Unheroic Life of a Certain Cape-Chapter 99 Skin Deep

Chapter 99 Skin Deep
I spotted Missive sitting by herself near the far edge of the pool, away from the chaos. She ate her barbecue with slow, deliberate bites, head tilted just slightly, her eyes distant, like she was listening to a tune the rest of us couldn’t hear.
I was about to walk over and talk to her when the air shifted behind me.
A shadow passed, followed by the faint scent of coconut oil and something sweeter, maybe lilac. When I turned, she was there.
Dullahan.
She didn’t have a head, of course, but somehow that didn’t make her any less striking. Her body did all the talking, her movements smooth, fluid, and deliberate. The black swimsuit she wore clung to her curves like it had been designed for sin. Every motion drew attention from the bend of her waist, the flex of her thigh, and the subtle sway of her hips.
Something felt wrong… or maybe too right. There was a weight in the air that muddled thought, something invisible brushing against my mind. For a brief second, the rational part of me wanted to ask why she was here, why she moved like that, but the thought slipped away before it could form.
She handed me a bottle of something, a lotion or maybe a kind of cream, cool to the touch.
“Help me a bit with them, would you?”
I blinked, the words taking a moment to process. “What’s in it for me?”
“A favor.”
That one word carried a lot of gravity here. Favors among the Ten were currency, sometimes worth more than marks, sometimes worth lives.
She lay down on a mat near the pool, sunlight tracing over the smooth line of her back, glinting on the faint sheen of water still clinging to her skin. Even without a head, she somehow managed to look at me.
I knelt beside her, uncapped the bottle, and squeezed some of the lotion into my hand. It was cool and slick, almost metallic in smell. I started spreading it along her shoulders, her arms, and her back. Her skin was warm beneath my touch, alive with subtle tremors.
I didn’t know what I was doing, honestly. I didn’t want to think about it too much. There were questions I could ask, lines I could draw, but my brain just didn’t want to go there.
All I knew was that for some reason, I wanted to do it.
I don’t know what came over me, honestly. One second, I was rubbing lotion between my fingers, the next, my palm flew and landed hard on the meat of her rear.
*Slap!
Sound cut. For a beat, the world narrowed down to that one slap and the small, sharp sting that answered it. Dullahan hissed, the sound more animal than human, and every head on the rooftop turned.
A dozen Dr. Sequences froze with skewers half-raised. Thirdhand’s hand-head stilled mid-chew. Even the clones stopped arguing. Mrs. Mind didn’t look up from her plate; the Paleman kept sipping his tea like a gentleman at a funeral. Ning floated in the pool, eyes wide and ridiculous, as if he’d just seen a comet.
Dullahan’s skin flushed bright red across the place I’d hit. She pushed herself off the mat and wheeled, rigid and furious.
“How dare you?” she snapped, voice low and dangerous. “How do you want me to kill you—”
On instinct, I slapped her again. Louder. More childish than calculated. I expected fury; what hit me was something closer to stunned, sharp surprise. Her rear glowed a deeper color, and one of the clones actually whistled like an idiot.
Onyx burst out beside me, laughing until she hiccuped. “Pffft… ha ha ha! That was a good one, Nick! I knew you had that dog in you!”
Silver materialized on my other side, outraged and small. “Kill her, Nick! Kill her!” Her voice had that ridiculous brightness that made me want to scowl at her until she stopped.
Ugh… I guessed, me slapping her out of character was because of them… Or am I reaching?
I swallowed. I could feel the old turn of joy under my skin, the same chemical pull that made my fingers twitch for more violence, and I tamped it down like a slow-burning ember. “I won’t kill her just yet,” I said aloud. I let the words sound casual because if they sounded anything else, I’d have to explain why I’d slapped a woman two times in a Ten party. “This is just a prank, right? Stop it, Onyx.”
“Idiot,” muttered Onyx, “It’s your empathic survival instinct working in the background.”
Dullahan’s eyes narrowed, a hard glitter in the stony stump of her neck. “Who are you talking to?” she demanded.
“None of your damn business,” I shot back, angry.
