SSV4 Chapter 27 (Patreon)

AN - So much fun to see you all squirm about what his new power might be. :)

I walked out of Obsidian’s ‘play room’. The Obsidian at the desk watched me with shock.

“Do I need to help any of them?” She asked with a strange mix of concern and arousal.

“No, they are fine. Just exhausted.” My mind was too active for me to even think about sleep. I wasn’t sure how I’d manage to ever sleep, but that was a problem for another time.

I’m fairly sure I could put you to sleep if you wanted. An image of Mona smiling at taking me off to my dreams for herself floated through my head.

Not now.

I looked up, noticing Doctor Wells waiting nearby while discussing something with Skel.

“Is that my sample?” She looked at a copiously full sample cup with a raised brow. “That’s not physically possible.”

“I heal quickly, and Angelina was very insistent that we take multiple samples.” I went to hand her the cup and she pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, putting them on before reaching out to accept the sample.

“Thank you. We’ll begin our analysis. We are currently unsure if your reaction to monster fruit was because of your power or just a standard side effect. After all, this variant was made entirely with you in mind.” Wells frowned at the cup again and nodded to Skel; the two of them hurried off. The two of them were a scientific force to be reckoned with.

But from that cup, they’d figure out if my swimmers were fixed.

Heading towards the elevator, I thought I’d check in with the others I knew were likely mingling about in the house.

When I reached it, instead of calling for the elevator, I just opened the doors and shot myself up the shaft to the main level.

When I walked out, a few Obsidians nodded at me while they went about cleaning the house. I found Kim, Beatrix and Vaash all sitting at the kitchen table.

“There’s the man of the hour. How did everything go?” Kim looked at me expectantly.

I coughed into my hand. “Sample collection took longer than expected.”

Beatrix checked her tablet. “Four hours?!”

“He goes all night in New Haven.” Vaash shrugged, her ears twitching.

“Some of us aren’t that durable.” Beatrix went pale.

Kim only raised a manicured brow. “Interesting. No wonder you have such a harem. Did the new power have something to do with regeneration? Immortality perhaps?” Her eyes twinkled with excitement, and I could tell she wanted her power to be the one I’d chosen.

I smiled. “No, it isn’t your power. But I think it’ll serve me better. No offense, but your immortality is quite painful.” Rather than just heal from wounds, I planned to evolve beyond getting wounded. But I knew it would take some time. My women weren’t ready for that quite yet.

“If you are truly back, I need help with Pratt and Hendricks.” Kim moved on now that she realized I hadn’t taken her power.

“Something new or the same old bullshit?” I frowned, sitting down at the table.

Beatrix scoffed. “They threatened to take the BSH away from her because her prison rates weren’t high enough.”

“Oh?” I glanced at Kim, interested in more.

Kim crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, once again becoming the serious Director of the BSH. “Hendricks is all over me to get more girls in prison because they want to continue to push them out into the wilds. At first she led me to believe there was some natural resource they were after.”

“But now?”

Beatrix tapped on her tablet a few times and flipped it around for me to see a topographical map. “See these filters?” She tapped through a list on the side.

When she tapped the filters, the map didn’t change much. There were just a few small blips of color.

“Doesn’t look like much.” I replied.

“Exactly.” Kim nodded. “There’s no resources where they are targeting this expedition.”

Beatrix continued. “We went back to determine what used to be in that section of the wilds before titans made humanity pull back to the cities, and it was a small town. The only thing of significance was a project that was an archival science vault of sorts.”

“What did it archive?” I asked, still confused why Pratt or Hendricks would want an old world vault. Most of the knowledge of the old world smoothly transferred into the cities; there wasn’t much to glean. But there had been a fair share of doomsday preppers when monsters started to cause problems.

“That’s the strange part. Animals, bugs mostly. They called it Nature’s Ark.” Beatrix looked up and nearly dropped her tablet. “What?”

I put my hand to my head. “Bugs? You are telling me it is filled with bugs?”

“And animals.” Beatrix clarified. “Lots of them are ones from the early age of powers. So, many of them are super. It was built to be like a seed in the event some power wiped out all life on earth. They collected all sorts of bugs and some smaller animals with powers to hopefully repopulate earth.”

“That’s worse. I think I know who is behind all of this.” My headache was growing by the minute.

Kim was watching me closely. “Is it a former villain you knew?”

“No. It’s a problem from New Haven. There’s a villain that is a recurring problem. He’s a man with roach mutations and the ability to dominate the minds of insects and people with insect mutations.” I explained.

Kim frowned. “But he’s in New Haven.”

“Not really. He lives in the Wilds. All we know is that he has an operation in New Haven. I hadn’t considered it before, but it wouldn’t shock me if he’s had dealings in the cities too.” My newly enhanced mind was running far ahead of me putting together the pieces. There were still some missing pieces though.

Beatrix was quickly tapping away on her tablet before she started to swipe several times. “This him?”

The way Daeva described his inability to even find a woman to have sex with had me prepared for an ugly bastard.

