Chapter 8: Investigating Around The City

You pick up Rei, since Julia's house is on the way over. She apparently just spent the day (after she finished sleeping) lazing about in Julia's apartment and watching her anime on her TV. Well, she did a bunch of flying around yesterday, and also is you, so you can't blame her for being lazy.

Hunter's Point used to be a naval base, until being permanently shuttered in 1994. There's a bit more to the story, but as long as you've known it, it's been a dead naval base, where they have to do a ton of crap to clean up all the chemicals and shit they dumped in the ground/water there. It's still being decontaminated, over twenty years later, and only a little bit has been given over to residential use. The EPA made them stop selling it off, a couple years back, because it's probably still radioactive.

The smog gets thicker as you go, though you can always really see through it. Unfortunately, as Bayview turns to Hunter's Point, you get to various fences that block your progression further, STOP and KEEP OUT the words of the day. When you concentrate, you can see the smog thicken further in. You'd fly in, but Julia can't fly. It's not like you can't get further, but you actually have no idea what will happen if you do.

Well fuck it. You're just a kid, and also can turn into animals. "Julia, Rei and me will turn into birds. You follow us, alright?"

"Yes, goshujinsama," she declares, with a nod; you take the form of a raven and fly over the fence. She clambers over quickly, showing an impressive degree of agility, and you and Rei both fly around in gentle circles as you guide her towards the heart of this smog. It feels wrong - not like you're going to lose your lunch or something, but definitely bad. The central point of the corruption appears to be a single, well-kept laboratory, which is guarded by well-armed security agents. And by well-armed, you do mean well-armed, with bullpup rifles and combat armor. Also big - a number of them are probably around six and a half feet tall, male and female both.

The building itself is emblazoned with its branding - Whitelight in a sleek, modern font, and a vaguely chemical symbol next to it. Even this late at night, lights are on, though it has relatively few windows, and even less visible through them.

Julia does take up a fairly concealed position as you scout out the building. Unfortunately, while you get no notice from the guards, one of them approaches her quickly, bullpup in hand.

Female, six and a half feet tall, and looking stern as she does so. She'd probably be fairly pretty, out of that getup... what the hell are you thinking. "What agency are you associated with?"

"The Hellsing Group," Julia says, instantly, referring to the costume she's wearing. She can't possibly get away with a lie that blatant - though, then again, Rei Ayanami's name does prove that normies don't watch enough anime.

"I am unfamiliar with this group. I will take you to speak to a security officer."

"Aren't you a security officer?" Julia asks, trying to buy some time or get an excuse to get away, it looks like.

"I am a security officer. I will take you to speak to another security officer."

You find a low-visibility spot to transform back to a human in, and promptly do so, as Mark. You adjust your clothing slightly, tucking in your shirt, and then approach. "My apologies, officer," you say, interrupting her conversation.

"What agency are you associated with?" She asks, immediately.

"The Hellsing Group. We got turned around, my apologies. We have business on the north end of Hunters Point."

"I see. On the north end of Hunters Point are the Catellus and Noumenon buildings. Both companies are on poor terms with Whitelight, so I cannot escort you there."

"That's fine, we'll find our own way," you tell her.

"Very well." You two depart. She watches you for quite some distance - you use your enhanced perception to be able to pick her out well after she's left what would, for a normal person, be the range of the visible. Eventually she returns to her patrol route, leaving you with the chance to let out a long breath. Maybe you could have taken her down, but there were a lot more armed guards than just her.

Maybe you should leave this place be. It, uhh, really doesn't seem safe. Somehow you're less comfortable with guns than you are with vampires. Well - Julia could probably have killed that lady. She was kind of hot, though, and also just doing her job.

You head back out of Hunters Point with Julia, clambering over the fences when you get to them. You let out a long sigh. "Did you get anything from the Whitelight building, Julia? It's the center of... something. Something bad, I think. Feels bad," you say, shaking away that sense. Now that you've identified the source, there's no need to keep an awareness of it, and it's cloying and unpleasant, like marshmallow napalm.

"Sorry, goshujinsama, all I could smell was cordite and people. The woman smelled odd, though. Like she'd bathed in disinfectant or something. I couldn't catch any hint of sweat, even though she was wearing that getup, presumably for hours."

