SSV 4 Chapter 2 (Patreon)

Daeva had led us out of her home and around the city after her warnings on new titans.

“They really love you.” I commented, still struggling with my skepticism as I watched her interaction with the citizens.

It felt too good to be true.

“Daeva!” Another citizen waved at her. “Do you have enough bread in your place? I have some fresh loaves.” It took a moment before I noticed that the woman had her hand pressed against a stone oven, and where the two were making contact, the oven door was glowing red.

Nearby, loaves of bread were stacked on a counter, a shopper looking through them.

As the woman spoke to Daeva, everyone in the area looked up from what they were doing.

“No, it is fine, Veronica. If I get more of your bread, I’m going to start putting on weight.” Daeva laughed before gesturing to me. “Have you met Miles? He will be joining me in dealing with large threats. He might even be a little stronger than me.”

“Daeva.” I cautioned. I’d never promised that.

“Oh!” The ladies all around us were suddenly looking me up and down, more than a few with hunger.

The gender disparity in the village seemed a little worse than Point City. But as I considered it, it would make sense that those in committed relationships might have more roots tying them to a city. Those who were single were more likely to adventure out.

“He’s going to be the God King of Fertility.” Stella added unhelpfully. “I’m his little Goddess of Lust.”

“Stella.” I tried to compel her to stop talking with my voice, but the damage was already done. At least Melody was being calm and watching everything carefully without spouting nonsense.

The woman who had been inspecting the loaves of bread was on me, her hand touching my arm reverently. “You’ll be blessing our city with fertility? More males, I hope.”

Daeva cleared her throat loudly, and the woman backed up.

“Sorry.” The woman politely bowed. “I’m just glad that Daeva has some help. She protects our city and needs a break from time to time.” While she was complimenting Daeva, she still kept her entire focus on me.

I didn’t know how to answer, so I just nodded at her and moved on. “These people like you too much.” I told Daeva.

“No. They recognize what I do for them, because I’m not some bureaucratic organization with shadowy intentions at every turn. I’m a hero, The Hero, of New Haven. My contributions to the city are clear, and they honor them.” Daeva continued the tour.

I nodded, looking around a bit more carefully. I still remembered my initial mission. The goal was to scout New Haven and the source of Monster Fruit. I hadn’t decided how I’d use the information after the government had tried to kill me, but I was still interested in gathering it.

So far, I’d learned a good bit about New Haven.

Daeva had shown us around the entire city. It was missing many modern conveniences, but instead of investing in more technology, they seemed to simply have supers use their skills to fill in any gaps. And others reimbursed them for their services.

“So, what do you want?” Daeva asked with a raised brow.

The question caught me off guard. “What do I want?” I frowned, a little on edge.

“What should we do next?” She clarified.

“I’d like to see the Monster Fruit. I want to understand what you are doing with it.” I tried to work it in casually. Curious for more intel.

Her question also made me realize how little I had planned for my next steps.

Some of my women were still in Point City, but they were safe for the time being. The BSH wasn’t expecting me back, given Void was declared dead, and I hadn’t worked out how I was going to get revenge for their attempts to kill me.

So while I was in New Haven, what did I want?

Mona started digging furiously through my mind. I could feel her working in the background.

Mona? What are you doing?

My fated, I wanted to help you figure out what you want.

I held my forehead. The question shouldn’t be so hard.

But Daeva’s concerns over super titans at least held some credibility I wanted to explore. I realized what I wanted most was long term security for me and my harem. Stella had awoken something in me, and while I’d been alone for so long, I couldn’t imagine going back to that life.

Each of my women gave me a warmth, a comfort in my life. I wanted them to be safe and secure.

Daeva glanced over at me, heat filling her eyes. There was something that drew me to her, but I still hadn’t determined just how much crazy was too crazy for my harem.

Mona seemed to coil around my thoughts and started picking them apart.

What now?

I’m looking at what you need in your harem and how we can make something permanent. We are continuing to work on the lair, but that isn’t enough, is it?

No. It isn’t enough to just have the lair.

We need more, something either completely on our own or enough power that nobody would dare harm us.

I felt Mona dive straight through my mind, dredging up long forgotten thoughts as she did so.

You could come out as Void when you return. No one would bother us then.

There would be some that attack, just as the government did.

You could just paste General Pratt and the Mayor when you return.

She turned over a few of my surface thoughts. Oh, they are as good as dead, aren’t they?

Pretty much. After what they did to Melody, I’m not going to let them have any authority. I just need to make sure I nip that particular bud when I return. It’s going to require a little attention to make sure that they not only die, but no one worse takes their place.

Then might I suggest that you just relax for now? Or have you forgotten how to do that?

Mona had a little sass to her mental voice, as if daring me to object.

Fine, I’ll relax. I’ll build a hut here and trade whatever it is I can do with my power that isn’t just blowing shit up.

