Abaddon Born(e)

Outreach 6.9

Panacea and I flew back to her house shortly afterwards, landing just short of midnight. As she turned to me to say goodnight the door to her house slammed open, Brandish in full costume striding out. “Get away from her!” the woman barked, glaring at me with open hostility.

Panacea’s head snapped towards her adopted mother, the girl taking an unconscious step behind me. As I watched Amy’s the older woman’s expression turn uglier, I Saw her. White and Orange flames lapped angrily at the air, her Hard-Light Weapon Projection waiting to be used. Her Hard-Light Sphere Form was primed and ready to go as well. As I looked at her power I noticed that the secondary form had no exterior means of perception. Hopefully this wasn’t going to be knowledge I needed. From the open window on the second floor I saw a flash of White and Gold as Glory Girl spotted us, quickly disappearing.

“Good Evening, Brandish, have I done something that warrants such a reaction?” I asked politely. I knew my good manners would further upset her, but by this point I knew getting her as an ally was probably not going to happen. If this was unfolding how I thought it might, then this confrontation wasn’t for her, but for her daughters.

“You know what you did!” the New Wave Changer hissed, hand flexing as she stalked forward, stopping ten feet away from me and halfway across her front lawn.

My first response, which I quashed, was anger. That was such a bullshit response it wasn’t even funny. If I knew what I did wrong, I wouldn’t be asking, would I? And if I did, and was playing coy, was that supposed to make me suddenly admit it? However, if Brandish was pulling out this level of dishonest argumentation right off the bat, then this was a planned, no holds barred ambush and was meant to put me on the back foot with no desire for a peaceful conciliation.

I hated social combat, and that’s what this ultimately was. I stilled my emotions, keeping my face blank as I tilted me head in confusion, commenting in a carrying voice so Glory Girl could hear me from inside the house. “I believe that I don’t, or else I wouldn’t have asked. Would you care to enlighten me, or are you just going to continue throwing vague condemnations my way? If it’s the second, by all means, keep going, I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually.”

“How dare you talk to me that way you villain!” she spat. “You kidnap my daughter and act like nothing’s wrong?”

I blinked, “I’m sorry, both of those statements are incorrect. First of all, I’m a Hero, registered and everything, just like you. Second-”

Brandish tried to interrupt me, but I kept on talking over her “You’re nothing like me!” like she hadn’t said anything, continuing, “I didn’t kidnap Amelia, I stopped her from getting kidnapped and then we went to go get dinner, like we have for the past week and-”

Brandish tried to interrupt me again by saying “And you just happened to be there?” but I kept on rolling, “I wouldn’t accuse others of being rude if you can’t keep yourself from interrupting me while I’m responding to your question. Twice. Now if you can-”

Brandish tried to interrupt me a third time, saying something that was probably both rude and slanderous. I’d stopped paying attention, finishing my statement with, “please restate both of your statements without trying to talk over me I would be most grateful. Make that all three of your statements.” I smiled pleasantly, waiting for the contemptable harridan’s response.

A rather unpleasant friend of my mother who believed herself to be the ultimate moral authority over all, especially those younger than her, had the habit, tactic if I was being honest, of talking over people she considered her moral inferior. It had worked, at first, my own confusion stopping me, though that wasn’t her intended result. She instead relied on the social programming and manners of others to make them shut up and allow her to dominate any conversation, as speaking over someone so blatantly was rude and to the point that even children were taught not to do so.

This underhanded technique meant she could shut down anything that proved her wrong by talking over them to introduce something else the other person needed to respond to, demanding they address this new factor before the first one could be handled, talking over her victims and claiming that they were ignoring her if they tried to go back to the previous topic. The fact that, if you thought about it, her constant interruptions of others put her below those she tried to belittle and command on the maturity scale was one she never seemed to understand.

The trick to counter this tactic, which I learned after a great deal of experience with it, was to put together a mental script and just read off of it despite what the interrupter said. Brandish reacted to it about as well at that woman had, only Brandish seemed to believe she could take me in physical combat once she lost in the social arena. Just like Victor, I realized, which did nothing to help my estimation of the hard-light harpy.

An ugly snarl crossed her features as her power flared and a sword of hot white light sparked to life in her hands, looking to be made of frozen lightning. I had no qualms with my power greedily reaching out and grabbing a copy of it for myself. If she thought to use it to intimidate even a nominal peer she was losing to verbally, especially in a non-combat setting, then she was in no way a hero. As she started to take a step forward, Glory Girl, flying out from behind her, shouted, “MOM! What the Hell!?”

The worst member of New Wave didn’t even look at her daughter, just commanding, “Victoria, get inside! You should be in bed!”

Glory Girl looked at her mother, then at Amy hiding behind me, then at me. I just shrugged. “Mom, Vejovis is one of the good ones! Why are you doing this?”

“No he isn’t!” she rebuked. “He kidnapped your sister!”

I held up a hand, “I quite obviously didn’t.”

“Like anyone would believe a villain!” Brandish spat. “You’re all alike!”

I started to object but Glory Girl looked at me pleadingly, shaking her head. I nodded once in return, gesturing for her to go ahead. Brandish glanced between us, her scowl deepening. “Vejovis isn’t a villain mom!” Glory Girl informed her plaintively. “I told you they were out to dinner, like they do every night because they’re both healers and talk about healer stuff. Why do you keep saying he’s bad?”

“I’m sure he only heals people for money, and he’s making your sister do the same thing! I talked to the hospital!” she accused.

“Yes,” I admitted, continuing to talk over her “See, he admits it, he doesn’t even feel bad!” I had to wonder if she did this in the court-room, and if so why the judge allowed it. Ignoring her incredible rudeness, I explained loudly, “I’m taking money for my labor, just like all of the other medical staff there. Evil monsters, the lot of them. Doctors and nurses should all work for free and be grateful for it, just like lawyers! Oh, wait.”

She gripped her sword as she snarled, “That’s different.” I waited for more, but the moment dragged, with her eventually adding, “Nothing to say in your defense, villain?”

