Super Genetics
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B3 - Chapter 5: Bunny and Peanut
🕑 Added 2025-01-21 17:00:08 +0000 UTC“So…you left the Metaphysical Singularity in the Underworld?”
From anyone else, it might have sounded like an accusation. But from his mother’s tone, he knew that she understood his reasons. He hoped she would have done the same, but was afraid to ask.
“Yes.” He kept his tone even, holding her gaze. It was a difficult task with the swirling magic that seemed to always be present in her eyes. Unlike others, who expressed it during times of peaked emotions or heavy workings, his mother seemed to always show the swirling silver.
Perhaps that’s because she was always doing heavy workings.
After a moment, she nodded, her expression shifting in a way he couldn’t read.
“And…my brother? You said he came back with you?”
Terry had been hesitant to message Ben. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to reunite the man with his family. It was more that he wasn’t certain how the man would cope with returning to Earth. There was a part of Terry that assumed the man would need time and space—who wouldn’t after decades away?
But then he remembered that Silver had gone through a very similar situation. Perhaps reconnecting with his father was exactly what Ben needed.
“He said he would accept the Summons back, but I haven’t messaged him yet…”
His mother looked off in silence for a handful of moments. When she turned back, she licked her lips nervously.
“Would you…would you reach out to him? No pressure,” she added hurriedly. “Just…just tell him…”
Terry nodded. “I’ll message him.”
She smiled, returning his nod gratefully.
[Terry]: Hey, Ben. Did you make it back okay?
The silence stretched uncomfortably after he hit send. He watched his interface, waiting expectantly for a response. When it didn’t come immediately, he cringed to himself.
“I, uh, I sent it—”
“But he hasn’t responded,” his mother supplied for him. She took in a deep breath, then nodded once. “I don’t blame him. I saw the struggles your grandfather had after being away for decades—and that was after he’d been back for months. Hell, I had an adjustment period after my Capstone, and that was only a year.”
Terry shrugged apologetically. “Yeah, he seemed to have had a tough go at it. I think I was the only human he interacted with for—”
He cut off as the System message came in.
[Ben]: I’m here.
He opened his mouth to tell his mom, when another message came in.
[Ben]: As far as being ‘okay’…don’t know about that.
“He replied!” Terry said quickly, beginning to form his own response. Ben’s next message preempted his.
[Ben]: Seems the world’s gone to hell in a hand basket since I’ve been gone.
“He said the world sucks now,” Terry said with a snort. “Can’t argue with that.”
His mother smiled sadly, her eyes flashing opaque for a brief moment.
“Would you…would you ask him if he’d be up to meet?”
Terry nodded as he began crafting the message, then paused. “Should I ask about grandpa, too?”
She chewed her lip in thought before shaking her head.
“No, not yet. Let me…gauge his demeanor first.”
Terry started at those words, studying her to see if there was a deeper meaning there.
She met his gaze, her eyes widening with a hint of surprise. “I’m not going to invade his mind, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Terry shrugged. “I didn’t think anything that extreme. But…”
“Did I just read your mind right then?”
He shifted his head back and forth for a moment, before shrugging agreement.
She laughed lightly. “No, sweetie. You just have a terrible poker face.”
Tania scoffed, raising her eyebrows as he shot her an accusing look.
“What? It’s true.”
He pursed his lips in annoyance, then shook his head and turned his attention back to Ben.
[Terry]: Hey, so…I’m here with my mother. She’d really love to meet up. If you’re up for it?
He expected hesitation, some sort of pause, or perhaps even no response for a time. Instead, the reply was immediate.
[Ben]: I’d like that. Where are you? Are you near Topeka?
Terry felt his eyes widen in surprise. Turning to his mother, he said, “He’ll meet! But he’s in Topeka…”
Penelope’s face brightened and she stood from her chair.
“Not a problem.” She flashed him and Tania a mischievous look. “Perks of being the most powerful super in the Protectorate is, I have an A-ranked Traveler on standby.”
Tania whistled quietly as they followed his mother out of the tent. At his back, Terry felt the three ghouls shadow them and he experienced a thrill of irrational security; the ghouls wouldn’t be able to stop an S-ranked threat—probably not even an A-ranked threat. All the same, it was a familiar comfort borne from a childhood filled with ghouls a constant presence on his heels.
[Terry]: We’re sending you a portal. Can you find a landmark?
[Ben]: Sure, I’m at 6th and Gage. Where are you two?
He felt a rush of humor in his chest as he typed out the response.
[Terry]: We’re in San Francisco. Standby.
[Ben]: San Francisco! The hell you doing there?
[Terry]: Tell you all about it in person.
As they rounded the command tent, his mother called out to a nearby person.
