You bring the tip of the knife to the gap in the envelope. Why do they bother sealing these if they're going to be opened later anyway? What kind of design is that? And all at once you discard the knife and begin tearing open the envelope with your bare hands, like a spoiled child on Christmas eve. The photographs, glossy and fresh-cut, with corners sharp enough to draw blood, spill out onto the table and you hastily gather them together into a pile not wishing Mord to see anything that's on them. Of course, having taken the pictures, he's obviously seen everything already. You lift the pile and push in the sides to make them even, tapping them a few times against the table. The pictures are dark, taken at nighttime or inside a low-lit room. A bedroom, you think at first, jumping to the most obvious conclusion but in fact it's an alleyway. Some kind of dive bar then. There's the neon sign in bright blue letters, "Cadaver". Strange name for a dive bar. You flip through the photos one by one, turning them face down in a pile next to you like they were playing cards. A close-up shows Vicky entering the bar, her wavy auburn hair tied up in an uncharacteristic bun, but her cool, liquid-green eyes -- the same color as her nail-polish -- and the thin, freckled nose of which she was mildly embarrassed, unmistakable. On the bottom right of each picture there's a timestamp. This one says 9:14PM, about four hours before you were home that night. Plenty of time. And yet, that very night you remember her reaching for you, slipping her leg in between yours, putting her fingers through the fingers of your hand, summoning the dark and brutal lust which had eventually overcome even your fatigue. That was only two days ago.

CONT.

Another close-up. Someone at the door lets her in. A medium shot of her looking around. Could Mord have been noticed? Your wife was always a sharp girl, very detail oriented. If she hadn't married you she could have had a good life as a business woman, the driven CEO of some tech start-up, or a lawyer in some high-powered firm. Maybe that was it. Maybe you had stifled her potential. She tells you every night that her only dream is to be a mother, coaxes you every night with its implications, but the prospect of fatherhood terrifies you and you have so far repulsed her unwearying efforts with the old saw that you need to save some more money first. Did you do this? Denying her a career, denying her motherhood, denying her purpose and meaning. A long shot of the alleyway. But you had finally started to fold, that was why you took on these new responsibilities, worked these extra hours. There was a spot open in the executive table and you were up for review. It wasn't entirely a lie, the need for more money. You want your child to have the best of everything. Some medium shots with a few people coming out of the bar. She's with them. They file off. A long shot of her in the alley and someone else but... she's wearing different clothes? A close-up. No, it's definitely her. And some other man, handsome, and strangely familiar.

You begin flipping faster through the photos, your heart pounding painfully in your chest, the heat and filth unbearable in this disgusting office. The rest are close-ups of this man and her. They appear to be talking. Just talking. Then at the end, something strange, something impossible. Vicky, your wife of six years, the love of your life (you'd decided that before you walked in here today), somehow changes her face. In one photo she's Vicky, and then in the next, her skin is grey and ashen, her hair is jet black, her lips, a rigor-mortis-blue, her eyes sharper and darker and with a fierceness you've never seen before. You can't look away, you can't believe what you're seeing. But the photos are only a few seconds apart, too quick for foul play, not that Mord would ever dare try something like that, not with all his debts transferred to Superstar's accounts. But how can this be?

You place two photos side-by-side. Vicky. And Redstar. Your wife is Redstar. Your wife is a supervillain.

>[continue]
>write-in

QM NOTE: This is a quest in which you play the husband of a comic book supervillian, updated (I plan) twice daily. The setting is original, though I'll be using pics of comic book characters you may recognize from other media. This is merely a convenience and does not imply any kind of cross-over. This quest is also unique in one respect: it is write-in only. Every vote you'll have a choice between [continue] and write-in. [continue] is a vote for moving the story forward as I (the QM) see fit. Write-ins allow you to not only control the actions of the main character, but (beyond the things I've established in this first post and the posts to come) his personality, motivations, etc. I will try to incorporate as many of the write-ins as possible, assuming they are compatible. Shitpost write-ins (basically things wildly OOC) will be summarily ignored. I've chosen this system to ensure I can continue to write even (as I expect) when there are few voters, and to completely rid myself of the burden of trying to come up with choices every post. If this bothers you, I suggest you find another quest.

>>4913780
Neat idea. I'll play this
>>4913778
>[continue]
This is an actual vote option right?

>>4913778
>write-in

>research redstar

>>4913780
Nevermind, I just took a closer look at what you said.
I'll support this>>4913787
And
>Why was Mord following Vicky to find out in the first place?

>>4913778
>>4913788

>>4913788
I Thought My Wife was Cheating, But Actually She Wants to Rule the World??

>>4913778
Ask him if he was spotted

>>4913832
Also ask him if anyone knows he's here.

>>4913778
>Find out who printed those pictures
>Ask if anyone else knows about this or this job
>Plan to kill Mord and clear any trace of our involvement
Because men needs to protect his family.

>>4913822
I know that animu! I think. Sounds like one.

>>4913868
If we kill him, someone will investigate. That will bring more attention. He works for some super named Superstar.

>>4913788
I'd presume because we hired him, folks?

>>4913901
Yeah seems logical. If we become her henchmen, it'll probably be out of rage from being kept from her due to superstar putting our ass to the grindstone

>>4913778
Ask Mord what does he intend to do with this information.

Let’s be real, he’s probably terrified. He knows he’s become a loose end, but he also knows the wife won’t take death of her husband sitting down regardless of circumstances making prospect of killing us a hazardous one. Yet he seems to have enough integrity to have had actually delivered the evidence to us.

>>4913787
>>4913788
>>4913832
>>4913848
>>4913868
>>4913909
Closed. Update imminent. The quest is certainly getting more traction than I envisioned, but we'll see how long that lasts.

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>>4913940

File: 1557944360006.gif (1.99 MB, 403x234)

1.99 MB GIF

>>4913973

With as much calm as you can muster, you lay the last photograph facedown on the others, a medium shot of your wife shaking hands with who you now recognize as Communion, the leader of the notorious terrorist group, Antimatter. Again you gather up the photos, drum them even on the desk and then you put them discreetly into your suit’s inner breast pocket. Outwardly, you keep the appearance of calm, even smile a little at Mord, who returns the smile awkwardly. At the same time, you can’t feel your fingers, and it feels as if all blood from your head had been siphoned off to somewhere else, into a gutter or drain.

“You alright bud? You want some water?”

You nod weakly at Mord and he presses a small red button at the base of a little desk-microphone.

“Shelly, a couple of waters in here please?”

“What water?” Returns the scratchy, shrill voice of Mord’s wife, distorted by two packs a day of Virginia Slims and the ambient crackling noise of the crude intercom. “We don’t have any water, Mordy. They cut off our water two weeks ago, you remember?”

“Alright so go to the corner store and pick up a couple of cokes–” Mord looks up at you, checking to make sure this change of drink is acceptable. You nod again, mechanically. “Two cokes and get one of those eclairs–”

“With what money?”

“What you do mean with what money? I slipped you some bills two days ago! The–the twenty and then the fifty two days ago!”

“…I spent it on groceries.”

“You spent seventy dollars on groceries? You got some other secret family I don’t know about Shelly? And you haven’t cooked a meal a day in your whole goddamn life!”

“Don’t yell at me!”

“I’m not yelling!” screams Mord. “I’m not yelling!”

“Mord, it’s alright,” you say.

Mord shakes his head, refusing your refusal. It’s the principle of the thing now, for him, but reminded of your presence, he takes a breath and speaks calmly and evenly. “For Christ’s sake, Shel, we’re dying of thirst over here. Mr. Richard’s getting heatstroke.”

“Alright. Alright.”

“Alright?”

“I said, alright!”

“Alright,” says Mord, releasing the button and settling back to his former pose, hands on stomach. “Two minutes,” he assures you.

CONT.

The silence is unbearable. Mord puts on a face of complete stony impassivity, whether an act or just professional indifference, you don’t know. Mord has been with Superstar, the PR firm that represents about a quarter of the supers in the country, for three years now. You’ve had to deal with him only twice in your time with the company and both times were over the phone and both times over matters as unpleasant as they were critical.

When you had hired him to follow your wife you had made it very clear that this was a side-gig and that under no circumstances could he report this to Superstar. He was all too happy to oblige. A tax-free injection of capital into his “growing business” was too alluring an offer and he promised the utmost discretion. In fact, he had been very good about keeping things on the down low, and had even gone to the trouble of buying you a small prepaid cellphone on which he could call during pre-established hours, usually on your morning drive to work. He, like you, had suspected infidelity and had gone to such precautions precisely on those suspicions. Yet now, with the real, horrible truth laid bare, he seems no less perturbed.

“So it’s a little impolite to ask,” he finally says, “but…”

“What?” you say.

“Well there’s the matter of a certain closing fee–unless you want I keep tailing her.”

“N-no, that won’t be necessary.” You begin rifling through your pockets, suddenly at a loss for where you put the white envelope with the twenty, crisp, one-hundred dollar bills you had withdrawn the night before. You finally find it in the same breast pocket you had put the photos. You place it on the table and Mord simply stares at it, as though he could make it slide toward him with his mind.

“So that just leaves us,” says Mord, not looking up from the money.

“Yes,” you say.

“So what are you gonna do?”

“How do you mean?”

“You gonna tell her?”

“I don’t–”

“Because if you’re gonna tell her, I’d like a little heads-up. I don’t want her coming after me.”

“No, she would never–”

“Oh, that reminds me,” he says, fishing through the pockets of his baggy khakis and finally retrieving a small, black thumbdrive and then sliding it across to you. “Originals. Don’t worry, I didn’t make any copies.”

You quick stuff the thumbdrive into your trouser pocket. It won’t go in in your seated position, so you stand up and then finding that you don’t want to sit back down, begin pacing back and forth.

CONT.

“I know bud,” says Mord. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen this, if you can believe it. My advice? Hit the road and don’t ever look back. Keep your mouth shut. Keep your eyes and ears open.”

“She’s my wife,” you say, through gritted jaw, through clenched fist, through nerves and vessels now coursing only with the thought of her deception. How could she do it? How long has she been doing it? That night that you had heard her coming up the stairs at 4AM in the morning, on her tip-toes, sneaking into the bedroom, into the bathroom, and the quiet rush of tap without the accompanying strip of light beneath the door, hearing her come again, slip off her dress and slip in between the covers and lie very still, and listening to her breathing until she finally drifted off to sleep, you felt a crushing rage then, like being submerged beneath miles and miles of ocean water, and how you had hated her in the morning when she greeted you, as always, like nothing had happened, with a smile and a cup of coffee and idle conversation as she busied herself with breakfast, how much you wanted to hurt her – maybe, I’ll have an affair too, you had thought, and imagining it had disgusted you so much that tears almost came into your eyes. Then denial. Then the rational part of you urging for an irrefutable testimony, no matter how painful, which led ultimately to calling Mordecai Borowski at a gas station phone booth with trembling hands.

The image of the two faces appear before you like the two halves of a playing card. On the top: the face of the woman whom you have loved unreservedly for seven straight years, loved almost from the first word, and who has, in no uncertain terms, reciprocated that love with her whole being–and Redstar on the bottom. Redstar, who just a month ago was on the news for trying to destroy the Scarsberry Bridge, in broad daylight. Twelve people killed. You remember watching the coverage on the huge wall monitor in the office, watching with rapt attention – and disgust – a black and red speck floating hundreds of feet above the suspension bridge, dodging heat beams, blocking fists, and at one point, slamming another super – one of Superstar’s own clients, Bluebolt, into the water below, earning gasps and curses from the other staff and then later, cheers, when she had to retreat once Lord Justice appeared. You remember yourself cursing and cheering with the rest.

CONT.

How long? That’s what you really want to know now. How long has she been living like this? Was it before you had met? Was it after? How long after? After marriage? After you told her how your own parents were killed in the collateral of one of Antimatter’s terrorist attacks? Or maybe it was after you started working for Superstar. Maybe they recruited her then. Maybe they threatened her. There was a perverse, desperate hope in that – how long had Redstar been around? You could check Herobase, the government system that keeps tracks of known heroes and villains. Superstar has high-level access and would let you look back years and even read some of the classified materials the SIA kept on each super – but wouldn’t that be suspicious? All access through the office is logged. And the question brings up the most painful thought of all, that despite her dishonesty, despite her real identity and the terrible, vile things she’s done, you still love her. To see her incarcerated, to her get hurt, was impossible. You’d rather die. And if anyone hurt her, if anyone so much as tried to hurt her, you’d…

You stop pacing and look up at Mord. He’d been counting the money in the envelope, licking his thumb like someone trying to turn the page on a newspaper. He looks up at you, his large, bovine eyes, slowly narrowing, watching the hand you’ve now slipped behind your back.

