Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

Amelia, 143- Taylor


Emma left not long after, having extracted promises from both Amelia and I to get our backups done. We'd also have to talk to everyone else, with a rare exception or two, like Zach, who didn't really need the tech. "So, it's still early afternoon," I said. "What should we do now?"


Amelia snuggled against me. "Didn't you say something about a bikini?" she asked.


"Maybe later," I responded. "We do have stuff to worry about. As nice as it is to get closure for things, we have things to do." I kissed her on the forehead. "Thanks for that, by the way. I probably would have punched her again if you hadn't stepped in."


WarmthSafeLove. She looked up. "Oh, it's nothing you hadn't already done for me," she answered.


She really is the best thing that's ever happened to me, I thought, then smiled. Fire extinguisher included.


CuriousHappy. "What are you thinking about?" she asked, nuzzling into me. "Whatever it is, keep thinking it."


"Just about how we first met," I answered. "And then you hit me."


"Huh," AmusedSmug. "I wouldn't have thought you were into stuff like that."


I shrugged. "Totally worth it for what came later," I answered, and contemplated kissing her. Then I dropped the idea. Still not into girls. "Tell you what, let's actually get some work done today, then we'll relax this evening. You should talk to your mom and dad?" ReluctanceAmbivalence. She still doesn't view them as that. "Carol and Mark, then. Someone's going to need to convince them to exhume Victoria's body. The others who got caught in that bomb, as well. But it'll probably be easier to talk them into it if we have a proven success first."


"You're right," she agreed. "We could probably do it in secret, but it's better if we ask."


"The publicity, if it works, should also help," I added. "A way to bring back capes after an Endbringer fight is insanely huge..." I paused. If we had this last time, I thought. So many dead...


Amelia touched my face. "It wasn't your fault," she insisted. ProtectiveNurturing.


I forced a smile. "I know," I confirmed. "I'm sure I'd feel a lot worse if it was my fault."


"Okay," she agreed. "You just have this habit of taking responsibility for things completely outside your control."


"I do, don't I?" I agreed. "I'm going to go ask about that backup. Would you mind shutting down the relay network? Including the link. I'm not sure it's a good idea to have it running while they do all this, y'know." ConcernSuspicion.


"Umm, if you insist," she agreed. I quickly started going "blind" as the relays went into hibernation. Not the first time, certainly not going to be the last. We'd done before simply to allow the network to be properly rebuilt.


"Thanks," I squeezed her one last time before our empathic bond went silent. "It shouldn't take long. Go ahead and talk to Carol and Mark. Maybe arrange a time for that 'meet the parents, only for real this time' thing?"


"Alright," she agreed. And I reluctantly broke contact in order to head to the labs. In truth, it wasn't that bad being 'alone'. Every time Amelia was asleep, her presence in our bond was missing. And vice versa, even if I still had some control of my power when sleeping, it didn't convey anything intelligible for her to feel. So we were used to an hour or two each day without the other.


I went to our 'secret' passage to the lab. Or, at least, to the hidden lab section where we kept the 'big deal' stuff. The start of Eidolon's biosuit, the next generation of armor systems, Alexandria's new equipment. Rey spent more time working in our 'official' secret lab, which only existed to test run the zerglings and other combat units. I'd be working with him tomorrow, to test the new stuff.


And of course, our official lab space, used to design our team's battle armor, the generic suits, and the M7s. Frankly, they weren't seeing a lot of effort. We'd reached the point of diminishing returns on that tech. Plus we had other, more immediate concerns. At its best, it still wouldn't help us in the future battle with Scion.


I spotted Riley first, mumbling into her recording microphone. Emma, on the other hand, was currently in her yellow state and looking at the computer. I decided not to interrupt. After a couple minutes, she started typing, then spoke. "File saved: IT fifteen."


Riley looked up. "So, anything useful?"


"Yes, actually," Emma answered. "Turns out I might have a way to break you through. Although it's a weird way of doing it that doesn't explain how Amelia broke through. I don't think the Entities knew what 'sleep' was when they designed this memory wipe effect. If you actually pass out during or right after a Taboo event, you should be able to remember when you wake up. At the very least, it'll let you remember stuff that we've already discovered."


"And we already know how to identify when a Taboo is starting to influence the brain!" Riley declared. "I could probably build an implant that emulates losing consciousness. It may take a few tries, but should't be that hard to achieve. From there, it's just a matter of feeding the target mind enough legitimate Taboo data that the Passenger doesn't know what to remove anymore, like with you!"


"That's really good news," I said from my position near the door, then I started walking in. I meant it, too. "Good work, both of you. Riley, why don't you finish up for the day and go hang out with your sister. You might not get many chances to in the next few weeks."


"Why not?" Riley asked.


"You'll just have to trust me on this one," I said, smiling. "There's going to be a lot of things going on. She'll be really busy, and you'll probably be really busy. We're also pretty close to when you have to go back to school and that'll just make it even harder to find time. Plus, I know I kinda hog up most of Amelia's free time to begin with. Since I'm going to be taking time down here getting a memory backup made, you have time to go spend time with your big sister."


"Okay!" She agreed, and she gave me a quick hug. I repressed the only somewhat diminished urged to cringe. "Thank you."


I patted her now permanently black hair. Then she bolted from the lab. As far as I could tell, she did not have a 'walk' setting.


"So, why'd you really want to talk?" Emma asked.


"Figured it out that easily, huh?"


"So did Riley, even if she didn't say anything," she responded. "You tripped off her lie detection system. And probably her common sense, as well. She acts a whole lot more naive than she really is. Not that I need to tell you that."


"Yeah, probably not," I agreed. "I kinda wanted to ask you for help with something."


"It's the whole you not being gay thing, isn't it?" Emma asked. "No, it's not that obvious, but I have a near perfect sense of human biochemistry. You're not into her, and it has absolutely nothing to do with you not loving her. You got that much covered, at least."


I nodded. "Yeah," I agreed. "I do. I tried using that, before. Tried making feelings be enough. She, well, let's say she turned down my offer."


"Ouch," Emma sympathized. "I bet that was embarrassing."


"Humiliating," I confirmed.


"And now you want to try again, I take it?"


"Have for a while," I admitted. "I can't ask Riley because she's still ten."


"She's at least eleven, actually," Emma corrected. "Probably twelve, actually. Not that it makes it much better."


"Plus she's still Bonesaw," I continued. "She tried to saw open my skull. I know she's trying her best to be better, but I just can't imagine myself willingly giving her have access to my brain." The very idea of it was enough to give me nightmares.


"And you trust me with it?" Emma asked. "That's kind of a big deal."


I paused. "Hadn't thought of it like that before. But you'd have access to my backups, anyway. So, if anything, I'll have to trust you, eventually. I could ask Amelia, but..." I stopped and thought about how to say the rest of this. Emma didn't know what happened to Glory Girl, and that was not my secret to share. "She's afraid to work with brains. For a lot of reasons, at least partially due to examples set by assholes like Valefor and Heartbreaker."


"No, I totally get it," Emma confirmed "Plus the whole guilt factor of her having to rework part of your brain to make you attracted to her. I'd probably be bothered, too."


"So, can you switch me over to being gay with this tech?" I asked.


"Well, yeah, sorta," she said. "It's kinda hard to rewrite patterns entirely. Easier just to add new ones. Like, this equipment could make you left handed, or make it so you speak Spanish instead of English, thanks to Rey's tech. But it would be a lot easier just to make you ambidextrous or add a second language to what you already know."


"Okay, so you'd just make me bisexual, then?" I asked.


"We can be a little more precise than that, if you like," she offered. "How does 'heterosexual, plus one' sound to you?"


....


"I... don't feel any different," I said, as I climbed out of the chair.


"What? You were expecting maybe to be suddenly obsessed with boobs like a teenage boy?" she asked.


"Well... maybe a little?" I said. "You're right, though, that sounds stupid when it's said out loud."


"Speaking of boobs, are you sure you don't want me to give you an upgrade?"


I shrugged. "I'm fine," I said. "The only person whose attention matters seems to like my current figure just fine." I started thinking about the looks, and feelings, I got from Amelia on a regular basis. And then... well, I started thinking other thoughts.


"See, it totally worked," Emma declared.


I blushed. Hard. "Okay, yeah, it worked," I muttered. "I... I'm just gonna go, now."


"Have ~fun~!" she sang after me as I left the lab.


The whole process had taken a few hours. Apparently, adding new pathways is a pain in the ass without a specific copy already in the database. It turns out that 'wants to sleep with Amelia' was not in the database. Then there was the memory upload, which took a bit of time in its own right. Hopefully I'd want an update, soon, considering what I had planned. I went to my room to do the usual 'freshening up', complete with a shower where I spent most of my time trying really hard not to think about how the water system here works.


I put on one of the cuter new outfits, even though it was a little warm for that, especially inside our amazingly well regulated environment here in the Yggdrasil.


I palmed Amelia's door, and it opened. She and Riley were playing a card game.


"-ust because I have a good memory and basic math skills," Riley said insistently.


Amelia looked up at me and smiled. She's beautiful, I thought. It's wonderful, looking at her and being able to think that.


"Does this mean playtime's over?" Riley complained.


"Yeah," I confirmed, walking in. "I promise I'll make it up to you later, mushroom. I have something fun planned, already." It was true. Spending a couple hours getting your brain scanned left you plenty of time to think. We didn't have any clue when Riley's birthday actually was, but we could pick some time to throw her a party. I'd have to talk to Amelia and Missy about it, first, but it was going to happen.


"Okay," Riley agreed. "I was getting bored, anyway. My big sister's not very good at card games." Amelia pretended to try to smack her, and she rolled away backward, right off the bed. Half a second later, she was on her feet, and stuck her tongue out at Amelia. She was close to me, so I managed to smack the back of her head. "Hey! That's not fair!"


"We're partners," I said. "That means we're automatically on the same team no matter what."


She looked at me, and her eyes narrowed for a moment, then she smiled broadly. "I am so going to tell Theo to use that line on Missy," she declared, and With that, she stepped past me and left the room.


Amelia just looked at me, still smiling her wonderful smile.


"What?" I asked.


"You're being nice to Riley," she pointed out. "You're never nice to Riley. I mean, you're not bad to her or anything, but that might be the first time you've ever touched her without a really good reason. Or tease her, or use a nickname with her."


I shrugged. "I dunno," I said. "A lot of things are changing these days. And she is kinda my future sister-in-law or something. And, well, like you said earlier, she is kind of adorable, especially with Missy. Anyway, we can reestablish the link now, if you like."


She smiled, and closed her eyes. The relay network went up first, as always. The empathic bond was more complex and sensitive, and it took a little more time to reestablish.


"So, do you like my new outfit?" I asked after the bond was fully established. It was a full invitation for her to really look at me, and I luxuriated in her desires. More than usual, not because didn't enjoy them before, but because now I could return them. ConfusionSurpriseDesireJoy. I smiled. Didn't take her long to catch on, either.


I moved toward her and sat on the bed next to her, then ran my fingers through her hair as I drew her into a kiss. This time there was no hesitation on my part. This time, I wanted this as much as she did, and for the same reasons. Our second kiss was wonderful and set off all the fireworks they were meant to set off. JoyDesireLove. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed more passionately.


RecognitionWorry. She broke the kiss. HorrorPain. "Oh god, Taylor, what have you done? DisgustGuilt.


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


A/N- Die happiness! DIE!!!!

... Also, this was a chapter I expected me to get in trouble with the mods over at SB... it did not.

 

Amelia, Ch 144


PainHeartbreak. "I..." Taylor hesitated. "I know, I should have told you. I was going to, but then... and the link... and I just wanted to fix this so bad and..." she stuttered. "I wanted to want you like you want me. I was going to tell you..."


I pushed away from her. "When were you going to tell me?" I insisted.


"Umm... before the kiss," she answered, tears running down her face. "I didn't realize I'd want you so badly after. I went on impulse instead of easing into. I'm sorry."


I couldn't think straight, and she wasn't helping. Her desire was reacting with mine and... and if it went any longer, I would kiss her again. If that happened, I wasn't sure we'd be able to stop until it was far, far too late. A quick thought and I deactivated our bond. Taylor's eyes went wide. Her lip quivered. My heart broke at the sight of it.


"Why?" She asked.


"Because we can't talk like this," I answered. "Taylor, that would have still been after you got the changes, not before. What were you thinking?"


"You would have tried to stop me," she pleaded. "I couldn't keep hurting you like that. I love you!"


"I know! I love you, too!" I exclaimed. "God, we both knew that. There wasn't even the possibility of doubt. We can't even hide it when Zach makes a stupid joke that we actually find funny! How could I possibly not know your feelings for me?"


"I wanted to be able to say it myself," she insisted. " I didn't want it to be the empathic link. I wanted it..."


I buried my face in my hands. "Fuck. Why didn't you listen to me? I told you I was happy with our relationship how it was. I didn't need you to do this. I didn't want you to do this."


"But you did!" Taylor insisted, moving to try to touch me. I pulled back further. The temptation was still far too great. "I could feel it. Every time you looked at me. Every time we touched. I know you would never ask me to do this, but you do want more. And I... I wanted to want more. I've wanted that for a while." She was shaking, and even without the usual bond, there was still the glimmer of emotions from the rest of the network.


"No, Taylor," I sighed. "That's just what I desired. I wanted what we had. I wanted someone I could trust. Someone I could..." I trailed off. I don't even know what I want. I took a deep breath. "I wanted something safe."


She blinked. "Safe?"


"Yeah," and now that I'd said it out loud, I started to put together my feelings. "I want love. I want intimacy. I even want romance. I'm a human being, of course I want all of that. But I don't want to do more. I was perfectly happy with what we already had. Maybe I wouldn't be happy like that forever, but I was happy for now. And I thought you were happy, too. Weren't you?"


"I was," Taylor admitted. "I am. Why didn't you tell me?"


"Which part?" I asked. "I didn't know I had to tell you not to surgically modify yourself for me. I'm sorry, Taylor, I didn't think that was ever going to be an issue in my life. Why'd you even have... why now? Why not wait?"


"Victoria," she answered.


I froze. "What?"


"I'm part of the same link you are," she elaborated. "I know about your feelings for Victoria. Aura or no aura, I know you still have feelings for her. Ones that are more than just sisterly. I'm not sure you even know about them, but I do."


"God, Taylor," I groaned. "You're just not happy unless you're sacrificing yourself for a cause, are you?"


"No!" she shouted, again moving toward me. "No. That's not why."


"Then why?" I pleaded. "Why would you do this?"


"I..." she paused, then whispered. "I was afraid of losing you."


My heart jumped, and I struggled for something to say.


"I was afraid that you'd want her... and then... then you'd stop wanting me," she looked away.


My stomach clenched. "No!" I moved toward her and pulled her into a hug. I restored the link. I need her to know I mean this. ReliefJoyGrief. "Taylor. Taylor, please listen to me. I don't want Victoria. My desire for her is artificial. The result of a fucked up power that got to me at a vulnerable time. I'm over the addiction part of it. I'll get over the rest. And if I can't do it naturally, then I'll start considering something artificial. Rapture's an expert on this stuff, we can talk to her. I'm pretty sure, whatever she says, it won't be 'sleep with some other girl'."


Taylor smiled slyly. "Are you sure about that? She's dating Rey for a reason."


"Well, not as sure as I was a moment ago," I relented. "But the point remains. I was happy with what we had. I didn't want you to... to do this... it's what Victoria did to me on accident. It's what I did to her on purpose. It's not right."


GuiltHopePride. "It's not the same," she insisted. "I chose this. I have the right to do this. I wanted to. I've wanted to for... for weeks now. I was hoping for it to come naturally. That the time we spent with each other, the closeness, would make the physical desires happen."


"And it didn't," I finished. I knew it didn't. I'd spent enough time feeling for it, yearning for the moment she looked at me like I looked at her. Now I had it, and I couldn't even enjoy it. It was tainted. It was nothing but a lie. A reminder of every mistake I've ever made.


HesitationResolve. "I was willing to give it time," she insisted. "A few more weeks. Months. I could wait to see if it would evolve naturally. Maybe do something more gradual with the brain tech. But Victoria meant we... I didn't have that kind of time, anymore. It was a problem. I fixed it."


"You made it worse, Taylor," I said, and the words burned inside me. "Minerva was right. It's the link." FearAbandonmentLoss. "It's always been the link, hasn't it? Without it, you never would have felt the need to be attracted to me. We would have been friends. You could have found a nice boyfriend. I could have found a nice girlfriend, if it turned out that's still what I was still into. Instead... instead we got this. This isn't healthy."


"This is the best thing that's ever happened to me," Taylor insisted. DesperationPanic. "I can undo this modification if you want me to. Or you can. It's not like it's a complete rewrite. It didn't make me attracted to girls. Just you. It's not even the only thing I did. I got Rey's medical package as well. I asked for it because it's helpful. You can't say it's not! You don't feel guilty over that, right? It's the same as this. Six years of med school in two hours is a whole lot bigger than a small tweak to who or what I'm attracted to!" Her face and our bond was awash with her fear.


I closed my eyes. "No, that doesn't help," I sighed, fighting back the tears even as I started unmaking our bond. I have to do this. I located the relays, and altered them so they no longer reacted to my power unless I needed them to. The bond isn't healthy. It's doing to Taylor what Victoria did to me. I have to end it. I reached into the bracer and slowly shut it down. For her sake. Abrupt cutoffs were always a bit jarring. "This arrangement was always mutual. The moment either one of us decided we didn't want it, it was over. No questions, no arguments. That was the promise, remember?"

LossFailureAlone. "I remember," she choked out, just before the last part of the bond was deactivated permanently. I watched through tears as she stood and walked toward the door. The portal opened when she pressed her hand on other door.


"I love you," I managed to say. She paused for a second, but didn't say anything or look back before she walked out.


I curled up and started to cry. It wasn't the first time we went without our link for a length of time. It wasn't the first time Taylor stayed at home, instead of here. But this was the first day since our bond was formed that I was alone.


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


A/N- The author of this story is a horrible person who hates happiness.

 

Amelia, Ch 145- Zach


The thing about not being able to sleep is that it results in a lot of free time. A whole fucking lot of free time. I could probably do something productive, like studying, or planning combat strategies, or learning a new language. Maybe I could become a painter or write the next great American novel. Although considering the sum total of my art skills amounted to 'stick figure pornography', and my writing skills were even worse, it was probably for the best that I didn't. Instead, I was just bored out of my mind.


I paced along the halls of the magic treehouse. Everyone who didn't live here had gone home. The rest of us that did were all asleep. Unless Emma was in the labs, which would only add another reason for me to not go down there alone. Or with anyone else, if I could help it.


I was sick of the internet, impossibly enough. New Delhi was the only thing anyone ever wanted to talk about. Even the friends I had that didn't know I was a cape were still obsessed over it. I, on the other hand, wanted to talk about anything and everything else. Being flash boiled several times a second is not something anyone wants to think about. I didn't want to think about it when it was happening, either. The whole time I tried to imagine how cool my second trigger might turn out. Maybe I'd be able to bring back people who had died a while ago, instead of just the little bit of 'memory space' I currently had.


There are weirder powers out there by far, right?


Even thinking about Emma was better. If anything, the scifi geek in me thought her new transformed states made her even more hot, and she was a 'ten' before. But, no. Taylor may have 'forgiven' her, for whatever political reason she had, but that didn't apply to me. She tormented another human being for her own sick pleasure. There weren't many things out there that I couldn't accept. Fuck, I spend more time hanging out with fucking Bonesaw than I did with my own sister, back before. And... what Emma did... there was no forgiveness.


I went down to the workout room. I had a custom set of training weights. If we were being honest, it was more like a modern version of being drawn and quartered. I gripped the vines and pulled. They pulled back, and I kept pulling. They wouldn't let go. I disintegrated, if I had to guess, it was a tendon pulling. Another go, this time with the new starting resistance being what tripped my regeneration last time.


I focused on holding my body together as long as possible under the strain, and failed after about three seconds. If this were my 'official' workout, it would be timed, but right now I just needed to take my mind off everything.


Another respawn. I gritted my teeth and grabbed the vines yet again. The strange combination of burning and numbness from my renewals was as familiar as always, and with it the memories. I probably imagined the screams I heard in that scouring light. Some trick of the air being so hot that it caught fire. I don't know. I didn't imagine the aftermath. The numbers of capes tough enough to survive the explosion, who still died. Sinking into molten tar that used to be roads. Struggling to find somewhere safe. Dying slowly of suffocation in the unbreathable smoke.


I tore my thoughts away from that line yet again.


More pleasant memories. I insisted to myself. Like Crystal agreeing to that date. That was worth a happy thought. She was a real beauty, after all. Smart, too. And smart enough to catch me in my bullshit. Bullshit I even convinced myself was real, sometimes. A man could do an awful lot worse for himself than that. Of course, I have to wait five years for it, I added unhappily. Shoulda tried for three. Eighteen and twenty two is cool, right?


I got out of my makeshift torture-workout device and wandered the halls yet again. Huh, since when did we have this tunnel? I followed it, and quickly realized this was the furthest away from the 'main building' that any of our underground rooms had gone. That I knew about, at least.


"Oh wow," I said when I saw the room. I meant it, too. The central area of the room contained a massive swimming pool. The pool itself was bottom lit by a soft blue glow, while the area around was bathed in a green light. It was warmer than most of the rest of the base, a warmth coming from the water in the center. The smell was slightly sweet, almost like honeysuckle. "The dead could get laid if they brought their date here."


"Okay, I don't even want to know where you got that analogy," a voice spoke from below the waves. I walked to the edge and looked down. No wonder I hadn't seen her. It was Amelia, in her armor. I could barely tell her apart from the floor even now that I was looking.


"Sorry," I said. "Didn't know anyone was here. I was just saying this place is gorgeous. Very romantic."


"Thanks," Amelia sighed. She sounded miserable.


"So, what's going on?" I asked. "Did I just interrupt something? Like, say, a warm up before Taylor gets here?"


"What?" She asked, sounding confused. I waited for her to get the joke. "No!"


At least she doesn't sound as miserable, I thought. Shock isn't quite laughter, but it's better than self pity.


"Okay," I agreed. Ice broke, NOW ask the heavy questions. "So what's the story?"


"Nothing," she answered. Doesn't sound like nothing to me.


"Practicing holding your breath?" I guessed. "I'm sure Taylor will appreciate it."


She started sobbing. Oh fuck, that's not suppose to happen. "No," she answered. "I doubt Taylor's ever going to 'appreciate' anything from me from now on."


"Want to come up here to talk about it?" I asked.


"No," she answered.


"Guess I'm coming down there then," I dropped into the water before she had a chance to refuse like I knew she would. I sank the thirty feet or so to the bottom and sat next to her. She looked at me.


"Wow, this pool is really deep," I told her. I doubted she could understand words, just 'blub blub' or something. Then I started to take a breath, which tripped my restoration as expected. A burning sensation radiated from my lungs and I appeared at the top of the pool, clothes dry.


What the fuck, power? You can teleport to get out of water, but you can't teleport to get away from two thousand degree infernos?


"Okay, I tried it your way. You'll have to come up here."


"Fine," she relented, standing and allowing buoyancy to take her to the top. "Taylor and I broke up." How the fuck? "Happy now?"


No, I thought. "So, you're saying she's single..." I answered.


"Zach, I swear that if you such much as finish that thought, I will find a way to make you stay dead," she growled.


There was no thought to finish. "Don't worry," I answered. "You're the one into the bony girls. Plus she seems like the type that'd be into weird date gifts like giant bug monsters and chocolate covered grasshoppers. Which, granted, would be a nice change of pace from the version she currently gives me. Is that what happened?"


"Yeah," she laughed bitterly. "You could say that."


Talk about a freakin' shot in the dark. "What happened?"


"She decided she didn't find me attractive," Amelia confessed.


"Then she is a lousy judge of female flesh," I offered the roundabout compliment.


"She probably should be, since she's straight," Amelia defended her girlfriend. "Or was straight. Apparently she decided that was a 'problem' and 'fixed' it. Fucking brain surgery. Most romantic gift in the fucking world."


I paused, trying to find a way to say 'you're a moron' to my boss, and one of the few people whose power I was honestly afraid of. I settled on one word. The only word in the world that could truly convey my reaction. "Huh."


"Such words of wisdom could only come from you," Amelia muttered.


"Doesn't your dad have depression issues?" I asked.


She hesitated. "Not comfortable discussing my family with you," she replied.


"Fair," I granted. "Well, a lot of people have that problem. Some of them take medications for it. So they can spend time with their children, or their spouse, or simply function to go to work. This doesn't sound any different than that to me. Except, y'know, cheaper, safer, and better in every possible way."


"I didn't want her to change herself for me!" Amelia shouted. "She at least should have asked me about this."


"You're not suppose to want her to change herself," I answered. "But she's going to. That's what relationships are. You changing yourself for others. Not because they want you to, but because you want to for them. Like last week when I kept Theo up late and Missy wanted to hang out in the morning. He did what she wanted, didn't even tell her he was tired. He did it because he wanted to, and that makes him a good guy. If Missy had known, she'd probably have told him to get his sleep. If he wanted to sleep and she insisted he get up, that would have made her a bitch."


"There's a big difference between that, and what Taylor did."


"Okay," I granted. "Then let's look at the other extreme. Riley. You know, your little sister. You can't tell me the gap between 'gay' and 'straight' is somehow less huge than the gap between 'Bonesaw' and 'everyone that doesn't belong in a cage or a casket'. She's working so hard to change herself, and she's doing it to make you happy. And Missy, but still mostly you. Yes, it's a good thing she is changing. The entire sane world would back me on this. But it's still her changing for you. Hell, you threatened me with death for making a bad joke, like, a minute ago. That'd be me changing for you. If, y'know, it worked."


"That's not the same thing at all!" Amelia insisted. "It's just asking people to behave differently, not actually be a different person."


"Why?" I asked. "Sex isn't this big amazing magical thing that defines who we are. Koalas have figured it out, and they're going extinct because they're literally too stupid to live. I'm straight as an arrow and I'd give that tech a spin just to see what it's like, if my power would let it work. Hell, I'm kinda curious if they can implant nonhuman memories. I'd honestly love to know what it's like to be a cat. As long as they edit out the parts where it licks its own crotch. I'm pretty sure I would be happier to never learn what cat crotch tastes like."


"Your analogies are disgusting."


"But true," I insisted. "Do you have a problem with gays?"


"No, of course not."


"Do you have a problem with Taylor?"


"No."


"You love each other, right?"


"Yes," she affirmed.


"Then I say run with it," I added. "Existential crises are for old people. What you should do is find your girlfriend, drag her to this love nest you've built here, and don't let her leave until the next Endbringer battle. But not before I set up the hidden cameras."


"God damn it, Zach."


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


A/N- Zach knows less than I do about both ancient execution methods and Australian wildlife. Keep that in mind if you try to "correct" those parts.

 

Amelia, Ch 146- Taylor


I didn't bother going home. I wasn't in any mood to talk to my dad. I was in even less of a mood to come home to an empty house and make assumptions on where my dad was spending the night. Instead, I went to the labs. Not the secret labs, since I didn't want to interrupt Riley or Emma's work, just the normal ones. Primarily where Chariot worked, these days. His skills and abilities didn't lend themselves to the high priority task of breaking the Taboo, so he was relegated to designing improvements on our bioarmor.


"How's it going, boss?" he asked as I came down into the lab.


"Picking up habits from Rey, now?"


Chariot shrugged. "Not my fault you guys don't hang out with the nerd herd enough for us to pick up your habits. Speaking of: been talking to Kid Win, he gave me a few ideas he picked up studying Vista's power. Already upgraded Matriarch, since it's the easiest to work with. I got the specs for Azrael. By the way, Kid says thanks for his suit."


I tried to smile, a system's test might keep my mind off of Amelia. "So what's it do?"


"Short range teleporter," he answered back. He didn't notice my mood. Then again, he probably wouldn't. I was calm, or at least my body was. It had been a long time since I could truly offload into my power, force my emotions down so that I could focus on the important things. Maybe Lisa was right about the link being detrimental, I mused. I can do a lot more with my time this way.


"Very nice," I praised. It was, too.


"It's a hybrid of the shunt tech, the subspace pocket tech Kid Win uses, and some of Vista's power readings," Chariot started explaining. I knew if it kept down this road, I'd be lost in the sea of technobabble. Fortunately, Chariot was one of the few tinkers that seemed to understand that people don't want to hear that stuff. "Long story short, it teleports you up to a hundred feet. Any direction. At will. Has a charge time between teleports, however. If you need it, you can also use it to shunt between Bet and our dimension pretty cheaply."


"That... I can see how useful that would be," I agreed. I could, too. "So, what do we have to sacrifice from the armor to make it work?"


"From yours? Nothing," Chariot answered. "Your armor is about two pounds heavier, and that's the end of it. Same with the Dryad, Radiant, and Clarice. Can't put it in Singularity due to how it's designed, not that Missy needs it. Azrael and Tapestry are going to suck. I'll need Emma and Riley to help me with those."


I nodded. "Okay, work on the ones you can work on," I agreed. "I'll talk to the others. Mind if I give mine a test run?"


"Sure," he agreed. "I need some user testing of the control interface, otherwise it's in full working order. It has an anti-obstacle system in it... if you find yourself in our pocket dimension, that means it would have teleported you inside of something else in this dimension. Just move around a little and try to shunt back over after the device recharges."


"I'll be sure to relay my results," I answered as I started putting on the armor. Or letting it swallow me with its back, as the case may be. A couple minutes later, I decided he was right, this control interface needed a lot of work. It was meant to respond to the eyes looking at specific parts. Which was great, if you didn't need to look at other stuff at the same time. It took me six minute just to figure out how to get the destination locked in, and I had to do it by deliberately defocussing my eyes.


Then I was outside, well above the Yggdrasil. For a second I was falling, before the antigravity caught me. There was a bit of a moment where I almost succumbed to vertigo, but I solved that easily enough by paying more attention to the insects, and less to Taylor. The conspicuous absence of Amelia made that process both easier and more difficult. Still, it helped some. I am not alone, I thought. As long as there are people in this city, I can never be alone. Yeah, that didn't work to convince me of anything.


I bolted to the north end, almost wishing we hadn't wiped out E88. I wanted someone to punch right now. I wanted it badly. I spent four hours finding nothing. I spent my time reporting details and suggestions for interface improvements. First to Chariot, then after he decided to call it a night, his recording device. Eventually I gave up and headed home. Any other day, I would have considered four hours with no crime more serious than speeding violations, some kids smoking a few joints in the park, and a single mugging a source of pride. Today it just made me that more frustrated. I stopped the mugger with my bugs, he was too far away to get there in person in time.


Besides, there was a limit to the number of bones one could break in a purse snatcher before it was bad PR.


Sleep did not come easily that night. Dad had long ago stopped bothering to wait up for me. For that matter, he didn't even bother locking the door these days. Break-ins were practically a thing of the past. Break-ins at my home were regarded as a particularly creative form of masochism. And it had happened. One dumb kid trying to impress his friends by stealing an article of my clothes, most likely my underwear. One dumb adult looking to impress his friends by shooting me in my sleep. And two very dumb reporters, also most likely intent upon stealing my underwear.


