Grind 3.7 Vicky and Amy

Vicky

Snorting I put away my phone, and poured on the speed. Honestly asking if Player was a good kisser, what was wrong with that boy? Not that it mattered right now I had much more important things to worry about. Mom needs to know about this, it's not my fault the girl had a bad reaction to my aura! It's not like her little pets flew around with signs saying empathic power multiplier!

I was sorry that it messed with her head, but what was I supposed to do about it? It's part of my power, and I can't turn it off. I'd tried, especially early on when all of a sudden people started to like me because of it, well that and being a hero. Not having a secret identity though I just had to get used to that.

It's not like anyone ever complained about my aura though! At least, not the good guys, but it's alright to scare the crap out of the bad guys. They deserve it. Player hadn't deserved it.

I winced at that. She had not planned to kiss me, hell from what she said she didn't even want to. And then I hit her with fear, and shit, Dean said the affect multiplied. Damn she really did not deserve that especially given she wasn't exactly feeling like herself. Oh man I really should apologize… Call first though, call ahead and give her a chance to meet me without the little dragons.

Oh crap, I wanted to hold them though! They looked adorable! Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I keep my aura running at the lowest setting, and she only brings one?

Crap no. Need to focus, need to apologize, and show her I really mean it. Maybe I could take her shopping?

Landing in front of the house I headed inside

"Mom, we need to talk." I called out.

"Kitchen."

True to her word she was in the kitchen, dicing up carrots. "Mom we ughh might be getting a call from the PRT." Please don't be mad, went completely unsaid.

Sighing she turned to face me. "Property damage, or an injured criminal?" The fact that she expected the call to mean either of those things, well it hurt a bit.

"Neither, umm I met the new Ward Player, our powers did not, umm interact well." I said scuffing my foot against the floor.

Mom straightened up and gave me a searching look. "What happened, exactly?"

I tried and failed not to gulp. "Umm the little dragons from her public debut, they're, what did Dean call it… oh um empathically linked to her. So, when my aura hit her, it uh hit her a lot harder than it would have normally."

Mom was already messaging her temples, the way she does when she spends an entire day working on a difficult case. "What happened exactly? And do not make me ask a third time."

"Well she umm kissed me, and then I ughh switched to the fear side of the aura, and well she…"

"Vicky, tell me."

"She cried, a lot, and ummm curled up in a ball, and she umm basically begged me for forgiveness and mercy." Damn, putting it in words really drove the point home. I really need to find a way to apologize properly. I don't think a trip to the boardwalk for some shopping is going to make up for this one.

Still, might not be a bad place to start.

{}{}{}{}

Amy

Conference rooms suck. The off white paint, the stiff chairs, everything about them is frustratingly bland. Based on how much Player was fidgeting I think she agreed, but then she was also trying to divide her attention between three little dragons.

When the door opened I was surprised to see a trooper rather than Carol, or Vicky, or for that matter director Piggot. "Player, director wanted to give you a heads up that Glory Girl will be coming with Brandish, she recommends you leave your pet dragons in the Wards common room to prevent a repeat of earlier." Player seemed to wince at the word pet.

Nodding Player headed out the door her dragons winging after her, leaving me alone in a rather large conference room with far too much on my mind.

What the hell am I supposed to do in this situation? What is the standard procedure for learning that your romantic interest in your adopted sister is the unintended result of extensive exposure to a weak master effect? Does the PRT have a pamphlet for dealing with that or do they have a shrink they can recommend? Oh shit they aren't going to force me through master stranger protocols are they? If they are I'll leave right now, because today has been shitty enough as is.

Tapping idly at the table I went back to my musings from earlier.

Five minutes later Player came back, sans dragons. "Hey." She said. "Still no Piggot?"

It was the kind of question you ask when the answer is obvious just to make some noise, not that I minded, any distraction was welcome right now. "Nope."

Grunting Player slumped back into the seat next to mine. Apparently neither of us are particularly good conversationalists. I could ask her for advice. I mean she had already solved the biggest issue in my life once today, what's once more?

