Super Sales on Super Heroes: Book 2

Chapter 7 - Thinking with Portals -

Felix drummed his fingers along the edge of the terminal. He’d been sitting there unmoving since the strange portal popped open in front of them earlier.

“Felix?” Kit asked, coming into the conference room. Five Andreas twitched in unison at her entry, one in each corner, and one at Felix’s side.

“What’s wrong? Everyone is running around in a hurry,” Kit said, her brows knitting together.

“Hm? Oh… ah… someone opened a portal out of thin air. Right over there in fact,” he said, motioning to the exact spot. “Opened up like it was always there. Poof. Then vanished just as quickly. I want to see if I can’t get that for ourselves.”

Kit frowned at that, her eyes set on the area he’d indicated.

“Anyways. Have a seat. I think we should talk,” Felix said with a practiced smile. He indicated the seat directly across from himself at the table.

“No conversation has ever gone well that started that way,” Kit muttered. “And I should know. I’m in HR.”

“Ha… very funny,” Felix responded, still pointing to the chair. “Sit your booty down.”

Rolling her eyes, Kit did as instructed. She gave him her best “HR knows best” look as she did so.

“Should I make pancakes? Pancakes makes every situation better,” Andrea asked.

“No, Andrea, it’s fine. This actually isn’t a bad conversation, though… I doubt it’ll be comfortable.

“And diving right into that. Kit, I’d like to talk about the fact that you don’t trust me,” Felix said without regard to how it came across.

“I… what?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

“Of course she trusts you!” Andrea argued, slapping a palm against his shoulder.

“No, she doesn’t. Not in the way you’re thinking. You never did, not fully, Kit. I think that’s partially due to the fact that you can’t read my mind,” Felix said, folding his hands together in front of himself.

He kept the eye contact steady, his tone neutral, but direct.

Don’t scare them, but don’t let up. Come from curious.

“It’s very possible that I’ve misread the situation. I wouldn’t doubt it for one minute. Maybe you could explain it to me from your own perspective?” Felix asked.

Kit’s mouth twitched as she fought whatever emotion had attempted to gain traction.

Andrea pouted at him. She was fond of Kit, he imagined she didn’t quite care for his accusations.

The four in the corner were in their Myriad impersonations, all holding an SMG ready.

“I mean, if it was exactly as I said, I’d understand. You’ve spent your entire life being able to simply source the truth from someone’s mind without having to trust in them. I imagine that now, after you’re very invested in this whole thing, not knowing my thoughts is more of an annoyance than the gift you thought it was,” Felix said. “Or so I’d believe if I were in your position. Could be wrong.”

He watched her as he spoke, attempting to catch the subtle tells that people gave off. A partial head nod or shoulder shrug, leaning in close to him or pulling away, folding her arms or putting her hands under the table.

What he got from her was… nothing.

She didn’t even twitch.

Kit just sat there as if she’d been hit in the back of the head.

Letting the silence take hold, he waited.

Silence and steady eye contact could crack even the most obstinate of people.

Well, most people.

Felix waited. Letting the time pass.

Instead, Felix turned his thoughts to his task-list. He even began sorting out what he wanted to do with the portals if and when he could get them functioning.

“I hate it when you do that,” Kit said, leaning back in her chair away from him.

Defensive.

“Hate what, when I wait for you to talk?” Felix asked.

“Yes. That and your stare. That cold stare that burns through me and leaves me no room,” Kit grumped. Slowly, she folded her arms across her midsection.

Defensive again.

“So, let’s cut to the chase. I want to change your power, and give you the implicit ability to read my mind. I think that’d be the easiest way to solve this dilemma. Your dilemma,” Felix said as nonchalantly as he could. “Once we go down that road though, we can’t really go backwards. You’d have popped open the seal to my thoughts and rummaged around in there.

“Also, you don’t need to worry about Miu. I know… what she is. What she thinks. We had a good long talk about it.”

