Duellist 35 (Patreon)

AN: It's late... I apologise. I've chopped the upcoming chapter up into two as going over 20K is usually a bit much all at once and this is the most logical place to cut it. The next update is already well in progress, so I'm looking to have it out faster than my usual schedule.

I dance across the rooftops of Brockton Bay in a blur of speed, every footstep propelling me just high enough to leap to the next building - barely adjusting the angle of my approach to make an ever-widening circle as I scan the ground below. A search pattern. My target suspected nothing. Not realising that they were even being hunted. Not realising that I'd tracked their movements through social media, waiting for the ideal time to strike the moment their guard was down - which led me to this very moment.

There. A muted, nondescript figure settled against the wall. Costume covered by a raincoat with the hood raised, but I don't even need the challenge screen popping up to recognise the build, behaviour and the small parts of the costume visible even in the faint streetlight. I land a short distance from them silently with the shadow state, straightening up as they obliviously let out a tired sigh. Understandable, as exciting as the night had been for me - that was true for plenty of others too. For my target. Her absent bodyguards. Even the regular security making a show of force at the building entrance just across the road, trying to make people feel safe - or perhaps legitimately concerned that the violence of the night wasn't over yet.

But simple added security wouldn't stop me from reaching my target, still blissfully unaware of my approach as I complete the final steps required to reach her position. I slip closer, my longer, faster strides rapidly eating up the distance without the need to break into a run and potentially alert her. She moves closer to the wall without turning around, presumably hearing my footsteps and intending to let me pass. But I am not a simple pedestrian. I'm here for her. I pull my arm back-

Breathe.

-and strike.

"Pan-Pan!" My palm connects with Amy's ass as she jumps into the air like a startled cat at the clean impact of the hit. The outraged expression on her face turns to confusion as she turns to me, then to something indecipherable, then to embarrassment and all the way back to outraged.

"I'll make your dick fall off." She decides after a few second's of indecisiveness, hands already reaching out towards me in a vaguely threatening, grabbing motion.

"You wouldn't." I backstep rapidly anyway. "I mean, shouldn't you be jumping for joy at the chance to see me? Or, even just to thank me for all my heroics today? I don't know if you missed it, but the rest of New Wave ended up in a bit of a situation that I had to help them out of."

Her expression softens a little. "I heard about that. I suppose I can thank you for that much." A dash of red enters her cheeks. "And, did you say anything to Vicky about us- Never mind. I don't think I want to know how you stuck the idea in her head."

What was that about? I shrug and move on. "It was my pleasure." I wave her off. "Literally. To tell you the truth - my version of your power got a bit of an upgrade on range a while back, remember that? I don't need to touch the exact area anymore. Just the general right half of the body. But that fact just really slipped my mind when I was in front of Laserdream and her legs had been hit by shrapnel. I definitely enjoyed telling her that close skin contact was mandatory and that I'd need to pinch and squeeze a bit to stretch my power to check that nothing was too injured on the inside." I close my eyes and picture the scene again with a pleased look on my face. "She completely believed me, you know? Incredibly grateful, almost enough to make me feel bad and come clean, admitting that I was just taking the opportunity to feel her up and experience the appeal of a demure heroine shyly peeling away part of her bodysuit for my benefit-"

"I take it back. Die." Amy condemns me, failing to entirely suppress the quirk at the corner of her mouth.

"Hey, I still healed her! And freed the rest of them. You're only complaining because the sexually-charged reverse-nurse story I'm telling isn't about the part where I ravished Glory Girl instead." I accuse.

The responding silence stretches a moment too long. I give Amy a look, Amy has the grace to flush red - but doesn't offer any commentary other than her pointed, anticipatory silence.

"I didn't get the chance actually." I admit. Amy looks disappointed, then rapidly attempts to school her expression into an uncaring one. "She got locked up in some crystals and didn't have the leverage to punch her way out. Just couldn't find the opportunity to make my rescue sexual. Especially with the Wards watching. Particularly Gallant who was hanging around watching my every move like a hawk all evening. God, I am so sick of that guy. He hates me, I'm pretty sure-"

"He's always been a smart guy." Amy nods.

I ignore that. "-and let me tell you, I have done absolutely nothing to that guy." I complain, then amend. "Yet. I mean, yes I want to bang his girlfriend but I've genuinely put on a world-class performance as a hero today. Real action-movie stuff start to finish. He should be asking for my autograph and begging me to join the Wards like the rest of them, not sending me glares and trying to cockblock me every time I look at someone of the fairer sex. Don't think I'll forget his attitude anytime soon - I'll remember it when Vicky is deepthroating me for the first time, I'll tell you that much."

"Really trying to prove that he's a bad judge of character, hm?" Amy brings one hand up to poke me on the cheek. "And listen, just because I like the idea of it - doesn't mean that Vicky is going to be into you. She's definitely-" Her eyes take on a distant look, and her poke turns into a pinch of my cheeks. "-you idiot, I thought you could heal yourself?" Her voice takes on an irate tone. "Burnt tissue, your arm is a mess, cracked ribs and- is that part of your costume melted into your skin?" Her voice takes on a higher tone at every addendum.

"Ow." I complain about her hold on my cheek. "Really? I thought I'd fixed the ribs actually, they feel fine-"

"Answer the question!" She glowers at me even as I feel a fuzzy sensation spreading across my torso.

"Healing with the shadow state is slow, and it's really best for closing wounds - stopping me from bleeding out, you know? It isn't even really healing, it's just... putting me back together a little more accurately than I got split apart. Stopping the bleedout in process for a moment, stuff like that. Eventually putting bones back together, but it doesn't really convert from 'burnt flesh' to 'healthy flesh' as quickly as it does everything else." I make a vague motion at the air with my hands. "And actually, in some of the places I got burned - I couldn't really feel it that much anyway until I started using the shadow state. It just made it worse, so I figured: Why bother when I can go see Pan-Pan in a few hours?"

"Don't say it with that stupid, self-satisfied expression on your face!" She still hasn't let go of my cheek, in fact, she's just pinching even harder now. "Burns not hurting is a bad thing. Bad! If they started hurting after you started to heal them, that just means your nerves got fixed and were telling you that you were seriously hurt. And coming to find me after a few hours? How about, right away? Burns can kill you, you know that right?" I do. But I wasn't close to that kind of level. "I would have come to you if I had to, New Wave owes you one - they wouldn't have minded taking the time to taxi me around to return the favour. And my name isn't Pan-Pan!" She pulls on my cheek again. "And even when you did see me, did you ask for some emergency healing? No. You just appeared out of nowhere to molest me in the middle of the street, while you were in pain - just, what, to look cool?"

I blink. "I haven't even started to molest you yet." I object.

She stares at me in silence.

I clear my throat. "I mean, I was going to get to that part pretty quick-"

"I heard the 'yet'." She snips testily.

"Just checking." I appease her. "And, I mean. I don't know what to say to all of that really. I like to think I'm a pretty good judge of what kills me and how fast these days, I knew I was going to be fine - and the shadow state is slow but it still works. Something needs to be actively killing me for me to be worried, if I survive the first, like, ten minutes without going unconscious - I'm going to be fine. My pain tolerance is pretty good, don't worry about that. I've got some aches and pains right now but I'm feeling pretty normal actually." I tick off each point on my finger. "Pan-Pan is a great name, making up names is just something I'm naturally talented at - you should be honoured. And, yes. I did look cool. Thank you for confirming." The pinching of my cheeks sharpens. "Ow! Nails! Nails!"

"Sorry, Mr Pain Tolerance. Didn't know something as little as that would be a problem for the super-tough Void Cowboy." She drawls.

Touché. I shrug and reach my arms out, hands sliding under multiple layers of clothing to rest against her skin. She frowns at me, then rolls her eyes and moves her arms to allow me easier access as she continues to work on healing me. I fumble with her overly thick, multi-layered costume for a moment, before neatly resolving the situation with an application of Parian's power. She doesn't protest as part of her costume splits apart at the seams under my touch, so either she doesn't care or she's successfully been distracted from the logistics of where my hands go and how they got there.

"Not the right place." She protests instead. "The hospital entrance is right there. If anyone walks out and looks this way-"

"They'd cheer you on and say you deserve it." I squeeze with one hand. "Worried about being judged for being in a relationship as a Cape? I'm surprised, given your family-"

"No. I'm worried about being judged for being caught fucking in a dirty alleyway a stone's throw away from where my respected colleagues are working, in the aftermath of a major gang attack." She corrects crudely. "There. All healed up. Come to me right away next time."

I adopt a scandalised expression. "Fucking? Is that where your dirty mind was going with this? I was just helping you to get skin contact for your power to work, I didn't realise that your needs were so-"

"Don't even joke around to the person who can literally sense every possible aspect of how horny you are right now." Her feet shuffle for a moment as she looks embarrassed at her next words. "I'm not saying it's a problem. Just, there's a time and a place - right? You know that, you couldn't keep those other girls interested in you if you kept propositioning them in run-down alleyways like this."

"Cute." I tease. "And, for the record, those girls are usually the ones throwing themselves at me in dirty alleyways. All the homeless and drunk guys have a point, right? It's just logistics, it's really easy to find some quiet, dark area of the city with no cameras or foot traffic - but kind of difficult to find a nice bed without navigating through cameras, door staff or someone's house all with masks on throughout. And even if that wasn't the case, Arachne and Shadow Stalker are both the type to demand action on the spot when they get emotional about something."

"I don't need to know details like that! And I feel like you shouldn't be naming any names to me either!" She attempts to sound authoritative, but by this point - I've fully opened the front of her costume and have each of my hands occupied with massaging her chest. Impossible to look intimidating from that kind of position, especially when she shows absolutely no resistance to any of my advances. No, all she does is inch further away from the light - deeper into the alleyway and away from any pedestrians that might exit the hospital and look around.

"I think it's important to flex my superheroine-banging credentials to you every now and then, just to remind you that Glory Girl is still on the target list." I wink. "It's fine, I know you won't tell anyone. Doctor-Patient confidentiality. It's a legal thing, I think." I give her a roguish smile as I bend over to kiss her to interrupt the heated retort that always when I misrepresent some aspect of her day job.

"Does not apply in this case." A slightly mollified Amy mutters to herself.