“I couldn’t find coke,” says Shelly, flinging open the door and walking straight toward the desk, her heels going clickety-clack on the hard tile, “so I got some tea.”

Mord’s gaze lingers on your arm a second before turning to his wife. “What the hell we’re gonna do with tea, Shel? It’s two-hundred degrees out. You trying to kill us?”

“It’s iced tea, dummy,” says Shel, laying the two cans of iced tea on the table and a cream-filled eclair. “Lemon flavored. Your favorite.”

“My favorite is cherry you ditz.”

“It’s lemon!” she insists.

“Where the hell do you get off telling me what my favorite iced tea flavor is? Huh? It’s cherry goddamnit! It’s always been cherry!”

“Don’t yell at me!” says Shelly.

“I’m not yelling!” screams Mord. “Mr. Richard, please,” he says, gesturing to the cans. “While it’s cold, yeah?”

“How do you Mr. Richard?” says Shelly, finally noticing you standing behind her.

You relax just enough to offer her a polite nod. Mord clears his throat loudly.

“What?” says Shelly. “I can’t say hello?”

Mord tightly jabs his finger at the air, the universal gesture for “get out!”. Shelly, sensing the mood, makes herself scarce, leaving the scent of her strong citrusy perfume near the chair in which you again sit down.

CONT.

You snap open the can and take long drink. Mord doesn’t touch his can and instead begins unpeeling the eclair from its plastic wrapper. “Mr. Richard,” he says, “I like my current job. Working for Superstar’s a–well, I won’t say it’s a dream come true, to tell you the truth I’ve always wanted to be an olympic athlete.” He waves his hand, as if dismissing some expressed interest on your part (there wasn’t any). “A story for another time. But what I mean is, Superstar has treated me well, really well. No hounding me for the debts. Steady pay. I’ve got no complaints,” he takes a big bite of the eclair and continues talking, noisily chewing the pastry with his back molars. “What I mean is, I’ve got no reason to disrupt the status quo. I’m a professional, you know that. Superstar knows that. What I mean is, what I really mean is…” He takes another bite of the eclair, spooning up with his finger a line of cream that was dribbling down his chin, into his mouth, and then going silent.

You drain the rest of the iced tea and slam the can down on the armrest of your chair. “What DO you mean, Mord?”

“…Am I gonna have to disappear, Mr. Richard? What, exactly, are you planning to do? And what, exactly, is my part in it? If any?”

“Mord–” you start to answer him, but your cellphone begins to ring. You hold up a finger to Mord, while you check the caller. It’s your wife.

>[continue]
>Write-in

>>4914118
>Write-in
Mouth "Wife" to him, hoping he'll duck under his desk or away from any windows, then pick up the phone.

>>4914118
>[continue]
I mean she can't be super terrorist if she is preggers

>>4914118
Both of these are good points>>4914124
>>4914135
If she isn't on her way home, and letting us know, immediately start looking for live news feeds to see if she shows up in them, if she gives a cover story. Don't threaten Mord or his wife, and leave peacefully to get a gun and mask. Then go watch our wife.

>>4914118
>>4914145
Oh and, if getting a gun isn't viable to do right now to go to her crime scene, a taser and a knife.

>>4914118
>Mouth "Wife" to him, hoping he'll duck under his desk or away from any windows, then pick up the phone.
Do this, and motion for a pen & paper too. Write down that you have no idea what you're doing, and definitely don't want anything to happen to him, it'd probably be a good idea if he skipped town for a while.

>>4914145
>>4914147
Would those even be useful? Let's not get weapons yet.

>>4914118
Basically >>4914124

and while it's a bit...manipulative, it IS what she wanted, although now I suspect it's more for villainous progeny than any real desire for a family. So the >>4914135 idea has merit, if only for a short term solution.

>Also backing the 'look for live feeds if she's not on her way home' thing, but not the getting a gun/mask thing.

>>4914156
This too. We're not mad at him, or anything. We're still confused and worried. Maybe a vacation, sure, but he shouldn't have to leave forever.

>>4914156
Just keeping a piece on us will be safer since we now know we're married to a super villain. Plus sneaking to her "Work Zone", would require some precautions.
>Do this, and motion for a pen & paper too. Write down that you have no idea what you're doing, and definitely don't want anything to happen to him, it'd probably be a good idea if he skipped town for a while.
This too.
>>4914169
>and while it's a bit...manipulative, it IS what she wanted, although now I suspect it's more for villainous progeny than any real desire for a family.
Only one way to find out, and if that was the case she could just fuck some villain, or even some random schmuck if all she wanted was kids.

>>4914173
>>4914118

In fact, the reason she might want our kids out of guilt for working with the group that killed his parents.

>>4914118

>Take the call
Hey love...

Personally I'd love to see this work out just to see what the end result would be. I will just lurk in these threads but know this; I'd like to see us reconcile with our wife and come to terms with her double life. Support her on principle of being our spouse and see if any vows have been violated since our marriage.

>>4913940
You should kill yourself.

>>4914124
I support this
>>4914196
I want to reconcile with her too, but she's an actual terrorist. Not an 'steal forty cakes and tie a woman to a track' supervillain, she's an 'blow up a bridge' terrorist. Your parents were killed in her attack.

Sure, she may love you, but she's still a shitty person if she's willing to kill other people for her own gains.

Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like...that's kind of a love-killer. IF it were me. Gonna have to do a bit of disassociation though since QM said 'we still love her'. Still going to be rough on how to treat this. Theoretically this should be a very cut and dry split, honestly, but. Theory and reality don't often work.

>>4914312
Eh...to be fair, it's kinda hard to believe that your wife is a terrorist. We don't know about the full story, though, so there's that.

I don't think (we) are going to continue to be in love if Redstar still plans on giving innocent people the IRA treatment. I mean,she's a supervillain - if it was murder, that would be horrible, but believable, and even then some people wouldn't stop.

But super terrorism? It's so big in scale that it doesn't feel true. It's like if you found out your wife comitted genocide. I mean, that sucks and would probably kill love, but at the same time, it'll be a while until you believe it.

>>4914304
Its wasn't confirmed she was the one that killed his parents, just that they were killed in one of that Antimatter's groups terror attacks.

>>4914332
True, but it WAS confirmed she blew up a bridge and killed people. Just as bad, really.

>>4914334
I mean yeah, but when dating, and as of now, finding out after being married to a supervillain for this long. You need to be a little apathetic to other people you don't know dying.

>>4914338
She killed people, that's fucked up. You wouldn't marry some proud peace trucker, even if she 'loved you'

>>4914344
Yeah, but it was collateral killings, not some torture porn shit. And it doesn't change we already married her, my personal preferences aside.

>>4914348
We married Vicky, not Redstar the Terrorist

Vicky has to choose which identity she values more.

>>4914391
She's in a terrorist group, what can she do to get out?

>>4914294
Right after you, sempai.

>>4914312
We’ll right now we just have some horribly disturbing facts. I don’t think relationship and attachment of several years can be extinguished at drop of a hat, we’re gonna be spending some time denying or trying to justify what we learned, and she’ll definitely pick up that something is wrong from our call now.

Yeah killing and terror are big deal and definitely grounds for marriage nullification but if we were so in love with her before we’re gonna want to hear her justify herself before we give up on her,

>>4914344
So? She didn't hurt us, just random NPCs we've never met and have no reason to care about in the slightest. I'd feel betrayed if she was involved in the attack that killed our parents but if not then it's completely irrelevant except insomuch as it puts us at risk.

>>4914756
Are you a psychopath in real life?

>>4914756
Sir, that is what we call sociopathy. It is not a good thing. It is not a healthy thing.

>>4914118
>>>4914124 >>4914135 >>4914145 >>4914147 >>4914156 >>4914169 >>4914175 >>4914183
Closed. Update imminent. Enjoying the debate/discussion btw. I will probably mix it in to your character's thoughts/motivations since they are more or less in character

>>4914118
>Talk to her, then ask to have a chat back at home

>>4914527
Boy I slap the shit out you. Don't play with a grown man.

Rolled 3 (1d20)

>>4915355
That's big talk coming from someone in ass-kicking range.

Rolled 8 (1d20)

>>4915391
Weakling, get in your seat.

>>4915391
Bruh, yous a faggot cuh. Yous a faggot cuh.

Mord raises his eyebrows and you answer his unaired question with a nod. He glances behind him toward the blinds, ducking in his seat a little, as if expecting, any minute now, the window to be suddenly shattered by a sniper’s bullet.

“Can I take this somewhere?” you ask.

Mord gestures to a door beside the window. It’s a cramped but clean bathroom, with hardly enough room to stand. A brand-new toilet and sink sits in stark contrast to the flaking paint on the walls and cracked tiles on the floor. You put down the toilet cover, wipe it off with a bit of toilet paper, and then sit down, careful not to lean against the tank. The heat in here is even more unbearable than in the office, with no ventilation to clear the air. You consider taking your coat off but there’s hardly enough room to stretch your arms. Taking a deep breath, you swipe upward on the phone and bring it to your ear.

“Are you busy, darling?”

Hearing her voice, hearing her call you ‘darling’ as though nothing had changed, as though she were still Vicky, still the girl with freckles that fretted over recipes she found online – for gourmet burgers or for brownies or for cooking tandoori chicken without the clay oven – watching your expressions as you tasted them, working her bottom lip, watching with the keenness of a scientist observing her mice, and finally bubbling over with relief at seeing the obvious pleasure in your face, still that girl, still your wife, and all you can wonder is not why, or even when, but how? How could she be that girl and Redstar at the same time? The girl who always cries at the end of The Iron Giant and a mass-murderer, all at once?

“Darling? Are you there?”

“Yes. I’m, you know,” you say, clearing your throat. “Hardly working. The usual.”

She giggles, as always, at your stupid joke. Nothing has changed for her. “I called your office a little while ago,” she says, freezing your blood cold.

“Y-you did? When?”

“Just before I left – I’m at the grocer’s right now – it was fifteen, twenty minutes ago? I got that new secretary of yours, Lor-something.”

“Alice,” you correct.

“Wasn’t it Lor-something?”

“You’re thinking of Loretta, from college.” Vicky had never liked Loretta and maintained a suspicion of her trying to “steal you away” all through your tenure as student President (she was VP), despite that a) nothing had ever happened between the two of you and b) Loretta was a lesbian. You’ve always found the innocuous expressions of your wife’s jealousy, like pretending to forget people’s names, or one time, baking cookies for all two-hundred members of the student union and then making sure to hand out all the nut-free ones before she got to Loretta (who was deathly allergic to cashews) so she could gleefully apologize that “oh no! I’m so, so sorry, all of these have nuts!”, such things you found almost endearing. Now, it’s almost irritating.

CONT.

“Oh, yes, I think you’re right. Well, anyway, whats-her-name told me you were busy and that I should call back later.”

You could kiss that girl. She’ll be getting a glowing review this term to the higher ups.

“Yes, very busy.”

“Which is why I called on your cell, darling. I just wanted to know if you still wanted vermicelli tonight, because there’s a sale here on penne but I didn’t want to buy it before asking you because I know how much you hate surprises.”

“Yes,” you say.

“Yes…I should get the penne?”

“Yes, yes, just get whatever you want.”

“…Is something wrong, darling?”

“No. Nothing. Why would anything be wrong?” A pause. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Are you coming home late tonight?”

So she can go out for another meeting with Antimatter? How long has she been taking advantage of your late nights? “Why?”

“Oh, well, I just wanted to know if I should leave the pasta in the fridge, that’s all. Or,” she adds eagerly, “if you tell me around when you’ll be coming home I can stay up and I’ll cook it then and we can eat together.”

“No,” you say. “Don’t wait up for me.”

