"So, you're friends with my little girl?" Danny asked as he passed out food to the two teens, having bought some for Greg so he'd be forced to stick around and answer some questions.
Taking in the fact that his daughter wasn't wearing her glasses, he decided the answers to those questions were even more important than he thought, as she wasn't vain so the only reason she wouldn't be wearing them was because she thought Greg might like her better without them.
"I'd like to think so," Greg replied, "but I do tend to annoy people."
"You aren't that bad," Taylor told him.
Greg simply raised an eyebrow.
She groaned. "Okay, you used to be hyper annoying, but that was then, you aren't that way now."
Greg nodded. "No one has tried to gag me lately to shut me up, so I'm definitely improving."
"Motormouth?" Danny asked.
"Get me talking about one of my favorite subjects and you might have to chew an arm off to escape," he joked.
"I'll have to chance it," the older man said with a smile, at seeing his daughter looking so animated, unlike how she'd been for the last couple years. "Tell me about yourself, what do you like?"
"Besides Taylor?"
"Greg!" Taylor exclaimed before hiding under the blankets.
Danny burst out laughing. "I meant about school."
Greg considered that. "Same answer. I used to enjoy art, but they kicked me out of class because I took the assignments too literally."
"I thought it was because you turned in photos of the artwork," Taylor said, cautiously poking her head out from under the blankets.
Greg shrugged. "They said to make a copy as I saw it, so I did. If they'd told me it wasn't supposed to be true to life I wouldn't have drawn it that way."
"Are you claiming to be so good they couldn't tell the difference between a photo and your work?" Taylor asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I wouldn't call myself good," he said, "there's no imagination in simply drawing what you see, we have cameras for that. Art is supposed to let you draw things you imagined, or at least that's what I thought it was about."
Danny grabbed a clipboard off the side table and flipped over the photocopied prescription rules, so the blank side was facing up. He handed it to Greg along with a mechanical pencil. "Let's see what you've got," he challenged him.
"Sure," Greg replied and clicked the pencil twice to extend the lead before his hand fairly flew across the paper, switching hands at several points as he worked.
Taylor would have asked to see it after a minute or so, but the way her father had stared kept her from interrupting.
"And done," he said, handing it to Danny.
"This… this is really good," he said as he examined it.
"Let me see," Taylor asked impatiently, practically bouncing in bed.
Danny turned it around and Taylor's eyes widened. "Can you actually see it?" he teased, knowing she was very nearsighted without her glasses.
"Panacea stopped by to check up on me and fixed my eyes while she was at it," Taylor told him smugly. She returned her attention back to the clipboard. "You have at least some imagination, I'm not that pretty," she told Greg.
"And as I told you, you aren't the best judge of your own attractiveness, you are beautiful and that's just what I saw," he told her firmly.
"This might as well be a photo," Danny assured his daughter, gesturing to the photorealistic drawing of Taylor smiling as she sat with Panacea, looking around in wonder at being able to see without her glasses. Greg was really starting to grow on him, he thought to himself as he saw his daughter look down, blushing but with a smile on her face that she was pursing her lips to try and suppress.
0o0o0o0o0
Frank glanced between the gold coin and the blonde teenage girl that handed it to him. "How do I know this is gold?"
"You weigh it or bite it like a pirate," Myst sarcastically.
"My dentist would kill me," Frank replied as he pulled out a scale and dropped the unfamiliar coin on it.
"That sounds like a 'you' problem," Myst replied with a grin.
"Do you want the money or not?" Frank asked.
Myst mimed zipping her lips as she glanced around the pawn shop, trying to entertain herself while the shopkeeper ran the required tests.
"Where did you say you got it?" Frank asked.
"I didn't," Myst replied with a shrug.
"I'm required to ask," Frank told her.
"Am I required to answer?" she replied.
"Only if you want me to buy it," he said, rolling his eyes.
"In a box from my dead grandmother, no she didn't say anything about it, no clue where she got it, but she was a hooker in France in World War Two," Myst lied.
"Nazi gold," the man muttered.
"Like I said, I didn't ask, she might have told me," Myst replied with an only slightly overdramatic shiver.
"Nothing wrong with having a bit of fun," Frank assured her as he opened one of the lock boxes and started counting out hundred-dollar bills.
"You've never met the woman," Myst replied. "Plus, who wants to hear sex stories from their grandparents about their grandparents?"
