48

You get out of your math class Monday morning and spy Thunor trudging along across the courtyard looking despondent, his beard in disarray. Hurrying over and intercepting him he looks up at you and takes a few seconds before he can place you. "James? From the party that got broken up by the Merchants?"

"Yeah Thunor. Look, I'll be honest, you look like hell. D'you have class right now?"

"I should be going to the gym. I guess." He blows a gusty sigh and you can barely restrain rolling your eyes. Looks like the 'emotional affair' that he and Othala were having was heavy on the emotion.

You shake your head at him and throw an arm around his shoulders. "It's a little early for bars to be open so we're going to go to a cafe and get coffee or something and we'll dose it liberally with whiskey."

Ten minutes later in a dark little cafe you've thrown up a notice-me-not and Aelfie slipped a bottle into your backpack. "I'm assuming it's about a woman. Talk to me."

The older guy tugs at his beard and doesn't meet your eyes. "It is. Was. I don't know. Did you ever meet Erica?" At your nod he continues, "She was married to this guy—total jerk. His friends were pretty suspect too. She was part of it but seemed like I was getting through to her and she was moving away from the racism." He sighs and rubs his temples. "Her husband 'left on a long-term trip' two weeks ago and she was suddenly talking about getting a divorce. And now she's disappeared."

You blink at that… interesting version of events. "Bullshit." Holding up a hand to stop him, you continue. "Look, Thunor. You called me 'cyning' at one point that day and I looked it up—it meant 'king'. I'm not, I consider myself much more of a ƿiċċa—a sorcerer. Y'know, one of those real-power-behind-the-throne types. Also, pretty observant. So let me make an observation. Erica, she of the sunglasses or her hair covering one eye all the time, was the E88's Othala, who has an eyepatch. Which, if random PHO speculation is correct—and why not, who would lie on the internet?—means Victor was her husband.

"He's been arrested and is in jail in New York, not Brockton, so he's likely fucked. You're apparently a memetic sex god and were pulling Erica away from the Neo-Nazis, but because of the attack on the PRT building last week she's disappeared." You sit back and tilt your head slightly. "How'm I doing so far?"

Thunor looks around with wide eyes to see if anyone has overheard you and seems to realize that no one is paying any attention to the two of you at all. "…How?"

"So I'm dating Crystal Pelham, right? More importantly for this—Laserdream, a cape. Now she's pretty tight-lipped about cape things, but if you've seen PHO you may have seen Warlock interrupting us at lunch a couple of weeks ago. He gets chatty when he hangs out." You pull out the bottle of whiskey and pour a very generous amount to top off his coffee.

Taking a sip and wincing—this isn't actually firewhiskey, but it's damn close—the redhead closes his eyes and very obviously goes over everything you've told him. He takes another swig and combs a hand through his beard. "Has he mentioned anything about… her?"

Poking into Thunor's head shows that he is totally fucking besotted with Erica. With the woman who he talks to in stolen moments in his dorm room or in the history classes they share. He's fully aware of her many issues including her casual racism and has done work to get her to be more accepting, but there is just something about the girl in her unguarded moments that draws them together.

"Nothing specifically about 'her', no. However, he did mention that there were some capes apprehended that are turning either PRT or independent and getting makeovers to disassociate themselves with their previous identities. Normal procedure is to ship them off somewhere else, but it's not happening this time because of amongst other things—and I'm quoting—a 'vaguely-requited love affair'."

Thunor's face is like the sun coming up as he beams. Before he can blind you with his smile you wave a hand. "No clue about timeframes or if this is even Erica. All I can say is if that's who Warlock was talking about, she's likely to be completely different looking." You slide the guy your civilian phone number. "Now go wash your beard, gird your loins, and buck up, dude."

"That's the best news I've heard since—well since I heard about Erica's husband."

You lean in and smile, "You're sounding a lot more like some kind of chivalric knight than an Anglo-Saxon warrior."

Thunor's back in the groove as he booms (quietly), "Nay! Perhaps I shall woo her with song and poetry, but I will no longer pine ingloriously!"

