The Impossibles

Bryant DeWitt was finding out just how long you could sit on a shocking revelation and still not have any idea what to say when the time finally came to talk about it. Two days ago, he had gotten superpowers and, after the dizzying series of revelations about his world, his family, and his newfound profession, ranging from the impressive to the profane... and the one thing that seemed most important to talk about felt as impossible to bring up now as it had the moment he had learned it.

His father, Daniel DeWitt, was King of the Forest, famous superhero. That, Bryant's mom knew. Since she was Lady Luck. They were married in both identities, just in the same way that the whole world knew that Nova Nine (aka, Bryant) was also Kid Impossible, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Impossible. That was all fine, in so far as it was fine that your Dad sometimes turned into a nudist anthropomorphic deer-man.

No, the issue was that Bryant had learned that his girlfriend, Melissa Sok, was a bit of a superhero groupie. While she had been dating him, she had also been sleeping with any superhero who she could catch the eye of.

Including, in this case, Nova Nine.

Aka him.

Bryant still felt a bit like he was going cross-eyed keeping that straight. His life already felt so complicated, and he wasn't even on day three!

... right, also, Melissa had dropped the bombshell hat she had also fucked King of the Forest. Again. Day three. This was just day three.

Nova Nine was thinking that over and over again as Lady Luck and he arrived at 'your first job' - the two of them stepping off the garbage truck that Lady Luck had grabbed onto to ride and hopped off at a seemingly random moment, landing directly before where she had planned to get to. Luck powers, and all that. Nova had offered to teleport her with his powers, but she had pointed out that it wouldn't be a fun surprise if she told him where they were going before they got there.

He couldn't argue with that.

"So, uh, there's just... one..." Nova trailed off, blinking at the Century City General Hospital. Lady Luck stretched her arms behind her back, arching her spine as she sighed, her impressively full tits heaving up with her motion. "... why are we at a hospital? I'd thought we'd be in Crime Alley or something."

"Crime Alley has really turned itself around, ever since Mayor Dragonheart used his golden hoard to fund that gun buyback program," Mom said, cheerfully. "And besides, you can reconstitute matter with your mind, beating up muggers seems like a shocking waste of your talents."

Nova opened his mouth, his ears twitching up and down as he realized that that had also been bothering him. He still was trying to think of which to say first well, duh or uh, well or Mom, I think Dad was cheating on you with my girlfriend? when Mom clapped her hands together and said. "Follow me!"

They entered in through the front door, capes swishing, and were met by the administrator of the hospital - he was a balding man with the two stud-scars for someone who had undergone one of the Deinhardt Administration Neural Restructuring procedures. He had a face like a shark - all sharp lines and predatory angles, but softened by age and his bemused smile into a shark that had gone vegetarian. "Welcome, welcome," he said, taking Mom's hand. "We're so glad you're here."

"Of course, Administrator Blume," Mom said. "This is my son, Nova Nine, he's here for his first real job. He got into a bit of a scuffle yesterday." She smiled, ruffling his hair.

"Momm!" Nova groaned - she had to actually stand up a bit on her toes to reach the top of his head for maximum mothering.

"Congratulations on your superpowers," Administrator Blume said. "Now, uh, what are they?"

"Molecular and energy manipulation, largely intuitive," Mom said. "But we've gotten him a crash course in basic physics, chemistry, and some biology."

The books had been pretty fascinating. Though, part of it was that... well... Nova hadn't told his parents, but he found out that he could feel every molecule in an object. So, that meant it was relatively simple to just scan the book with his powers, find the raised ink, then transmit all of the data contained in that directly into his brain. It had felt a little bit like licking an electrical outlet, but the end result was that he had basically devoured three hefty textbooks and still had time to freak out about his personal relationships and growing list of alarming secrets.

"Perfect!" Administrator Blume said. "Come!" He turned and started to walk off. As they walked after, Nova leaned in, whispering.

"Sooo... should I... mention the..." He made a vague gesture towards the forehead.

