“Aren’t you supposed to be the artist here?”

“Art restoration,” Adele signed to Cane. “I do art restoration. A hundred years from now if this painting needs to shined up, I’m your girl. Right now…”

“Right now it’s...a respectable effort for a beginner, dear,” Lee assured her. Doing some recreational painting with friends had been her idea, but Adele’s frankly embarrassing showcase of painting skills was making her regret that. Even among amateurs, she was by far the worst. Especially compared to Luke’s surprisingly exceptional skills.

“Mine kind of looks like a butt,” Harley said, as she compared her painting to the bowl of apples on the table. “I swear it wasn’t on purpose.”

“So much for this being a cultured diversion,” Lee said.

“It’s an accident,” Harley said. “And I heard that!”

“Heard what?”

“Somebody mumbled something,” Harley said. “I actually only sort of heard it. But somebody said something!”

Everyone looked around at each other. No one fessed up to bumbling any snarky comments, though their culprit revealed itself in time. Another round of muffled mumbling emanated from the general region of Vell’s buttocks.

“Vell, is your ass haunted?”

“No,” Vell said, hoping he was correct. “Probably just butt-dialed someone. One second.”

Vell took his phone out of his pocket, and found the source of the voice to be something worse than a butt dial or a butt ghost.

“About fucking time,” Alistair Kraid’s voice said.

“Oh fuck you,” Vell said. “How did you get this number?”

“I have always had your number, Harlan, but that’s besides the point,” the phone said. Vell started scanning for the hang up button and couldn’t find it. “I hacked your phone.”

“Well unhack it, and then never talk to me again,” Vell said.

“It’s not like I enjoy this either, Harlan, I need-”

“Just smash it with a hammer or something,” Harley said. “Lee can get you a new one.”

“Wait! Fucking christ, you people. I need your help.”

“Why on earth would any of us help you?” Vell asked.

“Because by helping me, you’d be hurting Lee’s dad,” Kraid said. Lee couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“Go on,” Lee said.

“Seriously?”

“Let’s just hear him out,” Lee said. “We can always ignore him afterwards. Or not.”

That did very little to alleviate Adele’s concern, but she quieted down and let Kraid speak for now.

“Good. I’ll make it quick and try not to make any sarcastic comments about anyone while I do it,” Kraid said. “There’s a senior at your school, just about to graduate, and for his thesis he invented a new compact motor for forklifts. Five percent more effective than the current model-”

“You want us to commit sabotage for five percent more efficient forklifts?”

“We use a lot of forklifts,” Kraid said. “It adds up. Anyway, he’s looking to sell the patent. I, personally, am just going to steal the technology, and frankly there’s nothing you can do to stop me, but what you can do is stop Noel Burrows from buying it up. Less efficiency means less money, less money means less evil he can do.”

“And what about your efficiency to evil conversion?” Cane snapped. “Why shouldn’t we stop you too?”

“Feel free to try, neurologist,” Kraid said, as if “neurologist” was an insult. “Your dad’s coming by later today, Lee. Stop him if you can. Or don’t. I honestly don’t care that much, I just figured it’d be easy to get you guys to sabotage him. Have fun, and if you decide to kill anybody as part of your scheme, let me know! I’ll send poison!”

“Just stay out of my phone,” Vell demanded. The hacked device fell silent afterwards, as Kraid has presumably lost interest in this particular scheme. Vell put his phone back in his pocket and scanned the room.

“I don’t know about this,” Luke said.

“We shouldn’t do this,” Vell said. “Kraid always has some other game. We’re still trying to figure out what he was up to when Joan showed up.”

“I don’t know, seems like it might just be what it says on the tin,” Cane said. “Greedy bastard taking an easy opportunity to be a greedy bastard.”

“It’s never that simple,” Vell said. “Never. We should stay far away from this.”

“Maybe not that far away,” Luke said. “We could at least warn the guy Kraid’s trying to steal his tech. Maybe mention Lee’s dad if he seems chill.”

“We have to do more than that,” Lee said. “This is an opportunity to slow down my father’s destructive corporate functions.”

“Look, you know everyone here is down to sabotage the bloody machine of capitalism, Lee, but I don’t think forklift efficiency is the way to do it,” Cane said.

