The Protagonist System

I woke up alone in my bed and couldn't remember falling asleep. My last thoughts had been about how excited I was that my left hand had twitched and that alone wasn't enough to fight off unconsciousness apparently. It took me a few minutes to come up with a reasonable explanation.

I had taken three potions in quick succession that affected my body and the last two had stamina boosts. When they ran out, my natural tiredness hit me a lot harder than it normally would and conked me right out. It made me chuckle to inadvertently discover a quick way to fall asleep and I would have to remember that reaction if it was ever needed again.

My attention was caught when a knock sounded from my bedroom door. “I'm awake.”

The door opened and Viper stood there wearing the same thing she wore the night before. My eye popped out and stretched to get a better look at her. She looked a little ragged and her hair was messy, which said more about what happened than anything else.

“What happened?” I asked and let my eye sink back into my head.

Viper sighed and walked into the room and over to the bed with an unsure look on her face. I patted the bed beside me on my right side and she sighed, then she climbed onto the bed and cuddled up to my side and snuggled in. She didn't say anything at first and I didn't push her, because I knew she would tell me in her own time.

“One of the calls I made was to an old friend of mine. She's going to visit later to talk to you about everything... in a professional manner.” Viper said and I knew she meant a psychiatrist. “The second call was to Rikki and I told her what you told me about how you were feeling about what happened between you and Bobbie.”

I had to blink my eyes at that. “Why did you tell her about that?”

Viper let out another sigh. “Because it's like I told you. That kind of thinking isn't normal and your boss needed to know that you were compromised.”

“Oh.” I said and then I understood. “Oh, boy.”

“Yes, that's where I went last night. I met up with Rikki and a squad of handlers, because we knew that Bobbie was not going to be happy when Rikki started asking her exactly why she had conditioned you like that. No one should so easily accept verbal abuse on a constant basis, neither man nor woman, and Rikki was quite upset about it when I told her.”

I let out my own sigh at them going over there to confront Bobbie about it. “How did Bobbie react when you told her why you were there?”

Viper stiffened under my arm briefly. “We never got the chance to talk about that.”

“Why?” I asked, confused. “That's why you went there.”

Viper lifted her head to look into my eyes. “Hank, I... I don't want to lie to you.” She said and her hand reached up and caressed the left side of my face. “Do you really want to know what we found when we checked the surveillance footage?”

“Just tell me.” I said.

“Bobbie was... in a compromising position. When Rikki saw it, she ordered the squad to bust down the door to stop her.”

“Stop her? From doing what?” I asked, frowning.

“She was... she...” Viper looked really embarrassed. She didn't break eye contact with me, though. “She was sucking off your son Vance on the living room couch.”

The world seemed to slow down and greyed out as the World Pause function activated. I ignored the menu pop up telling me it was a pivotal moment in the story, because that was redundant. What I actually needed was the unlimited time that the pause option gave me to think about everything.

It also gave me the perfect opportunity to take out my Adventurer Card to level myself up without any witnesses around and I did exactly that. The divine glow happened for every level I gave myself, so jumping up to Level 50 had me glowing like a small sun for several minutes and I felt a presence cuddle up to my right side.

I put my arm around it to hold it. “Hey there, reading buddy. Long time no see.” I joked and heard a soft female laugh echo through the emptiness, because they were just a presence and I had never been able to see them.

I went back to my Adventurer Card and checked the XP total and the experience points still had the infinity symbol, which meant I had gained so much experience at a low level for so long that I never had to do anything else to keep levelling myself up, at least until I reached the Level 10 limit with my Touch of Divinity skill.

With that done, I put it away and realized I had plenty of time on my hands and suddenly had a great idea. “Is there a book you'd like to read? We've only been using the ones I wanted to read so far and that's not fair to you.”

The presence at my side shivered slightly and then the gift shop popped up around us. A book floated over from the nearly endless rack and I was given the 50 credit bill. I paid it without hesitation and the shop faded away as we kind of reclined and the book hovered in front of us.

