The Owl in the Abyss - Chapter 23 (Patreon)

“Rule number one of this house, if anything appears out of thin air, you do not touch it, inspect it and look further at it. You turn around and shout for me. If I’m not here, you shout for Mr. Hebert. If you’re alone in the house, get your new phone out and call.”

I could see that Theo understood the words, but he was still confused about such an esoteric rule for a modest suburban household. He took a sip from a glass of cola and frowned at me from across the kitchen table. “Does that happen often here?”

“It does, hence why it’s a house rule. Suffice it to say, that it’s a phenomenon that Fortress is investigating. Rule number two. If you meet a pleasant woman by the name of Shauna, who sometimes comes round the house,” I fiddled and swiped my smartphone, to bring up a photo of her. “Do not agree to undergo any psychological therapy with her or tell her about your problems, even if she asks. Simply stop speaking or listening at that point and tell her ‘Remember your promise.’”

Theo was now quite baffled, I didn’t blame him.

“She is a cape with a very specific power that will activate the longer you talk to her about your problems. What happens to you will be either fantastic or it may seem so, but it may also be horrible in a way that will make you wish for death.”

“Okay,” he said faintly, his eyes wide.

“Garbage days are Wednesdays. I generally take care of all household chores, since I don’t sleep, but if you are going to live here, you need to do your part. I’ll draw up a schedule and we can share it between ourselves. Your bedroom was my room before I triggered, so please keep things neat and not a pigsty.”

He nodded seriously before having to fend off questing hands from the baby in his lap, who wanted to have a sip of his drink. “No Aster, you can’t drink this. You’ve already had your milk and baby food.”

“Any specific allergies that you or Aster have?” I asked with an amused grin at the toddler.

“None,” he shook his head.

“Good, no changes in the groceries needed then. Next we’re going to talk about school. My dad has already communicated with Arcadia that you’ll be away for the next two weeks, due to the arrest of your stepmother and the upheaval that caused. Naturally, we didn’t say a thing about your trigger event, but hopefully it should be enough time for you to get your head on straight before returning.”

He let out an explosive breath of relief and I saw a figurative weight leave his shoulders. “Thank you, the idea of going back now…”

“It would be irresponsible and dangerous to put you in the cauldron of turmoil that is a high school. Not until you have a handle of what your power is completely. That is something we will be working on at Fortress, unless you wish to go to the Protectorate?”

“With the moles in the PRT, no,” he shook his head. “I want to delay Kaiser finding out that I have a power as long as possible.”

“Would he really conscript you?” I asked, studying Theo’s aura carefully.

“No, there’s no one to threaten. I might have disavowed him as my father, but I’m still his son at the end of the day. He might try to coerce or even bribe me though.”

“Carrot instead of stick.”

“Exactly, but I want nothing from him or anything to do with him.”

I nodded, “Then we can do small scale testing in the basement and start to explore the finer details of your power, starting today.”

“Today?”

“The sooner the better, Theo. I’d rather not find out your power has a nasty expression while you sleep or as you experience a nightmare. Though we have a pretty good baseline to work from given you’re a second generation cape and your power is clearly in the theme of your father’s.”

If I didn’t have my misty form I’d be very wary of ever fighting Kaiser.

He was the strongest Shaker in the city and arguably the strongest in the entire East Coast.

Summoning metal in any shape he could imagine from any surface around him in a very large radius that had never been properly quantified, though I imagined it had to be within line of sight at least. Henry would probably have a good idea, given how thorough a study he’d been making of parahuman abilities.

Naturally, Kaiser used shapes such as blades, bludgeons, spears, needles and so on when he was acting offensively, whilst sheets, tubes and beams could be summoned when he was defensive or needed some utility on a battlefield. His power also didn’t respect any sort of conservation of mass and needed very little time to work, even when summoning huge amounts of material.

His Manton limit meant he couldn’t generate metal straight out of someone’s body to kill or injure, but one of the most common tricks he used was to summon a spike right under someone's foot to root them in place whilst seriously injuring them.

In self defense, he could create a suit of thick armor that he could regenerate and mold on the fly. It showed the precision of his power that he usually created this armor to near perfectly resemble a knight with all sorts of E88 regalia and symbology all over it.

I imagined that Miss Militia would at the very least need to use a very large recoilless rifle to punch through Kaiser’s armor. On the other hand, that would only work if she could catch him off-guard, since he’d just summon enough steel in the path of the projectile to stop it cold before it could ever reach his body.

Theo’s power was clearly a spin on this; putting his limbs into an example of the material, then that limb was manifested a distance from his body from a similar material that existed naturally within his range.

On the surface it seemed like a downgrade of his father’s power, lacking the speed or outright lethality it gave Kaiser. That was only at first glance though. A hand and arm made out of steel, glass, concrete or any of the other materials that we surround ourselves with, suddenly appearing at the wrong time and place, could be potentially devastating.

Was there any feedback from the projected limb to his senses?

