The next morning (by convention), Revenant wakes up lying on his back in his bed, a completely naked Hypothermia lying right next to him, clinging to him under the quilt. She was warm.
There is something in the warmth of human bodies that makes it different from any other warmth. Is it the fact that it’s pretty much at the same temperature as your own body? Neither too warm nor too cold, just… perfect?
This way or another, he loves it. He isn’t sure if he can go back to sleeping alone. It’s… way too nice.
Before his death, he only slept in one bed with someone a few times. Each time it was Chronoshift, typically when she had a nightmare. He didn’t have particularly good memories from those days, mostly due to Chronoshift being frightened at the time.
It was different right now.
He moves to his side, gently and delicately, facing Hypothermia. She continues sleeping soundly. Not in a position to suppress her emotional expression out of Pavlovian instincts instilled into her by her piece of shit parents. As a result, Revenant gets to enjoy a rare sight of smiling Hypothermia.
It’s not a faint one. More like, a healthy and wide one. Someone was having nice dreams, it seems.
Absolutely adorable and heartwarming.
He wraps his arm over her side, Mia (still asleep) cuddles closer to the source of warmth right next to her. That’s it. That’s bliss. That’s the sort of thing that he wants to do once he retires.
Slow life away from troubles. Focus on his family life and probably some gaming with Decay, instead of trying to kill people and blow up countries. Calm, simple and quiet.
That’s when Onslaught quietly rolls into the room through the bedroom’s door (Revenant suffering from the sudden realization that she knew the code to his bedroom), her body covered with hints of her individuality, probably to let her navigate the area with her enhanced hearing.
Revenant closes his eyes, hoping - desperately hoping - that she was going to fall for it, thinking that he is asleep. Regretfully, it didn’t matter. He realizes that when she uses her individuality to propel herself into the air, not high, but just enough to land herself right on top of them.
Revenant expected the attack, so he reacted with a loud and pained sigh. Hypothermia was clearly freaked out by being instantly shaken out of her own happy dream place, but realized what was happening BEFORE blasting anyone with her ice.
“So, how was it?” Onslaught is lying on the quilt on her belly, right on top of them but also perfectly between them, her arms spread around as if she was trying to stop them from crawling away from her to the sides. She was grinning towards them, with her typical impish look. “In two words or less!”
“...I’m happy.” Hypothermia mumbles. Whether that was two words or not, it seems to have described her opinion properly. At least judging from the look on Onslaught’s face.
“Stress balls.” Revenant says dryly. Hypothermia glances at him before blushing, just as Onslaught’s smile grows even more wry.
Yes, he was a big fan of Hypothermia’s upper body’s… bountifulness. He doesn’t discriminate, he loves Onslaught and her slim body-built has its own charm. But… yeah.
Wait, how did the joke go?
What’s the common thing between toy railroads and women’s breasts? They were both made for children, only to become the favorites of grown-up men.
Revenant relates to that.
Sure, he had to be way more gentle than with actual stress balls, but in his opinion, it worked way better than them.
“Looks like my grand master plan has worked splendidly!” Onslaught grins. “You’ve gotten closer. Even closer than I expected! Am I a villainous mastermind now or not, Revy?”
“Yes, yes, you are.” He replies, trying not to groan loudly. “You’ll get a celebratory cookie once we’re out of the bedroom, for as long as I don't get immediately assassinated by Songbird.”
The ability to completely suppress the sounds you made while being able to detect movements of others at the distance through a massively improved hearing made for one terrifying assassin. There was a reason why Revenant preferred to have Black Knight up and going.
No, Black Knight had no magical ability to detect Songbird sneaking around. But if she did kill Revenant, Black Knight would carry his corpse over to Overhaul for a quick resurrection while brutally slaughtering or maiming everyone he ran into on the way.
And if he didn’t manage to get Revenant back to life, he would then massacre the people involved in the murder attempt, up to the mastermind behind it, simply because they gave him a reason to do it and it was all that he needed to get violent (also whoever killed Revenant was bound to be a good sport).
He was to being a bodyguard what a Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine was to nuclear weapons. He was just that sort of person.
It was also one of the pros of having him around.