"No, no, they edited out his desire to make a profit in 2016 and even with the cybernetics removed, he's still a great administrator for health care services." Mom nodded. "You know, I disapprove of the supervillainy, but I do approve of the overhaul in healthcare. I just think if the president was that smart, she could have come up with a better method than neural restructuring, you know?"

Nova considered, for a moment, pondering the complex moral wreckage left behind by America's first and most popular supervillain president. Then he ditched it in favor of worrying about things that actually mattered, like his life.

The Administrator, then, opened a door that led into a large, rather strange looking room. Nova had always imagined that pretty much every hospital room had the same general vibe - bed, place for a doctor to sit, scale to tell you how fat you had gotten so the doctor could yell at you, that kind of thing. But this was simply a long, relatively narrow tube of a room with a bed every few feet, with a very sick person per bed. There were IV tubes running to them, bleeping machines monitoring them, and small checklists hanging off the foot of each bed.

"All right," Administrator Blume said, gesturing to the beds. "Here are our worst cases, organized from worst to least worst."

"T-This lady has terminal brain cancer," Nova whispered, taking the chart off the head. He looked at Mom. She gave him a big thumbs up. "... you're here to help me not mess up, right?"

She nodded, then added a second thumbs up to her first.

"Right." Nova hesitated. He had to admit, he hadn't expected this - even with the hospital, it still felt a bit like he had been given a hamburger and bitten in to taste hot dog. It wasn't even that he disliked hot dog, it's just... it was just wrong! It tasted weird! He started by holding his hand out and focusing. And for just a moment, he was thrown by how normal the woman's body felt. Her molecules were all in the right spot, everything was humming in the right way. Then he kicked himself. Cancer wasn't wrong on the level of neutrons and positrons. It was wrong in a higher, messier level. He tried to ratchet his 'perspective' out, and after cocking his head slightly... he felt it.

There was the wrongness. He could feel the connections of her body, the way it was laying - the way it was laboring. He could feel the... crackling, crinkling feeling of something vast and energetic and more fragile than anything he had ever touched. It was like holding an egg made of a million tiny diamonds laced together by the hair of a baby angel. Merely breathing wrong would snap one thread and the entire thing would fall apart.

That's... He thought. That's her...

Soul? Some people called them that. Consciousness pattern. Quantum quantum wibbly bibbly.

Whatever you called it, Nova was hit in the chest by the weight of this responsibility. He could feel it.

Nova breathed out slowly.

And gently, gently, he began to turn cancerous cells to healthy. He started to transport the mass out of her brain, teasing apart neurons at the atomic level to make sure he didn't upset a single inch of her brain. Then he started to quest through her body. The metastasized cancer cells in her blood stream, her bones, her lungs. Gone. Gone. Gone. It felt like he was a rampaging army, unstoppable, powerful. Then he shifted his focus, lowering his hand. The woman sat up, yawning and stretching - accidentally tugging the IV a few inches closer.

"How long was I out?" she asked, blinking and looking down at her hands. "Hey! Lady Luck!"

"Hi!" Mom waved from the sideline.

"How... long did that take?" Nova asked.

"About three minutes!" Mom said - which threw Nova, it had felt both far longer and far shorter at the same time, somehow. "Did you check every part of her? Did you check the lungs?"

"Yes, Mom," Nova said, flushing, his ears pinning back against his head. The woman was helped to her feet by two nurses who entered into the room and guided her out, their voices soft. Nova blinked a few times, then turned back to Mom. "... do you do this kind of thing every day?"

"I'm no good at healing," Mom said, cheerfully. "I can help another healer, so, I usually sit in on surgical things. I'm also great factories. It takes me abouuuut fifteen seconds per factory to save approximately ten thousand lives a year!" She puffed up her chest, her smile playful. "The statistics are pretty remarkable - lots of faults getting caught, lots of errors never getting through the product line. A bunch of people who would die from unexpected flaws in machinery those factories make, all alive, thanks to me. And I barely had to do anything. Just manipulate probability a little, away from entropy, towards order. Easy peasy."