“But really it’s no trouble–”

“I said no!” Damn this heat. You can feel your pits soaked entirely through the shirt. You’ll have to call ahead to let Alice know to have a fresh one ready for you in your office. “I don’t know when I’ll be coming home.”

“…OK, darling. I’m sorry for calling you at work, I know you must be very busy.”

And still you can feel a pang of guilt, still you can see her purse her lips together like she does when she’s sad or disappointed, and still you want to hold her and comfort her and be comforted by her. “No, it’s alright,” you say. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“OK, darling. I love you.”

“Yes,” you say, and then after a painful, vacillating pause, “I love you, too.”

You don’t stay much longer in Mord’s office. You need some air. You thank him for his services, for the iced tea, and especially for his discretion. “I think it’d be best if you took a vacation for a while. Somewhere remote.”

“What about Superstar? They’ve got me on a job right now, bud, and I’m on whatchamacallit with them, you know like with the lawyers?”

“Retainer.”

“That’s the one.”

“Even lawyers take vacations once in a while, Mord. I’ll take care of Superstar, don’t worry about them.” And then you add, seeing his lingering reservation, “Think of your wife.” And Mord immediately discards all reservation.

“You’ll call me when it’s all over? You won’t hang me out to dry?”

You pat your trouser’s pocket, where the little black pre-paid phone sits next to the thumbdrive. “As soon as I can.”

As you turn to leave, Mord grabs your arm. “And are you gonna be alright, Mr. Richard? She’s–”

“I’ll be fine,” you say, lifting his arm off. “She’s still my wife.”

But when you get into your car, your hands are trembling too much to even put the key in the ignition. You throw them as hard as you can over the dashboard where they strike the windshield and leave a small crack. You feel sick, like you’re going to throw up, but you don’t let yourself. Instead, feeling the solid, L-shaped lump against your back, you lift yourself up on the seat and retrieve the handgun you had bought the same day you hired Mord. A Glock 17. The gunshop owner had said it was the best gun for someone who had never fired a gun before. Perfect for home defense. For incapacitating (that was the word he had used, “incapacitating”) unwanted intruders. There was a short waiting period but he let you test the gun, and a few others, in a range he had set up in the back of the shop. It was easy then, to imagine the black silhouette on the target as her mysterious lover, the unwanted intruder of your marriage. To plug him mercilessly full of holes.

Now the thing looked strange and obscene in your hands, something cursed and nauseating, like a voodoo doll or a shrunken head. You open the glove compartment and hastily toss it in and then wipe your sweaty hand against your trousers. The enormity of it all still feels far away. You’ll have to go to work, at Superstar, knowing that your wife, that Redstar, is despised by everyone there. And then you’ll have to go home and face her, and lie in bed with her, and watch her make breakfast, and wonder, with every word she utters, with every happy gesture, how? And whether she’s lying. And whether it’s all a lie. The ‘darling’ and the ‘I love you’, as much as the others. And the thought of that, as with the thought of her adulterous affair, is still more painful.

But she has killed people. She works for the same people that killed your parents. And she knows that they killed your parents. You were only five when they pulled you out of your kindergarten class, to go to the principle’s office. You remember being scared that you were in trouble for stealing some crayons from the classroom playchest. You remember your older brother sitting outside principle’s office, wearing the dark-blue blazer embroidered with the crest of Branson Prep School, which he was attending on a scholarship (there was no way to afford it otherwise) and which was ten miles from here, holding his head in his hands and weeping. You had never seen him cry before and had rushed to him, letting him squeeze you to his chest, sensing that something had happened that was bigger than a few missing crayons.

CONT.

Your brother never cried again after that. Not even in the funeral, where they buried two empty caskets because the bodies were too mangled to put back together, just blood and viscera. The first night in orphanage, where they sent the two of you against the wishes of your grandparents, who had been deemed too debilitated to take care of you, one with dementia, the other with crippling arthritis, had been quiet and gentle. You asked your brother, sleeping on the top bunk, “When are we going home? When is mommy coming back?” And when your brother answered, savagely, that this was our new home, and that our parent’s weren’t coming back, you had begun to cry. And he had climbed down, crouched by the bed, and slapped you in the face, hard, which was so surprising that you had immediately stopped crying. “You don’t cry here,” he said. “Ever.” Then he slipped under the covers with you and held you and stroked your hair until you fell asleep.

You remember his words again, your brother Philip, now a successful aerospace engineer working for the Pale Blue Dot Company, with three children of his own. You don’t cry here. Ever. And he hadn’t. He had kept up the steady, unyielding facade in the face of unthinkable tragedy. If he could do it…

You reach for the keys again, start the car, and pull away onto the road.

>[continue]
>Write-in

>>4915427
Go home, draft a letter to work explaining that you've got a family emergency, and that you're going to need the week off, possibly longer. Don't send it yet. Then write down Mort's number from the prepaid phone on a sticky note, hide the note somewhere in your car, like in your owner's manual, message him that you're going to try talking to her, and that if you don't reply back in the next 48 hours, assume the worst and act accordingly, then remove the SIM card from the phone and ditch the cell in the river.

Then go home, set yourself up for a long wait on the couch with a hard drink and the proof, and wait for Vicky to come home...

Rolled 9 (1d20)

>>4915398
>>4915401
Still stronger than you.

Rolled 1 (1d20)

>>4915427
>Get whatever work we have left done quickly, or at least the minimum required for today.
>Think about the years of happy marriage and think, when did she first start working for Antimatter.
>What happened to you two on the day Redstar came upon the world? And what led up to it.
>Call out for a day from work tomorrow.
>Call her back an hour before work is done and ask if she wants to have a date tomorrow.
>>4915460
This too.
>>4915464
Pathetic

>>4915468
I hate d20s

>>4915427
Seconding >>4915460 (although I'm worried we'll be too drunk to approach it with any level of tact, I can understand the need to numb some nerves).

Maybe >>4915468

File: bigfeet laugh.png (352 KB, 720x500)

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Rolled 72 (1d100)

>>4915468
>>4915475
LMAO WEAK CUNT
HERE, USE A 1d100 INSTEAD

Rolled 49 (1d100)

>>4915460
Lets not get drunk, or even buzzed, we're a bit wound up right now, and we don't want to say something we'll regret by accident.
>>4915492
Fine bitch, witness my power unleased!

Rolled 34 (1d100)

>>4915494
POWAH

File: 1555534247091.gif (1.45 MB, 288x198)

1.45 MB GIF

>>4915494

Rolled 18 (1d100)

>>4915497
P-powah?
>>4915499
DIE

File: Can't stop laughing.jpg (37 KB, 479x345)

37 KB JPG

>>4915497
>>4915502

Rolled 72 (1d100)

>>4915502
One more time!

>>4915494
I was figuring we'd have a beer or a finger of whiskey to hold off the shakes, not finish off a forty by ourselves.

Also, can you and this fag >>4915503 here just fuck each other already? I'm bored of all the foreplay, get to the action.

File: lmao.png (200 KB, 366x450)

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>>4915506
ITS JUST A 1 IN 100 CHANCE, BRAH
IT'S NOT EVEN THAT HARD

Rolled 42 (1d100)

>>4915514
FUCK YOU BASEMENT SWELLER, I HAVEN'T DONE MY SACRIFICES YET!
>>4915511
Might give her the wrong impression, and there is no telling we'd be able to hold off at one if we start.

>>4915427
>Write-in
Don't come back home with pictures make deposit either in a bank or post office

File: Fuck you, I'm out.gif (2.73 MB, 240x135)

2.73 MB GIF

>>4915516

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Rolled 3 (1d10)

>>4915516
OH NO NO NO NO
HERE YOU GO
EASY PEASY LITTLE BABY

Rolled 9 (1d10)

>>4915524

File: Congratulations.gif (409 KB, 498x366)

409 KB GIF

>>4915527
There you go. I knew you could do it, champ.

>>4915464
Shut the fuck up bro. Shut the fuck up bro.

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>>4915602
Fucking parrot. Use proper syntax.

>>4914135
Only a temporary fix. Eventually, she can't get knocked up anymore and maybe if we are really lucky she would have cooled off by then. From the sounds of it, she is a hardcore variety of supervillain and we exist as a likely part of her cover identity. Unsurprisingly it failed in the long run. This means we're in deep shit because her cover is now blown and since we are not in the game we cannot be trusted.

>>4915460
Kind of cheating to be honest since we know OOC that she isn't going to kill us. Mort though is fucked. It won't be hard for her to find out who found proof considering he's magically on vacation. Will likely get dragged into a huge mess though as how can we be trusted without getting dirty too? Can't play straight and dumb anymore.

>>4915613
> Guts pic
> RIP in piece, you overworked mangaka

>>4915460
Seems fine. Just a single drink to savour, don't want to lose our edge.

What's with the retard slapfight

>>4915807
That's if we mess up our talk with her so badly it gets to that point. Or her bosses do it instead.

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>>4915613
Faggot bitch. Don't say stupid shit to me again.

>>4915985
The issue is we aren't dirty enough or involved in their game enough to be trusted. We have plot armor but Mort is fucked. All thanks to us belonging to her clean identity and having a connection to their enemy that can be pursued. We got used regardless the question is if the kid gloves will come off or not. Which considering this is a quest its a safe bet their coming off.

>>4916003
True, but if we can prevent them from finding out in the first place, and get our wife out, we can either get a plea deal and ditch the captors, then leave to Guatalara and hide for awhile. Maybe fake our wifes death?

>>4915460 >>4915468 >>4915487 >>4915520
Closed. Update imminent. Didn't expect you guys to play your hand so quickly, but I like it.

>>4916017
This is 4chan. We don't do gentle subtlety here. Largely because we're horrible at it and anything resembling the matter usually results in paranoid shadowruns which usually are incredibly obvious in their attempts at secret-keeping.

>>4916015
That is assuming she wants out which as a quest obviously means it won't happen even if she agrees. She does have poor taste in men for that line of work. You're supposed to date people in a similar line of work to prevent these kinds of fuckups. At least she has classic romantic tastes instead of villainous. The real question is what will happen with her people since she is part of a group and her reason for being a member. She is one hell of a cold hearted bitch for dating someone whose parents your people murdered but that is definitely a classic villain behavior. So OOC props for that IC damn one cold hearted bitch alright also still stupid in love so apparently, the shit tastes in love are mutual.

In my opinion it's more about damage control and desperately trying to not get dragged too deep in the shit. Which I know is hopeless but makes sense in character. At least we get to look forward to feel like what it means to be the damsel in distress in reverse trap form and what it's like to be a true villain's love who they actually care about.

>>4916022
Hey now shadowrun tier paranoia is a classic and autistic for a reason anon.

>>4916017
I'm kind of running off of what anons did in another quest, Fuck Me, My Daughter's a Magical Girl!

Of course, that one ran off of anime logic rather than superhero comics logic, and the cast list got pretty convoluted at the end, but it was a fun ride while it lasted.

>>4916027
>So OOC props for that IC damn one cold hearted bitch alright also still stupid in love so apparently, the shit tastes in love are mutual.
That's still working on the assumption she's working for them willingly, we might have been a hostage the entire time, and didn't even know it, like every bad day we've had was them.
>Which I know is hopeless but makes sense in character. At least we get to look forward to feel like what it means to be the damsel in distress in reverse trap form and what it's like to be a true villain's love who they actually care about.
We survive the coming weeks we start working out like a madman, John Wick style training, and loot guns from criminals. Build up an arsenal. Then we swing in, "kidnap" our wife after she pretends to be knocked out in a battle, and run. Whatever comes after that is up for debate if we survive.
>>4916034
I still have the archive saved. Dealing with all those horny girls was a nightmare.

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>>4915996

>>4916058
You want me to kill you? Dude, you're a fraud and everyone here knows it. Go die before you really shame your father faggot bitch.

Superstar’s main offices are located in one of the biggest structures in the world, the Newborn building, owned by one of Superstar’s biggest clients, Olympus, the third largest superhero development agency in the world. The smooth, pointed obelisk of chrome, steel and exotic supermaterial you’d need another five years of schooling to understand, stands like a defiant finger pointed toward the heavens. Shiny, bubble-shaped elevators speed silently up and down its surface like giant raindrops, providing, if the rider is so inclined, an unobstructed view of the entire city all the way to the western bay on one side, to Scarsberry bridge on the other, currently closed for repair.

