You head out - and run into a snag in your plans

Well you had your fun, you suppose.

You sit up with a heavy sigh and start pulling up your pants as Liz watches you leaning against the wall looking confused and unhappy. As you head for the bedroom door – snatching your shirt up on the way - she surprises both you and probably herself by calling out “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.” Giving you this forlorn look.

Shit how are you supposed to react to that? You give her a small smile, “Thanks I’ll uh take you up on that.” You see her perk up slightly at that, before you turn around and leave Toby to his new life for now.

After you have walked about a block from Tobys new apartment, you finally allow yourself to disappear into a small alley to truly process what you just did. To anyone looking you must seem like a crazy hobo, shaking and fidgeting with the aftershocks of adrenaline, with silent laughter and sheer excitement.

True. It didn’t go exactly as planned. But you still got to touch a woman – a woman who was all over you. You can still smell her, when you lift your fingers to your face! And the look on her face! That small little gasp as you….. And the feeling… you had no idea it felt like that…..

You had been so caught up in seeing how well the hypnosis worked you hadn’t really paid the sex all the attention it deserved. And now the memories are fading fast. Sooo in a way, it was actually a good thing that you didn’t loose your virginity yet. That way you can truly savour it when it happens.

And speaking of wetting your dick. You didn’t take the time to wash up, so now there is a moist mess in your boxers and the inside of your shirt where it touches your lower belly. You better head home and get a fresh change of clothes.

And add ‘carry spare underwear’ to your to do list if you plan on having spontaneous sex where showers aren’t readily available. You pull out your phone, putting the item on a rapidly growing list of things to do.

Actually, now that you look at this list there is another way to get clean underwear. One that doesn’t risk running into your mom when you should be at university. You scroll to your contact list until you find the newest entry: “Terra (IG)”. You went by her place yesterday, before returning to Toby and made her the first VIPER minion you recruited.

The IG stands for ‘Information Gathering’ but since VIPER is still understaffed, Terra will just have to moonlight as your valet until you find a suitable person to fill that job.

It takes her some time to pick up, “What is it, Sir?” she whispers when she finally does.

“I need you to me at your apartment in twenty minutes.”

“What?! But I am in the middle of a class!” when you don’t answer she lets out a resigned sigh “I’ll be there in twenty minutes, sir.” and hangs up

You feel a bit bad for inconveniencing her like that, but mostly you get a kick out of knowing she is now at your beck and call. In a strictly professional manner. Pretty as she might be, that’s really no reason to mess with her and her boyfriend just for an hour of fun or two.

And it’s not like she needs those classes now anyway. You muse. In exchange for pledging her loyalty to VIPER, Terra has received enough natural aptitude with electronics and computers that even splitting her time between her work for VIPER and getting her degree she should still have more not less time to spend with her boyfriend or to go dancing.

After a quick shower at Terras place ( and donning some fresh underwear she graciously got you from a nearby supermarket ) you decide to skip classes for the day and instead work on the infra-structure for your very own Secret Organization. And that means Terra will be skipping her classes too. Because the whole point of having minions is that you can delegate.

And now that you get down into the nitty gritty, you have to admit that building VIPER might not be as easy as you envisioned it to be. Even with your power. Stopping you would be hard, but if the government thought you were enough of a threat to just snipe you with a rocket fired from a drone you never even saw ……… yeah.

So aside from ease of conscience, that was another reason to be the kind of supervillain who use their incredible powers to steal 40 cakes or turn every clock in the city back ten minutes.

By the time you arrive back home, you have a newfound respect for joke-villains. An afternoon brainstorming with Terra drove home just how much work and planning has to go into even the silliest scheme. Did you have fun doing it? Absolutely. But was still a lot of planning. And you are mentally wiped out.

As you lie on your bed after dinner, thinking about your future and that of VIPER, there is a knock on your door.

“Yeah, come in.” you call out as you haul yourself up into a sitting position.

Kate has a look on her face that you find hard to read, as she slips into your room and closes the door behind her.

“I want in.” she announces before you can ask what this is about.

“What?”

“I want in.” Kate repeats “VIPER. I want to join.”

How..? Where.? What the hell? Thinking back on it Kate had been giving you strange looks all evening, but you had been so preoccupied with your own thoughts you didn’t pay it any mind.

How did Kate learn about VIPER!?

“You want to know how I learned about VIPER.”

