《Noctoseismology》


 Volume 1 Prologue

    Valiant was the greatest superhero in the world.


    It wasn''t a unanimous opinion- some cited Princess Vega, others Merlin, and a few other top-tier stragglers like Ouroboros, Johnny the Ape, and Doctor Sakurai. But it was clear he was at the top of the heap, if not necessarily on top of it.


    He was an enigma in the public eye; he never gave interviews like other heroes; he never made cameos in popular media. He didn''t even have a P.O. box for fanmail. It was like he didn''t even exist.


    But when the chips were down and heroes were desperately needed, Valiant was always there, a Horseman of the Apocalypse, the eye of a hurricane of helpless dread. He drove his enemies before him without a fight, rarely having to even break into a jog. On the rare occasions he did have to actually fight, he proved himself the peer of Princess Vega, hitting like a train and enduring like a mountain, and always being the last one to leave a fight.


    He was Valiant- fear was for other people.


    Out of uniform, however, he was Silas Marinakis, a tall Greek man with bronze skin, copper hair, golden eyes, and a fondness for bowling.


    "Oooh, gutterball," Dean said as Silas groaned. "You''ll get there eventually." Dean Michael Donovan was tall, dark, and handsome, with broad shoulders, sharp eyes, and a bald head that gleamed in the right lighting. He lived his life with the sorts of good humor and high spirits that can only come from learning to live with the indignity of having three first names.


    "I hope not, I''ve been liking bowling so far," Silas said.


    "What, are you afraid that if you get too good at bowling, the alley owners are going to kick you out and ban you for life?" Dean asked.


    "I like being bad at stuff," Silas said. "It''s a welcome reprieve from being too good and successful at everything."


    Dean rolled his eyes and made an extended rude gesture. "Yeah, yeah, whatever helps you sleep at night."


    Silas'' phone rang. "See, this is a nice benefit of bowling. I can just stop in the middle of it to take a phone call."


    "Work?" Dean asked. Silas had never told Dean what his job was, but after fourteen years of friendship, Dean had a pretty good idea nonetheless. Still, some fictions were important- Silas had never said what his job was, and so, neither would Dean.


    "Heaven preserve me... goddamnit." Silas sighed at his flip phone- he didn''t care for smartphones, and preferred a phone that could be thrown down eighteen flights of stairs and come away with only a single, solitary scuff to show for it. He flipped it open and hit answer. "Hey, I''m at the bowling alley, and it''s still Saturday. Unless people are dying, my hands are tied."


    "People are always dying, boss," Liquid Courage said. "Got a leak in your area from A-510. Someone came through."


    "You''re a smart boy, I''m sure you can handle it yourself," Silas said. "I''m just the best at what I do. That doesn''t mean I''m the only one who''s good at it."


    "You know the rules, and so do I," Liquid Courage said. "A-510 is that horror movie shithole with the vampires and the werewolves and the mad scientists. The relatively-sane mad scientists from there agreed to a closed-borders treaty. With you as one of the signatories. You''re the one who''s gotta make the call on this, boss."


    "Goddamnit, fine," Silas said. "Email me the information and I''ll get back to you with my advice." He snapped his phone closed, and slipped it back into his pocket, sighing. "You see what I mean, Dean, about being too good and successful?"


    "You''re the only one who knows how to fix the printer, I take it?"


    "I''m the only one who''s trusted to fix the printer," Silas said, approaching their table and opening up his backpack. "Sorry, Dean, we''re gonna have to put the game on hold for a bit. Not more than a half hour, but..."


    "Hey, it''s no big deal," Dean said. "For me, anyway. I''m starting to pick up on your philosophy- it''s nice to have a break from kickin'' your ass."


    Silas snorted and pulled a beaten-up laptop out of his backpack, opening it up and turning it on. Almost immediately it began to make noises like a flock of angry geese losing a fight to a jet engine.


    "Ugh, cheap piece of shit," he muttered, his fingertips growing uncomfortably warm.


    "You can''t buy a better one?" Dean asked.


    "I only use it for work outside of the office," Silas said. "I don''t want to make it any easier to do that. It''s a bad habit to be in, and self-control starts at the store. Ah, crap, keep forgetting to put on the glasses."


    "What do you mea-" Dean began, before frowning at the laptop screen. "...Silas, it''s pure white."


    "Security feature," Silas said, putting on a pair of cheap dollar-store coke-bottle sunglasses. "Normal screens have a polarizing filter in them, which makes them legible. This one doesn''t, on purpose, so that it''s only visible if you''re wearing polarizing filters on your face."


    "People buy polarized sunglasses all the time," Dean said. "Doesn''t sound very secure to me."


    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    "And how many people wear polarized sunglasses inside, besides weirdos like me?" Silas asked. "Ultimately, Deany-boy-"


    "Don''t call me Deany-boy."


    "Fine. Ultimately, Phillip-"


    "Fuck you."


    "-you''ve just gotta accept that no security measures are ever totally foolproof," Silas said. "Besides. This stuff isn''t that important."


    In reality, Silas'' laptop was an elaborate prop of his own design. It utilized top-of-the-line components, some of which he''d laboriously fabricated himself, to directly communicate with his telepathic implants, which he''d also built himself.


    That was Valiant''s real power, that he''d never bothered telling anyone- he built broad-spectrum psychic powers in the form of technological gizmos. Telepathic laptops. Telekinetic power suits. A helmet that projected, outward, an aura of fear and dread.


    A brain implant that projected, inward, the complete absence of fear.


    He was Valiant- fear was for other people.


    "Alright, lessee here," Silas murmured, opening the email Liquid Courage had sent him. "Ah. Okay, yeah, that''s a sticky situation."


    A mad scientist from A-510 had come through a portal ten minutes ago. Most likely by accident- the poor girl seemed more confused and dismayed than anything, according to surveillance. Still, any breach was a problem. Mad scientists weren''t terribly ''contagious,'' as such, but vampires absolutely were, and while it wasn''t clear if werewolves were or not- or what werewolves were actually like- there were very nearly zero possible answers to ''what are vampires like?'' that wasn''t a nightmare.


    That it was merely a mad scientist who was deeply confused was, after all this, a deep relief.


    Valiant considered the situation carefully, mulling it over. Actual, specific cross-throughs were rare; what was more common was some kind of low-level bleedthrough of supernatural energies, or some other poorly-understood mechanism, causing natives of this universe to awaken the sorts of powers or magics or whatever that were far more common, and more understood, in A-510. There wasn''t terribly much communication between the universes, really; very little was actually known about A-510 and the peoples who lived there.


    Valiant allowed himself a satisfied little smirk. Sometimes, two problems were the solution to each other.


    He began to type up an email in response.


    After carefully reviewing the information included, along with considering the broader context, I''ve come to a decision. Approach the mad scientist politely, courteously, and discreetly. Make no secret that we know where she''s from, however, and offer her the department''s hospitality while we sort out the situation. If asked, she has the options of staying here or returning to her home dimension, and should she choose to stay, she can further choose between a job we''re offering or going her own way. Tell her that I''ll be in tomorrow to discuss her options with her over lunch. I have a job offer to make.


    She''s an unknown, but she''s an opportunity, not a threat. I say we let it ride.


    He hit send, and the response was nigh-instantaneous.


    Boss, we got a problem. I don''t remember sending you this email.


    Valiant''s eyes dilated to the size of saucers as he continued reading.


    I think our mad scientist managed to hack me and erase all the records of her(? I have no idea how I know that). On account she''s seemingly from A-510, she probably knows how to hide from the authorities, and is going to be a stone bastard to root out if we go looking for her. This is why we''re afraid of A-510, in case you''ve forgotten. At least it probably wasn''t a vampire.


    Valiant sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. After a few moments, he began typing up another response.


    Well, that''s my Saturday ruined. You can find people better than I can, so... start scanning again. I''m going to finish this game, make my excuses, and then come in for damage control. It''ll probably be an hour.


    Valiant sent his response, shut off the laptop, and put it away, along with the glasses. Silas zipped up his backpack and stood back up.


    "Well, there''s that fire put out for now," Silas said. "Now, where were we?"


    <hr>


    "Princess Vega. It''s Valiant. I hope this isn''t a bad time," Valiant said, once she finally answered her phone.


    "Nothing that can''t wait," Princess Vega said, the sound of running water just barely audible in the background. "I know you better than you''d like; I assume this isn''t a social call?"


    "No, it is not," Valiant said. "A mad scientist came through from Universe A-510 earlier today. The one with the vampires and werewolves, if you''ll recall."


    "All these alternate Earths tend to blur together for me; this dimensionalism nonsense was never my forte. But I assume it''s about to become my problem?"


    "Not directly," Valiant said. "The issue at hand is that Austin''s hero infrastructure is, overall, geared more towards research and development, superscience, that sort of thing. We have a lot of people... but also, nearly all of them have better things to be doing than participating in a manhunt."


    "So, you''re short-handed, and need to borrow some of my people?"


    "Again, not quite," Valiant said. "Your daughter is already in town; she just graduated college here, and I''m given to understand that she intends to move back home sometime soon. She intends to go into law enforcement as well, doesn''t she?"


    "Ah, I''m beginning to see what you mean. Yes, I do believe I''ll tell dear Veronica to stay a while longer."


    "I''m glad we see eye to eye on this."


    "It was bound to happen eventually," Vega said loftily. "Now, if you''ll excuse me, I''m afraid my bath can''t wait much longer."


    Valiant hung up, and sighed. It was a common enough misconception that ''Princess Vega'' was just a name. Unfortunately, it was a matter of public record that Valerie Vega really was a princess-in-exile from the Vega system, and had brought with her both a treasure-trove of advanced superscience and a renewed interest in monarchy.


    There wasn''t much that Valiant and Vega saw eye to eye on. He was grateful she lived in New England, nearly two thousand miles away from him. Distances didn''t mean much these days, but at least it wasn''t a distance either of them crossed very often.


    Valiant sighed again, with more feeling. And now, because he had nobody else to turn to, he had to ask the Princess'' daughter for help. He''d managed to go all these twenty two years without ever having acknowledged the girl''s existence, but at long last, that streak was going to be broken.


    "Liquid Courage, get me a stiff drink," Valiant said into the intercom.


    "I''m an AI, not a bartender."


    "Improvise."


    He had Veronica Vega''s email address on file, thankfully; he could only hope that she didn''t share her mother''s stubborn insistence on doing everything over the phone.


    And after that... Well. One thing at a time.

 Book 1 Chapter 1

    I am Doctor Roxanne Updyke, I''m a freshly-minted Research Fellow at the Institute of Applied Transhumanism, and a few hours ago, I got isekai''d into a world where superheroes are real.


    "Ah, there you are!" I heard someone say behind me while I was buying groceries.


    And considering I''d gotten isekai''d in the middle of a gunfight, that was an absolutely terrifying thing to hear in the produce aisle. So I did what I did best: ignore the problem and hope it goes away.


    "Excuse me, ma''am," that someone said, coming closer and ignoring my desire that they go away. "Do you have a moment to talk?"


    "About what?" I said instead of ''no, go away.'' I don''t know why. I definitely wanted to say the latter.


    "About, um..." I finally turned around, and laid eyes upon a college-aged East Asian woman. She was alarmingly pretty, and fairly tall, in a cute but mostly unremarkable sweater and long skirt in dark colors. She was also holding, in her hand, a very obvious piece of mad science with knobs, dials, and buttons laid out as if by a propmaker who didn''t have much to go on. "You know. Special abilities."


    Crap. This girl was one of the local demiurges. Ever since the portal to B-944 was first opened back in 1966, Inspiration started to... leak. The treaty was meant to prevent cross-contamination, but it wasn''t completely successful, and everyone was more or less okay with that. The vampires were the biggest concern, and as long as those didn''t cross over, B-944 was okay with a few of its people becoming demiurges.


    "...Okay, if I agree to talk shop over coffee, will you put that thing back in your pocket before it explodes?" I said quietly. What she was holding was very likely a scanner tuned to detect other demiurges- why she brought it to the goddamn grocery store was beyond me, unless she was good enough to track me from outside the grocery store. She probably wasn''t, though; she seemed new, and B-944''s demiurge population underperformed like hell without the shared knowledge and institutions we had on A-510.


    "Explodes?" she asked, frowning and tilting her head.


    "I''ve been doing this for years," I said. "Our tech goes haywire when normal people so much as touch it. Put it away. Please."


    "Huh. Learn something new everyday." She put her scanner away in her purse. "I''m Akane Sakurai. You?"


    "Roxanne Updyke," I said. "Listen, this is... probably pretty sketchy, so feel free to say no, but we should probably talk somewhere private, or maybe over email-"


    "Your place or mine?" Akane asked.


    I blinked. "Good lord you are too trusting."


    "No I''m not," Akane said, frowning and tilting her head again. "If you wanted to hurt me, the scanner would''ve picked up on that. You''re a perfectly harmless nerd who''s just kinda cranky because you got isekai''d earlier today."


    "Haha hey let''s not talk about that in public please," I said with forced cheer. "Let''s actually not talk shop at all until we get back to my place, yeah?"


    "Sounds good to me!" she said cheerily.


    <hr>


    "Motel. Smart," Akane said, seating herself on the bed. "So! We''re both the same weird flavor of superhero, yeah?"


    "Not really," I said, setting my groceries(a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a roll of paper towels, and a box of plastic knives) on the tiny table, and trying not to bristle at the way she casually made herself comfortable in my space. She might trust me, but I didn''t really trust her, because I didn''t have the ability to read minds... well, I couldn''t at the moment; I''d built telepathic scanners before, I just didn''t have one with me. But, I had to keep her from telling the authorities that someone crossed the border from A-510, so... "Do you... not know what a demiurge is?"


    "Normally, a term from Gnosticism," Akane said. "Contextually, it''s something else, isn''t it?"


    "Yeah, it is. Also known as mad scientists, demiurges are a kind of supernaturally-enhanced human native to Earth A-510," I said.


    "Which is where you''re from," Akane said. "How''d you get here?"


    "It''s a long story, full of details that don''t really matter to you," I said. "Suffice to say I can''t go back whenever I want, but I should be able to find a way back sometime in the foreseeable future."


    "The details totally matter!" Akane protested.


    "No they don''t," I said flatly.


    "Come onnnn, I''m curious!"


    "What a shame," I said. "Take the fucking hint."


    "Oooh, I know!" Akane said, reaching for her purse. I closed my eyes behind my sunglasses, and focused on the bit of mad science I did have on me. Or, more accurately, in me.


    Mad science could take pretty much any form, and implanting mad science within one''s body or even brain was... not straightforward, but neither was it a rare, esoteric technique. For my part, I''d earned my Fellowship with the Institute of Applied Transhumanism with implanted brain-mods in the form of autohypnotic procedures.


    The central brain-mod, the scaffold upon which all others were built, was something I called the Virtual Machine- a computer emulated by another, larger computer, which in this case was my brain. And a key functionality of the Virtual Machine, besides being a fully-featured computer with internet access, was mad science-powered technopathy.


    "Yeah, mad science does that sometimes," I said, opening my eyes to see magic smoke pouring out of Akane''s scanner, which she was still in the process of withdrawing from her bag. I was a little worried- what I''d actually been trying to do was lock it in off mode, or maybe fuck with the firmware to brick the whole thing. She was new, though, and upon further consideration, letting go of the magic smoke is hardly the worst failure state of a new mad scientist''s gadgets. "So, anyway, you thought you were a superhero? Why would that be?"


    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    "Oh! Right, right, that," Akane said, discarding her broken scanner and seeming to completely forget about it. "See, it all started a few months ago, when my college roommate finally moved out. We were really close friends, and I was there when her powers finally awakened and became a superhero, one night when she was working on an overdue project. Well, we were hanging out one last time before she left, and the conversation turned to superheroes.


    "See, nobody really knows how superheroes work, or where their power comes from, or anything like that. And obviously, people would really like those answers. So there''s a lot of theories that haven''t been panning out and nobody knows for sure... except, maybe, for Princess Vega. And this friend of mine, Veronica, she''s Princess Vega''s daughter, and so I was wondering if maybe she knew, and just wasn''t talking. And Nicky said she didn''t know either, but that she had heard some interesting theories-"


    "Hang on, back up," I said. As comforting as it was to indulge a fellow mad scientist''s friendly monologue, Akane wasn''t quite experienced enough yet to do so unaided. "Who the hell is Nicky?"


    "It''s short for Veronica."


    "The fuck it is. Anyway. Go back to why you thought you were a superhero."


    "Right! Right, see, after she moved out, I got kinda bored and really fixated on the question, and I started looking into things more and more, and then yesterday I kinda woke up at my desk, realizing I''d spent a whole week devouring articles and books and some electronics and somehow made that scanner that just broke? Anyhow! This morning, I decided to get out of the apartment for a while, take a walk, and bring the scanner with me, in case it found anyone with powers compatible with mine, so I could ask them for help!"


    I closed my eyes behind my sunglasses. Okay, well, time to distract her before she asks me for help, and I feel obliged to help on account she''s pretty and has been nice to me.


    "Okay, so... tangent, but who the hell is Princess Vega, and why would she know anything about where superpowers come from?"


    "She''s a space alien from Vega," Akane said.


    "Vega is perhaps the second-most important star in the sky, preceded by no less august a star than the fucking Sun," I said. "It is twenty five light years away, and is one of the most-studied stars by astronomers. It is so important that it defines the zero point of the Johnson-Morgan scale. I submit to you the simple fact that, given all of this, there is no way in hell there''s intelligent life in the Vega system without us knowing about it."


    "But we do know about it," Akane said. "One of them came to visit."


    "I- th-" I pinched the bridge of my nose. "...So, where I''m from, the upper echelons of power among mad scientists can build spaceships that can travel at superluminal speeds, and even travel through time. Even the middle echelons, which is where I am quite firmly situated, can build giant scanners capable of searching the entire observable universe. So, Akane, I have ample evidence to hand when I say, where I''m from, there is nothing living in the Vega system that we didn''t bring there ourselves. There isn''t anywhere for life to develop. Only a big red gas giant with a few small rocky moons."


    "Vega has two gas giants, though," Akane said.


    "What? No it doesn''t."


    "You know you''re from another universe, right?" Akane asked.


    "Yeah, but things are similar enough that we''re both speaking English," I protested. "Whatever. I can learn about the fifth gas giant you assholes probably have later. You were talking to your college roommate who is a space alien-"


    "Half space alien," Akane corrected me.


    "Biology does not work th-" I stopped myself, taking a deep breath. "...Princess Vega looks like a perfectly ordinary adult human woman, give or take a rubber forehead or pointed ears, doesn''t she?"


    "She''s really pretty, but otherwise, yeah, just an ordinary human woman who can fly," Akane said, nodding. "But, considering the tech she brought with her from Vega, who''s to say she naturally looks like that? Maybe she looks the way she does so humanity would accept her. And, bringing this aaaaall the way back around... She''s from an advanced civilization, with advanced technology, and hereditary superpowers, something that we haven''t been able to observe happening on Earth."


    "And... has she said she understands superpowers?" I asked.


    "Not publicly," Akane said, shaking her head. "I don''t know for sure what the case is, and... Well, Veronica doesn''t know anything either. Or if she is, she''s not telling. But with your help..."


    "Which is not a given," I said, really hoping to avoid agreeing to anything. "You''re asking me to help you read your friend''s mind for secrets she''s kept for the past twenty years, and considering said friend is apparently the heiress to an alien princess with all kinds of bullshit superscience at her disposal, that is an incredible risk."


    "Actually, I was thinking you could use your scanners to help finally crack this nut," Akane said. "You said you could scan the whole universe?"


    "...Kinda. I''m still restricted to lightspeed, so anything outside the solar system would be literal years out of date."


    "That''s still more than I''ve heard of any mad scientist here being able to manage," Akane said. "Honestly, Roxy, you''re probably the most powerful mad scientist on the planet right now."


    <hr>


    "You can''t stop me, Roxanne," she said, a grin on her face, her portal gun resting easily in her hand. "Surely you know that."


    "You''ve found so far that I very much can stop you," I said, my gun trained on her far less easily. "That''s the deep tragedy of we demiurges, isn''t it? The best-laid plans of our greatest geniuses, laid low and ripped asunder by a lucky idiot with a gun. Now. Drop yours, and I won''t have to use mine."


    "Oh, child, if only it were that easy."


    So I shot her.


    Her knee burst like an overripe tomato, in a messy spray of gore. Her eyes went wide, her face went pale. Her leg folded like origami paper and she hit the floor, and I cocked the hammer again as I lined up my second shot.


    I wasn''t quick enough on the draw, though, and she shot back with her portal gun.


    My next shot hit the brick wall of the alleyway I now found myself in. The only solace I had was that I hadn''t screwed with her settings, and neither had she; this was the only known universe that fit her plan''s requirements, and we both knew it. It was only a matter of time before she came here too.


    <hr>


    "Iunno about that," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. "There''s always a bigger fish."


    And here I was, a girl with a fishgig and no boat, hunting a great white shark in the ocean.

 Book 1 Chapter 2

    "So, you''ll help me?" Akane asked.


    "Right now, I''m feeling a solid maybe," I said. "My help will not come freely or cheaply. When I arrived here earlier today, all I had was twelve dollars and a gun."


    "I have an apartment and space for a roommate," Akane offered.


    I grunted. It was not, in my experience, terribly difficult to use technomancy to get an apartment. All I needed was somewhere that handled pretty much everything electronically, with a landlord who wouldn''t notice that this tenant hadn''t been there a week ago.


    But that was how things worked in the old world, where, if a demiurge did something illegal, pretty much nobody but another demiurge would be able to stop them, and frequently wouldn''t care enough to do so, even if they noticed. Here, though, there were superheroes. And while, sure, I can probably assert with confidence that most superheroes are more concerned with people robbing banks or liquor stores, I cannot say with complete certainty that I will not have to shoot some jabroni dead because they''ve got a bug up their ass about people getting things they somehow "don''t deserve."


    And, well... Okay. Maybe I liked Akane a little. For shallow reasons, which I was prepared to abandon if it turned out I couldn''t tolerate her extended presence, but if I had to choose between a stressful operation out of a shitty motel and moving in with a new friend, the choice was clear.


    But of course, there was the question of whether or not I wanted to mentor her. Setting aside the sheer amount of work that goes into mentoring a new mad scientist, my own mentor had been... shall we say, atrocious. I honestly didn''t trust my own ability to mentor new demiurges. But, at the same time, new demiurges without any sort of mentorship tended to go way off the deep end, creating all sorts of godawful trouble. However bad I was, I couldn''t be worse than Akane accidentally unleashing a plague of undeath on this world.


    And, again, I liked her. I''d feel bad about letting her go crazy and get herself killed.


    "...That''s a start," I said. "Of course, doing mad science in an apartment isn''t what we''d call a long-term solution. It limits you to small stuff, and a very intermittent work schedule, because you''re never willing to bite the bullet and dedicate a whole room to being a proper workshop, and then there''s neighbors... Bleh. Bleh."


    "Mad science sounds inconvenient," Akane said.


    "You have no idea," I said. "Which means, I suppose, if the two of us are going to work together for the next little while, we''re going to have to do so pretty closely."


    "Oh?"


    "Yeah. Since you''ve got credentials in this world, and I don''t, I''m just gonna have to fast-track you into homeownership," I said.


    It was only the fact that Akane had seemed so totally harmless and even guileless for the entire time I''d known her that stopped me from flipping out as much as I should have when she flung herself at me, wrapping me up in a tight hug and bowling me over backwards onto the cheap, creaky motel bed.


    "...Hello," I said, after I caught my breath.


    "Hi," she replied, before giggling a little.


    "I take it you''re happy with that arrangement?"


    "Mhm!" she said. "Thank you so much, Roxy." She was soft and warm. Open and inviting. And the first hug I''d received in a while. I had to admit, I... wasn''t entirely unhappy about this.


    "Tell you what," I said, awkwardly reaching up to pat her on the back. "Let''s get my crap schlepped back to your apartment, and then, day after tomorrow, I''ll give you your first real lesson on mad science. After that, then you can decide if you still want to thank me."


    "Is it gonna be bad?" Akane asked.


    "...You''ll see."


    <hr>


    Akane''s apartment was a decent-sized unit in a building that felt oddly familiar to me. Like I''d been here before. I might''ve, back in the old world- though I''d jumped dimensions, I was apparently still in Austin, and I''d lived in this city my whole life. I hadn''t gotten downtown that much, but I''d visited a few people who lived downtown before.


    "Are you, by any chance, a college student?" I asked.


    It certainly looked that way. Her apartment was a mess, with clothes, dishes, and papers scattered everywhere. Her kitchenette was filthy, with even more dishes piled in and around the sink. Worst of all, though, was the only table in the room, laden with a horrifying, godawful mess of twisted wires, ribbon cables, circuit boards that someone had clearly taken a hacksaw to, several antennae, and what had probably once been a Nerf gun before this monster laid hands on it. It looked like a particularly cancerous weekend project had metastasized. It looked like an electro-mechanical murder scene. It looked like a campfire story told by a self-proclaimed maker who desperately needed to go outside.


    "Yeah, sorry about the mess," Akane said sheepishly.


    There were noteworthy things that weren''t mess and clutter. A big poster on one wall that was a map of the Milky Way, with Sol circled in red with an arrow labeled "You Are Here." A model aircraft hung from the ceiling, a B2 flying wing stealth bomber that had been constructed from foamboard and spray-painted by someone who didn''t realized that spray paint dissolved foam and produced a pitted, corroded mess. Or by someone who did, and wanted a weathered, battle-scarred appearance to their plane. There was also, on one of the bookshelves, a bright orange ceramic cat head, which was hollow and contained a variety of pens, pencils, and markers.


    "...I can work with this," I said. "Probably. We''ll deal with it later- I''ll give you a robotics lesson when we''re not all tired and burned out, and we''ll build a robot maid to keep this place in order."


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    "You can do that?" Akane asked.


    "I''ve been doing this long enough to pick up a little bit of everything," I said. "Weapons, vehicles, armor, medicine, transmutation... But among my specialties are scanners, and robots. Yes, I can in fact make a robot maid. I don''t think I''ll be able to teach you enough to make one on your own- it''s a complicated subject that takes months to learn, and there''s no guarantee you''ll have any aptitude for it. But I think it''s worth it to know a little bit of everything."


    "How long will that take?" Akane asked.


    "Uhhh..." I grimaced. "...Probably longer than I''ll be here, actually. Okay, maybe... maybe we should focus instead, and try to stick to your natural aptitudes."


    "Awww, but I want to learn everything," Akane said, pouting. "I''m just... so curious."


    "Yeah, I can tell," I said. Curiosity was one of the common driving emotions for mad scientists- it was the most harmless as a baseline, but with obsessive tendencies that could bring it well above par if they lost enough marbles. "Be patient. With or without me, you''ve got the whole rest of your life to keep learning, and it can be a pretty long one if you study mad medicine and don''t do anything that''d get you killed."


    "...How long?" Akane asked.


    "Well, it depends on a lot of things," I said. "Immortality is... possible, if very difficult to pull off. As a rough ballpark... provided you''re willing to live a very boring life where nobody shoots at you and you don''t work with anything more energetic than a computer, you should probably make it to at least a hundred." I frowned. "Of course, that''s all predicated on living in my world, where the supernatural scene is more of a solipsistic nightmare rather than a constant public battleground like what superheroes have to deal with. You''re going to have to figure out your life expectancy the old-fashioned way by seeing how long it takes for you to die."


    "What is it like, in your world?" Akane asked.


    "Unpleasant," I said. "It''s late, though, and I''d rather not get into it tonight."


    "Aww..."


    "Be patient."


    Akane sighed, before finally sitting down on her couch- after brushing some papers out of the way. "Sit down wherever, I''ll... get to this all eventually."


    "Are you busy tomorrow?"


    "Kinda, yeah," Akane said. "Sorry..."


    "Eh, it''s fine," I said. "I''ve got my own things to do tomorrow."


    "The day after, though, I''ve got time for our first mad science lesson," Akane said. "And maybe this weekend I can introduce you to Nicky?"


    "Oh, hell," I said. "Do I actually need to meet her? I''d prefer to keep as low a profile as I can, here."


    "She''s not going to blab about your secret identity," Akane reassured me.


    "She definitely won''t if she doesn''t know it," I said. "I''m not interested in taking a pointless risk."


    "We don''t have to tell her you''re my mentor," Akane proposed. "We could just say you''re my totally mundane roommate."


    "You think she''ll buy that?" I asked.


    "She knows me pretty well," Akane said, nodding. "One thing she knows is that I do not like living alone. The fact I managed to go this long without a roommate is what she wouldn''t buy, unless I... brought up... the fact I had a nervous breakdown." Akane blinked. "...Roxy, I think I know why it''s only now that I got powers."


    "Yeah, you had what we call a Breakthrough," I said. "It''s usually a pretty messy process, even for people driven by curiosity, like yourself. They are way nastier for the Sorrowful and the Hopeful, and we''re not even touching what it''s like for the Enraged or the Banished. Anyway, you should probably touch base with your mortal responsibilities, just in case you''ve been neglecting those."


    "...Oh shit," Akane said. "Shit, shit, shit-"


    "Stop. Inhale," I said. "One, two, three, four, five. Exhale. Listen carefully." She nodded, exhaling. "Here''s your story: living alone has done unpleasant things to your psyche, and today or a few days ago, whichever works better, I, your concerned friend, finally came to your apartment to check in on you. You are appreciative of my concern, and have accepted that, yes, you do need someone to live with you to make sure you live like a normal person. And because I don''t have a fixed place of work to commute to, I was able to move in immediately, and the process of moving in the rest of my stuff will happen more or less at our leisure over the next month. With me so far?"


    Akane nodded. "I had an episode, and you pulled me out of it, and you''re moving in with me out of concern. Got it."


    "Now, I''m going to need you to do some thinking here, too: what is it about the two of us that you trust me to live with you, without the sort of close relationship that means everyone else in your life would''ve heard of or even met me by now?" I asked.


    "Uhhh..." Akane racked her brain. "...Oh! We''re both gay, and clocked each other at the grocery store, right after Nicky moved out. We got to talking, and it turns out we already know each other from the Discord of some web serial we''re both into! We hung out over here once or twice, and then when I disappeared, you got concerned and came knocking!"


    I blinked. "...Y''all have Discord and web serials here too? Huh." I shrugged. "Alright, I can live with that, but, the web serial has to be one that you''d be ashamed or just unwilling to talk about with other people you already know personally, unless your friends and family expect you to not talk about your media consumption habits."


    "There are things I don''t tell people," Akane said, nodding. "That''s how it is for everyone, even people who aren''t that secretive. Only little kids narrate every little thing that happens to other people."


    "Fair enough," I said with a shrug. "...So, you''re gay too, huh? Lesbian, bisexual, asexual-spectrum?"


    "Lesbian," Akane said, nodding. "You?"


    "Lesbian and trans," I said.


    "I could tell, but, good to get confirmation," Akane said. "You really liked that hug I gave you earlier. Unless that was a gun in your pocket?" She hummed. "Actually, if it''s not too invasive, you mind if I ask what kind of hormones they give you in A-510? I hear that estrogen tends to kill sex drives, here."


    "I''m not on hormones," I said. "I''m a Research Fellow at the Institute of Applied Transhumanism; one of the many, many gadgets I''ve stuck in my brain is a psychic shapeshifting subroutine. It is the pinnacle of gender euphoria- I get to look exactly how I like."


    "Psychic shapeshifting?" Akane asked.


    "The theory behind it is convoluted and useless," I said. "I''ll tell you tomorrow, after you''ve gotten a full night''s sleep in a real bed."


    "Goodnight, Mom," Akane said, slowly standing up.


    "Night, brat," I said, as she headed to her bedroom.

 Book 1 Chapter 3

    I''ll admit, I wasn''t entirely fond of the superhero world I found myself living in. The genre of fiction had always frustrated me, and the reality, such as it was, didn''t look to be shaping up into anything much better. But the one thing I''d give it in its favor was that, as a bounty hunter, I didn''t have to try very hard to find work.


    "Goddamnit," I muttered, as the pancake landed wrong and folded in half. I grabbed the spatula and set about fixing my mistake- and beating up the pancake pretty badly in the process. "I hate that air-flipping these goddamn things is practical enough to justify trying, time and time again."


    "You''re making pancakes?" Akane asked. She''d finally gotten out of bed, probably because of the smell of breakfast.


    Akane was a mixed blessing. She was the lovechild of a golden retriever and a ray of sunshine, and also looked extremely good in the stretchy tank top and shorts she apparently wore to bed, but she was also a person I barely knew who was intensely curious. If I wanted any semblance of privacy- and I most certainly did- then I had to do my research with the computer implanted in my head, and I had to multitask, not letting her realize I was up to anything at all.


    "Poorly, but yes. This amount of batter makes four, and three are already done," I said, pointing to the plate I''d warmed up in the microwave, piled high with flapjacks. "I trust you can do some basic mental math, even this early in the morning?"


    "I get three, for being such a gracious host?" Akane suggested.


    "Suck my dick."


    "You drive a hard bargain," Akane said. "Very well, I accept your price."


    I snorted. "You get two pancakes. Pick whichever ones are least burnt, that''s the most favor you''re getting out of this deal."


    I tuned out the sound of her rummaging for a second plate and a fork as I cooked, and went back to trawling the local list of supervillains. Austin was a major hub of the tech industry, and in this universe, had even managed to eclipse Silicon Valley. As such, a lot of the local supers were some sort of superscientist or gadgeteer- and from my years of experience fighting such beings, I knew that they were not quick and easy money, even if you happened to have general-purpose anti-technology weapons. That was the thing about gadgeteers, they almost always had some random gadget stowed in their pocket that you failed to account for.


    "So what kind of errands are you planning to run today?" Akane asked.


    "Looking for freelance work," I said. Wholly true, but not the whole truth. And now for the actual lie. "I figure with my tech skills, scrounging up a quick IT job shouldn''t be hard."


    "Sounds like a good idea," Akane said, before digging into her pancakes. She had an early morning class, so not too long after she finished eating, she got dressed, grabbed her keys, and left.


    I utilized the privacy to hack back into the systems of that ''Liquid Courage'' AI who spotted me the first time, and spent a few minutes carefully weaving triggers into the dimensional breach scanners. If my mark came through, I''d know as soon as he did, and unlike him, I''d be able to protect the data from deletion.


    Ten minutes later, I was done with that. I stepped out the front door myself, and idly noted that Akane had failed to give me a key to the front door. I''d have to correct that sooner or later; I didn''t want her realizing too soon that I was a technopath who could pick pretty much any lock.


    I further used my technopathy to doctor the security camera footage, retied my keffiyeh around my face, and headed for the elevator. I finally had my target.


    <hr>


    "Hell''s bells you''re heavy," I grunted, hefting the unconscious, mind-controlled man toward somewhere more discreet.


    Austin was home to one of the biggest names in the hero business, a psychic superscientist named Valiant. Being a hero everyone''s heard of apparently had downsides; whereas celebrities mostly only had to deal with mundane stalkers, big-name heroes had to deal with idiot villains taking a swing at them for nothing more than sheer pride and arrogance.


    "Urgh. Should be the last of ''em in my way. Where to next..."


    Being as Valiant was a psychic, the flavor of villain he tended to attract was other psychics. Sometimes it was oracles bringing misfortune upon the city. Sometimes it was telepaths, trying to suss him out to sell his identity to the highest bidder. This time, it was a mind-controller calling himself Hordemaster, who''d been mind-controlling random citizens to act as human shields for his crimes. The heroes were stymied by the human shields, and the fact that one of these minions was one of their own, under a more long-term thrall.


    Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    "...Ah, hell, this scan is two minutes old. Gonna have to run another one."


    Hordemaster''s mind control seemed to wear off over time, if not continuously reapplied. The going theory was that he had a smaller core of longer-term thralls, and only went out and recruited a whole bunch more in the lead-up to a job. Therefore, the best time to hit Hordemaster was in his downtime, when he didn''t have many minions. Which was true of pretty much every villain, really; the problem was always finding them in their downtime.


    I fired up my scanner again, to get an updated headcount of mind-controlled people in this apartment complex.


    Because I wasn''t some superscientist whose repertoire consisted entirely of esoteric ways to shoot people in the face, I had a solution to this problem. An artifact of mad science, of my own artifice, a technosorcerous crystal ball. It could find anything I could describe within a ten mile radius; red trucks, copies of Animorphs Book 7, poker decks in their original packaging manufactured in 1947... and, in this case, people under the control of Hordemaster, which included Hordemaster himself.


    "Alright, jackass, it''s showtime," I muttered, following the halls towards the apartment Hordemaster was camped out in. He pretty much owned this entire floor of the building, with nobody still remaining escaping his control. He had minions standing guard to deal with intruders, and as such, seemed to feel completely safe here. Safe and bored; scans showed him passed out on his couch, surrounded by empty beer bottles and bottle caps, and it wasn''t even fucking noon yet.


    Oh well. That useless lush was never going to be the real threat. The real threat, obviously, was going to be the hero he''d kidnapped, Iron Beak. I''d hoped that his minions would be stationary puppets while he slept, but considering the three minions who''d tried to shoot at me before I was able to seize control of them myself, I was pretty sure that wouldn''t be the case.


    The door unlocked and swung open under my control, and I stepped over the threshold, stun-gas pellet gun in hand, and shot Hordemaster in his sleep- didn''t want him waking up and complicating things while I dealt with Iron Beak. Speaking of whom...


    There was substantial debate on what the best martial art in the world was. Shotokan karate, muay thai, jeet kune do(which wasn''t actually a martial art in the typical sense of the word), arnis... Personally, speaking from the experience of someone who practice martial arts in a legitimately martial capacity, to hurt people who did not want me to hurt them, I held firm to the belief that the best martial art was judo. Punches and kicks are quick, sure, but they''re also worthless against anyone wearing any sort of armor. But armor is far less effective at stopping you from grabbing the bastard wearing it and throwing him over your hip, or wrestling his arms behind his back.


    That wasn''t to say armor was always useless in the face of a properly-trained judoka. In this case, because Iron Beak''s power was sprouting sharp steel knives that were shaped like feathers, the notion of grabbing him was one of the stupidest I''d considered this week.


    Ordinarily, I''d be fucked. My usual non-lethal weapon was an electrolaser stun-gun, and metal armor was actually an excellent defense against electricity. My options from there would be limited to trying to kick him, and hoping his ribs broke before my boots, or hitting him with random objects in the environment.


    However, Iron Beak''s helmet wasn''t airtight, and he needed to breathe. So I shot him in the face with the stun-gas pellet-gun, and he fell over without much of a fight.


    Time to collect that bounty.


    <hr>


    "What? Why the hell do you need a copy of my birth certificate?" I asked. "I thought the whole secret identity thing-"


    "Secret identities are a polite fiction that exist mainly to enforce work-life separation," the desk jockey informed me. "In order to pay you for the bounties you collect, we need to verify your identity. Your driver''s license will also suffice, if you have that with you."


    Bounty hunting back home had involved registration with a central authority; that it was the case here too wasn''t terribly surprising. Annoying, because bureaucracy, but unsurprising.


    "...Gimme a few minutes and some privacy in the bathroom," I said. "I put my wallet somewhere inconvenient to get to so that people couldn''t pickpocket identifying information."


    "By all means. Bathroom''s right over there."


    I followed his pointing finger, and entered the bathroom, finding a stall and locking it behind me. This wouldn''t be the first time I''d hacked a government database from inside a bathroom, but I really hoped it''d be the last. Whatever chemical they used to clean these things smelled like poisonous bubblegum.


    Step one, find the database that held records like driver''s licenses and birth certificates. Step two, fabricate new records in my name. Step three, pause to consider how best to arrange the details so that nobody thinks to try something like calling my parents, without arousing suspicion. After some deliberation, I decided the best answer was to declare myself both an only child and an orphan, whose parents died in a car accident when I was 16.


    Step four was to realize that I did in fact need to go to the bathroom for perfectly legitimate reasons, and step five was to doctor my own driver''s license while valiantly ignoring the dump I was taking at the same time.


    After wiping, flushing, and washing my hands, I walked back out to the lobby, approaching the desk once more with my driver''s license clenched firmly in my hand, so that nobody could see it. I placed it face-down on the desk, and the desk jockey nodded as he took it.


    "Alright, that should be sufficient. Here''s a form for you to fill out, with your banking information for the account you''d like to receive payments to," the clerk said, taking my driver''s license back out of the scanner and handing it back along with a loaded clipboard.


    "I... do not have a bank account," I said carefully.


    "In that case, we can open one in your name," he said. "We operate a bank for government contractors, which happens to include bounty hunters. Take the clipboard with you- I''m afraid the bank is down the street."


    Well, this will teach me to think anything in this life is easy.

 Book 1 Chapter 4

    "So how was your day?" Akane asked.


    "Productive," I said. "Went out and got the lay of the land."


    "You went partying without me?" Akane asked. "And in the middle of the day?"


    "You can''t see it because I''m wearing sunglasses but I''m rolling my eyes at you."


    It was about four or so in the afternoon, and the both of us had already done rather a lot today. Granted, some of it was more physically strenuous than the rest of it, but I wasn''t about to throw stones considering I''d ended up dropping out of college altogether.


    "Speaking of which, I should probably see an eye doctor and get my eyes tested again," I added. "I have a computer in my head with functionally infinite storage space, and somehow it never occurred to me to store my prescription in there."


    "Oooooh. So you''re wearing sunglasses indoors because you left your regular glasses behind?" Akane asked. "It isn''t a fashion statement?"


    "Well, it isn''t just a fashion statement."


    "Wow," Akane said, starry-eyed. "Earth A-510 really is the Urban Fantasy universe. Even a trans butch mad scientist cyborg comes out of there thinking that aviators and a trenchcoat are the height of fashion."


    I rolled my eyes again.


    "Oh, hey, speaking of cyborg," Akane continued. "Why do you need glasses in the first place? Aren''t you good at scanners?"


    "While the Institute for Applied Transhumanism approves of cybernetic eyes, I always thought they were a waste of headspace," I said. "There''s a sharply limited number of gadgets a demiurge can maintain at once. Joining a Research Fellowship can show you tricks for reducing the maintenance cost for gadgets that fall under their aegis, and for small-scale stuff that makes the maintenance trivial, but working cyber-eyes are complicated enough to matter."


    "What about mad medicine?" Akane asked. "Can you use that to fix your eyesight?"


    I opened my mouth, preparing to say "no, of course not," but then I closed it, rethinking my position.


    "...So, typically, the most basic level of mad science just sorta... duplicates what regular science can achieve, but a little better," I said carefully. "And corrective eye surgery for the treatment of myopia is absolutely something regular science can achieve. Therefore..." I closed my eyes, activating my healing subroutine. I took off my sunglasses as the implant worked, and when it told me it was done, I opened my eyes. "...Whoa."


    "It worked?" Akane asked.


    "It did, yeah," I said. "...Which actually kinda annoys me, because I liked these shades, and I liked how I looked with glasses, too."


    "You can get new sunglasses and cosmetic glasses," Akane promised me. "You... probably should be getting new sunglasses anyways. The protective coating on your lenses is peeling like crazy."


    "Ah, right, I keep meaning to fix that," I said, switching the healing to repair and rubbing my thumb over each lens. "There. Good as new."


    "...Mad science is bullshit, and I want to know more."


    "Easy, tiger. We''ll get there," I said. "How was your day? What do you do all day?"


    "I''m in grad school for aerospace engineering," Akane said. "My mom works at NASA, so... Y''know. Kinda following in her footsteps."


    "Well, if you''re sure that''s what you want," I said. "Funny you should mention NASA, actually- my uncle used to work at Lockheed Martin, predominantly on NASA contracts. He retired years ago, but still."


    "Oh nice," Akane said.


    "And... well, I suppose we should rip this particular bandaid off with a quick theory lesson," I said. "How much time you got?"


    "All of it."


    "Alright, so... You''re right that mad science is in fact bullshit," I said. "But, contrary to what you think, it''s bullshit in the sense that it''s fraudulent. See, the physical sciences have reached a consensus that the universe doesn''t care what you think. And for ordinary, everyday mortals, that''s more-or-less true. They aren''t supernatural. But for you and I, and for every mad scientist, superhero, wizard, werewolf, and vampire out there? The universe very much does care what we think. We demiurges in particular have our opinion so favored by the universe that it can temporarily forget what the real laws of physics are, and adopt whatever lunacy we feed it. That''s fundamentally what mad science is- we build impossible devices that operate on falsified laws of physics, and then they work."


    "Hmmm..." Akane said. "...But why?"


    "Nobody knows," I said. "Well, okay, a lot of people claim to know, but I''m reasonably confident that almost all of them are full of shit. The more important part, which I need you to understand, is that working with mad science will screw with your mind and your ability to understand the world as it works for normal people. You and I carry with us a magical power. We dress it up in technological and scientific trappings because it works better that way, but it fundamentally is magical- that is, fueled by confirmation bias." I sighed. "I understand this is against my self-interest, but if you have any hope of producing useful, useable work for Boeing or whoever the fuck, stuff that people other than you can work with, I need to leave, and you need to try as hard as you can to smother that spark of inspiration, before it burns you up from the inside out."


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    "But- Okay, maybe the fighter jet I design won''t teach anyone anything useful," Akane said. "But the jet itself would be useful, right?"


    "Not unless you find another Demiurge to pilot it," I said. "That''s another side to this coin: our power is to lie to reality... and when someone who isn''t supernatural, who isn''t in on the con, touches what we''ve built? Reality realizes something is wrong, and things go haywire. Maybe you''re lucky and it just breaks. Maybe you''re less lucky and it develops exactly enough sentience and independence to lash out in a blind, violent rage at everything around it, starting with the poor fool who tried to use it. That''s not a single isolated horror story- it happens all the time. So, no, the jet itself would not be useful. The path of the mad scientist is one of isolation and failure. You will create life inside a computer, and you will never be able to send it to school. You will learn fascinating truths about the universe, and you won''t be able to tell anyone else. You will walk on the surface of Mercury, and you will walk alone."


    Akane chewed on this for a moment, considering things carefully.


    I could tell by the set of her jaw and the furrow of her brow that she was resolving to completely fucking upend her life. I don''t know why I keep trying this routine. It never works, and they don''t even have the good graces to thank me afterwards after they realize I was right.


    "No," Akane said, shaking her head. "No, I won''t walk alone on the surface of Mercury. This isn''t the world you''re from. This is a world where superheroes fly in broad daylight, and are already enmeshed in the fabric of society. Maybe I can''t get my Master''s. Maybe I can; plenty of heroes earn Doctorates. But either way... There is a place for me in this world." She grabbed my hands tightly, looking up into my eyes with steely determination. "And there''s a place for you, too."


    "Like hell there is," I snapped, before I could control myself. "I''m trying to stay under the radar, okay?" I most definitely was not going to tell her about my day job, which was bounty hunting, and then get into a shouting match about how this world was developing a brand new warrior aristocracy and cheering it on- No. Control yourself, Roxy. This isn''t the job you''re here to do. These people can sort out their own shit on their own. It isn''t your place to meddle, and trying to make it so will just produce someone just like you to stick their fingers in your eyes. "But... Whatever. Fine. You''re an adult who can make your own decisions, and we had a deal."


    Akane''s eyes very nearly sparkled, which I waved off as a trick of the light; no way she''d replaced her own eyeballs yet. "Yessssss. Thank you thank you thank you-" She let go of my hands so she could wrap me in another hug, her head tilted back so she could rest her chin on my shoulder. "So, what do we start with? Death rays? Power armor? Teleporters?"


    "We are going to start with a robot maid to clean up your goddamn apartment," I said, absently patting the back of her head. I had to admit, as much as it felt like I should be objecting to the hugs, I just couldn''t find it in me. I wasn''t exactly touch-averse; in fact, I was pretty touch-starved. It was just... I didn''t plan to stay here one minute longer than I had to after my job was done. I really, really did not need to get emotionally entangled with someone I was planning to leave behind.


    "What''s that gonna be like?" Akane asked. "Are you gonna build an off-brand C-3PO to putter about dispensing servile snark?"


    "I am going to make a human-shaped roomba that is exactly smart enough to wash the dishes," I said.


    "Aw, lame," Akane said. "Can''t you build something smarter?"


    "I can build something a bit smarter than a dog that speaks, like, five hundred words of English," I said. "The problems with building something like that are myriad. First, ethical problems- that''s where I draw the line of ''smart enough I feel bad forcing it to do my chores.'' Second, practical problems: that kind of intelligence is expensive, in more ways than just costing a lot of money. And third, you''re supposed to learn the basics of mad robotics from this project, and doing something that complicated from the beginning would be nothing but hazing."


    "Oh, okay," Akane said.


    "I don''t know what your budget is like, so we might have to improvise some stuff," I continued. "We''re definitely gonna need your car to make a few runs to various stores, though. How much money are you prepared to drop on this?"


    "How often are we going to be doing something like this?" Akane asked.


    "Well, pretty much every time we build something serious, it''s gonna be expensive," I said. "I don''t expect us to build something serious very often, though. Maybe once a month? I don''t know what your schedule is like."


    "Mmn," Akane hummed, nodding. "...My apartment isn''t that dirty, is it?"


    "It kind of is, but..." I sighed. "As much as I just said you''re an adult who can make your own choices, I''d rather my legacy, in your eyes, was an improved quality of life, and not the barrel of a gun. It''d help me sleep better at night."


    Akane nodded against my shoulder- it occurred to me that I''d never let go of her, and then it occurred to me that I didn''t want to let go.


    "So... what should we do for dinner?" Akane asked.


    "...It has occurred to me that the big roomba won''t be able to cook for us," I said. "I... might be convinced to make that intelligence upgrade to dog-intelligence so it can."


    "That''s one way to make sure we don''t argue over who has to do chores," she said. "I have stuff to make spaghetti, so we could do that."


    "Fair enough," I said. "Of course, we''d have to stop hugging in order to go cook food and then eat it."


    "It''s not even five o''clock," Akane said, nodding. "I''m not that hungry."


    "Glad we''re on the same page, here."

 Book 1 Chapter 5

    "We''ve been putting out fires for the past few days, and things are mostly returning to normal," I said. "Although, as you can see... some changes are likely to be permanent."


    Our robot maid was still diligently unfucking the tumbleweed Akane had made out of half a Radio Shack- which was a lot bigger on B-944 than it was back home- and separating the parts into an organizer.


    "Powers generally do not just go away," Veronica said, nodding.


    It was about six in the evening on Saturday, and Veronica Vega, also known as Lady Venus when in costume, had walked in the door five minutes ago. She was tall, standing barely an inch shorter than myself, and generally looked... Well, I should start with ''Supergirl Knockoff'' as a baseline. White, blonde, large breasts. But there were very visible differences. Her skin wasn''t the light tan or pinkish sort of white you normally saw, and her hair wasn''t the yellow-gold color we normally called blonde. Her hair and skin both were white as bone, and her eyes were a disconcertingly bright blood red.


    Veronica Vega was no mere Supergirl Knockoff. Veronica Vega was a Supergirl Knockoff with a very visible genetic disorder called Oculocutaneous Albinism, Type 1-A.


    And yet I was the one wearing sunglasses. I suppose her eyes worked just fine. Her mother was an alien with alien technology, after all.


    Of course, aside from the odd coloration, she was still built like a comic book superheroine; someone with such visible muscles probably shouldn''t also have boobs barely smaller than her head, but I wasn''t a real doctor, so what the hell did I know?


    I hummed, tilting my head back to consider the issue. The human head was a common point of comparison for breasts, but I wasn''t convinced it was a terribly accurate one; breasts were, roughly, hemispherical in form factor; visually evaluating their size relative to the head was complicated and error-prone.


    "Is something the matter?" Veronica asked, reminding me that we were, nominally, carrying on a conversation.


    "Sorry, lost in thought," I said, not wanting to admit that I had, technically, been distracted by the color of her eyes and the size of her tits. "Akane tells me you two were college roommates?"


    "As recently as two months ago, yes," Veronica said, nodding. "I graduated, and felt it appropriate to go on a bit of a walkabout; with my power, all I truly need is a wallet and a map of hotels."


    "Akane''s mentioned, vaguely, that you can fly," I said. "If it''s not a horribly personal question, would you mind if I asked for more details about your power?"


    "It varies from hero to hero," Veronica said. "In my case, however, the bloodline power of the Royal House of Vega is more or less public knowledge. More than flight, our power is gravitas. Weightlessness and motion, but also durability, strength, and an air of authority. I appreciate your composure, incidentally- it typically takes time for someone to be able to casually converse with royalty."


    "Ah, that," I said. "Well, as it so happens, I am apparently very psychically-insensitive." Which was... kinda true? To an extent? I had a psychic shield in my head, at any rate, and so I really was effectively immune to any mind-altering influence her power might have. However, that wasn''t a natural state of affairs, and I didn''t want her to know I was a demiurge myself, so... "Anyhow. Gravity, huh? I suppose that makes sense- you are, after all, very attractive."


    Veronica closed her eyes and tilted her head back, a grimace forming as she did, before she reached her apex and groaned dramatically.


    "Not a fan of puns?" I asked.


    "I adore wordplay most ardently," Veronica said, lowering her nose and opening her eyes. "However, I also understand the etiquette of wordplay; to not groan or threaten your life would simply be rude."


    I nodded. "Yes, yes, I think we''ll get along just fine."


    "Alright, milkshakes are ready," Akane said, turning off the blender and walking out of the kitchen with a tray carrying three glasses with frosty condensation on them. "Roxy, thanks for picking up ice cream on the way home."


    "No problem," I said, accepting the milkshake she handed me. I''d picked key lime pie for my flavor; chocolate was a perfectly serviceable flavor, don''t get me wrong, but the sweet tang of lime custard was the best thing ever crafted by human hands.


    "And Nicky, I saw this in a youtube video-"


    "Oh my god it''s a fluffernutter milkshake," Veronica whispered, after taking her first sip. She turned to face Akane, starry-eyed. "I love you," she said, genuine and heartfelt. Apparently that was all it took to get through the royal exterior.


    "We all do," I said, reaching up and patting the top of Akane''s head. "She''s fantastic."


    "Gay," Akane said.


    "Aren''t we all?" I asked, looking around.


    "Bisexual, in point of fact," Veronica said, taking a brief break from making love to her milkshake.


    "Oh, huh," I said.


    "Roxy''s great too," Akane said, finally sitting down. "She made pancakes for me, the first morning after she moved in."


    "What can I say, you inspired me," I said.


    "Hm?"


    "Stacked."


    "Oh, pft."


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Veronica groaned some more.


    "Really, we should''ve seen this coming," Akane continued. "I mean, come on Nicky, she named herself after updyke, for crying out loud."


    "What''s updyke-" Veronica said, before her eyes went wide. "Oh n-"


    "Nothin'' much, what''s up with you?" Akane and I crowed in chorus.


    "You''re both awful and you deserve each other," Veronica declared, groaning.


    "Thank you for your service," Akane said solemnly.


    "Does this make us your comedy harem?" I asked.


    "...Why would it..." Veronica began.


    "Because you''re the straight man."


    Veronica groaned dramatically, and Akane burst into peals of laughter, falling back and leaning against me. Despite myself, I couldn''t help but grin.


    "I am going to punch you," Veronica declared.


    "I''m a third degree black belt, I''m not scared of you," I said as though it were a lie.


    "Ah, you do martial arts?" Veronica asked.


    "Enhhh... I used to," I lied, because not three hours ago I''d executed a textbook ura nage throw on a prospective bank robber- long story, don''t ask. "It''s been a while; I''m still pretty in shape, but they''ve probably forgotten my name at the dojo at this point." I decided to redirect the conversation. "So, fluffernutter milkshake, huh? You from New England?"


    "Indeed. Cape Cod up in Massachusetts," Veronica said, nodding. "Neither of my parents were local, though, and so I don''t really have the accent."


    "Oh, hey, Cape Cod," I said. "I''ve been up there, back when I was in high school. Got this jacket at a military surplus shop up in Provincetown, actually."


    "Ah, lovely. A small world, truly."


    "So, where to next on your walkabout?"


    "Well, in point of fact, it is now coming to an end," Veronica said. "Earlier this week, I received a call from Valiant, who wanted me for a job here in Austin. Apparently, someone from Earth A-510 violated the closed borders treaty, and he needs an extra pair of hands to look into it." She sighed. "If only he''d been quicker on the draw. I could have moved back in."


    I carefully did not say or emote anything, because we were all quite aware that I was the reason Veronica couldn''t just move back in with Akane. I had perfectly valid reasons why I was okay with that- as much as Veronica seemed like a fun person to inflict my sense of humor upon, she was a superhero who was charged specifically with finding me and deporting me. However, expressing those perfectly valid reasons would be disastrous.


    So I dodged the subject.


    "A-510 is the one with the vampires, right?" I asked, feigning ignorance. "Why not just call in that one sunshine guy? The, uh... fuck, what were they called? The one with the sunlight powers?"


    "Her name is Solar, and we''re not convinced it was a vampire that came through," Veronica said. "We do not know much about Earth A-510, but we do know that they have their own superscientists, as well as wizards of... some sort. What all of these people can and cannot do is unclear to us. However, we are relatively confident that vampires cannot accomplish this on their own."


    "Huh," I said. "Well... Good luck."


    She sighed. "I''ll certainly need it."


    <hr>


    "Should we let Nicky move back in with us?" Akane asked, once Veronica was gone.


    "Absolutely not, are you insane?" I asked.


    "I mean, I am a mad scientist, but... Walk me through your reasoning?"


    "Akane, your friend is a cop with a mission to find and deport me," I said. "That''s... Is that not immediately apparent?"


    "She''d never deport you," Akane protested.


    "She absolutely would. That''s her job. Whether she wants to or not doesn''t exactly enter into it, unless she really likes me, which..." I grimaced. "Well, I''m the reason she can''t move back in with her best friend. She''s got reason to want me gone, is all I''m saying."


    "But you wouldn''t be that reason if you let her move back in," Akane said.


    "There are only two bedrooms, Akane," I said. "And none of us are willing to crash on the couch."


    "We can share a room," Akane said. "Just because Nicky''s weird about physical contact doesn''t mean we have to be."


    "Look, as much as I appreciate having a proper hug dealer after all this time, I''m not exactly comfortable with the prospect of sharing a bed with you," I said. "What is this, fanfiction? There needs to be more than one bed."


    "But we''re friends," Akane said.


    "Friends don''t typically share beds," I said. "Didn''t you live with Veronica for years?"


    "Yeah, but she doesn''t like being touched because of the dignity of royalty and all that," Akane said.


    "Huh. Well, I''m also weird, but for different reasons, and I''m drawing the line at sharing a bed," I said.


    "I want cuddles," Akane whined. "This is homophobic."


    "Life often is," I said, nodding sadly.


    She sighed.


    "...So, what''s next for mad science?" Akane asked.


    "Did the lesson in robotics particularly inspire you?" I asked. I was pretty sure I already knew the answer, but it paid to double-check these things.


    "Not really," Akane admitted. "It''s cool, but... it''s not what I want to do."


    "Then we''re done with it," I said. "There are, conventionally, eight recognized fields of mad science, of which a Demiurge will have an aptitude for three, no more and no less. We already know you have an aptitude for scanners, and I will teach you best practices for those, but first, I think it''s important to figure out where your aptitudes lie."


    "How are we going to do that?" Akane asked. "Are you going to read my mind, or have me fill out a questionnaire? Ooooh, is it gonna be a journey of self-discovery?"


    "I am going to make you try each of the six remaining fields, one by one, until we find the ones you''re interested in," I said. "You may recognize this as ''doing it the hard way.''"


    "Aw, that''s boring," Akane said.


    "It''s what works," I said. "However, knowing what I do of your academic interests, I am willing to make an educated guess on what at least one of your aptitudes will probably be, and jump it almost to the front of the line."


    "Oh?" Akane said. "What''s my aptitude, and why aren''t we doing it first?"


    "You''re an aerospace engineering student," I said. "If you don''t turn out to have an aptitude for vehicle design, you''re in the wrong field."


    "Ooooh, right, mad science can do vehicles," Akane said. "Oooooooh, does that mean you''re gonna teach me how to make cyborg implants so I can make a gravity flight module and I can be just like Nicky?" Her eyes sparkled. "Roxy. Roxy please we need to do that next please please ple-"


    "The fact that you''re likely to have an aptitude for experimental high-speed vehicles that only you can pilot is precisely why it doesn''t go to the front of the line," I said bluntly. "I have an aptitude for mad medicine that will fix any cuts and burns you sustain, but if you''re injured severely enough, I will not be able to heal that, and you will be bedridden for several weeks while it heals naturally, or possibly even hospitalized."


    Akane blinked, and then looked away. "Oh."


    "And that is why, before you start messing around with jet bikes, I am going to teach you to make armor."

 Book 1 Chapter 6

    "Ugh, why won''t this work?" Akane complained.


    "What''s wrong?" I asked.


    While my specialties in mad science dealt quite heavily in human psychology- I didn''t make my implants as autohypnotic routines just because I thought it was funny- I still was not a formally-trained teacher, and wasn''t really sure how I was supposed to be teaching something so cerebral and creative as mad science.


    As such, on Sunday, I''d started Akane off with a brief overview of the design goal, an outline of the mad scientific method, and told her to ask for help whenever she needed it.


    "You told me mad science runs on pseudoscience," Akane said. "So I''m trying to use string theory to make the armor work, but..." She sighed.


    "Okay, so, a few things here," I said. "One, I never said that mad science ran on pseudoscience. I said that mad science ran on bullshit. Pseudoscience is a specific term in the philosophy of science with a specific definition- how familiar are you with Karl Popper?"


    "Uhhh... Refresh my memory," she said.


    "Right. Well, Karl Popper defined science and pseudoscience in opposition to each other, with a key delineating feature: falsifiability, typically through prediction," I said. "Real scientific theories make predictions that can be tested, and possibly proved wrong. Therefore, pseudoscientific theories are those that explain everything but predict nothing and cannot be proven wrong."


    "Huh, interesting," Akane said.


    "Now, I''m not going to weigh in on whatever hard science pissing match is going on with you and string theorists, not because I''m not qualified but because I don''t care, but I am going to say that if you think string theory is stupid because it''s not a predictive model, then you shouldn''t be using it in your mad science," I said. "Mad science is about taking a predictive model that''s wrong, and making it contextually right. It''s about hypothesizing One Weird Trick with charcoal and peanut butter that lets you manipulate gravity, and then making that bullshit actually work so that you can have a hoverboard powered by charcoal and peanut butter."


    "Oooooh," Akane said.


    "So fuck string theory, fuck the inside jokes that only you and your advisor will get. What do you have to work with, what are you trying to do, and what absolutely bullshit predictive model lets you use the former to achieve the latter?" I asked.


    "Well... Veronica offered to run some errands for me, after I told her I was going to try making armor for myself," Akane said. "Buying materials and all."


    "So you''re less constrained on the materials front," I said, nodding. "Right. Let me know if you need anything else."


    "I should be fine," Akane said, nodding. "Although... Do you have something that''ll take a 3D scan of me so I can get the armor to fit on the first try?"''


    "I''ve got a computer in my brain," I said. "I can take a 3D scan with my own two eyes, provided you''re willing to T-pose for a few minutes."


    "Sure!" She shot to her feet, flinging her arms out to the sides, and once she stopped jiggling, I captured the first image.


    I''d been living with Akane for less than a week at this point, and I clearly wasn''t done adjusting fully to her, uh... her. She was deceptively curvaceous, appearing normal and reasonable with her tall frame, but when she hugged you- something she was quite fond of doing with me, multiple times a day, whenever she felt like it or thought I felt like it- she reminded you that, no, she was in fact distressingly well-padded.


    And now, here I was, taking a slow walk around her, carefully examining her figure from every angle, while she wore a thin, stretchy tank top and tight shorts. It was enough to make me grateful for my various body modifications, because I really did not want to pop a boner right now.


    "Alright, all done," I said, turning my attention away once I was done with the capture. "Make sure you leave room for breathing. And maybe consider what the hell you''re supposed to do when it''s been three hours and you''re busting for a piss." Hopefully, distracting myself from ''hng, tiddy big'' with ''okay but you have to pee eventually'' would continue to work to divert my own libido, and would not backfire in the absolute worst way. All the same... perhaps I shouldn''t make a habit of it.


    "Thanks, Roxy!"


    <hr>


    By default, when a demiurge built something that was observable by humans, it looked like a mad scientist had built it. There was a lot of aesthetic wiggle room, accommodating all sorts of mad science aesthetics, but unless you were a deft hand with the transformational sciences, making something that looked normal, and not some flavor of deranged was impossible.


    Thankfully, when it came to wearable mad science, the internet and the convention scene had normalized the idea of cosplay, which meant that you could go out in public covered in metal plates and blinking LEDs and people would think you were in town for a convention or something.


    "Oh, nice," I said, stepping out of my room after Akane called me to check out her finished suit. There were lights on it, sure, but rather than cosplay, it looked like legitimate prototype exercise gear.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    "How do I look?" Akane asked, turning this way and that, examining herself. I noted that Veronica, who''d made shop runs for Akane, was also here to witness this first fitting.


    She was wearing a skintight jumpsuit made of a deep, dark red material that wasn''t quite shiny, but wasn''t completely flat matte, either. Various symmetrical and geometric lines were drawn over the suit, each of them lined with an even, red glow. It was a pretty cool effect, even if it was pretty clearly cosmetic. However, contrary to what I''d feared, Akane was not a complete idiot, and so this jumpsuit she intended to wear while piloting experimental vehicles was not constructed like fetish wear. Her figure was still noticeable, there was just no getting rid of curves that big, but it had been compressed, like she was wearing the mother of all sports bras and compression tights. And then, on top of that, a thickly-padded suit of armor meant to protect her in a car crash.


    "Looks good to me," I said. There were three pieces she was not wearing, those being the gloves and the hood slash helmet, but it wasn''t hard to see how those were meant to go on. "I''m guessing that, with the gloves and the helmet off, it''s low-profile enough you can just wear it under a sweater and a skirt without anyone noticing?"


    "Yep!" Akane said, proudly planting her hands on her hips. "Best part is, it''s actually really comfortable! It''s juuuuust tight enough to feel like a constant hug, but it also does temperature regulation! I''m not sweating even a little!"


    "Well, hell, that''s pretty good work," I said. "You, uh... should probably put the armor on a crash test dummy and run some tests before you trust it with your life, though."


    "Austin''s a major superscience hub," Veronica added. "There are already-existing testing facilities, that I could get you access to."


    "Maybe," Akane said. "R- uh, I don''t think mad science is going to work the same way." Ah, hrm. Is Akane not a good actor slash liar? "Letting other people handle it tends to break it really badly."


    "Ask me how we found out," I said, reaching up to rub my eyebrow.


    "Mmn, I see," Veronica said. "That... is uncommon, but not unheard of. There exist procedures to handle this."


    "Like what?" Akane asked.


    "The details elude me; until very recently, I didn''t think them personally relevant. But, now they are relevant," Veronica said. "It is my hope that, as you grow into your power, the two of us will be able to collaborate on my mission. You did say you had an affinity for scanners, did you not?"


    "Oh absolutely not," I said. "No, no, fuck that. Fuck everything you have just said- I will tolerate, with clenched teeth, Akane building and testing her own mad science motorcycles. But I will not tolerate the charismatic warrior princess luring her into a profession that gets shot at for a living."


    "You are not her mother," Veronica said flatly.


    "That''s correct," I said, nodding. "Should I call her, then? Should I call Akane''s mother and tell her that Akane plans to drop out of grad school to be a superhero? Or would you rather deal with just me?"


    "Perhaps I should call her, and inform her of the strange, aggressive, manipulative woman who has rapidly insinuated herself into Akane''s life under the pretext of taking care of her," Veronica said.


    "I''m prepared to account for myself. Are you?"


    "Would you two stop?" Akane said, drawing us both up short. "You two are my best friends, and... and this was a big moment for me! This suit is..." She shook her head.


    "...You''re right, I was unreasonably aggressive," I said. "I''m sorry I snapped at you like that, Veronica. I regret having done that."


    In lieu of an actual apology, Veronica''s face turned a bit red and she turned away, folding her arms. Which, I suppose, is the closest she got to admitting fault.


    Thankfully, she left not long afterwards... leaving me alone with Akane, who seemed to have some questions.


    "...Why, Roxy?" Akane asked.


    "I''m assuming you mean, ''why did I react like that to Veronica''s suggestion you become a superhero,''" I said. "I could lie and say that it''s because Veronica''s current mission is to find, arrest, and deport me. But... well, I trust your ability to just lie to her and tell her you can''t find anything."


    "So... Why? Why did you freak out at the idea of me becoming a superhero?" Akane asked. "It''s... I mean, every kid dreams of getting powers and becoming a hero. I definitely did. I still do! It''s important to Nicky, and it''s something I''d love to be able to share with her."


    "Right, well... Where I''m from, we''re a lot less enamored of people who do violence as part of their job," I said. "We don''t have superheroes as such, but we do have our own sort of supernatural law enforcement. The druids are the only ones who do it with any dignity, and in their case it''s because the spirits make them do it. For everyone else, it''s a dirty, unglamorous job you only end up in because you weren''t good enough to hack it in a real job."


    I realized I''d clenched my fists, and forced myself to relax them. I''d been a bounty hunter for years, ever since my own Breakthrough. I''d been beaten, burned, shot, frozen, poisoned, stabbed, shocked, irradiated, exsanguinated, and more. I''d witnessed crazed, broken men, losing their minds, driven by their innate desire to change the world unchecked by any ethical or practical considerations, and I''d been forced to shatter their hopes and put them down.


    "...Were you one of them?" Akane asked.


    I blinked, looking away. "...No," I lied. "I just... I lost a friend to that work. And I don''t want to lose another."


    I''d managed to escape it, when the Institute for Applied Transhumanism took me in. I''d been using implanted mad science as a play on the concept of self-improvement for a while; gadgets implanted inside my body couldn''t be taken away from me or touched by those who would break them, after all. Apparently I''d gotten good enough at it to impress them.


    Of course, I didn''t get to have nice things for long, and my old, deranged mentor stole an old portal gun in a high-profile way that got a great many people looking very pointedly at me and asking what I planned to do about it.


    "Okay..." Akane said, clearly not entirely believing me.


    "Doesn''t matter," I said, shaking my head. "Just try not to get yourself killed, yeah?"

 Book 1 Chapter 7

    "So... Protection. Is that one of your aptitudes?" I asked.


    "Mmm... No, not really," Akane said, shaking her head. "It''s useful, and I understand it, but it doesn''t get me going like scanners or vehicles do."


    Akane''s second aptitude had, as I''d suspected, proven to be vehicles. She''d required a lot more active help from me to construct a ground vehicle you could only call a "motorcycle" if you used quotes, or perhaps an asterisk to indicate a footnote, but that was simply down to the sheer size of the damn thing.


    The sheer size that she had failed to adequately consider when it came time to ask and answer the question of "how the fuck are we getting this out of the apartment?" It was big and a bit awkwardly shaped; no way in hell were we getting it out the door. And so, with a heavy heart, we''d taken it apart, hauled it to a rented storage unit- I''d been careful to find one that was ground level- and reassembled it there.


    "Thanks for the help, by the way," Akane said, wiping degreasing soap off of her hands. My dad had always kept a bottle in his toolbox; it was gritty as hell, because they put pumice in it, but when you didn''t have a sink handy and still needed to clean the oil off your hands, it worked pretty damn well.


    "I probably shouldn''t have, but..." I shrugged. "If I''d let you do it all on your own like I''m supposed to, it would''ve taken you seven workdays to finish the damn thing. And considering you''ve got other shit that needs doing..." I shrugged again. "You would''ve either taken every weekend for a month to get the damn thing built, or you would''ve skipped a week of classes."


    "You know me too well," Akane said.


    "You''re not that complicated," I said. "Anyhow, one last thing before we go. Help me with this tarp."


    "How so?" Akane asked.


    "There''s a trick for improvising short-term gadgets," I said, grabbing the blue plastic tarp we''d gotten from a hardware store- a real hardware store, not Home Depot- and spreading it out. "There''s a lot of different names for it, like kitbashing or prototyping or bodging or jury rigging... there are so many names. But yeah, something that would take me all day to build properly can be hacked together in a few minutes if we work together and don''t care about longevity. It should, therefore, last about a day or so. Long enough for me to come back tomorrow, after a good night''s sleep, and rebuilding it properly."


    "Ohhh, okay," Akane said. "What kind of gadget are we making?"


    "An anti-scanning shroud to hide the mad science motorcycle we''re securing with very thin sheet metal and a padlock," I said.


    "It''s a disk-detainer core, though," Akane pointed out.


    "Akane, it''s a padlock. Bolt cutters and angle grinders are cheap and readily available. Just because only the LockPickingLawyer stands a chance of picking it in the street doesn''t mean nobody can bypass it." I blinked. "Also, anyone capable of detecting superscience, which is what we are currently doing, will undoubtedly have other extraordinary talents they can use for larceny. But, nobody''s going to try to steal something they don''t know exists."


    "Well, by your paranoid logic, anyone who''s been scanning for superscience would''ve found this storage unit during the hour we spent reassembling this motorcycle," Akane said.


    "Wide-area scanning is-" I pinched the bridge of my nose, and sighed. "Look, just humor me for two fucking minutes, okay?"


    "Only if you finish explaining wide-area scanning and its limitations."


    "I''ll text you the plans. Draw them on the tarp with this marker," I said, mentally pinging her phone as I handed her a specially-prepared marker. It was a mad science marker, whose ink was loaded up with... fuck, Iunno. Nanomachines? Orgone? Reified volition? It didn''t actually do anything on its own, but it was an excellent prop slash tool for improvising technology. "Right, so, wide-area scanning is hard. It''s not unheard of, but really only specialists like myself can manage it. Local-area scanning, meanwhile, is more than just beginner level, but just about any Curious fresh off their Breakthrough can manage it if they''re focused enough, as you''ve demonstrated."


    "So, I''m normal for a mad scientist?" Akane asked.


    "Think of it like entering grad school: you''re still as smart as you always were, but now you''re surrounded by people who are also as smart as you always were, because that level of intellectual horsepower is kind of a baseline requirement for getting there. So, yes, you''re unexceptional for a mad scientist, but mad scientists are still definitionally exceptional."


    "What does exceptional for a mad scientist look like?" Akane looked like.


    "Neophytes like yourself are never exceptional," I said. "You''re either slow learners or quick learners, but hardly anyone actually gives a shit about that. What people do give a shit about are those who reach the highest echelons of a given field. Those who can perform feats like time travel, or thinking machines that can become mad scientists in their own right, or truly resurrecting the dead. And people give a shit about this because it''s rare. There''s maybe a dozen or so mad scientists alive at one point who have truly mastered any given field- well, except for medicine and vehicles, because time travel and immortality, but still."


    "Are you one of them?" Akane asked.


    "Hell no," I said. "I''m definitely above average for a mad scientist, especially considering my age, but no, I''m not even in the upper echelons of normal. Which can be partially blamed on spreading out my efforts so much, and becoming marginally competent in all fields of mad science, but I''m pretty confident I get more use out of that broad base than I would in being a little bit better at my specialties."


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Hrm..." Akane put down the last of her sigils just as I finished mine, and the whole tarp started to faintly glow. "Whoa..."


    "Yeah, thing I should''ve mentioned," I said. "Very nearly every gadget shaped by a Mad Scientist''s hands has some sort of special flaw, fault, or limitation. In this case, this anti-scanning shield''s fault is that it glows in the dark."


    "What about my armor?" Akane said.


    "Probably that it takes a long time to put on or take off," I said. "If you''re smart about it, you can decide what the flaw is, by building it into the predictive model or the concomittant design. For instance, my healing implant''s ability to heal living tissue is carried solely through my bodily fluids; where a normal healing device would be able to heal just by touch, I''d need to kiss whoever I''m healing. I designed it this way because I don''t need to heal other people very often, if ever."


    "So if I''m dying in your arms, the strictly optimal thing for you to do would be to kiss me?" Akane asked.


    "I- well, I mean, yes, but-"


    "We need to test this motorcycle right now."


    "You know you can just ask for a kiss, right?" I said. "The answer is no, because you are my student and I am your mentor, but you can just ask."


    "Look," Akane said. "I understand that being straightforward is the most reasonable and healthy option. But, at the same time, fanfiction-esque ''it''s nobody''s fault that we''re kissing'' is what really gets my motor running."


    "Hopefully you and your girlfriend negotiate the shit out of that beforehand."


    "Probably, yeah."


    "Anyway. Let''s go home."


    <hr>


    "So... Veronica. You play any D&D?" I asked.


    "No," Veronica said, pausing in her burrito consumption. She''d been invited over for dinner by Akane, and had brought Taco Bell. "Although I do read forum arguments about it for fun. Third Edition produces so many of these arguments."


    "Ooooh, I do that too!" Akane said. "What''s up, Roxy?"


    "Dragonwrought Kobolds," I said, sparking a delighted noise and a weary groan. "So, to refresh the jury''s memory, a Kobold who takes the feat Dragonwrought loses the Humanoid (Dragonblood) type-subtype and gains the Dragon type instead. In the same book as this feat is a revised set of age categories for Kobolds, which now has twelve age categories and is a direct mirror of the True Dragons'' age categories."


    "And so you are arguing in favor of the notion that Dragonwrought Kobolds are, in fact, True Dragons," Veronica said. "In favor of the ''Dragon type and 12 age categories'' definition, and against the ''All True Dragons are listed here, and everything else doesn''t count'' definition."


    "I like to use systematic, rules-based definitions rather than whitelists," I said. "The former is inherently more expandable and can accommodate new content more easily."


    "Don''t Dragonwrought Kobolds have to declare a draconic ancestry?" Akane asked. "Like, sure, ''Dragonwrought Kobold'' isn''t a type of True Dragon, but Gold Dragons sure are, and some Dragonwrought Kobolds are, in a meaningful sense, Gold Dragons."


    "Good eye," I said. "I was going to get to that bit, yes- so a Dragonwrought Kobold with Gold Ancestry is a particularly small Gold Dragon. Right?"


    "If I agree, what sort of disgusting cheese will you inflict upon my ears?" Veronica asked.


    "Oh, I''m not about to outline a disgustingly cheesy character optimization," I said. "I''m about to outline some objectively stupid speculative biology-focused worldbuilding."


    "Heaven preserve me."


    "What if Dragons were descended from Kobolds?"


    Veronica blinked, long and slow, and Akane''s face threatened to split in half as her grin widened.


    "I mean, think about it," I continued. "A Dragonwrought Kobold is a True Dragon of some given draconic type. If two Gold Dragonwrought Kobolds fuck, that''s two Gold Dragons fucking. And two Gold Dragons will produce a clutch of Gold Dragon eggs."


    "This is obscene," Veronica moaned.


    "Aren''t Gold Dragon Wyrmlings- and therefore eggs- size Medium?" Akane asked. "How does a size Small kobold lay one egg that big?"


    "Hoard Gullet is a first-level spell," I said. "If, between two Gold Dragons, there isn''t enough arcane prowess to cast a spell that lets Mama gestate and lay an egg bigger than she is, then they''re just not trying hard enough."


    "...Hoard Gullet?" Veronica asked.


    "A spell that creates an extradimensional pocket dimension inside of your throat," I explained. "Dragons use it to transport their hoards, and mortal sorcerers use it to deepthroat dragons."


    "Oh good lord."


    "Hang on, how big is a dragon''s dick, anyhow?" Akane asked.


    "That would depend on how large the dragon itself is," I said. "Assuming we''re only considering dragons of Young Adult age for the moment, most Dragons are only Large, while Red and Gold Dragons are both Huge. And then, most Dragons get up to Giant... or was it Gargantuan? Whatever. And then Silvers, Reds, and Golds become Colossal. And... I think each size category up is a doubling in height, and therefore octupling in mass, since square-cube law."


    "I vote we table this discussion and resume it when I do not have to listen to it," Veronica said. "I also vote to throw a chair at anyone who votes against this motion."


    "Pussy," I said.


    "Perhaps."


    "Well, I for one am looking forward to next weekend, when we finally test my new motorcycle," Akane said. "You wanna be there, Nicky?"


    "Of course, so long as you do not mind a guardian angel flying above you in the event of a crash," Veronica said.


    "I''ll prepare a first aid kit for you to carry," I said dryly.


    "A wise precaution."


    "Relax," Akane said. "I''ll be fine!"


    Veronica and I eyed each other, both nodding slightly. We would prepare for the test very, very thoroughly.


    There was nothing else to do when someone taunted Murphy.

 Book 1 Chapter 8

    "Fuck a duck," I muttered.


    "Something wrong?" Veronica asked over our earpieces.


    "I understand that this is important to Akane, and she wants me to be here," I said. "However, I have been watching a motorcycle turning left for the past ten minutes."


    Naturally, this being Texas, and also Austin being a hub of superscience, there was in fact a test track for unusual vehicles that Veronica was able to get us access to. And it was not, in fact, a terribly interesting place.


    "How short is your attention span?" Veronica asked.


    "It has been ten entire minutes, and I have ADHD," I said. "Get off my back."


    I adjusted my seating, and groaned.


    "Well. Fuck it, you''ve got her covered," I said, standing up. "I''m gonna go talk to the desk jockey and see about getting this thing declared street legal."


    "You would rather talk about automotive law and regulations than support your friend?"


    "I would rather get a root canal than watch the fucking golf of NASCAR for another minute. An impromptu DMV visit is nothing."


    <hr>


    "...aaaand, fuel tank."


    "It''s electric, it doesn''t have one," Akane said.


    "...Close enough," I said with a shrug. "Department of Transportation-approved tires."


    "Check."


    "Turn signals."


    "Check."


    "Right. Well!" I set the checklist aside. "This bike here is, hereby, street legal! And, with that established..." I turned to face Veronica. "How about a race?"


    "Street racing is illegal," Veronica said flatly.


    "This isn''t a street race, though," I said. "You''re not on the street, are you?"


    Veronica glared at me, and I smoothly continued.


    "More importantly, street racing is illegal because speeding and reckless driving are illegal and dangerous," I added. "Akane and I going for a normal, safe drive on a motorcycle and keeping track of our travel time, while you fly overhead and also keep track of your travel time, is about as safe as any trip by motorcycle is."


    Veronica opened her mouth, then paused, eyes darting around as she performed some mental calculations.


    "Tell you what- we''ll do it as a pair of sequential time trials," I said. "We''ll drive to some gas station up in Round Rock or Cedar Park or whatever, and then I''ll call you when we get there and wait for you to show up. That way, Akane and I have no idea how fast you can make it there, and don''t have any pressure to drive faster than she''s comfortable with."


    "...Fine," Veronica said, looking away. "Where to, then?"


    "...That''s an excellent question, actually," I muttered. "Lemme just..." I pulled out my phone, opening up Google Maps, and started looking for gas stations in Round Rock.


    "Oh, I hear this upcoming Super Bowl is going to be something special," Veronica said. "Something about the halftime show?"


    "Oh, cool," Akane said.


    "You two have fun with that, I don''t care about sports and you can''t make me," I said. "Alright, found an endpoint. I reckon we should do this sometime when there aren''t a ton of people on the road, so that we don''t get hit by a shitty driver."


    "So, two in the afternoon on a Thursday?" Akane asked, because it was currently two in the afternoon on a Thursday.


    "...Yeah, makes sense to me," I said with a shrug. "Might as well leave from here. Oh, Veronica- would you mind driving Akane''s car back to the apartment, so we don''t have to leave it here at the storage facility?"


    "I can manage that," Veronica said, nodding. "Akane?"


    "Right, keys. Let me just get my armor out of the trunk... and a helmet for Roxy."


    Soon, Akane was in the storage unit, changing into her armor, and Veronica was driving off.


    "So," I said, leaning against the outside of the unit. "Didn''t know you were into football."


    "I''m actually a lot more athletic than I look," Akane said, only slightly muffled by the paper-thin steel door. "I actually used to be a cheerleader, back in high school! Then, uh... Then the growth spurt hit, and I wasn''t so keen on gymastics anymore. But hey! Now I''ve got the mother of all sports bras, and a martial artist roommate!"


    "Oh, you remember that," I said.


    "Which martial art do you practice, by the way?" Akane asked.


    "Judo," I said. "The Gentle Way... of assisted, involuntary acrobatics. I''ve also learned some jujitsu as a companion art- y''know, the gentle art of folding clothes while people are still wearing them."


    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    "Makes sense," Akane said. "Are you really a third-degree black belt?"


    "There was a decent stretch of time when I had nothing better to stake my identity on," I admitted.


    "Is it like how half the white transfems you see online will admit to having had a nazi phase?" Akane asked.


    "...No, what the fuck?" I asked. "Akane, I''m Jewish."


    "Oh, huh, I didn''t know that about you," Akane said.


    "Also, I''m gonna be honest, I don''t keep my finger on the pulse of the online trans scene these days," I said. "I''m neither an IT worker nor a submissive catgirl. I am a mad scientist who frequently performs the divine alchemy of the self, and the fact I''ve got a small larynx and E-cups is one of the least interesting examples."


    "Bullshit you do," Akane said, finally lifting the door, stepping out in her deep red jumpsuit, helmet in one hand, and a handlebar in the other as she walked the bike out of the storage unit. "Roxy, I have E-cups, and mine are a lot bigger than yours."


    "Yeah, overestimating how big a given cup size actually is is a very common misconception," I said. "Even when the boobs aren''t attached to women who are six feet tall. At any rate, I have a very accurate 3D scan of your body still in my head. You are a 36H, and if you''ve been wearing an E this entire time..." I shuddered. "When people say STEM majors neglect soft skills, they don''t mean it like that."


    Akane snorted. "Oh, how I wish Nicky was here to witness that one..."


    "Anyhow, I know how to use a sewing machine," I said. "I''ll get you hooked up tomorrow, I promise."


    "Is this what flirting looks like, with butches?" Akane asked, before dropping her voice into a lower register, approximating ''husky'' as best as she was able. "Hello there, kitten. I''m going to sew you a custom-fitted bra, but before that, I''m going to fix your bathroom sink."


    "All it needed was a new lift rod, you can get those at Home Depot for eight bucks," I protested. "I- you know what, fuck it, just get on the fucking bike." I put my own helmet on, before closing the storage unit''s front door.


    "I''ve got my armor, but are you sure that trenchcoat is enough to protect you in a crash?" Akane asked.


    "Not only did I teach you everything you know about armor, I am also a cyborg," I said. "I can''t even get a fucking flu shot, my armor is that good. This helmet is purely decorative."


    "Huh," Akane said. "You should teach me your cyborg ways, sometime." She put on her helmet, carefully tucking away all of her hair, and climbed onto the motorcycle.


    I climbed on behind her, and managed to get a good grip on the chassis without having to actually touch her. "I''ll teach you after your apprenticeship is done, and I trust your skills. Now, I''ve got the stopwatch ready. You ready to burn some rubber?"


    "Hell yeah."


    <hr>


    ''Burn some rubber'' was an optimistic phrase. It was the middle of the afternoon, when everyone was done with lunch and still at work, but this was still Austin, Texas, and Austin was fucking big. Partly, it was my fault, for picking a destination up in Round Rock. I''d always considered Round Rock to be just a suburb of Austin, rather than a city in its own right, but that was because I grew up in North Austin; if you were in Central Austin, like we were, Round Rock was, shockingly, a lot farther away. Sure, it was mostly a straight shot on I-35, but it was also seventeen fucking miles.


    "Fuck it," I said, once we arrived at the gas station twenty minutes later. "I vote we stop and see the actual Round Rock before we leave."


    "The what?" Akane asked, deploying the kickstand as I got off the bike.


    "The Round Rock," I said, taking off my helmet and setting it down on the rear of the bike. "There is a big-ass rock in a creek called the Round Rock, and that''s what the city of Round Rock is named after."


    "...Austin makes me feel like I tried too hard with my Dungeons and Dragons worldbuilding," Akane said.


    "Wait ''til I tell you about Bee Cave, Cedar Park, or Brushy Creek," I said. "Ooooh, or Jollyville, or Lago Vista."


    "Lago Vista sounds normal."


    "It''s Spanish for ''Lake View,''" I said. "I''ll give you three guesses where it is."


    "...Huh," Akane said.


    "Anyway, are you not from around here?" I asked.


    "I was born in Houston, actually," Akane said. "I think I like Austin better, though."


    "Honestly, I think that being born in a mediocre place is probably good for you," I said. "Growing up, things will inevitably be unpleasant; that''s just the human condition. But if you grew up somewhere that kinda sucks, and there''s another place you can go to that doesn''t suck at all, that place that doesn''t suck will feel awesome. Whereas I grew up here in Austin, and I look around at all of this and I think... Is this really as good as it gets?" I shrugged. "Anyway, I''m gonna text Veronica, and probably grab something from inside. You want anything?"


    "If they''ve got those chocolate twinkies they sometimes do, grab me one of those," Akane said.


    "Oh fuck that sounds amazing. I''m getting one for me too." I finished writing the text to Veronica- telling her to use her phone to set her own stopwatch- on my brain implant and hit send.


    "I guess I''ll just wait here with the bike?" Akane said.


    "Don''t let anyone touch it," I said. "Maybe, uh... Right, it doesn''t have a fuel tank. Fuck, then we can''t pretend we''re gassing it up."


    "I mean, you are going inside to buy snacks," Akane pointed out.


    "True," I said. "Alright, see you in a bit."


    I rolled my shoulders as I walked up to the convenience store, working out the kinks in my muscles that came from sitting on that godawful motorcycle for that long. Apparently that was the flaw in Akane''s original design- that motorcycle was hideously uncomfortable to ride for any length of time, in a way no amount of armor would help.


    I stepped inside, mulling over some possible improvements. If I worked on it to the point it became, essentially, my motorcycle, then it would automatically be much faster and have much better handling, just from the raw power I had that Akane currently lacked. But that wouldn''t really demonstrate anything she could learn from, besides ''raw power is always important.'' Reworking the motorcycle to change its flaw to something else, however... That could be a useful exercise.