“If anything, more efficient machines will actually reduce the amount of damage your father’s company does by reducing carbon fuel emissions,” Freddy added.

“That’s stupidly naive,” Lee said. “My father’s a monster. If his machines use less fuel, he’ll just buy more machines. He doesn’t let things get better. The harm is the point.”

“You have a valid point about the inherently destructive behavior of billionaires, but don’t insult Freddy, okay?” Luke began. “I think Vell’s right. We should stay far, far away from this. Especially considering how personally you take stuff involving your dad.”

“Of course I take it personally,” Lee snapped. “It’s my father. It’s as close to personal as it can possibly get.”

“You’re only making my point for me,” Luke said.

“Yeah, this one time, let’s just not stick our nose in something,” Harley said. “I know a lot of people, so I’ll just text some random friends and see if they can warn this senior guy that Kraid’s after his shit. Then we wash our hands of it and get back to painting.”

“Can we try origami or something instead?” Freddy said. “I’m bad at this.”

The conversation turned to potential painting alternatives as Harley scanned her phone for candidates to intervene on their behalf. Hopefully a few random members of her social circle wouldn’t be accounted for in whatever Kraid was planning. Meanwhile, a dark cloud started to form over Lee’s head. In a somewhat literal sense. A combination of hydromancy and barely-repressed rage easily affected the weather on a subconscious level. Adele noticed that clouds were starting to form outside and leaned on Lee’s shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

“No, dear, I am not,” Lee said. She shrugged Adele off and stood up. “I’ll be going. I’m feeling the opposite of creative right now.”

Lee said no goodbyes as she stormed out of the room and out of sight, leaving behind a somewhat confused Cane.

“She’s feeling unimaginative?”

“Destructive, Cane,” Luke said. “She’s feeling destructive.”

“Ah, right, that makes- fuck. Without Renard around, I’m the dumb one, aren’t I?”

“Only took you a whole year to realize that, so...yes,” Luke said. “On the note of figuring things out, should someone be checking on Lee?”

“I got it,” Adele signed. “I am the girlfriend, after all.”

“You are the girlfriend,” Luke agreed. With her girlfriend status in mind, Adele set out and followed Lee. She was easy to find, considering she was just around the corner, scanning her phone and muttering unpleasant things under her breath. Adele sauntered up to her side and stood shoulder to shoulder.

“Hello darling, sweetheart, honey, beautiful, light of my life, et cetera,” Adele signed. As expected, the torrent of sweet nothings changed Lee’s setting from blustering to blushing, if only for a moment. “You seem to be in a mood, and not a good one.”

“Why would I be in a good mood? You heard Kraid.”

“Okay, yeah, your dad’s coming. But...what are you going to do?”

“I’m figuring that part out,” Lee admitted. Furious patricidal rage did not induce good planning.

“Well, I have an idea,” Adele signed. “Why don’t we just find him and talk to him. About, you know...us?”

“That’s absolutely out of the question,” Lee said. “I’ve told you, he only pretends to be accepting of the LGBT community for the publicity. He’d throw a fit if he knew I was a lesbian.”

“Which makes it perfect as a distraction, right?”

“No, dear, it could get me disowned,” Lee said. “My father is, frankly, worryingly obsessed with me producing an ‘heir’. I think he’s watched too many medieval fantasy shows. If I give any indication I’m not going to produce a strapping little Noel Burrows II for him someday, I doubt he’ll let me take over the business in the future.”

“Oh, it can’t be that bad,” Adele signed. “If he were that obsessed, you’d have a little brother.”

“Oh, he’d love for me to have a little brother. He told me so himself. Several times. Sometimes on my birthday.”

Adele cringed harder than she’d ever cringed before.

“Thankfully for the world’s gene pool, my father demo’d a new magic-powered motorcycle and a leaky battery sterilized him,” Lee continued. “Also something he told me about. In detail. On my birthday.”

An attempt at a magic-powered motorcycle had resulted in Noel’s ‘l’il Noel’ getting blasted with enough radiation to kill an elephant, a story he had told Lee in excruciating detail on several occasions.

“On second thought, maybe we could just avoid your dad,” Adele signed. “Forever.”

“If only that were an option,” Lee said. “I put up with him now so I can undo his damage later. But today, I might be able to prevent some immediate harm.”

“Right, so you’re all-in on sabotaging your dad, then?”