After finishing off your drinks you both head back to campus and take a brotherly swig of whiskey before Thunor heads off to get his head back on straight. You tell him you'll catch up with him later in the week and see if there's anything else you can learn from Warlock.

When you catch up to Crystal and fill her in later she just boggles at you. "Did you just blame yourself for being chatty? Really?"

"I coulda blamed you, y'know."

"Psh, I know how to keep my mouth shut. You're playing cupid with a racist." She kisses your cheek. "I think it's sweet, I just hope she's worth it for him."

Shortly after school lets Taylor shows up at the lair. She hasn't even finished setting her backpack down before you ambush her and demand she recite the ritual chant you'd given her yesterday evening. Her pronunciation is slightly off so you correct it and chant back and forth as you walk her to the ritual area and draw her blood for the runes. When Amy shows up a little bit later you have the healer practice the runes again to ensure she'll be able to paint them on correctly.

By the time Crystal shows up you're satisfied that Taylor will be able to hold up her part. Crystal and Amy both were able to handle the runes with little issue after a small refresher.

You've informed the girls that you're using this as a test for enhancing New Wave. You can handle runes on the men, they can handle it on the women.

In practice it works beautifully. The four of you are enrobed with Taylor in the middle of a triangle set by you, Amy, and Crystal. As you invoke the magic of the circle you commingle all three women's magics with yours and find the drain on yourself is much less than it had been.

After the ritual cleanse you cast the spell to lay out the runes needed for the enhancement before your back and presumably Taylor drops her robe. The waiting seems longer than it really is before you're tapped on the shoulder and you examine the girl's naked back. Everything there seems fine, and after donning her robe again you spot check a few other parts of the runes on the chest.

At that point Taylor once again takes her place amongst her reagents and you funnel magic from the three of you supporting her as she begins to chant.

As a squib, it appears that Taylor can't quite feel the rhythm of the magic the same way you did, so you end up whispering the words along with her.

When the three of you did the ritual last week you chanted for something like a half-hour. For Taylor she mouths at the twenty-minute mark that she's not getting anything else from the reagents. You have her repeat everything once more as you reach out through the magic of the space and piggyback off of the feelings she's getting. It corresponds to what you had felt when the ritual was complete last time and you nod and gesture Amy and Crystal closer.

As you intone the closing the wave of exhaustion you felt last time is incredibly minor—the benefits of spreading one ritual across four participants, you suppose.

You don't know if she realizes you're looking, but Taylor pulls the robe open and looks down at herself, you assume to see if the runic marks are gone. You look away immediately and thus don't see her walk up to hug you, pulling herself off the floor as she wraps her arms around your neck. "Thank you. I-I feel better knowing I'm protected."

Wrapping your arms around her you feel Crystal and Amy join in as well. "I'm happy to do it. You can nap for a bit if you need to, we'll be going to the New Wave meeting in about an hour."

In fact all four of you end up on your bed, although Taylor takes the far side. Amy claims little spoon and wiggles back into you. The T-shirt she's wearing is baggy enough that you can slip your hand inside and cup a breast as you all doze for thirty-ish minutes.

The New Wave girls head out first after claiming kisses and as you roll out of bed yourself you throw a light sheet over Taylor, who sleepily mimes blowing you a kiss. You wonder if she'll remember that later and be embarrassed.

At the Pelham house you stroll in as New Wave is going over a patrol the elders did last week. You sit and wait until they're done and smile beneath your mask as Photon Mom turns to you.

"So you found three new capes to team up with, all female…"

You laugh and pull out some documentation on the subrosa charm and slide it over to Brandish. "I have a secrecy spell I'd like to use to generally keep everything talked about here from randomly leaking. Mainly the various things I can do, but some of cape-related stuff as well. To indirectly answer your question, I didn't find the capes, they found me. One was personally suggested by the other two."

Carol taps a pen agains the table. "How exactly does this… 'spell 'work in reality?"

"Care for a demonstration? I'd need a drop of blood from you—on your own finger, you don't give it to me."

The lawyer weighs it in her head. Neil is visibly about to speak up and agree to test it when Carol cuts him off. "No, I need to know how it feels and what it restricts."

