Painful!
How Painful!
Fuck! It Hurts!
The peaceful, dreamlike state he was in shattered, and a powerful throbbing pain spread throughout his body, like someone had just run him over with a fucking Cybertruck going over a 100 miles an hour. No! It was more like someone had just stabbed him in the chest with a knife and then twisted the blade for good measure.
Fucking Ow…
He tried to move around, tried to get up, to look around, anything - but he couldn't. It was like he had completely lost control over his body and couldn't do anything. He took a deep breath, and, ignoring the sharp burst of pain that just breathing in had sent through his body, he tried his best to focus and escape the shackles placed on him by this darkness and confusion.
But whatever willpower he managed to summon was flaky and ethereal, like a fleeting fog, and he could actively feel it getting harder to control his thoughts or think deeply. No matter how much he tried, he kept losing his focus as random thoughts surfaced in his mind.
Fuck, don't tell me I'm going to die young?
He needed to wake up now.
Then, all of a sudden, the pain started to ebb away.
From the looks of it, sleep is impossible. How am I to show up for work tomorrow? He thought, before immediately frowning. Why was he thinking about work when he was in so much pain and not about calling an ambulance? He was taking some damn time off. He didn't have the brainpower left to care about his idiot manager's grumblings.
Huh, when he put it that way, it didn't seem that bad.
Hehe, maybe I can end up getting some spare time for myself!
The pain slowly faded away, enough that he was eventually able to muster enough strength to open his eyes, as he finally broke free from his reverie.
His sight was blurry for the first few moments before it cleared up, revealing the state of his bedroom. Or rather, the fact that he was no longer in his bedroom. Rather than the drywall ceiling and a glass window he had in the room he'd been renting ever since his mother had kicked him out the moment he'd turned 18 – he found himself looking at a ceiling made of wooden slabs.
He sat up and took a good look around.
The first thing he noticed was that the medieval-like room he was in was several times larger than the room he currently lived in. The second thing he noticed, or rather felt, was the mattress, and the fact that is was filled with straw. The frame of the bed was made of oak, and there was a large rug going under the mattress as well as covering most of the stone floor. There was a desk in the corner of the room, with several books stacked on top of it, with only one open.
What the hell? He thought confused as he abruptly got off the bed, only for his body to remind him why that was a bad idea even before his feet fully straightened. The sheer pain that spread through his body almost made him collapse onto the floor, which he only avoided by grabbing the bedframe in time.
Pushing through the pain, he made his way to the cracked mirror hanging next to the desk and took a good look in the polished silver surface. He took a step back in horror, because instead of a brown-haired, hazel-eyed boy of nineteen, he found a young boy of twelve staring back at him, with dark hair and grey eyes.
This is…, a wordless gasp escaped his mouth. Had he been Isekaid? He'd practically grown up on Anime and Manga, and had often fantasized about such things happening to him. But it was hard to accept such a scenario when it actually happened to him.
If not for the pain in his chest, he would have suspected that he was dreaming. It was as if on a cue, but he saw a brief glint coming from his chest. His heart dropped as he came to a cold realization. His gaze snapped downward, breath hitching as trembling fingers moved toward his chest. For a moment, they hovered there, uncertain, as if touching it would make everything real in the worst possible way.
Then he felt it.
Cold metal. Jagged. Buried.
"…You've got to be kidding me," he rasped, voice thin and shaking.
He wrapped his fingers around the crude handle and pulled.
Agony detonated as pain filled his every being.
Not a clean pain, not sharp and precise, but something raw and tearing, like his insides were being dragged along with the blade. His vision went white, his knees nearly buckling as a strangled gasp clawed its way out of his throat.
The shiv slid free with a wet, sickening resistance.
For a heartbeat, there was only silence.
Then, a warmth spread across his chest. Not blood. Something else.
The torn flesh writhed. Before his eyes, the wound pulled itself together, muscle knitting, skin sealing, until nothing remained but unbroken, unscarred skin… as if the blade had never been there at all.
