These don't sound like his words. They're too prepared, too rehearsed. His therapist, maybe.
"Dad," you say lowly, "it's fine."
The frustration just grows heavier.
You tilt your head back, and choke back a groan. "Look," you bite out, "I'm dealing with it. I'm doing really good at school, and I have some good friends. That's enough, isn't it?"
You risk a glance over at him, taking in the pained grimace on his face as he leans back in the chair, looking up at the ceiling as though for guidance.
You get the feeling that, no. Dad does not consider that to be nearly enough.
His expression doesn't change at all when you get up from the table and storm off to your room. Not that that helps you at all.
Even later that night, after you've hidden in your room for over five hours, you can still feel the shame rolling off him.
The next day, you wake up to find Dad already awake. Odd; he usually likes to sleep in until nine on a weekend.
Neither of you bring up last night's scene. There's an air of awkwardness between you two, but you're content to let that stand. The awkwardness is better than the disappointment he was feeling last night. Besides, you can feel his antidepressants at work, slowly smothering his disappointment and shame beneath a small thread of cheerfulness.
Breakfast is mostly a silent affair, until eventually, the phone rings. Dad rushes off to answer it, and you take the opportunity to steal his fried eggs while he's gone. Push you for answers, you grumble silently. Let's see how he likes his breakfast without a fried egg!
When he returns, it's with a smile, if a strained one. Internally, you let out a sigh of relief. It must be good news, if he's smiling so soon after a fight.
He raises an eyebrow at you when he looks at his plate and sees his fried eggs missing, but you don't say anything, just glare defiantly at him as you eat a huge forkful of eggs. Oddly, that seems to soften him somewhat.
Of course, as has to be the way, any traces of a good mood you'd developed are shattered when he speaks.
"Good news," he says, somewhat cheerfully. "I just got off the phone with Alan. Apparently he was speaking to the father of that girl you went to visit yesterday, and it reminded him that we haven't seen each other in a few months. He's invited us all over for dinner."
Your hands clench around the handle of your fork, and suddenly, you wish Alan Barnes was here so you could steal his eggs, too. Then something he said catches your attention. "Us all?" you ask.
"Yeah," he replies. "Us and the Clammen... your friend and her family."
Well, you suppose. At least there's some good news here.
You'd say that today started off so promisingly, but you'd be lying. A fight with your father, and an attempted discussion about your "feelings", as though that actually needs to be talked about. And now, you're going over for dinner with Emma and Madison.
You aren't prepared for this. You have a plan for how you're going to approach Emma, and it looks nothing like this. You need more time, more room to prepare. You haven't even started nudging her emotions yet. How were you going to get her to accept you in now, when she was going to be pre-warned and have her defences up?
The thought of not influencing her crosses your mind for a moment, but you dismiss it out of hand. Even if you didn't have to worry about Emma making nasty comments and causing your father to storm out in a huff, which would make it very difficult for you to seduce her later, you honestly want to get started sooner now that the opportunity has forced itself on you. A plan is already forming in your head, a very naughty plan.
The dinner won't be until six, if you still know Emma's family at all. Dad will drive you over at five, and you're going to need some time to prepare yourself before, so you're going to need to be home by at least two. It's seven now, so you still have a fair amount of time during the day if you want to get something done.
You're going to spend your time in the morning...
[] With Madison— you won't have recovered by the time it's time for the dinner, but that's okay. You expect you'll find yourself aroused again soon enough anyway. You'll call her— her name is in the phone book, you checked— and invite her over to your house. It's not time to finish what you've started, not yet, but it's time to take a step you never envisioned when you formulated this plan; you're going to bring Madison over to your house, and you're going to subtly introduce the idea of ownership to her.
— Success chance: 50% 60%% (10% bonus from Submission). Note that this option will always be available unless another future path is chosen for Madison at a later date, but will disappear permanently if such is chosen.
