Chapter 17
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~Grease, I'm going to have to send you a thank you card.~ Jack was contemplating his good fortune at Grease seemingly hellbent on getting Sass laid as he managed to drag her to her bedroom, "How fortunate you have labels." He commented as he found the room with a placard that read: SASS Team Leader Sass was of a mixed mind about things. She seemed rather outspoken about not going along with this. Verbally, she was protesting the whole way to her room. However, she put up exactly no amount of actual physical resistance to being brought here. Just as they got to her door, Sass called out, "GRIFTER!" Jack stopped and looked down the corridor. Grifter, in full gear had just walked out of a room further down. She looked around as her name was called out and seemed taken off guard. Sass waved, "Is there some sort of pressing matter? You seem upset." She looked at Jack, "I'm terribly sorry. It looks like I need to take a rain-" Grifter cut in, "Everything is fine." Sass looked up at her and spoke through gritted teeth, "Grif. I know for a fact you were on monitor-" Grifter held up a hand and said, "Actually Goldie wanted to take over. It seems like it's going to be a slow day. So you take as much time as you need and don't worry about anything." She turned to face Jack, "Grease texted me." Then gave him a thumbs-up, "Please take care of Sass here." Jack returned the thumbs up, "One full body rub that ends happily, coming up!" It's hard to look surprised while wearing a gas mask, but Grifter somehow managed to pull it off, "Oh Really?" Sass mouthed the words, 'HELP ME'. Jack nodded, "Yup. You want one later?" Jack held up his hands and wiggled, "My mom used to say I had magic fingers." Grifter tilted her head to the side, "You gave your mother body rubs?" Jack nodded, "Well, shoulder rubs. At the end there it helped her sleep. The chemo was rather intense and she had a-" His voice trailed off as he fell into a thousand yard stare. Time passed and Sass started looking concerned. She waved a hand in front of Jack's face, "You okay?" He jumped a little, "What? Oh. Sorry. Just... remembering things I'd rather not deal with." He forced a smile, "Sorry to ruin the mood." He took Sass' hand and pressed it against the biometric scanner next to her room. A laser played along her hand then the door opened with a whir, sliding into the wall. He gestured into the room, "Shall we?" Sass abruptly yanked her hand away, "Look kid, you are sweet and lovely and nice and you look hot but the fact is you are jailbait and I can't afford any trouble for the team right now Grif please show him out." She spoke in one, long run-on sentence, grabbed Jack's hand with both hands and shook it while using said handshake to maneuver past him and get inside the room. She let go, slapped the panel on the other side, and locked the door as soon as it was closed. Sass stood there at the door, sighed, and gently rested her forehead against it. A moment later she jumped out of her skin when she heard Jack say in her ear, "What's jailbait?" She turned to see Jack floating in the air next to her head. She backed up, "How the...?" Jack smirked, "Teleporter. Now explain jailbait." Sass blinked as she took several steps away, "You are like... what? Sixteen? Seventeen? The age of consent is eighteen. So-so-so-" Jack cut her off, "I'm twenty eight." He sounded a tad bit sad at this admission, "And while I find your attempt to compliment me quite charming, I don't like being insulted to my face." Sass froze for a moment, the squinted, "Excuse me?" Jack walked over to the bed and sat down on it, "Look, I was born at night, but not last night." He gestured to his face, "Yeah, I get it, I look like I'm thirty five, but I swear I'm only twenty eight." He sighed and let his shoulders slump as he hung his head, "Do you have any idea what it's like to be twenty eight and know you are already over the hill?" He shook his head slowly, "I'm going to wind up living alone with a house full of budgies." Sass slowly walked over closer, "Wait... you look... thirty five?" She slowly sat down on the bed next to him, "What do you mean, over the hill?" She gestured at him, "You can fly, you can teleport, you can heal! That's amazing!" Jack looked up, "I can glide, I can teleport about ten feet, and I can't fully heal people. Back home, I'm a loser." He reached over to poke her. There was a flare and the ache was gone. He shrugged, "That was the best I could do and that was just sad. You heard of Mister Right?" He hooked a thumb at himself, "Well, back home the ladies call me Mister Swipe Right." She narrowed her eyes, "Uh... here you swipe left to reject someone." Jack blinked, "Really? Man, this place is strange." Sass stopped doing anything other than looking at her arm. She slowly flexed her fingers as she muttered, "Yeah... this sure is a strange world." She looked up at Jack, "Angel, listen to me. I don't know what things are like back in your world. I just sort of assumed your world was like heaven, but now that