The Usual Apartment
The next morning.
Agent Bobbi Morse stepped out of the elevator into the hallway, wearing another stylish track suit (with a similar color scheme, she was nothing if not consistent), and was happy to see that the ninjas had been cleaned up. She approached her observation target’s door, knocked sharply twice, waited approximately two seconds, and opened the door without waiting for an invitation to enter.
She didn’t knock to announce her arrival. Greg likely knew she was here. She knocked in case her observation target and his overly affectionate girlfriend were in the middle of some embarrassing PDA that they wished to break off before she entered. They never did. They were completely shameless.
Still, Bobbi felt it was worth the small amount of effort to be polite.
Her professional eyes scanned the room as she entered the apartment, taking note of the usual suspects. Jess was wearing a pair of comfortable jeans and a crew-necked white t-shirt, playing with Spot on the couch with a new laser pointer toy. Bobbi’s observation target sat on the couch with his typical newspaper and his normal relaxed set of flannel pajamas. Jean sat at the breakfast bar with a laptop, drinking coffee and presumably doing her Psychology homework. Doreen was sitting precariously on the balcony railing, humming something that sounded a lot like Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’.
“Who’s the new girl?” Bobbi asked Jean as she opened the fridge to find her observation target’s home made cold brew… honestly much more delicious than the store bought stuff she usually got, and made specifically so she didn’t have to stop for coffee on the way to work.
“Hmm?” Jean said as she looked up from her homework, looked over to the newest addition to the household - a barely 5’ even woman that appeared to be in her early to mid 20s with black hair tied into tight twintails, wearing pink and white pajamas, and clinging to her boyfriend like a particularly well endowed and jiggly barnacle, “Oh, her?
“Miss ‘Busty Petite’ over there is the Lady Serafall née Sitri, abdicated Princess and Heir to the Sitri clan, abdicated Satan Leviathan of the Devil Race, youngest devil to ever reach Satan Class, former lover of the deceased Miss Melania Seere, Godmother to Ms. Seere’s only heir, and incidentally my boyfriend’s fiance.
“The woman hasn’t stopped holding on to Greg for more than 30 seconds since she arrived yesterday. She said, and I quote, she has ‘a 400 year deficit in her recommended Vitamin-G intake’, and that she’s ‘trying to make up for centuries of a serious affection deficiency’. The woman even clung to him during the bath last night. It was really awkward… in an incredibly fun way… trying to fit my hand between them so I could soap Greg up.”
“That’s quite the introduction,” Bobbi said as she filed much of the information she just learned into the ‘don’t really need to know about it’ category in her mind, and looked sympathetically at the girl sitting nonchalantly across the table, “And how are you feeling about the whole ‘fiance’ thing?”
“To be honest,” Jean sighed and tore herself away from her homework, “It’s a little sad. I knew something like this was going to happen sooner or later. I never expected a long lost fiance, but I knew you, Jess, Emma, or some other girl would probably make a move eventually…”
“Yeah, at least one of those is never going to happen,” Jess said to interrupt her, before going back to play with her cat, “Emma will definitely try to jump his bones though… That woman thinks seduction is a normal business practice. I can see why you didn’t include Doreen, though, that girl’s a bit too Het to fit into your freaky little love quadrangle.”
“Anyway,” Jean said as she rolled her eyes and looked askance at the black haired girl, “A sudden fiance reveal wasn’t really expected, but I knew something like it was inevitable. I was hoping it would take a bit longer, we were still in our honeymoon phase and I was rather enjoying the undivided attention, but at least she seems to be fine with the whole situation.”
