You know what I hate?
Not having anything to do.
You would think I'd be swimming in free time what with my boss being basically the baddest bitch in town and all that. And yeah, I kinda do got a bunch of time to kill working on my suits and weapons and stuff.
But I also gotta heard all the angry cats that make up our team. I gotta run patrols around the block, cus if those ladies from the dojo catch a guy fucking with their turf, they're as likely to lynch him as turn him in. I gotta teach pretty boy how to take care of the weapon I made his dumb ass. I gotta make sure none of the Tinker crap in the walls is gonna explode today.
Basically I got a whole bunch of shit to do, which is fine, cus I enjoy at least half that shit, and the other half is stuff I do cus I live here.
Besides, sometimes the work is actually kind of interesting.
For instance.
I have no idea where the material for this damn tower the Boss made earlier is coming from. She says she's doing some space warping shit to make it work, but I call bullshit on that. You can only expand a tiny building so much before the materials give out cus of the strain.
Fucks it called? The uh...
"Square Cube Law" her voice whispers into my ear.
I grimace, not saying anything, and keep doing what I was doing - which is pulling metal plates off the walls in the stairwell leading up to the top of this thing to try and figure out how the wiring in it worked. Like everything in the damn castle, it was way bigger on the inside than on the outside, with dozens of landings for different floors, each one with a functioning light illuminating the landing.
The lights were another one of those things that left me skeptical about the Boss' 'It's just space warping' excuse. Where the fuck did the light bulbs come from? Are they all just really complicated bends in space showing the same light bulb?
"You know they aren't. You checked."
I stiffened.
You get used to a lot of shit around the boss. She raises the dead. Kills armies. Makes castles outta nothing. Hands out new powers like candy.
But even though I've seen, dealt with, and heard ghosts before - I have never been haunted.
Until about three days ago, when all my stuff started talking to me. I couldn't avoid it if I tried, cus without my armor I don't even have any fucking legs. Or thumbs. A man needs his thumbs. I thought about asking the Boss about it but... eh. Nothing bad has happened yet, and the damn thing mostly just answers questions I'm thinking. It's creepy that it does that, but eh. Maybe if it kills me the boss can bring me back in a body that has genitals.
"I wish you would answer me. No one else listens." She - definitely a she - sighed dejectedly. I almost felt kinda bad for her. Her voice was... honestly kinda pretty sounding. Like a woman who'd seen some shit, knew what she wanted, and knew how she was gonna get it. A badass. It appealed to the part of me that still had a libido, despite lacking any of the necessary equipment to act on that fact.
Not that I was going to respond to her. I was stubborn that way.
It was... something like eleven in the evening at this point. I didn't make a big deal of it, because I guess my fucked up body just didn't need that much sleep in the first place, but I almost always ended up working into the night, and waking up before noon. I hadn't noticed any signs of long term problems popping up from it, so I just ignored it.
Except when one of the dipshits decided to tromp through my Garage at eight am for some god awful reason. You'd think with a magical oversized castle full of exits and entrances, people would go out through the front god damn door, but no - Danny boy, Oliver, the creepy silver haired kid and her bird - they all used the fucking Garage exit for some reason. I can't even complain, cus I've got a perfectly good bedroom. I just prefer to sleep in my suit. Sure, I gotta shower like three times a day to keep the grease off, but its my Garage. I keep all my stuff there. The hell am I gonna do if another idiot decides to steal one of my suits? The only reason I'm not that worried about the tiny terror who stole that one sword is that the thing runs on Tinker bullshit. My Tinker bullshit specifically. Which means it'll probably fall apart within thirty seconds of her trying to use it, given that I haven't done any maintenance on the thing.
I continued pulling panels off, checking the wiring under them, and then replacing the panels for a good half hour uninterrupted, before she bothered me again.
"Hey. Why don't you move your stuff into the tower?"
"Take too much space. I'd eat up the whole bottom three floors and-" I froze, cursing silently. I didn't really 'tense' the way most people did when stressed out. I don't have enough core muscles to do it. Instead, the network of charged pseudopods I weave through my suit sort of... flex... slightly, drawing taught against all my controls and making my armor lock up.
"I knew you could hear me! Hey why doesn't anyone ever explore in here? There are so many rooms and no one uses any of them!" She began to natter happily at me, and I could feel myself sweating in response to the sudden uptick in yappy ghost.
I chose to deal with the problem in the simplest way I could.
I went back to ignoring her.
=TW=
It is fucking astounding how stupid a criminal can be.
I mean, me? I'm a piece of shit. I know it. My team knows it. Everyone knows it. But if you gave me a brochure of Brockton Bay with a tidy little map in the middle of it that basically said 'here be dragons' in one part of the city, I'd probably have enough neurons firing to be able to avoid that area of town. I mean, ignore me and the gang for a second here, half our fucking residents are abused prostitutes who have spent the better part of a month learning magic kung fu so they could beat the shit outta the next guy that looks at them funny. I'm pretty sure at least one of our neighbors is a Cape trying to stay under the radar. Don't even get me started on some of the weird shit the castle can get up to if it thinks some asshole is trying to break into it.
And yet, here I am again, looking at the fifth drug den to pop up at the edge of what I guess is our 'turf'.
"Like fucking cockroaches." I complained under my breath, shifting slightly and running my many appendages over the controls for my suit to make sure I had everything straight. I know I make it look easy, but moving around in this thing is basically like driving a car with a cellphone app. The tactile feedback is completely different from a normal suit of armor. One of the portals (Gaps, whatever) I had set into my suit was currently engaged, a complicated series of reinforced poles directing all my considerable weight through the gap and into a spike in the ground back at the castle. It was the only reason I could stand on the roof I was on without caving the thing in. No one ever expects the two ton juggernaut of hanging out on the roof, and unpowered thugs don't look up nearly as often as a criminal in a superpowered world probably should.