“Errol, I need transport for a high-level asset from Topeka.” She turned to Terry. “You have the cross-street?”
As he walked up, he couldn’t help but notice a familiarity to the man. Errol was short, with a balding head ringed by a cul-de-sac of hair, his face pinched tight and mousy.
The man had been looking at his mother, but the moment he turned his gaze on Terry, his face turned ghastly pale. Terry narrowed his eyes, trying to place the man. But when it didn’t immediately come to him, he began relaying the information to the Traveler.
Errol nodded timidly, his eyes glued to the ground, occasionally flicking toward Terry in fits and starts. When he reached through space toward Topeka, it hit him like a punch to the face.
“You!”
The man flinched in surprise, losing his grip on space with a showing that would have had Marlon spitting curses.
Penelope looked between the two of them in confusion.
“You two have met?”
Terry nodded, trying to understand the vehemence roiling inside his gut. He had reason to distrust the man, even dislike him. But this hate felt visceral.
“He was Dancer’s personal Traveler.” He looked at his mom for a hint of recognition. “You know? The one that tried to leave me, Tania, and a thousand innocent refugees to die during the fight with Qui Shen.”
His mother’s head tilted up in realization. “Ahh, I see.” Her expression had a suspicious lack of reaction that confused Terry. “I’m aware of Errol’s role in that battle—though I had forgotten how closely the two of you must have interacted.”
“And you trust him!” Tania blurted.
Terry gave a thankful look toward the girl—at least somebody was acknowledging the issue at hand.
His mother had a patient look on her face—which irritated Terry. It was the look an adult gave to a petulant kid.
“Errol, here—” She waved toward the cringing man. “—was just following orders. He shares none of Dancer’s animosity or bloodthirsty inclinations.”
Tania scoffed, shooting the man a scowl. “Just following orders? What a convenient excuse.”
“Mom…” Terry started. “Just following orders isn’t an excuse. Most of the atrocities committed in history were by people ‘just following orders.’”
His mother nodded, pursing her lips as she glanced between Errol and the two of them.
“Do you mind if I share?” She addressed that toward Errol. Tania and Terry shared a confused look.
Errol sighed, still unable to meet their eyes. “No, ma’am.”
His mother reached forward, gripping Errol’s chin lightly to lift his gaze. “I told you, Errol: just Penelope, please.”
Tania rolled her eyes, casting Terry an irritated look.
“You two are so similar, I’m gonna puke.”
Terry snorted, but didn’t feel the humor in the situation like she did; if this man had succeeded, hundreds of people would be dead. He studied his mother, trying to piece together where her empathy stemmed from.
As she looked back, there was a sadness visible even behind the silver of her eyes.
“Errol’s entire family was held hostage by Dancer,” his mother started. Terry felt his stomach flip at the words. “He tried to portal them out early on and Dancer…”
“He sent me one of my girl’s fingers,” Errol suddenly spat, his demeanor shifting in an instant. There was a fire in the man’s aura now—not a ton of power, by Terry’s estimation, but a burning hot fire.
A tense moment of silence followed, broken by Tania. “Damn…sorry I jumped to conclusions there, Errol.”
The man’s aura dimmed once more, his gaze turning to the grass, the barest nod of acknowledgment visible. But then, he flicked his eyes toward Terry.
“I…I felt your aura…during…”
Terry nodded, not quite sure where the man was going with this.
Errol glanced toward his mother before taking in a deep breath and meeting Terry’s eyes. “I just meant…you were strong and…impressive. That other Traveler was in a league of his own…but you were the most incredible D-ranker…”
Terry wondered how to react to that. Thanks? It felt cheap to be praised by someone forced against their will to kill others.
The man stammered for another beat and Terry was surprised to see his mother smiling softly, a patient compassion in her eyes.
“What I…I’m saying is…thank you…for beating me…saving those people…”
Penelope smiled brighter at the man, putting a hand on Errol’s shoulder.
A voice suddenly sounded in his ear, making him jump in surprise.
He’s been struggling with that guilt for weeks now. It was his mother’s voice inside his mind. He knew he should have refused Dancer’s commands, even at the expense of his family, but he didn’t. I can see his thoughts now. He sees you beating him as a sign from God, and you as His messenger.
Terry recovered from the shock of his mother’s voice in his mind, meeting her eyes. After a moment, he nodded in understanding. Reaching forward, he put his hand on Errol’s other shoulder.
“What’s done is done, Errol. I’m just glad it worked out the way it did.” He hesitated, trying to find the words to absolve the man of some of his guilt. Not all, but some. “We can only move forward, doing the most good with what powers we have…right?”
Errol looked up, a hint of surprise in his eyes. A smile flitted across his face one moment, gone the next. “Yes, sir.”