But the muta on the screen was hard to look at.

“I have not seen him before.” A frown of disgust formed on my face against my intentions. Unfortunately with my new power, the image of the man wasn’t leaving my mind anytime soon. “But given that he started using his power to rape women, I can see maybe why he had to go to such an extent.” I pushed Beatrix’s tablet for Kim to get a look.

Kim winced. “Yeah. Reminds me of some of the mutas that you aren’t sure if they are human anymore.”

The man in the picture had very clearly taken after a roach. His eyes had swollen into segmented bug eyes, with grotesque mandibles bursting out of his cheeks. Meanwhile, his human body had bloated into something that wasn’t a recognizable human shape, and his skull shape was just off enough to trigger the uncanny valley.

Then there was his apparent lack of hygiene as he tried to hide his torso under a stained and dirty shirt that had two skinny human arms covered in spines sticking out of the sleeves and then another pair half way down his body.

“Okay. So, what do you have on him B?” Kim pushed the conversation forward and swiped off the picture.

“Not a lot…” She trailed off, reading through the data on her tablet quickly.

I wondered with my new power if I could match the reading speed of someone like her that was a speedster, even if it only affected her hands, the brain of speedsters all interpreted inputs at insane speeds.

“Okay. So this is weird. He’s got a record a mile long from a ways back. Then there’s a big dead space, and then after that only a few minors that were dismissed.” She hit a few screens that made her put in a password. “Lots of the information is redacted. Oh shit, yeah, he does not treat women well. But his record jumps between cities more recently. He’s moving between them really quickly.”

That made sense. “He has a telepathic with super speed that’s working with him or is dominated by him. We aren’t sure which.”

“Why does he need Pratt to get this for him then?” Kim pondered aloud.

“It’s deep in the wilds and a very dangerous area. Remember those dragon cranes that attacked Point City five or so years ago?” Beatrix asked.

Kim nodded, and my brain felt like it was about to melt itself as it went through my mind trying to dig up past memories.

But I found what I wanted. I knew about an incident with about fifty of what the news called dragon cranes. They tore up a good portion of the city. Each one was about on par with an S grade super. It hadn’t started a titan response, but Point City had gotten reinforcements from Coast and Mountain to defend against them.

“I remember. How many are there around this vault?” I pulled myself out of my new supercharged brain, trying to dive into my past memories.

“Hundreds. I don’t think their population is past the thousands, but even for some big bad villain, that’s a nightmare.” Beatrix tapped away at her tablet before flicking something. “I’ll send you their details.”

I chuckled. “Need to find my tablet. Angelina probably has it somewhere.” I’d been without electricity for a while, so I hadn’t bothered to bring it. I’d left it with Angelina.

And I had to admit, the disconnect had been nice.

“Well, what are you going to do about this?” Kim was scowling. “The top leadership of Point City is working with him.”

“They need to die. Obviously.” I rolled my eyes. “I was expecting to do this and then jump back to New Haven to continue to dig up his operation there.”

“But Point City needs you to save it now.” Kim argued.

I shrugged. “It doesn’t really seem like it needs saving. This has likely been going on for some time. Pratt’s plan to send supers out there has been in the works for over a year. That means Pratt and Hendricks have been working with Roach for at least that long.” I blew out a breath and looked at the ceiling.

The more we dug into it, the more I realized that Roach had dug himself into the fabric of this world.

He really was an infestation.

“Beatrix, I need you to dig in deep. Figure out how far this goes. When the time comes, I want to rip it up in one go.” It was messier than I’d anticipated, but what needed to happen was relatively clear. “If I don’t get it all the first pass, the next person elected to be mayor is going to also be in his pocket, and it will all start again.”

“Why don’t you take over?” Beatrix asked while her fingers blurred over her tablet.

I scoffed. “Please. I have zero interest in bureaucracy. But I’ll weed the garden if I have to. He can control bug mutas. Check into the higher power ones we have in the city. Are any going missing in our penal system, or worse, is there some statistical anomaly with them in regards to crime? He could be using them to get what he wants out of Point City.”

Kim was holding her tongue and just shook her head, letting whatever she was thinking go. “Miles, can you kill this Roach?”

“I’d have to find him first. That’s been the problem. He’s always sort of lurking at the fringe of these problems.” I rubbed my chin. “Can you find him, Beatrix?”

“Even what I’ve found is pretty scarce. If you are right and he’s using a telepathic speedster, it’ll be hard, but I’ll try.” Beatrix went back to work on the tablet.

“If nothing else, he’s likely to go to this vault when Pratt and Hendricks open it up for him.” I said. “We’ll let their project continue, but we need to be ready to swoop in at the end. How long do we have, Kim?”

“The big push is this week.” Kim replied.

Beatrix pulled up the map again. She drew some lines and started doing math. “Five days to get there, maybe another day to clear it and start to dig up the vault?” It wasn’t as precise as I’d like, but it was close enough. I had a little time to prepare.

