CHAPTER FOUR: SWEETHEART
I snuck Mia through the back streets of Sunport from the catacombs to the small, happy farmlands just outside the border to the northeast. Primer had driven us to the catacombs from our meeting place near the mayor’s office, and I had taken the twice-daily bus from the farm to the city center. I didn’t want to take Mia on the bus and risk getting looks, and she was acting a little too needy for me to tell her to pretend not to know me.
She clutched at my hand with her two small hands as I swung open the gates to my aunt’s farm a little over an hour later. I grimaced, and glanced over to the farmhouse. Sure enough, though, the telltale flickering of the TV through the living room window showed me she was relaxing on the couch for the evening, and probably wouldn’t move from her spot until she awoke for her 6am bathroom break.
“I’m gonna take you through to the barn,” I told Mia, and when she grimaced at that I mirrored her expression. “Yeah. I don’t know where else you can go, though. I’ll figure something out later.” A pause. “When we’re successful supers and earning a lot of money we can get our own place, how does that sound?”
Mia still didn’t look impressed, turning away slightly so that her dark hair obscured some of her pretty face. “I don’t want to stay in a barn, but it’s still better than where I came from,” she said softly, and then I felt like shit. Obviously I’d been intending to do it up for her so it was nice and cozy and her own special place, but the poor girl had been somewhere hellish for however long. She turned back to me and her eyes bored into mine. “Can’t I just stay where you stay? Isn’t there room?” She looked down at herself. “I’m small,” she added.
“That’s not the issue,” I said back, feeling flustered.
“I’m quiet,” she said. “I promise I won’t bother you. I just…”
She trailed off and I looked into her big blue eyes and sighed heavily. “Of course,” I said. “Of course you can.” But when I started to summon more and more recruits, then what? I’d have to make them all a little hideaway somewhere. “We just have to sneak past my aunt, alright?”
Mia nodded rapidly, still clinging tight to my right arm. I resisted the urge to kiss her right then, to show that everything was fine and I was pleased she was here with me, but I had no idea how she’d take it.
I slid my key as slow as I could into the front door and found that it was unlocked anyway, despite how many times I’d reminded Aunt Frankie to be more careful. There were thieves in the area. Some of them even had superpowers. And she had, what? A rubber spatula? A saucepan? I wished she would at least get a couple of farm dogs.
I gestured for Mia to follow me closely, but as soon as we entered she drifted over to the open plan kitchen and began squinting at the pictures stuck to the fridge. When she came across one of my mother holding me as a baby she gasped and plucked it off, and the magnet fell clattering to the floor. I gripped her slender arm and pulled her towards me, shaking my head, and held her still as I listened for sounds from the couch just six feet away.
I heard a slight snuffle as Frankie turned over in her sleep, and the low buzz of the 24 hour news, and took Mia’s hand to lead her upstairs.
“Zander, there’s someone in the house,” she hissed suddenly, yanking on my arm so that I stopped halfway up the stairs. She stared, concerned, at the wall leading to the living room and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Yeah, this is my aunt’s place. The whole farm. I’ve just been staying here while I work and save,” I told her. “You gotta be quiet, though, I don’t want any q--”
“Zand?”
I froze and scrunched up my face, maneuvering Mia so that she could be behind me, and trying to flap my hand in a way that told her to run up the stairs before we were questioned. My aunt appeared in the doorway from the living room and rubbed one of her eyes, looking confused.
She looked pretty youthful and chipper for a woman in her 60s. My father’s older sister and her husband had taken me in at 18 while I tried to finish my education -- and failed, but that’s a story for a different time. I’d enjoyed the work here on the farm, it had taken my mind off of everything from my parents’ death, to how Elle seemed even more heartbroken than me over it, to how I was never going to get any powers. Or so I had thought. Waking up at 5 to feed the goats and doing chores like a zombie until my evening shifts at work was almost therapeutic, and I didn’t know what the hell would have happened to me without my aunt.
