April 13th, 11:00
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Humming to herself as she pulls into her garage, Mary parks her bike, dismounts and starts skipping to the door, not slowing down at all even as she hangs the bike's keys up on the wall alongside a dozen other sets of keys.
When the door to the house opens, she is greeted by the sight of a massive open space full of fancy decorations that she ignores in favour of the lioness that immediately rushes her.
It's with a wide grin on her face she crouches slightly and catches the big cat in a hug, nuzzling her face into it's fluffy neck.
"Oh who's a cutie patootie, you are, yes you are~," she coos indulgently, rubbing the predator lovingly as it purrs and rubs itself against her in turn.
Yes, she lives in a mansion now, and yes, she has a few.. exotic, pets. Her inheritance did leave her kinda rich after all, so she couldn't help but buy a massive property around Captain's Hill, on the western edge of Brockton.
She was originally going to just get a penthouse, since it would be less of a commute for work. But then she found out that her family owned a whole bunch of animals that had been kept 'around' that she also inherited.
Naturally, she couldn't let so many cuties just get sold or euthanised, so she bought a massive house inside an even bigger estate so that her pets could have plenty of space to live and play around in.
Not all of them are allowed in the house though, unfortunately.
Frankly, the only reasons they aren't all fighting with each other are because she's hired people to make sure none of her new pets ever go hungry, and because she is a parahuman, so it was pretty easy to show all the more violent animals who stood at the top of the food chain.
It turns out, when you suplex a tiger, even an animal can learn to be peaceful. It was kind of a pain for the first week though, because she had to keep intervening to stop her pets from killing each other, but they've learnt their lesson now.
Apparently there's something about private enclosures or something that people did to keep them all separated, but she can't be bothered to do that. Besides, it would be mean not to let her pets all mingle.
It helps that they were already tamed once before, makes it easier for them to relearn obedience.
Tony the tiger still isn't allowed inside the house though. Bastard nearly ripped one of her maid's arms off. The maid quit and she had to pay a massive compensation package. Fucking Tony.
"Not like you Sarabi~," she coos some more, joyfully rubbing her face against her lioness'. "Cuz you're a good girl, aren't you? Oh yes you are~."
Still, exotic animals aren't the only new addition to her life, and with that thought driving her, Mary stands, picking up Sarabi while she is at it, and starts making her way up the wide set of stairs in the centre of her foyer.
"Welcome back, Mistress Malaki," a professional voice distracts her from her continued fussing of Sarabi, and Mary looks up to see the petite, brown haired Isadora Abraham, one of her maids.
And yes, she is wearing a French maid uniform, frills and all. Why? Because French maid best maid.
"Ohayou~," she casually greet, not feeling even slightly tempted to match Isadora's professionalism with some pompous tone of her own.
That's way too much effort.
"How's he been?" She asks as Isadora falls into step behind her.
"The Young Master has been well, quiet."
"That's good," she relaxes slightly at the reassurance. She's not used to really worrying about things too much, but she'd be pretty upset if anything were to happen.
It doesn't take long then for them to reach a certain set of doors, and Mary quickly puts Sarabi down, the big cat immediately slumping to the ground, knowing that she isn't allowed inside this room and choosing to wait here for Mary to return.
Then, with a smile on her face, Mary opens the door.
Inside is a colourfully decorated room, with seemingly every colour of the rainbow present somewhere. On the left side of the room is a large, eighty inch TV attached to the wall in front of a few incredibly soft couches that look like they would swallow you up if you sat in them.
The right side of the room is full of various plushies lining the wall. There's probably over a hundred of them at this point, covering the entire length of the wall and stacking about halfway up. There's everything from animal plushies to Hero plushies, including multiple of her own line of plushies as Falcone.
And then, the crowning piece. Opposite the door, lying just under a large window that showers it in sunlight, is a crib.
A baby's crib.
Inside of which, is... an alligator.
No, she's just kidding, it's obviously a baby.
Her baby.
"Cain~~!!!" Mary cheers, her voice rising several octaves as she practically glomps herself over the crib, scooping up her baby boy and spinning around as she hugs him close to her chest.
