Possessive Behavior

"Zen? He's 'aight." Darwin said as he swirled the stick through the cotton candy machine. "Kind of a know-it-all, but he'll undoubtedly be very useful to us in the future."

I gave him a nod as I took a bite of my caramel apple.

"Oh, I don't doubt that. Still....Do you know what his Power is? Or at least an idea, an inkling?"

He shrugged.

"I don't really think about it a lot, y'know? It's not like it matters to me. Haunt has to make plans with all our skills in mind, I just follow'em."

He pulled the uneven wad of pink sugary delight out and took a big bite.

"But if you put a gun to my head, I'd say he's one of them arcane fucks."

That certainly was on my list of possibilities.

"A mage? What makes you think that?"

Once again, Darwin shrugged.

"He has fifteen abilities or something."

"Fifteen? Did you count?"

He rolled his eyes before giving me an answer.

"You know what I mean. A bunch. And.....Now, I'm no expert at this or anything, but I've been in the game long enough to see a wide, wide variety of Empowered. And usually, when someone has a bunch of Powers, they're all pathetically weak. Not just kinda, sorta weak, I mean Sidekicks for Hire weak. Or, they have one really strong ability but all the others are weak. It's one of those two things. To have as many abilities as Zen and at that level...that's arcane power. It's why mages are so goddamn arrogant. Fuckers know they're just better than us."

"I guess that could be.....If he was a mage, though, what type would he be?"

For the third time, Darwin shrugged.

"You're barking up the wrong tree here, girlie. I don't know about any o'that mageshit. Go ask a spellslinger, they oughta know better. Twin, whichever one of them is alive right now. But you gotta wait. They're on a small run for the boss today."

Alright. At least it was some kind of lead.

"Yeah, thanks. I'll pay them a visit tomorrow. Enjoy your cotton candy."

Darwin gave me a two-finger salute as I walked off.

"You bet I will. Don't often get a craving for it, but if it happens, the beast must be satisfied."

So....if Zen was a mage, Lone Twin could probably give me more info. But what to do right now?

After a bit of thinking, I decided I would ask the other members anyway. Never hurt to get more insight. And who better to start with than the one I both knew was almost always here and I wanted to talk to least?

I walked through the confusing, maze-like layout of the tent, got lost twice, and almost stumbled over myself multiple times due to the weird properties of the floor before I reached the entrance to the cloth tunnel where my target lived.

I steeled myself and yelled out.

"Hey! Ariadne! I want to ask you something!"

It did not take long for the hair-rising skittering noises to echo out of the circular opening before the half-spider woman emerged.

Her eight black eyes shone with an unsettling glee, and her mouth twisted into a fanged smile.

"Aaaaah, Sweetling. How nice of you to visit me. Do you want another hug?"

I shook my head harder than I probably should have.

"Uhm, no. No thanks. I'm here to ask about one of our....colleagues. Zen. You know, the floating one."

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Ariadne giggled and shook her upper body in an expression of...some kind of emotion, I was sure.

"Zen, Zen, Zen. I like Zen. Zen is not sweet, or cute, or pretty, but he helped me lots and lots."

Now that was interesting.

"He helped you? May I ask how? With what?"

The towering woman leaned down and ran an oily finger down my cheek.

I took a very deep breath.

"Of course you may, Sweetling. Haunty doesn't allow me to be bold and active. I can only hunt in a way no one sees me. That's very difficult for a big girl like me. So I only used to get a few Sweetlings every year. But Zen showed me places where lots of cuties go alone at night. So now I have a steady stream of new Sweetlings! It's so fun! It's so cute! All thanks to Zen!"

Oh.

That couldn't be good.

I looked behind her, into the dark maw of her cave. Some long-buried instinct deep within urged me to go in and rescue whoever was in there. Or at least make plans to.

But that instinct was quickly suppressed.

"Thanks for the talk. That was really all I wanted to know." I said and took a few steps back.

"I'll see you later."

Ariadne chuckled.

"I hope so, Sweetling. You are welcome in my cave any time."

With that, she ducked back into her hidey hole, and I turned back and navigated back to the Caramel Apple stand.

I needed another treat after this.

----

A sugar bomb later, I thought about my next steps.

The Haunting Nightmare and Boneyard were together very often, and she seemed to me the type to tailor her responses to her boss's liking while in his presence.

After a minute, I had an Idea. I would try to get Alice, then, after questioning her, I'd ask about getting put on the patrol tomorrow morning. Like most Villain groups, the Freakshow sent someone out every day to check around the area of their hideout to make sure no Heroes are sniffing around or other bad guys are encroaching on their turf.

I knew Boneyard was doing these rounds for this tent. She had been seen multiple times walking the Gas Quarter Perimeter, though whenever a Hero showed up to apprehend her, their corpse was found shortly after. And when teams went, with even more backup on top, she just wasn't there anymore when they arrived. On top of that, Freakshow was so large a group that risking Heroes to squish one tent was not worth it, since history had shown every time that happened a new one would spring up soon after.

Patrolling with her should give me both the time with her and the isolation I need.

