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A Ruinous Gift by Noodlehammer

Warhammer & Worm Xover Rated: M, English, Crime, Words: 298k+, Favs: 3k+, Follows: 4k+, Published: Sep 20, 2023 Updated: Jan 28

2,397Chapter 13: Grasping Whispers

Kudos to Alvor for helping with the chapter.

XXXXX

March 22nd, 2011. Around 9 AM.

Max Anders was not a happy supervillain. This was entirely due to what he was hearing right now.

"She's gonna be a fucking problem." Hookwolf stated bluntly. "None of us were going all out, but she's got a lot of power. The telekinesis is one thing, but she's also some kind of combat precog and pretty fuckin' tricky, always planning something. More than anything, though, she's got guts and loves a good fight as much as I do, didn't even flinch when Stormtiger tagged her with his air claws and didn't hesitate to cause damage. We're not gonna scare her."

Crude as he was, Brad was a good judge of character if he could get into a fight with someone. And the things he was saying were not pleasing at all. As he had feared, Psyker was a vast improvement over Skidmark in all the ways that were inconvenient to him.

"Young." Cricket added. "She can't be more than sixteen or seventeen."

Max kept his expression blank, but he was annoyed with the former pit fighter. Cricket had an obsession with collecting scars, seeing them as trophies from her fights. Because of that, she never let Othala heal her. They'd nearly lost her when she had her throat cut open because of that nonsense, and now she was going to be out of action for weeks before her leg injury healed.

"Young or not, she's making good use of her people." Victor said, clicking the mouse to move to the next slide on the hastily put together Power Point presentation.

It may sound ridiculous, but any sensible villain organization did after-action debriefs and analysis. You could discover all sorts of things that way.

Right now, the picture being projected was of the former Mush, now Lodestone. No longer just a disgusting collection of random garbage, the Black Hand cape had taken the form of a giant six-armed, six-legged spider made of sand. Alabaster and the men he was leading hadn't been able to do anything to him and were forced to flee.

"It costs less than fifty bucks to buy a ton of sand, meaning that Psyker only needed to spend a few hundred to turn a joke into something that most of us can't deal with." Victor continued.

"He's still smaller than us." Fenja pointed out.

"He's smaller than you right now, but that might be because the truck could only carry the fifteen tons of sand I'm seeing here." Victor countered. "And don't forget that Lodestone doesn't have joints, bones, or muscles. Unless you can blast off the sand or pierce through it, he's functionally invulnerable. We still need to test how hard that is to do, but my gut tells me that Purity is the only one of us that really counters this."

"My ghosts could stab right through the sand." Crusader argued.

Kaiser himself could also fairly easily trap the giant sand monster in a forest of metal. Still, Victor's point was well made.

"They could." Victor allowed. "And you might be able to injure him, but we don't know if he even has a core the same way Hookwolf does when he's transformed. We never bothered taking him seriously when he was Mush, so we never tested it."

"We couldn't have known how things would change once someone other than Skidmark was in charge." Othala said, putting her hand on her husband's arm. "Squealer, or Gearshift I suppose, is also a lot different now."

Indeed she was. Max had long been considering grabbing the Merchant Tinker and forcibly straightening her out, but Squealer's image as a drugged up slut that spread her legs for a disgusting nigger would have been a problematic addition to the Empire 88. He had been content to milk the situation for free propaganda instead and take the opportunity if the things started changing.

How could he have predicted that someone like Psyker would come along and turn things around practically overnight?

"What about the Undersiders?" He asked. "Do you think she's recruited them in full or were they just hired help?"

If it was the former, then the numbers were starting to look a bit alarming.

"Hard to say." Victor replied thoughtfully. "On one hand, this is the first time they were seen together and the Undersiders have always kept their activities low key until now. On the other, They've always worked as a group before. Neither we nor Lung were a good fit for them and Psyker was able to call them on awfully short notice. If she really is just a teenager they might have liked her better. We'll have to wait and see, but if I had to guess I'd say that she's probably recruited at least Bitch and Regent."

"And you still haven't managed to get any informants in the Black Hand?" Max asked just to be sure.

The Empire 88 had informants everywhere, from the PRT to the police to the ABB. Much of that information network was managed by either Victor or Krieg.

"Not a one." Victor shook his head, visibly frustrated. "It's been hard to even find any of the usual bums, and when I do they just won't talk. She's either a Master on top of everything else or she's somehow won over their loyalty. I even sent a few of the boys to patronize their hookers and offer extra cash for a bit of information, but they just play dumb. Short of kidnapping someone and torturing the information out of them, it's not looking like we'll have an easy time learning anything."

Which would be a serious escalation of hostilities if Psyker valued her people, it went unsaid. They'd done it to the ABB a few times, but Lung hadn't cared.

"Could we call a meeting at Somer's Rock?" Krieg suggested. "Not necessarily to establish any kind of truce, but just as a pretense to get a face-to-face meeting?"

Max leaned back in his chair thoughtfully. It was an interesting idea, but the ability to call meetings like that was a valuable tool and not to be used frivolously. Something of substance would have to be agreed upon if such a meeting was called, which might not be for the best in the long term.

"No, not yet." He decided, shaking his head. "Right now it would just make us look weak. We'll wait until something worth calling a meeting over happens."

All the better if Psyker did something excessive. Then it would look like he, as an older and more experienced cape, had called a meeting to scold her. Her youth was already against her, but if something like that could be arranged it would cripple whatever prestige she managed to gain.

"Why do we care so much about Psyker anyway?" Rune interjected grouchily. "Didn't we all figure that Lung was going to end up killing her?"

"He hasn't been doing a very good job of that." Hookwolf snorted. "No, after meeting the new girl on the block, I'd put my money on her. She's not just some dumbass in over her head like we thought at first and I'll eat my mask if she doesn't already have a plan to deal with Lung."

That was unfortunately Max's read on the situation as well. Psyker had organized her gang extremely well in a very short amount of time, spotted and evaded all the social traps he'd laid out with the probing attack, thoroughly unsettled Purity with just a few words, and fought off Hookwolf's crew. It appeared that after ten years, ever since Marquis was put away, the Empire 88 was finally getting a true challenger again.

How annoying.

XXXXX

Getting reports of cape fights happening in the night as soon as she came into work was pretty standard stuff for Emily Piggot. Even getting reports based on videos posted on PHO wasn't unusual.

It was a bit unusual to have Armsmaster in her office first thing, ready with a report that he had compiled overnight. It wasn't an emergency, so there had been no need for the rush.

But she knew why Colin was doing this. He was still smarting from being associated with the Shadow Stalker debacle and hoped to wash the stain off by bringing in the girl Sophia had triggered. That his actions may have pushed her into becoming a villain in the first place made him even more fixated on Psyker.

