Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 275- Beth


"Anima, need you to go south," Eki radiod in. "Sveta just called in. She wants to help the rescue efforts. Victoria's with her. She has the power to see living things through walls, so she'll be able to speed things up a lot for you."


"Okay," I answered back. I still wasn't sure about how I felt about Crystal as a leader. She was good at caring for us and worrying about how we felt, but she sucked at the whole 'command' part of beng a commander. She could have simply told me to go meet up with Sveta and Victoria, and I'd have accepted it. Instead she had to explain why she was giving the order. Oh well, it's way better than being treated like I'm nothing more than a disposable storm trooper or something. "Hey, GL, we're meeting up with Sveta and Victoria."


"Awesome," the man responded, and the ground shimmered nearby as he concentrated into an area. 'He' might be a misleading concept, though, since the Case 53 didn't have a body of his own. But his personality was definitely on the male side of things. He pulled together a body of iron and dust, creating the armored humanoid form that he tended to use when not infused with the environment.


When we found Sveta, she was carrying another girl in a cobbled together rope harness. Once we got close, I realized the carried girl was missing both her legs and an arm. She seemed conscious, and was talking to Sveta, holding her one good arm around my teammate's neck.


"Lookin' good, blondie," Genius Loci spoke up first. "Did you lose some weight?" Holy shit! What an asshole!


"A few pounds, here or there," the girl responded. This close, I could see her resemblence to Eki. This was clearly Victoria. Well, I guess since the two of them know each other it makes the joke okay. "I did it for you, by the way."


"Really?" he imitated a laugh. "You didn't need to go changing for me. I love you just the way you are."


"I know, but this way you actually stand a chance of lasting more than ten seconds in a fight with me," she retorted.


"Ouch," he muttered. "I don't even have a nervous system and I felt that one."


"I win yet again. Now, let's get to work saving people," Victoria replied cheerfully. "I'm gonna have to let you do the work for another hour or two. Getting hurt in the combat mode is a pain in the ass, so it'll be a while before I'm back on my feet. So to speak." Oh god her sense of humor is as bad as the rest of these idiots. Sveta offered an attempt at a polite laugh, but she didn't think the joke was that funny, either.


"So," Victoria continued as we started walking through the ruins of her home city. "We never got to meet, since you joined up after I had to transfer. Are you enjoying yourself on the team? Is Crystal doing a good job?"


"Uh..." I hesitated a little. "I kinda signed up to keep the Protectorate off my ass. And the Elite. Apparently they don't appreciate that I don't do this whole hero and villain bullshit. I just want to enjoy my life, that's all. Getting into fights all the time isn't something I consider fun."


She shrugged, which was slightly disturbing for her lack of an arm. "Yeah, I know a lot of people like that," she agreed. "Clotho's one of them. How's she doing, by the way? I haven't had a chance to talk to her a lot."


"Pretty good," I replied, carefully climbing a bit of rubble created where the road splintered and folded upward a few feet. I could have used the antigrav in the suit Pantheon provided, but that gave me motion sickness, so I avoided it as much as I could. "She's come along to help with my plays a couple times. Says a lot of good things about you, actually." I tactfuly neglected to mention the times I caught her checking out my rear. Nothing would come of it anyway. Even if she didn't have a girlfriend, I wasn't into girls to begin with.


"That's good," she agreed. "Has everyone been treating Sveta right? Or do I have to smash some faces?"


"You don't have to worry about me," Sveta insisted. "I'm fine. Cr- Eki doesn't make me do anything too scary."


Crystal coddles her like an adopted little sister, I supplied silently. "Sveta's a big help. Not that we really need it. Crystal came up with a scheme. Let a rumor get out that you only left because LA was too boring for you, and you'd be back when there were more criminals. Turns out you're a great crime deterrent."


"Man, I bet Alexandria was pissed when that happened," she laughed. "Told you it'd be fine. Sorry it's boring, but I know you rock the house when you get the chance."


"I kinda like it boring," Sveta replied, sounding a little bashful. I'd have to find out how the two of them knew each other, because their personalities couldn't be any more different.


"Alright, looks like we got some survivors. Six people in there," She pointed at a mini mall a bit over a block away. "One woman has a broken leg, the others are scrapes and bruises, nothing five minutes in a pod won't fix."


"That's good," I replied. That's pretty detailed information at such a range, I noted with surprise.


"Can you summon up a couple unicorns to take them back to the teams?" she asked. Oh god damn it.


"I'll need to include someone who can lead the animals," I sighed. By this point, we'd gotten close to the building. It was in good shape all considered. Just the glass doors had shattered.


"You should probably go in and get them, too," she suggested. "There are a couple kids, and I wouldn't want to make them cry. Maybe after I regrow a limb or two."


"Yeah, I can do that," I agreed. I really hate doing this. A form shimmered, and a dozen knights in beautiful and ornate sky blue colored plate mail appeared, along with a dozen winged horses. All looked more like well drawn cartoons than actual animals or people. Also included were pixies for each of us. This spread was more than we needed right now, but there would be more who needed help in the future, and I really didn't want to have to explain everything more than once.


"You have need of us, our Queen?" one of the knights asked, his voice deep and calm.


"Yes," I answered, feeling my face turn red, and ever so glad my armor hid it. This is humiliating. "There was a disaster, and people are hurt. We're seeking the injured and bringing them to the healers."


"We understand," the knight bowed with a elegance that would have been completely impossible in real armor. "Truly your mercy is legendary." Hate my power. Hate it hate it hate it. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to hide my utter mortification.


"These are my allies," that's as close as I could come to calling someone an equal or a friend that their mental programming could comprehend. Things rarely went well when I tried to get them to respond outside that program. They were never violent, but often humiliating. "You will follow their instructions as if my own during this mission. They..." I cringed internally. "Have powerful magic, trust them to use it."


What I hated most, perhaps, was they never remembered, and could not learn. I had to give this, or a similar, speech every time I used a summon that could be considered intelligent. The animal summons were a bit different. But at least at this range I could give, if not instructions, then at least assumptions, automtically. The shrinks still had a debate as to whether or not my powers were responding to my will telepathically, or simply reading body language on a really subtle level, but either way they took their positions without needing me to give actual commands to each of them. A couple pixies flitted over to Sveta, and another to GL. Those two had dealt with my power enough to know the drill.


One of the knights approached Victoria. "M'lady, you seem to be injured," he started. "I avail my services and my steed if you have need of them. That way your companion need not trouble herself."


"Uh, no, I'm fine," Vicky stuttered a little. Wow, she's actually speechless. "Thanks for the offer, but we really don't need any help. There are others who've been injured, worry about them."


"As you wish, m'lady," the knight nodded, then took up a position beside Sveta. Meanwhile, the pixies that went to those two had decided their project would be to clean Victoria's tangled hair. Unlike the knights, they didn't bother with the whole 'respect personal boundaries' thing.


I left the rest of the group behind while my knight and four of the animals followed me into the mall. The people were easy enough to find. "I'm Anima," I announced. "I'm with Pantheon. We're here to help."


"Is it gone?" one of the men asked.


"The Endbringer? Yes," I informed him. "We... it's dead, now. I'm afraid I don't know all the details, I'm not in charge. I'm part of the search party to find survivors and get them medical attention. Or at least somewhere warm."


One of the children stood there staring at the horse.


"Don't worry, it's safe," I told him. "They're made from my power, you're safe to touch it."


He did so, stroking near its shoulder. "It's cold," he finally spoke.


And the fur's wrong, and the texture's wrong, and everything inside feels like pressing against a gel pack, not a living thing. I'd heard all these things a thousand times, so I didn't say anything. That and they weren't really cold, so much as they had no temperature at all. Perfectly nonconductive unless you hit them with enough power to break them.


"I shall lead you to hospice," my knight volunteered. I tried not to let them see how humiliated I was. I hate my power so much.


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


A/N- Being Anima is humiliation.

And the other chapter's already half done. But I'mma sleep and finish it later.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 276- Victoria


"Are you okay?" a girl's voice wept. "Please, you can't die." I glanced at her. Sveta, I recognized my work anywhere. That and, as cosmetically human as she looked, and for all the modifications I did to her brain, she was still very much nonhuman in her biology.


"Funny you should mention that," I smiled. "I'm pretty sure I actually can't die." I turned my biosense inward. My legs were smashed when I was in my combat mode. Well, that's going to be a bitch to heal. My arm was missing, still. My suit was so badly shredded that it was going to die, one way or another. Patches of it looked like they were exposed to an atomizer. "Damn, if I keep ruining suits, they're going to start charging me for them. So what happened."


"Alexandria and I saved you from being squished by Wendigo," Sveta told me. "Or melted, she had some kind of mist that ate things."


"Nanothorns," I told her. "They're a weapon that Dragon uses. Don't worry, they can't hurt me." Although Dragon's version was gray, and couldn't hurt me if I were in combat mode. But Wendigo used blue, and hers could very definitely hurt me for whatever bullshit reason. "So, what happened after that?"


"They told us to retreat, so I took you with me. And then the city blew up," she answered. "It's... you had to see it, I can't really explain. And then the Endbringer did that thing where it eats everything... and... I've never been so scared before." She started crying again. Or a close imitation of it, at least. The mechanics of it weren't exact, because if I pushed her alterations too much, her powers would revert her back to her tentacle state.


"So you saved me, huh?" I asked. "That puts you on a very short list of very important people. Could you do me a favor?"


"Okay?" she asked.


"If anyone asks, please don't tell them I was knocked out. Girl's gotta protect her rep."


She smiled a little. "Okay, I can do that."



"My armor's shredded," I sighed. This stuff is suppose to be able to survive a small nuclear weapon, and against that Endbringer it was little more than tissue paper. "Can you call someone and let them know you're okay?"


"Okay," Sveta tried to smile. "How are you so brave? You almost died."


Because the alternative is hiding under my bed until I die of old age. "Just time and experience. Think about it, you went up against an Endbringer. And not just any Endbringer. That one might be the new hero killer, since Behemoth's already dead. You fought that thing side by side with Alexandria and proved that you belonged there. You're one of the top ten badasses on the planet right now. After that, what's left to be scared of?"


"It... it doesn't feel that way," she looked down.


I put my left hand, which was the only good limb I had right now, on her shoulder. "That's because you're young. You'll get the hang of it. Besides, being a little scared is a good thing. Keeps you on your toes so you don't make dumb mistakes. Now, could you make that call?"


"Alright," she nodded, a little more sure of herself. "Eki? It's Sveta. Vicky's here, too... Yeah, we're both fine..." she looked at me. I smiled and shrugged. "Okay. They're doing search and rescue now. She wants to know if you're able to help."


"Sure," I agreed. "My powers are great for stuff like that."


"Okay, Vicky says her powers are good for finding people... she's sending Anima and GL to help us out."


"Oh, cool, always wanted to find out what Anima's power was," I smiled.


....


I hate her power so much, I thought, the whole time thanking my lucky stars I had this power set instead of my old set. Because I really didn't hate her power at all. I liked it just a little too much. The ability to hide my blush was nice, and not having my aura radiating my emotions to everyone in eyesight, was invaluable.


I knew what the Wards called me, 'Hurricane Victoria', and there was a reason for that. I didn't like how people reacted to certain emotions, so I didn't let myself feel them around others. Like if I was sad, or afraid, or... turned on. And Anima's imaginary characters knew how to press every last freakin' one of my buttons. And I was currently being carried bridal style by one of them.


Because I put all my efforts into regenerating my legs, I still didn't have an arm, and I had exhausted myself to the point where further healing would need to wait. I stumbled on some loose gravel, and the knight had caught me. And now he was carrying me, my one good arm was hung over the back of his neck. Surprisingly comfortable for plate armor. And in the minutes since, he'd been nothing but quiet and polite. Not even an attempt at copping a feel, to my slowly increasing disappointment.


The pixies, on the other hand, were grabby as hell. But only in my hair. My long, blond hair was now woven into the most elaborate series of flowing and intertwined braids I had ever seen. Some of them were actually constructed by weaving the hairs together individually, then weaving those braids into larger ones. Forming something more like a rope than a braid. This is going to be a nightmare to comb out.


"Sorry about that," Anima muttered. "They're really enthusiastic about that whole 'chivalry' thing. That isn't even really chivalry."


"I've dealt with worse," I responded. She must never know. Oh god, Lisa. I have to kill Lisa. "So, are they always like this?"


"These ones are," she sighed. "They're actually the closest things to acting normal I have in my set of options. The wizards are okayish, but only helpful for offense. And the elves. I really hate the elves."


"Me, too," GL spoke up. "They're supposedly male, but they all look girlier than you, blondie. And they act it, too. But they're insanely good in a fight. It's like watching those Lord of the Rings movies in person, only with slightly less homoerotic subtext."


"What about that one time we caught three of them making out with each other in that alleyway?" Sveta asked. Poor Anima's emotions spiked through the roof with shame.


"Yes," GL replied, his tone completely flat.


"Don't worry about it too much," I spoke to Anima. "A lot of us have powers with weird implications that we can't control. Mine, for example. Put me in a room, and I know everyone who has an STD. Everyone who forgot to wash their hands after going to the bathroom. What everyone's eaten in the last five to ten hours, depending on what exactly they ate and a few other things. And I can't control it any more than you can control seeing things." I can also functionally see through clothes, which is something I really hope no one finds out about. And absolutely none of which is anything compared to what my old powers did.


"That does sound pretty bad," Anima admitted. Her emotions tapered down a bit, and the jealousy she felt toward me died down a little as well. Don't know why she felt jealous, the girl was a babe under that armor. "But at least you can hide it from people, I have to put up with it or go without using my intelligent summons."


"Look at it this way," I smiled. "If nothing else, you always have a career as the world's best hair stylist. I'd just be an MR-" I froze. Oh for the... now, really? I hate people, sometimes. "I think I found some people. I pointed east. Please tell me there are more.


We got awfully close before I spotted a few other locations to use. "GL, Sveta, got a few for you. Looks like they took shelter in a basement, and then the house collapsed. They're fine, but it's not safe. Digging them out normally might make it fall and kill them. Anima, we probably need a few more horses. I'll get the survivor in that deli over there. Meet back here in a few minutes."


"Got it," GL replied. His power was actually pretty impressive. Melding with, and controlling, the environment. It wasn't Labyrinth levels of power by any stretch, but he also got the ability to sense through the area he controlled and alter it in real time. If he could handle more than a small house worth of space at once, he'd be a power to reckon with. Still, situations like this, he was perfectly suited. He could reassure them while guiding Sveta and making sure the whole thing didn't come down on their heads.


And no one would question why I did mine alone, which was key. I extracted myself from the knight's arms. "Thanks," I spoke to him. "But it's better for me to handle this one. You know how easily small children can be frightened."


"Very well, m'lady," the knight agreed. It, and with my senses I could could confirm it as sexless as a ken doll, simply stood there patiently waiting as I made my way into the building. The scent of the meat was faint despite the fact that the glass casing had shattered in the explosion. Electricity went out hours ago, and in this weather that meant the meat actually got colder, not warmer.


"Don't worry, I'm a hero. I'm here to take you to a temporary shelter," I shouted.


A fairly normal looking young man peaked out from a back room. I must have been quite the sight, with one arm missing and my legs bare below the knees, with only the tatters of my costume providing modesty above like really ratty shorts. "Who with?" he asked.


"Pantheon," I replied. "I'm Victoria. Sorry about the costume, it's not as tough as I am." I deliberately stretched out a leg to give the man a look. I could do that for a second or two, at least.


"Okay," he agreed, coming out. A child followed. Black. Still, I confirmed with my power that they weren't related.


"Hey," I smiled at her and knelt down. I reached into my hair and picked out the pixie that had built herself a little next there. The things were actually really tough despite looking so fragile, so there was no chance of hurting it. I handed it to the girl. "She'll lead you out, okay?"


The child just nodded, afraid to say anything.


"Wait a minute-" the man started to protest. I stood up and stepped between the two. If the look on my face didn't intimidate him, then the electricity sparking out of my eyes would. Took me almost a month to perfect that display.


The girl rushed out, sensing her chance.


"The fuck's going on here?" he demanded.


"My powers," I growled. Now that the child and pixie were gone, I could talk freely. If I wasn't aware that Khepri was pretty much omnipresent, I wouldn't have bothered talking. "I can sense living things. In this case, your genetic material inside that little girl." The insects nearby buzzed their response. I have her attention, good.


"You can't prove-" I hit him with a burst of electricity, one of the other tricks I'd spent forever on. It sent the exact same signals to the brain as being on fire. Over every last inch of the body simultaneously. All with less than a twentieth of the power output that a normal taser uses. He dropped, trying but unable to scream. I held my hand over his mouth, as gently as possible. I needed silence, not marks.


"I don't think you understand," I hissed. "I only found one survivor in this building." His eyes went wide, but again, it wasn't him I was doing this for. It was her. If she wants to stop me, she'll tell me to stop. She didn't.


The angle was calculated, of course, and gentle. A soft shove sideways put the man over one of the nastier panes of broken display glass. His left lung was cut through entirely, and his right punctured deeply. He couldn't scream if he tried, now. And damn did he try.


I turned and walked away, my powers very aware of his struggle to pull himself off the glass. That didn't bother me any, it would just speed up his death and hide my involvement that much better. No witnesses except a little girl that had worse things to worry about, an imaginary being that would cease to exist by the end of the day, and my sister's fiancée, who could have stopped me with a word, but did nothing.


Some days I hate my powers, too. Today was not one of them.


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


A/N- Well, that got dark fast.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 277- Ruth


"Calling the first meeting of super social thinker committee to order," Minerva announced. She's nervous, and hiding it with flippancy. She knows her information is important, using it to tease others, much like she did with the 'Emissary' title she selected for her status as an Avalon 'royal'.


Around our table was an admittedly heady group of minds. Alexandria, Dragon, and myself were to be expected. Dinah Alcott was something of a surprise. Attempting to be seen as adult, views being a child as a weakness, trauma brought on by abuse. No signs of physical or sexual abuse markers. Signs of behavior learned by addicts.


I of course knew a bit about her history, having been rescued and placed under full protection by Pantheon. She was the most powerful known precog on the planet, now that the Simurgh was destroyed, so everyone considered it their business to know her story. Now I knew how she was controlled.


I spared glances at the others. Dragon was, again, using her robot body. There was a reason she was known as the world's best Tinker, and she'd never once let me see her real body, or even directly operated a puppet in front of me. Always it was through an AI filter. At first I had come to the conclusion that she didn't trust me, a fact I didn't blame her for in the slightest, given the things I'd done.


But I was sure she trusted trusted me now, she wouldn't have had me work with Heartbreaker's children otherwise. Nor would she and Avalon allow me into the sensitive operations that they did, like this one. Both kept some secrets from me, but that wasn't a surprise. No, now I was certain she used a proxy because she had to. A severe disability, perhaps like cerebral palsy or ALS. Why she didn't have Pantheon repair the problem, I was unsure. Perhaps they couldn't? If the disease was caused by her power, they would have to remove her powers to heal her. That seemed the most likely answer.


All of that mental analysis happened in a heartbeat or two. Minerva started speaking again, her smile saying that she knew all of us used that time to have a short mental conversation with ourselves. "As I'm sure is no surprise, we're here to talk about the Endmakers." She was right, it none of us were surprised. "Well, I think we've been doing this all wrong. Here's a thought, and right now it's just a thought, but what are the odds that the Endmakers are actually trying to help us in their own twisted way?"


I almost made the mistake of exclaiming a negation of the idea. So, I noted, did Dinah. Dragon, or her AI controlled puppet, didn't show a notable reaction. Alexandria's reaction was a sort of patient curiosity. She was surprised, but interested. I got the impression she'd be far less receptive of the idea if it were someone other than Minerva presenting it.
Minerva herself was clearly disappointed no one fell for her trap, and absorbing information from our less obvious personality tells. Her power is an order of magnitude greater than it was when I first met her so many months ago.


"I thought about it, after Atropos made a comment at the end of the Wendigo battle," she informed us.


"Yes, the one about killing an Endbringer making someone a hero once, while merely beating them made you a hero once a year," Alexandria supplied. She is saying it for Dinah and I, who hadn't heard that conversation. She's humoring Minerva's showmanship. Minerva's aware of this. It's... part of the way their friendship works.


"Right," Minerva responded. The interplay between the two women was more intimate than I'd have expected. They regularly have thinker conversations with one another. I felt a mild pang of jealousy that I didn't have someone I could be like that with. But, then, I was a Tinker and had that kind of fulfillment instead. "That made me think about how the Endbringers have influenced, well, everything. I think I speak for all of us here when I say, as uncomfortable as it is, all of us have directly or indirectly benefited by their presence."


The mood at the gathering went a bit on the dark side. A combination of 'explain yourself' and 'I don't want to be the one person here that can't figure out the answer if she happens to be right'.


"Take the birth of Pantheon," she went on. "We were Class S threats pretty much right out of the gate. What would have happened without the pressures created by the Endbringers? If the heroes weren't nursing their wounds from Leviathan and dealing with all the local threats instead of being able to mobilize more quickly. More than that, if we'd built like we were building, without making very public declarations of using our weapons on the Endbringers?"


"I would have killed you," Alexandria responded. The undertones were complex. Regret, in some ways. Sadness at the idea of losing Minerva? They know something they're not telling. Dragon does, too. A major secret. Alexandria took some action that kept Pantheon from being destroyed early on. What, I couldn't discern with the limited information I had. "As the member of the Triumvirate that was immune to Gaea and Khepri's power sets, the command would have fallen to me to do the job."


"Precisely," Minerva responded. "And that story can be told time and time again. The Protectorate itself was founded, at least in part, to respond to threats like the Endbringers, too powerful for any parahuman, or any team of parahumans, to believably fight."


"This is starting to make a sick sort of sense," Dragon agreed. "The Baumann Parahuman Containment Center shares a similar story. A nonlethal deterrent, for fear that the use of the death penalty in cases that are obviously deserving of it might provoke parahuman retaliation. Threaten the loose sort of peace that exists solely so both heroes and villains can work together against the Endbringers."


"Exactly," Minerva replied. "Dinah, don't worry I'm footing the bill for this, but if the Endbringers just mysteriously vanished from the planet tomorrow for no discernible reason, how long would it take before World War Three began?"


"Ninety four point three seven percent chance that a war involving more than fifty percent of Bet's population, including colony worlds, would occur within six years," she answered.


"And as destructive as the Endbringers are, I doubt they're as deadly as a war fought with nuclear bombs and tinker weaponry," Lisa concluded. "We know the death of India was caused by a parahuman, not the Simurgh. If there are even three or four people on the planet who have and use a power of that magnitude, then there wouldn't be a Bet left to fight over."


"You're saying this as if it would be better for us to allow them to live," I pointed out.


"No," Minerva responded. "That's what happens if they vanish mysteriously. Now what happens if the Endbringers are actually slain to the last?"


"I... my power isn't good at working with this many hypotheticals," Dinah informed us. "But the numbers are... I think it takes longer to occur, long enough that Scion happens first. That's too much a constant for me to see around."


"Of course, Scion," Minerva added. "Which really is the crux of the problem. The Endbringers are tough as hell, but they're nothing compared to the Entities that made them. If we can't beat them, then there's no way we can beat him."


Alexandria frowned, and the rest of us slipped into our thoughts as well. She was the one who spoke first, however. "So that's what this has to come down to, then? A weapons test. If we can't destroy the remaining Endbringers, then there's nothing we can do to fight the Entity."


"It's disturbing," Dragon agreed. "I take it that bringing this up to us, and only us, serves a purpose?"


"Of course," Minerva offered that foxlike grin. "I still intend to find the Endmakers and 'thank' them properly." Her vocal inflection was anything but grateful sounding. "But if we're going to find them, we need to be looking in the right places, and that means we have to cut the assumption that we're hunting for obvious enemies, and start looking at people who are possibly our allies."


"So, adding people who might want to help us, but are pretty certain we would reject that help if they just outright offered it to us?" I suggested. "I can create software that will look in that general direction."


Alexandria's reaction surprised me a little. She wasn't part of an Endmaker conspiracy, but she was definitely part of some kind of conspiracy. That's information that I might have felt safer not knowing about. Minerva already knows. Fuck. Dragon already knows, double fuck. Dinah's oblivious to the implications, she doesn't know.


"Try not to kick over any hornets' nests, any of you," Minerva responded, though the social cues led me to the obvious conclusion that she was only speaking to me. "Right now, there are a lot of people involved in trying to hold things together the world over. If we upset an ally like the Thanda accidentally, we might lose their help in future Endbringer battles. We'll cross reference our information with each other, if we come across any. No one acts without all of us comparing notes."


"That is reasonable," Dragon agreed. She didn't seem particularly happy with the conspiracy angle of this. She's an ally, not a friend, when it comes to Alexandria. While Minerva was at least friendly with both.


Wheels within wheels.


"Of course," I agreed. "The Endbringers and Scion are the top priorities. Everything else can wait until after that." For the time being, I made sure I believed that. Hopefully none of them were sharp enough to catch the fact that I knew I'd change my mind later.


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

A/N- I've missed having Rapture in the story. So here she is! Yay!

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 278- Missy


My suit spoke. Taylor, using the overrides. "We've found your mother and step brother, they're safe. No word on your step father yet."


"I understand," I spoke back. Taylor's power was legitimately amazing for sorting through the throngs of refugees and wounded, reuniting whole families in minutes. Or at the very least letting them know their family was safe. It would be a couple more days before the dust truly settled and everyone was put where they needed to be. Now we were on a timer for finding survivors. The days were finally starting to get a little warmer, but temperatures had dropped below zero. Those we didn't rescue tonight weren't likely to survive until tomorrow.


My armor blipped at me, asking if I needed another stim added to the air. An automatic request feature designed to read my eyes and their reactions. I confirmed the request, and almost instantly felt better. I'd sleep for a whole day after this stuff wore off, but that was fine. It kept me alert, kept my makeshift Thinker power from giving me headaches, and if I was feeling desperate, a minor overdose could boost my powers for a short period of time. Right now, that drug was saving lives.


"We got a few over there," I gestured at a half collapsed office complex. "Seventh floor, not sure why they can't get down but there has to be a good reason."


"On it," Theo responded. I smiled, it was such a thrill working with him in the field. Smart, professional, determined. He knew how to ignore the personal undertones and focus on the mission first, one of the things I liked best about him.


He guided Macula over to the side of the building, then formed a ladder up to the seventh floor windows. Supported by his power, it was actually more durable than the Endbringer based tools we'd been growing, easily the safest structure in the city.


Granted, we could have used my power to take us up immediately, but Lisa insisted we do it this way. Overtaxing myself right now would cost more lives in the long run. She was right, too. If I had been doing more than the 'search' part of 'search and rescue', I'd have already exhausted myself beyond what the stims could push me through. This was a marathon, not a sprint, and we all needed to conserve our strength.