You give her a nod and stand to move over to her side of the table. "Prick your finger and get a drop of blood on it. Part of the casting process is an agreement as to what exactly is going to be secret. So I would ask that you do not discuss my ability to create items or imbue effects into things with anyone not in this group, for example. If you tried to do it on the Boardwalk you'd get a sense that others could overhear. If you wanted to ask someone else I, and everyone else in the in-group, would get that feeling so that we could collectively vote on things or dissolve the secret. Or decision-making like that could be granted to a smaller number of people—I will always be one of them, however."

Continuing, you say, "In this case, I will cast the spell and we'll walk outside. I'll tell you something, and the secret will be what we discuss outside. Neither of us can speak about it where others could overhear. We'll come back in and you can try to break it and have the others assist."

Carol goes into 'serious face', which is even worse than her normal resting bitch face, and you cast the spell. The drop of blood shimmers and turns into motes of light as similar motes come out of you. The two of you exchange some of your lights and they disappear.

"Since I specified that the secret will be told outside nothing we say here is covered. So if I—in all confidence— whisper something to you," you lean in and murmur, 'I'm not wearing socks', "it won't be restricted."

Brandish dutifully tells everyone you're sockless. "So now we go outside and do the secret part?"

You nod and the two of you walk outside. Throwing up a muffatio you hand her the potion vial with Mark's potion and tell her that Amy assisted you in making it and it will last six months. "That's not the real secret though, I wanted one you'd likely want to tell. The secret is that the cape labelled 'Witchy Woman' or more properly 'Sorceress' is actually Crystal using enchanted items of mine."

The lawyer looks at you in surprise. "How in the world? Didn't she stun people with blasts like yours?"

You grin beneath the mask and you're sure it shows in your voice. "Yup. So let's go back in and you can try and tell everyone—and Crystal is okay with this, we had discussed it previously."

As you open the door and let Carol proceed you, you see the moment she tries to tell her sister that Crystal was one of the capes. You sense through the spell that Carol wants to share the secret. You deny the request and have to stop to not run into her as her steps falter for a moment. She turns back to you with a question in her eyes and you nod.

Sitting down you also try to blurt out the secret and watch as Carol frowns and carefully denies you after some consideration. "So I shared something with Brandish. She's already tried to spill the beans, as have I. I'll let her try and break it a bit until she's satisfied."

While Carol tries to write, sign, text, speak, and play charades with the other people at the table Lady Photon turns back to you. "We—the older group of New Wave—have decided to claim Captain's Hill, the University grounds, and a swath of the South Docks going south-east ending around Arcadia. It's a lot, but the University is generally fairly quiet, and while this neighborhood has Empire sympathizers there is little actual gang-related crime or cape crime. We'd end up in residential potion of the South Docks on a more regular basis.

"The kids… well, they keep saying they want to form a 'strike force' and go hunting problems rather than claim and guard territory. I don't like the idea, but they're getting to the point where I feel like we're stifling them if we don't let them attempt it." She sighs and finally gets around to asking the question you were expecting. "Would you be able to add Victoria and Eric, as well as Crystal if she's interested, to your team?" You see Glory Girl and Shielder perk up and lean forward with pleading eyes.

You wave a hand in a negation. "I'm not going to say no, but I'm also not saying yes. We—and we don't have a team name at the moment—have decided that administrative-type things are going to be done as a group for now. I'll bring it up and maybe if the others agree we'll do a group patrol and make sure that we don't have personality clashes." You hold a hand up and block Vicky and Eric's faces from your sight. "The puppy-dog eyes shit isn't going to work on me. I'd have three sets of angry eyes if I just accepted without discussion. So just like, when we come up with a time to do a patrol together don't be jerks and everything should be alright."

Carol is almost tearing her hair out trying to leak the secret and is gesturing frantically to Neil, a somewhat-interested Mark, and Vicky to try and get them to guess things. Trying to speak or write didn't work for her, and she's not making any progress with sign-language as any time she comes up with a charade-like pantomime or tries to text her arms go slack. Even trying to talk to Crystal herself about it fails like everyone else.

"Are you satisfied, Brandish?"