I'm talking to you, it sounds like you have problems, they just come in different flavors." Jack bobbed his head, "You could say that." She put a hand on his shoulder, "I get you see things differently, so let me explain things from how I see it." She held up her once broken arm, "You helping heal this is nothing less than a godsend. You might think it's a minor power, but we could really use someone like you around here." She took a deep breath, "And you do look really young. You might actually be twenty eight, but you look half that." She averted her eyes and lowered her voice, "And good looking to boot." Jack turned to look at the floor. His grin faded away and his tone shifted to something far more serious, "I feel like something is going on here. Like... you seem... I don't know. There's a tension here." He looked sideways at Sass, "You seem to be the most on edge. I can tell when someone is desperate and that's you. What's going on with you?" Sass' eyes darted sideways to look at Jack. Her shoulders collapsed as she slumped forward, "Good eyes." She rubbed her eyes, then dragged her hand down her face, "Being a superhero team without selling out isn't easy. None of us want to get sponsors, but making ends meet isn't easy." Her jaw tightened, "And then there-" She stopped mid-sentence before looking at Jack, "You sure you want to hear this?" Jack had felt the mood was ruined a while ago. Since it didn't seem like he was getting laid any time soon, he'd changed gears and was actually feeling concerned about her. He had no respect for people who got in debt because they were foolish, or people who didn't prepare for bad times, but he did respect people who worked hard and tried to get ahead, and had a soft spot for people who just had relentlessly bad luck. He nodded once to her and gestured for her to continue. She abruptly leaned back and flopped back on the bed. She stared at the ceiling as she monologued, "It's my mom. My Mom is All-Star, the leader of the caretakers who took out the Anti-Christ. I've forever been in her shadow." She flipped her hand into the air, "Which wouldn't be such a problem if she wasn't such a woman-slut." Jack blinked at the unusual phrasing. "Excuse my french, but it's the truth." She threw her arm over her eyes, "And dad knew it, but he was a Delta and she is a Sigma so you know how those power dynamics work." He shook his head, "No. I don't." She peered at him from under her arm, "Power rating goes Zed, which is normies, then epsilon, delta, gamma, beta, alpha, and finally, sigma. The original rating system was blown out by people like my mom, so they added Sigma above Alpha." Jack squinted and muttered, "That... sounds familiar for some reason." She covered her eyes as she continued, "So mom, being the most powerful and popular superhero on earth got all the men should could stand. Dad put up with it, especially because she was rich, but unfortunately he started abusing Two-X and Bries." Jack interrupted, "Explain Two-X and Bries." She peeked at him again, "You don't have that shit on your planet?" She covered her eyes again, "Lucky you. I hope you never find any. Two X is a doubler formula. It effectually doubles your monad efficiency, but only for short periods of time. The downside is, it doesn't last long, the organic damage afterwords is terrible, and it is very addictive, both mentally and physically" She let out a sigh, "Now Body Rehabilitation Injections or a Bee Are Eye, or Bries as everyone calls them, properly used, are a godsend, but expensive as hell. And dangerous to use without a trained medical technician. The government regulates that stuff." Sass took her arm away to look at Jack directly, "For good reason. I know people claim it's because the American Medical Association doesn't want the competition, but I've seen people use that shit in a fight to keep going and really fudge themselves up. It heals you rapidly, but it doesn't set bones or put organs back in the right place. Imagine your arm heals with a missing finger, or a rib sticking into your lung. Yeah, you are 'healed', but it's unsafe." She folded her hands on her chest and looked at the ceiling, "I had no clue it was going on. Mom didn't care. In the short term, you build up a tolerance to it, so you have to use more and more to heal the same amount. And if you can afford it, which Dad could with Mom's money, it was a good way to offset the damage caused by the two-X." Jack moved back on the bed to look down at her, "I can hear a 'but' coming." "Long term abuse of Bries leads to cancer." Jack raised a finger, "Wait. Shouldn't it heal cancer?" She shook her head, "Oh hell no. In fact, bries and flash healing aggravates cancer. Bries work by detecting for damage in the body and then making your body's cells in that area revert to stem cells. The stem cells rapidly reproduce and then, depending on where they are in the body, take the cue from its proximity to other cells to then develop into whatever cell is needed in that area. Some of the more expensive tailored Bries will grow new specific organs. The