Girls With Powers! (Worm | Post-GM AU)

And now, my mandatory 'next generation cometh' fic also comes to QQ!

Short synopsis: Rose Ellison, high school student, learns her classmate, Catherine Dallon, has powers. So does she. But what bothers her more is that it doesn't surprise the parents of either of them...

Warnings: it's about children and friendshipping. Also LGBTQA+ issues. LOTS OF THEM. I find it intriguing conflict fodder.

Original SB thread here:
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/girls-with-powers-worm-post-gm-au.545926

AU disclaimer:

• Canon mostly happened as it happened.
• This is the Worm equivalent of Gundam Valhalla.
• People coming back from the dead will be handwaved if (when?) necessary.
• Conflict comes from and revolves around social interactions first, dumb government policies and world-ending threats second.
• I'm just faffing about with making a slice of life about schoolkids whose parents are parahumans with TONS of baggage.
• Updates will be semi-sporadic as Emissary is my main thing, but the average piece for this story only takes a couple of hours to write.
• If you find issues with my portrayal of LGBTQA+ issues, feel free to thwap me on the head. I'm just a Kinsey 2 cis male with an interest in the subject, I can and will own up to mistakes made.
• As with Emissary, there will be QQ-exclusive snips posted in my NSFW thread, probably largely non-canon.

If you want, think of this as the sequel to a hypothetical High School AU: the We Have Kids Of Our Own Now AU, with mild ecchi sitcom anime leanings.

The original snips from the Wormverse thread will be reposted as-was, then subjected to Orwellian Editing as worldbuilding expands. Links to the originals will be added once the divergence becomes statistically significant.

And now, enjoy!

 

"Girl School"​

She couldn’t be a hero. Not with a power like this.

She stood under the shower, sobbing, watching as the foggy swirls of red reduced to pink as they mixed with the warm water the shower doused her shaking body with. Her long hair stuck to her body where it had gotten wet, and dammit, she would have to dry it again, she only washed it yesterday!

She couldn’t be a hero. Not at this cost.

She stepped out of the shower stall, hoping not to slip on the tiled floor of the shower room, hoping at least her skirt wasn’t bloodied, she loved that skirt and no, there it was, one perfectly round splotch where a droplet of blood had hit it. Her mother was definitely giving her an earful about this unless she washed it out herself before she could see and-- And she was getting cold now, because instead of drying herself, there she was, zoning out, wet and naked and now she got the skirt wet as well. This, she decided, was probably the worst day of her life.

She couldn’t be a hero. Not if she got sidetracked this easily.

She walked out of the shower room, finally dressed, still fussing about the skirt which now sported wet handprints that stubbornly refused to dry in addition to the bloodstain. She was met with accusing glances, from the teacher, from the other girl, and-- oh beedlyboops, her mother was here!

She couldn’t be a hero. Not when she was looking at her mother like that.

The other girl’s mother had short hair, like a military haircut that was let out to grow. She found herself staring at it for some reason, just staring at the back of the woman’s head as her own mother pulled her towards the headmistress’s office. This was not going to end well.

She couldn’t be a hero. Heroes didn’t shriek like that.

“She broke my nose!” the other girl protested as she rubbed her sore knuckles. That was not entirely accurate, the other girl’s nose wasn’t broken, just purple. Not even bleeding anymore. And, of course, her own knuckles were raw too. More than one punch was exchanged, more than one cruel word was said, before the teacher intervened.

She couldn’t be a hero. Not--

“Rose,” her mother said to her, and the world went a little quieter at that. She looked up at her mother’s face, “Why did you get into a fight with Catherine?”

“She called me a toad, mom,” Rose replied, sniffing, “And--” she paused, looking around the room, then leaning into her mother’s ear, up close, so only she could hear what she whispered next, “--and I think she’s a cape, but she’s mean, she can’t be a hero, and that means she’s a villain! And villains are fair game, right?”

Her mother laughed, mirthful and loud, tossing her hair back, before clapping Catherine’s mother on the shoulder, as Rose still struggled to remember her name.

“You hear that, Amelia?” her mother managed to say, fighting back the giggles, “Catherine can’t be a hero, so she’s a villain!”

Amelia, right, that was her name, Amelia stared at Rose’s mother in bewilderment before turning to Rose, then to Catherine.

“Young lady,” she began, “What’s this about being a cape? And a villain at that?”

Catherine’s glare could have burned Rose to a crisp if that was her power. Rose felt relieved it wasn’t, then grossed out that it certainly would have been more presentable. Belatedly, Rose realized that she had just outed her classmate to three other people.

Seeing her tense up, Rose’s mother ruffled her hair.

“Ease up on the tension there, Sparrow, you’re probably the only person without powers in this room,” she said in that entertaining tone she had, when she would use words that would have probably grate but instead reassured. How she managed that, Rose could never understand, and the conversation ran away from her before she could ask what her mother meant by “the only person with powe--”

“But I AM a hero! Not a villain!” Catherine protested, “I’ve already gone on patrols and stuff! Busted drug deals!”

“Yeah, right, that’s all you can do, beat people up!” Rose retorted, temper flaring, previous line of thought forgotten. Her mother’s hand, heavy on her shoulder, brought her back down into her chair. She didn’t even notice when she stood up.

“So what if that’s what I do best?” Catherine countered, huffing her chest inasmuch as it was possible for a fourteen-year-old girl that would best be described as ‘boyish’.

“Then it means your mother and I hadn’t raised you right,” Amelia said sternly, flinching when she noticed the droplet of red running down Catherine’s face, “Did you get hurt somewhere else?”

“No, mom, that’s my power!” Catherine chirped in reply, raising an open palm. Rivulets of red were criss-crossing it, massing into what looked like a thin film of constantly flowing blood.

“Right, that time of the month, on demand!” Rose barked, earning a cuff upside the head from her mother, “But mom, it’s gross!”

“Sorry dear, but that’s far from the most gross power I’ve seen,” her mother said, earning a chuckle from Amelia. Catherine somehow vanished the blood while Rose was getting cuffed, darn, she wanted to know where the excess went!

“Ladies, if you’re done debating and showing me who’s responsible for literally painting half the gym red,” the headmistress interceded, “Can we please get to the bottom of this? Rose, were you seriously threatening to out Catherine? Did you intentionally out her now?”

“B-but it was why we fought? Besides, the teacher saw most of what she did, anyway!” Rose protested weakly, realizing that what the teacher actually saw could have easily been explained by the copious nosebleed Catherine sprouted after Rose’s retaliatory strike, delivered in response to Catherine’s power-assisted throw of her across the gym mats.

“Because you were being an ass!” Catherine replied, “I only wanted you to stop gossiping about my powers! And then--”

“--and then you lost your temper, I imagine?” Amelia asked, pinching the bridge of her nose with an exasperated sigh.

The headmistress humphed at that, apparently stifling a laugh.

“Very well then,” she said, “I guess that means Hematoma--”

“I hate that name!” Catherine fumed, “PHO can go throw itself in a fire, I wanted to be called Corpuscle! It’s awesome!”

“Right, and sounds like ‘corpse’,” Rose sniggered, earning herself another cuff.

“To be fair, Anne, she’s right,” Amelia said to Rose’s mother before turning back to Catherine, “That’s kind of a nice twist on the medical theme, and I realise being a haemokinetic doesn’t leave you with a lot of options, but--”

“But the point remains, Rose is getting detention for cape misdeeds,” the headmistress re-railed the conversation, “And Catherine gets detention for unmotivated use of powers. Perhaps, they will get to spend it together,” she added with a malicious glint in her eye.

“Eep,” Rose eeped, looking at Catherine. Catherine glared in response.

“And ladies,” the headmistress continued, “I would greatly appreciate it if I could spend at least a week without parents or students finding out one or the other or BOTH have powers IN MY OFFICE.”

“Yes, Miss Gully, sorry Miss Gully,” four voices replied morosely before four chairs scraped the floor and four sets of feet padded guiltily out of the room.

“Sparrow,” Anne said suddenly, stopping Rose by the hand she was holding, “You’d tell me if you had powers, right?”

“Um--”

“She has powers,” Amelia said, prodding Rose’s forehead next to the bruise left by her tumble across the gym, “And either she’s a vampire or I really need to teach someone about how unhygienic it is to stuff their blood down someone else’s throat!”

Catherine wilted under her mother’s gaze, lowering her head until the curtains of her golden hair hid her face. Rose was too triumphant to notice the bruise stopped hurting and too human-shaped to notice it was gone now, but Catherine did notice and shot her mother a questioning look.

“I, uh, I… I can eat anything,” Rose began.

“Anything?” Anne asked, tilting her head to one side. Rose pondered how it always made her mother look like a puppet with its strings cut. Amelia shot a responding look at Catherine, which seemed to placate her.

“Anything. Then I can spit out stuff it was made of, if I don’t need it for nutrition,” Rose nodded, “I can also sense WHAT it’s made of,” she continued, jabbing a finger in Catherine’s direction, “So I can tell you she’s using real blood, and she’s a universal donor.”

Anne laughed again, clapping Amelia on the shoulder.

“Two bucks says she can condense the blood around her like a force field,” she giggled out, leaving both girls with confused looks on their faces.

“I can, but how did you know?” Catherine asked cautiously.

“Because I know your mothers, dear,” Anne replied as Rose suddenly noticed they’ve already reached the parking lot and stopped next to her mom’s VW.

“But I never knew--” the blonde began, but was cut off by her mother.

“Enough,” Amelia said, fumbling in her purse, “There. My card, with our home phone number on the back. Hash it out outside of school, alright?”

Rose nodded in confusion as she accepted the card.

“Actually, I think we’re half past forever to hash it all out,” Anne countered, “How about dinner at my place, Friday evening? Bring the girls, I’ll try to make sure Everett makes it?”

“Alright,” Amelia replied, her expression a little guarded, “So long as you promise to keep it polite.”

“Oh, Amy,” Anne replied as a ladybug landed on the outstretched palm of her prosthetic hand, “You know I’m almost always polite.”

Spoiler: A/N

Challenge: The "she couldn't be a hero" could theoretically apply to both Rose and Cat, but were written to take turns talking about one, then the other.

Yes, Rose's powers were inspired by Glassmaker.

I blame Ack for selling me on the concept of Skitter/Tecton.

The idea of a Case 53 as a school matron is amusing as heck.

 

"Big Girl Things"​

“But Moooom, I don’t even remotely like Rose!” Catherine protested as their car pulled into the cul-de-sac. Brakes braked, tires sssssshed and the engine shut off.

“If it makes you feel any better, neither your mom or I like Anne either,” Amelia replied, half-turning to her daughter from the driver’s seat, “But we owe her quite a lot, so we discussed it--” she shot her wife a look, “--and felt we should indulge her at least this once.”

“Um. What am I even doing here? I don’t even go to the same school,” Catherine’s younger sister, Elizabeth, chimed in from behind Amelia’s seat. Her other mother turned to her as Amelia fumbled her way out of the seatbelt and out of the car.

“Because it concerns you too, pumpkin, in the same way it concerns Cat,” she said, her voice turning playful, “You wanted to do Big Girl things, here’s a Big Girl thing - we’re going to be trading Secrets!”

“Really, mom? Secrets?” the two girls asked in unison, Catherine’s indignant with all fourteen years of experience behind it (she knew all about secrets, she would never kiss and tell) and Elizabeth’s curious, will all ten years of discoveries she’s made (she knew all about secrets, she saw who Catherine kissed).

“Yep,” Victoria said, having left the car to hold the door open for Catherine as Amelia unbuckled Elizabeth from her seat, “Cape secrets!”

Both girls’ eyes widened at that as they turned their heads towards the house that lay before them unbidden, like at the wave of a conductor’s baton. The house, previously looking boring and ordinary, except maybe the VW Beetle Catherine knew belonged to Mrs Ellison, now loomed with Ominousness. If that was even a word.

The car, with its custom paint job depicting a snail made to look like the quintessential British gentleman cresting a mountain peak, was one more thing adding up to the strangeness of the bespectacled wild-haired one-armed professor of English Literature that somehow knew her mothers had powers before Catherine did, and guessed at her own even though PHO never saw evidence of Hematoma (Corpuscle, dammit!) using them this way yet. And to top it off, implied she had some of her own.

The front door swung open right before Victoria could jab her finger into the doorbell button, leaving her stuck with her hand halfway up in the air, looking dumbstruck at Anne, standing in the doorway with a goofy grin.

“Glory! Haven’t seen you with my own two eyes in years!” she exclaimed before hugging Victoria in an awkward please-don’t-touch-me-but-I-wanna-hug-you display of unilateral affection.

Catherine wondered about the oddly specific phrasing -- did that mean Anne knew her mother before she became a celebrity but hasn’t been in contact with her since then? And what did she call her? And what was with the odd cartoonish cape on her tee-shirt? And why do I have larger--

“Sparrow! They’re here!” Anne called out into the house, breaking her line of thought before addressing the three blondes (and Amelia) again, “Would you kindly step into my--”

Amelia, for her part, seemed happy to interrupt Anne by shoving her hand in her face and dragging the black-haired woman by it into the house.

“Elliott,” she nodded in greeting at the gorgeously well-built man emerging from what looked like a kitchen with a kettle. Catherine’s eyes widened at that, he was dreamy, what was he doing with that, that, extremely weird lady?

“Amelia, welcome to our home,” he nodded in response, his voice making Catherine’s insides a little gooey. She could understand, at least, what drove Anne to him. It was curious how Rose took after her mother in all except the auburn hair color, “I hope Tee’s antics haven’t turned you guys off this idea.”

“Tee?” Elizabeth intoned, overstretching the vowel, “Why do you call her that, Mr. Ellison?” she paused before adding “If you don’t mind me asking, that is,” a little too quickly as if Victoria’s stern look at the back of her head was palpable.

“It’s a running joke for her students,” Elliott laughed, “She’s constantly drinking tea, she loves rocking in her chair, clearly she’s the Tea Chair!” Catherine could swear there was more to the eye roll her mothers shared, “That’s a bit unwieldy though, so she went from that to just Tea or Tee, like the shirts she keeps wearing.”

Anne, for her part, flushed a little, just as Amelia wandered deeper into the house’s living room, pulling Elizabeth after her by the hand, clearly an answer to the man’s question in itself. He nodded at that and busied himself in refilling the empty mug (“It’s always teatime somewhere!”) left on a bookshelf before handing it to his wife. She gave him a peck on the cheek as a reward and turned to usher Rose towards the living room as well.

Catherine, in the meantime, meandered in the entryway, staring at a wall of framed newspaper cutouts featuring the local Warden team, apparently. Was this was what all cape houses looked like? Then again, her own house was a cape house, apparently, and she couldn’t tell before Wednesday’s revelation. Hell, she still couldn’t.

“Alright, gather round, dinner’s in the oven, so we have some time to talk,” Anne announced, gesturing at her husband, now returned kettle-free from the kitchen, to one of the plump chairs in the room.

“Mooom,” Elizabeth warbled quietly, tugging on Victoria’s sleeve. A questioning look was directed at the mistress of the house, who telegraphed it to her daughter. With a small sigh, Rose got off the sofa armrest and gestured for Elizabeth to follow.

