Victoria answered the door. God, was she beautiful.
"Hey," I said.
She opened her mouth, paused, clicked a few times, then pointed at me with a smile. "You're Dark Smoke Puncher."
I smiled back. "My real name's Greg, I figure I can trust you with it."
Victoria made a zipping gesture and opened the door wider, "you're here to see Amy, right?"
"I am, she is here, right? I wouldn't put it past her to forget I was coming."
Victoria shrugged, looking over her shoulder in the direction of Amy's room. "Amy!" she bellowed.
A slightly muffled, "What?!" echoed from upstairs.
"I'll show you up," Victoria said, stepping back to let me enter the house. It was a nice place, something I didn't care to notice on my last visit. Big without being extravagant, well decorated without losing its homeliness.
I inventoried my shoes as I stepped inside, taking my enormous hoodie with them. I wasn't supposed to leave home without it to conceal my borderline inhuman physique. I'd stopped growing bigger at exactly the twenty-ninth point in Strength, and while I was gigantic for a fifteen-year-old I wasn't quite roids big. There were two downsides to this: I could never go outside as myself without a covering, though I wasn't losing out much there, and I would never be Joestar levels of big.
"We saw your interview," she said chattily, leading me through the house. "You're so lucky to work with Bad Canary like that. She's going to be really big one day, I can tell."
"Yeah, Amy told me you and Dean watched it with her. It was great fun, I'd been wanting to do something like that since way back when I was a busking cape. And, like, I can sing, dance and act so why not get famous, right?"
"Right!" she beamed. "If I wasn't set on parahuman psychology, I think I'd be an actress, but," she shrugged, heading up the stairs. "Less creeps that way."
I neglected to mention all the times I'd looked at upskirt pictures of her on the internet.
"The psychology of us really is interesting, isn't it," I detoured the conversation away from anything incriminating. "I've had a lot of time to read up on it, I'm actually taking a college course at the moment, what's your take on the post-trigger psychological development? I think there's a lot of validity in the Powers Corrupt theory."
"It's too much of a stretch. It would require powers themselves to be acting agents when there is a far simpler explanation that doesn't hinge on the enormous added complexity of powers having a corrupting motive. Power Corrupts makes a lot more sense, it's not like humans without power are immune to it," she traced a finger along the wall as we turned off the staircase. "There had never been a shortage of monsters before superpowers existed."
"While it's true that there's absolutely no evidence for it, I have a Thinker power-"
"Classic Thinker arrogance."
I snorted. "A Thinker power that helps me understand people, and a trend I've observed is that Parahumans have lower wisdom than unpowered people; on average. And on reading dozens of reports there is an observable increase in anti-social behaviour after triggering in most cases. So while it definitely could be that, triggers happening most often to people in bad situations in the first place, that merely having the power to affect their environment in a powerful new way puts people on a negatively reinforcing spiral, I don't think that the power itself having motive should be discounted. I mean, did you find yourself making obviously stupid choices with your power that you could have avoided? I know I did."
Victoria rubbed her chin for a few moments, "I see your point, but, it adds needless complexity to an already complex issue."
"It does, but," I shrugged exaggeratedly. "It makes for a good conversation, doesn't it?"
"It does," she narrowed her eyes at me, a smug smile on her beauteous lips as she opened Amy's door without knocking. "I can see why you like this one, Ames, am I going to have to ask you to leave the door open?"
Other Greg metaphysically sagged in relief.
We fucking did it, bro!
Hardest be cool moment of our fucking lives, bro!
Amy made a genuine noise of disgust as she looked up from her phone. "He wishes."
Classic bitch Amy.
"I'll have you know I have a sort of, almost, maybe girlfriend," I shot back. "And she's really hot."
"As if, paying a camgirl a tip doesn't mean she likes you."
"I'll prove it, if you like," I shot back snidely, equipping my work phone. "Just promise you won't spill her identity."
I brought the picture up and tossed it to Amy, who nearly fumbled the catch, and stood there with crossed arms.
Victoria watched the byplay with a mixture of confusion and amusement.
"Shit," said Amy after a moment. "She's hot."
"Ooh, let me see," Victoria floated over and held out a grabby hand, accepting the phone from a sour-faced Amy. She held it close to her face, slowly rotating as she levitated. "Wow, dude, she's really into you. A girl won't send you a picture wearing that kind of shirt unless she's keen. You better put out quick, Ames, or this girl's going to beat you."
Amy sighed deeply, shaking her head.
Victoria cackled, floating over to hand me my phone. My heart rate spiked as the fluttery feeling of her aura crept over me for a brief second before ebbing away.
"Where did you meet this girl, 'cause she is hot."
"Boston, but she's actually a New York Ward."
"Oh," Victoria's voice dropped. "That long-distance stuff must be hard, she's like ten hours away. Sorry, Greg."
My brow prickled with a sudden cold sweat. What was she talking about? Ten hours wasn't very much, why was she sorry? What did she mean by that?
Normie cuckshit.
"Eh, I'm not worried," I shrugged, feigning Chadlike confidence. "It's not like I'm here forever, I'm going to go get transferred to somewhere more important sooner rather than later, and I have no problem with New York."
She gave me a gentle, pitying look, "I'm sure it'll be fine. You were on TV, girls like fame."
"I'm a really good judge of character. Thinker, remember?"
"I guess if it's like Deany's power you'd know."
"It's something like that," I hedged. "I can get a pretty good overview of someone's personality."
"I hope things go well then. Anyway," Victoria clapped, settling back down onto the carpet. "What're you here for? Amy never has friends over."