Eh. Not my problem.
A flick of a tendril, and a mechanism in my suit rips one of the 'can't possibly kill a guy by mistake' tags Taylor gave me. Then I'm off, rotating a joint so that my weight is no longer being taken by the rod in my feet, and slamming through the roof of the warehouse these chuckle fucks had set up shop in like the wrath of an angry god.
"Has anyone ever told you that you might have anger issues, actually?"
I ignored the comment, instead opting to glance around my surroundings, feeling the low thrum of my Aura pulsing in time with what would be my heartbeat, if I even had one. I can tell these guys are either amateurs or ex-merchants just by the stunned way they stare at my while I look around, instead of immediately shooting at me. Neet little lines of tables covered in 'product' fill the room, with dozens of tatted up looking gang bangers standing stupidly over them. A subtle shifting beneath me tells me I probably landed on at least one of them, which is fine since - like I said, I couldn't kill anyone if I wanted to right now.
Which wasn't much of a limitation, really.
With a bellow I stomped forward, throwing a haymaker that flatly should have murdered the guy I hit with it, but instead just sort of rotated him on his center of gravity, plowing him into the floor unconscious. I made sure to trample anyone I could reach, flinging heavy objects and people at anyone trying to flee, and all too soon, it was over.
Even before I met the Boss, I could have taken this group of chumps. Now I was mowing through them with about the same amount of effort you'd expect to put into eating a bag of potato chips. Only this was a lot funner. The last guy in the room - Jesus did he fucking piss himself? Gross - was crawling away from me on all fours like I was the asshole, doing some awkward mix of crying and screaming while he fired his useless little peashooter at me. I smirked at him when he hit a wall and couldn't back away any further, then lifted a foot to stomp on him.
"Hey, that's enough right? He's not going anywhere." She husked at me.
"He's a fucking piece of shit." I spat, eyeing the guy who's eyes about bugged out of his head when I actually seemed like I was speaking to him. I wasn't, but that didn't stop him from babbling some shit about... money I think. I dunno. Wasn't listening.
"Trainwreck. You aren't a piece of shit." She said in the sort of annoyingly sympathetic tone you catch a lot of on soap operas.
"I ain't talking about me! I'm talking about this piece of shit!" I countered quickly. I hated this psychobabble crap.
"You're projecting. Hey, why don't you calm down and we can chat? Since we're doing that now, apparently." She continued to whisper soothingly to me. It honestly wasn't very effective, cus she didn't exactly have a soft whispery voice - but whatever. I didn't have to cave this guys balls in. I just wanted to.
"...You suck and I want you to know it." I spat at the idiot, lowering my foot gently and reaching forward to yank his gun out of his hand, then throwing it across the room. Looking around, I spotted a safe nearby - presumably full of money or some shit - that looked heavy enough for my needs, so I ambled over, picked it up, and gently put it back down on the guys legs. They wouldn't break. But it wouldn't be fun either.
"Were you talking to me or him?" She asked me, mild amusement in her voice.
"Yes." I ground out, ignoring the mans sobs as I turned away from him.
"Oh good, we're still talking. You did good back there big guy." She encouraged.
"Whatever. Gonna ask the Boss to fucking deal with you first thing tomorrow. I don't have time for this ghost shit." I retorted. Seriously, I needed a Jiminy Cricket ass voice in my ear like I needed a hole in the head.
"What, so she can bring me back? Pass." She answered flippantly.
"Then she can stab you into heaven or whatever it is she does with that baby-sword thing of hers." I argued, stepping out in front of the building to wait for the cops - who I had called before I even jumped into the building.
"I think I'm okay where I am, thanks." She said, and I could feel my expression tighten.
"No. You can't just live in my fucking armor forever. You're a nuisance." I growled angrily. What the hell was wrong with this woman? Who the hell chooses to spend their time riding my oily ass?
"You're sweet. Dumb. But sweet." She chortled.
"Come a-fucking-gain?" I asked coldly.
"Oh quit being such a brat. Look at you, all self loathing and body image problems. I've been watching you run around the area for over a month like a chicken with it's head cut off. You're a good man."
I stopped, staring off into space. What kind of saturday morning bullshit-
"What, you saying you fell in love with me or something?" I asked suspiciously.
"Not hardly. I doubt you're into necrophilia anyway. I just thought to myself, 'when will he stop?' and you know, the fact that the answer is apparently 'when you drop dead' kinda pissed me off." She chuckled at me.
"Heh. Yeah, guess it'd be hard to fall for a guy-" I started self deprecatingly.
"Without a dick. Yes. I've heard that one before too." She cut me off, seeming very unimpressed for some reason.
An awkward pause stretched out between us for a moment, then I spoke again.
"You gonna earn your keep?" I asked skeptically.
"If you can't beat em, join em?" She responded jokingly.
"Just answer the question," I replied tiredly. Seriously. I ain't cut out for other people. Even dead ones.
"Sure. I do a mean poltergeist impression. You could probably use some positive reinforcement too."
I stared up the street, the distant sound of sirens blaring as the police approached the building, contemplating that with a frown.
"You're gonna annoy the shit outta me aren't you." I stated flatly.
"Probably." She answered chipperly.
"Got a name?" I finally asked in defeat.
"Yeah, it's a bit fuzzy, but when I was alive I think they used to call me... Challenger."