"What the hell is this?!" Panacea screamed, pointing at the Doll that carried her sister's face.
"This, Amy, it's the Plain Doll…" Emilia shrugged laconically. "Doll meet Amy. Amy meet Doll".
"Yes, indeed." The Doll added with a short bow. Her accent was different, weird but the voice was unmistakably the same of her sister. "Hello, good hunter. I am a doll, here in this dream to look after you. Honorable hunter, pursue the echoes of blood, and I will channel them into your strength. You will hunt beasts... and I will be here for you," Amy shivered at those words. "to embolden your sickly spirit."
"…T-this is your s-secret project? You built an animated doll V-Vicky?" Amy squeaked.
"I thought that would like it, dear. Call it motherly intuition, call it secretly stalking you all the way from her home to her school, call it the fact that you tried to turn me into her…" There was no accusation in her tone, but Amy couldn't help but flinch. She preferred to think that her quasi-breakdown never happened. "But you seemed to like your adoptive sister a lot…"
"That's not how as it sounds …" The girl denied, still never leaving her traitorous eyes from the perfect, beautiful, pristine face of the Plain Doll.
"Amy relax. My old master did the same thing with his own adoptive daughter…" The Good Hunter waved, attempting to shake off years of anguish, wrecking guilt and self-destructive loathing with the same levity and subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Amy would have probably screamed back at the perceived accusation, at her depravity being laid bare so uncaringly, if she would have been able to leave her eyes from the simulacrum of her sister. The Plain Doll was beautiful: the same piercing celestial-blue eyes, the same platinum-blonde hair, and the pleasant wind that carried the same unique.. scent. If it wasn't for the peculiar clothing, the height, and the Dream, she would have never believed that she wasn't actually her own sister.
Her Victoria, the sister that she had lost, ripped away from the cruel world outside. Tainted and poisoned against her. A Victoria that she always wanted but she could never have. While… While… the doll... this Victoria, said…. She said…
That was here for her.
Her. Not Dean. Not the city. Not Carol. Her.
...
"C-can I t-touch her?" Amy murmured too low for being heard from anybody.
"What?" Her mother replied.
"Can… I t-touch her?" She asked again, this time louder.
"Uh, yeah, sure go ahead"
Amy raised her hand, instinctively reaching towards the Plain Doll's face. She froze for a moment, overpowered by her guilt, but the Plain Doll didn't seem to be bothered.
She was smiling at her, the pure pristine smile of Vicky that she craved for oh so long.
Her hand caressed the pale porcelain-like cheek of Victoria's face. Nothing. She couldn't feel anything with her power. Nothing. And yet, she could sense something inside. Something primordial, churning, and twisting. She could feel it, not thought her power… but through her… ẹ̛̥̙̗͇̱͟y̧͓͎̮ȩ̸͈̗̱̩̺͈̰͜s̳͕̯̘͙̦͇̹ͅ...
She wanted to think that was just a doll, just a piece of carved wood, some tinkertech shenanigans, an illusion. The Good Hunter seemed quite apt to pull ridiculous powers straight out of nowhere. Yet, something inside her heart told her that she wasn't. She was so… real...
A Victoria that she couldn't heal.
A Victoria that she couldn't corrupt.
A Victoria that she couldn't ruin.
A Victoria that she couldn't lose.
A Victoria that was always here for her.
A pure Victoria.
A incorruptible Victoria.
An everlasting Victoria.
"Amelia, this Dream is yours…" Her mother snapped Amy from her trance, almost as if she had just finished read her thoughts. "…it's your sanctum, your home, your place of comfort. Whenever you feel like, you can come here. The Plain Doll will be here for you… I, well, I have some... let's say... unfinished business in the waking world… but… if you need my help... I'm here too" She concluded.
Home. Amy thought, weighing the word.
She had never been at home with the Dallon. She had always been a stranger, a guest at best, and criminal trying to sneak inside at worst.
This was her Dream.
Her workshop.
HER Victoria.
"Something wrong, my Good Hunter?" The doll asked with her peculiar inflection that Amy was starting to like more and more...
"Please, call me Amy," She asked with an awkward smile.
"If that is your wish, Amy." The Plain Doll smiled back.
"Well, now that the matter it's settled." Emilia interrupted the moment with a fake cough. "I think that I should point out, the other uses of the doll…"
"What?"
"Well, you remember what she said?" The Good Hunter asked.
"Yes, something something… about… channeling the echoes of blood?" Whatever the hell that even meant…
"You see, when you slay monsters in the dungeon, you absorb the echoes in their blood. The doll can channel those echoes, strengthening your body." The Good Hunter explained.
