Amelia, Ch 320
Chevalier flexed his new hand. "Feels strange," he stated. "Like, I don't know, like I fell asleep on it. Or like I have two left hands now."
"That will wear off as you get used to it," I stated. I did my best with it, since Vicky liked him so much, but I still had to pretty much reverse and copy his left to make his right, and that came with some minor side effects. "I'd have to rewire your brain to let you instantly adapt to the new limb. And I don't do that." Vicky didn't have to add those disclaimers, neither did Sanction. Their version of healing by gifting regeneration worked very differently than my own power.
"Well, it still beats the alternative," he agreed, getting to his feet. "Wow, that felt different, too. I feel like a kid again."
That's because you pretty much are. I'd repaired numerous old scars, like an injury to his Achilles tendon that hadn't quite healed properly sometime in his early teens. Burns that he must have gotten taken care of by a less talented healer a few years back, and the starting of cellular decay caused by radiation exposure that was about a year and a half old. I'd bet money it was Behemoth related. Repairing that alone probably improved his lifespan by twenty years or so. Plus another twenty or so by adjusting his internal chemistry and cellular age, not unlike what I did for Rey.
"Aren't you glad I talked you into agreeing to the full package deal?" Vicky asked, smiling broadly. She was standing there in a pose obviously meant to impress, her hands clasped behind her back, her back arched slightly, and her left leg forward a bit, fully extended. Like she started stretching and stopped. She still doesn't compare to Taylor.
"It's not quite as good as what you and Vicky can do," I dismissed, amused by how he was torn between staring at my sister, and figuring out his body's new responses. "But I did my best. By the way, I corrected your genetic tendency toward heart illness while I was working."
"No wonder we have such a high injury rate in the capes we give augmentations to," he mused as he hopped up and down a bit. Testing his new strength. It wasn't that impressive a jump, but then he was wearing about sixty pounds of battle armor right now, minus whatever belonged on the arm. And he was jumping without using its mechanisms to compensate for the extra weight. "I can tell this is going to take some getting used to."
"Don't worry," Vicky smiled, staring at the toned, medium brown limb like she was going to pull it off of him and eat it. "I'll help you test drive the upgraded equipment." She paused for a half second, just long enough to let ideas happen. "But it'll have to wait a couple days, I'm too tired to spar against someone with a Brute rating, after all the healing we've done today." I doubt any of us actually believed that she was talking about training.
"The practice is a good idea," I agreed. Happy belated eighteenth birthday, Sis. Hope you didn't mind waiting a few months for your present. "You're classing around a Brute two or three right now, plus Mover and Thinker one ratings, for improved reactions and accuracy. You'd have a good chance of getting gold in every Olympic event, if you were allowed to compete. On top of all your other powers. There's a reason they gave me a 'trump' rating, after all."
"Thank you for putting in the extra effort," He responded while stretching, flexing and twisting his new arm. "You do excellent work." I really do, don't I?
"Expect to feel uncoordinated, overly emotional and impulsive for the next couple weeks," I added. "It will take that long for you get used to your new hormone levels and physical abilities. Think of it like a second puberty, but without all the acne and angst. Don't worry, it won't last very long, but try not to make any major emotional decisions until it wears off."
"Uh, yeah, I'll keep that in mind," he agreed, glancing over at Victoria uncomfortably. "I wasn't really the type that made a lot of rash decisions as a teen. But thanks for the word of caution."
Vicky gave me the look of a small child that just watched me take away the puppy she wanted. Sorry, but it's for your own good. You'd be functionally taking advantage of someone while they're drunk. Or, worse, he'd end up sleeping with her and half the females on his team by the end of next week. I'd hate to clean up that mess.
"It'll probably be a couple days before we get your replacement armor ready," I informed him, happy to change the subject away from his body. I called some mass off my armor and coated his arm with it, fusing it into the living portion of his suit and forming the earliest version of our armor, the one I could still make on my own. "This'll at least give you a temporary patch for now. They're so caught up in the shunt-bug idea that I'm not sure if they'll have time to get proper armor repairs done."
There's so much extra stuff packed into this armor these days. My power was only helpful for growing the framework of the suits. The living layer was still needed, integrating into the Endbringer tissue and maintaining the organic antigravity and electromagnetic technology. Handling the shunt drives. All kinds of things, actually. Ensuring that not even Dragon could build the system, not without a copy of the seed lifeform that grew into the armor layer. But it also ensured that I didn't have the ability to fix them where they were broken. Or, in this case, dismembered.
"Alright, well, we'd better get going," Vicky agreed, tuning into my desire to be done with this, to get back to Taylor. "We've been running poor Eric ragged today. Any more and he'll be making double overtime."
She pulled Chevalier off toward where Eric was waiting, chatting with Zach about whatever it was they found interesting. She was right, the only people left now were the ones living on Avalon. Crystal's team had gone, taking Alexandria with them. Vicky was about to leave. The Protectorate and PRT members were long since gone. The tinkers were still there, talking eagerly about their plans and waiting for us to take them to their labs.
I went to the pod we put Taylor in, and simply bonded it to my armor and stood. The Dryad, even without antigrav and other augmentations, could lift a minivan without much difficulty. One deceptively heavy girl in a pod, wasn't a problem. I wasn't that light, either. Even at my slightly below average height, I weighed over a couple hundred pounds. Side effect of a bioengineered superathlete body.
Don't worry, Taylor, I'll get you home soon. I knew she'd understand that we had projects to worry about first.