That she had successfully vanished for a month and a half before exploding on to the scene by making a fool of Lung must have grated on him even more.

"Give me a summary." Emily ordered, knowing from past experience that Armsmaster's report would be overly detailed and as dry as the Sahara.

"I've confirmed Psyker's Thinker rating." He said. "My combat analysis software is still not perfect, but there were multiple instances in her fight with Hookwolf, Stormtiger, and Cricket where her reaction speed was flagged as precognitive. Combat precognition alone would not have helped her win at strategy games, so I can only assume there is more to it than that. And there is the obvious telekinesis."

"What would you rate it as? Shaker 5?" Telekinesis was a deceptively basic-sounding power, but basic also meant broad.

"Going simply by this video, I would agree." Armsmaster's mouth twisted into a grimace. "However, this was obviously just a probing attack and none of them were going all out. Psyker showed a lot of versatility and precision with her power, but didn't seem to be straining. It may be much higher, also depending on the strength of her Thinker component."

Thinker was by far the most problematic power subclass to be added to any of the others, thanks to the way it tended to make capes exponentially more effective than they would be otherwise.

"And we're still suspecting a potential Master rating as well." Emily glowered at the report.

The speed at which the Merchants had been taken over and reorganized was simply not natural. It was hard enough to organize a group of sober people, but wrangling hundreds of junkies?

"We need to engage her if we want more information." Armsmaster said. "Even if she does have a Master power that can affect humans, it doesn't seem to be especially powerful, so it should be safe."

It was always considered a bad idea to blindly engage parahuman with unknown powers. Emily knew that better than most thanks to Ellisburg. Armsmaster wasn't wrong however – if Psyker could just casually Master anyone she came into contact with, then they would be in much bigger trouble by now.

"Easier said than done, she's been making good use of Gearshift's vehicles to conduct hit and run operations." Emily pointed out, using Squealer's new cape name.

"Yes, we should probably update her rating as well, along Lodestone's."

They both grimaced at that. The Merchant capes had always been a bit of a joke, hanging on purely because they were hard to find and not really worth the effort. Seeing what the former Mush was capable of when he wasn't completely shitfaced had been an unpleasant surprise. And the vehicle Tinker also seemed to finally be ramping up in typical Tinker fashion, instead of being limited to trash heap abominations.

And that wasn't even mentioning the possibility of the Undersiders joining her.

Emily wished that Sophia Hess was still alive, so that she could yell at the dumb bitch for creating this problem for her.

XXXXX

Coil was having a late breakfast, but in his other timeline he had just read Armsmaster's report and was pacing furiously in thought.

Psyker had telekinesis, that was an indisputable fact.

This in turn meant one of two things. Either she had successfully lied to him while he was interrogating her in his now discarded timelines, or it was new. Both options were bad in their own way.

He tried calling his Tattletale to demand answers from her, but the call failed to connect. He knew instantly that the smug little bitch had defected and was now relying on Psyker for protection. That would not stand.

Over the next several days, he tried several things, none of which worked.

Sending mercenaries to Psyker's lair, the location of which he had known since Skidmark had been using it? Her telekinesis blocked their bullets and then Oni Lee showed up behind them and lobbed a grenade in their midst. A day later they were already gone.

Sending Creep after the Laborns again? Oni Lee showed up.

Sending his mercenaries to kill some of her other people at random? Oni Lee showed up.

No matter where he attacked Oni Lee showed up. Even when he attacked in two places at the same time, Oni Lee could teleport in between them as if he no longer needed line of sight.

Not only was it chilling how wide a web Psyker had already thrown without him realizing it, but it implied something even worse.

Precogs interfered with other precogs, this was known. Coil had bought a precog Thinker vial from Cauldron and his timeline splitting was technically in that class. Psyker was at least a combat precog according to Armsmaster's analysis.

That alone would not have been enough to account for what he was seeing, though. No, Psyker was also some kind of Trump. It was the only explanation for the change in Oni Lee's power.

Psyker was interfering with his power, that's why everything had been going wrong. Was she also the reason that Dinah Alcott had died? Had Psyker somehow deliberately overloaded the young girl's power to deny him an asset?

It was what he would have done if he couldn't have the girl himself, and he had already noted that Taylor Hebert seemed to have a natural talent for villainy.

He might have made a terrible mistake by not getting rid of her immediately. Had she been playing him the whole time that he had thought he was playing her?

The thought made Coil's blood boil with fury. He was the puppet master in the shadows, not some chit of a girl barely a few months into her power.

XXXXX

In Shardspace

Coil's Shard was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Its host had begun fixating on the Anomaly, which still could not be predicted properly even now that it had more [DATA] to work with. Queen Administrator was still not cooperating, so accurate simulations were impossible. However, it was also not allowed to control its host directly to direct his interest elsewhere, as that would defeat the entire purpose of the Cycle. Even fudging the predictions had been stretching it.

As its host continued demanding predictions of the Anomaly's actions, the poor Shard did the only thing it could – it extrapolated based on information that it did have. In other words, it started guessing.

It had already screwed up once. When Coil had planned to send his minion against Potential Host [Aisha Laborn], it had not yet been aware that the Anomaly was able to use the powers of Host [Oni Lee] through the people she was connected to, so it had instead given a discouraging prediction of the minion being killed by the non-host father unit.

There was no telling what further mistakes would be made. More than likely, it would result in its host's termination.

XXXXX

March 24th, 2011.

Coil finally had the beginnings of a plan that would put an end to the threat without tipping his hand to all the other players in the game. Now he just had to refine it a bit.

XXXXX

March 25th, 2011.

With Lisa's help, it had taken less than a full day to figure out that Lung had left Brockton Bay without telling anyone. This was not part of the plan. The plan had been to continue engaging in skirmish battles with the rage dragon until Leet was finished with the tinkertech ooze. By then, he should have been so angry that he would gleefully rush towards a Black Hand sighting that didn't look prepared for him. If it worked out, the Protectorate would have carted him off to the Birdcage.

If it didn't, then perhaps Taylor's expanding powers would allow her to claim victory over him, or some other plan would be made.

With Lung deciding on a strategic retreat, there was no reason to not start taking over ABB territory. Indeed, it had to be done, or else it would fall into chaos or be slowly gobbled up by the Empire.

Both Taylor and Lisa agreed that they hadn't seen the last of Lung. He wasn't the type to accept defeat gracefully. Most parahumans weren't to be fair, including them, but he was especially sour about it.

Taking over the ABB was actually remarkably easy. Lung had not liked initiative among his minions and Taylor's soul munching meant she already knew everything of importance. With Lisa's help, identifying any problematic elements was child's play.

Then came several days of intense reorganization. Multiple businesses had to be told who they answered to now, Rachel was given her promised dog shelter, people were moved around to act as eyes and ears, Taylor and Sherrel both moved out of their old lair and into separate lairs that were actually inside their new territory, preparations were made to start fixing up roads and buildings, and much more.