That's right, Mary has a son. An adorable, beautiful, cute and precious son called Cain. He has lovely forest green eyes and a small tuft of dirty blond hair. H's only about half a year old right now, as she got pregnant almost immediately after getting off probation.
She has no idea who the father is, because she kinda went on something of a drinking and fucking binge after her probation ended, but she also wouldn't care even if she did know.
Because Cain is her son. He's hers, and she's not going to let anyone else take up even a portion of his parental affection, that all belongs to her and her alone.
...That said, she still got him a personal maid in Isadora, because as much as she loves the little guy, if she can avoid changing diapers, then she's going to.
You would not believe the stink of a baby's shit. It is so much worse than you'd think.
Shaking her head to dispel the gross thoughts, Mary turns her attention back to Isadora.
You see, there's a reason she hired Isadora, and it isn't just because her breasts are disproportionately large for her body type. The true, or rather main, since the boobs were still a factor in her decision making, reason for hiring Isa is that she's actually a parahuman.
Her power? She can place two distinct 'marks' on two different people, a 'sacrifice mark' and a 'protection mark'. The former of those marks makes it so that if Isa takes any damage, the damage will be reflected on to the marked. The latter mark makes it so that if the marked ever takes any damage, then Isa's body goes back in time proportional to the damage taken.
So she's basically immortal, which is cool for her, unless she overuses her power and gets rewound out of existence. But the important part is that if Cain were to die, then instead he would be fine and Isa would be about half a decade younger. Smaller injuries obviously affect her less, a small scrape would only shave off a couple minutes of her age.
The woman is in her sixties but she looks barely thirty, and she was raised to be a servant, so she's perfectly happy being a maid. Especially since Mary is a much kinder master than her previous Lords.
The only downside is that her power can't pass damage from the protection mark straight to the sacrifice mark. Still, it's a pretty good power for her maid to have. She's not going to take chances with her own son.
Speaking of Cain, he's unfortunately still fast asleep, but that doesn't stop her from rubbing their cheeks together and giggling to herself. He's just so cute!
He's even grabbing her pinkie finger in his sleep! Isn't that adorable~!
Pulling her attention away from her son is a struggle, but it's one Mary manages so she can speak with Isa, obviously keeping quiet so as to not wake Cain.
"How about Suzuya? That little shit hasn't broken any more stuff, right?"
Isadora opens her mouth to respond, but no sound comes out, and she looks away awkwardly, making Mary's face fall into a deadpan.
"What's the damage this time," she asks, beyond exasperated.
"Young Master Suzuya," Isa pauses for a brief moment, too professional for vocal disfluencies like 'uhm' and 'ahh', but still clearly hesitant to answer. "He set fire to the main kitchen. I have already arranged for people to come and repair it in the morning."
Somehow, Mary feels her expression become even more deadpan.
"How, and why?" She asks, once again regretting allowing Suzu to live with her.
"He wanted to make a cake after watching a video about Baked Alaska cakes. It.. did not go well."
She's pretty sure that that cake is actually supposed to be set on fire, so at least there was a reason for there being an open flame in the kitchen like that. Better than when he crashed one of her cars because he wanted to drift even though he'd never even driven normally by then.
"Don't grow up to be like Suzu," she whispers pleadingly to her son.
A soft ping draws Mary's attention away, and she shifts Cain to be held in one arm so she can reach into her pocket with the other, pulling out her phone to find a new message from an unknown number.
Curious, she reads it.
Can we talk? It is urgent. Cavatica.
Attached is an address and a note that she will be there in half an hour.
Well, that's interesting.
What could little Taylor want with her so soon? She knew that Taylor would message her eventually, she was counting on it for that matter, but it wasn't supposed to be for a few days yet, after Lung inevitably breaks out again.
Oh well, no plan is perfect, and honestly, it's a little boring if all her plans went exactly as she deigned them to. It's also annoying that she's going to have to drive all the way to the bay right after getting home, on the opposite side of the city and in the middle of the night.
But for the introverted girl to reach out to her, it's probably something interesting, so she'll go anyway. And she will be very unhappy if there isn't a good reason for calling her away from her son.