I could use an assassination attempt right about now. I would settle for punchable reporters. Instead, I got a quiet night in a warm bed. I couldn't help but think about Amelia the whole night.


....


I didn't want to come into work the next day, I really truly didn't. I didn't want to look at Amelia. I didn't want to be reminded of what I had lost. If she didn't want to, well, be with me... that would be fine, I could live with that. But I missed her presence. Her thoughts and feelings. Having a connection with someone I could trust and knew that I could trust no matter what. And that had been taken from me. It took everything I had to remind myself that no, this was not a repeat of Emma.


Still, I showed up anyway, teleporting straight down into the labs. An act which would have set off any number of automated defenses if this armor wasn't made from Yggdrasil. Riley was here, this time.


"Oh good," she said with her usual smile. "How's the armor?"


"A little sluggish compared to usual," I informed her. "Probably needs a checkup. Either the teleporter is drawing too much power off the flight system, or that extra two pounds is really that important to the speed.


"Okay, I'll check out the specs," Riley agreed. Then she stopped smiling. "Now why is my sister sad?"


"Grown up stuff," I sighed.


"Fix it," she commanded. "Right now."


"There's nothing I can do," I replied. "This is something she has to fix for herself."


"Okay," she said, not quite sounding convinced even though I know her built in lie detection would back me up. "Lisa needs to talk to you about a couple things."


"Tell her I'm going to be busy working on the zerg instincts, today. If it's not work related, it can wait."


"It's work related," Riley answered. "Dinah says someone's going to try to assassinate Director Calvert, later. And we have our working plan on how to take down Butcher permanently."


"Really?" I smiled. The Butcher is one of the only honest threats left in New England, I knew from more than one team planning meeting. With her gone, we could afford to spend more than a day in other cities.


"Yeah, really," Riley answered. "Gotta take care of Calvert's assassins, first."


"Don't worry," I smiled. "This, I can do something about."


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


A/N- Oh, hai Skitter, been a while.

 

Amelia, Ch 147- Lisa


I made my final phone call for the night: Dinah Alcott. Every day, the same thing. Ever since learning that Scion was not only the source of our extinction event, but would exterminate life in *every* world, not merely our own, we'd been dedicating most of our resources solely to that concern. It made it more of a pain in the ass since Dinah couldn't see Scion, only his aftermath. Same with Eidolon, the Endbringers, and apparently the effects of the Taylor-Amelia bond. This limited her effectiveness. Right now, we had sort of taken a more general approach: we were recruiting and upgrading our forces into an army, cross referencing possible power interactions, and simply increasing our power and influence.


"Hello, Minerva," the young girl's voice said in an utterly businesslike tone. Used name immediately, wants to project illusion of omniscience. Considers her power far too precious for such wasteful display. Relying on other power. Not second trigger. New parahuman. Wouldn't allow herself to be seen as childish enough for such a thing, especially to another thinker. Using equipment. Tinker tech.


I smiled. She likely spent several thousand dollars on what amounted to a really fancy Caller ID. I considered teasing her for it, but opted to do the opposite. "Getting stronger with your powers, I see," I said, then I channeled my old way of thinking. "Seems like a waste of energy."


"Pots and kettles," she retorted. I smiled. She was right, emphasis on the 'was'.


"So, the usual starter questions," I said. I liked this question. It was free, because of just who it protected.


"Point zero nine there is a credible attempt on the life of a member of Pantheon or its priority allies in the next twenty four hours, fifty nine percent chance of a credible attempt on the life of a member of Pantheon or its priority allies in the next week."


"Fuck," I muttered. "Don't waste any energy on that question for a moment, okay? I'm going to think up the most optimal way of narrowing down the possibilities first."


"Understood," Dinah replied. Afraid. Knows she's a possible target of assassination. I popped up my computer and ran down the list. Right now our 'priority allies' included the Triumvirate, Dinah, Calvert, Accord, Epoch from the Adepts, Dragon, and Costa-Brown if she wasn't already covered. She was listed separately just in case someone manage to hack our theoretically unhackable systems.


I immediately ruled out the Triumvirate. The phrase 'credible' ruled out almost any attempt against them. Plus they had assured me they had a top tier precog of their own, who was just as blind to Scion and Endbringers as Dinah. I didn't ask about Eidolon and didn't mention Taylia. I trusted Cauldron only as far as 'enemy of our enemy', no further. To allow them to learn about Taylia would be a monumental disaster.


"Will there will be one attempt, or multiples?" I asked. That would be a way to narrow down the rest of the questions.


"Umm..." she hesitated. "Just one."


That was helpful. "Male or female?" was my follow up.


"Male," Dinah spoke with a brief hint of relief. She ruled herself out. We were down to a pretty narrow pool, most of whom were our own team. Zach's power ruled him out permanently. We knew because we had tested that, already. Apparently Zach's respawning didn't register as 'death' to Dinah's predictions. Whether because the Passenger didn't consider it death, or because Dinah's powers were tied to her own psychology in interpreting what the question was, and she didn't view it as 'dying', I couldn't yet know. "You have three questions left."


She's capable of doing up to nine a day without stress, up from seven at the beginning of her release from Coil's captivity. That's interesting. Did Coil overtax her power and thus weaken it, or is she just naturally stronger now? "Alright... is the victim a member of Pantheon?"


"No," she answered.


So we were down to Coil, Accord and Epoch. "Does the victim live in Brockton Bay?" I asked.


"Yes," Dinah responded.


"Alright, that narrows it down enough," I answered. It narrows it to exactly one, but Dinah doesn't need to know that. "We'll be sure to have our people ready for any would-be assassin."


"I'm billing you for the last two questions," she responded.


"Fair enough. Got one one more for you if you don't need it elsewhere," I sighed. What was twenty grand, anyway? She didn't contest the idea, so I went ahead. "What are the odds we can successfully engage and defeat the Butcher without losing any of our members using our latest battle plan?"


"Ninety six point three seven seven," she responded.


"That is enormously better than before," I blinked. "What happened?"


"I just give the numbers," she dismissed. "The rest is on you."


I smiled. "Thanks," I replied. "So... I was thinking... you know how we've got you under guard?"


"It's appreciated, yes," Dinah responded, sounding a bit suspicious. "What of it?"


"And you know how we've created that Pegasus for Aceso?"


"And more for a bunch of the rest of your team," she agreed.


"Want one of your own?" I offered. "No strings attached beyond the stuff we've already agreed to. It'll have the added benefit of a very visible deterrent to would-be attackers, in addition to your better hidden defenders."


"Ponies are stupid," Dinah dismissed. "Can you build me a Gryphon?"


....


Taylor was conspicuously absent when we had our morning strategy meeting. It was myself, Riley, Amelia, Crystal, and for the first time ever: Emma, who was looking for someone else at the meeting. Obviously, Taylor. Didn't even need my power for that. Maybe Zach, though that wouldn't be likely.


Amelia even managed to show up on time for a change. Tired, didn't sleep at all last night, upset, Taylor missing, fight between them. I didn't need my powers to tell me any of that. Taylia bond broken. Amelia broke it. Taylor did something that upset Amelia. Emma at meeting, looking for Taylor, not afraid of usual reaction. Reconciliation? I blinked. My power had been certain that couldn't happen. Taylia bond responsible. I hated Taylia, sometimes, but I needed to get back to figuring out what broke them up. I was on Emma, right now. Emma helping Taylor? Helped Taylor. Taylor used brain modification tech on herself. Made herself gay.


I almost facepalmed at the revelation. God damn it, Taylor. I knew my best friend had a fucking martyr complex, but seriously? Also: God damn it, Amelia! It took this to break the link? She couldn't have done it when they were both in what passed for a stable emotional state with them? She had to wait until Taylor was at her most emotionally vulnerable to figure out... fuck, of course. If they were both happy, then it meant their bond was a good thing. Ugh.


Emma looked more and more apprehensive as we got closer to 'start the meeting' time. Crystal, however, was the one that spoke up. "Umm, where's Taylor?"


"She must have slept in, she was out testing the new suit improvements," Riley offered, then she looked at Amelia. Is aware of Amelia's distress. Concerned. Indirectly fishing for information. Suspects Taylor is responsible. "We'd know if she was in danger."


Amelia simply looked at her arm, where the slightly lighter patch of her already pale skin denoted the lack of their empathic device. Oh fuck, she's going to cry, can't let that happen in front of Riley!


"We'll just let her sleep in, then," I said. "I'll talk to her later about the meeting. Right now: we have some good news and some great news."


Of course, the first thing I did was go over the news from Dinah. More or less on autopilot. Meanwhile I was watching Emma and Amelia. If Riley figured out exactly what happened, we'd be facing the worst sort of damage control. I'd need to distract her. I'd need to distract her, then I'd need to get Missy to distract her. Then I'd need to talk to Emma. Then I'd need to punch Emma. Then I'd need to talk to Amelia. Then I'd need a way to call Amelia a stupid twat without upsetting Riley. Ugh.


Crystal was glancing between me and Amelia, thinking at least some of the same thoughts. Good, she's my ally in this, I realized. It's really, really nice to have someone who's willing to help me, no questions asked.


"Y'know," Crystal muttered after I finished explaining the news. "This is possibly the only organization on the planet that considers an assassination attempt on one of our most helpful allies, followed by a straight up war with one of the most dangerous people on this continent, to be the 'good' and 'great' news."


"Better than not knowing about it until it's too late," I pointed out. "Either way, Calvert's been alerted and we are pretty much prepared for any possible attempt. Unless the Endbringers are coming out with a new and weirdly specific combat strategy."


"So, what's the deal with the Butcher?" Crystal asked. "We've never had better than a thirty percent chance to take her down before."


"New weapons, near as I can tell," I responded. "Our current strategy puts a lot of the fight on your shoulders. Radiant's update has all kinds of new tricks. You could probably solo the Teeth, if not for Butcher. But the tinkers can tell you more than I can."


Emma moved to speak up, but I interrupted her. "Riley, why don't you show Crystal her equipment? Especially the nonlethal weapons."


Emma looked like a puppy that had her favorite toy taken from her, and Riley kept glancing between me and Amelia, who had said nothing the whole meeting, but I remained firm on this one. Technically, due to the social dynamics here, Crystal still outranked me. Not that she ever felt the need to assert that status. Also, she was on my side here, even if she didn't know all the details, she knew I had a plan.


"C'mon, mushroom, I can't wait to see my new toys," Crystal smiled, putting her hand on Riley's shoulder.


One last quick look and she turned to follow Crystal to the labs. Thank you Crystal you are literally a life saver.


"Alright," I sighed once I was alone with the two girls who had left their footprints all over my best friend's psyche like craters on the moon. I ignored my jealousy. Knowing I never had, and likely never would have, such a deeply personal bond with any human being hurt. But, unlike before, I admitted to myself that it was there. Pretending otherwise was no longer an option for me. Fuck you, Rapture. Fuck you and every figure you've ever said a prayer to. "So, both of you idiots are to blame for this. Emma... why the living hell would you agree to do this? I mean, I get that you're quite literally suicidally stupid, but there has got to be a limit."


"What? She just wanted a minor tweak to go along with her other upgrades," Emma defended. "It's not a big deal. Would you prefer I told her to try closing her eyes and thinking about Johnny Depp, like Sophia always suggested during our slumber parties?"


Isn't telling the truth. Attempting to use off colored humor to ease tense situation. Not very good at it. Is not used to trying to comfort people. Using a method she learned from Zach. Still strongly... I cut off my feed. It was heading into territory that I had already figured out, and frankly didn't give a fuck about. I needed to worry about Taylor's self destructive behavior, not the bitch that made her that way in the first place.


"I've already figured that out," Amelia sighed. "I over reacted. "I'll be begging her forgiveness, just as soon as I see her again. We will see her again, right? She wouldn't do anything drastic?" She practically pleaded with me to confirm her hopes, and a little piece of my heart actually felt for the girl.


"Yes," I confirmed. "Taylor's not the sort that runs from her responsibilities."


Anything and everything else, yes, but not her responsibilities.

 

Amelia, Ch 148


"She's back!" I exclaimed the moment Taylor's armor touched down inside the lab. I rushed off to talk to her. I needed to see her with my own eyes. To know she's okay, to remind myself of how beautiful she was. To talk to her and apologize and hold her again.


Lisa rushed after me. "No!" she insisted. "I'll talk to her first. You'll just make it worse."


Emma trailed behind us, deciding quite wisely to keep her trap shut. I still couldn't believe she let Taylor talk her into that in the first place. Fucking bitch, if she wasn't so dumb about things I'd suspect she did it on purpose just to drive a wedge into our relationship. No, this was just the same shit she always did- find the nearest person who seemed like they knew what they were doing and latching onto them for guidance.


I opened the lab passage right before we got there. Riley was poking at Taylor's discarded armor, while Taylor was halfway up the stairs. "Oh!" she exclaimed, glancing at me, before looking back toward Lisa. Ouch. "So, Riley said something about assassination attempts and a way to beat the Butcher?"


"Uh, yeah," Lisa replied. "Someone's going after Calvert. He's been informed, of course, and we have a general idea of the anti-assassin plan. We'll know more tonight, after we compare notes and discover what kind of fight we'll be up against."


"And the Butcher?" Taylor asked.


"New weapons," Lisa replied. "Zach and Crystal are the primary fighters, with their upgraded suits. The teleportation tech seems to be the tipping point. It all hinges on Zach getting into touch range. After that, we've already won. You'll be playing tactical command, of course."


"Won't Butcher sense him before he attacks?" she asked, showing the calm passionless curiosity that I'd started to forget she possessed.


"Probably doesn't trip her combat senses to be targeted for a slap by a baseline human without a harmful power," Lisa volunteered. "We never had a way to get him into touch range before, and now we do."


"Makes sense," Taylor agreed. "Is that all?"


"We should probably talk about you and Amelia breaking up," Lisa started. "Pretty important in the whole 'team dynamics' thing."


"I'm still here, aren't I?" Taylor said darkly. "My body will adjust to the new circumstances, just like it did before, and my sleep patterns will reassert themselves. Isn't stuff like that normal for a recovering addict?"


She growled the final words.


Emma looked dumbfounded, and I had to blink hard to stop from crying. Lisa, at least, kept a cool head. "Close enough," she conceded. "Surely you can see the difference between how you are now, and what you were like this time yesterday, even. Or what you were like six months ago."


"Know what, Lisa? Fuck you," Taylor barked a short laugh. "You're right, I can see the difference. I was the happiest I'd been since my mother died. I finally had some level of peace with myself. I actually believed it was possible for someone to love me. But that wasn't good enough for you, was it? You wanted me to be miserable, mopey, easily manipulated by even the faintest glimmer of pretend kindness, Taylor. Fine, you got her. Most of her, at least. We are not friends anymore, Lisa. Not now, not ever again. We are business associates, I am your boss, and you are too good at your job for me to let petty personal issues get in the way of that."


I swallowed hard, trying to control my emotions, watching the girl I loved in this kind of pain... I didn't have anything to compare it to. Not that I could say I saw her in pain. The entire time she tore Lisa down, she said it with a level of almost bored calm that I might expect of someone reading from a dictionary. She's better at controlling her feelings now than ever before, I realized. "Taylor, please, can we talk?"


She looked at me for a long moment, her face completely impassive. "Okay," she replied. "Talk."


I struggled to find the words. I had to default to emotions. "I'm sorry," I started. "I didn't mean to hurt you like this. I love you."


For a brief moment, I thought I saw an emotion on her face. "I know," she relented. "I love you too."


"I over reacted when I found out..." I sighed. "I should have at least waited, talked instead of acting on impulse."


"I should have, too," she agreed. "Sorry about that, I knew you'd want to talk me out of it. I thought, if I did it myself, then you couldn't blame yourself for it. I didn't want that. This was something I wanted for myself, I wanted to give you what you gave me. You'd just have to accept that I made my own choice because I wanted to. That's one of the things I tend to do a lot, and you shouldn't blame yourself for my actions."


I choked up. "I know," I sobbed. "I guess I was channeling a bit of you when I shut down our bond. Doing what I thought was best for the girl I love, instead of taking the time to at least discuss it with her first."


She forced a smile. "I guess," she replied. "So, do you think it was for the best?"


"What?" I asked.


"Ending the bond," she clarified. "Do you think this, now, is better than before? If you had it to do over again, would you?"


"N-no," I admitted. "I regret it."


"I don't," she stated. "The outcome, I'd change in a heartbeat. But what I did? Allowing myself the chance to love you, physically, as well as emotionally? I don't regret that for a minute, and would do it again even if this was the only possible outcome."


I smiled, and moved to hug her. She stepped back.


"No!" she exclaimed. "Don't. I know enough about your power. I don't... I can't let you touch me. I can't let you see inside me like that."


I did start crying, then. In front of Lisa and Emma, both of whom had decided to exercise discretion about their presence here. "I can restore the link," I offered. "Let you see inside me, too? Like before."


Lisa went to say something, but Taylor raised her hand up, then spoke. "Don't worry, Lisa," she said. "It's not going to happen."


"Wh-why?" I managed to gasp.


"Because I can't trust you like that again," she answered, looking away. "I did that, once. I ignored how easily you could turn it against me. How everything you were giving me, you could take away again. I believed you wouldn't. I thought that you loved me too much to do something like that. Yet here we are. I love you, that hasn't changed, but I can't trust you. I can't give you that power over me."


I didn't say anything. I couldn't say anything. I simply crumpled to my knees and wept. First Victoria, and now Taylor. The only two people in my life I could remember loving, in any sense of the word, and ultimately they both ended terrified to let me touch them. I gazed up at Taylor, begging her with my eyes. She closed her own, and turned away.


"I'm sorry, Amelia," she said, at the ground. "I can't help how I feel."


I didn't answer. I couldn't find the words for it. I was still trying to figure out if this was somehow better or worse than what happened with Victoria. I thought I'd moved beyond this. I'd hoped to fix my mistakes, not repeat them. I don't know what she thought about my silence. I no longer knew what she thought about anything.


"We've used up enough time on this," she finally spoke again. "Emma, Riley's been listening in. Not sure for how long, but please find a way to keep her from doing whatever incomprehensibly horrible things she might be planning to do to me right now. At least until Amelia's recovered enough to talk her out of it. You can do that, right?"


"Y... yeah," Emma agreed.


"If anyone needs me, I'll be working with Rey on the zerglings. Someone let Theo know that after lunch, I want to see him for training. And Lisa," Taylor added as she walked away. "Why don't you go ruin the life of someone who deserves it for a change?"


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


A/N- The last arc: exploring the significance of Taylia. This arc: exploring the LACK of Taylia.

 

Amelia, Ch 149- Theo


My cell rang, and I answered immediately. The ringtone I had set for Missy. Even though this was the 'work' cell, and therefor it was officially 'Lachesis' making the call. "Horus speaking," I said the moment the line connected. Zach was kind enough to pause our game.


"Umm... what's going on with Amelia?" Missy started. "Clarice called me and sounded really scared and upset and doesn't know what to do to help."


"I don't know," I answered. "I didn't know there was anything going on. I'll go calm her down and find out what happened."


"Thank you," Missy said. "You're the best."


I blushed. "No I'm not."


"Yes you are," she insisted. "In fact, Clarice has charts and graphs that prove it. I'm not even making that up. There's, like, eighty of them and they cover pretty much everything. I'm not sure whether it's creepy or adorable."


"That... that certainly sounds like something she'd do," I admitted. It really did. "Okay, I'm going to find her, now."


"Okay, good luck, and keep me updated."


"I will," I promised, then turned off the phone. Neither of us were much for long goodbyes, even under normal circumstances, and especially not over our work phones. Chances were pretty good her mom took away her private cell, for whatever reason. You'd think that maybe, just maybe, 'my daughter is an Endslayer' would be enough for them to trust her to make her own decisions.


Maybe I should do what Minerva suggested and let it slip that I am, functionally, on the low end of the billionaire scale. However, the idea of doing so just did not feel right to me. Reminded me too much of my father, plus it was pathetic and tacky and even if Missy didn't think too highly of her parents, I really didn't want her to know they were... those kinds of people.


"What's up?" Zach asked as I got off the couch.


"Just running a checkup on Riley," I answered. "Seems Missy's a bit concerned."


"You're just trying to get out of the game so you don't have to be humiliated by losing," he taunted.


"Dude," I chuckled. "I was winning."


"By what standard?"


"The game's," I retorted as I headed for the labs. The only place Riley would be if she wasn't in her room. Emma had, apparently, left for the night. Riley was just staring at a blank screen.


"Hey, mushroom," I said as I walked in. One of these days, someone would need to explain to me where she got that nickname.


Riley looked at me. "Amelia's sad and I don't know what to do," she told me. I could see she'd been crying. "Missy didn't know, either."


"Just tell me what happened," I shaped a seat out of metal to sit on. It was actually far more comfortable than it sounds, more like sitting on some kind of magic water balloon than anything. Weird ass powers.


"I was playing with my Big Sis, then Taylor came in and wanted to be alone, I could tell she wanted to do... adult... things, so of course I left," Riley started explaining. I blinked. Wasn't Taylor straight? Oh well, not my business. "And then a few minutes later Taylor ran out looking angry and upset and Amelia was crying and neither of them told me what happened..." Riley sobbed.


Fuck. I put my arm around Riley and gave her a hug. "Don't worry," I told her. "This is a perfectly normal thing. It sucks, but it's normal and it's nobody's fault."


"But... whenever my old family fought, someone died," she cried into my shoulder. "I don't want anyone to die."


I frowned. Not too different than my own supposed family, actually. "The Slaughterhouse Nine probably isn't where you should take examples from. It's just a minor argument. They'll be upset for a little while, then it'll be forgotten and they'll be back to their usual selves. All couples do it."


"Will... will you ever fight with Missy like that?" she asked, clutching me tighter.


I shrugged. "Don't know," I said. "Maybe. And when we do, it'll probably be over stupid things that seem really important at the time but really aren't."


"Like what?" she asked.


"I don't know," I answered. "I didn't have a normal home life, either. Most couples fight over things like not liking their in-laws, or spending too much time at work instead of together. My parents weren't exactly 'most couples'. They fought over things like whether or not all people with different skin colors are inferior, or just most of them." I was actually surprised by the bitterness in my voice at that. I probably shouldn't have been, but I was.


"Yeah," Riley agreed. "That really is stupid."


"Right," I confirmed, then rustled her hair. "So don't worry, I'm sure the two of them will fix things up. Just give them a few days to think things through and remind themselves that their love is what's really important."


....


I walked into our trianing room, Taylor was in her basic armor, this time. She almost never wore that outfit, anymore. "Good afternoon, ma'am," I said.


She nodded. "I was thinking nonpowered combat, this time," she said. She sounded, somehow, both tired and angry. "Just the biosuits with all the augments off, for protective purposes. No sense in getting hurt unnecessarily."


"Okay," I agreed. To be fair, nonpowered training was something most of us had gotten lazy about. The augmentative armor and all the bells and whistles inside made even normal people more powerful than most parahumans. Even better for those whose powers worked through the changelings, or who have powers that can be amplified. I, unfortunately, had neither. In the meantime, I changed the settings on the armor, turning off all the settings except the compensation tech that kept the armor's weight from slowing us down.


"Ready?" Taylor asked impatiently.


"Yes," I agreed. She rushed me, and I barely managed to deflect what would have been a really painful blow without the armor. I tried to knee her in the stomach, but she jumped and rolled. She was up on her feet before I could press the advantage. This was not her usual calm and collected combat style. She turned and came in low. Even though I was an awful lot more fit than I used to be, she was faster than me. And clearly more than a little pissed. Bad judgment was something I knew I could exploit.


I let her get her hit in, and then simply fell on top of her. We may have been the same height, but I was twice her weight with plenty to spare, even if only part of it was muscle. She couldn't lift me, and I was better trained with wrestling than she was.


"Okay," she gasped. "Point for you."


I stood, letting her get to her feet as we spaced ourselves apart. "Are you sure you should be fighting right now, ma'am?" I asked. "You don't seem like yourself."


"Tell that to Lisa, next time you see her," she scoffed.


"Is that what the fight was about?" I asked. "Something Lisa said?"


"Of course you know about that," she sighed. "Why can't people just mind their business about my life?"


I looked down. "Sorry, ma'am, I try to respect your privacy, but... well, Riley was upset and I..."


"It's fine," she interrupted. "You're not the one who caused this mess. I just need to work out my frustrations physically, and you're one of the few people I can trust to not want to turn it into a conversation about my personal business."


I shrugged. "Sure, if that's what you want," I agreed. "But your physique doesn't lend itself to the whole 'berserker' thing. You're a more tactical fighter, you're just going to hurt yourself trying what you just tried."


She sighed. "Yeah, I know," she agreed. Then she took a breath and returned to her stance. "Ready for round two?"


An hour later, we were both exhausted. Her more than I, but then she'd won most of the matches. She plopped down on the mat, breathing heavily. "I'm going to ask Calvert to pick out some of his best men and women for us to run the brain scan on."


"Why?" I asked.


"We've gotten to the point where we can use the tech to upload skills," she answered. "Thanks to Rey's college skills, I'm qualified to be a doctor. Sort of. Barely."


I blinked. That was a thought and a half. "So... you're saying..."


"Six years of stressful training, granted in two hours of sitting on a couch," she answered. "We should probably work out a sort of manditory curriculum for everyone."


"Oh, that's great," I laughed. "Wish Victor was around for this. He always bragged about all his stolen skills, as if he somehow 'deserved' them or some such bullshit. Now we have a way to do the same."


"Not really stealing, though," Taylor responded. "Just copying. Does that idea... bother you?"


"No," I replied. "I think I would like having the skills of a doctor. Maybe public speaker, if you think we can get one?"


She shrugged. "Don't see why not. Glad to see you see the value of this. I'm going to bring it up for a vote next time we have a meeting. Won't make it mandatory, of course, but at the very least we should invest some time and energy into setting everything up."


I slowly climbed to my feet, hissing at the soreness in my legs and shoulders. "I'm going to go play video games for a while. Do you feel better?"


"Yes," she agreed. "Mind and body. Thanks for not prying."


"Any time, ma'am," I agreed as I walked, if a bit slowly, toward the exit. Sometimes people need to talk. And sometimes, they need someone who doesn't need them to talk.


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


A/N- Because I like Theo.

 

Amelia, Ch 150- Chernobog


Calvert was an almost laughably predictable man. Every night he'd leave the office at the same time, arrive home at the same time, and go to bed at the same time. This night was no different. Sure, his route was in the safest city on the planet, so almost any standard attack would fail miserably. I wasn't using a standard attack. Instead, I pressed a button, and his vehicle vanished. They'd probably spot the spacial distortion, perhaps even track it to destination after a few days. They'd never be able to determine who was responsible.


Calvert's guards were easily dispatched, if remarkably professional. Some of the PRT's best, clearly. Just not 'best' enough to beat me. Calvert himself calmly exited the vehicle, but he didn't try to fight. "Grue, I presume?" he asked to the darkness.


"You are awfully calm for someone who's going to die soon," I threatened.


"I survived Nilbog," he responded. "It had a certain impact on how I view the world. I don't doubt you can kill me. I don't even doubt you can do worse than kill me if you wanted to. Still, I am currently very much alive, and that means there's hope I get out of this."


"Hardly," I answered. I found myself incredibly unnerved. Calvert no doubt had plenty of training to resist thinkers, and that included the various cold read skills I'd picked up, but he was almost inhumanly calm. Like he was sitting safely in his office in the PRT headquarters, without a care in the world. Curious about the events transpiring, but in no way worried. I was also certain he was telling the truth about me being able to kill him: there was no secret plan in which he expected to survive by enacting.


"Ah, but I am resourceful," he smiled. "I may not be able to defeat you, but I can likely convince you that you have more to gain from my remaining alive, than by killing me. Surely, there must be a solution to suit both of us."


"And I'm suppose to trust you enough to work for you?" I growled.


"You did before, Mister Laborn," Calvert's voice shifted a bit, and I finally recognized it.


"Fuck," I mustered a laugh. "You're Coil."


"Coil, as far as I am aware, has been eliminated by Pantheon," he answered. Interestingly, that passed my lie detection as well.


"Cut the crap," I spat out. "I was just going to ask you if you were involved in the same corruption that let Piggot murder my sister. Now I guess I have to ask a different question. Did you have another choice? Could your power have saved her? Don't bother lying, I'll know."


"I have no way of knowing," he answered. "Perhaps for the next couple years, until the apocalypse. I chose, instead, to ensure the death of Jack Slash and delay that over all other priorities."


I reached for my gun, a tinkertech weapon stolen from one of my other missions. And then Coil vanished, replaced by a number of people. Pantheon.


I bathed the area in darkness, and was surprised when some of them collapsed. Gaea, Aceso, Minerva, and Khepri simply fell like rag dolls, leaving me the handful remaining. Granted, that handful include Eki, and all three of the so-called Endslayers. I tested my powers, which I promptly lost as most of them took flight, leaving the darkness. Lachesis remained behind, kneeling and shaking the fallen form of Aceso. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but they probably had some kind of closed com system.


I stepped forward, testing her power at least, and regretting it quickly. My power copying never came with the same instinctive knowledge that the actual user had, nor the skills they had perfected. I was now within a foot of her. And with a half step, she was several feet away. I could see how she flexed her power, pushing the others further away from me.


I didn't know why they collapsed... no, now that I looked, I was figuring it out. They aren't real, I realized. I don't sense skills to draw from them through Victor's power. They must have been doubles, like those M4s that the police were using. Apparently they didn't get along with my power. Interesting. I had no desire to fight my former team, or their new allies, so I retreated.


Correction: I tried to retreat. Vista's power made that difficult, although with her power siphoned off for me to use, it was far from impossible.


Then I was slammed down by a kinetic attack. The safety glass of my goggles broke as I was driven into the ground. I looked up: Eki. How did she hit me? I bolted, and she fired again, causing me to stumble. That was still absurdly accurate. Still, I felt my body adapting. The third shot didn't even slow me down. I fired back, striking her with the teal energy ray. Her forcefield canceled it. Of course it did. She survived New Delhi, this shitty gun means nothing compared to that.


Lachesis took flight, carrying Aceso. Or the body double, at least. She left my darkness, and with it I lost my access to her power. Aceso stepped away, staying in the air thanks to her armor's flight system, and the area around me warped to the point that the ground started to splinter under the stress. I hesitated for a second. Her power doesn't work on living things, I reminded myself as I ran into the mess.


Crawler's enhancements and Victor's skills served me as well as always, as I bobbed and weaved my way through the disintegrating landscape, evading stronger bursts of energy than before.


A steel cage fell toward me, despite it having been dropped well off course. It took me a second to realize it was Vista's power at work, again. I was caught behind the metal bars. This would have ended the fight, if not for Crawler's power. A grip and a tug and I tried to lift the cage off me. Only for it to remain, like trying to move the planet itself. How?


A floor of bars formed beneath, denying me even the ability to dig out.


"It's over," Eki shouted from above.


Fuck. There's nothing for me to do, now, but try to talk my way out. I dispelled my darkness. It didn't take long for the remaining body doubles to climb to their feet. Superhuman senses was one of the things I had not yet managed to pick up, beyond an ad-hoc 'people detector' using Victor's ability to sense potential skills. I could not hear what they were saying to each other, as they approached.