“No,” I responded patiently. “I was just waiting for you to back up your claim. As a lawyer, you of all people should know that claims made without evidence can be disproved just as easily. To counter your argument, I merely need to state that there is no difference. There, we’ve provided equal amounts of evidence, and,” she started to talk over me, but I kept on speaking. “If you called the hospital you’re surely aware that between the two of us we’re taking a single surgeon’s pay, despite doing the work of over a hundred, on top of doing things no surgeon ever could, or did you just not want to mention that inconvenient truth? Also, can you please stop trying to interrupt me, it’s quite unprofessional, and more than that just plain rude.”

On an intellectual level I knew why she was going after me, but it still pissed me off something fierce. Yes, the woman had unresolved trauma, but it’d been at least sixteen years and she was an adult. The part of me that constantly tried to screen situations for bias to keep me fair by going ‘what if’ and switching the race/gender/age of the things I saw pointed out to the rest of me that was feeling somewhat bad over poking that sore spot that if this was a man who responded to a polite woman the same way that Brandish was reacting to me, he’d get no sympathy from society. Deciding to split the middle, I allowed myself to feel a little bad, but the forgiveness that feeling would’ve bought her was long gone.

I continued being perfectly calm and polite, fully in control of my own emotions, as not only was it the right thing to do, but the one thing that pissed off an emotional person most of all was when you didn’t come down to their level and illustrated how badly they were acting. Unfortunately, people ruled by their emotions usually didn’t apologize when shown this, they just doubled down, because you committed the crime of hurting their feelings, while they hypocritically held themselves blameless of any feelings they hurt.

So I stood, waiting for the next baseless accusation, ignoring the growing headache this situation was creating. Brandish complied, as she snarled, “You’re all smooth words, but that’s because you have something to hide.” And there it is. “You seem to be spending quite a lot of time with a sixteen-year-old girl for a man in his what, thirties? Forties?”

My first response was to tell her to go fuck herself with her insinuations that I only cared because I wanted to sleep with Amelia, but I checked myself. She hadn’t actually said that, just suggested it so much that it still was probably legally considered slander. I was sure however that if I defended myself against her implied threats of sexual malfeasance, she’d use that to try to condemn me by claiming that’s not what she meant but that my defense obviously made me guilty of it without any other proof needed and with no need to worry about silly things like context. While that line of reasoning made no logical sense, we’d obviously not be in this situation if she was rational. As anything I said would be used to prove I was, I don’t know, the second coming of Marquis, there was my response. I stood silently, obviously waiting expectantly. “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” she demanded.

I sighed and turned to Glory Girl, “Does your mother have short-term memory problems? I ask because I literally just said that claims without evidence were worthless, and I didn’t even hear a claim that time, just her incorrectly guessing my age.”

“Don’t speak to my daughter you pedophile!” Brandish commanded, abandoning all pretense of civility.

“What the fuck, mom!” Glory Girl swore, flying away from her mother as her Aura spiked for a moment before she wrestled it back down. “What is your problem!?”

“You’re too young to understand! Get inside now, Vicky!” Brandish practically shrieked, the lights turning on in houses around us.

I sighed, “Amelia, you should probably go stand by your sister. Your adopted mother seems to realize that baseless slander isn’t working-”

“Will you shut up!” Brandish yelled, darting forward as she was seemingly pulled by her sword and stabbed for my chest.

I twisted out of the way, grabbing and tossing Amelia towards her sister with a call of “Glory Girl, catch!”

Brandish landed next to me, swinging her sword at my exposed back, but I could feel the disturbance in the air as she did so. I stepped forward twice to avoid the swing and sharply turned to face her, hands held loosely at my sides.

“Attacking my back while I get your daughter to safety?” I asked, some of my emotions escaping my control at the thought that she could have easily hit Amelia. I twisted out of the way of a stab, then stepped back as she tried to swing her weapon into me. My face was calm but voice was cold, “And you call me a Villain. For shame.”

She screamed in mindless fury, executing a sloppy vertical slash, which I dodged, before she shifted to a small sphere of light, likely expecting a counter, which I didn’t respond with. The crazed cape spent about half a second like that, emerging in an instant with her body in a completely different position, already starting a horizontally swing at the gap in my defenses my non-existent counter would create, and for an unexpected hit even if I hadn’t. At least, it would be a hit, if I couldn’t fucking fly! Swinging around her with Glory Girl’s flight as fast as she could swing her sword was child’s play.

For all of her supposed experience as a parahuman, her combat technique sucked.

Another overhead slash was dodged, the extension of its effective range as she allowed herself to be dragged forward by the descending sword could have surprised me if couldn’t See her power and she hadn’t started the fight showing she could do so. She shifted back to her shielded sphere form, coming out of it a half second later with a stab. This time I copied her secondary power, adding the unique defense to my rapidly growing list of powers I couldn’t use without outing myself as a power copier. I wasn’t sure what combination of the cape’s behavior, the hypocrisy of what she said, the sheer baseless dishonesty of it, the actions of this woman in the future that would not be, and the aftereffects of Glory Girl’s Aura spike pissed me off so much, but I knew for sure that this pitiful excuse for a parahuman had no claim on the title hero. If it weren’t for the witnesses, I’d be tempted to see if she was resistant to her own power.

The stab was dodged, as was the follow up swing, which scored the pavement with a loud sizzling sound. “I don’t want to fight you, Brandish,” I called out to her, tone bored as a seven-foot-tall man and a blonde woman came out of the next house over, both in costume, having taken the time to suit up. Being able to see through insect eyes made it much harder to be blindsided, but on the bright side the Pelhams just seemed to be trying to figure out what was going on, so I continued, “Evidenced by the fact that I haven’t struck you once, despite all of the opportunities you’ve given me.”

I sidestepped another slice, the woman telegraphed every blow, as she snarled in un-earned confidence, “You can’t stop lying can you?” As she sphered I looked back at her sister and brother-in-law with an upside down ‘what can you do’ shrug as I flipped up and over the concentration of light that was their sister to land facing my opponent on her other side.

