Chapter 12: Mute-Cute
BRAZEN
Dominic sat propped up against the wall of the warehouse, a few feet from the entrance. Brazen considered it the entrance, despite there certainly being other means of ingress (such as the window he had crashed through dramatically, or the receiving bay garage-style vertical sliding doors built to accommodate truck shipments), because it was the one they used. He didn't feel like climbing up to the windows every time he wanted to enter, and the truck doors were locked shut with chains.
There was evidence that the entrance had also been locked up. Neo must have forced her way into the building; she didn't have a key, but knew the place would be abandoned? Or perhaps she just liked its association with Torchwick.
Brazen lay flat on the ground, idly making dust-angels with his arms and legs.
"So... what did you think of it?"
"Probably exactly what you thought of it," Brazen replied quietly. They were a good distance from where Bedlam slept, but they didn't want to wake him up after all he had been through and, more importantly, to the sight of their flushed faces.
"It felt surprisingly similar to charging up Moonslice," said Dominic.
"Just that slow build-up of pressure, the incessant desire to release it." Brazen continued the thought, "I can understand why he thought that she was having such an effect on him, given the circumstances."
Neither one had dared progress their experiment to its natural conclusion. The sweat they could explain to Bedlam as having been from needing a shower, of having been running around the city searching for him without pause. Despite their inexperience in the activity, they knew from second-hand accounts and his time spent in a wilderness camp with a few dozen sexually active faunus that the aroma they would produce would tip Bedlam off to what they had done.
It wasn't like what they had done seemed to have been effective anyways. At least, not effective at charging my semblance, Brazen considered. The thought came to him that merely trying to rub one out to charge the novel 'White Moonslice' had had a slim prospect for success; from a logical perspective, the act had failed to replicate numerous factors that Bedlam had implied contributed to his discovery. Neither he nor Dominic had worn a condom while they explored their newfound disjunction between who they now were and the notion of 'saving myself for Blake Belladonna'. Neither of them had imitated the mirrored parries or thrusts that had allowed them to charge Moonslice on the train or in Lichen's house while powering up their semblance to aid in Bedlam's escape: they had not touched one another, and it wasn't like he had ever once before expected to charge up Moonslice by polishing his blade. Yet here he was, feeling slightly disappointed and guilty as Bedlam lay on the other side of the empty warehouse, his blood still pumping from the attempt.
He'd be lying to himself and himselves if he said that the attempt was unpleasant.
Brazen looked at Dominic, finding that his brother had turned at the same moment to regard him. Each of their minds wondered simultaneously: should we try it differently? Should we try it again? Brazen didn't feel like he was quite up for it, mentally or emotionally. It was enough to sate his curiosity, his desire to change, for now. Dominic nodded slowly, then reached for his pants.
"So, now what?"
"Not sure. Sort of a new situation everyday with you two. I guess we're supposed to be on watch until he wakes up." Brazen said, "probably for the best that we didn't manage to replicate the anomaly he experienced. Even if we did charge up White Moonslice, what would I do then? At least on the train we had a clear target. What am I going to do with White Moonslice? Fire it at you and have you tell me how it felt?" He thought about that. He could use Dom as a test target... "No, even if I was sure it wouldn't just do what our semblance normally does and tears into you, we have no idea what sort of lingering or ongoing effects result from getting hit by it." He looked at Neo's scroll; the image of the scantily-clad woman tied to a table, "I mean, we keep saying she's asleep but what if she's just brain-dead?"
"She messed with me, maybe she already was."
Brazen scoffed amusedly. "Yeah, maybe. Even if it doesn't mess the target up, what's to convince her to give reliable feedback?"
Dominic shrugged. A more serious look came to his face. "What are we going to do with her?"
A good question, Brazen thought, one which I would like the answer to. "Would she be of any use to you on your journey?"
"I can't think of how having a prisoner while travelling on a boat to Vale would make my life any easier," Dominic said, "and Bedlam seemed to keep her for you, not me. Not that I care. She wants what you want, so it would be easier to convince her to aid you than it would be to coerce her to serve me, even if she has some of Torchwick's skills at operating in Vale."
"Alright. I'll have Neo assist me in locating Cinder, once she's willing."
"Yeah, I bet that's all you want to do if she's willing." Dominic said with a smirk. Brazen responded by flattening back out on the ground and making another cloud of dust rise up. "Don't think I haven't noticed you keeping an eye on that scroll. I'm not judging. It certainly helped you out for our semblance test."
Brazen wanted to argue that it had been part of keeping watch. That Bedlam would feel safer knowing that his brethren were watching over the woman who had inflicted herself on him, making sure she would not gain freedom nor pardon while he slept. Dominic came over and snatched the scroll out of his hand; Brazen did not resist the grab. "I guess she's still asleep. How exciting."
Brazen lay on the ground for a while, mulling over his thoughts about Neo. She was dangerous and human, but under their control – for the time being. Would he be able to sway her to his side? To get her to willingly cooperate with him so that they could track down Cinder? Neo clearly wanted to find Cinder, so perhaps it wouldn't be too difficult to overcome that hurdle. The hard part would be getting the vengeful illusionist to stay her blade long enough for Cinder to give him the answers to the burning questions that had created him as an entity. If he managed that, could he avoid the inevitable betrayal? Neo would decide he had served her as much as he would at some point and call down the human authorities on him to get that bounty. Brazen would have to come up with some way to overcome that: either by making sure he knew when the betrayal was set to occur, or by making sure that her trap would fall apart whenever it sprung.
"If I get her to work with me to find Cinder, she's still going to betray me afterwards."
"I didn't want to spoil your fantasies of getting a rebound girlfriend, now that Blake is out of the picture, but yeah, Neo's bad news. Who knows when you'll find Cinder? Will Bedlam or I still be around, or will we have gone off on our own by then?" Dominic mused, "probably safer to make plans that don't rely on support from myself or him as core elements."
Brazen sighed. It was going to be a lot of effort to get Neo to not be a detriment to his goal. He hoped that she would be worth it, that finding Cinder would be worth it. He didn't want to say it out loud, but the thought of going to Salem scared him. She was entwined with, or was herself, grimm. Seeking her out, finding answers to his questions from her directly, seemed like a last resort sort-of-deal. A deal with a devil, and he didn't want to sell out his soul so easily before exploring his other options. His brothers hadn't had to see her face yet, but hopefully the fact that she was monstrous was reason enough for them to understand why he balked at the thought of going to her without Cinder at his side.
He needed to learn more about that jellyfish grimm, the seer. He didn't consider himself an expert of the types of grimm, but he had never heard of anything close to it before.
"So what are your plans for the day? I'll be here with Neo, I guess. Bedlam said he has to go spy on Blake more."
"I've got a few things I want to take care of around town. Going to head over to say farewell to Lichen, might check in at the travel centre to see if there has been any word from my ship yet. Hopefully the ship hasn't sunk out in the ocean. I mean, I could bum a ride off Hazel, but I'm not sure if that would get me any closer to Vale."
Or if we can really trust Hazel now that I don't have the White Fang under my command, Brazen read between the lines. "Would you mind going clothes shopping for Bedlam? We need at least one set of clothes for each clone, or else one of us is going to be undisguised all the time. At least none of us is worried about doing laundry."
