Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

Amelia, Ch 285- Lily


"You mean unmask myself?" I confirmed, watching Lisa through the screen. Or, Minerva I guess, we were both in costume and using whatever dimensional tinker bullshit was packed inside to talk. "On national television, no less."


"International. Interplanetary, even. You were going to have to, anyway, with the whole royal family plan," Lisa pointed out. "Sham marriage notwithstanding, you'd have to prove your identity and show your face, confirm your nationality, all kinds of other stuff. Giving up your secret life was part of the package even from the beginning."


I frowned. She wasn't wrong, but I never thought about that. "What's the angle this time?" I asked. Didn't really want to let Lisa know she caught me not thinking all of that through. Easier just to ask her about her plan and see what she had to say.


"Pretty much the same thing as before," Lisa responded. "Only we don't need the marriage. You're an international hero. Except in China. Two dead Endbringers, and the whole dark and mysterious look that Pantheon's been missing after Taylor dropped the reformed villain angle for the 'behold, I was really a hero all along, also tragic backstory' combination. Which was great, don't get me wrong, but it leaves the slot open."


I sighed. "You remind me of someone. I can't remember who. Oh, right, I remember. How about every last retard in the Protectorate's PR department? Yeah, let's start with them and move our way into politicians."


"I probably deserve that," Lisa replied. "But remember, this one was your idea. You wanted to help Japan, on the macro scale. You wanted to set yourself up as a hero of the people the same way Taylor and Amelia have done. Social justice and equality for everyone. Whole nine yards plus some bonus inches. Giving up your secret identity is a requirement to all of that."


"Being able to cause change by working with the system instead of gutting it like a fish was also suppose to be part of the goal," I countered. "This looks like it's going to be the opposite of that."


"Sorry, can't do miracles. We only pretend to be gods," she snarked. "Seriously, though. You threw a gay pride ribbon on your costume and walked through cities in countries so intolerant that it would make Empire Eighty Eight uncomfortable. Don't tell me you're not ready to smash a few heads to get what you want."


"It's not like that," I insisted. "I don't want to go in looking for a fight. It's just that I'm ready to end it if someone else starts it, but..." Fuck, how do I explain it to her? "Know what? Use your power to figure it out."


"Already have," Lisa responded. "My point is, we both know you want this. Maybe you don't want to cause the waves you'll need to cause to get it, but that doesn't change anything. The 'system' you want to work inside of doesn't want your help. Your choices are either to leave it alone, or force the issue. It's on you to make that choice. I'm just offering to do for you what I've done for Taylor and Amelia."


"Which is?" I asked.


"Keep the powder keg from exploding in your face while you do the social crusading," she responded.


....


"You okay?" Eric asked.


"Not really," I admitted. "Conversation with Lisa. Nothing you need to worry about. Won't impact the portal building any. I was just going to ask you a favor."


"Impromptu visit to the girlfriend?" he asked. He didn't wait for my confirmation before getting up. "Okay, let me grab my armor." Half a second later, he was holding it, and it started folding over his body. Unlike my gear, which needed special modifications to properly harness my power, his was able to shapeshift and mold around him. Honestly, I was glad mine couldn't do that, it looked creepy as hell.


We shunted over. Avalon was still a mostly uninhabited world, so we were treated to the same unending expanse of blue green as always. Although Avalon's version of Serbia's hills made for slightly more interesting terrain than the flat endless stretch that most of the world possessed.


"Call me when you want the return trip," he instructed, and then the world changed. It would have been disorienting if I hadn't already gotten accustomed to it. I appeared on a twenty foot wide gold and blue checkerboard, with 'Los Angeles' printed on it in orange. The garish color combo was on purpose. Eric's power was tuned to location, and of course dimensional barriers. With this setup, all he'd have to do is envision the pad and he could teleport anywhere one was built, without needing to 'imprint' on it, or however that worked.