"What the fuck…"
He turned his gaze at the shiv he'd just pulled out of his heart. It was covered in blood and little bits of flesh and gore that made the bile in his stomach churn. On closer examination, he figured out that the shiv was something this boy had made on his own, probably by sharpening the end of a spoon or a fork.
Calm down, calm down, calm down… it took several deep breaths before he was able to calm himself down enough that he wouldn't throw up at the sight of blood.
At that moment, as his mind and body calmed down, memories began flooding him as they slowly appeared in his mind! As it turned out, he had been born into some sort of what-if version of A Song of Ice and Fire, and he couldn't help but grimace; the boy really hadn't had an easy life.
Daemon Targaryen, the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, hadn't had an easy life. He was born a bastard in the final stretches of the War of the Usurper, which would have been called Robert's Rebellion in another world. Rhaegar and Lyanna married under the light of the Seven after the end of the war, and Daemon was hence legitimized, but the stigma of bastardry had never disappeared, and it showed in how people treated him.
He wasn't really treated all that well, especially when compared to how his older siblings, Rhaenys and Aegon, were, or even how his younger sister Visenya was treated. He was always treated as lesser to them, less important. Even his two mothers, Elia and Lyanna, persisted with this behaviour, repeatedly ignoring him in favour of his siblings.
Oh, he wasn't abused or anything, don't get him wrong, but he was awfully neglected and ignored at every turn. With Rhaegar having his mind buried in his prophecies and thinking that Aegon was the Prince that was Promised, with Elia and Lyanna preferring to care and show affection to the others rather than Daemon, and even in how Rhaenys and Aegon avoided him at every turn, it was quite obvious.
Hell, even Viserys and Daenerys didn't like him all that much, for reasons he couldn't ever understand. And their mother, the former queen and his grandmother Rhaella, well, he'd never even met her before, but considering the fact that the rest of his siblings had met her and often talked about her after such reunions, even the little Visenya – it just said things about the widow of King Aerys II Targaryen.
This behaviour was noticed, not just by the maids and the knights serving the Red Keep, but by even the royal court. And on seeing the king and the two queens disfavour one of the princes, the bastard prince at that, the rest of the court followed. Suddenly, a 4-year-old Daemon had found himself increasingly isolated from any company he'd had before. The children who had been his friends before, on the urging of their parents no less, were pulled away from those very parents and told to make friends with Either Rhaenys or Aegon. Visenya had just been born back then, and didn't exactly have a circle on her own.
The four-year-old Daemon had been very confused and afraid, because he had never been alone before. But this isolation continued, and even the nanny meant to care for him had started neglecting her duties not long after.
It had all come to a head when Daemon was nine years old. He'd been training under Ser Arthur Dayne for over a year now, like all the boys of House Targaryen had, when a 16-year-old Viserys stormed the training grounds and tried to bully him. Daemon hadn't taken it too well, and the two got into a scuffle that Daemon ended up winning. He'd also shattered the two front teeth in his uncle's mouth.
Needless to say, Daemon had been severely punished. He was sent to his room and barred from coming out until Rhaegar personally ordered him to come. He had been banished with no food, no water and no contact from the outside world or from anyone visiting him.
That had been three years ago.
Daemon had to thank Ser Jaime Lannister from the bottom of his heart, because it was he who ensured that Daemon got all the food and drink he'd need, that he had the proper clothes and some books. He didn't even want to imagine where he would be without Jaime.
But it hadn't helped much, and Daemon had fallen into a deep depression. And in the midst of that, the boy had decided to end his life. He'd sharpened the end of a stirring spoon into a vague blade, like sharpness and had shoved it into his heart in one swift move.
That's when he woke up as Daemon.
Daemon hadn't wasted the time he had been basically Rapunzel'ed in this room, but had been studying Hermes, an ancient and dead language. His siblings had all been taught High Valyrian by the maester, but he had never been allowed to join those lessons, so learning this had been his own way of catching up with his siblings.
