"Do you have a single power with a lot of uses or are you a grab bag?" Vicky asked Greg.
"I think it's more a theme thing," Greg said thoughtfully.
"How do you mean?" she asked, sitting cross legged in the air.
"Well, Lung is a dragon, so he gets fire, strength, and regeneration while slowly transforming into a big scaly lizard," he explained, "that's not exactly either of those things, it's more of a theme."
"Yeah, I can see that," Vicky said, nodding. "I'm guessing your theme is angel then."
"Physical boost, mental boost, wings, healing, singing," he listed off. "Yeah, that does fit the theme. It probably has something to do with the reason you gained powers."
"You triggered to help me," Taylor said quietly.
"Guardian Angel," Panacea offered.
"Boytoy," Vicky joked, trying to lighten the mood and cheer Taylor up, making Greg laugh.
Panacea rolled her eyes. "Guardian Angel fits his power set pretty well."
"It could be Boytoy," Vicky argued, just to annoy her sister, "we don't know that this is all his powers yet, these are just the ones he's discovered so far."
"I really wish these had come with an instruction manual," Greg said with a thoughtful frown. "Do I have more powers?"
"Maybe you give heavenly massages," Vicky teased.
"I could probably do that," Greg agreed, thinking it was easy enough to read people from their body language so knowing how to give a massage was pretty much a given.
"I can do that too," Panacea said, "healing pretty much guarantees it."
"So, it could go either way," Vicky said with a smirk. "Can you cook?" she asked.
"I…" Greg paused. "Yeah, the best I could do was microwave something before, but now I seem to know just about everything there is to know about cooking. I seem to have a cooking power, I guess, at least as far as knowing how to do it anyway."
"How about cleaning?" Vicky asked.
Greg considered that. "I don't think so, though I did take the time to clean my room before coming here. Really, there's no reason not to keep my room clean."
"I'll give that a maybe," Vicky decided. "Except for the wings I think Boytoy is his theme!"
Panacea groaned but Taylor couldn't help but giggle at how ridiculous this conversation was.
"Close your eyes and feel for your powers, see if you have any sensory enhancements or other abilities," Panacea told him.
Greg closed his eyes and tried to see if he could sense anything. "Metal, I can sense metal," he realized. "There is a lot of metal around."
"Makes it easier to find car keys," Vicky said, "not sure if that's another point in Boytoy but it's not a point against it."
"There's a space…" Greg frowned in thought and then stiffened as he heard the girls gasp and he felt a draft. "My clothes just vanished, didn't they?"
"Yes, yes they did," Vicky said, unable to look away.
Greg pulled his clothes back from the empty space and opened his eyes, patting himself down, pleased to see he was dressed again.
"And Boytoy takes the lead," Vicky said, not entirely joking.
"I'm a Boytoy Guardian Angel?" Greg asked curiously.
"That may in fact be your theme, though I'd more describe it as Booty Call Guardian Angel to be honest," Vicky agreed. "Let me get your number, New Wave is pretty experienced in figuring these things out."
"Vicky!" Panacea groaned.
"What? No, not like that!" Vicky quickly defended herself. "I just meant our team could help him firm his legs um find his feet, as a hero." She shrank back from the glares of the other two girls present.
"Let's see what you can do with metal," Panacea said, changing the subject before Vicky could give him her phone number.
"Okay," Greg agreed, surprised he didn't feel embarrassed at having basically pantsed himself in front of them. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of spare coins. "They're metal… and I can tell what metals they are composed of. I hadn't realized how little silver and copper was actually in our money."
The coins sank into his skin to the surprise of everyone present.
"And I seem to have eaten them," he noted.
"Can you cough them back out?" Taylor asked.
Greg focused on his hand and a shiny copper penny pushed up through the skin.
"So you can store bus fare as well as get dressed and undressed in a flash," Vicky noted 'innocently', "handy."
"No," Greg said with a frown, "this isn't the same coin, this one is pure copper, I seem to have made it based on the one I ate."
"How many can you make and can you make anything else?" Taylor asked, wanting to be involved and unconsciously trying to draw his attention away from Vicky.
Greg created another penny and then another and another, filling his hand with coins. "That's pretty easy. I could probably do silver, zinc, and nickel ones as well. As for shapes…" A small silver pyramid formed on his palm. "Pure silver."
Panacea placed a finger on his wrist. "I'm not seeing any mineral deficiencies, so you aren't depleting anything in your body."
"Can you make jewelry?!" Vicky asked excitedly.
Greg considered that and a simple gold bracelet grew around his wrist. "It looks like it," he agreed, "and I didn't even have to absorb any first."
"That's pure gold, isn't it?" Vicky asked quietly.
"Yes, though I really should have made a gold alloy as it's kinda bendy," he replied, reabsorbing the coins and taking off the bracelet before handing it and the pyramid to Taylor who blushed, and put the bracelet on.