"B-Grue?" Khepri asked, looking at me. "What happened to you?"


"Hey, Taylor," I said, taking off the helmet. For the most part, my facial features hadn't changed. I was aware of her former feelings for me. We hadn't parted on bad terms. Maybe I could use that to influence her? Although talking to her through this proxy made it hard to read her reactions and emotions. But, then, that was true of her even in person. Lisa was here, too, and I wasn't sure just how well her power would work on me. Too much to bother lying about the most obvious stuff. "Turns out, I have a more or less permanent version of Crawler's regeneration, now."


"I meant the part where you're assassinating PRT Directors," Taylor responded, her voice cold.


"You do know he's Coil, right?" I asked. I suppressed a desire to smile when a handful of people reacted like they clearly did not know this. In fact, of the ones who were actually here in person, none of them knew. I wasn't sure about the doll users, but I was pretty certain Lisa and Taylor had to know.


"No trying to bullshit your way out of this, Brian," Lisa chided. Of course, imply I'm lying without saying it. "Where did you pick up this kind of social manipulation, anyway? That's not really your sty-" she froze. "Oh fuck. Brian, how the fuck could you?"


"What?" Taylor asked, looking over. "What did he do?"


"Remember how we couldn't find Victor?" she answered. Taylor's doll didn't show a reaction, but did her real body? I couldn't know.


"You know, I am aware those bodies are fakes," I said. "There's absolutely no reason for you to talk to each other through them, instead of wherever you're really hiding. Except for my benefit, or the benefit of the people who put themselves in real danger here."


"There was never a real danger," Minerva responded. "We knew who you were before we showed up. We just really didn't want you getting access to Gaea's power. Or mine or Khepri's or Clarice's for that matter. But especially not Gaea."


I frowned. "Good to know. So, planning to turn me over? You know I'm birdcage bound, just one show trial that the powers that be will ensure I can't win."


"You've been using people as human batteries, Brian," Minerva answered. "I don't think there's a rule you haven't broken with that."


"Nazis don't consider me a person," I countered. "They don't get to bitch when I return the sentiment."


I was, of course, watching everyone. Clotho and Atropos glanced at one another. Those two, at least, are sympathetic enough. They were also amongst the ones that reacted hardest to learning about Calvert being Coil. "Don't pretend you haven't done a few morally questionable things of your own, getting this far. Bribery, blackmail, recruiting supervillains left and right. I'm not even going to speculate on how you're the most blatantly obvious Class S threat since Nilbog, yet are being treated like heroes by the PRT, instead of on the receiving end of a kill order. Don't say 'Endslayer', we all know that's not nearly enough."


"You're not psychic, Brian," Lisa countered. "You don't even have a legitimate thinker power. You can't know anything."


"I know Armsmaster is still alive, and I know you also know," I offered. "Why are you covering that up? Blackmail to keep the wolves away from your door, I'm sure. Probably blackmailing Calvert, too. Unless he's still your boss. Fuck, Lisa. Taylor. He could have saved Aisha, and who knows how many of the rest of our team. How could you still work for him?"


"We work for no one," Taylor hissed. I was surprised that she cracked first, honestly. "We work with a lot of people. We do it to save the fucking world."


"By being as corrupt as the people who murdered your friends?" I countered. "If you need to worry about Dinah's predictions, then fine: you deal with that cataclysm. Leave me to cleanse the fucking PRT of its corruption and see to it that the world you save is still worth living in. If it makes you feel better, I won't even try to touch Coil. Attempt failed, villain escaped."


"Not how it works," Gaea stated.


"No?" I asked. "Is this a dictatorship? Do you make the decisions for everyone? If you're so sure of yourself, put it to a vote."


"A vote to what?" A young girl's voice asked. I wasn't sure who it was of the people above. Lachesis, probably.


"To decide if I'm more valuable free, perhaps?" I suggested. "That if they take me into custody, I'll talk about whatever secrets I know. Or that my crimes aren't as bad as yours, so you have no right to drag me in to be locked away and murdered. Or that maybe, just maybe, I'm the one doing the right thing and should be allowed to continue fixing the mistakes that you're too busy to fix. Call it a trial by a jury of my peers. The only one I'm ever likely to get, because you know I won't get one in an actual court of law. You won't, either, if they ever decide you've outlived your usefulness."


The three girls in front of me were silent. Likely talking to themselves in person, instead of by proxy. I could imagine the conversation. Refusing to make this democratic basically meant telling some of their most valuable members that their opinions didn't matter. Allowing the vote... well, I wasn't sure how it'd go, but I was pretty sure at least someone would side with me. A schism that I could use.


"Okay, fine," Gaea responded. "A vote. "


"Take him in," Eki answered first. "He just threatened us and promised to continue a killing spree. The Nazis can go die in a fire, for all I care. But I am not letting any more unrepetant monsters walk away."


"That's a start," Lisa stated. "Same vote, here. We can't let you go just because you were our friend. Sorry, Brian."


Taylor looked away. "I'm abstaining from the vote. Too close to this." Of course she is, I thought. She knows the way the vote's going to go, and doesn't want to split her team's leadership by going against it.


I didn't wait to hear the rest. I knew which way Gaea would vote, and with her Aceso. Even if everyone else was in my favor, and I was only confident about two of them, that'd just force it back on Taylor. She'd choose her team's stability over me. I pressed the emergency button, and was teleported back to my base. I so didn't want to demonstrate that trick. Next time, they'd be prepared for it. And they had a lot more tinkers than I did. Including one with a transportation specialty.


I sighed. Well, fuck me, then.

 

Amelia, Ch 151- Lisa


Our combat team waited in our side dimension, of course. No sense in jumping twice. Horus and Lachesis stood together with Clarice. While Riley was next to Amelia. Off a little ways was Clotho and Atropos, talking privately. It was a clear demarcation, and I didn't need my power to see the social structure here.


Near them stood Eki, and Taylor's changeling wearing the Matriarch. And my own changeling in the newest model of the Huntress. That was the quiet corner.


Emma, Chariot and Yum Kaash were working the hardware we'd set up to track Calvert. Really, it was a van sized staging platform full of hardware I wasn't about to try to name. A lot of it was tech that we'd traded with Dragon for. Theoretically the most advanced sensory technology that wasn't currently pointed at an Endbringer.


Taylor herself was in her old, silk costume. Fighting via proxy instead of in person. Favors left side. Recent injury. Refuses to let Amelia heal it, refuses to let Riley heal it. Would likely allow Emma, but her skills aren't good enough to do more than merely speed the process. Choosing non Yggdrasil outfit, won't trust Amelia not to 'peak' at her through its connection to the living armor systems. Doesn't want to let Amelia know she's hurt. Doesn't want anyone to know she's hurt.


I tried to ignore the lovestruck longing looks that she and Amelia gave each other when they thought no one was looking. And the occasional glance they gave me that was anything but love. They blamed me for this, and I didn't need my power to tell me that, either. Fuck, the worst part about it is they were right. I fucked up bad, here. I forgot what Taylor was like without the Taylia bond. I forgot what Amy was like, too.


I hadn't accounted for just how completely alone they were, without each other. Bundles of trust issues that were only working around it because they knew the one person they trusted most was always there as backup, so no other betrayal mattered. That safety net was gone, now, and there wasn't shit I could do to fix it.


"He made his move," Taylor spoke. Of course she'd figure it out first. "Teleportation, I think? Out of my range."


"Tracking," Chariot responded. "Got it. Almost twenty miles northwest of the city. Middle of a field somewhere. Missy has the spot on her HUD."


....


Our changelings collapsed as soon as they were hit by Grue's darkness, and we were cut off from their info feed, leaving our VR systems black.


"Fuck!" Amelia exclaimed. "This happened before, during the fight with Siberian. I forgot about it with everything else that happened!"


"Everyone get out of the darkness!" I commanded through our radio system. I couldn't be certain they heard.


"Got my bugs, though," Taylor responded. Is upset by turn of events, angry at Brian, misses him, feels betrayed yet again. "The relay function of my changeling still works, I just can't control anything. Guiding Eki's attacks."


"Lachesis got me out," Riley informed. "She's going to have Theo cage him."


....


"About this thing with Coil being Calvert," Atropos asked. "Is that true?"


"Yes," Amelia answered. "I'll share the details later... let's just say he's thoroughly under control and absolutely no danger to anyone. Ever again."


"You're skating on thin fucking ice," Atropos responded. "It better be a damn good explanation."


"A vote?" Eki asked over the communication network, interrupting that particular bomb. "Of all the assinine bullshit. If he's using Victor's power..."


Confident, hard to read due to Crawler mutations and Victor's skills, is highly familiar with Victor's power as well as Crawler's, has been using them for weeks. Has access to other powers as well. Likely the other missing members of E88. Has access to high yield energy weapon and long range teleporter. Likely access to a tinker. Keeping them imprisoned somewhere. Believes he can escape if he buys enough time. Will return to his base. "We'll go along with it," I insisted.


"What? Why?" Eki exclaimed.


"We already know he's losing the vote, and so does he," I said. "He's planning some way to escape. Chariot, can you track him?"


"Already on it," Chariot answered. "Not quite sure how to explain some of these readings. He's carrying what's basically a miniature wormhole. No idea how it's being contained or where it comes out at, but the scanners are pretty sure that's what we're looking at."


Using Crawler regularly. Using E88 member(s). "Brockton Bay," I instructed. "Likely the north end, near the park they're building around Crawler's body. That's where he's keeping his victims."


"That's crazy," Taylor replied. "How the fuck could he hide something like that from me?"


"Not all that difficult," Riley answered. "You didn't notice my spider bot."


"Because it was using corpses and garbage as camouflage!" Taylor argued. Frustrated. Less forgiving of Riley's... oddities... Is aware of the danger of upsetting the girl. Doesn't care. Welcomes it, even. Refusing medical treatment. Wants to be hurt. I almost cringed. The Taylor I remembered was never so destructive. Untrue. Emotional connection and nostalgia colored perceptions. Taylor is behaving as normal, if more confidently than before. Isn't afraid of death or suffering, but not actively seeking it, even subconsciously.


"He has some kind of tinker help," I interrupted. "Don't know who, but someone's responsible for that gun and the teleporter. And the wormhole. Scan Brockton Bay." The last sentence was a clear command, he'd need to be ordered not to by Taylor or Amelia. Neither of them did.


Meanwhile, Grue teleported.


"Got it!" Chariot shouted. "You were right, Minerva. He's on the north end, near the docks. Imputing coordinates."


"He'll run," Taylor volunteered. "We've got at most ten minutes. Gathering insects. If nothing else, I can keep him from taking others with him."


We shunted over in pairs, so half of us kept a charge to return with.


We dropped back right next to the signal. "I recognize this place," Taylor exclaimed. "We're only a block from the old place. He was right under our fucking noses the whole time." She paused for a moment. "The fuck? I can't sense the building."


"Do you mean there's no bugs?" Amelia asked.


"No, there are," she insisted. "I just... they're not noticing anything."


"He's using a technological version of Imp's power," I spoke. "You'd notice if it was simply driving the insects off or killing them. Fucking clever. Okay, we can't trust the changelings and we can't trust our coms. Eki, fly above and fire the localized EMP straight down on the building. Full power."


"Got it," she acknowledged, taking off.


"I've twisted the surrounding area," Lachesis responded. "He'll be in for one hell of a fight trying to reach us with that darkness."


The pulse of energy hit hard enough that it blinded a lot of our changeling senses for a few seconds. Nothing electronic could have survived. In fact, we were lucky this area was industrial. We wouldn't have dared use this weapon in a residential zone. As it stood, it would still be hours before the repair crews fixed the damage to the power lines. This mission had better be worth it.


"Feeding the wormhole tracking to your HUDs," Chariot stated. "It'll let all of you track him."


Darkness tried to spill out of the building, caught only inches from the door and twisted around like a tornado up into the sky.


Atropos fired a couple more times, into the inky blackness. And then it stopped. Grue dropped, holding his stomach. Regenerating, faking severity of injury. Correction: not faking, is pretty hurt. Regeneration greatly inferior to Crawler's variant. Was relying on other regeneration during Coil battle. That regeneration countered by Atropos' power. "He's still functional. Gaea, cover him."


Most of her Dryad's mass simply tore off of her and collided with Grue, followed immediately by Yggdrasil pouring out of the sewers.


"There's five others in there," Lachesis reported. "Unsure if allies or captives. Two don't appear to be moving."


"On it," Taylor said darkly. "Two in cages in the basement. Another unconscious, has been for a while judging by the... smells." Angry at condition of prisoners, angry at Grue, reminded of Dinah, reminded of how Grue refused to side with her when she wanted to help Dinah. Comparing her relationship with Amelia to her relationship with Brian. Brian is very much coming up short in this. Resentful of how she lost that relationship. "Two others, holding weapons. Small guy and big guy. One seems to be the tinker. Negotiating their surrender."


Through my equipment's enhanced hearing, there was screaming.

 

Amelia, Ch 152


I almost got sick when I entered the basement. We trusted dealing with Grue's accomplices to the others. Theo alone should be more than capable, the rest were just for assurances. But Taylor didn't want to let the others into the basement. She didn't even want me entering the basement. It wasn't hard to see why.


To call it a 'basement' was bullshit in and of itself. They carved a hole in the ground, pretty much literally. Rough, uneven walls shorn into the earth and then coated with some kind of shell. Possibly melted into an obsidian... I didn't know, tinker bullshit of some description, I was sure. A single extension cord brought power into the room. We had to follow the stairs down before we could really see anything. There were two separate cells that looked to be cobbled together from rebar and chicken wire.


"Who are you?" A woman asked- one of the prisoners. Her clothes looked relatively clean, and she looked in decent health at first glance. The man in the cell on the other side from her was... anything but. Staring blankly, unrecognizingly, at us.


"We're heroes," Skitter spoke, mechanically. "We beat your captors. I'm sorry we didn't know about you sooner."


"I suppose it's too much to hope for that you killed those rapist bastards?" the woman spat. I looked over at Taylor. The real her, not the changelings we were working through. She tensed at the accusation, probably deciding whether or not she believed it.


"You don't have to lie," Minerva countered. "Trust me, we know how bad this is. Rape would be the least serious crime on the list."


"What they did to Victor is rape," the woman insisted. "And Fenja..."


"Riley, back room," Taylor stated from our safe place in our alt earth. "You'll find the third captive. She appears to be comatose, I'm fairly certain it's medically induced. You'll know better than I would."


Aceso jogged toward the back.


"We'll get you out," I told the woman, stepping toward her cage. "What's your name? Are there any traps down here?" I wasn't concerned about us, but I didn't want the prisoners to be killed.


"Othala," she answered. It took me a moment to remember who that was. Had it really only been a couple months since the removal of E88? "I don't think there's any traps, but one of them was a tinker, so I can't be sure."


"No," Minerva answered. "They were confident the prisoners wouldn't escape, and had no reason to set up traps. There were defenses upstairs to protect Uber and Leet, sure, but I'm pretty sure they were disabled by Eki. Any that withstood that attack? Khepri didn't give them a chance to use."


I gripped the bars and tugged. They broke easily enough. Out of the changelings, mine was definitely the strongest. In all honesty, I doubted it could rip the bars off of an actual jail cell, but this makeshift prison was nowhere near so durable.


Minerva simply opened a rather simplistic latch on Victor's door. He was unresponsive enough that they didn't even bother putting a real lock on it. How long has he been like this?


Othala rushed into the cell and gripped her... husband? I honestly didn't know enough about them to be sure. Still, she wept for the man, in full view of us and with no reservation or shame. "Can you help him?" she begged. "You're Panacea, right? A healer?"


It's been a while since I've been a healer, I thought.


"She can't," Minerva responded. "Grue used his own power on him, right? Repeated long exposures. Your husband has left behind plenty of case studies, and the damage cannot be repaired. No known healer has been able to fix the lives he's broken in the past, and he's been put through far more exposure than most of them. There's absolutely nothing for us to do beyond putting him in a care facility somewhere. Make his life as comfortable as possible."

"The fuck are you doing?" I asked Lisa from our staging area. "Our neural regeneration tech should be able to fix him."

"At best, it would allow someone else to have his body," she responded. "That mind won't be Victor's mind. Whatever remains of him in that shell is barely above brain dead. There's nothing left to save." I closed my eyes. She has a point.


"On top of that?" Lisa continued. "Fuck them both, they're still Nazis. What Grue did to them is fucked up beyond words, but that doesn't change the fact that Victor did this exact sort of thing to others on a semi regular basis, and Othala helped murder people in front of their own families for the supposed 'crime' of not being white. I want her to be fully aware that this is an ironic hell of the highest order. They might be victims, but they're nowhere near innocent."


I frowned. I might be able to undo it. I had never tried fixing Victor's victims, due to my fear of working with brains. But she wasn't wrong: whatever I built out of what was left of his mind wouldn't be the same person. Minor repairs, especially in someone I already knew, that was one thing. This... fuck, most of our zerg have higher mental facilities than what was left of Victor.


"I'm sorry," my Dryad spoke. "We can't restore him. We... we can make sure his trial is fair. Considering his... medical condition... I can't imagine he'll be subjected to prison." Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what would even be the point?


"You're going to arrest us?!" she shouted, startling Victor. "Shhh," she cooed at the upset man who couldn't understand what was happening, beyond knowing he was confused and frightened. "After everything that psycho put us through, surely you could just let us walk away?"


Taylor spoke to us in our safe spot. "So, the question is, do we recruit her? I vote against. We can't trust her, and she's mostly a redundancy."


I flinched. Fuck, the woman might be a Nazi, but she's still fucking human, and for us to go straight to the hard sell after she's been through this? I was beginning to remember why I hated Skitter and Tattletale so much.


"Nudge her over to the Protectorate," Lisa answered. "They need her far more than we do right now. Let them deal with the headaches that come with a Nazi nurse on the payroll. Right now, her only realistic value to us is making Calvert look good."


"It won't be that bad," Skitter responded to Othala. "Things have changed drastically since you've been down here. The Protectorate will make an offer. You'll get off scott free, long as you're willing to work for them. And they'll take care of your husband for you. Maybe they'll even be able to find someone who can fix him."


"What about E88?" Othala asked.


"Dismantled entirely," Skitter answered. "In prison, dead, or so deep in hiding that I'm not sure if even they know who they are."


"Purity and Crusader have joined the Protectorate in Houston," Minerva informed us. When did that happen? "Different names, of course. Purity's pretty generic, and it turns out Crusader's power can manifest almost any kind of outfit and melee weapon for his projections. He's got this whole cowboy theme going on with lassos, now. All the others have either left the country or settled down to an under the radar lifestyle so effective that I haven't been able to track them. Either that or they got themselves dead. Can't rule that out."


"You're a healer, Othala," Skitter continued. "One of the best ones on the planet, actually. Even if we ignore everything else you can do, that makes you invaluable."


She looked back down at the unresponsive Victor. "Fuck. You can promise they'll look after him?"


"I can promise a very fair and reasonable PRT Director who would meet you halfway," I answered. "Your power's too versatile and too useful. I'd be lying if I claimed to know exactly what you'll get offered. Directors will probably argue for weeks over where to assign you." Mostly who gets the credit or the blame, depending on who you ask. "Still, one way or another, Victor's going to be at the mercy of the state. At least this way you can ensure he gets the best possible medical care."


"She'll recover," Aceso announced, exiting the back room while carrying a very tall blond covered in nothing but a blanket. "Atrophy and substandard health care will be an issue, but ultimately a minor one. She should remain sedated for now, and allowed to recover slowly in a proper facility. Nothing more than a week or two. We can speed it up to about three days."


I constructed some outfits out of Yggdrasil and had them shunted over to my Dryad. "Let's get all of you into better clothes," I offered, handing Othala the set for her and Victor. She's his wife, so we were content to let her dress him while we worked to get Fenja clothed.


Meanwhile, our real selves were still debating on how to handle our captives. Victor, of course, was useless. He'd be the carrot that kept Othala in line. We'd already agreed on testing how Fenja's enlargement power legitimately worked. She might have useful powers that may or may not prove valuable. The really interesting question was if she could use her power on, say, one of our ultralisks. We could build a literally hundred foot tall monster for Taylor to command. Bring that into the next Endbringer fight.


And now, we were on to the criminals.


"Leet's got some promise for us," Lisa was discussing with Taylor, who was dead set on not taking any of the people who had done this. It feels good to know I'm still on her side most of the time. "But, honestly, if we could, I would really like to swing a way to get him straight into Dragon's personal control. That would be the absolutely ideal outcome. Leaving the kind of goodwill this kind of favor would generate with her, I've been comparing a few things, and I'm pretty sure I know what her tinker specialty is."


"Really?" I asked. I was actually interested in this.


"I think her power lets her understand other tinkers' technology," Lisa continued. "She isn't quite perfect at reverse engineering, but with each new piece of tech she picks up, she multiplies her options. It's likely she'll eventually reach a point where she can explain tinker tech in such a way that ordinary people can understand and build or improve upon it. But that's only a 'maybe', and not what I'm concerned with. What matters is that if Emma's a grab-bag-tinker, then Dragon is a trump-tinker."


"That is broken as fuck," Taylor muttered.


Riley simply nodded in agreement.


"No wonder she's so eager to buy almost everything we offer," Chariot responded. "I thought she was being nice to us for political reasons. But if you're right, then even the junky tech can be invaluable to her, as long as it's something she's never seen before. Or even if it is something she's seen before, just done in a different way."


"Holy shit!" Emma exclaimed. "You're talking about putting her in the same room as the guy who can build practically anything that can actually exist. Christ, give them a year and she might even be able to solve the Entity problem for us."


"That is exactly what I'm hoping for."


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


A/N- Munchkining!

 

Amelia, Ch 153- Taylor


Dammit, Brian. I ignored the need to cry, looking at the state of his victims. Othala was reasonably healthy, though certainly not in good shape. After a bit of time, we'd decided that the only thing that had kept Fenja and Victor alive was liberal applications of Othala's powers. Part of what made her such a powerful healer is that it was 'no cost'. Or, at least, the Passenger was footing the bill instead of the laws of nature or physics. It worked like Lung, generating the mass and energy from seemingly nowhere. Instead of like Amelia, who needed to draw resources from somewhere and put concentration into it.


With Brian and his new 'friends' disabled, we could finally arrive in person, shunting our Changelings back over. Amelia had a sort of auto system that would take them back home. Most of the group was focused on finding equipment to confiscate. Whatever they used to blind me and my bugs was... I really wanted to know how that worked, and how to overcome it. I also, honestly, didn't want Dragon to rebuild a copy to use against me. Just because I happened to like her, that didn't mean I was willing to let her have that kind of power over me.


Speaking of... I glanced over at Amelia. She's beautiful. I looked away. God damn it, the world couldn't let have just that one thing, could it?


I walked over to Emma, currently in yellow mode, who was busy examining one of the larger devices. "So, what's this one?" I asked.


She shook her head. "Seems to be their teleportation device. Kinda insane, it's going to take us weeks to figure it out."


"Sell it to Dragon?" I suggested.


"Eventually," she responded. "This thing's giving me ideas, a way to transfer power from one area to another without it having to actually travel through the space between, and I'm sure Trevor will have some of his own. He's too busy on the stable point wormhole right now."


Fucking tinkers. "Okay, keep up the good work," I responded. Emma smiled far too happily at the minor praise. My own significantly less cute and horrifying version of Bonesaw, I thought. Of course, if she starts calling me 'big sister', I'm going to stab her in the kidneys. I walked away.


Ordinarily, right now Amelia and I would be holding hands and just... discussing. It was our post combat cooldown, taking the time to let the adrenaline wear off. Right now, after seeing what happened to Victor, I would have loved such a comfort. There was nothing of him left but a shell. I once again affirmed to myself that I would rather die than for that to ever happened to me. I had to hope that, if it did, someone would be kind enough to kill me.


Meanwhile, I spied with my bugs, listening in on the other conversations. Atropos and Clotho were off in a corner, doing exactly what I would have done with Amelia. I tried hard not to be resentful that they were so happy together. I chose not to listen in on them, except to ensure they weren't too upset with us over Coil.


Theo was with Lachesis, and they had approached the mostly passive Othala. She wasn't doing anything right now but trying to comfort her husband. My heart went out to her. I couldn't even imagine what she was going through. "Hello, ma'am," Theo said to his father's former employee. "I'm... I'm sorry about what happened to Victor."


Othala paused for a second. "Theo?" she asked. "Is that you?"


"Yes, ma'am," he answered. "Please don't spread it around to anyone else. I'm Horus, in costume. A hero."


"Kaiser was beginning to suspect you would never get your powers," Othala responded. "Instead you seem to have gotten the best ones out of your family."


"My father was wrong about a lot of things," Theo answered, letting a bit of distaste into his voice. Enough to show he has an edge, without making him sound needlessly angry or unstable. I was impressed. He'll be a brilliant leader, some day.


Miss Militia arrived with the PRT, someone else that I felt sorry for. I had a hard time imagining what her life was like these days. The last remaining Protectorate member in Brockton Bay. Yes, most of the others were nearby, but she was the only one here. After Piggot and Armsmaster... well, guilt by association. She may or may not deserve it, but her career was functionally dead. They couldn't demote or fire her, but they would never place her in charge of anything important.


"Don't bother sending your guys in yet," Lisa said, intercepting Miss Militia. "We're still itemizing the tech. Leet left behind some traps. We're combing the interior to make sure everything's been disabled."


"You mean to make certain you've stripped everything of value," Miss Militia countered.


"Spoils of war," Lisa dismissed. "Private organization, we don't get a fat government budget. Don't worry, we'll be selling it to your bosses eventually, I'm certain. Wouldn't want anyone to accuse us of some kind of cover up."


She frowned. The 'spoils' system was... messy, from a legal standpoint. What was valid, what was not. Especially when it came to tinker technology, which by all rights always went to the PRT and then the claimant would simply be paid for the equipment. Much the way firearms and drugs were treated. Dead to all rights, we could not legally do what we were doing. It was also a shady area of borderline legal, so if no one told us to stop... we didn't have to stop.


"Are we going to have another custody argument about the prisoners?" Miss Militia asked, choosing a different battle. She sounded tired. Resigned, even. She would have won the spoils battle, at least in the short term. And, in the process, given the PRT access to technology that might just be able to shut down my power entirely. Instead she chose not to, knowing that she didn't have the political clout to keep what remained of her career should she piss us off. Did she feel this way when she let Piggot firebomb my friends? I wondered. I certainly hope so.


"Depends on who you want in custody," Lisa responded. "Othala, Victor and Fenja are victims, here. We didn't capture them, we rescued them after they'd been kept in captivity for weeks and used as a power supply. We won't be turning them over to your custody. However, Othala's willing to discuss the terms of her own surrender. And the possibility of joining the Protectorate. Be nice to her, and she goes home with you tonight."


God damn it, Lisa, you did that on purpose.


Miss Militia didn't respond to the comment. Considering she wasn't native to this country, she may not have gotten the joke. Then again, she dealt with Assault and Clockblocker on a regular basis, so it was just as likely that she developed a skill for ignoring that kind of thing. "The other two?"


"Victor's... well, you'll see for yourself," Lisa continued. "He's not in a condition to be making decisions for himself, and likely never will be again. Fenja's injured. We will be taking care of her until she's rehabilitated. It'll take a week at most. After that... it's really up to her to decide what comes next."


"The others, the actual criminals here. Responsible for the attack on former Director Piggot, the attempted assassination of Director Calvert, at least three other murders, kidnapping, crimes against humanity, conspiracy to commit a bunch of other crimes, and possibly treason. You should be thanking us... you were on his list, too. So was Legend, although I personally doubt he could have succeeded at that." So was Costa-Brown, aka Alexandria... that would have gone poorly for him as well. "I'm sure the prosecution will come up with a few other things to add to the list... they're all yours."


"Really?" Miss Militia sounded shocked. "No argument, no surprises?"


"Well... we do have to insist that Dragon take personal custody of Grue," she added. "His powers are... weird, now. We're not sure you have the facilities to hold him. We're not completely certain we have facilities to hold him. We had to use our Endslayers to put him down the first time."


"And he survived?"


"Well, we weren't trying to kill him," Minerva countered. "Look. He has had access to a lot of powers, and he's somehow even managed to keep the ones he got from Crawler. We don't know for certain what he can do now, and it's everything Gaea can do to keep his adaptive regeneration suppressed."


"A couple more hours of this and I won't be able to keep him unconscious anymore," Amelia confirmed. "After that, Theo might be able to hold him, if he doesn't have a power that can let him escape. If we don't have a better solution by then..." She'll have to kill him, I added mentally. I wanted to laugh and cry. One of my exes might kill the other. And then I had to chide myself. Brian and I were never an 'item' to make him an ex, and Amelia wouldn't be killing anyone. More likely, Atropos would have to kill him. Hers was the only power we could rely upon to no-sell his regenerative abilities.


Meanwhile, I was drawing my new breed of shunt capable units into the area. I was the only one here, other than Riley, who legitimately had blood on their hands. I can add more, if it means no one else has to. It's not like it really matters to me.


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


A/N- being part of my story is suffering.

Also: I use "of course" *waaaay* too much in my writing. I've been deleting a lot of those because it's fucking annoying.

Why did no one ever point that habit out to me? It's a bad one and needs to die. In a fire. Made of bees.

 

Amelia, Ch 154- Danny and Carol


Taylor didn't even look at me when she walked in. She was wearing her old silk costume, instead of her newer armor system, which meant she had walked home. There was a time when I would have been worried sick about her out alone at night. Coupled with how quiet she'd been the last couple days... and, for that matter, how she was coming home instead of staying at their base... I had good reason to be worried. "Hey kiddo," I started. "What are you doing home?"


"Sorry," she answered. "I know it's getting pretty late, but we didn't get finished until late. Then we had to deal with the PRT and Dragon and I'm completely exhausted."


"Usually you stay at your base, especially after one of your missions," I pointed out. "C'mon, Taylor, I'm not completely oblivious. I know I haven't really been there for you when you needed it, but I'm trying to make up for that. What's wrong? Is it a problem with Emma?" It didn't seem likely, but I didn't have a lot to go on, either. I had my problems with them working together, but I trusted Taylor when she insisted that it wasn't going to be like before. Still, this...


"No," Taylor sighed. "It's not Emma. If anything, she's been too nice. Bordering on the pathetic. Like 'I wish I were a more horrible person so I could enjoy this instead of feeling pity' type... fuck, I don't even know."


I wasn't a fan of the language, but I let it slide. Now isn't the time for that. "So, what's bothering you?"


"A lot of things," she admitted. "It's a work night, I don't want to keep you up."


It was an obvious avoidance, something I was painfully familiar with. She'd done it for years, and so had I. It was something I thought was behind us, after she joined Pantheon. She was like a different person after she and Amelia started seeing one another. A couple months ago, I would have let her behavior right now go. A couple months ago, both my daughter and I were miserable, and I didn't have Sarah giving me advice on how to deal with teenage girls.


"Okay," I agreed. "But tomorrow, we're meeting up for lunch, and we'll have that conversation."


