I felt a little bit bad later on, but we spent most of the night teasing, and flirting, and playing, and then fucking like rabbits. We moved from the shower after less than an hour, but only got as far as the floor before we were going at it again, but finally we made it to the couch. I got a hold of a bedspread, but we never quite made it to the bed before she was bouncing on my lap again. Exploring her body and finding out each and every sensitive area and sometimes caressing, sometimes tickling them, was enormous fun. Around 2 am we called for takeout from an all-night taco place via door flyer, and after tearing through a couple of dozen tacos each we were back to talking and trying to make each other holler.

We didn’t stop until I noticed that Mariah was starting to get sore and had, at one point, gone unconscious for about ten minutes, and then complained about not being able to see. She had been inflicted with temporary blindness and I hadn’t realized that that was really a thing. ‘Fucking her blind’ was just an expression, but I guess when a girl got amazingly turned on, it was actually possible. I still felt good when 8 o'clock rolled around, and she was laying half asleep on my chest, gently stroking my left pec, when my phone rang.

I nudged her, and she leaned out a little and grabbed my pants, handing them to me while she snuggled again against my naked body. We were covered by a couple of towels, the bedspread stretching from the bed and covering our feet, and one of the towels was a little damp, either from last night’s shower or other activities. I was considering heading back to the shower again, this time sans deliciously-curled girl when I answered the phone.

“Hullo?” I asked. I wasn’t really groggy, but I noticed that Mariah’s smooth and lightly-scaled thigh was rubbing against my member again. She wasn’t really awake, and I knew she wasn’t up for going again, but I couldn’t help but respond a bit. I was beginning to learn the ups and downsides of improved endurance.

“If you are quite done abusing that girl, we have a flight in less than an hour at O’hare.” I heard Antonia’s voice.

I cleared my throat a little. Holding the phone away from my mouth, and then said “Well, I am not sure if she’s done abusing me. I am going to have to wake her up and make sure if she can see again, and then get her breakfast, because that’s the polite thing to do after 12 hours of continuous lovemaking.”

Antonia’s voice grew chillier as she said, “Do what you have to do. Grace should be stopping by any moment with her travel arrangements and Windfall, so I hope she’s not unconscious or injured. Baldwin said he was already outside. He wanted me to say something to you, but I am more than willing to let him say it when he picks you up.”

I hung up the phone, and then picked the girl up and headed towards the shower, hoping that the water could wake her up. Interestingly, she just curled up closer to me when we stepped into the water, and even when I turned it cold, she just stood there snuggling with her eyes closed. I guess being able to resist the temperatures at the bottom of the ocean meant a little cool water wouldn’t wake you up much.

I found out that while her supersuit was aesthetically pleasing on land, it was not particularly useful. The low top tended to catch the water when she moved at speed, and if she moved at the wrong angle, in moments the flexible fabric could look a lot like a blowfish. Anything with more coverage would make it impossible to breathe while she was underwater, since she had jets that led from the hollows of her shoulder blades to vents under her rib cage, and functioned a bit like gills, as well as allowing her to easily control her depth. Fortunately, they were not particularly sensitive, or our antics the previous night might have been less pleasant.

I went ahead and washed us both off, caressing her with my fingertips as she woke slightly. When she finally opened her eyes and lifted her arms to allow the spray to caress under her ribs and breasts, I said, “Grace is going to be here shortly with Windfall, and I think she has plane tickets. We have to get you packed up fast, and I have to be out in 15 minutes because the agents scheduled my flight early.”

She nodded, letting the water flow over her for a few moments longer before hopping out. She wasn’t exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but the way she kept smiling happily at me kept my spirits lifted and we both started grabbing her stuff and packing it into bags. When we heard knocking at the door, I hurried to pull on my day-old clothes while she underwent a remarkable transformation, turning back into the stunning redhead of the night before in a wave of color from her head to her toes and pulling on a robe.

She opened up the door and Grace stepped in, followed by Windfall, or at least she smelled like Windfall. She was also a redhead, but was considerably less... staggering than Mariah, but still a definite ten in my book. She was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt and blinking at us owlishly through her thick glasses.

“We have to get you packed up quickly,” Grace said, seemingly completely unphased by the fact that I was pulling pants on over my underwear and still bare-chested, and Aquantis wasn’t wearing anything under her bathrobe.

I buttoned up my pants and started working on socks and shoes, having to search for a few minutes as Grace took in the utter wreck we had made of Aquantis’ hotel room. I finally found my sock resting on top of the air conditioner, and started on my shoes. I had zero recollection of how it had gotten up there. “I expected a bit more disapproval, Grace,” I said, chuckling as I pulled on and started tucking in my shirt.