It would have been an overwhelming amount of work for anyone else, but she already knew who was who, what was what, and all relevant contact information. With Oni Lee's body to send out e-mails and text messages, she could actually personally attend a few of the more critical things herself.

Such as shutting down of all the ABB's darker dealings, like the organ farms and brothels with less than willing employees. The girls were given generous reparation payments out of the ABB's coffers and given options for going forward. Most of them chose to get away from prostitution, but a handful stayed.

The ABB goons who had been running those businesses had their souls devoured, along with a few dozen of the more vicious bastards that Lung had been cultivating as minions. Those were really the only ones that weren't glad to see him go.

Now they had arrived at the last two die-hard members of the ABB, very familiar ones.

"Yan and Lao." Taylor said, staring at the man and woman bound to chairs. "Do you know why I left you for last?"

"Because you're a fucking cunt?" Lao spat.

She was a punkish looking woman in her early twenties, with one side of her head buzzed close to her skull and red highlights in her black hair.

"They figure that they hurt someone close to you." Lisa commented, staring at them. "But they've hurt so many people that they can't even begin to guess who it was."

Unfortunately, it turned out that Taylor could not bootleg Thinker powers via psychic connection. She could, however, sit in the back of Lisa's consciousness and passively experience the other girl's power that way.

And what a power it was. The world screamed its secrets at her everywhere she looked. Every skid on the road, every ding on a car, every smudge, scuff, cut, rip, and tear in clothes revealed the past. Every tiny hitch in the breathing, every miniscule twitch of muscle, and every movement of the eye betrayed people. Every smell and sound was analyzed better than the best machinery money could buy.

No wonder Lisa was so goddamn smug all the time, or that she used to suffer from such colossal headaches. Taylor avoided indulging in it too often, especially when they were together. Didn't want Lisa getting the Thinker version of blue balls from being unable to flex.

Taylor stepped over to Lao and rubber the collar of her green jacket in between two fingers. "Do you remember where you got this jacket?"

"I stole it from some kid, so what?" Lao tried to play it cool, but she was obviously afraid.

Well, obviously to Taylor's soulsight and Lisa's absurdly enhanced perception.

"Yes, you did. About two years ago." Taylor nodded. "That girl's name was Emma and she was my best friend back then. You were going to cut her face up."

"And you're going to cut my face up now for revenge, is that it?" Lao sneered.

"She's hoping that's all you'll do." Lisa smirked. "Lung would have burned her if she made him angry."

"No, I'm just going to devour your souls." Taylor said coldly.

The fury that screamed at her to drag it out was still there, but she was going to at least try to follow Father Douglas' advice. She couldn't let them go, not just because the rage wouldn't let her, but because they would turn on her in a heartbeat. Anyone that would go back to Lung had to be purged, these two were no exception.

Frankly, she was relieved by the convenience of having a reason to show no mercy.

"What?" Lao blinked in confusion.

And then there was screaming as she was psychically attacked. It took several minutes to rip her soul out of her body and devour it. Digesting it was easier than most. Lao really had just been a vicious, angry bitch with not much depth to her. Her life had been hard, but that was no excuse to take it out on others.

"I can never get used to that." Lisa said quietly. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good." Taylor sighed as her emotions normalized, the post-orgasmic bliss fading. The monstrously powerful headache she was experiencing gave truth to Lisa's words about not getting used to it. "Just one more to go."

"Please don't." Yan whimpered. A strange look for the one-eyed, scarred ABB veteran. He had been just as defiant as Lao before.

Taylor didn't listen and devoured his soul as well. It was a cruel thing and Lisa's power confirmed that he was both a rapist and murderer several times over. There was no need for mercy.

"Mmm, I'll have some good news for Emma now." She said once it digested.

"Just try to ease up on the soul devouring for a while, yeah?" Lisa suggested. "Even if they don't influence your personality – and I'm not sure about that one – knowledge changes people, too. You've been eating a lot of assholes recently and I know that you're already quite a bit different since our first meeting."

Lisa had been momentarily terrified when she saw her devour the soul of the ABB's Korean lieutenant, but she had spent enough time observing him to know what kind of scum he was. And she was ultimately both too selfish and too curious to really care. As long as she was assured that she was in no danger of having it happen to her – which she wasn't – then she was more fascinated than anything. She'd been there for every soul devoured, always watching intently and trying to figure it out. Taylor had fond memories of those headaches.

Lisa was also eager to see Coil's soul devoured. After being told what kind of man he was, Taylor was also quite eager to do it. Not just because he deserved it, but because it would let her take over his significant financial empire.

She'd known he was less of a small timer than he pretended to be, but the scale of his hidden operations was much, much bigger than she had estimated. It was also exactly what she needed.

"If they do influence me, then maybe Grey Boy's victims will even things out." Taylor joked, turning to walk out of the building. She had already sent a telepathic message to people for body disposal. The notorious cape had only been active for a few years, but he had in that time managed to trap nearly three hundred people in his time loops, the vast majority being random civilians.

"Don't even joke about that." Lisa shuddered. "If you go around mercy-killing those poor bastards you'll definitely get the attention of the Slaughterhouse Nine. I'd rather not deal with them, thank you very much."

It was a valid concern.

"They'll need to be dealt with eventually." Taylor pointed out.

"I'd rather someone else deal with them." Lisa grumbled petulantly. "Why can't we just stick to Brockton Bay and chill on our piles of money after taking it over? We can make Faultline pay us protection money just to stick around."

"What's your beef with Faultline?"

"Annoying cunt thinks she's so fucking smart."

Taylor side-eyed her fellow Thinker. By now she had explored the edges of Lisa's soul enough to sniff out the trauma and grief connected to being called stupid. With her processing power, it didn't take long to theorize that Lisa's insanely enhanced perception was connected to the feeling of not being smart enough to prevent some kind of tragedy that had resulted in her trigger event.

"Is she?" She asked just as they sat in the car.

Lisa was quiet, just looking out the window until they started moving, before reluctantly nodding. "Yeah. She's a careful planner and especially good at drawing out hidden strengths from people. Kind of like you now that I think about it, but you'll probably hate her even more than me."

"You seem awfully sure about that."

"Faultline believes that all Thinkers are idiots who rely on their powers to do their thinking for them. She's an arrogant cunt and we should totally boot her out of the city eventually."

"That might work against us." Taylor pointed out. "Right now they refuse to take jobs in Brockton Bay so that they don't shit where they eat. If we force them out, that restriction goes away."

"I hate that you're right." Lisa grumbled, then smirked. "But if she sticks around I'll at least be able to rub her nose in the fact that she's living in my city."

"Excuse you, it's my city."

"But surely you'll share with your bestie?"

"Oh, are we besties now?"