"I'm not great at choosing clothes..." Dominic began.
"Well, don't use the relic if you can't decide." Brazen joked before getting serious again. "Just get something that fits and doesn't stand out in a crowd. Something you wouldn't mind being seen in by Blake, if you still cared about her like before."
It was so much easier to just let her choose what we would wear, the pair of clones thought.
"Well she's not here so we shall have to press on, boldly into the uncertainty of the future but possessed, I hope, of the dignity of pants."
"You know," Dom began, a sly smirk growing on his face, "if you can convince Neo to be your obedient little human pet, maybe you can just have her use her semblance to help you go around in public. It would be an even better disguise than hair dye and an eyepatch!"
"I think I'd pass. Even if I was confident in her ability, and her willingness, to do such a thing, I'm still not too keen on just walking around naked. Winter is coming, and I don't want my dick to freeze off just as I started enjoying the thing. I might get her to do that, though."
"Go around naked in her semblance, or enjoying your dick?" Dom replied, his face reaching maximum smirk capacity.
"Yes."
Dominic barked out a laugh, then held his hand over his mouth to stymie any more outbursts: Bedlam was still sleeping. The other hand, holding the scroll, presented the device back to Brazen. "Here, have it back. Just try to keep an eye on the entrances, too." Dominic said while handing back Neo's scroll and putting on his pants, then the rest of his clothes. "I'm going to get something for us to eat for breakfast."
"Don't forget the fourth mouth," Brazen reminded, "from the look of it, she's been surviving on stale energy bars."
Dominic gave a begrudging nod, then headed out into the darkness of the industrial district. Brazen was left alone with his thoughts, and in the silence he drew up his plans for Neopolitan. His reverie ended as Bedlam began to stir. Bored, Brazen strode over to where his other clone lay his head upon Neo's sleeping bag-turned-pillow.
"Did we figure anything out while I slept?" he asked, wiping the sleep from his blue eye as he leaned up from the floor. "Is the building still secure? Neo is...?"
Brazen blushed, though that would be hard to notice in the pre-dawn dark of the warehouse. "She's still tied to the table where you left her. Other than that it has been quiet." No need to talk about what Dominic and I did to try to charge White Moonslice. "I was thinking of calling the old version of Moonslice 'Black Moonslice', and your new version can be 'White Moonslice'."
"Those names suck. You can't just add 'white' and 'black' in front of each version. White Moonslice needs its own neat name."
"You just called it White Moonslice! It's sticking already!" Brazen argued, knowing he was going to lose the debate but trying anyway for the sake of stubborn pride.
"Nope. No no no. If you give me a minute, I'm certain that I can think of something better. Something less irritating, more poetic." Bedlam grumbled, then under his breath whispered "something Blake would appreciate..."
"Dominic went out to buy more food for breakfast. I'm sure he'll get whatever we would."
Bedlam smiled at that. He took a minute to stretch. "Alright, I'll keep watch and you can get some rest, Braze. When Dom gets back I'll go out to check on Blake."
Brazen took the sleeping bag, fluffed it up a bit before laying it under his head, and began to fall quickly into sleep. "Anything else I should know about dealing with Neo, outside of what the scroll transcript said?"
"If you want to piss her off at you: just insult Torchwick. If you don't want to piss her off: keep him out of the conversation. If you feel like pissing her off at Cinder, mention him without insulting him," he responded, a hint of humour in his tone. "She might not know that we've lost control of the local White Fang. So she would probably believe Dom is just another faunus, with his disguise. Like Lichen, she has no reason to suspect that we've been magically tripled. Just have him speak in a lower pitch or something if he needs to talk, otherwise just use signs."
Brazen nodded, filing the information away in his brain in case it was useful later.
"If it matters, I kept track of how long she left me with the cattle-prod strapped to me: two hours while she beat me with the umbrella, seven hours after I smelled through her illusion. I'm not sure how long she had me upside-down for. I told her my task is finding Blake, so you'll have to reason out of that being your task if you want to convince her that you're more interested in Cinder all of a sudden. She saw my wounded finger, so wear gloves or figure out an explanation for that. Maybe she'll believe that we regenerate? The last thing I told her before I left the room to wait for you guys was a threat to behave so that I would not have to use the cattle-prod on her to see if she could beat my record. Before that, but after I got free, I told her that I would convince my faction that she could be useful to us in tracking down Cinder. Hopefully she assumes that to have meant faunus loyal to our cause despite the fiasco at Haven. Told her that I was not keen to kill her, yet." Bedlam thought for a little bit, his expression eventually seeming content that he had remembered everything pertinent regarding his ex-captor. "Moonbright, by the way. I discovered it, so I get to name it. I want to name it Moonbright."
Brazen nodded, "'s fair, I guess. Good name. Moonslice and Moonbright."
Brazen stood outside the Product Testing room. Dominic had left after Brazen had woken up; Bedlam had taken off while Brazen had slept, after eating one of the pudding cups and an apple from the foodstuffs Dominic had returned with from a nearby market. He looked at the desk, taking stock of what items he had to work with.
Neo's scroll, of course. It let him see that she continued to lay motionless in the room, still asleep in her underwear. Or dead, but probably asleep.
A score of pudding cups of various flavours, some sweet apples, and a single cold cooked-sausage. He hadn't known what to make of the last bit when he first saw it. Dominic had already left at that point, so he had wondered if it had been a masturbation joke; then he realized the sausage was for Neo. Maybe it was Dom's way of saying that is the only meat-pole that Brazen should be shoving in her mouth today? What a prude. Probably good advice, though.
Neo's stuff, which included her purse (a mess, but he had found a few more condoms stashed within), a familiar black bowler hat with a red ribbon tied around it – Roman Torchwick's signature chapeau, the pile of energy bars she had been eating from, the cheap audio equipment connected to the speakers in the padded room, Neo's bladed reinforced-parasol that he had quickly determined how to operate, a collection of necklaces and the rest of her clothes that Bedlam had not bothered to put back on the human.
His stuff: the clothes Bedlam had allowed to get torn to shreds, his weapons, his wallet. Bedlam had taken back his original clothes, leaving Brazen with the rags. Why would I need them? I'm stuck inside until I convince Neo to work with me in such a way that does not expose our relic-based secrets to the human criminal.
Brazen decided that rather than hesitating outside Neo's prison, he would check out the other rooms. It gave him time to solidify his confidence in his plan: intimidate her, then feed her. Appeal to her sense of reason once being fed calms her down; convince her that together we have a better chance of not only finding Cinder, but overpowering her once we do. Cinder cost me my authority, the White Fang I've spent a decade rising through. Neo lost Torchwick, her... boyfriend? Father? They had a working relationship of some sort, Brazen thought. It wasn't a priority, but he did want to find out what they had meant to one another.
Cinder had used both of them: him for control of the faunus revolutionaries in Vale, Neo and Torchwick for control of the Kingdom's criminal elements. Brazen just had to make Neo agree that their interests aligned enough to warrant working together in seeking justice for what Cinder had cost each of them.
Worst-case scenario, if Neo refused to cooperate, he still had her tied up on a table.
