Chapter 65

A thin spray of hot, crimson blood misted the air above their heads, and a bestial growl shook the room. 

Cassie didn’t know what sort of cheating ass katana Jay had given their little impish hellion, but she fucking called dibs next! As soon as the battle had commenced, the self-titled ‘Nightblade’ had disappeared from her place near the edge of the ring, a gust of wind sending dust flying from underfoot. From one moment into the next, with a flash of steel and a blur of motion, she’d been the one to draw first blood.

And Cassie was the only one who’d seen her do it.

Not for the first time, she found herself thankful that her visor’s HUD feature kept Aisha present in her mind despite the girl’s terrifying Stranger power. It was part of the reason why she installed cameras in all main areas of the Palace using the same method; beyond the bonus to security, it made her feel more comfortable knowing where Aisha was whenever she was skulking through the base. Plus she didn’t like forgetting about her friend, even if it was only temporary.

Though now, with a huge dragon dog rushing her from the front and a half-giant swinging around her left side, maybe it was better to forget about Aisha? Lock the fuck in, Cassie!

“Bad doggie,” Cassie tutted, ”Again!”

It was clear what she needed to take care of first. Even as darkness began flooding in from her left, Cassie’s HUD kept Bitch’s dog highlighted with a bright red outline, which would allow her to keep a bead on the beast in spite of any visual interference. 

With the recent upgrade from CodeLink to MagiLink, the entire aesthetic of her Heads-up Display had undergone a transformation - from cutesy digital-core to cutesy digital-core, RPG Edition V1. Now, her vitals were represented by sparkling pink hearts in the upper-right corner of her vision, above glittering blue gems representing how much juice was left in her equipped Mana Crystals attached to the back of her gloves. Athena, her VI, had already updated the Ally and Enemy nameplates, ‘Bad Doggy #2’ glowing an insidious red above the snarling, mutated beast that was currently diving to snap her spine between its massive jaws.

It was like her very own VR video-game! And just like a VR video-game…

It took a single swipe of her finger to open her virtual Spellbook, and a twist of her wrist to select ‘Freeze (30 MP)’. Instantly, Cassie felt the biting, icy twinge of frost magic surrounding her hands. In her peripheral vision, two of the six gems became significantly dimmer - a reminder that tossing around nothing but Apprentice spells would quickly see her Mana Crystals depleted at a ridiculously fast rate. She had to make each spell count.

As Cassie threw herself to the right, lashing her hands out at the too-close monster dog, she realized she was excited.

Hoarfrost crackled and sang, crunching like hard-packed snow beneath the wheels of a car. Two spikes of ice shot from the open palm of her gloves, tearing through the frigid mist that surrounded her hands and slamming into the bone-like armor of the mutated dog mid-lunge.

CRACK.

The ice shattered on contact, exploding in a shimmering white mist not unlike the kind shrouding Cassie’s hands. Bad Doggy #2’s armored chest was completely unmarred save a few scratched grooves, but the spell wasn’t meant to break through the bone - no, Frost magic had a much more useful aspect that she’d been banking on.

Bad Doggy #2 staggered out of its lunge, its face-sized paws scrambling against the marble floor as that icy, freezing mist seemed to cover and cling to its body, causing fractals of frost and sleet to form on its bony hide. It whined, frosted claws the size of knives trying - and failing - to give it the leverage it needed to properly stand and return to the fight. In its desperation, the silly pup didn’t realize that it was sliding itself closer and closer to a ring-out. 

Safely out of harm’s way, Cassie was already recovering from her dive, rolling back onto her feet and only staggering slightly in the recovery. The cloud of darkness was practically on top of her now, billowing past the shivering dog and shrouding her in shadow. As she’d expected from Grue’s files - which were all freely available online, by the way - the sudden rush of black shrouded her ears in silence. There was something cold about his darkness. Unsettling. If she’d been anyone else, Cassie figured she’d be freaking out right now. Probably throwing attacks at the huge, looming silhouette approaching her from the right-

“I can still see you, Aisha’s Brother!”

But Cassie wasn’t just anyone else. 

Grue, with his sibling-coded Enemy Alias, was already locked into her HUD, and it was impossible to miss the tall red outline attempting to sneak up from her left side. Whatever trick he did with his darkness to create that illusion was impressive, but not impressive enough to trick her VI.

She flexed her fingers, mist pooling between the slim digits.