Wait, Hermes language? His mind stirred as he reached out to rub his throbbing temples. He cast his gaze toward the table at the open notebook. He noticed that the text on the yellowed paper turned from strange to alien, before turning from alien to something familiar. It then turned into something readable.
It was text written in Hermes language!
The dark ink wrote the following:
"Everyone will die, including me."
Hiss! An inexplicable Horror filled him as he jumped back in an attempt to widen the distance between him and the notebook, as well as the text on it.
As he leaned even further back, his eyes once more fell onto the mirror. To his horror, the appearance had once more changed. It was no longer that of a boy, but of a girl with long black hair tied in a spiky ponytail and sharp onyx-colored eyes.
///
Black eyes snapped open, and a gasp escaped the sixteen year old girls mouth as she jerked awake. Daemon looked around and saw that she had fallen asleep on her desk. She let out a groggy little groan before wiping the drool that had trailed out of her mouth and onto the wooden desk, and then she shook her head to rid herself of the powerful urge to return back to sleep she was feeling.
She let out a yawn, stretching her thin, hairless arms upwards as she arched her back, inadvertently thrusting her chest out.
She grabbed at the half-empty mug of coffee on the desk and took a sip, frowning at the way it cloyed in her mouth now that it had gone cold. She forced herself to down the entire mug in one swift gulp as she thought back to what she was doing.
The last thing she remembered was using this form's abilities, that is, Momo Yaoyorozu's Creation quirk to create the necessary components needed for her to assemble the high-performance computer she had designed with her tinker powers. She had been munching on a plate of cookies she'd freshly baked using Momo's own skills in the kitchen, and then – nothing.
Her eyes widened as she realized what had happened.
She'd fainted!
She must have run out of usable fat to use for the Creation quirk and must have started to draw on the essential fats the body required to keep functioning.
That makes sense.
Having figured out what had happened, she also decided the next course of events. To let go of the transformation and return back to normal form. And she did just that. Reaching deep within her, the same place where metamorphosis rested, she let go of the taut string she could feel in there.
Immediately, a light and a weird sensation she commonly associated with her transformations consumed her form. It felt like thousands of maggots crawling under her skin as she shifted into another, much more familiar form. As usual, the transformation was instant, even though it didn't feel like it, and the next moment she was back to being Daemon.
"Brr…" Daemon shuddered the moment he returned back to his normal form. After experimenting and transforming a few times over the past few days, he found that his mind had become more malleable, more adaptive to the transformations. Somewhere along the lines - around the time he had metamorphed into Fujiwara Chika, he believed – he'd started to refer to himself as a 'she' while he was transformed, and considered himself a girl. Thankfully, it reverted back to normal when he let go of the transformation, and he was even more thankful that he was still attracted to women even while transformed – he'd checked and made sure that was the case!
[Bastard of Ice and Fire: @Elijah Mikaelson, I've got what you wanted ready.]
[Bastard of Ice and Fire: Come and take it from my place when you're free.]
He sent it on the Multiverse chat group before waiting for a response.
When he didn't get one, he just shrugged and went on with his day. He'd let the other members know about Momo Yaoyorozu's powers when he'd first transformed into her earlier this morning, and Elijah had wanted something made and had sent in a request. He'd offered to pay Daemon for it, but considering he'd already helped Daemon by muddying his records, he'd decided to do it for free.
Daemon grabbed the five silver daggers he'd created for Elijah according to strict specifications – following the extremely detailed illustrations the vampire had provided no less – and wrapped them in a newspaper. Grabbing the wrapped package, he made his way outside to the living room.
The first thing he saw on entering the hall was Dinah sitting on the couch, focused so intently on a bunch of papers spread across the entire coffee table that she didn't even notice him there. Which was odd, because she was usually so skittish and almost supernaturally aware of everything going on around her, probably a consequence of her experiences on her run from Coil.