In the car he had definitely gotten a ‘handful’ of my breast and had been trying to puzzle it out, so there was a sensation transfer. What would happen if that projected arm was damaged or destroyed? Would it hurt Theo? Would it just simulate pain? Where does his actual arm go when he shoves it into a surface?

All questions that would have to be answered in the next few days.

He had finished his drink at this point and was just staring into the empty glass as if it held all his answers, though a quick look through True Sight and I saw his power was currently imbued in every bit of glassware in the kitchen at the moment.

I didn’t begrudge him trying out the Thinker aspects of his powers, since it seemed the most passive and the more he used it the better it would be for his situational awareness. Now it was just a question of how to get around the limitation that was imposing in a tactical sense.

“Another bit of homework is a name for your alter ego,” I spoke up, causing him to jerk out of his augmented perceptions.

“Oh yes and a costume-”

“One step at a time, Theo. Your name might influence your costume.”

“Yeah, how’s the Internet in the house?”

“At the moment, we’re mostly just using smartphone tethering on laptops. There’s a crew coming in the next few days to install a fiber optic line for the house. I’ll let you borrow my laptop for any research.”

“Thanks-”

I held up a hand to interrupt him as my nose smelt something burning. I audibly sniffed in more air and looked around the room. Naturally, nothing in the kitchen was on fire.

“You smell that?”

He sniffed and frowned, “Vaguely, yeah.”

“One moment.”

I misted and quickly did an inspection of every room in the house at max speed.

So nothing inside at least, I zoomed up and through the roof, before gazing around the neighborhood in a full circle.

Then I saw it, roughly four or five streets away a column of thick smoke was climbing into the sky.

A house was on fire.

I zipped back down into the kitchen and reappeared right next to ‘15 leaned against the wall, grabbed it and my phone from the table.

“Something wrong?” Theo asked.

“House on fire nearby, gonna see if I can help.”

With no further word I misted again and flew straight through the wall, a couple of trees and another house before gaining enough altitude to just skim over the rooftops of the passing houses.

When I was a sufficient distance from my house, I rematerialized my upper body and pushed myself to max speed, angling slightly to the right away from the thick column of smoke.

It felt like barely moments later I had to will myself to stop, lest I overshoot the street in question.

I turned right and shot up the street for a few seconds, coming to a stop at the intersection, scanning for the street name.

That done, I retraced my flight path back to the house and began dialing my phone.

The home was a fairly nice two floor building of brick and wood. The entire rear garden with its many trees, plants and the nearby section of the home was ablaze with roaring yellow flame.

The line connected as a man still in his pajamas burst out of the front door coughing and stumbling onto his knees on his front lawn.

“PRT Emergency line, how can I help?”

“This is Escort, coding in, Sierra, Alpha, one, nine, jelly bean, exclamation, star, Yankee, one, four.”

“Stand by… coding confirmed. What is the situation?”

“I need a fire truck at 64 Carlisle Avenue, Docks central. Single house on fire, potential to spread. No current parahuman causation evident.”

“Understood Escort, rerouting your report to the Fire Department.”

While ordinarily, I would’ve directly phoned the emergency services hotline, the instant any ‘parahuman’ got involved in a seemingly mundane situation, it complicated matters. The normal emergency operator would’ve also asked for my phone number and ID number, which was not on the cards when I was technically always in my cape persona.

I double checked that my hair was properly arranged around my face. “Thank you, only spot one civilian out of the house so far. Anything else?”

“No, Fire Department confirms the dispatch. They’ve also received multiple calls in the area.”

“Good, thank you. Escort out.”

I stowed my phone and flew down to the man who had finally stopped coughing his lungs out and gathering his wits. He abruptly whirled around to the burning house in a panic.

“Mom!”

I materialized myself fully behind him and grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Easy sir, stop. Your mother is still in there?”

His head whirled around to face me in astonishment by my demonstrated strength keeping him in place, then his jaw slacked and his eyes grew wide.

“Bu- bu- yeah- wha-”

“Stay here! I’ll get her!”

I misted my legs and flew past him towards the front door that was now steadily billowing smoke. The heat I felt as I neared it was already scorching.

I misted completely just before I passed the threshold.

Inside I was confronted with a world of smoke, crackling and hissing flame and groaning structure.

I willed myself lower to the floor to keep my bearings.

With a non-existent breath to fortify myself I began a quick room to room search, zipping through walls, flame and on-fire furniture.

The first floor revealed no one and moved on to the second as I felt the weight of every second ticking by.

Luck was with me though as I found the man’s mother in the first room I searched.

It was a bathroom and she was practically kissing the floor with a towel wrapped around her face. Her long gray hair was a mess and the dressing gown she was wearing was soot stained.

Her coughing was severe and she seemed to be clutching her leg.

I wasted no time in materializing only my hand, touching her shoulder before ‘dragging’ her into my misty form.

It was the mental trick I used and had perfected to reliably mist other people safely. Right now, the woman was just like anything else I carried in my hands.

