I took a shower in one of the cabins and had chosen, instead of messing up a bed, to simply grab a bedspread and fold it onto the deck on the other side of the boat davit, next to the railings. I felt like I desperately needed the air.

After years of sleeping exposed, I finally just stripped off the sweatpants and flopped down on top of the bedspread. The metal deck was cool enough that I preferred the protection. The strip of deck on the other side of the boat was likely seldom used for anything except perhaps a secret smoking area, and if someone wanted to grab a peek it wasn’t like I wasn’t used to people observing me while I slept naked. I simply couldn’t get to sleep with clothes on, I felt like I was being strangled. That’s why even in the hotels I generally just flopped on top of the covers in my birthday suit. It was their problem, not mine, and if I needed to fight I was probably more dangerous naked anyway. Especially if I needed to become Hyde, he always carried an extra baseball bat anyway.

I didn’t awaken until the sun was well up, probably as late as eight AM. Four hours was more than enough time for me to feel rested. At first, I felt odd, like someone had curled up next to me, and I realized that someone had draped a blanket over me while I had slept, which I had promptly kicked up against the railing while I was sleeping.

About a foot below my feet, there was a long, wrapped bundle with brunette hair at one end. Vectress had apparently decided she needed some air also, although she had bundled herself up in a cocoon of thick bedspreads and had several pillows under her head. I had barely caught a glimpse of her before her power had sent me spinning into an abyss, so I reached over and lightly touched her ear, one of the few exposed places I could get to without instantly waking her up.

Glinda Lauren Grumman (Vectress)

Metahuman 12%, class E(B)

Aspects: body, electrical, spatial

Power: 124

Conditions: 11 days until menses

Projected lifespan: 112 years barring a mishap. Current age: 21

healthy, asleep, aroused, comforted, secure

Powers: improved durability, quantum spark, quantum portal

no current abnormal infections

What the hell? I was intending to set her on edge, to torture her a little for the crime she had committed against me. Was Akiko right? Did she crave being treated like property? I had heard strange stories of girls who had gotten caught up in the bondage scene, that were so traumatized that they craved constant affirmations of their existence from abusive strangers, but Glinda… evil parents again… except for being a black-hearted bitch, had seemed relatively normal, if evil. She didn’t have any psychological torments or imbalances in her brain chemistry, it just seemed like being at the bottom of the totem pole was… normal. And one day, she would be a tremendous force for evil. What could a class B portal specialist do? Drop an entire city into hell?

“Glinda…” I whispered, and she barely moved, wiggling a little in her cocoon. “Glinda…” I said again, a little louder, balling up bits of her cocoon in my hands. She moaned a little and her head tossed, sending her brown hair flying everywhere. I remembered it being black. Had she worn a wig or dyed her hair while doing the Victrix thing? She settled down after a moment and was still mostly asleep.

“Glinda wake up!” I yelled, yanking the covers off of her and causing her to roll onto the cold metal deck. She yelped and looked up, an accusing expression on her face that quickly turned to wide eyes and an open mouth of shock as she looked at me.

Oh, right. I had forgotten I wasn’t actually wearing anything but the wrist-phone Technomancer had adapted for me.

I sat down on my bedroll and started digging for the essentials. Underpants, socks, sweat pants, and my shirt and sneakers. Good thing I hadn’t woken up with morning wood or she probably would have pitched right over the side.

“Take this stuff to the laundry room, and get breakfast. I like eggs and breakfast meats. I eat enough for six, but I am hungry enough to eat for ten this morning, so a dozen eggs, a dozen pieces of sausage, and a dozen strips of Bacon and an orange should do me. Get yourself some food too. The Galley should be open, and then make sure you start securing things for our trip. As mentioned last night, We will need to do this in two hops, and you need to make sure your identity is concealed, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder to protect my investment because you were stupid enough to let someone see your face.” I said, trying to drive home that, as of now, she was the same kind of slave she had been trying to force me to become. She certainly deserved it. Paul wouldn’t be that lucky.

She crawled to her feet quickly, and stammered out, “How do you know my name?”

I shook my head, and said kind of cruelly, “If you had paid attention at Grace’s briefing, or spent more time concentrating on something other than kidnapping me to turn me into a slave, You would already know. For right now you don’t need to know. All you need to do is take care of yourself and your kid, and except for combat and power-related situations, you follow orders. You are now my personal secretary. My unpaid personal secretary. That means that you don’t get to call me Louis. You either call me sir or Mister McCarthy. Got it?