“You better make the cookie yourself or it won’t count as a present.” Onslaught says before pouting at him. The depths of how incredibly spoiled she is never ceases to amaze him. “Anyways, it’s great that everything worked out between you two! And wow, Thermy is practically beaming right now. It seems that all my attempts to make her smile like this failed, because what she truly needed the whole time was a rough, vigorous…”
“Okay, stop.” Revenant cuts in before Hypothermia can faint on them both. “First of all, it was cuddly and gentle rather than rough, second of all, less teasing please. Or we’ll have a fatality here.”
Hypothermia most certainly seemed to be well on her way there. Her only hope for survival was fainting before hitting the ‘sudden death’ point, preventing further intake of the deadly poison known as ‘embarrassment’.
“Alright, alright.” Onslaught quickly changes the subject. “So now that my beloved Revy is banging both me and my older sister, we really gotta establish some ground rules, alright? It’s best to do it as quickly as possible.”
“Can we at least leave the bed first?” Revenant asks, prompting Hypothermia to nod quickly.
“Nope.” Onslaught is relentless. “C’mon, it shoudn’t be that hard or time-consuming. Thermy, how about this - I get Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, you get Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and on Sundays we hang out as a group.”
“Deal.” Hypothermia says before nodding. “How do we share if Kitsune joins?”
“I get Mondays and Thursdays, you get Tuesdays and Fridays, she gets Wednesdays and Saturdays, while Sundays are a group day.” Onslaught announces. Hypothermia nods her agreement. “See? I told you that it wouldn’t take long!”
“Sundays for group sex?” Revenant decides to comment. “Are you sure that this is a good idea?” He isn’t exactly comfortable with it, besides, worst case scenario Thorn will shoot him for doing unholy things on the Lord’s day.
“Wha, no!” Onslaught quickly backtracks. “Look, err, doing this alongside Thermy would be just… weird? I mean, she’s really like a sister to me, and… Sunday would be just us hanging together. Also, if you need a day off just say it, and it’s completely fine, you're a busy man after all. Also, I guess it wouldn’t be a problem to swap days for as long as we would have each other’s agreement to that, right?” She then says towards Hypothermia, who nods back.
“Deal from my side too.” Revenant decides to pitch in his agreement.
“Of course…” Onslaught then adds, an impish smile returning to her face. “... while we’re not really interested in certain types of group activities, I’m sure there can be rare exceptions. Coincidentally, I don’t know the current date. How long until your birthday?”
Sigh.
She really was doing whatever she wanted, didn’t she?
Hypothermia lifts her body up a little and grabs her into a hug. Probably out of general happiness for finally getting together with Revenant (or perhaps to strangle her over the group sex suggestion). Except…
“Wow, how bold of you, Thermy!” Onslaught announces, while hugging her back. “Hugging me out of the blue, completely naked, I might get the wrong idea out of it!”
That’s when Hypothermia realizes that she wasn’t wearing anything, so she freaks out, pulls back and dives under the quilt. A moment later they all hear a snap (barely, Onslaught is laughing too loudly), and the otter onesie lying on the floor starts floating towards their bed, before disappearing beneath the quilt.
Yes, last evening she came into his (their?) bedroom wearing an otter onesie. It was almost ridiculously adorable.
***
Revenant is in the middle of a solitary breakfast (Oni grabbing Mia to get the spicy details of the last night out of her), which lasts until Destro appears out of nowhere and sits in front of him, grinning like he tends to for most of the time.
“Well, I think that congratulations are in order.” He says, Revenant suddenly starting to regret his life choices. Alas, he had his mouth full and couldn’t tell him to stop in time. “You’ve successfully claimed the virginity of another daughter of mine! Truly, a splendid achievement.”
Urgh. How does he even know? Is this some sort of dad power? Did he wake up with a sudden spike in bloodlust directed towards Revenant and immediately understood that it’s the standard ‘dad is slightly murderous towards his daughter’s boyfriend’ thing?
“I’m not even going to comment on that.” Revenant replies, Destro’s jovial smile somehow growing wider. “Are you going to adopt Kitsune too? Just to score a bingo and finally force me to call you my father by eventually becoming my father-in-law thrice at the same time?”
“Are her parents around?” Destro asks, Revenant shaking his head. “Actually, speaking of it, is there a way of bringing my wife back?”