"Hey, Player what would you do, if you were me?"

"What about?"

"Any of it, all of it, whichever."

"Maybe try being a little more specific."

I glanced up at the ceiling gathering my thoughts. "Where do Vicky and I go from here? What do I do about my families reactions? And…"

"And?" Player prompted.

"What do I do if I have to leave New Wave? Hell what do I do after college? I don't really want to work a regular job, but I heal for free. Even if I stick with New Wave, if they don't throw me out, I'll need a job to pay for stuff. But between healing, and a job I just wouldn't have any free time. I'm exhausted most of the time already. I just don't see it working out. Then on top of that, how the heck could I even move out? Most capes respect the unwritten rules but a healer living alone would just be asking for trouble, though I can't live with Mark and Carol forever." I glanced over at Player. "That specific enough?"

She chuckled dryly. "Yeah that is plenty specific. Anywhere in particular you want to start?"

"Sure, how about the most pressing, what do I do if they throw me out? I could stay with my aunt and uncle for awhile, probably, but I couldn't do that forever."

"Why would they throw you out?"

I did not have a good answer to that one so I decided to shrug instead.

"OK, well, I don't think they would throw you out for something that is not your fault, but off the top of my head, you could stay with my Dad and I. Though that doesn't really solve your villain worries, and it would put my Dad at risk so no. Umm you could probably convince the director to let you stay in the Wards room or get the Protectorate to let you stay on their base. I mean it is kind of huge, and they only have six heroes, and most of them live off base. I bet they have plenty of empty rooms you could stay in."

OK that's not what I'd call ideal, but it could work. At least I had options now.

"What about making a living?"

Player was giving me what I assumed was an incredulous look based on how her eyebrows arched under the big goggles she was wearing, and on how her head tilted. "You are joking right? You could just charge for healing."

"No, no way. That's one of my rules. I do not charge people for healing."

"Why?"

"Because it's a slippery slope, that's why." Alright so maybe not my best argument ever but still it was true.

Player seemed to mull that over for a sec. "Ok so you don't charge for healing, can you do stuff that is not healing?"

"What do you mean?"

"Could you do stuff like cosmetic surgery? Could you drain the fat out of people and trim away all the excess skin it would leave behind? Could you give people nose jobs or boob jobs, things like that? It wouldn't even be healing since it technically doesn't need to be done. You could charge people for stuff like that."

Cosmetic surgery, charging for cosmetic surgery… I could do all of those things easy, and probably a lot more. I could give people a tan without all the increased risk of skin cancer, I really could drain the fat out of people all I would need is a shower. Boob jobs, nose jobs, I could show them in real time what the final result would look like. I could definitely do that. Player had a point it was not really healing if they did not actually need the procedure. So was there any harm in charging for it? But it would cut into time I would otherwise spend healing wouldn't it? I asked Player.

"I doubt it. I bet plastic surgeons don't handle more than one or two operations a day. I think most of their time is spent meeting with people who may want surgery and then filling out paperwork. And even if that isn't the case most people live just fine on a fraction of what people like that make, and you can charge more than they do."

"Why would I be able to charge more?"

"No recovery time, no scars, and if you mess up you just put everything back the way you found it. Yeah you can charge a lot more than normal doctors."

I felt the need to argue, there had to be some reason why that idea would not, or could not work. For the life of me though nothing came to mind. I even know a few plastic surgeons. Maybe I could talk to one of them about a partnership, and with that sort of job I could earn my living in a few hours, go do my charity healing, and then have most of the day free.

"That's actually brilliant. As long as I only charge for cosmetic stuff I can keep refusing people who try to bribe me to heal their actual diseases."

"Sure." Player responded with a shrug.

"How come you're so good at this?" Really she was solving all my problems one after another like it was no big deal, what the hell is up with that?