Nova brushed his hand through his hair. "And this doesn't get into the comic books because..."

"To quote your sister," Mom said, leaning in, whispering. "It's hecka boring."

"Corvi does not say hecka, and you know it, Mom."

Mom grinned. "Now, come on, get to work. They don't not pay us to stand around!"

And so went the rest of Nova's day at the hospital. Some people had more than just a cancer wrong with them - some of them were broken in ways that made cancer look like a head cold. One man had fallen into a dimensional compactor at the local widget factory, and his body currently existed across and through several inimical dimensional barriers. The fact that the hospital was able to keep him alive while his liver and lungs were interpolated into the Z axis was pretty fucking impressive, and detangling that matrix of energy and matter took more focus than Nova had ever expended on anything - there was a terrifying moment where the dimensional planes felt like they were going to skid apart and the man would fall part into a haze of quarks, but Nova caught it at the very last second and then gently eased him into this universe completely. With a plaid-like haze of colors, the man flickered between several versions of himself before snapping back to normal.

I think they fucked that triage up, make a note to tell the doctor once you're done.

"Oh thank you! Thank you!" He shook Nova's hand, while Nova shot a covert look at his mother, who grinned and winked at him - but, ever so subtly, he could spot the sign of strain on her face. It eased a moment later, but for that second, he knew they had worked together as closely as any surgical team.

Cancer. Cancer. Long Covid. Man caught in a stasis field seconds before an antimatter beam hit him. The cases kept going - bouncing wildly between the mundanely horrible to the alarmingly exotic. And once Nova had reached the end of the line, he felt the kind of tired that only came from a really hard job that didn't look like work. It was like people who had crunched numbers to stop the Y2K bug from hitting the second singularity threshold, or someone who worked at an MMORPG's backend. It looked like just a lot of finger wiggling, and Nova couldn't really say which part exhausted him... and yet, at the end, he slumped backwards onto a chair that happened to be there and groaned.

"This is hard," he said, panting. "Do all heroes do this?"

"No, only cool ones," Mom said. "The bricks, like Legacy II and Paragon, are usually on power station duty."

"... power station?" Nova asked.

"Ya know, jogging on a big hamster wheel to run an electromagnet," Mom said. "They charge capacitors in countries that haven't built their ZPM reactors yet."

"... really?" Nova asked.

"Yup!" Mom said.

"How the hell do we keep up kayfabe?"

Mom giggled. "Have you ever heard of professional wrestling?"

"... no..." Nova said, his brow furrowing.

"So, in the before times, back in the long long ago, roughly... five years before Legacy I really stepped out and shook everything up, when superheroes were just goobers kicking up near to the Determination Threshold and everything was fisticuffs and gadgets, there was a sport called professional wrestling," Mom said. "And in it, everyone kinda knew it was fake. But they bought in because it's just more fun to think that it's true." She shrugged.

"Blissful illusions?" Nova asked, standing up.

"The world's a scary place, if you look at it rationally," Mom said, shrugging. "Humans have been making up ways to deal with it since we were banging rocks together - be it gods, the afterlife, the concept of fate, stories of heroes and legends. They help us contextualize the chaos and fear of our world and make it all seem a little less scary. Cause if you really just sit there and think about it, the immediate rational response is to curl up into a ball and cry!" She put her hand on his shoulder. "But with a handful of comics, you can at the very least go down swinging."

Nova blinked at her, his ears quivering.

"Mom, I'm not sure if that helped or just made me more scared?"

"Hah!" She slung her arm around his arm, dragging him towards the front door of the hospital. She leaned in, her voice soft. "One way to help is to remember you're not exactly human anymore. You get all the perks of being in the story!"

"... and the downsides?"

"We try and minimize those," Mom said, firmly. "That's what the past twenty years have all been about. But... they're there." She sighed. "Hopefully, you'll get a good long training period under your belt before your first Event."