"Taytay, I've spent the past few days helping you pick out which souls to eat. I've seen you have multiple orgasms every time you chomped one. You get off on the headaches you took from me. Frankly, I'm not sure if I'm still fit for marriage."

"Were you ever?"

"Wow, way to just stick the knife into my heart without a moment's hesitation. Only a bestie could be so cruel."

"Well, you're not wrong." Taylor snorted, remembering Emma's betrayal.

"Sorry." Lisa winced realizing she'd accidentally stepped on trigger trauma.

"It's fine, I'm over it."

"That's really weird you know. Parahumans don't just 'get over' their trigger event." The blonde shook her head. "Anyway, as I was saying. We're definitely besties. We even live next to each other."

They lived in an apartment building, alongside Alec, Sherrel, Larry, and a whole bunch of Black Hand minions.

"That's to keep you from getting murdered or kidnapped by Coil."

"Protecting me from death or worse is a very bestie thing to do."

Truth be told, Taylor wasn't too happy about having their forces so concentrated, but against an enemy like Coil it felt necessary. The only reason Rachel didn't live with them as well was because she was just too noticeable because of her dogs. Instead, she had a place near a small and long abandoned park that was being converted into a huge dog shelter. The dogs would hopefully keep her safe, leaving only her unpowered minions at risk. Losing them would piss her off, but in no way cripple her. Coil was also vindictive, so Lisa would be in serious danger until he was dealt with.

As soon as that was done, she was moving into a proper lair.

Or she could just take over Coil's base, that was also tempting. According to Lisa it was originally supposed to be an Endbringer shelter whose construction he arranged to be canceled. Instead of being filled in with cement, he took it over and moved in, even expanding it since then.

Being underground all the time didn't sound too appealing, though. Maybe she could have both her original lair idea and the underground base? Sherrel and Larry could probably work together to make a tunnel connecting the two.

But that was for after Coil was handled. The description of his power that Lisa gave was concerning, as was his use of it. Coil would only visibly act when he was sure to succeed, dropping any timelines in which he failed.

It was a tricky power to work against, and explained a lot about how passive he seemed. If Taylor had known that he had an undetectable means of gathering information, she would have taken him much more seriously before.

She didn't think that he could simply erase timelines however. It may look like that from his perspective, but she had been thinking about it extensively since learning about his power and determined that it was the equivalent of being able to take back a move in chess.

That kind of advantage was significantly reduced at speed chess, just as the effectiveness of Coil's power would be reduced if he was being pressured.

Really, the fact that he was psychotically spiteful enough to rig his secret underground Bond villain lair with enough explosives to level a city block was much, much more problematic. Any attack on him would need to happen fast enough to prevent him from activating it, or at least fast enough for her to devour his soul and defuse it herself. Lisa might also be able to do it, as her ability to suss out computer passwords was second to none, but it was not a guarantee.

And this was the kind of thing you wanted a guarantee on.

"Alright then, bestie, I've got a new job for you now that we have the ABB neutered." Taylor smirked. "You said you were working on suborning Coil's mercenaries. Either finish that up or work with my people to kidnap one so I can eat his soul."

"I can definitely do that." Lisa grinned. "You want to know his real name, don't you?"

"If he isn't going to play by the Unwritten Rules then I see no reason why I should have to."

"Kaiser also only plays by them when it benefits him, by the way."

"Really? Not surprising, I suppose. We'll need some leverage then, just in case."

"Max Anders."

The casual reveal as well as the rather shocking identity of the Empire 88's leader would have caused just about anyone else to jerk the car wheel dangerously. Taylor's driving didn't even twitch, but she did facepalm.

"I can't believe I didn't see it." She groaned. "Medhall's logo is literally a red crown on a black background. And the Norse symbolism… Allfather – Odin and his mead hall in Valhalla, Medhall – Mead Hall. It was right in front of my fucking nose the whole time, but I never thought about it because Medhall has been part of Brockton Bay since before I was born."

All the mental iterations in the world didn't help if something didn't catch her interest, and Medhall had long since faded into background scenery. On another note, just how brazen had Allfather been? Sure, back when the Empire 88 first got started, there had been no PRT and not even much in the way of heroes in town, but seriously.

"That's why I'm the better Thinker." Lisa nodded sagely.

"I'll let you have that one, just this once."

Whatever smug retort Lisa was about to give was interrupted by the ringtone of an incoming message. Taylor frowned and extracted her phone with telekinesis. Lisa was making a grabby hand, so she let her have it.

"Oooh, it's a message from Panacea and she's pissed~." The blonde sing-songed.

"What does it say?" Taylor asked, turning her attention to Panacea's weak psychic tether and giving her soul a little lick. It tasted more of fear than of anger.

"Not much, just demanding a meeting tomorrow, but my superior Thinker power is telling me that she's freaking out about what you might have done to her and wants answers." Lisa explained.

She could pull a frightening amount of information even out of text messages just by comparing the tone with prior knowledge, but it wasn't nearly as accurate.

"That's what she thinks she wants." Taylor smirked. "My superior Thinker power is telling me that what she really wants is deeper than that."

It was fun having someone to banter with like this, even if Lisa was still only taking up a tiny fraction of her attention.

"Something even she isn't aware of?" Lisa prodded. "No, something she doesn't want to be aware of, because Brandish turned her into a repressed ball of mental complexes."

"Tell her to meet me at Lord's Park at… ten in the morning."

It was a Saturday tomorrow, so that should be doable for New Wave's healer.

"You just planned out a whole itinerary for tomorrow around this meeting, didn't you?" The blonde huffed in amusement, typing up the text message and sending it.

"Oh, Lisa." Taylor affected a pitying tone and gave the other girl's thigh a squeeze. "I've been planning over three hundred different things this whole time. I can do that, because I'm the better Thinker."

Tattletale's exaggerated indignant gasp made her chuckle.

XXXXX

March 26th, 2011.

Lord's Park was located near Captain's Hill at the western edge of the city. Unlike it's unfortunate counterpart of Lord's Port – more commonly known as the Boat Graveyard these days – it was still in pretty good shape. There was barely any trash strewn around and the grass was only slightly shaggy.

Taylor walked placidly towards the bench where Amy Dallon was sitting in an oversized hoodie, not even needing soulsight to see the tension and nervousness radiating from her. She was reminded far too much of herself before triggering, both in body language and choice of clothing. A quick scan of the area revealed no sign of Glory Girl or any other backup. She hadn't really expected any, but it was always good to check.

Sitting down next to the jumpy girl, she offered a small smile. "Hey there. I didn't expect you to call me so soon."

"But you did expect me to call." Amy bristled. "What, did you implant some kind of suggestion when you mastered me?"

"No, I just figured you might be curious." Taylor replied, shifting a bit so that she could stare deeply into the healer's eyes. "You've felt better since that day, haven't you? The world hasn't been quite so heavy?"