The older cape turns to you with just a bit of murder in her eyes. "No. Well, I'm satisfied that it seems to be secure, but it is really pissing me off. I don't like having my ability to communicate cut off somehow."

You shrug one shoulder. "Fair, but I don't like the idea of having to burn all of China because the CUI caught wind of a rumor and tried to kidnap me. It probably wouldn't be good for the environment."

Sarah looks askance at that, but Carol just nods. "Could we do multiple versons with different secrets so if we decide to release information about something the entire process doesn't need to be re-done?"

"Sure. I'd also suggest not giving everyone a vote, as that does make things difficult. I would prefer an small number, but any number from one to the total number of people in on the secret will work."

The sisters look at each other and lean their heads together before Brandish uses the spell to ask to release the secret. This time you grant it and you can see her whispering into Sarah's ear. She then gets a face-full of hair when Sarah whips around to stare at Crystal, who is smirking.

Between you and Brandish, you map out separate secrets for your civilian identity (which you'll have to expose to them when you do the rituals), Sorceress' identity, and the fact that you can enchant things—and you're sure to specify that 'enchanting' means imbuing abilities into anything, items or living beings. You find it somewhat surprising that the lawyer has no problems with you being the sole determinant of adding to the secret for enchanting, but she just seems surprised at your surprise. "You need to be able to discuss it with other people and it's your ability. I deal with need-to-know on a daily basis and this doesn't seem to be horrible."

After that agreement the actual casting is straightforward. As soon as all three secrecy spells are done Crystal stands and you hand her a copy of your mask and conjure a robe around her. "I am the Sorceress! …although I preferred 'Witchy Woman', but everyone said it was dumb."

Eric jumps in before anyone else. "Wait, how did you knock people out? The report on your capture said that you knocked them out, not him."

"Funny you should say that…" Crystal starts to say, then hits Shielder with a stunner.

The rest of the table—bar Vicky—boggles as you sigh. "Really, Crystal?" Waving the teenager awake again you ignore the 'gimme hands' that Vicky is making to learn how to be able to stun people and gesture to your girlfriend. "So this is one of the reasons I phrased the 'enchantment' things the way I did. That wasn't a ritual, it is a semi-permanent tattoo."

"Crystal Marie Pelham, you got a tattoo?!" comes from across the table.

"Awesome, it's a tattoo!" comes from Vicky and Eric.

You burst out laughing and get the laser focus of Sarah Pelham on you. "And you, did you see my little girl naked when you put a tattoo on her?" She turns back to her daughter. "What did your boyfriend have to say about it?"

Crystal looks over at you and you slip your mask off for real. "He thinks he did a great job, honestly."

Lady Photon looks like you force-fed her a lemon. Vicky and Eric crack up laughing. Crystal opens her mouth but you whistle loudly and draw all the attention to yourself.

"Alright, I don't feel like dealing with intra-family drama, so let me say a few things. First, it's not an actual tattoo done with a tattoo gun. It's more like henna—drawn on the skin in blood and ink a lot like the ritual you all have expressed interest in. The difference being that that ink is being used up as she uses the spells I programmed into it and the tattoo will stop working in time. How much time I'm not sure, it depends on use. The ritual is permanent.

"Second, you'll notice it's not visible. Part of the design makes it fade into the skin unless Crystal pulls it up to be visible." Flicking a finger over to the blonde in question she pokes at a spot on the back of her shoulder and the extensive full-sleeve-and-back design becomes visible. Eric is almost salivating looking at it, while Vicky suddenly looks much less interested.

Lady Photon actually flies over the table to examine the lines while Carol looks between you and Amy. "Are you dating Crystal or Amy?"

Before you can speak up (and probably answer 'yes'), Amy leans in and grins. "He's dating Crystal, but he's pregnant with my baby."

It is a testament to Amy's sense of humor that everyone pauses, considers what is said and who said it, and proceeds to ignore her.

"So anyhow, Crystal and I are dating. Amy and Warlock are dating, as Amy said something about better—or at least different—press." You look over at the pouting brunette and decide to throw her a slightly humorous bone. "I am also contractually obligated to tell you that she is really my sugar momma. She offers me money to make me do things, like make this statement out loud to her family. Also I'm pregnant with her baby. She's my baby daddy. Momma. Whatever." You hold your hand out in Amy's direction and get a handful of coins dropped into your palm.

