Chapter 117: We Want the Modification Too! (Patreon)

"If I still had clothes on after transforming, I honestly wouldn't care."

"The problem is the clothes just go. Nothing left covering anything, and that many people staring — of course it's awkward."

"Ohhh, so that's it."

Blizzard nodded the way children nod at things they only half grasp, her eyes wandering without any thought behind them until they settled on Alex's legs. Wide-eyed and utterly innocent, she lifted a hand and sketched a small measurement in the air.

"But Uncle really is shaped different from the big sisters…"

The words came out blunt and clean, with not a trace of anything hidden behind them, and Alex broke into a helpless laugh.

"That's just how boys and girls are built differently. You'll understand once you're a bit older."

The embarrassment and irritation that had been sitting on him all this time dissolved completely. His whole body felt light, and the room around him turned easy and pleasant.

He sat and chatted with the two sisters, Tornado and Blizzard, for a long while, the mood relaxed and unhurried.

Before long the bathroom door swung gently open, and Maeve and Starlight came out one after the other.

Both of them had long wet hair spilling loose over their shoulders, soft white towels wrapped around their bodies.

Warm steam drifted around them, carrying the faint clean scent of soap, spreading slowly through the room and filling it with atmosphere.

The hot water had left their skin fairer and finer, and there was a languid, softened warmth in their eyes that came only after a bath. It made them striking.

"All right, you two go play somewhere else for a bit."

Tornado, ever the sensible one, tugged lightly at Blizzard's small hand.

"Uncle and the two big sisters have things to talk about."

Blizzard nodded obediently, without a single word of protest, and followed Tornado out of the room.

The door closed softly. In the quiet that followed, only Alex, Maeve and Starlight were left.

Perhaps it was because they had just come through a brutal, exhilarating fight, bodies and minds strung between relaxation and leftover excitement.

Or perhaps it was the warm steam thickening the air into something hazy and unguarded. Either way, Maeve and Starlight were unusually soft tonight — and far more forward than usual.

With the weight finally gone from his chest, Alex let himself sink into that tender, clinging atmosphere and simply enjoyed the moment for what it was.

A long stretch of warmth later, the room settled back into stillness.

Alex lounged against the headboard, a cigarette held between his fingertips, smoke curling up in a lazy, unhurried thread.

He glanced sideways at Maeve and Starlight beside him, both of them satisfied and soft-eyed, and a comfortable smile spread across his lips.

"That fight against the Mysterious Being today — you looked like you were enjoying yourself."

Alex traced his fingertips down the smooth skin of Maeve's back, the light contact sending a small stir through him.

Under that faint touch, a soft, broken little hum escaped Maeve's throat, like a cat stretching lazily for attention. It was maddening.

"You… you don't want to go again, do you?"

Maeve lifted her eyes a fraction, a damp haze in them, and ran her tongue lightly across her lips. Her voice carried a hint of testing, and a hint of shyness.

"What sort of nonsense is going on in that little head of yours?" Alex looked at her saying one thing and meaning another and laughed under his breath, exasperated and fond all at once.

"I meant the fight. You and the Deep Sea Mysterious Being, earlier today."

"Ah. So that's what you meant."

Maeve nestled lazily into his arms, eyes narrowing, her whole body going slack, as comfortable as a cat sunning itself.

"It was satisfying, I'll give it that."

She stretched her waist a little, her voice carrying the pleasure of a good exertion.

"After coasting for so long, I finally got to move properly and fight something worth fighting."

"It's been ages since I ran into an opponent that solid."

Maeve slowly raised both arms and rotated her stiff wrists, her knuckles giving off small dry cracks. A reminiscent look surfaced in her eyes without her meaning it to.

The two hard fights she'd just finished had burned through most of her stamina, but even with every muscle aching, she could still taste the tension and the thrill of trading blows with a Mysterious Being.

"Still — those things are about my ceiling."

Her arms came down again, and the brightness in her eyes dimmed. There was a wistfulness in her voice she couldn't quite hide.

The danger of that earlier fight against the octopus Mysterious Being was replaying itself in her mind with perfect clarity.