Frank handed the girl a thousand dollars. "Don't spend it all in one place."
"Wasn't planning on it," Myst replied as she left the shop, trying to ignore the amused look on the man's face. 'Okay, I need somewhere I can sit down and do some research, make sure some of the villains I remember from the story aren't heroes or the heroes villains. See if I can track down Saint or the Slaughterhouse Nine. Might as well take out the low hanging fruit before going after Scion'.
She headed down the street then ducked down an alley when she saw a group of thugs crossing the street and heading her way. She wasn't surprised when the group of four rough looking guys followed her into the alley.
"Why are you running, miss?" one of the guys asked with a smirk.
"I didn't want there to be any witnesses," Myst replied with a grin as she shifted into a fighting stance.
"Right, so much for taking a leak," one of the guys said then promptly turned and walked back out of the alley, his friends quickly following him.
Myst stared at the retreating thugs. "Seriously?"
"Wrong place, wrong time," the guy said, pegging the girl as a cape, something he wanted nothing to do with.
'What the hell? Competent thugs?' she asked herself as the man quickly followed his friends. She shook her head then walked back out of the alley and continued on her way. 'So much for stealing, I mean looting a smartphone.' She glanced around with her X-ray vision and stopped when she noticed a decent looking girl in her late teens or early twenties with a trench coat filled with small plastic bags containing what she was guessing were various drugs, some of which were branded pharmaceuticals. 'She probably has some idea what's going on,' she mused as she changed direction and headed that way.
Beth glanced up from her phone when an attractive blonde girl stopped in front of her holding a twenty. "Can I help you?"
"You look like someone with connections or at least a decent idea of what's going on in the city, do you mind giving a street side lecture on the local gangs?" Myst asked.
The girl looked Myst over, trying to figure out what she wanted. "Hero or villain?"
"Bit of both," Myst replied.
The girl reached out and took the twenty. "You have the Empire, they run dog fights, pot and pharmaceuticals, if their drugs aren't clean, the leaders will usually dump their bodies in the bay. The ABB basically run casinos, hookers, and protection rackets. The Merchants are basically drug dealers, a mix of party animals, scum, and people just trying to make a living, if they're using they're probably cutting their product with shit. If they're solid, you can get cheap shit, but the quality is either mind blowing or a good way to end up dead. It's sort of like playing Russian Roulette. Coil is supposed to be the token normal but he has mercenaries with tinkertech weapons. Leet and Uber are jokes but I'm fairly sure that's an act."
"Okay, that's the villains, what about the other gang?"
"Other gang?" she asked.
"Heroes?" Myst asked.
"Only one you really have to worry about is Shadowstalker, bitch has a crossbow fetish or maybe she just likes watching people bleed, I had a 'friend' that lost a kidney to the psycho," she complained.
"What about Glory Girl?" Myst asked.
The girl shook her head. "Not really a problem unless you do something stupid. Her reputation is worse than she actually is, I think she actually encourages it so that people surrender rather than give her any trouble."
"Entirely possible," Myst decided. "Capes and powers?"
The girl quickly ran through the capes in the city, giving a decent description of everyone's known powers other than the Undersiders which she was a bit shaky on. "Is that enough?"
Myst pulled out another twenty. "Can I borrow your cell and look at PHO for a bit?"
The girl pulled a burner phone out of her pocket and handed it over after taking the twenty and unlocking it. "Go for it."
Myst sat down in a chair and started looking for any sign of Tattletale or signs of the Nine that she could find, wanting to give Lisa a heads up about Coil and possibly hire her to help track down some targets.
0o0o0
Greg smiled cheerfully as he left the hospital. He didn't think things could have gone any better if he'd scripted them himself with a typewriter that allowed him to alter reality. Well, except for the bit where he's lost all his clothes and the girls had kept theirs, he'd definitely have reversed that one. Of course now he had to convince his parents to let him homeschool himself and somehow hide the fact that he was at least half a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier today then he had been yesterday.
The last one was going to be a problem.
He briefly considered ducking them for a week or two and leaving workout magazines around to try and convince them they just hadn't spent much time with him for long enough that such a change was possible, but they weren't that neglectful except around tax season and even then they made time for him, so that wasn't going to work.