Was she smiling?

“Freeze!”

Holy shit, she was.

And she couldn’t fucking stop.

_______________________________________________

Trainwreck was a simple man. Avalon or Overdrive tell him to smash a bitch?

He smashed a bitch. And got food, water, a roof, and money for his troubles.

Yeah, he was a simple man living a simple life. Plus - sometimes it was just plain ol’ fun.

Like now.

“GRAAAAH!”

“GRRRRRR!”

He wasn’t sure who released the louder battle-cry between him and that damned monster dog, but only one would be coming out of this fight as the winner. That ginger bitch - Rachel, Avalon had called her - was whooping from its back, pointing at him from across the circle as they charged each other. Every lunging stomp from his boots quaked the floor beneath them due to their ridiculous size and density, but that magic stone shit had made the weight issues with his armor nonexistent. Trainwreck ate up the distance between him and his new enemy surprisingly quickly for a metal giant nearing nine feet tall.

Of course, the truck-sized dog was quicker.

CLANG!

They met near the center of the circle, the full bulk of the dog’s massive body slamming against his chest and threatening to smush him into the floor like a bug - power armor and all. Trainwreck grunted, wrapping his respectably thick metal arms up and around the snarling beast’s bone-spiked neck. His gauntleted fingers scrambled against the back of its spine, and he felt the bitch - Rachel - try, ineffectively, to stomp on the metal digits before he finally managed to clasp them together. 

Even then, the dog wasn’t idle, throwing every ounce of strength in its body into Trainwreck’s. His artificial knees buckled, and hot, acerbic dog breath oozed through the slits in his helmet as long, razor sharp teeth tried in vain to pry through the melded layers of rigid steel. They were effectively in a deadlock, though Trainwreck was, admittedly, on the losing end and quickly falling into critical territory. More strength would be needed to break the stalemate.

If he’d been wearing his suit from a month and a half ago, it was very possible he’d be completely overpowered in this clash. Thankfully he had many more resources now than when he’d been bumming it in trash heaps, and more resources came with more upgrades. 

It had been slow but consistent, his modifications. No one spent as much time in the garage as Trainwreck. He was a freak of nature. A ‘Case-53’ according to the others. It wasn’t like he could go out and enjoy the city as an amorphous blob of pink flesh, and he’d have to deal with a bunch of annoying hero bullshit if he went out in his armor. No cock meant no sex. His hideous, pock-marked face meant no woman would even want to, anyway. 

He wasn’t sad about it. Not now, and not ever. He used to be furious - because who wouldn’t? But reality had a strange way of grinding even the most righteous anger down into the sand when you were too powerless to do anything about it. Now, his disability was just an annoyance. An obstruction.

But while everyone else - mainly Avalon and his harem - spent their time playing with fruity magic, planning parties, and kissing each other, Trainwreck was grinding. Growing. Creating. And although his prototype armor was still just that - an ugly, unfinished, unpainted prototype - he figured that now was a better time than any to test it out.

HISSSSS.

It started in his upper-back. With his pseudopods piloting every aspect of the power armor, Trainwreck could feel them damn near shriveling from the heat. Tiny vents previously sealed shut along his shoulders were slammed open with loud, whistling hisses of piping hot steam. Thermal energy coursed through his massive limbs, granting him just enough strength to tighten his grip on the dog and adjust his footing ever so slightly. It wasn’t enough to change the tides of battle, but neither did it need to be.

That was just the warm-up.

The main dish was, of course, the huge, fuck-off rocket engine that took up the majority of his back. It was a stupid idea - a fact that had been drilled into his brain by both Overdrive and his powers after he’d made his Rocket Hammer prototype, and he hadn’t really taken it seriously until he’d gotten the magical ability to tell the weight of anything he piloted to suck his nonexistent dick. The density of the metal he’d needed to make the armor out of in order to handle the power of a Tinkertech rocket engine was just infeasible unless you created a whole mech, which was a bit out of his general scrapyard specialty. For a while, he’d thought the prototype would stay just that.

A prototype.

Until…

BOOOOOM!

“THE FUCK-“

Trainwreck ignored the bitch mounted on the back of his temporary enemy. If she was smart, she’d fucking move.