"Plus, I'm not unconvinced you didn't mostly know already, given all the information your power gives you. And, honestly, I trust you with that information anyway. At some point, I'd like to introduce you to the others - and not in a professional context. They all know that there are others, but in the long term - it's probably just healthier for my girls to know each other rather than leaving it all in the shadows." Not just as a sex thing, but as a... life goal, kind of thing. I was serious about a harem. I had to be, with my powers being what they were. While there was likely to be a certain element of hiding some relations and bits of information from some people, I had no intention of trying to maintain an ever-growing web of scandalous, clandestine meetings between dozens of women hoping they never decided to dig into the others. The Trio and Taylor was evidence that that level of drama wasn't the path I wanted to take.

"You can just say that you just want to fuck some of us at the same time." She rolls her eyes at me as we both redirect our gazes to watch another part of her costume unravel under the effect of Parian's power. Well. Of course she would think that. She still thinks I'm just a playboy that lucked into my current situation - and that my dreams of expanding the 'operation' were just dreams and idle boasting.

"Eventually, maybe." I shake my head emphatically. "No, definitely. I have a promise to keep after all - you and Vicky. I'm going to make that a reality. I'm getting stronger and more awesome all the time. A few more days like today and-"

Wrong thing to say, her expression sharpens at once. "No!" I blink at Amy's firm refusal. "Stop thinking like that. Today was bad. Don't think I've forgotten that you decided to pick a fight with Lung just because I haven't yelled at you about it yet. Some terrible flirting and groping in a back alley isn't going to make me forget that you could have died."

"But I didn't, and I got a bunch of powers out of it. And not just that, this isn't some casual brawls on a patrol - this has cemented my reputation across the city. With villains, with heroes, the Wards - and especially the rest of New Wave. You should be especially happy about that last one-"

"Stop it!" For some reason, that only makes her angrier. Cute. Sexy-cute, because her tits are still exposed and the flush of arousal can't be quelled even by a new flash of annoyance at me. "I don't care about that! You're worth so much more to me than just the possibility of getting with Vicky by proxy one day. You're a fellow hero. Another healer. The only person in the city I can trust that I can talk to about my powers - my real powers, my feelings for Vicky, the... difficulties with my family, how I really feel about healing - all of it! And I actually like you! Somehow. The Vicky thing is just a bonus that probably won't ever materialise, if you gave up on it tomorrow - I would still be happy with this. With you!" She brings her head forward to rest under my chin, her chest pressing into mine. "If you died chasing some stupid goal, I'd-"

"-be incredibly sad and cry yourself to sleep for months. Back to the boring old normal. I get it. I'm sorry for being too lighthearted about it." I appease her, feeling a little bit bad in the face of something a little more heartfelt than I was expecting.

Amy shakes her head into my chest. "No."

I wait for her to continue, but nothing more comes. "No?"

She breathes into my chest for a moment. "No." She repeats, the word notably muffled. She pulls back slightly, eyes coming up to meet mine - and this time, there's a hint of something I haven't really seen there before. Not in real-life, at least. Coincidentally, I'd seen the look before - on another Amy's face that had decided she didn't want me to die, whether I objected or not.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should make less jokes about my mortality to this girl. "You're right. That would never happen." I start defusing whatever dark thoughts were brewing in her head. "I was just saying that I got a whole bunch of new powers today. I'm getting stronger, that's all. You could say that I've become safer than ever. I know I'm mortal - I'm not intending to suicidally throw myself into danger just for a potential mild benefit. I love my life, and my girls and my powers and I'm not going to throw all of that away. Okay?"

"Okay." She mumbles. Speech check, fucking passed. Natural twenty. "And you'll come straight to me the next time you get hurt?"

"If it's serious, same as before." I nod. I wince as her eyebrows slam together in a sharp frown. Natural one. All things are equal in RNG. "I know, I know! You wanted me to come to you earlier for this too - I knew that it was okay this time, but next time-"

"You didn't know that! You are not a medical professional! You're not even a medical amateur!" She glowers at me. "New rule. You get injured, I decide if it's serious or not!"

"We've got to be a little bit reasonable here." I take on a soothing tone. "I can heal myself with the shadow state, remember. Even this would have been fine in a few hours, I don't want to get in the habit of waking your family up at 3am just because someone threw me into a wall and broke some ribs."

"That's exactly the kind of thing you should get me for, you have no idea what other damage could be there. You could have a concussion, impaired mental judgement, internal organ damage-" She cuts herself off. "Besides, I think my family would understand a late knock on the door for a bit of potentially-life-saving treatment on the person who just bailed them out of their troubles with Tinkertech explosives." Amy huffs, cheeks turning a little red. "-And, even if you didn't want to bother them - you could have just contacted me directly. I answer my phone. And you could slip in and out through my bedroom window without anyone noticing and causing a scene if you really wanted."

I tilt my head. "That sounds like the perfect way to raise a scene. Aren't there, like, special cameras and intruder alarms all over your place?"

She tilts her head back at me. "No?"

I blink. "Then, Thinkers from the Protectorate that can detect when people enter your house-" Amy shakes her head, a look of confusion on her face. "Pre-cogs that warn you in advance of home intruders and attacks-"

"It's a house! We live there! WIndows! Walls! Front door! What's unclear about that!?" Her eyebrow twitches at an impressive rate.

"So you mean, anyone could just... sneak in and there would be no consequences for that?"

"Why do I feel like you're taking offense to this?" Because I am. I had a whole thing about ways to discretely spy on your family to get powers, ignoring the possibility of just poking my head out from the attic entirely because there had to be SOMETHING that would stop me from doing that. I was being smart at the game, and now it turns out they weren't even playing. Of course I'm a little annoyed. "Literally every single one of us has powers. Safe to say that I can think of a few consequences to some unwanted pervert getting caught."

"But a wanted pervert on the other hand..." I nod in understanding. Normal people would say thank you. Instead, I ignore it and continue my assault of the grumpiness of Fort Panacea. I swoon on my feet. "Oh my, thinking about it - I just got invited to perform secret nighttime activities in Panacea's bed! Oho, the lewd tales in the adult fanfiction corner of PHO that will arise from this! I can just picture dozens of my most deviant fangirls writing up their sauciest plotlines already. They were probably already doing that, but now you'll be included - you should feel honoured, really. Smutty fanfics really are the truest marker of popularity as far as I'm concerned."

"They definitely weren't doing that. Even Arachne has more relevance there than you." She stops herself, then shakes her head. "I mean, as I was saying - we wouldn't be doing anything of the sort! My parents are the next door over!" She snaps hastily. "Quick healing, in and out-"

"Oh there'll be some in and out alright- Wait, how do you know so much about the darkest corner of PHO?" I do a double-take. Amy stares back at me, cheeks flushing a dark red. "Pervert."

Amy suddenly finds herself on the defensive in the conversation. "I googled my own name! It was in the results-" She insists hotly. Too hotly.

"No, no. Nobody believes that. It's like saying your friend added a porn site to your internet history as a joke when you get caught. Just own it. You're in good company. I understand." I shake my head. "Actually, now that I think about it - we probably share a lot of literary interests. As a standard-issue straight guy, the rare confirmed sister pairing is something I'd zero-in on like a shark sensing blood in the water. And you, well, you'd obviously be interested in seeing exactly the same thing. Panacea x Glory Girl. The forbidden love angle-"

"Stop talking." Amy groans.

"-but maybe the fans would be disappointed if they knew it wasn't real incest-"

"I will make your dick fall off." She threatens futilely.

"Nuh-uh." I shift my active power to match hers, just in case.

Her eyes sharpen as she notes the Manton Limit blocking her plan of attack. "I will hurt you in other ways." She promises.

"I'm sure you will." I allow indulgently. "But let's get back to the important things. What's your favourite story? Maybe we could read it together, think of ideas for how I should play things once I bring Vicky around-"

Amy glares at me impotently, then - oddly, relaxes and smiles serenely at me. "You really want to know? My favourite one? You're sure?"

"Absolutely!" I enthuse. "I'm open to ideas. And, to be honest? I think your sister would be the type to indulge you in your fantasies if she knew you were into it."

"Fine then. Here I go. I'll refrain from spoiling the title, I think it will make the story better." She smiles to herself, then clears her throat. "So it's late, right? All that time in the hospital. And I'm really stressed, and I need a way to blow off some steam." I nod along as she talks. "I go to Vicky, and I ask her if she has any advice on how to help me get my mind off of things. She says that she knows exactly what to do. Later that afternoon, she invites me to her room - strips me down, ties me up and moves me to the bed-"

"Now we're talking. I'm surprised though, going straight for the smut? I expected some kind of drawn-out, slow-burn romance, defying the parents to discover your true feelings-"

She grins widely but doesn't respond to that. "So, things start to get heated - but it's clear that Vicky is just warming us both up. She goes to the door, and introduces the real star of the show. It's Gallant, from the Wards."

The smile slips from my face. "Wait-" I interrupt in protest.

She continues, ignoring my protest. "The oh-so-handsome knight we're all familiar with." She nods in delight. "And this particular knight has a truly impressive sword-"

"This is an NTR story!" I complain loudly.

"I haven't even gotten to the best part yet!" The devil tells me. "You know how he can shoot emotion blasts? Well. Lust is an emotion. And turns out, he doesn't need to fire those blasts through his suit or his hands - there's one particular organ that also works- mmf!" I cover her mouth with my own. She's too dangerous to be allowed to talk further. Amy doesn't seem upset at the intervention either, eyes dancing with smug satisfaction that indicated she was knew that she had won the exchange. Which she had, if I was to be honest.

"I knew that fucker was up to no good." I grumble as we break apart for a moment.

"You seem to be taking this a bit too seriously." Amy sounds as bemused as she is triumphant. "Are you really going to let yourself get jealous of a fictional Gallant?"

"Yes." I decide, sliding another layer of clothes down from her shoulder. "From my interactions today, he's really got it out for me - I can't rule it out as something he wouldn't try if he got the chance."

Amy rolls her eyes. "Lucky for you, I can. That is absolutely not even close to the kind of guy he is."

"You weren't there today. He was- I don't even know. He really had it out for me, and I'm not sure why. I've been thinking about it for hours." I massage her exposed chest with my hands, and making room to allow Amy to do as she wanted with my costume too. That brief protest about the location was just a show, we'd both silently agreed that we'd be fucking here and now - we were just taking it slow while the conversation continued. "You should have seen how he was acting. He left me alone with Vista with so much reluctance like he was expecting that I'd be trying to hide her body next time he saw me. Then when I go ahead and help New Wave after hearing that they got hit by Oni Lee and his new arsenal, does he finally start to appreciate me? Nope. Not even a thank you. He was like that all evening. I swear he put more effort into stopping me from being useful than he did into fighting the ABB, nobody does that for no reason. I was thinking that maybe I got on his nerves on one of my patrols somehow. Maybe he has a criminal friend that started telling tales about the circumstances I broke his arm in?"