That's true, actually - you didn't notice at the time, since you were a bit distracted, but yeah. She didn't smell like much of anything. Was she actually some kind of supernatural being? Like a vampire, maybe? Tch. You don't like just giving up on this, but definitely, Julia is not going to be able to get into the building with what the two of you can do... not right now, anyway. You could probably get in by using your invisibility, at least. Well - they might have dogs or something. You're not sure you're inolfactible.

"Let's go," you say, making your way out of Hunter's Point with Julia at your side. Rei flies overhead, you're pretty sure - otherwise there's a raven out here with a yandere complex.

Getting caught wasn't the funnest thing, but you can always come back later, when you've got more of a handle on your new powers. Now that you're back from... whatever Whitelight is, you're thinking that you want some money. And you did just have your girlfriend rip and murder her way through a gang, right? The people at the top tend to have a good chunk of change. As in, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

Julia knows more about their operations than you do, but you have the ability to shapeshift into various animals to sneak your way into places you couldn't otherwise get to. The cops have hit their major bases of operations as part of their investigation for the perpetrator of the mass slaughter at the YMCA building (Julia), and where they haven't, opportunistic former employees thinking the same thing as you have broken into every place they keep money that they know of, and taken it.

You do manage to find one cache that they didn't, hidden inside part of a bookcase; you slip out twenty grand in cash and get gone before anybody can find and bother you. That's all you manage to find, though. Everything else that you and Julia can find has already been picked over.

"That's so much money, goshujinsama," she says, eyes almost glittering as the two of you take a break in her bedroom. Rei is there too, naturally, and she's also eyeing up the money like it was a million bucks. "What do you plan on doing with it?"

"I was thinking of using it to get started on trying to get close to that Techarate chick," you tell her, "but maybe we could spend a little now." Money is nice, after all.

"Ooo, can you buy a ring gag, goshujinsama? Forcibly hold my mouth open and make me use my throat as your personal masturbation aid," she says, practically drooling. Rei sticks two fingers in Julia's mouth to temporarily shut her up, while you think.

There is one other place where you could get some cash, from the ruins of the Shafter gang - the girls that Mark was pimping out. Mary obviously doesn't want to keep going with it, but maybe one of them would? Not every girl hates prostitution, right? You do wonder what kind of percentage Mark got, as their pimp. Probably way too much - you remember watching a video of a pimp talk about keeping all the money the girl earned, which was fucking insane to you. You snort at the thought of how management always takes the money from the worker, even in the criminal underworld. Especially in the criminal underworld, actually; probably most members of the Shafters got paid less than minimum wage, from what you've read.

You flick through the pictures on Mark's phone to decide if any of them are worth your time. One of them is the quite-underage girl who was definitely unhappy. Besides her, there's three high school aged girls, and another two older women in their twenties or thirties. The text conversations... suggest that most of them are in it for the money, rather than having been blackmailed or forced into it like Mary. You could possibly become a pimp? Or just forget about it and let them live their lives.

You call up Sydney, the way-too-young girl, and just tell her that Mark won't be a problem for her any more. When she doesn't initially believe you, you 'get Mark on the phone' and have him tell her that it's all good now, forget everything, it's fine. You do your best to make your voice sound like you're being threatened and that you really don't care about her versus getting out alive. She thanks you profusely when you come back on the line, sounding genuinely on the verge of tears. It makes you regret killing Mark an even more negative amount. What a piece of human garbage.

"I'm going to try to get a handle on the others," you tell Julia, though by this point she's slobbered all over her top from Rei sticking her fingers in the other girl's mouth for so long. You're pretty sure that Rei's about two minutes from dragging Julia over to the bed and riding her face, and... it's actually less than that.

You step out of the bedroom, because you don't want to listen to that. Well, you want to participate, but you don't want to have these girls overhear it happening in the background. First on the list is Taylor, young and terse in her texts. You give her a call.

"Hello?" Comes a female voice. "Mark. I am not working today. You agreed not to set my hours, and merely to provide basic protection in exchange for eighty percent of all the money I make." Eighty percent? What an asshole.

"I'm not Mark. I'm taking over business for him. Just curious what got you into this business?" You ask.

"I needed money. As an attractive young female, prostitution was a good option to get money quickly. Even with Mark's exhorbitant cut, I could make hundreds of dollars per day."

"Anything you want besides money?"

"Security, which is what money can purchase. Will you provide me with protection in place of Mark? If not, I will have to find a new pimp."

"Yeah. If anybody hurts you, you can call me, and I'll make sure they don't do it again. Just like how Mark won't hurt you again. And, I don't like 80/20; call it 50/50."