When my uncle died I’d tried to be there for her as much as I could, but Frankie hated being alone and it was difficult to balance my life with being there for her. It had made having a girlfriend feel almost impossible when there were things to take care of at home, on the farm, and at work. I had always wished deep down that if I did get my powers, it would be one where I could split myself off into multiple copies, because I wasn’t sure how I could ever live my best life as just one person.
Funny, how this wasn’t all that far off.
“Hey, Frankie, I didn’t mean to wake you,” I said quietly, hoping Mia had taken the hint and scrambled quietly upstairs, but knowing from the light breaths on my neck that she hadn’t budged an inch.
“I’ll make us a pot of tea and you can tell me about work?” she suggested, running her fingers through her long hair, still more brown than gray. Then, even in the dark lit only by the occasional flicker of the TV through the doorway, Frankie squinted her still-sharp eyes and they landed straight past me. I closed my eyes for a long moment and then opened them, ready to lie to my aunt. I hated lying to her, but … I guessed it was time to get used to it.
“Hey, who’s your friend? Sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t see you there. Do you have a tea preference?”
Dammit, she was so nice. I glanced over my shoulder to allow Mia to show herself a little more, a false grin plastered over my face as I leaned in to brush my lips against her ear. “Go with this whatever I say, alright? Please.” I was about to lie my butt off. But I didn’t get the chance to speak before I heard Mia growl.
“How do you know my name?”
I backed away from Mia and frowned at her. The hell? She was staring, wide-eyed, at my aunt and started to shake a little. “Who are you?” she added.
Frankie tilted her head, still very sleepy, and now very confused. “I--”
“Wait,” I interrupted, holding a palm out to each woman before this escalated. It had clicked in my mind what was happening. “Frankie, this is Mia. Her, uh, her nickname is Sweetheart.” I turned to Mia. “Mia, this is my aunt, Frankie. She was just calling you, you know, a pet name.”
Frankie covered her smile with her hand and then laughed lightly. “I’m so sorry, how silly,” she said. I thanked her silently for being cool. It occurred to me that I actually didn’t know shit about Mia. Sure, she was nice to me -- I’d freed her from a place called the Inferno, for god’s sake. I had no idea how she would act around others. But my influence seemed to calm her immediately and she wrapped her arm tight around my waist for comfort, or by way of silent apology.
“No, I’m sorry,” Mia said, glancing from my aunt to me and back again. “I’ve had a really weird day.” She let out a laugh, but it sounded a little too high. I caught Frankie’s eyes and grinned widely, as if to let her know for absolutely sure everything was fine. Or that I was insane, I don’t know, I didn’t have a mirror. My heart was pounding in my throat and I didn’t know why.
“Oh, hun,” Frankie said, and then paused and glanced at us both as if wondering if that pet name would elicit a response too. I smiled wider and she gave me a puzzled look. Yes, I probably did look insane. “How about that tea, then?”
“We were just going to…” I trailed off. I’d never even asked about my aunt’s policy on girls in my room. What had I even been about to say? I readjusted smoothly as I could. “Mia is new at work and we were just going to talk for a bit. You know … gossip about the coworkers.” Shit, I was bad at lying.
Frankie, though, just smiled and shook her head. “Well keep the talking down, Zander. I have to be up early to feed the goats.”
I felt my cheeks burn an embarrassed pink, but the light was low enough that no one could see.
“Yeah,” Mia agreed. “Well we might not just talk all night. Maybe we’ll fuck.”
I froze and then slowly turned to stare right at her smiling profile. She turned back to me and then her face fell into confusion. “What?” she whispered. “That’s way more believable, Zander, you’re sneaking me up into your bedroom at night.”
I let out a heavy breath and shook my head. “Night, Frankie,” I mumbled to my aunt, who was shaking with the effort it took not to laugh out loud, and I just turned to trail up the stairs, Mia bouncing up behind me.
“I think she bought it,” she said, excitedly as we reached the top.
“You think?” I repeated, and then couldn’t help but laugh. “I was hoping she wouldn’t think that’s why you were here, Mia.”