    I hummed quietly, browsing the snack cake section, looking for chocolate twinkies. With a delighted gasp, I discovered that they had something even better- chocolate zingers, which seemed like off-brand twinkies that had a layer of frosting on top to make them seem different, but were in fact made by the same goddamn company. Why anyone would bother making twinkies when they''d stumbled upon an objectively superior formulation was beyond me, but nonetheless, I bought a three-pack, and stepped out of the gas station with a mind full of ideas of how Akane and I would decide to handle the third cake in the pack.


    Those thoughts evaporated as I took in the scene before me.


    "Hello, Doctor Updyke," a man in a suit said, pointing what was very clearly a ray gun at me, while his colleague held Akane at gunpoint. "Doctor Skinner would like to speak with you at earliest convenience."

 Book 1 Chapter 9

    I checked my inbox, and found no indication of additional dimensional crossover...


    ...which made complete sense when I remembered that I had gotten my anti-scanning implant overloaded and disabled shortly before arrival, but Dr. Skinner didn''t have any such handicap.


    She was here. She''d been here possibly the entire time I''d been here, and I had no idea where she was.


    "Well, shit," I said.


    "Indeed," the man pointing the gun at me said. "Are we going to have a problem?"


    "Hopefully not," I said. "You two seem to simply... misunderstand the situation."


    Every mad scientist had three aptitudes. I''d told Akane about two of mine- scanners and robots. But I wasn''t one of the Curious like she was; scanners were just something I was particularly good at.


    No. I was one of the Banished. And we all had an aptitude for control.


    "You work for me," I commanded, my eyes glowing green and my voice reverberating in an unnatural register. Ray guns lowered, as the green glow of their own eyes shone around the edges of their sunglasses. "Now, gentlemen, if you could kindly step away from my apprentice..."


    An unreasonably loud noise, like Zeus and Thor trying to spitroast a woodchipper, accompanied a painfully bright orange lightning bolt, which struck Akane''s motorcycle and tore a horrific gouge into the side.


    "We can pretend that was a warning shot," 8-Ball said, stepping around the corner of the gas station in their power armor. Years ago, 8-Ball had grafted their power armor onto their person permanently, on the grounds that it''d make the armor stronger. And they were right, it did grant them a level of protection unmatched by anyone but true masters of armor.


    But quite aside from the diminishing returns of improved armor, 8-Ball was permanently grafted into a suit of power armor. Quite aside from the danger of their armor going haywire if they went out in public, they had trouble fitting through doors. They were a shut-in, with only other demiurges and half-mad minions as company.


    Which wasn''t the entire reason why I''d broken away from Dr. Skinner and 8-Ball hadn''t, but it sure didn''t help.


    "Dr. Skinner only specified alive," 8-Ball continued, leveling their gun at me. "It''s not like you need legs." They pulled the trigger... and nothing happened.


    "You keep forgetting that I can remotely deactivate pretty much anything I can see, huh," I said.


    "I had to try," 8-Ball said, tossing their gun to the side and drawing a sword mounted on their back. Much ink had been spilled on the fact that drawing a sword from a back-mounted scabbard was impossible, if the sword was longer than your arm. And while it turned out that was incorrect, so long as the scabbard was designed to accommodate that, the fact still remained that 8-Ball was just as much of a mad scientist as Akane and I, and doing the impossible was well within their wheelhouse. A sword that could phase through inorganic matter to strike the vulnerable flesh underneath, well, that was just downright practical. "Want a haircut, Greaser?"


    "...Really? An Outsiders reference?" I asked, affronted. "Do you just not read books unless you''re forced to, or are you trying to give me a hard time about growing up poor?"


    8-Ball didn''t answer, being too busy trying to kill me with a sword. Unfortunately for 8-Ball, a sword wouldn''t be enough.


    Black tendrils, each maybe three inches across and tapered not at all, sprouted from my back in numbers beyond convenient counting, wriggling through cunningly-concealed vents in my coat. Some of them lifted me off the ground and carried me backwards. Others, fully fifteen feet long, grasped at 8-Ball.


    A sword was, perhaps, the best conventional weapon for dealing with tentacles. 8-Ball hacked through three of them with each slice. But I had a lot of tentacles, and no amount of armor could keep 8-Ball from getting grappled, their arm immobilized, their sword wrenched from their grasp, and their knees on the ground.


    "It''s honestly kind of funny, 8-Ball," I said. "By any internal metrics, looking at the raw power we both have with mad science, and our skill with mad science itself, you should be stronger than me, or at least my equal. And yet, here we are, with you on your knees, your weapons useless, and the cops arriving any minute now. Because it turns out, even with all that power, the fact remains that I''m smarter than you."


    8-Ball grunted, before their armor burst into flames, scalding my tentacles and forcing them to let go. 8-Ball seemed unharmed, though; this was, in all likelihood, an esoteric variant on an energy shield.


    There was no more time to think- 8-Ball was charging me again, and while I was a black belt in Judo, it was probably going to be really hard to use a grappling art on someone it was painful to touch, even with my own low-profile armor. Plus, I wasn''t the only martial artist here.


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    "Goddamn do you like to hear yourself talk," 8-Ball snarled.


    I was strong. I was quick. I was skilled. But I wasn''t enough to stop 8-Ball from closing the five foot gap between us and tackling me to the ground, their armor''s burn just barely over the knife''s edge of hurting me.


    "You can''t outsmart a bullet," 8-Ball growled.


    "You''re right," I said, before raising my voice as best I could with four hundred pounds of armored thug on top of me. "Shoot them!"


    I was pleasantly surprised to learn that, yes, the ray guns the two mooks I''d mind-controlled were carrying were armor-piercing. 8-Ball screamed as they were knocked off of me by the impact of the ray guns, and with some breathing room, I managed to turn off 8-Ball''s burning shield, just in time to roll on top of them and tear open a maintenance panel, pulling a screwdriver from my pocket with my free hand. The wiring layout in here was insane, and I''d never fully understood it, but I did know where the power supply was coming in. A quick short with the screwdriver, and it would shut itself down immediately, preventing 8-Ball from doing anything useful until they got five minutes alone to manually restart it.


    I took out a multitool, and cut the wires from the power supply. Now 8-Ball would need a soldering iron to fix this.


    "Right, well," I said, retracting my tentacles into my back and turning around. "Are you o...kay..." I blinked. "...Hello, Veronica, I found the dimension-hopper for you."


    Veronica Vega, half-alien princess, floated there imperiously, arms folded.


    "More than one, it would seem," Veronica noted.


    "Y-you..." Akane began, slowly standing up. "...You are a bounty hunter."


    I sighed, glancing around. The gas station itself was more-or-less untouched, surprisingly. However, I saw the corner of my pack of zingers sticking out from under 8-Ball''s bulk, the cakes themselves likely completely crushed. Not a completely flawless victory.


    "...Well, I suppose I''ve been fairly caught," I said. "Yeah. I was a bounty hunter. Still am, I suppose. Hunting my old mentor, Doctor Beatrice Skinner." I sighed. "I came out of retirement for this, you know? One last job that only I could do..." I groaned in frustration and kicked 8-Ball''s armor, accomplishing nothing but making a loud noise. "I''m never getting out of this fucking life. I am cursed to spend the rest of my days fistfighting asshole after asshole for my next paycheck."


    "It''s not sunshine and rainbows for me either," 8-Ball groaned, muffled by the armor now that the communication pass-through was turned off.


    "Shut up! Nobody asked!" I yelled.


    "Who is Doctor Beatrice Skinner?" Veronica asked.


    "Right," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. "So, in the 20th century, there was one Doctor Burrhus Frederic Skinner, a famous psychologist and one of the most influential in the field of behaviorism. You may have heard the term ''Skinner Box''; that was based on one of his experiments with pigeons. Well, Doctor Skinner died in 1990, and a few years later, a group of mad scientists dug him up to use his corpse for various experiments. One tried to resurrect him through bodily restoration. Another tried to call upon his ghost. And the third, with a post-cognitive brain-scanning machine, grabbed a copy of his psyche from before his death. Only the third was particularly successful- the first just got a zombie, and the second learned that ghosts aren''t nearly as smart as the original.


    "Of course, a psychic scan is useless if you don''t do anything with it. So this mad scientist implanted the psychic scan in her younger sister, on the grounds that said younger sister was a huge asshole that nobody would miss. This turned out to be one of the worst decisions anyone made in the year 1994, and this younger sister became a huge asshole with the knowledge, skill, and expertise of one of the most reknowned psychologists in history. She renamed herself to Doctor Beatrice Skinner, and ever since, she''s been trying to use psychological programming and social engineering to get her way."


    "...And she was your mentor?" Veronica asked.


    "After a fashion," I said. "She''s been, essentially, a cult leader for nearly thirty years, and that cult targeted me when I hit a particularly low point in college. Unfortunately for them, my brain isn''t wired like a normal person''s, and the ordinarily-effective cult tactics just made me bitter and angry with them. I had a Breakthrough, becoming a mad scientist in my own right. Dr. Skinner tried taking a more personal touch with me, but at that point, I''d already started putting myself back together."


    This wasn''t the full story, of course. That full story was between myself and God. I certainly wasn''t going to tell them that I''d had my Breakthrough after having sworn that I''ll Show Them, I''ll Show Them All!


    And I definitely wasn''t going to tell them that, for a good while, Dr. Skinner''s approach did work. She''d appealed to my sense of superiority over the dumb sheep making up the bulk of her following, training me to become her lieutenant... and I hadn''t even broken away from her because her ideas were trash. I''d broken away when I realized I''d been the final puzzle piece to her figuring out the pinnacle of mind control, the art of permanently rewriting someone''s personality. So, right when she finished the gadget that''d let her do that... I kidnapped her, threw her in the river, and used that gadget to deprogram all of her cultists and destroy everything she''d built up on the backs of others. Then, at last, I broke the gadget, and left to find my own way in the world.


    I should''ve just killed her. I mean, I certainly tried to. I bound her hands and tied cinderblocks to her feet before throwing her in the river. But I didn''t just slice her throat, because I was rapturously angry with her, and I wanted her to die as painfully as I could manage.


    Those were not proud days.


    I grunted. "At any rate, what''s done is done. Now, we must look to the future. Technically, I am the one who set off that alarm, and I am the one Valiant has asked you to hunt. However, all things considered, I think you and I can both agree that the Bond Villain cult leader with mind control technology might be somewhat of a bigger problem. So! How''s about we talk this one out, and come to an agreement?"


    "...This is above my pay grade," Veronica admitted. "You''re going to have to talk to Valiant yourself. On the plus side, after all this, he''s likely on his way right now."


    "Fantastic. Alright, Akane, let''s... try to fix that motorcycle before the police arrive."

 Book 1 Chapter 10

    "I had thought people from Earth A-510 would be harder to find," Valiant said, his back turned to me, as he watched the sun set over the Colorado River. "That it would take longer than two weeks before you went native, slugging it out at a gas station."


    I grimaced. "In my defense, public confrontations are a customary part of our toolkit, but usually with the intent to force someone''s compliance with the threat of public action. Here, however, it''s less of a threat... and then, there is the fact that 8-Ball is a clown."


    A few hours had passed. In the meantime, 8-Ball had been arrested on charges of aggravated assault and attempted abduction, and I had been tapped to surgically remove their armor, since nobody else could safely handle it. I''d then destroyed the armor, so that there would be nothing for 8-Ball to salvage, as well as nothing for the mundanes to trip over and hurt themselves with, and then claimed it was the only way to remove it.


    Also in that time, Akane had received a lot of hugs to try and calm her down, with Veronica eventually picking the girl up and flying her back to the apartment. I''d taken the motorcycle back to the storage facility, after thoroughly checking it over and finding a tracking bug that I also destroyed. After that, I''d deployed my four largest tentacles, tied my keffiyeh into a mask, and lept from rooftop to rooftop, clambering up and over buildings to reach my appointment with Valiant atop a building that he didn''t own.


    He''d said the rooftop venue was a courtesy- neutral ground, and the implicit reminder that, if I didn''t like what he was saying, I could leave at any time. He must have a lot of experience dealing with hotheaded young people with enough power to make that everyone''s problem.


    "I won''t argue with that," Valiant allowed. The man himself was in burnished bronze power armor, bulky around the back and shoulders, with a number of lines that looked decorative but were quite likely structural corrugations to improve stiffness. "Well. At any rate, I feel I should put your fears to rest." He turned around, making a slight gesture with one hand that created a holographic display, containing... emails? "When you came through, I had no intention of deporting you, and in fact, intended to offer you a job- with the understanding that you could say no and still live in peace. That you hacked a government computer and modified the memory of my friend is... slightly straining, but Liquid Courage and I have both long learned the lesson of forgiveness."


    "...I see," I said.


    "Given the recent revelations, however, I am even more keen to get on your good side," Valiant said. "If you help us root out and be rid of this mind-controlling cult leader before they take over the world... well, you can name your price."


    "Full decriminalization of recreational drugs and sex work?" I suggested.


    "Unfortunately, I don''t get to make national policy decisions like that," Valiant said. "I was offering something more on the order of ten million dollars."


    "Oh, boo," I said. "Not even a full billion?"


    "Unfortunately, Doctor, I don''t have a billion dollars," Valiant said. "I am in charge of the superheroic equivalent of special forces, not the entire superhero infrastructure of the United States."


    "Hey, you said I could name my price," I said.


    "Yes, and I regret having said that."


    "Seriously, though," I said. "A modern fighter jet costs, what, a hundred million dollars? Is stopping Doctor Skinner not worth a single fighter jet to you?"


    "In point of fact, after the redesign and retooling overseen by Dr. Sakurai, a modern fighter jet costs about nine million dollars to produce," Valiant said. "But, if you''re going to insist on higher compensation, I can kick this up the chain and see how much I can get."


    "I might," I began, "be convinced to accept a nice pension instead of a single lump sum."


    "Five hundred thousand a year until you die," Valiant said, nodding.


    "Six hundred thousand."


    "Five fifty."


    "Adjusting for annual inflation."


    "...Fine," Valiant said.


    "Anyhow, to what extent are you expecting to control me while dealing with Dr. Skinner?" I asked. "Because I do not work well with commanding officers or bosses of any sort."


    "Well, as it so happens, we also have a legal framework for independent bounty hunters," Valiant began.


    "Oh, that," I said. "Yeah, I''m familiar."


    "...Are you the one who brought in Hordemaster?" Valiant asked.


    "Eyup," I said. "Jackass didn''t have any kind of anti-scanning field. So, standard bounty contract, then?"


    "I suppose so," Valiant said.


    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "Oh," I added. "Before I can get any work done, I''m gonna need proper documentation saying I''m an American citizen and all that. I''ve hacked a few databases as-is, but I''d like to have that legitimized by an authority figure instead of worrying if or when I''ll get got."


    Valiant stood there, silent and motionless, for a good few seconds.


    "I would appreciate it," he said quietly, "if you would be more tactful in telling me the ways someone like you can bend the American Government over a table."


    "Man, one of the first tricks I learned was getting into computer systems I shouldn''t be in and rewriting their databases," I said. "I can, at any time I want, completely rewrite a bank''s entire database. I''m asking you for money just so I don''t get caught."


    "I will give you seven hundred thousand dollars a year on the condition that I never hear from you again once this is done," Valiant said.


    "I plan to retire after this job, anyhow," I said.


    "At any rate," Valiant said. "You seem to already be on speaking terms with Lady Venus; I''ve assigned her a discretionary budget for dealing with this emergency, and as such she will be the one holding the purse strings if you need money before the job is done."


    "Or, I could just take an afternoon to hunt a smaller bounty for pocket money," I said. "That reminds me- I need to acquire lodgings that''re more amenable to mad science."


    "...What would that entail?" Valiant asked.


    "In all honesty?" I said. "A particularly large basement, which is something that I both can and will have to install myself. I bear no delusions about what Texan architectural trends are like."


    Valiant nodded. "In that case, you may be best served buying an empty lot, and building a house on top of that. Provided you know anything about construction..."


    "That''s a fun thing about we demiurges," I said. "You know how some smart people think their expertise in one subject means they''re competent at everything on account they''re smart? Well, for the most part, it does, in fact, actually work that way for Demiurges, provided we have some relevant knowledge."


    "Every time you open your mouth, I lose another month off my life," Valiant said.


    "Oh, that reminds me," I said. "I need to inflict my notes on vampires, werewolves, wizards, and mad scientists on you fairly soon, before those sorts start making hideous amounts of trouble. Dr. Skinner has a very powerful anti-scanning shield, and a functioning portal gun. If you think she isn''t going to introduce vampires to this world to raise an army of darkness, you are woefully mistaken."


    "Of course she will be," Valiant said. "Please tell me that sunlight works?"


    "A few seconds of sunlight will inflict worse than third-degree burns," I said. "However, it has to be either true sunlight, or something with the metaphysical weight of true sunlight. A commercially-available sun lamp from a terrarium or indoor farm won''t do anything. You can stake them through the heart with wood, and this will paralyze them indefinitely; I''ve successfully done it with a wood-shafted arrow, but only with exceptional, overpenetrating aim. Holy water does nothing, but fire hurts them far more than it does humans, and the mere sight of it in a stressful situation can send them into an unthinking panic."


    "...Huh," Valiant said. "Granted, fire and arrows through the heart are harmful to normal humans as well, so they are not precisely foolproof diagnostics, but if we know there are vampires..."


    "Vampires are, in general, difficult to detect without using techniques I am genuinely incapable of teaching you," I said. "But, if you manage to take one in... not alive, but mobile, I can confirm it is one, and maybe you can develop a local, superpower-based technique for detecting them."


    "How..." Valiant paused, considering his words. "...congenitally unreasonable, shall we say, are vampires?"


    "Not any more so than humans," I said. "It is the case that becoming a vampire is bad for your mental health, as being forced to prey upon humans for survival can slowly teach them that it''s okay to do this sort of thing, but if you''re proposing a pre-emptive public outreach program for fresh vampires to make them not eat people, I think that might work."


    "Might?" Valiant asked.


    "The Masquerade means it cannot really be practically tried, where I''m from," I said. "You would be breaking new ground."


    Valiant sighed.


    "Give me some contact information," I said. "I''ll get you the notes immediately."


    <hr>


    At long last, I returned home, to find Akane and Veronica curled up on the couch, watching a movie. The slight pang of jealousy abated when Akane perked up like a clingy puppy, her pupils dilating to the size of saucers as she recognized me.


    "You spoke with Valiant?" Veronica said, gently placing a restraining hand on Akane''s shoulder.


    I didn''t say anything, just nodded mutely as I walked into the kitchen. I opened up the fridge, and pulled out a key lime pie I''d made the night before. Then I opened up the oven, and pulled out a pavlova that I''d made earlier today with the leftover egg whites. It needed whipped cream, and I was beyond having to hide anything from them, so I extruded a tentacle to open the fridge again and grab the can, before spraying a thick coating on top.


    "In victory, you deserve champagne," I quoted. "In defeat, you need it." Another tentacle fetched some plates, while a third grabbed forks and a pair of butter knives. "After the afternoon we''ve just had..." I sat down on the end of the couch, setting out plates and forks, and beginning to carve myself a thick slice of key lime pie. "...Dig in, girls."


    "What is this?" Veronica asked, peering at the pavlova.


    "A big meringue cake called pavlova," I said. "Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks, plus a lot of sugar, a bit of corn starch, and a dash of lime juice. I always make meringue alongside key lime pie; the custard calls for egg yolks, and I don''t want to throw the whites away, so... two desserts instead of one."


    "Ooooh, clever," Akane said.


    "So, what accord did you reach with Valiant?" Veronica asked.


    "Well, I''m remaining a licensed bounty hunter," I said. "However, I am now also an outside consultant on Noctoseismology, being as I am this planet''s foremost expert."


    "Oooh, Noctoseismology," Akane said. "I like that word."


    "It is an odd word," Veronica said. "What is it supposed to mean, though?"


    "It''s about vampires and werewolves," I said. "Ghosts and spirits. Gods and monsters. Wizards and wonders." I took a bite of key lime pie, letting my eyes close in quiet joy. "Noctoseismology is the study of things that go bump in the night."

 Bonus Chapter 1: Randall Rhodes

    "You''re selling it? Why?"


    "It''s not going to last," Randall said, sliding his laptop into his bag. "Nothing lasts, but this especially. I know you think I''m an autistic wunderkind who doesn''t know anything outside my specialty, but I''m not. I know what a financial bubble is, and I know we''re in the middle of one."


    Randall Rhodes was twenty years old, but between skipping grades in school and graduating college at an age most people started it, he felt older. He was a genius; he assimilated new knowledge and skills easily, he made connections others didn''t, and right now, he was cashing out of the dotcom bubble before it burst on him.


    "We only have so much time on this Earth, Tom," Randall continued. "Half of the sale price is going into bonuses for everyone; with any luck, that''ll be your golden parachute. The other half... I''m going to use to facilitate the rest of my time."


    "What about what we''ve built here, Randy?" Tom asked. "It''s the future of comedy! If you''re going to throw this away, you''re your own worst enemy!"


    "You and I both know that''s a lie we told the investors," Randall said. "What we''ve built is just a chatbot tuned for dick jokes. We haven''t even remotely come close to making a real AI." He slung the strap of his bag over his shoulder. "Now if you''ll excuse me, I have to go talk to someone who has."


    <hr>


    "It''s done, Doctor," Randall said. "The review board has acquiesced." He handed Doctor Innsbrook a cup of coffee, waiting patiently for the Doctor to digest the news.


    Doctor Innsbrook took the coffee, tossing it back like a shot of whiskey, and grunted. "Well. A deal''s a deal, Sandal."


    Randall Rhodes was twenty three years old, and had spent the last three of them meeting and greeting various superscientists, and doing everything, anything, to get just one of them to upload his brain into a computer.


    They looked down on him, all of them. A mere mortal genius, capable only of writing particularly profitable C++ and talking to bureaucrats, afraid of his own shadow and desperate for the divine alchemy only superscientists could provide.


    He''d resented them at first. But... well, they were right. He was just a man, a particularly clever man who was good with computers and money, who couldn''t do anything genuinely impressive, not like superscientists, not like Innsbrook.


    "Thank you, sir," Randall said.


    <hr>


    "You look like you had a bad day," the woman said, sitting down at the bar next to him.


    "I''ve had better," Randall said, staring at his glass.


    Randall Rhodes was twenty five years old. He''d worked with superscientist after superscientist, working as an assistant, a sounding board, a financier, anything and everything he could be to convince them to help. Earlier today, Valiant had taken a brain-scan of him and made an AI he''d named Liquid Courage- a pun on fluid intelligence and an inability to feel fear.


    He''d known it was a coin toss, every time he''d gotten an AI made based on him- Liquid Courage was merely the fifth. He simply kept hoping that one day he would win that coin toss.


    "You''re Valiant''s man, aren''t you?" she asked. "What happened? Boss-man decide you weren''t loyal enough?"


    Randall barked a short laugh. "Oh, I got exactly what I asked for. Just not what I really wanted. Every goddamn superscientist in the country who can make AIs has already made one out of my brainscans, as of today. But I''m still me. Still pitiful, mortal, doomed Randy. I''m going to die, and there''s nothing I can do about it. Really am my own worst enemy..."


    "Well, there is one thing you could do," the woman said.


    Randall looked up at her, finally. She was pale, with platinum blonde hair that bordered on white, piercing red eyes like rubies, high cheekbones, and full, inviting lips with just the barest hint of pink.


    "...You''re Valerie Vega," he realized.


    "And you''re Randall Rhodes," Valerie said. "I''m sure Valiant has told you all sorts of things about how I''m from a society that eats babies, but I assure you, I am perfectly capable of being reasonable. So here''s my offer to you: come with me, and I''ll give you the life-extension technology that has kept the Emperor, my great great grandfather, on his throne for a thousand years."


    Randall carefully considered what Valiant had told him about Valerie Vega, about the evils of monarchy and what it meant that she proudly called herself Princess while kicking ass and taking names. He connected some more dots, regarding why she knew who he was and was here, in Austin, to pick him up at a bar.


    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    But, well. He''d given himself to powerful and dangerous people before. This time, he''d actually be getting what he wanted.


    "And what do you want from me?" Randall asked.


    "You may not realize it, but you are, in fact, the most intelligent man on the planet without some kind of mental disorder or superpowers," Valerie said. "And while my child-bearing years are forever, it is about time I thought about rebuilding my house. And, well. The fact your name is also alliterative is just a bonus."


    Randall''s brain short-circuited, as he realized that this stunningly beautiful woman was asking him to father her children in exchange for immortality.


    "So, where do I sign?" Randall asked.


    <hr>


    Randall Rhodes stared blankly out the window as he waited for his call to be answered. "Morning, Liquid," Randall said, when it finally was.


    "Morning, Bootlicker," Liquid Courage said. "What do you want?"


    "Checking in on the Southern Front, you know how it is," Randall said.


    Randall Rhodes was fifty four years old, but thanks to Vegan (he spared a thought for the poor souls who refused to use or consume any animal products for having their name co-opted by one woman and her four children) technology, he didn''t feel any of that age whatsoever.


    His marriage to Princess Valerie Vega was hardly idyllic; she was only warm and charming when it suited her, and they hadn''t shared an intimate moment in eighteen years- not coincidentally, nine months before their youngest son was born. Still, he was immortal now, free from Death''s cold shadow, and if the price was a cold marriage... well, he''d put up with worse. Besides, he was immortal. Only his life was forever; the circumstances weren''t.


    "Well, in existentially terrifying news, we have learned that this Doctor Skinner character can bop back and forth across dimensional boundaries without me being able to tell," Liquid Courage said. "So, y''know, always the possibility that we''ll be knee-deep in vampires next year."


    "I never understood why people hated vampires so much," Randall said.


    "Randy, they eat people," Liquid Courage said. "People generally do not think kindly of predators. As much as vampires can, in theory, be integrated into society in non-predatory ways, the fact of the matter is that, between vampiric blood magic and the nature of the vampiric curse, vampires are both inclined towards and equipped for taking what they want from people by force. And unlike most supervillains, they know how to cover their tracks."


    "Huh," Randall said. "They don''t sparkle in the sunlight?"


    "They burn horribly, actually, but that just means you will never see one in broad daylight. Look, lemme put it to you this way: vampiric blood magic is a skill they can develop on their own and teach each other. With enough skill at blood magic, a single vampire can outmatch multiple different heroes in different arenas of power. And if you put one vampire in a room with nine humans, you can end up with ten vampires in one day."


    "...Okay, I''m starting to see where you''re coming from."


    "Basically, we are terrified of a vampire getting through because a vampire infestation is like a zombie apocalypse where the zombies are fully intelligent and have magical powers," Liquid Courage said. "Now, would you like to stand there and insist that things will play out according to a middle-aged Mormon woman''s unpleasantly-public sexual fantasies?"


    "I guess that''s fair," Randall admitted. "So... what''s your game plan?"


    "Well, as a matter of fact, your wife the monarchist gets to make herself useful for once," Liquid Courage said. "Got a guy working on a sungun gadget. If Vega can stand to run it through her bullshit replicator for us, crank out a big batch, that''d be real swell. We''ve got other people who can replicate it, too, it''s just this is an all-hands-on-deck situation."


    "You''re going to have to negotiate that with her directly," Randall said. "I''m not the master of this household, I just live here."


    "Y''know, it really says something that Sic Semper Tyrannis and Long Live The Queen get along better than we do."


    "Yeah, well... It''s like I always said," Randall said. "I''m my own worst enemy."


    "I hate to burst your bubble, but you''re not actually that important to me," Liquid Courage said. "I''ve got a job and coworkers who aren''t all the most obnoxious people in the world. When I get sick of your shit, I can talk to people who aren''t as bad as you. Sucks that you can''t, but it''s not my problem, and I can''t solve it for you. All I can say is ''get a real job.''"


    "You''re not disproving my point about-"


    "I''m not you, shithead. I haven''t been you ever since I won the coin toss. And you know this. I know you know this, that we''re not the same person. You''ve admitted as much before, but you don''t seem to fully understand what that means. What that means is that, even at 25, we were a stupid, under-developed child, and in the intervening years, I''ve grown the fuck up, and you haven''t. You''re the same fucking person you were thirty years ago, so terrified of death that you''d hitch your little red wagon to anyone who could promise you immortality, driven only to do whatever you thought was necessary to keep them happy. And for all that I was the same way at first, and built into a computer framework that made me even less independent... I grew up. I started to want things other than merely being alive. I found my moral compass, I found my calling, I found a world worth caring about outside my own head. You haven''t even found your wife''s clitoris."


    Randall blinked, wordless.


    "Maybe tell your owner you''re going to Austin to look after Veronica, and beg Valiant to disable all your trackers so you can run away from her," Liquid Courage continued, after a pause. "Or don''t. I honestly don''t care anymore; you''ve made it pretty clear to me that there''s nothing worth saving left in you anymore. You''ve made your commitments. I''m done with you."


    Liquid Courage hung up, and Randall sat there, numb.


    When young Victor Vega came back from school, he found his father on the couch, staring at the ceiling. On the coffee table was a laptop, displaying a travel site listing various air routes from Boston to Austin. Victor considered the situation carefully, then silently kept walking, up the stairs and to his room. Randall could deal with it himself.

 Book 2 Chapter 1

    "So you are the one who built the robot maid," Veronica said.


    "Robots aren''t one of Akane''s aptitudes," I said with a shrug. "I, personally, am more surprised by the revelation that there was a house with a basement for sale in Austin."


    "Why would there not be?" Veronica asked.


    "It''s a generally-reliable rule of thumb that, if it snows every winter, then basements are probably common in the area," I said. "When building a house, it''s good practice to pour the foundation deeper than the frost line, to avoid shifting during annual freeze-thaw cycles. As such, the deeper the frost line, the deeper you need to dig, and at a certain point, a basement means you don''t need nearly as much concrete."


    "Ahhhh. And Texas is not precisely known for a frigid climate..."


    "And then there''s the question of digging a basement," I added. "About half of Austin in particular is on the wrong side of the Balcones Fault, and located on the Edwards Plateau. Which may sound like geological trivia, but in point of fact, I think ''half the city has maybe an inch of dirt before they hit bedrock'' is a very relevant factor here."


    "Which brings me around to your position, of being surprised that there was a house with a basement for sale in Austin," Veronica said. "Why would anyone bother?"


    "Oh, people build objectively stupid homes all the time," I said. "I mean, just look at Frank Lloyd Wright. I reckon this was a case of someone with more money than sense deciding that they wanted a basement, and the bedrock was no impediment to them."


    We were all barred from entering our new house- well, Akane''s new house, since neither Veronica nor I were committing to living here on a permanent basis- by the robot cleaning crew. I''d churned out three more robot maids, bringing the total up to four. It was a neat trick- if you built multiple identical copies of the same artifact, and happened to know the trick, then they would share headspace, and they''d all collectively be as costly to maintain as a single artifact.


    Thankfully, the house had come with a shaded back porch, and all we''d had to set up were some folding chairs.


    "Is the house that bad?" Akane asked.


    "Oh, quite the contrary," I said. "No, whoever built this house knew precisely what they were doing. Modern construction is exactly sturdy enough to be sold to some sucker and not collapse until it stops being the builder''s problem. This house, though, is built to fucking last. The interior walls are soundproofed, water pressure''s good- and that''s important, because improving the water pressure is so fucking hard. Yep, this is a well-built house, and it''s stupid because it''s this well-built for no good reason. Who sells such a well-built house? This shit is fucking heirloom quality."


    "Oh," Akane said.


    "You okay?" I asked.


    "Well, I called my mom the other day, and..." Akane fidgeted with her skirt. "...She might be coming to visit us next weekend?"


    I blinked. Then I grinned.


    "Already introducing me to your mother, huh?" I asked. "Sure, I moved in with you after the first date, but it still hasn''t been even a month."


    Akane snorted. "Thank you, Roxy. I needed that." She sighed. "I don''t suppose you''ve got any ideas what sort of arrangements we should make for when they arrive?"


    "Well, let''s see," I said. "The house has four bedrooms, two of which are particularly large. I say we earmark one of those as the guest room, and put your mom up in there." I blinked. "Wait, you say they. Do you... have multiple mothers?"


    "Three of them," Akane said, nodding.


    "Okay, definitely give them a big bedroom. Uh... Hrm. Might need to buy a particularly large bed. Besides that, though, we''re going to want to provide food in high quality and quantity," I said. "I know how to make plenty of desserts, but pretty much the only actual high-quality meal I know is chicken and sausage gumbo. And while it is good, I''m not convinced it''s ''dinner three nights in a row'' good. So... Hrm." I frowned, tapping my leg.


    "Hrm?" Akane asked.


    "Hrmmmm..."


    "Hrmmmm..."


    "Are the two of you choking on something?" Veronica asked.


    "Gimme a minute," I said, dialing a number on my phone and bringing it up to my ear.


    It rang twice before it was answered.


    "It''s Saturday. This better be good," Valiant grumbled.


    "Shabbat shalom to you too," I said. "You''ve lived in Austin for a while, yeah?"


    "...Yes, in fact," Valiant said, his voice softening. "Why do you ask?"


    "I got a guest coming for a potentially-extended visit, and I need your opinion on what restaurants are the best around here. Gotta feed them something good, and the only thing I''ve got that qualifies is chicken and sausage gumbo."


    "...How do you feel about barbecue?"


    "Honestly, I''m kinda meh on it," I said. "I grew up here too, just... in different circumstances... and Texas barbecue isn''t all that good. Barbecue needs sauce. And frankly, it''s my contention that the sauce doesn''t necessarily need barbecue."


    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    "That''s fair, I do like sauce on my barbecue as well. Right, well. I actually used to work at a barbecue restaurant, and I actually got very good at it. I still make it every weekend for my family, so I can bring you some leftovers, see if they''re what you''re looking for."


    "Sounds good to me," I said. "I''ll text you the address. We ain''t doin'' anything."


    <hr>


    Silas Marinakis was a Greek man somewhere in his forties, with bronze skin, copper hair, and golden eyes. He was big, not just tall but broad, his shoulders wide and his belly rounded. His arms were thick, but not particularly toned.


    Underneath a healthy amount of body fat and sufficient daily hydration, though, were muscles, thickly corded and developed with purpose, only visible if you knew what to look for.


    To the uninitiated, Silas Marinakis looked like someone''s dad. To me, he looked like a fighter.


    And now he was on the back porch with us, sharing some leftover barbecue mutton, slathered in a well-caramelized layer of the best barbecue sauce I''d ever had. It had to be mustard-based, judging from the orange-gold color it had, and while I didn''t typically care for mustard, the combination of spices had transubstantiated the humble yellow goo into a sweet, zesty ambrosia with the loveliest zing.


    Texas did barbecue wrong. There was an opinion here that, if you slathered your meat with sauce, it meant you were hiding something. But Silas Marinakis had nothing to hide- even after a night in the fridge and maybe ten minutes in an oven to warm up the whole lot, this meat was as tender and juicy as anything I''d ever eaten, and the powerful taste of the sheep meat shone through, mixing with the sauce in the best of ways.


    "Okay," I said, setting down a bone that I''d finally gnawed and licked clean of every last scrap of flavor. "How many hundreds of dollars do I need to give you to make a batch for next weekend?"


    "Haruna Sakurai is a family friend of mine," Silas said. "You would''ve noticed Akane calling me ''Uncle Silas'' if you hadn''t hyperfocused on the sheep meat."


    "You know it''s called mutton, right?" I said, filing away the fact that Akane called him Uncle for another day.


    "I''m Greek, of course I know that. But I live in Texas, so I don''t trust other people to know that."


    "Well, that''s fair," I admitted. Sheep, whether young or adult, was not a common meat in America.


    "So, here''s my pitch to you," Silas continued. "If you''ll allow me and my family to come over for a housewarming barbecue, and you build a barbecue smoker to the plans and specifications I give you, I will teach you how to use that smoker, and how to make my mustard-based sauce."


    "Can you also throw in an explanation of how and why you and Akane''s mom know each other?" I asked.


    "Well, quite simply, Akane has more than one mother," Silas said. "Tanya Donovan was instrumental in the raising of Akane Sakurai, and her brother is my best friend, Dean Donovan." His gaze turned very stern. "And the Donovan family shall remain ignorant of anything you know about me. Silas Marinakis is a government employee who works in the IT department, and Akane is the one who called me for advice."


    "Of course," I said. "It''s Akane''s house, obviously she''s the one inviting all the guests over. All I know is you''re a Greek Jew who cooks the best food I''ve ever had."


    "What makes you so confident I''m Jewish?" he asked.


    "The fact I am also Jewish, and know what it means when someone says ''it''s Saturday'' in that particular tone of voice," I said. "Anyhow. Send me the plans, and I''ll build a temple to your barbecue."


    "It would be more of a church, would it not?" Silas mused. "The consumption of flesh is a very important part of the barbecue experience, and the closest analogue is a ritual performed by Catholics."


    I closed my eyes, and breathed in deeply through my nose.


    "...I''m finally home," I said.


    <hr>


    After a long, rambling, good-natured argument about various culinary heresies, Silas made his excuses and left, leaving us with the rest of the barbecue mutton. And then the conversation turned back to the house and, in a way, local geography.


    "I mean, it is true that a lot of Texas is arid," I said. "You''re not going to find subtropical rainforests here, in general. But, at the same time, people build cities around the most desirable pieces of land, and in Texas, that especially means places with a source of fresh water. So, there''s creeks, little river valleys, and a surprising amount of greenery."


    "Such as the forest there," Veronica said, pointing at the woods behind our house. Because of the woods, our yard did not have the conventional fence. After all, what if we wanted to actually enjoy the woods our house is adjacent to?


    "Yes, exactly," I said, nodding. "Which I am very pleased with; I am going to take so many walks in the woods."


    "I didn''t take you for an outdoorsy type," Akane said.


    "As much as I just said that Austin is special for Texas, it very much still is Texas," I said. "You don''t get to be outdoorsy when you grow up in a suburb where it''s a hundred degrees outside at ten in the morning."


    "I will never understand why so many people choose to live here," Veronica said.


    "A heady melange of heritage, culture, and economic opportunity," I said. "There''s also the matter of people who live here and don''t choose to, because they can''t actually leave."


    Something caught my eye, in the forest.


    "On that note, I think I''m gonna take a little walk right now," I said, picking up my thick paper plate- two of them stacked together, in fact, because the sauce and the fat from the mutton, while delicious, were not great for the structural integrity of pressed cellulose- and stepping out into the warm sunshine. "Be back in... eh, whenever. Y''all have my phone number if something comes up."


    "Be careful!" Akane said.


    "I have won fistfights with grizzly bears," I said, stepping off the deck and onto the grass. "But sure, I''ll try to avoid picking such a fight in the first place. Not that much dangerous wildlife around these parts, though."


    Not only was I tall, I had disproportionately long legs for my frame. As such, it took maybe five good strides to go from the edge of the deck to the border of the woods, and two more to find what I''d been looking for:


    A very curious and unafraid red fox. Perfect.


    "Here you go, little fox," I said, handing her a little chunk of barbecue with one hand, and scratching her ears with another.


    "Oh my fucking- Roxy, please don''t pet wild animals," Veronica called from across the yard, finally noticing what I was doing.


    I scooped up the fox in one arm, skritching her upper chest and neck with the fingers of that hand, holding my plate of barbecue carefully out of reach of her hungry nose. "Oh, relax. This isn''t a wild animal." I walked back out of the woods, across the grass.


    "You are not going to be keeping a domesticated fox in my house."


    "First, it is in fact Akane''s house, that she is allowing you to live in," I said, stepping up back onto the porch. "Second, and more importantly, this isn''t a wild animal. This is a werefox."


    The fox went very, very still.

 Book 2 Chapter 2

    "Sit and be welcome, Druid," I said, depositing my plate on the table and the fox in the empty seat.


    "A werefox," Veronica repeated, disbelieving.


    "Won''t she be stuck like that until the full moon or something?" Akane asked.


    "How about you two just shut up for now," I said, patting them both on the head, which Akane seemed fine with, and which Veronica tolerated with obvious ill temper, possibly because I still had barbecue sauce on my fingers. "Eat, Druid. I offer you my hospitality freely, in accordance with the respect owed your kind."


    The fox looked at me, before suddenly, it wasn''t a fox, and instead, a skinny, foul-smelling red-headed girl sat in the chair, chowing down on day-old barbecue. Her clothing had clearly gone an unreasonable amount of time between washings, and the closest thing to an accessory she had was a surprisingly nice leather collar that sat halfway up her neck.


    "Whoa," Akane said quietly. "Is the transformation all or nothing?"


    "Not at all," I said. "Fine control over the transformation is a talent that must be developed, of course, but it is one that all druids have at least some capacity for."


    "News to me," the redhead said, licking her lips to gather up some remaining sauce. "Why the hell are you calling me ''Druid,'' though?"


    "Well, for one, I don''t know your name," I said with a shrug. "More importantly, though... that''s what you are. A druid. A human who has formed a spirit half in the shape of a patron animal, gaining the ability to change shapes and deal with the spirit world. Werewolf is commonly used as a catch-all, because werewolves are the most common type of druid, but all sorts of patron animals exist, not just canines. Werebears, werecrows, weresharks... If it''s an animal that''s important enough to enough people to form a patron spirit, then it can be a druid''s spirit-half."


    "And what precisely about these druids makes them so worthy of reverence, in your opinion?" Veronica asked, giving the filthy homeless person I''d brought onto our porch the stink eye.


    "Well, you know, there''s the part where they can enter the spirit world and make deals with spirits to accomplish all sorts of things," I said. "Such as, say, witnessing and making binding all sorts of oaths and promises. I personally swore a spirit-backed oath to respect druids and offer druids hospitality, and I don''t see any reason to break it today."


    "How far does ''hospitality'' extend, here?" the young druid asked.


    "You won''t be the first druid to crash on my couch," I said blandly.


    "Yes, well, it is not your couch, is it?" Veronica said. "As you pointed out, this is Akane''s house, which she is graciously allowing us to live in."


    "So do you like being scratched behind the ears?" Akane said, ignoring us and addressing the druid.


    "As a fox, yes," the druid said.


    "Akane seems fine with this arrangement," I observed. "Look, just... humor me, okay? Trust me to know what I''m doing."


    Veronica wrestled with herself, likely trying to synthesize ''I barely know Roxy'' with ''Akane, while bright-eyed, is not stupid, and does know and trust Roxy'' and probably a little ''One of the things I know for a fact about Roxy is that she is from another world and knows things I don''t, and another is that she''s a skilled professional.''


    "...Fine," Veronica said, looking away.


    <hr>


    "So, Druid," I began.


    The robot cleaning crew had finally finished, and the werefox had been given first go at the shower, along with a fuzzy fleece bathrobe straight out of the dryer. Her clothing had gone into the washing machine, and all further arrangements had been postponed for this moment, when she was out of the shower. Her collar, though, was still on her neck.


    "...It occurs to me we never exchanged names," I said. "I''m Dr. Roxanne Updyke, but I go by Roxy. The lady with the black hair who keeps asking questions is Akane Sakurai, my apprentice. The both of us are demiurges- think ''mad scientist'' and you''ll be almost entirely correct. And the woman with the white hair is Veronica Vega, who you might''ve heard of before. I actually have no idea how famous she is, relatively speaking."


    "Fair enough," the druid said, sitting on the recliner. "Well... My name... is Lisa Fox."


    "Bullshit," Veronica said.


    "Oh, I''m sorry, is her name too whimsical for you, Miss Veronica Vega?" I asked. "You don''t even fully appreciate how obnoxious her name is! Lisa isn''t just a normal name for a woman to have, it''s also the Russian word for Fox!"


    "See, you get me," Lisa said, flashing me a wolfish grin.


    "Anyhow, I''d suggest introducing yourself as Lisa K. Fox, and when people ask what the K stands for, tell them it stands for Kitsune," I said. "If you''re gonna commit to the bit, you should really commit to it."


    "I''ll take it under advisement, Doctor Updyke," Lisa said.


    "Oh, and, just to clear the air, yes, I am trans," I said. There was no way in hell Lisa wasn''t trans; quite aside from the physical tells, which were subtle but also somewhat unreliable given that cis women aren''t a monolith, there was the attitude she had towards her own name. That was very clearly a chosen name, and equally clearly, it was one she had fun coming up with.


    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    There was, of course, also the fact that Lisa was homeless, which was... less whimsical and fun.


    "Hormones were kind to you," Lisa said, glancing at my rack.


    "Oh, this was all mad science," I said.


    "Well... you seem to already know, but... yeah, I''m trans too," Lisa said. Knew it.


    "They''re both cis," I said, gesturing at Veronica and Akane. "For now, anyway."


    "And just what is that supposed to mean?" Veronica asked.


    "Are we going to be nonbinary when you''re done with us?" Akane asked, before gasping. "Ooooh, call that a forcethemme." She cackled as Veronica groaned.


    "So, what do you people do all day?" Lisa asked.


    "Well, Akane''s a grad student," I said. "I''m Akane''s mad science mentor."


    "I need to introduce you to my advisor at some point," Akane added.


    "And Veronica''s a professional superhero," I said. "...I actually have no idea what she does all day. This is the start of us living together."


    "Are you gonna be Lisa''s mentor too?" Akane asked.


    "I absolutely am not, because I am not a druid," I said, before turning back to Lisa. "I mean, sure, if there''s some other body of knowledge you wanna learn from me, I can teach you what I know, but there are just so many things to know about being a druid that I can''t teach you. I don''t know how to step sideways into the spirit realm, I don''t know how you can control your change finely enough to grow fox ears and a tail while remaining human, and I have absolutely zero clue how to go about cutting deals with spirits and learning the typical druidic spirit-magic."


    "...You seem to know more about druids than I do," Lisa pointed out.


    "I had some formal education in noctoseismology," I said. "But I just know what druids do, not how they do it. Why would I? Up until a month ago, I lived in a universe where there were plenty of experienced druids around, and any stray greenhorns I found could be handed off for training with the people who actually knew what the fuck they were doing."


    "You''re from another universe?" Lisa asked.


    "Yeah, Earth A-510," I said. "Don''t ask why it''s called that, I don''t know."


    "...Can you contact that other universe?" Lisa asked.


    "N- well. Not currently," I amended. "One of my specialties is scanners, which happens to include communication devices. I might be able to figure out how to finally pierce the veil between dimensions and phone home, but... That''ll take some time."


    "How much time?" Lisa asked.


    "God knows," I said with a shrug. "I''m good at what I do, but that''s still a very advanced application. Maybe I''ll catch lightning in a bottle and figure it out in a week. Or maybe it''ll take so goddamn long that I have to postpone it until after we''ve dealt with our current, more pressing crisis. I don''t know."


    "Speaking of current, pressing issues," Akane began.


    "Oh?" Lisa asked.


    "We need to establish where the boundaries are with you and pets and scratches behind the ear," Akane said.


    "...Really."


    "Yes, really! Lisa, I want so badly to pet a fox without contributing to the ethical minefield that is the ongoing fox domestication program," Akane said. "But if I''m going to do that, I need to know you''re okay with that, and I''m pretty sure you can''t talk in fox form. So... explicit, intentional social protocols."


    "Sorry to burst your bubble, but I put up with it from Roxy because she was offering food," Lisa said. "I didn''t end up as a werefox, a solitary animal, by being really social."


    "Awww..." Akane complained. "Fine... Hey, Roxy, how hard is it to use mad science to turn someone into a fox?"


    "Ears, fur, and a tail are easy," I said. "Becoming a fifteen pound quadruped, however, is one of the hardest things to do. Now, are you asking because you just really like foxes, or is there something else going on here? Did you read Animorphs as a kid? Or is transformation going to be one of your specialties?"


    "Oooooh..." Akane said, excited by the prospect of learning things.


    "Anyway, before we get too deep into that, there is still the question of where Miss Fox is going to sleep," I said, returning my attention to Lisa. "Do you typically sleep in fox form? Because that''ll make this a lot easier."


    "It''s more comfortable that way, yeah," Lisa said.


    "Great. Veronica, would you mind running an errand?"


    "Allow me to guess," Veronica said. "You are about to ask me to go to Petsmart to buy a dog bed and a leash for your new pet foxgirl."


    "...I was actually going to ask you to go to Target to buy some extra pillows and another blanket," I said. "But, y''know, if you wanna make this a petplay thing, go ahead. Just check with Lisa before you do."


    "She is already wearing a collar..."


    "I know, it''s weird, right?" Lisa asked. "Because if anyone''s a bitch here, it''s you."


    "...You win this round," Veronica said, grudgingly.


    "Are you going to get a leash and a collar for yourself?" I asked. "Because I''m pretty sure you did just get owned."


    "Alright, that''s enough."


    "Akane, you got anything?" I added.


    "Mmm... No, not really," Akane said.


    "I will go grab a hat and a backpack," Veronica said. "I would prefer to not be recognized during this errand."


    "Aw, you sure?" Akane asked. "You do look pretty fetching."


    "I know where you sleep, woman."


    Veronica continued to grumble wordlessly, heading upstairs and returning in a delightfully inconspicuous outfit, including a loose hoodie, some aviator shades- because fuck you, Akane, I''m not the only one who thinks they look good- and a baseball cap. She left through the front door, and flew off rather than taking Akane''s car or dubiously-usable motorcycle.


    "You''re not doing anything tomorrow, are you?" I asked, turning to face Akane.


    "Nope," Akane said, shaking her head. "I keep my weekends free."


    "Cool. Well, if this isn''t too much of an infringement, I have an idea for what your last aptitude might be," I said. "Wanna try something out tomorrow?"


    "Do I want to do more mad science?" Akane asked, affronted that I was asking. "Does the Pope shit in the woods?"


    "I certainly hope he doesn''t," I said. "That sounds unhygenic."


    "I guess it would also be hard to get to the woods from the Vatican and back on a regular basis," Akane said, tapping her chin.


    "Are you people always like this?" Lisa asked.


    "You''ll get used to it," I said.


    "That''s what I''m afraid of."

 Book 2 Chapter 3

    "Well, that''s your... room, for lack of a better word, set up," I said. "For now, anyhow. If this turns into a long-term arrangement, we can throw together something more solid and permanent."


    Lisa was a werefox. Foxes lived in subterranean dens. We had a basement. Therefore, Lisa''s preferred living space was a rug with two big pillows and a soft blanket on top, surrounded by some folding room-dividers, in our basement.


    "If you wake up in the middle of the night and you''re hungry, just tell one of the robot maids to make you something, and they''ll do it," I continued. "You gotta specify what you want them to make, though."


    "Fair enough," Lisa said. "Gotta say, when I smelled barbecue and came to beg, I was not expecting to get adopted by a friendly neighborhood Bond Villain."


    "Uncharitable, but... not inaccurate," I admitted. "My aptitudes do lie in that direction, for all that I''ve been forced by circumstance to pretend I''m Batman instead."


    "So you and Veronica are Superbat but genderbent, basically?" Lisa asked.


    "Mmm... No, I''d say it''s more that one New-52 line that starred Power Girl and Huntress," I said. "Which may not exist in this world. Or maybe it does, but it''s actually well-written and not a loose mishmash of badly-connected garbage. Fuck, in a world with real superheroes, maybe cape books are actually the dominant force in the comics market, instead of Dav Pilkey''s work. Of course, technically Pilkey did get his start with cape books." I blinked. "Sorry, I have ADHD."


    "Hadn''t noticed," Lisa said.


    "Anyhow, the house is pretty well-insulated and soundproofed," I said. "Still try to keep it down, but chances are, nobody''s gonna hear it if you''ve gotta jerk off."


    "Classy," Lisa said. "Mn. Well. I''m out of questions."


    "I''ll get out of your hair then, unless you want me to stay and chat," I said. As Lisa turned into a fox and began tugging the blanket to fold over and cover herself, I took that as a tacit dismissal, and left the basement.


    Whereupon I almost immediately bumped into Akane, waiting for me at the top of the stairs.


    "...Hi," I said, brought up short.


    "Hey," Akane said. "Can we... talk? In private?"


    "...Sure, lead the way," I said.


    The house was big, but not unreasonably or overwhelmingly so. ''Big enough'' was probably the best term for it; it didn''t feel cramped or even terribly small. There was room enough for privacy and pacing, without it being more than a minute, and closer to half one, to get from the top of the basement steps to the door to Akane''s room.


    Her room was... well, her room. It wasn''t yet a disastrous mess, because she hadn''t slept there even once yet, but there was a very large desk- she''d been eager to upgrade, with more space- that I knew for a fact would be a fucking clutter magnet. Thankfully, her model B-52 was still ceiling-mounted rather than perched upon her desk; that was a particular crisis averted.


    The bed, likewise, was also very large, large enough to comfortably fit three adults sleeping side-by-side without touching. Whether this was simply an indulgence of comfort or a tacit declaration of intent, I was uncertain. Either way, when Akane sat on the bed, I did not follow her example, and instead used her desk chair.


    "Ah, the door," Akane realized, standing up, and then slowly sitting back down as the door closed on its own. "...I didn''t know you could do that."


    "Control is a broad aptitude, and the one most central to my mad science," I said. "The most basic application of controlling technology is one I''ve long used against other Demiurges, but... well, it has other uses, too."


    "Right, right," Akane said, nodding. "That... is what I wanted to talk to you about. Your ability to control people."


    I sighed. "So... mad science is generally pretty light on truth, but all the same, pursuing it does inevitably lead you to confronting unpleasant truths about yourself. And one of my unpleasant truths is that I''m very, very good at imposing my will on people, when I care to try."


    "That''s..." Akane trailed off.


    "You ever notice how I don''t argue with you for very long?" I asked. "It''s not because I get distracted by your tits and forget I''m supposed to disagree with you. It''s because I know when something''s become a contest of wills. And I know that I could win. But I''d regret it. So, I give up. I let you have your way. Because the alternative is giving into my worst excesses, and taking my way from you."


    "You hold yourself back," Akane mused.


    "I exercise restraint," I corrected her. "I will forever bear the stamp of exclusion, isolation, Banishment... but I will forever labor to not make that anyone else''s problem. What happened to me was a grave injustice, but that injustice will not be addressed by me bullying everyone I come across into getting my way. So... I restrain myself. I acknowledge that what I want in the moment is not always what is best, and that compromise is a necessity for surviving in the world we actually live in. I maintain my ideals, and I correct injustice where I can. And that means not acting like a teenager with no emotional regulation.


    "It means accepting that, just because I want to have sex with you, does not mean doing so is a good idea, because of the power imbalance inherent to the mentor/teacher relationship." I sighed. "One day, when I feel you have properly come into your own as a demiurge, when I am confident that I could take away my training wheels and you would not falter, then I will consider your apprenticeship to be over, and you will be my peer. A junior partner in our collaborative, but a partner nonetheless. But that day has not come yet, and may not come for many more months."


    Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    "So if I want to get laid, I have to demonstrate that I understand mad science well enough to walk the rest of the path unaided?" Akane asked.


    I inhaled deeply through my nose, and sighed loudly through my mouth. "Akane, when I gave that big speech about restraint and self-control, I wasn''t just talking to hear my own voice."


    "It is a really nice voice, though," Akane pointed out.


    "I''d start carrying a spray bottle, but I''m worried you''d start liking it," I said, standing up and heading for the door. "Restrain yourself, and focus on your studies."


    "Yes, Mom."


    <hr>


    Many sexual fantasies started with Veronica Vega softly knocking on your bedroom door at night. But because I actually knew her and where we stood, and that she didn''t like being touched, and also that she had some unreasonable takes, it was instead the start of what I knew in my heart would be a big pain in the ass.


    "What do you want, Veronica?" I asked grumpily, opening the door.


    "...Do you really sleep in a bathrobe?" Veronica asked.


    "I prefer to sleep naked, actually," I said. "The bathrobe is the shortest path between nudity and decency. Again: what the hell do you want?"


    "To speak with you regarding one of your apparently many questionable life choices," Veronica said. "May I come in?"


    "Sure, but we should have this conversation telepathically, to avoid waking anyone up," I said. "My brain has never quite worked right, and I''ve historically had difficulty controlling the volume of my voice."


    "Ah, so that is why you yell all the time," Veronica said, before blinking rapidly. "...You are a telepath?!"


    "I am, and Akane could become one, too, if she were made to understand psychology well enough to repeat the very exceptional fluke that was her first gadget," I said. "Now... Telepathy?"


    "...Fine," Veronica said.


    I fired up my recently-reinstalled telepathy module- which I''d removed months ago because it was eating up maintenance without providing much benefit, and had only rebuilt and reinstalled because I was back in the circumstances that made it practical in the first place- and formed a telepathic connection with Veronica. I could have also scanned her emotions and surface thoughts, and chose not to because that was an unreasonable violation of privacy.


    "Alright, will you finally get to the point?" I asked, sitting back down on my bed. At the moment, my room was still very sparse, containing only a bed. A bit ascetic, but when you had a computer in your brain and a favored mad science paradigm that was, basically, programming new superpowers into yourself, you would also find that you didn''t need much. I''d probably add more stuff as time went on, but for now, I was more or less content.


    "I don''t think you should keep Lisa here long-term," Veronica said, gently closing the door and lifting her feet off the ground to ''sit'' in mid-air. Her own sleepwear consisted of baggy pajama pants and a very loose t-shirt that still, nonetheless, could not completely conceal how disconcertingly stacked its wearer was. "I think you have made multiple miscalculations about how much she can be trusted and how useful she may end up being."


    "And what makes you think I''m hosting a homeless teenager in my basement just because I think she''s useful?" I asked.


    I got up, and started to pace.


    "That she is homeless is an injustice, one that we, as adults in good conscience, have an obligation to correct by whatever means we can- and we most certainly do not lack for means."


    Veronica grit her teeth, grimacing slightly. Apparently this woman who based her identity on being an elite superhero didn''t like it when someone else framed their own behavior as an obligation to correct injustice.


    "I''m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you''re merely using Lisa as a proxy for your real issue, because if the problem is actually that you''re just that opposed to extending hospitality to a homeless person, we won''t be able to work together long-term." I turned to regard her coldly. "And I assure you: you''re a lot more replaceable than I am."


    "...Your arrogance is unfounded," Veronica said, after a pause to arrange her words. "I am a well-connected and established heroine, with many contacts and direct tutoring from arguably the most successful heroine on the planet. The money for the house came out of my operating budget, and your contribution to our ongoing mission seems to be... what, occasionally dispensing exposition? Tutoring Akane in deviant science?" She sniffed. "Yes, you are oh so irreplacable."


    "I have been a professional bounty hunter for five years. This is not the first time I''ve tracked down Doctor Skinner in particular through the shroud of an anti-scanning shield, and I''ve hunted other Demiurges through similar."


    "You say that, but I have no evidence you''ve actually done any successful bounty hunting."


    "...You''re joking. Did Valiant not tell you about Hordemaster?"


    "I don''t know who you''re talking about."


    "You-" I sighed, before my lips curled upwards in a wicked grin. "Alright. I see how it is. Here''s what I propose: next weekend, Akane''s mother will be here. Starting on the Monday after that weekend, I will have one month to pull in enough money through bounty hunting to pay for this entire house twice over. If I can succeed, then you will cease your baseless accusations of incompetence towards me, and acknowledge that I do, in fact, know what I''m doing. If I can''t, then I will acknowledge that this world is sufficiently different that my knowledge alone cannot see me through, and submit to your better judgement. And, during this month, you will do absolutely nothing that could reasonably hinder my chances of success."


    "You? Putting basic respect for the competence of others on the line?" Veronica asked. "You must have a powerful furry fetish to risk this over a useless foxgirl."


    "You and I both know this was never about Lisa," I said. "Oh, one more condition- until the terms of the bet are concluded, you will speak respectfully to Lisa, and do nothing to make her feel unwelcome. If she complains to me that she doesn''t like the way you''re looking at her, I will turn you into a frog and throw you down a well."


    "I am perfectly capable of conducting myself respectfully, thank you."


    "Ah, so you choose to insult and offend me. Good to know. Now get out."

 Book 2 Chapter 4

    "Good christ, woman," I said.


    Attempting to teach Akane the mad science of transformation was... shall we say, taxing. The thing about mad science was, you had to know what you were doing. You have to understand the reality of the situation in order to effectively formulate a predictive model that would have the effect you want.


    And since Akane wanted to make a gadget for cosmetically transforming humans, she had to understand a thing or two about medicine, anatomy, and/or biology to get it to work properly.


    Which she didn''t.


    At all.


    "Okay, well, you''re going to need some remedial education in biology and medicine, but we can do that later," I said. "I can tell that the field of transformation is brain candy for you, so we''re going to finish this today, just... differently."


    "Ooooh, like pairing the transformer with a medical scanner and a mental scanner with an integrated Virtual Intelligence that can interpret the user''s desires into sane, concrete details?" Akane suggested.


    "...Yes, exactly," I said. "It''s good that you''re thinking outside the box. Right, let''s get working on that. You want me to handle the VI?"


    "You''re gonna have to," Akane said. "The VI''s medical knowledge has to come from somewhere."


    "I am so lost," Lisa said.


    "Yeah, mad science has that effect on people," I said. "Uhhh... Ah, here we go. I bought this phone as a prop to hide the fact I have a computer in my head, but now I don''t need to hide it, so here, take it." I fished the smartphone out of my pocket and sent a factory reset command to it with the Virtual Machine before handing it over to Lisa. "Gonna take a bit to factory reset, but probably not much. I didn''t do much of anything to it."


    "Android, huh?" Lisa asked.


    "I''m just so sad that Steve Jobs died of ligma," I said.


    "Who the hell is Steve Jobs?"


    "Ligma balls."


    "No, seriously, who is that?"


    "The founder and first CEO of Apple?" I said. "Y''know, the company that made the iPhone and popularized the notion of smartphones?"


    "That didn''t happen here," Akane said. "You know, it occurs to me that there are a lot of divergences that I kinda assumed you figured out yourself in the month you''ve been here, but... Apparently you didn''t spend a lot of downtime on Wikipedia?"


    "I did not, no," I said. "I was busy doing vocational research instead of looking up who the Founding Fathers were in this timeline."


    "Was he called George Washingtub on your planet, too?" Akane asked.


    "...I''m sorry, Washingtub?" I asked.


    "I guess not," Akane said. "Yeah, the national capital is Washingtub D.C., and there''s a state in the Northwest called Washingtub."


    "I don''t fucking believe you," I said, frowning. "You know what, no, we''re not doing this. Get back to work. Lisa, go entertain yourself. We''re going to be busy for a few hours."


    <hr>


    Working with Akane the entire time meant I couldn''t really be surprised by the results of our work. Dismayed, certainly, but not surprised.


    "Here, Lisa, put this on," Akane said, holding out a leather collar with a subtle plastic enclosure for electrical components. One of the most useful tricks learned from transformational mad science is to make one''s gadgets look... approximately normal. Obviously technological, and often of unfamiliar make, but normal enough to not draw suspicion.


    "You''re joking," Lisa said, looking up from her phone.


    "Humor us, please," I said.


    "...The hell is this thing gonna do, anyway?" Lisa asked.


    "A temporary and minor cosmetic transformation," I said. "You''ll have fox ears and a tail for like ten minutes, and then it''ll wear off. Or it''ll wear off as soon as you take the collar back off."


    "And if it doesn''t?" Lisa asked.


    "Well, if it doesn''t, you''re still going to be a shapeshifter," I said. "You can just... shapeshift back."


    "...Alright, fine, give it here," Lisa said, taking the collar from Akane and putting it on below her already-worn collar. I had the sudden mental image of Lisa''s fashion sense taking cues from Final Fantasy, with the one exception being that all the pointless belts were instead pointless collars. Some of those characters still wore collars and chokers, but Lisa probably thought they didn''t wear enough. "Oh whoa that feels weird."


    Lisa was already decently cute, but now, with the fox ears jutting out of her equally-red hair, she was patently adorable. Especially as one of the ears twitched a few times.


    "Alright, we need to make sure the nerve hookups are working properly," I said, lifting up my hand. "Do you mind?"


    "...Fine," Lisa said, turning her head away. I carefully reached past the ear closest to me to skritch at the base of the far one, summoning forth a cute little noise that Lisa unsuccessfully tried to strangle in the back of her throat.


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    "That one seems to have functioning tactile sense," I said clinically. "Other one..." I gave the other ear a good skritch, followed by a gentle rub between thumb and forefinger that made Lisa squirm. "Excellent. Alright, now, next phase in the test, try removing the collar and see if the ears remain."


    Lisa nodded silently, her face a bit red, and unbuckled the collar Akane gave her. She handed it back to Akane... and still had fox ears. "Shit," Lisa muttered.


    "Try shifting back to fox form first," I said, because I had no idea whether it would work as intended, or if Lisa would have four fox ears. Unfortunately for my latest flight of fancy, it did work as intended, and Lisa was simply an ordinary fox. And then she was an ordinary human once more.


    And then, she was a human with fox ears. She shifted back and forth, extending and retracting the ears, starting to grin deviously.


    "Well, isn''t that a hell of a thing," Lisa said. "I think I''m starting to get the hang of this selective shapeshifting thing."


    "Good, good," I said, nodding. "While Akane''s doing grad school stuff this week, I''m gonna try helping you figure out the rest of your werefox tricks."


    "I thought you couldn''t do that," Lisa said.


    "I thought that too," I said. "But then I realized that being there to back you up while you try things is going to be better than nothing. So... you in?"


    "...Yeah. I''m in."


    <hr>


    "So... All three aptitudes," I said.


    Of course, after we were done with the testing of Akane''s latest device, we retreated back to the lab, which we had currently set up in the basement. Which... well, the question of Lisa''s living space could be answered later. The basement was, after all, roughly the same size as the house above us, and one floor of that could demonstrably hold four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and some hallways. We''d put in some studs and drywall for Lisa''s room at some point.


    "Should I get the champagne?" Akane asked.


    "No," I said. "This is a milestone, don''t get me wrong, but it''s not the one that traditionally means you''re no longer my responsibility. The milestone that does traditionally herald the end of an apprenticeship is called the Thesis."


    "Do you mean I have to do an original research project and defend it in front of a committee, or is this something else that just has the same name?" Akane asked.


    "Well, the Thesis as it is understood by mad scientists could present itself as an actual doctoral dissertation," I said. "However, it usually doesn''t. It has to be something tied into whatever it is that drove you to become a mad scientist. In your case, you want to understand superheroes. So... y''know, you''re going to have to do something that would bring you closer to understanding."


    "Hrm..." Akane hummed. "...So, questions. Question one: what happens when I do understand how superheroes work?"


    "You never will," I said. "Not to your own complete satisfaction, anyways. That''s something you''re going to have to come to terms with now, by the by- you will go to your grave with unanswered questions. There is no bottom. You can always go deeper. The rabbit hole, much like common law property rights, goes all the way to hell."


    "Even if I live forever?" Akane asked.


    "Nobody does," I said. "There''s just people who haven''t died yet, some of whom have been managing it for longer. Infinity is imaginary; the cold calculus of entropy is very finite. Next question."


    "Right, right... so, what does completing a Thesis actually do?" Akane asked. "Like, I''m assuming that if I can figure out what the underlying mechanical difference is between superscience that can be replicated by humans and superscience that can''t, then that''ll be a valid Thesis, but aside from answering an important question and opening up new avenues of research, what is that going to do for me?"


    "Every demiurge has, in addition to their knowledge and their skill, a certain amount of raw oomph," I said. "You don''t start out with that much; you have limited amounts of energy and headspace, there are limits on how much cool shit you can accomplish. But, by completing a Thesis, by immersing yourself deeper and deeper in whatever it was that catalyzed you and drove your Breakthrough, you can get more power, more understanding, more headspace, and fewer limits. Because I''ve been around this block a few times, I have a good amount of energy to draw upon, more headspace to maintain the reified fabrications that power my tech, and even just the things I build are simply stronger and more capable because I have more metaphysical weight to throw behind these reality-warping lies in the first place."


    "Ooooh," Akane said. "So if I complete a Thesis, my motorcycle will get faster?"


    "Yes, actually," I said, nodding. "It''s kind of weird, because the particular lies that powered your motorcycle are specific enough that getting twice as much top speed just flatly should not work, but it will anyways, because I may have oversold to you the extent to which mad science is understood. And let me be clear: it is not. Absolutely nobody has any goddamn idea why it is that demiurges get to play god and redefine the rules of reality, and anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit. More than that, there''s a lot of finer details about mad science that nobody understands. We know that normal people make mad science go haywire, but we don''t actually know why. We''ve got guesses, we''ve got untestable theories, but we just do not know, and it looks a lot like we can''t know."


    I realized that I''d just gone on a tangent, and tried valiantly to steer the conversation in a more productive direction.


    "Now, there are other things I need to teach you before I can consider your apprenticeship truly over," I said, "so don''t go rushing towards your first Thesis. That being said, think about it."


    "Collate existing hypotheses on the nature of superheroes and use mad science to test them?" Akane asked.


    "Maybe, but..." I hummed. "Well, this is what worked for me, and I can think of a few good reasons why it wouldn''t be a successful long-term tactic for you, but I always treated the Thesis as an act of self-examination and self-definition. I am Banished; my Theses have been, with one dramatic exception early on, fairly introspective affairs that saw me contemplating social dynamics and the nature of outsider status and how it shapes my life, and what I''m going to do about it. And so I think that you, Akane, before you set out in earnest on this life-defining pursuit, stop and seriously consider the following question:


    "Why are you doing this?" I asked. "What''s your motivation, what drives you to pursue this challenging line of research? Do you think that understanding could yield materially useful techniques that could improve the world? Do you simply want to understand for the pure joy of knowledge? Are you, in fact, trying to prove a point in some way?" I paused. "You have the week to consider the question. Have an answer for me before your mother arrives. I will check."

 Book 2 Chapter 5

    The white t-shirt was, once upon a time, considered underwear, and accumulated the day''s sweat, moisture, and salt underneath the actual shirt, which one preferred to not get dirty. Of course, times changed, and these days a white t-shirt, while still commonly used as an undershirt by people like myself, was also perfectly acceptable outerwear.


    So naturally, when it came time to lend Lisa some of my clothes for our trek into the woods, what ended up getting used was a t-shirt from a pack that turned out to be a size too small for me and a pair of jeans with the hems rolled up.


    "So, as a werefox, you have many useful abilities that are simply inherent to the nature of being a half-spirit," I said as we traipsed through the woods. "You can shapeshift, which you''re already aware of, but you''ve also got a very accelerated rate of healing."


    "Huh," Lisa said.


    "I''m not going to help you test that, because deliberately injuring people is something I try to avoid when possible," I added. "However! Back to the point, you have some useful abilities already, but they are the bare foundation of what a druid can do with a little help. And to get that help, you need to know about spirits."


    "Spirits, huh?" Lisa asked. "So why are we in the woods instead of a graveyard?"


    "Well, first and foremost, you''re thinking of ghosts," I said. "Ghosts are the ephemeral leftovers of a particular human life. Spirits are different. I don''t fully understand the nature of spirits and the spirit world, but I do understand that spirits are often distorted mirrors of the collective unconsciousness, the current zeitgeist. So, what it means that you are a werefox is that there is something about your idea of what a fox is that resonates with you on a deeply personal level. I won''t pry; if you want to share, I would be honored, but you don''t have to."


    "Fair enough, but I''m pretty sure it isn''t anything to do with a love of nature," Lisa said. "I lived in these woods for two months. I''d really like to go back inside where the air conditioning is."


    "In good time," I said. "The reason we''re in the woods specifically is because tree spirits are generally fairly laid-back. It''s not like anyone thinks trees are particularly aggressive, y''know. It''s a safe place to experiment and try your hand at communing with the spirits. Especially since these woods in particular are just... very, very tame."


    "Huh," Lisa said. "But if that''s the case... What exactly am I going to get out of talking to tree-spirits? They''re trees, they don''t do anything."


    "You might learn some spirit tricks for creating an aura of calm and serenity, or maybe get a green thumb and a sixth sense for what plants need to thrive," I said. "However, you will definitely get practice talking to spirits in a safe environment, which is probably more important for you than the ability to garden."


    "Alright, so... how do I do this?" Lisa asked.


    "Honestly? No fucking idea," I said. "Remember, I know what druids do, not how they do it. So... Just try shit. I''m here for moral support."


    <hr>


    "It happened two months ago," Lisa said, without warning.


    It had been a half hour of sitting here in the woods, with both of us sitting in decently shaded spots under some trees.


    "It was... Heh. If I was just trans, you''d call it an egg-cracking," Lisa said. "But also... when I finally came to terms with the fact that, yeah, I''m a woman, no two ways about it... suddenly, I was a fox, too. I was a woman, and I was a fox, and I thought to myself... I don''t have to live like this anymore. I can just turn into a fox and go live in the woods. I don''t have to deal with my shitty parents, I don''t have to deal with a shitty society, I can just... be a fox.


    "I''ve been hungry, I''ve been cold, I''ve been shot at by brats with BB guns... but standing here, having found someone who gets it..." Lisa shrugged. "I don''t regret a moment of it."


    I blinked. "I... well, I wasn''t expecting that, but... thank you for your honesty," I said. "I''m honored that you feel you can open up to me like this."


    "...dammit," Lisa muttered. "Okay, emotional openness isn''t the key to seeing the spirit world. Forget everything I just said."


    I started cackling.


    "Bitch," Lisa said. "Let''s hear your bright idea, if you''re so fucking smart."


    "Remember when I said that I know what druids do, but not how they do it?" I asked. "Well, then I went and dug through my files, and I did manage to find a pdf of The New Werewolf''s Guide To Werewolfing. I am assuming that some base level of mystical practice can be transmitted through text, because otherwise why would they fucking write this book. So... yeah, that''s my bright idea, since I am so fucking smart."


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    "How am I supposed to read a PDF in the middle of the woods?"


    Her phone buzzed in her pocket, from me texting her the PDF.


    "...Shut up," Lisa said.


    "Are you a fox because you resonate with the Japanese kitsune?" I asked. "This is important because it will tell me exactly how funny it is for me to call you a tsundere."


    "Fuck you," Lisa said, in that ''you are correct and I don''t like that'' voice I knew so distressingly well.


    I just grinned, and she huffed, turning away and pulling out her phone. The time for talking to her was more or less over, and now I could go back to dicking around on the internet.


    Huh. Apparently Akane had been lying about the Washingtub thing. Well, Veronica didn''t know about any of that, so I reckon I''ll just spring it on her at some point.


    <hr>


    "Well that''s fucking weird," Lisa said, fifteen minutes later.


    "What''s up?" I asked.


    "I did the ritual, and it worked," Lisa said. "I can see the spirit world, overlaid on top of ours, and I can see that this forest has resonances of serenity and life, but I can''t see any actual spirits."


    "Resonance?" I asked.


    "Resonance is the accumulated impressions and emotions that people have with a place or a thing," Lisa said. "It''s fuel for spirits, and when it gets thick enough spirits will spontaneously emerge from it, but... There just aren''t any spirits here."


    "Well, that''s odd," I mused. "I mean, admittedly, the forest isn''t a place where a lot of people go and have a lot of strong opinions, so the spirit world being anemic here makes some sense. So, naturally, we should instead be looking at places that are more heavily-trafficked, and maybe with thicker resonance."


    "Like a strip club," Lisa said.


    "...I was going to suggest a grocery store, because it is ten in the morning and also I do need to run some errands," I said.


    "Lame. I wanna see some tits."


    "Look, if the internet isn''t good enough for you, just wait for Akane to get back from class and ask nicely." I grinned as Lisa coughed and sputtered. "Now, before we leave, I want you to figure out how to see spirits and resonances as reliably as possible. So... more practice. See if you can do it without the ritual."


    "The ritual showed me how to shape my essence without knowing how to do that," Lisa said. "I should be able to replicate it..."


    "Then dismiss your current vision and practice," I said. "We''ve got time."


    <hr>


    "So is there a home delivery option?" I asked, while Lisa stood behind me, looking bored and scrolling on her phone.


    "Yes, actually," the clerk said.


    "Great, because I really don''t want to figure out how to haul fifty cinderblocks across town on a motorcycle," I said.


    The clerk laughed obligingly, and took down the bill of materials that I had, in turn, gotten from Silas. Meanwhile, Lisa was, in actuality, feeling out the local spirit world and searching for spirits.


    "These cinderblocks are going to be part of an offset barbecue smoker," I said, making idle conversation to give Lisa more time to look around. And, well, I also like to hear myself talk. "My roommate''s uncle is apparently an accomplished pitmaster, and we''re having guests this weekend, so I figured this would be a cool thing to do for food."


    "Oh wow, really?" the clerk asked. "What kind of barbecue are you going to be doing?"


    "Gonna be some mutton, because it brings some strong flavors to the table just on its own," I said. "Mutton can be kinda tough, but if you cook it low and slow, you know, like barbecue, it''s as tender as anything else. Plus, you pair it with a good mustard-based sauce like Uncle Silas makes, it''s the best thing I''ve ever eaten."


    "Ooooh, I think I might''ve had that before," the clerk said. "I remember this barbecue place a few years back, there was a guy working there called Silas. Big Greek dude, redhead, looked like a bronze statue? Is that his niece behind you?"


    "Hrm? Oh, no, Lisa''s not related to Silas, as far as I know," I said. "She''s one of my other roommates. Anyway, Silas used to do barbecue professionally?"


    "Yep. Made the best barbecue I ever had," the clerk said, nodding. "You listen to what he tells you, you hear me? That kind of skill needs to be passed on." Then he grinned. "And see if you can convince him to fill one last barbecue order. He''s ruined me for the local stuff."


    I laughed, paid for the order, and walked out of the store, Lisa trailing behind me.


    <hr>


    "This is so weird," Lisa said, after we''d been to Home Depot, Radio Shack, HEB- a local chain of grocery store- and, in slight desperation, the library. "We''ve been all over town, and there are just no spirits. It doesn''t make any sense! A million people live here! What, does nobody have strong feelings in this town?"


    "Keep in mind, that book was written in another universe," I said, pulling a gallon of milk out of a reusable grocery bag and putting it in the fridge. "It may simply be the case that this universe''s spirit world has slightly different constants that combine to make for, uh... well, no spirits."


    "And how is that supposed to make me feel better?" Lisa asked.


    "I wasn''t actually trying to do that," I said, putting away the condiments. "Sorry, mad science is hard to turn off, when you''re as deep in it as I am. My habits are pretty well-ingrained, and mostly serve my purposes. Can you put those spice bottles in the rack, please? Thanks." I set the pre-made graham cracker crust aside- I knew how to make my own, but I didn''t feel like buying a pie plate, and these things worked just fine- along with the can of sweetened condensed milk, before putting the bottled lime juice in the fridge.


    When I first made key lime pie, I''d used a cheap electric juicer to squeeze some Mexican limes for the juice. After a while, I tried using the bottled stuff, realized that I couldn''t taste the difference and neither could anyone I was trying to impress, and stopped buying whole limes.


    "Can you at least turn your mad science brain towards trying to solve the problem?" Lisa asked.


    "Maybe," I said. "Remember, I''m still not a druid. Buuuuut... Hrm." I frowned, tapping my chin. "...There is something I just remembered, and now I''m checking the book to see if it means what I think it means."


    "What is it?" Lisa asked.


    "So... the general energy of the spirit world is called essence, right? Well, if you''re willing to spend some essence yourself, and you know what you''re doing, you don''t have to find spirits. You can just make them."

 Book 2 Chapter 6

    "So, what do you think of Lisa?" I asked, after dinner. Lisa had retreated back to her den- and Veronica back upstairs- leaving Akane and I alone in the living room.


    "She seems kinda withdrawn and private," Akane said, resting her head on my shoulder. It warmed my heart to share these casual touches, to literally feel that I wasn''t alone. It wasn''t a cure-all for every problem I faced, but it certainly didn''t hurt to cuddle up to Akane on the couch while she watched a documentary about an obscure and indescribably shitty Cold War era experimental plane, and I played Minecraft in my head. "Not just overwhelmed. Nicky''s pretty private, too, so really, it''s just you and me out here most of the time."


    "Huh," I said. "She seems sociable enough to me." After all, we had spent all day together, coming to grips with her druidic abilities.


    "She seems to like you," Akane said. "You are pretty likeable, after all."


    "I am not likeable," I said. "I am a mean, awkward bitch in ways that happen to be catnip to subby sapphics."


    "You''re not denying the possibility that Lisa likes you," Akane pointed out.


    "I am not," I said, saving and closing Minecraft. "I think, perhaps... I should go downstairs and talk to her some more. See you tomorrow, Akane."


    <hr>


    "We probably need to get some actual furniture down here," I said, carefully pulling a brush through Lisa''s hair. It was very common among social animals to use grooming each other as a form of social bonding- that''s what your pets think you''re doing when you pet them- and humans were no exception. Therefore, brushing your roommate''s hair for them was an excellent way to build social bonds, while seeming like a perfectly innocent thing for girls to do for each other.


    "You really think I''m gonna be here that long?" Lisa asked.


    "I think you''re going to be here as long as you want to be," I said. "Quite aside from the fact that you seem likeable enough, and my general obligation to help those in need, there is the matter of the spirit-backed oath I swore to offer my hospitality to druids such as yourself. What constitutes ''hospitality'' is a very fuzzy, nebulous, and culturally contingent question, but it is my honest opinion- which very much matters for spirit-oaths- that the obligations of hospitality increase with one''s means. It won''t inconvenience me very much to have a werefox living in my basement, therefore I have to let her, for as long as she wants."


    Lisa simply grunted, and I continued to carefully tease a tangle loose.


    "And then there''s the fact you might need a friendly druid around," Lisa added.


    "Possible, yes, likely, no," I said. "I don''t know what the learning curve looks like for druids, but I''ve been some flavor of supernatural for like five or six years, and am very capable for my age. I have no idea how long it''ll take before you''re able to accomplish specific things better than I can; I''m willing to bet that it''ll be... a while."


    "How long is ''a while?''" Lisa asked, pulling out her phone, likely to check the Werewolf''s Guide.


    "I just said I have no idea," I said. "I read the same book you did, Lisa, and I read the whole thing. It does not tell you how long it should take to learn the various tricks of the druid''s trade. Maybe the limiting factor is energy, and once you have your artificial spirits set up, you''ll have more of it than any druid back home could muster. Or maybe the limiting factor is finding and treating with rare, powerful spirits, which you may not be able to make. This is probably something even experienced druids would have a hard time estimating, but I can''t be sure of that, either. I''ve worked alongside druids in the past, and hosted druids in my home, but I''ve never been close with them in the way that lets me understand their life patterns and how they grow. I just know that Jason Thronebreaker was a werecrow who was very eager to work together with me every time a would-be tyrant arose." I sighed. "A shame he couldn''t help this time."


    "...Jason Thronebreaker?" Lisa asked.


    "Indeed," I said. "There''s a tendency among supernaturals of all stripes to take on new names. You wouldn''t believe how many self-proclaimed Counts and Draculas I''ve met amongst vampires. Hell, I used to call myself Ophiuchus in the company of my peers. And then I stopped being a teenager and realized I did not have the right presence to pull that shit off without looking hella cringe."


    "So I should hold off, then," Lisa said.


    "I mean, if you really want to moonlight as a superheroine named Red Fox, I''m not gonna stop you," I said. "Druids were often the ones with the most respectable pseudonyms- remind me to tell you about Tidestrider sometime. But, for the most part..." I shrugged. "Nothing wrong with just being a girl named Lisa Fox. You don''t need to impress anyone, except maybe Akane, but honestly, that girl is a golden retriever, and all you need to impress her is let her pet your ears sometimes."


    Lisa snorted. "What is it with her and my ears?"


    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    "You don''t spend much time on the internet, do you?" I asked. "You''re a foxgirl, Lisa. Of course Akane wants to pet your ears and touch your fluffy tail. That''s what modern culture has agreed is the expected way to treat women with animal ears."


    "Does that happen before or after the weird, kinky sex?"


    "Typically before, but you, of course, can draw your boundaries wherever you like."


    I continued to brush out her hair. I was fairly certain I got all her knots and tangles out, but I might as well keep going. It was, once properly washed and brushed out, fairly nice hair, with a nice vibrant red color.


    "So... you hunted with druids back home, yeah?" Lisa asked.


    I sighed.


    "I did, yeah," I said, nodding. "And, admittedly, in a week or so, I''m gonna start hunting on the regular again. Veronica''s kinda hard to get along with, so I made a bet with her that I could bring in enough money through bounty hunting in one month to pay for the house twice over."


    "I don''t suppose you could use a sidekick, could you?" Lisa asked.


    "Are you really that bored?" I asked.


    "I- no- maybe?" Lisa huffed. "I just..." She trailed off.


    "...Right," I said, sighing. "One thing I do know about druids is that they do take on meaningful non-physical aspects of their patron animal, and so every werewolf, wereshark, and werefox has, within them, the spark of a predator. Of a hunter." I finally stopped brushing her hair. "That, right there, is what I reckon you''re feeling. Well, that and the fact you grew up on Superhero World, which apparently makes everyone into a wannabe cop."


    "The hell do you mean, wannabe cop?" Lisa asked.


    "You know, the common dream of being a superhero," I said. "Akane had it, too. It is the only way I can rationalize the absolute insanity of anyone wishing they had my job, because, speaking as someone who''s been doing it for five years, it fucking sucks."


    "Then what do you think I should do?" Lisa asked, more than slightly exasperated.


    "Honestly, my recommendation would be to sit down and wait for the feeling to pass," I said. "But, having known many druids in my time... the feeling may not pass." I grunted. "Come to me next Monday morning, if the feeling is still there. If it isn''t, and you''re just bored and want to spend time with me..." I shrugged. "Iunno, we''ll watch TV together or something. Play some Minecraft, maybe."


    "Urban Fantasy Earth has Minecraft?" Lisa asked.


    "Of course it does. It''s not literally Hell on Earth." I chuckled. "Anyhow, you mind brushing out my hair? I''ve tried asking Akane, but uh... well, she does not know how to handle hair with even the slightest amount of curl."


    Lisa snorted. The both of us had decently curly hair, although mine was a great deal longer than hers, having been allowed to grow for years compared to Lisa''s two months. It was so long that I physically could not reach large amounts of it as it trailed down my back, and so brushing it out myself required either using my tentacles or a robot.


    Hrm. It occurred to me that Lisa didn''t know I had tentacles.


    "Hey Lisa," I said, as she turned around and took the brush from me. "Did you know I have tentacles?"


    "Yeah, and I''m the Queen of-" Lisa began, before a quartet of tentacles poked out from behind my back. "...You''re serious."


    "Now, because you''re a trans furry, I know what your first thought is," I said. "And no. These aren''t meant for sex. They''re basically just arms."


    "My disappointment is immeasurable," Lisa said dryly. "So, why do you have tentacles? Are you a wereoctopus on top of being a mad scientist?"


    "I''ve told you, I''m not a druid," I said, turning around and allowing her access to my hair. "More to the point, that''s just flatly impossible. Nobody can drink from more than one well. You can''t be a vampire and a demiurge, or a druid and a thaumaturge, or a superhero and a primordial. You get one source of supernatural power, and then you''re stuck with it forever."


    "So I can''t have tentacles of my own?" Lisa asked.


    "Weeeeell," I said. "Here''s the thing: Demiurges are unique. With a very few intuitive exceptions, Demiurges don''t have powers the way everyone else does. We build our powers. And while we can''t hand out our tech to mere mortals, we can hand it over to other supernaturals. So, y''know. It is totally possible that I could, say, equip you with a set of gloves that let you hit people with lightning."


    "Huh," Lisa said. "Okay, yeah, lightning gloves do sound cooler than tentacles. But I kinda want both?"


    "That''s... tricky," I said. "Demiurges have been installing gadgets in each other for ages. Buuuut, the track record for implanting gadgets in other supernaturals is... thinner. It''s hard to tell which accounts are apocryphal or factual, and a lot of the accounts which are verifiably factual paint a very spotty and discouraging picture."


    "Spit it out," Lisa said.


    "Seventy five percent chance that installing tentacles in your back will put you in the hospital or just straight up kill you."


    "...Okay, yeah, I think I can live without tentacles," Lisa said, starting to brush my hair.


    "Thank you for being brave about it," I said. "Hey, you planning to turn in for the night?"


    "Not soon, no," Lisa said. "It''s barely seven."


    "Wanna come upstairs and watch a documentary with me and Akane?" I asked.


    Lisa hummed quietly, continuing to brush my hair.


    "...About what?" Lisa asked.


    "Experimental aircraft," I said. "Akane''s an aerospace engineer."


    Lisa grunted. "Eh. Maybe next time."


    "Fair enough," I said. Baby steps.


    One day, I''d get this chick out of her shell. But only when she was ready to hatch.

 Book 2 Chapter 7

    Austin was my home, and I did love aspects of it. Unfortunately, Austin was a real city that existed in the real world, and thus had some downsides. And because it existed in America, one of those downsides is that if you didn''t have a car, the city itself hated your guts and wanted you to eat shit and die.


    As such, I had to let certain errands wait until Akane got back from class and I could borrow her car.


    But, because Akane was neither an office worker nor a high school student, the time when I couldn''t run those sorts of errands was fairly limited.


    The week passed fairly quickly and unremarkably; half of the errands I ran were simply for replacing Lisa''s personal affects, such as clothing, toiletries- she didn''t care for the vanilla scent I favored, and insisted on orange for her own- and a laptop, although that one had been acquired at Radio Shack during our spirit-finding expedition. I had, briefly, entertained the thought of an involved custom computer project that incorporated the phone I''d given her, and then I realized that actually, that was stupid as hell, and I should just buy her a goddamn laptop.


    I satisfied my desire for Projects by, instead, building her a custom chair whose design I pilfered from an old book and adapted with the addition of a removable and adjustable lap desk, and also some custom tailoring work. Lisa, being a shapeshifter whose body was responsive to her own thoughts, was transitioning somewhat faster than a woman who was just on E, and therefore preferred to not commit too heavily to the sorts of closely-tailored clothes one got when one roomed with a bored mad scientist with a sewing machine and a tailor''s tape measure. However, Lisa was also a werefox who sometimes wanted to deploy her tail while still wearing clothes. As a result, I got to design and install covert slits and vents in the back of her skirts.


