"Fuck."

"I know."

"Well," Valiant said. "It's not as though we can just cancel the Super Bowl."

"To play Devil's Advocate," Princess Vega said, "why not?"

Now, you'd think you'd meet your girlfriend's parents before you moved in with her, but considering that Nicky and I were keeping our romantic involvement secret, and also that she'd moved in before we'd started fucking, and also that she lived in fucking Massachusetts, I had never actually been in a room with Her Royal Highness Princess Valerie Vega before now.

She cut an impressive figure, not just because she sported a rack that had likely once been as big as Nicky's, but on a frame four inches shorter, and then been augmented by the predictable effects of four pregnancies, but also because of her sheer gravitas, whose weight I could feel even through my psychic shielding.

Mostly, it was greatly annoying. My shielding was good, and blunted it down to just a mild compulsion to be a touch more respectful to her (and also, oddly enough, be less circumspect than I normally would be about looking at her tits), and while I could and did consciously counteract that, the fact that I even had to was annoying. I didn't have to ignore Nicky's gravitas; I straight up just couldn't even feel it.

"For some reason, I don't think a bunch of corporations are going to appreciate having a very expensive event shut down by the government over something we merely strongly suspect is going to happen," I said dryly. "But hey, you wanna try telling the NFL to cancel the Super Bowl, knock yourself out."

Valerie shot me an annoyed look, and I smiled in serene smugness back at her.

Aside from being proportioned like a horny twitter artist's milf OC, Princess Vega wore a costume that was clearly loaded up with the regal pomp and pageantry of a culture I wasn't very familiar with. I recognized that she wore something like a crown- a decorative piece of metal around the top of her head- along with a variety of other decorative metal bits atop her less ostentatious white dress that, all together, reminded me of ceremonial knightly armor, to signify that she was, at least in some way, supposed to be seen as martially capable.

To my dismay- and arousal, but mostly dismay- one of the biggest metal pieces was a breastplate that, really, was little more than a particularly well-shaped rigid metal bra, which seemed more aimed at signaling that she was maritally capable as well. Boobplate may look objectively stupid, but alas, as a horny trans lesbian, I did have to admit that I liked big tits anyways, and I couldn't rightly claim that the cleavagey look didn't work on me.

Thankfully, my great personal distaste for Valerie helped me control my lusts. Aside from the whole monarchy thing- cringe at best, grounds for the death penalty at worst- there was also the part where she was my girlfriend's extremely shitty mother, and personally responsible for more than half of the bad things Nicky has experienced in her whole life.

"As Dr. Updyke has so undiplomatically put it, that is why not," Valiant continued. "We don't have the authority to cancel the Super Bowl. What we do have is the authority to... privately approach the NFL about our suspicions, and volunteer to provide additional security measures in the background to ensure that the event goes off without a hitch."

"That hardly requires authority," Valerie noted.

"Au contraire," Valiant said. "It requires a great deal of authority for the NFL to believe that we know what we're talking about and have the ability to do anything productive with our suspicions. Just because we're offering help instead of issuing demands doesn't change the fact that we need to secure their cooperation, and that requires authority."

"They don't let just anyone snoop around backstage," I added. "Only people with specific, credible need to be there. Which does pose a problem for you."

"...I'll humor you," Valerie said with a heaving sigh. "Why, exactly, do you think I don't need to be here?"

"Your general lack of information-gathering superpowers that would make you useful on your own, and your specific lack of rapport with people who do have such abilities, which would make you useful muscle-based backup for those aforementioned people," I said. "We already have Venus, who's quite capable of tearing someone in half with her bare hands. You are redundant."

"And you don't think that my presence, and the personal authority I command, will have any benefit at all to securing the cooperation of the NFL with your little operation?" Valerie asked, quirking an eyebrow. "I can tell that you have a distinctly American complaint about the stylings of my native culture, but I would appreciate you following your mentor's lead in staying professional."

"Doctor Updyke reacts poorly to people using their reputation as a bludgeon, as well as mind-altering powers in general," Valiant said dryly. "Should you find yourself unable to stop projecting your mind-altering power, I'll have to ask you to relocate and continue this meeting through telepresence."

Hah, eat shit, Princess.

"In addition, her concerns are not unwarranted, and I share them as well," Valiant continued. "You have not been part of this case up until this point, and given that Doctor Updyke is, in fact, the one in charge of it, she has every right to demand you explain exactly what you think you're doing here."

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"Pursuant to that," I added, "what exactly do you think you're doing here?"

"Ensuring that the capture of Doctor Skinner at the Super Bowl actually succeeds, rather than going up in flames because it was left in the hands of an amateur," Valerie said dryly. Surprisingly yet thankfully, she did ratchet down her gravitas, if not actually turn it off. It was at a level that she probably thought was plausibly deniable, but because Valiant and I both had psychic technology rather than any innate and organic psychic ability, we knew with far more precision. Still, this was the best we were likely to get from her, and I wasn't feeling the gravitas at all now, so... good enough.