Our analog to LA was extremely active. Already they had graduated from Yggdrasil homes to real construction. Although our Sacremento was Avalon's biggest city, and that wouldn't change until the gold was mined out of the mountains. Plus uranium, plus whatever else they found. All I knew was Dragon considered the area profitable enough to be burning hundreds of millions of dollars out here. And where money went, people followed.


I took off from the teleportation pad. It was on an elevated platform to prevent anyone from getting up here without a lot of effort. One of the small chunks of land that Avalon claimed for itself. A few people pointed and waved at me as I hovered further up, coming into their view. I waved back, of course. Being an interplanetary hero had its fun moments, certainly. I still didn't know if I was ready to commit myself to it completely, however. I activated my dimensional viewer to look into Bet, find the appropriate height, then shunt over. Idly, I wondered how those watching below would interpret that display.


I appeared just a few feet over the roof of Avalon's building in the actual city, touching down gently. The security system recognized my armor, and the door opened for me. Down below, someone would have been alerted. Whichever poor unfortunate got saddled with monitor duty. The building itself was a modified small office complex. At some point the team went from renting it to owning it. I wasn't sure how that happened, but Crystal was excited. She was really coming into her own as a leader.


Crystal was there to greet me when I got out of the elevator shaft. "Hey, Lily, this is a surprise."


I shrugged, and the armor peeled away from my mouth, at least. One of the few features this armor had to partially unsuit. "Yeah, I was just in a mood to see Sabah," I told her. I didn't want to be rude about it, of course, but that was why I was here.


"She's not here right now," Crystal told me. My armor's tech picked up on her nervousness. The six month probation where I wasn't even able to turn off the lie detector tech as Lisa's idea of a punishment and reminder of my fuckup wore off a while ago, but I had gotten so used to it that I never thought about deactivating it anymore. "I'll call her and have her come back."


"Little late for her to be on patrol," I pointed out. That was part of her deal, not doing the late stuff.


"She's working on one of her projects," Crystal corrected. She'd pulled out her phone and hit the speed dial.


Right, her fashion career, I reminded myself. "I thought her studio was in the building."


"You'll have to ask her about it," Crystal responded. "Hey, Sabah."


"Is something wrong?" Sabah asked. My armor caught her voice and amplified it for me. I'd gotten so accustomed to that, too, that I didn't even think about it anymore.


"No, nothing like that," Crystal assured her. "Lily's here."


"Oh, she didn't say she was coming over," Sabah responded. "I'll be there in ten. I'll let Bee know it's nothing important. Bye."


"Bye," Crystal responded, closing her phone. "She'll be here in ten minutes. Come on, I'll introduce you to the rest of the team. Sabah said something about you maybe joining this group when the portals were all established?"


"Yeah," I replied. Not important? No, she didn't mean it like that. But who's 'Bee'? "It's going to be a little while. Labyrinth's in a bad place right now. Bad enough that Faultline's keeping her on Avalon. We have to wait until she's more lucid before we can build more portals safely." I am sorta on call right now, the moment Elle recovered, we'd need to finish the Serbia portal and move on right away. We were already behind schedule.


"Ames told me that Trevor and Dragon are working on a system to build portals without needing your power interaction," Crystal offered. "There's a bit of a catch since it can only work on worlds that already have portals. But it means you won't have to go back and build multiple portals in all the countries that want them."


"Yeah, Lisa mentioned that," I nodded, then I glanced at my armor's internal clock. "We had a talk about me going public with my identity. Apparently I'm a public relations tool to be used. Draw all those east asian colonists."


"Lisa's kind of a massive bitch," Crystal responded. "But she's not often wrong, and she wouldn't lie about stuff like that. I'm used to a public identity, so it's a little different for me. If you want to talk about it, I'm here to listen."


"Uh, sure, that'd be nice," I agreed. Still over nine minutes left.


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A/N- Sorry for the delay. Been in a bit of a funk. One of those 'unhappy and don't know why' things. I think it was related to my sleep pattern being fucked to all hell. Twelve hour crash and now I'm pretty sure I'm back in fighting form.