"What are those?" Daemon asked, dropping Elijah's package onto the couch next to the younger girl, making her jump in surprise as he peered down at the papers. He frowned, and it looked like math to him, and he wondered why what she was solving.
"Homework," she said simply, erasing a mistake she made and writing it correctly again.
Daemon blinked, confused. "Homework? From who, Annette?" Had she decided to homeschool Annette?
"Nope, from Miss Amanises,"
Daemon cocked an eyebrow, "…What?"
Dinah turned towards Daemon, "Miss Amanises said that every kid needs a stable and structured education, and Miss Annette agreed," she rolled her eyes, as if the very notion aggrieved her to no end. "Thus, Homework."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah," the sigh the younger girl let out was weighty, like the girl was carrying a heavy burden and just needed to let go for a moment. "And the worst part is that Miss Annette specially made it Maths that I can't use my powers to predict." She scowled, "I hate having to do this the hard way!"
"Sheesh," Daemon took another look at the homework sheets, and easily admitted to himself – he didn't understand a thing. "But since when does Amanises care about education. I'd expect something like this from Annette, but… Amanises?!" He asked, still baffled at the turn of events.
"Yeah," Dinah nodded, "but the numbers are saying that there's a 35 percent chance that she'll agree to teaching me Magic if I do well at what they're teaching me, so that's cool." She ended with a nonchalant shrug as she wrote something down on the sheet in front of her.
Magic.
Seriously!
Well, that's something.
Daemon had to admit, learning how to use magic was one hell of an incentive. Even he, who was still getting used to these admittedly cool powers of Metamorphosis he now had, would give a lot to learn some magic spells. If maths was what it took to let him cosplay Harry Potter, Dresden, and Merlin, then maths was what he was going to learn. Before he could ask the brown-haired girl for a copy of her assignment sheets, she spoke up again.
"What about you? How did your creating stuff go? I saw that you'd fell asleep on the desk," she said with a giggle, "You drool, y'know."
He rolled her eyes at her little joke and let her enjoy her little bout of silliness alone – she needed it after what she had gone through. "Well, I'm done with the computer system I needed, and the commission from Elijah," He started. It hadn't taken him long to discover that his tinker powers were entirely software-based and did not enable him to create Hardware of any sort. So he had been extremely fortunate that he'd metamorphed into Momo Yaoyorozu, someone with the power of creation, and actually smart enough that she knew how to create all that advanced twenty-fourth-century tech.
"And what about the sword?"
"…Sword?"
Dinah shot him a confused look, "Uh, yeah? You were saying something about recreating a sword from your world, and something about it being made of something called Valyrian steel? You were pretty excited to create that sword if I remember right."
Daemon just stared blankly at her for a long moment, before he facepalmed. "I completely forgot about the sword," he said, his palm muffling his voice. He'd been pretty excited when he'd gone through Momo's memories and seen that she could create Damascus steel, the closest equivalent to Valyrian Steel he was probably going to get without needing magic, and had been pretty excited to create a Bastard Sword out of it. He'd even thought of the design - a direwolf's open jaw as the hilt and the blade coming out of the mouth – and then he'd fucking fallen asleep.
At least he'd created everything else he…needed. . .
A tired, muffled groan erupted from the bottom of his stomach, vibrating his entire chest as Daemon realized that he'd forgotten to create the cooling system for his setup. He'd created what was probably the most advanced computer system in this entire world, other than those probably belonging to Dragon or the Toybox, and he'd skipped over the system to cool the damn thing down and stop it from overheating and bursting into flames, or from just straight up exploding.
"What happened?" Dinah asked.
"I forgot something else," he groaned. Guess it was up to him to jury rig a cooling system on his own, because he highly doubted he would be lucky enough to have the next transformation also have creation powers. "Now I need to go to the hardware store and buy some stuff."
"Now," her eyes widened, quickly flicking towards the window as she stared at the nearly dark skies, before turning back to him. "But its almost night, what if Coil or his men attack you?!"