problem is the same processes that allows that to work are the same processes that allows cancer to get out of control in your body." "Wait... your dad was injecting himself with a drug that causes cancer?" She tightly closed her eyes and shrugged before continuing, "Not... exactly. Used infrequently, it actually prevents it, to some extent. Everyone has some cancer cells. A B.R.I. will boost your immune system and hoover that crud right up, but if you abuse the drug, or if cancer has advanced too far, the drug is very dangerous." Jack covered his mouth with one hand, "So what you are saying is..." "By the time my dad figured out something had gone wrong, he was in stage four." She covered her eyes again, "But that wasn't the problem. Mom rushed to his side. She took time off of work. She did everything to care for him... for about six months." She whipped her arm off her eyes and pounded a fist into the bed hard enough to make the whole bed shake, "And Dad started to get better." Jack squinted, "Huh?" She nodded, "Six. Years. He kept getting better, worse, better, worse. He was declared terminal five times. Five time he was supposed to die and then he managed to pull through. Mom was only willing to put on a show of being a devoted wife so long." She snorted, "She was having an affair with Wonder Guy the night dad finally died in the hospital. I was there. Mom never showed up. Her excuse?" Sass started talking in a sarcastic tone, "I thought he was going to pull through again." She clenched both fists and hit the bed with both at the same time, propelling herself upright, "I hate her. I hate her so, goddamn, much. The only reason I talk to her is dad begged me to forgive her on his death bed." She shook her head slowly, "I talk to her, I have forgiven her like dad asked, but I have no RESPECT for her." She gestured around the room, "That's why I formed the Rascals, along with Grifter. We both got an axe to grind with our parents and want to show them up by being better superheroes than they ever were." She laughed bitterly and looked at Jack, "Sorry to lay this all on you. It's been eating at me late...lee?" She tilted her head to the side, "You okay?" Jack was trying hard not to cry. The details were different, but the situation described hit entirely too close to home. He remembered taking care of his mother as she fought cancer and how his father was a scumbag who cheated on her. How he kept trying to blame her for all their problems. How late at night he could hear his father rant outside when he got drunk, talking about how much god hated him. How if there was a god, why didn't he just hurry up and kill her? Here, right in front of him, was his inter-dimensional soulmate. His very own Ka made manifest. He had been an angry man for so long. Now, finally, he had found someone who shared his pain. Jack was so moved that he was at a complete loss of words. He had no idea how to explain to her that he saw with her eyes, felt with her heart. He arrived here merely hoping to get his rocks off. This was a game and he was hunting for prey, but instead he found someone who's spirit he wanted to heal. He thought about what he wished for so many years ago when he felt he was alone, with the weight of the world on his back. If he was in her shoes, what would have made his life, just a little bit easier? And so he made up his mind. "I am going to bang your brains out."
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~Grease, I'm going to have to send you a thank you card.~ Jack was contemplating his good fortune at Grease seemingly hellbent on getting Sass laid as he managed to drag her to her bedroom, "How fortunate you have labels." He commented as he found the room with a placard that read: SASS Team Leader Sass was of a mixed mind about things. She seemed rather outspoken about not going along with this. Verbally, she was protesting the whole way to her room. However, she put up exactly no amount of actual physical resistance to being brought here. Just as they got to her door, Sass called out, "GRIFTER!" Jack stopped and looked down the corridor. Grifter, in full gear had just walked out of a room further down. She looked around as her name was called out and seemed taken off guard. Sass waved, "Is there some sort of pressing matter? You seem upset." She looked at Jack, "I'm terribly sorry. It looks like I need to take a rain-" Grifter cut in, "Everything is fine." Sass looked up at her and spoke through gritted teeth, "Grif. I know for a fact you were on monitor-" Grifter held up a hand and said, "Actually Goldie wanted to take over. It seems like it's going to be a slow day. So you take as much time as you need and don't worry about anything." She turned to face Jack, "Grease texted me." Then gave him a thumbs-up, "Please take care of Sass here." Jack returned the thumbs up, "One full body rub that ends happily, coming up!" It's hard to look surprised while wearing a gas mask, but Grifter somehow managed to pull it off, "Oh Really?" Sass mouthed the words, 'HELP ME'. Jack nodded, "Yup. You want one