Catherine used the lull in the action caused by her sister’s potty break to study the people, because their living room was boring. The TV wasn’t anything special, the paintings all showed alien landscapes, the photos showed the family in various vacation spots and the only extra person with them was a tall balding man that vaguely looked like Anne - equally thin and frail-looking, but probably made of the same wiry strong stuff as her.

Catherine realized after Wednesday’s debacle what was weird with the woman - she wasted no motion. Everything she did, was either to do something, like get from point A to point B, or drink her tea, or check her prosthetic. She didn’t do much idle fidgeting between those, keeping almost unnaturally still, like some sorts of martial artist. Was that where her injury came from?

The silly t-shirt, the men’s cut jeans she wore, the fuzzy ladybug slippers (she idly noted that Mr Ellison’s were fuzzy dogs and Rose’s were fuzzy birds, it was a Family Thing, like her moms’ weird obsession with working white into their wardrobes), the wild but obviously well cared-for hair… it’s like her entire image was designed by committee to create the World’s Least Threatening Embarrassing Mom, and even the way she seemed to forget her prosthetic arm wasn’t real when she fiddled with the fingers not doing what she wanted them to only added to it.

Her arms, however, seemed to confirm the martial artist idea. Defined muscles, some weird scars on the exposed forearm of her sole real one, and-- was that the edge of a Khepri Survivor tattoo she could see peeking out the edge of her sleeve?

Rose and Elizabeth returned, talking quietly about something, as the younger girl ran up to her mothers with an excited face.

“Moooms, they have a whole display case of Alexandria souvenirs!” she exclaimed animatedly, “Like, action figures and posters and even one of those old lunchboxes!”

“It was a gift from a friend, and very collectable,” Anne shrugged, before gesturing for the girls to sit down, “She was my favorite superhero growing up, and a good role model for any girl,” she added, ruffling her daughter’s hair before sitting her down back on the sofa’s armrest. Somehow, this display earned her another glare from Victoria.

“Alright, let’s do this. What Rose did on Wednesday was terrible and apparently she never learned why PHO has their ‘no speculation on cape identities rule’, but Catherine also kinda dropped the ball by using her powers at school. So,” she clapped her hands together, “I strongly suggest we air out all the secrets among us to avoid further incidents.”

“And involving me, and Beth, and your husband is relevant how, exactly?” Victoria asked somewhat languidly, arched eyebrow and all, visibly ignoring that the question made Elliott snicker.

“You of all people should know how mishandled secrets ruin families and lives, Victoria Dallon,” Anne replied with a sudden darkness to her tone as Amelia squeezed her wife’s hand and frowned at the tall brunette.

“Anne, what did we agree on about politeness?” she added for good measure.

“Right, sorry, Amy. Anyway, round the table we have my husband Elliott, or the Warden Team Leader Tecton, my daughter Rose, who chews rocks for fun because she inherited part of her father’s powers for rocks and my utter inability to confess about having powers to her parents,” she paused for a laugh and an intake of breath as Catherine thought that was what the newspapers were about! “Then we have Amelia Lavere-Dallon, leader of the local chapter of the independent hero team New Wave under the name of Claire Karlsson as the heroine Epione.”

Amelia’s look could probably melt metals, but all it did was make Anne laugh again. Elliott facepalmed, Rose looked aghast and Elizabeth turned to her mother with a look of intense adoration. Catherine, for her part, just nodded, she suspected as much after Wednesday, when Amelia made Rose’s bruises vanish (and confirmed her powers with a touch, apparently). Victoria seemed relaxed, like she expected this or something like this to happen.

“If it makes anyone feel any better,” Anne continued unabated, “She pays her taxes as both identities, even though her flower business is a pretty good cover for whatever bounty money her team earns for shutting supervillains down.”

“Is that true, mommy?” Elizabeth asked, looking up at Amelia with probably the widest eyes Catherine had ever seen her sister do, “What are your powers?”

“Yes, pumpkin, it’s true, and I heal people, mostly,” her mother replied, obviously stopping there, but Anne’s stern gaze seemed to force her into continuing, “I can also fiddle with the inner workings of a body, make you stronger or weaker physically, for example.”

“Kinda like LEGOs?”

“Yeah. Kinda.”

Another exchange of awkward glances between the adults worried Catherine. What aren’t they telling us? Airing of secrets my butt.

“Next up, Victoria Dallon, formerly Glory Girl of the original New Wave Initiative, currently TV personality and, when masked, reserve member of the local chapter of the independent hero team New Wave as the heroine Aglaea,” Anne continued, causing no small amount of squeeing from both Rose and Elizabeth, “Powers are flight, super-strength and invulnerability courtesy of a personal forcefield.”

Victoria began a frown at the mention of her powers, but then like a switch was flipped and she tried to suppress a smile, nodding at Anne. Recognition dawned on Catherine like the headrush of jumping down a ten-storey building. That’s how she figured my powers out!

“Catherine Lavere-Dallon, or Cat, the independent heroine Hematoma, though I’m told that PHO ignored her notion of being called Corpuscle,” the one-armed lady continued as Catherine realized she didn’t even notice when she took the prosthetic off, “Powers are haemokinetic blood manipulation, Manton-limited to line of sight, with capacity for reproduction and density and shape manipulation, including creation of shields, armor and weapons.”

She beamed. This was her, playing in the big leagues now! She nodded at her sister’s questioning glance, shaping a glove of blood on her hand behind her back before showing her. She felt proud at the look of awe that produced before she dissipated the blood again.

“Last but not least, Elizabeth Lavere-Dallon, or Beth, no known powers, but a great love of dinosaurs,” Anne finished, handing a small plush utharaptor to the golden-haired girl, her braids bouncing with her excitement.

“Wait, last? What about you?” Rose asked suddenly, as if noticing a stage magician’s hat move with the rabbit inside.

“What about me, Sparrow?” Anne replied, the magician trying to get the hat under control. Catherine giggled, something she rarely did, but this was funny, even though it felt orchestrated on purpose.

“What about your powers and superhero name and whatever?” her daughter intoned.

“Who said I’m a hero?” Anne narrowed her eyes, sly grin on her face. Catherine noticed her mothers tensing up, Victoria barely holding herself in her seat. Oh shiiii~~

“You can’t be a villain when Dad is a hero! Can she, Dad?” Rose’s tone was borderline pleading now.

“I dunno, Sparrow, your mother is her own woman, she can do what she wants so long as dinner’s ready when I’m home from work,” Elliott replied evenly, clearly copying the ‘Dad’ voice from a typical sitcom.

“Come on, everybody, I’ve given you so many hints already, can’t you figure it out? Except you, honey, you saw the man behind the curtain.”

Elliott lowered his raised hand with fake dejection on his face, making Rose snicker despite the concern.

“Oh, you’re no fun. I’m Anansi, The Trickster God!” Anne (Anansi?) announced, spreading her arm-and-a-half outward. No, two arms? That’s not her prosthe--

SPIDERS, SHE HAS SPIDERS FOR HANDS

Three screams, one gasp and one thunk were the reaction as Victoria tried to leap back from her seat, toppling the sofa, taking a surprised Amelia and a screaming Beth along for the ride. For their parts, both Rose and Catherine simply screamed as the spiders that held the shape of Anne (Nancy?)’s missing arm scattered along her body, scurrying into her t-shirt and HAIR?

“Now-- now I see what you meant by grosser powers, mom,” Rose finally said, gasping for breath.

“Nah, Cat’s grandfather manipulated bone. I knew a guy that could shrug off any bodily harm because he had spares of every organ AND they could cover for each other, and so on,” her mother waved dismissively.

“But isn’t it wide-known that Anansi is old? And black? And a man?” Elizabeth offered from her hiding spot behind the collapsed sofa. With a grunt and a sneer, Victoria foisted it back into place, catching her eep-ing daughter by her ankle so she wouldn’t fall over.

“Yes, because he’s working from home due to advanced age, and waited so long to reveal his powers that emerged soon after the Golden Morning so people wouldn’t think he inherited them from Skitter, or Khepri,” Elliott suggested, laughing, “Two out of three isn’t bad.”

“It worked for Dragon, so I thought -- why not? Taylor Hebert died to two bullets to the head in front of a lot of witnesses, she couldn’t live after what she did. But Anne Harris still had a lot to do, and a lot to teach the world. And so, when I was ready again, Anansi went and joined the Wardens. Nobody even noticed the book reference, or maybe thought that was how Mr Yuri Salem picked his cape name."

“Wait, does that mean you WERE a villain?” Rose asked incredulously, her hand covering her too-wide mouth, so much like her mother’s. Anne shrugged again, giving Catherine another glimpse of the Khepri tattoo. Hiding in plain sight! Wait, if she’s Khepri…

“I was a villain for about four months. Then I killed Alexandria and became a Ward, and then spent over two years as a hero before I died. But sure, everyone remembers the Warlord of Brockton Bay, not the Bane of Behemoth or Scionslayer.”

“But that means you’ve got a shrine to your victim?” Catherine asked, gesturing towards the hallway with the display case.

“She WAS a great symbol, even if she was a pretty terrible person,” Anne, Anansi, Khepri, Weaver, Skitter, Taylor, nodded. “But a growing girl needs a strong role model in her life.”

Spoiler: A/N

Yes, Amy and Vicky got hitched. It will be explored later, I promise.

The idea of a little kid yelling "moooooms!" brings a smile to my face.

Mr. Yuri Salem is a gesture towards Spider Jerusalem. Anansi is a spider god, of the trickster type. The book reference Anne mentions is American Gods.

Lord Blackwood is an amazing SCP with a metric ton of stories attached to it. Assume they were serialized as pulp novels in this 'verse.

Alexandria is now officially a tool. A tool of education!

 

"Girl's Friend"​

“Mom?” Rose said, fidgeting in her seat, her Mousey-Os mostly untouched in her bowl.

“Yes, Sparrow?” Anne asked, glancing up from her tablet. Rose knew now her mom wasn’t always simply reading the news there. Or, rather, not the normal kind of news.

“Would you mind if my friend Robbie came over this weekend?” Rose draped herself onto the table around the bowl, cradling it with one arm. The milk was scalding, and so was the bowl, but to Rose it felt like warm fuzzies. Powers, Rose thought, are pretty awesome.

Anne nearly dropped her tablet, it seemed. She took a gulp of her tea to steady her nerves.

“Do I know him?” she wondered, making a quizzical eyebrow pop at her daughter and a floating question mark of what looked like mayflies next to her.

“Sorta?” Rose said awkwardly, flowing off the table, nearly bringing the bowl down with her. She took a spoonful of the Os into her mouth, crunching loudly in an obvious delay tactic, “Wemembew muh fwend Behta?” she munched aloud.

“Yes, but-- oh. Oh!” Anne’s expression brightened. She didn’t think herself old-fashioned in terms of kids playing hooky, in fact she’d rather they did it in the safety of her home - and from what she knew about her neighbours, her home was the safest for miles around, two Wardens living under one roof with their super-powered daughter - but girl friends and girlfriends generally meant lower chances of teen pregnancy regardless of whatever was or wasn’t actually happening. “So, you’re still friends, after-- you know?”

Rose nodded, smiling wide. She liked Robbie, whatever cut of pants he was wearing. He was smart, and tall, and-- oh, yeah, her mom was still talking.

“Sure, then. I think I’ve met Berta before?” Anne ventured. Another nod. “How long since--?”

“Coupla months, maybe?” Rose shrugged, shoveling another spoonful into herself. Her powers meant she didn’t actually need to chew what she was eating, but she enjoyed the crunching sounds too much to care about that. “Took his mom a while to get around that, and I don’t think he has a dad… but then he said he’d still be doing track, and she mellowed.”

“Huh. Good for him, I suppose,” Anne admitted, flicking through something on her tablet again. “Do I know his mom, then?”

Another shrug, another spoon. Anne glanced at the wall clock.

“You might want to hurry it up a bit if you want to make the bus,” she said chidingly, finishing off her tea and carrying the mug to the sink. Rose wondered on occasion how her mom managed household things with only one arm and a simple prosthetic for the missing one, but now it made more sense, seeing beetles carrying towels and pushing cups and generally serving as her mom’s little helpers. It felt like she lived in a Disney fairytale. Except with bugs, but eh, she could swallow rocks whole and spit out liquid stone. Powers are awesome.

“I’ll make it fiiiiine,” she whined, “And no, I don’t think she makes it to parent-teacher conferences often. Robbie complained they have to reschedule a lot.”

“Wait, does that mean he’s on his own half the time?” Anne asked, concern tinging her voice. That’s my mom, Rose thought, always thinking how to make everyone’s lives better. Still not sure why she pretends to be an old guy when superheroing, though.

“Nah. He’s got friends, like me! So we hang out, go to the mall and stuff,” Rose waved her hand dismissively, pouring the contents of the bowl directly into her mouth. Anne looked like she was about to give her daughter another stern look, but then reconsidered.

“So you don’t know what his mom does?” Anne pressed, loading the bowl Rose handed her into the dishwasher.

“Mooom. You didn’t give me the third degree when he was Berta!” Rose protested, a rare frown crossing her face. Anne couldn’t help but smile at how much it resembled her own.

“I didn’t hear anything about parental neglect then, dear,” she said, ruffling Rose’s hair, “And it’s not like I’m saying Robbie can’t come over until he finds a new dad or mom.”

She ushered Rose out of the kitchen to get ready, entering her own bathroom to prepare for the day. She cheated of course, but there was only so much you could do with make-up and insects without using your hands at all. In the meantime, a small cloud of bugs continued conversing with Rose as she got dressed for school.

“In fact, now I’m more for it,” the bugs buzzed. Rose giggled, somehow the feeling of the swarmtalk her mother did reminded her of the sensation of tickling. “But just to be sure -- he doesn’t have powers, that you know of?”

“Mooom. Violation of privacy much?” her daughter protested as she struggled with pulling on her knee-high sock of the day (white, with blue stripes, Tuesdays were blue days) the right way around.

“Sparrow, you know I take privacy seriously,” the bugs tickled again, “I don’t invade our neighbours homes, except--”

“--to track the guns in the gun lockers, I know,” Rose followed along, moaning the last word in frustration as she triumphed over the second sock and fell back on her bed, exhausted.

“Yes. That. But after what happened with Catherine--”

“We sorted it out, okay? We’re… kinda friends now? I dunno, she’s weird.”

“Define ‘weird’?” Anne asked with her her own voice as she entered Rose’s room. “And get up off the bed already, you’ll be late!”

“I dunno… like she fancied Berta, but is now confused how to feel about Robbie?” Rose shrugged without moving from her position whatsoever, “I don’t see why though. Still the same person, right?”

Anne kneeled in front of her daughter, poked a cheek.

“Sparrow, you’re probably the best friend Robbie could have wished for,” she said, before grabbing a hand and tugging it up. “Now stop ragdolling and let’s go, unless you want cockroaches in your lunch.”

“I don’t mind,” Rose said dismissively, getting up as she was pulled, “They crunch just as good, and I digest them like anything else.”

