A longer while (and a quick shower) later, they were back in their bed. Revenant all but taking over Commodore Veenstra’s old captain quarters, leading to them having their own bathroom.
It had benefits.
Onslaught was even clingier than usual. They were already pretty late about the whole sleep thing, and… well, judging from the look on her face, this wasn’t going to change very quickly.
No, she wasn’t still into it. If anything, it seems that the itch was at least temporarily scratched. It was happiness that kept her awake, not horniness.
Revenant can relate. It was… he wasn’t sure how to describe his own opinion on it. Too much of an emotional tangle. In one way, sure, it was simply pleasant (sex tended to be like this unless you’ve done it seriously wrong, or so he heard), but… to be honest it wasn’t what was really important to him right now.
What really mattered was that it was Oni. What they were once denied because of her death, now finally happened. They were together now… and it was going to stay that way. And that’s what was making him feel warmer than he used to be in years.
It was nice, if very confusing.
For now they are lying on their sides once more, Onslaught having clearly decided how much body contact (through clothes) she can achieve at the same time. His right arm is thrown over her waist, their heads resting on the same pillow.
Very, very close to each other. Close enough for Onslaught to kiss him from time to time, all while having that… adorable grin on her face.
He might be back to the ‘apathy’ thing, so he doesn’t do the same, but he lets her do what she’s clearly enjoying so much. Except…
“Oni, keep doing this and we’ll end up having to take another shower.” Revenant says. Onslaught ends up giggling at this. Someone’s just as happy as he is, but is better at showing it on the outside.
“Nah, don’t worry, I’m done for the night.” Onslaught replies. To be honest, Revenant might feel a tiny bit of disappointment over that. “It was my first time, another round and I’m going to sit funny tomorrow. Everyone’s going to see it and they’ll… ahh!”
Arm over her waist = hand being able to reach a lot of interesting places.
“You make the funniest face when you’re startled like this, you know?” Revenant comments. The hand is back where it used to be, he isn’t in a mood for another shower to be honest, he just enjoys teasing her like that.
“Jerk.” She pouts at him. “But a lovable one.”
Ah. He realized it now. The reason why he loves her so much, why he feels as if he lost half of his braincells whenever they were together alone.
Because on some deeper level, he wants to be normal. He wants to be Analyst. He is tired of being a supervillain, especially as it was all just him lashing against the world that hurt him. And now the injury was healed.
She makes him feel normal.
Nice. Way too late to bring Analyst back, though. It might have been a fake backstory, but from his perspective it was real. He has way too much baggage of memories to return to the innocent self that he used to be before Archvile and what happened to Onslaught warped him.
But… it’s for the best, perhaps. Analyst wouldn’t find a way out of this maze, he wouldn’t be even nearly as efficient in dealing with threats as Revenant was. He is completely fine with being Revenant for the world… but he should probably try to be the Analyst for those around him, like Onslaught. Just as she told him last evening.
Hopefully he won’t get a split personality out of obsessive attempts on splitting his own behavior into two different selves.
“Well then, Oni, I believe that this lovable jerk should really go to sleep.” Revenant decides to move along. “I’m going to be busy tomorrow, and… what is it?”
He can read it from her face. There is something of a flinch, hints of self-doubt. She wants to speak about something, but… isn’t sure about it. So, she needs a tiny bit of push to open up. Some… encouragement.
“I… there is something else that I wanted to talk with you about.” She says, the look on her face is suddenly all serious. “It’s about Hypothermia and Kitsune.”
Revenant sighs painfully.
“Onslaught, I think that I made it clear that you have nothing to worry about.” He says, his voice carrying all the exasperation that he was feeling right now. “Why are you still bringing this up?”
“Well, maybe I just want you to consider the harem ending?” Onslaught replies with a question. Revenant sighs again, somehow managing to squeeze even more existential pain into the motion.
“Oni, go to sleep.” He then adds. “Your horniness and a sense of humor are great, and I love them both, but not at this hour.”
He realizes immediately that he made a big mistake. The angered frown on her face is all that he needs to know.
“You think that I’m joking?” She says. Her voice is damn close to hissing now, and… it’s not normal for her. “Is that what you think?!”
“Okay, okay, I clearly misread something.” He admits. Let’s not escalate any further. “Let’s talk about it calmly. What… the hell… are you talking about?” Well, at least he is genuinely doing his best to talk about it calmly. It’s not exactly working.