You can almost hear the intake of breath. "Thank you. I hope our business partnership will go well."

It goes on like that, as you go through the list.

Kayla seems quiet and taciturn over the phone, almost mumbling over her words. She's putting her money away for university, in the hopes of getting out of this neighborhood and generational poverty.

Aniyah is boisterous, apparently Muslim despite having no obvious signifiers of it, and just glad to have more money to help support her ailing grandmother and only living family member.

Destiny is older, soft-spoken, and seems almost sadistically pleased to hear that Mark is out of the picture. She makes some flirtatious comments your way as the two of you speak, seeming more interested in who got rid of Mark than anything like the exact cut she's getting off the profits. You still give her the same rate as everybody else, though.

Alyssa sounds sloshed when she picks up the phone. "Heeeey Mark," she says. "I'm, 'm tips, tipsy." She giggles. "Ooo, Mark, why are you calling? Oh, I have to give you the money, sowwy, I haven't seen you around." A bit of probing discovers that she's mostly in the business to keep up a party lifestyle, though not really that lavish of one. Well, she can have an easier time doing that with more cash, and she thanks you. "You're so much nicer than Mark, Mister..." She hiccups. "Oh, did I forget your name already?"

"It's Brad," you tell her, just the same as you've told all of them. "I'm just picking up where Mark left off, don't worry too much about it. And, again, if anyone - and I do mean anyone, even outside of work-" it'll make you feel a bit better about taking so much of their money "- messes with you, just call me up. I'll put the fear of God into them."

"Thank you so much, Brad! You're super nice. Do you want me to come over~?"

"Not right now," you reply. "I'll talk to you later. Just remember, half what you make is mine, alright?"

"Alright," she says, hiccuping again. You hang up.

Even if they lie to you about how much they make, well, they were the ones to actually earn it anyway. You take a long sigh, and hear Rei's voice through the door to Julia's bedroom. "That's right, lick it, lick it you horny little black bitch!"

Rather than going in there and stuffing your dick in Rei's potty mouth, you decide to check up on the companies you saw and heard about over at Hunter's Point, just to get a better idea of what you're dealing with.

Whitelight is a government contractor, apparently, and there's not much besides that in terms of what they do. They're not publicly traded but a "closely held" corporation, though not by an actual family or anything. The corporate board and ownership are a mystery, and most websites you can find on them are conspiracy theorists suggesting they do black ops for the US government to throw guys in black vans and bus them off to nowhere.

Catellus is in biological research, frankenfood and frankencritters, with one notable event where a modified horseshoe crab escaped into the ocean and fucked up the ecosystem because it was modified to produce more amebocytes, the reason people farm and experiment on horseshoe crabs in the first place. Noumenon is in industrial waste management and the energy industry, apparently working to help clean places up like Hunter's Point. They got given some of the parcels that weren't vetted properly to vet them a second time over, and they're apparently trying to negotiate with the city government to get the rights to open a nuclear power facility there. Some activists suggest they're trying to strongarm them, using the parcels of land they've been given to evaluate. Both companies are majority-owned by Pentex; its oil revenues alone put it up there with BP or Exxon, but it also owns hundreds of other companies, like those two.

One interesting fact about the Whitelight facility is that about five years ago, it was a Catellus facility. Then there was a shooting at their facilities which killed twenty-two people - you vaguely remember the news back when - a bunch of investigations into the events, and it all finally resulted in Catellus losing their lease on the land and Whitelight taking it.

You decide to just pack up what you have here, leaving Rei and Julia to go at it. Since Rei's you, she's no doubt going to enjoy raping Julia's mouth until her jaw locks up.

* * *

Alexandra knows a little bit about the supernatural world. Unfortunately, she's asleep when you get home. Rather than ruining her sleep, you take a nap yourself - you have been running around all night, after all.

Come morning, you head downstairs and find her wearing a tank top and a pair of briefs, lounging at the breakfast table as Chanelle cooks in the kitchen. "Brighton's up," she calls over her shoulder as she sees you, giving you a wave.

You never realized before just how hot she was, but you actually do have some business here. "Hey, I'm doing some research into Hunter's Point," you tell her. "I don't suppose you know anything about Whitelight, Catellus, or Noumenon?"

She squints and looks off to the side, as if trying to recall, then shakes her head. "Nope, sorry. Who are they?"