A massive gout of reddish-blue flames exploded out the back of his armor, accompanied by a smaller yet no less hot release of steam that blasted from his shoulder vents and filled the air with a scalding mist. Immediately, Trainwreck felt his entire body - his armor, he had to remind himself -  surge with even more thermal energy, fractions of a second before inertia ceased to exist and all five point seven tons of dense, tightly compressed, steel power armor blasted forward with the explosive power of a compressed rocket engine.

The puppy stood no chance, and neither did wind resistance. They practically flew across the room.

It felt like only a moment had passed before Trainwreck, still gripping the beast around the neck with both arms, felt his forward momentum abruptly stop due to the rigid, unyielding surface of the marble wall. A few hundred feet of distance ate up in less than a couple seconds, and the pair - larger than pickup trucks - announced their collision with a ground-shaking bang, a choked, shrill yelp, and a sickening crunch of so much bone breaking apart and scattering across the floor.

There was a beat of silence. Distantly, in the background, Trainwreck heard a masculine voice yell out, followed by Iris’ cackles and the telltale crackling of her damned ice magic. Somewhere else, the skinny blonde bitch was yelling something about ‘strangers’ - who she was talking about, he had no clue, but none of that was important to him right now.

No, all Trainwreck felt at that moment, past the adrenaline high of combat and assured victory, was concern.

For the dog he’d just crushed against the wall, of course.

And maybe a twinge for the ginger bitch.

Slowly, he unclasped his beer can-sized fingers and allowed the larger body of the beast to fall from his arms. The ridged, scale-like bone plates that had previously covered its body like armor had all but flown off of its body on impact, leaving behind muscular, veiny pink flesh that still rippled and twitched despite its owner’s unresponsiveness. The mass of unconscious dog muscle was disgustingly horrid to look at, looking more like a vaguely canine-shaped pile of pink sludge the longer he stared, but it had been a cutie mere minutes ago.

A German Shepherd, if he remembered correctly. Its name was Angelica, that chick had sai-

Trainwreck stiffened. ‘Shit.’

“Don’t worry,” a deep, vaguely amused voice drawled from behind. Avalon. “That’s the first one down, eh? Nicely done Trainy. Kinda disqualified yourself, movin’ out the circle, but I guess that doesn’t matter now.”

He whipped around, all concern for Angelica shoved away beneath the wariness of what would happen if he’d accidentally turned her owner into a meat sheet.

The sight that greeted him immediately laid those fears to rest.

Uncaring of the darkness covering half of the training room behind him, and the crack of gunshots as a bloody and lacerated blonde bitch shot her pistol at seemingly nothing, Avalon stood tall with Rachel’s limp body slung over his shoulder. Somehow the cheeky brat had dressed himself up since the start of the battle, and he was wearing some fancy looking all-black outfit.

Trainwreck grunted. “She good?”

His bastard of a boss must’ve seen something with those freaky eyes of his, because his lips curved up into a grin. “Yeah. I grabbed her and knocked her out as soon as you flew towards the fuckin’ wall at damn near the speed of sound, since that woulda been a killshot. New toy?”

Speed of sound… so about seven hundred miles per hour, then. Not as fast as he’d wanted, but adding more power to the rocket engine would risk lethally overheating his body. Already he felt like he was in a fucking sauna.

Still, Trainwreck felt his cheeks warm beneath his helmet. Fuckin’ compliments.

Pah!

“Prototype,” he replied instead, shrugging his bulky shoulders. “Rocket engine, heavier chassis, an’ vents for thermal exhaust . Overdrive helped.”

The boss hummed curiously. “And you didn’t use your rocket hammer. Why?”

“Didn’t need it.”

And judging by how this showdown went, it probably would’ve been overkill. If they’d known about the rocket beforehand, Trainwreck knew for a fact that the fight would’ve gone differently. They wouldn’t have gone for a battle of pure physicality, probably relying on the dog’s superior agility to dodge around his slower form and batter at his defenses. Through attrition, they would’ve most likely won if his rocket hammer didn’t flatten Angelica’s snout first… but battles were gritty. Unexpected. You never knew what the enemy had, unless you were one of his crazy teammates and magic’d the info outta the enemy’s skull. 

Rachel and Angelica bet on strength, and they lost. Simple as that.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t care about the poor dog. Had he really killed it?

The sound of snuffling and squelching, along with the eye-watering scent of offal, brought Trainwreck’s attention back to the pile of flesh and discarded bone behind him. The rippling bulge in what he’d previously thought was Angelica’s body was gone, replaced by the much smaller claws and snout of a familiar, blood-soaked German Shepherd.