My will carried me away and out of the house in moments, but I could feel the considerable extra ‘drag’ I now had, with the mass of ‘15 and the woman.

I materialized completely just in front of the guy, who was pacing frantically and wringing his short hair in worry whilst his aura was a wretched mess of despair.

“Mom!” he shouted and immediately kneeled to help, carefully pulling off the towel.

The old woman was wracked with coughs and grimaced with pain, still clutching her leg, which I now could see had a nasty burn on her upper thigh.

“Ah blast it,” she wheezed.

“Anyone else in there?” I asked urgently, gazing at the house.

“No,” he shook his head, helping his mom to lie on her back and assessing her burn wound. “Mom lives alone, I’m just here on a holiday visit from Boston. Where are those fire trucks?!”

“They’re on their way, sir.”

“Well… then make yourself useful and get me a first aid kit, I’m sure one of the neighbors has one.”

Speaking of which, at this point, those who were still home at this time of the morning on a weekday were emerging and spectating from their lawns. None were approaching to help in a typical show of ‘diffusion of responsibility’.

The only exception being the immediate neighbors on either side of the burning house. One man in a suit that had looked ready to go into the office was frantically running closer with a garden hose. He at first tried cranking it up to throw water directly onto the flames, but it was like spitting in the wind. The hose had nowhere near the volume of water to make any meaningful difference. He quickly gave that up and settled for throwing water on his fence and plants to prevent the flames from easily spreading in that direction.

The wind was carrying the smoke and flame more to the right, and that house was seemingly unoccupied.

“Be right back.”

I misted and flew into it with a blur of speed.

It was pure chance whether this house would have anything resembling a first aid kit, then whether I would find it.

I checked the kitchen, briefly poking my head through every cupboard - nothing but cutlery.

Nothing in the pantry or near the stove.

The garage was my next destination, only a single car parked with enough space for two and the smell of the space told me that a car had left here rather recently. I spotted a promising red bag hanging near a tool rack. I rematerialized and after a closer look, yes, a first aid kit roughly the size of a football.

When I reappeared next to the Bostonian man, he had managed to carefully tear away at the pajama bottoms his mother had worn, leaving only the bits of molten fabric that had fused itself with the skin.

“Here,” I said urgently, handing the kit to him.

“Thank you,” he zipped it open and started grabbing the supplies inside with a competence that only came from some form of medical training.

The mother hissed and groaned, but she seemed to bear the pain well enough to squint her eyes at me. “Really girl? You’re the hero who pulled me out?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She scoffed, “What a dichotomy, a hero and manners from someone who has no shame, strutting about with her tits and fanny exposed for the world to see.”

It was hard to show no reaction, but I bore the biting criticism as stoically as I could. “I don’t mind your judgment, ma’am. At least you’re alive to have one. All I will say in my own defense is that clothing would be pointless with regards to the mechanics behind my power.”

She grunted as her son started to carefully cut more away with a pair of scissors. Her aura was wracked with pain, but I saw some measure of respect from her at my response.

“Well, if you’re here then you might as well do something about the little bastards who started this fire. They’re probably somewhere in the garden still,” she said grumpily.

I blinked as my brain threw a gear, “I’m sorry, ma’am, what?”

“The three little dragons. I was raising them all as instructed, now look at me and my house. Bastards, I’ve half a mind to sue them for damages,” the old woman huffed and grumbled.

“Mom, do you have smoke inhalation?” The man looked at his mother weirdly.

“Don’t look at me like that Elijah,” she huffed. “I might be in pain and yes, I probably did inhale a bit of smoke, but your mother’s faculties are all there. I meant what I said. I was raising dragons. Got a US Postal delivery about ten days ago. The letter said I had won a competition and inside the box were these eggs with instructions. Looked entirely legit.” She winced as her son carefully applied some burn ointment with his hands covered in latex gloves. “So I followed them on a lark, I was a bit bored at the thought of doing yet another knitting project and I missed Alyson-”

“Her cat,” Elijah said quickly, giving me a look.

“Don’t interrupt your mother, did I not teach you better?” she scolded.

“Yes, just providing some context for the cape, mom,” he explained quickly, holding up his hands.

“Anyway. Seven days after putting the eggs near the electric heater in the shed, lo and behold, three very cute dragons popped out.”

“And these small dragons could naturally spit fire?” I asked skeptically.

“Yes, but only when they’re startled or frightened. I made sure they got a good look at me as they hatched. They definitely imprinted on me, just as the instructions said. They were cuties and definitely treated me as if I was their mommy.”

I rubbed my forehead as I digested and turned her words over in my head. Really, in a world of parahumans, SCPs, tinkers of all types, was it so hard to swallow that someone had done something like this? No.

“First things first, how do they look exactly?”

“Let me think, well, imagine a dragon, but about as big as my hand. One was fire engine red, little black horns, also a speckled shell.”

“Sorry, shell?”