“Sense and Sensibility?” I asked and felt a nod. “Well, I've never read it, so it's going to be a new experience for me.”

A burst of happiness came from beside me and the cuddling increased. It was surprisingly similar to the way Viper cuddled me, so I enjoyed it a little more than I probably should have. Then again, my mind was a hell of a lot clearer than it had been before and I suspected that things were going to be different from here on out.

For the next 7 hours, I had a great time reading out the entire book. I had also tried, and failed badly, at doing the different female voices. The presence beside me had laughed almost the entire time and I could feel how much she thoroughly enjoyed it when we finally finished it.

“That was a great book and I learned a lot from the moral of the story.” I said and I felt a kiss on my cheek. “I should thank you for letting me carry on like that, too. I kind of messed up with not knowing what they should sound like.”

That soft laugh echoed through the space around us again and I felt another kiss on my cheek, only this time it was partially on my lips. I puckered mine and the kiss seemed to hesitate slightly, then the feeling moved over and became a full on one. I returned it as best as I could and the presence at my side slid around me and straddled my waist.

Of course, my body reacted and a breathy moan sounded from nearby. I hugged the presence closely with my sole working arm and didn't try to grope their behind or anything. The kiss ended after a few moments and I could feel something holding their breath, so I leaned forward again and placed a gentle kiss where I thought those immaterial lips were. A hum of satisfaction responded and the presence faded away.

After all that relaxing and enjoying myself, and thinking over what the presence was probably trying to tell me by reading that book that most of the characters had followed the public's sensibility instead of following common sense.

However, the moral of Sense and Sensibility was that both practicality and passion are necessary for a happy life. While having a good character in a person was more important than having a charming personality, both passion and attraction couldn't be ignored. With those thoughts in my head, I knew what I had to do when I unpaused the world of The Incredibles.

“Thank you for the advice.” I said into the emptiness and I felt a hand gently caress my right cheek. I smiled at that and brought up the menu. I chose the unpause option without looking at anything else and the world formed back around me and faded back into full color.

I stared into Viper's eyes after her revealing that Bobbie was giving head to my son, and I completely understood how something like that could have happened. Without me there, Vance must have stepped up to help take care of Danica, and Bobbie must have noticed how much he was helping her. Being reliable and able to take care of kids, was huge turn on for a woman.

I also knew that Bobbie had been having a dry spell for almost three months, since we hadn't had sex after that first week back, so any sign of affection from Vance would have set her off. It did make me wonder how far they went at it, though.

“Was that all?” I asked and Viper gasped. “I mean, was that as far as they've gone, or have they been... you know.” I said with a wave of my hand and she didn't notice it was my floppy left hand.

“O-oh, I thought...” Viper blushed from embarrassment.

I chuckled and leaned in to give her a quick kiss. “I wasn't dismissing what she did, I was asking for clarification.”

Viper nodded. “After she was tackled, Bobbie put up a small fight and Vance tried to help her. A few of the agents ended up with broken bones and one had a concussion; but, once she was tasered and secured, Bobbie admitted that was the first time she had done something like that with him.”

“Something like that?” I whispered the question and thought about it. “If that was only the first time she tried to swallow him, they could have been doing other things like heavy petting and making out for a while.”

“H-Hank, h-how can you talk about it like it doesn't matter?” Viper asked, clearly shocked.

I smiled at her misunderstanding. “Viper, of course it matters. There's no way Bobbie can keep custody after that and we both know what that means. The government owns her now and the kids are going to be sent into the system or be allowed to stay with me, which they can't because I'm staying here.”

Viper nodded again and let out a sigh. “I'm sorry I don't have the room for two more people.”

I gave her another kiss and pet her messy hair. “Don't worry about that. I'll call in a favor from another old friend. He has lots of room at his mansion and Danica adores him.”

“His mansion?” Viper asked and she caught her breath. “He'll never accept! He hates how disruptive kids are!”