"Ah, Whitelight owns a cleanup facility, I think. Catellus does bioresearch, and Noumenon is in the business of cleanup too. Catellus and Noumenon are both subsidiaries of Pentex-" At the name Pentex, Alexandra's expression instantly changes. Clearly a name she does recognize, which, you recognize it too, just like you recognize Exxon. But her reaction isn't quite like that.

"Pentex is evil," she says, with a simplicity to the words that actually surprises you. "Back when I was part of the family, that was one of the things that was drilled into our heads over and over. They were dealing with BLM. They were spilling poison in the water. It wasn't just an accident, it was on purpose. When I got out, I thought - maybe it was just a grudge, something made up and fake. So I looked into it. Pretty much every company Pentex owns gets in trouble for destroying the environment sooner or later, and always after Pentex gets its tendrils wrapped around it. It should have been broken up a long time ago, but it's now one of the biggest employers in the world, right after Wal-Mart, with all its myriad subsidiaries. State legislatures are scared of it moving jobs to other states, municipalities are similarly afraid of it packing up and moving to another city, so they let it do whatever it wants. On the national level, both the parties are well and truly in its pocket." She pauses. "Why do you ask?"

"I sensed a weird supernatural aura around Hunter's Point, and the companies seemed involved." She hums at that, nodding along as if it makes perfect sense. "Would your family know more?"

"Probably," she says, somewhat hesitant. "Brighton, I know you're riding high on this power, but - my family is dangerous. If you meet them... don't get in a fight, alright? They'd kill you. Turn into a bird and fly away, or something, if it does get violent." She bites her lip. "One time, I saw-" she cuts herself off. "There were some hunters in our territory. It only took one of them to kill three people, all armed. So be careful."

"Thanks, I promise to keep it in mind," you tell her, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. She smirks at that, giving your shoulder a quick punch. "But no, you're right. I'll think about... investigating the matter in more detail before doing anything."

"Good to hear," she says, smiling at that. "Don't get yourself in any trouble that you can't get yourself back out of, alright?"

"I promise."

Chanelle then comes to the dining room table with three plates, putting them down for all of you to eat. The conversation is normal, though Chanelle is obviously just a little bit anxious of sharing a table with you and Alexandra both, given that she cheated on Alex with you. You'll have to deal with that, but not just yet.

Once you're done eating, you kiss Alexandra and Chanelle on the cheek - once each - and head up to your bedroom, pulling out your laptop and getting to work on investigating Techarate and Milicent Rowden.

Well, not quite. You lie down on the bed, placing the laptoy on your stomach, and then call up Julia. "Hey, bitch," you say, when she answers, and you can almost hear the thrill she gets, the tiny intake of breath she makes on hearing those words so full of poignant meaning. "Get over here. I'm bored and I want my dick sucked."

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Any part of you that would have worried she wouldn't be up for it is instantly crushed into oblivious. "Yes, goshujinsama," she says, her words slightly slurred. You can hear her suck up her drool. "I'll be over as quickly as I can!" She hangs up, and you have no doubt she'll be over.

In the meantime, you start looking into Milicent Rowden and her company. There are official pages all about it. It was officially incorporated two years ago, with her as the manager; she has a list of donors that's as long as your forearm, yet... there seems to be little of anything about her, three years ago. You frown as you try to track down her history. She has social media, but again, nothing before three years ago. No pictures, no names... you can't even find images that have been tagged with her on Facebook from before that time. As if she didn't exist.

Or as if she was a different person? If she's a vampire, she probably discards identities fairly regularly. You try to think of how to connect her to her previous identities, and as you do, Julia arrives, saying some quick words to your mothers before rushing up to your bedroom, wearing a t-shirt that shows off her bust and has a skull on the front, hurriedly dropping down between your legs and yanking out your dick, not even asking for permission before slurping down your length, her throat bulging as it accommodates your girth. It feels damn good, your fingers brushing through her hair as she sucks you off - then you get back to work.

How, exactly, can you find out the identity of somebody without their name? By face, of course, or people who recognize her, but that's the wrong way around for what you have access to. Julia moans softly around your dick.

Maybe there's something in the founding? Where did she get the money? Who were her initial seed investors? You have the name of the lawyer who incorporated the company, and in short order you also have the name of a couple early adopters of Techarate, but unfortunately they seem to just be Silicon Valley dorks whose brains melted the moment they met a hot, smart woman - no prior connection.

