Amaranthine

Nick sopped along, tentacle in hand with Gwyn as they roamed the market after the day’s work. They’d seen Cait drag Qi off in this direction, and weren’t going to pass up the opportunity for their own little date. They’d both been homebodies before meeting each other, Nick due to an almost pathological social ineptitude, and Gwyn because she’d always preferred the company of games, machines, and tentacle porn. Now that she had a real life source of the latter, they’d each found they wanted to experience a little more of life with one another.

“Where did they even go?” asked Gwyn, craning her neck around to look for the two enormous, unmissable women. They’d lost track of them after they grabbed churros from a fantastic smelling stand, which the odd couple now stood in line for. “I swear to god, if those two get caught fucking in public…. Actually. Idk, what do you think that would do to AEGIS’ image?”

WE WOULDN’T LOOK WORRIED

THAT’S FOR SURE

Nick didn’t think Gwyn was conscious of all the little movements her soft hand was making along his tentacle, or that technically, the mere act of holding ‘hands’ for them probably was too lewd to do in public. So he couldn’t really judge if his friend was plowing Qi behind the sweetcorn stand. That said, he hadn’t actually lost track of them, Cait glowed like the sun in his Altered sense, and Qi burned like an active caldera. Zero chance the flimsy cloth and tarps of the market were hiding that.

However, he could also tell when Cait wanted privacy, and that the two auras were speaking, not fucking, so he didn’t feel the need to interfere. He did keep his Altered sense active. It seemed odd that the Bookkeeper hadn’t made any moves after the chaos of last night, but this open air gathering was a perfect target. Nick planned for the motherfucker to have a pretty big surprise if he thought the target was soft.

That was worst case scenario though. For now, he was enjoying time with Gwyn. The heat of the day had forbidden her from remaining in her normal hoodie, so she had stripped down to a cami of the exact same shade of green that showed off those amazing boobs, and was even wearing athletic shorts for the first time Nick had ever seen. All in all, shining with a light sweat, the 'sight' of her was enough to stoke even his tanked thirst for boobage.

She ordered their fried TexMex treat, ignoring the teenaged attendant's eyes locked firmly onto her chest, and handed Nick’s to a waiting tentacle. She sat down on a bench, pulled him into her lap, and the two people watched as they savored the churros.

As ever, the place was a melting pot of humanity, Altered and otherwise, and while the vibe was a little guarded after the streak of adverse events, overall, people smiled as they enjoyed the beautiful night and the oddity of the evening market. Nick saw a good amount of people pointing and whispering when they saw him, but was pleased that the vast majority looked excited rather than scared. The highlight of his night was when he saw a guy wearing an exact replica of his hat.

THIS IS FAME, he said, pointing the dude out to Gwyn. She lifted him up, licking at the cinnamon sugar that she’d spilled onto him.

“Not as good as the real thing,” she purred, and he shivered. Now that he really knew what that tongue could do, there were few things on earth that he loved more. “Christ, now I’m the one that’ll be in trouble with PR. No, that’s great babe! I’m really happy people are starting to see what I do.”

Nick faced her, cocking his hat in question as he looked at her. She blushed.

“Okay, maybe not what I do, although you’ve seen your thirsty ass fan page, you know I’m not alone!”

I AM A SEX ICON

IT’S TRUE

“I mean, a very specific one, but yeah! Anyway, point is I’ve seen the change in the way even kids look at you from terror to glee. Its nice. Really nice, given how bad I know it hurts you when you scare people.”

Gwyn patted him on the hat, smiling down at him warmly. He burbled as pleasantly as he could, nuzzling into her tummy. A violinist set up nearby, and a string version of a popular pop song began to fill the street, bringing out even more smiles from the market-goers.

That made the first scream all the more jarring. It came, high and shrill, from the middle of the crowd. The tide of people quickly turned away from it, even as more broke out. With his senses, Nick didn’t need a break in the crowd. He saw a figure burning with ghostly white fire, holding a coruscating orb that blazed brighter than Cait, standing over a corpse. The figure clenched their fist, and the orb disappeared, while the figure grew just a little brighter.

Nick shot forward, using the building opposite him as an anchor. As he barrelled towards the mystery figure, he heard it chuckle. Whipping a tentacle towards its head, it disappated into wispy smoke. As he reoriented himself, he found it again, right in front of a fleeing civilian.

It looked like the man waved his hand through the fleeing person, emerging with another of those orbs even as his victim fell lifeless to the street. He clenched his fist again, and it was gone. Nick hissed at the casual indifference of the violence. He’d come to expect it from the Bookkeeper’s puppets, but something about this felt different. He tried to attack again, but again, a mocking laugh, and smoke. He searched, frantic in anger, but his blood ran cold when he found the man.