The capital e in Event was audible, even to an inexperienced ear like Nova Nine's. It didn't take an A+ in civics class to know what those were. Nova shivered, despite the sunny afternoon that they emerged into.

"Now," Mom said as a scrap of paper blew into her ankle. She picked it up and unfurled it, revealing that the splatters and muck that the paper had blown through had smeared and blurred the advertising that the paper had once been into a near perfect replica of her handwriting, creating an already half finished to do list - with check marks on the take N9 to hospital and give him the talk about heroic legends and mythos to contextualize his newfound transhuman potential and under that, unchecked, was practice powers and edge cases. She turned to him. "So, powers and edge cases-"

"Wait, Mom. I... there's just... before we do anything more, I want to talk about... um..." Nova blushed.

"Sure!" she said. "What did you want to talk about?"

They stood there in perfect stillness. A few pedestrians ambled by on the sidewalk across from them, and a car skimmed by on a cushion of glowing agrav energies.

"... uh, can we go somewhere private?" Nova asked.

"Sure!" Mom said, nodding, though now her eyes were having that distinct 'nervous' crinkle to the corners. Nova snapped his fingers and, with a crackling snarl of tearing air, a portal ripped open to the Impossimansion. This was better choice for privacy - so long as they stuck to the third floor, as the first two were currently being remodeled by contractors - because nearly everyone in the family was still living at their old home, which was in the process of being sold as they transitioned into their new house. There, Nova rubbed his hand along the back of his neck.

"So, uh, t-two nights ago, after S'eats, something happened..."

"Ahh," Mom said, nodding. "Okay, honey, before you freak out, that's totally normal."

Nova froze. Then he shook his head. "N-No, uh, I mean, I should tell you-"

"A soupie threw herself at you," Mom said, her cheeks having a faint red tinge to them despite her matter of fact tone.

"Wait, they actually call themselves that?" Nova asked, his eyes widening.

"Yup! Super Groupie, Soupie!"

Nova chuckled and then opened his mouth to try and continue the story - but then he heard the unmistakable soft whirring noise of his sister Starflight coming up the stairs on her hoverjets. Mom, hearing it too, took his arm and yanked him into a private room, the door closing and... well, it was his room. Which made sense. Of course, this made him think of how he had slunk back in here after cheating on himself, with himself, and then jerked himself off for almost an hour remembering how good and tight Melissa had felt.

Superhero stamina. It had its downsides and its upsides.

He blushed hard as Mom continued. "So, it's... well, it's not good exactly, that you've cheated on your girlfriend. Melissa is a sweetie." She paused. "... but..."

"But?" Nova asked.

"W-well, it's just, you know, superheroes are often in athletic situations. Adrenaline gets pumping. We're all gorgeous. I mean, even the heroes that used to consider themselves ugly are gorgeous. Like, Sloppy Joe is an old timer from the 60s, and he's learned over the years that some girls really are into acidic slime boys." She nodded sagely. "Fortunately, boys too. Sloppy Joe is bisexual, he, uh, actually was at Stonewall, you know?"

Mom is babbling, Nova thought. She's just as embarrassed as I am. Huh.

Which did make this a bit easier.

"So, uh, who did you end up plowing?" Mom asked. "I mean, no, I, sorry, that was the wrong question, I'm sorr-"

"Melissa," Nova admitted, sitting on the bed with a thump.

"Oh!" Mom said. Then, her voice shifting from embarrassed-helpful mom to worried-annoyed mom tones, she said: "Nova... you need to keep your secret identity s-"

"She didn't know it was me, though!" Nova said, flushing, his ears drooping as he looked away.

"Oh that's, uh..." Mom hesitated. "Oh. That's. Uh."

And it was here that Nova learned something that was a little bit like the knowledge in the old horror comics about heroes who dealt with the lower cosmic threats of the Earth - threats Nova realized he had to check and see if were real or just exaggerated for effects. Those comics always went on and on about the way that simply knowing those facts would drive a man mad, if your mind was not prepared to face them.