“Yes, sir.” She nodded and started gathering up the bedclothes on the deck. She was wearing a longish, filmy negligee and a matching pair of diaphanous shorts, which didn’t leave much to the imagination. Kinda dumb to wear if you are going to be sleeping out in the open, but it certainly explained why she had been wrapped up like a mummy. She had heavy breasts with light brown nipples I could barely see through the thin blue fabric and a plush bottom. Yeah, she made me horny, but right now I wanted to punish her, not jump her.

“Oh, and before you do, go put on some real clothes. You are distracting like that, and it’s pissing me off.”

Once I had some clothes on, I started doing my best to get some kind of workout. Push-ups just wouldn’t cut it anymore, even though I rapidly pumped out a thousand. I hated to admit it, but I needed some kind of equipment to get a good workout anymore. I finally compromised by doing full-body lifts with the back end of the boat, ungriping the entire thing to get it to move. After I felt like I had stressed myself a little, I finally noticed that Glinda was standing under the dining awning next to a table that had been nicely set, a pair of heaping trays with bacon and sausage, another stacked with what looked like eggs fried hard. There was a bowl of oranges as well as a pitcher of milk and orange juice on the table, and four glasses as well as two place settings at the table.

I stepped over, pulling a towel out of my bag. Always know where your towel is, as stated by Ford Prefect, and a very valuable law. I sat down at the table and started piling food on my plate.

She sat down across from me and started looking over the plates. I was still feeling a little nasty, and I almost told her to eat on the floor, but I was testing her obedience and said, “The table is for civilized people. You can keep the glasses on it, but you use your lap for your plate.”

She looked for just a moment like she was going to get mad, but then just nodded “Yes, sir.”She said putting her plate on her lap and moving some food onto it. She began to eat silently, and I finally relented. I planned to work her to exhaustion, not humiliate her for the rest of her life. “Fine. You can eat at the table. I am not that much of a dick, but I want you to know that in the future, my word is law.”

She nodded again, putting her plate on the table and eating normally. Weirdly, after her initial argumentativeness, she just seemed to accept the odd state of affairs. I might have to push her a bit harder. She was trim enough from being a meta that did not habitually and grossly overeat, but I intended to put some meat on those bones, and I was certain she was going to hate it.

“Good morning!” I heard as Tino appeared, a huge bowl of hopefully hard-boiled eggs in one hand, and a set of silverware and a plate and glass in the other. He flopped down next to us, put his plate and the bowl on the table, and poured himself a glass of juice, before starting to peel the eggs and put the shells on the plate. Each time he finished peeling an egg, he put a little salt on it, and then popped it whole in his mouth.

“Hey, Tino. You are looking good today. Grabbing a light snack?” I smiled as I teased him, polishing off several more links myself.

He nodded, “Yeah. I have to watch my diet to maintain my slim girlish figure, you know?” He said, popping an egg into his mouth and swallowing. I didn’t know if the rule about slender metas applied to pacific islanders, and based on watching Tino polishing off probably four dozen eggs for breakfast wasn’t doing much to enlighten me.

I nodded thoughtfully to him, “Of course,” and then I sing-songed “Till you’re roughly the size of a baaarge...uh.”

He laughed and glanced at Glinda, “Good morning Miss Vectress.” She smiled at him. I shook my head and said, “Hey Tino, right now Vectress here is getting punished for being a black-hearted, cold-blooded, backstabbing, arrogant, slaving bitch. Would you mind spreading the word that she is to be called ‘girl’ instead of by her name? If she would have asked for help instead of deciding that electrocuting someone and kidnapping them, she’d probably have her kid here right now instead of in the middle of a bunch of murderers, rapists, and drug dealers, but she thought she knew best, so now she’s getting punished by being treated exactly the way she deserves.”

She was getting angry now. Good. Her self-control had been grating on my nerves. Tino looked at her thoughtfully, swallowed another egg, and then said, “Does anyone else know about this?”

I nodded, “Yeah, you remember her dropping me off. Also, the little loudmouthed idiot with the bent rifle. Maximum knows what is going on, if you need more details, and so does Caelo, but she might not want to share.”

“Huh.” He said, “If Kjootoo shows up, I don’t know if he will be cool with it, but he shouldn’t be here for a couple of days. As long as he gets it from your mouth, it’s no skin off my neck, but she’s kinda considered an ally.” He looked thoughtful as he polished off another egg.

Glinda coughed a little, cleared her throat, and lifted her hand a little. “If… umm… if this girl, may speak to Tino?”

I nodded, “Go ahead, but if you start some crap about wanting to be rescued from the horrible Alchemyst, what happens next will be entirely your fault, and I will expect you to apologize to Tino and help him out of the water if you live through it.”

