Duellist 19 (Patreon)

AN: 32K words lets goooo! Bit later than I wanted, but I wanted to get the first day as the break point and it just took a while to get where I wanted.

I gave this one a minor attempt at a spelling check, but honestly I just wanted to get it out.

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If there was one benefit to the complete transformation that my power had done on Alice and Clara, aside from the obvious, it was that there was no longer a leash around my neck when I wanted to go out. Not that I had generally wanted to go out much before, but now I had the option without either of the two breathing down my neck just waiting to start screeching - and even better than that, they were actually supportive of helping me when I needed it.

Emma's house is way over on the other side of the town and the bus routes there all suck? I don't even get a blink of hesitation when I ask if I can be dropped off, even with the last-minute revelation that I was intending to sleepover at a friend's house. Clara had made a quip about being surprised I actually had any friends, but the light-hearted jab was far from the measured cruelty of years gone by. No questions asked. No demands were made about my behaviour, or what time I needed to be back by. No barbed insults, no going behind my back to badmouth me to Emma and her parents - a testament to just how thorough my power had been on the pair. A drastic effect that I hoped to replicate on the more... difficult villains of the Bay. I'd need a little bit more than a crush and an airbrush for a hardened, unrepentant Nazi to become tolerable, but I couldn't say my power had let me down yet so long as I went through enough challenges.

Not that Nazis were any of my concern now. Sophia and her two hangers-on were the sole-focus of this weekend. The latter two would be simple, of course, the only reason they weren't already done was to keep the transition nice and natural in case my power messed something up and Sophia noticed something was off.

Emma beams at me as she opens the door. "Greg! Glad you could make it, come inside - Madison's running late, but Sophia is already here." She peers past me. "Or... that might be her being dropped off now." I glance behind me at the car pulling into the driveway. "Well, she knows the way. Follow me!" She leaves the door ajar as she gestures into the house.

I follow her lead, leaving my shoes in the pile to the side of the door and following the redhead through the house before she practically throws herself into a sofa in front of a TV. I wave at the other occupant of the room as I look around for a spare place to sit. "Yo."

Sophia grunts her acknowledgement at me.

"Don't let her attitude put you off." Emma shifts into a more comfortable position. "I asked her about having you maybe tag along with us and she was perfectly happy about the idea. She's just being moody, don't mind her."

"I know what she's like, don't worry." I shake my head. "Too proud to admit that she can't go another day without my handsome good looks, witty humour and dashing personality." I wait for Sophia's expression to twist into annoyed, concentrated derision before mumbling the next word. "Challenge."

I whistle to myself as I set out to our usual meeting spot in the simulation.

"You're in a good mood." Sophia doesn't waste any time greeting me. "Is this the start of your big challenge streak then?" Sophia calls out to me.

"Indeed it is." I spread my hands wide. "A few challenges every hour, with full access to you on cooldown. I think I might set a record for the number of attempts I have with my power in one day."

"Assuming that you don't get tired of ending up in the dirt every few minutes." Sophia agrees passively.

Actually a legitimate concern, but one that might be mitigated here. The last time I'd run around challenging as many people as possible had been at the staging area against the Simurgh. I'd ended up with a killer headache and a body that had felt somewhat drained of energy. I suspected that was an inbuilt limit against overusing my power too much - the equivalent of a Thinker headache, forcing me to slam the brakes on rather than continue forever. But specifics were key. What was taxing my power so much? Was it the toll that they were taking on my psyche, with the sheer number of violent deaths? Was it the multitude of complex powers and simulations it was generating? Did it matter how much I was injured during a challenge? Was it better if I spaced out the challenges over time, rather than blasting out a bunch in a timeframe of just a few minutes?

Or, to put it another way - between getting physically and mentally destroyed by multiple different Capes over a few dozen challenges in just under half-an-hour, and recreating the same, low-stakes, low-injuries fistfight a few times an hour over the course of two or three days - was the latter going to have the same impact on my mind and body as the former? I suspected not. If my power had wanted to artificially gate me, it already had a tool it used to do it - the cooldowns per-target were already there. If I stuck to those, and didn't spread my attention around to dozens of others at the same time, I was pretty confident that I would be fine.

"I don't see that happening." I tell her. "Did I ever tell you about how our first fight yesterday went between you and I? In real life? I should tell you-"

I suppress a grin at the twitch on her face and her immediate approach towards me. "Not listening to your blabbering. Go and tell someone who actually cares."

"I was just about to, because you seemed pretty bothered about the fact that a stronger version of you lost under the same circumstances-" I break off for a moment to duck away, catching an outstretched arm that disappears into smoke before I can even start to counter.

"That has nothing to do with your own skill and everything to do with catching me by surprise. So you blew everything in your bag of tricks and came out slightly ahead in two completely meaningless battles - so what?" She crosses her arms. "You blew it. Any serious fight from now on, you'll lose just as hard as you do in here."

"Not by much then." I conclude. "Even though we both know I'm getting better and better, I'll take that as a compliment. And a concession. I'm the one getting more and powers over time, after all. If you really don't think your more experienced self can handle little-old me any better than you can right now, then it seems like you've already given up."

"Don't put my words in my mouth." She scowls at me.

"Don't worry. I'm working towards putting something else in your mouth inste- blech!" I make a face as she flings a handful of dust and soot at me. I'd blocked, expecting an awkward punch instead - and hadn't quite realised that the dusty cloud that had been carried inside her fist was a separate attack until it had been released through my arm, and appeared inches from my taunting mouth. "Pteh. Ptuh. Really? I thought we said no projectiles?"

"Did we?" Sophia shrugs. "And that isn't a projectile."

"My ass it isn't." I complain. I eye up my arm. "Do I have dust in my blood now? Am I going to keel over in agony in a few seconds?"

"Sadly not." She replies shortly. After a moment of silence, she continues. "It needs to be more of a single object to focus on to release it at the right timing, and it would need a certain amount of consistency to not just reform outside your skin where it was easiest. If I took my time and pushed it into you personally, maybe."

I put my hands in the air. "You know what, pause. Put the banter on hold for a minute, because I'm actually kind of interested. What actually are the limits on just phasing stuff into people like that? Because you know, the way you said that - it almost sounds like you can't just instantly kill a guy by putting a phased pebble or crossbow bolt directly into their brain from twenty paces and that means that I've probably lost a whole bunch of credibility in powerscaling debates. And you drop like, two tiers as well."

"...tiers?" She just looks confused.

"Yeah, the Brockton Bay power rankings." I nod knowledgeably. "We figured that you've managed to make bolts appear in the middle of things before, so there's no reason that you can't one-shot most of the Brutes in the Bay from an ambush position. If you can't do that then you're only really above the non-fighters in D-tier. Skidmark kind of level."

"Skidmark." She echoes that last sentence dumbly.

"Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't take that too personally - I actually think that Skidmark is kind of underrated in a bloodlusted kind of scenario. I mean, I might get to experience that one day soon and find out - but have you seen the railgun speculation threads? We know that he can stack them a bit, but is there an actual limit on that or not? It's kind of hard to set-up, sure - but I think a sensible, non-druggie Skidmark can make a case for low B-tier. if his power works the way we think it might."

"Skidmark." She repeats, woodenly.

I raise my hands in the air. "Sure, it sounds low but there was a lot riding on that ranged insta-kill that we were assuming you had."

"Have." Sophia corrects instantly. "You know that this is a real weapon, right? I know that sounds like fucking magic to most of the Capes in the Bay, but this will really kill a person. Phasing or not."

"Yeah, well. Anyone can have one of those." I dismiss. "No offense or anything, but it's just a worse version of a gun if you treat it like that. It's the bolt interacting with your power that was interesting. All those forcefields, the brutes, Hookwolf, power armour - we just kind of assumed you would just shoot through it and win. If you can't do that... it's tough, what can I say? Versus debates aren't kind to people lacking in offensive powers."

"It isn't impossible, if the target was big enough and the timing was good-" Sophia shakes her head. "But it's stupid. I need to commit to the timing in advance, and being off by milliseconds would have the bolt go through entirely, or the actual dangerous part of it would phase in on the other side - and the way that things around the bolt react when it starts to reform is inconsistent and unreliable. Reforming in the brain would definitely do a massive amount of damage, but more likely it would carry its momentum and find that its easier to reform outside the skull and scalp them on the way past than to push brain matter each and every way to make an arrow shaped hole. It would do that if I was holding it and released it, because that gives me more control - but my control ends the moment it stops touching me. Unless the guy is staying still, it would take a miracle to be useful. It's much more reliable to just phase it in two inches from their face. Unless its Hookwolf or someone, I guess."

"D-tier then. That's so sad." I give her a pitying look.

She flips me off. "Fuck you. I never said I agreed with any of your bullshit reasoning. Did you miss the part where I said I could literally just push the arrow into them? There are like, three, four Capes in the Bay that I'd concede would be tough for me. Everyone else either dies to a crossbow bolt, gets destroyed in a straight-up fight or can't keep themselves protected from one of those two options forever and can't find me until I ambush them. How is that D-tier? D-tier is bad, right?"

"Well-" I deflect. "Anyway-"

"Yeah, I thought so. I can't believe you're sitting there, face dented inwards because of the beatings I give you three times a day - genuinely saying that you think I'm one of the weakest Capes in the Bay." I'm really getting to her. I think I'll bring up the powerscaling forums to the real Sophia at some point, when the cat is out of the bag. I get the feeling it would be funny to watch her devolve into a seething forum dweller eating every bait post from every troll account on the platform to try and defend her ego.

I shrug. "Well, I'm already accounted for in that. If I'm not using powers I'm just a regular guy that's almost matching you in a fair fight. E-tier. Baseline human. As low as it goes unless you're a literal child or your powers hurt you more than help."

"So Vista is below that? F-tier?" Sophia probes, the note of suspicion in her voice informing me that she was already suspecting that the answer wasn't one that she was going to like.

"I think this topic has kind of overstayed its welcome." I spread my hands. "Why don't we return to the logistics of how you would use your power in a fight against, say, Hookwolf. Or Glory Girl. I say that, because that's super relevant for me once I get an upgrade to your power and being able to one-shot through shields sounds good but my current version doesn't do that at all. I've tried."

"Stop deflecting." She narrows her eyes at me. "E? D?"

"Like I said, not important. Let's move on." I encourage.

"Fine. Just tell me that she isn't above me, and I'll drop it." Sophia promises.

My wince betrays the news before I even make the decision to lie.

"Fuck off. There's no way." She paces to the side, hands clutched to her forehead. "We're talking about the same girl, right? The pipsqueak? Would probably lose a fight to a particularly enthusiastic puppy? You said that the ability to run away doesn't count, yet you're valuing a bit of utility over this?" She pulls her crossbow out, waves it in the air for show. One bolt twirls between her fingers before it turns to wispy smoke with the rest of her hand - reforming halfway into the wall and instantly generating a spiderweb of cracks into the building wall around it, the bolt snapping at the stress of the action but remaining lodged firmly inside.

"There's a lot of different criteria that powerscalers make judgements from." I defend my old hobby. "If you only compare one aspect or use of someone's powers, there's not much discussion to be had. It's about the situations that they'd be used in, how they stack up against certain opponents..."

Shadow Stalker scoffs. "So a bunch of basement-dwelling nerds, all got together and decided that they know how Cape fights work better than anyone else. Is that right? A bunch of armchair warriors screaming themselves hoarse at each other over which laser is larger than the other. And these drooling morons are the people you're using to decide how strong a Cape is? Over your personal experience of having your ass handed to you literally every day for weeks on end?"

"That's-" I mull it over. "-pretty accurate, I guess. It's not really that big of a deal, but there's a certain amount of street rep at stake."

"That's retarded." She tells me. "You're retarded. Are you even listening to yourself? They put her above me, that should tell you everything there is to know about them. No credibility. No common sense. No girlfriends. No social life. Wasting their entire lives arguing on an internet forum over some useless crap that literally nobody relevant will ever care about." I raise my hand. I care. "Like I said, nobody relevant." She shoots my objection down before I can even voice it.

I make a face at her. "I mean, that's fair." I concede. "Pretty accurate. Maybe got a bit too personal at the end there, but I can't say that you're wrong either. Apart from calling me irrelevant. That's just like punching yourself in the face, I'll remember those words when you're crying about losing this time tomorrow."

"I'm done with this ridiculous conversation." Sophia states bluntly.

"Fine, fine. Onto other things. You mentioned that you could force it in personally if you were at close range, what's the interaction with the manton limit like?" I mime a grabbing gesture. "I mean, I'm guessing if you could just rip out my heart you would have done it already so that's a bust - but can you only release the object separately if you're no longer connected? If you had a sword or a pole, or something, a spear. Could you turn that into smoke, poke them with it and hold onto it to guarantee that it doesn't go off-course, or does the mantom limit apply if you are still touching it - even at a distance? What if you tied a rope to your crossbow bolt, shot it directly through someone and then phased the entire thing back in with the rope still inside them?"

"Why would I answer any of these questions?" She scowls at me. "Do you think I'm your friend or something? It would be strictly beneficial to completely lie to you about everything."

Most of my other challenges don't talk to me, and I don't know what makes you different. Is it the nature of the challenge? Is it something to do with my power? Hers? The scenario? Was it the lack of direct opposition to me? Or the fact that talking lowered my chances of winning due to the time limit, so it was a sensible move for the simulation to allow? Was Sophia just more in-sync with her power, and that worked both ways? What even was this Sophia simulation, not as a person - but in the nitty-gritty details. Was she purely a product of my power? Of hers? Or a mix of the two? And why did it all work this way? Aside from that Cauldron agent, she was probably the closest answer to those that I had - regardless of her clamming up whenever it felt like I was making a breakthrough in the mechanics of how the simulation worked.

I continue the conversation as if there weren't a million questions racing through my head. "Nothing wrong with a bit of curiosity. My version of your power is pretty different in a few ways, so it's worth a discussion to see how it might evolve."

"Yeah? Sorry you got the crippled version. Better luck next time." She mocks me.

I make a negative noise. "Not crippled, just different. It was the same with Taylor, not as strong... but it trumps hers in other ways. You know I've got a set time to reform, while you can hold it as long as you can hold your breath?"

Sophia doesn't confirm or deny anything. A hint of wariness entering her eyes. There went my hopes of getting that last bit of speculation confirmed.

I take the silence as permission to continue. "So it kicks me out of the state after that one second has passed, and if there's something in the way - it just shoves us both to the side until it finds a nice place for us all to appear. If I try to phase back into a swarm of bugs, the bugs get buffeted aside and I get the faint sensation that I got slapped by a toddler all over my body. I phase into a wall, I get shoved out on the closest side of it and maybe get a small bruise if it was particularly bad - that happens pretty much instantly. But you-" I raise one finger. "You don't get to do that. You can hold it as long as you like, even select parts of your body or items to phase in or out if you're good enough - but you don't get to be ejected out to safety like I do. You've got to reform yourself together."

Taylor's fight against Sophia had bugged me, and by her eerily blank reaction now, I was confident that I was correct as to why that was. Sophia had been too slow. Too sluggish at reforming and punishing overextension in the way I would have expected her to do. I'd chalked it down to her holding back at first, but did that really sound like the girl I knew? No.

"If you were to do the same, try to appear directly inside a swarm like in my example, you'd have to fight them aside with your smoke. You'd have to shove them out of the way, jostle for the right kind of position to bring yourself back into the physical world. And if you can't do that, or you force the issue like my power does - then it hurts you like hell in a way that my version doesn't. That's why aerosols are so effective, you can't just shove them away as you reform - they're stuck in the air you're moving around with your own movements. You turn the aerosol itself into your flesh and blood, and your body screams in protest at something your power wasn't supposed to do." I make a circle with my fingers in the air. "But it goes further than that. In the second example, if you were to stop, halfway into a wall - I suppose you would desperately struggle with that. You can't apply your own momentum without reforming part of your body into a solid object. I can only assume that your power would eventually do the same thing mine does once you become unable to maintain it, but I'd wager it's a lot less forgiving about it."

"Blind guessing." Sophia scoffs.

"If that makes you feel better." She probably would feel better about that, rather than my explanation coming from a four-month old comment on a fight between the Wards and Stormtiger - where the user had spent five paragraphs detailing his theory on why it took so long for Shadow Stalker to return to the fray once knocked into a collapsed nearby building and why she had decided to just take an indirect hit twice rather than get knocked away again. He'd been banned afterwards for his speculation about Shadow Stalker's grizzly demise in a made-up scenario where Stormtiger had directed a wind-blast down into the earth, and Shadow Stalker had decided to phase through it like she does walls and rooftops. The mods had apparently taken offense to suggesting that her momentum as a cloud would make her continue deeper until she reached magma and got cooked alive, unable to ever reform when surrounded on all sides by solid rock.

He'd been called a moron, naturally, because Shadow Stalker didn't fall through the floor or walls unless she wanted to, so she wouldn't choose to get hurled into the earth's core either. Momentum had nothing to do with it, because she jumped off buildings to the ground just fine. But the idea about getting stuck still stood unchallenged, because every video of Shadow Stalker in action showed her in constant motion. Nobody knew what would happen if she stood still, and the space around her became too occupied to fit her body into safely. The question about what would happen if she dove full speed into a wall that simply didn't have a room on the other side went unanswered. The PRT must know, of course. Power testing was, by all accounts, very thorough about such things - but that information wasn't for the likes of us mere mortal forum dwellers.

But I wasn't just a professional shitposter anymore. This kind of information was important to me. Both for the purpose of beating Shadow Stalker, and also in taking advantage of her power better as I made it my own.