Grace smiled. “I was prepared, and you are not my boyfriend. Windfall said that the chances you two were going to be naked were near parity, and I am just glad that the 62% chance she said that you had to still be in the middle of something turned out incorrect.”

Windfall nodded solemnly and glanced at the taco wrappers. “I misgauged your food choice last night. Tacos were less than ten percent. If you had ordered pizza from Papa Capone’s instead, Aquantis would have gotten sick, you would have given her a rejuvenation potion, and when we knocked on the door she would have been bent over that table after you ignored your own phone.” and she pointed to the table next to the air conditioner.

I nodded, Mariah was back in the bathroom, and I asked her, “What if Aquantis had turned me down for my tour run?”

Windfall shook her head, “That was less than a 6% chance. But if she had, You would have asked me to go. The odds of surviving the upcoming event would have dropped to only 31%, but we would have had an 88% chance of getting caught by the police having sex on a freeway sign, and spent the night in a holding cell. That would have lowered the odds of your creating a relationship with Aquantis by 3%, and without her, Our eventual odds drop even more abysmally. Unfortunately, she and I are the only two relationships with a low enough pride and enough confidence to submit to additional partners after ourselves. If you had chosen the low-probability outcome of asking Agent Andropolis, for example, her conversion to a superhero would have increased your personal chances to 7%, while dropping your combined chances to only 13%. She is willing to become entangled in your fate, but as the first, she would be entirely unwilling to allow others to come to your bed or your aid.”

She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I detect less than 5% chance of you being willing to do so, but if you invited Speedburn to your bed, his sister will willingly help us triumph and increase eventual survival odds to 31%. Inviting Katonic, however, was assumed with the original 28%, as it will make Speedburn jealous, and I estimate a greater than 95% chance he has already masturbated thinking about you and Aquantis having sex. His refusal to move to Detroit was entirely predicated upon the interest you displayed towards Aquantis. If you had flirted with him as well, and chosen to be his lover as well as hers, our chances would have improved to 35%, and the three of you would have approached parity of being in that bed when we arrived, although Aquantis would have been pregnant with Speedburn’s child, 62% chance of it being a boy, and 97% chance of her carrying it to term, probably due to her religious convictions.”

She coughed and sighed. “Oh crap. I am so sorry, I was in the zone, there. Sometimes my mind drifts when I am calculating odds, and they get off on weird tangents. I still cannot let you touch me, even non-skin-to-skin, because… it would be bad. You have an almost negligible attraction to males and non-meta women and would consider it immoral to sleep with someone you didn’t have an emotional bond with, even to secure their cooperation if it means avoiding possible death. I find that attitude laudable, if dangerous.”

She looked Aquantis over as she stepped out of the bathroom, fully dressed. “I will need to recalculate some stuff, I didn’t know she could look like that.” And she sighed.

All of us were staring at Windfall, and in my case, it was a bit slack-jawed. Holy spoiler, Batgam!

Aquantis interrupted it by saying, “So what you are basically saying is, to save the world, Alchemyst has to sleep with a whole lot of meta women, and I have to be okay with it?”

“Louis,” I said.

She shook her head slowly, “No, he only has to have romantic relations with three of them, at least from what I can tell. Plus one non-meta. It is possible that the odds could improve over time, and I can recalculate based on other factors, like new interactions and newly awakened. If it helps, one of the relations will be because you fall in love, not him. One you will be happy he takes, one you will tolerate for his sake, and one you will accept because you have to, to save the world.”

Aquantis shook her head, “I am straight.”

Windfall shook her head in return. “No matter what, even if you had never met Alchemyst, you have a better than even chance of falling in love with a woman, even if you never had sex with them. Love is not about sex. You are attracted sexually to men, but that doesn’t mean a thing when it comes to love and self-sacrifice for those you care about.”

I said automatically, “Louis, not Alchemyst.”

Baldwin chose that moment to show up, look at all of the women standing around with me tying up my shoes, and then asked, “Am I interrupting something? I can come back in five minutes with a camera.”

Baldwin turned to me on the plane. We were in first class and had almost missed it, but he had driven right out on the tarmac to get us in before the flight window closed. I say first class, but the whole flight was first class, a small plane that did the chartered run from Chicago to Detroit at least six times a day, and on a Sunday, it was almost empty.

“So you literally were up all night?”

I shook my head and sighed. “No, I was up all night. She had to sleep. That’s why I wanted to take a short one-hour nap while we are flying. Which I am now missing.”