She hesitated, probably looking for a way out of it. "I have work, too," she started. "We have a pretty big op planned for Friday morning."


"Bigger than Chicago?" I asked. It's Wednesday, now, so that only leaves one more day.


"Yeah," she agreed. "Lots bigger. This is going to make people thing Chicago was a vacation day for us."


"Then we talk right after you get back," I stated. I hated negotiating spending time with my child, it was simply depressing. She's a busy girl, I reminded myself. Important on a national level. International, even. In the last week she's spoken with the Triumvirate and most of the leaders of the PRT. Dragon. A half dozen political leaders. I tried not to focus too much on how she declared all out war with some of the most dangerous psychopaths in the world. You told Sarah she should accept that her daughter's grown up and making her own place in the world. Time to take your own advice, Danny, however much it hurts.


"I'm not sure when that'll be," Taylor answered. "Itcould take days before everything's concluded."


"Okay, but then we talk about everything," I insisted.


She shrugged. "Okay, I can do that. Just, not right now. I need to get some sleep if I want to be useful when I go to work tomorrow. Logistics are going to be a nightmare, and we have to figure out how to best distribute our people. A couple of our most valuable are also our least cooperative..." She complained as she went to her room.


I smiled to myself. Not so different from her old man, then.


...


The doorbell rang. Too late at night to be business. I checked from the window. Amy was standing there, in her armor. She rarely goes anywhere without wearing it, I'd realized. I rushed to the door and opened it.


"Hey, Carol," Amy said as I opened the door. She still doesn't call me mom, I thought for what must have been the dozenth time in the last few days. I suppose I really can't expect anything more, all considered. "Mind if I come in?"


"Of course not, sweetie," I said. Then I mentally slapped myself. 'Sweetie'? Really, Carol, that's the best you can do? "What's the problem?"


"That obvious?" she asked, smiling sadly as she stepped into the house. A fairly empty house, since Mark wasn't here right now. Hopefully Amy wouldn't notice, I really didn't feel like explaining that to her. I also didn't want her to think that I was reconciling with her out of loneliness.


"You're here, aren't you?" I pointed out.


"Yeah," she sighed. "Sorry I haven't come by sooner. Caught up in all kinds of stuff."


"It has only been a couple days since I extended the invitation," I consoled. "I honestly expected it'd take a bit longer. Maybe we might get together for dinner this weekend. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're here. You don't have to feel bad about it." When did she go from blaming me for everything in her life to apologizing? "Now, tell me what happened?"


"Taylor broke up with me," she answered. Oh, that kind of problem. "No, that's not fair. We got into a fight over something she did. Then I did something worse. And I was the one who broke up with her. We both over reacted. I apologized the next day, and now she says she loves me, but can't trust me not to do that again. I have no idea what to do."


I hugged her. "I'm sorry," I said. "Relationships are hard to give good advice on." Made more difficult by the things you're not telling me, like what the fight was really about. "Lord knows I've proven I'm not very good at them. Are you still working together?"


"Yes," she answered.


"That's good," I tried to offer her a confident smile. "Having shared goals helps. You can keep working together, and that means you're still close. The same things that brought you together as a couple the first time can do it again."


She looked down. "I... don't think that's going to be possible. Taylor has... a lot of trust issues." Well, that's one thing I have in common with the girl. "In a way, it's amazing that she ever let me get close enough to hurt her in the first place. I doubt she'll ever make the mistake of trusting me like that a second time."


Mistake to trust her? "Amy, why-"


She kept speaking, interrupting my question. "Then we ran into her ex and he..."


Oh. Oh! This definitely isn't good. "Are you afraid they're going to get back together?"


"What? No!" Amy exclaimed. "He went full psycho. Kill order type stuff. Remember the E88 members we couldn't find? He had them chained in a makeshift prison."


I tensed, trying to force myself to not think about what happened to me so many years ago. It's in the past. They're dead. They can't hurt you anymore.


"Yeah, it's that bad," Amy confirmed. That's right, she is still in contact with me. Which means she can identify my emotions. She doesn't know why I feel so strongly. "Turns out, he has a power that lets him drain powers from other people. He was using them as batteries. He drained Victor so completely that he was pretty much a zombie. It was the stuff of fucking nightmares... I'm not even sure what part's got me most messed up right now."


What part? There's more than one? Christ. "What happened. Maybe it'll help to say it out loud."


"Part of it was how Victor and Othala were," Amy responded. "I could see how much she loved him... almost anyone could. Except Victor. He was so dead inside that he couldn't recognize who she was. Every part of their memories together are missing. It... no one should have to go through that."


I simply nodded. I didn't think much for the idea of feeling sorry for Nazis, but if there was ever time for an exception, it was now.


"Then there was Taylor..." Amy shuddered. "She acted almost like Victor did. Empty, nonresponsive. It's how her power works, when she lets it. She coordinates so many things all the time that sometimes she forgets to act like a person. Especially when she's upset. It's terrifying to see her like that, especially comparing it to him."


"That's creepy, but at least she was upset, right?" I asked. I'd run into enough power based oddities to not judge things like that. Especially when it comes to the ones with Thinker powers. "Not being good at showing your emotions isn't the same as not having them."


"No," Amy sighed. "That's just part of it. She tried to hide it from me, I think. When we had her ex in custody, there was a pretty good chance he could escape if something went wrong. He has a top tier power. Maybe not Triumvirate level, but pretty close. She brought some of our anti-Endbringer weapons to use if he managed to break free of the other restraints."


"That's pretty smart of her," I stated, but there was a sense of dread forming in my stomach.


"They're killing weapons only, Mom," Amy disclosed. "She was ready to kill him. Someone she used to love. And that's not even the worst part. The worst part is how she looked at him like she didn't even see him. The way Victor looked at Othala. The way Taylor looks at me, now."


I hugged her tight. I had no advice to give.

 

Amelia, Ch 155- Clotho


I woke to Lily kissing the back of my neck. "Mmm," I turned and smiled. "When did you get here?"


"I only live three doors away, you know," she laughed. That was true enough. Lily and I were trying very hard to not be 'uhaul lesbians'. Neither of us wanted to live in the base the way about half of Pantheon did, either. We didn't want that even before knowing that fucking Bonesaw lived there. I pushed that thought out of my mind; they were right, she was too damn useful to get rid of, no matter how much I hated to admit it. So, instead, we lived in the 'refugee apartments' near the northern edge. It was mostly empty, now, as people received their government aid money and houses were repaired or rebuilt. A virtual ghost town. If a building could be called that.


"You have a point," I admitted, turning toward my lover, then sitting up. I didn't bother covering myself. After all, nothing she hadn't seen before. "Give me a chance to shower and clean up before we start talking business."


"I'll join you, Lily offered, starting to shed her clothes. I didn't object.


....


"Are you sure about coming with?" she asked me, after we'd managed to get dressed. "You don't have to."


"Yeah," I confirmed. "I've been doing nothing but making costumes lately. Don't get me wrong, I love the job," except I really don't, but the money is amazing and I certainly don't hate it. "But I could use some more excitement, y'know. Chicago was such a rush. I'm looking forward to doing it again." Even if it puts me in the same team as her.


She shrugged. "Yeah, I'm feeling kinda restless, myself." I ignored everything she didn't say. I knew she left New York for a reason. It made sense that they have her lead our team for that mission, she knew the way things worked there. Now she was going back. To old friends and enemies. To those who might feel betrayed by her shift of allegiances. And of course the villains that were now our allies. I could imagine how uncomfortable that was even without thinking about what happened to New Delhi.


I should probably distract her from thinking about all that, I decided. I smiled in what I hoped was a seductive fashion. "Besides, you're going to be in charge this time. I can't wait to find out what orders you'll give me."


....


"First stop, Boston!" Lachesis announced, letting that team off. It included our heaviest and most versatile forces. The ones that were going to bring down the Butcher. I understood how important that was. We could crush the rest of the Teeth as many times as we wanted, it wouldn't make much difference if the leader still remained. Still, they were sending all our primary team leadership. They weren't exaggerating when they said Lily was going to be in charge of this, she and I were easily the eldest members, and I made it pretty clear that I didn't want to be in charge of anything.


They also weren't kidding when they said we needed help to make it work. The five of us were powerful, but we weren't unbeatable, and we were lacking in a few departments. Especially when it came to a city like New York, which had a massive number of people. It was like looking for a needle in a stack of needles.


I tried to avoid glancing at the girl beside me. The one that had spit acid in my face only a few months ago. Talking to her would achieve nothing, and she had the good sense not to try, preferring to spend her time with Lachesis and Horus. Instead of thinking about that too much, I concentrated on filling my suit with power. Not too much, I didn't want to waste the energy. Systems started lighting up as they were charged. The anti-materiel blaster was one of the team's favorite weapons. Capable of destroying almost any equipment, with no risk to anyone wearing that equipment. Every so often they'd ask me to demonstrate my power again, as they tried to invent a weapon that could imitate that effect.


What seemed like only a few footsteps later, we found ourselves at our destination. We shunted over, right into a cleared out area of Central Park. Right between the Adepts and the Protectorate. Three of each. I recognized Assault and Battery, but not the third guy. I didn't recognize either girl, or the guy from the Adepts. They didn't look terribly happy with each other. They didn't seem very happy to see us, either.


"Fancy seeing you here," a man's voice spoke from the Adepts' side of the line. Lily- Atropos, we're in costume now- turned toward him immediately, Azrael's wings fanned out and angled forward toward the speaker, in response to her body language. This is the combat stance. Coupling that suit with her power meant she could put twenty rounds a second through anything, natural or parahuman, with damn near perfect accuracy right now. This is why we keep Bonesaw alive, I realized.


"Shaman," a woman spoke, sounding less than pleased. "I suggest you shut up." She looked over to us. "Sorry about that, Pantheon."


Atropos laughed. "Don't worry about it," she insisted. "We have a... history together. So, 'Shaman', do your bosses know you named yourself after your favorite class from a tabletop RPG?"


"You bitch!" he muttered. Now that I had a chance to get a look- he wasn't that old. Probably younger than me. Maybe younger than Lily, though he was pretty tall. "But since we're on the subject of sharing personal information with strangers... here's some more: We dated for six months before she cheated on me."


I blinked. What?


"No. I dumped you and then started dating her," Lily argued back. "And you couldn't handle that, so you got her drunk and slept with her when she was too wasted to turn you down!"


"Guys!" Lachesis shouted. "This is not the time! We have more important shit to worry about. You can hash out your personal problems in private, later. I'm sure everyone here would rather work out how to deal with the Teeth."


There was a cough from the heroes' side, we all looked at the source: Assault. "I think I speak for anyone when I say that this is fascinating and I am perfectly okay with letting it c-ooof." He gripped his side where Battery elbowed him.


"You're right," Atropos said, presumably to Lachesis. "Sorry. Let's start with powersets. I already know the heroes. Shaman is a breaker that can imbue various objects with special properties. I trust he's picked up a few tricks since joining the Adepts?"


The woman nodded. "Bag of sawdust. Uses it to create shields by infusing the material and causing it to lock in place."


"I've seen him use that trick with dirt," Lily confirmed. "So what's your name and power?"


"Scry," she answered, then glanced at the others. "I'd rather not let my powers be known. I'm a thinker."


"You're amongst allies, here," Lily countered. "Need to know what you're capable of. Especially since you're the one we're relying on to give us much of our information, here. How you got it is important."


"Postcognition," she answered, after pausing for a minute. "I can look into a reflective surface and view anything it reflected for up to two weeks. Usually mirrors, but pools of water, tv screens, and windows will also work." That is kind of terrifying. "In addition, I can look into one mirror and see out of another in real time. It has a few limitations. I have to set the mirror in question, and can only keep one at a time. I've been tracking the teeth for a while. I want to see them dead. Promise me we're not going to hold back."


"Trust me, we're going all out for this one," Lily answered with an almost sadistic tone. "In fact, we're about to reveal one of our own secrets for this. You are listening in, right, Khepri?"


The voice rose up around us, a chorus of clicking and chirping to mimic human speech. "Loud and clear," it stated. I shuddered involuntarily. Giving away the fact that Khepri's range was capable of covering both Boston and New York simultaneously was a big fucking step, one of those things that potentially changes everything. I knew that, but all I could think about was how fucking creepy that disembodied voice was.


Scry cringed and Battery was scratching at her side. Almost everyone on both sides glanced around looking for the speaker. That's good, I thought. I'd feel like such a child if I was the only one freaked out by that trick of hers.


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


A/N- You can't prove any of this isn't true to canon!

And, yes, Shaman is the other Sting user. Shaker variant instead of Striker/pseudo-blaster.

 

Amelia, Ch 156- Zach


We had a few hotel rooms rented when we arrived in Boston, which we went to almost immediately after our meeting with the Protectorate and the Ambassadors. They'd coordinated everything with the Boston heroes and villains already, so there wasn't any real difficulty there. Simply the usual final agreements bullshit. I didn't pay much attention.


"So, what's the plan?" I asked, following Taylor into her suite. It really was a suite, too. Really fancy, two bedrooms and everything. Had to cost some good money to rent this thing, let alone three of them.


"You'd know if you put as much effort into paying attention as you did pretending to sleep during meetings," Taylor chided me. "Seriously, why do you do stuff like that? We all know you don't actually sleep, ever. You're fooling absolutely no one."


I smiled. "I wasn't pretending to sleep," I told her. "I was picturing that beautiful little love nest Amelia built for the two of you. Specifically, with the two of you already spending a romantic evening in it. Seems so sad that it's going to waste."


"You..." she paused. "Wait. Why are you in my room?"


"There were only three rooms rented. I got one, Crystal and Lisa got one, and everyone just assumed you and Amelia would get the other," I answered, flopping down on the couch. "I traded with her, so this is now our room for the night. Wow, this couch is insanely comfortable. You could make out for hours on this thing. Seriously, like world record snogging sessions could be achieved here. I'll get the camera and the stopwatch, you go get Amelia."


"Fuck me, why can't you people stay out of our business?" Taylor opted to sit in one of the chairs.


"I know it comes as a surprise to loner types like us," I said, stretching out across the luxurious piece of furniture. "But this is what having friends is like. It means you're never alone because there's always some asshole taking up space on your furniture and trying to help you get laid. Do you think the hotel will let me keep this baby? Or at least tell me where to find one of my own?"


"You remind me of someone I used to know," she said. "No, that's not a compliment. At least he had the good graces to at least not poke around in my business. In all seriousness, it's not your problem. It's not anyone's problem. Why can't you people mind your own business?"


"For real?" I asked.


"Yes, for real," Taylor insisted.


"Dunno why I'm about to tell you this... must be the couch..." I tilted my head back and sighed. "Fuck, grab your note pad and pen. This stays between us. I'm not scared of you like some other people are. I can and will make your life suck if you speak of this to anyone."


"Fine, complete confidentiality" she agreed. "Let's hear it. What gives you such a need to prod around in my life?"


I closed my eyes and compelled myself. "Her name was Erica," I started. "Six years older than me... beautiful, smart, friendly, nice to everyone... she was my sister's best friend. I don't remember a time from my childhood when I didn't know her. I loved her before I even understood what love was."


Taylor said nothing, so I continued. "Maybe I'm looking back through rose colored glasses. I dunno. She had her faults. Namely, men. She always had the worst imaginable luck with men. Starting with her sack of shit father, and that set the tone for everyone she ever dated." I started crying, though I was at an angle that kept Taylor from seeing my eyes. "The fuck nineteen and twenty year olds thought they were doing, dating a twelve year old, I don't even want to imagine."


"And her father?" Taylor asked, her voice radiating her anger.


"You mean, did he touch her? Like that?" I asked. "I don't know. I do know he hit her. And, no, there's nothing we can do about him... he didn't live through Leviathan. Neither did she."


"I'm sorry, I didn't think..."


"I do go out of my way to not let people know," I pointed out. "I can hardly blame people because I succeeded at it, right?"


"I guess..." she agreed reluctantly.


"All of that? That's the stuff I could probably live with," I continued. "I was just a child, y'know. For all my fantasies of rescuing her and running away? I know that would never have happened. What really eats at me. The part that I can't forgive myself for. I never even told her how I felt. Not once. Would things have been different if I had? If she felt the same way, it could have saved her from a lot of her god damn 'boyfriends', at least. If she'd just been with me when the Endbringer sirens went off, then she would probably still be alive today. That's the shit I could have done something about. If nothing else, at least she would have known someone cared about her. That's something she deserved, and I failed to give her."


"Wow," Taylor muttered. "I'm so sorry."


"Don't be," I insisted. "Sorry won't change a damn thing. It won't make me feel better, it won't help her at all. You want to prove this story means a damn thing to you? Then don't do what I did. You have a real chance to be happy right now. More importantly, you have a chance to make someone else happy. Take it, take it and don't you dare look back. Life's too short to do justify anything else. I don't care if you're immortal, life's still too short."


"You're right," she sighed. "You're absolutely right."


"Good," I said. "I'll go get the camera and the stopwatch. You get Amelia."


"No," she stood up. "Not tonight. We need to be up at like three in the morning. Amelia needs her sleep, and so do I. We can't afford to be anything but our best tomorrow, not against the Butcher. All the happy makeup sessions in the world won't make any fucking difference if we screw up and get ourselves dead the next day."


"I guess that's fair," I relented. "Promise me that you're serious, though. I mean right after. The rest of us take care of dropping off the captives and looking good for the press. Meanwhile, you and Amelia will run off to that grotto she made and be elbow deep in each others' pants."


"Know what?" Taylor smiled. "I'll do my absolute best to do exactly that."


"Good," I said. "And remember, it has to be the grotto. That's where I put all the hidden cameras."


Taylor shook her head slowly. "I'm going to bed. Try not to get dust all over the couch." She turned and walked to one of the bedrooms. I spent my time looking for something interesting on television.


....


Four in the morning is early for most people. It's even earlier for assholes who spend all night being psychopathic fucks. They likely didn't wake up early very often. I imagine they woke up hung over a lot. Some of them have probably woken up screaming before. I bet some of them had even done both at the same time. I really doubt any of them woke up covered in terrifying mutant bugs that inject a drug designed by the world's most powerful biotinker so that all it does is inflict pain. Today, they got to do all those things.


And I was happy to let them.


"She's been flushed out," Khepri announced over the com. "She'll be looking for us, do your thing."


"On it," I responded, trying to fly in a passable copy of Khepri's armor. I was doing a pretty poor job of it. Clearly not too awful, however, as evidenced by a spear impaling my gut. The world vanished for less than a blink of an eye, and I was restored to normal. The fake-Khepri outfit continued to fall. I teleported near Butcher, and she vanished. That we had expected. A quick activation of my suicide switch, and I had a fully charged suit once again.


"Fuck, she spotted me," I said over the com.


"Othello says she's in the building," Minerva announced. I had no idea who 'Othello' was. One of the other teams' capes, I guessed. "She's checking up on her people. She's very very pissed. She'll be back out in a moment."


"Left!" Khepri shouted, and I turned immediately. In time to catch another oversized crossbow bolt to the face.


I teleported behind her a heartbeat later. She spun and stabbed at me with another spearlike bolt. It appeared to be made of brick, somehow. I managed to touch her hand before she shoved the weapon into my stomach. I reappeared. A half second later, she also reappeared right beside me. Confused and nude. I had seen how she moved- there was no fucking way I could touch her if she didn't want me to. I'd have to make her touch me.


I said the first words that came to mind. "Nice tits."


She punched me in the face, letting me tag her again. She vanished, and I pulled her back. "No, seriously. Those can't be real." This time, she clotheslined my neck before vanishing. She didn't get far.


"Or is regeneration plus durability the parahuman wonderbra?" Butcher grabbed my mouth, lifted me off the ground and slammed my head into the roof hard enough to crack the tiles.


A second later, we had both resumed our prior positioning. "You really should trim, though," I taunted, and she broke my neck for it. She didn't even try to teleport away this time, opting instead to decapitate me with a sword she got from somewhere. "Need a machete to even find anything." A sideways slash that got both of my lungs. "Just because you're a deranged bitch." And that would be my heart. "Doesn't mean you can't take the time to shave." She kneed me hard in the crotch. I was glad that pain didn't carry over between restorations.


"What do I have to do to kill you!?" she shouted, finally getting frustrated.


"Well I dunno maybe you could bitch at me, how about that?" I suggested, at which point she attempted to use some power on me. I wasn't sure which one, it didn't work except to trip my restoration.


"Seems that's all you appear to be good for these days, huh?" Another power attack, apparently, made me respawn again. "Are you trying to use your bitch-fu on me?" I asked. She stomped into my shin, and would have shattered my leg if I didn't reform before the damage was much more than superficial.


"Bitcher, that's what they should call you," I continued my memorized rant. It was easier than being spontaneous, especially when every fucking thing she hit me with hurt like hell. Speaking of, she just kicked me in the head hard enough to crush my skull.


"Seriously, five ancient sages of bitch gathered atop the peaks of Mount Bitch to proclaim your birth," I kept going, and was rewarded with an elbow to the chest that sent me flying. I rematerialized almost twenty feet away from her. She was still tagged, however, so I just stood there. "And a hundred years later, when all the bitch stars had aligned," she teleported. I almost brought her back, when a fist punched through the back of my neck.


"You were born and made everyone's life around you a living hell," Wait... Did she just uppercut me in the ass?


"Because you are SUCH a BITCH!" She didn't attack, and I felt the teleport. I brought her back, and she vanished again, only a few feet away, however.


While I had been distracting her, Khepri's swarm had been gathering. Butcher's teleportation had limits. Mass distribution- if there was too much other stuff in in the way, she couldn't teleport into it. The sky had gone so dark that even the infravision setting on my armor couldn't see the sun.


"THERE IS NOWHERE FOR YOU TO RUN," the world around me announced. I mentally reassessed last night's claim that Taylor didn't scare me.


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


A/N- Wanna hear something REALLY depressing? "Based on a true story, used with permission."

Also. Zach gets a crowning moment of something, at least.


And THIS, ladies, gentlemen, and others... is the chapter that got me in trouble on SB. The one and only chapter that got me in trouble. Everything else was apparently cool. But this, alone, got me a one day mute.

Wanna take a stab at which line, specifically, it was?

 

Amelia, Ch 157- Lachesis


"Two day vacation, huh?" I smiled. Mom is going to flip her shit over this one.


"Yup," Clarice confirmed cheerfully. "Like Chicago, only without all the adult supervision. Too bad we're not going after the entire criminal underworld this time. That was so much fun "


"Only the worst of them," was my response. This really was exciting, and Clarice's energy was infectious, even if I knew she wasn't actually real. Riley was busy with other stuff. Like breaking the Taboo. Something that would likely take a lot of time. "So, how's Trevor doing?" I asked. In spite of him being a mole, he was one of the only people who actually took the time to try to get to know me in the Wards. Him and Weld. I worried about them both, sometimes.


"He's doing great," Clarice said happily. "Still playing with that wormhole. Says he has an idea for allowing us to use our powers across dimensions without needing an actual gate. It might be what we need to go after the real target." By which she means Scion's true body.


"So who's on our team?" I asked.


"Clotho, Theo, and Atropos gets to be in charge." she pouted. She still hadn't gotten over Lily getting to take that name, when she didn't get to give it to Bella. I smiled, it really was easy to forget how young she was sometimes. "They think she's best to put in charge because she was a Ward in New York and knows the landscape better."


"Makes sense," I stated. "Probably need the senior members to deal with Butcher directly. And of course they'd want to keep me, you, and Theo on the same team since we rock the house every time we're together." I, on the other, was more worried about Lily's lack of professionalism. She reacted far too much on really dumb impulses without stopping to actually figure out the situation. There is a reason she was never put in charge of the wards despite the PRT's stupid seniority system, oh brilliant leaders.


She brightened up. "Okay, that's going to be fun, at least."


....


Hopefully Khepri's display would distract everyone from Atropos', I thought. I felt more than a little humiliated that I had to look the leaders of two separate professional teams in the eyes and admit 'yes, she is our team leader'. Maybe next time they'll just put me in charge.


"Aren't you suppose to be in Boston?" Battery asked the swarm. Smart, I thought approvingly. She was trying to discern the limits of Taylor's power. No doubt there's already a pre-approved kill order waiting for a moment like 'interstate range'. If only they knew.


"We confiscated a piece of tinker tech recently," Khepri answered. "Some sort of portable wormhole that powers can travel through. I'm carrying one, Aceso's carrying the other. Functionally, it means I have my range around her as well as where I'm at. Minus a few feet."


"I see," acknowledged Adamant, the leader of the Protectorate at this location. His powerset was mostly defensive. Lowest grade brute, plus immunity to all powers. Literally any kind of power stops where he starts. Mind control, precognition, lasers, forcefields, invulnerability, super strength, none of it worked on him. Unfortunately for him and others, that didn't include bullet fire. Or Endbringers, apparently. I wasn't sure how it would apply to my powers, or Clarice's abilities, or an 'absolute' power like Atropos or Clockblocker... but none of that was likely to come up on this job.


"We're hoping to find a way to maintain the device," Khepri continued explaining to Adamant. "But it's Leet's tech, so it's anyone's guess whether we'll ever be able to fix it when it breaks. May as well take advantage of it while it still works."


Then there was the last of the Adepts. I was disappointed, but not surprised, that Atropos didn't bother to ask her what her power was. Instead, I texted the question to Riley. She spoke via the com to all of us. "The last Adept is called Alchemy. Breaker/shaker. Anything she touches can be attuned to her, so all attacks directed at her transfer harm that object instead. She's close to indestructible thanks to this, and she can extend that durability to objects she holds. One of the survivors at New Delhi."


I saw Atropos tense, as did Clotho. She sent the information to them as well, but they're not too happy with the idea of Riley being the one that sent the information.


"Thanks for the info," Khepri said over the coms. "Horus... talk with Alchemy, maybe your powers will interact. Aceso, I want you with the Adepts as well. The rest of you go with the Protectorate. How Lachesis and Adamant interact, power wise, needs to be tested in detail before we go to battle."


They're breaking me away from the rest of my team? Fuck. I knew the reason was sound, but still... fuck.


"So what's the strategy?" Scry asked, once she had recovered from the creepy swarm voice that still caused me to shiver, despite all the times I had dealt with Taylor. I had nightmares from the times I'd fought her as Skitter.


....


The plan, it turns out, was 'the bugs go in first'. The new pepper flies. Basically just large houseflies that detonate into a cloud of capsaicin- or some tinker built chemical that did the same thing, only better. One was guaranteed to clear a room in a matter of seconds. We had about ten thousand of them. There couldn't have been so many that it was any kind of necessary, but that's what we did. I was more than a little disappointed, honestly. Why even show up if we were just going to watch Taylor and Amelia play with our toys?


I watched the bedlam through my people-sense, as they ran for cover that wouldn't be available, or tried to work their way to an exit while blinded and struggling with other blinded and desperate people. Okay, I had to admit, this is kinda fun. Then a cloud of light purple smoke. billowed out of one of their buildings.


"That's Haze," Clarice announced over the coms. "Stay above the cloud at any cost." I recalled back to our briefing. Haze's power is illusionary, not chemical. He can pick who's influenced and how, and physical barriers mean nothing.


I gave the tug, and Calysta leapt into the air, folding her wings in to maximize the antigravity. It was one hell of a weird feeling, falling upward, but we had practiced with it a lot. Theo's power rippled into existence, coating the two of us and our Pegasus in indestructible metal.


All of us took to the air with our respective abilities, except Adamant, who was immune to powers- including, presumably, Haze's. And Clarice, who was of course not an actual person to begin with.


A yellowish gunk splashed against our metal shield, and quickly slid off. More shots fired upward, forcing others to avoid the attack. Shaman extended his hand casually, and the goo targeting him dissolved into nothing. "That's Plague," he announced. "Do not let that stuff touch you, it's lethal if you're lucky."


Another from the briefing, his power ranged from Crawler-type-acid to 'cancer of the everywhere' to fast acting ebola. The one saving grace was none of his afflictions were contagious, but Shaman wasn't exaggerating. Death was what happened to the fortunate. We were pretty sure our armor systems could counter the stuff, but there was no reason to tempt fate.


"Khepri, can you guide my aim?" I asked. There was no answer. "Khepri's not responding," I announced to the group. "We're on our own, here."


Another burst of acid traveled up. Atropos dived in front of it, protecting Clotho. Her power destroyed the goo. Several more bursts traveled upward, but we all had our defenses in place. Unfortunately, we were only able to defend. Especially since we couldn't risk being inside that cloud.


I was watching the ground with my power, pulling and pushing in minor fluctuations that allowed me to locate the likely source of the attacks. Setting Singularity to its lowest attack state, I fired straight at the target. Direct hit in the gut. I... may have used my power to cheat a little, making my attack the equivalent of a point blank shot. He doubled over, in what I hoped was a lot of pain. I found myself wishing I could have used 'stage three' on that sadistic bastard.


"Plague is down," I announced. "I'm watching to make sure he doesn't get back up." I hesitated, I'm not in charge here. "Atropos?"


"What?" the older girl asked, and I felt the need to either facepalm or slap her.


"You're in charge, what are the orders?"


She hesitated. "Can you clear that fog away with your power?" she asked.


"No," I answered, ignoring the desire to point out that if I could, I already would have. "It's not really there. A function of the power. I can't bend it any more than I can bend Khepri's control radius."


"I can move in," Adamant volunteered. "All I have to do is find Haze and I can take him out."


"Okay," Atropos readily agreed. "Go with that."


I activated the private com line to Riley. "Send Aceso in with him," I instructed my friend. "He's not strong enough to go in there alone, immunity to powers be damned. Don't tell Atropos about this."


"Understood," Riley agreed. I was a little more at ease, now. She was younger than me, if only by a year and a half. She also had at least that year and a half more combat experience than I did. I could trust her to handle her own.


I felt the distortion right before a shriek came from Clotho. A six armed monster had appeared in front of her and tried to claw her with some wicked looking serrated talons. It didn't work, fortunately. Tapestry was almost as indestructible as Singularity. We could trade punches with Endbringers without much problem, so chances were pretty good there wasn't a physical attack on the planet that could hurt either of us. The monster vanished only moments later, leaving a very startled, but unharmed, Clotho.


"The fuck was that?" Atropos asked.


"Don't know, not in the briefing," I responded. I sent a video over to Riley, along with another private message. "Any clues?"


"Don't recognize it," Riley answered. "Moves like it's real, so most likely a Case 53 or shapeshifter, possibly some kind of construct. Almost certainly not an illusion or projection. I'm running it through the database. Clearly has brute and mover powers, recommend you step up to stage two."


There was a thud against Horus' defensive shell. The spider monster had attacked us, but failed miserably. It vanished.


"Oh no..." Riley muttered from the private channel neither of us had switched away from. Clarice's voice went over the standard com. "Haze isn't an illusionist!" she announced. "He's a reality changer, like Labyrinth! Everyone fall back! Retreat!"


I was about to command Calysta to move when I felt a sudden sharp pain in my chest. I looked down, and could see the blood pouring out of me, out of the destroyed portions of both Theo's power and my own armor. Huh, I didn't-

 

Amelia, Ch 158- Taylor


The Butcher was surrounded by enough insects that there literally was nowhere for her to move, beyond a small bubble of space in the middle. I idly wondered if she still needed oxygen, because there simply wasn't a lot of air. If these were natural insects, they would all be dying en mass right now. And, in fact, most of them were dying, only to be held in place by the antigravity latticework put together by Chariot and Emma. Who'd have though Emma, of all people, would be one of my best allies? I smiled grimly. Fucking Tinkers.