— General results: Will plant a seed of a thought in Madison's head, making her consider the idea of asking Taylor to mark her as hers. Note that this does not mean Taylor will literally own Madison; it will open up future paths for Madison in which she will act subserviently to Taylor, (e.g. cooking her meals for her, performing domestic duties without complaint), and most importantly, will get off on doing so.
— On a success: Raises Madison's maximum Submission score to 15.
— On a failure: Raises Madison's maximum Submission score to 12.
[] In the library, researching the local cape scene. It's important that you do so soon-ish; you need to have an awareness of the local scene before you try and set up your own hero team, so that you can use the trio's skills to begin spreading your influence around before you enter the scene. Besides, you're curious about what the town's capes are up to, now.
— Success chance: Cannot be failed.
— On a success, will provide exposition about the local cape scene— which capes are prominent in the area, the large teams and gangs, notable individuals, and current alliances and power plays. Will also provide early access to begin recruiting Glory Girl, and the first chance (of many) to begin recruiting Battery.
[] Down at the Boardwalk, "acquiring" some magazines of... a certain nature from the adult stores around. With not just one, but two girls about to be under your thumb, you're suddenly a lot less confident in your actual sex skills. And besides, Madison is nearly ready for you to take her. Tease her just a little bit more by, say, reading some adult magazines and playing with her, and she'll be primed for you to finally have sex with.
— Success chance: 50%
— General results: Acquires adult videos, allowing you a scene in which Taylor sexually frustrates Madison as they watch porn together. Note that this scene will open up options in which Taylor has sex with Madison in one of three locations.
— On a success: Will increase Sophia's Intrigue by 1, and raise successful recruitment rates of Sophia by 5%. Note that this does not initiate recruitment of Sophia.
— On a failure: The next point of Lust and Loyalty gain from Emma are negated.
[] At your house, with Madison. Madison is submissive enough towards you now that you think you could push her a bit further without completely altering her mind. To that end, you're going to invite Madison over and push her submissiveness a bit— and delight yourself in the process.
— This option cannot be failed.
— Invites Madison over, allowing you a scene in which Taylor and Madison lie on Taylor's bed in their panties and watch a movie, and Madison feeds Taylor snacks as Taylor plays with her. Note that this scene will open up options in which Taylor has sex with Madison in one of three locations.
1.6
The air between you and your father is still awkward over an hour later. Your resentment faded somewhat in light of the new nervousness now fluttering in your stomach, and you even felt a little bad about stealing his eggs... at least until he just went and fried himself three more to replace the two you stole. That killed off the guilt fast, and you went back to glowering at him.
When you announce that you're going to visit the library today, Dad gives you a one-armed hug and the money for the bus fare, sending you on your way with a cheery wave. You shoot a suspicious look at his back as you leave, but sadly, you have the power to manipulate people's emotions, not the power to read people's minds. You can feel that he is feeling happier than he has for the past... well, as long as you can remember reading his emotions, anyway.
The bus is late, as it always is. Not too late today, thankfully, it's only four minutes behind the times listed on the schedule sitting on the side of the bus stop. Once, you'd had to wait almost half an hour beyond the scheduled time for the bus to arrive. The bus scheduled to arrive half an hour later had arrived while the first one was still picking up passengers. That had been an embarassing incident for the first bus driver.
Soothing songs ring forth from the radio, tuned to the Protectorate-aligned channel of Brockton Bay. You're a little surprised— usually the music on this channel is a lot worse than this— but it's passable enough today that you sing along under your breath. "Mouse Protector, Mouse Protector, Defender of the Weak and Innocent, Mouse Protector~"
The man sitting beside you gives you an odd look. You glare up at him and continue singing defiantly. Those words are meant to be capitalized. You'd seen the subtitles once, and they said so, damn it! Subtitles are law!
The bus trundled down along the roads of Brockton Bay, slow and cautious, as mandated by the council. There had been one too many incidents of minor villains taking advantage of the buses, planting bombs on them or holding them up so they could get some funds far enough away that the heroes in the PRT couldn't respond in time to save anyone. Now, the public transit system was mandated to remain within a certain distance of patrolling heroes or subsidized rogues. It was inconvenient, but less so than not having buses at all, or inevitably ending up in a hostage situation when the heroes turned up.