“Absolutely.”

“And you don’t want to tell him about us.”

“Adele, dear, I’d rather die,” Lee said.

Lee gave her girlfriend a kiss on the cheek, which kept her from noticing Adele’s fists clenching. By the time Lee pulled away, the moment of tension had passed, and Adele had a smile on her face again.

“Alright. Then we need some kind of plan,” Adele said.

“You’d be surprised how far you can get by winging it,” Lee said. She’d saved the world on gumption and luck so many times she’d stopped counting. “He’ll be coming through the teleporter soon, we can brainstorm on the way.”

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

“Okay, that would probably work,” Adele admitted. “But how about a plan that doesn’t involve breaking his legs.”

“Well it doesn’t have to break his legs,” Lee said. “That’s just an example. Could hurt him in a lot of different ways.”

“Let’s just establish ‘no physical harm’ as a rule of thumb,” Adele signed. “Or at least nothing worse than a paper cut.”

“That’s not as strict of a guideline as you think,” Lee said. “People can be cut in half by paper under the right circumstances, you know.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“I -I didn’t. I did not know,” Adele signed. “I’m not sure I wanted to know.”

Now she was probably going to remember that fact every time she handled a sheet of paper for the rest of her life. And Adele worked with paper a lot.

As Adele integrated the newfound stress of potential paper bisection into her life, the portal they were standing near began to flare. The circular construct surged to life in an octarine spiral that began to spin faster and faster the more the power grew. The beautiful display of colorful magic was brought to an unpleasant end by the finale: the emergence of Noel Burrows.

The square-faced billionaire looked around the room, expecting some fanfare for his arrival. There was a small cadre of misguided techbros who usually hung around whenever Noel Burrows arrived, but Lee had chased them all off for a “private greeting” with her father. Both for the sake of privacy and to deprive her father of having his ego stroked. He already looked disappointed that only his daughter and some stranger were here to greet him.

“XL-X8, what are you doing here?”

“Obviously I came to see you, father,” Lee said. Even with a warning of how horrifyingly inhuman Lee’s “good daughter” voice sounded, Adele still bit her tongue when she actually heard. It was like a barbie doll and a network news presenter had a baby and that baby had been raised by aliens who only mostly understood what a human being sounded like.

“I told you, I don’t have any business with you today,” Noel said. As one might expect, Noel only ever interacted with his daughter when he wanted something from her.

“But I have business with you,” Lee said. “I have-”

At this point in her sentence Lee realized she hadn’t come up with any plans that didn’t involve grievous bodily harm.

“-A surprise for you,” Lee said. “I was...going to show you something.”

“What kind of surprise?”

“The profitable kind,” Lee said, already knowing the flimsy lie would work. The way to her father’s heart was through his wallet, after all.

“Alright, I suppose I have a little time before my meeting,” Noel said. “Come on then, lead the way. Unless this person here is the surprise.”

“Oh, no, I’m not the surprise. I’m- Actually, why don’t you introduce us?” Adele signed, before indicating Lee should take the lead.

“Oh, yes, this is Adele,” Lee said. “A friend of mine.”

Not the answer Adele had been hoping for, but she’d take it for now.

“Ah, good to see you’re networking, like I told you,” Noel said. “What’s she doing with her hands?”

Lee was good at playing pretend, but even she had to take a pause for that one.

“It’s...sign language,” Lee said. “She’s deaf.”

“Oh, I was wondering why her lips weren’t moving,” Noel said. “I thought it was just a neat trick. Anyway, nice to meet you, I suppose, what do you do?”

“I’m studying art restoration.”

Now it was Noel’s turn to be unable to hide his contempt. Unlike Lee, though, he didn’t even bother, and all but sneered at Adele’s lifestyle.

“So, you, uh, what, your family owns the Louvre, or...some other museum?”

“No. No, nobody owns the Louvre, it’s a public institution,” Adele signed, unable to keep herself from correcting him. “And no, I don’t have family history with the field. I just care about art.”

“Oh, well, that’s...nice, I suppose,” Noel said. “I appreciate art. I own Impression, Sunrise, you know.”

“Uh...no? That’s in a museum in Paris.”

