Amy Dallon

I didn't remember the last time I had gotten such consistent sleep, the kind where my body didn't wake up with aches and pains from a chair in the hospital or the uncomfortable bed at home. Beyond that I didn't feel the fatigue from staying up too late, even the overarching exhaustion that had clung to me since the moment I had awoken to my power and put forward my utmost to use it only for others.

Part of me was ashamed at just how good it felt to wake up on the soft bed that had been provided to me, the smell of breakfast wafting through the air of the spacious room I had been given. The food was head and shoulders above most of what I had eaten before in my life, which given how I had spent a significant chunk of my recent time in a hospital eating basically what the patients got wasn't a difficult feat to pass. But all the same the variety of different foods and the masterful way they were cooked made my mouth water.

I pulled myself out of bed, taking the tray that had been left by my doorstep and taking it to the table that had been provided for me in the center of the room. The 'room' was about as large as a living room and contained basically everything I needed. A bed, bathroom, a small living area, a number of workout equipment and even various forms of entertainment. Movies, comics, books, even a television. However the t.v. didn't seem to have any channels with news on it, just various shows ranging from sitcoms to cartoons.

Of course all of the fancy additions in the world didn't change the fact that the door was made of a solid metallic material with no visible hinges. I wasn't even sure if Vicky would be able to punch her way out of here, much less someone like myself.

A knock rang out from the door, cutting into my thoughts before a voice followed after. "Are you all good for me to come in?" the voice called out from the other side, heralding a person whom I had grown all too familiar with.

"I'm finishing breakfast, let me change first." I knew that technically I could tell him just to leave, I had done so quite a few times during my stay here and had suffered no repercussions. But I was starved for human contact and despite being in league with the people who had kidnapped me he at least was someone I could talk to.

I quickly changed into a comfortable outfit that had been provided to me and called out. "Okay, I'm ready."

The door opened to reveal a tall man in a button up shirt and jeans, fairly well built with extremely pale skin, very pale blonde hair, and red eyes. Common signs of albinism when added together, and an extreme case as well given his general unhealthy parlor. I couldn't have guessed ethnicity or the like, he had already displayed once during our time together that he could slip into any number of languages and from what little I could pick up from his confident expression he didn't seem to struggle for a moment with any of them.

"Man it really is like night and day from when we brought you in, a nice bed and a few good meals really can do a wonder can't they?" The man examined me for a moment before nodding his head in satisfaction. I had gotten used to looks from guys, both normal fans and the kind of guys who had any number of god awful thoughts in their mind, but he was different. When he looked at me it was like how I had often seen doctors at the hospital I helped look at their patients, the utterly detached air of someone looking at a body and not a person.

The sad thing was that I couldn't really say he was wrong, even when kept mostly to this room or the large open garden that I was allowed to move about in I had somehow ended up in amazing shape. I was still terrified at whatever was planned for me, but I had been cared for in pretty much every aspect from the moment I had woken up here. Even if logically I knew he was a villain I couldn't bring myself to hate him.

And that scared the hell out of me.

"What does that matter?" I spit the words in a venomous tone toward the man, trying to maintain any level of animosity I could toward him.

However all my words got was a simple shrug from him. "Well seeing as you are finally healthy my employers are eager to invite you to their tea party." the man didn't quite meet my eyes as he spoke, finding the wall suddenly more interesting. "I promise its not a sex thing if that helps."

The awkward way he delivered that last part actually got a laugh out of me despite the situation, somehow the way that he said it with such awkwardness actually made me believe him. "Are they going to make me dress up or something?"

"Nah, they aren't really the type to care. That being said I doubt that I can use your health as an excuse so they'll want to meet with you later today." he sighed and turned toward the door. "I figure a quick visit to the garden might be a good breather before that though, you game?"

A genuine sense of dizziness bubbled up in me at the mention of the garden. "Yeah, I'd like that."