Your office is located on the 145th floor. It’s a relatively small room, a side-office, instead of a corner, furnished with a desk, a filing cabinet and a small couch. Your assistant Alice sits right outside your door at a smaller desk, working a phone and a desktop computer. She was a hand-me-down from one of the executives who had left the company, given to you temporarily while company looked for some place to put her. After about a month she had become so indispensable that you eventually convinced the higher-ups to leave her with you and they happily obliged.

“Mr. Gardner,” she says, standing up from her desk and moving to help you with your coat and then following you into your office to rattle off the day’s messages and reminders. “You have a two o’clock with Mr. Crawley and then a five o’clock with Dr. Rosenbaum – which he wanted to reschedule for five-thirty, but I told him no because you also have a meeting with the marketers from Lirito-Fays at six thirty, and you won’t be able to make it in time, that is, assuming the usual rush hour traffic. I’ve laid out the shirt you requested – I wasn’t sure of the extent of the damage, so I took the extra precaution of laying out some accompanying ties as well as a pair of trousers. I’ve just put on a fresh pot of coffee, and should have a cup ready for your momentarily. Is there anything I get for you in the interim?”

Alice waits expectantly with the little spiral pad and the carpenter’s pencil she always carries, like an up-and-coming journalist looking for a fresh scoop. She looks like what you imagine a finely made Italian luxury automobile would like, if it was a woman. Every bit of her, from her sleek, designer suit, to the severe bun atop her head and the tasteful bit of zebra-striped silk around her neck, screams prim and professional. A Ferrari in the flesh. When you were entertaining thoughts of vengeful adultery, she was the first woman that came to mind, not least because there were unsavory rumors still lingering about her and her previous boss. Naturally, your wife hates her.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” she says, tapping her pad with the pencil. “Your wife called earlier. I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to say…” She watches your expression carefully.

CONT.

“You did fine. I spoke to her a while ago.”

“Oh, well, that’s a relief.”

You begin rifling through your desk, looking for the scrap of paper on which you had written down Mord’s private number. You’ll need to call him before you do this; create some kind of failsafe.

“Anything I can help with, Mr. Gardner?” asks Alice, stretching her head to the side to peek.

“What?”

“Are you looking for something?”

“Yes,” you say, continuing your search. “A slip of paper, with a phone number on it.”

“Was there a name on the slip?”

“…Yes, I think so.”

“Mordecai Borowski?”

You stand up too quickly and bang your head against one of the opened desk-drawers, which inspires a litany of curses. Alice rushes to help you up and then tries to run off to get you some ice, but you hold her fast.

“Where’s the slip? You have it? You took it?”

She lifts the shirt on the table. Underneath is the sticky note with Mord’s name and number.

“Are you alright, Mr. Gardner? You don’t seem yourself today.”

“I have to leave early,” you say, carefully testing the integrity of your skull around the wound. No blood. “Family emergency.”

“I hope everything is alright. Has someone been hurt?”

“No,” you assure her. Then you snatch the slip from the desk, your coat from her arm, your bag from the sofa and begin walking back to the elevators as fast as humanly possible without also looking like you’re about lose control of your bladder. Alice follows at your heels.

“Should I cancel all the rest of your meetings for today?”

“Yes.”

“But Mr. Crawley–”

You stop short. Mr. Crawley is one of the head executives of Superstar. The meeting with him today should be about your performance this quarter, something you’ve been looking forward to for the last six months, given all the extra work you’ve been putting in. Bailing on it now means kissing that promotion goodbye. But then you feel the photos in your suit pocket, the thumbdrive and the cellphone in your trouser’s pocket. No, this is more urgent.

“Reschedule it.”

“Reschedule it?” says Alice, as if you’d just asked her to eat live cockroaches.

“Tell him it’s a family emergency.”

“I don’t know if he’ll–”

“Please, Alice, just,” you sag, nearly collapsing from the weight of all that’s happened today, right there in the elevator bank. “Please.”

“A-alright, Mr. Gardner. Of course. I’ll do my best. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, Alice, just go home when you’re done. Thank you.”

CONT.

Back in the car, the first thing you do is call Mord on the black cell. It rings for a painfully long time. “What’s going on bud? Change of plans? Didn’t expect you to call back so soon.”

“No, no change of plans…listen. Mord. If I don’t call you back in 48 hours assume the worst case scenario and take the necessary precautions.”

Mord doesn’t answer at first, instead you hear his wife in the background. “Mordy, where’s my bras? I can’t find any of them. I can’t find a single one of my bras! Where did you put my bras?”

“For christ’s sake Shel, why would I put your bras anywhere? What am I gonna do with your bras?”

“Well, where are they?”

“How the hell should I know? Did you check the hamper?” Silence.

“They were in the hamper,” says Shelly. “Why’d you put them in there?”

“I didn’t put them anywhere! You put them in there!”

“Do we have enough time for a wash, Mordy, you think?”

“No, we don’t have enough time for a wash! We’re running for our lives here, for Christ’s sake!”

“Well, you don’t have to yell at me!”

“Mord!” you say, “Listen to me. 48 hours. You understand?”

“Yeah, yeah. You want I call you?”

“No, I’ll call you. If I don’t…”

“I got that part. Are you sure you wanna do this, Mr. Richard? You might not like what you find. Maybe it’s better to just, I don’t know, forget about it.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Well, if you say so.”

“48 hours, Mord.”

“48 hours. You got it bud. Good luck.”

Next, you hide the slip with Mord’s name and number in the owner’s manual of your car. You then work on the pre-paid cellphone. You take off the back cover, looking for a SIM card, but this model doesn’t seem to have one, so you just take the out the battery and toss both it and the phone into a nearby storm drain. Then you drive home.

You and your wife live in the outskirts of the city, what would be considered the suburbs if not for its proximity to the Oaktown theater district. It’s about a forty-five minute drive from the Newborn building to the small two-story, one-family house, which you currently lease from Vicky’s father, a real estate mogul, and were saving to one day buy outright.

Your wife’s sedan isn’t in the driveway, which means she’s not back yet from her shopping trip. She usually likes to meet with her girlfriends for smoothies on Friday’s. Or, you now realize with horror, that’s a lie and she’s with Antimatter right now.

CONT.

After a quick shower, you try to eat something, but having no appetite, end up pouring yourself two-fingers of a bottle of Jim Beam, with lots of ice. Vicky’s father had presented you the bottle last Thanksgiving. Vicky had put it in your kitchen cupboard, where it had remained, unopened, ever since. It goes down smoothly and leaves a sweet, cedary aftertaste, which you find you don’t entirely dislike. With the ice, it’s not quite enough to settle you down. But you don’t pour yourself another. You need to be completely lucid for what’s coming.

You put the photos on the low glass table in the living room and sit down on the couch. All around the house are pictures of you and your wife, smiling, happy. Pictures of your honeymoon at Niagara Falls, a cliche you had selflessly allowed because of her cloying insistence. Wedding photos. Her in the flowing, white-ribboned wedding dress, her hair done up in a crown, you in your father’s three-piece suit – something of a tradition in your family, your brother had gotten married in it himself – and the two of you looking at each other with a love that bordered on hunger. Your brother had approved of Vicky from the first time you introduced her. You’d only been dating her a month at the time but he had taken you aside to tell you to go out and buy an engagement ring. “This is the one, Dicky,” he had said. “Don’t wait. Life is short.” Of course what he didn’t know is that you already had the ring. You bought it after the third date. You were so in love you could not imagine any other possibility. Guess she had you all fooled.

But did she? Was she Redstar even then? Antimatter had been around since the beginning, since the Lord Justice’s heyday, the Golden Age of supers, so it’s not impossible. But if so, then what about her parents? Do they know? Are they in on it? If not, how could she hide it? From her own parents? And her powers – from what you remember, she’s got the basic package: flight, strength, invulnerability, regeneration – was she born with them? Or was she the result of some development program? Or maybe–

Your phone begins to buzz on the table. You pick it up. It’s from work.

“Hello? Alice?”

“Mr. Gardner, I’m so sorry to call you like this.” She’s whispering for some reason. “Mr. Crawley is in your office, he says he wants to speak with you. It’s urgent.”

“Did you tell him–”

“Yes, I told him you had left for the day because of an emergency but he insisted. I didn’t know what to do.”

“That’s all right, Alice. Put him through.”

CONT.

A pause, then a jovial, and strongly accented voice greets you. “Richard, I just heard about the emergency. Terrible bad timing, my boy, but never mind. I trust all is well? Anything Superstar can do to help?”

“No, sir. It’s just a personal family matter.”

“I see. Well, I suppose you knew what was to be the topic of discussion for our meeting this afternoon?”

“Yes, sir, my quarterly performance.”

“Yes, and you’ll forgive me for saying this, but I really had hoped to do the meeting in person. Wireless communication is in the top ten of the worst evil’s mankind has ever committed in my opinion. Perhaps top five.”

“I’m very sorry, sir.” Just get it over with, you blowhard.

“Well, at any rate, we’ve been monitoring your performance quite closely this last quarter and we are, in brief, quite pleased. Yes, quite pleased indeed. In fact – oh this would have been much better in person, I had a few small surprises planned and everything – well, anyway, we’d like you to handle a new private client we’re taking on named, let me see here, Perihelia, well, that’s a mouthful isn’t it? Perhaps as your first assignment you can come up with a better name, eh?” He laughs.

“I’m–I’m being promoted? I’ll be an executive?”

“Oh, don’t sound so shocked, my boy, it should hardly come as a surprise. And, well, it’s not a real executive position, we won’t be putting your name on the building as it were. Think of it, instead, as a trial run. One with a considerable pay raise and a new office. Do well, and more shall follow. Ever forward, my boy, like Orpheus in the underworld: never look back.”

“When would I start?”

“The girl’s flying over – quite literally, I might add – tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Well, I guess–”

“Obviously you’ll be taking tomorrow off, of course?”

“What?”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday, my boy. You know what they say about all work and no play. We want no dull workers here at Superstar.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But I haven’t heard your answer yet! I need a verbal confirmation, you know, for the men upstairs.”

It’s then that you hear the keys rattle, and the doorknob begin to turn. You didn’t even the car coming in.

“Darling, are you home?”

"Are you still there, Richard?"

>[continue]
>Write-in

>>4916247
>"I'll take the promotion sir, my wife just got home. Have a good evening." But say it quietly.
>"Honey, can you come here real quick, we need to talk."
>Drink some of the melted ice from the glass, and get ready to kiss your wife.
>Start off with the good news.
Welp, this is either going to go well into horribly wrong. Go well then end in tears. Go well and end in tears that also might end up in holding each other sobbing before wild and desperate baby making commences.

I'll be going down to an update/day as they are getting pretty long now (due to all material in the write-ins).

>>4916255
+1

>>4916247

This sounds good. >>4916255

Let’s Go and make this work!

>>4916255
That fits.

>>4916255
+1

>>4916257
Take your time.

>>4916255
This
But maybe not start the baby making until we get this whole "mass murderer" thing sorted out
Kinda kill the boner

>>4916402
Not if it's a fear boner sadly.

>>4916255
This, and also make sure to be an adult. Don't accuse her of anything, don't get angry, don't try to lie (but don't just give away our buddy Mord either), and let her explain her side of the story.

>>4916247
>>4916255

I am with him. Agree to the promotion, make a mental note to check who that new super is if we dont know her already.

Keep taking deep breaths, that releases relaxation hormones and oxygen in the brain means a bigger think. I read that in a book made of paper once. Give the wife a long hug with a squeeze and make a note of how she hugs back. We are visibly shaken, so if its long, hard and loving, then perhaps her marriage to us was not just a ploy, an alibi cover for her criminal activities. Perhaps she is equal parts lover and villain and we got golden opportunities here.

If its short and flimsy tho, we wasted the best years of our life on a hussy, lads.

>>4916255 >>4916284 >>4916541
Closed. Update imminent.

Think admitting that we know is a mistake, for if we are really just a cover there is nothing to stop her from snapping our neck and then call it in as an assasult

>>4917371
If it's just a cover we're dead regardless.

>>4917411
She is not gonna kill us so long as her cover woorks

>>4917426
She'd have no reason to use us as a cover anyways. Unless she was hiding her powers for so long that the first to find out was Antimatter. Even then, she could just live fully as Redstar doing whatever she wanted, or not even that, she wouldn't need to marry us for anything. She could get someone else if she needed cover.