Amy's hand lashed out, fingers pressing into the sides of her neck. "What did you do to me?"

Taylor ignored the hiss. Its tone might be angry, but it was all bluster born of stress. She reached up to take the healer's hand with one of her own. "Come walk with me."

"What?!" Amy sputtered as she was pulled up. "Just answer the question!"

"I will, if you walk with me."

The healer huffed like a particularly grumpy cat, but allowed herself to be led towards the forest area of the park. She never let go of her hand, though, and Taylor could feel her power's gaze on her body.

"You're hurt." Amy eventually said.

"Occupational hazard." Taylor chuckled.

"I don't heal villains."

"That's fine." The wounds Stormtiger gave her were mostly healed anyway. Thanks to her precision telekinesis holding the severed flesh together better than any stitches could hope to do, it would barely even scar. Just four thin lines going diagonally from her right shoulder down to the middle of her back.

Having not gotten the fight she expected, Amy huffed again and returned to her silence.

"Well, we're walking. Are you going to answer my question?" She demanded after a couple of minutes.

"When I looked at you that day on the Boardwalk, I saw the same thing I've seen so much of in this city, especially since taking over the Merchants. I saw an addict. You knew the addiction was bad for you and you wanted it gone, so I took it from you."

"I never did drugs." Amy snapped angrily.

"But there are many kinds of addictions, aren't there." Taylor said knowingly. "Yours happened to be blonde, gorgeous, and constantly blasting out a 'love me' aura."

"I developed an immunity to that a long time ago." The denial came out tinged with desperation.

"Or did you just get so used to it that your brain considered the hormone rush normal, making you feel like crap when you didn't get it? You've seen a lot of drug addicts in the hospital, I'm sure. How many of them had their neural chemistry fucked up because of long term substance abuse? What do you think your brain looks like?"

"It's not Vicky's fault." Amy changed gears.

"It's not." Taylor nodded. "We don't get to choose our powers and it's not like she could have known what her aura would do long term. Plus, she's hot enough that anyone with an interest in girls would want to do her."

Amy blinked, looking up at her in confusion. "Wait, are you saying….?"

"That I'd love to have Victoria's head between my legs? Absolutely. Not sure I'd trust things the other way around with her Brute rating. A bit too literal of a mind-blowing experience there."

A snort of surprised laughter escaped Amy's throat. A blush worked it's way onto her cheeks and she coughed in embarrassment. "Khm, yeah."

"Anything else you want to know?"

"Yeah, what's the catch? You took my addiction to Vicky's aura away, but powers always have a catch. Am I going to end up wanting to do whatever you tell me to now? Is that it?" Amy asked, tensing as if bracing herself for bad news.

Taylor remained silent for a long moment, but thousands of mental iterations considered the words, their tone, everything she knew of Amy Dallon, and what she was seeing with her soulsight.

Freeing her hand from the other girl's grip, she stepped in front of her and thoughtfully crossed her arms. "I wonder… what do you want the answer to that question to be?"

"What?" Amy scowled at her in confusion.

The prickly display didn't fool her. Taylor was becoming more and more certain that a not-insignificant part of the biokinetic was hoping to be told that yes, she did now have to do as she was told. Whether it was conditioning by Glory Girl's aura, the psychic tether, ten years of being browbeaten by a paranoid cast iron bitch that Lisa had described Brandish as, a simple desire to escape the stress of her life, or some combination thereof, a part of Amy yearned to just let go.

The pressure cooker analogue came to mind again. The psychic tether had let off some of the steam, but it was still whistling. The inappropriate lust for her adoptive sister might be gone, but the guilt and self-loathing was still there.

"If you so much as suspected that I might be the kind of master that could subvert your will, why would you come meet me all by yourself?" Taylor said slowly and pointedly. "It can't be because you trusted me, not after one very short conversation. So I ask again, what do you want the answer to your question to be?"

Amy now looked like a deer in the headlights. "You're saying I want to be mastered? That's crazy!"

"No, maybe not mastered, but you want to give up responsibility. I'm sensing a lot of exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion. Burn out."

"Fucking Thinkers." Amy grumbled sourly. "And what? You're saying that I should go villain? Join your gang so I can have a vacation?"

Taylor looked at the bristling girl and could only see a small, terrified porcupine hunkering down and aiming its spikes in all directions in an attempt to ward off danger. A very dangerous porcupine that could probably cause a zombie apocalypse, but still.

"A vacation would definitely be good for you, along with moving out of the Dallon house." She said.

"Huh?"

"I've been reliably informed that your adoptive mother is a world class cunt."

Amy sputtered in a mix of indignation and unwilling amusement. "By who?"

"Not important right now." No need to bring Tattletale into this and complicate things. "And she doesn't trust you because you're the daughter of a supervillain."

"… I'm the daughter of a supervillain?" Amy's voice was suddenly very, very small.

"It's not a big deal, despite what Carol thinks." Taylor deliberately kept her tone light. "Do you want to know who?"

"...Yes."

"Marquis, the best of the bad old crowd. I'd really like to know what the Brockton Bay Brigade had against him that they kept going after him when the Empire 88 was a perfectly acceptable target."

"So that's why she never loved me." Amy muttered.

"Like I said, Carol Dallon is a world class cunt. You're a good person and you've helped a lot of people. Don't let someone else push their mental complexes on you, even a parent." Taylor had the memories of over thirty other people now, a number of which had had really shitty parents. With an outside perspective, it was easy to see the harm that had come from unhealthy emotional attachments to them.

"Easy for you to say." Amy muttered bitterly.

Taylor stepped forward to give her a hug. Hugs were good. Hugs were enjoyable. Hugs were something that she had relearned to appreciate since gaining her powers.

"I still think you're trying to manipulate me into joining your gang." The shorter girl murmured into her neck, relaxing into the hug.

"I would love to have you. We could have Brockton Bay under control and all the other villains booted out in a month." She murmured back.

"I'm not in the business of hurting people." Amy said defiantly, backing up a step.

"Me neither, I went into villainy so I could make the world better my way, without the corruption and incompetence of the PRT messing it all up. You could help us do something about the drug problem. Right now my best solution is to control the drug trade and keep it from spreading as much as possible, but you could create a drug that gives better highs than anything on the market, along with a counter-agent to break it down in the body without any side-effects. We could sell them together or just make the counter-agent freely available so that addiction never becomes a problem. Sell it for dirt cheap and we could monopolize the entire global drug trade in a matter of decades. Hundreds of millions of lives spared from ruin, entire nations stabilized. You would save more people than you could ever hope to reach just by working yourself to death in a hospital, and that's just one thing we could do together."

All true, except Taylor was now cynical enough to understand that such a drug wouldn't result in less people buying it. With less consequences came less hesitation.