I chuckled and motioned to my wheelchair. “I need to get to the phone to call Rikki and then Ed Mode. They'll handle the details and I'll see if Rikki can find a nice compliant maid to help Ed corral the kids until I'm better.”

Viper stared at me and looked like she was going to refuse, then she took a deep breath and let it out. She let me go and climbed off of the bed and brought the wheelchair over to the bed and locked the wheels. She helped me slide off the bed and into the chair, adjusted my floppy arm and leg for me, and secured my ankle before pushing me out into the living room.

“I'll start on breakfast while you're busy.” Viper said and parked me beside the wall phone.

I could easily reach it with my stretchy arm. “Thank you, love.”

Viper froze and her eyes were really wide. “H-Hank...”

I reached up and caressed her face. “Yes, Viper. I love you. I always have, actually. I just couldn't say it before.”

Tears came to her eyes and Viper knelt beside the chair to give me a long and tender kiss. “I've always loved you, too.”

We held each other for several minutes before she let me go, wiped at her eyes, and went into the kitchen.

I picked up the phone and dialed Rikki's number from memory. It shouldn't take long to arrange things and Ed's place wasn't that far from either of the schools that the kids attended. It wouldn't be that big of an inconvenience for them to live somewhere else for a while, assuming Vance hadn't been arrested with Bobbie. That might be a little inconvenient to work around.

*

Bobbie sat in her jail cell in the government building and she didn't know what she was going to do. She had let herself be convinced by Vance's insistence that he was the man of the house and he was going to take care of her. Her desperate need to feel some kind of love after so long had played a part of it, too.

Vance had made her feel wanted and appreciated, as if she was a woman and not his mother. That alone had been a pleasant surprise, then she had been extremely turned on as he rubbed her down during the massage and then he started licking her and fingering her, telling her how hot she was, and she came so hard.

Of course she had to thank him for his hard work by doing it back to him, her orgasm-clouded mind had justified. His cute reactions to her skills had given her even more reasons to keep going after he blew a hot load onto her breasts... then the whole world came crashing down around her as government agents broke into her home and caught her with Vance blowing another load down her throat.

Her first and quite wrong reaction, was to stop them from taking away yet another man from her, so she fought. Vance tried to help and was taken down as well, which she quickly regretted. That doubled her own guilt about what happened and then that doubled again when Rikki told her she had violated her probation by using her powers again to attack her agents.

In other words, she was fucked and not in the good way.

How could I have been so stupid? Bobbie asked herself listlessly, her emotions dulled after sitting for hours in an empty cell with only her bathrobe on. At least they had let her keep it after they searched the pockets. It was wrong of me to do those things with Vance, no matter how good it felt.

Her thoughts kept going down that direction and she couldn't help but wonder what it would have felt like to have him inside of her. Yes, it was very very wrong, and more taboo than the worst taboo; and yet, she couldn't help but think about welcoming her son home in such an intimate way. He would have been hers completely and no one would be able to take that experience away from her.

The cell door opening brought Bobbie out of her horrible thoughts and she looked up at a scowling Rikki.

“I called in a few favors, so they're letting me handle your processing.” Rikki informed her.

Bobbie blinked her eyes at her in confusion. “My what?”

“Your processing.” Rikki said and waved at the door. “The newly reinstated Super Registration Act requires all people with powers to register. An addendum was also pushed through this morning in an emergency session of the government to allow criminals to be chipped to keep track of them.”

Bobbie's heart almost shattered and she felt a pit form in her stomach. She couldn't move or speak as she stared at the old woman that had always been there in her corner to support her.

“Before you ask, the answer is yes. Vance is being processed as well. I didn't bother trying to stop it.” Rikki said and nodded at the security guard.

The man stepped forward and grabbed Bobbie by the arm and hauled her to her feet. She didn't resist at all as he dragged her out of her cell and down the hallway towards the room where the procedure would be done. An extremely angry Rikki Dicker followed in their wake.