“I know. She didn’t fight me earlier when I started poking around. One thing led to another and I watched the whole thing unwind from her own point of view. Are you sure you’re actually comfortable with that from her? It’s… not normal. It is legitimately insanity. The thoughts that she has in the darkest places were… extreme. Even for me and what I’ve seen,” Kit said carefully.

“Yep. I know. I looked up the definition the other day for the term she gave me. There was a number of examples in media of characters that fit it,” Felix admitted with a shrug of his shoulders. “She’s insane. And would do anything I asked, even if I told her I wanted her to capture every blue-eyed woman named Jane Smith in Skippercity that had more than two fillings.”

“Exactly. I mean, you heard her, she wants to kill me and ea—”

“Yeah, I know. But she can’t,” Felix said hurriedly. It’d be best if Andrea didn’t know the depth of Miu’s devotion.

At least, not yet.

“Besides, she’s devoted to me. Do you know how much I can get done with that kind of loyalty? Lots. Also, we’ve trained her up to the point she can take Wraith’s spot. She’s our blade in the dark now. For better or for worse, we can’t exactly change that at this point,” Felix said. “Anyways, no changing the subject allowed. Mind reading me. Yes or no?”

“I want to read your mind,” Andrea said, grabbing his forearm with both of her hands.

Felix snickered at that and gave her a look.

“What… It’d be fun to read your thoughts,” Andrea said defensively.

Looking back at Kit, Felix focused on her again. Kit grimaced at the attention, her fingers flexing on her forearms. Before he could even start to give her the staring treatment, she sighed and hung her head.

“This seems wrong. To make you do this just so I can stop having a crisis of faith,” Kit mumbled.

“Why? This isn’t a silly book, or a story, or a TV show. People don’t just trust for no reason. Everyone wants to know that they’re making the best decision they can. And in that way, we all seek confirmation of our choices,” Felix said.

“To quote a favorite saying of mine,” Felix said. “’The sum of what we are, our experience, is what we draw upon to make choices. It’s what we use to defend ourselves from doubt. We compare them to things we’ve done previously and judge it based on what the outcome had been then.’ In your case, you have no experience dealing with people at face value, and not plumbing their minds for the truth.”

“I trust you,” Andrea said, trying to get his attention once again.

Kit groaned and held her hands up to her face.

Taking the moment that she distracted herself, Felix leaned in close to Andrea.

“Please, help me? This is her problem, and I need your help. Please,” Felix said, inaudible to anyone other than a Beastkin.

Andrea’s eyes held confusion at first, then determination. She gave him a fierce nod of her head, her ears twitching atop of it.

“Thanks,” Felix said, and then kissed her once. Pulling back, he saw Andrea had a silly grin on her face, her tail swishing slowly back and forth behind her.

As if he’d never diverted his attention, he set his eyes back on Kit.

“Is it so terrible to admit a simple truth? Shall I assume that’s a yes? You can just nod your head, you don’t have to say it,” Felix offered.

Kit’s shoulders tightened up, and then she slumped into her chair.

Defeat.

“Nod your head. I promise it’ll be fine, and once you see inside, you’ll feel better. Then we can get back to the business at hand,” Felix said.

Kit nodded her head once.

Done.

Forcefully, he put his attention on modifying her power. Modifying it so that she could actually get into his mind as if he were anyone else.

Except he put in the caveat that it was something that he could deactivate whenever he wanted. It’d limit the scope of the power, give him a back door, and maybe lower the point cost.

Or so he hoped.

Power Upgrade: Directed Telepathy(Owner included)

Required Primary Power: 80 (Met)

Required Intelligence: 70 (Met)

Upgrade?(2,500)

“That’s not so bad at all,” Felix said to himself. Activating the upgrade button, he deliberately made sure to keep his mind tranquil and open. As if it were nothing more than a closed file folder and wouldn’t require any effort to look into at all.