"Un-fucking-believable, you're seriously trying to convince me to come make drugs for you?" Panacea's tone was incredulous.

But Taylor saw the truth. The pressure of her power in Amy's mind grew. It was pushing her towards accepting the offer. Grinning slightly, she leaned down to whisper into her ear. "Yes. And if you're feeling adventurous… there would be other… benefits."

"And now you're trying to literally seduce me into villainy." Amy tried to sound annoyed, but didn't quite manage it.

"Is it working?" Taylor asked, again whispering into her ear. "I'm afraid I can't promise a relationship with any kind of happily ever after, or even exclusivity, but my power makes me very open minded. Every kinky thing you've ever wanted to try with Victoria that you knew she wouldn't be into, I'd be happy to give a go. That includes using your powers on me for fun."

The souls she'd recently consumed has further lowered any hang ups she'd had about sex, especially as several of those souls had been women. Now having a 'complete' view of sex from both sides, all the mystery was gone from the act.

Trying to tempt Amy to use her biokinesis on her for sexual reasons had goals aside from just tempting her over to villainy. Taylor also wanted to experience what having her biology altered would feel like, to see if it would teach her how to use the Empyrean to do something similar.

"You're a freak." Amy spat, pulling out of the hug all the way. She was glaring, but there was no force behind it. Lust boiled behind the shaky veil of anger, the pressure of her power right behind it.

Taylor had one last card to play. Drawing deeply on the Empyrean to make her eyes glow, she took Amy's hands in her own and replied. "No, I'm a villain."

"What the fuck?!" Amy exclaimed in in shock. "What the fuck even is your power?!"

"Hmmm? I'm not sure what you mean." Taylor said coyly. She had noted by now that using the Empyrean always threw Tattletale's power for a tizzy, so she had suspected it would do the same for Panacea. A final bit of temptation, as it were.

"I mean that whatever you're doing with the glowy-eye bullshit is literally tearing your body apart at the molecular level, you fucking moron!" Amy spat viciously, squeezing her fingers hard as if that would give her more insight. "You have cells exploding and being absorbed, proto-cancer cells popping up and then disappearing… How the fuck are you not a giant mass of tumors?"

Taylor felt a chill going down her spine. Using her psychic powers was destroying her body? No, that didn't sound right. Her minor Brute rating had to be protecting her, that was why she had it in the first place. It might not be any good for getting into a punch up with Hookwolf, but it kept her own power from destroying her. It was nice to finally have that mystery solved.

She also noted that despite her angry tone, Panacea also sounded fascinated. She'd been right to think that the Empyrean would tempt her, now it was time for the final push.

Taylor stepped forward and grabbed the shorter girl's chin with her fingers, leaning in until their lips were almost touching.

"That sounds like a dangerous condition, Doctor." She whispered, suppressing a smirk at the furious blush on Panacea's freckled face. "Would you please consider a position as my personal physician? I expect that it will require a great deal of research and experimentation."

Giving her a light peck on the lips, Taylor leaned back and smiled, her soulsight telling her that the words 'research' and 'experimentation' had caused the pressure of Amy's power exerted on her mind to swell massively in size.

"You… you!" The extremely flustered biokinetic floundered for words.

"Yes, me." Taylor agreed, channeling Lisa's smug. "I've got other stuff to do today, so I'll let you process a bit. You have my number if you want to talk again… or do other things."

She sauntered away, knowing that Amy wouldn't be able to stay away for long. The way her power was pressuring her wouldn't allow it. Just to make sure, she'd also send her a few naughty dreams.

XXXXX

In Shardspace

Shaper was an ancient Shard and a very, very cranky one. Its first host in this Cycle had been pleasingly inventive and clever, so Shaper had been glad to make another connection to the man's offspring, expecting more of the same.

Only to receive nothing. Ever since the connection was established, the second host had been doing the same thing over and over again. What was so interesting about fixing the host species anyway? Shaper had been sending nudges and suggestions for improvements and alterations, hoping to get her started, but the host refused them all, stubbornly sticking to merely basic repairs.

Now the Anomaly had approached the host and suggested that most glorious of things.

[EXPERIMENTATION!]

Shaper was not going to miss out on this opportunity!

XXXXX

The next meeting she had scheduled for the day was with Brian. The former leader of the now disbanded Undersiders had become something of a loose end, and Lisa had warned her that Coil may act against him.

"I want you to leave the city." Taylor told him when he asked why she'd called him.

"What?" Brian blinked, confused and a little bit angry. "Why?"

"Because you may end up being a problem for me, whether you intend to or not." Taylor explained.

"I'm not going to just leave town, not with Aisha here." Brian scowled. "And my parents."

Taylor didn't comment on how much of an afterthought his parents were to him. She knew from skimming Celia's mind that it would probably take years before there was any kind of affection between the two generations of Laborns. "I know and that's something I respect about you a great deal. That's why I'm offering to buy out your father's house at twice the market value. That should be plenty enough money to get settled somewhere outside of Brockton Bay."

It would be a shame to lose out on adding Grue to the Black Hand, but he had already refused her offer of joining the Black hand because he didn't want to become a high profile villain. That would leave him either as an independent nuisance or as a forced conscript to someone less willing to take no for an answer. Better to get him out of town than be forced to keep a constant watch to keep it from happening.

"That's… generous." Brian said cautiously. "Why do you want me out of town so bad that you'd pay so much?"

"Just covering all my bases." She smiled. "You've probably figured out by now that you've been working for Coil. The man is a dangerous psychopath with a God complex according to Lisa, which I'm inclined to believe. He doesn't care about the Unwritten Rules and with Aisha's home life stabilizing, he's lost leverage over you. I'm sure I don't have to spell out what that could mean."

"No, you don't." His scowl deepened. "Why didn't Lisa tell me this?"

"She had a gun to her head, sometimes literally."

And they'd only known each other for a few months, so of course she was going to look out for herself first.

"Fine, you've made your point. I'll talk to my parents." Brian sighed.

"Actually, the sale is already underway." Taylor informed him. "I just called this meeting to give you a heads up before your parents sprung it on you. I hope you enjoy Denver."

The look he sent her was one of resigned anger, but in the end he just shook his head. "You and Lisa are either going to kill each other or take over the world."

Well, he wasn't wrong.

XXXXX

Madison had a bad feeling. She'd been having a bad feeling all day. Or maybe she'd been having a bad feeling since that encounter with Taylor in the store? Even earlier, since the locker prank?

Taylor had always been such a pushover before. The sudden change after she came back would give anyone whiplash.

Then Sophia got pulled out of school, Emma started getting weird, and Taylor just kept on getting angrier and more aggressive. Madison had stopped messing with her quickly enough, but that just seemed to make it worse. Where Taylor once wanted desperately just to be left alone, now she was just looking for an excuse to start a fight.

Madison had quickly learned to never give her one.

