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Murder Moves to Suprenum

Chapter 3

by Draconicon

_He almost couldn't believe it. Here he was, getting offered a contract by Bruno Bonifacio himself. Mato looked down at the paper, shaking his head in disbelief for nearly a minute straight before he could look up again.

"This...this is real? A real job?"

"Oh, yes, quite. Very real."

Bruno Bonifacio, the head of Bonifacio Industries, nodded rapidly. The elephant was surprisingly excitable, going from standing still and dignified to moving around the office like an excitable intern. The blue-white suit he wore was almost like a blur as he darted about, either looking out the windows or looking the crow right in the eye, like he was doing right then. Those thick glasses made it look like his eyes were huge, but Mato was used to that, and more to the point, more focused on the contract - and a job - more than anything else.

"I can't...I can't..."

"Oh, yes, yes, there should always be something. No point in being here if you're not going to do something, after all. And you - you seem to have talent. And that would be useful. Very useful. You're sure that you're ready to jump right in?"

"Uh, um. Yes. Yes, sir, if you'll - if you'll have me."

"Splendid. Most splendid. You'll start tomorrow."_

"Splendid, huh?"

Mato shook his head as he surfaced from the subway. A week had gone by since he'd first been hired - and with an advance, as well - and he'd learned far more about the city since his arrival. Such as the fact that there were three different subway networks that ran beneath the city, each one serving as a back-up to one of the others, and that there was a station merely three minutes walk away from the Fifth Bonifacio building that led nearly directly to Bonifacio Industries. In hindsight, it made sense to link up the different pieces of the Bonifacio architectural empire, but he hadn't thought of it until after riding the train a few times.

But that was small potatoes compared to his current frustrations. He groaned as he tapped his phone against the reader at the top of the subway entrance, paying his fee in a mechanical motion as he turned toward the apartment building down the road. The crow leaned his head back, biting back the grumble that wanted to come squeaking past his beak.

"Splendid. Yeah. Right."

As much as Mr. Bonifacio had said that he'd be useful and that he'd get to use his powers, Mato had barely done more than clone himself to do four different secretaries' work and run errands around the office. He was little more than a personal assistant, and he honestly didn't know if he was doing that well just yet. It was a rapid rise for his first position, he was well aware, but...

But it wasn't a super position. And that bothered him.

Kicking a can on the sidewalk, he tried to put himself into a more grateful mindset. He had a job. That was something that he hadn't had a week ago, and he was making money. That had to be something worth feeling gratitude for, even if it wasn't -

The crow clicked his beak sharply. Even in his own head, he couldn't buy his own bullshit. He hadn't come here to survive. He came here to be himself, and part of that was using his powers in a way that actually was super. Not as some secretary saving someone money, but as a hero, as someone doing amazing things. He could clone himself, and each clone could operate with all his knowledge and experience. It wasn't like he got weaker by making them. He was amazing.

"It's not fair."

He shook his head as the shade of the Fifth Bonifacio fell over him, and he turned toward the building's front door. He stepped past the automatic doors, looked down to his right -

"You have rent?"

"GAH!"

And was almost immediately startled out of his feathers by the pit bull on his left. He pressed one hand to his chest, shaking his head as his feathers slowly began the process of unruffling.

"How do you keep doing that?"

"What?"

"Being somewhere surprising. I swear you have some kind of power."

"Maybe. Landlord power."

Codrin chuckled as the crow shook his head, the latter making his way to the lobby's bathroom doors that the pit bull was in the process of fixing. The canine put down his screwdriver, shaking his head as he held a finger up against a screw head, clearly measuring something. Mato shook his head.

"I have rent," he said, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a bundle. "Cashed my check today."

"Weekly pay has advantages, yeah?"

"I guess." He sighed. "Just...wish it was for something better."

"Oh, let me guess. New super has the blues."

"..." He sighed. What did he expect? Codrin wasn't the first person that seemed to have an issue with supers. Wasn't even among the first dozen. He turned around. "Nevermind."

"Eh, you don't want it that bad, then?"

