4

Initialization 1.4

I found her sitting on a bench at the boardwalk carrying a big and packed backpack, in a nondescript hoodie and jeans. This was starting to look really bad. At least she had the sense to go somewhere without much gang activity. It was 2AM but there were still some people hanging around in the area for the nightlife. The boardwalk had enforcers though, so it was safer than my neck of the woods at the docks.

"Hey," I said as I plopped down beside her. "So what did you want to talk about?"

She glared at me with puffy eyes underneath her hood.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She asked sharply.

"What? What haven't I told you?" I asked bewildered. I thought for sure she was blaming me for telling her too much.

"Vicky's aura! That's what you meant before! The thing you said I wasn't ready to learn!"

Oh. Oh. She figured it out.

I looked at her seriously. "I'm sorry. I didn't know for sure if that was the reason for your feelings. And I don't have any way of stopping the effect right now, so I didn't think it would help you if I told you about it."

Victoria Dallon, also known as Glory Girl, had a power to make people admire her, or if fear her if they had a reason to be intimidated. There were theories that Panacea's romantic feelings toward her adopted sister were a result of long-term exposure to the aura, particularly during puberty's onset. Those theories were never confirmed in-story, but it made a lot of sense. Plus Panacea was too old at adoption for the Westermarck effect to be relevant.

Her face shrunk back and lost the anger. She looked down despondently. "What am I supposed to do now?"

"What happened exactly? Why are we meeting in the middle of the night, and what did you mean by it was my fault?" I asked, glancing towards her backpack.

Her lips quivered as if trying to come to a decision. After a moment, she talked.

"That day…I went to clear my head before going home. I got back late…and Carol got angry when I didn't explain anything. I asked her about my father, and we got into an argument. Then I saw Dean at school the next day and he tried to do his therapy bullshit on me, and it just pissed me off more! I started researching into Marquis, and…" She trailed off staring at the ground, and I just silently watching her from the side waiting for her to continue.

Dean Stansfield was Victoria's boyfriend, which naturally made him the target of Amelia's jealousy. This was compounded by the fact that he was also Gallant of the Wards. He had the power to sense emotions and generally tried to live up to his name…hence his attempts at being the understanding amateur therapist, which actually worked quite well on everyone…except Amelia, for obvious reasons. He knew that Amelia had "strong" feelings about him, though in the original story it was ambiguous whether he thought Amelia was jealous of Vicky and liked him, or actually knew the truth. I was sure Amelia interpreted it as the former though, which made her all the more resentful of his arrogance. As if some tool of a knight could compare to Vicky. I wondered what she would think if I told her the gallant hero never even had a traumatic trigger event and bought his powers with cash. Something to keep in mind…

"I started to remember things. How he read me bedtimes stories, made dinner…how he took a hit from Brandish to protect me. Then Carol confronted me at home again and pressed me to tell her who told me. I didn't tell her, but she found out about you anyway after she talked to Jane at the hospital." She shot me a look. "I got grounded until she could track you down."

"Ah. I take it she didn't succeed?"

That Amelia still had good memories of her father was no real surprise. The way that Marquis went down had always struck me as dubious, especially considering his temperament. Generally capes in this world followed "unwritten rules", one of which was that cape didn't attack each other's families and civilian identities. Brocton Bay Brigade had a plan, called the New Wave Movement to reveal their identities and convince other heroes to do the same, in the name of accountability. They also attacked Marquis in his house. The result? Marquis was defeated but Amelia was the victim.

Eventually the Brigade renamed themselves New Wave, and one of their members Fleur got killed when her civilian persona was targeted. I would have called it karma except I don't believe in that.

She snorted. "Of course not. My public healing sessions don't need ID. What could she do? Demand to trace your face by the security cameras because she was suspicious that you took too long to heal?"

"Mmhmm. So what happened next?"

She turned sombre again. "Vicky tried to defend me but she was also suspicious of you. She tried to cheer me up but it didn't work. I just kept thinking—about her—about—how she'll never..." She bit her lip. "I shut myself in my room. My volunteering sessions all got cancelled while I was grounded. And I…I actually felt relieved. What kind of horrible person was I, to be relieved that people that needed me would continue suffering, maybe even die, because I wouldn't heal them? But I was just so tired of it. There's always more people to heal, and it's never enough. Never enough for Carol," she said spitefully.

