Greed God chapter 47

January 13th 2016 Tibet 10:00 PM EDT

The  Calculator was REALLY fucking good at his job. Like seriously, Tibet? I  never would have fucking found this kid. I was kind of curious why  Cheshire hadn't hired the hacker, but then I remembered how much I  fucking paid him. Luckily I had a private jet, so making the  preparations to come here was pretty simple, if relatively annoying.  Still even with perfect body control and a whole team of metas the trip  to this secret base was fucking annoying. Luckily whoever the hell  stored Roy here was thorough enough to keep documentation of this secret  base in their records. Or they weren't and Calculator sifted it out of  their metadata or some shit.

So here we were, under a  cliff overhang looking down at what looked like an actual Tibetan  monastery. "Huh. I think this place is staffed with legit monks." I  turned to my team. Fafnir was transformed and Bonebreaker was in  costume, while Whisper had a domino mask on that she'd gotten  from...somewhere. With her ridonculous booty and literal wings I didn't  see her keeping her secret identity secret, but hey, it was her call,  maybe I'd make her a mask like mine later. " Any of you guys mind  beating up a bunch of monks?"

A series of head shakes was  enough answer for me. "Glad to hear it. So we take the two pronged  approach here. Whisper, you fly me up to that bell tower and we come in  from up top, Fafnir and Bonebreaker you go in from the ground floor  through the wall. Make some noise and draw them off." They nodded to me  and headed out into the snow. Whisper wrapped her arms around me and  zipped us over onto the bell tower. There was a monk over there on  guard, but we were on the opposite side from the entrance, and they  apparently didn't think to account for flight.

I crossed  the distance to the monk in seconds, wrapping him up in a choke hold  until I felt his muscles relax and he dropped his...spear, then setting  him down. Whisper and I slipped through a trap door and down into the  temple. More spear wielding guys with face coverings walked past. I  wasn't a monk but I was pretty sure they didn't usually pack spears. We  crept down a ladder and into a ridiculously bright red hallway, seeing a  few patrolling spearmen coming around the corner. Luckily that didn't  really matter because there was a loud crash and the spear wielders took  off at top speed in that direction.

I grinned behind my  mask. Fafnir sure knew how to make an entrance. I followed the hallway  down to a large red door that glowed in my masks treasure sight. Only  red, but still, it was clearly slightly valuable. Seemed as good a lead  as any. I turned to Whisper. "Burn it." She smirked and then inhaled  puffing out a rolling wave of crystalline prismatic fire. The door was  completely consumed within seconds, and I raised and eyebrow at her,  smirking. "Impressive." She blew me a kiss, walking into the room and I  gave that big fat ass a swat for luck as she passed, drawing an adorable  squeak from mt viper.

We made it into the room and I  looked around with interest. Blue generators coated the whole place in  ice, and in the center was a big ass pod with what looked like a human  shape in it. I muttered beneath my mask to Crassus. "So I need to  convince this traumatized kid to swear loyalty to me if I want him on my  crew?" Because I had no idea how the hell I was supposed to manage that  shit.

[What? No. Just steal him. He's a statue.  He's been a statue for years. No brain activity, no choices or ability  to make decisions. Take the pod and the statue is yours, the Brand will  remain once he thaws.]

I blinked. "Wait...what?  Then can I just immobilize anyone and steal them?" Because if so I'd  been doing this shit wrong. I would have come up with some kind of  paralytic ages ago if I'd known that. If I'd gone through all this  effort converting people for no fucking reason I was going to be  seriously pissed.

[Nah, the kid hasn't moved in  years. He's been in that frozen state long enough to develop an identity  as a tradeable resource...it's complicated. Suffice to say if you find  any other people in hibernation or some shit, it's possible you might be  able to grab them, but otherwise just consider it a no go.]

I  blew out a breath. That was a relief. It would have been convenient,  but I was pretty sure I'd have gone ballistic over the wasted time. I  stepped forward and reached out to touch the pod, mentally deciding it  was mine. I felt the Brand form basically instantly. Which was  just...neat. I nodded to Whisper who stepped up and tapped a button on  the side panel. The door opened in a whoosh of steam as the kid went  from popsicle to almost awake in literally seconds. I stepped forward  past him to study the cryogenic freezing unit. I used appraise.

[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Cryo-pod-G  rank. A cutting edge cryogenic stasis pod that can be used to place a  patient into an easily reversible stasis. Created by the genius  Professor Anthony Ivo using designs stole from Victor Fries, this pod  represents the apex of human cryogenic technology.]

I  debated having Fafnir take it. He could carry it easily, and it was G  rank. I decided to have him bring it with us. Speak of the devil, I  heard lumbering footsteps behind us and turned to greet my henchman,  before freezing. The very large very ugly man standing at the door was  NOT Fafnir. In fact, he was nobody I knew, but I was pretty sure I  recognized his appearance based on descriptions from my Kobra Venom  research. "Huh. Mammoth."