later?" Jack held up his hands and wiggled, "My mom used to say I had magic fingers." Grifter tilted her head to the side, "You gave your mother body rubs?" Jack nodded, "Well, shoulder rubs. At the end there it helped her sleep. The chemo was rather intense and she had a-" His voice trailed off as he fell into a thousand yard stare. Time passed and Sass started looking concerned. She waved a hand in front of Jack's face, "You okay?" He jumped a little, "What? Oh. Sorry. Just... remembering things I'd rather not deal with." He forced a smile, "Sorry to ruin the mood." He took Sass' hand and pressed it against the biometric scanner next to her room. A laser played along her hand then the door opened with a whir, sliding into the wall. He gestured into the room, "Shall we?" Sass abruptly yanked her hand away, "Look kid, you are sweet and lovely and nice and you look hot but the fact is you are jailbait and I can't afford any trouble for the team right now Grif please show him out." She spoke in one, long run-on sentence, grabbed Jack's hand with both hands and shook it while using said handshake to maneuver past him and get inside the room. She let go, slapped the panel on the other side, and locked the door as soon as it was closed. Sass stood there at the door, sighed, and gently rested her forehead against it. A moment later she jumped out of her skin when she heard Jack say in her ear, "What's jailbait?" She turned to see Jack floating in the air next to her head. She backed up, "How the...?" Jack smirked, "Teleporter. Now explain jailbait." Sass blinked as she took several steps away, "You are like... what? Sixteen? Seventeen? The age of consent is eighteen. So-so-so-" Jack cut her off, "I'm twenty eight." He sounded a tad bit sad at this admission, "And while I find your attempt to compliment me quite charming, I don't like being insulted to my face." Sass froze for a moment, the squinted, "Excuse me?" Jack walked over to the bed and sat down on it, "Look, I was born at night, but not last night." He gestured to his face, "Yeah, I get it, I look like I'm thirty five, but I swear I'm only twenty eight." He sighed and let his shoulders slump as he hung his head, "Do you have any idea what it's like to be twenty eight and know you are already over the hill?" He shook his head slowly, "I'm going to wind up living alone with a house full of budgies." Sass slowly walked over closer, "Wait... you look... thirty five?" She slowly sat down on the bed next to him, "What do you mean, over the hill?" She gestured at him, "You can fly, you can teleport, you can heal! That's amazing!" Jack looked up, "I can glide, I can teleport about ten feet, and I can't fully heal people. Back home, I'm a loser." He reached over to poke her. There was a flare and the ache was gone. He shrugged, "That was the best I could do and that was just sad. You heard of Mister Right?" He hooked a thumb at himself, "Well, back home the ladies call me Mister Swipe Right." She narrowed her eyes, "Uh... here you swipe left to reject someone." Jack blinked, "Really? Man, this place is strange." Sass stopped doing anything other than looking at her arm. She slowly flexed her fingers as she muttered, "Yeah... this sure is a strange world." She looked up at Jack, "Angel, listen to me. I don't know what things are like back in your world. I just sort of assumed your world was like heaven, but now that I'm talking to you, it sounds like you have problems, they just come in different flavors." Jack bobbed his head, "You could say that." She put a hand on his shoulder, "I get you see things differently, so let me explain things from how I see it." She held up her once broken arm, "You helping heal this is nothing less than a godsend. You might think it's a minor power, but we could really use someone like you around here." She took a deep breath, "And you do look really young. You might actually be twenty eight, but you look half that." She averted her eyes and lowered her voice, "And good looking to boot." Jack turned to look at the floor. His grin faded away and his tone shifted to something far more serious, "I feel like something is going on here. Like... you seem... I don't know. There's a tension here." He looked sideways at Sass, "You seem to be the most on edge. I can tell when someone is desperate and that's you. What's going on with you?" Sass' eyes darted sideways to look at Jack. Her shoulders collapsed as she slumped forward, "Good eyes." She rubbed her eyes, then dragged her hand down her face, "Being a superhero team without selling out isn't easy. None of us want to get sponsors, but making ends meet isn't easy." Her jaw tightened, "And then there-" She stopped mid-sentence before looking at Jack, "You sure you want to hear this?" Jack had felt the mood was ruined a while ago. Since it didn't seem like he was getting laid any time soon, he'd changed gears and was actually feeling concerned about her. He had no respect for people who got in debt because they were foolish, or people who didn't prepare for bad times, but he did respect people who