“I’ve succeeded in hacking our friend here.” Humility comments some time later. Interrupting Clockmaker’s little moment of orgasmic bliss. Which, by the way, meant the supervillain sticking some improvised tools into desiccated remains of alien robots. Not anything even remotely kinky.

Revenant is surprised that Clockmaker’s first reaction to the robot wasn’t ‘hey, wanna fuck?’. She is uncharacteristically restrained. Must be the existential dread thing settling in. They are all going to have a moment of joint meltdown once they deal with the looming threat of imminent death.

Thankfully, the resurrection machine carried over her cybernetic parts. That was both making fun of the laws of nature and highly reassuring.

The Vermillion/Gamma command bot is beeping quietly and scarcely in the background. Revenant has a feeling that if it was a human, he would be groaning in pain, his strength entirely spent in his acts of futile resistance.

“Is that a ‘good and bad news’ moment?” Clockmaker asks quickly. “Please tell me that it’s a ‘good and bad news’ moment.” Yeah, she excelled at those, for some reason. Really liked that phrase.

“Yes, it is a ‘good and bad news’ moment.” Humility replies. Clockmaker looks happy. Yeah, those two are totally going to fuck soon. “Good news is that we aren’t dealing with a Vermillion Gamma capital ship.”

It stays silent for a moment. For some reason, Revenant feels that they won’t like the reason for it.

“And the bad news?” He decides to ask, regardless.

“We’re dealing with three capital ships, several escort vessels and some troop transports.” Humility replies, prompting Revenant to groan painfully. Because of fucking course it wouldn’t be that easy. Was anything in his life ever easy?

He even failed at dying, of all things.

“I thought that the Vermillion Gamma is lacking in numbers and doesn’t deploy the capital ships often,” Revenant asks back. He lacks intel about the tactics of the space battles, but he can guess at least some things from the names of ship classes alone.

“Because it doesn’t.” Humility replies. “However, this was an exception. A larger raid fleet was tasked with an assault and harvesting of an outlying human colony. Never arrived, due to encountering Visitor en route to their target. When they woke up, they were merged into this gigastructure.”

They are probably as confused about being there as Revenant & Co were, he concludes. Of course, this is still a ‘kill or be killed’ situation, so he isn’t going to pity them. They are an enemy, after all.

“What’s the enemy strength we’re talking about?” Decay asks. Straight down to business, good. They need someone like that, especially when Revenant gets too invested in learning general things about the world.

“Hard to say.” Humility replies. “The ships were scattered throughout this mess, only some of them managing to re-establish contact with each other. The whole fleet had anywhere between five hundred and six hundred thousand drones, upward to fifty thousand soldiers and at least a few hundred tanks and other combat vehicles.”

Well, that’s a big oof. But Revenant doesn’t have the time to respond, as Humility continues speaking.

“However, we’re barely a blip on their radar.” The AI says. “Vermillion Gamma fleet is currently engaged in heavy combat against combined forces of the BANDIT/BLACK ALPHA and BANDIT/BLUE GAMMA to one side, MENACE/SILVER BETA to another and, apparently, has already lost a cruiser to NIGHTMARE/BLACK manifestation event, meaning that it’s currently too busy trying to survive to attempt to squash us seriously. Though we can expect more scout parties, at least until we teach it that it’s just wasting its force for no gain.”

… okay, he has to ask that question.

“How many threats are there, exactly?” Revenant asks, prompting Humility to move its faceplate towards him. “Because it sounds as if Mankind out there has issues.”

“If you sum up the estimated numbers of BANDIT/BLACK ALPHA, BANDIT/BLUE GAMMA, MENACE/SILVER BETA and MENACE/VERMILLION GAMMA, you’ll get perhaps ten million soldiers and a hundred capital ships.” Humility replies calmly. “Mankind’s total numbers, depending on how much time has passed since Visitor swallowed me, might be approaching one hundred trillion people, most of which got at least a basic combat training, and probably a million capital ships.” It pauses for a short while, before speaking again. “Make no mistake. We’re facing armies of terrifying aliens, eldritch abominations and monstrous humans that are more than capable of wreaking more havoc than you did in your story… but to Mankind as a collective, they are pests. That would be utterly annihilated within months if they tried to take and hold any part of the Human Space.”