Wearing nothing but a bra and underwear. Completely at his mercy.
If he was not able to get her to help him find Cinder, to find answers about the Relic and the source of Cinder's strange abilities, then at least Neo could help him answer a few questions that had arisen concerning his semblance's potential. If it worked like Bedlam had implied, maybe his semblance could even coerce her to ignore her revulsion at his inhuman nature. If it reflects pleasure at the target, then maybe he could appeal to the hedonist in her. He was certain that deep down the girl was a hedonist: it was just a matter of how deep he would have to reach to find it in her.
With that perverted thought forming images in his mind, he entered the room and saw Neopolitan for the first time outside of a hand-sized screen. Her mismatched eyes fluttered open, her head turning towards the sound of his entrance so that she could squint hatefully at him.
It's a good thing the screen resolution on her camera is so poor, otherwise I don't think I would have been able to hold myself back when Dominic and I were trying to self-charge Moonbright. Bedlam would have smelled something amiss, for sure. Neopolitan was beautiful; the scroll live-feed didn't do her justice. A petite body with ample curves, particularly those barely restrained by the bra that wrapped over her bosom. Rosy-red cheeks. The rheum of her restless repose that crusted in the corners of her eyes did little to negate their lustre. Screw symmetry, Brazen thought, it's overrated anyways. He appreciated her eyes. She may be human, but she clearly hadn't fit into the social norms.
She coughed, and his mind snapped back to the task for which he had ventured into the room. Right, he scolded himself, stick to the plan.
Brazen moved up to the table and looked down menacingly at her. He placed an apple, a pudding cup, and the sausage parallel to her midsection on the table. She watched and instinctively licked her lip at the sight of food.
"I had a quick nap. Sorry about that, I've just had trouble sleeping for a few days." Brazen uttered darkly, working at creating an intimidating atmosphere, "but enough about me, how are you feeling?"
No response, but her eyes darted between his face and the food beside her that she was prevented from reaching for.
"Have you considered my offer? Of working together to find Cinder?" Brazen turned around, walking calmly around the table, examining the padding on the walls. It made his voice sound different: sharper. There was no echo in the room, so his words didn't resonate. She only had one chance to hear them. He touched the wall, feeling the texture of the foam. Neopolitan remained silent.
"No?" Brazen said, turning around while slowly drawing Wilt. He stepped back towards Neo where she lay on the table while admiring the keen edge of his blade. "Well, if that is how you feel, it makes me sad. It's fine, though."
He raised the sword up, and she shook her head desperately while her mouth clamped shut – she must have wanted to not die screaming, he surmised.
"I have a plan for that, too." He brought the sword down in a swipe too quick for even his eye to follow and she shut her eyes in fear. His faunus senses detected that if her panties were not already a wreck, she would have wanted to change them after his demonstration. The sword bisected the apple cleanly through its core, so perfectly that the halves remained standing upright until he pulled the blade back up.
Neo's breath hitched and, after several long seconds, she opened her eyes again upon realizing that the blade had not cleaved through her. Brazen moved around the table and made another quick cut, which this time Neopolitan watched, turning the apple into four quarters. With the blade, he impaled one slice and moved it with the tip of his sword to hover over Neo's mouth.
"Are you hungry, Neo?" His eyes trailed down from her eyes to her midsection, where he saw the long, thin cattle-prod that Bedlam had shoved down through her cleavage into her sex. So that's where the cattle-prod Bedlam mentioned got to... He didn't hear the tell-tale jolting zaps, nor did the room smell like flesh getting burned, so at least Bedlam had not put the device into her crotch while it was active. Neo opened her mouth and lifted her head up hesitantly towards the apple slice, probably suspecting it to be a cruel ploy wherein he would pull it away as she neared it to make her feel her hunger more acutely. He did no such thing, and she devoured the fruit as it entered her mouth. Sweet juice mixed with drool dribbled down one side of her face. Once she had finished chewing, he offered her each of the other three quarters in turn until the apple had been consumed. She smiled pleasantly at him.
Progress, Brazen thought. I gave her a bit of a scare, now she's feeling better having been given something to eat. "So,-" he began, intent on making an appeal to her sense of reason.
Ptoo! Ptoo!
Neopolitan spat the apple's seeds at his face, her little mouth transforming into a veritable cannon as the little brown pellets shot forth at him. So surprised was he at the attack that three hit him in his bare chest before he had the sense to propel himself out of her range.
"Alright, if that's how you want to do this. You're going to answer some questions. Who knows that you're in Mistral? What happened to Torchwick in Vale? What was your relationship with Torchwick? What do you know about Cinder? Why did you attack me while I was watching Blake?"
No response. He moved back towards her, and she spat another seed at him. He caught it with one hand while sheathing Wilt with the other. With both hands he grabbed the smooth skin of her face and forced her mouth open. His keen faunus eyes peered into her mouth, inspecting it for any remaining seeds but seeing only her white teeth. "That's enough of that. No more apples for you. We'll have to feed you something without seed until you're more cooperative." He picked up a cup of vanilla-flavoured pudding, before repeating his questions; "Who knows you're here? What have you learned about Cinder? Why did you attack me?"
Still no response. He began to suspect that her silence was some sort of anti-interrogation technique that Torchwick had instructed her in, so as to not jeopardize his operations should his... whatever she was to him... get apprehended by the authorities.
"Ah, but what is this? It seems I don't have any utensils to feed you this with," a lie; a bundle of plastic forks had been procured by Dominic along with the food to enable the easy consumption of the puddings, but Neo didn't have to know that and Brazen mind had already devised an innovative means of overcoming the fake obstacle to his prisoner's nutrition.
Neo opened her mouth wider, indicating that she wanted him to just pour it into her mouth directly from the plastic container, as if it were a squeezable tube. He certainly could do that, but what fun would that be?
"Oh, you think I could just dump all this sweet, thick white cream in your mouth?" Brazen held the pudding cup over her face. The strong smell of vanilla emanating from the opened container, combined with the vaguely lewd subtext, made her drool slightly more than before, "but despite what you think, I am not some sort of savage. I am a civil civil rights activist, and think it appropriate to eat in a dignified fashion." He pulled the pudding cup away slightly, causing her to whimper softly as her belly rumbled in protest.
"Ah, not to fear, there's a proper bit right here!" Brazen reached to her chest above her cleavage, his hand finding purchase on the handle of the cattle-prod wedged between her breasts and yanked it out with a sudden tug; she winced as he did and gritted her teeth while letting out a wheeze of distress. Brazen made an exaggerated hum as he looked at the tip of it, "seems to me it's already been used to dip into some pudding." He suddenly stuck the prod into Neo's mouth, manoeuvring it with precision past her parted, trembling lips against her teeth. He instructed her to "clean it off so you can use it to eat your pudding. Unless you would rather I just... press this button, here?" He indicated the power switch, while turning the dial to its lowest setting. If he turned on the power, it would sting sharply. More power and it would begin to sear the tender flesh inside her mouth. He assumed that she knew that, since it was her implement.
Neo blenched a bit and her feet did a series of weak and rapid stomps against the table as the invasive utensil inundated her sense of taste with the flavour of her own stale arousal that must have superseded the lingering sweetness of the apple, but she got ahold of herself and complied with his order when she saw his finger drifting slowly closer towards the power switch.