"Well my power means I can get whatever power I might need, but doing that takes time, lots of time. Short books I can blow through in about six hours, but I can't just sit down with a new novel every night. If there aren't any powers or anything in the book it won't do me any good, and I can't give up six hours every day anyway. So far the Wards have me prioritizing. First stop was to get my healing power, second was for some heavy firepower. Where I go next is actually a rather heated debate between the Wards, Piggot, and Dragon. So I make do with what I've got. Granted what I've got is four powers at any given time, but I do a lot of experimenting. Like how can I mix power A with power B, and then what happens when I add power C to the mix? It's given me a lot of practice with problem solving and looking at things from new angles lately."

"OK like what?"

"Well, I tried mixing metal bending with fire bending the other day. It was Clockblcker's idea. He wanted to see if I could make a flaming sword. Turns out I can but I almost burnt my hand. Mixing powers with Vista works a lot better."

OK so not taking suggestions from Clockblocker, good to know, if not rather obvious.

"Alright seeing as you have already provided a solution to almost every other problem in my life, where do Vicky and I go from here?"

"You're asking me? I still have half a mind to bind your sister with steel cables, and then bury her up to her neck in rock for a few days. You may want a different person's opinion."

"Come on, seriously, what would you do?"

Player sighed and leaned back. "I don't know. She may very well beat herself up over this for the rest of her life. That sounds like a good enough punishment to me, but then if spending a lot of time around her is going to fuck with your head again… I don't know, forgive her but make some distance. I don't think there is a good answer here."

We both lapsed into silence after that. It was another ten minutes before Carol, Vicky, and director Piggot finally joined us. Vicky, surprisingly seemed rather subdued as she walked in. Her aura was set low, but for the first time in years it was noticeable to me. I'd seen enough drug addicts to realize what that meant. I'd never been immune, I'd just gotten used to the effect. Despite the extremely mild positive effect that new realization sent a shiver down my back. Player seemed to bristle.

Taking her seat Piggot wasted no time getting down to business. "Player, you told me I would need to call this meeting, and I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt. This had better not be a waste of my time. Explain what happened at the hospital, stick to the facts if you please." The director's glare made it perfectly clear things would not end well if she failed to stick to facts.

Player grumbled under her breath before launching into her explanation. "I met with Panacea at the hospital. We spent roughly an hour seeing how my healing interacted with various conditions, I'll get that report to you later director. After we finished Panacea and I headed to the roof to meet up with Glory Girl who was going to bring Panacea home. Her, aura," Player seemed to almost spit the word out at Vicky. "hit my dragons and I. I don't know if it multiplied, stacked or looped the feeling, but the end result was an emotional overload. I walked up to and kissed Glory Girl at which point her aura switched to fear mode, and I collapsed in tears on the roof. My dragons teleported away, most likely because they were as terrified as I was, and that helped. Panacea convinced Glory Girl to turn her aura down to the lowest setting at which point I yelled at Glory Girl. Panacea eventually told her sister to head home. The rest is really Amy's story to tell."

Fuck! Now they are all looking at me, I really don't want to do this. Player reached over and squeezed my hand reassuring me. Taking a deep breath I launched into my part of the story.

"I, I got player inside and sitting down, but something she said to Vicky about not being gay, and about what her aura had done, got me thinking." Fuck! I have to do this, for Vicky's sake. It wasn't my fault, it was never my fault, I don't need to feel guilty anymore!

"I've been in love with Vicky for almost two years now." The room went silent. No one said a word, not even Vicky, though all the color had drained out of her face. She understood what I was getting at, she had been afraid of this sort of thing when we first figured out her aura. She had woken up in the middle of the night with nightmares about boyfriends that didn't really love her for months. Now here was that same nightmare, twisted into something she had never even considered.

"At first I wasn't sure, if it was really her aura, couldn't be sure really. I'd been so afraid to admit it for so long, the idea that I wasn't some kind of sicko… it just seemed too good to be true. I slipped up, said something, and Player pieced it together. She figured it out and offered to fix me. I… at first it sounded too good to be true, but she convinced me in the end. She did it, Player fixed my head. I'm not attracted to Vicky anymore."