The crow stopped in his tracks, slowly turning around to face the pit bull. The older man had already turned back to the screws, using a new tool to undo them. He stomped right back over.

"What did you say?"

"You don't want it. Not really."

"Of course I want it. I want to be a hero."

"Be, or be seen as?"

"There's no difference. If people don't know you're a hero, then the bad guys don't know when to stay down," he muttered, shaking his head. "If they don't know me when I walk out there, when I say to stop, then they're going to make me prove it. And there's no time for that."

"Heh." Codrin shook his head. "Always the same."

"What? Wanting to make a difference? Wanting to stop being stifled by all this...this..."

"Maybe there's reasons for the rules."

"Reasons? Besides everyone else still controlling everything we do?" The crow shook his head. "It isn't right. It isn't."

"It's not good, I'll grant you. Nothing's good that shuts off people being able to do what they want like that."

"So -"

"But considering what some of you can do, can't say that it's the worst compromise in the world, either." Codrin shook his head. "Besides. You even licensed?"

"I'm registered."

"Not what I asked."

"..."

"What I thought."

The pit bull turned back to the doorframe. Registered, licensed, what was the difference? Mato had thought that they were one and the same, but if they weren't -

What else didn't he know? What the hell else was different about Suprenum than everything that they said abroad.

"You want to be hero. What is a hero?" the pit bull asked.

"Someone that does things others can't."

"Heh. Then that's me, too."

"That's - I guess. Maybe."

"Maybe? I fix things. Others don't fix things. I understand the building. Others don't. Hero of the Fifth Bonifacio, that's me."

The pit bull was driving him up the wall, and he was doing it without even trying. Mato rubbed his forehead, fingers brushing the top of his beak as he tried to collect his thoughts in a way that he could actually express. Before he could, his landlord just pushed it further.

"Heroes're more than fighters. They do stuff. But anyone who can do more? They follow rules, or do too much."

"...What are you trying to tell me? Just...say it, whatever it is."

"There's reasons for rules. And if you don't like it? That's your problem. Not the rules' problem."

"...You're wrong."

"Then prove it."

"I think I will."

The crow turned around without a word, even as the pit bull blinked and stared at him as he left. If he needed to prove himself a hero, then he would. It would probably settle a lot of his own personal problems, too, come to think of it.

The crow managed to find a cheap bodysuit in a sex shop. It wasn't very good, and it was more like a gimp suit than anything else, but at least it would function as a way to hide his overall identity from anyone that he had to fight. And more to the point, it was cheap, and considering that he'd just paid rent, that was the more crucial consideration.

He walked the alleys as the sun went down, enjoying the cool air contrasting with the trapped heat in the suit. There was something comforting about it, though Mato was sure that he'd hate it by the time that the patrol came to an end. For now, though, it was just a comforting sort of warmth and slipperiness inside the suit.

He'd finished a round around the beach and was turning back towards the Fifth Bonifacio - a walk of about three miles - when he heard muffled shouting from around the corner. The crow slowed, creeping around the nearby cornerstore to peep down the street.

A red-tailed hawk had his hands on an owl, the latter in a dress and both of them with shining wedding rings that would have been beyond a salary three times his own. They were both dressed rather well-to-do, but the latter was being dragged by the former towards a car further down the street. Nobody else stood outside the theater that they seemed to have just emerged from, and the owl clearly didn't want to go.

Whether it was kidnapping or something else, Mato knew that the first thing needed to slow this down was a witness. He stepped around the corner, shouting.

"Hey! What's going on?"

That stopped the hawk from pulling the owl any further away, but he didn't let go. Even as Mato hustled across the street, the hawk barely took the time to look down his beak at the raven before shaking his head and pulling the owl along, one hand keeping her beak tightly closed.

"Hey! I said, what's going on?"

"Go away. This doesn't concern you," the hawk shouted back.

"Whatever it is, it doesn't seem consensual. Perhaps you should enlighten me."

Across the street, less than fifty feet from the pair now, and more details were emerging. The rich details of their clothes, the wealth in the car that they were walking toward, the obvious familiarity between the two. A well-off married couple, peraps, that was going through some strife? Or perhaps one well-off and the other a sex-worker that had been on the arm of the other for the night?