This fact was like that. And it was hard to miss, considering how Mom's suit was made.

Her nipples were hardening. Bit by bit, they puffed up more and more until they jutted temptingly from her curvaceous chest. Her uniform practically framed them.

Nova's own cocktip started to peek from his sheath. He tried to force it back through sheer mental willpower, but while the metahuman ability to shrug off telepaths, unwanted teleportation, being turned into stone, cursed by magical artifacts, and generally fucked with superpowers was remarkable - it didn't include basic physiological responses to stuff like, say, erections. Doubly so when you were eighteen and sitting in the room with a woman that... for all that Nova's logic said was 'your mom', his eyes, and his brain were all saying the same thing.

That's Lady Luck.

That's the superhero you've been jerking off too since you learned how to jerk off.

"Well!" Mom said. "Uh. This is more complicated." Her cheeks were burning. "I may need to hear more, so, we can help you untangle this moral, uh... quandary." She smiled, sheepishly. "Usually, us heroes start with trolley problems. But, uh, cosmic powers means jumping into the deep end."

"Trolley problems aren't the deep end?" Nova asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Oh no, no, they're easy - just turn the trolley off," Mom said, flicking her hand. "So, uh. Firstly. Did you seduce her?"

"N-No, uh, she... practically threw herself at me." Nova gulped, feeling himself inching towards the real reason he was here - but they kept getting distracted. For one thing, his eyes kept darting down to those hard. Hard nipples. I wonder if she's hotter in or out of the uniform... he shook his head, hard.

"Oh." Mom blinked. "Uh. Wow. I would not have expected that from Melissa! She seemed like a sweet girl."

"S-She actually said she was doing... that is... that I'm the only real relationship I have, and, like, that she didn't want to ruin it by fucking me," Nova said, blushing.

"Ahhh! Right! Her family is pretty Christian," Mom said, shaking her head. "They're so weird about sex. So, she's got a normal, healthy libido-"

"Uh, a little more than normal," Nova corrected. "She... said she's... fucking... uh..." He looked up at Mom. "... a lot of people. Like. Every super she can throw herself at."

"Oh!" Mom's face was even redder now. "Okay, so, an... an extra health libido!"

"And..." Nova squirmed.

"Yes?" Mom asked. "R-Remember, you can say... anything you want. This is a total honesty and acceptance zone." She mimed a box with her fingers. "And secrecy, too. Well, privacy. Privacy is a better word, secrecy... implies something wrong is going on. A-And why shouldn't a mom help her son with relationship stuff? This is what this is! Really! T-The sex is... secondary..." She bit her lower lip. "... was it good? I mean, it... I hope... that is, you know, t-there are books for dealing with any, uh, that is, complications! From having, uh, superpowers!"

"It was!" Nova said, his cheeks burning as his ears quivered up. His dick was now half out of its sheath, tenting his uniform. "I knotted her."

Mom was very quiet for a very long time.

"G-G... Good for you, honey!" she said, her hands wringing before her belly. "I... didn't even know you... had a knot..."

Nova started mentally kicking himself. Why!? Why had he said that!?

Mom breathed in. "So. Your girlfriend is a soupie. That's not the end of the world! Like, uh..." She hesitated. "How are you feeling about it?" She sounded more gentle now, her voice softening as she looked down at him. Then, as he looked at her face, he saw her eyes dipping down a few inches. Then widen. Then jerk back to his face with a stolidity that made it so, so, so very clear what it was she had seen. Her throat worked, and Nova blurted it out.

"She's fucking dad too," he said.

Mom blinked a few times at him. Then...

She laughed.

"Oh! Oh! Honey, oh, honey, honey, honey, that's fine," she said, nodding.

Nova's mouth dropped open in shock.