"Seems unlikely." Amy pulls me close and shifts her hips. Left, right. Left again. My lower half throbs with need, and it's hard to tell how much of it is my natural reaction to the now half-naked healer urging me on and how much of it is her power deliberately pushing my buttons. "Knowing you, you probably said something insensitive or dumb right at the start and didn't even realise." Amy surmises.

I pout as Amy shimmies my pants down, the movement a little awkward from her position - but neither of us are in a hurry. My shaft springs free to press firmly against her bare skin as I continue the conversation. "You're already on his side and he hasn't even said a word to you personally yet. I'm feeling more justified in my concerns than ever right now."

"Hardly, I think I've just interacted with you enough to know that you just say things sometimes." She leans her head back against the wall and closes her eyes, her hips shifting again - this time with a more insistent intent. "And are you really going to accuse me of being on Gallant's side? I've been jealous of him for far, far longer than you, in case you needed reminding. And I've worked with him on more than just a single, unusual evening. I think I've got a better idea of his personality than you do. Trust me, he is not interested in the same kind of relationship arrangements that you are. As much as I hate his guts, that guy is committed."

I snort. "Let's not give credit where it isn't due. It's not that he wasn't interested, it's that he knew his own limits. I mean, it's right there. 'Guy'. It's obvious he wanted the threesome, he just never imagined it as a realistic option that wouldn't come crashing down around him later. Trust me, I've got years of experience as a teenage male. He's thought about you two like that before, he was held back only by the fact that he didn't know how freaky you were, and that Vicky would probably break him in two for suggesting it." I smile as she grinds into my lower half as I hold her in place. "Besides, it's pretty natural for me to get defensive at the idea of him stealing you away - when I'm planning to do the same to him and Victoria. We're competing, in our own way."

"I still say you're wrong, but even if you weren't - seems a little hypocritical of you, if you ask me." She raises an eyebrow wryly. "You have me, and want to add Vicky into the mix. Is it so wrong for Gallant to have Vicky, and want to add me in the mix?" Her expression tells me that she already knows the answer, but is content with needling me anyway.

"Absolutely illegal. Pointing out that I'm a hypocrite doesn't change anything about what I'm going to do."" I affirm. "What's right and what's fair doesn't come into it. Not in this. You're mine now. I'm not letting you slip away, no matter what. That hypothetical Gallant? Just because I understand him as a man, doesn't change the fact that anyone threatening to take you away from me is going to disappear."

Whoops, a little too bloodthirsty perhaps. Amy might have four challenges down, but she is still the soft-hearted healer of the city at heart. I probably shouldn't be too honest if I can help it. Although, with my heroic reputation - I could easily spin it to mean something less murderous if she protests.

A smile appears on Amy's face, matching with her oddly-intense gaze into my eyes. "The feeling is mutual."

Looks like there's no need. Although her statement is a little ambiguous, I'm pretty sure that she's referring to the 'won't let you slip away' part. That's sweet. A little dramatic, maybe - I'm not vain enough to consider myself irreplaceable by any of my girls. I'm the obvious best-choice for a boyfriend thanks to my challenges, enough to make a harem work - but if I ended up dead or in the Birdcage there would be a brief mourning period and then they would all move on in their own way. I'm touched by the sentiment all the same though, even if it's just words.

Her finger taps against my bare chest once. "I'm just winding you up anyway. Even if Gallant walked in tomorrow proposing that exact scenario, it just doesn't work for me."

"No?" I raise an eyebrow at that.

"What can I say? You've made me greedy. I don't want to give up what I have now." She sends me a wry smile as her hands glide along my shaft. "Hah. Even if Gallant wasn't in the picture at all, and Vicky just wanted to fuck - if only I broke up with you? I couldn't do it. Do you understand how crazy that is for me? I've been sitting on this- this thing, for so long now. Vicky has always been trying to drag me on double-dates, thinking that the right guy will fix everything for me. And she was actually right. Except, my right guy isn't fixing anything - he's happy with all of the worst parts of me." She smiles. "Not to mention - here's me, following her advice to find the right guy - but if she saw us in this position, she'd be horrified. Her cute sister isn't supposed to be lewd."

"Don't worry, I won't leave her much room to judge - she'll be bent over right next to you before you know it." I grin.

"Mhm. I hope that's true." Her mouth meets mine again as she swings herself up and locks her legs around my waist, then sinking down onto my length by deliberately wiggling her hips. "But if you can't, it isn't a big deal. I've got you, you've got me. And as a small bonus - if what you've said is anything close to accurate, that fact alone is going to drive Gallant crazy." She stops talking for a moment, mouth parting wetly as she sinks fully down onto my shaft. "A-and, honestly, I still think your version of events is missing something - but I can get on board with one thing: Fuck Gallant."

"Fuck Gallant." I agree. Except, my idea of 'Fuck Gallant' is far more literal than whatever she is thinking right now. As spiteful as I may be feeling right now, I already had plenty of evidence for how easily my perception of someone changes the instant they get a pair of tits and a healthy attraction to me. If I do get any 'revenge' for this feud he seems to have started with me, it's going to be very short-lived - because Gallant isn't strong. Not at all. I could credibly clear him out in a single meeting if I didn't need to split my challenges across other people. Actually, it's very, very possible that it ends up in the reversed situation to my initial thoughts - fem-Gallant bobbing on my dick crying about how she's being unfaithful, and a teary Glory Girl coming after me in revenge only to end up kneeling right next to her old partner.

Hot. I've said it before, but turning my enemies into sluts for my dick really hits something primal inside me. I'm throbbing just thinking about it.

Fortunately, I've got a good outlet for that feeling. Amy wraps her arms around my neck and presses her naked chest against mine, her hips moving in my grasp at a slow and steady pace as - with a little help on my part - she works herself up and down my cock. The sensation of filling her up entirely is as incredible as ever, almost suspiciously so. I've never asked if she does anything 'under-the-hood' to make things better, and I don't intend to either. If a girl wants to use her powers on me to encourage me to fuck her better and harder, she can do that all she likes. I trust her. I've been open about encouraging her to use her power in every fun and different way she can imagine, and the idea is definitely appealing just on its own - that with potentially complete control over my body, the only thing she wants with it is to help me thoroughly ruin her even harder. I set her against the wall, taking a more active control of the pace - thrusting harder and deeper than her lighter motions from before.

"R-right there-" She gasps out. "Void-"

No need to ask. My hands are already sliding down her body and gripping her thighs to pull her closer with every thrust, and she reacts beautifully. Her eyes flutter shut, the breathy sounds she makes becoming almost constant as she hangs off of my neck for dear life. With every thrust, her breathing goes more ragged, her legs grip my waist tighter and her hips tremble in a way that makes it very clear that she's approaching her limit. I kiss her neck, her jawline and anywhere else within reach as I feel the moment arrive, her body tensing and shaking as her orgasm washes over her in a rush. I hold her in place while she rides out the high, keeping up my own pace without stopping for an instant.

For another girl in the same scenario, I could have kept going for some time. Drawn it out, seen just how much of a puddle I could melt her into before I was done myself. No time pressure, nowhere else I needed to be. But, Amy is different. Amy is Panacea. And while I'd tagged into her power briefly as a half-joke a few times during the conversation, I hadn't felt the need to keep it up. Coupled with our obvious skin-contact, her power had free-range over me. A fact that she makes very clear just a moment later.

"Cum." She half-whispers, half-orders into my ear. Any hope of self-control evaporates upon hearing the single-syllable word. The pleasant buildup that I'd been enjoying up to this point, abruptly transforms into a white-hot crescendo of lust and pleasure. A climax not achieved through patience and repetition, but from the skilled hand of an artist carefully crafting the perfect sensation. I don't just cum, I practically detonate - emptying myself into Amy with more force and quantity than I even knew was possible for me.

It's a rush that almost leaves me dizzy as the feeling flows through me, but it isn't just the peak of the sensation that's unusual - it's the way it just continues. The way it maintains that period of bliss that usually lasts for just a few moments into something that leaves me scrambling to take advantage of, slamming full-throttle into Amy's slit to wring out every new drop of sensation possible from this state of heightened sensitivity - and Amy matches that needy energy with equal fervour, the architect of this situation eagerly offering up her own body as the solution for my relentless demand.

Eventually, it all draws to an end. I'm not entirely sure what the limit was, whether it was Amy deciding that there was a certain limit to how hard she should pull certain levers in my body or if it was simply that Amy had hit her own personal limit for what she could take - either option was plausible, Amy hadn't formed a coherent word for the last several minutes and I was slowly coming down from my sex-crazed high into a post-coital bliss I don't think I've ever felt before.

We separate slowly, I use my arm to keep her steady and upright against the wall as she sends me a dopey, pleased grin.

"That was different." I understate. "I could get used to that, if I wasn't worried about becoming a useless addict."

"There could be worse fates." Amy hums as she runs a finger down her body. Another unusual thing about fucking her, her body can clean up the 'evidence' fast. Anyone else would be leaking and dripping right now, but aside from the shaky legs, messed-up hair and her uncharacteristic expression, Amy looked like she'd just had a mild workout and decided to strip off to cool down.

"True. But a lot of my charm comes from the things I do when not getting laid, I can't go spending all my time living out some hentai plotline in real life." Yet. "Besides, I think I'd like to see your face when I get a power that can do that back to you one day."

"I don't think you need the help." She drawls.

"And you do?" I question with an eyebrow raised. "I left as a satisfied customer last time, if I remember rightly."

Amy coughs and looks away. "I thought I should try something special, as a way to say thank you on behalf of New Wave. From what I heard from them, I didn't get the impression they really thanked you properly for helping them out before running off - I'm just... averaging it out."

"I didn't think it was an issue. I get it, they're heroes. They wanted to see if they could catch the ABB while they were still around." I wave a hand dismissively. "Besides, I wouldn't consider it a debt to be repaid anyway. And even if it was, I've got a nice idea of how Laserdream and Glory Girl would look thanking me properly - you wouldn't steal that from me, would you?"

"Including Crystal now? Ambitious. Although, thinking about it - it's probably more achievable for you than Vicky, at least there's no competition to fight off first." Amy muses.

"Now? I was always including her. You were just tunnel-visioning on Glory Girl so hard that you didn't pay any attention to the obvious fact that I want to make every single woman in New Wave mine. Yes, that includes Brandish. Yes, that includes Lady Photon. Yes, probably at the same time."