"Good, gnomes get to work," with a snap of his fingers the hallway in front of him was suddenly flooded by small creatures wearing plain brown robes that only came up to about my knees in terms of height, scurrying past the two of us and into the room behind me. "God those things creep me out." the man shuddered and moved forward into the hallway, motioning for me to follow.

"I think they're kind of cute," I looked back and saw one of the creatures wave at me, or at least I thought it was waving at me, there wasn't a single inch of skin revealed under their clothes.

"That's because you've never seen what's under those robes." The answer was cryptic but I didn't push for any further answers. I had discovered that when I pushed for too much information I tended to get shut out or just have the topic moved away from my question.

The hallways of wherever I was being kept in were a stark and perfect white, not a single chip of paint out of place and every so often broke off into multiple hallways that seemed to stretch on further than I was able to make out. Though that might have just been the uniform nature of the hallways playing tricks on my mind.

It was one of the many reasons I hadn't tried to stage an escape, even if I managed to somehow knock out the guy in front of me I would be lost in an instant and be forced to suffer some consequence for it. Before I could dig any deeper into the matter however we arrived in front of a steel door, the first bit of color I had seen since leaving my room.

The man pushed against the door and it hissed open, a warm burst of air entering into the otherwise stagnant hallway. Through the door was a massive field of grass with hundreds of flowers, trees, and all other manner of vegetation lining it. Up above a perfect blue sky with the sun shining through only a few fluffy clouds gave the place a further sense of peace.

I had grown up in Brockton Bay for most of my life, and the most green I saw on a day by day basis was maybe a few weeds desperately pushing their way through cracked sidewalks. The 'garden' as the man liked to call it was like a whole other world compared to the city, and being here made me feel free in a way I couldn't quite describe. When I was brought here it felt like all my cares simply slipped away.

However I was the only one who felt that way, whenever I turned back toward the man who had been my primary caretaker since I had been taken here I noticed how tense he seemed to get whenever we stepped in this place. I couldn't bring myself to ask despite my curiosity, trying to hold onto some fleeting sense of resistance against coming to see him as a person instead of someone working with the people who had taken me from my family.

Though the more time I spent away from them, the less I seemed to really care about missing my family. Not having Aunt Carol constantly looking at me like I was filth, not having to worry if Uncle Mark was going to have a good day or not.

Not having to see Vicky with her arms wrapped around someone else.

I decided to sit next to the field of flowers and just look at them, a veritable sea of colors that danced with whatever breeze happened to flow by. If asked a few weeks ago I wouldn't have said that I had any particular interest in flowers, but something about the very nature of this place and its stark contrast to the white halls of wherever I had been taken gave me a sense of peace.

That peace lasted for only a few moments however, as the normally perfect temperature of the garden was replaced with a cold breeze that instantly had me shivering. But that was thrown aside when I saw a figure descending from the sky and coming to a stop right in front of me, their arms wrapping around me.

"Thank god you're safe," Vicky held me tightly to her, only breaking the hold slightly to look at me. "I was so worried I would never see you again, never get to tell you how much you meant to me."

Despite the oddness of the situation my heart began to beat at a mile a minute, my cheeks flaring as Vicky looked at me with an intensity that I had only seen her aim toward Dean before. My mouth was far too dry to summon up any words.

It turned out I didn't need to use any, as in a moment her lips were pressed against mine, a scene pulled out of dreams I would have killed in order to keep secret. But I had always imagined it as something warm and full of love, but the kiss that I was receiving at the moment was cold and left my lips stinging after only a moment of contact.

However the kiss was broken in moments as the man who had brought me here pushed us apart and stood between us.

"What the fuck do you think you are doing?" The man turned back to look at me for a moment before turning back toward Vicky with a scowl. "This is too far even for you."

My mind was racing to catch up, but his words put things into focus. This wasn't Vicky, whoever it was just put on her face to fuck with me. I felt blood rush to my face as a host of emotions ranging from pure fury to humiliation exploded in my mind. Despite myself I rushed forward, only to be stopped by the man putting an arm out.