“Hah, sure, that’s what they want you to think,” Noel said. “People like me buy up most of the genuine paintings nowadays, get forgeries put in their place. I’m honestly not sure there’s any real masterpieces left in those museums. The Mona Lisa’s still there, I think, if only because no one’s made a good enough offer.”

Noel showed absolutely no sign he was joking. Adele glanced quickly at Lee, who maintained her stiff, inhuman smile without blinking. With no conceivable way to respond to what Noel had just said, Adele decided to change the subject instead.

“So why don’t we get going on seeing that surprise?” she signed, before gesturing away from the portal. Lee was hoping for a bit more time to think, but she knew a hasty diversion when she saw one. She tried to take the lead, but Noel Burrows insisted on being in front, even when he had no idea where he was going. He did briefly allow Lee to walk by his side, for the purposes of whispering to her.

“So, Excy, this Adele girl…”

“Yes?”

“You spend a lot of time with her? Like...willingly?”

“We’re acquainted. I wouldn’t say ‘a lot’,” Lee lied. The less her father knew about their relationship, the better, as far as Lee was concerned.

“But why?”

“She’s...good company,” Lee said. It took a bit more effort to force out the lie than usual. Trying to downplay her affection for Adele was turning out to be harder than expected.

“But she’s...you know…”

“She’s what, father?”

Noel was trying to refer to Adele’s deafness, and Lee knew it, but pleading ignorance put the burden of explaining his bigoted opinions on Noel. With no way to tastefully explain himself, Lee’s father opted to shut down the topic entirely and pretend he’d never said anything.

“So, where are we headed?”

“Oh, I won’t spoil the surprise,” Lee said. She tried to hide the delighted mischief in her voice. She had realized she knew a place that would be perfect for her father. A place that could always be counted on to cause problems. Lee opened the door and beckoned her father to step inside the Marine Biology department.

“Well, this is...fish,” Noel said. He looked around at the variety of specimens the Marine Biologists kept in too-small tanks. “What, are you planning to open a sushi place? The Burrows dynasty historically hasn’t involved food service.”

“What about the pizza delivery service?” Adele signed curiously.

“Never happened.”

“It’s on your wikipedia page.”

“Anyone can edit those things.”

“There’s five hundred eighty nine thousand google results for it,” Adele said, displaying the count on her phone for emphasis.

“Fake news,” Noel said. “XL-X8! Explain what’s going on here.”

As she was entirely unprepared to half-ass an excuse for why she’d brought Noel here, Lee hesitated for just a second. That second was long enough for rescue to arrive -albeit in an unconventional form.

“Noel Burrows!”

The booming voice of Michael Watkins was filled with accusatory anger, but Noel turned towards it with excitement anyway. He loved attention and also lacked the self-awareness to recognize when people hated him. Most people he met hated him, so he just thought it was normal.

“Do I know you?”

“Don’t play stupid now, Burrows,” Michael said. “I am Doctor Professor Michael Watkins and you damn well know it.”

The less-than-esteemed Doctor Professor stepped right up to Noel Burrows, followed, as always, by his fishlike daughter Michaela. While the fish researcher appeared to be angling for a staredown, Noel just looked confused.

“Michael...Michael...Not sure I’ve ever met a Michael Watkins,” Noel said. “Met a Michelle Watkins about twenty years back. Slept with her.”

“Impossible,” Michael snapped. Michaela’s eyes narrowed contemplatively for a moment.

“Dad, isn’t Mom’s name-”

“Impossible!”

Despite Michael’s denial, Michaela did some quick mental math, looked at Lee, and experienced a moment of horrified disgust. A revelation that quickly proved contagious, and spread to Lee.

“You sabotaged my efforts to win the 1994 Popular Science Man of the Year award,” Michael said. Meanwhile, Lee texted Harley to ask if she knew anyone who could do a rapid DNA test on short notice.

“I most certainly did not,” Noel said, with an unmistakable uncertainty to every word. He had done a lot of cheating in his lifetime, and even though he didn’t remember this specific instance, that didn’t mean he hadn’t.

“Don’t try to deny it, you cheat,” Michael Watkins said. While he had no actual evidence and was speaking purely out of a bruised ego, he had accidentally stumbled onto an entirely plausible accusation. Noel loved cheating. He cheated on popularity polls, at card games, even cheated on his girlfriend, and later wife, Granger -one specific instance of that cheating being the reason why Lee and Michaela were currently putting strands of hair into a DNA testing kit a drone had delivered.