“Yes, oh, these aren’t the dragons you imagine from the movies, what did the pamphlet call them… oh yes, dragon-snails.”

“So a hybrid between a typically fictional creature and a garden pest?”

“Don’t you dare call those little cuties of mine a pest, young lady.”

“Sorry, ma’am, please continue. You had three of them and they all looked like that?”

“Just the first one, the Slimybellie. I also hatched an Oozedrake - yellow skin, striped shell and a Glowdrake, this one looks just like the Slimy but it glows in the dark.”

I frowned, “Ma’am, just how many eggs did this package contain?”

“Twelve, two of each type of dragon-snail.”

“And where did you leave the box containing the eggs?” I asked.

“Garden shed, it’s probably all ash at this point.”

Okay, baby steps, Taylor, I thought to myself. First get confirmation.

“I’ll be right back.”

I misted and a few moments later was hovering over the back garden in question. Only half of the trees had caught fire, a fluke of the garden design had created an almost accidental firebreak. At this point, most of the trees were just glowing blackened stumps, with only the occasional tongue of flame still burning on the branches. Spring hadn’t yet hit completely so the garden was quite susceptible to fire.

My eyes opened to True Sight and my stomach sank.

Sure enough, there in the soot remains of the garden shed, were three… dragon-snails, exactly as described… and they were SCPs. They were merrily oozing and moving slowly in the way snails did, except with the heads, snouts and eyes of a typical Western depiction of a dragon.

If the old woman was to be believed, it put a very big wrinkle in our theoretical conception of how SCP events and objects were appearing around me in an ever increasing event horizon.

In the distance, the sounds of emergency sirens and the characteristic honking of a fire truck reached me.

I willed myself to a safer distance from the blazing house fire and materialized my upper body, pulled out my phone and began dialing.

“Yes, Taylor?”

“Henry, we’ve got dragons.”

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Two fire trucks and a dozen firemen were now blasting the house with their high power hoses, using both the street fire hydrant and their truck’s internal reservoirs. The old woman, Mrs Howard, was now ensconced inside the back of an ambulance and receiving treatment for mild smoke inhalation and second degree burns to her leg.

“You better keep my babies well fed, you hear?!” she shouted to me from her stretcher, as the paramedic shut the rear doors of the ambulance, cutting off any further ranting from the old woman.

I couldn’t help but let out a small sigh of relief as the ambulance gathered speed and disappeared down the street.

“She can be a bit much,” Elijah said with a mild apologetic smile, awkwardly scratching his scruffy brown hair. He had apparently been in the shower when the realization of the fire came, and had redressed himself in a hurry with clearly mismatching clothes.

I nodded in understanding, resisting the urge to point out that he was lucky enough to still have a mother. Instead I handed him my newest hero business card, which clearly identified me as being part of Fortress.

“This has all my contact details. I’d like to buy the dragon-snails from your mother.”

“Not sure she’d agree, Escort. If she emotionally invested herself in them like she did her old cat, then there isn’t any amount of money in the world you could give her.”

“We’ll just have to see, excuse me.”

I walked off, trying to put out of my mind his own aroused aura and firmly not looking in the direction of all the strong, sweaty firemen and not imagining what they looked like under their protective gear. All of them had been very professional and no-nonsense in the face of a fire, but every time they took a breather…

Well, I give them credit for being as nonchalant as possible, but it was clear that I was being used as eye-candy.

Waiting for me at the marked Fortress van was a brick of a man, Corporal Louis Gomez.

Short, stout and muscly, were three words that described him to a tee, with dusky weathered skin that spoke of a life in the sun and outside. He was in civilian clothes for this occasion, looking like he had just walked off a construction site; jeans, heavy shirt and strong hard boots.

“Everything good here, Gomez?”

“Yes, mistress. The uh, dragons are in the terrarium and seem quite content, though one did seem to burp flame after eating the lettuce I gave them.”

The terrarium in question was just big enough to be easily carried by one person, yet large enough to give three dragon-snails enough room from each other. It was belted down in the back of the van. Another FTF member was hovering over it with a fire extinguisher in hand and ready to blast the little dragons should they decide to go crazy with their ability.

My phone rang.

“Yes, Henry?”

“After seeing the pictures, yes, you definitely have SCP-111 and it’s a Dr. Wondertainment product.”

“Great, just great and it somehow appeared in the US Postal system,” I said, feeling anxious with worry. That it was possible for an SCP to appear via that vector was very bad news. It definitely meant that the days where I’d be able to sense them appearing were numbered and the only way we’d know in the future was in the aftermath of the destruction or confusion the SCP left in its wake.

“I have a theory about that. It might be that the delivery itself, the van, the worker doing the job, was an SCP instance. In that case, it appeared in this universe still within the incidence radius around you ten days ago and went on its way to deliver it to the address.”

“I would’ve felt it back then.”

