Homelands Pt. 09 Ch. 01

Naturally, while he waited for Cahill to explain the scenario they'd be acting out, Finnegan occupied himself by flipping a gold coin. And muttering to himself, occasionally letting out a chirp of maniacal laughter.

After seeing the two of them embody their iconic roles so hauntingly, Cahill felt a bit embarrassed about his effort. Or lack thereof. So, with some difficulty, he packed on an additional twenty pounds of muscle. That probably left him looking a bit too much like Gallech, bulkier than his mother liked, but at least he felt more like Batman.

The women made more modest changes, as was only fitting. None of their assumed identities were known for their burned faces or unnatural smiles, or terrifying physiques. For them, nothing more was called for than a change of outfit and perhaps different color hair.

His disappointment with the outfit his mother had changed into, then, had nothing to do with how well it channeled the comic book character. No, it was her choice of character that put a frown on his face. Presumably to give him what she thought was a taste of his own medicine, Caronwyn had chosen to play the part of Harley Quinn. Poison Ivy would have been a more natural fit in many ways, not least because of that character's iconic red hair, but no. She just had to go and pick the Joker's girlfriend.

As if Seamus could ever deserve her.

Not that he had anything against his brother. He'd never been anything but decent to Cahill, and more than decent to Fiona. He could get a bit jealous, from time to time, of the attention she gave Cahill, but otherwise he was as good to their sister as could be. Amazing as Fi was, though, she wasn't Caronwyn. If any man was good enough for the matriarch of Clan Walker, and the jury was still out on that, it was Cahill.

As much as he wished his mother had left Harley Quinn for the woman who most belonged at Seamus' side, he couldn't deny that Fiona fit the part of Poison Ivy quite well. Her dark green hair, which currently had ivy leaves growing out of it, seemed to fit the character better than the red locks for which she was so well known anyway. Plus, she had always been more in tune with plant life than their mother was, so it made more sense for her assume the role of a villain whose crimes were committed in defense thereof. Truthfully, Seamus playing the Joker was the only reason Fiona would have fit the role of Harley Quinn at all. That was a pretty good reason, perhaps, but his sister's personality couldn't have been much more different from that of the manic, sadistic, and psychotic jester.

Not that his mother was any of those things, either.

Thinking too much about it made his head hurt. All he knew for sure was that the wrong one would be behaving sycophantically towards his brother. And that both of them looked so fucking amazing that he couldn't wait to start "interrogating" them.

Cahill probably shouldn't have been surprised to find that Fiona looked just as good with pale green skin as she did with her usual complexion, but he was. A little, anyway. Her green lipstick and nail polish also did more for him than he'd have expected. As did the vines curling about her arms, legs, and throat. There was a strange appeal, something unsettling yet downright enchanting, about the green on green on green thing she had going. On the other hand, there was nothing mysterious or surprising about the reaction he had to her makeshift teddy. Fashioned wholly from ivy leaves, it barely covered anything. The teddy did almost nothing to shape her figure, besides giving some support to her girls. In her position, most other women would have opted for a pair of stockings, perhaps, heels or boots almost certainly, and definitely a corset to emphasize her generous breasts while pulling in her waist. Cahill respected the hell out of that choice, though. Sure, even by mortal standards, his sister's proportions weren't quite ideal, and for a woman of the fey she was uncommonly thick. But so far as he was concerned, Fiona had a truly glorious figure. Her large breasts, huge ass, and full thighs more than made up for her waist not being as impossibly thin as that of her fellow fey women. That his sister was as comfortable with her figure as she was only made her that much more attractive.

But she couldn't begin to compare to their mother.

If his sister made the most of an idea that probably shouldn't have worked too well, a character whose sex appeal had as much to do with her use of pheromones as it did her appearance, Caronwyn took everything that was sexy about an already sexy character and kicked it up a notch. Or three. Her interpretation of Harley Quinn, like many recent ones, hewed a bit less closely to the traditional harlequin jester. Instead, her outfit consisted of a frilly white skirt, a black and red leather corset, a white blouse that basically only covered her shoulders, leather gloves, knee high boots, fishnet stockings, and a leather choker. Her left boot was red, the right one black. Accordingly, her left stocking and glove were black, red on the right. She wore her hair in pigtails, one on each side. Though the character was usually portrayed as a blonde, his mother's hair was black as pitch on one side and red as blood on the other. Not her usual red-brown, but red. Like Seamus, she'd painted her face bone white, but unlike her son, her face retained its usual shape and size. She wore so much black makeup around her eyes that it took him a moment to realize that she wasn't wearing a mask. Her upper lip was coated with black lipstick, her lower one red.