She frowned. “You wanted to just tell her the truth? I thought you were feeling the whole secret identity thing.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t want her to think either thing.” It was maybe hard to explain. I was twenty-one, and Frankie was the furthest thing from a prude, but it was embarrassing, you know? Just something we didn’t discuss in this family. Even though our family really just consisted of the two of us now.
I shut the door behind us and nodded to my bedroom, turning on a lamp so the light wasn’t too bright but we could still see. It threw a warm glow over my unmade double bed, a pile of yesterday’s clothes on the rug, and a messy desk covered in books and sketches. I crossed the room before Mia had fully looked around and bundled up the clothes to dump them in the hamper, and then shook out the duvet and threw it across the bed to make it more inviting.
“I’m gonna sleep on the floor,” I said before she could argue. The image of her curled up at the foot of my bed, a pet like the system had called her, crossed my mind and I shook my head, uncomfortable. It would be ridiculous to treat her like anything other than a person. A guest.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she argued, simply, and sat on the end of the bed. She looked down at her clothes. “I like these and all, but I don’t want to sleep in them,” she added.
“Oh, I could summon you some comfy clothes but…” I looked around. “Well, my power kind of carves a chunk out of whatever I use. I’ll just lend you some PJs, OK?”
She grinned wider than I’d expected, excited at the prospect. “I can wear your clothes, Zander?”
Fuck, the way she kept saying my name was really hot, and I couldn’t even put my finger on why. Girls had said my name before. Girls had been in my bed before. When my aunt and uncle had been away on their yearly vacation I usually brought people over. Otherwise, I would go to their houses. I wasn’t a virgin, but I hadn’t exactly been playing the field since living out here in almost-nowhere and prioritizing keeping my aunt company. I wasn’t super frustrated about it, either, just accepted it wasn’t the right time for girls.
But now with this extraordinarily pretty girl sitting on my bed in her tank top and short skirt with no underwear -- had I really forgotten to summon her any or had it been subconsciously on purpose? -- and kind of giving me the vibe, I suddenly felt like I’d been in the Sahara for weeks with no water.
“Let me find you something.” I pulled open my drawer and chose a pair of shorts, with an elastic waistband so it would fit, and one of my t-shirts. When I handed them to her she ignored the shorts and just picked up the shirt. I wasn’t a big guy -- I’d worked out a lot more in the past in anticipation for powers I’d recently given up on, and still had some muscle mass from farm work -- and yet it totally swamped her tiny frame.
She stood up, and in one swift movement grabbed the hem of her tank top and peeled it off, over her head, and let it fall to the ground. I looked in the opposite direction as purposefully as I could.
“Zander, you’ve seen me before,” she teased. My neck was hurting with the effort to stare behind my own shoulder, and I must have looked ridiculous.
“It’s still … impolite, isn’t it?”
She laughed softly and when I couldn’t hear any more movement I turned back around, expecting her to be dressed. She stood topless with her hands covering her breasts and raised her eyebrows. “Um,” she said mockingly, “you’re being impolite.”
I looked away again and she laughed harder. “I forgot how funny people are on Earth!” She clapped her hands with glee and out of the corner of my eye I saw the way it made her breasts jiggle. I bit a little too hard down on my lower lip as I tried to will away the hard-on.
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“You were born here, then?” I asked, wanting to change the subject.
“Mm,” she replied with a nod and slipped out of her skirt. I caught another glimpse in my periphery of a neatly trimmed triangle and I really, really wanted to ask. Well, what the hell? She hadn’t exactly been cagey.
“The, uh…” I started, and then lost my nerve.
“Hmm?” she asked.
“You trim,” I pointed out, looking up at her as she let my t-shirt fall over her torso, still somehow accentuating her perky tits despite how loose it was.
She looked down towards her crotch, concealed now, and then back up at me and shrugged. “You don’t like it? I can grow it out.”
“I...” I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter if I like it. I’m just wondering if there’s a reason. You were in...” I trailed off a second time. I didn’t want to bring up that place again.
“No, just preference,” she said with a sweet smile. That didn’t really answer my underlying question -- if she had been a prisoner somewhere hellish enough to be called the Inferno, why would she focus on trimming and shaping her pubes? I guess it didn’t really matter, but it was weird, right?