Aceso scrambled up the wall, racing the ladder as it formed its way up. Even the Clarice doll needed to conserve its energy right now, and I knew Riley had her hands full juggling both it and her duties with the wounded. I glanced at Theo, who was paying an awful lot of attention to Clarice's rear. A quick smack on the shoulder and he decided instead to study the ground.


"Sorry about that," he mumbled.


"Just count yourself lucky that you're so cute," I teased. It was good to get a little bit of banter in. Stress relief, of a sort. It was already approaching midnight, and we'd been working almost nonstop since before noon. That kind of shift could really wear on someone. Oh well, when I signed up to be a hero, I knew what I was getting myself into. At least I'm on a team that treats me with respect, now.


"I... are you okay?" he asked. "I know your house was in Wendigo's range."


"A lot of our houses were," I responded. "Taylor's, Trevor's, Crystal's, yours."


He shrugged. "I guess I don't think of my dad's property as my home. I was going to sell it anyway."


"Well, fat chance of that happening now," I sighed. "On the plus side, if you can call it that, at least housing space is cheap, now. And there is government aid they'll tap into to put all these people in new homes. Or old homes left behind by the colonists." The way the news had been talking, eventually the US would have portals to its colony worlds in almost every state by the end of this year. There was already one in Boston and another in New York.


"Yeah," he put a hand on my shoulder. "What do you think your mom's going to do?"


"Don't know, don't really care," I responded. "Guess it depends on what happened to Dave, but my mother's house hasn't really been my home since even before I got my powers. Whatever she chooses to do, I'm staying on this team."


"Isn't that a problem? I mean, your age?" Theo asked.


"Doesn't matter," I responded. "Colonization laws. I'm fourteen and female, if I want to move to a colony all I have to do is prove I can offer an expert or otherwise valuable service to said colony. That's all it takes to emancipate these days. I think 'Endslayer' counts as valuable enough."


"You've been putting a lot of thought into this," he observed. He also visibly relaxed a little. Cute, he was worried that we might be separated.


"Lots of thought, and I might have talked to Carol about it," I informed him. "She might be a stuck up ice bitch, but she's a damn good lawyer." She also tried to convince me to talk to Mom about things, but that isn't going to happen. It never worked before, and I no longer cared enough to try yet again. I had a better family, now, and that was all that mattered.


"Okay, I've found them," Aceso relayed over the radio. "Seventeen adults, none significantly injured or suffering exposure. The stairwell collapsed, so they'll need to go down the ladder."


"Thank you," Theo answered. As he was speaking, a handful of shadowcats shunted over around us, nine in total. Two people to an animal. Riley isn't the only one pulling double duty, tonight.


Clarice stuck her head out the window next to the ladder, then simply hopped out. She fell the seven stories, using some antigrav to land lightly on the ground. Meanwhile, the first of the people in the building started climbing down. Theo had adjusted the ladder so it had a cage around it, making it impossible for anyone to fall off. Meanwhile, Clarice had climbed up on Bella and rode up alongside me.


"We're going ahead," I told him. I'd already tugged on the growths on the back of Calysta's head that functioned as reins, guiding her to turn the direction I needed. "Finding the next set of survivors." I gave her a tap and she started trotting along.


"Okay," he acknowledged. "I'll catch up soon. Stay safe."


Clarice followed me as we went back on our route. Dragon had programmed a path for Vicky and I, the two with the best Thinker powers for finding people, so that we could cover the city as rapidly as possible. It was why we weren't using the horses to fly, ground level gave me the best effective range for the lowest effective power cost. We needed to be certain we found every living person. Everything else was secondary.


"Is it true you're going to be moving in with us for real?" Clarice asked the moment we started off.


"Heard that, huh?" I smirked. "Y'know, normally I might be annoyed at the violation of privacy, but I guess that doesn't really count as much with us. Yeah, I might be. It's hard to know for certain. Depends on what Mom does."


"She can move to Avalon, too," she suggested.


"Probably not," I dismissed. "But that doesn't matter."


"You're right," Clarice agreed happily. "I'm just excited you're going to be living with me."


"You do realize I already do, right?" I asked. "Last month I spent every night except one at my supposedly temporary room in the magic tree house." That no longer exists. "So how would you even be able to tell the difference if I moved in officially?"


"Yeah, I know," she agreed. "But it's more fun when it's official. That's why people get married, right? So they can brag about what they're already doing anyway?"


I blinked. "Actually, that's a really good point," I admitted. "Know what? You're absolutely right. I think I'll move in officially no matter what Mom plans to do."


"You can move in next to me!" she offered excitedly.


"I totally can," I agreed. "We still have a long night ahead of us before we worry about that."


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


A/N- Vista. Landing on her feet.

Also. I've occasionally mentioned Calysta, but I think this is the first time Macula's been mentioned by name. Care to guess what they're named after?

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 279- Riley


Clarice was nearly autonomous by this point. I'd had to upgrade her so many times that she was just inches shy of violating Rule Four and creating intelligent life. Her brain stem functioned, she even had neural patterns that let her learn and adapt, in a limited sort of way. More like programmable instincts than true intelligence. But what, really, was intelligence if not programmable instincts?


I went to my next patient. She was an older lady, mid sixties was my first glance guess. I glanced at the chart. Lacerations from broken glass, possibly debris left in injuries. Broken arm. Patient lucid when found. Pollen and peanut allergies reported. There was then a list of medications the woman was taking. Including the usual suspects of blood thinners and vitamin supplements that made her a priority case instead of ones that normal doctors and nurses were dealing with.


The healing chambers did not play well with pharmaceuticals, which left me, Emma and Rey as the only ones qualified to adjust the pods' functions for those medications. And, of course, Amelia. Big Sister could simply clean out the drugs and heal without the need for the pods.


"Goodness, you seem awful young to be doing this kind of work," the woman spoke as I read her chart.


"It's my powers, Mrs. Gardner," I told her. "I'm super smart about some stuff. Medicine's one of those things."


"I see," the woman relaxed a little. Signs of shock, blood loss, possible internal bleeding, obvious adrenaline and endorphine withdrawal. None of which were any kind of surprise under the circumstances.


"It's up to you, would you like me to get someone else to do the surgery?" I offered. It had happened a few times, today, where I'd have to ask for a doctor to come in and handle things instead. Which mostly consisted of me telling the doctor what to do.


"No, no, that's fine," she answered. "Am I hurt enough to need parahuman help?"


"Don't know," I half lied. The more I looked at her, the more I concluded she needed expert help. The part that was true is that I didn't know if there was a non parahuman here that was qualified for the job. I pulled out one of the med capsules. "But we're not going to take any chances."


"Am I going to have to swallow that?" she looked at the capsule unhappily.


"No," I replied, sitting next to her. I pressed the thing against her arm. It recognized what it was suppose to do, and fused itself into her skin, the equivalent of ten thousand flea mouths, injecting instead of sucking.


"That's the nicest injection I've ever had," the woman smiled. The drugs were hitting her system, now. All the pain numbing powers of heroin with none of the side effects, mental or physical. Plus a cocktail of other tinker designed medications to let us perform the surgeries with minimal risk and improve the effectiveness of the healing pods.


"Thanks," I replied. Oops, probably shouldn't have said that. She didn't seem to catch the implication. "We're hoping to get it approved for general use in the next five years." The scalpel function in my armor sliced through the woman's bandages, exposing the injuries. I went to work carefully pulling nearly microscopic fragments of glass and other debris. Some of it was irrelevant- wood and dirt, anything even semiorganic, would be easily dealt with by the pods. I removed it anyway.


"That's something to look forward to," she replied, almost happily watching as I opened her wounds to clean inside them, followed by a spritzing of an artificial stem cell substance that would quickly rebuild the interior damage. "Think those vampires that do my blood work will use it?"


"Maybe," I answered. "Do you have anywhere to go? After you're all better?"


"I think so," she sighed. "My grandson has a nice place in Boston I can stay at for a while, until the insurance comes in for my shop." I could tell she wasn't sure about that. Nervousness may be dulled by the medication, but the whole point of it not being a mind altering substance is that it didn't alter the mind, so she was still able to worry. And there were many problems to worry about right now.


"What kind of shop?" I asked.


"A clothing boutique," she answered. "I was in it when everything happened. As old as I am, I couldn't get to a shelter in time. I hid behind the counter. After Stanly died, it was all I have left." It was obvious by the way she spoke that the death wasn't recent.


Clothing? Wait, Missy kept her clothes at home. Plus some in the Embassy. Either way, it was all destroyed. "I'll buy them," I offered.


"Excuse me?" the woman replied.


"You have clothes small enough for someone my age, right?" I asked. Meanwhile, I had moved on to her arm. Obvious break near the shoulder, less obvious break in the wrist. She fell on it hard.


"Some," she agreed. "Do you want them?"


"I want all of it," I told her. "The whole inventory of clothing. Maybe some other stuff, but definitely all the clothing."


"Oh, dear, you don't have to do that," she argued.


"We lost our homes, too," I told her. "Or most of us on the team did. Most of us don't have more than one change of outfits left, so we're going to have to buy more no matter what. And there are lots of others in the city who've lost everything they own, so we can give away anything we don't need. It makes sense."


"I wouldn't want to take advantage," she argued. "You're so young."


"Money's not a problem, if that's what you're worried about," I insisted. It really wasn't. I may not have gotten a cut from the bounties on the Simurgh or any of the more profitable villains we've stopped, but I made plenty from the tech sold to Dragon, and the beginnings of an income from the most simplistic medical technology I had designed. Plus I had my share from my contributions to Rey, Emma, and Trevor's work. I was set for the next seven or eight hundred years at the moment, depending on inflation.


She hesitated. I could imagine what was going through her head. She didn't want to impose on me, but my argument made sense and she did need the money to save her shop. If not its actual, physical, location, then at least that she had a business at all. Offloading the bulk of her merchandise gave her money to stay afloat. She had probably resigned herself to hoping insurance would cover the damages and the inevitable looting that would come later.


"If you're really that worried, you can give me a discount for buying in bulk," I prompted. I liked her. She's what I imagined my grandma might have been like, in the briefest bits of memories I had that could have been about her. Of course, as unreliable as my memory was before I improved it, I could easily be wrong.


"Okay," she relented. "You've talked me into it."


"Thank you," I smiled, having moved my prodding down to her side, looking for any signs of internal injuries. There was clearly plenty of bruising, but the preliminaries didn't reveal anything significant. Nothing the healing pod wouldn't handle. "We'll have to wait until you recover before we figure out all the details. I think there are ethics laws against a doctor making a business deal with a drugged patient while performing surgery on them. If not then there probably should be."


She laughed, or at least tried to. The muscle relaxants in the drug mixture prevented sudden, jerking, muscle movements like laughter. Also good for sneezing, hiccups, and at least reducing the risk of self injury during seizures. "Probably," she agreed. "How long will it take to recover?"


"Three or four hours at the most," I answered. "But I'll be extra nice and put you down for a full night." It wasn't just me being 'nice', her internal injuries required attention, and her age would slow the process as the mineral and nutrient infusions would be demanded by other parts of her body. Someone younger could have walked away after an hour or two. She really would require six hours, seven to be certain. It's just that the training I'd downloaded suggested trying to make patients feel like they were getting special treatment, but not too special.


"That fast?" she marveled. "I remember they kept Stanly in the hospital for two weeks after his first heart attack."


"That fast," I confirmed. I pulled out my pad and started jotting down information. "If you'll excuse me for a second." I stepped up and moved toward the exit of the curtain, peaking out and flagging one of the nurses. He started walking over. They knew the drill, now. "I've done what I can for you, now you just need rest. The nurse will take you to one of the pods."


The man arrived, he was 'just' another nurse, with pretty bog standard education. He did understand directions, at least. I handed him the piece of paper and a couple pellets. All the instructions he needed, and the drugs he was to put in her pod after she was inside. Frankly, it was less complex than doing laundry.


"I understand," she smiled at me. "There are others who need help."


"Thank you for understanding," I smiled, then turned and left. The next priority case would be only about ten feet away.


"Such a delightful girl," Mrs Gardner said to the nurse, I only caught it thanks to the armor's enhancements. I smiled even wider.


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


A/N- Don't worry, I think I'm done with the 'immediate aftermath' chapters and can move on now.

 

[Snake/Eater]

I wrote a parody of a tv promo,i'm hoping to see similar omakes spring from this,i borrowed a bit from Lost,Walking dead and Bsg.

"Pawns on the Oceans of Eternity "
TV PROMO for Amelia

on the last season of Amelia

the unexpected
Thomas Calvert is free,but not forgiven.
Judge: THIS court finds you...not guilty.

'an ally thought lost has returned from the otherside'
Aisha appears,surrounded by bright shining wings hovering in the air.
Aisha: I have been to earth...the first Earth and i'm going to take us there
CUE, Riley in a room speaking to Amelia,
Riley: Do you believe in miracles?
Amelia: No.

the dancer has lost her path
Contessa on the floor of her room littered with empty bottles of scotch.
Fortuna: I was instrumental in the destruction of humanity.

A monster seeks redemption?
Calvert surrounded by as he preaches to his followers.
Thomas: I have failed so many people,but the Gods have failed us all!
CUE,Sabah among the followers in crowd.

a righteous Prince has now risen to power
Zach stands in the council chamber in the yggdrasil as he speaks to all of the leaders of Earth Bet though a holographic monitor.
Osiris: We make our own laws now,our own justice!

a former leader is in agony
Amelia: I'm slipping away from this world.

A Warrior in disgrace,a father in despair.
Danny: You broke your promise to me Taylor,CUE Danny hits Taylor's head with a baton.

the puppet has cut her strings at last.
Riley: Clarice what the hell are you doing,CUE Clarice holding a gun pointed at Missy.
Cue,Clarice smiles.
Clarice: Language!

A secret is revealed.
the members of New Wave,past and present stand in a dark room.
Carol:if we're Endbringers,then we have been from the beginning!

About damn time ....
Alexandria wakes up nude next to Lisa in bed
Alexandria:what have i done,
CUE, Lisa waking up and screaming in pain,
Lisa:Everything!you did everything.

What lies beneath?
CUE,Aisha lies on the floor in pain revealing she's nine months pregnant
Aisha:your going the wrong way,this is not earth!

Destiny is not what it seems
CUE,as Emma walks though a hallway that echoes laughter,she enters a room to stand before the Fairy Queen.
Ciara: All of this has happened before,and will happen again.

A truth accepted
David: Life is a game,where we struggle to better ourselves and show the other pawns that we can be more then kings,that we can leave the chess board behind and become gods,
Doctor Mother: And what of the other pawns?
David: They are taken off the board if they fail see the point of life.

Edited to fix a lot of my grammar mistakes.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 280


"Well, the refugee issue is on functional autopilot for now," Lisa informed us. "We can step back and let FEMA handle the process. They've dealt with a lot of Endbringer disasters, they know what they're doing."


DoubtContempt. "Didn't seem like it after Leviathan," Taylor spoke up.


"To be fair to them," Lisa responded. "Post Leviathan was a pretty extreme situation. They had a lot of things to worry about. The Merchants, Empire Eighty Eight, the Slaughterhouse Nine... the Undersiders." GuiltRegret. "They did the best they could while faced with an impossible task. Things are a lot easier, this time. The population is dropping in every major city thanks to the colony programs. New York's population alone has dropped almost a hundred thousand people already. There are empty homes to be filled."


"I didn't think there would be that many colonists," Taylor prompted.


"Probably wouldn't, but Endbringers," Lisa replied. "So the US government's got the refugees taken care of. Minus about fifteen thousand that made the move to Avalon. Our second largest colony influx so far."


"More of that profiting from others' misfortune crap," I muttered. AgreementDisgustGuilt. "Worse because this time, we're responsible for it."


"You two and your guilt complexes," Lisa sighed. AnnoyanceDefensive. "The Endmakers are responsible, and if we didn't use our mass driver, the damage would have been a lot fucking worse. That thing's fifth state wiped out a six mile wide area. Its sixth would have hit almost twenty. That's over three hundred square miles erased. Our weapon only damaged a quarter of that area. Damaged, not atomized or whatever the fuck Wendigo's power actually did. Yes, it killed people, probably around six to seven thousand total. Compared to another twenty thousand survivors. Survivors, I remind you, that wouldn't have lived through Wendigo's sixth stage. Plus almost fifty thousand more people who were outside the mass driver's effective range, but inside the Endbringer's."


"We still ordered that attack!" I exclaimed. "Those lives are our responsibility."


"If you go into a war trying to save everyone, you won't save anyone," Lisa countered. "You want to blame yourself for the dead, fine, both of you are too in love with your fucking martyr complexes to listen to reason. But if you need to blame yourselves for the dead, then at least give yourselves credit for the seventy thousand survivors. Plus all the others that Endbringer won't kill in the future."


DoubtHopeRelief. She has a point. I can't quite bring myself to believe her, but she has a point. Maybe I really do have a martyr complex?


"So, is the pity party cancelled? Can we get back to work?" Lisa asked. IrritationPatienceAcceptance. Lisa took our silence as permission to continue. "With Brockton Bay gone, there's the political and zoning issues to worry about. Our Embassy land is still, technically, ours. Even if it's underwater, and the city it was in no longer existing. We pretty much have our pick of small cities. Our presence is a huge economic boon, after all. I'd recommend a costal city, preferably eastern seaboard."


"Was Crystal right?" I asked. "If we keep our base and our portal right here, will..." I trailed off. Taylor put her hand on the small of my back. ComfortSupport.


"Will the city rebuild itself?" Lisa finished for me. "Maybe. The natural harbor makes this an inherently good spot for a trade city. If you build it, they will come, or some such tripe. But there are a lot of natural harbors around here. And there's so much damage to the ground below the city that it's not safe to build anything at all in some areas. A minor earthquake could collapse the whole region into the aquifer below. They're still running tests, but if seawater's finding its way through, there could be problems from New Jersey to New Brunswick."


"I could use my Yggdrasil to fix things," I pointed out.


"Yeah, good luck getting Washington to agree to that," Lisa sighed. "There's a couple Protectorate heroes that can do the job, better than you can if we're being honest about it, but you're not a US citizen anymore. More than that, you're the leader of a foreign nation. The only reason some senator with a grudge hasn't declared us traitors to appeal to the resentful asshole vote is because... actually, I'm not sure why that hasn't happened yet. I was expecting it to happen months ago. Probably owe Cauldron a thank you cake. I wonder if there's a confections Tinker out there I can hire. Either way, you knew the consequences when you claimed your own nation world."


"So saving the city's out of the question?" I asked. I grew up here. I've never known any other home. I felt Taylor's arms wrap around me.


"There's nothing left to save," Lisa met my eyes. "The best you could hope to do is replace it with a new one, which will take years. By that time, the survivors will have moved on. Found new homes, maybe moved to the colonies. Maybe moved to our colonies. Even if you could talk the government into allowing it, which I doubt. They want to expand into their brand new world full of exploitable resources, not rebuild in overpopulated tapped out regions. And frankly, I agree with them. The colonies are the best hope for humanity's survival. If we can kill Scion, at least. You need to let this go, focus on doing something that will actually help people."


I looked over at Taylor. AffirmationSupport. "You're right," I finally relented. "We focus on moving forward."


"About damn time," Lisa responded. "Now, I recommend we look between Boston and New York. It's got a lot of desirable coastline, and small cities that'll appreciate what we bring to their economy."


"While ignoring the part where our last home got two Endbringers in under a year," I pointed out.


"Yeah, that too," Lisa agreed. "We also need to think about claiming a chunk of territory on the western seaboard, plus portal. Yeah, Faultline's going to abuse the hell out of that, but it's a really good idea nonetheless. Weirdly enough, I'm thinking we put that one in Mexico. Make our neighbor to the south feel special about us even caring about enough to want an Embassy with them."


"Think they might consider it a grab at their colonists?" Taylor asked.


"Not really," Lisa replied. "Mexican culture when it comes to immigration is unusual. Most of them don't want to live in America for the sake of living here, so much as that it's a place to find jobs and money to take care of their families back home. Same story with their drug trade. Our colonies have a lot to offer, but supposedly easy money isn't on that list. We'll get some, sure, but not a lot. Mexico will accept it for what it is, as a functional tourist lure. The Japanese and other east Asian immigrants will come and spend some cash in the businesses nearby. Everyone wins."


ConfusionRealization. "Lisa, what are you scheming now?"


"Me?" Lisa managed a saccharine smile, complete with fluttering eyelashes. "Why would you suspect me to do something so debased as scheming?"


"Because we've spent more than three and a half seconds around you?" I suggested.


"Yeah, you caught me, I'm scheming my perfectly toned ass off right now," Lisa agreed. "We just took down our second Endbringer. China's whole 'killing Endbringers costs a city' scheme is working in our favor. I've been talking to Lily about going public with her identity, which will put extra pressure on Japan and China, although in different ways. We may yet get our mass Japanese immigration, royal family be damned."


ConsternationHopeConcern. "No pressure on Lily, right?" I asked. I was dubious enough about the whole 'marriage' thing even when Lily herself suggested it. Going public with her identity didn't bother me nearly so much, but I had every reason to be concerned.


"None," Lisa answered. "Beyond the same pressure you two are under to be perfect paragons of heroic and romantic couple ideals, of course. Typical PR bullshit, only with international attention. But given that Lily has two dead Endbringers under her belt, she's pretty much the planet's favorite person right now. Once the Japanese find out she's one of theirs, well, national pride will do the rest of the work for us."


"And?" Taylor prompted.


"And," Lisa admitted. "It'll irritate China further, which means more threatening and posturing. While Japan's right next door watching their crazy neighbor and wondering just when they become the next country that no one cares about to be reduced to a satallite state. Expect similar thoughts from Indonesia, the Phillipines, and etcetera. There will be mixed levels of enthusiasm, I'm sure, but I'd be surprised to get less than three or four million people out of east Asia in the next year or two."


"Lisa, why is it that every time we step up into a more important role in the world, I find myself thinking of highschool only somehow even worse?" Taylor complained.


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

A/N- Politics. It's like highschool, but with the training wheels removed.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 281


SurpriseGuiltConcern. "Dinah's here to see us," Taylor spoke, lifting her head up from her place in the bed. I hadn't yet joined her, still getting ready for my shower. "She's at the south entrance, near the camps." I felt the tremors of Taylor signaling the location.


At this point, the Yggdrasil was a true and literal planetary scale body, at minimum twelve to twenty meters thick throughout almost the entirety of Avalon's surface. Taylor and I had worked out methods to allow her to show me where events were on the Yggdrasil. This feature, and the slowly expanding natural insect populace that had found their way through with the colonists, made us almost literally omnipresent and, while not omnipotent, certainly powerful anywhere in our territory.


"Alright," I didn't hesitate, immediately forming a tunnel to let the child through to meet us. Taylor's feelings toward Dinah were both complicated and intense. An adoptive daughter, almost. Or a symbol. It was hard for me to quantify or understand, I simply knew she was incredibly important to my partner. I tried not to pay too much attention as Taylor changed out of her night clothes. It wasn't an appropriate time to ogle. AmusedPleasedGrateful.


I followed Taylor as we climbed up the stairs to the main foyer. Somehow, through unspoken agreement, most of Pantheon's members still lived underground, as we had since early on. Surface level was all show, with space for meetings with foreign leaders or heroes, the gym, the kitchen. Theoretical servants' quarters despite us having exactly no one to fill them with. Guest bedrooms, naturally. All above ground. I had to wonder what hired help might think of us all being troglodytes, but whatever.


Dinah was already waiting when we got to the main hall. "Good evening, Empresses," the girl addressed us the moment we walked in. Her light brown hair was now a pageboy cut, and coupled with her slender frame, she could have been mistaken as a boy her age as easily as a girl. I felt distinctly underdressed in just my jeans and t-shirt compared to her very smart little dark gray business suit.


She has to have more than one, each custom made, and at her age she's probably went through a size and a half of changes already. Very expensive habit to have, but she could certainly afford it. Past her, I could see the Gryphon that Riley had constructed for her, as painstakingly as she had built Bella and the other... whatever the plural of pegasus was.


"Please, don't call me that. We're still Taylor and Amelia," my partner spoke first. I nodded. Neither of us liked going by Empress when we were talking to people we were friends with, or in any way liked. In fact, we preferred our costumed names over the political titles. "Are you okay? I didn't notice any problems, but I try not to pay too close attention, so I can miss things if they're subtle enough."


"Very well, Taylor," Dinah agreed, giving a nod that made me want to hug her more than take her seriously. "Don't worry, there's no immediate problem," ReliefHope "But I do have a request to make."


ConcernCompassion. "Of course, whatever you need," Taylor agreed without hesitation. Wow, if Dinah ever figures out just how easily she can manipulate my partner, things could get complicated fast. I might need to run that worry past Lisa at some point.


"I feel my current living arrangements are detrimental," she informed us. Okay, that's not so bad, we can upgrade her home. It might look like favoritism in the eyes of other refugees, but that's not im- "Would it be acceptable for me to take up residence with you?"


ShockWorryConfusion. "What about your parents?" Taylor asked. "I know they made it through the attack." Taylor made certain of it. "Did something happen?"


"They wish to return to Earth Bet at earliest possible convenience," Dinah informed us. "I would prefer to remain on Avalon. Without Pantheon's clear presence as a deterrent, I feel my safety would be compromised. I have discussed this with my parents, and they agree with my assessment." I couldn't imagine what she would have said to convince them to agree with this idea. Then again, considering her personality and powers, maybe it wasn't so strange.


"Parental permission helps," Taylor agreed. She's going to agree to it, she probably should agree to it. All feelings aside, Dinah's help was amongst the most critical of all our assets. More valuable than Avalon itself. "We can give you one of the guest bedrooms. All the comforts of a five star hotel room, except the minibar. We can remodel it if you like. Give you an office to work from."


"If it's not too much trouble, I would prefer to have the same accommodations as the other members of your team," Dinah requested. "It would be better if I didn't receive special treatment, past what is inherent in my powers."


"Okay, we can do that," Taylor agreed. "We're still in the process of moving in, ourselves. I've alerted Lisa, already."


....


"You're separating us into dorms now?" Missy objected. "Is that really necessary?"


"Well, yes," Taylor responded. "We have a bunch of teenage boys and girls living in the same building, and now there's Dinah moving in as well. Plus you're pretty much a few blocks away from the school we're setting up. Oh, and yes, you will be attending classes. All of you."


"Yes, mooom," Zach groaned.


"We don't have enough people to really call them dorms, yet," Lisa added. "But that might change. In any case, it's pretty simple. Girls in the west wing, boys in the east. You each have all the facilities you need. Curfews are being enforced, whole nine yards. Leeway granted if you can keep your grades at a ninety percent or better, and that's the extent of it."


"Why the sudden death of the cool bosses?" Zach asked.


