The trip took almost 14 hours, with a layover in Los Angeles. After several hours of talking about inconsequential, and watching a movie, Akiko finally teased me out of my funk enough to convince me to join the Mile-high club. The main compartment was divided into 3 sections, with two pilots that had their own area. At the back, there was a bedroom with a queen-sized bed that we made a lot of use of. I was intending to take a nap, but my feet hung off the end of the bed, and after playing with her for nearly five hours solid we decided to eat so she could recuperate and then just snuggle for a while.

She surprisingly really enjoyed having her feet played with and her toes nibbled, something I was more than willing to work with, especially after she spent a solid 20 minutes using her tiny hands and mouth to get me off. She was every bit as petite and flexibly energetic as I remembered, but five hours, two of them spent with me simply teasing and nuzzling between her legs as she came repeatedly, was enough for her to finally call it quits.

She laughed as she curled up naked in my arms. “I am beginning to understand why Aquantis needed a break. I regenerate, but I am not sure I could have sex again for a week.”

I shrugged, smiling slightly, and used the remote console to begin flipping through the entertainment options of the giant television mounted on the plane’s bulkhead. Mostly it was Japanese entertainment options, but there was a surprising amount of stored American movies as well. I found an interesting movie I hadn’t seen yet, something called The Ugly Truth, and turned it on as we lay relaxing. “I actually cannot sleep very much now. When I was in Prison it was only about five hours a day, but now, a two-hour nap is about all I can get before I wake up and need to start doing something.” I leaned forward and licked her ear. “Or doing someone, I guess.”

She rolled to put her head and spread her gorgeous hair across my chest, her tiny breasts pressed into the side of my pectoral while her hand rested on my tummy, and started tracing the outlines of my stomach muscles. “You have kind of this protectiveness aura coming off of you, you have an amazing body, and you have wings. I am surprised you don’t have to beat girls away from you with a stick.”

I shook my head, “Occasionally, yeah, but you’d be amazed at how often it just makes women want to stay the hell away from me. Lauren called it dominance, but it seems to only really attract people who are incredibly confident in their own abilities, like you or the ones that want to be pampered and protected. Some women just find it flat-out offensive, like my ex-lawyer. I am not even sure I blame her, since I sorta needled her about it occasionally.”

She lifted her head to kiss my chest and then smiled, “Was this the woman who represented you in court and got you two years of being naked?” She asked.

I nodded, “Yeah. Karen Anchorage. I found out recently that she might have been playing games, double-dealing to keep me under lock and key. She probably hated me from the moment she met me.”

She nodded, “Well, you have your list, and now I have mine. She probably hated you because she wanted you and was stabbing you in the back. That’s pretty normal if you have to betray someone. If you poked fun at her and flirted with her, that probably made it worse.”

I nodded, that would make sense. I would freely admit that there were better-looking guys than me, but a lot of them were a lot more into themselves than girls, and they often appreciated the same thing in other men that they worked so hard to perfect in themselves. I could understand it even if I did not share it because I appreciated the hard work it took to lift heavy shit religiously.

“Hey, would you be jealous if I talked about other girls?” I asked curiously.

She shook her head, “Not even slightly. I mean, I should be, and if you talked about them constantly I might get upset, but you just spent five hours proving how attractive you think I am, and it’s pretty clear that you’d keep going if I could.”

I nodded, “I like all sorts, but A… Windfall said that there would be huge benefits to getting Sif interested. Honestly, I like her, and I am a fan of her build, which some guys would find to be too much, but I think is just perfect for her. The problem is, she’s exactly the type that hates overprotective men. I mean, she flirted, but she made it pretty clear that I would have to kick her ass to even have a chance.”

She smiled a little evilly, “You won’t have to kick her ass.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I was fighting with her and with Galactica when we raided the Oni. She was frantic to get you out of there. Do you know that overprotective thing? She kind of has that going on too, and I think she feels guilty about you getting kidnapped three years ago like it was her fault or something. I mean, she might want to have a spar or something with you to convince herself that she upheld her honor, but as long as you don’t ask her to play domme, she’d probably be all over you the moment you let her know that you wanted her.”

