Chapter 6
"I would like this apple pie please, with extra cream and some darjeeling tea." I told the waitress with a smile as she noted down my order and left.
"You sure you don't want to order anything?" I asked Monica who was glaring at me.
"No, I want you to explain how exactly we came out of a briefcase." She said with a glare. Can't believe she's still on that.
"Monica, just let it go." She didn't let it go.
"You stopped my toxic laser gun, was that some sort of space manipulation? Is that your power?" She asked rapidly, her earlier fear of me completely forgotten.
I just rolled my eyes at her attempt to understand how my powers worked, it was kinda cute but unnecessary.
"Monica, we aren't here to talk about my powers. We are here to talk about everyone else's powers." I said.
"Should we really talk about that while we are in the open like this?" She asked with an arched eyebrow.
"You do not have to worry. As far as anyone near us is concerned, we are merely two old friends talking about kitten videos." I said with a shrug just as the waitress brought my pie.
"Wha… how?"
"As I already said, we aren't here to talk about my powers. We are here to talk about powers in general, so start talking." I said as I put some of the pie in my mouth. It was delicious.
"Okey. Okey, as far as we were able to understand, the powers of every parahuman in existence comes from a small part of the brain called Corona Pollentia. Every person have it somewhere else and for some reason, no technology can find out whether someone has Corona Pollentia unless they have triggered. We don't know why." She said with a grunt, looking irritated.
I was somewhat irritated too. I had thought that maybe I could replicate their powers but this changed everything. I may have done lots of risky things in my life but throughout it all I always had one rule that I adhered to.
Do not mess with your own brain.
"Is there anything else?" I asked, might as well learn anything else.
"Not much, we know that children of parahumans have a chance to manifest their own powers without trigger events but the chances are about twenty to thirty percent and it gets smaller with each generation. If it wasn't for that, the world would have been filled with humans with powers by now." She explained it to me. All interesting.
"Hmmm, that is nice to know." I said as I ate the last pieces of my pie, all happiness must end after a certain amount of time after all.
"Why did you want to know anyway, are you a scientist as well?" Monica asked.
"No, not a scientist. That would imply that knowledge itself is the goal of my life. It isn't, every experiment I make and every question I ask is for one simple reason." I said and drank the rest of my tea.
"I was curious."
Monica Rappaccini feared for her life.
That was nothing new. She had been worried about her continued existence ever since the higher ups of AIM had declared her to be a traitor and tried to have her killed. Which was why she had escaped to Brockton Bay, the place was such a shit hole that no one who knew her would think to look for her here.
Yet she had somehow ended up with a guy who was far more dangerous than anyone in AIM, even more than that pet assassin MODOK was keeping around.
The look in his eyes while they were talking, she couldn't even describe it. Not to mention that he was perfectly willing to cut her up simply because he was 'curious'. He was dangerous. Far too dangerous.
Yet whenever she thought about running away from him, her mind would go back to the contract he had forced her to sign and a fear unlike any she ever felt before would make itself known to her at the very thought of going against the contract.
"Did you master me?" She asked as she followed after him in the street, not caring about other people hearing her after the ability he had shown in the cafe.
"Hmm, depends on your definition. Am I controlling your mind, no. Did I turn you into a minion that has no choice in whether she will follow my orders, yes. Yes I believe I did." He said with no shame with his hands behind his head.
"Spatial manipulation and a master, just what kind of power do you have?" She said with a sigh, she didn't have the energy to rage at the unfairness of the world at the moment.
"Hmm, who knows. Honestly, I can do pretty much anything." He said with a shrug, making her eyes widen as she understood.
He wasn't a master, or a shaker. He was a trump, one like Eidolon!
…and she had tried to mug him. She no longer needed any proof that world had no fairness in it, what were the chances of one guy she'd try to assault throughout all of her life turning out to be an overpowered trump?!
"So you can just force people to sign a contract and they are your slave? Talk about overpowered." She muttered lowly but not low enough as John had heard him.
"Well, no. I can't force people to sign it, it wouldn't work that way. They need to choose to sign the contract."
"You forced me to sign it though." She said, somewhat irritated but mostly curious about what he meant.
"That's where you're wrong. I gave you a choice. Sign it or die. Death is always a choice. You decided that signing it was better than dying so it works. If I had manipulated your mind or grabbed your hand and sign it like that, it wouldn't be a choice." He said and she had to admit that he was right, even if in the most disgusting way possible.
"By the way, can you tell me about the gangs in this town?" Huh?