"Oh come on Desperate, she wanted it so bad I couldn't help but try and grant her wish," 'Vicky' began to melt away before my eyes, leaving in her place a woman with long hair that was colored as if someone had taken a paintbrush and flicked it at random. "Besides I can't help myself around adorable girls like that, it's my fatal flaw."

The man, or rather as he had now been named Desperate let out a long sigh before turning back to me. "Fuck off in a fire."

"Ow, my maiden heart has been wounded by your harsh words," Cloth remained utterly flippant toward his words, instead focusing her attention on me. "Regardless it's time for the tea party, you have kept a lot of people waiting you know." the woman snapped her fingers and suddenly the two of us were pulled away from the garden to a large…space.

That was the best way to describe it, while the ground under my feet was solid there were no walls and no roof above us. Everything outside of a small white floor was blackness, only interrupted by massive celestial bodies floating overhead. The sheer scope of the room sent my head swimming with vertigo, but I was held up by Desperate gripping onto my arm.

"Don't worry, it's always weird at first. Just take a deep breath and walk with me. Nobody here will hurt you." Despite his calm tone it was easy to make out the anxiety in his eyes as he led us forward toward a large table at the center of the 'floor' of the area. It was a large round thing made of wood and surrounded by four chairs, set with a white tablecloth and a number of different pots letting off fresh steam from their spouts.

I carefully took a seat in one of the chairs as directed by Desperate, with the woman called Cloth taking another. "Stay calm, things are going to get a lot weirder pretty fast." with a final pat on the shoulder Desperate moved behind my chair.

Honestly I didn't know how things were going to become any stranger than they already were, but any doubts were quickly swallowed as…something…appeared in the vastness of the space around the floor. It was difficult to describe, like hundreds of tendrils pulled tight like one might wrap together a ball of yawn to ensure it wouldn't come loose. Somewhere in the vague 'center' there was empty space filled by a brilliant light that seemed to pull me in until I finally forced my gaze away.

A single one of the uncountable tendrils pulled itself away from the mass and descended toward the room, pausing only just above it before from the 'tip' of the tendril a human body formed into a person that I recognized from my occasional work with the PRT, a tall black man with an almost skeletal build. The only reason I remembered him was due to thinking he had been creepy the first time we had met, Thomas Calvert.

"Apologies, so many irons in the fire that it's hard to pull myself away, even with all the time in the world.'' He pulled out a chair and took a seat, glancing toward me with a small nod of his head. "Amy Dallon, I'm sure you have a million questions but please wait for the last of our number to arrive if you would."

His voice was smooth and he spoke with the sort of command in his tone that made me want to listen despite the terror in my stomach at the thing above me. I hoped at some point that I would simply reach a peak and there wouldn't be anymore fear that could possibly rise up in me.

I was proven so very wrong by the arrival of the last member. I knew something had happened, and that something was sitting at the last chair. It had arrived in the same grandiose fashion that the massive ball of tendrils had above the sky, but I couldn't look at it.

Or rather I had looked at it, and now my body physically wouldn't let me turn my head to acknowledge it any longer. At some point I had gripped the armrest of the chair hard enough that my nails cracked against the wood.

"Sister-of-Mine, do remember that your true form is difficult for our current guest to handle." Thomas spoke casually toward the…thing that had taken its own seat.

It must have responded, in fact I would put money down that it had because there were suddenly tears in my eyes for reasons I couldn't remember, another span of seconds ripped away. But soon enough a child-like voice rang out from my side. "Oops, I always forget to phase shift down for these things, sorry!" The thing that had taken the seat was replaced by a bundle of black robes that sat in a vaguely humanoid shape, a gaping black hood with a smiling mask standing in place for a head. The mask itself was white with two little dots of red on either cheek.

"Now with all of us here, let the tea party begin." Thomas turned toward me and poured a cup for me before pushing it toward me. "So how have you found your time with us? I do hope our man behind you has been treating you well?"