Daemon's eyes softened, and he sat next to the younger girl, wrapping an arm around her shoulders in comfort. "Don't worry, Coil doesn't know where you are or who I am. No one knows I am Overkill. You need not worry Dinah, I promise you, you are perfectly hidden and safe." He shot her a smile, hoping to calm her distress down.
"But – But…"
Daemon continued, refusing to let the younger girl spiral within her own thoughts. "And even if he does attack, I am more than powerful enough to take down some mercenaries. And Amanises and Annette are just a call away." He pulled her closer to him, letting her burrow and snuggle deeper into the hug, "so don't worry, okay. I'm gonna be completely fine."
"Okay," she said amidst the snuggling, before abruptly pulling away and pointing a finger at Daemon's face. "But you have to call in every 15 minutes to let me know if you're fine." She demanded. The fact that her powers couldn't accurately predict Daemon was something that made her really anxious, and she constantly worried about his safety, as well as Amanises's, to whom her powers reacted similarly.
"Let's make it once every hour, and it's a deal." Daemon chuckled.
Dinah frowned a bit, thinking on it for a moment, before she nodded. "Fine, deal."
"Alright, I'll get going now," Daemon said, releasing the girl from the hug and getting up. As he was making his way towards the entrance, his eyes landed on Elijah's package, which he must have absentmindedly placed on a chair. He grabbed the package and placed it on the couch in Dinah's line of sight.
Dinah looked at it in confusion, and he elaborated. "That's the commission Elijah gave me. He might come by to pick it up, so just give it to him if he comes, yeah."
"Yeah, okay." Dinah Nodded.
He flashed her a smile and quickly put on a pair of boots and slipped out of the house.
///
The sky had completely darkened by the time he'd even made it halfway to the nearest Home Depot. Daemon walked along the sides of the road with his hands stuffed in his pockets. The streetlights flickered to life one by one, with all except one broken one casting long, thin shadows onto the walls of the buildings. The road he was walking on was mostly empty, with a single car or a truck passing by every now and then, and a few parked around the corners.
Daemon exhaled slowly, his breath fogging faintly in the cooling air as he idly made a mental list about everything he was going to need to buy. Fans, thermal paste, maybe liquid cooling if he got lucky… cables, tubing, something to improvise a reservoir. His mind ticked through the list with mechanical precision, each item slotting into place like pieces of a puzzle he couldn't afford to get wrong.
He was so lost in thought that he'd even forgotten to check if he was going the right way, and was only broken out of that fugue by a ping from the multiversal chat group.
Daemon willed the illusory screen to open, and saw that both Elijah and Annette had pinged him
[Elijah Mikaelson: @Bastard of Ice and Fire, Thank you for the reminder, Daemon.]
[Elijah Mikaelson: I will be there to collect the daggers as soon as I make some time in my schedule.]
[Star of Ruin: @Bastard of Ice and Fire, DAEMON!]
[Star of Ruin: I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO CALL YOU, FOR 30 MINUTES]
[Star of Ruin: PICK UP!]
Sheesh,
All Caps.
Guess someone's ticked off.
Daemon sent an affirmative to Elijah on the Multiverse chat group before pulling out his phone, and quickly discovering what the problem was – it was on fucking Mute.
Of all the damned things…
The smartphone Daemon had in his hand was the one he'd created using the same memories as the rest of the setup back home, from Momo Yaoyorozu. So, needless to say, it was better than any phone he has ever used, both in this life and in the one before. The Creation quirk had also somehow created the software that the phone ran on in the world of My Hero Academia – though how it works, Daemon wouldn't be able to tell to save his fucking life – and so there were a lot of things he was going to have to learn about it.
So, there were bound to be some mistakes – like not knowing when he'd accidentally muted the phone.
Add that to the fact that, that some-fucking-how the phone he had created from the hero student's memories was her exact phone, and had all her data as well. Photos, videos, contact, Selfies, Documents – everything Momo had stored in her phone had somehow been recreated in this phone as well. He'd had to format it properly and remove all of the girls' data from the device, which his Annette-given tinker powers thankfully made really easy.