“Hmm. There goes my whole threat plan,” Anne threw her hands up in mock indignation, before resuming the pulling, “So, back again. Robbie’s mom. What about her?”

“I don’t actually know, exactly. Something in law, I think? Not an actual lawyer, but, like, a law firm?” Rose scrunched her nose at that, like she always did when she reached to things she didn’t want to reach, like conclusions, condiments (she no longer saw the point in them) or concentration. Also bunnies, but that was an allergy thing, not an actual dislike. She was perfectly fine with pictures of bunnies.

“Huh. That makes sense, though I still feel bad for the kid. Tell you what, since you’re already late for the bus, I’m going to pry into your life some more, drive you to school, and take a look at Robbie myself. Deal?”

They were standing in the driveway, Rose’s school bag and Anne’s own messenger bag hanging off Anne’s prosthetic as she fumbled for the car keys with her healthy hand.

“I’m confused. What part of that offer was supposed to motivate me, again?” Rose asked, crossing her arms. “And also, Lord Blackwood? To school? I’m already a laughing stock after that whole blood thing.”

“But so is Catherine, and you didn’t get in as much trouble with the teachers,” Anne protested, brandishing the keys triumphantly. “And Lord Blackwood is only the most recognizable car in the city. Why wouldn’t you want people to know your mother drives a VW?”

Rose rolled her eyes, then cast a sideways glance at the gentleman snail airbrushed on the side of the VW in question.

“Never mind, let’s go.”

------​

“So which one’s him?” Anne asked, leaning back against her car. They were standing in the school’s parking lot, watching the flow of children into the doors of the institution of learning.

“That one,” Rose pointed with her chin. Her hands were occupied by thumb-twiddling. She was utterly convinced her mom was thinking she was into Robbie, which was dumb. Robbie was a friend, you don’t make out with friends.

“Could you be a tiny bit more specific, Sparrow?” Anne sounded exasperated.

“The group by the soda machine. The tall one,” Rose said, her voice a bit quieter. Was she into Robbie? Who knows?

“The one in the Anansi T-shirt? Really?” Anne grinned, elbowing Rose lightly in the shoulder. The girl sighed and waved at the tall dark-skinned boy when he looked their way. The boy smiled and waved back, then started walking.

“Robbie!” Anne exclaimed when she was certain the boy was within hearing range, “Don’t worry, I’m not here for the birds and the bees talk.”

Confusion reigned on Robbie’s somewhat thin face, but he composed himself quickly. He was tall for his age, taller than Rose, maybe as tall as Anne’s shoulder, but she wasn’t particularly short either. The grey T-shirt with the symbol of Anansi - a stylized bespectacled spider - sat snugly on a mildly athletic frame in a way that one could guess at the shape of a tank top beneath. Rose suddenly realized Anansi’s glasses were the exact shape as her mother’s and barely suppressed a snicker.

His shoulder-length hair was slicked back and pulled into a ponytail, letting his slightly too-large ears to poke out freely. Rose recalled Catherine saying they made Berta look cute when they poked out of her hair when she wore it down. Robbie seldom wore his hair down, these days.

Finally, Rose spoke up.

“I’m sorry, Rob. She cornered me and started asking about your mom and stuff,” she said apologetically, nodding at her mom a few times.

“No problem, Mrs Ellison. I can assure you I bear no ill will to your daughter and will submit to any questioning.”

That made Anne smile, and that made Rose smile and that made Robbie smile and that made all three of them feel slightly awkward.

“I feel we got off on the wrong foot here,” Anne said, reaching her good hand out, “Anne Ellison, Rose’s mother, crazy Beetle lady. Nice to make your acquaintance.”

“No worries,” Robbie said, taking her hand, “Roberto Hess, track nut, Rose’s friend, collector of cape T-shirts.”

Rose felt a chill run down her neck at the odd glint in her mother’s eyes.

“T-shirts, you said? Do you… do you have any of Weaver?” Anne asked with a shaky voice, “I’ve got rare Alexandrias to trade. I’ll throw in a Chevalier if you have Shadow Stalker.”

Now, it was Robbie with the odd glint. Only this one was black.

Mooooom. You did it again.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, “I do have a spare Shadow Stalker in my collection.”

Spoiler: A/N

The notion of a sorta-love triangle confused by gender identities was a spur of the moment thing, but is amaaaaazing.

You can blame parts of Robbie's story on my love for the movie Zerophilia.

I have no real idea how an FtM transition would work in high school.

I dated a person who decided to try going FtM, at least pre-op, they rolled back about a year later. Remember, kids, it's important to weigh all your options before you cut stuff! Let the story of Dani Bunten be both a cautionary tale AND an inspiration of bravery!

 

"Not A Girl"​

She was not having a good morning.

Roberta (just ‘Berta’ to her friends) stepped out of the shower, toweling off her hair. That conversation the day before with Rose’s mother was awkward and loaded with double meanings and generally felt too much like deception. Berta didn’t like deception.

She preferred to say things straight, get to the truth of things. Even the awkward ones, like ‘Mom, I think I like girls more than boys’ (her mom was okay with that), or ‘Mom, I think I may be a boy?’ (her mom was not okay with that, but grew to accept it by now), or even something horrible like ‘Mom, I really don’t like how Aunt Trish smells’ (her mom was not okay with how Aunt Trish smelled either, thankfully).

Discarding the towel into the laundry hamper (it was beginning to smell a bit too), she stared at herself in the blurry fogged-up reflection in the (dreadfully) full-length mirror of the bathroom cabinet. This way, even without squinting, Roberta didn’t have to deal with the fact that she was a girl.

A girl who was taller than everyone in her year except Mickey, and Mickey was an ugly scarecrow of a boy, deathly pale beneath his rarely-washed dark hair, and always trying to get her on a date. She thought it was a height thing. She really didn’t want to know what he thought.

A girl who was gangly, narrow, and definitely unfeminine. A girl who wasn’t entirely sure this whole ‘feminine’ thing was her thing even before it turned out Mother Nature wasn’t sure either. And so as she grew, she moved from dresses to shirts and skirts. And from skirts to pants. And from that to t-shirts and cargo pants.

And then one morning, when she got dressed, and pulled her hair back into a tail so it wouldn’t fall onto her shoulders like it usually did (mostly at her mom’s insistence, likely because she didn’t think Berta would be able to pass for a girl without longer hair either, Berta suspected), and walked into the kitchen where her mom was drinking her usual morning coffee, and asked the question that made her mom do an actual true-to-life spit take. Her mom thought it was a joke at first. Berta pointed out the absence of a laugh track. Her mom frowned and took Berta to a doctor that she said knew about these kind of things.

The next weekend they went shopping, and now Berta had two sets of clothes, ‘in case she or he ever changed their mind’, her mother said. The school… didn’t really care, just changed one letter in some of the records (because R.Hess isn’t gendered in the slightest), and the track coach sighed and moved a name from one list onto another, because he still had a shortage of good runners on either side of the glass ceiling. And the other kids…

Sure, there was some name-calling and a bit of shoving in the hallways, but Berta was strong for a girl, and so when Robbie asked to be called a guy, it only took three black eyes to establish the validity of that request. Granted, one of them was Robbie’s own, but still. It worked.

Much weirder was dealing with her two best friends, and not because they weren’t really friends between themselves. More like… frienemies? Berta didn’t see, and Robbie didn’t dare ask what exactly came between them, but the event that got Rose and Cat to even begin talking to each other regularly somehow involved a lot of blood in the gym and a visit of their mothers to the headmistress of the school. Rumours around the school revolved around either one of them being Hematoma or the teachers getting her involved in the resolution of their fight.

One way or another, weirdness only overlaid the fact that Rose liked both Berta and Robbie while Cat… stopped wanting to hold Robbie’s hand like she did with Berta. Does she have a thing against boys? Or… a thing towards girls? Berta wondered, twisting this way and that, looking at the vagueness of her not-reflection.

She wiped away part of the fogginess on the mirror. Her damp hair hung loosely around her head, her eyes looking out at her from the clear gash in the vagueness. Darkish brown, ‘like the inside of a chocolate muffin’, Cat once called them. So much like mom’s. Except that seemed to be all she inherited from her mom (certainly not the feminine Amazonessness her mother exuded), except maybe a talent for sports. She tried basketball, but her hand-eye coordination was pretty blah, which also ruled tennis out. She tried soccer, but she wasn’t really a team player. And all the while she was working out, running, getting herself in shape for whatever fit she would eventually find. And then it became clear: running. And that’s how she ended up on the track team (and a small tear of joy in her mother’s left eye, a rare treasure).

She wiped another gash into the mirror. Her stomach, flat and fit, with a faint definition of what could theoretically be called abs. Not a particularly girly trait, for sure, although both Rose and Cat separately admitted they envied Berta the flatness of her tummy (they would never do that when either could see the other). Hmm. Easy for them to say, they have had feminine figures for a while now. Although Rose’s mom looks kinda twiggy, so at least some of that had to have come from her dad’s side of the family, right?

Two careful sideswipes let her look at her hips, not bringing unwanted places into focus. She always had a butt like a boy’s. Got teased for it by boys and girls alike, until she became too strong to be teased to her face. And-- no, I can’t do this, not today.

Turning away from the mirror, she faced the two sets of things she laid out for herself every morning for the past two months, as part of her agreement with her mother to not rush into things blindly. Today was one of the days she actually spent contemplating the choice. But still…

On went the simple black band to secure the ponytail. The plain white boxer-style briefs - still a girl’s, but a lot more boyish than what was worn before. After all, there were hygienic concerns. Finally, the equally white tank top, to flatten what little there was of what was not wanted to be seen, why the rest of the mirror stayed fogged.

The rest of the fog on the mirror was wiped down with a towel. Roberto Hess stared at his reflection in the mirror, rubbed his nose, smiled. It was time to get ready for school. The white panties and bra went back into the room with him, to be returned to her side of the wardrobe as Robbie moved on to the task of deciding which shirt to wear today.

------​

Breakfast was a practiced routine, as it usually happens in a household shared by two people with relatively rigid schedules. Juice, glassed. Coffee, made, poured to pre-agreed levels, with preheated milk added as necessary. Sugarcubes, laid out (efforts to make smiley faces out of his mom’s sugarcubes and morning pills were not appreciated, so the practice did not take). Eggs, fried, then doled out.

As his mom sat down, tablet in hand, eyes scanning the news headlines, he silently consumed his sunny-side-up, running scenarios in his head. This month’s Mom Project had been stock studies, she was treating the offhand joke of a coworker that lotteries were more lucrative than stock trading way too seriously, but the resulting thousand-and-a-half dollars from the lottery side of the project funded Robbie’s makeover, so he didn’t make fun of it. She wasn’t to be disturbed when she was in Project Mode, her therapist said it was a functionable outlet for her… issues. The past two years and finally a steady job (with the occasional windfall from the Projects) were testament to that.

Robbie sometimes mused whether his birth was a Project in itself, but no, his mom said when he asked, her face burning in shame, he was the result of a tumultous relationship she started with a fellow Khepri Survivor, which ended when he moved on to a less angry partner. Robbie was two at the time, she admitted, and the man that helped raise him was not related to him by blood, albeit they both mourned his passing last year as if he was. He might as well had been, the way he had helped mom sort her head out, how he’d taught Berta most of the things she knew about housework, which Robbie now put to use to care for his mom. For all her stubborn determination about conquering tasks, cooking edible food had never ranked too high on the list.

“Uh, mom?” he finally spoke up.

“Yes, Bee?” his mom replied, looking away from tickers and graphs and charts, but still sipping coffee. They both were thankful her pet name for Berta fit Robbie alright.

“Rose is having a few friends come over on Saturday to play board games and stuff. Can I go?” he asked, wondering which obstacle he’d have to circumnavigate today.

“Is that the same Rose you said had a fight with your friend Catherine a week ago?”

“Yeah. They, uh, they said their parents met and talked it over and it won’t be a problem,” he replied hesitantly. Technically, Rose had said that, but her mother confirmed it when they talked yesterday. “In fact, Cat has been invited too!” So were Luke and Gemma, but his mother disapproved of Gemma, because she was an underachiever, and his mother valued effort. Somehow, it was easier for her to cope with her only daughter becoming a son, but learning disabilities were beneath her.

“And her parents are okay with this, I assume?” her tone eased off a bit, but not by much, not yet.

“Actually,” Robbie said, a hint of a grin on his lips, “Her mom grilled me yesterday on whether I was alright.”

“Alright? Does she know your--” his mom looked worried at his poor phrasing, so he hurried to remedy that.

“Yeah, yeah, Rose told her in advance, we agreed on that before she went to ask permission,” he explained, polishing off the rest of his juice. “Her mom was more concerned how you were handling it, being a single mom and all.”

“I… what?” she sputtered, backing away a bit. “Bee… I’m not… a bad mother, am I?” she asked, her expression worried. On the one hand, it was amazing how much this latest therapist had helped his mother progress towards the more rational range of human emotions (although he wouldn’t exactly say that she’d been a bad mother before, either), but on the other…

“What? Oh no, no. No! She wanted to know if she could help,” he asked, still reeling from the audacity of the proposition. Rose had mentioned before that her mother was a bit of a meddler, but this was still beyond his understanding of the word. “She’s a professor at the Brannigan University, English Lit, I think. Slightly weird, but in a funny way.”

“You’ve lost me,” his mom said, putting her tablet down, expression slightly displeased, less at him and more in general, “You want me to take her up on it?”

“Just… consider meeting her, maybe?” he shrugged, “She looks okay, and you are kinda swamped with work lately. She didn’t specify the kind of help she’d be offering,” he clarified, finally.

“Huh. I’ll… I’ll think about it, okay?”

“Sure,” he shrugged again. “Gotta get my stuff and run for the bus, okay? You got everything you need?”

She nodded, finishing her own coffee and getting up to stack everything into the sink. Robbie made a mental note to wash everything once he got home from school, though sometimes he’d come home to find she already did so before leaving. Her routine wasn’t as rigid as some people presumed it to be, she wasn’t an automaton!

“Or maybe I’m getting a ride.”

That got her attention, as she spun around, looking at her son, then out the window he was pointing at. Beyond, she saw a VW Beetle with some sort of landscape painted on it, a ginger-haired girl with huge amounts of curly hair waving at them from its open front passenger window and a tall woman with a prosthetic arm, long curly black hair flowing in the wind, square glasses glinting on her face, striding purposefully towards their front door.

It was the third time Robbie had ever seen his mother pale like that, the first two being when she was told his Dad had just died, and the second when she’d first laid eyes on Berta at the hospital after her scooter had been T-boned by a car last year. The casts had been impressive, but she made a full recovery, and the doctors went out of their way to assure her mom there wouldn’t be any complications from how well Berta had healed the fractures, and without any healer involvement too!

But never before had he heard his mother swear, not even before she swore off drinking.

“Can’t be her, she’s fucking dead!” his mom muttered, clutching at her arm, the one he knew she had her Khepri Survivor tattoo on. She flinched as if struck when the knock on the door came, an odd twang to it -- the prosthetic, Robbie supposed.

