It's such an incredible rush, fucking someone like this. Hearing her scream and sob. Knowing that the only reason she's surviving what he's doing to her is that he's healing her constantly as he does it. At any moment he could just stop doing that, and she'd die screaming under him. It's beautiful.

It only lasts a few minutes, but they're a top contender for the best few minutes of his life.

And then he's done, and he lies on top of her for a moment, catching his breath, enjoying the way it feels when she burns and heals and burns again.

All right, that's enough playtime. He wills her to sleep and fixes her up and takes away her memory and puts her back in the passenger seat with her clothes and her eggs, and restores the car into its ordinary driving configuration with transparent windows and no obsidian-lined torture closet, and settles himself back into place in the driver's seat, and sits for a minute just breathing until he's sure he can pick up where their conversation left off. And during that minute he remembers that he put her down while he was in the middle of getting into the car, so he gets out again and wakes her back up as he's sitting down and closing the door behind him.

Finally, finally, finally he's done. He's done, but he doesn't stop, he just lays there, and Evelyn still burns. She wants to ask him if that's it, she'd been hoping it would end when he was, well, done with her. But he's still lying on top of her and her skin keeps blistering and peeling and he won't get off her. She wants him to get out, wants it to end needs it to end. But he's lying there, taking his time. And there's nothing she can do about it but scream, and occasionally gasp for breath. And then-- 

Evelyn smiles at the boy as he sits down, suddenly feeling a bit more out of breath from carrying all those groceries than she expected. Isn't she in better shape than this? Well, regardless she has a ride home now. And she'll do this somewhat smarter and less spur-of the moment next time. "You're going to want to start heading down that way," she says, pointing down the street in the direction she'd been walking. "You'll turn right in a few blocks, I'll tell you when we're getting close. Sound good?" 

"Yep," he says agreeably, proceeding down the street in the indicated direction. Contrary to her expectations, he's actually a pretty careful driver; her eggs will be safe.

Evelyn really must have just misjudged this boy. It's always nice when someone exceeds your expectations.

After a few minutes of direction-giving, they arrive at Evelyn's home. "Alright, we're here. Give me a hand with a couple of the bags, would you?" She opens the car and goes around to the hood to get her groceries. 

"Sure!" he says cheerfully. He gets out of the car and helps her carry in her groceries.

"You can put them down on the porch," she tells him when they get there. "I can make two trips from here." Evelyn still feels just a little bit awkward about the situation -- she'll tell her husband about it, for sure, it'll still be a funny story, but she doesn't necessarily want him to see right this second.

She gives him a small smile. "Thank you very much for the help, it was greatly appreciated. I hope you enjoy the rest of your driving." 

"Aww, you're welcome! Bye!"

And he goes back to his car and sits behind the wheel and contemplates how this evening has gone so far.

...yeah, there's no way he's giving up this power, is there.

Okay. Okay. He should maybe... think about things a little, here.

Problem number one: he got this power through some kind of deal with, if not the devil, a pretty good imitation, who is probably not going to be kind enough to let him slide through the 'I only agreed you could ask for a favour' loophole if it comes up. He's not sure he wants to do that favour but he is sure he'd be devastated to give up this power. So he's probably going to agree, and then he's probably going to have a problem someday. Unless all the devil wants is for him to torture or kill somebody, or something. As long as he doesn't have to give up anything he owns it'll probably be fine. Maybe. Ugh, who even knows. This is a problem for Future Sean.

Problem number two: as much as he fucking loves this car, it's a car. He really needs to get his hands on some more substantial territory. A house would be good, a condo would be probably adequate, the ideal might be to own something like a mall or a movie theater that gets lots of people coming through every day...

He doesn't quite feel able to think things through properly, sitting here in his car in front of Evelyn's house. He starts the engine and heads out, not going anywhere in particular, just driving for the sake of driving. Thinking is easier in motion.

The thought occurs to him that he could go home - well, 'home' - and try to think in his apartment, maybe pace around or see how good the building's gym is, but that place has never felt like he belonged in it and after how the devil-or-whoever kept talking about it earlier it probably never will. His car is better. His car is his.

Okay. Think and drive.

How is he going to get his hands on land?

The first images that come to mind involve finding some wilderness somewhere and building a log cabin in it by hand. He's not sure that would count, and it would be a hell of a lot of effort, and it wouldn't be near anywhere he could get victims from, so it might work as a proof of concept or a way to explore what his power can do with territory but it's not going to work as an actual starting place from which to build his ideal future.

The next thought he has is to get somebody to assassinate his parents, but as annoying as they are he's not sure he wants them dead, and they're useful to have around sometimes, such as when he gets caught committing violent crimes. So maybe not that one.