Grimacing, she wrapped her lips around the metal shaft and began to gently suckle it until it was clean. Well, clean-er at least.
"See, that wasn't so bad. It's easy to cooperate with me, Neo. If you cooperate with me, you can have your shot at Cinder. It will just be on my terms. Cinder can't die right away. We need her alive." Brazen pulled it out of her mouth and dipped it into the pudding cup, bringing a taste of the vanilla pudding to his captive. She eagerly cleaned off the shaft again. It would take him a while to feed her like this, since the thin prongs couldn't hold much pudding at a time on its tines, but that was fine. He had all day to hang out with his latest acquisition while his brothers hogged their remaining clothes. He had all day to familiarize himself with her and to make her learn to trust him.
"So it just so happens that we both have an interest in finding out where, after Haven, Cinder managed to get herself off to," Brazen said while Neo slurped at another serving. The hand not holding the cattle-prod raced down to hover closely over the front of her panties. His faunus senses had already informed him all he needed to know about what he would feel there, but it was still exciting to feel the heat of her overteased sex wafting up to his outstretched hand. Addressing her desire, he whispered softly, "or maybe you just want to get yourself off, too."
Neo made a low groan as his attention strayed from the act of feeding her pudding, or maybe she just didn't appreciate the clever wordplay.
"You could work for me. There's no reason that we cannot pool our resources to find her. I need to know more about what she wanted from Beacon Academy." Brazen stated, then continued in a whisper, "I'll tell you a secret: I followed her literal trail of destruction during the attack, and it led me to a large chamber under the school where she had fought the headmaster. The headmaster was under the school, during the attack. The most powerful huntsman in Vale. He was guarding something, and I need to know what was so precious that he would forgo his responsibility to his students, to his Kingdom. Whatever it is, that's what Cinder wanted, what all her effort was directed towards."
"You want Cinder to pay for getting Roman killed, and I can respect that. Revenge is something I'm... well-acquainted with. Some would say that I've dabbled in its pursuit more than most. I've learned that you can't let it cloud your senses, though, lest you get caught in your own trap." He poked one of the restraints holding Neopolitan's arm. "Rather than killing Cinder for what she took from you, wouldn't you rather know why she took him from you, first? Once you get that you can get your revenge at your leisure."
He gave her a moment to consider the offer, the rationality of it all.
"So, what do you think? Want to join me to deal with Cinder?"
Neo suckled on the pudding-laden tines, but said nothing. Brazen stood up and walked out of the room, returning in short order holding the bowler hat.
"Roman was the finest human thief in Vale," he said. Neo looked like she might be about to say something to contest the application of a species-based condition on that statement; certainly she felt that Roman had been the best thief in Vale, period. Bedlam was right, Torchwick is her biggest button. She managed to hold her tongue, and stayed silent still despite her obvious desire to argue about her flamboyant associate's prestige. "Don't you think you would honour his memory more by stealing the target of Cinder's desire, that propelled her to bring Vale to ruin, than by simply slaying her?"
His words seemed to have the desired effect on Neo. Her eyes softened and lingered on the hat that he held in his hands. He moved forward and placed the hat over her goosebump-covered belly-button.
"I'm not sure what you and Torchwick were to one another, but as far as I know you seem to be the closest thing he has to a legacy now," he said, "unless any of his other friends came with you to Mistral?"
Neo still didn't talk, and now she just looked sadly at the hat on her stomach. Brazen came to stand in front of where her head lay at the edge of the table, taking a long look at her throat. The slight beginnings of bruises were visible from where Bedlam had grasped her during his escape, adding a touch of colour to her otherwise flawless pale skin.
"We've not really gotten off to a great start. I'm concerned that might be clouding your judgment, prejudicing you against my offer. This whole business of dragging me here, ruining my clothes, and so forth... you could have just talked to me, first."
Neo shook her head from side to side.
Probably true; we would have just seen her as a bounty hunter, hungry to cash us in for the government's prize lien. Oddly enough, by doing things this way rather than politely approaching him as an ally, she had pretty much ensured her survival by demonstrating her capabilities. Just like Cinder... I'm starting to think my most recent female relationships are subscribing to an alarming trend, as far as introductions are concerned.
If he was making a profile on a dating site, he imagined his interests would be: faunus rights, justice upon those who have wronged me, strong female leads threatening me with violence, and long walks in the forest in the moonlight.
"Well, if that is not the reason for refusing me, then why? You're not in much position to negotiate."
Despite her body trembling in fear, Neo managed to smile deviously up at him.
"The fact of the matter is that you need me, if you want to get what you came to Mistral for. The question now is 'do I need you'." Brazen walked back around to sit on the table. He impaled the sausage on the tines of the cattle-prod, and held it in front of her mouth. "You're not used to working on your own and probably couldn't handle Cinder in a straight-up fight. You'd just be throwing your life away." Her smile turned into a hard stare; maybe she had accepted that, but was ready to try anyways? He thought about the warehouse, how she had been eating garbage. Maybe she literally had nothing left but the thought of killing Cinder, getting revenge for the death of Torchwick.
A clean slate, more or less. If there was one thing that Adam Taurus was good at, it was convincing others that they should live (and possibly die) for his vision for the future. Well, that and putting his sword in people.
"I might not know where she is right now, but I've got some leads on tracking down Cinder. I would let you have access to Cinder when I find her if we can come to some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement." Neo seemed to be in deep thought. She certainly wasn't talking, or bargaining for her life like he had expected her to be doing. Clearly, she's made of sterner stuff. I hate to admit it, but I'm impressed. It takes guts to remain so stoically silent in the face of peril such as she might see herself as being in now. My reputation for dealing with human captives, if she worked with Torchwick or saw the news report about those SDC executives we took hostage two years ago, would make most humans have little hope for survival here. Most people in her position would be running their mouth as fast as possible in the hopes of saving their own skin. Score one point for Torchwick; for all his many, many, many faults, he had at least created a worthy creature in Neopolitan.
He idly wondered how long a will like hers would have lasted, how long the White Fang headquarters would have been secret had she been captured by Mistral's authorities. He suspected that Ghira and his human allies would still be trying to find the enclave a month afterwards, the possibility that Adam Taurus was rebuilding his strength in the stronghold eating away at them. A shame she's human. A shame I didn't have more, capable people like her serving my Fang.
"I could have killed you, but that's not what I'm about despite what the human media would tell you. I'm not sure if you heard about my vision for the White Fang, for my people. I don't need humans to fear the faunus. I'm offering a new alternative. You don't have to be afraid of me, Neo." She opened her eyes, which focused on the sausage hanging in front of her. She bit her lip, salivating more at the sight of it, her body still visibly trembling while she kept silent.
"I believe that humans should serve the faunus. We're the superior species, but that doesn't mean I'm automatically against coexistence. I believe that even humans have something to offer the world, my reframed hierarchy." He rose to his feet, moving back to the edge of the table by her head. "So, Neo. What do you have to offer me? Can you help me get what I need? Do you know what it is that I need?"
