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The not-so-great room was filled with a large conference table which stretched from one end of the room to the other, and around it were seated a dozen depressingly ordinary old guys.

She was always hopeful that one of these jobs would involve like…

an octopus man or something, but they never did.

Sadly, most of the world’s problems were caused by old dudes just like these, sitting around tables in not-so-great rooms just like this one, and doing worse things to people than even the most badass Octo-Badass could ever dream of doing.

It was all very disillusioning.

Evil used to be about the show. Now it was too focused on the awards season.

The guard roughly slammed his hand down on her shoulder.

His thumb moved along her skin for an instant though, obviously liking the feeling of power and control he got from manhandling her…

which would have actually been kind of hot if she were a complete whore.

Sadly, she was not. It just made her kind of pissed off and disgusted.

Party Line bordered on the whorish though and had no objections to the action, despite the fact that it made Natalie’s skin crawl. Nat really needed to calm down and embrace the often insane elements of life. For all her hippie bullshit though, Nat didn’t like being touched by anyone .

Natalie had… issues. Which was another reason why no one liked her.

That and the fact she was a fucking lunatic, obviously.

Mull was more inclined to agree with Natalie on the issue, but to be fair, she was about to kill the man, which kind of ruined the potential romance of the evening.

True, she’d made a few exceptions to that rule over the years, but she was really trying to cut down on killing the people she’d slept with or sleeping with the people she had definite plans to kill.

It just made things messy. Not in the literal sense, as she also always tried to avoid shooting them while in the physical act itself, just in the metaphorical sense.

Having to figure out a way to get some dead naked guy out of her apartment at 9AM on Christmas morning was a pain in the ass and she wasn’t about to make that mistake yet again.

Aaaaawkward .

“Who is this?” Shouted an important looking bearded man from the end of the table.

His silly military uniform was crammed with even more medals and brightly colored sashes than General Ponytail’s had been.

It was a wonder the weight didn’t tip him over.

Half of them were probably just bottle caps or some shit.

It looked like the dude coated his chest in Elmer’s glue and then rolled in glitter and ribbons until he looked like one of the goddamn My Little Ponies . “What is she doing here, Bolten?”

Party Line spun around to flash Natalie’s most beguiling smile at him. “I’m the entertainment .” She prowled towards him, reaching up to the straps of her dress. “Your friends sent me here as a gift.” She let the garment drop to the floor. “They thought you’d like me.”

If the man had half the sense that God gave a rotisserie chicken, he’d realize how truly stupid that excuse was. He’d question who these supposed “friends” were, how she’d gotten past the guards in the hallway, and why someone would send a stripper to a foreign embassy during a formal gala event.

But the man was an idiot. When you really came down to it, most men were.

Once they saw a half-naked woman, they stopped caring about all of the trivial stuff like security and common sense.

Generally speaking, no man would ever ask too many questions of a woman who was taking off her clothes for him.

She pursed her lips in thought.

Huh.

Evidently, Party Line had issues with men in general. Every other thought in her head was some complaint about them.

Interesting…

The nature of Multifarious’ powers meant that she had a new ability and persona each day.

Some days, the difference in personality was negligible and she barely noticed.

Some days, she was suddenly a raging bitch who not even she could stand.

Some days her power was useless, some days it made her a very effective criminal, and some days it basically made her a god on earth. It was all the luck of the draw.

Still, on days like this one, it was kind of exciting to discover something new about herself, even if she’d only be “herself” for another fifty minutes before being replaced by some newer version.

Not a completely new person or anything, just a new set of powers, beliefs, and ideas about the world.

Every 24 hours, she got new little quirks and exciting ticks, which made her her .

It was the equivalent of putting a few thousand people’s personalities, passions, and powers into a blender, then slamming back a fresh glass of “Multifarious” every morning.

The core of Multifarious remained mostly unchanged, she just sometimes spoke weird languages, could move shit with her mind, or lost the ability to recognize faces.