“That was… about what I was expecting you to say,” Bobbi nodded as she nodded at Jean’s statement, “And fair, I did want to jump the kid’s bones when I first saw his picture…”
“Honestly,” a perpetually mortified Gregory called up from the couch as his aunt was rubbing her face into his chest, “The fiance thing isn’t something you have to worry about. The arranged marriage is over four centuries old, and I doubt my Aunt’s feelings are anything more than Platonic… I mean, she is…”
“Greggy-chan! Shut! Up!” interrupted the small woman with an adorable pout on the face that she suddenly lifted from her nephew’s chest in order to stare daggers at his flushed complexion, “I never dissolved the engagement for a reason. Sure, it was partly to keep all of the other stinky boys away, but after about a century everyone was scared of me anyway… well, everyone but Zechs, and he only had eyes for his grey haired wife with a maid fetish. We’re engaged, and we’re going to get married. That was the agreement, and we’re sticking to it whether you like it or not.”
“Eh?” Greg bashfully whined, “I mean, I’m honored Auntie, but aren’t you… you know… more inclined toward the softer…”
“Spit it out, Greggy-chan. I never took you for a coward,” Serafall said with an angry huff, “I’m a Lesbian. A carpet muncher. A slimy cave spelunker. I’d rather spend my life sniffing fish tacos than slobbering on flesh popsicles. I’m 100% home grown dyke, and I’m happy and proud of everything that entails. Soft bodies make me wet and gushy, and hard bodies make me dryer than a PB&J if you hold the J and hold the milk.”
“Oh!” Doreen called in from the balcony, “I really like PB&J when you hold the J! Peanut Butter Sammies are one of Tippy’s favorite snacks!!”
“Er… yes,” Greg answered sheepishly, “That.”
“Greggy-chan,” she said slowly, as if trying to drill the message directly into his thick brain, “Yes, I prefer soft floral scented squishy bodies to smelly, hard, annoying men… but you’re not a man.”
“I beg to differ on that,” Bobbi muttered, just loud enough for the room to hear, shuddering slightly as she spoke, “He definitely seems like what I look for when I’m looking for something I call ‘Man’. I don’t always want a handsome hunk to ride me like a forward facing meat motorcycle, but when I do…”
“Damn Bobbi,” Jean said as Bobbi’s voice drifted off, “First. Hot. Second. I figured you were freaky, but I didn’t take you for an M.”
“Eh, not really an M, honestly… but when I’m with a guy, I just prefer to have the orgasms arrive as quickly and as often as possible. It doesn’t take me much to get ready… I’m the kind of girl that has to change her panties twice a day on a normal day… so when I’m with a guy I mostly just want to be taken quick and hard, with as little foreplay as possible, and left a drooling mess at the end. I leave the cute stuff for when I’m drunk and hooking up with my girlfriends.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Sera said, focusing on the description of Greg as a ‘man’, which seemed to slightly offend her, and less on the much more problematic ‘meat motorcycle’ part of the conversation, “What I mean is, Greggy doesn’t feel like any other stinky boy to me. I was there after his mother gave birth to him. I changed his diapers. I’ve watched him grow up… from birth until now… and he doesn’t feel like any other boy to me.
“I’m not suddenly turning heterosexual, I’m Greggy-o-sexual, with a side of extremely aggressive Lesbian. I still like jiggly boobs and butts… a lot… I just, also like my Greggy… even if he is a lazy slug that hasn’t even hit Ultimate Class yet.”
“Eh, when did this turn into a critique of my cultivation?”
“You need to hurry up, Greggy-chan,” Serafall said as she rubbed her face on her nephew’s chest, “Your mommy said we couldn’t get married until you hit Ultimate Class, and Auntie Sera is getting tired of plastic toys… so, chop chop!”
“Fair enough,” Greg grumbled and went back to his newspaper, “If it’s any consolation, that last fight with Selene really pushed me to the limit of my current power. I can feel myself hovering at the critical point. I think one decent contract should push me over the edge and start my evolution.”
“Good,” Sera nodded with contentment, “All it takes is that last little push, and your magical power is going to go BOOM. It’s not as big as the jump from Ultimate to Satan class, but you can expect at least an order of magnitude of growth essentially overnight.”