He can imagine that much. Space is massive, and it’s much easier to find an inhabited planet orbiting a star (that’s clearly visible) with the naked eye than to find a reclusive space station serving as a vocal point for, say, space pirates.

“One hundred trillion? By year, what, 2570-something?” Decay asks, staring at the AI in surprise. “Do the people out there, like, don’t remember what hobbies are?”

“Colonies need to be self-sufficient as fast as possible, and with modern technology, erecting new cities and industrial facilities quickly isn’t a problem. Staffing them, with the issues locals have with excessive automatization, is.” Humility replies. “Aside from the earliest colonies, the main prerequisite to becoming a colonist candidate was the readiness to have as many children as possible. Add vast spaces to take over meaning a lot of areas to expand to, improved healthcare, prolonged lives and fertile periods, technology making childcare much less burdensome, countries realizing that they need large populations to be able to defend themselves and putting as much money as they can into demographic growth stimuli. Detract the casualties of wars and other disasters. You get this. Anyways, can we return to the main subject?”

They all nod, minus Clockmaker who was back to enjoying herself by sticking things into a dead alien. It was an interesting thing to know. A part of Revenant can’t help but imagine having children after settling in this new world (no points for figuring out who was the mother in his thoughts, damn it). But in the end…

… yeah, it’s not going to be important anytime soon.

The fact that apparently Mankind’s most potent weapon against a Galaxy full of genocidal AIs, evil and monstrous aliens, and full-blown eldritch abomination was impregnation fetish was morbidly hilarious to Revenant.

“Before that, what’s your threat designator?” Onslaught suddenly says. “With the whole ‘Slaughterer of Billions’, I can’t imagine you not having any.”

“BANDIT/GRAY ALPHA.” Humility replies. “Gray is for all the rogue AIs of human origin. Alpha is because I’m the first true rogue AI. Anything else, or can we get to the subject?”

Onslaught nods. Revenant congratulates her in his thoughts. If they ever find any working computer from the original inhabitants of this system, it’s one more moniker under which they can look for information about Humility.

Revenant doesn’t trust the AI. At all. At fucking all.

“Do you want me to summarize the threats I mentioned?” AI then asks. Tempting - who doesn’t love a good mundane exposition? But…

“Are any of them even remotely close to our current position?” He asks instead. Humility shakes its head. “Then it’s not important right now. And if I start hearing about it, it’ll be like jumping into a rabbit hole and we’ll be at it for days.” Decay and Onslaught both chuckle. Yeah, they know how… persistent in his search for information he can be. “Let’s focus on things that are presently important. Clockmaker?”

“Yeah?” She stops defiling the corpse in front of her and looks back at him questioningly.

“We need some basic equipment asap.” He replies. He really feels naked and useless right now. “Anything you can offer us?”

“What, with only the most basic tools I have right now?” Halworth replies with a question. “I’m an engineering genius, not a miracle maker. In a few hours, I should be able to get you some proper knives and maybe a working portable plasma cutter or two, but I’ll need at least one for myself. Give me a day or two and I should refurbish the projectile drone remnants into a working rifle, but don’t expect it to be pretty or ergonomic.”

Thankfully, some of her cybernetic augments doubled as tools or potential tools if you were to get creative. Those carried over. Not a lot, but… it’s much better than nothing.

“Grenades or explosives?” Revenant asks back.

“Maybe.” She replies, before returning to poke the dead drone she brought over to their improvised planning room. “I’m still familiarizing myself with their tech, but I think that I should be able to rig a bomb out of their power sources. if given some time and allowed to blow up a few for testing. Why do you ask?”

“To be honest, no particular reason.” Revenant replies. He is actually honest about it. “I just think that it’s always better to have a bomb than to not have it.” Or at least that’s what he learned out of his supervillain career.

“I’ll work on it, then,” Clockmaker replies. Seems like she agrees with him about it. She, too, learned a lot as a supervillain. “What should be the priority?”