"We'll have to abandon the command center here for the night," Lisa said as I approached her.
"Set it on autopilot," Trevor spoke up. "I put that feature in. It'll head to our capital city, or the geoanalogue of Brockton Bay no matter what dimension it's currently in. It's really not well defended, and it's pretty slow. But it'll arrive in a day or so."
"I'll assign a couple Azazels to protect it on the journey," Dragon offered. "Avalon territory code gives military craft right of access to certain flight paths. I can set the system to follow them appropriately, with your permission."
"Of course," I agreed immediately. "Thank you for everything."
"You're welcome," she responded. I turned to walk over to Janus, trusting her to handle things. Dragon was half the reason Avalon was working so well. An entire planetary governing system built by the most powerful Tinker on the planet, with help from some of the most powerful Thinkers. It was unlikely we'd have air traffic any time soon, but Dragon had built rules for the future air traffic right into our starting code of laws and regulations.
Not the constitutional ones, of course. The whole point of a constitution was to make a general outline that was very hard to change. The whole point of regulations was to set specific guidelines so everyone knew what to expect and wouldn't get into pointless accidents. In this case, the possibility of putting a passenger aircraft in the path of a supersonic tinkertech weapon system. No one wanted that.
"Thank you for waiting on us," I said to Eric as I got to him and Zach. "Sorry it took so long."
"Hey, Endbringer bullshit," he shrugged. "We knew what we were getting into when we signed up. Want me to send you home right away?"
"Yes, please," I agreed. The others could take care of themselves, I just wanted to leave now. Go home, see Taylor.
"Wait for Clarice," Riley instructed. I almost forgot she was still in here with me. "I'll be out of range if we teleport back."
"Hold on a sec," I interrupted him as he reached for me, instead looking back at where Riley's doll had jumped off toward us, moving at speeds that would make you think it was life or death. Her combat changeling was absurdly powerful now, one of the fringe benefits of being her personal workplace for everything she came up with. It was somewhere around model 20, now, and that showed in its speed and power.
She landed gently next to me and spoke. "Okay, time to go."
"Do you think I'll be able to see Missy, even though it's past curfew?" Riley asked, as Eric reached over and put his hand on my armor.
Missy's probably devastated about not being able to be a part of this one, I thought as the world changed around us. Of course Riley would be concerned.
"That's kind of an understatement," I responded, looking up at the dark sky of Avalon. Every star was so bright it was almost like you could reach up and touch them, the advantage of our thinner, pollution free atmosphere.
I'd started guiding the Dryad toward what was essentially our launching bay, where we kept all the suits above the labs where they were designed and tested. The more I thought about it, the more I realized our capital buildings were an incredibly high end military research facility. At least we'd finally managed to make our actual living area just a living area, instead of having superweapons in the basement. Now they were just waiting next door.
"Please, I'm really worried about her," Riley begged. "I don't want her to be alone."
She really does love Missy. That only made sense. Missy was her best friend, her first act of legitimate kindness, possibly the first person who was ever legitimately kind to her for no reason at all. I knew I couldn't claim that. I legitimately cared about the girl, now, but it certainly didn't start that way.
It was Missy who forgave her and defended her when no one else would or could. I couldn't help but see the parallels between those two, and myself with Taylor. The only way they could get closer is if they found a way to create an empathic link through their powers. Although if that were possible, I imagine Riley would have done it already.
It made me feel pretty good that Riley even felt the need to ask, instead of doing what Zach and Emma did and trying to avoid getting caught.
"If Missy's still awake," I agreed, guiding the suit into the building and landing. There was no doubt she would be, considering the circumstances. "And don't let anyone else find out I let you break the rules. I know Zach and Emma do it all the time, but I don't want to encourage that sort of thing."
Especially as we move forward and pick up more people. None of the Mass Triggers that we were hoping to recruit were underaged, but a lot of them were still pretty young. The 'dorm' layout, curfew included, was likely to be the norm even for the adults, most likely.
"Thank you!" Riley exclaimed, activating her release button and dropping down to the ground. She bolted off toward the elevator.
I couldn't help but smile, as I set the healing pod down and awakened Taylor.
"Wha-" she asked ever so eloquently as she sat up. "My head hurts."
"It's going to for a little while," I apologized. "I had to knock you out. Sorry."
"Did you use another fire extinguisher?" she asked.
"What do you remember?" I asked, smiling.
"Not a lot," she admitted. "I think... Endbringer attack?"
"Yeah," I confirmed. "This one was a Master class, spawning monsters like... us. Maybe more like Nilbog. Things got ugly when we found out you could see through the monsters it was making."
"Is that why I can't remember?" she asked, groggily.
"No, I did that on purpose," I answered. "I was lucky enough to even think clearly enough to put you under. After... I disrupted the way the sleep cycle's suppose to work. Think of it like a hangover, complete with blackout. Only without the need for alcohol poisoning to get you there. Let's get you to bed, I'll explain more in the morning." That wasn't completely accurate, but it was close enough.
"Okay," she agreed. She'd need the natural sleep that I prevented her from getting before. I didn't know exactly what she experienced through Beelzebub's creatures, but I had my suspicions. What I felt through our link was almost enough to make me physically ill. Couple that with what Riley had been saying about the way the parasites linked themselves into the nervous systems... she could easily have been experiencing every sensation and every thought of every victim. With any luck, she would never remember any part of it.
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A/N- Yeah, I know. Pretty much nothing actually happened in this chapter. Still, I happen to like it.
