Kit let out a shuddering breath and gave him a bright smile her eyes flickering to Andrea.
“Nothing, Andie. I was just teasing him. To your own point, Felix. Yeah. We’re good. Also, I’m glad to know you think that way, but I think you’ve got your hands full already.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Felix said deliberately, his eyes widening at the edges.
Please god, read this thought and stop right there. Please. Andrea will drag me off for hours if she even thinks I have thoughts about other women.
“Fine. I’ll say no more,” Kit said with a self-satisfied smile.
Andrea looked from him to her, and back again. She didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.
Safe?
“For now, at least. And yes, I’ll take on another power. I saw it in your head. It’d work and I like the idea of it. Though we’ll have to prepare some teams to go with me and make sure everything is clear,” Kit said.
“Yeah, that’s fine. Arrange it with Ioana and Andrea. Oh, and by the way, I set it up so I can turn your ability to read my mind on and off at will. As you no doubt saw in my memories. Let me know if and when you want it on or off. Now, if there is nothing else more pressing, we should probably get moving on the new power,” Felix said with a waggle of his fingers.
“Mm, no. Though, we did get the most recent suggestions back from Skippercity just after that meeting. One was interesting and I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss,” Kit said.
“Oh? I’m always open to suggestions.”
“It was from one of the security people. Alex was the name, I believe. He wanted to know why we don’t have pancakes available that are at the level of Andrea’s skill. And on top of that, why don’t they operate in the same fashion as power sausage,” Kit said.
Uh… what?
“Pancakes!” Andrea shouted. “Make a robot of me that only makes pancakes. But make the boobs bigger.”
Andrea looked down at her kevlar vest and cupped herself experimentally through it. “Maybe… Lily’s size. Or Victoria’s, she squishes them down. But not Felicia. Those look like they’d hurt under a vest.”
Felix ignored Andrea and frowned in thought as he contemplated what Kit had said.
I… actually that’s not a bad thought. Why aren’t we doing that? Can Felicia use something other than corpses to make power sausage? Even at a lesser degree? And pancakes wouldn’t be that hard either. All she’d have to do is make a machine that would do both, right?
Or do one, and I upgrade it to do the other.
Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Felix held up his hands in front of him.
“Good idea. Put it on Felicia’s project calendar and send Alex a bonus for the month. I’d like to encourage good ideas in the future. Now… about that power,” Felix said.
Kit scratched at her ear with a smile. “I’m ready. And… do you really believe I look better with the short hair? I know I’ve let it grow out long, but all of your…” She paused at that. Thankfully she continued on, skipping whatever word she had originally planned on using. Her eyes flickered to Andrea for only a moment. “They were of me when my hair was really short.”
This was a terrible mistake. All a terrible mistake. Oh my god what have I done.
“Felix likes short hair?” Andrea asked Kit.
“He does. He especially likes your hair length right now or a bit shorter,” Kit said.
“Oh! Good. I keep telling Lily she should get her hair cut short like mine,” Andrea said.
Forcing his thoughts to the task at hand, Felix imagined giving Kit another power.
Her fourth major power.
A power to control portals. That lead to anywhere. Any place.
Even different worlds.
Only Eva had as many powers, but hers were all conditional things.
Fourth Power(Unlock):Portal Control
Required Intelligence: 70 (Met)
Required Wisdom: 70 (Met)
Upgrade?(125,000)
Felix winced. It’d take an entire day’s worth of points. Everyone would practically be at zero.
We’ll keep Felicia amped up, I still want a technological version of this portal power. Kit can handle this for now. With any luck, we can use this to our advantage. Portal directly into the Hero HQ.
Then we can just leave her memories alone. No need to go digging into that quagmire.
It’d just hurt everyone to have those memories brought back, and it’d have to start with Kit.
Not doing that.
He tried to not think about the three mummified women. How he had met Kit, Miu, and Ioana.
Whatever was done to them had broken their minds. There was no reason to go back there, even to find out what he wanted.
“Alright, I’m going—” Felix paused. Kit was staring at him. Her shoulders were tight and her spine ramrod straight. “What… what is it? Are you alright?”
I didn’t turn on the power, did I? She said it hurt last time. I can’t imagine opening a fourth power would help at all.
“No. I’m fine, I just… hearing your thoughts… they come non-stop. I’ve met those with faster, but very few. And… and I’m thankful. You worry over me, even though you have such a cold and icy exterior. I… I think I’d like it if you turned off my ability to hear your thoughts. For now. I’m reassured but… I don’t think I like it. You were right. About everything, and I appreciate your consideration. For now, let’s turn it off,” Kit said, repeating herself.
Felix didn’t have any reason to deny her request. So he mentally deactivated the extension of her power, and then purchased her fourth power upgrade.
Kit’s head dipped down and she pressed her hands to her temples.
“God, I hate that,” she said. “It’s not painful but… it’s unnerving.”
With that done, the next task on the chore list was getting a hold of Felicia. He needed to get her running on creating a portal machine that could accomplish the same thing that Kit could now do.
Beyond that, he’d have to start dealing with the local and federal government. He needed to put a stop to both branches of the government interfering with his plans. They kept trying to halt his plans for the college campus.
Lily and Lauren are ideal for that. Take Victoria and Andrea for protection.
Kit can stay here and start practicing with the new power.
So much change so fast.
How far do I push everyone as well? At what point can I justify popping open their memories and subjecting them to whatever hell they went through.
Again.
Finding himself with no answers to that, Felix opened up his terminal.
Flicking open the address book inside, he typed in a quick email to Felicia.
If she hasn’t responded to phone calls, that means she’s buried elbow deep in some machine’s guts. So… email to her and White.
Adding White in to the CC function, he snapped off the email with a finger flick.
“With any luck, she’ll get back to me before I get bored and tell you to just open a… actually, let’s just do that,” Felix said. “Kit, you feel up to trying out that new power?”
“I… yeah, I think I could. Doesn’t seem to be that difficult honestly,” she said, raising her head up to meet his eyes. “Similar to the telekinetic side of things, but not quite?”
“Is that a question or a statement? Nevermind. Just… try to open a portal to Skippercity HQ. Preferably the Labs. I want to talk to Felicia,” Felix said, getting up from his chair.
“Alright. I can do that,” Kit said. Spinning in her chair, she focused on a point at the end of the table.
Slowly, much more slowly than the previous portal had opened, a sphere appeared. Starting no bigger than a baseball it began to inexorably open up into an ever-growing oval.