You stumble to your feet. Now that the moment is upon you, you have the powerful urge to run away. You glance at the photos on the table. What if Mord is right? You’ve the got the promotion you always wanted. You can give Vicky the child she’s always wanted. Maybe that would curtail her activities with Antimatter. And then what? Just pretend like everything is fine? That’s it OK to live with a supervillain? To have a child with a mass-murderer? A terrorist? You leave the photos where they are, instead, you snatch the glass and drain the last of the bourbon left in the melted ice.

“Mr. Crawley, of course I accept the offer. And I’m very, very grateful for the opportunity.”

“Splendid! Then I’ll leave the details with your girl, Alice, shall I? I presume you’ll be taking her with you to one-forty-seven?”

The deadbolt on the front door turns and your wife steps into the living room, hugging two large bags of groceries to her chest.

“Yes, sir, that’ll be fine. I’m very sorry, but I have to go now. We’ll talk again soon.” You hang up the phone, toss it on the sofa, and move to help your wife take the groceries to the kitchen. A force of habit which persists even now, even when you know that she can probably juggle concrete trucks with one hand tied behind her back.

She leans in for a kiss and you return it automatically. “What a wonderful surprise!” she says, touching her hands together. She looks the same as always, the same green nailpolish that matches her eyes, the same auburn hair rolling down to her shoulders, the same freckled nose, the same warm and loving eyes. Nothing at all like Redstar. She begins busying herself with putting the groceries away, stopping for a moment to snack on a pickle, apparently stymied by the lid on the jar. She hands it to you to open and you do so without thinking, feeling a rage building inside as you watch her zip around.

“I have some good news,” you say.

“Oh?” She looks up from her crouched position by the crisper in fridge, in which she was stuffing a bundle of celery. “What is it?”

“I got the promotion.”

“The executive position?”

You nod. She squeals and rushes toward to cover your face with kisses. “I’m so happy for you, darling! You’ve been working so hard and it’s all finally paid off. And-and so…with the extra money…” She looks up at you, making a little circle with her finger on your chest, but her lips already pursed in preparation for disappointment. You gently push her away and move back into the living room. She follows you.

“I’m sorry darling, I shouldn’t have mentioned it just now. We can talk about it later. For now let’s celebrate!”

CONT.

You sink into the couch. Your wife stands at the threshold between the kitchen and the darker living room. She sees the bottle of bourbon, the glass, and then the photographs. You slide the last of the three towards her. She hesitates at first, but then slides the photos to the edge of table, picks them up and begins shuffling through them, her face growing more and more severe, her eyes narrowing and gaining the fierceness of Redstar, with each picture.

“Where did you get these?” she says, with a trembling voice.

“So don’t you deny it, that’s good.”

“Richard. Who gave you these?”

You breathe slowly and deeply. You keep your jaw loose, your hands unfurled, resting them gently on your thighs. An old trick to relax the nerves, perfected from your days in high school as captain of the track team and in college as student president. It works now, as then, to keep you calm and collected. You don’t raise your voice. You don’t fidget. You look at her straight on, without pity, without feeling.

“You’re a supervillain. You’re Redstar.”

“Richard!” she says, slamming the photos down the table, her chest heaving. “Richard, darling–”

“Stop. Please just stop. Please.”

She purses her lips until they turn white, then lets out a long, audible breath. “Have you told anyone?”

“No.”

“No one else knows?”

“Just me. I took these.”

She stares into your eyes, trying to figure out if you’re lying. Or maybe one of her powers is mind-reading. In which case she’ll know in a second about Mord and will probably fly off to go take care of that loose end. But she doesn’t. Her shoulders drop. She’s so relieved that she has to lean back against the wall for a moment, to hold herself up.

“I guess that means I’m your only loose end,” you say.

“That’s not funny.”

“Who’s laughing?”

Silence. Then she steadies herself back on her feet and begins walking toward you. You don’t move a muscle, tracking her unflinchingly with your eyes. She sits down next to you and reaches for your hand but you brush it away. “Why did you do this?” she says, gesturing to the photos. “Spying on me? Explain yourself.”

You scoff. “I think, Lucy, of the two of us, I’m not the one who has some explaining to do.”

Her eyes soften and she reaches for you again but you stand up and move away, toward the kitchen boundary. When you look back, she’s scowling.

“You wouldn’t understand,” she says.

“Try me,” you say, folding your arms, at the same time thinking that she’s probably right.

“I did,” she says, after a long pause.

You unfold your arms. “What?”

“I did try, once. This isn’t the first time you’ve done this, Richard. You were always too smart for your own good. Too tenacious. And then, afterward, too principled.”

You brace the wall for support. “What are you saying? ‘This isn’t the first time’ – what does that mean? What does that mean?”

CONT.

She looks down at the table and says nothing. You go back to the breathing exercises: keep the jaw relaxed, unfurl the hands, a warm day at the beach, you’re on a hammock. It’s a warm day at the beach.

“I don’t understand how this could have happened,” Vicky mutters, looking through the photos again. “I was so careful. And you aren’t supposed to have those kinds of thoughts anymore.”

“What did you do to me? You did something. If you’re going to kill me anyway, I have a right to know. Tell me that much before you do it.”

She looks at you as incredulously as if you’d just admitted you’re secretly Lord Justice. “I can’t kill you,” she whispers.

“Because you’re not allowed?”

“Because I love you.”

“No,” you say, warning her with a finger. “No. Everything. All of this. The last six years. This marriage. This house. It’s all a lie. A sham. You never loved me,” you say. You say it calmly, as if it were simple fact of nature, as if it didn’t even bother you, even though the mere utterance of it breaks your heart. “You never–” She’s on you before you can blink, leaping from the sofa and over the table and across the room in a single bound. She grabs you by the throat and lifts you bodily a foot off the floor, as easily as if you were a hamster. Then she slams you against the wall, choking you.

“How dare you say that to me?” she screams. “How dare you say that? I don’t love you? Do you know what I’ve–” She catches herself, breathing heavily. Her lower lip trembles. “If I didn’t I love you, you’d be dead right now,” she says, in a venomous whisper. “They would have killed you the first time around.” Then she lets you go. You sink to your knees, gasping for breath, blinded by tears of pain, anguish and, secretly, of relief. A few seconds later, your wife's footsteps sound on the staircase going up to your bedroom. You crawl over to the couch, pull yourself up and sit down, holding your head in your hands.

For some reason, all you can think of is your honeymoon, how beautiful your wife looked standing against the railing of the boat, as it passed next to that great rush of water, the tips of her hair wet from the spray, the smell of her nailpolish and her shampoo raising the little hairs on the back of your neck. And the long summer nights, in which you came together again and again, resting briefly to laugh and talk and dream and hold one another.

If she didn’t love you, you’d be dead right now. Do you dare to believe her?

She returns a minute later with a glass of water and a bottle of pills, both of which she places before you on the glass table. Pink little tablets in one those orange prescription bottles. The label on the bottle reads Ambien, 10 milligrams.

“Take two,” she says. “How much did you have to drink?” She weighs the bottle of Booker in her hand. “Two should be fine,” she confirms.

>[continue]
>Write-in

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>>4916163

>>4917460
Ask her how it happend the last time. Ask her what is going to happen afterward and just what her plans are

Try and pretend to take the pills

>>4917460
> How many times has this happened before?
> If this has happened before, logic would say it's going to keep happening. So let's try to deal with this like two mature adults, instead of sweeping it under the rug and making me forget again.

>>4917460
>"Honey? Do you know really want to know why I took these pictures?"
>"It wasn't because I thought you were a supervillain, it's because, and may got strike me down if he sees fit, cheating on me."
>"Coming home so late at night with a smile on your face, me being unwilling for so long to start our family until I was sure I could support us, for the rest of our lives, made me think I was loosing you."
>"So I pray my parents forgive me, because the only reason I haven't turned these photos over to anyone is because I still love you, even in spite of the fact you work for the same people that killed my parents, I was so relieved that you weren't cheating."
>Take one of the pills not breaking eye contact.
>"I didn't know what to expect when I confronted you this afternoon. The fact this happened before, or the fact you know someone messed with my memories.
>Grab her shoulders and make her look us in the eye
>"So tell me, how long has this gone on, how long has it REALLY been, is the happiest years of my life a lie?"
>"Are you going to make me regret spending the rest of our lives together?"
>"I'll let the fact you knew someone messed with my mind slide for now, just answer this question."
this too>>4917485

>>4917485
I say we are better off pretending to be affected by the pills, then train that new superhero we will become repsonsible for to take her down

>>4917460
>...could you shift to your picture for a bit? I want to see you. Really see you for you.
>Vic, why, exactly, are you playing house with me? In general, too, actually?
>You're a super. You literally have super powers. You can have your pick of either side of the morality isle, people who are smarter than me, stronger than me, can shoot fricking laser beams from their eyes, control the cosmos, have doctorates in things that I cannot for the life of me even spell, and a decent number of them have actually come back from being dead. Why are you sticking around with the human equivalent of white toast?
>Your parents. They know?
>Was this... (waves arms around vaguely) part of anything?
>What about the whole child thing?

>>4917485
+1

>>4917495
That is probably the reason why we got mindwiped in the first place, so lets not.

>>4917485
>"Insanity is doing the exact same thing over again and expecting different results. But this isn't really about that, it's about...

>...us. Why...why get involved with this? Why cause so much pain- why...

>...why my parents?"

>>4917460
+1ing>>4917497
>>4917507
these too.

Hopefully these questions can be condensed a bit.

>>4917507
This
If it seems like she's going to mind wipe us or anything then take the pills but leave them in your mouth without swallowing them, tell her that you can't stand to be here, walk outside to the car, and shoot yourself in the thigh with the glock in the glove compartment
This way some people will see/hear this and call the cops/an ambulance. Redstar wouldn't want to reveal herself so she wouldn't come out as a supervillian and we can go to the hospital safely where the super we're going to be in charge of may come in to check on us
If no one comes then we escape the mind wiping and superstar has a *very* interesting thing to cover up/investigate

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>>4917531
Reason for not taking the pills is they could be a mind wipe. Ambien isn't pink at 10 mg

>>4917531
seems a bit farfeetched for us to be able to

>>4917539
Worth a try if we genuinely think there's a mind wiping we need to escape

>>4917531
Gonna suggest against that. She mentioned something about

>"They would have killed you the first time around.”

Keyword 'They'.

Meaning that likely she took a deal to mindwipe us in exchange for our continued life. Likely we already found out what she's up to before, tried to either get her out of it and blow the whistle on them or something else, and basically screwed up, so they know we know- or knew.

The major question here now is, was she a supervillain before she met us, or did this only happen afterwards and we discovered foul play? And if she was before, then how bad was she compared to now?

I won't get too in the weeds with my theory, but she's at least reluctant on some level. We need to see what information we can wheedle out of her. I know, again, that 4chan isn't really good with being subtle, but unless we do that (or at least try) we're likely to get stuck between Scylla and Charybdis in regards to people who want to tie up the potentially dangling thread that is us. Gotta be careful to notice context and use some critical thinking skills, people.

>>4917545
Also seems like she did try to recruit us after the first time but we rejected it

>>4917531
>>4917538
>>4917541
What part of, she isn't the one that did the brainwashing did you not get? Making a giant, obvious scene like that would tip off any snitch that is watching our house.

>>4917545
Some people are just way too quick. Like >>4917495

It's stupid. It's very clear that she still loves us, there is literally no other reason she'd go through the length of mindwiping us otherwise. We need to be serious and talk with her the WHY.

Don't jump the gun and go screaming to the heavens about it.

>>4917497
Yeah, just throwing my hat into the ring, don't take the pills. Or at least say you'd perfer the Melatonin ones, in case these aren't actually sleeping pills.

>>4917548
I suggested not taking the pills because i believe them to be the way she mindwipe us

>>4917546
Ah, right the 'too principled' part. Good catch.

>>4917485
Supporting

>>4917547
My objective isn't to get away. It's to not get mind wiped, and if dying means no more mind wipes it may be worth it
Also did you not read how I said that he'll only do what I said if he genuinely believes that he's going to get mind wiped

>>4917550
Yeah, but "and then we'll train the heroes that'll take her down"?