Angelica!

Ignoring Avalon’s chuckles, Trainwreck leaped for the struggling canine and ripped the tiny opening of desiccated flesh apart with his gauntlets. The smell of blood and innards became even thicker, nearly burning his nostrils with its stench, but all of that was less important than making a way for man’s best friend to crawl out of her meat suit and shake the blood and biofluid from her fur. She almost growled at him when her paws touched the dirty marble floor, but his superior size - and her significantly smaller form - instantly reminded her of just who won the fight.

Angelica turned to the observing Avalon, and her ears went down and back. A sign of submission.

“Let’s head over to the sidelines,” he tilted his head over towards the entrance of the Dojo, lightly adjusting Rachel’s body on his shoulder. “We’ll let the other two have their fun ‘fore we end things off and tally up the votes.”

What they were voting for, Trainwreck had no clue. Then again, he wasn't paid to ask questions. 

He was a simple man like that. 

And dogs… Dogs were simple creatures.

So he just nodded his head briskly, grabbed the passively whining Angelica in palms that were nearly as big as she was, and followed behind the easy, long strides of his boss.

Whatever vote they had to make, he was going to vote for whichever one got him more time with the mangy mutts.

If the bitch had to come too, then so be it.

__________________

Brian didn’t know what was going on.

Going after Iris had been the tactically sound decision. From what little they knew, she was Invictus’ communications and intelligence expert - basically their team’s Tattletale, if Tattletale had the ability to casually hack the virtually unhackable PHO every week purely for the fun of it. For all intents and purposes, this ‘fight’ between the two of them should’ve ended only a minute or two in. He was easily over a foot and a half taller than her, practically dwarfing the girl with pure size and bulk, and outside of that little burst of electricity she’d shown off in the backyard, it hadn’t seemed like she held much in the ways of offensive power or skill.

Hell, she’d spent the entire conversation inside dozing off on her boyfriend’s chest.

But then, the fight started, and Brian was forced to swallow both his words and his pride as he watched her sling around spikes of ice and frost nearly as long as his forearm, seemingly immune to the blinding aspect of his darkness ability. Watching Brutus slide and scramble himself across the marble floor with icicles clinging to his bony hide could have been funny in any other situation, but any and all humor had long since fled his spirit. 

The fact that the damned dog got itself eliminated by sliding out of the circle was only added salt.

Within moments, she’d turned away from the scrambling hound and flung some more of her ice his way, forcing him to abandon his own charge and fling himself to the side. Despite her ‘Freeze’ ability’s - because she kept saying it out loud like some fucking video game character - effectiveness at slowing down and inhibiting whatever it touched, like poor Brutus, the projectiles were also slow. He was confident that he could avoid the spikes and close the distance fast enough to take her down efficiently.

And then she yelled out ‘SITH LIGHTNING’, wiggling her sparking fingertips at him, and Brian realized that maybe - just maybe - this whole ‘spar’ idea was fucking rigged from the start.

The bright, writhing arcs of blue electricity slammed into his midsection instantaneously, not giving him even a moment’s time to react or even attempt to dodge.

He’d been tased before. This was no taser.

His muscles immediately locked up, overwhelmed by the sensation of what felt like a thousand tiny, burning needles jabbing into his skin, crackling and sizzling. Each jolt traveled through his nerves like lightning, and before Brian realized it, he was on the ground twitching and quivering like a newborn baby, a drool leaking out the side of his mouth as he attempted to fight through the burning agony of God knows how many volts of electricity surging through his body.

He was horrified, pissed, and disgusted to realize that he may have pissed himself. Fortunately his leather pants were already dark.

Against his will - mainly because he was already struggling enough trying to regain motor function in his prone, trembling body - Brian felt the connection to his darkness waver, and then fade. The previously thick and cloying cloud of shadows began to dissipate into nothingness as if sucked away by a vacuum. Light pierced through to reclaim what had been darkened by his power, and through the fogged up plastic of his mask, Brian saw her: light of foot, practically skipping as she moved past where he lied on the floor.

Iris. He wanted to reach out and grab her by her ankle, yank her down and slam her fucking face against the marble. It wasn’t fucking fair. Life wasn’t fair, he knew this intimately. It had never been fair. But whatever circus show Avalon had going on in this magical palace of bullshit, Brian wanted nothing to do with it. 

