193 Striking A Deal 2 Electric Boogaloo

"Why. Are. You. Here." Leopold's terse voice brings a smile to my face as I recall the meeting three weeks ago now.

And so, ignoring the angry glares being sent my way, I decide to give the same response I gave then. "Oh that's easy.~ I'm here to ask nicely.~"

Predictably, my jaunty tone wasn't enough to placate them into jolly conversation, as the moment I finish speaking, the room bursts into action, many things happening at once.

First, a bubble of green light appears around Leopold and one of the guys behind him, almost in the same instant, a thin line of light appears, going from the other guy behind Leopold's heart and through my body.

At the same time, the seven suits either side of me burst into motion, three of them clearly Brutes from how they charge forward, weapons suddenly in hand. A fourth also charges, his skin turning pitch black, like obsidian, as he raises an arm shaped like a sword down on me.

Of the other three, one of them is likely a Shaker, from the way the air feels heavier on my skin and the accelerating Brutes all start accelerating even faster. Another extends threads from his fingers that attach to the backs of each of his ally's necks, presumably boosting their powers, and the final person glares at me so hard that a laser comes out.

Six, presumably high level, attacks coming at me at the same moment, with another two powers boosting them all, and I sense it all happening and categorise it all in less than half a second.

Unfortunately for them, I can respond just as fast.

Blood flows out of my body in waves in what seems to me like slow motion, growing and pulsing with purple light, as it explodes to cover the room. Four thick pillars of blood meet the charging Brutes, matching their enhanced bodies and coming out on top, even as another three pillars of blood join them, aiming for the other suits and crashing into them all the same.

As the seven of them are slammed into the walls of the room, I turn my enhanced attention to the three behind the desk, and see the guy who's power connected the two of us moving to clutch his chest, his face slowly morphing into a rictus of pain.

No idea why, but I don't question it.

I also don't try and dodge the laser, letting it impact the side of my head and feeling it melt through a considerable portion, burning away most of the skin on my face but not managing to get past the bone.

A blink of the eyes, and time seems to return to it's normal pace. The sounds of the office being destroyed reach me all at once and I give the once pristine room a glance, noting that the new addition looks sort of like a moth's nest, only with me as the centre, and the webbing extending from me to cover a majority of the room being blood red and pulsing with purple instead of white.

It looks like a horror movie, with each of the suits stuck against the walls, their bodies held in place and immobile by solid nets of flesh, only their heads and parts of their arms and legs still visible.

Still not moving from my relaxed seat, I turn my eyes back front, just in time to see the line-of-light guy fall to his knees, mouth open in a silent scream.

I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything to him, so I can only assume it's power backlash of some kind.

Not caring either way, I turn to the only still standing men, hidden away inside of their bubble.

"So, as I was saying. I'm here to ask nicely; would you please maybe consider hypothesising the thought that you might purport to the ending of your most austere coterie at your earliest convenience, which I believe would be, like, right now?~"

I think my impressive vocabulary must have stunned him, as Leopold seems to be lost for words. I suppose that even when speaking German, my voice can be too distracting for men of lesser minds. Oh woe is me, why must I be so perfect?

Laughing to myself at my thoughts, I only remember that I'm the only one hearing them when Leopold gives me a strange look. How embarrassing.~

"Sorry, I got lost in thought for a sec, wasn't laughing at you... Sooooo, any questions?~"

Seeming to calm himself, Leopold lets out a long sigh. "What do you want." It's more of a statement than a question, an understanding that he would be dead by now if I didn't want something, and merely going through the motions.

"I'm glad you asked handsome,~ see, we were hired to beat you down, with bonus points if we bring your Gesellschaft to an end. An official disbandment. Now, my fellow capes of good humour have already crippled most of your organisation, your most important and valuable bases all gone. Typically, I'd finish the job by just killing everyone here and enjoying my pay check.~"

Obviously, I haven't been doing that, but I don't want to do all the talking, so I leave the sentence hanging, inviting Leopold to participate.