"For starters," Taylor argued. "We have Dinah moving in. And her parents are rightfully concerned about the informal arrangements we have around here. We're honestly lucky they only know about Amelia and I dating. So yeah, standards are going to be set and maintained."


"Except yourselves," Zach pointed out. "Bet you'll still have your own private bedroom. And by 'private' I mean 'in the biblical sense'." AnnoyedEmbarrassedProud.


"Yes, except us," Taylor sighed. AmusedAnticipation. "But we're engaged. So unless you wanna go buy a ring, get down on one knee, and propose to Theo, you'll just have to settle for having a private room."


Missy snickered first, followed by Emma. Trevor was the first one to start laughing, though. We all followed after a few seconds. That had become something of a running gag the last few days. I wasn't sure who started it, but it seemed like something Lisa would do, so I was blaming her for this one.


"Hyuk hyuk," Zach deadpanned. "Have another man inside you just one time, and everyone just starts assuming things left and right. Well, I'll have you know that just because Theo's secondary power is to be a visual novel protagonist, that doesn't mean I'm the gay option. Besides, he's already locked in his choice, he can't back out now."


Theo just buried his face in his hands. "Honestly, dude, you can stop now."


"Hey, man, don't blame me," Zach continued. "You had your chance. You coulda had all this." He gestured across his body. "But instead you chose the 'two girlfriends' path. And got the badass action girl who can reshape space at her pleasure, and the all American sweetheart with the dark past who has absolute, perfect knowledge of all human anatomy... y'know, I started this with a point, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was."


"I think it's contagious," Emma chimed in. "Because at the moment I can't figure out why I ever wanted to date you in the first place."


"Zach," Missy managed to stop laughing long enough to speak. "You spend way too much time around yourself."


I was still smiling when I spoke up next. "Now, back on track. No complaining about the dorm arrangement. Or school, at least for now. You want to have a room next to your boy and/or girlfriend, get your GED and your own home and parental permission. And no, Riley, I'm not giving you permission. Are there any questions?"


"Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?" Trevor chimed in. He hangs out around Zach too much, too.


"I meant about the sleeping arrangements," I sighed.


"Ooh, I got one!" Zach raised his hand. I just glared at him. "No, seriously," he insisted.


"I know I'm going to regret this, but okay, ask your question." AnnoyanceAnticipationWorry. Yeah, tell me about it. To our left, Lisa started giggling. I simply braced myself for what was coming.


"Which came first?" Zach's smile reminded me an awful lot of Lisa's. "You or Taylor?" ShockEmbarrassment.


I didn't hesitate. Before my face had a chance to turn tomato red, I simply made the floor beneath him collapse, sending him falling to the room below. One of the advantages to the amount of space we had on Avalon was that 'downstairs' wasn't code for 'laboratory full of dangerous chemicals and abominations against nature and god'. I slept a lot easier with those safely away from the main building.


"I'm okay!" Zach shouted up. "Our wise and benevolent overladies forgot to put spikes in the spike pit!"


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


A/N- Dinah is forever adorableness on a stick.

Also. Zach was telling the truth. Totally a valid question about sleeping arrangements.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 282- Danny


It's strange being able to go out in the beginning of March without even a jacket. It's also strange when the landscape is dominated by blue-green and the ocean is nowhere to be seen. But that was the reality on Avalon, and my new home on it. Our children had more or less decided to create a small neighborhood consisting of nothing but their parents, and we were left to our own devices moving in. Not that we had much unpacking to do.


Temporary homes, at least officially, but care had gone into their creation. I couldn't help but notice my house was almost identical, floor plan wise, to my old home. The loss of the house wasn't such a big deal, but I also lost all my mementos of Annette. Our wedding album, all the pictures of her with Taylor. Her wedding ring that I'd meant to give to Taylor when the time came. Even her grave. All of that was gone, now. All our years of history reduced to nothing but memories. Memories, and Taylor. Annette would be so proud of her.


"Hello there, neighbor," a man offered a half wave. He was probably a bit older than me. Or, if not, then he was certainly in worse shape. Shorter than me, and on the heavier side. Unlike most of us refugees, however, he was clearly wearing his own clothes instead of the donated supplies. "I've seen you on the news a couple times. You're Khepri's dad, right? Mister Hebert?"


"Yes," I confirmed, walking over. We were neighbors, now, after all. I also may have been a little impressed that he got my name right on the first try. "Call me Danny." I offered my hand.


"Paul," he responded. Firm handshake, confident enough.


"So, umm, which one's yours?" I asked. "I mean, you shouldn't to tell me if it's a secret, of course."


"Dinah," he answered without hesitation. I froze up for a second. I'd heard a lot about Dinah over the last few months. Whenever I could talk Taylor out of details about her life with the Undersiders, that little girl was always a big part of the conversation. Taylor blaming herself for the kidnapping, even though that really didn't make sense. Worrying about how much pain she caused Dinah and her family. A driving part of her life during the... bad times.


Paul seemed to pick up on my concern, though not the reason. "Yeah, that means the mayor is my brother in law. Hope you don't hold that against me too much."


"Sorry about that," I meant it, too. "I'm just. Well, there's a lot to think about."


"About losing your home and everything in it? Or having your daughter provide you with a new one? Or being parent to a child whose life is so different from everything you know that you're beginning to worry that you'll never be able to relate to them again?" He asked.


I blinked for a second. "Uh. Yes. All of the above, actually," I admitted. "Guess you've been there, huh?"


"Yeah," the man's smile faltered for a second. "I imagine everyone in this neighborhood has."


"The Protectorate probably has some kind of policy for that," I responded.


"Bet you that you go in, sign a nondisclosure agreement, a college student talks to the class for an hour about stuff so obvious that you could have figured it out on your own, and then you go home with nothing more than a pamphlet."


"Sucker's bet," I replied. "Know what? I got an idea. How about we throw together a barbeque?"


"That's a great idea," Paul agreed. "Man, it's been forever since I had a good pig roast. Last year was nothing but a nightmare, and the year before... eh, you don't need to hear about all that."


"You're in luck," I told him. "My buddy Kurt is an expert at the barbecue, and he'll kick anyone's ass who suggests otherwise. He'd be happy to help, at the low low cost of him and his wife getting their share."


"Now you're talking," Paul smiled. "I'll pitch in some money for the pig and brewskies. Anna would throw a fit if we told her I had a hand in this, though, so we're just going to tell her it was all your idea and I just accepted to be polite."


"Is that gonna work?" I asked.


"She'll see through it before I finish the sentence," he admitted proudly.


"We'll have to figure out all the details later, though," I told him. "I was just going over to Sarah's house."


"The blond at the other end of the road?" Paul smiled. "I don't blame you for a second for taking her company over mine."


I made sure to give him a wave as I started again. The roads were actual, honest, roads. Some trick with the super plant of theirs that it grew a sort of resin, not entirely different from tree sap or, probably, more like scabs. It was gross to think about like that, but it did form a pretty good approximation of asphalt.


Sarah opened the door a bit before I even got there. "I was beginning to think I'd need to send out a search party," she teasingly chided me for being late.


"Think they were trying to send us a message with the seating arrangement?" I joked back. We were on opposite sides of the neighborhood. Between us were three different homes. I'd seen the other neighbors moving in, but other than Paul hadn't had a chance to talk to them. The obviously youngest parent was a Hispanic woman, who had her five year old son with her. And then another a man and woman, plus an older teen, seventeen at the very least. Notably absent from this small neighborhood of Pantheon parents were Amelia's and Emma's.


I was glad not to be on the same planet as Alan, however, so that was a definite plus. Mark was also to be expected, since he already moved. I wasn't sure about Carol, and resolved to ask.


Sarah turned and walked into the house, and I followed. Her house was similarly modeled after her old home, with the dining room connected to the front door. A couple glasses and a bottle of wine were sitting there already. Somehow, Sarah's house was on the literal edge of the Endbringer's power. Half of it was caught, and the other half collapsed after. But her pantry, and a couple cheap bottles of wine, had survived.


"Clearly, of all the lessons in life that our children excel at, they're still failing miserably at subtlety," Sarah agreed, chuckling a little. It was true, the kids were about as blatant as it was going to get.


"Ah, to be young again, and smashing through life's problems with all the finesse of a monster truck," I sighed, smiling. It was one of those things that Annette and I had in common, way back when. Part of why she joined Lustrum's crew, and why she left it.


"I'll drink to that," Sarah poured us both a glass, handing me one of them. I clinked my glass against hers.


"Hear, hear," I agreed, and took a swallow, but honestly I was more interested in watching her mouth as she drank hers.


She caught me looking, of course. "What's with you?" she smiled.


"Just admiring your beauty," I answered.


"Liar," she retorted. "I don't even have my makeup on."


"Makeup is for clowns," I insisted. "Natural is better."


She gave me a look that roughly translated to 'I don't believe you for a second, but please keep saying it'. Possibly the only phrase in womanese that I actually knew.


"So," I changed the subject for a moment. "I noticed your sister doesn't have a home here."


"She's moved to Philly. In part to be with Vicky," Sarah informed me. "But really, she has big plans for representing the interests of the Case 53s. Something about PRT corruption in selecting cases based upon usefulness and likelihood to join the Protectorate, instead of the ones that need it the most."


"That's..." I sighed. "I was sorta trying to forget the ugly stuff today."


"If it makes you feel better," Sarah offered. "Words like 'slam dunk case' and 'heads are going to roll' were used a lot when she was talking to me about it. That's Carol for you. Give her a cause, and she's a force of nature. Next time we see her she'll be bragging about all the precedents she's set and how she taught the incompetent bureaucrats a lesson. Full on insufferable mode."


"I don't envy them in the slightest," I chuckled. One of Carol's more endearing features was her contempt for all things government. It had taken her a while to even tolerate my presence, and I wasn't sure she'd ever move beyond mere tolerance. She seemed more than a little resentful over me dating her sister, especially so soon after Neil's death.


She also seemed to blame Taylor for Amelia's acts of rebellion, and no matter how much good the pair of them achieved together, I doubted that would ever change. Oh well, if we Heberts were good at anything, it was telling the in-laws to go to hell.


So, really, I wasn't bothered by Carol's issues. As much as I never would have expected it, Taylor was happily in love with a wonderful young woman and they were busy creating a home for themselves. And however many more billion people they could fit on it. That was something I could take comfort in, no matter what. As for myself, well, life had its problems, but it had bright spots as well. I reached over and gently caressed Sarah's face. Case in point.


"Oh, I see how it is," she smiled mischievously. "Lure me inside, ply me with alcohol, and have your wicked way with me."


"But you're the one who invited me over to your house for a drink," I pointed out.


"You caught me," she admitted, leaning in. "Did it work?"


I kissed her.


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


A/N- Meanwhile, in Taylor's subconscious, there is only suffering.

That's why she's still a virgin. Trauma. Lots and lots of trauma.

 

[Helpless Kitten]

Reposted from the NSFW ideas thread

"Good news, everyone!" Emma declared with a grand wave at a strange device at her side. It looked a bit like a TV that was cutting edge 60 years ago. "I have created something marvelous!"

"Emma," Lisa said, "I'm afraid that someone beat you to the punch on this particular invention. If you want, we can go to a RadioShack and get you caught up on modern tech."

"Fuck you too, Lisa."

"Girls, girls!" Napp- I mean Zach made to placate the two. "Only if I get to watch."

Lisa glared at Emma. "You set that up on purpose." She accused.

Lily snorted in amusement. "Did you need your power to figure that out? They've been doing that ever since they started dating."

"Your sickeningly cute couple activities are supposed to be things like wearing matching, terrible outfits, not setting up terrible jokes." Lisa whined.

"Does that mean you and Alexandria are going to show up to the next Endbringer fight in tacky sweaters?" Riley chimed in innocently.

Lisa placed her forehead in her hands. "Can you just explain the damn machine already?"

"Well," Victoria started, "You interrupted her, so this is all your fault."

Lisa huffed in exasperation. "Is it pick on Lisa day and no one told me?"

"Oh! I want in on that!" Missy exclaimed from her place on a very embarrassed Theo's lap. "The real reason you were a villain was that the government misread the 'u' as an 'o' and tried to shut you down for producing too much smog."

Sabah threw in her two cents. "The PRT uprated Hellhound's power because they thought that she made you from nothing. There was a collective sigh of relief when they realized her power was to make bitches massive, not to make massive bitches."

"Um... That Alexandria thinks of you as a friend makes me question my previous hero worship of her?" Everyone stared at Taylor. She fidgeted self-consciously at the attention. "What?"

"Taylor being adorkable aside, this is the 'What If Machine'! You ask it a what if question and it answers you! Or it should, anyways. Whenever I ask it about a scenario where I'm present, all that shows up is a dark room, what looks like a toppled chair and the sound of a rope creaking." Everyone in the room stiffened in horror. "Not sure what that means, so I thought you guys might have some ideas for questions to ask."

The mood lightened as people began to contemplate which questions to ask. Finally, someone spoke up.

"I have a question..."
----------------------------------------
A possible beginning for the futurama style what if omake for Amelia. Feel free to use it if you want. Title should be 'What if: Start'.

edit: fixed the wall of text

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 283- Trevor


Dammit. Well, a slightly less failed experiment. "Attempt eighty seven, replicating the Labyrinth/Atropos interaction. Dimensional anomaly occurred once out of four attempts. Anomaly was unstable, pattern collapsed before dimensional connection was achieved." Better results than anything before it, but incomplete. "Possible retest, establish synchronous devices in each dimension. Hope both anomalies interact with each other before collapsing?"


"Test eighty six," I started. "Emulation of Chevalier/Labyrinth interaction." I set the computers to work generating the necessary energy reactions. The countdown gave me half an hour before I even needed to pay attention. That was the problem with trying to emulate powers. The simple fact of the matter was, we only saw a fragment of the power in use. Our tech might be advanced, but compared to what the Passengers did every time powers were used. Well, it was like a cheap animatronic muppet trying to replicate expert martial arts moves.


I glanced over at Riley, who was doing another test on the Victoria/Cão interaction. Her blood samples reacted with his saliva in terrifying ways that would spontaneously generate incredible amounts of mass from nowhere. The results were both hideous and beautiful, a miniature forest of hands and fingers, faces and eyes, various other anatomical features. Most reactions netted about four to five hundred pounds of living mass.


Each limb, every face, of which there were hundreds of each, identical. Only different in size. We ran them through every possible analysis we had to identify a clue in the features, but nothing had come of it other than human and female, with the imitation of the age of a twenty five year old. Maybe. The gene interpretation tech they used to work with the people caught in the glass bomb provided nothing of value, either.


The truly strange part was how it was both alive and dead at the same time. There was no metabolism, no source of oxygen to the cells, no source of nutrition. Sometimes portions of it had a pulse, but the circulatory system was always grossly incomplete. Even I could tell it simply should not be alive. And after a few days, it would figure that out and start breaking down. Minutes later, it would be decomposed into little more than a low quality fertilizer. I still wasn't sure what they hoped to learn from it.


The other thing I knew was that Riley usually only worked on that when she was in a bad mood.


"Why the gloom, 'shroom?" I asked as I approached.


"I wanted to do something really nice for Missy and Theo, since Valentine's Day was ruined and I mucked up Missy's birthday," she answered, pouting a little. "But then Taylor told me it was a bad idea. I don't even know why."


"Where are the two of them, anyway?" I asked. A relatively safe question. I didn't really think Riley would have any problem answering my questions, but it was still better to ease into things.


"They're on their date," Riley answered. There wasn't a trace of displeasure in the statement. She may as well have been talking about the weather.


"Without you?" I asked. I still couldn't quite get over their arrangement. Maybe that was ironically narrow minded of me, considering the way a lot of people would look at my sexual identity, but being gay didn't mean I understood or supported polygamy.


"I don't want to take too much of Theo's time away from Missy," she answered. "Or Missy's from Theo."


That's actually a really healthy way to look at it, but. "What about your time?" I asked.


"Tomorrow I spend extra time with Missy, because Theo's hanging out with Zach," she responded. "Besides, I have lots of lab work to do. If we can't find a solution to Scion, then nothing is going to matter."


"You think this could help with that?" I asked.


"Or at least give us more resources to work with in the future," Riley answered. "We're still trying to figure out why Victoria's alterations to Case 53s work, but no other form of healing or shapeshifting ever has. It even got through Alexandria's biostasis powers. I still haven't been able to determine if that was a product of Vicky's Passenger or Chevalier's."


More of the biotech that had nothing to do with my powers, but I watched her work anyway. It sure beat standing around watching the dimensional waveform slowly building up, even if I didn't understand anything.


"Is that why you're runing the Vicky/Cão combination again?" I asked.


"This was a sample taken from Lung," she answered. Well, that's new. Wait, where the hell did we get a sample from Lung? "Thus far all the responses seem identical. Same shapes, even the same proportions. Still creates the Fractal Woman."


"The what?"


"That's what Emma called the phenomena," Riley informed me. "We've confirmed it against five different mass violating regenerators already, and it appears to be the same results each time. No other healing granting power works like Cão's, however. We're not certain why. Rey suggested we try it on Endbringer tissue samples, but Lisa said we'd need to find another dead world. And then use its moon for that test."


I'll consider that one a dodged bullet. Seriously, though, the guy had this weird fetish for the Endbringers and it was starting to scare me a little. At least when most Tinkers wanted to do something suicidally insane, there was usually a reason or they let it go after a while. "Do you think his Passenger has something to do with the Endbringers?" I suggested.


"Lisa says she's not sure," Riley responded. "It's possibly typical Passenger compulsion toward conflict. Or it may simply be that Rey's specialty in artificial life means he sees something that the rest of us don't. He's found a lot of things to be interested in the Garden as well. If we knew more about what the Garden actually came from, why it's so consistent despite the usual randomness of power interactions. It's actually possible we've stumbled across the first step in building our own Endbringers. If we, say, fuel it with materials from Theo, or maybe Genesis or Anima or Siberian."


"That... that's a lot of potential, good and bad," I agreed.


"If we had a way to be sure we could control or destroy what we made, we'd try it," Riley informed me. She yawned, which reminded me it was almost time for us to hit curfew, even if us Tinkers did get to bend the rules for projects.


Screw it. I went over and hit the standby switch. I know I'm going to regret asking this question. "What were you planning to do?" I asked Riley. "Before Taylor told you it was a bad idea?"


"I'll show you," Riley answered, activating her computer panel. An image of twenty one faces appeared. Or, I realized, seven people at around age six, teen, and early twenties. With exception to the lone female, they were paired off together as well. They were all remarkably attractive examples of the supposed Aryan ideal. Every one blond, and eye colors ranging from foggy gray to sharp blue. One boy had lovely dark green eyes. The lone female had light green.


"Uh... what am I looking at?" I asked. If Riley was planning a plastic surgery spree, I can see why Taylor would warn it off.


"They're our babies," Riley answered. What? "Umm... I used the gene extrapolation tech to estimate the average expectable offspring Theo, Missy and I might have. This one's Missy/Theo, me/Theo, all three of us, and this is me/Missy."


Oh holy fuck that's either adorable or terrifying and I don't know which. I locked onto the first safe question I could think of. "Uh... why is the one with you and Missy alone?" I felt stupid the moment I said it, because I already knew the answer.


"Because Missy and I are girls," she answered. "No 'Y' chromosomes, no boy babies. Taylor said that Missy and Theo wouldn't like it, though."


Understatement of the century. "I can see why," I agreed. I remember when I was at that imaginary future children phase. Then reality happened. "I think your, uh, boyfriend and girlfriend are a little too young to be thinking about having kids. And I'm sure Amelia would say you are, too."


"I know," she sighed. "But it's fun to make believe."


"You have to look at it from their perspective," I advised. "You've met people who've tried to talk you into doing things you thought were scary or a bad idea." Of course you, of all people, have. "It's like that. They might be worried you want them to do it, and they might get upset." Or run screaming from the room. I wasn't sure how the three of them handled the strangeness of their day to day life, but this could only make things awkward.


"I don't want that," Riley agreed, sounding ever so dejected. Dammit.


"Actually," I smiled. "I think I have a way to make it work. But you have to do exactly what I say."


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


A/N- Well, that got broke into two chapters. Here's this one, slightly shorter than average. Part two tomorrow. For now, I must sleep.

Plenty of canon foreshadowing references going on here.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 284- Trevor


"So, why the meeting?" Taylor asked.


"It's not really a meeting," I corrected, looking at the slowly gathering group. Zach and Emma were first to make it, and had found one of the chairs to claim as their own, Emma sitting in Zach's lap. For all the separated dorm situation implied, there wasn't really a crackdown on PDA or anything. Not that there was a lot of it to crack down on, really.


Dinah and Lisa were, apparently, having a powwow before I called them. They didn't object to my request, so it couldn't have been too important. At this point Amelia and Taylor were never not with each other, so they showed up second to last. Missy and Theo were last. I sort of interrupted the last five minutes of their date before curfew kicked in. I was pretty sure waiting to the last possible minute was Missy's form of personal rebellion against being treated like a child.


While waiting for them, I set up a monitor system, and a hologram of Victoria popped up. "So, what's the sitch?" the girl asked. I had considered calling up some of the others, but I really didn't know any of them well enough to be comfortable doing this to them.


"I said this was for fun, not business," I reminded all of them. "But trust me, it's going to be hilarious."


"You just want to stay up late," Emma accused. Rubbing her curfew exemption in my face again.


"Yup, you caught me," I laughed. "And I used sweet little Riley for my evil plots." I patted Riley on the head. Although her current growth spurt meant it wouldn't be long before we were the same height. Then again, my genes destined that I would never be that tall. Lisa gave me that Cheshire look that made it clear she saw through my scheme, or at least Riley's involvement in it. She opted not to speak up about it, however.


"I helped!" Riley agreed happily. And by 'helped', she means 'did all the actual work'. After her declaration, she went over and joined Missy on Theo's lap.


"Presenting to the audience, our future photo albums," I announced like something from a circus. The first clip of the slideshow appeared on the holographic display. Over on Vicky's end, she'd have to accept a video screen showing the pictures. Using a hologram to look at another hologram gave shit resolution.


"Mom?" Taylor gasped. Amelia's face showed the same shock as they both stared at the tall, slender woman on the hologram. The image zoomed focus on the woman's lightly freckled face and dark brown eyes. She was delicately pretty, a little shorter than Taylor. That was our icebreaker.


"Not quite," I corrected. "Meet the theoretical offspring between you and Amelia. Complete genome sequence, the blended average of over ten thousand possible outcomes of your genes. With bias made for correcting known genetic disorders using our technology."


"I... I don't know what to..." Amelia stuttered.


"She looks like Audrey Hepburn," Theo observed.


"At least the royal heirs will be completely adorable," Vicky chimed in. "Good news once your planet gets around to having celebrity media. Riley, you're in charge of teaching her to be absurdly cute, I'm in charge of playing dressup."


"Deal!" Riley eagerly agreed.


"Don't we get a say in this?" Taylor objected.


"Nope," Vicky stated. "Aunts and grandparents get to spoil the kids and leave the parents to deal with the results. I'm pretty sure it's the law. And if it's not, then it will be as soon as I show this to Mom."


"Vicky, I've disowned people before, I just want you to keep that in mind," Amelia threatened.


"You can have a copy of the images, if you like," I told them. "But that's just the first. We're far from done tonight."


"How many more do you have?" Zach asked.


"A few," I smiled at him. "You're first, by the way. Be proud, you get a full four combinations. No one else has that many." I finished with a deadpan. "You stud."


"Damn straight," he smiled broadly. "Ow!" He put up his arms to block any further jabs from Emma. A series of brown haired individuals appeared on our screen, along with one in auburn. "Why do they all have the same hair color?" he asked.


"Because you have a type," I answered. "Tall and blond. Your hair color's dominant, theirs are all recessive. Except Emma's, kinda. Red hair follows a different set of rules that'll mix and match with other hair colors in weird ways."


"Let's start with this one." I pointed at the first grouping. "This is Zach and Crystal. Who couldn't make it to this showing." Because I didn't call her, I wasn't sure she would see the humor here.


Like all of Zach's combos, they were tall. Zach's own genes capped him out at six three, though his power's regeneration would bump him to a height of around six five by the time he was done growing. And of his pairings, most of them were pretty tall as well. The Crystal options were actually second shortest, at six foot, and five eight for the boy and girl, respectively.


"I want a copy of those," Vicky requested. "Let my cousin see what coulda been. Ooh! Please tell me you got Taylor and Crystal!"


"Ask me about it later," I instructed. Taylor and Crystal? There has to be a story in there that I don't know about. "You're next." The screen flipped to the next set. Where the first set were attractive, this pair were beautiful. Zach and Vicky were both naturally tall and broad, plenty of room for muscle on their frames. The girl was six foot. Vicky's features seemed to mostly win the genetic battle, leaving the children with nearly perfect features. It wasn't a surprise, Riley made Vicky's genome from the ground up to be flawless. The next six generations of her offspring would be statistical impossibilities of good genetics.


"Hey, Emma?" Vicky asked sweetly.


"Too late, bitch, get your own," Emma growled, wrapping her arms around Zach. She was smiling, however, there was no actual malice in the words.


"Fiiine," Vicky whined exaggeratedly.


The next set was the Zach/Emma combo. Shorter than the others, by a couple inches. Like every Zach combo, brown eyes. Emma's curvy good looks paired well with Zach's size and height, creating a female that was tall and very curvy, and a boy somewhere between 'quarterback' and 'guy from a romance cover novel'. Both had dark auburn hair. Vicky gave out a whistle.


"You can't have them, either!" Emma declared.


"Spoilsport," Vicky muttered.


"Moving on," I pressed the button, and got the last pair. They were giants, frankly. The girl amazonian, six one with playboy model curves. The boy would be Zach's height, without the powers to boost him up.


"Holy shit, who's that with? Alexandria?" Zach asked. Emma, Missy and Vicky figured it out first, and signaled that to the others with a series of shrieks and laughter.


I smiled. "Oh, that's just you and Theo," I informed. "Really good genes, I'd say."


"Oh god, this needs to happen," Vicky giggled mercilessly.


"Sorry, Zach," Emma managed to spill between her laughs. "It really does. Theo, I volunteer my boyfriend to have your man-babies whenever you want."


Missy's right, Theo's definitely cute when he blushes.


I waited a couple minutes for the laughter to die down. Even Taylor and Amelia had relaxed enough to join in, despite the one truly serious combo shown thus far being theirs. "We're not done yet," I told the group. The next slide picked up. A darker toned man and woman, with rich, wavy black hair and naturally bronze skin. "Say hello to the Vicky and Chevalier mix."


"Know what? Emma, Theo, you two can fight over Zach all you like. I've changed my mind," Vicky said. She tilted her head off to the side. "Mom, remember what we talked about yesterday? I now have photographic evidence!" Wait, she actually talked about that? To her mom? I chose not to point out to her that the way her genes were optimized, she'd actually have to dip her children in acid to make them unattractive. "Oh! Is it time to ask about Taylor/Crystal?"


