Magnetic Attraction 25 (Patreon)

Magnetic Attraction
Chapter 25

-VB-

Clarissa sat in front of her desk in her room, courtesy of Arthur, and thought.

She thought hard and long about where her life was going. Her hands slowly caressed her pregnant belly, and couldn’t help but feel both elation and a loss of control. After all, she was going to be a mom, soon. Being a mom meant a lot of things. She’s seen that much from how Kayden changed.

Kayden… she used to be Max’s right-hand cape. She did everything he asked. She was the most feared cape at one point, not Max or Lung, but her.

And then she had Aster and everything changed.

Having a kid was going to change her, and Clarissa knew it. Honestly, it scared her a bit. She hadn’t even graduated high school, and here she was, raising her ass towards Arthur and letting him use her body for all its worth.

At the same time, she also knew that Arthur was not like Max. Max - Kaiser - was a strong man doing “strong” things. Arthur was quiet. And rich. Very rich. Richer than all of the Empire put together. He didn’t flaunt that wealth because, as he said, “The only people I want to impress are you, Kayden, Nessa, and Jessica.” That was romantic as fuck.

Oh, she loved him. She loved him so much. She didn’t understand how she lived, hating and everything, without knowing what love was. It wasn’t like when she was a kid and loved her parents. It was a more visceral feeling that gripped and steered her.

Hell, she never ever sat down to think hard and long on anything before!

But love already had changed that much about her.

It scared her.

To be constantly vulnerable and weak towards someone scared her, and yet, she kept her piece unsaid. She didn’t want to be weak. She didn’t … want to be a weak mom like her mom was.

Arthur was her husband-.

She giggled a little as she thought that.

-but she wasn’t going to let him dictate everything for her. So what if she was the youngest of this “harem”?! She was a cape! She was strong!

But she also knew jackshit about most things a mom needed to know. Hell, even Kayden needed help with Aster. A lot of help, actually.

Was that what family life was like? What having a baby was like?

Scared, hectic, and a little lost?

She let out a slow and steady stream of breath.

Whatever.

She’ll do as she always did. If she got help, then she had it. If Arthur was there with her, then he was there with her.

But above all, she intended to remain strong and firm.

(Not weak like she was as Rune.)

-VB-

Despite what my previous self would have done, I did not dive right into “unraveling” the white supremacy brainwashing all four of my women were heavily invested in.

One needed to change by themselves and needed to want that change. A change was not something I could just force upon people. Oh, it might look like it worked on the surface, but that’s what the Roman Empire thought about Christianity as well during their days of persecution. People would just hide that aspect about themselves deeper and deeper. The more the foreign force of change became, the deeper those characteristics would be.

No, what I needed to do was expose them to new environments. They were raised and told that minorities were wastes of time and wage thieves? I’ll show them that there were minorities who worked harder than Midwest farmers. Did they hate Jews? If they hated them for something that had been personally done to them, I won’t begrudge them for that, but if not, then I’ll show them why they didn’t have a reason to hate.

After all, I’m one of the richest persons in all of the East Coast and I wasn’t a Jew. I was richer than most Jews, but did that make me a Jew like some racists thought and conspired?

I did, actually, get accused of being a Jew (but I would have much preferred to have been accused of being French) years before my new life and during the years of growing my own financial empire.

Regardless of the details, their recovery would take time. What I needed to do in the meantime was love them as best as I can and ensure that they did not turn their parahuman abilities upon the wrong targets.

Besides, most of them will be too busy with their future children to cause too many issues - they had trouble with having large pregnant bellies. In fact, I betted on the fact that they might turn out to be New Wave 2.0, just richer and greyer politically.

Of course, one of the things I needed to do to ensure this new and stable environment for their recovery was to ensure that the status quo of Brockton Bay never returned.

The first thing I needed to do was to lessen the chances of relapse for my girls.

This meant that the remnants of the empire Eighty-Eight had to go. Despite their current disconnect, all members of the Empire, former and current, knew each other. Connections and relationships always came to give back, and I could not let the Empire crawl back into their minds and hearts.

Of course, I couldn’t be seen attacking them. No, I needed to hire someone to do it for me, and it needed to be a final battle for the Empire. If the rest of the Empire did not die, then at the very least, the organization and all of its connections had to dissolve from relevancy.

But who could I hire…

Or invite?