She smiled a little, “I am not like Aquantis. I don’t want to be in the same bed with you and another woman, but Sif is strong and honorable, I wouldn’t object to you sharing time with her.” She stuck out her tongue at me. “Although I still want you for me too. It’s a good thing you are so huge, there’s enough of you to go around.”

I grinned, “Do you want me to show you huge?”

She shook her head quickly, “No, you proved that already, lots of times. I am sort of getting used to it, and it hurts but feels good too, but you don’t have to prove it again so soon. I am… sore. What I cannot figure out is why your regeneration affects everything, and not just healing and conditions. Unlike you, I still need a good seven hours of sleep a night or I am groggy unless I take a rejuvenation potion. You behave like you have a rejuvenation potion on all the time.”

I nodded, “That’s because I do. My regeneration was one of the first things I modified about myself, and it actually took away some of my power. It’s a lot like a permanent version of my last hurrah potion, which I gave out at the invasion. So far, most of my concoctions are either temporary or they only affect me.”

She nodded, “Was that what you were talking about when you mentioned Takahashi’s medical tech?”

I smiled and started brushing my fingers through her hair, “Sort of. I keep finding new potions, but I think in order to create stuff that permanently affects others I am going to need components that are… not normal. I suspect you have access to, or can get access to, high-essence ingredients, and if I could experiment with them I might find ways to make more permanent things. I already have an elixir, but it only boosts metahumans. I also have access to a few things I am a little worried about letting people know about, but they could be incredibly valuable if I had a way to sell them indirectly.”

She raised an eyebrow, “Can you tell me about them? And why they are so valuable?”

I shrugged, “I can make healing potions that can cure long-term damage, stuff like repairing bad cosmetic surgery or the aftermath of breast and ovarian cancer or even regenerating old injuries, but that takes a huge sacrifice and I need to be in close contact with the person while I make it. I could even create a potion that refreshes your skin, which will get rid of any old acne scars, as well as tattoos. I also have a couple of drugs that are harmless but… prized.”

She nodded, “Those seem valuable, I am sure that we could probably work something out. It might be limited profit, though, since we would have to market them to a private crowd because they cannot get approved or reproduced in bulk.”

I nodded, “Yeah, but I haven’t gotten to the troublesome one yet.”

“Okay, what is the troublesome one?” she asked, moving her hand down to start caressing me, wrapping her fingers around my shaft which grew in her hand. In moments I was full again, and she started stroking me.

“I uhh… remember that Oni I melted?” I asked, trying to keep my focus as her little hand moved faster.

She nodded, “Yes. I was surprised.” She beamed and twisted slightly so that she could stroke me fully, and used her other hand to delicately tease with her fingertips along the ridge of flesh beneath my sac. It had been half an hour since our last bout, and unfortunately, I was already raring to go.

I had to go quiet, because the stimulation was too much, especially when she leaned over to give my head a little lick, and I groaned as I pulsed out into her hands and mouth.

After a few moments, she grabbed a handkerchief and cleaned herself up, beaming, “I might not be ready to go again, but that was sort of fun. I need to remember to do that more often.”

I nodded, “Whenever you want, little control freak. Still, I got a read off the oni when I melted it. One of its properties was un-aging.”

She nodded, “Yes, Oni get bigger and stronger, and when they get powerful enough they can become mages and use glamour magic to conceal themselves and their clan. When they get powerful enough they can last a long time. As long as they can keep progressing and do not stagnate, they can live for pretty much ever. If they stagnate, though, like in this world, they will eventually die, but it’s more because their bodies become so powerful they need continually higher essence to support them and they expire from lack of energy, not age.”

I tucked her up against my belly, “Well, my gift tells me that if I combined it with another element, I could create a potion that will… umm… cause someone else that consumes it to lose age.”

She looked startled, “Like, an old person, actually growing younger?”

I nodded, “It won’t be very powerful, maybe twenty years or so, and then it would stop working, but as my ability grows that could last longer. How much would a rich old man pay to suddenly be twenty years younger? And is it a good idea to even let people know it’s possible?”