For now, you'll just scrape what you can off her social media presence, try to put together a profile of her time here in San Francisco, under this name in particular. Much of her postings are inoffensive, the kind of whitewashed corporate crap you'd expect, but she does have a certain charm of her own. She talks a big game about revitalizing neighborhoods and expanding into marginalized communities; there does seem to be a specific focus on the Asian community, interestingly enough. There are some self-deprecating jokes here and there, and a few posts written in straight up Japanese or Chinese, the latter of which you have to translate.

The overwhelming tendency, though, is inoffensiveness. No jokes at others' expense. No jumping onboard for a political cause or candidate. No insults. No drama. Just a very long and drawn out social media history that contains not a single thing that could comprehensibly get somebody mad at her. It's kind of impressive, honestly.

Besides that, the company has produced nothing of value, and will probably continue to produce nothing of value for the forseeable future. They are supposedly in the business of "technological solutions," and their main products are a couple programs that are used for conferencing and coordinating in the workplace. They do have a social media app, a ripoff of Twitter that is apparently trying to orient itself around the local nightlife - clubs, bars, parties, and the like. It doesn't seem to really be working, and you're sure it's cost around a thousand times more than it's ever made.

Beyond that, she's a blank slate online.

Julia pops off your cock with a wet noise. "Goshujinsama, rape my throat, grab my hair and just fuck my face."

"Do it yourself, bitch," you tell her, making her almost vibrate in place, going cross-eyed for a moment. "I can't be bothered to use you like the masturbation aid you are."

"Yesh-" she says, her words disappating into a gurgle and glak as her throat slams its way down your length, your fat cock throbbing in her throat as her nose presses into your pubes. You lean up for a moment, bringing one sharp smack down on her ass, making her moan and nearly come right then and there as she starts to facefuck herself on your cock.

You prioritize getting the intel you need over paying attention to her, though, so you lean back down and get to work. You start to look for connections - people present at the start of Techarate, people who recur as donors, people who are important and valuable to the company. The wet gluk-gluk noises of Julia's throat fill the air as you make a list every time you see a donor's name. Every time you see her mention an employee on her social media.

It's really hard to focus, given Julia, but you manage. You come right down her throat, with her choking herself on your dick, and you get back to work the moment you're done - so does she, fortunately or un-.

Once you've gotten a list, you sort it, finding the recurring names and their counts. A couple guys with seemingly much more money than sense who have dumped tens of millions each into the company. A handful of inner circle corporate monkeys and code monkeys, who do seem to be particularly close to her... possibly in a similar way to how Gretchen was 'particularly close' to Charlie. That is to say, mind control.

A couple companies that have invested significantly in her operations. Looking into them, one, Sunburst, is a subsidiary of Pentex; the other is "Beteiligung," some closely-held corporation owned by an old-money German family.

...and perhaps most strangely of all, one lonesome Japanese artist whose works are of a few brushstrokes and more abstract designs, but carry a haunting note to them. She's appeared no less than five times on her social media feed, and she even has a few rather macabre email exchanges with Milicent, where she, seemingly unprompted, starts discussing how best to artistically portray blood, and Milicent's replies are apparently sincere advice right back her way on how a blood spray looks in practice.

It almost distracts you enough that you lose your boner, but Julia is nothing if not dedicated, starting to twist her head and wiggle her tongue about even more wildly as she gags herself on your oversized cock.

Given the way she sticks out on the list of notables, you decide to investigate the artist - Kuroko Kuroda. Black Daughter Black Field, in Japanese. A weird enough name that it's probably a pseudonym used for her art. She lives alone in a studio apartment, by the looks of things, not quite in Japantown but close. Her connections are mostly in the local art world, but there, she's apparently quite the rising star - she has a gallery opening two days from now, and it's apparently expected that she'll rake in the dough. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

She has a modest social media presence, a few casual or distant pictures - she's apparently a bit of a wallflower - but you do find one photograph of her that's a close up. She has short, dark hair, and red-hazel eyes, with pale skin and a subdued goth aesthetic. She's not quite conventionally attractive, but she's definitely the sort of girl you find yourself staring at. Those eyes that seem to know so much... the lips that are pursed in consideration... the pallor that suggests a life of contemplation indoors...

You're dragged out of the idle poetry about this beautiful-but-not-sexy woman by the loud gagging noises from Julia, who has apparently decided to deepthroat-choke herself on your cock for so long that she actually is in danger of asphyxiation. Her eyes are rolled up and her body is twitching absently on your dick as you put your laptop to one side, and she drunkenly, stupidly smiles up at you with her eyes while her nose remains full of your pubes.