>>4917587
More of a long term idea. And rather than train i meant more like support. Used the wrong word there.

>>4917588
Actually, what about planning a heist on some company whose CEO is a Tony Stark type, making super suits? Our brother Phil works as some sort of aerospace engineer, surely there's some hidden power armor projects he might be working on.

Unless, of course, he's the Iron Man expy... What do we know about that scholarship he got? Could our parent's murder have been in retaliation for him acting as some sort of Boy Wonder to notBatman?!

>>4917538
The ambien being pink was a typo, I didn't realize the 10mg tablets aren't also pink.

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>>4917619
ah

>>4917607
We are supposed to be an average Joe. I dont think being a superhero ourself would fit with the nature of the quest,

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>>4917460
Not that I'm familiar with the setting, but I doubt that those pills alone are capable of erasing and rewriting a person's memories however they could be something to incapacitate us.
She went upstairs, she could have contacted an associate skilled in telepathy and memory editing.
If that's how this works then they could discover Mord while tinkering with our mind. If they get to Mord then the information he collected won't be passed onto Superstar when we inevitably fail to call him back.
The best way to protect Mord, and by extension ensure Redstar is brought to justice, would be to kill ourselves.
We have a pistol stashed in our car's glovebox. A single shot directly at the cranium would be best, to ensure that no information can be harvested post-mortem.
Richard is an ordinary man, but he can die as a hero.

>>4917682
I'd rather this not be a one shot, y'know.

>>4917682
Good build up but poor execution. If you ended it with "an hero" it would have been a 10/10, but because of this you get a 5/10.

>>4917699
I don't know what hippie dippie schizo shit you're on that makes you think otherwise but 'a hero' is correct

>>4917729
Fucking new fags can't 4chan.

>>4917743
there's no point, anon

>>4917785
Yeah you're right
>>4917729
Sorry man. I forget that most people who are on here aren't old enough to know the old ways

>>4917485
>>4917497
>>4917507
+1
>>4917490
+1, but don't take the pill. Don't try to trick her into thinking you took it, either. Just tell her that you both need to be clearheaded for this.

>>4917490
Also +, sans taking the pill.

>>4917729
An hero is....wait do I have to tell newfags what these means? Lurk moar faggot.

>>4917485
Supporting!

>>4917729
lol pathetic

>>4917485
That seems right.

We are mostly in shock and in anger, so we're going to have to deal with this properly this time

>>4917460
THE DRAMA

damn
now i want "your wife is dark lord" quest

>>4918250
There was one on here where a princess was forced to marry a dark lord. Ended up getting him to chill out, having a demon kid with him, lezzing out with our big tiddy maid friend and our formerly enslaved orc bodyguard, and becoming a dominatrix to the elven queen, her champion, and her bodyguard before OP disappeared into the mists.

>>4917472
You must want to be hurt. Don't say anything else.

>>4917729
1urk m0ar, newb

>>4918297
Go back to RISK, Iceland.

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>>4918293

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>>4918300
Shit. I've been found out.

>>4918300
>>4918301
Ladies, please, you're both pretty.

>>4918289
I seem to recall hearing somewhere that Amex jumped ship to Akun. If that's true, it's not really a surprise.

>>4918289
That quest was garbage though. Completely unreadable unless you are a faggot. This quest has good writing and a compelling story though

>>4913774
like what I'm seeing

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>>4918301
Faggot bitch.

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>>4918694

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>>4918707
Faggot bitch.

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>>4918735
Relax
Have a duck

>>4918744
You STFU.

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>>4918784
>quack

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>>4918735
>>4918784

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>>4918795
>>4918796

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>>4918884

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>>4918854
>>4918911

>>4918962
faggot

Any ideas when OP will return?

>>4919076
OP got drugged by his supervillain wife. He doesn't even remember writing this /qst/

>>4919084
Happens to the best of us

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>>4919072
this mans seething

>>4919076
Maybe all the rampant shitposting chased him off.

>>4919076
>>4919084
>>4919091
>>4919114
Apologies guys. Got caught off-guard by work today (trouble with working from home: you can take a 30 minute nap and wake up 3 hours later) and will have to post tomorrow instead. I'll make up for it with a second update tomorrow.

>>4919205
No worries get your sleep questman

>>4919205
Go to bed, wake up ready for tomorrow, and for our write ins.

>>4919205
Godspeed bossman

>>4919557
What he said.

>>4919094
this mans fagging

>>4917477 >>4917485 >>4917490 >>4917497 >>4917517 >>4917682 >>4918246
Closed. Update imminent.

You take the bottle of pills in your hand. They’re prescription. Besides the fact that you can’t get Ambien over the counter, you can see Dr. Rosenbaum’s name on the label. And the bottle is only half-full. How long has your wife been taking these? She’s staring at your throat now and you can still feel the ghost of her touch, the broken vessels throbbing with a distant pain where her slender fingers have bruised your flesh.

“I’m relieved in way,” you say, clenching the pill bottle. “I thought you were cheating on me.”

“That’s stupid,” she says, hotly. Then she hangs her head and comes to kneel in front you, taking your cheeks in her hands, turning your head so that you’ll look at her. “How could you think I would ever do that?”

“You snuck out in the middle of the night and came home like it was business as usual. What was I supposed to think?” You tap one of the photos, the pile of them now scattered all across the table and floor. “It sure as hell wasn’t this.”

“What do you want me say?”

Seeing her eyes shining with tears, the tracks they’ve left on her cheeks, and the visible white strip of teeth as she nervously works her lip, touches you in a place that your rage and hurt cannot reach. And it makes you ashamed and afraid and, yes, even a little happy. Because she does love you. She does.

“Show me your other face,” you say, in a hoarse voice you hardly recognize as your own. “Your true face.”

“But, darling, this is my–” she begins to say, but seeing your eyes, seeing the twist of your mouth, she hangs her head again. Then she lets go of your cheeks, stands up, briefly touches the end of her nose with her knuckle to stifle a sob, but afterward turns her head up, almost proudly, and presses a spot on the side of her neck. The air around her face visibly shimmers for a second, like the quivering air above a hot road, and then your wife is gone and in her place stands a stranger.

“Happy?” she says. Even her voice is different now. It’s a little deeper, more throaty, more self-assured, the voice of a lawyer who’s never lost a case, or a businesswoman who’s just closed the big deal. “Now take the pills so we can get this over with.”

You’ve spent so long studying and loving that other face that, despite the differences, you can’t help but notice the little similarities. The same shape of the nose and cheeks, the hair still wavy, all the old mannerisms – the way she holds her hips with the palms turned up, or the way she carefully pinches away a stray lock of hair from her eyes, or the way she moves her weight from leg to leg in impatience, like a little girl who needs to use the bathroom – those parts that perhaps only you know, are still there. But even so, this version of her is a little easier to hate.

“Tell me about the last time this happened.”

“No,” she says, firmly.

CONT.

“I’ll take the pills, if you’ll answer my questions,” you say. She considers this proposal, wondering at its truth. You’re not sure yourself.

“You said the same thing last time.”

“And did I?”

“No. You hid the pills in your cheek and I was forced to knock you out.”

“All the better. You can make sure this time around.”

She folds her arms, still hesitant.

“What does it matter?” you say. “I won’t remember any of it either way.”

“You said that last time too.”

“And it worked. Because it’s true.”

“I suppose.”

“So when was it?”

“On the day we got married,” she says, pausing a moment to watch your reaction. You’re thinking of wet sand. Little crabs scuttling in from the warm water. “You suspected before well then but you didn’t know for sure and you wanted to clear the air before we… and you sat me down and wanted to ‘put all the cards on the table’ and you were so insistent that I was afraid you might not go through with it, and so… I-I told you.”

“And then you wiped me so we could live happily ever after.”

“No,” she says. “That didn’t happen till after we came back from the honeymoon.”

You put the pill bottle down, gently, on the table, where it lands with a soft clack. “You’re saying I married you even after knowing who – what – you are? I went on a honeymoon after that?”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “It was only a front. You were secretly plotting to ‘rescue’ me from Communion and Antimatter the whole time. It was almost kind of sweet. Although Communion didn’t see that way. For what I asked of him, I was… but it doesn’t matter now.”

“What? What did he do to you? Did he hurt you? How?”

She just smiles sadly at you, which infuriates you all the more. You don’t know at what, at yourself for still feeling this way, or at Communion or Antimatter or whoever-the-hell for daring to lay a finger on your wife.

“They were going to kill you, Richard,” she whispers. “I couldn’t have that.”

“How long has this been going on? Obviously before we got married, but how long before that? Do your parents know? Are they even your real parents?”

“I’ve already said too much.”

“I guess you’ll have to knock me out.”

CONT.

You watch her eyes drop to your throat again and she sighs. “I was nine when they brought me in. Every once in a while Antimatter would hit a human trafficking operation for fresh recruits. This was before Nighthawk got in the scene. The traffickers had already done the hard part of breaking us in, so we made for excellent recruits. I remember, when they put us in those horrible containers, I remember thinking – hoping – that I would just be a servant – I wasn’t the prettiest girl on the boat – but I also wasn’t the ugliest…” She looks into her darkened reflection on the big wall-mounted flatscreen. “Communion picked them out personally. He chose me for the development program. I wasn’t the best in the group – or the brightest – and he knew that and he still chose me. I’ll always be grateful to him for that.”

“Antimatter has a development program?”

“Sure. Why not? Communion invented most of the technology the supercorps use. We just don’t have their facilities.”

“So your parents…”

She shakes her head. “They don’t know. They’re lucky in a way. They’ve forgotten that their daughter died of leukemia thirteen years ago, when she was only twelve years old. They’ll never have to live in that reality because of Communion. And because of me.”

“So you just – you just took over her life? Just like that?”

“Of course not. You make it sound so easy. I had to train for months. Watch old memorytapes. Do you know how hard it is to reconstruct someone from the memories their parents or their best friends had about them? It took me two years before I could get it down pat, the walk, the talk, everything. Two years and I could fool even the dog. But it was bliss. To live in a house. To have parents that loved me. Parents that I also came to love. To go to school. God, I loved school. I loved sitting on the schoolbus and listening to the girls gossip about who kissed who and who wore what to where. It was bliss. And Antimatter didn’t ask for much at the time. Monthly check-ups. Homework. Exercises. I didn’t know why then but Communion seemed to think it was important for us to have a normal life. As normal as possible given the circumstances.”

“There are more like you in Antimatter?”

“Not any more. New recruits are hard to come by now. And it’s gotten harder to maintain cover because of their telepaths. None of them can match Communion, of course, but they can at least detect tampering. And Communion isn’t as… spry as he once was. He gets tired now. He was never a fighter like us.”

CONT.

You sit in silence a while. Your wife looking off into space, reminiscing about her past, while you consider the future. It can’t go on like this. You can’t just let her wipe you again. You can’t let her keep working for Antimatter. And maybe you can’t stay married to her. Just the thought of it rips your heart in two, makes you even consider taking the pills and just letting this go. It’s only a passing thought though. You tried to rescue her before, and they made you forget, but the impulse remains.

“So in college, when we met, you were still in the fringes?”

“No, that was my first real mission.”

“What, me?”

She nods her head. “Well, not you exactly. It’s your brother we wanted.”

“Phil? What did you do? Did you mess with his mind too?”

“Of course not. It’s just surveillance. The original plan was to get with him.”

“He was married then.”

She nods. “You were just supposed to be the ‘in’, but somehow you… the plans had to be changed. Antimatter made me work for it but I’ve never wanted anything or anyone as much, then or since.” She smiles a little and it makes you sick to see that the two faces share the same smile, the same dimples.

“Why? You’re a super. You’re supposed to be with other supers.”