His experiences tonight with Jenna and Evelyn suggest that he's surprisingly charismatic, much more so than he would've thought if you'd asked him yesterday. Maybe he can do something with that. Convincing someone to buy him a house sounds... maybe a little overambitious, but he's got magic powers, he can probably work something out. Find another rich kid with better control of their money and get them to marry him, maybe.

Could he use his powers, in their current state, to somehow convince someone to just give him land or money? By torture or mind control or some other means?

...not, he thinks, unless he can first convince them that he owns them. If he gets someone into his car and mind-controls them into giving him all their stuff, they're going to figure out something is up even if they don't have any way of knowing exactly what, and whatever happens afterward he suspects it won't end in him still having all their stuff. If he wants to use magic to force someone to give him a house he's going to have to be able to use magic on them permanently whenever he wants, and that means making them his.

Well, it's not like that's going to be a big step out of his way. He wants to make someone his anyway. He really, really wants that. Now that he's thought of it, it's kind of hard to think about anything else. He doesn't know exactly what the requirements are—if he gets a chance, he should ask the devil about it—but making someone believe that he owns them... sounds like the kind of thing he could maybe do, now he has the example of what happened to Evelyn when he wished she'd get with the program.

Being able to force people to believe things by magic is, he reflects more soberly, actually kind of fucked up. It makes him feel... uncomfortable. He could lie to someone and force them to believe him. He's kind of already doing that, when he brings people into his car and tortures them and then lets them go without their memories of his transgressions.

But being able to torture someone with absolutely no consequences is undeniably also really hot. Overall, he thinks it's a pretty good trade.

And now...

He's already been luckier than he could reasonably have expected twice this evening, stopping to offer rides to people who turned out to be pretty easy to talk into his car. Going out hunting for a third would probably be pushing it, even though he really wants to get started on figuring out how to own someone and the thought of owning people has gotten him very thoroughly in the mood to rape someone again.

Okay. He's going to head home—well, head back to the apartment—and if he spots any really good opportunities on the way back, he'll stop and try his luck, and if not, he'll check out the apartment and the building some more and maybe say hi to any neighbours he happens to run into and then go to sleep and he can go hunting again tomorrow.

Sean doesn't run into anyone of particular interest on the drive home. 

Bob really doesn't like working late nights, but every once in a while they have a crunch at the office to get things done on time for the next release, and it's a lot better for morale if the manager is there when all the testers are. At least that's what his bosses tell him. Most of the time during these crunches he has little to do; he mostly just collects the various bugs his testers find and relay them to the software engineers, as well as directing his own team to recently changed pieces of the UI, as directed by the programmers' manager. His job is honestly a lot more interesting when things aren't almost done, when prioritizing what has to be changed and what doesn't and when and how is a much more interesting puzzle. Nights like these he mostly plays games on his phone. 

He's a bit surprised when he gets into the elevator at his apartment building to see his floor already pressed, and the only other person in the elevator a rather imposing young man who Bob is sure he's never seen before. And he's at least met everyone on his floor, he's pretty sure, even the quiet ones in 14-B who almost never leave the room. But one of the rooms did just open up...

Bob decides to be friendly, and puts out a hand to shake. "Hey there," he says, "I live up on 14 myself, 14-D. Did you just move into 14-A? The Templetons moved out a month or so ago."

"Yeah." He shakes the man's hand, smiling. "I'm Sean. Gonna be studying architecture at MTU."

A good firm handshake. Not surprising, given his build. He returns one in kind. "Oh, nice! I know some people who went there, it's a pretty good school. I work for remote medical solutions -- you've probably never heard of us; we make software for, well, remotely controlled medical and surgical equipment." He resists getting into his whole spiel; the elevator ride isn't that long, and he wants to go watch tv and fall asleep. Plus he'll probably run into Sean again. 

"Huh! That's pretty cool," he says. "It's, like... useful in a way a lot of stuff isn't."

Bob smiles a little. "It is! There's a whole bunch of times where surgeons might need to control medical equipment smaller than their hands can possibly manipulate, or move tubes around when they're inside people, or be in another room due to infectious diseases. And in those cases it's important that the equipment not break or malfunction, because it's not like the surgeons can use their hands if..." 

The elevator bings and the door opens. Bob does his best not to look sheepish. "Er. Sorry about that, we're already here. I can tell you more about it later if you're curious, though? But I should probably be getting to bed."

"Super reasonable," he says agreeably, getting out of the elevator. "See you later! You can tell me all about it!"

Bob smiles, stepping out after him. "Well, it was nice to meet you, Sean. I'm sure I'll run into you later, as long as school doesn't keep you too busy, hah! And if you need something, feel free to knock." 

He seems like a reasonable enough new neighbor, and nothing wrong with making new friends. He probably needs a few more of those. For now, though, he's gonna take a nice hot shower, Netflix binge a couple episodes of the comedy he's been watching, and get some sleep. 

"Sure thing!"

