Chapter One – Serious Mode!

A month ago she would have been panicking.

Two months ago, she might have been nearly catatonic with anxiety. The sort that bubbled up in her stomach and made her entire body felt like it was being squeezed in from every direction all at once.

Now, however? Now Emily was a hardened warrior. A villain of great repute. She had faced down other villains, had fought with and against heroes, had chased entire villainous organizations out of her city. She had even done some things in the public eye, where people could see her and judge her, and she came out of it without a single visible panic attack.

This challenge now? She could take it.

“Wow, Boss, you look serious,” Teddy said as she eyed Emily up and down.

Emily was in jeans and an oversized sweatshirt. Her hair was tied back in a loose bun, and she had a large plastic bucket next to her. The handles of various cleaning implements stuck out of it. By her other foot was a plastic grocery bag, this one filled with brightly coloured containers. Soaps and detergents and bleaches and perfumed cleaning products of different sorts.

“That’s because I am,” Emily said as she narrowed her eyes at the challenge before her.

Their home, the secretive lair tucked deep below the city, connected to a metro system that never was, had turned into a mess.

Her task today was to clean it all up.

“Everyone!” she barked out. “Gather here… please!”

“Boss, I’m here already,” Teddy said.

Emily resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Mostly because her many sisters were precocious enough without picking up the gesture from her and imitating it at every possible opportunity. They already picked up swears like dogs picked up fleas and convincing them not to use those was as hard as giving a dog a bath.

The call worked, eventually. Her sisters dragged themselves out of their respective rooms or where they were lounging the day away and slowly gathered before her.

There was Teddy, who had already been there from the start. Emily’s ‘oldest’ sister in the sense that she was created before the others. A bit short, a little rotund around the tummy and cheeks, and filled to the absolute brim with attitude.

Teddy had a T-shirt on with a picture of a roaring bear on it, which was suitable. When Teddy decided to use her power–which was too frequently, especially at home–that was exactly what she turned into. A full-sized, adult, North American grizzly.

That was two hundred kilos of very strong, surprisingly smart, and unsurprisingly aggressive bear. Her powers had evolved over time, turning her brown fur into a sea of iron needles that only made her tougher and meaner in a fight. Probably heavier too, but Maple had stolen the bathroom scale at some point, so Emily wasn’t sure.

“Hi, Big Sis, what’s up?” Athena asked.

Athena was a slim girl with features that Emily might have–were she not a good big sister–described as gremlin-like. She had wide, intelligent eyes behind a pair of large round glasses and the kind of smile that could only mean trouble.

Her powers meant trouble too. They were orders of magnitude more subtle than Teddy’s ‘turn into a literal bear’ powers, but no less likely to cause trouble.

Athena could meet someone’s eyes and read their surface thoughts, get impressions from their mind, and then cause others to feel growing amounts of paranoia. Giving a girl who looked like she was barely a teen the ability to mess with people’s minds wasn’t a good idea, and yet here she was.

It didn’t help that Athena thought she was the smartest person in the room. It especially didn’t help that she oftentimes was the smartest in the room.

“I’m here!” Trinity called as she stumbled into the living room.

Emeily stared at her. Trinity was small compared to some of her sisters, though she wasn’t quite as short and stout as Teddy. She came up to Emily’s nose but was the kind of thin that a lot of girls would be envious of.

“Where’s the rest of you?” Emily asked.

Trinity blinked, then refused to meet Emily’s eye. “I’m… here and there,” she said.

“Trinity,” Emily said, the warning in her tone made Trinity’s fluffy raccoon tail twitch.

“Ah! I’m coming, I’m coming!” she said, but not just from the body in front of Emily. Instead, it came from the two other Trinity’s that ran into the room, stumbling over each other.

This book’s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Trinity was a one-for-three kind of deal. Three bodies that shared one mind. There weren’t three Trinity’s, just the one shared between all of her bodies. Which meant that she could be causing three times as much trouble as one kid.

That was her power, being in three places at once. It certainly came with some advantages, and some interesting mental quirks.

Emily had never had a sister so likely to walk in front of a moving vehicle.

Trinity’s power extended to a few other quirks. She could transfer items between her selfs. What slipped into one pocket was likely to come out of another, and in a way, Trinity was impossible to put down and could use that to her advantage in any sort of fighting that might come up.

“Trinity, can you send part of you to go get Maple?” Emily asked.

“Okay!” Trinity cheered. She might have been the most likely of her sisters to bathe with the toaster while it was plugged in for fun, but she was also quick to listen and obey, which was nice.

Speaking of toasters…

Trinity ran off to one of the rooms, and then a fresh new Trinity appeared next to herself with a pop. “Oh, I died.”

Emily sighed. “Try again,” she said before raising her voice. “Maple! No traps in the house!”

This time, Trinity succeeded in returning with her sister. Maple was red in the face and her entire focus was on the floor between her toes.

Maple was perhaps the sister that Emily resonated the most with, at least in terms of personality. She was small, shy, and quiet. Introverted to an extreme degree and more interested in spending time off on her own than busy with others.

Emily could understand all of that very well.

Maple’s powers were by far the most versatile in their entire family. She was a gadgeteer, the kind of powered individual whose power mostly focused on making stuff. Gadgeteers usually worked around a specific theme. One focused on lasers might, for example, be able to make room-temperature superconductors as long as it was something meant to be used in a laser rifle, or they might be able to turn a plain glass bottle into the focus for a pistol. Their power would surround their theme, giving them blueprints and the ability to turn scrap into something technologically superior to anything commercially available.

Maple’s gadgeteer theme, as far as Emily could tell, was based on her own imagination.

It was kind of terrifying, to be honest. Maple had turned a toaster into a railgun and could turn a tube of toothpaste into a sticky bomb as long as she had some sticks of bubble gum and some rubber bands because by her logic, gum was sticky and toothpaste could easily explode out of its tube.

“Sorry,” Maple muttered. “I heard you, but I just wanted to finish what I was working on.”

“And the trap?” Emily asked.

Maple shrank into herself. “It wasn’t a trap-trap. I just had some mouse-traps I’d modified by the door.”

“And they were strong enough to kill Trinity?” Emily asked.

“Just a little?”

Emily sighed. “No traps in the house,” she said.

Maple nodded, and Emily was certain the rule wouldn’t be followed.

“Hey, sorry I’m late,” the last of Emily’s sisters said as she came in from the kitchen. She eyed Emily up and down, including all the cleaning supplies. “Are we doing some spring cleaning?”

“That’s the idea,” Emily said with a nod. “The place needs a good scrub-down. I figure if we all work together, it won’t be so bad.”

The last of Emily’s sisters was so new that she was still a bit of an enigma. She was a girl a little taller than Emily herself, with deep red hair and a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Aurora looked like she was in her late teens, maybe just a few years younger than Emily.

She was calm, collected, and rather mature for her age, and so far she had been very helpful and kind.

It worried Emily to no end that after so many… somewhat troublesome sisters, her latest was so kind and helpful.

Her power wasn’t visible at the moment, but when she activated it, she’d grow a pair of ethereal antlers that were both immovable objects. Nothing could move them unless Aurora wanted them moved, from bullets to trains.

It was a strange and difficult power to leverage, but Emily was certain they’d manage.

“Alright, let’s get started,” she said.

***

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep