SSV3 Chapter 3 (Patreon)

“Bye everyone! We’re going on patrol.” Amelia sang as we stepped out of the Bureau.

Stella joined her, holding her hands as the two of them started to bounce in a circle and continue to sing ‘going on patrol’ together.

I hadn’t thought about the implication of putting both of them together, but it was too late to do anything about it. Ivanna, Emma and Mona were quietly walking by my side. “We need to get going.”

Melody had not been pleased to be benched, but she’d taken it better than I’d expected. I had to make it up to her later.

“Dibs on Miles!” Stella broke off from her dance with Amelia and scooped me up in a princess carry. Then her two huge bat wings appeared, and she shot us both into the sky.

Soon, Amelia was flying as well with Ivanna in her arms, followed by Mona carrying Emma.

Mona might have seemed the calmest of the group, but she wasn’t, at least not in my head.

These two. The last thing we need is another goofball. Mona sighed in my head as she dug around for reasons as to why I picked up Amelia. Oh. I guess you are right, she would have overshadowed any of the other trainees. But I like Ivanna better.

I noted her opinion and moved on, focusing on our patrol.

Stella picked up speed as she carried me further ahead of the others and squeezed me to her chest. “We really haven’t had much time alone lately.”

I tapped at my tablet for a moment before considering her statement. “You’re right. Would you like to go on a date with me tonight?”

Stella crushed me to her chest and spun in the air. “Yes. Yes. That would make me so happy!”

“Stella.” I tried to complain about the turbulence, but my voice came out muffled in her chest.

She pulled me out of the crushing grip so that my face was level with hers before she kissed me, her eyes glowing a bright electric blue as her power activated and she drained my ki.

The draining of ki sent a pleasant soft tickle through my entire body.

With my power, I just pulled more back into my body as she took her fill. Others hadn’t been so lucky.

She pulled back, my beautiful succubus turned hero staring into my eyes.

“I love you Miles. And I can’t wait for our date!” She held me there.

“Of course. Want to go to that Italian place you like?” I proposed.

Stella paused, puffing out her cheeks as she righted me back into a more comfortable carry. “I’m not that predictable. We’ll go somewhere else.”

I doubted it. She loved the Italian place.

She might actually surprise you. Mona interjected after reading my thoughts. We’ve all been craving some alone time with you. I think she’ll want to make it special.

“I’ll leave it up to you.” I rejoined the conversation with Stella, mentally nudging Mona to mind her own business. “Even if you pick the Italian place, I don’t mind.”

“It won’t be the Italian place.” She huffed, and I dropped it.

“Fine. Now, let’s see what we have to deal with today.” Flicking around on my tablet, I brought up the city map that my analysts were working on establishing.

There were no red pings indicating a large danger to human life, but there were a few orange ones. I swiped my comms to talk to the entire team.

“Looks like we have a break in at a pharmacy at Eighteenth and Martin.”

Stella gave me a blank stare. She had absolutely no sense of direction.

I pointed in the correct direction, and she pivoted before zooming off.

“Drop me off on the building across the street.” I pulled up more information and got a live feed from one camera in the building.

The burglary included two supers wearing ski masks. One was even waving a gun around. Guns were an indicator of weak powers.

The other thief was filling duffel bags by raking his hands along the shelves behind the pharmacy counter.

“Emma, stay back with me. Amelia and Ivanna, you two got lucky. This looks like a simple one. Just incapacitate and capture the two robbers. You have one out in front with a gun. Which of you two should take that super?” I decided to play it out with them.

“Me!” Amelia eagerly pushed herself further forward.

“No.” Mona said quickly. “He has a gun. Ivanna is bullet proof and able to shield bystanders with ice. She should clearly take the gun-wielding villain while you stall the one in the back.”

“One in the back?” Amelia asked, confused.

I rolled my eyes. Mona had jumped ahead of her with knowledge plucked from my head. She needed to be more careful.

“I saw the tablet.” She lied quickly. “There’s another behind the counter. That one will be yours. Distract him with your fog. And if you can’t subdue him, Ivanna can help after.”

Amelia’s shoulders slumped. “But I want to take down a villain.” She said it quietly, but the comms could pick it up.

“You’ll all get your days. The most important thing is to play to your strengths.” And Ivanna just had a lot more of those, if I was honest.

If Amelia could get herself to the point, she could actually restrict someone’s movement with her fog, she’d be amazing. But Ivanna’s near complete control of water in all three phases was incredible.

“Venus, I want you in there with them. If anything starts to go wrong, do your best to protect them. Demoness, stay on standby at the exit.” I ordered my heroes.