She smiled a little, “Twenty years could be worth billions, especially if it can be combined with regenerating long-term damage. But there’s something you haven’t considered, a very compelling reason to consider letting at least the supernatural types know about it, and perhaps even what it’s made out of.”

I started to sit up, holding her in my arms. There was something very satisfying about holding a naked, wriggly woman in your arms. “What’s that?”

She blinked at me innocently, “What do you think they will do if they know that you need a dead Oni to make such a powerful potion? Especially if you demand they supply the ingredients for the potion?”

“Oh,” I said and did not have the heart to tell her that one melted Oni had enough chemical mass to probably make dozens if not hundreds of potions.

***

We ate dinner on the plane during the LA layover, fully dressed, and cleaned up again.

I didn’t have a passport, but we solved that very simply. I didn’t know she could do it, but apparently, kitsune are just as facile at using their shadow magic to conceal others as they are themselves. She showed her passport to customs, I simply walked out.

I was tempted to ask her if she wanted to fly, but 50-foot black wings tended to attract attention, even at night. I also had no idea how well I would be able to navigate in the dark since I still used very human eyesight. We wound up using the Ryde widget, and by one o’clock I was back at the house I had purchased but had only slept in once.

I realized that I didn’t even have a key. So I knocked on the door.

There was no answer. It had been a couple of days. Was Alison even still here? I hated it, but I might have to turn my phone back on.

I rang the doorbell, which miraculously mostly worked with a weird howling chirp at the end of the electronic tone. Surprisingly, since I hadn’t actually replaced it yet despite picking one up at the Home Workshop. I simply hadn’t had time.

I spotted the flash of a pair of glasses at an upstairs window, and in a few moments, the door opened, spilling light across the porch. Out charged Alison, wearing a pair of red flannel pajama bottoms and a pink Tee-shirt with a cartoon cup of coffee on it with a face saying “Drink Me” on it, and she wrapped her arms around my waist.

“I am so sorry… I didn’t calculate the odds of her going with you, or of her death, they were too low. I should have called you and warned you but I had no idea, they were too low. I am so sorry. I am totally useless.” She was crying into my shirt, and I realized that she and Lauren must have gotten close after several days of being in each other’s company and taking care of Toby together.

I put my arms around her in return and started walking her sideways into the house, waving away the Ryde driver as Akiko followed me in.

Once we were in, and seated in the kitchen, she started making us tea. I didn’t argue with her, since she was doing it with tears in her eyes and the motions were calming her down, but I raised an eyebrow at Akiko, who just shrugged and mouthed the word ‘human’.

I checked my own analysis and then Alison’s when she stepped over to drop tea in front of us, taking her wrist in my fingers.

Louis Albert McCarthy

True Human 67% Class C (S)

Aspects: body, aura

Power: 311 (266)

Conditions: Extreme fitness, True Form

Projected Lifespan: ??? Current Age: 27

Grieving, focused, curious

Powers: concoct(2), analyze(2), improved endurance(2), Freedom(Aquatic), improved strength(2), improved durability(2), regeneration(2), mending(1), liquefy(3), true form(2), irrepressible will(1), Winged Flight(1), Weaponized Aura(1)

no current abnormal infections

Alison Ellenda Baxter (Windfall)

True Human 16%, class C(S)

Aspects: body, fortune, dimensional, karmic

Power: 142

Conditions: 25 days until menses

Projected lifespan: ??? years barring mishap. Current age: 19

healthy, grieving, frustrated, sleepy, frightened

Powers: fortune transfer(1), karmic analysis(1), manipulate fortune(1), left sock(2)

no current abnormal infections, poor eyesight(curse), forgettable appearance (curse)

Well, that tore it. The true human tag proved that my analysis was absolutely based on my own understanding, rather than some sort of third-party information source.

I was going to have to find out more about analysis now, though. What did the (2) and (3) mean? It looked like some kind of deeper information my analysis was giving me, perhaps a better comprehension of relative strengths? Analyze(2) probably meant that I gained a deeper understanding.

Or perhaps it was simply letting me know that I was stronger and tougher now than I had been before? It certainly stood to reason. The new abilities, irrepressible will, winged flight, and weaponized aura, were probably tied to true form.

