“Don’t worry about that,” Miranda told Roman. She returned her focus to the prostitute. “I want you to go to the party now, and I don’t want you to remember any of this. If your friends ask who you met, which they won’t, say it was an old schoolmate, one named Miranda. Tell them she was on a date with a guy who was clearly below her standards,” Miranda said, winking at Roman.
“Goddamn telepaths,” Roman whispered under his breath as the prostitute stood, smiling at Miranda.
She left just as more of Kevin’s employees showed up outside the restaurant, three of them coming via a teleporter. From their current vantage point, Roman could no longer see Ava, Coma, and Jess on the rooftop, but he knew they were there. If they were following the plan Ava had devised, Jess had already turned herself into a rooftop storage unit with Ava and Coma crouched inside.
The waiter came around with their tea and scones, quickly leaving them.
Roman slipped his hand into his pocket again, feeling for Casper. He hadn’t activated her since her big reveal last night, and he figured now was as good a time as any.
But not around Miranda.
“I need to use the restroom.”
“But you haven’t even had a sip of your tea yet.”
“You can join me if you’d like,” Roman said, figuring he would play her game and see how far she went with it.
She scoffed at his remark. “If something ever does happen between us, it will be on my terms.”
“And here I thought you’d be interested in hooking up in the restroom of a crappy café in the Western Province. From the color of your hair, I always thought you were more the adventurous type.”
“You wish,” she said, the telepath not clear how she should respond. “Care has nothing to do with it.”
That was another thing Roman had learned about dealing with telepaths.
Sometimes the best way to throw them off guard was to get ahead of them, to say something they didn’t see coming. There was a pleasure to be had in watching them short-circuit.
“I’ll be right back,” Roman told her.
Before she could come up with a clever quip, he made his way into the café, their waiter smiling at him again. He located the restroom, and once he was inside, Roman brought Casper out of his pocket. The tiny doll came to life in his hand.
“Please don’t flush me down the toilet,” she said as he set her on the stone countertop. “And if you do, don’t take a shit on me before you flush!”
“You really screwed me over back there,” Roman told her. “Look, I like you, and I want to keep you around, but the amount of bullshit you just shoveled in my way…”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Casper started to say, a frown forming on her face. “Please don’t spank me, Daddy.”
“Are you serious?” Roman asked.
“Yes, please don’t spank me. Your hands are too big. It would hurt. Maybe you could do it with your finger.” She bent over and looked at Roman over her shoulder.
“I really do need to get rid of you,” he mumbled to himself.
“Come on, you like me. You like my sense of humor.”
“Stop it, and listen closely. Ava has had Jess’s and Miranda’s minds wiped.”
Casper nodded, clearly impressed. “Wow, she really is going to bat for you. Next time you go down on her…”
“Shut up,” Roman said, flicking her.
“Hey!” she said as she stumbled backward and nearly slipped into the sink. “That’s called abuse!”
“I still don’t know what’s going to happen after what you told them. Going forward, if there really is a ‘forward’ from here and they actually let me go there, I don’t care if you tease people or cause general trouble, but don’t go around revealing secrets. Especially secrets that could get me in trouble—because if I’m in trouble, they’ll take you away from me.”
“It’s that bad?” Casper asked, and by the tone of her voice Roman could tell she actually meant it this time.
“Yes. But they want us to focus on the mission first, and they’re going to deal with me afterward. So I have to do well. And Ava, in her infinite pissy wisdom, has decided to keep me out of the fight, almost in an effort to sabotage my actions here. Although she is letting Coma fight with her. I don’t know exactly how this is supposed to work, but the point is: I’ve basically been sidelined.”
“What if you just bring the building down with all of them inside?”
“Coma said something similar.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” Casper said with a laugh.
Roman glanced up, seeing himself in the mirror’s reflection. There was no time for retrospection, but if there had been, Roman would have to shake his head at the oddity of seeing himself standing in a smelly bathroom scolding a tiny doll for essentially betraying him.
“I don’t know exactly how this is going to happen, but I may need you,” Roman told her.
“You actually need me for once?”
“Yes, Casper, I need you.”
“That is the most flattering thing you’ve said to me all year!”
“Here’s what I want you to do…”
Roman took a deep breath in and told Casper his plan. He knew there were a lot of variables in how it could actually play out, but if it gave them an edge, it would be better than nothing.
“Okay,” she said after he’d finished. “I get the idea. I’m ready to actually be useful for once.”
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you, Daddy. Now, do you still want to spank me?”
Roman shook his head. “This is serious.”
“Sorry…”
Kevin Blackbook wanted to make a grand entrance, but after his little interaction with Sandy, he also wanted to keep things somewhat humble.
He would never be the Kevin he once was, the meek administrator who was easily pushed around and taken for granted. But he also didn’t want to become like the assholes he’d hated in his former life; the bullies, the jocks, the people who’d treated Kevin like he was a second-class citizen.
No, he couldn’t be that either.