I looked directly at Lady Photon as I slowly mimed punching Brandish as she came out with a stab where I’d been a half second after she disappeared, which seemed to be the fastest she could shift forms. The Sphere, while a powerful defense, left the user blind while active, and the parahuman trying to dismember me had apparently never bothered to account for that rather glaring weakness. Brandish caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye, and turned, slashing at my eyes in what would be an unquestionably lethal strike. Every attack before would have been bad if it hit a normal person, but with Panacea on hand I wouldn’t have died. This was different.

“Enough,” I called, catching the blade with my hand. My uniform negated the edge, the impact drained the shield on that arm, and my Immunity negated the burning heat. I stood there casually holding the sizzling blade in my gloved hand, looking down at her in disgust. She gaped at me before her face twisted hatefully and she manifested a second blade in her other hand, which I promptly caught before she could thrust it through my face, draining that shield as well.

I was done with this fight, and by the expression on her daughters’ faces, they understood what their mother had just tried to do. “I have done nothing to you, saved your daughter from being kidnapped by the ABB, and have been met with insults, lies, and physically attacked for it,” I declared formally, voice carrying down the street.

“If you were not family of one I count as friend, I would have subdued you, and would have been legally justified for meeting your unprovoked attempted murder with lethal force,” I continued, my voice easily drowning out hers as she tried to shout imprecations about my character in reply. “As such you will end this farce, or I will actually engage you in the combat you so desperately seek, which for the last fucking time is not something I wish to do!”

Brandish let go of her weapons, stepping back and Sphering. She reappeared, thrusting a hard-light spear for my heart. Before it could cross the distance where I could yank it of her hands and break her arms, the tip was stopped as it impacted a thin sheet of light that sprang up between us, Lady Photon’s forcefield separating us. The idiot looked at the wall in disbelief, turning her head to see her sister floating, hand raised. “Sarah! What are you doing?”

Lady Photon looked at me impassively and I nodded in thanks, taking a step back and letting my hands fall back to my sides. She turned her attention back to Brandish asking “Carol, what are you doing? Fighting in the middle of the night? What’s going on!”

“He kidnapped Amy!” the lawyer lied.

Lady Photon looked at Amelia, standing right beside her sister, then over to me. “We had dinner, just like we normally do after her shift,” I remarked. “Panacea is a better healer than I am, and I learn a lot from talking to her. I ha-”

“I’m sure you do,” Brandish interrupted, voice full of disgust as she tried to insinuate ill intent on my part. This time I let her, as without her previous tirade, it would seem jarringly nasty when compared to my own politeness. Lady Photon frowned at her sister.

“I have to wonder,” I tried again. “If Brandish was so concerned about her daughter why she didn’t call her.”

“I did, she didn’t answer!” Brandish rebutted.

I gave her a disbelieving look. How is a lawyer this bad at arguing? Wait, lawyers have time to think of their core arguments and think try to predict their opponent’s counter arguments, and maybe I’m moving too fast? “Okay, that seems pretty easy to check. Can, I don’t know, Manpower check her phone?”

“You’ve obviously deleted that call from her phone,” she rebuffed.

I threw up my hands, “I meant yours. And if you won’t let your brother-in-law check then we’re back to unverifiable claims by the woman who attacked me for no provable reason! Or are you just banking on your sister blindly believing you to cover that pesky ‘innocent until proven guilty’ problem? How are you a Lawyer?” I asked, honestly confused.

Brandish sneered, “You’re just sa-”

She was cut off as Lady Photon covered her in a bubble of light, muting her. The leader of New Wave sighed as she muttered into her hands “It’s too early for this.” She looked over at me, “Vejovis, I’m sorry for...whatever this is, but can you please leave? I don’t think this is going to get any better with you here. Sorry.”

I gave an understanding sigh in return, bowing at the waist to her. “I understand. Sorry for waking you, even indirectly.” I turned my back on Brandish, who was ranting at me silently. If she broke through the field to try to kill me, I’d feel it. “Glory Girl, Amy, sorry if this made things worse. I was just trying to help.”

Glory Girl glanced at her mother, before she shook her head, “Don’t worry Vej, not your bad.” Amy nodded.

“Good night,” I told them, crouching down and pulling on my strength to launch me up as hard as I could, augmenting my flight as I took off like a shot up into the night sky, not so subtly informing the rest of New Wave that I’m this fast, and was going easy with Brandish. What happens if I don’t?

<AB>​

Arriving back at base, and seeing that Herb was asleep, I was left wondering what I should do. Sending Dad the information on the new location the surrendering ABB had given me only took five minutes, and after only an hour’s worth of meditation, I felt well-rested, but restless. Creating all of the pieces of Golem’s armor, even taking the time to do the best possible job for it, took a bit, but I sighed, checking my phone to see that it wasn’t even two in the morning.

Groaning, I moved to project a weapon, only to feel that it already existed. Feeling out where it was, I left the base and lifted up, moving around to triangulate on its position. Frowning in thought, I thought about what was in the northern suburbs, only to realize that I’d never actually gotten my pistol back from Taylor. Rolling my eyes I recalled it, a bolt of Purple and Red shooting up into my hand. Whups. Apparently, it had to travel through the intervening space. Hopefully I didn’t break a window. Or a wall.

Landing I tossed the pistol around a corner, summoning it back to me. The power came back around the corner and reformed into a Ruger. Well, that doesn’t help. At least it seemed to take the path of least resistance, so it probably just flew out a window. Sure, let’s go with that.

Considering it, I projected the weapon into its own auto-fire assembly, small enough that I could still hold it and satisfying the restrictions of the power. Dropping a sound bubble and checking around with insects to make sure I was alone, I set it to fire at me every few seconds, moving around in something almost akin to a slow dance, taking the impact on a different shield each time. Concentrating on the bubble, I could barely feel the sound around me as the gun went off, only for my sound bubble to negate it. Focusing on it I could feel my own power working without my direction to lessen the sound of the gunshot when the sound-waves entered my ears, likely just enough to stop hearing damage.