Baldwin nodded, “Yeah, you are. If you give me details I will let you sleep.”

I shrugged. “Details aren’t mine to share. We went on a tour date. We ate lots of mediocre food at a restaurant and watched some fireworks. We went back to the hotel. I was still there when you rolled in. You didn’t get a lot of sleep watching a window all night. You are probably feeling worse than me right now.”

Baldwin shook his head, “Not totally, around four I saw boobs pressed against the curtains. Why were her boobs pressed against the curtains?”

Antonia coughed loudly.

“Probably because she pressed her boobs against the curtains. I don’t know, but that might be why my sock was on the air conditioner.” I thought about it. That was right after we finished the Tacos… that would be over the table when we mushed a couple of tacos and I had to lick them off afterward. Oh right, I guess her face was pushed against the window curtains when she was over the table.

I grinned at Baldwin, “Maybe she saw you out there and pressed her breasts against the curtains specifically to give you bad ideas. Did you consider that?”

Baldwin shook his head. “No girl gives me bad ideas without giving me her phone number.”

I nodded, “And that’s why you have been married three times, and are not married now.”

“Twice” Baldwin responded.

I shrugged, “Whatever.”

He answered, “Whatever you say, Alchemyst.”

“So why is it, exactly, that we took a different charter from the others?”

Antonia answered, “Because I needed to talk to you without chances of being overheard. DMA denied your request.”

“It wasn’t a request. It was a statement.” I started getting mad. “After Detroit, there’s one more time. Then they will either renegotiate with a clean slate, or we are done.”

She shook her head. “They made it clear that they expect you to either fulfill the full terms of your parole, for two years or until they can capture and try the other heads of the cartel, which will probably take more than two years. Two years is not really that long.” She was trying to be conciliatory now, but I wasn’t having any of it.

I thought for just a moment and then said “No.” flatly.

Baldwin raised an eyebrow and Antonia said, “You cannot back out. If you bail after Salt Lake, You will be considered a parole violator. You will have the US Marshalls and Defenders after you, and be labeled as a Supervillain.”

I shook my head again, “No. I gave two years of my life already. Hell, I just found out what real sex was like, for the very first time, and two years of that time was specifically because of the DMA. Yes, I cooperated, but I won’t be their slave.”

Antonia shook her head, “It’s not slavery, it’s a parole deal. That’s not the same thing. You are out early because you are cooperating.” She sighed a little. “Proteus knows about the video. They know it was you. Totem was a class C threat, and you tore him apart like tissue paper. They will label you as a class B threat. They are very, very interested in your elixir. I officially don’t know this, but there have been hints that you can create specialty elixirs for specific individuals that greatly enhance their powers.”

I nodded, slowly, “You know that I could tear this plane apart in less than ten seconds, jump out, hit the ground, and I would be fine, right? And in less than a year I would have more money than Cadmium could even dream about right? I could jump out this minute, and probably track Cadmium down in a few weeks and tear him to pieces.”

Antonia nodded slowly, “I think that you believe you could do that, and I think that it’s not unlikely.” She said guardedly. “But I am not the one to convince. You might be able to convince the Senator, but then Proteus would send Galactica or the Commander after you.

I sighed, “They had better, because when my deal ends, anyone else they send after me has a very good chance of winding up dead. You don’t want me to unleash Hyde. I don’t want me to unleash Hyde, and if I am Hyde, I won’t give much of a damn about who I turn into a Pinata. You really don’t understand. I stopped because I didn’t want to hurt the father of a little girl I realized I care about. I could have torn the boat apart just like I did Totem. If you send someone against Hyde that I don’t care about, you will set in motion a chain of events that the DMA and Proteus will really not appreciate.

She shook her head, “Again, it’s not me you have to convince, it is the DMA, and the Proteus. I am just following orders.”

I looked at her closely and then reached forward to take her hand. “Then stop.” I stated.

Antonia Melina Andropolis

Metahuman 14%, class E(B)

Aspects: body, kinetic, metal

Power: 138

Conditions: Currently reducing menses. Next menses, 59 days

Projected lifespan: 120 years barring mishap. Current age: 26

healthy, frustrated, terrified, resolved, jealous

Powers: Kinetic strength boost, Kinetic deflection

no current abnormal infections

She shook off my hand, “What?”