Casting a backwards glance at his mother, still frozen in shock, he went to answer the door. There, Anne stood, smiling that wide smile of hers, her real hand hooked in the pocket of her jeans (men’s jeans, Robbie noted, with real pockets), the prosthetic hanging loosely by her side. He also recognized the shirt design -- Weaver, the Ward that became Khepri. It was a collector’s item, with so many of these destroyed in the aftermath of the Gold Morning by... objecting people.

“Good morning, Robbie!” she said, as cheerful as yesterday, “Could you please tell your mom ‘Taylor’s here’ and that I’m very much "fucking" alive? After that, I can give you a ride to school if you want?”

Spoiler: A/N

I have tons of headcanons about Sophia, many of which are unimplementable in Emissary. Some will be test-driven here.

I still have no idea about transitioning, but I do have a lot of things to say about body dysphoria and hating your reflection. I'm wayyy too masculine for some of the things I'd have my body rather be and seeking comfort zones. It does get better.

I have a workaholic mother. Workaholic mothers are... A challenge for workaholic children.

Yes, in the Rose-Cat-Berta trio, Berta is halfway from Sophia to Taylor, why do you ask? Cat is Emma (or fanon!Vicky, if you prefer), and Rose is half-Taylor, half-Madison.

Lots of pronoun trouble for Bee's internal monologue, especially in the flashback, I know. Part of that is due to Robbie having to think of events that happened to Berta, and trying to dissociate.

 

"Girl Council"​

They sat at their usual table in the school cafeteria, silent, awkward, almost unblinking. The entirety of Rose’s morning passed by in a daze, Math, Physics, then Art. She was less out of it than Robbie, but that wasn’t saying much, not really.

“Oh-kay, Sulk Brigade,” their shared sorta-friend’s voice intruded, snapping them both into a more awake state, “What the hey is wrong with both of you today? You’ve barely said a word to anyone.”

“Rose’s mom came over to see mine this morning,” Robbie said, blankly, “They talked, then she drove us both to school.”

“Aaaalriiiight,” Catherine (Rose didn’t normally think of her as ‘Cat’, that would have been a friendly gesture and they weren’t proper friends! although the Saturday gathering was supposed to rectify that) drew out, “Ellison, is your mother going to interrogate the parents of all your friends? Should we hide Gemma and Luke before it’s too late?”

She stabbed her faux-meat thing with a fork, her face twisted in confusion over the squelching noise it made. Normally, Rose would have made fun of that, chewing her own merrily, then spitting out a pre-prepared nail or wingnut or something like that to freak Catherine out (it never failed to work), but she was not in the mood today.

“Wait,” Robbie said to no-one in particular once he was done with the suspiciously cardboard-like mashed potatoes he managed to get into himself during Catherine’s monologue, “Your mom does that? Why didn’t you warn me?”

Rose, for her part, shrugged nervously, then tossed the contents of a sugar packet into her mouth, mindfully discarding the wrapper (neither of them told Robbie about their powers yet, after all), then chewed on the sugar crunchily and swallowed, relaxing a tiny bit from what passed for a sugar spike in her altered biology.

“She did that to Catherine’s, yeah,” she admitted, trying her hardest to keep Robbie’s questioning look, “After the gym incident, last weekend. Invited them over, made dinner, revealed she actually knew both her moms from way back,” she paused, then whispered quietly enough that only Catherine would have likely heard her, “Before Scion. Then had us talk about why we did it and why we should be friends and stuff.”

“She, uh, also told us things about my moms. That they didn’t tell me or Beth before,” Catherine chimed in reluctantly. She pulled out her phone, fiddled with it, then passed it across the table to Robbie. Rose craned her neck to look, caught her breath, then pulled her own phone out.

Does your mother have powers? it said, in an awkward handwriting. Robbie erased it, then nodded hesitantly as he passed it back to Catherine. She gave Rose a severe look, to which she nodded, before passing her own phone over.

Do you?

Robbie glared at her. Then at Catherine. Then showed her Rose’s phone. She took it, added a few scribbles and passed it back.

Ours do. We do.

Rose watched with fascination as Robbie took a deep breath and gritted his teeth, working his free hand into a fist and back again several times. Then he erased the scribbles and handed Rose her phone back, nodding nervously, one, two, three times, his face a mess of emotions she couldn’t quite process.

“The car crash?” Catherine asked quietly, a rare thing for her usual brash demeanor. That earned her another nod. “Is… is that why you recovered so quickly?”

Robbie nodded again, then pushed his tray away, lunch half uneaten. “Look,” he said, “I’m not sure what went on in there, but your mom scared the shit out of mine. And nothing but the threat of death, or the fact of death, has ever done that to her before. What does your mother do?!” he hissed, leaning a bit towards Rose, making her lean back.

Catherine gave them both an uneasy look. “Didn’t you get a dinner invite or something?” she asked, confusedly.

“Nope,” Robbie shook his head, “My mom just told me goodbye when she saw me out with Rose’s and that was it. Nobody said a word till we got out of her car at school.”

A small ding startled the three of them into jumping up. Rose looked at her phone hesitantly as Catherine rolled her eyes.

“Seriously?” she asked the ceiling, “Have you no sense of tact?”

Rose and Robbie raised their eyes up to the ceiling as well, where the black outline of the word ‘none’ could be seen briefly, before it scattered into tiny specks flying every which way. Robbie shuddered, but Rose groaned. Powers, she thought, are a bother.

------​

It felt like a reverse of the morning drive. Instead of coming to school from the Hess residence, they were driving towards it. Instead of sitting in awkward silence, they were arguing animatedly. At least part of it was caused by the outburst of Robbie’s mother, who was first shocked to see Rose’s, then froze stiff when Anne hugged her, then started sobbing quietly into her shoulder.

The only words Anne said to Sophia (Robbie belatedly mentioned to the two girls what his mother’s name was, Catherine agreed to ask her moms if they knew her too, but that was before Anne picked them up from school) were “Live and let live”, and that seemed to break something in the stern, driven woman his mother had been for as long as Robbie could remember. Then they moved behind closed doors, and talked, and Robbie could bet all the life savings he had that the subject had been his biological father, and then they came out and his mom was okay with Anne taking him to school with her daughter. Or being friends with her in the first place.

There were no objections when he repeated his question about Saturday out of Anne’s earshot, either. Not when she now knew who Rose’s mother was, apparently.

And so, they were driving back to his house, and Rose was telling her mother off for pulling this sort of things without warning her, and all Robbie could think of was the Khepri Survivor tattoo he had seen on Mrs Ellison’s arm, nearly identical to the one his mother had.

There were three variations on the same tattoo: a scarab beetle, more rarely a specifically stylized sun, for Scion’s victims, unpowered people who considered themselves saved by Khepri and capes that wanted to conceal their powers, often those who were used by Khepri and lived and didn’t want to share that fact.

The same beetle, but seldom the sun, enclosed on a geometric figure the exact shape of which meant different things in different places, but which generally meant having lost someone during the Gold Morning.

And the same beetle, wearing a crown, for capes and normals that wanted to show: Khepri had chosen them. Had used them. And they had lived to tell the tale, be it good or bad. The crown and the framing figure were often combined. Robbie’s mother had the crown along with a triangle, though she only had it added a few years ago, when she became serious about therapy. Mrs Ellison had the crown and several concentric circles. Robbie had never seen or heard what multiple shapes were supposed to mean.

------​

“Look, Heb-- Tay-- Anne,” Ms Hess struggled through her mother’s names in a way that would have normally amused Rose but didn’t this time. Not when this woman, who somewhat reminded her of Victoria Dallon in a way, the same definition of coiled strength beneath her skin, a person used to fighting that wasn’t getting enough of her fix nowadays, she wagered, now that she knew they were capes. “I get that our children are friends, and I’m happy for them,” Rose noticed how that was mostly directed at Robbie, although it did sound somewhat honest, “But I have no idea how you came to the conclusion we should be too.”

“Two reasons,” her mother said, cutting up the onions deftly with her good hand, the tear-inducing vegetable firmly held between her artificial fingers, “One: it’s a mutually beneficial way to repay you for our shared past. You did, after all, contribute a lot to who I became. As did Emma, and you’ve clearly had her on your mind when you had your scarab encased.”

That statement, from the sad tone it was delivered in to the wince it drew from Robbie’s mom, made Rose and Robbie exchange pained looks of shared discomfort. They still didn’t stop putting the batter together: the spaghetti they outvoted their mothers about making wasn’t going to prepare itself.

“Whatever I may have said or felt when we last talked, she was still my best friend for two years,” Sophia said, pausing in mincing the meat for the bolognese mix. “My only friend.” She looked like she nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt Anne’s hand on her shoulder.

“Mine as well,” she told the dark-skinned woman, and despite their height difference of about two inches, it felt as if they were the same height at that moment, connected somehow. “It wasn’t entirely your fault she decided you needed a Klingon promotion into the position.”

That didn’t sound too good to Rose even though she couldn’t say she knew what a “cling-on” was supposed to be, but it sounded vaguely sexual. She briefly entertained the idea that this Emma was her mother’s girlfriend at some point and Sophia stole her away, but not knowing what Emma looked like, she accidentally imagined her mother making out with Sophia instead. Like indirect kissing through a shared milkshake straw, but with a girl instead of a straw.

That train of thought reminded her of the one she had before when she realized Catherine was into Berta, then tried to imagine them making out. Berta became Robbie (and made things awkward with Catherine) before it went that far. Still, like that time, Rose felt a criminal blush creeping up her neck and onto her cheeks. Thankfully, the train of thought was derailed (and fell in a ravine and exploded) with Ms Hess’s barking laugh.

“Hah! Morbid and nerdy! I guess Scion hadn’t changed you that much!” she exclaimed, before catching herself, a panicked hand to her mouth as she seemed to remember whatever reason Robbie said made her afraid when she saw Anne this morning. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Robbie’s confused stare, making it clear this wasn’t a thing his mother did that often. Or ever. Anne, however, smiled warmly in response.

“Nor you, it would seem,” she said softly before turning back to her onions. This made Sophia unfreeze again as she realized something.

“Wait a second, what was the second reason? You said there were two?” she asked, like one would ask of a shell game peddler about whether the ball was ever under the shells.

“Oh, that one’s easier,” Anne replied, sliding her onions off the cutting board into the mixing bowl, then jerking her head in Rose’s direction, making Sophia turn to look at her, “If we are to become in-laws one day, I wanted to get a headstart.”

Ms Hess and Rose exchanged identical deer-in-headlights looks while Robbie raised his hand like in school.

“Um, Mrs Ellison, ma’am, I, uh, I only see Rose as a friend?” he stated somewhat awkwardly, before gathering himself up. “A valued friend, possibly loved one, but not in the romantic sense.”

“All completely mutual,” Rose added, finding her voice again, “Of our classmates, it’s Catherine you have to look out for. Er, not for me though. For Berta.”

That made Sophia turn to Robbie now.

“Berta?” she said, as if remembering how to do this words thing, “Not Robbie? And why do I learn of this from an outside source?”

“Because there’s nothing to tell, mom,” Robbie replied, voice level, “She’s okay being friends when I’m Robbie, she just stopped pursuing further.”

“Have you actually talked it through though?” Anne wondered, “And bear in mind: this is coming from someone who’d rather internalize their issues than work through them.”

------​

She was having a good evening.

Berta stepped out of the shower, toweling off her hair. That conversation over dinner with Rose and her mother was fun and insightful yet still loaded to the gills with double meanings, but these were less about deception and more about two people that drifted apart in the past reconnecting. Even if her mom made it clear they’ve never been anything remotely like friends, it felt that they could be now.

And then there was the powers talk…

Returning the towel to the hanging rack, she stared at herself in the blurry fogged-up reflection in the (still) full-length mirror of the bathroom cabinet. This way, even without squinting, Roberta didn’t have to deal with the fact that she wasn’t a girl.

But maybe…

The first time it happened, she was confused by the chilly, slinky sensation, like her skin was sliding off her, or maybe like a really long length of silk was pulled loosely over her skin. She practiced controlling it, often ending up amused at how absurd some of the shapes she could make were. But after seeing Mrs Ellison’s spiders-as-arm trick (her mom found it gross, but Berta was entranced), she realized how stupid she was being, before.

She looked at her vagueness in the mirror, the boy-except-for-bits outline, and thought at it, and pictured things in her mind and it took all her willpower not to look down, but to look at her reflection as it became. The stocky shoulders, a little rounder. The flat hips, a little plumper. The nonexistent bosom, a little more there to begin with. The mannish muscled line of her hip, a little softer, but still defined.

She twisted, this way and that, hands flared out to the sides, looking at her outline, the girl she once wanted to be, feminine yet strong, so much like her mother. This is good, she thought to herself with a small smile, but… not for today.

She shut her eyes, then opened them again. Her old reflection greeted her in all its awkward angular glory. She turned to the two sets of things she laid out as the nightwear options.

On went the loose T-shirt, the hairband (a carefully gender-neutral silvery coiled metal thing), the pair of boys' briefs that were tried before and discarded because of the demeaning emptiness in the little extra give of the fabric in the front.

Another look was cast in the mirror, another image conjured in the mind’s eye. A nervous hand reached for the hand towel to wipe the mirror off.

This time, instead of the awkward feeling of a lanky girl pretending to be a boy these particular things gave him, Robbie felt right. Well, more right than usual, anyway. The chest was flat and broad underneath the shirt, not… bumpy… and the abs were still there to the touch through the cotton and the dreadfully empty front of the briefs had a fullness to it, a vague outline of…

Wiping a tear from his eye, he went to show the result to his mother, tiny curlicues of black smoke trailing after him. Not that his mom never saw him (or her) cry before, and not that boys weren’t supposed to cry -- his mom did teach him it was okay to cry in front of people you could entrust with your tears, after all.

And he wanted her to see those tears and know they were born of joy and what it meant, especially to him.

Spoiler: A/N

This is awkward and confusing and actually took me several days to construct in the gaps between work, killing beloved characters off in Emissary (expect a new chapter in the next twelve hours), and holding my son and not regretting being born a man at all.

I don't know what methods people with non-Changer powers could use to combat dysphoria, but I needed a power that would let Robbie and Berta mitigate theirs in either direction, and one that would still be a Sophia-like Breaker one. Its mechanics will be explained in-depth later on, I swear.

I apologize in advance if I triggered or Triggered anybody in the audience. The way I handled this still feels a tad icky to me too, but the endgame for the fic is Akward Teenagers With Powers Doing Dumb Teenager Things! So the de facto prologue is over, our main cast and their issues and powers are on the table.

Talking about this stuff in a public space is only slightly less awkward than having made-up people suffer through it. The next one will be fluffy and not sad, I promise.

Well, except for the part where someone gets murdered, but hey, that's playing Monopoly for you!

 

"Girl's Got Games"​

“But seriously, what’s going on between you three?”

Luke’s question startled Catherine out of her wind-up, and the die she was about to roll smacked onto the board with an undignified and loud slap. She glared at the sandy-haired boy before looking at the result: a five.