I wondered how long it’d been doing that. Belated, I remembered that firing most guns without ear-protection almost guaranteed a small degree of hearing loss, the ringing in your ears signifying permanent damage. With all of the guns and fighting around me, I hadn’t heard that once after that first day, except for when I actively suppressed it. Was I doing it subconsciously or was that my Shard at work? I’d known it could act on its own, intellectually, but hadn’t actually seen it doing so. At least not so blatantly, I corrected, recalling the use that had let me get the jump on Amelia’s would be kidnappers mere hours ago. What else is it doing? I wondered.

“Um, thanks for protecting my hearing?” I spoke to the empty air, getting no sign of response. I hadn’t spent the points to be able to talk directly to my shard, using them instead to gain my Immunity power, but it would’ve been nice. Shrugging, I turned my attention back to my power-assisted sense of sound. It was a faint enough feeling that I had to fully concentrate on it, always there, but such that it wouldn’t distract me. Speaking to myself, trying different sounds, I felt how they...tasted? It was a foreign sensation, and not one that was easy to classify. I frowned, trying to replicate the sounds I heard, and completely incapable of doing so.

Try as I might, my Acoustokinesis let me manipulate sound, but not create it. As such I started manipulating the repeated sound of gunshots instead. Silencing it was easy, something I’d been doing for a while. Making it louder was just as easy, though doing so started to make everything vibrate. I Pushed it even louder, my own power kept me safe from the effects, but the gravel at my feet shook. I took a deep breath and pulled on the power as hard as it would allow me to, grabbing the sound of the gunshot and pushing it as loud as it could go.

A wave of pressure slammed into me as my projected gun vaporized, knocking me off my feet, the buildings around me collapsing as the brick turned to dust. The silencing bubble held, barely, and I laid there, my shields having protected me from the worst of it. I felt sore in a way that was hard to describe and my shields were drained.

What. The. Fuck. I thought about what the hell just happened and gave a groan as I realized what I’d done. Sound is just repeating air pressure. Push it loud enough, and it’s like hitting something with a series of explosions... I’m a moron.

I started to get up, only to realize that I was flying when my hand went straight through the cement, the ground underneath me powder. Taking a deep breath, I fell into it, dropping down and finding the bottom before surfacing. Everything within the perfect sphere of the sound bubble I’d made was shaken apart to bits. A piece of hot, twisted metal I’d found at the bottom was in my hand as I shook the dust off it, my costume cleaning the dust off of me on its own. Whatever what I held originally was unrecognizable as the sound deformed and hammered into unidentifiable scrap.

Cricket is a dumbass.

However, if sound control, pushed far enough, could do this, I was grateful for it. Flying up and away, the destruction was in a complete circle, the building appearing to have been sheared where the sound was stopped by my bubble of negation.

If I hadn’t set up limitations?

That could have been...bad.

Slotting it away as an unexpected ‘fuck everything in this general area’ attack, I rose, only to spot someone else flying slowly over the railyard, only visible by their form outlined by the light of downtown. Pulling on my Power Sight, the figure blossomed in White & Gold flames. Glory Girl? Coming up above the heroine, I trailed her only to realize that she was following someone else, a girl wreathed in Bone White and Blood Red power.

Surrounding us with a sound bubble, I slowly and silently descended behind her, leaning over her shoulder and whispering, “So, why are we following Amy?”

 

Outreach 6.10

Glory Girl shrieked in surprise, turning to face me, not even leading with a strike, which was just sad. I really needed to work on this girl’s combat style when I had some time. “Who? Vejovis? What are you doing here?” she almost shouted, before glancing back down to Panacea, looking relieved that the healer continued as if she hadn’t heard us.

I floated away from her, keeping pace with Amy as she walked towards my base. “I asked you first.”

Glory Girl pouted in what I’m sure she thought was a cute manner as she followed, and I gave her an unimpressed look. “After you left, Mom and Aunt Sarah really got into it,” she explained. “Like, I could get that maybe she might not like you, ‘cause you’re a guy and you’re hanging out with Ames and she didn’t like Dean at first either, but that totes wasn’t what her problem with you! She was sayin’ things that weren’t even close to true, and even tried to say that you attacked her, but Aunt Sarah saw the beginning of the fight and called major BS on that.”

She winced, looking at me gratefully, “Thanks for not fighting back bee-tea-dubs. I get that you would’ve so been in the right if you did, but she’s my Mom, you know?” I nodded in understanding. “And after, like, the fifth lie mom got caught telling, Aunt Sarah told her to get her life together, which was savage but is so true because that was not like adulting at all! But then after she left Mom grounded both of us and said that we weren’t allowed to talk to you, or see you, or do anything with you at all! She even told Ames that she wasn’t allowed to heal anymore, which is so not cool. Healing is like what she does!”

“She could do more than that, but I get you,” I agreed. Glancing down, Panacea had reached the base and had a hand raised to knock, but was hesitating as she looked for a spot that didn’t look like it’d give her Tetanus. Waving Glory Girl over, I started to descend, dropping the sound bubble as I turned off my Power Sight, the flames of their power dissipating into nothingness.

“Vejovis. Unlock.” I called, causing Amelia to jump. Looking at her I realized that she was carrying a small suitcase in addition to her backpack, my Power Sight having obscured them when it was active. I had a sinking feeling about what this could be about, and I really hoped I was wrong.

She was looking between her adopted sister and I, confused. “Hello, Panacea,” I started, getting the ball rolling on what I’m sure would be a delightful conversation. “Isn’t it a bit early for house calls?”

Amy looked at me, steeling herself, “Can I stay with you for a few days?”

Usually I like it when I’m right, I noted. “I’m not saying no, but why?”

She sighed. “My m-...Carol said a lot of things after you left. About...about my father.” Staring me in the eye she didn’t so much as ask as confirm, “You know who he was, don’t you?”