Realizing his thoughts were going on a tangent, he shook his head before quickly dialling Annette.
She picked up on the third ring.
"Daemon! Where were you?" She shouted over the phone, making Daemon pull it away from his ear, a grimace on his face at the volume.
She could be really loud when she wanted to be.
"Alive, walking, and only mildly stupid," Daemon brought the phone back to his ear and replied. "My phone was on mute. I just saw your calls."
There was a sharp inhale on the other end, the kind that carried equal parts relief and the sincere promise of bloody violence. "You what?" Annette said, her voice dropping into something dangerously calm. "Daemon, I have been calling you for thirty minutes. Thirty. Minutes."
"Yeah, I got that part," he muttered. "Look, I'm fine. I just stepped out to grab some stuff from Home Depot."
Silence.
For a long moment, she didn't say anything, and as the seconds of silence increased, so did the feeling that he'd made a mistake somewhere. "…At night." She finally said, and he could practically hear what she didn't say.
Ah.
"It's not that late," he tried, already knowing it sounded weak.
"Daemon."
That was it. Just his name. Flat. Disapproving. And his jaw clicked shut before he even knew what was happening. Because that voice that she used, it was the voice of a concerned parent being disappointed at you. And Daemon had seen it often on TV, but he'd never had someone be so concerned about him that his actions might disappoint him, in both his lives.
He'd never had this voice be directed at himself before.
It struck a cord deep in his heart, and he quickly buried it deep within, compartmentalizing the hell out of it and leaving it for later. There was no way he was opening that box of issues out of the streets.
He rubbed the back of his neck, not that she could see it over the phone. "Okay, yeah, it's late. But I needed parts. I forgot to make a cooling system for the computer, and I'd rather not have it turn into a very expensive bomb sitting in our living room."
"You built a computer powerful enough to require a cooling system to even work," she said slowly, trying to process everything. She'd known what he was going to create since he'd told her that earlier in the morning. "But you forgot the cooling system."
"When you say it like that, it sounds irresponsible."
"It is irresponsible."
"Yeah, that tracks."
Another pause, shorter this time. He could almost hear her recalibrating, anger folding into something more controlled, more precise. "What are you even going to buy?"
"Fans, thermal paste, maybe tubing if I can rig something resembling liquid cooling. Cables. Anything that stops my setup from committing suicide."
"Do you even know how to assemble a cooling system manually?" She asked.
Daemon paused. "Define 'know.'"
"Daemon."
That voice came out again
"I have theoretical confidence." He said, smirking – but it fell right off his face when he once more realized that Annette couldn't see it.
"I hope you realize that that is not a reassuring sentence." She said, and Daemon could practically hear the groan the older woman was undoubtedly stifling right now.
"I have tinker powers," he added quickly. "You know that – Hell, you gave them to me! Trust me, I can figure it out."
There was another pause. "Touche," she admitted. "Fine, but you don't rush it. And you don't cut corners. I'd rather you take longer making the cooling system than blow up the house."
"Hey, if anything explodes, it'll be contained. Probably."
"…Probably?"
"Okay, bad choice of words."
"Very bad." Annette agreed.
He let out a small chuckle, the tension easing just a fraction. "I'll be careful. Promise."
"…You'd better be," she said quietly. "Because if something happens to you over thermal paste, I will personally drag you back just to kill you again."
"That's fair." He said. "And wha - "
Daemon was cut off as he heard Annette start talking to someone else on her end. "Give me a moment dear, I'll be back soon," she said, and muted the call, leaving Daemon hanging there with his phone to his ear, looking like a fool in the middle of the street.
"Seriously," he brought the phone in front of him and shot it a disgruntled stare. She just sidelined me like this? But, in the end, he had no choice but to be on hold till Annette cam back. So he let out a sigh and put the phone back to his ear.
Thankfully, she came back not long after.