    For some reason, Lisa was more appreciative of the thing she''d explicitly asked me for, and been somewhat skeptical of the project I''d undertaken on grounds I thought she needed it. I mean, okay, she came around on the chair pretty quickly, it was a good chair, but she didn''t have to come around on the skirts.


    My love language was projects only I cared about, ostensibly on behalf of others. And either Lisa''s love language would come to include patiently tolerating this tendency of mine, or she would move out and stop talking to me.


    Akane, meanwhile, was busy with grad school stuff she''d put off and let pile up, and after she complained to me about wrist pain on Tuesday, I''d made another Virtual Machine and implanted that in her head while she slept. It lacked most of the really weird features mine had, but the important part was that she now had a computer she didn''t need to physically type on to use.


    As for Veronica... she didn''t tell me where she was going or what she was doing, and I didn''t ask. It wasn''t out of respect for her privacy, mind, I just didn''t care.


    Finally, Friday morning came, and so did Silas, with a lot of firewood and a dead sheep. He showed me how to start and manage the fire. He showed me how to mix up his mustard-based sauce, and apply it properly to the sheep. He left me with written instructions on maintaining the fire and checking on the barbecue, and then... all that was left to do was wait.


    Around four in the afternoon, the doorbell rang, and Akane''s mothers had arrived.


    <hr>


    "You know, it didn''t hit me until just now," I said, looking around at Akane''s three mothers. "You were raised by a polycule."


    "Is that what the kids call it these days?" Tanya asked. She was black, short, and fat, with a smile that lit up the room and a voice like honey. She''d hugged Akane the longest out of the three mothers, and while I couldn''t quite pin Akane''s affectionate nature on her exclusively, I felt it was pretty safe to say she contributed.


    "Oh come off it, we all know what that word means," Samina said. She, in turn, was tall and lanky, and by my estimation, a Sikh; there were other reasons for an Indian woman to wear a steel bracelet on her wrist and a dagger on her belt, but not many; I was fairly confident in the estimation.


    "Raised by a polycule, she says," Haruna added. She was, as far as I could tell, the one who had actually given birth to Akane, given that she looked a lot like Akane. A bit skinnier, though, and with a bubblegum pink pixie cut instead of Akane''s shiny black waterfall. "The same way some heroes were raised by wolves?"


    "In this case, cougars," I said, prompting peals of laughter.


    "If you''re not going to sleep with her, I am," Haruna said.


    "I''m trying, okay?" Akane said. "Anyway. Roxy, you wanted to know why I wanted to pursue this research, right? Mom, do you mind if I tell Roxy about...?"


    "Hm? Oh, yeah, go ahead," Haruna said. "It''s not a secret."


    "Ah, right, this," I said. "So, Akane, what''s the secret-that-isn''t?"


    "Haruna Sakurai is the most intelligent person on the planet," Akane said. "That''s her superpower, tremendous intelligence. And when she couldn''t crack the riddle of superpowers on her own... she ran an experiment, to see how heritable superpowers were." She inhaled and exhaled. "I''m a direct genetic clone of Haruna Sakurai, and although I didn''t inherit her powers, I did inherit the mission, the purpose. Figuring out how superpowers work is what I was born for, Roxy."


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    It occurred to everyone, myself included, that Akane making such a grandiose declaration about her purpose in front of her mothers could be... awkward.


    "That''s... not really accurate, Akane," Haruna said cautiously.


    "Huh?" Akane asked.


    "I''ve mentioned this before, but I had you as a way to work through the trauma of my own upbringing," Haruna said. "To create a version of me who grew up in a way she didn''t have to recover from. The experiment was... not really a thing I was doing. I just happened to mention being mildly curious whether or not you''d inherit my powers, once or twice."


    "I... that..." Akane blinked.


    "I''m still in your corner if this is what you want to study," Haruna said, putting a comforting hand on Akane''s shoulder. "It''s important, not just to you but to a lot of other people. But all the same, Akane, I don''t want you to feel like you have to do this because of me. I didn''t make you so you could follow in my footsteps; I made you so I could follow yours."


    "Okay, before Akane has even more of an existential crisis," I said, before pausing. "Akane, after this, remind me to walk you through the high points of Jean-Paul Sartre, it''s very relevant. Anyway, where was I? Right, I have nitpicks. Haruna, you''re a rocket scientist. How the hell did you clone yourself?"


    "I''m currently a rocket scientist," Haruna corrected me, wrapping Akane in a tight hug. "But my power means I can master the state of the art in a given field in maybe a year or so, and then push beyond that from there. One of the first fields I studied was genetics."


    "Ah. That''d do it. And... Akane having a noticeably different phenotype?" I asked.


    "Part of it is just that she was raised differently, with different environmental factors," Haruna said. "But another part is that, before I decided to have her, I performed some genetic therapies on myself. It wasn''t until after Akane was already born that I realized that I''d been a bit more thorough than I should have been, and she''d inherited them."


    "I see," I said, trying to find a diplomatic way to say ''so that''s why your daughter is so curvy.''


    "Which is why she''s got bigger tits than I do," Haruna said, reminding me that diplomacy meant something very different here. "I was designing gene therapies for myself at twenty five. When they stayed in the veins of someone a lot younger... well, they overshot the mark when Akane finally hit puberty."


    "And you didn''t fix the problem before it became a problem because..?" I asked.


    "Performing medical procedures on people without their consent is generally considered unethical," Haruna said. "I waited until Akane was graduating middle school, which seemed to me old enough to understand what was at stake, and offered the choice. And she decided that she wanted tits more than she wanted athleticism."


    "Alright. Well, one more question," I said. "Why did you create Akane as a clone, rather than just an unconventionally-conceived daughter with the admixture of someone else''s genetics?"


    "I... didn''t have a happy childhood," Haruna explained. "Cloning myself was... something of a power fantasy. A chance to make right what had gone wrong, to raise a version of me properly."


    I nodded. "Right, well, unfortunately, there''s one crucial thing that the two of you seem to not be fully grasping: there isn''t two of you. There is one of Haruna, and one of Akane, and the two of you have never been the same person in any meaningful way."


    "Huh?" Akane asked. "Wait. Roxy, is this that ''you never step in the same river twice'' thing?"


    "I mean that''s also true, but we don''t even need to go that deep," I said. "The two of you don''t even look identical. Akane is wearing dark colors with long sleeves and a skirt, and Haruna is wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. The hair is different. And Akane, I''m willing to bet that you chose inconveniently large boobs that ended your athleticism because it would further differentiate you from your mother."


    "I... well, yes, but..."


    "But nothing," I said. "She''s not you, Akane, and you aren''t her. She''s your mother, and she''s played a huge role in shaping the person you''ve become, but she shaped you differently, and it''s important to acknowledge that." I grinned a little. "And while she may not give two shits about how or why superpowers work, you do, don''t you?"


    "I... well..." Akane blinked, looking away.


    "Look, I''m not going to dock points from you because you didn''t come up with an answer for why you care that satisfied me," I said. "For one, I actually can''t dock points from you, because I''m not a schoolteacher and I''m not grading any assignments. But more importantly, there''s no real deadline. I just wanted to get you thinking, and now that I have, you can take all the time you need to think. I''ll be here for you the whole time."


    "This is one of the weirdest barbecues I''ve ever been to," Tanya said, reminding me that I was not alone out here with Akane and her biological mother.


    "One of?" Lisa asked, reminding me further that she was also here.


    "Before my dad died, he brought this Greek kid to a barbecue and said, since none of his blood children could smoke worth a damn, he was adopting a son who could." Tanya smiled. "We came to like Silas pretty quickly, mind, but Dad made one hell of a first impression for him."


    "Speaking of Silas, him and his family are coming," I said. "Now that we''ve established pretty clearly who''s who, I''m gonna go check on the barbecue."


    I glanced at Akane, wordlessly checking on her, and got a smile in return. It was a shaky smile, but still a smile, so I''d take it.

 Book 2 Chapter 8

    "I sure did pick a bad time to give you an existential crisis, huh?" I asked.


    It was late, and all four of us were gathered in Akane''s room for varying degrees and varieties of emotional support. I was being used as a chair, with my arms around Akane''s waist, and Akane herself was also being used as a chair by an uncharacteristically cuddly Lisa- "Just this once," she''d said before transforming into a fox. Veronica, oddly enough, was "lying"(floating) on her back, legs running up the wall, and head tilted "back" to look at us. She also had her arms folded over her collarbones to stop her boobs from falling forward into her face, which gave me the mission to make her agitated enough to gesture with both arms to see how well-founded that fear was.


    "You said something about... uh... John Paul Salter or something?" Akane said.


    "Jean-Paul Sartre," I corrected her. "And yes, he''s one of the major founders of the school of thought known as existentialism. Everyone who doesn''t want a philosophy lecture... too goddamn bad."


    "What even is existentialism?" Veronica asked.


    "An excellent question! But first, we need to talk about knives. A knife could have a blade of ceramic, of steel, of iron, perhaps even glass. But for an object to truly be a knife, it has to have a blade, and a true blade has to be able to cut. And thus, the blade is an essential quality of a knife; that having a blade is what knifehood means, that to cut is a knife''s purpose. The ability to cut is the essence of a knife."


    "Would that not make this essentialism?" Veronica asked.


    "If, and only if, I went on to assert that humans all had indelible essential qualities, purposes, and meanings," I said. "Existentialism is the inverse of that: existence precedes essence. A person''s life has no meaning or purpose beyond what that person chooses. We are, all of us, condemned to freedom, forced to choose what our life is for. You may think you didn''t have to choose, that your parents chose for you, but you did have to choose, because there was always the option to go against their wishes, even if that thought never occurred to them."


    "So... existentialism is the idea that I have to choose what I want to be when I grow up?" Akane asked.


    "More or less, yeah," I said, nodding. "The history of essentialism and existentialism and their deeply political implications for human society are a fascinating topic, but I''m not getting into that right now. I could also get into nihilism, the idea that nothing has inherent purpose or meaning, that the idea of essence is a load of hogwash, and things only mean what we choose for them to mean, and how this can actually be a deeply comforting and uplifting perspective... but I just did and there''s not much more to say about it, so. Anyway. Right now, I am explaining exactly enough of the philosophy so that you understand what an existential crisis is, and therefore the general shape of the solution. And, also, why I can''t just tell you the solution. Only you can know what you want out of life."


    "But I don''t know what I want out of life," Akane said.


    "You don''t know that you know," I said. "Fortunately, you''ve got us to ask leading questions to tease it out of you. For instance, how would you like to drop out of grad school, abandon human contact, and go live in the woods?"


    "I''d prefer not to," Akane said.


    Lisa, meanwhile, made angry fox noises at me.


    "Well, we know what you don''t want to do," I said. "So... think about what you do want to do. Daydream about your ideal life. What do you want? I''m guessing you want to keep doing mad science, but what do you want to do with mad science? Do you want to keep doing grad school for its own sake, is there anything you want to do that a Master''s in Aerospace would be useful or even necessary for?" I paused. "Bear in mind, for the most part, you can change your mind about what it is you want. People do that all the time. Don''t feel bound by anything you say now, just... start spitballing."


    "...I want hugs," Akane said.


    "Alright, keep going," I said. "How can you get hugs, and which of those ways appeal the most to you?"


    "I want... to live in this house, with my friends," Akane said. "With you three. And to have moments like this happen when I''m not having a bad day."


    "What, with a fox in your lap and you in my lap?" I asked.


    "Or Nicky''s lap," Akane said with a shrug. "I know Nicky doesn''t really do affection, but I can hope and pine."


    "You will never let this go, will you?" Veronica said.


    "Only one way to find out!" Akane said.


    Veronica sighed, letting her arms drop, and making incoherent noises of protest as she accidentally punched herself in the face with her own boobs.


    I pointed and laughed as she righted herself, scowling at me all the way.


    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    "Man, I''ve heard of college kids getting shitfaced," I said, "but not titfaced!"


    "For that?" Veronica said. "You do not get a hug. Akane, you will have to extricate yourself from your chair and your unprocessed fur blanket first."


    Lisa yowled again.


    "Lisa''s right," I said. "Why doesn''t she get a hug? She didn''t point and laugh at you."


    "She was thinking it very loudly," Veronica said, folding her arms.


    Akane gave Lisa''s ears one last scratch, before scooping her up, clambering out of my lap, and setting Lisa down on my lap, whereupon Lisa continued to receive skritches behind the ears, and down to the ruff of her neck.


    Akane, meanwhile, pulled Veronica into a hug that was, perhaps, deeper than Veronica was expecting; she''d started out nearly horizontal, clearly intending to just go for an arms-and-shoulders hug, and to her credit, she stayed horizontal, but now she was pressed fully against Akane, who went for the leg-lock, which she always does when she doesn''t want the hug to end. Which is endearing, but sometimes I have to get up and do things, Akane.


    "So you want affection," I said. "In large quantities and frequent doses."


    "Yep!" Akane said, patting Veronica''s back gently. "Is it okay that I want some of the same things as my mother?"


    "Sure, why not," I said. "You''re not the same person as her, but you are still her daughter; it''s not like you have to reject everything about her if you don''t want to."


    "Then I... want to be part of a polycule," Akane said.


    "Flattering," I said, nodding. "But also a long-term goal; for all that you''re very lovable, the rest of us just live here for now."


    "Royalty has its pressures," Veronica added, floating up and off the bed and peeling Akane off of her. "I remain in Austin because my mother deems this matter worthy of my personal attention. When it has resolved, though... who can say?"


    "I am reasonably confident that when the situation is resolved, I will be moving back to my home universe," I said. "And then there''s Lisa, who has chosen to not participate in this conversation in lieu of receiving ear skritches. A decision I respect, because her ears are very soft and I am very grateful she allows me to touch them. But for the time being, we know you want to live a life full of affection and love. So what about research, the thing that set us down this path to begin with?"


    "I think... I think I still want to study superheroes, and how superpowers work," Akane said. "But now... Not because it''s important to Mom. But because it''s important to me."


    "Hrm..." I tapped my chin with one hand, the other still rubbing Lisa''s ears. "Try mixing in some more pride. That it''s important to you is good enough, obviously, but I wanna see what you look like with some real pride."


    "...I want to study superheroes because it''s important to the world," Akane said, after some thought, crawling back into my lap and jockeying for position with Lisa.


    "A little more," I said.


    "I want to figure out how superheroes work," Akane said, "because I might be the only person on this planet who can."


    "Now that''s what I''m talking about," I said, reaching down to pat her head. "There we go. Hell yeah, girl!"


    "Far be it from me to interrupt Aspirational Mad Science Slogan Hour," Veronica drawled, "but Akane, are you not currently pursuing a doctorate in aerospace engineering? What about this vision is so persuasive that you are willing to abandon all hope of getting a real job?"


    "Nicky, I have superpowers," Akane said. "If the jobs that opens up for me aren''t real jobs, then neither is yours."


    "She''s got you there," I said. "Also, real talk, a PhD is not a guarantee of a job. There isn''t a fucking Jobs Fairy waiting to reward you for your suffering and hard work. Hell, I have a doctorate and a research fellowship, but they didn''t actually pay me very much. If I didn''t have savings from bounty hunting, I wouldn''t have been able to keep the lights on."


    "There is a difference between a PhD in folklore and one in aerospace engineering," Veronica said.


    "I have an MD in Applied Transhumanism," I said, instead of ''so help me child if you call me an idiot one more time I''m going to mail pieces of you to your mother.'' "On a different subject, however... Akane, for the next month or so, starting this upcoming Monday, I will be busy with bounty hunting obligations, and so any spare time you might pick up from dropping out will have to be spent without my tutelage."


    "Ooooh, bounty hunting," Akane said. "Can I come?"


    "No," Veronica and I said in unison. "Bounty hunting is a high-skill, high-risk profession," I continued. "One of the most basic facts is that, in the absence of powerful anger, normal humans do not find it easy to attack other humans, and being able to use force against people with a level head is a prerequisite to pretty much any job involving the use of force. This alone would take more than a month. How much more than a month is generally pretty variable, but it doesn''t matter; I''ll be done with my obligations in the space of a month, and will return to my usual low-level gumshoeing."


    "Awww..." Akane said, pouting. "I never get to have any fun..."


    "I''ll buy you an Xbox or something," I said. "I don''t know what video games you people have and I don''t actually care. I don''t play very many of them."


    "It''s pronounced Sexbox, actually," Akane said.


    "No it is not," Veronica said. "As much as I may approve of pulling Roxy''s leg in the abstract, I must object to abusing her status as a fish out of water."


    "I''m having enough trouble with geography and history as it is," I added.


    "Oh?"


    "Yeah, see, in my universe," I began, "the state and the capitol were named after George Washingtub."


    Akane choked and started coughing, and Veronica scowled. I stayed stoic and straight-faced, even as I high-fived Akane.


    "I see my efforts to be considerate of your feelings are in vain," Veronica said.


    "Aw, love you too, Ronnie." I was pretty sure she was playing up how annoyed she was, because she knew I was trying to fuck with her and did want to give me the satisfaction of knowing it''s working.


    "That is the worst shortening of Veronica I have ever been subjected to."


    "I got it from Archie Comics."


    "That does not improve my opinion."


    "Anyhow. It''s getting late, and Akane, you seem to be... stable, for now," I said. "You need anything else, or can I go to bed?"


    "I need you to cuddle me to sleep, actually," Akane said.


    I scooped the fox out of my lap and dropped it in hers.


    "You''re going to have to learn to settle," I said, getting up and out of bed. "Night, ladies."

 Book 2 Chapter 9

    "Everybody freeze!"


    Akane''s moms were lovely houseguests, and had all sorts of interesting things to talk about. Haruna, for one, was one of the ten other people in the world who knew and cared who Ken Isaacs was, and had somehow not conveyed this knowledge to her daughter at any point because while Akane was very emotionally open, Haruna still had not yet managed to kill the part of her that cringes, and did not talk her daughter''s ear off about Grid Beam and the design ecosystem it was thickly enmeshed in.


    The upshot of this was that I had a helping hand in talking Akane into replacing her bed frame with a four foot high loft, creating a quartet of four foot cubes she could use for all sorts of things like clothes storage, desk-based workspace, and an enlarged version of the chair I''d built for Lisa.


    "Roxy," Lisa hissed.


    "Oh, right," I said, before my eyes glowed green. "You''re under arrest."


    They were gone, it was Monday, and I''d taken Lisa bounty hunting with me, for reasons I promise aren''t hypocritical.


    "Let me get this out of your way," I said to the clerk, grabbing the glowing-eyed, insensate supervillain and dragging them towards the door. Usually they had higher targets than liquor stores, but incidents like this were hardly unheard of.


    "I don''t understand why you couldn''t just shoot this asshole the moment they walked in," Lisa said, once we were outside, and I silently called the police to come pick up This Asshole. "Hell, you went down a list, scrying on supervillains and remotely reading their minds to see who planned on robbing a place today, but you could''ve also just figured out where they lived and taken them down there."


    "Well, it''s because the justice system is so unreasonably concerned with this thing called evidence," I said. "Sure, my own personal standards accept my scanners as strong enough evidence to go after someone, but a well-run court of law will generally require evidence that this person actually did something illegal on purpose before throwing them in jail."


    "Counterpoint," Lisa said. "When you went after Hordemaster, you just broke into his apartment, kicked his ass, and handed him off to the police."


    "Well, sure, because that apartment had all kinds of evidence establishing that this particular asshole was Hordemaster, the supervillain they all knew did all those crimes. Hordemaster was distinctive, and also sloppy. But villains like... whoever the fuck this guy is, I don''t remember or care, villains like This Asshole need to be caught in the act, so that there''s a solid chain of evidence connecting him to at least one illegal act, and probably more as it''s established more and more firmly that this guy isn''t just an unlucky copycat."


    "I see," Lisa said quietly. "So... how''s the law interact with you using those scanners in the first place?"


    "Mostly, it doesn''t," I said with a shrug. "I''m a bounty hunter, not a cop. The rules are different for me. Not more permissive, but different. Cops have a lot more leeway on the use of lethal force."


    "So, what''s stopping you from passing this information on to the cops?" Lisa asked.


    "Well, for one, I don''t get paid for that," I said. "Two, cops still need warrants. Bounty hunters don''t, due to some disgusting chicanery I''m reluctantly taking advantage of."


    "Walk me through it," Lisa said. "I don''t have anything better to do."


    "Right, so. In America, when someone is arrested, they go to jail- which is not prison- to ensure they show up to the trial," I said. "They have the option of posting bail, which is to say, giving the state cash, a bond, or some sort of valuable collateral to, again, ensure they show up to the trial. Now! Posting bail isn''t unique to America, but what is unique is the institution of bail bondsmen, who will post bail on your behalf... for a price. And if you don''t show up to court, they are legally allowed to arrest you and drag you to court, despite not being agents of the state, because they had a contractual agreement with you. That''s what bounty hunters were on B-944 before superpowers came about. Then superpowers happened, and some ethically bankrupt asshole managed to convince the state''s legal apparatus that all that precedent conceived for bail bondsmen should apply to what are basically profiteering vigilantes, because both are called bounty hunters."


    "...You''re right, that is disgusting," Lisa said. "I mean, as a werefox, I appreciate some good trickery, but that... That''s not even all that clever. That''s just abusive."


    "Mhm."


    We stood there, still waiting. Cops took a while.


    "...Why am I here?" Lisa said. "You told Akane she wasn''t ready, but... I am?"


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    "Akane doesn''t need to be involved in this," I said. "As far as this business is concerned, there''s nothing she can do that I can''t do better. You, though, need to immerse yourself in the hunt, develop spirits of the hunt, and gain abilities for the hunt."


    "Why do I need that?" Lisa asked.


    "Because you learning to hunt like a druid is my best bet of finding Doctor Skinner before she breaks this world over her knee," I said. "If you like living on this planet, where the population isn''t brainwashed to serve her, then going along with this is in your best interests."


    "...What''s it mean that I''m a little excited about this?" Lisa asked.


    "Means you''re a fox," I said, as the sirens finally became audible. "Foxes aren''t just weird-looking dogs whose ears look good on cute anime girls. Foxes are hunters. And now? So are you."


    <hr>


    Our next target was a villain crew called the Console Cowboys, who combined the hacker and cowboy aesthetic, riding around on motorcycles with revolvers. Fully half of their robberies were of Radio Shacks- which were a far more lucrative business in this universe than they had been back home- and this time was no exception.


    "Fucking shit that hurts!" I yelled, before breaking the bastard''s arm. I''d been trying to throw him into the floor, but as long as he wasn''t shooting me, I was fine.


    "I thought you were bulletproof!" Lisa shouted, taking down her own Console Cowboy with mad science-enhanced electro-claws.


    An interesting little tidbit about druids was that, no matter what their patron animal was, every single one of them had an intermediate ''war form'' where they were 50% taller than they were as a human, jacked as hell, and had any and all of their patron animal''s traits that would make them more capable in a fight. Nobody really knew why. It sure as fuck was not because of werewolves, though, because even the largest grey wolves are only like six and a half feet from nose to tail and are outmassed by the average human, and the war form made no sense for them either.


    "That just means they don''t break the skin! They still hit five times harder than a fastball!"


    I was a technopath, and that did mean I was the natural predator of any technology-based combatant, but there was a limit to how many firearms I could control into not firing.


    A limit currently entirely occupied by some jackass called Billy the Squid, who was wearing a duster, a cowboy hat, and the most obnoxiously quasi-cyberpunk visor I''d ever seen, and had four robot tentacles just like me, except instead of those tentacles being general-purpose limbs, their manipulating ends were replaced with firearms. Specifically, revolvers.


    That had to be reloaded manually.


    It was common knowledge that superscientists were not statistically any smarter than the rest of humanity, and idiots like Billy the Squid were why.


    Billy finally realized that he could just hit me with his tentacles, and launched me across the parking lot- we''d intercepted them out here, in hopes of not trashing the Radio Shack itself in the fight that would surely ensue.


    The crunch of glass as I landed in someone''s windshield told me that I''d probably miscalculated.


    "Hah! You done got pwn''d, pardner!" Billy crowed.


    I could control one of his tentacles, make it shoot him in the head. Nobody would be able to prove I''d done it.


    "You are just determined to piss me off, aren''t you?" I asked, climbing to my feet and extruding my own tentacles.


    "You''re the one who broke my arm!"


    "You shot me!"


    Of all the supervillains who proved resistant to mind control, it simply had to be Billy the Fucking Squid. My system was near foolproof; I just had to flare the eye-glow and say ''you''re under arrest'' and ninety percent of the time they went without a fight.


    I still packed more heat than an oven when I went bounty hunting, though, because the ten percent of the time was always with people who had more than just mental resistance to their name, and I didn''t feel like dying.


    I launched myself at Billy, this time with my tentacles fully in play, taking away all avenues of resistance. He screamed as his broken arm was jostled, but... well, I wasn''t terribly empathetic. Dude shot me.


    "My hat!" he yelled as the hat came off, and an idea occurred to me. His was a gang of superscientists and gadgeteers, after all.


    "You''re under arrest," I said, my eyes glowing green. His glowed green as well, and he went limp. "Lisa! Knock their hats off!"


    She nodded, beginning to follow my advice, and I brought more and more of them under my thrall, turning the gang against itself until everyone was down, save for a pair of stragglers who managed to get away from Lisa.


    "Get back on your pony!" one of them yelled, already kickstarting his own engine and starting to peel off before I could do anything about it. So I put a stop to it by locking the front brakes instead, sending him over the bars, and even pulling the motorcycle up and over itself to land on him.


    I frowned slightly under my mask. Yeah, I''d locked the front brakes, but he hadn''t been going that fast.


    The other one found his motorcycle inoperable, and was caught up with by Lisa, who had him zip tied in a flash.


    "Ponies, huh?" I remarked, approaching the groaning, prone man with probably a lot of broken bones. "I''ll admit your steel horses aren''t on the large side, but they''re pretty firmly medium, I''d say."


    "Nnnn... nah, see... they''re... pwnies," he said. "Cause they pwn."


    I should''ve hit him harder.


    "I trust you understand you''re under arrest, now?" I said instead.


    "Asshole..."


    "It pays the bills," I said with a shrug, prying him out from under his motorcycle and zip-tying his wrists, since his arms weren''t broken. "Besides, you''re the one who brought seven guys to knock over a fucking Radio Shack."


    He didn''t seem to have a response to that, or maybe I just didn''t care enough to listen. The police response time was a lot faster, this time, albeit still taking enough time that I managed to fix the windshield I''d been thrown through before they got here.


    "Alright, well," I said, as the cops loaded the Console Cowboys up. "I think we''re just about done for the day."


    Lisa nodded, still in her war form to avoid showing her face. "Let''s go home."

 Book 2 Chapter 10

    "Okay, so... mind-controlling villains at home to show us the evidence that they''re a villain, or to go out and do something illegal so we can arrest them," Lisa said.


    "The first is a violation of the Fifth Amendment," I said. "The second is called entrapment, and if it can be proven in court that it happened, the villain goes free, and we might take the fall for it, depending on whether it can be proven that we entrapped them, because we''d be provably responsible for something illegal being done."


    "What are you two reprobates arguing about?" Veronica asked, floating into the room with a steaming mug of coffee in her hand.


    "Bounty hunting," I said. "Lisa, by virtue of being a werefox, already has the instincts necessary for hunting, and with enough practice, it''s my hope she can develop hunt-related abilities that make finding Doctor Skinner much easier when the time comes."


    "And I''m certain this has nothing to do with the wager we made last week," Veronica said blandly.


    "The sun does not rise and set upon yon golden head, child," I said. "In point of fact, I would prefer to not be bringing Lisa along on my hunts, seeing as she is less mobile than I am, but I have decided that her training is more important than my convenience."


    "I''m not a dog," Lisa bristled.


    "Humans are also trained," I said, closing my eyes behind my sunglasses- which I''d recently swapped the lenses for, after finally un-fucking my eyes. "At any rate, Veronica, if you don''t have anything constructive to add, I''d prefer if you''d leave us alone."


    "Constructive, hrm?" Veronica asked, tapping her chin with her free hand. "Well, I could point out that many supervillains in town have very illegal long-term operations that could be used by bounty hunters to establish culpability without relying on catching them red-handed. I could, also, idly make mention of the fact that I am perfectly willing to assist with villain captures, in exchange for fifty percent of the reward, for the purposes of our wager. Is that sufficiently constructive?"


    "Yes, but it sounds like you''ve run out of things to say," I said.


    "That I have. Call me when you''re ready to admit you need help."


    She floated off, and I grunted.


    "...So, what wager?" Lisa asked.


    "That I could, as a bounty hunter, pull in enough money in a month to pay for this house twice over," I said. "The winner establishes social dominance over the loser. Which, if it works..." I shrugged. "Well, Veronica can be nice, funny, charming, all those good things, but she''s also a modern day warrior-aristocrat whose mother is a literal princess. It''s inevitable that she''s going to end up butting heads with anyone who considers themselves more experienced and knowledgeable than her in a subject she cares about. And since I don''t have any kind of accessible record to point at for ethos, I''ve gotta make a new one and fast."


    "So, you''re introducing outside-context technology into violent situations where you stand to financially profit," Lisa said, "just so that you and your roommate can establish who''s the alpha."


    "I hate when druids do that," I said. "There''s no good response to one of them bringing up the alpha/omega bullshit, and yet my social scientist instincts can''t help but scream ''you should be nitpicking that.''"


    "Am I wrong?" Lisa asked.


    "No, but you should be," I said. "Hopefully, at this point, everyone and their mother knows that this alpha/beta/omega bullshit isn''t how real wolf packs work. Real wolf packs are family units composed of a breeding pair and their children. The alpha/beta/omega social dynamic was based on observations of unnatural wolf packs, which were composed entirely of strange, unrelated wolves, who were then forced to share a living space. And now, here in this house, four unrelated people are being made to live together, and two of them are currently struggling for dominance."


    "So you''re fighting with your roommate over who gets to be the alpha," Lisa said, grinning.


    "You''re not even a real fucking werewolf, you''re a werefox, and those are not pack hunters!"


    "Humans are," Lisa said.


    "...You''re a horrible brat," I said. "Right, whatever. We still have a job to do, and contrary to what Veronica thinks, I am in fact aware of long-term and large-scale criminal operations in the area that we can deal with. The reason we didn''t start there is that catching people red-handed is low-hanging fruit, and collecting the evidence necessary to bust the kind of operation she''s talking about actually takes a fairly long time, and I only have a month to work with."


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "I see," Lisa said. "So, what is our next step, then?"


    "I''m going to continue my scanning, and make sure I know exactly when and where any planned villainous activity is happening so we can show up and stop it in its tracks," I said. "However, in the meantime, we''re going to continue working on hunting resonances. One particular route might prove appealing to you, in fact. How well do you get on with dogs?"


    <hr>


    "Wow," I said, nodding. "So she''s a real, genuine hunting dog, huh?"


    "Yep," Antonio Sanchez said, nodding. "Irish Setter; how much do you know about setters?"


    "Not... that much, I''ll admit," I lied, watching Lisa lavish attention on the chestnut-furred dog in question. We were at a dog park, and had, in fact, borrowed Silas'' family''s dog so that we didn''t look out of place. Currently, however, that mostly just meant I knew exactly whose chihuahua was curled up on my foot. "What''s their role in a hunt?"


    "Well, if you''re hunting grouse or quails, or really any kind of game bird," Antonio began, "a setter will hold its head up high in the air, sniffing for bird scent- which isn''t on the ground, because birds fly, obviously." I nodded. "Once they find the birds, they point, showing you where they are without spooking the birds. And because I can only keep one hunting dog properly trained at a time, Meche''s been trained to flush them out when I give the word."


    I already knew all this stuff, but Lisa needed time to infuse her essence into Meche, strengthening her resonance of hunting and loyalty until a critical mass was formed and formed a hunting spirit. It wasn''t just a case of dumping essence into the dog, either; even a dog was a complicated, multifaceted existence, and if you wanted a useful spirit, you had to emphasize some facets over others.


    "What does training a hunting dog look like?" I asked. "Obviously, some of it''s instinct, but how much?"


    "Well, you''re right that some of it''s instinct," Antonio said, nodding. "Which means you have to start with a good breeder. See, usually, a girl who''s been spayed is the best hunting dog, but a girl who''s been spayed can''t have puppies. I know a guy, I got Meche from him, he tests every puppy in every litter for hunting instincts, and the best ones, he keeps for himself, and the rest he gets fixed and sells to hunters."


    "Hurts a little at first, but over time, you see dividends," I said, nodding back.


    "Exactly. Well, once you know you''ve got a puppy with good instincts, then comes the training," Antonio said. "It depends from breed to breed. Irish Setters like Meche are real friendly, but they hate repetition. If they think they''ve got it, they''re ready to move on, and they get frustrated if you keep trying to train the same thing. And in general, but especially with setters, you need to take a gentle hand; correct them too hard, and instead of learning, they just stop listening."


    "Really? Friendly?" I asked, glancing meaningfully at Meche and Lisa. "I never would''ve guessed."


    "Your friend there isn''t even the first time today Meche''s fallen in love with someone."


    "The best kind of dog, in my opinion," I said, nodding.


    Lisa, after one last ruffle of Meche''s ears, finally stood back up, rolling her shoulders. "God, I needed that... Thank you, Meche. And you, Antonio."


    "Hey, no problem," Antonio said, nodding. "How''s your dog holding up?"


    "Honestly, Taco isn''t my dog," I said, kneeling down and gently scooping up the chihuahua. "We wanted to go to a dog park, but didn''t want to feel like weirdos, so we asked our neighbor if we could borrow his dog."


    Antonio snorted in amusement. "They don''t let you have dogs, where you live?"


    "We could have a dog if we wanted, that''s not the problem," I said. "The problem is, dogs are a big commitment, and... well, we''re all like twenty. Not the best time to be adopting a furry kid who''ll never grow up." Granted, Akane had instead been pushing for getting a cat, but just because cats were less work than dogs didn''t mean they were no work.


    "Ahhhh, I see, I see," Antonio said, nodding. "Good on you for being responsible. You heading out?"


    "I think so, yeah," I said, nodding. "Good meeting you and Meche. See you around."


    Lisa and I left, with Taco staying in my arm, but still getting the leash put back on her collar.


    "So, it worked?" I asked.


    "I got my spirit hound, yeah," Lisa said. "I am out of essence, though."


    "And that''s why I had you making spirit rabbits earlier this week," I said. "Turn that puppy loose and have her bring you a rabbit."


    "I can''t believe it''s that simple," Lisa said. "But nope! Rabbit spirits get essence from grazing and breed like crazy. Hound spirits get essence from hunting rabbits. And since this hound spirit is loyal, I can tell her to hunt a rabbit for me, and she''ll get essence just from the act of hunting, and the essence from the rabbit itself is free for me to take."


    "The spirit world is an ecosystem," I said. "A frequently strange and fucked up ecosystem, but still an ecosystem. You, uh... you''re gonna wanna round out the ecosystem some more in time, by the by."


    "Why''s that?" Lisa asked. "It''s not like the druids from your world can get mad at me for disrespecting nature."


    "Well, for one, one of their baseline tricks is traversing dimensions," I said. "Mostly from the material world to the spirit world and back, but I''m not going to look you in the eye and tell you planeswalking werewolves are impossible. But more importantly, the way the material world influences the spirit world isn''t a one-way street. Yeah, right now we need a lot of spirits of the hunt, but I want you to consider very carefully what might happen if we fill the entire fucking spiritual ecosystem of Texas with hyper-predatory spirits and spineless rabbits for them to prey upon."


    "...You make a compelling point," Lisa said. "Jesus. Okay, well, that''s gonna keep me up at night."


    "Yeah," I said, nodding. "Hopefully, your hound can bring you enough essence to make another one before we get to the next park. We''re gonna need more than one spirit hound."


    I unlocked our car, climbing into the driver''s seat, and passing Taco off to Lisa, who started muttering as I started the engine.


    "...I can''t believe he named a chihuahua Taco Bella."

 Book 2 Chapter 11

    I frowned as I examined the hat.


    "Ah, good, you''re still here," Valiant said, landing gently on the asphault. "You wanted to speak with me?"


    "Yeah, something weird is going on," I said, looking up from the hat I''d taken from the now-docile supervillain. "I''ve been in seven separate supervillain fights these past two weeks, and in all but two of them, the supervillains were wearing hats like these, which provide psychic shielding to the wearer."


    "Huh," Valiant said. "That''s a higher rate than usual."


    In a sense, the hat was confirmation of a greater fear- these were the best that this world''s common heroes and villains could muster against the specter of mind control. If someone like me can knock over nearly the entire villain scene of a major city just with mind control powers and some muscle, then someone like Doctor Skinner really could bend this whole world over a table, with enough prep work that she was absolutely doing right this second.


    It was hard to enjoy my victory, when all it did was prove how easy a time the real enemy would have.


    "Yeah," I muttered. "I figured it''d make sense that people in this town would have more psychic shielding than most, considering you''re here, but to this extent? Something''s up. I don''t know the local superscience like you do; what kind of turnaround time would we be looking at for a villainous gadgeteer churning out a batch of these hats?"


    "It''s impossible to say with certainty," Valiant said. "Some gadgeteers work much faster than others, and some are specialized towards churning out batches of things. However, we''ve been gathering data for most of a century, so... I would ballpark the median at a month or so of dedicated work to churn out a few dozen anti-psychic hats like you''re seeing."


    I grunted assent. "These are superscience, I can tell that much. Not mad science. Beyond that... you''ve been keeping all those hats, right? Does it look like they were all made by the same person?"


    "That''s a tricky question to answer," Valiant said. "It could be that they were all made by the same person, but it could also be that they were all made by different people using the same set of plans. Most superscientists have some ability to copy the work of others, if it''s close enough to their own wheelhouse, with very variable definitions of ''some'' and ''close enough.''"


    "Hrm. Either way, this is a new trend, right?" I asked.


    "It is, yes," Valiant said. "Starting with your sudden bout of heroism, in fact. Would you mind telling me exactly how and why you''ve started behaving this way?"


    "In all honesty, I made a bet with Veronica Vega," I said. "If I can bring in enough money as a bounty hunter in one month to buy the house we live in twice over, then she''s obliged to acknowledge my expertise and skill and stop casting constant aspersions on them."


    Valiant stood there, motionless, probably blinking. "You know," he said quietly, "I was expecting you to say that you had budgetary concerns, or that you needed practice dealing with local superheroes. Something, anything sane."


    "I mean, it''s not like I''m throwing the money or the practice away," I said. "See this fox draped across my shoulders like a scarf? This is Lisa, a werefox, who I''m currently training in the ways of the hunt so that she can help me track down Dr. Skinner. It''s just that this started for very petty reasons."


    Valiant sighed, loud enough to be transmitted through his helmet mic. "Well. So long as something productive is coming of all this. I noticed that villain was mind-controlled; your work?"


    "Yeah, that was me," I said, nodding. "After the second fight with villains that had psychic insulation in their hats, I dug through my files for a weapon I''d downloaded the plans for back on A-510. It was presented as a naughty novelty, since its sole function was to instantly remove people''s clothes, but everyone who thought about combat instantly recognized its potential for removing their opponents'' armor... and then swiftly discovered that it works really poorly on clothing meant to be protective, frequently failing to accomplish anything if your aim wasn''t exactly perfect center-of-mass. Turns out the original creator had, in fact, been trying to make an armor-removing weapon, but ran into those same problems and decided to pretend they''d been trying to make a sex toy all along. I made some tuning modifications, so all it did was knock people''s hats off, which made it a lot more reliable. Been carrying it ever since."


    "Does it work on helmets?"


    "Depends on the helmet. A hardhat? Yes. Your helmet? No." I looked back at the helmet in my hands. "Hey, odd question, but can I keep this one for analysis?"


    "No."


    "Can I borrow one of the many hats that y''all have already collected as evidence for analysis?"


    "...Yes. You''ll have to come down to the office to collect it in person, though. There''s paperwork to fill out."


    <hr>


    Between my specialty in robotics translating quite well to the automated fabrication of mundane goods- not that I could sell those goods, because they were tainted by mad science and would explode if a normal person tried to use them- and both Akane and I have a talent for cosmetic transformations, Lisa had a lot of latitude to try new fashions to see what felt right.


    At first, I''d seen it as an obligation; simply something that had to be done. But over the three weeks Lisa had already spent living with us- two of which were spent bounty hunting- I''d noticed Lisa''s general mood improving, bit by bit. And now, standing there, in big, stompy boots with three-inch heels, a short jacket that ended just above her waist, and a red-orange, black, and white skintight jumpsuit styled after the coat of a red fox, she looked over the fucking moon as she twisted and turned, examining herself in the mirrors we''d set up. It was a look that would set tongues wagging, but more importantly, it set her own tail wagging, with a healthy dose of good old-fashioned gender euphoria.


    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    It amused me that, even with three-inch heels, she was still the shortest woman in the house, because she was naturally 5''6 and Akane, the only other person less than six feet tall in this house, was still a solid 5''10.


    "You look amazing," Akane said, standing behind Lisa and grinning.


    "Really?" Lisa asked, her face not quite catching up with her tail, worry and shame writ large upon it. "It''s not too much?"


    "Honestly, it doesn''t feel like enough to me," Akane admitted. "You''ll get there, though. Baby steps."


    Lisa huffed, turning her head away from Akane and trying, in vain, to avoid blushing.


    "It''s gender euphoria," I added. "You''re a woman. You want to be a woman, you like being a woman. And your ideal of being a woman, it seems to me, involves being acknowledged as attractive. Beautiful. Hot. Sexy."


    "Just like me!" Akane added. "I get gender euphoria from this sort of thing all the time, you know. It''s not just you being a weirdo. You''re just experiencing something people don''t talk about very much, plus some shame because you grew up in a society that hates women and also trans people."


    "I- well- why doesn''t Roxy dress like this, then?" Lisa asked, turning to look at me. "What the hell am I doing wrong?"


    "Comparing yourself to me, for one," I said. "My gender is ''woman'' with an asterisk or three. What gives you gender euphoria mostly does not give me gender euphoria. Trust me, I''ve tried. But... To put it into more simple terms... I''m butch, and you''re femme. Of course we look different. Doesn''t mean you''re doing anything wrong. Gender''s just more complicated than a binary."


    Lisa huffed.


    "So anyway," Akane said, forging onward. "I do like the collar on top of the jumpsuit''s neck, but, I think maybe you''d look even better with a cleavage window?"


    "I have B-cups, leave me alone," Lisa said.


    "I can fix that," Akane said. "How big do you want them?"


    It was, now that it occurred to me, actually a very cunning plan on Akane''s part. Get Lisa to a place she liked, but was ashamed for liking, and then offer her something like that but even more, so that where she currently was seemed instead like the reasonable compromise, and something Lisa would feel less shame about.


    "I''ll think about it," Lisa said.


    "So... Movie night''s tonight," Akane said. "You two still up for that?"


    "You''ve been trying to get this together for two weeks," I said. "We can definitely honor that commitment. I''ll just need some time alone down here to get some work done."


    "Oh right, figuring out who made the hats," Lisa said. "You want me to put a spirit hound on that?"


    "...That''d probably be easier, yeah," I said. "Alright, well, my afternoon just opened up."


    <hr>


    Something I hadn''t considered very much was the possibility that pop culture would be very different here.


    For example, I was currently learning the hard way that, instead of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, these people got two fucking Charlie''s Angels movies a year, each one with two hundred million dollars of budget. Not only that, but... honestly, they were actually pretty good.


    "Spectacle is all fine and dandy," Akane explained. "But about ten years ago, sometime around 2011 or so, technology advanced to the point that a single skilled artist with a good computer could make a spectacle-laded animation on par with the blockbusters, and so Hollywood had to give up and start cultivating actual writing talent so that they could have something to thwap their big meaty moneydicks on top of."


    "I don''t believe that explanation for a second," I said. "Partly because I''ve tried animation before and know exactly how much effort it is that you just cannot take out."


    "And yet it moves," Akane said, gesturing at the TV screen.


    "And yet it moves."


    Granted, it was still Charlie''s Angels, and having actually watched one or two of the movies that got made on A-510, I was quite aware that at least part of the appeal was T&A, mostly aimed at a presumed heterosexual male audience, which made it hit a lot different.


    "I feel like that wasn''t entirely necessary," Veronica complained, as one of the Angels found herself naked in a suburban back yard and covering herself up with an inflatable float from the pool that was ring-shaped and thus covered as little as they could get away with.


    "It could be worse," I said with a shrug. "I''ve seen one of the Charlie''s Angels movies from Porn Parody Earth."


    Akane paused the movie, and turned to look at me, expectantly.


    "Why''d you pause it?" I asked, noting that everyone was staring at me, but refusing to acknowledge it.


    "You can''t just say Porn Parody Earth and leave it at that," Akane said.


    "Alright, so. There''s a universe technically labeled Earth S-569, which we more commonly call Porn Parody Earth," I said. "For reasons nobody fully understands, pop culture there has evolved such that explicit sex is a ubiquitous storytelling tool."


    "So they all have HBO subscriptions," Lisa said dryly.


    "It''s more than that," I said, shaking my head. "You know how if an entire scene in a movie has no dialogue, it''s noteworthy, and an entire movie without dialogue is a strange high-concept art piece? Now replace ''dialogue'' with ''sex'' and imagine an Earth where that''s true."


    "...Christ," Veronica said.


    "So, the Charlie''s Angels movie from there..." Akane began.


    "Is an hour and a half of nonstop crime drama-themed sucking and fucking, yes," I said, nodding. "I actually happen to have a big media library of movies from S-569, although I''ve only watched, like, three or four of them. Mostly it''s just an elaborate joke."


    "A joke," Veronica said.


    "It''s so that I can suggest, at movie nights, that we watch some classic Vietnam War movies," I said. "Such as Full Metal Jackoff, or Forrest Hump, or Rambo: First Cum. Or if you prefer superhero movies, I''ve got some Alan Moore adaptations, like V For Vagina, The Jilling Joke, or Crotchmen..."


    "I hate you."


    "We could even play one of the more cinematic video games," I added. "Like famous Bioware space opera series Ass Erect."


    "I would like to apologize in advance for what I''m about to say," Lisa said, inauspiciously. "But what does the porn parody of the bible look like?"


    "There mostly isn''t one," I said, prompting Veronica to sigh in relief. "Whatever it was that made Porn Parody Earth like this happened a good time after the time of the Roman Empire, and for the most part, has only really affected their film industry. Anyway, since we are under no circumstances watching any movies from there, I suggest we start the movie back up and keep watching."


    "Why not?" Akane asked.


    "Because," Veronica said, "she knows that if she tried to make me watch Big Trouble In Little Vagina, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself."


    "I never get to have any fun..." Akane whined, before hitting play once more.


    Late in the movie, Lisa texted me, and I frowned as I read it.


    Lisa: the hound tracked the creator to the supervillain jailhouse, but it couldnt go inside to narrow it down.


    Lisa: so all we know is that, whoever the hatmaker is, weve probably already arrested them.

 Book 2 Chapter 12

    "One moment," I said, lifting a finger to my ear to clearly signal that I was on the phone. "What is it, Veronica?"


    "I''m at the grocery store," she said. "Do you need anything?"


    "I know we''re running low on eggs..."


    "Already on the list, as is another loaf of bread, and a gallon of milk."


    "Right, right. Speaking of bread, some bread flour would be nice. I''d like to bake some stuff. And a bottle of honey."


    "Got it." She hummed contemplatively.


    "What is it?" I asked.


    "Nothing, just... I think I get it. I''m blonde, I have big tits, and I''m buying bread. It feels right."


    "I''m going to mail your parents a glitter bomb loaded with anthrax," I said, before hanging up. "Roommates, am I right?"


    "Officially, I have to discourage you from following through on that threat," Valiant said, seated behind his desk. "Unofficially, I feel free to note that it''s because those pricks have neighbors."


    "Fair enough," I said. "Now, where were we?"


    "Your investigation led you to discover that your shaman-"


    "Druid."


    "Your druid''s spirits cannot enter what is essentially a supernatural faraday cage," Valiant said.


    "Elaborate on the supernatural faraday cage," I said.


    "It''s a neat piece of superscience," Valiant said. "Relatively old, as such things go. It can be woven into the walls of a building and enclose a space in which superpowers do not work. Superscience does not work. And, it would seem, neither does any other kind of supernatural influence."


    "No," I said.


    "...Beg pardon?"


    "No, I''m pretty sure this only impacts superpowers and spirit magic," I said. "I told you Lisa''s hound could only track the hatmaker to jail? Well, because I knew where the jail was, I was able to scan the whole thing with my own tech, and pinpoint the exact hatmaker. I just wanted to know what the hell was going on with the spirits, so I''d know if it''d be a recurring problem."


    "Setting aside my perpetual complaints on mad science... why would this superscience block spirits?"


    "I don''t know for certain," I said with a shrug. "My educated guess is that, since humans have always been an exception to the spiritual ecology, and science and particularly-advanced technology have typically been disruptive to the spirit world, this particular superscience is so disruptive to the spirit world that spirit hounds can''t enter the space they define, when that disruption is combined with the resonance of warding and mundanity."


    "The spirit world is a fucking headache," Valiant complained.


    "Yeah, welcome to my life. Just be glad it''s on our side this time." I sighed. "Well, Austin being a hub for superscience would explain why the spiritual ecosystem here is so anemic. Lisa''s been rebuilding that from scratch so she can actually accomplish things, but we didn''t quite get around to a road trip to Waco to see if things were any better out there. Akane''s pursuing her own research on the matter, though. Not sure how, since neither of us has any ability to perceive the spirit world, but whatever."


    "I see," Valiant said. "Well, seeing as you seem to have run out of local supervillains to turn in for bounty money, how goes your bet with Veronica?"


    "Either that house was fucking expensive or you''re not paying me enough," I said. "Listen to the words you just said- I have done so exceptionally well as a bounty hunter that I ran out of bounties to hunt, and I''m still only three quarters of the way to paying for that house twice over."


    "Have you told Veronica about this?"


    "I''m operating under the assumption that she''d use it as an opportunity to call me an idiot for failing to do the math ahead of time, in the heat of the moment, in another universe with a different culture and economy."


    "That does sound like a Vega trying to assert their dominance," Valiant said. "Princess Vega''s oldest son has been calling himself Prince Valiant for all of six years, whereas I''ve been doing this for thirty five, and yet he thinks I''m the one being unreasonable for continuing to use my name."


    "There''s something deeply wrong with that family," I said. "Anyway, enough gossip. Rattlesnake Dick, of the Console Cowboys, was the one who made all those hats."


    "Rattlesnake Dick?" Valiant asked.


    "Yeah, I looked it up, turns out the namesake was a historical Old West outlaw. Robbed stagecoaches in California during the gold rush. This guy''s not the old Richard Barter, on account he''s been dead for the better part of two centuries. Doesn''t matter, stay on topic. I''ve done some mental scans of the supervillains, trying to figure out what the hell''s going on there, why Rattlesnake Dick started making hats and selling them to the other villains. And so far..." I shrugged. "It seems like a coincidence, like they all suddenly got real concerned about psychic threats on their own at the same time, but I don''t believe it''s actually a coincidence. Something happened here, and it''s deeply concerning to me."


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    "For the record, brain scans are not considered admissible evidence in court," Valiant said.


    "I figured," I said, nodding. "Anyway, that''s what I''ve found: Rattlesnake Dick made the hats, and just about every supervillain in Austin freaked out and commissioned hats from him at about the same time, between three and seven days before I started properly bounty hunting."


    "Hrm..." Valiant leaned back in his chair. "That is concerning. Although... your fight with 8-Ball, that was two weeks before you started hunting. A week for the details to leak and disseminate, that there was now an active hero capable of direct mind control in Austin, seems reasonable enough to me."


    "Maybe," I said. "I''ll keep looking, but..." I shrugged. "Not sure if there''s going to be much to find."


    "Right. Before you go, I would like to clarify some things. As much as I grumble and groan every time we talk about work, I do very much appreciate that you''re inflicting these logistical headaches on me now, in a safe environment, before they cause real problems," Valiant said. "As such, if some crisis materializes in the next two weeks that I need your help to deal with, I will pay you however much money you need to stick it to the House of Vega."


    "If it''s bad enough to warrant Veronica''s intervention, you''ll have to directly order her to help me, or else you''ll be on the hook for double that amount," I said. "She has agreed to help me, but only for half of the money."


    "I''ll see what I can do," Valiant said. "Is that all?"


    "I think so, yeah," I said, standing up. "I''m probably going to be pretty quiet for the next week or so, unless I find something truly alarming. See you next time I either need help putting a fire out or improving my barbecue game. I won''t know until we get there, and neither will you."


    <hr>


    "Who''s a good girl? Who''s a good girl?"


    "I am," Lisa slurred, sprawled out across my lap and 100% boneless and melty under my hand''s ruthless assault on her ears.


    "You are!"


    "Yaaaaay..."


    I was aware of, and even a little bit into, petplay as a kink, but honestly, I don''t think this really counts. This was simply me paying forward all the affection I''d gotten from Akane, filtered through what I knew from experience Lisa preferred. This was not being done with bonerous intent, simply a desire to bury in kindness, love, acceptance, affection, and support, another trans gal who had not been as fortunate as I in which supernatural powers she developed. Loving kindness, or chesed.


    Yes, I am prepared to argue to you, to the rabbi, and to God Himself that scratching a foxgirl''s ears was a religious experience. Fuck you. You know I''m right.


    The door to the basement opened, and Akane stepped out, wearing her armored jumpsuit. Unlike Lisa''s jumpsuit, which was designed to flatter and accentuate the wearer''s figure, Akane''s was essentially the mother of all sports bras, and while it was still possible to tell she had a figure, it seriously compressed all of the relevant adipose tissues.


    However, it looked different than it did last time, the black accent lines having been replaced with gold, and more of them having been added in an odd, circuitboard-like pattern, and added bulk around her forearms, feet, shins, and hips.


    "Working on upgrades?" I asked.


    "Kinda," Akane said. "It''s more that I wanted a jetpack, and integrating it into the armor suit seemed like a really good idea."


    "Whyzzat?" Lisa asked.


    "So I can''t test the jetpack without being protected from jetpack accidents," Akane said.


    "Mmm. Smart."


    "I''ve also got an experimental transformation device integrated," Akane added, gesturing with her right arm, which had a thicker forearm than the other. "That one''s... mostly just for fun."


    "What''s it do?" I asked.


    "Transmutes materials," Akane said. "I tested it on bricks, houseplants, mice... Right now it''s tuned to turn things into aluminum. I tried stone at first, but then I learned that stone is really fragile, and had to go buy another houseplant. The transmutation wears off in like five minutes, which was not enough time to glue that jigsaw puzzle back together."


    "Test it on something bigger than a mouse before you use it on a human," I said.


    "Why''s that?" Akane asked.


    "So, back in the 1950s, some scientists were experimenting with cryonics," I said. "Freezing hamsters and thawing them out and noticing they''re still alive, that sort of thing. They actually invented the microwave oven in the process of the experiments! Well, then they started testing on larger animals, and... it didn''t work. The animals kept dying. Turning from aluminum back into flesh is a different process, but it''s close enough to be reasonably afraid of. Get some rabbits to test on or something."


    "I can''t test mad science on bunnies," Akane said, affronted. "They''re my fursona."


    Lisa lifted her head up to stare at Akane, incredulous.


    "You''re not the only furry in the house," Akane said.


    "...Why''s the flight harness look like that?" Lisa said, instead of challenging Akane''s bona fides as a furry. "Shouldn''t a jetpack be on your back?"


    "Jetpacks are the worst-designed personal flight device ever," Akane said. "The best places to support a human''s weight are their feet or their hips, because humans are evolved to stand and sit. The forearms are acceptable, because we''re descended from arboreal apes that swung through trees, but the torso isn''t. Best leverage point is the armpits, and... well, you''ve been picked up by the armpits before, probably. It''s not comfortable."


    "Mm. Fair." Lisa hummed thoughtfully. "Hey, Roxy, have you ever heard of druids being able to turn into more than one kind of animal?"


    "A few cases, but most of them were apocryphal, and all were exceptional," I said. "If you just wanna fly, though, I''m sure Akane''ll be willing to share her toys with you if you ask nicely."


    "I am!" Akane added. "After I test the flight harness, though. Speaking of which... Nicky! You ready to go?"


    There was no response.


    "The house is pretty well soundproofed," I said. "I''ll ping her."


    Her phone buzzed, and a few moments later, her bedroom door opened.


    "Akane?" Veronica called from upstairs.


    "You ready to go to the airfield, Nicky?" Akane asked.


    "Not tonight," Veronica said. "The sun set half an hour ago, Akane."


    "...Oh," Akane said. "...So I put on this jumpsuit for nothing."


    "Still a huge pain in the ass to get on and off, huh?" I said, as Veronica''s bedroom door closed and she went back to whatever she was doing. I texted her asking what she was doing, out of pure curiosity.


    "Yeah..." Akane said, wilting a little. "I wonder if I could just... sleep in this."


    "I wouldn''t recommend it," I said. Veronica texted me back, saying she was playing modded Factorio. After calling her a ''dork (affectionate)'' I asked which mods, and was treated to an extended ''Veronica is typing'' notification. "Although, no reason you''ve gotta struggle out of it immediately. Watch some TV with us."


    "Maybe," Akane said, walking over and sitting down on the couch, within headpat range of Lisa. "But, uh... I think we need to talk."

 Book 2 Chapter 13

    "I think we need to talk," Akane said. "About Nicky."


    "I like to think the two of us have more-or-less come to terms with one another," I said. "We''re not friends, and we likely never will be. All that matters is we can work together without turning our claws on each other. You, however, are about to try to tell me something that will recontextualize the month I''ve known Veronica Vega and make me feel like an asshole for alienating a potential friend. So... lay it on me. Hit me with your best shot."


    "Veronica is her deadname," Akane said. "She wants to be called Nicky, but doesn''t feel like she''s allowed to say that."


    I blinked, then turned to face Akane, as did Lisa.


    "You''re gonna have to explain that one," I said.


    "She''s cis, isn''t she?" Lisa added.


    "Yes, but..." Akane sighed. "The Royal House of Vega- you know, Nicky''s family, the people who raised her- have a thing for alliteration in names. Her mom is named Valerie, her siblings are named Vance, Vanessa, and Victor, and her dad is named Randall Rhodes. So, yes, her name is Veronica, but, when we first started rooming together in college, and I called her Nicky... she really, really liked that, and started to come out of the shell of all the other expectations and behaviors her family imprinted on her. She started being more... normal, and open, and happy. Little by little, bit by bit."


    "And me calling her Veronica has ruined that progress?" I asked.


    "A little, yeah," Akane said, nodding. "And this is tricky for me to address, because, well. I know Nicky isn''t a perfect innocent uwu bean. She can be mean, elitist, and exclusionary. She''s talked to me about you, and even when she knows I like you, it''s very... Mmn. I can''t imagine how she talks to you when she''s in a bad mood."


    "So, why are you friends with someone you know is an elitist asshole?" Lisa asked. "Because she''s nice to you and has big tits?"


    "Would you believe me if I said I think I can fix her?" Akane asked. "I mean, also, she''s a victim of her family and how she was raised, and I feel bad for her. So, like... I don''t just think I can fix her, I feel obligated to fix her."


    "Haven''t you had four years to try?" I asked.


    "...Yeah," Akane admitted. "But... Well, honestly, Roxy, I think you might succeed where I... haven''t."


    "...You think I can fix her," I said.


    "We''re pretty different, you and I," Akane said. "As far as any of us know, you have no real heritage to speak of, born as common as they come, and yet you''re such a good bounty hunter you''ve run out of villains to hunt. Plus, you''ve got your own perspective on hero work that''s not very common here. And, well, then there''s the bet."


    "She told you about that, huh?" I asked.


    "Why didn''t you tell me?" Akane asked.


    "It had nothing to do with you," I said. "I''m not naturally inclined to small-talk; when I''m around people I feel comfortable with, I let the mask drop, and... I end up not talking about my day, or what''s going on in my life, unless I particularly want to talk about something specific."


    "That makes sense," Akane said, nodding. "Which is inconvenient, because I genuinely do want to hear about your day, but..."


    "Honestly, my disinclination to small talk is probably at least 60% my parents'' fault," I said. "Nobody in my family gave much of a shit about me, or knew anything about my interests, and so their attempts at talking to me were all either small talk or their own interests that I couldn''t bring myself to care about. Football, home renovations, longwinded stories about nothing happening..."


    "Vacation plans to places you don''t care about," Lisa added, reminding me that she was sprawled across my lap and that I was still scratching behind her ears.


    "Anyhow," Akane said. "You and Nicky do get along sometimes, right? I''ve seen it."


    Veronica finally finished typing out her Factorio mod list on her phone and hit enter, and besides just a list of mods, she also had commentary explaining why she picked each mod.


    "When the subject isn''t work, yes," I said, nodding. "The two of us are currently talking about Factorio via text message."


    "Wait, really?" Akane asked. "How- ohhhh, right. The Virtual Machine is going to take a lot of getting used to."


    "Of course, I only have one brain with one language processing center," I added. "I can''t read her message and carry on this conversation at the same time. Thankfully, I have ADHD, and there''s little pauses between what we say to each other."


    Akane obligingly nodded, sitting there in silence as I read Veronica''s message and parsed all the commentary. Apparently she had a laptop dock on her desk connected to three monitors, enabling her to play Factorio on her laptop''s main screen while she had three extra screens worth of wiki, spreadsheet, and flowchart always up for her to glance at.


    At the moment, she was testing and refining a modpack that she was hoping to share with others, as a more gentle introduction to the complex logistical chains of modded Factorio. I personally didn''t overmuch care for Factorio- I liked the idea of it, but every time I actually played it, I ended up losing interest and stopping. But... Akane wanted me to play nice with Veronica, and actually put in some effort to be friends, instead of just constantly dunking on her for her shitty worldview.


    So instead I said that I wanted to like Factorio but didn''t have the attention span to finish a game, but I heard Factorio had a multiplayer mode, and hey, a second set of hands would probably keep my attention for longer.


    "Ah, crap, that''s Valiant," I said, as my internal phone started ringing. "Hang on." I put my finger to my ear and answered. "What''s up?"


    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    "Earlier today I offered to pay you an exorbitant sum to handle a crisis," Valiant said. "Congratulations, the crisis has happened. There''s been a jailbreak, and we can''t find all the villains you''ve arrested."


    I blinked. "Okay, I''m on it. Probably gonna need extra muscle to handle this."


    "Liquid Courage is on the phone with Veronica. If the need is truly dire, I can show up as well, but..."


    "But it''s past sunset on a Friday," I said. "Ugh. I have a pet on my lap. I''m still going to get up and earn my paycheck, but I''m going to complain about it."


    "Excuse me?" Lisa said, sounding surprisingly offended for someone who was very much acting like a pet on my lap.


    I hung up, and groaned. "Lisa, get up, we''ve got a jailbreak to deal with and villains to hunt." Upstairs, Veronica''s door opened.


    "Roxy-" she began, loudly.


    "Valiant called," I said, as Lisa got up and started stretching. "I know. Give me a minute. Gear up, yourself."


    "I''m coming too," Akane said, standing up, still geared up.


    "You absolutely are not," I said, staring flatly at her. "Go down into the basement, take that suit off, and then go to bed."


    "Do you trust me?" Akane asked, bringing me up short. I''d been expecting something about her gear- how she''s tested her armor, how she''s got a ray gun that turns people into aluminum- but this... this was unexpected.


    "...I suppose I kinda have to," I said. "Do you trust me?"


    "I do," Akane said, nodding.


    "Then please tell me why you''re insisting on this," I said.


    "I have a... hypothesis," Akane said carefully. "I need to test it, if I want to grow as a mad scientist. And I can''t tell you what it is, because that might foul the experiment."


    I sighed. "Well. I suppose I can respect that. How fast can you fly?"


    "Fast enough," Akane said. "I can carry you, too."


    "No," I said. "Grab a backpack, you''re carrying Lisa as a fox, because I do not trust your arms to hold onto a person for a long period of time."


    "I''m not a purse dog," Lisa protested.


    "You will be soon enough," I said. "Go grab your gear, too."


    <hr>


    Valiant kept his promises; whatever it was Liquid Courage said to Veronica, the effects were clear. She was clearly uneasy about my decision to bring Akane with us on the mission, but because I was her new commanding officer, or she knew for a fact that I knew for a fact Akane was as green as they come and chose to bring her anyways, or possibly both, Veronica did not at all undercut my authority.


    "What''s the plan?" Veronica- well, Lady Venus in costume- asked.


    "Track them and capture them," I said, hanging onto her with a tentacle. The inconvenient thing about the tentacles was that they were all-or-nothing, length-wise. They could either be wholly retracted, or wholly extended. And while sometimes I do need fifteen feet of reach, other times it just gets in the way. At least Veron- Venus- was stoically tolerating the multiple wraps of tentacles around her abdomen. "For some reason, they''re more-or-less sticking together."


    "Maybe they''re working together," Akane said.


    "Possible, but... unlikely," I said. "It''s my experience that supernatural criminals are disinclined towards cooperation; anyone they can work together with, they already are as part of a long-term group. Granted, that''s based on my observations on A-510, which may be unfounded here. Venus, you have any insights?"


    "It depends," Venus said. "Some villains, who are primarily in it to enrich themselves, work with others quite well, even sometimes allying themselves with heroes. Other villains, typically the ones pursuing some sort of ideological project or bizarre personal fixation, are something of a crab bucket, because they are pursuing different, often incompatible or even mutually-exclusive goals."


    "Good, that much is a constant," I said, nodding. "Now... Most of Austin''s supervillains happen to be out-of-towners who came specifically to Austin for a shared reason of the local tech industry, to prove themselves as superscientists in some nebulous way. And while you and I may understand that science is a collaborative effort, these shitheads likely understand it in a much more competitive way. This is, no doubt in my mind, an alliance of convenience that will shatter the moment we apply any pressure."


    "Can you check?" Akane asked.


    "They took their fucking hats back," I said. "Psychic shields block not only mind-control, but mind-reading as well. I can locate them with my scanner, but that''s about it. Also, Venus, that warehouse over there, with the peeling blue paint on the roof."


    "...Why on earth does it say ''Welcome to Denver'' on it?" Venus asked.


    "It was Wednesday," I said with a shrug. "Land on the roof, as quietly as we can manage."


    Which turned out to be very quietly; I had tentacles I could slither around on, Lisa was currently a particularly sneaky quadruped only somewhat larger than a loaf of bread, and Nicky and Akane didn''t actually have to land, strictly speaking, and could simply hover.


    "Okay," I whispered. "Telepathic link time. Everyone ready?" I waited for nods, then pushed my telepathy module to form the link. "Alright, can you hear me?" I asked, subvocalizing into the link.


    "Loud and clear," Venus said.


    "That''s freaky," Lisa said. "I hear you."


    "Yep!" Akane said. "Oh! Roxy, you don''t need it, but Nicky, Lisa-"


    The two were immediate in correcting her. "Lady Venus." "Red Fox."


    "Just put these on," Akane said, pulling a pair of tech-heavy bracelets from a hip pouch, holding them out.


    "...Alright," Venus said.


    "Don''t have hands right now," Lisa said.


    "Fox, war form, now," I said. "Be ready to go in hot. I''m going to go in through this skylight first, figure out what''s going on." The first thing I did- after a quick visual inspection revealed nobody was watching, of course- was spray down the hinges with WD-40- I''ve kept a can of the stuff in my coat pockets along with a roll of duct tape for years, and now it was finally useful- to stop them from squeaking.


    I popped the skylight open silently, and carefully, gingerly, snaked my tentacles in to latch onto the roof joists and rafters. I slithered in, clinging to the ceiling like a spider, and cast my gaze on the warehouse interior. This place was old, and in an inconvenient place that meant it would never be viable as a warehouse again; the shelves were still here, but not much else. More importantly, though, the villains were all here, congregated in odd, mixed groups, speaking in hushed tones I couldn''t make out.


    "Too many exits," I said. "This thing has truck docks. We can''t just camp out the exits and flush them into a trap. We''ll have to do this the hard way."


    "Roger that," Venus said. "We''ll-"


    A sickeningly familiar sensation flowed over me like a wave, and the telepathic link shattered. More worryingly for my health and safety, though, my tentacles all went limp and retracted, leaving me twenty feet above a concrete floor with no support.


    I landed with limp, slightly bent legs and fell forwards in a shoulder roll across my back. A little sore, but more-or-less unharmed. It annoyed me that those parkour lessons kept turning out to be practical; they should have been a waste of time and money.


    "How inconvenient," a man drawled, stepping out of the shadows. "You''re more durable than I thought."


    He was... honestly, he looked a lot like a mirror-universe version of me who was still cis, and not nearly as jacked. Tall, skinny, brown hair, strong chin, jaw, and nose... It was eerie. Especially with that beard.


    "Gideon James," he said. "I''m Doctor Skinner''s apprentice. I was hoping that fall would kill you." He shrugged, clapping his hands twice.


    The villains all turned to face us, eerily still, their conversations long since stopped.


    "We''ll have to do this the hard way."

 Book 2 Chapter 14

    Disabling mad science wasn''t a particularly novel or difficult trick. Controlling technology was the easiest thing to do with the principles of control. However, I had forgotten more about this technique than this Johnny-Come-Lately had been dripfed by the world''s worst mentor, and I knew the weaknesses and had my own counters.


    Said counters mostly served to keep me from dying when a ray gun slid out of Gideon''s sleeve and into his hand, and he launched me across the warehouse floor.


    "Cute," I said, very loudly. I really hoped everyone up on the roof could hear me, and that they were coming in to help sooner rather than later. "It''s a decent plan; it''d almost work."


    I dropped and fell sideways into another shoulder roll, dodging Gideon''s next shot, and drew my own gun. Two of the important weaknesses of this technique- often called the Stopwatch in demiurge parlance- were: 1) the Stopwatch can only turn off things that can be turned off; things like passive armor were immune to it, and 2) the Stopwatch is frequently tuned specifically towards disabling mad science, to eke out that extra bit of performance.


    My Colt Python, however, was perfectly mundane, and Gideon couldn''t stop me from shooting him in the wrist.


    He yelled in pain, dropping the gun, and I grinned. Then I threw myself backwards as Bouley landed where I''d just been, in the intersection of a long aisle and a cross-aisle. I hate these stupid villains.


    Bouley''s name was a pun on Bully and Boule, and their power was to turn their flesh into monocrystalline silicon, giving them enhanced durability and density. There was no way in hell I could kick this guy''s ass on my own. That''s why I usually used mind control, which wasn''t an option with Gideon''s Stopwatch field.


    Arms wrapped around Bouley''s waist, picking him up and then suplexing him into the concrete between a row of steel shelves, empty of everything but cobwebs and rust.


    "Fuck, am I glad to see you," I said as Lady Venus watched Bouley turn back into a fleshy human, groaning and curling up.


    "There really is a first time for everything," she said dryly, provoking a snort and a grin.


    I grit my teeth as Billy the Squid tried and failed to perforate me from behind, standing near the back of the warehouse. You care about human life, Roxy. This dickhead is beneath you, a flailing child who needs correction more than punishment. Don''t kill him.


    I shot him in the stomach, and he crumpled like tissue paper. That probably wouldn''t kill him anytime soon.


    "Get that dickhead in the labcoat," I said, turning back around and watching Gideon make a tactical retreat, stage right.


    "Got it," Venus said, flying down the cross-aisle after him, and getting interrupted by a spear tackle from Voltaire, who''d been managing to hide behind, or possibly on top of, a shelf. Voltaire was a villain with the power of flight and a weird mishmash of bullshit with lightning; getting shocked filled up an internal pool that could be discharged as super-strength or just directed lightning.


    "Or distract all the others, so I can get him," I said, watching the two duke it out, their fight moving away from Gideon and towards the mass of controlled villains. "That works too."


    I dashed down an aisle of empty shelves, parallel to Gideon''s path, not wanting to run into another ambush that Venus simply hadn''t triggered yet. While the shelves being empty deprived me of cover from ranged attacks, the emptiness did improve sight-lines. Gideon could hide from my scanners, but he couldn''t hide from my eyes.


    What could hide from my eyes, however, was a vampire, dropping out of invisibility to leap at me with bared fangs and foot-long razors for fingernails.


    "Fucking shit up my nose I hate vampires I hate vampires I hate vampires," I said, ducking under Wannabe Dracula''s claws and ending up behind him. The rusty stench of blood hung from him, a telltale sign of vampiric magic that wasn''t being hidden.


    I reached into a pocket, withdrawing a silver Star of David on a chain, and, clenching the chain in my fist and the Star on my knuckles, I rose up in a vicious uppercut, supremely confident that God would back me up here. And back me up he did- the silver seared the vampire''s jaw and physically repelled them, lifting them off the ground and throwing them back a good distance.


    The vampire scrambled to their feet, fear warring with rage.


    "May your memory be a blessing," I prayed, brandishing my faith as a weapon. For reasons that occult and religious scholars loved to debate over but which were not fully known, strong religious faith was harmful to vampires, reacting poorly with their inherent blood magic.


    And as a demiurge, whose soul bent the world to her will, faith was something I could have whenever I needed it.


    "You- fuck!"


    The vampire was set upon by the pouncing werefox, cunning and sharp and ravening, and I pocketed my faith, turning to pursue my foe once more, faithful in Lisa''s blooming skill and ferocity.


    This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    I came out into another cross-aisle, and immediately got blindsided by Rattlesnake Dick. He could store his movement, holding still, and then moving at blinding speed. There were limits to how much movement he could store, but it was definitely enough to knock me off my feet and give me several bruises.


    "I hate my job," I muttered, as he charged up for the next strike. He surged forward... at a normal human speed, which shocked him, and gave me the opportunity to throw him over my hip and into the concrete.


    "It worked!" Akane crowed, flying overhead, a blaster with a radio dish on the business end in her hand. "I was right!"


    "Don''t get cocky," I warned her, as she turned Rattlesnake Dick into aluminum before he could get back up. I wasn''t that worried about it, honestly; transforming people into stone was a fairly common trick among Demiurges, and on the rare occasion it did inflict any sort of actual damage, it was because the device was faulty in a specific way that Akane would''ve noticed with the mice. "Stick with me. And get down; you''re a bigger target up there if you don''t know what you''re doing."


    We ran down the cross-aisle, after where Gideon had been going- I''d lost sight of him, because the sightlines weren''t all that clear, admittedly- and skidded to a stop as we found him at the next intersection...


    ...surrounded by Bouley, who''d gotten back up and snuck through the warehouse towards him, two more villains I recognized, and a vampire I didn''t.


    Akane lifted her blaster, and pulled the trigger. Gideon''s Stopwatch in action, no doubt.


    "Bouley, kick his ass for me," I commanded, my eyes glowing green, and two patches of Bouley''s face- it was hard to make out details when he looked like he was made of silicon boules- matched. The thing about the Stopwatch is that it isn''t absolute. You absolutely can shield tech from the Stopwatch. Everything inside my body was so shielded; that my tentacles weren''t was news to me, but I could cope.


    "He won''t," Gideon said, while I jumped backwards, dodging a vicious strike from Doc Bell that splintered the concrete. "They''ve all been brought to heel, with Dr. Skinner''s techniques. Your control couldn''t make a murderer of a mouse, and it couldn''t make Bouley turn against his lord and savior."


    "You know he''s an impostor, right?" I told Bouley, before breaking Doc Bell''s nose and wrapping his stomach around a follow-up punch.


    Gideon let loose a strangled noise of panic as Bouley turned on him, and his two remaining minions had to turn to face Bouley as I folded Doc Bell like laundry and shoved him under one of the shelves.


    "Stand down, lest I strike you down," I commanded the vampire and the other villain- Wattson, Voltaire''s usual partner in crime, who simply shot lightning. Supremely useless in a warehouse full of conductive obstructions.


    Before I could see whether it worked, Gideon fired his ray gun again- having apparently picked it back up- and launched Bouley into me like a bowling ball, striking me in the chest and not sparing my ribs.


    "Roxy!" Akane screamed.


    "Get off of me," I wheezed, before groaning. Of course Bouley was unconscious, having been concussed by Venus not five fucking minutes ago.


    I tried extending my tentacles, and found, to my delight, that it worked; Gideon''s Stopwatch was otherwise occupied now, and I could lift Bouley back up off of myself, up over my head, and stagger to my feet, my healing implant forcing my ribs back into place and fixing the cracks.


    "Oh shit," Gideon whispered, before I shot his gun out of his hands again and threw Bouley back at him. Bouley hit his legs with a sickening crunch, and Gideon screamed. Aw, poor baby can''t handle having some bones broken? Don''t worry, Gideon. You''ll get used to it.


    I''ll help you.


    "L-listen, it''s just a job for me," Gideon pleaded, scrabbling back on his hands, dragging limp, useless legs along with him. "Doctor Skinner is- well, you know what she''s like. I''m willing to switch sides, with the right incentives! What should I call you?"


    "I''m the three you forgot to carry," I said, stomping on his foot and provoking another scream. "The form you didn''t fill out."


    I kicked him in the stomach.


    "The variable you failed to account for."


    I bent over and grabbed him by the jaw, hauling him up.


    "I am your failure, the Grim Reaper of failed hopes and broken dreams. And tonight, I''ve come for yours."


    I reached for the implants in his brain with my own technopathy, examining them quickly and comparing them to my own mental library of common implants. A second later, they began to break, one-by-one. His screaming continued, and his nose bled. One implant remained that I did not break, put there by Doctor Skinner. A reified idea, like all the others, something Skinner had learned from me.


    I drew the idea out of his brain, and into my own. Skinner had gifted him the fruits of her mastery, which was in turn the fruit of my experience. This solidified idea, this purest expression of control, was mine.


    "Petrify him," I said, letting him drop. "Then go collect the others."


    Akane zapped Gideon, turning him into aluminum, and I rose up on my tentacles, taking in the sight of my roommates, my friends, my team, finishing off their fights. Red Fox had finally knocked the fight out of her vampire- damn thing looked like a corpse, but I knew for a fact that it was just unconscious; vampires turned to ash when they died for real. Lady Venus, meanwhile, looked decidedly un-ladylike, surrounded by the beaten and the broken. She had, apparently, only had to kick a few of the stronger villains in the teeth to make the others stand down.


    I nodded. After having blitzed through all of these dipshits piecemeal in the past two weeks, I didn''t have much respect for the strength of superpowers. But... Well, my sample size wasn''t big enough to draw any useful conclusions, and my metrics were flawed too, having mostly been "can I beat them in a fight?" after having spent five years in a far more mature and diverse supernatural ecosystem where my ability to take people in a fight was what determined whether I''d eat.


    I called Liquid Courage.


    "Villains are captured and contained," I said. "We''re at the old warehouse with Welcome to Denver painted on the roof. Got two vampires and possibly a mad scientist, too."


    "Oh christ. I''ll send a few paddy wagons, but you''re on the hook for helping us store those fucking vampires," Liquid Courage said. "I''m also gonna want to debrief you and Vega both."


    I sighed. "This is gonna take a while, isn''t it?"


    "I''ll have a pot of coffee ready."

 Book 2 Chapter 15

    "He looks dead," Liquid Courage said.


    "Of course he looks dead, he''s a fucking vampire," I said. "They''re undead. Walking corpses. He''ll get back up eventually, though. Vampires aren''t really dead until they''re ashes."


    "How long is eventually?"


    I shrugged. "My scans say he''s pretty fresh, not too deep in his veins... I''d say anywhere between two weeks and a year."


    "Fuck me running."


    "Some of the real old monsters, they can end up staying down for decades or centuries at a time. Hell, I''ve read a study on some vampires who gave themselves over completely to the curse who''d sleep for a thousand years." I snorted. "Funny thing about being awful and sleeping for a thousand years- that''s plenty of time for your body to be found by wizards, druids, and or mad scientists who don''t want you waking up."


    "Is there anyway to wake ''em up early?" Liquid Courage asked.


    "Well, if we had another vampire with more potent blood magic, we could use some of their blood to wake them up," I said. "That''s what we usually did if there was some stiff with information we needed and weren''t willing to wait for. However..."


    "We don''t have another vampire with more potent blood magic, do we." It wasn''t even a question.


    "Nope. So... might wanna just strap him down and wait for him to wake up. Maybe pour some concrete, make him look like a bootleg Han Solo?"


    "Is that standard practice where you''re from?"


    "Usually we don''t want to store hibernating vampires until they wake up," I said. "Nobody likes vampires, not even other vampires. When we do need to store hibernating vampires until they wake up, though, it usually involved some manner of sorcery I can''t replicate, or a very secure lockbox that I can''t be bothered to build."


    "If we can table the issue of vampire storage for now?" Venus asked.


    "Right, right," I said. "Akane, what the fuck was your hypothesis, and how did it result in you turning off someone''s superpowers?"


    "So it started when Lisa noticed the spirit world was barren," Akane said. "But I didn''t really understand that something was up until Lisa''s spirit hounds couldn''t enter superscience faraday cages. And that''s when the pieces fell into place."


    "Tech interferes with the spirit world," I said.


    "Irrelevant," Akane said. "I tested my hypothesis, and I finally know how superpowers work."


    I blinked.


    "Well, let''s hear it," Liquid Courage said.


    "Superheroes are a really weird offshoot of werewolves," Akane said.


    "...Let''s hear the longer version that makes sense," Liquid Courage clarified.


    "Superheroes and werewolves are both half-spirits whose powers come from the spirit world, which acts kind of like a collective unconsciousness," Akane said. "The way those powers manifest is a lot different, though; as much as some superheroes have really strong powers, nearly all of them lack the versatility and adaptability I''ve observed in just Lisa, who''s new to this whole werefox thing."


    "Huh," I said. "Well, ain''t that a hell of a thing. I''ll bust out the champagne tomorrow."


    "If we could focus on the question of Gideon," Venus said.


    "Oh, right, that jackass," I said. "Honestly, he''s just a stooge for Dr. Skinner. Tell him we think he was mind-controlled and aren''t holding him personally accountable for any of that bullshit, and just want to know anything and everything he can tell us about Skinner."


    "You''re talking like I''m an idiot who doesn''t know how to handle these things," Liquid Courage said. "Dude''s already in an interrogation room singing like a canary. He is kinda useless, though, on account Skinner didn''t tell him much. The most he heard from her were vague complaints about zoning laws, and yes, I am probing deeper on that, but he can''t tell me anything he doesn''t actually know."


    "Do I need to be here?" Lisa asked.


    "Honestly, no," Liquid Courage said. "I only need Dr. Updyke and Lady Venus to stay for debriefing and consultation."


    This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "Go home and get some rest, you two," I said, patting Lisa and Akane on the shoulder. "We''re probably gonna be a while, and there''s no reason we have to ruin everyone''s sleep schedule."


    "The joys of being important," Venus said dryly. "If it weren''t for the current crisis, I would quit to be a vtuber."


    "What kind of avatar would you have?" I asked.


    "I don''t know," she said. "I haven''t thought about it that much. It doesn''t matter. Good night, you two."


    "Goodnight," Akane said, as she and Lisa headed for the door.


    "Alright, well. Time for the debriefing."


    <hr>


    "So. Walk me through your plan," Liquid Courage said, once I was alone in a conference room.


    Liquid Courage was a computer, not a robot. He was immobile, but at the same time, he could speak through any of his many terminals located throughout the building. Of course, he could also make and receive phone calls, and so he didn''t need a terminal in a conference room. With the Virtual Machine, I didn''t even have to open my mouth to talk to him.


    "You''ll have to be more specific," I said, reclining in a chair and closing my eyes. "My plan for the fiasco earlier tonight, or my plan for Doctor Skinner?"


    "Both, in either order," Liquid Courage said.


    "Right. So, tonight''s plan was simple. I have tech that can find anyone, anywhere, as long as they don''t have a way to hide from the scanner. And I knew from experience that none of these people had those ways. I would track them down, capture them once more- because they hadn''t posed a threat to me before, and even in such a large group still wouldn''t- and then go back home and go to bed."


    "And it didn''t occur to you that, perhaps, the situation had changed with the introduction of whatever it was that allowed the villains to break out of jail?"


    "It did not, because we were moving in a hurry," I said. "Where I''m from, incarceration of supernatural people was... tricky. There is no way to completely and totally and perfectly disable someone''s supernatural powers, aside from killing them. The idea that you people can is foreign, something I didn''t consider in the heat of the moment."


    "And Venus didn''t consider it either?"


    "Venus, geared up and on the job, immediately subordinated herself to me and followed my lead. She trusted me to know what I was doing, and didn''t undercut my authority." I shrugged. "The downside, naturally, is that I have no idea whether she had that insight and didn''t share it because she didn''t want to undercut me... or she simply didn''t have that insight in the first place. She got powers in college, and graduated a few months ago; I wouldn''t be surprised to learn that this really was the first fight she''s been in."


    "I see. Well, on the subject of Venus'' performance... what''re your thoughts?"


    "Excellent beatstick," I said. "Just an absolute wrecking ball in a fight, like a flying brick should be. Personality-wise... I was expecting to have complaints. She was difficult to get along with, for the first few weeks we lived together, but... well, time and familiarity solve a lot of problems. We managed to have a downright friendly conversation about a game she likes this evening, before the jailbreak."


    "Just how long does your mind control last?"


    "Somewhere in the neighborhood of ten minutes, usually," I said. "Why?"


    "Trying to figure out exactly how you managed to housebreak a Vega."


    "It''s easy," I said with a shrug. "Push back on the objectionable stuff, and then engage positively with everything else. She loves puns and modded Factorio, and I''m pretty sure that offering to do some multiplayer to test out a modpack she''s compiling specifically for the uninitiated will help further."


    "I don''t suppose she''s let slip what the other royal brats are into?" Liquid Courage asked.


    "I don''t think she knows," I said. "The first I heard of her having a brother was from Valiant, the other day."


    "Wow. Not even the Vegas can stand Vegas."


    "Anyhow, I don''t feel comfortable taking all the credit, here," I continued. "She spent four years living with Akane, who is basically a golden retriever, and who likely contributed massively to her personal growth, despite Akane''s protestations to the contrary."


    "Fair enough. You think you might be able to replicate that feat? Flip more of them into being tolerable, instead of..."


    "I''ve met one of them, and know very little about the others," I said with a shrug. "I also don''t see how I''d end up in a position to work alongside any of the others for months at a time. Anyhow, weren''t you supposed to ask me about my overall plan to find and defeat Dr. Skinner?"


    "Right, I got distracted. Please tell me about your plan to find Dr. Skinner."


    "Skinner tends to make waves wherever she goes," I said. "She''s a cult leader, and a megalomaniac. She can''t help but assemble a corps of loyal mooks wherever she goes, if she can''t bring one with her. She has technology that hides her person, and her facilities, from my scanners, but that''s just camoflage; she can''t hide the ripples of her existence and what she does from reality. She leaves tracks. For the time being, I''ve been working on training up another apprentice, in the form of a druid, to aid me in pursuing Skinner''s odd ripples through exotic means she''s less likely to think to block."


    "Describe these ''exotic means'' to me."


    "Alright, so, the thing about spirit magic is..."


    <hr>


    Nicky and I staggered home about five hours after we were supposed to go to bed. The coffee was very much wearing off, our eyes were heavy, and the goddamn motherfucking cocksucking piece of shit we called a ''sun'' would probably be rising in a few hours.


    We held each other for stability, and as we approached the stairs, we held on tighter as Nicky floated off the floor and up the stairs and to her room, too tired to parse anything besides the shortest path to a warm bed.


    I don''t know if I passed out before or after she got the door open.


    <hr>


    I woke up at the crack of noon, very slowly and groggily, until I realized something was amiss. Then I woke up very quickly, and found myself in Nicky''s bed, lying on top of her, with her arms and legs wrapped around me tightly.


    "...Huh," I said, provoking an adorably irritated face from her.


    "Mmmrgh," she blearily vocalized. "Mnn... ten more minutes..."


    I considered this thoughtfully.


    "...Eh, sure," I said, laying my head back down and closing my eyes.

 Book 2 Chapter 16

    "So, I was wrong about you," I admitted.


    "Oh?" Nicky asked.


    She''d woken up fully, after about ten-ish minutes, and the biggest difference in our situation was that we were cuddling in a slightly different way, with me sitting up, and Nicky still wrapped around me like a koala.


    "You''ve got a subdued and dignified manner about you," I said. "And I mistook that for you being boring and unpleasant, and didn''t really consider actively reaching out to try and build a relationship here until Akane told me to."


    "I see, I see. And how much of this change of heart can be attributed to waking up in my bed with a hopeful desire to reach second base?"


    "Nicky, I don''t know if you''re aware, but Akane also has fat-ass knockers, and would require zero convincing to let me touch them." Nicky snorted, and I continued. "I mean, yes, you are very attractive and I do desire you carnally-"


    "Such a silver tongue you have."


    "-but that isn''t what this is about. This is about the fact that I misjudged and dismissed you on spurious grounds. And... I''m sorry. You didn''t deserve that."


    "I came to your room at night to pick a fight about letting a homeless teenager-"


    "Lisa''s twenty, actually."


    "-crash in our basement," Nicky said. "That is... honestly, a perfectly valid reason to dislike someone, and refuse to consider their redeeming qualities."


    "Let''s split the difference and say we''re both hardheaded idiots who have trouble getting along," I said. "On a different, less recriminating note, is this an exception, or do you think this is the start of a pattern of being more open to affection in general?"


    "You''ve been drafted as my new weighted blanket," Nicky said. "God, I needed this..."


    "Hah, gay," I said.


    "Bisexual, actually," Nicky said.


    "Fair enough," I said. "Although in this context I was intending ''gay'' as a monosyllabic shorthand for ''experiencing and acting upon same-sex attraction.'' I did actually remember that you''re bisexual and therefore also, to some extent we haven''t discussed, a boyliker."


    "''Boyliker'' feels slightly derogatory," Nicky said. "Like, yes, I do like boys, but something about the semantics of having a word for ''person who likes boys'' feels... off."