“Yeah I do. Come on in, this is gonna take a while.” I walked into the base, calling over my shoulder, “And I know Herb took you right here, but this is supposed to be a secret base, so please don’t lead anyone else here. Glory Girl I’m sort-of okay with, but I’m quickly accruing a list of people that have tried to, or will try to, kill me and I’d rather they didn’t know where I lived.”

“Who?” Glory Girl asked, floating inside following her sister.

I counted off on my fingers “Kaiser, Lung, Coil, your mother, Oni L-“

“Hey!” she objected. “Mom didn’t try to kill you!”

“Tea or Coffee?” I responded.

She looked confused. “What?”

“It’s like three in the morning. I took a nap,” I shot Amy a look, who gave me a slight smile, “But I doubt either of you have. We don’t have soda, so for caffeine it’s either tea or coffee.”

“Coffee, two cream, five sugar,” Glory Girl replied, shaking her head. “Don’t change the subject.”

“So coffee candy for you, Amy?” I asked. I felt a creeping sense of unnatural guilt quickly followed by hatred, and my head snapped back to Glory Girl, who flinched from my expression as the feeling disappeared. “Glory Girl,” I informed her coldly, reigning in the unnatural rage. “I do not mind you being here but while you are you will not Master me. Do I make myself clear?”

She had the good grace to look ashamed. “Sorry, just don’t ignore me.”

“I’m not,” I started, talking over her objection, “I’m getting us something to drink before we talk, and I’m focusing on doing that first before I get distracted.” I sighed, turning back to my co-healer, “Coffee or Tea?”

“Coffee, just cream,” she said, not getting involved.

I motioned for them to sit down at the kitchen table, and a few minutes later we all had our drinks. Sipping my black coffee, not needing the caffeine but having long ago gotten used to the taste, I started, “Glory Girl, did your mother know my power set?”

“What? Maybe? She knew you healed. And flew I guess. But she didn’t try to kill you!” she asserted.

“Let’s assume she knew what I told the PRT,” I continued. “That means healing, bug control, and a general Alexandria package like you. Nowhere in there was the degree of cut resistance, or anything about heat resistance. She attacked me with a plasma sword. For all she knew, her first attack, an attack on someone who had not ever threatened her, would’ve done anything from cut off my arm to the bone, to cut me in half. I only blocked because she was try to slice open my head, and even Panacea couldn’t have saved me if I hadn’t had hidden defenses.”

“She knew you would dodge,” Victoria replied dismissively.

I blinked at her. “Have you received any combat training Glory Girl?”

She shrugged! “My uncle showed me some stuff, and Dean has too, what’s that got to do with anything?”

Sighing, I put my face in my free hand. “That’s a no. Glory Girl, the expectations and responsibilities you have when wielding a deadly weapon are much different than what is normally considered when punching someone. Would you punch an E88 thug as hard as you could?”

Looking at me like I was crazy, she physically recoiled, “What? No! That’d kill him!”

“And if you did, but the person dodged it would be the same as if I took a gun and shot Gallant, but he dodged, or it bounced off his armor. You’re saying that your boyfriend shouldn’t be mad if I tried to shoot him in the head because I knew he’d dodge, or his armor would take care of it? Right? Or if I were to shoot you, but only once, then you’d just shrug and be all smiles?” I questioned, sour expression on my face. God I hate moral myopia.

“That’s different!” she immediately shot back, stiffening as she realized what she said.

I gave her a moment to realize she just echoed her mother, before asking, “How?”

“It...You...She’s my mom!” she finally admitted.

I nodded, “Which is why I didn’t return her murder attempt in kind, which is what it was by the end Victoria. I had assumed that she was counting on using Panacea to keep me from dying if she hit me, but those last blows? The ones for my head? Those would’ve been instantly fatal if I didn’t have hidden defenses.”

“Glory Girl,” I sighed, “I’m as strong as you are, if not more so. You’ve seen how fast I am. Imagine what would’ve happened if I decided to do something simple like kick your mother’s knee at full strength.” Panacea looked down at her coffee as Glory Girl paled. “I wouldn’t do that, Brandish isn’t enough of a threat to me to require that kind of response, but she was calling me evil and suggesting I was some sort of sexual predator. Would that kind of person, the person she was claiming me to be, hold back?” I shook my head, reaching behind me and taking out my pistol, both girls stiffening as I placed it on the table, pointed away from them. “And I wouldn’t even need to do that. All I’d have to do is back up, wait for her to come out of that sphere, and shoot her in the leg.”

“But you wouldn’t!” Victoria reasoned.

I nodded, my voice cold, “No, I wouldn’t, but she didn’t know that. Hell, I could’ve swarmed her with a couple hundred wasps; it would’ve been even easier, and she’d be just as dead as if I’d shot her in the head. My point is that she came out looking for a fight and got increasingly nasty when I didn’t give her what she wanted, which she escalated to trying to maim me, then kill me.” Glory Girl looked like she wanted to object but couldn’t find the words to do so with. “She was trying to manipulate me, and you in doing so. She was trying to provoke me into offensive actions, so she could fight me.”

Holding up a hand, palm raised, in an explaining gesture, I explained, “If I lost, as I assume she thought I would, assuming she didn’t kill me, she likely would have claimed I attacked her and tried to get me railroaded in court. If she lost, she could use that to try to turn you against me for ‘attacking her unprovoked and trying to kill your mother’ or something. Either way, she wins, I lose, and you stay under her control, Amelia. You being there, Glory Girl, complicated things, which is probably why she kept insisting you leave and why she waited so long before attempting to kill me.”

I looked the blonde dead in the eyes. “If she was anyone other than family of one of my friends, I would’ve taken her down, as well as anyone else that attacked me unprovoked, before dumping the lot of them off at the PRT to press charges, because that’s what a Hero would do.”

I leaned back, opening my hands, voice controlled. “Not that they’ve probably mentioned it, but New Wave has attacked people they didn’t like in their own homes before, and I’d rather not open myself up to that, as if they corner me in my own home, I may not hold back.”

“NO!” Glory girl shouted, spiking Awe without meaning to. “They’d never do that!”

I quirked an eyebrow as she pulled back her power, not mentioning it, but if she did it again I was going to kick her ass out. A flash of motion caught my eye and I saw Herb launch horizontally out from the hall towards Glory Girl, fist swinging forward to hit the sitting girl in the back of the head while he screamed “Fuck!”

As my conscious mind stuttered in shock at this complete non-sequitur, Glory Girl had already pushed me enough that my combat instincts were up and running. I couldn’t get up and block him in time, which meant I had to stop him from a distance. Almost unbidden my Aerokinesis sprung to the front of my mind, forming a rapidly expanding disk of air an inch behind her head, solidifying an instant before he hit.

His fist impacted the surface at speed, his arm breaking almost apart on impact, grotesquely folding in on itself as flesh pulped and bones snapped, one piercing the flesh to stick out like white arrow shaft. Herb hit the ground with a meaty thud, eyes wide as the two girls started to realize something had happened, jumping up in almost slow motion. I noted distantly that Glory Girl had tossed her mug to the side, porcelain shattering on the hardwood and spilling sugary coffee everywhere.

As quick as the moment came, it passed. “Fuuuck!” Herb yelled in pain, holding what was left of his arm.

“Dude, what the fuck!” I yelled, overriding the girl’s own reactions.

“She, here, fuuuck!” he cried inarticulately.

I took a deep breath, putting my coffee down and walking around the table over to him, Panacea staring at him with wide eyes while her sister tried not to vomit as she stared at the mutilated limb. “Why in the ever-loving fuck did you try to sucker punch Glory Girl, when she was sitting in our base, drinking fucking coffee? The fuck man!?” I tried not to shout, and failed.

He was looking at his arm, having gone partially into shock, which he deserved. “She. Base. Invading?”

That I understood, he thought the sisters were somehow invading and he was taking out the heavy hitter first. The sheer hypocrisy of that statement pissed me off. “Oh that’s ripe coming from you. You’re the one who brought Amelia here in the first place, but now she’s back you think that’s grounds to attack? Fuck you.”

He shook his head, “No. Sister. Angry? All I heard was no! And then I felt a sharp thing in my head... There was yelling man!” he finally said, Peak Condition pushing him back out of shock like it had for me when I was Boardwalk. He blinked, then looked at the hardened air shield he’d punched, which still had some blood smeared on it highlighting the impact crater directly in the center of it. “What’d ya use?”

I gave a significant glance to where Vicky was standing behind me without moving my head. “Force fields.”

He cocked his head, confused. “When did ya get forcefields?” I just looked at him, shocked that Mr. ‘I’m so great at reading subtleties’ missed that. I swear to god Herb, I will hurt you if you blab my secrets. As I glared at him I swear I could see the thought click in as he went, “Sorry, so sorry, sorry.”

I sighed, trying to find a good explanation. “Just because I’m finding new uses for my power, doesn’t mean it’s a new power,” I ‘reminded’ him.

“Right, that’s why I’m apologizing,” he agreed, getting up. “Sorry.” He looked down at his ruined arm, moving it slightly and wincing as the flesh shifted and jiggled like an arm shouldn’t, blood slowly pooling below it as it dripped down his arm to fall from his twisted fingers. “This is kinda weird.”

I sighed, harder. “Okay, take a fucking seat. Panacea can you heal him so he can put on some clothes and talk like a fuckin’ adult.” Panacea looked back at me, before looking back at Herb and realizing that all he was wearing were boxers, having probably jumped straight out of bed when her sister had spiked her emotional manipulation field. “He’s not gonna fight, he thought she was here to attack one of us, and he was woken up when she spiked her ‘not-a-Master’ power.”

Herb turned to her, shrugging and wincing, “Yeah, it’s not like you have a massively overprotective sister that my friend has been hanging out with.”

“I’m not overprotective!” the overprotective sister in question objected, still looking green.

All three of us looked at her in disbelief. “Yeah, ya are,”; “You are very protective, but that’s not bad,”; “Sometimes,” we responded at once.

The Brute took a seat, pouting, while Amy repaired Herb’s arm. I grabbed some paper towels and cleaned up the blood, gore, and coffee as the healer frowned. “Your powers...are helping mine?” the redhead questioned, confused. “Where is it getting the biomass?”

“Same place any creation power gets mass,” I absently responded while I cleaned up my friend’s spattered flesh and blood and reminded myself that Herb was fine. “They convert energy stores into matter, E equals M C squared and all of that fun stuff in reverse.” I looked up from the blood I was cleaning off of the three-foot-wide air disk and saw the sisters staring. “What? It makes sense and the powers can’t truly violate basic thermodynamics, they just use a ton of power to manipulate things on a small scale.”

Panacea shook her head as she turned back to healing as Victoria frowned at me, “How do you know that?”

I shrugged as I realized I’d over-explained again. In my defense I might’ve been a bit off-balance from the near-fatal misunderstanding. “Can’t tell you right now without bad things happening.”

She pouted again, which if I was into teenage valley girls might’ve worked, but I preferred dark, smart, and snark-... Not looking at Panacea I made Glory Girl another coffee after I finished cleaning. As I put it down she was poking the now near invisible disk. “What is this?”

I shrugged, “Forcefield?” which was true, in a sense.

“But it’s invisible.”

Sighing I took a seat, sipping on my room temperature caffeine. As Herb left to get changed “The best one’s are,” I quipped, before snapping my fingers and dismissing it in a gust of air that I directed away from the girls and down the hall without touching anything. A deep breath later I continued. “Okay, where were we? .. .Oh right, your family’s habits of attacking people in their own homes.”

“They wouldn’t!” Glory Girl objected, though not nearly as strenuously as she had last time.

“Well, they’d hardly have told you about it if they had.” I turned to Amy, “Now, you had a question about your lineage?”

Panacea glanced at her fuming sister, who looked like she wanted to continue, but was holding back for her sibling. “Yes. Who were my parents?”