She sends me a flat look. "If you weren't always this delusional, I'd check you over for head injuries. You're nice. You're funny, somehow. You're attractive. I don't think it's at all a coincidence that you're sleeping with multiple Capes right now." Amy shakes her head with a bemused look on her face. "But, come on. The belief in yourself needs to find a limit at some point. Both of them are married. Happily married, with kids."

"So little faith." I tut, shaking my head slowly in disappointment. "And here I was going to ask you if you'd prefer a brother or another sister."

She pulls a face at me as I fully slip back into my costume. "Congratulations, you made it weird." Amy bends down to the street level, picking up her scattered clothes. "What a mess. Here." She waves a few of the articles of clothing I'd used Parian's power to separate at me. "I need to get back at some point, I'd rather not explain the state of my costume. Fix please."

"Fix?" I echo, a faint chill racing down my neck.

Her smile remains fixed in place, and turns slightly brittle as her hand brushes against my own to find that I'd slotted in Panacea's own power as my active one. "Right. Fix. With that power you used. The clothing one."

"Honestly, it's more about moving threads specifically - not necessarily doing things to clothing as a whole." I stall. Amy's hand clamps down on my wrist as I make a half-step backwards. "Which is to say, uh. Someone good with textiles probably could repair that with this power." I pause. "But, uh. Not me. Not the slightest clue."

"..." She doesn't let go of my wrist. Impressive grip strength, actually.

"It was just kind of complicated to unravel, and I didn't want to interrupt the conversation-" I attempt to explain.

"So you decided-! This is my costume! You expect me to walk back inside with-" She holds one hand up, showcasing her robe. "-there is a literal hole where my crotch is! I can't go back to healing people like this!"

"It has a certain appeal-" I cough as her eyes glint dangerously. "Of course not. It's my fault, you were just too beautiful and I couldn't help myself-"

"I'm not falling for that!" She hisses. "I'll strangle you right here and now I swear they'll never find the body-"

"Come back to my workshop!" I blurt out. "It's not far from here. But I've got loads of material. And, plants too. You could, you know. Do something with that, right?" She stares at me. I continue. "Turning a plant into a robe that looks like yours? It would be good practice for your power too. Thinking about it, you could turn your entire costume into a real living bio-armour, thing. Take the opportunity to give yourself a way to fight if you ever needed to, or at least just some protection from bullets now that the city is gearing up for a gang war again." She continues to glare at me, but with less intensity than before. Yes. Think of the fun things you could do with your power. You know you want to... "Thinking about it, this is actually a great chance for a redesign. Arachne had this problem with her first design where it was just bland, kind of ugly - but after the redesign? Totally sexy. Practical. Protective. And designed to provide easy access for those special moments before patrols without needing to strip off entirely-"

"I don't want to hear another word out of your mouth until we get to your workshop." Amy grumbles. "I need to think of excuses for why I don't need an air-taxi back home yet."

I brighten. "Are you sure?"

"I'm not calling Vicky to be picked up like this, am I?" She harrumphs. "And I meant it, I'm mad at you right now. Zip it!" I shoot her a thumbs up, gather the bundle of clothing in one hand - then scoop up Panacea with the other. She lets out a yelp of protest, as I top off Browbeat's power - then rapidly cycle through it, Vista's and Shadow Stalker's power to kick off the walls one after the other to get to the rooftops. "No, wait- let me get- you can't be serious- I am not decent! I won't-"

---

"I hate you." My companion mutters as I set her down, with her clutching the hastily-wrapped remains of her robe around her like an emergency bath towel. "If even a single flyer was patrolling and happened to see-"

"No you don't." I respond cheerfully. "And it's pretty late, and dark. And the cameras are aimed at street level, and there's no reason to be patrolling in this part of the city when the ABB and Empire were kicking off in the other half. And even if someone was around despite that, unless they brought a searchlight with them they'd never make us out from above."

"Sure, sure. You got away with it this time. One day, you'll stop getting so lucky and I'll be the one regretting it." She shakes her head. "And it will be my fault. Look how stupid I am. I can't believe I let you drag me back to your stupid sex dungeon."

"It's not a sex dungeon!" I protest as we round the fence of the seemingly-abandoned storage area that I had 'acquired'. "This is a serious, professional workshop for Tinkering and lazing around. In fact, you're the only person other than me to even see this place. You just want it to be a sex dungeon because you're a deviant that's after my chastity." I look away as flat, unimpressed eyes try to meet mine. "That is to say, if you really thought that's what this was - you still decided to come here. There were other options."

"I'm the victim in this scenario, in case you forgot." She accepts my offered hand as I pull her up to clamber over a set of discarded boxes. "And right now, I think sex dungeon was me feeling optimistic about the care you put into your secret base. Do you live in a trash heap or what?"

"Believe it or not, I actually made the outside look like this on purpose. It was all neatly piled up when I bought it. A little storehouse attached to a scrapheap is kind of ideal, as far as I'm concerned." I push aside a crate blocking access to the door. "I forgot how difficult I made it for a normal person to get in here, I got some equipment delivered and then just did my best to lock it down - no need to have an easy entrance if I have the shadow state. Why even worry about having a real key or working windows if I can just make it impossible to get in without someone already being inside?"

"Or impossible to get out." She echoes.

"Not a sex dungeon." I repeat. "No matter how much you want it to be. Just, basic security - tailored to my toolkit. Look, this lock needs to be operated from both sides at once to open. Conveniently, I have a clone-" My ash clone stirs to life next to me. "-that can help me do just that. Stay here a moment. I can't give my clones powers right now, so I'll do the other side." I phase through the door before she can respond. Deadlock. Slide. Turn. Rotate. Pull. Hold. Slide.

Awkward pause. "I think your clone, uh, got confused?" The voice comes from the other side. "I think this part should go down, then- no, it got stuck. Maybe- oh, who designed this tr-"

I sigh. "I forgot that the clones aren't that good at sequential instructions without being an administrator. Hold on, it's easier if we swap places again. I bend down to the defunct keyhole and peer through it. With a flex of will, the ashen form of my clone mirrors the action - the vague impression of an eyehole in its otherwise faceless expression staring directly back at me-

-and I straighten up to see Amy attempting to puzzle out my genius system of locks-within-locks, pausing only long enough to send me a queer look. "Isn't that new? Stealing another page from Oni Lee's book?"

"I wish. His power isn't nearly so restricted." Don't want to talk about it. "But yes, it's new. Here. You pinch these two down-" Metal groans on the other side of the door as my clone takes over the far simpler remaining task of simply applying pressure. "-slide, turn, then this one. That lets this go through which opens the handle-" The door swings open with a loud squeak.

"Stupid system." Amy declares, stepping forward into the doorway as if surveying her new home.

"It's a secret base. It has to have a cool mechanism before letting someone in." I insist. "That's how you know it's a real Tinker's lair."

Amy turns and prods the mishmash of gears and sliding bolts with a doubtful look on her face. "It's not cool, it's a dozen crappy locks lazily crammed into each other into some abomination that isn't any better than a normal lock. Not to mention, it's just a regular warehouse - I'm pretty sure that even I could go through the walls with a big enough hammer if I wanted."

I flick a switch on, overhead bulbs flaring to life with a steady background hum to illuminate the area. "I know it's natural for non-Tinkers to fail to understand the technicalities of the work-" That was Squealer's power at work, after all. Or, rather, Squealer's power was used to handle putting everything together. I never actually finished the design it was actually supposed to slot into, so I don't know if it really counts as Tinkertech as opposed to just generic solid engineering - but I just don't really have a need to build actual cars right now. "-but I'd have thought you could at least see the appeal of it from a design standpoint. It's like a hallway of moving lasers that only has a single possible path through it for the superspy to backflip through. It doesn't need to make sense, it just needs to be included. Nobody watches that kind of movie and says 'oh he should just come back with a licensed electrician and a health inspector and order the security system to be disabled as a health hazard.'"

"You're so lucky that you're attractive." She tells me dourly.

I throw my hands into the air. "What does that even mean?"

She ignores the question in favour of looking around. "It's actually a workshop. I'm surprised. Not at all what I expected." Amy murmurs, stepping up onto tip-toes to peer into a precariously-stacked box on the closest shelf.

I roll my eyes. "I had to send the whips and chains off to be washed, maybe next time." I lock the door behind us, dismissing my ash clone once I'm done.

Amy prods at one of the half-dissected cars sitting in the central part of the small warehouse. "I didn't mean that. I meant that I was expecting just a regular bedroom where you picked fights on PHO all day. Bed. Computer. And then you'd just call it a workshop because you had a few hammers and a wrench sitting on a table somewhere."

"Just what kind of impression do you have of me? I'm a real Tinker, you know? Squealer, Leet, Armsmaster? The power variants are starting to stack up!" I wave my hands expressively. "I actually spend a lot of time tinkering these days now that I'm a Noctis Cape, makes the hours go by when nobody is doing anything at night."

"If you say so." She nods easily.

I pause, feeling slighted. "What do you mean by that, exactly? That's not an 'if I say so' thing. It's just a fact. I'm a Tinker several times over. A fairly decent one, actually."

She blinks innocently at me. "Well. It's just, all of this time since your debut and I've never seen you Tinker anything. Or use any Tinkertech."

"I literally just used it against Lung." I mime a swipe at the air. "The mecha-sword? I know the videos aren't out yet, but ask anyone in the Wards and they'll confirm it was a real thing and it kicked ass. And my teleporter, that was- actually that one didn't really do that well against Lung. It got me my sword at least, but the rest... the materials and grenades just weren't up to par against the heat - but actually, if I could get some samples of Bakuda's bombs I think it could be really effective as an anti-Brute-"

"Can I see?" The question cuts through my train of thought. The tone sounded innocent, but I knew it was a lie. This entire line of questioning was designed to hurt me, a calculated act of spite engineered in her mind the entire time I was carting her from rooftop to rooftop on the way here.

"Well." I make a vague gesture. "The sword is probably being held by the PRT right now because I left it right where I turned Lung into Lu." No laugh emerges. I have no taste in women. "And the teleporter, uh. Well. It's melted." I hold a finger up in the air to forestall the accusations of being a fraud. "That is, the targeting bit of the teleporter. The actual machine is right there - it just, won't do anything until I make another remote." I point it out in the corner.

"So, you don't have any working Tinkertech?" She tilts her head at me. The corner of her mouth quivers.