"We're done here." She lunges forward. I mirror her actions. Apparently she didn't like the direction this conversation went in. That was always a risk, but the thing about Sophia was that everything pissed her off, so anything I did was really just a temporary blip on her default mental state and she'd be back to normal in a challenge or two. She opts to dash directly into me, then right through me - the tell-tale shift of her shadowy clouds reforming towards her chosen spot letting me send a blind, optimistic elbow over my shoulder. It falls short, but buys me enough time to turn and-

Pain.

"Ch-ch-ch-" I stutter, practically going cross-eyed at the shaft sticking out of my forehead - barely visible at the top edge of my vision. "-ch-ch-ch-" My legs give out under me as I lose my balance. "-ch-ch-ch-

"If you're trying to call me a cheater, grow up. Life's not fair." Sophia makes a great show of inspecting her nails. She has gloves on, so it's all just a show to put on an uncaring air of disinterest. "Call it a bit of payback for being so rude to someone that's already helped you so much towards becoming nearly competent in a fight. Vista. Really? That little trick took me half-a-second. I can do it whenever I want."

"-ch-ch-" I try again. Speech simply failing to form coherent words.

She makes a noise of disgust. "Damn, that's almost as annoying as hearing you talk normally. Here I thought it was going to be an improvement." She places one finger on the top of the shaft, my body helpless to respond - a small mercy being that my body was really underestimating the damage here. The level of pain did not at all reflect the amount of damage that I had taken here. Her hand, and the shaft touching it, turn to smoke and press deeper into my head.

I collapse completely as she releases the effect, the distant-yet-all-too-close sound of something splintering and cracking, alongside a desperate scream draws my attention - but I can't stir myself to do anything about it. My body doesn't respond. She says something, but I can't make any sense of it at all anymore.

When the sweet release of death comes, I welcome it with open arms.

FAILURE

Clarity returns. Brain damage resolved in a single instant. That bitch. We had an agreement!

Well. Fine. It wasn't like she hadn't broken the agreement before when I annoyed her too much. I'd been shot and executed a fair number of times now, it was just that this time she'd broken the rule in the middle of a scrap rather than opting to unceremoniously kill me from a distance. Maybe there wasn't any real difference between the two in practice, but this felt worse in some petty way that I could never explain to Sophia. Because if I said something like 'gentleman's agreement' or 'honour' she would wet herself in absolute hysterics at the fact that I could say that with a straight face and then do it to me again for fun.

I straighten my expression as I return to the real world, it wouldn't do to be caught glaring at Sophia, or matching the slack-jawed expression I probably had at the end of my fight just now.

An instant passes in real life, and nobody seems to notice the slightly glazed look in my eye as I blink back to reality.

Sophia starts to respond, oblivious to my efforts to remember where the conversation left off. "Funny how we were enjoying ourselves perfectly fine before you came along. Too oblivious to realise when an invitation was out of politeness only? I would have thought even you would have the social awareness to realise that you weren't actually wanted, but I see I had my expectations too high." Ah, abuse. Should have guessed.

"Emma owed me one, the way I see it - I'm enjoying a pleasant weekend with her and you two are the unwanted extras." I jab a finger at Sophia and at Madison as she steps through the doorway.

"Better not be calling me an extra. I brought all the snacks with me." Madison counters evenly.

"Just the one extra then." I concede. Madison nods with approval.

Sophia lets out a groan of disgust. "I can't believe you girls. Who even starts to consider the idea of bringing a guy to the girl's weekend? You're going to take him shopping with you? Get his opinion on dresses? Go and see some stupid, romantic movie and drag him along the entire way?"

"No weirder than dragging along you." Emma quips. Sophia gives her a level look in response, not rising to the bait.

"I don't know, I think it will be nice. Gives us more options, and it will make the shopping trip better too. It would be super useful." Madison flops onto the nearest sofa to claim it as her own. "Getting a guy's opinion, I mean. The whole point is to get something that looks good, we can judge each outfit by the amount of drool leaking out of his mouth when we show them off."

"Counterpoint: Why would we want to show anything off to him, of all people?" Sophia argues.

"I'm right here you know." I complain half-heartedly.

"And?" Sophia looks at me blankly, as if to ask if I even had a point. I flip her off when the other two look away.

The other two just ignore my statement. "Why not him? Sure, he's not like, an absolute ten-" That reminds me, I need to knock out Madison's challenges at some stage. "-but he's at least decent enough to sit next to us and not drag us down in public."

"And he doesn't have any other friends to run off to behind our back." Emma's voice is saccharine, but the delight in her voice at the statement comes from a place of pure, unabashed malice. She was obviously still riding the high of Taylor's argument with me. "Which means we don't have to worry about him spilling the conversation topic of the day outside of our group, or worry about any risque pictures of our summer outfits being leaked."

"There's no risk of that because it won't happen in the first place." Sophia denies flatly.

"It's definitely happening." Emma confirms with a cheer and a blatant wink at me.

Madison bites her lip. "We'll... see how it goes." Sophia shoots her a betrayed look. "What? The entire point of having a cute outfit is to look good in front of guys, just because you're too shy to get an opinion straight from the source-"

"Shy?" Sophia splutters. "Me?"

"You." Madison affirms. "That makes the most sense, doesn't it? It's not like you can even say you never wanted Greg around in the first place, wasn't it your idea to go and offer him some better company than Taylor in the first place? This is just an extension of that, really."

"There's a difference between showing a bit of pity to a guy with no sense of which way the wind is blowing, and inviting him to the sleepover. The girl's sleepover, might I add." Sophia grouses. "You're being deliberately obtuse if you can't recognise that."

"Relax." Emma rolls her eyes. "What do you think he's even going to do that's got you worked up about the idea? If you think he's perving on you, I'm not going to start screaming if you plant him in the dirt."

"When." She corrects, then shakes her head. "And I don't disagree with you. You won't scream and cry about it. But he might." Sophia counters.

"Firstly, I'd like to stand up for the wild-" And completely accurate. "-and insulting assumption that I'm going to act like some kind of pervert just because I'm alone in a room with three pretty girls. Rest assured that you won't be getting any unwanted attention from me." I pause, eyebrows momentarily wiggling. "I mean, if the attention is wanted, on the other hand-"

"Keep a leash on your boy-toy Emma." Sophia groans. "I knew it. What else would a guy be thinking of at a time like this? He just wants to fuck all of us. Totally going to kill the mood."

"As if there's a single straight guy in the school that doesn't wish the same. At least he's man enough to admit it to our faces." Emma gives her friends a self-assured smirk. "So it's no different from hanging around any other guy, really. Right, Madison?"

"It's a fair point." Madison allows. "He can think whatever he wants. As long as he knows what lines he can't cross, what's the harm?" Her calculating gaze slides from me, to Emma. "I can't say I'm surprised at his attitude, but I'm surprised to hear you not making any objections yourself Emma. Weren't you two... together?"

"Call it a friends-with-benefits kind of thing." I wave her off. Despite using her as an excuse to not unmask to Taylor, Emma was certainly not occupying the spot of my one-and-only partner. And with her challenges maxed out, she wasn't even bothered by that fact. Or, maybe the challenges didn't have much to do with it - she had a fair few issues even before I did anything, she might have had a similar kind of attitude even without my power greasing the wheels for my benefit. "I don't tie her down, she doesn't tie me down."

"It's nothing official." Emma agrees, underselling the strength of our relationship with an easy lie. "So don't worry about treading on my toes if you want to take him for a ride." Neither of the other two girls notice the intense look in her eyes despite the casual tone.

"Please don't even imply that either of us would be interested." Sophia snorts. "I think you'll find that the two of us haven't taken leave of our senses quite yet. Did you forget what a loser he was until we rescued him from Taylor?"

"I wouldn't say that. You can't say that we really did much of anything to him apart from separate him from the leech-" It really was impressive how Emma managed to maintain her enthusiasm for hating on Taylor regardless of the situation. It was like being an outside observer watching myself hate on Velocity, not understanding the reasoning but respecting the energy and consistency nonetheless. "-and since then, he's thrived. Look at him! We weren't seeing him at his full potential before. I'd expect you, Sophia, of all people, to understand that."

"Incredible." Sophia drawls. "Random nerd takes one tiny step to fix his miserable life. At his current rate, he'll be a respectable member of society by the time he's thirty. I can barely stop my legs from spreading on their own."

I nod. "I am known to have that effect on people." She shoots me a withering look. I grin back unrepentantly.

"No need to exaggerate, Sophia. I think he's doing fine for himself. He's kind of cute in his own way." Madison opts to defend me. "I'm not saying I'm going to jump him the moment you turn your back, but you've got to admit that you could do a lot worse in Winslow than him."

"Citation needed." Sophia quips shortly.

"I can't help but feel like you're objecting to this a bit too much." Madison retorts. "Anyone would think that we were trying to marry you off, the way you're taking this so personally. So the guy you thought was a dweeb got laid one time and decided he likes it, and now he's a playboy - is that really such a surprise? Half the school would do the same if they could."

"Don't rush to point it out, Madison. It's rude to point out that she's overcompensating." Emma smiles, Sophia giving her a narrow look in response.

Challenge-Sophia would have a crossbow in her hand by now, or at least be throwing punches. Was this proof of the character development she'd had since that snapshot? As it is, her head snaps around to glare at Emma in challenge. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?" Emma practically radiates smugness. "Your only experience with boys is beating up gang members and glaring at them in corridors, compared to someone like me - whom, out of the three of us, is quite clearly the expert - it's clear that you're coming up short." Emma's smile widens. "I understand that it's embarrassing to feel left behind and realise that you're the bumbling novice when it comes to romance, but you don't need to come up with a justification to us. It's perfectly fine to be single and unattached! We wouldn't judge you for that. So you don't need to be so vocal about how your standards are too high for you to hook up with anyone to hide the fact that you're embarrassed and maybe a little bit jealous- oof!" Her shit-eating grin is wiped away by a red missile soaring across the room at her head.

Sophia shakes her head, arm still extended where she had thrown the highly accurate cushion at the redhead. "You are so lucky that we're friends. I'm not even going to pretend to understand what delusions you have running through your head - but I can assure you that they're completely wrong. I've got far more interesting problems in my life than... boys." She shifts her gaze to Madison, who has an amused smirk on her face. "Something to say?"

"Who, me?" She blinks with an exaggerated expression of innocence. "I wouldn't dream of it. Emma is definitely out of line." She waits until a slightly mollified Sophia grabs another cushion and slots it back in position under her head. "I mean, sullying your delicate, innocent ears with all of this scandalous talk about the opposite gender-" Madison manages to duck the second cushion, but not the third. She grabs both of them and shoves them underneath her body, establishing something of a cushion-fortress on her side of the room.

"You're both making us look like clowns." The Ward glares at them, then jabs a finger at me. "Did you forget that he's standing right there, listening to every word you've been saying?"

"I don't think I said anything I'd be embarrassed to let him overhear. What about you, Emma?" Madison flutters at the model.

"Same here, Mads." Emma nods wisely.

"Fuck you both." Sophia grouses, turning to glare at me instead. "Fuck you too."

I mock an offended expression. "What did I do?"

"You know what you did." She refuses to elaborate.

I suspect she's blaming me for the apparent treachery of her friends. Nonsense. Anyone could see from a mile-off that Sophia wasn't the socialite that the other two were, without the implicit threat of violence and intimidation that most people were worried about - these two were free to run rings around her when teasing their friend in private.

No, what she was really mad at me for, was me being here to witness it happen.

Tough. Seeing Sophia off-balance and out of her element was kind of cute. Not a word I often associated with her, but there it was.

I don an unapologetic smile. "I'm afraid I can't do much about the other two realising how awesome I am-" The snort this time doesn't just come from Sophia. I send a suspicious look to the other half of the room before continuing. "-but I'd rather not bring down the mood by having you stay mad at me all weekend. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"

Sophia looks torn between saying something rude and having to face the realisation that we could easily spend the entire weekend sniping at each other if we started holding grudges. "Just pick a decent movie." She grumbles. "You can't do much worse than these two."

"Is that what we're doing? I didn't really get told the schedule, if I'd known I could have grabbed something before I left." I sigh mournfully.

"Watch a movie. Eat all of the food. Play a few games. Sleep. Get dragged around the mall by Madison and Emma for a few hours. Mess around the house. Either go home or sleep again and leave in the morning." Sophia lists it out dully. "Julia usually acts as a tiebreaker for us because we can't agree, so you'll have to take her place."

"Sounds reasonable enough." And full of opportunities for me to stick close to Sophia all day. I refocus my options to the last line. Best keep my apparent attention on the task at hand. "What are the options here?"

She points at Emma. "Shitty romance movie." Madison. "Shitty horror movie." At herself. "Decent action movie."

"Sophia freaks out when she watches horror movies. It will be really funny, trust me." Madison pipes up. "I've already got the perfect one picked out!"

"I do not freak out." Sophia hisses.

"She jumps so badly she practically touches the ceiling." Emma agrees with Madison.

Sophia whirls on her. "What are you even talking about? That isn't even close to true." She shakes her head. "You're both just ganging up on me to try to make yourselves look better."

"Only because you're in denial about it." Emma smirks. "I'll happily admit that I can scream a little when a movie catches me off guard, but you're so focused on appearing aloof and unbothered that it's just kind of funny to point out that you get a little jumpy as well - or that you need to leave the room whenever something sappy starts to happen on the screen."

"I'm allergic to cringe." Sophia sniffs. "And it's not like I would ever miss anything important happening anyway. Everything you watch is as predictable as-"

"Ladies, ladies." I try to calm down the brewing argument. "No need to argue over a little bit of evening entertainment, I'm here to take all the blame for the terrible movie we're about to watch because I'm breaking the tie." I slam my arm down to point at Sophia. "Generic, shitty action movie it is!" Yes, I'm shameless. A sellout. The lowest of the low.

"That's bullshit, if getting you on my side was that easy I'd have tried being a moody, grumpy bitch too." Madison gripes. Sophia can't quite stop the smirk from appearing on her face at the words. "Who knew being this cute had so many downsides?"

"I'm changing my vote to whatever Madison wanted." Emma pipes up. "Looks like it's a tie again. Shame."

"We could arm-wrestle for it if you want." Sophia hums with restrained amusement. "But anything other than that, you'll have to physically rip me away from the screen to put your crap on."

"We'll just watch both. That's sensible, right - Greg?" Emma and Madison nod in sync. I can't help but nod alongside them.

Sophia gives me a betrayed look, but there's a certain lack of heat to it compared to normal. "Whatever. I don't even care anyway."

But I do, Sophia. Because this pretty much guarantees that you'll be in my direct line of sight for the next few hours. Two minutes until your cooldown timer is up, I can fit at least fourteen more attempts in within the runtime of this flick alone.

Sophia takes a few minutes to start the first movie, making a point to double-down on the snacks closest to Madison every time she stepped past her. The movie isn't bad, despite Emma's initial griping. A shameless run-and-gun movie following a retired soldier who finds out that his child has been kidnapped by Nilbog and his army, and spends the next two hours of runtime on a furious, gory pursuit across America to get her back. Generic and cliche, but admittedly entertaining.

Even if my enjoyment was slightly interrupted by the periodic need to get beaten up by Sophia on-cooldown. It was pretty fortunate that the plot wasn't at all complicated to follow, because the disorientation that comes from ten minutes of solid, unarmed combat only gets worse when there isn't a real person on the other end who can adjust to my initial confusion when trying to remember what was said last.

Challenge. Challenge. Challenge again. It was impossible to hear my occasional, breathy whispers over the sounds of the movie, and nobody would have given me any more than a funny look even if they had picked up on the word.

Even when Emma repositions herself to sit next to me, angling herself just perfectly enough to press her breasts into my side without drawing Sophia's ire - nothing can distract me from my mission. Challenge. Challenge. By the time the movie ends, I've spent more time brawling with Sophia than watching the screen.

Madison is swift to replace the movie with her own, sweeping away the snacks of the night and demanding that we all sit together at the centre of the room with the lights off.

Incidentally, that's how I find out that my power gives me... not night vision, but night...identification. The challenge boxes don't care that I can barely make out each girl's silhouette half the time, happily indicating their approximate location and their name the moment my vision passes over them. Something that could be useful in the future, maybe.

Emma sits on my left. Madison on my right. Sophia loudly rejects the idea of 'needing to cling to each other for comfort' and steals the beanbag in front of us instead. Probably for the best, because if Sophia could see Madison and Emma pressing into me so blatantly after the first scare she'd probably go and look for her crossbow.

It takes about five minutes of Emma not-so-subtly groping my crotch for me to give in. We couldn't just... start going at it, of course. Sophia might actually castrate me. Madison would... well. It was hard to be sure, really. I was quite confident that she was at a level where I could make moves on her alone, but was she the kind of girl to not raise an eyebrow at some heavy-petting going on right next to her? Or, dare I say, the kind that might be inclined to join in? I didn't know, and I'd initially gone into my plans for this weekend thinking that I'd finish off her challenges further into my stay - just to keep the rate of progression natural and ensure that Sophia wasn't the odd one out for not wanting to jump my bones.

As they say. No plan survives contact with the enemy. In my defence, I was pretty sure that Madison knew what she was doing. She wasn't oblivious to her body, she knew what her 'innocent' position was likely doing to a guy like me. I don't doubt that in her head, she had everything under control. Drive the guy wild, lead him on a bit, indulge at her own leisure and then drift away just as easily as she arrived. Allowing herself to indulge in a minor curiosity, but not to get bogged down in anything complicated. Not to give up anything too serious. Not to compromise her own position or social status among the group of us. To stay firmly in control at all times. A continuation of one of my first real conversations with her, the image of a girl with her entire life planned out ahead of her - a cozy plan to leech off of her target for an easy retirement, where romance and genuine feelings were an afterthought to her own comfort and goals.