I looked down at the cup for a moment before turning to look at him. Something in me snapped and I smacked aside the cup and stood from the chair, slamming my hands against the table. "What the fuck is going on here!?"

"Oh no she is raising her voice," Cloth calmly sipped from her own cup. "I'm so afraid I worry my heart will give out."

"Do you need medicine?" the entity with the mask turned its form toward Cloth, a cup of tea lifted near its mask, splashing against the surface of it in a parody of a drink.

"Sarcasm Sister, sarcasm." Cloth turned toward Thomas and made a 'get on with it' motion with her hand. "You're best at this sort of thing, take it away Thirdy."

Thomas for his part sighed and looked back at me. "Very well, first through," he put his full focus on me before speaking. "Sit."

Against my will my body plopped down in the chair opposite of him, sheer terror digging its claws into my mind and removing any more thoughts of anger.

"There we go, no reason we can't all be civilized about things," Thomas put on a smile before continuing. "Now you have been brought here for two equally important reasons. The first is because we have something we want to ask of you, and the second is because we believe you were being treated unfairly by those around you."

"Put it more mildly, why don't you?" Cloth butted in. "Spent basically her whole life fixing people up and still the second favorite? That's not even a joke with how sad it is."

Despite the terror of the situation I couldn't help but be moved by those words. Some part of me knew that Aunt Carol had always treated me differently, that no matter how much good I did it was never enough for her. Hearing it be vindicated, even by these things, was somehow comforting.

"Quite," Thomas nodded at the interjection. "You've offered yourself to serve others for no small sacrifice to your mental and physical health. Certainly you aren't the only one to have ever done so but for one so young to have such a terrible burden thrust upon her without being compensated for it fairly burns at our collective sense of injustice."

"Right, it's so mean that just because your dad was a 'bad guy' that you were treated like a bad guy too. And your dad wasn't even that mean either!" The 'Sister' spoke in the same childish voice, but now it held a bit of an edge to it.

"My dad?" I asked, my voice small. I had always known that Carol and Mark weren't my family, but they had never told me about my actual parents.

"Yes, I suppose we can start there." Thomas then began to recount to me the history of a man who had gone by Marquis. He had been a criminal, but had held a sense of honor about him despite that. They recounted his rise, and then told me about his fall, how he had been finally defeated not due to the skill of his enemies, but because he had thrown the fight to protect the only thing more important than himself.

"Mind you I tell you this not to glorify the man, he was a criminal by the standards of your world. Maybe not the most monstrous or evil of the bunch. But still a villain," Thomas paused for a moment. "And because you share his blood your 'family' cast you in the same light."

"That's why?" so many things seemed to finally click in place. Why I had received the constant lectures from Carol about staying on the right path, why I was pushed harder than anyone else no matter how good I did. Why everytime she looked at me I felt like nothing but a bug she was forced to put up with.

"I believe so. It might be cold comfort but there you go." Thomas took a sip from his cup and allowed me time to process the revelation.

A small laugh escaped from me, drawing the eyes of the other three at the table. However it was soon followed by a much louder series of laughs as the pure absurdity of the whole situation fell on me then and there. It would never matter how good I was, what I did, because no matter what I would always be the daughter of a villain.

Carol would never accept me, Mark was usually too caught in his own mind to say anything, and if Vicky knew she had kept it from me. And if she didn't, how could I trust that Carol wouldn't poison her toward me?

It was too much, I couldn't help but laugh even as tears ran down my eyes. A comforting hand fell on my shoulder, and I turned to see Desperate through my own fogged vision resting his hand on me.

"I understand that that is quite a bit of information to receive, but we still have our favor to ask of you, if you are willing to listen." Thomas waited, and I eventually gave a small nod. "Very good, now then, what do you know about entropy?"