"You can't beat me with bugs," Butcher growled at me.


"LET'S TEST THAT, SHALL WE?" was my response. A dozen shock-beetles flew in at her, along with over a thousand other similarly sized cockroaches. Who were amongst the few bugs that could survive the rapidly depleting oxygen levels. She slashed the shock-beetles out of the air with a sword made from concrete and ignored the roaches entirely. So, her combat sense is effective enough to identify which bugs are a threat, and which are not. That makes this harder.


Some of the modified hummingbird moths charged in next. They couldn't last long, but they didn't need to. Another slash, and they were destroyed. But her blade was now melting. She tossed it aside before it could reach her hand. Then bolted straight into the mass of bugs.


She didn't dive into any of the deadly ones. That would be too much to hope for. I covered her body with biting, stinging creatures in masses dense enough that they could have chewed their way through a normal human body in minutes at most. Butcher wasn't most bodies, however. Too durable for the bugs to cut through anything. I tried the eyes, next, but she was fighting with them closed. Not that surprising, it was too dark for her to see in there, anyway.


She teleported. It was less than a foot, but it was enough for every insect near her to be consumed in the explosive firestorm her power left behind. God dammit, I thought I had that covered. I rapidly plugged the holes left by her movement, no sense in giving her a chance to teleport back to the spot she just came from. I couldn't stop her, but I could make her work for it.


She coughed, now that she was free of attacking bugs. Good, the air quality is poor enough to make it a problem for her.


The bugs converged again. This time, I wasn't as interested in going for the obvious weak points. These bugs swarmed into her mouth and nose, trying to fight their way down her throat. She clamped her mouth shut and started chewing the insects, crushing and grinding them with her teeth and tongue. There was not a moment of hesitation in her actions. She bolted again, then teleported back to her starting point. I just couldn't flood the area with bugs fast enough to block her return effect.


Zach was moving to get in close, and I provided the swarm of bugs needed to keep him cloaked on his way closer to the madwoman.


She dropped and pulled a makeshift spear out of the roof, throwing it toward the boy with perfect accuracy to strike his heart. "Bugs don't block her ability to sense blood and veins," I noted aloud to the team, through their armor. It wasn't something we had expected to work, which was why we were using Osiris to test the chance. "We can't use them for striking cover."


"Fuck," Minerva muttered.


"Doesn't matter," I responded. "I'm wearing her down fast. I might not need help."


"You'll need help," Minerva insisted. "You might be able to tire her out, but there's no way in hell you can take her down without killing her."


"You're right," I agreed. "But the more I can soften her up, the better off we are." I drew almost all the shock beetles and had them dive in to form a bubble around her. They activated their power surge a half second before converging on her body. Not quite as good as having them make contact, but at least this way they actually did something before they died.


She stumbled, heat and smoke pouring off her body from the rough equivalent of getting struck by lightning twice. I pressed the swarm in, trusting that her body could withstand the initial blow without killing her or even disabling her. I was not disappointed.


"Got a plan," Emma stated. "Gaea, I need you to make more of the shock beetles, but with only a hundredth of the electrical power."


"I can do that," Gaea agreed. I let myself indulge in the music of her voice for a second. "It'll take a few minutes."


"Still got her on the ropes," I reminded. "I can keep her there, but don't stop feeding more reinforcements, we've already killed half the usable insects in Boston here." It was true, too. She couldn't fight me, but this was becoming a war of attrition. Between her durability and her regeneration, she would win that war.


She had another idea however, manifesting a throwing knife of stone, she launched it at absurd speeds, where it flew out of my bug cloud and kept traveling, impaling a pedestrian that had come out to gawk at the spectacle.


"See that?" she gasped, fighting for the limited supply of oxygen that my bugs were consuming far faster than she could. "I can keep doing that. How many lives am I worth to you, hero?"


I hesitated for all of a heartbeat. However many are necessary. "WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I'M A HERO?" My swarm asked, as another stream of acid moths dived toward the unarmed Butcher. One even managed to clip her arm before she teleported, annihilating the rest. She didn't seem as bothered as I would have expected, frankly. Oh, right, one of her powers is supposedly an inability to experience pain. I wondered if that was a real power, or merely a side effect of her insanity.


I didn't have any actual eyes on the scene, and the junk bugs were dying quickly, so I could only make approximate guesses at Butcher's condition as she continued to fight. She was slowing down, but even still she was faster and stronger than any normal person. With her various regeneration powers and the precognition, and my bug cloud being held together by antigravity instead of their own power anymore... I had another minute or two before she worked free.


"Got the new bugs," Gaea announced. I almost sighed with relief.


"Eki, I need you to shunt in next to Osiris," Emma instructed. "T- Khepri, when they shunt through, cover her in them. Don't activate them, they should slip under her danger sense. For a little while, at least."


They appeared a few seconds later. Good, they don't rely upon oxygen, I noted. That makes this easier. They were tiny, this new batch. Mosquito sized. Butcher really didn't notice them as they found purchases in her singed hair and across a body that was charred and crisped in several areas. How is she still standing?


Eki appeared in my full awareness, as opposed to the somewhat dimmer perception across the dimensional barrier.


"Ready?" Emma asked.


"Ready," I answered.


"Taylor, I need you to take control of Eki's suit. The weapon's already ready. Fire a half second after you discharge the smaller flies, got it?" Emma asked.


"Understood," I answered, and followed the instructions.


Butcher, of course, teleported the moment before Eki's weapon fired, but the lightning arced and struck her anyway. Burning its way through a good portion of my insect cloud. For a moment, it must have looked like one of those plasma globes as the electricity discharged itself across my swarm.


She collapsed to the ground, her body battered to the point of uselessness. For a second, I wondered if we might have accidentally killed her, thus passing on that curse to me or Eki. That could have been disastrous. But then the psychopath managed to force herself to her feet. Right arm hanging limp and useless, and the rest of her so damaged that it was hard to imagine she wasn't some kind of zombie. She teleported in a burst of flame.


Only to reappear right next to Osiris, who instantly disintegrated and Eki, who started screaming in blood curdling agony. She dropped to her knees, gripping her hand around her lightning weapon. Eki struggled to catch her breath as Osiris disintegrated again in response to getting too close to the madwoman. Eki roared in inarticulate rage as she brought her weapon up and fired it directly into Butcher's gut. The psychopath gripped Eki's arm with her one good hand, holding the the energy weapon against herself. A third shot went off, and Butcher's hair caught fire from the released heat from the electricity.


"Fuck!" Minerva shouted. "Butcher's given up! She's trying to escape by forcing Eki to kill her!"

 

159- Horus


"Haze isn't an illusionist!" Clarice shouted over the com. "He's a reality changer, like Labyrinth! Everyone fall back! Retreat!"


Moments later, I felt a sudden sharp pain in my side. I tried to cry out, but the pain and shock had taken my breath away. Then Missy slumped forward. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. I gripped Calysta's reins with the arm that wasn't holding Missy. I forced my power tight around the injury in my side, trying to staunch the blood flow. "Aceso," I managed to gasp. "Lachesis is unconscious."


I brought Calysta up and back, landing her on a rooftop a couple blocks from the mission location. Atropos and Clotho followed, with Shaman trailing behind. I could feel my armor working itself into my wound, both back and front. It was patching itself in, relieving pain and providing for my biological needs as best it could understand. Injecting what passed for its blood into my bloodstream. Missy's armor would be doing the same, but it her case it would do more harm than good.


A series of explosions sounded in the purple fog, detected and amplified by my suit's systems. It was dimmer than the usual perfect clarity it typically grants. Whether that was because the suit was putting too much of its effort into keeping me functional, or because I was injured enough to lose hearing, I didn't know.


I laid Missy flat on the roof. "I'm going to stabilize her and then shunt her over," I insisted. "This is really bad." I called upon the memories that had been installed thanks to the memory tech. Six years of medical college from Rey, plus a few updates provided by Riley and Emma. Tinker knowledge didn't translate, unfortunately, but I had first rate skills and then some. Who gives a fuck if I didn't earn them?


"Not from a rooftop," Riley insisted. "You know the shunts are geoanalogous."


"Just... just buy time in there for us, okay? I don't want them attacking us while I'm working on her."


Atropos landed first. "Is she okay?"


"Cut open her armor," I instructed, speaking slowly so as to not strain my own injury. "Neck to crotch."


Atropos didn't argue, slipping a clawed finger into the armor and splitting the high durability living armor like it was gossamer. Deep red fluid sloshed out in a way that would make you think the armor itself was bleeding. Too much blood, my unfamiliar knowledge told me. I tore open her shirt before thinking about it.


The human male part of my brain apparently spent too much time around Zach, because I couldn't help but think that I was now looking at my girlfriend topless. Unfamiliar programmed instincts screamed at me that I didn't have gloves. Not things I care about right now, I instructed my mind, but that was probably my own shock and blood loss speaking. Alongside the certainty that she was far beyond my ability to help.


"The fuck happened?" Shaman asked, after he landed. "Holy shit!"


"Not your business," Atropos told him, still staring at Missy.


"The fuck were you thinking!?" he continued, yelling at her. "You knew they had an illusionist and you fired a lethal attack!"


"It wasn't my fault!" Atropos yelled at him. Meanwhile, another series of explosions went off in the clouds.


"Nothing ever is, is it?" Shaman retorted.


"Will you two just shut up and fuck already!" I screamed at them. They looked at me, and a small part of my mind once again confirmed that I spent too much time around Zach. Another small part of me was terrified. A good amount was in pain. The overwhelming majority, however, was pissed. "We're in a god damn war zone right now, and you two are arguing while one of our own is dying in front of you! Learn some fucking priorities!"


None of them spoke up. "Clotho," I instructed, as I started to push Missy's armor back together. It needed to seal so the shunt would work on her. "You're the most vulnerable of us. Take Lachesis and shunt her. We'll coordinate from there. Then you're to go support Battery's team at the other location." Missy got shot because your girlfriend was too busy looking after you to think about the team, I added mentally. That won't happen again.


"Isn't that dangerous in her..." Clotho started.


"At this point, it doesn't matter," I interrupted. "She'll die before we get her anywhere, and the only place with facilities that can help is on the other side of our teleportation. Take her and go." A few lies, there. We didn't want Shaman to know about our side dimension. And I didn't want to tell anyone, even myself, that Missy had already died. That shot pierced her heart.


Atropos spoke up. "You don't get to make that call," she insisted. "You're sending her to..." she paused, glancing toward Shaman. Bonesaw, that's the name you can't say.


"The fuck I don't," I started coughing, and felt the metallic tasting fluids coming up. Blood, I realized. Must have pierced my lung. Fuck it, I only need one of them. "Someone needs to take command here. You have a problem with that, take it up with Khepri and Gaea when we get back. Our suits have recordings for a reason, I'm sure they'll be fair in their evaluation. Of both of us."


"It... it's fine," Clotho said timidly, her ribbons moving to wrap around Missy gently and firmly. She has the same medical 'training' as I do. She'll handle everything with proper professional care. "Saving her takes priority. I'll be back soon." At least one other person here is competent.


There was another explosion in the mist.


"Fuck!" Riley shouted. Wow, first time she's ever sworn. Now is not the time to focus on that. I had to wonder about how much my mind was wandering. Probably a function of the anesthetics the armor uses. "Lost Clarice. Sorry I couldn't buy you more time."


"Aceso's down," I wheezed. Talking so much with only one lung sucks. "Clotho, go. We'll take care of ourselves."


She hovered slightly and then vanished over to the other side. Smart choice, establishing flight before teleporting.


I forced myself to stand, using my armor to do much of the work. It was laborious to work my way back onto Calysta, despite the antigrav built into my armor, and my metal shaping to help me. "Okay, now we're going back in."


"What for?" Shaman asked.


"Rescue operation," I said grimly. "This mission's fucked already, but I'm not about to lose someone." Else.


"You're going in there for Aceso?" Atropos asked incredulously, which of course earned a look from Shaman.


"Don't forget Adamant," I reminded her. "Aceso can take care of herself, but he's barely more than baseline human."


"Once we're in there, we won't be able to trust anything we see," Shaman pointed out.


"I know," I agreed. "That's why we make a plan now. We know Adamant's power will cancel any of ours. Pretty simple to verify that it's him, that way, just have anyone claiming to be him touch your armor, and see if they lose a hand. Whoever finds Adamant is responsible for escaping with. Once they're out, our... mission control... will activate the emergency shunt and bring the rest of us to our home base. There is exactly zero other goals.


"You're going to show him our..." Atropos hissed. "You can't trust him with that."


"Oh, sure, the cheat says I'm the one who can't be trusted," he scoffed.


Can't believe I'm thinking this, but I wish Zach was here. "Horus to Clotho," I said over our com. "Tell our mission control to contact me."


"Uh... mission control?" she asked.


"Yeah," I insisted. "She should be the only other person except Lachesis there with you right now."


"Oh, right," she agreed. "I'll let her know."


A few seconds later, Riley's voice spoke into the coms. "Kinda busy, what do you need?"


"Turn on Shaman and Atropos' lie detection systems for me," I requested. Why they didn't already have them active, I thought. Know what? Don't care.


"Done," she answered.


"There," I said. "Now, Atropos, did you cheat on him?"


"No," she answered, her voice hard.


"That's a start," I sighed.


"He still got my girlfriend drunk to sleep with her," she continued.


"No I didn't!" he insisted. "Yeah, I slept with her. A bunch of times, actually, but she was sober! Most of the time, at least."


"Then why did..." Atropos started.


"Doesn't matter," I interrupted. "You guys can go find your mutual ex and have a heart to heart when people aren't trying to fucking murder us all."


"Fine, whatever," Shaman agreed. "Now what?"


"We split up and follow different paths. Keep your powers active, trust no one and nothing you see. Don't use any ranged attacks. We're immune to almost anything that matters, and we're no longer trying to win this battle. Just find our ally, cut our losses, and hope the other teams succeeded where we failed. No other goals. And remember that Clarice got out already. You see her, it's a fake." I struggled to get a deep breath. Who'd have thought running on one lung was such a pain in the ass. "If we see each other, we don't bother speaking. That's our code: there is no code. If the other talks, we know it's a fake. But don't attack... just ignore it and go back to the search. Com silence as well, we can't trust what we hear over it."


....


I was glad to have Calysta. I was glad to have a mission. I kept thinking about Missy. Sure, she had the memory scan... but was that still her? Or just a really convincing copy? Would I be able to tell the difference? Would I care? It would be easier if Riley could save her. No hard questions.


"H-help," a voice croaked. I turned my head. Clarice? No, that doesn't make sense. But there she was, partially trapped under some rubble. "Horus, I'm so happy to see you!" she smiled, and tears ran across her beautiful face. "Please, help me. It hurts." I felt a pang of sympathy and a desire to protect her. She's one of my friends, the one who introduced me to Missy. I owe her so much.


I knew it was a fake. I knew it was a fake for a bunch of reasons. Clarice is a remote control doll for Riley, who was safe. Clarice is designed to shunt over if damaged. If that fails, she self destructs entirely to prevent anyone from reverse engineering the tech inside her. Clarice doesn't have tear ducts. Clarice can't feel pain.


Despite that, I moved toward her. "How can I know it's you?" I asked.


"I don't know," she admitted, her voice going soft and timid. I wanted to hug and comfort her so much it hurt. "My armor's damaged, the com broke. I can tell you something only people you trust would know. Like your name?"


She knows my name, that makes sense, I decided. And she speaks it beautifully. "Okay, that's a start," I agreed. I approached her. My armor flashed its lie detection warnings. Lying about what? I paused again. Life signatures. Not injured. Definitely not a humanoid shaped cybernetic pseudo fungus. "You're not hurt, and you're not Clarice," I stated.


She blinked. "Well, nevermind then," she sighed, extracting her leg from the rubble and climbing to her feet. "Don't know how you're so resistant. I'm not picking up any power interference. Doesn't really matter, though. You may know I'm not 'Clarice', but my power works on the subliminal. You still believe I'm her, despite your awareness. You can't hurt me, and you will trust me. Now would you mind letting down your armor so I can climb onto the horse?"


She's right, I realized with a slowly dawning horror. I know better, and it doesn't make a difference. She approached the side of Calysta, walking seductively. I wanted her body against mine. No, that's not true. Yes, I think Clarice looks attractive, it's hard not to considering she was built like that on purpose. But this is artificial. As I was fighting my warring emotions, I caught sight of the knife she wielded. Fuck, I know it's going to happen and I can't change it. Except... "I know something you don't know," I stated.


"Do tell," she said with a confident smile.


I answered with two metal spears, formed from my armor on the side of Calysta's body. They lanced out at her, spearing in the left shin and right kneecap. She dropped screaming, and the spell was more or less broken. Must be one of the ones that require concentration. "Something like that wouldn't have hurt Clarice," I informed her as I quickly retreated from the fake that I didn't believe was a fake, forcefully crushing the emotions she played on. I love Missy, I was forced to remind myself. Not Clarice. It helped that I knew Clarice was really Riley's automoton, and I didn't feel that way toward Riley. Knowing didn't stop me from crying at the loss.


As it turns out, I probably could have spared myself the trouble of looking. It was Shaman who found and escaped with Adamant. A fact I only discovered after being shunted, painfully, into our alternate world. I gasped in agony from the sudden distortion of momentum as I was brought across the dimensional barrier.


"We got everyone out," Riley announced, and I was glad for that. "And I've managed to stabilize Missy." I smiled, but my heart wasn't in it.


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


A/N- Ah, one of the chapters I kinda wished I could have ended on a cliffhanger right around the point where she pulled the knife. Que Sera, Sera.

 

Another Canon omake by Slayer Anderson:

Heartbroken:
*~*~*~*
​

Rebecca, Rapture, sighed wearily.

It had been a difficult month, to put things simply.

It had also been a busy few months. She'd been primarily occupied with the numerous children Heartbreaker had spawned through his numerous unions, rapes, with his enslaved 'wives.' She'd had her work cut out for her as one of the few qualified capes able to counsel, console, and untangle the various psyches involved. One of the few blessings that could be salvaged from the utter disaster that was the Simurgh's death throes was that there was, for once, enough psychiatric personnel in the Protectorate's employ to spare a few for extraneous operations like seeing to the needs of dozens of mentally and emotionally damaged individuals.

She was particularly thankful for the loan of a gifted psychologist, Yamada-something, that had spent the last week relieving her of a few of her more...problematic cases.

“Rapture? You still with us?” Narwhal probed.

“Yes, just...what was the topic again?” Rebecca asked, taking another deep pull from her coffee mug.
Narwhal gave her a look, the likes of which she could read even without her power helping. “You need sleep, Rapture. Don't make me ask Defiant to slip you decaf again.”

Rebecca scowled.

“I'm fine,” she replied, with what she knew a half-second later was unnecessary harshness. Sighing again, she palmed her eyes tiredly. “Okay, I'm not fine. I'll head to bed after this meeting, I promise, I just...”

Narwhal cocked her head, worried, “...you just?”

Rapture shook her head. “It's...personal. Something I don't like to talk about.”

Narwhal, though she looked somewhat more worried than before, nodded. “As long as you're talking to someone about it. That's what the other shrinks say, right? You need to talk to someone, don't keep it bottled up.”

“Yeah,” Rapture agreed faintly. “That's what they say...and, well, I'm calling Yum Kaax almost nightly now.” It felt good to be that honest with someone who was rapidly becoming one of the few she'd call 'friends.' Rey, of course, was topping that list rather quickly himself. Although their long-distance relationship was far from ideal, it did allow both of them to take it slowly and give them the space they'd become accustomed to in their single lives.

Honestly, she was a bit glad for that space these days. Dealing with the mess Heartbreaker had left behind had hit her unexpectedly hard, reminding her of the 'bad old days' when she'd just gotten her powers and when she'd had to reverse a lot of the damage she'd caused after joining Haven. Her temper had frayed especially with one child whose power was somehow interfering with her own, making him difficult to read. It was like his body was saying one thing and he was thinking another...perhaps he had some undocumented Stranger power?

“Good,” Narwhal smiled, inadvertently breaking her musings, then paused.

Rapture knew the question before it was asked, but tolerated it all the same.

“...so, is it true what they're saying about Pantheon and Chicago?” She finally queried.

“I honestly couldn't say, but I think it's likely enough,” Rapture replied. “After all, Chicago was that hardest hit by New Dehli.”

“I suppose,” Narwhal sighed. “It's just difficult to accept that the Protectorate might be ceding control of a city like this, even as hard-pressed and short-handed as they are.”

“Pantheon is competent enough,” Rapture assured her fellow hero, despite the other thoughts she might have on the subject. Sure, Pantheon was competent, but they also had their fair share of skeletons in the closet, and far more than their share of emotional, social, mental issues to go around. In short, they were dangerous, but appeared to have cobbled together enough of a semblance of order to aim their various disorders at the far more dangerous and vile members of society.

Only time would tell if the cure would prove worse than the disease.

“So, how is progress?”

It was some Canadian official speaking, someone suitably high-profile who'd co-opted praise for 'Breaking Heartbreaker' that he'd managed to land himself nominally 'in charge' of the efforts to actually save the people they'd physically and mentally removed from Heartbreaker's influence. She never actually managed to summon up enough desire to remember the bootlicker's name, but it started with 'T'-something, she was sure.

“Well enough,” Rapture began. “I think we're past the 'attempted suicide' phase that several of Niko's 'wives' went through once his control over them was gone. A few of them never even got that far and slipped into non-responsive coma-like states where they can only rock themselves and cry.” Which he would have known had he actually read the reports, given what her power told her. “Normally, I'd recommend remanding them to the custody of a psychiatric facility, save for the fact that most of these women have parahuman abilities which could cause significant damage if they managed to escape...or be removed by a third party, which is actually the greater concern in this case.”

The annoying man made affirmative sounds in all the right places, a habit born of long practice.

“The wives who are actually in something resembling a normative mental state are a mixed bag,” Rapture continued, more for the other attendee's benefit than their 'government oversight.' “The ones who are responsive and can handle it, mostly those without powers, I'd recommend sending home to be with their families, this would likely speed their mental and emotional recovery.”

Another pause. Dragon's avatar nodded, probably making notes on whatever computer she was situated behind. Defiant, the woman's significant other, was not present, but likely listening in through the comms. The rest of the Guild were there in some capacity, looking grim over the overall assessment of what the press had dubbed 'The Heartbroken.' A few of the psychiatrists and psychologists were in attendance too, though she'd likely be the only one speaking today. Even Yamada was there, when rightfully she probably should have been using the meeting as cover to get some sleep, especially since her presence wasn't necessary. Hopefully, they could exchange notes on that one specific 'problem case' after things wound down, Yamada should have had a recent session with him.

Coughing once to buy a second to order her thoughts, Rapture shuffled a few papers in front of her. “The parahumans who are...operable, are of course a different matter. Many of them have expressed desires ranging from returning to whatever life they had before Niko Vasil, to joining up with the Guild, the Protectorate, Haven, or other independent hero organizations.”

Notably, she didn't name Pantheon, but she didn't have to.

It wasn't one of the options many were trying for, but a few of The Heartbroken had expressed interest in Pantheon, if only because they had co-developed the 'cure' for Master-class parahumans with Haven.
Another pause, this one somewhat longer.

“As for the children...” Rapture trailed off. “I have no idea.”

There was silence for a moment as that sank in. Dragon cleared her throat.

“If you could elaborate, Rapture?”

Rebecca sighed, dropping her head into her hands to emphasize her helplessness on this cause. “None of them will likely ever lead normal live. They are, to a lesser or greater extent, functional sociopaths on top of being predominantly parahumans. Precious few of them have a mother in Heartbreaker's harem who is willing and able, both, to care for them. Likely, they'll all be remanded as wards of the state, the problem being...”

“...the state doesn't have the resources, wherewithall, or specialized skills to adequately deal with children this disturbed who have super powers...in these numbers, at least.” T-something finished, surprising several of the heroes at the table by actually contributing usefully to the discussion for once.
“So, suggestions?” He continued, rubbing at his face tiredly. “Is the Guild willing to accept any of the Heartbroken on a more permanent basis? The children or the women?”

“Regrettably, we don't have the resources either,” Dragon replied. “Personally, I think the best option would be to consult with the Protectorate. They have several Wards teams which could serve as the closest thing to normative socializing these children could have, all the while placing them under the supervision of the more senior members of the Protectorate.”

“Allowing this many Canadian nationals to join the Protectorate or Wards,” the official took a deep breath, “is tantamount to admitting Canada can't look after it's own. I can only imagine the field day the press would have if we simply turned over that many children to the Wards without so much as trying for an alternate solution. Then there's the recent PR nightmare concerning that Ward...what was her name? Shadow Stalker? The case could be made that the Wards aren't a suitable environment at all for these children and I really don't want to have to explain to the PM why we're looking at a civil suit from the Youth Guard; overall, it would be a massive headache.”

“What about Haven...or Pantheon?”

All heads swiveled towards Mrs. Jessica Yamada as the discussion paused for a long moment.

The Canadian official looked towards Rapture, “That is a thought...would Haven be able to accommodate even a few of the Heartbroken children?”

Rapture sighed, her eyes turning heaven-ward for a time. “I...can't say. Theoretically, yes, but it's not my call to make. I'll have to contact Halo and see what he says, at the very least, before committing to anything.”

“And Pantheon?” The official pressed. “I understand you've worked with them before?”

Rapture allowed herself a brief moment to ponder the thought of handing over even one of the most unstable children she'd ever met to Pantheon. Idly, she wondered if the ensuing visions of destruction and fire were God's way of telling her this was a 'bad idea.' She moved to speak, but Yamada was already talking.

“Even while she was nominally a 'villain,' Skitter provided food and shelter for a number of orphaned children from Leviathan, which more than demonstrates their ability to care for traumatized children. Also, some members of Pantheon have experience with the Heartbroken.” Jessica Yamada continued.

The government man perked up at this, shuffling through several reams of paper. “Really? I hadn't seen anything about that...wait, there was the girl, Cherie...ah, Cherish, who was a member of the Slaughterhouse before Pantheon removed them. Is that really applicable?”

Yamada's eyebrows creased and, distantly, Rapture felt the voice of her instincts, not her power, begin to wail in alarm.

There was something wrong here.

“Not Cherie,” Yamada refuted. “Jean-Paul Vasil, aka Hijack, aka Regent of the Undersiders.”

Rapture frowned. Why would Yamada be going to bat for Pantheon like this? Recruiting for them? She was, too, even though everything her power was telling her said that the argument she was making was completely impartial. Her choice of words, the way she was stating facts, it indicated an obvious bias towards Pantheon. Then there was the fact that she was even citing Regent as an example...that showed she'd put some level of thought or research into building a case for Pantheon...

There was something very wrong here.

“I wasn't aware,” Narwhal commented, “That the two were one and the same. How did you come by this information, Mrs. Yamada?”

“I was in Brockton Bay when he Mastered Shadow Stalker, an event which former Director Piggot thought was indicative of him back-sliding to old habits, however, with the recent information leak regarding Sophia Hess' behavior towards Taylor Hebert, now Kephri, it can be inferred that Jean-Paul's time with the Undersiders engendered some level of camaraderie, perhaps even feelings of loyalty towards his teammates, which run contrary to the supposed mental state of a sociopath.” Yamada explained...

...no, Rapture faintly realized. It wasn't Yamada.

The leaps of logic she was making could hardly be called professional, and if Yamada was anything in the short time they'd known each other, it was professional.

One of the Heartbroken must have gotten to her. Rapture divined. Whichever one it is, they're trying to make a case to be sent to Pantheon. Why? To Master them? To try for asylum? Yamada has almost certainly heard of their aggressive stance on recruiting villains...

The thought of Pantheon in the hands of one of the Heartbroken made her shiver, even as the conversation continued on around her. Discretely, she caught Dragon's eyes through her webcam, then began to blink, pausing carefully as Rapture typed out a message in Morse code.

Only a moment later, a gray haze began to seep into the room. Chairs squealed against the floor as people stood in a sudden panic before they realized it was the anti-master 'cure.' Rapture's attention, though, was focused solely on Jessica Yamada as her eyes darted around in alarm.

Then their gazes met and Yamada's eyes widened further.

Rapture's hand moved to seize a non-lethal countermeasure, the tinker in her already spitting out possibilities regarding why the cure hadn't worked.

“I haven't hurt her!” Yamada shouted out, raising her hands defensively.

The room stilled as the capes settled into positions between the Mastered psychologist and the civilians. Rapture stepped up, holding what was essentially an advanced taser pointed at the woman, who was still disturbingly resistant to the Thinker aspect of her own power.

...just like the 'problem case' child I'd been trying to help, she realized.

“Who are you?” Rapture demanded, filing that realization aside.

“Reggie,” Yamada's voice replied, her posture still one of surrender.

“I have a match,” Dragon spoke through her armor. “Reginald Wilkins, son of Amanda Wilkins, a woman Heartbreaker abducted some six years ago. Reggie would have been four, and records indicate he went missing at the same time. His mother died two years ago in an altercation with the Adepts, she was a cape with low-level bio-manipulation powers, similar to Gaea's, but limited to humans in scope and incapable of doing anything other than repairing minor wounds. We'd believed both to be dead when he wasn't discovered among the children during the takeover of Heartbreaker's compound. Be aware he may have some Stranger power which has allowed him to stay hidden until this point.”

Which explains why the cure didn't work on him, we don't have his DNA on file, only Heartbreaker's and, therefore, his close relatives.

“We need you to let Jessica Yamada go,” Rapture said softly, trying to remember that this was a ten-year-old child she was dealing with.

“I...I'm sorry I took her,” 'Reggie' spoke through Yamada's body. “I just...I don't want to be here anymore. I...Mrs. Yamada knew that Jean-Paul went to Brockton Bay, that he made friends there. He was the only one that was nice to me. I...wanted to go be with them.”

“Whatever the case may be,” Rapture stated, “you need to let Mrs. Yamada go. You might be hurting her...and you need to tell us where you are. If you do that, we can talk about getting you to Pantheon. I know Kephri and Minerva, the surviving Undersiders, and they might be willing to take you. I can't promise anything, but you're only hurting your case by keeping Mrs. Yamada under your control.”

A tense moment passed as uncertainty flashed over Yamada's face.

“Okay...I'll let her go.”

Before she could start to be relieved, Yamada's body had dropped to it's knees and the seam along the back of her shirt began to tear, revealing a sudden growth of skin that was rapidly emerging from her body. Within seconds, long enough for a few of the civilians to release their stomachs, the 'growth,' fully emerged as a young boy with brown hair, blue eyes, and a complete lack of clothing.

“Reggie?” Rapture forced herself to ask, even as Narwhal stepped in to slowly move Yamada away, careful of alarming the parahuman and doubtless getting her medical attention.

The boy nodded, “They...called me Parasite. Can I go see Jean-Paul's friends now?”