"See, I got my powers before your father, so, I was out and about as a heroine, and, well, people threw themselves at me, but, well, I did try and keep myself pure, since, well, I love your father, but then he got his powers, but he never told me, since he didn't know that I was a super, so, we both met in the UN-01 rec room and, well, he was this huge hunky boar man with a crown and, well, I mean, I love twinks, I absolute love riding twinks, don't get me wrong, but this guy was huge and muscled and had just enough fat to be cushy, and he started flirting and, well, I had just gone three rounds with Mixmistress and her goons in a staged fight outside of the First National Bank of Century City and I was so wound up that I didn't even think of your dad until he was down to the fifth inch!"

The words were coming so fast that Nova didn't even have a chance to say anything, so, he just... sat there getting harder and harder and harder.

"S-So, uh, after I broke that dam, and he broke his dam, b-both of us kinda went a bit ham!" Mom continued. "I've fucked Legacy II, Sky, Jackanape, uh, PB... uh..." She rubbed her chin. "D-Dad, meanwhile, m-mostly stuck with baselines, but, that's why he racked up nearly a hundred on his punch-card, and, well, then we found each other out, there was shouting, we got in one another's faces..." She bit her lower lip. "Then... god, he just pushed me over a desk and said if I was a cheating whore, he'd... show me..." She shivered, trailing off.

Nova's cock was straining at his uniform now, so hard that he was worried his symsuit would snap.

"... s-so, anyway, you and Melissa are fine, nice talk, bye!" Mom said, then opened the door and shot out of the room.

Nova gulped, slightly.

I can jerk off, he thought.

Or...

You're a superhero, you know.

... that was a terrible idea. He should just jerk off, then, uh, start practicing his powers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was going to jerk off, then practice his powers in the danger room.

***

Suspended above the city on a shimmering 'board' made of coherent force, his cape flapping in the wind, and with nearly half a mile of a straight drop down to the pavement under his feet, Nova Nine thought to himself: I should have jerked off in the danger room.

His vague plan of 'flying around' and then getting laid had a few holes in it. For one thing, while there were people out and about in the early evening - lots of them, in fact, the actual step of, say, flying down and landing before a set of college aged girls out on to enjoy Century City's vibrant night life and saying 'hey ladies' was so completely impossible that Nova wondered why he had even bothered.

What you should do is fly around a bit more to make sure no one is trying to mug anyone, then, I can go home and is that Jinxwitch?

That was, in fact, Jinxwitch. She was standing on the roof of an apartment building and as he flew overhead, she grinned, reached down, grabbed the hem of her top and yanked it all the way up, flashing her completely flat chest at him, her dark gray nipples two tiny points at this distance.

Nova kept flying in stunned silence - and then his head clocked the underside of a blimp carrying a huge advertisement for Legacy-O brand cereal and he was down. The board under his feet crackled away and Nova plummeted, wind screaming past his ears as he clutched at his head, trying to focus enough to bring his powers back online. He screamed as he fell - and then came up short, grunting as a bubble of inverted gravity snapped on around him for a moment, stopping his fall and then letting him drop onto his rump.

"Oh, nice catch!" Jinx said, grinning wickedly down at him as she stepped over. Her top was now back down over her chest - but Nova spotted her nipples were hard against her top, whether she wanted to admit it or not. "I'll give you... seven out of ten, I've seen better."

Nova rubbed the bruise on his head, scowling at her. But then he remembered: He had superpowers. He focused and the bruise turned back into healthy flesh with a pale blue glow - it was just a simple matter of remembering the atomic structure of unbruised flesh and winding back to that point. He stood and brushed his cape off with one hand, then scowled at her.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"Uh, that's a fine how do you do, considering I just made sure your first comic is gonna be able to star one of the most popular villains in the city!" she said, scoffing.

Nova arched an eyebrow at her. "Really? And you got this data from your butt? It is a very cute butt, but it's still not a reputable source."

Jinx scoffed, then yanked out a handheld terminal from... from...