“I want you to give relationships with Hypothermia and Kitsune a chance, that’s all.” Onslaught replies. She, at the very least, got actually calmer, no signs of her earlier outburst on her face or in her voice.
Revenant blinks at her in visible shock. Yeah, that was… very out of place and out of character. Like what the hell?!
“And why is that?” He asks. She doesn’t answer. “I loved you so much that I killed lots of people over that, did you seriously expect me to just… embrace some bullshit manga protagonist energy and go for the harem ending over that?! This is real life, Oni.”
“Well then, Revy.” She replies, with a hint of venom in her voice. “How exactly are you different from them? Since you told me that they’ve killed a lot of people because they loved you.”
…
Okay. That’s… he actually didn’t think of it that way. But… yeah, it kind of was like this, wasn’t it? Ugh. Now he is actually disappointed at himself for not realizing that fact. Crap.
“Let me make one thing clear.” Onslaught then adds. “I don’t like it. I want you to have your eyes on me, and on me alone. This isn’t some harem story where all the women have a personality that can be summed up to ‘MC is hot’. This isn’t a world where deciding to share someone with others is so normal that no one even bats an eye at it. But… after listening for days about how they all died for you, I realized that if you don’t give them at least a chance, I’m going to not like it even more.”
“So, what do you want me to do?” He asks.
“Give them a chance, that’s all.” Onslaught replies. “Forget that I exist for a moment, have a date with them or something. If they decide that they don’t want to continue it, I’ll be happy and relieved that I can monopolize you. If they decide that they want in, I’ll bear it. But I want you to genuinely try to make it work, because if I find out that you fumbled the whole thing because you decided to ignore what they did for you, I’ll never forgive you. Got it?”
Revenant sighs painfully for the third time during this brief talk.
***
It didn’t take a lot of time after waking up for things to become… irritating. Destro appeared out of nowhere and put a food tray with his breakfast right in front of Revenant, who was currently busy eating his share of toasts.
It seems that toasters were still a thing in the 26th Century. Praise the Omnissiah.
“How are you doing, son?” Destro says in his standard, jovial tone. Revenant mumbles something back. Destro then speaks once more, although more quietly. “By the way, I think I should congratulate you.”
“Oh?” Revenant decides to stop eating for a moment. It’ll come in handy very soon. “What for?”
“For taking my daughter’s virginity, of course.” Destro replies with a straight face. See? It came in handy. Because if Revenant had something in his mouth, he would choke to death. He still almost choked on air.
“What the fuck was that?!” Revenant lets out, while staring at the man over the table. He must have… misheard it, or something?
“Revenant, my boy, when it comes to operational planning you could run circles around me, but when it’s about talking? About diplomacy and persuasion?” Destro shakes her head. “People might try to fluster you with this sort of intel to break your composure, get a read on your emotional state and so on. Don’t fall for that. Also, language.”
… he isn’t taking complaints about swearing from a man who killed less people than he did.
“I know how it works.” Revenant replies, still staring daggers at the former politician. “I did it myself, even if I preferred the flustering techniques such as ’I know what you did last summer, and soon so shall the world’ and ‘we have your daughter, cooperate and we won’t mail her back to you in fifty installments’. I was asking about something else.”
Destro doesn’t seem fazed by the latter technique. It’s one of the few things about Revenant that he himself would prefer to be only spoken about in past tense. Especially as sometimes the other side tried to call a bluff, and proving to them that it wasn’t a bluff was… ethically compromising.
“You’re perfectly unreadable, I give you that.” Destro replies. “But I can read my daughter like an open book. She's been on cloud nine since morning and she spent the night in your quarters. I can add two to two.”
“I plead the Fifth.” Revenant replies dryly, deciding to graciously ignore the smirk on Destro’s face. “Did she mention to you that she’s trying to rope me into a harem ending?”
Oh, that actually got him. Destro blinks at him thrice in short succession, then clearly digests the information, before smiling widely.
“Well I always felt it deep inside me that legalizing polyamorous marriages should have been a core tenet of the People’s Liberation…” Revenant gives him a death stare. “Alright, alright! Sheesh, you don’t know what a good joke is! Is it correct to assume that she wants to involve Hypothermia and… Kitsune, was it?”
“Yes.” Revenant replies. “No one else is on the table, and even those two are only because of the fact that they had a crush on me and died to save my life as a result of said crush.”
