36

Chapter 36: Sun, Feb 20, Plan time

…fuckin' Dave, fuckin' Coil. You verify there's no recording devices in Dave's bedroom and pop around the city a couple of times before going back to your lair. Looks like it's time to get rid of Snakey, the asshole just can't leave well enough alone.

You sketch out some basic plans in your mind, one of which would involve drugging the shit out of everyone in the base. You'll need to make a bulk brew of Alihotsy Draught, and that's going to take almost all of your remaining Alihotsy. You shoot Amy a text wanting to talk magical plants and she tells you she'll be there in a half to three-quarters of an hour, so you take the time to try and scry for Coil.

Instead of the ten-ish minutes that scrying normally takes, you're left with a pretty shitty connection after twenty that shows Snake-Face in his office of his lair. Obviously with his full-body costume on you can't see his face but the villain's entire posture is slumped as if he's incredibly tired.

You finally get sound working but hear nothing except keystrokes for a bit before someone walks in. The man that interrupts is wearing a sweater and places down a couple of pills in a container before holding a hand out. "Let me check your vitals first, sir."

Coil's bodysock apparently doesn't interfere as the guy checks his blood pressure and pulse. "I would suggest against any more than this, sir."

Coil looks at the clock on the computer and obviously does some mental math. "Understood, Mister Pitter," the villain says, sounding a bit hoarse. Waiting until the other man leaves the room, he pokes at a small fold in the cloth and the head portion unzips separately letting Thomas Calvert's tired face be seen. The bags under his eyes are purple and swollen-looking as he takes the pills and washes them down with water before switching to a mug of coffee from a machine in his office that he chugs, refills, and slams down again.

Gathering himself, he takes a couple of breaths before standing in front of the phone. The image in the scrying mirror shakes like someone just dropped the bass for a moment, and when it clears he's picked up the phone and has hit a speed-dial selection. You make a note of the number that pops up before the other side is answered. "Tattletale."

The emotions passing over Tom's face is pretty amusing, honestly. "The plans are still on for the moment. I have other things to take care of—if you encounter information that would impact these operations, then you need to contact me immediately." He hangs up with no farewell.

Sitting back down he pulls up another file on his computer and starts to dial someone else, but this time it just ends up being about construction equipment.

You cut the connection and note down Tattletale's cell number before heading out of the room to meet Amy, who shows up shortly after with a little red wagon loaded with a bag of topsoil and some plant pots. She doesn't seem particularly happy when you hit her with a charm to change her into a pair of bib overalls and a straw hat even if you appreciate the lack of a shirt you gave her. The sideboob you get does seem incredibly distracting, you have to admit. You let her stomp up and huff at you and thoroughly mollify her by dipping her and stealing all that huff away with a kiss.

Before you get started on brewing and discussing Herbology, you put in a call to the hospital and let them know you'll be healing alongside Panacea this afternoon, and after that's done break out your 'healing uniform' that you've never worn. The enchanted robes with the constantly-shifting foliage do seem to be a hit, but Amy does happen to have one request.

"You can't wear these out in public with me, James."

"But why not?"

Amy tosses the robe over her shoulders and flips the hood over her head. "I guess Crystal didn't get around to discussing it with you, but we've mostly decided—if you're okay with it, of course—that she's dating James, and I'm 'dating' Warlock."

You shoot air-quotes right back at her. "No, she didn't. And 'dating'?"

"Well, yeah. You can't exactly play the cool older boyfriend and pick me up from school, but we can be seen in public occasionally," she looks down and nudges the floor with a shoe. "Only if you want to, of course."

[X][Amy] Agree to 'date' Amy as Warlock

You sigh and snatch Amy up and ignore her squeak. "I do, but let's keep in mind all the ways this could go wrong. What's going to happen if Crystal changes her mind? What's going to happen when you decide we're better off as friends?"

The dark-haired girl wraps her arms around your neck and looks in your eyes. She's worried and nervous, but there's a deep undercurrent of affection there. "We act like adults and sort things out?"