Kit lifted her head up, her hands hanging down in front of her knees. She met his eyes, and he suddenly felt her. Like a finger poking around in his memories.

She was gentle about it, but he could feel her power. The strength of it.

The speed that she went through all of his thoughts.

An absolutely astonishing level of power.

He was suddenly very glad she was on his side. Before he changed his train of thought, he deeply implanted in his own mind the need for her to send him an email.

An email with all the answers to the questions he needed answered, that he was sure she could see in his mind.

Kit smiled and then quirked a brow. “Yes. I can answer those for you. And Lily would be annoyed.”

“Huh? About wh—oh. Hey, hey. Thoughts are private things and aren’t meant to be shared aloud. You said you wanted to look in, that goes with all the baggage that comes with it,” Felix said defensively.

“I don’t think every man wonders about people in his employ quite like—”

“Nope! Not going there. Stop. You’re done. Now, unless you have anything useful to add, like helping me remember something I’ve forgotten, we should change the subject. Like to if you’re feeling better about everything and your doubts are dispelled,” Felix said, desperate to get the topic changed.

“Not going where?” Andrea asked. “Why would Lily be annoyed?”

Kit let out a shuddering breath and gave him a bright smile her eyes flickering to Andrea.

“Nothing, Andie. I was just teasing him. To your own point, Felix. Yeah. We’re good. Also, I’m glad to know you think that way, but I think you’ve got your hands full already.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Felix said deliberately, his eyes widening at the edges.

Please god, read this thought and stop right there. Please. Andrea will drag me off for hours if she even thinks I have thoughts about other women.

“Fine. I’ll say no more,” Kit said with a self-satisfied smile.

Andrea looked from him to her, and back again. She didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.

Safe?

“For now, at least. And yes, I’ll take on another power. I saw it in your head. It’d work and I like the idea of it. Though we’ll have to prepare some teams to go with me and make sure everything is clear,” Kit said.

“Yeah, that’s fine. Arrange it with Ioana and Andrea. Oh, and by the way, I set it up so I can turn your ability to read my mind on and off at will. As you no doubt saw in my memories. Let me know if and when you want it on or off. Now, if there is nothing else more pressing, we should probably get moving on the new power,” Felix said with a waggle of his fingers.

“Mm, no. Though, we did get the most recent suggestions back from Skippercity just after that meeting. One was interesting and I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss,” Kit said.

“Oh? I’m always open to suggestions.”

“It was from one of the security people. Alex was the name, I believe. He wanted to know why we don’t have pancakes available that are at the level of Andrea’s skill. And on top of that, why don’t they operate in the same fashion as power sausage,” Kit said.

Uh… what?

“Pancakes!” Andrea shouted. “Make a robot of me that only makes pancakes. But make the boobs bigger.”

Andrea looked down at her kevlar vest and cupped herself experimentally through it. “Maybe… Lily’s size. Or Victoria’s, she squishes them down. But not Felicia. Those look like they’d hurt under a vest.”

Felix ignored Andrea and frowned in thought as he contemplated what Kit had said.

I… actually that’s not a bad thought. Why aren’t we doing that? Can Felicia use something other than corpses to make power sausage? Even at a lesser degree? And pancakes wouldn’t be that hard either. All she’d have to do is make a machine that would do both, right?

Or do one, and I upgrade it to do the other.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Felix held up his hands in front of him.

“Good idea. Put it on Felicia’s project calendar and send Alex a bonus for the month. I’d like to encourage good ideas in the future. Now… about that power,” Felix said.

Kit scratched at her ear with a smile. “I’m ready. And… do you really believe I look better with the short hair? I know I’ve let it grow out long, but all of your…” She paused at that. Thankfully she continued on, skipping whatever word she had originally planned on using. Her eyes flickered to Andrea for only a moment. “They were of me when my hair was really short.”

This was a terrible mistake. All a terrible mistake. Oh my god what have I done.

“Felix likes short hair?” Andrea asked Kit.