“See, she’s amazing,” Jean said as she turned back to her homework, “And honestly, I’m not even sure she’s sexually attracted to him. She spent like 20 minutes feeling me up in the bath to ‘make sure her nephew’s peerage was up to snuff.’ She never even looked at Greg.
“To be honest, I think Greg’s Oedipal Complex has transferred nearly entirely to Serafall. It’s nowhere near as bad as her Jocastal Complex, but…”
“You know this is why people hate Psychology students, right?” Bobbi interrupted, “They can’t help but explain everything with Jungian and Freudian terminology… you know those two were mostly discredited, right?
“Anyway,” Bobbi once again skillfully guided the conversation to a less awkward direction, “Are you done playing around with your prisoner’s brain? The people back at the office… the other office… were asking when you were going to release him to us. I’ve already cleared the expungement of Jess’s record… but the brass is itching to get their grubby mitts on him.”
“I’m done,” Jean said, matter of factly, “Jess was planning to head over one last time before you carted him off, but it should be anytime now.”
“I’ll go now,” Jess said with a nervous sigh, the her entire body suddenly locking up with tension as the tiny furry supervillian-in-training in front of her indignantly looked up at her formerly ever-faithful minion, wondering why the hated red spot suddenly ceased its useless struggles, “I was just finding reasons to procrastinate. Someone else needs to take this laser, though, or Spot is going to disown me.”
“I got you,” Bobbi volunteered, “Let me watch the little terror for a bit.”
“Jess,” Jean said tentatively as Jess handed the pointer to Bobbi, “If you don’t want to do this, no one is going to think less of you. Sure, it might help give you closure, but…”
“No, I need to do this. I’ll be back soon.”
An adjacent apartment on the 24th floor.
A few moments later.
An utterly miserable man knelt on a floor in a full body purple raw wool woven onesie, complete with an eyeless gimp mask, mittens, and booties, with his arms raised above his head by shackles affixed to the high ceilings of the nearly identical apartment. An IV drip was shoved unceremoniously into the exposed antecubital fossa vein in his elbow, the most uncomfortable spot it could have been placed. The bulge of an adult diaper that hadn’t been changed in a few days was visible around his waist, buttocks, and crotch. His feet were affixed to loose shackles on the floor, just long enough so that the man could stand up and pace a few steps, but not long enough to give him true freedom of movement.
The only sounds in the room were the occasional tortured moans of its only occupant and the occasional gentle hum of the HVAC, set just cold enough to be uncomfortable, but warm enough that it wouldn’t induce hypothermia.
The usual quiet the man experienced was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. The blindfolded man expected to hear the familiar click of his red haired tormentor’s heels, signaling the start of today’s ‘therapy session’, but instead the soft sound of socks sliding on the carpet could be heard, followed by a familiar timid voice.
“Hi Zeb” Jess said as the man’s hood was removed, and he felt the buckle behind his head for the ball gag in his mouth click open, “They’re taking you away today.”
The girl across from him was very different from when he last saw her… er, even the last time she wasn’t glassy eyed and under his direct control (though that wasn’t often, to be fair). Even a narcissist like him could recognize that the girl… no, the young woman… had changed.
Instead of a frightened little girl, huddled in the corner of a hotel room, trembling in fear of his abuse, she was almost… confident. There was still the edge of fear, he could see it in the tension in her shoulders and jawline… but she wore the denim jeans and thick leather biker jacket like armor, and there was anger in her eyes. Anger and strength that hadn’t been there before.
“Jess,” the man suddenly screamed in relief, almost refusing to believe it. His torment was finally over. Jessica would release him, his power would make sure of that, “Potato soup! Question orange completely! Tree standard through giraffe table!”
“Wow,” Jess seemed taken aback by his shouted orders, but the vacant stare that the man expected never arrived, “Jean said that she scrambled the language centers in your brain so bad it would take a slide rule and fifteen years of hard work to undo. She really outdid herself.”
“Jessicca!” The man shouted with a thick northern British accent, confused as to why Jessica wasn’t freeing his arms and taking him away from this place immediately, “Underneath ocean window banana? Clock giraffe toward turtle standard!”
