Fluff

Chapter Sixteen - Debrief

"Th-thank you all for coming," Emily said. She bowed her head a little, and then made a concerted effort to meet the eyes of her new minions.

She was expecting... well, maybe not anger, but disappointment, or something like that. Instead, she found all four of them looking at her with something just shy of amazement. Somehow, it was worse.

"Anyway," Emily was quick to say. "Sam will be in contact with you in the near future. We need to go, uh, debrief after that encounter. Thank you."

The minions seemed to want to linger around, so Emily decided to do the smart thing and gathered up her sisters. With a final quick goodbye, she headed out with the bunch of them towards the same subway station entrance they'd used earlier.

The walk was about as quiet as a walk could be with all of her sisters around, so Emily almost jumped when she felt someone tugging her jacket.

Athena was looking up to her, a hint of worry in her eyes. "Are you okay?" she asked.

Emily sighed. "I'm okay," she said. "Just... thinking."

"Do you want me to help?" Athena asked.

Emily almost dismissed her, but... Athena was clever. Probably the sharpest of Emily's sisters. Teddy and Trinity were play-fighting a bit ahead of them, and Maple had stuck close to Emily's side and was being rather quiet.

"Yeah, okay," Emily said. "I'm mostly worried about... actually, I'm worried about a lot of things, but right now that villain is bothering me."

"The Rattles guy?" Athena asked. "He was dangerous."

"You mean his thoughts were dangerous?" Emily asked.

"Yeah. He didn't mind hurting Trinity and Teddy at all. He thought we were mostly annoying."

That was disheartening to hear. "He's stronger than us, isn't he?"

Athena shrugged. "Maybe. But there's a lot of us and only one of him."

That was true, or it was true so far. Emily hadn't been a 'villain' for very long, and already she had some minions somehow, and at least one of those minions had a power of his own. It wasn't hard to imagine Rattles gaining a few followers of his own, and then her numerical advantage might disappear.

She didn't think he was part of the Cabal. While they seemed totally okay with hiring and helping villains set themselves up to make their own heroes look good, this felt different. It was too chaotic and messy to be the Cabal.

So he was probably a lone actor, for now, and yet he still felt stronger than she or any of her sisters did. "We need to prepare, to get better," Emily said.

Athena nodded. "Yup! Maybe we can pool all of our quests together and find out which ones we can all do together?"

Emily blinked. She'd... kind of sorta forgotten about that. All of her quests asked her to do stuff she wasn't comfortable with, so she had decided to just not bother. But they were a direct and obvious way to grow stronger. "That's not a bad idea," she admitted.

She didn't currently have any outstanding quests that she really wanted to tackle. Her sisters might have a few, though. Being that they were... more or less created from whatever system gave people powers, they seemed to all have an instinctive grasp of how quests and the like worked.

"Let's look over that stuff once we get home," Emily said.

She felt another tug, this time from her other side. Looking down, Emily found Maple pinching her jacket between forefinger and thumb, but her eyes were downcast, not meeting Emily's.

"What's wrong?" Emily asked.

"Um," Maple began. "I want to help too. I can help. But I need more stuff."

Emily nodded slowly. "Okay. That makes sense. Do you think we could get stuff for you by shopping for it? We could go together, just the two of us, and pick out a few things?"

Maple looked up, eyes wide and almost teary. "Yes! Please!"

Emily smiled and rubbed Maple between the ears.

Her sisters might have been a pack of little pests, but she could admit to herself, in the privacy of her own mind, that they were kind of cute.

Athena pouted at her, an ineffectual glare that did nothing to intimidate Emily. "I'm not cute," she muttered. "I'm threatening."

They arrived at the subway station, snuck in, then walked all along the tracks until they arrived at their train base which was parked right next to the entrance to their current bunker home. It was probably not too wise to have the train parked next to the bunker, but the convenience trumped caution.

"Home!" Teddy cheered as she ran ahead. Within moments, she'd catapulted herself through the air and had crashed onto their couch.