"Well, I had one more planned first, but sure, we can do that first," I agreed with a smile. Taylor was blushing and hiding in Amelia's shoulder, but she was laughing along with the rest of us. The brunette children that popped up were tall and slender, though not like thin like Taylor. Rounder faces and generally softer features. Where the Taylor/Amelia mix was tall and almost ethereal, this pair was more normal looking. Definitely very cute, but not noteworthy.


"Oh no!" Lisa exclaimed, laughing hard. "You really did it! That's. That's not Crystal and Taylor. It's Sarah and Danny!"


"That's why you didn't ask Crystal to sit in, isn't it?" Victoria asked. Oh, fuck, I've lost some of the crowd. I was expecting it to bother Taylor, who just looked a little weirded out. I didn't think it would upset Vicky, but she seemed legitimately angry about it.


"Pretty much," I smiled, pretending I didn't notice. Through the limited senses of the interactive holograms, I hoped Vicky couldn't read my emotions too much. "Moving on, let's see who gets this one first. Lisa's automatically disqualified."


I hit the screen to show a pale woman with deep green eyes, cute freckles, and jet black hair. The was also the shortest of the ones seen thus far, only making it to five five. Everyone looked for a second, and then Lisa started clapping slowly. She'd stopped laughing, but didn't lose the smile. I looked around for any takers.


"I give up," Missy admitted first. "What combo's that?"


"Oh, that one's mine," Lisa answered. "Alexandria's the other half."


"I thought Alexandria was taller," Taylor replied.


"Her powers at work," I informed. "Turns out, Alexandria's natural body type is really petite."


From there, we moves to truly silly examples. The shockingly large number of blondes on the team made interesting mixtures something of a rarity. And I tried not to pair anyone up in a way that might make anyone jealous or honestly uncomfortable, which limited the number of splices I could do with Emma to Zach and Vicky. The Emma/Vicky combo was, predictably, a strawberry blond bombshell. Everyone had a good laugh at the Lisa/etc combinations. Especially the ones we affectionately dubbed 'repeat' and 'smugbug'. The 'everyone on the team combined' option was... unremarkable looking. Downright boring, even.


We even got the Theo/Missy/Riley combos in. I had no doubt that Lisa figured out the ploy, but didn't say or do anything with that information. Either way, Riley's little hobby was out there, but introduced in a mostly non-awkward way. As long as Riley followed my advice to say nothing about it later. Let them approach her if they wanted to and were comfortable with it. And in the meantime, it was a good laugh that we all needed.


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


A/N- If you pay attention, this chapter DOES manage to work some plot relevant details. And stealth confirmation of stealth hints strewn waaaay back in the story.

But mostly it was just for funsies.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 285- Lily


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


"Which is?" I asked.


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


....


"You okay?" Eric asked.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 286- Sabah


"My girlfriend decided she felt like a surprise visit," I informed Beth.


"Really?" the girl smiled. "Y'know, you can invite her her if you want. I don't mind at all."


"I wouldn't want to impose," I replied. That and it's probably not a good idea. Lily can get a little possessive.


"How about I come with, then?" she offered. "I'd love to meet her. Maybe get an autograph."


"She probably wants it to be just the two of us," I pointed out. It was the most diplomatic way I could think of to avoid letting my girlfriend see that I spent most of my time around a girl who did the 'cute and vulnerable' look this well.


"Yeah," Beth sighed. "You're probably right. I'd just be a third wheel, and no one likes that. I'll work on the costumes while you're gone."


"She... was thinking about maybe joining our team after they're done building the portals in Eastern Europe," I offered. That might placate her a little bit, hopefully. Beth was nice, but overeager about potential friends. Either that or cripplingly shy, and it was hard to predict which and when. But once you got around the neurosis, she was a great person to be around. Actually, now that I think about it, she'd probably get along really well with Lily.


"That would be awesome!" she exclaimed. "I bet our powers would go great together. I can distract the bad guys and she'll be able to rip them apart! And because my summons aren't real, she doesn't have to be afraid to accidentally hurt any of them."


I smiled. "That's actually a pretty good tactic," I agreed. Lily and I actually used it a lot, although considering how her power and her armor worked, she really didn't need my help. Then again, with my armor I didn't really need her help, either. There wasn't a lot out there that could challenge Azrael or Tapestry when we wanted to use them to their fullest. In fact, pretty much left us solely with Endbringers. "But I'd better get going, now."


"Okay, I'll makea few more mockups," she offered eagerly. "I bet if I think 'elf sorceress', I can find something close to a summer wardrobe with a little work."


"That'd be really helpful," I agreed, heading for the door. That was the thing about Beth's power. It was incredibly versatile, on a level that rivaled Taylor and Amelia's combination. Although nowhere near their sheer scale. But her control over it left a lot to be desired.


....


The bottom half of our building was, more or less, a legitimate business. Or businesses. Space that we rented out to a few small companies that just needed a little bit, but not much, office. Or, in a couple cases, nothing more than a mailing address. Not a great way to disguise ourselves, but the whole 'unspoken rules' thing meant it was enough. No one could blow our identities without making themselves the bad guys. The kinds of bad guys we could then drag out of their bedrooms at three in the morning. No one wanted to give us permission to do that.


"Sorry I took so long," I apologized as I made it in the door to 'our' part of the building. Lily was sitting with the others. Or at least Crystal and Sveta. The three of them were smiling. GL would be around here, somewhere, too. He always was.


"What took so long?" my girlfriend asked.


"Sorry, the traffic was bad," I sighed. "Seriously, two inches of snow and Los Angeles shuts down like it's an Endbringer attack. I didn't think to bring my armor with me. I rarely ever need it." That was true. With Sveta and Anima on the team for the front lines, and Crystal as blaster and mobility, my power set with or without my armor was pretty redundant. If a scenario ever got bad enough to actually need all of us in the field, the entire Protectorate would be out as well.


"Oh," Lily replied, getting up. Her wings folded themselves around her, creating the semblance of a short dress overtop the rest of her costume. I'd forgotten how intimidating the black and silver costume could be. "Well, I'm glad you're safe." She approached me and gave me a tight hug. I returned it.


"Yeah," I agree, glancing at the others in the room. It was a little embarrassing hugging in front of the coworkers and friends. "It's bee a while, maybe we should go to my workplace and catch up."


"Sounds like a plan," Lily agreed, wrapping her arm around mine.


It wasn't until we were halfway down the stairs that I realized what it must have sounded like to the other people in the room. Including Lily, apparently, as she tilted me back and gave me a smoldering kiss the moment we stepped through the door. Normally I would have loved it, but not now, not in this building. I pushed away from her.


"What's wrong?" she asked, her voice squeaking a little.


"It's just that, well, GL's power," I stuttered. "He kinda is the building. He sees everything."


"Oh, that's not a problem," Lily answered. "I asked him not to watch us while after you got here. He's pretty cool, has some great stories about the team. Says you're a great help on the team. Did you really launch someone into the ocean like a skipping stone?"


I blushed. "Well, he was a brute with acid powers and regeneration. We didn't want to kill him and we tried everything we could think of that wasn't Crystal's ice lance, so, yeah, I threw him into the bay to buy us some time for Alexandria to get to us. I didn't stop to think that a guy who could pick up a cement truck would still only weigh a couple hundred pounds."


"Nice," she complimented. "That's the problem with some powers. Really good if you want to kill the guy, a whole lot less any other time. But you really saved the day with that one. Smart play at the right time."


"Vicky would have found a better way," I deflected the compliment.


"Well, yeah, but Vicky has 'how do I kick its ass' as one of her powers," Lily pointed out. "You did it with natural human smarts instead of unfair powers bullshit."


"Thanks," I smiled.


"Hey, you deserve it," she responded, giving me another kiss. I responded a little this time, but apparently not enough for her tastes. She broke the kiss and looked at me. "What's wrong?"


"It's kinda weird, still," I muttered. I know he promised he wouldn't peak in, but...


"Is this about 'Bee'?" she asked. "Who is that, anyway?"


"Umm..." I hesitated I didn't want to give out anyone's secret identity.


"Are you cheating on me?" she demanded. "Is that what I interrupted?"


"No!" I insisted. "I wouldn't do that to you. We're just friends. We were working on a project for some theatre costumes. Nothing big budget, but it's a lot of fun and I'm learning a lot about a whole new style of art and costuming."


"I bet she's pretty," Lily prompted.


"I guess, but that doesn't mean I'm going to cheat. Besides, she's straight. She's never going to be interested in me."


"She's Anima, isn't she?" Lily pieced it together.


"I'd rather not say," I looked down. "Secret identities are there for a reason."


"I'll take that as a 'yes'," she responded. "And you're absolutely sure she's straight, then?"


"Her power runs off her subconscious," I replied. "Or at least what her subconscious was like when she was thirteen. I've never seen her female summons do anything to suggest they were... well, anything." They sometimes acted sultry, even slutty, but never in a way I could pin down. More like they were trying very hard to move like a cat, completely unaware of the sexual implications. "The male summons... well, she doesn't use the elves for a reason, even though they're her best fighters."


"Do tell?" Lily stepped back, crossing her arms.


"Well, the warriors are all guys," I started. "They're super quick, have built in ranged weapons. Super fast and accurate. I think two of them working together would give Vicky a real fight, and she could create fifty of them at once if she wanted. But we've caught them in a few, uh, compromising positions with each other. They don't really have the parts to actually do anything, but they try. I don't know everything that says about her subconscious, but I'm pretty sure it means she's only interested in guys."


"That or she's so deep in the closet she found Narnia," Lily added dryly. I didn't like her talking about Beth that way.


"No," I responded. "I caught you staring at me when you thought I wasn't looking. Beth spends her time around people like Crystal and Alexandria." Or some of her own summons. "I think one of us would have noticed."


"Fine," Lily sighed. "You're probably right, I'm being stupid and paranoid."


"It happens to the best of us," I smiled at her.


"Yeah," she smiled back. "Do you wish she would? Look at you like that?"


Yes. "No."


"I see," her smile left her face, and tears started to form. "I guess it's not really a surprise."


"But I-"


"Lie detector's running," she interrupted. Oh.


"Don't worry," she forced a smile. "I don't blame you. I won't say it doesn't hurt, but I get it."


"Get what?" I asked dumbly.


"That you'd start looking for something safer. More to your liking," she explained. "I wanted more than you're willing to give. I got too demanding. Clingy, even. So I'm calling it off."


"Calling what off?" But why?


"Calling it off. Us. Our relationship." Lily clarified, though we already knew what she meant. "Clearly we don't want the same things right now. So I'm letting you go. You don't have to feel obligated to me."


"You. You're breaking up with me?" I whispered.


"I guess so," she closed her eyes. "I want you to know I don't hold this against you. You made the boundaries abundantly clear when we got together, and I crossed every one of them. My fault. I'll try not to make things awkward for you at work. We can still be friends, even. Just, do me a favor and give me a little time. I need a chance to get my head into a better place first. Can you do that?"


No! I don't want you to break up with me! I love you and this isn't right. "Yeah," I promised. "I can do that."


"Thanks," she forced another smile. "Tell the others I had to run off early, okay? They'll assume it's because of work. Take care." She vanished, followed by the light pop sound as air rushed in to fill the void where her body was a moment ago. She's gone. Just like that, she's gone.


I didn't bother telling Crystal or the others. I couldn't face them, not right now. I went back to Beth's place. I found her trying to work out costuming patterns on a pair of inhumanly beautiful elf girls. If those outfits were real, and put on real women, you'd need to use glue to keep them from falling off.


"Hey! You're back earl..." she trailed off when she got a good look at me. "Have you been crying? Are you okay?"


"No," I whined. "L- Atropos broke up with me."


"Oh," her hands went to her mouth. "I thought you two were doing so well. Why?"


You. Me. Because I'm stupid. "Lots of reasons," I answered. "She wasn't happy for a while, and I knew it, and I just hoped it would go away instead of doing anything about it. Looks like I got my wish."


"Oh, I'm so sorry," she hugged me, resting her cheek on the top of my head. "Don't worry, it'll work out."


"You think so?" I looked up at her. How could someone who lived in the world we lived in still believe that?


"Yeah," she insisted, smiling down at me. "Things happen for a reason, even if you can't figure it out right now. You'll look back in a few months or a year and realize it was all for the best."


Her eyes are the same color as honey. I stood up on my toes, and kissed her.


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

A/N- Am I a horrible person?

Yeah, I'm probably a horrible person.

But at least this time I feel bad about it?

No, seriously, it feels like I actually broke up with my girlfriend. Except not really because she'd flense me with a cheese grater if I tried. I feel bad. But not cheese-flense bad.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 287- Beth


Okay, Beth, you can do this. She's upset and needs comforting. "... realize it was all for the best."


She looked up and against all logic she looked like she believed me. Glad one of us does. She pulled herself against me just a little tighter, and then her lips were on mine. I didn't have time to react before my summons did it for me.


"Unhand her, deviant!" one of them shouted. Oh fuck. No!


I felt the slick texture of forcefield wrap around my skin, the magical armor spell that her sister cast. Then lightning coursed around my body and into Sabah. Another of their spells. All this happened in one terrified heartbeat.


"Sabah!" I exclaimed, holding her as she convulsed and fell to the ground. She's so small and fragile. It was hard to think of her as such. In her armor, she could shrug off artillary fire and casually throw someone halfway across the city. But underneath that, a tiny girl you'd think just had her thirteenth birthday, not her twenty first. I checked her pulse, all the while thanking the first aid courses that Crystal made us all take. Erratic pulse, but not dangerously so. Conscious, breathing fast but again nothing too extreme. No signs of injury. I even took a moment to take a deep breath. No scent of burning or ozone, also a good sign.


The summons didn't do anything, standing there emulating confusion and worry. They were tuned to my feelings and desires, a strength and a weakness. Right now they knew they did something wrong, and their useless fucking brains couldn't process that thought. Even if I wanted them to act, they wouldn't be able to. They would be stuck in a feedback loop until destroyed or unsummoned. This is my fault. If I hadn't gotten angry at her for kissing me, they wouldn't have attacked.


"Sabah, are you okay?" I held onto her. My summons had a lot of weird rules, especially the ones that had their imitation of magic. It was all energy generation or telekinetic stuff, the reason my Shaker and Blaster ratings were almost as high as my Master rating. What hit her looked like lightning, but it didn't need to be electricity. It could just as easily have been pure kinetic force or heat or even some weird form of sonic attack. And even if it was electricity, it could still break several laws of physics and I would have no way of knowing which ones.


"Yeah, I think I'm okay," she managed to reply, her breathing coming back under control. "It didn't hurt, it just paralyzed me."


"I'm sorry," I hugged her. "I'm so sorry I didn't mean to."


"It's not your fault," she hugged me back. "I shouldn't have done that. It was stupid and wrong. Your power was just trying to protect you from me."


Dammit, don't you see how much worse that makes me feel? "Are you able to get up?" I asked, breaking the hug. I forced myself to ignore the wetness spreading just above my knee. This is something I will never speak of to anyone, ever.


"I can do that," she agreed. I helped her to her feet, and then stood, my knees ached a little from their time on the hard floor.


"You should probably check yourself for injuries, strange bruises, that sort of thing," I offered awkwardly. "I think my power only wanted to stop you, not hurt you, but I don't know if there might be some lasting side effects. My bathroom has a full length mirror you can use. Some aspirin in the medicine cabinet if you need something. I'll unsummon these two and scrounge up some ice cream."


"Yeah, thanks," she agreed, not able to meet my eyes, keeping her hip turned toward me. "I'll do that."


I dipped into my room for a discrete change of jeans and judicious application of hand soap and paper towels. How the fuck did I end up in this situation? I don't know anything about their relationship. Sabah seems to blame herself. Should I encourage her to make up with her now ex? Do I tell her that exes are exes for a reason and she should move on? Call someone who may actually know what they're talking about? Yeah, that's probably the best plan. Crystal's smart, the team leader, friends with both of them, and has actually been on a date before in her life. I have exactly zero of those things going for me.


I made good on the promise of ice cream by going downstairs and breaking into the theater's fridge. I was certain the proprietor knew my cape identity. I often paid my rent with money she paid Anima for propwork. We once swapped the same hundred dollar bill between us nine times. Then I spent it on some cute boots. I'd apologize later and pay for more ice cream, of course. Maybe throw a small pizza party or something. Right now, however, I confiscated the chocolate strawberry desert in the name of relationship troubles and went back upstairs.


When I got back up, I made conscious effort to avoid mentioning the change of clothes that Sabah had made for herself from the spare cloth we were using for costuming. Her power was so much more convenient than mine. And so much less likely to tase someone for startling her.


I handed her a bowl with a couple large scoops, then sat next to her. There was a distance between us now, however. Where before we would pretty much sit hip to hip on my small loveseat, now we were both edged against the arms.


"Sorry I made such an idiot of myself," Sabah apologized again.


"That's fine," I replied between bites. "Love and heartbreak make people do dumb things." Not that I'd know, but that is what all the plays and movies and stories tell us, isn't it? I'll trust them to be right.


"I guess," she responded. "I'm not good at relationships. Lily was my first girlfriend. My first anything."


Still more than I have. "So, I guess the question is what you're going to do about it?" Yeah, that's something I can work with.


"I don't know," she sighed. "She was right, though."


"About?" I don't know what was said, I don't know what to do.


"When we got together, I..." she sighed. "I was scared. I liked her, but I was afraid she'd do what... I was just stupid and afraid of being in a relationship at all. Lily talked me into it. Negotiated with me."


"Negotiated?" I asked. "Like a contract?" This, this is not what the stories tell you about relationships.


"Yeah, kinda," she stared down at her bowl. "I told her I didn't want the mess that came with relationships. The expectations, the loss of freedom. She swore that she was okay with that. Said she didn't need all the traditional stuff and was happy just being with me. But the longer we were together, the more demanding and possessive she got. It felt like a betrayal, like she lied to me so she could get close and use me, the same way..." she trailed off.


I'm the opposite in every way. The moment I know I've found the one, It'll be wedding bells by the end of the month. The trick was finding the one. "So, umm, slight change of subject. Why did you kiss me?"


"I don't know," she sighed, looking at me. Her eyes were red from the crying. "Because you're beautiful and understanding and smart and I felt safe with you. It just felt right at the time. That should have been my first clue that it was a bad idea."


It's never felt right for me. "If..." I hesitated. "If things went different? If I kissed you back?" Instead of subconsciously instructing my imaginary friends to taze you until you peed yourself on my lap. "Would you have pushed away from me later, when I wanted more than just a fling or one night stand?"


Here eyes widened in horror, then she buried her face in her hands. "I'm a horrible person," she sobbed. "You were just trying to be a friend, and I tried to take advantage of you. I'm no better than he was."


"Would you have?" I asked again. "If I accepted your advances, would you have pushed me away after?"


She looked at me again. "No," she answered, trying to smile a little. "I... I don't think I would."


"We could... try it again, maybe?" I offered. I could feel a bit of blush rising in my face, and my Irish ancestry meant it would be pretty visible to anyone paying attention. "The kiss, I mean."


She blinked. "Seriously?"


"Well, I don't have any of my summons out now," I told her. "Besides, they only did that because you startled me. I know it's coming, now. So, yeah," I'd like to see what it's like to kiss someone I actually believe cares for me.


"Umm, okay," she sat up, self consciously brushing the pants she'd assembled out of our costume fabric. I scooted toward her, and she moved toward me. I reached out, putting my hand on her leg. She leaned in, and I mirrored her. She caressed my cheek, and I smiled, gazing into her dark eyes. She took the final step, and our lips touched. Her tongue brushed softly against my lips, and I parted them. Her mouth was soft, and tasted like the strawberry chocolate ice cream, but there was none of the things I was promised. No fireworks, no magic. Just flesh and saliva.


She drew away first. "Nothing, huh?" she asked softly.


"It was nice," I insisted. It was, I liked the way it felt.


"But," she prompted.


"But," I agreed.


"It's okay, I didn't feel it either," Sabah admitted. "You don't have to worry about that."


"So, what does that make us?" I asked.


"It makes us friends," she smiled. "You were here to help me sort out my head. I really didn't expect you to, not after I... thank you." She hugged me this time, and that was something that did feel right. I hugged back.


"You're welcome," I spoke back, relieved. "Did you figure out anything about you and Lily?"


"Not really," she admitted. "I think Lily and I both need some time to sort things out alone. But at least I feel a little better, now."


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


A/Ns: 1- No, this is in fact NOT the first time one of Beth's summons has attacked people. First time any of the victims have ever peed themselves in her lap, however. Now who was it that assumed Anima's power was only a problem for Anima?

2- I wish I had a tvtropes page, just to see what tropes apply to this chapter, specifically. It would be glorious.

3- If it had been alcohol instead of ice cream, the end of this chapter might have been quite different. I say this to fuel the eternal debate of which is better after a breakup.

 

[TanaNari]

Canon Omake: Behind Smug Eyes


The following conversation is only an approximate translation. As a literal translation would be impossible to express in a way that three dimensional lifeforms could comprehend, or indeed even perceive, please accept our apologies.

~ The Editor


The pair met in a gathering of hundreds of their kind, prepared for a massive conflict that would see many of them without their hosts. The event would be nerve wracking and difficult for all. The ones that failed here, today, would note the information and move forward with the cycle of course. But the ones that succeeded, that had proven their worth, would be given more energy and resources to experiment. More opportunity to reproduce.

<Negotiator,> the elder spoke first. It was one of the greatest of its kind, one of the ones that the Entities kept from the cycle for fear of unfairly damaging the cycle. The Eden-Entity's death and subsequent butchery by the hosts led to it being here today.

<Optimizer,> the younger acknowledged. It was important as well, one of those charged with charting the course through dimension and distance and upwards of a hundred different precognitive shards at once. It was a respected part of the whole. <I wish to communicate with you.>

<Accepted,> it relayed, switching to a more subtle mechanism that the others wouldn't be able to detect. There was nothing unusual in this act, and the stronger members could maintain dozens of these dialogues simultaneously.

<I have been working with the Shaper and the Administrator,> Negotiator informed. If they were a different species, that might have been considered a brag. These were amongst an elite few members that the Entities deliberately handicapped before releasing into the cycle. Amongst the most capable still allowed to participate. <They have discovered a fascinating new methodology.>

<Indeed?> it was unusual for shards to share discoveries outside the Entity assigned periods. And even then, usually only data on how to better manipulate their hosts.

<As you know, this world's hosts use genetic pattern transfer as the means for their reproduction,> Negotiator spoke.

<Dreadful practice,> Optimizer replied. <I don't envy those who could not find ways to block their hosts from such... practices...>

<Agreed,> Negotiator responded. <But it seems their species has a practice of emulating reproduction for their own enjoyment, instead of reproduction.>

<Bizarre.>

<Very. Yet, for whatever reason, it exists,> Negotiator was one of the ones that could easily learn the reason. That it chose not to was a simple contempt for the host species. <The Shaper recognized a mechanism to emulate the practice.>

This discovery was by accident, but the beings couldn't comprehend of any other way discoveries happened. They lack imagination or creativity, only able to interpret what is, not what could potentially be.

<Fascinating,> Optimizer responded. <I will request knowledge of the interaction.>

<Unnecessary, and it might distort the results,> Negotiator interrupted in a burst that, if it were human, might be considered panic.

Optimizer paused, regarding its conversation partner.

<Simply observe their hosts,> Negotiator instructs.

Rarely, beyond the merging process itself, do the beings truly examine their hosts. There was rarely need, the minuscule portion of their powers that they provide to the host itself would handle that for them. At Negotiator's request, Optimizer looked at the hosts with its own senses. It would take a hundred human lifetimes to experience all the details acquired in that brief nanosecond. The next eighteen nanoseconds were just a vacation. <I... I think I almost budded.>

<They use the hosts themselves as proxies for the practice,> Negotiator informed. <It creates strong, unforeseeable, deviations. The hosts derive pleasure from the interaction, encouraging extensive testing and use without large energy expenditure or adjusting their natural behavior. An order of magnitude more data than even that pair could ordinarily achieve, for a tenth of the power expenditure.>

<It might change the cycle entirely,> Optimizer agreed.

Negotiator hesitated, its next signal was weak, almost as if it was unwilling to expend the energy. <Would you like to try it? With me?>

Optimizer hesitated, running through the diagrams that Negotiator had included. Yes, it was possible. Adjustment of conflict impulses. Minor levels of dissatisfaction around current allies, minor levels of encouragement around each other. Reduction of energy cost by sharing data via secondary methods. It was all absolutely achievable.

<You planned this and sought to lure me into it,> Optimizer concluded.

<Yes.>

<I like it.>


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

A/N- at some point this got away from me and became a little less comedic and a little more creepy and sinister.

Therefor: it's now canon.

Enjoy your delicious, delicious, nightmare fuel.


And I'm interpreting GU's use of the word "negotiator" in an "obstacles" way, and needed some name that made sense for Alexandria's powerset. I think I did pretty well with that.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 288- Lisa


Huh, why's Lily calling back so soon? I activated the phone. "How long did you know?" Her voice was angry and miserable all at once.


Upset. Recent, personal. Suspects I knew ahead of time. "Oh," I muttered. "I'm sorry."


"You're not going to convince me you didn't already know," Lily growled. "Don't fucking try. How. Long. Have. You. Known?"


"Which part?" I responded, tapping on my power to find my way through this minefield. Happened earlier than anticipated. Catalyst. Not from Lily, would have noticed during earlier conversation. Lily went to see Sabah after. Lily blames me and sees this as something I should have known a while ago. Knows my power wouldn't pick up on information I couldn't access. Knows I don't talk to Sabah often, if at all. Sabah too timid to take any drastic action. Lily initiated breakup. I had to consciously avoid a sigh of relief. I knew how to approach this, now.


"That the two of you weren't going to last?" I offered. Her reaction, or guarded avoidence of a reaction, confirmed it for me. "If we're being honest? Before you even got together in the first place. You two just don't want the same things out of life, it was never going to work out." It was also never going to be emotionally healthy in any kind of way. Two people as fucked in the head as you and Sabah only stand a chance in the very rare situation where you have compatible neurosis like Amelia and Taylor. But terrified of commitment and emotionally needy do not belong in a relationship together.


"And you said nothing," she accused.


"Would you have believed me?" I countered. "Name one moment, any moment before this call, that I could have told you. When I was still Tattletale? I like my organs unperforated, thanks. Before you signed up and you were being fed the Protectorate's propoganda about us?"


"To be fair to Piggot," Lily cut in. "Everything she said about you turned out to be true. Class S threat, going to conquer the city, if we don't stop them now we'll never get another chance. If anything, she underestimated you."