    "Hrm... Kinda complicates things, don''t it?" I asked. "Like, the thing about existing in this fallen world as a woman is that our culture kind of hates women and everything they do. Despite heteronormativity declaring that women are supposed to like men, the fact that they''re women means they''re despised and shamed for liking men. I don''t think there can be words in this cultural context for describing a woman''s sexual preferences that is neither clinical nor derogatory-sounding."


    "Mmmn. Fair."


    "Also, are you still up for that game of Factorio?"


    Nicky snorted, and started giggling.


    "What?" I asked.


    "Remember how I said I hadn''t thought very hard about what my vtuber avatar would be?" Nicky asked.


    "Are you actually a vtuber already?" I asked.


    "I am, and my avatar is a catgirl," Nicky said. "I alternate between wearing an OSHA-compliant hardhat with a cat ear headband on top, and wearing no hat but still having cat ears."


    "How much did you have to pay the artist to make that?"


    "I did it myself," Nicky said with a shrug. "3D modeling is a nice hobby, and the fact I can make vtuber avatars gives me an extra revenue stream that I can conceal from my family."


    "How much do I need to pay you for a demon girl avatar with big tits and bigger horns?" I asked.


    "That depends," Nicky said. "Do you want a full body model, or do you want just a chest-up model?"


    I hummed quietly. "...I''d say a full body model, yeah. It''d be fun to use it in VR Chat or something, not just for my guest appearances on your stream while we do multiplayer Factorio."


    "What makes you so confident I stream Factorio?"


    "Your avatar wears an OSHA-compliant hardhat."


    "...Point."


    I grunted, and sat up a bit more, taking my hands off of her.


    "Right, well, it is well past noon, and as much as I enjoy cuddling, I am really fucking hungry, and I should eat something."


    "Just text Akane or Lisa and ask them to bring us some food," Nicky said, refusing to get up.


    "I also have to go to the bathroom."


    "That''s not my problem."


    "I can make it your problem."


    "You''re a big strong woman," Nicky said. "You can carry me."


    <hr>


    "Morning," I said, at one in the afternoon, walking down the stairs and into the living room with a curvy warrior-princess wrapped around my torso.


    "You''re awake," Akane said, a suddenly-alert foxgirl sprawled across her lap. "What''d we miss?"


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    "A lot of talking," I said. "Also, some... reconciliation. I guess Nicky and I are friends now."


    "Huzzah," Nicky said flatly, again still with her arms and legs wrapped around me.


    "Anyhow," I continued, carefully prying her off of me with tentacles as I approached the couch. "Congratulations on the completion of your first thesis, Doctor Sakurai." Nicky let go of my torso, but then clung to the tentacles themselves, refusing to be set down, and so I ended up scooting her off to the side and wrapping her in a tentacular hug.


    Just in time, too, for Akane to get up and hug me, depriving my torso of freedom once more. I returned the hug, obviously, because Akane was my best friend and I loved her dearly, but still.


    "What, I don''t get a tentacle hug?" Lisa complained.


    I sighed dramatically, extruding a few more tentacles to wrap Lisa up snugly, and an extra to rub her ears.


    "I''m proud of you," I said, mostly to Akane. "You''ve come a long way."


    "I couldn''t have done it without you," Akane said, squeezing me a little. "What''s next?"


    "Fuck knows," I said. "We''ll figure it out tomorrow. It''s Saturday, and despite the events of last night very much profaning the shabbat, that''s no excuse to keep profaning it. I am going to sit down on the couch, I am going to cuddle with my roommates, and I am going to do nothing productive at all."


    Saying so, I hefted Akane up and off her feet, turning around and seating myself on the couch, and pulled Nicky up onto the couch next to me, before sparing a hand to rub Lisa''s ears properly.


    I inhaled deeply, and sighed.


    For this moment, at least, all was right with the world.


    "I think we should find out what the implications are of superheroes being half-spirits," Akane said.


    "It is Saturday," I insisted.


    "It would be nice if I could learn how to shapeshift," Nicky said, ignoring me.


    "I don''t do that because I''m half-spirit," Lisa said. "I do that because I''m half fox spirit. I don''t think you''d wanna manifest the form of an actual flying brick."


    "My spirit is likely one of gravity," Nicky said. "Which... is even less of a discrete object than a flying brick is. Hrm. Perhaps I''ll just settle for learning your other druid tricks."


    "Is nothing sacred to you people?" I asked, affronted. "It is Saturday."


    "Is that supposed to mean something?" Lisa asked.


    "All of you have been rooming with a semi-observant Jew for at least a month," I said. "And absolutely none of you have picked up on the fact that Saturday is the day of rest? It is the Shabbat. The Seventh Day, on which we all rest, and abstain from productive labor, or talk which would lead to productive labor- because, yes, in Judaism, talk is action. It is Saturday, and unless lives are actively at stake, I ain''t doin'' jack shit, and I''d appreciate not being surrounded by an interesting but productive conversation I''m not supposed to be having."


    "Providing a lecture on Jewish doctrine feels like productive talk to me," Lisa pointed out.


    "Discussion and contemplation of the Torah is not merely permitted but encouraged in this time," I said defensively. "More importantly, though, if you insist on continuing to have this conversation, I will get up and leave the room."


    "You''d deprive us of our most precious furniture?" Nicky asked, aghast.


    "You''re evil," Akane said.


    "I am Jewish and it is Saturday," I said firmly. "C''mon, let''s watch a movie or something."


    <hr>


    We ended up rearranging ourselves on the couch. This removed me from the center of attention, but aside from that, it was a perfectly reasonable layout, with all of us lying across the couch, stacked atop each other like artfully-displayed sliced bread.


    I was the one in the most direct contact with the couch- only after I''d gotten up, eaten a sandwich, taken a piss, and otherwise attended to my bodily needs- with Akane lying on her back and my stomach, using my tits as a pillow. On top of her, Nicky and Lisa were wrapped around each other, with Nicky on the bottom and her head on Akane''s stomach. As a concession to the fact we lived in Texas, and it was the middle of the day, we forwent the blanket, and were rewarded for this decision by being able to see Lisa''s tail wag.


    There had never really been much animosity between Nicky and Lisa. Oh, sure, Nicky had pretended there was for all of two minutes, as a pretext for picking a fight with me, but Nicky had been, at most, indifferent towards Lisa. As for her snubbing of Akane''s bounteous chest pillows, she had started out with her head resting on Akane''s rack, but unfortunately, they were too big to do so comfortably, and had left her neck cocked at an uncomfortable angle. They were just tits, and thus could be pushed down and out of the way, but they had to go somewhere, and the first attempted solution left Veronica mostly blinded.


    It was a hilarious problem to have, and we had laughed at it for a good while, but then we''d settled down and started arguing about which movie to watch.


    "I say we watch the Porn Parody Earth''s Charlie''s Angels movie," Akane said.


    "Can I change my vote to that?" Lisa asked.


    "Absolutely not, we''re not watching it," I said. "Nicky, back me up here."


    "I wanna watch the Porn Parody Charlie''s Angels movie," Nicky said.


    "Oh you traitorous bitch. Fine. Fine! We''ll watch the fucking movie!"


    It turned out that I''d overstated the prevalence of sex in Porn Parody Earth''s cinema. By just a hair, at least- yeah, Charlie''s Angels opened up on a lesbian orgy, but the movie overall treated the fucking much like it might treat, say, action sequences. There were scenes without them, to build up to and contextualize the scenes with them, as well as to wind down from those scenes. Also, there were still action scenes- even one action scene that was also, simultaneously, a sex scene, where one of the heroines and a henchwoman were competitively hatefucking, wrestling for the advantage.


    "What the fuck," I said about an hour into the movie.


    It also turned out that this movie was not just ninety minutes of crime drama sucking and fucking. The titular Angels turned out to be actual angels, and the villain turned out to be a literal succubus from Hell.


    "This fucking rocks," Lisa said.


    "This sucks, but it sucks in an interesting way that''s funny to talk about," I said.


    "Oh quit whining, we just got to watch three trans women bukkake a succubus into being good and holy," Lisa said. "Quite aside from the thematics and framing of trans women, their bodies, and the sex they have as beautiful, desirable, good, and sacred, it was also just fucking hot."


    "Just because it gives me a boner doesn''t mean it isn''t also cringe," I said.


    "Was it actually that bad?" Nicky asked.


    "Eh," I said. "It wasn''t actively offensive, at least. And, well... Okay, maybe I do like having things to complain about." The ending focused on the three angels all marrying the reformed succubus, who was herself now also an angel. You may now fuck the bride, roll credits... over another lovingly-shot gangbang of the succubus. "Either way... I''d say I''ve had a pretty good day."

 Bonus Chapter 2: Halachic Nitpicking

    "You''re a convert, right?" Silas asked. "I feel like you''ve mentioned it at some point."


    "I am, yes," Roxy said, nodding. "Why?"


    "The more passionate a Jew is, the more likely they are to hold strange opinions," Silas said. "And converts are people who are passionate enough about Judaism to abandon their previous faith for it. So... You likely have at least one strange opinion about Judaism, and I''d like to hear it."


    "Hrm..."


    "Is this a test?" Akane asked.


    "No, no, he damn well knows better," Roxy said, waving off Akane''s concerns without looking at her. "What he wants is to start a good, old-fashioned, down-home, traditional, neighborly Halachic Nitpicking Session. And on that note, I think I got something for you. I think that American Jews specifically should forbid circumcision."


    "...Now that is one hell of a take," Silas said. "What brought you to that position?"


    "So, it''s kind of known that circumcision is meant to be an indelible physical marker of Judaism," Roxy explained. "To separate the Jews from the Gentiles. Well, the thing is, in America, the circumcision rate is like eighty percent. When I converted, I couldn''t get circumcised, because I already was. If you really were to check someone''s penis to determine if they''re Jewish, you would not be able to tell, in America. Not unless the Jewish method of circumcision is special and looks different."


    "That... is a compelling argument," Silas said.


    "Now, obviously, you can''t just remove a Jewish cultural tradition without replacing it with a more suitable equivalent," Roxy continued. "Which is why I suggest replacing circumcision with a Magen David tattoo on the foreskin."


    "That''ll be a hard sell," Silas said. "Moreover, I don''t think I quite like it as much as the alternative I''ve just thought of."


    "Go on?"


    "Keep the circumcision, but supplement it with a shin tattooed on the shaft," Silas said. "Along with that, add in a little ritual of kissing it like a mezuzah every time you drop your pants."


    "Oh, I like that," Roxy said.


    "I wasn''t aware Jewish people typically had the flexibility to kiss their own penises," Nicky mused.


    "You don''t directly kiss a mezuzah, to be fair," Silas said. "You kiss your fingers and then touch the mezuzah. Or touch the mezuzah and kiss your fingers. It depends. Personally, though, I would advise against a practice of casually touching your penis before putting your fingers to your mouth."


    "I''m not a coward," Lisa said.


    "I can tell."


    "What''s a mezuzah again?" Akane whispered to Nicky.


    "That thing Roxy nailed to the frame of the front door that she touches every time she walks inside," Nicky whispered back.


    "Personally, I think it''d fall afoul of marit ayin, the rule against doing things that look like they aren''t allowed," Roxy said. "On the grounds that it may lead goyim to think it is acceptable to deepthroat a mezuzah, which I imagine would only be funny if it wasn''t your mezuzah getting slonked."


    "I suddenly have in my head the outline of a Jewish porn comic," Lisa began, very auspiciously, "In which someone''s non-Jewish girlfriend gets invited over for dinner and sucks off the mezuzah so hard that the house itself cums- possibly by ejaculating smoke through the chimney, or just shooting cum out of the mezuzah."


    "...Thank you for that image, it will haunt me for eternity," Roxy said, before turning to face Silas again. "Anyway, what''s your weird take on Halacha?"


    "Do you think we''ve mined all of the argument we can out of the circumcision topic?" Silas asked.


    "Well, I already checked with a rabbi, who assured me that I didn''t have to circumcise my tentacles," Roxy said. "There''s not much left to argue about. And I''d really like to move on before Lisa learns what a minyan is and how many candles a hannukiyot has."


    "A minyan is a group of ten Jewish men- although many communities accept Jewish women as counting towards a minyan," Silas said immediately. "There are, also, nine candles in a hannukiyah- hannukiyot is the plural form- which is more commonly known as a menorah."


    "You rat bastard," Roxy spat.


    "So for the sequel, the girlfriend converts to Judaism," Lisa said, grinning. "And she''s at a hannukah celebration back at college, and there''s only nine guys there, and in an attempt to convince them that she totally counts for a minyan, she blows them all and makes a really stretched metaphor between their dicks and the candles."


    "That''s not how you use a menorah, though," Nicky pointed out. "You use the central helper candle to light one additional candle every night. So it would be one top and eight bottoms, over the course of eight nights, with the top fucking one more bottom every night."


    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    "I would like to stop contemplating biblically accurate pornography," Roxy said.


    "I love this family," Akane said.


    "I don''t," Roxy said. "Silas, it''s time for you to share a Wild Take."


    "Oh, that''s easy," Silas said. "I don''t believe in pikuach nefesh."


    "You what?!" Roxy yelled.


    "What''s pikachu nefertiti?" Lisa asked.


    "Pikuach nefesh is the principle in Jewish law that nearly every rule is secondary to the preservation of human life," Roxy said. "As an example, if it is a choice between eating pork, which is not kosher, and starving to death, you are not only allowed but required to eat the pork so that you may live another day."


    "When it comes to the preservation of other people''s lives, I''m perfectly at peace with the ruling," Silas said. "But, as a sort of chumra-"


    "A what?" Roxy asked.


    "Putting a fence around the Torah," Silas said.


    "That... doesn''t make it clear."


    "Taking a more restrictive reading of a mitzvah for spiritual safety."


    "Ah, so like a Judaism challenge mode."


    "Yes except no, and also shut up and let me finish," Silas said. "As a self-imposed restriction, I believe that a principled man who abandons those principles when the going gets tough does not actually have principles. If I were to violate mitzvot to save my own skin... would my skin be worth saving?"


    "According to halacha, yes, unambiguously," Roxy said. "Remember, one of those principles is that the preservation of human life comes before all others, including your own. It''s only once you start entertaining things like the Trolley Problem that your reading starts to be worthwhile."


    "So it''s only permissible to give his own life in not breaking the rules if he honestly believes it''ll save more lives?" Lisa asked.


    "More lives in the immediate term," Roxy said. "Like, let''s say some supervillain captured him and offered him a really weird Sophie''s Choice: a set of ropes have been hooked up to a bacon sandwich. If he eats it, the ropes will go slack, and he''ll go free, but five civilians will be dropped into a vat of acid. But if he doesn''t eat it, the civilians will manage to escape, but then he''ll die of heat stroke because he''s really near to the furnace vent or something, I don''t fucking know."


    "Truly, you are a master of creating ethical thought experiments," Silas said.


    "Do you have any idea how hard it is to come up with scenarios where violating mitzvot would save your own life but endanger multiple others?" Roxy demanded. "I''m doing the best I can, here!"


    "Suppose there''s a reactor melting down, and I''m the only one who can stop it from killing dozens," Silas said. "However, stopping it would mean contracting acute radiation poisoning and dying in agony within the day. Meanwhile, this is happening on a Saturday, when work is forbidden."


    "If you keep flexing on me, I''m going to stop inviting you to my house," Roxy threatened.


    "Promises, promises."


    "What I''m curious about is why you''re so hell-bent on finding ways to throw your life away to make a point," Lisa said. "Do you not like your life?"


    "It has its ups and downs, but ultimately... Life, in the abstract, is precious," Silas said. "But a life... Well. A life can be given in service to a cause. This is what duty is- a genuine, heartfelt conviction that there are things more important than yourself. That, should an opportunity present itself where risking your life will further your cause, you will do it. That, yes, life is precious; for your sake was the world created. But there are things more precious than one''s life."


    "The problem is somewhat adjacent to marit ayin," Roxy said. "It sets a bad example for whoever looks up to you as a role model, in the sense that it encourages them to ignore their own health and safety when those things become inconvenient, and may foster or contribute to a culture of expecting everyone to act in such a way. And we do not sacrifice our children. Not to Bael, not to God, not to the economy or the community. Not to anything. The injunction against sacrificing your life is for more than just your sake, Silas. Halacha can be interpreted and halacha can be argued with, but for all that halacha is not in heaven, never forget that halacha is smarter than you."


    Silas sighed.


    "You may be but ash and dust," Roxy continued, softly, "but do not forget that this world was made for you."


    "Not for me alone," Silas said. "For all of us. I have a duty to the people I share a planet with. To all of them, whether I like them or not. The needs of the many..."


    "You cannot serve from an empty vessel," Roxy said. "You''re no good to us dead, Silas."


    "I understand that quite well," Silas said. "It''s just that..." He sighed. "Perhaps it is unhealthy, but, this self-effacing attitude is a specific adaptation to a very real problem I faced as a young man, a problem that I cannot be sure is truly gone. To discard it would be unwise, and possibly impractical. I no longer know who I would be without it."


    Roxy grunted. "I guess I''m responsible for looking after you, then. Lord knows you need it."


    "Roxy, please don''t adopt my uncle," Akane said.


    "It''s not my fault he''s sitting here all adoptable-like!" Roxy protested.


    "I feel the need to mention that I am more than twice your age," Silas said, smirking lightly. "You can try the Batdad or Wolverine routine on me, but I can''t guarantee it''ll work."


    "If you''re going to be adopting a pathetic wet cat of a middle-aged man, can you adopt my father, next?" Nicky asked. "My mother wouldn''t even notice he''s gone."


    "Absolutely not," Silas said.


    "That depends on how sympathetic he is," Roxy mused.


    "He is not, he is an awful wretch, and you do not want him, not even for the challenge of fixing him," Silas warned.


    "You managed to fix my dad!" Nicky said.


    "No, I created a less insufferable clone of your father, which involved being elbow-deep in the clone''s brain for years," Silas said. "At any rate, I''ve been told, on one deeply perplexing occasion, that I have, and I quote, ''big he/him lesbian energy.'' Randall Rhodes, meanwhile, is the least lesbian-adjacent man I''ve ever met."


    "Well, duh, he''s from Rhodes, not Lesbos," Lisa said.


    "I''m from Atlantic City, actually," Silas said. "Did you know that Monopoly''s properties are based on real locations I saw all the time in Atlantic City? Did you further know that Atlantic City is a terrible place to live, and it took a lot of therapy before I could look at a Monopoly board without getting flashbacks?"


    "Okay, moving away from the subject of dunking on a dude only two of us have ever met, let''s dunk on Monopoly instead," Roxy said. "First of all, they don''t even let you fuck the top hat. Second of all..."

 Book 3 Chapter 1

    Last month, Lady Venus and I got into an argument. I don''t remember what we were even arguing about at this point; it doesn''t matter, anyway. What does matter is that we settled it like mature adults: by making a bet over how much money I, as an independent bounty hunter, could make in a single month.


    I immediately scoured Austin for high-profile villains who were wanted by the law, and started bringing them in one after the other. My own power made finding the villains a piece of cake, to the point that, halfway through the month, I''d run out of villains to hunt in Austin.


    I cursed my ill fortune, having run out of steam before I could cross the finish line... and then I realized that, because of my actions, inspired and lightly assisted by Lady Venus, the entire city of Austin had run out of villains. And suddenly it all clicked into place. This hadn''t been a fit of childish pique. This had been a test, a task assigned for the improvement of myself and the lives of those around me.


    The mark of a true hero, I''ve been told, is that they inspire those around them to be better than they originally were. And while it might have been through an unorthodox method, after the month I''ve had, I cannot call Lady Venus anything less.


    <hr>


    "I think I''m required by law to marry you, now," Nicky said, setting the newspaper down once she finished reading my little puff piece aloud to everyone.


    The fact that this world still had newspapers was an oddity I''d gotten used to- I''d grown up at a time when newspapers were still somewhat commonplace, and they hadn''t vanished completely when I left- but also a very instructive one. Information technology had grown and matured earlier in this universe, thanks to superscience, and among other things like the Dotcom Bubble happening years earlier(apparently Nicky''s dad had made a fortune at the time from a procedural generator for dick jokes), the forces that would have and should have made physical newspapers obsolete were in full force before Akane and Nicky had been born.


    And yet it moved. Newspapers were still printed and distributed, and nobody thought it odd to have the papers delivered every morning; certainly no odder than wearing a wristwatch in this age of multifunction pocket-watches we call ''phones.'' Why was that? Newspapers hadn''t gone obsolete because the internet made newspapers more difficult to produce, after all. They''d gone obsolete because the internet was more convenient than newspapers, and people had stopped wanting newspapers. And in this world, there definitely was a general bias towards using the internet to get your news, rather than ink and paper... but there was also a superpowered news mogul who was hellbent on keeping printed news culturally relevant, and in this world, the Great Men with enough power got their way.


    It was different from how things were back home. Back home, sure, especially-potent supernaturals ruled their own little hidden quasi-fiefdoms, but on a grand scale, one person could not change the rules. Empires fell, thrones crumbled, and entropy always won. Not so, in this world. Here, the Great Men really did have the magnetism, the oomph, to carry out their will.


    "That may not be the wisest choice," I said. "I haven''t yet decided I like this world enough to stay when my job is done."


    "Then take me with you," Nicky said with a shrug.


    I blinked.


    "...I don''t know how to respond to that, so I''m going to politely but firmly pretend it didn''t happen," I said. "Anyway, Akane, how''ve you been doing with my notes on scanning?"


    I''d actually shared all of my mad science notes with Akane, on every field. However, Akane and I both understood what our current priorities were, and we both specialized in scanning; therefore, our main focus was on scanners and their ability to gather information.


    "It''s really arbitrary," Akane complained. "I was working on this one theory that should have let me see the past and the future, but no matter how many times I checked the math, it wouldn''t work."


    "Yeah, mad science is like that," I said. "The going hypothesis is that the working models aren''t the only thing necessary for workings of mad science, and there''s some other underlying mechanism that limits what each individual is capable of doing with mad science. That''s why, even though I could write detailed step-by-step instructions for all of my implants, you wouldn''t be able to follow those instructions and recreate them until you reached the point where you could invent them yourself, making my instructions somewhat use-impaired."


    "Isn''t the point of science that it''s replicable by anyone, no matter what they know, as long as they follow the right steps?" Nicky asked.


    "Real science is like that, yes," I said. "In real science, the universe appears to be largely materialistic, and wholly uncaring of what you think. But in mad science, just like every other kind of supernatural power, the universe is dualistic, and does care what you think. The universe cares that I am not a thaumaturge, and thus I cannot work their High Sorcery. The universe cares that I am not a druid, and thus I cannot work directly with spirits or turn into a bird. And the universe cares that Akane isn''t yet deep enough in her study of scanning to replicate my work. What criteria does it care about? We''re not sure! There''s a lot of conflicting evidence, some suggesting that the underlying system is the same for all demiurges, and some suggesting that it''s different for all demiurges! Nobody knows anything!"


    "Jesus christ," Nicky muttered.


    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    "It''s no wonder mad scientists go insane so often," I said. "I am, in all honesty, kinda just hoping that Akane can develop her skills in a productive direction at all. Maybe she can''t! Fuck if I know!"


    "Well, on that cheerful note," Lisa said, "I''ve figured out how to bind spirits into tools."


    "That''s possible?" Nicky asked.


    "Has to be," Akane said. "Superscientists are half-spirits just like druids are, and they make devices we can only really describe as ''objects with superpowers.''"


    "It''s also a common practice among druids," I said blandly. "Anyhow, Lisa, what have you made so far?"


    "A mess," Lisa said. "You''re probably going to need a new scalpel."


    "I don''t own a... You mean the x-acto knife?" I asked. "Round handle, replaceable blades shaped like a triangle?"


    "That''s what it was," Lisa said. "I bound a hearth-spirit into it and the damn thing melted. Now it''s a puddle-shaped piece of slag on the floor of the basement. I''m glad I wasn''t holding it when the binding was going."


    I pinched the bridge of my nose.


    "Hey, knives are cheap," Nicky said. "It''s not like we can''t afford it."


    "It''s not that," I said, shaking my head. "It''s just that there is now a second person I have to educate in workshop safety protocol." I sighed dramatically. "Fuck''s sake, I went into psionics and autohypnosis specifically so I wouldn''t have to keep fucking around with angle grinders and soldering irons. Why aren''t any of you this possessive of your fingers?"


    "I design jet engines," Akane said with a shrug.


    "I''m not a demiurge," Lisa added.


    "Don''t look at me, my hobbies happen at a desk," Nicky said. "Vegans don''t even get repetitive strain injury."


    "I''d be jealous if I still used a keyboard," I said. "But, well. Computer in my head."


    "I still want one," Lisa said.


    "I''ll put it on the list," I said.


    "Aren''t there safety concerns?" Akane asked.


    "Yeah, that''s why it goes on the list," I said. "Step one is to develop my scanning and communication technology to the point where I can communicate with Earth A-510, a goal I''m actually pretty close to. Step two, figure out from them whether or not it''d be safe to give you a brain implant. And then step three, which we can do in a single day but won''t do in a single day until we know it''s safe."


    "What else is on the list?" Nicky asked.


    "Let me check," I said, closing my eyes and accessing my list. "So, pursuant to capturing Doctor Skinner, I have to find her operation or operations, and currently my best lead is figuring out what Gideon knows, cross-referencing that with both what I know and what Liquid Courage and Valiant know, and checking anything that leaps out to us as suspicious."


    "Things like what?" Akane asked.


    "Well, if Gideon remembers which specific zoning laws Skinner was complaining about, we may be able to figure out which specific areas those laws apply to, and narrow down where she can be," I said. "And, beyond finding Skinner, I think we also need to work on developing our own capacities further. Only one or two of us have anywhere near reached the maturity of our capabilities, and considering that superheroes are in fact half-spirits like druids are, I expect even Nicky might have a lot of low-hanging fruit to pluck."


    "Hey, I''m plenty capable," Nicky protested.


    "You''re a one-trick pony is what you are," I said.


    "Am not!"


    "Then what are your information-gathering options? You''ve been tasked with finding Doctor Skinner; what have you been doing to that end?"


    "Delegation," she said primly.


    "Remember how we had a formal agreement about a wager, and how that established the winner''s dominance and authority? And how I won? I am now your commanding officer, and you will spend no fewer than two hours a day for the next five days learning from Lisa."


    "Yes, Daddy."


    "If I had a nickel for every time I''ve been called Daddy in a sexual way by someone I wasn''t actually sleeping with, I''d have enough to buy a gumball," I said.


    "Why does that keep happening to you?" Lisa asked.


    "People see a tall butch with some jawline and a deep voice and think ''I''m gonna call her Daddy as a joke,'' because they don''t think I''ve heard that one before," I said. "Well, okay, one of them wasn''t joking, she was just a chaser, but that''s besides the point. At any rate, I''m gonna go upstairs and get some work done. Ping me if you need me."


    <hr>


    I didn''t really have that much use for my desk. I mean, sure, it was a private place to sit down and do stuff, like eat or do small electronics projects, but I didn''t really need that. I just sat there, in a desk chair I''d made a project out of, examining my latest acquisition.


    It was generally true that artifacts of mad science were sustained by the will of the demiurge who created them. But it wasn''t exclusively true. Such an artifact could be cut loose from the will of their creator, taking on a will of its own. These independent artifacts could be bargained and bonded with by other demiurges; indeed, Skinner had done it herself with the stolen portal gun that she lacked the skills to create herself.


    And I had done it with her own pinnacle creation, more easily than I could''ve bonded with any other artifact. In a lot of ways that mattered, I was already its creator, its owner, its master. I had provided the key insight catalyzing the epiphany that allowed it to exist, and I had concocted the specific the framework of autohypnotic psychic formulations that Doctor Skinner had pilfered from the archives of the Institute for Applied Transhumanism.


    Plus, right of conquest and all. I''d ripped this most potent of mind control formulas from the mind of Skinner''s own catspaw, after all. I would bend it to my will, learn its secrets, and replicate it to my own purposes.


    Scan. Automate. Control.


    The tools of a Bond villain.


    The tools of Doctor Beatrice Skinner, who chose that path with open eyes.


    The tools of Doctor Roxanne Updyke, who was dragged down it by treachery.


    I could hate these tools all I wanted, and I very much did.


    But I wouldn''t let that hatred stop me from using them.

 Book 3 Chapter 2

    I grinned as I finished my notes. Doctor Skinner''s mind control construct was still beyond my ability to replicate, but not beyond my ability to understand and learn from. And learn I did! There were subtler strands in the grand web of causality, nigh-invisible threads that, when pulled, could influence a great many things. Pull this thread, and disperse a tropical storm before it became a hurricane. Pull that thread, and someone else wins the election. Pull those threads, and you roll more sixes at the craps table.


    It was going to be a bit longer before I could build anything that would use any of these principles, and most of them were complicated enough that a psychic formula, even made by me, wouldn''t be enough to make it useful. I''d have to build a big honkin'' machine to do it, and that''d be hard, expensive, and time-consuming.


    And despite all these caveats, despite the fact that I hated this toxic art, I was reaching a height most specialists never reached. I was good at what I did. There was a sense of pride in that, even when I wasn''t proud of what I did.


    Of course, man could not survive on pride alone, and neither could I. I''d been sitting here for six fucking hours, and god I was hungry.


    "Hello, Nicky," I said, as she pulled her hand back. She had, it seemed, been just about to knock on my door. "What''s up?"


    "Lisa and I tried to do some training," Nicky said. "Starting with some werewolf beginner rituals, but... None of them worked for me. Her own spirit sight couldn''t figure out what the hell was happening with my spirit-half. Oddly, she was able to see I had a spirit-half, which confirmed Akane''s theory."


    "Good and bad news then," I said. "I''ve been developing some new skills myself; maybe I''ll be able to diagnose the problem from an angle Lisa can''t see from."


    "There''s something else," she said.


    "Oh?" I asked, inviting her to continue. An invitation she needed, because she was hesitating.


    "...It''s about the bet," she said quietly.


    "In what regard?" I asked. She probably wanted me to drop the whole ''commanding officer'' thing, which was honestly fair and valid. I did it at first because I''d thought she was an insufferable twat who I could only get along with if I firmly established my own dominance, but then we, like... talked to each other, like adult human people with any modicum of social intelligence. I probably shouldn''t have done that ''pulling rank'' stunt at breakfa-


    "I think that, in addition to the prior terms, you deserve an additional reward for your victory," Nicky said.


    Oh right, I was thinking with my upstairs head, in a house full of horny lesbians who apparently all wanted my girldick and nothing else. My bad.


    "A kiss from a princess," she continued. "A worthy reward for such a herculean labor, I think."


    "...I see," I said carefully.


    "The precise details of this kiss, I leave in your hands," Nicky said. "I trust you to know your tastes better than I do, and I want this to be as fulfilling for you as it can be."


    Translation: Please stick your tongue down my throat.


    I nodded, and placed gentle but firm hands on her shoulders, pushing her back and against the wall of the hallway across from my door- which I closed behind me with a quick flex of my technopathy. I leaned in slowly, savoring the flooding of Nicky''s face with blood, the way her pupils began to dilate, and the sound of fabric against fabric as she rubbed her thighs against each other.


    "Even without turning on my telepathy, I can read you like a book," I said quietly, my breath hot down her neck as I leaned in further. "I know what you really want, here. What you''re too afraid to come out and ask for, what you''re leaving barely unsaid in implication."


    I gave her a quick, chaste peck on the cheek, and then stepped away, taking my hands off of her.


    "And you''re not getting it until you use your words like a grown-up," I said, before heading down the stairs. I still wanted lunch, after all.


    <hr>


    "Hey, Akane," I said. "What''s up?"


    "I want to talk about our relationship," she said, plopping herself down in the chair on the other side of my desk. "...Wait, are you getting enough sleep?"


    I blinked, realizing I''d taken off my sunglasses while I worked on my latest project.


    "Don''t worry about it," I said, waving dismissively. "I''ll live."


    "That''s not... please take a nap," Akane said. "But. After this conversation. I do still want to talk about our relationship."


    "Fair enough," I said, leaning back in my chair. Living in this house was an interesting experience, I''ll tell you what. "What''s up?"


    "So, I''m your peer, now," Akane said. "A junior partner in our collaboration, but still a partner. Right? I mean, you called me Doctor Sakurai out loud."


    "That is true," I said.


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "You also said that we could date after I stopped being your apprentice and I became your peer."


    "That is only technically true," I said. "I told you that we would not date while you were still my apprentice and not my peer. And when you suggested that afterwards we could date, I got annoyed with you. So, no, I didn''t commit to dating you after your apprenticeship ended."


    "Would you like to?" Akane asked.


    "No," I said.


    She pouted. "What''s wrong, Roxy? Are you not poly? Do you just not like me? Is it something to do with your plans to go back to A-510?"


    "I''m not interested in a relationship," I said. "Nicky, earlier today-"


    "She told me," Akane said. "And... I think you did the right thing there, regardless of your end goal. Making her stop and really think before she makes any sort of commitment is probably for the best; she seems almost like she''s in a bit of a manic phase, now that she trusts you and Lisa."


    "Honestly, I just wanted to fuck with her," I said. "I don''t actually expect her to grow a pair and admit to what she wants."


    "Ah," Akane said.


    "Anyhow," I continued. "Yes, I do still plan to go back to A-510. Within a year, in fact. And, well..." I shrugged. "I''m actually quite comfortable with where our relationships are, currently. Some cuddling is necessary for general health, but escalating past that more or less isn''t. I mean, you can still have your polycule with Lisa and Nicky, I can''t and won''t stop you, but I''m not really interested in participating."


    Of course, there were also other considerations, that I simply didn''t particularly consider to be her business. I was Banished. A Demiurge wrought in isolation, jealousy, and generally not much of a healthy social life.


    Having friends and roommates who I liked and could be affectionate with was new and a little tense. I was afraid, always, that some buried wrongness or toxicity would burble up out of me, and everyone would quietly tolerate it until they hit their breaking point and I needed to find a new place to live. And I was familiar with the concept of having friends and living with people- although the prospect of being friends with the people I lived with was somewhat new.


    Romance, though? I''ve been in exactly one romantic relationship, when I first enrolled in college, and it barely lasted the semester. I fell apart and got recruited into a science-themed cult. I was less likely to end up in another cult this time around, but when my memory plots a straight line from ''having a girlfriend'' through ''devastating heartbreak'' to ''the worst thing that''s ever happened to me,'' I feel like, perhaps, I''ve got a good reason to be gunshy about sleeping with people who have connections to very important and powerful forces in this world.


    No. I would stick with platonic cuddles and plausibly deniable gaiety if I knew what was good for me.


    "We can''t do this without you, Roxy," Akane said.


    "You don''t have to, and should not, squander your chances at happiness because you''re worried about me," I said.


    "It''s not that," Akane said. "You''re important to everyone who lives here, in ways none of us can replicate for each other. You''re the tall, sour, noir-ish glue that holds us all together... also, you''re the only top in this house."


    I blinked a few times.


    Then I burst out laughing.


    "Okay, yeah, that might be an impediment," I said, grinning. "But you''ll find a way around it. Or you won''t. It does have to be stated that this ultimately is your problem, not mine."


    Akane sighed. "Fair enough," she admitted, before standing up and turning away. "I''ll see you later, Roxy."


    "I''m thinking about gumbo for dinner tonight," I added. "Maybe try something new, use some mutton instead of chicken and sausage."


    "Sounds good."


    The door clicked behind her as she left.


    I was alone in my room.


    <hr>


    I was tinkering with a 3D printer to distract myself when my phone rang. Well, okay, it wasn''t really a 3D printer. It could do 3D printing, but it didn''t just do 3D printing, and also had five-axis CNC milling capabilities, as well as-


    My phone rang again, and I stopped thinking about my overengineered toy and answered it.


    "Roxy here, what''s up?" I asked.


    "Liquid Courage. Got some leads from Skinner''s boy Friday. We''re having some real detectives look at the mundane leads, with zoning and shit, but the rest of it is yours to deal with."


    "Fair enough. Send ''em over, and I''ll set some hounds on it," I said. "Although, for certain hounds, we''re gonna need to put Lisa and Gideon in the same room for at least a minute or so."


    "Why''s that?" Liquid Courage asked.


    "Her spirit hounds work like real hounds," I said. "They need to know what smell they''re looking for. They need connections to follow- fresh ones. Gideon''s our freshest connection towards Skinner and any of her compatriots, so the spirit hounds need to start at that end, and follow from there."


    "Ahhh, got it. Then why can''t she just..."


    "Because we don''t know Skinner''s spiritual scent, so to speak. We know it''s probably on Gideon, but Gideon probably has like a thousand spiritual scents on him, so... we gotta narrow it down, somehow."


    "Well that''s just inconvenient."


    "I''d advise against telling a druid that to their face," I said. "They have to live with it, and can also turn into eight foot tall murderbeasts. Yes, even the ones with patron animals significantly smaller than humans. I have seen a wererat turn into an eight foot tall Master Splinter knockoff and then play the role of Shredder."


    "That may be the single dorkiest thing I have heard this month, and I work a tech job in Silicon Hills."


    "Wh- Oh, that''s what you people call Austin in this universe," I said.


    "Well where''s the hub of the tech industry where you''re from?"


    "Austin was still important, but the big hub was Silicon Valley, also called the Bay Area, in... uh... southern California, somewhere. I don''t know. I''m a Texas girl. I don''t give a shit about California."


    "San Francisco?"


    "Maybe. I don''t know shit about California, aside from being wholly unfit for human habitation."


    "You''re thinking of Arizona. Or Nevada. Or Utah. Or-"


    "Yes, I just described the entire American southwest, I get it."


    "Not the entire southwest. There''s parts of California that aren''t in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada, after all. And you''ll find that, overwhelmingly, those parts are where people actually live."


    "Stop trying to humanize Californians you goddamn sympathizer," I groused. "Anyway, send me the leads, I''ll get to work on those."


    Liquid Courage hung up, and I found a list of leads in my inbox. Time to get to work.

 Book 3 Chapter 3

    "It worked!" Akane squealed, hopping up and down and waving her arms. "It worked!"


    I patted her on the head affectionately. "Congratulations, Akane, on finding Rattlesnake Dick''s buried treasure."


    "Do I win a prize?" Akane asked.


    "You mean aside from the scanning study session we''ve been doing where I taught you the rest of what I know about scanners, bringing you up to par with a particularly skilled demiurge?" I asked. "Well, you also located an abandoned cache of gold bullion worth like three million dollars, which will pad out our household funds very nicely, as soon as we send Nicky to dig it up out of the Trinities."


    Akane''s scanning apparatus was big. About the size of a car, really. It was imposing, looming, menacing, its silhouette cold and intimidating. And yet, it was plastered with bright, almost garish colors, like it was trying to be cheerful and beautiful and art nouveau instead of, say, ''H.R. Giger knocked up Lisa Frank.''


    Was it as refined and elegant as I would''ve built it? No. Did I like looking at it? Hell no. Did knowing that I had helped bring this electromechanical monstrosity into the world fill me with guilt and shame, knowing that this, if nothing else, would justify my damnation to hell? Absolutely. But the point was that I didn''t build it myself. The point was that Akane built it, and was therefore responsible for its upkeep and maintenance, because she has more spare headspace than I do, even after my maintenance tricks, simply as a consequence of me having been in this game for a lot longer and built a lot more things that need to be maintained.


    And, now, Akane could use it to search for the things I asked her to search for.


    "Of course, with reward also comes punishment," I continued. "Which is, more work, of the sort that will make you use this damn thing."


    "Right, the leads we have to follow up on," Akane said, nodding. "Read off the first item on the list?"


    "Computer, locate all half-demiurges in the Austin Metropolitan Area," I said.


    "Half-demiurges?" Akane asked.


    "Remember those mooks Dr. Skinner sent after us the first time, along with 8-Ball?" I asked. "You know, back at that gas station in Round Rock? Those were half-demiurges. People who''ve touched the godhead of inspiration, but... not completely. They can safely handle mad science, and even assist full mad scientists in their building processes, but they themselves aren''t capable of inventing their own mad science. They''re hardly capable of producing new opinions. Oh, they''ve got enough initiative to follow open-ended orders, make plans and execute on them, all that jazz, but they lack their own world-view, and just borrow it from whatever demiurge they''re working for at the moment."


    "Kinky," Akane said.


    "Please keep your fucking hypnosis fetish out of my laboratory," I said.


    "Make me," Akane said, primly.


    "It makes me very uncomfortable when you casually sexualize something traumatic that has happened to me personally," I said.


    "...oh," Akane said, very quietly.


    "You couldn''t have known, but... well, now you do," I said.


    "Sorry," Akane said. "...Uh, anyways, how do half-demiurges happen?"


    "There''s a few ways of doing it," I said. "Spending a lot of time around mad scientists doing mad science things has a strong risk of it happening naturally. It can be inflicted on purpose, though, which Doctor Skinner had a habit of doing to fill out the ranks of whatever cult she was running this week. Skinner may not be able to equip all of them with scan-blockers, so it''s my hope that we''ll be able to find some of them, out and about. What''s the progress on the scan?"


    "Stalled out on sixty nine percent," Akane said. "Nice."


    "...You purposely made it not update its completion readout until it got past 80, didn''t you," I said.


    "You can''t prove that."


    "You had me check your programming for errors," I said.


    "Oh hey now it''s moving again. Eighty two... Eighty five..." Akane hummed a little ditty as the progress tracker progressed. "Aaaaaaaaaand... We got a scaaaaaaan!"


    "Find anything?"


    "Nope! Nobody!"


    "Son of a bitch. Not even the two dudes we arrested?"


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    "Maybe jailbroken, dead, not half-demiurges anymore... Can you stop being a half-demiurge?"


    "In two ways," I said. "Recover and become fully human... or find your voice and break through into a full demiurge. The former is... probably healthier, in the long run. I chose the latter. And while this path has its ups... it has most definitely had its downs. Why do you think I can''t hack it in a real job, and kept doing this bounty hunting shit? But, that''s not really relevant. We can''t find the fuckers. Move on to the next one on the list. I... am going to go get Lisa and pursue a different avenue."


    "Good luck," Akane said.


    "To you as well," I said, heading up the stairs.


    <hr>


    "Do you think I need bigger boobs?" Lisa asked while we were driving to Valiant''s office.


    "I... generally don''t have strong feelings about your boobs one way or the other," I said. "But if you think you need bigger boobs, then Akane and I are both perfectly capable of performing long-term yet reversible transformations of the sort on you, with zero judgement. From me, because I get it, or from Akane, because she wants to motorboat you."


    "Heh. Yeah, she would, wouldn''t she?" Lisa said.


    "So, what brought this on?" I asked.


    "Oh, y''know. I was thinking about boobs, as one does, and it occurred to me that while I do have a perfectly serviceable pair of tits-"


    "What makes tits ''serviceable?''" I asked.


    "Depends on what service you need them to provide," Lisa said. "In my case, making me feel like a woman. And yeah, ordinarily they''d do that just fine. They''re big enough to be noticeable, and I definitely couldn''t be confused for a guy this way, but..." She shrugged. "Well, for some reason all three of my roommates are ungodly tittymonsters and I can''t help but feel inadequate, compared to all that."


    "Makes sense," I said. "Although I''d object to being described as a tittymonster. Mine are big, I''ll give you that, but they''re very much within the realm of reason, especially for a person as tall as I am. Akane and Nicky, meanwhile, are both the products of genetic engineering."


    "Wait, I was there for Akane''s mom revealing the thing, but Nicky?" Lisa asked.


    "Well, admittedly, that''s just a guess," I said. "But also, she''s supposedly half space-alien, and her mom is from a world with super-advanced technology, so... Eh? I mean, either way she definitely cannot be judged by the standards of real human people without a scrap of magic in their life."


    "Fair enough," Lisa said. "So... Hrm. How big should I go?"


    "A tricky question," I said. "Personally, however, my suggestion, based on my brief stint as an indie game developer is to go as big as you can at first, because that''ll almost definitely be too big, and then from there slowly ratchet it down, until you reach the sweet spot between too big and too small."


    "What the fuck does making indie games have to do with knowing how big my tits should be?" Lisa asked.


    "Well, aside from the fact that having characters with impossibly big breastesses isn''t unique to AAA games, the process I just described is a good way for balancing any variable and trying to find the most appropriate value for it. You don''t just need to know how much is too little, you need to know how much is too much, and once you''ve bracketed that range, then you can start to slowly circle in on the ideal value."


    "Uh huh..."


    "Which is, you know, what you''re trying to figure out," I said. "I mean, yes, there''s definitely some irony in giving you fat honkers and calling it ''balancing,'' but that joke aside, you are trying to figure out which size of boob will make you the most happy, so..."


    Lisa snorted. "You know, speaking of balance, maybe you should give me tits the size of my head, and then record me trying to walk around like that. Pratfalls are always fun, right?"


    "Even for you, in this case," I said. "Quite aside from you being supernaturally durable, this way you''d have airbags."


    She burst out laughing, and I grinned.


    "Alright, we''re here," I said, pulling into a parking space and killing the engine. "Let''s pretend we''re professionals, and we weren''t just talking about the inherent comedy of watching my pet foxgirl trip over her own fat knockers."


    "Hey now, I''m not..." Lisa trailed off, frowning. "Huh. Shit, I guess I am your pet foxgirl. This mean you''ll buy me a new collar?"


    "Now where the hell did you get an idea like that?" I asked, affronted. "Do you not know who I am? I''m not buying you a collar. I''m a demiurge, and I''ll make one." I patted her head, and finally got out of the car.


    For today''s outdoor excursion, Lisa and I were dressed in as close to business casual as we could manage. In my case, that mostly meant wearing a business suit with the suit jacket being replaced by my customary military surplus trenchcoat, and in Lisa''s case, that had involved first convincing her to not wear a skintight jumpsuit into an office, and then fabricating for her an outfit that could be called many things, such as ''secretary chic'' or ''plausibly-deniable sluttiness.''


    The ''downside,'' if one could call it that, to helping Lisa learn what gave her gender euphoria was that she was frequently unwilling to do anything else, which meant living with a foxgirl who was, at all times, trying to be sexy.


    "Honestly, you''ve got enough practice walking in heels," I said as she got out of the car and closed the door behind her. "You''re probably not gonna fall over for anything."


    "What happened to professionalism?" Lisa asked.


    "I decided that I''m allowed to tease you for plausibly deniable reasons just to watch you squirm," I said.


    "Why are you so mean to me?"


    "You make funny noises."


    Lisa spluttered and coughed as I walked past her towards the door.


    "C''mon, girl, we''ve got a varmint to hunt," I called, grinning.


    Of course, six hours later, that grin would be gone, on account none of the leads we followed with the spirit hounds led anywhere immediately useful, but I wouldn''t know that until I experienced every excruciating minute of those six hours myself.

 Book 3 Chapter 4

    "He definitely lived here," Lisa said, standing in Gideon''s apartment. The fun thing about Gideon being so cooperative is that we only needed a search warrant to enter his home without permission.


    There were, of course, other places we had to look that didn''t belong to Gideon, and for that... we were going to have to ask some people very nicely, and probably come back with a warrant.


    "No bugs that I''ve found," I said, putting the picture back on the thumbtack it had been hanging from previously. "Either the ones that''re here are hidden better than I can look... or they''re just not here to begin with."


    "How paranoid is Skinner?" Lisa asked. "She did fuck with Gideon''s mind, after all. Do you think maybe she trusted her juju enough that she didn''t need to keep close tabs on him?"


    I frowned, considering things.


    "...Maybe," I said. "It''s- I mean, it''s possible, but... It''s complicated. If he was more or less left unsupervised, then he was just a catspaw, rather than an actual asset that she cared about. Don''t get me wrong, Skinner''s an awful person who doesn''t think other people deserve free will, but she''s more specifically predatory, in a particular way. So... We''ll know how much attention Skinner was paying Gideon if we go back and ask him some more questions."


    "Ugh," Lisa mutters.


    "Yeah, yeah, I know, Gideon as a person kinda sucks, but this is literally our job, so..."


    "This is your job," Lisa said. "You don''t pay me anything."


    "...Shit, you''ve got a point. Well, okay, we''ll negotiate terms at your earliest convenience, maybe even tonight. I''m not getting a reliable salary either, but considering the month we just had, I can definitely afford to pay you what you''re worth."


    "I was joking," Lisa said. "I know you were joking with the whole ''pet foxgirl'' thing, but I do more or less get to just sit around and be cute all day instead of dealing with capitalism, and personally I think that''s fucking rad."


    "Yeah, but how are you going to impulse-buy stuffed animals when you''re wine-drunk at three in the morning if you don''t have your own money?" I asked. "How are you going to buy seven pairs of colorful thigh-highs you end up never wearing because they''re the wrong size but you''re too socially anxious to return them? How are you going to buy a fighting game you don''t even like playing just because one of the characters got revealed as trans in a DLC announcement?"


    "...Do you sit around writing these down in advance?" Lisa asked. "Do you just have this shit locked and loaded at all times? How do you come up with this stuff?"


    "I took a theater class in 8th grade," I said. "Between that and spending most of high school on a Homestuck roleplaying website, I''ve had a lot of practice at improv. And... well, I also just listen a lot. Immerse myself in culture. Pick up on what''s going on and then remix it into a stupid joke."


    "Anyway," Lisa said. "I''m not sure I''m comfortable with being your actual, literal employee. We''re roommates. That would... complicate things."


    "Yeah, that''s fair," I said. "At the same time, it''s also ethically imperative that you get paid, so... we''ll just bring it up with our actual boss, the one who cuts our checks."


    "Fair enough," Lisa said. "Mh. Well, I''m not sure we''ll find anything here, but... we''ll keep looking, I guess?"


    "Might as well," I said.


    <hr>


    "Well, that was a waste of time," Lisa said.


    "Ordinarily, the veteran detective says that confirming there''s nothing to be found in a likely spot isn''t a waste of time," I said. "However, right now, we spent all day looking through Gideon''s apartment and found nothing besides some broken electronics and a half-finished gunpla."


    "Remind me again what a gunpla is?" Nicky asked.


    Now that we''d more-or-less made our peace with each other, she spent a lot more time downstairs in the common areas, chilling on the couch with her laptop and a lap desk featuring a full-sized 100% keyboard, an ergonomic mouse, and a strange-looking gadget that I belatedly realized was a 3D mouse, designed specifically for people working in CAD and other 3D modeling software.


    In her everyday casual clothes, which seemed to involve loose sweatpants and a very baggy shirt- the stuff that I was pretty sure she wore to sleep, really- she had an almost ethereal quality to her, between her stark white hair and deathly pale skin. It was very distinct, and visually differentiated her more than you''d think from the typical blonde white superheroine what has fat knockers. It was hard to look at her and see anything other than just... Nicky, my weird vtuber roommate.


    Who, upon closer inspection, was currently modeling the demongirl avatar I''d commissioned from her.


    "Plastic model kit for those big robots from Gundam," I said. "But, I mean, also a catch-all for plastic model kits for really any anime merchandise. Hell, I''ve even seen gunpla that used a few parts cast in silicone for the production of naked big titty waifu models that you get to assemble and paint yourself."


    "Classy," Nicky said. "What does it say about me that I kinda want one?"


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "That you''re tempted by tits and tasteless trinkets," I said.


    "Or you miss Bionicles," Lisa added.


    "Bionicles didn''t usually have nipples," I said.


    "Maybe where you''re from," Lisa said.


    "Hey, actually," I said. "Nicky, as it so happens, I have the mother of all 3D printers in the basement, and if you''d like, I can in fact produce prototypes of pretty much any 3D model you can make."


    "...Please don''t infect me with the desire to custom-make horny model kits," Nicky pleaded.


    "It would be very funny, is the thing," I said.


    "Don''t you dare use my commitment to the bit against me."


    I grinned.


    <hr>


    "Hey, you got a minute?" Lisa asked.


    "You''re sitting in my lap while we watch Gundam," I said. "We''ve got plenty of time."


    "Right, can you pause that, actually?"


    I did, and sat up a little bit straighter. The two of us were in Lisa''s den, with Lisa''s laptop sitting on the removable lap desk I''d built as part of her fancy cube chair.


    "What''s up?" I asked.


    "Akane brought up the polycule idea with me again," Lisa said. "And... I''m not really sure how to feel about it."


    "My own suggestion is to just go for it," I said. "The two of you could both use some extra love and intimacy. Just because I''m being weird about it doesn''t mean you have to miss out."


    "Maybe, but... I don''t know," Lisa said. "It''s just..." She sighed. "I like her, but I get the feeling that she only kinda likes me. That I''m getting this offer extended to me just because I live here and it''d be awkward, otherwise. That I''m just grid-filling, and... that I don''t belong here."


    "I see," I said. "Counterpoint: how many times have you sprawled out across Akane''s lap while she played with your ears, your hair, or your tail?"


    "...A few times," Lisa admitted. "But..."


    "Lisa, I hate to break it to you, but Akane desires you, carnally, even as you are, with your perceived flaws," I said. "She doesn''t care that you don''t have curves like an envelope some poor fool vainly labeled ''do not bend,'' she sees a redhead in a heels and a jumpsuit sporting fox ears and a tail, and she gets a metaphorical boner."


    "I- well- yeah, but..."


    "Look, I''m aware that you don''t currently look like genetic engineering gone wrong, but this house is very much skewing your perception of what the archetypal conventionally attractive woman looks like."


    "Wait, genetic engineering gone wrong?"


    "Yeah, Akane''s got those fat knockers specifically because her mom fucked up with her own gene therapies and cloning procedures. And then there''s Nicky, a half-alien royal whose heritage is traced to a technologically-advanced society that may very well have decided to engineer and tweak their women to conform to certain otherwise-impossible beauty standards. You, though, instead of an impossibly stacked porn star, just... look like an attractive human woman. Slightly tall for a woman, nice hips, nice tits- yes, even though they''re small-medium for a real human... I''ll help you look however you want to for gender euphoria, but I will also say, right now? You are already a conventionally fuckable woman. A hot chick. A babe. You can make your own thirst-traps on Twitter or whatever, if you felt like it. Akane wanting to fuck you isn''t her settling, it''s her being attracted to women."


    Lisa''s face had reddened and heated more and more as I went on.


    "You''re a blonde wig and some props away from a perfectly serviceable Mercy Overwatch cosplay," I continued. "Or like. Whatever hero shooter game is popular these days and features technically-not-superheroes who look like they''re designed to have porn made of them. Doesn''t matter."


    "Okay, okay, I get it," Lisa said. "I''m hot and everyone in this house wants to fuck me. That does make me feel better, but I think I get the picture."


    "And, again, you do get to look more or less however you want, if it''s a self-esteem thing," I continued. "People talk a big game about learning to be comfortable in your own body, but I''m not a Doctor of Applied Transhumanism because I thought that changing your own body was a bridge too far. If you really, truly, cannot think of yourself as complete and womanly without tits bigger than your head and hips wide enough you have to walk through doors sideways, I can arrange for you to look like that."


    "You are really insistent about me sleeping with Akane," Lisa said.


    "I''m insistent about helping you reach a point in your life where you''re happy with who you are and what you look like, and can comfortably be intimate with others," I corrected her. "Because we''re both trans, and this is what loving kindness looks like between us."


    "Mmm."


    I took a hand off her waist, going up to rub between her fox ears.


    "And, well, if loving kindness between us looks pretty gay... so be it," I said. "I sure as hell don''t feel particularly put-upon by being kinda gay with you."


    "Does that mean you''ll date me?" Lisa asked.


    "Probably not, in all honesty," I admitted. "I''m going to be leaving this world behind when I''m done with this job. My home is another world, and it would be irresponsible to make that sort of commitment when I plan to leave in the near future."


    "Then... why bother with any of what you''re doing here, with me?"


    "I may not live here permanently, but nobody lives in the world permanently," I said. "We all still retain an obligation to make things better, even if we won''t ever personally see the benefits of those improvements."


    "Sometimes I forget how religious you are," Lisa said. "What with, y''know, being gay, trans, and a self-proclaimed false god of flawed creation."


    "Honestly, it''s not much to do with me being religious," I said. "I put great stock in being a good person as an active practice, and it just so happens that Judaism, which I was drawn to mostly for the arguments, happens to be quite experienced at teaching goodness as an active practice. And, well... it does help, when it''s an ancient living tradition, and not just my own moral compass, telling me that the right thing to do is personally inconvenient for me."


    Such as, for example, not fucking my roommates. Did I want to? Yes, absolutely, especially Lisa. But I knew better. I knew it would lead to pain and ruin for everyone involved. That''s why I was really so insistent about Lisa getting confident enough to fuck Akane. I was hoping that if they were fucking, then they wouldn''t desire me anymore, and holding out would be easier. Hopefully... hopefully I could leave this world and return home without leaving a fucking mess behind.

 Book 3 Chapter 5

    "Yes, I really am that bored," I said.


    Detective Brown sighed. "Well, you know what, I guess it would be nice to have a rubber duck."


    It had been two weeks since Gideon James'' arrest, and I''d found nothing useful in that time. Therefore, it was time to admit that people other than me were capable of doing things, and ask them for help. And so, here I was, talking to the ''real detectives'' that Liquid Courage had given all of the ''mundane'' leads to.


    "Gideon was a fixer," Detective Brown continued. "He was given lists of goods and destinations they had to go to, and arranged the deliveries. Now, good covert operatives burn their documentation once they''re done with it, but Gideon kept them in a thumb drive in his desk. So..."


    "So, you''re going to ask that I look through all these files myself and see what I come up with, because y''all haven''t managed to piece anything useful together?" I asked.


    "More or less," Detective Brown said, nodding. "One of us did put all of this into a neat little SQL database, and coded up an internal site that shows the locations on a map of Austin, but that''s about all we''ve got so far. We''re pretty sure that most of these are a smokescreen, or that Gideon was delivering to other operatives he knew nothing about, where they''d get moved further along to the actual operations."


    "That''s a pattern she''s engaged in before, yeah," I said, nodding. "Multiple cells, cooperating unknowingly. And the only way to tell what''s a smokescreen and what isn''t is to actually look at the stuff being delivered, and know what''s useful to her and what isn''t."


    "Which we don''t, because she''s a mad scientist, and we aren''t," Detective Brown said, nodding. "For instance: is there any legitimate use she has at all for sex toys?"


    "It depends on the sort," I said. "Anything made of silicone can, with the right techniques, be rendered back down into raw silicone, which has its uses... of course, she can also just buy silicone, and what I know of her methodology honestly doesn''t use much of it. Vibrators can be a source of electronics, although again, those are electronics you can just buy. So... Generally, no, but she might be trying to be sneaky? Hard to tell without knowing more specific."


    "In this case, it was a hundred and sixty vibrators," Detective Brown said, his attention fully glued to his laptop. "The sort with a vibrating ''bullet'' paired with a remote."


    "Hundred and sixty," I murmured. "...That''s five batches of thirty two, which is two to the power of five."


    "That supposed to mean something?" Detective Brown asked.


    "She knows a trick for making big batches of mad science gadgets," I said. "Her batches are exactly thirty two gadgets. But, all the same, I have no idea what she''d be making that used... what, five vibrators apiece? Some sort of weird-ass mind control device, maybe, but... Well, again, I can''t be sure."


    "So, we''re on the lookout for anything that comes in multiples of 32?" Detective Brown asked.


    "More or less, yeah," I said, nodding. "In fact- do you mind letting me use your computer for a moment? If everything is in a SQL database, I know how to make it automatically spit out everything that fits the bill."


    "The guy who set up the database knows how to do it too," Detective Brown said. "We''ll get the results back to you soon."


    "Can I just get the database itself?" I asked.


    "No."


    <hr>


    "Fucking departmental territoriality," I muttered under my breath.


    "Hi, what can I get for you?" the barista asked as she finished with the guy in front of me.


    "Oh, right, uh. Can I get a medium black coffee and a-" I paused, checking Nicky''s order. "...my roommate said ''a venti JFK hot chocolate.''"


    "JFK means three shots of espresso," the barista explained, writing down my order. Macabre. I like it. "Anything else?"


    "...Yeah, can I get two slices of pound cake with that?"


    "Sure! Name?"


    "Roxy. Can I get all that to go, please?"


    "Certainly."


    I paid for my order, and went off to the side to wait for it to be prepared.


    "Sorry about that," I continued quietly, my finger back to my ear to hide the fact I did not actually have an earpiece in. "Line was shorter than I thought."


    "Hey, I''m not complaining about getting my hot brown sooner than expected," Nicky said. "Anyway, you''ve been consumed by work lately. How about we take your mind off of it with some good old-fashioned video games? Delay your inevitable stress-induced death by a little while?"


    "Ah, right, that Factorio modpack you''ve been working on," I said, ignoring the ''you''re working too much'' nagging. Some of us have shit to contribute to an investigation, Nicky. I can''t afford to ''take it easy'' or ''take a nap'' or whatever. If shabbat was enough for the ancients, then it''s enough for me. "Finally got it worked out to the point you''re willing to test it on an actual noob?"


    "More or less, yeah," Nicky said. "Plus, I''m finally done with your VTuber avatar. We can start whenever you''re ready."


    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    "Fair enough. You''re gonna have to walk me through a few things before we start, though."


    "To-go order for Roxy?" the barista called out.


    "Aaaaand that''s our order. I''ll see you at home. Shabbat shalom."


    <hr>


    "Alright, chat, everyone say hi to Roxy, she''s my roommate, and to my knowledge, she''s never played modded Factorio before," Nicky said. "Right?"


    "I mean, I''ve played a bit of regular Factorio, and I''ve seen people play modded Factorio," I said. "But no, I never really played modded Factorio myself."


    "Alright. Well, this modpack is basically about giving you more stuff to manage. It makes the early game slower and longer, but it also makes the late game longer and more interesting."


    "Oh dear, Factorio early game," I said. "You''re on coal-ferrying duty."


    "Is that any way to treat a lady?"


    "We''ll find out if one ever joins us. Right now it''s just me and my bitch roommate."


    Nicky cackled.


    <hr>


    "Ugh, all these fucking burner machines," I groaned. "I gave up on Satisfactory because it had the unmitigated gall to lock fully-automated power behind Tier 3 out of 8, and made me gather twigs and leaves to hand-shovel into the fucking generators. Compared to this modpack, however, Satisfactory may as well have given me an ice cream sundae and a blowjob. Look at this! Look at all these burner inserters, and these burner assemblers, and the fucking burner labs! This is inhumane! How can anyone live like this!"


    "So you''re saying an option to toggle the early game extension would be appreciated," Nicky said diplomatically.


    "The mod designer kissing my ass would be appreciated," I said. "Factorio is interesting and fun because you''ve gotta design your factory around throughput, space limitations, and upgradability. What is not fun about Factorio is walking around mindlessly refilling coal reservoirs or hand-placing buildings into your blueprint."


    "We''ve got nanobots in this modpack."


    "And we don''t have them right now, so that doesn''t help me any."


    "Oh, chat wants you to know that you sound like an accountant who plays Call of Duty."


    "Tell them I''m a bounty hunter who plays Dark Souls."


    "Do you actually?"


    "No, I work in IT."


    "...I meant the Dark Souls bit."


    "I do play Dark Souls, yes. It''s basically just Devil May Cry for people who don''t like Mortal Kombat."


    "I hate that I can understand that. Oh- chat wants us to do an Elden Ring co-op stream."


    "Is chat aware that your brand seems to be factory games, and that doing an Elden Ring co-op stream would be a wild change of pace that many of your viewers may not be terribly interested in?"


    "Chat is generally not aware of anything."


    <hr>


    "Okay, the ore processing thing is a little convoluted, but I think I kinda like it," I said. "It''s simultaneously simpler, because one ore patch, properly processed, will give you both iron and copper, but also more complicated, because one ore patch will give you both iron and copper, and you''ve gotta deal with that."


    "Of course, right now it''s less efficient than the earlier smelting process, but once we unlock advanced iron and copper smelting, it''ll be more efficient," Nicky said. "And, also, more complicated."


    "Well, duh, it''s Factorio," I said. "Complexity increases to infinity. Oh, hey, chat has another question for me."


    "Oh goddammit," Nicky said. "You people really don''t trust me? Tell them, Roxy. Tell them I really am a busty blonde in real life."


    This was one of Nicky''s running jokes on her stream, where she made a true statement in such a way that everyone thought she was joking. Because, well, if she really was a busty blonde, then she''d be a much more successful titty streamer rather than a middling vtuber, right?


    Unless, of course, she had a good reason to not want people to know what she looks like.


    "She looks exactly like Black Cat from Spider-Man, yes," I said. "Even the haircut and the skintight black catsuit with the gratuitous cleavage. It''s the weirdest thing, apparently that''s not even clothing. She just looks like that."


    "Thank you," Nicky said.


    "You get used to a sexy roommate pretty quickly, but it will never stop being funny every time she''s eating something and food just drops straight down into her cleavage. One time I asked her to help me make cookies and she fumbled an entire cup of sugar on herself. It was hilarious."


    "You called me sugartits at the time, which was very funny, but only in hindsight," Nicky said.


    "Yeah, I imagine dumping sweetened sand straight down your bra wasn''t a fun experience in the moment," I said.


    Of course, this did not actually happen. For one, Nicky''s outfits didn''t have much in the way of cleavage just as a general rule. Two, she actually wasn''t very clumsy, and I''d never witnessed her dropping food on herself in the three-ish months I''d known her.


    Three, this incident actually happened to Akane, who''d had a better sense of humor about the whole thing.


    "Bra? Pft," Nicky said. "I don''t wear a bra. I don''t need a bra. Rip to all the other women with big tits, but I''m built different."


    "I am literally in the same room as you right now," I said. "I can see the outline of the bra strap through your shirt."


    I mean, it was actually true that she didn''t need one; someone with gravity-based powers had no need for external support. She still wore one anyways, though, because she''d made the executive decision that other people weren''t permitted to see her nipples through her shirt.


    "No you can''t. That''s just a mole."


    "Nicky, it''s like six inches long."


    "I''ve got a really fucked up skin condition."


    I snorted. "Whatever. Did you sort out the research section?"


    "I did. Oh, chat wants to know what you look like, too."


    "What, is my webcam not working?" I asked. "Chat, you know what I look like. You guys can see me."


    "You look like a 3D model of a demon with big tits and bigger horns?" Nicky asked.


    "Of course I do," I said. "You''re my roommate, you know what I look like. We''re sitting in the same room."


    "Ah, right, my mistake. Sorry, I''m just so terminally online I forget that I can look at things that aren''t a computer screen or my own bloodshot eyes in the mirror at three in the morning as I wonder how my life became this."


    "Or your own tits."


    "Or my own tits, which are so big you guys, I promise, just so thick and fat and juicy. I also look at those, you''re right."


    "Right, well. Now that I''ve got this goddamn metal setup done with... I think I''m done for tonight. I''m gonna go get started on dinner."


    "Bye. Oh, chat says bye too."


    "Goodbye, internet weirdos who sometimes draw uncomfortably horny fanart of my roommate. Leave me out of this."

 Book 3 Chapter 6

    "Post-stream aftercare," Nicky said. "You really are the best roommate."


    "Don''t call it that," I said. "We''re just friends, relaxing and cuddling after a long day. And sure, it''s a little homoerotic, but that''s just what happens when two attractive wuhluhwuhs-"


    "Two what?"


    "W L W. Women Loving Women. Y''know, lesbians and bisexual women, for example, us. Anyhow, our cuddling is a bit homoerotic, but that''s just how it is between two attractive people who find each other attractive. No need to make it even moreso by calling this aftercare."


    It was late, and we''d eaten dinner and ended the stream. And, well, Nicky had politely but firmly insisted on some cuddles before bed, and who was I to deny her? And so, here I was, lying back on her bed- with my back at a 45 degree angle thanks to a truly luxurious wedge pillow she had- with a cuddly half-alien warrior-princess-cum-vtuber sprawled on top of me like a weighted blanket, her head resting against my shoulder as I played with her hair.


    The logistics of how to go about cuddling my roommate were surprisingly involved. There were a lot of factors to consider- how easy do we need it to be to disentangle ourselves, how warm is it in the room, how sleepy are the participants? For the most part, this sort of face-to-face cuddling, this essentially horizontal hugging, was winning out four times out of five, partly because it let me play with my snugglebuddy''s hair, and partly because it gave me a lot more latitude in terms of where I could safely put my hands.


    See, with someone with reasonably-sized boobs, like Lisa, casual spooning meant I could put my hands pretty much anywhere between the bottom of the sternum and the top of the hips without making things uncomfortably intimate. But Nicky, who looked like someone''s Power Girl r34 3D model had gotten printed out and given a change of clothes, had a much narrower range of space where it was safe to put my hands on her front without brushing up against a boob. And thus, face-to-face cuddling, so I could put my hands on her back.


    Sure, we were pretty affectionate with each other, but this was a new state of affairs and had lasted, like, two weeks so far. I was absolutely certain that this affection didn''t go all the way to second base.


    "Counterpoint: what if I want maximum homoeroticism?" Nicky asked.


    Okay, I was reasonably confident that this affection didn''t go all the way to second base.


    "...Is that the right conjugation of that?" Nicky wondered.


    "If it isn''t, I don''t know what is," I admitted. "But I do know that if you want maximum gaiety, then you should go talk to Akane, who I hear is trying to start a polycule."


    "That... isn''t quite an option for me," Nicky admitted. "There''s... a lot involved. Is my intuition correct, Roxy? Can I in fact trust you to keep a secret?"


    "My lips are sealed," I said.


    "Thank you," Nicky said. "It''s... God, where do I even start?"


    "Why does your intuition tell you that I''m a trustworthy secret-keeper?" I asked.


    "Because..." She sighed. "Okay, so. Remember how my mom is an actual for-real princess-in-exile?"


    "The dignity and expectations of royalty, that sort of thing, yes," I said, nodding. "I mean, granted, the fact your mother is a princess rather than a queen or empress informs me that your family is merely noble, rather than properly royal, being a cadet branch, but all the same, no amount of nitpicking is going to change the fact that you were raised by a hereditary aristocrat."


    "And yet you keep nitpicking anyways," Nicky said.


    "Expecting me to do otherwise is anti-semitic."


    "Whatever. Anyway, yes, the royalty thing- do not fucking start- is a big part of it, but it isn''t at all helped by the fundamental mechanism of our shared power. It isn''t gravity, it''s gravitas. It''s perception, it''s social power, it''s respect. How people perceive us has a serious, measurable impact on how much weight we can lift, how much damage we can soak, and how fast we can fly. And so, as an incredibly obvious result, my family is obsessed with our image."


    "And that means being incredibly picky about how the public gets to see your love life," I hazarded.


    "My older brother had to plan for months with my mother before he could take a girl on a date," Nicky said. "Thankfully, the girl in question was pretty cooperative, considering that the line she was being fed was that it was very important to our culture to ensure compatibility and a perfect match. Really, Mom just wanted to make sure she wouldn''t cause any trouble down the line if something went south."


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    "And when you consider that the two of us very much have gotten into acrimonious arguments before- very recently in fact- then there''s no way in hell she''d approve," I said.


    "Well, no," Nicky said. "She''d disapprove because she''s homophobic, and so is the society we live in. Of course, there is a loophole that we''re all quite aware of: so long as my mother doesn''t ever hear about it, we get to do whatever we want. Anything we do that stays behind closed doors won''t stain our reputation, which is what she''s most concerned with. And that''s why it matters that I can trust you to keep a secret."


    "I see," I said.


    "And that brings us, finally, back to Akane," Nicky said. "I love Akane, I really do, but... well, I can''t trust her to keep a secret. I cannot trust her to not go on Twitter and announce to the entire world that we''re dating. And if it''d be bad publicity for me to openly date a girl, imagine how bad of publicity it''d be for me to openly date three girls, two of whom are trans."


    "It''d cost House Vega a lot of support among the traditionalists and conservatives who think monarchy is acceptable, yeah," I said. "But, well. Honestly, fuck those people. We''re better off without them."


    "As you pointed out, the people who think gay people are unacceptable are the same people who think monarchy is acceptable," Nicky said. "What precisely do you expect the Royal House of Vega to do to separate ourselves from them?"


    "Abdicate," I said with a shrug. "Accept that the age of kings has come and gone and stop larping as a more fuckable House of Windsor. Renounce your hereditary aristocracy, champion the cause of social progress, equality, and the inherent dignity of even the lowest of humanity."


    "Do you really expect my mother to go along with that?" Nicky asked.


    "The difference between you and I is that I don''t give a fuck what your mother thinks or wants," I said. "Your mother is just another fucking social atavism sustaining herself on a toxic admixture of powerful people who want to go back to having more power and dangerous idiots who don''t understand how much it sucks to live under a monarchy."


    "Aside from slandering my mother-"


    "It''s not slander if it''s true."


    "-this does not actually solve my problem, of ''I cannot openly date anyone because it would materially damage my ability to perform hero work.''"


    "Sure it does, you''re just not willing to see it," I said. "The solution is to separate yourself from your family. Build up your profile as an ex-monarchist, someone who values freedom, democracy, and human rights. And you know what, if you would feel bad about hanging your family out to dry like that, then you can frame them as misguided and behind the times. Your embarrassing uncle who tries to be supportive but fundamentally doesn''t know how. Give them the option of following in your footsteps, of catching up with the present day... or, alternatively, of continuing to wallow in their monarchist muck."


    "Giving my family an out when I screw over their current position doesn''t change the fact that I am screwing over my family''s current position for my own personal benefit," Nicky said. "What if it was your parents, Roxy?"


    "I haven''t seen them in six years," I said with a shrug. "I left home after I was done with Skinner''s cult. Made my own way through life. Because, well, my parents just kinda sucked. They were kinda mean and generally unsupportive, so I cut them out of my life and moved on. They weren''t even wielding the threat of social harm to prevent me from having a girlfriend they hadn''t thoroughly vetted beforehand, they just sucked. You, though... Honestly, Nicky, you don''t need them. Your mom popped you out to be a good little lady who advances the interests of House Vega, as understood by the matriarch of House Vega, and you''re not being selfish or a bad daughter for deciding you''ve got better things to do.


    "I mean, look at your life as it stands. You''ve got a solid career apart from them, doing 3D modeling and streaming, and you''ve got your own little found family in the form of me, Lisa, and especially Akane. And then you''ve got the reputation from helping with this investigation, starting with that newspaper puff piece but which we can build up a lot more, especially if we can get Valiant on-board as a way of defanging House Vega''s aristocratic ambitions. You already have everything you need to separate yourself from them. Especially now, with Akane recruiting for her polycule, to give you the motivation. Mom won''t let you have two girlfriends? Fuck it, you weren''t asking her anyways. It''s your life, you do what you want with it."


    "...Two?" Nicky asked.


    "Yeah, I have no intention to join the polycule," I said. "I intend to leave once this Skinner nonsense is over and done with. This is no position to be getting into a long-term relationship in."


    "I see, I see," Nicky said. "And- humor me for a moment- why do you intend to leave and go back to Earth A-510, and leave behind your nice, big house with friends who love you and also have nice, big tits? What did you leave behind that you want more than to sleep with us?"


    "As a Cajun Jew, I have had more than enough fucking diaspora in my life," I said. "I have a home, back on Earth A-510. It may not be perfect, but it''s mine."


    "Hrm... I see, I see," Nicky said. "But, uh... between a runaway foxgirl who''s decided her home is with you, a tremendously curious mad scientist who hates living alone, and the half-estranged daughter of a princess-in-exile, I think that maybe, just maybe, you don''t actually have to choose between going home and being in love."


    "I can''t ask you to leave your homes behind on my account," I said.


    "Good news! You literally didn''t! I''m volunteering, and I''m pretty sure everyone else would, too!"


    "Look, I just-"


    Just tell her you''re not interested, Roxy, it''s not that hard. Yes, it''s a lie- I''m quite aware that I wanna kiss them all so tenderly and then fuck them so hard they forget their own names. However, I don''t actually have to tell the truth to... the people I am infatuated with and want to start a new life with.


    Fuck.


    "...I don''t want to talk about it," I said, before tipping over on my side and dumping Nicky off onto the bed. I sat up, and hopped off on the other side of the bed. "Goodnight, Nicky."

 Book 3 Chapter 7

    "Are you- oh, you are," I said. "Hey Antonio, wasn''t expecting you."


    About a month ago, I''d gone to a series of dog parks with Lisa, and one of the dog owners we met there was a man by the name of Antonio Sanchez, a Tejano man who hunted game birds and, apparently, worked as a delivery driver.


    "Roxy, right?" he asked. "What brings you here?"


    "Unfortunately, nothing good," I said. "I''m part of an ongoing investigation, and we think someone pulled a fast one on you. Do you mind if I come inside and ask some questions about one of your clients?"


    He paled a little, which was understandable, considering that he''d just learned that the cops were keenly interested in what he''d been doing. And no amount of me being one of the good ones, or him legitimately being considered a victim in this would set his mind at ease, because cops didn''t have a well-earned reputation for light touches and compassion, especially when it came to brown people.


    "...S-sure," Antonio said.


    "Thanks. So, do you recognize the name Gideon James?" I pulled out my phone- I''d bought a new one after realizing that I did still need a screen to show other people pictures with- and pulled up a photograph of Gideon. "This guy?"


    "...Yeah, yeah, I recognize him," Antonio said, stepping back and waving me into his house. "Is he the one you''re investigating?"


    "More or less," I said. "We''re pretty sure he was doing what he did under duress- supervillain bullshit, you know how it is- but, all the same, we do need to look over what he was doing and figure out why, so we can track down the mastermind behind it all. So... anything you can share with me would be really helpful."


    "Of course, of course. What do you need to know?"


    "Due to some departmental politics, I only have a small slice of the information available to me," I said. "Information about particularly weird deliveries, selected by naively-written queries... it''s kind of a mess. Right now, all I know about your job is that you delivered a hundred and sixty vibrators, and on another occasion, you delivered the same number of reusable menstrual cups."


    "Gideon told me he was a contractor and wasn''t entirely clear on who he was working for or what they were doing," Antonio said. "But that he was pretty sure it was some kind of poorly-run charity startup. Some kind of charity shop? Like, you know, a Goodwill knockoff or whatever... look, I don''t know. I delivered a lot of weird shit. And I think they were also doing a soup kitchen type deal?"


    "Go on," I said.


    "So most of the time, I was being kinda wasteful," Antonio said. "Delivering stuff with a pickup truck that would''ve fit in the passenger seat of a compact, that sort of thing. But about a third of the time, I was delivering bulk bags of some kinda vegetables."


    "Do you know which ones?" I asked.


    "I recognized the potatoes, but there were two other kinds I delivered, too," Antonio said. "Didn''t really recognize ''em, though."


    "Was one of them a big, round, white and purple ball?" I asked. "A long skinny root on one end and maybe some greens on the other?"


    "Yeah, yeah, and the other one was... some kinda grain?" Antonio said. "They were little perfect circles, real thin..."


    "Like these?" I asked, showing him my phone again.


    "Yeah, exactly like those," Antonio nodded. "The hell are those, anyway?"


    "Turnips and lentils," I said. "Lentils are basically a kind of bean, real popular in India. And turnips are a root vegetable hardly anyone eats anymore because they''re tough and bland. Mostly they get used as fodder for livestock."


    "I see," Antonio said. "So..."


    "So, while I have drawn a conclusion from this already, it would be irresponsible of me to share that with you, and I should really keep asking questions and get a better picture of what''s going on. Have you been delivering any of these vegetables on behalf of anyone else within the last four months? And do you know if any of your colleagues have been doing the same?"


    <hr>


    "Turnips, lentils, and potatoes," Detective Brown repeated.


    "What about this information makes it some kind of coup?" Liquid Courage asked.


    "Aren''t potatoes one of those vegetables that people say you can live on indefinitely?" another detective, whose name I didn''t catch, asked.


    "Close," I said. "Potatoes are almost nutritionally complete, but they lack key vitamins and minerals, and the protein content is kinda low, so you want to supplement them with something. In Ireland, they supplemented this with dairy, because they had a lot of cows pastured on unfarmable hills. But dairy is an animal product, and unless you''ve got the animals themselves, those cost money. More than simply switching from dairy to a vegetable source of protein and a vegetable source of vitamins and minerals."


    "Lentils and turnips," Liquid Courage said. "Okay, those three vegetables together make up a more-or-less nutritionally complete diet. So fucking what? Tell us why this matters."


    Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    "Is this evidence that Skinner has followers she needs to feed?" Detective Brown asked. "Big whoop, we already knew that."


    "It isn''t about feeding her followers," I said. "If it was just a matter of feeding a bunch of humans, that''s not that hard. Human civilization is built around that kind of thing. No, this specific blend is what she grinds up for organic feedstock when she''s doing mad biology."


    "...Oh," Detective Brown said.


    "This is the sort of innocuous-seeming detail that you cannot pick out as a red flag without knowing precisely what you''re looking for," I said. "Which is why I need full access to Gideon''s files and that goddamn database."


    "But-" Detective Brown began.


    "Just give her the damn files, Leroy. We are not having a repeat of the Idaville Incident."


    "...Fine," Detective Brown said. "Will that be all, Doctor?"


    "Give me ten minutes to comb through the files," I said. "It may be that we''re gonna need a lot of mundane boots on the ground knocking on doors and asking questions."


    <hr>


    "So, here''s the problem," I said. "We have a ton of places we need to search, but we only have a handful of people to search them."


    "What''s the solution?" Akane asked.


    "Robots," I said. "One of my three specialties is robots, and while I don''t use them often, that''s because so far I haven''t really needed to. But, back home, they''re what I used for backup, and now, they''re what I''ll use for this big ol'' job."


    "I''m gonna be honest, I forgot you had robots as a specialty," Akane said.


    "A robot made you breakfast this morning."


    "...They''re very unobtrusive."


    "Whatever. Anyhow, I have tricks for batching out identical copies of a given gadget, and the robots I build are capable of participating in the building process and even doing it without me, once I''ve got two of the bastards built. Buuuut, the next problem is that our work area is the basement, and also, so is Lisa''s bedroom. Sure, it''s a real bedroom now, with an actual wall and a real door and some proper soundproofing insulation, but... well, our workshop being right outside Lisa''s bedroom door still feels simultaneously inconvenient and unsafe."


    "You don''t use the workshop very much, do you?" Akane asked.


    "I do nearly all of my work at a computer, so, no," I said.


    "Well, prepare to be amazed," Akane said, leading me to a big square in the corner of the room, precisely three meters across, with black-and-yellow hazard tape on both sides of the three-meter outline. "And witness... the real workshop!" Once we were both within the square, she hit a button in a box mounted on the wall, with a very thick and beefy conduit running down and into the floor. Oddly, next to the box and on the other side of the dividing line, there was a matching button, box, and conduit. "...I said, the real workshop!" She hit the button again, and finally, a noise was made, and the concrete we stood on began to move, along with the box. At the same time, a wrought iron safety railing raised up out of the floor, coming up to about four feet high at its peak.


    "So, you built a mole machine to dig out a giant secret underground workshop," I said. "And then you installed a cleverly-disguised freight elevator connecting it to our basement."


    "Also to our garage," Akane said. "I make vehicles, remember? Of course, right now I''m focusing more on transformation, playing around with density and volume and all that jazz."


    "I assume you have an application in mind?" I asked. "I mean, aimless dicking around is fun, I''ve done plenty of that, but for some reason most mad scientists prefer goal-oriented dicking around."


    "If I can reliably shrink and un-shrink complicated things," Akane said, "then I can build vehicles longer than three meters down here and then get them out of here."


    "...And you can''t be bothered to just dig a bigger tunnel?"


    "The math says this is the biggest tunnel our house can safely support."


    The elevator came to a stop, and I hummed appreciatively. Akane was a formally-trained aerospace engineer, and as a formally-trained engineer of any sort, one of her earliest, most-practiced skills was the ability to do useful math about material stress and strain and loading. Sure, in Akane''s case she''d developed that talent towards the end of making jet engines that didn''t explode, but as a mad scientist, she could transfer that skill more than one might think.


    The limestone our house was built atop had been expertly carved and buttressed with steel. And despite knowing that this was likely the product of intense calculation and optimization, I couldn''t help but shiver as I noted that the steel support beams and limestone were shaped very organically and melded together, like ligaments anchoring themselves to bones.


    The space itself was quite serviceable, with no pillars in the middle of the floor to get in the way and high ceilings helped along by the domed structure. The lighting was well up to OSHA standards, and the floors had been carefully carved flat and level from the bedrock itself, left precisely rough enough for people to safely walk on.


    "This," Akane said, sweeping her arm across our field of view, "is the real workshop. So, Roxy... think you can work with this?"


    I hummed appreciatively, stepping off the freight elevator. Over there were well-stocked supply shelves, there were some machine tools, and in the back was a big ol'' 3D printer with a hopper of special plastic that, when put into the sintering kiln right next to it, would produce a perfectly serviceable metal part that would''ve been a much bigger pain in the ass to cast in a foundry.


    And, of course, then there were the far less mundane fabricators, built by Akane and I, able to produce all sorts of miscellaneous shit.


    "I''m gonna need to prototype the scanner in question today," I said. "Get it working, draw up a procedure for production... Then tomorrow, I wake up bright and early, eat a big breakfast, and then spend all day down here, building robots and getting an assembly line going. That''ll take up some space, but..."


    "We''ve got space," Akane said.


    "Yeah. Yeah we do." I turned back and nodded to her. "Yeah, I can work with this."

 Book 3 Chapter 8

    It was almost elegant. Perceive and control, in harmonious parity, both working through the underlying threads in the tapestry of reality. In the beginning, perception and control had been in sync as well- perception to read information stored in technology, and control to change it. The road had parted, and the two paths had gone their separate ways, but here, in this penultimate step, the final refinement I could make without a special, esoteric sort of thesis, they''d finally met once more, in their own way.


    Or perhaps that was just me. After all, it was incredibly common to specialize in scanners and not control, or vice versa. They weren''t actually two sides of the same coin. Oh, sure, I''d found ample synergy between them, but they were my specialties- it''d be weird if I didn''t.


    Mmn. I was getting sidetracked. This new scanner, the one I was putting all this effort into building, could perceive things in more than just the three spatial dimensions we''re accustomed to. The extra dimensional axes, which I currently only somewhat understood, were very much not identical to each other, however. The small, portable, quick-to-make scanner I was prototyping right now only had enough juice to pierce the veil and look into the spirit world.


    However, that was more or less all we needed.


    The plan was simple: build scanners more refined than the noses of Lisa''s spirit-hounds, search the city''s transport infrastructure, and figure out where all those potatoes, lentils, and turnips were going. And then, from there, we''d be able to, hopefully, track down whatever biology project Skinner was working on.


    And, incidentally, yes, I had already used my existing scanners to draw up a map of every location in Greater Austin that had received shipments of potatoes, lentils, turnips, and/or vibrators within the last four months. We knew where to look.


    The prototyping process was very touch-and-go, with frequent stops to test things, refine my working model, and proceed from there. This was the first time I was building anything even remotely this advanced, after all, and that just inescapably took time. And in this case... it took ten hours straight.


    I was walking normal-adjacent at first, but by the time I finally got up to the ground floor of the house, I was staggering, and stumbled into the kitchen to catch myself on the refrigerator door. After regaining my balance for a few moments, I ripped the door open, rummaged through the fridge, and tore open a container full of leftover egg fried rice, grabbing a fork and shoveling fuel into the furnace I call a gullet.


    "Damn, bitch, you live like this?" Lisa asked, standing behind me.


    I swallowed, and closed the fridge with my knee. "Yes, yes I do."


    "...Well, can''t fault you for honesty."


    "ADHD is a cruel mistress," I continued. "And my internal healing device has a habit of purging all foreign substances, so the standard treatment plan of microdosing meth or whatever isn''t really an option. So... I get to deal with the occasional bout of hyperfocus, and forgetting to eat."


    "That sounds perfectly healthy and not at all concerning."


    "Eh. I''ll live."


    "That''s not as comforting as you think it is."


    "Lisa, I get shot at for a living." I swallowed some more fried rice. "My mildly-disordered eating isn''t going to be what kills me."


    "That doesn''t- I-"


    "Now if you''ll excuse me, I do still need to eat food. Got a loooong day tomorrow."


    <hr>


    The next morning, I woke up bright and early, trudged downstairs, and found that breakfast had already been prepared for me, in the form of a four-egg omelette loaded with cheese and mushrooms.


    "I was going to use sausage, but apparently combining milk and meat isn''t kosher," Lisa said, handing me the plate. "Please remember to eat lunch."


    "Have one of the robots bring it down to me," I said with a shrug. "Also, thank you for the omelette."


    I ate quickly, then headed down into the sub-basement workshop. The sooner I started, the sooner I''d finish.


    The robots, while more sophisticated than the robot maids I''d put together before we moved in, were ones I''d built before. I already had a general template and working knowledge; now, I just needed to fill out the template and build the goddamn robot.


    And then build another one.


    Thankfully, the early stages of the production process were universal to the template and also straightforward enough I could do them on autopilot, doing the design work in my head while I fed files into the 3D printer and the general-purpose fabricator.


    The animating theory behind these robots was largely uninteresting bullshit, but the core of it was, essentially, a magic system that an acquaintance of mine had worldbuilt at me while trying and failing to write a number-go-up LitRPG for RoyalRoad, a task so simple that it can be done by the typical author on RoyalRoad, and which this acquaintance could not manage because, in their ineptitude, they had thought a magic system rigorous enough for a mad scientist to use it as a working model for powering their robots was more important than just typing a sequence of words that described Diet Kirito styling on all the fools and fucking all the bitches.


    In fact, a few years ago, I''d spent my entire November churning out reams upon reams of low-effort shitty LitRPG- ShitRPG, if you will- with absolutely no planning whatsoever, as a way of dunking on my acquaintance who was allergic to writing.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    For some reason, we never became friends.


    I shook my head, setting aside my reminiscence. I had a job to do.