"Mm," I grunted. "Well, unfortunately, your bloodline has used up its chance to question my competence- ask your daughter how that played out for her when she tried it. As such, while you are welcome to think I'm an untrained amateur, if you actually attempt to treat me as such, I am going to immediately put you on the plane back to whatever Masshole you crawled out of. I am a skilled professional with years of experience, much of it with this quarry in particular, and you will treat me as such. Do I make myself understood?"

"Obnoxiously, but yes. I'm already humoring you; may as well keep going."

"Furthermore, and more relevant to the actually important matter at hand," I said, trying very hard to imply that making a would-be monarch shut up and sit down- even if she had to pretend she was choosing to do so- wasn't worth my time. "Letting Super Bowl Sunday roll around before Skinner has been taken out of the equation is, itself, a failure state. A recoverable failure state, but still a failure state. As such, because I am not an idiot, I have been pursuing several different leads to track Skinner down before the possibility of a live broadcast to a hundred million people lands in her lap."

"Please elaborate on these leads," Valiant said, in a, well... courageous effort to keep things at least somewhat civil and productive.

"It's a bit difficult to do so, admittedly," I said. "They mostly amount to hoping that my on-staff druid can turn up a useful connection back to Skinner, and trace her that way. The reason I can't elaborate much further is that... well, how superpowers work is, in your opinion, fairly straightforward, yes?"

"In the sense that, when I know what someone's power is, and generally people have between one and six individual abilities that often tie together conceptually, I can almost always figure out how they did something, yes," Valiant said.

"Right. And mad science is a bit more convoluted, but ultimately, still somewhat explicable- from the outside, we're more or less just weirder superscientists who share a common foundation and simply have our own individual aptitudes, priorities, and other such things."

"Right..."

"Well, druidic spirit magic is, in fact, magic, and relies heavily on a set of metaphysics you have probably never observed or knowingly interacted with, and which I don't understand much better than you do," I said. "There's something in there about connections and resonances and all that, but I do not understand it, and that's why I have an expert who does understand it. She mentioned this morning that she had a promising idea, and was preparing a ritual circle, so hopefully, after this meeting, we'll find something useful. I'll shoot you an email after the ritual."

"Do you have my email address?" Valerie asked.

I was just about done putting up with this woman. Thankfully, Valiant's office was one that was quite easy to exit from at speed.

"No," I said simply, before telekinetically opening the great big window and leaping out, my tentacles sprouting from my back as I prepared to catch myself on the opposing building's facade.

----------------------------------------

"Who pissed in your oatmeal?" Nicky asked.

"Your mom," I said, stepping into Lisa's dedicated ritual room, in Akane's mad science sub-basement.

"Ah, that'd do it," Nicky said, nodding.

"Well, that actually might be useful," Lisa said, lighting a candle. "You're probably going to be pretty pissed as part of this ritual, just... about someone else."

"Oh?" I asked. "What the hell is this ritual, anyhow?"

"The full scope is pretty complicated," Lisa said. "And also not really something I can explain to anyone other than another druid; spoken language isn't sufficient, which I learned from like three minutes of talking to another druid on A-510."

"Which one?"

"Some catgirl named Scarlet," Lisa said with a shrug. "Apparently she's Jonas Wales' daughter?"

"Jonas Wales is married?" I asked.

"We're getting sidetracked," Lisa said, almost reproachful. "The short version, that's relevant to you is, we need to get a connection to Skinner herself, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, there's something we know has been in contact with Skinner herself, on a pretty deep level," Lisa continued. "Or rather, someone."

"Me," I said, as dots began to connect. "So, lemme guess- you need me to think about Skinner and what she's done to me as hard as I can, in order to get the best chances of getting Skinner's spirit scent out of my general melange?"

"Basically, yeah," Lisa said, nodding. "You up for that?"

"Probably should've asked before you drew the ritual circle," I noted. "What if I said no?"

"I'm gonna be honest, Roxy," Lisa said. "I knew you wouldn't, pretty much no matter what. You're only really avoidant of things that you like, for fear that you'd fuck 'em up. I didn't really ask if you were up for it because I didn't know the answer. I know the answer. I'm just, y'know. Allowing for the possibility that I'm wrong."

"...I don't like that you know me this well," I said. "However, there isn't much I can do about it-"

"Besides going to therapy," Lisa suggested.

"-so I'm just going to stand where you tell me to stand and think real hard about Beatrice Skinner," I continued, ignoring her.

"Right. Sit down in the empty central circle, please." Lisa took up her own place, standing in a smaller circle with unrecognizable sigils drawn inside its perimeter. "Facing away from me. Eyes closed... Nicky, can you give us some privacy?"

"Sure thing," Nicky said. "Done with the charcoal?"

"Leave it in the copper bowl."

"Got it."

"Now," Lisa said, her voice beginning to sound like it was coming from all around me as she worked her magic. "Mouth closed. You can't talk. You can only think the answers to my questions, to yourself, as hard as you can. Who is Doctor Skinner to you?"

I answered...

...and I found that I had a lot to say.