And I had gained a new aspect, called an aura, or perhaps my new analysis was simply capable of identifying it? I had analyzed myself after the fight with the Oni, and the only number was melt(3) which had turned into the more informative liquefy(3). Considering that an Oni had splashed, I guess it was obvious that it was more powerful.

I noticed that there were special things that people like Sif were able to do with a simple description, such as her ability with minor storm summoning. She had used it to create a mist at the gym and had implied that it could create bursts of wind that could help her maneuver in the air, lighting bolts that could strike multiple targets, or charge up her weapons and attacks with lightning. Would these sub-powers show up on her analysis now? Was there a way to change it into a major storm summoning? What would that be capable of?

Mathematically, at some point, my power had gone from 100% +10% for apparently being superhuman, plus 2% per parahuman or true human purity, to 3%. Did that simply keep increasing? Alison was still at 2%. maybe once you exceeded 50% purity you gained more energy? Did it happen again once you got a higher percentage? My analysis was almost like some sort of game if you just happened to be missing the user’s manual or tooltips to explain what the heck stuff meant, or was just presented with a sheet full of attributes without any labels.

Meta Strength was sort of like just something additive to your normal strength. If you could lift 500 pounds, Meta strength(1) just tacked on an extra 1000 pounds, so you could lift 1500. Improved Strength, though, felt multiplicative, so if you had the ability to press 500, and had improved strength(1) it doubled to 1000 pounds. At the low end, you would be weaker, but if you kept adding it up in the long run, and you were fit, did improved strength 2 mean you had 3 times as much strength? Or did it double again to 4 times? Or was it some other weird formula? I would have to start testing my maximum strength to discover it and try to find metas that would let me test them.

The idea was both troubling and elating. With analysis, I might not only be able to create potions that helped myself and others but also put together techniques and exercises that would help someone actively choose to improve some aspect of their abilities! Imagine if, instead of relying on potions or lucky breaks, you could simply choose to train your durability, somehow, and elevate your class?

And what the hell was left sock?

The house we were in was now filled with empty bedrooms, a far cry from last week, and I found one for Akiko. I needed to talk, very seriously, with Alison, so I checked on Toby, who was sleeping peacefully and then guided Alison into the now-furnished living room.

“Sit down,” I told her, seriously, taking the large easy chair that Baldwin had insisted belonged there, which he called the Daddy chair.

She nodded, curling up on the couch, and asked, “Is this the part where you send me away? Back to Chicago or Detroit? The chances are split between them both but since you...changed, I am having a hard time getting decent odds in either direction.”

“Stop,” I said simply.

“Stop?” She asked. “Stop what?”

“Stop using your karmic analysis all of the time. It is too aggressive.”

“What do you mean?” She asked, looking worried. “It’s not aggressive at all, it just tells me the best course of action.”

I shook my head, “No, it doesn’t. It tells you the odds. It builds too much of a dependence. You let it lead you around by the nose, and yet low-probability events happen constantly that you haven’t anticipated, right? Kjootoo’s survival, Alison’s death, my capture. Those are all vital, and yet each of those is an incredibly low-probability event. You depend on your odds, and in a way, knowing I have you to call on, I have been doing it too. Life is filled with low-probability events. Every moment of every day. I strongly suspect that you have also lied to me several times about probabilities because your analysis has told you that it will increase the chances of a favorable event occurring?”

She slowly nodded, taking off her glasses and cleaning them. “Umm… yes sir.”

I nodded, “I hate to have to do this, but I am going to lay down an ultimatum. I don’t want to lose you, but your ability to sense the odds is destructive. I plan on committing to several courses of action soon that I suspect have incredibly low probabilities of succeeding, and yet I am confident that I will.”

She coughed into her hand, curling her legs up more tightly on the couch and putting her glasses back on. “Yes sir.”

I smiled slightly, “Let me guess, you detected a low probability event that I would come back and lay out an ultimatum, didn’t you?”

She nodded, “Yes, sir. I suspect you are going to tell me to only use my analysis in combat, or when I need them in the very short term. But… I am scared. They have been guiding me for years, and I have no idea what to do if I stop. The worst part is, I agree, because if I don’t, you send me away, and then the extinction event happens, almost 100%.”

