Snuggles The Symbiote

Well, Brandish and Lady Photon were of no help whatsoever. Most of the advice the gave applied to teenagers and was the kind of thing teenagers didn't want to hear and weren't always applicable. The rest was stuff like image, firm control of boundaries, and not letting them have pets because it wouldn't be fair to the pet if we died and then there was no one left to take care of the pet.

My concerns about disciplining Ashley without punishing her—the things she'd done were wrong, but had been done for what she'd thought of were good reasons and I didn't want to discourage her—were dismissed out of hand as impossible. Apparently there's no middle ground between no rules and boundaries or too damn many that makes the kid resent you for being a controlling bitch...

...No. That wasn't fair. Maybe they didn't know how to put what they were thinking, or maybe I asked the wrong questions... But still, the advice they gave reminded me too much of the director, too much of Principal Blackwell, and too much of all the Teachers who had no idea how children worked and just made things worse when they tried to help, and that didn't help me at all with how to take care of Ashley.

Photon Mom had suggested confiscating Ashley's possessions as punishment for the penance stare thing, but personally I didn't think that proving that demons were real by using demonic powers to remind someone to not be a cunt to their relatives was deserving of punishment, and she'd been the one to start it by talking down to Ashley. I'm quite certain that I'd have absolutely hated it if an adult talked down to me and questioned when I was the recognized expert on a topic, so I'd be a hypocrite to punish her for acting on it.

After the most unproductive discussion, I looked around for Ashley. She'd been trying to get more exercise, therapists' orders, when I interrupted her about Marquis escaping so I figured that she might be back in one of the exercise rooms, which were also closer than HQ, so I checked there first.

I found Ashley, in her hero costume sans mask, in the sparring and CQC room... Dancing?

She was moving pretty quickly, shifting one leg forward and the other back while jumping very slightly side to side and moving her arms back and forth in front of her face. I watched her do that for maybe a half-a-minute, then she jumped, flipped over, kicked the air, and landed on her back.

I rushed over to her to make sure she was okay, but she was back on her feet just fine by the time I got over to her. "So he let me keep restricted access to the Penance Stare... But my reflexes are worse than I started with? I need to ask Doctor Strange what his priorities are."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just need more practice," she said with a smile. "Could you stand back? I don't want to hurt you by accident."

"What are you doing?"

"Capoeira!" She replied with a touch of drama.

I blinked. "I don't know what that is."

"Dance fighting. It was invented by African slaves in Brazil to be able to fight off their oppressors but they deliberately made it flashy and incorporated music and showmanship into the spars so they could pass off their practicing as a culture celebration instead of training to kick the slave owners' butts. Then it spread from former slaves to the criminal underclasses and from them to people fighting against corruption in the government and police force the fighty way instead of the talky way and then from there into legitimate martial arts."

Since I didn't stand back, Ashley backed up a little bit and started doing the dance thing she'd been doing before again.

"So... Why are you doing this?"

"Because I don't want to start with karate or kung fu and being able to beat up a bunch of people at once"

I blinked again. "What?"

Ashley stopped dancing. "I'm still kinda inhumanly enraged after realizing the reasons why my powers kicked in early, and when I got here the CQC instructor was finishing up a lesson with some of the agents who are still in their probationary period or however that works. When they were done, I asked him if he'd spar with me since that isn't technically a lesson so it's not against the rules and I needed to blow off some steam and he agreed."

"...But?" There was a but coming.

"But... He spent five minutes dodging everything I threw at him and then picked me up and gently punted me out of the sparring circle," Ashley concluded clinically. "He said that my form was all over the place and that I looked like someone who had a lot of experience but was years out of practice. He recommended that I start by practicing one thing until the skill 'came back' and then expand out from there." She blinked. "I didn't tell him about the memory thing. So now I'm practicing Capoeira."

"How do you even..?"

"Captain America knows it. Actually a couple of people I got codices from know it but Captain America actually uses it in his personal fighting style."

"Okay," I said slowly, "let me rephrase. Why are you practicing martial arts? You're on a break from the Cape life."

"I want to do something productive, Doc Samson said I'd be less anxious if I got more exercise, and I'm not really in the mood to play." Ashley blinked. "Also, I'm not gonna be on a break forever and I don't know when the spell holding back my powers will wear off or how strong I'll be when it does because I don't know what Doctor Strange thinks is a reasonable amount of power for me to have or what spells he used to make my limiters."

"Right now. I'm still super agile, but not as much I'm used to, and super tough. I still heal fast... But I'm only as strong and as fast as a girl my age might be normally. I've got a little shapeshifting and my sword, and I'm still smarter than I used to be but everything else is either locked up completely or really, really low powered compared to what it was before." Ashley looked me right in the eye. "If I'm going to be protecting people, my options are to learn how to fight or to throw myself in front of people and eat bullets. So now I'm practicing Capoeira."

...What is a parent supposed to do when the kid has a well thought out argument and a couple of other good reasons for doing the thing you don't want them to do?

I was saved from having to figure that out immediately by Ashley's pulling a vibrating phone from wherever it was she kept it. "Darn it. PR wants me in the media room. They scheduled another Livestream without telling me so now I have to go answer questions... I hope they have a better seat for me this time."

She grumbled something I didn't catch and marched out of the room...

And I was stuck there wondering if I was going to have to ask my dad for parenting advice which... Things between us had gotten better recently, but not by that much.

Maybe I could ask Bonesaw and then do the opposite of what she suggested?