24 [ Jase ] Home sweet Rome.

  The drive out of the city proved to rather less exciting them I hoped. A few cop cars did begin to chase us, but when they did, all Marrow did was actualy slow down to let one of them put up beside us, at which point she grinned and called out, “Give them a smile Juliet.”

  Shark girl narrowed her eyes at the back of her friends head, before turning to roll down the tinted passanger side window and stick her face out, at which point I saw the angry cop at the wheel eyes go wide as he slammed on the brakes, with his partner screaming into the microphone of their cop car.

  The other police vehicles behind us slowed to a stop.

  I guess they don’t pay cops in Brazil enough to deal with humanoid sharks as we didn’t see anymore of them on our way out of the city.

  The rudimentary AI of my Gomez suit was able to use GPS to show me we had a drive of several hours to get to where my programmed memories told me Nova Roma was located. “So… do you think we can stop somewhere along the way to pick up some food? I’ll pay.”

  Turning to wink at me girl in the back seat, I teased, “After all, we’ve had our show, but it’s not a real date without me treating you to dinner.” I dug out my wallet and thrust a few Twenties toward her friend in the driver’s seat. “I’m sure you can find some takeout or something. My treat.”

  The bone growth mutant gave me a narrow eyed look, but snatched the cash out of my hand to her friend’s protest. “Sarah!”

  Sarah? Body Horror’s real name was Sarah? Marrow glanced over her shoulder at her friend in the back seat. “Far be it from me to get in the way of true love, besides, a girl has got to eat.” Then she did one of those snort laughs.

  My girl pressed her hand against her face again for a moment, and I took the chance to listen to some decrypted military chatter. Unfortunately, Paragon, the Brazilian conscription leader, had survived the explosion in my apartment. In fact, no one had died since I had made the bomb into more of a low pressure concussive explosion that had worked great to stun and knock around the soldiers in my apartment, as well as do a spectacular job on the windows, but it had never been meant to kill anyone.

  Give them concussions, yes. Some bleeding from their ears, yes. But not dead.

  I took a moment to sigh in relief. Killing was on the table rather than getting effectively enslaved, but until my choices came down to kill, submitting, or losing my current life, I would rather not end someone else’s.

  “Why are you like this?”

  The very earnest voice asked me from the back seat. I turned to look at… sigh, Shark girl, and gave her a little nod before I began crawling over the top of the seat to join her in the back. Which proved to be a bit awkward since my Gomez suit had made me a bit more bulky than I realized.

  Fortunately Marrow helped me out by grabbing one of my leg to heave me over, head first, and my girl grabbed me by the shoulders as I went over and held me steady so I could twist around and end up sitting next to her.

  “Real smooth Romeo.” Body Horror Girl sounded off from the front seat.

  Shark girl stared down at me with soulless black eyes.

  “I have a sort of grab bag of powers, which includes putting out a scent that scares off humans… and other than having powers, like all the other people born of man with powers, and altered physiology, like all the other people born of man with altered physiologies, Mutants are for all intents and purposed… Human.”

  Marrow began to object, until I reminded her, “Such as when you nearly backed off my balcony when you startled me, you know, like every other human which that particular, or particulate, power effects. But we care debate questionable terminology some other time, right now…”

  Reaching out, I took my girl by the hand with both of mine so I could pull it close, or at least I tried to do so before she snatched it back like I had burned her. “You didn’t get scared. In your shark form, you are doing something that is more than just looking like a shark. You are somewhere in between shark and woman, and that makes you different enough from human to be immune to my power. Which makes you someone I can talk to no matter how nervous talking to a girl makes me.”

  She blushed as Marrow made a gagging sound and rolled her eyes in the front seat. Shark girl almost casually hit the back of her friend's headrest with an elbow and nearly sent Marrow's head into the steering wheel.

  I smiled. “But it's more than that. My powers can also make people like me… a lot, or rather, it can make women like me. To the point I don’t know if they really like me, or if it’s all my powers. But anything you feel about me is real. So yes, I am flirting outrageously, because regardless of if you hate it, or, as I hope, you like it, your reaction is yours. Not something my brand new powers are making you feel.”

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  Shark Girl stared at me for a moment. “So you like me, because I’m a half human half shark woman?”

  Smiling I shrugged, and scooted up closer to her. “What can I say? I got a type.”

  She snorted, but she didn’t try to move away from me. Largely because at her size there wasn’t any room in the car for her to do so, but she didn’t shove me away either.

  I thought about trying to hold her hand, but I thought I had made some progress here. Why push my luck?

  An hour later we pulled over in a small town, with my girl shrinking down to a cute little Latina girl as she slid out of the driver’s side back door and headed up to order for all three of us, turning to confirm that she had gotten enough for us with a questioning look, only to blush as she saw me smiling a giving her human form a long look up and down before nodding in approval.

  She whirled her head around with a blush.

  Marrow got a few odd looks, but I think most people thought she and Shark Girl were doing some kind of cosplay from having their uniforms on.