Because I'm pretty sure that's what I was to her right now. A fun distraction. Something interesting to do, and then move on from. In the same way that a ski resort was a nice place to visit, but not live in. Because that was where my challenges had left her before, and I hadn't done anything to change that except reveal my relationship with Emma. My powers had directed her interest and attention towards me, but not re-adjusted her world-view enough yet to actually convert that into something as desperate and lasting as Emma's feelings.

Tough luck, Madison. I have no intention of letting you tease me for two hours straight so you can treat me with the same kind of pity as a particularly interesting toy or some kind of pet. If you insist on getting me all riled up, then you'll have to handle it right here and now. Because you aren't like Sophia, or even Emma. Your challenges are full of normal people. Easy, for my current self.

She pulls my arm tight against her chest, oblivious to my increasingly murderous chain of thought. There was something to be said about the mental head-case that I must look like from outside. Horniness fuels violence, violence fuels horniness - yet there's no sign of me actually fighting someone. I'd probably throw a bunch of Thinkers for a loop just trying to decipher what's going on with me.

I slide my eyes over to Madison, who blinks innocently back at me as our faces are briefly illuminated by the light from the screen. "Challenge." Maybe it was a bit earlier than I had intended, but there was never a chance that I finished this detour without claiming Madison in every way that matters. Even ignoring the opportunity to break her future plans wide open with the realisation that she's a hopeless addict for my cock and the good things that does for my ego, I'd already committed to making the Trio into my personal sluts. The original reason for that, Taylor, might not be appreciating my efforts right now - but that was a temporary thing. And it had a more immediate benefit as well. With both of her best friends on my side, I could control Sophia's movements even if I didn't manage to max her out by the time school comes back around.

I whistle to myself as the waterlogged streets of Brockton Bay appear around my feet. This should be quick. One GANG modifier, as per usual for Madison - this time with an added HUNT modifier. But that didn't matter unless I activated her mob before I managed to reach her.

I pause. Which way was it again? I definitely had the right direction last time, but that was quite a long time ago now. The thing I remembered most... was ignoring the occasional NPCs wandering the streets around me. I'd assumed they were innocent stragglers last time, but now I knew that they were opportunists at best, collaborators with my target at worst. It doesn't take me long to find the approximate site of my previous death.

"Hey!" I saunter over to a familiar face. The generic homeless-looking guy that had shot me the moment I turned my back last time. Merchant. "Got some questions for you." He's just a normal human, not even ready to start a fight with me as I approach - only understanding my violent intentions when my ash clone has already formed and lunged towards him. His frantic punches at the clone dispel it quickly, but the temporary distraction was all I needed. He folds like wet cardboard under my assault, sent sprawling into a nearby puddle with almost comical ease. In fairness, he didn't look in the best of shape. This looked like a textbook post-Leviathan city, so a bit of starvation, disease and a general lack of shelter was probably expected for a while.

Once again, the possibility that this wasn't just a simulation conjured up by mind rears its head. Endbringer's couldn't be predicted. It was pretty much a fact. They no-sold almost every pre-cog power on the planet. But, still. The thought occurs - was there an element of truth in this simulation? Compared to most Endbringer targets, Brockton Bay would be a somewhat strange choice. We weren't a major shipping hub or anything of the sort. Hell, we'd done perfectly fine crippling the city all on our own. The only thing we were well-known for was the abnormal Cape population, but was that really worth a visit from Leviathan?

Not important. Not now, anyway. I had no proof that there was any merit to these challenges genuinely predicting an attack, nor any way to warn people about it without giving away a key aspect of my powers, nor any way to actually do anything about it personally even if it was coming any time soon. I'm not exactly going to make a dent in Leviathan as I am now.

Still. It bugged me. Taylor's simulations showing her as a villain... they'd seemed all too reasonable, in a world where I didn't have these powers. It would be nice if I had access to more future-based challenges to compare against, but when did my power ever like to make things easy for me?

I blink, a dull, distant screaming from below drawing me from my musings.

Right. The guy. I'd been running off of complete auto-pilot for a moment there, but hadn't been any less efficient despite my inattention. Parian's power to draw a thread at knee-level, frozen in place by Clockblocker - and then pressing the man's neck roughly against it as his twisted, purple-tinged limbs hang uselessly by his side. Still, for all of the screaming and crying - he didn't seem to be forthcoming with answers.

Or... did I just not ask him anything yet? That was probably it, judging by the begging noises lacking any trace of defiance.

I'd almost feel bad, if he hadn't shot me last time.

My boot presses against his neck, the slow drips of red as the stretched thread edges into his skin not enough to kill him yet. "Where's Madison?"

"I-" The man whimpers. "I don't- argh- I don't-" I ease up my foot slightly, allowing the man to speak without further slicing his neck open. "I don't know who that is."

"Seriously? It was just opportunism last time? I think that makes it worse than just being on her side." I grumble to myself. "Fine." Without any other clue, I should just eliminate the most likely place for a civilian to be hiding in the aftermath of an Endbringer attack. "Where's the nearest Endbringer shelter?"

"A few blocks that way-" The man can't point, but he does slightly bob his head down the street. "-straight line. Can't miss the signs. Can you- Can you let me go now?"

I smile.

I stomp downwards.

The nice thing about killing people by cutting their necks open as that you can't really hear them screaming after you as you walk away. They just kind of... gurgle at you until they die.

Really. Let him go? After last time? What was he thinking?

Not that he remembered, but I did - and ultimately, I was the only one that really mattered in these simulations.

I pause. Reverse my steps back to the dying man. "Sorry, I remembered you had a gun last time - but a suspicious looking guy like you, you have a knife - surely?" I rifle his pockets as he limply jerks his body against mine. An appeal for help? An attempt to fight back? A dying curse? Who knows. I inspect the brutal-looking Karambit I fish out of his back pocket with approval. Good enough to do the job.

I make a point to not go near the Endbringer shelter directly. Not through the main entrance. Because however much I rated my odds in a fair fight, Madison's challenges were all about numbers. The unwashed masses arrayed against me to defend their queen. And I... had no answer to that. There were plenty of AOE powers within the Bay, I just didn't have any of them. Which meant busting down the front door and fighting through the likely hordes was going to be pretty much impossible.

I needed to win. Quickly. And that meant a neat assassination on my target, but despite popular belief - Endbringer shelters weren't exactly fortresses. Most of the time, they were little more than particularly large underground warehouses with a few gimmicks. Reinforced and protected, yes - but the aim was always to keep citizens out of the way and prevent them from dying to collateral damage and environmental hazards. To stop citizens from clogging up the streets for hours on end in a futile evacuation attempt, and to keep them safe up until the point that an Endbringer decided that they wanted to squash this building in particular.

They certainly weren't designed to protect against human infiltrators. A detour across the rooftops gets me above my target, and then it's time for me start phasing through the ground just above where the tunnels begin. Or, trying, at least. If my power constantly kicks me out on the closest safe side with little more than a light bruise once the timer is up, then attempting to plummet into the ground above the shelter should eventually eject me into a maintenance tunnel or an air vent large enough to hold me - because if it wasn't large enough, I'd appear on the ground above instead.

It takes a half-dozen tries, but eventually, Sophia's power gives out on me and I find myself sprawled across the unforgiving metal of a maintenance catwalk rather than grass and dirt. Bingo. Assuming that Madison is actually in here, of course. Otherwise, I just wasted a lot of time. I scurry along the walkway as quickly and quietly as I can, I could never really be sure how aggressive the GANG modifier was about detecting me. Sometimes, a pindrop from a hundred metres away would draw the entire horde in - others, they would ignore anything that couldn't be decisively identified as me.

This time, there was already a fair amount of hustle and bustle. A few people padding through the tunnels below me, and a wall of inaudible mumblings that can be heard even through the walls intended to act as flood barriers in an emergency. The ones below me were open, but I have to phase through the ones up here. Each successive barrier brings me closer, until I reach the primary shelter room - and get immediately vindicated. The room is packed, and unnaturally centred around the figure at it's centre - elevated slightly onto what I would almost have called a stage. Each of her followers was distracted by their own conversation with those around them, but to my eye - the defensive rings around Madison's expressionless form couldn't be mistaken as a coincidence.

On the plus side, these people were loud. And not looking up. Stuck in their default loop of activity, waiting for me to be spotted by anyone before hunting me down as a unit. A thousand, two thousand. Not even worth guessing at how many people were in here. Packed like sardines. It would be impossible to wade through under normal circumstances.

But I already knew that. The same went for her last challenge as well. The trick wasn't to kill everyone. It was to kill her. The only viable way to do that was from above, but the catwalk didn't go directly over her. Still, I was high enough to not draw attention to myself in the rafters. I could experiment. Vista? Probably too far, nor could I condense the space enough that I could just reach out and stab her from all the way over here. I'd need to be up close and personal. Two jumps with the help of Vista? If I took something off and used it to pin myself into the air with Clockblocker, I'd have two entire jumps to make it to her platform.

I'm a genius. I condense space as far as I can directly in front of me. Pure, open air into as small a space as I can possibly fit. Regardless of how much space I twisted, I could only jump so far. I slip off my jeans, holding them in front of me like an impromptu surfboard - and then a rapid, daring leap sends me into the open air towards Madison. I pass through the shrunken space, the room almost seeming to lurch forward as I do so, and then I freeze the item of clothing in my hands. It stops dead, and my momentum completely stops with it - not gracefully, for an instant, I wonder if I've broken something in the brutal, painful impact - a gash opening up where one fold in my clothes has turned into a time-locked edge capable of cutting flesh, but fortunately, I don't slip - my momentum carrying me far enough into the legs that the rest of my upper body gets stuck before I can slip down into the crowd below.

I don't scream, or cry out. It's a near thing, but I've gotten pretty good at not making noises when the alternative is an agonising death. Focuses the mind.

I wriggle back, pushing myself up and onto the uneven surface I'd created. Now it was a race between my previous use of Vista's power unfolding, and this timelock wearing off. I could reapply the latter, but I could only do it as fast as I could react. The surface might change to something unsuitable in that time, and I had no sense for when exactly it would expire.

Vista's power is the first to unravel. I leap again, not directly horizontally this time - but at more of an angle, using the shrunken space to target my landing spot rather than maximise the distance travelled. I shift into my shadow state to land, Madison finally alerting as the smog-like cloud reaches into her vision - but Madison wasn't a physical threat to me. Sophia would have been able to defend herself from the likely attack, but Madison simply turns around with a hateful expression that fades into a stunned look as my makeshift blade plunges into her stomach. I wrench it out, impaling her neck at the next opportunity. The crowd around us is rippling with rage, a thousand eyes snapping towards me in outrage - but it's too late.

SUCCESS

Reward: Madison Clements +

I blink back to reality. If all I was looking to do was fuck Madison, I could probably stop here. Hell, I'm pretty sure I didn't even need to win that one - she seemed interested in a brief one-off encounter already, this was just to help her get over the edge and perhaps consider doing something naughty with a witness in Emma.

But I wasn't just looking for that. I didn't need a fucktoy in Madison, that was just a bonus. I needed an accomplice against Sophia. Someone that could help me control her movements and reactions, someone just as keen on seeing me break her as Emma was. And that meant fully clearing her challenges.

So even as Madison's hand quests towards my crotch for the first time, I reach out for more.

Madison Clements

Schoolgirl 4/4

(GANG) (ALRT) (HUNT)

No surprise. The sequel to HUNT modifiers usually involved the addition of an ALRT. I think this was actually good, at first glance. As long as no superpowered individuals were involved, it didn't change anything for me. Madison was still vulnerable up close, and I could evade normal people forever no matter how many she sent my way. "Challenge."

The same waterlogged streets greet me a moment later. At a guess, she's in the same spot she was last time. I repeat my previous path. The same Merchant still wasn't part of the GANG modifier, so I didn't have to deal with him being prepared for my cold-blooded assault. I pick up the same knife as before, except this time - by the time I get to the right street, I find hundreds of people pouring out of the tunnels towards me. Clambering up nearby buildings, sprinting towards me through the street, some people liberating nearby bicycles in an attempt to reach me faster.

I slip into my speed-state and book it. I was safe like this. Unless they had guns, but my power was generally pretty binary about the kind of people who had guns in my challenges. It was rare to see regular people armed, while anyone affiliated with a gang or guarding a secure location was near-guaranteed to have a weapon on them or at least nearby.

I watch the horde approach. Dangerous, if I didn't have my speed-state I wouldn't have any answers to this. But I did. None of these people would ever catch me. None of them could climb a building like I could. None of them could leap from rooftop to rooftop like I could.

And, from what I could tell, there wasn't an ounce of synergy or planning between any of the charging figures. There were still masses racing out from the tunnel, but none falling into a guarding posture or position. They were expanding in different directions, yes - but only because the path directly to me was clogged by people of differing speeds. The objective of every single NPC here was to run at me and kill me, with none of them staying back to protect the VIP - at least, as far as I could see. I could exploit that.

Because that meant that if I survived long enough for every last individual to leave the shelter to pursue me - that Madison would be left all on her own inside. There were thousands of people in there, and I'd need to draw them all some distance from the shelter before circling around... but I wasn't seeing anything to disprove my theory yet.

I run backwards, mentally making note of the nearby landmarks so that I could get back here later. The HUNT modifier meant that they would never lose their knowledge of my position, so running away in a mostly-straight line was the smartest thing to do. I hit the Trainyards after five minutes, then race through the residential area on the other side just a few minutes later. I couldn't do much in my speed-state, but if nothing else - it was fast. I'd outpaced Oni Lee with it. Could barely edge out Glory Girl at her maximum possible speed. It was a pretty safe assumption that aside from Velocity, Armsmaster-with-prep and maybe Dauntless - nobody in Brockton could catch me in a race of pure speed.

Certainly no normal person, even if some of them had managed to find a working car or some other vehicle. It would take an hour for those on foot to catch me. Maybe a third of that for those that found a good route by bike. But the timings didn't really matter. All that mattered was how long they had travelled directly away from Madison. The fastest of them were going to have to travel further on the way back once I reversed course.

Which is exactly what I do. The first motorbike to screech around the corner is my signal to go, sprinting back the way I came with weightless, gliding steps. It's a slightly messier journey. Some people had tried to traverse towards me via the rooftops as well, and tried to make all-too-slow lunges at me as I blitz past them - but even Oni Lee couldn't manage to seriously tag me with the aid of instant, line-of-sight teleportation. I'm certainly not getting touched by someone a thousand times less capable than him.

I needn't have worried about memorising the landmarks. I can just follow the trail of people back to where I came from - once I get past the slower people - the trail of trampled, broken bodies guides me the rest of the way in. The friendly fire is actually a bit of a detriment, the broken bodies underfoot are still aware and angry enough to reach out to try and grab me even if they can't stand properly - but ultimately, nothing stops me from reaching the final room once again.

And nearly immediately getting shot. Madison's poor marksmanship the only thing that stops the bullet from ripping through my vulnerable speed-state like paper. I dip and dodge to the side, I wasn't faster than a bullet but even trained professionals struggled to hit a moving target with a pistol even without superspeed. I keep my distance, waiting for her to reload - only then dropping my speed-state as she ducks behind the stage. My paralysis wears off, and I drop into a charge - phasing through the first few bullets, eating the next two between my forcefield and ash clone - and the next three hit me in my chest before I crash into her and send us both into the ground.

"Need a bigger gun." I tell her with a bloody grin, blade already lodged deep into her chest. "Little baby calibre like that isn't stopping a charge unless you get lucky." It would kill me, certainly. But she'd die first. I yank the blade out, and impale her through the neck just like I did last time.

SUCCESS

Reward: Madison Clements +

I grin to myself. Easy. Just as I knew it would be. I'd deliberately not bothered to test Madison's challenges that much, reasoning that I could just handle them at will so long as no Capes were involved. It was good to know that I was right. I'd gotten pretty good at racing through regular people's challenges by this point. I was too slippery to die to a single mistake. Too many tools, too much mobility for a normal person to take me down without an ambush or absurd modifiers from my power. I rarely felt overpowered against a real Cape, but against a normal person I was near-impossible to deal with in a fair fight.

As reality blinks back into my vision, I note how I've already unconsciously pulled the two girls to my side closer without even thinking about it. Neither of them are in any sort of mood to protest, with Emma content to snuggle into my side to watch and Madison... taking only a moment to place a tray of snacks into my lap before her hand vanishes underneath it to get a firm grasp of my cock. The conspirational look that Emma and Madison share says everything there is to say about their plans, with Emma taking a moment to bump up the volume of the movie and swinging her feet up and over my legs to help block Sophia's view if she turned around on a whim. Both of them recognised that Sophia realising what was going on behind her would go poorly, but at the same time, neither of them cared enough about that fact enough to do any more than a light coverup while hoping that the darkness and the distraction of the movie would keep Sophia from putting two and two together.

In a different situation, it would be good to have a proper talk with Madison around now. Now that I'd completed her challenges, it was no surprise to see her acting like as much of a slut as Emma even without me making an explicit move on her - but it would be good to understand what was going on in her head and what the limits were for how far I could push her. My power changed perspectives, but it worked on what was there when it could. Emma's devoted attitude to me still sprang from her issues about strength, her obsession with Taylor and the predator/prey mindset she had going on. My power had twisted that in my favour, but the support I now had wasn't unconditional, nor was it guaranteed that she would stay on my side even after my power had aligned her closer to me. Madison had never seemed to share that kind of attitude, so what was she thinking right now - to justify the current situation to herself?