*~*~*~*

PRT/GUILD ID FILE - Parasite:

Striker/Breaker 3 – Capable of entirely displacing his own body mass as he 'merges' with a host organism. Requires physical contact with a suitable 'host' organism.

Sub-rating: Changer 5 – Capable of appearing as any person, animal, or otherwise organic being that he 'merges' with. Slightly enhances the 'host' organism, granting the host a low-level brute rating complete with low-level regeneration, greater physical strength, and improved reflexes.

Master 3 – Capable of controlling a single organic being at a time, only while 'merged' with it. While merged, Parasite induces a coma-like state in the host. Affected individuals feel as though no time has passed, though Parasite is capable of drawing on the host body's natural reflexes, physical skills, and subconscious ticks to pass even close inspection by some thinkers. Rating subject to change as it is not known whether Parasite can use other parahuman powers through 'proxies' after he has possessed a host organism.

Stranger 3 – Capable of utilizing the knowledge, skills, and instincts of the organic being he is merged with, to the point that, to untrained individuals Parasite will appear completely identical to the 'host' organism he is currently inhabiting.

Subject, alias Reginald 'Reggie' Wilkins, is ten years of age, having spent the last six years of his life as a resident of the Heartbreaker compound in Montreal, Canada. Speculated to have triggered soon after or at the time of his mother's death, the exact circumstances around the event are unknown. His parahuman abilities have demonstrated the classical 'inheritance' of attributes from parahuman parents. In this case, aspects of his power are representative of his mother's limited bio-manipulation abilities as well as the well-known Master powers exhibited by the Heartbroken, although he bears no known biological relation to Niko Vasil. Subject initially escaped observation by hiding within one of his 'siblings,' but attempted escape through one Jessica Yamada. Neither individual has retained any memories of their time under Parasite's control. Subject has expressed a strong desire to be placed under the custody of the independent hero team Pantheon owing to his good relationship with former Undersiders member Regent, aka Jean-Paul Vasil.

Custody decision is undergoing further discussion at this time.

*~*~*~*

Alright, so as per author-fiat, this omake is a canon one, and introduces an OC of my own design. Owing to the fact that TanaNari has no shortage of characters at this time, it is unlikely that Reggie will see any screen time in the main story for a while, if ever.

Personality-wise, I designed Reggie to be much like canon Taylor was at the beginning of the story, only with less 'heroic resolve.' In other words, he's primarily a quiet introvert who would rather hide than involve himself in confrontation. Not being one of the biological children of Niko Vasil, he was probably also bullied by some of the other children. Reggie liked Alec/Jean-Paul mainly because Alec didn't bother him and, as one of the older children, could serve as a shield from their bullying.

If anyone wants to co-op Reggie for another fic, all I ask is a little citation about having created him.

 

160- The Butcher


DANGERDEATHRUN Three cried. Two watched as our blood began to boil inside. Seven struggled against the damage, mending where it could. Fourteen screamed at her impending death, my death, I am fourteen, I am Quarrel.


We cannot let ourselves be taken, One insisted. We must fight.


HateRageMurder, Nine screamed into the mind of the blond that would be our new host, forcing her to keep attacking. Desperate stupid ploy Three cried out. Worked before, Ten insisted, adding its voice to the will of Butcher.


The annoying boy that I couldn't kill charged in, and I focused One's pain aura on him. He vanished, only to appear again. I kept the aura active, if anything the pain only drove my enraged victim to fight that much harder to kill me. The boy couldn't get to me, and somehow he lost his ability to teleport me away from her. I didn't know why. I didn't care in the slightest.


Suddenly an unexpected surge of power lanced out from the girl's weapon. Regeneration impossible! DeathdeathdeathDEATHdeathDeathDEATH.


Seconds later, I was whole again. ShockPainAngerLossRemorseRageHopeShameGlorySuccess.


"Taylor?" a girl's voice spoke. TaylorTAYLOR.


"I... I'm here," I answered. "I'm okay."


"You killed her," another voice. Minerva... her name's Minerva. Lisa. Tattletale. Traitor.


"The Butcher?" I answered sadly. I AM THE BUTCHER! "Yeah... she's dead... how long do you figure I have left?" Yes, tell us how long until fifteen breaks and submits to the will of the whole.


"Not sure," Minerva responded. "The third host managed to hold out for weeks. But there was only two previous hosts, then. You've got seven times that many to deal with. Then there's your powers, which might help you, or it might hurt you. No way to know until we see it."


I looked at Amelia. I focused on my love for her. If anything, anyone, could help me fight this.


Betrayer! Five shouted. The irony, her being the one that got the position by poisoning meherthemFourhim in his sleep, was not lost. The only host that wasn't a parahuman. Five rebelled against the thoughts. You forced me! Used me! Tortured me! Five was always troublesome, able to resist the Butcher better than all the others.


I crumpled to the ground under the conflicting thoughts and the horrific memories of sadistic abuse inflicted upon me. By me. No, her. Him! Four and Five! Not me. I'm not them. I'm not the Butcher. I'm... I'm... HostPreyMonsterPropertyHeroCowardWeaponWeakWarriorBrilliantPatheticPerfectMagnificentVictimTaylor! "I'm Taylor," I spoke aloud. Insistent. Desperate. I was the Butcher. I will be again. I will win this.


Amelia was crying, moving toward me. I took flight. "Don't come closer," I commanded.


"Please, Taylor," Amelia requested. "Let me touch you. I can make you sleep. Keep you unconscious until we find a way to remove the Butcher's influence."


"Won't work," I countered. Grief and certainty of victory warred with equal measure in my mind. "Can't work. It's been tried. If you succeed, it just means you're the new host." The idea of Amelia being trapped in this filled me with grief and joy. Her powers combined with mine-hers-mine-no! It is incomprehensible. It is thrilling. It is the stuff of horror.


Don't fight, I reminded myself. You've been through this before. Accept and push through. I breathed deeply.


"We'll figure out some way," Lisa insisted. "Rapture's technology. Riley's. We have options!"


"STOP TRYING TO CONTROL ME YOU MEDDLESOME BITCH!" I shouted at her. Much of my armor dissolved itself and reformed into a magnificent ebon colored rapier. I paused for a second, smiling as she stepped back. KillherProtectherControlherBreakherSaveher. I looked away and closed my eyes. The voices had a harder time envisioning a goal if I wasn't looking at it. It's the bugs, I realized. They're having trouble distinguishing my senses from the bugs. "Sorry... I'm... that wasn't me."


"Yes it was," Minerva replied, sadly. "Maybe you wouldn't have said it like that. But that was still you."


I called on my swarms and found a target. A lot of targets. My insects poured through sewers, finding and slaughtering rodent populations en masse. I wasn't efficient about it, I didn't want to be. I needed to draw it out. Distracting the minds inside me by inflicting suffering on a target that wasn't human. I was not clean, I was not merciful, and the minds within me were mollified. Or at least distracted temporarily. In the long run, this would probably make their influence stronger. I don't care about the long run.


"You're probably right," I admitted. "I'm sorry. Now I need you to listen to me."


"We're listening," Amelia agreed.


"I know I don't have a lot of room to talk when it comes to trust," I continued. "I've done a lot of soul searching in the last few days. None of that really matters right now, but I want you to know that I'm sorry for everything. I was going to talk to you. Apologize for everything. Talk about maybe renewing the empathic bond. That's... none of it's going to be possible now."


Her eyes were tearing up, but she didn't cry. She was being strongStupidBeautifulCowardTraitorPervertBeloved. I cringed. It was getting worse. I faltered, barely managing to keep aloft. I can't keep them at bay forever. More rodents were sacrificed at the altar of petty sadistic amusement. To my surprise, I was actually running out. How does New York City run out of sewer rats? I allowed my slaughter to make its way into the empty alleyways, away from prying eyes. I had to upgrade the carnage to stray cats and dogs.


"I want you to know I love you," I smiled, painfully. It was hard to focus on tender feelings when I was torturing animals a million at a time.


"I know," she agreed.


"When... when you awaken my copy..."


"Don't talk like that!" she insisted. "We can save you, if you let us."


"Too much risk," I told her. "Like I was saying, you have to trust me on this. When you awaken her. Me. She'll want the empathic bond restored. She won't know why it's missing. I want you to give that to her. Will you do that for me?"


"I..." Amelia looked away. "I don't know that I can."


"Just do what I say you dumb bi-" I bit down on my tongue hard enough to sever it. I spit the chunk of flesh out of my mouth, where of course it was caught in the mask. I wasn't so sure what I thought of the inability to feel pain, right now.


"Sorry," I said through the armor suits that were linked to my mind. I considered it a perverse victory that the voices may have been able to control my body, at least to a degree, but they couldn't control the voices of my power or the actions of my swarm. "It's getting worse by the second."


"It took me two weeks simply to be able to control my power," my physical body muttered, speaking more to myself- both Taylor and Butcher- than to my audience of friends. My words weren't intelligible anyway. The bleeding had stopped and my tongue was growing back, but it hadn't gotten there yet. "I controlled, maybe, a square mile back then. Now... now I control a fucking world. Let me know how long it takes you to do the same."


VAST. All my gates came down, every barrier I'd placed between my power and my mind collapsed. Right now, I was tapped into three cities. Boston, New York, and Brockton Bay. Millions of people. Hundreds of thousands of active voices. More when you added every television and radio. I could handle that. They could not. I felt the twinges and breaking as I discovered I couldn't handle it, either. Thanks to their powers, I was aware of the damage I was doing to my body and my brain. Two, Three and Seven issued their meek warnings that the only reason I hadn't given myself a fatal stroke was thanks to my newly acquired durability and healing.


"Okay," I croaked. "I've bought time. Don't know how much."


"We can still help," Amelia insisted.


"I know you would try," I agreed. I was getting tired. Slow. Winning the war inside me was impossible. "I don't want you to. Butcher dies today. That price is worth the last week of my life. I can't say I enjoyed it much, anyway. Just promise me you won't let my copy suffer for the things I've done. Treat her well. And don't listen when other people try to say what is right for us from now on, okay?"


She closed her eyes, fighting the tears. "I promise."


"Thanks," I didn't bother smiling. She wouldn't be able to see it through my mask, or all the blood. "I love you."


"Love you, too," she sobbed.


I didn't look at Lisa. I didn't want to give her any more clues than this last one would provide. It had been hard enough getting this far. I brushed my hand over the weapon I'd extracted from Zach's kamikaze Raptor. I crushed its containment system.


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


A/N- If you were hoping for a 'satisfying' conclusion to their breakup... well, too bad. Life doesn't work that way. I won't disrespect the story like that.

 

Amelia, Ch 161- Taylor


I woke up slowly. Strange, this isn't my room. I couldn't move, so I must still be sleeping. It was peaceful, quiet. Quieter than I could ever remember it being. I was floating in emptiness. No... no terrain? No bugs. No Amelia! My eyes snapped open, and I tried desperately to sit up. I was in a room I didn't recognize, even if it was clearly in the Yggdrasil. Amelia, Lisa, Emma and Riley were all there watching me. I could feel Amelia's power throughout my body.


"What happened?!" I exclaimed, trying to move. I couldn't. I wasn't merely restrained, my body was paralyzed. I was reminded of Leviathan, and the hospital after. I wasn't alone this time, but I was still frozen. It was easier not to panic than I would have expected, but


"It's a bit of a story," Lisa smiled warily. "Let's start with the last thing you remember, if you please."


I took a slow breath. Amelia and I talking. Emma's apology. The transfer tech's true nature. "I'm the backup copy, aren't I." It wasn't a question. There wasn't any other kind of logical conclusion here. "Guess that's not much of a surprise. What's the date?"


"August twenty eight," Emma informed me. Everyone else seemed too busy staring at me to answer any questions.


"Really?" I probably would have sounded more shocked if I wasn't completely locked down. "I didn't last very long, did I?" The false bravado was not likely to fool anyone in this room, but it was easier than thinking about this in a serious manner. Huh, wonder if this is what Zach feels like all the god damn time. No wonder he acts like such a dumbass sometimes. "So... what happened? I'm guessing it wasn't an Endbringer. Did one of those would be assassins manage to get me?"


"You don't remember that we were going to fight the Butcher?" Lisa asked.


"Ah," that did explain it. "I killed her, didn't I?"


"You did," Lisa confirmed. "We did a lot of damage and she was trying to force Crystal to kill her. Probably would have succeeded, too, but you used the system override and finished the job. Taking 'credit' for the kill, so to speak."


"Guess that explains the paralysis," I replied. "And the attention. You're making sure Butcher didn't come back with me."


"Something like that," Lisa agreed. "Now stop dodging the question. Why is your last memory from a week ago?


I frowned. It went badly, didn't it? "Can I talk to Amelia?" I asked.


"Not yet," Lisa insisted. "We're still running our tests. Asking questions, making sure there's nothing that went wrong. We have to keep Amelia away from you just in case Butcher manifests itself. The rest of us are only here in changeling form, but we need her present to control the facility and keep you under control. You can talk to your lover after we're done with all the tests."


Lover? My stomach would have clenched if it could actually respond to my thoughts. Maybe things did work out. But then why wouldn't I update myself... Or, well, I guess the question is really why wouldn't she have updated... uh... me? Future me?


"I thought so," Lisa answered. And I would have slapped her if I could. She probably figured it out before they ever woke me up. Okay, prior self, how badly did you fuck things up? Scale of one to ten?


"Emma, Riley, would you mind leaving so we can have a private conversation?" Lisa asked the other two girls. Oh, that's at least a nine. I watched as the pair retreated without any objection. Nine and a half. Lisa turned toward me and smiled an ever so saccharine grin. Ten, definitely ten. "So, why don't you tell me how long you've been planning to kill yourself to get out of your mistakes?"


Oh, fuck you, me. "I... don't think that I was?" I answered. "Wouldn't your power be able to figure it out?" Seriously, Taylor, what the fuck is wrong with you? Me? I'm going to need therapy for this, aren't I? I might need it just from trying to figure out the pronouns.


"Taylor," she sighed, sitting down on one of the chairs jutting out of the floor. "If there's anything I've learned from you in the time we've known each other. It's that you're incredibly good at finding ways to jam my powers. Moreso thanks to that whole 'Taylia' thing."


"Speaking of which, why isn't that working?" I asked. "I can't sense anything at all. I've never been completely blinded since I've had my powers."


"We sorta started the Exodus project a bit ahead of schedule," Lisa answered. "This is another dead world. Near as we can figure, life never happened here in the first place. If your stupid ploy to remove the Butcher actually works, then we will end up bequeathing this planet to Dragon using a cute little bylaw in the international Endbringer treaties about weapons research and some crap about space exploitation that was written, badly, in the sixties."


"Well, that's good news," I agreed. "So, what would have happened if it carried over and I was still the Butcher?"


"What makes you so sure you're not?" she asked. "What will happen, if you still have those powers... well, here's some facts. Somewhere in this dimension, possibly at the bottom of the ocean or in high orbit, is a gateway the size of a human eye. The only other way in is through shunting tech. If you're still the Butcher, we abandon this world and have Labyrinth change the portal destination. The atmosphere outside of this underground building is unlivable. It could take a century for the Yggdrasil to change that on its own."


"So basically, a prison that makes the Birdcage look fun?"


"Are you saying you wouldn't just open the door and walk out to die again?"


I blinked. Again, I chewed over the word. It didn't sit with me. I might do just that, just to ensure the Butcher was disabled. "That... I didn't do that," I muttered, looking at the ceiling. I really didn't have many other places to point my eyes, after all. "From my perspective it's a week ago. Amelia and I just got done making some kind of pseudo-reconciliations with our past bugbears, and I decided..." I froze. Does she know? That's kinda private, even for me to share with Lisa.


"You decided to make yourself attracted to Amelia," Lisa finished for me.


"Guess I'm not surprised that you know," I closed my eyes. "She did that, after the backup... after I was made. If it didn't work out, then this... I don't have that trait. I decided on that being the first legitimate difference between us. "


"You did plan to kill yourself," Lisa accused.


"No!" I insisted. "No. I just... accepted the odds. We live dangerous lives, and we're not immortal." What the fuck did that other me do? "You know what happened better than I do right now. Did she change so much in just a week? Do you believe she was attempting suicide?"


Lisa just looked at me, studying my mostly numb face. I had to wonder how much body language one could read from 'paralyzed and wrapped in a living blanket'. "No, I guess not," Lisa answered. "Okay, she's cleared. You're safe to come out now."


I felt Amelia's power let go, and I had control of my body again. I moved my arms for... well, the first time ever. It was difficult. Coordination was built into the brain, not the muscles. Contrary to what people sometimes believed about 'muscle memory'. I knew how to use my body, but that was just the thing. I knew how to use my body. And this body I was in now wasn't really mine. The inside of my mouth felt funny because my teeth weren't quite in the same alignment. Calluses weren't there. I was willing to bet my fingerprints were different. Everything was just close enough to feel familiar, without being close enough to be familiar.


"This is going to take a little time to get used to." I said as I slowly worked myself to a sitting position. I decided to wait a little while before attempting to walk. At least they included some kind of clothing, I noted. I guess it doesn't really matter. Semi-public nudity is better than being dead, but I was glad for the outfit nonetheless.


The wall opened and Amelia stepped through. "Hi," she said. She was nervous. Shy, even.


I, on the other hand, was just glad to see my best friend. "Hello," I answered. "I'd get up, but I'm still getting used to moving around. How long until that wears off, by the way?" Dammit, Taylor, why are you being so awkward? I asked myself. Oh, right, because something bad happened and all I know is that they're not telling me.


"Riley says an hour or two," Amelia smiled cautiously, walking toward me slowly. "Are you upset that I had to imprison you like that? Or that I was spying on your conversation with Lisa? I'm sorry if it was a unpleasant. I tried to make it as comfortable as possible.."


"No," I answered. "I mean, I'd really prefer not to make a habit of it. Being paralyzed like that isn't fun. But I get why you did it. It was the right decision. I'd have recommended the exact same thing, if it were someone else who got possessed."


"Good," she managed to move next to the bed I was sitting on. "I was worried it might bring back some ugly memories. I also might have mixed in a little mood stabilizing to keep you from getting too upset. That should wear off soon."


"It's fine," I repeated. "Special circumstances. You've stopped doing it now, right?"


"Yes," she confirmed. "You're not mad?" Seriously, what the ever loving FUCK did other-me do? I was beginning to be glad that she was dead.


"Not at all," I insisted in the most reassuring tone I could, as I reached out shakily and brushed my fingers across her hand. She tensed, and I pretended not to notice even though there was no way I could hide that from her while we were in contact. She pretended that I succeeded in hiding what I'd noticed. It wasn't the ideal reaction, but it was enough for us, for now. "We're partners," I insisted, pushing the emotion. We didn't have the link active, clearly for good reason, but she could see my every emotion through her power, since we were in contact. "I trust you."


She hugged herself tight against me and started crying. I wrapped my arms around her as I felt the flicker of awareness blossoming. One point of knowledge when I was used to a world's worth of constant information. And yet, somehow, that one spark meant more all of the rest combined.


ReliefJoy.


========


A/N- Yay! Happy feelings. Err. Just don't think about it too hard.

Also: THIS chapter. Remember the whole "twilight zone" thing talked about during the Emma arc? Hehe. Foreshadowed so hard.

 

Amelia, Ch 162


"Just promise me you won't let my copy suffer for the things I've done. Treat her well. And don't listen when other people try to say what is right for us from now on, okay?"


I fought back the tears. She means Lisa. "I promise."


"Thanks," Taylor said through the armor. It didn't carry vocal inflections, which I knew meant she was struggling to control it at all. She was normally very good at making her override sound convincingly normal. I could only imagine how hard she must have been fighting. "I love you."


"Love you, too," I sobbed, looking up at her hovering in the air. She reached her hand into the pack she kept with her, and a half second later she was concealed in ice and plummeting to the ground, trailing steam and smoke.


One of the ice weapons that Emma had designed, I realized, even as I focused my power into the Yggdrasil. I pulled the mass back, while forcing it to spew as much fluid into the hole as possible. I had only seconds, however. Not nearly enough time to create a pool deep enough. She collided hard enough to shatter. Explosively, thanks to the insanely cold temperatures of the ice exposed to the much warmer Yggdrasil. Liquid nitrogen and oxygen splashed across the Yggdrasil.


I just stood there, stunned. She's dead, I struggled to comprehend what that meant. So many things I should have said. Not just now, but before. Things I would never have a chance to say. Unless.


"Call Coil," I commanded Lisa. "Undo this."


She didn't say anything, she simply pulled out her phone and pressed a few buttons. Then she stood there watching the screen.


"Did you know she was going to do this?" I demanded to know.


"No," Lisa answered coldly. "I didn't."


"How the fuck did she sneak something like that past your power?" I may have phrased it as a question, but it was an accusation. "She had a god damn Tinker suicide bomb in her purse! How could you miss something like that?"


"Because of your god damn link!" Lisa yelled back.


I glared. "Explain."


"I can't read Taylia!" she exclaimed. "No one can! I've paid other Thinkers while pretending to be someone trying to spy on Pantheon, just to see how it pans out. It's laughable how wrong they are. Dinah comes closest, and her predictions lose accuracy in a matter of days at best. I'm pretty much convinced that even Coil's power doesn't actually work on you, but there's no fucking way to confirm or deny that because Schrodinger's Snake takes its secrets to the grave with it. And since my power doesn't work on you, either, all the stuff I hear from Coil that sounds wrong to my power might be because I don't understand you."


"Taylia hasn't been around for a week," I reminded her, bitterly. My one source of happiness in this world, and I gave it up because I thought it was hurting Taylor. Then I lose her anyway. I ruin lives no matter what I do.


"Hasn't it?" she sighed. "Yeah, you don't have the link active, but you're already hard to predict thanks to your 'third trigger', and Taylor can offload so much of her mind and personality into her swarm that if she wants to block me out, then the only thing my power tells me is that she's deliberately blocking me out. Something she started doing the moment you two broke up, and hadn't stopped doing since. A talent she only got better at thanks to her practice with Taylia."


I didn't say anything. I knew our link was, functionally, a Taboo unto itself. We all did, of course. I just hadn't realized that it was as effective as that. Lisa hadn't told me that we'd blinded her power. I suppose it's no surprise she'd keep that weakness to herself.


"Both of you have been fucking around with your Passengers so hard that I..." Lisa paused, searching for words. "I was finally just barely starting to understand 'Taylia' enough to work around it and predict its influence. And even that was patchwork at best. Then you go and surprise me by turning off the fucking bond!"


"You wanted us to do that from fucking beginning!" I yelled back. "Don't blame me when you get what you want!"


"Did I get what I wanted?" Lisa asked. "Taylor just said she was planning to ask you to restore the link, and I don't need my power to know you'd jump on that like the lovestarved puppy that you are. We also know that Taylor's copy never lost the link in the first place. Then there's her really flashy self sacrifice suicide ploy, complete with dying wish. There's no fucking way your bond won't be up and running the minute she wakes up. You can't give it up, and neither can she."


I broke eye contact, looking back over at the ice fog pouring from Taylor's remains. "I don't know," I admitted. "Taylor's dead. I don't know if I can look at her replacement and have the same feelings. That I'll be able to look at the copy and see her as the same as the original."


"You will," Lisa sighed miserably. "You can't help yourself, and if you do, somehow, resist the impulse... well, Taylor will find a way to make that the only option in the long run. It's easiest just to let you both have your way. I failed, the damage I hoped to prevent has already happened. Heads you win, tails I lose."


"Does that mean you'll tell me the real problem you had with our link in the first place?"


She paused. I had to wonder if she was thinking about it, or looking for a way to change the subject. Probably the latter, and fate conspired to help her as her cell blipped at her. She looked at it. "Fuck," she muttered. "We have to keep this timeline."


No! I cried out internally. "No," I gasped, trying to force the word to be an order.


"It looks like Butcher managed to transfer to Crystal in that one," Lisa continued. "She's still fighting, and it's tearing Boston to pieces."


"God damn it," I whimpered. Choosing between Taylor and Crystal. Plus however many civilians are dying in the battle. Butcher "only" managed to kill one person, here. Two, including Taylor. Radiant could kill a city block every three minutes.


"We can't keep that timeline," Lisa consoled.


"What about the other teams?" I asked, grasping at straws. "Did anything go wrong in those missions?" Lisa is right, as it stands we can't allow something like Radiant into enemy hands. It was an anti-Endbringer artillery platform with so many features I couldn't begin to imagine the damage it could do if someone really wanted to go all out with it. Combined with Butcher's powers... the Triumvirate might not be enough to stop it.


"Okay," Lisa replied, her voice showing no signs of hope. "Hecate, status report?"


"We're golden," Emma answered. "Scry's intel is awesome, and Assault and Battery's combat systems are working better than anticipated. If we get the time, I'd really like to see if I can upgrade them to named suits. The normals are basically mopped up, and there's this breaker that is made out of water being a pain in the behind." Behind? I wondered. Emma's probably spending too much time around Riley. "He can't do much, but he's really durable. We're having trouble hitting him hard enough to hurt him, without accidentally killing him. And frankly, I think our combat team is showboating a bit. Other than that, there's nothing to worry about."


"Thanks," Lisa answered. "Tell them that the other missions are almost done, and they're going to be last if they don't hurry up." Lisa switch communications without waiting for Emma to respond. "Aceso, status report?"


"Not good," Riley answered. Riley, not Clarice, that's bad. I realized then how happy I was to hear it was bad news. "We found Haze." Oh, he's one of the bad ones. "His powers are a lot stronger than anything our intel suggested. Missy's been injured. I've stabilized her, but even with healing, she won't be able to contribute for the rest of the battle. Clarice has been destroyed. Theo's declared the mission a failure and is running a rescue mission to pull Adamant out of the battlefield."


"Understood," Lisa answered. She looked over at me. "Both those missions went well in the other timeline. But..." she didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to, I knew what she was saying.


"You said Coil's power doesn't work right on us, didn't you?" I begged. "You don't know..."


"We know enough," Lisa said softly. "Butcher going to Taylor instead of Crystal was probably as much luck as it was anything else. A moment of hesitation might have been all it took for Taylor to be too late. Even if we don't know that Coil's right, that means it's just as likely that Taylor did the same thing in that reality as she did in this one. She was counting on this, you know. Taylor gets what she wants, no matter what it takes."


I smiled sadly. "She really does, doesn't she?" Warm tears came to my eyes. One of the things I loved most about her. One of the things I hated most as well. "It's still my command to give, isn't it?"


Lisa didn't say anything, she knew that I already knew that. That amount of lives lost was not an option.


I spent several minutes watching the fog cloud slowly dissipating. There wouldn't even be enough identifiable material to call what we buried a body. Damn you, Taylor. "Tell Coil we're keeping this timeline."


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


A/N- Not a lot to comment on with this one.

 

Amelia, Ch 163- Lisa


"Tell Coil we're keeping this timeline," Amelia managed to choke out. I was almost tempted to hug her. To apologize for my failure to see this coming. How did I miss something so important? Taylor hid behaviors, power forced to rely upon models instead of indicators. Models inaccurate due to influence of Taylia on personality corrupting the behavior. Greater personality regression than anticipated. Impossible to predict. I tried to take solace in the knowledge that I couldn't do anything, but if anything it only made me feel worse.


I called Coil. Or, more properly, I called the line where the Directors were waiting for news. Calvert was amongst them, at the Boston site, alongside the various political leaders and whatnot. Both cities would have speeches and press conferences and all that stuff ready for the evening news. They probably wrote everything days ago, right after I contacted them.


"Minerva here," I said over the phone to their teleconferences. "Primary mission successful. Butcher has been successfully removed to classified location. All parahuman resistance at Boston site has been eliminated. You're clear to move in. Be prepared for the possibility of nonpowered resistance. Secondary New York missions are still ongoing."


There was cheering in the background. It was Butcher that was the biggest problem. The rest of the gang would be demoralized and likely fairly easy to break up and take down in smaller missions over the course of the next few days, if they were't beaten immediately. I would also need to consult Accord about the missions his Ambassadors were sent on. Lowest risk missions, mopping up drug and prostitution rings. But, ultimately, even if everything else was a failure, they'd call this mission a success.


How New York's location went wrong, I wasn't terribly surprised. We had been torn on that one. It was the worst odds, with only a 75% chance of success. Still no risk of any permanent harm to our team. Or at least that's what Dinah had said. She also said we'd get out of this one without losing anyone. Power works by sampling possible futures. Power works based upon her mental imagery. Cannot parse something she doesn't personally comprehend. Needs concepts or faces to perceive events related to them. Dinah would have no means to realize clones even existed. Perception does not view clones as different people.


I cringed. Well, that's one mystery down.


....


"Okay, first is how we divide our teams," I told the gathered forces of Pantheon. "We have a very narrow margin of time for this mission, Dinah's models place our best odds at Friday, between 4 and 4:30. After that, they plummet down to the levels they were last week. We may never get another shot at this. Amelia, you're going to be on the anti-Butcher team. To provide additional ordinance if Taylor runs out during the battle and to keep Butcher thoroughly unconscious once she's disabled. There's no sense in having both our healers at the same location, so Aceso is assigned to New York."


"Makes sense," Taylor agreed. "I'll be going to Boston as well." Concerned for Amelia's safety. Asserting position before argument can be made to countermand it. Wants to be part of the main mission. "Naturally my power means I'll be providing command support in both locations, but Butcher is a dangerous opponent... you won't be able to rely on me once I've engaged her."


"All the Moirai are going to New York," I continued. Lily is frustrated at the lack of influence, similar to Taylor, wants to be on important mission, views secondary mission as 'beneath her'. Already resentful due to a lack of being consulted beforehand. "We can't risk our precog-disruption suits potentially interfering with Dinah's predictions. Not with such high likelyhood of success. And I think we can all agree that the further away from Atropos that the Butcher remains, the safer the whole world will feel."


Sabah looked over to Lily, rightfully worried, and wrapped her arm around her girlfriend. Everyone else was no doubt running the same thoughts through their head. The Butcher. In Azrael. There were no words for how terrifying that was. It partially mollified the pair, at least. "Lily, you know New York better than any of us, you'll be a team leader, probably with the Adepts, if you're okay with that."


"I can handle that," Lily agreed. Happy with decision, glad to be in a position of trust. Still dislikes being part of a secondary goal, but properly intimidated by the prospect of becoming host to Butcher. This wasn't going to be a permanent solution, of course, but it was a good patch for now. Hopefully it would allow Lily to feel less like an outsider.


"Zach's respawning power and the new teleportation tech is integral to locking the Butcher down long enough to defeat her," I continued. "And Crystal's the only heavy hitter we have that can be relied upon to disable the Butcher without accidentally inheriting her powers." No arguments from that part of the plan.


"Theo, you'll go to New York," I continued. That made him and Missy very happy. "Your durability won't mean anything to Butcher's powers. Your powers will be put to better use against the Teeth's heavy hitters in that area."


"Emma... you and I are the wildcards," I continued. "You could be an asset to the Butcher team, looking for tells in her power and giving Amelia ideas. So could I, in a similar but different manner. I'll have to consult with Dinah about which gives the best odds. Either way, be prepared to listen in, even if you're in the New York team. So I'll need you at all detailed mission planning for both teams." That wasn't true. Coil's split timelines would let us use both plans simultaneously.


