by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings.
Crystal ClearMany children idolize their parents, even when they act wrongly. Or even just irrationally. And thus, taking as gospel what they say about their beliefs, they are often inducted in whatever church the parents go to… or just adopt the same behaviours.
Before meeting Lustrum, Annette Rose had believed her WASP father and had piously prayed every day and gone to mass every Sunday, also giving time and money for the poor. Since the man was among the preferred target for her one-time hysterical leader (which was easy since he practiced the "turn the other cheek" mantra… and got slapped twice), she had then turned to her mother.
Annette's mother, while respectful of her husband and his beliefs, had others. Taken from a long Briton lineage harking back to when the island wasn't Christianized yet, but also enhanced with Native American lore and especially New Age drivel, the woman believed in "natural energy". She always wore semi-precious stones and insisted that they healed her mind and body, and protected her against harm to both – the proof being that she was alive, yes? Until she died, of course. Early, from smoking too much (and not only tobacco).
Annette loved her parents to bits, and Young Taylor idolized her own parents. She took seriously both her father's cautious atheism and her mother's fixation with healing crystals… despite the fact that it didn't help against a speeding truck.
After the event, Taylor's image of her dead mother became, if possible, even more saintly. Convinced that her mother couldn't be wrong, the girl would always carry several protection trinkets at all times – and, according to what knowledge of crystals she had absorbed, she chose them carefully: obsidian to shield against the bullies, jasper to protect and absorb stress and negative vibes, and amethyst for protection. She even tried to put them in the proper places for Chakra alignment.
Not that it protected against the bullying, in the end.
She had faith, though, even when they pushed her inside her contaminated locker: she prayed upon the crystals, as she always did. And the manner became quite urgent as panic settled, because she could feel the unsanitary mess swimming with insects, which she could already feel digging into her own flesh.
And, this time, "they" answered. When she arrived in the hospital, she was cleaned thoroughly by the nurses and orderlies (her clothes burned and replaced) and inspected medically, but they found nothing wrong.
Nobody found the necklaces she had chosen to wear, that day.
That last part was what surprised and annoyed her the most, too, because she thought that her bullies had finally cottoned on her protection schemes and had stolen them.
The fact that she found them next to her body the next morning surprised her even more – and it was the stones, only, without the necklace itself. Sadly, they were damaged.
She tried to bring them back to a semblance of their former glory, by using a few tools of his father. But after shattering the obsidian with the powered sandpaper, she remembered the disdain her mother had for those, and went to the small room Annette had commandeered for her stones.
Barely larger than a closet, it still housed her collection of stones, as well as lithic tools – made of stones. Such as a little stone hammer, and a stone pick. Using those, Taylor went back to work on the damaged stones, and succeeded in cutting away the little imperfections, and even smoothed them with sand and water. The fact that the stones came out better, and even a bit larger, was another surprise, but she chalked it to her novice status in handling the stones – she clearly thought that it was normal, that her mother had known, and that the answer would be in one of her books… which she started to read intently.
Yet another surprise came when she was ambushed by thugs, a few days later. By then, she had completed a set of stones she thought would complement each other: to the starting set of obsidian, amethyst, and jasper, she had added moonstone for strength and growth, tiger's eye for motivation and to lessen fear, pink quartz to encourage respect and trust from others towards her, and a small turquoise (her mother had some precious gems among her collection of stones) for luck and emotional balance.
She had even tried deep meditation to attune to these, as outlined in several books of her mother's. Including one which mentioned the use of something called "chakras" – points of confluence of natural energies in one's body. And so, during her meditation sessions, she tried to "open the chakras" with each of these stones, in the proper order: jasper for the root, followed by moonstone, tiger's eye, pink quartz, turquoise, obsidian, and amethyst. She had been quite giddy when she had felt some resonance between the stones and her body. It had also broken her concentration and her meditation.
When she found herself ambushed, she found her fear abate slowly, and the tiger's eye heat up… and dig itself inside her solar plexus. As if it was a fruit set upon a cake batter, the stone was completely swallowed. And then its heat started to spread to her whole body, and the fear lost its effect. It was only there as an indication, which didn't paralyze her anymore. Instead, when seeing one of them rushing to attack her, she was able to act instead of cower.
The obsidian and jasper were quickly absorbed, then, allowing her to shield her body and mind from both the physical attacks and the taunts. They were followed by the moonstone, because she clearly needed a boost in strength and growth for her ordinarily stick-thin body to fight and overcome her odds, as well as the amethyst for her wounds to close quickly.