"He can make jewelry," Vicky said smugly. "Is anyone going to question my Boytoy Angel description now?"
Panacea groaned, seeming to be in physical pain from her sister's antics.
Greg reached over and hummed softly, wings reappearing as he poured golden light into the annoyed healer for a couple of seconds until she shrugged him off and waved a hand to indicate she was fine just annoyed.
"I still feel guilty that I caused you to trigger," Taylor said.
"But you didn't," Greg said, quickly figuring out what to say since he apparently couldn't say how he gained powers, his wings vanished as he sat down by her bedside. "You being injured could be said to be what led to me gaining power, but you weren't responsible for getting injured, Emma and Sophia were."
"I still feel… involved," Taylor offered, not sure what to think but feeling a bit better as she could understand and agree with what he was saying.
"I don't think being like this is a bad thing," Greg told her, "it's miles above what I was and all it took was a bit of pain and frustration. I'd go through it a dozen times over if that's what it took."
Taylor blushed and fingered her bracelet.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Myst grinned as he watched Max glaring at the window where he'd written 'Prick!', on the outside in bright red lipstick, from a couple of blocks away and through a building. 'Ruined Max's day, check. Dealt with the trio or at least started the ball rolling, another check. Local gangs? Messy and someone would just replace them.'
'Noelle? Something to consider, not sure if she's in town yet. Canary? Dropping a stack of gold coins on Calle's desk would be the easiest and he'd rip the public defender apart and the judge,' he mused, figuring that he could always spring her from prison and relocate her to DC if Calle couldn't get her off legally.
He turned his attention to scanning under the industrial section of the city with his X-ray, looking for Coil's base, wanting to deal with Noelle before she caused an unreasonably large mess. 'This is easier than scanning Metropolis, I swear Lex puts lead sheets in buildings just to annoy Clark,' he complained to himself as he quickly searched the section of the city.
'Gotcha asshole,' he thought when he found an underground base, then frowned when he realized it wasn't large enough to be Coil's base and was abandoned. 'A bunch of tools and abandoned computers from the 90's, I should probably drop Greg a message.'
He grinned when he turned his attention back to searching and found a much larger base with people walking around and a vault with a monster in it. 'Okay, that looks promising. He should have a second exit tunnel, he's a wannabe bond villain,' he mused as he scanned the base and figured out the best way inside. 'Why the hell do they make the vents large enough for people to crawl through?'
He shook his head then cast his invisibility spell and flew the couple of blocks to the vents and slipped inside after carefully disabling the sensors. He floated down through the vents to the vault, being careful not to touch the edges then broke the grate on the vent and dropped into the room. "Please surrend…" he trailed off as the two mercenaries in the room opened fire with their handguns.
"Screw it," he blurred forward and 'lightly' punched one in the temple, dropping him unconscious then did the same for the other mercenary. He walked over to the vault and pushed the button for the intercom. "Hello Noelle, I'm Myst, how would you like to return to a human shape, I can also make the voices in your head vanish."
"What do you want?" Noelle asked cautiously.
"I want you to be a hero, I can give you the tools, you're an expert when it comes to gaming and combat simulators, you'd make a decent hero," Myst assured her.
"If you can fix me and a friend's legs, I'll be a hero," Noelle agreed, thinking it was a small price to pay and much more acceptable than the semi-villainous gig they had been forced into.
"I should be able to deal with that, let me give you a contract," Myst said as he opened the vault door, ready to move faster than the centaur like monster as he didn't want to fight a deranged clone of himself. He conjured the contract then pulled a pen out of his pocket and floated them over with telekinesis.
Noelle grabbed the contract and looked it over then signed it. "Now what?"
"Now, I work my magic," Myst replied as he focused on the mutated centaur-like monster with a human torso and head, wondering if he'd have ended up insane if he couldn't repair his own genetic damage. He shook his head and used his adjustment and optimization powers on her to restore her to peak human form, causing her mutated body to twist, condense and sort of melt into a busty half naked woman with a body a supermodel would be jealous of.
He ignored her quickly pulling her sweatshirt down to cover herself as he gave her purity of body and mind to make sure her shard couldn't warp her mind or body anymore. He smiled as he realized he could give her something that would help her mental state, a chance to make up for her crimes and random bouts of insanity since she'd drank the Cauldron vial. He gave her the healing hands ability. "You're fixed, I've given you an ability that will keep you from being transmuted against your will or mind controlled, I also tossed in healing so you could help your friend yourself."
"Thank you!" Noelle blurted as she looked down at her once more human legs, wishing she had a mirror as the bits she could see looked in perfect shape, better than she'd ever been if she was being honest. "Now what?"
"I suggest leaving through the vents, Coil was never going to help you," Myst replied as he pointed up at the vent.