The petite girl laughed a bit for some reason, the tension seemingly falling away from her body, as even the hatred and anger in her eyes faded to contentment. Over the course of a few minutes the laughing went from light giggles, to full guffaws, to nearly crazed manic laughter, until it devolved into choked up sobs of relief. After a few minutes, the girl finally stopped crying and composed herself before speaking again.
“Jean said your language centers were screwed up, but names are recognized by a different part of the brain. It’s amazing how true that was. You can say my name, but every time you try to say anything else, it comes out as gibberish. It doesn’t even seem like you know you’re doing it. Or maybe you can’t even understand what I’m saying.”
“Open top fart whistle?” the man sobbed in frustration, “Jessica, redundant. Star monkey, wisteria old marshmallow.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jess continued, “I asked Greg to give me this apartment, you know. I thought that maybe looking at the hooks for the shackles and remembering you like this will help me when the nightmares wake me up at night. It beats drinking myself to sleep every night, I guess. That would’ve been my solution, if Jean and Greg hadn’t helped.”
“Jessica Jones,” the man said her full name sternly, as if chiding a small child, “Platypus alphabet electricity! Umbrella mountain standard velocity!”
Jess slowly placed the ball gag back into the man’s mouth, pausing only to hold back infectious giggling with her left hand, and then fastened the buckle behind his head. When she finished, she slowly raised the hood back over his head, plunging him back into the hell of itchy darkness he’d been subjected to for a week or so.
“I just came back to say goodbye for good,” the girl continued once the bindings were back in place, “Jean thought it would help me get some closure, and she was completely right. You have no power over me anymore, and I needed to see that.
“I honestly thought I would want to kill you when I came in here, but it’s funny, I don’t even have the energy to be mad at you anymore. Oh, I’m always going to hate you, and hope you never have another happy thought as long as you live. But you’re going to be put in a dark room for the rest of your natural life… and not even the most skilled telepath will ever be able to unlock your power ever again.”
There was a long pause, as the man heard a sigh of relief escape from the girl.
“Honestly, that was the only thing we were really worried about. It would have been horrible if some greedy bureaucrat back in Washington decided to give you a sweet deal because he thought you’d be ‘useful’... or worse, you somehow talked your way out of prison.”
The only answer was more frantic moaning from below the mask, followed by a resigned whine. Another voice followed shortly after, this one professional and confident.
“Everything ok?”
“Yeah, Bobbi, that really helped. You can take him now.”
“Right,” the confident voice continued, and Zeb felt the chains attached to his shackles grow slack, though they remained firmly attached to his wrists and ankles. He felt an insistent tug as the confident voice continued, “We’re going to take you away from this nice family… Er, well, they’re a family, not sure how nice they are.
“Anyway, move convict. I don’t have all day. You should get used to hearing people call you that from now on. I’m sure you’ll make a lot of friends on the Raft.”
5th Avenue in Midtown, near the Park.
August 10th, 2006. Noon.
Liz Allan struggled to keep her phone on her ear as she kicked open the rear passenger side door to her new chrome black Lexus LS430, pulled on her purse, awkwardly inched out of the back seat, and stumbled over her new designer pumps, nearly tripping over the 5th Avenue curb. Thanks to a last second grab by her nervous driver, disaster was averted, and Liz walked off without a second look.
“It’s going great Pete,” the young woman said as she found her stride, “I couldn’t have asked for a more hands off boss. He has the big ideas, and he just trusts me to make sure it gets executed. It’s more than I ever could have asked for.”
The party on the other line was inaudible to the casual observer over the standard din of the city, as Liz walked confidently down the busy street, past the standard 5th Avenue lunchtime gridlock she forced her driver to pull over and avoid, and nodded her head to the sound of a muffled voice.
“I know Pete! It’s amazing… look, maybe I should introduce you two… he’s honestly just as big of a tech nerd as you are. You guys will get along famously. Anyway, how is MJ doing?”