His mind was simply not equipped to handle that much sex appeal.

It wasn't like he'd ever been unaware of how extreme his mother's proportions were. How could he have been? Her usual outfit might have been the flowing brown robes of a druidess, but even so, no man could fail to notice her divine shape. The tight corset she wore now, however, made her tiny waist seem smaller still, while giving extra prominence to a pair of breasts that demanded attention as it was. That the hem of her blouse didn't reach any lower than her ribcage only seemed to further emphasize the generosity of her bosom and the sharp contrast between her bust and her waist. The stockings and boots flattered her long, shapely legs and the heels on her boots were so tall that most mortal women would have had difficulty walking in them. That should have presented a challenge to a woman accustomed to going barefoot, but of course it didn't.

Allowing the whole affair to move forward took a great deal of willpower. Only the smallest part of Cahill had any interest in anything other than ravaging his mother right then and there, on the rec room floor. Or on top of a table. Or up against the wall.

Eventually, he took note of Brittany's getup. After his breathing returned to something approximating normal. Which took a while.

When he'd first met his sister, he remembered, he'd thought her every bit as attractive as Fiona. Had in fact felt some guilt over thinking as much. But that assessment had been influenced by the excitement of meeting a new family member. Over time, he'd come to realize that while his younger sister was indeed a very attractive woman, who'd grown even more beautiful after having purebred children, she didn't compare to Fiona. A man with different tastes might think her the hotter of the two, but the clear winner in his mind would always be Fi. Brit just didn't have the right physique. She had an impressive amount of T and A for how thin she was, he supposed, but Cahill wasn't inclined to grade on a curve.

That wasn't to say his little sister didn't look damn good, though. Her Catwoman outfit couldn't have clung more tightly to her body. The black latex emphasized her round little ass, slender waist, and firm breasts, forcing Cahill to acknowledge that her figure was far from featureless. Her hips were entirely too narrow, but there was no denying that she had a woman's body. Though the only skin showing was around her mouth and eyes, that itself turned him on more than he expected it to. He was no fetishist, but there was something incredibly kinky about seeing his sister buried beneath all that shiny latex.

"So," Fiona asked while Cahill was still busy undressing their younger sister with his eyes. "What's the plan, Batman?"

"Look at you. You're a poet and you don't know it," he said.

Seamus gave Cahill a dirty look that he'd have readily ignored had his brother looked like himself. Coming from the Joker, though, that glower felt different. Unsettling.

"We're good to go now, right?" Brit asked.

"Not quite," Cahill said. "One last preparation."

"Awww, Bats, you're no fun!" his mother said, affecting a high pitch. When everyone looked at her, she said, "What? Have none of you seen the cartoon?"

"That was pretty good, actually," Seamus said, his comment directed at Brittany as much as anyone. "Besides, we are supposed to get in character."

"If you didn't sound so much like Seamus when you said that, I might have taken you seriously," their sister replied. "Course, then you'd have to ask 'Why...so...serious?"'

Cahill cleared his throat. "I realize that some of us might find it hard not to laugh at ourselves. So I thought maybe we'd take an extra step this time."

"I don't know," Finnegan said, after Cahill explained exactly what that extra step would entail. "I'm not sure I want you inside my head."

"Oh, relax, Finnie," Brit said. "He's not gonna read your thoughts or anything." Turning to Cahill, she added, "Like he said, it'll wear off before we're done anyway. Right, Kay?"

He nodded. Though their cousin still looked skeptical, he voiced no further protest.

"I guess it doesn't sound too bad," Seamus said.

"Not at all," Fi agreed. "I think it sounds rather fun, in fact." She blushed a little, her cheeks turning a darker shade of green. "Can be fun to let yourself go every now and then, don't you think? Give up control for a little while."