“Do you wanna, um, talk about the future for a bit?” I asked. “Or would you rather get some sleep?”
I was really rattled by seeing her naked, more so this time because it seemed like she’d done it on purpose, and had even enjoyed it. I wanted to talk and strategize a little before I went to sleep to get my mind off of her body. I stood and started to pace, thinking.
“The future?” she repeated, perching at the end of the bed and resting her hands on her knees. She bounced the balls of her toes on the carpet, a smile on her face.
“Yeah, with the power I have. I want to start thinking about it. I could really be something with this. Make a lot of money. I think I want to go all in on the super thing. Are you really in? You can sleep on it, but I’d like you to stay.” I paused. “Of course, you can leave whenever you want to, you don’t have to decide now.”
“I’m not really sure I know what you’re asking. You want me to be on your superhero team?”
I nodded. “We can take contracts, get paid, do some cool stuff. I’ll make sure you have everything you want with the money we earn, and I’ll also power you up however you want, with my ability.”
A larger smile spread across Mia’s face, reaching her eyes, and it was like I was seeing her for the first time. In that moment I was glad that the system laid out exactly how loyal she was to me, because if I didn’t know that it was fairly high, I would have been concerned just then about ulterior motives.
But then the strange look in her eyes faded and I felt stupid for being temporarily paranoid. Whether or not Mia was a villain of some kind, or didn’t get on with people easily, she had been nothing but great for me and had even saved my life already.
“I’m with you, Zander,” she said. “I won’t lie to you and tell you I’m uninterested in the power element of it, as well as whatever luxuries might come with having a paycheck. But I also get a good vibe from you. If you ask me to do something I don’t want to do, I can really just leave?”
I shrugged. “I’d rather you talked to me about it first, if that’s OK? I’ll be willing to listen to your opinion. But, of course, the door is always open for you to enter and exit however you want.”
Hmm. There was really very little stopping Mia, and the rest of my army later, from reaping the benefits of my ability for, say, a month or two and then leaving and striking out on their own as individuals or groups without me. I wouldn’t bring this up yet, maybe when her loyalty was a fair bit higher, but I should start to think soon about a failsafe. Of course, they could all leave me whenever they wanted to, but they shouldn’t be able to keep all the skills and attributes I’d gifted them.
There were other things I’d need to figure out, of course. Maybe my next purchase should be someone with really high Intelligence so I could brainstorm with them. Alternatively, it could be someone with really high Strength, or even a superpower, and I could get the two of them starting to take on jobs as soon as possible. After all, defeating minions looked like the fastest way to get points so far.
“Let’s talk shop a little before we sleep,” Mia said, wiggling underneath the covers and getting cozy, propping up her head on her hand and gazing over at me in a way that made me want her even more.
“Sounds fine with me,” I said, and sat back down on the end of the bed, wary about getting too close. If she teased me any more I’d be hard all night with no relief. “So, uh, we can talk a little about your fighting style, and how you want to improve it. And then I can see how much that costs.” She nodded, looking sleepy and comfortable. In my shirt, and tucked up in my bed, which was way hotter than it should have been.
“I’m fast,” she said, eyelids looking heavy. “I like light weapons and clothes. I’m not good against any enemies who have really good defenses because I tend to attack with low power and high frequency.”
I tried to internalize that as best I could, and it seemed like I’d already made some alright decisions by equipping her with light clothing and a small but sharp dagger. It would make sense to just keep putting points into her Dexterity, then. Make sure she had as much of what she wanted as she needed. After a moment of hesitation, assuring myself I wouldn’t pull anything from the other side, I pressed my palm against the wall beside my bed and made a forge so I had something to reference as I thought, and brought up Mia’s sheet.
I willed it to tell me how many points an increase cost now, too, and to look a little more like a spreadsheet so it was easier to organize.