"Do you kiss your mother with that face?" You ask, and she just hums drunkenly, nodding as best she can with your cock lodged in her throat. Your hand curls into a fist with the intensity of the sensation. "You look like a hentai slut." She moans, hips humping at the air, eyes rolling around in her head. As she finally passes out from asphyxiation, jerking before going suddenly limp, you grasp her hair and pull her off, letting her suck in deep breaths around your lips. Your free hand goes to your dick, quickly stroking it off right in her mouth, filling it up with copious amounts of cum. Her body jerks and sputters, and her brain stutters back to life, eyelashes fluttering as she comes back to wakefulness having her mouth used for your sexual relief.

When you're finished, you pop her off, and she just swills the cum in her mouth, smiling stupidly on the bed. Apparently at some point she got naked; impressive that she managed that, given you don't think she let your cock out of her mouth for long at any point.

In any case, you just give her ass a slap. "I hope you're satisfied, bitch. I have to go do some investigation work now." You've gotten all you really can off the internet. It's time to do some of this stuff in person.

You stick your dick back in your pants, open the window, and fly off towards the art gallery where her showing is going to be. It takes a bit to find an entrance, but there is an office window that some overheated worker cracked open just a wedge, and you manage to slither in in your mamba form to get access. You manage to find the store room where the paintings are, and get a good look through them.

They're about what you'd expect of her body of work, except one, a single great vortex with teeth curling around on the inside, reminding you faintly of the Chtorr from The War Against the Chtorr series. It seems to almost invite you to stick your head inside, to let a thousand blades blissfully nip and slice away at your bare flesh and end your life.

You shake your head, turning away from the image. That's... something. Part of you considers, and you look at it again, and once more that feeling rises up. You turn away a second time, backing out of the store room, almost reaching the door. You reach within yourself, drawing on the engine of power inside you, twining its invisible threads around your mind to act as a shield, and look at it one last time.

Nothing happens, this time. Your mind is guarded, sealed, and whatever magical influence - ah, after a moment, you do notice it, the faint pressure that rolls off your mind. The piece of art you're looking at isn't just art, it's something more. Something mystical. You reach out tentatively towards the painting, and your fingertips brush against the surface, but there, it's just a painting. It doesn't try to bite your hand off or submerge you inside it or anything like that.

You pull back from the store room, instead trying to find the files and notes they have on Ms. Kuroda. Despite the absurdity, it does seem to be her legal name - or an assumed name, maybe? You do wonder if Milicent was born with that name or not, and you're reasonably certain any identity she has is forged. Beyond that, what written contact she has is taciturn emails, even more laconic in content than she was with Milicent. All business, no flowery language.

There doesn't seem to be anything else to find besides that, though. Still, you did get an important bit of info about her, that her art has some kind of magic applied to it.

You wriggle your way out of the building, fly over to her address, and knock on the door to her apartment. You hear her shuffling around inside, and decide to turn invisible so that you can get a better idea of her habits - she does open the door, poking her head out for a moment, a look of faint confusion on her beautiful face. You slip inside.

Within her apartment, the impression of the macabre and the gothic becomes much more intense. Grisly images of dissected animals are currently arrayed on one wall as reference material; an in-progress painting shows a lonely grey dog in the midst of a snowstorm. Or perhaps she hasn't gotten to the grass yet. She settles in to work, and you quietly watch her for a time, admiring her gentle features, her cold mien. The faint twitch of her lips as she works, the cold look in her eyes as she stares at the image before her.

You manage to catch yourself from staring all day, instead looking around her home for anything of value. You don't move anything, not wanting to risk being heard, as she works in absolute silence. It's almost eerie, how quiet the place is.

Some other paintings she has already finished adorn the walls. Two provoke a severe emotional response, perhaps the same kind of magic. One makes you want to simply sigh at the placid beauty of the girl on display there, dead in a bathtub filled with her blood; the other is of an angel, six-winged and carrying a blade, which somehow makes you feel like there truly is no justice in the world, just the whims of whoever has power.

You shake your head. These magic paintings are definitely not something to stare at.