The domineering look of superiority she sends my way, the smirk she shares with Emma, and the comparatively little attention she shows me might have the answer to that. Before I completed her challenges, Madison had been pretty set on her life goals for the future - and had a fairly uncaring attitude towards the day-to-day affairs happening right now. There was no need to worry about bullying, or dating, or grades or any other drama when her life would ultimately be decided by attaching herself to the right kind of guy in a few years time. If that attitude was enabled by my power, then would that cause her to consider that a bit of fooling around now didn't matter in the slightest? That there wasn't anything even wrong with sleeping around, in fact - it would be strictly beneficial to get in practice in the right scenario. So when Emma shows up, having 'obviously' tamed her pet boy-toy and tugged him along to the sleepover to share with the girls, was there any real reason to not take advantage? We were both clearly interested, and with the promise of no future entanglements getting in the way - it must seem ideal.

And that explained why she had barely even bothered to acknowledge me before making a move. I'd already expressed willingness in my own way, but it was Emma that had enabled the scenario - and it was Emma that she turned to for unspoken approval of what she was about to do. There was a certain temptation to the idea of thoroughly disabusing her of that notion, it would be interesting to see how she reacted to how Emma really was in private with me - but I suppose that I couldn't blame her for her assumptions. She was basing her expectations on a version of me that no longer existed, a social hierarchy that no longer applied. She was assuming that she could simply experiment with me as she wished, and disengage with just as much ease - not realising that the feelings urging her towards me wouldn't go away even after being indulged.

I couldn't be upset with that. There was something fun about the idea of seeing her so confident, so in control - but knowing that she had already lost even if she didn't know it. Even if she thought that this was just a pity-handjob, a mild experiment for both of us before we went back to our normal interactions, that couldn't be further from the truth. This was the start of her fall into my depraved slut. Maybe she didn't even know it herself, but she was mine. If I wanted to fuck her, she would let me. If I wanted her to get on her knees next to Emma and join her in sucking me off, she'd be at ground-level before she even understood why she was doing it. If I wanted her to help me fuck Sophia, she'd be just as eager as Emma was.

And you know what? I was looking forward to her realisation of those facts. The sinking realisation that she couldn't stop herself. That she was already a slut from the very first taste of me. Just one more Queen Bee of Winslow coming to terms with her new place. She'd never slighted me as the old-Greg personally, but she didn't need to say anything for the gap between us to be understood. Our social statuses were too different. Watching her come to terms with how things had changed, were changing, was probably the best part about my decision to subjugate the Trio. All three of them were at the top of the school hierarchy in different ways, so flipping the tables on them so completely - as someone once on the other side of the hierarchy - was almost addicting in the satisfaction that it provided.

Of course, I could be off-base here about my guesses into her thought process. She could just be crushing on me normally, or perhaps my power had expanded on the idea of her doing things together with the rest of the Trio - and this was no different. I wasn't getting that impression, but it wasn't impossible that I'd just misread her and the likely direction my power had taken things based on what I was seeing so far. But regardless of what exactly she was thinking, I was confident that Madison was going to be just as eager as Emma. I still hadn't even said a word of encouragement to her and she was already jerking me off without a shred of hesitation or shame despite Emma being in full vision of what she was doing. While it was technically possible that she had a secret exhibitionist kink before I ever arrived, it was a lot more likely that my power was greasing the wheels when it came to what 'my' girls found acceptable around each other. I doubted either of them would even have considered sharing without my powers involvement, yet I already knew without a doubt that if Sophia decided to go and play vigilante in the middle of the night - I'd have both of these girls tag-teaming my cock every second that she was out on patrol with just a few words of encouragement.

Shame I couldn't just have them do that now. It was tempting, but I doubted that either of these two had any of the subtlety required to do any more than a quiet handjob without making it obvious to Sophia what was going on. Sophia was distracted, but not deaf or blind - even in a dark room with a movie playing, it was still possible to make out details up close if you took the time to look. Regardless of how determined Madison was to test how far she could push it, I wasn't quite so into the idea. When Sophia turns to seize another handful of snacks, she scowls in my direction as she sees that the tray has been relocated - but even as she takes a moment to stretch across and liberate food from the tray, Madison doesn't even consider stopping. If Sophia was paying more attention to Madison, or happened to linger for a moment too long and realise the slight shaking of the tray didn't come from me... I pinch Madison's ass lightly in recrimination. It's not like I was opposed to indulging an exhibitionist kink, but if she scared Sophia off by being a little too reckless I was going to be annoyed.

But nothing comes of it. Sophia doesn't notice, and turns back to face the screen without an ounce of suspicion towards what we were doing pressed up against each other. Madison takes things even further, drawing my dick out of its confines and exposing it to the open air. Emma's eyes light up as she gains an intrigued look, not hesitating to set her own hand to work massaging the base of my cock while her friend truly set to work - no longer content to grope and tease, but now truly making an effort to make me cum. And quickly, at that. As much as the movement gave her a lot more freedom to work with, there was also no longer any way for Sophia to remain unaware if she turned around again - putting an unknown timer on how long she had to finish me off.

It wouldn't really cost me anything to take back control. I could put my dick away, make sure Madison understood that I was in charge of when and where this kind of activity happened. There wasn't really any risk that she'd blow up at me or hold a lasting grudge over something so minor... but somehow, I couldn't bring myself to care. Maybe if I was worried that Sophia would call the PRT on me, but I'd taken things slowly enough that there was history in place to fall back on. Rational, normal reasons why some horny teenagers might be experimenting in a dark room while watching a movie. Some of my classmates had probably done worse themselves, without any power to back it up. There wasn't really a reason to assume the supernatural was involved any more, not now that I was no longer an unknown stranger to this group. And that meant that the consequences just... weren't that severe. At worst, Sophia would throw a disgusted fit and leave - but that wasn't a very Sophia-like attitude to things she had a problem with. She'd try to pick a fight with me, and I was utterly confident in how that one would go without powers - and her coming to that realisation might be fun all on its own.

So if I wasn't really scared of consequences, then why not live a little? Wasn't this a glimpse of the reward I'd earned through my efforts? Two of the Trio already subservient to me, the third blissfully ignorant to my intentions - unaware of the power I already had over both her and her friends. The fact that it was Sophia, the most powerful and egotistical of the three, only made it better. So used to being dominant and in control, the fact that she didn't even realise that the boot was on the other foot was kind of enticing on its own. It was an empowering and intoxicating feeling, that for all of her skills and training - she hadn't been capable of even noticing the subversion of the two people closest to her. Knowing that in all likelihood, that wouldn't change even up to the point where I was marking her womb as my personal property.

Now... flaunting that fact like this was probably a pretty dangerous habit to get into, but I'd allow it this time - if only because of how long her challenge-self had stalled my progress. It felt good to get a win over her like this, however petty it seemed. Like the dark feeling of satisfaction that had raced through me as Taylor had dramatically turned her back on me at school, only to practically gift-wrap herself as a mere side-piece to my costumed self just a few hours later - unaware of the own-goal she'd just inflicted on herself.

It wasn't a heroic feeling. I could admit that much, but I wasn't ashamed of that. I was man enough to admit that I liked the feeling of power over other people. I liked seeing them fall under my influence, degrading themselves for my benefit and slowly coming to the understanding that I was just... above them. I liked that Emma didn't consider herself worthy of keeping me all to herself. I liked that Taylor had an inferiority complex as a hero towards me, and that she was grateful to even get a glimpse of romantic attention from me when she could. I liked the acknowledgement from Cauldron, that I was something special. I liked the feeling of approaching destiny every time I gained a new power, the feeling of being one step closer not only to my own personal milestones - but to milestones of power and fame that the entire world couldn't help but acknowledge. To a level where I was openly acknowledged as Triumvirate tier, and then beyond that. When I could cast off the lies and pretenses about my power, show the greatest heroes and villains across the world worshipping me - and have the world no longer care out of sheer gratitude.

And, in all honesty? I think that's fine. Those desires are just part of being human. It was only because of the fact that I actually had the luck and power to act on them and reach those goals that people would call me evil. Every straight guy in the school would trade places with me right now, and nothing would change. Not with the oblivious, obedient girls on either side of me, not with Taylor practically begging me to use her as sexual relief - and that was going to stay the case until I got all the way to Alexandria. Even if people didn't like the fact, I was just a pretty standard guy before getting this power - and I don't think there's any average guy like me out there who would do any better.

I tighten my grip on Madison's ass as she jerks me off faster and faster, the dramatic chase scene on the screen in front of us all was the only reason Sophia hadn't twigged what was going on yet - Madison recognises my motion for what it was, a silent signal that her efforts were about to bear fruit. She cups her other hand over the tip of my cock, at least somewhat prepared to stop my seed from escaping across the room. A flash from the screen lights up Madison's expression for a second, a half-lidded look of concentration in her eyes and a self-satisfied smirk on her lips as she methodically pushes me over the edge.

It takes a lot of focus to not make any noise as my load bursts out into Madison's waiting hands. Even a grunt, a pant or just abnormal breathing might set Sophia's suspicions off as the horror flick turns to a more suspenseful scene. To my ears, the light splatter of my cum against her outstretched hand acting as a shield sounded more like thunder and crashing waves than the subtle noise it truly was - but all of that was down to the feeling of taboo. The threat of being caught. The thrill that someone was right there, just waiting to explode if they ever realised... I would never call myself a true exhibitionist, but I was starting to realise why it was a kink now. I'd gotten a lot of handjobs over the past few weeks, but somehow I don't think any of them could compare to this quiet, hasty one in the back of a dark room.

Emma moves her hand up my shaft, teasing and squeezing out the last drops as Madison finally pulls her hand away. Emma unsubtly licks her hand clean as I cover myself up. Madison splays her cum-coated hand up in the air as if to admire it for a second, fingers spreading out wide as ropes of cum stretch and fall between them - her hand rotating just enough to pool my seed together in her palm rather than allowing it to escape. We lock eyes as she brings her hand down to her lips, the slimy mixture exposed only long enough for her to display it to me with her open mouth and wagging, cum-soaked tongue - then she visibly swallows before mimicking Emma's cat-like gesture of licking each digit of her hands completely clean.

And then, as if nothing at all had transpired between us, she rotates back around into a more comfortable seating position and turns her attention back to the movie. Not that I was saying that it was a bad thing, there were certainly limits to how far we should be testing Sophia's inattention - even if I could see from her all-too-rigid posture in front of us that most of her focus was going into not visibly reacting to any of the movie's scares. Madison and Emma's earlier teasing doubtless living in her head rent-free.

It was a little different to my usual experiences, seeing such a switch between a skilled slut and the aura of nonchalant indifference I was now getting. It was down to the circumstances, of course. Everyone else that I'd fucked, we'd been alone and had all the privacy we needed before and after the act. That wasn't the case here. Even if Emma would have joined in, with Sophia around there wasn't any opportunity for pillow talk or any proper continuation of where she had left off. Her actions made complete sense... it just felt a little different, not being able to immediately wipe the smug, self-satisfied expression off of her face immediately. But I wasn't a child. I could be patient when the time was right, and if that meant letting Madison believe that I was, at best, a freshly-graduated virgin that Emma was leading on for her own satisfaction? A toy that Emma was happy to lend out to her friends? Then I could put up with that.

After all, it didn't make the fact that I had cleared her challenges any less true. Whatever assumptions she had made in her head about me or my relationship with Emma, the end-result still had her attentions directed at me. Sophia's presence might be denying me from making a move, but the same applied to her as well. If I compared her to Emma, Emma would have been satisfied with this much after two or three challenges - but now that she was fully cleared, she wasn't the kind of person to settle for half-measures. I'd skipped past that stage with Madison, so I could probably take solace in the fact that she was going to spend the evening stewing in the realisation that she wanted to take things further just as much as I was.

But even if restraint and stopping my dick from deciding everything wasn't one of my strong points, I did have other things to focus on than just thinking of how to get Sophia out of the room for long enough to fuck these two. I was here on a mission, and work always comes before play.

I return my gaze to Sophia, who's already rising out of her makeshift seat as the credits begin to roll. I'd let Madison do her thing continuously from my perspective, even though I could have interrupted it with Sophia's challenge as it came off cooldown - but being violently beaten up and then abruptly returned to an otherwise pleasant handjob was either going to give me a dangerous fetish or completely kill my boner and give the impression that I had performance issues to Madison. That was a worse outcome than delaying one challenge by a few minutes.

Especially when I'd gotten in so many attempts already. Two movies, a small break in between to restock on drinks and snacks - we'd been here for hours already, and Sophia's current challenge wasn't like most of my active walls elsewhere. This was only her second challenge. The cooldown was short, rather than the nearly hour-long cooldown that Taylor had upon failing - I was already fast-approaching the thirtieth attempt of this evening alone.

And actually, I was starting to feel pretty good about it. "Challenge." Back into the fray.

---

I catch a probing kick, shoving it away before it dissipates into smoke. "You know something?" I call out, stepping back from the melee.

Sophia declines to follow. "What?"

"I know that these challenges, they all have their own rules. They're all biased against me. I get it. It makes sense, because I only need to win single time and you need to win every time. If they didn't put all of these annoying little caveats in, didn't have the system cheat against me when I try to cheese it - I'd be spanking the Simurgh right now. The balance would be completely off." I wave my hands around. "I get that. I'm not complaining about that."

"You going to make a point, or just talk?" Sophia leans against a nearby wall, pretending not to catch her breath.

I flip her off. "I'm getting there. Just explaining that I completely understand why these challenges don't side me with me in the event of an actual draw. I don't mean that in the sense of, you know, if I kill someone first and die immediately after - that would be a draw in real life, but here it's a win and that makes sense. I filled all the victory conditions and didn't check the defeat conditions until after. No, what I mean is what we would consider a draw in here. When nobody dies, or is subdued. Both people still ready and willing to fight, we just get cut short by the timer."

Sophia crosses her arms. "Get on with it. We haven't got all day."

"Beg to differ." I wink. "But in these cases, where the timer is about to run out - anywhere other than these challenges, we'd call it a draw. Right? You couldn't decisively beat me, I couldn't decisively beat you?"

"No." She disagrees. "Your objective is to either capture me without the possibility of escape or to make me submit. If I stop you from doing either of those things, I win."

"That's just copium, Sophia." She looks confused at the terminology. "By which I mean, you're just coping and you know it. I know this is a fight. You know that this is a fight. Neither of us is worried about the technicalities here."

"Agree to disagree." She allows. "Say this is a fight then. What's your point?"

"Ever played a fighting game before? A video game?" I throw the question out.

"Not that often. It isn't really my thing." Sophia narrows her eyes at me, trying to work out my angle. "Why?"

"Fighting games usually have a timer as well, just like our little meetups in here." I explain. "And in a competitive setting where only one guy can take the win and advance, you can't have a draw even if both fighters are still standing at the end. Do you know how they resolve those draws, Sophia?"

She waits for me to continue, then reluctantly throws out a guess when it becomes clear I am expecting a real answer. "A bonus round?"

"Not a bad idea, but no." I shake my head. "When the timer hits zero, the fighter that has taken the least amount of damage is declared the victor."

Sophia looks at me. I take a step backwards as she processes that. "You cannot possibly be saying-"

"-between the two of us-" I call out loudly, increasing my backwards pace. "-I wonder which of us has taken more hits this round." I shake my head in wonder. "Now, I would never dream of suggesting that you were saved by the bell - I just thought it was an interesting point that in other cases like ours, people might actually have declared me the winner a long time ago-"

Sophia ignores me. "-actually think that you somehow have even the slightest advantage-"

I continue my retreat as Sophia adopts an increasingly infuriated expression. "-in fact, I can't help but notice that you've got a little bit of a nosebleed going on there, while I seem to be perfectly fine."

"-get back here, you cowardly fucking rat." Sophia seems to have taken the idea of standard competitive tiebreaking rules poorly. "I don't know which of the last hundred times that I caved your face in did the brain damage necessary for you to even consider trying to claim that you won any of these fights - but I promise that I'll hit you hard enough to fix it back again just as soon as you stop running away."

"I would love to fight you more - my dear Sophia." I declare theatrically. "Alas, it appears that our time is up. I suppose you'll have to try and beat me a little bit faster than the timer can if you want that kind of satisfaction. Putting everything you have into a fight like this, only to have your efforts dwarfed by a glorified alarm clock - I'm glad I don't have to come to terms with that realisation."

"I will fucking end you-" Sophia promises with a snarl. The timer expires, and the world starts to break apart. Sophia's fist has already dissolved by the time she catches me, and her furious series of threats is the only thing that reaches me as the challenge ends.

FAILURE

She took that about as well as I expected.

She's not usually so easy to taunt into a seething mess, for all that she seems like a hothead - she can usually be fairly measured about her approach to things. But as ever, my words have that special element to them that gets under her skin in a way that she can't handle. Truth. Because for all that she wasn't wrong about the technical requirements of the challenge, I wasn't wrong either. I was winning these exchanges now. Not enough to win outright thanks to the timer, but if this challenge was a simple CAGE modifier with no time restrictions - I would have won by now. I had more endurance. I hit harder. I recovered faster. To an extent that even with the vast flexibility and manoeuvrability that her power gave her, she couldn't help but slowly get chipped away.

Even if Sophia pulled out every trick she had, as long as I avoided permanent damage or a knockout blow - any trade would favour me. Her power wasn't automatic, it was near-impossible to knock her out - but not to hit her at all. She'd avoid any serious, fight-ending blows - but every time I hit back at her limbs, she was walking away with a bruise just as large as mine. Every time I met her kicks with one of my own, every time I guessed where she would reform next - I forced out another block that her frame couldn't handle quite as well as mine. Even if I wasn't using my active powers, I knew how to abuse my physical advantages. It wasn't something I needed to gain through a challenge - but something I had learned through gratuitous amounts of violence over time. Boys were stronger than girls. Boys were faster. Boys were beefier.