It's my turn to glower at her. "I know you're only asking me to wind me up, and maybe I deserve it - but that only makes it more annoying that I can't decisively disprove it right now. I am a real Tinker. I spent days iterating on those designs to make something that I could spawn on demand. And now most of my hard work is either molten slag or sitting in Armsmaster's lab to be ripped apart for ideas." Not that it was a true hardship for me. I'll have my paste-box back tomorrow, all I need is to gather the materials up again - which is, admittedly, the more annoying part.

"It's okay. I believe you. You're a Tinker on the inside. Where it really counts."

I make a rude gesture in her direction, earning a rare peal of laughter in response. Typical. The most I've made her laugh today and the joke is at my expense. At least she's cute.

Now. Where were those plants?

---

My ash clone deposits another pair of potted plants next to us, I shoot it a casual thumbs-up before resuming my begging on PHO for videos of the Lung fight to be released.

Uh. Negotiating. Not begging. I'm a serious hero now, communicating with my respected peers. And my remaining undeleted comments properly reflect that.

"This really is a suspicious amount of plants." The nude healer - all of that complaining just to strip off again - pulls her mouth away from my cock to comment, taking over the job with her spare hand - the other buried in her costume. "And meat. Fur. And everything, really. Were you planning to drag me here the whole time just to get me to try this?"

I ignore the question. "I do love talking with you, but is it really okay for you to multitask like this? I'm concerned for the Little Cowboy that you might get your wires crossed at some point."

"What's the worst that could happen?" Amy replies innocently, other hand grabbing a steak and tossing it into a bucket - then turning it into a warped, bubbling goop in a matter of seconds. All while gently jerking me off with the other.

A chill races down my spine. "That was deliberate." I accuse.

"And you dodged my question." She doesn't deny it. "Which is an answer all on it's own, because it probably means you're embarrassed by the answer."

"That's not true. I avoid questions for all sorts of reasons." I downplay the truth of the completely-accurate assessment. "And it's a perfectly normal amount of plants, it's an enclosed space - having a few plants to make it more breathable is just common sense."

"That doesn't explain the rest of it." She hums, running her tongue along my shaft as she thinks it over. "Oh, I get it. This wasn't for me - it was for you. All of those ideas about bio-armour, plant weapons, plant hormone grenades - you were trying to make that for yourself, weren't you? But your version of my power just couldn't handle it. The attempt must have gone pretty bad for you not to want to talk about it this much."

"Conversations like this are a lot less fun when the other person has the equivalent of a super lie-detector attached to my body." I say sourly. "I should just turn my version of your power back on, just out of spite."

"More fun in other ways though." Her tongue circles around the tip of my dick teasingly, then pulls away. "And don't you dare. I'm watching your body."

"As long as you don't turn me into, whatever you're doing with that." I direct my gaze to the way the bundle of clothes wrapped around her other hand is pulsing, as if it had a heartbeat. "You can watch all you like."

"I wasn't planning on it." She affirms drily.

We continue in our respective tasks for some time. I only look up after getting threadbanned from my own victory celebration thread, as Amy scoops up the evidence of her efforts from her bare chest with one finger and swallowing with obvious delight.

I raise an eyebrow at her as she licks her hands clean. "New flavour?"

"I don't think you want to know." She pauses. "Unless, you want to try?"

"Absolutely not." I shudder. "I don't even want to think about it."

"That's fair enough." She concedes, then a light frown dusts her face. "You know. If- if using my powers like this makes you uncomfortable-"

"No, it's fine. Great, even." I interrupt her before she can even get started. "I wanted you to go down this route with testing your powers out more. I'm more than happy for you to experiment on me as long as you're sensible about it. I trust you. My repulsion comes from the fact that I can't see any appeal in personally testing different flavours of my cum. That's gay, totally."

"For you."

"For me. You can do it all you like." I amend. "But I'm completely on board with you doing, whatever you need to do." I shrug. "In fact, I'm kind of curious if you're interested in going a bit further. The way I see it, your power could do some amazing things on a willing participant. I have a Brute power that I can activate now that directly scales with how much mass and strength my muscles have - except it doesn't actually make my muscles any better on its own. Tougher bone structure. Faster healing. Night vision. Or, what about some kind of hidden talon-blade thing that can spring out of my arm at a moment's notice! A poisonous breath attack. A punch that's as fast as one of those mantis, bug things that they always talk about online!"

"Getting into the realms of fiction for a bit there." Amy straddles me with a thoughtful look on her face, then sighs. "Don't get me wrong, I think some of that stuff - I might be able to do it. And maybe, even would do it - on someone that was a bit more stable. You're a bit too important to me for me to make some highly-experimental modifications and then release you into the wild without any monitoring for a few weeks hoping everything will be fine. I'd rather test on- well. Uh-" She clams up suddenly.

"On some complete nobody, right?" I nod absently.

"Uh. Well. I mean-" She hesitates. After a moment, I realise she was having a moral crisis about even suggesting that. And was probably half-expecting me to get angry about even the implication. Human experimentation is bad, or something like that. Bonesaw ruining fun things for the rest of us.

Well. That is very heroic and responsible of her, but that kind of hangup is inconvenient for me personally. I don't know if it's a great idea for me to just loudly support the idea and hope that she comes along, so maybe I should just reframe the issue in a different lens. "Sure. I can find a few people in the underground parts of the city that wouldn't say no to a 'tune-up' with regular check-ins on their health. A lot of them are in a bad way and have a tendency to wreck their bodies, so some regular interaction from us might be the intervention they need in their lives anyway. And, naturally, we'll keep the name of Panacea out of it. We'll just blindfold them and say that I'm the one doing the changes, everybody knows I've got a billion powers by now - nobody will blink twice at it. Our volunteers will have a less active lifestyle than me, so it should be easier to verify the impact of the changes on their own. Everyone wins."

Panacea blinks. Not an unusual reaction when one of my girls encounters my flexible morality. It's just a sign of how good my media campaign is, that they really think that I'm a true-blue hero who just has some perverted tendencies. "I guess- I guess that works." She seems happy with that interpretation. Or, maybe she just wanted an excuse to agree without crossing some of her remaining mental red lines. "And, that's for just basic work. A better functioning body, sure. The other stuff? No. I'm not making you or other people into a Nilbog creation just because you think it would be awesome and maybe help you out in a fight some time."

"Killjoy." I poke my tongue out at her. She relaxes and smiles faintly at my laconic response.

"That's not the only thing I'm concerned about though. I'm just not confident about how well anything I do will hold up when your power decides to hurt you." Her eyes lock with mine. "You didn't really mention it, but that- that strain that your body was under at the Canberra attack. You're exactly the same right now. Even when I fix you, you start slowly sliding back to where you were - it's like your body just wants to be in a slightly-injured state. Or, not injured maybe... worn? Exhausted?"

"Using my powers too much in a short time span. It's my equivalent of a Thinker headache, I've seen it a few times now." I nod. "I'm planning to keep to myself for a solid day. It doesn't take long for me to get back in fighting shape."

"At the rate I'm seeing, I'd say two days to be at the standard that your body usually is when I see you." She disagrees. I incline my head in acceptance. It makes sense that there would be a difference between the first signs and when I could actually feel any issues. "Ideally, I'd like to see it happen personally to put it into numbers."

"What?" I question.

"The power copying." She clarifies. "That's what causes the damage, right? When a new power integrates with your body somehow, there's some kind of temporary backlash and this is the result."

"Just generally trying to do too much at once. I have to switch-" I cut myself off at the downwards tilt of Amy's mouth. Right. Got too used to people not being able to tell when I'm bullshitting.

"You're lying." She tells me bluntly, a confused tone entering her voice. "Why are you worried over this? Is it supposed to be a secret?" She continues as I don't respond immediately. "If it is, it wasn't hard to work out. It certainly isn't just using your regular powers, I'll remind you that I saw you using multiple in quick succession for several minutes just to get us here - and it didn't have the slightest effect on the state of your body. It seems like a pretty logical conclusion to me."

"I-" I make up my mind. I'm being silly here. And... I actually trusted Amy a lot. I was able to establish a strong relationship with her even before clearing many of her challenges. Every challenge since had reinforced that strong foundation. I wasn't worried about her betraying my secrets unless my Mastering ways were suddenly revealed. "Sorry, bad habit. I don't really want to get other people wrapped up in the drama of how my power works. It's not you- I haven't even told Arachne more than the surface-level stuff." I adjust the pile of cushions I was using as a headrest. "I just think a lot of people could take offence to the exact nature of my power's mechanics, and I don't see much of an advantage in handing out the full details to everyone. I mean, people are already protective at the thought of me taking their powers for free without going through their trigger event."

"Not me. You're quite welcome to every last bit of it." She leans forward, breasts lightly swaying with the motion. "I don't get it. You're trusting enough to leave your life in my hands right now. We're sharing secrets that could destroy our reputations several times over. You're happy to delve into things that are, maybe not quite-entirely-legal just to help me cut loose with my power. I'm supporting you in your quest to recruit my sister into your harem. What's left to say that can dwarf all of that?" The tone isn't angry, but the genuine nature of the question ensures that the weight of it still comes through.

A partial truth should be fine. "The power copying has an active component to it. I can choose to... I guess you could say, 'ping' a target's power and get a success or failure from it - depending on if the connection goes well. Even a failure can give me useful insight into someone's power and how they use it, so I fire it off a lot in life-or-death scenarios. I was actually in pretty good shape up until Oni Lee showed up at the end, pushed myself a bit just to make sure Vista and I didn't die to his latest trick - which was a good idea considering what a difference those grenades make. It's attempting a lot of those connections in a short time period that causes issues, and I had plenty of valid targets today."

"Hm." Amy nod slowly. "I can see it. If you say it's entirely passive, people will just have to deal with it and accept that it's part of your power and who you are - that you're just guaranteed to eventually get the powers of everyone around you. If you admit that you have to deliberately target them repeatedly until you snag something, people could get upset. They'd ask you not to, and then conflict happens when you actually need that power. They might even try to get you on Assault with a Parahuman Power charges or something, especially without power testing saying that it was safe."

"Plus, I don't intend to let myself get slowed down by people getting defensive over their power. I haven't hit an upper limit on the variants I can acquire yet. If I could become a Triumvirate-level Cape, or beyond that - I have a duty to do it." It wasn't just about duty. It was fundamental to my entire moral argument about my power. If you took away the part where I punt Leviathan back into the ocean, kick Behemoth to the curb and- uh, do something about the Simurgh - then the maths no longer worked out for me to be a net-positive. I could accept being a villain to myself over the circumstances I earned my harem in, but I don't know if I could stomach being enough of a villain in the sense of 'the world would be a better place if I were never born'. I think I really do need that bit of justification - that, yes, the harem and power was dubious, but everyone is happier and millions, even billions, of lives were saved because of me. What's a few horny life goals compared to that?