“Phew, I almost thought I’d have to thump you,” she said, her voice a beacon of generosity. Luke scoffed at that, he knew all too well that while the girl who was the daughter of the former-superheroine-turned-TV-Star could throw a mean punch, she very rarely put actions behind the more violent of her words. “But now instead I will--” she was moving her piece, the cat of course, when she realized she should have counted better. “I take it back, I am now officially obligated to thump you,” she said, landing her piece on Luke’s only hotel location.

“Pay first, thump second,” he smirked, sticking his tongue at her. Although among the five of them Luke was probably the shortest, that did precisely nothing to make him more composed. Or well-behaved. Or well-anything. He claimed it was a boys vs girls thing and he would be getting his belated growth spurt any day now, along with his testosterone starter kit. So would Robbie, he now often added, to the grin of the dark-skinned boy and continued confusion of Gemma.

Catherine was still unsure at what point Luke went from ‘that guy with a crush on Rose’ to ‘that guy Robbie plays videogames with regularly’. It was like he invited himself into what started out as a group of three girls before Berta started hanging out with Rose, then turned into Robbie (somewhat to Catherine’s dismay), then Luke invited himself along because he had the puppy eyes for Rose, then… then it turned out he and Robbie already knew each other because they met at a fighting game tournament of all things. And then, of course, Gemma felt left out because for all her gawkiness, Berta was the one who brought the three of them together in the first place. Surely, social structures could be such a tangled mess sometimes!

“What do you mean, us three?” Catherine remembered suddenly.

“He means you, Rose and Bee, of course,” Gemma explained patiently, pushing her hair out of her face. In a town that was mostly made up of the residents of the former Brockton Bay, unmade by Scion on Golden Morning, being multiethnic was the norm, yet somehow in this group of five, only Gemma was overtly so: almost bronze skin, shoulder-length raven-dark hair and almond-shaped eyes some boys had gone as far as calling ‘mesmerizing’. That’s what she was telling everybody and it’s their problem if they wanted to object. She wouldn’t be listening.

“Ha, I only just realized: Rose and Bee?” Luke snorted, accepting the payout and then a light shoulder-punch from Catherine, “You’re either a pollination pun waiting to happen or the oddest Birds and Bees metaphor ever!”

“Ha, ha, very funny,” Rose deadpanned, rolling her die next, “One day you will learn it’s better not to say such things in front of girls,” she dispensed with a faux scholarly affectation, mimicking her mother’s lecturing tone which itself, Catherine now knew, was a parody to begin with. Musing at how much Khepri’s daughter had inherited from her without actually knowing her mother was worshipped as an actual goddess in some cape circles, Catherine almost missed the finisher, “Till then you’ll stay alone and unloved.”

Luke pretended to be smitten into submission by these words, before grinning widely again. “Nope. Gem and I already figured that one out: if you three continue doing your best impression of a poly-whatsit marriage by the time we’re both thirty, if still single, we’re tying the knot.”

Gemma didn’t look as certain of the statement as Luke did, but didn’t comment. Catherine wasn’t as reserved, however.

“Gem? Was that something that actually happened or is that the sugar rush talking again?” she asked her best friend of many years, feeling guilty she allowed this situation develop in the first place. Luke wasn’t actually that bad, but these ‘last resort’ agreements always rubbed her the wrong way, like the arranged marriages one found in old books and fairytales and the occasional newscast.

“It did, sure,” the only unpowered girl in the room admitted, “I can imagine worse people to spend an eternity with, and as much as I love ya, Cat, I’m still boys-only, sorry.”

“But… dating pool? Derek’s okay-looking? Phil, maybe, but he’s a year older than us…” Rose started listing off, looking as if she was not entirely sure whether she was listing off actual suggestions to Gemma or just trying to remember which boys at school were ‘available’.

“Or you could just find someone at whatever college you’ll go to? Worked out okay for my mom,” Robbie suggested before elbowing Rose to remind her she hadn’t actually moved her bathtub yet.

“My parents met in a refugee camp, after… you know,” Luke admitted sheepishly, “Although they did go to the same school, same as your mom, I think, Rob?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t a very good one to hear her tell it,” Rose agreed before catching herself, seeing everyone’s eyes on her. “What? My mom is a meddler. She meddles. She went to Robbie’s mom to literally, yes I quote, ‘meet the future in-laws’, end quote. You can imagine how his mom must have felt. My mom went to the same school, but never talked about it for some reason.”

“My moms grew up together,” Catherine said, unsure if anyone didn’t know the story yet, “A-Mom got taken in by V-Mom’s family when she was orphaned,” she explained, using the nicknames they invented for her sister when she found it too hard to reproduce the different inflections of saying ‘mom’ that Cat herself used to address them separately. She rather enjoyed the way it confused the hell out of other people.

More money changed hands and Gemma rolled for her turn, aiming to land her Alexandria on GO. Nobody seemed to understand Rose’s mom’s odd obsession with collecting Alexandria-related merchandise (Catherine now knew the reason, but understanding it was still an issue), but between the multiple versions of Monopoly in the house, there were two different Alexandrias to choose from, and Gemma went with the one that she claimed kinda looked like she would if she’d ever get her hands on an Alexandria cosplay outfit. The last time the subject was broached, Mrs Ellison made a complicated face that reminded Catherine of a lioness unwilling to part with her prey that said she had at least one, but nobody was laying their hands on it.

She wondered what Anne would look like in it once or twice, for the insane irony of it. I wonder if Mr Ellison has a matching Legend outfit - it would suit him way better than Eidolon or Hero - and if they do stuff in costume. Oh. Wait. They’re capes. They have their own costumes. No. Wait. What the hell is Anansi’s costume supposed to be?!

“Well, if you don’t want my money,” she realized Gemma was saying to her, “I can just--”

“Nuh-uh, Gemma Patricia Stockton! You are not getting off that easy!” Catherine protested, “Bad Geepee! No taking advantage of your friend’s Tinker fugues!”

“You’re not a Tinker, Cat, you’re yet to build or make anything worth stealing!” Gemma retorted, settling happily into a practiced routine, “Or Master Thief Geepee Stocks would have stolen it already!”

“I could be, and you’d never know it, because you keep interrupting my design phase, so I never get to the part where I build stuff! Now pay up already! That’s two houses on the Boardwalk!” Catherine kept up, “And who cares if none of us know what that was because this board is literally older than I am!”

“There’s pictures if you actually want’em?” Rose proposed halfheartedly, “Some sort of posh shopping outdoorsy place, I guess? Kinda like Hart Street for us, maybe?”

All the girls oooohed together, including Rose, making Luke and Robbie exchange confused glances.

“Is that what a wereshopper mating call sounds like?” Robbie wondered aloud, passing the die to Luke from where it ended up, “And then, when the full salesmoon comes out, they unleash… the discount hunger!”

With that, he hopped out of his place, arms up in a claw-like manner, a parody of a growl on his lips, making Catherine flinch out of her place, toppling her back onto the carpet away from the coffee table they were all sitting on the floor around. The whole byplay reduced everyone, Cat herself included, to hysterical giggles.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Gemma asked, trying to stop her post-giggle hiccups, “If it’s discount hunger, does it mean it’s weaker or lighter, or does it mean it’s… cheaper, somehow, like, easier to get?”

“Aw, come on, don’t ruin my perfectly dumb joke with a thing such as logic, woman!” Robbie protested, “Next thing you’ll say, it’s not even funny because it’s got no puns in it!”

“Ye--” Gemma began before getting cut off by Luke’s accusing finger.

“Hiccups! She had the hiccups, Your Honor! Clearly, medical evidence of laughter!”

“The Honorable Judge Lavere-Dallon shall render her verdict!” Rose intoned, trying (and badly failing) to imitate a gruff man’s voice, handing Catherine a small mallet from a small gong that must have come from her mother’s Feng Shui phase or something to that effect, she supposed, because she had A-Mom’s very similar one standing on her own vanity right now.

“Thank you, Bailiff Ellison!” Catherine spoke in her best imitation of her mother’s TV voice, “And now, thanks to expert testimony by Doctor Veder, we can conclusively conclude the conclusion,” she stifled a giggle as she gestured with the mallet, “That the Master Thief Geepee Stocks did indeed laugh at Sheriff Hess’s joke, even though it did not contain a pun, as admitted by Sheriff Hess herrrrrr--” she froze, eyes wide, then quickly tried to recover, “--rrrroic admission! I proclaim his joke FUNNY!” she concluded, tapping the mallet lightly - but strong enough to make a wooden sound - against the coffee table.

“This court is now adjourned!” Rose announced, not pointing out her fr-- friend’s, dammit, we’re friends now even if I may not act like it at times, Catherine chided herself -- her friend’s faux pas like the polite daughter of the woman who Mastered the entire planet that she was. “Break for fresh drinks and potties and smokes?”

“Rose, you know none of us smoke, right?” Luke asked, getting up and stretching his legs, apparently a bit cramped from all the sitting with them stretched out beneath the coffee table that he insisted on doing even though everybody knew he did it to try and brush his toes against Rose’s bared knees. It was kind of cute, Catherine admitted, although Rose likely minded being distracted from the game like that.

“I dunno, I haven’t seen you for eight hours since school yesterday,” the auburn-haired girl said, “Maybe you’ve started since then? If so, could you teach me?” she said, reaching an open hand towards him. As he hesitated at the surprising gesture, she grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him along, grabbing Gemma by the arm with her free hand along the way, “You too, Gem.”

Once the patio door slammed closed, maybe just a bit too loudly, Catherine exhaled loudly, letting out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Across the table from her, she could see Robbie doing the same.

“Shit, Bee, I’m… I’m sorry, I--” she tried to begin, but the words didn’t come properly, so she Aargh’ed and thunked her head on the coffee table instead, making a deeper noise than the mallet did.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” he whispered, and she felt a hand stroking the back of her head, “Look, I know how-- how you feel about Be-- about me,” he replied, demonstrating his clear superiority on the matters of eloquence by at least finishing his sentence thus earning the sight of Catherine looking up at him from beyond the table, “I’m sorry I put you into this position, I really am, but I need this. I need to sort myself out.”

“I… I understand, it’s just… I look at you and I think back and…” Catherine tried to explain, she needed to explain, she may have lost a possible girlfriend, but she didn’t want to lose her very actual friend as well.

“Oh-kayyy,” Robbie exhaled nervously, making Cat wonder what this was about, was he going to-- no, please don’t say the words I think you’re about to say-- “Let’s not ruin everyone’s day with beating ourselves up just yet, okay? I… I’m not making any big promises, but come by my place tomorrow noon-ish, okay? I think I have something to show you,” he said somewhat shakily, as if imparting some terrible secret, “I think it’s half past time I showed you what my powers do.”

“But… not Rose? Alone?” Catherine asked carefully, her voice rising expectantly, her hand somehow finding itself on top of the one Robbie was using to support himself in leaning halfway across the table.

“Not… not yet, no,” Robbie confirmed, giving her an awkward smile, so much like the one Berta gave her last year when they… when they…

“Hey, are you two done kissing and making out or do you need more time?” came Rose’s voice from the patio door, “Not-smoking turned out to be not actually that fun with the pouring rain outside and all that goes with it. My hair is going poofy.”

“My imaginary cigarettes are all wet!” Gemma added, “How else am I going to get an imaginary nicotine fix?”

“Imaginary nicotine patches, duh,” Luke duh’ed, “Or licorice sticks. Real sugar, imaginary nicotine, best of both worlds!”

Catherine was unsure at what point her free hand became closed into a fist, or encased in a gauntlet of solidified blood - she’d been practicing making actual armor out of the stuff - but she was keenly aware of the pitch black long-fingered-- no, it was clawed, no, it was… long-nailed? --hand grasping it, stopping her from outing herself again. Robbie’s hand, she saw, vague black smoke drifting around it, terminating along with the blackness at around his elbow, where it gave way back to his smooth dark skin, muscles stretching it taut from the effort of stopping her from lashing out at the interruption.

“We need another minute, not enough of the making!” Robbie called back, his face revealing he was grateful they could not be seen from this position.

“What was--” Catherine asked, breathless, reabsorbing her blood without a second thought. That was a woman’s hand, was all she kept thinking about, and the irrational anger flowed out of her as quickly as it came.

“Tomorrow. Okay?”

“Okay.” Okay.

Spoiler: A/N

This was vaguely based on some of the ridiculous things discussed during the various game sessions I've hosted in the past. Of the stuff that's printable.

Luke's vaguely based on a classmate of mine, Gemma started out as a concentration of puns slowly scaled back into a semblance of a particular girl that got too married for me to ask out by the time I worked up the courage (we're still good friends though, you never stop being friends with people whose sense of humour complements yours perfectly), though in personality more than appearance. Her exact ethnicity may or may not come up later.

 

"A Patient Girl"​

Rose dangled her legs off the medical bed type thing. She never learned the proper name for them and besides, calling them “medical bed type things” perfectly described their form and function! Kinda like blueberries (they’re blue, they make your tongue blue), goalkeepers (which, unlike goalies, actually kept their goals safe!) and pachinko (because of the pa-ching sound the little balls made). Rose had a problem with pachinko machines, actually, the balls were too tasty for their own good.

Her Dad was busy talking to Doctor Lawrence, a short thin man with a wide bushy beard. It always amused her how the color of his mustache and beard didn’t match, the whiskers adorning his upper lip long and firmly dyed yellow by his smoking addiction. He was one of maybe two or three people she knew that still smoked in this day and age, and his habit was the reason many people refused to have him treat their children.

The Ellisons were not among their number, both of her parents shrugging and saying something to the effect of ‘Hey, at least it’s not VX or U4IA’ when questioned. Somehow, when her Dad was faced with this situation at a class parental meet, this actually earned Doctor Lawrence a couple of patients, including Luke.

Which made this visit all the sadder: they were saying goodbye. With the way her powers had changed her body, Rose now needed to go to a special cape doctor. Thing was, cape pediatricians were not very widespread yet, the requirements for that sort of license being much harder to obtain on top of the fact that most kids with powers still retained a more or less human anatomy.

This meant she’d have to go halfway across town now, to see a Doctor Stevens, who, they were told, was a woman. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but for some reason her Mom still made a point of warning her Dad about it. Dad gave his usual good-natured chuckle in response, hugged his wife, kissed her on the cheek and left her to grade papers (and participate in a drug bust somewhere in the Port area) in peace. She seldom did less than three things at once, the third one in that particular case being listening to an audiobook version of some boring old book about teachers that was entirely made up of official documents. Who would write such a thing? Who would read such a thing? Who would narrate such a thing for an audiobook?!

Then Doctor Lawrence offered to take her blood sugar levels for last times’ sake, and she giggled and shrugged and held out her arm and giggled again when he looked at the melted incisor of the blood sucking thingy, his dumbstruck expression hilarious beyond belief. Her Dad laughed again, clapping the Doctor on his shoulder and offering him his trademark handshake (warm and soft and huge, he taught Rose a lot about shaking hands politely when you’re stronger than the other party). The Doctor finally regained enough of his composure to laugh along, then wished them the best of luck and they were on their way.