Mammoth  was, as mentioned. An ugly motherfucker. His skill was like discolored  leathery green and had split at the seams in multiple spots from his  body expanding. His stringy red hair barely looked like it fit on his  head, looking like a mop of straw clinging to his misshapen skull. He  bared his yellowed crooked teeth at me. "Looks like they weren't being  paranoid after all. Number Man noticed some weird stuff going on in the  files for this place, but the others thought it was nothing."

I  sighed, well, that made sense. It would figure someone with enough pull  to set this place up had a hacker on staff. I sighed. "See. You  shouldn't have told me that. Because it means that now I have to kill  you to make sure you can't report back to your bosses about any of  this." I dove forward into a picture perfect roll and popped up into a  blow to Mammoths jaw. He stepped back with a grunt and rocked a bit but  otherwise showed no real sign of the impact.

Annoying.  The ugly bastard had taken the OTHER Kobra Venom, the stupid kind that  boiled your brain in hormone soup and was pure force with no mental  enhancement. Which of course meant he was completely inferior to me.  Except in the case of raw physical output, in which he had a distinct  edge. He sneered and aimed a backhand at me that I easily avoided. Force  equals mass times acceleration, bigger things hit harder as long as you  move them at the same speed. However, smaller things move EASIER. He  was slightly stronger, but only slightly, and I was faster, which I  could work with.

He  growled with frustration throwing out a storm of punches, trying to  crush me, but I slipped aside at every hit. Aside from being big and  slow, he was also a fucking idiot. I wasn't a master combatant yet, but I  WAS a master of body language, and this ugly fuck would have been  telegraphing up a storm to me even if half his muscles weren't literally  fully exposed for me to watch. The more he missed the angrier he got,  and I just slipped in where I could and hammered in punches.

Not  randomly either. I hit the same fucking spot every time, a small point  on his ribs that his body seemed to subconsciously favor. Nothing  current, more like an old injury that had healed already. But if it  broke once it could break again, and I kept smashing my force fielded  fist into his side in a perfect body turning martial arts punch courtesy  of Barbie's katas. He tried to defend, but he was so livid at being led  around by the nose he couldn't stop swinging, and he left me an opening  every time.

One,  two, three blows right to the short ribs, and the more I hurt him the  angrier he got. I knew Whisper probably wanted in on this fight, and as I  beat him to a fucking pulp I had an idea. "Whisper, you get that mental  burn down?" We'd never used it, but it was possible that destroying  Mammoths mind would throw them off the scent. Maybe they would assume  his shitty brain finally gave out, at the very least it would send them  after telepaths because no one knew Whisper had that ability.

She  responded immediately. "Of course my lord." I grinned beneath my mask,  that was perfect. I backed off, gesturing for her to go ahead. She  stepped forward, passing me the kid, who had the orange serpent on the  bicep of his missing arm. With some focus I moved it, shifting it up  into his hair, once the glow faded it would be completely impossible to  notice unless they shaved him. She stepped up gracefully, putting a nice  wiggle on her hips to show off her booty for me, and then exhaled  another gout of flame.

This  time the flames hit Mammoth and consumed nothing. He caught fire, but  none of him burned. Whisper's prismatic glassflame could burn the  physical or the mental, and I hadn't ever seen the mental before.  Despite the lack of serious damage there was obviously tons of pain  involved, because Mammoth dropped like a rock and started to scream. Not  like 'oh shit my hand is burned' screaming either. Fire wouldn't cause  this. This wasn't a scream of pain, but of torment. He wasn't just  hurting he was scared, angry, depressed, and a dozen other things.

I  have to be honest, I got a little sick watching his fucking mind burn  away. He just lay there, twitching on the ground until he stopped making  any noise at all, at which point his eyes lolled back to stare blankly  at the ceiling, no one home inside his head. I turned to Whisper who was  looking a little green around the gills herself. "Ok, that? You don't  do that to anyone else unless I say so. That was fucked up." She nodded,  looking disturbed, and I handed her back the awake but still very dazed  Roy.

A loud  ruble sounded down the hallway as a pair of forms approached. I waved  cheerfully. "Nice job on the distraction guys. Ignore the living corpse  on the floor. One of you take the kid from Whisper, we gotta bounce." Bonebreaker  took the kid, because lizard spikes, and we made our way out. It  occurred to me that they could question the monks, but they'd only seen Bonebreaker and Fafnir, the latter of whom looked MUCH different and the former technically worked for Knightfall.

I turned to Bonebreaker.  "We're going to need to get you a new costume. Fafnir has another form  to hide out in so whoever owns this place won't be able to find him.  I'll have him lay low for a while, but your costume is noticeable. Best  to replace it and let them focus on Knightfall for a while." The idea of  whatever secret cabal this was trying to track down Knightfall made me  smile, so I decided that was the plan we would go with. Meanwhile no one  would ever know I was here. "Alright folks, back to the plane. We need  to get the kid home and bring him into the crew before I hand him over  to the milf I found him for."