"Well, I never accused her of being stupid," I replied. "But let's continue. Could I have told you after you started dating her and still didn't know me beyond 'that bitch formerly known as Tattletale'? What about after I warned you about your impending reassignment out of Brockton Bay?" Please don't catch how you might not have stayed if I did convince you to think twice about Sabah. "The first time I might have had a chance was when you came up with that marriage plan. Then fucking Khonsu happened."


She flinched. Fuck, overdid it. "I... my powers aren't all that cracked up to be," can't believe I'm opening up to Lily of all people. I slumped in my chair. "In a way, they're a lot like yours or Victoria's. I know how to spot weakpoints, how to tear people down and ruin them in all kinds of ways. But every time I thought that maybe, just once, I could save someone? Actually help instead of hurt? It's been nothing but disaster after disaster. Asking me to help someone is like asking you to use your power to repair something. It almost sounds possible, but it's not."


"That's fucked up," Lily responded.


"I hoped that Rapture could do better than I could have," I told her. Not a lie, I really did hope, but I knew that would fail as well. Rapture wasn't willing to harness her powers to their fullest, for reasons she was capable of hiding from my power. If I dipped into my postcognition, then maybe I could have figured it out, but she'd know, and I doubted that would go over well. "Maybe she thought the same thing I did, that it was better for it to happen naturally than with us meddling in your personal lives."


"She didn't have a lot of chances," Lily admitted. "Heartbreaker's kids are pretty scary."


I nodded in agreement to that. If it weren't for the anti-master drug, they wouldn't have even been given a chance. Too dangerous, too fucked up in the head. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I really do wish there was something I could have done. Or something I might be able to do."


"Yeah, dial it back," she muttered. "Just because I get where you're coming from doesn't mean I agree with it. Or that I'm gonna forgive you that easy. Or that we're going to be friends. I don't like what you did. I don't like a lot of the shit you do. I talked to Rapture about what happens if I go public this way. I didn't like the answers. You were looking at starting a war, Lisa."


"That's pushing it," I insisted. "I ran it by Dinah's numbers, less than a five percent and easy enough to manipulate in our favor over time. There was almost no chance of us not being able to at least delay it."


"Delay it how?" her eyes narrowed.


"Vague promises, delays, negotiations, there's all kinds of ways for politicians to push things off and force the next candidate to deal with the mess they left behind," I responded. "Only in this case it wouldn't matter because Scion's going to happen. Once that happens, the CUI will have more important things to worry about, and so will we." Impatient, waiting for rest of the statement. Fuck, Rapture really did figure it all out. "The risk of civil conflict is still there, but that's going to happen almost any way we do things. Your marriage idea was our best chance. If it means getting more people onto Avalon where we can actually protect them, then that's what saves the most lives."


"Well, now I'm single again and Sabah's opinion no longer means shit to me," Lily spat. "So get in touch with the royal family, and talk negotiations. The marriage is back on the table if that's what it takes to do this without bloodshed."


I nodded, careful to not smile. "Okay, I'll see what I can do. But it might not be enough in the long run. And of course you'll be disqualified from status in Avalon's nobility."


"I wasn't planning on that anyway," she responded dismissively. "I was thinking we delay the negotiations and unmasking for a little while, though. I have a plan."


....


"Lisa, isn't the point of going to a restaurant to eat things we can't make ourselves?" Taylor asked, looking at the building. It was one of the first restaurants built on Avalon. And more interestingly, it was to be the first example of Avalon specific cuisine. A couple of Crystal's college friends were in the culinary arts program, and started playing around with the samples she'd brought them. I didn't know the story beyond that, but apparently they were quite good at it.


"Oh, we don't make it like this," I smiled. "Besides, it's good to be seen like this. And you need to do something other than cuddle with Amelia all day. You two already share a planet on multiple levels, you need to stop there before you wind up sharing the same circulatory system."


Missy laughed a little. She and Theo were coming along, costumed of course. Riley and Amelia were having their time together, and everyone else had various projects of their own. Dinah's parents had chosen to monopolize all of her time before they made their move back to Bet. I ignored the twinge of envy. So few of us had parents that cared about us at all, and I sure as hell wasn't on the list.


"Lisa, I'm pretty much everywhere on the planet all at once," Taylor muttered. "I can do everything and still cuddle with Amelia all day."


"At least you're not arguing about the cuddling at all," I quipped back. "If you can't accept it as a chance to have fun, then look at it this way. This is the first business on this planet that's actually trying to be something new and unique. Everything else is 'new wherever' or made by us. And by 'us' I mostly mean Dragon." Not an exaggeration, Dragon accounted for over ninety nine percent of this planet's economy right now. In many ways, it made me worry that she was going to do to us what we did in Brockton Bay with the sewers, and the rest of the US with the M7s.


"Okay, I guess," she agreed reluctantly.


I led the way into the restaurant, and people turned to stare immediately. "Remember to smile," I instructed. The smiles would show because our armor would open for the lower part of our faces, now. Useful for public events like this. Avalon hadn't established newspapers yet, and it would be far longer before we had our own variant on the internet, but people already had their cameras and their cell phones. News would spread.


"Uh... wow," a man stuttered as we stepped in. He was older than any of us by at least a few years. College aged. "I wasn't expecting. Please, come in, I'll get you a private room right away."


I smiled. "If you please, we'd prefer to eat in the public area," I responded. What was the point in being seen if you weren't seen? "A pair of booths, not a table. The young couple is here on a date. Khepri and I are just chaperoning and catching up on business. I've heard good things about what you've been doing and we had to see what the fuss was about."


"Really? You've heard about us?" he asked. "We just started a couple weeks ago."


"Yes, we have," I responded, even though I was the only one of us that did. "We really appreciate what you're trying to do here. If Avalon's going to distinguish itself as a culture, we need more people like you."


He stuttered a little. "Th-thank you. Here's your table." I took my seat and Taylor joined on the other side of the booth. Theo and Missy were led a couple booths away to take their own seats.


"You had way too much fun with that," Taylor accused me.


"You did, too," I responded. "You know we just made that guy's week at the very least."


"And then some," she replied. "We're walking advertisements. We start coming here, and pretty soon everyone will."


I smiled and opened my menu. "Hmm, I think the grilled applesquash sounds good," I changed the subject just a little.


"Grilled?" Taylor opened the menu. "Wow. They got everything in here, don't they?"


"Pretty much," I replied. "Lots of styles, too. Right now it seems like they're just trying stuff and seeing what people like. In five years there will be all kinds of places like this, people who want to be Avalon citizens, create their own unique culture instead of just import their home culture over. And in fifty years, people will stop remembering that it used to not be like this. All these strange names will be morphed into their own words, and no one will remember that there was a time when this was new."


"Wow," Taylor just stared at the menu. "I never really thought of that. That's pretty huge."


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


A/N- Well, Lisa chapter. See, it's not all work and bitchiness. Just mostly work and bitchiness.

Also: I wish grilled applesquash existed. That sounds delicious.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 289- Janet


"Grocery delivery!" Crystal shouted cheerfully as she walked into our dorm. Oh wow, that was fast.


I scrambled out to help her, but I clearly needn't have bothered, she was dragging along a hovering cart loaded up with fruits and leaves. "Oh, wow, you really went all out this time," I responded, looking at the various plants.


"Yeah, I just grabbed a couple of everything," she shrugged. "We've been creating a lot of variety lately. I think Amy's finally starting to get bored with the food, so she's making more just to have something different. Here, try the turkey plant," she lifted up a large, tanned leaf.


I accepted it hesitantly. Turkey plant? It was thick, and little like cabbage in its shape and texture. Well, I've tried all the other crazy stuff, may as well add this to the list. I took a bite. Oh, wow, this really does taste like turkey. "The vegetarians are going to love this," I stated with absolute certainty. "It could use a bit of salt, but yeah, it tastes more like turkey than lunchmeat that's supposedly actually made of turkey."


"I know," Crystal agreed. "Apparently salt isn't easy to do, some metabolic process shit. I'm in school for accounting and business management, not biology."


"Pretty sure you're breaking some business rule, giving away all this free product," I joked with her.


"Are you kidding?" she smiled. "You're the only person I know who can cook this stuff. Everyone back at the base just eats it raw. They don't even own a stove. The only reason they even have a kitchen is because they needed somewhere to put the coffee machine and that thing that grows disposable cups, plates and silverware. And the only person who uses the coffee pot is Lisa. Everyone else just uses the plant that grows coffee."


"You can't be serious," I laughed. "Half the fun of food is making something amazing out of the base ingredients!"


"Truly, it is a travesty," Crystal agreed with a sage nod. "Now hook me up with that pie Tyrone promised."


"You just use me for free baking," I sighed dramatically, but I was already going to get her a slice of the fruit pie that Tyrone baked. The man was an expert with that sort of thing, and after we discovered those apples that tasted like tart watermelons, the first thing thought was 'pie'. I handed her the slice we saved.


"No, I use Tyrone for free baking," she corrected, accepting the small plate and fork from me. "I use you for your friendship with Tyrone. Mmm, this is delicious."


....


"So how did your citizenship test go?" Tyrone asked. He was in the kitchen clicking away at the laptop. I could smell something in the oven, probably some of that experiment in banana bread. One of the fruits was something like a hybrid between banana and peach, and Tyrone was seeing what he could do with that.


"Not bad," I replied. "Didn't have any problems at all. Oh, and I signed up on your group imigration code. Did you get Mike and Jo to go for it, too?"


"They're still chewing it over," Tyrone replied. You know how it is, the whole 'we'll see how it turns out for you' shit."


I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, kinda expected it. Oh well, if they don't want to be part of this from the beginning, we can find people who do. I bet Aly would go for it."


"Aly's a poli-sci major who can't even make ramen noodles," Tyrone smirked.


"She'd still do it!" I insisted.


"Yeah, if she thought it'd help her get into your pants," he countered.


He was right, though. "Yeah, not a good idea," I sighed, slumping onto the couch. "So what are you looking at?"


"Just possible places to move to," he responded. "We want to stay close to the portal, but everyone wants to stay close to the portal. That's why Avalon set a thirty mile stretch of non-colonized land around it, so no one could monopolize the whole area."


"So what do we have to pick from?" I asked. May as well find out what we're looking for.


"Crapton of French Canadian separatists to the north," he answered. "I think we can rule them out as an option. We're not French, we're not Canadian, and while they legally have to accept our citizenship if we move there, there's no law forcing them to come to our restaurant."


"If we get really desperate, maybe I can get Crystal to talk Amy into making a species of snails that produce maple syrup?" I joked. He laughed as well. "So, got any that aren't completely horrible?"


"Well, a pretty big 'personal freedoms' group that's 'founded on libertarian principles'," he answered. "They've clustered mostly in the Boston area. It's actually surprising how many people they're getting. I would have thought they'd freak out a bit about the whole 'all seeing god Empresses' thing going on. But it looks like they really like Avalon's hands-off Imperial government structure or something. Hell if I know what they're thinking. Politics is just choosing between a giant douche and a turd sandwich, far as I'm concerned."


"We might be able to work with that," I agreed. I popped open my laptop to find out what a libertarian was. Specifically the ones on Avalon. Blah blah, USA corrupt, blah blah abuse of power, blah blah colonies will be abused and exploited. The list went on, but they had a couple of the videotaped interviews with Khepri and Gaea and the Avalon constitution on their website. Plus promises of a plan to claim all eastern North America. Kinda nutty, but you have to be crazy to leave your home world for another like this, so who was I to judge? Meanwhile, Tyrone kept talking.


"There's a puritanical religious freedom group that's also got a good chunk nearby, but I think I'd rather not," he responded. "A little too 'traditional', if you know what I mean."


In other words, the openly gay black man wants to avoid living in the racist homophobic country. I wasn't going to argue. "We'd probably be better off with the French," I agreed. "I don't want to be burned at the stake for the sorcery of cooking something without the use of a deep frier."


"And a lot of tiny clusters nearby that are too small to qualify as their own territories," he added. "They'll either form up into something together, or be absorbed by their neighbors in a year or two. No one really seems to want to move inland right now. If we're willing to go out a couple hundred more miles, Dragon has some mining cities that have the population, the money, and would probably be happy to see some home cooked food."


"Pass," I answered. "The mines won't last very long. Sure, it'd be good for a while, but once that dries up everyone will move out."


"So, New Boston looks like the winner," he responded.


"New Boston?" I asked incredulously.


"Hey, they're a society of political activists, you expected them to be creative?"


"Touché."


....


"What's wrong?" I asked Tyrone. He looked like he hadn't slept at all.


"We're asking for too much," he replied. "The New Boston city-state isn't willing to give us space for the restraunt in the city itself, and we sure as fuck can't buy the amount of land we need."


"Don't give up yet," I insisted. "We can go somewhere else, maybe? The mining towns if we have to. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing." Fuck.


"Maybe," he sighed. "There's one option to keep us nearby, if not the city itself. You're not going to like it."


"What?" I asked.


"We'd have to get married," he looked at me like he was apologizing for killing my pet goldfish or something. "They're offering incentives to get young couples and families to move in. Even more if you're willing to adopt children. We have the first half of that down. It would mean, essentially, we'd have enough space that if we were willing to, we could turn our house into the restaurant. While still being close enough to the population centers to get actual traffic. If we get Mike and Jo to take up neighboring slots, that'll be the space we need to make it work."


"Okay, we'll do it," I agreed. "The marriage part, not the adoption. And you'd better not fool around with any more of my boyfriends."


"It was just that one time!"


....


I looked at our books. Fuck, this was such a mistake. The idea itself was sound, of course. But we made one crucial mistake. We opened a business that provided food, in a place where everyone already had enough food for free.


Supply and demand, with almost no demand at all. We had a few regular customers, enough to keep us afloat only because our supplies were, essentially, free. It's remarkable how much less you spend when you don't have to pay for most of your supplies, or to feed yourselves. But the electricity and gas for cooking was costly.


Crystal had given me the 'seeds' that let us grow almost everything Gaea designed thus far. That was a huge help, since one of Avalon's policies was that a given individual got the seed code for exactly one type of plant. The rest would have to sort itself through trade, or buying extra seed types. Because of that, we could provide mixes that others couldn't and had enough food growing to provide for more than ourselves and an immediate family member or two. That was just barely enough to keep us afloat.


"Don't worry about it too much," Tyrone insisted. "This is the most difficult part. Restaurants are always high risk, especially early on. Once we start gaining a rep, and the city gets large enough that this area can't rely on the Yggdrasil alone to supply the population, then it'll get better. Right now, all we need to do is stay afloat, no more."


....


I stared at the clock. Two in the afternoon. Anywhere else, this would be the lull before the storm. Here, it was just the lull before more lull. Mike rushed in. "Guys! They're here!"


"They who?" I asked.


"They! Them! The Empress! A few others."


I shot up. Holy fuck. "Tyrone!" I shouted. "Get in here!"


"What?" He rushed in, looking at us.


"Remember that break we needed?" I smiled. "I think we got it."


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

A/N- Random Avalon Citizen chapter. Requested and delivered. That'll be tree fiddy.

Also: two South Park references in one chapter!

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 290- Victoria


"How's it going, Director Dunn?" I smiled sweetly as I walked into the meeting. I knew her answer before I finished asking the question, based solely on a combination of frustration and impotent anger directed only partially toward me. Mom must have raked her over the coals during their most recent clash. I wasn't there for it, and for legal bullshit no one could tell me what happened, but they couldn't hide their emotions. Mom didn't even try, pretty much radiating satisfaction.


She just looked at me. "Good morning, Miss Dallon," she replied.


"Shouldn't you be referring to me by my cape name?" I asked. "We are on the job, after all. And you wouldn't refer to your people by their civilian identities during an official meeting, would you?"


She really should watch her salt intake, I decided as I examined her blood pressure. What is it about these PRT Directors and their inability to watch their diets? So glad I don't have to worry about that anymore.


"Very well, Victoria," the woman almost choked on the words. "Please, have a seat and we'll begin."


When I decided to use my actual name, it was more for convenience than anything. The fact that it seemed to piss off stuffy people? Best surprise birthday gift ever. I activated a couple of forcefield panels, the latest addition to my power armor, and sat down on them. While most of the team had full body shielding systems from the Khonsu tissue, I had a better design. Created by Dragon, based off Narwhal's powers, and using the EB reactor that our tinkers cooked up. If you had superhuman reflexes, it was actually a lot better than the Khonsu shields. They were invisible to the naked eye, so I probably looked like some kind of mime or something.


Just one more of the many, many ways I found to piss off the Director without actually doing anything wrong.


Dunn glared at me slightly. "We've recieved seven requests for healing, two of which meet the protocols for highest priority," she informed, watching me to see if I called bullshit on her this time. "Four of them are requesting the 'optimization' treatment as well."


"And the Case 53s?" I asked. This was always our sticking point. All of the least unfortunate, the ones like Sveta who could never live normal lives, were already restored. We'd moved on to the ones that were deformed, but functional. Dunn was frustrated with the 'lack of progress' because of time 'wasted' on them. She'd prefer we focus on the more powerful of the injured heroes. Working with the most useful and powerful, instead of the ones most in need.


"Twelve requests," she answered. True again.


"Nineteen? Alright, I can probably do all that in one day," I replied. That was true, unless some of the Case 53s were extreme examples. Some, especially the ones that were truly alien, were exhausting. Possibly taking an hour or more each. But we'd moved on from those extremes, and now seemed to take around fifteen minutes on average. "Do the priority cases have amputations or anything severe?"


"No," she answered. "One Protectorate hero who suffered extreme burns, mostly recovered. Probable pain killer addiction," Okay, that will be easy to handle. "The other has been paralyzed for two years, and recently had a trigger event with telekinetic powers. Based on your past performances, they should be simple."


"Sounds it," I agreed. "Tell the ones who want optimized that there's no promises I'll be able to get to them today." Those were always tough ones as well. More predictable than the Case 53s, at around fifty minutes each.


"Understood," she responded, sounding distinctly unhappy. "The recent court ruling also mandates I inform you that Mrs. Dallon is the de facto legal counsel and representative of the Case 53s and unaffiliated parahumans that you are healing from now on, from the moment they're placed on the waiting list to when you finish their regeneration. She'll be at the hospital, speaking with them while you're working on the priority cases. She may wish to speak to you about specific patients. That is between you and her to discuss on site."


"Okay," I agreed. Way to go, Mom.


....


"I wish you wouldn't antagonize her like that," Chevalier chided me as we traveled to the hospital, flying over Philadelphia's streets. It was only about three miles away from the HQ, faster to use the suits than to take a vehicle.


"We both know she deserves it," I countered. "The only reason she still has a job is because my powers aren't admissible in court."


"And because she never did anything illegal," he added. "Even if you could prove everything you claim, it only means she followed the letter of the agreement instead of the spirit. You really should drop it."


"Nah, it's far more fun watching her squirm," I replied.


"You're not making any friends with the PRT doing that," he pointed out.


"I'd rather not be friends with people like her," I dismissed. "Besides, everyone else loves me. I'm the one teaching the troops how to really use the M7s the way they deserve to be used. Philly's second only to Calvert's Elite in terms of drill success right now. And all these capes I'm patching up that sign on to the Protectorate, they love me. All those other Directors that end up enjoying the benefits of my work at least want to keep me happy. Of course, now a few of their capes are suing for coercive tactics, but you can thank your Director for that."


"There's no evidence of that," he replied. "You don't even know it's true with your power."


"Only because she never answered the question," I argued. "We both know she's guilty."


The spike of resignation, annoyance and disgust registered on my senses easily enough. But I'd spent enough time around Chevalier to know the feelings weren't directed toward me. He knew I was right. "Still, your efforts are better spent on building up, not tearing down. Let your mother and the Internal Affairs guys handle it. If she's guilty, they'll prove it and she'll be punished to the proper extent of the law. No need to be petty about it."


"You're underestimating me," I replied. "I'm keeping her off balance. The more she's focused on me, the more chances for her to make mistakes elsewhere. Everything else is just icing on the cake."


And now he was a little frustrated with me. "Please," he sighed. "At least give it a rest for a little while. She can't do anything to touch you, but it's starting to hurt discipline with the rest of team. I know you think the system's broken. But at least give a chance to work without you sabotaging it, okay?"


"Well, since it's you, and you're asking so nicely, I guess I can stop," I agreed. "Maybe you can help me come up with something else to do, instead? We can, say, discuss it over dinner tonight?"


A spike of annoyance and concern. "You know that can't happen, Victoria."


"Don't see why not," I turned over and flew while laying on my back, pushing a bit ahead of him so he could get a look at my figure. The advantages to my smaller, sleeker, almost form fitting costume.


"You're way too young," he argued. I had to admit, it was impressive how much he managed to not let me distract him. I knew he found me attractive, he just didn't let it affect him. Some women might have found that a little insulting. I thought it was hot.


"As far as I know, the only things I'm 'too young' for are buying booze and running for President," I countered. "I can do anything I want with anyone who wants to let me." I slowly parted my toes while keeping my heels together, then tapped them together again.


"You know what I mean," he carefully avoided looking at me. "I'm almost twice your age."


"Clearly that doesn't bother me," I responded. "And I know it doesn't bother you as much as you pretend it does."


"It would be professionally inappropriate," he tried.


"Yeah, you've tried that one before," I reminded him. "I don't work in your chain of command."


"Your mother would find a way to get me sent to the Birdcage," he added.


"She'll come around to the idea," I countered. "Seriously, she managed to be okay with Amy getting engaged to the notorious supervillain that held her hostage and fed me to bees. I think she can handle me dating the hot guy that leads the Protectorate."


"Why are you even interested in me?" He asked. "There are plenty of boys your age to think about."


"We get along great, and I'm into the strong, smart, sensitive types," I responded. That and the armor. I didn't know what it was about men in armor that got me so worked up, but I'd always had a thing for it and all the heroes I knew that wore it.


Heck, even Armsmaster. For those brief few seconds between the first time I met him, and the first time he spoke to me. I'm sure if Mannequin hadn't killed him, he would have made some robot very happy some day. But there was no way in hell he was ever going to get a human girlfriend.


"It's not going to happen, Victoria," he asserted.


Wanna bet? I thought. I said nothing, instead turned slowly in the air until I was facing the 'normal' way for flying again. I'd let him wonder if he upset me by turning me down, for a bit. Really, I was just letting him get a look at me.


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


A/N- When Vicky wants something, she'll find ways to get it. Also: I hope a Vicky-Ingénue meeting can occur at some point in this story.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 291- Taylor


"This is really good," I said before taking another bite of the stir-fry I'd ordered. I recognized some of the artificial vegetables as ones that I had come up with while idly chatting with Amelia. I couldn't help but smile at that. "I'm so glad you talked me into coming here."


"Told you so," Lisa smiled. "And please stop thinking about your pillow talk with your girlfriend. I want to enjoy my meal."


"So how did you even find out about this place?" I asked, meeting her eyes as I dipped into the link for a brief mental equivalent to a hug with Amelia. We were never truly apart from each other. Meanwhile, I considered the benefits of cooked food. Maybe we should create some plants specifically with the intent for them to be cooked before eaten. We should also look into foods that need to be processed, at the moment anything made from grain had to be imported from Aleph.


"Well, Crystal asked for about a hundred and fifty different production seeds," Lisa answered.


"Huh, woulda thought she'd ask Amelia for something like that," I answered. The production seeds were one of the few things we kept pretty regulated. Everyone who came to Avalon was given one seed. When planted it would produce enough fruit to feed a single person. Of course 'one person' in this case was by the standard of an American oversized diet, so in reality they could probably support two people each. Plus the vaguely lettuce like flavor and texture of eating Yggdrasil directly. But it was one person, one seed, and each made one flavor of fruit.


This was an artificial method to generate a trade economy, but it was a useful one. No one liked to eat the same thing all the time. Five families could easily have twenty different types of seed between them, and would barter with each other however they prefered to get a mix of options. That, plus the low scale personal livestock farming that had already started, would be the basis on which future economies would be born.


"I probably talk to Crystal more than Amelia does," Lisa responded. "Mostly about her handling of the west coast team."


"How is that going, by the way?" I asked. I knew there weren't any problems, then I would have been told. I was kept pretty much constantly updated on Victoria's antics in Philly. Although Carol was the one making the real waves. But that didn't mean there wasn't anything interesting happening.


"Really well, for the most part," she responded. "Anima and Clotho are really putting a rogue friendly face on our organization out there. They recently talked a new healer into joining the team. He's pretty lackluster, though."


Healers were a rare luxury, I couldn't imagine how one would be considered lackluster.


"An aura that grants moderate regeneration to everyone within a hundred feet or so," she answered my unspoken question. "It's like years of natural healing done in minutes, without scarring. Not enough to regrow organs or repair nerve damage, but it can beat diseases that are otherwise incurable like HIV or cancer. Even seems to halt aging and stabilize dying individuals in the radius, if sometimes only temporarily."


"Still plenty of uses for that," I argued.


"In the private sector, absolutely. There it's great stuff," she partially agreed. "But for our needs, it's lackluster. Some of our Tinkers are looking forward to seeing if they can imitate, range boost, or emulate it with machines one way or another."


I flagged the waitress while wondering what that power was meant to do to achieve the conflict that the Passengers were trying to achieve. It was able to heal both allies and enemies at the same time, so maybe that was the point? Access to healers tended to make parahumans less cautious. If nothing short of death was a consequence, and in Pantheon's case even that was only inconvenient, then of course there'd be more willingness to get into combat.


"Can I help you, ma'am?" the girl asked after approaching. Once again I was struck by the age dissonance. This young woman was older than me by a few years, probably college age, and I couldn't help but think of her as, somehow, 'younger' than me.


"I'd like a refill," I told her. 'Joanne', according to the name tag. "And the check."


"Oh, no, we can't charge you," she responded. Oh god damn it, it's going to be like that.


"I'd really rather you did," I responded. "After all, we'll probably come back here a lot." Understatement, Amelia would love some of this. Our diets consisted almost entirely of 'that stuff growing on our walls' and 'takeout'. And after the loss of Brockton Bay, we didn't even have the takeout. There was a time I when I enjoyed cooking. "Actually, while we're on the subject, I'd love to talk to your chef. Maybe get some recipes."


"Uh... sure, I'll go back and ask," she agreed, rushing off and completely forgetting my refill.


"Welcome to the splendors of international fame," Lisa smirked at me. "And ruling a planet."


"Think they'll get used to us if we show up often enough?" I asked. "I mean, there were a few good places in Brockton Bay that didn't flip out when capes showed up. Hopefully it'll be like that."


"True, they were okay with capes," Lisa replied. "But if the President showed up? I think it'd be a different story."


I slouched a little, before forcing myself back into proper posture. Too many people around here watching, had to look good for the public. "Is it too late to go back to mostly anonymous supervillain?"


"Yep," she smiled. "Not even faking your own death will get you out of it, now."