worked hard and tried to get ahead, and had a soft spot for people who just had relentlessly bad luck. He nodded once to her and gestured for her to continue. She abruptly leaned back and flopped back on the bed. She stared at the ceiling as she monologued, "It's my mom. My Mom is All-Star, the leader of the caretakers who took out the Anti-Christ. I've forever been in her shadow." She flipped her hand into the air, "Which wouldn't be such a problem if she wasn't such a woman-slut." Jack blinked at the unusual phrasing. "Excuse my french, but it's the truth." She threw her arm over her eyes, "And dad knew it, but he was a Delta and she is a Sigma so you know how those power dynamics work." He shook his head, "No. I don't." She peered at him from under her arm, "Power rating goes Zed, which is normies, then epsilon, delta, gamma, beta, alpha, and finally, sigma. The original rating system was blown out by people like my mom, so they added Sigma above Alpha." Jack squinted and muttered, "That... sounds familiar for some reason." She covered her eyes as she continued, "So mom, being the most powerful and popular superhero on earth got all the men should could stand. Dad put up with it, especially because she was rich, but unfortunately he started abusing Two-X and Bries." Jack interrupted, "Explain Two-X and Bries." She peeked at him again, "You don't have that shit on your planet?" She covered her eyes again, "Lucky you. I hope you never find any. Two X is a doubler formula. It effectually doubles your monad efficiency, but only for short periods of time. The downside is, it doesn't last long, the organic damage afterwords is terrible, and it is very addictive, both mentally and physically" She let out a sigh, "Now Body Rehabilitation Injections or a Bee Are Eye, or Bries as everyone calls them, properly used, are a godsend, but expensive as hell. And dangerous to use without a trained medical technician. The government regulates that stuff." Sass took her arm away to look at Jack directly, "For good reason. I know people claim it's because the American Medical Association doesn't want the competition, but I've seen people use that shit in a fight to keep going and really fudge themselves up. It heals you rapidly, but it doesn't set bones or put organs back in the right place. Imagine your arm heals with a missing finger, or a rib sticking into your lung. Yeah, you are 'healed', but it's unsafe." She folded her hands on her chest and looked at the ceiling, "I had no clue it was going on. Mom didn't care. In the short term, you build up a tolerance to it, so you have to use more and more to heal the same amount. And if you can afford it, which Dad could with Mom's money, it was a good way to offset the damage caused by the two-X." Jack moved back on the bed to look down at her, "I can hear a 'but' coming." "Long term abuse of Bries leads to cancer." Jack raised a finger, "Wait. Shouldn't it heal cancer?" She shook her head, "Oh hell no. In fact, bries and flash healing aggravates cancer. Bries work by detecting for damage in the body and then making your body's cells in that area revert to stem cells. The stem cells rapidly reproduce and then, depending on where they are in the body, take the cue from its proximity to other cells to then develop into whatever cell is needed in that area. Some of the more expensive tailored Bries will grow new specific organs. The problem is the same processes that allows that to work are the same processes that allows cancer to get out of control in your body." "Wait... your dad was injecting himself with a drug that causes cancer?" She tightly closed her eyes and shrugged before continuing, "Not... exactly. Used infrequently, it actually prevents it, to some extent. Everyone has some cancer cells. A B.R.I. will boost your immune system and hoover that crud right up, but if you abuse the drug, or if cancer has advanced too far, the drug is very dangerous." Jack covered his mouth with one hand, "So what you are saying is..." "By the time my dad figured out something had gone wrong, he was in stage four." She covered her eyes again, "But that wasn't the problem. Mom rushed to his side. She took time off of work. She did everything to care for him... for about six months." She whipped her arm off her eyes and pounded a fist into the bed hard enough to make the whole bed shake, "And Dad started to get better." Jack squinted, "Huh?" She nodded, "Six. Years. He kept getting better, worse, better, worse. He was declared terminal five times. Five time he was supposed to die and then he managed to pull through. Mom was only willing to put on a show of being a devoted wife so long." She snorted, "She was having an affair with Wonder Guy the night dad finally died in the hospital. I was there. Mom never showed up. Her excuse?" Sass started talking in a sarcastic tone, "I thought he was going to pull through again." She clenched both fists and hit the bed with both at the same time, propelling herself upright, "I hate her. I hate her so, goddamn, much. The only reason I talk to her is dad