He stood right behind the bench that still held Gwyn, who for all her abilities still had little experience in emergent situations. His eyes glowed a familiar gold, and held a cruel kind of glee as his hand stretched towards Gwyn’s head.

It stopped inches away, a strong, tanned hand around its near-incorporeal wrist.

“Hey shithead. Your daughter likes it when I fuck her,” Cait snarled. In Nick’s Altered sense, the golden blaze of her aura locked down the ethereal ghostfire of the guy that had to be Kennedy’s dad. Nick watched the contempt in his golden eyes shift to fear as Cait’s free hand thundered towards his face.

Then a different glowing band caught Cait’s wrist, and whipped her back with force against a nearby wall. The man shrieked as Cait’s grip shattered his wrist as she was yanked away, but he was free. Fortunately, Gwyn had collected herself, already whisking herself away on a cloud of ‘bots. More glowing bonds flicked towards Cait’s limbs, pinning her to the wall.

Nick followed their source to a beautiful, slender, raven-haired woman with a face he was beginning to know well.

“I had hoped to do this ‘big reveal’ with my granddaughter present,” Bookkeeper said, the puppet of his daughter serving as mouthpeice. “But that troublesome forest creature you all keep as a pet has forced my hand. Please, let Kennedy know her family misses her.”

The woman snapped repeatedly, sending bonds flying towards Nick’s limbs. He dodged them all, but found himself face to face with her father. The man reached out for his center mass, faster than Nick could react. He felt a push that was beyond phyiscal, a chill spreading through his body as he lost control of it. Then something snapped him back into it.

The man’s eyes went wide as Nick hissed, lunging forward to bite at what should have been ethereal flesh. Instead, it was like cotton candy. The ghostly fuckhead screamed as his shoulder disappeared into Nick’s maw, edges burning and blurry in his Altered sense. He looked at Nick with horror, vanishing as he fled.

Did I just eat part of a ghost? What the fuck!?

Nick followed the energy of the smoke cloud as it ran, resolving that either this motherfucker left the city, or entered his stomach. It hadn’t been long that Nick had been empowered to right wrongs, but what he’d gathered of Kennedy’s trauma lay squarely at this bastard’s feet, whether it was controlled by the Bookkeeper or not.

It didn’t look like he’d get the chance to end it. He was keeping pace, but not gaining, and chased until the glowing ghostly smoke exited the Tortoiseshell into open air.

He hissed in frustration, starting to swing back to check how things were going with Kennedy’s mother. She hadn’t seemed as dangerous, and based on his readings was definitely a character, instead of the odd energy signature of the ghostly figure he’d just chased off.

Indeed, when he returned, the woman was a chrome statue, just like Frostie from the night before.

IS THIS GONNA BE A THING?

He asked as he approached Gwyn, who was dissolving the parts of the building Cait was attached to. Qi stood sheepishly off to the side, probably feeling bad she hadn’t been able to help much in the quick melee.

FOR THE RECORD

I AM BONDAGE

IT WOULD BE WEIRD TO DO THIS TO ME

“I dunno,” Gwyn said, ignoring the jibe. “Seems like a good idea to take prisoners now and again right? We don’t know exactly what she can do, but it didn’t seem like insta-death a la ghost fuck over there. Did I see you eat him by the way?”

JUST A NIBBLE

“I don’t know how to parse that in this context.”

WELCOME TO BECOMING A TENTACLE MONSTER

“Fair, I guess,” Gwyn shrugged. “How’d he taste?”

COTTON CANDY

MADE FROM COCAINE

“I think that should frighten me, but its too far outside my frame of reference to really set anything off. Did you pick up any other Characters in the area?”

I DON’T THINK....

HE WASN’T A CHARACTER

SHE IS

NO MORE THOUGH

“What the fuck? That’s probably not good. About him, I mean. Oh. Oh shit. I can’t watch that,” Gwyn said, turning away from him. Nick's senses picked up a man walking hesitantly over to the corpse of Kennedy’s father’s first victim.

Oh shit, Nick thought, as the man fell to his knees, starting to weep over the body. Oh fuck me. Is this what always happens when we fail? Could we even have prevented this, really? I didn’t see anything until it was too late, even with my Altered senses going.

Ashamed, he tried to block the scene out, even as he saw Cait walking over towards the sobbing man. He didn’t hear what she said, but he heard the man’s fist impact her stomach, and a hiss of pain, not from Cait. The pain must have cleared his mind, because he went back to crying over his lost loved one as Cait knelt next to him, hand on his back, until the paramedics arrived.