***Chemestro***

Chemestro opened the door and stepped through into the conjugal visit room.

Inside, his therapist was waiting for him on the couch.

“Here’s the deal.” Lu’ann said as he stepped inside. “You need to tell the girls in the other rooms to go home. I expect you came to me first because you recognized my name on the ticket?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Chemestro said, nodding.

“What they’re here for is something that you’re not ready for. I don’t want you to accidentally hurt one of these girls or gain a warped view of how relationships work. This is a step that should be taken when you’re ready, with a person you feel comfortable with.”

“Understood.” Chemestro said, standing at rigid attention. He was a bit curious what all the fuss from the other prisoners was about, but if Lu’ann’s professional opinion was that he shouldn’t meet with the women, then he wouldn’t meet with them.

Lu’ann cocked her head to the side and frowned.

“You’re not treating me as a surrogate parent are you?”

“…No?”

Chemetro hadn’t noticed it, but he might’ve been. He deliberately relaxed his posture as Lu’ann eyed him critically.

“Anyway, why don’t you do some pushups while you tell me how you’ve been feeling since your father…passed?”

Chemestro hit the floor and began knocking them out.

***Perry***

“Sorry I didn’t rescue you,” Natalie said, her shoulders slumping. “By the time we figured out where you were, you were already being arrested out of the smoking remains of Neuron’s lair. I feel really bad about it.”

Chuck whined, his puppy ears drooping in response to Natalie’s self-recrimination.

“Hey, it’s no biggie,” Perry said with a shrug. “I’ll be out again in a couple days and we can pick up where we left off on the Spirit Smithing front.”

Natalie’s eyes lit up.

“Oh my gosh, that reminds me! I’ve been dying to show you what I’ve been working on!”

“Which is?” Perry asked.

“A surprise!” Nat said with an infectious grin.

“Okay, but what kind of surprise?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she said with a smug pose.

“I could tickle you until you spill the beans,” Perry offered, placing a hand around her waist, fingers dangerously close to her ribs.

Natalie stiffened, but the steel in her gaze didn’t falter for a moment.

“Didn’t you hear? I’m a Spirit Smith. If you tickle me now, I shall return more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”

“Hmm. Let’s put that to the test.”

Perry spent the next hour or so reducing the raven-haired Tinker to a panting boneless mass on the bed, but still couldn’t get any hints out of her. Not that he really wanted to. It was more about the journey than the destination.

“How’s Heather and the rest of the team doing?”

Natalie let out a groan that sounded vaguely like ‘good’, so Perry ran with it.

“Cool. I’ll be out the day after tomorrow. Can I get a ride back to my place?”

Natalie groaned something like ‘sure’.

What do I wanna do when I get out?

Perry had almost completely recovered from the soul surgery to install the Light spell. Expanding his internal infrastructure and increasing it’s sophistication was the next logical step.

There was also the scrapyard, which was making money hand over fist, producing recycled concrete.

I’m making enough that I could consider expanding to a second location, Perry thought. Although I still gotta pay for the rest of Breaker’s belt from Hardlight.

Lots of stuff to take care of.

Perry’s attention was drawn away from his musing by Natalie struggling to get up. She’d flopped onto her belly and was struggling to push herself onto her hands and knees, not quite able to get her arms under her.

Her bottom wiggled in the air as her arms trembled and gave out, plopping her chest back into the sheets.

All that stuff is future Paradox’s problem. I’ve got other things to handle.

“EEP!” Natalie squeaked as Perry went in for the kill.

***2 days later***

Supers didn’t only work putting on tights and fighting other supers for fun and profit, some of them put on their suit and tie and commuted to work like any other unpowered citizen.

Mephisto being a case in point. He was a highly specialized Lawyer with the power to strongly enforce contracts. In the civilian market, his time was worth nearly a million dollars an hour, although Nexus got him pro bono.

“And here’s the NDA that encourages you to overstate the severity of The Workshop.” Mephisto said, sliding the document across the table.