  We had a pleasant, and relaxing lunch as we chattered about some of the music, TV shows, and films that had come out in the last five years, after I claimed to have missed since I had been raised in isolation for my own safety since I was eleven.

  Yeah, I know that math would make sixteen rather than my real biological age of thirteen, but slow aging is pretty standard for characters in comic books… and sixteen was datable.

  Lunch was fun, and relaxing… and both of the girls were getting giggly… and playing with their hair…

  Standing up, I explained that, “I need a moment.” Then wandered off a ways to hose myself down with Hatchet body spray. Waving my hands at the damper spots from the cheap cologne, I then returned to the table. Both of the girls crinkled their noses and frowned at me.

  “Well the ‘like me’ pheromones seem to work just fine on the two of you as well as the scary ones. At least while you are in your human form. May I have a name to call you when you are human shaped?.’

  She had seemed started at first when I explained that I had whammied her with my powers, then realized why I has spray myself down and nodded in approval. “Iara. And thanks for not trying to mess with my mind.”

  We finished off our food, and the two girls headed off, together, to the women’s room. Yet more proof that mutants are still just human. I took a trip to the men’s as well, then we were back in the car and on our way to Nova Roma, with Iara waving at me to join her in the back seat, even if she did turn back into her shark form as soon as we got back on the road.

  I patted her hand, and let it rest there for a moment. “Trust, but verify.” She turned her head and slowly nodded.

  We, all three of us, were nearly talked out by the time we finished taking a series of turns and dirt roads, all of which eventually led us to something more like a dirt trail barely wide enough for the car to push through all the vegetation. Marrow finally parked the car below some cargo netting spread out between some poles before twisting around in the driver’s seat to face me. “We walk from here.”

  A few hundred feet down the trails, with electronic sensors and concealed automated weapon my sensors picked up lining the path, we came to a steep hill with a vine shrouded crevasse cutting through it.

  Moments later, I found myself looking over a recreation of a Roman city from ancient times…

  Sort of.

  “I don’t remember the ancient Romans having solar panels, satellite dishes, and hydroponic farms. But of course I wasn’t there…”

  I mean, I could be at some point. Papa Doom didn’t include the plans for his time platform, but I had the math to figure out something he had built so early on in his career. How hard could it be?

  Iara waved at me to join her and her friend as they began walking down a series of terraced steps between cultivated gardens lining the long slope leading down into the valley the city sat in. “We couldn’t swing a fusion core at first, and our families needed electricity, televised football, and plenty of fresh vegetables.

  So the city of Nova Roma, even after most of the people left who had been mentally enslaved by the Mutant Witch Selene to believe they were citizens of the city to deal with centuries of inbreeding over the centuries was once again full.

  With the wives and husbands, the parents, grand parents, and children of the Mutants who had all gone off to live in the promised Mutant homeland of Krakoa.

  Which didn’t allow humans, no matter how they were related to a Mutant. Spouse, parent, or even child.

  Not even the ones who had the X gene, the one main thing that defined a Mutant other than just another Metahuman, if that X gene was inactivated.

  So they had settled down on some free real estate, right outside one of the least used doorways to Krakoa, effectively allowing those Mutants with non Mutant families, which turned out to be most of those who did have families, to commute.

  I almost said ‘Kinda racist.’ but it had become clear to me that Marrow had definitely drank the cool aide and I didn’t want to set her off, or have who appeared to be Iara’s best friend hate me. At least not anymore then she already did.

  Scarring her in my apartment, and then making her get all giggly at the restaurant had not made a good impression on her.

  Not that I got to meet anyone in the city, the girls took me right to a portal generator that seemed to be made of a conglomeration of various plants, all giving off some intense exotic energy according to my scanners.

  I hesitated as we got close, “Ah. You know I’m not a Mutant right? At least I don’t think I am.”

  The two of them looked at each other, then me. Iara, now in her shark form smacked herself on the forehead and sighed. “I didn’t even think to ask. The Brazilians are grabbing anyone with powers and almost everyone in South America with power are mutants.”

  Marrow just stared at me with narrowed eyes and a frown, having dropped down in her estimation by being a human with powers. In effect, a mock mutant. “Then what are you?”

  “Good question.”

  I began counting on my fingers. “Scientific Polymath. Sorcerer. Heir to the throne of a small European Barony. Handsome devil. And the super powered son of a woman who was altered on the genetic level to have super powers that have turned out to be inherited traits. Which I am pretty sure makes me less of a baseline human than Mutants are.”

  I bowed. “But even if I can’t enter the promised land, it was a delight to meet you both, and I hope to see more of one of you.” I gave Iara a wink. “And I thank you for the rescue, but from here, I think I can handle myself.”

  A hidden city, with plenty of high technology anywhere from Shi’ar leftovers to Forge tech, and a population who were used to people with powers.

  I couldn’t ask for a better base of operation for rebuilding my plan to become a multi millionaire super powered playboy inventor.

  It was just going to take me a few more steps than I had planned.