The turquoise was included, too, because she needed a lot of luck for the endeavour – not only was she fighting for herself, now, but also for the woman behind the group, whom they had been in the process of… taking advantage of, when she had crossed the alleyway's mouth, earlier.
Last was the pink quartz, and it was not for the thugs. No, these were physical bullies and they just needed to be taken care of once. Taylor needed it to deal with the fallout, when regular heroes appeared on the scene.
Because some needed a nudge in the right direction, sometimes. In the PRT, Armsmaster was rumoured to be the first on scene, often, and to regard with suspicion any and all unknown persons. In New Wave, Carol Dallon played the same hard-ass role.
The heroes to arrive first, due to proximity, was New Wave's own Brandish, assisted by her niece Laserdream.
"What's going on here?" Brandish asked with authority.
As the one remaining standing the most upright, and especially as the one helping the victimized woman, Taylor thought it was her time to put aside her shyness (helped in that by the stones) and establish herself as something she would have never dared to imagine: a hero. And, as she spoke, she could feel the pink quartz heat up, its effect helping the normally by-the-book lawyer to understand her way of thinking, and to align with it.
Her newbie status helped endear her to them too, especially with Crystal, Laserdream's civilian name. Speaking of which, she was quickly inculcated on the "game" heroes and villains played – in Carol Dallon's mouth, it was, of course, not worded as such. Still, witnessing an eye roll from the younger hero made her smile, internally.
Having lost a member because of their insistence of going mask-less, the two heroes told her to get herself a costume. And a name, too.
As soon as she was safe in her bedroom, at home, Taylor felt the stones leave her body, and she became quite a wreck as soon as their effect dissipated too – the accumulated stress made her suddenly weak and unable to move for a while. It left her some time to think, though.
First was about her encounter with the villains, and then the heroes.
Even with all her knowledge about the stones, her mother hadn't struck her as being stronger than the norm, or anything of the sort. In fact, she suspected that everything she had learned about the stones was tinted with either faith, or scepticism.
But Taylor seemed to be able to internalize the stones, now. And given the propensity of powers appearing among people, she suspected that she had triggered into a parahuman, at some time – with a bit of introspection, she easily determined the exact moment, even. And her power seemed to give "healing" stones the power they were rumoured to have. The two encounters had been an involuntary proof of concept that it worked.
With that realization, plans flowed into her head, and she realized that her power included some Tinkering – although contrarily to popular belief, she didn't seem to require power tools… mostly because those didn't exist in lithic versions.
Taylor started with plans to repair the stones she had used recently, of course… and then to others, so that she could have a reserve of stones able to last a while. She also got herself a satchel for the tools, so as to always be able to repair her stones on the fly.
And then she imagined what life could be with a little help from her mineral friends. She made plans to embed stones in her bed, for instance, increasing her safety, healing her, providing good dreams, requiring less sleep, and other things in that regard.
She made plans to embed stones in her mother's little workshop, that she commandeered for herself, now. Those would be to improve her efficiency when working with the stones. To purify and recharge them faster, too – some were supposed to require the light of the full moon for full effect, or a fresh and pure source of water (something quite rare in our polluted world), and since she would patrol more often than once a month, as a hero (and keep to her hometown for a while), she needed the wanted effect in a permanent fashion.
Of course, she made plans for stones for her heroic cape and its identity. Her current assembly, along the chakras, had worked quite well and could be her default setting, but she expected more out of the stones. She would test energy grids, even the concept seen in some games, where the stones orbited one's head (impractical as it may seem to be, it could have interesting effects, such as emitting rays, absorbing them, or reflecting them).
As for her identity… with a couple stones in relation to skin, most notably aventurine (also called goldstones despite its green colouring), she was able to change its appearance. She chose a bronze colour more often found in desert-dwelling tribes of Africa. With some lapis-lazuli, she also modified her hair, changing into from wavy and down her back into shoulder-length tresses with cornrows. And she also chose her name, Lilith, because of the stone-related suffix.
Despite many tries, she couldn't equip herself with too many stones. She had chanced upon a good way to gain powers from the stones in an unobtrusive way, with stones embedded in her body. She could also use other stones, too, but only with one passive effect for each limb (either worn as a band, a bracelet, or just held), plus one that would orbit the head.
Thankfully, she managed to use, improve, and even create stone assemblies that had active powers. She could then use them with her hands, and store them in a belt or on a necklace, waiting for use.
According to popular knowledge, those stones had energies (which was true, in a scientific way, in that some of them could hold piezoelectricity for quite some time), and her parahuman power allowed her to refine that concept into the manipulation of electricity around her, and other energies too. Those chakras she used also had links with elemental energies, and by using specific stones in the appropriate one, she could wield them in the same way.