“Maybe, maybe not, there is little certainty when dealing with SCPs. There is a tendency that was common among the early Foundation scientists to consider their observations and conclusions about SCPs as set in stone. Thinking that if they applied the scientific method rigorously enough that there would be no more surprises from an SCP. There are always surprises and it’s the reason that some SCPs are difficult to contain. You are a SCP yourself, Taylor. You might as well be the SCP-001 for this universe.”

Thank you Henry, I thought sarcastically. The 001 designation was of special significance to the Foundation, as it was considered the true ‘genesis’ of all SCP events. It was so classified in that universe, that a specific memetic kill agent, an SCP in itself, was guarding all knowledge of it. Anyone who truly comprehended SCP-001 died instantly and to further obfuscate it, dozens of fake 001s had been released by the Foundation.

“Let’s talk about this later,” I said, feeling like there were iron bands constricting around my lungs. “We’ve got temporary custody of the dragons only and it seems that Mrs Howard won’t want to sell.”

“A pity, but we don’t have the fiat authority of the Foundation, so the best we could do is at least support her materially so there isn’t a repeat of this incident. They do have home insurance?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Details to work out later. How is the fire now?”

“Under control.”

“Let the FTF return to base and I think you should hang around there until the fire is completely dead. The other eggs will have survived. Probably buried under the ash.”

I glanced at the firemen and inwardly cursed my own imagination, feeling the instinct to go and have some fun with them slowly start to build within me. The small crowd of neighbors watching at a safe distance and those glancing from the windows didn’t quell it all. Naturally, I was also being watched as much as the fire itself.

No Taylor, bad Taylor, no having an orgy with the firemen for the whole neighborhood to gawk at, I mentally slapped my libido with a rolled up newspaper.

“Very well, I’ll look for them and bring them to Fortress later.”

“Excellent, I’ll begin preparations for a habitat for them in the meantime.”

“By the way, do they procreate?”

“Thankfully, no, they’re sterile. Dr. Wondertainment, for all his apparent mischief and catering his creations to children, is still a business at the end of the day and can't go eroding his own market.”

“At least we dodged that bullet. Okay, thanks Henry, see you soon.”

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It was evening. I felt a renewed weariness and weight on my shoulders as I leaned against my now customary spot on Sleepy Hollow street in the Red Light district, half keeping an eye out for customers, the working girls and the single gigolo of the street.

Most of the day had been spent dealing with SCP-111 and further theory work with Henry at Fortress, who had begun teaching me the basic principles of ontokinesis. We wouldn’t even be touching any practical application for months at least, but just this first lesson had only served to make my mood take a significant dip.

It further hit home the peril that the world, the universe and the very fragile human race now faced on this mudball.

If people began to become ontokinetically ‘active’ for lack of a better term, if the malleability of reality began to increase and reach a critical point, then it was entirely possible for SCP events and objects to manifest just because someone had something similar to a Trigger event. I didn’t even want to think about the consequences when those two events intersected - trigger event and spontaneous SCP generation.

I knew Trigger events involved extra-dimensional principles, so when the potential parahuman was in the throes of causing reality to become putty around him or her, then what?

Would the true source of that parahuman power come spilling out into the world completely like a burst pipe?

What would the consequences be to the unfortunate parahuman?

Splat?

An even more bizarre Case 53?

Henry’s theory had made it even worse.

“The power expression of some parahumans is frankly ridiculous in power and scope. Any being, machinery, alien or strata responsible would be enormous. I’d be worried about the survival of the city in which this occurs, Taylor, maybe even the continent…”

I took a deep breath and just let all thoughts about the issue go. There was a time and place for brooding about the future survival of the human race, it wasn’t now, especially when I was looking for a client and guarding the Red Light.

“Hey Escort, bad day?”

My interlocutor was Allesandra. Del was off sick for the night and now Alessandra was covering her spot on the street as well.

For tonight she was wearing a one-piece red dress that looked like it was vacuumed to her skin and glinted in the overhead streetlight. There was also so much cleavage on display from her painfully generous bust, that it looked like if she just moved it down another millimeter that her nipples would pop out. The same thing applied to the bottom of the dress, she definitely couldn’t bend over without her pussy coming out - then again, that was probably the idea. Cherry red stilettos completed the ensemble that wonderfully emphasized the shapeliness of her lower legs. She managed to also walk in them with a well-practiced, perfect balance and I bet she could even kick with those in self-defense if she had to.

I shook my head, letting my expression do most of the talking, “Just a very long one.”

“Urgh, I hate those,” she said in sympathy.

We lapsed into a strangely comfortable silence and a quick glance at Alessandra's aura told me she really didn’t want to be alone at the moment; motes and flares of a dull fear radiated out from her.

She was not alone in that feeling. Everyone in the city was feeling similarly with varying degrees.

In the aftermath of the ‘Train from Hell’ and the ‘Human Tree’, resulting in two quarantine zones in the city, everyone was waiting for another disaster from the parahuman or ‘group of parahumans’ to drop on the city. The latter being the best explanation that even the PRT had regarding both SCPs.

