Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

Amelia, Ch 327- Sabah


"Hey, if you think it's scary for you," Beth asserted. "How do you think it feels for everyone else?"


She made a really good point. How did we look, to the outside? I was a no-name, dodging recruitment attempts from the Protectorate and villain groups by sheer virtue of not being worth the effort of recruiting. Now I'm one of the most famous heavy hitters on the continent. Possibly even the whole world. A freakin' Endslayer. I looked over at Lily, who had gone silent as well.


"And now I've made it awkward," Beth sighed.


"No! I mean, well, yes, but not for the reason you think," Lily responded. I recognized she was starting to ramble a little. "I've just been sorta going with the flow in this whole thing. We have Thinkers for considering the consequences and everything. For me it's just been about fighting the good fight. All the good fights, I guess. I'm really good at the 'causes' thing, just not so much at the 'consequences' part."


Beth smiled and shrugged. "I'm the opposite, I guess," she admitted. "I can't help but think about consequences, how things could turn out. I've always been that way, thinking about everything and worrying about how things might turn out. I'm surprised I didn't get a Thinker power. That's where they come from, right? Triggers where you worry about things get Thinker type abilities" Woulda made things so much easier for me, too."


"Take it from me, Thinker powers aren't all they're cracked up to be," Lily responded. "Thinker powers don't make you smart, and they don't solve a thing for anyone. I mean, I technically have a Thinker sub rank, but I don't really think of myself as a Thinker, I just have superhuman aim. Real Thinkers, like Minerva or Alexandria... let's just say their powers fuck with their heads. They sometimes do really stupid things. It's... I think the problem is they rely too heavily on their powers as a crutch, and it makes other things harder for them. Like knowing how to not be complete assholes. It's a rare Thinker who can do that. Besides, parahuman smart doesn't mean honestly smart. I think that's part of the problem with Thinkers. They got their powers because they're not smart enough. And powers don't change that, they just give you a crutch. You are just naturally smart, so that's not what you needed."


"Uh... thanks," Beth smiled. "Do you really think I'm smart?"


"You figured out in a few minutes what I hadn't managed to consider in months," Lily responded. "Either you're really smart, or I'm really, really stupid. And I'm pretty sure I'm at least a little above average intelligence."


"You seem smart to me," Beth responded. "I think you're just too close to the issue. It's not like this is something people ever expect to think about."


"Except heads of state and military advisors," I added. "That's kind of their job. Maybe that's why you're so good at it? You're used to commanding your summons. You've had lots of practice with thinking about troops and stuff like that. All I ever had to worry about was assembling stuffed animals, and I could never do more than one. And now that I have this armor, I don't even do that."


"Sorta the same for me," Lily responded. "My powers are straightforward in their own way. All the thinking involved in my power is taken care of by the power itself. Worry about missing? Perfect aim. Not sure if the enemy's armored? Armor doesn't matter. There's no thought other than trusting the power to do what it does. You're more like Taylor and Amelia. Their powers are either useless or world shattering, depending on how they harness them."


"I hate my powers," she responded. I already knew that. "I honestly wish I never got them. They only made things worse."


Lily paused, glancing at me as if to say She's your friend, you know how to handle this better than I do.


"I know," I spoke up. "But I don't know why. I mean, sure it's one of the powers that's hard to control, with your summons acting whichever way suits their personalities, but you really do seem to hate your powers. Like they've hurt you. Most of us... we may not like what we had to go through to get our abilities, but we're still glad to have them. Even when I thought I had one of the dumbest and weakest abilities, I only wished I had better powers. I never wished I didn't have them. at all."


"I have Social Anxiety Disorder," she responded, looking at us. Her eyes watered a little.


"Like, umm, you're shy?" Lily asked.


"Different version of the same thing," Beth replied. "You know those people who act up, draw attention to themselves and just generally try to hard to get others to like them? Yeah, that's me."


"You don't strike me that way," Lily responded.


"I've been in therapy for years to try to get over it," she answered. "The meds help. It also helps that you're girls. I... it's a lot worse with guys, especially ones I think are cute. I'm not into women, so that makes it easier to spend time around them."


Well, that explains why a very attractive twenty year old heterosexual woman who flirts with every male she meets is somehow such a virgin that her first kiss was with me, another woman, I thought. I've known her for months and she didn't tell me about this. She tells Lily right after they meet.


"But even at my best, I'm terrified, wondering what people think of me," she continued her confession. "Does he think I'm pretty? Does she think I'm rude? Do they wish I'd just leave so they can get back to spending what little time they can together before they have to go back to work? Will my friends talk about me behind my back? Will they forget about me when I'm no longer there? I ask these questions all the time. It's part of how I got my powers in the first place. An army of servants at my command that are perfectly loyal and love me without question. Everything I wanted, and absolutely nothing I needed."


"That... that's something..." Lily responded. "Fuck, and here I thought you had such an awesome power. If it makes you feel better, I won't talk about you behind your back. And, well, I'm certainly picking up a lot of food for thought."


"Thanks," Beth responded, smiling nervously. "I keep telling myself that, and for a while I can believe it. And then something happens and it's back to the same old story. I think that's why I love acting so much. I'm good at it, and I don't have to worry about what people think about me, since they're really thinking about the character I'm pretending to be.
It makes things so much easier."


"Umm... you said you're on medication?" I asked.


"Yeah," she looked at me suspiciously. "You think I'm crazy now, don't you?"


"No!" I insisted. "It's not that, it's just... I think that we have the tech to treat that pretty easily."


"Really?" she asked.


"Yeah, that's a really good idea," Lily agreed. "I mean, they have the ability to upload entire languages in, like, ten minutes. I have all the skills of an expert surgeon and general medical practitioner, mastery of half a dozen forms of martial arts, and the violin, and I even picked up the skill to drive a tank, just for the fun of it."



"A tank, really?" I asked, looking at her.


"Hey, do not dis the tank," she warned me. "And that's not even getting into the whole 'download your mind into a new body' thing, the 'injectable cure for all genetic disorders' thing, the 'add about ten I.Q. points and photographic memory' thing, the 'artificially evolve a billion years of genetic evolutionary history into an artificial life form overnight' thing. Or whatever other complete and total bullshit our Tinkers have dreamt up this week. I mean, I'm not an expert on this sort of thing, but they sure as hell are. There's only one problem I know about."


"Which is?" Beth asked.


"Well, it doesn't really work if the power itself is causing the problem," Lily responded. "Some powers, especially Thinker powers, fuck with how the brain works. Those can't be cured without erasing the powers themselves, for reasons I'm not too sure about. I work with a parahuman that has problems like that, and no I won't say who. But you're talking about something that you had a problem with before getting powers, and that medication works on."
I already knew that she meant Elle. The girl was a sweetheart when she was having a good day. And completely nonresponsive on a bad one.


"That sounds too easy," Beth responded.


"Sometimes easy's a good thing," Lily responded. "I mean, what's the worst that can happen?"


======================


A/N- I love that phrase.