The best way forward would be some kind of amalgamation of both, a Kevin that was ruthless but also with administrative savvy, one who knew how to both stay under the radar and break the radar over someone’s head if they overstepped their boundaries.
It was a wild, wild world Kevin had found himself in, and now with his cat girls, his telepath, and his Zero Ring, Kevin would become king of that world.
“I’m so glad you could make it.” Kevin raised a silver chalice filled with wine the restaurant had arranged for him.
The new members of his fledging operation were seated at a U-shaped table before him. He could see his scantily clad employees at the back of the room, none of them invited to the dinner that had just happened. Their job was forthcoming, one in which sin and pleasure intermingled.
Each of them had been dosed up with the toxin, and Kevin was now having Sandy hand out samples to the exemplars at the table. There was the strongman and his equally strong sister, the woman who could animate her hair and turn it into a weapon, blond-haired Chap and his electric powers, a sinewy man with enhanced speed, a woman who could spit acid, a duplicator, a man who morphed into a beast covered in bony spikes, and their new company teleporter.
A couple of them had an uncertain look on their face, but most seemed content, both with the raise they had just received, the incoming drugs, and for those that cared to partake, the whores.
Kevin kept his chalice raised in the air. “As all of you know, things have been moving rather quickly with my operations here in the Western Province. I have recently acquired your company, and we will continue to expand into the other districts of Ravja. Now, the way we have expanded thus far has been by brute force, and we won’t always be able to move in this direction. This is why Sandy and I have been in talks discussing how we can further legitimize our operation. There will always be a side of it that politicians and
local activists frown upon, and it will be our job to make sure their frowns don’t go far beyond their graves,” Kevin said firmly.
He had prepared the speech and asked Sandy to read it to him, ingraining it in his psyche.
Now it felt natural, fluid even.
“But that’s not what tonight is about,” he said. “Tonight is about celebrating our unique gifts, our contributions to this company, which doesn’t have a name yet but will soon. I don’t want this to be like some of the other operations happening in the Brownlock District or Overtone Heights. I want there to be some structure to this, some meaning. I want this to be groundbreaking.”
Kevin took a sip from the chalice. He then handed it to Sandy, who walked all the way to the end of the table and took a sip of it before passing it to the next exemplar, who happened to be Chap.
“Yes, pass it around. Let us all drink together from the same chalice.” Kevin smiled down at Obsidian, who was looking up at him fondly, one of her ears erect. He could see her prayer beads wrapped around her arm, a few of them between her fingers as she whispered a quick prayer.
He then turned to look at Turquoise, who also had a smile on her face. For a moment, it seemed as if she was actually impressed with him, a smile Kevin gladly returned.
Even now, after knowing her for a good amount of time, he never could get a read on Turquoise. Sure, she would have sex with him, but she never seemed to have the same type of affection for Kevin that Obsidian had, affection that could turn to jealousy rather quickly unless it involved Turquoise.
He was fine with that.
Adding Sandy to the mix gave him somewhat of a triple-edged sword, Kevin covered on most fronts.
After this morning’s interaction with Sandy, Kevin wanted nothing more than to fuck the living hell out of the telepath, but he knew that time would come, and he knew he would have to earn it.
He also knew he would have to be careful with Obsidian around. He didn’t want something to happen to Sandy.
The chalice came to Turquoise. She took a sip from it and handed it to Obsidian, who also drank some before handing it off to her left, to the woman who could spit acid.
“So you’ve had your dinner, and now you will have your fun. You’ll start work tomorrow afternoon,” Kevin said, a few of the exemplars chuckling. “I wouldn’t be cruel enough to ask you to get started in the morning. The restaurant staff should be in shortly to clear out the tables and chairs. There are private rooms attached to the space, along the wall,” Kevin said, motioning toward the rooms in question. “These have all been outfitted with bedding as per our request. I really don’t care what you do or where you do it, and the staff here also turn a blind eye, just in case you were worried. Whatever happens here stays here. Don’t forget that.”
The back door swung open, and a woman with red hair stepped out pushing a cart. For a moment, Kevin felt like he recognized her, but as she started collecting dishes, he quickly assumed it was a coincidence.
“So have fun, and let’s make this a night none of us will ever forget.”
The back door swung open again, a dark-haired woman in a mask entering.
It was the last thing Kevin remembered seeing before all hell broke loose.
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Last Supper
Roman now sat on the sidewalk, his back against a lamppost, his eyes squeezed shut. He could see what was happening inside the restaurant in his mind, Ava, Coma, and Jess in the kitchen. The staff members had been forced out the back door, only to be ensnared in Miranda’s telepathic trap.
Through Coma’s eyes, Roman watched as Jess morphed into a cart, Ava quickly locating an extra set of kitchen clothing.
Roman had to smile as she initially smelled one of the aprons and then considered it before placing it on.
After she was dressed, Ava got behind Jess and began wheeling her cart into the main room of the restaurant.
Roman was anxious all of a sudden, and he didn’t know if his plan for Casper would work or not. The tiny doll was long gone; he knew better than to try to check her perspective as well, assuming it would be best to remain focused on Coma, who would be doing much of the fighting.