“Well then, what else can I say aside from ‘go for it, son’ and ‘I’m going to have so many grandchildren to dote on, yay!’” Destro replies, the expressionless ‘yay’ sounding almost comical. Revenant glares at him once more. “Look, I don’t know much about Kitsune, but Hypothermia comes in a package with Onslaught. My two daughters are pretty much willingly conjoined twins, and we both know it. Hypothermia will be there for the rest of your life, whether you two enter a relationship or not. The only question is whether she’ll end being alone in the romantic sense of the word for the rest of her life. And the answer to that question depends entirely on you.”
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
That was… honestly a rational point. One supporting an irrational decision. He is way too sober to deal with it right now.
Also, wow. He really embraced getting Hypothermia as a daughter. That’s… nice to see. She deserved that.
“Anything constructive to say?” Revenant instead changes the subject.
“Got to meet the other Triumvirate members properly.” Destro replies. Yeah, he prefers to talk business. “Not a lot to say about the priest, except for the fact that she has bigger balls than most men I know and that trying to badmouth her will probably get you burned on a stake by her flock.”
“Oh?” Revenant asks, his brow raised. “What did she do?”
“You remember the whole ‘pirates taking trophies to their ship’ bit?” Destro asks. Revenant, unfortunately, does. “It takes a lot of balls to offer to go there willingly in exchange for some of their parishioners being left alone. The pirates disagreed, but enough people saw the event to give Lois Knight a… moral authority. Wilcher deals with management of remaining resources, Palmer issues orders to people when they are armed, but Knight has more influence than those two combined outside of those two fields.”
What is with Christians and Knights nowadays? The word just keeps returning over and over again. And they are all a potential source of troubles.
“As for Palmer, well.” Destro pauses eating for a moment. “You do know that he…”
“... isn’t who he pretends to be?” Revenant cuts in. “I realized. He claims to be an officer of a regular military, but his very presence screams of special forces. It’s like seeing General Ripper, except white instead of black, having less scars and pretending to be a regular soldier.”
“We’re in agreement there.” Destro nods. “I talked with our friendly transhuman. Palmer mentioned being happy to see the knights showing up somewhere, it sounded like something he actually experienced rather than a hypothetical situation.”
There is no one in the vicinity aside from Decay quietly fighting against a small pile of sandwiches (while grumbling something, probably a variant of ‘my wife makes them much better, I want to see her asap!’), but with how much of a secret Humility’s actual identity is, it’s best to work on developing the right habits as soon as possible.
“So?” Revenant lacks the context for that. Then again, Destro’s his political advisor, providing context is his job.
“No ethnopolity in the vicinity of New Springfield is a part of the RPC.” Destro replies. “None of them were also targeted by a crusade in the known history, if only because the RPC has little strategic interests in this subsector.”
Now… this was getting interesting all of a sudden.
“He is an outsider?” Revenant asks. Destro shakes his head.
“That’s a possibility, especially as none of the others knew him before this all happened.” Destro replies. “The transhuman suspects that… Well, the ‘crusades’ aren’t the only initiative of this kind nowadays. Most larger ethnoalliances have their own equivalent, sometimes with its own unique name and legal framework, sometimes not. It’s highly likely that he volunteered to participate in one of the APD’s liberation wars, their crusade-equivalent.”
Ah yes, an offensive war to establish democracy somewhere at the other end of the Human Space, against the will of the natives. How very… American.
“He might be a local that joined one and returned home, or someone from a larger America-descended ethnopolity that decided to move to a quieter planet.” Destro continues. “This way or another, he is dangerous. Especially if he actually saw knights arriving as the reinforcements.”
Oh?
“The RPC and APD don’t like each other?” Revenant asks. Destro shakes his head.
“I’d say that they have mixed opinions about each other.” Destro replies. “To the democrats, the RPC is a bunch of stratocratic dictatorships, some of which went backward to the point of introducing modernized versions of feudalism. Not to mention being downright reactionary rather than conservative, and being very restrictive, morality-wise. To the RPC, democracy is a mistake, an inherently weak and discordant system that breeds totalitarian regimes through its own failures and harmful ideologies by lacking a system-enforced moral system. I believe the quote that I got from our transhuman was ‘democracy without strong values is one well-funded and smartly executed PR campaign away from reintroducing slavery’.”