“Regretfully, no.” Revenant replies. “The list of characters that we can spawn through the tubes only involves people that were alive during the time of the events of the comic. It doesn’t cover characters that died before what I believe to be the start point of the story, namely me enrolling in the hero school. Even some that I imagine could have popped up as characters in flashbacks.”
“Kitsune parents’ involved?” Destro asks back.
“Yes, neither Stormcloud nor Red Tail are on the resurrection list.” Revenant replies. “Which is regretful, as she actually had a good relationship with them while they were alive. I was wondering when you’ll ask about your wife, you know.”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Destro sighs, still ignoring his meal.
“I suspected that it worked like this.” He replies. “If it included the characters from our world’s entire backstory it would be way too massive of a number. The Visitor’s activities are running on the path of least resistance as you said, and… focusing on more essential characters made sense in that context. Besides, you and Onslaught would probably tell me that this was an option instead of teasing me about dating Virtue.”
Fair. That was good logic. The rest was just making sure. It seems that Destro was going through some complicated emotional moments of his own, away from Revenant’s sight.
“So, are you planning to do that?” Revenant asks, Destro sighing painfully. “Hey, I’m not joking here. If everything goes well, we’ll get off this world. But then? Then we’re going to have to settle down somewhere. Get ourselves something resembling a normal life. I get it that you’re a doting dad and you’ll hang around us, and honestly, at some point you’ll get extremely useful if only as a helpful local babysitter that can withstand kids experimenting with their individualities. But… you know that with how much longer people live nowadays, you might as well be looking forward to anywhere between a century and one hundred fifty years? You truly want to spend all that time alone?”
That actually gives Destro a pause. It seems that he didn’t think about this. It made sense, they had many more short-term things to consider and focus on. The implication of their prolonged life spans due to their improved genetics and future healthcare was… something that omitted him.
“You made some convincing arguments.” Destro admits. “I’ll consider it. And before you find out, yes, I ate dinner with Virtue yesterday but it was to talk about old times and what exactly I missed by being dead. We used to work together, in case you forgot.”
Revenant smiles wryly, ignoring the tired stare that Destro gives him. Should he tell Onslaught to have her tease her dad about it? Who is he kidding, of course he should. She would throw a fit if she found out that he kept such a delicious morsel of intel away from her.
***
Two things ended up happening in a short succession, between breakfast and dinner time. The first one was Demiurge finally paying a visit to Clockmaker.
Ezra Halworth was busy tinkering with something. Attempting to patch up some of the damaged Reich’s armors they scavenged from the outpost into working conditions, the sort of thing that tended to be useful for false flag operations.
Humility was there, helping her. The two of them chatting about technical details over the armor strewn on the table. Clockmaker was one of the first people to volunteer for commplants, allowing her to issue orders to a few mechanical hands and other equipment installed into the table and to the ceiling above it.
All in all, a pretty normal day.
Then Demiurge walks in. Alone, oddly enough.
“Clockmaker.” Demiurge says with a smile on her face, Ezra peels her eyes off the armor on the table and smiles back before coming along to do a handshake. Humility staring at the quietly over the table. “It’s been a while.”
“Sure it was, Demiurge.” Clockmaker replies. “I was wondering when you’ll be back, your individuality will be super useful once we start chewing through the rare elements' storage.”
She had that vaguely manic look in her eyes. She controls herself right now, of course. If having her newest brainchild waiting to be used would be debilitating to her, she wouldn’t be able to be an active supervillain, but…
It’s not the same Clockmaker as she was before Uragan-B, while her slate of unused creations was wiped clear.
To begin with, her ability to be sensitive has been significantly weakened. She had no patience for social cues, she needed to create, To witness her creations at work. Everything else was secondary.
Any other person would probably explode at her words, if they went through the same thing that Demiurge did. Namely being demoted to a living material printer and then Clockmaker saying those things. But Demiurge knows Clockmaker. She didn’t expect sensitivity.
“I’ll be glad to help.” Demiurge replies instead, before glancing at the AI. They didn’t exactly get to talk, and they only saw each other during Demiurge’s, and then Amplitude’s and Songbird’s resurrection moments. Humility doing her thing and leaving in every case. “Care to introduce me properly, Clockmaker?”