Where did she pull it? She didn't have her shoulder bag, and she did not have pockets on that skintight, skirted outfit. She tapped at it, then turned the phone to him, showing him a rather... familiar webpage. She smirked, pointing. "Jinxwitch parenthesis Century City end parenthesis! Two thousand fifty six hundred individual fanarts."

Nova, his cheeks flushed, tried to riposte. He pointed. "In that one, you have tits the size of a building."

"Yeah, I keep trying to get those artists killed, but someone keeps stopping me, just cause of the 'sanctity of human life'," she said, rolling her eyes. "Look at this!" She showed him a rather well drawn and remarkably detailed drawing of her being eaten alive by a snake.. "Is this legal? Is this ethical? They drew me with DD! I'm flat and proud goddamn it!"

"... that's your problem with the art?" Nova asked.

"Prude," Jinxwitch said, looking at her phone and then tucking it away. "So. As I was saying. That's a fine thank you very much!" She said. "And I showed you a free look at the goods!" She pointed at her chest dramatically, as if Nova could forget.

"Okay, so, this is you asking if you can be one of my heels," Nova said.

"Heels," she said, rolling her eyes. "Trust a bunch of heroes to come up with terminology and just steal from baseline wrestling. We villains, we have a much more enlightened view of our powers." She put her hand on her chest, her pink eyes glittering.

"Which is?" Nova asked.

"We do. Whatever. We. Want." She said, stepping a bit closer with each word. She leaned up on her tippy toes, her voice growing warm and sprightly against his ear - causing his ear to shiver and twitch up slightly. "You heroes have soooo many rules and guidelines and modes and terms and boxes and, like, fuck it!" She pushed away from him, twirling and letting her hair brush his feet for a moment as she flounced away. "You can do whatever you want! So, do it!"

"I am," Nova said, chuckling. "Today, I got to heal, like, thirty people of terminal brain cancer! That's, like, something I've dreamed about."

"Wow, you are a fucking nerd!" Jinx said, spinning to face him. "What about fucking the hottest girl in your class? Or, fuck it, your teacher. C'mon, you have to have a favorite teacher. You've got superpowers, you can get her panties down soooo fast. Just snap your fingers, wink." She grinned at him. "Or, if sex isn't what interests you..." She flicked her eyes down, spotting the bulge growing between his thighs. "... nevermind! Ditching the rest of the villain pitch, you wanna get that big fat dick of yours wet? Villains get it on."

Nova's cheeks burned. "And heroes don't? KOTF-"

"Okay, fine, your Dad and villains get it on," Jinx said.

"... and Lady Luck..."

"Okay, fine, your Dad, and your Mom are both turbo sluts, and villains get it on," Jinx said, sounding annoyed.

"And if Mom fucked Skrayper then it means Sky has fucked her, which means Sky probably gets laid too, and Legacy II, and if Legacy II is getting laid, then it means heroes are also getting it on, ergo, why would I ever want to be a villain?" Nova asked.

Jinx spluttered. She crossed her arms over her chest. Scowled. Kicked her foot at the ground. "... the... aesthetics?" she asked.

"Uh-huh," Nova said.

Jinx scowled. "You know, this actually works sometimes, when they're totally innocent newbies. And there is a difference between hero and villain sex." She rubbed her fingers together. "A certain something something, a little... ya know, the vibes." She nodded.

"And you know this because of your years being a superhero, right?" Nova asked.

Jinx snorted. "Hey, you don't know me. You don't know my tragic backstory."

"Want to tell it?" Nova asked, genuinely curious.

Jinx blinked. "Uh..." She hesitated. "Well. I started out as Luck Witch. Kinda had a cutesy aesthetic going on." She shrugged. "But luck magic is kinda hard to do in a hurry and I put a security guard into the hospital for three months because I didn't work fast enough, until a metahealer was able to deal with him." She rubbed the back of her neck. "Since he was all... bleeding and screaming, I was so distracted that the next time I cast my luck shield spell, it... botched and turned my skin gray, and, well... if you're a villain, you know that real heroes are gonna keep everyone safe. So. There! Tragic backstory." She smiled, slightly. "It's not that tragic. More mildly- MEW!" She squeaked as Nova stepped over and gave her a big hug. He squeezed and she squirmed, hissing. "Hey! Hey! I've almost killed, like, twenty people!"