Ah yes, the ancient debate of freedom against efficiency, of more meritocratic rule of elites to letting the public decide. Nothing new there. It’s all so… trite in his eyes.
“So they do dislike each other?” Revenant asks. Destro shakes his head once more.
“Not exactly, if only because there are groups that they both downright hate in comparison.” Destro then adds. “That’s why they generally do not target each other with crusades and liberation wars. There is some small-scale local cooperation too, though that depends on the involved member states. The thing is, if Palmer took place in a liberation war that saw RPC’s intervention, crusade-level or not, things must have gotten bad. So either we’re reading too much out of it, or the enemy turned out more dangerous than the campaign planners assumed and they were forced to ask their buddies for help or it was a situation so bad that the RPC and APD were forced to operate together from the start. And if it’s the last option…”
Destro gives him a ‘you know what I mean’ look. Yeah, Revenant figured it out. If it was the last option, then it meant that it was the target where you only sent best of the best against, as everything other than that would just be a slaughterhouse.
Best of the best from the alliances with population counted in trillions, and number of soldiers probably in high billions.
Besides, if Lieutenant Colonel Ferris Palmer saw a bigger chunk of the Galaxy than Lois Knight and Ted Wilcher, it also meant that he was going to be much harder to fool. It was… deeply unpleasant.
Revenant sighs painfully. Why do the things just keep… wait, stop. Saying or even thinking that would just be tempting fate. Things would get more complicated just to spite him. He is used to this happening.
“I heard that we’re getting some brain implants, hmm?” Destro then changes the subject. “You sure it’s wise?”
“I’m not happy about it, either.” Revenant admits. “But if we want to avoid people realizing that we aren’t from this world at all costs. I asked Clockmaker about it, and she confirmed that we aren’t being bullshited, the locals do have those. She asked them about having designs for those, in a way that played along with what the transhumans told them about us. You know ‘ours does not work so we are considering switching to another design for some time’. and so on.”
Destro nods. It made sense, reinforced the cover-up and was informative. As it should be.
“But you are right in that it’s probably not wise.” Revenant replies, before munching on the last of his toasts. “I fear something worse than death if we accept those.”
“Someone hacking your brain and making you do horrible things?” Destro asks.
“No, connecting to some variant of local internet, discovering fandom for our comics and, for example, finding a Revenant/Decay smut fic. And then promptly dethroning our friend and becoming known as ‘Slaughterer of Trillions’.” Revenant replies dryly, prompting Destro to start laughing. “You’re laughing now. I’m looking forward to seeing if you can keep laughing if we find, say, a Destro/Archvile fic.”
Destro’s laughter is choked out in an instant. Yeah, that was suddenly much less funny. A large chunk of the internet was a distilled intellectual sewage of millions if not billions of people. What does its equivalent for trillions of people look like?
Revenant doesn’t mention the ‘Destro/Onslaught’ option, because Destro would crush the table between them accidentally.
“What, not so funny now, dad?” Revenant replies. The ‘dad’ is made to sound so sarcastic that Destro doesn’t even comment on it. “Anyway, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Any plans on seeking romance yourself?”
“Huh, where did that come from?” Destro asks, glancing at him weirdly.
“Soon before you showed up, Onslaught got a tiny bit drunk and asked Virtue to give dating you a try because she wants to call her ‘mommy’.” Revenant says. He mostly did that to see Destro’s reaction, and he wasn’t disappointed. The man went completely slackjawed for a second. “I figured out that you might have heard about it and got influenced by your daughter’s desire to obtain a mother figure.”
“Contrary to popular opinion, I can ignore something that my daughter says.” Destro replies. Uh-oh, Revenant would like to actually see that happen. “Also, I’m 56 years old. Virtue's 34. That’s a way too wide of a gap.”
“First of all, you’re 56 years old chronologically.” Revenant replies. “You were dead for three years, so you’re 53 years old. Second of all, people live twice as long nowadays, that alone changes things. In a few years you’re going to fit the ‘half the age plus seven’ equation for an acceptable age range by a large margin. And with how she dislikes people lusting for her body, I’d say that she might prefer someone of a slightly older age. To, you know, be less of a horndog.”
Destro is staring at him with complete lack of comprehension for a few seconds, before frowning.
“Wait, are you trying to fluster me with words, just like I did to you earlier?” He asks while squinting at Revenant over the table.