With that decision made, she responds with a gif of a chibi version of her in costume making an 'O' over her head that flashes green.
She doesn't know who made all her gifs, but she loves using them.
"Something's come up," Mary states, gently handing Cain over to Isa. "I'll probably be back in an hour or two. Text me if I'm later than that and if I don't answer, feel free to contact the PRT."
It's not like she believes anything will happen to her, but it's important to leave detailed instructions for people like Isa, because they're practically incapable of making decisions by themselves.
With little more than a sigh to show her frustration, Mary gives Cain one last kiss on the head, and squeezes Isa's butt for good luck before leaving, getting a small yelp from her maid.
She considers changing into her costume for this, but honestly she kinda wants to go to bed, so she figures just bringing one of her masks is good enough.
Assuming that this is supposed to be a quiet meeting, she takes her 'stealth' bike. It's been Tinkered with enough to both improve performance and to make it practically silent, but not so much it needs a Tinker to perform maintenance every other week.
...She's been spending a lot of her 'hard earned' money on a lot of stuff, but who could blame her? She's got nearly a billion dollars in inheritance, if she didn't indulge in some reckless spending then there would have to be something deeply wrong with her.
It doesn't take long to arrive thanks to how lacking speed cameras in Brockton, not that she would ever speed of course. That would be illegal, and she's a Hero. Heroes don't break laws...
Ahem.
The meeting place is just some decrepit building on the edge of the docks, looking out at the bay and she leans against a railing and admires the view of the PHQ.
It's hard to properly describe what it's like to look at the retrofitted oil rig to anyone who hasn't seen it, especially at night with dozens of floodlights lighting the place up.
The forcefield surrounding it makes everything inside seem like a bubble of some cartoon world has been edited over the bay, it just doesn't look real. It's honestly kind of dissonant, the kind of thing that looks more wrong the more you stare at it.
She doesn't keep track of the time, but soon enough her sensitive ears pick up the sound of light footsteps approaching.
Her head tilts slightly and a small smile grows on her face.
Has she been practicing? Mary thinks to herself, noting that the footsteps are rather quiet. Not enough to escape her notice obviously, but enough that it seems like some effort has been put in.
Turning around, Mary leans her back against the railing and waits for Taylor to enter her view, which she does a moment later, wearing her full costume. And it really is a cool costume. Dark greys and blacks covering her in form-fitting silk (she assumes it's silk considering her powers), with portions of armour over vital areas that she's pretty sure is made out of chitin, which is just metal as fuck.
Seriously, it means that she's slaughtered her own minions just to make some armour, that's cold as hell, even if her minions are just bugs. But the main draw of the costume is the mask.
Her jaw is covered with the design of a pair of sharp mandibles, and she has a pair of large, bug-like yellow eyes that honestly have a great intimidation factor.
Just imagining two large yellow eyes glaring at her through a thick buzzing swarm of insects sends a shiver down her spine.
So fucking cool.
God she can't wait until she gets to see Taylor do that classic 'swarm of bugs cover a man completely for a bit then disperse leaving only bones'.
Meanwhile all I'm wearing is casual clothes and a blindfold that doesn't blind me.
I feel underdressed.
"Just so you know, if you pulled me all the way out here in the middle of the night to tell me you had a nightmare or something, I'm going to kick your ass."
Taylor, or rather Cavatica, doesn't react at all to her greeting, but then Cav doesn't seem to react much to anything. She's either a sociopath, which is unlikely, incredibly disciplined, which is even more unlikely because she's a teenager, or her power comes with some kind of emotional suppressant.
Probably just spreads her feelings out amongst her swarm or something. Or maybe her power just comes with some kind of mental partitioning thing, like one mind for each bug, and she can just put her feelings in a bug mind and-
That's basically just saying the same thing but with more words.
"I need to call in a favour," Cav answers, ignoring my greeting entirely.
If not for the fact that Mary has already stalked the shit out of Taylor recently and already knows how socially isolated the girl is, she'd probably be pretty annoyed at that blunt delivery.
Mary opens her mouth to tell her to try again and ask properly, but changes her mind, deciding in the moment that Taylor would be cooler if she's really demanding.
Encouraging bad habits is one of her favourite pastimes.
