Chapter 95: The forbidden Fruit

“Rise and shine!” dad crowed, marching through Perry’s room, clattering together a pot and wooden spoon.

“Remind me why I still live here, again?” Perry asked, sitting up in bd and rubbing his throbbing temples. “I’m literally a millionaire.”

“Because you love us! Also because you did a cost-benefit analysis and realized that you could save millions on defense against other supers by continuing to live under the wing of Hexen and The Mechanaut!”

“Ah. Now I remember.” Perry muttered rubbing his hands down his face to wake up.

“Get your game face on, son, grampa is going back to the farm tomorrow, and he wanted to have a family get-together, so we rented out a mall! We’re going bowling!” dad looked practically giddy at the prospect of rolling a ball down an oiled lane. Perry vaguely recalled grampa enjoying the ‘sport’ as well.

The entire mall?

“My millions don’t mean anything to you, do they?” Perry said, glancing up at the hawk-nosed professor with his receding hairline.

“It’s a good first try, boy! But numbers on a ledger aren’t power!”

Dad then proceeded to march out the door, turn to the right, entering the master bedroom, waking up mom in a similar manner. There was a flash of light from the other side of the hall and the smell of ozone began wafting through the air.

A moment later dad walked past the door, grinning like a maniac, his hair standing on end.

Perry heaved a yawn and stretched, rolling out of bed, tugging on a fresh set of underwear and heading for the bathroom.

Perry stopped short when he spotted Heather from the guest room at the end of the hall. The dawn light filtering through the windows made her hair into a vivid halo of brilliant reddish gold.

That’s right. Heather had moved in with them. Mom and dad were more than happy to become surrogate parents and look after her for a couple years, claiming they had never really wanted a son in the first place. Traitors.

Heather was wearing an oversized T-shirt that hung down below her knees. The dawn light flooding in from her bedroom penetrated the soft fabric and made her skin glow from inside the sleepwear.

She blinked blearily at him, then glanced at the bathroom, halfway between the two. Perry shook himself out of his stupor, realizing his morning bathroom time was about to get sniped.

“Dibs!” they shouted, sprinting for the bathroom and colliding like sumo wrestlers in the center. Heather tried to squirm past him, but Perry boasted superior pound-for pound-strength, and she would have to lose her clothes if she wanted to shapeshift and slip through his fingers and under the door. Still, she was too flexible and stretchy to actually make her lose her footing and push out of the way. An impasse.

The two of them struggled like that for a good thirty seconds, until Heather got serious and bit Perry, growing her teeth into fangs and sinking them into his neck.

HP:5

“Did you just bite me?”Perry asked as the system informed him of Wraith’s malfeasance.

“Don’t act like you didn’t like it,” Heather whispered, pulling back to look at him. Their faces were less than an inch away from each other, so close that Perry could feel her breath on his lips.

Okay, I need to stop wrestling now. Perry thought, trying to dislodge himself before Heather got a feel for his growing problem.

“Now, now, kids,” Grampa said, placing a firm hand on their shoulders. “I understand you two have a bit of a rivalry thing going on, this is going a bit too far.”

The old farmer stepped in between the two of them, acting the mediator.

“I know you’re teens and you’ll use any excuse you can get to put your hands all over each other, but you gotta keep yourself under control and look at the big picture. Getting into fights about every little thing is a distraction and a bad habit to get into. Sooner or later, someone will take advantage of that distraction. Case in point:”

Grampa, having successfully gotten between them, opened the door to the bathroom and slipped in before Perry or Heather could do anything about it.

A moment later, the sound of the shower started, along with grampa’s bass voice humming an old-timey song.

“Son of a bitch!” Heather shouted with a scowl, but Perry was already running to the kitchen bathroom.

The usual routine of the family of three had become much more hectic in the morning with the addition of Grampa and Heather, straining the facilities nearly to the breaking point.

Once everything settled down, they sat down for breakfast, and mom made pancakes with strawberries.

Halfway through breakfast, grampa dropped the bomb.

“By the way, I invited Mary to go bowling with us,” he said, nonchalantly studying the syrup-drenched pancakes on the tines of his fork.

Mom’s silverware dropped out of her hand and clattered onto the plate, while dad’s pancakes dripped syrup onto his shirt, hovering halfway to his mouth as he stared, jaw slack.

“Who’s Mary?” Perry asked, frowning curiously along with Heather.

“Your grandmother, Marigold.” Mom said, wiping off her fork with a scowl. “I don’t know what made you think that was a good idea, but she’ll definitely stand us up. Probably with some kind of message that apologizes profusely while also implying we’re less important than whatever she’s doing.”

“Let me tell you something about rich ladies: They’re people. And something that all people have in common is that they’re fascinated by what they can’t have. The one thing that rich ladies can’t have: Poor country boys.” Grampa straightened his blue button-up shirt collar.

“We’re like catnip for rich women.” Grampa said with a shrug. “The forbidden fruit. She’ll show up. And even if she doesn’t, I still get to do some bowling.”

“Wow,” Heather said, resting her head on her palm and glancing at Perry. “I’m starting to see where you and your dad get your frankly suicidal self-confidence,” Heather remarked, causing mom to nearly spit up some milk.

Grampa straightened his collar again, not bothering to dignify Heather’s comment with a response.

“That reminds me, I gotta go grab the experimental soul-modification blueprints I plan on using on myself from my room and bring them along to show to gramma.” Perry said, excusing himself from the table.

“Case in point,” Heather murmured as Perry trotted back down the hall.

After breakfast, they piled into the family SUV and set out for a day of fun.

“Whoah,” Heather said, upon sticking her head into the van, pulling her head back and glancing toward either end of the care before sticking her head back in.

“Is your freaking family van bigger on the inside?” Heather asked, glancing back at him in astonishment.

“Yeah, so?” Perry said with a shrug.

“Did you do it?” she asked, climbing in in front of him.

“Nah, dad made it and mom made it bigger.”

“So you’re not the first person to do magitech.”

“I’ll have you know that this is not magitech!” Perry said, his voice raising as they buckled themselves in. “Magitech is when techniques from technology are implemented in the process of making magic to create something more potent or streamlined, THIS is a car with a spell cast on it. They’re two totally different things.”

“Sure…” Heather said, blatantly trying to get a rise out of him.

Perry would’ve punched her in the shoulder had she been within arm’s reach, but the inside of the family van was roughly equivalent to the bridge of the Enterprise.

The trip was relatively uneventful, until they arrived at the mall and piled out of the SUV. The mall itself was a smoldering pile of rubble.

“By ‘rented’, Perry asked, glancing at dad as he climbed out. “Did you perhaps mean…”

“Relax, it’s a hologram,” dad said pulling out a remote control and pressing a button. The scene changed to an ancient coliseum, followed by a desert oasis, followed by a an alice-in wonderlands scene with a giant caterpillar, followed by a bunch of scantily-clad barbarian woman fighting, seemingly straight out of a pulp fiction novel.

Mom glanced over at dad and raised an eyebrow.

“Shoulda put a dang off switch on here, too,” dad muttered, cycling through images rapidfire until finally the mall was revealed in all its glory.

It wasn’t nearly as big as Washington City’s but that gave it more of a small-town feel. Plus everyone who’d wanted to go to the mall today had turned around immediately upon seeing the damage. The place would be nice and roomy.

Rented it out, my ass.

The whine of a jet engine echoed through the empty parking lot as Natalie’s mechsuit landed beside their van.

“By the way, I invited Natalie.” Perry said with a shrug. If Grampa could do it, Perry could do it. Oddly enough, no one was particularly upset. Not like with Gramma Z.

Nat’s newest mechsuit design was beginning to take on a biological look, more than mechanical. The cockpit looked like an egg, and the floating arms and legs held together by solid magnetic joints had an organic swoop to them that reminded Perry of bones.

They even had narrow bands of giant bone inlaid into the smooth steel, enhancing the biological, almost primal design of the suit.

The guns jutting out of the arms ruined the aesthetic, but Perry supposed she wasn’t actually trying to chase the biological aesthetic, it was just that organic structures tended towards ideal shapes that were stronger and more resilient than simple straight lines.

The cockpit popped open and the tiny Tinker climbed out, frowning up at the mall, then around at the parking lot.

“Was I imagining things from the sky, or was this place a battlefield? – Oof!” Nat’s breath was crushed out of her as Heather tackled her, picking her struggling form off the ground, legs kicking several feet off the ground.

“Dad set up a hologram to prevent people from going to the mall.” Perry explained.

“Oh,” Nat said through a cloud of gold hair. “Cool.”

Heather set Nat down and the six of them headed for the mall.

“Whaddya wanna do first?” Dad asked, rubbing his hands together. “Bowling, maybe shop around and walk off some of that breakfast, bowling? Check out the arcade? Bowling?”

“When Darryl was a kid, I took him bowling every time he got a pink slip from the school.” Grampa said.

Perry frowned.

“It’s harder than you think, getting several hundred pink slips without getting expelled,” Dad said.

“Why would you do that?” Natalie asked, her jaw dropped, while mom giggled, and Heather looked at Grampa with newfound respect.

“Well, his grades were already perfect, and he was a shy, neurotic little boy, always anxious about every little thing, so the only thing more he could learn at school was confidence and a lack of respect for authority.” Grampa said. “Can’t have my kid crumbling when a dumb sumbitch bureaucrat with a shiny badge tries to throw him off his land or tell him what he can and can’t build. Goddamn liberals.”

“So much is starting to make sense,” Perry said, shaking his head. “You realize you raised dad to be a supervillain, right?”

“While I don’t understand or approve of running around wearing tights and blowing stuff up for the hell of it, by all accounts, my boy is one of the best.” Grampa said, clapping dad on the shoulder.

“Thanks, dad,” Dad said with a grin as they walked through the massive double doors into the mall. “It’s power-armor.”

“It’s highly irresponsible to step away from the clinic for any length of time.” A cold voice cut through the gentle hum of the mall’s air conditioning “My time equates to lives saved, so you should be grateful I even bothered to attend,” Gramma said, standing beside one of the mall pillars in a long-sleeved dress that was literally sprinkled with magical gemstones.

“That’s my cue,” Grampa said, straightening his clothes and rushing ahead of the rest of the family at a trot.

“Mary, I’m so glad to see you could make it.” Grampa said with a big grin.

“You’re late,” Gramma said, nose raised in the air.

“Darryl drove,” Grampa said, throwing his own son under the bus without hesitation.

“Perhaps your idiot son could learn how to keep a schedule.”

“He is such a scatterbrain,” Grampa said, holding his arm out for Gramma to loop hers around. “Have you had breakfast yet?”

“No,” she said, softening as they spoke.

“Neither have I,” Grampa lied through his teeth. “These cretins already ate though. Whaddya say you and me grab something to eat? Somewhere fancy or sinfully low class?”

“As fancy as a mall food court can be, I suppose,” Gramma said as Grampa guided her to the escalator. She got a mischievous look in her eye that Perry had never seen before. “But this morning…Sinfully low class.”

“IHOP it is,” Grampa said with a grin.

“What about bowling?” Dad asked after him.

“You’re an adult. We’ll join you later,” Grampa called over his shoulder.

The five of them stood in silence for a moment, processing what just occurred.

“Your dad is trying to seduce my mom,” mom broke the quiet spell with a shudder. “And I think it’s working.”

“I don’t wanna think about it!” dad said cheerfully, turning to Perry, Heather and Nat.

“So what do you kids wanna do first?” he asked.

Perry glanced at the other two and shrugged. “Bowling sounds good.”

Dad practically skipped in excitement as he led them to the lanes.

The bowling alley was practically deserted because of the hologram tricking people into believing the place was destroyed, except for the people who worked there, who had no idea why business was so slow that particular day.

If they knew, they probably weren’t paid enough to care, anyway.

A kid about Perry’s age handed them each a pair of shoes in their size and a menu, which was composed entirely of pepperoni pizza and hot dogs.

The bowling alley was not known for having good food.

“Alright, here’s the rules,” dad said, removing his shoes and slipping into a customized pair he’d produced from a flamboyant nylon bag beside him. “Rule number one: Don’t get caught using your powers to cheat. Rule number two: don’t get caught damaging or modifying the lane or the balls. Rule number three: team with the lower average score pays for dinner.”

“Did you just tell us to cheat?” Perry asked as dad lined up his feet on the lanes’ markings.

Perry could’ve sworn he saw a targeting reticule flicker up on dad’s eyeball for an instant before dad smoothly took three steps and threw a strike, the pins clattering wildly as his ball curved left to land right in the pocket, just right of center.

“I said no such thing,” dad said, with a smirk as he traded places with mom on the bench. “You three should get started, though. Dinner could be expensive.”

“But I’m terrible at bowling!” Nat said, her expression worried.

“You know I’m a millionaire, right?” Perry asked. “These stakes are meaningless.”

“Oh come on, Perry, get in the spirit of the game!” Dad whined. “It’s not about winning, it’s about not getting caught!”

“Alright, old man, you’re going down,” Perry said, entering his name as the first player, followed by Nat and Heather.

Perry grabbed a twelve-pound ball and stood on the line, seemingly lining up his shot and pondering his strategy.

What he was actually doing was modifying his team’s lane by scraping it with his foot.

Perry channeled his intent through his Tinker Twitch and Spendthrift perk.

In a subtle motion that was vanishingly small unless one was looking for it, the oil on the lane developed a grain that would pull a bowling ball towards the center pocket.

Perry hauled off and tossed the ball, deliberately sending it off course. The unnatural grain of the oil grabbed the ball and guided it back to the center of the lane. The ball over-compensated a bit, going the other direction a ways before tugging back to center, making a wavy snake shape until it finally stabilized and struck the pocket, giving a satisfying clatter as all the pins went down.

“How the-“ Dad murmured, his jaw slack.

“Looks like you’re up, Nat.” Perry said, motioning to the lane and sitting across the bench from his dad.

“What?” Perry said innocently as dad stared at him.

“You did something.”

“Prove it.”