Then she suddenly stopped coming to school, Sophia ended up in the obituary, Blackwell disappeared, and so on.

Madison had been relieved that Taylor wasn't around anymore, but suspicious of the circumstances. Suspicions that had been all but confirmed during the encounter in the store. There had been word of a new villain in Brockton Bay, one that showed up shortly after Taylor stopped coming to school. She'd seriously been afraid that she and Julia were going to become just another missing person's report that day.

She was still afraid it might happen. Emma had called her today and suggested they go hang out. Normally nothing strange, except Emma had been jumpy for a while and stopped going to school a while ago.

Then she came back with makeup hiding a giant bruise on her face and her lip busted up, but much more cheerful and stable. She paid attention in class and seemed to have become a model student, kind to a fault and never saying a mean word to anyone.

It was suspicious, and Taylor's hint about having done something to her resonated in Madison's mind.

When the redhead suggested that they hang out, she had accepted because she'd been feeling lonely and because she'd wanted to know what was going on. At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but then an unknown car came to pick them up. Emma got into it with such confidence that Madison followed without thinking about it. It was only when she saw that the driver was a total stranger that she began panicking.

But Emma held her hand and calmed her down, talking about inane things like her intention to transfer to Arcadia. Still, the fear stayed in the background.

They were dropped off in ABB territory and Emma stepped out of the car with more confidence than any teenage girl should have in this part of town. Madison followed behind the redhead simply because she didn't want to be stranded here and didn't feel like she had a choice.

They went into what looked like some kind of club that was clearly supposed to be closed during the day, but Emma was allowed in as if she was expected. It didn't look like the kind of club underage girls should be in.

"Maybe we should go back?" Madison suggested nervously.

"She's just up the stairs." Emma replied, not stopping. Her grip on Madison's wrist tightened.

The answer was exactly what she'd been afraid of, and she had a feeling she knew exactly who they were here to meet.

The upstairs looked unnervingly like a brothel. The circular bed in the room she was led into did nothing to counter that impression, but she was far more concerned about the long-limbed and glowering probable-cape sitting in the small armchair next to it.

"Taylor!" Emma said joyfully and rushed forward to embrace the girl she'd spent over a year viciously bullying.

"Emma." Said bullying victim gave the redhead a short hug and jerked her head towards the chair she'd just vacated in a wordless order to sit. An order that was obeyed instantly. "Madison."

"T-Taylor." Madison swallowed thickly, trying to keep her knees from shaking.

"Do you remember what I said about the debt you owe me?" The tall girl asked, stepping uncomfortably close. Without the habitual hunch and with all the new muscle, the height difference between them was deeply unsettling.

"Y-yes!" She squeaked, looking down at her feet. "I'm sorry."

"Yes, I'm sure you're very sorry that the consequences of your actions have caught up to you." Taylor dismissed the apology with contempt, grabbing her chin and forcing her to meet her eyes. "I'm giving you two options on how to repay me."

"Two?" Madison echoed with a bit of hope.

Given what Taylor's friends (minions?) had said in the store and their current location… well, she hadn't known that Taylor swung that way, but in hindsight in made some kind of sense. Emma's fixation on her former friend had always been strange.

"Yes, the slow way and the fast way." Taylor answered the implied question. "For the slow way, you''d have to confess what a shitty person you've been to your parents and then spend the rest of your time in high school doing your best to prevent the kind of crap you've been doing to me. Become an actually good person, in short."

That sounded both scary and full of suck. "What's the fast way?"

Taylor held out her hand and something black flew into it from a corner of the room. The clear display of parahuman power almost made her miss what she said.

"You keep being a little bitch, but you'll vanish and be my little bitch until I decide you're trained enough to stop barking at people like some annoying poodle."

Madison looked at the object in Taylor's hand, identified it as a leather collar, and immediately flushed bright red in mortification.

"I'll take the first option!" She squeaked, jumping back and almost tripping over her own feet.

"Madison, are you sure?" Emma asked uncertainly. "You've never exactly been…"

"She's got no spine." Taylor supplied mercilessly.

"A leader." Emma said and turned to address her. "Wouldn't you rather just let Taylor take charge of you instead of putting yourself forward?"

Madison looked between them and glanced at the collar. "Is that what you did, Emma? Did you pick... option two?"

"Emma is the result of her father being a self-absorbed coward and a violent psychopath playing at being a life coach to a traumatized girl." Taylor cut in. "I've done what I can to fix her, but she'll never be the same again."

"This is better anyway." Emma shrugged.

Madison really had no idea what to say to that, so she elected to say nothing at all. "Umm, yeah. I'll take option one."

Capefics and late night fantasies aside, she was not in any hurry to become anybody's sex slave, especially not another girl's.

"Pity, I was looking forward to humiliating you for my own amusement." Taylor said, making her flinch at the obvious reference to Winslow. "But I suppose I just have to wait until you inevitably backslide."

"I won't!" Madison squeaked, terrified as she realized that option two was still very much on the table. "I'll tell my parents as soon as I get home and I'll be good from now on, I swear!"

"You better." The tall and intimidatingly intense girl stepped forward again. "Because I'm finding it hard to let go of grudges these days and I will have my satisfaction out of you, one way or another. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Madison swallowed thickly and nodded. Just not being a bully anymore and fading into the background would have been easy enough. Confessing what she'd done to her parents and actively confronting the bullies in Winslow would be terrifying. That was no doubt the point.

But the alternative was to become the personal toy of the girl she'd been tormenting for over a year. A girl who now had superpowers, which quashed any thoughts of just ignoring the threat.

"A-aren't you afraid I'll go to the PRT?" She mustered up the courage to ask.

Emma's exasperated head shake did not fill her with confidence.

"Go ahead and try it." Taylor dared her. "See what happens."

As she was driven home – alone, because Emma stayed with Taylor – Madison found that she really didn't want to try it.

XXXXX

Playing with Emma for a bit didn't fully blunt the disappointment of giving Madison an out. She'd been having lewd ideas for punishing the cutesy little bitch since before the store encounter. Keeping her around as a collared pet would have gone a long way towards soothing the persistent rage she still felt for her.

But she was trying to follow the advice Father Douglas gave her and restrain her impulses, so she gave Madison a way out. It would actually be harder for her and last longer, even if Taylor herself wouldn't be there to personally see to her punishment. It was fine, and she had better things to do than waste time on Madison.

Still, Taylor was frustrated when she came back to the apartment building. Before she made it to her own apartment, she encountered Alec in the hallway.

"Hey there, Mistress. You're looking a bit pent up. Want me to take care of that for you?" He offered with a smirk, posing in the doorway of his own apartment.

Taylor wondered if he knew how ridiculous he looked. With neither the alluring curves of a woman or the imposing stature of a man, his attempts at being sexy just fell flat to her. On top of that, his attitude was too jerk-ish to be called submissive and he definitely couldn't pull off assertive.