"There's nothing wrong with that, Amelia. You have a life of your own to live, you don't need to act like a saint and spend every moment healing," I put my hand on her shoulder and tried to reassure her.

She didn't respond to my touch except to continue. "I don't know what got into me. When I had nothing to do in my room, I started thinking about my father again. And then I…I started making a sculpture of him from my memories. I turned the plants in my room into bone for materials."

I had a sinking feeling about where this was going. But some part of me also felt excited. If Panacea's relationship with New Wave soured too quickly, a lot of my potential plans would be messed up. New Wave was useful in many ways: give me credibility by association, extra manpower to fight my villain targets, Carol as lawyer to sue the PRT for Taylor or defend my vigilante actions, etc. On the other hand, I could make Amelia mine that much sooner.

"I had broken one of my rules, to use my powers for healing only…but I couldn't stop once I started. I promised myself it'd just be this once, and I wouldn't do it again. At first I was just reshaping the bone, then I started changing its texture and modifying bacteria to color it. I'd spent hours on it trying to get it to look just right even with my vague memories…I didn't even notice Carol coming in," her voice lowered to a whisper.

"And she didn't react well," I supplemented for her.

"No, she didn't. She…destroyed it and hit me. She said that was why she never told me about Marquis. She knew I'd follow in his footsteps. She had to keep me from becoming a villain, stop me from associating with the wrong people," She narrated quietly.

"That's awful, you're not a villain for using your powers to make a damn sculpture, and you aren't going to become one," I told her. I wasn't sure if she even heard me.

"Then Vicky flew in to save me like an angel…beautiful, wonderful Vicky, always there for me…" her voice became haunted and she started sniffling again. "But then I realized…that was her aura on high power. I never became immune to it…just used to it at low amounts. All that time…it was her aura! Suddenly I became afraid of her, and I started panicking. I could barely think straight with her aura so high. I tried to tell her to stop but nothing came out," she said as she pressed her hands onto her face.

I had to admit that would be one of the worst ways to find out about the aura. Glory Girl couldn't really control it. The mechanism of its activation and effect was such that once Amelia had a reason to fear her by realizing how the aura had messed up her mind, that same aura being active kicked up her fear to extreme levels.

"In my panic I broke my rule again…I knocked them out with an anaesthetic gas made from modified bacteria…when Mark came in eventually and saw me with their unconscious bodies, I panicked again and knocked him out too."

Damn…that was bad…I couldn't help but look around, as if New Wave or the Protectorate would be after us any minute now.

"I couldn't stay after that…I had to get away, from Carol, from Vicky's aura, from everything!"

"So you packed up and left," I murmured. "And you came to me because…"

She turned to look at me again with bloodshot eyes and grabbed my arm shakily. "You said I was supposed to be an important hero in the future. But look at me, I can't control myself, I'm breaking my rules and attacking people with my powers! If you can see the future then you know how to fix this, don't you? Tell me!"

I stared at her for a moment. I knew that my approaching Panacea would have significant consequences, but it would have been preferable not to have New Wave as enemies so soon. It was going to happen eventually, but the manner which Panacea left would likely cause them to assume she was Mastered. And when they went to the PRT with this, everything would go to hell, really, really fast once they realized the extent of Panacea's powers if they didn't already know. The public thought Panacea's powers could only be used for healing, but the truth was far from that. She control over biology made her an extinction level threat if she decided to unleash a zombie plague apocalypse or something. This increased danger meant that I would have to take risker moves to stay on top of the game.

"Alright, I said I wanted to help, and I will. You have two options right now. If Carol and Mark haven't contacted the PRT yet, it might not be too late to go back and apologize—"

She cut off me. "NO! I can't. I just can't."

I sighed. "There's no going back, you know? If you don't return now, the PRT and Protectorate are going to get involved in the search for you. Panacea suddenly going missing is a big deal to a lot of people. You'll have stay in hiding, maybe for a long time. I doubt you'll be able to petition for emancipation after what you did."

"I know," she said with no hesitation.

"Then you can stay with me for now. We'll talk more later, let's get out of here. Can you get rid of your scent?" No choice but to keep moving forward then.

She hesitated a bit, before nodding. My own scent was probably still trackable, but this was the boardwalk, so there'd be tons of scents around. They wouldn't be able to figure out which scent to follow if Panacea erased her own here. A few minutes later she was done and we moved.