“I’m sure you put forth a good effort, but...whatever it was I was inventing at the time, probably just had a bit more flash,” Noel said. He barely remembered the events of last year, much less 1994.

“Flashier than the world’s most extensive breakdown of the Stellate Ganglion of the European Cuttlefish? Hah, unlikely!”

“The what of the whattlefish?”

A small beep interrupted the conversation, as the DNA analyzer finished its rapid work. Lee scanned the results and breathed a sigh of relief when they showed no relation. She had enough loathsome family members already, she didn’t need Michaela for a half-sister. Michaela was just glad she wasn’t the product of an affair. If she were someone else’s kid she might have gotten taken out of Michael’s will.

Now that the horrifying possibility of sharing DNA with the Watkins had been quashed, Lee turned her phone to other purposes and quickly searched up some information. The award Michael was currently shouting about had been contested by roughly a hundred people, and Michael had come in ninety-eighth place. That didn’t rule out Noel cheating, of course, but Lee doubted he’d done so specifically to thwart the good Doctor Professor.

“Father, didn’t you win that award for developing a new magical battery?”

“That’s right,” Noel said, assuming it was, in fact, right. He had no idea.

“Please, do tell us how that happened,” Lee said. “I’m sure we would all like to hear about such an eminent scientific achievement.”

Even if his memories of that year hadn’t been lost in a haze of drug abuse, overall apathy, and general stupidity, Noel would’ve never been able to answer that question. The only things he’d ever invented were new ways to disappoint his daughter. His career was built off of taking credit for the inventions of the actual scientists and engineers under his employ.

“Well, it was a long time ago, the finer details have been lost, and, you know, I’ve invented so many new things that outdated technology really doesn’t have a place in my brain any more, right? Who’d remember something they submitted in 1993?”

“1994,” Lee corrected.

“Right! Exactly! What kind of lunatic would remember something from that long ago?”

As it turned out, the exact kind of lunatic that Michael Watkins was. He began to recite his stellate ganglion research from memory, interspersing it with accusations that Noel’s battery could not possibly outstrip the scientific marvels he had uncovered. Noel was neither listening nor caring.

“Was this the surprise?” Noel said, whispering to Lee as quietly as he could.

“No, father, this was meant to be a short cut on the way to the surprise,” Lee said.

“This isn’t exactly short,” Noel said, as Michael entered his fifth consecutive minute of rambling. “But I feel like if I walk away I might just make it worse.”

“Almost certainly,” Lee said. A rare moment of insight from her father, or perhaps Michael was just that obvious in his spite.

“Alright, I know what to do,” Noel said. “We tell Adele to leave first, and while Mike is distracted with her-”

“I can hear you,” Adele signed.

“What? I thought you were deaf.”

“I mean, not literally hear,” Adele clarified. “But I know what you’re saying. I’m right here.”

“Oh, sorry, I misspoke,” Noel said. “What I meant to say was, we let Adele leave first because she clearly knows how to handle him-”

“That is very obviously not what you said,” Adele signed.

“I’m sure you just misheard. Or mis...whatever it is you do, me,” Noel said. “Wait, shh, I think Mick’s getting distracted.”

True enough, Michael was so engrossed in his ranting he had stopped paying attention to them and started working on the part in his lecture that required visual aids. As soon as he turned his back, Noel Burrows made a break for the door, with Adele and Lee hot on his heels. Doctor Professor Michael Watkins was so engrossed in his nervous system diagrams he didn’t even notice them go.

“Wow, what a narcissist,” Noel said, once again swerving away from a chance at self-reflection.

“Sorry about that, father,” Lee said. She was only sorry it hadn’t diverted them longer. In an ideal world she would’ve liked to see Michael and her father argue with each other until the end of time. On that note, Lee concocted the idea of locking the two of them in a room and throwing away the key -and then also taking the entire room and dumping it into a river of lava. She shook off the cruel fantasy, and filed it in the unhealthy coping mechanism fantasy section of her brain, which was starting to get crowded.

“Let’s move on, shall we? There is still an actual surprise to see,” Lee said.

“And it better be good, after all this trouble,” Noel huffed. “And quick. You’re going to make me late for a meeting, XL.”