Mia
“Sweetheart”
Attribute
Score
Cost
STR
10
10
DEX
13
40
INT
9
10
WIS
7
10
CON
10
10
CHA
13
40
Loyalty
8 (+3 attributes)
Powers
None
100
So there was no increase cost when it came to Loyalty, of course, but that was still disappointing. I had no idea how to increase it. It looked like increasing her Dexterity was going to be pricey and I’d only be able to get it up 3 more levels anyway. If the point price increased every time the skill levelled up, that also meant I could only get her Dex up by around 2 points right now. When it was currently that, or get another recruit, it didn’t seem immediately worth it.
Then my eyes were drawn to the new field I hadn’t seen yet. Now that I’d turned it into a table with costs it must have added the things that didn’t yet exist, but were unlockable.
Powers. I leaned back. OK, now it was a choice between giving Mia superpowers and unlocking a second recruit? I reached up and rubbed my neck, unable to choose. There’d be really no telling what her power might be, if I’d have any control over that, if it would be useful, if she’d take it and leave me with nothing…
But that could be said about almost every decision.
It felt too risky now. If I made the wrong move we wouldn’t be able to get any more points. That would be something of a dead end when it didn’t need to be. I’d wait.
Turning towards Mia and away from the interface I’d pressed onto the wall had her unfreeze and smile at me.
“That’s weird, when you do that.”
“What?” I asked her.
“When you stare at a wall and your head moves all fast, like a blur. That’s your power?”
I nodded at her. “Yeah, I can see a bunch of information about you here.” I gestured to my bedroom wall. “I can equip you with different things and make your attributes like Strength and Constitution better.”
She squirmed, sleepily. “What’s better Constitution gonna do?”
I gave a small shrug. “Defense, I guess. Attacks will hurt you less. You’ll maybe be able to move around for longer, better endurance. Resistance to stuff like poisons and disease.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You can do all that, to anyone?”
“Only people I can pull in through these invisible portals I make,” I said. “The system calls them forges. I don’t know if they’ll all come from where you came from, but I think for Summoners that’s usually the way. One plane or dimension they have access to.”
Mia yawned and then apologized. “Come here, Zander. I don’t want to talk about that anymore. I’ve had a really strange day.”
“Me too,” I realized. She rested her head on my pillow, her chest rising and falling, her hard nipples clear to see underneath the material of my t-shirt.
“Come here,” she murmured again. “I haven’t had human contact in so long, I just want to feel you next to me.” She cracked an eye open to peer at me. “I saved your life today,” she joked.
It wouldn’t have been easy to refuse if I’d wanted to. I shuffled down to the pillow end of the bed and lay on top of the covers beside her. She rolled her eyes.
“Get changed, we’re sleeping.”
“I usually sleep--”
“Naked? That’s fine.”
Fuck. I got so instantly hard at the thought of sleeping next to her naked, knowing she only had on a t-shirt that ended just below the curve of her butt.
“I was going to say in my boxers.”
She closed her eyes again. “That’s fine too.”
I wiggled out of my jeans, realizing they were pretty covered in rock dust even though the walk home had shifted most of it. I pulled off my shirt too and threw them both from the bed straight into the hamper without touching the sides. I glanced casually over at Mia to see if she’d seen but her eyes were still shut, so I slipped under the covers.
While I deliberated whether or not to spoon her, touch her, wrap my arms around her in any way to provide some comfort, she made the decision for me and scooted over to rest her head on my chest. Her leg draped across mine, just under the enormous erection tenting my boxer shorts.
“This isn’t weird to you?” I asked, after a short silence. I was struggling to get totally comfortable when I didn’t know if touching her back would make her angry or upset. But I couldn’t think about anything but touching her.
In response she wiggled against me, a smile on her lips, and I felt the unmistakable brush of short pubes against my leg. I knew nothing about this girl, but I wanted to. Because something about her made me think she was just as dangerous as she was sweet.
“I want to know your story, Mia,” I said.
“Like what?” she replied.
“How did you get a nickname when you don’t have powers?”
“I was still a part of a group,” she said. “Not everyone involved in the super world has superpowers. I’m a good fighter and I do what I’m told. That made me valuable.”
I digested that for a moment. “Were you, like, a henchman?”