“That law only applies to heroes,” she says, still smiling. “And if you’re asking why you, why then, I don’t know. Maybe because of your sadness, maybe because of the way you hold it in so others won’t see it because you’re afraid of judgement, and your drive, and the way you can’t bear the suffering of others because you also suffer. I remember one time, I came to pick you up after one of your debate team competition things. I was late and in a rush, and in the hallway I see you with this girl. She’s sitting on the floor, crying into her hands and you’re sitting next to her, talking quietly, almost as if to yourself. I didn’t recognize her from the debate team and everyone else had already left. I didn’t know what to do. I was embarrassed for some reason, so I hid. But I couldn’t help picking up what you were saying and I realized that the girl had participated in the debate, but she was on the other team. They had lost and it was because of her and they had all blamed her for it. And you were trying to cheer her up by telling her about all your screwups. And it worked. You got her to laugh and she hugged you and she went away smiling. Maybe it was then. I remember I felt this pit in my stomach, this thing I’d never felt before, a despair, a fear, a different kind of fear, that maybe you might walk off with her and I’d never see you again. I’ve given up trying to figure it out. The human heart is an enigma.”

“They didn’t blame her,” you mumble, looking down at the photo of your wife shaking hands with Communion. “She blamed herself. When other people blame you, you get angry. It’s only when you blame yourself that you cry.”

CONT.

She walks over to your side, grabs one of the couch cushions, pauses, then cautiously touches your arm. “We were never going to hurt your brother. And we aren’t going to either. I won’t let them.”

“Why do you need him? He has nothing to do with supers. He’s a rocket scientist for god’s sake.”

She remains silent.

“… isn’t he?”

“I’ve said enough. Too much. You’ve even got me monologuing.” She reaches for the pill bottle, takes out two pills and drops them into the glass. They stream bubbles as they fall. She pushes the glass toward you.

“What are you going to do after this? Keep killing? Keep destroying? Take over the world?”

“Maybe the world is better off in our control. And yes, there’s always some collateral damage.”

“Like my parents?”

Grim silence.

“I had nothing to do with that mission,” she finally whispers. “If you believe nothing else, believe that.”

“It doesn’t matter. You still work for them. Every time you try to blow up a bridge or kidnap a senator there’s collateral damage. Another little boy loses his mom or dad. A mom and dad loses their little girl. You want to be a mother so much. Why can’t you understand the pain you’re causing?”

She has nothing to say that, but her eyes and jaw are set with determination. There is no remorse in them.

You pick up the glass. “If I do this,” you say. “It’s just going to happen again. Your boss let you off the hook the first time when you decided to marry me, and the second time when you spared my life, and maybe he’ll even look the other way this time. But what happens when – and I say ‘when’, not ‘if’ – this happens again? Supervillains aren’t known for their patience or their mercy. And the next time, you’ll have to explain it to our child.”

Although her face betrays no emotion, she begins fiddling with the couch cushion, poking into its body and unconsciously breaking through its fabric as easily as if it were saran wrap and not layered cotton. But she holds her tongue.

“Fine,” you say, bringing the cup to your lips, gambling the greatest gamble of your life, doing it slowly to give her ample time. And just as your tongue tastes the first drop of water, she seizes your wrist and takes the glass away.

“You really didn’t tell anyone else? No one else knows? You won’t try to do what you did before? Promise me. Promise me. Convince me.”

>[continue]
>Write-in

>>4920167
feel like telling her "That is for you to find out" then take the pills. Just a small payback, a small measurement of power in this one sided situation.

>>4920167
>Write-in
Drink the whole glass, say nothing.
The next time we figure this out, we got her where we want

>>4920167
>>Write-in
Yes that other guy.

And here is a list of things I need to do when I wake up. I also want a triple cheeseburger. I haven't eating for hours.

>Swallow pills

>>4920167

Okay, so here's the problem:

What do we DO? The problem in this situation is that it's kinda lose-lose-lose all the way down when you think about it.

Option 1: We do nothing and retain our memories, then she continues being a mass murderess and terrorist, and considering our defined personality, that kills us inside emotionally, causing us to fall out of love with her. Eventually, that causes us to probably either live in a loveless marriage, or try to run away or divorce her, VERY likely leading to our death.

Option 2: We take the pills and remove our memories. Quest essentially over as the cycle continues barring her having some fucking heavy change of heart, which is unlikely since she's been in this game since childhood.

Option 3: We do not take the pills and secretly rat her out. The bad guys know us and where we live, we get killed, and of course hated by our wife before death, and I find it unlikely that protective services work well enough to stop supervillains 100% of the time.

That's really the big three options, unless I'm missing something incredibly obvious. Really, the problem is that our wife is a legit danger to humanity, life, and free will. What she wants is honestly nothing less than the total subversion of humanity and choice to her organization's ends. It'd be different if she was some silly Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain who basically inflicted property damage and little else, but no, these are serious, life ending threats. There Is No Happy Ending, from what I can see. It's just a matter of how selfish we are, and again, our pre-determined character tells me that we're not that selfish. Kinda selfish, but not enough to not feel immense guilt.

I'm kinda at a loss as to what to do here.

Mord isn't going to stick his neck out. If we don't call him in 48 hours he'll assume we're dead and disappear forever, it's the thing he wanted to do in the first place. That and maybe call the cops on us. Is it possible to convince her that we have set up a series of such hidden traps? Enough that she has to leave us with our memories for at least a couple days? We need more time than anything.

>>4920185
Oh, and all of that completely forgets about the fact that, should we NOT take the pills and let her continue this, then should the moment come where she is captured or detained and found guilty or killed, then WE ARE COMPLICIT IN AIDING A TERRORIST. We'd get a life sentence AT THE LEAST. At the worst, freed by an insider in her terrorist team, watched EVEN CLOSER, and ultimately in debt to them that way.

No good options, really.

>>4920185
We take the pills and then we continue with our husband and work stuff intill we happen to find the USB stick we got with the information, and this time he doesnt confront her right away ?

>>4920185
>>4920189
Same here and even if we take the mindwiping it's just going to happen again. Due to her shady activities, we will inevitably get suspicious and investigate...again. Assuming she even finds out about Mort in time before he makes the info drop. So we stay married so far the MC isn't someone who will be down for it. From the sounds of it, their evil organization is already in deep shit and is fighting a losing war. The issue is she is some kind of loyalist and doesn't see it that way. Even though she knows things aren't going well. So even if we also become a bad guy which she won't like because that means we 'changed' from the man she initially fell in love with also won't fucking work even when excluding the fact their organization isn't doing so good.

Unironically the only way to win is not to play but we already married her. Our only consolation prize is at least we haven't knocked her up...yet. There is no choice that doesn't end fucking badly. I mean she is only goddamn muscle and a true believer. So potential to reason with her or convince her to adapt/reform her group. So not even that is a goddamn option.

No matter what we choose to do or not to do we are honestly kinda fucked no matter what. There isn't even an option that is 'least bad' or the lesser of two evils.

>>4920188
AND I completely forgot about Mord, who IS a loose end and could ruin literally every option EVEN WORSE if he decides to go to Superstar or public in general.

>>4920192
And then what? This whole conversation happens again. Just at a different time.

>>4920195
We try to figure out a different plan instead of just approaching her, talk with some superheroes, use our new position at our company for tech or connections

>>4920189
Well, that depends on if their telepaths can get inside her head, and that she doesn't have a contingency for that. If these pills can erase specific memories I wouldn't put it past the organization she works for to have each of their agents get a false tooth or subdermal implant that can erase all sensitive data from their mind if they're caught.

>>4920192
Already did that the first time and didn't work. She did think it was sweet and adorable but yeah. Trying to rescue her or target her organization is nonviable.

>>4920195
I kinda like Mord since shit is fucked no matter what. Might as well go full nuclear you know? At least we got out like a hero assuming we survive, die, or only get mindwiped.

>>4920198
Heroes can detect mental tampering and with our promotion guess who gets a very close look at from their people to make sure we aren't compromised? We are so fucked.

Starting to wonder if the mindwipes has diminishing returns, like its some knacking thought in the back of our head that we cant quite identify, Could see our thoughts of her having an affair was born from our old knowledge of her supervillainy

>>4920201
It would appear we tried that on our own. Know we got a whole superhero orginazation to our disposale

>>4920201
Shit, that's right. Bring up that the fact that our mind has been tampered with and that we'll probably have to go through screening for that kind of shit! That'll at least leave us with our memory and the ability to act! We can decide of everything else later.

>>4920167

>No, I didn't tell anyone. Who would I tell? Even as I realized what... who you were, I still knew that only you mattered. I... needed to know. Needed to hear you. Your... side.
>I believe you, Vicky... I believe how you feel. I believe what you are saying me. I believe you're being as genuine as... as you can be.
>I thought it's my fault, you know? That maybe it's my neglect of you that drove you to your... suspicious behaviour. Learning that you still care for me even after how we've been barely seeing each other, Day after Day.. it brought me enough joy and relief to almost make up for this... bizarre situation. But it made one thing very clear for me.
>I can't imagine my life Without You.
>No Matter What.

I just love Badfinger.

Just to clarify, because I don't want this t influence your decisions: the pills are just Ambien. While there are mindwipe pills, they tend to work like rophynol, creating a total blank. For what your wife wants she'll need to take you to a telepath. A powerful one.

I don't know about this. I mean, ratting out on Mord is a bad idea, he's definitely not going to rat out on us considering the kind of man he is, but simply taking it would just be kicking the can down the road.

But i feel like you people are overreacting when it comes to saying that if we don't do it, that we'll just fall out of love...seems to me like she's been indoctrinated, yes? We're messing with telepaths here, so, ultimately, 'Redstar' and 'Vicky' are different people. Obviously, ratting out on her is not a good idea, and neither is trying to 'rescue her'

I Think..Our best option might be to play the long game. Their leader is losing. Even if she does not see it that way now, it's obvious that the one thing we value more than the group is us. If anyone has any chance whatsoever of converting her, if not out of her indoctrinated line of thought, to the conclusion that he group is going to lose - then we might just be able to get her to stop.

I understand that this might not seem nice - after all, we're still marrying a terrorist, but butting our head against the wall is going to do nothing but leave us bloody.

>>4920197
Then the bad guys realize 'hey, there's too much heat on Redstar, what's up with that?' first port of call is going to be us if they use their smarts a bit. And as >>4920201 said, we more or less tried that after a fashion.

>>4920198
I'm not even talking about that, I mean like, basic investigation shit. If they're smart they'll be able to puzzle out that Redstar can shapeshift to a limited degree, and it'll be easy to at least narrow down her 'civilian' face. From there it's just a basic grid/background search that leads to our door. Logical ending.

>>4920202
Possible. Sadly irrelevant, and only BAD for us, if true.

>>4920209
Appreciate the clarification, but sadly that doesn't change the core of the problem, nor does it really affect our options- or lack thereof, in a way.

I'm still trying to think, but so far I got nothin' that's anything more than essentially spitting in the wind or a full field Hail Mary.

>>4920209
Ah, so the pills are a non-issue. Well, I still support my most recent proposal >>4920203

>>4920202
>>4920203
Our mind has already been tampered with by supervillains there isn't a chance in hell the superhero organization will trust us much as we are 'compromised'. They will take our info and might try to 'reverse' the damage. So...yeah it's not gonna end well. Not to mention the fact that our wife is a goddamn supervillain and we managed to get that high up..is a HUGE security break and risk. Our career is turbo fucked even if they give us a medal for being a hero. It's a goddamn consolation prize.

If our mind hasn't been tampered with we might have been able to bullshit it because the heroes will respect our want for privacy in our minds but they would still check for damage/tampering. We cannot hide the tampering that has already been done and won't be able to bullshit it away as a need for privacy.

>>4920216
>>4920213
THe only other alternative is to lay down and die, but that is simply not an option

Taking us to a telepath is a big problem because it means that other people will *know* that we did it again. What are the chances that they just decide 'he's doing it too many times, let's cut the loose end before the house falls on us'

I'm really starting to think our best bet is to not get our mindwiped, promisse we won't act out against her, and then, rather than rat her out, to find a way to play this passively

>>4920221
DOnt think the wife will give us an option on the matter, all i think we can do is that it will happen and we play it from there. We could always just pick the "Continue" option.

>>4920212
We've ALREADY had massive heartache because of the revelations. Our character is clearly not someone who can sleep soundly with this kinda thing hanging over his head. And it's not a matter of just 'oh, she got mindwhammied', it's that she's essentially been raised in this organization since CHILDHOOD. She's not under special coercion, she's just been straight up raised in their system and 100% believes in it. IS there a chance she could be shaken out of it? Sure. Is it likely? Exceedingly not. The stories you hear in the news are news specifically BECAUSE it's so rare. Redstar was probably more Redstar before she was Vicky.