------​

She didn’t get to ride in her Dad’s car a lot, spending more time on the bus or aboard Lord Blackwood with her Mom, so she always enjoyed the feeling of being able to stretch your legs out infinitely or the entirely electric everything, or the fancy way the heads up display on the windshield worked, especially compared to the deliberately retro analog way everything behaved in the old VW. That is not to say she hated Lord Blackwood, she just… needed a break from being one of Mom’s Many Things At Once, although she did understand that her Mom’s powers basically meant she literally always had time for her daughter, even if sometimes they had to talk via insectile telepresence.

Once she stopped wiggling in her seat to get into the optimal comfy position, she was grinning at her Dad, wringing her seat belt with one hand while the other tapped along to the radio on the door handle. It was the latest hit from The Heartbroken, but she felt neither here nor there about it, she tapped along to a lot of things. What she was focused on right now, what she needed to talk to her Dad about when Mom was at maximum distraction, because a literally omniscient Mom was every teen girl’s nightmare, was The Question, which had been percolating in her brain for the past week or so.

Here it went.

“Daaad,” she drew out, “Remember you said I could ask you about any complicated grown-up stuff that I couldn’t ask Mom about?”

“Did I, Sparrow?” her Dad smiled at her when they stopped at a red light, “I thought it was the other way around?”

“Daaaaad, come oooooon,” she protested, “I’m trying to be serious here. Life-changing stuff, potentially life-ending.”

She could see the transition then, from goofy Dad to serious Cape. It wasn’t any one thing, like the different glint in his eyes, or a much more rigid and forced grin, or the way his back straightened out and his hands gripped the steering wheel tighter. It just… as if a switch was flipped and even though he was still dressed like her Dad, she wasn’t talking to Elliott Ellison anymore, she was talking to Tecton, hero of the Dimensional War, although the way her Dad told the story, it mostly boiled down to ‘I saved our president from our president’, usually followed by raucous laughter from all the adults present. She still didn’t get the joke.

“Honey, have some mercy on your old man,” he begged, bits of Dad still peeking out from under the Hero, “I’m trying to drive here. What’s wrong? Is it something at school? Is it a boy? Did you get in a fight again?”

“Um. No, to all of those,” she said, shrinking in on herself a little bit. She wanted to talk this over with Goofy Dad, not Serious Cape, she pushed too far!

“Then what is it?” he asked cautiously, relaxing by a tiny fraction.

“If, and that’s a big ‘if’ right there, so if, theoretically I was a Cape, and I had Powers…” she trailed off, wondering if this whole thing wasn’t a stupid idea she shouldn’t’ve attempted anyway.

“But you are a cape, even if you don’t wear a cape,” he replied, relaxing further, but then snapped to, “Wait, is this about capes? You want to wear a cape?” he sounded worried, making her worried, “Roseanne Breanna Ellison, this family does not wear capes! This has been a fine familial tradition for a whole one generation and we will not allow you to defile it!” he lectured her steadfastly over her rising giggles.

“No, Dad, relax. Capes are stupid-looking and a major tactical disadvantage. I’ve read enough comic books to know that one,” she placated him, “What I wanted your advice on was, when picking your own cape name, should I go with something that describes my powers, or something that obscures them?”

“Huh. I’m afraid we’re the wrong people to ask, dear. I’ve only had the one for my entire career and it was the work of a PR department,” he shrugged ineffectually, the gesture curtailed by the need to keep holding on to the steering wheel, “And it is very descriptive, as you no doubt noticed. Your Mom… had all but the last one assigned to her. I’m guessing that was a major contributing factor in the blatant act of rebellion that her Warden membership has been about from start to finish.”

“That, and she enjoys messing with people?” Rose suggested, her grin widening.

“Yeah, that probably played a role as well. That said, this example is one you can and should learn from: her name does reveal her powers, but also conceals her identity pretty effectively,” he outlined, making her nod along with the sudden realization that the name and the false identity played very well into each other, just as her unobtrusive carefully cultivated image of a ditzy Professor Of Boring Things, “If you manage to invent a name that does reflect you, but doesn’t give away anything you don’t want it to, I believe that is when you’ve struck gold.”

“I see,” Rose nodded one more time, with extra finality, “Thank you for taking this seriously, Dad.”

“Hey, Sparrow, after a near-heart attack like that, how could I not?” he grinned at her again, “But really, if you’re seriously considering caping, please bear in mind that the Wards are a perfectly viable option.”

“I’ll consider your offer, but I’d like to keep my options open,” she grinned back, “My people will call your people.”

“By which you mean you’ll make your mother act out us arguing about this again, like you did with your photography class?”

“Yep. It’s hilarious when she does the voices too! Maybe this time she’ll use the insects too!”

------​

The office of Doctor Stevens was an unassuming off-white color on the inside, likely designed that way on purpose to underscore the Doctor herself. Her pitch-black eyes had no whites and seemed to look directly into your soul. Or possibly your colon, it was impossible to infer exactly from just where her head was pointed. Of course, it was logical to expect a cape doctor to be a cape herself.

“You’re tall,” were the first words out of Rose’s mouth at the sight of her, “Like, you’re even taller than my Mom!”

The Doctor smiled warmly, which looked pretty awesome with the way everything just beyond her snow-white teeth was also impenetrably pitch black. She was like a white idea of a person stretched over a void of blackness. Suddenly, the concept of driving across town to see her didn’t sound so terrible anymore.

“So, Mister Ellison, what brought you to my doors, aside from the car you have parked out front, of course?”

Her voice was a bit of a letdown, Rose decided, merely the kind of voice you’d expect a pretty woman her Dad’s age to sound like. She’d expected someone who was a black hole on the inside to sound deep and ominous, not high-pitched and English.

“I know you can’t tell from the outside, but…” her Dad dropped into a conspiratorial whisper and leaned in a bit, “...my daughter is a c-word.” He made a show of splashing his hands out in an exaggerated shrug, “Can’t take her to a boring normal doctor anymore, have to go to the one a colleague of mine recommended instead.”

She laughed at that, recouping some of Rose’s Eldritch expectations, because it sounded like she would expect a buzzsaw made of tinkly glass to sound. That is to say, pretty cool. Then a slightly darker thought graced her mind as she realized why her Mom warned her Dad. He could be too charming for his own good, and though Mom wasn’t the jealous type, she did constantly chide him about leading women of loose moral fibre on. Not that Rose expected a doctor, or especially a cape doctor to be a person of loose moral fiber. That was against the rules, wasn’t it?

“Alright, Rose,” Doctor Stevens said, leaning down a bit, because she was taller even than her Dad, “What do your powers do that prevents boring doctors from treating you?”

“Well, I’m immune to heat, like, I absorb heat and don’t even become much warmer when I do, but I can get cold,” Rose recited the text she rehearsed with her Mom, “I can also eat anything that I can fit in my mouth, and digest it regardless of what it’s made of. Then I can tell what it was made of, although I judge by taste, so I have to learn what stuff other stuff can be made of first.” She paused, then scratched her nose. “Did that make sense?”

“Yes, yes it did, thank you, Rose,” the Doctor said, straightening out, then addressing her Dad again, “I’m guessing taking her blood and other bodily fluid samples has been off the table ever since?”

“Well, she can spit?” Dad suggested with a shrug, “I have no idea why that’s treated any differently, but yeah, we had to scale up to Brute 7 rated toilet facilities because some of the stuff that comes out the other end… yeah. Chemically inert, most of the time, but two shattered toilet bowls is two too many, you know?”

“Daaaad! You’re embarrassing me!” Rose protested, despite knowing full well that hiding things from your Doctor was a no-no because if they didn’t know everything, they couldn’t heal you right.

“Sorry, Sparrow, you know you--”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I didn’t say you shouldn’t explain, but could you please do it in a less embarrassing way?”

“Sparrow, that’s way less embarrassing than my first option, which was ‘she can eat rocks, she poops rocks too’, don’t you agree?” her Dad objected, making Rose flush a color befitting her name and hide her face behind her hands.

The Doctor buzzsaw-laughed again. “Well, that’s alright, Rose. As you probably guessed, my powers affect not only how I look, but also how I see, so if you’d go under that lamp for a moment…”

“Do I have to undress or something, like for an X-ray?”

“Not unless you’re wearing anything made of sheet metal, which I suspect you are not?” Doctor Stevens said, half-seriously (or so Rose felt she did), “But I can’t resist asking: why did your father call you Sparrow?”

“It’s been her pet name since she’s been little,” her Dad supplied, “Because she’s kind of like one: quick, fidgety, and eats very fas-- Oh my God, did you Trigger from overeating and choking on something?!” he asked, the words tumbling out heedless of the way his sudden outburst made the Doctor jump up in surprise.

“But Daaaad, it was an amazing peach cobbler!”

Spoiler: A/N

Kept you waiting, huh?
Don't worry, the Cat/Bee resolution is coming sooner than this did. I was desperately seeking for a story idea to break up the Cat viewpoints apart, since I don't want mono-PoV chapters to become sequential.

I've spent a lot of time in doctor's offices as a kid (and as an adult), and I'm one of those weird kids that like undergoing medical things. It's fun to have your blood taken. It's awesome to have stuff done to your teeth because you have a legitimate reason to spew blood at people. I get awesome power naps inside MRI machines!

Also, Rose gets a full name reveal, talks cape stuff, and you get a tiny glimpse of the expanded infrastructure of a world where not all capes are forced to be villains or servants of the state.

The book Anne is listening to is Up the Down Staircase - Wikipedia which I picked because I imagine it would be a right mess as an audiobook and because it's an AMAZING read which I recommend both as a former teacher and as a kinda-writer.

Also, amazed at how attending doctors is so rarely raised as an issue for Brutes, Changers and Strangers, only Case 53s.

 

"The Dark Girl"​

This ‘talking to your friends’ mothers’ thing was becoming a much larger part of her life since she made her powers known to them, Catherine mused. It was as if becoming a cape made her more socially active. Or maybe more socially threatening, in that whole ‘don’t you dare touch my child, you fiend’ kind of way? She had no way of knowing without asking directly, and even with the brashness she inherited from V-Mom, she knew that was not an envelope she was supposed to be pushing.

Ms Hess was an imposing woman despite being a bit over an inch shorter than her son, or even when she was not wearing the power suits she was so fond of. Catherine snorted at that. The phrase was older than either of her moms, but somehow was still in use despite power armor being about as widespread nowadays as the cut of suit it described. Come to think of it, A-Mom’s idea of formal wear more often than not included one of those ridiculous angular pant suits from fifty years ago as well, didn’t it?

One way or another, Catherine was sitting opposite Ms Hess (“Call me Sophia.” - “Sure thing, Ms Hess!”) in her kitchen and trying not to fidget. She was sure this would be The Talk, something absurd like “If you get my son pregnant!” or “Have you ever taken U4IA?” or maybe even “Why are you only wearing one earring? Do you know what that is a sign of?”

She was sorely mistaken.

“Bee already told me, so you can unclench,” Ms Hess said, a lot more softly than Catherine expected, “Then again, given your parentage, I’d be more surprised if you and your sister didn’t develop powers at some point.”

“And you’re… okay with it?” Catherine asked cautiously, unsure where this conversation was headed. Robbie was sure as hell taking his sweet time loading her bags into the car - apparently, the Ellisons have roped her into some sort of a road trip for the day, and Rose was supposed to spend the day with her grandpa. Something Catherine only learned from Ms Hess, making her wonder what the connection between her and Rose’s mom was and if it would affect Robbie somehow. Internally though, because as much as she would worry about having the whole house left to the two of them, she wasn’t planning on spilling a single droplet of blood in front of Robbie’s mom.

“It’s a town that’s already got a lot of capes in it,” she shrugged, “I have powers, I was ready for my child to have powers, I was ready for whoever they’d be friends with to have powers. So I have only one hard rule I expect you two to obey in my absence.” She leaned in, suddenly looking a lot more menacing than before, making Catherine wonder if she was a villain before Scion went nuts. “Don’t damage any furniture.”

When she leaned back, Catherine let out a breath she was not aware she was holding, barely remembering to nod furiously. It felt way too much like a Master effect, like the one she felt from Umbrella, the Minion Master, when she helped the Wards stop him from wrecking the amusement park last week. It was still unknown why he did it, but her blood geysers helped stop three of his thralls long enough for whatever it is Apsaras’s power did to free them, and that meant she did her part as a Hero that day. She did not feel as certain here.

“Mom. What have you done to her?” Robbie asked accusingly, finally entering the kitchen from the general direction of outdoors. “I hadn’t expected you would be putting the screws to my girl friends, to be honest “

“I use equal opportunity screws, Bee, surely you know that!” Ms Hess joked back, her voice mostly shedding the steely core it just displayed. She reminded Catherine of a caged beast that had grown used to its restrictions, but has not yet forgotten how to be vicious. She sort of remembered Robbie mentioning that his mom hadn’t been caping in a while now and realized why Ms Hess reminded her of V-Mom at times: she didn’t have an outlet.

It’s been scientifically proven while Catherine was still in kindergarden that all powered people needed to cut loose with their powers at times, had to use them on a regular basis, or there could be detrimental consequences to their mental health. Victoria Dallon didn’t do much caping these days, but when she did, Aglaea was a fierce combatant that was rightfully called in to deal with only the worst of criminals. Belatedly, Claire realized why V-Mom was always so mellow after her parents’ annual trip to Kaijudrome with Aunt Crystal. They weren’t going there to spectate, duh!

“Well, just make sure you don’t overdo it,” Robbie continued, unaware of Catherine’s sudden determination to find where her moms put the silver medals for last year’s Kaijudrome that Epione and Aglaea won in Monster Mash Doubles. “Er, you alright there, Cat? You look kinda woozy.”

“Eh? No, no, I’m okay!” Catherine protested, realizing belatedly that she just swatted Robbie’s hand away from her forehead, “Still processing this whole ‘cape families’ thing.” She made a nebulous wave around her head, burning in shame with the thought that this was such a Rose thing to do, because even Gemma was never that scatterbrained, then was saved by the bell. Or, well, phonecall. Ms Hess had some old-timey Western movie music as her ringtone, it turned out, and greeted the person on the other end with a curt announcement of her last name.

Leaving her to her communications device, Catherine turned to Robbie.

“Hope you’re ready for this,” he said, making her scrunch her eyebrows in confusion, considering his mom was right there.

“Ready for what?” she asked as innocently as she could muster under the thought that Ms Hess gave her implicit permission to do stuff in her house with her-- child-- and that they were discussing those things under her nose like it was no big thing.

“Power testing, of course!” Robbie replied smartly, as if it was the most obvious thing ever. “I need your help with figuring out the limits of the stuff I do!”

“And there’s my cue,” Ms Hess said, pocketing her phone, “Try not to leave bloodstains anywhere, alright?”

“I take my blood very seriously, ma’am,” Catherine reported in her best grown-up girl voice, wondering if the question was supposed to be a test to determine her powers. “I’d really rather keep it inside myself. No guarantees on Bee, though.”

“Well, I guess that’s reassuring enough,” Ms Hess sighed, “And Bee? Please be careful.”

She squeezed her son’s shoulder emphatically, grabbed her keys of a little shelf and stepped out of the house, leaving Catherine alone with Robbie and the rapidly accumulating awkwardness.