Her lips turned upwards even more and she nuzzled at my chest. “Mm, you could say that. That’s not usually what we call ourselves, though. Mercenaries, bodyguards. Sometimes we’d call ourselves peons, but that’s our word. Other people can’t call us that.”
It was really ridiculously hard to concentrate, as much as I wanted to know what she was saying, when her delicate fingers were running lightly up and down my happy trail, stopping at the waistband of my boxers, and trailing back up to my belly button again.
“I like your body,” she said, and there was such a hint of surprise in her voice that I had to question it.
“You do?”
“It’s not, you know, classically model handsome.” She pinched at a little extra skin around my waistline and I swatted her hand away. “There’s a really good foundation here, though, Zander. You’re broad-chested and kind of tall, and your face is really nice.” She lifted her cheek from my chest and looked at my body in a way that I should have found embarrassing, but I was more amused. “I think if you just worked on strength training you’d be really hot.”
I wasn’t offended, but it had taken the edge off my hard-on to hear it.
“I’d still fuck you, probably,” she added thoughtfully, and rested her head back on my chest and closed her eyes.
How the hell was I supposed to get any sleep now?
“Wait wait wait,” I said, and her eyes fluttered open once again, looking confused -- as if she had no idea what I’d want to follow up on. “You can’t just say that to a guy and then immediately fall asleep. Shouldn’t we maybe…”
She squinted up at me quizzically as I tried to find the words. “Sleep together and get it out of the way? I don’t know, I was thinking maybe that’d be a good idea, but don’t you think it’d be distracting since we still don’t have a clear goal?”
I left my mouth hanging open. I was going to say something like ‘talk a little more’, mostly because I was just curious, but the fact that she’d been thinking about sleeping with me, even in passing? Something about what she had said struck me as off, though.
“Mia, I … don’t want you to think you need to sleep with me… This isn’t that kind of role. We’re just teammates.”
There was a pause. “Oh.”
Shit. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way, I just want you to know that I’m not expecting anything. I’m not even thinking about that.”
Before I knew it her hand disappeared under the blanket and her fingers wrapped tight around my hard cock over my boxers. I let out a breath in surprise, and in arousal.
“What’s this, then?”
It took me a second to realize she was teasing again. I didn’t know what to say, or do. I’d never been in a situation like this before. I’d saved her from some kind of bad situation, and in return she’d saved me, and now we were looking into having some kind of career together using my superpower. That wasn’t a relationship I’d ever explored with a woman before, and I didn’t know the rules.
I didn’t move, just in case she stopped. Her fingers trailed up and down my shaft and it felt so good even though her touch was light. It really must have been too long since I’d been with someone.
“You like that?” she said, her nose brushing against my hair and her lips right by my ear. Fuck, I already felt close. If I ever actually did want to sleep with Mia, I would have to make sure I didn’t embarrass myself right this second.
I nodded.
“Do you want my mouth?”
Goosebumps pricked all over my skin. Even hearing her ask that brought me dangerously close. Her voice was suddenly throaty and sensual. Out of nowhere I pictured Lady Luck’s red lipsticked mouth, her tight leather suit, her pink tongue flicking the head of my cock. And then it was Mia in my imagination, her big blue eyes locked on mine.
“You wanna feel me too? I’ve been so fucking wet for you, walking around without underwear. You’re so naughty, Zander, for doing that to me.” She traced her tongue across my earlobe and my breathing got heavier but I remained frozen, not completely sure what was happening all of a sudden.
“Yes?” I said, truthfully, nervously, and then reached under the covers to try to find her, but she took her hands off my cock and threaded her fingers through mine, smirking.
“One day, maybe,” she said, her voice snapping back to normal as she placed my hand onto my stomach. I could feel precum leaking through my shorts. “We have a lot to figure out if we’re going to work together for a long time, Zander, but at least now I know how you feel.”
Before I could even open my mouth to answer -- though what the hell would I say? -- Mia brushed her soft lips over mine just briefly, smiled, and rolled over to fall asleep.
It took me a lot longer than her to drift off.