"I can do that," Emma agreed eagerly. Still desperate to please, feels guilty over her indirect part in Amelia and Taylor's breakup. Insecure and worried about being blamed. Worried that she may be legitimately responsible, hopes to find a way to fix the problem.


"Now, Chariot, I'd like you to work with Accord's team..." I continued.


....


I made the difference, I realized. I was there. Probably because I alerted Taylor to Butcher attempting to compel Crystal into murdering her. Taylor must not have realized the danger in time, in the other timeline.


I called Riley. "Are you free to talk?" I asked. "When you are, I need a full mission briefing."


"Yes," she answered. "Haze isn't an illusionist. His power is similar to Labyrinth. They're mostly immaterial, but still fully 'there' according to all of Clarice's senses. They even interfered with Adamant, who we had expected to also be immune. It'll be in my report to the PRT, along with a recommendation to raise him from a six to an eight."


I sighed. There wasn't anything my power would tell me on that angle, but chances were good that if I were there, I could have adapted to the discovery. I could picture how I would have made the difference in that mission by simple imagination. "That's good to know, please go on."


"His power also seems to extend outside the cloud he generates. I don't know if the cloud is even necessary at all, or something he does to bluff his enemies," she added. Unnecessary detail, providing it to put next detail into context. "In the confusion of the battle, he managed to trick Atropos into shooting Lachesis and Horus with an empowered bolt."


Oh fuck. "You said something about her being stable?"


"I fixed her, for the most part," Riley explained. "She could recover naturally, now. But I'd like my big sister to speed the process." Doesn't need to make that request, there's no doubt that Amelia would heal Missy at earliest opportunity. Missy was hurt more badly than Riley's words would indicate. Riley is upset and angry. Blames Lily. Afraid of her thoughts and impulses. Correction: Afraid of how Amelia or Missy will respond. Feels lost. Needs comfort and guidance.


I looked over Amelia, who just stared blankly at scene where Taylor died. Not an option. "I..." do not tell Riley that Taylor died. "I'm afraid Amelia's still dealing with Butcher's defeat," I informed the girl. It was true enough to beat any lie detector. Riley knew how we needed Amelia to make sure Butcher stayed under control. "Is Missy conscious?"


"No," Riley admitted reluctantly. I already knew that would be the answer.


"Okay," I said. "Put her in one of the generic Yggdrasil outfits. Talk to Emma to see who can spare one. Then Amelia will be able to do her thing at range. It's the best we'll be able to do until Missy's able to set up her warp tunnels."


"Okay," Riley agreed.


I contacted Emma immediately. "So, everything cleared up?"


"Yeah," Emma answered. "Your advice worked perfectly. Riley's calling, want me to put her on with us?"


About damn time something went right. "No. She's really upset right now. Missy's wounded and Amelia's really distracted. Do your best to make her feel better. Consider this the most important job you've had all day."


"Uh..." Emma hesitated. "Oh. Oh fuck."


Say what you will about her, she knew how to figure out social subtext quickly. Even if her presence on the team is what ensured that Riley and Taylor were competing for second place in any theoretical contest for most fucked up psyche in Pantheon. I cut the com so she could talk to Riley. Hopefully that'll be enough. How did everything go this wrong?


I went back to those thoughts. I didn't have much choice, did I? My best friend killed herself. Like my brother killed himself. I tried to help her, like I tried to help him. He pushed me away, she pushed me away. I failed. I failed miserably. I need to know why.


It's my fault, I knew that much. If I hadn't been here, Taylor wouldn't have done this. Taylor claimed she planned to apologize and make up with Amelia. Would have restored Taylia. Would not have been willing to self sacrifice. Would have tried, but hesitated. Taylia could have been restored sooner, was delayed because of Butcher mission. Reason success existed in such a narrow margin.


Dinah's numbers changed the day Amelia and Taylor broke up. Changed back the day Taylor and Amelia would have reconciled. Had they reconciled sooner, predictions would have reverted to failure of Butcher mission.


Dinah should not be able to anticipate Taylia. Doesn't need to. Dinah's power works around the Taboo by technicality. Uses a different method than other precognition powers. Accidental consequence of shard's true function being corrupted. Unanticipated by the Entities. Partially unfettered power. Dinah can be used to fight Scion directly, despite Taboo.


That was amazingly useful information, and somehow I couldn't force myself to care. Taylia could have saved my best friend. It it were active, then Dinah never would have given this mission a chance at success. I was responsible for taking that away. Her death is my fault.


I didn't scream, I didn't cry, I didn't weep. Those were things that other people did. I wasn't sure I even knew how to express myself openly, even in a situation like this. I broke quietly, looking at what little remained of my closest, arguably only real, friend. Everything went black.


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


A/N- Aaand THIS chapter.

 

Amelia, Ch 164


We were magnificent. We could not appreciate it, but we were magnificent. A mere moment of our cosmic dance would require centuries to express to a human mind, and all its glory meant nothing to us.


I fell to my knees, rocked with the vision. It was the first time I could remember seeing them. Breaking the Taboo meant I kept new memories, it offered nothing to allow me to restore ones I'd lost before. More than just that, I'd seen me. Correction: It. My Passenger at work. My human mind couldn't truly handle it. It was so complete, so significant, so connected into an incomprehensibly beautiful whole.


And yet it felt so meaningless and alone. Even here, grieving over Taylor. Even losing Victoria, both times. Even at my worst day, I still felt like I was more than my Passenger. At least I was. Just that. Was. Am. Its sense of self could be compared to that of a cheap gas station lighter, and that might be an insult to the lighter.


I shuddered as I pulled my mind back to the awareness of my own body, and my power as it expressed itself. I was connected to a world, a tiny world that compared to an Entity the way a golf ball compares to a human. There were less than ten people on this world, and yet that made it more meaningful than the Entities and their singular, rapacious, purpose could ever be. I was never so certain of what needed to be done, even if I was less certain of how to achieve that goal than ever before.


There was laughter behind me, a hysterical, pained sound. I turned to see Lisa, on her back and holding her hands over her face.


I wasn't sturdy enough to climb to my feet, so at a thought the Yggdrasil rose and swelled, pushing me to my feet. Still unsteady, I walked over to her. "Did you see that? Do you remember it?"


She calmed herself, and removed her hands to look at me. "I remember it," she confirmed, and I was relieved at that news. She is past the Taboo. She slowly sat up. "I remember every. Fucking. Thing."


I didn't know what to say, but her behavior was starting to frighten me.


"You just saw a Second Trigger," Lisa laughed darkly. "And probably a Third as well. Was it as as wonderful for you as it was for me?"


I cringed at the memories. None of them were good, although they certainly inspired a lot of wonder. "Terrific," I answered dryly. I meant that in every sense of the word, especially the archaic. I trusted Lisa would be smart enough to get the meaning. Good god, she triggered over this.


I knew triggers were harsh. Mine was ugly. Victoria's was, too, even if she liked to laugh it off and pretend it was less of a deal than it really was. And I knew second triggers were even worse. The fact that I didn't get one when I saw Victoria's... body... left me dreading what it would take to push me over. And Lisa just had one over Taylor's death. I didn't even know how to react.


"Riley's going to be fucking thrilled," Lisa continued. "Imagine all that data she'll have. Parahuman brain scan, then three hours later a Trigger. She'll forget all about how Atropos shot Missy and Theo, and we'll have to use a spatula to peel her off my backup recording."


"Wait, back up," I said. "Lily shot them? Why?"


"Stupidity," Lisa answered. "Remember how she was all 'grr, you hide things from me' and we were 'sorry, won't happen again' and it happened again and she was royally pissed and I thought 'hey, let's put her in charge of something that doesn't really matter so she feels important'?"


"Yeah," I prompted her to continue.


"Well, turns out she cracks under pressure," Lisa answered. "Okay, that's not entirely fair to her. She was under the influence of mind altering powers coupled with a scary spider monster that she believed was quite literally eating her girlfriend's face."


"Fuck," I muttered. "Wait, how do you know that?"


"That's my new power at work," she answered, the hysterical rambling energy slowly draining from her voice. "I can tell you what happened to this planet. Or make a guess, at least. My money's on giant fucking solar flare. I'm actually watching the sky burn right now, as we speak. It'd be beautiful if it wasn't a planet on fire around me."


I reached my hand out to help her up. She looked at me, probably judging intentions. She reached out and took it, allowing me to pull her up, while I melded our armors so that I could make actual contact, assessing her condition. It wasn't quite what I had with Taylor, but I could still pick out emotions this way. The colors of grief, in all its stages, ran through her.


"Aren't you suppose to ask permission before you pull something like that?" she asked. It wasn't a friendly comment, but it lacked any real conviction of anger. Mostly she just felt tired. The blend of denial, depression and acceptance that comes from someone who has given up entirely.


"Sorry," I said, still peeking around inside her. I stopped to look at her brain, the patterns of her gemma and pollentia. The changes weren't subtle, they did outright damage to the portions of the brain around them. Swelling and bruising, but patterned and clearly artificial. Done with a purpose. Rerouting additional bloodflow into the Coronas. Compensating the rest of the brain by altering it in bits and pieces throughout. I've seen this before, I realized. Taylor's brain was altered the same way. Grue's, too, but his was altered in a bunch of ways, thanks to Crawler's power. And Riley's.


"Find what you're looking for?" she asked.


"Yeah," I answered. "I know what a second trigger looks like, now. I... I might even be able to induce them on purpose. Even push them beyond. A legitimate third trigger, instead of breaking the memory blocks."


Her smile was anything but happy. "Well, lucky everyone who doesn't go through it the natural way."


"That can wait," I said. "Right now I need to make sure you're okay."


"You don't care about me," Lisa retorted. She wasn't wrong.


"You're Taylor's friend," I answered. "That's more than enough reason for me to care. Right now, we need to be strong. For her. And if that means helping each other, then you better believe we're going to help each other."


"Fine," she agreed. "Now could you please remove your hand. My power's... well, if I thought it was easy to get too much information before? I'm learning things about what you do with your hands that I already could have figured out, but now I can watch it happening."


Oh. Oh! Eww! I blushed and looked away as I pulled my hand back as fast as the fused armor systems would allow me. "Sorry."


"We will never speak of it again," Lisa insisted. "Ever."


"I can live with that," I still couldn't look at her. "What are we going to do about... about Taylor..."


"Privately? I don't know," Lisa replied. "We will have her backup to deal with. You'll have to decide how much you want to share with her. We can't keep the Butcher a secret from her, she's too smart and that's going to be all over every media until the next time we do something high profile and supposedly impossible. She'll figure out what happened, at least in a general sense."


I nodded. That was definitely true. Hiding her death from her copy would be idiotic and impossible.


"The real question is what we tell her about her personal life," Lisa continued. "How bad your fight was. The Taylia link being broken. Our suspicion that her suicide was planned and on purpose. I don't have any answers for that. You know this Taylor better than I have ever known anyone. I'm conceding that I fucked up and can't be trusted with this. It's all going to be on you from now on."


I swallowed, coating my throat with some much needed moisture. She's not admitting she was wrong, so much as saying she's given up, I realized. She's stopped caring. I couldn't bring myself to call her on that... there was still so much more to worry about. "What about what we tell everyone else?"


"Cover it up. Cover it up like Stormtiger covers up his Brazilian ancestry," she replied. "We'll even hide it from our team, where possible. Emma and Riley will need to know. If at all possible, no one else ever finds out. We use the excuse that containing Butcher took more effort than we anticipated, requiring us to spend all our efforts keeping her contained until we could imprison her properly on that so-called 'prison planet' we found. That'll buy us a few days of relative silence. We then pray that Taylor's clone doesn't inherit our mutual best friend's spare guests when she wakes up."


"And if she does?" I asked.


"Then unless your newfound brain knowledge proves useful, we do what we promised to do, and leave her there to die alone," Lisa whispered so softly that only my armor's systems let me hear the words. It was like a punch in the stomach.


"Fuck," I felt myself trying to cry, but I'd long ago run out of tears to shed. "God damn it, Taylor. Why did you do this to m... us?"


Lisa rested a hand on my shoulder, separated by two sets of bullet proof battle armor. "You will probably never know the real answer to that question," she told me. If this was Lisa trying to be comforting, then she had a worse bedside manner than I did.


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


A/N- Clearly Lisa's talking about being able to see Amelia wiping herself after going to the bathroom.

 

Amelia, Ch 165


I examined Missy's body with my power, even though it was difficult from this kind of distance. Maybe if I were in a better headspace. But after Taylor's death, and Lisa's second trigger, I just wasn't able to concentrate. She's lost a lot of blood, I realized first. And over half the blood she does have isn't even her own, it's a combination of blood substitute and a uniquely modified blood type I'd only ever seen in one person. That's how I was able to piece together the scenario. Riley is using herself as a life support machine.


I started the mending process, restoring Missy's punctured heart. Converting the material from her suit's life support layer into extra protein and raw material. Drawing upon the oxygenated blood substitute and converting it to natural, human, blood. Filtering out between her and Riley would be impossible, I'd have to trust Riley to know when things had progressed far enough for her to extract herself from whatever system she cobbled together.


I moved on to the other, incidental, damage. There was minor oxygen loss to the brain, but nothing likely to be dangerous. Especially given our neural repair technology, and the memory backups. If she woke up any time soon, it would be with a truly legendary headache, but otherwise fine. Then there were a number of other dents and injuries to worry about. Some old enough that I had to wonder why she never had me fix them before. The girl was virtually covered in scars and old injuries. I chose not to undo those, but I'd have to ask her why she never asked me to fix them.


It was during this that Zach and Crystal shunted back over.


Lisa had retired to sitting, waiting for news from the other fronts. Theo was still running the rescue mission, and that made theirs the last that was still running ongoing.


Crystal simply plopped down on the Yggdrasil, making no attempt to talk. It was comfortable enough to use as a bed, and clean enough, too. She looked exhausted, and since it was my power telling me this, I trusted its judgment. Even Zach looked tired.


"So," Zach started. "Mind telling us what the fuck just happened? Crystal was freaking out so hard about how she thought she was going to go insane that I thought she was about to go insane. And you didn't even notice that our systems were damaged by that attack that killed the Butcher."


I cringed. It was true, we forgot all about them. "Sorry," I said with absolutely no feeling.


Zach reached into the container pouch and pulled out a burnt human leg. I probably should have been upset by that, but I'd just watched by best friend explode. "I brought the body," he continued. "There was more, but I got hungry while waiting. Apparently Taylor did, too, because she got to everything else, including the bones."


I smiled at that. Taylor had the funniest ways of being being thoughtful, and making sure no one could find Butcher's body when none of the rest of us were even thinking about such things was insanely helpful. "Taylor's dead."


"Fuck me," Zach swore. "What happened?"


"She overrode my suit," Crystal finally spoke. "I was too messed up to notice, but she did, didn't she? That's why I didn't become the Butcher, because she did it first. She sacrificed herself for me."


I couldn't think of what to say to that. Fuck, that has to be... "No," I finally spoke. "Taylor had her own reasons for doing what she did. She wasn't really thinking about you when she did it." She wasn't thinking about anyone other than me.


Crystal didn't say anything. I doubted she was convinced.


"She had her backup, right?" Zach asked. "She'll back up and running as her usual self in no time. We'll just have to wake her up tell her that she shared a room with me for a night, and a brain with a bunch of psychopaths for a few minutes. Like a wild night of binge drinking. Just with a lower chance of STDs."


"A week," Lisa corrected. "She apparently decided that she wasn't going to update her copy since she was so upset with how last week had gone for her, so she's missed out on the last week."


"Okay," Zach hesitated. "Well, what happened this week? She missed out on her ex boyfriend being a fucktard."


"Not an ex," I corrected instinctively. Defensively. "They never dated, which means he can't be her ex." I didn't need Lisa to tell me why I felt I had to correct him of that. And only part of it was my feelings for her. I saw what he had become. The less we had in common, the happier I was.


"Fair enough," he responded. "And... we killed the Butcher. You made a really sexy grotto, but that's fine since you haven't broken it in yet so she didn't miss out on anything fun. Was this before or after she decided to be all friendly with Emma? Because if it was before... she's gonna think we're punking the shit out of her. All in all, not a big deal. Hey, we should totally make weird shit up that she won't believe. Maybe wear monkey costumes and pretend humans are our slaves."


I didn't say anything. Zach was ignoring the important parts, and both of us knew it. Just that conversation we had the other day alone was huge and left completely unsaid. Probably better that way. I simply nodded. Zach had just told me that he wouldn't say anything important about what happened over this week to Taylor, without actually saying anything. I'd have to find a way to thank him.


He sat down next to Crystal. "So... now what?"


"Lachesis got injured, so we won't be relying on space warping to get us around," Lisa answered. "We could ask Dragon to give us a ride, or we could take a more traditional mode of transit. Not a whole lot for us to do, really."


"Probably gonna have to shunt back over and chat with the locals," I sighed. "We're trying to keep Taylor's death a secret. Don't need the media hearing about it. Should probably keep it from the rest of the team, too. Story is, she and I are keeping Butcher contained for now."


"Which isn't completely untrue," Lisa added.


"We can buy a couple more days just by, well, me not being seen much," I added. "Let people draw the obvious conclusions."


"You two do have a pattern of vanishing from the public eye for a few days every time we have an important success," Crystal volunteered. "PHO has a meme or two hundred implying that your idea of romance involves violent conflicts. They phrase it a little differently, however."


I sighed. "You're not kidding, are you?"


"Well, to be fair, the story does sorta write itself," Zach added. "Normal romance: start a conversation while waiting in a bank. Pantheon romance: start a conversation while robbing a bank. Normal first date: going to a movie with friends. Pantheon first date: going to an Endbringer with friends."


"There's dozens of them," Crystal confirmed. "More if you include the ones about New Delhi that keep getting banned. You can thank Clarice for that little 'kill Endbringers, then get married' blurb to the press. It's been translated into almost as many languages as the bible. Mostly after we proved we could actually back up the words with results."


"Why does she get all the credit?" Zach pouted. "I was the one who posted a six page article culminating in mathematical proof that for their fifth wedding anniversary, they would conquer Russia in the middle of December. A lot of work went into that!"


What? I determined that my method of thanking Zach for earlier would be by not dissolving his armor and forcing him to walk back to Brockton Bay. And even that might be overly generous. "Okay," I said dryly. "So while all of that that is both convenient and horrible. One of us should really talk to the authorities. This is kind of a big deal and all."


"I'm not up for it," Crystal sighed. "Does Butcher's mind power have any long term side effects?"


I really wasn't ready to talk to the public, either, even without my convenient excuse of needing to stay hidden for now. And I knew for a certainty that Lisa wasn't.


"I can do it," Zach volunteered.


"It can wait," Lisa muttered. "Calvert will be more than happy to play spokesperson and brag about whatever. In fact, the more limelight we give to the PRT and politicos, the happier all of them will be. I'll let them think we're doing them a 'personal favor' and play on it for some future considerations. Meanwhile, we can play on Pantheon's rep for being elusive and mysterious. Win-win for all involved."


God knows we could use more of those, I thought.

 

Amelia, Ch 166


The plan was always for us to stay behind after the battles, to meet with the heroes and our assimilated villain-cum-hero allies. The plan always implied it was likely I wouldn't be part of the group that did those visits. Keeping the Butcher disabled before pickup was something no one could object to, and almost no one other than I could achieve. And so, gratefully, I stayed behind. With my thoughts. On an almost literally empty world. Our world, now. Legally.


Shunting Butcher off to a prison dimension was a secret part of the plan that only a few knew about: Costa-Brown, Dragon, and a handful of heads of state. Not even the other Directors, all they knew was we had a plan to neutralize her powers and keep her contained. But now our inter-dimensional travel secret was, at least unofficially, out of the bag. We'd soon have to debate what to do with our portal tech, how to petition off worlds to the various nations that might need it. Namely, all of them. The initial agreements included two things: a single new world, with hundreds of portals, which would acknowledge the same legal boundaries as our own planet. And that we would never open gates to worlds with humans without unanimous agreement.


There would be debates, of course. Negotiations. Treaties. Bribes and backstabbing. Possibly even wars of the literally inter-dimensional variety. Lisa had assured me that Pantheon's world being acknowledged as its own sovereign nation would be approved. Especially since that was, functionally, all that we asked. It meant we could claim other worlds during all future arrangements, as well.


Crystal, at least, stayed with me. She was also my 'flight home', after all. Boston wasn't that far away from Brockton Bay, we didn't really need Missy for that. Of course, now I had armor that could fly on its own, which was beyond awesome, but I didn't have Crystal's speed. Very few of us did, and my armor needed a lot of disposable mass associated with it to really exploit my powers, so she had a hand gripped onto my back and was, functionally, pushing me along.


Or, really, guiding my fall. Antigravity is a weird flight system.


"How are you holding up?" she asked me as we started along.


"Badly," I admited. "We're going home to replace my dead sorta-ex sorta-girlfriend with a copy of her made when we were still together, sorta. I am not prepared to deal with this kind of weirdness. No one is. Except maybe Zach."


"That kid reads the strangest stuff," Crystal agreed. "He got me hooked on this one asian comic that has a guy who turns into a girl whenever he's splashed with cold water. And his dad's a panda, and that's actually the least strange part of the story."


"Some weird cape story?" I asked. I'd heard of a few crazy ones, but like most parahumans I hated reading them. They were just mind numbingly stupid and clearly written by people who did't even ask a cape what things are really like.


"No," she replied. "No capes, just magic. Pretty much pretends parahumans don't exist. Also pretends police officers don't exist. And, for that matter, all laws of both man and nature. Or the very idea of consequences for your actions. It's really god awful by any and all literary standards, but it's fucking addictive both as a comedy and a will-they/won't-they romance. Just as long as you don't allow yourself to think about it."


"Sounds like something Victoria would read religiously," I tried to smile.


"Yeah... are you guys really going to be able to bring her back?" Crystal asked.


"Got permission from mom and dad to at least try a few days ago," I confirmed. "There's still legal mumbo jumbo, with the whole exhuming thing. Normally that would take months to work out. But it's being fast tracked by the PRT and Protectorate. They are really hoping this works. Some of their own are glassed, too. Plus others who've been transformed by other means. If this works, there will be a couple dozen others to bring back."


"Makes sense," Crystal agreed.


"And it implies we'll be able to make our resurrection tech available to others," I added. "Which is its own fucking ethical nightmare. We literally cannot do this for everyone, so how do we decide who deserves it and who doesn't? Heroes are one thing, sounds easy enough. What of the villains who fight to do something noble despite being horrible? Like Kaiser? He was there for Leviathan. Would we have extended the backup tech to him, if we had it then? Then we move to civilians. Billionaires and Heads of State with serial immortality? Is that the world we're going to create?"


"Fuck," Crystal muttered. "That's terrifying. This technology really does change everything, doesn't it? At least we won't have to ask ourself about giving it to sickos like Jack Slash and Genoscythe the Eye Raper, right? They can fucking remain in hell."


"That's better than nothing, I guess," I sighed. "So... how about you? Are you okay?"


"Not really," she admitted. "Butcher really scared me. The pain was insane, but that wasn't really the bad part. Nothing I haven't been through before. I've never been so angry before in my life. I've never been so afraid. I knew what I was doing, the whole time. That I was killing her, and what would happen when I succeeded. But I just couldn't bring myself to care about it. If... if I didn't have her there as a target, I would have found and killed someone with my bare hands and loved every second of it."


Fuck. "Fuck," I replied. "That..." I had no words.


"Yeah, I know I'm 'backed up' and all," Crystal continued. "But I keep asking myself questions. What if something went wrong? What if what comes out isn't right? Fuck, even if everything is correct, I can't really think of that copy as 'me', y'know?"


"I know," I agreed. Crystal must have heard the worry in my voice.


"Fuck!" she muttered. "That was beyond insensitive. I'm sure she'll be..."


"Don't worry about it," I interrupted. "We all knew there was a risk, even if it was a small one thanks to Dinah. If it wasn't now, there's next time. Or the time after. If nothing else, there are still more Endbringers. Simurgh made it pretty fucking clear we're not immortal."


"Y... yeah," Crystal mumbled.


"And now I'm being beyond insensitive," I apologized. "It's easy to forget there are emotional consequences, even if we make it out physically."


"I remember when this used to be fun," Crystal sighed. "Go out, zap Hookwolf in the face a few times, he runs off, day is saved. Even if you lose, he's not going to do anything more than talk shit to his skinhead buddies and let you limp away with your bruises and cuts. It was... like a game, y'know? I know it sounds stupid when you say it like that, but it really was. Now? We have an 'undo death' option, and weapons that put us in the same conversations as the Triumvirate. But I've never been this fucking terrified in a fight before."


"The Unwritten Rules," I suggested. "Lisa could explain it better, but basically heroes and villains had their fights, but they're all pretty minor. Everyone pulls their punches. Except for a few rare psychos like the Slaughterhouse Nine, no one wants to rock the boat for fear of sinking the whole ship and ruining things for everyone. Sounded so goddamn naive and trite when she said it. I just dismissed it at her trying to justify being a supervillain like it didn't really make her a criminal."


"I could really go for some of that right about now," Crystal sighed. "What happened? When did it all change? When did our lives become so fucked up that I'd rather be fighting Hookwolf in my underwear, than even going out in costume wearing an armor that gives me all the functional powers of a god? Even Leviathan wasn't this frightening. I knew I would be there and do my job, but I wasn't important enough to honestly matter in that battle. No expectations that I could make the difference."


I happened, I thought. The Entities didn't want us destroying ourselves, it doesn't give them enough time to gather results. The plan was a slow burning cold war. I got past their controls, went forward without thinking about consequences, found a partner like Taylor with a similar inability to consider consequences, and by the time anyone knew what we were doing, we were too strong to put down. Now we're in freefall and there's nowhere left to go but forward. None of that was anything I could say to my cousin.


"I think this is what the Simurgh planned as the result of New Delhi," I suggested. Not untrue, really. "The Rules no longer apply and this country is heading face first into a parahuman civil war on a scale that threatens to end the United States as a nation."


"Sounds like the Simurgh," Crystal agreed. "Who else would think they could destroy the United States by setting India on fire?"


"We have to run damage control," I continued. "We might not be able to stop the war, but at the very least we keep things from getting so bad that they collapse entirely. And to do that, we have to keep breaking those rules. Hitting so hard that no one dares fuck with us."


"Is this what they mean by 'peacekeeping' in the military?" Crystal sighed. "Do you think Alexandria thinks about shit like this?"


I shrugged. "Probably," I admitted.


"She's been doing this for like twenty years, now," Crystal muttered. "No wonder she's such an irritable uptight bitch."


I hadn't thought about it that way, before. "I guess Taylor and I are the same way," I agreed. "Doing what we have to do, no matter how much damage we cause in the process. Fuck, look at New Delhi. Even when we thought each Endbringer was a continental suicide bomb waiting to go off, we were still thinking about killing the other two. A couple billion or so more lives, half our planet pretty much destroyed. That... that we could even contemplate such an act."


"You wouldn't have done it," Crystal insisted. "We'd have found another way, like pushing them through to already dead worlds and killing them there. Or just closing the doorway and leaving them trapped there."


"Maybe," I said. But if we didn't have a solution by the time the next one came around, if the portals didn't work on Endbringers the way almost nothing seemed to work on them. We would have gone through with killing them the normal way. "What about Scion?"


"Can't you do the same thing?" she asked.


"No," I sighed. "He's like Eidolon, but without limitations. Any power he wants, as long as it exists. Including a few that are so unbelievably dangerous that he would never give them to us. It's likely any battle with him is going to cost us multiple worlds. Dinah says we'll lose billions."


"Dinah also said we'd walk away with the Butcher trapped in another dimension, and all our friends alive and well," Crystal reminded me. "I'm pretty sure none of that worked out, either."


"Didn't it?" I asked. "We got Butcher removed from our dimension. Missy's death was easily reversed. Taylor's death is... to us, she loses the last week of her life and everything that implies about our breakup and possible makeup. To her she wakes up from a dream to a bunch of people who have memories of things she never did and never will do... to us, that makes her dead. To Dinah, she's incapacitated for a day or two at the most."


"This is all so fucked up," Crystal concluded.


"We might be able to stop," I added. "There is the chance that Dragon or Cauldron piece together the winning resources. Or someone else. Dinah's predictions say there are five possible contestants at the end with strength enough to be the ones that end the threat that is Scion. We can back out and trust the others."


"No we can't," Crystal corrected. "It may be physically possible. But you and Taylor aren't the types that can let others be responsible for anything. This is the fate of the world, of every world, at stake. The whole fucking universe if what you know about their lifecycle is true. It makes you some of the most important people in the fucking multiverse just being on the list of people that might find a way to stop it. People like me, we can't handle that kind of pressure. People like the two of you can't handle anything less."

 

Amelia, Ch 167- Lisa


Missy arrived with Emma and an incredibly concerned looking Riley and Theo in tow. I could tell Theo was injured, probably fairly badly. He's going to be in a lot of pain without Amelia's help, I realized. And our need to keep Taylor's death a secret means he'll be going a while without that help. I felt bad, but there wasn't much choice.


I looked at Missy, extending my new power to her, first. I paid enough for it, may as well play a bit. Bits and pieces of data filtered in. Images in the form of concept more than something audio or visual. Argument with her mother before coming, too faded to pick up details. Her injury, but very little surrounding the event. Those didn't stick out as much as her date with Theo last week. A kiss on the cheek? I could see the moment when she quit the Wards so clearly that it was like it happened then and there. I smiled as Piggot's fat rolled while she tumbled to the ground. There's an image I am going to cherish for a long time.


Missy's trigger event, which I chose not to actually look at, stood out like an inferno. Why? I wondered, then turned my original power on the question. Postcognition is extension of usual inference powerset. Postcognition locates and refines data based upon interactions with the environment. Senses events of significant emotional impact. Correction, significant formative impact. Greater impacts leave longer and clearer data trails.


I accepted that that made sense. I could see the death of this world, despite it being millions of years ago, because it was the death of a world. Trigger events, too, would be huge details. My power accidentally gives me the ability to detect parahumans, I realized. Not accidental. Second trigger relates to a need to correct flaw in power resulting in emotional reaction identical to primary trigger. Primary trigger related to helplessness at losing brother to suicide.


Current stress related to parahumans and parahuman abilities, primarily the 'Taylia' link. Power refined to respond to parahuman threats. Trump ability. Trump abilities common in second triggers. Trump abilities result from trigger events caused by parahumans. Second trigger resultant from Taylor's suicide and need to understand the reasons. Second trigger cause identical to primary trigger cause in all cases.


I was floored. My power just gave me direct insight into how the Passengers operated. A lot of insight, actually. Things that, in retrospect, should have been obvious. Things that must have triggered Taboo, before. I actually smiled. Even as I started to cry, I was smiling. Congratulations, Taylor, you'd probably consider this final proof that you did the right thing by killing yourself.


"Are you okay?" Riley asked. I did NOT point my new power at Riley. That was something I don't think my mind could handle, seeing Riley 'at work'. I thanked every star that I had to deliberately look to use my postcognition. The fact that it was pushing me toward a tinker headache after mere minutes worth of actual use made me a little less happy, but I could live with that.