"Take off your boots first!" Emily snapped. "If you get the cushions dirty, you're cleaning them yourself."

It took a moment to organise her sisters so that they weren't climbing all over. Mostly that meant promising them snacks for behaving, then she had to actually go and make those snacks in the kitchen. She ended up dropping a tray full of chopped vegetables and some dipping sauce before them while ignoring Teddy's protests about how vegetables didn't count as snacks.

"Quests," Emily declared as she tossed her coat off and flopped back onto the couch. Almost right away, one of Trinity climbed up onto the couch behind her and she had her legs around Emily's shoulders. "We... didn't quite lose today, but I think it was a near thing. If we want to win against Rattles, then we need to be stronger."

"So we pick up a bunch of quests, boost our skills, then kick butt?" Teddy asked.

"That's... essentially it, yeah," Emily said.

"We're gonna grind!" Trinity cheered.

Emily nodded along. "Yes. But we're going to do it in a smart way. Ideally we'll all find a couple of quests that we can work on together. Something that will give us all a small boost. I don't want all of you running off to do your own dangerous thing on your own."

That, as it turned out, was harder to organise than she'd first imagined.

Her sisters started rattling off the quests they had, and Emily immediately lost track of who had what. So she put a pause on things and went to dig through her school supplies. She returned with a stack of rectangular index cards and a few markers.

Her sisters wrote down all of the quests they had, and Emily did the same, then with Athena's help, they sorted through the heaps until they got a matching set of potential quests.

There were two broad options, and her own quests seemed to exemplify those.

New Quest!
Charitable Chaos
Organise a false fundraising event to steal from the well-meaning. + Scoundrel for successfully taking from the generous.
Reward: +1 Skill Upgrade Point for every $1,000 donated (Max 2)
Accept? Refuse?

And another:

New Quest!
Grand Theft Hero
Steal from a hero, the more you take, the better.
Reward: +1 Skill Upgrade Point for every $100 worth of items taken (Max 2)
Accept? Refuse?

Neither option was great, but at the same time, they were both entirely doable. And, more importantly, they would help her sisters too.

Emily shuffled through the index cards with the quests her sisters had that overlapped. Trinity was the easiest. So many of her quests had to do with pick-pocketing or stealing that it was quite easy to slot some of her options in. Teddy had it a bit harder, but one of her quests did fit the bill.

Honeyed Heist
Intimidate people into giving you what you want using honeyed words and not-so-sweet actions.
Reward: +1 Skill Upgrade Point for every person intimidated (Max 2)
Accept? Refuse?

That would slot in beautifully with the charity idea. Not so much with the theft.

On the other hand, Athena had a quest that fit in the opposite direction.

Psychic Pilferage
Use Mind-reading to outwit a hero and take their valuables without being noticed.
Reward: +1 Skill Upgrade Point for every $100 worth of items taken (Max 2)
Accept? Refuse?

Emily chewed on her bottom lip. It seemed like there was no perfect 'one size fits all' thing they could do that would fulfil every requirement for everyone's quests. At best, they'd need to do two separate quests. Trinity and Maple were the exceptions. They had quests that were generic enough that they fit regardless.

Maple's own quests were very generic.

Ingenious Inventions
Create three functional gadgets to help you and your family gain an edge on the competition.
Reward: +1 Skill Upgrade Point on completion of the final gadget.
Accept? Refuse?

And then there was one which was aimed a little more towards helping her siblings.

Gadget-Assisted Larceny
Collaborate in a villainous action by creating specialised tools used in a successful heist, murder, or gang war.
Reward: +1 Skill Slot for every crucial gadget provided (Max 3)
Accept? Refuse?

Emily really didn't mind giving Maple a bit of an edge here. She was the one with the fewest skills, and the skills she had were at the lowest level. So doing more to help her would only get her up to speed faster.

Yeah, as long as she planned this out carefully, there was a lot of potential here.

***