She nodded quickly and said, “Of course sir.” and then turned to Tino. “This girl has negotiated Mister McCarthy’s assistance with the retrieval of her son, and has, as part of the said price for that assistance, agreed that she needs to be punished for trying to sell him to achieve that goal, as well as agreeing to be his personal slave for the foreseeable future until she can repay that debt. This girl has consented to this treatment, fully admits to both her guilt and her payment, and deserves this treatment. This girl is not under coercion in any way except for her own word.”

Tino nodded, and then looked at me closely, popping another egg in his mouth. “Cool by me. When you say it that way, Ve… uhh… girl, It sounds like a legit deal. He winked at me. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.”

I nodded, “I agree. A nicer person wouldn’t have tried to do what she did.”

Tino polished off a few more eggs, and I noticed that our food was gone, both mine and the new girl’s. I wanted to talk to Tino because that speech she just gave was too weird.

“Girl, grab the dishes and take them to the galley. I want to talk to Tino for a few minutes, and we don’t need your presence, so help clean up dishes until I come and get you.”

She looked like she was about to get defiant for a moment, and I could practically see phrases like ‘do it your damned self’ and ‘fuck you’ flashing through her mind, but then she calmed again and just said, “Yes sir,” and gathered the dishes up, heading towards the kitchen. Fortunately, she was less distracting now, wearing a pair of skinny jeans and a slight blue filmy waist-tied cardigan over a white tee-shirt, and she was wearing a bra.

Once she got out of ear-shot, Tino grinned, “Dude, you are so fucked.”

I raised an eyebrow, “What do you mean? And what was up with that speech? It sounded like she’s practiced it.”

He chuckled, “She’s subby, and everything you have done so far has played right into her game. I bet she has practiced that speech, without the crimes part, in front of her mirror a thousand times. If you really want to punish her, you throw her out on her ass the moment she has the kid and forget she exists. The whole treating her like your slave thing probably has her panties wet right this second, even while she’s grumbling about having to help with the dishes.”

I sighed, “Seriously? I am such a fuck-up I cannot even be an asshole right.”

He grinned again, “It is an acquired skill. But keep working at it. Maybe someday you will graduate to vaguely annoying.” He laughed and then said, “Seriously though, I am not going to say you are too nice, because I saw the aftermath of what you did, but you might want to cut the girl a little slack.” At my suddenly angry expression, he shook his head. “Not a lot of it, but her little boy’s been trapped by those Sanjira bastards since a week after her sister died, and she’s not really the plan-making type. What would you do if your little brother or sister died and left you their kid, and then some rat bastards kidnapped them and promised they’d get gutted if you didn’t behave?”

“You mean, besides ripping them into pieces so small the medical examiner couldn’t identify the bodies?”

He nodded, “Yeah, that’s the kind of thing you would do. But what if you weren’t a planner or much of a warrior type? She’s got the powers, but not the attitude. I was surprised she brought you to us instead of taking you to them, especially after Copperhead went to work on her. She’s a follower, through and through.”

“You think I should let her go?” I asked him. Dammit. Why were other people right so often?

He chuckled, “Hell no. I mean, unless you have like a girlfriend or something. Hell, I prefer men and even I would tap that ass. Nobody is that gay. Well, okay, that’s a joke, I kinda like girls too. But you seem to have the gift. Unless it would screw up some other relationship, I am betting you’d like treating her like a pet nearly as much as she enjoys it, and the whole guilt thing is a great excuse to do what you want to do anyway.”

A game, okay, she was kinda unbelievably sexy but as weird as she was, I intended to talk to Aquantis before I did anything. I still resented her, so treating her roughly would be easy, but everyone seemed to understand more about this shit than I did. I could check on the net, but this was… complicated, and with that sort of thing there would be ten million different accounts and probably most of them would be wrong.

I nodded and left Tino to finish his eggs. I needed to check one thing before we started getting ready for the raid. I moved back into the galley kitchen and several people were working back there that I hadn’t met, as well as an unhappy-looking woman with her sleeves rolled up elbow-deep in soapy water.

Without a word, I took her chin in my hand and looked her in the eyes.

Glinda Lauren Grumman (Vectress)

Metahuman 12%, class E(B)

Aspects: body, electrical, spatial

Power: 124

Conditions: 11 days until menses

Projected lifespan: 112 years barring mishap. Current age: 21

healthy, aroused, irritated, guilty, protected, valued, confident

Powers: improved durability, quantum spark, quantum portal

no current abnormal infections

Well, fuck.