Manipulating the fifth chakra's element (space) along with stones with powers over weight, she was able to lower gravity around her, gaining the power of flight – it was slow, but it was still more than those land-bound capes.
In fact, she was quite versatile. Working with the report from New Wave, the PRT had given "Lilith" a temporary rating of Brute 3, but they didn't know that she was, in fact, a Trump. With the pink quartz she had used to command respect, she could even give herself a Master classification – not that she would advertise it.
She was even able to give powers to others, through her self-powered trinkets – although she had to attune the stones to the person first. No one would get working stones by stealing them. She made that discovery when she revealed her cape status to her father – he hadn't wanted her to continue "playing" with her mother's memorabilia, and she had had to insist that she needed it.
When he had expressed doubts, she had showed him what she could do with them, and that's when he had asked if she had tried to do the same for others.
She gave him a collar with a single onyx, at first, and it helped him overcome his grief, finally – she had had to do the same, at one point. And with that proof of concept done, she gave him some hidden strength and resilience – those weren't like the gems she used when patrolling: he would wear them in his (manly) necklace or bracelets, and they would only activate when needed. And he would invoke adrenaline (and luck) if asked how he could have done what he did.
Such as lifting a fallen motor to help a fellow worker out. Or when fighting a cape who had come to recruit people in their gang. That increased the level of respect he already commanded.
Taylor also gave some to Panacea: after her first introduction to New Wave, she had grown close to Laserdream. Taller and smarter than people her age, Taylor was able to keep up in some subjects, and lead in others. After discussing her power with her new friend, she met the miracle healer. Given the general distrust from the medical profession towards alternative medicines, she was almost snubbed, but her visible healing of some scratches on Amy Dallon's arm was enough to make the girl stop… and hide it.
"Don't you see what you have done?" she hissed. "If you start helping, there is no end!"
An end there would be, though, because Taylor crafted a bracelet for her, allowing her to manage her stress levels more healthily. And after some research, she also succeeded in making another one that allowed Panacea to heal herself with her own power.
Given that this kind of limits seemed unchanging, that was another point for her Trump ability, in that she was able to modify the limits of capes' powers. For instance, on Vista, she suspected that she could have her modify space even with living creatures inside.
Her father came with a few ideas of his own, too. Having played with role-playing games, he knew about magic items and item slots, an analogy he had used to understand Taylor's use of stones (especially the "ioun" stone). He was the one who bought her a lithography "painting", at her next birthday – for the pun, once again, as her whole specialty was about stones.
And she took ideas from anywhere, too: the books her mother had had been a start, but others included bits of history about the use of crystals, as well as geography (such as where to find ones).
Speaking about scholarly matters, she also found herself without bullies, all of a sudden: some resistance to Sophia's physical aggression led to the girl becoming particularly agitated, and a fight broke out… except that Sophia's moves, and Taylor's newfound confidence, led the track star to out herself as Shadow Stalker. In a high school full of would-be Nazis. Even without factoring her black-on-white bullying campaign against Taylor, it was a red flag for the agitated students. She was chased to the roof, and she didn't appear anymore.
Emma tried to stay on top of things, but without her constant bodyguard, she was bullied by the racist thugs for her association with Sophia. She triggered, too, and tried to join the PRT, where she was sure to find Sophia, either in hiding or healing. Instead, she found Taylor, already there for a while, and well-liked.
Sophia being outed had pushed the PRT into investigating her school life, and Armsmaster's lie detector had seen a rough couple days as a result. She was now in prison. Taylor had been contacted, as a witness, and given the full story. In return, she had volunteered to join the Wards, where her many powers meshed well with the others.
Given that her own power was to create an armour of crystal around her, Emma found her power much less versatile and useful – even if she could provide immediate ammunition for Taylor. She was not used to being lower than her previous victim, on the totem pole, and it grated, initially.
However, being forced to stay (because otherwise she would join Sophia as an accomplice), and being often paired with her erstwhile friend, made her realize that Taylor had simply moved away from their bullying. Not completely forgiven, and certainly not forgotten, but she could work with her.
That, and mandatory therapy, made Emma rethink about the last two years in details, and she finally got rid of Sophia's toxic worldview as a result. And finally got help to get rid of the anxieties linked with her initial clash with the ABB thugs.
In the end, she followed Taylor into Arcadia. Besides, there was nobody to return to, in Winslow: apparently, Madison had been chased out of school too, and her parents had sent her to Immaculata.
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To be continued… clearly