All he wanted was to get his sister the fuck out of here.

His sister. Aisha. Right, she was supposed to be here. But where-

“... Alright, yeah, you can have him!” Iris spoke up in her high, girlish soprano, stopping a few feet away and placing her hands on her hips. “He’s pretty frickin’ boring, anyway. How do you control darkness but you can’t even turn it into, I don’t know, fucking tentacles or chains or something? L power forreal.”

His jaw spasmed as he gritted his teeth together. Fucking bitch.

But who the hell was she talking to?

It took all of his willpower, but Brian was able to just barely turn his head enough to see the other side of the arena. He hadn’t been paying attention to the others’ fight, having had complete confidence in Rachel and Lisa’s ability to hold off one oversized, clunky Tinker in power-armor, so the outright lack of teammates he saw around him was disconcerting. He could see streaks of drying blood dragged randomly across the floor, along with deep, carved-in grooves that tore across the floor and out of the circle. Hell, there was even a pile of decomposing pink meatstuff that he immediately recognized as the leftover biomass from one of Rachel’s hounds - disgusting, rancid stuff, and evidence that she’d lost.

Damn it, he’d really gotten tunnel-vision in that fight. Foolish.

Still, there was no one else there for Iris to have been talking to. Lisa and Rachel were gone, and so were the dogs and ‘Trainwreck’. All that was left was… who?

Their third member. For some reason, trying to remember them. Her. It pissed him off even more. Where the hell was she-

A thump cut his thoughts off at the root.

Heavy black boots appeared in the corner of his vision. Thin silver chains dangled from the sides of the footwear, nearly dragging against the floor. Somehow, someway, the sight of those boots was a familiar one. Dully, he remembered buying them for Aisha, his sister, a bit over half a year ago - for her birthday. But there was no way these were the same pair, since Aisha wasn’t a cape and wasn’t here watching him get his ass handed to him by a girl half his size-

“Yoooo, wassup big bro? Ready to get your ass kicked. Again?”

Ice water flooded his veins, and with it, memories.

Aisha was the third member of Avalon’s sparring crew.

Aisha had been on the phone with him.

Aisha was a part of Invictus.

Aisha was apparently a fucking cape.

Aisha was in danger.

This time, his body listened when he told it to fucking move.

Brian flopped onto his side, damn near frothing at the mouth as he forced his twitching limbs to obey direct orders. His elbow felt like it’d just gotten knocked by a rubber hammer, but his arm was strong, and it kept its position as he pushed himself up and onto his ass. His other arm came up a bit too fast, clocking the side of his helmet with an open palm before he managed to regain control of his fingers and fit his thumb beneath the edge of the mask.

Air, dried saliva, and sweat combined together made a loud, disgusting squelch as he ripped the helmet from his head and face.

With eyes reddened from burst blood vessels, Brian slowly turned his aching neck upwards, inwardly hoping that these weird, disjointed memories were wrong. That his baby sister, the one he was supposed to have been going through all of this dangerous, scary, fucked up cape bullshit for in the first place, wasn’t actually standing here in front of him, taunting him.

But, of course, reality had different plans.

There she was, black hair messy and windswept, a crooked grin on her face. A black and golden sword - where the fuck did she get a sword? - was held loosely in her right hand, the blade still wet with traces of crimson.

His sister.

Brian swallowed, not even sure of how to vocalize the myriad of negative emotions threatening to rip their way out of his chest. “... No. Hell no. Aisha, we are leaving. Now-”

He paused. Who’d he been talking to? Why did he feel so much anger and betrayal and humiliation? He knew Iris had beaten him, sure, but Avalon had clearly given her a large portion of his power for this fight. So why-

Ice water.

Brian stiffened. The cold feeling of a blade - the dull side - pressed lightly against the side of his throat. He could feel her presence behind him.

His sister.

But when…

“... No. Hell-”

“If you don’t stand up and fight right now, Brian Laborn, I swear to fuck I’ll knock your ass out right now and feed you to Snowcone. I’m not just your little sister anymore. I’m Imp, I killed Night, helped kick the Empire outta the Bay, and I am a proud member of Invictus. Now get. The fuck. Up.”

Her voice, normally so low and nonchalant, was on the verge of screaming now. Brian had never been too empathetic, but he would’ve had to have been retarded not to hear the anger and disappointment slicing his sister’s throat raw. The dull side of the blade had flipped, its razor-sharp edge so fucking sharp that just touching it caused a thin rivulet of blood to seep from the side of his neck.