He turns toward his apartment and heads inside. It still looks infuriatingly well-groomed in there, but there are no assassins waiting to ambush him for throwing out the flowers on the kitchen counter. And he can throw his clothes on the floor and watch porn on his laptop for an hour and go to sleep, and in the morning—

Well, in the morning he remembers vaguely that there's some kind of school orientation thing today, and he should probably find out when and where that is and then go to it. Maybe there'll be cute girls he can hit on or victimize! Maybe he can find out where to sign up for dance clubs!

If he checks the various and sundry emails he's received from the college over the past few months, Sean will see one with the subject line "Orientation Guide". It's been sent to both his personal email address and his school email address account, which, being Sean, he may not have set up yet. Regardless, the email starts with a small form letter from the dean, welcoming him to the college, and then a longer explanation about how orientation is a great time to meet and learn about his fellow floor-mates, which will include people from majors other than his own, learn his way around campus with a tour from his RA, eat his first meal in the state of the art MTC cafeteria, find out where to go for various campus services (including health services, physical mail, and admissions), sign up for various clubs based on his interests, and learn about the history of this fine institution.

This is followed by further, more specific detail about his orientation group and schedule. Since Sean doesn't actually have a dorm floor, he's been slotted into group OFFCAMPUS-D, and apparently, his RA is named Rachel Quinn. Because he doesn't live in a dorm, his meeting group's designated meeting place is in the lobby of the Wendell Sciences Building -- which is circled in red in a map in an email attachment. (The outline is clearly drawn by hand in marker by someone on top of a campus map and scanned in, and the PDF of the map is upside-down.) 

Orientation starts at 11, and runs until 3:30. There's a further detail of the exact schedule, but he's expected to stay until the end -- and the end is when his group gets to see various booths made by a number of clubs at the school, learn about them, and sign up for them -- so it's likely he'll want to stay until the end. 

If he shows up to the orientation location a little early, or reasonably on time, he will see several students in various positions on the floor, in the lobby of the marble building, standing or sitting, talking in small groups to one another or off on their own. Several of them may catch his eye. 

Standing towards the middle of the circle, and a little off to one side, talking helpfully to a couple of other students, is the girl who is very likely Rachel Quinn. She looks a little older than everyone else (though that might be confused by the fact that she is surprisingly tall), but most importantly she's wearing a brightly colored MTC shirt with the words "Orientation 2019" on the front. She is, as previously mentioned, surprisingly tall, about as tall as Sean is now, with long red hair and a pale complexion. She's very happily and helpfully explaining something to a couple of students, and a third is standing behind them impatiently waiting. 

There's a girl sitting towards the outskirts of the circle, on her phone. She's got spiky purple hair, a couple of piercings in her ears and nose, and her body language is pretty clearly giving off "don't bother me" vibes. She is, however, rather attractive, even if she's acting extremely standoffish. 

There's another girl who is black-haired with nerdy glasses, in a dark green cardigan that attempts to but still doesn't do much to hide her, well, rather large breasts. She's got two boys trying to chat her up and she looks really uncomfortable that they're doing so. 

If Sean looks around the room, he'll probably see a diminutive boy wedged into a nearby corner, with his knees up and his arms wrapped tightly around them, looking small and nervous and trying not to be seen. He's got sortof light wispy blonde hair that's sortof blown about his head, almost like dandelion fluff.

There's another girl, wearing, well, somewhat more revealing clothing than would be expected at an orientation meeting, makeup, and bottle-blonde hair. She's chatting up a couple of guys -- one of them seems to be pretty into it, but she's more interested in a more buff guy that is mostly keeping to himself. But she's acting all flirty with them both. 

He does in fact show up early, mostly because leaving early for things means he gets to be in his car sooner. And, ooh, people.

Can he keep them all? Probably not, but he wants to. Okay, time to prioritize.

He instinctively wants to rescue the nerdy girl, except that it would feel dishonest to rescue the nerdy girl intending to torture her later. Can he rescue her intending to befriend her and see if he can convince her that he owns her without any torture? Still feels kind of dishonest, but maybe. Call that a backup plan if nobody else takes precedence.

He also instinctively wants to go talk to the shy guy, but this time the instinct in question is more of a directly predatory one. Shy nervous people trying not to be seen put him in a hunting mood. And the guy's pretty cute. Overall he prefers women to men, though, so he probably won't end up going for this one unless he rules everybody else out for some reason. Or tries them and can't get anywhere. (Oh, but the way he's curled up so small in his little corner... Sean can't help a wistful little sigh before he turns his attention elsewhere.)

The hot girl who doesn't want anyone to bother her is nice to look at but looks tough to crack. Probably not the first place he should look. She'd be tempting if there weren't so many other good targets around, though.