“Yes, and it worked.” Revenant replies, letting a wry smile pop up on his face.. “Shame that it was only for a moment.”
Destro breaks up into a loud laughter before fistbumping Revenant over the table. Ehh, he’ll get him properly some other time.
***
The next person that gets released from the tube is a scrawny teenager. Overhaul is a young man, but with proper clothes, they could easily pass for a woman. And, to be honest…
There is no point in describing Overhaul in detail. Right now, they are a scrawny young man with short brown hair, giving them a bit of a … femboy feeling. Especially once they give Revenant an odd look and grab their clothes.
Pinkish nurse outfit, the sort that seems more like a fetish cosplay than anything else, even if it actually covers most of their body completely. Revenant suddenly has questions that he doesn’t want to have answered.
There is a gasmask, too. Overhaul puts it on a strap right under their face, ready to put it up if needed.
“So, what happened?” Overhaul asks. Even their voice is a tiny bit girlish, actually. Revenant can only wonder how long this will last before the villain in front of him gets bored of it and changes it together with their body shape, outward gender identity and who knows how much more.
***
Revenant finishes his recounting of the situation (mostly the ‘we were comic book characters’ bit). Overhaul stares at him, long enough that it’s actually starting to get uncomfortable. Then, having finished the processing of the new information, they reply.
With an ‘oh’. How terrifyingly eloquent.
“We need you to get acquainted with modern medical tech as soon as possible.” Revenant continues speaking. “And then get ready to use your individuality for first aid. Modern guns are dangerous, and if we try to send people against them we’ll only suffer needless casualties.”
“Sure, I can do that.” Overhaul nods while waking-up from the brief stupor. They’ll go through the existential dread settling in (mandatory for all new recruits) a bit later. “Clockmaker’s around?”
“Yes, but she is now a villain lieutenant for our favorite rogue AI.” Revenant replies. Humility standing right next to him, says nothing. Overhaul raises one of their eyebrows, so Revenant makes an ok gesture over the table, before pushing his index finger through it a few times.
“Wow, that’s disgusting.” Overhaul says emotionlessly. “I guess I no longer work for Clockmaker then. Shame, I remember working for Halworth Industries rather fondly. Anything else?”
“Can I at least know their individuality, please?” Humility asks. Yeah, correct question, although asked a bit too late. Is Humility less smart than Revenant assumed it to be, or is it getting sloppy for some reason?
“Reshape.” Revenant replies. “They are capable of reshaping organic matter on touch. Overhaul can heal injuries instantly, they can even bring you back from the death for as long as less than thirty minutes passed since your death, though you’ll be in a resurrection stupor for up to several days. Also a masterful creator of crimes against God and natural order thanks to their ability to alter the body of living organisms down to the genetic code.”
“Also before you ask…” Overhaul decides to contribute. “... I carry a mask around because I suck at combat, but it doesn’t exactly matter when I can change my hair into a nerve gas cloud or something like that.”
“I see.” Humility says nothing about meeting a person that can shape life at a touch. “Backstory?”
Revenant manages to not cackle about it.
“Overhaul, your backstory?” He asks instead.
“I was a poor child and an orphan.” Overhaul replies without batting an eye. “Archvile picked me up as a part of his plan of organizing some proper underground hospital for the villains, and had me go through appropriate medical education to get there. I never exactly liked it, but I didn’t have a lot of choices in that field. I focused on the ‘healing’ part, ignoring the profession of people I healed to make it more palatable in terms of ethics, and… ”
“Overhaul, your backstory?” Revenant repeats his earlier words. No need to wait for more words.
“I was a medical school graduate.” Overhaul replies, once again without batting an eye. “Archvile decided to recruit me and, to be honest, I didn’t need a lot of convincing when he described to me the individuality I’d get. I also had some rather illicit interests, despite coming from a good family, and this felt like a good way of financing those. Also, I simply loved the feeling of power of shaping life that I gained, it was as if I was a god for my victims.”
Revenant glances at Humility, who looks back at him.
“We’re at 72 backstories by now.” Revenant announces dryly. “Pick the one you like.”
(***)
Aand... we have Overhaul.
Very much not like the one from BNHA lmao. But I do admit I was inspired by their quirk.
The AI Generator has some issues with gasmasks, by the way.
Obraz [https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1029465796570783838/1082817710066507826/00348-36881sk.png?width=651&height=651]