"She can really do that?" Amy asked incredulously. How does that even work? She could deal with alternate dimensions populated by horrors, but dolls that granted superpowers? That was just… just… insane...
Was she going insane?
The Good Hunter nodded. "Pretty much. Think an attribute you want to improve: intellect, strength, quality of blood... and all sort of stuff..."
Amy had no idea what to do. It didn't make any sense. Then again, she was a girl with the ability to reshape any biological organism with nothing more than physical contact. Oh, and now was immortal too, apparently...
Yeah, common sense had left Earth-Bet long ago, when that golden man appeared out of nowhere.
She took another look at the Plain Doll, her expression was so peaceful, so blissfully. No, this couldn't be bad for her. Victoria was here for her. Victoria would never betray her.
"Guess, I'll try…" Amy complied.
"Very well, let the echoes become your strength. Let me stand close. Now shut your eyes..." The Doll added and Amy obeyed. The doll knelt in front of her, gently asking for her right hand. Amy shivered at the feeling of her cold, yet warm, beautiful hands caressing her. Then the Plain Doll did... did... something.
Amy could feel it, first. It was difficult to describe: as if her body was being emptied and filled at the same time. Was she altering her biology? Just like she did so many times to others?
It was weird, but no way unpleasant.
When she reopened her eyes, she knew that something inside her had changed. She was different...
...
"Uhm, Mom, can you handle me the Hunter's Axe from before? I want to try a thing."
Her mother complied. She returned from the Workshop with the weapon and she threw it at her daughter, who caught it on the fly.
Amy practiced with the axe, swinging the weapon against invisible imaginary opponents. Even after the ministration, she could barely lift the axe , let alone use it without leaving her guard open with each swing and her arms burning, exhausted by the simple effort of lifting the large weapon.
Now it was something different entirely: the Hunter's Axe felt like an extension of her arm, perfectly balanced, and she wasn't winded in the slightest by the multiple consecutive swings. This blood echoes thing had worked fantastically. Her muscle mass was better, more efficient, denser and even so slightly larger. She was much stronger than during the fight against the Watchdog, and ridiculously more so than before the Dream.
"Yes, I can work with this…" She murmured at herself, before activating the trick mechanism of the axe, turning it into a massive halberd that would have put even Armsmaster's one to shame.
Amy's mouth stretched into a wide grin.
She could definitely work with this…
"I am thinking about changing my weapon if it's not a problem…" She asked. The Saw Cleaver wasn't bad, but this felt so much better...
"No problem, Amelia, the Workshop up here is full of all kinds of weapons I found during the Hunt, you can try all of them and find the one suits you the most… There is also other stuff inside the Workshop that I can show you, but I guess that you want to return to the waking world don't you?"
"Oh no, actually show me…" Amy replied to the surprise of the older Hunter. Her grin stretching even wider "… We have all the time we want. I mean the night is so long…"
The Hunter swept through the destroyed mess that was Brockton Bay. Emilia didn't lie when she told her that somebody went on a bombing spree. What she didn't tell her was that the bombs were actually… so unusual. She could swear that an entire side of that building was now transformed into colored glass.
How much time had passed? The destruction was too recent, some craters left by the explosions in the streets were still fuming, and the night sky was becoming slowly brighter, which meant that the dawn was soon to follow. Talk about the time not flowing inside the Hunter's Dream...
On the other hand losing track of time inside the dream was so easy, after all: exploring dungeons, studying runes, toying with gems, helping Victoria, talking to Victoria, watching Victoria in her sleep, smelling Victoria's hair…
…She conceded herself a small smile, track of time or no, she was really having a good time…
It didn't take long before she realized that somebody was following her. She could feel it, smell it. She feigned ignorance, an act made easier by the fact she was wearing her civilian clothes: hoodie and baggy pants; her sister was the one to dress fashionably for school, not her. She looked just like any mousy teenager. Of course what was doing a mousy teenager between the burning wreckage of the city right now... well, was hard to explain.
The figure crept from behind her closer and closer, until he was close enough to grab her with his muscular arm by the neck, lifting her even so slightly from the ground due being a head taller than her. "What a little bitch like you is doing at this time of day here, uh?" The paranoid thug inquired with a heavy Asian accent, pointing a knife against her cheek.
Amy rolled her eyes, getting threatened by a thug with a knife was much less scary after getting munched by a flaming monster. She couldn't get a closer look at the man but considering the accent, she was having a meeting with an ABB thug.