"Here's a cliche. There's a cliche. Everywhere a cliche! Yaay!" Caronwyn said with a little dance that was probably supposed to be goofy but instead came across as painfully arousing. "What?" she demanded of those who gave her a funny look.

That seemed to be the end of the discussion. Of course, it helped that Cahill didn't tell anyone that Aeife believed there was a traitor among them, and that while they were all convinced that they were comic book villains, he was going to play detective in more ways than one. Lies of omission were the fey's kind of lies.

"Wait, wait, wait. One last question," Fi said. "If you make us believe we're our characters, does that mean my subconscious might use glamour to produce pheromones that'll let me control your minds? My kisses going to be poison?"

Cahill stopped to consider that. It was a good question.

"I thought that was only with certain lipstick," Finnegan said. "In issue-"

"Really?" Brit asked, giving him her best, "Did you think you were ever going to sleep with me again? Ever?" look.

"Well, we know she can kiss Harley," Caronwyn said. "Guess Fi will just have to stay away from Cahill and focus her attention on me."

Cahill gave his mother a flat look. Then, turning to his older sister, he said, "I'll make sure to leave a strong impression in your mind about what Poison Ivy can and can't do."

"You sure?" she asked. "What about when the glamour starts to unravel?"

"Don't worry," he said.

Once upon a time, her concerns would have been most justified. But no one realized just how strong he'd become. Except maybe his mother. Maybe.

The others appeared ready to agree when his mother took him by the wrist and pulled him aside. "It's not too late to forget about the glamours. Have ourselves a regular costume party. So what if we end up laughing at ourselves a bit? Won't hurt anyone."

"And how will that help us figure out who's tampering with the glamours?"

She frowned. He could almost feel the effort it took her to keep from insisting that whoever was responsible, it wasn't any of them.

"Just trust me." Before she could respond, he covered her mouth with his.

#

The last rooftop leap put him just across the street from his kid sister. Cahill crouched low behind the balustrade and focused his vision. Though he enhanced it with glamour, for the sake of verisimilitude, he forced his field of vision to turn green. Random bits of information, expressed in the sort of font one might find on an old typewriter, filled his peripheral vision. All nonsense, of course. He had no idea what the rapidly changing numbers measured. But they seemed like they belonged. Batman would have use for something like that, no doubt. All he paid any attention to was the bursts of light emitted by the homing device he was pretending to have planted on Brittany. Once those confirmed for him that he'd found Catwoman, he let his vision return to normal. Only greatly magnified.

A quick little glamour amplified his hearing as well, allowing him to eavesdrop on the conversation she was having with Finnegan. With Two-Face.

"I told you," his sister was saying, "he doesn't trust you."

"But he trusts you?" their cousin asked.

Brittany threw up a hand in exasperation. "No. He doesn't trust anyone but Harley." Then, lowering her voice to a purr, she said, "It's that Harley likes to use her mmmmm-outh." It took forever to get that last word out, her throat rumbling over the "m" endlessly. The sound might have tightened Cahill's boxers a little, but he couldn't be blamed for that. His cousin's back was to him, but he suspected Two-Face had reacted the same way.

Nonetheless, Finnegan responded by saying, "You mean run her mouth."

"That too, I suppose," Brittany said with a lazy shrug.

"How can you be sure he'll let either of us work with him, then?" Finnegan asked. "That he won't just kill us rather than split the money, the way he did the last time he robbed a bank?" He pulled his coin out of his pocket. "Nevermind. Heads, we stick to the plan. Tails, we tip Batman off to his whereabouts and do the job ourselves."

Brittany laid a hand on her cousin's wrist. He shook his hand free and flipped the coin. It must have come up heads, though, because then he said, "Fine. But if he tries to screw us over, you're gonna make it up to me."

"Am I?" she asked. After trailing her tongue slowly across her full upper lip, she asked, "And how am I going to do that?"

"Heads, you give me head," Finnegan said. "Tails, you-"

Brittany snickered. "Keep dreaming."

Cahill decided he'd heard enough. Part of him wanted to see where things would go if he left them to it, his sister's one eighty notwithstanding, but he wanted to stay in character for now. Batman would have had heard all he needed to. It was time to bust these two, find out the Joker's location, and prevent a bank from being robbed. The good people of Gotham and their federally insured bank deposits deserved no less.