Sophia had spent most of the school year thoroughly disabusing people of that notion - something she'd been able to do even without her power. In terms of pure fitness, she was undoubtedly the top girl in our school - but that didn't mean that the gangs stayed clear of Sophia and her friends because she was stronger or faster than them. It had been because she was massively more skilled. It had been the same for me. Except, now I had caught up.

The only advantage she had left was her power itself, but now, the rules of our engagement were working in my favour. The best use of her power would be to guarantee escape and distance, then snipe me from a nearby rooftop while I was searching for a way to climb - but she wasn't allowed to do that. But nor could she use her power in melee as effectively as the current Sophia. She was trapped down here with me, forced to either concede defeat by admitting that she couldn't stick to our agreement - or just sit tight and hope that I didn't continue to improve enough to take the actual win. After so long on the back foot, this was a good feeling.

The only downside is that I was kind of feeling myself plateauing. I always had my Victor-aura going during these fights, while at this level it doesn't drain her skill - it does absorb the fruits of wasted practice. In gaming terms, the wasted xp of someone already at level cap - or taking a class that couldn't take them beyond their current level. Somewhat useful for catching up on grades in a busy classroom, but also useful here - because the challenge version of Sophia was the very definition of someone who physically cannot improve their skill any further. A limitation of the challenge system, but one that worked very favourably for my aura's interpretation of whether it would decide to leech from her or not.

But there were limits. Just like my academic grades have hit a comfortable level, but not been propelled to the levels of a trained rocket scientist - I was starting to approach the limits of what leeching off of Sophia could do for me. I would need someone better than her to get better at fighting than I am now to cheat my combat skills further up. Or just get better like a normal person, which was also a valid option and probably the most likely to happen. I get a lot of combat experience. Perks of the power.

But that wasn't to say that I didn't see a way forward.

I replay her earlier words. Your objective is to either capture me without the possibility of escape or to make me submit.

And didn't that sentence imply that there was a genuine path to victory where Sophia just... conceded defeat? Where she recognised that she couldn't win anymore, and chose to give up? I'd thought about the possibility before, but this was the closest confirmation of viability I'd ever had - from her perspective, no less. She was the one listing it as a possibility. Perhaps the first thought that the average guy would have to respond to that would be something along the lines of: 'So what? Sophia is too proud to give up.' and while I wouldn't say that I disagreed with the idea behind it, I'd say that the opposite is true.

Sophia is too proud not to give up.

For all that I was mildly annoyed at being unable to get a complete victory, I knew it would be absolutely eating away at her that I'd not only closed the gap but was actively opening one up despite not using powers. If it got to a point where the tables had completely flipped, where I was routinely showing up to put Sophia in the dirt like I was farming mobs in an RPG - she'd take the easy way out. She'd justify it in her own way, point to the artificial limits of the challenge, the fact that she'd grown in strength since this snapshot of herself or perhaps just point to the overall win ratio and say that one win was nothing. But given sufficient proof and evidence that victory was no longer possible, she would fold - because even if the challenge said that she won if the timer ran out, she wouldn't necessarily agree.

I was absolutely certain that Sophia would rather be honestly beaten in a straight-up fight than claim victory over a technicality. Not in a fight like this. She might talk a big game about the gangs, and how the heroes should be pulling out all the stops and all the dirty tricks - but this wasn't about pragmatism, this was about her life philosophy. A predator wouldn't need a third-party to save them from prey. Not if they were really stronger. And a clock? An artificial timer that said she wins when it gets to zero? The definition of third-party. Outside help for someone who should already be at an advantage.

And I had supporting evidence for this train of thought being viable: That Sophia was even in the Wards at all. It wasn't impossible to cow her with insurmountable force. It had been done before to this very version of Sophia - in fact, the challenge itself was essentially replacing Armsmaster's initial capture of her with me. While there was no video of it publicly available, Armsmaster had clearly handled Sophia thoroughly enough that she hadn't even considered the possibility of escaping or continuing to fight back. With all her public disdain for the Wards, for all her minor acts of rebellion at press events... she was still there. She accepted the result and moved on.

I just needed to match what Armsmaster had done here. With consistency, rather than overwhelming power and preparation. Show her that she didn't really have a choice. Because the alternative was being beaten over and over again, being saved by the timer over and over again - and that was perhaps more crushing than simply adding one more name to the list of people stronger than her.  Something she was already pretty familiar with, with a power like hers. Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of respect for its utility and its value in a fight - but even she would begrudgingly acknowledge that she wasn't even in the top ten in the Bay, let alone in the league of the top tiers scattered around the world.

"That-" Sophia stretches into the air as the lights come back on. "-was the worst movie I've seen all year. Exactly as dull and pointless as expected."

"No need to play at sounding tough." Madison smirks at her. "We could all see you flinching every time the killer appeared."

"Feel free to start making things up if it makes you feel better." Sophia dismisses. "I'll at least take some pride that I seem to be the only one of us able to watch crap like this without clinging to a giant teddy bear."

"Teddy bear?" I mouth to myself. Not the description I would have gone for.

"There was plenty of space for another person on this seat." Emma points out. "We could all have sat together if you were feeling left out?"

"Who even said anything about being left out?" She adopts an almost-insulted tone at the idea. "Nobody even hinted at that! Why would you even think that I would even want to sit together with him, of all people? I was perfectly comfortable, with a better seat, all the way over here."

It's Madison's turn to smirk now. "I just think that you're letting the fact that he's a boy scare you. If this was Julia instead, you would happily have slid in next to the three of us without even hesitating. I'll admit, I'm a little surprised. I didn't really think you were even aware of the opposite gender like that, but it's nice to see that you have a girly side too-"

Sophia lets out an exaggerated groan. "Fuck. Off. Already." Sophia pulls a face at Madison. "You're so full of shit. Are you two just ganging up on me for fun, is that it? Because I promise I'm not just going to take it lying down all weekend."

"Would I do that?" Emma flutters her eyelashes innocently. "But really, if you want to get your own back on Madison - it's not really that late in the evening. We've got some time to enjoy ourselves, all sorts of variety." She gestures to a pile in the corner. Playing cards, board games, a mess of cables erupting out of a pair of game consoles, a twister mat and who even knows what else underneath all of that.

Sophia follows her gaze. "Meh. Fine, pick something. We didn't watch your shitty movie, so it's your turn to choose. As long as it's something competitive."

Emma pulls a deck of cards out of nowhere with a pleased grin. "Say no more."

I smile to myself as I'm directed to draw my cards, Emma animatedly explaining the rules of how to play. More time in a group. More challenges. More progress. And, I suppose, it wasn't a bad night out amongst... friends? Would I call them friends? I was acting like it, certainly. And in general, they saw me that way - it was true. But could I say the same was true in reverse? I'd been thinking of them as victims, future lovers and treating socialising them as a means to an end - but I couldn't rightly say that I didn't enjoy their company.

Who was I kidding, if I could count Taylor among my friends for months based on nothing but anticipation - I could count these three as well based on a lot more than that. I should make more of an effort to enjoy myself, even if my primary goal was to progress Sophia's challenges - and my secondary goal was to fuck all three of them - there was no reason to see the downtime before achieving that as a chore. If we enjoyed each other's company, Sophia's gripes aside, then the fact that my power was somewhat forcing the issue was irrelevant.

---

I dash forward into the shadowy mass before Sophia even finishes phasing out, one hand scooping up dirt and flinging it into the largest concentration of smoke - the other stretched out to pre-emptively grab the spot she usually liked to retreat into. She starts to reform, then cancels it immediately before I can secure my grip - the mass of smoke dancing backwards again, only for me to repeat the action. Again. Again. The direction of the smoke changes, the cloud of dust behind me delaying her reappearance only long enough for me to get an instant of warning before the blow from behind comes.

My fist lashes out in a blind arc behind me, just as she moves to put me into a grapple. I make contact, and she gives up on the attempt immediately in favour of recovering some distance between us.

"You should be careful." I eye the flecks of blood on my fist, then at Sophia's bloody mouth. "If you kept running just a little bit further there, you'd have run straight into the wall. Walking into a power cable would be an embarrassing way to lose, after all this time."

"Who said anything about running?" She spits out blood onto the ground. "Stop the wishful thinking already."

"Alright, let's call it a strategic ploy that ended up getting you punched in the face." I allow. "You sure you don't want to put that helmet back on?"

"It just restricts my view." She dismisses. "And I don't need it to deal with you anyway."

I bring my other hand up to my face, swiping at it briefly and doing an exaggerated comparison between that hand and the bloodied one. "If you say so. I hope you'll live up to those words next time." I drop into a mocking bow.

"Next-?" White and grey takes over my vision.

FAILURE

"-ooks like I win." Emma crows, spreading her hand out on the floor.

"Again? This is ridiculous. Did we even shuffle the decks properly?" Sophia tosses her cards in to the middle.

I drop mine as well. "I was one away from winning for almost the entire game. She just got lucky." I ignore the sing-song cry of 'All skill!' from the opposite end of the table. I sweep up the cards into the centre. "Another round?"

"She can't win all of them." Madison vows. "Deal me in."

---

I guess left, Sophia goes right. Her move to punish the overextension is swift and merciless, a crushing blow hammering down to the back of my neck sends me into the dirt in an unkempt heap. My attempt to push myself back into a defensive stance comes to nothing, my body refusing to answer my call.

"Hmph." Sophia at least has the good grace to not kick me while I'm down. "Paralysed?" I grunt in affirmation. "Whatever."

I don't see the crossbow bolt coming, but the all-too-familiar twang heralds the usual end of this challenge.

FAILURE

I glance down at my cards. "Fold." I toss them onto the table. "Seventeen." Sophia is already out. Madison folds immediately after me. Eighteen.

Emma quietly flips her pair of cards over. A Queen of Hearts and the King of Spades. "Twenty."

Madison and I share a commiserating look. "Got to be something about the deck." Madison swears darkly.

"Marked cards." I echo.

"Those sleeves are a bit long if you ask me." Even Sophia can't resist adding a comment, perhaps being the only one yet to win a round was taking its toll on her prickliness.

The redhead adopts an offended expression. "As if I would even need to cheat to beat someone who goes bust every round. Jealousy doesn't suit you." Emma tells us smugly. "And who folds on seventeen anyway, you'll never win like that."

"I just need some real luck, don't get ahead of yourself." I shake my head. "Again?"

---

My hand lashes out, not with a punch, but with an underhanded throw.

"Shit!" Sophia practically sprints away from me, the formless cloud doubling the distance between us before I could even push myself into position to chase. As she reforms, I grin to myself at the obvious result.

It wasn't my first attempt at incorporating pebbles, not even the tenth. But it was the first to actually get a cry of pain from Sophia. The first to actually make a serious connection. She pulls one hand away from her bloodied eye, fixating on me with her remaining one. "Lucky shot." She hisses.

"I think I was just unlucky to miss all the other times. I feel like I'm getting pretty good at guessing where you want to reappear." I palm another pebble in my fist. "Can you see out of that?"

"As if I would tell you." Sophia scoffs, but now that her hand isn't blocking the way - the answer is clearly 'no'. Her eyelid seems almost fused shut, and she barely seems to notice the blood dripping down that side of her face. "Come at me already."

I come at her. And I keep coming. I think it was a pretty fair statement at this point to say that Sophia and I were near-equals in a pure melee fight at this point. So when she was handicapped with a minor head injury and what was essentially a missing eye? This time, there couldn't be any arguments over who had the advantage. I hammer my lead home, taking advantage of her blind spot and delayed reactions again and again.

And then, as usual, the timer hits ten minutes.

"You-" Sophia leans against the wall. The left side of her body is a ruin. Blood and broken skin mar the side of her face, one arm hangs uselessly at her side and I'm pretty sure I've broken her nose. "You lose."

I slowly look down at myself. I brush some dust off of my shoulder. And I smile, softly. "If you say so." Sophia's face twists into something unpleasant, but it's too late for her to respond.

FAILURE

"-ot over! If I roll two sixes, I win. That isn't impossible." Sophia argues.

"Just give up, Sophia. Second place isn't too bad-" Emma stops her gloating as Sophia tosses the dice. "No. No, no, no-"

"Yes!" Sophia crows, already rotating around the board to get closer to her stunned, disbelieving friend. "Never mind Emma, you see - in this world, there are only winners and losers. It's just a fundamental fact of life-"

"How quickly the narrative changes when she's the one that's winning." I murmur quietly. Not quietly enough, judging by the single-finger salute that immediately comes my way from the ebony beauty.

"We've got a long day planned tomorrow. Maybe we should call it a night?" Emma offers up a cheap attempt to change the subject. I mask my frown. Staying up later was better for me. I wasn't going to have as much luck subtly challenging Sophia when we were all supposed to be asleep and likely somewhat separated.

"Aha, so now that you've tasted defeat - it's now a good time to stop? I don't think so." Sophia herself comes to my rescue. "Another!"

---

I reel backwards, on the defensive after failing to dodge Sophia's uppercut. Recovering against Sophia wasn't too difficult, all you had to do was get out of the cloud so that any repositioning she did all came from one direction. She wasn't actually faster than a regular human run unless she already had momentum in that state, and she needed to reform in order to adjust her direction to start a pursuit. That meant if you could get her in front of you and back away, you at least weren't going to have a leg materialise half-an-inch from the back of your head and send you into next week.

That didn't mean that it was any less intimidating for a hungry, bloodthirsty vigilante to start sprinting at you full-pelt - before erupting into a formless mass of smoke and smog that matched her previous speed with a fraction of the effort. I sidestep instead of letting her exhaust me, then step back towards the cloud as she phases back in, starting her materialisation from her legs as she throws her momentum back towards me. Moving back towards her was obviously dangerous, and she immediately punishes my effort by slamming an elbow into my face before I even get close to her torso - but it's a hasty blow, not enough to knock me out or deter me. My momentum carries me forward, and I hurl her back - practically spinning her around with all of my strength, the almost-weightless, half-formed body is easy to throw in the direction of my choice. And Sophia, for her part, is happy to let me. It's a free hit for her, and she'll never take damage from being thrown like this unless its directly towards the ground.

She chooses to reform fully as I let go, nails raking out against my face like claws while she skips backwards - facing me with a self-assured look as I charge after her. My eyes widen in slight disbelief as she doesn't fully arrest her momentum as soon as she can, instead half-slipping into her shadow-state - something she usually does to soften the impact of hitting the ground, but this time she uses it to open up distance between me and my followup.

Mistake.

There was a building behind her. And she hadn't realised it yet, too focused on pressing her advantage against me to reorient the battlefield in her mind. She was still moving backwards just as fast as she was before, even if she had successfully killed her vertical momentum.

I lunge at her, a promise of violence on my lips. I actually have to briefly slow myself, being too fast was actually a detriment here - allowing her to dodge both hazards in turn once she realised. Sophia completely phases out as I charge in, and then the tendrils of wispy smoke behind her touch the wall - and she realises the danger she's in. The phase-in is immediate and instinctive, an uncharacteristic, wide-eyed expression of something close to fear appearing on her face as she slams into the wall - with my knee slamming into her centre-mass a split-second later. Something audibly cracks under the hit, the agonised, breathless gasp of my sparring partner the truest indicator that it wasn't solely her costume.

I move to press the advantage, then stop myself.

I step back, Sophia following me with her eyes every step of the way as she slumps against the wall. Still conscious. She'd have phased out if I completed the attack, now that there was no danger of drifting into the wall and hitting a power line. This, backing off and giving the appearance of allowing her time to recover, was the more damaging move by far. Mental damage, over purely physical.

It takes almost a full minute for Sophia to get words out. "The-" She spits blood to the side, arms clutching her stomach protectively. "The fuck do you think you're doing? Did you forget that this was a fight?"

"It's not like you can fight like that." I wave her off. "I know I broke a rib or three there, at the very least. Definitely knocked the breath out of you, you can barely even stand."

For a moment, I expect Sophia to deny it. The annoyed expression on her face betrays the truth of my words. "Tch. So?" Her voice gains a bit of heat. "How do you ever expect to win if you don't capitalise on the one-in-a-million chances when they happen to come up?"

"Firstly, I wouldn't call it one-in-a-million. Even you have to admit that we're pretty much relative to each other now, it's only natural for a situation like this to crop up every now and then." Surprisingly, she doesn't deny it. Maybe a mouthful of blood made it more difficult to claim that she was on a different level. "Secondly, I've just been using you to get better myself. I've made no secret of that, and you were kind enough to help out - winning off the back of a mistake you made, rather than purely my own strength surpassing yours - that would feel like a loss for me anyway. Particularly when I've been winning a fair few of our little bouts lately, timer aside - I don't need to be desperate when going for the official win, if that makes sense."

"That's the mentality of a loser. It doesn't matter how you win, as long as you win in the end. Everyone is going to make a mistake in a fight, complaining that you didn't earn it fair and square is bullshit - a lesser person couldn't have capitalised on something as minor as that. The person I first met in here couldn't have done that." Her head rests backwards against the wall. "And that logic assumes that I'm helpless like this. I'm still quite capable of fighting, as you should well know. It's one thing to back away at the finishing line and ask for another round, but this... is barely more than a single lap of the course. You haven't won yet."

"And can't." I challenge, getting silence in response. "You know, it's interesting. Every now and then, I run into a challenge that feels just like a... check. You know, like in games where they require you to learn a certain skill or have a special item to advance. Madison's challenge just now, her final one was probably easier than all the ones before it - because I had a power that trivialised it. I'm sure it's not designed that way or anything, just blind luck - there are probably a few powers that would be just as suited to sneaking around Parian's hotel-thing as yours was. Other powers than Velocity's to handle Oni Lee, someone other than Glory Girl to ignore Taylor's swarm. But this situation feels just like one of those. Because I'm not allowed to kill you to win. I have to capture you, but I've taken a detour through the houses around here and you know - I've never found so much as a blink of a working appliance or wrap of cable I might be able to use. The whole area is just a bit too run-down. Even the police outside don't have electric cuffs."