Perry read through and didn’t see any weird soul-stealing agreements. You never could be too sure when dealing with contract-based supers or demons. Mephisto was reputed to just be a Minder, but that name…

He glanced up at the well-dressed, black-haired super who seemed more bored than anything else.

Perry read the contract a second time, before signing it.

“Alright, you’re free to go.” Mephisto said, pressing a button under his desk.

Chuck dissolved into a golden retriever colored slime before washing down the drain that he’d been standing above.

“Chuck! NOOO!”

Perry felt like a piece of him had been sheared away. A future filled with puppy kisses and playful shenanigans that would never, ever come to pass. He was hollowed out inside.

“The exit is down that hall,” Mephisto said, pointing down a hall with a red line. “You’ll feel a lot better about your emotional support animal after a night’s sleep. Don’t forget to take your exit paperwork.”

Perry soullessly grabbed the paperwork and shuffled down the hall to the exit, until he was met with the bright light of day.

Perry squinted at the sun for a moment before the revving of an engine caught his attention.

VROOOM, VROOOM!

“Yo, how was prison?” Heather asked, her arm hanging out the side of the bright red sports car pulled up alongside the curb. Natalie was in the passenger seat, on a booster and looking embarrassed of Heather’s antics.

“Traumatizing,” Perry muttered, climbing into the back seat.

“…Are you okay?” Nat asked, frowning as she twisted in her seat to glance back at him.

“I don’t wanna go back to prison.” Perry muttered, staring blankly past them. Now that he knew what awaited his emotional support animal, he understood exactly how insidious the design of The Workshop really was. There were no happy endings. One way or another, Chuck was doomed. It would be best not to get sent there in the first place. Exactly the kind of deterrent they wanted it to be.

“I swear he seemed fine when I visited,” Natalie said,

“Yeah, I could tell. You could barely walk.” Heather scoffed, prompting Nat to smack her in the shoulder.

“I’ll be fine in a bit…just…take me home,” Perry said, barely able to muster the will to live.

Heather glanced back at him, then over at Nat before shrugging.

“Alright then, let’s get you back to your house.”

“Ugh,” Perry grunted, folding into the fetal position in the car seat.

The drive back to the lair was relatively quick. Heather put on a front like she wasn’t worried about him, but he could tell she was trying to knock him out of his funk by playing chicken with a couple semi-trucks.

Sadly, near-death experiences just weren’t the same without Chuck Norris.

They dropped him off at home, where Perry collapsed into bed and passed out, emotionally drained.

The next day, Perry did feel a lot better about Chuck, the mental whammy having unraveled while he slept.

On the scale of unpleasant things, leaving The Workshop was about at the same level as a particularly rigorous trip to the dentist. It was really, really unpleasant, but just barely under the level of truly emotionally scarring.

So now what?

Perry needed to plan for his trip to Chicago to retrieve the armor made entirely of areonite. It was probably crawling with replicators and mutated wildlife. After some quick napkin math, Perry estimated that he needed thirteen thousand XP before he hit level ten, where he thought he might be able to survive aforementioned outing.

Perry still remembered the attack by the replicators. The train had been assaulted by hundreds of the giant robots, and only managed to down a handful of them. Once the fight was no longer in the replicator’s favor, they retreated instantly and without hesitation.

It didn’t matter that Perry could probably take a replicator in a fair fight.

They would absolutely not fight fair.

Thirteen thousand XP is more than half the amount I’ve already gotten up to this point. Are there any quests that pay that much?

New Quest!

Defeat Solaris and his Anchors to seize control of Franklin City!

Reward: 30000 XP, Control of Franklin City

Failure: Reputation down with Nexus, parents, Solaris, Franklin City. Death, heavy fines, name becomes synonymous with stupidity.

Did I see death in there?

As this is a Quest with a penalty for failure, if you wish to, you may forfeit this quest any time before certain steps have been taken to oust Solaris.