"Adults do stupid things too, but I get what you're driving at." You lean forward and touch her nose with yours. "We will have to get together regularly and talk about things, and that means being honest about feelings no matter how much they might hurt."

You're not surprised by the spike of anxiety she feels, but Amy closes her eyes and pulls herself against you as she wrestles with it. "Okay. We can share, we can talk, and it'll be okay."

Putting her down you kiss her again and pull the hood of your robes that she's still wearing over her face. "Good. Now, about these robes…"

"Because 'Warlock' looks edgy and dark, and these druid hippy robes ain't it."

You shrug. "Alright, fair, I suppose. These robes are for interacting with people I'm healing and maybe kids anyhow."

You and Farmer Dallon start doing some experiments while you get started on brewing the Alihotsy draught. With a bit of testing with seeds you have plenty of it becomes obvious that part of the planting process involves magic. You have a metric fuckton of dittany seed and leaf, and you systematically discover that when Amy clones things they don't have the inherent magic that makes them useful as potions ingredients. However if either you or Amy go through the process of planting them and she just accelerates their growth they end up being viable, if not quite as potent as conventionally-grown plants. You should probably think about clearing some space for a greenhouse.

You also give Amy a test potion that doesn't need a finishing spell and she is indeed able to whip up a decent hair-raising potion with minimal assistance from you.

On one of her passes through the main room she does a double-take and almost trips over her own feet at what you have on the table.

"James, why is there a snake-thing and a…" she turns red, "a buttplug out here?"

"Because I found them when I was looking through my trunk the other day." You shrug, "The snake is the major catch, it acts like the incarcerous spell I was telling you about. In fact, once I checked it over, I was considering giving it to you as a way for you to disable an attacker if someone is stupid enough to try and hurt you."

Amy has to get up on her tiptoes to actually give you a kiss, but she does, throwing her arms around your neck and threatening to drag her overalls down and give you a show.

[X][Snake] Test the snake and give it to Amy now

You smile into her lips and continue talking, pitching your voice like a showman. "The buttplug is a very nice all-in-one expanding and contracting, self-cleaning, butt preparing vibrating magical sex toy."

Amy had started squirming as you talked, but while it seemed like she was trying to escape she mostly rubbed her thighs together. "James!"

"Let's try it out," you start, slipping out of her grasp. You wait a beat before continuing, "…I'm talking about the snake, of course."

"Eh-heh," comes the fakest laugh you've ever heard, "right."

The directions you found with the snake are pretty clear, so you do the quick binding ritual and have the snake wrap around your arm for carrying. A few test runs with the snake wrapping the teenager's entire body (and almost always snaking between her breasts) works a treat, but with that experience under your hat you manage to figure out how to target limbs instead.

That leads to you standing in front of your new cape girlfriend as she blinks up at you with her arms bound behind her. You don't even try to stop the evil smile from showing on your face and in turn she swallows thickly, causing the ankh on her choker to dance.

"An excellent position for you to be in, my dear."

You're monitoring her thoughts and this is treading fairly close to her limit for the day, what with the dating thing and all. Still, there's a submissive fetish switch that's being hammered in the back of her mind. Reaching out you trail a hand up her side and cup her face for a moment before you gently tug her closer to kiss her. Whispering the release phrase against her lips, her arms immediately grab yours and pull them around her, and you trade nibbles and pecks as she processes her feelings for the lightest of bondage.

Soon enough you're guiding Amy through the ritual and she's experimenting with different ways to incorporate an enchanted snake-thing into her wardrobe. It works equally well on both her forearm and bicep, but clashes a bit with her choker if she tries to use it as a necklace. Your suggestion to hide the choker was soundly ignored, but a bit more experimenting shows that it works as both a belt and a belly chain as well.