You hear Kuroko scooch her seat slightly as she gets on her feet, moving to her studio apartment's small kitchen to collect a water bottle, which she promptly begins to chug down for several seconds. A few seconds later, she's removed a bento, which you watch her eat in silence, her bewitching beauty communicated in each chew and nibble and bite. Your mind absently wanders to seeing that beautiful face, twisted in ecstasy, a raw desire to fuck and rut.

She appears to live for little beyond painting. There are some books, and although you can't read their contents - not without her noticing a book being pulled out of the shelf, anyway - you can read their spines. Many are anatomy books, and not the how-to-draw kind, the medical kind. A few are eclectic little reads that make you vaguely curious - shogi and the Meiji Restoration and Mormonism. The rest are what look to be occult tomes, books on magic or gods or demons, it's hard to separate one from the other. All the while, Kuroko simply continues to work on her painting, her gaze cold as ice. When she takes a break, it's only to drink and grab a bite to eat before returning to work.

You take on the form of a snake before becoming visible once again, starting to slither towards her; she notices you quickly (you're vivid green, in that shape), her lips curling into the faintest of frowns as she spots you. "What a strange snake," she says in a soft voice, slowly stepping away from you and moving into her kitchen area without any particular haste, collecting a butcher knife.

Rather than risk getting stabbed by her, you turn into a human, which you realize a moment later also risks getting stabbed by her. She just tilts her head softly, her lips faintly pursed. "A Nagah?" She runs the knife along her palm, drawing a thin trickle of red, then licks it up, her eyes seeming to flicker with light for just a moment. "No... something different." Her nostrils flare in interest, and she lets her knife hand fall down in a movement that seems to suggest she isn't afraid of you. "Something new. What are you, serpent-man? I know what you are not - fomori, Nagah, spirit, demon. But I cannot name you."

"I'm unique as far as I know," you tell her, and she hums in interest, tilting her head to one side. "To sum it up, I'm exalted from ordinary humans with the power of a god-beast." You have at least some awareness of what your past incarnation could manage, and it's quite a lot.

"Luna?" She queries.

"Maybe," you say, with a casual shrug. "I'm wholly unique, as far as I know. Stronger than even the most blessed of humanity, vampires, and the like," you say, puffing up a bit as you say so.

"Oh?" Her eyes lock on yours, soft words escaping her lips a moment later. "Humilia caput tuum."

You feel a powerful urge to simply kneel before her, to bow your head low in an obsequious offering of submission. For a moment, you resist, but it's strong - you'll have to call on your magic to hold it back any longer. If you do that, though, you're certain that the... whiplash, will make you try to tear Kuroko to shreds.

You're not bowing. Fuck that. Fuck her. You draw on the wellspring of power inside you, insulating your mind - and in a heartbeat you're rushing towards her, body slamming her down into the ground. She gasps from the force, and part of the ceiling collapses on you, slamming into the side of your head and making you spin for a second. She tries to claw herself out from under you, knife slicing in your general direction, but you're faster than her, and you grab her wrist, dragging it around towards her face. She drops it - and you manage to adopt the rage form this time, your monstrous visage reflected in her eyes.

In a few short moments your fangs and claws have torn her to ribbons beneath you, with her being unable to escape in time. You drink deep of her blood as you kill her, and for a moment there's just the pleasant bliss of having killed someone and drank their blood, a post-coital high.

Then the pain in your head from where the ceiling hits you kicks in. You're woozy, seriously injured - no, worse than that, almost dead. You collapse against the wall, panting and heaving, your brain on the fritz from the pain. You can barely even move, Kuroko's ripped-up body lying on the floor a few feet away as you drink in haggard breaths. Fuck. Everything hurts.

Your phone rings; you fumble for a moment but answer. Rei's voice greets you. "What happened," she says, her voice as woozy as yours no doubt would be, if you tried to speak.

"I got in a, fight at, Kuroko Kuroda's place," you tell her.

"I'll-" she winces. "Call Julia. Miss, Miss Jacoby," she yells, her voice warbly. "Call your daughter, and tell her, to go to Kuroko Kuroda's."

"Okay, dear!" You hear Mary say, if only faintly.

You turn off your phone, panting. There's a knock at the door, and part of you wonders if you've lost track of time. "Kuroko?" It's not Julia, it's somebody else. Fuck. You adopt the form of the late Kuroko, and try to stiffen your voice.

"I'm fine," you call out, affecting her softness, drawing on your pain to do so. "Just had something fall."

"Do you need help?"

"No, I want some privacy, I'm working on my latest piece."