She looked at me and then uncurled from the couch, “Can I?” She asked.

I wasn’t sure what she was asking, but I nodded, and she got up from the couch, slipped into my lap, and curled up. I wrapped my arms around her and she started crying again, quietly. “I hate trying to decide stuff on my own. It always leads to the worst possible things. I feel like Lauren died because I didn’t decide on my own, and let my sense guide me, but at the same time if I had decided, it would have happened anyway.”

I nodded, gently stroking her hair. What was it about a crying woman that seemed to make me horny? I savagely tried to suppress it, since now wasn’t the time. “I can sort of understand since my own decisions often lead to negative outcomes too. The thing is, you can deal with the negative outcomes as they come. The positive ones happen too, and sometimes the best possible outcomes happen because of the negative ones. If you want to stay with me you can, but we cannot depend on your sense. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it, but we have to remember that it is a tool, not a master.”

I chuckled a little, “So you agree? And when did you start calling me sir?”

She sniffled a little, “That’s how Lauren always referred to you. She would say sir this and sir that whenever she was talking about you, and I sort of like it, so I started doing it too. I am not sure if I can do the 'my master' stuff, though. At least not yet, anyway. It feels like throwing away a hundred years of American history, sir.”

I chuckled, “Yeah, I wasn’t really that comfortable with it either, but it seemed to make Lauren happy. Even the sir thing is a little weird because that’s how I always referred to my dad, but I am okay with it if you are. I sort of had plans to do awful things to you with my hands and mouth as soon as I realized what was going on with your abilities, and sir would have been right at home then, especially if I was spanking you.”

She nodded, “I guess I sort of deserve them if they are awful, but if they feel good I probably don’t.”

I shook my head, “Swap that around. Guilt over things you couldn’t control, especially in hindsight, is straight-up stupid. You can learn from it, but the 'I should have' game, once you use it to be better prepared next time, is destructive. I could have stuck to the plan, and ignored what was going on with the Kaiju, and maybe Lauren would have survived. Maybe she wouldn’t have, since that dickhead who was pretending to be Commander Freedom couldn’t have handled them without me, but maybe Galactica could have done a better job. Or maybe they would have slaughtered everyone and the extinction event would have immediately happened as everything started breaking loose from the containment zone and eating everything in sight.”

“Pretending to be Commander Freedom, sir?” She asked curiously.

I nodded, “Yes. The Kaiju were weak enough that I could handle them, and he was just fucking around with his eye beams. I have seen the guy fly right through both sides of a cruiser, and then use it as a missile weapon. He flies at Mach 7, or maybe even faster since he has set foot on Mars. Unless Freedom was screwing around, this guy wasn’t him. He was barely able to fly faster than me, and the monsters we were fighting weren’t close to the crap he usually handles.”

“They were weak, but that was because the Russian military was keeping an eye on the area. If they had a few days to grow stronger, and we didn’t kill them right as they exited the portal, or if the Russians hadn’t had some metas on-sight to immediately start fighting, if they did… well, the what-ifs can go both ways. That’s why dwelling on them past the point of preparedness is so useless. That’s also why your sense is such a double-ended knife.”

“I thought the expression was a double-edged sword, sir?” She said, and I smiled and kissed her nose.

“I am a supervillain. I can make up any expression I want. Sif has a double-edged sword at the end of her spear, and it’s a heck of an awesome weapon. So I changed it to a double-ended knife, it just makes more sense to me that you are holding a blade that’s fucking you up as bad as whoever you are stabbing.”

She shook her head, “You are not a supervillain.”

I nodded, “Yes I am, you just haven’t noticed it yet. Proteus has, they just aren’t willing to cut off their own future profits by declaring it. The DMA has, but like Proteus, they cannot just outright admit it without cutting their own potential throats, but that’s why Joe is here. And tomorrow, I am going to prove it. You don’t have to be evil to be a supervillain, you just have to piss off the wrong people, and I am going to piss off a lot of people.”

“Sir, how do you plan on doing that?”

I looked at her evilly, “This house has gotten too small. I plan on taking over a proper Supervillain lair, and you are going to help me do it.”