"Some part of me knew that, we were just desperate," Noelle admitted.
"It happens," Myst replied as he walked over to the unconscious mercenary and stole his coat. He tossed it to Noelle. "I need to talk to a certain villain about why it's not a good idea to kidnap and drug children, so here's where we part ways."
Noelle pulled on the coat then jumped up and grabbed the vent, fairly sure she could hear him mutter something about bodies hitting the floor as she left through the vent, strangely unconcerned that she'd flashed her savor, mostly because her previous issues seemed less important.
Myst blurred through the hallway, occasionally punching through locked doors until he got to Coil's office.
"What do you want?" Coil demanded as he stared at the blond-haired cape without a mask, something that was more than a little concerning as it meant the man didn't care if he saw his face.
"From you? Nothing," Myst replied then burned a hole through his head with heat vision. He blasted the computer and the security system then walked over and ripped open the door to the exit and left, fairly sure the Doc wouldn't be drugging anyone without Coil forcing the issue and the mercenaries were just mercenaries, not his problem.
He spent a couple of minutes staring at the ocean and enjoying the sound of the waves, trying to let the stress of being in Worm fade. 'I can't fix everything,' he told himself as he used his ring to shift to his female form. 'But I can fix the most annoying bits.' He flew off to find an internet cafe where he could look up a certain lawyer, mostly because just breaking Canary out of prison wouldn't send the right message.
0o0o0
"I should continue my rounds before they come and get me," Panacea said with a sigh, not looking forward to it, but knowing she had more patients to see. "Want me to fix your eyes before you go?"
"You can do that?" Taylor asked, before answering herself, "Of course you can, you're Panacea."
Panacea actually chuckled at that. "I'll take that as a yes."
"I wonder why my healing didn't fix it," Greg said.
"Because it's not an injury, most likely," Panacea replied as she took Taylor's hand and began to modify her pupils. "Humans don't come standardized, there isn't anything wrong with her eyes, she is simply adapted to close up vision. Mother Nature is really hit and miss and every human is a unique build."
Taylor took off her glasses and looked around in wonder, stunned at being able to see everything so clearly.
"I actually made your eyes a bit better than standard, it's a minor enhancement but useful for heroes, assuming you are going to be a hero because we have a full roster of villains and don't really need any more, so for the sake of my caseload, please try out hero as your first option. It's a bit more difficult to go from villain to hero than the other way around after all," she suggested.
"I would love to be a hero," Taylor quickly said, "and thank you."
"Plus heroes get invited to the best parties," Vicky added with a grin. "I'm still inviting you to the next game of Truth or Dare we play."
Panacea face palmed and muttered something too low for anyone to catch. "And that's our cue," she said, turning to leave.
"I still need digits," Vicky complained, whipping out her cell phone and passing it to Taylor, as she knew her sister would give her hell if she passed it to legs… um Greg.
Taylor slowly typed on the cell phone, not having used one before. "It's my house phone, I don't have a cell."
"You should get one," Vicky said, "they are super useful." She accepted her phone back and slid it into a pocket. "Bye, don't trigger as a stranger."
"Vicky!" Panacea groaned as they left.
"They are… just about what I expected them to be like," Greg decided as he sat down again.
"What? Really?" Taylor asked. "I mean, I know Glory Girl is exactly as everyone pictures, since she is online almost all the time and posts pics while beating up villains, so there's no surprise there, but Panacea was more snarky than expected and has a wicked sense of humor."
Greg nodded. "She's the heal slut, it's expected.
Taylor just stared at him.
"Sorry, that's a gaming term for the healer. I mean she's the healer so everyone goes to them constantly badgering them for healing when they get hurt doing something stupid, which they wouldn't have done of they didn't have a healer handy. Healers tend to be really snarky and grumpy," he explained.
"I wouldn't suggest using that name where she can hear it," Taylor said, shaking her head.
Greg frowned. "Do you really think she doesn't know the term?"
"Knowing the term and having it applied to you out of game is two different things," she said.
"Point," he agreed. "Just because we get the joke doesn't mean the normies will."
Silence fell for a minute as the two sat quietly and listened to the beeping on the heart monitor.
"So…" Taylor began awkwardly, "really inclined to obey me?"
"I got these powers because I wanted to help you," Greg reasoned, "so… that really shouldn't come as a surprise. I wouldn't consider it mastering, since I can disagree with you, as we've proved, but anything you want to do… I want to help you with."
"But what if I wanted to…" Taylor blushed and tried to think of something other than what an increasing number of lines of thought were suggesting.
"Heart rate," he reminded her with amusement.
Taylor took a few deep breaths and forced her mind to focus on other things. "What if I wanted to… I don't know, become a villain?"
"I'd try and talk you out of it," Greg said, "they don't have the happiest lives and I think you deserve to be happy."