begged me to forgive her on his death bed." She shook her head slowly, "I talk to her, I have forgiven her like dad asked, but I have no RESPECT for her." She gestured around the room, "That's why I formed the Rascals, along with Grifter. We both got an axe to grind with our parents and want to show them up by being better superheroes than they ever were." She laughed bitterly and looked at Jack, "Sorry to lay this all on you. It's been eating at me late...lee?" She tilted her head to the side, "You okay?" Jack was trying hard not to cry. The details were different, but the situation described hit entirely too close to home. He remembered taking care of his mother as she fought cancer and how his father was a scumbag who cheated on her. How he kept trying to blame her for all their problems. How late at night he could hear his father rant outside when he got drunk, talking about how much god hated him. How if there was a god, why didn't he just hurry up and kill her? Here, right in front of him, was his inter-dimensional soulmate. His very own Ka made manifest. He had been an angry man for so long. Now, finally, he had found someone who shared his pain. Jack was so moved that he was at a complete loss of words. He had no idea how to explain to her that he saw with her eyes, felt with her heart. He arrived here merely hoping to get his rocks off. This was a game and he was hunting for prey, but instead he found someone who's spirit he wanted to heal. He thought about what he wished for so many years ago when he felt he was alone, with the weight of the world on his back. If he was in her shoes, what would have made his life, just a little bit easier? And so he made up his mind. "I am going to bang your brains out."
~Grease, I'm going to have to send you a thank you card.~ Jack was contemplating his good fortune at Grease seemingly hellbent on getting Sass laid as he managed to drag her to her bedroom, "How fortunate you have labels." He commented as he found the room with a placard that read: SASS Team Leader Sass was of a mixed mind about things. She seemed rather outspoken about not going along with this. Verbally, she was protesting the whole way to her room. However, she put up exactly no amount of actual physical resistance to being brought here. Just as they got to her door, Sass called out, "GRIFTER!" Jack stopped and looked down the corridor. Grifter, in full gear had just walked out of a room further down. She looked around as her name was called out and seemed taken off guard. Sass waved, "Is there some sort of pressing matter? You seem upset." She looked at Jack, "I'm terribly sorry. It looks like I need to take a rain-" Grifter cut in, "Everything is fine." Sass looked up at her and spoke through gritted teeth, "Grif. I know for a fact you were on monitor-" Grifter held up a hand and said, "Actually Goldie wanted to take over. It seems like it's going to be a slow day. So you take as much time as you need and don't worry about anything." She turned to face Jack, "Grease texted me." Then gave him a thumbs-up, "Please take care of Sass here." Jack returned the thumbs up, "One full body rub that ends happily, coming up!" It's hard to look surprised while wearing a gas mask, but Grifter somehow managed to pull it off, "Oh Really?" Sass mouthed the words, 'HELP ME'. Jack nodded, "Yup. You want one later?" Jack held up his hands and wiggled, "My mom used to say I had magic fingers." Grifter tilted her head to the side, "Yougave your mother body rubs?" Jack nodded, "Well, shoulder rubs. At the end there it helped her sleep. The chemo was rather intense and she had a-" His voice trailed off as he fell into a thousand yard stare. Time passed and Sass started looking concerned. She waved a hand in frontof Jack's face, "You okay?" He jumped a little, "What? Oh. Sorry. Just... remembering things I'd rather not deal with." He forced a smile, "Sorry to ruin the mood." He took Sass' hand and pressed it against the biometric scanner next to her room. A laser played along her hand then the door opened with a whir, sliding into the wall. He gestured into the room, "Shall we?" Sass abruptly yanked her hand away, "Look kid, you are sweet and lovely and nice and you look hot but the fact is you are jailbait and I can't afford any trouble for the team right now Grif please show him out." She spoke in one, long run-on sentence, grabbed Jack's hand with both hands and shook it while using said handshake to maneuver past him and get inside the room. She let go, slapped the panel on the other side, and locked the door as soon as it was closed. Sass stood there at the door, sighed, and gently rested her forehead against it. A moment later she jumped out of her skin when she heard Jack say in her ear, "What's jailbait?" She turned to see Jack floating in the air next to her head. She backed up, "How the...?" Jack smirked, "Teleporter. Now explain jailbait." Sass blinked as she took several steps away, "You are like... what? Sixteen? Seventeen? The age of consent is eighteen. So-so-so-" Jack cut her off, "I'm twenty eight." He