"Alright," the voice replies, leaving you in piece. You sigh in relief, just closing your eyes and waiting patiently for Julia to arrive.

She does, eventually. She clicks the door open, closing it behind her, and sees the mess you've made. Kuroko, dead and coating the floor in her blood; you, resting against the wall, a gash on your head at least not bleeding still, but you can feel the sticky stain of blood across the right side of your face. Her expression is serious, her gaze running across the room for a moment as she locks the door behind her. "Goshujinsama, what happened?" She asks.

"Found out where this bitch lived, uses magic in her paintings. Wanted to talk. Seems she got mad about something I said, tried to make me submit, using magic. You can guess the rest."

"I see..." She looks at the scene again. "You can shapeshift into her now, right, goshujinsama?"

"Yeah."

"We should get rid of the body, and you can pretend to be her until you've cleaned things up enough that there won't be any evidence you were here. Or make Rei pretend to be her! She could totally make me get down on my knees..." she sighs wistfully, looking at the dead body as if it were a thing of serene beauty. "I'll start cutting up the body, goshujinsama," she says, stripping herself of her clothes as she says so. She neatly folds them and places them in the sink, then starts slowly dragging the body to the bathroom. When she finishes that, she grabs a few garbage bags and heads back into the bathroom to do the dirty work of cutting up a dead body.

You can hear her humming Cruel Angel's Thesis as she cuts away. Unfortunately, unlike she seems to think, you're not actually invincible, so you pretty much just lie there. Presumably, Rei is in much the same position. You're not entirely sure how to handle this situation, actually...

An hour later, she emerges from the bathroom, her expression unsure as she sees you, still lying where she left you. "Goshujinsama?"

"I... can't really stand up," you admit, after a few seconds.

"I see... goshujinsama, if you want somebody dead, you know I can do it for you, right?"

"I wasn't coming here to kill somebody," you counter, the pain in your head resurging as your voice rises.

"Sorry, goshujinsama. You can punish me as much as you like for my impropriety. Here," she says. She's naked, and she bends over into an L shape, showing you her ass... way too far for you to hit from here. Is she... making fun of you? You'll have to... punish her for that. "Oh, you don't want to punish me, goshujinsama?" She asks. "Well, if you're sure." She hums a few more notes of Cruel Angel's Thesis before speaking up. "Well, I can get rid of the body, but the blood will be a problem, goshujinsama. Some of it's yours."

"Cheeky bitch," you pant out. "When I get better, I'm going to... punish you for that, until you regret it."

"I don't think that'll happen, goshujinsama," she tells you, with a small smile. "How could I regret offering my beloved goshujinsama the chance to spank me? I only regret that you decided not to..."

You let out a little laugh, then wince. "I have a plan on dealing with Kuroko." You draw on the same power you used to disgorge Rei to split off another clone from yourself. He stumbles out and pretty much immediately collapses, looking like as much of a mess as you. He knows what to do, though, and soon adopts the form of Kuroko, rolling onto her back. Both of you glow.

"I understand, goshujinsama," she says, even without being told the specifics. "I'll take good care of everything now, so just wait."

The entire process takes a while. Julia takes several trips up and down the staircase with garbage bags, disappearing for several minutes at a time; on her second departure, the argent glow engulfing you both vanishes. When she finally finishes up, she dresses your Kuroko clone, uses some of the paint solvent on the blood, and finally takes you - in the form of a cat - out of the apartment, leaving your clone to call 911 in a few minutes and report having taken a fall.

You get taken back to your house, then Julia goes to her place, collects Rei (who is similarly injured), and brings her to your house too, dumping her out next to you. Rei gives you a glare, as unlike you, she did not actually do anything in particular to cause her injuries. You'll teach her a lesson for that... later.

You're not bleeding, and although your whole body aches, you're reasonably sure that you're healing up. You can feel it, the way your body is bit-by-bit fixing itself, as your head rests on the pillow of your bed. Somewhere else, no doubt, your clone - the one that's disguised itself as Kuroko - is probably lying in a hospital bed being monitored by doctors. Since your injuries were spread across the two (now three) of you, presumably the same will apply to any medical intervention is necessary.

Unfortunately, despite your rapid healing, you are definitely not able to go to school or do much of anything other than lie in bed at the moment. You could probably crawl your way out, but... fuck. Well, your moms know about your injury (if not the fact that you got it while killing someone), and obviously so does Julia, so you can at least expect some people to be nice to you at the moment.

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