Neo nodded, slowly at first but picking up pace. Suddenly she stopped nodding and reached forward for the sausage, wrapping her lips around the meat but not biting in with her teeth. Instead, she sucked on it, drawing out its succulent juices before running her tongue around its periphery. Her head began to shimmer pink and Brazen witnessed her use her semblance. Suddenly her eyes were radiant amber, her hair black as the darkness of a mineshaft. However, for whatever reason, the illusion began to shred itself, making the disguise flicker and become slightly transparent. Neo's aura must be low, or her mind unable to concentrate on her ability. He took out her scroll to check.
"I certainly don't need any more of that face," he said tersely. "After some introspection, I've decided to have someone else deal with Blake for the time being in my stead, someone I trust to see the task dealt with as well as I would be able to. I've decided to move on from that train-wreck of a relationship and focus on the bigger picture. " Her façade cracked and shattered, her Blake disguise dispelled. The particles of her aura dispersed into nothingness. He preferred her without the disguise anyway.
She saw her scroll and tried to reach for it, though her hands were stymied by her bindings.
"Oh, you want your scroll, eh?" He said in a faux-cheerful tone, then growled "yeah, right. I give you this, and you'll be unleashing yourself or calling your human authorities down on this warehouse. No, I think I'll hang on to this for the time being. Until you can offer me something tangible, something cooperative." Her scroll registered her aura, and he was concerned but not surprised that it was completely depleted. Why would her aura be so low? Has she been using her semblance in here that much? He put the scroll back into his pocket and used his now-empty hand to feel her shoulder. It was solid: certainly no illusion. He could feel the texture of her cold skin against his. His sense of smell certainly confirmed that she was there, too.
It also confirmed that Bedlam was not alone in needing to find a shower in the near future. She reeked of arousal and stress.
Was he just being paranoid? Had he fallen for one of her illusions somehow? Was that why she was so confidently resisting his questioning? He tested the restraints. They were solid, too. She's just messing with you, Brazen, he chided, trying to get in my head. He refused to let it work. She was his prisoner, securely fastened to the table. He knew that was a fact.
He surmised that he may have reached an impasse in his plan: she was not responding at all, outside of a few grunts and whimpers, body language that demonstrated her anxiety.
Thankfully, he had planned for his plan to fail. "Worst-case scenario, at least Neo could help me answer a few questions that had arisen concerning my semblance's potential." He had scared her. Fed her. Reasoned with her. None of it had worked; she still refused to accept that they could work as a team to hunt down Cinder.
Brazen tried to convince himself that he had no choice left now but to use Neo to test out Moonbright. It's not like I just want to try it because of the way her lips are clinging to the meat of the sausage, the way her chest is heaving rhythmically as she breathes, the smell of her permeating the room's air.
Maybe he gave up on trying to convince her with traditional means too soon, but who was there to judge him for it?
"You might not be able to provide me with anything I need right now, Neo, but perhaps there's only one thing I want right now."
He brought his hand to unzip his pants and pulled a plastic-wrapped condom from his pocket which he had acquired while preparing for his encounter – stolen from Neo's cluttered purse. His turgid manhood flopped down onto her forehead. The sausage was released from her mouth as she bent her neck to study the new arrival, her binary eyes going crossed to look at it.
"So the question becomes: 'what do you want? Do you want revenge? Do you want to serve the faunus?" He asked, turning the idea that had brought the White Fang stampeding to his banner into something salacious. Suddenly he was glad that the camera didn't have a playback function. Dominic probably would have taken umbrage at his slight heresy. Bedlam's indignation would be equal, but for separate reasons.
Neo squirmed around and lunged her tongue at him as best as her bondage allowed her to, but he – with great personal control – pulled back to keep his cock out of reach of her mouth. She pulled back and looked up at him, confused by the retraction, while her body continued to tremble weakly.
"What you did yesterday," Brazen said while demonstrating his inexperience with putting on a condom, "intrigues me."
Neo shrugged, as if to say 'that's just how I am, I guess'. Or perhaps she was insulting his virginity.
"Not that part. What happened at the end. That's never happened for me before."
She choked a bit, then his captive began laughing, or at least, appeared like she was laughing. She didn't really vocalize the chuckles.
"What's so funny?"
She closed her eyes and shook her head while her face was still full of mirth at his expense.
Oh, she took that as a sexual performance comment. "Come on, Neo. We both know I'm a virgin. My semblance has never done that before. Normally, it turns everything black and reflects stored up energy back at my foes after I absorb it with my sword, Wilt." Brazen explained, "but yesterday, you took a charge directly – as far as I can tell, since I had the blindfold on at that point – to your face, or throat, or whatever was there at the time. I thought it had killed you, but the energy build-up phase was white rather than black... and this would all be a lot easier if you would contribute what you saw from your perspective to the conversation."
Her dedicated silence was becoming aggravating, now.
"I don't think I absorbed energy, in fact I don't think I've ever been absorbing energy like I thought I did with my semblance. I think I have consciously been using my semblance to absorb pain. So if I didn't absorb pain, I think I absorbed pleasure instead through the condom and sent it back to you," he said, looking at her meaningfully, hoping for a single word. "Can you just tell me what it did to you when it went off?"
Neo looked annoyed, and shook her head in defiance of his simple request.
"Just fucking tell me what you felt!" He exclaimed, momentarily losing himself to anger.
Her face flushed a darker red, scarcely noticeable over the blush that had already covered her face since he had first walked in to see her (probably there since Bedlam had shoved the cattle-prod down her panties). Her brow furrowed in anger, and she mouthed what he assumed was some human profanity at him though she made no sound. It was like she was playing a game with him, and would lose if she uttered a single useful syllable. Maybe if he knew how to read lips he would have understood what cruel words she would have liked to say to him.
"I read lips worse than I can read books, Neo."
She scowled.
"If you don't tell me what happened, we'll have to recreate the situation under which I experienced it previously."
She tugged again at her restraints; apparently she expected to be released. Hah, nope.
"With a few changes to the seating arrangements, of course. Can't release you just yet," he continued. "So we'll just use your..." now he blushed and felt himself get a bit light-headed as blood flow was redirected elsewhere, "...mouth to um... charge my semblance again. Then I'll just tap you with it and see what it does first-hand. It should do something similar to what you experienced before with it. So if you suffered any ill-effects, best to tell me about them now rather than later."
Her mouth was open only by a sliver, she was mulling over his words and avoiding his gaze by staring at the other side of the room.
"If you had aura, I wouldn't be so worried. At least you might have some chance of negating Moonslice if it is what gets charged and tries to shred your body apart like my semblance has done to so many others in the past. Where is your aura? Have you been playing with your semblance all night or something?" He certainly hadn't seen her doing anything through the camera, but then again she was an illusionist. Her illusions would probably have an easy time fooling the camera she had planted in the room, and she would have known that she could do so. Her semblance was another mystery in life for him to solve.
He poked her mouth with a finger. "Don't be like that. I'm fairly certain it won't kill you." His finger got past her lips and tapped against her teeth. "Of course, if it were to kill you, you may as well tell me now what you'd like to be done with your remains and such." Morbid, he thought, but maybe it would get a peep out of her. "Any family or friends in town I should send them along to?"