The flirty girl is definitely drawing his attention and kind of makes an obvious first target. She looks like she'd be easy to pick up at least as far as getting her into his car. (It's so useful that all he has to do is get somebody into his car.)

And finally his RA is pretty hot but he doesn't really have to target her, they're going to end up interacting either way, so it doesn't make sense to make her his first stop.

Okay, that leaves his decision pretty clear-cut. He heads for the flirty girl. But along the way, as he's passing the standoffish one, he says, "Hey, cool hair."

The girl looks up from her phone, rolls her eyes at him, blows a bubblegum bubble at him with an audible snap, then goes back to her phone. 

He laughs.

And—hmm.

It occurs to him, as he continues walking, that just because the flirty girl is the easiest target doesn't mean she's the best one. A girl this flirty is probably still going to be this flirty in ten minutes; it doesn't really matter when he goes for her. But if he wants to rescue the nerdy girl, there is a best time to do that, and that time is as soon as possible, at least if he wants to credibly act the way his innocuous helpful persona would act.

Okay. Quick question to himself. Can he actually rescue her, and make friends with her, a process which may involve her and her delicious body ending up in his car, and not torture her even when it would be really easy? Because the way he treated Jenna and Evelyn is one thing, but 'hey, I'm here to rescue you from uncomfortable sexual attention—just kidding I'm actually going to rape you the minute I get the chance' is a level of dishonesty where he would rather just steer clear of her in the first place than end up telling that big of a lie, even if it's only implicit.

...yeah, he's pretty sure he can manage that. And if it gets tough he can remind himself how much the thought of that much insincerity makes him want to crawl out of his skin.

The bigger question is, with rape off the table does he still want to rescue her?

He slows down, then stops. Looks at the nerdy girl as though seeing her for the first time.

If making friends with her turns out to eat too much of his time and attention for too little reward he can always stop later. And he does want to find out if he can convince someone to give themselves to him without torturing them into it, and someone who has a pretty good reason to be grateful to him and who he has a really good reason not to torture seems like an ideal place to start figuring that out.

And every time he looks at her he gets an instinctive feel for how he could step in and start convincing those guys to clear off, and he's not even sure that seeing how is the same as wanting to, but it feels pretty similar.

Okay. Yeah. The flirty girl can wait.

He settles into the helpful mindset that worked so well with Jenna and Evelyn, and turns to head for the nerdy girl and her unwanted suitors.

Karen really thought it would be different here. Well, maybe just hoped. Well, maybe just wished. Here she was, in a new school, a place where people could pay attention to her for her mind again and not her body, just like they did when she was 12. Before, well... 

Back then it hadn't mattered that they were boys and she was a girl, she was just as smart or smarter than the rest of them, just as inventive, and she'd enjoyed talking about all kinds of science and math and fiction, getting better grades than them on math tests, playing her first dungeons and dragons campaign. They'd loved her because she was clever, because she was just like them, no matter what the bullies said. 

And then, one day, she wasn't. 

Some of the boys she thought were her friends expressed lewd and vile things and acted in ways she never would have expected from them. Others... didn't, but wouldn't stand up for her, and she still watched their gazes drawn to her chest when before they'd looked her right in the eyes. And they still treated her differently. Like she was other. Like she was less.

Thank goodness for the internet, thank goodness for fandom and fanfiction and everything in between, or she'd have had no friends at all during her teenage years. Not real friends, anyways. But she'd come here with a hope to make new friends, real ones, ones who would actually look her in the eyes. And here at orientation, she'd tried, shyly, to make some. But this was just a repeat of high school, with a couple of nerdy boys looking at her chest and trying to impress her, not realizing or caring that she already knew everything they were telling her about. And it looked like they wouldn't take the hint, either. Karen, was, well, just a little bit crushed. 

"Hey, what's up?" he says, directly to the girl, bypassing the two guys who are trying to talk to her. He's only been this tall for a day, but he already finds it natural to adjust his posture for the right effect: friendly, open, cheerful, but still a little imposing, and subtly reacting to her body language to maintain a comfortable conversational distance without crowding her, but ignoring the other two and therefore incidentally pushing them away a little with the implicit weight of his presence.

(It's surprisingly easy to just not even think about looking at her chest. His helpful persona has other priorities, and even the predatory part of him has already decided she's off limits.)

Karen's thankful for the intrusion, but she's a bit surprised that someone like that would be talking to someone like her. She shifts her body towards him, and away from the boys, taking his proffered lead to shut them out. "Oh, not much," she says, managing a wan smile. "Just waiting for everyone to show up and orientation to start." He's looking at her face, not her chest, which is weird and unexpected. What's an obvious jock like him doing helping a nerd girl like her if not for the obvious reason. Maybe he's gay? She decides it's ok to maybe continue the conversation a little more, especially if it'll keep the other two away from her. "What about you?"

"Same. What's your name? I'm Sean."