“Yes.” Demoness excitedly shot forward to catch up to Amelia. “Is that it, there?” She pointed down the street we were traveling. People were rushing out of a corner store onto the street.

“Put me down across the street.” I kept her focused.

Demoness banked to the side while Amelia and Ivanna continued straight ahead.

“Don’t forget the hero’s landing girls. It’s critical to shaping the city’s perspective of you.” I instructed them as Demoness dropped me off and Mona put down Emma next to me. Then Demoness and Venus were off, ready to execute their tasks.

Amelia dropped Ivanna. As she fell, Ivanna shot a spray of water down to slow her fall, only to land amid it with a splash that she froze mid air.

Next, Amelia spun as she dropped, letting the fog trail out of her mouth to make a corkscrew around her as she stopped a few inches from touching the ground.

The fog became rings that slowly settled around her.

I smiled. Not bad for newbies. Someone was sure to get a picture of those landings.

“Great job.” I praised the two. “But get in there and stop posing.”

“Right.” Amelia shot in first, and I had to rub my forehead.

“At least she has spirit.” Emma commented from beside me. “Ivanna needs that sort of spirit. Your new powerhouse is hesitating.” The cat girl in her tight green suit leaned against my shoulder.

Emma was lovely, if lazier than a house cat. She had the richest ruby red hair and loved to accent it at every turn with emerald green. To her luck, her power revolved around using gemstones to provide temporary enhancements. Her favorite emeralds just so happened to provide powerful regeneration.

Hence the nine emerald pieces she always had clipped to her upper arm, that she called her nine lives.

I held up the tablet with the live camera for Emma to watch with me. “You taught me how to use my power pretty well. Anything you are seeing here?”

“Oh?” Emma tapped her lip. “I guess I was a decent teacher.” She fished for compliments.

A small chuckle slipped out of me. “You have multiple powers based on what gems you touch, and they are all fairly limited in time. It’s made you think about how best to use your power all the time. Often fairly creatively.” I bounced an eyebrow, remembering a few things we’d done before she went away for tax evasion.

“We did have some fun.” She sighed and leaned against me. “Now we are so busy with this hero thing all day. It’s exhausting.”

“Lazy.” I teased her.

“It would do you good to take a few naps.” She purred against me, and my body reacted to her touch. But I knew I needed to focus. I even had new recruits in the field.

I turned my attention back to the tablet in my hands.

Amelia shot past the first robber, who turned and started firing before Ivanna was in place to shield them.

I reached out with my power, putting up a small barrier between the robber and the few people huddling behind a shelf. Even then, one of the bullets lodged itself into a pack of three books close to a civilian hiding.

It would make a good lesson later.

After three gunshots, Ivanna reached the area and threw up ice to prevent any more harm while she plunged the man with the gun in a deluge of water and somewhere in there his gun stopped working. She must have worked the water into the bullets.

I nodded along with her move; it was smart.

After soaking the villain, Ivanna turned the water to ice, making the woman’s clothes into a frosty prison.

Amelia was behind the counter at that point, fog spraying out of her mouth and coating the room in a thick blanket of darkness.

“That’s no fun.” Emma said from my shoulder. “At least let us watch.”

Concerned for my trainee, I sifted my gaze and instead focused my power to sense the room below.

It relied on the faint kinetic energy I sensed on the surfaces, using it to make a map in my mind. It came across as a strange gray scale world.

Amelia was inside the cloud, trying to fight the super, who then became completely flat with the wall. So much so even with my power, I couldn’t differentiate them from the wall.

Luckily, I could detect their ki as they slid along the wall and out of the cloud and back into view on the tablet.

The villain looked like a stick figure character of the robber as she ran along the wall like some sort of animated graffiti.

“That’s a unique power. Bet she’s fun at parties.” Emma looked on over my shoulder.

“Amelia, Ivanna, the second robber is escaping. Her power has her embedded in the wall. But you should be able to see her.” I did my job as a manager, even if I was testing them.

Amelia flew out of the fog in a rush to catch him. “I got her. She’s my target. I’ve got her.” She crashed into a few shelves, toppling herself and taking a moment to get back up.

Ivanna had paused with two big icicles over her head, waiting for Amelia.

The bumbling and excited super flew straight at the man in the wall as he tried to escape.

“I got you!” She screamed as she slammed into the wall, and the robber laughed before continuing to escape.

“Manager, do I hit her?” Ivanna asked as she slipped out the door and around the corner.

“Venus, could you fire a warning shot? Amelia, Ivanna, stand down and bring out the one you captured” I realized it was time for the trainees to take a step back.

Venus fired off a small beam of light that scorched the bricks and kept it there in front of the villain.