sounded a tad bit sad at this admission, "And while I find your attempt to compliment me quite charming, I don't like being insulted to my face." Sass froze for a moment, the squinted, "Excuse me?" Jack walked over to the bed and sat down on it, "Look, I was born at night, but not last night." He gestured to his face, "Yeah, I get it, I look like I'm thirty five, but I swear I'm only twenty eight." He sighed and let his shoulders slump as he hung his head, "Do you have any idea what it's like to be twenty eight and know you are already over the hill?" He shook his head slowly, "I'm going to wind up living alone with a house full of budgies." Sass slowly walked over closer, "Wait... you look... thirty five?" She slowly sat down on the bed next to him, "What do you mean, over the hill?" She gestured at him, "You can fly, you can teleport, you can heal! That's amazing!" Jack looked up, "I can glide, I can teleport about ten feet, and I can't fully heal people. Back home, I'm a loser." He reached over to poke her. There was a flare and the ache was gone. He shrugged, "That was the best I could do and that was just sad. You heard of Mister Right?" He hooked a thumb at himself, "Well, back home the ladies call me Mister Swipe Right." She narrowed her eyes, "Uh... here you swipe left to reject someone." Jack blinked, "Really? Man, this place is strange." Sass stopped doing anything other than looking at her arm. She slowly flexed her fingers as she muttered, "Yeah... this sure is a strange world." She looked up at Jack, "Angel, listen to me. I don't know what things are like back in your world. I just sort of assumed your world was like heaven, but now that I'm talking to you, it sounds like you have problems, they just come in different flavors." Jack bobbed his head, "You could say that." She put a hand on his shoulder, "I get you see things differently, so let me explain things from how I see it." She held up her once broken arm, "You helping heal this is nothing less than a godsend. You might think it's a minor power, but we could really use someone like you around here." She took a deep breath, "And you do look really young. You might actually be twenty eight, but you look half that." She averted her eyes and lowered her voice, "And good looking to boot." Jack turned to look at the floor. His grin faded away and his tone shifted to something far more serious, "I feel like something is going on here. Like... you seem... I don't know. There's a tension here." He looked sideways at Sass, "You seem to be the most on edge. I can tell when someone is desperate and that's you. What's going on with you?" Sass' eyes darted sideways to look at Jack. Her shoulders collapsed as she slumped forward, "Good eyes." She rubbed her eyes, then dragged her hand down her face, "Being a superhero team without selling out isn't easy. None of us want to get sponsors, but making ends meet isn't easy." Her jaw tightened, "And then there-" She stopped mid-sentence before looking at Jack, "You sure you want to hear this?" Jack had felt the mood was ruined a while ago. Since it didn't seem like he was getting laid any time soon, he'd changed gears and was actually feeling concerned about her. He had no respect for people who got in debt because they were foolish, or people who didn't prepare for bad times, but he did respect people who worked hard and tried to get ahead, and had a soft spot for people who just had relentlessly bad luck. He nodded once to her and gestured for her to continue. She abruptly leaned back and flopped back on the bed. She stared at the ceiling as she monologued, "It's my mom. My Mom is All-Star, the leader of the caretakers who took out the Anti-Christ. I've forever been in her shadow." She flipped her hand into the air, "Which wouldn't be such a problem if she wasn't such a woman-slut." Jack blinked at the unusual phrasing. "Excuse my french, but it's the truth." She threw her arm over her eyes, "And dad knew it, but he was a Delta and she is a Sigma so you know how those power dynamics work." He shook his head, "No. I don't." She peered at him from under her arm, "Power rating goes Zed, which is normies, then epsilon, delta, gamma, beta, alpha, and finally, sigma. The original rating system was blown out by people like my mom, so they added Sigma above Alpha." Jack squinted and muttered, "That... sounds familiar for some reason." She covered her eyes as she continued, "So mom, being the most powerful and popular superhero on earth got all the men should could stand. Dad put up with it, especially because she was rich, but unfortunately he started abusing Two-X and Bries." Jack interrupted, "Explain Two-X and Bries." She peeked at him again, "You don't have that shit on your planet?" She covered her eyes again, "Lucky you. I hope you never find any. Two X is a doubler formula. It effectually doubles your monad efficiency, but only for short periods of time. The downside is, it doesn't last long, the organic damage afterwords is terrible, and it is very addictive, both mentally and physically" She let out a sigh, "Now