For a second, I thought that would be that. Then the air snapped behind her, and the real Dullahan stepped out from the shadow by the cabana.
She wore the same black bikini, and she moved like someone who’d rehearsed every inch. But this one had the small details: the scar on her thumb, the faint mechanical whir at her shoulder where a service port sat, the way the bikini strap had been carefully repaired in three different places. She smiled, slow and amused, and rested on the lip of the pool as if she’d been watching the whole time. I didn’t know how a headless person could smile, but that was what I felt in my Empath powers
“Well, now,” she said, voice dry and oddly bright. “This is an interesting sight.”
The fake Dullahan twitched, skin rippling like wax under heat, and then came apart. Her neck extended, flesh rearranged, and bones cracking soft beneath the surface. A head blossomed where there was none before: blonde hair spilling down a lightly tanned face, and eyes too bright to be real. The transformation was beautiful in a grotesque kind of way, the kind that made you want to look away but couldn’t.
When it ended, she stood there smiling with a predator’s calm, the smell of sunscreen and burnt meat thick in the air.
“Lovelies,” I muttered, realization clicking into place. Empath-4, Hypnotist-4, Shifter-7. A shapeshifting, mind-bending sociopath who fed on control and performance. She was exactly the kind of cape I despised: the ones who made reality a suggestion.
She tilted her head, her new blonde hair gleaming under the sun. “Shouldn’t you be honored?” she purred. “I mean, you got to touch me—”
I cut her off before the bile could reach my throat. “You should be grateful you’re standing this close to me and I haven’t buried you six feet under.”
The laughter died. Air thickened into glass. Even Mrs. Mind stopped chewing, and the Paleman froze mid-sip, his head turning slightly in my direction. That kind of attention wasn’t flattering. It was the kind that could end careers, or lives, if I wasn’t careful. But fuck them.
Dullahan’s voice broke through the tension, low and cold. “That’s my spot.”
The real one was suddenly behind Lovelies before anyone noticed, a flash of motion and shadow. She grabbed the shapeshifter by the ankle, her grip like a vice.
“Don’t touch me!” Lovelies shrieked, voice cracking, the mask of control slipping into panic.
“Bye-bye,” Dullahan said flatly.
And then she threw her. Lovelies screamed all the way into the pool, splashing down with the grace of a falling drunk.
“AAAAAH—! You fucking bitch!”
Ning suddenly bolted upright from where he floated, blinking like a man who’d woken from the dead. His gaze fell to the flailing Lovelies in the water, and a grin crawled across his face.
“You wanna be touched so much, huh!?” he yelled, leaping into the pool. “Let me touch you!”
The splash that followed sent barbecue skewers tumbling and half the clones cheering.
I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “You’re all insane,” I muttered. I turned to Dullahan, who had already conquered the spot, lying there like nothing had happened.
I held up the lotion thingy, the same one that started this mess. “So… you want my stuff in you or what?”
She didn’t even open her eyes. “Fuck off.”
I chuckled under my breath and tossed the bottle aside. The pool behind me erupted in shouting, Lovelies cursing, and Ning laughing like a demon child. For all their insanity, I couldn’t help but think, this was what passed for normal in the Nth Contract.
Onyx’s laugh was a soft knife in my skull. “Really smooth, you know?”
Silver’s voice, all earnest and bright, fluttered like a moth. “I think you’ll fit in just fine, Nick.”
Onyx snorted. “I know. Him not fitting in and then killing everyone is a real possibility, but hey… let’s hope this works out for you.”
Silver shushed her. “Uuuh… we should go. I think Mrs. Mind is staring at us.”
They vanished like breath in cold air. The rooftop suddenly felt larger and emptier. I turned my head toward Mrs. Mind and met that small face like a coin in a dark room.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just minding my own business.
I watched the group for a long second, scanning the chaos from the clones arguing, Dr. Sequence stirring a marinade, Ning drying off and making a mock show of flirting with Lovelies, Paleman sipping tea like nothing in the world could bother him. It was bizarrely domestic for a crew of mercenary capes. No murder hobos. Not exactly a traveling caravan of anarchists. Structured. Polished. Businesslike.