I couldn't really say how much time passed as he spoke, but I felt drawn to every word. The revelation about my father had cast me out to sea mentally, but with each word I felt more drawn in by what they were seeking to do. There was something magical about their end goal, it had a sort of purity that the 'justice' Carol had shoved down my throat hadn't. There was no judgment, no hatred, no evil. By the end everyone in the world would be happy, even if people got hurt along the way.

And considering that the world had always seemed so close to collapse anyway, I couldn't help but be drawn in.

"All we ask of you is that you help us, and in return we will grant any desire you might have." Thomas finished.

"Or 'whomever' you desire." Cloth leaned forward and winked at me.

"So what do you say, will you join us?" Sister asked in an excited voice.

I looked down at the table for a moment and really considered what was being asked of me. I had always held that the world was black and white, there was good and bad and you could neatly put everything in those two boxes. Even now I don't think I was wrong, but maybe what I had thought was good for so long was wrong.

This world wasn't right, no matter how hard I had worked to help I had never gotten anything more than a passing thanks for my efforts. But they had taken me in and given me comfort, revealed my past to me, and on top of those things I could see the future they would build for the world. No beyond the world.

They would make everything right.

"Yes, I'll help you."

The words escaped my lips and a smile came to my lips as the three raised their cups to me.

The next few hours were an explosion of activity, moving things from the room I had been placed in to a larger room, lines of the 'gnomes' marching with boxes above their heads as Desperate lead me down the hallway, his plain outfit replaced by silver armor and a cycloptic helmet.

"Did I make the right choice?" I asked the man who had been my captor.

He gave a shrug. "You made a choice, that's all that matters in the end."

From there we moved in silence, separating from the line of gnomes and walking through a white door into a large room filled with various lab equipment. All around various men and women went back and forth, looking over computer monitors and figuring floating in sealed tubes filled with liquids of various colors.

"A new member of the club huh?" a man with frizzy brown hair approached us with a cigarette hanging from his lips and a wide smile. I could see the redness in his eyes but also saw the manic excitement behind them. "Oh shit, you're what's on her face. With the healing thing."

"Panacea." I provided.

The man quickly snapped his fingers. "Right, you got kidnapped at a mall like three days ago. Man people are going fucking wild over you kid."

I turned toward Desperate with a look of confusion plain on my face. "Three days?"

The man simply shrugged. "Time within that place is screwy, a few days out here can be a month or two within the Church."

"Anyway if you're with him that means you are with us, so welcome to the former headquarters of Blastgerm, but I think we need to go big on the name so welcome to the Garden of Eden. Names Blasto, head of lab and master of all things awesome," he motioned for us to follow him. "So you heal and shit right?"

"I can manipulate the biology of anything I touch," I put a hand against him and shut down the effects of the weed in his system. "Like that."

"Ah man, this was some good shit too," Blasto took the cigarette out of his mouth and put it out on his lab coat before thoughtlessly flicking it away. "But neat shit, I think you'll be a big help to operations, like this little beauty right here." he paused in front of a large tube containing a body floating inside of it.

"Whose this?" I asked, turning toward the man.

"A hero, the guy who took the name actually." Blasto knocked on the glass. "Got knocked down a bit, but his body was in mint condition when we dug him up and with the cool shit the bosses gave us I think we can remake him."

It took a moment for his words to connect, but I couldn't help but draw in a sharp breath once I realized just what he was saying. "Well, I'll do what I can. But I need something else first."

Blasto turned to look at me, cocking his head to the side.

"What do you know about cloning?"

I wouldn't leave Vicky forever, she was the one thing left that this world hadn't ruined for me yet. Even if I had to be here to help, I couldn't bear to leave her alone.

This was going to be how my real story began. With an act of love.

A/N
Not dead, never gone. Time for writers block to get kicked to the curb and for me to get back on the horse with things. Thanks for everyone still reading and liking despite my hiatus, and look forward to more in the future.

Also I apologize if this chapter is rough, it was pulled kicking and screaming from my mind.