Whatever their story, Mato continued closing the distance. They were almost at the car when he caught up, putting a hand on the hawk -

"Get your hands off me," the male bird all but shrieked in fury.

"Then get your hands off her."

The owl flicked her eyes to him, desperation clear and bright in her gaze. It was all he had a chance to see before the hawk through a punch.

Mato ducked out of the way and stepped into it, his shoulder slamming into the hawk's stomach and throwing up him and back. As he did, he pushed his sense of self forward, a clone stepping out from under the throwing motion who braced the owl so that she didn't get taken with the male bird. As soon as the hawk hit the ground and let her go, the clone started running, pulling the owl with him.

"Thank you!" she called back even as the clone dragged her into an alley and further off.

Mato turned his attention to the well-dressed hawk, shaking his head as the other bird got back to his feet. There was no point in dragging this out. He split himself three more times, creating a total of four crows that surrounded the other man. The hawk spun in place, his tail-feathers fanning and closing repeatedly as he looked at the barrier of feathers between him and whoever the owl was.

"You...you're a...a super?"

"I am. And you are a criminal."

"That bitch was my wife! I have a right -"

That seemed like a good time for a punch, and clearly one of his clones thought so, too. The one standing at the red-tailed hawk's right threw a jab right for the other bird's stomach, knocking the air out of his lungs, and the one standing behind him pulled him back by the feathers along his neck. The original leaned in.

"You have no right to abuse someone else."

"Nnngh...ah...what's...what's your...hero number? Your...your license..."

"That doesn't matter right now."

"I - I demand to know...who are you? I will...be filing -"

He shook his head. The story seemed clear enough to him now. The hawk was someone better off than others, and who thought that he could make demands of his wife. And now, he thought that that wealth protected him from the law, and that he could demand to be let off the hook.

Mato didn't agree. He passed his phone to one of the clones, who had the same idea and started calling the police. The other three began teaching the hawk a lesson.

When the police arrived, they brought an ambulance. The red-tailed hawk took a ride in it, though without any cops.

Mato, on the other hand, was dragged into one of the police cars as soon as he had collapsed his clones into himself again.

"Wait, wait! I just saved -"

"You are under arrest for assault and for unlawful heroing," the Great Dane officer said as he was shoved further into the back of the car, jammed into the seats without ceremony. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

The familiar rights that he had seen and heard so many times in cop dramas were being read to him now. His beak hung open as the cop slid into the front seat, continuing to list them as he stared in abject shock.

"Do you understand the rights as I have read them to you?"

Mato could only nod.

"Good. Last piece of advice. Stay quiet."

The cops were off, though he was grateful one of the cars veered off to follow the ambulance at the last moment. At least they were going to talk to the other guy and get part of the story. He wondered how much the hawk would lie to them about the whole situation, and whether what he said would matter.

I'm supposed to be the hero here...I saved someone...

And he had been arrested for it.

Then again...considering how much he and his clones had beaten up the hawk for what he'd been doing...

If we hadn't stopped him, it would have gotten worse. It could have been a rape rather than just a scary moment.

At least, that's what he hoped it would have stopped at.

The drive to the station was a short one, and he was hauled out of the car in short order. He had never been restrained like this before, and though he was tempted to pull out a clone to see if he could escape this, he didn't for two reasons. First, he wasn't sure if he could make a clone that wasn't likewise 'equipped' with the shackles around his wrists, which would be rather pointless. And second...

Second, he didn't want to break the law even further. He didn't think that it was fair, but at the same time, the cops clearly thought he was in the wrong. The fact that he was a new arrival would only make them look at him that much harder, and he didn't want to push his luck. Not when he was already on shaky ground.

The front room of the station was busy as he had imagined it, but not just with cops. Civilians and more were passing in and out of the room, with some supers that he had heard of in the news standing here and there. He even saw Mirage, the maned wolf from last week, standing in the lobby, talking to one of the desk clerks with several criminals in custody. The maned wolf seemed calm and collected, something that he himself was certainly not.