It takes nearly forty minutes for the bus to arrive at the stop in front of the town hall. You climb off there, then head across the street to the public library— an old, dour building, with a sign out the front proudly proclaiming "Brockton Bay Public Library". Beneath that was written, in smaller letters, "Proudly standing since 1878".
You pass through the RFID trackers standing in front of the doors and head within. There are several ancient computers sitting on small tables within the rows of books, permanently open with their screens set to display the library's catalogue searching system.
With an eager grin, you take a seat in front of the closest catalogue computer and get to work.
Four and a half hours later, you finally fold the last newspaper back up, wiping some imaginary sweat from your brow. It turns out that trying to get a good idea of what Brockton Bay's cape scene is like is actually a lot harder than it sounds. That's a recurring theme, you're noticing.
There's aren't a lot of records online. You'd checked, but the only really serviceable source you'd found was ParaHumans Online— "the" premier source for cape news online, if only because it was where the Protectorate actually had a presence, and thus official Protectorate news and posts from PRT-aligned heroes flowed in. There were other sites on the internet that followed and tracked cape news, but few capes visited them, so they never built much steam.
You'd read over as much as you could, both on PHO and in the library's archived newspapers. PHO is actually a good source for news, but it's relatively new, having only been around for three or four years, and there are a lot of smaller incidents in the Bay that either go unreported on the website, or were only tracked in some of the "Incident Megathreads" you don't have the time to read through today.
Still, you've learned quite a bit today. Some of which you wish you hadn't learned.
From what you've read, there are three "major" gangs in Brockton Bay. The Protectorate only officially recognizes two of them, naming specifically the East-Asian Coalition (unofficially referred to as the "ABB", the Azn Bad Boys, by some of the gang members, but that name hadn't caught on enough to be added to official reports) and the Empire— or Empire 88— as gangs engaging in criminal activity.
The political reality is as such;
The Empire's presence in Brockton Bay isn't as shaky as the Protectorate claims, but they're still far from the lofty heights they had presented in the Bay prior to the strife with Marquis, and then Leviathan's attack. They're a faction divided by internal strife, a civil war that had been formed with the death of the former leader of the faction, a man named 'Allfather'. Each of Allfather's children has claimed they are fit to rule the Empire, and the gang split in two between them.
Now, two factions of the Empire vie for supremacy within Brockton Bay's shores.
Kaiser, the elder son of the family, leads the faction still referred to as 'The Empire' by most of the populace. The man is noted to be extraordinarily charismatic, and you're inclined to agree, as much as you dislike it. He's charismatic enough that he's plastered most of the city's media outlets with Empire propaganda— radio channels, newspapers, even public advertisements. None of it is technically illegal, as the propaganda never uses hate speech— just preaches the "values of good, working-class families within the Bay and its surrounding area" and "struggling against the filth accumulated over centuries of Great American Progress", capitalization typically not included. It's effective, too. Nobody wants to believe that they're racist, but there are plenty of disadvantaged people in the Bay, and Kaiser prays upon their hopes and fears, furthering his own ends.
Beneath the Empire are a sundry list of capes. Purity, Fenja and Menja, Night and Fog, Crusader and Alabaster are amongst the ones mentioned most often; their powers are terrifying enough to let them hold their own against New Wave and PRT-aligned capes when they show up, and charges against his followers the few times the city's heroes have managed to arrest them have consistently fallen through. Purity is officially listed as a rogue as of a year and a half ago, but she has been noted as still being Empire-sympathetic, so you're listing her with the Empire still.
There are also a host of minor villains, often mercenaries hired temporarily to perform a specific duty, listed in there too, and then estimates of up to six hundred Empire-affiliated gang members. Surveys of Brockton Bay's citizens have found that near 20% of people living in the Bay sympathize with the Empire's position, too.