"Sorry about that, One of my colleagues had come over," Annette said. "So, what were you saying?"
"What did you even call me for?" Daemon asked, sounding annoyed at having to wait on Hold.
"Are you alone?" she asked instead.
"Yeah."
"No one's following you?"
Daemon glanced behind him out of habit. Empty road. A few parked cars. A Streetlight flickering on and off at random intervals. "Nope. Just me, my poor life choices, and a broken lamp post."
"This isn't a joke, Daemon."
"I know," he said, his voice softer this time. "I checked. I'm good."
She paused again, but this one was different. Less sharp, maybe. It was still tense, but no longer crackling like before.
"…Good," Annette said, breaking the silence, her words carrying unmistakable relief wound tight, like steel. "Then listen carefully."
Daemon straightened slightly, something in her tone slicing clean through the casual air he'd been wearing. "What happened?" he asked.
"A company," she started. "Vortex Solutions. They're small on paper, unremarkable, and nothing worth giving a second look at. But I found a trail, financial irregularities, Off-the-books acquisitions. Funny coincidences that just seemed to line up in their favour. Coincidences that were marked in the report as happenstances or lucky breaks – lucky breaks that happen far too often." She paused just long enough to let him realize the implications. "They've had dealings with Coil."
That wiped the last trace of humour off his face.
Daemon's eyes hardened into a steely grey. "…You're sure?"
"Yes."
One word. Absolute.
Daemon's mind immediately began turning gears. He'd done his research on Coil. There wasn't much, but he knew that Coil was meticulous, careful. He did not do random. Everything he touched had purpose. Infrastructure. Logistics. Control. "What kind of dealings?" he asked.
"I don't know yet," she admitted. "All I have found is by looking through old case files and reports. There's a chance that I've messed up somewhere and imagined connections where there are none, but - "
"-But if there's even a slightest chance that its him, we'd be better off taking it that missing it." Daemon completed, understanding the point. Better to be wrong about Coil being involved with this company and waste time investigating it than to not look into it and later find out that it was one of Coils shell companies.
"Exactly," she agreed. "I want you to use that new computer of yours to hack into Vortex Solution's servers and see if you can find anything about Coil."
"Alright, send me the details."
Not long after, his phone pinged. It didn't take him long to read through everything, placing Annette on hold during it. See how it feels, he grinned – Vortex Solutions was a consultation agency, and they also sold a patented inventory management software. Annette had sent over a lot of details, and he'd need to sit down and take a good look – he stilled when he noticed one particular thing.
Vortex Solutions operated out of a building, and their office occupied 7 entire floors. The most interesting part was – it was nearby, like really close.
The beginnings of a plan began to form in his mind.
"I understand now."
"Good," Annette sounded relieved. "Now buy what you want to buy and get that computer system operational. I want you to hack into Vortex Solutions and see if you find anything even tangentially related to any villain organization, not just Coil." Daemon nodded, not that she could see. He understood what she was trying to say. If he found Vortex working with any villains, not just Coil, they could both trace the connection back to the villains and figure out what was going on, or Annette could use the information to then obtain a warrant for Vortex Solutions. He didn't exactly know how it worked, but that's how it used to be on those Police Dramas back in his first life.
Unfortunately, Daemon had a better plan.
"No, I don't think so, I got a better idea." He said into the phone. "I'm gonna go, take a little look at Vortex Solutions."
"No," she replied immediately, and without hesitation.
Daemon blinked. "No?"
"I want you home," Annette said, her voice sharper and full of steel. "Immediately."
He frowned. "That's not happening fast. I'm halfway to -"
"Daemon." Her voice cut through him like a blade. "This is Coil. You do not improvise around him. You do not get curious. You do not go poking at anything connected to him without preparation."
He slowed his steps, the city around him feeling quieter all of a sudden, like it was just holding its breath in anticipation. "…I'm not planning to fight anyone," he finally said. "It's just information gathering."
"That's what everyone thinks," she snapped. "Right until they're already in too deep."