“He does. He especially likes your hair length right now or a bit shorter,” Kit said.

“Oh! Good. I keep telling Lily she should get her hair cut short like mine,” Andrea said.

Forcing his thoughts to the task at hand, Felix imagined giving Kit another power.

Her fourth major power.

A power to control portals. That lead to anywhere. Any place.

Even different worlds.

Only Eva had as many powers, but hers were all conditional things.

Fourth Power(Unlock):Portal Control

Required Intelligence: 70 (Met)

Required Wisdom: 70 (Met)

Upgrade?(125,000)

Felix winced. It’d take an entire day’s worth of points. Everyone would practically be at zero.

We’ll keep Felicia amped up, I still want a technological version of this portal power. Kit can handle this for now. With any luck, we can use this to our advantage. Portal directly into the Hero HQ.

Then we can just leave her memories alone. No need to go digging into that quagmire.

It’d just hurt everyone to have those memories brought back, and it’d have to start with Kit.

Not doing that.

He tried to not think about the three mummified women. How he had met Kit, Miu, and Ioana.

Whatever was done to them had broken their minds. There was no reason to go back there, even to find out what he wanted.

“Alright, I’m going—” Felix paused. Kit was staring at him. Her shoulders were tight and her spine ramrod straight. “What… what is it? Are you alright?”

I didn’t turn on the power, did I? She said it hurt last time. I can’t imagine opening a fourth power would help at all.

“No. I’m fine, I just… hearing your thoughts… they come non-stop. I’ve met those with faster, but very few. And… and I’m thankful. You worry over me, even though you have such a cold and icy exterior. I… I think I’d like it if you turned off my ability to hear your thoughts. For now. I’m reassured but… I don’t think I like it. You were right. About everything, and I appreciate your consideration. For now, let’s turn it off,” Kit said, repeating herself.

Felix didn’t have any reason to deny her request. So he mentally deactivated the extension of her power, and then purchased her fourth power upgrade.

Kit’s head dipped down and she pressed her hands to her temples.

“God, I hate that,” she said. “It’s not painful but… it’s unnerving.”

With that done, the next task on the chore list was getting a hold of Felicia. He needed to get her running on creating a portal machine that could accomplish the same thing that Kit could now do.

Beyond that, he’d have to start dealing with the local and federal government. He needed to put a stop to both branches of the government interfering with his plans. They kept trying to halt his plans for the college campus.

Lily and Lauren are ideal for that. Take Victoria and Andrea for protection.

Kit can stay here and start practicing with the new power.

So much change so fast.

How far do I push everyone as well? At what point can I justify popping open their memories and subjecting them to whatever hell they went through.

Again.

Finding himself with no answers to that, Felix opened up his terminal.

Flicking open the address book inside, he typed in a quick email to Felicia.

If she hasn’t responded to phone calls, that means she’s buried elbow deep in some machine’s guts. So… email to her and White.

Adding White in to the CC function, he snapped off the email with a finger flick.

“With any luck, she’ll get back to me before I get bored and tell you to just open a… actually, let’s just do that,” Felix said. “Kit, you feel up to trying out that new power?”

“I… yeah, I think I could. Doesn’t seem to be that difficult honestly,” she said, raising her head up to meet his eyes. “Similar to the telekinetic side of things, but not quite?”

“Is that a question or a statement? Nevermind. Just… try to open a portal to Skippercity HQ. Preferably the Labs. I want to talk to Felicia,” Felix said, getting up from his chair.

“Alright. I can do that,” Kit said. Spinning in her chair, she focused on a point at the end of the table.

Slowly, much more slowly than the previous portal had opened, a sphere appeared. Starting no bigger than a baseball it began to inexorably open up into an ever-growing oval.

It wasn’t large enough to get through yet, but he could clearly see the lab on the other side.

Walking over to it, Felix leaned down and stuck his head through the opening. On the other side of the portal were a number of lab techs. They were all staring at Felix.