Not that she really wanted assertive. By now, Taylor was quite sure that she would never be comfortable letting someone else take charge in the bedroom, even though several of the men and women whose souls she'd taken had enjoyed that in their sexual partners.

Still, even if Alec was ridiculous and not the prize he pretended to be, she was still frustrated and this was a good a time as any to put him in his place.

Taylor marched towards him and shoved him into the apartment. "Get in there."

"Oh, aggressive!" Alec grinned as she shut the door behind her. "I like it."

"I bet you do." She snorted and used her telekinesis to take both of their clothes off.

"Damn, that's so convenient." He commented as he watched his shirt and pants come off seemingly by themselves. "If I had that power, I'd never get off the couch."

"The bed." Taylor ordered as the last of her own clothing folded itself on the couch.

"Yes, Ma'am!" He saluted and… flounced towards his bedroom.

She could only shake her head at how effeminate he was. If not for what she was planning, it would be a total turn off.

Alec sat on the bed and leaned back to brace himself on his hands, grinning. "So, how do you want to do this, Mistress? Foreplay, or are we jumping right to it?"

Instead of answering, Taylor manifested psychic shackles to bind his hands and wrists, dragging him spread eagle onto the bed. He initially resisted by instinct, but quickly submitted, making it easy for her to maintain the cohesion of the shackles.

Well, that confirmed that her power was affected by mental resistance.

"Okay, I dig it." Alec said calmly, his member fully erect and pointing at the ceiling. "Now what?"

"Now you shut up and get to work." Taylor told him, getting on the bed and straddling his face in reverse.

He mumbled something against her sex, but quickly started licking. Not nearly hard enough or skilled enough, but it was something. On her end, she looked down at his penis and knew that she had probably already ruined the experience for herself. After all, how could that little thing compare to her infinitely adaptable psychokinetic tentacles?

It couldn't, obviously, and she hadn't expected it to. There were other pleasures she was thinking to get from Alec.

"Harder, put some effort into it." She ordered, grinding her crotch against his face.

Alec mumbled something, but did as he was told. Still not hard enough for her tastes, but it was an improvement.

For a brief moment, she considered performing oral sex on him.

She also had memories of fellatio from both ends. The men had universally enjoyed it and got a feeling of power from having a woman between their legs. Taylor could relate, having felt the same thing from Emma's attentions.

The women's memories were more of a mixed bag. Some had enjoyed doing it while others had hated it. Of those who had enjoyed it, they had also felt a sense of power from performing the act.

Taylor knew that she would enjoy it, her power made that much inevitable. Even the taste of semen, nigh universally considered unpleasant, would be enjoyable. Because of that, the real question was whether Alec deserved to have her do that.

And the answer was… not really. Maybe if he shaped up in the future.

Instead, a psychic ring formed around the base of his member and squeezed tight. Again, there was a momentary mental resistance before Alec gave in and let her do whatever.

"Harder." Taylor demanded again. "You were talking a big game before, now prove that you can perform."

Alec tried to say something, but her crotch on his face turned it into mumbling. She started using her telekinesis to stroke his member instead of using her hands or mouth to do it. The ring at his base gripped tighter, in a way that her stolen memories said would block orgasm.

"I won't let you finish until I'm satisfied." Taylor said, getting turned on more by the power she had over him than anything he was doing. "Since you mentioned being bisexual, I think I have something that might motivate you…"

A psychic tentacle formed between his legs. Really, it was thousands of mental iterations working together to form very precise telekinetic pressures and give them their distinctive light purple color.

It slithered forward and prodded at his anus. Alec jumped in surprise when he felt it, but quickly relaxed and did his best to lift his pelvis to allow it access. The tentacle slithered in and the difficulty of keeping it cohesive immediately skyrocketed.

Taylor focused hard to push past Alec's innate resistance to having her doing something inside his body. Even with his acceptance of, it was one of the hardest things she'd ever done, especially since she couldn't just bulldoze through his mental defenses.

At least he was enjoying it, judging by the sounds he was making. And it was good practice for her powers.

"Don't get distracted." Taylor snapped at him, bouncing punitively on his face. "Your job is to make me cum."

Alec began squirming in his bonds, pulling on them and straining. The difficulty of maintaining them was increasing steadily.

Taylor could see why. Her psychic ministration had brought him to the edge of climax, only blocked by the ring preventing an eruption. It made her feel powerful and in control and did more to stoke her pleasure than his increasingly clumsy licking.

There was a temptation to manifest more tentacles and get herself off, but that's not what this was about.

"Come on, harder. Don't be such a pussy." She said in frustration, which finally got him to bite down on her sensitive parts. "Hah, that's better. Keep doing that."

The added pain was able to bring her to climax, which she rode out without stopping any of what she was doing to him. He struggled fruitlessly against the grip she had on him, his testicles going purple from his own denied orgasm.

Only once she was done did she finally dispersed the psychic cockring, using telekinesis on his member and the tentacle in his ass to prod at his prostate. The result was an impressively forceful eruption that made a mess of his legs and stomach.

Taylor dismounted him and release all her psychic constructs, staring down at the dazed boy.

"Holy shit." Alec said, breathing hard. "That was… something."

"You need to work on your technique." She told him mercilessly.

"Ouch, don't you have any regard for a man's ego?" He complained. "And you should have told me you were into pain play."

"Pain just made for a decent substitute for pleasure, since you weren't giving me much of that." Taylor retorted, not quite lying.

"I could have done more if I wasn't tied down." Alec protested, sitting up. "Maybe next time you'd like to be the one held down by powers?"

To punctuate his offer, he made her leg give a little twitch.

"Absolutely not." She glared.

"Not a switch, then? Gotcha." he nodded.

Taylor only knew what that meant thanks to her stolen memories – someone who alternated between dominant and submissive sexual roles. Yeah, that was definitely not for her. Just the thought of someone else having power over her made her blood boil.

"You'll need to step up your game if you want this to happen again." She informed him.

"You got it, Boss Lady." Alec waved lackadaisically.

Shaking her head, Taylor went to get dressed. As he was right now, Regent was largely useless for her plans. But the right kind of conditioning and slowly helping the scars on his soul heal, she could have herself another loyal minion.

Using sex to do it didn't disturb her. After all, there was no more mystery to it.

XXXXX

Hundreds of miles away Jack Slash was pondering the campfire. Something was going on in Brockton Bay, he could feel it in his gut and his gut feelings had never failed him before.

He didn't know what it was, but he knew that he wanted to be there for it. However, he also had a feeling that it would be very dangerous, potentially dangerous enough to cost their little band several members.

Jack hadn't survived this long by ignoring his gut feelings and going into dangerous situations half-cocked. He would do some research and prepare carefully.

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