He glanced ahead, eyes narrowing slightly. "How far is the company from me?" he asked. He already knew the address, knew it was close, but he wanted her to say it – needed it to say it.
She fell silent and remained so for a few long moments. Just as Daemon was starting to wonder if she would never speak, she replied, "Twenty minutes," she said finally.
And there it was.
A spark.
The bad, and very tactically unsound idea, lit up like a match in a dry forest. Daemon turned, subtly shifting his path away from the Home Depot and towards Vortex Solutions.
"Daemon," Annette said, her tone dropping, dangerous now, and he was sure he was bound to get a lecture later. "Do not -"
"I'll just be taking a look," he cut in. "From the outside."
"No."
"No trespassing. No hacking. Just reconnaissance." He tried to reassure her again, but to no avail.
"Daemon - " she tried to say something, but he cut her off
"It's literally on the way," he lied as easily as he breathed.
"It is not."
"Its close enough that it doesn't matter."
"Daemon." He paused for a brief second. He could hear it now, in her voice. It was more than anger; it was worry. It was a desperation to stop him, the kind that clung to his ribs and refused to let go. But he soldiered on, bulldozing through the conversation. "You are not built for this kind of operation yet," she said, her voice quieter now. "You're strong, yes. But people like Coil don't lose because someone is stronger. They lose when someone is smarter, smart enough to run circles around them."
Daemon's jaw tightened. "And I'm neither?" he asked.
"That's not what I said."
"It's what you meant."
"Daemon -"
He once more cut her off. "I'll be careful," he said, full commiting to the idea, already knowing he wouldn't turn back.
"Don't go there," she said, and this time there was no edge, no authority that she tried to impose on him. It was just something raw, something desperate. "Please."
And that… that almost stopped him.
Almost.
He exhaled slowly, eyes lifting toward the darkened skyline ahead. "I'll call you when I'm done," he finally said.
"Daemon -" His name was the last thing he heard before he pressed a button and ended the call. Another press put the phone back on mute again. The silence that followed wasn't empty, it was heavy – it pressed down on him. He slipped the phone back into his pocket, fingers brushing against the fabric as his thoughts sharpened into something colder, more deliberate.
Twenty Minutes
A company tied to Coil
Vortex Solutions
Secrets waiting behind walls someone thought were unbreakable. Breaking walls that had just become his specialty. "Yeah," he muttered under his breath. "I'm definitely checking that out. "The streetlight above him flickered once, then steadied.
Daemon stepped into the shadow beneath it and reached inwards, all his thoughts pointed towards needing someone stealthy, someone who could get the job done – he thought, as he tried to aim his transformation, his metamorphosis for the first time.
Metamorphosis answered.
Not gently, it was never gentle.
The feeling of thousands of maggots moving under his skin was something he could never get used to. Power surged from deep within like a coiled serpent unchained and swept through his body as his body changed. Daemon felt himself get taller and his the jawline of his face change, felt how his body became more slimmer, and how its shape changed into something distinctly feminine. He felt his bones shift around and his muscles rewrite themselves as his center of balance tilted and narrowed. He felt his center of gravity shift, felt the not-so-insignificant additional weight on his chest. He sensed how his hair extended and how the way he thought changed into something alien, yet so human at the same time.
Control settled over him like a second skin.
By the time the transformation ended, where there was a fourteen-year-old teenage boy with dark hair, grey eyes, and a rugged build, now stood a slender, alluring, and seductive adult woman. She had long brown hair and hazel green eyes. She had sharp, aristocratic features and a slim, slender, and sexy body with tightly corded muscles that had been meticulously crafted to be used. She was dressed in a skin-tight leather catsuit that beautifully hugged her curves and framed her large breasts.
She took a look around before taking a step forward, a predatory grace in each movement, like she was the most dangerous person around, and she knew it. There was something undoubtably sharp and dangerous in the glint in her eyes.
Talia Al Ghul had entered the fray.