More important than that, you make sure she's capable of actually using the snake. Being wrapped up by it is uncomfortable—tight, but not super restricting, although it gets much tighter and a lot more uncomfortable as you struggle. With a little practice she even manages to get your legs as you sprint around and then stands over top of you with her hands on her hips and a smile on her lips.

"An excellent position for you to be in, my-"

Your smokejump takes you behind her and leaves the snake behind as you wrap your arms around hers. "No," you murmur into her ear, "that's not how this works, is it?"

She yelps as you nip at the side of her neck. "No!"

You murmur, "Good girl," and feel her shiver in your arms and wiggle back against you.

You can't find it in yourself to be surprised when the buttplug and directions have mysteriously disappeared after Amy leaves.

Soon enough, however, it's time to go heal. You bring your healing robes but don't wear them in deference to Amy. Apparating to a nearby roof, you fire off a smoke spell and apparate the two of you into the middle of it as you stroll out nonchalantly.

Once you're inside you verify with the admin that you're cleared for healing and it seems that Quinn has done his job, as everything is good to go. Amy sets you up the same way you were the other week—back-to-back—but she brushes up against you a lot more than she had previously.

Since there isn't a bunch of gang violence this time, the two of you aren't as swamped, and you continue chatting as you work. When you mention (quietly) that you've put feelers out to Quinn Calle about doing 'cosmetic alterations'. It takes a bit, but Amy finally asks if you'd be willing to do some work on her.

"My dear Panacea, while I'm perfectly willing to give you the same kind of tune-ups that I believe you've given your family, please know that you are already a beautiful woman, so please don't feel that you need to change yourself at all."

Seeing the flush rush across her face is adorable, as is the little squeak as you brush your fingers against her cheek. Her lips pout as if she expects you to kiss her before she looks back at your mask. "I'll keep it in mind."

Other than a few serious cancer diagnoses that have to be sent over to Amy to heal, you both have a fairly unremarkable healing session of about three hours. You're considering what to do for the rest of the afternoon, as Amy apparently has homework to do, when her stomach rumbles a bit, so you instead take the healer out for lunch.

Said healer side-eyes you the entire way, especially the part of your mask where you won't be able to eat as you're both seated at a nearby Indian joint.

This being Brockton Bay, the waitress gives the two of you a long, steady look before shrugging and taking your orders. Finally, Amy can't hold it in any longer and asks how exactly you expect to eat your lamb korma.

Leaning forward a bit you smile under the mask and pitch your voice down. "I'm going to take off the mask and play a prank."

Amy narrows her eyes at you. "Is this prank on me?"

"Nope, it's on a completely unsuspecting Clockblocker, mainly to stir up shit."

You can tell she deals with Dennis on a regular basis, because her eyes gleam with amusement. "An excellent choice of victim."

The two of you chat about the healing you did and similar topics until your food arrives, at which point you put a hand to your mask and remove it.

…revealing a half-mask exactly like it underneath and showing dark skin with grey clocks that slide around. Amy times a perfect gasp right as all conversation stops. "Oh, my, god. What happened to you?"

You hold a hand up in a fist, speaking dramatically. "I have come back in time to confront my father, Clockblocker. He will pay for leaving my mother like he did!"

"But-but who is your mother, then?"

Gazing into the distance, you can see people edging closer. "Skidmark."

Flicking your eyes over to Amy, she is struggling to keep a straight face. You're pretty sure she's bitten the inside of her cheek to keep from breaking down into laughter. "But Skidmark is male—"

"They team up to fight a villain named 'Degender' and… well, it is not my story to tell, but their romance was the stuff of legend. Nevertheless, I will have words with that monster wearing my father's costume."

Amy puts a hand on yours. "I'm sure you will. Let's not ruin our meal with such regrets, though. We will speak more of this later, in private."

"Of course, my dear Panacea." You surreptitiously heal her mouth before you both start eating. You also graciously ignore her pulling her napkin up to hide her laughter for a minute or two before she gets herself under control.