No you are not. Now, you’ve dwelled long enough. Think of New Haven as a vacation. Feel free to scout for a few more women to build out our family, and enjoy getting to be a God. Oh, I could be the goddess of light! That would be fun.

Mona’s mind drifted off as I caught flickers of images of her dancing with me, the two of us dressed up like Greek gods on the clouds.

I focused back on where we were going as Mona’s mind wandered off, and I caught Daeva staring again.

She smiled, seeming to read my expression. “It’s hard being a god isn’t it? There is so much we could do, yet doing it defeats the purpose of so much else. Come, here is Skel’s lab.”

Much of the city was archaic in design, but this building was like some junk hoarder had thrown everything they could find together.

“What is this?” I asked, eying the structure with skepticism. The thing looked like it could topple over.

“We don’t exactly produce our own computers, but Skel is a genius and makes it work. There are solar panels on top, so it only works during the day.” She didn’t seem concerned about the stability of the structure as she walked into it without knocking.

Stella and Melody who had been following quietly behind me trailed in, giving the place an odd look.

I walked in behind, bracing for a fight when Melody gasped and Stella ducked behind me.

Her eyes were fixed on the sole occupant.

A skeleton was working amid the building, doing a little dance as it played with a set of beakers and flasks.

“Skel. We have guests. The one I talked about before.” Daeva introduced me. “This is Miles. But he’s better known as Void in Point City.”

The skeleton turned around, red beady eyes glowing in their eye sockets. “Well hello.” Its voice was hollow, but friendly sounding.

“The skeleton talks.” Stella whispered.

“Yes, I talk.” Skel said.

Stella squeaked and ducked back behind me. “I do not like ghosts.”

I raised an eyebrow at her as I looked over my shoulder.

She rapidly shook her head, asking me not to force it.

I filed it away but didn’t press her. Who knew Stella was scared of ghosts?

“Skel, Miles here wants to understand more about Monster Fruit. He’s interested in understanding how we are going to catch humans up to monsters in power.” Daeva sat down on a stool and put her arm on the table.

The skeleton moved about, and I frowned. “How does your power work?” Using my abilities, I could sense that they had two powers active in their mind.

“This is what made me understand that we don’t fully understand power.” The mad scientist clacked their teeth together as they talked.

I wasn’t quite sure what gender Skel was, but with two powers, I guessed a female.

“You see, I was a mad scientist in life. Then I died in a horrible accident with pressurized fluorobenzaldehyde. The stuff melted the flesh right off my bones, all my organic matter gone.” Skel tapped their head. “But it never stopped. My mind. It stayed active even as nothing but a pile of bones. Whatever the power was that heightened my intelligence, it wasn’t bound by the flesh. It took some time and I got quite lucky. My second power allowed me to animate small objects, a rather fun power to make my tools dance their way back into the drawers.” Skel felt like she was about to dive into a long story.

“She animated herself.” Daeva sped up the story. “Dug herself out of the grave they put her in and then I found her. I brought her here because she understood powers differently.”

Skel nodded and got a syringe ready before handing it to Daeva to insert into her own arm and draw blood. “I’ve been trying to reverse engineer what was done to Daeva for her third power. That’s what led to the monster fruit.” Skel took the syringe carefully and put it in a fridge. “My lab isn’t great. It’s mostly cobbled together from what we could salvage from the fallen city.”

I nodded. That explained why it all looked like decade old technology. I gave them credit for using mostly abandoned technology rather than stealing it.

Given the old tech she was using, Skel likely had less advanced techniques she was following.

“You know your powers are both active in your head?” I asked Skel.

“Huh?” The skeleton looked up from their work.

Daeva laughed. “Skel, I told you that Miles turned off my power when I fought him. If he can turn them off, I’m sure he has some sense of them.”

The skeleton turned to me with an intensity burning in their eyes. “You can sense powers?”

“See them, actually. I have a mad scientist working for me too. We were playing with your monster fruit. Because I can manipulate powers, we were able to successfully control what power someone gained from ingesting it. We’ve also managed to prevent someone from becoming a cancerous giant.” I gestured to Melody.

My beautiful purple elf gave a slight bow. “He’s right. I took monster fruit and had a bad reaction. Miles then stopped the power from forming, and he and Dr. Wells continued to remove tumors until I stabilized and mutated like this.”

Skel’s body collapsed into a pile of bones.

“It died!” Stella clung to my back peering over my shoulder. “Why did it die? Where did it go? Is there a ghost free in here?”

The pile of bones picked itself back up as Skel reformed. “I did not die, merely lost concentration for a moment. You… you’ve progressed further in your study of monster fruit than I have.”

“Not really. I’ve been able to manipulate powers for a long time. In the past, I helped repair Stella’s power. I’ve actually helped expand several members of my harem’s power.” Feeling confident, I leaned against a space of bare wall. Stella tried to stay behind me, still afraid of Skel as she pressed herself between the wall and my body.