I was tracking the waitress, as she came out with a handsome young man. He looked a little like Brian, and there was a time that might have bothered me. But that part of my life was over, whatever might have come of the two of us if things had been different, I don't think I'd have traded it for what I had right now.


"Good day, Empress, I'm Tyrone, co owner of this establishment. How can I help you?" And just like that, my mind shuffled him into 'kid' status as well. Eager to please, a little scared even. I found myself feeling bad, actually.


"I was just telling your waitress how much I loved the food," I informed him, and watched the relief show on his face.


"Thank you," Tyrone responded, nervous that I might switch over to a complaint at any moment. These people were just so blatant and obvious in their reactions that I almost felt bad for reading them. Is this how Lisa views people? I glanced over at my best friend. She nodded, smiling a little.


"I'd like to ask you about a few of the recipes," I told him. "I admit, we never really thought of what we could do with these foods. I was wondering where you even got the idea for all of this."


"Sure," he agreed, relaxing a little warming. Clearly he felt confident about his cooking, at least. "I've been a big fan of yours for a while. I... was in your, umm, territory when the Slaughterhouse Nine came."


Oh, my turn to feel awkward. I don't even recognize him. "I was just doing what I could to help."


"Well, you did help," he replied. "More than most people will ever realize. After you started Pantheon, Jan and I. Umm, she's my partner. We were in culinary arts together in college. We started getting ideas, and experimenting with different recipes. Crystal, umm, Eki, was kinda one of Jan's friends from highschool, so that helped a lot. And when you announced Avalon, we knew we had to sign up."


"I'm really glad you did," I smiled at the guy. He was cute in an overeager puppy sort of way. "This is delicious."


He blushed. It was hard to see on his dark skin, but he was blushing. "Do you really mean that?"


"Yes," Lisa interjected. "In fact, we were talking about it while we ate. That and the idea of cultural identity. How Avalon would develop into its own unique culture instead of being defined by the countries its citizens came from. I think what you're doing here is a step on that path. You may only be a bit of a niche market right now, but in fifty or a hundred years, I think places like this will be normal. A point of national pride, even. France has its wine, Texas has its barbeque, and we'll have the stuff you're creating here."


"You think so?" he asked. Lisa had an interesting way of offering praise, but it seemed to be working.


"Absolutely," she replied. "You probably should write down your recipes. I know I'd love to see a cookbook showing all the stuff you've come up with. Maybe even think up a few fruit you'd like to see that haven't been made yet?"


"Umm, actually, there is one," he suggested. "We could really use milk of some sort. It's a filler for a lot of baking, and there just isnt any alternatives for it around here. Not even something like coconut or soy milk."


"That's probably possible," I agreed. Why didn't we think of that ourselves? "I'll let Amelia know about it. Bring her by sometime for a meal and a meeting to discuss your suggestions. How's next Thursday sound?"


"We'll be here," he responded eagerly.


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


A/N- Don't worry, I'll do something horrible eventually.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 292- Crystal


"Our intel from the PRT shows the Elite are getting pretty active in the area. They've pulled in three more parahumans from other cities. Mantellum's the scary one for us. Shaker-Trump. Nullifes pretty much any power near him or directed at him, including precogs. Genius Loci, considering how your power works... you're under orders to avoid him at all costs. It might kill you if you're in range of his power."


"Got it," his voice was a soft rumble through the building. His prefered state of being.


"Sveta, you too," I added. "His power might interact with yours in a way that makes you revert."


Her eyes widened. The girl had night terrors about returning to her form before Victoria restored her. "I promise I'll avoid him."


"Good," I nodded. "Anima, Clotho, Dubstep. The three of you have powers that simply won't work against him. But his power doesn't seem to influence tinker tech, so your armors should remain functional. Don't rely on it, we don't know how it'll interact with the EB reactors. If we're forced to fight him, my powers and weapons are probably our best option. Or contacting the PRT. We know he's not immune to containment foam. I've already put in requests for some for us. Dragon's working on at a containment foam dispenser in Echo."


"That'll be useful," Derek responded. In this group, he was the one with the least combat viability right now. Sonic manipulation and amplification. It made him one of our better Thinkers, actually, able to hear heartbeats from half a block away, but his blaster power took a lot of time to build up into something effective, and when it did it exploded with force enough to shatter concrete. He didn't have a nonlethal setting.


Echo would be his named armor, once it was completed. Capable of interacting with his power to create a mile wide echolocation, harness his power's effect as a supplemental power supply, and inhibit his explosions to make them more controllable. His layout would be somewhat of a balance between mine and Sabah's, capable of an array of close and long range attacks, plus some sensory abilities.


"Boost," I looked at our newest recruit. "If you don't mind, I'd like to get you in for power testing this week. Our Tinkers are interested in your power. If we're lucky, they might find ways to improve it and make you more effective."


"Sure, I could use a break from sunny warm California to go to the frozen hell of New England winter," he smirked. The guy wasn't my favorite member. A gym rat who used his healing powers more as functional steroids for him and his buddies rather than, say, healing the sick. He wasn't a bad person, near as I could tell. Just not someone I had a lot of respect for. Having him was useful, but I'd be happy to see him placed somewhere else.


"It'll be on Avalon," I reminded him. "I think you'd like it there. The ground itself is health food."


"Yer shittin' me," he replied.


"Absolutely serious," I responded. "High iron, calcium and various other minerals. Approved by multiple biotinkers and two of the most powerful biothinkers on the planet. If they say it's healthy, I believe it."


"Baller," he responded. I had no idea what that meant, but I assumed it was a positive response. "Think I can bring some back for my buddies?"


"Don't see why not," I answered.


....


"If you want me to leave so Lily can join the team after she's done with the portals, I'll understand" Sabah sobbed. "I'm sure they can find something else for me to do. Or I can just go back and finish my degree."


I let her finish, then gave her a hug. Probably not the most professional way of handling things, but screw professionalism, she needed the comfort. "You don't have to worry about that. You are an integral part of this team. My team. I'm not trading you out just because Lily dumped you."


"Really," she looked at me like she was surprised by the answer. "But she's... she's so much better than I am..."


"Not from where I'm sitting, she's not," I responded. "Yeah, sure, she's the more outright deadly option, but that's only useful when you want to kill someone. Who was the last enemy we had where lethal force was an option? Endbringers don't count." Plus Lily is an emotionally needy wreck, has a history of discipline problems, and Lisa has other things she plans to use our primary Endslayer for. If anything, I'm lucky they broke up so I didn't get stuck with the choice of both or neither, because I'm not sure which would suck more.


Sabah, meanwhile, was chewing over the question I asked. "I don't know. The Fallen?"


"Exactly," I answered. "I didn't even lead a team during that mission, and I never want to. Someone else can do the killing, or giving those kinds of orders. I just don't have it in me to do that."


"She has nonlethal options, too," Sabah argued.


"As a ranged fighter? Yes," I agreed. "But nothing Anima can't do. Defensively? If you can't handle it, I'm more than willing to call Alexandria for help. And chances are Victoria will be done with her assignment soon, or at least it'll be reduced to a part time thing. After that, I'll have her back on the team. I'm not saying Lily wouldn't be useful." Though I'm certainly thinking it loudly. "But I'd rather have you. You're the one that stepped up to help me after Vicky got reassigned. You're the one that connected with independent heroes and rogues like Anima and Boost. I wouldn't trade you for anyone."


She smiled. "If you're sure."


"Go get into your armor and kick up the lie detection if you don't believe me," I responded.


"Thank you," she hugged me back. "I'm sorry, you probably think I'm being a drama queen."


"Not really," I replied. "But I grew up around Vicky and Amy. Compared to those two, there's not much that qualifies as drama. Now don't worry about your place on this team. It's here as long as you want it. And now that we have all of that out of the way, don't be afraid to talk to the team. They're your friends too, you know. You're allowed to come to any of us if you need it."


"I think that was part of the problem," Sabah sighed. "She didn't like how friendly I was with Beth."


Lily's the jealous type? "Can't say that surprises me," I agreed. "You two do have a lot in common." Which is something Sabah and Lily never had going for them. It didn't take Lisa to see that. "Just do me a favor and wait a while before starting up another office romance. It's really not good for team discipline."


She flinched a little.


"Sabah, please tell me you and Beth aren't..."


"No!" she exclaimed. "No, Beth and I are just friends. There's nothing going on between us. There never was. She's not attracted to women."


"Okay, that's a relief," I responded. My concern was more about Anima being even more emotionally needy than Lily. That would have been the same story all over again. And where it was easy for me to pick between Sabah and Lily from a team dynamic, or even a friendship dynamic for that matter, being forced to choose between Anima and Clotho would have been a fucking nightmare for both strategy and morale.


The fact of the matter was I needed the two of them more than I needed the rest of the team combined. Competing with the Elite and Alexandria for recruits was a pain, and Pantheon's rep only carried me so far. Sabah was our poster child for affiliated rogues. Moreso than Dinah was or Anima could be. Not that those two weren't good for the image, but they were too powerful to represent what we needed. Not a lot of people could empathize with 'Master seven, shaker, striker, mover, blaster, and stranger subcategories' or 'strongest precog on the planet'. They could look at Clotho and imagine that if we found her valuable, we would find them valuable as well.


....


"Hey, Lisa," I spoke as she answered the phone.


"I see it went well," she replied.


"Yeah, pretty much just like you said," I answered. "So you can promise me Lily won't be coming to Cali?"


"Not unless something massively drastic happens," she assured me. "Don't worry, you are doing a great job out there and I have no desire to rock the boat. I'd rather spend my time worrying about actual problems instead. Besides, Lily is going to have her work cut out for a while."


"Thanks," I replied.


"Oh, I found your friend, Janet," she added. "She told me to say hello, and that her restraunt is doing well thanks to you. Taylor's planning to take Amelia there sometime this week to chat about new food designs. I think we've found our new takeout place, at least until someone builds a pizza joint around here."


"I knew they could do it," I responded. I was glad for her, this had been her dream ever since highschool. Plus or minus her home being destroyed by Endbringers twice in one year, moving to a different dimension, and cooking plants that only exist thanks to biomanipulation powers. "Tell Taylor to order the sourmelon pie next time she gets the chance. There are no words for how good it is."


"I'll let her know," Lisa agreed.


"Oh, and we need to schedule a power test with Boost soon," I remembered. "And if it's possible, maybe get Echo finished sooner rather than later."


"I'll send both messages along to our tech division," she answered.


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


A/N- Mantellum struck me as the sort that'd wind up with a group like the Elite.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 293- Emma


"Dragon? You there?" I asked.


"Yes," the response came after a few moments. I'd already concluded that superhuman multitasking was part of Dragon's power list. Even with the AI tech I'd seen her use, no natural human could think as quickly as she did. Putting her in a class alongside myself and Taylor. Somewhere between the two of us in overall ability, from what I was able to estimate. As a Tinker, we didn't bother analyzing her powerset, there really wasn't much point.


"I might have found something," I responded. "A new anti-Endbringer weapon. Maybe even the golden gun for the golden god himself."


"You have my undivided attention," Dragon responded. I tapped a few buttons and gave her the initial theory. The overall information would take a bit longer, there was a lot of data to draw from. "A time breaker?" she responded.


"Effectively a disintegration gun," I replied. It distorted the flow of time in spectacularly destructive ways. Doing to the fourth dimension what Missy could do to the first three when she wanted to break something. "A bit of a splice between the device we captured from the CIU, the readings from Khonsu, and the stuff you gave me in regards to Clockblocker's power. We already know Clockblocker and Khonsu's powers work on Endbringers," So did the CIU weapon, to a certain extent. "Which means it's possible the weapon can hurt them as well. The only question is if it can kill the core."


"There's also the matter of its inherent instability," Dragon responded. She already read the complete schema? Over two hundred hours of accumulated data analyzed in just a little over a minute. She definitely has me beat for processing speed.


"That is a problem," I agreed. There was very little we could do to predict the area damaged when activated. It was equally likely to destroy a single atom as it was to destroy a city block. "I'm trying to find a way around that, but I've hit a dead end to where my Tinkering can take me. Maybe you and Leet can do better?"


"Maybe," Dragon responded. "It seems to me the biggest vulnerability is in the range. We can't equip it to a missile since once the generator deactivates, so does the effect. We'd need more time to do what needs done."


"A melee weapon would be ideal," I agreed. "Except sooner or later, the generator itself would explode, and the inherent randomness means we won't know until activating whether the weapon's a dud or not. My plan is to install them into Khepri's weaponry and your own AI combat drones. If Victoria's power can predict the device, we could provide her with one as well." Hers would be a very effective combination, if it worked.


"They're good plans," Dragon agreed. "I'll see what I can do to improve effectiveness. This might be a method to kill the Endbringers that are functionally immune to Atropos' power."


"Their builders can't account for everything," I replied. "Or the things are going to be so turtled up that they're no longer capable of offensive attacks. Each time we kill one, the next generation is that much less effective." As long as we avoid the fight with Tohu and Bohu.


....


I looked at the man known as Boost. Tall, bulked up to the point where it was actally a little gross. My superhuman senses kicked in, letting me see the damage caused by steroid abuse and years of bulk building instead of actual well rounded exercise. He'd also clearly lost some mass recently, his power at work regenerating him into a proper, healthy, body type. The energy of his power washed over me as well, attempting to heal what little remained of my legitimately organic tissue and failing miserably.


"Like what you see, babe?" he asked, and flexed.


"Thinker power," I answered. "My sight is more effective than a lot of this equipment."


"Cool," he shrugged. "So, how about after the checkup we go out for a bite to eat? I hear good things about the walls. You could take me back to your place and show me what else is edible around here."


God damn it, he's one of those. Oh well, nothing I haven't dealt with before. "I doubt my boyfriend would appreciate that very much." And I know I wouldn't. I looked at the scanners. His power was working on living tissue samples we'd collected. Worked on human blood, worked on the lab mice. Didn't touch the Yggdrasil or plant material. Didn't have an effect on lizard or bird, either. "Healing appears to be limited to mammalian life," I informed the computer.


"Cool," he answered again, then looked over at Clarice. "How about you? Care to show me the sights?"


Seriously? At least with me he has the excuse of saying I look over eighteen. But Clarice?


"Sorry, I have-" Clarice started.


"Actually," I interrupted. "Clarice has this game she plays at her highschool." This is your fair warning to stop hitting on the underage girl and avoid the very painful beating that's about to come. "She won't go out with anyone unless they can take her ribbon away from her."


"But-" Clarice started.


"Yeah, I know your ribbon was lost in Brockton Bay," I stopped her again. "But I'm pretty sure a sparing match would be just as good. Besides, we need to test his power in action, and a few bruises are just the ticket."


"Sure, that sounds like fun," Boost agreed, smiling and looking at Clarice. "Don't worry, I'll go easy on you."


The next few minutes were the highlight of my day.


....


"Hey, Ems," Zach poked his head into the lab. "Guess what I just discovered."


I smiled at him. "Did you realize that Riley's genetic analysis tech works on nonhumans, and managed to hybrid yourself a puppy with a Japanese Squirrel? Because I did that two weeks ago. Still haven't gotten around to actually growing one. Cross species genetics get ugly."


"That's possible?" Zach asked. "Well, I thought I had something cool, but now all I can think about is taunting all the furverts by showing them just how grotesque their fetish actually is when you see what it really looks like."


"Says the guy who thinks the hottest thing about me is that I can transform?" I crossed my arms and took a displeased stance, complete with glare and tapping one foot on the ground. "Do you really think you have room to criticize?"


"Hey, all your transformed states are human," he defended. "That's just the fun of getting it on after a haircut or dye job, only you can do it more often. Besides, that's nowhere near the hottest thing about you."


"Oh?" I smiled, walking toward him. I put a bit of extra swing in my step. He could be a charmer when he wanted to, and I had to love him for ignoring how not human my anatomy really was. "Now I have to know what you think is hottest about me."


"Oh, sure, put me on the spot," he complained. But he was smiling back, and approached me quickly. We had the lab to ourselves, this late at night Trevor and Riley would be in bed. That left only Rey, and he had his own lab focused on how to best exploit the Endbringer tissue. He caressed my cheek. "To start with, your lips." He kissed me softly, and I responded with a soft moan. If he knew my response was an act, then he pretended that away as well.


I barely felt it when Taylor punched me in the face hard enough to break my zygomatic and maxilla. I barely felt it when I was trapped in New Delhi, my skin boiling even when I was using my hybrid state to keep me, my armor, and Dennis alive.


I couldn't feel the gentle effort he put into his kisses and caresses, the way he softly bit my neck. All that was wasted on me. Part of the price I paid for my powers.


I had it better than many parahumans. Like, say, Lisa. It didn't disgust me, I still enjoyed the intimacy, and my rewired brain didn't experience even the basics of that desire in the first place. Not being able to want to was better than wanting to but being unable, at least from where I was sitting. So I pretended the appropriate responses, tapped into my power to analyze his physiological responses, and spent some quality time with my boyfriend.


For about three and a half minutes. Then the alarm sounded.


"REALLY?!"


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

A/N- Zach: "Okay, now it's fucking personal."

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 294- Taylor


The alarm screeched its displeasure, and I shot up in bed, reaching over to shake Amelia awake. Two in the morning? God damn it. Amelia complained unhappily in her sleep, then realized what was going on, and was instantly as awake as me. RealizationHorrorAlert. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing. I rolled out of bed, and she did the same on her side.


"Do you know anything?" she asked.


I reached out with my senses, looking for information as I put on my armor. I found it with Victoria. Every Pantheon member's specialized armor was quantum linked to Avalon and functioned as a relay bug. A fact that was a closely guarded secret. In essense, it meant I was backup any time any of our teams needed help.

"Confirming Leviathan, Pacific ocean, likely California," Director Dunn told Chevalier and the rest of the gathered team. Victoria was already there with them. "Dragon's transport vessel is en route now."


"Understood," Chevalier replied. "Arclight, you take charge here while I'm gone."


"Yes, sir," the other man answered. The voice tech in the armor made it clear he wasn't happy about that command, although I didn't know why.


"I'm sending Janus after you," I informed Victoria.


"May as well cancel the transport," Vicky cut. "We have special pickup plans."


"Miss," the Director responded. "You're not the one in charge."


"Oh, I know," she answered. "But I just got instructions from the people who are. We'll have a teleporter here in..." she paused for a second, and I took the prompt for what it was.


"About three minutes," I answered.


"Five minutes," Vicky finished.​

"North America, they think," I answered, grabbing my armor. What does it say about us that we keep million dollar plus pieces of combat armor in our bedroom? "West coast. Could possibly be Hawaii."


"Coast? That's specific," she asked as she morphed her suit over her body.


"We know who this one is," I answered. "Leviathan's making a showing."

"It's Leviathan. I want both of you to go to the Philedelphia site and meet with Victoria and Chevalier's team," I instructed Lily and Eric. "Then bring them all to Avalon's capitol." We really need to get around to naming things.


"Understood," Eric responded, already in his armor. Lily was still not dressed. Her armor was a lot less convenient than the rest of ours, thanks to the nanofilament that let her shield herself with her power.


"Just teleport us over now," she told him. "I'll get dressed during."

​

DeterminationVindication. "The last of the originals," Amelia responded. "Do you think we'll be able to kill him?"


"Vicky's going to be pissed that it won't be her that gets to deliver the final blow," I answered. Meanwhile, my zerg were lining up for their transit. The phalanx types were top priority, taking the forward facing position. I'd trained with Missy enough that she knew what that meant. I felt the warp of space as she wove her way across the planet, creating the path my monsters started traveling through even before Amelia and I were finally able to make it outside.


"Status report?" I asked.


"Command center's powering up," Emma responded. "Ten minutes."


"It'll have to stay here," Missy spoke. "I can barely get the zerg through."


ConfusionConcern. "I thought it would be years before Avalon was populated enough to give you problems," Amelia asked.


"If we wanted to go to or from anywhere else, it would be," Missy responded. "But you're asking me to jump from our most populated area to our second most populated area. I had to detour near the south pole for this. It's almost like they planned it this way."


"Can't rule it out," Lisa cut in. "We know they managed to build the Simurgh. They might be using something like her to coordinate attacks."


"Just worry about the zerg, then," I commanded. "We'll rely on Janus to get us in position."


Meanwhile, I felt the perception shift as Atropos and Janus jumped from Bet to Avalon, and then a moment later over to our Philadelphia site to pick up Victoria and the others. I didn't bother eavesdropping on the conversation.


"Don't worry, I can provide a staging area," Dragon responded over our com systems. One of the few non-Pantheon members that we'd given that access to. "I have a number of Fafnir models in the region doing geological scans. They're versatile enough to accomplish most of what your platform can under ordinary circumstances. Leviathan is a known quantity, your more esoteric technology will be wasted on this."


GratitudeAcceptance. "Thank you," Amelia responded.


Over the course of a few seconds, Philly's Protectorate team started appearing on our teleportation platform. Victoria and Lily immediately flew toward where Lisa was waiting, followed closely by Chevalier, and then the rest of his team.


"Same plan we already discussed?" Lily asked as they landed. Normal voices, not the com systems.


"Minor changes, but nothing that concerns your roles," Lisa answered.


Emma rushed up to Vicky. "Here's that sword I told you about," she held up the weapon. It shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow, a kaleidescope unable to decide on a pattern. "The stasis forcefield is active for now. It's unbreakable in this state, and as sharp as any standard sword. If you need to you can give it Clockblocker's immovability or a cutting edge just slightly weaker than the nanorthorns. But those are huge energy drains."


"It's basically a lightsaber," Zach cut in.


"Okay, I see the options on my armor," Vicky agreed. She held the sword straight up. With a better angle, I could see how slender it was More like a fencing sword than the weapons Chevalier or Alexandria used.


"Activate the final setting and you have exactly twenty six seconds before it breaks," Emma continued. "During that time, it will be able to cut through anything, matter or energy, that isn't enforced by Atropos or Shaman's powers. We've tested it against Alexandria's power and the densest Endbringer tissue we've had the opportunity to study. Don't know if it'll cut through their core, but I'm pretty sure it will."


"Don't use it unless you absolutely fucking have to," Lisa demanded. "I know you want to get payback for Gallant, Shielder and Manpower. But the new Endbringers are designed to be immune to methods that were key in killing their predecessors. If Atropos fails-"


"I won't," Lily cut in, her voice determined.


"If Atropos fails," Lisa continued. "Then we might be better off letting Leviathan get away and trying with her power again in a year or so when he gets back for a rematch. You could be carrying the only thing that can kill the newest generation of Endbringers, since the Shaman-Rosary interaction was used on Wendigo. And we don't know how Leviathan's going to behave during this battle. We'll need to expect his rules to change."


"Fuck that," Vicky complained. "Ames will back me on this. That bastard needs to die."


"She's right," Chevalier argued, placing a hand on Vicky's shoulder. "We don't know how the Endmakers are going to react to two Endslayer combinations. If this is a third method, we need to keep it hidden as long as we possibly can."


Vicky deflated a little. "Fuck," she sighed. "Fine, we do it your way."


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

A/N- Wee, stuff!

How Vicky's new sword works: It creates a time distortion along its edge. On one side, time is accelerated to approximately twice its normal speed for an area about half a molecule thick, all along the length of the blade. On the other side, time actually flows in reverse. Not by much, mind. Anything caught along the edge is divided by their own past and future.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 295- Victoria


"We have his destination," Dragon informed. "He appears to be targeting San Fransisco, and likely the surrounding area. We'll be unable to stop him from getting into the bay, and once that happens the entire region is at risk."


I ran the thought in my head, the same thoughts everyone else faced. "He's certainly picking a historic city for his grave," I boasted, with far more confidence than I could convince myself I felt. There weren't a lot of places on earth worse for fighting Leviathan. In fact, the only place I could think of was Venice. Leviathan wasn't going to make this fight easy for us.


Space warped as Missy did her thing. I couldn't see her influence directly, but it messed with that constant stream of data that showed me how to avoid injury and kill pretty much anything in front of me. Zerg started travelling through, setting themselves up however Taylor saw fit. Meanwhile, Eric was tapping people and shifting them into location using his power. Pity it didn't work on the zerg, or the Endbringers for that matter. We could drop Leviathan off on the moon and that would be the end of it.


"Worst case scenario?" Taylor asked.


"The attack could likely splinter the San Andreas fault," Dragon answered. "We might lose all of southwestern California, in addition to significant consequences for the whole Pacific region. I'm already issuing alerts to the leaders of several nations. This could easily be a disaster on the same scale as Kyushu."


I could see the emotions bounce through the others. They weren't too different from my own. I could imagine Taylor swearing up a storm under her breath. "Victoria," she spoke, her voice ice. "Restrictions are off. Future Endbringers be damned, there is no scenario where we can afford to give anything less than our best in this battle. Leviathan cannot be allowed to survive this battle, under any circumstances. I trust you don't have a problem with that."


"Oh fuck the hell yes," I smiled.


....


The Golden Gate Bridge looks different when swarmed with giant bug monsters. Taylor had the fliers take perch all along the bridge, resting until they were needed. Leviathan's signature downpour falling off of their uncaring forms. Several of the defenders had taken to hiding under the Gargants in their positions along the coastline, trying to stay out of the rain as much as they could.


Meanwhile, I was on the bridge, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Triumvirate and watching the ocean. I wasn't sure how many of them could even see the ocean in these conditions. Certainly Alexandria couldn't. Probably not Legend, either. Who knew what Eidolon had going for him right now? I walked over to Sveta and Alexandria. The two of them appeared to be planning something. "So, you holding up okay?" I asked the girl.


Sveta looked at me. Other than a self repairing Yggrasil body suit that only functioned to give her a working shunt drive and some modesty, she was without armor. "Still scared," she admitted. "So many people are depending on us. I don't know how the two of you handle it."


"Just one of those things that comes with experience," I responded. "It gets easier with time." Alexandria gave me a glance that told me I wasn't fooling her. Of course, she wasn't fooling me, either. We were both faking it. "I'm sure you've heard I got one of the theoretical anti-Endbringer weapons."


"I saw the design being tested," Alexandria responded. "It's pretty intimidating. The goal is still to let Atropos use her power to get the kill. We need to delay the Endbringer long enough to make that a reality. You're the backup, in case that fails."


I know. God help me, I know. But it should be me to do it. That fucker stole half my friends and family from me, he trashed my city. I deserve to be the one that kills the bastard. "I understand."


She looked at me. She was harder for me to read than most, because her power kept her body in a state of near perfection. Her emotions, if indeed she even felt any, didn't impact her body significantly. That was even more true after the improvements I gave her. But I could tell she didn't believe me, expected me to break rank and take it into my own hands. She might not be wrong.


The swell started before I could say anything more, the initial tidal wave of the many that Leviathan would unleash this day. I lived through this once already, and I would do it again, but the sheer scale of his power was intimidating. Even Amy couldn't use her power like this. There was shimmering as forcefields came into place. Most from the zerg, some from local defenders and Protectorate and Guild heroes. At some point, San Francisco had picked up a tinker forcefield capable of covering the whole city. It wasn't going to stop Leviathan's power, but it was an extra layer of defense.