“Why didn’t you warn me your mom’s leaving us alone in the house?” were the first words Catherine managed to squeeze out once the mundaneness of watching Robbie set the coffee machine brewing overcame the odd mixture of feelings in her chest.

“From the look on your face alone, I can tell it would have only made you make even more out-there conclusions than you already did,” Robbie chided her, setting two mugs on the countertop. “Sorry if I gave you confusing messages. My intentions were mostly power-related.”

“Mostly?” Catherine repeated, adding a narrowing of eyes as an extra punctuation mark. Robbie nodded, then handed her one of the mugs, filled with dark magicks and the promise of making her blood easier to boil, making her wonder how Robbie knew how to boost her power.

“Yeah. But first - you are Hematoma, yes? The stuff that went down with Rose at the gym doesn’t make sense otherwise since I’m guessing her power has something to do with her eating habits and--”

Robbie’s tirade of guesswork was interrupted by the realization that instead of Catherine’s hand, the mug was held by an ornate knightly gauntlet of a rusty red metal, attached to a tentacle of flowing red which was extended from somewhere behind Catherine’s back, its point of origin concealed by her hair. She didn’t like the fact that to exude blood from an undamaged part of her anatomy, she always had to tolerate actual, if short-lived hematomas.

“Alright, what else has Mrs Ellison told you? I’m sure that she didn’t decide to ask your mom to come until yesterday afternoon?” she asked, her own guesswork punctuated by the loud slurp of the pleasantly scalding coffee as she accepted the mug from her additional appendage.

“Even if she did it to help us do whatever she thinks we’re going to do - and I’m not confirming or denying anything!--” Catherine followed Robbie’s gaze towards the ceiling, but there was no cryptic insectile message there this time, “--she didn’t discuss it with me. She’s a goddess pretending to be a lesser god. I’m pretty sure she can get away with whatever she puts her mind to.”

Robbie tapped the sign of Anansi on his chest, making Catherine do a double-take. She took another slurp to calm her nerves and fast-forward the awkwardness of the idea that not only was Khepri real, she was apparently interested in setting them up together.

“So what sort of help did you want from me that hinges on me having blood powers?” she finally mustered the mental fortitude to ask. “I hope whatever shadow thing you do isn’t blood-powered?”

Robbie scoffed into his own mug at the question, then put it down on the table. “Don’t worry, I just needed someone who can produce disposable targets for me to test my powers against and isn’t affiliated with any group. Luckily enough, my best friend is just the girl who fits that profile.”

“Targets?” Catherine repeated, blinking owlishly. Something was off about Robbie, now that he was standing straight she could tell. It looked as if he… buffed out since yesterday? In fact, if she didn’t know any better, she’d say without a doubt the person in front of her was born a boy… “Holy hell, you’re a Changer!”

“Breaker, actually, but I suppose a Changer subrating would fit as well,” Robbie grinned widely, flexing a bicep. She could barely see some sort of dark smoke wafting from his shirt’s sleeve at the motion.

He stepped around the counter, ending up in front of her. “Touch it, come on,” he said, still grinning. She looked down at his chest, broader than she remembered, with a hint of muscular definition that before today was at least part binder-provided. Today… she reached out to poke his solar plexus, then brushed her hand against the Anansi logo, feeling taut muscle underneath, pretty good for a boy their age. If Luke spent all his videogame time in a gym, he would only begin to approach this level of fitness. Then again, Bee was always devoted to working out diligently, even if without a specific end goal in mind. Track was just a lucky break.

“Your Breaker state is malleable?” she ventured, “And I suppose you don’t have to transform all of you?”

Robbie nodded, then took a step back. Catherine watched in wide-eyed fascination as like a liquid, blackness poured out of Robbie’s shirt, enveloping his skin, his hands, his face, his hair. They all looked the same as before, except a uniform matte black now, with the black bits - well, all of him, now - exuding the same curious dark smoke or maybe vapor. His wide grin looked positively unnerving turned pitch black, and she fought to suppress a shudder.

“I can’t stop being humanoid-shaped,” the shadowy being that was her best friend and hopelessly lost crush said with an odd ethereal voice, “But I can change my shape within the constraints of my skeleton, it seems, and also alter my voice, even get a new face--” she gasped as an acceptable facsimile of herself told her that, “--but only my own will be anything other than pure black. I am also a lot more durable in this form.”

Then his hair moved, shedding the hairband, then lengthening past shoulder level, as the mask made of darkness receded from his face, replacing Catherine’s with his own, the darkness-extended hair now under control of gravity again, rolling down onto his-- no, her shoulders as Berta’s subtly different smile - less teeth, for a start, and much more uncertain and awkward, reminding Catherine why she fell for her to begin with with a pang of pain in her chest.

The changes didn’t end there, however, as the chest’s broadness reshaped itself into volume, suddenly making Catherine too aware the shirt was the only top Berta had on (Wait, she thought, does that mean Robbie was half-transformed the entire time? That’s amazing!), but also making her blush as she realized she was staring. She drew her eyes back up to meet Berta’s sharply, trying to use her own powers to beat the blush back. It felt like she succeeded, until--

“Nice trick, driving your blood away from your face like that,” Berta said, leaning forward a bit to study Catherine’s face, her voice losing the brusqueness that always accompanied Robbie’s. “Can you pale on demand as well?”

“You know--” Catherine gulped, “I never tried the blush thing before either.” She grinned mischievously, drawing half a step closer to poke her friend in the chest again, “You bring out the worst in me, Bee,” she admitted, her hand freezing in place as she realized that doing that poke now would be… indecent.

“That makes two of us, Cat,” Berta said, taking her friend’s disoriented hand with one of her own, a ghostly black manicure adorning her fingers, and squeezing slightly, “Now, if I remember correctly, there was something you wanted to ask Berta before Robbie’s appearance made you drop it?”

“Yeah…” Cat breathed out, swallowing nervously as she noticed they had already closed the distance and reaching towards her friend the rest of the way, her free hand feeling but her brain failing to process that Berta’s hips had more curve now under the boy’s jeans she was wearing.

The kiss was everything she’d ever imagined it to be, and this time she didn’t bother hiding the blush. As they drew slightly away from each other, she pulled on the hand that Berta held in hers, bringing it up to their eye level.

“How sharp can you make these?” she asked, running her thumbtip against Berta’s ghostly thumbnail.

Spoiler: A/N

I hope this doesn't violate anything.

Now, the whys:
Bee is rushing through the new possibilities their power gives them, and after realizing Roberto can be a properly shaped boy, also realized Cat can get her wish fulfilled. Of course, to some, this may look as if Bee is leading Cat on with the promise of Berta... Ah, moral hazards, I loff you so.

Next chapter: Rose gets a cape name! It's already determined, but you have enough clues to guess.

 

"Who's That Girl?"​

Roof-jumping, Berta mused, was exhilarating.

She was following Cat - Hematoma, now that they were technically ‘in costume’ - watching the other girl springboard herself off of roof edges, then catch and pull herself up again with tendrils of her self-motile blood. The sight was, frankly, more than a little bit icky, the way the dark red liquid flowed unnaturally against the scenery, splashing but not spreading away from its mistress. Berta herself - or Vanta, as Cat proposed calling her due to her impenetrable darkness - worked around her apparent inability to make non-decorative wings on her back by briefly shifting her arms into proper large ones instead, modeled after a raven’s, whenever she needed to make a hop between buildings. Run up, flap her wing-arms, cursing the fact that whatever counted as muscle mass in her shifted form was still apparently reliant on her actual muscles, since her shoulders and arms buzzed with the burden of her weight only a few streets into the taller tenement blocks of South Town. One flap, two flaps, then hold and glide. Berta resolved to alter her workout regime if she was going to maintain this as her primary means of locomotion, she would certainly need to invest in larger shoulder muscles if this was to work.

Hematoma proposed the direction because it would take them into the territories of one of the few gangs still brave enough to be dealing drugs in the town which housed the all-seeing Insect Master Anansi. While both girls now knew the only reason Khepri chose not to go full Egyptian plague on the drug-dealers was the need to preserve the notion that the world-controlling goddess was dead and gone, her cape persona was still known to be pretty good at tracking them down. It took a special kind of determination and a lot of Tinkertech fumigators to keep their deals going, although their use in itself was usually a good tip off for the authorities that something shady was going down in a particular area.

As such, they would have a small window of opportunity to nab their drugmeister of the night after finding one, as courier delivery was considered a much safer and popular approach. You couldn’t fault a person for filling their car with incense after all, could you? So what if it was lethal to insects? Maybe they were allergic! So the ones that didn’t fumigate got caught easily, and those that did also got caught easily, just not as quickly. So it was this second one they had to aim for if they wanted to outpace Rose’s mom on the draw - and from what they both now knew about Khepri, that would be a challenge in itself, since they couldn’t be sure she wasn’t watching them already. But then again… she wouldn’t try and steal their credit, would she?

At least, such was the gist that Berta got from Cat’s rather messy explanation once the girl got off her giddy high at the realization that not only did her best friend reciprocate her feelings to some extent, she was also willing to go caping with her once they’ve established the extent of her basic combat capability. A quick web search told them Berta’s ability to take Cat’s (semi-officially rated Blaster 3) blood tentacle punch without so much as a huff meant she was at least Brute 4 in her Breaker form. Coupled with the fact that she could turn any appendage into a weapon of whatever shape or form she desired, it compensated neatly for the initially disheartening discovery that she could not manage a sharp edge at all.

And so there they were, looking down into a dark alley where a man dressed in dark clothing was tossing packets of something suspiciously green and gooey - either industrial-scale volumes of jello or the concentrated form of U4IA - from a shopping cart and into the back seat of a car that had strands of white smoke leaking out of every seam. Either that car was being used as a furnace or…

And yet, before they could leap down, a trite “Halt, evildoer!” rang out through the night as another teen girl - who else would wear a pink hoodie to cover their long hair, which still stubbornly escaped its velvety soft prison? - charged into the courier with a feeble attempt at a dropkick, which nevertheless seemed to do a lot more damage than the girl’s size implied.

They still dropped down, Hematoma using her blood tentacles to slow herself down against the fire escapes, producing an odd squishing sound, while Ber-- er-- Vanta floated down on an impromptu shadow parachute. They landed just in time to watch the courier sink a combat knife to the hilt into the girl’s chest, drawing a panicked gasp from her as she collapsed onto her back, the knife handle protruding from where a horrified Berta recalled the heart was supposed to be in a normal person.

As she drove a clawed fist into the man’s solar plexus, she hissed at her partner, “Hematoma, help her!”

“On it,” came Cat’s reply, her voice disguised beneath the burbling of the liquid sheath she used as her costume, armor and means of locomotion all at once. As Berta sweeped the man’s feet from under him with a shadow-tentacle protruding out of her left knee through the slit in her dress, she turned in time to see Cat stare in frozen shock at the girl in the pink hoodie. The would-be failed vigilante casually broke off the knife’s handle at the base, then, after giving it a few experimental tosses up and down, casually threw it into her mouth and swallowed without any issues.

“Is he out?” she asked, jerking her head at Berta, who gave a probing kick to the man’s side with one of her stilettos. There was no reaction, so she nodded back. The girl nodded again, then pulled her hood off, revealing a wave of auburn hair and a pair of snowboarder goggles above a tye-dye coloured bandana. “I didn’t know you were going out caping, Bee,” she continued, “Or that you wore heels. Ever.”

“In our defense, Sparrow, we thought you were with your gramps?” Hematoma burbled, before cuffing her friend upside the back of her head with a blood-metal gauntlet. “But seriously, what the hell! Since when are you a Brute? I thought you only do that weird eating thing!”

“And yeah, I’m cheating, full body control when I’m in this state,” Berta admitted, letting her slightly altered Vanta face to fade away, letting her real one show so she could grin at her friend.

“Not a Brute either,” Rose admitted, brushing off the question about her grandpa, “Just the fact that I’ve recently learned that my power recycles everything that enters my body beyond a certain depth,” she explained, lifting up her hoodie to demonstrate a small glowing scar where the knife wound was, and even then it was receding into smooth skin. “Not sure if that means I can’t ever have kids or even make out with someone without, you know, buuuut it also means any penetrating wounds actually empower me by giving me fuel.”

“So the weird eating thing, but with your entire body? What if an animal bites you? It loses its teeth?” Cat went on, all the while opening the car’s doors and boot to let out the vapors. She wiggled with her hand, thumb and pinkie outstretched, at Berta, who pulled out her phone, with its recently verified cape comms app, to signal the cops.

“No idea how it works on living tissue, I may be Manton-limited for all I know,” Rose shrugged, “This guy was alone? Did you check the ware—”

She didn’t get to finish as gunfire erupted from the door that the man probably got the cartful of drugs from. Berta flinched every time a bullet flew through her shadowed body, tearing a few holes in one of her mother’s dresses that she never wore anymore because her ‘dress to kill’ phase ran out of steam. Unlike her, Cat and Rose stood their ground, impassively watching as impacts against them either splorched uselessly against the blood barrier or whoofed into Rose, producing small clouds of smoke or maybe vapor at impact sites.

She regained composure when she realized she barely even felt the impacts - until her face lit up with pain as her untransformed cheek was grazed, sending a spray of blood out onto the car’s windshield. She scowled, going full Breaker, blacking out her face, blanking out her pain, and rushed towards the door. Her vague plan of ‘make them pay for the dress she didn’t have permission to wear’ (in her defense, she would have worn one of her own if they weren’t all from the age when she intended to grow up as a dragonslayer princess) was shattered by the rather ridiculous sound Rose made. She horked. Then again. And then she was throwing something at the doorway, and then there were these foul-smelling explosions, and the guys were coughing and dropping their guns and all Hematoma had left to do was collect the guns and help Ber-- ugh, Vanta, lug them out. They did get to play Warden Assault Team by storming into the building to check for more drugs (there were a few more packages in an industrial refrigerator) and drug dealers (there weren’t any).

And then they were sitting on the hood of the car, taking stock of their damaged outfits. Berta, who decided being a pitch black outline of a femme fatale was a good cape identity to counteract the mostly-accepted-as-male cape T-shirt wearing Robbie, complete with curves to serve as a distraction and heels to make herself look taller. She honestly didn't expect the shadowform would ignore bullets outright, hoping instead she would rely on blacking herself out and turning back to wash off whatever damage she sustained. Granted, she didn’t expect her mother’s slinky black dress to get dinged up, she’d need some sort of Tinker self-repairing material for the next one. Thankfully, the black also erased the nick on her cheekbone from the one bullet that grazed her face.

Cat was fully intact, since her red jumpsuit (bought used from a hovertube place, coupled with a straightforward red balaclava that came from a discount biker shop) was entirely protected by her blood field. Moreover, she liked the suit because it had a ton of zippery pockets, letting her exude blood from any part of her anatomy, choosing to place those hideous hematomas that marked her extrusion points where her normal clothes would cover.

Rose’s hoodie was in a sorry state, the shirt beneath it equally messed up with tears and scorch marks. Her bandana burned away, but that didn’t seem to faze her much as she rubbed Berta’s back, seemingly caught in the fuzzy feeling the naked blackness of her Breaker form produced to the touch.