Henry and I had a long discussion and debate on the merits of ‘coming clean’ to the Protectorate on the true nature of what was happening. It all came down to the point that it really wouldn’t truly change anything with regard to the effective response that the authorities delivered and would just paint a target on both our backs and any other sentient SCPs that came through. It would label us as ‘Other’ or ‘Extra-Universal’ and PRT policy, which we had high level classified access to thanks to Coil, was very categorical regarding such things. At best, the response was to isolate and contain, until measures could be taken to ‘ameliorate the impact’ of the extra-universal elements… at worst, broad kill-orders.

What was worse, I agreed with quite a lot of those policies and it was clear, reading between the lines, that there was some extra-universal technology or at least, ability that the Protectorate had.

‘It’s either that, with further classified development of Professor Haywire’s tech or these policies are just morale boosting,’ Henry had theorized.

“Escort, client incoming.”

Looking up the street, I saw the headlights of a car approaching.

Alessandra was already busy with some alluring casual ‘poses’, emphasizing her bust and standing in a way to really show off her legs.

I could already tell I wouldn’t be able to get my own head in the game before the car arrived, so I misted and retreated into the nearby shadow to give her the maximum chance to pick up the client. From experience now, I knew that my cape status and rep was enough that I would overshadow any of the other girls in a street lineup.

The car was midnight black, elegant, long wheelbase, seemed almost an SUV and spoke of money oozing out of the ears of whoever was the owner.

Alessandra twitched as she seemed to recognize it though, but resumed her posing, her aura now properly spiking with nerves and fear.

What was going on?

She looked around casually, recognizing immediately that I had retreated for her sake. “Escort, it’s Takeda-san,” she hissed.

Crap.

The ABB’s chief pimp of the Red Light.

The time had not yet come for me to officially ‘pay my dues’ to Takeda, but it seemed he was coming to me.

Sure enough, the car came to a stop near Alessandra.

Takeda Daiki himself stepped out of the rear seat, barely giving Alessandra a glance of acknowledgement as the working girl properly bowed to him in Japanese custom.

The short, yet formidable Japanese man, twirled a cane and began walking in my direction unerringly, even though I was invisible and intangible.

The how of that became clear when I spotted the slight bulge of a radio earpiece in his left ear - hearing someone giving him instructions, probably a distant spotter that had been observing us for the entire night so far.

He came to a stop three feet from me and rested his hands on the cane, its base planted between his feet.

His aura was an interesting dichotomy; confident yet there was fear, not for himself though.

I arranged myself and reappeared, standing tall and unintimidated with ‘15 in hand and planted near my right foot.

“Escort,” he greeted, giving me the slightest of bows with his neck. That rather surprised me, given the general disdain he clearly had for the working girls that he was supposedly ‘protecting’.

“Takeda-san,” I bowed my head, at an angle slightly lower than the one he had given me.

He kept a stoic face but I saw he was surprised at the proper Japanese courtesy I showed.

“I speak urgently, in the interest of preserving my own life and that of my family. Know that this meeting is being watched and listened to. If you should master me, a sniper’s bullet will end my life. If that is not enough to stay your hand, my family home - which has my elderly mother, daughter and son currently inside, has a bomb in the basement, which will also be detonated. The explosives are enough to also cause a greater loss of life in the area.”

I couldn’t contain my glare and scowl of anger. My grip on ‘15 was so hard that the pipe let out a honk of indignation.

My hands relaxed and I tried to rally some sort of composure.

“What does Lung want?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“Lung-sama asks for a meeting with you.”

“Is that all?” I asked, carefully studying the man’s aura.

“That is all Lung-sama communicated to me.”

That was the truth as far as he believed, but it didn’t say a thing about Lung’s true intentions or how this meeting would go if I said something the Dragon of Kyushu didn’t like. That I would eventually have to deal with Lung in some capacity was something that I had been expecting as an inevitability. I was a cape on his turf, an accepted working girl among the Red Light and gossip had surely reached his ears, as well as sending men like Takeda out to ask questions of the others. If nothing else, Lung probably also had people monitoring PHO. I couldn’t imagine he had an account himself, even a sock puppet. It felt beneath him. Just the thought of Lung hunched in front of a computer or browsing with his nose in a smartphone felt wrong.

“Will that sniper object if I make a call?”

“Lung-sama indicated no other restrictions be placed on your conduct, except for mastering me. You may therefore call whoever you wish.”

My first instinct was to call dad and get him to make precautions and contingencies, get the ball rolling that way. Then I imagined his own first instinct would be rather disastrous for a peaceful, rational ending to this meeting. His ability to utilize his power had been growing with every day and he was learning all sorts of tricks and ways to leverage it.

I brought my hand up towards my phone pouch, my eyes scanning for where a sniper could be perched. There were unfortunately too many possibilities, the street lights were more of a hindrance and there was only a sliver of moon in the sky. I was still in shadow somewhat, but Takeda had made certain he remained properly in view. True Sight only helped on what I could actually see and whilst I could pierce deep shadow somewhat, it wasn’t perfect night vision.