Obviously I’m not gonna do that one. Perry thought, setting it aside. What else you got?

New Quest!

Defeat Locust and seize control of the slums!

Reward: 5000 XP, Control of the criminal underworld that permeates the east side of the city.

Failure: Reputation down with Nexus, Franklin City, heavy fines. ‘cowl’ designation in the public eye. Increased hostility from other cowls.

As this is a Quest with a penalty for failure, if you wish to, you may forfeit this quest any time before Locust begins to perceive you as a threat to her power.

That one’s better, but do we have anything that doesn’t involve attacking someone I know?

New chain quest: Return of the King!

Establish a beach-head on Manita!

Reward: 10000XP

Failure: End of Chain, Death.

A chain quest is comprised of multiple stages, each more difficult and more rewarding than the last. Failure at any of the quests will void the rest of the chain. This quest chain will pass to your heirs in the event of failure or death, The quest will expire if you die without an heir.

Any quests that don’t have horrible penalties for failure? Perry thought. He was okay with taking a little longer to get level ten if it meant less potential downside. As long as he was alive, Perry could come back to that quest when he was stronger.

Look at that Stability, paying dividends already.

New Side-Quests!

Reinforce The Wall, ease food dependency on Washington city, increase the resilience of basic infrastructure throughout Franklin City, or pioneer Essence harvesting from terrestrial monsters.

Reward: 1000 XP each, increased influence with Nexus, general reputation up.

That’s what I’m talking about. Do a couple of those, work out every day, and hunt a few noobs, I should be level nine in no time.

Ostensibly, each of those tasks was actually quite the undertaking, but Perry’s main skill was doing more with less, so they were right up his alley.

Start small, work our way up to the big stuff, Perry thought.

Now which side-quest am I best positioned to complete? He wondered. Probably increase the resilience of basic infrastructure throughout Franklin City or make food.

The city lost huge amounts of money every time some a-hole got punched through the street and punctured the water main.

Not only the money to repair the damage itself, but the loss of labor and goods as trucks idled in traffic jams, their unrefrigerated contents slowly rotting.

So if I could make roads, water, power and gas lines nearly immune to breakage, then I could save the city billions, gain rep, and snag a ‘quick’ 1k.

Perry was best poised to do it because he’d already made a splash with his recycled concrete, which was impressing the hell out of people with its near-indestructability. People expected that kind of stuff from him now, and he’d be able to bend a few ears in the city planning commission.

Now that he’d decided on a course of action, Perry felt a bit of his focus return.

Perry glanced down at his phone.

9:31 am

“Gotta go, I’ve got a date with Nat at the Demetre estate,” Perry said, rinsing his plate off and putting it in the dishwasher.

“The Demetre estate?” Mom asked, frowning. “Is this a hostage thing? Blink three times if it’s a hostage thing.”

“It’s not a hostage thing.” Perry said.

“Demetre…Is that the kid that tried to impress you with his sword-fighting skills back in high school?” Dad asked, picking at his sausage and eggs.

“Yeah, Andre, he wanted to date me.”

“I mean, from what you’ve told me, pretty much everyone did, in some capacity.” Dad quipped.

Perry paused on the way out the door, his backpack over his shoulder. “…Did you just call Andre Demetre a kid?” Perry asked, thinking of the old, accomplished duelist with the long…long career of kicking ass.

Mom shoved a fork-full of pancake in her mouth, effectively silencing any potential response.

“Mom, how old are you?”

Mom guiltily gulped down the wad of pancake and chugged some orange juice before clearing her throat.

“You better go, don’t wanna be late for your date!” Mom said, clearing her throat and ushering him out the door.

“One of these days I’m just gonna do the math,” Perry said, stumbling forward as she shoved him from behind. “And then you’ll be sorry.”

“Have a lovely time, don’t let Andre kill you or marry you to one of his daughters!” Mom said before the front door closed behind him.