“Plasma cutter for you, then the knife for me, then the gun also for me, then either another gun for Humility or a bomb.” Revenant replies, Clockmaker nodding to him. Giving her a better tool should improve her production speed. “Decay, help her with carrying stuff around, we need it done as soon as possible.”

“No problem, boss.” Decay replies. It’s nice to be listened to. It’s not nice to barely have any resources available to you.

Ugh.

“Pick any empty room nearby as your improvised workshop.” He then says towards the Clockmaker before suddenly sighing painfully. “Wait, why am I even telling you this, you know well enough what to do.”

Clockmaker shrugs. They are used to working together. She was something between an independent supervillain and his villain lieutenant, being a part of the VAA’s Board of Executives, saved from the latter only because it was technically a team-up of independent villainous organizations. just with its own organizational structure.

It included remnants of the People’s Liberation Front. Which, in turn, was a similar team-up of several villainous organizations with its own organizational structure, previously led by Onslaught’s father.

It was the supervillain equivalent of a Matryoshka doll, really.

“Fine then, do whatever you want.” Revenant replies, before turning towards Humility. “Do you get any topographic map of the area out of that bot?”

“Yes, but I’m still compiling it, the alien programming is… different.” It replies. “What are you looking for?”

“Reasonably large open space.” He replies. “Doesn’t have to be open in a traditional sense, since I can imagine sunlight to be a scarcity here. But we need a place to use appropriate individualities to produce at least some food, or we’ll all starve to death or end up having to resort to cannibalism.”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“I’ll look for it.” Humility replies. “Anything more?”

“If the bot knows about a place that could work as a reasonable regular base of operations, preferably nearby, it would be pretty great.” Revenant replies. “Something to garrison many people in, for an extended period, in reasonable comfort.”

“Wouldn’t we want to keep a garrison around the resurrection chamber?” Humility asks back. Revenant nods, it’s a very valid idea, but…

“We naturally do.” He replies. “But this place is… scarcely livable. I intend to move base elsewhere, but close enough to be able to put some guards around the chamber. They would spend a few days here, then go back to the main base once their replacements would arrive and so on. We would also put some tunnel blockades and sensors to make sure that we only need to keep the garrison to a reasonable minimum without endangering the chamber, but… well, that’s for the future.”

They don’t have any sensors, nor the cables needed to connect them to an alarm network that actually works in this sort of environment. But, eventually…

“Sure, I’ll look for that.” Humility nods. “Whom should I bring back next?”

“Thorn.” Revenant replies immediately. Clockmaker gives him a weird look. Yeah, she expected him to bring back Demiurge, but… that’s not how the game goes. “We need to figure out a way to produce food, after all.”

“Boy if she ain’t going to be pissed.” Decay comments while shaking his head. Yeah, Revenant knows that, thank you very much.

In the meantime, it was free time for Revenant.

***

And not just Revenant.

Should he even be surprised by the fact that the moment he sat on a chair to gather up his thoughts about what happened, Onslaught decided to sit on a chair right next to him? Probably not.

A part of him is surprised that she didn’t try to sit on his lap instead.

He ended up helping her with the chair because it was clear that it wasn’t easy for her. Then, he just watched in silence as she sat on it, before asking the question he expected her to ask.

“So…” She says. “... Chronoshift, was it?”

Revenant sighs. She was persistent. Stubborn, even. Especially once she set her metaphorical sights on something. He blames her father, he would find a way to conquer the stars for her if she asked, and this taught her on some deeper, subconscious level that if she continued to pursue something, she was going to get it.

“Yes.” He just doesn’t feel like avoiding this subject anymore, because it was going to come up eventually. “Look, why are you so much into my fake backstory?”

“Because, you dummy, I missed out on several years of your life.” Onslaught replies. “And that pisses me off immensely. And since I think that knowing what happened to you is crucial to figuring out if you changed somewhat from the man I loved, I want to know.”

“So, it’s the past tense now?” He asks back, glancing at her. She doesn’t reciprocate, obviously.