“I only know one, but you should be able to figure their identity out on your own,” I deflected. “Riddle me this: Why did Brandish adopt you?”

Amy looked pained, and I repressed a passing urge to give her a hug. “I don’t know why, but she had to,” the healer told me. “Her and aunt Sarah talked about it tonight.”

I glanced over to Glory Girl, who wouldn’t meet my eyes. Things must’ve gotten bad after I left. I hate domestic disputes. “Okay, do you know when you were adopted?”

“When I was six.”

“And what happened around that time in or near Brockton Bay?” I asked. “This would’ve been back when New Wave was The Brockton Bay Brigade.”

She shrugged, and I turned to Herb who was walking back in the room, clothed this time, “Since you’re up, can you grab me a laptop?”

He shrugged, “Yeah, sure.” After he’d walked behind them to go get it, he gave me a double thumbs up with something that looked like a tentative smile crossed with a grimace.

We waited, and I got myself another coffee, nixing my idea to try warming my old one with a hidden tiny star. Herb returned with the laptop and a bottle of Wild Turkey. I took the computer and shot him a questioning look for the booze, but he shook his head. “Here,” I told them, handing them the device, “look up what happened in two-thousand and two-thousand-one around here.”

I sat at one end of the table as Amelia typed into the computer, her sister literally hovering over her shoulder. Herb grabbed four glasses and sat down, waiting, while I opened the base manual on my phone, starting to work through the newly discovered first chapter. I really wished I’d found this glossary of terms a while ago and found myself flipping back to understand what was said, which only confused me even more as the things it was listing how to use we didn’t have!

I was halfway through the my confusing research when I heard Amelia give a soft “no.”

Glancing over at her, I saw her looking at the screen, face pale. Glory Girl looked sickly horrified. Having Marquis as a dad should be that bad. Walking over to her and exchanging confused looks with Herb, I peered over Amy’s shoulder, opposite of Victoria. I saw she had a news report open about Nilbog of all people. “Why are you looking up that asshole?” I asked, even more confused.

Amy looked sharply, up at me, “Isn’t he my father!?” I blinked at her, before laughing at the ridiculousness of it. “It’s not funny!” she said, on the verge of tears.

“Nilbog isn’t your father,” I told her, putting a hand on her shoulder as I dragged the computer over, typing in ‘Marquis captured’ with one hand, hitting enter. The first result was a news story detailing the Brockton Bay Brigade’s win against the villain Marquis. “He’s your father.”

I looked over her shoulder as she and her sister read the new story. As it detailed the ‘valiant battle’ against Marquis the group that would become New Wave waged, ‘Storming his base’ a picture of a mansion with a destroyed front door and spikes of bone protruding from the wall in a few places putting that to lie. There was a picture of him, in cuffs, being put into an ambulance.

“What is he wearing?” Vicky demanded, squinting at the picture.

Squinting, I tried to remember the interlude that described this event. “I believe it’s a silk bathrobe. They kept your sister out of the story, but they beat Marquis by noticing he was protecting a closet, and Brandish used that fact to pin him down and stab him in the chest with her plasma sword. It’s a favored tactic of hers, apparently. After they found Amy Marquis gave himself up so they wouldn’t hurt her, willing to go to the Birdcage if they promised to take care of her.” Whether or not they did is up to debate.

I sighed, “So, letting New Wave know where I live? I’d rather not. You wouldn’t do anything Glory Girl, and neither would your sister, but your parents? You can’t tell me they wouldn’t.” I took a seat next to Amy, as they both gazed at me in shock, obviously looking like they wanted to say something in their family’s defense but not sure what it would be. “New Wave tried something well, new, by eschewing their secret identities. Unfortunately, they, like a lot of other people who claim to be honorable, only followed the rules when it served their own needs.”

“I’m sure they excused what was their greatest victory by later saying that since they didn’t have secret identities, they shouldn’t have needed to respect those of their foes. It’s why when that E88 thug killed Fleur when she wasn’t in costume, which was murder, well if you’ve looked into it you’ve seen that there wasn’t the outcry one would’ve expected from someone blatantly breaking the unwritten rules.” I sighed, shaking my head, “That was because the Brigade became famous for taking down their arch-nemesis by doing exactly that, only worse. Fleur was attacked walking down the street, Marquis was attacked at night, in his own home, when he wasn’t expecting it, when they expected him to be unable to defend himself. The only reason he wasn’t was that he’d just finished reading his daughter a bed-time story because she was having trouble going to sleep. Not only that, they played off Marquis’ refusal to hurt women by having their front-line fighters belong to the class of people he refused to injure.”

I leaned back. “Amy, I trust. You, I’ll give a chance because of what I’ve seen of your character. Your mother? I would’ve been hesitant to, but after tonight? No.” I wanted to add ‘sorry’ but I really wasn’t. I sat there, giving the girls a chance to formulate her response.

“So, my father is Marquis,” Amelia sighed. “That, that explains a lot.”

“What do ya mean Ames?” her sister asked, looking down at her. “That doesn’t explain, like, anything!”

“You know how much Mo- how much Carol hates Marquis. He’s been in the Birdcage for a decade and she still got upset when dad brought him up after the first time Lee helped me heal!” she objected, and I blinked, not realizing that my actions had sparked strife in her family that quickly and feeling a bit bad about it. “If I’m his daughter, was she just expecting me to turn out just like him? Is that really what she meant by mali principii malus finis?” Harmful start harmful end? The hell? Did Brandish think saying ‘bad blood’ in latin somehow made it true? “Just because Marquis is my father? That’s not how it works! That’s not how any of that works! I can literally see brains, that’s not how that works!” she nearly screamed, almost shrill in disbelief.

“Mom’s smarter than that, she’s a lawyer!” Glory Girl tried to reason, but her words lacked the weight of conviction. I wanted to say that smart people could believe stupid things, but I could practically hear Herb going ‘Not the time man, stay out of this’, so I glanced over at him, and he was indeed giving me a look which said exactly that. “Besides, you know she loves us!” Victoria added, sounding desperate.