As soon as she tried to dodge around it, I knew we could grab her.

“Caging the villain.” Venus’ beam branched out into a dozen, pinning the flat robber in place.

Demoness stepped up next to them, cracking her knuckles. “What happens if I just start punching her?”

“She’ll probably die. If Venus’ light beams could injure her, then breaking the wall she occupies most likely will too.” I reasoned.

“Hey get out of the wall, or I’m going to start punching your face.” Demoness barked at the robber.

The robber looked both ways and sighed before stepping out of the wall. Venus’ light beams encircled her to make room. “You got me.” She held out the duffel back, which Demoness took away.

The second Demoness’s arms were occupied, the robber slipped into the pavement. Once again, she was two dimensional as she ran along the street.

Demoness immediately raised the bag over her head so she could get a good view and began stomping, slamming down on top of the robber before she got more than a foot away.

Watching what happened next was insane.

The villain popped back into three dimensions, but she was split along the lines where Demoness had stomped.

“Eww.” Demoness wrinkled her nose. “Amelia, come get your robber.”

“I’m not touching that. What happened?” The trainee came over and saw the odd jigsaw puzzle of a person.

The robber wasn't bleeding or anything. It was creepy to look at a person cut up like that.

Ivanna came out next with her robber floating in a prison of ice. “Want me to scoop it up?”

“Yes, please Ivy.” Amelia pleaded.

The water manipulator made a shovel out of ice and scooped the assorted villain pieces up. “What do I do with them now?”

“We’ll wait for a clean-up crew.” I said over the comms. “Now, trainees, let’s talk about what you did right and wrong.”

Emma put a hand on my shoulder. “As much as you are a wonderful teacher, maybe let me handle this?”

I shrugged, happy to let her step in.

The cat girl flipped off the roof, falling three stories and making it look effortless.

“Demoness, can you come pick me up?” I asked.

“On it.” Demoness shot up and nabbed me, bringing me down to the street level as people were taking pictures of the heroes and the two captured robbers, one of which was in pieces.

“Think she can put herself back together?” Demoness asked.

“Probably. How else would they know to avoid things like Venus’s laser?” I reasoned. I knew the villain had tested their boundaries before. This wasn’t the first time they’d had an accident.

Emma brought the two trainees to the side and had them sit down on the ground. “Now, my kittens, what did you both do wrong?”

Amelia looked at the ground. “I let my robber get away.”

Emma tisked at her, but I moved past that crowd and stepped into the building for a prop. I grabbed the pack of books with the bullet nestled into it and walked back out.

“Amelia, you did a few things wrong. To begin, you should have let Ivanna go in first. She can draw small arms fire without a problem, and she’s able to protect those behind her. Watch this.” I went back to the beginning of the encounter, where she rushed in and the robber fired off several shots.

Then I changed angles to another camera where people were huddled behind shelves and one of the bullets, controlled by my power, punched into a book set not more than a few feet from a man.

I handed her the book set. “And here’s a bullet that almost killed someone because you rushed in first.”

She took the books out of the package, so she just had the book with a bullet embedded in it. “I… I didn’t know.”

“Which is why you need to think a little more about the general situation.” I chided her even as Emma glared at me.

I realized I’d cut off Emma’s coaching again, but I continued on, not wanting Amelia to feel picked on.

“As for Ivanna, you were too hesitant to act. If you had followed Amelia in directly, you could have put up that wall of ice before he started shooting.” I turned and made sure they both knew that they weren’t perfect. Both had made mistakes.

Emma cleared her throat, and I knew I was pushing it. “Thank you, deputy, but maybe you should talk to some of the news crews showing up.”

I turned, not realizing the news had showed up to the low level robbery.

But it didn’t take long to realize why they were there as they pressed in around Stella and Mona, periodically panning over to the two downed robbers before moving right back to focus in on the two beauties.

“And…” Stella turned to get my attention. “We wouldn’t have gotten to where we are today without the mentorship and guidance of the deputy director. Miles is a key part of our team's success.”

I was walking over even before her cue.

“What of the rumors that you are romantically engaged with him?” A reporter held a microphone closer to Stella.

She turned on me when I got close and surprised me with a kiss before turning back to the reporter. “I’d say it’s more than just a rumor.”

I was blinded by flashes as people worked to get the picture for the next day’s newspaper. “What was that?” I asked.

“Staking my claim.” Stella smiled and waved at the reporters. “Besides, this is better than the rumors of you dating Kim.”

I sighed. Those rumors had become a stubborn infestation that didn’t seem to go away. “Fine. But let’s not make this a regular thing.”

AN - I'm somewhat tempted to drop the hero names honestly with so many it is starting to get confusing :p