"But you are not doing that. You want something from me, something to trade in exchange for the lives of me and mine, I presume."

Giving him a pair of thumbs up, I smile widely. "Exactly! Got it in one.~ See, I heard a rather interesting rumour that I'd like you to expand on for me.~"

"And in exchange for this information, you will spare everyone present?" He asks, glancing down at the still writhing guy next to him.

Nodding my head at his assessment, I give the obvious answer. "Obviously not, there's more to this deal, but before that, what the fuck is up with that guy? I didn't even do anything to him."

He doesn't answer my question right away, but I get the feeling that they're friends as he seems to decide that being honest might allow me to provide a solution. "His power allows him to connect himself with another cape and share their own power. He used it on you, and now he is like this. You wouldn't happen to know why?"

He copied my power?

Unbidden, a bark of shocked laughter leaves my throat, before I quickly straighten and pretend I didn't laugh. No need to be insensitive, his friend is in pain.~

"Kinda yeah.~ The easy answer is that copying my power is a Bad Idea. A... friend and I have looked quite a bit into my power and how it works, and we've come to the conclusion that my power is something of a one-and-done kind of deal."

Pausing, I bring a finger to my chin, wondering how much information to reveal, deciding to share the basics but keep the fact that surgery can duplicate my powers a secret. Last Laugh is the only organisation allowed to have mini-mes.

"Basically, when I triggered, my power transformed my body, changed things around a little. Now, I can only safely digest human flesh, surprise~, my cannibalism isn't a preference. If your friend there copied my powers properly, then he's probably experiencing the growth of a new organ right now."

It's only now that I'm thinking we need to come up with a proper name for the organ. So far we've just been calling them 'Red Wraps' because we're uncreative. Maybe I can just translate it now that I'm multilingual? kakuhō sounds cooler, and basically means the same.

"We call them kakuhō, and it's where my power comes from, more or less," I admit, not really seeing any harm in sharing, "so on the bright side, the copy'll probably be permanent, so your friend will have access to one of  these badboys," I continue as I stroke a hand over the blood escaping from my back to cover the room, "on the downside, he's also a cannibal now, so have fun with that."

Leaning closer to the desk, I put a hand over my mouth as if I'm whispering a secret. "I'll email you my people recipes, he'll appreciate it.~"

Obviously I'm not telling them everything. He might have my powers, but he doesn't have my passenger, so he'll never hold a candle to me. 

I'm not sure exactly how far he can push my power by himself though, and I'm curious to find out, so this is a nice little experiment. Especially since I've noticed something else as he's been transforming, which is his  smell.

It's  new and  different and I'm almost salivating at the scent. But it's better to fatten up your food before eating it, and I'm sure he'll make for  quite the meal once he's had some time to grow.

"Anyway," I say, bringing things back on track, "as I was saying, there's more to this deal than just a little sharing of information. Though I do want some information, but I also want you to officially disband Gesellschaft. I don't care if you revive the group under a different name or move on and do something else with your life, Gesellschaft ends tonight. In exchange, I pinkie promise not to kill anymore of you, and as an added bonus, I asked my fellows to try and avoid fatalities of your capes. Agree to this deal, and they will  also be spared."

Aren't I generous?

As far as I can tell, it's a win-win. I get what I want, and he gets to not die. A pretty good deal if you ask me, not that he seems particularly happy to hear about it.

As he doesn't answer right away, I decide to motivate him a little bit by reaching an extended claw forward, tapping it against the green bubble surrounding him. The claw pierces through the bubble like a hot knife through butter, and I cut my nail in a circle, opening it up to me completely.

"Do we have a deal?"

He responds by looking to the side and tapping his desk once. I follow his eyes to the laser eyes guy and watch as both of his arms fall from his body, disappearing into sparks of ethereal light.

