Chapter Fifty – What to Do

Athena looked up as her big sister placed a hand atop her head. “Hmm?” she asked.

The Boss licked her lips, then glanced across the room where the three villains they had captured were currently held up. Aurora was standing over them, arms crossed and glowing antlers on full display. They had trussed the villains up with ropes and in one case electrical cords, then they had lit a few candles and placed them onto the kitchen counter at the back. It meant that the entire space wasn’t lit very brightly, but it was enough to see by.

Teddy was sitting on the counter with one leg crossed and the other draped down to tap onto the head of the lead villain. She was very smug that she had taken one of them out, and Athena was looking forward to telling her that it had been a group effort. It would annoy the heck out of her, she knew.

The villains didn’t look happy. Athena bet that they weren’t. Especially since Trinity and Maple were going around, looking for traps and things to steal and also the Orbject, which was probably close by.

“What do you think we should do with them?” Emily asked.

Athena stood a little taller, which coincidentally pressed the hand on her head a little deeper into her hair. The boss was asking her? Wait, no, of course. Maple was too nice, Trinity was too…. Trinity. Teddy was as stupid as a bag of rocks, and Aurora was busy keeping an eye on the villains so that they wouldn’t try anything funny.

Obviously, Athena was the best option.

“I think we could take them out back, find some shovels, and let them dig their own graves. We could do it ourselves, but digging sounds like a lot of work.”

Emily tensed a little. “And what about solutions that aren’t so, uh, permanent?”

Athena pouted. Wrong answer, then? “Well, I could poke in their heads a little and see if they’re the sorts to tell the HRF about us if we give them over? The heroes are stupid, but they have prisons. Or we could… let them go, I guess?”

“I thought about that too,” Emily said. “We tie them up, but don’t stop them from using their powers, and if they’re lucky and clever, they’ll eventually break their ropes and escape.”

“I can make sure that they’re so afraid of us that they’ll never even think about going after us again,” Athena suggested. It wasn’t often that she got to use all of her powers. Mostly because Big Sister Emily told her not to use harmful powers on her sisters.

“That’s… an option. How about we begin a little easier? Just eye them for a while, then ask some questions?

“I can do that,” Athena said. Her power was basically made of that kind of thing. Who’s Hoo, one of her secondary powers made it harder to tell who was an ally and who was an enemy, and Parlimental let her read surface thoughts. “I might need three or four hours. And it might be best if they were all separated. I can’t use all of my skills on all of them at the same time.”

“I see… okay then.” Emily perked up as Maple and Trinity returned, the latter carrying a small bin filled to the brim with stuff.

“Hey! Those are my snacks!” one of the villains shouted, the one with the fire attack.

“No it ain’t, it’s mine now!” Trinity shouted back. “But here, I was nice, and I got you cushions to sit on!” Trinity flicked a cushion across the room. All of the practice they had gotten with pillow fighting meant that her throw was super accurate and she nailed the villain in the face.

Athena still thought that it was too nice of Trinity to hand out stuff like that. Let the villains have their butts go sore from sitting too long! Or… maybe it wasn’t all bad? They could remove cushion privileges later, if they misbehaved.

“Maple, did you find any rooms that would be good for, ah, interrogations?” Emily asked.

Maple blinked, then nodded after thinking for a few minutes. “There is one?”

“Good, perfect. Athena, can you and Maple work together to set that up? I’m going to remain here with the villains. Trinity, one of you can help too? You’ll need a chair, I think. In the meantime, I’m going to see if I can’t cook something up for everyone. They have a little burning there, in the kitchen. If I can get it working we might be able to have lunch.”

Athena jumped to it. She had to do good work to impress everyone, but most of all her Big Sister. Besides, this is what she was made

for. The rest of her sisters could be tough and strong, and able to fight well, but Athena was here for the long interrogation sessions and for the mind games.

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The room Maple was talking about was more of a large closet. There was a rack bolted to one wall with several shelves, and the villains had stocked them with stuff. There was a box filled with cans of food and several large bundles of toilet paper and towels and little boxes of soap and the like. There was also a box of small candles, which she yoinked.

Basically it had become a small storage unit not too far from the kitchen and main living space. Athena started to get the sense that this wasn’t as much of a temporary space as she’d first thought.

She dragged a chair over and set it in the middle of the room then ran back.

She returned with a lit candle so that she could see better, and a small side-table to set it on. Soon it was joined by a half-dozen more candles, and that provided enough light to really see by.

She started to empty the room as well. Pushing things further away from the chair and bringing some stuff out into the corridor. Having a villain grab a roll of toilet paper was one thing, but having one grab a large can of tomato sauce was another. That could be a weapon!

The chair went in the middle of the room, and when Maple showed up, she cooked up something with glue and nails and some candlewax to fix it to the floor. It wasn’t going to be permanent, but if it stayed there long enough for Athena’s interrogation, then that was long enough for her.

The first one they brought in was the gadgeteer.

He slumped into the room, then scanned it once before allowing himself to be pushed down into the chair and tied up.

“So, is this going to be torture?” he asked.

“I read that torture is actually really not good,” Athena said. “At getting secrets and stuff, I mean. But that’s just something I read. I don’t know if it’s true. Maybe it’s just the heroes saying that to make people think that they shouldn’t bother?”

“You’d almost be cute if you didn’t sound so murderous,” he muttered.

“I’m not sounding murderous, silly, I’m sounding… torturous. It’s different!” Athena grinned at him, then she looked up and met his eyes. His surface thoughts were a bit of a mess. He was worried, annoyed, sad, a little depressed. The villain wasn’t too concerned about his friends, though, mostly just about himself.

She didn’t know if that meant he thought they’d be fine, or if he just didn’t care about them. “Where is the Orbject?” she asked.

“I’m not going to tell you,” he replied.

“Is it close?” she asked. He glared. It definitely was. “Is it in this room? The kitchen? Somewhere else? Oh, but it is in the basement area, right? The fire girl’s room? The other girl’s room? Your room? Your room! Got it! So, near the door? No? Your bed? There’s gadgeteer stuff in there, is it there? No… is the orbject trapped? No? Really? You didn’t even trap it? That’s sloppy.”

The villain flinched back. “What the hell? Are you a mind reader?”

“Yeah, obviously,” Athena said. “Now, next question… actually, Maple, did you have any questions for him, he’s a gadgeteer too. Like, a cheaper one. I think his whole thing is static electricity, and he feels annoyed because it’s not working.”

“Oh, my machine is stopping that,” Maple said.

“What?” he asked, turning to try to get a good look at her. “How?”

“Um… you know how electricity works, by having little negative electronics and positive electronics going around and wiggling?”

“…Yes?”

Maple smiled. “I made the negative ones positive all over.”

The man stared. “Are you insane? You turned electrons into positrons? Just like that? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? Did you test that at scale at all?”

Maple flinched back, then shook her head. “No? I made it just before getting here?”

“You… you can’t just make gadgets like that! You could hurt yourself! And others! God, I know you’re a child but you don’t need to be a stu–“

“Okay, that’s enough,” Athena said, her voice sharp and her power whipping out.

Maple had tears in her eyes.

And here Athena had been planning on being relatively nice.

***

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