The cops took him to the back of the station, pushing him into a cell. They didn't take the handcuffs off, either.

"Alright, let's get your name and everything," the Dane said. "Civilian name?"

"Mato Kiyoshi," the crow said.

"Registered super name?"

"Murder."

"..." The Dane shook his head, writing it down. "Unfortunate. Now, what the hell were you doing?"

"I -"

"And before you say anything about saving someone, I want to let you know. This is a serious crime we're talking about here. You were practicing hero work without a license and without training."

The crow clicked his beak shut. It wasn't the first time that he'd been pulled in by a cop, though it was thankfully still in the single digits that could be counted on one hand. They didn't want information; they wanted a resolution. The cop kept talking.

"More to the point, you assaulted a civilian that had no combat training, outnumbering him, and beat him to the point of broken bones, a busted beak, and several bleeding wounds. We have yet to hear back from the hospital, but unless he was in the process of hurting someone else to a similar extent, you clearly had the chance to stop at any time.

"The fact that you did not is a crime. And you will be charged as such if the hawk wants to press charges. At the very least, we will be putting a mark in your record, even if you aren't charged."

He knew that protesting that he'd saved someone would do no good. Cops were the same, everywhere. They had one objective and one alone: to safeguard the status quo.

"...What do you want from me?" Mato asked.

"Anything that we don't know. Is there an employer that we should contact for further information? Anything that might involve...mitigating circumstances?"

Deep inside, he realized that he was fighting the urge to laugh. They wanted to know who he worked for so that they could hold his employment over his head. They'd find out soon enough that he was a recent immigrant here on a visa. For a crime like this - even if he didn't consider it a crime - they could threaten to take away his visa or worse. They could hold all kinds of things over his head, and if the rich hawk decided that he wanted revenge, there was nothing that Mato could do.

The cops just wanted this to go away and protect this man. And he wasn't going to give them that.

He shook his head, sitting down. The Dane sighed.

"I can't help you if you won't help me."

"That implies that you want to help me. Somehow, I doubt that," Mato muttered.

"You need to -"

Another officer stepped in with an interruption of his own. The poodle stood on her tiptoes and whispered something to the Dane, who blinked and whipped his head around.

"You're kidding."

"No, sir. He's here."

"...I'll be right back, prisoner."

The Dane and the poodle walked out of the back room, and Mato leaned forward as much as he could. The bars kept him from seeing much, but at the edge of sight, he could just make out an elephant in a blue-white suit, and he blinked.

What's Mr. Bonifacio doing here?

He was released two minutes later, and Mr. Bonifacio called a taxi to send him home. The crow was still in shock as he was sent back to his apartment without anything more than a warning not to do that again and to make sure that he was on-time for work the next day. There was no explanation as to why the elephant had been there, or what he had said.

Mato endured the taxi ride in silence, staring straight through the front window as he tried to understand why his boss had come to find him. He doubted that it was entirely altruistic, but there was something there that felt like he needed to puzzle it out. Even someone with Mr. Bonifacio's influence in Suprenum couldn't just overrule the cops that easily.

Or was he being too naïve about that? Maybe the elephant had more pull in the City of Heroes than he thought. After all, Bonifacio Industries was the company that offered the most visas to those with powers and was the one that had set up the entire system in the first place. They were the ones that built up the city and had renamed it, making it into something that worked for supers.

Maybe the elephant wasn't the mayor or some sort of city-king, but he was, at the very least, first among the businessmen here. He needed to remember that.

But why help me?

That was the question, and Mato didn't have an answer. He refused to feel sentimental about it, though. Even if it was because Mr. Bonifacio felt he was in the right, he highly doubted that the elephant would stick his neck out for someone that had barely been an employee for a week. Nobody was that nice.

The taxi pulled up at the front door of the building, and he stepped out. The driver had already been paid, and the taxi drove off, leaving him alone. He stared after the yellow cab, shaking his head before walking into the lobby.

No surprise from the pit bull landlord waited, nor from anything else. The crow hung his head as he walked to the elevator and pressed the button.

"So much for doing good deeds..."