I continue. "Not to mention the fact that this is exactly the point where I need every advantage I can get. Lung, Oni Lee, plenty of others - they can still kill me in the right scenario, even if I'm slippery. If I asked Shadow Stalker nicely and she said no, I would have died the first night against Oni Lee - or even before that. So if I know that I'm not going to respect people's choices anyway, then everyone is going to be happier if they don't realise I even had the option."

"Fine. It doesn't bother me, but I can see why you wouldn't appreciate the information getting out." She shuffles back and forth on my torso absently. "Does- does that mean you can try it now? With me?"

"Sure? I've had a bit of downtime to recover, I don't think it will put me in a particularly bad shape." I look up at her. "Do you want me to?"

"Don't start changing your plans or asking for permission just because I know a little bit more about your power. I want you to be as safe as possible, and a good way to do that is getting your hands on every power that you can." She crosses her arms, trying to look stern. "I'm just looking for a demonstration before I can give out the doctors orders for your recovery."

Amelia Lavere

Villain 5/7

(PREP) (LUST) (TIME)

I hadn't challenged this one last time. Not after the brutal slog of her previous challenge. With this one outright naming her as a villain, complete with name-change and both PREP and LUST? I wasn't really looking forward to it. But it was in the way. And Amy's power had serious potential for me. A third level to her power, was the one-touch-knockout truly out of the question? Part of me felt that my power wouldn't give me such a powerful tool, but another part of me was pointing out that there weren't that many 'alternate' powers it could give me other than deepening the complexity, range and speed of what I could do. There was no chance of getting scammed like I was with Miss Militia, any upgrade would be powerful - and her power was already pretty good in the few circumstances I could use it in.

"Just a demonstration. Cool. I can do that." I lock eyes with her. "Barely even a challenge-"

The floor falls away. The street rises around me. Brockton? Brockton. A distinctly beaten-down and abandoned version, moss growing on the buildings - a pond forming in the road nearby from trickling rivulets trailing across the street. Another further down the ruined street - don't tell me this was another post-Leviathan Brockton Bay? I was starting to see a recurring theme here. It was never 'what if Behemoth hit' or 'Post-Simurgh Brockton Bay'. Leviathan. Constantly. Which was fair, I suppose. If anyone would hit us, he would be the one. But some variety would be nice, that's all I'm saying.

And if I did see some variety, I might have a few reasons to feel a little less worried that my power was hinting at something here. Nobody could fully predict the Endbringers, but my power broke a lot of rules - who was to say that this wasn't just an imagined scenario? My power mixed reality and fantasy, possible futures with impossible ones regularly. I'd seen the Undersiders in action before they'd ever established themselves as a group, and seen Browbeat before they probably even triggered. This could be the same. The trouble was that it didn't really matter. I couldn't exactly reveal the source of my 'hunch', nor would anyone really be able to do anything about it anyway - an evacuation didn't just happen because one Cape got a bad feeling that something might happen at some undetermined point in the future. Nor would I be able to do anything particularly different if I knew he was coming - I needed more strength if I wanted to matter in a fight like that.

Pointless, distracting thoughts. Move on.

No immediate enemies in sight, but the TIME modifier is already ticking so I should get moving. I take a deep breath, step forward and-

-fall to my knees coughing desperately.

Bad start. The same trick from the last challenge? I switch into Panacea's power and- oh. I freeze in place, hold my breath and take stock of the alarm bells that Panacea's power was sending my way.

I'm coated in- something. It doesn't look like it, but my Panacea-provided senses are assuring me that my skin and throat is covered in valid targets for her power. Tiny, biological structures that are now doing their very best to become not so tiny as they implant themselves into my body and drink deep. I brush off my arms frantically, using Panacea's power liberally to break apart the fragile structures making up everything touching me - starting from the rapidly expanding buds in my throat and then focusing on the external ones. The relative simplicity of the creations worked in my favour here, it was quick work - far simpler than trying to cleave apart something denser like human flesh and bones. Twenty, thirty seconds after collapsing - I'm safe again. Or, if not safe, at least recovered - and in a state where I could actively destroy any new 'things' settling on me at a faster pace than they landed.

Unfortunately, it showed no sign of stopping. I could see it now that I was looking for it, almost like dust particles in the air - giving the entire world around me a slight tint. This wasn't the chemical warfare of the previous challenge when Panacea lost her cool, this was... what was this? Pollen? Something like it? Something was in the air, clinging to clothes and skin wherever I moved - and then, almost immediately, reacting. Trying to absorb and grow into, I don't know. Something. I wouldn't like it, that's one thing I was sure about.

The good news was that it isn't as immediately dangerous as the airborne plague I'd seen previously. The bad news was that it didn't matter. It wasn't a one-off attack, it was just the natural state of the environment I was in. I was still stuck, with Panacea's power active full time just to stop myself from blooming into flowers or turning into a mushroom or whatever this crap would do to me. Swapping to other powers would have to be limited to short bursts before returning to this state. Worse than that, the passive part of Panacea's power that neutralised poisons and similar attacks against me while I was using it wouldn't help here - destroying the... seeds? Pollen? Whatever I was going to call this junk in the air, it had to be a manual task to break it up and neutralise it. Constantly.

Inconvenient. Suspiciously inconvenient. The PREP and LUST modifiers were interesting to think about here. Because if she hadn't committed to a lethal attack despite LUST being present, that indicated that there was a reason behind it. And I'm pretty sure that PREP is that reason. I already know that PREP gives the target knowledge of my powerset, so this Amy knows that hitting me with pathogens, poison or whatever other form of airborne-nonsense she can conjure is just going to get halted whenever I have her power selected. Then I could cycle my powers back and forth to shield myself, Glory Girl, Skidmark, a Tinkertech solution... I would only need to survive the initial moments to have all the time and freedom in the world to work out the next step. Especially with no ALRT modifier to trigger her to hunt me right away.

But now it wasn't a weapon. It wasn't intended to kill me, and it didn't even need to do anything to me to limit my moves. I cast a glance behind me, noting that my footsteps left visible imprints in the street - flowers blooming in a myriad of colours marking my exact path. More than that, the buildings closest to the flowers were starting to respond in their own way - creeping vines that I had ignored before also twitching to life, parts of them branching off as if to point in the direction that I had previously been standing.

Another thing to dislike. I doubted that this Amy truly cared about aesthetics, so I needed to assume the worst about what this environment of hers was doing. Sticking to just likely scenarios, the best case scenario here was that this was just an inconvenience and a helpful alarm system for Amy. A way to easily track me while limiting the full use of my powers. A way to give her a pseudo-ALRT and HUNT modifier, because I didn't see any realistic chance that she'd set up something like this and not be connected to it in some way. She knew.

That was the best case. The worst case... well. That was the trouble. I could only speculate at this point, but the speculation had to start at the fact that she was capable of making a city-wide airborne plague and had chosen not to do that in favour of this. Which made this, in her mind, more effective at dealing with me.

Or rather, dealing with my powers.

Most people with the PREP modifier only cared about their personal power and preparations, not so much about countering me. Or, more to the point, most Capes couldn't do anything to counter me - you can't just swap out your power, after all. Armsmaster was the only challenge I've faced before who could have tried to do that, and did to an extent - but he clearly had confidence in his kit and hadn't seen a need to craft up some insane Tinkertech solution to counter every one of my powers. But Panacea didn't have that kind of natural assurance or confidence that she could take me in a fair 1v1, out of everyone I'd faced so far - she seemed like the most likely to try and abuse the modifier against me.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it - this is worse than I thought. The shadow state responds poorly to simple aerosols because of the way it incorporates it into my body as I reform, it's a reasonable assumption that the same will happen here - except a thousand times worse. All of the trouble I had clearing just a small amount from just my throat before it got out of control, could I really repeat that in time across my entire body before they grew into something I couldn't kill in time? Or worse, before Panacea's power stopped recognising it as a foreign substance? There must be a cut-off after all. I couldn't affect my own body, nor could I manipulate the food I'd eaten in my stomach. That implied that at a certain point of integration, the power would cut off my ability to cleanse myself at all.

One defensive power down. It wasn't the only one. I wouldn't want to try the speed-state with the mandatory paralysis anyway, but it handles opposing forces very, very badly. Even on a small scale - pushing into heavy wind can be disruptive, I wouldn't be surprised if attempting to barrel through the pollen-dense streets of Brockton in that feather-light state would be much the same as pushing through sludge. And that was ignoring the fact that I would be locked out of Panacea's power the entire time, giving anything that landed on me free reign to grow. Another power down.

Glory Girl's power, simply putting a barrier up wouldn't help - not unless I could have it up upon exiting some kind of clean location. It was already underneath where the barrier would appear, in my clothes and skin - and it would simply build up against the barrier, waiting for the moment I inevitably had to drop it. Another crippled power.

I'm beginning to see the shape of this scenario now. Amy doesn't even want to fight me. Fighting me is the only way she can lose. All she needs to do is track me, avoid me and restrict my ability to search for and find her. She has the entire city to hide in, probably no shortage of booby-trapped locations to drive me into. She probably does have some combat-ready tricks for when I eventually find her, but her real weapon is the ever-present TIME modifier. Reinforcements will trickle in constantly, and without easy access to my mobility and defensive options of choice - I don't fancy my chances of even making it to the second wave with my current knowledge and powers.

This Amy wasn't crippled by emotional irrationality like the last one. I wasn't expecting her to reveal herself for the finishing blow, nor to even attempt to utilise her power in direct combat until she had to.

My advantage here was the lack of a CONT modifier. She spawned in the same place every time, reacted to the same inputs every time and used the same preparation against my powers every time. It would only change when I took different actions, or when the PREP power informed her that I had new or upgraded powers. If I could find her, that information was good forever. A counter against this pollen would be as effective on round one as it would be on round fifty.

But with the TIME modifier, every run just wouldn't gain that much information before the end. I either needed a power that shut down this pollen without occupying the active slot, or a Thinker power to narrow down the search. Glory Girl's or Panacea's power as a true passive, or Tattletale. Maybe Lung, if I could enshroud myself in a protective fire coating of some kind - but betting on that particular power as a reward, and then Amy not adapting to that via PREP - that was a long shot.