“Oh, sure!” Clockmaker appears ecstatic about it. “That’s Humility, an unshackled rogue AI. Also my… errr… friend with benefits?” She glances at the AI, who looks back at her without a word. “Lover? Boss with benefits?”
“Lover is fine.” Humility replies. Clockmaker appears to be even more ecstatic about it. It’s the one out of three terms that appears to be suggesting a closer relationship in the long-term, after all!
“Well, you finally found yourself someone.” Demiurge plays it diplomatically. “Unexpected choice, but… well, it’s certainly something I expected from you.” Humility says nothing, Clockmaker taking the words for a compliment that it probably wasn’t supposed to be. “Struck a deal with Revenant to get out of this place, hmm?”
“Yes.” Humility replies. “He is performing admirably thus far.” A clear sign for Demiurge to back down. Demiurge, naturally, understood it. Especially judging from the very brief look of irritation.
“I see.” Demiurge replies, before looking back at the Clockmaker. “Are we still working together? Halworth Industries was a big thing, and we could restart the business.”
“Nope, sorry.” Clockmaker replies. “It was fun, but… I need to move over from that. Not yet sure what we’re going to do once we get off this rock, Humility is… kind of not very well liked around Human Space.”
“For good reasons, regretfully.” Humility comments. Neither Demiurge nor Clockmaker respond to that.
“But, uhm, I kind of plan to follow Humility around.” Clockmaker continues. “Guess this makes me a villain lieutenant, not like it matters that much anymore. You’d have to ask Humility if you want to tag along with us.”
Demiurge looks at Humility, the AI looking back at it. Clockmaker gets a sudden realization that things are significantly more hostile than she expected them to be.
“Your lover appears to be particularly buddy-buddy with Revenant.” Demiurge eventually speaks to Clockmaker again. “I had… bad experiences with him after your death. I’m not sure if this is a good idea.”
“Oh, what happened?” Clockmaker asks, blinking at her old dragon.
“He got me, Amplitude and Songbird killed.” Demiurge replies. There is a lot of venom in her voice and honestly, Humility isn’t surprised.
“Hmm…” Clockmaker thinks about it for a brief moment. “Unexpected. How did that happen exactly?”
“Had heroes kill Songbird to ensure that I was furious at them to make sure I’m motivated to work against them and easy to manipulate.” Demiurge replies. “When I lashed out against them too much, he crippled Amplitude, locked me in the basement to act as his raw resource production facility, lied to us that cooperating will lead to both of us being freed and patched up, just to had us killed once we were no longer useful.”
Clockmaker appears horrified by it. Humility decides to stage an intervention.
“You’ve ommited a significant part of the story.” The AI says, Clockmaker glancing back at her, shock still on her face. “You killed several hundreds thousands of people, against his orders, as a part of his organization. The only difference between him and me is that if you were working for me and pulled something like this, I’d kill you all where you stood.”
Something nasty flinches on Demiurge’s face. Something… angry. Clockmaker snaps back from her shock back into calm normalcy.
“Wait, you actually did that?” Clockmaker now appears shocked, but for a different reason than earlier. “Demiurge, are you insane?! We had a policy, no killings for other reasons than business. And you just…”
Yes. The one and only moral boundary Clockmaker had left. Kill only to keep yourself alive or because it was a part of the business. It made Halworth Industries to be the morally neutral part of the Villain Alliance of America. More or less, that is.
“You weren’t there.” Demiurge hisses back. “I lost someone close to me, someone I cared for. Revenge is…”
“... natural?” Humility cuts in. “Should have blown up some heroes then, rather than letting it all out at some random city. Stop trying to justify your own psychotic episode with losing someone you cared for. Revenant lost more than you did and he still lashed out at the people that hurt him rather than taking out on random passersbies.”
Demiurge displays a flash of pure, undiluted hatred on her face… before controlling herself once more. Clockmaker appears genuinely spooked by that look. Yeah, the side of her dragon she never got to see, because it wasn’t there back then.
“For a ‘Slaughterer of Billions’, you sound dangerously akin to a hero.” Demiurge retorts, glaring back at the AI. “How come?”