She was being serious. He felt his recently healed knuckles nearly pop back out of place as he clenched his fists.

“Fine,” he rasped, eyes flickering towards the side of the sword. In its reflection, he could see her, a scowl warping her features into a visage of pure anger. The sight stoked his own overwhelming frustration. “But put the katana away, and no using that Stranger power.”

Her scowl eased, amusement lighting up her glare. “What ‘Stranger power’?”

“Don’t play dumb. Hand-to-hand only, and if you lose, you come back with me. You shouldn’t even be holding a fucking sword.”

The amusement flickered out like a snuffed candle flame. “... Did you even hear anything I said?”

Brian frowned. “What?”

“Ha. Nevermind. Fine, whatever - no Stranger power, no sword. If I win, you get the fuck out of here and leave me alone. For good.” Her voice had lost the edge of its anger, replaced by a tiredness that sounded completely out of place.

He didn’t like it.

“Aisha, don’t be-”

“Call me stupid and all bets are off, Brian. I mean it.”

His jaw clamped shut.

“Fine.”

When she removed the sword and stepped back, Brian took his time standing up and stretching the last bits of stiffness out of his body. Without that weird memory-altering power that made him forget where the fuck she was, or that sword that was most-certainly Tinkertech in some way, he knew he could take his sister down. Their dad trained her a bit in kickboxing, but she’d never been able to stick to just one fighting style. Neither had she ever been able to actually commit to anything in the first place, which made this whole Invictus thing even more weird.

But that wasn’t important. Brian would just have to knock some sense into her, turn this into just another flightless, passing fancy.

Easy.

___________________

Meanwhile…

As the taxi peeled off down the street, leaving a cloud of gray smog in its wake, one Amy - just Amy - stared up at the large, white, prim and proper country house that had once been a place she’d loosely called ‘home’. The lawn was an almost unnatural green, neatly trimmed to the exact 2.5 inch length that Carol Dallon preferred the biweekly landscaper to cut them at, and the driveway was more populated than normal. A red soccer-mom van - Carol’s preferred vehicle, was usually the only car occupying that space. She never actually used the garage.

But this time, there was a white SUV parked beside it. Aunt Sarah’s SUV.

Anxiety threatened to break past the flinty wall of obsidian she’d built around her heart, but the wall stayed strong.

Amy stayed strong.

‘It’s better that everyone’s here,’ she thought to herself, perhaps a tad darkly. ‘I want them all to hear it from me, and me only. I’m fucking done.’

The solid clacks of her new heeled boots thumping against the pavement was satisfying to her ears. It was a steady rhythm of noise that reminded her of what had led her to making this decision today - of what had led to her waving down a beaten taxi cab, setting her plump ass down on the ripped leather seats, and riding the hour or so from the Downtown mall all the way up to Captain’s Hill. 

There was a purpose to her steps now. A determined, rebellious flame that recent realizations had managed to coax out of her soul and into her heart.

It had started with her waking up early this morning to the sound of Cass choking on Jay’s intimidatingly large p- … cock. 

Them having sex while she slept beside them in that ridiculously large bed wasn’t anything new - not after Amy had been made an official part of their relationship. Jason and Cassie were both incorrigible, horny motherfuckers, and she’d made it clear to them after that first night of breathless gasps and dark, choked off growls that they didn’t need to try and hide their… fucking on account of her. She could’ve taken up literally any other room in the Palace if it had actually made her uncomfortable, after all.

But, on the contrary, like any other hot-blooded teenage girl… it did things to her. Dirty, impure, horny things. 

Even still, Amy knew she wasn’t ready to push things past that point, and neither Cassie or Jason pushed her. For Amy, making out and dry humping was the furthest she’d ever gotten with anyone but her old teddy bear, Mr. Snuffles, and even doing that with the two of them - and cumming so fucking hard - nearly made her skin set itself on fire with virgin embarrassment. So over the past week, she’d come to terms with her partners fucking beside her all night every night while she ‘slept’ with her hands placed surreptitiously inside of her panties, knowing full well that they could hear her rub herself to orgasm before she managed to fall asleep.