He fired a grappling gun at the roof of their building and then jumped. The rope he held in his hands was mostly just for show. In truth, he was flying. Ever since he'd developed the ability to do so, he did that as often as he could. But he made sure it wouldn't look to an outside observer like he was doing anything Batman couldn't do.

A second later, Cahill's feet smashed into the window, sending shards of glass flying across the office. They were slower than Catwoman, however. Before any broken glass hit the ground, his sister slipped out the door.

Two-Face, on the other hand, didn't have catlike reflexes. He was still coming to grips with what had happened, eyes wide with shock that would last another moment or two. Plenty of time for a martial arts master like Batman. Cahill took his cousin down quickly with a few calculated blows. Nothing that would hurt Finnegan too much, he didn't think. Just incapacitate him quickly and efficiently. Of course, Cahill hadn't slipped into his role as fully as the others, so he wasn't sure. But Finnegan hardly made a sound as he went down.

He probably could have stopped Brittany from getting away, but he didn't bother trying. If he let her warn the others, the showdown with the Joker might be less anticlimactic than the one with Two-Face. And the mere thought of Seamus treating Caronwyn the least bit like the Joker did Harley Quinn was enough to make him relish the idea of that.

#

He caught back up to his sister just as she arrived at a greenhouse that presumably belonged to Poison Ivy. Or that Fiona thought belonged to her, now that she believed herself to be the comic book villain. Heck, for all he knew, Cahill might have created it for her just an hour or so ago. He hadn't messed with his own mind nearly as much as he had the others', but he knew he'd hid some things from himself.

Cheating just a little, Cahill made himself incorporeal and slipped through a pane of glass while Fiona let Brittany in through the only door. It wouldn't have been too hard to listen in on their conversation from outside, but he didn't want to give anyone a chance to slip away as quickly and easily as his sister had before.

Once inside, he took physical form again. After finding something suitable to hide behind, of course. Which didn't take long, as the greenhouse was filled with incredibly lush vegetation. He didn't recognize any of the exotic specimens, but they all grew tall, thick, and strong. The bush he chose for his concealment was half again his size, dense, and fragrant.

"He's onto us already," Brittany said as she swept past their older sister. If anyone wearing that much latex could be said to sweep past anything.

There was nothing arousing about the gentle squeaks of her movements. No sir. And he wasn't wondering what it would be like to cut a few holes in that suit so he could fuck her while she still had it on. No sir.

"Who is?" their mother asked, looking up from a bed of flowers.

Whatever appeal there might be to his little sister's getup, though, it was nothing compared to their mother's outfit. There was something creepy about it, to be sure. She looked quite capable of the extreme violence for which her character was known, and every bit as far from sanity. The strange smile on her paper white face and the unfocused look in her mismatched eyes sent chills down his spine. He hadn't noticed that before. Where a breathtaking pair of brown irises should have been, there was now one red pupil and one pitch black. But there was denying that she was smoking hot either. The boots, the stockings, and the corset. The heels. Fuck, those heels. Even her gloves turned him on a little.

Most importantly, though his mother might have done a frighteningly good job of adopting another personality, those curves were all hers. And no one had a body quite like his mother. She was the very embodiment of female sexuality.

He could barely think straight. It was as though he'd breathed in a good measure of the pheromones for which Poison Ivy was so well known. But it wasn't she who had him hypnotized. And that wasn't an uncommon reaction for him, when looking at his mother.

"The man in the moon," Fi said with a smirk.

Brittany flashed a look over her shoulder at their older sister.

"No kiddin'?" Caronwyn asked, almost squeaking. Neither her late sister nor her mother spoke like that, and their voices were very highly pitched. Her unnatural eyes went wide, taking Cahill's breath away in the process.

"Of course she's kidding, Harley," Brittany explained, as if speaking to a child. "The man in the moon? She's making fun of you."

"Not at all," Fi said, going over to stand beside their mother. One green hand went around an impossibly narrow waist, the other lovingly stroked a lock red hair. "Having fun with, not making fun of. Right, Harl?"