Chapter 95: The forbidden Fruit

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.

“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.”