“Oh, hey everyone. Could someone find me Felicia and Mr. White? I need to run something by them,” Felix said.

The closest tech slowly nodded their head in the affirmative, and walked away stiffly.

Leaning back out of the portal, Felix watched as it kept growing. Andrea squealed and ran over to it.

Then promptly stuck herself halfway through the portal. She was waving at everyone on the other side and trying to start conversations with them.

“Good work. With a bit of practice, I’m betting you can get this thing opened up rather quickly,” Felix said, looking to Kit.

She gave him a bitter smile and glared at him at the same time. “Happy to see you try. We could always swap if you like. You might find my own ‘shower thoughts’ interesting, too.”

Felix blinked, did his best to forget her comment, and looked back to the portal.

Would that I could, my dear. If I could make changes to myself, this would all be… so much easier.

That or I’d already be an extreme super villain.

Probably.

“Felix! You dumb asshat. What the fuck are you doing to my lab?” came a shouted call from the portal. “Move, ya dumb wolf.”

“Ah, the ever pleasant shriek of my employees who are so joyous to see me,” Felix muttered.

Andrea squeaked and was shoved bodily out of the portal. She landed in a heap on the ground.

Felicia’s angry and annoyed face was on the other side of the portal, staring up at him.

“What did you do!? You ignorant goat’s ball-sack. Do I need to ban you from the lab?” she shouted at him. “And you know Andrea isn’t allowed down here. Not after last time.”

“You weren’t responding to people trying to get a hold of you. If you want to blame anyone, look to yourself. Maybe I should put in an intercom down there to yell at you from whatever office I’m in. Did Ioana drag you to a closet or something?” Felix asked.

Felicia’s face turned a deep scarlet at the accusation, and immediately crossed her arms in front of herself.

“Well, I’m here. What is this… thing then?” she asked.

Ha. I was right about the closet? That’s actually funny.

“It’s a portal that Kit can open up. We got the idea from a different piece of technology doing the same. I want to see if you can do the same, or better. Did I mention the tech looked as if it were at least fifty years old?” Felix asked.

That should rile her up.

Felicia’s eyes opened wider and she snorted.

“Oh, I’ll build you a damn machine that’ll do this. I’ll build it and it’ll open a portal straight to your godforsaken asshole so we can shovel all the shit you spew out back in!” Felicia declared.

“Ah. Good. Think you can have it done by the end of the week? Or do I need to give up on your R&D department and have Lily recruit me a bunch of people who can make portals after I upgrade them with a super power,” Felix said. He put as much disdain into his voice as he could manage.

She was always the type to rise to a challenge. And Lily was her most hated rival it seemed.

“You keep the damned Princess to your own bed and away from me and mine. I’ll punch her right in her nethers if she comes down here, you hear me? Bah, I have things to do now,” Felicia said, turning her head to one side. If Felix didn’t miss his guess, she was already pushing her power towards the goal. “Going to need to get White on this with me as soon as possible. Betting this’ll end up being a tech special. Like the beds.”

“Anything I can he—”

“Fuck off and die,” Felicia said, waving her hand at him.

At least I know she’s that way with everyone. Actually, other than Ioana, I might be the person she treats the nicest.

“You can drop the portal, Kit, we’ve made the point. It may not be any of my business, but you might want to practice open and closing it repeatedly. Distance might be a thing, might not.”

Felix yawned abruptly and held a hand over his mouth.

Andrea clapped her hands together from below, staring up at him.

“I want one. So I can get into your room whenever I want. You and Lily always lock the door. I listen sometimes but all you ever do is talk,” Andrea said.

“Actually, can you open a portal to the break room? I think I’m going to need a candy bar or something. My tolerance level for things is rapidly diminishing,” Felix said.

“Don’t bet on it. It takes far more effort on my part than any of my other powers,” Kit said, not even trying to open another portal.

“I can make pancakes! They’re like candy!” Andrea shouted.