"I'm going to need to tell Bitch about this. See if she wants to work with you too." I raise my eyebrow.
"Bitch and not Regent?"
"Oh no, he skipped town once you kidnapped Lisa. Speaking of, what did you do with her?" Oh boy, this question. Let's start with the truth. Will he believe it?
"We punted her a couple cities down the coast. Not my problem anymore."
"Not dead?" He looks hopeful.
"No. While I admit she was a massive bitch during her interrogation, if my threshold for killing someone was that low, that birdcaging of mine would be a lot more justified." I see some PRT uniforms out of the corner of my eye. "We should probably walk and talk." As I start to get up. He looks confused.
"Wait, what? Why?"
"I killed that Coil merc that was keeping an eye on you, and the PRT just got here." He puts his face to his hand.
"Oh my God."
"If we hurry we should be able to avoid any pointed questions."
"Oh my God."
The Forge takes this moment to fail to give me a chunky piece of something. I get a feeling of unrealized potential at the failure. Huh.
"Do you realize how fast we're going to have to move because of this?"
"I got a getaway driver on standby if that helps." Set that up while waiting for Panacea. "Thought it might come in handy if the meeting went badly."
"Right. Now we're going to calmly walk out of the building. Most of the nazi cops may have gotten run out of town, but that's no reason to take any chances." I look back over to him. Oh yeah, he's black. Huh. I start walking. Taking his advice this works like a charm. That is right up until we walk out the exit. Nobody is waiting for us, but I see Armsmaster walking at a ninety degree angle to us. I freeze. There's two motorcycles and Miss Militia behind him in the fire lane. Aisha bumps into me.
"Hey, what the hell Tay- Oh." I see him lock eyes with me. Probably. He has a visor on. Unsure of what to do I start visualizing the area I need to turn into napalm if this turns into a fight.
"Move along citizen." And he waves me off. Oh thank Christ. I start jogging towards my ride, and judging by the noise behind me so do my minion siblings.
"Okay, so why am I following you again?" I hear from Grue as we taper off.
"Oh shit!" From Aisha. "Sorry Bro, my power turned on!" He looks suspiciously at her.
"Is my head being messed with here?" Aisha's grin falters. "Swear to God if it turns out I never had a sister I will flip my shit." Oh boy. Here we go down the rabbit hole.
"Okay Grue, you wanted to work for me before I went to the Birdcage, right?"
"Uh-huh."
"So why did you change your mind and start attacking the Union?" He thinks for a second.
"Okay, I'll have to confirm all this with Bitch before I commit to anything."
"Perfectly understandable. Let's go Aisha." I hand him a phone, and drag her away from her brother. She only puts up token resistance. I find the truck easily enough, and hop in.
"Take us away real quick." I turn to Aisha. "I'm gonna need you to keep your power turned off for a few blocks here."
"I know I know." She sighs. "You know I half thought he would be immune. He was always my bigger and stronger brother, you know?"
"Yeah." Thinking of Dad after the Nazi beating. "I know."
"I really fucking hate my power." I hug her.
Aisha managed to arrange a meet up with Grue and Bitch in the afternoon after all that. Apparently she also asked if she was welcome there. Massive props to Grue, he said yes. In the meantime I managed my first stint of water walking in the bath tub. Surface tension feels weird on my skin.
Closer to the meet up point, I had a couple getaway drivers strategically placed around the meetup. Nothing agressive, but enough to have a few options for escaping. The meet-up location wasn't anything too special. Some random semi abandoned street corner in the docks area. I even own property around here.
For the meet-up itself me and Aisha are both wearing a camo cloak each. Aisha with a domino mask and me with my full gear under that, except with a dagger instead of a sword. Grue's darkness would make harming Aisha an especially unappealing possibility if it came to that. Much better for our chances against Bitch is my flute. Her monster dogs will not be a consideration. If they brought Coil mercenaries we can just fade into the background and leave. Plan set, let's go.
Walking up to the meetup we see that Bitch has her three dogs monsterfied and sitting down behind her. The left one is panting.
"Hello Grue, Bitch." Bitch snarls at us.
"Hello there." From Grue. "Give us your pitch." Straight to business then. I actually did some research into this. Grue has a reputation of being a common thug, and Bitch is a known antisocial murderer. That was kind of absolutely useless in regards to Grue. He just wanted to keep his little sister safe. He did it in probably the stupidest way possible, but that was his motivation. This makes me a little hesitant to trust what I found online in regards to Bitch, especially considering my own experiences with the law. Well, that combined with the fact she was the most well behaved out of all the Undersiders in all our other meetings.