Daeva got up from the bench and came over to me, pressing her hand to her heart and then pressing her hand to mine.

Something in me wanted her to keep her hope, so I forced my heart to beat a little faster as she touched my chest.

She smiled brilliantly and nodded to herself. “You like to help. I’ll take all I can get.”

Even though Skel didn’t have eyebrows to make an expression, I somehow imagined them looking confused at Daeva touching me.

“So if powers aren’t physical, what are they?” The skeleton asked.

“I call it ‘ki’. It circulates in a different shape for every person. If it is in the mind, it is often a metal power. But it also circulates in people’s bodies and tends to be some sort of physical power.” I explained.

The skeleton had a tattered notepad out and was scribbling everything I said down onto it. “I see. What does the pattern look like? Does it glow?”

I frowned at the question. “Glow? I think of it sort of like a fluorescent blue, but…” I raised my hand. “It is a type of energy. Let’s see what happens when I try to concentrate it.”

Focusing on a pin prick in my hand, I gathered as much ki as I could, constantly packing it into a tight little ball.

Eventually, there was too much of it. It started to give off secondary forms of energy, one of which was a soft blue light.

“Incredible. This is ki?” Skel came up and touched it with her bony fingers, but nothing happened. “Daeva, is it the right color?”

The super had a hard look on her face. “Yes. Miles, I need you to understand that I’ve seen this color on several titans now. The Fenrir Wolf has patches that glow like this, so do two of the titans that have appeared in South America and have devastated their population.”

I raised my brows in surprise. “Then they truly are very powerful titans. The titans I’ve seen have been blindingly bright in ki concentration, but no actual light was emitted like this.” When I stopped concentrating the ki, it dispersed quickly, but Skel kept poking the air where it had been.

“Also, Skel, there are devices in Point City now that can detect ki. Libertech has made them.”

Skel scoffed at the mention of the company. “They were reckless fools.”

“They’re dead.” I replied.

“Oh. Suits them. I never liked Liberator. Too much of a fool thinking that if he just threw enough computing power at everything, he could solve the mysteries of the world. He never even understood what he was making. How can you advance if all you have are answers, not the how or the why.” Skel started off on a tirade, and I got the feeling it wasn’t the first.

“Liberator made a titan.” Melody added.

Skel coughed. “Glad he’s dead then. But his research added value, even if he didn’t understand what he was doing…”

“I’ll get someone to get you one of these devices.” I replied, feeling Mona tug at the back of my mind and take the small mission I’d given her. “Daeva, I might need your help retrieving it though.”

“It’ll be done, just tell me where.” Skel replied instead of Daeva. “We have people that can traverse the wild and regularly do. One of those detectors could greatly help my own research. Would you be able to help me with my research later?”

I shrugged. “If you have some powers you’d like to replicate, I could help with that.”

Daeva and Skel looked at each other for a moment, some silent communication passing between them.

“Would you really be willing to help direct someone’s power with monster fruit?” Daeva asked.

I frowned. “I probably wouldn’t want to make an army of you, if I’m honest. But within reason, I could help.”

She shook her head. “We have a few people with powers to grow crops, build pipes, or create water. If we could double their number, it would stabilize the city greatly.”

“Oh.” I was surprised at where she focused her efforts. I was expecting some sort of military power to be at the top of Daeva’s list.

Melody turned to me, her eyes pleading for me to help. She was a softy and if it was to improve the lives of the people here, she’d want me to help.

I gave her a nod. We were on the same page. “Sure, that’s no problem. My tests are limited though. I can tell you what we did previously, but there is still a chance of failure.”

“I’ll trade my notes on monster fruit with your mad scientist.” Skel offered. “Of course our production is elsewhere.”

I relayed that to Wells, she is extremely interested. Mona projected an image of Wells looming over her drooling, and I laughed.

“Yeah, our mad scientists would love that.”

Skel frowned. “You’re in communication with her?” She looked for some hidden device on me.

I smiled. “There’s a super that has made a telepathic nest in my head. She’s still back in Point City.” I replied.

Skel frowned but nodded. “Let me copy some of my notes. I’ll send them to your scientist in return for a ki detector and any notes she has on directing power growth.”

Wells agrees to the trade.

“Yep, she’s good with that.”

Skel quickly started unplugging various devices and wheeled over a small printer, plugging it in. “It’ll take a minute. Even as a mad scientist, I can barely get printers to work.”

We could all relate.

“Here, I’ll leave directions for the drop.” Taking up a pen, I scribbled directions to a location just outside the city where Mona was agreeing to meet with the goods.

I finished writing down the location just as a set of sirens started to go off in New Haven. I braced, looking around.

“Oh, now you get to see the fun stuff.” Skel smiled. “That means that there is a large monster approaching.”

I glanced over to Daeva. She was already halfway out the door, waving for me to follow.