"But what if you couldn't?" she asked, unable to let go of the idea.
"Then I would do my best to make sure you were the most successful villain you could be," he admitted. "Unless you wanted to be an unsuccessful villain of course, like Leet and Uber. They make a pretty good living being unsuccessful villains."
"Still kinda sounds like mastering," Taylor pointed out.
"More like Stockholm syndrome," he argued. "You know, like that one Disney movie with the beast and his library."
"Beauty and The Beast?" she asked.
"Yeah, something like that," he agreed cheerfully.
"You think that was Stockholm syndrome?"
"Fits it to a tee," he told her confidently. "He basically kidnaps her, keeps her locked up, and eventually she falls for him. Pretty sure his library had a bit to do with it, as she was a bookworm."
"I… Huh, it does kinda fit. Pretty sure that isn't the lesson we're supposed to take away from that story though."
"At any rate it's not something I have a problem with or I wouldn't be the way I am now in the first place," he tried to explain. "Just accept the fact that you have someone who is devoted to seeing you be happy and succeed in life, it's not like other people don't have people who fill those roles so why not you?"
"Yes, but it was caused by… an outside force, it didn't develop naturally," she tried to argue.
"Taylor, the way I was… you could have trained me with pizza rolls and video games to follow your every command."
Taylor giggled, trying to muffle it with her hands.
"Really, I'm a lot happier now here with you than I was sitting in my room arguing online," he told her. "I know you don't think you deserve to be happy, but how about me being happy?"
"I… I don't think you deserve to be unhappy," she agreed.
"Then accept the fact that I derive happiness from making you happy," he told her.
"Did you just outmaneuver me using logic?" she asked in disbelief.
"Yes, yes I did," he agreed smugly.
"You really have changed," she said.
"Thankfully," he agreed.
Taylor was quiet for a minute while she went over everything they'd talked about. "Um… earlier you said you disagreed with me about my being beautiful… but I don't remember arguing about that."
"You said you weren't worth it," he replied, "that was kind of implied in there because you were running yourself down in general, saying you didn't have any positive traits. I think you have a number of positive traits of which beauty is one."
"Oh," Taylor said quietly, turning red.
The door to the hospital room opened and Danny entered, pausing as he noticed the rapid beeping of the heart rate monitor and the pleased blush on his daughter's face. He glanced at Greg, but he was firmly in his chair a good foot away, so he decided to be pleased at the situation. "I've got lunch," he announced, holding up a bag of fast food and a tray of sodas.
0o0o0
Quinn Calle studied the attractive and athletic looking blonde teenager wearing black slacks and a long sleeved shirt as she walked into his office holding a stack of gold bullion bars in each hand as if they weighed nothing which let him know she was some type of brute or they were fake and from the familiar gleam of metal he wasn't betting they were fake. "My assistant said you have a client that you'd like me to help."
"Canary, I'm sure you know who I am referring to. I find her treatment reprehensible and her public defender corrupt and incompetent. She had a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend, he shouldn't have been anywhere near her, let alone in the audience," Myst replied, her annoyance at the farce of justice clear in her voice.
"And you want me to defend her?" Calle asked.
"Ideally, yes," Myst replied.
"Who are you?" Calle asked.
"Cash," Myst replied as she set the stacks of gold bars on the desk.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Cash. There are cheaper lawyers," Calle pointed out, mentally calculating the weight of the gold bars and the current gold price.
"I think you mean less effective," Myst replied, causing the lawyer to grin. "I was born in America, everyone deserves their fair day in court. Unless something changes, she's not going to get that, she's going to get railroaded. Her lawyer will let them stick her in brute restraints and gag her without even giving her a keyboard to defend herself."
Calle glanced at the gold on his desk. "I can meet with her and file a motion for a change of venue and a different judge as the current judge has a personal bias against capes. I have a large collection of tricks and I've been doing this for years but I'm not sure it will be enough, various people in power are trying to make a statement."
"If you walk in there and make them work for it, I'll consider it gold well spent," Myst replied.
"I can push the ex-boyfriend angle with the restraining order and the fact that he shouldn't have been anywhere near her," Calle mused, thinking of the best way to handle the case.
"Is this enough to cover the costs?" Myst asked.
"It should be," Colle replied. "I'll be able to put in paperwork to unfreeze her assets for the purposes of paying for legal counsel on the off chance I need it but I doubt that will be required."
Myst pulled four gold bars out of her backpack and set them on his desk. "For clothes and other such things for her day in court or incidentals."
"I'll make some calls," Calle promised.
"Thank you. Do you need anything else from me before I go?" Myst asked, wanting to make sure.
"Let me write you a receipt for the gold," Calle said as he grabbed his notepad and started writing.
"Sure," Myst replied, not particularly worried about it.
Written by: dogbertcarroll and Mist of Shadows