"And?" Sophia grunts shortly.

"And that's just it. Have I really captured the ever-elusive Shadow Stalker if I haven't taken away her ability to escape at will? Unconsciousness is fleeting, there's no way for me to ever say 'Shadow Stalker has been captured' even if I have you wrapped up in chains in a police car. That's how the challenge sees it, right? I think you've hinted at that before, but I wasn't putting too much thought into actually winning at the time." I raise a finger in the air. "I would need something else. Sure, there are some odd-ball solutions that might work. I thought about hitting you hard enough to be put you in a coma, except your power automatically dodges most attacks at that kind of level. A Tinker power maybe, do something with the police cars back at the entrance... rig something up and beat you in just one or two minutes before the timer expires. Or, there is the natural and obvious solution - hold you down myself, with Manpower's electricity running through my body. But realistically, that last one is the only one worth talking about as an option - and without it, I'm screwed. Am I wrong in any of that?"

"Maybe. Who knows?" The fact that she's no longer quite so willing to speak is encouraging. If I was wrong, I'm pretty sure she'd be deriding me for being a moron right now.

"So unless I grab Manpower, and also break our little agreement for me not to use powers, worrying about winning just isn't a priority for me." I lie adeptly. Because I did want to win, but admitting that was counter-productive to getting her to concede defeat.

"So you dedicated your weekend to challenging me just for your own amusement?" She scoffs. "Very believable."

"I dedicated my weekend to making myself the best-hand-to-hand fighter in the Bay." I shrug my shoulders. "Be real with me, you've been fighting an unpowered-me constantly for a while now. Aside from Brutes and Armsmaster - is there anyone in the Bay that beats me in a fistfight right now?" I smirk at her silence. "Thought so. You haven't even seen me kick ass with most of my powers yet. I don't have to beat you to get stronger, that happens every time I show up here. That's only going to continue to happen."

"And if I'm not content to sit here, babysitting you until you become an almost-credible threat to me?" Sophia asks. "Don't you think that you're saying a bit too much about how you're benefitting from this? I'm under no obligation to help you. Quite the opposite, in fact."

"The insults sting a lot less when you're hunched over in the corner." I tell her absently. "But... does it matter even if you know what I want? You can run away if you want. Tell me the deals up, you go hunt down Nazis and I use my powers and do my level-best to run you down before you kill anyone - just as the challenge was intended. We both know that you'd be ducking me out of fear of losing, so I don't really expect you to do that. Even if you did, if I didn't get any benefit from this the first thing I'd do is go and stalk New Wave for long enough to snag Manpower and then completely speedrun your challenges start-to-end. I'd have done it already if I didn't have other things to work on. Manpower isn't easy for me, but I only need a single win to completely clear you out."

"Is that a threat?" She arches an eyebrow at me.

"A fact." I deny. "Come on, be realistic. If I had taser hands I could have beaten you within a day, even if you hadn't agreed to these little scraps. The fact that I'm good enough to take three, maybe four rounds out of ten purely off my own hard work should be enough evidence that I'd roll you over with that extra advantage. To say nothing of how good I'll be by the time I get to your next challenge."

A frustrated flicker of annoyance, almost too quick to notice, passes by Sophia's face. Aha. That must have hit closer to home than I had even intended. It wasn't just about her, but her being a liability to the next challenger I was going to face.

I tilt my head at her. "Honest question, actually. How do you feel about that? Not many of my challenge targets talk to me, for some reason - so it's kind of hard for me to gauge how much you care about each other. Do you see the next stages as, like, completely separate from you and you don't care if they lose? Or is it that they're also 'you', just in a different situation? Or a kind of, relay-race situation?"

She looks annoyed. "I don't care about them, continuation modifiers aside. I'm a simulation mirroring a personality, don't get me mixed up with an actual human. You think even the real deal would want to sit here, in essentially a time loop, for days and weeks on end - beating the shit out of you over and over with no breaks?" Sophia gives me a look as if to say, 'Are you retarded?'.

"Sure, sure." I wave her off. "And what does that simulated personality have to say about the current situation?"

"Why should I tell you? You've squandered your chance at winning this time around." I shift my attention to the timer. True. Thirty seconds.

"Call it a prize for managing to hit you that hard." I grin. "Let me cash in a bit of that respect I just gained from that, and tell me how you really feel."

"As if I would have any respect for you giving up your only chance to win." I shrug in response to the words, letting the silence repeat the question for me. "...frustrated."

"Hm?" I blink.

"I said, I feel frustrated." Sophia pushes herself into a standing position, barely seeming winded at all as the timer winds down. "The feeling of being a stepping stone sucks. Like some kind of sentient high-jump record, that can only watch as people fail to reach me again and again - but seeing them get closer every time. Knowing that every bit of easy practice against me, only makes it harder for a stronger version of me to pull out the win in the future. Knowing that even with my powers against nothing, I've already lost most of my advantage."

I purse my lips. "That was a lot more honest than I expected." I admit. "Kind of figured you'd tell me to go fuck myself and die." I scratch my head. "If it makes you feel better, your current self is way better at using your power than you right now. It's not like you inherently just suck, or anything like that. It's just early in your career."

"Obviously, moron." She gives me a derisive look. "But who even asked?"

Eight. seconds left. "I'm just saying, no need to feel bad. Nothing either of us can really do about that feeling, but it's nice to have an honest heart-to-heart every now and then." I give her a cheery wave. "I'll be back!"

Two seconds. One second.

One second.

I blink.

One second.

I pinch myself. Still one second.

"On that, we disagree." Sophia sounds oddly relieved. Decisive. "There is something I can do. And having a heart-to-heart with you is extremely unpleasant, so I can disagree on that as well."

"Fuck you." I quip reflexively. The timer had stopped. Did that mean...?

"I suppose this is the outcome you were hoping for all along." She continues. "But it's fine. It works for me as well. And my feelings are the only ones that matter here. If I can't completely win consistently anymore, then I can at least avoid losing."

"You're giving up?" I question. "I mean, I'm not complaining - but I feel like you're denying me my moment of triumph here. Kind of anticlimactic if you just give up because you can see which way the wind is blowing."

"Why should I care about your feelings? If you want to call it a loss, then suck it up - you don't get to make the decisions here." Annoyance laces her voice. "And, giving up? I wouldn't phrase it quite like that." A momentary pause. "But I can't fault you for choosing to think of it like that either. I don't want to keep on fighting you. It only disadvantages me, and strengthens you. You're not a match for me yet, but I don't want to just sit and wait until you hit that point either. I'd rather concede on my own terms, for my own reasons, than be forced into it by either force or the sheer humiliation of actually losing to an unpowered nerd."

"Dont forget the true reason." She looks confused as I smile. "You can admit that you've fallen for my irresistible charms whenever you want. Don't worry, I don't have anyone else to tell so it will be our secret. Between you and me, you're way more approachable than the real deal."

She gives me a blank look. "One: You repulse me. Two: I'm a simulation of her, you just haven't spoken with her enough in the same kind of situations. Stop dreaming of doing the equivalent of jerking off in your own head, and go and punch her in the face or something. Three: The only reason that I've been even somewhat friendly is because of the event modifier. A peaceful solution was always possible here. Without that, the only time anyone would willingly talk to you - or whatever else your perverted mind can think up - is to keep themselves alive and expand their chances of winning. That includes me, because there's two more challenges with the continuation modifier - but no more events." She stops, then ticks off a fourth finger. "Four: You disgust me."

I make a face. "You kind of already said that last one - but aside from that... huh. Good to know." I frown. "So that means you're going to give me the cold shoulder from now on?"

"Time spent talking costs you and your time limit, so that would be an advantage worth doing for me. But only when you get to a point that it's actually beneficial to do that. Far easier to just kill you, after all." Sophia's eyes alight at the idea.

"It's rude to fantasise about killing your friends." I refocus. "Fine. Back to the important things: It's totally not like jerking off, us hooking up is way more interactive than that. It's a two-way thing. You can deny it all you want, but I think we've got a real connection - I tripped a romance flag somewhere and now you're doing all you can to play hard to get. I actually read a light novel with a plot just like this-"

"Kill yourself." Sophia cuts off my animated speech bluntly. As if the entire challenge responded solely to her will, the ground beneath us starts disappearing as she utters the words.

"I'm serious here!" I protest. "Just the two of us, nobody would even know! The whole slate is wiped clean at the end anyway, what's wrong with messing around a little in between attempts to kill each other?" The silence is not encouraging. I continue, trying to explain away her judgmental stare. "Usually, people are too busy trying to kill me or aren't aware enough to hold a real conversation - but come on, any guy with a world like this that resets and has no real world consequences has to have a few horny thoughts every now and then, right? Honestly, I've been kind of a saint so far on that front-" Sophia's signature look of disgust disappears into the sea of grey and white before she can respond.

I think she likes me. And probably secretly realises that I'm correct on all points.

SUCCESS

Reward: Sophia Hess+

I start moving my mouth before I can even see what's happening. "Ah, sorry. Didn't think anyone else was in here." I apologise as Sophia comes into view by the sink, brushing her teeth with an annoyed look on her face as she sees me. "I'll wait outside."

Naturally, there was no such thing as a coincidence. I'd taken a leaf out of Taylor's book, hiding my administrator bug in her hair and using it to track her around the house.

She leans over the sink to spit. "I'm brushing my teeth, not taking a shit. I don't need privacy. Stop being a bitch about it."

That was... was that progress? The challenge had said that I'd gotten a relationship reward, but deciphering the extent of that was kind of difficult with Sophia. I got on pretty well with her challenge version, but the difference between actual, genuine hatred and mild, passive deaththreats out of habit was somewhat blurry when it came to Sophia. She was caustic by nature, and genuine moments of praise were few and far between.

But if I just looked at her actions... she hadn't slammed the door in my face yet. That was a good sign. I approach the sink myself, momentarily wondering if I should feel subconscious about my limited-edition Armsmaster-branded toothbrush and its matching bag - but really, there was nothing to worry about there. Objectively, my toothbrush was superior in both collectability, value and function compared to any others in this household. Anyone that dared to comment with anything other than awe was clearly not worth speaking to.

Sophia doesn't comment on it, and I can't help but feel somewhat disappointed at that. Not that I expected her to have a keen eye for collector's items, but still. I'd have appreciated the chance to leap to the defence of the Armsmaster brand.

Well. If she wasn't up for a conversation... I'd just have to leave it there for today. Everyone was winding down for the night in anticipation of what seemed to be an absurdly-long shopping trip tomorrow that had Emma and Madison squealing together as they plotted out their planned route. Still, with the long weekend thanks to school being out on Monday - we still had at least one more night to sleep over even after this one, so I still had plenty of time to bring Sophia on board.

But even if the night was almost over, that didn't mean that I couldn't get a glimpse of my next task.

SOPHIA HESS

Heroine 3/6

(TIME) (ZONE)

No CONT modifier. So I probably shouldn't expect to see Sophia talking in this one. Back to old-fashioned murder, I suppose. "Challenge."

A familiar floor appears below me. A familiar ceiling above me. I look to my left, and as expected, see a familiar look across the Bay.

"This works out well for me, actually." I murmur. Usually ZONE modifiers limited me in an unfavourable way, but this was the Protectorate ENE Headquarters. This wasn't my first time being here, Clockblocker's first challenge had me spending days killing time while waiting for him to die. I actually had a few passwords in my head from last time, and a pretty good idea of where all the containment foam grenades and sprayers were stored.

And more importantly, there was a lot of electricity in the walls and floors - the chief cause of why Clockblocker killed me the first time around. Both Sophia and I would have greatly reduced mobility thanks to that.

But that meant nothing if I couldn't find her. The TIME modifier ensured that reinforcements would be on their way if I dallied for too long - which almost certainly meant that wasting time heading to the storage areas below the ground floor would be a quick way to lose. Not that containment foam would be much use here, if the challenge even bothered to spawn the grenades in when setting this area up.

No, what I needed was... electricity. Electrified handcuffs would be nice, but battery-powered appliances - especially those with lengthy cables attached to them - that was what I needed to handle Sophia. Unfortunately, all of the games consoles around here were plugged into the walls - and the only laptop in the area looked a bit too bulky to really be considered a threat to her shadow state.

Not electricity then. I make for the stairs, belatedly noticing that the ZONE actually extended to the floors below me as well. Which was fine, because I was going up - to the Wards personal rooms. Perfumes. Deodoratant. The shadow state didn't play nicely with aerosols, and that was the most accessible offensive weapon I was going to get this round.

I reach my desired floor, and pause. I hadn't seen Sophia on the lower floors, nor in the Wards common room. The console room and armoury was apparently out of bounds, yet all of the Wards and heroes bedrooms were within the ZONE? Including Sophia's? Then, wasn't the most logical place for Sophia to be... on this very floor, in her room?

I opt to tip-toe past Sophia's room. Very slowly. Very quietly. The rooms were fairly sound-proof, but there also wasn't much noise around to mask my steps aside from the persistent hum of electricity and the air-conditioning units overhead. I skip past Clockblocker's door. Too close to Sophia. I move to the end of the corridor. Vista's room. Pin number 041309. Breaking the trend that most other heroes had made by not having her pin be the exact date she joined the Wards, but being off her official announcement date by only a month probably just meant that it was the date of her trigger instead. No points for originality, but that went for well over half the codes in the entire base. At least knocking the doors off of their hinges and working out the locks had kept me entertained while waiting for Clockblocker to die, and now it was paying off - because theses doors also had electric wires and locks running through them and simply phasing through wasn't an option.

The door swings open. I find a selection of unopened containers that seem to be likely candidates for my weapon of choice, ripping open a few and spraying each different generic perfume and deodorant into the air to test them. I pick the two that seem to have the most powerful spray, and spin around to prance back the way I came.

Twenty-five steps takes me to Sophia's room. Pin: 112233. No dates for her. There's no disguising the noise of the beeps, nor the sudden unlocking of the door - but it's too late to worry about that. I summon my ash clone, hand off the spray bottles - and kick the door open.

My ash clone sprints in after me, wordlessly obeying the sole command I gave it: 'Keep spraying'. By the time I'm halfway across the room, my clone is emptying both aerosols into the air on either side of me - we probably looked ridiculous.

But effective, all the same. Sophia's power hated reforming in aerosols. Not quite as much as electricity, but hated it all the same. That wouldn't be a problem if she could leave, but this room - like the rest of the building - was a fortress. In other circumstances, she'd have been alerted to my attempts to intrude long before I managed to get the door open. She'd have peppered me with holes by phasing her bolts through the door. She'd have reinforcements jumping in as the timer ticked down. But the challenge wasn't ready for someone that could just walk in, for someone that had already been here. Now, the strong defences that would have prevented me from getting in - were instead preventing her from getting out.

And that meant that she had to fight, and she doesn't even have time to finish pulling her crossbow from its container before I'm on top of her - my clone merrily blasting the both of us with two spray bottles at full blast, leaving a cloud dense enough to choke on while we both struggle for melee supremacy.

I say struggle, but that's not quite right. Because I was already a match for Sophia when I had no powers and she had all of hers. Not only was Sophia recognising the inherent danger in using her powers right now, but I had no such need to avoid using mine. I rain down blows with ease, my Echo-fuelled strikes crushing any attempt to shift my weight or grapple me away. She shifts once, out of pure desperation to escape - but the laggy, lethargic movement of the cloud only makes it halfway to the door before Sophia drops once more with an agonised scream. I land on top of her exposed back, grab her neck and wrench - the immediate, automatic shift into her shadow state faltering almost immediately. The second wrench gets no such reaction, and I'm rewarded with a loud crack for my efforts.

"Think I'm a bit overqualified for this one." I hum to myself.

SUCCESS

Reward: Shadow State (2)

A clear on the first attempt. That always felt good, but maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Challenges tended to increase linearly in difficulty, the fact that I'd been stuck on Sophia's second one for so long was just a matter of the tools available to me. If you consider the actual, expected difficulty of the encounter... you didn't need to be as strong or skilled as I am now. Any electricity-based power was an instant-win against Sophia, putting obstacles, knowledge-checks and time pressure in my way should have been a big step-up in difficulty for a version of me that had focused harder on New Wave and therefore won against Sophia in the first half-dozen attempts.

I sharpen my eyes as her challenge box swims back into sight. Back to the CONT modifier, perhaps?

Sophia Hess

Heroine 4/6

(ALRT) (HUNT)

Guess not. Considering she said that there were two CONT modifiers remaining, that meant that both of her final challenges would have it. Which made sense. A lot of my advantages in a fight came from my opponent not knowing my toolkit. Having to reveal my tricks in one round and having them known and accounted for in the next was one way of keeping the difficulty up for a power that wasn't exactly top-tier.

ALRT and HUNT were a pretty standard, if unpleasant combination that came up a lot. In Sophia's hands... I was going to get sniped through the walls. It was obvious, the HUNT modifier let her track me through walls and her power let her bolts ignore them - and the ALRT meant that she would start doing it immediately before she ever set eyes on me. A dream combination.

So I either needed to wait for her to run out of ammunition, or draw her out to somewhere she can't easily retreat from.

