"I ain't no snitch," Tooth said, folding xyr arms.
"What, like, are you, like, a cop? Like, fuck off, or whatever," Nail added.
"Nail, sweetie, you are really bad at the ditzy valley girl act," I said, shaking my head. "Don't force it like that. It doesn't even make you look dumb, it just makes you look cringe."
"Fuck you!"
"Anyway, you've met Skinner, right?" I said. "You know what she does? With the mind control and all?"
"And some of us are into that, so don't kinkshame," Nail said, folding their arms under her tits to push them up even further.
"Mhm. Cool. Well, I'm Skinner's original apprentice, and I can do that too, so... you don't actually have a choice in the matter."
Tooth pulled up xyr sleeve to reveal a glowing circuit board tattoo, raising xyr arm to shoot the strange, concealed ray gun at me... and then swore when it didn't work.
"You work for me now," I said, my eyes glowing green.
"We work for you now," Tooth said.
"Yes, Hypnomommy," Nail said.
"Do not call me Hypnomommy."
"Mistress?"
"You will call me Boss."
"Lame. Fiiiine, Boss," Nail said.
"Now... Akane, please un-shrink their truck?" I said.
"Got it!" Akane called, before hitting the truck with an unshrinking ray, returning it to its normal size.
"Great. Now... Hrm. Venus, you're the strongest and fastest. Come with me into the back of their truck, in case they try anything," I said. "Tooth, Nail, into the back of your truck."
"What's your plan here, exactly?" Lady Venus asked, climbing out of Akane's car and walking towards the back of the truck with me.
"Skinner can detect and undo any long-term mind control I have them under," I said, climbing into the back of the truck after Tooth and Nail. "What she's a lot less likely to notice is a skillfully-altered memory of what happened at this gas station today, making it look far more mundane, along with a little... mundane hypnosis."
"Mundane hypnosis?" Venus asked, a bit leery.
"Yep," I said. "That shit actually does work, although obviously it's more complicated than what usually gets shown in the movies, and not anywhere near perfect. It can't make people do anything that seems like an obviously bad idea to them, among other things."
"So, what're you going to do, here?" Venus asked.
"Simple, really," I said. "Tooth, you'll go to sleep when I stop talking. When you wake up, you'll get back out of the back of this truck and then get into the front, without thinking anything weird or concerning is happening. Once the truck starts moving, you'll completely forget what happened here, and all you'll remember is a particularly nice trip to a gas station where Nail took some killer selfies. Now... Go to sleep."
Tooth, who'd already been sitting down, slumped over further, and started to snore.
"Nail, once the truck starts moving, you will also forget everything that happened here, instead remembering only that you took some killer selfies and left without incident."
"Yes, Boss," Nail said.
"This doesn't sound like normal hypnosis," Venus pointed out.
"It isn't," I said. "That was the memory editing part. Now we do the post-hypnotic suggestions." I cleared my throat. "Nail. On the count of three, you will drop into a trance for me. One... two... three."
Nail swayed a bit, and their eyes glazed over.
"What are Doctor Skinner's plans?" I asked.
"She invited us to watch the Super Bowl with her next year," Nail said, her voice a bit dreamlike.
"I don't care about sports," I said. "What other plans does she have?"
"I don't know."
"Okay... how often do you see Doctor Skinner?" I asked.
"Once a week," Nail said. "Every Wednesday."
"Good, good. Does she ever give you things? Physical objects, that she held in her hands?"
"Every time," Nail said, nodding. "She gives us a thumb drive with instructions. We always destroy them after we read them."
"Good girl," I said. "Now. You don't really need to read or destroy the instructions right away. What kind of bimbo is a diligent reader?"
"Not this one..." Nail said.
"What the fuck," Nicky hissed.
"I'll explain later, stop interrupting," I hissed back, before resuming my usual hypnotic cadence. "You and Tooth don't need to read that thumb drive right away. You can just stash it in a little magnetic hide-a-key and stick it on the underside of your truck after you get it, and read those instructions after you stop at another gas station for snacks and drinks."
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"I can stash the thumb drive and get to it later," Nail said.
"Exactly," I said. "You're such a good girl, Nail. Now... when I stop talking, you're going to come back up from your trance. You're not going to remember me giving you these instructions. You will still follow them. You're going wait for Venus and I to leave the back of your truck. You're going to pull out your phone and open the timer app. You're going to set a timer for two minutes. And when the timer finishes, you're going to wake Tooth back up, and you're going to suggest that xe just get back in the truck. Nod for me if you understand." Nail nodded. "You'll come up from your trance on the count of three: one... two... three."
Nail sat up a bit straighter, and blinked a bit.
"C'mon, let's go," I said to Venus. "We've got two minutes to get out of here."
----------------------------------------
"I have ethical concerns about the use of mind control and hypnosis on others," Nicky said, once we were home and eating lunch.
"I have plenty of my own, but do go on," I said.
"Did we... do the right thing, there?" Nicky asked, hesitantly.