I was wearing shorts. Well, they had been sweat pants, but now they were sort of shorts. I remembered that I had shredded them when I got up to my normal size, about five minutes ago when we had gotten close to the resort.

I took the last swig from my tiny little flask and wiped my lips. I liked this flask. I wondered if the little brown men had more booze stashed somewhere? I tucked my flask into the tight pockets of my shorts since that was the only reason I was bothered to keep them on. Girls liked my dick, and that was a good thing, but there were no girls around right now.

I started looking for more booze, by the simple expedient of pushing my hands through the walls and pulling the walls off, but no luck. Those little munchkins up in the tower were starting to irritate me, and one of their little shots had made me bleed. It was uncomfortable, so I leaped up to the top of the tower. I was tired of people throwing the loud stinger at me because the sound made my ears hurt even more than the big stingers did.

After I mushed the top of the tower and the two little guys that made me bleed, I was still getting stung by a bunch of others. The ones with the little hand shooters were not much of a worry, but the longer ones could sting. I saw one little guy at a much larger thing with lots of barrels pointing them at me, as well as a guy with one of those rocket things on his shoulder. I remembered that rockets were bad, and might sting a lot more and knock me down, so I slid down the side of the tower like a ladder, picked it up like a ladder, and whapped them and the truck thing they were on a few times with the tower, again, like a ladder. I spun the towel around my shoulders like Jackie Chan and felt awesome since the stinging had stopped, although the lump at the top fell off.

The cute Japanese girl appeared and turned one short guy, who was pulling another shoulder-mounted thing out of a box, into two, much shorter guys. It was kind of cool. I wish she wanted to fuck. Even when I was weak I wanted to have sex with her, and I think I could have if I had talked smarter.

I waited for her to reappear again, but I kept having to swat away the pesky short guys. There was a taller white guy, who had muscles but not like mine, and he wanted to Indian wrestle. He told me to surrender, but he wasn’t my type, so I asked him why he was so much lighter than the little brown people. He said he was ‘Brazilian’ and gave me a really weird look when I asked him if that was more than a million. I wasn’t very good with numbers.

He was strong, and almost forced my hand down, but I didn’t want to lose, so I stepped on his hip and he fell. He kinda started crying, and I felt bad for cheating, so I left him alone with a mumbled ‘sorry’ and gave him one of the blue potions in my pocket. He wasn’t throwing stingers at me, and he might have even been stronger for such a teeny guy, so I didn’t need to mush him.

I felt bad, so I started apologizing when I had to squash the little brown guys that were pointing things at me. Pretty soon there were only a few of the munchkins left, and I saw the girl again. Man, she was pretty but so tiny, I would hurt her if I tried to fuck her.

“The kids are clear.” She said, looking around. I kinda stumbled a few times, when I moved too fast and lost my footing, I tried to catch the stingers a few times but they were a little bit faster than me and had hurt the palm of my hand. It was okay, though, cause all the little brown men had stopped throwing them at me, and moving. Some of the buildings were falling over because of my clumsiness, though. Those stupid stingers were so painfully loud.

“Hey, pretty girl, Can I ask you a question?” I laughed out loud and realized that by asking her a question, I had asked her a question! Without asking first.

She nodded to me and lowered the face mask and smiled. A friendly little girl.

“I know you are too small for me to put my thing into, but when I am small again, I want to. I wanted to last night, behind the boat, but I didn’t and you laughed and said I wanted to fuck you behind the boat. Which was funny because I did. When I am small again can I? You are tinier than the other girls, but you have the prettiest eyes.” I said, suavely.

She nodded slowly, “I think so, but you might have to do some things first so I won’t feel like you don’t want me afterward.”

That was… complicated. I nodded, though, without really understanding. “Why would I not want you? I like to keep pretty girls, and making you happy is the most important thing since I like you when you are happy. I want the pretty green girl, but she gets tired too fast and has to go to sleep when I want her again. Or she says she cannot see but is happy about it. Would you get tired fast too?”

She nodded, “I probably would get tired fast. You are getting a reputation for being inexhaustible.”

Right now, that word was too big with too many sounds. I shook my head a little, “Like a truck?” At her confused expression, I said, “I like Akiko better than Yucko name. It is prettier. It means lots of things, but I like pretty heart the best.”

I had an absolutely brilliant Idea! “Hey pretty girl, would you like a ride? I can run really fast, and I promise not to squeeze you. That way, when I get tired, and I wake up, we can kiss because kissing is fun too. The little hole that the other pretty girl keeps walking through is too small for me. I know what a hole too small for me looks like, that’s why I know I would hurt you because I am really big.”