Liz went quiet again as her conversation partner answered, dodging construction workers carrying generic metal poles complete with hanging white official construction buckets, bike delivery personnel recklessly careening down the city sidewalk, toddlers celebrating their temporary freedom by yelling as loud as humanly possible while running in circles, and beleaguered mothers frantically trying to get them under control.
“What?” Liz nearly screamed with indignation, as she paused to allow a screeching tomcat to zoom across her path, “Isn’t that like the fourth time she’s dumped you so she could move to Hollywood and work on her ‘career’? She’s a damn waitress, Peter, she might as well just accept it. Her ‘acting career’...”
Liz said the words ‘acting career’ with sarcasm so thick it would be considered a war crime in some parts of Germany.
“...is never going to happen. The only part she’s gotten in the past three years was as an elf during the Rockefeller Christmas Show. She was on-stage for three minutes, Pete, and she didn’t even sing… thank god… how does she think that…”
The young woman stopped, realized her location, took a few steps back, and turned down a secluded alleyway off 5th Avenue that she had walked past distractedly.
“Anyway Pete,” she continued as she swerved around an open top construction dumpster filled with pieces of broken mirror, “I’m here. My boss is waiting inside.”
The woman stopped in front of an open door that until a few months ago would have had two large, possibly mutant bouncers. She nodded, hummed, and made agreeable sounds as she watched two construction workers struggle to carry a large mirror out of the stairwell leading down, out of the propped open club double doorway, and past a simple white sign that read ‘Closed for Renovations. Grand Reopening Sept. 1st.”
“Yeah Pete, I’d love that,” She said, sweetness entering her voice for the first time since the start of the walk, and played with her hair absentmindedly as she continued the conversation, “Listen, maybe you just need a good rebound date. Hey, you know, I’ve been thinking about dating again… it’s been a whole year since I broke up with Harry… maybe you and I should, you know…”
“What Pete?” She stopped, voice suddenly growing frustrated as the sound of an explosion and sirens could be heard on the other side of the call, “Of course I can call you back, but I really think we should… aaaand he hung up. Great.”
The young woman groaned in frustration, it wasn’t looking like she’d be ending her dry spell any time soon.
Liz put her phone back in her purse, quickly took a deep breath, let it out, and put on a friendly smile before walking down the stairs into the dark room of the club. The dingy alley was immediately replaced by the frantic chaos of a commercial renovation project that was two weeks over deadline, as she watched her smiling pajama and apron clad boss in the middle of the room, cooking gourmet cheeseburgers on an open topped charcoal grill for the hungry construction workers.
Said boss’s black haired, twin-tailed Aunt-slash-fiance, dressed in a pink miniskirt and the most ridiculous pink beret Liz had ever seen, was clinging like a baby monkey to the young man’s front, feverishly biting into his shoulder as the man did his best to cook around her.
The young man’s red headed girlfriend, wearing a bright emerald green sundress and a yellow floppy hat, was acting as a middleman. She would accept the cooked burgers on a paper plate as they finished, add a bun, a scoop of homemade potato salad, and a handful of kettle cooked potato chips, and hand the plates to the eager construction workers on their rotating break.
The rest of the site was just as chaotic. There was a severe looking woman in a white suit and tailored pencil skirt berating a foreman. A Pashtun woman in a form fitting black pantsuit was arguing with a delivery driver. A petite black haired young woman in a leather jacket was sitting in a dusty booth, playing with a cat that was nearly old enough to no longer be called a kitten. A girl in a bomber hat, khaki shorts, and a baby-girl T that had the words ‘Nutz 4 U’ in glittery comic sans font… oh, and a massive Squirrel tail poking out of her shorts… was balancing on the railing of the second floor balcony, passing equipment back and forth for the workers.
Liz smiled at the chaos, thanked the stars for her recent luck, and mentally rolled up her sleeves to interrupt her lazy, good-for-nothing boss while he was… cooking barbeque for his construction workers… of all things.