That thing had been genuinely strong. Its body was hard as stone, its tentacles handled attack and defense at once, and its explosive power went far beyond an ordinary Mysterious Being. It had kept her pinned for the entire brawl.

She had thrown everything she had into it, fists and feet hammering in turns, and still she couldn't crack its guard. All she could manage was a stalemate.

If Alex hadn't produced that specially made recovery serum in time to stabilize her injuries, that fight would have ended with both sides crippled — or with her dead outright.

"Pure fists just don't do enough damage. Not anymore."

Maeve shook her head, and the resignation in her voice was real.

The steady stream of Mysterious Beings she'd faced lately had forced her to see the limits of her own combat strength for exactly what they were.

Her physical power ranked at the very top among ordinary superheroes. But set against those high-tier Mysterious Beings, born with monstrous bodies, it still came up short.

Breaking through defenses like that with nothing but flesh and bone was simply too much to ask.

Maeve's words landed hard on Starlight, who was slumped on the bed nearby. Familiar frustration welled up in her all at once.

"At least you can actually hurt them. You can put them down. I can't."

Starlight's eyebrows drooped, her shoulders sagging, her voice low and defeated. Helplessness came off her in waves.

"When my superpower hits those things, it's like tickling them. It doesn't do a single point of real damage."

She had never once slacked off in her training — daily conditioning, endless refinement of her control over her superpower, everything she had thrown at raising her combat strength.

And no matter how hard she worked, against the powerful Mysterious Beings appearing so often lately, she had nothing to fight back with.

In the early fights she still poured everything into her attacks, firing constantly to pin the enemy down, trying to create openings for her teammates.

But after a few encounters, those Mysterious Beings had her measured to the last inch.

They worked out that Starlight's attacks couldn't break their defenses. Couldn't even leave a scratch.

By the end, the vicious ones didn't bother raising an arm to block. They just let her blasts wash over them.

In their eyes Starlight had become a fly — buzzing, harmless, not worth the effort.

Being written off that completely, being that useless, dug into her like a bundle of fine needles. It was humiliating, and there was nothing she could do about it.

"If the Mysterious Beings keep getting stronger the way they have been…" Maeve's brows drew together and she stopped halfway, letting the rest go unsaid.

All three of them knew what the second half of that sentence was.

Mysterious Beings kept surging in strength while humanity's superheroes stayed exactly where they were. Carry that forward far enough, and mankind's line of defense would break for good.

Just as the mood turned heavy and airless, Alex's voice cut through the silence.

"If you two want to get stronger, honestly, it's not complicated."

"The serum I injected — I can put a dose in each of you," Alex said, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

Mass production of the Biceps Brachii King wasn't mature yet; there was no way to roll it out on any real scale.

But mixing a few doses for Maeve and Starlight, two people he trusted and kept close, was no great difficulty.

"You mean the one that remakes your body? The serum that turns you into a giant?"

Maeve's eyes lit up on the spot, the dullness in them replaced by fierce anticipation as she stared at Alex without blinking.

She had seen with her own eyes what Alex became after that injection — the explosive surge in physical power, the sheer crushing superiority of it. The thought of it thrilled her.

"Mm." Alex nodded and patiently laid out what the serum did.

"Once it's in you, your body's potential gets forced wide open. You'll have strength on a level you've never touched before."

"Even with just the base transformation, you'd end up somewhere around the Deep Sea King's tier at minimum."

"With that kind of power, handling the everyday Mysterious Being crises would be more than comfortable."

Beside them, something flickered in Starlight's eyes — then faded just as fast, leaving hesitation and conflict on her face.

"After I take that serum… I'm not going to turn into some muscle-bound Barbie, am I?"

Starlight's core combat strength rested on her superpower. She had spent years developing and refining it, and she had never had much interest in trading punches in the first place.

She was perfectly happy with the way she looked now. If the serum warped her frame beyond recognition and left her knotted with muscle, she wasn't sure she could live with it.

She'd lose the shape she'd always had. She wouldn't look like herself anymore.

"Hm. That part I genuinely don't know," Alex said after a moment's thought, giving her the honest answer.

The serum's effects varied from person to person, but the changes were overwhelmingly muscular in nature, so Starlight's worry wasn't something he could dismiss.