"Grue already knows what I can offer him. I'm offering to match your previous pay, plus anything else Coil was doing for you. I can't imagine you're all too loyal to him considering what he's willing to do to people already in his employ. You got any additional demands?"
"Why the fuck would I have anything to say to you? I'm only here 'cause Grue insisted." The man in question shakes his head.
"Rachel here runs a dog shelter. Coil provides the building and operating expenses." She glares at him. Probably not for using her name. She was unmasked long ago.
"I can do that. I own multiple buildings in town here. I can get anybody who's good with dogs for you to help run the place too."
"No. I'm good where I am." I raise my eyebrows.
"You sure about that? Coil didn't hesitate to try kidnapping his sister."
"You tryin' ta fuckin' say something here?" She all but growls. She whistles too, and the dogs stand up, suddenly alert.
"I'm saying I wouldn't trust Coil with any goddamn thing you value if I were you." She seems agitated. "Look I'm not trying to threaten you. To be honest I don't particularly care about you one way or the other. But I'm going to need you to stop working for Coil. I can employ you myself, set you up in another city, hell, get you a farm in bumfuck nowhere to raise your dogs. You have options with me. Doesn't seem like you have that with Coil." The dogs have started creeping up on me. I reach for my flute. "Could you get them to sit down again? They're getting kind of threatening." She smirks and points at me.
"Hurt." I see Grue do a face-palm while I play my song. I sidestep the one that charges at me, while Aisha presumably activates her power and scrambles to the side. It's less than a second before the dogs start stalling out and whining. A second more before they collapse into silk cocoons. I look over to Bitch. Her face is contorted in rage and she's charging.
"What the fuck did you do to my dogs!!" Hmm. Not throwing her down to the concrete this time. I learned my lesson with Tattletale. I sidestep, trip, and grab her arm to twist into a groundbound hold.
"Live by the sword, die by the sword Bitch. Its a pretty fucking simple" She struggles, and I twist her arm. "concept. They're fine for now, but they won't be for long if you don't use your goddamn words like a thinking human being." A total lie. The Cocoons will fade in about a half an hour. That will go up if I use actual silk for them though. I look back to Grue. He looks tense and mildly smokey, but he isn't doing anything yet.
"Now what exactly about my proposal didn't you like?"
"Its too good to be true." Too good- what? "There's a catch, there's always a catch."
"The catch? Oh my God, you dumb bitch, the catch is you wouldn't be fucking with the Union anymore. Stop fucking struggling!" As I smack her head into the pavement. After that she stills. Only for me to sense something weird going on with the cocoons. Then The Forge gains some power, and dumps all of it into the air. One of the cocoons bursts in a wet splorch, and I'm tackled by a fuzzy humanoid.
"Master!" Its a black and white dog girl straddling me? Whatever. I push it off only to get tackled by Bitch.
"Leave my Dogs alone!" She punches me in the face. She is tackled in turn by the dog girl.
"Leave Master alone! I finally found my forever home, and I'm not having it ruined by you!" As she pummels Bitch. She goes slack and the beating stops.
"What the fuck did you do to my dog!?" She exclaims, horrified.
"The fuck did I do? The fuck did you do to your dog?"
"Oh my god, she's naked!" From a far too amused Aisha. I look over to the dog girl. Goddammit Aisha.
I can't unsee it.
AN: So I knew this was coming for a while. When I rolled it, well... *looks at dice in severe disappointment*
After careful consideration I decided this wasn't something I was willing to reroll over. The gay jokes, and only the gay jokes, are coming back though.
Cu Sith (Monster Girl Encyclopedia) (400CP)
A dog that has, out of a deep wish to love and serve you in a better form, transformed into a humanoid canine Mamono. Your pet views you as her master and can sense danger and hostility toward you. Moreover, her breed is highly intelligent and adaptable, such that she can learn new skills to better serve you at what you need help with most. If you want help with food, for instance, she could gradually train to be a master chef, if you need a loyal knight she can become a fierce warrior, or if you want someone to help you with sorcery, she can learn magic spells and rituals; the main requirement is that you must be there to teach her some of the steps along the way for her to fully learn. The Cu Sith is normally a dog from the setting, but if you already own a dog, you may import your dog into the role; in the case that your dog already had special attributes or training, her Cu Sith version might start out with special skills – a hunting dog might now be a full master as a gamekeeper and hunter, and a [D&D] "Blink Dog" with a natural ability to teleport might retain that ability and in fact be able to use it better than ever before.