"Challenge." I don't recognise the exact building that spawns in around me, but I don't need to. Seeing no sign of my opponent nearby, I hurl myself towards the nearest window as fast as I can - phasing through it and shrinking the distance between myself and the ground enough that the second-story jump is merely jarring instead of potentially-crippling. I keep running in a straight line, making sure to weave from side-to-side - not even daring to stop long enough to switch into my speed-state, a thought vindicated as a bolt races over my shoulder and embeds itself into a nearby dumpster. The angle was... I'd have to come back and check it at some point, but certainly not the building I just came from. A neighbouring roof? It was too hard to tell without being able to stop and properly work out the direction.

Stick to the plan. Escaping the immediate area was the best play. Too many of my defensive tools required at least a bit of warning or knowledge of which direction to defend myself from. Even if my speed-state put me at the same level as a speeding car, a decent crossbow like hers would fire at three, four times that speed. That wasn't something I could dodge or even react to reliably, I'd be counting entirely on dodging her attempts to aim at me rather than the bolt itself - which should be just as effective as dodging gunfire, except for the part where she didn't actually need line of sight to hit me. She could be in any room, any building. Every step would be another potential ambush, and I'm pretty sure that Glory Girl's shield wouldn't save me if she nailed the timing and made her bolt appear inside me.

After thirty seconds of not being fired on, I start to doubt myself. Sure, there was no ZONE modifer keeping me here. But there was also no particular reason to think that Sophia would blindly chase after me so that I could confront her in an open field somewhere. I wasn't dealing with a rookie Shadow Stalker anymore. This was, presumably, something a lot closer to her current self. Someone who was well-used to ambush tactics and had a reserve of patience to burn through that her previous counterparts lacked. The challenge would punish me for stalling if it came to it, I was the one that needed to eventually confront her - not necessarily the other way around.

But none of my challenges had ever abused that fact. Yes, there was a certain soft-enrage that happened if I dragged things out without progressing them - a stacking Brute and Mover modifier that would let even a toddler bust down a wall and cave in my chest with one finger if taken to extremes, even if that would take days of deliberate inactivity to get to that level. But nobody had ever tried to avoid me with the intention of abusing that. It wasn't a part of their skillset, it was just to stop me from dragging out the simulation forever if they lacked the tools to catch me. So surely Shadow Stalker wouldn't just ignore me, if she had the capability to follow?

I slip into my speed-state, the momentary paralysis going unpunished as I pace side-to-side - watching the buildings I just came from for any sign of what my nemesis was doing. Avoiding conflict wasn't like her, so what was the aim here? I'd expect her to be sniping me constantly, abusing the fact that tracking her down in a sea of office blocks and residential housing was going to be a nightmare - but there was nothing. Yet.

But equally, it wasn't like Shadow Stalker to just sit still. So what was she doing instead?

That question goes unanswered for another minute, my sidesteps evolving into a light circular jog as I'm forced to concede that she might have managed to circle away from that block and flanked me. Presenting a difficult-to-aim-at target was the best I could reliably do here.

And then I see a mass of shadow gliding across from one rooftop to the next. Not towards me, not even perpendicular to me. Undoubtedly, she was moving away at an angle. The mental gears in my head click all at once: She had the exact same thought as me. If my route to victory involved either luring her into the open, or exhausting her ammo - then if I didn't come to her, she could simply take all the time in the world and sweep up every supply cache in the city before confronting me. Instead of twenty or thirty bolts to work through, I'd have to deal with potentially hundreds before she ran out - assuming that she couldn't access the actual armoury where there were doubtless thousands more somewhere.

I swear lightly, setting off after her at a dead sprint. I'd misjudged her. Too used to opponents lunging at me with whatever they had on hand to consider the possibility that they might back off for supplies and weapons just like I had many times before. I shift my momentum to the side as a bolt impacts the road in front of me, the unnatural attachment at the end flashing once before containment foam erupts outwards - not quite fast enough to tag me, but only because my perception and reactions were boosted in this state. I glance up to the rooftops, but any glimpse of the girl I had is now long gone.

I shift out of my speed-state once I've made it to the last spot I saw her at. Nothing. Not a glimpse of movement for miles around. She could be below my feet right now, or five-hundred metres down the road. In a city this size, I'd never catch her again. And that meant that I was dead. I probably wouldn't even see the bolt that killed me coming now that I'd lost track of her.

Well. Fine. I hadn't expected to win the first time anyway. I had access to Sophia for all of tomorrow, and most of the day after as well. I'd work something out.

In the meantime, I'll play around with my upgraded Shadow State. I'd already noticed the most significant change: The single slot in my mind had fragmented into three, and as I activate it - one slot winks out and starts refilling. Still one second, it seems - but I've still got two more charges, so if I chain into the next one... the next slot winks out, then the final one as well. Three seconds after initially vanishing into smoke, I touch back down on the rooftop.

Nice. The one-second limit had its frustrations, so a way to alleviate that was appreciated. The first charge was already halfway back to being restored, but the second was refilling noticeable slower and the third was even slower than that. Different cooldowns for each one. Somewhere close to the original cooldown for the first, something closer to twenty for the second - and I'd eyeball the third as somewhere around forty seconds to recharge.

And finally... I hold up an arm in front of my face. Then hit my first slot as it finishes charging. This time, my arm is the only thing to turn into smoke. Selective phasing, just like the current Sophia does. A bit limited, with three one-second blocks to spend across my entire body - but it opened up possibilities. A one-second charge across my entire body, a second on my body apart from my arm - would that let me land a solid punch out of thin-air? If it was exactly like Sophia's power, it would lack some of the weight behind it - but she still packed a punch like that all the same. I could probably reach through walls to grab something, or a bag or whatever - one second to step through, another to leave just my arm alone so that I could grab the item - and then the final charge to apply to myself and anything I was holding.

Or more importantly, I could do the reverse. I could do that with a grenade. Even just a containment foam grenade would do. The previous version of my power had been all-or-nothing, which meant that any 'deliveries' would leave me on the same side as the item I was dropping. Without that limitation... the PRT armoury and the containment foam grenades just got a lot more valuable in the instances where they hadn't been restricted or emptied out by whatever intelligence it was that decided how unfair the challenge should be for me.

I shift one hand and attempt to push it into my body, only to be rebuffed as it expires. A second attempt is interrupted - any further contemplation cut off by a crossbow bolt sprouting from my stomach. And then erupting into a burst of electricity. A second sharp pain in my forehead hits me just a few seconds later, as I'm still twitching incoherently on the ground.

FAILURE

Still got the electricity weakness then. Of course.

And at least I know that she can get access to her Tinkertech bolts. She so rarely gets to use them in her fights that I wasn't sure if they would show up, but I guess this means that she has access to all of her special bolts - and maybe a few that haven't even been seen by the public yet.

And, you know? Even without the sex, the power, the feeling of progression... that was something cool all on its own. I'd do this even without any of those benefits, because it was genuinely fucking cool and downright rare to see heroes and villains put their full arsenal to the test. The powerscaler in me couldn't help but squeal sometimes when I get killed in a new and novel way, no matter how agonising and traumatising it is at the time - I've got to admit that I'd rather be the Greg that knew how fucking fast Armsmaster could bisect a normal human than the one who could only watch takedown videos from the safety of his room. I could only imagine how the difference would be for a bloodlusted Dauntless, Eidolon or Alexandria. Some things you could only appreciate in person. And some things would just never be seen without my power switching those pesky morals off.

I blink back to reality, the awareness of my administrator bug in Sophia's hair telling me that she'd turned to look at me even before my vision was restored.

"What are you grinning about?" Sophia quizzes me sourly.

"I'm not allowed to smile now?" I defend myself with an expression of faux-outrage. "What can I say, it's been a fun day - hasn't it?"

"It was fine." Sophia grunts.

I grin. "Oh, don't be like that. You were enjoying yourself. Nothing wrong with admitting that."

"If I hated this kind of thing, I wouldn't even have decided to show up." Sophia's expression takes on a very familiar expression of irritation. "Any other smart comments today?"

"Jeez." I whistle. "What did I do? Can't help but feel that you've got a grudge against me recently." I tilt my head. "Or, should I say - who did I do? Don't tell me you're worried I'm going to steal Emma away from you."

She lunges forward, and it's all I can do to not thrust my thumb at her eye on pure instinct as she grabs my collar. Right. No powers. No serious fighting. Just a little roughhousing. Chill, Greg. "Listen." She growls at me. "Emma can handle herself. She's a survivor, she can handle it if you use her a bit and string her along before letting her go. But-" Her grip tightens. "-don't think that means that I'll just let you get away with that. She's my friend. Fuck with her, you fuck with me. I get that you feel the need to swing your dick around and try to feel important now that you've got a taste of what it's like to not be at the bottom of the pile - but just remember the reason you're not still down there. We picked you up, if we drop you again - you're back to nothing, and you'll be getting off lucky if we stop there."

"Please. Even Emma wouldn't try to take full credit like that." I hiss back at her. "And I've always been crystal-clear with Emma about what I'm doing. I'm not exactly much of a romantic and I'm not willing to commit right now, she accepted what I was offering and that was the end of it. She's a big girl, right? She wanted to get laid, she got laid. She doesn't need you hanging over her shoulder making scary faces at anyone who dares give her exactly what she asked for." I smirk. "Or begged for, should I say-" She slams me against the wall. "-and the same goes for Madison too, come to think of it. She's been making fuck-me eyes at me all evening, ever since Emma mentioned that I wasn't taken. Do you want to do a separate shovel-speech now about her, or is it just Emma that you care about?"

"It's none of my business what you do, or who you do it with - even if I think it's a dumb mistake, it's something they'll just have to learn from. All I'm doing is giving you a warning. I'm just reminding you about the food chain. You aren't at the top of it. You keep them happy like your life depends on it. You fuck up, and I'll leave you wishing that you were dead." A few months ago, I'd be pissing myself right now.

"Treating me like I'm some crying little bitch trying to join the Empire for protection? I don't care about all of your predator roleplay bullshit. I don't care about how pissed off you are about the fact that I turned your best friend into my personal onahole, and I'm working my way towards doing the same to your second best friend. You're just going to have to deal with it." I lean forward. "I'm not afraid of you, Sophia."

A beat of silence. One. Two.

For a moment, I thought that I'd misjudged her.

And then, as expected, her fist hammers into my face. I was expecting it, so I roll with it - and then lunge at her.

I would have loved to say that it was a hard-fought battle. A struggle for both sides. Skill and brawn being stretched to their limit in equal measure.

That would have been true a few weeks ago. Maybe even just a few days.

But after a minute, Sophia has her back on the floor - desperately fighting off a pin as she belatedly realises that I win in a physical content of strength. Every attempted grapple is countered, every blow turned aside. I'd seen all of these moves, but better. With more intent to seriously wound, if not kill. I could see the aborted motions where she was stopping herself from phasing out and punishing my commitment to the tackle, but this wasn't a simulation. If she used her powers, she would just be outing herself.

"Looks like I win." I breathe, as Sophia continues to wordlessly struggle.

"Are you okay? I heard something fall." Emma's voice approaches, getting closer with every moment. I shove the door fully shut with my foot.

"It's just me!" I call back, Sophia quietening her struggle to avoid drawing attention to herself. "I was going to take a quick shower, but the floor was already wet and I slipped."

"Alright, as long as you're okay." Emma hums, then turns sly. "You know, I could join you if you want-"

"Very tempting, but Sophia would have a fit if she heard you saying something like that." I laugh airily. "Honestly, I can't help but feel a bit worried about what might happen if she started a fight with me because of how overprotective she is of you." Sophia's eyes light up with fury at my unsubtle teasing.

"Sophia isn't like that. She's all about standing up for yourself and dealing with consequences on your own." Emma clearly disagrees. "But you're probably right - she'd throw a fit if she saw what we were up to. Actually, have you seen her? She slipped off when I wasn't looking, I thought she might be over here but..."

I look down at the dark-skinned girl beneath me. "Haven't seen her." The lie challenges Sophia to make a noise and disprove it. All she'd have to do is make enough of a scene for Emma to open the door... and see her best friend beaten on the floor.

"She might have gone out, I guess - she sometimes does that." Emma's voice trails off. "N-nevermind that. I'm sure she's around somewhere." The deflection is weak, but I don't do anything to challenge it - Emma is probably assuming she hopped out to kick a random hobo's ass or something. That sounded like a Sophia-thing to do in her free time. "I might go look for her. See you, Greg."

"Later, Emma." I echo.

We both watch the door as her footsteps fade away.

"You can say 'Thank you' whenever you like." I turn my attention back to Sophia with a grin. "I figured you wouldn't want your friend to know that you picked a fight over something stupid, only to get your ass handed to you immediately. All that talk about predator and prey, it would all kind of fall apart seeing you pinned on the floor. Maybe she'd think something else, we've tried something pretty similar to this position before-"

"In your dreams." Sophia snarls. "You haven't seen anything from me yet. Just try it, and I'll cut off your-"

"I wasn't insinuating anything towards you." I roll my eyes. "Honestly, get your mind out of the gutter. There's two girls in this house that are two words away from jumping me at any given moment, and you think I'm going to try and rape you instead? Be serious. I'm just saying, Emma would probably jump to the conclusion that you wanted to end up like this. I know what she's like, and I'm sure that she'd much rather believe that you got a little horny and opted in to some heavy petting in the bathroom, than accept the reality that your might-makes-right ideals mean that I'm the top dog - and not you. You've got a reputation, after all. This is a damaging kind of look. I didn't want to take that away from you. This can be our little secret."

"Is that supposed to be an attempt at blackmail?" Sophia snorts. "Just what do you take me for? Some crying toddler that can't handle ending up on the wrong end of a friendly scrap? You have nothing on me. And my position is unchanged. I was just making sure you understood that. If there was a next time, if I took it more seriously-" The rest of the threat goes unspoken.

"Oh, you weren't serious?" I challenge. "Shall we try again? I'll let you up, and we can see how quickly we get back to this spot with you trying your hardest."

"Fuck off." Sophia dismisses my challenge. This is probably the point where she would stomp away, but she's still firmly pinned to the floor.

"I feel like we got a bit antagonistic for no reason. We should be friends, right?" I shift my grip on her wrist. "Don't get me wrong, I've got a lot of respect for you being ready to jump me if I put a foot wrong around your friends. It's kind of hard to be upset at a reason like that. I understand your message. And I hope you understand mine as well: I'm not afraid of you. I'm not intimidated by you. I'm stronger than you." I lean into my grip on her arms to prove the point. "I'm going to do whatever the hell I want. But the things I want, they don't involve being a dick to people for no reason. It's way cooler to have twenty chicks swooning over me and how awesome I am than to just be a complete asshole to everyone. Does that make sense?"

She holds my gaze for a moment, then looks to the side. "Tch. Whatever."

I roll my eyes. This conversation was almost a little weird for me. I wasn't used to this power dynamic with Sophia. It was pretty rare for me to be in a position of physical dominance like this. "Fine, fine. It's not like I'm going to keep you prisoner until you agree that I'm fucking awesome or anything. As long as we get each other, we've got enough in common to work things out."

"We have nothing in common." She denies flatly as I let her up, the girl practically springing to her feet. For a moment, I half expect her to throw a punch at me again. Nothing.

"So you're actually really looking forward to this shopping trip tomorrow?" I probe dubiously. "Wow. I didn't believe the other two at the time, but you really do have a girly-side."

"Nothing important in common." She corrects. "Keep your delusions to yourself."

"I don't know, I can throw a pretty good punch - and it looks like you can as well." I nurse my cheek. "What happens if my beautiful face bruises? What will I say to Emma?"

"That you fell over in the shower. Like a moron." Sophia drawls.

I pout. "I feel like you're being harsh to someone who's kind of doing you a favour."

"I feel like I'm not being harsh enough to someone who just called my friend a living onahole." Sophia snaps back.

I make a face. "I mean, not in a bad way! I was just going for a vivid description of how things went down, and besides, she kind of likes that kind of talk-"

"Stop. I don't want to hear it." Sophia makes a show of plugging her ears and makes a disgusted face at me. "Just... be cool, and we won't have any issues."

I wink. "Cool is my default-state, no worries there."

Sophia has a mix of emotions on her face. Eventually, she sighs and shakes her head. "Whatever. See you, Greg."

I incline my head at her. "See you, Sophia." She brushes past me and escapes out the door.

It must say something about that girl, that I was pretty sure we were now better friends than before she punched me. Challenge-Sophia was right. Of course she was.

I whip my clothes off. I guess I'm having a shower, if only to keep Emma from realising I was completely making our conversation up. My hand is halfway to the dial, when I notice my administrator bug fast-approaching once more - followed by loud footsteps echoing down the corridor.

I could cover myself up... but this could also be kind of funny.

"Forgot my-" Sophia bursts through the door, only to completely freeze at the full-frontal view she gets of me. "-what are you doing? Do you have any shame?" She switches from stunned to infuriated in an instant.

I spread my hands out. "Having a shower, just like I told Emma I was doing when I had you sulking on the floor? After you assaulted me?" I remind her.

"Naked!" She hisses. "Why didn't you lock it? Or say something, I wasn't exactly quiet when I was walking here. One word, and I'd have known that it wasn't safe to come in!"

"I thought you were Emma." I lie blandly.

It takes a moment before the meaning behind that response filters through, but her expression turning murderous tells me that she understood exactly where my thoughts had gone.

"I hope you drown in the shower." She tells me bluntly.

"Unlikely to happen. And I thought you said you didn't care about what Emma and I do anymore? Why are you getting angry now? I thought we were going to be cool?" I pretend to be oblivious to the obvious answers to those questions with an innocent expression etched onto my face.

"This has nothing to do with her. This is about you being a pervert and how it's impacting me." Sophia growls. "I just came to grab-" She swipes something from the sink. "-this. And instead I come face-to-face with you flaunting your body without a sense of shame. Just turn the shower on like a normal person already!"