"I'll cope," I replied to Riley's question. I turned my usual power on the new one again. Range limitation exists. Manton Effect. Large population of living variables greatly diminishes power's range and detail. Likely to be limited to days on Bet, save for trigger events. "The mission didn't go quite as well as we hoped. We'll need to send Emma back to base as soon as possible, then we can go back "


"Was someone else hurt?" Missy asked.


"Not seriously," I lied, willing Riley to keep the secret. I could beat the standard suit lie detection, but I doubted I could fool Riley. Fortunately she didn't say anything about it. I knew she'd ask later. "We had a few complications involving the Butcher and could use her skills. I've extended my apologies to Director Calvert about us abandoning Boston after the fight. They were understanding of our need to deal with Butcher and the... less than successful mission in New York."


My power shared all four of their opinions on how badly Atropos fucked up. There was a damn good chance Riley might do something about it, and likely only Theo would try to talk her out of it. "I'm going to review all the recordings to figure out what happened, of course," I informed them. That wasn't strictly true, in that I probably didn't need to. Postcog worked faster. But I might have to, I had maybe a single dip into it for the day. I probably overtaxed it, already, all considered. I still needed my normal power, and they both ran off the same battery.


"Good," Missy responded. "So, need a trip back to New York?"


"Yes, please," I replied. "After getting Emma where she needs to go."


....


"I fucked up," Lily stated as soon as I walked into the room. She looked exhausted, miserable even. Well, that makes things enormously easier. She and Sabah were in their civilian clothing and sitting together, on a couch, although they rose immediately after Lily spoke up.


"Pretty badly, yeah," I agreed. Sugar coating things wasn't something I was good at. Maybe if I were, then Taylor... no. No. That was not a helpful road to go down. We won a fucking victory here, a lot of victories. Taylor didn't sacrifice her life, she sacrificed a week of memories. That's virtually nothing, in the grand scheme of things. Especially for a girl whose girlfriend can just keep adding new decades whenever she feels like it. "You'll understand if we don't put you in charge of any more missions, won't you?"


She closed her eyes. "No, that's fine," she agreed. Sabah held her, offering comfort. "I'm not cut out for leadership. I don't think there are many people on the team that would volunteer to be on a team I led, anyway. Just point me in the right direction and let me wreck some faces."


"We'll keep the worst of it quiet," I offered. "You can be forgiven for the shot that... wounded Theo and Missy. Your behavior around Shaman, on the other hand. That's the sort of thing I'd expect Zach to do." Except not, because Zach's actually shockingly good at being an idiot without be stupid about it.


"I know," she agreed. "Can... can we just go home now? I really don't want to be here anymore."


"Yeah," I agreed. "Our job's almost done here. The failure to remove one out of three major Teeth holdings in New York isn't a huge black mark on our organization. Butcher's been removed, and that's all the news is going to focus on. The remainders will need to face both the Adepts and Protectorate, both of whom are equipped with our armor suits. They could be difficult, but nothing the locals can't handle. Get some rest for a couple hours while I hammer out the various political garbage.

....


"You know what happened better than I do right now," Taylor mumbled through her partially paralyzed mouth. "Did she change so much in just a week? Do you believe she was attempting suicide?" 'She'. Is distinguishing between herself and the Taylor who died to stop the Butcher. Confused. Afraid. Worried we're angry. Taylor really did change a lot in that week where Taylia was removed. Almost as completely as she had in the the first week where Taylia was activated. To call her a different person was not an understatement. Worried about my opinion. Worried about our friendship. Still friends.


I extended my new power to her. Reaching for her past. That week was missing, of course, but I didn't need it. I'd been in Taylor's room. I'd examined her week. Punishing herself physically and mentally. Even paralyzed, this Taylor in front of me was more alive than that one had been. I looked further. Into the Taylor I had known amongst the Undersiders. Fuck, I couldn't even lie to myself and pretend Taylor had ever been happy, even for a moment, as part of our gang. We gave her goals, a sense of purpose, something to accomplish. All things that she craved. I could even rest assured that she saw us, or most of us at least, as friends that she could trust. Regent being an unsurprising exception. She was not, however, happy. At any point.


Still, even like this she was my friend. And she wanted to remain my friend, which was far better for me than her 'other' self had been. "No, I guess not," I lied, or as close as I was willing to lie to her. "Okay, she's cleared. You're safe to come out now."


Amelia opened her passage and stepped out, looking timid. Afraid to be disappointed like I had been disappointed. Taylor was overjoyed to see her. She hadn't looked at me like that when I talked to her. I don't know if anyone ever had, or ever would, look at me like that. I didn't use my power to find out. Neither of them noticed as I left the room. Not especially surprising, either.


....


I made my usual call to Dinah. She already got the report. The flaws our Butcher mission revealed in her powers. I had to tell her about our cloning tech and alternate dimension access, simply because it was the only way to prevent this kind of travesty from happening again. We'd still need clones in the future. At the very least, there were still Endbringers, who Dinah could not read in any significant fashion. But I wanted to prevent us from needing them any time soon.


"How do you like your gryffon?" I asked the girl.


"Typha is more than satisfactory," she answered. Tired, physically exhausted, physically sore. Spends several hours a day playing with or riding the creature. Sacrificing sleep. I smiled.


"Glad to hear it," I said. "Usual first question."


"Point zero four percent chance there is a credible attempt on the life of a member of Pantheon or its priority allies in the next twenty four hours, point zero six percent chance of a credible attempt on the life of a member of Pantheon or its priority allies in the next week."


"That's good," I answered. "Chances the latest attack model on the Fallen in Houston and the surrounding region will prove successful."


"Ninety four point four percent chance of total victory, ninety nine point seven percent chance of acceptable levels of mission failure. Zero percent chance of significant harm to Pantheon members during mission."


That was the change to the question, 'significant harm' covered anything that took more than a day to recover from, including our powers as a factor. That wouldn't have stopped Missy's injury, but still, it would have caught Taylor's suicide. No surprise that no harm came in that mission, it amounted to 'everyone has lunch while Taylor cuts loose on the people who planned the murder of her children'.


"Eighty seven point four four percent chance of unacceptable long term fallout," Dinah concluded. Okay, back to the drawing board on that one, I marked on the notes. About a five percent improvement from last time. The poblem with Houston's Fallen is they had a couple of the most powerful parahumans on their team, including the low powered biokinetic/stranger, brute and mover calling himself Baal. He could have been a direct relative of the old Slaughterhouse Nine member known as 'King'. Touching people and turning them into a biological armor suit surrounding his body. A lot like Amelia's Dryad, but made from still living human flesh. More, he could use the material on his own body, healing injuries and boosting his physical and mental abilities temporarily.


Deploying anyone else put them in serious danger of fighting him. Putting everything on Taylor's shoulders resulted in huge casualties as Baal subsumed people en masse to fuel his power's need for biomass. I'd thrown a few ideas at the problem, but he was just too damn durable and versatile for an easy victory. That and his girlfriend Lilith was a precog didn't help matters in the slightest. Weaker than Dinah by far, but too strong to just sneak up on. Her powerset was a lot like what we pretended Aceso's powerset was. Either way, that continued to be a bust.


"How about the Tennessee Fallen?"


"Ninety eight percent chance of success, twelve percent chance of long term fallout, no risk," Dinah answered. That one was worth attempting, through the safety net that was Coil's power. I marked that down.


"Chances that Dragon's latest Ellisburg quarantine features prevent the post-Nilbog cataclysm?"


"Twenty seven thousand casualties within seventy two hours of any successful mission to eliminate Nilbog," Dinah stated. Nilbog was something of a weird case as well. Killing him was easy. So was subduing him and throwing him in a prison world. Honesty, even our plan to just send in a small army of M6s was nothing less than 90% successful. The problem was that within days of his removal, people started dying in huge numbers, and we weren't quite sure why. Whatever it was, every plan failed. Including the one where we buried the city in Yggdrasil and had Amelia just sit on it consuming every living thing it touched until the whole city was gone.


"So that's still a bust," I sighed. "Pity, we could really have used that one."


"Umm," Dinah spoke. "Far be it from me to question your ideas... but have you thought of maybe asking him to leave nicely?"


I blinked "What?"


"Well, yeah," she continued. "He hasn't left Ellisburg in, like, ten years. Maybe if you just offer to give him somewhere for him and his monsters to play, he'll want to leave. Voluntarily."


I closed my eyes. "A wager," I muttered. "If this idea of yours works, I'll pay you double. If not, it's a free question."


"Triple," she replied. "And you have to mean it when you ask the question, no planning to throw on purpose."


"Fine," I agreed. "Odds of being able to remove Nilbog form Ellisburg by offering him a suitable chunk of land in another dimension, assume all plans involve no attempt at harming him. Include any sudden rise in deaths from his removal next. No plan right now, just wide spectrum idea."


"Seventy seven point three five percent chance of success, zero percent chance of increases in deaths within seventy two hour after mission, regardless of success. So long as mission does not include violence."


"Sounds like we have ourselves a winner," I stated. It would take some more time, some more planning, and some more questions. Of course it would require all those things. But it was an amazing opportunity to consider.


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


A/N- Dinah needed more screen time.

Also, Lisa needs hugs. All the hugs. Ever.

 

Amelia, Ch 168- Taylor


Everyone was so tired and glum when I got back, it was like none of them had even slept in that week I was gone. Lisa had retreated to her office before Amelia and I ever left the pocket prison. Wherever the portal was built, the actual prison was in Brockton Bay, or that dimension's geoanalogue. I found myself on our front lawn when we shunted over. No one was there to greet me, which suited me better than a crowd.


"I'm going to get dressed in real clothes," I informed Amelia. "And a shower. And something to eat. I'm starving." Makes sense, I decided. This new body hasn't ever eaten any actual food.


LonelyWorried. "Okay," she forced a smile. "You should talk to Riley or Emma before the food, you'll probably need some specific care for a little while."


I smiled. She was always the thoughtful one. I leaned in and kissed her cheek. "Thanks," I replied. JoyDesireGuilt. I walked to my room, more carried by Matriarch than under the power of my own limbs. I was still having trouble walking, though far less now than before. I stepped into my room and slipped out of Matriarch. A sudden draft informed me that I came out entirely naked. My armor ate my makeshift Yggdrasil hospital gown. Oh well, I wasn't planning to keep it.


Showering was difficult, with my lack of coordination, but somehow I managed to not stab myself in the eye with my fingers or my comb. Hmm, my clothes feel uncomfortable. Too tight in... wait a second... I sighed. Well, I needed to talk to Emma anyway.


I slipped back into Matriarch, solely because at this point I still couldn't quite move correctly.


I entered the lab. Emma was there alone. "Hey Taylor," she said with a level of cheer that I couldn't decide was a result of being genuinely happy to see me, a forced energy to hide her actual feelings, or being the result of spending too long picking up habits from Riley.


"So," I smiled back. "I'm told I may need some dietary advice."


"Oh, right," she said. "The growing system negates much of the problem, adding proper intestinal flora is built right in. I'd advise eating a good amount of yogurt and to avoid eating large amounts of meat for the next few days at least. Just to help things even out. You'll be back to your old self in no time."


"Speaking of," I said dryly. "Is there a reason that none of my bras fit, anymore?"


"Oh, that," Emma smiled. "The system may have accidentally put a little bit too much in when it was emulating the new body's puberty growth cycle. It's a very complicated process, reading your DNA and extrapolating patterns. All very involved tinker stuff that we'd be spending hours talking about. It's not really that surprising that something went a teensy bit wrong, right?" She continued smiling the whole time, and then she winked. "We've already fixed the error, but it was too late to undo the growth process without causing all kinds of other problems. We couldn't fix it, but Amelia certainly can."


Uh huh. Mistake. Sure, Emma, whatever you say. "So, any other surprises I need to worry about?"


"Shouldn't be," she replied. "The growth process is keyed to make you pretty much a match for Olympic level athletes in every physical way, and better in most, but if you don't train, then that it'll go away pretty quickly. So enjoy it while it lasts. You may have insomnia for a bit as your body reworks its circadian rhythm, and don't be surprised if you dislike salty or strongly flavored foods for a while. Your taste buds are brand new, after all."


"I meant about everything else," I responded. "Everyone's been acting weird around me. What happened?"


"Oh, that," she looked down. "Well, for starters, the only people who know you died were either there when you woke up, or Zach and Crystal, everyone else just has their own problems to worry about right now. Kinda hiding that whole 'death' thing from the public. And the team, I guess. The Butcher fight... it went pretty bad for everyone. Crystal almost became the Butcher after being hit by that rage power. You apparently activated the suit override and killed her first."


"Why didn't I just shunt Crystal out?" I asked.


"Too soon, hadn't recharged," Emma replied. I frowned. Crystal's suit had Crystal herself as a battery charger, but it was also the armor with the most energy intensive systems. It recharged in whatever order Crystal told it to, just by default. If all she cared about was killing the Butcher... well, that was a stupid question to ask.


"Okay," I agreed. "What about everyone else?"


"Lisa blames herself for asking Dinah the wrong questions," Emma continued. "Crystal's upset thanks to the whole nearly-being-possessed thing, and how you sacrificed yourself to save her. Everyone in New York blames Lily for fucking up her mission. Missy was killed, but Riley fixed that. Riley now hates Lily. Missy and Theo aren't fans, either, but Missy's too professional and Theo's too nice to let it show. And basically everything's fucked."


Well, god damn it. "And normally this is the stuff Lisa would handle, but she's upset too, right?" I asked. Crystal probably blames herself, too. Fuck my life. Or past life. Whatever.


"Pretty much," Emma agreed. "I'd try to do something, but, well, I come with baggage and no one wants to be near me, much less listen to my advice. You and Riley are the closest things I have to actual friends. Which puts a certain perspective on my life that I'm not all that pleased with."


"And what about the rest of the week?" I asked. "Lisa and Amelia are on eggshells around me, and I don't know why."


She looked away. "Are you sure you want to know?"


"Yeah," I responded. "Of course."


"Your past self preferred not to update for a reason," Emma continued. "You, she, knew that she'd be happier losing that part forever. You and Amelia got into a big blowout, and both of you were miserable, and it made other people miserable. You've been given a chance to undo that. I can't lie, I'm kinda jealous. I wish I had that option, I really do."


"I doubt your past self would appreciate the mess you left her with," I replied. A fight between me and Amelia? That explains a lot, but not why we had the fight. I had chosen to get the update before altering my sexuality, for a number of reasons. But if it didn't work out and upset Amelia that I made the change, I had expected to just use the old pattern to replace the new one. A simple enough fix, all considered.


"Guess I'm still a selfish bitch like that," she smiled sadly. "I know I keep saying this, but for what it's worth, I'm sorry."


Damn it. I stepped forward and put my arms around her, pulling into as tight a hug as I could without activating Matriarch's strength boosters. Her hair was cool on my face. That's right, part of her Case 53 traits means she doesn't generate body heat. "For what it's worth, it means more that you're trying to make up for it than if you had simply erased you memories of it in order to play innocent."


"Thanks," she mumbled into my shoulder.


....


I walked into Lisa's office. "How are you holding up?"


She jumped. "Oh, jeez, how do you move that quietly?"


"Antigrav system," I answered. "Still getting used to the new legs and all."


"Do you need something?" she asked, sliding back into her position in front of her computer.


"Just wanted to talk to you," I replied.


"About?"


"You," I answered. "I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate everything you do. I don't say it nearly often enough, but I really do."


She closed her eyes. "I know," she answered. "My power at work, it's hard for anyone to hide what they think of me."


"Still, you deserve to hear it said more often," I insisted. "Not just from me, for that matter."


She shrugged. "I don't exactly make it easy for people," she pointed out. "You're only here because you're under the emotional influence of a psychic link and a post-death experience. And that's fine, I don't like all that mushy stuff to begin with. Just be sure and praise my brilliance to the masses. You know how much I love that."


"I'll keep that in mind," I replied. "But you're not getting out of this that easily." I walked/glided over to her.


"Dammit, Taylor," she muttered, but she stood anyway, allowing me to hug her without anything more than her complaints to stop me. "You're completely ruining both of our images as a badass warrior goddess right now. I hope you realize that."


"Doesn't matter," I dismissed. "You'll just write up some crazy new scheme and next week we'll stomp some psychopath's face until we're back to being the scariest girls on the planet yet again."


"Speaking of, I have ideas for our next mission," she added. "And there's absolutely nothing that can go wrong with this one. I'll explain it at the morning meeting. But I've got a couple speeches to write, and some outlines to run past Dinah."


"I'll be there," I agreed, leaving her to her work.


I headed straight for Amelia's room after leaving Lisa. RecognitionJoy.


I paused and looked at her. I considered asking her what happened last week. Whatever it was, my other self decided it wasn't worth keeping. I also considered Emma's advice. Other-Me chose this, having a week erased. A week that might have become months, had it come down to it. Endbringer battles are generally the only time it was likely for us to die. Honestly, now that we could carry my power across dimensions, we no longer had a reason to be near them in order to fight them. She couldn't have been hoping for someone to kill her, she had to know it might take years for something to succeed. Right?


ConcernWorry. "Taylor, are you okay?"


"Still decompressing," I answered. That is certainly true. "Everyone's acting so differently, and I just found out I was dead. It's going to take a little time to get used to, is all. I'm also still trying to figure out what happened this week."


FearLonelinessGuilt. "I... I can fill you in," she offered as I started to work my way out of the armor. She stood and moved behind me to keep me steady so I didn't accidentally fall. I stumbled back, only partially on purpose, into her arms.


"Maybe later," I answered. "I've decided it doesn't matter right now. Maybe later I'll want to know more, but for right now? I'm happy just being happy. Or I will be when I don't feel like I'm trying to walk on stilts all the time, at least." ReliefConcern.


"Okay," she agreed. "I'll be here whenever you need."


I turned and hugged her tight.


SafeRealizationShockDesire. "Umm... Taylor... you're not wearing a bra."


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

A/N- So, apparently being dead for a few days makes you all mushy.

And man, on rereading this chapter... Taylor's kind of a hypocrite with absolutely no self awareness. I think that means I caught her character perfectly.

 

Amelia, Ch 169


"Clarice, Zach and Theo have no other guardians?" Principal Howell asked.


"I'm afraid not," my mother responded. "While Theo does have a living step mother, she is currently on the run from the law. The courts have acknowledged his legal emancipation, on condition that he continues to prove he is able to conduct himself responsibly."


AnnoyanceConcernAppreciation. And that would be Taylor, spending time with her father. Their lunch date to talk about her problems. Problems Taylor didn't even remember. I pushed what peaceful emotions that I could through the link. CalmWarmthLove.


"Which includes remaining in school," Howell concluded. "And, Theo, is Pantheon providing for you?"


"No, ma'am," he replied. Not technically true- he did live in our fortress full time, after all, but from a legal standpoint he was able to provide for himself. "My family has money. It's in a trust, Mrs. Dallon can explain it better."


My mom nodded. "I am on retainer as his advocate, and one of my senior associates specializes in corporate law, and serves his interests there. He has a trust and a monthly allowace to live on."


"I see," the principal agreed. "What of Clarice and Zach?"


"They have no immediate relatives capable of caring for them," my mom answered. "Clarice lost her family to the Slaughterhouse Nine."


Clarice hugged me. "I have my Big Sister!" she insisted.


"... and has connected emotionally to my daughter," she finished. "While she is technically considered a ward of the state at this point, I don't need to explain to you that the current conditions of Brockton Bay are still straining the child welfare systems. The city has no objection to her remaining in Pantheon's custody, although the final legalities are not yet finalized. Amelia will assume legal guardianship when she turns eighteen in two months."


"I presume Zachariah is much the same?"


"His mother and father also died to the S9," mom replied. "Other relatives were lost during Leviathan or the chaos afterward. His only adult relative is obviously unfit to care for a minor..."


"Translation," Zach interrupted. "My uncle hasn't been sober since the mid eighties."


Howell looked through the paperwork. "This seems to be in order," she concluded, then looked at me. "Is that everything?"


"Almost," mom responded. "There are two other students that are attending here that Pantheon will be paying tuition for, despite not being their legal guardians."


"The former Wards, I presume," Principal Howell asked.


"Yes," I nodded as I handed over the small stack of checks. "That should cover everything."


"Thank you," she responded. I got up, leaving with the three 'kids'. Mom remained behind to make one last arrangement.


....


I met up with Taylor and Mister Hebert after the meeting. The others went to do their own thing- we were only a mile or so away from home, after all. Clarice, thanks to the miracle of public identities, had Bella with her. I didn't worry too much about who went where, and walked the short couple blocks to one of the new outdoor diners being set up in this area. A chill reminded me that it would be winter soon. I was glad I had the Yggdrasil fully integrated to the version on the other side of our doorway. Trying to keep plants alive in winter, especially ones of the scale as mine, was damn near impossible. But this one had access to massive amounts of raw material and a uniquely warm sun.


"Hello, Mister Hebert," I said with a smile as I sat next to Taylor. A waitress got there at almost the same moment, with one of those giant pizza slices. "Are you sure you don't have a power for perfect timing?" I asked Taylor as I sat down to my lunch. AmusementPride. Taylor had opted for a vegetable soup, about as mild a dish as possible.


"I'm contractually obligated to not admit to any high end thinker powers," Taylor responded. "On grounds that it'd make Lisa cry if she had any competition."


"How did everything go during admissions?" Mister Hebert asked.


"School's been sorted out," I informed him. "Ms. Howell was really understanding about everything, and mom helped."


"I still think you girls should be going as well," he added.


AnnoyanceExasperation. "Dad, you know why we can't."


"The world isn't your responsibility, Taylor," he insisted. "You should let the adults deal with things while you get your education and a good foundation for your future careers. The world and all its problems will still be here for you when you graduate."


"Like the adults handled Lung and E88 and Butcher?" Taylor asked. "How about we ask the Simurgh what she thinks?"


"You have a point," her dad sighed. "I just want to make sure my little girl lives up to her potential. You're so smart, you should stay in school and take advantage of that mind of yours. You can easily be anything you want."


"I want to kill a couple more Endbringers and then retire to a quiet, peaceful life somewhere that no one knows who I am," Taylor responded. "That's not really an option for me, dad. Even if I wanted to, I can't ignore my responsibilities. And school just gets in the way of that. It was nice to go back, to prove I was good enough, that I was stronger than the trio. I did that, already. Now I need to prove to the Simurgh that people are stronger than her, by keeping everything from falling apart."


I reached over and put my hand on Taylor's leg, giving a squeeze and offering my emotional support. GratitudeSafePride. "Everything that she just said," I added. "Hopefully she recorded all of that so I can show it to my mom."


"There are others who can do that," Danny insisted. "The Triumvirate, for example. Let them fight this fight. That's their job, and they're good at it."


"They need help," I told him. "There's too much going on, and they can't be everywhere at once. Pantheon, on the other hand... thanks to Taylor's power, we really can be everywhere. And because of my powers, we can do it safely. I promise I'll keep her safe." From now on, at least, I added in my head. I will never allow myself to lose her again.


The answer didn't seem to make him any happier. He simply sighed. "Teenagers sure have changed since my day."


AmusementAnticipation. "Hey, look at it this way," she said with a smile that somehow managed to chill my spine and warm my heart at the same time. "At least we're not dropping out because of an unexpected pregnancy."


....


"Are you sure it worked?" I asked.


"Absolutely," Emma responded. "There's going to be a bit of difficulty at first, but yes."


I nodded, my hand trembling as I reached over and gripping Taylor's. She squeezed back. SupportLove.


"Okay, let's do this," I said, as I put my hand on the pod and finished the last step to allow her back to awareness.


Her eyes fluttered open. "Amy?" she asked, after focusing on my face. "Wha... what's going on here?"


I had to imagine I looked a lot different than the last time she saw me. Looking at her, I felt she looked a lot different, too. She was still beautiful, but she wasn't the icon, the living goddess, of my dreams and memories. She was frightened and confused. She was human and vulnerable. But, more important than all of that, she was alive.


"Hey," I said smiling, the tears running freely down my face. "It's a long story, Vicky."


=========


A/N- See. Other than Danny experiencing a nearly fatal heart attack, which Amelia quickly healed, no one suffered in this episode. I didn't write that part in because it isn't important due to how easily fixed it was. Also because it didn't actually happen.

 

Amelia, Ch 170


"What's with the audience?" Victoria asked, her bright blue darting between Emma and Taylor. No one else was in the room with us, for various reasons ranging from 'why would they be' to 'worst idea ever, of all time'. The only other person on the team who had a reason would be Crystal, who was currently with my parents and Rey, him being an actual doctor and all put him in position to help explain things to them better than the rest of us might.


"That's Emma," I introduced the one that would take the least amount of explaining. "She's a tinker that made much of the tech we used to restore you."


"What?" Victoria asked, eying the girl warily. "You mean you're a biotinker like Bonesaw or Blasto."


"Not exactly," I replied. They're not far away, though. "I've kinda started my own hero team. Emma's one of them. This is another." I stepped to the side and gestured to Taylor, knowing I was radiating a nervousness that my partner was kind enough to pretended not to notice. "Taylor, my partner."


Victoria sized up the tall girl to my right. "Huh, guess I'm a little woozy," she smiled a little. "When you said 'partner' I coulda swore you meant..."


"She did," Taylor answered. ProtectiveTerritorial. She gripped my hand. "We work together, and I'm also her fiancée."


"Well, that explains why you were never interested in any of the guys I set up up with," Victoria joked. AnnoyedConcerned. Taylor gripped my hand tighter. Victoria doesn't understand what she was saying, I tried to mentally remind Taylor. And myself. "Why didn't you tell me? You know I wouldn't have a problem with it, right? I dated that one guy for three months, or at least pretended to, until he finally worked up the courage to come out to his folks."


I froze, how the hell was I suppose to answer that question? 'No, Victoria, I don't think you would have been okay with your sister having a bizarre incestuous fixation on you that is entirely your power's fault' didn't seem like such a great conversation idea. Taylor came to my rescue. "She just hadn't found the right person," she volunteered. "You know how much trouble Amelia has with people. We only got to know each other through being part of the same team."


"Amelia?" Vicky asked, her eyes focused on me.


"I... felt it was time for a change," I replied. "Amy sounds so childish."


"Christ, Ames..." she paused. "Using your full name, and an engagement? How long was I out?"


"About three months," I answered.


"You got engaged after only three months?" She asked. "Are you sure that's such a good idea, Amy?" PrideProtective.


"Never been more certain about anything," I answered. Victoria just looked at me like I had grown a second head. I suppose I had, actually. In a way that was just shy of being literal. Note to self, never let Riley hear that figure of speech.


"Usually your healing power doesn't take this much getting used to," Victoria offered a brave smile, slowly sitting up. I was grateful that she chose to drop the subject. I could tell it would be a source of disagreement in the future. More when she realized Taylor was Skitter. I really did not want to deal with that headache, ever. I knew that putting it off probably wasn't the best plan, either, but maybe with a little time for her to get used to things and see how happy Taylor and I were together, she would be able to accept it.


"That's because it was our healing tinker tech that did the work," Emma explained to Victoria for me. "Your injuries were... beyond what Amelia was capable of working with. Tell me, what is the last thing you can recall? A date or major event?"


"Umm..." she closed her eyes, thinking. "I remember Leviathan. Neil and Eric's funeral. After that it's all bits and pieces. How bad was I hurt?"


I didn't want to upset her too much more, so I answered in a way she would be able to work with. "You got into a boxing match with Crawler," I informed her, almost cavalierly. "You were doing okay for a while, but he cheats."


She smiled. "Well, good to know I didn't go down like a punk." She paused and a worried frown started. "Wait. Crawler? You mean the Slaughterhouse Fucking Nine were here?"


"Yeah," Taylor answered. "Amelia here was so upset that she hunted down and killed Jack Slash. It was, sorta kinda our first date." ChagrinConcern. Oh, I must have reacted to that. I didn't like thinking about my fight with Jack. I didn't really want Victoria to think about my powers like that. HesitationConcernSupport. Taylor gave my hand a squeeze. "She recruited me after I killed the Siberian, to go after the rest of the group."


"Really?" Victoria asked, returning to her assessment of Taylor. "You killed the Siberian? Amy fought the S9?" Dammit Taylor, what are you doing?


"All that and more," Taylor continued. "The whole group is dead. Amelia got Jack and Bonesaw. The others were killed one or two at a time by a bunch of people. You can look it up later if you don't believe me, but they really weren't that tough once you figured out how to hit them."


"Bullshit," Victoria replied, slowly and unsteadily working herself to a standing position.


"Oh, that's not even the half of it," Taylor responded. ConfidentConfrontational. "Then next week we got bored, so we stomped all over E88. I'm not exaggerating, it wasn't even close to a fair fight. That was our second and third date, though I don't think either of us really figured that out at that point."


Victoria stared at Taylor.


"Their engagement party was suppose to be the Behemoth attack, in case you're wondering," Emma joined in, feeding the fire that Taylor had started. "But then the Simurgh had to be an attention whore and crash the party. So we killed that bitch."


Victoria just gaped. "You're fucking with me," she muttered.


"No, that's what really happened," I admitted. "It was a lot harder than they make it sound. We put lots of planning into all those missions. Thinker backup, including possibly the single most powerful precog in the entire world. Tinkertech weaponry. Days of prep work leading up to merely a few minutes of actual combat. Months of work for the Endbringer battle."


"What? And you had me in a coma all this time?" Victoria asked.


"It was... a little more than that," I answered. "Would you like like to see mom and dad now? They're waiting outside with Crystal and one of the doctors."


She looked at me warily. "Sure... umm, can I have actual clothes, first? Hospital gown isn't exactly the fashion statement I wanna make."


I pulsed my thoughts through the Yggdrasil, encasing her in the material before she even had a chance to react. "What the fuck!" she shouted, and then the mass pulled away, leaving her in her new clothing. Which, while admittedly looking like something you'd wear to a construction job, were both fully functional and comfortable.


"Uh... sorry, didn't think about how that might frighten you," I answered. "I've been practicing with my powers."


"I can tell," Victoria muttered, lifting her arm. "This outfit doesn't even have seams, but you really need to work on your fashion sense."


"Oh god, you have absolutely no idea," Emma remarked. "You should see the amount of effort Crystal and Lisa put into making sure these two wear something nice. If it were up to these two, there'd be no way for people be sure they're not amorphous blobs."


"Really?" Victoria smirked. "They needed Crystal for that? She doesn't know the difference between Gucci and Walmart."


"I heard that," Crystal said from behind us.


"I know," Victoria answered. "I, unlike you, am not blind."


"Stop teasing your cousin," Carol replied, sounding far less stern than her words may have implied.


"Hey, mom," Vicky smiled. "Dad. How are things?"


"Pretty good, firecracker," he answered, moving around us. "She's not going to break if we touch her or anything, is she?"


"She's fine," Emma answered. "Yum Kaax told you the basics. You don't have to worry about hurting her."


Dad moved in first, hugging her, and mom followed quickly after, hugging their daughter that had been dead for three months. I started moving forward, to join in the group hug that was quickly forming, when Vicky spoke.


"You're crushing me," she gasped, as much in surprise as pain. "Oh god, I don't have my powers!"


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A/N- Territorial Taylor is best Taylor.