Like I said, if we do nothing, we'll likely fall out of love IN that long game you propose. Will it happen instantly? No. But either 1: we just desensitize ourselves to the atrocities she's done, in which case I'd consider that a loss, and as stated, she'd likely not appreciate the kind of person we'd become, or 2: we become so depressed at her actions we can no longer take it, and we'll resolve it, in whatever way that might be, whether it be ratting her out and accepting eventual death, or just shooting ourselves and being done with the mental torture.

It's not a good look. And yet again, if we keep our memories, we're aiding and abetting a terrorist. If their group gets stopped and they're all brought in, then we're not long for freedom, either- regardless of if she's executed for Crimes Against Humanity or not.

>>4920219
I mean, yes. That's the problem. That IS the only other option. It's all bad options. Many of them long-term leading to potential death.

>>4920228
So we take the pills and gamble we find the option to do something about it the next time then ?

>>4920219
The issue is we are grasping at straws and all the options are terrible. Considering how the wife is fucking hard mode option for supervillains. Only could be worst if she was the mind rapist in question which is hell mode. on the plus side, we know our mind has been tampered with so when our company does its check up we aren't caught by surprise.

>>4920221
Every option is a big fucking problem. The best idea I got is to play passive and try to convince her to start thinking for herself instead of just being dumb muscle. This has already been proven given her desire for family which ran against the organization but she forced it through anyway. Indicating she holds rather strong maternal instincts and pair bond with us albeit twisted. However that doesn't actually fix her evil nature and grooming from childhood. It just makes it more likely she will wise up about how to be more within her interests and how the organization she is part of isn't doing so good.

Still not a very good pick because it's more trying to guide her evil rather than redeem it over so still a shit option for the MC, but would allow the wife to potentially evolve or experience her own breakthrough. It still wouldn't solve how badly it will bother the MC or many other problems. Only make it more likely that she will reconsider things within her own specific interests which gives us just a bit of breathing room.

We should ask her why she wants to get pregnant. Wouldn't that take her out of the game for 1 to 10 years depending on their 'maternity leave' policy? Which I'm assuming they have, since I doubt our wife is going to risk her baby doing missions while pregnant.

I'm wondering if we could try to get her to reform this supervillain organization from the inside out. What exactly are their goals and motivations? We could try to shift their methods from blowing up subway stations to campaigning for city hall.

>>4920232
Honestly? At this point, even taking the pills is a bad option leading to death? Why?

Because Mord. If he rats us out, then our wife knows we BSed her, and her organization knows we're too clever by half. She won't be able to protect us anymore, and may not want to (although she might, but still). Point is, our life becomes under sincere and sustained threat. And even then, since we'd forget most of this, we'd just be back to square one AGAIN. It's not a matter of 'oh we remember this and try again' like a rogue-lite. We'd be RPing in the fashion of 'we just woke up and remember none of this'.

And obviously if we come clean and tell her, she puts out a hit on him, he dies, Superstar gets suspect about why their retained PI just died/disappeared and starts sniffing around. Go to Jail/Death, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200.

It's a shitshow no matter how we try to dress it up.

>>4920236
Also we should remember that in the QM NOTE it's mentioned that this universe runs on comic book logic, so we might be able to use genre savviness to move things in ways that wouldn't always be rational or expected.

>>4920167
>"Yes, I told someone. But you won't find them, they already ran."
all these fuckers overthinking this shit

>>4920225
>IS there a chance she could be shaken out of it? Sure. Is it likely? Exceedingly not.
The question here is not about shaking. More about weak, gradual pull. The way you send a gravitational probe to divert an incoming asteroid.

Obviously the pull can work in both ways. But I'd say this sort of balancing act will be what OP has in mind for this story premise.

There will be arguments, there will be compromising and there will be questionable things done navigating between love and principles. Will we manage a redemption arc eventually, fall to darkness ourselves, or witness or even cause her to die or get imprisoned? Tune in for the next episode...

>>4920242
I do agree that people are overthinking it and that this quest is running on comic book logic rather than just normal logic.

But i guess we could offer our wife a deal, she let things be and dont mindwipe us and we give her that baby

>>4920225
>IS there a chance she could be shaken out of it? Sure. Is it likely? Exceedingly not.
Do you have a better plan? Because so far, this is the only 'chance' we have of so much as winning in this situation.
> we'll likely fall out of love IN that long game you propose.
I disagree.

The problem here is that you're rushing ahead. You seem to think that there's only two options, accepting it or being all sad and ratting her out to the heroes or killing ourselves or something.

That's fucking stupid. WE Control ourselves. We don't need to act like fucking children, who don't understand the situation. She was raised in this system - her leader is LITERALLY A FUCKING TELEPATH. To say he's used this on such an power like her is not just a guess, it's an certaintiy. Anyone who knows of this situation should be able to understand that Vicky is not Redstar.

We're supposed to be acting SMART. And the only way to act SMART. Is to convince her that she's fighting a losing battle. Soon enough her leader's going to kick the bucket, and there'll be nothing left but ashes and death. So we convince her that the smart thing to do, is jump out of the train before it derails into the fucking valley of death
> If their group gets stopped and they're all brought in, then we're not long for freedom, either- regardless of if she's executed for Crimes Against Humanity or not.
abloo-bloo bloo, because obviously the only way to do anything other than stand still is to rat her out.

This is the only option that leads to anything other than horrible death. If we accept a mindwipe, who's to say antimatter won't decide we're too high a risk? If we scream against it and kick the ground, we'll ALSO Die.

THINK For a while. You people aren't thinking.

>>4920237
I'm pretty sure they want to blow up City Hall and remake it in their own image. Again, they want the WORLD, not just a spit of land they don't have absolute dominion over. And yet again, she is DEEP into this. Has been since CHILDHOOD. She believes in them whole-heartedly and accepts and even believes their killing and terrorism as necessary, so I doubt she'd want to reform them. Strongly doubt.

>>4920236
That's presuming she doesn't want to groom her child into a mini terrorist like she was. She trusts them and would likely spin their actions as necessary. I don't think I'd feel comfortable leaving my child with someone who's a deep believer in a terrorist cabal, do you?

>>4920244
One problem with offering the baby is that we were planning on doing that anyways. We'd have to offer something that she wants but we weren't previously willing to give her.

>>4920245
I'm absolutely thinking, I just figure you're too optimistic and not wanting to take all the variables into account. Sometimes the likely outlook is just a bad one.

>>4920238
Which is why we CAN'T GET MINDWIPED.

If we don't get, we can still deal with Mord without killing him.

>>4920249
We have been holding out on her on having the baby, and we still are, remember when she tried to push the question when she came home and we gave her a none answer. She could have it right now if she wants, unless she will try to force herself on us while we are passed out or mindwiped

>>4920252
That sounded a lot less aggressive in my head and I probably shouldn't have wrote it. I apologize.

>>4920252
It's not about being optimistic, it's about TRYING TO NOT GET SCREWED

You keep moaning about how every option is a bad one, but when a good option, though unlikely, comes up, you just say it's 'too unlikely'.

THIS IS the best option. But i guess you'd just rather be overly dramatic, weep about everything and die. Either find a better solution, or take the one where we don't end biting the barrel of a gun.

>>4920256
If she was willing to do that she would have already done it, and we were waiting until we got the promotion and presumably had the money for a kid. Which we just got. If she mind wipes us, assuming nothing goes wrong we'll probably give her a kid within the year.

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>>4920178
>>4920179
The pills are just meant to incapacitate us, we can infer as much from what Redstar has told us. The actual memory editing will probably be done by Communion, and if he's as good as Redstar claims then he will discover that Mord also knows Redstar's secret when he is sifting through Richard's mind.
If we allow that to happen then we'd give Antimatter an opportunity to plug this information leak before Superstar gets wind of it but more importantly we'd endanger Mord, his wife, and potentially also our wife.

>>4920257
It doesn't sound aggressive to me, but that's not the point, moaning about how sad it is and about how bad our position is won't stop them

Sometimes, you have to be pragmatic. Sometimes, you have to force yourself to understand that the world, even a comic book one, is NOT a light switch.

There's one option that ends with the possibility of less people dying, and it's the one where we continue to love vicky.

>>4920255
I mean, yes. I was sorta pointing that out.

>>4920259
It's just I don't think it's the 'best' option, even out of a bad bunch, is where I think we're differing. I think they're all equally bad, and have as much chance of success if we were to try anything, which is to say, exceedingly slim.

So, I guess what I'm saying (and even I admit this sounds weepy and dramatic) is that I'll leave the throwing of the dice to you. I'm a bit too much of a coward to try in a quest like this. Best of luck, and I seriously mean that. You ARE trying something, at least.

>>4920167
I forgot to add this directly

I'm voting for not taking the pills and convincing vicky that doing it is just going to lead to our doom. The Telepath is most likely going to see that we found out about it again, and then we're going to get murdered for being a loose end.

We promisse to her that, despite still not liking it, we're not going to rat her out. Our ultimate goal is to convince her to get out of this burning train before it arrives on death row junction.

>>4920237
She thinks of herself as a muscle and not a thinker. Not to mention a true believer. The only in we have is her interest in family and love for us.

>>4920244
We need to get the traces of mind tampering ridden of too anon. Otherwise we are gonna get caught by the heroes when they check us to make sure we aren't compromised.

>>4920249
Overthinking her interests in us. For whatever reason we scratch her itch and get her jollies going. We know she has very strong maternal instincts and have a keen interest in love. So what can we offer to her that we previously weren't able to?

Noticed how touched she was when tried to 'rescue' her before? She doesn't mind if we know only if we care and don't try to ruin her thing. She actually adored our actions due to our love for her but got annoyed by it targeting her organization and evil interests.

See that is a way in. She wants that love and assurance for it. She wants that family and security of it. We know if she has to choose she chooses us over the organization which is why she butted heads with them over us. That is the way in but it means getting ourselves dirty so can we live with that? Can we use her maternal instincts and love against her?

>>4920188
> Mord isn't going to stick his neck out. If we don't call him in 48 hours he'll assume we're dead and disappear forever
I thought the implication was that if we don't call him back in 48 hours then he would go to Superstar with the information he had collected.
Uprooting his life, severing all contact with his employers and dropping off the map makes no sense.

>>4920272
We are pretty much her rock. We give her something to cling onto when times are hard and we are her giving her a sense of normalacy that she desperately crave

>>4920273
Well Mord said he gave us all that he had. Unless he lied to our face and kept a backup of evidence just in case, though I don't think that's likely. He gave impressions of knowing he's out of depth here.

>>4920272
Don't try to use our 'kid' as a bargaining chip, that's retarded.

We should use our child like an force. She's a believer in the cause, but she's not a zealot - she KNOWS her leader, the lifeblood of the movement, is getting older and older, she LOVES US, she WANTS to have a child

What do we do? We reassure that we, despite not liking it, won't rat out on her. We separate 'vicky' and 'redstar' (because they ARE different people - redstar is an identity created by Communion through a lifetime of brainwashing), we get Vicky pregnant, and we, slowly, but surely, convince her

But here's the thing, trying to play white knight and say "MURDER IS BAD!" wont work for a lifetime of indoctrination. Redstar may be a true believer, but that doesn't mean she's a moron. Convincing her that she's just dooming heself and her child by fighting a fight they have literally no way of winning whatsoever, convincing her that all those deaths ARE NOT Justified, but NOT from an "You're wrong" viewpoint, but from an "You will not win, stop making sacrifices that lead to nothing"

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>>4920261
>>4920185

Once again, I would like to advertise suicide by traumatic brain injury as a potential solution.
It provides the greatest chance that Mord will go undetected for the 48 hour grace period, and by extension that Superstar will receive key information exposing Redstar's identity.
This gives the heroes a chance to capture and imprison Redstar, which would keep her from harming others.

>>4920273
In this >>4914118 post Mord asks if he needs to disappear, and he's already disappearing for a few days. I'm assuming that if Mord doesn't hear from us he's going to assume that the villains know about him and are coming after him.

>>4920282
>yeah bro let's get rid of the one thing stopping the indoctrinated super terrorist from going absolutely shit crazy, that can't end wrong in any way possible

>>4920282
Eh, it's meta, but I don't want the mc to die so that I can keep playing.