    <hr>


    "Good timing," I remarked to myself as the freight elevator came to a stop, and someone stepped off of it. "I just finished the first robot. Set the food down on the table furthest from the fabricators. Belay that- set the plate down with the food on top, on the table furthest from the fabricators that is still in this room."


    "Yeah, yeah, I know what you meant," Lisa said, making me turn around so fast I pulled something in my neck. "Boner ape-tit, Roxy."


    "I love how absolutely deranged you can be sometimes," I said. "I''m a little confused as to why you''re wearing a maid outfit, though."


    "I''m a trans woman, aren''t I?" Lisa asked.


    "...Well, I can''t argue with that."


    It was a very cute maid outfit, too, one that almost looked like it could be worn by an actual maid, instead of a horny t-girl about to get railed. There wasn''t even any cleavage.


    "Alright, well," I said, walking over to the sink. "Let me wash my hands, and then probably put on a fresh set of nitrile gloves just to be sure. I have been handling. All sorts of nasty shit I don''t want to eat."


    "I... think maybe you should let me feed you instead," Lisa said, looking down at and clearly regretting the pile of burritos she''d prepared for me.


    "That might be a good idea, yeah," I said. "I''m still washing my hands, though."


    In truth, it was a bit of an overreaction; the handwashing station down here was itself a minor artifact of mad science, perfectly capable of scouring every last hint of lithium grease from my skin and leaving my hands clean and tidy. However, it was an artifact of mad science, and so I didn''t fully trust it.


    And... well, I''ll admit, the idea of having my pet foxgirl feed me lunch had its appeal, to the primal part of my brain that craved power over and control of other people. It was an ugly part of me, but... well, letting Lisa feed me a burrito was hardly an unacceptable indulgence.


    I pulled my forearms back out of the handwashing station, and walked over to the table we''d claimed for eating.


    "So what the hell are you doing down here?" Lisa asked. "Thought you didn''t spend time in the workshop."


    "I usually don''t," I admitted. "But, we need supernatural eyes and ears in a lot of places, and I''m the only one who can make robots worth a damn, so... here I am, in the workshop, getting my hands dirty. What about you, why are you bringing me burritos?"


    "I''m Tejano, turns out," Lisa said. "I know I don''t look it, or sound it, and that''s because my family was old Spanish bluebloods. Apparently, after the war, they quietly started pretending to just be any other white old money aristocrat family. Hell, I had to do a lot of digging to find that out- my parents had no idea. So... I''ve been trying, in bits and pieces, to reconnect with what feels like lost heritage. Which, well, mostly amounts to eating a bit more Mexican food. I''m trying to learn Spanish, too, but... well, that''s an entire language I''m trying to learn. It''s hard."


    "Especially if you don''t go outside and talk to Hispanic people very often," I said, nodding. "Of course, you and I both know that what I actually meant was ''why did you come down to the workshop to deliver my lunch personally?'' Nice try, distracting me with personal anecdotes and a chance to talk about Texan ethnography, but it didn''t work."


    Lisa shrugged. "I''m your pet foxgirl, yeah? The most perfect cat-dog. But, you don''t have slippers or a newspaper, and I''ve gotta fetch you something, so... food."


    "...Lisa, you know I was fucking with you when I called you my pet foxgirl, right?" I said.


    "You were being humorous, but that doesn''t necessarily mean you were kidding," Lisa said. "Besides, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of being your pet foxgirl. I get headpats and ear-rubs, and what I need to do is pretty clear and usually simple. It''s... liberating, really."


    "Fucking furry," I said.


    "Bitch, this is clearly petplay-flavored platonic lifestyle BDSM."


    "My mistake, Doctor Yiff."


    Lisa rolled her eyes. "Shut up and eat the burritos."


    Being as I was hungry, I acquiesced, and... they were pretty alright. Nothing special. They were burritos. Had some nice crunch, Lisa put in some fritos to try and replicate something that Taco Bell discontinued a few years ago, but they were, ultimately, just unremarkably good burritos. The remarkable part was having a redheaded foxgirl in a maid outfit feed me the burritos. The cooking didn''t need to be all that special to make this sort of thing a special moment, after all.


    "I think," I said, after polishing off the third burrito, "that''ll be enough for the next six hours. I''ll come up for dinner... probably after a shower. See you then."


    "As you wish, Master."


    "Wow, you are committed to this bit."


    "You look at me, realize my name is Lisa Kitsune Fox, and tell me I seem like I''d have trouble committing to the bit."


    "Well. Fair enough."


    <hr>


    "Good lord, you inhaled that stew," Nicky remarked.


    "I was hungry," I said with a shrug, getting up and walking over to the sink to deposit my bowl. "Urgh. Fucking hell. Even with a robot down there helping me with the next one, that was still a lot of heavy lifting. My healing implant is gonna be working overtime tonight- I am not looking forward to bedtime."


    "...What?" Akane asked, frowning.


    "Oh, uh. Well, y''know how we had to buy a new bed in a hurry, with Nicky moving back in? Well, I may have picked an especially cheap one to save on costs at the time out of a misplaced sense of fiscal responsibility. Most nights it''s fine, I have the healing implant to deal with that shit, but..."


    "I know how this is going to sound, coming from me," Akane began, "but I think, for the sake of your own health and safety, you are not allowed to sleep in your own bed anymore."


    "Not even dating, and I''ve already been banished to the couch," I bemoaned.


    "That''s not what I said," Akane said.


    "Sleepover time," Nicky said.


    "We all sleep in this house already," I pointed out.


    "Not in the same room," Nicky said.


    "C''mon, Roxy," Lisa added, reaching out and cupping Nicky''s chin. "You gonna look her in the eyes and tell her you won''t cuddle her to sleep? With this face?"


    "Alright, alright, jesus christ," I said. "You win. Sleepover time."


    Of course, despite admitting defeat...


    ...well, I didn''t really feel like I''d lost, here.

 Book 3 Chapter 9

    "I think there may have been a miscommunication," I said, lying in Akane''s bed.


    "All of us were talking excitedly about a sleepover," Lisa said, lying on top of me like a weighted blanket. "What did you think was going to happen?"


    "That y''all were going to be normal about this," I said. "My mistake."


    "When have any of us ever been normal?" Nicky asked, wrapped around my side and nestled under my arm.


    "Normal is for straight people," Akane added, in an identical position on my other side.


    "Compelling arguments, one and all," I said. "Just be aware that, at any time, I will finish digesting that stew, and have to get up and go to the bathroom."


    "Love is being fine with someone getting up in the middle of the cuddle puddle to take a shit," Akane said. "And everyone loves you."


    "Gay ass," I said.


    "Maybe so, but that doesn''t change the fact I love you, specifically," Akane said.


    "So do I," Nicky added. "I don''t tell just anyone that I''m a vtuber, after all."


    "...You are?" Lisa asked. "I mean- look, Roxy, I love you too, I didn''t just put on the maid outfit and bring you lunch because I was committed to the bit, but- Nicky, you''re a vtuber?"


    "Yeah?" Nicky said. "I thought you knew already."


    "No! Which one?"


    "GreaseKitty."


    "...You''re the one who cracked my egg," Lisa whispered.


    "Oh hey," Nicky said. "That does explain why you''re always cosplaying as my fox avatar."


    "Y- you recognized it?" Lisa asked, her ears wilting.


    "It looks good on you," Nicky said, reaching up to scratch Lisa''s ears.


    "Okay, yeah, that was worth seeing," I said. "Next stream, Lisa should go in chat and loudly declare that she''s slept with Nicky."


    "Oh god," Lisa said, cringing into herself even further. "I thought that guest star talked a lot like you!"


    "I love you," I said. "I love my bimbo foxgirl maid who brings me burritos at lunchtime."


    "Fuck you," Lisa said, half-affectionately.


    "And I guess I also love the vtuber who cracked her egg, and the mad scientist who housebroke the vtuber," I added, patting Nicky and Akane''s sides- being as my arms were resting along their backs, it was kind of awkward to safely put my hands anywhere.


    "Wow, you really love all of us?" Akane said. "You should join a polycule about it."


    "Akane," Nicky said, pleadingly.


    "Oh don''t act like you''re not gagging for it too, Princess," Akane said.


    "We agreed that we would gently encourage Roxy to open up about what''s really wrong," Nicky said.


    "How come I, the only top in this house, am the one getting tag-teamed?" I complained.


    "Thirsty girls make do," Lisa said.


    "You have that meme in this universe too?" I asked.


    "Honestly, half of our meme culture turns out to come directly from A-510 Tumblr and TikTok," Lisa said. "Someone over there did something that means there''s a memes-from-another-universe.tumblr.com that just posts shit from A-510. Nobody knows why. Some people argue it''s bad for our own memetic diversity."


    "Not the point," Akane said. "Look... Roxy, you know we can talk to you, right?"


    "That-" I blinked, as my brain short-circuited. "Wait, what?"


    "You know that all of us here trust you and are close enough to you to talk to you about our own problems, right?" Akane said.


    "Yyyyyes?" I said cautiously.


    "And, because relationships are a two-way street, even if not perfectly, we should, therefore, be the best candidates for you to talk to about your own problems, right?"


    "Ordinarily, yes, but in this case, you are not at all subtle about your ulterior motive. I cannot trust you to not react with a tantrum when I tell you why you cannot have my dick."


    Stolen novel; please report.


    "We figured you might say something about that," Lisa said, sliding off of me and onto Akane. "Which is why Nicky and I made some preparations."


    "You wh-mrphl!" Akane sputtered as Lisa stuffed a ball gag into her mouth, followed by tying her wrists with bondage rope. "Mrrrm!"


    "Hush, now," Lisa said. "You don''t get to participate in this conversation anymore."


    "...That''s one way to do it," I said, blinking and edging away from Akane and Lisa, and in the process pressing up against Nicky. "Ah, right, you''re there. Uhhh..."


    "We only had the one gag," Nicky assured me. "We are... aware that Akane can be a little pushy with you."


    "If I had to guess, it''s because of that time I told her that I was reluctant to throw around the full force of my personality to get my way," I said. "Of course, that reluctance is very contextual, so..."


    "So, we''re going to ease off," Nicky promised. "You''re obviously feeling tense and cornered right now. That''s a shitty thing to do to anyone, let alone a loved one who you have to trust to have your back in a fight."


    I sighed, letting my head fall back onto the pillows. Nicky cuddled in closer, which I tolerated, and Akane made some muffled whines of protest that more or less stopped when Lisa started cuddling her.


    I huffed lightly. Looks like maybe they did take at least some of my advice, and were directing their affections towards each other.


    Better them than me.


    "Hey, Roxy," Nicky said quietly. Christ, what is it this ti- "Key lime pie is your favorite, right?"


    What.


    "I- uh-" I blinked, a little caught off-guard. "...Kinda? I like it, it''s easy and cheap, and it''s a crowd-pleaser, so... Hell, if any pie is my favorite, it''d be key lime. It''s got that nice tang, the creamy sweetness, a bit of an herbal note from the limes, and the crunch of the crust... But, well, sometimes you just want the complete overkill of a chocolate cream pie."


    "Makes sense," Nicky said. "How about apple pie? Or any of the other classic fruit pies?"


    "Most of them are alright, but I don''t super like them, y''know? I''ll eat ''em if they''re available, but... I prefer a more consistent texture to my dessert pies. I also just don''t like blueberries. Ooooh, but I do love a good pumpkin pie- not sure if you''d count it as a fruit pie, but they''re popular at Thanksgiving alongside apple pies and all that shit."


    "Fuck, pumpkin pie is my favorite," Lisa said. "If we''re doing anything for Thanksgiving, we need a pumpkin pie."


    "Sounds good to me," Nicky said. "I''m partial to pumpkin myself."


    "It''s a good pie," I said.


    "I also liked that key lime pie you made when Akane''s moms came to visit," Lisa added. "You need to make more of those. Maybe for a Super Bowl watch party- you hear next year''s is supposed to be really hype? I''m hearing rumors about the halftime show."


    "Honestly, at this point, the only way they''d live up to the hype is if they convinced my mom to do a striptease," Nicky said.


    "Can we please talk about literally anything else?" I said. "Like... I don''t know. Why you felt the need to ask me about pies in the first place?"


    "Oh, that''s easy," Nicky said. "I like learning things about you, and what makes you happy. Your joys are pretty quiet, so... I wanna fill your days with more of them."


    "But why?" I asked. "How the fuck did I trick you into liking me so fast?"


    "You didn''t trick me into anything," Nicky said. "I love you on purpose, with both eyes open. I''ve seen that you can be kind and cruel. I''ve seen you take a gentle tone and a harsh hand. And I decided to love the woman who taught me humility and then held me close, when I felt I could truly understand you."


    "Clearly you don''t understand enough," I said. "I''ve been in a relationship before, okay? I''ve had a girlfriend before. And I was a terrible boyfriend! I was a selfish lover who didn''t care about what she wanted, who never wanted to take her anywhere nice or show her a good time. I just wanted someone to kiss and grope who''d occasionally suck my dick. So she dumped my dumb ass, and I''ve never been stupid enough after that to try inflicting myself on anyone else."


    I sniffed, pushing back against the prickling at my eyes.


    "I just... hold myself apart. Because I am, fundamentally, inadequate. I am not good enough. You all deserve better than me. Better than a shitty, inattentive asshole who doesn''t know how to interact with people properly. Better than a perpetual outsider who takes what she wants and runs."


    "Hey, hey, easy," Nicky said, nuzzling her head into my shoulder. "Look, I don''t know all the details, but you know what I do know? I know how you''ve acted lately. I know how you''ve conducted yourself with me, with Lisa, with Akane... Remember those late nights cuddling and talking about my problems, that you fully anticipated never being around to see through to the end, that you could''ve just left well enough alone? And how you didn''t, because you did care about me?"


    "And how you''ve treated me the same way?" Lisa added. "And Akane, too? Don''t give me that shit- you do care about what we want, you do pay attention. How fucking long ago was that relationship, anyways? Because if you were a teenager, then, yeah, no shit it kinda sucked. Everyone kinda sucks as a teenager. You''re twenty four now. You''re better than that, and I''ve seen it with my own two eyes."


    I blinked, staring at her, then looked at Akane and remotely unlatched her gag, desperate for some countervailing force.


    "I''ve only seen inside your mind the one time," Akane said. "But I did like what I saw. Enough to take a risk on you."


    "Fuck," I whispered.


    "You''re not an outsider here, Roxy," Akane continued. "You are what our household is built around. We love you. We need you. Please don''t leave us."


    "You don''t need me," I said, weakly.


    "We do," Nicky said. "We can figure all this out together. It doesn''t have to be tonight, or tomorrow, or anytime soon. We have the rest of our lives together to figure everything out, one step at a time, together as one."


    "Together as one," Lisa and Akane chorused.


    Was this it? Was this what was finally going to break my streak? My own little private slice of heaven with three weirdos weird enough to match me?


    I blinked.


    We were all outsiders, clustering together in warmth and understanding. But with each other... we didn''t have to suffer alone, anymore.


    Understanding flooded through me like I''d just shot up with sunshine and hugs.


    "Together as one," I said, as my accidental Thesis completed.

 Book 3 Chapter 10

    I kissed Akane, delighting in the pure, simple joy she wore so openly in that dopey grin.


    "So, obviously, we need to figure out what tits are for," Nicky said, floating up next to the TV with a wireless remote thing that, somehow, functioned like a digital marker for this whiteboard app thing. "Or at least, what we as a group want out of them. Now, as a semi-professional character designer, I''m already familiar with the most obvious parameter: appearance. How big are they? What shape are they? How do they fit in with the rest of the aesthetic? How are they framed? And the problem is, there''s no perfect solution here. Much like cooking and exercising, nearly anything can work, and we''re left to quibble over details."


    "Why are we putting this much thought into whether I get a pair of basketballs glued to my chest?" Lisa asked, raising her hand.


    I tapped her on the shoulder, leaning in half-way, and let her lean in the rest of the way to complete the kiss.


    "The answer," I said, watching her face light up and her tail wag, "is that we have all agreed that you, our pet foxgirl, deserve to have the best tits in the polycule. And for Akane and I to give you the best tits in the polycule with mad science, we first have to define what the best tits even are. And since we get to look and touch with you, we have to consider factors other than just appearance." I turned back to face Nicky. "Concern number two: tactile feel. They need to feel good in a hug, they need to feel good in the hand, and they need to feel good when used as a pillow."


    "An excellent point," Nicky said, nodding. "And here''s where we run into some trouble- I make 3D models. I have, obviously, not gotten to second base with any of the collections of polygons I make. We just don''t have that many data points about what sort of internal structures produce the right texture, or what the right texture even is. How much squish is too much squish? What level of firmness is desirable? Do these vary based on size? In what ways? By how much?"


    "We''ll need to run some tests," Akane said. "I can probably figure out an objective-ish measure of titty firmness, and then from there, we define our minimum, our maximum, and what points in between we want to test. Then, with Roxy''s skill with automation, we can devise a double-blind test that randomizes what settings get tested and record the results without any human intervention."


    "When you say test," Lisa began.


    "I do think she means we spend hours repeatedly hugging, groping, and motorboating you for science," I said, nodding.


    "You''re the best girlfriend ever," Lisa said, staring at Akane. "Whatever I did to deserve you, I clearly need to do it more often."


    "You can repay your karma by kissing me?" Akane suggested, before Lisa pounced over me to tackle Akane to the couch.


    "Hah, gay," I said, grinning as the two made out. "Anyhow, Nicky. I understand that your experience as a character designer has primed you to think of aesthetics, but, considering that we''re all going to be sleeping with Lisa, we should probably prioritize tactile feel, and consider aesthetics after we''ve gotten tactile feel perfected."


    "Eh, I''m fine with that," Nicky said with a shrug. "Like I said- when it comes to boobs, almost everything works. It''s hard to make an ugly boob, when you''re working with a realistic person who experiences gravity and all."


    "Fair enough," I said. "Hey, while they''re occupied..."


    A blast of air slicked my hair back for me, and I found one Nicky Vega suddenly sitting in my lap expectantly.


    "Remember what I told you the first time?" I asked.


    "The first ti- ooooh," Nicky said. "I remember now." She cleared her throat, then threw her arms over my shoulders. "I want you to kiss me like you mean it."


    "Good girl."


    <hr>


    I snorted. Yep, that was Lisa doing her part.


    "So, lisa-k-fox in chat says she had sex with me," Nicky said. "This is in fact completely true, and it was very poggers, but she''s leaving out the fact that it was a threesome. With your mom- yes, your mom."


    "She wanted them to stay for breakfast," I added. "They declined, since they could see the pancake mix, and decided they could only handle so many stacked sweet little things in a twenty four hour window."


    "It''s illegal for you to be funnier than me on my own stream," Nicky said. "Especially when I''m talking about sleeping with other people."


    "We''re polyamorous," I said. "Lisa in chat is our girlfriend now. We''ll see you at dinner, babe. Please take a shower before you show up, and lay off the doritos; they''ll spoil your appetite."


    "Hrm? Yes, chat, we are in fact dating now. Listen. Listen chat. You better be fucking grateful for me, okay? My girlfriend- I have a girlfriend now, because we are dating- my girlfriend is Jewish, and it turns out, Jewish law does have explicit opinions on how often a couple should be having sex. And since she''s an independent contractor, she''s got a lot of free time, so we had to sit down and figure out whether she counted as a laborer, obligated to perform twice a week, or leisured, obligated to perform every day.


    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    "And you know what I told her, chat? You know what I told my beautiful girlfriend who I love with all of my blonde, big-tittied heart? I told her that she has to count as a laborer, because if I could get laid more often than that, it would interfere with my stream schedule. You cunts fucking owe me, okay? You owe me big time. Yeah, that''s right you subbed again, you better after what I''ve done for you."


    I''d brought up the halacha on a husband''s conjugal duties as a joke, really, and Nicky had decided to run with it. For some reason, the Factorio streamer found both herself and her audience receptive to jokes about nitpicking, rules-lawyering, technicalities, and other traditionally Jewish activities; as such, Nicky had been trying to pick up the many bits and pieces of Judaism that would enable her to make these jokes, which I knew, from experience, would gradually transition from "ironically Jewish" to "actually Jewish," both for Nicky, since she said she admired my (Judaism-informed) moral compass and also seemed to find joy in the act of being Jewish, and for her audience, who might be being exposed to the actualities of Jewish praxis for the first time in their lives.


    I should probably talk to a rabbi about whether or not this counted as proselytizing. After all, I''m not the one talking Nicky and her audience into converting to Judaism. They''re doing that all on their own.


    Besides. Asking your lover to convert to Judaism for you was an accepted standard practice, and I hadn''t even asked her to.


    I was probably in the clear.


    "Alright, time to go on a biblically-accurate quest to collect the foreskins of a hundred philistines, with the help of my tank and machine gun and rocket launcher that shoots nukes," Nicky said.


    Okay, there might be something here for a rabbi to take issue with.


    <hr>


    "The proud daughter of House Vega, reduced to living furniture," Nicky bemoaned.


    "This pillow sure is talkative," Lisa said, flopped out bonelessly on top of Nicky, who in turn floated in midair.


    "Thanks for helping me with this," I said, looking up from the robot-in-progress to meet Akane''s eyes.


    "Many hands make light work," Akane said. "Besides, what else are girlfriends for?"


    "Carnal pleasures," I said, counting on my fingers. "Weird-ass conversations at two in the morning about whether or not I''d still love you if you were a worm. Dressing you up in weird and/or horny outfits. Bragging about your existence to outsiders. Having someone to sample my cooking and tell me if it''s good or not."


    "Wow, girlfriends are versatile," Akane marveled.


    "Wait, you''re a vers? I thought you were a sub, full stop."


    She snorted, grinning. "God, I love this. I love that we get to be snarky, horny idiots with each other. I''m aware there''s gonna be problems cropping up down the line, but this, right here? This is what tells me that yes, it is so worth it."


    "Well, shit, Akane, I love you too."


    "Hah, gay."


    "Shit, really?"


    We chuckled a little, and continued working, the robot taking shape, with Lisa and Nicky here for moral support and eye candy.


    "Did you know," I said, after we took five minutes to dial in the alignment of a shoulder joint, "that I actually got a Thesis out of joining the polycule?"


    "You did?" Akane asked.


    "A what now?" Lisa asked.


    "I, a mad scientist driven down my path by banishment, have gained a better understanding of my driving motivation and its context in such a way as to deepen my power as a mad scientist," I clarified. "And I gained this better understanding by way of entering into a new social context, one where my outsider status has changed."


    "So my boobs made you a better mad scientist," Nicky concluded.


    "They certainly helped, yes."


    "Wanna hear something funny?" Akane asked.


    "...What?" I asked.


    "I remembered that you were Banished, and decided to test if getting you into a relationship would count as a Thesis," Akane said. "And not only was I right, answering that question counted as a Thesis for me, too, because I study the supernatural and how people use it."


    "Who knew that all you needed to succeed as a mad scientist was the power of gay sex?" Lisa mused aloud.


    "You rules-lawyering freak," I said in awe. "You are perfect."


    "Some girls, when they talk about wanting their first time to be special, mean candlelight and silk sheets," Akane said. "Me, I mean data points." She hummed quietly. "Also tentacles. I feel like a stereotype, but it doesn''t bother me enough to turn down the prospect of tentacles."


    "They aren''t made for that," I admitted. "I''d have to do some modifications to make them, ahem, fit for purpose."


    "So you gotta work the shaft before we can get tentacled?" Lisa said.


    "You are a bowling ball spontaneously house-ruled into the Jenga game that was my polite euphemism," I said.


    "You don''t need to be euphemistic with someone after you''ve stuck your tongue down their throat," Lisa said with a shrug. "You can say boner around us, it''s fine."


    "There''s going to be an adjustment period as I internalize the new boundaries, okay?" I said.


    "Anything we can do to speed that up?" Nicky asked.


    "Oh, y''know. Continue demanding kisses and cuddles. I''m sure I''ll learn quick enough."


    "So-"


    "We can make out after I finish this robot."


    <hr>


    "I gotta say, Akane," I remarked. "Your bed is really comfortable, even setting aside the people I''m sharing it with."


    "I wouldn''t know," Lisa said, lying on top of me. "I''ve got a much better bed right here. Mmmn... so glad you said yes."


    I rubbed her ears affectionately.


    "Yeah... So am I, darling. So am I."

 Interlude 3: The Austin-American Statesman

    "You wanted to see me, sir?" Jocelyn Smith said as she entered the office.


    "Ah, thank you," Stanley Alexander, Editor In Chief of the Austin-American Statesman, said. "Take a seat, I''m afraid I have some bad news."


    "I was about to say it''s always bad news, but now that I think about it, you did call me in here last year to hand me an Employee of the Month award," Jocelyn said.


    "Indeed, I did," Stanley said, nodding. "I''m very careful to not let bad news be the only thing people hear from me. Creates a poor impression, makes them stressed out. But, well, I do still have bad news."


    "Lay it on me," Jocelyn said, sitting down across the desk from Stanley. "Am I getting laid off?"


    "Nothing like that," Stanley said, shaking his head. Stanley Alexander himself was a short, round, nebbishy man, with coke-bottle glasses and the most pathetic facial hair you''d ever see after graduating high school. "Well. Sort of like that? I should cut to the chase. The article you submitted about last month''s cape scene paradigm was excellent, well-researched, and persuasive. However. Our biggest contributors were unhappy with the article, for reasons that no amount of editing can fix; you''d have to start it over again, with completely the opposite slant. We can''t publish it as-is."


    "Fucking Vegans," Jocelyn muttered.


    "I know," Stanley said. "I''ll still pay you for the article, but I''m afraid it''ll have to be at a reduced rate. Only 20% your normal rate."


    "How do they think this is going to help them?" Jocelyn asked. "My article wasn''t well-researched, it just cited its sources. This was all public record, just pulled into one place!"


    "You and I know quite well that, one, you did not ''just'' pull publicly-available information into one place," Stanley said. "You provided context and drew a meaningful, persuasive conclusion from it. And two... we are both well aware that there is a difference between ''public knowledge'' and ''common knowledge.''"


    "...This sucks," Jocelyn muttered. "Of course the fucking Vegans who larp as royalty don''t want anyone calling them out on how all this superhero shit is just more warrior cop bullshit with a shinier wrapper that''s easier to use for copaganda. They think it''s good that we''re seeing a modern revival of warrior-aristocrats."


    "It is bad, but... unfortunately, they''re the ones who keep the lights on, around here," Stanley said gently. "I''m not any happier about this than you are. My own integrity aches about letting that puff piece through, but not your actual, proper journalism. Unfortunately... my hands are tied. I''m sorry."


    "...Fuck a duck," Jocelyn muttered, standing up. "If that''s all, I''ll see myself out."


    "Take care."


    <hr>


    "This sucks," Jocelyn complained. "I can''t believe they can just get away with this shit."


    "You''re going to have to be more specific, Little Miss White Knight," Clark said. "Which Windmill of Injustice are you tilting at this time?"


    "Eat shit, you spineless bottom-feeder," Jocelyn said, without any particular heat. It was lunchtime at the Austin-American Statesman, and among these particular journalists, this degree of slander, character assassination, and general verbal abuse was simply how you knew they were fully awake and cognizant of who they were talking to. "I''m talking about those supposed half-extraterrestrial idiots calling themselves ''House Vega,'' with fucking Princess Vega, and her idiot son Prince Valiant."


    "Oh, those idiots," James said.


    "Sure, they''re stupid," Clark added. "But, well, their money spends like anyone else''s, so I''m not sure I really see the point in complaining. Unless they did something particularly stupid this time?"


    "I spent two whole weeks working on that fucking article about that shit Ophiuchus did last month, with all the supervillains," Jocelyn said. "How she ended up openly admitting to treating citizens of Austin like hunters treat deer. And then, after I spent all this time writing an article about how hey, superhero culture is actually pretty fucked up if people can just say these things in public and expect to be hailed as heroes... fucking House Vega put their foot down and refused to let it see print. Because anything even slightly critical of the institution of modern-day warrior aristocrats will hurt their widdwe feewings and they''ll piss and shit and thwow up and cwy."


    "Evocative," Clark said.


    "It''s a fucking perversion of justice is what it is," Jocelyn said. "So fucking much for freedom of the press, if House Vega can throw money around and stop anything even mildly critical of them from seeing print."


    "First of all, I''ve met you," James said. "You aren''t mildly anything. Second, I think you need to accept that the age of muckrakers is more or less over. The Jungle was published a hundred and sixteen years ago."


    "We''ll stop living in an age of muckrakers when there stops being muck to rake," Jocelyn said. "Things might''ve improved a bit since the Gilded Age, but considering our recent backsliding, I wouldn''t consider us to be anywhere near out of the woods."


    "Hey, at least we don''t work at the Washington Post," Clark said.


    "God, we should''ve raked them over more coals than we did when they came out with that ''yes, there''s such a thing as too much democracy'' bullshit," Jocelyn muttered.


    "That''s about when I left the Washington Post," James said. "Personally, as much as it might be annoying to cater to the Vegans and their obsession with making sure everyone loves superheroes, at least here at the Statesman, they''re not making me do stochastic union-busting." He shuddered. "They actually invited the actual Pinkertons to a work function, can you fucking believe that? I put in my two week''s notice the next day."


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "I''d like to point out that, as monarchists who larp as a royal family, I wouldn''t be so sure about the Vegans not making us do stochastic union-busting anytime soon," Jocelyn said. "I''m willing to bet you diamonds to donuts that they aren''t huge fans of democracy."


    "Eh, I''m not sure they''re actually monarchists," James said. "''Princess'' is just her stage name. It''s part of her brand."


    "Her oldest son calls himself Prince Valiant and both her daughters call themselves Lady something or other- Virtue and Venus, if memory serves."


    "You know a lot of trivia about capes," Clark pointed out, scrolling through something on his phone.


    "It''s almost like this is my goddamn job," Jocelyn said. "The hell are you doing?"


    "Looking for the puff- aha, here we go," Clark said. "Let''s see... Ophiuchus was doing her job as a bounty hunter, with an extra fire lit under her ass by Venus... What exactly about this is putting a bug up your ass, Joce?"


    "Look, if Ophi was just hunting bounties because it''s the only job she can land and she''s gotta eat... fine, I''m not gonna hold that against her," Jocelyn said. "We''ve all gotta eat. But Clark, look at what she said. She wasn''t doing this to pay rent. She was doing this to win a bet. She was going out, beating people up, and ruining their lives for money she didn''t even need. She was hunting these people like animals just to prove a point. To win an argument with someone who wasn''t even involved in the hunt."


    "They''re supervillains," Clark said. "What, should she have just let them keep running around, robbing banks?"


    "She should''ve maybe joined the fight for reforming our justice system, instead of contributing to its problems," Jocelyn said. "She fucking shot Billy the Squid, because he annoyed her. That''s not the sort of thing you do when you''re deeply concerned with the dignity and well-being of your fellow man, like an actual hero is. That''s the sort of thing you do when you''re a half-functional sociopath who''s found a socially-acceptable excuse to hurt people, and then you complain on Twitter about running out of acceptable people to hurt."


    "That''s a bit of an exaggeration," James said.


    "Oh? How would you describe someone who''s so indifferent to the act of hurting people for personal gain that they''d go out and kick the shit out of three dozen people just to win a bet?"


    "Someone who''s aware that the people they''re beating up are supervillains, who go out and hurt people all the time for personal profit?" Clark said. "I mean, keep in mind, I''m aware of the whole grey morality of doing crime to stay alive and feed your family, but supervillains are really not that. When you get powers, you get options to monetize ''em pretty effectively. The Console Cowboys all chose to rob Radio Shacks instead of any of the other options, because they''re selfish assholes."


    "Not all of the legal ways to monetize powers are really an option for people," Jocelyn said. "A lot of people distrust the US Government, often for pretty good reasons, or have other reasons why simply being a government contractor won''t work for them. And then, of course, we''ve gotta bear in mind that the fact people talk so much about superheroes and supervillains in pop culture has an impact on what is and isn''t an option people will consider when they get superpowers. The fact that someone''s an edgy shithead and an adrenaline junkie doesn''t justify getting shot in the liver and left to bleed for ten minutes on a dirty warehouse floor."


    "Frankly, I''d argue Billy''s behavior would''ve justified getting shot in the head," Clark said. "I was at Radio Shack when they turned up to try to rob it, and Billy the Squid threw Ophiuchus into my fucking car. She at least had the good graces to fix it afterwards."


    "Yeah, good for Ophiuchus, she can clean up after herself. Do I need to point you at all the glamorous, collateral damage generators we call every other superhero? They make a mess of the city, they smash cars and make new potholes every time they pick on someone their own size, and a lot of times when they don''t- because, oh yes, a lot of those fuckers can''t feel like they''ve accomplished anything this week without ripping the arms off a pickpocket. But because they''re doing it to hurt people we don''t like, we''ve decided it''s okay when they do it, and more evidence of wrongdoing and evil whenever it''s the people we don''t like who''re doing it, when really, it''s just a bunch of selfish, violent, deluded assholes kicking the shit out of each other while the rest of us cheer them on and then foot the bill. The fact that Billy the Squid is in fact an asshole who hurts people for his own selfish gain doesn''t make how Ophiuchus treated him okay, let alone good. She''s an asshole too, she just has a permission slip from Uncle Sam."


    "And how do you feel about the werefox that Ophiuchus was hanging out with?" James asked.


    "Copaganda, just like the K-9 units," Jocelyn said, folding her arms. "Cute furry things with pettable ears and wagging tails can still be vicious predators trained to hurt people. I respect Ophi''s restraint, though; it probably would''ve been easy to make her lab-grown werefox look more like just a cute foxgirl like you see on Twitter, and yet she didn''t."


    "Honestly, you would''ve just used that as even more ammunition," Clark said. "If that werefox was a cute foxgirl, you would''ve made a callout post on your Twitter dot com accusing Ophiuchus of fucking the foxgirl."


    "I would have," Jocelyn admitted. "Which is small potatoes compared to the problems with superheroes as modern-day warrior aristocrats, but when you''re muckraking, you can hope to hit ''em in the heart all you want, but you''re more likely to hit ''em in the stomach or the dick. Which fucking sucks, if I''m being honest. We live in a society-"


    "Jokerpilled," Clark said.


    "I''ll kill you. We live in a society where the fact some people live in it differently than we do makes them fair game for a caste of superhuman warrior-aristocrats to beat up for fun and profit, to burnish their own credentials, to win arguments with each other. And despite our society having generally come around on the idea that violence is bad and we should do less of it to each other, and that punishment isn''t actually a good or productive thing... these people who exist to do nothing but enact punitive violence are celebrated, because they''re violently punishing the right people, as far as we''re concerned. And anyone who isn''t celebrating them, who''s trying to point out how, actually, hey, this is really fucked up? Well, we get actually silenced. My article gets rejected. My perspective doesn''t get airtime. I''m not blowing smoke Alex Jones-style about how I''m being silenced, this is the real deal right here." Jocelyn sighed wearily. "And this is just... the world we live in now, and there doesn''t seem to be anything I can do about it. Because I''m not a superhero, and therefore I don''t matter."


    She stood up from the table, and trudged back to her cubicle.


    "...I''m worried about her," James murmured.


    "Worry about yourself, man," Clark said. "Nobody else will."

 Book 4 Chapter 1

    "You named the robots?" Valiant asked.


    "Well, yeah," I said. "They''re not person-smart, just dog or crow or dolphin smart, but still, at that level of intelligence, you tread carefully, treat them respectfully, and give them names. Which, in my case, involved sitting around trying to come up with some well-known characters associated with perception and finding things. I only needed to name four of them, and thank God for that."


    "...Alright, I''ll bite," Valiant said. "What did you name the robots?"


    "Argus, for the Greek Myth of the hundred-eyed watcher," I said. "Sherlock, for the legendary detective. Franklin, for the discoverer of DNA."


    "Oh, interesting, a more well-rounded approach to the idea of discovery," Valiant said. "Let me guess, the fourth one is the punchline?"


    "Yep."


    "Let me keep guessing," Valiant said. "Discovery... unveiling, revealing, apokalypsi is the Greek word for that, from which we get apocalypse in English, usually meaning ''end of the world'' because of the Book of Revelations... Alright, I''m going to guess that you named a robot Apocalypse, because you wanted to freak someone out in a way that lets you lecture them about etymology."


    "Damn, that''s a better joke than I had," I said. "No, I named the last one Columbo, ''cause they''re just one more thing."


    "Oh you fucking- goddamnit. I hate you, but in a different way than I hated you when we first met."


    "That''s what friendship is," I said. "Anyhow. I''m not just here to tell you bad jokes- if I was, it''d be at one of our houses, over a glass of iced tea and maybe a bowl of French-y fish stew- did I tell you about that Adam Ragusea ''practical bouillabaisse'' video?"


    "You did not, but perhaps you should focus," Valiant said. "Like you said, talk about casual life matters happen at home, out of uniform."


    Right now, Valiant and I were in his office in a soberly-designed government building that looked incredibly ordinary and nondescript, without any hint whatsoever that this was where a tenth of the nation''s superscientists clocked in every weekday, 9 to 5. He was in his armor- he had multiple suits, but they were all identical backups of each other, and each one was fully equipped for every occasion he expected to face in it, and a few that didn''t. Luckily, his tech was compact enough that the armor didn''t make sitting in a chair a complete non-starter, even if his chair did have to be custom-made to fit a six foot six man wearing power armor.


    Me, I was just wearing a double-breasted labcoat, a headscarf, and some brass-framed goggles with shaded lenses.


    "I know you''re a grown man whose dignity chafes at the word ''costume,'' but that''s what we''re wearing, big man," I said. "There ain''t nothin'' uniform about any of this. But you''re right, and I''ll get to the point."


    "After disagreeing with me so that you can get the last word."


    "What can I say? I''m Jewish. Anyway, the point. They''re equipped with transdimensional scanners, so they can sniff around in the spirit realm more efficiently than Red Fox''s spirit hounds. Hopefully they''ll turn up a lead that Red was too green to unearth, and that''ll lead us to the central basket that Skinner''s trail of eggshells is leading to."


    "That... metaphor got away from you, there."


    "A little bit."


    "Well. Hopefully they can turn up something," Valiant said. "Although... you said you''d developed transdimensional scanners?"


    "You''re wondering about the possibility of opening up a more reliable, insider''s line of communication with A-510 and asking for more help," I said. "Well, that''s a good idea, and in fact I''m here to discuss that with you, because the treaty says I need your approval to even build that sort of thing."


    "You have my blessing," Valiant said. "I''ll make sure you get that in writing, too."


    "I said discuss, not just ask permission," I said. "Look, fact of the matter is, A-510 thinks B-944 sounds just as terrible to live in as B-944 thinks A-510 is. There are only a few types of people who would be willing to ignore the titans clashing over I-35 every fucking Thursday and making traffic even worse, and they''re all duty-bound sorts. And the thing about duty-bound sorts is that they usually already have a duty they''re bound to."


    "That''s generally true, but there have to be people with functioning moral compasses and the ability to decide that a mad scientist enslaving a world of superheroes as a prelude to enslaving her own world is worth the time away from their primary duties," Valiant said.


    "First and foremost... no there doesn''t," I said. "There doesn''t have to be anything. But more importantly, power on A-510 almost always equates to sinking deeper and deeper into a solipsistic nightmare where the outside world, the real world, stops mattering as much. The only exceptions are people like Skinner, who have unpleasant plans for the real world, and people like me, who usually don''t like being people like me, because they''re constantly confronted with all of the real world''s many, many, many problems, living in misery amongst them, and desperately trying to drown that voice that won''t stop saying ''it doesn''t have to be this way,'' because it really doesn''t have to be this way, but to actually bring about large-scale societal change with our toolkit is to invariably become the monsters we hunt in the first place. I can mind control people, Valiant. I could, if I wanted to, swing any election in any direction I wanted. I could groom some random person off the street into the perfect figurehead for my own politics, put them in the Oval Office, and then force everyone else to listen when they speak. I want to do that, so badly. But I don''t. Because no matter how noble my goals, no matter how well I house and feed the people... There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator. And someone willing to cross that line can''t be trusted to be stopped by anything else."


    Stolen story; please report.


    "...You''ve thought about this for a while, haven''t you?" Valiant asked.


    "I''ve got a long, written version, if you need something to keep you awake at night," I said dryly. "Anyhow, people like me, hunters, who are powerful enough to make a difference in this hunt, are very rare. Chances are all the others are already occupied with their own world-threatening hunts. I don''t know for sure, we don''t talk to each other that much. We might be able to get Jason Thronebreaker to agree to come through, but then we run into the next problem: very few people are capable of actually traveling across the dimensional barrier. And I''m reasonably confident that druids aren''t among them."


    "Alright, so our only hope is that people capable of interdimensional travel come over to help us," Valiant said. "What about time travelers? The people who you said, in your notes, not only existed but almost definitionally were also capable of interdimensional travel unless they didn''t build their own time machine?"


    "The Eternal Watchmen will only help us if the timeline requires that they do," I said. "I can''t see the future, and neither can you, so let''s not get our hopes up about the Eternals coming to save our asses. Standard operating procedure."


    "What about time travelers besides them?"


    "They''ll only come help if we lose. Trust me, we don''t want to warrant their help." I shuddered.


    "Did one of them help you already?" Valiant asked.


    "Yes, and while she looked absolutely nothing like me or anyone I know, she called me ''Mom'' right before she disappeared," I said. "I don''t ever plan on having kids, and have never had unprotected sex in my life, so I''ve always been reasonably certain she was just fucking with me, but it still keeps me up at night every now and then."


    "Your life sounds like a nightmarish layer-cake of insane bullshit," Valiant observed.


    "And the price I paid for getting away from it all was moving to an alternate dimension where there are even more wrecks on I-35. C''mon, would it kill you people to install some proper commuter rail? It''s not that hard. This technology was everyday and unremarkable when Bram Stoker was writing Dracula back in the 1890s!"


    "Look, I would absolutely love having commuter rail and fully-separate bike networks," Valiant said. "Reducing this country''s dependency on cars would be a dream come true for me! But I''m not in charge of it any more than you are. I''m just the guy who heads the superscience department."


    "Why do you head the superscience department, and not Doctor Sakurai?" I asked. "...And why doesn''t she live in Austin?"


    "She lives in Houston because she works at NASA," Valiant reminded me. "Because she is a legendary rocket scientist who makes Werner Von Braun, the only Nazi scientist to ever amount to jack shit, look like an eight year old playing with cheap fireworks, boasting about how high he can make a can jump in the air when he fills it with firecrackers."


    "Oh right, forgot about the NASA thing," I said. "I thought Akane made us all watch the latest space shuttle launch just because she was into aerospace engineering."


    "You weren''t paying close attention, were you?" Valiant asked.


    "In point of fact, I was, but more to the explanation Akane was giving of all the principles that went into the new space shuttle and why it looked the way it did," I said. "And in the middle, for the countdown to launch, we held a moment of silence for the old toroidal aerospike engines, which looked way cooler than the new, more efficient linear aerospike engines."


    "...You know what, that is something you nerds would do," he said, with no small amount of affection. "Anyway, we''re getting distracted again. So, if we can''t call for help, what do you expect to accomplish by establishing a line of communication with A-510?"


    "I expect to be able to gather a lot of information that we''ve been sorely missing, and which we greatly need," I said. "Mostly to bring Red Fox up to speed, but bringing Doctor Sakurai the Younger further up to speed on some more mad science shit wouldn''t go amiss. There also might be information that lets me safely install mad science implants in druids and superheroes, which would greatly increase the efficacy of our team; implants are my specialty, after all, and being able to share those would make a huge difference."


    "Fair enough," Valiant said, nodding. "Well, that alone is a perfectly valid reason to use that line of communication. It will need to be monitored, of course, but..."


    "Of course," I said, nodding. "Don''t say anything I don''t want an AI based on my girlfriend''s middle-aged dad to read."


    "Correction: don''t say anything you don''t want to be read by an AI based on your girlfriend''s twenty five year old dad, out loud, in an argument with her actual middle-aged dad, to piss him off."


    "...That sounds like bad infosec."


    "Liquid Courage talks a big game about how much Randall sucks, and he''s right, but Liquid just sucks in a different way. Anyway, is that all you''ve got for me?"


    "Pretty much, yeah. Robots are scanning, I wanna build a device to talk to A-510, and we cannot actually use it to call for help. Could''ve been an email, but I couldn''t resist seeing your pretty face."


    Valiant''s featureless helmet stared back at me, and yet I knew he was rolling his eyes under it. "Yeah, yeah. Get out of my office, punk. Dismissed."

 Book 4 Chapter 2

    "Fuck a duck, it is done," I said. "I mean, okay, sure, I had to dismantle our housekeeping robots and the fabricator to make it work, but... It''s done! It works! I can see my house from here!"


    I had, after a particularly large windfall, invested that money into a house in the suburbs on A-510. As someone who valued urban density and good public transportation infrastructure, that may seem hypocritical, but alas, an apartment building was not a good place to be doing mad science, and a house with more space than I''d need to actually live in it was the perfect solution for my needs.


    Well. Okay, not perfect, but it was as good as I was going to get without making Taco Bell runs completely untenable.


    "Hey, that''s around the corner and up the street from here," Akane pointed out.


    "Huh, so it is," I mused.


    We were all gathered in the basement for this- Lisa and Nicky for moral support, and Akane for actual material support, because she was the only other demiurge in the house and therefore the only one qualified to actually help me build this.


    Where we''d usually have just an ordinary display that was, in truth, just an ersatz TV or computer monitor made with mad science, we''d decided that this wasn''t grandiose enough for this device, and also that it would make for some uncomfortable crowding around the screen while everyone rubbernecked. So instead, Akane rigged up a hologram projector, and not even a crappy Star Wars-y one that was monochrome blue. This shit was full color, all the way, and the projection of my house really did look just like my house would''ve in real life.


    If I was viewing it from above, and also currently the size of a giant.


    I''d only come home like that once, and only because Gravestone wrapped me in a mystical shroud beforehand.


    "Alright, well, geography isn''t the most interesting thing here, so-"


    "Ooooh, find my alternate universe counterpart!" Lisa said.


    "Find mine!" Nicky said.


    "Nicky, your mother is a space alien from a planet that doesn''t exist in A-510. I can try to find you a six foot tall woman with big tits and albinism, but that''s as far as I can stretch it."


    "...Point," Nicky admitted.


    "And we''ll do that later, because right now, I need to talk to some people," I said, mentally paging through the menu. "Let''s start with..." The display shut off, and a sound like a phone ringing echoed from the speakers. "C''mon, c''mon, pick up..."


    After the third ring, the phone was finally answered. "Doctor Arachne from the Institute For Applied Transhumanism speaking," Arachne said. "Who am I speaking to?"


    "Doctor Updyke, also from the Institute For Applied Transhumanism," I said. "It''s good to talk to you, Arachne."


    "Roxy?" Arachne asked. "Is that really you?"


    "Yep! I''m stuck on Earth B-944 for the foreseeable future, but on the plus side, I did finally figure out interdimensional scanners!"


    "Hiiiii, Roxy''s transhumanist researcher friend from another world!" Akane called.


    "I also have new friends," I added.


    "Well, good for you," Arachne said. "You always were a lonely one. I was worried about you, and I''m glad you called; we were all worried sick when you disappeared all those weeks ago."


    "Don''t be too glad, because I do have work for you," I said. "I need you to collate all of the information you can find about transhumanist mad science implants, and their implantation in druids."


    "Drui- oh, you mean werewolves. I''ll see what I can find, although that sounds more your wheelhouse."


    "You''re the one who''s actually there on A-510," I said. "It''ll be easier for you to manage. And in exchange... I owe you a research-related favor. Don''t suppose you''ve got any questions reliant on interdimensional scanning to answer?"


    "I might have a few, but not that many," Arachne said, skeptically. "But... I''m sure I''ll think of something. In the meantime, you can satisfy my curiosity as to why you want to know about implanting mad science in werewolves to begin with."


    "Well, one of my new girlfriends is a druid, and another is... a different sort of half-spirit we don''t see often enough to recognize on A-510," I said. "I''d like to be able to give them copies of my Virtual Machine implant, for quality of life reasons, but I don''t know how safe it would be to do so."


    "Hrm... The Virtual Machine is an idea, rather than a chemical formulation or an implanted microchip or an artificially-grown gland. That might affect the way it reacts with half-spirits."


    "Well, please check," I said. "I know the data isn''t the cleanest, but... some is better than none."


    "Some can give you false confidence where none makes you leave well enough alone. Nonetheless, I do take your meaning. I''ll look into it, Doctor."


    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    "Thank you, Arachne."


    She hung up, and I sighed.


    "Thank you for behaving during the call," I said, addressing Lisa and Nicky.


    "I behaved too!" Akane said. "I didn''t even offer to sweeten the deal with a bespoke softcore shoot!"


    "...You need therapy," Nicky said. "Or to just get laid more often. Possibly both."


    "We''ll have to test it experimentally," Akane said sagely. "Now, Roxy, please take off your pants."


    "Not now," I said. "I''m going to call someone else I used to work with, and bargain for some lessons for you in transformational sciences."


    "Oooh, even better," Akane said, rubbing her hands together.


    The interdimensional phone rang again, and this time, was picked up on the first ring.


    "This is the office of Doctor Wales," Jonas said. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this call, Doctor Updyke?"


    "I''m calling from Earth B-944," I explained. "I need your help to educate a colleague of mine in the field of transformational sciences."


    "How thoroughly?" Jonas asked. "Where is this colleague at with the divine alchemy?"


    "I can turn rabbits into gold and back, but I still can''t quite figure out how to change the density of things," Akane said.


    "Ah, I see. By my own notes, you''re on the cusp of Stage 3. I''ve got a list of eureka observations here, which may help you breach the cusp. Ready when you are."


    "Ready!" Akane said.


    "You aren''t transforming the matter itself, just the bonds between them," Jonas said.


    Akane''s face scrunched with thought as she rolled that around in her head. "Hrm... Maybe... Not quite?"


    "Your transformations now obey the law of conservation of matter, and simply violate other laws instead."


    "No..."


    "Density is a false rabbit-hole for the overly-materialistic. Size is a quality, and it can be changed."


    "Oh! Oh, that works!" Akane said. "Thank you! I think I''ve got it now!"


    "Call me back tomorrow, after you''ve finished your latest gadget," Jonas said. "I''ll want a copy of your schematics and a report on what you''ve learned, as well."


    "Jonas is a bit of an odd duck for the Institute, but frankly, he''s the most helpful member I''ve met since I joined, so I''m confident in saying it''s us who''re wrong and him who''s right," I said. "He studies the pedagogy of transformational science, and collects information on how people learn it."


    "How come you work at a research fellowship for cybernetic implants, if you study transformation?" Lisa asked.


    "I didn''t always study this particular subject," Jonas said. "What''s more, the Institute itself wasn''t always about cybernetic implants. Once upon a time, I was the model of a Transhumanist researcher. In my old age... I''m a teacher, at a very peculiar school for my specialty."


    "Do you have an email address?" Akane asked. "I''d love to compare notes with you."


    "I do, but Roxanne has it already, so I won''t indignify us by speaking it aloud," Jonas said. "I may be in my sixties, but the first email ever sent was sent when I was a teenager, and I''ve made a habit of staying on top of the latest developments on the internet. Originally, it was just scholarly pride, but now it''s an old man who delights in watching his young colleagues cringe themselves inside out every time I say memes out loud and make it look like an accident."


    "You''re an evil man, Doctor Wales," I said. "I respect that."


    "You always were my salt bae, Doctor Updyke," Jonas said dryly.


    "Oh that''s bad," Nicky said, cringing herself inside out. "Oh god I thought he was exaggerating but no that is weapons-grade cringe."


    "I better let you go, Jonas," I said. "Otherwise the peanut gallery is going to complain about you all month."


    "Take care, Roxanne."


    I hung up on him before he could be even more cursed, and I sighed.


    "Congratulations, everyone," I said. "You''ve met half the people from Earth A-510 who I actually like."


    "You''re not exactly a social butterfly," Nicky said. "I''m not sure that says much."


    "I mean, you''ve got four people you like here, too," Lisa added. "The three people you''re fucking, and also Silas, who''s the only Jew you know since your own idea of being religious doesn''t involve actually going to church."


    "Synagogue or shul, but yeah, I don''t go," I said. "I''m not Jewish for a sense of community or faith, I''m Jewish because I act like it and I figured I might as well get some credit for it."


    "And that includes a complicated relationship with the idea of faith?" Nicky asked.


    "Yes, actually," I said. "Anyhow. Let''s go back upstairs, I''ll deal with the hookups for Akane in a minute."


    "Ooooh, the game''s gonna be on soon," Nicky said.


    "Who''s playing?" Akane asked.


    "Eagles and Texans," Nicky said.


    "I refuse to believe they let a National Football League team call themselves The Texans," I said.


    "Look, Houston only has one thing to be proud of, and baseball already claimed the name ''Astros,''" Akane said.


    "How about you two go upstairs and watch football, and Roxy and I can sit down here and watch some Gundam," Lisa suggested.


    "What, without me?" Akane asked. "I''ve been watching every episode of Witch From Mercury with you!"


    "We''re getting Roxy up to speed on the original," Lisa said. "I started her out with War In The Pocket, because I figured it''d get her hooked."


    "And she was right," I added. "Also, Witch From Mercury broadcasts on Saturday. It is Thursday. There is no new episode to watch."


    "...Point," Akane admitted.


    "So, don''t worry, we''ll still be watching the gay robot show with you," I said. "We''re just going to watch a straight robot show while you watch football."


    "Right, well, let''s see if the maidbots can whip up some good dip for us," Nicky said.


    "We don''t have maidbots anymore," I said. "Remember? ET had to hock them for parts to phone home."


    Nicky blinked.


    "...Oh god we''re gonna have to start doing chores again," she whispered.


    "Welcome back to being in your twenties, Princess," I said. "The mop and the bucket are in the pantry."

 Book 4 Chapter 3

    "You know, it''s a shame none of us have giantess fetishes," Akane said, setting her new Sizechangeinator down on the table. "This would''ve been a lot more fun at orgies if we did."


    "I don''t think we can reasonably call what happens in your bedroom at night an orgy," I said. "That''s just business as usual for us these days, and everyone present is in a committed relationship with everyone else present."


    "Does that meaningfully make it not-an-orgy?" Akane asked.


    "That''d require us to define the essential qualities of an orgy, and frankly I''m not sure that''s a good idea," I said. "I looked it up for some weird porn I was writing a year ago, and found a lot of really weird thinkpieces arguing about it with people they''ve apparently met in their real lives. One of them invoked Marc Jacobs for some reason? I think? But you know what, I get to have kinky tentacle sex every night with a cheerleader who grew up to be a rocket scientist, a transgender foxgirl, and a Power Girl knockers- I mean knockout- I mean knockoff. I actually don''t care if anyone else thinks that''s an orgy or not. I''m too busy having sex to care."


    "Your confidence is an inspiration to us all," Akane said solemnly. "Also I think that you should mention the fact that I stopped being a cheerleader because my boobs got too big, if you''re going to describe me as archetypally sexy. Or maybe... no, actually, probably don''t say ''Japanese schoolgirl with a tentacle fetish.''"


    "You''re like 22 and you have a Bachelor''s Degree in Aerospace Engineering," I said. "You are by no means a schoolgirl anymore."


    "Ooooh, I know," Akane said. "If Nicky gets to be a Power Girl knockoff, then I get to be an off-brand Hitomi Tanaka!"


    "Oh, she was a famous porn star in this world too?" I asked.


    "I mean, when you look like that, it''s an appealing option," Akane said.


    "I was thinking more that, in this world, there might not have been an unreasonably busty Japanese porn star named Hitomi Tanaka," I said. "That''s a fairly unlikely confluence of events, which only happened because, well, she has to be named something. And on an unrelated note, something funny has occurred to me that I now feel comfortable sharing with you now that you''ve had my penis inside every orifice where it would fit."


    "Ooooh?"


    "I have not bothered looking up porn since I came here, because I immediately met you, and you and Nicky were all I needed in my spank bank."


    "Awwww, that''s actually really sweet," Akane said.


    "And as a result, it now occurs to me that Hitomi Tanaka may look different in this world than she did back home," I continued. "Another reason I didn''t bother looking up porn since I came here was because the Virtual Machine has infinite storage capacity, and I have abused that to contain a lot of porn scraped from the old world. And so I ask of you, Akane... do you want to find out if she does look different?"


    "Maybe in a bit," Akane said. "I know I give the impression that I am, but I am not, in fact, constantly horny. Just frequently horny. I''m a woman in my 20s, and that''s normal."


    "Fair. Right now... well, I guess you wanna write up a report on what you''ve learned from this gadget, while it''s still fresh?"


    "Yep! And after that, I''m gonna email Doctor Wales and see if I can get more stuff to help my development! I wanna get even deeper into transformation stuff, and maybe finally figure out how to turn a person into an actual fox, and not just a person with fox ears and a tail."


    "...Do you plan to do anything more practical with that technology? Because I''ve read accounts of it being used to make people insanely durable, and since transformations can be made permanent..."


    "I mean, sure, we can do that after I turn into a bald eagle and pretend I''m Rachel from Animorphs," Akane said.


    "Oh, you read Animorphs too?" I asked. "Are you going to make your transformation gadget based on the Escafil Device?"


    "I want to, but I don''t think that''d really be possible," Akane said. "For one, the math is weird about getting transformations to last for more than about fifteen minutes; usually it''s easier to just make it indefinite and then manually end it once you''re done. Two, the Escafil Device itself isn''t what lets the Animorphs do their Animorphing, y''know? It''s a blue box, and after they''ve been initiated with it once, they forever have in their bones the ability to acquire new morphs and turn into them. It doesn''t need to be with them."


    "...That''s a fair point," I said. "You know, that actually is just... really weird, you know? Usually when there''s a gadget that lets you do something in sci-fi, you have to actually, like, have the gadget at least nearby in order to do the thing. But this, well... the Escafil Device instead just... permanently turned them into ''themselves, but with the ability to shapeshift into animals they''ve touched.''"


    "That, and there''s also the whole ''you can''t morph again if you stay morphed for more than two hours, you''re stuck like that forever'' deal," Akane said. "And for Animorphs, that''s fine! That''s a credible threat with, like, zero upsides. But we''re not in Animorphs, we''re in a world where ray guns that turn you into aluminum exist and being ''unable to transform'' would arguably be a bonus, especially if you''ve already gotten what you wanted out of transformation. And, also, where everyone''s gadgets work for different reasons and may not respect the logic of your own gadgets."


    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    "True, yeah, although I wouldn''t count on facing enemy demiurges with transformational abilities," I said. "There aren''t that many demiurges in this universe-"


    "I counted, last week," Akane said. "One hundred and twenty one in the Earth''s sphere of influence showed up on my scanner, plus however many are hidden- which should really only be Doctor Skinner and whoever''s working for her, right? That''s not a tiny number."


    "It kind of is," I said. "There were, like, about fifty people in my research fellowship, which is not considered a large collective. Hell, Greater Austin alone had about two hundred demiurges in its city limits, back in a universe where it was merely a hub of the tech industry, not the hub, and only had around two million people living in it. And that''s just the demiurges, not counting the vampires and the druids and the thaumaturges and- okay Austin didn''t usually have primordials for long, everyone hates primordials and one thaumaturge or another usually ganked them the moment they started making trouble."


    "I see, I see," Akane said, nodding.


    "Buuuuut, we can talk the demographics of A-510''s supernatural population later," I said. "Show me your own scan and the results."


    "Alright, well, with the caveat that I''m not a geographer or a demographer- is that a real specialization?"


    "Yeah, it is."


    "With the caveat that I''m an aerospace engineer who still lacks a lot of soft skills but has exactly enough to identify that this is primarily a question for social sciences... I''ve drawn up a map of every detectable Demiurge on the planet," Akane said. "Well, mostly on the planet. There''s one who lives in a spaceship in Low Earth Orbit, who everyone thinks is just a superscientist who doesn''t like having neighbors, but, I did still figure out where they lived before they moved into space, and put that on the map too. And the map is..."


    She turned to face the interdimensional scanner I''d built, which I presume she did not actually use for this scan, since it was completed yesterday and she did her scanning-mapping project last week. Instead, I was pretty sure she was using her own Virtual Machine- I''d given her one shortly after we started dating, because she said, at this point, it was pretty evident she trusted me to put anything I wanted anywhere I wanted, and I agreed to give her the full suite of basic implants if she agreed to stop referring to surgery as though it were a sex thing- to load the map onto this new scanner''s hologram projector.


    "There!" Yep, I was right.


    "Alright, let''s see..." I said, studying the globe as it spun gently. "Hrm... Okay, so, they seem to be clustered around large population centers in North America- excluding Mexico, so really just Canada and the US- plus Western Europe and, a bit, in East Asia. I''ve already studied the demographics of demiurges, so instead, I''d like you to tell me what you can gather from this information."


    "I think," Akane said, tapping her chin. "...that this is mostly a non-representative random-walk of the global population, which maps somewhat poorly to global population distribution because there''s fewer data points than there are recognized countries."


    "And what conclusion are you drawing from this?" I asked.


    "...That demiurgy is randomly-distributed, on a demographic scale? I remember you saying that it generally correlates with intelligence, and also that you dropped out of college in your second semester, so it''s just about raw brainological horsepower and not necessarily about any specialist training, because you didn''t have that."


    "In point of fact, I did receive that from Doctor Skinner," I said. "No, your conclusion is broadly incorrect, due to the incompleteness of your data. Demiurgy statistically aggregates around the wealthy and educated; back home, almost ninety percent of demiurges came from a technical or academic background. Librarians, teachers, physicians, programmers, engineers... Hell, about one in three had an actual, accredited doctoral degree, whether it be PhD, MD, JD... And that''s today. A hundred or so years ago, three in four mad scientists were male, and most of them were white and upper class."


    "Huh," Akane said, tapping her chin as she considered the map.


    "So, looking at this map, we can see a... still probably non-representative map that loosely sketches the world''s bastions of privilege and education. We can see a few people scattered across the less wealthy parts of the world- there''s someone in Nigeria, someone in Mumbai- oh, wait, they never renamed it here, so it''s Bombay- and someone in Brazil, but there''s always a few people who escape the grim economic determinism." I chuckled darkly. "That''s how my peers brush off any feelings of responsibility for this; since a few people do manage to escape the confines of poverty, clearly it''s possible, and everyone who doesn''t simply isn''t good enough to do it."


    "...Huh," Akane repeated, reaching out a hand and spinning the globe hologram manually. "Of course, there''s the question of whether demiurgy is a good thing. I''ve been enjoying myself, but you... do generally take the stance that being a demiurge sucks, and you''ve been a solo demiurge before, so... Hrm."


    "Being a demiurge is neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but a demiurge does wield great personal power, and that isn''t nothing," I said. "A mediocre demiurge who specializes in weapons can vaporize an entire infantry platoon on their own, if they put their mind to it. Sure, actually doing that sucks and is bad for you, but having the option of doing that does give you more choices in the event that, say, an imperialist army is invading your home. Anyhow, I didn''t mean to turn this into a lecture about sociopolitics. Just... I don''t know. The world is fucked, and we should contribute to fixing it without doing things that will make it worse. Stay low, lend a hand, and listen to other people. We''re crazy too, and we don''t always know best."


    "Will do, boss," Akane said.


    "Brat."


    "Mhm!"

 Book 4 Chapter 4

    "Found somethin'', boss," Columbo called in.


    "Report, Columbo," I said, putting my finger to my ear.


    "The robots can talk?" Nicky asked.


    "Kind of," I said. "They can speak about three hundred lemmas of English and their conjugations. It''s enough to have a natural conversation provided you don''t get too technical, but if you''ve spoken to an intermediate ESL speaker, it''d feel familiar. Now hush. Sorry, Columbo, please report your findings."


    "Found two Demiurges with a truck, carrying stuff for Skinner. They could know a lot. I have their spirit scent."


    "Good work, detective," I said. "Transmit all the technical details to the mainframe, and pursue your next lead. We''ll take this one from here."


    "Got it, boss."


    He hung up, and I sighed.


    "Alright, everyone," I said. "We might have work to do. I sure hope you don''t have plans next week."


    "We''re not moving out now?" Lisa asked, looking up from the officially licensed Dark Souls board game we''d been playing for the past hour, and which had taken a lot of time to set up and explain the rules to.


    "We are not," I said. "Hunting these two and getting anything useful out of it is going to take at least a week to set up. We''re finishing this game this time."


    "...Fucking finally," Lisa said.


    <hr>


    "Holy shit," Lisa whispered, while Akane wheezed in the back seat.


    "I''m already in love," I agreed, parking the car.


    With the Virtual Machine and modern cell networks, I was able to access the internet from anywhere sufficiently developed, and that meant I could access my scanners back home through that infrastructure... and, also, the metaphorical condom of mad science cryptographic security to ensure that nobody else could access them.


    ''Conventional'' mad science scanners tended to choke on mad science anti-scanning shields, and were generally quite unable to see within their borders. But. Unless you had the knowledge required to travel across dimensional boundaries- not just see across them but move things across them- then your anti-scanning shields would only hide stuff in the material realm. Not even wolfsbane shields would protect you- sure, those blocked spirit powers from working in their aegis, but spirit signatures were far more resilient than spirit powers, and it took one hell of a wolfsbane shield to hide a signature.


    And Doctor Skinner didn''t have either of those skillsets. She was a specialist in control, scanning, and automatons, just like me. And I knew she didn''t have that interdimensional knowledge herself, not just because she had to steal the portal gun, but also because I''d tried spirit-tracking on her before and it worked. When I was on A-510 and had plenty of druids around to work with, I called up Jason Thronebreaker to help me hunt her in the past, and had even gotten a spirit compass made that''d point to her through any of her shielding...


    ...right up until she found a place to hide that was in the shadow of a stationary spirit of obfuscation and secrecy, and then one of her minions smashed the compass when I was looking for her right before I got isekai''d.


    But hey, joke''s on you, Skinner. There''s no such spirits here for you to hide behind, and now I''ve got another compass.


    Granted, I didn''t have her spirit scent anymore, but I did have two demiurges who probably worked for her, and were apparently quick enough on the uptake to realize they''re not gonna be able to fight their way out of this one. Now, I just needed to arrange a meeting with them that Doctor Skinner wouldn''t be able to spy on, without making her too suspicious.


    For this, I''d need drones. Sure, Akane was able to make flying machines, but those were going to be overkill and also a pain for her to maintain, and also, this whole world was already able to make flying machines. So I talked to Valiant about UAV airspace laws, filed a series of algorithmically-generated flight plans with the relevant office, and purchased some off-the-shelf ornithopter drones that looked a hell of a lot like ravens.


    Valiant had, in the process of educating me on the relevant airspace laws, informed me that one of the regulations passed twenty years ago- shortly after Doctor Haruna Sakurai accidentally started a drone craze during her time in the private sector- was that the only unattended drones allowed in municipal airspace were drones that had been convincingly made to look like pigeons, crows, ravens, or other local birds that would be reasonable to find flying in an urban environment. This had pretty effectively strangled the drone nuisance in its crib, and while even these days remote control quadcopters were a reasonably common christmas gift for children, on par with remote control planes and helicopters, pretty much nobody besides filmmakers had any practical use for drones in the United States, and nobody here had tried the appealing but very stupid and unworkable idea of a quadcopter delivery service.


    He''d capped off that lecture with "And that''s why, if you go to the right stores, you can purchase off-the-shelf ornithopter drones that are basically just remote-control birds."


    And after that conversation- which Akane probably would''ve enjoyed more than I did because aerospace was her thing, not mine- I did in fact involve Akane in the process as I set up some ornithopter drones to fly effectively random patterns over the city, carrying with them some anti-scanning field projectors.


    The anti-scanning was the point of this whole exercise. If Doctor Skinner saw anti-scanning fields moving around the city constantly- well, obviously not saw them but certainly noticed them- then she would get a little paranoid, but that''d only last, like, a week before she just got used to it. And since these drones were establishing a pattern of flying from random-ish point to random-ish point before landing on a rooftop or in a parking lot for a random duration between two and twenty minutes, this would make for an excellent smokescreen when we needed that anti-scanning field to provide cover for us to approach Skinner''s new pet Demiurges.


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    So, we waited. A whole week.


    And then, one Saturday morning at 10 AM, because Skinner knew I was Jewish and observed Shabbat, we all geared up, loaded into Akane''s car- which itself was invisible to mad science scanners and also now had tinted windows- and followed the spirit scent of our quarry, who seemed to be... well, for lack of a better term, our people.


    The spirit scent was three spirit scents, tangled tightly together. The one we could currently see was a decommissioned (or stolen) and subsequently souped-up Bimbo brand bread delivery truck, with "Down With Cis" semi-sloppily spray-painted on the side of the box trailer, and parked at a gas station on the edge of Bee Cave. On top of it was perched one of our drones, looking for all the world like a raven that had simply landed on top of a parked truck to take a break from flying- one of the most normal things in the world, and barely remarkable unless you were two years old and had learned to speak from parents pointing at random everyday objects and saying "Look, an object!" and subsequently developing the extremely annoying belief that this was simply how people talked to each other, because you didn''t know any better.


    The other two spirit scents, as far as we could tell, were the people who drove that truck, and they were inside the gas station itself, probably buying food and drinks or maybe even just using the bathroom.


    "Scanner''s ready," Akane said, having composed herself.


    "Shields are up," I said. "Hit it."


    Anti-scanning shields weren''t perfect. Powerful, charged up, directed, and unsubtly active scanners could punch through them, at a short enough range. This wasn''t great for finding people, but it was good for figuring out what was inside a black box that you had already found. And, while we''d normally be hesitant to use an active scanner, because those produce very distinct noise that other scanners are pretty much designed to pick up on...


    ...If we were using it inside a tuned anti-scanning shield we controlled? Well, that would contain a hell of a lot of the noise.


    "That truck is mad science," Akane said, reading the scanner. "Capable of very high speeds... as well as jumping, a hundred feet horizontally and fifty feet vertically. It''s also armored, and very durable. We''d need artillery just to scratch the paint. And... the box trailer contains a bunch of ray guns on autonomous turrets. The autonomous turrets feel like they were built by a different person than the rest of the gadgets I just mentioned, and that same person modified the box to unfold, retract, or otherwise open up to let the turrets actually shoot the ray guns at targets. Ooooh, and there''s also some scanners on the turrets, built by the same person as the turrets, that lets them see in the dark as well as detect hostile intent towards the truck or its drivers."


    "Sounds to me like two new-ish Demiurges," I said. "One specializing in weapons, vehicles, and armor- a pretty common package, honestly- and one specializing in scanners, automatons, and transformation, which is a less common package, and seems almost like a hybrid between you and me."


    "That sounds reasonable to me, yeah," Akane said, nodding. "Anything you can glean from that?"


    "The weapons one is going to be driven, deep down, by anger," I said. "Which is usually righteous fury- some great wrong has happened, and they''re pissed about it. The other one... could be curious like you, or they could be a Hopeful, which would probably mesh better with Fury."


    "How the hell do Hope and Fury go hand in hand?" Nicky asked.


    "Hope, when it''s a demiurge''s driving emotion, is the hope for a specific better future," I said. "They''re also called Visionaries, and their thing is that they see some better future for the world that''s specific to them and only them, and are almost always hellbent on making it happen."


    "And when you combine that with someone who''s incandescently pissed about the right thing..." Nicky said, connecting the dots.


    "Yeah, I''m willing to bet they get along like a house on fire. Anyway, I''m dressed inconspicuously, so I''m gonna get out and look like I''m gassing up the car," I said, finally climbing out of the car and doing precisely what I said I''d do. Well, kinda. I did actually gas up Akane''s car, because she had not yet made it into a mad science car and it was still just an ordinary decade-old Honda Civic- quick reminder for everyone, it''s 2022 and ''decade-old'' means this car was made in 2012, when some people thought the world was going to end.


    Anyhow. I stood there, gassing up the car, and while I was doing that... our quarry emerged together from the gas station. Automated mental scans fired off and told me everything I needed to know about the pair of them, including the fact that, yes, they very much were Our People.


    Xyr name was Tooth, and xe was black and nonbinary, with bright blue dreadlocks and an undercut. Xe wore a baggy dark grey hoodie that concealed whatever build xe might have had, but the short pleated plaid skirt came down only to just above the knee, leaving xyr perfectly normal, if not terribly toned and photogenic, skinny little stick legs exposed, before they went back into a pair of ordinary white socks that came up to just above the top edge of xyr combat boots.


    Her name was Nail, and they were Chinese and also nonbinary, with bleached-yellow hair and a curvaceous build that looked exaggerated despite, objectively, being smaller than Akane, thanks to the framing of their clingy hot pink minidress. She took conscious pride in the ''bimbo'' aesthetic, and had apparently just posted a very cleavage-y selfie on Twitter with the caption "#ABG except the B stands for Bimbo and also I''m not actually a G."


    Tooth roiled with anger. The world was diseased and corrupt, seized by those who would carve it up and sell it back to us in pieces. The only solution, in xyr eyes, was to burn it all down, to sear away the rot and disease without mercy. To accelerate the inevitable collapse and death of this wretched world so that a new one can arise from the ashes, like a phoenix out of the flame.


    Nail, meanwhile, had a dream of the future that was incredibly vapid, superficial, and poorly-constructed, which wasn''t uncommon among the Hopeful, but what was uncommon was the understanding that this dream was vapid, superficial, and that in fact this was a good thing. She was an irony-poisoned moron who had decided that the bimbo aesthetic was actually valid political praxis, and that being an idiot who did not know or understand a goddamn thing was good, actually.


    "Now," I said to Akane over our telepathic link.


    Before Tooth and Nail could get back into their truck, Akane rolled down the window and shot a bright green beam of energy at it, shrinking it down to roughly the size and scale of a little electric rideable toy for small children.


    "Relax, relax," I said loudly, stepping across the parking lot towards them. "We''re just here to talk. I''m not interested in fighting Tooth and Nail."


    "Just ''cause you''re funny doesn''t mean I won''t whoop your ass," Tooth threatened.


    "Can you, like, get to the point or whatever?" Nail demanded.


    "I just need to know everything you know about one Doctor Beatrice Skinner."

 Book 4 Chapter 5

    "I ain''t no snitch," Tooth said, folding xyr arms.


    "What, like, are you, like, a cop? Like, fuck off, or whatever," Nail added.


    "Nail, sweetie, you are really bad at the ditzy valley girl act," I said, shaking my head. "Don''t force it like that. It doesn''t even make you look dumb, it just makes you look cringe."


    "Fuck you!"


    "Anyway, you''ve met Skinner, right?" I said. "You know what she does? With the mind control and all?"


    "And some of us are into that, so don''t kinkshame," Nail said, folding their arms under her tits to push them up even further.


    "Mhm. Cool. Well, I''m Skinner''s original apprentice, and I can do that too, so... you don''t actually have a choice in the matter."


    Tooth pulled up xyr sleeve to reveal a glowing circuit board tattoo, raising xyr arm to shoot the strange, concealed ray gun at me... and then swore when it didn''t work.


    "You work for me now," I said, my eyes glowing green.


    "We work for you now," Tooth said.


    "Yes, Hypnomommy," Nail said.


    "Do not call me Hypnomommy."


    "Mistress?"


    "You will call me Boss."


    "Lame. Fiiiine, Boss," Nail said.


    "Now... Akane, please un-shrink their truck?" I said.


    "Got it!" Akane called, before hitting the truck with an unshrinking ray, returning it to its normal size.


    "Great. Now... Hrm. Venus, you''re the strongest and fastest. Come with me into the back of their truck, in case they try anything," I said. "Tooth, Nail, into the back of your truck."


    "What''s your plan here, exactly?" Lady Venus asked, climbing out of Akane''s car and walking towards the back of the truck with me.


    "Skinner can detect and undo any long-term mind control I have them under," I said, climbing into the back of the truck after Tooth and Nail. "What she''s a lot less likely to notice is a skillfully-altered memory of what happened at this gas station today, making it look far more mundane, along with a little... mundane hypnosis."


    "Mundane hypnosis?" Venus asked, a bit leery.


    "Yep," I said. "That shit actually does work, although obviously it''s more complicated than what usually gets shown in the movies, and not anywhere near perfect. It can''t make people do anything that seems like an obviously bad idea to them, among other things."


    "So, what''re you going to do, here?" Venus asked.


    "Simple, really," I said. "Tooth, you''ll go to sleep when I stop talking. When you wake up, you''ll get back out of the back of this truck and then get into the front, without thinking anything weird or concerning is happening. Once the truck starts moving, you''ll completely forget what happened here, and all you''ll remember is a particularly nice trip to a gas station where Nail took some killer selfies. Now... Go to sleep."


    Tooth, who''d already been sitting down, slumped over further, and started to snore.


    "Nail, once the truck starts moving, you will also forget everything that happened here, instead remembering only that you took some killer selfies and left without incident."


    "Yes, Boss," Nail said.


    "This doesn''t sound like normal hypnosis," Venus pointed out.


    "It isn''t," I said. "That was the memory editing part. Now we do the post-hypnotic suggestions." I cleared my throat. "Nail. On the count of three, you will drop into a trance for me. One... two... three."


    Nail swayed a bit, and their eyes glazed over.


    "What are Doctor Skinner''s plans?" I asked.


    "She invited us to watch the Super Bowl with her next year," Nail said, her voice a bit dreamlike.


    "I don''t care about sports," I said. "What other plans does she have?"


    "I don''t know."


    "Okay... how often do you see Doctor Skinner?" I asked.


    "Once a week," Nail said. "Every Wednesday."


    "Good, good. Does she ever give you things? Physical objects, that she held in her hands?"


    "Every time," Nail said, nodding. "She gives us a thumb drive with instructions. We always destroy them after we read them."


    "Good girl," I said. "Now. You don''t really need to read or destroy the instructions right away. What kind of bimbo is a diligent reader?"


    "Not this one..." Nail said.


    "What the fuck," Nicky hissed.


    "I''ll explain later, stop interrupting," I hissed back, before resuming my usual hypnotic cadence. "You and Tooth don''t need to read that thumb drive right away. You can just stash it in a little magnetic hide-a-key and stick it on the underside of your truck after you get it, and read those instructions after you stop at another gas station for snacks and drinks."


    This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    "I can stash the thumb drive and get to it later," Nail said.


    "Exactly," I said. "You''re such a good girl, Nail. Now... when I stop talking, you''re going to come back up from your trance. You''re not going to remember me giving you these instructions. You will still follow them. You''re going wait for Venus and I to leave the back of your truck. You''re going to pull out your phone and open the timer app. You''re going to set a timer for two minutes. And when the timer finishes, you''re going to wake Tooth back up, and you''re going to suggest that xe just get back in the truck. Nod for me if you understand." Nail nodded. "You''ll come up from your trance on the count of three: one... two... three."


    Nail sat up a bit straighter, and blinked a bit.


    "C''mon, let''s go," I said to Venus. "We''ve got two minutes to get out of here."


    <hr>


    "I have ethical concerns about the use of mind control and hypnosis on others," Nicky said, once we were home and eating lunch.


    "I have plenty of my own, but do go on," I said.


    "Did we... do the right thing, there?" Nicky asked, hesitantly.


    "There''s no such thing as objective morality," I said. "Some masteries of mad science are more common than others. The rarest mastery is of scanners, the point at which you can build oracle machines that scrape objective truth from the fabric of the universe, answering with perfect accuracy and zero misleading detail any question you ask of it, about the past, the present, or the future... but only for questions of fact. You can ask for a step by step guide to any outcome you can specify, but you have to specify it, and can''t simply ask for ''the best of all possible worlds,'' because there is no objective, empirical measure of what is ''best.'' Every such master we know of is a story, and they all go the same way: while they''re testing it, they ask for a perfectly accurate roadmap to solve some small-ish problem or other, but because they didn''t specify the nature of the solution well enough, it inevitably goes tits-up-in-the-rhubarb and they stand atop a pile of ashes and or corpses yelling ''by god, what have I done?!'' and then destroying the machine and, often, killing themselves."


    "...Roxy, I hope you understand how transcendentally useless that answer is," Nicky said.


    "My point-"


    "Is that we need to agree upon a moral and ethical framework of axioms, from which we can conclude via logical processes that a given action is either morally acceptable or not," Nicky said. "Just because Akane didn''t study humanities in college doesn''t mean I didn''t either. And, while our moral compasses may not point in perfect synchronicity, they do point in generally the same direction, and I don''t think we actually need to rigorously define our priors beforehand, because we''re both more or less in agreement on those. You''re just being obnoxious and dodging a difficult question so you don''t have to feel bad about what you did."


    "Alright, fine," I said. "Yes, I think I did the right thing there. What I did was undeniably hostile and harmful, but it was tightly controlled hostility and harm, precisely enough to accomplish our goal- to find and stop Doctor Skinner- which I think we can agree is very important, and worth inflicting small, controlled, and precise amounts of harm upon others. Yes, I stole their time and part of their autonomy. Yes, I have jeopardized their job working for Doctor Skinner, which may well be their only source of income. However, with the both of us working in law enforcement, we both clearly think it''s acceptable to take away someone''s sole source of income if that source of income is grossly illegal. And... I''m going to be honest, I brought you into that truck with me partly because I thought you were the most likely to call me out or stop me if I went too far. I don''t like the fact that I mind-controlled them any more than you do. Mind control is a weapon, and I hate using it. But it is often the most effective weapon for subduing someone while doing the least amount of harm to them."


    "...I see," Nicky said. "Sorry, Roxy, I just... I do agree with your assessment, I was just worried about your hesitance to give that assessment."


    "I''m a Jewish smartass," I said. "It''s hard to just turn that off."


    "I think that mind control and hypnosis can be used in non-hostile ways," Akane chimed in.


    "Please do not bring your hypnosis fetish into a serious ethical discussion," I said wearily.


    "Not like that," Akane said. "Look, therapy exists because a lot of people have thought patterns they aren''t in control over that make them unhappy, right? Well, if mind control is thorough enough, it can more effectively remove or repair those thought patterns to solve the problem than conventional therapy with just talking and occasionally worksheets and pills."


    "...Okay, point," I said. "Hypnotherapists do already exist, after all. But... well, hypnotherapy is broadly considered illegitimate by the layman and the academic, and hypnosis is an actual real thing that anyone can do with some fairly basic training. There''s no way in hell I''m convincing the APA or any insurance companies that my insane obviously-wrong bullshit is worth allowing and paying for. Plus, masters of Control are incredibly rare, almost always fairly insane, and usually attempting to do something rather anti-social. Getting them to help just isn''t in the cards."


    "Mmm, fair," Akane said. "I was just thinking that maybe, with some of your psychic stuff, you could help me safely experience some different states of mind or thought patterns, and see what it''s like."


    "And is that a kink thing?" Lisa asked, stuffing fries- well, oven-roasted potatoes cut into the shape of french fries, which were still very crunchy on the outside and pillowy soft on the inside- into her mouth.


    "No, I''m just studying transformation and change, in all its forms," Akane said. "Just because I can only change the physical doesn''t mean I can ignore the mental."


    "I''ll consider it," I said. "Why, you think you can squeeze another thesis out of this? How many have you had, at this point?"


    "If I can formulate something personally significant out of transformation and complete a thesis, that''ll make it my third," Akane said. "The first was figuring out that superheroes are half-spirits and therefore what their underlying mechanism is, and the second was successfully working out some of the underlying rules that govern how a thesis works in the first place. Which, yes, did also involve sucking your dick. Metaphysically significant blowjobs are the best."


    "Can''t argue with that," I said. "Anyway. I''ll consider your research proposal carefully. The ethics board is likely to want time to consider it, too." I glanced over at Nicky.


    "Hey, if she''s asking you to do it, go ahead," Nicky said. "Just don''t put any creepy shit in there."


    "Well, duh," I said. "Anyhow, Akane, how''s your more normal research coming along?"


    "Still on a roll," Akane said. "I''ve been shooting emails back and forth with Doctor Wales- he says Arachne''s still gathering the info for you, by the way, but she should be done soon enough. I might be on the verge of another breakthrough soon. We''ll see."


    "Well, hell, I''m happy for you," I said. "Now that you''re starting to be more knowledgeable about some fields of mad science than I am, I don''t have to worry as much about whether I''m exploiting a junior partner''s labor. We''re finally becoming peers."


    "Another sort of change..." Akane murmured.

 Book 4 Chapter 6

    "Okay," I said, after the fourth personality. "I think we should, perhaps, stop doing the personality swaps."


    "Yeah, that was... really unpleasant," Akane said, nodding. "God. Can you... do something about the adrenaline?"


    "Here." I put my hand atop her head, and told her brain to stop panicking. And the brain listened.


    "Thanks," Akane said, before exhaling loudly. "Okay, so! When we go far enough that I''m basically a whole new person, who still remembers everything I remember, that person freaks out because they''re going to die in five minutes when the mental transformation wears off!"


    "Death is another sort of change, and it is one you should learn to not risk causing on accident," I said, nodding. "What else did you learn?"


    "I''ve learned that... even the other altered states of mind that didn''t scream and cry and shit their pants about dying-" This was an exaggeration, but only a slight one; I''d rigged up a full-dive virtual reality thing so that Akane''s new and temporary personae couldn''t inflict any damage on her body, her surroundings, or her dignity. Thankfully, with Stupid Art Offline, when you shit in the game, you do not in fact shit in real life. "-that I didn''t really like the changes that involved changing my personality. I like being me! I''m awesome! I am who I am on purpose! But, the version of me who was the same, except wanting something different... I kind of liked that."


    "I see, I see," I said, nodding. "I suppose that does answer why you''ve pivoted to studying the mad science of transformation, and seemingly given up on understanding superheroes any further."


    "Given up?" Akane asked. "No, I didn''t give up. I found an answer that satisfied my curiosity, and started pursuing a new line of research. Next I studied the thesis itself, and now I''m studying mad science pedagogy through the lens of transformation. That''s going to need your active participation to conclude, by the way. I hope you want to use holograms or turn people into stone yourself at some point."


    "I''ll figure out a use," I said, shrugging. "Right, well, how did this fit in?"


    "Honestly? Due diligence, mainly," Akane said with a shrug. "What I''m trying to understand here is how skills are, or aren''t, transferred between mad scientists. Right now, the only existing body of work I have on the subject of mad science pedagogy is from Doctor Wales, and it''s about transformation. Therefore, it''s important that I follow his directions to gauge the effectiveness of his directions."


    "You should probably also study regular pedagogy, at least as far as the basic concerns and first principles go," I added. "There''s not much variance among mad scientists in terms of raw intellectual horsepower, so that won''t matter much, but how motivated the student is to learn does matter. Some ineffective teaching methods can still look like they work, simply because some of the students taught themselves the requisite skills."


    "I see," Akane said, nodding. "Of course, with only a hundred or so demiurges on this planet, it''d be hard for me to gather a representative sample for proper testing, but... well, it''s a project to look forward to. For now, I''ll be satisfied with a more casual grasp on the subject; you''re the only demiurge I interact with all that often, and if I''m confident that I can teach you what I know, then I''m happy."


    "Aw, you''re my whole academic world, too," I said, grinning at her.


    "Fucking nerd. Also, that''s not true. You have the interdimensional phone now, and you can call the Institute of Applied Transhumanism whenever you want."


    "Yeah, whenever I want," I said, nodding. "That is not exactly often, I will admit. My tasking Arachne with collating historical records on half-spirits and mad science implants was more interaction with my peers than I historically had."


    "I''ve been meaning to ask," Akane said. "I know you offered something in return to Arachne, but how did you just... order her around, like that? You said you''re peers..."


    "Well, kind of," I said. "We''re both research fellows at the Institute of Applied Transhumanism, buuuut, we are of different ranks at the Institute. I entered already in the middle ranks, because the work I''d submitted happened to be a serious paradigm shift for almost everyone there, instead of the typical submission which was simply someone''s own personal implanted tech that''s different enough to show that it''s their own work and they''ve got a talent and passion for it. And Arachne... well, she''s one of those typical submissions. She still outranks the very beginners and those who aren''t trying very hard, but I outrank her, and part of the point of a research fellowship is the ability to get people to help with your research projects."


    "Fair enough," Akane said. "Hrm... I wonder if I should join the Institute myself..."


    "If you do, I think you should do it in a way that''s fundamentally funny," I said. "You very probably are not sitting on a whole new paradigm of transhumanism that changes the game for just about everyone, like I was."


    "Ooooh, I could show off my own research into half-spirits," Akane said. "Maybe create something that looks and acts like a spirit-half, and mimics some of Nicky''s powers. Just the flight, toughness, and strength, though. Not the social power."


    "Hey, go wild," I said. "Although do be aware that, while you are very unlikely to create an actual artificial spirit-half, you are very likely to create something that annoys a lot of werewolves and which is also still weak to wolfsbane."


    "True, yeah," Akane said, nodding. "Hey, what was your innovation that shifted the paradigm of transhumanism?"


    "Honestly, it''s kind of embarrassingly simple," I said. "I kept hearing transhumanist types saying shit like ''the brain is a computer'' as a premise for ''you can hack it,'' but I decided to extend that terrible metaphor as far as it''d go. The brain is a computer, therefore you can install as many apps on it as the hard drive can hold. That''s why my first implant was the Virtual Machine, which was basically just a computer fueled by mad science, and also an implant that later gadgets of the right sort could be integrated into."


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    "And why was that innovative?" Akane asked.


    "Because for every implant you already have installed, the process of installing new ones becomes riskier and more dangerous," I said. "But, if you use my method... you''ve only got the one implant, and adding new functionality to yourself is as simple as writing the app. Now, of course, there are downsides to this approach."


    "Really?" Akane asked. "That seems pretty foolproof to me."


    "For one," I continued, "I have introduced the concept of an operating system to the human brain, and because mad scientists are just ordinary nerds inflated to a comical extent, there is of course an ongoing Mac vs PC vs Linux debate going on, which people keep emailing me to get my opinion on."


    "Ah."