“C’mon, talk to me.” Onslaught says instead. “I’m pissed off enough after staying quiet for the whole day, due to, you know, not being a tactical or strategic mastermind, just the girl that destroys your enemies for you with a smile on her face. Don’t make it worse.”

Fine. As he said, he can’t avoid the subject eternally.

“She’s my daughter.” He says the words.

To be honest, he expected her to fall off her chair, but he clearly underestimated her sense of balance.

“Okay, first off, she’s our daughter.” Onslaught then replies. And thus… the talk leaves the field where Revenant expected it to stay.

“Stop parroting Cripple with their communism jokes.” He shoots back, making her smile wryly. “Also, she’s my daughter. You were dead when I adopted her, excuse me for putting it that way but you weren’t…”

“And second off, I should kick your ass for adopting a child without asking me, your goddamn fiancee, about my opinion!” She then says, ignoring his attempted interjection and sounding utterly exasperated. “I mean, who does that?!”

“You were dead when that happened!” Revenant retorts (loudlier than he wanted), staring at Onslaught in shock. “How was I supposed to ask you about it?!”

“Have you at least tried?” She replies with a perfectly serious expression on her face. “Don’t you think that adopting a child without at least trying to contact me through an ouija board was downright rude?”

This time he just stares back at her, slackjawed, until her super-serious expression is finally broken, and she snorts loudly before starting to chuckle. After a few more seconds of staring, he starts chuckling too.

It… doesn't last for long. On his side. Because… Yeah, other feelings show up. The ones he was bottling in for a while now. The ones that, in his opinion, didn’t befit a supervillain, especially not one of his infamy.

“I-I missed your sense of humour, O-Oni.” He says, cursing himself for letting his voice betray him again. “I m-missed you, and…:”

She wastes no time hugging him. He hugs her back.

“I missed you too.” She whispers into his ear.

“From your perspective, I was gone for what, a week?” He whispers back.

“So what?” She remains undaunted by his logic. “That was enough time for me to miss you, you dummy.”

Enough of showing his vulnerable side. Even when he’s showing it to her, he… just doesn’t feel right. He pulls back a little, just enough to be able to look at her face from up close. Her eyes are closed.

“You do realize that it didn’t really happen?” He asks. From his point of view, the fact that she is seemingly capable of ignoring it completely is… both incredible and somewhat worrying. “We weren’t really engaged, it was all just…”

“Then let’s tell all of that a juicy ‘fuck off’.” Onslaught cuts in. “And let’s agree that none of that was really binding, just a … dream of sorts that we both shared.”

He is staring at her for a few long seconds, Onslaught staying quiet too. Until she sighs loudly.

“This is the moment when you say some variant of ‘now that we decided to ignore the burden of our backstory, I can without any further ado ask you to be my girlfriend because you’re the cutest, sexiest and smartest girl I know.’, Revy.” Onslaught then announces (with her best super-serious expression), making him sigh painfully.

Because of course that was her plan.

“You’re a walking definition of stubbornness to me, Oni.” He replies, just to see a wry smile bloom on her face.

“If I wasn’t as stubborn as the most stereotypical donkey ever, we wouldn’t even get to the love confession stage.” She replies dryly. “You want me to talk about how many months we’ve wasted until you realized that yes, I was actually into you? Because, apparently, you kept telling yourself that there is no way that I like you.”

He shivers a little. Yeah, that was… not the part of his backstory that he was particularly proud of. Probably that jerkass Author showcasing how fucking innocent and nice he was before Onslaught’s death kicked him off the ledge.

“Look.” She then says, her face suddenly serious. Just not the mockingly super-serious. “I’ll be honest with you. I love you, even despite all that happened. Do you know why? Because I loved Analyst. He might have been a character in the story, but he had all the character traits that I find nice and attractive. Just the backstory that made me connect with him on an emotional level. You might have changed your name and are no longer a character in a story, but in my eyes, you have the exact same character traits.”

He opens his mouth to protest about it, but she doesn’t let him.

“Before you say anything, I find how confident you become when dealing with other people surprisingly enjoyable to witness.” She says, before letting a faint mischievous smile pop on her face. “Not to mention, quite hot.”