That should’ve been it. In any other situation, Amy was sure she’d continue being ‘not ready’ for months until that flame sputtered out and her two new lovers lost interest in waiting and set their sights on other conquests, because God knew they had the looks, wealth, and power to get anyone they wanted. Sherrel was just one example of that, and Amy still wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about it. 

She was the queen of self sabotage, and at some point, she’d genuinely thought that, even after all of the progress she’d made in opening up and accepting her feelings, she would just end up fucking it all up. 

Where did that belief stem from?

Her appearance, of course. Or, no, not just her appearance. Her entire countenance. Her whole fucking identity!

Amy didn’t know who she was anymore, and before she could fully take that next step in her relationship, she felt like she owed it to herself and her partners to discover that.

And so she left that morning to figure it out.

A few hours later, with her wallet damn near a thousand dollars lighter and Cassie’s Bag of Holding stuffed with over a dozen new outfits, Amy found her answer staring back at her from the smudged changing room mirror inside of a grungy little store called ‘Kulture Vulture’.

The woman in the mirror wasn’t Amy Dallon, the tired and haggard healer hanging herself from the puppet strings of her dysfunctional, abusive family. No, Amy Dallon had been a dumpy, exhausted, depressed, slovenly sack of sadness that lusted after her own sister and jumped at any shadow that reminded her, even slightly, of her own overwhelming power.

In contrast, the woman in the stuffy changing room was electrifying. Ethereal. Powerful. 

Everything she found herself wanting to embody.

Aesthetically smudged black eyeliner highlighted the baleful ‘RBF’ glare that her honey-brown eyes naturally lent themselves towards. There were no dark circles beneath her gaze now - only the slightest underline of that same sleek black, further accentuating her surprisingly long lashes. It colored her freckled cheeks red to think about it, but Amy knew that this woman in the mirror had eyes that Jason would find extremely arousing if they were to be looking up at him.

Possibly from a kneeling position.

The paleness of the woman’s face clashed with her overabundance of freckles, but the smooth black lipstick carefully applied to her plump, pouty lips - lips that she’d previously thought of as fat and unappealing, like tiny worms  - made the contrast eye-catching instead of harsh. The way those darkly painted lips naturally sloped downwards into a bored frown would have been a sign of bitchy moodiness before, but now, Amy could see how it gave a sense of devious nonchalance. A certain pose came from apathy and coldness, and when acknowledged, the vibe was different.

This woman was different.

Her chestnut brown hair was long and messy, but the mustachioed man at the front desk hadn’t just been a master of makeup - he was a hair stylist too, which had come at a bit of a surprise considering his shiny bald head. Rather than falling down her shoulders in a frizzy, tangled mess, her hair seemed… purposefully tousled. It was soft now, curled in a controlled, yet somehow chaotic shower of healthy, silky locks.

An all black ensemble finished off the goth woman’s makeover. Fishnet sleeves came attached to an off-shoulder black crop top that was emblazoned over the chest with the imagery of a skull - one that perfectly matched the black skull choker wrapped snugly around her neck. At first she’d been hesitant about wearing such a revealing top, especially because of the plumpness she’d built up over the past couple years of late night vending machine visits in the ER, but the results were… okay?

Better than okay, even. It could’ve been because of her determination to no longer be Amy Dallon, but she refused to shit on her every quality. There was a soft yield to her stomach, and she was sure Jason would get a handful of pale, freckled flesh if he squeezed her sides, but she wasn’t fat. With her DD-cup breasts and the dump truck of an ass she had to force into her new leather pants, Amy was sure that the correct modern term for her physique was ‘thicc’. With two C’s, even.

Long black boots with three inch heels concluded the lower body analysis. From bottom to the top, from stylishly tousled hairdo to wide, juicy hips tucked snuggly in skin-tight black leather… Amy found herself smiling widely, pride and happiness and confidence covering her skin with goosebumps for the very fucking first time she’s ever looked herself in the mirror.

And that hot, sexy, dangerous goth woman in all black smiled back at her. Because that’s who she was.

Amy. Just Amy, until she decided to take on her boyfriend’s last name. 

Never Dallon. Never again.

‘…So maybe I should make it official.’

…

That’s how she ended up here, standing before the front door of her former family’s ridiculously expensive home.

Amy raised her fist, preparing to beat on the sleek wood, but hesitated. It would be smart to send a text, either to the Invictus Group Chat or Avalon’s Harem, just to let the team know where she was… but somehow, she didn’t find herself as afraid as she thought she would. There was a small chance Carol would try and force her to stay, if just to keep her powers as a healer and biostriker under lock and key, but what were the odds that Victoria allowed that to happen?