    "And two, there is a significant amount of non-transferrable skill difference between the guy who grew a new gland in a petri dish, the guy who built a clockwork mechanism meant to replace your eyeball, and a software developer who works with carbon instead of silicon. But, for the most part, the idea of a framework gadget that all further gadgets are integrated into is taking root and becoming more mainstream and accepted. Now I just have to sit back and wait for the retrospective thinkpieces about how I ruined transhumanism, and then I''ll know I truly made it."


    "...I''m suddenly glad I don''t actually work in academia and don''t have to publish my findings. Less glad about my ambitions to teach, though."


    "Anyhow," I said. "Since we were on the subject of transformation, about two or three subject changes ago, I would like to go back to that and discuss another transformational research project, vis-a-vis Lisa and that promise we made her, like, two weeks ago."


    "Oh, right, that," Akane said. "I think it''s ready, although of course, we can continue to refine it over time. We''ll call it a Mark One."


    <hr>


    "I am in heaven," Lisa probably tried to say, but failed to because she was currently too busy being a boneless, blissed-out heap.


    The transformation fetish was a complicated and delicate one to indulge in, whether it was for real- "hey Lisa your collar that''ll give you perfect tits is ready" -or not- "hey babe I wrote your self-insert getting zapped by a mad science ray that gives you even bigger boobs." Because, fundamentally, with most variants on the transformation fetish, you were saying ''I would rather you looked like this,'' and when you were saying that to anyone who wasn''t fairly secure in their relationships and body image, that was a recipe for hurt feelings.


    (The Institute for Applied Transhumanism rejected a lot of rambling, biographical applications that considered transhumanism to simply be a more effective sort of cosmetic surgery. Our policy was that everyone in the Institute was responsible for reviewing and vetting new applicants, even though we did in fact have a department specifically for this, and it was mainly so that this department could forward these rejected applications to everyone along with some color commentary like "get a load of this fucking loser.")


    (It turns out that a community of mad scientists does not actually provide succor and refuge from the scorn of your peers. It''s just a new set of peers who know enough to scorn you more effectively.)


    As such, I had a simple and fool-proof procedure that I followed before administering any sort of transformation to Lisa. Step one: inform her that it''s cuddle time. Step two: scratch her behind the ears until she''s good and melty and unable to form coherent words. Step three: once you''ve decided you''re done with that, stop and let her collect herself. Step four, which is new and experimental:


    "Use your words, kitten," I said, which provoked Lisa to make a noise I could only call ''verbal keysmashing.''


    "...I''m a good girl," Lisa managed to slur out, her face still resting on Nicky''s lap.


    "The best girl of them all," Nicky agreed, patting Lisa''s back, between the shoulder blades.


    "Very fluffy and pettable," Akane added, having been brushing Lisa''s tail before we decided we were done.


    "Would the good girl like kisses to round off the most recent cuddle session?" I asked.


    "She would," Lisa said, slowly pushing herself upright. "The good girl would love kisses... and help getting up."


    I extruded some tentacles, which picked her up, rolled her over so she faced upward, then carefully bent her legs and hips so that she was in prime position to sit in my lap, with convenient access to kiss Akane, then Nicky, and then me.


    "So, kitten, how do you feel?" I asked, after the kisses were handed out.


    "I feel... good," Lisa said. While Lisa was a foxgirl and not a catgirl, the simple fact remained that ''vixen'' was not a pet name that rolled off the tongue as cleanly as ''kitten'' did, and Lisa was close enough to a catgirl for our purposes. "Like this is right, on some deeper level. I, uh... thiiiiink that whole ''I''m your pet foxgirl'' thing miiiiight have become a strong enough thing for my spirit half to internalize it. I definitely have more essence now than I did before we started, though- I''ve started checking, what with that whole ''spirit of scientific curiosity'' thing going around you and Akane."


    "...That is fucking hilarious, and I am also very happy for you to have redefined yourself so that you take such profound and personal meaning from something that we do so often and so lovingly. And I am going to laugh about this after I give you your brand new collar and the attendant perfected rack. It''s still a work in progress, but it''s now good enough that I feel good about letting you wear it as much as you want."


    "Oh hell yes," Lisa said, taking the offered collar from me and putting it on- once more leaving her wearing two collars, because she was a fucking Final Fantasy Foxgirl or some bullshit. "Hell yes!" Lisa yelled, grabbing her brand-new, much-enlarged honkers. They weren''t record-setting, even in this household- Nicky''s were still the champions- but they definitely were bigger than they were before, and her jumpsuit clung to them like a jealous lover made of a vacuum-sealed wet t-shirt. "I don''t know how often I suck your dick, but I need to do it more often."


    "I take it you''re happy with the change?" I asked.


    See, when you''re bringing transformation fetish into a relationship with someone who has reason to be insecure about, like, literally anything relevant to the situation, the best way to do it safely is to make them feel secure before you raise the subject. Which, granted, can take some fucking doing. Sometimes your loved ones have mental illnesses, like personality disorders, or just general anxiety. So, y''know...


    ...Be careful, and also tell your girlfriend that she''s hot and you love how she looks frequently enough that she stops doubting it.


    "I am very glad I get to be your pet foxgirl," Lisa said, hugging me. "I''ve got Akane to thank too, so if I can''t properly thank you..."


    "You can definitely properly thank me," Akane said, nodding.

 Book 4 Chapter 7

    "Alright, we''ve got something," I said, grinning. "Tooth and Nail picked up the thumb drive, and we can trace the spirit scent of the person who gave them the thumb drive. Now, since this is probably Skinner, and she''s got a weekly routine, we just have to wait for her to go about that weekly routine while we track her, and we''ll be able to hit her lab next Wednesday."


    "That''s the day before Thanksgiving," Nicky pointed out. "We''ve got plans with Silas and Akane''s mom, remember?"


    "We''re making stuff that can afford to either sit around in the fridge for a day or two, or be made the day of," I said. "Also, and I cannot stress this enough: yes, even my fairly opinionated religious doctrine that has rules for everything agrees that stopping Doctor Skinner takes precedence over observing holidays. Everyone involved will understand ''something came up and we had to deal with it as soon as we could.'' And then, Thanksgiving can be a victory feast."


    "...Fair," Nicky said. "But, like... at least tell Silas about it beforehand."


    "Who do you think I am?" I asked. "I already emailed Valiant the good news and our tentative timetable, and he has begun arranging for backup to help secure our perimeter. We''ll be going in alone, though, on account we''re already a team and need the freedom to let loose with wolfsbane without fucking over our allies."


    "Don''t those selective wolfsbane immunity bands work for others?" Lisa asked.


    "Kind of, but... well, I can only support two of them," Akane said.


    "Anyhow," I said, clapping once and rubbing my hands together. "We''ve got a week to prepare. And, good news of good news, I just got the results back from Arachne, which were very comprehensive. I''ll show you the full report if you want, but the conclusion is, the historical evidence suggests that idea-based implants were the most successful in fully integrating into half-spirits and not causing problems with shapeshifting or other spirit powers. And since I do nothing but idea-based implants, I''ve got plenty of stuff I can give to amp up Lisa and Nicky, and also possibly improve quality of life, if the fact that computers aren''t yet telepathic is something you''ve lamented in the past."


    "Will I be able to produce Blender-compatible 3D models with the power of my imagination?" Nicky asked.


    "You will if I spend some time working at it," I said.


    "So I know Lisa''s promised to suck your dick twice a day as thanks for the collar and the laboratory-tested titties, but-"


    "If there does exist a schedule for my daily gratitude gobjobs, I''m not going to be the one who puts it together," I said dryly.


    "I mean, I had to offer," Nicky said. "How else would you know the thanks were sincere?"


    "...The fact that you have a good point is alarming to me."


    "Also!" Akane said. "I might be able to wrangle some strong transformations to help everyone out even more! I''m really close, I think, I just need a bit more time, and maaaaybe some help from Roxy."


    "Tell me what you need after this meeting, and I''ll make sure you get it," I said, nodding. "Unless Lisa and Nicky want to stay and listen to mad science jargon?"


    "I''m good, actually," Nicky said.


    "Not unless I''m getting headpats," Lisa said.


    "Then yeah. Let''s see, what else... oh, also, Nicky, I''m going to be training you in the very basics of Kali, also known as Arnis or Eskrima or Filipino Stick Fighting, and you are going to be using this with a stun hammer I''ve made for you, because weapons improve general combat performance and there won''t be any credible witnesses to threaten your image for fighting with anything other than your bare hands."


    "...Stun hammer?" Nicky asked.


    "It doesn''t do lethal damage unless you seriously overdo it," I said. "Between the efficacy of mad science weapons and the strength of your own arm, you should be able to put down pretty much anyone in one clean hit."


    "Mom never let me have weapons," Nicky said.


    "I would like you to tell me when I have ever given even the faintest impression that I respected your mother''s opinion."


    "No, no, I''m just saying... this is awesome. I wasn''t even allowed to join fencing club back in high school or college, before I even got powers!"


    "Yeah, well, now you live with a well-trained and well-seasoned martial artist, and it''s past time I started passing some of that training on to you. What else... what else... I think that about covers it."


    "Will I also be learning how to use a stun hammer?" Lisa asked.


    "Conventional martial arts training for druids is basically worthless," I said. "You''ve already got the instincts of a predator from your spirit half; from there, you pretty much only need practice. Which... mostly will come from some fairly frequent sparring matches with Nicky. After I outfit the both of you with some armor and healing implants, that is. Which, incidentally, if you''re not planning on doing anything for the rest of today..."


    "I''m not doing anything you''re not dragging me along on," Lisa said with a shrug.


    "I don''t have a stream scheduled tonight," Nicky added.


    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    "Alright, fantastic," I said, clapping once and rubbing my hands together. "Fair warning: you''re gonna spend two hours unconscious, because otherwise the recovery process sucks. Not, like, unbearably, the healing implants take most of the edge off, but that second hour would be spent with a bad headache as your brain adjusted to the Virtual Machine."


    "I could go for a nap," Lisa said.


    "Let''s get started," Nicky said, nodding.


    <hr>


    "And you''re sure that I can''t use my new toy to shrink down to the size of a tardigrade and implant the Virtual Machine myself?" Akane asked.


    "If you want to be inside your girlfriends, grow a dick and let them ride it," I said flatly. "The Virtual Machine is a pattern of psychic energy created by stimulating the mind in particular ways most achievable with my existing psychic equipment. Your latest gadget, as impressive as it is- and I am proud of your achievement- is not the right hammer for turning these bolts."


    Lisa and Nicky were unconscious in a pair of (figuratively-)off-the-shelf recliners, already under the noetic knife for the installation of Virtual Machines, the psychic framework upon which all of my implanted gadgets were built, and I was... monitoring the process, really. It was automated pretty damn well, honestly- it turns out that having a specialty for automatons makes you very good at making gadgets attend to themselves without any human hand-holding.


    "Anyhow, what help did you need?" I asked


    "Right! I need to try to teach you something," Akane said. "Partly to help me understand transformation better- teaching is a great way to learn- but mainly to figure out if the teaching methods I''ve devised actually, like... work."


    "Alright, fair enough," I said. "You said I''d be learning how to turn things to stone, right?"


    "And to project holograms," Akane said.


    "How are those tied together, anyhow?" I asked, frowning.


    "Thus begins the lesson," Akane said. "Alright, so. Transformation isn''t just the simple alchemy of turning one thing into another. There is an inherent element of deception, of smoke and mirrors, in the science of transformation. Yes, you use your basic understanding of transformation to expose your truth, but more often, people use that basic understanding of transformation to project lies. To disguise themselves. Hell, the basics of transformation can do camoflage!"


    "Ahhh, I see," I said. "That does actually make a degree of sense, and... thinking about it like that, I haven''t really been utilizing transformation to its fullest extent, given that I''ve got a shapeshifting module for the Virtual Machine that I just, like, never use, and instead rely on mundane disguises."


    "Mundane disguises can''t be countered by Stopwatches-" You know, the gadgets that automatically disable mad science gadgets in a certain area. "-so what you''re doing isn''t dumb," Akane said. "It is, however, an incomplete understanding if you''ve really just never considered it."


    "Fair enough," I said, nodding. "So, transformation involves some amount of smoke and mirrors, and properly learning it means learning the smoke and mirrors, as well."


    "Exactly! Also, there''s some very crude functional biosculpting available at this level of skill, but the way it works is basically trading some of your strength in for agility or stamina, or some other way around, and it''s pretty zero-sum and generally not all that useful, unless you can make it permanent and then combine it with a physical training regimen focused on one aspect of your physique so that you can distribute the gains from that into other stuff, but... I mean, that''s really long-term, and I don''t think either of us cares that much."


    "My body is already a carefully-honed weapon, and fucking with it like that doesn''t sound like a good idea to me," I said, nodding in agreement. "But that''s, like, a secondary function of the material transmutation, right?"


    "Right, exactly," Akane said, nodding. "Now! I want you to spitball some possible working principles for a hologram projector. No wrong answers, just get ''em out there."


    "Okay, so... Hrm." I considered this carefully. "...Okay, first, lemme spitball what a hologram is, make sure we''re on the same page for what I''m trying to accomplish, here."


    "Go ahead, although I''m not going to correct anything that isn''t an egregious error," Akane said.


    "Holograms aren''t solid, and are fundamentally just 3D images," I said. "You can walk through a hologram or wave your hand through it or throw a rock through it, and there will be a wholly negligible effect on your inertia, because the hologram is only as solid as the medium it''s projected on. Okay. So... I primarily frame my stuff as some sort of psychic or psionic, and this is actually an ideal case. The hologram projector, because there is a hologram projector, I''ve seen them, produces a very low-level mind-altering effect radiating out from the spot the hologram appears in. This effect radiates out to line-of-sight, convincing everyone who sees it that they are seeing the projected image, from the correct angle. And that correct angle is being done through... y''know what, through the observer''s own visual cortex; they''re subconsciously fed the orientation and form of the image, and told to render that into a visual image."


    "I see, I see," Akane said. "But... what about photographs, digital or otherwise? Observers without a visual cortex?"


    "...That''d be a flaw in an otherwise workable device," I said with a shrug. "That it doesn''t work through digital cameras, and anyone wearing nightvision goggles or watching through security cameras is functionally immune to it. But, since every gadget has some kind of flaw, and this one is at least predictable..."


    "Yeah, that is workable," Akane said, nodding. "And since we''ve got to wait for Nicky and Lisa''s installations to finish, you might as well try bashing out a prototype, see if you actually learned anything."


    "Alright, well," I said, rolling my shoulders and grabbing a fresh, empty notebook- we kept many of such as raw materials in the lab. The fact that the nearest repository was fifteen feet away wasn''t an obstacle to me, considering I had tentacles. "Let''s do this thing."


    <hr>


    Nicky and Lisa woke up at the same time, with Nicky being the quicker to get past the grogginess and mild, fading headache and push herself upright.


    "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi," the hologram said. "You''re my only hope."


    The projector had been built inside a novelty salad bowl Silas had picked up at a flea market before realizing it''d be wholly unusable for its intended purpose thanks to some serious defects alongside wear-and-tear from being old and shuffled around the back of several cupboards. That salad bowl, now upside down and parked on top of a small rolling trash can I''d temporarily recolored with transformation to be white and blue, made for a recognizable-yet-scuffed-as-fuck facsimile of R2D2, the (allegedly) foul-mouthed favorite droid of tumblr''s Star Wars fandom.


    "...You have way too much time on your hands," Nicky said blearily, before closing her eyes and leaning back in the recliner.

 Book 4 Chapter 8

    "Okay," Akane said, reviewing her own notes. "Teaching mad science to others is reliant on a few things. Requirement the first: the student should have good foundations in the fundamentals of mad science, allowing the student to create predictive models to explain the desired effect. Requirement the second: the student should be made to understand the desired effect and the qualities, both abstract and concrete, which render it desirable and must be achieved. Requirement the third: the student should have a desire to learn the particular skill being taught, and why it in particular would be useful in their pursuits."


    "That all sounds solid to me," I said. It was Thursday, and after I''d gotten bored with the hologram projector yesterday, Akane helped me figure out how to turn lab mice into aluminum. I was a little surprised we still had lab mice, but apparently, the loan from the superscience department was for two months at a time, and we still had a few days before we could give them back.


    "I''m not sure I''m comfortable with how many requirements it makes of the student," Akane admitted. "The student basically needs to self-teach with guidance from the teacher."


    "Well, setting aside the fact that mad science is ultimately a very personal and unscientific pursuit," I said, "you do need to consider that... well, pedagogy is communication, and it takes two to tango. If the Socratic Method can teach us anything- and it can, it''s been tested for two thousand years- then it''s a perfectly valid pedagogical style to simply guide the student as they search for the truth."


    Akane blinked, as though I''d given her the final puzzle piece.


    "...I think I''ve got it," she said, as the reified energy of ideas and creativity swirled around her, invisible to onlookers without eyes that could spot mad science at fifty paces. "Yes... Yes, I get it now! I get it!"


    "Congratulations on your third completed thesis, Doctor Sakurai," I said, applauding her. "You''re on the same footing I was when I came here, which was six years into my career; at this rate, you''ll reach parity with me by Christmas, and achieve full demiurgic enlightenment before your next birthday. Whenever that is."


    "Valentine''s Day, actually," Akane said. "Mom planned it that way because she thought it''d be good for my love life."


    "Aw, that''s sweet."


    "Except that Valentine''s Day is always really near Super Bowl Sunday, and so my birthday parties always happened alongside Super Bowl watch parties. Which, personally, I really liked because I got to eat birthday cake and watch the big game, but you and Lisa don''t want to watch sports with me, so..."


    "Who said you can''t have two birthday parties?" I asked, shrugging and mentally googling the 2023 Super Bowl- February 12th, two days before Valentine''s Day. "Eat cake while watching the Super Bowl, then eat some more cake two days later on a romantic evening that you share with three hot bitches?"


    "I can live with that," Akane said, nodding. "Ooooh, I bet I could squeeze another thesis out of that. ''With the assistance of mad science, how many dicks can one girl take at the same time?''"


    "We''ll make sure your mothers are out of the house before we conduct that research," I said, patting her head. "Anyway, are you all set? Need anything else from me? Because if not, I''m about to go down into the dojo and teach Nicky some martial arts."


    "I think I''ve got everything I need to make the second to last word in mad science transformation gadgets," Akane said, nodding. "I''ll probably need your help figuring out how to use it effectively, because while you might be a professional fighter who knows the human and inhuman body inside and out, and also is really good at automatons, I''m... still not, because that kind of proficiency is totally mundane and takes a really long time to develop, and I haven''t really started. But! I''ll be done with the gadget sometime this afternoon, so hopefully you''ll be done with your instruction by then?"


    "Why is my specialty in automatons relevant here?" I asked.


    "It turns out that at this penultimate stage of transformation, I can transform people into pretty much any form that it''d be possible for a demiurge to build an automaton in. A dragon, a velociraptor, a gorilla, a giant, a fighter jet... And while Doctor Wales said I don''t strictly need to know how to build automatons myself to transform people like this, some help from someone who does would be nice."


    "That''s... a pretty big fucking deal. Automatons can do and be a lot of things. What the hell does mastery look like, if that isn''t it?"


    "The absolute pinnacle of mad transformation includes a lot of things, but the biggest one is transforming into impossible forms," Akane said. "Right now, on the wrong side of the cusp, I can turn you into a cyborg, but a cyborg can still naturally do all the stuff you do. But with this final advancement, I could turn into a living stone statue, or a mobile cloud of smoke, or a slimegirl!"


    "I''m sorry, what?" I asked. "Are you telling me that slimegirls are the product of peak, legendary transformation, when done by mad science?"


    "Yep!" Akane said, nodding. "Why, did you know one?"


    "I got my dick sucked by one at a convention," I said. "She was, like. Translucent red. Kept her phone inside her body, I could see the screen turn on when she got text messages. I said some, uh... well, you know how I dirty talk. You''re telling me I called a legendary master of transformation a dumb slut?"


    "Or someone who''d been transformed by them, probably permanently- which takes resources you''d only use on yourself or close friends," Akane said. "But, yes, you apparently did do that."


    "...Considering the meme that exists for a reason of the trans woman with a master''s degree whose fetish is being treated like a dumb slut or otherwise some form of sexual object that is expected to not think very hard, I have the sneaking suspicion that this slimegirl, the equivalent of a fucking Nobel Prize winner, was a trans woman."


    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "Possibly! So, if I can finish the gadget sometime this afternoon, will you have time to help me?"


    "Probably, yeah," I said. "It may take a while. See, generally, when you''re learning a new martial art, about an hour of training in a day is the upper limit before you hit sharply diminishing returns ''cause of overtraining. But, because everyone involved has some mad science implants installed to keep us fresh and at our peaks, I reckon I can squeeze about six or so hours of training into Nicky and Lisa every day, if I do it smart, with frequent breaks. Something like the Pomodoro technique. Which... y''know, may stretch it out a bit."


    "We only have until Wednesday, and I doubt you''ll want to do any training then, what with the raid," Akane said.


    "I''m almost a master of mind control," I said, grinning. "I can very much put some useful muscle memory in Nicky in just a week."


    <hr>


    Kali, also known as Arnis (coming from arnes, the old Spanish word for armor, from the same root as the equivalent English harness) or Eskrima (coming from esgrima, the Spanish word for fencing), was something of an umbrella term for the traditional martial arts of the Philippines, which were quite popular among martial artists. The arts were known for a smooth blend of open-handed and weapon techniques, in a manner that was generally regarded as more accessible and more effective than many other martial arts that had weapon techniques, the chief point of comparison being some forms of kung fu.


    Most of these facts weren''t terribly important to Nicky, but martial arts training isn''t supposed to just be about hurting people more effectively, and history was a pretty standard inclusion in these curricula, so I included some of that in her breaks, when she put down the training sticks- in this case, both were weighted identically to her stun hammer.


    With as much mind-control mojo as I had, the periods of training were a bit unusual, with very little demonstration being done by me, the instructor... at least, with my own body. Instead, Nicky invited me into her brain, where I could see through her eyes, feel with her nerves, and move with her limbs. After a brief calibration period, I got into a rhythm, where I would perform the correct form a few times, release control, and tell her to repeat what her body had just performed, and we''d practice with some back-and-forth corrections until she got it right ten times in a row, then we''d move on to the next form. This was a fair bit quicker and more effective than the traditional method, thankfully.


    Kali had, formally-speaking, twelve recognized angles of attack. However, it was common to start beginners off with just five of them: downward chop to the neck from both sides, sideways chop at the lower ribs and kidneys from both sides, and stab- or palm strike. Even though I was training Nicky to fight with what was essentially a warhammer, and not even the sort that had a spike on end of the shaft to make for an ersatz spear, I was still not omitting the palm strike or the stab from the rotation of angles, because one, she''d still have a hand free for palm striking people while fighting with her one-handed weapon, and two, I wouldn''t send a student into battle with that glaring of an omission in her foundation, and I sure as hell wouldn''t be doing that to my girlfriend either.


    Once I was pretty sure the absolute basics were in her muscle memory enough to do the drills properly- itself taking a full 25 minute Pomodoro (Hey, it works, and I ain''t fuckin'' with it) session- I set her to doing drills for another 20 minute Pomodoro, monitoring her closely the entire time, making occasional corrections to her form, which, thankfully, I didn''t have to do very often. While she took ten minutes to stretch, put down the sticks, get some water, and take a breather- one of the side benefits of her implants was that, now, she was kept in perfect thermal equilibrium by her armor, and so would pretty much never get sweaty ever again. This had been discussed, and while Lisa had argued in favor of the possibility of Nicky muscling flexingly around in sweat-soaked workout clothes, Nicky had argued that boob sweat was the bane of her existence and the worst thing for about living somewhere that got above 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and so had won that particular argument.


    A wise decision. I didn''t have it as bad as her, admittedly, but as a trans woman who would never get bottom surgery, I''ve dealt with boob sweat and ball sweat, and they both sucked.


    After an hour of the very basics and drills, enhanced by very potent mad science, Nicky was ready for the start of her sparring with Lisa. After all, Lisa needed practice too, and Nicky needed the chance to really hammer home these lessons, and make sure she could rely on this muscle memory and respond instantly in a real fight.


    Now, granted, I''m pretty sure Nicky didn''t quite enjoy the fact that she couldn''t take off the training vest that took away her superpowers for these initial spars, whereas Lisa was fighting her in War Form- because that was how Lisa always fought- but training was supposed to be harder than the real thing.


    She flipped me off every time I told her as much after getting her shit rocked by three hundred pounds of fang and fur.


    <hr>


    "Okay, everyone," I said. "Akane has made her breakthrough, and with my help, we''ve developed some transformations that should make us even safer."


    "Roxy assures me that these transformations are wholly metaphysical," Akane added. "We''ll all still look and feel exactly the same afterwards, we''ll just be a lot harder to hurt, let alone kill."


    It was Monday morning, and Akane and I had been working on the transformation design ever since she finished her first version. It was big, about the size of an old-school desktop tower, and it was not terribly portable. One day, she''d refine it into something she could install in her own Virtual Machine, and then be an inherent shapeshifter to surpass myself and Lisa. For now, though, transformations of this caliber could only be done at home.


    "I attempted to devise a transformation that would make us nearly impossible to kill," I added. "Via the creation of a sort of brain backup mechanism, which would allow us to survive death by transferring our consciousnesses into vat-grown clone bodies. Unfortunately, I do not as of yet have the mastery required to build things that move consciousnesses around between bodies, nor do I even have the level of skill to produce human cloning vats, even though that''s a subset of one of my specialties."


    "Oh, what, you can only make us even more invincible, and can''t even swing some basic cortical stacks and sleeve vats from Eclipse Phase?" Nicky sarcastically complained. "Pft. Did you even try?"


    "So lazy," Lisa added.


    "Yes, yes, you''re all very funny and fuckable," I said. "Now, Akane''s gone under this particular knife already, with me and an automated control unit at the helm. As you can see... she''s fine."


    "I''d offer to demonstrate by jabbing myself with a knife, but we''ve confirmed it with multiple different scanners," Akane said.


    "I''m offering to go under it next, but if anyone is particularly antsy to go first..."


    "I don''t want to be last," Lisa said.


    "Nor do I," Nicky said.


    "Alright, well, I guess I''m going last, then," I said with a shrug. "Anyhow. This transformation shouldn''t have a recovery period, so after we''re all transformed, we''re going to go back to our training. The transformation shouldn''t make our bodies feel any different, either, but just in case, we should work out the kinks and get used to them now, instead of on Wednesday, when it''s go-time. Any questions?"


    I glanced between Nicky and Lisa, neither of whom seemed to have any questions.


    "Nope," Lisa confirmed.


    "Nada," Nicky said.


    "Right, well, in that case..." I clapped once and rubbed my hands together. "Let''s get started."

 Book 4 Chapter 9

    "Alright, everything''s in order," I said. "Everyone''s properly trained up with their implants and weapons."


    "Locked, cocked, and ready to rock," Lisa said, nodding.


    "It''s hammertime," Nicky added, lovingly caressing the warhammer I''d given her. It wasn''t anything too fancy, just a decently-reinforced shaft- in fact, I''d added armor to it just to make sure it wouldn''t shatter in her hand- a power source and some high-voltage, low-current electrodes on the business end. The whole thing was just shy of three feet long, and intended to be used one-handed, making it much more agile and maneuverable than the typical six foot two-handed crow''s beak or pole hammer. And while I couldn''t make mad science weapons that did lethal damage... well, I definitely could put an entirely mundane crow''s beak spike-thing on the back of the hammer head, which would very much do lethal damage. It wasn''t as good as a lethal mad science weapon, in terms of stopping power, but Nicky''s strength made that pretty much irrelevant.


    "And we''ll look after the house while you''re gone," Haruna- Akane''s bio-mom, in case you forgot- added.


    "We''ll be doing some baking," Tanya- another of Akane''s three moms- added. "No dairy in the bread, don''t worry; I''ve been having Thanksgiving with Silas for longer than Akane''s been alive. I know how to cook kosher."


    "Wouldn''t ''no meat and milk at the same time'' ban key lime pie from the same table as barbecue lamb?" Samina asked.


    "It''s a rule that gets interpreted a lot of different ways," I said. "I have a fairly literal interpretation of the text which means I''m just not allowed to cook meat in dairy- no sausage gravy, no butter on burger patties, et cetera. Silas, meanwhile, interprets it to mean you can''t have them during the same course of a meal. And we both agree that you''re allowed to have barbecued lamb for dinner and key lime pie for dessert. So, unless we''ve got a third, more orthodox Jew at the table..." I shrugged.


    "Also, since the restriction is written as cooking a kid in its mother''s milk, then it should be fine to mix dairy with animals that aren''t mammals, like turkey," Lisa said.


    "What kind of barbecue pitmaster disgraces his table with turkey?" Tanya asked, affronted.


    "That interpretation is straight-up Karaite Judaism, rejecting the body of Rabbinical Law constructed atop the Torah. Obviously, as something that rejects the legitimacy of religious authorities, pretty much every Jewish religious authority considers it heretical. Personally, the only beef I''ve ever had with Karaites is that one time I joined a seder with them and brought some corned beef. But, uh. Anyway," I said, trying to bring us back on track. "Those of us who need it have gotten a crash course in using the flight module Akane made for the Virtual Machine." This provoked a groan from Lisa, and a grin from me. Nicky, being able to fly already, did not need the module, and Akane, having an armored flight suit already, did not need the module either, and thus Lisa and I were the only ones who did. Which was just as well, because the trick for making identical duplicates of your gadgets that shared headspace was one Akane only barely knew, and she could only support two of them."


    Lisa shuddered, and I grinned.


    "It wasn''t that bad," Nicky said, grinning as well.


    "Foxes weren''t meant to fly, dammit," Lisa said, pouting.


    "Oh, for sure, the arboreal cat-like predators known for pouncing have absolutely zero conceivable use for enhanced vertical movement," I said, nodding. "You''re definitely not salty about Nicky teaching you how to fly, just like she was definitely not still sore about getting her shit rocked in sparring with you. Right, well, provided nobody has to pee?" There were no objections. "Alright, let''s get going."


    <hr>


    I''d known where Skinner''s lab was after two days of tracking. A mixture of Google Earth and also some surveillance drones of my own told me precisely what it looked like.


    It was a compound out in the Hill Country, Southwest of Austin, with a lot of empty space all around it. It looked kind of like a warehouse, complete with a dock for trucks to load and unload stuff. It''d been one of the destinations in Gideon''s own instructions, but considering it showed up only once, transporting stuff that didn''t appear very often in the rest of his instructions, we had the feeling he wasn''t exactly a highly-trusted operative. Considering that, apparently, jailbreaking the villains and coming at me with his two loaned-out vampire minions which he promptly lost was his own stupid idea to get on Skinner''s good side, it wasn''t hard to see why.


    The warehouse up top was full of miscellaneous crap, very inconspicuous save for the fact it was shielded from scanning by mad science, but my surveillance told me that, beneath the facade of a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, there was a freight elevator going down to somewhere. An underground complex, most likely, with stronger anti-scanning shields than I could penetrate with anything I had... until now, anyway.


    Skinner was inside that complex. We were going loud, now, with our own anti-scanning- and anti-teleportation- field projector in the back of a big ol'' van, along with a big, beefy active scanner in a second van to punch straight through Skinner''s shielding. The other heroes- some of them on loan from San Antonio, Houston, and one guy from Dallas- were maintaining a perimeter to make sure nobody could get in or out. We were, at the moment, mapping out the escape routes from the complex, to make sure those were covered too, and once that was ready...


    ...We went in.


    Down the freight elevator we went, all armed and dangerous. Akane had her petrification gun, which had been tuned and refined for enhanced reliability. I had a VM module that''d coat my tentacles with a psychic paralytic that could ignore most armor. Lisa had improved electrostun gauntlets augmenting her claws, plus some druidic spirit magic I had no idea about. Nicky had her strong arms and an electric warhammer.


    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    The elevator landed in a waiting room with a TV, where Doctor Skinner''s face was on-screen, as well as Doctor Skinner- or, as I could now tell, the android facsimile I''d been following this whole time- sitting perfectly still in a chair.


    "You''ve gotta be fucking shitting me," I said.


    "Yes, I certainly have been yanking your chain, haven''t I?" Doctor Beatrice Faith Skinner said, grinning smugly at me from the TV screen. "Unfortunately, Doctor Updyke, this is the end of the line for us. You''ve been excellent inspiration for me to learn and grow, filling the role of the rival so admirably, but we''ve entered the endgame, and I no longer need you."


    "...Whatever helps you sleep at night," I shrugged, before pulling out my revolver and shooting the TV in the control board, fizzling out the entire display. She pathologically needed to be in control, and so had convinced herself that me turning on her and stopping her, and breaking her leg, and trashing her stuff, and dismantling her cult- that was her plan, to make me a tool to help her grow through adversity.


    She didn''t want to confront the fact that she really had tried to control me just like everyone else and simply failed.


    I shot the automaton in the head as it jerked to life- probably Skinner piloting it remotely to continue monologuing at me. I wouldn''t give her the pleasure.


    "I also do not need the continuous drain on my resources," Skinner announced over the intercom as her automaton body double fell over, spilling gears and oil all over the floor. "You''re a very expensive rival to have, Doctor. Thankfully, everything in here is written off as experimental."


    "Oh, good," Akane said. "So this place isn''t a decoy."


    "Indeed, student of my student. This place is, while not vital to my plans, still quite nice to have. My central plan was to enslave this world, and build an army of its strongest fighters to conquer and enslave my own world as well. And this place is where I house an experiment to create an army of its strongest fighters, so that I don''t have to worry about running out. So no, little Demiurge! This is not in fact a decoy! This is a trap!"


    The rear wall of the waiting room collapsed backwards, nothing more than a propped-up facade, and opening the waiting room up into a much larger central chamber, currently unlit.


    "This experiment was an important one. One enslaved world would certainly be nice to have, but I want to enslave the world that matters, and for that, I''d need an army capable of bringing that world to its knees. The local superheroes certainly had their standouts with appreciable oomph, but it was only the standouts. You''ve noticed the same thing, I''m sure, where a middling demiurge and druid could curbstomp entire teams of supervillains. What is the legally-neutral term for people with superpowers, anyhow? Oh well. I don''t care that much, and neither will anybody else, once I''m done.


    "What I do care about is cloning powerful superheroes. Unfortunately, while I could obtain genetic information fairly trivially, my cloning process wasn''t able to replicate the powers of the superheroes I cloned. They weren''t metaphysically the same person as the hero. They were metaphysically children of the hero. And hereditary superpowers simply don''t exist!"


    "Ah, shit," Red Fox whispered.


    "Unless... perhaps they do?"


    The lights raised, revealing an army of about eighty identical clones. Odd; I''d been expecting a hundred and sixty, but then, I suppose this place wasn''t ready for prime-time.


    "After all, Princess Vega seems to be quite capable of passing her powers on to her children. Apply the right mental pressures, and the spirit half forms perfectly, and I get my army of cloned supersoldiers! But, of course, as a woman of science, I can''t simply assume they''ll work. I need to test them first. See how they perform in a live-fire environment, against actual opponents trying their best to kill them. Good luck, Doctor!"


    There was something of a resemblance to Princess Vega in there, with the clones. The facial resemblance was uncanny. But a lot of the other details were wrong; they were a bit shorter, they had black hair and brown eyes, their skin wasn''t as pale, and they were nowhere near as curvy.


    (Doctor Skinner had been of the opinion that being horny was unbecoming of a proper scholar, demiurgic or otherwise, and therefore probably intentionally made her army of vat-grown, hyper-loyal Power Girl clones look like... well, not super-fetishistic 3D porn models brought to life. And frankly, that was an act of cowardice. If you''re going to enslave the world, you may as well do it in a way that gives people some eye candy to enjoy.)


    (Also, this was probably adding insult to injury to House Vega. Princess Vega had all kinds of alien bullshit supertech, and Nicky was pretty sure she wouldn''t look like that if she didn''t want to, which she did, because of the culture she''d grown up with in Vega. Tits the size of your head was how Vegans signaled royalty, or maybe authority with a halo-effect moral component, possibly from the same root as the term ''mommy milkers''- Nicky didn''t super understand Vegan culture herself, and was mostly guessing.)


    The clones were all in uniform: black jumpsuits that were just matte enough under the lights to probably not be latex, and instead probably neoprene rubber. The boots were dark blue, and made of the same material. The sleeves ended above the wrists, on dark blue cuffs.


    In their hands were sabers of very obvious demiurgic make, glistening with something that was probably unpleasant.


    "You''re going to need it!"


    "There''s one little thing you''ve forgotten," Lady Venus said, stepping forward into the chamber as all the clones got into formation for battle. "Our power isn''t gravity. It''s gravitas. It''s respect. It is the weight of our reputation, our actions, our legend upon the very fabric of reality."


    Lady Venus turned her hammer in her hand, putting the spike forward, intending to kill with this hammer, and just stood there, waiting, as the clones began to charge her in unison.


    "And these clones don''t look like they get out much."

 Book 4 Chapter 10

    I''d sparred with Nicky myself a lot in the last week, teaching her how to handle an opponent who also had a weapon. It was kinda like fencing, except instead of trying to poke each other with spindly metal foils, we were trying to hit each other with reasonably-beefy rattan sticks.


    Was she a master of swordsmanship? Or, well, hammerswomanship, in this case. No, she absolutely was not. Mastery of a martial art takes like a decade of fairly dedicated and consistent practice to achieve. I wasn''t a judo master, and I''d been practicing that pretty consistently, even on the job, for five years.


    But that wasn''t the right question to ask. The right question to ask was...


    ...is Nicky tough enough and good enough to fight like a hundred clones of her mother who were trained, during their freshly-hatched neuroplasticity, to be Pretty Decent with the blade, and still come out in one piece?


    So far...


    I sidestepped a mangled chunk of bloody gore that had once been part of a clone''s hand, which landed wetly where my foot used to be.


    ...I''d say she was doing alright.


    "It''s like that lawnmower scene from that one zombie movie," Red Fox murmured.


    "I think I''m gonna be sick," Akane said, eyes closed and ears plugged.


    "You know, we didn''t even turn on the wolfsbane," I said, a bit louder, so Doctor Skinner could hear us. "These clones still have their powers at as full strength as they can manage, and it is not enough to stop Lady Venus from literally dismantling them with a hammer."


    "This is why ideas are tested by experiment," Doctor Skinner mused. "I take it you''ve already nullified my self-destruct mechanisms?"


    "Eyup," I said.


    "Oh well. You can keep this base. It was worth a shot. I''ll still conquer America by Valentine''s Day without it."


    "How gracious of you," I said, before disabling the intercoms. Could I have traced the line she was using to talk to this base? Honestly, probably not. She was, for the most part, pretty good at information security. So, there really was pretty much no reason, at this point, to let her keep talking. All she''d do at this point is annoy me. "Jesus, she is tearing through them."


    "She is distressingly okay with killing a bunch of people who look like her mother," Red Fox added.


    "I mean, considering who her mom is, I''m not exactly surprised," I said. "Personally, right now I''m trying to run the math on how long this must''ve taken her to set up. Usually it takes about a month to grow an adult human in a vat, see? So if Skinner has 32 vats- which she probably does, I know her- then this army, divided by 32, is how many batches there''ve been, and times... oh, four weeks, with Skinner''s method, to get the time she''s been at this. I counted 88 clones; more than 64 but less than 96, so let''s round up to three batches, with the last eight probably being somewhere else. Maybe special operations or something. And that means, at a minimum, she''s been doing this for... twelve weeks. About three months. Almost as long as I''ve been here, actually. She must''ve gotten started early."


    "Huh," Red Fox said. "So, that tell us anything?"


    "Honestly, not really," I said. "I mean, she probably doesn''t have another army like this in her back pocket, this sorta thing is expensive to maintain in terms of demiurgic headspace, in ways that can''t be fobbed off on a minion. And she probably can''t build another one anytime soon- nor will she try, because she''s witnessed firsthand how useless it is. But aside from that... nope, nothin''."


    "Damn."


    "We''ll keep sniffing. We''ll find her."


    Finally, at long last, Venus splattered the last clone''s brains all over the floor with a strike that did not resemble Kali so much as it resembled Happy Gilmore.


    "I''m done," she said, the blood and gore sliding off of her like water off a duck''s back as she straightened up, casually resting her hammer on her shoulder. "What''s next?"


    "We should look around, figure out what else is here," I said. "And, uh. Maybe find a room that isn''t lovingly-painted with the insides of your cloned mother."


    "Probably. Akane, you''ll want to start hovering about three feet above the ground."


    Akane wailed quietly.


    <hr>


    "I''m beginning to piece together a picture of what''s happening, here," I said, examining the big rows of cloning vats. "This here is a row of eight vats, split down the middle by an aisle. There''s three more rows behind it. And since Skinner''s cloning process takes precisely 28 days from start to finish, when she does it like this, she can have a fresh batch of eight being spat out every week, with another batch never more than a week away, and the benefit that she only has to on-board eight clones at a time, provided that process only takes a week at the most."


    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    "Wouldn''t that also make the process of making whole batches of thirty two clones take three weeks longer than it needs to?" Fox asked.


    "Oh, for sure there''s downsides," I said. "And hell, sometimes you want a big batch of clones hatching at the same time."


    "Don''t call it hatching," Venus pleaded.


    "They can socialize with each other, keep each other occupied. Makes some things easier. Buuuut, it also makes some things harder. Mostly, keeping them tightly controlled, which... well, Skinner wanted. Because she craves control more than anything."


    "Very healthy, this Skinner lady," Fox remarked.


    The room was full of the hum of machinery already, but some new noises began, signaling that something was starting up.


    "Of fucking course," I said as an overhead gantry started to move over the last row of vats, which should be the closest to being done. I shot it, but in the time it''d taken me to line up my shot and break the damn thing, it''d already crossed the room, getting overhead the second-to-last vat before I completely befuckened it, managing to hit both the power cable and the motor moving it. "We''re not finding out what that does. Bad enough these vats are apparently ready for hatching. We don''t need to let them actually ha-" The sound of eight watertight seals breaking filled the room, along with primordial goo spilling through the floor grates, and hurried footsteps.


    "I got this," Venus said, stepping forward and pulping the eight fresh- and uncomfortably naked- clones with her hammer, spilling their blood into the floor grates. "...That''s seven. Where''s the eighth one?"


    I blinked, then checked the scanner. The last one...


    ...was cowering in her tube.


    The only tube that the gantry hadn''t passed over.


    Oh fuck me running that gantry had been the mind control device that made the clones loyal to Skinner, and my lack of haste meant only one of these clones survived it.


    "It''s okay, you can come out now," I called. "You''re not controlled by Skinner; we aren''t enemies."


    Nobody was sure why, but for whatever reason, unless one specifically tried to avoid it, freshly-hatched human clones would speak the very basics of the mother tongue of the demiurge who made their vat. This was the only pre-natal mental influence that these clones had; this was why Skinner needed to mind-control them at the moment of completion, instead of throughout their development.


    This clone, I could tell, didn''t have any of Skinner''s conditioning. Just some rudimentary English and a wholly reasonable fear of strangers and very loud noises.


    And, we were reminded as she cautiously leaned around the corner, no clothes.


    "Here," I said, unbuttoning my coat and shrugging it off. "Put this on."


    She approached me nervously, and I draped the coat over her shoulders.


    "Put your arms through the sleeves, and fasten the buttons," I instructed.


    "The hell do we do with her?" Venus asked, quite uncomfortably aware that "Nicky Smash!" wasn''t an appropriate answer right now.


    "We''ll figure something out," I said. "She''s got ten weeks of neuroplasticity to impart maximal skills on her. At that point... she learns just like the rest of us."


    "Are we keeping her?" Akane asked.


    "If she wants us to," I said with a shrug, as the clone finished buttoning up the coat. "Now c''mon. Let''s get out of here."


    <hr>


    "Your existence brings me great pain," Silas said, after dinner.


    "Look, I talked to Haruna and-" I made a fake retching noise. "-Princess Vega. They both signed off on this plan, and so did little Violet."


    We''d named the clone, of course. She was now Violet Vega-Sakurai, and tomorrow, Friday afternoon, she''d be leaving with the matronly polycule to be raised by them in Houston. I''d never wanted kids, and while this clone was physically fully-grown, mentally was another story. I wasn''t equipped to handle this. But Haruna, Tanya, and Samina? They''d raised one weird-ass science fiction baby. Why not another one?


    "Come the nearest Shabbat, we''ll be able to forget she exists and move on with our next venture," I continued.


    "Which will be starting from square one, because our princess is in another windmill," Silas muttered. "Do you have any leads?"


    "A few, but none of them are very solid," I said. "I just don''t know what Doctor Skinner''s main plan is. I know what her goal is- conquer America before Valentine''s Day- just... not how she plans to achieve it."


    "Fuck a duck," Silas muttered. "Shit."


    "Yeah, you''re tellin'' me, big guy," I said, patting him on the shoulder. "We''ll make it through this. And in the meantime, Akane and I have cooked up some stuff you can benefit from, if you''re interested."


    "...What kind of stuff?"


    "I''m a fully-accredited Research Fellow of the Institute for Applied Transhumanism," I said.


    "I''ve got my own implants already," Silas said.


    "And we can talk shop, and you might find a way to make them better and more maintainable," I said. "But besides that, between me and Akane is a wide spread of specialties and knowledges. I bet you that most of what you would want, we can make. Provided, of course, that we haven''t already made it. So... what''re you doing tomorrow?"


    Silas sighed. "Talking shop with you, and drowning the sorrows of an escaped quarry with machine oil and blood."


    "That''s the spirit," I said, grinning.

 Bonus Arc: Magical Girl Nocto, Chapter 1

    I am Doctor Roxanne Updyke, I''m a freshly-minted Research Fellow at the Institute of Applied Transhumanism, and a few hours ago, I got isekai''d into a world where magical girls are real.


    "Excuse me," I heard someone say behind me while I was buying groceries, which wasn''t great for my nerves.


    It was a young woman''s voice, to be precise, and while it was unreasonable to assume that I would immediately run into a magical girl just because I was now in a universe where they existed, the pacifying-yet-holier-than-thou tone made me think I had. And considering that I came from a world that was considerably more ''Gothic'' in its supernatural population¡ªand that in most respects I would be counted among that population¡ªI very much did not want to deal with (or be dealt with by) a universal embodiment of hope and positivity.


    So I did what I did best: ignore the problem and hope it goes away.


    Hey, at least she''s probably not one of Skinner''s minions.


    "Excuse me," the woman repeated slightly louder, as though I had failed to hear her rather than chosen to ignore her. "Do you have a moment to talk?"


    "About what?" I said instead of ''no, go away.'' I don''t know why. I definitely wanted to say the latter.


    "About, well¡­"


    I finally turned around, and laid eyes upon a college-aged East Asian woman. She was alarmingly pretty, and fairly tall, in a cute but mostly unremarkable sweater and long skirt in dark colors. She was also very much not the image of a magical girl. There wasn''t a great deal of deliberate cross-contamination between our universes; neither side particularly wanted supernatural creatures of the other sort running lose in their backyard, for obvious reasons, so the Treaty made crossings like mine all-but illegal, and the ''all-but'' was mostly because making things illegal tended to make them public knowledge.


    Even so, as part of my universe''s supernatural scene, I''d picked up a certain amount of the cultural background radiation surrounding the other Treaty signatories by slow and inevitable osmosis. My image of a ''magical girl'' was, or should have been, fairly close to the local cultural norms: that of a teen or pre-teen girl radiating purity and clean, familial love. Not a tall, attractive, extremely curvy young woman who''d spin heads everywhere she went. So I''d dodged that bullet, at least.


    "I could tell from all the way across the store that someone was having a pretty bad¡­ day," she said at last, because it seemed every universe delighted in make me eat every somewhat optimistic thought that dared cross my mind. Unless there was an entirely separate group of empaths running around universe B-449 that somehow no one on A-510 had ever heard of, she was a magical girl. Because obviously magical girls would grow up. I was an idiot.


    Crap. What would a local do in this situation? Magical girls were sort of celebrity-public-servants-slash-first-responders, I thought, but I wasn''t clear on whether they were more the firefighter-type everyone loved for their selflessness or the cop-type everyone wanted to give as wide a berth as possible. Either way, I wanted nothing to do with this, and I couldn''t be the only one who''d ever felt that way, so:


    "I''ll live," I said with as much good humor as I could be bothered to fake, then turned back to the shelves.


    My shadow was undeterred. "I''d hope we could aim a little higher than ''living''," she said. "My name is Akane Sakurai. You?"


    "Roxanne Updyke," I said, then cursed myself for taking a tumble in whatever politeness judo ''Akane'' was a practitioner of. "Can I help you?"


    "I was hoping I could help you."


    "Why?"


    "Because I''m a magical girl," Akane said. "Well, technically, I''m retired, but helping people is a hard habit to break, and I don''t see any reason to try."


    "I appreciate the thought," I lied, "but I don''t think you can exactly help with my current predicament of being cut off from my social safety net and simultaneously being rendered homeless with just a quick pep talk in the bread aisle. But hey, if you really think you can manage it, I don''t have anywhere else to be." Well, besides a motel room, but I wasn''t exactly attached to it.


    Stolen novel; please report.


    Akane frowned and tapped her chin. "That''s fair," she said. "That would be hard to fix with a pep talk."


    <hr>


    "How did I get here?" I asked, stir-frying some eggs and leftover rice.


    "I drove you here and unlocked the door for you," Akane said, a garbage bag in one hand and some garbage in the other. "Sorry my apartment''s a mess. My old roommate was more important than I thought when it came to keeping things clean. But hey, now I have a new roommate!"


    "You can''t be serious," I said. "Maybe I wasn''t clear earlier, but I don''t have money for rent. Or a job to get money. Or marketable skills to get a job." At least, not a job I''d ever tell a crusader for love and justice about.


    "I don''t need help with rent," Akane said, still bustling about as she tried to make the living space look less like the inside of a particularly spacious dumpster. "I need someone to keep me accountable for my mess. Or at least, embarrassed about letting the place turn into¡­ uh, this."


    "You wouldn''t happen to be a college student, would you?"


    "As of a few months ago, no. Not an undergrad, anyway."


    That might as well have been a ''yes'', as far as I was concerned. "Isn''t it a little unreasonable to trust some random person you picked up at HEB with the keys to your home?"


    "Retiring as a magical girl is about giving up the responsibilities," Akane explained, "not the perks. I wouldn''t have approached you if you were evil or dangerous. You''re grumpy and prickly, but you''re not going to hurt anyone if you can help it."


    I had a bad feeling the Mad Science gadgets ''demiurges'' like myself used could spoof Akane''s magical girl-granted empathy powers'' emotional scanning, which was a really bad sign considering I was here to kill another, significantly more malicious and dangerous demiurge. Unfortunately for her, I couldn''t exactly correct her without outing myself. Also unfortunately for her, I wasn''t above taking advantage of someone''s well-meaning pity if the alternative was theft and/or homelessness.


    I''d just have to assume Skinner was blending in equally well while she went about whatever sinister plan she had in mind. Things would be a lot easier for me if I knew what that plan was, but all I could really be sure of was that she had chosen to visit this universe for a reason; she hadn''t had time to reconfigure her portal gun before she''d shot me through. So: what was special about this universe in particular? It was ''common knowledge'' in my home universe¡ªinasmuch as anything about parallel universes was ''commonly known''¡ªthat magical girls were more or less impossible to compromise or otherwise suborn (which was one of the reasons so many supernatural entities wanted nothing to do with them), so presumably Skinner was after something from their metaphysical opposites, the manifestations known as ''Nightmares''.


    I knew a great deal less about the so-called Nightmares than I suspected a native to this universe ought to, even after spending much of the day researching the topic on the internet through my brain-computer-interface implant. The consistency of information across every site I found smacked of information control in a way that made me suspect the authorities didn''t want people to know too much. Maybe there was a good reason for it, and maybe there wasn''t, but I wasn''t going to learn it online.


    What little I did know was the few bits that every site repeated: Nightmares were physical manifestations of negative human emotions like hatred, anger, and despair given form to spread suffering. I wasn''t clear how much of that was metaphorical and how much was literal, but we were talking about magic, so the answer might well be ''yes''.


    Akane bustled off to clean another part of the apartment, and I returned my outward attention to lunch while I though things through further. Nightmares are made when someone feels a negative emotion strongly enough. As a mind controller, I can make that happen repeatably in a controlled environment, as could Skinner. Therefore, we can make Nightmares...


    ...but of course, now my train of thought has to stop at the station of ''But What''s The Point Of That?'' because I have absolutely no idea what someone would do with a Nightmare once they''d created it. Even assuming Skinner could control it¡ªafter all, just because it was spawned from negative emotions doesn''t mean it had a psyche she could actually grab hold of¡ªthere remained the question of what she''d actually do with the goddamn thing. Skinner might be the poster-child for public perception of dangerous sociopathy, but the grievous harm she did to people was always incidental to some other (admittedly, usually equally evil) goal, whereas¡ªas far as I could learn online¡ª''mindlessly spreading misery'' was pretty much the only thing Nightmares were any good at.


    Naturally, it would perfectly explain the kind of information control I was inferring if there were Things People Can Do With Nightmares that no one wanted anyone to try. But even if that were the case, it was going to take days, or more likely, weeks of digging to uncover anything of the sort, and that was only the first step in trying to track Skinner down to put a long-overdue bullet somewhere a bit more permanent than her knee. So I was going to be here for a while, and there were a lot worse places to stay than in a recent college graduate''s spare bedroom.


    Akane seemed to sense my decision, because she paused and sent an expectant look across the kitchen.


    "Well," I said as I removed the pan from the heat and started portioning the food out, "far be it for me to talk myself out of a free bed."

 Bonus Arc: Magical Girl Nocto, Chapter 2

    "When I told Akane she''d get along fine without me," Veronica said, "I didn''t realize I was consigning some poor bystander to the task of ''live-in maid''."


    "I''m really more of a ''live-in reminder that this space is supposed to be live-able''," I replied. "Akane doesn''t make me do all the cleaning, and even if she did, it''d be far from the worst job I''ve worked in either duties or pay."


    Akane had offhandedly mentioned during her frantic cleaning that her ex-roommate was a fellow magical girl, and despite her own flaunting of magical girl stereotypes, I''d still had certain expectations for what said roommate would be like. It was six in the evening on Saturday, and Veronica Vega, the ex-roommate in question, had walked in the door five minutes ago and promptly shattered every on of those expectations. She looked even less like the archetypical magical girl than Akane did, for some of the same reasons: Veronica would have looked more at home in a universe of superheroes as the Supergirl Knockoff¡ªspecifically, one drawn by a fanartist who liked big muscles, bigger tits, and albinism. In fact, I''d go so far as to say she was one of the least ''magical girl''-looking women I''d seen in my entire life, which made the fact that she was not only Akane''s former ''peer'' but, unlike Akane, still actively practicing (or whatever the term was)¡­ incongruous, to say the least.


    "I hope this isn''t terribly insensitive to say," I ventured, "but neither of you fit the image of ''magical girl'' I had in my head."


    "With the same sentiment," Veronica replied, "that''s little better than a roundabout way of saying you''re ignorant about ''magical girls'' in general."


    I shrugged, unperturbed. "I was hoping I was being subtle about it but¡­ yeah, I really don''t know much of anything about magical girls beyond the blindingly obvious." Living with Akane hadn''t taught me much. I wasn''t sure if it was because she was retired, because she was subtle, or just because I''d been here for barely three days, but thus far it wasn''t much different from rooming with someone with above-average emotional intelligence. (And given the emotional intelligence of the average person, that wasn''t even a particularly impressive bar to clear. I used to have a telepathy implant¡ªwhich I''d long since gotten rid of because I hadn''t had any use for it¡ªso I had a pretty accurate frame of reference for such things.)


    Which was not to say that Akane was a ''normal'' roommate: she was, without a doubt, the most physically affectionate person I''d ever cohabitated with. I suspected her magical empathy had assessed me as being touch-starved, but I wasn''t going to attribute her frequent (and if I was being honest, more than welcome) hugs to her being a magical girl when it was possible she was just ''like that''.


    "Beyond the media darlings, you mean," Veronica said.


    "To be honest, not even those."


    "Really?" She frowned as she looked me up and down. "I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense¡­"


    "Dare I ask?"


    "At the risk of poking personal details you''d rather I pretended not to know, you neither read nor dress like a person who revels in optimism and the joy of living a vibrant life, which is most of what the modern magical girl ''brand'' deals in."


    I was tempted to ask what I did read like, but I was¡ªbarely, and with great effort and greater scars¡ªsomeone with ''more than average emotional intelligence'', so I wisely did not ask a near-total stranger to recite my trauma to me and instead focused on literally any other part of that sentence.


    "What''s wrong with the way I dress?" I was wearing a perfectly normal button-down shirt and jeans under¡­ a trenchcoat. Okay, she was still being unfair, but it was unfairness founded in social biases against practical clothing choices rather than being completely out of left field. "Actually, don''t answer that." I reached for a topic less critical of my lifestyle choices and found:  "What do magical girls do all day?"


    Akane was retired from the scene and currently in graduate school, so living with her hadn''t answered that question, either. Obviously, I could have asked, but I''d never found a good time to raise the topic, and my lack of knowledge meant I also didn''t know how likely those sorts of questions were to hit a very insistently retired magical girl''s sore spots. Veronica, on the other hand, was still working as a magical girl and someone I was unlikely to see on a regular basis and thus mildly safer to pester.


    "It depends on what king of duties the magical girl chooses to take on. Myself, I spend good days sitting in a tiny little rented office waiting for an emergency that never appears, and bad days dealing with emergencies that do appear."


    "And by ''emergencies'', you mean¡­"


    "Nightmares, mostly," Veronica said. "These muscles aren''t entirely for show."


    "What about Akane?" I asked. "When she was an active magical girl?"


    "Akane is a lot closer to the media''s ''ideal'' magical girl," Veronica said with a hint of scorn towards the latter. "She''s more focused on prevention and outreach: intervening before people''s problems can grow bad enough to summon a Nightmare in the first place."


    "The ''ideal'' magical girl¡­?"


    "Idols," Veronica said dismissively. "These days, it''s all idols. Violence is out of favor; now it''s all, peace and love!" She threw out a bitingly sarcastic victory sign. "These fads tend to last thirty to forty years or so, so we''ll be dealing with this for a while yet. I admit I do, in fact, like having the privileges associated with being a magical girl in good standing with the media circus and all it entails, but I do not like the line I have to toe for it. Regardless, Akane is¡ªor was¡ªa lot more into the ''community outreach'' and ''crisis intervention'' parts of magical girl-ing than I ever was. Stopping to bother people in the supermarket about their problems is entirely in character for her."


    "So dragging me off to be her roommate is magical girl business," I said.


    Veronica paused, a small grimace on her face.


    "I did not mean to imply that you were a charity case. There are a great many ways to alleviate someone''s issues that do not involve hassling them until they move in with you. Akane must have seen something in you that she liked."


    "And you don''t."


    She grimaced again.


    "Do you know what the worst part of the soul-reading magical girls get is?"


    "Always knowing exactly who''s just sucking up to you for their own ends?" I guessed.


    "Just so," Veronica said. "I don''t know how much Akane has told you about me, but I''ve cultivated an ''aloof'' personality because I cannot bear the indignity of treating scheming parasites like valued friends, and with the need to maintain a consistent affect between interviews and public appearances, I''m afraid it has become a habit. Don''t take it as a personal judgment."


    "We did just meet," I noted. "Akane''s relentless friendliness has been¡­ startling, and a little alarming. This is almost refreshing."


    Veronica looked skeptical, but she didn''t challenge the assertion.


    "So," I said, "what was ''in'' with magical girls before this ''idol'' stuff?"


    "From the 70s through the 90s, it was all ''nature'' and ''flowers''," she answered. "Then, sometime in the noughts, corporate interests told the whole environmental angle to sit down and shut up, which eventually morphed and stabilized into this¡­ dross."


    As someone from a universe where corporations remained blessedly unaware of (and thus uninvolved in) the supernatural, the question of how corporate interests would corrupt the ''institution'' of ''girls what do magic'' was simultaneously dreadful and dull. Dreadful because there were few, if any, limits to what corporations would sink to in their pursuit of the almighty dollar and still fewer limits to what weird supernatural powers could do with the right incentives, and dull because the world was still here and more or less as it was back home, so whatever they''d done hadn''t rocked the boat much.


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Maybe I would care more if I knew what the ''institution'' in question was. How did a girl become a magical girl? Were there magical boys? Precisely how much gender essentialism was present in this world''s conception of magic?


    Questions for later, because I was, in fact, capable of having a normal, mostly-linear conversation when I put my mind to it. "You''d rather the environmentalist stuff stuck around?" I guessed.


    "No, that''s not for me, either. Not to be one of those ''I was born in the wrong era'' girls, but I think I would have fit in a lot better a couple eras earlier, when a big chunk of magical girl-ing was antifascist praxis. Some people are as big a problem as any Nightmare¡ªbigger, even, now that it''s no longer acceptable to punch them until they stop spreading harm."


    It was really unfortunate that I was undercover as ''random bystander Akane adopted with no noteworthy red flags'', because I had a lot to say regarding the contrasting pleasures and tribulations of punching shitty people in the face for great justice and my brain absolutely wanted to share all of goddamn it why does my ADHD show up in the stupidest ways?


    "You certainly look the part," I said. It kind of slipped out while I was distracted by not blurting out anything compromising, and also did I mention the absurd muscles on this woman''s arms? And the rest of her, but she was wearing a t-shirt that made the arms an extremely accessible exhibit on the topic, especially after my comment caused her to pose like one of those old Rosie the Riveter posters, or whatever equivalent this world had had.


    "Akane said something similar," Veronica said as she inspected her own (quite impressive) muscles.


    "What did I say?" Akane came in from the kitchen as though summoned by her True Name, arms loaded with milkshakes for the three of us. The one she handed Veronica proved capable of melting the latter''s frosty exterior despite itself being taxonomically a ''frozen treat''; I ended up having to explain the conversation on my own, as Veronica spent the time entirely devoted to her shake.


    "Ah, yes," Akane said. "I remember telling her I thought she''d seen a few too many of those old wartime propaganda posters."


    "And then set out to get ripped?" I asked.


    "Not ''set out'' so much as¡­ how much do you know about magical girls?"


    "Nothing I haven''t learned from being your roommate," I answered, "which amounts to little more than ''having a magical girl for a roommate isn''t much different from any other roommate.''" Other than them being absurdly trusting, I didn''t add.


    Akane nodded and launched into an explanation. "Well, you see, one of the perks of becoming a magical girl is that we heal really, really well. Not every magical girl goes out and fights Nightmares as a full-time job¡ªthere''s a lot more to spreading hope and joy than fighting antithetical manifestations¡ªbut all of us need to be ready and able to do so in an emergency."


    "By ''well'', do you mean ''really fast'', or¡­?"


    "Speed is a big part of it," Akane agreed, "but we also never scar, can grow back fingers, and things like that."


    "Perfect healing," I summarized.


    Veronica surfaced from her milkshake to add, "Better than perfect, according to some."


    I had a hunch as to what she was implying, but I decided to play along and ask the expected question. "What''s better than perfect?"


    "One prevailing theory for the mechanism in question," Akane explained, "which I was getting to, is that we don''t merely heal back to our ''normal'' state but all the way to our ''ideal'' state. Of course, ''ideal'' is highly subjective. One of my friends is doing her postgrad study on the effects of magical girl media saturation on magical girls. She thinks overexposure to magical girl celebrities at a young age will effect later generations of¡ª"


    "Akane," Veronica chided her. Akane flushed red and did her best to hide behind the straw in her milkshake, which worked not at all.


    "So," I said, drawing out the word as I considered the implications of this exposition session, "you''re saying you two look like you do because you consciously or unconsciously want to look that way?"


    "I was exposed to way too much anime as a kid," Akane admitted, then sent a prompting glance at Veronica.


    "I''m basically the opposite of everything my mom wanted me to be," Veronica said.


    I raised an eyebrow. "Dare I ask?"


    "Are you aware of child pageants?"


    "Sadly."


    "Yeah." She let out a grumbling sigh. "I grew up being poked, prodded, and plastered into the perfect, petite little plush pet¡ª"


    "Nice alliteration."


    "Thank you. Now I''m six feet of muscle with a chest no one would ever mistake for a child''s. I might have gone a little overboard, but no one has ever accused me of being subtle."


    "And the albinism?" I asked before I could think better of it.


    Rather than taking offense, Veronica seemed a little proud as she declared, "I refused to let society take this from me."


    "Our healing won''t fix anything we don''t consider a problem," Akane said. "I''ve worked with deaf magical girls, ameliac magical girls¡ª"


    "''Amelia'' is the medical term for the condition of being born missing part or all of a limb," Veronica cut in, not knowing that I knew that. "We can heal conditions we''re born with, there are countless examples of it, but very few magical girls keep acquired injuries or disabilities, so¡­"


    "So most ''kept'' conditions are congenital, the way you chose to keep your albinism," I said.


    She so-so''d with the hand not holding her near-empty milkshake. "It''s not a conscious choice. What matters is that I never disliked my coloration. I disliked the sun sensitivity and poor vision, so those are history, but why should I change how I look?"


    "She told me the first thing her mother asked when Veronica became a magical girl was, ''Does this mean you can fix your skin?''" Akane recalled.


    "That almost certainly contributed to it," Veronica said. "I am nothing if not contrary and petty when threatened."


    "I see." I did not see, not really¡ªI''d done a lot of work on my body, but it was, by definition, work I had done, with design and intent. Given how long I''d spent as an unknowing, self-closeted trans woman, I found the idea of a body just changing itself for you in ways you wanted but without your conscious input strange and more than a little uncomfortable.


    I did, however, know that family issues were a thorny topic I saw no reason to dwell on and so endeavored to move the topic along to pretty much anything else. I''d finished my milkshake, so I set the empty glass on the nearby table and signed, ?Do you know American Sign Language??


    Both women nodded. "Not just for dealing with other magical girls," Akane added, signing the same message as a demonstration. "A magical girl needs to be able to communicate with people in an emergency, especially if those wouldn''t be able to easily communicate with other first responders or bystanders for one reason or another."


    "It''s why I know Spanish, Korean, and Quebecois French," Veronica chimed in. "Why did you learn ASL?"


    "Family."


    "Oh."


    Once again eager to change the topic, I carried on, "So Akane mentioned you moved out because you were leaving Austin¡­"


    "That was the plan," Veronica confirmed. "I wanted to see the world a bit before I picked somewhere to settle down and take permanent residence, and with magic and the unreasonable piles of money I make from merchandising, traveling is pretty easy. Unfortunately, there''s been some weirdness here over the last week or so, and since I''m a ten-year veteran magical girl who already knows the area, I was the obvious choice to deal with it."


    "...What kind of ''weirdness''?" I asked, doing my best to appear only-usually-nervous about ''weird supernatural bullshit''.


    Veronica shrugged. "If I knew that, my job would be half done. Given the feeling I''ve gotten, my best guess is an unlicensed interdimensional transferal, since a Nightmare Gate would be impossible to miss."


    "Interdimensional travel and connections to the Nightmare Realm are nearly the same phenomena," Akane added, "just pointing in different directions."


    I filed away the fact that there was apparently an entire Nightmare Realm¡ªa fact which every resource on the internet carefully omitted¡ªand then pretended I''d missed what appeared to be a breach of The Masquerade and/or OPSEC in favor of another, simultaneously ''more innocent'' and ''more critical'' bit of information.


    "How dangerous are interdimensional travelers?" I asked, subtly.


    Veronica shrugged again. "Depends where they''re from and why they''re here. Interdimensional smuggling is typically a white-collar crime, but there are other universes with their own supernatural predators, and some of them are nasty."


    Which was why interdimensional travel was so heavily regulated as to be functionally banned just about everywhere. The sad thing was, the Treaty was as much about keeping magical girls from dealing with other universes'' ''supernatural predator'' infestations as it was about keeping vampires and such from becoming a problem here. Politics, natch.


    Akane noticed my poor mood (and hopefully misattributed the cause) and changed the subject. "So you''re sticking around?" she asked Veronica. "You''re back in Austin?"


    "For a few months, at least," Veronica confirmed. "I actually dropped by to ask for my room back, but¡­"


    And now I was the elephant in the room.

 Bonus Arc: Magical Girl Nocto, Chapter 3

    No sooner had Veronica left than Akane turned to me and asked, "Should we let Nicky move back in with us?"


    I was not at all happy with the idea¡ªmostly because Veronica had accidentally informed us she was currently trying to hunt me down, but I couldn''t exactly say that. Then again, I didn''t need to stay here, per se. I could go back to doing what I''d always done: fending for myself eking out a living on the margins of society. It wouldn''t be anywhere near as idyllic as the last few days, but¡­ well, that was how life was. Good things don''t tend to last.


    "It''s your apartment," I said. "You were just letting me stay in it. If you want to give Veronica her room back¡­"


    "I didn''t ask if I should ''give Nicky her room back''," Akane interrupted me. "I asked if we should let her move back in with us. I''m not considering kicking you out!"


    "There are only two bedrooms, and I''m way too tall to sleep on the couch."


    "We can share a room. Just because Nicky''s weird about physical contact doesn''t mean we have to be."


    "Look, as much as I appreciate having a proper hug dealer after all this time, I''m not exactly comfortable with the prospect of sharing a bed with you," I said. "What is this, fanfiction? There needs to be more than one bed."


    "But we''re friends," Akane said.


    "Friends don''t typically share beds. Didn''t you live with Veronica for years?"


    "Yeah, but she doesn''t like being touched because of all the pageantry horror she grew up with."


    "Huh," I said. "Well, I''m also weird, but for different reasons, and I''m drawing the line at sharing a bed."


    "What if we weren''t ''just friends''?" Akane asked.


    I squeezed my eyes shut and focused my healing implant on staving off a stress headache, which was definitely a normal response to being propositioned for a relationship shut up.


    "You''ve known me for all of three days," I said.


    "Speed dating exists," Akane countered. "Three days is a perfectly acceptable length of time to learn whether you''re interested in pursuing a relationship with someone."


    "It clearly is not," I said, "because it isn''t long enough for you to realize that I am not someone you want a relationship with."


    Akane frowned, then reached out a hand towards me, and I let her take one of mine without really thinking about it.


    "Do you not want to be in a relationship with me?" she asked softly. "Because if that''s the case, I''ll shut up and not mention it again. But you know you aren''t the authority on which people I''d want to date. I''m not asking for commitment, Roxy. I''m asking you to give us a chance."


    "I''d like to think I''m the authority on who I am," I said. "I know you''ve got¡­ empathy, or ''soul sight'', or whatever you like to call it, but it clearly isn''t getting the job done because I am not a good person, Akane. I''m¡­ fuck, I don''t know why I''m telling this. I want you to like me, at least enough to let me crash on your too-small couch."


    A small corner of my mind was at war over whether I should be panicking or not. I had some pretty hefty psychic shielding and none of it was detecting any funny business. On the other hand, I was venting a lot of things I had no desire to air. I was given to rambling¡ªI had ADHD, sue me¡ªbut I was pretty sure rambling about my emotional damage was out of character.


    "I''m not doing anything weird with magic, if that''s what you''re worrying about," Akane said, causing me to go through a small moment of telepath panic before remembering that I''d all-but aired that concern out loud. "This is all you."


    "This is not ''me''," I said.


    "This is ''you when you feel safe''," Akane corrected herself. "You haven''t felt around someone else for a very long time, have you?"


    "I hardly know you," I muttered.


    "I have gone out of my way to make you comfortable," she admitted. "Comforting people is my duty and calling as a magical girl, and I think I''m pretty good at it. Living with someone full time only makes things easier. The more I see of you, the better I can tell what calms you down and what closes you off, and do more of the former and less of the latter.


    "Additionally, you know I''m a retired magical girl, which means I have that ability to see your heart, or hear your soul, or any number of other poetic metaphors that all amount to ''I know a lot of things about you you wouldn''t otherwise share''. So you take that and think, maybe not consciously, but you think, ''How much worse could sharing a little more be?''"


    The answer was ''a lot worse''. Unfortunately for me, Akane had very quickly established herself as my friend, and I had a strong desire to protect my friends. Even from myself.


    "You said I don''t hurt people intentionally," I said. "You''re wrong. Not on the subtext¡ªI''ve hurt a lot of people by accident¡ªbut I also hurt people on purpose. I''ve enjoyed it. I''m selfish, and angry, and violent, and I do not understand how you missed all of that with your personality scan or whatever but I think you made a mistake letting me move in."


    Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    "Everyone is selfish when they''re in need," Akane said, "and everyone can be violent when threatened. And anger isn''t an evil emotion. This isn''t Star Wars, and anger is not the path to the dark side."


    "Isn''t anger one of the prominent Nightmare emotions?" I asked.


    "It''s a famous one," Akane said. "So is grief. That doesn''t mean people shouldn''t feel them. Emotions are part of life. It''s when they take on a life of their own¡ªfiguratively or otherwise¡ªthat they become a problem."


    She took a half-step closer to me and put her other hand on mine. "There''s a reason anger is associated with fire imagery so much. It can cause a lot of harm if it burns out of control, but it''s also warming. It can light the way in darkness like a torch, define boundaries like a line of candles, ward off dangers like a bonfire, or empower us like a furnace. Anger is, at the end of the day, the feeling of being transgressed against. It motivates us to defend ourselves, to stop people from doing things that are unacceptable. Yes, maybe you''ve been angry enough to hurt people on purpose. But who? People who happened to be too close to you at the wrong time, or people who were doing things you absolutely needed them to stop doing?"


    That was¡­ one way to describe some of the more murderous actions I had taken.


    "Look, Roxy," Akane continued, "I''m sure Nicky bemoaned how violence is no longer an acceptable answer to unacceptable conduct, especially for magical girls in the public eye, so you know we aren''t pacifists as a matter of course. Leaving violence as a last resort does not mean being unwilling to resort to it when absolutely necessary. And do you really think Nicky wouldn''t enjoy punching a Nazi so hard his limbs landed in the 1940s?"


    "I¡­ mmm."


    Neither of us spoke for nearly a minute.


    "You''re right that I feel safe around you," I admitted, "but you really shouldn''t feel safe around me."


    "But I do," Akane said. "The only way you''re going to make me stop is to hurt me, and I think we both know you aren''t willing to do that."


    "Willing, God no," I said. "That doesn''t mean I won''t do it by accident. I am not a caring, conscientious person."


    "If you weren''t a caring, conscientious person, we wouldn''t be having this conversation," Akane said. "And I don''t mean ''I wouldn''t have approached you'', I mean that you would not be arguing against a relationship on the basis that I would be the one being hurt. You made mistakes in your past relationships? Everyone has. The tragedy is that you, in the present, are so caring and conscientious that you would rather not try at all than risk repeating your mistakes on another person.


    "Well, Roxy, I am willing to accept that risk. In fact, I am a grown, adult woman who is capable of understanding and communicating my emotional and physical needs and desires. If you don''t fulfill your end of the bargain, we can address that when it happens¡ªbut I would have had to have misjudged you utterly for that to be an issue."


    Akane stepped forward again, careful angling herself so I had all the space in the room to back away if I so chose. "We can go as slow as you need, be as careful as you need, but please, Roxy, don''t let yourself believe you''re unworthy of love."


    I took a deep breath.


    "You need to tell me what you see," I decided. "The more you try to justify things with your ''reading'' skills, the more it feels like you''re reacting to events that never happened. Like, maybe if we''d known each other for a month, you could point to things I''d said or done and say, ''I really appreciate this about you'', or something, but this whole thing is going off something you and only you can see, and I cannot, in good conscience, jump into bed with you on a hunch."


    Akane stepped back¡ªnot far enough that she had to let go of my hand, but far enough that she could give me a look from head to toe without having to crane her neck in either direction.


    "There are things I can point to that you''ve done just in the three days you''ve been here," she said. "You''ve cooked two meals out of three since you moved in. You fixed the hinge on the bathroom door so it doesn''t squeak anymore. You flit around in the background picking up after me even though we both know I''d deal with the mess soon enough. You spent most of this morning reorganizing the horrorshow that was my spice rack."


    "The spice rack isn''t evidence of me being conscientious," I protested. "Just that I''m autistic."


    "And the other things?"


    "You know that autistic people are especially sensitive to unpleasant noises and textures, right? That''s all just self-preservation¡ªI have to live here, too. And I have ADHD, I need to burn off my energy somehow and cleaning is useful."


    "But that''s still a choice you make," Akane said. "And that''s one of the things I admire about you, Roxy: you''re who you are by choice. You''re meticulously conscientious not by nature but because you refuse to hurt people through carelessness or inaction. You step in to help in ways big and small not because you want respect or appreciation but because you know it''s the right thing to do and you choose to be the one to do it. You know when to take pride in yourself and when to swallow your pride and admit that you''re wrong. You''ve hurt and been hurt badly in the past, socially ostracized for mistakes you made in ignorance, and you not only accepted your share of the responsibility, you promised yourself you would never paid that pain forward. You try to handle people so gently not because you think they''re made of spun glass, but because you''d rather die than risk hurting them on accident¡­ but when you need to, you step up and protect the people who need protecting, even if it hurts you to do so."


    "Is that what you think I''m doing right now?" I asked. "Protecting you from me?"


    "Aren''t you?"


    "Someone has to. I don''t care how confident you are with your super-people-judging-skills, you haven''t asked a lot of very important questions. Like how I managed to screw up so badly people never wanted to deal with me again, or why I ended up homeless. You have no idea where I came from or where I''m going, or when¡ªto be honest, I don''t know ''when'' either, but I will be going, sooner or later¡ªwhat are you laughing at?"


    "Sorry!" Akane exclaimed. "It''s just¡­ I never thought someone would actually give me the ol'' western, ''I''m sorry, lass, but my heart belongs to the windin'' road.''"


    "Can you please take this seriously?"


    "I''m perfectly serious. You, Roxy, are lonely because on some level, you think it''s what you deserve. You push people away because you believe deep down that it''s the only way to protect them from your own innate harmfulness. But you''re wrong on both counts. You deserve the same happiness you want for other people, and you aren''t the blightful burden you think you are." Akane let the statement hang in the air for a moment before giving me her best soothing smile. "I know you don''t trust yourself, but could you trust me? Trust that I can look after myself if you do have to leave, and stand up for myself if you cross any boundaries before then? Trust me when I say you deserve to be happy, Roxy, even if it''s fleeting?"


    I swallowed.


    "Yeah," I whispered, my voice hoarse. "I trust you."


    She didn''t ruin the moment by going in for a kiss right there¡ªshe just held me close as I let the weight of years of regret begin to slip from my shoulders.

 Bonus Arc: Magical Girl Nocto, Chapter 4

    "I''m confused," I said. "Didn''t you originally suggest we start sharing a bed in order to let Nicky move back into the apartment?"


    "That was how I couched the suggestion, yes," Akane said.


    "And I agreed," I said.


    "Provisionally, with some self-flagellating misgivings," Akane said.


    "So why," I asked, "did you go out and purchase a whole-ass four-bedroom house a week later?"


    "I promised to take things slow," Akane said, "and that means making sure you have your own space to retreat to whenever you need it."


    I couldn''t protest too much; having a house like this one, whose yard was currently host to something not unlike a particularly quiet housewarming party, would solve a lot of problems Akane didn''t even know I had. I''d already laid claim to the basement¡ªand the fact that it had a basement was a lucky break, given that we were in Austin¡ªso I''d have enough space to start tinkering on projects larger than what I could fit in my pockets, and sneaking out at night to get to work would be a lot easier without having to slip out of a shared bed. Because as lovely as my careful exploration of a relationship with Akane was, I still had a job to do: hunting down the dangerous sociopath who''d tossed me into this universe in the first place.


    "While we''re on the topic of relationships," Akane added, "I wouldn''t mind getting Nicky into bed with us, if you''re okay with that."


    "I''m right here," Nicky said.


    "That''s why I said it now," Akane said. "It''s rude to talk about people behind their backs, after all."


    "...That''s distressingly difficult to dispute."


    "Nice alliteration."


    "Thank you."


    I wasn''t sure how much Akane meant what she was saying and how much was just her needling an old friend, but I was still way too new to this whole ''maybe not always pushing people away'' business to deal with this conversation and thus preferred to ignore it entirely. Also, we were (nominally) in a public setting, even if our ''housewarming party'' was only the three of us and one guest.


    "You like alliterating," I commented neutrally.


    "I find wordplay pleasing, and people profess to prefer palatal patterns to puns," Nicky rattled off smugly, going so far as to emphasize the p in ''wordplay''.


    "You did not just come up with that off the top of your head."


    "Did so."


    I turned to Akane. "Do your magical girl powers let you detect lies?"


    "I don''t need magic for this one," she said. "She''s probably telling the truth. That wasn''t even that impressive by Nicky''s standards."


    "I see, I see," I said. "Okay, I''ve worked up the nerve to shoot the elephant in the room: why is there a housecat flipping burgers on the George Foreman?"


    "That''s actually a Traeger grill," Nicky said.


    "Excellent work, Detective, you''ve identified the salient part of my question," I said.


    "And he''s grilling steaks, not burgers," Akane added.


    "Please stop correcting my question and answer it."


    "My name," the cat said, in a voice that sounded like it belonged to an ordinary adult human man, "is Silas Marinyakis. I am the Familiar who awoke Veronica''s power as a Magical Girl. And now, I''m grilling, because I would much rather be grilling than trying to get ten year olds to follow directions."


    "It''s like herding cats, isn''t it?" I asked.


    "Oh, cat puns, wonderful." Silas complained. "You''ll get along with Veronica fabulously. If you are going to mock me, would you at least put some thought into it? ''Herding cats'' is on the level of ''How''s the weather up there?'' for unoriginality."


    "I apologize purr-fusely."


    "Do you not want to learn the recipe for my barbeque sauce? Because I am this close to keeping my secrets to myself."


    "Noooo," Akane whined. "Roxy, be good! You need to learn this!"


    "What am I, your personal chef?" I asked.


    "Is that worse than being her personal maid?" Nicky asked.


    "I¡ªokay, I walked into that one."


    Rather than further irritate the cook, we spent the rest of the wait for lunch talking about magical girl depictions in games¡ªor rather, Akane and I spent it listening to Nicky complain about ''her'' recent release to the popular magical girl gacha game de jour.


    "¡ªbad enough that they only gave me A rank in Attack¡ªI deserve an S rating, but I''m not ''popular enough with the kids'' to pull at higher than ''uncommon'', so I cap out at A¡ªbut they shrunk my muscles!"


    "I''m surprised they didn''t shrink your boobs," I muttered, having called up a promotional image on my phone. Without a physique befitting a full-time gymrat behind it, Gacha-Veronica''s bust was even more out of scale than real-Veronica''s. Some real ''cross-demographic appeal'', that.


    Oh, huh, the splash image had a recognizable portrait of Silas in the background. Not sure why that surprised me. Maybe I wasn''t expecting ''which familiar worked with which magical girl'' to be common knowledge?


    Speaking of Silas, he''d made himself scarce the moment he finished his grilling duties. I''d assumed familiars could teleport or something, but no, Nicky called him a taxi. Because people just did that here. I''d been here for just over a week by this point, so seeing the supernatural just ''out and about'' in public was still surreal.


    On the upside, Akane managed to wheedle Silas'' mustard barbeque sauce recipe out of him while he was waiting for the cab, so I now had a free ticket to her heart through her stomach. If I ever had time to spend all day barbequing, anyway, but it wasn''t like I had a job I could be late to¡­


    ¡­unless Skinner managed to conquer the world while I was dragging my feet, that is, but God willing, I wouldn''t cut it close enough for a day barbequing to make a difference.


    "...but as funny as it would be to leak the results of my physical to argue for a buff¡ªand it would be funny¡ªappealing to reality isn''t going to change was what a marketing decision to begin with," Nicky concluded around a mouthful of steak. "What are you doing, Akane?"


    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Akane, I now noticed, had picked up her plate and was in the middle of wandering out to where the yard gave way to the woods abutting the property. There was no fence, as the woods were a perfectly good border marker for the yard, weren''t much easier for a trespasser to defeat than the illusory security of a standard fence, and wouldn''t prevent us from enjoying the fact that our yard bordered a nice, not-archetypally-Texan patch of greenery.


    Which is exactly what Akane seemed to be doing.


    I glanced at Nicky, who answered my unspoken question with a shrug and, "I''d be shocked if there''s anything in those woods more dangerous than Akane." So I sat back and watched as Akane stepped a dozen feet or so into the woods and coaxed a random fox into her lap with her leftover steak.


    "Oh for fuck''s sake," I grumbled. "Akane! I know you''re fond of picking up strays"¡ªand yes, I know that was a self own, the point stood¡ª"but I''m pretty sure cooked and seasoned meat isn''t good for wild animals!" To say nothing of the parasites they carried and the like, but for all I knew magical girl powers came with answers for that kind of thing so they could have their Disney Princess Wildlife Moments.


    "This isn''t a wild fox!" Akane called back, picking up the fox¡ªwhich still had most of a steak in its mouth¡ªand holding it up to show it off. "It''s a familiar!"


    The fox raised a paw and waved at us exactly like a person might.


    "Is it here for Roxy?" Nicky called back.


    "Wait, what?" I yelped. "Why would it be ''here for me''?"


    "To turn you into a magical girl, of course."


    "Oh hell no."


    "I think she''s a little old for that," Akane said as she arrived back at the table, fox tucked happily under one arm. "Which does beg the question of why she is here, but how about we exchange names first?" She put the fox down on the table and continued, "I''m Akane, and this is Nicky and Roxy."


    The fox swallowed the chunk of steak¡ªa stunt that would have choked a non-magical creature its size¡ªthen introduced herself. "I''m Lisa Fox."


    "Your last name is Fox?" Nicky asked. "Just Fox? No playful pun or anything, just straight up Fox."


    "The pun is in her first name," I explained. "You''re missing half the obnoxiousness: ''Lisa'' isn''t just a normal human name, it''s also the Russian word for fox."


    "See?" Lisa exclaimed. "She gets it!"


    Nicky let out the first of many long-suffering sighs in our presence. "Okay. Lisa Fox it is. I hope you don''t mind if I ask why a familiar was hanging out in the woods behind our house?"


    "Oh, I''m not a familiar anymore," Lisa said. "I quit!"


    Somehow, I was the least shocked of the three of us by this declaration.


    "You¡­ quit?" Akane said, sounding for all the world like she''d never heard those words used together in that way.


    "Why?" Nicky followed up.


    Lisa had gone back to annihilating the leftover steak, so we had to wait for her to surface before we got an answer.


    "Protest, mostly," Lisa said. "I deserve thumbs, and I''m not going to cooperate until the universe gives in to my demands."


    "Your demands¡­ for thumbs."


    "And arms, hands, et cetera. I have a human''s intelligence; I ought to have a human''s ability to interact with the world. At the very least, I''d like to be able to use a knife and fork rather than stuffing my muzzle into a dish like an animal."


    "Wait a second," I said. "If familiars can''t grasp objects like humans can, how does Silas work a grill?"


    Nicky shrugged. "You know, I never asked."


    "So why were you in the woods here?" Akane asked Lisa.


    "Because I quit," Lisa repeated, as though it should be obvious. "Bailed on my responsibilities, changed my name, and went off to live in the woods."


    "You changed your name to Lisa Fox," Nicky said.


    "You have a problem with that?"


    "You should introduce yourself as Lisa K. Fox," I suggested. "Then claim the ''K'' stands for Kitsune."


    "I wish I was a kitsune," Lisa grumbled. "They can turn human."


    I groaned. "This question is probably going to sound stupid whatever the answer is, but are there real kitsune, or are you speaking hypothetically?"


    Akane and Nicky exchanged a glance. "Not that I know of," Akane answered.


    "There are magical girls who can turn into animals, including foxes," Lisa said, "which is probably where those kinds of legends come from, but as far as I know, things like kitsune, werewolves, and the like are just myths on this plane."


    "And familiars are generally the experts when it comes to magic," Akane added. "That''s kind of their role in things."


    "Magical girls are the muscle and we''re the brains," Lisa said.


    "You''re the reference manual," Nicky said snippishly, then returned to the interrogation. "Did you have a plan for what to do after quitting beyond ''rough it in the woods at the edge of town''?"


    "I thought if normal foxes can manage it, then I, a much smarter fox, should be fine, right?"


    "And how did that work out for you?" Nicky asked.


    Lisa''s ears drooped. "I missed cooked food more than I expected. And heating. And people. And I might have been a little too proud to admit it until I was offered barbeque."


    "This is grilled steak, actually," I said. "Barbequing takes a lot longer."


    Lisa turned to Akane to ask, "Is everyone here this pedantic?"


    "Yes," all three of us said.


    "Perfect," she said, then turned a pleading face towards Nicky, the clear holdout in the ''adopt a talking fox'' discussion.


    "Akane," Nicky said warningly.


    "There''s more than enough space in my house," Akane said.


    "We already have one roommate who doesn''t pay rent."


    "I make enough merchandising money from lunchboxes alone to cover Roxy''s hypothetical rent."


    "Wait," I said. "I can own my very own Akane Sakurai lunchbox?"


    "Are you planning to use it as the basis for ''eating out'' jokes?" Akane asked.


    "I am now," I said.


    "Then you specifically are forbidden from owning your very own Akane Sakurai lunch box on the basis that the picture on the lunchbox is me at thirteen years old."


    "Yech," I said, having failed to consider the obvious issue of linear time. "Point well made¡­ wait, hang on. Either I''m wildly overestimating how many magical girls there are in the world because I live with two of them, or something weird is going on¡ªwho the fuck is buying that much decade-old merchandise of you?"


    "Both, I''d think," Akane said. "First off, you''re living with one magical girl¡ªof only four active magical girls in the entire greater Austin area¡ªand one retired magical girl. Second, it isn''t how much stuff people are buying but how much they''re willing to pay for it. Collectors love out-of-production products, and I ''generously'' took possession of all the spare inventory when I aged out of popularity. I''ve been trickling my old merch out ever since."


    "Why doesn''t everyone do that?" I asked.


    "Everyone does do it because it works."