Terry pinched his lips at the term, ‘sir,’ but nodded all the same.
“Now, my uncle is waiting on us. Think you could flex some of that A-rank power and see him through?” he asked with a forced smile.
Errol nodded fervently, as if he’d been asked the most holy of tasks. “Right away, sir!”
Before Terry could gently correct the man, he was reaching across space—far more confidently than before. A moment later, a portal whooshed into existence before them and Terry turned his attention to the aura questing through it.
A moment later, Ben stepped through, his face as flat and expressionless as his element. His blue-grey eyes glanced over Terry, locking onto his mother.
There was a moment of pure silence, even the wind stilling as if in anticipation of this moment.
Then, Penelope raced forward, clearing the distance in a single bound before throwing herself into Ben’s arms.
Ben took a step back from the impact, more from shock than anything, his hand reaching up toward Penelope’s hair.
“Hey Bunny,” his mother said into his chest.
Ben looked down at her wide eyed, his whole body freezing. She looked up, tears slipping down her face.
“What?” she asked softly. “Thought I forgot?”
There was a horrified look on the man’s face that Terry sympathized with; he had left Earth as a teenager and had most likely only interacted with other supers on Summons. He would have placed walls around his emotions and memories that would be difficult to chip away.
But Terry knew that difficult didn’t mean impossible.
“No,” Ben said slowly, as if waking from a fugue state. “I…after so many years, I guess I forced myself to forget…” He trailed off, his mouth opening and closing with doubt before he seemed to find his courage. “I missed you…Peanut.”
His mother laugh-sobbed, resting her head against his chest once more and holding him tight.
They embraced a handful of moments longer, until Ben gently separated them.
“Uh…Peanut?”
“Yeah, Bunny?”
“I don’t want to sound indelicate, but I’ve been in the Underworld long enough to recognize the undead…” He pinched his lips uncomfortably. “And then there’s the whole no breathing thing…”
His mother sighed, pulling away to look between the three of them.
“It’s a long, long story. But let’s pray we’ve got some time before the next crisis.” She nodded toward the command tent in the distance. “Come on. I’ll have some tea brought for you.” She put a hand on his arm, smiling up at him. “It’s been too long—” Her smile turned curious as she looked toward Terry. “—and I want to hear all about the Underworld…and the Singularity.”
Ben and Terry shared a look before Ben nodded.
“Yeah, we should discuss that. But can we do something a bit stronger than tea? I don’t know if I can get drunk, but I’d damn well like to try.”
***
They quickly discovered that Ben, too, desperately needed a shower, having lived inside the fur of various dead things for years. But once the man was clean, shaved, and wearing fresh clothes, it was like looking at a new person entirely.
Ben had always possessed a primal air to Terry, not just the furs and the untamed appearance lending to that feeling, but the very presence of the man. Something about living apart from humans, without the convenience of everyday life, the grounding nature of Earth, had empowered his aura with something closer to a dire wolf or a ghoul than a man.
But now, Terry was witnessing a transformation happen before his very eyes. His uncle had always been a towering presence, approaching the heights of a seven-footer—even without his fur cloak. And his physique had been exactly as one would expect of a Duelist, thick muscles and deadly grace apparent in his every movement.
What he was now realizing about the man, was that he was actually incredibly handsome. He knew this, because Tania’s entire demeanor had shifted the moment he’d entered the command tent, her aura fluctuating the same way a person’s heartbeat could speed up with excitement.
There was no logical reason for him to be jealous of her reaction…no logical reason.
A little burr of that jealousy clung to him, making him feel like a boy in front of his masculine and powerful uncle. He knew he was still technically a child at nearly fifteen, but none of the things he’d accomplished felt like the work of a child.
He did his best to ruthlessly shove down the feelings of inadequacy as his uncle settled into a chair with an entire bottle of whiskey. A glance from his mother told him that he wasn’t hiding it as well as he had hoped—at least, not from the piercing magic of the world’s most powerful Hypnotist.
But he was no slouch when it came to aura control, his time learning ghoulish pairing with his above-average power lending him the ability he needed to smooth his external aura shape.
The corner of his mother’s lip flicked up in the shape of a smile, there and gone in a flash. Whether that meant he had succeeded, or that his attempts at privacy were too infantile to shield his thoughts from her, he couldn’t say.
Ben took a pull from the bottle, a second turning into five and then ten, the caramel-colored whiskey disappearing at an alarming rate.
When he finally came up for air, a third of the bottle was gone and Ben made a satisfied sound as he finally looked at the three of them. A slightly chagrined expression crossed his face as he realized the Tania and Terry were staring at him wide-eyed, while Penelope had a vaguely disapproving look.