At home, I would ask Jess to ask around about Zen in the BHF Offices. Too suspicious if I did it.

If I knew what he is, maybe I could be more at ease around him. Or better yet, maybe I'd stumble upon some kind of terrible weakness and take him out in private.

With him gone, W.R.A.I.T.H would have no reason to want me here, which meant I'd be able to go back and be a loser again.

.........

Wouldn't that be nice?

------

"Of course you can ask me something! You can ask me anything! Come in!" Alice yelled excitedly and dragged me into her room.

It was...more or less what I expected.

The tent walls in here were a uniform hot pink, as was all of the furniture. I could see a few gaming consoles, a doll house, a variety of dolls and stuffies.

Lots of stuffies.

Though, to my great relief, none of them evoked that tingling of sapience in the back of my mind that....the other one did.

That very same plush was sitting on the only thing in the room that seemed out of place.

The bed.

I'm sure it was supposed to be a bed.

It had four....legs, a headboard if you squinted, a mattress that looked to be firm but was rippling ever so lightly as if it were a waterbed.

The things on top of the bed did approximate something that certainly could be fluffy if you lay your head on it and a long piece of what I could only assume was fabric that gave the impression it could be warm and snuggly when placed on top of a person....but...it was so...strangely put together it gave me a headache just looking at it. I couldn't even tell what color it was.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor. Alice was fanning me with something...no...she was whispering something. I couldn't make out the words....or..,no..I could, but...they weren't words. It didn't even seem like she was just making random sounds....the way her mouth moved did not make sense with what came out of it. Her eyes were different too...sharper, more mature. I got a headache again and felt things going dark once more. As I faded, I enjoyed the cold breeze coming from all sides around me. It felt nice. Soothing.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting on a chair in Alice's room. There was a sheet over the bed, though the outline seemed even more bizarre and jagged than the scraps I could recall.

"I'm sorry! I'm really sorry!" Alice cried and held my hand. "I got so excited to have you as a guest that I forgot to cover my beddy! The silly thing always spooks people! Boney also fell down the first time she saw it! It was my fault! Forgive me!"

The fog in my head lifted slowly, but there was still an uncomfortable buzzing. What....what had happened again?....

Oh yes. Zen.

" 'S fine, Alice." I mumbled, not really sure what she was apologizing for.

"I...I have a question."

Alice perked up again and hopped onto my lap.

"Thanks for still being friends! Ask me anything."

All at once, the buzzing receeded and my head was clear once more.

It was a bit strange, having a teenage girl dressed and behaving like a toddler on my lap.

My instinct from my Hero days, when fans set their children on my lap for photo-ops or during signings was to stroke their hair, but Alice was basically a young woman.

This kind of awkwardness was not something I had been expecting from my Villain career.

With a sigh, I let my instincts take the wheel and ran my gloved hand through her hair. It was very clean.

"So, Alice...what can you tell me about Mister Zen? Do you like him? Do you think he's...um....cool? Or something?"

The girl giggled and waved over her bear, who had been sitting on her dresser. The thing jumped off and waddled toward her.

"I do like Mister Zen a lot! He always does cool tricks for me when we're alone."

"Oh? Like what?" I asked as she scooped her pet abomination up from the floor.

"Once, when I wanted him to stay here for a tea party, he brought me in front of the mirror and made Mirror Alice move and talk instead, cuz he was busy. It was so fun! I call her Ecila! Mirror me has her own Mirror Mister Nottub, so we had our first four-way tea party! The next day, they were back to normal again, though."

Making mirror images move and talk coherently without his presence for a whole day? That was certainly new. And didn't even really fit with his other demonstrated abilities that well.

"Another time, he took his head off for me! He unscrewed it from his neck like he was a robot, but it was all bony and fleshy and icky! It was fun! He could still talk too, even when we threw it back and forth!"

I.....I had nothing. But right now wasn't the place to process everything anyway. I pushed it into the vault for later and continued listening.

"And once, he opened all of his eyes and looked at me and told me lots of things! But Mister Button made me forget them all again, so I dunno what it was."

My eyes fell onto the little teddy who hugged Alice tightly.

"Your....friend made you forget it all?"

The girl nodded.

"Yeah, Mister Button does that sometimes. He really doesn't like Mister Zen, but I think he's just being a grumpy pants cuz he's old."

"Yeah....that's probably it.......that's probably it." I said.

Alice continued babbling about her stuffy, but my mind was otherwise preoccupied.

It seemed less and less likely with every person I asked that I would be able to draw any solid conclusions in the end.

But if everything went smoothly, this was just Day 1 of a 2-day....I guess you could call it an investigation.

I stayed a bit longer with Alice, but eventually extricated myself from this situation and went home.

On the way, I texted Jess.

"Hey. You home? I need to ask a favor. Could you ask around for Info on a Villain named "Zen" in the BHF? Thinking about asking him to collaborate on something. SYL and Thanks."

I put the phone away and let all the info I gathered swirl back through my mind.

Maybe I should possess Laura again and go work out a bit.

Not a big fan of workouts, but Lu used to say working out helped her think.

And I had a lot to consider.