Low.

With Sarah and Crystal there, two women who were almost always there for her whenever Carol was being a bitch… that ‘low’ faded to ‘nonexistent’. 

Plus, it wasn’t as if she was coming here completely unarmed. A new wardrobe wasn’t the only reason she brought that magical satchel.

Before she could make up her mind and rap her knuckles against the door, a distant, muffled shout erupted from inside - followed by a quieter but no less harried cacophony of voices. Moments later the door swung inwards, and Amy was greeted by the sight of-

“Vicky.”

“AMYYY! I fucking knew you’d be back! You- you- …” Victoria, clad in a blue spaghetti tank top and white yoga pants, quietly trailed off as she stared, wide-eyed, at a stoic-faced Amy. 

Face to face, for the first time in… ever. Heels had the tendency to equalize height. Even still, in some philosophical way, Amy felt equal to Vicky in ways that had absolutely nothing to do with how tall they were. For once, as she stared her shocked step sister directly in her supermodel-gorgeous face, Amy didn’t feel that sad, submissive urge to shy away, or drift her gaze down to her lips, or even further down to the tank top that did interesting things to her bust.

Now? Now all she felt was numbness, and maybe a dash of wistful nostalgia. It was infinitely better than before.

“You look sooo… SEXY. Oh my fucking god, who did your makeup? And your hair?! And - holy shit, you went straight gothcore, didn’t you? The heels!” 

It didn’t take long for Vicky to overcome her shock and start gushing over her new look. A month ago, Amy imagined she would’ve been embarrassed yet over the moon at this sort of treatment, but that was Amy Dallon.

This Amy yanked her hand back before Vicky could inspect her new nail polish. The hurt expression on the blonde girl’s face didn’t do much to move her.

On her finger, the Mind-Shielding ring turned warm. 

Amy’s neutral expression turned cold.

“Thanks, Vic,” she allowed a small, dry smile to curl her black-painted lips upwards, “But I’m not here to compare fashion tips. Where’s Carol and the others?”

Vicky drew back slightly, her eyebrows rising with naked concern. “In the dining room. We were having a team meeting… Wait, Amy, what’s this about? I’m- I didn’t get to say sorry before, and-“

“Thanks again,” Amy interrupted, her small smile freezing over, “But save it. Excuse me.”

Victoria’s expression crumbled. “Ames-“

This time, when Amy brushed past her, there was no panic attack, or synopsis of vaginal tears and period cramps - just cool skin against cool skin, right before she made it through the door way and began click-clacking down the hallway. Despite it only having been a week, the house felt unfamiliar. Colder. It only furthered the numbness in Amy’s chest, reminding her of just how much she hated this house. How much she disliked this family. Some of them, at least.

But she had a job to do. And then, only when she left this accursed place and returned to her true home, could she feel warmth again. Only then could she really smile.

For now?

She’d bear the cold.

____________________________________

A/N:

Wanna give a big shout-out to Risser for beta-reading this chapter!

So, we have multiple POVs going on here. I don't do that often, but I feel it was the best way to handle the spar, so that's what we did. It sorta went down a somewhat chronological path that I hope you all were able to follow, and the results - well, they speak for themselves. Brian only really has... hand-to-hand and darkness, which Cassie was able to entirely circumvent with her HUD.

There was no way Lisa was beating Aisha with a pistol when Aisha had the katana and her Stranger power, so that fight wasn't even shown. It was literally just Aisha playing with her like a cat would play with a mouse, up until Lisa passed out from bloodloss and was sweeped up by Jason.

And Trainwreck - well, you saw what he could do with his new prototype jet engine armor. And you ALSO saw how Cassie's MagiLink works, which quite literally makes her her own RPG character. I personally think it's so fucking cool, and I hope you guys like how it was described as well. Cassie is actually growing to be pretty fucking strong.

Finally, Amy.

I've had this transition in the works for months now. Goth Amy is officially here, and she is entering a new chapter of her life.

She's completely rescinding the Dallon name. Wonder how that'll go.

Next Chapter: Aisha vs Brian, Amy vs the Dallons. Two family quarrels in one chapter? That's some tasty drama!

We are tying up loose ends for our heroes and preparing for the next step in the story, folks. Strap in.