"I can hear you out, but I'm not making any promises."
"Okay," she answers, and Mary's pretty sure it's not even intentional how she says it like Mary doing anything but accepting would be absurd. "But I should explain things first. First off, the Undersiders offered me a spot on their team. I took it."
Mary's brain short-circuits.
.....Fucking what?
Of all the things she was expecting to hear.. What the fuck? Who the fuck opens a conversation with a Hero like that?
She does understand the dynamic between Heroes and Villains, right? Is she being punked right now?
"Okay." Mary says, tone full of incredible amounts of confusion. "Sooooo... should I just arrest you now??? Or...?"
"Ah, please don't, let me explain," Cav says, her tone still dull despite the words, and Mary just crosses her arms and does her best 'unimpressed mother stare'. She's been practicing the pose for when Cain is older.
"I've been thinking a fair bit about the conversation we had last Sunday. I was a good guy then, I'm a good guy now. I joined the Undersiders because you said you were having trouble getting info on the guys. Now I know their faces, I know the names they're using, I have a pretty good idea about what their powers do, and I know where they're living."
Mary tries, she really does, but she finds herself wholly incapable of holding in the laughter than bubbles out of her at the girl's bold proclamation. She can tell even through Cav's unchanging posture that the girl isn't happy with her response, probably likening it to bullying in her head or something.
That doesn't help Mary stop laughing. It's just too funny, and it must have taken a solid minute or two for her to get a hold of yourself.
"Sorry sorry," she waves her hand in front of her face as if to dispel the rising tension, "I don't mean to laugh, it's just- how do I put this. Have you ever heard of the Unwritten Rules?"
Cav doesn't respond, and she takes that to mean no.
"The Unwritten Rules are basically a set of guidelines that all Capes supposedly follow. They're designed to prevent escalation, things like no unmasking other capes, no targeting families, no rape, that kind of thing. Things that would push a Cape to stop holding back from just going on a rampage. So, in the future, try and be a bit less cavalier about secret identities. They're secret for a reason."
For the first time since meeting her, Cav actually shows a response to her words, fists clenching and a slight change in posture that is smoothed out a moment later.
Raising her hands placatingly, Mary continues, "Now now, I'm not blowing you off, don't worry. I'm just letting you know, plenty of Capes would kill you if they thought you'd be willing to unmask them. But the information you've gathered would undeniably be useful, so if you'd like we could go to the PHQ together and you could present it to the team?"
But apparently Cav isn't done knocking her off balance for the night, because instead of doing the obvious thing in this moment and excepting, she shakes her head.
"I can't."
Seriously, what the fuck is going on right now? 'Oh hey, by the way, I joined your enemy, but you can't arrest me, also I have a lot of important information for you, but I'm not gonna tell you any of it.' What the fuck is wrong with this girl?
This is hilarious.
"Have you ever heard the term 'edging'?" Mary asks, unable to help herself.
"What?"
Right, isolated teenager. "Never mind. Why exactly can't you share your juicy deets?"
"There's one more thing I need to find out for you."
One of Mary's favourite things about her mask is that she can roll her eyes without anyone noticing. "And I don't suppose you can tell me what this last thing is?"
"I can't."
Goodie. "Can you at least tell me what you know and then find that last detail later?"
"I can't," Cav answers in a completely unexpected turn of events.
"Is there a point to this meeting? Why can you only tell me that there are things you can't tell me?"
Cavatica takes a fortifying breath, which has Mary hoping she will actually say something of value this time.
"What if I told you there was a spy in the PHQ?"
"I wouldn't really be all that surprised, though I'd like if you gave me a name."
Whatever answer the girl was expecting, it clearly wasn't that as Mary gets her second reaction so far out of the girl as her head snaps up in apparent shock.
"What?"
For the second time in as many minutes, Mary rolls her eyes. "It's pretty much impossible for any large scale organisation to not have corruption inside of it. Whether that's people skimming a bit of money off the top or people selling company secrets, it's an inevitability the more people get involved. The PRT is no exception. But we're not here to talk about that. Why did you call me here if you're not going to give me any actually actionable information?"