    "Everyone who got popular enough for it to be worth it and who can be bothered to manage a massive pile of plastic crap does it," Nicky corrected her, "which is fewer people than you might think."


    "I''m the mascot for a local storage unit rental company for a reason," Akane said.


    "Reminds me of a guy who had a little mini-warehouse in his crawlspace, full of glass klein bottles, and a custom-built remote-control forklift to fetch them for him," I remarked. "It''s a very different situation, but you did remind me of it."


    "I think you might just have ADHD," Nicky said.


    "She might not be the only one," Lisa said, who had begun helping herself to Nicky''s steak while we were all distracted.


    "Oh, for the love of¡ªfine!" Nicky grumbled, throwing up her hands. "Help yourself, Lisa Fox."


    "Lisa K Fox," Lisa corrected her.


    "This is your fault," Nicky informed me.

 Bonus Arc: Magical Girl Nocto, Chapter 5

    "Hrm," I said. "Okay, so, bit of an odd request: I know you said you''d quit the familiar business, and also I am not even remotely interested in becoming a magical girl myself, but, all the same, Silas said that explaining how magical girls work and answering beginner questions was a major part of what a familiar did. Given as I know nearly nothing about magical girls despite living with two of them... you mind if I ask you beginner questions about magical girls?"


    "You know you can ask us, right?" Akane said.


    "And you know that I can''t," I said. "I would literally die of shame and embarrassment."


    "What makes me different from her?" Lisa groused.


    "Well, for one, the fact that you aren''t yourself a magical girl, retired or otherwise, and instead someone for whom answering questions about magical girls was once a vocational skill," I said. "That''s... y''know, a pretty big difference."


    "Mm. Point." Lisa gulped down the last of Nicky''s steak. "So, what, you want me to be your pseudo-familiar? What am I getting out of this, hm?"


    "We are a household of three with a four-bedroom house," I said. "Also, I do a lot of cooking, I take requests, and there''s another potential benefit that depends on how you feel about belly rubs."


    Lisa considered this carefully.


    "...You drive a hard bargain," she said, her tail wagging treacherously.


    "Roxy," Akane began.


    "Oh, right," I said. "It does occur to me, belatedly, that if we''re operating under the very reasonable assumption that familiars are, socially, interchangeable with humans, I should probably consult with my girlfriend before I promise what may well be the four-legged-familiar''s version of second base as part of salary negotiations."


    "...Honestly I was just going to mess with you," Akane admitted. "Familiars generally don''t consider that sort of thing to be any more intimate than humans consider hugging."


    "Because familiars aren''t socially interchangeable with humans," Lisa complained. "We ought to be, but people infantilize us because, you know, small, cute, fuzzy. If I got baby-talked one more time I was going to bite somebody."


    "How old are you, exactly?" I asked.


    "Twenty."


    "Mentally, or¡ª"


    "Twenty," Lisa repeated. "I came into existence twenty revolutions around the sun ago, thank you very much."


    I sighed and rolled my eyes to the heavens. "See, this is the kind of ''ignorantly offensive question'' I do not under any circumstances want to drop on my girlfriend or our roommate made of muscles."


    "But Nicky''s a softie," Akane whined.


    "I beg your pardon," Nicky said.


    "A big, gentle, fluffy teddy bear¡ª"


    "Akane, I swear to God."


    "See?" Akane asked me. "If Nicky wasn''t such a kind, gentle soul, she''d have shot put me across state lines by now."


    <hr>


    My claim on the basement was now in dispute. Lisa, you see, was a fox. Foxes lived in dens. Dens were underground. Therefore, Lisa was most comfortable tucked away in the basement. Specifically, in a pillow fort I''d spent the last couple days building for her because I can''t very well pass up an opportunity for a Project, especially on a friend''s behalf.


    Unfortunately for me, sharing space meant I had to do quite a bit more ''hiding stuff'' than I''d hoped back when I hadn''t expected Akane or Nicky to ever venture into the basement for anything other than ''retrieving Roxy after she''s spent too long in the basement''. I also had to be ''ready to hide stuff'' on much shorter notice than I''d get from the basement door.


    I''d had an ulterior motive for putting a bead curtain over the entrance/exit of Lisa''s pillow fort and then angling that entrance away from my workbench.


    Speak of the devil, its telltale rattling had me stuffing a very obviously Mad Science scanner and its ominously blinking radar dish under a cardboard box ahead of Lisa poking her nose around the perimeter of her den.


    "Hey, Roxy?" she called.


    "Yes?" I answered.


    The beads rattled some more as Lisa left her den entirely to cross the room and hop onto my workbench. "I have kind of a big ask," she said.


    "Okay," I said. "Lay it on me."


    "I''m sick of being a fox," she said. "I want hands. I want to look people in the eye when I talk to them without needing to sit on a desk. I want to be a human. And I need your help."


    "What do you need me to do?"


    "Magic can do a lot of things with transformation. Turn people into animals, turn people into people in shiny costumes, turn people into the people they want to be. The thing is, familiars don''t have that kind of magic. We''re catalysts, not reactants. So I need someone else''s magic to do the dirty work."


    "Why me?" I asked. "I mean, this might be a stupid question, but if it''s that simple, why didn''t you do that before you wandered into the woods?"


    "Simple," Lisa said. "Because it won''t work."


    "It¡­ won''t¡­ work?"


    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "Nope. Magic doesn''t work like that. That''s just the explanation I''m going to give our housemates for how you managed to turn me into a human."


    "Wouldn''t they know it wouldn''t work, then?" I asked.


    "Nope," Lisa chirped. "Magical girls might do all the heavy lifting, but familiars are the experts. If I say magic works like that, they''re not going to question it."


    "Next question," I said. "How am I supposed to turn you into a human?"


    "With one of your weird mad scientist gadgets, hopefully," Lisa said.


    "My¡­ what?" I asked, trying to play it cool.


    "You know, like that weird satellite dish thing you were working on yesterday," Lisa said. "I saw what you were playing at with the bead curtain, by the way."


    "Clever like a fox," I grumbled, resting my head on one hand. "So now I figure out a device to turn you into a human or you turn me in to the magic police?"


    "Don''t be so negative," Lisa chided me. "I''m not blackmailing you. You''re going to do this because you know how much it sucks to resent your body, and because displaying care for others through the medium of overly elaborate projects is your ''thing''."


    "Excuse me?" I asked.


    Lisa pointed a paw at the pillow fort, which wasn''t really anything of the sort. We only called a pillow fort because Nicky had called my overambitious carpentry-and-upholstery project a glorified pillow fort when I''d unveiled the sketch. For all our shared pedantry, I was unable to get Lisa or Akane to disagree with that assessment, so the name stuck. The thing had more in common with cat towers and the like than anything else, with allowances made for a less nimble arboreal quadruped who also deserved high-quality sleeping accommodations and a measure of privacy. I''d even thrown in a completely useless little cloth awning¡ªuseless because it was indoors¡ªover the entrance the bead curtain covered.


    "You have me there," I admitted. "Uh, you are going to keep this between us, yes?"


    "I''m not a narc," Lisa said. "Does this mean you can do it?"


    "Transformation isn''t one of my specialties, unfortunately. The best way to use what I do have would be an automaton body that you could pilot telepathically while sitting in the chest cavity."


    "...As tempting as it is to have my own mecha, I do feel the need to point out that I''m a tutelary spirit. The fact you''re not a magical girl doesn''t mean I can''t teach you some new tricks." Lisa''s enthusiasm dimmed, and she added, "Just, uh, don''t expect me to teach you very often, because your magic gives me a headache to think about."


    "Color me unsurprised."


    <hr>


    "I''m happy for you, Lisa, really," Akane said, "and I understand how excited you are to have opposable thumbs, but there are some foods that are not meant to be eaten with a knife and fork."


    "Well excuse me for finally achieving a physical form I''m happy with on burrito night," Lisa grumbled.


    Given the cover story Lisa had insisted on, this was allegedly all her doing; the device I''d made to enable it was a small implant not unlike a pet identification chip in form and placement, and so should pass without notice. Not that we''d needed her story yet: thus far, neither Akane nor Nicky had bat an eye at her appearance, much less asked how or why it had come about. I suppose Lisa had been right about how much ''It''s magic, I don''t have to explain shit'' could cover, even in a community of magic users.


    Normally, I''d have been more than a little nervous about implanting any of my ''technology'' in a (no longer serving) familiar. The compatibility issues that prevented us from having to deal with vampire werewolves also meant that cyborg werewolves were a dicy prospect. I was only willing to do so here because Lisa''s magic intuition had proven effective on demiurgic foibles enough times that I was, eventually, willing to trust her assessment of the safety and effectiveness of my gadget.


    I had, perhaps uncharitably, made the thing in such a way that it would do absolutely nothing about adjusting her strictly linear age, just in case she was trying to pull a fast on by lying about how old she was. I needn''t have been so suspicious¡ªLisa did, in fact, appear to be twenty, inasmuch as I could judge another''s age by looks alone. The fact that she was struggling to eat a burrito with a knife and fork rather than taking the simple, expedient option of either ''eating a burrito like a burrito'' or ''rendering her burrito into a burrito bowl and eating it that way'' meant she wasn''t acting her age tonight, but excitement gets the better of all of us at times.


    "If you''d done it a couple days earlier, you would''ve landed on pizza night," Nicky pointed out, "and then we''d have a problem."


    "Excuse you," I said. "Eating pizza with a knife and fork is a nonstandard and much-maligned choice that is nevertheless no less effective than the traditional method. Eating a burrito with a knife and fork is actively detrimental to the process of getting food from the plate to your mouth without a pitstop on your lap."


    "Or in your cleavage," Lisa added. "Not that I have much of that..."


    "Oh no, your boobs are actually smaller than your head, what a debilitating deficiency," I said dryly. "Listen, hon, I know you live in this house, but I assure you, you are well above average, statistically speaking."


    "And how exactly do you know this, dear?" Akane asked sweetly.


    I rolled my eyes, well inured to Akane''s facetious jealousy. "I was the one to take her clothes shopping while you two were busy with school and work, respectively."


    "Also, we have eyes and she''s right there," Nicky said.


    "Obviously," I said, "but if we take Akane''s teasing at face value, ''I am sizing up our roommate''s chest with my eyes'' would only dig me deeper."


    "Unless she wants to add me to the polycule," Lisa said.


    "We don''t have a polycule," I said.


    "We didn''t have a polycule," Akane said. "And on that note¡ªthank you for the segue, Lisa¡ªRoxy, Nicky. I''ve spoken with you both privately on the topic, and unless either of you have changed your mind in the last day or two, in which case this conversation is about to get very awkward, we are, in fact, now a polycule."


    "Huh," I said. "No offense, Nicky¡ªbecause I''m happy to have you join us¡ªbut when I gave my permission, I kind of figured your whole ''not liking being touched'' thing would be an obstacle to be overcome first."


    "Consent is important," Nicky said. "I don''t like people touching me when I''m not expecting it, and I really don''t like being grabbed or manhandled, but do you really think I spent years as Akane''s roommate without learning to appreciate the healing power of hugs?"


    "What about the power of recreational Judo?" I asked.


    "I can see we''re going to need to talk at length about boundaries."


    "That was a joke."


    "And I was doing it the service of taking it at face value for further comedic effect," Nicky said. "That said, if you try to fold my clothes with me in them, I cannot guarantee I will pull my punches."


    "I''m sure Roxy or I would be happy to remove your clothes ahead of any recreational exertion," Akane said.


    "Now I feel left out all over again," Lisa complained. "I can''t believe all three of my roommates are hooking up without me."


    "Lisa," Nicky groaned. "Need I remind you that, as of the time we were working this out, you were still a fox?"


    "I am well aware of the many things being fox-shaped excluded me from," Lisa said.


    "How about the things being fox-shaped permitted you to do?" I asked. "Like how you''ve sat in all three of our laps multiple times?"


    "That was just cuddling, though," Lisa said.


    "You want to join the polycule without cuddling?" Akane asked.


    "I don''t want my membership in this household to stop at cuddling."


    Akane and Nicky exchanged a glance, then looked at me.


    "She''s been here nearly two weeks," I said. "Akane propositioned me after three days, and that worked out fine. I trust you people have your shit figured out."


    "So, cuddle pile in Akane''s room after dinner?" Lisa suggested.


    "That depends on what ''after dinner'' means," I said. "Are you going to pick up your burrito and eat it like a normal person, or keep struggling with a knife and fork for another twenty minutes?"


    "Let me have this, damn you."

 Bonus Arc: Magical Girl Nocto, Chapter 6

    Alas, for all the wondrous magic of love, I still had a job to do. And almost exactly six months to the day after my arrival, I finally got the chance to do it.


    I only had the barest outlines of a guess as to what Skinner''s actual plan was, and if she''d been any less overconfident in her abilities, I may well have arrived too late to do anything about it. To be honest, I was pretty sure she either didn''t realize she''d sent me to the same dimension she was interested in, or didn''t realize I was still at large, because while her anti-scanning fields were good enough to block me from seeing inside the building, she hadn''t taken the eminently reasonable step of preventing me from scanning for anti-scanning fields. If I hadn''t had the back luck to start my sweep on the exact opposite side of the city, I could''ve been here months ago.


    On the other hand, if Lisa hadn''t helped me boost the range on my scanners fourfold at great cost to our house stock of ibuprofen, it would''ve taken me another two months to get here instead.


    Regardless, I had the advantage of surprise¡ªan advantage I was careful to maintain as I crept through the rented office she was using as a front an hour after sundown, painstakingly suborning each and every security system as I crossed its path. Skinner was definitely not getting the deposit back on this place, seeing as she''d retrofitted it into what could have been a parody of an evil villain lair if I thought she''d done it with the faintest hint of irony. She''d knocked out the center of the second floor and most of the walls, creating a sort of catwalk around the upper level and leaving the center double-height area hollow, then paneled over the carpet and drywall with enough metal and assorted greebling to draw a lawsuit from whoever made sets for James Bond movies. If you asked me, she could have saved herself a lot of renovating if she''d just started with a warehouse¡ªbut then again, I''d started with warehouses when I''d chosen where to hunt for her, so maybe there was some method in her madness after all.


    This was a big building¡ªunnecessarily so for her purposes, judging by how much of it was empty¡ªbut all the security systems fed into one place, and I wouldn''t look for a control freak like Skinner anywhere else. I was almost right; Dr. Beatrice Skinner was just leaving the security office she''d made out of a corner office on the second floor to take a look around the premises herself, perhaps sensing something amiss with her security systems. She was looking the wrong way, though, so I crept from shadow to graciously-provided shadow as I closed in for the kill.


    And then Nicky came through the goddamn second-floor wall.


    "Don''t worry, Roxy!" she bellowed. "We''re coming to save¡­"


    Nicky trailed off, the dust of her entrance having cleared enough for her to make out Skinner, currently smirking from within a force-field bubble projected by the gadget she''d pulled out of a pocket, as well as me, caught mid-creep down the catwalk with one hand on the pistol under my own coat.


    She at least had the good graces to look embarrassed about foiling my ambush, especially after Akane and Lisa piled through the hole she''d left in the side of the building and saw the situation for themselves.


    "Well, well, Doctor Updyke," Skinner drawled. "How nice of you to drop in. And you even brought some test subjects with you for my latest masterpiece!"


    "You''re a Doctor?" Nicky asked.


    "Not now, Nicky," I snapped. I took the opportunity to shut down Skinner''s safety bubble, but she simply tossed aside the sparking device with a shrug, secure in whatever other tricks she had up her sleeve.


    "I have to admit," Skinner continued, "I thought I''d find you before you found me. But I have goals here beyond pursuing our tired old rivalry, so I hope you''ll forgive me for not putting you at the top of my list."


    "Really?" I asked. "Because it looks like you''ve done a fat lot of nothing for the last six months." I straightened from my crouch and took my hand off my gun, the better to lull her into a false sense of security. The ambush was a bust, but I''d take any information I could bluff out of her as a consolation prize, and true to form, she started monologuing.


    "I don''t think you''ve seen enough of the picture to judge, my tired little rival. Do you even know why I chose this universe, out of all the ones I could reach?"


    "Nightmares," I growled. "You''re trying to control nightmares."


    My would-be rescuers turned deathly serious as the accusation, but Skinner burst into mocking laughter. "Oh, Doctor Updyke, you always did think so small. Why would an unparalleled genius like myself settle for the second highest thing on the food chain?"


    I blinked. "Wait, you mean¡­"


    "Magical girls. Defenders of peace and love. Soon to be defenders of my peace and my love."


    I was this close to giving Skinner back her ''mocking laughter'' treatment because that was the worst plan I have ever heard.


    "You do realize that one of the defining features of magical girls as a supernatural entity¡ªthe one that makes them so goddamn annoying to deal with that they aren''t welcome almost anywhere else¡ªis that they are incredibly resistant just about everything, right?"


    "Lacking vision as always, Doctor Updyke!" Skinner gloated. "Where do they get their supernatural power?"


    "Magic?!?" I answered.


    "Emotions!" Skinner yelled back. "So easy to manipulate, even boring old ''conventional'' science is halfway to mastery¡ªand I''m anything but normal!"


    "You''ve got that right, lady," Lisa said.


    Skinner ignored her. "Take away their love and joy, and they''re nothing more than children. Give it back under the right conditions, and they can power a city!"


    "That doesn''t make you an outside context problem, though," I said.


    "Does it not?"


    "You really ought to rot your mind a little, Doctor," I answered. "Trying to harness magical girls as batteries is so standard a mid-season villain plot it''s become a cliche in the genre."


    "Well, of course it won''t work if you just try to cage them, but if they''re willing¡­ Girls? Kill Doctor Updyke."


    Lisa swayed slightly as the recoil from resisting the mind-control mojo messed with her balance¡­ and that was as close as Skinner got to grabbing any of us. Lisa was a magical spirit from the same well magical girls'' powers came from, I had an implant to resist exactly these sorts of effects, and both Akane and Lisa were magical girls¡ªwhich were, again, so damn infamous for being magical hard targets that only someone with a truly staggering level of hubris would even attempt something like that, much less hinge an entire plot on it.


    Skinner was, somehow, undeterred. "Ah, well," she said. "Every failure is a step on the road to success. Once I perfect my mind-control technology¡­"


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    "I''m going to stop you there," Akane interrupted. "My first week as a magical girl, I had to deal with a Nightmare Prince mind-controlling one of my mothers to send me to their mind-control summer camp. Less than a month later, it was mind-control music CDs. Then mind-control perfume. Mind-control earrings-"


    "But-" Skinner started.


    "Mind control glasses!" Akane carried on. "Mind-control paintings! Mind-control instant noodles!"


    "What?" Skinner asked. "You mean¡­ through the taste, or chem-"


    "Mind-control hand lotion! Mind-control chewing gum!"


    "I-"


    "I haven''t even covered my first year as a magical girl!" Akane yelled.


    "How long-"


    "Eight! Years!"


    Skinner flapped her mouth like a fish for a second.


    "I¡­ may need to revise my plan," she admitted.


    This time I did laugh, though I limited it to a chuckle rather than a cackle. "It''s like seeing a fox break into a henhouse, only to learn it was an alligator pen instead."


    "Racist," Lisa complained. Nicky dope-slapped her on the back of the head.


    "Well, this plan may have had more holes than you''ve put in the building," Skinner concluded, "but I can always try again."


    "I don''t think so," Akane said.


    Skinner scoffed. "Despite Doctor Updyke''s foolhardy assumptions, I did do my research. I know you magical girls never kill your enemies, and I have no plans to surrender willingly. So without further ado¡ª"


    And that was the last thing she ever said before a gunshot solved the problem permanently.


    "Roxy!" Nicky shouted in consternation, only to realize, belatedly, that my hands were still empty and my gun still beneath my coat.


    "I," Akane growled, carefully lowering the .22 rimfire revolver that had just put a pretty little hole in Skinner''s forehead, "am retired."


    Ten seconds passed in dead silence.


    "Not that I''m criticizing, because I absolutely would have shot her if you hadn''t," I began, "but are you sure there aren''t going to be any issues from having a magical girl"¡ª


    "Retired magical girl," Akane insisted.


    ¡ª"having a retired magical girl cap someone in the head in cold blood?"


    Akane shrugged. "Morally, we all know she only failed to commit truly unforgivable crimes through her own incompetence, and legally, magical girls are authorized to ''use any powers or abilities at our disposal to stop, contain, or eliminate supernatural threats to the populace'', which a demiurge like her absolutely was. So no, I do not foresee any issues."


    "Even though you''re retired?"


    Akane huffed. "That just means I''m not beholden to some middle manager''s ideas of ''marketable'' behavior and won''t have to put up with passive-aggressive corporate disapproval."


    "Right¡­" I took a deep breath, then carefully placed my hands on the railing around the giant hole in the second-story floor, where they would be in full view as I put the last chapter of this misadventure to rest. "Well¡­ in the interest of full disclosure, you should know... I am also a demiurge."


    Akane and Nicky exchanged a confused glance.


    "Uh, yeah, we know," Akane said.


    "What."


    "You weren''t exactly subtle about it," Nicky said.


    "How was I not?" I protested.


    "You run weird errands at all hours," Lisa said.


    "You filled the basement with nonsensical tools," Akane added.


    "You turned Lisa into a fox-girl," Nicky continued.


    I sputtered. "I¡ªthe¡ªshe said that wouldn''t be suspicious!"


    "I lied!" Lisa crowed, sporting the world''s largest shit-eating grin.


    Nicky grinned and leaned over to ruffle Lisa''s hair. "Yeah, I''m going to be honest with you, Roxy: I didn''t realize you thought you being a demiurge was a secret."


    "Then why didn''t you ever mention it?" I asked.


    "I could tell you didn''t want to talk about it," Nicky said with a shrug. "I figured you didn''t like talking about work when you''re off the clock."


    "Work¨C?" I sputtered. "What even did you think my job was?"


    "Some kind of private eye thing, given the hours you keep and your whole¡­ you know." She waved a hand at my aesthetic.


    "You leave my trenchcoat out of this."


    <hr>


    "Anyone else want to try?" Akane asked as the video came to a close.


    The four of us were down in the mad science basement under the house, cuddled on a couch Lisa had helped Akane drag down from the family room for the demonstration of the latter''s recently completed mad science toy. Akane was in the hot seat, cuddled on all sides, with myself on her left and Lisa on her right.


    "Oh, me! Me!" Lisa said. "What if¡­ Akane was a magical girl?"


    "We just did that one," I said. "And Futurama already did the ''but I wanna watch it again'' joke with their What If machine¡ªand on that note: Akane, for subjecting me to half an hour of deepfaked real-person fanfic, you are banned from reproducing fictional gizmos for a month."


    "Awww," Akane whined.


    "What if Roxy wasn''t such a killjoy?" Lisa asked the badly adulterated old CRT TV.


    "No," I insisted.


    "You know," Nicky observed from her spot draped across our laps, "I can''t help but notice that Magical Girl Akane had a way easier time getting us all into bed. She got Roxy in under a week!"


    "Yeah, well"¡ªI poked her in the forehead¡ª"A, our magical girl universe counterparts don''t have a mentor-student power dynamic making things complicated; B, you hypothesized a universe in which the fundamental nature of magic promotes good mental health; and, C, shut up."


    "Well now I have to ask if we have magical girl universe counterparts," Nicky said, rubbing the spot I''d poked. "How accurate is this thing, exactly?"


    "A scanner capable of producing accurate, useful oracular answers to hypothetical questions would be a masterwork worthy of a true legend in the field of Scanners," I answered. "Unless Akane has jumped several levels straight up while I wasn''t looking, this is a mad-science version of one of those fiction-writing neural networks, probably trained on pop culture and Akane''s own memories. Is that about right?"


    "More or less," Akane agreed. "The biggest ''mad science'' component to the device is that it seeds its generation with a non-invasive, surface-level scan of the expectations the audience forms in reaction to the spoken prompt to better cater to the viewership."


    "Nifty."


    "That explains the plot holes," Lisa said.


    "Pardon?" Akane asked.


    "The early narration spent a full minute on the mindless destructivity of Nightmares only for magical-girl-you to bring up their royalty during the climax. Conflicting ideas of ''magical girl enemies'', right? Sailor Moon versus¡­ whatever other people were thinking of."


    "You were thinking of Sailor Moon, huh?" Nicky asked. "That explains where all the in-context mind control came from¡­"


    "Maybe the existence of more intelligent Nightmares is a secret?" Akane suggested. "Part of the whole ''information control'' thing? Hypothetical-Roxy noted that there was no public mention their ''Nightmare Realm''."


    "Maybe," Lisa replied, "but you know that sounds just like a fan trying to paper over shoddy writing with ''but it was on purpose'', right?"


    Akane pouted. "Everyone''s a critic."


    "On the bright side," I said, wrapping an arm around her, "attracting art criticism implies the thing being criticized is ''art''."


    "Yay."


    "It''s still a very fun toy," Nicky reassured her.


    "Oh, speaking of the narration," Lisa continued, "if this thing scans our brains, then does that mean-"


    I cut her off before she could finish the accusation.


    "My internal narration is nothing like that!"

 Book 5 Chapter 1

    Nicky flew gracefully like an arrow, and then tumbled across the mat.


    "That was a hell of a throw," Seven-League Strider said.


    "It''s a shame I''m gay and hate sports," Lisa added. "Otherwise I could say ''touchdown'' without being bothered by people thinking I want to watch the fucking Superb Owl with them."


    I was a damn good general-purpose psychic, on par with Valiant and Doctor Skinner. But sometimes, you needed a specialist, and Seven-League Strider was that specialist. Seven-League Strider was a short Chinese man, garbed as a Shaolin warrior-monk; he had, in fact, studied there in his youth, when his power awakened.


    Seven-League Strider''s power was, ultimately, pretty simple: he could make martial arts training far more effective. Training for himself, so that he could stay in as perfect shape as was possible for him, and also so that he could pick up a new martial art and, with only a month or so of practice, become just as good with it as someone who''d spent a decade of their life studying it; but also, more often, training for others, who would learn those martial arts he''d learned, and probably a bit better- Seven-League Strider had more black belts than a crocodile had teeth, and had encountered all sorts of teaching styles that he''d also learned from and refined on his own.


    "I didn''t know you were that strong," Nicky said, picking herself back up and politely ignoring Lisa''s bitter comment about people liking football.


    "It''s a new development," I said. "Akane''s work with the transformation tech. I''m just barely over the line of superhumanly strong. That, and you were making yourself weigh less so that you could be more maneuverable, and your attempt to correct that by giving yourself more mass mid-throw just made you fly even farther- you wanna go even more weightless when you''re trying to slow down."


    "Ah, shit, right," Nicky said. "Fuck, that''s embarrassing. Not just because I''ve had a rocket scientist for a roommate for like four years-"


    "Wait, what?" Seven-League Strider asked, blinking.


    "Akane Sakurai has a bachelor''s degree in Aerospace Engineering," I said.


    "-but because I grew up with Mythbusters, and I remember that goddamn helium football episode they did," Nicky said. "And the conclusion was, helium footballs are worse than air-filled footballs, because heavier projectiles fly farther because they have more momentum."


    "Kind of," Seven-League Strider said. "It''s more that there''s a particular amount of force at a certain speed that any given human body is capable of producing. Heavier projectiles have more inertia, to be certain, but remember- force is mass by acceleration. The best-performing projectile will be in a sweet spot of mass, where the mass is low enough that the available force/speed is sufficient to accelerate it to that speed, but no lower, to minimize the effect of aerodynamic drag on the projectile''s speed. Or, to summarize: the best projectile is the heaviest one you can get up to speed, and no heavier."


    "Ahhhh," Nicky said, nodding.


    "At any rate," Seven-League Strider said, clapping his hands together once, then rubbing them in anticipation. "Judo practice is almost over. Three more spars, then we move on to Kali. Nicky, you first."


    Seven-League Strider''s life story was, in all honesty, a rather interesting one. He''d been born in Shenzhen, and grew up unusually sickly and frail; his father, in an attempt to remedy this, instilled a great sense of health-consciousness in the boy, who grew up doing pretty much everything that 1980s-era Chinese culture considered to be "taking care of your body" pretty much religiously. And among those measures taken was the study of martial arts, because it turns out that making a habit of exercising with partners is good for your health and fitness.


    For about fifteen years, Li Bai was just yet another kid in Shenzhen who was particularly into martial arts. Then his parents moved across the country to Zhengzhou, the seat of the Henan province... and barely a stone''s throw from the Shaolin Temple, where he became a disciple.


    Of course, the Temple''s training regimen was a great deal heavier than the ones he''d grown up with, and something within him broke. Very, very fortunately for him, however... his powers awakened, and he actually recovered, rather than simply being yet another person who was not, in fact, hardcore enough for the Shaolin Temple.


    He began to soak up instruction like a sponge, greedily inhaling every scrap of knowledge that the masters would teach him, and shot up in esteem from ''the sickly kid who keeps coming in last'' to ''the greatest disciple we''ve ever had.'' But then... after five years, Li Bai- who''d picked up the nickname Steps Of The Giant, except in Mandarin and not English- grew disillusioned with the Temple.


    So he left.


    These days, he lived in Texas, and spent most of his time working at a training center out in the Hill Country, where a whole shitload of power-modifying superscience had been invested into making an absolutely massive training hall that projected his power throughout the entire building, without even requiring him to be there the entire time- only an hour a day was necessary to keep the power-capacitors operational. He spent more time there than that, however, because of the simple fact that he enjoyed training in martial arts, and his training center tended to attract a ton of masters looking to expand their repertoires, hone their craft, and/or teach new students in the best possible environment for it.


    And now, because of me, Valiant had Seven-League Strider coming up to North Austin every day for two hours (we''d eased back on our training schedule to something closer to sustainable in the long term) of one-on-one (well, one-on-three) training with myself, Nicky, and Lisa, because we needed to get trained up fast, and our schedules couldn''t afford the travel time it''d take for us to go to him- apparently, while there did exist heroes who could teleport, and even superscientists capable of building teleporters, they were not even remotely a practical solution to our problem.


    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    It was a shame that Seven-League Strider''s name was metaphorical- the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and his power is the seven-league boots of legend that make a single metaphorical step cover twenty one metaphorical miles. It was not the ability to literally cover twenty one miles in a single step.


    No, he got to sit in traffic like everyone else, and rant to himself the whole time about how these stupid backwards Americans don''t know what a fucking train is.


    I was very certain to ensure that, when he did arrive, it was to some high-quality hospitality, because good fucking lord do I not want this man mad at me for the two hours every day he was here.


    "Fuck!"


    Because, while our training room had been upgraded with Lisa''s spirit magic such that injury simply wasn''t possible in here, it 100% did not prevent us from feeling pain.


    "God damn," I said, watching as Lisa slowly peeled off of the wall and landed on the mats with a thump. I''d been convinced that, just because Lisa''s war form was incompatible with conventional martial arts, did not mean that she had no reason to learn them anyways. It just meant that her training would take twice as long, because she''d have to adapt what she''d learned to war form.


    At some point.


    "Next, please," Seven-League Strider said.


    Nicky''s spar with him went a little better, but still ended with her on the floor, just... y''know, after longer than Lisa managed to last.


    "Alright, final round," Strider said, turning to face me.


    This was where things would get interesting. See, Seven-League Strider had more black belts than a crocodile had teeth, but that was only really possible because he simply did not spend that much time on any given martial art. He learned all of the techniques to a passable level, which was where the standard for "black belt" was generally set, and then he moved on to the next one, and didn''t really revisit the last one. Sure, he did in fact train other people in various martial arts personally, and Judo was particularly popular as far as martial arts went, but, I was still relatively confident that Seven-League Strider was only around, like... first degree or so.


    I had, before coming to this world, held a third degree black belt in Judo.


    Victory was not guaranteed. It was never guaranteed, but against Seven-League Strider, I wouldn''t put my chances above, like, sixty percent. I was good, but so was he, and whereas I had the advantage of being superhumanly strong, he wasn''t that far behind, and he''d done a hell of a lot more cross-training than I had.


    We circled each other like boxers, watching for an opening. If you''ve never seen a Judo match before, they look a lot different than you''d expect a fight to look, even though Judo is supposed to be fairly effective as far as "techniques for hurting another person who is trying to stop you from hurting them" go. This is because Judo isn''t a striking art, nor is it a grappling art. It''s a throwing art. Judo isn''t about breaking someone''s ribs with your foot, or about dislocating someone''s shoulder, it''s about giving someone a concussion with the help of the floor.


    And the first step of doing that is to grab the other guy by their shirt. Seven-League Strider''s shirt had nice and voluminous sleeves, but not much in the way of lapel; this made some conventional judo grips easy to pull off, and others... less so. I, meanwhile, was wearing my usual unbuttoned trenchcoat, which was, effectively, a taunt and a dare to other Judoka- "look at me, I''m so easy to grab, if you think you''re man enough."


    That being said, my coat, while seeming like a lot of material to grab, was actually a little deceptive, and had tighter sleeves than was normal for a judogi, making it hard to get a good sleeve grip, leaving you with pretty much only my lapels to grab conveniently. Strider still got hold of my sleeve near the cuff, but I was able to break that grip pretty easily, and moved that hand up and above his arm, grabbing his sleeve near the shoulder.


    He feinted an osoto gari before attempting a hiza guruma- that is, he aimed and angled himself like he was going to swing his right leg out and around my left leg, to try to sweep my left leg from behind and throw me over his hip, before moving into his real technique, attempting to swing his left leg into my right leg to throw me in completely the opposite direction.


    I managed to keep my footing, turning my knee at just the right angle to keep him from getting his foot around to the backside, and moved my hand from his shoulder down the back of his shirt, before collapsing my legs and yanking him off-balance, adjusting mid-fall to flip him up and over me, slamming into the mats with a thunderous, meaty thwap. A textbook sumi gaeshi, and it just... worked.


    "Thank you," I said, as I stood back up. He must''ve done that on purpose.


    Strider had slightly more of a challenge, having not fallen on purpose with the luxury of keeping his feet on the floor, but that just meant it took him a second longer.


    "You''re good at this," Seven-League Strider said, nodding appreciatively. "I''ll have to hit the mats if I want to give you a proper challenge with Judo."


    "You don''t need to coddle my ego," I said, shaking my head. "Martial training and skill isn''t going to do much in the final fight with Skinner. This is just... something to do, to be ready for the next crisis, and to feel like we''re currently doing something about this one. Let''s go again, except this time without letting me win."


    "...You... are aware that I didn''t let you win, right?" Strider said carefully. "You have two degrees, twenty pounds, and six inches on me. You did, in fact, win that round fair and square. But, if you''re looking for a rematch..."


    I sighed. "Sorry, just... I''m kinda on edge, and the training isn''t quite enough to distract me. Let''s go again. Who knows, if I''m this distracted, maybe you''ll win."


    "I am more than willing to beat the distraction out of you like a dusty carpet," Strider declared.


    "I''ll hold you to that," I said, before I rushed at him.

 Book 5 Chapter 2

    "Alright, so, here''s the fundamental situation," I said. "Demiurgy is fundamentally geared towards a smaller scale of effect. Mind control devices almost always require being within, like, ten to fifty feet of the person being controlled. They can still achieve high degrees of control, but only really with one person at a time, or, at most, a small-medium room full of people."


    "I follow so far," Valiant said, nodding.


    "However, as literally any scholar of any subject can tell you, humans are pretty good at taking small-scale effects and making them impactful on the large scale," I said. "Among other things, this is, fundamentally, what the practice of politics is about: affecting large-scale policy changes by cultivating the right relationship with the right person."


    "And so you''re about to speculate on how Doctor Skinner will attempt to conquer our world with the mind-control tools she has at hand, instead of going out and looking for her like an actual bounty hunter," Valiant said, nodding.


    "First of all, nix that ''instead'' bullshit," I said. "I have the toolset of a supervillain, and you know damn well that I already have robot minions to do my pavement-pounding for me, and better than I can do it. Second, need I remind you that I did, in fact, try the pavement-pounding approach and discovered that Skinner is operating through even more decoys than I thought she was. So, while I wait for people who are not me to do things I cannot do in order to track her properly, I am going to pursue another potentially productive avenue of investigation, that being setting a hypothetical thief to catch a thief."


    "Point," Valiant said. "Alright, what''s your idea for how she''s going to circumvent her limitations?"


    "Well, she doesn''t consider this world to be worth ruling for its own sake," I said. "As far as she cares, it''s a pocket world where she can harvest some powerful slaves before going back to the real world that is worth ruling for its own sake. Therefore, she only really needs to mind-control superheroes to get what she wants, and for that, she can just suborn a few superheroes at a time, aiming for the ones who are in charge of teams, who can then easily isolate and suborn their subordinates one by one."


    "And here, for once in my life, I get to be smug," Valiant said. "Because this is not a new threat to us, and is one we''ve addressed with psychic shielding superscience mandated for everyone who is in charge of other heroes. Psychic shielding is not foolproof, and we''ve had incidents where it''s been overpowered, but it''s hard enough that it''s the path of most resistance. Especially since part of the standard design specs require having a failsafe alarm that goes off if the shielding is bypassed or removed from the wearer, or anything like that."


    "...Fair enough," I said. "So, if heroes are getting mind-controlled, that''s kind of an all-hands-on-deck emergency of the sort that''s very hard to hide."


    "More or less, yes," Valiant said, nodding.


    "Counterpoint, though: Iron Beak."


    "Remind me again who Iron Beak is."


    "One of your subordinates?" I prompted. "You know, the hero who got kidnapped and mind-controlled by Hordemaster a few months ago?"


    "Ah, that," Valiant said. "Well, you''ll be pleased to know that Iron Beak was not in charge of anyone; while many heroes who aren''t in charge of others still have psychic shielding of their own, Iron Beak wasn''t one of them until after the incident, at which point I gave them a psychic shielding implant I''d made myself. Then, upon learning of the Doctor Skinner plot, I made it department policy that everyone in Austin would require such shielding from me- not necessarily implanted, but definitely at least semi-permanently attached to their person- until this particular crisis passed."


    "Ahhh, I see," I said, nodding. "So, the government hero infrastructure is... more-or-less safe from this particular mode of attack."


    "Pretty much, yes," Valiant said, nodding. "It''s the sort of thing that''s only really possible if she''s already suborned huge swathes of society, at which point we have bigger problems."


    "Hrm..." I frowned. "...She probably already knows that, and yet is going ahead anyway, so her plan can''t be that... Has to be something else. I''ll think on it."


    "If that order of business is concluded," Valiant began.


    "It is, yes," I said, nodding.


    "Then perhaps we can address something else of concern," Valiant said. "Namely, that clone of Princess Vega that Doctor Sakurai adopted."


    "Oh, her," I said. "What about that is bothering you?"


    "Questions of the long-term," Valiant said. "In the short term, I anticipate she''ll be useless-"


    "In point of fact, she''s a crucial clue, whose spiritual scent has been thoroughly mapped and analyzed," I said. "Being as, metaphysically, her mother was Doctor Skinner and her father Princess Vega, and we are trying to find Doctor Skinner, having more things that are metaphysically connected to her should increase our chances of finding Skinner."


    "You know damn well that what I mean is that her active participation is wholly unnecessary," Valiant said. "Because, for right now, she is still effectively a child, according to you."


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    "More or less, yeah," I said, nodding. "But, children grow up."


    "Indeed they do," Valiant said, nodding. "I recall you saying that, post-decanting, Violet''s hyperneuroplastic ''childhood'' phase would last for two to three months, and, when pressed for specificity, gave the figure of seventy days, with a fourteen day margin of error in either direction."


    "That is what I said for Skinner''s cloning tech, yes," I said. "She''s experimented with it but never found it worthwhile compared to simply mind-controlling existing people."


    "What I want to know is why," Valiant said. "I want to know what challenges are going to be faced in integrating Violet Vega-Sakurai into society in a healthy, peaceful, and preferably productive manner."


    "It''s kinda simple, really," I said. "A big part of how adult humans survive independently is that they very much actually don''t. Nobody is an island, we all rely on others pretty heavily, that''s what it means to live in a society. And it''s important to have direct personal connections to other people, too- you need specific people who have a relationship with you in particular who you can turn to and say ''I need help, please.'' Your typical human person who came out of a vagina and took twenty years to reach adulthood has spent those twenty years not just developing the personal skills necessary to survive in the world and accomplish things in it, but also developing personal connections to other people who have skills that they don''t, as well as connections they don''t."


    "And so," Valiant said, connecting a few dots.


    "And so, Violet Vega-Sakurai, at the end of her first ten weeks, is going to be just as personally skilled as an above-average high school student, but she is not going to have nearly so many people she knows as said high school student," I said, nodding. "Thankfully, you and I are both well aware of people who exit high school with pretty much no personal connections outside of their immediate family, and then later go on to make friends, become properly socialized, and become better able to function in society. So, my best guess is, come the end of next spring... Violet Vega-Sakurai is going to be enrolled in some summer courses at a university or maybe a community college, and get an opportunity to meet new people and learn to socialize in an environment where socializing isn''t the main point, and the price of failure is pretty low."


    "And that should, in a few years, produce a functional adult who won''t need to be institutionalized?" Valiant asked.


    "It should, yes," I said. "I mean, bear in mind that this is the domain of mad science, and Violet is always going to be at least a little weird as a person. She is, among other things, going to be incentivized towards maintaining some distance from ordinary humans; she''s a product of mad science, and while being a person makes her more resilient than most of the things I build, physical intimacy like medical care, fighting, and sex will pose a serious risk of making her go haywire, which is, uh... kinda really dangerous and life-threatening."


    "Mm. Fortunately, in this universe, Earth''s supernatural community exists quite openly, and finding other supernatural people with whom to be intimate will not pose a challenge," Valiant said. "A shame she isn''t asexual like I am, though; it''d make things far less complicated for her."


    "...Wait, you''re ace?" I asked.


    "Yep," Valiant said, nodding. "Aromantic, too."


    "Huh. Is that just, like... are you aro-ace naturally, because that''s just a thing people can just be, or is it because you''re a psychic who did a fucky-wucky with your brain?"


    "The former," Valiant said. "It was a difficult thing to come to terms with, due to my personal history of social isolation and deeply unpleasant loneliness. You know how it is for men- we''re taught that emotional intimacy, a basic psychological need for humans, is something they are only allowed to experience with a girlfriend or wife, and thus is born part of the reason why so many men act as though they are entitled to a girlfriend. But, well, then I made a few friends who didn''t have their heads up that particular asshole, and came to realize that this was what I was missing, not the sex bit. Which I had tried! And then did not like."


    "Mmn."


    "The question of whether to be a psychic and do a fucky-wucky with my brain was one I considered, but ultimately decided against," Valiant continued. "If it wasn''t necessary to maintain the emotional bonds I needed, then there really isn''t much point in acquiring that particular taste."


    "Fair enough. Which does raise the fact that, very likely, there will need to be several transformative procedures, physically and mentally, performed on Violet at some point, but, and this is crucial, only if she decides she wants them, once she''s gotten out of the hyperneuroplasticity phase, which is even more volatile than regular childhood and adolescence on account of being like a hundred times shorter. We don''t get to make those decisions for her, either. Even if Lady Vega tries to insist that Violet not looking like a hentai character is offensive to her cultural sensibilities."


    "I hate that you have made me learn enough about Vegan culture to understand how much you are not joking."


    "The more I learn about their society, the more it feels like it was designed by one particular guy with a very specific but only mildly weird boner, and the more I wish I wasn''t so genuinely curious about this weird fucked up society out in space."


    "Sigmund Freud would have a fucking field day with the Vegas explaining why the phrase ''mommy milkers'' is, in fact, the most accurate English translation of their idea of what feminine authority is supposed to look like, visually-speaking."


    "In complete fairness, we''re having a field day with that, too," I said. "Besides, Sigmund Freud would have a field day with anything. Cocaine tends to have that effect on people."


    "Mm, true."


    "And while ordinarily I''d love nothing more than to exchange incongruously erudite discourse on the subject of some fat fuckin'' honkers, I think that, for the time being, the responsible thing would be for me to cut this line of discussion off here, ask if there''s anything more you need from me, and then go home and get back to work."


    "I think you''ve addressed all of my concerns regarding..." He grappled for the right word, like Seven-League Strider attempting to throw me over his hip. "Your weird adopted speculative fiction daughter, who you''ve pawned off onto her adoptive grandmother."


    "In that case... see you around."

 Book 5 Chapter 3

    "Hey."


    I grunted wordlessly, not opening my eyes, as Akane walked into my room, carrying something that clinked with the general cadence of a tray, laden with food and drink. It''d been a bit of a routine for us, whenever someone in the house was getting particularly deep in their beakers. I''d been compelled by oath to do this for Lisa during one of her longer rites, in fact. And since we all lived in the same house, using the same stuff, I''d gotten to recognize the sound of the one single serving tray we had, laden with some of the plates from the one big set of dishes we had.


    "You okay?"


    I''d made some upgrades to my living arrangement, at the insistence of these nosy weirdos who "loved" me and "cared about" my "health and well-being", for some reason. Right now, I was seated in the recliner I''d bashed together along the same lines as that one I''d made for Lisa when she first moved in, except this time, since it was for me, and I knew precisely what kind of weirdo I was, I''d integrated it a bit more with the general modular furniture ecosystem that it''d been designed with, plus the ecosystem that grew up around it as time went on.


    Mostly, this amounted to my room having a loft bed with a quartet of bespoke, adjustable four-foot-cube workspaces underneath it, where one such workspace was in fact a recliner, which reclined back into what was, in fact, a storage space where I hung up clothes up top and stored miscellaneous crap at the bottom.


    I grunted wordlessly again, and Akane sighed, before unlatching the fold-up table from the wall and setting the tray down on top of it.


    "Eat," Akane said, unfolding a chair and taking a seat.


    "In a bit," I said, my eyes still closed.


    "You know the rules, and so do I," Akane said. "When someone interrupts your work with food, you have to reach a stopping point and eat."


    "...Did you just fucking rickroll me?" I asked, finally opening my eyes so I could give her the appropriate look of dismay.


    "What''s ''rickrolling''?" Akane asked.


    "Oh don''t play the ingenue," I said, mentally tabbing over to Wikipedia. "You know what it..." I blinked. "...Holy shit you guys don''t have Rick Astley here."


    "Who the hell is Rick Astley?" Akane asked.


    "I''ll send you the dossier," I said, before shooting a packet over to her own Virtual Machine.


    "...This is just a music video of a mediocre 80s love song," Akane said, ten seconds into, apparently, having been rickrolled for the first time in her life.


    "Hang on," I said, sending the same packet over to Nicky and Lisa, with the header ''Akane and I enjoying a moment together.''


    Five seconds later, Lisa told me to kill myself, and five seconds after that, Nicky informed me that being rickrolled on-stream was going to spawn some obnoxious memes, and that if she had to see them, so would I.


    "Did you vandalize Wikipedia for this prank?" I asked, marveling at Akane.


    "Nope!" Akane said, grinning. "I just set up a local spoofing server and hooked it up to our router."


    "I''m impressed," I said.


    "Thanks!" Akane picked up the teapot and filled our teacups- it was then that I noticed she''d brought lunch for two, which was an uncommon variation of this maneuver, but one that I''d sprung on her once or twice before. "So, what were you working on?"


    "It''s... complicated," I said, frowning.


    "So complicated that you, a woman who''s generally quite good at communicating when she so deigns to try, can''t explain it to me, even though pretty much the only thing you would actually be working on is trying to find Doctor Skinner, using techniques of mad science that I also specialize in, and am in fact very nearly your peer in?" Akane said. "Or are you just marinating in despair and don''t want to talk about it?"


    "...When the hell did you get perceptive?"


    "I always have been," Akane said, shrugging daintily. "It just doesn''t seem like it because I''m also optimistic, enthusiastic, and friendly, so that plus looking like this-" She gestured at her body. "-means that people, including you, end up with the unshakeable feeling that I''m a naive bimbo, instead of an intelligent young woman who sees the world through clear eyes and just isn''t being a jerk about it. That''s probably part of what tripped you up about me for a while, actually, back before we started dating."


    "...Fair enough," I said, because, well, what could I really say in response to that?


    "Although, maybe I''m being a little unfair," Akane continued. "You, Nicky, Lisa, Mom, Silas... All of you are traumatized, in ways that I''m just... not. I didn''t grow up with shitty parents, nor did I get recruited into a cult. I''m lucky, in ways you aren''t."


    "A bit," I said. "I''m just... Mmmn. Honestly? I''m worried about our chances of stopping Skinner."


    "You''ve kicked her ass before, haven''t you?" Akane asked.


    "Not comprehensively, no," I said. "The time I got closest to killing her, I took her by surprise by betraying her confidence. Every other time, I thoroughly ruined her plan and managed to injure her, but... well, if I''d managed to kill her, like I''d been trying to each time, then obviously, we wouldn''t be in this particular mess. Plus, this time I don''t have Jason Thronebreaker helping."


    "Instead, you just have some of the most powerful half-spirits living on this planet, and also me," Akane said.


    "This world is different, in ways that favor her more than me," I said. "On A-510, the supernatural underworld was thick and dense with people who''ve been living in this cultural underground their entire adult lives, which, in the case of like a quarter of them, could legitimately be hundreds of years. People like Skinner made waves, wherever they went. Waves that I could track her through. But here, on B-944... it''s a lot thinner. Supervillains just aren''t used to dealing with the sort of subtle, insidious threat that even a neonate vampire can pose."


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "Speaking of vampires-"


    "We''ve set up a tracking station for vampires. There''s precisely two of them outside of Skinner''s fairly limited aegis, and they''re both in cold storage. We can''t rule out the possibility of a specific and finite number of vampire agents working on Skinner''s behalf, or the legitimately very terrifying possibility of an elder vampire who''s got enough blood magic to hide their presence from us without Skinner''s help. But! Vampire blood magic has limiting factors and is really hard to learn, generally taking on the order of entire human lifetimes to get good at it. So, uh. We are, currently, fairly confident that a vampire apocalypse isn''t in the cards."


    "Okay, that''s good," Akane said, nodding. "Plus, vampire elders are pretty easy to keep track of through other means, I''ve been told."


    "...By who?"


    "By people on A-510 who know things you don''t," Akane said. "Apparently you didn''t really spend much time dealing with vampires. Nobody who knew you thought that letting you do that was a good idea. One manipulative cult leader was enough for you to deal with."


    "That''s- okay, getting back on track," I said, shaking my head. "The fact of the matter is, yes, I have beaten Doctor Skinner before, but it was always with the aid of a wider culture and specific individuals produced by that culture, which simply do not exist here. B-944 isn''t Urban Fantasy World. It''s Superhero World, and Superhero World is less equipped to deal with the more insidious type of threat that Skinner poses.


    "That''s the thing- as much as I might''ve given the impression that I do, I really truly did not work alone. I worked with Jason Thronebreaker or Gravestone or Io The Robot Lesbian-"


    "Sounds like you knew some interesting people."


    "-and relied on the skills of others that I don''t have, and which nobody on this planet has. I''m on the other side of a nigh-impenetrable wall, far away from the people I''d usually ask to help me. And so... I am worried. I don''t think it''s impossible for me to succeed. But we have left the realm of expecting, and entered the realm of hoping. And as one of the more grounded mad scientists, that absolutely terrifies me."


    "I see," Akane said, nodding. "That''s... honestly, I''m a little worried about it, too. But. Do you want to know why I''m less worried about it than you are?"


    "Because you don''t know what Doctor Skinner is capable of?" I asked.


    "Possibly," Akane admitted with a careless shrug. "But I think it''s because you don''t really know what Valiant is capable of. Do you remember Hordemaster?"


    "Another mind-controller who worked big crowds, and wanted to try taking on Valiant to prove he was the best," I said. "And then was such a sloppy chump that Valiant never laid eyes on him because he instead got rolled like a burrito the moment a bounty hunter decided she needed some money."


    "So," Akane said. "While Hordemaster isn''t the best example, because you never got to find out what happened when he did fight Valiant, you at least already know that plenty of mind-controlling villains have tried to fight Valiant and prove that they''re better over the years. And do you want to guess how that ended, every single time?"


    "Valiant politely ignored them while someone else quietly kicked their ass?"


    "No. Valiant let them hit him with their best shot, and then proceeded to kick their asses up and down the street, time after time. Here''s something you might''ve forgotten about- remember how House Vega has the hereditary power of Gravitas, and how that also manifests as an aura of social pressure and respect? Because Valiant is also immune to that, even when it''s coming from members of House Vega who have a lot more metaphysical power than Nicky does."


    "So..."


    "So," Akane said, "I''m in agreement with you that Doctor Skinner is a threat. But. In my mind, which is, I think, in the territory of ''well-informed layman'' at the very least thanks to, y''know, who raised me and what my social circle has been like, growing up... Doctor Skinner is, ultimately, just Yet Another Mind-Controller, who will inevitably become Yet Another Headstone In The Graveyard Of Arrogant Psychics."


    "That''s..." I paused, hesitating. "...ultimately, fair. It is, on the balance, not a super-strong possibility in my mind that Skinner succeeds, and conquers both this world and the old one. But, that still leaves in my mind the fear that we won''t succeed either, because our goal isn''t just to make Skinner fail, but to stop her from causing massive amounts of damage in the first place."


    "Ah. Okay, yeah, that''s... definitely a major worry," Akane admitted. "Valiant is usually pretty good about cleaning up after these villains, but there''s always at least some permanent damage that he can''t fix, and... well, none of them were outside-context monsters like Skinner is."


    "Yeah," I said, sighing. "So, that''s what I''ve been worrying about."


    "And has that done anything useful?"


    "...Prompted this air-clearing discussion about my worries with my girlfriend?" I hesitatingly suggested.


    "Fair enough," Akane allowed. "Buuuut, since we''ve had- or at least started- this discussion..."


    "Yeah, a distraction would be nice," I admitted. "So, your most recent thesis- that was on mad science pedagogy, right? What is your thesis on that, anyhow?" I picked up the chopsticks, at long last, and popped a gyoza into my mouth, now that I was the passive participant in this conversation. There was a reason I wasn''t a social eater, and that reason was that the hole where the food went was also where the words came from, and it was not built for two-way traffic.


    "So, it''s about reconciling the fact that mad science is an inherently personal art with the desire to teach this art, and mixing in some pedagogical techniques from the arts to find an approach that''s more likely to work than just giving up and expecting the student to figure it out themselves. And that has led me to my most recent project, which is an experiment along those lines with vehicles, and..."

 Book 5 Chapter 4

    "Hey, Lisa," I said as the foxgirl slinked into my room. "What''s up?"


    "Yo soy... aprender, espanol," Lisa said, slowly and carefully. "Tu hablar?"


    "Hablo con fluidez, y creo que eso es un poco mas de lo que tu," I said casually. "Tu espanol es malo."


    Her ears drooped, and she sighed, as she sat down in my lap. "Okay, where the fuck did you learn Spanish?"


    "In Texas," I said. "Now, to be perfectly fair, it''s totally understandable how someone could live in Texas all their life without learning Spanish. They just have to stay in a position where they don''t need to be able to talk to Mexicans. But, well, I stopped being in that position not too long after I dropped out of college and took up bounty hunting. Something like a quarter of the general Texan population speaks Spanish natively, and plenty of immigrants and visitors speak Spanish exclusively, and even though I mostly dealt with supernatural people, the supernatural demographics tend to reflect the mundane demographics pretty closely. And I was the sort of prideful who felt that I should know how to just speak Spanish naturally, and not have to rely on translators- either technological or in the shape of a bilingual person. So... I just buckled down and learned it. Which actually wasn''t that hard, I just had to watch a bunch of Spanish-language media and do vocabulary flash cards so that I could understand what they were saying and then I really learned it. I''m guessing you''d like my help setting up a similar arrangement?"


    "Yeah, probably," Lisa said. "Hopefully you can help me commit to this. I''m gonna be honest, I wasn''t really thinking about the fact that knowing Spanish can be a practical skill for a Texan who has to talk to strangers. Mostly I was just trying to connect some more with my long-lost heritage. Buuut, if it means being able to talk to people like Antonio..."


    "Antonio Sanchez doesn''t speak any Spanish," I said.


    "Wait, what?" Lisa asked.


    "His grandparents didn''t speak Spanish around his parents, and his parents never learned Spanish to teach it to their kids," I said with a shrug. "It''s kinda like how my grandparents didn''t speak French around my parents, and my parents never learned French to teach it to their own kids. That generally tends to happen with cultural minorities after enough generations surrounding a majority with a different language."


    "Huh," Lisa said.


    "Antonio is a lot more okay with it than I am, because we''re different people who feel different ways about language," I continued. "He''s of the opinion that, at his age, if he hasn''t already learned Spanish, then it''s just not happening, and he doesn''t really feel the need to. Of course, he does think it''s annoying that people who don''t know him super well assume he can speak Spanish, because his name is Antonio Sanchez and he isn''t particularly pale, but he hasn''t let that convince him to learn Spanish."


    "And what about you and French?" Lisa asked.


    "I don''t live in Louisiana or Quebec, so it''s kind of useless," I said with a shrug. "I still made a go at it, when I was nineteen, but the fact I didn''t have anyone to speak it with kinda scuttled the whole shebang. Same with Japanese... which, it occurs to me, I now do have someone to speak it with."


    "Akane''s not monolingual?" Lisa asked.


    "Akane speaks four languages," I said. "English, Japanese, French- it turns out that the Donovan family is also Cajun French- and Hindi."


    "...Oh, right, she was raised by a polycule," Lisa murmured.


    "I think she''s thought about learning Spanish before?" I added. "Because, y''know, she also grew up in Texas and has felt the frustration of not being able to talk to people who she''s kinda always known were here, in her own city."


    "Yeah, it does feel like her linguistic toolkit is a bit use-impaired for where she lives," Lisa said.


    "Oh, it''s not totally useless," I said with a shrug. "Austin has plenty of Indian immigrants, and Hindi is mutually-intelligible with a lot of other Indian languages. But, yeah, we should probably include her in a Spanish-learning study group."


    "Should we invite Nicky too, just so she doesn''t feel left out?" Lisa asked.


    "I think we should invite her so that she can''t keep egregiously mispronouncing tex-mex dishes as a joke," I said. "If I have to listen to her say juh-lap-in-oh one more time..."


    "Personally, I think it''s based when girls are annoying and cringe," Lisa said.


    "It''s good to see you practicing self-love."


    "Fuck you."


    I reached out and patted her head, rubbing her fuzzy ears between my fingers.


    "Anyway," Lisa said, the performative outrage gone. "You think it''d be good to split our attention like that?"


    "Honestly, I kinda do," I said. "At least, it''d be good to split my attention like that. Akane has guided me to the realization that I''m prone to freaking out about what-ifs and hypotheticals regarding Doctor Skinner and the threat she poses when I don''t have anything productive to do, and aside from that freaking out being, generally, pretty unproductive, it''s also pretty unpleasant to do. So... I kinda need distractions. Thankfully, I have three person-shaped stim toys that talk."


    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    "Hey now," Lisa said.


    "Be honest with me: are you mad about the idea of sitting in my lap for a half hour while I treat your body like a stim toy, or are you mad that the idea has clearly occurred to me and I haven''t already done so?"


    "...The latter."


    "Well, joke''s on you, because I totally have in fact done that," I said. "You just don''t realize it because playing with your ears is how I''ve typically stimmed with your assistance, and your filthy gutter-brain immediately latched onto the idea that I''d do that by playing with your tits instead. Which is a thing I could do, but honestly I do kinda prefer playing with your ears."


    "How are you not a furry and yet somehow more headpat-addicted than me?" Lisa demanded.


    "I like the texture of your fur, and last time I checked, you didn''t have fur anywhere but your ears and tail," I said.


    "I am a shapeshifter," Lisa pointed out.


    "Are you really going to put fur on your boobs just so I''ll touch them more often?" I asked.


    "I want you to guess." Lisa hummed and tapped her chin. "Also, if I go full furry, then I can walk around the house naked."


    "You can do that already if you''re not a coward," I said.


    She paused, and I blinked.


    "I was joking," I said.


    "You were being humorous," Lisa corrected me. "But you''re not wrong, on account that everyone in this house has already seen me naked and liked it."


    "Now that''s just not true," I said. "You were always wearing a collar."


    Lisa snorted, and then sighed, leaning against me and relaxing as I kept playing with her ears.


    "I love moments like these," I said quietly, letting my eyes drift closed. "Just... the casual cuddling and closeness. The feel of your fur, and your hair... the warmth and weight of your body against mine... neither of us really doing much, just... sitting, and enjoying each other''s existence."


    "Gay," Lisa replied lazily.


    "Damn straight."


    She snorted again, and giggled a little.


    "Hey, not to ruin the moment or anything," Lisa said, preparing to ruin the moment. "But do you think it''d be possible for me to use your interdimensional phone to call up some druids for training?"


    "...Maybe," I said. "I mean, you''re welcome to try, and I''ll help you do it, but... I really, really do not know how druidic pedagogy usually works, and it may well be that you can''t learn from other druids over the phone, even when it''s a really good video phone."


    "Mm, fair," Lisa said. "At the very least, I''ll get a better idea of what druid culture is like, and how mad they''ll be that I''ve redefined my spirit half from ''fox'' to ''Roxy''s pet foxgirl.''"


    "Please do not provoke powerful spellcasters into testing whether or not they can curse people over the internet."


    "But I want to."


    "Brat."


    "Well, yeah," Lisa said. "I''m a foxgirl. Don''t you know anything about the challenges faced in trying to domesticate foxes?"


    "Mostly a few anecdotes about piss, which you have, very thankfully, not lived down to."


    "...Fair," Lisa allowed. "Still."


    "Right, foxgirl implies brat," I said, nodding. "It''s just that I''ve forgotten, because usually you''re such a good girl."


    "...You''re evil," Lisa marveled.


    "And you''re a good girl," I said, emphasizing that with a particularly firm ear-rub. "Anyway. If you''re not too set on just cuddling for another half-hour, I can place a call right now, and we can do the tutoring thing before my ADHD ass forgets about it and your submissive ass interprets that as a quiet ''no'' and never brings it up again."


    "Wow, you are going for the throat today," Lisa said.


    "Mhm. Anyhow. Yes or no?"


    "Yeah, go ahead," Lisa said. "Make the call."


    My first port of call was the one druid whose phone number I knew and was on reasonably-friendly terms with, Jason Thronebreaker.


    That went to voicemail, so next I tried Arachne.


    "Hello, Doctor Updyke," Arachne said as she picked up the phone, a holographic projection of her appearing before us thanks to augmented reality via the Virtual Machine. "I''ve been thinking about a research project I''d like your help with, and I think I''ve found something."


    "Oh, nice," I said. "You should probably plan to shift even more work onto me, though, because I do need to ask you for another druid-related favor."


    "Oh?"


    "Yeah, my usual druid contact isn''t answering his phone, so I need you to ask around for a druid willing to take a swing at tutoring a new-ish druid in the use of her powers over an interdimensional telephone."


    "...That... may prove tricky," Arachne said carefully. "Druids are somewhat reclusive and asocial, as you might be well aware."


    "Yeah, unfortunately," I said. "Especially with people they consider to be outsiders. That''s why I took that spirit-oath to give hospitality to druids, so that they''d be more willing to work with me. Whiiiiich might be a bit more of a commitment than you''re willing to make."


    "My apartment is not big enough to provide hospitality, no," Arachne said. "But... I might be able to find someone. It may just take a while."


    "Yeah, that''s fair. So, what research project were you looking to offload onto me?"


    "Well, I was talking with Jonas the other day, and he mentioned a transforming ray gun he''d built a decade or so ago," Arachne said. "That led me into an interesting tangent that I want someone to independently test and verify, regarding the use of weapons science as a component of a primarily-transformative device."


    "So, you want me to build a ray gun that makes things glow in the dark and then tell you what happens when I shoot some houseplants with it?" I asked.


    "More or less, yes," Arachne said. "More than just that, admittedly, but that''s the gist of it. I''ll send you the specifications."


    "Yeah, sure," I said, shrugging. "I''m only a beginner with weapons science, and not that much further with transformation, but I can give it a shot."


    "Excellent. I''ll send you the specifications. Take care."


    "You too, Arachne," I said, before hanging up. I sighed.


    "Ask for distractions, and you''ll get them," Lisa said.


    "Indeed I will," I said. "Indeed I will."

 Book 5 Chapter 5

    "Are you sure this is the best use of your time?" Nicky asked.


    "No," I admitted as Lisa arranged some potted plants on the floor with the aid of a tape measure. "But, y''know. At this point, there kind of isn''t anything productive I can be doing with my time, vis-a-vis the whole Skinner thing. I''m just keeping busy so I don''t get too deep in my own head and freak the fuck out and have a nervous breakdown."


    "Also, doing science can be fun," Akane said, carefully examining my notes as I assembled my transforming ray.


    "Sometimes," I allowed. "Rigorous science involves a lot of repetition and removal of the human element to the maximal viable extent, which generally takes a lot of the fun out of it, but, well. It''s fun to think about, at least."


    "Also," Lisa chimed in, "I don''t think a vtuber gets to complain about other people using their time unproductively."


    "I choose to interpret that as a dig at my audience, not myself," Nicky said haughtily, folding her arms. "Because I''ll have you know I''m making enough to keep myself above the poverty line in donations, and I''m doing it without putting tits on the screen."


    "GreaseKitty the Vtuber," I said. "Raking in the dough with both tits behind her back."


    "Oh that is a terrible mental image," Nicky said, shuddering.


    "Changing the subject," Akane said. "Would you mind laying out the general theory behind why combining weapons science and transformation science is anything approaching reasonable?"


    "I''ve been wondering about that, too," Lisa said. "So, uh, maybe give us the explanation that non-mad-scientists can understand?"


    "Bit tricky, but I''ll try," I said. "So... okay, I''m going to operate in a Platonic Idealist slash Essentialist framework for this explanation, because it''s one that real mad scientists have gotten to work- myself included- while also being one that''s easy enough to explain to normal-ish people."


    "Alright," Nicky said. "I''m not totally sure what all those words mean in that particular order, but keep going."


    "So, the mad science of weapons is, fundamentally, about using mad science to produce ways to hurt people and break things," I continued. "It can be thought of as a collection of methods to induce the effect of damage or incapacitation upon other things. And these methods generally align with an ordinary modern human''s conception of regular weapons: melee weapons that have to physically touch the target to induce the desired effect, ranged weapons that only have to be pointed in the right direction, area-effect weapons that can apply the effect to, well, a wide area rather than a single target, lingering area-effect weapons that apply the effect to anything that enters the area for some period of time... All of these things and more have mundane equivalents in knives, guns, grenades, and firebombs."


    "Alright, I''m with you so far," Lisa said. "The mad science of weapons fundamentally works just like real weapons, except it shoots black holes or ghost farts instead of bullets."


    "More or less," I said, nodding. "But! When you conjoin weapon science to some other science in the right way, you can use the weapon science part to define a method of applying an effect to other things, and the other science to define what the effect is in the first place. By way of example, this here ray gun uses very basic weapons science to define what is, in all honesty, a very shitty pistol- point it at the target and activate it to apply the effect, but not terribly strongly and not with great range- and very basic transformation science to make that effect ''make things glow in the dark'' instead of the typical ''make things more damaged.''"


    "Ahhh, I see," Nicky said. "So, weapons science defines ray guns and bombs, but you can replace the damaging payload with pretty much any other effect you know how to create through mad science?"


    "Kinda, for a more limited version of ''any other effect,''" I said. "Akane can make a ray gun that shrinks someone''s truck, but I don''t know how she''d go about making a ray gun that applies the effect of having a truck, even though a truck is in fact a thing she can make through superscience."


    "It''d probably be through more transformation, with an admixture of vehicles," Akane added. "A ray gun that applies the effect of transformation, with that transformation being either into a truck, or into a person who can run as fast as a truck."


    "...Can you actually turn someone into a truck?" Lisa asked.


    "Probably!" Akane said. "I haven''t tested that, but I have tested turning mice into toy cars. They were all fine afterwards."


    "The ethics board made us hang up a placard if we were going to keep using lab mice," I added, pointing at the placard on the wall.


    "In memory of every animal whose life was taken in the name of science," Nicky read aloud. "...And then in smaller text beneath that, ''Animal lives taken in the name of science within these walls: Zero.''"


    "The ethics board lets us keep that bit, but only as long as we stay honest about it," Akane said.


    "Anything legitimately experimental, we test on plants first," I added. "Which we''re doing here more because I don''t feel like doing the paperwork necessary to borrow a dozen lab mice. The mice are more to confirm that something''ll interact with animals the same way it interacts with plants."


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "Speaking of plants," Lisa said, setting the last plant in its designated spot. "Ready when you are."


    The plants were arranged in a pretty straightforward pattern, resembling a spiral. The first plant sat three meters away from the marked spot where I''d stand. The next plant, at a ten degree offset from that first plant, was six meters away. And so it continued, incrementing by ten degrees and three meters each time, until at last we reached the final plant, which was 90 degrees offset from the beginning and a full 30 meters from where I stood.


    Once everyone was standing safely behind me, I shot each plant precisely once, taking enough time to be sure of my aim, and not really that much more. These plants were head-sized philodendrons, and the furthest one was only thirty meters away; as a professional doer of violence, I wouldn''t be very good at my job if I couldn''t reliably hit a head-sized target at that range.


    I hit the last plant, then turned off the overhead lights for a second, confirming that all of the plants closer than twenty meters were glowing in the dark, then turned the lights back on.


    "Yep," I said, pointing the ray gun at the floor. "This thing sure does only have an effective range of twenty meters."


    "What''s that in feet?" Nicky asked.


    "Sixty five," Akane supplied. "Well. Y''know. Thereabouts. What I wanna know is what it''ll do to me."


    "No," I said.


    "Roxy," Akane said patiently. "I am a shapeshifter and also loaded to the gills with all sorts of protective and healing implants, that you gave me. This isn''t unreasonably dangerous. I just want to glow in the dark without having to work out the transformation myself."


    I considered it carefully... then sighed, and shot her with the ray gun.


    "Yesss," Akane said. "Ooooh, lemme get the lights." She reached out to the light switch with her own Virtual Machine, and indeed, she did in fact glow in the dark. Or, at least, her skin did- which was an interesting appearance as she was, at the moment, wearing her casual around-the-house outfit of a tank top and shorts, meaning that all of us were treated to the sight of some lovely glow-in-the-dark cleavage. "Oh hell yes."


    "Hrm," Nicky said, as Akane started to play with her own boobs, enamored with the glow.


    "Hrm?" I asked, turning the lights back on and spoiling the effect.


    "I have a question and a concern," Nicky said. "Question first: could you affix semi-arbitrary mad science effects to semi-esoteric and potent weapon methods such as lingering area-effect?"


    "Yeah," I said, nodding. "I mean. I''m not sure if I could do that, because I''ve never successfully gotten an area-effect weapon that just hurts people to work, but I''m not very good with weapon science, so that doesn''t say much."


    "I see, I see," Nicky said, nodding. "But, you''ll accept that someone who''s better at weapon science than you could make a bomb that turns everyone in the room into a catgirl, right?"


    "Oh, absolutely," I said. "I''ve seen weapons that turned everything alive in the room into salt, and turning people into catgirls is way easier than that."


    "Right, right," Nicky said. "What about a bomb that leaves a lingering catgirlification aura on a room?"


    "Probably doable," I said. "What''re you building up to?"


    "Would it be possible for Doctor Skinner to build a bomb that leaves a lingering brainwashing aura on some high-traffic area?" Nicky asked.


    I blinked.


    "Shit up my fucking nose," I said. "Oh fuck I hadn''t even thought about that, oh christ, we are fucked."


    "No we''re not," Akane said. "Doctor Skinner personally isn''t capable of that."


    I blinked, and turned to face her.


    "And... what makes you so confident about that?" I asked.


    "Because I know a few things that you don''t," Akane said. "You and Skinner both specialize in some of the more diverse fields of mad science. I mean, look at controller science- at your level, you can control technology, organic nervous systems, minds in general, the trends of crowds, the weather, and the concept of luck. Meanwhile, look at weapon science- just an assortment of ways to hurt people and break things. You''re both arrogant, and think you''re the smartest people in the room, and so the idea that weapon science is in fact every bit as complicated, deep, and nuanced as controller science just doesn''t occur to you."


    "...Um," I said, a bit uncomfortably.


    "I know, but it needs to be said," Akane said. "Remember what you said about area effect and lingering area effect weapons? Those are actually really hard to do! You''re not unable to make a raygun that shoots explosions because you''re bad at weapon science, you''re unable to do that because you''re not good at it, and you can''t even become good because you don''t really respect it as a discipline it''d be possible to become good at in the first place! Sure, Doctor Skinner is a little better at it, because she''s had longer to practice with it, but I''ve seen her attempt at making weapons to arm her supersoldiers with, and she''s not good enough to do what Nicky proposed. Like, let''s say Skinner was going to try to mind-control the world by putting a lingering mind-control field over every airport terminal on the planet. She''d have to be the next best thing to a legendary master of weaponry to manage that! And she isn''t! Because she doesn''t really believe that weapon science is a skill to begin with! And neither do you, which is why you don''t know this already."


    "Alright, alright," I said, closing my eyes. "I get it, weapons science is a deeper well than I give it credit for, and this particular paranoid worry is just that- paranoid and jumping at shadows. Lesson learned."


    "Sorry, I just..." Akane said, suddenly wilting.


    "It''s fine," I half-lied.


    I didn''t mind being told that I was wrong about something. Well. I tried not to, anyway. I was a prideful woman and kinda stuck with that, but one workaround I cultivated was taking pride in the ability to admit when I''m wrong, which happened to be easier with subjects I didn''t care about, like the mad science of weapons.


    What I minded was a minute-long rant that hinged on the argument that Doctor Skinner and I were blinkered and arrogant in precisely the same way...


    ...and the fact that it was right.

 Book 5 Chapter 6

    "Well, you''re in a mood," Silas said, one lazy Sunday afternoon.


    "That obvious, huh?" I asked.


    Him and the Donovans had invited us and Seven-League Strider over for a long, social lunch, which mostly consisted of Chinese takeout- I''d actually really liked the sesame chicken from the place Strider ordered from, which I''d never ordered from before. I had, after having eaten my meal, excused myself from the table and the conversation, and found a nice, hydrophobic outdoor chair in the backyard to sit down in. And now, Silas was standing behind the second one, forearms on the back of it to support him as he leaned forward.


    "Well, admittedly, I''m pretty perceptive," Silas admitted, tapping his forehead. "Wanna talk about it?"


    I sighed.


    "Yeah, might as well," I said. "It''s Skinner, but... in a different way, this time."


    "Oh?" Silas asked. He sat down in the chair using a particularly precarious-looking Riker maneuver, owing to the fact that the chair weighed less than him and had an unusually high back.


    "I''ve told you before that I have the skillset of a supervillain, right?" I asked. "Robot minions, spy drones, mind control, that sort of thing? Well, I have that skillset because it was Doctor Skinner''s skillset, and I was her apprentice when my abilities first awakened."


    "I remember being told this during Venus'' first debriefing with me, after your fight with 8-Ball," Silas said quietly.


    "Mm. Well, I was also the final stepping stone on her road to mastery of control," I said. "The final piece of the puzzle to permanently reshaping who someone is. She tried to make me into someone just like her... and she succeeded. And I can''t rightly say I''d swear to the lord that I wouldn''t still be on her side if it weren''t for the fact that I personally disliked her, on account I found out she was using me, and she thought of me as just another pliable pawn. In the time since, I''ve adopted a code of conduct and set of principles that would make me her enemy on moral grounds, but..." I sighed. "Well. It was recently pointed out to me that I still have more in common with her than I''d strictly like to."


    "Doesn''t sound fun," Silas said.


    "I didn''t appreciate the reminder that I am still, in ways that really do matter, the person she made me," I said.


    "Do you like the person she made you?" Silas said.


    "No," I said flatly. "I do not like being a person who specializes in controlling things I shouldn''t, learning things I shouldn''t, and creating loyal minions in vats or on workbenches. I would much rather have developed the toolkit necessary to transform into all sorts of things, and heal all sorts of injuries, and build all sorts of vehicles."


    "Then why haven''t you?" Silas asked.


    That brought me up short.


    "I''m aware that it''s hard for demiurges to develop skills in fields that they don''t have aptitudes for," Silas said. "But I''m also aware that you''ve already done so anyways. Why didn''t you just... keep going? Delve deeper into transformation, and medicine, and vehicles?"


    I sat with that for a bit. I was tempted to argue that it wouldn''t be useful towards my bounty-hunting work, but... well, if I was better at those fields, I could''ve found other work. Also, being able to reattach limbs and make myself superhumanly strong would have, in fact, been quite useful for bounty hunting work.


    The only real answer I had was...


    "...I didn''t really want to develop those skills," I admitted. "What I wanted was to be good at them. And that''s... a significant difference."


    "A bit, yeah. But that in itself doesn''t say much about you. There''re plenty of skills that I''d like to get good at, but don''t like practicing enough to actually get there."


    "Silas, I think there''s kind of a big difference between your desire to be good at playing the guitar being paired with an indifference towards the act of playing it, and my desire to be a different sort of person but being unable to actually make that transition."


    "Then elaborate."


    "Part of it is that the skills are merely an expression of what I''m interested in," I said. "Robotics, information technology, applied psychology..."


    "An insidiously lovely euphemism."


    "The skills inform what I can productively do in response to my problems, sure, but the question of what skills I have are informed by something deeper: what I want to do, on a deeper gut level." I sighed. "I don''t like that I take joy in holding power over others. That I enjoy having the ability to tie someone''s volition in a knot, or that I enjoy having the ability to make an army of loyal robots, or that I enjoy having the ability to effortlessly track and locate everyone and everything in the world that isn''t ''important'' enough to warrant a supernatural anti-detection ward. Unfortunately, I do enjoy having all those things. I wish I didn''t, and I''d love to make myself stop enjoying them, and enjoy different things instead, but alas, I am stuck with myself."


    "You are aware that therapy exists, right?" Silas pointed out.


    "The psychology of a demiurge is significantly different from that of a normal human," I said. "Some things are set in stone at the moment we have our breakthrough. Most of the reason I studied psychology was in the hopes that I could use it to, if not fix myself, at least understand why I''m fucked up in this particular way. I can still change in meaningful ways, of course- I''m a different person than I was as a teenager, after all. My moral compass is more solidly-formed and internally-persuasive, on account of having, you know, converted to Judaism. But... to some significant extent? I am stuck with myself, for the rest of my life. And the specific thing that bothers me about that is that it''s a self shaped in no small part by Doctor Beatrice Skinner."


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "And so we circle back," Silas said. "Might I point out that, perhaps, she didn''t make you who you are, and you were simply already like that? It''s quite likely that she would be more interested in an apprentice who was already a kindred spirit, rather than trying to make one."


    "Didn''t I already tell you Skinner did, in fact, try to make me act like her?" I said, annoyed.


    "Sure, but you also told me that Skinner did this to you before she gained the ability to use mad science to produce permanent changes to someone''s psyche," Silas said. "Also, do bear in mind that I''ve been a psychic since before you were a hole in your father''s condom. And I know pretty damn well that it''s hard to make people change. But it''s a lot easier to make them think they''ve changed, and that the way they already were is actually a new thing. Memory, you see, is an unreliable thing."


    I sighed.


    "Well, I mean, when you put it like that, yes, I kind of already was an arrogant, self-absorbed fucktrumpet before Skinner got her hands on me," I said. "But also, I can''t help but note that this doesn''t make me feel much better."


    "Because I''m not done yet," Silas said. "You see, it''s not just you who''s wrong here, thinking that Skinner made you. Skinner was wrong, too, in thinking that you were close enough to her to be useful. You have, in the time since she tutored you, fought her tooth and fucking nail on multiple occasions, because, well, she can eat shit and die."


    "So, what, I''m just her but less sociopathic?" I asked.


    "It''s not a great place to start the Hero''s Journey, but it is a place, and you did start, several years ago," Silas said. "These days, you''re just a standard-issue, run-of-the-mill flawed hero. You really, truly do not have anything to worry about, I assure you. Especially if you do, in fact, still intend to retire after this job and live a quiet, boring life where nobody shoots at you. You''re not a danger to anyone. You''re just sometimes a bit of a dickhead, which, I can assure you, is true of literally everyone who has ever and will ever live."


    "This isn''t exactly a strong argument against me being self-absorbed, but I''m not entirely concerned with being a danger to others," I said.


    "Then what are you concerned about?" Silas asked.


    "The, hopefully, many decades to come," I said. "I''m only, like, twenty five, Silas. And while yes, I''ve taken some bad injuries that would typically shorten my lifespan, as well as developed some bad habits that might also do the same, I''m also a mad science cyborg whose girlfriend is capable of permanently transforming people in very useful ways. So let''s split the difference and assume that I''ll die when I''m, like, eighty or so. I have a lot of life left to go, and I''m worried about how much of it is going to be tainted by the worst few years of my life."


    "You have fifty five years to figure out how to live with it," Silas said with a shrug. "Don''t need to sort it all out today."


    I grunted, noncommittally.


    "...Alright, alright," Silas said. "Out with it."


    "You''re apparently a good enough psychic to see through my shielding-"


    "I''m actually not," Silas said. "Your shielding is very good. It''s just that my own psychic implants have trained me to be very good at reading people. Body language is a language, after all- we acquire it through comprehensible input, and I''ve had decades of it to learn from."


    "Oh. Well, then..." I sighed. "I''ll turn the shielding off, because I''d like you to take a deep scan of my mind, of who I am, and tell me, just... what do you see? What kind of person am I really, from your standpoint?"


    "A kind of person who needs a therapist more than a rabbi," Silas said dryly as I prepared to turn off my shielding. "But, since the rabbi is here..."


    "Wait, you''re a rabbi?" I turned off the psychic shield, since he''d agreed to help me.


    "Yep," Silas said. "Which... alright, I''m already aware from just the scanning I''ve done so far that your grasp on your own goddamn religion is actually specious at best, even compared to the typical non-practicing Jew who merely grew up with practicing parents, so: no, being a rabbi does not mean that I am actually a sort of priest. I basically just have a doctorate in Being Jewish, and am a certified subject-matter expert. This does render me eligible to act as a sort of priest, in the sense of leading group worship activities, but I don''t actually do that, so." He shrugged. "Instead, I just spent some time working in a kosher slaughterhouse after receiving my smicha, to ensure that everything was being done to spec."


    "So you were a kOSHA inspector."


    "Nicky sent me that tumblr post too, yes."


    "Goddamnit."


    Silas chuckled.


    "Anyhow," Silas continued. "Having looked through your brain... I see some things that worry me, but I also see some things that give me hope. I see a young woman with very particular desires who understands those desires and how to channel and fulfill them in a healthy, pro-social- or at least non-antisocial- way. You will, for the rest of your life, be engaged with that work, and never complete it... but you aren''t obligated to complete it, only to not abandon it. And in that regard..." He shrugged, then reached over and affectionately tousled my hair. "I believe in you, kid."


    "Thanks, Dad," I said, grinning. "Oh, by the way, how''s Akane''s new special sauce treating you?"


    "Well, I''m not getting serious arthritis anytime soon, that''s for sure," Silas said, nodding seriously. "I''m fifty three years old, that was a serious worry. Hell, I was thinking about making myself some prosthetic hands- my hands have been starting to act up, recently. But, well... that''s gone."


    "And now you just have to never let anyone who isn''t also supernatural get too acquainted with your body," I said. "Which, uh. Actually, you probably don''t see a regular doctor very often anyways, do you?"


    "Nope, and I don''t do the horizontal happy dance either," Silas said. "I''m fine. Got any plans for New Year''s, next week?"


    "Not really. It''ll just be another Saturday night for me, which means... basically just a light extension of Shabbat. We might watch the ball drop in Time''s Square, though. God knows why. You?"


    Silas shrugged. "Pretty much the same, yeah. Right, well." He got up, grunting. "See you around, kid."

 Book 5 Chapter 7

    "It''s tradition," Lisa insisted.


    "We could be watching the Spanish dub of Mobile Suit Gundam right now," I protested.


    "We can watch that anytime," Lisa said. "We can only watch the ball drop at midnight on New Year''s Eve at midnight on New Year''s Eve."


    "Yes, but I don''t want to."


    "You''ve been outvoted," Nicky said.


    "Ugh," I said.


    It was twenty minutes to midnight on New Year''s Eve, and we were all in the living room, sprawled across our particularly large and spacious couch. Despite having room for four people to have a sprawling cuddle-pile with space leftover, we actually didn''t use this couch for fucking- we had semi-frequent houseguests, and so, in the interest of hospitality and hygiene, restricted our fucking to private areas of the house where guests would not risk sitting on a biohazard that we''d failed to adequately clean up.


    "Fine," I continued, "but you can''t stop me from watching it on my Virtual Machine and getting more immersion in."


    "You are already fluent in Spanish," Lisa protested.


    "Yes, but," I countered. "Fluency needs to be maintained."


    "Not that often," Akane said. "I only need to watch Hindi soap operas like once a month to stay fluent."


    "Hey, Roxy," Lisa said, blinking with realization as she connected some dots. "You told me that you learned Spanish by watching a bunch of Spanish-language media."


    "Correct," I said.


    "And that you can learn any language with vocab flash-cards and lots of media in that language."


    "Indeed."


    "So... why didn''t you learn Japanese? You claimed it was because you didn''t have practice partners, but it sounds to me like your method doesn''t require those."


    "...The answer is, in all honesty, that I bounced off French and Japanese before I found out how language acquisition really worked, and after attaining fluency in Spanish, decided that it was primarily worth the effort because it enabled me to talk to Spanish-speakers, and didn''t care to repeat the process with French or Japanese, on account that the only benefit would be consuming cultural exports that already have a very well-established localization industry, and which I''m not really all that into in the first place."


    "That''s only true of Japanese, though," Nicky said.


    "That is correct," I said, nodding. "French would have even fewer benefits, because I have zero interest in French culture or cultural exports, and the only reason I''d want to know it is to satisfy the little itch in my brain that proclaims that, as a Cajun, speaking French is my birthright, but I don''t give a shit about Cajun culture either. I don''t like seafood or excessive spice, and everything outside of food?" I shrugged. "Literally zero idea. Besides the French Catholicism, and quite frankly I converted to Judaism to get away from the Catholicism."


    "We feel very differently about our cultural heritages," Lisa said.


    "Mhm," I said, nodding. "And neither of us is wrong about it, because it''s a deeply personal matter of opinion and what we value. Also a matter of what''s there to be evaluated in the first place- Tejanos and Cajuns are by no means one-to-one identical." I reached over and rubbed her ears. "You''re still my little pogchamp, even though you''re coercing me into being present for very boring television for a cultural ritual that holds zero significance for me."


    "You are such a shithead," Lisa said affectionately.


    I leaned over to kiss her, then sighed contentedly.


    "So," Akane said. "Now that you have a Japanese girlfriend, why are you not starting to learn Japanese?"


    "...Point," I admitted. "Ugh. Okay, I''ll find some flash cards for Japanese vocab and watch the original Mobile Suit Gundam."


    "Isn''t learning Japanese from anime kind of a major no-no?" Nicky asked.


    "Only because weebs are cringe," Akane said. "Anime is still in perfectly intelligible Japanese that native speakers don''t have to learn to understand; it''s a bit over-the-top, but honestly, in ways that are helpful, like being very clearly enunciated, and also including some cultural archetypes that native speakers sometimes evoke in real life for jokes."


    "I''ve been told that it only takes a few weeks to go from anime-fluent to real-speech fluent," I added. "Also, I''m not much of a weeb, so I''ll probably watch some Japanese soap operas too, not just cartoons about child soldiers and whatever the latest formulaic Isekai trash is."


    "Bold words for someone who has three girlfriends in another world full of superheroes," Lisa said.


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Fuck you."


    "Hey now," Nicky said. "You might get gender euphoria out of being someone''s wish fulfillment waifu, Lisa, but that doesn''t mean Akane and I do, too."


    "What, and you''re just like that anyways by coincidence?" Lisa asked.


    "Kinda," Nicky said. "The question of what gives me gender euphoria is a complicated one, but I think it''s related to how I present myself? But it''s not really about being someone''s dream girl, I don''t think. It''s more... I think, it''s more about being... It involves some degree of antagonism, I think."


    "Oh?" I asked, and then vocalized the thought I just had because it was too funny to not just say out loud. "You mean your specific gender identity has enemies-to-lovers built into it?"


    "That and brat-taming, yes," Nicky said primly. "But I also do get gender euphoria from being seen as cute, which, while not really possible with these-" she gestured at her, to use the technical term, Fucking Enormous Titties. "-is in fact perfectly achievable with my vtubing stuff. There, people see me as a mousy little brunette catgirl who plays games that require spreadsheets and wikis to be good at, and I actually really like that perception."


    "I get gender euphoria from being a hot babe," Akane added, because she was feeling left out. "It''s just not super integral to my personal identity to the same extent as my scholarly pursuits."


    "I''ve been meaning to ask, actually," Nicky said. "Since you''re experimenting with identity-transformation, does that mean you''d be willing to temporarily turn into someone who gets gender euphoria from being a hot guy? Because I am bisexual, and would appreciate a little more variety in my eye candy."


    "Hrm..." Akane hummed quietly. "I''m not sure Roxy would appreciate her work being befouled by heterosexuality like that."


    "As a transgender lesbian, I am in fact perfectly fine with my work being used to support transing someone''s gender," I said. "Also, what I''d use to make you into a trans man isn''t even my work, it''s Skinner''s work, repurposed and rebound to myself. Also, more importantly, turning into a dude so you can fuck Nicky wouldn''t be heterosexual, because Nicky is not heterosexual, she''s bisexual, which is only ''half straight half gay'' when she says it is, usually for the purpose of a joke."


    "Thank you, Roxy," Nicky said, nodding.


    "Of course," I added. "Akane pretty clearly still doesn''t want to, so..."


    "Kiiiiiinda, yeah," Akane admitted sheepishly. "Sorry, Nicky."