I only realise what's happening too late to do anything about it as twin beams of  dense red light shoot at me for a second time until it is all I can see. Blinding red light.

Then, nothing.

I burst awake with a jolt, taking a second to realise where I am, still in the same chair, if slid a little down from jumping slightly.

Motherfucker just popped my head. That's the  second time that's happened!

Frowning at laser guy, I manipulate my blood to push against his carotid arteries, and as that works to knock him out, I look in the opposite direction where the laser beam pierced through not only my head, but my blood too, brushing through the side of one of the Brutes, leaving a rather sizable hole in one half of his torso, as well as a hole in the wall, and the next wall, and the next, all the way until I can see the trees outside.

Moving my blood further, I morph it to replace the damaged organs and heat up some more blood to cauterise all of the poor guy's leaking wounds.

Finally, I turn back to Leopold, my lips set in a firm frown. 

"Now that was just  rude. Here I was being oh so polite, what do you have to say for yourself, young man?" I ask, going for the stern mother approach, because the dude is obviously used to being the top dog, and talking down on people like this is the best way to piss them off.

Not that I'm really all  that mad. People try to kill me all the time, and I kill people all the time. Getting mad about it would be  hilariously hypocritical.

With twitching lips, Leopold reluctantly opens his mouth to respond, clearly peeved at my unkillability. "In my defence, I really thought that would work."

Heh, I like this guy.

An amused smirk grows on my lips at his response, and I shake my head fondly.

"Whatever, do you agree to the deal or not? I wanna know the answer before I offer the second deal.~"

With all of his options for survival out of the count, he can only agree, and agree he does. "I don't have much choice do I? I accept. I'll give you information and officially disband Gesellschaft. What do you want to know?"

With my smile only growing wider, I briefly shake my head. "Before that, the other deal. The Meisters will no doubt be on your asses no matter what you do by tomorrow. I can offer to leave them... distracted for... let's say, three weeks. In exchange, I want  you to owe me a favour to be cashed in in the future, with the caveat that you'll be free to refuse the favour if you find it too inconvenient.~"

Eyeing me suspiciously, Leopold measures out his words in his head before responding. "That seems awfully.. generous, especially considering the previous 'deal'."

"I'm actually really nice once you get to know me.~"

"Of course you are," he agrees with a huff, pausing for nearly a minute before sighing once more, "fine, I accept."

"Awesome!" I exclaim with a clap of my hands, releasing all the captured capes at the same time, reabsorbing all of the blood, leaving the room as if nothing ever happened, so long as you ignore all the broken furniture around me.

"Now then, to the information I want expanded upon." My voice, for the first time loses it's joking tone, even as I keep it light-hearted, showing just how serious what I'm about to say is.

"What's this I hear about you knowing how to induce artificial trigger events?"

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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

IMPORTANT: This fic shall be coming to an end (kinda) pretty soon, because I am burning out a little, and my original plan for the fic has been completely blown out of the water, so I've decided that since the time skip to canon times was coming up pretty soon anyway, that I'll end this fic there, and split it into a vol1 and vol2, with the sequel finishing the story off, cuz honestly, The scope of the fic is getting too large for me to properly focus on, so naturally I've decided to double down and make the scope even bigger, but I'll need some time to actually think about it, hence there will be a short break, prolly less than a month.

Also, OoOoOOOooOooOO, Lusia's making even  more deals~ I wonder what this all means and if it'll all come to an end, or if I'm just trying to leave doors open for myself? 

(I'm not, I've actually planned the rest of this fic out since like 15 chapters ago ;))

Also yeah, Lusia's so op lmao. I won't say how the list looks, but if I were to rank the most powerful beings on the planet, I'd say Lusia is in the top 5 for sure. whether she's top 3 is up for debate tho.

(5+)Advanced chapters with the links below!

pat/reon.com/user?u=41732867 (get rid of the first slash or check the description)

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