"Fifth challenge my ass." I grumble. "Shouldn't this be the last one?" The fact that it wasn't must surely imply that, once I did reach Amy, I'd likely annihilate her in a fight. Otherwise the difficulty scaling was just broken.

I'm going to die to the TIME modifier soon. Barely a few seconds left until the first wave, and I'd barely even cleared the first street. I'm not particularly upset at that. The search area is too large for me to meaningfully cut it down at a normal pace. Best to just gather information as well as I can.

On that note... I sidle towards the closest building, reaching out to touch the nearest vines. They seemed connected to each other, so if this was connected directly to Panacea I might be able to glean something about her location from what her own power would tell me about it.

Immediately my senses expand, all across the wall and roof of the building the vines were spread across. Not just around the outside, but throughout the walls and floors as well - not a single room inside the house was missing crawling tendril. The stretch below me, clear to the naked eye - but the plant snaked through the concrete under my feet and into the pipes below just as easily as it went through the walls.

But that was it. I cast an annoyed glance at the next house, seeing and sensing the problem at the same time. It looked like a single, gigantic plant - but it wasn't. It was a series of individual ones, all connected together to form a network. I could sense the points where they linked into the next one along the chain, complex biological sequences conveying information onwards in some indecipherable plant-language. That too, was deliberate. In the same way that I couldn't touch one person, and scan someone else that they were holding hands with - I couldn't touch a single part of this network and get a map of its spread across the city, or any idea about where it's creator might be hiding.

Another deliberate design decision to work around the limitations of one of my powers. I'm not actually upset about this. Getting countered like this is what I should probably expect from other highly-flexible powersets and Tinkers. Not just in challenges, but in real life too - I wouldn't expect an enemy Tinker to ever challenge me without an answer to every one of my currently-documented defensive powers. Shadow Stalker's main weaknesses not being well-known was helping me for now, but even the weaker Tinkers of the Bay would find it trivial to add a few sparks into their creations if it meant fucking over my power of choice. Getting tested in a way where simple obscurity wouldn't help me had a certain appeal to it.

The TIME modifier in my head ticks to zero. Shorter than the usual five-minutes most of them offer before the first wave, but it doesn't bother me. I would have hit fast-forward on it if I could. I want to see what the first wave is, get a full understanding of what I'm up against for future runs.

I glance around. Nothing? Nothing. The timer was already racing towards the second wave, but I couldn't even hear anyone moving in the distance. I usually had cars screeching and sirens blaring as the first wave, powered or unpowered, rushed in my direction - but the streets were just as empty as ever.

Good? I grimace. No. I should assume that any deviations from the norm were bad for me. In that case, what did this achieve for her?

It hid information, for one. Not just on the foes I would be fighting and in what order, but also where and how they appeared. If knowing their initial location, even over the span of multiple attempts, might give some estimate of where Amy was hiding? Then holding them back and letting me wander, then ensuring that they were released into the city out of my sight was a generally smart idea.

And aside from the information game, she could also just be using them as a defensive force. Assuming that I was correct in considering Amy herself as the 'weak' point of this setup, she could realise that too - and direct new reinforcement waves into becoming her personal bodyguards. I could handle gunmen individually and deal with groups stealthily given time, preparation or enough chaos - but I didn't have a way to just kill someone through a hail of gunfire. Sending people out into the city to chase me wasn't necessary. I could only win by getting to her.

Fine. I'll just... search where I can while I wait. I don't expect to find anything, but a miracle might happen. I summon my ash clone, take control of the nearest bug with my administrator power and begin a three-pronged search. Room by room. House by house. Street by street. I wasn't necessarily looking to find Amy right away, I was looking to exclude possibilities. Even confirming simple things, like an overly dusty room indicating a lack of footfall, or a lack of secret tunnels, could exclude large swathes of the target area. Especially as my power usually starts my challenges with my body facing in the approximate direction of my enemy. I could tentatively say that the entire half of the city behind me was, at the very least, not where Amy had spawned in. She might have moved there, but she wasn't there at minute zero.

It's only after my mental timer announces the arrival of the third wave that I encounter my first enemy. A gun-toting individual who announces his presence by unleashing a storm of bullets through the walls of the house I was searching with uncanny accuracy and almost ending the challenge on the spot before I find cover.

Well. Hardly uncanny, actually. I glance with annoyance at the pointing, accusing vines stretching in my direction from all angles. A gigantic target marker, for those who knew how to look. I'd hoped that the reinforcements would struggle just as much as I had in this hostile environment, and had even held out a slim hope that the reason I hadn't seen the first waves was because they'd simply perished to the effects of the pollen.

As my ash clone strikes the man from behind and knocks him down, that hope is finally extinguished. The man is hardly even a man at all, the flowers have taken any identifying features from him - roots trail out of every orifice as he gasps in pain from each hit as my clone and I effortlessly tag-team to tear him apart. Wounds burst open as I smash his head and chest in, viscera and some kind of pus exploding outwards with each hit - his blood simply curdles on the spot, turning a sickly-yellow colour as it's exposed to the air. Worst of all, with his brain half-splattered across the street - he doesn't die. Long-established roots and branches manipulate his muscles and limbs directly, an intelligence - or perhaps just a very, very complex ingrained response - that I haven't quite been able to identify directs him to pick up his gun again and attempt to complete his task.

Panacea's power ends that in a flash. The parasitical plants have no resistance to the power, obviously - and fall to pieces in seconds. The man slumps and falls silent. I consider him cautiously. Well-dressed, for an obvious thug. Given the name-change and the designation given to this challenge, combined with what Tattletale had let spill during the bank challenge - was it safe to assume that this man was with Marquis? Was my power going for the alternate-history route here? Was Amy going to announce herself as the Marquess when I reached her? Or would it be Marchioness? What was the difference again? It probably wasn't important. What was important was the idea that I needed melee contact with Panacea's power to fully defeat every enemy in this challenge, I wasn't happy about that - another thing to overcome in the group combat that I was expecting this late into a TIME mission. I can't even hand that duty off to my ash clone because I'll just die without constantly cycling back to Panacea's power to cleanse myself.

Just one enemy. Could have been a problem in a more thorough ambush, but perhaps group tactics like that are a little bit beyond the capabilities of the parasites controlling my opponents this time. Maybe I could use that. There was definitely something here. Even two or three gunmen would have greatly improved the chance of killing me in this ambush, the fact that Amy hadn't opted for that... that was interesting. A limitation, somewhere. Would they fight each other if they were in combat and lured into each other? What if- I stumble, a flash of pain pulsing from my chest. Panacea's power identifying something for the barest flash of a moment before going worryingly silent.

I spit blood onto the ground, rolling over to consider my attacker.

My own ash clone.

Except, I could hardly call it that anymore. It was just an infestation surrounding the shell of my ash clone, a flopping, extended plant retracting from its arm - a needle-like protrusion dripping with some unidentified liquid. Likely what I'd just been injected with, going by the pain in my chest but the lack of a gaping hole that that usually signified. I dismiss my ash clone, watching as my attacker sags and falls over - a mass of plantlife attempting to push itself upright without any more leverage to do so. And nothing to sustain it's incredible growth with - it's already starting to turn in on itself for food. Not that the ash could have been that nutritious... perhaps it was the proximity to the attacker? The pollen must have set on the ash clone, then activated in response to touching the flesh of the man, or the fluid splatter as we were hitting him, or some type of pheromones or... something. I can't interpret it. My version of Amy's power likes to tell me what is happening, but not why - which makes the overly complex biological signals essentially impossible to interpret for me.

I wince. My body feels weak. Heart is racing, and my chest is screaming in agony with a sharp-painful squeeze. Heart attack, I guess. A new one for me - which actually seems a little surprising given the huge amount of times that I've died already. I didn't want to use the shadow state fully, but shifting parts of my body isn't an issue. Shift my torso, leaving the skin out of it - I expend every charge I have on it in a row, then settle back into my physical body in exactly the same state I left it in.

Well. Fuck you then. I sit back and wait for death, absently watching through my bug-administrators eyes to check one more building off of my search area. Every little helps. When I get my hands on you, Amy...

FAILURE

I blink my eyes a few times as the real world filters back, Amy's concerned face appearing at the edge of my vision - but that softens into a more neutral expression as I focus on her.

A familiar soreness pulses from my arms and legs. There goes my power protesting at it's self-imposed limit on simulations again. Just as bad as after I fended off Oni Lee and Bakuda. No, worse than that - I was happy to move around after that, although maybe some adrenaline was helping. Now, I don't even want to do that. Glad I'm already lying down, I wouldn't want to get up anyway.

"Was it everything you dreamed?" I wink.

"I feel like I have more questions than answers." She answers. "You had me worried for a moment there, but you seem okay now - was that, did that feel normal? To you? You look- I can tell you're in pain. You should have said no if it was going to be this bad."

"Pretty average. Doesn't hurt that much, I've had way worse." I nod. The content of the simulations shouldn't affect me externally, apart from that one time with Newter - but that had a DNGR modifier. In reality, this should be just like any other single simulation.

She hums distractedly. "All of that elevated brain activity, the adrenaline spikes, the heart-rate, the traces of damaged muscles - it's already starting to look normal to me, like you've been in this state for hours. It's hard to believe that it looked like you were having a panic attack and a stroke at the same time just a few seconds ago."

"I told you, I get some aches and pains if I overdo it - and then it all fixes itself when I ease off the gas. Again, it's the equivalent of a Thinker headache except I'm too tough for a headache to stop me. You've probably seen one of those in action, right?" She shakes her head. Really? I feel like I consistently overestimate how much people experiment with different parts of their powers. "Well. Whatever. Are you going to stop worrying about me now?"

"No." She deadpans. "But I can at least say that the 'damage' it's doing when you do that isn't going to kill you. Directly. It isn't damaging your heart or anything similar in the same way that it's weakening your limbs. I guess, as you said, if you take it easy for a few days - you'll be back at 100%. I'd actually like to see if your power will stop reversing my changes after a certain point of recovery, but maybe we can test that out another day."

"Medical tests are boring. Sorry." I make a face. "Also, can't promise that - I'm staying down for a day, maybe a day and a half. But then I'm back in the fight."

She frowns at me. "I'm not saying you can't go on patrol, just avoid trying to copy powers for a bit."