After his own injection, his physique had grown noticeably more powerful, the definition of his muscles sharper, the boost in strength enormous.

But he was a man. A harder-edged build did him no harm, so those outward changes had never bothered him.

"If you're really interested, you'll have to ask Dr. Genus about the specifics of the transformation yourself."

"Ugh, isn't there anything that raises a superpower specifically?" Starlight let out a soft sigh, her face full of frustration and reluctance.

"I train on schedule every day. I've never once slacked off. I've thrown everything I have at breaking the bottleneck, and my superpower hasn't gone up a single step. It's just stuck."

Looking at how crushed she seemed, Alex felt his own share of helplessness. He didn't have an answer worth offering.

Starlight's ability came from The Boys' compound, and that serum had a ceiling built into it from the day it was created. The foundation was already fixed.

No amount of training would let her break the limits she'd been given. Effort alone wasn't going to change it.

"I do have two ideas, though. Take them for what they're worth." Alex considered for a moment, then laid out his suggestions.

"You could try injecting the original compound. Not only does it keep you young indefinitely, it gives a small across-the-board lift to physical conditioning and to your ability's ceiling."

"And if you'd rather not touch the Biceps Brachii King, you can wait."

"Once Dr. Genus's Immortality Series research fully succeeds, the effects of the healing serum will become permanent. Your staying power in a fight would improve enormously."

The moment he finished, Maeve moved. She slid forward, hooked her arms around his neck, leaned down, and fixed a burning stare on his eyes.

"Would you mind?"

"Mind what?" Alex raised an eyebrow, genuinely puzzled.

"If I took the serum and ended up with obvious muscle on me." There was a seriousness in Maeve's tone, and beneath it a flicker of nerves she couldn't quite hide.

"As long as it doesn't go overboard, I wouldn't mind at all," Alex said easily, his tone light.

Man or woman, a moderate, clean line of muscle only made a body look stronger and better. There was nothing jarring about it.

His limit was the sort of grotesque over-inflation you saw on the Deep Sea King or Superalloy Darkshine — bodies swollen so far past human shape they weren't recognizable anymore.

Delight flashed through Maeve's eyes at his answer.

"Then I'm going to go ask Dr. Genus right now!"

She lifted herself off him at once, brisk and decisive, snatching up her clothes and dressing in quick, clean movements.

The whole thing flowed without a hitch. Nothing about her suggested she'd just come through two high-intensity fights.

Starlight watched with open astonishment and finally had to ask.

"Aren't you tired?"

First a fight against a monstrously strong Mysterious Being, then a round with Alex — two bouts, both draining. Starlight herself was completely wrung out.

Even Maeve, whose constitution far outstripped her own, had no business being that full of energy.

"Did you forget I took a recovery serum?" Maeve answered without turning around, her hands never pausing over her clothes.

The high-grade recovery serum had already repaired every bit of damage, restored her stamina and closed her wounds, putting her right back at her peak.

In a matter of seconds she was dressed and brimming with vitality, with nothing left to show she'd been through a vicious battle.

Alex looked over at Starlight, limp and boneless on the bed, and teased her.

"What about you? Not going with Maeve to take a look?"

"No, no." Starlight shook her head, sagging into the mattress like a strand of noodle that had lost all its strength, her voice lazy and worn out.

"I'm way too tired. I don't want to do anything right now except lie here and rest."

"I'm heading over, then. Once I've got the details on the serum, I'll come back and tell you both what I find out."

Maeve tossed the words over her shoulder, turned on her heel and set off toward the laboratory with a light, eager step.

Watching her go, Alex's lips curved into a warm smile.

Then, over Starlight's startled yelp, he leaned down, reached out, and gathered the utterly unprepared Starlight securely back into his arms.

Events unfolded exactly as Alex had predicted.

News that the Deep Sea Tribe had surfaced en masse to wreak havoc swept across every nation on earth like a storm.

Countries had already spent years under constant harassment from Mysterious Beings of every description, straining public safety and national defense to the limit. Now, with the formidable Deep Sea Tribe stepping into the open, every one of them slid into a state of high alert.