Neil breaks out in laugher at that point and everyone seems to take that as a cue to get up and get drinks and admire Crystal's ink.

Five minutes and refreshments later and Sarah has calmed down, but only after trying everything except lasers to scrub the lines off her daughter's skin. You explain how the runic tattoos will expire, and even if you actually tattooed them into the skin it would only extend the time it lasted, it wouldn't be permanent.

"In contrast a ritual is permanent. It also involves runes—that's the way that I control how reality is altered—but it locks the changes into you permanently. A magical item is the physical object version of that, something that will permanently have an effect of some kind. Speaking of items, though… Crystal, show them the color-changing stone."

Laserdream suddenly having silver shields is interesting, and even more so after she hands the stone over and Brandish's weapons turn purple and then green as they explore the options you had programmed into the stone. Mark even rouses himself to ask if you could do a multicolored or strobe effect. When you say it's possible with a bit more research on your part he chuckles and whistles something that sounds like the hook to 'Disco Inferno' before going quiet again.

Unfortunately for Vicky and Neil, their shields aren't generally visible so the color-changing for them doesn't accomplish that much. You may have noticed an odd tint to their skin, but only in bright light.

You also have Crystal and Amy show their enchanted jewelry and explain the various spells they have on them. The auto-portkey function if they're hurt or knocked unconscious gets particular attention, although the Pelham house is the only real 'lair' they have.

"Now, between doing the ritual—or rituals—and creating emergency portkeys I'll be pretty busy with things. We can talk about giving everyone a runic tattoo but even the three-shot option took something like an hour and a half and I'll likely need to refresh the spells themselves here soon. I'd like to spread all of this out as much as possible, but there'll need to be a couple of days between rituals." You gesture over to Crystal and Amy, "Both of them have had it done, as have I, so we can act as batteries so that the power required is stretched between more participants. This is part of the sacrifice that makes the ritual different—and more permanent—than a simple tattoo."

You turn to the elder two ladies of the group. "Also since the two of them already have practice with inking the runes they can draw them on you and I don't have to look if it bothers you. In the case of the guys I can do the drawing and they can turn away and not look." You shrug, "Or we can all be naked, I don't really care."

Both mothers seem completely in tune as they point out that they care, and there will be the absolute minimum required nakedness, thank you very much.

The ladies—Sarah, Carol, and Vicky—will go first either on Friday or Saturday, with the men—Neil, Mark, and Eric—to be handled the next time you can run the ritual, probably at least two days later. You'll also work on getting everyone a simple bracelet that returns people to the Pelham house for the moment in the same circumstances that you, Crystal, and Amy would be recalled to your lair.

As you take your leave both Crystal and Amy are cornered by Vicky before you've even made it out of the door.

Later, Crystal tells you that Glory Girl was endlessly curious about the whole two-timing thing when both girls know what's going on. Amy seemed to get annoyed by it, but it appeared fairly lighthearted on Vicky's part.

You leave a space between you on the bed when you get in and call Aelfie to grab your mistress if she's not asleep.

She wasn't, but she was naked and fingering herself. You spoon her and take over when her hand goes slack with surprise. She's soon cumming on your fingers as Crystal kisses her and presses their breasts together. You get Aelfie to pop the younger girl back to her bed and adjust your wards to not let her back in. You and Crystal snicker to each other as she rolls you on top of her and you sink into her welcoming depths and your phones chime angrily in the background.

As you wake up on Tuesday morning you have a long email from Tattletale. She apparently spent much of the previous day doing research and has come to the conclusion that Accord has crafted a plan that involves either taking over the Bay or at least establishing a presence in order to do so at a later date. Additionally there are at least three bounties regarding information about you, all of which she has reason to believe are from Accord through various shell organizations.

Now the thugs that attacked the Undersiders were there for Lisa specifically and knew nothing about you nor did they know anything of other plans Accord may have had, so you can't say if this is Lisa trying to use you to eliminate a problem, her own shard spinning a crazy tale, or completely valid logic.

-=-=-