No such luck. She continued to stonewall his efforts to elicit a dialogue.
"What have you got to lose? If you don't speak, and you don't help me understand what happened to my semblance, then what use do I have for you?" He wished that he had worn his mask for this: his eye may have betrayed his bluff, if his tone hadn't already. Despite his aggressive approach, the sad fact of it all was that he really did desire Neopolitan's help in finding Cinder. He may have leads on how to find his quarry, but as the most-wanted faunus in Mistral, he found himself hard-pressed to act on those leads without bringing down a host of eager bounty-hunters, huntsmen, and the rank-and-file military authorities on his head. Neo may not know it, but after having all morning to think it through, the illusionist was becoming central to his upcoming scheme to integrate himself into Mistral's criminal information networks without exposing himself to his myriad enemies.
Also, he had nearly climaxed touching himself while watching her nubile body on her scroll scant hours prior. Combine that with the attraction to her he had immediately felt upon seeing her (and continued labouring to deny to himself), and he found himself in no position to mean any of the threats he implied to his captive.
He needed Cinder, because who else in Mistral might know anything about relics and magic? Nobody that he knew of, especially with Lionheart dead. Without Cinder, he'd have to let Hazel whisk him off to Salem for answers. Salem was clearly the reason why Lionheart was dead. Not trustworthy at all, as far as allies went, but at least she seemed to hate humans so that was a bit of a plus. Even so, he would prefer to work with Cinder as an intermediary; to find Cinder, he would need Neo's help.
Just as he was beginning to compile reasons why replacing Cinder with Hazel wouldn't be too abhorrent, Neo timidly opened her mouth. She wasn't talking, but despite that (or maybe because of that) Brazen took the motion to signify consent to his experiment.
Too bad, Salem, Brazen crowed, Cinder's still on the table!
Or, at least, Neo was.
He slowly brought his latex-covered tip up to her open lip and watched as she lapped at it with her round pink tongue. Once her tongue connected she seemed to visibly relax; she extended her tongue as far as she was able and her mouth yawned wider.
"They say that good help is hard to find..."
He inserted himself further in, the crown of his head being taken in its entirety now past the teeth which no longer barricaded the orifice.
"...but I disagree. I think you and I can be great friends, wouldn't you say, Neo?"
She gave a bit of a hum that resonated pleasantly from her throat through his dick, which he took as affirmation of what he said. He put himself deeper, then deeper still into her until he felt himself hit against the back of her mouth, making her sputter around his girth. He felt her tongue wrapping around him inside, and revelled in the sight.
He felt nothing, or so little that it may as well be nothing. I hope this is my semblance, otherwise I don't get what the big deal about sex is. Jacking himself off while watching Dom mirror his actions had felt better than this; the lack of sensation must be his semblance absorbing the pleasure. He looked at his scroll, his attention drawn away from Neo as he focused on the tell-tale drain on his aura as his semblance nibbled at his reserves to turn him into a living battery.
His aura wavered on the screen, then went to 99%. He felt it, since he was focused on it: he felt the energy getting stored in his soul like Schnee lien in a bank. Neo began roughly poking at his member in her mouth with her tongue, almost like she was trying to do a reverse tug-of-war with it. Pushing against it, rather than trying to draw it in. Testing how much it wanted to stay in her warm orifice, trying to see if she could reclaim her mouth from his invasion. He looked down at her panties; more so than the rest of her, moist from her experiences over the past day. Her glistening skin, sleek with sweat. Her arms as they strained against the restraints. He liked the sound that her mouth was making against him, now. Like a wheezing choke, interrupted with slobbering gasps while a clear liquid made a rivulet from her flared nostrils down the side of her face.
He put his scroll away and looked at her sideways face. Her brown eye was wide open, her face flushed. She inhaled a ragged breath noisily through her nose as he pulled back a little to let her breathe: his inexperience made him uncertain how far to keep himself inside of her, and he was worried about asphyxiating her with his dick before the test was completed.
I'm not sure what I was worried about earlier. This is fine. My semblance will endear me to her, my ability to help her take down Cinder will appeal to her; together we will form a strong partnership. Even after Cinder is dealt with, he could certainly use someone with Neo's talents at his side. He looked up at the ceiling light; Dom doesn't want her, Bedlam hates her, she is all mine.
The beginning of a new relationship. Proof of concept that his ideals were rooted in fact, that humans could be taught to live under faunus as nature intended. Indeed, a very-nearly perfect moment, Brazen thought to himself as he basked in the light of the moment, relishing the gasps from her mouth and the rattle of her arms against her bindings.
Then, her mountingly panicked attempts to warn him failing, she sneezed, with her teeth snapping down with reflexive force on his member.
DOMINIC
Dominic put his hat on and walked out of the warehouse. The street was alive with occasional large cargo trucks and folks on their way to work. The sun's early light was blocked out by the mountain city, but it was still bright enough for humans to see without street lights. He grabbed a ride on a tram and lost himself in his relief that Bedlam was safe; before he knew it he was back in the faunus district. A short walk later he was at Lichen's door. He walked in.
"Lichen? You around? It's Dom." No response, but he heard movement from Salt's room. "Salt? You home?"
Salt emerged from her room, wearing an over-sized t-shirt and tomboyish shorts, eyeing him with caution.
"Where's your mom?"
Salt sneered a little. "She went to go deal with your little runaway. Since Kuchinashi is safe again, there's a caravan of the people who fled from the town heading back that way. Mom's taken Rothy to make sure she gets back to Kuchinashi with them. So you don't have to worry about her, anymore."
Dom smiled, "that's good news. I am glad that she'll be reunited with her family. Her family did live through the attack, right? She mentioned on the train that her father was part of the town militia."
"The army had a message for her from her mother, so at least her mom's alive." Salt looked away, "I'm not sure about her dad, though."
Salt probably doesn't care much about the dad, though not for the same reasons as me. She's probably thinking that growing up without a dad is just par for the course; I'm more concerned with the father's human-ness.
"So what're you wanting mom for?"
"I have some nice news of my own," Dom began. "My business in Mistral is pretty close to being done, and I've gotten to the point where I don't need to stick around here anymore. I'd go up to get my stuff, but I think I've got it all." He let the joke hang in the air for a moment, unappreciated. Perhaps, like himself, Salt didn't find all that much humour in how little he had left after being ousted from power in the White Fang. In this line of work, severance isn't a kind of pay you get. Thinking about Sienna put him back in a serious mood. "Pass word along to Lichen that we're square, and that she won't have to worry about me being seen around here anymore. The police will have nothing to connect us from here on out."
"You can tell your brother that my mom'll be happy to hear that she'll not have to put up with the stress of keeping him hidden anymore." Salt said, hand on her hip. "You should think about severing your ties to him, too, as soon as you can. He's an anchor, weighing down anyone he's attached to. You're better than him, Dom. You showed that when you helped out Rothy for no reason other than wanting to protect her."
"Mind your tongue, Salt... that's my brother you're talking about." Dominic warned, though his stance remained relaxed.
"Are you really going to just follow him, like a stray dog, just because he's your brother? Sort of plays into the herd mentality stereotype there, which I thought you'd be a bit more aware of since-"
Dominic's stance shifted, his arm reaching around to brush against Blush where it was tied to his back under his disguise.
