"Sarah, am I pushing Amy too hard?"
Sarah looks up at her visiting sister, Carol Dallon, who's already on her second glass of red wine, "What brought this on?"
Carol drains her glass and leans forward refill it from the bottle on the coffee table. As she puts the bottle down, she picks up an envelope and tosses it onto the sofa next to Sarah. "Earlier a young cape brought Vicky home from South Memorial Hospital."
Sarah grabs the envelope and slides the contents out, "Why would she even be there?"
"I don't know, and Vicky wouldn't say. Anyway, she turned up on top of our house with no costume, just street clothes. I assumed that Vicky flew them, you know what she's like for following the rules."
Sarah nods and hums absently as she scans the first page, "What did you do?"
"I ran out to shout at her of course. I was about to say that Amy can heal anything when the cape interrupts me."
Sarah barks a laugh, "Someone interrupted, Carol 'The Dragon' Dallon?"
"Haha, laugh it up. She said that Amy isn't a doctor."
Sarah nods, "Well, that's true enough. What is this?"
"It's Vicky's blood tests, EEG, a meal plan, and a letter from a Nutritional Psychologist about booking an appointment to discuss how best to bring her back up to a healthy weight."
Sarah sighs, "Carol, you already know my answer. We've argued about it often enough. What's changed?"
Softly, Carol says, "She could have killed my daughter despite doing everything I asked of her."
"Carol, Amy's your daughter too. That's what it meant when you adopted her."
"Sarah, you know I only did it to keep her out of the hands of the gangs."
"It doesn't matter, you still agreed to it. You know what, I'm not having this argument again. Let me read this."
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Assault leans on the railing of a footbridge that crosses the train tracks in the west docks. As he does, Battery leans backwards next to him. "Bunny, why are we patrolling out here? Nothing ever happens in suburbia."
Battery sighs dramatically, "Don't call me that. And you know why. Brass got a hint that something might be going down somewhere between the Boardwalk and Captains Hill, so we have a walking route through suburbia."
Assault hums in agreement as he follows the progress of an odd looking cat. As he watches, he blinks and the cat has pounced on a rat on the other side of the tracks. Except he didn't blink. "Er, Battery, do you think there's anything strange about that cat?"
Battery turns around to look at where Assault's pointing, "What are you talking about? It's just a cat, probably someone's house…"
She trails off as the cat walks up to the chain link fence, and is suddenly on the other side of the fence. "Right, I'm going to call it in."
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Max Anders clicks play on his remote control to start playing a security recording, "Brad, James, this was recorded earlier on the roof of Medhall, tell me what you think."
The three of them watch as the cameras turn to static, and suddenly there's two girls in the view of the Antenna camera. After a brief conversation they move out of the view of that camera and enter the view of the southwest camera. A few seconds later it goes to static and doesn't recover.
James hums, "The one in the hoodie, she seems familiar."
Brad grunts, "Glory Girl, I recognize the hair."
James nods, "But she's not a teleporter. New cape? Maybe a changer too, or very careless about her identity."
Brad nods, "What do you want to do boss?"
Max stops the recording, "I want a soft sell. She's already associated with Glory Girl, so we can't afford to over play our hand. James, check our junior members, see if anyone recognizes her. Brad, you've got ears on the street. Remember, soft sell. We don't know what her range is if she rabbits."
Brad nods, "If we can get her, she might be able to balance Oni Lee."
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A man wearing a black body suit, with a stencil of a white snake curling around it, sits across a plain metal table from a young woman wearing a purple and black bodysuit. After a moment he slides over a bus pass.
"This is your next recruitment target. She's a telekinetic."
The woman looks down at the photo and shakes her head, "No, and hell no. Where did you get that anyway?"
"A merchant tried to use it while high. One of my men relieved him of it when he let slip that she threw skidmark around."
"Boss, she was this close to skewering me, and she did skewer Regent before she almost killed Glory Girl."
"Then you better be careful then."
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Vicky leans against her sisters door way, "Hey Ame's, you ok?"
A pillow hits her in the face as Amy shouts, "Go away!"
Vicky grabs the pillow and floats over to the bed, "No Amy, I'm not going away. Now what's wrong?"
"I almost killed you."
Vicky recoils in surprise, "What? No you didn't, you saved my life."
Amy looks up from her other pillow, "You heard Carol, if it wasn't for your friend you'd have died."
Vicky sits down next to her sister, "And it wouldn't have had anything to do with you. Look, I know everyone thinks I'm some dumb bimbo that's only good for destroying stuff. But even I know how to read."
Amy snatches the pillow from Vicky's hand and bops her around the head with it, "You're not dumb. You wouldn't be taking AP courses if you were."
"Then take it from me, you don't know what you don't know."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that, wait, I think Taylor said it best this afternoon, 'Try to avoid making assumptions, as what you don't know could get you jailed'."
"Again, what's that supposed to mean."
Vicky sighs, "Amy, we've all been assuming that just because you can heal everything, that means that you know everything there is to know about the human body. Before I came in, I was looking up what's involved in becoming a doctor, and it's insane. There are so many subjects you have to cover just to know enough to earn a place at a teaching hospital. Then you need to do years as a junior before you're finally qualified to be a doctor. Powers or not, how can we expect you to know everything they know? I mean, did you know anything about Refeeding Syndrome before tonight?"
Amy sticks her tongue out at Vicky, "No. Are you trying to make me feel better?"
Vicky smiles, "Is it working?"
Amy sighs, "Maybe. Who's Taylor."
"She's this sweet girl who's interested in Japanese woodwork, and is also a pants wettingly powerful cape."
When Amy give her a look, Vicky shakes her head, "No really. You've already met her, as she tried to save your life in the bank before I punched her too hard. No, let me finish. She's not hiding the fact that she's a cape because she doesn't want to hurt people accidentally. Anyway, just from personal experience, she's strong enough to force me to sit down after I've started to fly. She dragged me into the hospital when I didn't want to go. She can teleport, in two different ways. And she has a heart of gold, or at least bronze, as she recognized that eating a fudge cake was dangerous. For the wrong reasons, but then she helped me look up the right stuff to do by going through dozens of boxes of books to look for just the right one. She sews with her powers in order to practice not killing people with her powers. Oh, and according to PHO she made the glacier in the docks while fighting Lung for long enough to escape."
Amy smiles at Vicky, "So, should I be jealous?"
"Of Taylor? No, I'm still straight, and even if I wasn't she's too young for me."