“They’re about to move in,” Roman announced without opening his eyes.
He watched Ava turn to Coma and give her the thumbs up, Roman’s combat doll a few steps behind her, arms morphing into long blades.
Ava went in first, Coma pausing at the door and taking a brief look through the glass.
“It’s him,” Roman said as Coma watched Kevin give a toast.
It was going to be a bloodbath.
And while he wished he could be part of the action, there was a piece of Roman that was happy to be outside looking in, even if he wouldn’t admit that to Ava. Sure, what was about to go down would ultimately be on him, but at least he didn’t have to witness it firsthand with most of the killing handled by Coma.
It was odd to think of it in this way, but Coma wasn’t human, nor did she value human life the way Roman did. And as much as he hoped some of the innocents would be able to get out, he knew the odds of this were low.
Coma pressed through the kitchen door, Kevin not yet paying attention to her.
She almost made it to the end of the table before Roman’s former coworker looked up and saw that her arms had morphed into two enormous blades.
The first to react was the cat girl seated next to Kevin, the one with black ears and a black tail. She hopped onto the table and took off toward Coma, leaping into the air and meeting her doom almost immediately.
Roman didn’t know what she was thinking.
Perhaps the cat girl thought she would be faster than Coma and her blades; perhaps she was inebriated in some way.
It didn’t matter now.
Coma’s blade pressed out of the cat girl’s back, and while she tried to claw Roman’s combat doll, Coma only dug in deeper, finishing up with her other blade arm, which she also sent straight through the woman’s torso.
Coma then pulled her arms wide, both of her blades cutting out of the cat girl’s body, severing an arm and cutting away half her torso, if not more.
Roman saw the bloodied body hit the floor, and he also heard Kevin screaming, a vein about to burst on the side of the fat man’s head.
Ava lit someone up at the back of the room, a man who had been coming to help Kevin. And as the man’s body caught fire, Jess quickly morphed into a replica of Coma, also growing blade arms.
This was something they had tested out earlier. Jess wasn’t able to actually take a human’s form, but she could easily take Coma’s doll body after Roman deactivated her. It was weird, but she wasn’t that kind of shapeshifter. The object couldn’t be alive.
But now Coma’s body was ingrained in Jess’s psyche, the morpher narrowly avoiding acidic spit from one of Kevin’s exemplars. Ava roasted this woman in a matter of seconds, fire erupting into green and yellow plumes as the woman died.
The real Coma focused on trying to get to the back of the room, to Kevin, but the two muscle exemplars were about to present quite the obstacle.
Rather than go through them, Coma took control of the floor beneath the muscled woman, swallowing her up until all that was left was her head. Coma sliced the woman’s head off in a matter of seconds, the head bouncing and leaving blood splatters on the ground.
She spun just in time for her blade to go through the chest of the exemplar with enhanced speed.
Blood spritzed into the air, dozens of men filling the room as Kevin’s duplicator started creating additional combatants, engaging Coma and Jess-as-Coma.
They were devious, grabbing the prostitutes and holding them hostage, Coma trying to both fend them off and stop them from killing innocents. Kevin shouted panicked orders at the back of the room as it filled with more duplicators.
“She’s trying not to kill innocent people,” he mumbled.
It was like Roman was in a trance.
He could barely feel himself sitting on the
ground across the street from the restaurant, his entire focus now on what Coma was witnessing. He was so focused that he couldn’t even hear the commotion of the otherwise silent streets due to the way Miranda had cleared them. There could have been a trolley heading right at him and he wouldn’t have noticed.
A bolt of electricity struck Coma, tossing her into the wall, where she brought down a large portrait of a silver moon.
Roman nodded as Jess jumped off the ground and turned into a giant metal ball, crushing the man named Chap and thwarting his electric attack.
Ava burst forward, an inferno raging around her as she met the other strongman, who cried out in pain yet still defended himself, throwing huge fists in the air in an attempt to stop her.
“Just get him…” Roman grumbled, Miranda crouching next to him. “Come on…”
“Do you mind?” Miranda asked, lightly placing her hand on his arm.
“No, go ahead,” he told the telepath, who quickly tapped into what he was seeing.
She ended up sitting next to Roman, her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed as well.
Roman tuned back in to the fight as a wave of hair launched in Coma’s direction.
Roman had never seen anything like it. Coma’s immediate response was to form her blades into scissors, slicing and cutting her way through the hair that just kept on coming.
One of the duplicates punched Coma in the side while another one came in on her right, his fist connecting with her jaw. She spun, their bodies cut in half and disappearing into a burst of mist. She brought down a portion of the ceiling onto another pair of duplicates and skewered one with a modified chair leg.
As more hair continued to try to pull her legs out from under her, one of the duplicators ran toward Coma using the prostitutes as cover.
Still dealing with the exemplar who could control her hair, Coma lifted a wall from the ground, the duplicator and the prostitutes smacking right into it. Miranda let out a little gasp.
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