Ch40 Cake

Imp

 

It had been a long night, which made for a quiet morning. Imp enjoyed these calm mornings after a successful job. They were one of the best parts of working a night shift. Like Sandra he’d also worked through the night, but unlike her he had long ago adjusted to a nighttime schedule. Being the primary sneak for Hellion’s Henchmen would do that.

 

He took another sip of the tea he was drinking in the HH cafeteria. Caffeine free. Unlike everyone else around him, he didn’t want to wake himself up. It was technically early in the morning, but for him it was the end of a long and fruitful day, and he was going to head to bed in a bit.

 

Shame I didn’t find anything on the Espada though.

 

That was the one thing that irked him. Kidnapping mutants, and then using their bodies to create a monster army which would hypothetically increase anti-mutant sentiment? That had Espada written all over it, but when they found the guy responsible there wasn’t even a hint of their involvement. Tofu had given Imp a rundown of everything the ‘rat-stitcher’ had said, and as far as anyone could tell this was just a random Oddity of summer. Just a highschool math teacher who had reached his wit’s end. If the Espada were still around, it seemed HH would just have to wait and see what happened.

 

Meh. Maybe they got eaten by a rat. The thought made him smile.

 

He took a bite of his bagel with cream cheese substitute, and continued reading the morning news on his phone. The rat story was the biggest news in E13 for now, which meant that nothing else too drastic was taking place. Yep, just a nice, quiet morning.

 

*clack* *clack*

 

Two clawed hands hit the table next to him, and Imp looked up to find a looming Viper staring daggers. She didn’t look like she was in a good mood, but then again she was always rather testy in the morning. Maybe this wasn’t about-

 

“What the hell did you say to Sandra?”

 

-nope, it was.

 

Imp stifled a sigh and tried to subtly move his tea away from her. He could technically teleport away if she threw it at him, but the last time he did that she signed him up to fifty different spam e-mail services. Some things even teleportation couldn’t dodge.

 

“I just asked her to listen in while I asked Tofu some questions, Viper.”

“Uh huh. You do know she already gave Tofu a thorough interview right? With questions she expressly designed to get the answers HH wants without prying into personal details, right? And you definitely remember how Sandra gets about misuse of her power, right? Or did you somehow think-”

“Alright, alright Viper, I get it! I was already going to apologise to her later.”

“In person.”

“Of course.”

“And no bullshit about it being your job.”

“Wasn’t gonna bring it up.”

“And a pastry from that bakery she likes.”

“Sure.”

“And I’ll castrate you if you don’t.”

“Okay, damn!”

“…”

“…”

“Well?” said Viper, who was still looming over Imp.

“Well what?”

“What was so damn important you felt you had to interrogate the twerp? He do something fishy?”

Imp sighed, “Yes and no. On one hand he’s followed every order I’ve given him to a T, like a seasoned minion, but on the other hand he acts like he’s been living under a rock his whole life.”

“Which, given his circumstances, makes perfect sense.”

“Right, but it also leads to certain incidents that… set off a few alarm bells. Here, this is from the job last night.”

 

Imp fiddled with his phone and then showed it to Viper. It was a picture of a message scrawled onto a wall in messy graffiti.

 

Please refrain from indiscriminately attacking civilians in Hellion’s territory.

Thank you.

 

Viper didn’t get it. “Okay? So he…?”

“Did exactly what I told him to do. Kill the rat guy, and make a message out of him so people don’t follow his example. Interesting font wouldn’t you say?”

 

Viper’s brow furrowed before she turned back to the picture and squinted at the letters to try and spot what Imp was talking about. It took her a few seconds to realize the message wasn’t on a wall, it was on the floor. Tofu had taken Imp’s order quite literally, and the… materials wouldn’t have adhered to the wall.

 

“Oh ew.”

“Yeah. I’m actually kinda impressed at how straight the lines are. He used every part of the buffalo.”

“Oh gross Imp.”

“Yeah, but you see why I needed to do a double check?”

“Yes, jeez. Put it away please. Way too early in the day for that.”

“How do you think I feel? I’m heading off to bed. Gonna make for an interesting nightmare later.”

“Make sure Sandra doesn’t see it.”

“Pft, please. She’d stick the kid in therapy for the rest of his natural life.”

Viper considered it for a moment. “…You think maybe we should stick him in there anyways?”

 

Before Imp could answer, a loud *bang* sounded through the cafeteria as the doors to the training rooms burst open, and Tofu came barreling out. His feet skid on the smooth tile for a second, and then he started power-walking for the elevators, which was more like a fast jog since his legs were still shifted. Adder soon followed hot on his heels.

 

“Tofu, where are you going?”

“SORRY ADDER I HAVE TO GO! I NEED TO GO MAKE MEATLOAF!”

“If this is about the batons I was joking! There’s other ways to diet.”

“I DON’T WANT TO DIET!”

“Get back here!”

 

Tofu stayed ahead of Adder as she tried to catch up to him, and they slowly sped up until Adder was basically just chasing Tofu around the cafeteria and up and down the halls. As the chase continued down towards the garage, the other minions started taking bets.

 

“Eh, I think he’ll be fine.”

 

---

 

Tofu

 

Adder has impressive skills for a baseline human. Peak physical health for her size, years of training, and absolutely astounding reflexes. But one thing she can’t do? Stick to the ceiling.

 

“Tofu get down from there. You’re being ridiculous.”

“I don’t think your dieting method is work safe.”

“Tofu, I had them on the lowest setting, all they do is glow and look menacing at that level. Would you please come down?”

 

Hmm…

 

“I’ll tell you how I keep predicting your moves.”