It made sense, she heard rumors that the ABB got some kind of bomb-tinker but cape-stuff have never been her forte. Probably she should have listened during New Wave scheduled meetings…
She touched the arm that was grabbing her, acting as if she was putting some token resistance. Could she break out with just raw strength? Maybe, but she wanted to try something. With her power, she tried a little trick, inspired by the frailty of the Watchdog's legs: she tweaked his rib-cage, specifically, she made it frailer, much easier to break applying a considerable amount of pressure.
Like her elbow slamming on his chest.
Her ears welcomed the pleasant loud crack as the thug collapsed to the ground in pain, gasping for air. It was difficult to breathe when your ribcage was shattered. Her foot finished the job, stomping on his face, breaking his nose and knocking him out of commission.
A quick check to remove any potentially lethal bone-shards (and only the lethal ones) and Amy resumed her trip toward the hospital. Should she fix him? Nah, he'll live. Probably...
Yes, she was definitely having a good time.
As she kept walking, Amy started to hum a little tune.
If the city was a mess, the hospital was somehow even worse. The building was undoubtedly damaged by the explosions, conspicuous chunks of it were missing, in some case even lying bare the clinics inside. But even worse were the people outside: the fact that there was such massive crowd outside the building right before the morning, spoke clearly about the parahuman disaster that had struck the city.
It was just like Canberra. Maybe even worse.
She took a deep breath, before pulling her hoodie up, covering her face and trying to sneak inside the building, hoping to don't get noticed. Panacea in a crowd of injured was like a bloody steak in a pool full of sharks… Definitely not a pleasant experience...
She got better at being stealthy, but not that better. They spotted her nearly instantly, for her frustration, and, as she learned during her service at Canberra, disaster survivors don't like people who try to pass the line, especially when it comes to the basic medical procedures.
They told her to "fuck off", to "get in line", to "go to hell". Somebody even threw a bottle at her; she avoided it, moving the head just enough to dodge it.
But she couldn't stop her hoodie from falling off.
And the crowd recognized the curls and the freckles, recognized that she was Panacea.
Fuck.
Sometimes she really hated the New Wave policy about transparency and no secret identities.
When the crowd few moments before was pushing here away, now it was literally fighting for her, many hands, way too many, reached for the miraculous healer, trying to grab her. The "fuck off" and "go to Hell" suddenly became "Please, help me, Panacea", "Save me, Panacea", "I can't feel my leg, Panacea…". Of course, you can't, she thought, your leg is made of crystal now…
Oh, were those flashes of smartphones? Good, now she was even on PHO. That's just precious…
She pondered if this had been a good idea, to go to the hospital. Maybe she should have just gone at Dallon's House. But she still hadn't come up with an idea to explain her disappearance… Did she want to throw her own biological mother under a bus?
More importantly, how to explain to Carol why she wasn't outside doing something while the city was burning?
She didn't have a choice, didn't she?
In the confusion, she somehow managed to slip past the crowd and enter the hospital. People cared about her power, not hers. Now did the confusion outside alerted somebody?
"M-Miss Dallon?!" Speaking of the devil…
"Doctor Clark" She greeted him, practicing that fake polite smile that she used so much during her shifts at the hospital. She couldn't help but savor the irony: normally Doctor Clark was always so composed, so collected, with that smug smile, acting like he owned the hospital. Right now? He looked like he just got out from a warzone; his usually perfect hair oily and messy, his coat was dirty, his eyes were empty by the lack of sleep. Usually, she was the overworked wreck, but right now was feeling better than ever.
Oh, how just the roles have reversed.
"Miss Dallon, the PRT informed us that you were missing… W-what happened?"
"Nothing important, for the moment…" She lied.
"Is-Is the New Wave aware? We received no communication from them." Clark asked somewhat panicked.
"Actually no, but I think that they can wait, considering the situation…" The doctor made a weird expression but in the end, he agreed. The city was burning and they needed their miraculous healer.
"Right…" The doctor nodded. "Miss Dallon please follow me."
"Of course, my good doctor..." The Healer agreed to let her smile turning into a grin (when was the last time she grinned?) much less fake and much more predatory.
Meanwhile, a girl was trying to sleep relentlessly in her bed but no matter how hard she tried: she simply couldn't. She couldn't go to sleep and do nothing when her sister was missing, kidnapped by some vile villain without the minimum sense of decency. She opened again her phone, the light of the screen illuminating the entire room, scrolling incessantly the newsfeed for any clue, anything. Her parents didn't want to tell her? Fine, she would find any information by herself.
…
...
This was new.
...
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Topic: Panacea SPOTTED at Brockton Bay Central Hospital
In: Boards ► Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay
BinderOftheHill (Original Poster)
Posted on April 16, 2011:
My uncle was injured during the bombings. I was waiting with him in front of the hospital when a bunch of people saw a girl trying to sneak inside.