"I'm going to assume for the same reasons you go to your friend's houses."
A discerning glint flickered in her eyes for a split second. Great, I thought that line was smooth. My acting should easily be enough to trick her, but all of her social trifecta stats were really good so maybe she just rolled a twenty or something.
Read Body Language has levelled up!
Damn it.
"Makes sense," she rose off the carpet again and floated backwards out into the hallway, shooting us finger guns. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
My heart-rate spiked again as she pulled the door mostly shut behind her, but this time it didn't have anything to do with her aura. Shit.
"What are you here for anyway?" Amy shifted into a lazy sitting position on her bed.
"Well, I do want your advice on something, but mostly I thought it would be nice to hang out. Catch up and all that," I trundled over to the truly impressive pot plant sitting on her windowsill. A fly landed on one of the tropical-looking flowers and a small harpoon jettisoned from within its depths, spearing the fly and dragging it out of sight. "Like, that's new."
"Yeah, that's the calming flower I told you about. That thing has saved me so much sleep."
I bent over to smell the flower, taking a deep inhalation. It was a new smell, I was sure it hadn't existed before she made it. I didn't have anything to compare it to, but it was extremely nice.
You have gained [Mild Calm]!
"Impressive," I said. "Very nice. What've you been up to lately? You're much happier."
"Yeah, it was called 'three months without you here'," she snapped.
"You need to lay off the pills if the comedown makes you this crabby, also, give me some."
"You're only saying that because you've never had one," Amy lay back down, sagging into the soft duvet cover. "Do you have any idea how much I get done while I'm on them? I have everything lined up for the second I can get emancipated. The NEPEA laws are a fucking joke on them, I'm months from owning my own 'health' company. I'm going to be able to help more people but on my terms. No more feeling guilted into those shitty hospital hours, no more stupid rules that don't do anything to help. Nah, I'm fixing my fucked up life, let's move to New York and just fucking live."
"I'd like that," I took another sniff of the flower. "Let's do that. I have some stuff to do here first, though, and that might take a while. One of them was what I wanted to ask about."
"Right, lay it on me."
"Please don't think too badly of me for this," I moved over to sit on the edge of her bed, facing the door.
I heard her open her mouth.
"And yeah, yeah, yeah," I cut her off. "Your opinion of me couldn't get any lower. Whatever. I caused Scarecrow's trigger event."
Amy gave an elongated, confused groan. "That was… the crazy girl. The vigilante."
"Yeah."
"It was an accident, right?"
"Of course it was. We were, like, acquaintances at school and I played a really shitty prank on her at the wrong time," I stared at my feet, shuffling. "And now she thinks I'm a Nazi and she wants to melt my brain with her fear powers."
"Sounds like you really fucked up, you utter retard."
"Yep."
I glanced over as she sat up, tucking her legs under herself and rubbing at her bloodshot eyes.
"Give me a quick rundown."
She was silent as I laid out the story, going from the start of high school, her subsequent status as bullied and my bitchmade inaction, to our meeting the other night.
"Sounds complicated," she eventually said. "I don't have any idea on how to fix that. She obviously won't want to hear you out for you to apologise, and letting her get herself killed fighting the gangs is a fucked move-"
A hiccup sounded from out in the hallway, then a sniffle, then the door burst open as Victoria barreled through it.
"That poor girl," she mashed at her face with her jersey sleeve, leaving wet spots of tears and snot. "We have to help her."
"Get out, you fucking snoop!"
I really needed enhanced senses. She barely made any noise when she flew slowly, stupid, Greg, stupid. Now she knows how much of a stupid piece of shit you are, you cretin. You put so much effort into being cool and you blew it, you fuckhead, you're a fucking fuckhead.
"I thought I'd hear you making out or something! I didn't mean to eavesdrop on something like that!"
"It's cool," I made a placating gesture, forcing myself into a relaxed posture. "I'm here because I need help with this, and I can tell you're really good at this kind of thing, Victoria. What do we do?"
Victoria gave a huge sniffle, swallowed, then scrubbed at her face again. "She just needs a friend. If I see her I'll let her know she can talk to me."
"That might be just what she needs," I agreed. "And you're not a Ward, so I think she'd be more likely to listen to you anyway."
"I'll try. I'll go for a fly tonight and see if I can see her, Amy you need to-"
"No I don't," Amy interjected.
"Yes, you do!" Victoria shifted her hands onto her hips. "She probably has a phobia of pretty girls, so she mightn't trust me by myself."
"Oh, thanks, bitch," Amy muttered. "Go by yourself, I'm busy."
"I didn't say you were ugly."
"Whatever."
They both started looking huffy, and I decided it was best to pretend that I wasn't there.
Every step was an effort greater than the last, each footfall compounding the crippling weight on my shoulders. Mortal men weren't supposed to be subjected to this. It was wrong. It was inhumane.
My lungs felt cold, like with each breath I was inhaling the essence of desolation only the Arctic could bring. I didn't want to do this, but I had to.
I turned to face the jury of my peers and the guillotine of their waiting judgement.
Dean smiled encouragingly.
"I'm sorry I used to be such an annoying dick," I piled all my effort, both my brains, into coming off as sincere and cool as possible. "I've done some work on that, and I hope we can start over and be friends this time instead of you just putting up with me."
Dean looked at Dennis, who looked at Missy, who looked at Chris, who looked at Carlos who looked at Dean.
"Of course we can," Dean said.
It still tasted like ash in my mouth.