Body Rehabilitation Injections or a Bee Are Eye, or Bries as everyone calls them, properly used, are a godsend, but expensive as hell. And dangerous to use without a trained medical technician. The government regulates that stuff." Sass took her arm away to look at Jack directly, "For good reason. I know people claim it's because the American Medical Association doesn't want the competition, but I've seen people use that shit in a fight to keep going and really fudge themselves up. It heals you rapidly, but it doesn't set bones or put organs back in the right place. Imagine your arm heals with a missing finger, or a rib sticking into your lung. Yeah, you are 'healed', but it's unsafe." She folded her hands on her chest and looked at the ceiling, "I had no clue it was going on. Mom didn't care. In the short term, you build up a tolerance to it, so you have to use more and more to heal the same amount. And if you can afford it, which Dad could with Mom's money, it was a good way to offset the damage caused by the two-X." Jack moved back on the bed to look down at her, "I can hear a 'but' coming." "Long term abuse of Bries leads to cancer." Jack raised a finger, "Wait. Shouldn't it heal cancer?" She shook her head, "Oh hell no. In fact, bries and flash healing aggravates cancer. Bries work by detecting for damage in the body and then making your body's cells in that area revert to stem cells. The stem cells rapidly reproduce and then, depending on where they are in the body, take the cue from its proximity to other cells to then develop into whatever cell is needed in that area. Some of the more expensive tailored Bries will grow new specific organs. The problem is the same processes that allows that to work are the same processes that allows cancer to get out of control in your body." "Wait... your dad was injecting himself with a drug that causes cancer?" She tightly closed her eyes and shrugged before continuing, "Not... exactly. Used infrequently, it actually prevents it, to some extent. Everyone has some cancer cells. A B.R.I. will boost your immune system and hoover that crud right up, but if you abuse the drug, or if cancer has advanced too far, the drug is very dangerous." Jack covered his mouth with one hand, "So what you are saying is..." "By the time my dad figured out something had gone wrong, he was in stage four." She covered her eyes again, "But that wasn't the problem. Mom rushed to his side. She took time off of work. She did everything to care for him... for about six months." She whipped her arm off her eyes and pounded a fist into the bed hard enough to make the whole bed shake, "And Dad started to get better." Jack squinted, "Huh?" She nodded, "Six. Years. He kept getting better, worse, better, worse. He was declared terminal five times. Five time he was supposed to die and then he managed to pull through. Mom was only willing to put on a show of being a devoted wife so long." She snorted, "She was having an affair with Wonder Guy the night dad finally died in the hospital. I was there. Mom never showed up. Her excuse?" Sass started talking in a sarcastic tone, "I thought he was going to pull through again." She clenched both fists and hit the bed with both at the same time, propelling herself upright, "I hate her. I hate her so, goddamn, much. The only reason I talk to her is dad begged me to forgive her on his death bed." She shook her head slowly, "I talk to her, I have forgiven her like dad asked, but I have no RESPECT for her." She gestured around the room, "That's why I formed the Rascals, along with Grifter. We both got an axe to grind with our parents and want to show them up by being better superheroes than they ever were." She laughed bitterly and looked at Jack, "Sorry to lay this all on you. It's been eating at me late...lee?" She tilted her head to the side, "You okay?" Jack was trying hard not to cry. The details were different, but the situation described hit entirely too close to home. He remembered taking care of his mother as she fought cancer and how his father was a scumbag who cheated on her. How he kept trying to blame her for all their problems. How late at night he could hear his father rant outside when he got drunk, talking about how much god hated him. How if there was a god, why didn't he just hurry up and kill her? Here, right in front of him, was his inter-dimensional soulmate. His very own Ka made manifest. He had been an angry man for so long. Now, finally, he had found someone who shared his pain. Jack was so moved that he was at a complete loss of words. He had no idea how to explain to her that he saw with her eyes, felt with her heart. He arrived here merely hoping to get his rocks off. This was a game and he was hunting for prey, but instead he found someone who's spirit he wanted to heal. He thought about what he wished for so many years ago when he felt he was alone, with the weight of the world on his back. If he was in her shoes, what would have made his life, just a little bit easier? And so he made up his mind. "I am going to bang your brains out."