Once, she’d had a tail.

That had been a weird day.

Today though, she was Party Line, and although being basically powerless, she’d apparently developed a rather hefty amount of distain for the abilities and intelligence of the opposite sex, as well as being far more flirtatious and comfortable with her own body than Multifarious and Natalie would ever dream of being.

But either way, Multifarious was more than happy to let Party Line use Natalie’s face and body to put these guys at ease.

Which sounded weird, but made sense if you were as insane as she was.

Natalie was the mask which Multifarious wore to look normal, and right now, Mull was letting Party Line use that mask to more easily wipe out the heads of a sovereign nation so that she would get paid, and Multifarious could then afford to pay for Natalie’s apartment and her tendency to purchase Steve McQueen movies on Amazon late at night.

It made perfect sense.

She sat down on the man’s lap and put her hand to her breast. “Oh, there are so many of you.” She bit her bottom lip nervously. “I’ve never had so many men at once before.”

Mull almost scoffed at Party Line’s words. That was probably the most idiotically slutty thing to ever pass Natalie’s lips. Still, she had little doubt that it wouldn’t work.

…Little doubt that it would work? Or “wouldn’t”? Fuck, Party Line sucked at grammar too. Mull hated it when that happened.

Whatever. Whichever one meant, “men are fucking stupid,” that’s the one she meant.

Sure enough, the man chuckled and smoothed a strand of hair from her face. “We’ll be gentle.”

“Oh, that’s a relief,” Party Line smiled, adding a sinister edge to Natalie’s disgustingly innocent face, “…because I won’t .

” She smashed the back of her head into his nose, pulverizing the cartilage and driving it into the man’s brain, causing blood to explode from his face.

She pushed off the table with her foot, knocking the chair they were sitting in backwards and crashing through the balcony doors behind them.

She continued her roll and came up holding the silenced automatic weapon she’d thrown onto the balcony from the neighboring room moments before.

The guards at the entrance to the room raised their weapons to fire, but she gunned the men down before they got the chance.

The Agletarians at the table stood up in shocked disbelief, drawing their own weapons.

“Gentlemen,” she hopped up onto the table, “The Consortium of Chaos says ‘ payback is a bitch with a machine gun .’” She opened fire, emptying the clip into the Agletarian assembly, exactly as she’d been hired to do.

For some reason.

To be perfectly frank, even on the best of days, it wasn’t Mull’s policy to get overly involved in the reasons for doing what she was doing.

If she did that, her whole life would collapse.

She was like the Coyote in one of those old Looney Tunes shorts: she was fine as long as she didn’t look down and see that she wasn’t walking on anything.

Because the second she took the time to really think about it…

well, it wouldn’t be too good for the Coyote, that was for damn sure.

Another guard burst into the room and Mull silently cursed Party Line for not paying more attention to the number of people. That fucking girl, man. Her and Natalie. Their inattention to details was going to get Mull killed one day.

She tossed the empty gun at the man, catching him above the right eye. She dashed across the table, leaping off of it and kicking the man in the face before he could recover. He turned and brought his arm up to viciously backhand her.

The force of the blow caused her to stumble in the stupid fucking high heels which stupid fucking Party Line had chosen for this stupid fucking mission, and crash into the table.

It was embarrassing to be hit by someone so unskilled.

Normally, the impact would have been cushioned by her Kilroy etched facemask, which Mull always wore, but sadly in her stupid fucking brilliance, Party Line had taken that off before ever beginning this job.

Multifarious missed her face. She hated being without it. It was sooo much better than Natalie’s. Nat’s wasn’t cool or memorable at all. Everything about that girl was lame.

Party Line licked the blood dripping from her mouth and was oddly turned on by the violence.

…Mull was really going to have a heart-to-heart with herself when this was over, and tell herself that she did phenomenally stupid things sometimes, and to wizen up before she kicked her own ass.

Also, that she was being really creepy at the moment.

Ew.