Instead of using a privacy spell and being obvious, Amy mentions schoolwork and you speak of your meetings with your lawyer. After you finish and pay, you go to peel the half-mask off, revealing another full mask underneath. Your tablemate picks up the half-mask and fits it to her own face and you both stride from the restaurant with Amy holding the original mask in her hand.

After you clear about a half-block, she tosses the mask in front of you and it lands with a clatter, spewing dark smoke from the eye and mouth holes.

"Ninja…" she says

Neither of you break stride, "…vanish."

You appear back in your lair and Amy immediately collapses in laughter, almost howling in your ear as you pick her up and throw her over your shoulder. You end up with her in your lap after you sit down as she tries to get her breathing back under control. "I assume you're going to get Vicky to find out how Clockblocker reacts?"

Wiping tears of mirth from her eyes, Amy nods and starts texting someone. "Oh yeah. I doubt she'll be able to get video, but I'll settle for her describing it. I'm going to let her know to ask him when she sees him next."

Amy can't stay any longer, so she heads back to the Pelham house and you scry Coil again. This time you actually scry for 'Thomas Calvert', and get the same snake-suited cape, this time in the back of a car. Coil gets out of the suit and changes into a pair of slacks and a polo shirt before stashing the suit in a hidden compartment. When the car pulls up and into a garage there's a moment where everything goes fuzzy again before Thomas gets out and heads into what you assume is his house. He reheats some kind of leftovers and shovels it into his mouth with military efficiency before slowly ascending a set of stairs, showering, and collapsing onto the bed. It's only seven in the evening and the would-be king of Brockton Bay is completely passed the fuck out.

You stop the surveillance for about a half-hour before checking back. Coil has shifted position but his breathing is even, with a slight snore. You pivot your point of view around to check for any places that cameras or other monitoring equipment could be before carefully casting everything you can think of to render yourself untraceable. Making an emergency portkey with a short trigger phrase, you apparate silently into Thomas Calvert's bedroom.

It's really unfortunate that there is nothing here that connects him to being Coil, as having him at asleep and at your mercy would make things pleasantly simple. You hit Coil with a stunner, and follow up with a body-bind before checking the man over with a diagnostic.

…something, perhaps you, has made him make some dumb fucking decisions with his health. The pills you had seen were amphetamines, and he's crashed. You don't know if his day job is a regular one, but you doubt he's going to be showing up anytime soon tomorrow.

Sticking to your plan, you sedate the cape and make an incision down to bone, carving out a chunk of the iliac crest and enchanting it with a portkey set as far out as you have been able to see over the horizon, and a couple of thousand feet in the air. You also use a protean charm to link to a coin you transfigured with Coil's snake emblem on it so you don't have to be in yelling distance of Coil's pelvis to get rid of him.

After fusing the bone back together and sealing him back up you peel an eye back and brain dump him. You'll need some time to dig through everything and make sure he isn't hiding a massive Doom-Cannon in his base rigged to go off or anything.

Checking everything over to ensure you've left no trace, you pop around before hitting up your lair and changing, then heading back to your apartment.

Crystal's texted you, and you respond back before popping over to her dorm and getting pounced on. You take her back to the apartment and the two of you make a late-ish dinner and catch up on things—she hung out with the Klub, and Karen was finally cleared to be released.

[X][Discussion] Explain about the Dave/Coil connection

You're in the middle of cutting your chicken when you decide to talk about the Coil thing a bit. "So, that guy that I mentioned that tried to bug the place?"

Crystal raises her eyebrows at you as she chews and gives you a 'go on' gesture.

"So I had used the time-turner and tracked him after he got done. He dropped the van he was using off at a garage and headed to a condo down on the southside. Now, I made the decision based on the whole 'capes don't try to find out the real names of other capes' thing, and figured someone was being fucky."

By this point Crystal's finished chewing and is already rubbing one temple. "You're right that it shouldn't be happening, but I can already tell something's going to be screwed up. Let me have it."