"Sure you have," Nova said, drawing back and setting her down with a grin. "You're a very scary villain."

"I'm going to make your balls fall off!" she hissed, eyes narrowing angrily.

Nova smirked. "However, there is an issue with you being my heel."

"Pff, like what?" Jinxwitch asked.

"I'm a cosmic level hero, you are able to sustain a single luck based effect at a time," Nova said, holding up his hand and spreading his fingers. Blue light shimmered around Jinx and, with a blink, several holographic images formed as Nova interpolated what his innate talents were pulling from feeling the flux of Jinxwitch's own metahuman nature. The end result was a fairly broad, impressive set of powers - but he had her beat in sheer weight class. She put her hands on her hips, frowning.

"I can still kick your ass, if I wanted," she said.

"Maybe, but, it'll be either me obliterating you, or you almost dying to beat me and... that's not great for a long term hero/villain relationship, ya know?" Nova asked. "I need a heel who can go toe to toe without me needing to constantly hedge things. A-Also... like..." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I... don't want to have to beat up a cute girl."

"Hm, that's fair," Jinxwitch said, smirking. "Boys get all weird about hitting girls unless they're trained out of it, and I want you to pull your punches when we actually fight." She nodded. "All right. Well. You're not a total nerd... I guess I couuuuld bring you to The Cage."

Nova's ears perked up. "And what, pray tell, is that?"

"Oh god, you said pray tell? Never mind!" Jinxwitch turned, her hair swirling like a cape. Without thinking, Nova reached forward, took hold of her hair, and gently held it. Jinx over-sold the sudden pressure by flailing and falling backwards, which somehow ended up with her tight, tight little gray ass grinding against his bulge. She gasped, then paused and ground more thoughtfully, her eyes widening. "O-Okay, I... I was going to fake gasp, but..." She bit her lip. "Is that a-"

Nova gently pushed her off him, then said. "Maybe you can find out," he said, trying to ignore how his entire face felt like it was on fire. "If you tell me what the cage is."

"The Cage," she said, pronouncing the capital letters with care. Then she grinned. "You have to promise that no hero over the age of twenty hears about it, though. Villains, sure, but heroes are such sticks in the frigging mud."

"Okay, promise," Nova said, without thinking, because currently, a good chunk of his brainpower was focused on the silky, tight feeling of her skirt-covered butt and how it had been amazing to feel it against his bulge. Also, she was pretty. And the night was young.

Jinx grinned, then snapped her fingers, pink sparks flickering around her fingertips as a glowing portal opened behind her. "C'mon!" she said, then turned and headed through the portal. Nova followed after, blinking as he saw that they had entered into... well, it was a waiting room. The walls were a dark black-purple and felt. The floor was soft carpeting, and there was a ring of benches around the walls for seating, and a drinking fountain in the corner. There was a door that led to another room - thick, metal, and with a sign over it saying EXIT.

"Where are we?"

"The teleportation arrival room, ya know, so people have somewhere safe to port or portal in," Jinx said, grabbing the door and throwing it open - and that was when Nova learned how good the soundproofing was, because thumping electronic music immediately buzzed into his ears with the force of several freight trains. Jinx spread her arms wide, her skirts flaring around her hips as she bounced. "Welcome!" she shouted - her voice timed remarkably well to the gathering drop on the track.

And beyond her?

What looked like every single teenage villain or hero in the entirety of Century City - and beyond - gathered on the dance floor, sitting at tables, and lounging at the bar, all in their costumes. Including, dancing with The Beast Prince, Starfleet. And Corvi was... yes, that was... that was his sister Corvi Magpie, off in the corner, making out with Devil Girl. Sloppily.

"... to the Cage!"