"There's no such thing as objective morality," I said. "Some masteries of mad science are more common than others. The rarest mastery is of scanners, the point at which you can build oracle machines that scrape objective truth from the fabric of the universe, answering with perfect accuracy and zero misleading detail any question you ask of it, about the past, the present, or the future... but only for questions of fact. You can ask for a step by step guide to any outcome you can specify, but you have to specify it, and can't simply ask for 'the best of all possible worlds,' because there is no objective, empirical measure of what is 'best.' Every such master we know of is a story, and they all go the same way: while they're testing it, they ask for a perfectly accurate roadmap to solve some small-ish problem or other, but because they didn't specify the nature of the solution well enough, it inevitably goes tits-up-in-the-rhubarb and they stand atop a pile of ashes and or corpses yelling 'by god, what have I done?!' and then destroying the machine and, often, killing themselves."
"...Roxy, I hope you understand how transcendentally useless that answer is," Nicky said.
"My point-"
"Is that we need to agree upon a moral and ethical framework of axioms, from which we can conclude via logical processes that a given action is either morally acceptable or not," Nicky said. "Just because Akane didn't study humanities in college doesn't mean I didn't either. And, while our moral compasses may not point in perfect synchronicity, they do point in generally the same direction, and I don't think we actually need to rigorously define our priors beforehand, because we're both more or less in agreement on those. You're just being obnoxious and dodging a difficult question so you don't have to feel bad about what you did."
"Alright, fine," I said. "Yes, I think I did the right thing there. What I did was undeniably hostile and harmful, but it was tightly controlled hostility and harm, precisely enough to accomplish our goal- to find and stop Doctor Skinner- which I think we can agree is very important, and worth inflicting small, controlled, and precise amounts of harm upon others. Yes, I stole their time and part of their autonomy. Yes, I have jeopardized their job working for Doctor Skinner, which may well be their only source of income. However, with the both of us working in law enforcement, we both clearly think it's acceptable to take away someone's sole source of income if that source of income is grossly illegal. And... I'm going to be honest, I brought you into that truck with me partly because I thought you were the most likely to call me out or stop me if I went too far. I don't like the fact that I mind-controlled them any more than you do. Mind control is a weapon, and I hate using it. But it is often the most effective weapon for subduing someone while doing the least amount of harm to them."
"...I see," Nicky said. "Sorry, Roxy, I just... I do agree with your assessment, I was just worried about your hesitance to give that assessment."
"I'm a Jewish smartass," I said. "It's hard to just turn that off."
"I think that mind control and hypnosis can be used in non-hostile ways," Akane chimed in.
"Please do not bring your hypnosis fetish into a serious ethical discussion," I said wearily.
"Not like that," Akane said. "Look, therapy exists because a lot of people have thought patterns they aren't in control over that make them unhappy, right? Well, if mind control is thorough enough, it can more effectively remove or repair those thought patterns to solve the problem than conventional therapy with just talking and occasionally worksheets and pills."
"...Okay, point," I said. "Hypnotherapists do already exist, after all. But... well, hypnotherapy is broadly considered illegitimate by the layman and the academic, and hypnosis is an actual real thing that anyone can do with some fairly basic training. There's no way in hell I'm convincing the APA or any insurance companies that my insane obviously-wrong bullshit is worth allowing and paying for. Plus, masters of Control are incredibly rare, almost always fairly insane, and usually attempting to do something rather anti-social. Getting them to help just isn't in the cards."
"Mmm, fair," Akane said. "I was just thinking that maybe, with some of your psychic stuff, you could help me safely experience some different states of mind or thought patterns, and see what it's like."
"And is that a kink thing?" Lisa asked, stuffing fries- well, oven-roasted potatoes cut into the shape of french fries, which were still very crunchy on the outside and pillowy soft on the inside- into her mouth.
"No, I'm just studying transformation and change, in all its forms," Akane said. "Just because I can only change the physical doesn't mean I can ignore the mental."
"I'll consider it," I said. "Why, you think you can squeeze another thesis out of this? How many have you had, at this point?"
"If I can formulate something personally significant out of transformation and complete a thesis, that'll make it my third," Akane said. "The first was figuring out that superheroes are half-spirits and therefore what their underlying mechanism is, and the second was successfully working out some of the underlying rules that govern how a thesis works in the first place. Which, yes, did also involve sucking your dick. Metaphysically significant blowjobs are the best."
"Can't argue with that," I said. "Anyway. I'll consider your research proposal carefully. The ethics board is likely to want time to consider it, too." I glanced over at Nicky.
"Hey, if she's asking you to do it, go ahead," Nicky said. "Just don't put any creepy shit in there."
"Well, duh," I said. "Anyhow, Akane, how's your more normal research coming along?"
"Still on a roll," Akane said. "I've been shooting emails back and forth with Doctor Wales- he says Arachne's still gathering the info for you, by the way, but she should be done soon enough. I might be on the verge of another breakthrough soon. We'll see."
"Well, hell, I'm happy for you," I said. "Now that you're starting to be more knowledgeable about some fields of mad science than I am, I don't have to worry as much about whether I'm exploiting a junior partner's labor. We're finally becoming peers."
"Another sort of change..." Akane murmured.