"First off, I have nothing to be ashamed of." I glance down, then back up at her. Her eyes follow me down, then blaze back up to mine with renewed fury as if it was my fault that she looked. "Second, I'm not flaunting anything. I was literally just about to turn the shower on when yu burst in. You knew what I was going to do when you left, why are you even acting surprised now?" I cross my arms. "And thirdly, you're calling me the pervert - but then why are you still looking?"

Her mouth drops open at the idea that I was accusing her of being the pervert now. She lets out a slightly-insane laugh of disbelief. "You- I can't believe how delusional you actually are. It's actually kind of impressive, being able to develop so much arrogance - so much ego - in such a short amount of time. I'm really impressed."

"I get that a lot." I drawl, looking to the side and turning the shower on - flinching back as the cold water splashes down, I take a full step away to let the water warm up. I turn towards her as her eyes snap upwards to lock with mine once more. "But fine, I could have locked it. But admit it, it's not like I was actively planning for you to come back and catch an eyeful. I figured you were done here - that's fair, isn't it?"

She shakes her head. "Just... whatever. I only came here for this." She clutches the item in her hand like a lifeline. "Keep me out of your perverted dreams, and we'll leave it there."

She scurries for the exit again, the second time in as many minutes. I can't quite fight the twitch of my lips at the hasty retreat.

I mentally track the administrator bug in her hair as it bobs and sways down the corridor, second left - then settles down as Sophia sits down on something. Or just lets her hair down. Or moved in a slightly weird way. Honestly, I don't even know how Taylor can even parse this data into anything useful - but just the general location is good enough for me. With that pervert settling down, I should probably avail myself of the hot water-

I turn my head as the door opens again.

"You really should lock this, you know." Madison hums. "It's just asking for trouble to leave it open. Especially when locking it is so easy, see?" She tilts the lock down, then shunts it into position firmly.

"I see." I echo.

"Something I've learned from previous sleepovers-" Madison fiddles with her shirt. "-is that some of the walls around here are much thinner than you would think. If you're in the right room, you can hear pretty much anything you want. I've gotten pretty used to being woken up by Emma trying to sing in the shower, and that's going to go double when I'm sitting just on the other side of this wall when a certain conversation is happening."

"Did anything in particular stand out?" I affix my gaze to her chest as the shirt falls away, followed by her bra a moment later.

"A few things." She confirms drily. "And while I feel like you've got the wrong idea about me on a few points, I figure that it isn't that important as long as we're on the same page here and now." More fabric falls down around her ankles. "I'll admit, after we enjoyed that lovely movie together - I was a little disappointed to hear you say that you had assumed Emma was your visitor. Did I really mean that little to you?"

"I wouldn't say that." I shrug. "It's just hard to be sure what your intentions are. I know Emma better, that's all. It's something she would do, while I'm not quite as sure with you. Though, I'm certainly willing to find out."

"Hmph." She sets her watch next to the sink, turning and facing me - every bit as nude as I am. "I suppose that's fair. There wasn't much room to chat back then."

"And there is now?" I probe her.

She shakes her head. "Sadly, I'm not in much of a talking mood now either. I just came here for a nice, pleasant shower. That's all."

"Is that so?" I mirror her gesture. "Then by all means: The water's already warm for you."

"A true gentleman." Madison demurs, stepping past me - brushing past my semi-erect cock with the gentlest of touches before standing just at the edge of the rushing water, lone rivulets of water splashing up and racing down her slender form as she turns to face me with an almost-taunting look on her face. "The only trouble is, I'm not actually all that dirty yet."

I smile. "And I suppose you think I can fix that for you."

"I've had a chat or two with Emma." She responds blandly. "I'm told you have the right kind of skillset, and she was very enthusiastic in suggesting that I give you a trial out."

I step forward, approaching full-mast at the girl unashamedly exposing herself to me and practically daring me to do something about it. "Is that what this is? A fun experience? A one night stand to brag about to your friends?"

"Sure-" There's a note of hesitation in her voice, but it's gone by the time she continues. "You've made your position clear, and I've already told you about my aspirations. I'm not looking to stir up petty drama between friends arguing over one guy-" She coughs, slightly red-cheeked. "-not that Emma seemed inclined to argue, but the point remains. Statistically, any relationship in school at this age is likely to break up within a few months - let alone the years required to make it through to when we're completely done with our education. This is harmless. It's fun. For both of us. So why not? Is there a problem with that?"

"Not at all." I shrug. "It's just as you say. There's nothing wrong with it, so you can come crawling back as much as you like for seconds - that won't bother me in the slightest."

"Big words, I hope you can live up to them." She smirks at me.

"I will. But not right now." I tell her, a flicker of consternation appearing on her face at that. "You see, I just didn't feel like you really had your heart into that little handjob you gave me earlier. Why don't you drop to your knees, and give my cock the attention that it really deserves?"

"I suppose that's fair. But if I end up disappointed afterwards, I'm telling Emma you have performance issues." She sinks to her knees, then crawls forward - coming to a stop close enough that her breath caresses my dick as she breathes out. She looks up at me, the hint of red in her expression deepening. "It might be best if you take the lead, I understand the basics but- theory isn't always... you know-"

What a diplomatic way to say that she had no idea what she was doing. "You seemed to have the right idea before, but why don't you use those tits of yours instead of just your hands? I don't expect you to be as good as Emma, but I realised you had the right kind of body type for it once those clothes came off." I'd mentally classified Madison as 'cute and petite' before, but hadn't quite appreciated the importance of ratios and what might happen with a few less pieces of fabric holding her back. Her tits were a nice handful, definitely enough to put to work around my cock. Her first few efforts to find a comfortable position are both amusing and erotic to watch, mounds of titflesh being groped and moulded, pushed and shoved this way and that against my unyielding rod - before at last she settles into something she finds comfortable.

"Like this?" She looks up at me for approval, both breasts pressed inwards and around my shaft.

"A good start." I tell her. I take control for a moment, guiding my cock up the tunnel that had been made for me - pressing against her mouth insistently. "Lick." I order, and she complies with a hesitant nod. "Now, down. Up. Down." I watch her work. "Between your mouth, tits and tongue - that's all you need to make me blow my load all over you. You can do it."

It takes her a minute or so to get into the rhythm of it, the feeling of her tongue running along the underside of my shaft is accompanied by the slight shifting and squishing of her tits against the upper half of my cock - twin sensations that combine to make an experience that I can't help but enjoy despite the obvious lack of expertise. And it wasn't just about what she was doing, it was also about who was doing it. She might not be a Cape, but just like Emma - she was once one of those untouchable people at Winslow. A social tier that was little more than a distant star to the nerds and geeks arguing at the back of the IT classroom over whether Eidolon could solo the rest of the Triumvirate or not.

And now? Now she was just one more nervous girl in a fast-growing line of them, eager to please and all too happy to hand over any sense of dignity and pride that she might have had just a few weeks ago. She was mine now. Still coming to terms with it, but mine all the same. The mask of the socialite with an easy life planned out in front of her was just that, a mask. Her true self was being born right in front of me. A horny slut that found purpose and delight into milking every reaction out of me possible, weaponising her natural talents to work my shaft top to bottom.

Not for the last time, I wonder what Taylor would make of this. Before our little argument, I'd thought of making it a little present for her. 'By the way, I turned your once-proud bullies into my personal cumsluts - they won't be bothering you anymore.' Something like that. Nowadays, it almost seemed like the reverse was fated to happen. I'd probably be done with converting, reforming and bonding with the new versions of the Trio before Taylor was ever ready to apologise to my civilian self. Emma's ideas for how to accept that apology when it eventually came... they definitely had their merits. When I was done with the entire Trio, I was actually looking forward to what ideas they came up with together. Not that I was looking to join in on bullying Taylor, I was just interested in the sexy ways she might be convinced to try in the name of earning my forgiveness.

Well. Knowing how stubborn Taylor was, that was just a pipedream. She'd probably rather become homeless and powerless than admit she just assumed the worst of me and that she was in the wrong. She wasn't that good at being honest.

Unlike Madison, who was getting into this now. She'd settled into her optimal rhythm - and between the tight tunnel that she'd formed for my dick, the teasing tongue lashing at my tip and the enthusiastic pace she was setting, it looked like I was going to have to disappoint her by telling her it was all going to be over for a moment.

Or, not telling her, perhaps. It was one thing when it was in her mouth, but there was a certain quiet appeal in the first blast of cum catching a girl off-guard. Yes, they might get a bit upset with me - but it also skipped the momentary panic of 'What do I do?' with the simple, aesthetically pleasing answer of 'Get covered in cum'.

With Madison's head slightly obscuring my vision, I don't quite get to see the impact of the first rope of cum released into her face - but by the time she lets out a surprised yelp and pulls her face away, her face has already been completely plastered with my seed. Strings dangle down her upturned face to connect to her neck and tits, and she breaks the tight seal her tits have made around my cock to bring her hands up to her face - wiping away a large blob that threats to drip into her eye. I jerk myself off while she reels, sending a few more strings across her torso - linking up with the light rivers already flowing down and around the proud orbs on her chest.

"That went-" Madison looks down at herself sheepishly. "-well? I think?"

"That was excellent." I praise her, and she practically glows at the compliment.

"I didn't think you'd cum that much. Or that fast, come to think of it." She pulls one gooey string from her cheek, causing it to slide and droop onto her shoulder. "Does that mean- well. You're done, right?" She blinks up at me. "Not that I mind, I didn't expect this to be so fun - we can save the rest for another time, I get that boys need to recover-" She pauses as I pull her up, likely noting that the cock she just spent so much time milking - is already ready for more.

"No need to worry about that." I inform her. "Now, hands against the wall."

I can almost hear the nervous swallow, and if I wasn't hard already - something about the meek, nervous obedience mixed with obvious anticipation would have had me ready to go in an instant.

I trace Madison's newly exposed folds with a pair of fingers. Soaked, in a way that had nothing to do with the shower still going full-blast not even two full steps away from us. "You're sure about this?" It wasn't even a real question. A polite fiction, seeking an answer that I already knew. If I hadn't fully cleared her challenges, I might not have pushed it - taken things slower, let her decide the pace on her own terms. But now? She was mine. And I was going to make sure that she knew that too.

"If I wasn't, I wouldn't have come in here in the first place." Madison tells me over her shoulder. The light swaying of her body is enough to press against my cock, threatening to start things herself even if I wasn't planning to move for some reason.

That's the pleasantries over with. Maybe it's not that great of me to sit here considering her consent as a yawn-worthy given and little more than a checkbox that I feel kind of obliged to do out of habit rather than some absolute necessity with appropriate moral weight - but at the same time, it was kind of weird to start thinking of that as a problem after I've rewritten her personality into being Greg-sexual. "That's what I figured." I grip her hips, and press forward. She gasps, a broken intake of air that never goes anywhere - an aborted noise that's rapidly stifled as her flower opens up to accept me.

And then I'm inside her.

There's no preamble, no attempt to make things slow and gentle for her. She knows what she wants, and I'm all too happy to oblige her. I'm straight to pounding away at her. The only thing to watch out for is the wet surface beneath us. The nearby shower splashing and making the floor just wet enough that I might slip if I'm not careful. But that isn't enough to deter me when I have a beautiful girl in front of me, begging me in frantic whispers to keep going. And what kind of man would I be if I failed to obey?

The repeated slaps of her body colliding against mine fills the room, muffled only by the persistent drone of the shower and the water splashing uselessly into the drain. Madison seems to be struggling to handle the pace, or at least - struggling not to make a noise. One hand comes away from the wall to cover her mouth, but that only gives me more room to fuck her into the wall harder and faster. With the effects of our coupling becoming more and more obvious I elect to quicken the pace, watching her body shake helplessly with every thrust - feeling each shudder and shake through my handholds on her hips.

Her legs wobble and her hands slip a few times, only remaining standing up thanks to my firm grip - and I can't help but notice that her moans are starting to become louder, her words becoming more urgent. "F-fuck!" She exclaims, any sense of composure long since leaving her body. "I-I'm gonna-" The rest of the sentence goes uncompleted, but it doesn't need to be vocalised. I'm all too familiar with the female body by now, and I've found that the best thing to do is keep fucking her right through her climax. May as well help them get the most out of the whole 'multiple orgasms' thing, right? And if nothing else, it's a sign that what I'm doing is right and I should just keep on doing that if I want them to keep feeling good.

Truly, I am a saint.

"I'm going to cum." I grunt at her.

"Ah-" Madison starts at that. "Should-should you pull out? I'm not really ready for-"

"Too late to worry about that." I tell her, never slowing my pace for a second. "Between pre-cum, and the fact that we didn't exactly clean up after you gave me that titjob - the risk has already happened at this point. It doesn't really matter if we pull out now. Talk to Emma about whatever she uses if you're worried."

One of these days, I'd run into a girl that kind of fancied the idea of actually having a kid with an irresponsible high-schooler with too much power and not particularly caring about getting his opinion on that fact. There were doubtless a lot of women out there with that mentality, and I'd probably gotten kind of lucky that all of my current girls were either responsible enough to know better or had a lot to lose by dropping out and becoming mothers. But... even if someone decided to not bother with pills or whatever contraceptive method they preferred, I wasn't that bothered. I'd probably be a shit father, but they probably wouldn't mind that if I'd cleared enough of their challenges to fuck them.

And either way, the problems were nine months away. In nine months, I'd either be dead, birdcaged or a god. Preferably the latter. But none of those options cared much about an extra kid or two lying around. Not that I was worried about Madison. She was far too put together to put her future plans in jeopardy with a kid.

"I- I guess so-" Madison seems to agree with my point of view. "If we've already come this far... then go ahead. Fill me up!"

I don't need any further encouragement. I lodge myself deep inside her core, erupting in her warm, welcoming depths. A flood of cum painting her inner walls white and marking her as mine forevermore. She'd never, ever come back from this. She was every bit my cocksleeve now, just the same as Emma. She'd never find a man to replace me, my challenges had moulded her into my woman - and in turn, made her dream partner exactly like me. I hold there for a moment, both of us panting in sync - and then I move to pull out. The walls of her pussy clamp down on me, not allowing a single drop remaining in my shaft to escape as I slowly extract my length from inside her. Only when I've fully unsheathed my cock does the fruit of my handiwork start leaking out of her abused slit, a slow trickle of cum that does nothing to truly show the size of the load still held inside of her.

We stand there in silence for a moment, gathering ourselves without feeling a need to talk.

"That was-" Madison clears her throat. "-nice."

"Who said we were done?" I quirk an eyebrow, a mischievous smile on my face.

"Huh?" Madison looks a little wide-eyed at that.

I tilt my head at the long-forgotten shower. "Well. There's a perfectly good shower right there, wasting enough water to make Leviathan feel inadequate - it would be a shame not to use the opportunity to clean up."

Madison smiles at that. "You're absolutely right. I mean, even if I wanted to I couldn't leave the room like this-" She gestures at the cum still hanging down her chest and the side of her face. "To be honest, I completely forgot that the entire reason we did this was to get dirty enough to warrant using it in the first place."

"The entire reason." I echo with a straight face.

She sighs loudly. Too loudly. "The only trouble is, I can barely stand right now." She takes a half step towards the shower, wiggling her ass at me mid-step as she looks back over her shoulder. "I don't suppose I could convince you to help me out?"

"As if you needed to ask." I grin, hands already coming up to knead and grope at her curves.

All in the name of proper hygiene, of course.

---

Madison and I re-enter the room together. The response is immediate. Emma bursts into a wide grin, giving Madison a huge thumbs-up - while Sophia-

-gives me the biggest death glare I've received yet. "Die." She says.

"Don't say that! We should be happy for Madison!" Emma enthuses. "I mean, I figured she would go for it - but wow! I didn't even realise there was anyone else in the room with Greg but now I realise why he didn't open the door!" Sophia stops glaring at me for a moment, looking uncomfortable at the topic.

"Ehe-" Madison scratches her head. "I really thought the shower would drown out any noise we made. Probably should have guessed you could hear us."

"And the entire neighbourhood, probably." Sophia mutters darkly.

"Don't be jealous." Madison grins. "I'm sure if you asked nicely-"

"Finish that sentence at your own peril." Sophia warns. Madison makes a zipping motion. Sophia shakes her head in slow disbelief at the two beaming girls. "Un-fucking-believable. What are you two even thinking?" Her gaze returns to me. "I swear to any god that's listening. If you try any funny business with anyone tonight, I will end you. In fact, all of the girls can sleep in this room - and I'll guard the door."

"Well. Madison and I can share the bed if you want to do that." Emma muses. "But if you're going to be a guard anyway, it wouldn't exactly be a problem if Greg was in here with us - would it?"

"Absolutely not." Sophia denies flatly.

"Afraid of something happening?" Madison taunts.

"You two are clearly just as bad as him." Sophia hits back. "It's not happening."

I raise my hands in surrender. "Don't worry. I'm not planning any trouble." Tonight. "Where am I sleeping though?"

"The kennels." I flip off Sophia.

"There's a guest bedroom two doors down." Emma sends a mock glare at Sophia. "We didn't actually make the bed because we figured the entire point of a sleepover is that we all sleep together-"

"You've done a great job of that already-" Sophia snarks.

Emma pauses, then concedes the point and unintended wordplay. "-but you can slap the airbed down there and treat it as yours."

"Challenge." I whisper as the argument continues.

This time, I stay still. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four seconds.

Thunk. The bolt hits me in the neck. Left side. Upwards angle. Below me, not across the street - but maybe the office block next to this one, and a floor or two down? Useful information

FAILURE

"-We'll bribe Sophia to not be a prude tomorrow at the mall, and we'll get you back in here." Emma promises.

"Over my dead body."

What a choice in wording, Sophia. Because that is exactly the plan.