Dullahan shifted beside me on her mat and, for a moment, I forgot she had no head. “You are blocking the sun,” she said, not unkindly.
“It’s high noon,” I answered. “Won’t you get fried?”
“I need my solar energy. Get off the sun.”
For someone without a face, she radiated contempt like heat. I liked her less for it.
“How many are here?” I asked, counting heads without moving my eyes too much.
“Where’s Assessor?” I said aloud. “I only count nine of us.”
Onyx’s voice threaded through, sassy and bored. “Is that a question seeking my services or just a mundane thing that doesn’t need depth?”
“The latter,” I muttered.
“Probably decided to skip because you’re here,” she said after a beat. “You sure pissed his ego off. He hides when his ego’s bruised. Won’t surprise me if he’s dead by next year.”
“Hey,” I said, trying to sound amusing and failing. “Can I have a free question from your services? You know, after protecting your honor and all that?”
Dullahan laughed. “Protecting my honor?”
“Yeah.” I leaned in a fraction. “What if I got fooled by Lovelies? Or anyone? They could all start thinking you were hitting on the newbie. That’d be messy.”
She studied me with that unblinking mechanical patience. For a second, I felt like a specimen under a glass. Then she scoffed.
“Everyone knows Lovelies has her… hobbies.” She used the word ‘hobbies’ like it were an insult. “They were watching how you reacted. You did well not to escalate; it would’ve ended poorly for you. You kept your hands where they belonged.”
“Now, that’s a relief to hear.”
Dullahan pushed herself up off the mat and met my eyes as much as a headless neck can. For all her bark, there was an odd, dry amusement there. “Fine,” she said finally. “I’ll give you a freebie. Ask.”
“Tell me about Missive,” I said, folding my arms as I leaned against the railing.
Dullahan paused and then stared at me, or the closest thing to a stare a headless woman could muster. “She’s basically a child. Physically, at least. And if you think you’ll have your way with her, trust me… it would end badly for you.”
I sensed contempt and disgust through the empathic connection.
I frowned. “What do you even think about me? Hell, what made you think that about me?”
“You were trying to flirt with me, weren’t you?” she countered, voice smooth but laced with quiet mockery. “And based on my observations, you have empathic ratings potent enough to counter Lovelies, yet you let her toy with you. What for? To cop a feel?”
“Rude,” I muttered. “I meant it as a professional query. It’s for a job.”
She let out a soft hum of skepticism before answering. “Fine. Full name… unknown. Goes by Missive. Lives on the second floor. Physically looks fifteen. Has been with the Nth Contract for five years. History… unknown.”
She dusted off her hands, then continued. “Her powers are Precog-4 and Regenerator-10. She’s a paradox. Her precognition fluctuates depending on how often she dies. She exists simultaneously in the past, present, and future. If she dies, a version of her from another point in time replaces her. Meaning her age constantly shifts. She’s the closest thing we have to an immortal.”
I blinked. “…That’s probably the most bullshit powers I’ve ever heard.”
“She’d probably agree with you.”
Dullahan returned to her mat, clearly done with the conversation. I took that as my cue to leave.
Missive floated lazily near the edge of the pool, her blue hair fanning out across the surface. She wore a simple black two-piece, modest by comparison to Lovelies’ taste. She noticed me before I said anything. Her eyes flickered for a heartbeat, like candlelight behind water.
“Want something, Nick?” she asked, her voice light but distant.
“I was thinking of taking a supply run tomorrow,” I said. “Figured you might want to come along.”
She propped her elbows on the pool’s edge, droplets sliding down her shoulders. “You’ll pay me half your salary for the chore.”
“Half?” I almost laughed. “That’s robbery.”
“Then don’t invite me,” she said simply, her smile faint and unbothered. “But when the others realize you’re walking into a trap and you don’t have me to warn you, remember this conversation.”
I stared at her for a moment, then sighed. “…Fine. Half it is.”
“Good boy.” She leaned back, letting the water cradle her body, eyes closed to the fading sun. “Pick me up when you’re ready.”