Amy shook her head, crying, “No Vics, she loves you! She’s been clear about that. She tolerated me until I started ‘turning evil’ like my father!”

Victoria, now crying as well, hugged her sister, “I’m so sorry Ames! This is like, the worst!”

I sat there, feeling so awkward. Should I give words of encouragement? Leave? Give them a hug? Anger, arrogance, or apathy I could handle pretty easily, but anguish? Not a ton of knowledge on how to help someone else with that, mostly because I wasn’t used to people being this vulnerable around me, and I knew that I was weird enough what helped me probably wouldn’t help them. It was made worse by the fact that I actually gave a shit about Amelia, and surprisingly about Victoria as well, so I didn’t really know what to do, but wished I did.

I silenced myself as I repressed a groan. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew what I wasn’t going to do. There was no way I could kick them out now. If only I’d not talked like I normally did, explaining things that people didn’t want to be explained, even if they really needed to be, I could’ve convinced them to let me rent a hotel room for them or something until this all blew over.

However, I knew I couldn’t as they cried and held onto each other as if they were each other’s only lifeline in stormy seas. They shared the pain of a terribly but undeniable truth that reshaped how they understood reality, a pain I was far too familiar with. One I also knew from experience that was going to leave them vulnerable and crash them hard. While I’m sure I could still convince them to leave if I needed to, I could no longer do so without hurting them.

Me and my stupid mouth.

<AB>​

After about half an hour they were pretty much done. I wanted to offer words of understanding and comfort, but still really didn’t know what to say. Cleaning up the kitchen as Herb produced a bottle of whiskey and poured it into the glasses he’d gotten earlier, three fingers worth in two, almost filling the others, I sat down across the table from them.

“So,” I sighed, getting tired, tear-bright looks from both of them as they sniffled. “I never actually said you could stay here, so I am saying it right now. We’ve got a few open rooms and you can stay here as long as you need Amy. Glory Gi-”

“Call my Vicky,” she interrupted.

I nodded. “Okay Vicky, stay here tonight, and if you really want to you can stay longer, just know that if you do so, Brandish will probably try to kill me. Again. She...” I trailed off, trying to figure out how to phrase it.

“She what?” Victoria asked tiredly.

I sighed. “Do you want me to be nice, or be blunt?”

Herb passed me one of the half-filled glasses, pushing the two full ones to the sisters, as well as the bottle.

Vicky looked at the glass in front of her, before taking it in one motion and downing the entire thing, breaking off into coughs as her sister took a swig before grimacing. After Victoria stopped coughing, she gave me a teary smile, “I could use some nice right now... and some water?”

“Okay,” I nodded, getting her some. I took a sip of my whiskey and waited until after she took a drink of water to look her in the eye. “Brandish cares a great deal about you, your wellbeing, and your safety. As such if you spend time around someone that she has declared a Villain she’ll both take it badly and assume that you are only doing so because I did something to you, not by your own choice. After all, you’re a good daughter and good daughters listen to their mothers. There’s nothing you can do to convince her otherwise because anything you do to prove her wrong is obviously something I told you to do.”

She tried to object that that made no sense, and I held up a hand. “Yes, it’s not rational, but a large portion of adults believe that anyone more than twenty years younger than them isn’t capable of making logical decisions, especially ones that counter what said adults, with their age and experience, have chosen to do. They feel that, as adults, they don’t need to justify themselves, their positions of power and respect being enough that they shouldn’t be questioned, especially when attempting to do so would just prove the younger person right, which would hurt the adult’s pride, though they don’t consciously realize why they feel so offended. They just lash out at it, like the children they call their opposition, ironically enough. The same adults also usually dismiss what people who have twenty plus more years of experience than they do think, because those old people are obviously out of touch, or senile, or something. It’s really just an ‘I’m right, and I’ll make up whatever excuse it takes to get you to accept it’ mindset. It was used against them, and they hated it, but now that they have the power they’re going to use it against everyone else.”

Glancing over at Panacea I continued, “I had asked Amy to ask you if you could hang out with her while she heals as protection, now that the ABB is desperate for healers, but she obviously didn’t get the chance, so I’m asking now that I have the opportunity. However, if you stay with her all the time, it’s a when, not an if, that Brandish will come to, um, claim you and drag you back home. If that doesn’t work I would not be surprised if she tries to tail you back here, to try to force a confrontation, and maybe attack me for daring to steal her daughter or something similar.”

I sighed. “If you’re staying at home, and just meeting your sister for her hospital shifts, she might pitch a fit, hell, she’ll probably ground you and tell you not to, but, well, you do have an Alexendria package. It’s not like she can stop you without hurting you, and I doubt she’s that far gone. It’s not pleasant, but it’s an option. If you can’t watch her back I’d ask her to not go healing now that we have the added threat of Brandish trying something, but if you sister decided to do so anyways I wouldn’t stop her, and just ask that she wears a tracker.” I looked at Panacea. “There’s a decent chance they’ll try to take you again, and once I hear about it I would go kill the people that took you, but I’m worried about what they’d try to do to you in that interval. It’s something the two of you need to decide soon.”

Speech done, I leaned back as the sisters whispered to each other. I wanted to eavesdrop, but this was a decision they had to make. Herb stood up, walking over to them and giving them both a hug, which neither of them knew how to respond to. “I’m sorry girls,” he told them, nodding to the bottle, “That’s yours, I don’t want to see it tomorrow.” With that he went to bed.

The two of them looked to me. “I don’t’ think you’re going anywhere else tonight, and Brandish already thinks I’m evil incarnate, what’s a bit of underage drinking on top of that?”

Vicky nodded, refilling her glass and topping off her sister’s, before the two of them started to quietly debate again. They went back and forth, from the body language Amelia was telling her sister she was fine, and Vicky disagreed. After almost an hour, and several more drinks, they came to a decision, Amy seeming to have lost. Victoria turned to me and smiled as she swayed slightly in her seat, “I’m staying!”