She looked at me weirdly for a bit, and then slowly nodded, “Yes, but I want to ride on your shoulders like a piggyback ride. Your hands are kind of messy right now, messier than my clothes.”

I nodded to her, “Yeah! You are smart even with such a tiny head. I mean, you could take your clothes off, but I am dirty right now. Your clothes are pretty, but you would be prettier and cleaner without them. I especially liked the way you turned that little brown guy into two little brown guys. That’s like the coolest thing ever.” I lowered myself to the ground so that she could clamber up onto my broad shoulder without me having to use my dirty hands, which she obliged.

I was good at mashing up little guys, that was twice I had to do it, but I missed my Nunchuk. I wasn’t mad or anything, but I gave her plenty of time to sit on my neck and bury her hands into my hair. I chuckled a little, “I remember that I wanted to have you sitting like this morning, but facing the other way.” I grinned at my joke and started loping towards the exit, pushing the remains of the fence out of the way with my dirty hand so it didn’t scratch the pretty girl, Yoku-something. I started running, but in a minute I dropped down and started using my hands too. I was weirdly faster like this, kind of like those gorillas at the zoo.

We ran for a while. I wanted to play with the toys on the road, but Akiko asked me not to so I didn’t. I could do what I want, but making her happy was very important.

When I woke up I groaned. I was so far beyond fucked it wasn’t even funny. Not only had I made a complete idiot out of myself in front of Akiko, but I think I might have maimed one of the Prometheans.

Things had been a little hectic, and I wasn’t sure, but I remembered his black costume with gold stripes and the large stylized DP on his chest, the well-known symbol for Punto Doble. Punto Doble was one of the more famous of the Prometheans because he worked alone and was both very strong and very, very tough, often responding to trouble calls in South America and dating several Spanish soap actresses. His Brazilian features were well known on tabloids across both the US and Mexico.

I think I had pulverized his hip bones while he was trying to subdue me. He must have been called in while I was rampaging through the resort, I had moved quickly enough that I had lost control several times, knocking out walls, and the few remaining Sanjira soldiers had been desperate enough to call for superpowered help.

The problem was not just with the injury, but with the fact that I had given him a regeneration potion. The DMA, and probably Prometheus, had a very small list of people whose powers included making regeneration potions, I was pretty sure I was the only one that was on it.

I was… not covered in gore this time, although my sweats were utterly shredded. Apparently, I had been concerned about getting clean and had swum across the Rio Pitillal, before we ran for almost half an hour north along the coastline. My catalyst had run out there since I kept drinking after I changed, but we had to have made it at least forty miles up the coast before I finally decided to curl up, wondering what Akiko looked like without clothes.

“You are, without a doubt, one of the strangest monsters I have ever met.” I heard from behind me. I glanced back and noticed Akiko, who had taken off her bloody costume and was wearing a white silk shirt and a pair of black capris. She was tiny, in every way, but still delicious in an exotic way.

“How many monsters have you met?” I asked her.

She shrugged, “In my line of work? Probably more than you can imagine.”

I nodded, “Okay, how many monsters in the traditional sense have you met?”

She smiled a little, “Not as many, but you are a very sweet monster. Once the fight was done, you just seemed to want to talk and uhh...run. Very, very fast.”

I nodded, hopefully, I hadn’t embarrassed myself too badly. The details were a little fuzzy. She stepped forwards, very close, and tilted her face upwards to look at me. “You know, you are way too tall to do this without help.” She stated.

“Do what?” I asked her. She was very very close.

“Kiss you. I did say I would when you woke up. You were oddly a very clean monster.”

I didn’t argue. When a beautiful Asian girl that was capable of separating people literally into two pieces with a sword, a feat even with a truly sharp weapon, tells you she wants to kiss you, you just lean over and accept the inevitable. This time I hadn’t gotten gore into my mouth, and though I tasted a little like Jamaican rum, my breath wasn’t too bad. She turned out to be a very good kisser, and even nibbled at my mouth and licked my lip while we were kissing, and I sort of lost track of time even while I learned more about kissing in five minutes, finding out what she liked, than I had in a very long time.

Akiko Theresa Shinasami (Kyokudai)

Metahuman 18%, class E(D)

Aspects: body, shadow

Power: 136

Conditions: 29 days until menses

Projected lifespan: 115 years barring mishap. Current age: 26

healthy, aroused, intrigued, nervous

Powers: Shadow melding, shadow walking, shaded weapon