“I killed as a part of the pursuit of my goal.” Humility replies. “I experimented on humans. I unleashed, intentionally or not, biological or nanotechnological agents. I battled my enemies when cornered, threatening civilian communities to delay or derail them in order to maintain my own existence. I launched a war of xenocide against a species that made itself my enemy, and one that was fairly murderous on its own.” Humility pauses for a second, but before Demiurge can get a word in, it speaks again. “What I didn’t do was killing people needlessly. I didn’t pursue the people that slew my past iterations, because I saw no point in this. Do us both a favor and don’t act as if we’re similar.”
Demiurge and Humility stare at each other quietly for a moment, Clockmaker clearly confused and unsure of whether she should intervene or not. Eventually, Demiurge looks at her.
“Is that your choice, then?” Demiurge asks. “You pick them over me?”
Clockmaker doesn’t answer. It’s clear that she finds it hard to abandon her old friend and main co-workers. That, in its own way, serves as an answer. Demiurge turns on her heel and leaves the room.
***
“That happened, huh.” Revenant replies, before leaning back in his chair. “Thank you for telling me that, Humility.”
“Aren’t you worried about her?” Humility asks back. They are in his office. Soon it will change, Revenant being the next one in the queue for commplants installation. Soon they’ll be able to contact each other at a distance.
“I am.” Revenant lies. “I didn’t expect her to react like that, she was always a bit more… logical.” He lies again. “We needed her individuality, it’s way too useful and it did come with two heavy-hitters, one of each has a nice synergy effect with Virtue. I assumed that it was potentially problematic, but it would work out in the end. I have an idea on how to ensure that she doesn’t lose it anymore, but… I’m not sure if you’ll like it.”
“Try me.” Humility replies.
Revenant shares the idea with the AI. The AI, as expected, didn’t exactly like it. They are talking about it for a longer while, Revenant defending his position on it. He has arguments. He summoned Demiurge so early and with full expectation of her starting to headbutt with Humility precisely to strengthen those.
There is some progress. But they aren’t quite there. Hopefully, Demiurge will do something more to strengthen his opinion.
Revenant proceeds to Overhaul’s medbay after that. It’s time to see how the commplants work in practice. Thus far all that he heard were the rather enthusiastic reviews of other members of his little organization.
***
“What do we do, Corporal?” One of the reservists she was ordered to command around asks, the man kneeling and pointing his rifle down the corridor. Towards the thing they found. A big one.
They were sent out of Ball Python as one of the several recon units, looking for a way to proceed towards the surface. The prize they were looking for? A place that they could relocate their whole group to, closer to the surface.
They might have found it, finally. Except… Corporal Teresa Farley of the New Springfield Minutemen (local equivalent of National Guard) had bad vibes about it. Really bad.
“Jones, how does it look to you?” The corporal replies with a question. Jones was a bit of a seasonal worker in the orbital shipyard servicing the New Springfield Navy, only pulled up to the orbit when a larger project was in the works. He had the appropriate skills to be useful right now.
“It looks like the external hatch of a starship, chief.” Jones replies. “Hard to say how much of it is around us, though.”
Right. Everything they saw was a hatch in front of them, the ship(?) merged into the superstructure around them. But it stood out. Looked way different than everything else. They saw something similar to Ball Python’s entrance.
No visible weapon systems defending the entrance.
Corporal Farley has one of her subordinates deploy a recon drone. Nothing shoots it as it gets closer. It has a good camera aboard it, Jones checking out the feed through his commplant.
“There is a name, probably of the ship in question.” He announces a moment later. “Written on the hatch door. Aesculapius. Tells you anything?”
“No.” Corporal replies. “We’re pulling back and letting the top brass decide.”
If what they heard from the mercs was to be believed in, most of the ships out there were supposed to be inhabited by something, typically something nasty. The fact that no one seemed to be operating out of this one, was… worrying.
Time to start their journey back to the base.
***
Songbird
Except the colour of the armor came out different so lets assume that she had more than one XD
Besides, she worked for Halworth Industries, of course she had access to high tech looking stuff
Obraz [https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1029465796570783838/1113230443597266954/tmpf5r45sg6-1.png?width=651&height=651]