Cav doesn't seem to want to let the subject of the Heroes not being perfect drop, but after a mental struggle, she does. Rightfully recognising that now really isn't the time to discuss the deficits of greater humanity.
"They're planning something," she starts. "They want me to help them. I do this, maybe one or two other jobs, I'm sure I can get that last essential detail, and you'll have what you need to capture these guys."
Seriously what the fuck is wrong with this girl. As if the last ten minutes wasn't bad enough, she's now admitting that she's planning to commit a crime or three. She is damn lucky that Mary is somewhat.. morally flexible, for a Hero, or this conversation would be going very differently right now.
"I need to know that if things go sour or if I need to sabotage their plan, I'll have you to pull my ass out of the fire and keep me out of jail."
It's like she just watched some movies and assumed she knows what she's doing, because Mary doesn't think she even realises how incredibly illegal everything she's suggesting is. It's kind of funny actually.
"What are they planning?" Mary asks, already knowing the answer she's going to get.
"I can't say."
It's no wonder this girl has no friends, Jesus Christ.
"So, if you don't mind me just summarising real quick. You, an underage self proclaimed Villain, want me, a Hero to let you attempt to infiltrate a gang, without a handler or anything of the sort, by committing what I can only assume will be a major crime, all while I'm expected to have your back while you give me nothing in turn except the knowledge that you do have something to give that you aren't sharing. That about sum it up?"
She can tell her words have pissed the girl off, and that's just beyond amusing. Because she's getting pissed that I'm mocking her, when all I'm doing is reiterating her own points. Basically, her plan is so stupid that she's getting pissed off hearing it, all seemingly without realising she's pissing herself off.
This shit was worth the drive, Mary is having a blast.
"I can't have a handler. They'd know," Cav responds through gritted teeth, making her chuckle a bit.
"Figured as much," Mary says with a sigh before turning to the sea and leaning her arms against the railings in thought.
Truthfully, she's still kind of annoyed about getting contacted so soon. Sure, having her plans shaken is fun and preferable even, but it's still annoying. Kinda like how sex is great but then you've got to clean up after. Yes, it's worth it, but you can still be annoyed while you're cleaning.
So maybe she spends a little bit longer 'thinking' than necessary, just to make Cav squirm a little bit.
Really, it's not even that big of a deal. Her original plan was to wait for contact until after Lung inevitably gets busted out again in a few days, but it's not like that isn't going to happen because of this.
Hmm. Yeah, she can use this to improve the plan. Accepting now will give Cav a higher opinion of her, and one of her goals for Cav is to have the girl basically view her as the only 'true' Hero in the city.
but Cav's opinion of Heroes in general is still too high right now for her to pull a speech about how the PRT is worse than useless. So, after Lung breaks out, they can have a heart to heart or something. She can espouse some crap about how most Heroes don't fight to hard to put Villains away for good so they don't run themselves out of a job.
It's not true, obviously. Most Heroes are actually pretty decent people. But since when has manipulation ever really cared about honesty?
"Fuck it, fine," Mary says with false reluctancy. "I won't give you a way to contact me for emergencies, since clearly that Tattletale girl is a Thinker of some sort. You're on your own, I'll only step in after you've been put in a cell, if it comes to that."
"Wait really?" Cav's response is quick and Mary gives her a grin.
"No need to sound so surprised~," she teases, before straightening. facing Cav and ruffling her hair. "I believe in you."
"T-Thank you," Cav breathes out, showing more emotion in one moment than she has in all their previous interactions so far, and Mary just smiles, feeling her plans come just one more step closer to fruition.
Since she first started as a Hero here, she has maintained one simple conviction.
Brockton Bay will bow to her in reverence.
What is a little bit of manipulation in pursuit of such a Heroic goal?
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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!
Where doe the time go, it's already wednesday again, I had to write this last minute again :/ I really need to work on my time management.
But anyway, the first 100k words of this fic were ass, but I feel like I've got my mojo back somewhat since those interludes, cleared my mindset up a little bit. Even if the quality is the same for you, or even worse, I feel better about it :)
And yeah, remember chapter three when Mary declared her plan for presidency? Who the fuck said that was a joke? ;)