“Stop,” I said. “The DMA sucks. With your abilities, you could easily work as a solo cape, join a registered team, or even work for another Agency.” I nodded towards Baldwin. “The secret service would love someone who could not only bounce bullets but potentially redirect them right back at whoever shot them. From a distance. The Treasury Department, The Marshalls, INS, the DEA, any one of them would pay you a huge salary to be working for them, you would be a hero, doing the right thing, just like you wanted, without putting other people, who are also doing the right thing but don’t want to have their soul owned by the DMA, in prison for it.”

She shook her head, “I cannot do that. If I do, I will be blacklisted from every agency, including never being allowed in a cape team in the United States.”

Baldwin coughed.

“I can not use my powers, and I cannot settle down and just be a stay-at-home working class whatever. With great powers comes great respons…” Baldwin coughed again, louder, and then said, “Excuse me, Provisional Special Agent Andropolis. I feel the need to correct a misunderstanding.”

She looked at him. “What?”

He shrugged, “Have you ever heard of the Keenan Trial? It should have been an important and often emphasized part of your training.”

She nodded, “Yes, it’s about unlawful orders.”

Baldwin nodded, “Right. The military judge found that… Ummm… The justification for acts done pursuant to orders does not exist if the order was of such a nature that a man of ordinary sense and understanding would know it to be illegal.”

Antonia nodded again, “And what Illegal order am I following?”

Baldwin said, “I am getting to that. Who told you that you would be blacklisted, even if you legally resigned on the grounds of a conflict of interest, after signing all relevant non-disclosure agreements? Hell, the Secret Service loves people like that. You don’t ask people without morals to step in front of a bullet for someone else. It’s just that sometimes their morals don’t match the service. We not only love to get them, but we have no problems letting them go. If you have a moral issue with, say, abortion, and your principle is getting one done, we would far rather have you sign conflict of interest papers than feel like you had to support it despite your conscience, or do something stupid to prevent it.”

Antonia said, “Mrs Rosenbaum”

Baldwin nodded, “And this would be the same Mrs. Rosenbaum that was the former senator’s security staffer, and is still currently awaiting trial while covering her boss’ inability to keep his hands out of little boy’s pants, correct?”

Antonia nodded, realization dawning.

“Now who, exactly, approved your current principle’s incarceration for what looks, to a man of ordinary sense and reason, to be a trumped-up self-referential charge, one which is, to put it bluntly, Illegal? Even if he was permitted to do so, instead of being placed in the witness protection program or, assuming that witsec was insecure, the personal protection programs of one of the Special Exigence Teams?

Antonia sighed. “Mrs. Rosenbaum approved it.”

I looked at both of them with shock apparently evident on my face, “What the hell is a Special Exigence Team?”

Baldwin looked at me. “The US government has been fighting the southern drug cartels for a very long time. They have a far longer reach than any simple criminal cartel. It is well-known that certain witnesses are unlikely to be well protected by the witness protection program due to that reach since even the best of protection details have identities, families, and debts. Special Exigence Teams, or SET, are groups that are detached from the chain of command of the Witness Protection Program. They set up witness protection in foreign countries by special treaty. That special protection gives them a new identity, and sets them up with a new life, while the agents and Metas of the team keep an eye out for their safety.”

He shrugged, “A lot of retired heroes, people that don’t want to be called on to fight supervillains, and agents that have had too much politics with no connections join the teams. It allows them to start a new life in a new place with a stable income, and their only job is to keep a witness safe and keep their mouths shut. No oversight, because oversight can be corrupted. Think of them as untouchables that help people like you lead a normal life until your testimony is needed.”

“So I did not have to sit naked in a jail cell for two years?” I asked.

“No,” Baldwin stated. “In fact, Mrs. Anchorage could be held legally liable for not pursuing justice in this case. I would suspect that Mrs. Anchorage was not your friend. Did you notice how quickly after you were paroled you were kidnapped? It’s possible she was just looking for an excuse, any excuse, to get you into a situation where that was possible.”

Antonia sighed. “And what about Proteus?”

Baldwin smiled. “That’s the fun part. Why do we have protector teams stationed on US soil instead of a Promethean team?”

Antonia thought about it for a moment and then said, “Oh shit.”

Baldwin nodded, “Yep. The only exception is hot pursuit. So what’s that mean in this case?”

Antonia sighed. “That Proteus, and the Prometheans, are not allowed on US soil in any official capacity. The only time they can interfere using their powers is if they are here as a tourist or representative and physically witness a powered felony taking place, a terrorist act, or are in pursuit of a suspect on foreign soil fleeing to this country and do not lose visual contact with that suspect at any time. Cadmium has used that law several times as a get-out-of-jail-free card, since most protectors are not up to the task of taking him out, and with his invisible fortress it’s almost impossible to maintain visual contact. The only exception is if the DMA specifically asks for their assistance, which requires presidential permission or a special act of congress.”