He grumbled. He'd done the right thing. Of that, he was still convinced. He didn't know what that man would have done if he'd held back, or what would have happened to the owl, but he was sure that it wouldn't have been anything good. Stepping up and stopping it from happening had been right.

But what happened after...

Perhaps he hadn't needed to go so far with what he did to the hawk. Perhaps he hadn't needed to do more than the first throw and the first punch. Perhaps he'd let things get out of hand.

"Heroes make sure that people don't make the same mistake," he muttered.

Ignoring the little voice that was asking how a beat-down was supposed to stop someone when that tended to inspire riots in some cases, he stepped into the elevator and took it up to his floor. It was a short walk to his apartment, and he stepped inside to find the clone from earlier waiting for him.

The cloned crow looked quite a bit happier than he was. Mato arched an eyebrow.

"What happened to you?"

"She was...very appreciative for the rescue," his clone said.

"...You have to be kidding me."

"Nope. Her name was Irene, her husband's name was Faustinus, and she had just told him that they were getting a divorce. He refused to accept it, we intervened, and...well, she wanted to do something with someone as her first act as a free woman."

"..."

"What happened to you?"

"The police decided that we had broken the law."

"Oh." His clone winced. "Ouch."

"Mm-hmm."

As they spoke, he'd been stripping out of the latex suit, tossing it over his shoulder before sliding into bed. He shook his head as he laid down, eyes on the ceiling with his arms behind his back.

"At least we're not in prison," his clone said.

"Please...just merge."

"You want to -"

"Yes."

No more needed to be said. The crow clone pressed itself to him, and as their fingers touched, they melted together. The connection deepened rapidly, and Mato closed his eyes as he felt the memories of the clone's 'adventures' coming to him. It always happened like this. Everything that one of the clones did came back as if he had been the one to do it, and the memories could quite often be very pleasurable.

The crow groaned as this one turned out to be very pleasurable indeed. They had barely gotten away from the fight and had their little chat before the owl had started making moves, and what a move it was.

He moaned under his breath as he stared down in memory, feeling those soft fingers pulling down his suit and exposing his cock. They were in an alley - an alley - and a rich woman was on her knees before him. Him, the newcomer, her, the established money, and his cock was sliding along the sides of her beak. Her hands rubbed his balls, and she breathed him in, whispering under her breath about how much better this was.

Out of memory, his cock rose, and he grabbed it, squeezing it as he relived what his clone had gone through. A short blowjob, so brief, but one that transitioned rapidly into something so much better. As soon as she had his cock spit-soaked, she had stood up and fanned her tail-feathers, lifting her dress and showing off her feathered rump.

"Mmph...we got a reward, alright," he muttered, reliving the memory as a phantom of what it was, so much sensation, and yet, still seeing the room around him as it took charge.

In they went, and he shivered, stroking himself. The twin sensations of fucking that ass and his own hand at the same time mixed, providing a very different but very powerful feeling of pleasure. The crow groaned, leaning his head back against the pillow as his hips lifted off the ground.

The memories of the clone were just as strong as if he had been there himself. Every time he 'saw' himself thrusting away, he could feel the owl's feathery ass sliding down his cock. She whispered something - no kids, no kids - but that only meant that he was getting the tighter hole. He hissed through his clenched beak, his talons curling through the sheets.

Though half-sure that he could cum from the memory alone, Mato didn't want to risk blueballing himself. He closed his eyes, remembering where he was just enough to keep his hand moving and no more.

The allure of the fluffy-feathered owl beneath his clone was better. It was a reward. It was something that made him feel like a hero. It felt like...things being right.

Mato clenched his eyes tighter, focusing on the feeling of being this Irene's hero, and the feeling of her reward. That ass, that tight little hole, clenching around his cock as he hammered away. From the memory of his clone, he knew that this was going to be a long night.

The End

Summary: Mato attempts heroing and finds out that it's more complicated than he might have realized.

Tags: M/F, Owl, Hawk, Crow, Various Species, Suprenum, Anal, Oral, Latex, Superhero, Series, Patreon, Clone, Copy,