“Sorry ‘bout that.” His voice was wet, not quite slurring, but clearly still processing the burn tracing down his throat. “It’s been a tough couple a decades.”
Tania chuckled at that, a bit too high and free from Terry’s memory of the girl.
“Hell,” she said with a bit of a quaver in her voice, “been a tough year for me, too. Let me grab a swig of that.”
She held out her hand and to Terry’s surprise, Ben offered the bottle with a shrug. Penelope intercepted it with a graceful movement, lightly pulling it free from Ben’s hand as Tania went to grip it.
“She’s fourteen, Ben.”
No Bunny moniker, Terry noted.
Ben worked his lips back and forth, like he was chewing on his sister’s words.
“No offense, Pen,” he replied after a moment. “But why the hell she in a warzone, then?”
His mother seemed to have no good response to that, her lips pursing tight with annoyance. Tania seemed to feel a need to interject, turning to face Penelope.
“Not fixin’ to get drunk, Penelope.” Her eyes flicked to Ben, then back to his mother. “Just ease the nerves.”
She seemed to churn over the concept for a moment, but didn’t pass over the bottle. “Here’s the deal,” she eventually said, “I was a teenager once myself, so I understand it’s a rite of passage thing.”
Tania’s eyes turned hopeful, flicking a glance toward Terry as if to silently celebrate. He kept his expression neutral, not quite as optimistic as the girl.
“But when you’re with me, under my command, I’m responsible for you. Now, Tania, dear…I don’t know what your parents would have thought about this and I’m so sorry they aren’t here to guide your path.” Tania’s face went stone still, but he felt her aura, and it wasn’t angry, so much as guarded. His mother paused a moment, her eyes finding both Terry and Tania’s in turn. “So…as the ranking parent in this situation, I feel it’s best that if you’re gonna do this thing—” Tania whipped her head toward Terry, her eyes alight. His mother held out a hand, her expression stern. “—if you’re gonna do this thing…” She sighed, seeming to fold in on herself. “Then it’s best you do it with someone who can protect you and let you know when to stop.”
Terry could feel Tania’s energy elevate, her eyes flicking toward Ben, then back to Terry. She was excited, practically giddy, considering her baseline.
As for Terry, getting drunk with his mother to watch whatever stupid shenanigans they got into sounded less than freeing.
Whatever his reservations, Tania didn’t seem to share them. She reached forward greedily for the bottle, which his mother relinquished hesitantly, and took a deep swig. Not a Ben-level swig, but a lot for someone of her stature.
“Whoa, slow down there, girl,” Ben said, pushing the end of the bottle down gently to stop the flow. “Let’s respect Pen’s generosity by pacing ourselves, hm?”
Tania had the grace to look embarrassed, flashing his mother a probing look before the whiskey seemed to take her. A coughing fit started up, wet and painful-looking as she bent double. Ben pat her back gently as he handed the bottle to Terry with a questioning look at Penelope.
With a tight-lipped frown, his mother nodded once.
Terry eyed the bottle like a coiled snake, double-taking between it and his mother, before receiving it by the neck. Her frown turned into a whimsical smile as she sighed heavily.
“Alright, I guess we’re doing this,” she said in disbelief. “Learn from Tania’s mistake and give it a three-count, not a nine-count.” Ben and his mother chuckled lightly as Tania narrowed her eyes from where she was still bent over.
Terry eyed the lip of the bottle, smelling the powerful vapors burning at his nose.
Somehow, he’d faced down vampires, A-rankers, and draugrs with less trepidation. Forcing some steel in his spine, he put the bottle to his lips and tilted it back, counting quickly to three before bringing it back.
As he swallowed, the heat burned down his throat, surprising him—despite Tania’s example. As it entered his chest like a warm sphere, he barked out a single cough, the burning lodging deep in his throat.
Ben laughed once, slapping him on the back as he took the bottle from Terry’s hand. He took a powerful swig, nearly finishing it right then and there.
His mother sighed, closing her eyes as she shook her head.
“Your father is gonna kill me,” she complained. Then, she opened her eyes and locked them on the bottle. “Give it here,” she commanded, plucking it from her brother’s hand.
Without a second’s hesitation, she put it to her lips, finishing it with three powerful pulls.
Ben had a puppy-dog look in his eyes as she placed the empty bottle on the table, but his mother called out loud enough to be heard by an attendant.
“Vicks! Three more bottles, if you please!”
---
[A/N]: Thanks for reading. Next chapter on Thursday!
Comments
Andrew Simpson
Also wasn't Ben a teenager when he was last on earth? Do they have whiskey in hell?
Andrew Simpson
Wow, day drinking in an active war zone is not what I expected out of this reunion.