He absently got on the bus and took a seat while trying to figure out what he could tell his parents without letting on that he had powers, as being responsible parents, they would immediately try and get him signed up with the PRT's Ward's program. It wasn't that he didn't like the idea of being a ward and working with heroes, it was just that being a ward would interfere in time he could be spending with Taylor erm… helping Taylor achieve her goals. Yes, helping Taylor was the goal.
He figured he'd eventually convince her to sign up with the wards, but until she did he couldn't because that would separate them. It'd been quite some time since he'd had a real-life offline friend, as he tended to drive others away, so he wasn't going to allow them to be separated.
He felt an itch in his side and scratched it, finding a hole in his shirt. "I'm going to have to fix that," he muttered to himself, noticing that they were approaching his stop and pulling on the cord.
He exited the bus deep in thought, still figuring out what story he could give his parents that wouldn't result in him being separated from Taylor, he left behind a very confused drug addict who was examining the remains of his knife, which he'd stabbed a kid with because he'd ignored his muttered threats to hand over his wallet.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside, immediately running into his mom.
"Sweetie?" she asked in disbelief. The tall blonde woman just stared at her son, as he was easily recognizable just… bigger.
His father appeared from the kitchen a moment later, having heard the confusion in his wife's voice. "Wow, puberty hit you like a freight train," he offered, causing the two of them to turn and stare at him in disbelief. "What?"
"Dear, there is no reasonable way for our son to have gone from…. to…." She gestured.
Put on the spot he quickly came up with a plan of action, one he'd used earlier in fact… blame Panacea! "Someone at school jabbed me with something and I was lucky enough to run into Panacea," he lied. "It was really damaging and addicting stuff, so she had to do a lot of work."
"That is a lot of work," his father said in disbelief.
"Yeah, Winslow is getting worse and worse," he told them solemnly. "My friend Taylor is in the hospital right now because a couple of the popular girls filled her locker with used tampons and stuffed her in it. The staff pretended not to hear anything and she was in there overnight banging her hands bloody against the metal."
"Jesus," his father said with a wince. "Are those girls trying out to join The Nine?"
"No, that's just the way things have escalated over the year," Greg told them. "The teachers and staff have pretended not to see what the girls have been doing to Taylor all year and even now are denying everything. I'm pretty sure the guy who injected me was a gang member wanting to test a new drug or something and naturally the teachers didn't notice that either."
"Honey," his mom said, quickly wrapping him in a hug, "we can't let you go back there."
"Yeah, there is no way you are going back to that… school," his father quickly agreed.
"Taylor is going to try and do homeschooling, any way I can do the same?" he asked hopefully, trying to act upset and nervous.
His parents looked at each other and winced.
"Dear… you have a hard time focusing," his mom said gently, "I'm not sure you can be trusted to actually do all the work and not just… play online the entire time."
"Sorry, son," his dad agreed with a sigh, "you just don't have the drive."
Greg nodded as his mother released him. "Yeah, since I was healed… by Panacea, I've actually noticed that I was really scatterbrained. I don't seem to have that problem now, but the way I was… I am really surprised I haven't wandered into traffic because I wasn't paying attention."
"I actually have had to pull you into the crosswalk a time or two," his father admitted.
Greg shook his head. "I feel like I've gone through life with a dozen radio stations playing at full volume in my head until recently. Now, I have to admit some of the stations were fairly entertaining, but it was still distracting. I can't believe I almost walked into traffic."
"It's just part of your unique personality," his mom said encouragingly.
Greg chuckled. "I think that sounds more like a reason for death than a personality. Oh well, at least I'm thinking clearer now. Anyway, the current topic is Death by Winslow or Alternate Schooling. Which is it going to be?"
His parents exchanged looks and probably whole conversations from what he could tell, but he wasn't quite skilled enough to read all of that in their body language.
"Maybe something where the work is monitored online?" his mother asked hopefully.
"That… that just might work," his father agreed.
"I am rather good with a keyboard," he offered, seeing they were willing to take the chance, "and if I show up to school looking like this, whatever gang the guy who drugged me belonged to is going to want to grab me to find out if the drug made supersoldiers or something."
"Damn," his father said, "he's right. Even telling them Panacea fixed him won't stop them."
"Yeah, that's about what I figured," Greg agreed, glad his off the cuff plan was working out and wondering how much of the changes he had gone through he could pawn off as Panacea's work.
0o0o0o0o0o0
Myst meandered down the street as she considered her next move. She had a rough idea where the Nine were, but she wasn't sure she wanted to kick over that ant hill until she'd dealt with some of the other problems.
