The next day, despite my new acquisition, I got bored again. No calls, no news, no plans to be carried out, no fights to break up, and apparently no more shit about Damien's death to deal with, at least not for the moment. So I brought Billy and sat on the cliff, looking out to the forest the sea, seeing for miles in the clear weather, although there were some grey clouds some distance out. I've been up here before, of course, but not recently, and never with him.

"Billy, you've never told me about the people you thought were your parents. What were they like?"

"Nothing like the parents of everyone else I knew. They were polite and all, but they were just.. weird. I didn't know they were weird until I was like 8 though. They did everything, but when it came to all that parental happy crap, you know, taking me with them to where I didn't wanna go, like everyone else at school had.. they never did any of that, not really. Also, there's the food thing, the sleep thing, and well.. they basically stayed out of my way. Now I know why..."

"Ha! That's because they didn't want you developing any Oedipal complexes or any other shit before you got here."

"Oh, to preserve my mental integrity, right?", he said with some sarcasm.

"Billy, do the words 'damaged goods' mean anything to you?"

He chuckled for some reason and said "Yup. But Oedipal complexes? I imagine if the guy pissed me off, I would have killed him.. but to marry the wench? Uuugh!" The thought of Billy and a 300 pound, 5'1" sphere-shaped whore (although I know that's definitely not what the agent looked like) in holy matrimony split my sides.

I shrugged. "Part of normal psychology.", I said smiling.

"Oh, it applies to me, too.. just not with the parents." He was referring to something.. what? I was about to ask him when I grasped the unbelievably obvious. He meant me and Sarah. Duh.

"Ha. So what were their parents like?" Billy's parents would not be an accurate indication of the norm. They were agents, trained to pretend and to downplay Billy's special abilities to the rest of the world, and to act in a specified manner to specified conditions. Not like normal parents, who bring babies into the world with no thought of consequences or exactly how they will raise their children, except to go on the ideas and morals of their parents. They muddle through that like everything else.

"Okay... they were almost like.. like masters, of implanted servants. Only the implants didn't work right, and the servants were pavloved all to hell, and there was a lot of psychological shit that you keep saying you hate. They didn't really.. raise their children, you know? Most of them just did a lot of threatening. They didn't think about what it would make." Well, of course not. They're not supposed to. The real raising is done in the schools and the TV where it belongs.

"Ick. How'd you deal with all those normals anyway?" That would be horrifying to me, dealing with a lot of unpredictable fools at once. I'd just break out the guns and tell them to get the hell away from me. That's the only solution I could think of. Just thinking about having all those profane normals up my ass at once, several shouting near me, all expecting me to worship the popular gods we as Illuminati have set up for them, truly disgusts me. The horror. I know I've asked Billy this before, but this time he's a good deal closer to reality.

"I ignored most of them, threatened some of them, kicked the shit out of seven of them, and made friends with .. four of them. Believe me, Howard, dealing with normals is a hell of a lot easier than dealing with you." Normals are manipulable.

"So you want to go back?"

He exploded with a rage and a fury I've never quite seen him use. "Yeah. What the fuck did you think, Howard?", he screamed. "That I want to stay here with you and be your servant for all eternity? I don't care if they're stupid! I don't care if they're sheeple! You didn't know that the first thing I wanted was to go back and be with the reality and the freedom I'm used to again, even if it is fake?"

"It was painfully obvious as soon as you got here. But I can't send you back with them, Billy. Even if you did, even if absolutely nothing wrong happened, if no one found out about your abilities, even if no one remembered you, even if no one got a hold of your DNA, what would you do? You live forever, Billy. Sooner or later, someone would find out. You're living proof of our existence.", I said as who I am, the Dominator, preserving the secrecy and the power of the Enlightened Ones. "So I can't send you back. And even if I could, I don't think I'd want to."

His rage turned to sorrow. "Why not?", he said half-sobbing.

"Billy, before Sarah, then you, got here, you know how much time I've had to talk to anyone anywhere near my age? How much research I've done on people and how little I've talked to them? Then she came along and finally there was someone, now you're here and I have someone else. Hell, even if you were a normal I still couldn't let you go. You're too fucking valuable."

"Howard -- the only thing that's comforting me right now is what you said about every eventuality happening sometime in an immortal's life. That means one of these days, you are going to get knocked off your fucking high horse."

"Ha. I welcome it."

"Bullshit."

"Fuck you. Not literally, I don't want to see that."

I heard a crunching of shoes on small rocks. "Hello, Howard. Hello, Billy.", Paul's tired voice called from behind us. "Overseeing your kingdom, young master?"

"Yes.. Paul, there's a dissident frog in Korea I need you to capture.", I said with mirth. Billy turned to look at me, and his face asked what the fuck I was doing.

Paul swiveled and walked back down the mountain. "Do you mind being more specific?", he called back.

"North Korea." The idea of Paul searching every mud-filled pond in all of communist North Korea for frogs got me laughing. "I'm just kidding! Get back here."

"Howard, that was not funny.", Billy said as Paul sat between us, elbows on knees, his feet on the rock. "Paul, why the fuck did you come up here?", he asked as if that was a stupid thing to do. From Paul's point of view, it almost certainly was.

"I got bored and felt a little masochistic."

"A little masochistic? More like suicidal!", Billy replied. A breeze picked up and cooled me a bit. I looked up and saw thick, gray clouds coming in from the west.

"No, suicidal is when you ask for something to do.", Paul said in a semi-humorous voice. Now the punchline... three seconds passed. "Not unless you tell me.", he said with certainty.

"Argh! Am I that predictable?" He guessed my thoughts. Damn. I'm glad I got him.

"Not really.", Billy said at the same time as Paul said, "Pretty much."

"All right, Paul- what am I going to do next?" Let's test this.