Baldwin nodded, “Good, exactly. The only reason I knew about that one is that I have had to babysit Prometheans on US soil a couple of times. I figure as a DMA agent, that should have been pounded in during training. So what exactly does that mean for our Mister McCarthy?”

Agent Andropolis thought about it for a moment. “Unless he commits a powered felony on foreign soil and flees into the US, or the DMA has a specific and justifiable reason to request assistance from Proteus, he cannot be touched. He also cannot be extradited or labeled as a threat factor as a US citizen unless reasonable evidence comes to light that he is committing powered felonies on US soil.”

Baldwin nodded, “So, taken together, what do these factors mean?”

Antonia sighed. “I am an idiot for not paying enough attention to who threatened me, I need to contact the FBI, and the DMA sucks. Oh, and Alchemyst is pretty much innocent and completely justified if anyone comes after him illegally to kick the shit out of them. And that includes me.”

Baldwin shrugged. “You are only an idiot if you don’t fix it and learn from it. That’s why I am here.”

I smiled at Antonia, “I wouldn’t kick the shit out of you, I like you. But if I am Hyde, You should stay way the hell away from me, as far away as possible. I’d probably try to get intimate with you, and likely won’t think about it hurting you. Hyde is totally stuck on you, so stay away. When you can fold a tank in half with your bare hands, your loving can be deadly.”

Antonia shook her head. “I don’t even slightly understand how you can live with something like that in your head, like a completely different person.”

I shrugged. “He’s not a different person at all, he’s me.”

Antonia was very thoughtful for a few minutes before we hit the final approach to Detroit Metro.

Baldwin piped up, “The DMA isn’t all bad, they just suffer badly from departmentitis.

I chuckled, “What is departmentitis?”

“So glad you asked.” He beamed. “See, agencies that have a real job, like the Marshalls, the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Secret Service, and the mail, well, they are concerned mostly with doing their jobs. Individuals try for their own advancement, of course, which tends to unbalance things and make them corrupt, but as a whole, the Agencies still do their jobs, mostly. The more limited the job, the better they are able to keep focused. The Secret Service, for example, has only a few major jobs, mostly involved with protecting assets. We have had a few bad seeds, and bad department heads, but for the most part we can act like good guys and still be critically important.”

“But departments that are in charge of things that are not illegal, but can become illegal, like the DMA, Department of Agriculture, Federal Parks and Planning Commission, and the ATF, they are pretty much corrupt from the very beginning, because they have to make their own jobs, make things illegal that they can respond to. Their whole existence involves justifying their own existence, so they will make rules all over the place so they are looking like they are doing their jobs. Hell, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms should be the name of a convenience store, not a government department.”

“The DMA is close to the top of that list because unlike the EPA and the ATF, they have their own enforcement arm. Agents like Andropolis here. That means more money, more power, and more need to justify their own existence. It’s almost like department envy. They truly envy the FBI, so they do everything in their power to expand their area of influence, make more laws for people to break so they can be prosecuted, and make themselves look absolutely critical to the survival of this nation. At any time, if anyone realizes they are irrelevant, tens of thousands of people instantly lose their jobs, power blocs are broken, and congressional lines are shifted.”

He shrugged, “Me, personally, I think local and federal law enforcement are perfectly capable of handling metas if they get out of line. Give them some money, have them sponsor their own meta teams like SWAT, and bingo, billions in federal funding saved every year, teams are closer and more responsive, way fewer metas wind up in jail for vigilante crime, and suddenly there’s an outlet for metas with too much energy and not enough common sense. You put an experienced law enforcement officer with them, just like with rookies, to help them figure out what they are and are not allowed to do.”

“Breaking a law with power is breaking a law. You don’t need to prattle on about how special metas are and how they need special laws, that make meta criminals feel all snowflake and elite. Set up a few federal prisons with special meta wings, just like they have now, get them paid for by the states instead of the federal government except for a couple of supermaxes, and you are gold.”

Baldwin instantly earned my eternal respect and gratitude when he said, “That’s why I hate special laws for special groups. It makes them feel like they are better, that laws just don’t apply to them, they are superior to the rest of us. Do you know what happens if a cop overshoots a target and hits an innocent person? He loses his gun and his badge, and if it was negligent he may even go to jail for manslaughter. But if a protector overshoots and wipes out an entire family, you get an apology letter, maybe a crappy settlement, and then it’s all swept under the rug. Fuck that.”