“Good. Then I’ll continue with the New Haven problems and come back when we are closer to the completion of Pratt’s project. Stay in touch with Mona. She’ll be able to keep in touch with me, and I’m fairly sure I can travel between the two cities faster if I need to.” I smiled.

“Still keeping the power a secret?” Beatrix asked.

“I made myself smarter.” I tapped my forehead. “And the rest was mostly a guess. I’ll have to spend some time working on it before I do anything too risky. But, from what I saw of my power, it should be stronger than what I’ve done before. My limitation is how much brain power I have to use it.”

Kim frowned, but she didn’t say anything. I knew she’d wanted me to copy her power. But it wasn’t what made the most sense for me.

“Anyway, let me wake up the girls so I can get them moving back to New Haven.”

Mona mentally clung to me, and I remembered that she wanted to have that date night with me at a concert hall.

We might be busy here.

I know my fated. You have a lot placed on your shoulders. I will move the date for after all of this.

Sending her images of kissing her, she gobbled them up and moved away from my surface thoughts. She was likely to hoard those images wherever she kept her favorites.

For a moment, my powered mind started to look for them, but I reigned it in.

Having a mad scientist power was a lot. And I still wasn’t positive I’d actually accomplished my goal and made the right power. After all, I was banking on the fact that she didn’t quite realize the limits of her own power.

It will be right, my fated. Your logic makes sense, and she likely hasn’t thought to use it that way. For as intelligent as she might be, she’s grown up with the power and that’s shaped her mind. It made her more certain of her own perceived boundaries too.

I nodded along with Mona as I reached the basement again.

The first floor looked like any ordinary basement, with a strangely shaped corner that anybody would miss if they were looking from the stairs.

I opened the elevator and an Obsidian had on a bellhops outfit, standing inside.

“Going down, sir?” She smiled.

“This is new.” I stepped into it. “Catching up with the ladies. I think they are still in the playroom.”

“Ah.” The Obsidian clone hit the right floor. “Lucky ladies indeed. We’ve been petitioning Prime for some opportunities.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “I mean, you are at least physically attracted to all of us, right?”

I made a hum of agreement. “It’s complicated. I like Obsidian, and I have a relationship with Prime. But you are all your own person to an extent, which means I’d have to form and cultivate a relationship with each of you.”

The bellhop Obsidian was frowning deeper with each word. “We know you. The Obsidian’s that you broke, that you worked with initially… Those memories are in all of us. For me it is like waiting for a first date from a guy, but he’s choosing your sister instead.”

“What if I took an Obsidian that was willing to share her memories wide out for a date?” There was no way I could date all of them.

The Obsidian in the elevator licked her black lips. “That would be fantastic. I’m sure we could find one to go on a double date with you and Prime? Every man fantasizes about twins, right?”

I paused, not hating the idea.

“It would satisfy a growing body of Obsidians that are pushing against Prime for hogging you.” She added, clearly trying to sweeten the deal.

“That’s a thing?” I asked, surprised Prime hadn’t told me.

“Yes, it is. Time with you is a hot commodity. Some of the upper echelon are stirring things up against Prime on the basis of her hogging you.” She looked like Obsidian, sounded like her too, but the smallest aspects of her were different.

She wasn’t wound as tightly as Prime, and our relationship still wasn’t as deep.

“I’ll talk to her.” I promised.

The bellhop Obsidian pumped her fist. “Awesome. We’ll find the perfect one to offer up to Prime.”

The elevator dinged and the doors opened.

A small platoon of Obsidians were behind the desk and bowed as I stepped out.

“Welcome.” They spoke in unison. “The ladies are awake and eating breakfast. Would you like anything? Absolutely anything.” One Obsidian purred the question.

“Thank you ladies. I could use some food. Bacon and eggs sound divine right now.” Stella’s pancake fetish had made my diet a little carb heavy lately. I was craving something more savory.

“One bacon omelet coming right up.” The center Obsidian replied and picked up the phone at her desk to deliver the order while another Obsidian peeled off from the group and led me back to the girls.

It was a little excessive, but that was Obsidian.

“Master.” Stella perked up from a plate of pancakes as I walked into the room.

A nice foldout table had been erected and the girls were all sitting around eating breakfast while a small army of Obsidians cleaned the rest of the playroom.

“Here you go.” The Obsidian leading me pulled out a chair next to Prime and gestured for me to sit down before pushing the chair in for me. “Anything I can get you to drink?”

“Water’s fine. I need some hydration after earlier.” I replied.

The girls laughed. “Not as much as Pollen. That was an interesting surprise.” Obsidian chuckled, looking over at one of the couches in the playroom where several of her clones were working to clean the sticky fluid off of the black leather.

I smirked; it was fun to make Pollen make a mess. I looked over and Pollen’s cheeks had turned rosy as she focused very intently on her breakfast.

“Let’s all eat up quickly. I’m heading out after that. Back to New Haven. We have more information about Roach, and the scope of his operation is larger than we thought. I want to make sure we keep it from New Haven for now.” I explained.

Angelina leaned forward. “Larger how?”