 

I climbed down from the ceiling corner I wedged myself into, but stood out of arm’s reach. Hopefully this wasn’t a trick.

 

Adder rolled her eyes. “Alright, you ready for the super secret special technique?”

“Yes.”

“You know how when you’re practicing martial arts, one of the goals is to get rid of unnecessary movements?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you are really, really good at doing that. Like, down to the centimeter accurate. Which is quite impressive… annnnnd it makes you predictable. You almost always choose the correct movement for the situation, but that makes it easy for me to pick the correct move to counter with. The fact that you can repeat the same movement in the exact same way every single time just makes it even easier for me.”

 

I thought that over.

 

“So… how do I choose what to do?”

“Well if you have more experience than your opponent you can just keep picking the moves that slowly edge the fight in your favor, which is what I’ve been doing, or you can just pick a slightly worse move at random. Even if it’s not the absolute best choice, it’ll throw your opponent off your rhythm.”

“…So in order to succeed, I have to be… less efficient?”

“Versus someone like me at least. You can still fight like you normally do against thugs and stuff though.”

 

Less efficiency could sometimes be the correct option. That was just so… wrong.

 

“Anyways Tofu, I need to go help the regulars that aren’t early risers, so we’ll call it quits for today. I’ll try to think of methods to help you train if you’re dead set on being heavy. I can’t really spar with you if a single bad hit will brain me.”

“It’s fine Adder. If you think it will hinder me I’ll dump the extra weight.” I was reluctant to dump my stockpiled energy reserves, but I was not about to let it compromise my immediate survival. It was actually the shock batons that had truly worried me. Even a small electrical discharge would disrupt the micro unit signals, and there was a decent chance they would self-destruct before I could reestablish control. I didn’t want to display that vulnerability if I could help it.

 

“So what was up with the scaredy cat routine?”

I picked an excuse that would align with my ‘backstory’.

“I just don’t like getting shocked. Bad memories.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Ah, sorry about teasing you with it then.”

“No worries.”

“See you again tomorrow?”

“Absolutely.”

 

More improvement was necessary. But for now, it was time for meatloaf.

 

---

 

Before I left the base, I checked to make sure that Nicole was still asleep and that Mikey was on the schedule for today. I then sent a text to both Cindy and Mikey asking them to join me for lunch at the base later today, and went to the grocery store to get ingredients.

 

The grocery store really was a relaxing place. Food everywhere, everything properly labeled, good field of vision due to all the mirrored surfaces and yet plenty of places to duck for cover. Even the temperature was kept stable using an A/C at full blast. It reminded me of the rat-stitcher’s pantry a bit. That place had been relaxing as well. Come to think of it, any place where I was surrounded by food marked a measured reduction in stress levels from Human.exe. Maybe that was part of the reason I liked crowds? As long as they weren’t looking at me at least.

 

I went down the aisle with my complimentary kart, grabbing ingredients for the meatloaf. It was all easy to find since I’d mapped out the store my last time here, but I was taking my time in order to practice being… inefficient.

 

It was a detail that I had overlooked in my effort to improve; humans were, by and large, inefficient. If I wanted to hide within the general populace, a certain degree of inefficiency would actually help my disguise, not hinder it. Circumstances in the testing lab had demanded that I strive for excellence at all times in order to survive, and comparing successful examples such as Hellion’s Henchmen, to inefficient and unsuccessful examples like the rat stitcher, had convinced me that the same held true outside of the lab. Technically it still did, but I had not considered just how large the acceptable margin of error was.

 

It did explain quite a few things that had puzzled me about human behavior. Things like Mikey’s reluctance to attend Adder’s training sessions, or how Maz didn’t know her children would share her mutation made a lot more sense now. They had decided to ignore things they thought had little relevance, in favor of things that had more relevance. It wasn’t laziness or a flaw; they were reducing effort in an unneeded area. Maz’s children potentially sharing her mutation would not negatively affect her or them, so why waste time seeking information on the subject beforehand? Especially if nothing could be done about it regardless of the answer? And Mikey not seeking extra training was because… well, I couldn’t imagine how combat training would be unimportant. Maybe he was simply incorrectly sorting his priorities? Even I did that sometimes. Human thought processes were decidedly… focused, and it was easy to get too drawn into a singular goal.

Maybe purposeful inefficiency was a self-defense mechanism against pursuing an overly resource intensive goal? I myself had been trying to increase combat survivability, maximize energy storage, and maintain a perfect disguise all at the same time, straining my efforts in each area in order to maximize all of them. Like Adder said; a perfect approach would work only until I encountered a problem that was simply outside of my capabilities. Then it would fail spectacularly. By introducing some slack into lower priority areas of improvement, it would increase available resources in more fruitful endeavors, and would decrease the odds of me picking a course of action that was too difficult and had the potential to fail. After all, an organism that knew it couldn’t solve an electric puzzle trap would never attempt to do so, and therefore avoid the inevitable costly failure. I wasn’t in the test chambers anymore; I could always walk away from said impossible problem.

 

… I’d hated electric puzzle tests.

 

I finished up my tour of the grocery store, finding several new items that hadn’t been stocked the last time I came (hah, inefficiency was already helping to discover new options). The ingredients I needed were located where I remembered, but when I wanted to get the meat, I needed to ask a clerk to retrieve it from a sealed locker. Odd Summer had caused the price of meat to skyrocket, so much so that I briefly considered using a substitution like tofu, or perhaps whatever I could hunt up close to the surface of E13. Eventually though, I just decided to splurge and buy the ground beef. I didn’t know what a substitution would do to the flavor, and besides, I was practicing inefficiency.