Salt gulped, loudly.
"I'm not following him. We're living our lives for ourselves, and it just so happens that our goals compliment one another. Helping Rothy was incidental to my mission. I will always help my fellow faunus when I can, but it is more important that humans be taught their place."
Salt took a moment to digest what he'd said, before replying quietly. "You shouldn't have tried to convince poor Rothy that she is better than humans just for being faunus. She should think she can be a better person by helping civilization, not because she is entitled to it by birth. When I was cleaning her off in the tub she told me that you told her she was better than all her schoolmates and why. You should give Ghira Belladonna's ideology more credit. I've been listening to his speeches and the message he is making is helping people more than your brother's ever did. Shops and theatres are letting faunus in, segregation policies are being rewritten to include everyone equally, schools will be based on where we live rather than how well we see in the dark... Ghira is uniting the people of Mistral like never before and-"
"Against me!" Dominic said, then corrected, "against my brother and I! Belladonna is not the saint you think he is. He is not the hero he is making himself appear to be. He is just a coward, afraid to get his hands dirty. When the White Fang became militant, he was all too happy to fade into the crowd in Menagerie and let others do what had to be done! Who do you think turned Adam Taurus into a weapon? Do you think it was the SDC?"
"You sound... just like your brother. I heard people around the neighbourhood talking, before and after the humans assassinated Khan. Talking about the message Adam was spreading. Nothing but spite and hate. You'll see, Dom. Adam's path is going to lead you both to ruin. Why ride it with him? You're not him. You can go to Ghira, get good terms for Adam, live productive lives in Menagerie."
"In Ghira's custody?" Dom spat out, spittle flying as his mouth frothed a bit from his growing fury; "Adam Taurus lived for years as property, a slave. You've... seen Adam's face. You know what they did to me. You know what they did to you, too. Your mother had to give birth to you in a forest because of human cruelty. She could have died out there, in Ghira's arms. Not going to trade being shackled by the Schnees and other humans for being kept by Ghira or anyone else, doesn't matter who is holding the other end of the chain. I'll be the one holding the chain, now. Don't worry, Salt. We have nothing but respect for good faunus like you and your mom, who know that what is best is to sit back and let us save them from humanity. I will save you."
Salt shook her head slowly. "It's clear there's no point in trying to reason with you. Go on, then. Get out of here. Hopefully I won't see you on the evening news. When I'm old enough, I'll join the new White Fang and help people. We'll make a better world."
"Good luck, Salt." Dominic said, making his way back to the front door. "Have a good life."
He left Lichen's house, his mind a tumult from the argument. Fuck her, what does she know about life? This faunus ghetto might not be the nicest place to live, but it is still high above the SDC's accommodations in the mines. She's never known the real struggle our people face, never had to break our people out of cages. The moment Ghira leaves, the moment the humans get my head on a pike, the moment they feel safe and dominant again, the humans will turn on the faunus once more. Inclusion will revert to segregation, then turn to slavery.
Humans were predictable like that.
As he walked he eventually calmed down a bit, enough to remember that he still had to find clothes for Bedlam. He suddenly wished he hadn't had the argument with Salt. She probably would have been able to help him pick out clothes like Blake used to.
On the other hand, the less time he gave her to ask why he wore the eyepatch, the better. His disguise was paramount, afterall, and who in the world would believe that long-lost twins would have identical facial scars? He'd have to figure out a cover story for that in advance. It's not like I could say I did it as a show of solidarity... nobody in their right mind would do that. He cursed the SDC. For all the blessings the power of the Relic bestowed upon him, the brand would always harry his designs. It was a shame that they had closed the borders and recalled their forces: he would love to find some Atlesian envoys to vent his frustrations out on.
Maybe I could pretend that I hide the eye so that nobody knows which is the 'real' Adam... that could work unless someone sees the identical branding.
In haste, he purchased a tidy looking pair of pants, a shirt and a hooded vest; he made sure that all had been manufactured in Menagerie, though that meant paying triple the price of anything made locally in the sweatshops. The human clerks paid him a bit of attention, but were too lazy to actually approach him while he shopped through the store. They took his lien when he approached the register without making any extra conversation. Just another eccentric huntsman-type, buying fancy clothes, nothing suspicious here...
He visited the docks and ascertained that there was still no signal from the incoming ship; it was still beyond the limited communications network relied upon since the fall of the Beacon CCT. He felt his semblance charging, the strange sensation of somebody else using his soul's unique power combined with that power being used in a novel way. Brazen must have finally replicated Bedlam's discovery of Moonbright.
Disconcerting, to say the least, but preferable to inexplicable aura depletion.
It's odd, Dominic considered as he walked through the dirty, crowded streets of the undercity. Perpetual rain and industrial smog kept anyone from spending any effort trying to pierce his cunning disguise. With the CCT out of commission until who-knows-when, my split soul is one of the most reliable means of long-distance communication. He made a mental note to discuss that with his clones later, to see if they could figure out a way to take advantage of that so that they could keep one another apprised of progress even after going their separate ways.
Who knows, he thought, once humanity has been subjugated and the faunus have no more need for me to fill the role as saviour, I'll need to give my brothers something to do. Unless they choose to rejoin me so that all of us can rule this world as one Adam. If that doesn't happen, I can have them work in communications since I'm not sure anyone actually knows how the CCT worked in the first place. If anyone knew, they're probably dead now. His clones could be governors of the new world, exerting his will from a distance via their shared soul somehow.
Several bodies, a single voice.
Halfway back to the warehouse, Dominic wondered if he should have tried the clothes on before buying them. Nah, he reckoned, the tag says they're the same size as my current clothes, and having to get undressed to put these on would just put me at risk of having my identity exposed. He had the receipt; if he needed to he could always return them later.
Or, if Brazen turned Neo, they could have her do it in order to reduce the chances of themselves being spotted on the streets. What were the odds that the days in Mistral would always be rainy and smoggy? He hummed to himself, seeing Bedlam's good sense in keeping Neo alive. Like Rothy, she would just need to be taught the natural order.
Faunus first.
BRAZEN
With mucus sprayed all over his groin, Brazen realized two things.
First: despite having not killed her, Bedlam had left the human on a cold metal table for hours, soaking wet, in a building that was certainly less than what most would consider to be 'warm'. Sure, it was a picture of luxury for SDC faunus employees (at least she hadn't had to scrounge for her daily quota while wet, cold, and miserable!), but for a weak human it was a ticket to getting sick.
Second: she had just involuntarily bit his dick about as hard as her body could muster given her enfeebled state. If he hadn't consciously been putting his aura into the area to maximize the energy absorption, she probably would have dug right into the flesh with her pearly-white chompers to deal devastating harm. Even with the protection of his aura, he still shouted out a string of expletives as he staggered backwards before falling into the soft wall and sliding down to the floor to curl up in a ball.
The condom bore several tears, now, and would have to be replaced if he wanted to try to charge Moonbright any further. In his wisdom, he decided that he did not. At least I was able to demonstrate that my semblance can absorb energy from another person in this way.
After a minute, the shock went away and he stood up and returned to stare down at Neo.