'Do I have something else I need to deal with first? No, the endbringers attacked a couple of weeks ago, I should be good even if they're attacking in pairs here. I've dealt with Noelle, burned a hole through Coil's head, lined everything up for the trio, if that doesn't work I can let Greg deal with it…' She snickered. 'Yeah, I'll just check back on that later to make sure things are on track. Dealing with Saint? Yeah, he'll become unstable enough I should deal with him before he completely loses his marbles. I'm not sure what would set him off, but I doubt dealing with The Slaughterhouse Nine would do it, so I can probably deal with them first, considering they're more of an immediate problem.'
'Lung isn't going to rampage unless poked, none of the local gangs are supposed to cause any major problems in the near future… so yeah, let's get scanning,' she told herself as she flew up into the air and headed off towards Georgia where she was reasonably sure the Nine were hanging out as they'd been spotted less than two days ago and they couldn't move all that fast while people were on high alert without giving their position away.
Myst wasn't sure if he should be relieved or disappointed that it only took him twenty minutes of searching to find a beat-up van with a driver that had Simurgh and omega tattoos. He wasn't surprised to find Crawler sleeping in a U-Haul while the rest of the Nine were laying low in a camper. 'Bunch of murder hobos, normally you kill the healer first, but she'll probably release a bio plague if I kill her and she's possibly innocent. Well… reasonably innocent.'
Myst flew down and picked up a baseball sized rock. She cast invisibility on herself, unwilling to risk someone seeing her before she'd dealt with the problem. She flew back into the air and over the van. 'It's the wind up,' she mused as she pulled her arm back, 'It's the pitch,' she thought as she threw the rock at the van, the friction of the air causing it to partially melt as it broke the sound barrier and slammed into the windshield with the force of several cases of dynamite, obliterating the van and tossing the fragments into the forest with an earth-shattering boom.
She turned her attention towards the RV and burned a hole through Jack's head before doing the same to Shatterbird, not remotely interested in letting either get a word in edgewise. She flew down, grabbed the U-haul containing Crawler, and flung it skywards, sending it into orbit, then turned her attention back to the RV. Using her X-ray vision to look through the metal. She fried Mannequin's brain with her heat vision, mostly because she doubted he'd appreciate her saving him even if she could fix his sanity; he'd lost far too much to consider doing that a kindness.
Myst turned her attention to Hatchet Face as he burst out of the side of the RV and unleashed her heat vision into his eyes, causing them to burn away before his head exploded from the pressure, his brute abilities providing no protection from the expanding gasses that were his brain just a few heartbeats before. "Both of you give up, Jack is dead and I'd like to negotiate your surrender!"
Myst watched as Riley pulled her attention off Jack and grabbed a white shirt on the way to the bathroom. 'Bioweapon?' she asked herself as Riley pulled the shower rod out. 'At least Burnscar isn't teleporting,' she told herself as Riley tied the shirt to the rod. 'Huh, that works.'
Riley stuck the rod with the shirt out one of the hole in the side of the RV. "We surrender!"
"Good," Myst replied as she walked over, stopping fifteen feet away from the RV and scanning the vehicle as she wanted to make sure that Riley wasn't grabbing something that might actually cause her problems.
"What do you want?" Burnscar asked.
"You both have powers that are pushing you to cause violence, I'd like to help, in exchange for you agreeing to quit the Nine, I'll restore your mental and physical health," Myst offered.
"You're a trump?" Riley asked.
"Yes and my power involves contracts," Myst replied as she conjured two contracts. "Sign the contract and agree to be a reasonably decent person and I'll relocate you somewhere you can try to put your lives back together."
"That's it?" Riley asked incredulously.
"Basically; you were a child when Jack found you and he was an unregistered master. Burnscar has a power that pushes her to be sociopathic and burn everything, something I can easily deal with," Myst replied as she floated the contracts over with telekinesis.
"Okay," Riley replied, figuring they didn't have a chance if it came down to a fight so they might as well sign and see if the floating woman was being truthful.
Myst smiled as they signed the contracts.
Upper Earth Orbit above the Dead Sea
The Simurgh stirred, her carefully laid plans falling apart and not sure why. She twitched when a U-haul slammed into her without warning a second before releasing a confused Crawler who started trying to eat her.
Written by: dogbertcarroll and Mist of Shadows