“I would not dream of it, Father,” Lee said. She dreamed about harming her father in much more drastic, violent ways. Another reason her unhealthy coping mechanism folder was getting a bit overstuffed.

“Well, if we don’t have that much time, maybe we could just talk for a bit before the meeting,” Adele suggested. “You could tell your dad what you’ve been up to. Who you’ve been spending time with.”

“No one of any interest to him,” Lee said, all too quickly.

“Nobody but Vell, at least,” Noel said. “And that Frizzle kid makes some decent stuff too, I suppose.”

“We could-”

Lee started, and then stopped herself, before suggesting they go see Freddy. He had been vehemently against the idea of distracting her father. She couldn’t ask for his help now, nor could she ask any of the people she usually turned to for assistance. The only friend she had right now was Adele, and Adele’s ability to remove old varnish from paintings quite provably did not impress her father.

“We could what, XL?”

“Oh, sorry, just being a bit scatterbrained,” Lee said. “You know how us women are.”

The fact that Noel actually accepted that as a valid excuse made Adele’s fists clench for roughly the hundredth time since she’d met him.

“I appreciate that you’re trying to help, Excy, but why don’t you just talk to your friend Belle-”

“Adele.”

“-for a bit while daddy does some real work, alright?”

Though Adele was upset by it, the condescension barely registered for Lee. Being talked down to was the least offensive thing her father put her through on the average day. She’d complained to Joan about it on more than one occasion.

‘That sounds like a good idea,” Adele insisted. She planted her feet and held her ground while Noel started to wander off.

“Adele, it’s a bad idea to leave him unattended for too long,” Lee said.

“Lee, just stop for a second,” Adele signed. “I’ve been trying to play along, be a supportive girlfriend, but maybe your friends were right. Maybe you should just stay away from all this.”

“And what, let my dad keep making things worse?”

“Lee, your dad’s going to keep making things worse no matter what you do,” Adele signed. “And he’s especially going to keep making things worse for you. He doesn’t have to be your problem.”

“He’ll always be my problem,” Lee said. “I’m still his daughter, after all.”

“You don’t have to be,” Adele said. “You said yourself, he might just disown you for coming out to him. You could do it, get kicked out. Live your own life for once.”

“And in so doing, lose any chance I have at undoing the damage my family has done,” Lee said. She could hardly dismantle her father’s empire if she got kicked out of it. It would be a long journey, but so long as she remained heir-apparent to the Roentgen company, she stood a chance of undoing all the damage her family’s empire had done.

Adele sighed heavily and took a seat before continuing.

“And that’s what you want for the future?” Adele asked. “Stick it out, stay in the closet for decades, never let yourself be happy until your dad kicks the bucket?”

“I...Wouldn’t say it’s what I want,” Lee mumbled. “But it’s what I need to do.”

“Right. Well what I want is a nice little house somewhere close to a museum, a cat...and a wife,” Adele signed. “And all I’m getting out of this conversation is that as long as I’m with you, I can’t have that. So why would I be with you?”

After about three years of looping, Lee had assumed herself mostly immune to shock. She’d seen angels, undead, extra-dimensional cats, and goddesses, all while barely batting an eye. Yet somehow it was the quiet, muted motions of Adele’s hands that finally overwhelmed Lee.

“I- I have to do this,” Lee said. “I could help so many people.”

“I know. I’m not saying it’s not the right choice. Just that it’s not the right choice for us.”

While Lee stood frozen in place, overwhelmed by her situation, Noel Burrows continued on, heedless to his daughter’s abject misery. He had never been aware of or cared about his daughter’s feelings before, and he wasn’t about to start now. Not when there was money to be made.

“Alright, let’s see about these forklifts.”

Noel threw open the laboratory doors. A single human skull rolled past his foot. The sound of the rolling bones attracted the attention of a forklift with glowing red headlights, and blood covering the massive lifting forks mounted on its front.

“Well that’s probably not good.”

An unusually canny observation, by Noel Burrows standards, but not one that saved him from being impaled by a forklift. The sudden violence got the attention of the two women he’d left behind. Adele panicked. Lee, in spite of the circumstances, couldn’t help but feel a little satisfied as Noel got speared. Then reality sank back in—and the forklift sank a fork into her chest—and Lee was miserable again.