A few taps later, the phone rang on speaker. I tapped the star button three times.

It rang extra once before Henry picked up.

“Escort?”

I felt inward relief that our system had worked, another handy little thing from Coil.

“Fortress, I’ve been invited to a meeting with Lung. It would be unwise to refuse.”

There was a slight pause as Henry took that in. “Understood. Good luck.”

I thumbed the red button to end the call, and gave Takeda a look. “We can go.”

He simply nodded and turned around, his aura blossoming with relief and a few motes of hopefulness.

I walked forward in his wake and gave Alessandra a meaningful look. She met my eyes rather fearfully, turned her head minutely to make sure Takeda wasn’t looking, before giving the slightest of nods.

Good, hopefully that meant the network would soon be informed as well. Not that they’d be able to do anything meaningful if this meeting went badly wrong, but I took a bit of heart that most of them would be in my corner.

Takeda gestured to the rear left seat and he walked around to the rear right.

I tested the handle and the door popped open.

Inside it was as fancy and luxurious as befitted the car’s exterior and I now saw that it was a Bentley.

It almost felt a sin to have my bare ass on the comfy leather seat, but I settled for putting my weight on the right cheek and keeping the other side lifted. I didn’t want my pussy in contact with it, on the chance that I might leave a bit of a puddle behind.

I settled ‘15 to my right in the footwell before closing the door. That there had been no mention of my weapon and leaving it behind was comforting and worrying. It meant Lung didn’t give a shit. He either just thought it was a basic iron staff I used for a weapon or he knew about the devastating aerokinetic power I had through it. The latter ability wasn’t known on PHO and I had only ever had cause to use it during the SCP Train containment incident, which was under tons of classification.

Takeda took his seat, closed the door with an ominous thunk and snapped a few rapid words in Japanese that I didn’t catch to the driver.

The car pulled off promptly with a slow unhurried acceleration, but was soon testing the speed limit.

“Escort, the sniper’s crosshairs might not be on me now, but we are being watched by camera,” he pointed to the front dash of the car, where a portable camera was strapped and looking backwards at us. It was also wired into the car’s native smartphone communication system.

“Let me guess, there’s also a remote detonated bomb underneath our feet.”

Takeda nodded, “Enough C4 to destroy a significant part of whatever street we happen to find ourselves in.”

I gave his aura a deep look, “You’re remarkably steadfast for a man in your position, Takeda-san. The life of your family on a knife’s edge, put there by the man you’re still unquestionably loyal to.”

“That is the nature of things, Escort. Lung-sama doesn’t entertain a lot of the trappings of the old Yakuza, except in the absolute authority he wields over his underlings. He is oyabun and everything we have can be potentially used in service to his goals.”

I turned and looked out of the window at the passing streets, considering the words and what I had managed to interpret from him. There was seemingly no way I was conventionally swaying him, nor could I master him in front of that camera. However, Lung was making an assumption that my power was overt, that it would be visibly obvious on the victim by their behavior and that I needed my voice to give orders to my minions.

The latter was true to an extent, especially if I needed to hypnotize, but my subconscious and intended desires bled through to my minions well enough.

Now the question remained, what did Lung actually intend to achieve with this meeting?

Kill me? No, he’d just have to climb into a car and enter the Red Light himself to try that. Threaten to immolate a few of the working girls and he’d neatly force me into a fight.

Conscript me? That was possible, again he’d just need to dangle his flames threateningly over any number of Red Light denizens and given what he assumed of my ‘heroic’ nature, I’d join if it meant saving the lives of Del or any of the others.

What else?

By the time the car pulled to a stop I had brainstormed a bunch of scenarios that just became more and more ridiculous, which despite the palpable aura of doom in the car, had me suppressing giggles.

Takeda opened the car door and got out without a further word.

My stomach felt some slight knots and jitters at this point as I also emerged and beheld our destination.

We hadn’t traveled too far from the Red Light, but was still well into ABB territory in the south of the city. Before me was an ordinary three floor building that housed a number of street facing businesses on its lowest floor; a Japanese restaurant, an electronics store and a clothing store. The rest of the street had a similar layout with a large apartment building dominating the southern end and looming over everything.

Takeda led the way and I fell in step behind him.

There were a number of people hanging around, mostly at the restaurant's exterior patio and tables. They were definitely ABB gangers, drinking and chatting; those who had spotted me smirked, laughed and leered.

We entered the electronics store, which was currently empty of customers and filled with gadgets, phones, phone casings, flatscreen TVs, cheap DVD players and even gas stoves, heaters and bottles. I didn’t spend more than a moment pondering that odd stock choice as Takeda approached a door behind the counter.

The store owner sitting behind the till gaped rather stupidly at me as I passed.

Beyond the door was a small staircase and we ascended to the second floor and into a hallway.