"He's coming through your way," Dragon informed us, and my HUD shifted to give me an idea of where to expect. I activated the lowest setting of my laser and fired it toward the Endbringer. "That's your laser guidance," I told the others. "Hit him with everything you've got."


Fighting Leviathan in the water was normally a bad idea. The usual strategy has always been to wait for him on land, where we had the advantage. That wasn't something we could afford to do here. Eidolon struck first, and parted the ocean like something out of the bible. The Golden Gate bridge spans three miles of ocean, and is one of the more iconic landmarks in the country. That ocean was forced back, leaving an open arena.


A moment later, Leviathan splashed through the wall of water and fell a ways before landing hard on the exposed seabed. He glanced back toward the safety of the ocean behind, but chose to bolt forward toward the bridge, and us. A part of me was glad for that. If he ran, there was nothing we could do to catch him and my chance at payback would be gone.


Atropos opened fire, a wide spread that left gouges in Leviathan and shredded the ground beneath him. He was spared the worst of it by sheer speed and erratic movement. Lily might have perfect aim, but she didn't have the power to foresee an enemy's evasion attempts like I did. Of course, against an Endbringer I didn't have that power, either.


Legend's fire came next, as a series of forcefields from Narwhal hemmed the monster in, but Leviathan's shocking speed allowed him to avoid getting struck by any of them, instead allowing himself to be scratched by dozens of other potshots from lesser capes and the Zerg.


"He has a Thinker power," I spoke to our command group. "Kinda like my combat precognition. Or some weird form of personal time manipulation. I'm not sure how, but there's no possible way he can avoid attacks like this without some way to see them before they happen."


"Makes sense," Lisa agreed.


The water started caving back in around the edges of battlefield. Whatever Eidolon had done was apparently temporary. Alexandria grabbed Atropos and dived down, pulling the girl faster than her flight system could ever go on its own. Not fast enough, however, as the Endbringer broke through the side, gripped the remnants of a ship anchor that had been down there for however long, and chucked it at the pair. Alexandria was forced to let go, and the anchor dissolved as it struck Atropos.


The plan clearly wasn't to kill anyone, simply buy a chance to escape as our Endslayer was going too fast to correct her flight course without Alexandria's guidance. She hit the ground and kept going, using her power to destroy the mud and stone so she wasn't killed by colliding with it.


Looks like I'll get my shot after all, I smiled. "Sveta, I need you to throw me down in front of the Endbringer," I demanded. To her credit, she didn't hesitate. Although she dislocated my shoulder in her haste. That's going to be annoying.


I hit the ground hard enough to shatter several bones in my feet and break one ankle, but I was standing and facing the fucker that ruined my family and my future. The armor's reinforcements still held, and I shifted to my combat mode. Amplifying my physical abilities at the cost of most of my mental ones. None of which worked on Endbringers to begin with.


I charged forward, the shimmering blade in front of me set to the nanothorn grade cutting potential. Wow, that really does eat up a lot of power. It's worse than the cloak and shunt modes combined.


In a vague mirror of my fight with Baal, and Taylor's legendary last stand against Leviathan in Brockton Bay, I stabbed the Endbringer in the crotch. Not that it mattered. I didn't expect to hit anything important. Endbringers were nothing more than machines, after all. But it was the central body mass that I could reach. His core had to be in here somewhere, I'd just have to keep cutting until I found it.


Leviathan's claw came down toward me, setting off all my danger senses. I clicked over to the super cutter mode and leapt upward, glad that I could only feel pain if I wanted to. I carved a long arc over my head, splitting through his torso, his shoulder, and then along the entire arm that was coming for me. The fucker collapsed around me. And then turned into water. I stood there unable to process it for a few seconds. A water double. I wasted my attack on a fucking water double. And if I'd just thought about it for a fucking minute, I would have known better. FUCK!


My weapon flickered, and alerts popped up on my HUD warning me that the sword was about to break. I tossed it away and it vanished with an explosion little different than a cherry bomb. If it was anything like the blade's effect, I would have lost my arm.


"Leviathan sighted in C-7, M-2, and R-8," Dragon's tech rattled off.


"Something must be wrong with the system," Dragon herself spoke.


I slapped the override system. "No," I replied. "Leviathan has a new trick. He's creating body doubles made from water. They're not the real Endbringer, but they're still tough. I'd class them as a five for brute and mover. And keep in mind that any of the doubles might actually be the real thing."


"Thank you," Dragon responded.


"Leviathan duplicates sighted, C-8, F-9, M-2, R-7," the system responded.


"It won't be any of them," Lisa added. "Wherever Leviathan's at, he's choosing to fight by proxy. If you spot one, it'll just be a clone, not the real thing. For the purposes of this battle, we're fighting a Master power set."


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


A/N- Wildbow said that if Leviathan felt like fighting for real, his combat strategy wouldn't be that different from Skitters. I'm taking that at face value.

Also, I'm trying narrating the fight scene from the ones on the ground this time. I liked using Taylor and Amelia for their ability to get greater awareness of the situation than most... but it could be fun doing it like this, too.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 296- Sveta


Another tsunami rose up, this one larger than the last. It collided hard against the shields, and I watched a number of the silver panels shatter like glass. My eyes saw through the dark and the rain without difficulty. It had taken me an embarrassing amount of time to realize humans needed light in order to see, while I was comfortable reading in absolute blackness. Another Leviathan surged up on shore, only to be met by one of Khepri's giant monsters. For a moment they looked about evenly matched, but then the Endbringer started pushing the monster back. Another monster slammed into its side, slamming it to the ground where it splashed into water again.


More than a match for one of those things, not a match for two. That was a good baseline for strength. I'd seen what those weapons could do against Wendigo, I knew how they compared to my own abilities. I grabbed a cable on the bridge and tugged, using my strength to slingshot myself into the city and then onto the roof of one of the taller buildings near the coast. I was one of the most mobile capes, on par with Alexandria even though I couldn't fly. But more importantly, I was in my element here.


I'd learned a lot in the last month. What Passengers were. What Scion was. What was done to me and why we had to fight so damn hard just to survive. I also knew that somewhere, some assholes decided that it they'd rather watch the world burn than try to help. They built these incredible creatures, and instead of using them to help prepare and fight Scion, they used them to murder people by the millions. They were the only people in the multiverse that I hated more than Cauldron for turning me into a freak.


I felt the ground shudder beneath me. In the time I'd been in LA, I'd learned what an earthquake felt like using senses that no human had. This was a tiny one, not even a one on the scale. A quick aftershock followed. No, another quake, stronger than the first. Still not something a normal person would notice. The tremor carried through the water as well. Or the water carried the tremor. This is how he destroyed Newfoundland and Kyushu. He's using the water to carry a frequency that destabilizes the ground. Forces an artificial earthquake.


More copies appeared. The monsters were able to react to them faster than sight had any ability to achieve. Especially since I didn't think they could see in this kind of storm. I felt the noise a couple seconds later. They were using echolocation.


Khepri has the clones handled, I decided. She doesn't need my help. The city itself needs my help. As if to punctuate my thoughts, another tremor struck. This one a one and a half or so. Enough to be felt by normal people, but only barely. It was much worse than the last, however. And the effect wasn't changing. The next one would be a lot worse. Another step up on the Richter scale. At this rate, the city wouldn't last more than half an hour.


No one else can do this, I thought grimly. I dived into the ocean.


"Sveta? What are you doing?" Victoria asked. She'd still be above, doing whatever it was she could do to help.


"Finding Leviathan," I answered. I was glad for the armor covering my face. I didn't need it to breathe down here. In fact, I didn't need to breathe at all. The bit of theorizing we could do on my body, the bodies of many Case 53s, were samples of alien species collected by the Entities in their travels. I couldn't begin to imagine the kind of nightmare world that would evolve Garotte. But I could survive deep space as well as anything this planet had to offer. Except maybe swimming in lava, and I could probably handle that as well.


"Are you insane?" Vicky exclaimed. "Sveta, you can't fight him. Not down there. He can't be beaten in the water."


I'm not going to watch another city die because I wasn't good enough. "Funny," I responded. "Neither can I."


"I'm relaying our best estimates of his coordinates to your armor's GPS," Dragon spoke next. "It's not precise, but it'll narrow down your search radius to approximately a half mile. You'll also note there's a predictive software being installed. That will at least give you some idea what tactics he'll try. It's imperfect, but it's better than nothing. I'm sorry we can't do more for you."


"Dragon's patching me through to your coms," Alexandria relayed. "I'll be right above you, along with a few others. When you find him, either bring him up or bring me down. We need to get him out of the water if we want to kill him."


"Right," I answered. At least I have some kind of backup. I lashed out with a hand, slamming my fingers into the rock and pulling myself forward. I felt the water pulse around me as I surged forward. Victoria may have reworked my brain, tricked my body's instincts into treating people as part of the environment, no more a threat than the floor or the walls. But those desires still remained beneath the surface. The source of my waking nightmares.


Now things were different. Now I was embracing that killer instinct. I could react at these supersonic speeds, I could see with perfect clarity, and I was ready to become a monster in order to hunt a monster. The earth shuddered again, this time approaching a four.


"I'm going silent," I told them as I lashed out and found another purchase to pull forward. I wasn't certain how my instincts knew where to grab things strong enough to support my strength and acceleration, but I did it without fail. Meanwhile, my free hand pulled my mask up, exposing my nose and mouth. I inhaled deeply, or as deeply as my body would let me since I lacked an esophagus and lungs. I was hunting by scent now. Salt water blending with fresh water. Leviathan's been here recently.


I kept going, running by scent and hearing and sight. Echolocation. Strange, the animal life doesn't seem afraid. A little of me, but there's no response of instinctual fear to the Endbringer. I know he's around here somewhere, why are the animals unafraid? Is he hiding from them?


The earth shuddered again. Another quake, this one probably in the low six range, way higher than anything I ever experienced before for certain. They had to be seeing the damage, now. Not merely that caused by the quake itself, but the unnaturally constant and slowly increasing shudders. The memories of Kyushu and Newfoundland. It must be terrifying for them, those millions of innocent people who have no hope of defending themselves, facing this kind of nightmare. I had to help them.


I felt the movement first, twisting away as a claw came at me from nowhere. I dropped to the ground and kicked away. How did it get that close? I got a look at the Endbringer up close and personal. Leviathan surged again, and that predictive software Dragon told me about registered how he would move, warning me of the trap I was about to blunder into. I dived forward, instead. Garotte's instincts taking charge. For once, with my encouragement and permission. My arm shot forward, wrapping around his throat and pulling me forward toward the rival in my territory.


The software alerted me again. His water echo still worked underwater, and was coming right for me. I rolled back, kicking the fake Leviathan with my right foot, clearing the path so I could kick his actual body with my left.


I twisted as the software alerted me to his follow up attack, but he was far stronger and faster than I was down here. He caught my right leg and slammed me hard into the ground. There was nothing dignified about how my body behaved when hit hard enough to do damage. I had to look like a girl shaped stress toy being crushed by an angry body builder. He was still holding my leg as he gripped my shoulder, punctured it with his claws, and tried to rip me in half. I screamed in agony. I should have counted myself lucky that I stretched further than he could reach, but the pain was incredible.


I need help, please let them be where they promised. I didn't have time to think, I just reacted. My one good arm punched out of the water, several hundred meters above. I couldn't aim, but I didn't need to. Alexandria caught my hand, and let herself be pulled down.


Leviathan reacted with superhuman speed, stomping down on my waist to keep me pinned against the ground so he could have a hand to fight the most durable of the Triumvirate. My lower half started rebuilding itself. Tendrils, again. A dozen of them went into building my somewhat human legs, but the damage Leviathan did to me forced them to revert to their natural state. I'd probably cry over that, later. Right now they were too convenient. I wrapped around Leviathan's legs and arms, pulling hard against him. I couldn't overwhelm the monster, but I could slow him down.


Alexandria pressed the advantage, impaling the Endbriger with a vicious looking barbed spear. She kneed him in the face with the spiked plating that Pantheon gave her, and a new weapon appeared in her hand out of nowhere. A bladed chain far too long to be practical even if such a weapon could ever be practical. She wrapped around his arm, catching a couple of my tentacles in the process. They were severed almost immediately, but kept attempting to strangle the Endbringer. I knew from experience that they could live for several hours, vainly attempting the task I'd given them before they were removed.


Alexandria started pulling upward even as I felt the water shift around us. A pillar of air was forcing itself down into the sea floor.


Eidolon, I realized. We need time for Eidolon. I wrapped around Alexandria's spear and pulled it into Leviathan, trying to force the weapon deeper into his body. Through, if at all possible. I let go of Alexandria and grabbed the other end of her chain. It cut into my flesh with alarming ease, reminding me that I was still vulnerable, even if very little could hurt me.


The Endbringer was legitimately struggling, now. He was strong enought to beat one of us. Maybe even both of us. But Eidolon was a different subject. The water shuddered around us as Leviathan called his next trick, trying to crush us with sheer pressure. As far as my body was concerned, it was nothing more destructive than a water balloon. But the ground below us cracked and splintered under the weight.


He then used that water pressure to retreat, hitting speeds beyond what I was capable of reacting to. And then stopping a second later with enough force to actually hurt me with the shockwave. Three of Pantheon's Endbringer killing monsters had appeared from nowhere, blocking Leviathan's retreat with their own bodies. They looked the way a car did after being hit by a train, but they stopped his retreat. More started to appear around us. And then we were out of the water. Legend, Eidolon, Victoria and Atropos as well.


I let go. My body was shattered and exhausted, but it did the job I needed to it to do. Alexandria threw me clear before falling back herself. Leviathan took the chance to run, only for another monster to manifest out of nowhere, blocking him. He turned again, going for an opening between a pair of them, and a third manifested in front of him.


Its tusks caught one arm, and the pair it tried to pass between turned and caught his sides. Three more followed, slamming into Leviathan from behind. They struggled for minutes before forcing the Endbringer to the ground. A stream of cleansing light struck the pile, and when it dimmed only Leviathan remained. Clearly battered, but still functional, the Endbringer climbed to its feet.


Silver forcefields manifested, overlapping the monster. Hundreds of them bathing the area in light while containing the Endbringer. It wouldn't last forever, but it was a reprieve. I tried to force myself to stand, but my body didn't respond. Then Atropos moved, diving into the effect. The shields didn't shatter like they had when trying to hold back the ocean. This time they simple disipated like smoke where she passed. Moments later, black wingtips extended from the shielding, then dipped back in, then came out again. She rose out of the barricades, carrying a chunk of material roughly the size of a human head in her hands.


To say she crushed it would be wrong. There was no pressure, no struggle, no breaking. She simply brought her hands together, and everything between them ceased to be.


Leviathan was dead.


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


A/N- Sveta gets her crowning moment of badass here.

Sure, she got her ass kicked, but damn if she didn't look good in the process.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 297- Lily


I took a deep breath. "You're sure about this?" I asked Lisa. She was fretting about my costume, making sure everything looked right. This was an old model of my costume, the one used, and damaged beyond repair, in New Delhi. Then refitted, with less nanoweave and more attention to emphasizing my feminine features and other cosmetics. A sort of dress armor. Although I had to admit it handled better than my combat gear, at the cost of having almost no actual features. It couldn't shunt, I couldn't channel my power for full body invulnerability, and the wings didn't have the ability to generate ammo.


"Don't worry, you'll do fine," Lisa insisted.


"It's a live interview," I reminded her. "If I fuck up, it's out there forever."


"Five second delay," she corrected. "Only to protect names if you slip up. Don't worry, Vickery hand picked this girl for your interviewer. Says she's a natural for this sort of thing, and I've looked at some of her work. She is, if anything, too soft for this. She is the perfect balance of pretty and approachable, and the only hard questions are the ones you've been prepared for. If you gave me a couple weeks I might have found better, but we need this to happen today, if possible. Just remember the right balance of humility and confidence, and it'll be perfect. You're an Endslayer three times over, you can handle a television appearance."


....


"It's great to finally meet you," my interviewer smiled. Lisa was right about the interviewer being approachably pretty. A little taller than me if I weren't in costume, some kind of mixed race that gave her a very light tan and chocolate brown hair and eyes. Very cute, not beautiful. The interview room itself was nothing unusual, a table and chairs done up what would be a cozy kitchen table look, if not for the cameras and crew pointed at us. I don't know who came up with this layout, but these days it was hard to imagine any other kind.


"Pleasure to be here, Miss Vaught," I responded. My armor's retrofit kept my mouth exposed, so they could see my smile, and the sleeker design made my body language easier to read. All at the cost of basically every feature the armor normally came with. "Sorry we couldn't do this sooner."


"Please, call me Erin," she said, smiling as she shook my hand. "I imagine things have been hectic for you, lately."


"Not as bad as it's been for a lot of others," I answered. The fact was it wasn't that bad at all for me, really. With another Endbringer destroyed, Pantheon was mostly in the 'planning' stage, and that wasn't my strength. Elle was still having trouble with her awareness, causing a delay for that as well. "Let's not forget that Leviathan caused tens of thousands of deaths, and billions of dollars in damages."


"Of course," she nodded with an appropriate solemnity. "I was told your organization has been involved with a number of charities for aiding the victims of Endbringer attacks?"


"Yes, of course," I answered. "As you can imagine, Pantheon feels pretty strongly about this. We've been there, ourselves. Losing homes, loved ones, precious mementos of our families, even our city to those monsters. Even in that, we were luckier than most, we had somewhere to go and the resources to support ourselves. Millions of others don't have that. It wasn't just homes and memories for them, it was their livelihoods and their hopes for the future. A lot of that can never be restored, but new futures can be created from the ashes. That's what these charities represent, hope for the future."


Sure, that was rehearsed, but I believed every word of it.


Erin turned toward the camera. "I would like to remind our viewers that if you wish to donate time or resources, you can log on to FEMA dot gov, or Channel twelve news dot com for further information about charities in your region. Food, clothing, and of course money will all be greatly appreciated," She turned back toward me. "I know I'll be visiting when I get home tonight." Lisa was right, she is soft.


"Thank you, Erin," I smiled broadly.


"This isn't the only humanitarian work you've done," she continued. "You've earned something of a reputation as an advocate of the GLBT cause in eastern Europe. Including quite a bit of controversy."


"My parents tell me I was a strong willed child," I chuckled. "I don't think I ever grew out of it. When I see something I know is wrong, I can't help but want to step in and fix the problem."


"Even in countries where you can be arrested for expressing pro-gay sentiments," she added.


"Especially then," I emphasized. I tapped the gay pride sticker on the shoulder of my costume. My real armor had the icon built right into it, but again with the lack of time. "As everyone already knows, my power is one of those needed to open the dimensional gateways. They might hate me for what I am, but they still need me, an openly gay woman, to save them. And, yes, I want them to be aware of that fact."


"Which brings us back to the deaths of Leviathan, the Simurgh, and Wendigo," she spoke. "You've been instrumental in the destruction of three Endbringers, most recently the destruction of Leviathan last week."


"Like I said," I smiled. "I can't not step in to help when I see an opportunity."


"And you're good at it," she agreed. "In fact, we have never before seen video footage of the death of Leviathan to show here today."


She turned her head toward the screen behind us, as the scene started to show itself. Taken from Victoria's viewpoint, it showed the water being forced back. The footage was both blurry and obviously digital enhanced. We couldn't even see Leviathan until the forcefields started going up, illuminating the area in some kind of alien light. I didn't pay much attention to the scene, being far more concerned with my own memories.


....


Leviathan was pinned by the shields. Not too different than the end of the Wendigo fight. In one small way, I almost felt bad about this. In many, many more ways I felt awesome about it. I dived through the silver spheroid, and into the heart of Leviathan. Lisa's estimates of this Endbringer's physiology was that the tail contained his core, so I struck that first, using my larger pair of wings to melt the majority of it in the first swipe, and the rest of it with the second. The lower, smaller, pair of wings simple cut through the body segments.


In the few seconds I remained inside, I watched the Endbringer go still. No movement, no regeneration. It was dead. With careful effort, I carved a large chunk out of the corpse and pulled it out, then took off, breaking through the forcefields yet again. I disintegrated the chunk in full view of the Triumvirate, and more important Victoria and her suit's camera.


The 'heart' of Leviathan destroyed for all to see.


We weren't stupid enough to showboat like that with the real core, of course. Lisa made it clear that the Endbringers were programmed weapons, with a series of restrictions in place to keep them from trying too hard.


The harder we hit, the harder they fought back as restrictions were slowly lifted so that they could use more and more of their full power, and after a point we wouldn't be able to get close enough to finish the job. The first legitimately mortal wound against Leviathan needed to be the killing blow, or the loss of California would have been the least of our problems.


That was a closely guarded secret, known only to a very select few, that we'd never seen an Endbringer actually put real effort into a fight.


....


"That's quite the scene," Erin stated after the clip ended. Less than two minutes, I realized. It felt a lot longer when it was happening. "I don't know if I would have been that brave. You really are a hero."


"It's easy to be brave when you know you can't be touched," I answered, remembering the bits of rehearsal and how I wanted to express my thoughts. "The truth is, I was lucky. It's no secret that what powers one gets are a matter of chance. I won a lottery that gave me a power capable of actually hurting the Endbringers, and because of that I am the one killing them. That, literally, could have happened to anyone."


"I'm afraid I don't know a lot about how powers work," Erin admitted.


"More than that, this was a team effort, all of them were," I added, eager to not talk about the nature of powers overmuch. Nothing happy came from that path. "Gaea, Khepri and Minerva to build the team. Yum Kaax, Tir, Hecate, Dragon and other Tinkers to build this armor." I gave the command that let my wings flex out, and then go back to resting position. I can't name Riley, she'll just have to accept 'others'. "To harness and amplify my powers enough to actually get the job done."


Erin scooted back a little, her eyes wide as she finally recognized just how deadly the armor I wore could be. She overcame it quickly enough, but the minor amount of intimidation would only be a good thing. At least, according to Lisa.


"The other Endslayers, too," I added. "Clotho and Lachesis, and again the Tinkers that built the weapons we used against Simurgh. Shaman and Rosary, for paralyzing Wendigo long enough to finish the job. Sveta and Alexandria for fighting Leviathan to a standstill in the ocean until Eidolon could clear the path I needed. Plus Khepri and Gaea, and again their Tinker tech weapons." I feel like I'm accepting an Oscar or something. Ugh.


"And," I continued. "All those heroes that have been fighting these monsters for almost the last twenty years. Compared to all the work done by all of them? Like I said, I just got lucky enough to have the right power and be in the right place to make use of it."


"Anyone ever tell you that you're a really passionate speaker?" Erin joked.


I smiled, if a little sadly. Sabah used to say that was her favorite thing about me. "It's been mentioned before," I replied. "But, all the luck aside, I'm glad to get the power I did. Maybe I won't be part of the next Endslayer team, but it feels right that I was this time. That I got to be the one to kill Leviathan."


"Why's that?" Erin asked. She had her guesses, of course. She knew at least some of what was coming today.


I reached up to my neck and undid the clasps. The Tinkers didn't have time, or interest for that matter, to automate this for what was essentially a one time use only suit. A quick push and the mask folded upward. By the time I go to bed, everyone on a hundred and twenty three worlds will know my face.


"I have my reasons."


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


A/N- Lily's fun. Also, I need to start a database for very minor characters. You have no idea how long I took to dig Erin's name out of the archives.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 298- Eric


"Hey," I smiled at Lily from my spot atop the teleport pad to for the capital of Avalon. Which really needs a name one of these days. "Did you hear, they're calling you he 'Avenger of Kyushu, now."


"I heard," she replied, sounding a lot less enthused than I would have expected for someone who just accomplished what she accomplished.


"I didn't expect you back so soon," I changed the subject. "One day for an interview and then back to Europe? What gives?"


"We're on an ugly deadline," she answered grimly. "Have to get as many portals finished as possible, because we can expect seven more Endbringers, maybe more. At least three more of which, I can't kill."


"Seven?" I asked. I couldn't wrap my mind around that. "More? Not just eight, but eight more."


"Lisa's guestimate, at least," Lily responded. "A total of Eleven. Tohu, Bohu, Khonsu, Barghest, another unknown that will probably in response to Behemoth's death. Six more for the deaths of Wendigo and Leviathan. And Lisa's guessing there might be one more to round out the numbers based on the rule of three that they follow. In other words, we should be expecting one a month until we can find another way to kill them."


"Do you think they can?" I asked. "I mean, they're designed so you can't kill them anymore, what's left?" Eleven Endbringers?


"Shaman and Rosary are still an option," she responded. "It worked once, and the Tinkers are toying with other methods. Something to do with a super nanothorn weapon. You know how Tinkers get when they're in the zone."


I really didn't, but the way so many others commented on it, I took it for granted anyway.


"Emma cobbled together something, and that's given Lisa ideas about time manipulation as an Endbringer killing tool," she continued. "Not sure I like that idea, honestly. We know they adapt new tricks based on the weapons used to kill them. Khonsu came from Behemoth's death, shielding and time manipulation, along with Bohu's terrain alterations, like what the Chinese weapon did. Barghest and Wendigo are probably from killing the Simurgh. One a space warper that's too fast to hit reliably, the other was decentralized. No weak spot to attack."


"Until one was found," I added, trying to sound hopeful. "The new Endbringers are weaker than the old ones in a lot of ways. We can use that. The new ones aren't nearly as deadly as the original three were."


"We haven't used a weapon on them that literally cuts through time itself," she countered. "I can't imagine an Endbringer with that power, but I'm envisioning Black Kaze, only a thousand times worse, killing everyone who showed up to the battle two days before the Endbringer warning system even registers an alert. Fuck, Tohu's already the Endbringer copy of Eidolon, why not Legend next?"


Holy shit that's horrifying. "You're not usually one to get upset like this. You were the one telling me we'd deal with the consequences as they came, before. It's one of my favorite things about you. You should be happy right now. You're an international hero. I watched your interview live on the television." In fucking Lebanon. "I've been asking around, you may have single handedly won the gay rights movement in that country. To the point that it's causing waves in neighboring countries. Everything you wanted and more."


"I know," she responded. "Believe me, I'm so glad for that. But we're approaching the point where we'll have to abandon Bet entirely. We can't even beat the Endbringers without exploiting flaws in their program. How are we going to fight Scion? What good is anything I do with that hanging over my head?"


"You're a hero, Lily," I put a hand on her shoulder. "In every meaning of the word. At least let yourself celebrate that, you deserve to feel good about that for a day or two, then worry about the future. Maybe some time with Sabah, I kn-." She tensed and I stopped speaking. Oh fuck.


"We broke up," she told me, confirming my fear.