It probably says a lot that your first thought is that your sister must have somehow acquired the power to read your thoughts. Not that your response of staring at her and saying “Errr.. “ occasionally made it really easy to guess what you were thinking.

“You are clever little brother.” Kate says with a little smirk “But you are a programmer. You look for loopholes and fix them. I am a lawyer, I look for them to exploit them.” Her smile widens a bit “Also, when it comes to role playing games you are just a filthy casual, no offense. I on the other hand have been offering my players demonic pacts since I was twelve. And I have spent a lot of time thinking about what ifs.”

She makes a short pause to gauge your reaction before continuing “Soooooo when I dreamt I could shape Tobys whole reality at a whim, I naturally set up a way for Liz to remind me of what happened out of sheer habit. Don’t worry ” she quickly adds “ Liz doesn’t remember that conversation. ”

“So you….?” You ask

“I know about your power. Yes.” Kate licks her lips as her carefree attitude cracks, revealing the nervousness beneath. “And I know you can erase my memory again. But – But I think our relationship is better than that. “

“It is!” you assure her hastily. “It’s just -”

“I understand.” Kate raises a hand to stall your explanation “I mean at first I was hurt that you wouldn’t tell me. But if I had a power like that…. I’d want to take a few days too before telling you or mom. So. Yeah. I understand.”

“It is more than that. I made a mistake, and now I am a villain.”

“Because of what you did to my ex?”

“No. Yes. I asked myself if I wanted to be sensible and use my powers to change the world for the better or act like a corny supervillain and use them to enact petty revenge and for my personal amusement. And I choose petty revenge. ” you give her a wry smile “ And then the entity that gave me these powers took away my ability to affect myself. So now I am the villain of this tale.”

Kate makes a face “Ouch. So you are your evil counterpart now? Are you going to grow a goatee?” she lets out a weak chuckles but you can see her tense up at the revelation.

“I don’t think I have to be Evil with a capital e now. Not if I don’t choose to. I could probably still become an eco terrorist taking on the corporations destroying the planet. Sabotaging factories is definitely a crime. Or I could try my hands at being a gentleman thief. Steal purely from rich assholes. ”

“Yeah, that’s not too bad.” Kate agreed, relaxing a little.

“Yeah but no matter what I do, I will be getting in trouble a lot. A. Lot. So, here is the thing: I don’t want to drag you and mom down with me but I have no choice now but stir up trouble. I’ll do what I can to help you out and…..”

“Bullshit.”

“Pardon me.”

“I call bullshit. Comic bullshit to be precise.” Kate crosses the room with a few quick steps to sit down beside you on the bed. “I know you love your comics little brother, but leaving to protect their loved ones is the stupid shit heroes do. And then they find out they are stronger when their friends have their back. And since you ” she pokes you in the chest “ are the villain you can skip that whole song and dance. As the villains you only have three options when it comes to sisters. And since I wouldn’t just as soon hug you as put a knife into your back, you only get two. I’ll either play a crucial role in defeating the black sheep of the family – and probably fall for some hero along the way - or I am your partner in crime and we are doubly dangerous for it. And if you give me a choice I’ll always take the second option, because there is no way in hell I want to be the one to put my own brother behind bars. ”

You are really touched by Kates words. But because she is you sister and you are her brother you instead give her your best unimpressed look “You know we aren’t actually bound by comic book rules, right?”

“Says the guy with superpowers.” She fires back.

“They aren’t superpowers. There was this extra dimensional being. It took a look at the way I was living my life and decided I deserved them for …. Ah shut up” you finish lamely as you realize what you are saying and the way Kate smirks.

There is a long comfortable moment of silence between you two. That bit of familiar bantering helped to calm both of your nerves.

“So, you are really ok with this.” You finally ask “With Toby.”

“To be honest, I am not entirely sure how I feel about it yet.” Kate admits after a long pause “I thought about it a lot this afternoon. And in the end it’s not like I didn’t have a hand in making him Elizabeth. I mean depending on how things go I might ask you to give him his life back a month or maybe a year from now. But I think the cheating asshole deserves at least a week of this.”

Dang! You hadn’t even realized how much it meant to hear Kate say this, until you feel a huge weight lift from your shoulders.

Maybe bringing Kate into this wouldn’t be so bad. But could you really ask her to risk her career as a lawyer and maybe even her life for your sake? Did you even want to make that decision for her?