"I suppose I deserved that," Brazen said, smearing the girl's snotty mucus around on his belly with one hand as his attempt to wipe it away just led to spreading it around further. Neo's eyes opened back up as she recovered from the sneeze, her trembling body – no, her shivering body covered in goosebumps. Neo sharply drew in another breath as before; Brazen leapt back to avoid the spray of snot and spit.
Maybe her throat was clogged up from being sick. Maybe that was why she had used the scroll to speak: she had already been beginning to get sick when she caught Bedlam. He hadn't mentioned her sneezing during his captivity, but then maybe he had felt ashamed that he had been so easily captured and contained by a sick human girl.
Oh, I'm going to have a laugh at his expense for that, later.
"There is the energy stored in my reserves... I could try using it on you, but the condom is busted and I don't know what would happen if I combine Moonbright with the fire-dust in Wilt. After that bite, I'm not even sure what side of my semblance would be used: pain or pleasure?" That definitely deserved further investigation, he thought as he said it. What would pleasure do when combined with fire-dust or, for that matter, any kind of dust? How would he decide what form of his semblance to use, if he absorbed both pain and pleasure together? He imagined fighting a bunch of bounty-hunters who ambushed him while he was having intercourse, only to find that rather than making them hurt his attacks made them keel over in ecstasy. Hmmm. I've never considered dealing non-lethal damage in a fight before. Most of the time he would just kill anyone he was fighting, and the fat human SDC executives and bosses he'd taken hostage hadn't fought back – they were not fighters.
"If I go and get another condom from your purse, maybe I can still use it like yesterday. Maybe it will even help you with your... sickness." He left the room and dug through her purse for a replacement. He heard her coughing through the open-door; no longer did she try to hide her infirmity from him in a facade of strength. He went back in, closing the door as he entered. He focused his mind on his semblance while peeling the condom from its wrapping, quickly finding the reserve of energy stored within his soul that seethed for release. He could have just hung onto the energy for later: it would slowly drain his aura to contain it, but years of devoted training and metaphysical meditation had not only increased the amount of energy he was able to store in his semblance's capacity, but also allowed him to withhold discharging it for longer periods of time. It wasn't particularly useful for combat, since starting a fight with aura already having taken a hit was less than desirable, but for stealth missions it had been handy to have it poised for use against stubborn locked doors and the like, without requiring him to noisily absorb energy at the scene. It felt like the metaphysical pit he had dug for storing Moonslice's energy seemed to work just as well for Moonbright. He walked up to Neo and let his dick rest in her palm, since he wasn't that comfortable putting it anywhere near those teeth again.
Also, if it failed to work as advertised, she could probably live without the hand.
"Alright, here it goes." He said, trying to grasp the pleasure rather than the pain contained in his semblance.
Neo scrunched up her eyes, preparing for the worst.
The red skin of the apple beamed brightly; the walls of the room were cast red by the glow from his hair. Everything flashed white as he released the energy she had spent several minutes pouring into his aura back at her, into her palm, all at once. Her hand gripped firmly around him, but he barely felt it between his semblance numbing the sensation and his aura shielding him.
As the glow of his semblance faded, he looked down upon his target. Her body was spasming, her hand having released his member as it stretched to fan out her fingers, her legs clenching together tightly, squeezing and rubbing against one another where they met. Her eyes had opened to a half-lidded state, revealing that they had crossed and rolled back in their sockets; her mouth hung open. She was breathing even more quickly than before, and a new glossy stain was being added to the front of her panties while her stomach pushed against the cable wrapped around her midsection as she tried to arc her body off the table. A rumble, almost a purr, came from her throat. Or maybe that was just more snot in her throat, gargling.
"Neo?"
Well, she didn't die and I saw it in action. The first test was a success! Bedlam wasn't entirely insane.
"How do you feel?"
No response from Neo, who continued to twitch erratically on the table. A bit of drool escaped from her mouth, dangling from her tongue as it hung out.
"Right. It knocked you out last time, too. I... I guess this is just how it incapacitates you." He walked back out of the room to retrieve the sleeping bag (and to do something other than watch her very interesting facial expressions since they did little to relieve his continued erection); he could use that as a blanket for her to stay warm. He might have grown up in a mine shaft, but he still knew sick people needed to be kept warm. He tossed the blanket over her, then picked Torchwick's hat up off the ground. It had fallen off her when she had arched her back. He put it over her face and felt content that most elements of his plan had gone as he wanted them to. Give her the hat as a show of respect or trust. If she loves Torchwick, then giving him a modicum of due respect would probably go a long way towards building something akin to acceptance towards me.
It's not like I just think she'd look sexy as hell wearing the hat, Roman Torchwick's hat, while sucking my dick later!
With every fibre of his being he wanted to see her sucking him off while wearing Roman's hat. Roman's hat, and nothing else. After all the times the man had called his people animals, forgotten their names, insulted them, the image of Neo kneeling before him with the hat on her head would be the ultimate form of payback.
Eschewing such fantasies, he reinforced his resolve to care for his budding new accomplice's health. He went in, grabbed her pants and heeled shoes, and struggled to get them onto her. The pants were sort of crusty, having not dried properly after being soaked. It was a struggle to get them on her semi-conscious body. At least the footwear was easy, though he did not even try to get the socks on. Are they shoes, or are they boots? His mind wondered as he got them on. Once that was done, he tossed the sleeping bag over her, with the zipper completely undone so it was just a flat blanket.
Against the wall there was a bucket with a cloth in it. He took that and headed over to the bathroom, filling the bucket with cold water since the building had no water heater. That would be a problem: cold water wouldn't do his patient any good.
He shoved Wilt into the water and spent a bit of his aura into the fire-dust-enhanced blade. Steam erupted around the blade, splashing against the side of the bucket. He pulled his aura back and felt the water with a finger. Warmer, now. Sometimes old dust-mine tricks were still handy: aura plus red dust equals life for the night.
By the time he came back into the testing room, Neo had sort of snapped back to awareness. Enough to see him coming back in with a bucket she had used on Bedlam in a much less benign manner. He put the warm bucket on the table beside her head, dipped the cloth in the warm water and lay it over her forehead, moving the hat back over her belly. Her eyes relaxed as she realized what he was doing and from the nice feeling of the warm cloth draped against her feverish scalp.
"I'm going to keep you restrained for now," he clarified as she meekly jostled one of her arms against the cable. "Let's just focus on getting you back to feeling well and then you can tell me what your thoughts on working together are." She bit her bottom lip, she's hiding something.
He patted the hat on her stomach gently. "Sometimes..." he thought of Blake, how he had been so unwilling to let her simply go, to move on with his own life. How that part of him was now an entirely separate entity slinking through the city streets. "Sometimes you have to move on and accept the past. Keep fighting for the future. But it's still good to remember where you came from, to remember what is important to you. Why you fight." He took his mask out from his shirt and donned it, hiding his facial branding from view.
He heard the door of the warehouse open, so he gently put the hat over where the blanket covered her chest and went out to meet the new arrival, drawing Wilt slowly from Blush as he did so. It had been long enough for either of his brothers to return, but despite his name he was not one to entirely be without caution.