… he really is supremely weak to her, isn’t he? He proves it right here and then when their lips lock (to Onslaught’s short-lived surprise). Although it doesn’t last for long before he pulls back.

“I think…” He then says, Onslaught smiling at him while licking her lips. “... that your terms are acceptable. The whole ‘starting from scratch’ thing. Because… well, I do admit that I do like spending time with you.” He pauses for a second before sighing. “Even if I do feel like I’m strengthening your false belief that enough stubbornness can solve all your problems.”

He… might just need her to stay sane and productive, really. Revenant from the final parts of the story… wasn’t in the best state. He really doesn’t think that he could stay living like this for an extended time after being resurrected if Onslaught wasn’t there.

“See? Finally, we’re getting somewhere.” She then says, smiling at him triumphantly. “What would you be doing without my firm hand to guide you, eh? Analyst?”

“Most certainly not being busy asking myself questions about the genesis of a certain… unexpected choice for underwear colour.” He asks dryly, finding perverse pleasure in Onslaught suddenly going slightly… red. “Bold red, really? And don’t get me started on the design.”

It doesn’t last for long before she is smiling like the mischievous imp she probably is once more.

“Let’s just say that I was looking forward to hearing your startled reaction.” She replies, her grin somehow growing wider and wider. “The one in the middle of the very interesting process of you taking it off.”

That, somehow, sounds like something she would do.

***

Clockmaker, to be honest, was still processing the whole revelation. Thankfully, she could multitask and do it simultaneously to her attempts to dismantle one of the killer alien robots into usable parts.

In the meantime, she had another thing to think about. Or, to be more honest about it, another thing to thirst about.

An actual, sapient Artificial Intelligence. A post-Turing one, one that with a proper sound emulator (it needed more emotions) could easily fool you into thinking you were talking with a human being.

Well, if you didn’t see their body, that was beside the point. Besides, the… shape was rather aesthetically pleasing. Enough to make her eyes drift to it quite regularly. The design itself…

She just had so many questions about its inner workings! She was trying to make a truly sapient AI for so long and it just didn’t want to work! It was infuriating! It was frustrating and…

And then she suddenly feels metal hands on her shoulders, holding her with enough strength to basically pin her to the floor. She bends her neck enough to see Humility standing right behind her.

“I heard some slightly worrying things about your preferences, Clockmaker.” The AI says. “I don’t have to specify which ones, I presume.”

Oh, fuck you, Revena… or, wait, it could be Decay too. Wait, how to get out of this pinch? She is sure she can find the right words, she’s a supervillain! Sure, she might have lost her entire organization (temporarily) and it was her dragon, Demiurge, that was doing most of the human-to-human interaction for her, but…

“I think that it would be a good idea to discuss that subject and our future cooperation.” Humility continues, making Clockmaker blink at it in surprise. “In detail. When others go to sleep, perhaps?”

Wait. Waaaait. It doesn’t, like… it’s not trying to… hit on her, right? She couldn’t be so, errr, lucky, yes? It didn’t even look like it had the capacity for that. It was an AI of the Robotic Overlord type! Basically, Skynet uploaded to a single body!

“Uhm, errr, wait, are you…” She feels like she is on the verge of being publicly humiliated (where’s Demiurge when she’s fucking needed), but… “Are you hitting on me right now? But, err, you’re an AI.”

“You could say that we have a common tendency to enjoy the look of humans on their knees, Clockmaker.” Humility replies.

Oh. Oh. Ohhhh. She has no idea how’s it going to work, but she’s going to get so fucking laid.

Possibly.

Just in case, that short-range EMP blaster in her right-hand stays charged up. She might be thirsty right now, but she isn’t stupid. And she doesn’t trust the unshackled AI without proper leverage.

***

“Everyone’s having their fucking waifus around…” Decay groans to himself while carrying a bunch of damaged robotic parts towards Clockmaker’s temporary workshop. “... and here I am, working my fucking ass off without having anyone to get that hugging mood boost from.”

Oh, the things he is ready to bear for Revenant.