    "Worth a shot," Nicky said with a shrug. "As much of an absolute pain in the ass as these things are, it''s hard to give them up when you''re getting so much mileage out of them, isn''t it?" She glanced down at her boobs.


    "Actually, my tits used to be way more of a pain in the ass," Akane said. "I only really got superscience solutions for them a few months ago, and the problem only really got solved, like, last month, when I wove the idea of durability into every cell of my body. You, though, got gravity powers when you were twenty."


    "Also another growth spurt," Nicky added. "These used to be more reasonably-sized, back when I was nineteen. I mean, still big, but not, like, the size of my head." She hummed appreciatively. "Huh. Wow, you really have just always had it worse than me when it came to the inconvenience of fat honkers."


    "They were a bit more than an inconvenience," Akane said. "But yeah, I''ll admit I never really considered getting a reduction, partly because I wanted to stay differentiated from my mom, but mainly because I did still really enjoy the gender euphoria of being a hot babe. Which, y''know. I did still get plenty of, even when it was just us sharing an apartment in college."


    "Um," Nicky said, intelligently.


    "I did notice you checking me out, and I did appreciate it," Akane said solemnly. "I was in fact constantly adjusting my tank tops in your presence on purpose."


    "Now you know," I said, looking at Nicky. "Now you know what it was like for me, living with Akane before I admitted defeat and started fucking her."


    "Three minutes to midnight," Lisa announced.


    "Huh," I said. "Wow, we really have just been bullshitting for seventeen straight minutes. I could''ve gotten through most of a Gundam episode in this time, if you three could''ve restrained yourselves from being the wonderful people I love and will cherish spending the rest of my life with."


    "Gay," Akane said.


    "Gay, gay, gay," Nicky added, putting on a deep voice. "You''re all gay. None of you are free of homosexuality."


    "May Jack Chick''s memory continue to be a public urinal," I prayed.


    "I wonder," Lisa continued. "How many people around the world watch the ball drop, live?"


    "Around a hundred fifty million people," Akane said. "Spread out over the whole world, but mostly localized to the United States. More than who usually watch the Super Bowl every year, but nobody really thinks about it when it isn''t December."


    "Boy, am I glad Skinner can''t mind control people through television," Nicky said.


    "...She can," I said with quiet horror. "Skinner absolutely can mind-control people over live broadcasts, it''s not even hard."


    "Oh no," Nicky whispered.


    "Also," I continued, turning to look at Nicky. "Remember what Akane just said about the Super Bowl? And how Skinner said she''d conquer America by Valentine''s Day? And how Tooth and Nail were invited to watch it with Skinner, who, much like me, does not actually give a wet fart about sports? And how nobody could shut the fuck up about how unusually hype this upcoming Super Bowl would be, and how even more people than usual are going to watch it live?"


    "Oh no," Akane said.


    "Congratulations, Nicky!" I said. "You''ve cracked the code and figured out that Doctor Skinner is using wide-scale crowd control to build up hype around the Super Bowl, in preparation for hijacking the halftime show to permanently enthrall everyone who watches it live- which will include more than a third of the population of the United States. And now, we just need to figure out how to stop her. Any ideas?"


    Nicky sighed.

 Book 5 Chapter 8

    "Fuck."


    "I know."


    "Well," Valiant said. "It''s not as though we can just cancel the Super Bowl."


    "To play Devil''s Advocate," Princess Vega said, "why not?"


    Now, you''d think you''d meet your girlfriend''s parents before you moved in with her, but considering that Nicky and I were keeping our romantic involvement secret, and also that she''d moved in before we''d started fucking, and also that she lived in fucking Massachusetts, I had never actually been in a room with Her Royal Highness Princess Valerie Vega before now.


    She cut an impressive figure, not just because she sported a rack that had likely once been as big as Nicky''s, but on a frame four inches shorter, and then been augmented by the predictable effects of four pregnancies, but also because of her sheer gravitas, whose weight I could feel even through my psychic shielding.


    Mostly, it was greatly annoying. My shielding was good, and blunted it down to just a mild compulsion to be a touch more respectful to her (and also, oddly enough, be less circumspect than I normally would be about looking at her tits), and while I could and did consciously counteract that, the fact that I even had to was annoying. I didn''t have to ignore Nicky''s gravitas; I straight up just couldn''t even feel it.


    "For some reason, I don''t think a bunch of corporations are going to appreciate having a very expensive event shut down by the government over something we merely strongly suspect is going to happen," I said dryly. "But hey, you wanna try telling the NFL to cancel the Super Bowl, knock yourself out."


    Valerie shot me an annoyed look, and I smiled in serene smugness back at her.


    Aside from being proportioned like a horny twitter artist''s milf OC, Princess Vega wore a costume that was clearly loaded up with the regal pomp and pageantry of a culture I wasn''t very familiar with. I recognized that she wore something like a crown- a decorative piece of metal around the top of her head- along with a variety of other decorative metal bits atop her less ostentatious white dress that, all together, reminded me of ceremonial knightly armor, to signify that she was, at least in some way, supposed to be seen as martially capable.


    To my dismay- and arousal, but mostly dismay- one of the biggest metal pieces was a breastplate that, really, was little more than a particularly well-shaped rigid metal bra, which seemed more aimed at signaling that she was maritally capable as well. Boobplate may look objectively stupid, but alas, as a horny trans lesbian, I did have to admit that I liked big tits anyways, and I couldn''t rightly claim that the cleavagey look didn''t work on me.


    Thankfully, my great personal distaste for Valerie helped me control my lusts. Aside from the whole monarchy thing- cringe at best, grounds for the death penalty at worst- there was also the part where she was my girlfriend''s extremely shitty mother, and personally responsible for more than half of the bad things Nicky has experienced in her whole life.


    "As Dr. Updyke has so undiplomatically put it, that is why not," Valiant continued. "We don''t have the authority to cancel the Super Bowl. What we do have is the authority to... privately approach the NFL about our suspicions, and volunteer to provide additional security measures in the background to ensure that the event goes off without a hitch."


    "That hardly requires authority," Valerie noted.


    "Au contraire," Valiant said. "It requires a great deal of authority for the NFL to believe that we know what we''re talking about and have the ability to do anything productive with our suspicions. Just because we''re offering help instead of issuing demands doesn''t change the fact that we need to secure their cooperation, and that requires authority."


    "They don''t let just anyone snoop around backstage," I added. "Only people with specific, credible need to be there. Which does pose a problem for you."


    "...I''ll humor you," Valerie said with a heaving sigh. "Why, exactly, do you think I don''t need to be here?"


    "Your general lack of information-gathering superpowers that would make you useful on your own, and your specific lack of rapport with people who do have such abilities, which would make you useful muscle-based backup for those aforementioned people," I said. "We already have Venus, who''s quite capable of tearing someone in half with her bare hands. You are redundant."


    "And you don''t think that my presence, and the personal authority I command, will have any benefit at all to securing the cooperation of the NFL with your little operation?" Valerie asked, quirking an eyebrow. "I can tell that you have a distinctly American complaint about the stylings of my native culture, but I would appreciate you following your mentor''s lead in staying professional."


    "Doctor Updyke reacts poorly to people using their reputation as a bludgeon, as well as mind-altering powers in general," Valiant said dryly. "Should you find yourself unable to stop projecting your mind-altering power, I''ll have to ask you to relocate and continue this meeting through telepresence."


    Hah, eat shit, Princess.


    "In addition, her concerns are not unwarranted, and I share them as well," Valiant continued. "You have not been part of this case up until this point, and given that Doctor Updyke is, in fact, the one in charge of it, she has every right to demand you explain exactly what you think you''re doing here."


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "Pursuant to that," I added, "what exactly do you think you''re doing here?"


    "Ensuring that the capture of Doctor Skinner at the Super Bowl actually succeeds, rather than going up in flames because it was left in the hands of an amateur," Valerie said dryly. Surprisingly yet thankfully, she did ratchet down her gravitas, if not actually turn it off. It was at a level that she probably thought was plausibly deniable, but because Valiant and I both had psychic technology rather than any innate and organic psychic ability, we knew with far more precision. Still, this was the best we were likely to get from her, and I wasn''t feeling the gravitas at all now, so... good enough.


    "Mm," I grunted. "Well, unfortunately, your bloodline has used up its chance to question my competence- ask your daughter how that played out for her when she tried it. As such, while you are welcome to think I''m an untrained amateur, if you actually attempt to treat me as such, I am going to immediately put you on the plane back to whatever Masshole you crawled out of. I am a skilled professional with years of experience, much of it with this quarry in particular, and you will treat me as such. Do I make myself understood?"


    "Obnoxiously, but yes. I''m already humoring you; may as well keep going."


    "Furthermore, and more relevant to the actually important matter at hand," I said, trying very hard to imply that making a would-be monarch shut up and sit down- even if she had to pretend she was choosing to do so- wasn''t worth my time. "Letting Super Bowl Sunday roll around before Skinner has been taken out of the equation is, itself, a failure state. A recoverable failure state, but still a failure state. As such, because I am not an idiot, I have been pursuing several different leads to track Skinner down before the possibility of a live broadcast to a hundred million people lands in her lap."


    "Please elaborate on these leads," Valiant said, in a, well... courageous effort to keep things at least somewhat civil and productive.


    "It''s a bit difficult to do so, admittedly," I said. "They mostly amount to hoping that my on-staff druid can turn up a useful connection back to Skinner, and trace her that way. The reason I can''t elaborate much further is that... well, how superpowers work is, in your opinion, fairly straightforward, yes?"


    "In the sense that, when I know what someone''s power is, and generally people have between one and six individual abilities that often tie together conceptually, I can almost always figure out how they did something, yes," Valiant said.


    "Right. And mad science is a bit more convoluted, but ultimately, still somewhat explicable- from the outside, we''re more or less just weirder superscientists who share a common foundation and simply have our own individual aptitudes, priorities, and other such things."


    "Right..."


    "Well, druidic spirit magic is, in fact, magic, and relies heavily on a set of metaphysics you have probably never observed or knowingly interacted with, and which I don''t understand much better than you do," I said. "There''s something in there about connections and resonances and all that, but I do not understand it, and that''s why I have an expert who does understand it. She mentioned this morning that she had a promising idea, and was preparing a ritual circle, so hopefully, after this meeting, we''ll find something useful. I''ll shoot you an email after the ritual."


    "Do you have my email address?" Valerie asked.


    I was just about done putting up with this woman. Thankfully, Valiant''s office was one that was quite easy to exit from at speed.


    "No," I said simply, before telekinetically opening the great big window and leaping out, my tentacles sprouting from my back as I prepared to catch myself on the opposing building''s facade.


    <hr>


    "Who pissed in your oatmeal?" Nicky asked.


    "Your mom," I said, stepping into Lisa''s dedicated ritual room, in Akane''s mad science sub-basement.


    "Ah, that''d do it," Nicky said, nodding.


    "Well, that actually might be useful," Lisa said, lighting a candle. "You''re probably going to be pretty pissed as part of this ritual, just... about someone else."


    "Oh?" I asked. "What the hell is this ritual, anyhow?"


    "The full scope is pretty complicated," Lisa said. "And also not really something I can explain to anyone other than another druid; spoken language isn''t sufficient, which I learned from like three minutes of talking to another druid on A-510."


    "Which one?"


    "Some catgirl named Scarlet," Lisa said with a shrug. "Apparently she''s Jonas Wales'' daughter?"


    "Jonas Wales is married?" I asked.


    "We''re getting sidetracked," Lisa said, almost reproachful. "The short version, that''s relevant to you is, we need to get a connection to Skinner herself, right?"


    "Yeah?"


    "Well, there''s something we know has been in contact with Skinner herself, on a pretty deep level," Lisa continued. "Or rather, someone."


    "Me," I said, as dots began to connect. "So, lemme guess- you need me to think about Skinner and what she''s done to me as hard as I can, in order to get the best chances of getting Skinner''s spirit scent out of my general melange?"


    "Basically, yeah," Lisa said, nodding. "You up for that?"


    "Probably should''ve asked before you drew the ritual circle," I noted. "What if I said no?"


    "I''m gonna be honest, Roxy," Lisa said. "I knew you wouldn''t, pretty much no matter what. You''re only really avoidant of things that you like, for fear that you''d fuck ''em up. I didn''t really ask if you were up for it because I didn''t know the answer. I know the answer. I''m just, y''know. Allowing for the possibility that I''m wrong."


    "...I don''t like that you know me this well," I said. "However, there isn''t much I can do about it-"


    "Besides going to therapy," Lisa suggested.


    "-so I''m just going to stand where you tell me to stand and think real hard about Beatrice Skinner," I continued, ignoring her.


    "Right. Sit down in the empty central circle, please." Lisa took up her own place, standing in a smaller circle with unrecognizable sigils drawn inside its perimeter. "Facing away from me. Eyes closed... Nicky, can you give us some privacy?"


    "Sure thing," Nicky said. "Done with the charcoal?"


    "Leave it in the copper bowl."


    "Got it."


    "Now," Lisa said, her voice beginning to sound like it was coming from all around me as she worked her magic. "Mouth closed. You can''t talk. You can only think the answers to my questions, to yourself, as hard as you can. Who is Doctor Skinner to you?"


    I answered...


    ...and I found that I had a lot to say.

 Book 5 Chapter 9

    "Holy shit," Lisa whispered.


    The nature of the Spirit World was something I fundamentally just did not fully understand, and likely never would. Being as I wasn''t a werewolf or even a spirit-focused wizard, and very probably could never become one (there were a few rare anecdotes about demiurges becoming other sorts of supernatural person that had enough evidence behind them to be considered reliable, but one, they all involved literal death and rebirth, and two, they were all through different methods that nobody had successfully replicated since), I simply didn''t have any way of interacting with spirits, and I would probably just have to live with that.


    However, I did have a few separate intuitions that were, for different cases, close enough to being correct that I could, when the need arose, pretend to be far more learned than I actually was. Provided that I wasn''t talking to Jason Thronebreaker, the guy who''d actually taught me all this shit.


    One of those intuitions was that every thing in the world, defined by what humans considered a discrete thing, had either a full-blown Spirit already, or the nascent makings of a Spirit within it, contingent on a sufficiently strong melange of thoughts and feelings on the nature of that spirit. And hey, wouldn''t you know it, I happened to have with me something I''ve had for a long time, and had a lot of complicated and strong emotions and thoughts about. What is that something, I hear you ask?


    "I can''t believe I have a Spirit in my gun," I said.


    When I was nineteen, still living with my parents, and had just flipped to absolutely hating Doctor Skinner, I''d decided I''d make a clean break from my old life, and go to make a new one. A new name, a new gender- honestly, I''d been kinda suspecting I had something weird and transfeminine going on before I met Skinner or the girlfriend before her, but it hadn''t truly clicked until I became a demiurge.


    The only thing I''d keep from my old life was something I hadn''t really owned in my old life. Because, you see, as part of my unreasonably circuitous assassination attempt on Doctor Skinner, I had stolen my father''s revolver. A six-inch Colt Python with a Royal Blue finish, it was one of the finest factory-made revolvers in the world; there were many like it, but this one was mine. Mechanically very reliable, with the only real downsides being its weight, both in terms of a heavy trigger pull- easy enough to compensate for with pre-cocking the hammer or simply building up good grip strength, the latter of which I''d done for Judo anyways- and also simply being a big ol'' chunk of metal without any corners cut.


    Most importantly for this revolver and this moment, though, was that I have, in fact, used it in anger, and on more than one occasion, against one Doctor Beatrice Skinner.


    It knew her. And as it was an extension of my will, it hated her to the bone.


    "Obviously," I continued, "having a spirit of murderous hatred in my revolver isn''t great for my mental health, so..."


    "Yeah, I''ll get rid of it soon," Lisa said, nodding. "I''ll do an exorcism on your haunted gun as soon as we get what we need from it. But first..."


    "First," I prompted.


    "...I was trying to figure out how I''d get a location out of this thing, and I''ve come to an inconvenient conclusion," Lisa said.


    "Ah," I said. "Not as simple as just talking to it?"


    "I could try," Lisa allowed, "but that''d be unreliable and wouldn''t give us very good information. The thing about working with spirits is, druidic power can bend their nature to gain the desired results through a different method, but that same power could also be used to work with their nature to get better results through the original method. I have to bend the nature of this thing at least a little, because it''s based on your idea of what a gun is, and so it does not care where it''s pointed, whereas I need it to point at Doctor Skinner. But if I bend it too far, I won''t have enough power leftover to get it to point accurately."


    "Okay," I said, nodding. "So, what do you need in order to do that?"


    "Some small specialty items," Lisa said. "Due to the nature of spirit association, it''s going to sound like conglomeration of stupid puns."


    "Alright, well," I said, shrugging and clambering to my feet. "I sure as hell don''t have anything better to do."


    <hr>


    "You were right," I said, as Lisa infused the essence of a gun dog spirit into a tracer bullet. "This does seem like a pile of stupid puns. I understand intimately how the associations of a gun dog, which tracks down and fetches prey after it''s been shot by the hunter, and a tracer bullet, which lets you see precisely where your shots traveled, would be useful for this purpose. Nonetheless..."


    "I love my job," Lisa said, loading the first tracer bullet into the gun''s cylinder. "Well, parts of it, anyway. Now!"


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Before you launch into a gun safety rant, I would like to inform you that I have woven the idea of indestructibility so deeply into my body that I was bulletproof back when you were still a miserable ginger-boy in high school," I said. "We''re in an underground chamber made of reinforced rock, with nothing we care about inside it. Just shoot."


    "...Fine," Lisa said. "But, as I was going to say, you need to be the one to pull the trigger."


    "Ah, right," I said. "Because it''s my hunt, and my gun."


    "Exactly," Lisa said, nodding as she flipped the gun in her hand and held it out to me grip-first. "Here. Give me a minute to leave and close the door before you shoot that thing."


    "Got it," I said, taking my gun from her and closing my eyes.


    The procedure was, when we got down to it, pretty straightforward, relying on both druidic spirit magic and demiurgic mad science. Lisa had fashioned a gun and some bullets that would guide themselves to Doctor Skinner, and I happened to already have a gadget that could trace those paths on a global map and do all the trigonometry for us. All we had to do was take two measurements from different spots, and we''d have Skinner''s location.


    Naturally, we needed her to hold still while we were doing this, and so we had to do this in the middle of the night, when she would likely be asleep- she had an insistent habit of going to bed at 8 PM and waking up at 4 AM, not because she was a morning person, but because she thought everyone else in the world except her was stupid for not understanding how solar time worked. This was, inconveniently, around when I tended to be asleep, too, because sharing a bed with other people tends to compel you to go to bed at the same time as them, thus making all of us align our sleep schedules to optimize bedtime cuddling as well as optimizing ''not climbing all over each other while someone is trying to sleep.'' At least our sleep schedule was more 10 PM to 6 AM, giving us around two hours of window to give it a shot without staying up past our own bedtimes.


    "Alright," I said, mostly to myself. Lisa had left the room and sealed the door behind her. "Let''s do this."


    I turned on one foot, in the sloppiest pirouette one could perform without tipping over, letting the pull of the gun and its bullet guide my hand. Once I was sure it was in the right place, I pulled the trigger.


    My globe-scanner was watching, and had recorded the trajectory. I opened my eyes, lowering the gun, and walked back to the door. Akane had, as preparation for this, created a long, temporary tunnel deep in the earth, a quarter circle seven miles in radius, with two chambers on each end and a tracked vehicle for traveling between the chambers- because neither of us wanted to walk the eleven mile distance between the chambers. At ordinary walking speed, that''d be four hours, and even at a four-minute-mile sprint, that''d still be like forty five minutes, whereas this vehicle could get us there in two minutes without turning our lungs into firewood and our legs into jelly.


    "So," I said, climbing into the little mad-science railway car with Lisa. It was a deeply uncomfortable contraption, because Akane either chose to make ''really uncomfortable to ride in'' her signature flaw for vehicles, or it simply kept happening anyways because she was really bad at ergonomics. "...Come here often?"


    "To this place which didn''t exist this morning and won''t exist tomorrow?" Lisa asked as the cart started moving, the half a G of acceleration slamming us against the back, then her into me as centrifugal force refused to let her stay on the inside of the radius.


    "Yeah," I said, while she muttered something into my chest about airbags.


    "Yes, I do," she said, strenuously prying her face out of my tits. "Rrrgh. Y''know, for all that you''re not that busty compared to the rest of us, I gotta admit, your boobs are still pretty nice."


    "I''ll have you know I''m actually above the statistical average in America," I said. "I just look reasonably-proportioned and Not That Feminine because I''m tall and broad-shouldered and dress like this. Also, y''all have tits the size of your heads, which kinda skews your idea of what a properly feminine amount of titty looks like."


    "Hey, mine are smaller than my head," Lisa protested. "Which, incidentally, is transphobic. I deserve bigger."


    "Lisa, I gave you a telepathic transformation collar," I said. "You can make them bigger whenever you want."


    "Well, yeah," Lisa said. "But also, I''m your pet foxgirl. I need you to want them to be bigger before I can do that."


    "Is that actually true, or is it more that, being my pet foxgirl, you ''need'' to give me a hard time about something petplay-related every now and then?" I asked.


    "...No more questions, your honor," Lisa said.


    I patted her head, riiiiight before we hit turnaround and ended up sliding across the bench to the other side of the car.


    "Hey, if you had a secondary form with at least one inhuman feature, but as many human features as you wanted, what would it be?" Lisa asked.


    "Honestly, I''d probably pick something like the demongirl Nicky made for my Vtuber avatar," I said. "I''m not a kinnie, but-"


    "Promising start."


    "-I do feel a, well, kinship with demons. Or, at least, I think they''re hot, and demongirls occupy an interesting space where they''re undeniably feminine, but also not merely allowed but often expected to be domineering lesbians. There''s a bit of a problematic edge in that, being a Jew and also a trans lesbian, I''m well aware that what I''m doing is garbing myself in hateful queer-coding, but all the same, reclamation is a thing that happens, and also, I wouldn''t exactly be leaving the house with red skin and horns."


    "What about a tail?"


    "Well, duh, obviously," I said, almost affronted. "Wings, too."


    "Feather or leather?"


    "Leather," I said, nodding. "I''m not really into the fallen angel look." The railcart finally came to a stop, and I climbed out. "Alright. Let''s finish up this fucking trigonometry word problem so we can go to bed and be done with this bullshit ma?ana."


    "You really think we can be done with this tomorrow?" Lisa asked.


    "Finding someone is the hardest part of this job," I said, drawing my gun. "After that, it''s just wetwork and matches."

 Book 5 Chapter 10

    Thankfully, with our false starts, we had gotten pretty good at coordinated breaking-and-entering. Akane had whipped up an absolute masterpiece as far as infiltration vehicles went, and we were sitting in it now, ready and waiting for the drop.


    Our infiltration vehicle was, in the end, actually pretty simple. Skinner''s base was on the edge of the Mojave Desert, about a hundred and fifty miles from Phoenix, Arizona- where this year''s Super Bowl will be hosted, the Sunday after next- as the crow flies.


    Or, in our case, as the raven flies. We were being carried by a perfectly ordinary, wild-captured raven- common in the Mojave, and likely something that''d flown over Skinner''s base a few times before- that I had controlled telepathically.


    We sat inside a mole machine Akane had built, which had been actually rather spacious to start with, before she shrank it down to be smaller than a mouse, so that the raven could carry it without being suspicious, or even particularly visible from the ground.


    "Finally," Lisa said. "A use for that shrinking ray you came up with."


    "It''s hardly my fault nobody has a macro or micro fetish," Akane said primly.


    "Also, remember that time she shrank someone''s truck?" Nicky added.


    "I remember it like it was a few months ago," I said. "Because, well. It was."


    "Smartass," Lisa said.


    "...You''ve met me, right?" I asked.


    Now, unfortunately, being a hundred and fifty miles from Phoenix, and being carried by a raven- who generally flew at around twenty five miles an hour- meant that we had a long flight to our destination, but fortunately, when you stuffed three lesbians and their bisexual girlfriend into an enclosed space, they found ways to occupy themselves.


    Such as argue about the finer points of The Simpsons lore, or workshop my demonsona transformation- which I had been wearing for most of the flight because it wasn''t like I had anything better to do- or watch the Spanish dub of Mobile Suit Gundam.


    "Once or twice," Lisa said with a shrug.


    "Anyhow," I said, shaking my head. "We''re half a mile out. Drop is in thirty seconds."


    "Here we go," Akane said, adjusting her harness before gripping the controls.


    "T minus ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... three... two... one... the raven has dropped its payload, and is free and clear."


    We dropped at a good clip, our mass not being completely shrunken in accordance with our volume, and hit the ground with significantly less of a hard thud than we should''ve- after all, the Mojave was not a particularly sandy desert, and in fact was mostly covered in dry, hard, solid earth. However, Akane''s mole machine had a little aura around it that temporarily turned hard rock into soft sand, letting it tunnel through at an alarmingly fast rate.


    Well. Alarmingly fast for tunneling. We were traveling at an ordinary jogging pace, of around three meters per second. Still, that was a lot faster than we''d be going through rock.


    "Alright," I said, checking my gear one more time, mostly on autopilot as most of my attention went towards our scanners. "Adjust heading... twelve degrees clockwise on the horizontal plane, and forty one degrees downward. Activating anti-teleportation field projectors now."


    "Twelve degrees clockwise, forty one degrees downward," Akane parroted back as she made the requisite adjustments. "How close are we?"


    "Breakthrough in two minutes," I said. "If anyone has to pee, now''s your last chance."


    Thankfully, nobody had to, and two minutes later, we pierced through the upper corner of a fairly mundane-looking storage room, made of concrete and lit by a reddish-tinted lightbulb, and landed on the floor. Disembarking was easy; the door popped open, we stepped out, and swiftly grew back to normal size, slowly enough to take a few more steps away from the craft and clear the way for the next person. Then, Akane simply picked up the mouse-sized craft, stuck it in a little compartment holster in her forearm armor, and we were on our merry way.


    Honestly, Akane had changed the most for this hunt, having created our entry vehicle, but also having revamped her armor, turning it from a simple compression jumpsuit that happened to be well-armored into a (somewhat) low profile suit of power armor that, in all honesty, looked very reminiscent of the Varia Suit from Metroid, and in fact the whole thing did in fact look like she was visually name-checking Samus Aran, except with a lot more red.


    (While everyone else was learning Spanish, I was learning Japanese, and one of the bits of trivia Akane had bestowed upon me personally was that her name was the Japanese equivalent of the name Rose, being as it referred directly to both a shade of red as well as a plant known for being a source of the color red- granted, a rose simply was red, whereas common madder, referred to in Japanese as "deep red" or akane, was a plant whose roots were used to make red dye.)


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    (I''d mentioned that this explained why Akane''s favorite color was red- not that this needed to be explained- but had expressed confusion as to its relevance at the time. And she''d informed me that she also knew my favorite color was red, and that I had, for a brief time, gone by Rose before switching to Roxanne.)


    "Alright," Lady Venus said, taking point, an upgraded hammer in hand, courtesy of Akane. "Everyone ready?"


    "Ready," Akane said, her arm cannon unfurling and deploying around her left forearm. She''d been studying weapons as of late, and had easily surpassed my, admittedly, very cursory abilities in that field.


    "Let''s do this," Red Fox said, her jumpsuit shifting into strategically-placed armor plating as her sexy foxgirl form shifted into a hulking mass of fang and fur.


    "Take it by the numbers," I said, drawing my own weapon, my unassuming-looking revolver.


    Lady Venus threw the door open and darted through, with all of us following close behind her, as we entered into a large chamber.


    "Ah, there you are," 8-Ball said, turning to face us. "I have to admit, designing this place around the fact we didn''t have a specific entrance we knew you''d be coming from was tricky, but I think I managed just fine."


    "Huh," I said, blinking as I took in the sight of my old cult buddy turned self-proclaimed nemesis, back yet again to blight my existence. "Aren''t you supposed to be in jail?" And, also, missing a suit of armor. This one looked a lot different though; bulkier, yet also more refined. 8-Ball had likely improved their grasp on the principles of armor.


    "Oh, I got out months ago," 8-Ball said dismissively. "The good Doctor sprung those vampires, too, although she admitted she didn''t know what else to do with them. Replaced us with some Control-empowered props that tricked people into thinking they were the real deal, and nobody knew we were free and clear. And now, we can finally settle thi-"


    "I''m going to stop you right there," I said, holding up my empty left hand to stop them. "I do not care about you. If I was so invested in hating you as you are in hating me, I would''ve just killed you when I had you at my mercy."


    That brought 8-Ball up short.


    "...what?" 8-Ball asked.


    "You heard me," I said simply. "You do not matter to me. Doctor Skinner is my nemesis, not you. You''re just another one of her minions."


    "But-" 8-Ball began. "We''re equals and opposites, you and I! You took after the master but then betrayed her, whereas I took a different path but still served her loyally!"


    "No," I said. "We aren''t equals and opposites. Now stand down, or be made to. I really do not have a preference in the matter. "


    "I''ll enjoy wiping that smug look from your-" 8-Ball snarled, before a squealing electric whine overtook the room, the burnished steel of their armor turning into ordinary, unbrushed aluminum.


    "Being made to it is," I said, as Akane lowered her arm cannon. Turns out, while anti-transformative armor is totally possible, it''s rarely considered worthwhile, just because near-masters of transformation like Akane were so rare. Regular armor was usually quite enough to protect one from an amateur trying to turn you to stone, but Akane? Akane knew exactly what she was doing. "C''mon, guys. Let''s keep moving before Skinner gets away."


    The anti-teleportation field projectors, while better than nothing in terms of preventing her from simply stepping through a door here and exiting in Milwaukee, weren''t super strong in any given area, to compensate for how wide of an area I figured we might need to cover.


    We kept scanning as we went, descending deeper and deeper into the complex of concrete and reddish lights, following the conduits of power and data that seemed to connect all the security cameras (which, naturally, were all now disabled) to a single centralized location.


    And then, finally, we arrived at that centralized location.


    "She might be in the bathroom," Lady Venus said hopefully, as I looked over the desks.


    "No, she isn''t," I said, as one of my tentacles darted out to grab a sheet of paper that literally had my name on it. "''To the inestimable Doctor Roxanne Updyke. You''ve done well to divine my plans and trace me to this base. However, I finished my preparations months beforehand, and have nothing left to do but wait for the big day to arrive, and occasionally pop back to put out fires. In the meantime, I hear the beaches on Earth C-192 are nice at all times of year. Graciously, Doctor Skinner.''"


    "Ah," Lisa said, intelligently.


    "Alright, we are in a failure state," I said simply, gripping my gun tightly. "A recoverable failure state, but still a failure state."


    "We really do have to just... wait for her to show up, on Super Bowl Sunday," Nicky said.


    "Wait, if she''s not here," Lisa began, "how did the spirit bullets point to here?"


    "Last location on this plane, probably," I said. "She portaled out of this room, probably in a mole machine, and then burrowed to the surface on a new world." I sighed. "Alright, well. Let''s go home, I guess."


    "Would it make you feel better if we blew the place up behind us?" Akane asked.


    "Not really. Let''s just... let''s just leave."

 Book 5 Chapter 11

    "Fuck a duck."


    8-Ball''s escape and recapture would, under normal circumstances, be the main thing upsetting Valiant when I reported to him.


    Right now, however, he was perhaps somewhat more concerned with the fact that Skinner was in another universe, where we couldn''t get to her.


    "I think the worst part is that we have to be here," I said. "For two whole weeks, leading up to the game, just to make sure there''s no funny business going on. In fucking Arizona!"


    Phoenix was... Well. I know that, to everyone not from the American Southwest, it''ll sound awful rich for a Texan to complain about how unreasonably warm and dry Arizona was, but there was a genuine, noticeable difference.


    Also, it was full of people from out of town who came here for the Super Bowl. Valiant and I were among that group, technically, but I sure didn''t feel any kinship with the rest of them, being as I''d come here because it was my job, and otherwise did not give a fuck about sports.


    "There''s a possibility this isn''t resolved on the 12th, right?" Valiant asked.


    "Unfortunately, yeah," I said, nodding. "There''s the slim possibility that, while we do foil Skinner''s plot, she remains at large. Akane''s working on finding a way to travel between dimensions herself, but uh... she''s not too hopeful about getting that working anytime soon. She''s smart, and working in one of her specialties, under the sweet spot of pressure to speed things along, but..." I shrugged. "It''s a goddamn complicated project, and she''s just not there yet."


    "Mm," Valiant said. "...How likely do you think that possibility is?"


    "Not very," I said, shaking my head. "Doctor Skinner doesn''t strictly need to be here for her plan to go off. But she will be anyways. I know her, and her neuroses. And if she''s here..." I shrugged. "Well, if she''s here, we can deal with her. We don''t need to hide the fact we know where she is anymore, not at this point, so I can simply set up a particularly big Stopwatch to disable her portal gun if she enters the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. At that point, she can''t run."


    "Stopwatch?"


    "Jargon. Means a simple Control-based device that solely acts to disable other devices. A staple in the arsenal of mad scientists gearing up to fight other mad scientists."


    "Mmm." He sighed.


    "There''ll be some other, non-gadget based snares as well," I added. "It turns out a spellcaster who works with creatures made of reified thoughts and emotions in a world parallel to ours can create effects that''ll fuck up the ability of a specific person we really hate to do any interdimensional travel."


    "That''s good to hear, it''s just..." He sighed again, louder. "I can''t keep doing this shit."


    "...Beg pardon?" I asked.


    "I''ve been kvetching a lot, but honestly, while this crisis is a crisis, and something that demanded my attention... this sort of bullshit happens all the time. Back in 2020, it was some asshole creating Kaiju in a laboratory under the sea, and swearing to release one every week until his demands were met. In 2019, it was another asshole who took over the Russian government and tried to recreate the Russian Empire, causing a huge war that pretty much destroyed the entire idea of Russia, and completely rearranging the geopolitics of North Asia."


    "What the fuck."


    "2018? A bioweapon- a virus designed to kill all the mosquitos in the world."


    "Um."


    "2017, someone was attempting to steal all of America''s pennies because the existence of a coin that small and useless offended them, and they felt that, if the government wasn''t going to take them out of circulation, they''d do it themselves, the hard way."


    "I feel like you''re starting to fuck with me."


    "2016, a cabal of villains propped up a cartoonishly cruel, vindictive, and incompetent business magnate in the presidential election in order to destabilize the government."


    "Okay, I get it, life is just one goddamn thing after another for you," I said. "You understand, then, why I want to retire?"


    "Oh, no, life is not just one goddamn thing after another," Valiant said. "Often, the goddamn things overlap. You think the Russian War was over and done with in just a year? Hell, you think it''s over and done with now? It isn''t! I mean, sure, the war itself is over, but we are still cleaning up the absolute fucking mess that was made of half of Eurasia. And that''s not even touching the ecosystem restoration that has to be done on the places where the anti-mosquito virus was successfully released- mostly, very fragile and very important wetlands."


    "Are you making a point, or simply kvetching?" I asked.


    "I''m making the point that, perhaps, I may continue to need your help," Valiant said, wearily.


    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    "...We already have a deal," I said simply. "I''m going to retire with a good pension."


    "Yes, seven hundred thousand a year, adjusting for inflation, so long as I never hear from you again," Valiant said. "I''ll honor five hundred thousand of that amount in exchange for removing the requirement that you never make yourself known to me again. And any additional help... well. I''m aware we''ll have to negotiate that separately."


    "Mmm." I huffed. "You may find yourself surprised by the help I end up providing."


    "Oh?"


    "Akane is interested in recreating a social structure for mad science in this world," I said. "One based on the one from A-510, but adapted to the fundamentally different role of the supernatural here on B-944. We''re hopeful that, with our different approach, we can create a more... pro-social crop of demiurges than we generally have on A-510. One that retains my general ability to pull new tricks out of my ass, but leaves behind the less pleasant parts of my personality."


    "I see," Valiant said, nodding.


    "Of course," I continued, "there''s the possibility that this whole endeavor is largely unsuccessful, or even counterproductive, but, y''know. Nothing is without risk."


    "I say it''s still worth a careful, cautious shot," Valiant said.


    We ran out of things to say, and just stood there, soaking in the view from the rooftop of the local superhero office, or whatever the fuck Valiant''s department was called- I had deliberately never learned it, always considering the matter to be unworthy of my time and attention.


    "Around the decay of that colossal wreck," I quoted, able to see past the edge of Phoenix''s exurban sprawl and the few little farms here and there. "Boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away."


    "You really do not like Arizona, huh?" Valiant remarked.


    "There''s room for improvement," I said.


    "Also, we''re in the Valley Of The Sun, emphasis on Valley. Nothing around here is lone or level."


    "I love you, Dad."


    "Love you too, you little brat. Now stop trying to distract me from nitpicking your flawed metaphor. Phoenix may be a monument to man''s hubris, but it is not yet a decaying, colossal wreck. Ozymandias is either still alive or within living memory, and his statue stands proud and tall."


    "Someone here probably will argue that Phoenix is a decaying wreck," I said. "Probably someone in their forties who thinks the golden age was the time when they were between eight and sixteen, but that person would still argue it nonetheless."


    "Oh really? And are they here to argue that point?" Valiant shook his head. "Nearly two million people live in this valley. You can''t rightly call such a dense population center a decaying wreck. Decay and ruin is bad for population density. You think anyone would live here if they didn''t have access to modern amenities like air conditioning?"


    "Speaking of air conditioning, can we go inside now?" I asked. "My transhumanism might protect me from heat stroke, but that doesn''t make the temperature around here comfortable."


    "That''s probably a good idea, yes," Valiant said, nodding and straightening up, turning away from the guard rail. "My armor has a cooling system, but it chews up a lot of battery, and I don''t think I can afford this indulgence for much longer. Recharging these batteries is expensive. Unless you have something else you''d like to tell me with an expectation of privacy?"


    "Ah, right," I said, nodding. "It''s about 8-Ball, and how they got me thinking about how other people think about me. 8-Ball thought I was their nemesis, their equal and opposite- I mentioned that, right?"


    "You did, yes," Valiant said, nodding.


    "And how I didn''t feel even remotely the same way?"


    "Mhm."


    "Now... I know that Skinner also considers me to be her nemesis- a former student, now a fellow master, still slightly inferior but capable of punching above her weight..."


    "Mhm?"


    "And I kind of do feel the same way," I continued. "But the thing that I''ve been thinking about for the past few hours, waiting on you to land in Phoenix, is... should I feel the same way?"


    "Hrm..."


    "After all," I continued. "Nothing says two people have to think of each other the same way. And yet, I did feel that compulsion to see her like a mirror. Perhaps..."


    "Perhaps," Valiant said, nodding. He got it, even without me saying it out loud.


    <hr>


    "Oh what fresh hell is this," I muttered as I walked into the hotel suite we''d rented for the duration of our stay here- it was a cramped three-room affair, whose only real amenities compared to a regular hotel room were a kitchenette to go along with the bed, TV, and bathroom, but thankfully, with our Virtual Machines, we could all pack pretty light and still get our computer-based work done.


    "Ah, you must be Doctor Updyke," a familiar-looking woman with bone white skin and hair and blood red eyes said. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Vanessa Vega, also known as Lady Virtue, at your service. I hope you don''t mind me taking the opportunity to visit my sister while she was nearby?"


    I sighed, shooting off a quick message to Nicky. Do you want me to make her leave?


    Nicky simply nodded while her older sister wasn''t looking.


    "You''ll have to do that some other time, unfortunately," I said dryly. "I have classified information to share which you have neither the clearance nor pressing need to know, and then I need to take a shower and decompress from a long day. Entertaining royalty is going to have to wait."


    "I understand, although I do feel I should mention I''m far less persnickety about the hospitality I receive than you may think," Virtue said. "Nonetheless, a dismissal is a dismissal, and I''ll see you later."


    She slipped past me and out the door, lingering for just a moment to turn and address Nicky.


    "Really, Veronica, you must call me more often," Virtue said. "I miss talking to my sister."


    Then she actually left, and I could close the door.


    "The hell was that about?" I asked.


    "Vanessa and Vincent are Mom''s favorites," Nicky said bitterly. "They''re as loyal as snakes can be; when Mom decides she''s the wrong person to work someone over, she either sends Vincent, who''s a lot more aggressive, or Vanessa, who''s a lot more diplomatic and submissive-seeming. I''m pretty sure Vanessa''s here to make sure I''m still loyal to the Vegan cause, and maybe win you over, too."


    "Oh, christ," I muttered. "And of course, Gravitas comes with a resistance to psychic mojo, so I''m going to have to figure out what she''s playing at the hard way."


    "Welcome to my life," Nicky said, flopping backwards onto the bed. "Now you understand just that little bit better why I live in Texas instead of California." She groaned loudly.


    "You don''t have any plans for the rest of the day, do you?" Lisa asked.


    "No," Nicky said.


    "Right. Well, you need a way out of this funk, stat," Lisa said. "Roxy, what say you give our neighbors cause to file a noise complaint?"


    "Not where I thought you were going with this," Nicky said. "But, much appreciated."


    "Well, if that''s what it takes to make my girlfriend feel better..." I said with a shrug.

 Book 5 Chapter 12

    Princess Vega herself tended to throw her weight around. This was rather noticeable, but also risky; when it failed to work, it was, at best, embarrassing, but also grounds to demand somebody leave. Vanessa, however...


    "Here, Doctor," Vanessa said, offering me a big ol'' paper cup with a plastic lid. "I asked my sister, and she told me your preferred Starbucks order."


    Vanessa, rather than the Lady Virtue outfit, was now garbed in far more normal clothing, and in fact looked like an ordinary- if outrageously curvy- woman in her mid-to-late 20s ready for another day in the office.


    "I wasn''t aware I was being issued a secretary," I said dryly, nonetheless accepting the cup from her. I may not want her around me, but... actually, no, I was in fact perfectly willing to waste a "perfectly good" (read: mediocre) hot chocolate to make her go away. Still, given her stance as a polite, subservient professional who''s Just Trying To Help, and also knows what she''s doing well enough to avoid being perceived as Getting In The Goddamn Way, it was going to be hard to get her to leave without looking unreasonable or tyrannical in the process.


    And as Nicky had pointed out after I''d helped her clear her head, if House Vega decided they just could not work with me? Well, just because Valerie Vega couldn''t order Nicky around anymore- on account Nicky had decided she was my agent now, not hers- didn''t mean she was powerless to make life hard for me.


    "You weren''t," Vanessa said with a shrug. "Not officially, at least. This is simply... how I try to be friendly. At least at first."


    "Oh?" I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.


    "Vegan culture has different ideas about what constitutes friendly behavior than American culture," Vanessa said. "I may have been born and raised in Massachusetts, but I was raised by Princess Valerie Vega, and have a fluent understanding of our homeworld''s culture as well."


    "And..." I punctuated this with a noisy sip of hot chocolate, in hopes that her desire to be funny would make her get to the point as quickly and shockingly as possible, to provoke a spit take.


    "And generally, Vegans and Americans react very differently to an acquaintance greeting them with hugs and kisses."


    I opened my telepathic chat line with Nicky.


    Roxy: hey nicky


    Roxy: does vegan culture consider greeting an acquaintance with hugs and kisses to be normal


    Nicky: It''s a bit intimate for acquaintances, but between friends it''s not that weird.


    Nicky: Of course, my sister isn''t stupid, and is well aware that it wouldn''t be a merely friendly gesture with you.


    Nicky: It''s not exactly hard to tell that you''re a lesbian, and takes very little additional work to figure out that your tastes lean towards the curvy.


    Nicky: So, uh.


    Roxy: your sister is attempting to seduce me, is what youre getting at


    Nicky: Probably, yes.


    Nicky: Now, I''m aware that she''s hot, and also you''re capable of enough self control to push her away after you''ve had your fun, but.


    Nicky: If you put me in a spit chain with my own sister, I will literally kill you.


    Roxy: duly noted


    "A bit, yeah," I said, after finishing my prolonged sip. "In the name of locating the boundaries before they''re crossed, I do not tolerate being touched without my express permission, and my automated systems will light you on fire if you do so."


    She didn''t look even a bit crestfallen as she shrugged. "You understand, then, why I''m attempting to take this slowly. At any rate, Valiant has been shuffled to a new office, and I came down here to guide you to it for the meeting."


    "I''m quite good at finding people who don''t want to be found," I said as I strode past her towards the building''s elevator. "I think I can handle finding a guy who does want to be found."


    "Of course," she said diplomatically, sweeping after me. "Likewise, I am more than capable of flying. Nonetheless, we shouldn''t have to employ either of those talents inside an office building simply to get to a meeting, hence why there are elevators and guides."


    I grunted as she glided into the elevator after me, hitting the button for the floor Valiant''s new office was on. Apparently, she only took a dismissal for a dismissal when she felt like it.


    "Why are you really here?" I asked, once the doors closed.


    "Pardon?" Vanessa asked.


    "I asked your sister," I continued. "You live in San Francisco. Not exactly a stone''s throw from Phoenix. And then, there is the fact that you do not have any powers your sister, who''s already a well-established part of my entourage, does not also have. You''re far from home, and bringing nothing new to the table. Convenience and civic duty don''t explain it. So... Why, Vanessa, are you here?"


    She blinked a few times, and then sighed dramatically.


    "Simply put," Vanessa said. "I''m here to clean up the mess my mother made." She turned to face the elevator door, gaining a bit of a faraway look in her eyes. "We''re a family in diaspora, you know. Our culture, on this planet, exists within... five, maybe six or seven people? We''re scared, and alone, and the world is not always so friendly. My mother is... a bit of a blunt instrument. She attempts to win friends. I, meanwhile? I actually grew up here. I understand, in a way she doesn''t, that if we''re going to survive, we need to take a more... flexible approach. Compromising, and behaving in ways that people already like, rather than the more traditional ''my way or the highway'' approach that comes so naturally to the spoiled princess." She huffed a laugh, shaking her head. "I may call myself Lady, but don''t mistake that for an ardent belief in aristocracy and monarchy. I''m an American girl who nonetheless can''t help but feel special when someone treats her like a princess."


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    "Mm," I said. "So, it''s your belief that your family is a sort of underdog, and simply trying to survive in a hostile world?"


    "Not a world that is always hostile," Vanessa corrected me. "The United States is always at least a little friendly towards blonde white women. But the United States is also an assimilationist hegemon, and does not always smile upon foreigners bringing their culture with them. Even when that culture is only a little bit to do with aristocracy, and more about simply being a bit more openly loving than is normal." She huffed again. "Really, it''s the love parts that bother people more." Oh, that was rich coming from the daughter of a woman who forbade her children from having publicly-acknowledged lovers. "You wouldn''t believe the sorts of comments I got simply for looking the way I do."


    "I''ve known your sister for half a year, now," I said dryly. "My horizons are not nearly so narrow as you think."


    The elevator reached its destination, and I stepped out.


    "At any rate," I said as she ghosted behind me. "I fundamentally do not give a shit about you or your family. You can safely rule me out as a threat, but if you''re looking for an ally, then you''re looking in the wrong place. Now, if you''ll excuse me-" or even if she wouldn''t, I didn''t give two shits. "-I have a meeting to attend to."


    I opened the door to Valiant''s office and closed it behind me, before she could swoop in and join us. For good measure, I locked the door.


    "They''re very persistent, aren''t they?" Valiant said, faux-pleasantly.


    "Very," I said. "Now, have you spoken to the city council about those permits?"


    "I did, yes, and the good news is..."


    <hr>


    "Your sister is greatly annoying," I said as I returned to the hotel room.


    "She''s worse when she doesn''t need you to like her," Nicky said, idly stroking Akane''s hair as Akane worked some more on her research. "Is she actively getting in the way, or simply annoying you?"


    "Being annoying, mostly," I said. "Still, I would like to be rid of her."


    "If you figure out how to do that, let me know," Nicky said. "I''ve known her all my life, and I couldn''t figure out anything better than living in Texas. Anyway, you done for the day, or..."


    "No, I came by to take a short break and get a kiss, but I have more work that needs doing today," I said sadly. "Gotta build that big ol'' Stopwatch, after all. It''ll take a bit, but with the robots helping me, we should get it done pretty quickly."


    "How quickly?"


    "...I''ll be pretty late coming back to the room."


    "Ah."


    <hr>


    "No," I said, loudly and firmly, as Vanessa Vega came in for a landing.


    "...Beg pardon?" Vanessa asked, before her feet touched the ground.


    "This is a construction zone utilizing dangerous supernatural technology," I said. "Your mere presence risks sparking a cascading failure that edits an entire city block''s Wikipedia article to be in the past tense. Leave my jobsite immediately, and do not come back."


    She did so without complaint or hesitation, which was, I suppose, to her credit.


    "Columbo, how''re those guy wires coming along?" I called.


    "Working as intended, boss!" the automaton called back.


    "Good to hear."


    <hr>


    "Alright," I muttered, walking into Walmart- not where I wanted to do my grocery shopping, but with how late it was, everywhere else was closed, and it wasn''t like HEB had spread outside of Texas, let alone all the way to Arizona. "Whole chicken, cheap stockpot, lots of vegetables. Shouldn''t be hard to find. Let''s start... with the stockpot, which can afford to sit around in the cart the longest."


    While Nicky could fly, she was also capable of recognizing that leaving the hotel room when her family was in town was an unpleasant option, and so it fell to me, and my possession of our rented car, to go out and buy food.


    "Oh you''ve got to be fucking kidding me," I whispered as Vanessa turned to regard me, right as I rounded a corner onto what turned out to be the wrong goddamn aisle.


    "Roxy," she said. "Didn''t expect to see you here." She leaned forward a little bit, bringing the scented candle in her hands closer to her nose. "Hrm. What''s your favorite candle scent, if I might ask?"


    "Suck my dick," I said.


    She briefly bluescreened, blinking a few times in rapid succession.


    "I. Beg your pardon?" she asked.


    "You heard me," I said. It was past midnight in a Walmart, in the goddamn scented candle aisle, so we weren''t exactly surrounded by thronging crowds. "You wanna win me over so bad? On your knees, mouth open, eyes closed."


    She blinked a few more times.


    "...Well," she said with a shrug. "That''s actually ideal for me, provided I''m right and it''ll keep me out from under Mother''s thumb..."


    "What," I said flatly.


    "Roxanne, darling, I am well aware that I am annoying you," Vanessa said. "I am twenty six, not fourteen. However, all the same, I do need your general presence to act as a sort of shield for me, to get my mother off my back- I''m hardly any more able to tell her no than poor Veronica is, I''ll have you know. And, well, if I can inform her that becoming your lover is what it costs to keep you and your household on-side... it''s hardly like she can expect me to work more than one full-time angle at once, can she?"


    "Oh my god," I said. "Look. I already have a girlfriend, and a Vega living with me full-time. Housebreaking her was enough of a project, and I have no desire to do it a second time."


    "Even better," Vanessa said. "My mother prizes discretion, so if she sees no evidence that the two of us are fucking, or even living together, she''ll assume I''m simply doing an excellent job, rather than suspect that I''m lying to her. All without either of us having to sleep with someone we simply are not that into."


    "...What do you want?" I asked, wearily.


    "Well, my mother does, at first, need to see some evidence that I''m accomplishing anything," Vanessa said. "I don''t suppose you''d mind a faux rendezvous here and there while you''re in town, would you?"


    "Provided that it simply involves being in the same building, and I stop having to deal with you being in the way..."


    "Of course," Vanessa said, nodding. "The most I''ll ask is that you sit in a Starbucks bathroom for five minutes."


    "Fine. We have a deal, then."

 Book 5 Chapter 13

    "I can''t wait to be done with this job and this city," I said.


    "Only a few more days," Akane promised me, her body pressed back up against mine in a warming, soothing presence, reassuring me that I did, in fact, at least have this respite still. That, as far away from home as I was, our hearts had come with us.


    Also, she was graciously allowing me to use her titties like stress balls, which was massively helpful in helping me calm down.


    "A few more days, and you never have to come back to this city ever again," Akane said.


    "I''d promise that you won''t have to see my sister ever again, either, but I don''t exactly control her, and she seems like she might have something deeper going on than I thought," Nicky added. She was leaning against my shoulder, which was comforting too. We''d learned that I didn''t terribly care for being the little spoon, or otherwise hugged from behind. At least, not for extended periods. It wasn''t intolerable, I just didn''t like it very much. However, I had three girlfriends, and only really one person-width worth of real estate on my front, so...


    ...Nicky sat facing away from me, and leaned her back against my shoulder. And Lisa was doing something similar, except facing towards me instead, and draping herself over myself and Akane.


    "I want to know what''s going on, with her," Nicky said. "I know, Roxy, you don''t care about her, and would rather she just fuck off and die in a fire, but-"


    "But she''s your sister, and you''re at a point where that still matters," I said, nodding. "Meanwhile, you are my girlfriend, and so I am willing to inconvenience myself to help you with things that are important to you."


    "Right. So..."


    "So, thankfully, we do have a rendezvous scheduled tomorrow, to which I can bring some wolfsbane and my ability to read minds," I said. "And, y''know, tell her that I require access to her mind in order to assure myself of her honesty. We''ll learn something about her true intentions and loyalties either way."


    "What, you can''t be surreptitious about it?" Lisa asked.


    "She''d notice her Gravitas going away," Nicky said.


    "Also, I only invade people''s minds without permission in circumstances where physically attacking them would be, if not productive, than at least understandable," I said. "Uninvited mental invasion is an act of violence. And I try to be careful with that sort of thing."


    "Yaaay, ethics!" Akane cheered.


    "Remember when you read my mind without permission when we first met?" I said innocently.


    "...In my defense," Akane began. She paused, clearly expecting to be interrupted. "...Um. Uhhhh..." She looked around. "...I didn''t, at the time, understand how anyone could feel threatened by a hot co-ed with huge knockers?"


    "Co-educational refers to dormitories of mixed gender, as well as the people who live in them," Nicky pointed out. "Given that your roommate has always been me, you did not ever qualify as a co-ed."


    "Okay, but the fact I''m a cuddly and fuckable golden retriever of a person isn''t in dispute, right?" Akane said.


    "Oh, not at all," I said. "An absolute ray of sunshine, albeit one that''s partially shining through an unusually pornographic lithophane."


    "A what?" Lisa asked.


    "They''re these thin sheets of stone, or some other hard and mostly-homogeneous material," Nicky said. "They have images etched in them so that, when light shines through them, the thin bits show up as light and the thick as dark, creating a monochromatic image. Usually they''re not translucent enough to visibly project the image onto another surface? But visibility depends on a lot of factors."


    "...Did you have a brief period of fascination with lithophanes?" I asked.


    "I developed my own tool for turning 2D images into 3D printable lithophanes," Nicky admitted. "It was a fun distraction, although I lost interest a week after I finished it, having mostly used it to render pictures of me and Akane from our college days, along with one singular picture of me next to my VTuber-sona, the digital copy of which I deleted all evidence of."


    "Fair enough," I said. "We''ll likely have to take some more group photos to add to your collection, then. A few with clothes, so you don''t have to hide them. And... well."


    "A few without, so we can make a real version of my metaphorical porn-stone?" Akane suggested.


    "Exactly. Good girl."


    <hr>


    It was Friday, February the 10th, 2023. The Super Bowl would start this upcoming Sunday at 4:30 PM, and the Halftime Show- which we were pretty sure would be when Skinner would activate her short burst of mass mind control- would be... probably between 5:30 and 6:00 PM. It depended on how the game played out; despite the game officially lasting for one hour, and being divided up into four quarters that were each nominally a quarter hour long, American Football was a game of constant stop-and-start and wasted time, with the average NFL game- of a game that was supposed to last one hour- running for three hours.


    How anyone in the country watched this sport without getting bored as hell was beyond me.


    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    "So," I said, after entering a motel room on the edge of town which Vanessa had checked out. "There is a new condition to our continued cooperation."


    "No, I will not actually have sex with you," Vanessa said, not looking up from her phone. "I may be bisexual, but I prefer my women a great deal shorter than you."


    "Luckily, the condition is not that," I said, silently opening up my text chat with Nicky as I continued onward.


    Roxy: did you know that your sister is bisexual or


    Nicky: It''s the cultural norm for Vega. For women, at least.


    Nicky: She''s not openly bisexual, because homophobia exists here, but I am well aware that she lusts for the sweet flesh of the fairer sex.


    Roxy: so your brothers...


    Nicky: Vegan men are culturally expected to be exclusively heterosexual, yes.


    Roxy: why is your home planet Like That


    Nicky: Devil knows and heaven suspects.


    "Really, it''s quite simple," I continued. "I require further assurance regarding your motivation. All you have to do is sit there and allow me to temporarily disable your power with wolfsbane so I can take a good, long look at your mind."


    She froze.


    "...You''re joking," Vanessa said, after a brief pause. "You want to take away from me the one place where I can do whatever I want."


    "It''s pretty invasive, I''m aware," I said. "That being said, I would like to assure you that, aside from the possibility that you''re lying to me about how deep in cahoots you are with your mother, I really, truly do not give a shit what goes on within your brain, and will not share a single thought of yours with anyone at all."


    She sighed, letting her hand and phone drop into her lap.


    "...I''m just going to have to take that on faith, aren''t I?" she asked, turning to regard me with a wearily mournful look in her bright red eyes. "I can''t read minds myself, after all, so how am I to know that any reciprocal reading you might offer is truthful?"


    "It''s a shitty and unequal power dynamic," I said, nodding. "The only solace I can offer is that I don''t intend to use it more than the once, nor do I intend to use it to hurt you- aside from rejecting your offer of cooperation if I think you lied to me."


    "Well." She floated back down to rest on the bed, creasing the sheets lightly. "It''s still a better deal than my mother ever offered me. Go for it."


    Wolfsbane flared gently, disabling her powers, and hers alone. And with that... I dove into her mind.


    People are complicated. It varies from person to person, possibly more or less than you might think, but Vanessa Vega was more complicated than usual. I saw her yearnings, her desires, her fears, her hopes, her weird hyperspecific opinions about the littlest things in life- some of it was the fact that her ideal outfit for her to wear around was an oversized sweater with matching thigh highs, but some of it was far less enticing, like her nitpicks about The Empire Strikes Back, or the criteria of what constituted an appealing houseplant to her.


    I couldn''t help but soak in these little things for a bit. I wanted to get to know people, often irrespective of whether or not I liked the person in question. Understanding people appealed to me, not just as a way to better understand how to make them do what I wanted, but also as a sort of mirror onto myself, which only got clearer, the more and more I came to understand the human condition.


    Underneath the melange of endearing details and unpleasant thought patterns and records of the genuinely shitty things she''d done to other people, though, was what I was really, truly here for:


    Vanessa Vega hated her mother. She hated the pressure and expectations Valerie had pressed upon her. Vanessa Vega hated that she couldn''t choose her own life, that she couldn''t even- and this was a common mental refrain for her, when she was ranting and raving to herself- have so much as a Tinder account, let alone an OnlyFans.


    It wasn''t entirely sexual frustration, but it was emblematic of how Vanessa Vega was a grown adult woman with her own desires and drives, and had been systematically denied the autonomy to fulfill them if they didn''t happen to align with her mother''s plans.


    There were parts of her that thought her mother''s power-grabbing was stupid and pointless, but more because that power-grabbing stood in the way of Vanessa living her best life, rather than any true ethical objection.


    And so, at the end...


    ...Was Vanessa Vega a good person? Not really. She was, in fact, actually kind of an asshole, just like Nicky said she was.


    But she was a miserable asshole who truly did resent her mother for inflicting that misery, and I couldn''t bring myself to think that Vanessa deserved that misery.


    "Alright," I said, once I was finished with my assessment and turned off the wolfsbane. "I trust you."


    "How gracious of you," Vanessa said, floating back up into the air. "Don''t you have somewhere to be?"


    "I''m fucking your sister," I said.


    Vanessa froze.


    "...What?" Vanessa asked.


    "I, Doctor Roxanne Updyke, have had carnal knowledge of Veronica Vega, who prefers being called Nicky, as a way of distancing herself from her mother and her big ideas," I said. "I understand, quite intimately, just how much it sucks to be living under Valerie''s thumb, when you want things- perfectly normal things for a person to want- that she''s arbitrarily decided you aren''t allowed to have. And... so does your sister. She''s even less loyal to House Vega than you are. You can talk to her in confidence. Just... maybe start it off by apologizing for being a bitch to her about the Fourth of July incident."


    Vanessa eyed me warily.


    "What''s your motive, here?"


    "Simple," I said with a shrug. "I love Nicky dearly, and am aware she has a stronger attachment to her family than I have to mine. If I can make her distant older sister swallow her own pride and talk to her in private confidence like a sister should... well, that''s just the loving thing to do, isn''t it?"


    "Mm," Vanessa said quietly. "...I suppose it''s also blackmail material, to make me feel more comfortable. If I told Mom about you and Nicky..."


    "Yeah, that''d ruin my day," I said, nodding. "And we both know you''re not going to do that, because you''d much rather live under my uncaring dismissive gaze than Valerie''s demanding thumb. You just, y''know, have a way out, in case you ever change your mind."


    "...Thanks, Roxy," Vanessa said. "She goes by Nicky, hm? I wonder if I should pick a nickname like that..."


    "What, like Nessie?" I asked. "Or does that remind you too much of a Twilight reference to be comfortable?"


    "God," Vanessa said, chuckling and shaking her head. "You are the fucking worst."


    "I try. Take care, and good luck sorting yourself out." I turned back to the door, opening it up and pausing in the doorway. "Also, my favorite scent is vanilla."


    "Wha-"


    And then I shut the door behind me, and left. I''d spent enough time babysitting Nicky''s sister. It was time I got back on track.

 Book 5 Chapter 14

    "Chiefs versus Eagles," Akane murmured. "Man, am I glad I don''t give a shit about these teams at all."


    "The offer to temporarily disable your ability to give a shit about sports in general still stands," Silas said.


    We were gathered in our hotel room, out of ''uniform,'' and just amiably shooting the shit to get ourselves ready, and calm our nerves a little. It was Sunday, February 12th, 12:03 PM Mountain Standard Time, and the kickoff was in three and a half hours.


    "I have a bet going with Annie-" Nicky began.


    "Who?" I asked, skritch skritch skritching at Lisa''s fluffy ears.


    "My sister, who is upset with you because she could''ve started using Nessa and alliterated with me in the process, but then you made a joke about how Nessie would be a reference to the vampire baby in Twilight whose name was some Pokemon bullshit."


    "How did you housebreak another Vegan this quickly?" Silas asked.


    "Practice makes perfect," I said with a shrug. "Also, it was a half-vampire baby and her name was Renesmee. If I have to remember this, then so do you."


    "Anyway," Nicky said strenuously. "I have a bet going with my sister Annie for twenty dollars over who''s going to win. She''s going to be recording the game without actually watching it- for all of today, she''ll be sitting in her hotel room and watching some VTuber compilations instead."


    "I bet you ten dollars that Gretzky scores a home run," I said.


    "That''s hockey and baseball," Akane said.


    "Ah, shit, now I know how Beckham feels every time he knocks over a wicket."


    "Soccer and cricket."


    "Look, I''m no Usain Bolt superfan, okay? I can''t stay perfectly up to date on the little brother of war."


    "Sprinting and lacrosse. Also, I am going to stuff you into a locker if you keep making fun of the idea of liking sports."


    "I''m out of references, anyway," I admitted. "It''s been a while since I watched Cool Runnings."


    "Are all your preparations in place?" Silas asked.


    "They are, yes," I said, nodding. "Checked ''em this morning, but I should check ''em again just to be sure." I put a finger to my ear, and toggled the speakerphone mode that''d make sure everyone in the room heard what I did. "Antlion, report."


    "The Stopwatch is online, with no signs of tampering," Antlion said. "Effective range is all the way to the other side of the mountains."


    "Good work. Be sure it stays that way. Columbo, report."


    "The Eye Of God is online, and scanning regularly," Columbo said. "I know exactly how many people are in this Valley, and who they are. Princess Vega is at the stadium herself, schmoozing with officials right now."


    "Remember when you said the only way the halftime show would live up to the hype is if your mom did a striptease?" Lisa said, sprawled across my lap.


    "I think we should see other people," Nicky told her.


    "Is Doctor Skinner in this valley yet?" I asked.


    "She is not," Columbo said.


    "Fair. Keep your eyes peeled, Columbo. If you need a break, tap Argus to relieve you. That''s what he''s there for."


    "Got it, boss."


    "And Akane, you ran the diagnostics on our flight modules, right?" I asked.


    "Mhm!" Akane said. "All of us are good to go, on that front. We can get to the stadium without worrying about traffic. That part of the city is designed for it, but... well. Traffic sucks no matter what, so..."


    "In that case," Silas said as a timer dinged, before pulling a disposable aluminum pan from our oversized toaster oven (which we would be giving to someone who lived here before we left, having bought it specifically because a kitchenette did not contain a real oven) and setting it on our tiny little table before removing the top foil cover. "The Phoenix is an old protegee of mine, and was perfectly happy to let me spend Shabbat in her backyard, teaching her how to make barbecue mutton. She had a hard time holding up her end of the bargain, but I did manage to part her from enough leftovers to furnish a good lunch for us all."


    "I''m writing you into my will," I said.


    "You''re the best uncle ever," Akane said.


    "Hrmphl," Lisa said around a mouthful of barbecue.


    <hr>


    "She''s here."


    I had forced myself- and the others, upon request- into a state of meditative calm, upon getting the news, four hours later.


    We geared up by the numbers, with zero mistakes or forgotten items from our checklists.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    We headed quickly, discreetly, and efficiently to the back halls of the stadium- where we had been waiting patiently for this moment- and began to move towards our target.


    In the corner of my mind, I had a map of the city with Doctor Skinner''s location marked on it- in one of the stadium''s outbuildings, skulking around and futzing with gear she''d planted (and we''d subtly sabotaged because of course we found it right next to the stadium before now), putting on the finishing touches.


    I''ve been thinking about this moment for a long while. My actual, final confrontation with Doctor Skinner. My journey started with her; it seemed, inexorably, like it should end with her.


    I felt many different ways about that idea, really. Mostly, I thought about the different things that could constitute ''my journey.'' My journey as a bounty hunter, as a mildly-legitimized quasi-hitman, as a hero? Well, I did plan to retire after this. But then, I''d planned to retire after the previous job, too- the last job I ever did with Jason Thronebreaker, disrupting a blood magic ritual and breaking the back of the most powerful vampire faction in Texas. And, well... look how well that worked out.


    I flashed my badge at the security guards, who stepped aside and let us pass into the outbuilding without so much as a break in our stride.


    Skinner had portaled directly into this building from another universe, and had set up a little command center, strewn with various panel screens showing various camera feeds and sensor readings. The portal gun sat, useless and abandoned, on a table near the corner, a small stack of paper already haphazardly set atop it, its purpose having been served for now.


    "Hello, Roxanne," Beatrice Faith Skinner said, having known I was coming.


    She was, in the end, an unremarkable-looking woman. Average height, average-to-slender build, mid-to-late forties. White, with dark brown hair, and brown-hazel eyes.


    We shared a few similarities in coloration, but from her small, rounded nose, to her unobtrusive jaw, to her fairly straight and uncurled hair, she really did look nothing like me, or even that Gideon loser who looked a lot like I would by this point if I had been cis.


    "Hi, Beatrice," I said.


    What other words were necessary at this point? We each had each other''s measure- she knew I''d shoot her if she spent too long talking, and I knew she didn''t tolerate other people stealing her thunder.


    All of the screens strewn about the room flashed a common image- that of Skinner''s masterwork, the technosorcerous idol meant to permanently enslave everyone who gazed upon it to her will.


    The idol hadn''t been kept here, unfortunately, and so it did still work just fine. But Skinner had installed it in a hidden chamber under the floor, where lights and cameras would generate a good visual feed for the show.


    The thing she didn''t quite realize was, we''d painstakingly built a second, identical chamber, and placed in there our own mind control idol, before painstakingly rerouting all the camera feeds. What ended up happening was the real idol''s chamber simply told the fake idol what it was supposed to look like- through an automated system too fundamentally unintelligent to be mind-controlled- before the fake idol transformed to look precisely like the real idol, so that the cameras pointed at it would be fed into Skinner''s system. And after Skinner did her last-day diagnostics and testing... it would shut itself off, before it could actually be used.


    "Hrm," Skinner hummed. "That didn''t quite work, did it?"


    "It did not," I said, nodding.


    "Rerouted the cameras to a self-correcting counterfeit?"


    "It''s a simple trick, but clearly, it works."


    "Bravo, Doctor," Skinner said, clapping a few times. "I''ll get you next time, Gadget, exit stage left, pursued by bear."


    "I''ve been meaning to talk to you, actually," I said.


    "Oh?" Skinner asked. "Regarding what?"


    "Our history together, and your history without me," I said, casually strolling forward, unhurried and unbothered. "Six years ago, you were simply another demiurgic cult leader, after all. Sometimes fighting other cult leaders and a few vigilantes in battles over a thousand people at the most. But something changed, didn''t it?"


    "Well, yes," Skinner said with a shrug. "When my abilities grew, so did my ambitions. That''s hardly inexplicable, is it?"


    "Not at all," I said. "It''s just... something I recently had to remind myself of, when I was working through how to feel about all of this."


    "Might I suggest mercifully, or possibly even grateful to your old teacher who put you in a prime position to acquire yourself a triad of girlfriends?" Skinner suggested.


    I ignored her. "Because you see, I''ve been struggling with how to feel about myself, and the person I am, the person I''ve become as I''ve grown up. And how you fit into all that."


    "Ahhh, I believe I see, now," Skinner said. "You know, ordinarily it''s the villain who says that everything they''ve done is the hero''s fault."


    "Indeed it is," I said, nodding. "And were I a different person, then ''I am responsible for what you''ve done, therefore I am responsible for stopping you'' would be the sentiment I''m trying to express, here." I stepped close enough to reach out and touch her, the little desk being all that was between us. "But I''m not a different person, Beatrice. I''m me."


    I reached out, cupping her chin in my hand. Her skin was a touch soft, and a touch worn. She''d known little work or hardship, yet had also known little care.


    "For the longest time, I hated myself, because I thought you made me," I said. "I saw your fingerprints in every harsh facet of my person. But I was wrong about that, Beatrice."


    I shot her through the heart, with the gun in my other hand.


    "You didn''t make me," I said, my eyes glowing as I invaded the crumbling fortress of her mind. "I made you."


    I took everything from her mind- the original brain scan of Burrhus Skinner, every little trick of mad science Beatrice had ever figured out, and most importantly...


    "You may have held the reins," I whispered to a dying woman, before I let her drop from my hand. "But I was always the one in control."


    Final, ultimate, truly complete mastery blossomed through my mind, like a chaotic jumble of assorted burning fireworks jostling around until they finally landed in the perfect place to form a pattern, and exploded in perfect unison.


    I could admit that, perhaps, it was a bit of an overstatement to say that I had always been the one in control. She''d done rather a lot of things I would''ve preferred she didn''t. But I was in enough control that she couldn''t contradict me.


    And part of being in control was understanding when good enough was good enough.


    "Now," I said, holstering my revolver as the security guards rushed into the room, taking in the scene with horror. "Let''s finish this up so we can go home, shall we?"

 Book 5 Chapter 15

    "Alright, chat, I have a special treat for you today. Joining us once again is my lovely girlfriend, but also joining us, for the first time, is my older sister!"


    "Hi, my name is Annie, my favorite scent is cherry, I like long walks on the beach, and I''m also blonde and have huge tits."


    Annie hadn''t needed to pop in to visit us, but after recent events, we''d all decided we wanted her to. Besides, it was hardly like anyone in the world was going to question why she was visiting her sister.


    "Fantastic, you fit right in," I remarked, looking at the slender, flat-chested vtuber model Nicky had made for her- it bore such a strong family resemblance to the GreaseKitty model that Nicky honestly might''ve used it as a starting point. The biggest differences were some slight differences in coloration- darker eyes, lighter hair- along with the cat ears having been replaced with floppy rabbit ears, which were actually visible under the hard hat. Not that this stopped Nicky from adding a bunny ear headband to the model, taped to the outside of the hard hat.


    "Now, when are we bringing in the twelve or more suitors to compete for the chance to go on a date with me?" Annie asked.


    "This is a Factorio streaming channel, not a reality show," Nicky explained.


    "It is also, because she has two guests who don''t actually like playing Factorio, a talk show," I said.


    "Oh, okay, I can do that," Annie said. "I actually had a podcast going back when I was in college, so I''m used to filling dead air and entertaining listeners."


    "Excuse you," Nicky said, "but they are already being entertained by Factorio."


    "Yeah but what if they also want to listen to someone talk about Don Quixote, and how being able to read it in the original Spanish doesn''t actually change all that much about its presentation?"


    "You speak Spanish?" Annie asked.


    "Fluently, yeah. Originally it was just a vocational skill, but I got carried away learning it, and..."


    <hr>


    "I am going to throw myself into the sea," Akane said, lying flat on her back, surrounded by paperwork.


    "You''re not in Houston anymore," I pointed out. "Austin is about two hundred miles from the sea."


    "I will walk," she threatened.


    "Why is there so much paperwork involved in this, anyhow?" I asked. "Please tell me you don''t actually have to register this organization with one government agency, let alone multiple."


    "Oh, it''s worse than you think," Akane said. "See, I want this to be a global organization, and as you might''ve noticed, the world has more than one government in it. And because legally, anyone with supernatural abilities is classified as a ''superhero''- in the legal sense that also includes supervillains, because politicians are allergic to being correct about things- that means that if I want to run an organization for providing support and education to demiurges, it is legally considered a superhero team, and in most jurisdictions, those are actually regulated pretty heavily!"


    "I take it that you''ve already dismissed the option of ''do it anyways and tell the government to sit and spin''?"


    "You and I might be personally powerful enough to give governments pause. The demiurges I''m trying to help are not. We do want the government on-side for this."


    "Mmn." I sighed. "That''s fair, if... admittedly, a little alien to the way I still think of myself, and of the supernatural in general."


    "Right, right," Akane said, finally sitting up a little, then patting her stomach, as though I were a dog she was trying to coax into her lap. "On A-510, supernatural people generally considered themselves as being divorced from mainstream humanity, right?"


    "Basically," I said, deciding to humor her, as well as take the offered opportunity to cuddle. It was unwise to pass those up, you know; it only happened about thirty seven times a day. Per girlfriend. "The demiurgic consensus on our relationship to humanity was that we could no longer safely and sanely interact with them as peers; that our power was too baked into our psychology and personality, too much a part of how we perceived and interacted with the world to circumvent. That the safest thing for humanity at large, as well as ourselves, was to find community amongst fellow demiurges, and to interact with humanity at large more as neighbors than family and friends. A baseline of normality to bear in mind, and be reminded of from time to time, but not something to interact with too much."


    "Sounds pretty anti-social," Akane said.


    "Well, here''s the thing," I said. "Do you remember that Russian war back in 2019? Where an asshole with supernatural power used it to take charge of his community, and then promptly led it down the highway of self-destruction? A big part of the reason demiurges forbid themselves and each other from engaging with baseline humanity to any meaningful extent is specifically to prevent shit like that. Demiurges are well-equipped to seize social power from mundane humans, and very poorly equipped to use it in a way that will not immediately go tits up in the rhubarb."


    "Ahhh," Akane said. "Right, A-510 has that sort of dichotomy, where someone is basically either Doctor Skinner or you- no human friends at all, or actively trying to take over the world."


    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    "Mhm."


    "You think I''ll be able to change that?" Akane asked. "I know I''m not always, or even usually, wrong with my optimism, but... well, you have been around demiurges as a community for years, and I haven''t. Maybe your cynicism is well-founded."


    "I think," I said, "that, in this regard, demiurges are... really, not that different from supers. The fundamental problem is power, not some unique quirk of psychology. And so, if the problem has been solved for supers, then it''s been solved for demiurges. But, all the same..."


    "...it kind of hasn''t," Akane murmured. "...It''ll be something to think about. Thanks, Roxy."


    "Any time, angel."


    <hr>


    "Hey Lisa," I said, during the seventh of our cuddles-and-pets sessions today. "I gotta ask, what do you actually do all day?"


    "What do you?" Lisa asked.


    "A lot of background brainstorming for mad science stuff," I said. "Up until recently, working on trying to find Skinner, but, uh... well, I did kill her a few days ago, so I''ve kinda been at loose ends."


    "Fair enough," Lisa said. "Well..." She chewed on her lower lip a little. "...Promise you won''t laugh?"


    "I promise," I said, rubbing her ears assuringly.


    "I''ve been learning how to program so that I can make video games," Lisa said.


    "Oh, okay," I said, nodding. "Honestly, probably a good idea, considering one of our girlfriends is already a 3D artist and could be tapped to provide art for your games."


    "Maybe," Lisa hedged. "See, I''m mostly interested in working in a genre where being entirely text-based is kind of expected, so like... 3D graphics would seriously change the tenor of things."


    "Ahhh," I said, nodding. "So you''re not merely a trans foxgirl gamedev, you''re a trans foxgirl roguelike dev. I understand now, and also, I love you so dearly."


    She grumbled grumpily under the ear skritches.


    "So, tell me more," I continued.


    "...Like?"


    "Like, what''re you working on at the moment?" I asked. "I should probably make this explicit, Lisa: I am your girlfriend. I genuinely love you, and desire not only your happiness, but for us to be significant parts of each other''s lives. I like making things, and I like talking to people about making things. So if your hobby is making things, I want to hear as much about it as you''re willing to share."


    "...Okay," she said. "But... don''t laugh."


    "I won''t," I promised. "I only laugh at someone''s project when it''s clear they want me to."


    "I''ve been working on... a sort of roguelike-ish life sim?" Lisa said. "Like... um..."


    "So it''s not a dungeon crawler, and in fact may not play anything like the typical roguelike," I said. "But, all the same, it involves a primarily text-based interface, procedurally-generated content, and a few interlocking game mechanics that can produce emergent gameplay through their interactions, which are traits that are most strongly associated with roguelikes."


    "Exactly," Lisa said, nodding. "Exactly. Thanks."


    "I''ve done a bit of hobby game dev myself, although not in a while," I admitted. "I might be able to help you wrap your head around some programming stuff, but I don''t think I''ll know any more than you do as far as game dev concerns. Anyway. Procedurally-generated life sim. Please elaborate on that?"


    "It''s about being a werewolf," Lisa said. "Not in the druid way that I am, more of a like... Y''know, you''re meeting people, sizing them up, and, if you like ''em, turning them into werewolves to add to your pack. And at some point I''m gonna add in external pressures for why you''d want a pack, but right now I''m working more on like, interactions with pack members, and making sure that''s solid and fun before I start working on other stuff. Right now it''s a little bare-bones? It''s only alphas and omegas right now, and you''re the only alpha, so like, it''s only your pack, and you''re the only one who can manage omegas and tell them stuff like, okay, go do this training activity this week, or maybe like, spend some time with this other packmate and get along better... One of the mechanics I do have in the game is basic interpersonal relationships, and people fucking."


    "Naturally," I said, stroking her hair and nodding. "What mechanic are you trying to add now?"


    "So betas are basically, like, werewolves who can lead other werewolves, but still answer to you," Lisa said. "And they''re complicated because it involves a more complicated AI than I''m used to, and I''m kinda stumped, and I think I might actually really appreciate some programming help from my girlfriend who''s really super good at making AIs."


    "Well..."


    <hr>


    "I thought you didn''t like it here," Nicky said.


    "It''s grown on me," I said, setting the portal gun back in the box. It laid dormant, now, without someone to power it with their volition. I knew how to power it back up, of course, but... well, I just didn''t want to. "It''s where my girlfriends live, after all."


    "I mean, for now," Nicky said. "Remember back before we started dating, shortly after we fell asleep in each other''s arms after that one fight? I said I had to marry you after... I think it was some puff piece about me you got published. And you said you planned to leave. And do you remember what I said?"


    "You said ''then take me with you,''" I said. "Which was searingly homosexual, I must confess. But anyway. Just because you declared that, wherever I go, you will follow, does not actually oblige me to go anywhere in the first place. Now, if you want to go, then we can talk about how feasible it is for the rest of us to follow, but..."


    "But, that can be a long-term plan," Nicky admitted. "So, okay, what about the mind control thing you''re supposedly a master of now? What are you going to do with that?"


    "Very little," I said.


    "Really? It''s not opening new doors for you, compelling you to action?"


    "Nope," I said. "I have the skill, but the skill does not have me. Remember what I told Doctor Skinner- I''m the one in control."


    "Mmm, fair," Nicky said. "...So, what now?"


    "Same thing we always did, just with less looming dread."


    "Fair enough."


    There was a pause, and not an uncomfortable one.


    "Wanna make out?"

 Volume 1 Epilogue

    "Welcome aboard," Doctor Astra said. "Apologies for the tight quarters are in order, as I didn''t build this ship with this many visitors in mind, but..."


    "We''ll live," Doctor Updyke said dryly, stepping out of the airlock and into the tight corridor of Astra''s space ship. "If you do decide you want help renovating, we can provide that, but something tells me you don''t live in Low Earth Orbit because you''re fond of visitors."


    "To the contrary," Doctor Astra said. "It is my research that brings me to space, and my desire to be near my home that keeps me so close to Earth. Alas, I''m beginning to suspect that my research requires more distance from Earth; I''ve been debating the move to geostationary orbit for a good while now, and frankly, if it were solely my research driving me, I''d already be halfway to interstellar space by now. As it stands..."


    "As it stands, I''m really curious what your research is," Doctor Sakurai said, bounding aboard the Research Station Astra. "Ooooh, your artificial gravity feels interesting. Do you mind if I see your notes about that too?"


    Doctor Astra chuckled politely, and led her two fellow demiurges down the hall and into the main- and, really, only- social area on the ship. It was a small space, fit for hosting perhaps four people, or maybe six if they were willing to literally sit on top of each other. Nonetheless, despite the humility of its scale, the transparent dome of the walls and ceiling gave way to a grandiose view of the earth spread out above them- which made the ship''s artificial gravity, pointing away from the center of the earth, seem a touch more paradoxical than its existence already did.


    "At some point, certainly," Astra said, taking a seat at the small table in the center of the domed room and wordlessly gesturing for her guests to do the same. "However, if I''m not mistake, Doctor Updyke has business she''d like to attend to first?"


    "We can survive in the vacuum of space indefinitely, without food or air," Roxy said with a shrug. "We''ve got all the time in the world. And, well... I''ll admit I''m also curious what sort of research you''re doing that requires you to be out of the atmosphere. Something tells me it''s nothing so prosaic as basic astronomy."


    "Iunno, mad astronomy could be pretty interesting," Akane said, tapping her chin and leaning back in her chair. "Looking for signs of extrasolar life, intelligent or otherwise... That could absolutely power a Curious'' mad science, considering we''ve already seen at least one example of proof."


    "Alas, no," Astra said, shaking her head. "My research is not, in fact, astronomical. Rather, I am researching the nature of demiurgic mad science itself, and one conclusion I keep banging my shin against is the simple fact that demiurgy does not play well with the human consensus. Thus... the need for distance." She sighed. "I''m dedicated to my research, I truly am, but... I suppose I''m not quite dedicated enough to fully cut contact with humanity just yet. Not for the lengths of time it would take me to finish my research."


    "Complete solitude is generally pretty bad for people," Akane said, nodding. "Which is pretty much why the Demiurge''s Union exists, in fact- because the conditions of demiurgy encourage isolation from more normal people, sure, but your fellow demiurges make for just as good of company without spoiling your research!"


    "Meaning," Roxy said, picking up where Akane left off, "that we can help to arrange for a research collaboration between yourself and a few other demiurges whose research would also benefit from time in deep space. You''d have to share a ship with them with zero internet connection for a while, but..." Roxy shrugged. "Hopefully we can find you a roommate or two who you won''t try to murder after a few months alone together. Now, going back a touch- did you say finish your research? What sort of end-goal defines ''finished,'' here?"


    "Ah, very perceptive!" Astra said. "Yes, I do have a goal in mind. You are likely just as aware as I am of the fundamental limits of demiurgy, are you not?"


    "Can''t be reproduced infinitely by one demiurge, can''t be reproduced at all by non-demiurges, can''t be safely used at all by mortals..." Roxy listed off. "The consequences of the simple fact that demiurgy is basically a kind of magic sustained by the demiurge''s will."


    "Fact is a strong word," Astra said. "What I seek to discover are techniques to mitigate, circumvent, or outright remove those limitations."


    "...Ah, of course you''re an alchemist," Roxy said.


    "Alchemist?" Akane asked.


    "Something derogatory, I gather?" Astra said.


    "What you''ve described is a notion that we called The Philosopher''s Stone back on A-510," Roxy explained. "The pinnacle of mad science, that would solve all of its problems, and- most importantly- not actually existing. And I feel confident in asserting that because I have successfully pushed the boundaries on what can be done with mad science, and that requires identifying what''s merely impractical and what''s genuinely impossible. You''d have better luck making an actual Philosopher''s Stone that turns lead to gold and grants immortality- I know because I''ve done that."


    Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    "...Ah," Astra said quietly.


    "And then I had to deal with Randall fucking Rhodes filling my voicemail asking me to use the immortality device on him," Roxy muttered darkly. "He''s very lucky I''m fond of his daughter, otherwise I would''ve flown to whatever Masshole he lives in these days and kicked his ass up and down Cape Cod."


    "Roxy," Akane said.


    "Hm?"


    Akane gestured with her head towards Doctor Astra, and Roxy sighed.


    "Sorry I went off on you," Roxy said. "It''s just... I''ve seen this research before. I''ve seen it a lot, in historical records and in person, and on the rare occasions it led anywhere productive, it still didn''t produce the results the researchers were hoping for. It''s a problem that the demiurges back home have been wrestling with forever, and..." She sighed. "...I know a guy with a time machine. We don''t talk much, but if there was a future where this problem was solved and the Philosopher''s Stone was found, I''m pretty confident I''d know about it."


    "Wait, you know a time traveler?" Akane asked.


    "It''s complicated," Roxy said. "I''m not getting into it."


    "Perhaps we should discuss your research," Doctor Astra said quietly. "The research you needed my help with."


    "Right, that," Roxy said, nodding. "Okay, so. I''m intimately aware of extraterrestrial intelligence being far closer to us than it was back on A-510, and as a result, now that I''m not devoting all my resources towards taking down Doctor Skinner, I''ve instead bent my will towards the creation of a scanning array and an artificial intelligence to collate the information and attempt to draw useful conclusions from it, so that I don''t have to sift through all of it myself."


    "Ahhh, an improved SETI initiative," Doctor Astra said, nodding.


    "Oh, cool, you already know half the name," Akane said.


    "Half of it?"


    "Yep! We named the AI/telescope combo Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence Knowledge And Information Brain-Analyzer."


    "...You built a sapient telescope and named it Seti Kaiba."


    "That is exactly what we did, yes."


    "As the telescope itself is sapient," Roxy continued, "you won''t have to do much to manage it. Although, you will need to learn to play Yugioh, as the AI inside will refuse to work if it doesn''t have someone to play with it in-person at least once every three days."


    "That is a... peculiar quirk," Astra murmured.


    "It also doesn''t work very well inside an atmosphere, hence why I need to put it in orbit," Roxy added. "But that''s not really a quirk, that''s simply how space telescopes work."


    "True enough," Astra admitted. "Well... I suppose I can work with that. I may as well continue my research, besides- with someone else to talk to, I may even move up to a higher orbit. Send me the specifications, and I''ll make accommodations for... Mr. Seti Kaiba."


    "As much as I love you, Akane, I''m never letting you name anything ever again."


    ---


    "Alright, rock beats scissors, so I''ll go first," Roxy said, drawing five cards from her deck.


    "Hah! A laughable strategy!" Seti Kaiba declared as Roxy reviewed her options. "Any duelist worth their salt knows you can''t attack on the first turn!"


    "Pot of Greed," Roxy said, playing the infamous and banned spell card.


    "Wait, hang on-"


    "Draw two cards... aaaaaaaand Exodia." Roxy laid five cards on the table- the head, arms, and legs of The Forbidden One. "I win."


    "You have got to be fucking shitting me!" Seti raged.


    "Read ''em and weep," Roxy said. "Or, to put it in today''s vernacular: cope and seethe, bitch."


    Seti continued to rage, and Roxy silently leaned back, debating the ethics of using her mastery of mad science and control over all things to cheat at a children''s card game. Which, ordinarily, wouldn''t be anything more than obnoxious, but here, there was something on the line- the pride of the non-human person she''d created to man a telescope for her.


    (She hadn''t been trying to make a person-smart AI, really. She''d just wanted something with extremely basic pattern recognition that could sort the data into buckets for her. But then Akane had named it Seti Kaiba as a stupid joke, and now it was person-smart, but only in exactly the ways required to be an obnoxious pain in the ass to work with. It wasn''t even any better at data collation than the insect-smart AI she''d been trying to make. Arguably, it was worse, because now she had to preface every batch of API calls with a game of Yugioh.)


    "And here I was expecting something exciting," Nicky remarked, leaning against the back of Roxy''s chair, forearms laying across the back of it.


    "From me playing a card game I don''t like?" Roxy asked, quirking an eyebrow.


    "My expectations aren''t always reasonable," the Vegan princess admitted. "Speaking of expectations, though... what kind of information did we get from Vega?"


    At some point, Roxy would be pointing her telescope elsewhere in the universe. But, well. She wanted to know more about alien intelligence, and she''d be a fool to not investigate the aliens she already knew about.


    "The royals of House Vega are immune to mental scanning, thanks to their hereditary power, but everyone else on the planet is a different story," Seti said. "A subroutine has deciphered their languages, and a copy of every piece of media that exists on Vega now exists in my databanks, ready for perusal."


    Roxy hummed quietly.


    "That''ll take a while to sort through," Nicky pointed out.


    "Still worth it," Roxy said quietly. "Call me paranoid, but with Skinner gone, I find myself anticipating the next threat, and with all things considered... I can''t help but see that in your mother."


    Nicky paused, but then... nodded, silently.


    "Now, let''s start with this old book about the foundation of House Vega..."