Well, guess who was that girl? Yeah, you are right. Our magnificent healer has finally decided to grace us with her presence! [LINK]
Right now, she entered in the hospital and seems to have started to heal people but seriously where the fuck she was until now?
(Showing Page 1 of 1)
► LordOfDarkmoor
Replied on April 16, 2011:
About fucking time...
► Door_Unclosed
Replied on April 16, 2011:
My cousin got injured during the bombings, he died a few hours ago on the operating table.
And this bitch decides to pop out NOW? WTF!? The city was burning for Christ's sake. Where the hell she was?
► GstringGirl
Replied on April 16, 2011:
Don't say that! Panacea is a hero! There must be some explanation...
End of Page. 1
…
The heroine hastily dressed in her costume, before jumping out the window and flying towards the Brockton Bay Central Hospital the fastest that she could.
"Permission to heal you?" Amy repeated mechanically, as she placed her hand on the new patient.
She was here from, she wasn't sure, not even half an hour. And she had already patched up a dozen of people, mostly by pulling out shrapnel and shards of other materials from their bodies. She never liked her power, she always saw it as a curse, a crushing burden over her shoulders, a duty towards society but right now? It was a boring chore. No rush of adrenaline, no thrill, no fear that brought her body high...
Such a waste. These new thoughts didn't stop to press against her mind. She could be so much more...
And for once, in her damned life, she was seriously thinking to listen...
No, that was wrong. So wrong. Was it? Was it really wrong?
Well, at least those who got the worst end of the deal were already dead. The amount of work was much less than she expected, even if meant that the familiars of the deceased were mad about the fact that she disappeared right when she was needed the most…
Surprisingly she found out that she could barely bring herself to care…
She finished patching up her last patient, the same old man that asked to fix her crystal leg outside. Amy had to explain that she couldn't do anything with inorganic material. She helped to make the amputation of the art the most painless possible and, as a "consolation prize", she cleansed his lungs from both the smoke and cancer that was starting to develop. Still, she doubted that he would have thanked him post-operation. More probably, he would have joined the angry mob, shouting that if she would have been present on time, he would still have working leg, somehow. Everybody just hated her, didn't they?
She asked for a break, to the nurse's surprise. She never asked for a break before but, right now, she couldn't stand healing another meat-sack without either taking a breath of fresh air or drinking something.
Fuck, the only thing that felt right into the hospital in that moment was the smell of blood… It made her feel thirsty...
Unfortunately, she never got the chance of enjoying her first break in three years of hospital shifts, for a loud commotion caught her attention from outside the emergency room. She recognized the voice of Doctor Clark speaking with somebody else. Somebody very conceited.
"Miss Dallon, please wait..."
"My sister is here! Let me go!" The other voice roared and it was quickly followed by a large "thump". A sound that Amy recognized by experience, as the sound of a human body getting thrown away like a ragdoll.
Something burst from the door, almost ripping out it out from his hinges. Amy was quick to recognize that something: unmistakeable blond curls flowed from her head, piercing blue eyes scrutinized the emergency room until they stopped on the healer's figure. Lastly, she recognized the tingling on the back, the electrical shiver down her spine.
Aura.
Her sister.
As her sister stared at her stunned for a few moments, unable to comprehend if she was just a fruit of her imagination. the healer used this moment to think: how to explain to her what happened? Could she explain it to Vicky? Actually…
Actually did she want to tell her?
She loved Vicky but she also knew her. Amy knew that if Vicky were to know, so would Carol.
She remembered her mother's words.
Her Dream…
…Her Workshop…
…Her Victoria…
…getting ruined, destroyed, and raped by the New Wave. Mutilated and chained like her powers.
…Her home…
No, she didn't want that.
Unshackled she could be so much more...
Victoria flew towards her, completely ignoring the surroundings, as well the other stunned patients, the doctors, and the nurse. There was only her target in her mind. She grabbed the smaller sister and lifted her on the ground, squeezing her in a tight bone-crushing hug.
"Oh my god, sis it's you! You are fine! Oh, I was so worried, Ames! I was so worried." Vicky shouted overjoyed, with small tears forming in her eyes.
Yes, she didn't have to tell them anything.
All other capes had secret lives, why she shouldn't be able to?
What was a little lie, after all?
Oh, Vicky don't worry. Everything is going to be okay. Yes... everything is going to be a̠̰͠l̢͎̥̖̺̺̳̖ͅṟ͎͔͎̣̜̣i̺̥̕͡ǵ̶͈̗͔͖͕̼̟͡h̻̪̪̩̬̰̦͍̟t͓͚̘͓̀ͅ