I shake my head. "Can't do it. Sorry. It's too useful in the middle of a fight." I note her frustrated expression and tap my head. "I wouldn't insist if it wasn't serious. I'm needed out there. You see - part of that process is, I guess you could say, connecting to the powers? I get a bit of insight into what they can do. Well, I did that to Oni Lee and Bakuda-" Just Oni Lee, but semantics don't matter here. "-right at the end of this evening's events. So I can tell you with complete confidence - Bakuda's crappy bombs? Pale imitations of what they could be. Oni Lee's little bombing run tonight trapped a lot of people, but pretty much everyone lived - right? New Wave got most of their members trapped in crystal, but they weren't affected themselves. Manton limit. Problem is, that isn't an actual limitation of Bakuda's tech. She just didn't have the time or a push from Lung to work around it for her more interesting bombs. But she can. And she will. If I don't take the fight to her and beat some sense into her, she's going to give Oni Lee bombs that could let him fight the entire Protectorate ENE branch on even footing."

Honestly, if that was all - I might not have cared. A second Lung wasn't a problem. But my power hadn't shown me a Cape with that level of restraint. I'd seen civilian casualties on a scale I would have associated with the Slaughterhouse 9. Was my power exaggerating, making things worse than the actual likely reality - just to make the challenge harder? Maybe. But Bakuda didn't strike me as someone who wouldn't eagerly participate in the scenes that I saw. And Oni Lee is just following instructions, as ever. That scenario had seemed all too likely.

I was arguably a villain. But I wasn't that kind of villain. I wasn't going to allow that kind of scene to happen in my city. Not that level of civilian casualties, nor would I allow someone with that lack of restraint to display that kind of power against my girls. Taylor had already come close to death against Oni Lee the first time around, I didn't want to see the outcome of that fight if the grenades simply deleted space in an area five times the size of the old ones - or if they simply converted a building and every occupant in it into glass. As much as I liked to joke around, I did need to step in here.

"That sounds like something you should be telling the PRT." Amy leans forward. "And New Wave, for that matter. If she's that much of a danger, everyone needs to be involved."

"Even if I could explain my 'hunch', which I can't - you already know that nobody is going to pick a fight with Lung when he's arguably at the strongest he's ever been. Oni Lee is free, and he has a pet Tinker. Everyone knows the ABB is going to ram their fist right into the Empire's asshole to make up for all the territory they lost while Oni Lee was out of the picture. The Protectorate isn't strong enough to stop them and quietly wants that to happen anyway, two of their enemies fighting each other - and they just minimise damage and civilian casualties. A strong ABB against a strong Empire... everyone is hoping they just cripple each other and I can't even blame them for thinking that. New Wave just tried and failed to beat both Lung and then Oni Lee separately, they're smart enough to know that they can't just jump into an open fight like this. Nobody wants to pick a fight now, even if they knew that they were going to be more problematic in the future."

"The Protectorate and New Wave isn't strong enough, so you should fight them instead?" She scowls, one leg flipping over my body to allow her to stand up properly from her seated position on me. She gives the costume she's holding in her other hand a frustrated flick to straighten them out, as if they'd done something to personally offend her.

"I'm not looking for a fair fight. I don't even intend to show my face to Lung. I'm not part of a highly-public, flashy hero team like the Protectorate or New Wave. I'm allowed to be more practical and flexible in how I approach problems. If New Wave jumped Bakuda in front of the lights and cameras, she'd blow everyone up just so that nobody saw her lose." And I'd wager anything that the next deadman's switch won't have a Clockblocker-sized weakness in it. "If I jump her in the middle of the night, offering friendship and a temporary alliance against the Empire on one hand - so long as she stays within certain rules - and outright violence in the other, I think I can convince her to limit her destructive tendencies. Lung was able to threaten her into compliance without creating a spectacle, and I made some pretty good progress in my talks with her earlier. I just need to do the same - make it so that she doesn't even need to acknowledge a defeat publicly to change her plans and tech to something that suits everyone."

"That sounds like a stupid idea." At least she's honest. "Even if you did, somehow, find her and then also beat her and Oni Lee and Lung to have your 'conversation' - there's just no way that she would agree to limit her powers like that. Or that Lung would even let her."

She's right, but I'm right too. More right. Righter. The rightest. Because she was missing information, even after all I'd dumped on her tonight. Unfortunately, I couldn't really come out and say 'Actually, I have a really good chance of convincing her and Oni Lee not to carpet bomb the city because I'm a human Master and I'm going to master them just like I did you! Once I'm done with them, they'll be very wholesome Capes who don't turn people into glass statues for fun and coincidentally also love my dick'. I don't think that would go down well, even if it's actually a very reasonable and well-thought out plan.

"Everyone's a critic." I wave her off. "Fact of the matter is, this doesn't even need to be a fight. Just a reminder that all of us Capes play by the same rules. Even Lung knows not to act up too much. This is just a... welcome to the neighbourhood speech that got interrupted before I could finish tonight."

"You make it sound so easy." Amy rolls her eyes. "Well. When you get caught creeping in the middle of ABB territory and end up looking twice as crispy as you were today, I hope you'll actually ask me for healing then rather than trying to be tough about it." She sighs. "From what they were saying earlier, we were already planning on a show of force over the next few days to try and hammer home the fact that the gangs really can't get away with things like this. You'll probably see each us on your patrols no matter what you do - and I can hardly criticise you for wanting to find Bakuda on one of those patrols when my team wants to do exactly the same. At least you won't really be alone when you're trying to pull off your stupid plan. Best case scenario, you find them - we arrest them and we never need to worry about what she might have been able to build."

Patrol? Ah. Right. She thinks that I don't know where Bakuda is right now. She doesn't know that my administrator bug is currently cocooned safely in Bakuda's costume, halfway across the city. In a basement, going by the angle. I wouldn't be 'looking' for Bakuda - I'd be dropping in from the ceiling like the wrath of god. That was the reason for my time-limit too. That bug was going to die at some point, and then I'd lose my only way to track their location.

Maybe I shouldn't say that. It was nice to be able to say this much and be rewarded for that trust, no sign of her pulling an Emma, having a meltdown over each new revelation or running off to ruin my plans by trying to send New Wave on the warpath or anything of the sort. But I think she's only avoiding a panic by thinking that I'm not actually going to end up in a real fight. Telling her that actually this matchup was a guaranteed face-to-face battle rather than just an enthusiastic patrol-with-intent that would never get further than fighting some gangbangers and running away? Yeah. Maybe not. Gotta remember that this girl could poke me and lock me into her bedroom for my own safety if I pushed her too much at once.

"I wasn't going to be alone. I've got a team, you know? I haven't asked yet, but Arachne is always up for some gang-busting activity. Shadow Stalker isn't an official member, but I doubt she'll be happy with the PRT's likely plan to sit on their asses and watch - so she might be around too." I watch as Amy slips her costume back on. And that is the right word, with the way parts of it melts and wraps around her skin before adopting the approximate appearance and texture of regular cloth once more. I knew this was a good idea, I can practically sense her mood improving as she regards her reflection in a nearby mirror - and my own mood soars as I note that she's included my advice for 'accessibility' as half the costume folds away with a thought, then unfolds back out again.

She spots me staring and flushes, brushing imaginary dust off of herself and straightening up. Her expression turns back to a neutral one as she fully turns to face me, biting her lip as if mulling over a difficult question. "If-" She starts, hesitancy in her voice. "I could- I mean-" She trails off, gaze fully-focused on her sleeves - where her robes billow as if in an invisible wind, the only indication that something is different about it than usual. "No. Nevermind."

I guess the direction of her thoughts easily. "Thinking of lending a hand on the frontlines yourself?"

"What? No. Well. Maybe. Not now." She sighs. "It was a selfish thought. I'd be a liability, I wouldn't even know what to do in a fight. I'm good at healing. That's always useful. If I got myself injured because I got ideas about being able to do more, then couldn't heal someone when it was needed..."

"I think you would work it out pretty quickly, but the ABB probably aren't the best people to start learning to fight against." I concede. "That's no reason to give up on the idea entirely though. It would be a fun way to use your powers, and being able to defend yourself is always a good idea even if you did intend to stay as a healer forever. You should come and train with us sometime. Arachne gets beaten up by Shadow Stalker regularly to learn how to fight in hand-to-hand - there's no reason why we'd exclude you, if you wanted to try throwing some punches or test out your latest plant-armour thing."

"I'm part of New Wave. I'm not joining your team." She reminds me, leaning her hand over her shoulder to look back at me.

"You're currently part of New Wave." I correct. "Just as Shadow Stalker is currently part of the Wards. She still shows up. And you don't need to stay with them until you're ninety years old. They'll still be family, even if you did join another hero team. Plus, I can promise that Arachne isn't going to say anything about how weird it is that Panacea can grow tentacles out of her costume and Shadow Stalker wouldn't tell anyone just because she dislikes the PRT. If you're not ready to reveal more of your powers, but you still want to experiment... you'll have to get in touch."

"I'll- I'll think about it. Maybe it's a little fast for me. Things have already changed a lot in just a few weeks." She shakes her head, but her words seem more about convincing herself. "I should head back. I think I need to think about things properly. Work out what I really want to do."

"Take your time. We're not going anywhere." Honestly, it didn't matter if she joined my team or not. At the end of the day, by the time I was done - every team in the Bay would be 'my' team. I just had a preference for a team that was more obviously under my control, away from expectations and obligations that I didn't want anything to do with. Faultline's crew got away with things that New Wave would get the hammer dropped on them for - I wanted that same operational freedom and general hands-off approach from the authorities for my team.

"Thanks. I'll call Vicky. My excuse for being out this late is wearing pretty thin at this point." She starts to walk towards the door, then pauses at it - turning towards me wryly. "Care to let me out of the sex-dungeon? Or do I need to dust off a spot in the corner to sleep in?"

I mock-glare at her, ready to retort... except, it's difficult to do that given what we've been doing ever since arriving here. "Just wait until I get you and Vicky in a room at the same time. You'll see the difference."

"Won't ever be able to do that if you get blown up by the bomb lady."

"Don't worry." I state firmly.

I won't make a mistake in this. And I won't take chances on anyone that hasn't been affected by my power. Oni Lee's third and fourth challenges were enlightening, to say the least. And as much as I would like to handwave it off as the kind of alternate-history simulation that my power loves, it didn't need to take any creative liberties with personality or technologies at all to get the bombing spree that I'd seen. If I can't get all of the ABB Capes past their second challenge to at least blunt any of their more homicidal plans, or at least finish off Oni Lee's fourth challenge to hopefully put some kind of moral safeguard on the person that can do the most damage with those bombs... then I'll just kill Bakuda and Oni Lee and be done with it. It would be a shame to lose their future powers, but there's a limit to the risks I'm willing to take. Not for my sake - but for the girls around me.

"I won't lose."