"You're going to tell us to get inside before we get hit by lightning." Good prediction. The gray clouds were coming in fast. Although I'm not sure what a good, solid ten thousand volts would do to my physiology, it probably wouldn't be beneficial.

"You guessed it. Get inside before you get hit by lightning." And we hiked back down the mountain, sliding a few times on the small volcanic rocks, jogging through the brushless forest, and getting inside before the rain hit. And it hit hard. Even with the soundproof glass I could almost feel the wind buffeting against the house.

Sarah came down the steps, making as little sound as usual. "Howard, Damien's dad called again. As you probably guessed, he's pissed. He and a few other jokers want you to go to a meeting of theirs about this. He also wanted you to call him.", she said, knowing that I'd really fucking hate to hear it. But it must be said.

"I didn't know that assfuck had a dad.", Paul said with venom. Funny he'd use the word 'assfuck'.. no, I'm not going to go there.

"Actually, if he didn't, he'd probably be much smarter. And still alive. But noooo...", I spat out with a maximum of disappointment for my fallen comrade. Fuck that. These servants are more my fellows than that asshole was. Even Paul wouldn't fall for the trick Billy used.

I didn't really feel like talking to that Herbert asshole again. And I didn't have to.

"Billy, take off all your clothes, go up to my room, put on the white suit, get back down here, and you deal with the asshole as would best prevent bad shit from happening to me. While pretending to be me, of course." He grinned as he did it. I put on his dark clothing and looked like the servant. I wonder how many more times I'll do this to avoid dealing with annoying people. Paul giggled slightly. "No giving it away, everyone.", I said. Paul made an effort and smashed down his smirk.

Billy came down and punched the viewscreen on, and turned it to the channel of the person who sent the last message. A mean-looking old man, about fifty-ish, came on and immediately started screaming. Damn, these people are anal. I hope to hell I don't end up like the rest of my fellow controllers. "You killed my son, you little bastard!!" Funny you should use that term, Bastard..

"Bullshit! He killed himself. He let his fucking servant shoot him in the head.", Billy screamed back with my personal blend of authority and anger.

"After your servant told him to do it, him thinking it was you!" If you only knew, asshole. I could feel everyone in the room- including Sarah- making a conscious effort not to laugh hysterically at the irony. I had to bite my tongue.

"Look, I am not responsible for anyone's stupidity. I let him ask the question..", Billy replied, gesturing towards me, "..because I thought your precious son couldn't be killed by a few words. He was a fucking second level. I thought he could take care of himself.", Billy said, sneering. "Now, I am going to ask you a question,", he continued loudly to drown out the idiot's replies, "and I want you to answer it! Do you doubt what I have told you about the facts of the incident is the truth?" Well played, Billy. Complete truth and absolute authority aren't the usual combination, but they can work wonders when used right.

"No. I do not doubt the facts you have told me. I doubt your reaction to them. I have seen no justice." Okay- now he's really starting to tick me off. There is no justice, asshole. He of all people should know that. He's a fucking first level himself. He has no business pretending to place normal concepts in the hands of the controllers.

"All right then, I want to hear exactly what you want and why you want it."

"I want you, and that servant who asked the question, to come to a meeting, so that we may best talk about what should be done." Something's wrong with this.

And Billy, of course, realized it. "And who will be at this meeting?"

"You and your servant, myself, and several other Illuminati who have an interest in this matter."

I exploded laughing. So did Billy. "Oh- so you mean everyone who agrees with you? I don't think so. If we're going to have a meeting it will be with at least the top two levels. If, of course, this matter is as important as you say it is.", Billy said in a strongly flippant voice with some fury behind it.

"You listen to ME!!", he started to scream.

"NO. YOU LISTEN TO ME.", Billy said in a massively authoritarian and dominating voice I never knew either of us had, a voice far beyond any normal ten-year-old, using the echo effect in a way even I have never used before the third test, a voice that made the old man on the screen recoil as if his own father was disciplining him heavily. Billy clenched his fists tight and the suit's blades came out of the fists silently. "I will not tolerate this shit any longer. The meeting will be held between all members of the top two levels at the main headquarters exactly fifty-three hours from now." That would be the midnight, Bavarian local time, of three nights in the future. Is that the decision I would have made? I don't know. It's a good one. "You will come to that meeting respectfully and you will never use that tone of voice with me again, or I will personally cut you into tiny pieces. Am I making myself clear?" I could feel the hate in the man's eyes. I could see how he was begging that someone, anyone, would administer parental punishment to someone who has no parents. But he didn't dare say anything about it, because of how many hits it takes for any of us to kill him in: only one.

"Yes, Dominator.", the old man said in a far more subdued voice. He winked out.

"Uuugh... my throat hurts.", Billy complained in his usual voice after bellowing like a Norseman. Paul was cheering for him, pumping his fist and going "Yes! Yes! That was glorious!"

I started to take off the dark clothing, throwing it into a random corner of the room. "Billy, that was good. Excellent, in fact. And yes, take it off.", I said gesturing at his clothes.

"Howard, are they always like that?", he asked as he popped the magnets open.

"Sure as hell seems like it, doesn't it?", I asked, smiling.

"Yup.", he replied. There's his answer.

"That was a good call, that meeting thing. If it'll finish this, anyway.", I said. Paul was still cheering, although in a quieter voice, and laughing a bit. Sarah had a simple grin plastered on her face. My thoughts went back to what Daddy said a week or so before I got Sarah. He said the servants would hate me for probably a year or so after they were acquired. I have only one word for you, Daddy. Bullshit. They hate the situation. They hate being who they are. They don't hate me, it's just that I'm in the way of their rage. Sarah in particular has a score to settle with that asshole.

We killed the next two days doing things normals only dream about.