You put your utensils down do a little hand shrug. "So the dude wasn't named 'Ralph' like his coveralls said. His name is Dave, and he works for Coil." You stop for a beat before you continue, "And apparently he's like the main spy microphone installer, and a bit of a pervert. So anyhow, he had recordings of all of the gangs' capes, some PRT and Protectorate people, some civilians I don't know offhand, the Undersiders—who apparently were put together by Coil in the first place—even your parents' backyard."

Your blonde girlfriend is furious, "What in the hell is that fucker thinking? If anyone knew he was doing that they'd start a straight-up war."

"I'm assuming he's a Thinker, so he probably thinks he's better than all us peons," you offer mildly.

Narrowing her eyes, Crystal kicks back in the chair a bit. "You have a plan."

"I have a plan. The same plan that worked for the Merchants." You spread your hands and smile, "See, it appears that Coil has gone full Bond villain and has an underground lair. With an HVAC system. That I looked up the plans to, and know where to dump the potion into."

"Uh-huh, and how many jokers does Coil have?"

That drops the smile from your face. "Well, there's the problem. From the poking around I did this morning, he has close to two hundred people all-told," you check to make sure the choking noise from her is just air before you continue, "and I have no idea how many are actually in the base at one time. Supposedly they're mercenaries, so I'm assuming that the ones not caught in the base would just bug out and go elsewhere." You sigh and scratch the side of your head, "I was planning on calling Templeton and getting some advice on timing and such—of course if she's a mole then the whole thing is screwed, but…" you throw your hands up in a what-can-you-do gesture.

"If you need help from me, or Amy, or really any of the rest of New Wave, you know we'll help. Keep me in the loop, okay?"

You bring up the Amy thing as well, and Crystal looks a little embarrassed. "Okay, this is going to sound weird, especially since I claimed like a month ago that I wasn't doing an open relationship. I still don't want like an open-open relationship." She floats over the table and settles in your lap and looks you right in the eyes. "We're a couple, and stuff like having Susan as an occasional third is cool, but like anything like that we'll decide together, right?"

You lace your fingers with hers. "I agree."

"But the Amy thing… James, I've never seen her react like this to anyone before. She totally has a thing for you—both as you and Warlock. She doesn't know I know, but she's written fanfic about you. She like, wants your babies."

"Uh…"

Crystal snorts, "Metaphorical babies. And I don't have it in me to deny her, but I'm not willing to give you up either."

You kiss your girlfriend and lean your forehead on hers. "And jealousy isn't an issue?" You push into her mind a bit and probe as she answers.

"I might be a bit jealous—not gonna lie—but as long as I know that you and me are still strong, there's no problem."

More than that, Crystal feels that bit of jealousy and a frisson of arousal. Well, a lot of arousal. The term cuckcake also floats through her mind. You find it a weird thing for her to enjoy, but as long as you monitor the situation…

"I can see things going badly if this gets mismanaged—I'm not going to say no, but I am going to tell you that if you ever stop feeling secure about things, please talk to me. As long as we can discuss things like actual adults we'll find something we can do to fix it."

"Agreed," she says, and seals it with a bunch of kisses.

Later in the evening you find both of you sitting clothed on the bed as you talk Crystal through the first steps of internal mind magics. You were lucky enough to be able to skip these steps when you gained your skill, but you have the knowledge to teach as your squib girlfriend learns the basics of clearing her mind both mentally and magically.

For someone who has never touched magic before you came into her life she does wonderfully—she's not quite able to still her mind and concentrate on the flow of magic within her without your assistance, but you had assumed she wouldn't even be able to get as far as she had.

Coming back up out of the trance state Crystal blinks those beautiful blue eyes at you and reaches up from where her head is cradled in your lap to pull you down into an inverted kiss. Some wiggling on her part later and a pair of panties is deposited on your head.

You pull back and see her cocky smirk, which quickly goes crosseyed when you reach out and touch with your magic hand.

Grabbing your other hand, she bites your thumb and pants against your wrist. "James, baby, I think it's time for bed."