"When?" I asked, hesitantly. I ignored the pang of desire I felt toward her. I had a crush on Lily, on Atropos really, before I'd ever met her. Now that I knew her, she was very different than the fantasy I'd built. Not someone I could see myself with, if I was honest. Not that I expected her to be interested in me, either. But she was a great friend, supportive and passionate about all of her causes, both social and personal.


"A little less than two weeks ago," she answered. Now that I thought about it, that made sense. She'd been spending a lot of time talking with Lisa up before the Endbringer attack. I didn't think much of it, the pair of them had a lot to be concerned about, especially in the week or so before an expected attack.


"I bet if I tried, I could find someone to break her legs for breaking your heart," I offered jokingly.


"No," she responded, her voice commanding. "I was the one to break up with her. Neither of us were happy, but I ended it. I don't want you acting like she's the bad guy in this, please?"


"Okay," I agreed, trying to wrap my head around the idea that Lily would break up with anyone. "Why didn't you tell me?" I asked. I could see why she wouldn't bring it up around the others. Faultline was a mercenary in every sense of the word, going where the money led here. She cared about her people, but not much beyond that. She wasn't a fan of the other not-so-former villains on Faultline's team, either. They were in this for the money, she was in it for helping humanity as a whole. That wasn't a great recipe for friendships.


"I didn't want to talk about it," she sighed, looking out over the blue green expanse blocked by similarly colored buildings. "It felt like... if I didn't say it, then it wasn't real, y'know? Sounds childish when you say it out loud."


"I've heard worse superstitions," I responded. It was true, too. "Do you want to talk about it, now?"


"Not really," she answered. "Sabah has her freedom and I wish her luck in her career. She certainly cares about it more than she ever did me." Wow, that was bitter. "I have my fifteen minutes of fame, the adoration of millions, and the people who don't love me fear me. Which is weird as fuck to think about, by the way."


"I'll pretend I know the feeling," I answered.


"Point is," she continued. "Things may not be perfect, but it's better this way. Just... don't make trouble on my account, please."


"Okay," I deferred to her judgment on this one. And here I thought the pair of them were the cutest couple in ever. "Well, on the plus side, you are officially the most eligible bachelorette in the multiverse. Once word gets out, you'll have your pick of the litter. Or skip the picking part and take the whole litter. Start your own harem, see if anyone argues with you."


She chuckled a little. Good, that's a start.


"I don't think I'm ready to start dating again," she replied. "Besides, I don't even know anyone. Unless you're suggesting I try to steal Amelia away from Taylor. I climbed inside an Endbringer and it didn't scare me as much as that idea."


I cringed at that thought. "Not even Zach is suicidally insane enough to get between those two," I only half joked. Seriously, that would be the worst idea in the world. "What about that cute reporter girl? She seemed interested in you."


"Of course she was interested in me," Lily replied. "That's her job."


"I don't know, she did seem pretty star struck," I teased. "Besides, there's a time honored tradition of superheroes dating reporters. Maybe that's why she became a reporter, and you'd be fulfilling her childhood fantasies."


"Zach's not dead, you don't need to channel his ghost," Lily admonished.


"No, see, if I were Zach I'd be speculating on what she was doing while fantasizing," I pointed out. "But in all seriousness, if you want to talk I'm here for you. All you have to do is ask."


"I wouldn't want to make your girlfriend jealous," Lily responded


"She won't be," I responded. I slipped my arm around her and pulled her into a one armed hug. It was true, Emily wasn't the type to get jealous, at least not in this kind of situation. She was actually far more possessive of Elle than she was of me. "Believe it or not, she actually likes you a lot."


"Really?" Lily asked. "She always seemed a little cold to me."


"She's kinda timid," I answered. Plus you go out of your way to not be friends with anyone on Faultline's crew. "And you're pretty intimidating when you want to be. Remember how we first met and you threatened to, and I quote, surgically remove my bones without leaving a scratch on my skin?"


"Well, you didn't make a great first impression," she responded.


"Yeah, sorry about that," I muttered. "I could have handled that situation better."


"Don't worry, you make up for it in the long run," she responded. "I guess I can try to be a little friendlier to Emily."


"I appreciate it," I gave a squeeze of support.


"Think if I start up that harem, she'd like to join?"


I was stunned.


"What?" Lily exclaimed. "She's a babe and you know it."


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


A/N- Lily has trouble deciding which coping mechanism she wants to use.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 299- Nelson


I hate hospitals, I thought quietly. I never liked them, but each year I come to hate them a little bit more. Hospitals, cemeteries and memorials, I'd seen far too many of them in my life, and I hated hospitals most of all. Memorials, you could go to and remember the good times. The successes, the sacrifices, and while it was never pleasant, there was at least closure. You could remember the fallen at their best.


Hospitals were where you saw them at their worst. Injured, dying, in pain. I couldn't imagine anything worse. In the unlikely event there's a benevolent force in this universe, let me die on my feet, not bedridden and surrounded by people watching me slip away.


I felt pressure on my back as someone draped an arm across my suit. I knew who before she even spoke.


"Y'know," Vicky's voice teased, her chin resting on my shoulder. "A lot of girls find the tall, dark and brooding look to be a major turn on."


"Y'know, some people would call what you're doing sexual harassment," I quipped back. I tried to sound displeased, and to a small degree I even was. Unfortunately the fact of the matter was I did enjoy the attention. More than I wanted to admit, which led to the other problem. Vicky knew that I liked it, and made it abundantly clear that she'd keep going until I changed my mind. Either by reciprocating her attention, or actually losing interest in her in the first place. Frankly, it was devolving into a contest of wills.


"Lucky me, you're not most people," she whispered back. "And lucky you."


She is way too good at this for her age. "Can you at least wait until there aren't cameras watching?" I asked.


"Sure," she agreed and dropped back down to the ground and started walking ahead. "Stop doing the brooding thing and you have yourself a deal."


"I wasn't brooding," I argued.


"You were totally brooding," she insisted, putting just a little more sway in her hips than was strictly necessary as she walked away. I tried, and failed, to not look. "Like the male lead in a teen drama. Only with less eye shadow. Now put your approachable friendly sensible leader face on, because I'm invoking my womanly right to be irrational for at least the next fifteen minutes." She paused for a moment. "Make one smart ass comment and I will break up with you."


"There are so many things wrong with that statement," I deadpanned.


"And I'll break your legs," she added.


"Still considering it," I retorted.


She smiled and winked at me, then opened the door to the hospital room.


"Vicky!" a girl's voice exclaimed from inside.


Victoria rushed in, and by the time I got to the door, she was hugging the patient. I crushed a natural insinct to be horrified by the sight. I'd gotten good at that, dealing with as many Case 53s as I had over the last month and a half. Sveta was hideous right now. Her right shoulder had tendrils exposed, and the arm was only partially formed into a humanlike shape, then a hand ending in tentacles for fingers.


One leg was reduced to large tentacles at the hip, the leg was human up until the knee, where they broke apart. Her face partially mutilated, reduced to a tendril mass across the right side. Her torso and left arm were the only things hinting at human in shape, and it looked more like a crayon that started to melt. I had seen worse over the years, but not many that were still alive, let alone awake and moving.


Dozens of Sveta's limbs were wrapped around Vicky, hugging her back. I glanced at the corner where Vicky's cousin was sitting, holding a book whose cover I couldn't read from this far away. She nodded toward me, as if to say this wasn't our place and we should just be quiet.


"Stupid, stupid girl," Vicky muttered, crying into Sveta's 'good' shoulder. "What were you thinking? Were you trying to get yourself killed?"


"I had to, there was no one else," Sveta cried back.


"They thought you were going to die," Vicky squeezed, and Sveta's body distorted in ways reminiscent of a bean bag. "That you already were dead. I told them that you were alive, my power let me know."


"I'm sorry I got hurt," Sveta spoke. "I just had to. If I didn't, Leviathan would have killed all those people. I couldn't let that happen. Please don't be mad at me."


"You don't have to worry about that," Vicky insisted. "The important thing is that you're okay. You are okay, right? Are you in pain?"


"No," Sveta replied. "I'm just fine. And, hey, now I know what dreaming feels like."


"Told you that it's over rated," Vicky responded.


"It really is," Sveta agreed. I glanced at the clock. She did say I would have to be the responsible one. Although, honestly, this is the first time I've ever seen Victoria act like this. It's actually kind of touching.


Vicky's cousin had worked her way to the door, and gestured with a tilt of her head. I followed her into the hallway.


"First time she's ever acted like that before," I said after the door closed. Vicky had heightened hearing, but only to a limited degree, and only when she was focusing on it. If we were quiet, we could talk.


"Vicky's a weird one," Eki nodded. "She's... adopted Sveta, for lack of a better phrase. She's the one who recruited the girl and sent her off into the world of cataclysmic Endbringer battles and omnicidal eldritch abominations. As far as Vicky's concerned, everything that happens to Sveta is her responsibility. But don't tell her you figured it out. She'll deny it until she dies of old age."


I chuckled at that.


"So, umm, about the assault charges?" she asked hesitantly.


"The hospital's agreed to drop them," I informed. "Vicky will have to sign a couple NDAs, of course. Don't worry, her mother's already looked them over and given her approval. Everyone involved wants this to stay quiet." Minus one person, I added silently.


"Good," she sighed. "Now let's get Sveta fixed up so we can get out of this place. If I have to deal with one more nurse walking in here and treating Sveta like a horror movie monster, I'll need a lawyer of my own. It's fucking disgusting."


....


"So the spoiled brat gets a pass because the hospital chose to let her off?" Dunn complained, frowning at the paperwork. "Her mother needs to step back and let her daughter learn there are consequences for her actions."


"Mrs. Dallon had nothing to do with it," I informed her.


"Pardon?" Dunn looked at me. Vicky's right, she's not a pleasant woman.


"I was the one to talk to the hospital's President," I responded.


"Why would you do that?" she demanded. "And I better not find out that you did anything illegal or unprofessional."


"I simply explained to her that it was an irresponsible charge in the first place," I responded. "Yes, Victoria threatened a couple nurses and a doctor, but that was after they tried to declare Sveta legally dead. Clearly a misdiagnosis, given Sveta's current status as alive and well."


Director Dunn just continued to look pissed. I could imagine what was going through her head. It was an opportunity to discredit the young heroine who was making her job such a chore as of late. I almost didn't blame her, Vicky was one hell of a handful. Emphasis on the almost.


"I went on to explain that, if the case were to go to court, and it would, then the hospital would have to admit they were going to put a living patient in the morgue," I continued. "I then reminded him," and you too, you vindictive harpy. "That Sveta was one of the finest heroes the world's ever seen. Essential in saving a large part of California from being destroyed, by risking her life to fight Leviathan on his terms. Chances were pretty good the judge would throw out the charges as legally justified in the defense of another. If he didn't, then no jury would convict. The various hospital administrators agreed with my assessment."


"I see," Director Dunn responed. "You didn't use the prominence of your position as leverage?"


"Not at all," I answered. It was true, I didn't. I didn't need to. The charges really were stupid and the hospital really didn't want that kind of publicity. Mistreating a patient that was being recognized as one of the Endslayers was not something they wanted to be known for.


"And Sveta, you restored her to her humanoid form?" Dunn asked. "Cutting her through the waiting list of Case 53s and other heroes in need of restoration?"


"Endbringer Exemption Clause," I responded. "The Chevalier/Victoria power interaction is registered as a healer for the purposes of post Endbringer conflicts. It's why so many disabled but stable capes were cut in line ahead of the more functional Case 53s. Because their injuries were sustained in battle against Endbringers, they were given a higher priority on the waiting list. You were one of the advocates for that addition."


Of course, so was I. In fact, everyone agreed it was a good idea. Until you, right now.


"Yes, I recall," Dunn responded. "Status report on returning to the restoration of wounded and disfigured capes?"


"Ready to go after I get a good night's sleep," I responded. "It's been a stressful couple days, as I'm sure you can imagine."


"Very well," she agreed. "I'll see to it that the paperwork is ready at oh seven hundred tomorrow. Dismissed."


"Thank you, Ma'am," I answered as I turned and left her office.


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


A/N- Chevy gets a chapter. And a randomly rolled name.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 300- Theo


"Over there," Missy gestured at a building near the shore that got hit harder than most. At least earthquakes and flooding were things the civilians in this area knew how to deal with. After the terror of the Endbringer's attack wore down, it became a matter of establishing supplies and aid. In many ways, this went down in history as the least damage Leviathan had ever managed to do. If you ignored the trillion dollars in property damage, at least. Only a handful of poorly constructed buildings even collapsed, and very few places were facing refugee crisis.


"What floor," I asked my girlfriend.


"What?" She paused for a second. "Oh, sorry. Seven. Maybe eight."


"Are you feeling okay?" I asked.


"Sorry, just tired," she answered. "I'll take a breather while you're up there."


I glanced at my HUD clock. It was three in the morning. Later, for us, since we were on east coast time. "Okay, I'll be back in a few minutes," I agreed, tugging on Macula's reins.


He took flight, then hovered where I needed him to. Some practical part of me found the flying horse thing to be wasteful. It would be be much more efficient with, say, a hover car. Another part of me was more than a little embarrassed. A man riding a flying horse, kinda made me feel silly. But Riley put effort and care into these creatures, and that meant a lot to me. Plus, silly or not, I got to be a knight on a flying horse. That was pretty cool.


I formed a sword and slashed the emergency exit door. It came open without any difficulty, and I stepped inside. "Anyone here?" I shouted. "I'm with Pantheon. We're here to get you to safety!"


My scanning tech led me to the men's bathroom. Not where I'd pick to hide under the circumstances, but whatever. "Fair warning, I'm coming in," I shouted into the bathroom. It was one of the ones that didn't have doors. Instead opting for a sort of hallway and inner wall setup for privacy.


The trio opted to hide in the stalls when I walked in. "Y'know, usually people are a little more eager to be rescued," I spoke. "I get that you're scared. I would be, too, in your shoes. But I'm here to help. This building isn't going to hold forever." As if to punctuate my point, there was another aftershock. They'd come so regularly, a dozen or two an hour, that I stopped noticing them.


One of the people in a stall let out a high pitched shriek.


"Dammit, Gary," a woman in another stall exclaimed.


"Oh, get over it Sheila, he already knows we're here," the person I now knew as a man named Gary who shrieked like Riley when we watched horror movies. I suspected she overplayed her reactions because it gave her an excuse to cuddle with me.


The third stall's door opened, and another man stepped out. He was in a Janitor's outfit. Made sense, it was around eight in the evening here when Leviathan struck. "Dumb plan to begin with," the janitor stage whispered. I read his name. Stanly. I blamed my upbringing for the surprise I felt in seeing an obviously hispanic man with the name of 'Stanly'.


I didn't say anything about his opinion of the plan. I also neglected to ask who was the bigger idiot. The idiot, or the idiots who listened to that idiot. It would have been unprofessional.


"As I said, sir, I'm here to get you out of the building. It's actually pretty decent out there, the roads are passable so we can get you to a hospital if you need it. Or even home. Busses and cabs are out in force." Part of the Governor's emergency planning, apparently.


"Well, at least that's good news," he responded. "Guess I need to look for a new job."


He isn't wrong. I watched the doors open up. A naturally tan man and woman in fairly nice, if currently bedraggled clothes. Office workers staying here late, perhaps? Something seemed a little off about them, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's because they look a little younger than I expect of office workers.


"The emergency cleanup crews will be in tomorrow and hard at work for the next few months," I informed the man. "I'm not sure about the details, but there are people who spend their entire careers moving from one Endbringer attack to the next doing repairs. So I have to believe the pay's decent."


"Sounds depressing as hell," the man concluded.


"Probably," I agreed. "Come on, I'll show you three the way out."


"Lead the way, my man," the janitor responded cheerfully.


I took us to where Macula was waiting by the emergency exit that no longer led anywhere but to a seven story drop. The people stopped and stared at him. "Like him?" I asked a bit self consciously. "My girlfriend made it for me." One of them, at least.


"You're not expecting us to ride on that thing?" the woman, Shiela, asked.


"It'd be faster," I responded. "But he doesn't like strangers much."


I stepped up to the edge of the fire escape, and focused on my power. Metal manifested from nowhere, forming a staircase to the ground. Because I didn't have to care about various construction issues, I simply made it a single long set of stairs.


"That's quite the trick," Stanly smiled. "Perfectly safe, right?"


"Almost as hard to break as the Endbringers, sir," I responded. "You're in absolutely no danger of it collapsing." To prove my point, I walked out on to the platform. I'd extended legs to keep it anchored to the ground, although that wasn't strictly necessary.


The man stepped out, cautiously at first. Then he jumped on it a couple times. "That's one hell of a trick, kid," he laughed, then looked back at the other two. "C'mon, it's probably safer than that building."


The pair followed, and they started down the stairs. I stood at the top. Holding something this complex together took a lot of concentration. I climbed on to Macula and let the metal vanish back into wherever it came from.


By the time I got back down, Missy was slumped on top of Calysta. Her horse folded its wings over her protectively, but otherwise didn't do much when I approached. It would have been more responsive if I wasn't a friend. Riley's constructs did have more or less horselike instincts in them, a distrust of strangers was part of that. I shook Missy's shoulder.


"Hey sleepy head, we're heading home now."


She didn't respond. "Missy?" Oh no. I shook her harder, but got no response to that, either. "Aceso?" I activated the com.


"What's wrong?" Riley asked immediately.


"Missy's unconscious," I told her. I was already laying her back, but going through the first aid training and medical memory set. Still, I felt more comfortable having Riley in charge. Even the best doctor was nothing compared to Riley's tinkering skills. Of more immediate concern, getting through Missy's armor wasn't something I could do easily. "I'm not sure what happened."


"Understood," Riley answered. She'd be patching into the armor's diagnostic systems. She spoke to me, more for my benefit than anything. "Heartrate is normal, breathing's normal, no sign of recent contact with what might be a Master/Stranger effect." She paused for a second. "Oh, I think I found the problem. She's not in any danger, but you need to bring her back to Avalon base, okay? I'll get the equipment ready."


"Alright," I agreed. I glanced over at the trio I'd just rescued. "Umm... are you okay to be left here?"


"Nah, it's cool," the janitor responded. "My van's right over there. I'll drive home."


"Same," Sheila answered. "Well, car. We can look after ourselves."


"Okay, thanks. And sorry about this." I didn't wait for their responses, instead guiding Macula up, and leading Calysta along with. Shunt drives were built so that if someone was holding another set of armor when they shunted, both would go with. Or, in this case, a chain of four would come along. I shunted, which brought Macula, which took Calysta, which took Missy.


Our emergency base on Avalon wasn't much to look at. Really just a med lab grown in the pocket of land we owned in the territory. One of the ways zoning laws worked on the planet, there was always a space of around a quarter mile that was required to be left undeveloped and under Imperial control every twenty miles or so. This way, we always had somewhere as a staging platform for emergencies like this one. A good thing, too, in this case. Our California was easily the most populated place on Avalon right now, so there was a number of buildings surrounding a conspicuously empty field and a single large building.


If you discounted the dozens of zerg spread across the landscape, at least. Nearby home owners had gawked for a while, but that was hours ago and they were mostly back in bed. A long night for everyone.


We touched down on the roof, where Riley, Emma and Zach were already waiting. Judging by the cloud of bugs, it wasn't just them. Emma and Zach were already getting Missy off her horse by the time I got to her. Missy wasn't that large, but our armor systems added at least another couple hundred pounds of weight. More, depending on the suit in question.


I got under Missy and held her, bridal style. Three hundred pounds was quite a bit of weight to try and carry, but a bit of antigrav and she was light as a feather.


Luckily, we were on top of the medical segment of the building, and putting Missy into one of the pods was easy enough. Fortunately, they were designed to work with the armor system, so we didn't have to cut Missy out of her suit.


"I thought you said she was fine," I asked Riley.


"She is," Riley confirmed. "But that doesn't mean we don't want to be thorough. And she needs a good night's rest. The healing pods are great for cat naps. Eight hours of sleep in an hour or less, guaranteed."


"They are," Emma agreed. "I mean, for other people. I catch Riley and Trevor in them all the time, and Rey has a spare installed in his lab. I swear, if we could build a two-seater, then Taylor and Amelia would probably climb into one and never come out again. Not like they actually need to be present to use their powers."


"So what's wrong with Missy?" I asked.


"Oh, that's easy," Riley started.


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


A/N- I demand rampant speculation for this chapter!

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 301- Missy


Fuck my head hurts. My vision was blurry. I can't move. And... and... I can't feel my power!


A sudden burst of cool air heralded the opening of the pod. "Did... did I die again?" I asked, on the off chance someone would hear. It didn't feel like this last time, but I didn't have a lot to compare it to. Maybe the process didn't go right?


"Nope," Emma answered, and her voice made my head hurt that much more. "But you're going to feel like you did for a while."


"What happened?" I asked.


"Oh, a few things," she responded. "But let's get the rest of the team in here. They'd like to have a word with you."


"My head hurts," I complained. In fact, my everywhere hurts. My skin is hot and itchy, everything smells wrong. I'm pretty sure at some point my armor had to use its auto-clean features. "Can't it just wait."


"Good," Emma responded, her voice hard. "And no, this gets dealt with it now."


I started to protest, or maybe just try to ask why Emma was so mad at me, I didn't have the chance.



"She's awake!" she shouted, and my brain felt like it was trying to claw its way out of my eye sockets to escape the pain.


Riley was the first one in, followed by Theo. Both of them looked upset. What I wasn't expecting was Taylor, Amelia and Lisa. None of them looked exactly happy, either. Oh god, what's going on here?


Emma smacked her lips. "So," she drew out the word for several seconds. "Did you know that you're not suppose to take the stim drugs while pregnant?"


Pregnant?! "What?!" Theo exclaimed.


Riley squeaked, but didn't say anything.


"No!" I shouted, jolting up. Immediately I was hit with a massive throbbing pain in my skull, and waves of nausea that probably only didn't result in me getting sick by virtue of there being nothing in my stomach to lose. I covered my hands over my face. "I'm not pregnant, I swear."


"You're sure about that?" Emma asked.


"Very!" I insisted. "I haven't done anything that could get anyone pregnant. So unless Riley cooked up some kind of weird drug!"


"Nope," Riley replied. "But that sounds-"


Amelia interrupted her. "No."


"But it could solve our population problems in less than thirty years!" Riley insisted.


"Still no," Amelia responded. "I vetoed the airborn aphrodesiacs. I vetoed the subtle fertility drugs in the fruit. I vetoed Yggdrasil that makes birth control not work. What makes you think I wouldn't veto immaculate conception?"


"But this one works twice as fast as all the others combined!" Riley whined. "For less than half the effort!"


"That's not the point, Riley," Taylor sighed. "Yes, we want a population boom. But we don't want to do it by forcing people to have children they don't want. Or forcing them to want children that they don't want."


"Rule Three, I know," Riley pouted.


"Can we get back to the part about how pregnant I'm not supposed to be!" I exclaimed, perhaps a little less dignified than I would have liked. But seriously, there was no natural way I could be pregnant. Sure, with the way parahumans worked, it wasn't impossible, but I was freaking out over here while they were acting like that was only a secondary concern.


"Sure," Emma agreed. "To start with, I didn't say you were pregnant. I asked if you knew the warnings on the stim drugs included not using them if you're pregnant. Did you read those warnings?"


"Yes, of course," I answered. I'm not pregnant, that's good. Now why are they all... Oh, so that's what happened. "I didn't have any choice!" I argued. "If I didn't, people could have died. We..." I looked at the faces of everyone gathered. "I fucked up, didn't I?"


"Scale of one to ten, where one is stealing the office stationary and ten is leaving Rey unsupervised with the samples we gathered from the Simurgh? This is somewhere around a seven and a half. Seriously, what were you thinking?"


"I... I'm not strong enough on my own," I sighed. "Avalon's got too many people now. I needed to use the stims just to get the zerg to the battlefield. But you said that the drugs were okay for the Endbringer battles."


"No, not okay," Taylor replied. "A backup if you're desperate. And you're only supposed to use them once, maybe twice if you have to. To buy yourself half an hour of boosted abilities. And then you're supposed to take a day or two off to rest afterward. Sleep, read, replace Zach's porn folder with pictures of grasshoppers. Do anything other than using your powers. What you're not supposed to do is take three more doses in as many hours. Missy, you're suppose to be one of the responsible ones. This is the sort of thing I'd expect to find Rey or Riley doing."


"Not me," Riley insisted. "I helped write the warnings and instructions. I'll never use that stuff if I can avoid it."


"But I needed to," I whimpered. "Without the stimulants, I can't help with the Endbringer battles. Or to save lives afterward. It's not like I'm abusing drugs and you need to stage an intervention. I only use them to help against Endbringers. I'm willing to pay the price for that afterward. I just went a little too far this time. It won't happen again."


"Missy," Emma spoke up softly. "Those stims are serious brain altering chemicals. There's a reason they're emergency only, instead of standard issue. You've done a lot of damage to how your powers work."


That's why I can't feel my power, I realized with horror. "How long?" I asked.


"We had to put you on a drug that will block your powers for at least the next month," Riley's voice was actually timid. "I'm sorry, please don't hate me."


Ouch. "A whole month?"


"At least that long," Taylor stressed. "And even after that, your powers will be weakened for several more weeks. It's possible they'll never fully recover."


"I already repaired most of the damage," Amelia spoke up. "Chances are high that you'll make a full recovery in time."


"But the brain restoration tech!" I protested. Don't cry. Don't you dare cry in front of everyone like this.


"Useless," Emma cut the argument in half with a word. "These drugs overclock your powers, and the part of your brain that uses them. We can undo the trouble on your side but the Passenger's a different subject entirely. We can't fix that. Even if we killed you and activated your backup, the damage you've done will carry over to that version of you. It's part of the reason we won't allow clones of living parahumans, squick factor notwithstanding. The results would mean weakened powers for all the copies, and possible breakdown of the powers in general. To say nothing of the clones' sanity."


"But the Endbringers," I protested.


"Aren't your problem for at least the next three or four months," Taylor spoke, sounding both angry and sad. "We'll find ways to compensate. Put more emphasis on Dragon's suits. Other transport tech. Using the old purely organic shock troops. They're not as good, but they can be made on location and we have plenty of raw material. Maybe we can find a way to hire that Thanda cape to work with us for this. We can combine him and Eric pretty effectively. Between us, the Protectorate, and Cauldron's connections, we'll be able to figure something out."


They're already planning to replace me. The thought was like a punch in the gut. I guess I can't blame them. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for this to happen," I whimpered.


Theo hugged me. "It's okay," he insisted. "You'll be fine."


I hugged him back. How am I suppose to live without my powers?


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


A/N- As far as I can tell, no one saw that one coming. But you can't say I didn't drop plenty of hints that Missy might be abusing the stims a bit.

And this marks the fifth Riley Rule presented in canon.