Takeda walked down it and paused at a nondescript door and knocked four times.

The door opened immediately to reveal Oni Lee.

The cape looked exactly the same as I remembered him from the Red Light meeting, black clothes, demon mask, bandoleer of grenades, wicked knives holstered in sheathes, but I could definitely see that change had happened in his aura. He had looked bad then, but now it was even worse. His barbs, motes and flares were even more muted and dull, their color fading and I struggled to perceive any proper emotion coming from him.

Oni Lee regarded Takeda, then me. That there wasn’t even the slightest reaction made it even worse. Experimentally, I began pushing out my mind web, not to snare him but just see how it passively interacted with his aura.

He barely registered and while I could take control in a basic fashion, he’d be barely worth anything in terms of sustenance and my own feelings of distaste were almost as pronounced as when I was near Coil.

Lee took a step back when I heard a strong, guttural voice bark an order in Japanese.

Takeda entered first, I took a deep breath and followed.

The room beyond was not what I imagined the leader of the ABB inhabiting, but perhaps that was just my preconception of what a dragon would do speaking. He wasn’t lying on a pile of money or swathed in luxurious surroundings. He didn’t seem to embrace any of that, beyond his appearance.

He was over six feet tall, wearing a silver steel mask stylized after an Eastern dragon, whilst his muscular bare torso and arms were practically covered with tattoos featuring yet more dragons of varying complementary colors. Otherwise, he wore only a long pair of jeans, with bare feet exposed, showing that his tattoos even extended to that level down his legs. He was reclined back in a lazy boy chair, with a single television in the room that was currently off. There was a musty carpet on the floor, the walls were bare with fading white paint.

His aura was as human as anyone’s but there was an intense quality to it. The transdimensional link above his head was also the ‘thickest’ I’d seen in any parahuman so far. Was that just my own mind telling me of the potential power of this man? He was capable of single handedly fighting Endbringers, or at least Leviathan. He’d never gone against the other two so far and the Simurgh would just stay out of his range with her flight. How he’d fare against Behemoth was something I couldn’t really quantify off hand.

That was the rational side of me speaking, my instincts and nature on the hand…

I wanted him.

I wanted him in my mind web and to never let go. I wanted him inside me and riding him until he screamed. I could even feel a bit of my juices begin leaking out of my pussy on the inside of my thigh.

As nonchalantly as possible I shifted my weight from one leg to the other to hide it.

Takeda bowed deeply at the waist. “Lung-sama, I have brought Escort as ordered.”

“Good,” Lung said in a strong Japanese accented English. His masked face turned to me and I could barely make out his cold yet smoldering eyes behind the eye slits of his mask. He raised a hand and pointed to the corners of the room.

More wired cameras.

I met his eyes again and nodded in understanding at the implied threat. No need for him to spell it out further.

“Leave,” he ordered.

Takeda bowed and obeyed, whilst Oni Lee simply left robotically and closed the door behind him.

Lung settled back with his hands folded on his six-pack abdomen that I wanted to just lick, nuzzle and caress, and he regarded me with scrutinizing silence.

“You present me with a problem, Escort. Problems are things that I burn.”

I licked my lips, “Yet, we’re having a conversation here, in the heart of ABB territory, which you would ideally not blow up or burn down. You would if pushed far enough, but it would be annoying and cost you.”

My mind web snaked forward slowly and I began teasing the edges of his aura and mind.

He only grunted, in a manner not confirming or denying my reasoning. It was all I could do not to gobble him up completely, order him to strip and lay down. My rationality won out though. He was undoubtedly recording this meeting. If I played this incorrectly, then it could be used against me by the ABB releasing it to the Internet. It was being live streamed for all I knew, but I found that unlikely. Lung would definitely want to control the narrative. That could be potentially worse for me than just a bomb going off in my face and taking out a bunch of people in a building undoubtedly belonging to the gang in all but name.

“You are cape, an oiran walking my Red Light, with no true fealty to me. You take the term independent hero. Your name rises in the city.”

I frowned, “And so I must now yield for you to save face and the lives of everyone who’s currently sitting on a bomb? Even as I know you partake in all the sins of the gangs of this city; drugs, weapons, though only the ABB deals in human trafficking and forced prostitution as far as I know and those latter two especially is something we’re going to have problems with in the future.”

“There is demand, I supply it. I am Lung, lord of my territory. There is no compromise possible.”

My mind web was completely stretched out as far as I could make it currently.

Lung was the most prominent in it, but there were others, a grouping of five minds two rooms away, densely clustered around a point. Three minds above, another two walking below.

My eyes found the cameras and specifically the little red lights that indicated they were active.

“It seems there is no choice then… Lung-sama.”

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SCPs featured in this chapter:

"SCP-111" by Adam Henderson, from the SCP Wiki. Source: https://scpwiki.com/scp-111. Licensed under CC-BY-SA.

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AN:  Ouch. Things not looking good. Hope you enjoyed the read. Have a good weekend folks and stay awesome