Across the table Vicky slumped into her seat looking dead to the world. Carol looked pale and was glancing back and forth between Player and I. For a moment she just seemed stunned at what I'd said, probably trying to wrap her head around the idea that I'd been in love with Vicky. But then her whole demeanor seemed to shift. She looked cautious, guarded, almost like she expected a knife in the back.

"How do I know this new Ward isn't some kind of master or stranger? So far I've heard you have small dragons which sounds like a master power, healing, and now some kind of anti master ability. This is all highly suspicious. And Amy, you let her use some random power on you, and I'm just expected to believe my daughter has been forcing you to fall in love with her? For all I know you've both been mastered and this is some kind of, kind of…"

"Miss Dallon! Are you insinuating that the PRT would use an undocumented master power in some kind of attack against New Wave." The directors voice was ice cold, as she glared daggers at Carol, who seemed to blanch before switching to what I thought of as her lawyer face.

"I'm saying that I'll need more proof than someone saying that Player here can just fix people's heads."

Player was all but fuming beside me. "I can't just fix heads, what I do is remove mental contamination, which lucky for Amy here extends to master affects!"

Carol shot my new friend a dismissive look. "Oh, and how do you know that is what it does? Have you tested this alleged power before against a documented master power?"

"Well, Amy was the first person I've tried it on, but…"

Carol pounced on the opening. "So it was an untested power. Then I see no reason why I should trust your word on this, and if you had never used it before how could you possibly have known what it did?"

Player now grinding her teeth, practically spat her response. "Because that's how my power works! Now would you please just consider the implications! There could be a lot of other people suffering from similar effects depending on how much exposure to her power at normal levels it takes to have that effect! Hell you could be under some kind of effect! Glory Girl needs to learn to reign in her aura as much as possible or she could do a lot of damage! What if she wants to have kids some day? Imagine how fucked up things would be if what happened to Amy happened to her kids?"

Vicky was now visibly shaking in her seat. Vicky loves people. The idea that people only like her because she was a cape, or because of her power had always scared her. She had mostly gotten over it with the distraction of patrols and fighting villains, but this must be bringing it right back up for her.

Carol looked torn. She hates backing down, or admitting she is wrong. As a lawyer her instinct is to never admit she's wrong, and as a mother defending Vicky is obviously a priority. However I can see the possibility taking hold in her head. Player's argument, crude as it was, is hard to ignore. Carol kept glancing between us, you could almost see the gears turning in her head as she thought out the possibilities.

As Carol looked at Vicky shaking in her seat, the conviction and certainty that she normally displayed seemed to come back to her. She straightened visibly, and shook her head.

"Director, I need time to consider this, and to discuss it with the rest of my team, in the mean time I suggest you find a way to prove the girl's power does what she says it does. Vicky, Amy, we're leaving."

What just like that?! She ignores the fact that Vicky's power made me love her for two years, and the fact that I hated myself because of it, and now she just wants me to leave with her? To go back home like nothing happened?! No, I still love Vicky like a sister, and I won't abandon her, but until we figure out some guidelines to minimize the risk of a relapse… I need to spend some time away from Vicky, and time away from Carol wouldn't hurt either.

"Director Piggot? If it's alright with you, I'd be very grateful if the PRT could lend me one of the empty Wards rooms here for a few days, or at least for tonight, so I can figure out more long term arrangements tomorrow?"

Everyone except Player was shocked by the question.

Piggot seemed to recover first. "I believe we can give you a room with the Wards for now, as long as you are willing to sign some non disclosure agreements that is."

"A-Ames, come on you, you're d-ditching me?" Vicky stuttered out, looking like I'd just killed her puppy.

Wrapping my sister in a hug, I tried to calm her. "No, no of course not Vicky, I'm not mad, really I'm not. But this has just been way too much, way too fast. I need to sort all this out in my own head, and I need a better idea of why this happened than too much exposure to your aura. I'm not ditching you. I just need some space to figure things out."

Vicky shakily nodded as she hugged me back, from over her shoulder I could see that Carol looked furious. Interestingly I didn't care. At the moment pissing off Carol was at the bottom of my list of worries.