Honest to Himself 26 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Kejmur

-VB-

Chapter 26: A Start

Arc 5: Scion

2012.7.27

I was there for each and every single one of my children’s birth. For the first two times, Amy and my hired help had me outside and doing nothing, but I was ready for the third time, having studied and done a lot of prep work.

That was how I met Alexander as he was being born and the rest of my children.

It was here that I … experienced my first feelings that weren’t really carnal. Most of the women I fucked were here because I saw them and liked how they looked: body, mind, or history. Only Sophia, Amy, and Sherrel made me feel things outside of libido.

All of my children, though? They made me protective. They made me want to just cuddle them, hug them, carry them around, and all of that made dealing with the nastier side of being a “father” easy.

Now, I realized this slowly and hadn’t even realized it until Joseph was born to Ligeria. As I welcomed my new youngest into my family, I was struck by the fact that I had more than a thousand clones out … and I had three clones to each of my children permanently, which was one more than any permanent activity that I undertook.

Just looking after them was a delight to me, even if it made me tired and bored sometimes. I was literally waiting on my hands and feet to feed them, coo them, and spend time with them.

They were mine and I loved them.

It was strange. It was really strange. I wasn’t used to it. I didn’t know how to really categorize it because this feeling encompassed so much categories on its own.

I also began to feel fear. What would happen to my kids if something happened to me? Would they be isolated from society because I was their father?

And so, I began to make plans. Big plans.

Namely, I started with non-violently integrating some clones through the world. It turned out that I had no literal limit to range these days. One of my clones even tested this out by hopping halfway to the moon before the lack of atmosphere killed it (the clone burst open). I used this newfound range to my advantage by creating fake identities and setting up businesses, using money stolen from New England gangs and laundered through Number Man. I was now a multi-millionaire in charge of 43 companies, one for each country in Europe and few shell companies.

Fuck, I even made a parahuman paramilitary company and hired out my services in Africa!

But the point of it was that I was growing these not for the money but connections and establishment of places that would accept my kids without scorn.

Unfortunately, my children would have no future as long as Scion was alive, and so I needed to kill him. It. Whatever.

I knew of one way to kill him, the way provided to me by the “Worm” storyline (or was it a precognitive perspective into one possible future of Earth Bet?). It required a lot of things to happen for me to use it, however, so I wasn’t going to make it my default plan.

No, I still liked using brute force, so I was going to make the primary plan something along those lines.

After all, I now possessed a lot of Tinker powers with me, and opening up portals to Zion’s home dimension for a black hole bomb was going to be far easier with my resources.

And that’s exactly what I began to do.

Of the powers I was able to absorb from Eden’s corpse, there were thirteen shards that were capable of specializing into Tinker powers. They were: Light Filament, Infest, Conditional Robotics, Convert, N*&@H, Defective Goal, Trespass, Peripheral Cascade, Regimentation, Eclipse Source, Matter Comb, Inertia Blockade, and Cyclical Trap.

Of them all, the ones I was interested in using to defeat Scion was Infest, Convert, Matter Comb, and Cyclical Trap.

Shard-Infest was a shard that specialized in biological terrors that did its namesake: infest. How it went about this was apparently up to the power user and their trigger event. Fortunately for me, I gained its less powerful yet far more flexible and manipulative form, the tinker variant.

I could use the tinker power to create a vessel using …

When I broke out of my Tinker Fugue, because that’s what that was, I realized that over seven hours had passed, but I didn’t get anything out of it, because whatever I had tried to make didn’t turn out alright. The mangled mess of wires, scrap metals, and other irredeemable things that was once something more viable made that failure very clear.

“There goes that much time I could have used for something else.”

… Oh wait, my clones did use their time productively. The babies are fed, my women are having funeven without sex (although most of that was me), the base was being maintained, and … why was Clone 19 messing with the Protectorate?

Oh, it’s testing out a tinkertech it made on its own while I was in fugue.

*Snort* Armsmaster was going to need to upgrade his power armor a lot after that.

Alright, let’s get back to planning a god’s downfall...

-x-

[spoiler=”Status of Stitches”]

Cash: ~ $8 Million stolen and converted from drug and weapon sales

Reputation:

*Kill Order - $750,000 dead (PRT)

*Kill-On-Sight [KOS] (Coil, Ambassadors)

Willing Assets:

Dinah Alcott - Precog Thinker

Kelly

Lisa Wilbourn - Super Intuition Thinker

Sophia Hess - Phase Breaker

Sherrel Bailey - Automotive Tinker

Amelia Claire Lavere - Queen Shaper (Pregnant 39w)

Olivia - Multi-Effect Trump

Kayden Russel - Solar Artillery Blaster

Sex Slaves:

Wilson sisters (Jennifer, Samantha, Cherry) (Broodmares)

E88 Woman (Pregnant 32w)

Cassandra - Contact-Limited Telekinetic

Jean Brown (Citrine) - Field Micro-Adjustment Shaker (Pregnant 42w)

Samantha (Ligeia) - Liquid Water Storage and Dispenser

Rescued & Soon to be Released:

Unbroken Asset 1:

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=”Children”]

Jane (Mother: Emma Barnes, 2012.5.4)

Michael (Mother: Sophia Hess, 2012.5.7)

Alexander (Mother: Lisa Wilbourn, 2012.5.9)

Rin (Mother: MW2, 2012.5.13)

Wendy (Mother: MW3, 2012.5.18)

Elizabeth (Mother: Jennifer Wilson, 2012.6.1)

Victoria (Mother: Samantha Wilson, 2012.6.7)

Lily (Mother: Cherry Wilson, 2012.6.8)

Rose (Mother: Olivia, 2012.6.9)

Margaret (Mother: Kelly, 2012.6.3)

Tyler (Mother: Sherrel, 2012.6.14)

Mary (Mother: Cassandra, 2012.6.20)

Zoey (Mother: Kayden, 2012.7.4)

Cathy (Mother: MCW1, 2012.7.8)

Issac (Mother: MCW2, 2012.7.10)

Iris (Mother: MCW3, 2012.7.2)

Joseph (Mother: Samantha(Ligeria), 2012.7.19)

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=”Stitches Power Upgrades”]

Mirror Image (Second Trigger):

*Increasing number of copies (Passive)

*Copies permanent unless killed (Passive)

*Telepathy between Original and copies (Passive)

*If Original is killed, then one of the copies become Original (Passive)

Offscreen Travel:

*Can teleport while being seen. (Active)

*Can teleport to locations that is being observed. (Active)

True or False:

*No limits to daily questions. (Passive)

Insomnia:

*Can force unconscious on close targets.

*Manipulate dreams (Active)

Regeneration (Second Trigger):

*Increased regeneration speed (Passive)

*Temporarily gain Changer ability

-Become bigger with double strength and speed. Cannot teleport while this Changer ability is in effect.

-Allows for variety of form, but if base humanoid form is changed by more than 10%, then all other powers except for Regeneration and Mirror Image are disabled for the duration of change.

Blindspot:

*Applies to locations where he stays a lot. (Currently: Home Base, Brockton Bay)

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=”Looted Power”]

Relationship Meter

Light Filament
Infest
Conditional Robotics
Convert
N*&@H
Defective Goal
Trespass
Peripheral Cascade
Regimentation
Eclipse Source
Matter Comb

[/spoiler]