“Chin up, Bee. That’s only one dress you ruined to find out you’re bulletproof!” she chirped, before horking again, a piece of metal landing in her open palm. “This is the sum total of the bullets that hit me. I’d give it good odds the burns on my clothes came from when they splashed into my being. I’m not gonna show you what I did to the knife or the one I stabbed myself with at home after having an attack of the smarts about what my power does.”

“So that what the weird sound they made was? They got, what, slagged?” Berta asked, making a face. She was still wearing what she and Cat decreed to be her “Vanta” face, a mix of her mother, Willow Smith, the famed cape singer, and that infamous bust of the Queen Nefertiti they saw at at the museum once. The Earth Dalet one, though, because Bet’s was lost to the ages (images were preserved, and replicas produced, but she still wasn’t as pretty) and Samesh’s was proven to be a repainted Tutankhamun, leading some dimensional archaeologists that on that world, they were the same person.

“Pretty much,” Rose shrugged, “Cape doctors tell me I’m basically a human shaped pool of walking, talking magma wrapped in a cute package, primordial geological soup as it were, to which I can add or remove material as I see fit through whatever replaced my digestive system,” she gestured with her hand, two fingers down the throat, “The magma does all the functions of blood too, keeping me warm to the touch, distributing nutrients or spilling some if I get hurt badly enough.”

“So, if you see a hot enough boy, your clothes will burst into flame because of your nosebleed?” Cat quipped, her laugh sending ripples through her sheath of blood, making for a slightly nauseating wobbly picture.

The auburn-haired girl with molten rock for blood shrugged. “Maybe? I have no idea how hormones work with this stuff. I haven’t actually had a nosebleed in years.”

“How about… you know, the other end?” Berta asked awkwardly, relishing in the fact that being pitch black meant that blushing was something that happened to other people.

“Never had that. And yeah, sorry about all the ‘that that time of the month’ jokes I made at your expense, Hematoma,” Rose replied, fiddling with her goggles in a way that made it clear that in this case she was that other person.

“Don’t worry, you dork, I forgive you,” Cat accepted the apology with a small bow, “So, I’m Internet famous and all, so you both know my cape name. Bee can’t make up one for herself so I called her Vanta—”

“After the color? Clever, but you do know it’s actually an acronym, right?” Rose laughed, “Though it does sound like a girl’s name. Again, the heels, a shock.”

“Effective cape disguise though, right?” Berta, no, Vanta countered, producing the outline of a domino mask on her face momentarily, “So the point which my partner here was trying to take us to… have you thought of your cape name, and, while we’re on cape matters, do you want to team up?”

“I am a furnace that turns everything entering it into slag, a ready-made instrument of smithing justice!” Rose replied, hopping off the car to strike a pose, “So you can call me Kiln!”

“Huh. You do kinda look a bit Irish, I suppose?” Hematoma had her hand to her chin, a thinking pose on full display, “What does it mean?”

“That’s not Irish, you bloody barbarian!” Kiln laughed again, “It’s blacksmithish! Kind of a furnace, but you can melt or burn anything in it. Just like me!”

“We can debate terminology later,” Vanta said, hopping off as well, gesturing at the mouth of the alley, as sirens drifted down it, delivering the news of the imminent arrival of their bearers. “Cops are here. Time to go make our first impression.”

Spoiler: A/N

Utterly not the direction expected this story to go, powers or otherwise, but here we are.

So, the idea is that Bee isn't ready to commit to being Robbie 24/7, but is also certain that his hard-earned school reputation will be damaged if he backs down on being a girl.

Next up, the Lavere-Dallon household and its long-overdue reveal!

 

"The Other Girl"​

Catherine leaned against the wall, checking her watch again. Her sister was running late and that just wouldn’t do. Today was supposed to be a Cape Planning Day for her and the girls, because they still didn’t have a team name or any semblance of a coherent design guideline, and Elizabeth holding her up wasn’t in the cards.

Sure, the fact that Vanta was essentially a limited Changer in her Breaker form and the way Catherine herself remade her external armor from scratch every time she went out meant they only really needed to get Kiln sorted out in the costuming department… but the unlimited possibilities of the two mutable team members also meant it was only that much harder to settle on one specific theme for the team. Perhaps Rose was right in suggesting not trying to do a team theme this early on until they had settled tactics and got some semblance of a rep going.

There was also the obvious issue of how Khepri would take the whole thing about her daughter deciding to go out as a cape. The Lavere-Dallon household greeted the enforced revelation of the family’s powered heritage with a change in family dynamics, but Catherine had no way of knowing whether the woman that killed Scion would handle things the same way. Then again, it was her talking to Robbie and his mother that lead to Vanta joining her on that rooftop run last weekend.

As for her own family, things became a lot more open. At least half of A-Mom’s “florist conventions” turned out to be out-of-town cape fights or negotiations that required her presence at the head of her team. One “romantic vacation” her moms took a couple years back was revealed to have been a trip to Earth Taw to fight some sort of lava monster that blew up the Yellowstone Caldera, plunging the world into a lava-filled nuclear winter. Elizabeth was right on the money about the unnatural sunburn both of their moms had afterwards - the best A-Mom’s powers could do with the actual burns they both had on such short notice.

That left the question of how A-Mom used her powers on herself, or how her moms had apparently taken turns bearing children unattended, however. Somehow, the knowledge that A-Mom bore her but V-Mom bore Elizabeth never made her question things before, not like artificial insemination wasn’t a thing, but now that Vanta had gained the most secure civilian identity coverage imaginable, Catherine realized that certain… options suddenly came up for consideration which she hadn’t even thought of before.

And then she noticed that someone was tugging on her sleeve and maybe she shouldn’t have done this while wearing headphones and so she leaned down to give her sister a hug.

“What happened, Cat?” Elizabeth asked, brow furrowing in the exact same way V-Mom’s always did. “You’re usually not that spacey!”

“Sorry, sis,” Catherine replied, straightening out and taking her sister’s hand. They headed to the bus stop that would take them down Norman street and past the hospital, then up Lewis boulevard, and there they would get off to get some ice cream at the kiosk place Elizabeth liked. It was a routine that was well established by now, and precious few reasons could disrupt it. It also included ice cream, and Catherine had once seriously contemplated the merits of whether she’d turn to a life of crime if it would secure her a limitless supply of wild cherry ice cream. The Cassandra Delirio books made her face the darkness inside of her psyche quite a few times already, although most of the time she recognized that, for example, wild cherry ice cream still being legal to purchase was one of the reasons she remained a hero. For now.

“So, are you seeing Berta again today?” Elizabeth asked as they sat down on the bus, picking up speed the more she talked. “I thought she was a boy now and you didn’t, you know.” She made a face. “Like boys?”

“It’s Robbie now, and we’ve kinda… worked it out, don’t worry,” Catherine replied as lightly as she could, ruffling Elizabeth’s hair despite her sister’s protestations. Then, she made an executive decision. “We’re making a team.”
That got the younger girl’s attention for sure.

“Wait, really?” she asked, because that was something you were supposed to ask in these situations. Or so A-Mom said, at least. Catherine still suspected there was some sort of long-running social experiment going on in regard to their upbringing, and the next stage would begin as soon as Elizabeth’s powers made themselves known. Probably something to do with lizards or dinosaurs. Only her sister would be driven enough by her love for the scaly monstrosities to take the moniker ‘Lizzie the Lizard Girl’ that her classmates tried to pick on her with, and own it. “I never thought you’d get into lacrosse!” Elizabeth added with mock surprise, snapping Catherine out of her tangent.

“Wait, what does lacro– Ooh, you got me good!” Catherine pointed her finger at Elizabeth in mock accusation. “Bad Beth, making fun of your sister!”

“Eh, it’s a double opportunity to mock you. A doupportunity?” Elizabeth pondered, tapping an index finger against her chin. “An opportwinity? Oppor-two-nity? Nah, never mind,” she shook her head, making her golden braids flop back and forth along the sides of her head. “Point is, after all the pictures on PHO, it’s clear there’s a cape team already, so I was wondering if you decided to branch out to something else immediately after.”

“Wait, what pictures?” Catherine asked warily, casting a look around herself to make sure they weren’t being eavesdropped on. Then she remembered that she’s on an extremely short list of people Khepri has an apparent personal interest in and relaxed. That was an odd thought, expecting the woman who’d slain Scion to watch your six. And trusting her with it.

In lieu of an answer, Elizabeth fished out her own smartphone and with a couple of deft swipes and circles made her way to a threadful of pictures. The first one to load showed Corpus– ech, Hematoma, Kiln and Vanta sitting on a car’s hood, the photographer obviously trying to get as much of Vanta’s legs into the shot through the slit in the side of her dress as possible. The fact that it tore slightly - most likely when she tentacled her first opponent through said slit, Catherine concluded - probably contributed to the choice of angle. She wondered how fast the picture would get taken down once it became known the mature-looking woman with a body to die for was a shapeshifting teen. PHO mods never screwed around with inappropriate imagery.

The rest of the pictures showed Kiln picking at a hole in her shirt that didn’t have an accompanying hole in her stomach. Hematoma trying to copy the shape of Vanta’s dress and heels with her blood. A police officer telling off a bashful Vanta about the clawmarks on the drug courier’s chest. Vanta showing that she’s able to stretch herself vertically to some extent. Anansi’s spider-avatar talking to Kiln and Hematoma.

Oh, yeah. That. I wonder if Rose got a talking-to from her mom about this. Somehow I don’t see Mr Ellison to be the stricter parent of the two, and getting knifed in the heart, then shot several times definitely merits a talking-to.

“Well, this isn’t half bad?” she ventured, returning the phone to its owner. “Did the police give our names up?” she asked while furiously thinking please don’t let this be another Hematoma/Corpuscle debacle.

“Yeah, after a bit of collective creativity eruption,” Elizabeth grinned widely, “Since your PHO name is BloodKnight, they suggested BlackQueen and PinkPrincess at first,” she paused while Catherine got her unladylike snorts of laughter under control, “Then they became fixated on the idea of Kiln eating stuff and spitting it out and someone mentioned an ancient videogame character who did something like that and was pink. Thus, Kirby. I have no idea if I’m saying it right, by the way.”

“Not enough letters to mispronounce, I think? Beats me,” Catherine shrugged in agreement, then stood up, offering her hand to her sister. “C’mon, our stop is next.”

They got off the bus and trudged towards the ice cream kiosk. The lady manning it today (why is it always manning and not womanning when appropriate?) made tiny cat ears out of broken waffle cone bits for both of them, eliciting a vivid reaction of desire from Elizabeth. Several extra bits later, her minty green scoop looked like a round triceratops, bristling with accurately spaced out horns (Beth was very specific in her desires). Catherine did not object to her cherry kitty (the cherry poking out of the scoop made for a nice red nose, like a cartoon) and tipped the lady a bit extra as thanks for putting up with them.

They walked and talked, with Elizabeth gushing about this new anime she’s heard about that was about a girl whose power was to turn into a lizard, all the lizards, from a normal-sized lizardwoman to a giant kaiju, and how she used that and her magical abilities to battle evil and have fun. Catherine found the whole thing grossly unfair and unbalanced, because it sounded like the girl’s enemies either had magic or powers, but she had both and both in volumes that would get her into the 6-8 range in power rating terms. Then again, it was an anime aimed at tweens and younger teens, they were about having fun and not about realism.

In reality strong powers came with horrible downsides, either due to the Trigger events (less so now that so many new capes were second or third generation), or the fact that they came with some hidden cost, like her own hematomas. Vanta would have to go on using her powers constantly to keep the body she wanted. Kiln doubted she’d ever be able to have children.

And then there were her own mothers. A-Mom fought hard to forge a masked identity for herself after being an open cape when she was young nearly drove her to madness, going as far as fabricating the person under the mask for the authorities to interact with, all to avoid being a person-shaped epicenter of medical tourism ever again. V-Mom wasn’t even a full-time cape anymore. Aunt Crystal was pretty much the same, like a volunteer firefighter. Catherine wasn’t sure what her power’s issue was, but V-Mom’s certainly had something to do with how most of the enemies she saw (New) New Wave fight on television always, always went to her first once she joined the battle, and her allies tried to shield her. She used to have a different Shaker effect, she’d explained, but a terrible wound she sustained changed it.

That was another thing television seemed to get wrong. Powers evolved, but not always in terms of becoming better in a linear way. Even without Second Triggering, someone could develop additional effects to their powers or watch their powers change on their own from external stimuli, more fitting the needs of the user or changing to accommodate an inability to use the power anymore or giving them more options.

Again, Elizabeth shook her out of her funk.

“Seriously, sis, if this is how you’re always gonna be from now on, maybe I shouldn’t let you do it?” she said, crossing her arms across her chest, but the ice cream clutched in one hand ruined the seriousness of it. Still, the pose was full of defiance, and V-Mom often used the same one to tell them that there will be no TV or videogames or going out until their chores were done. “Nuh-uh, no caping for Miss Sulkyface! Next thing you know, you’re gonna be brooding on rooftops, then wearing all black, then maybe start cutt–”

She had the gall to look insulted when Catherine started laughing madly. “Beth, what I do can probably already count as that,” she explained, making her sister relax… right until Catherine’s tone changed, making Elizabeth tense up again. “...and what the hell list of stereotypes are you getting this from?”

“Read it in a book.” Was that… awkward feet shuffling?

“What book?” Catherine persisted. Her sister decided deflection was a good option.

“Simon lent it to me.” Oh, that guy. He reminded Catherine of a larval stage of a boy from her own grade, Pete. Pete wouldn’t know appropriate even if it politely wiggled its monocle in front of his face. And maybe a little bit of Luke too, just a little bit, because Luke grew out of his icky phase pretty quickly. Simon was a lot like that, and that brought Catherine close to her own Trigger issues.

“Was it an older book, maybe a grownup book?” she tried to elaborate, making a note to tell moms and check what sort of book it was. Self-harm of any kind was a subject Catherine got a lot of talks on once her mothers found out what her powers did. “Did Simon lose all of his baby teeth yet? I haven’t punched a tooth out before. Kinda iffy to do it to a ten-year old tho–”

“He’s eleven!” Elizabeth protested, but somehow it only served to make Catherine’s grin wider.

“All I’m hearing is appropriate target, sis.”

Spoiler: A/N

This sat in my Google docs since December, because I wrote it up and then a misaligned cloud update replaced the completed local version with the online wip and I couldn't recreate the domestic scenes it had in a satisfactory manner and so you get ice cream and bus rides instead.

The bus for ice cream experience is based on a story from my dad's childhood where he'd routinely ride the trolleybus from school in the direction away from home to make it to a better ice cream place.

Lastly, I made a Ko-Fi to maybe let you guys give me moneys so I won't be too broke from my upcoming brain bone operation thing to remove the growth that may or may not have been the cause of me losing my left eye (the doctors still haven't agreed whether this was the true cause, but they do agree that having a bone burrow into my brain isn't a good thing either way).

Buy Noelemahc a Coffee. ko-fi.com/noelemahc

Or you can just show your appreciation for this silly stuff I do without having to commit to a Patreon. Your pick.