Vicky winced as her sister's hands ran through her hair, catching on the sticky webs held there and pulling on her scalp, "Careful Ames, that sort of hurt."
Her sister gave her a snort, removing her hands from Vicky's hair and depositing several clumps of web on the kitchen table where they were sitting, "You want me to stop? There's still a bunch of webs in here, but I'm sure a haircut could get rid of most of them." She gave Vicky's head an appraising glance, "I wonder how Dean feels about bald women." She thought aloud.
Vicky paled at her words, imagining a shining dome where her beautiful hair once was, "Nevermind, keep doing what you're doing!" She insisted.
Amy gave her a smirk, before moving her hands back to her sister's hair, using her powers to loosen the bonds between the webs and her sister's blonde tresses.
Vicky winced as the tugging began once more, before turning her attention to the only other person in the room. A person who was practically shaking with her anger.
"What in the world were you thinking Victoria! You could have been seriously hurt, or worse!"
Carol Dallon was very clearly not happy with her daughter, and Vicky winced at her mother's words just as much as the pain in her head. She was pretty sure Amy was doing it on purpose.
"But I wasn't!" Vicky defended, her mother's disappointed gaze striking a cord in her, "I didn't even get hurt! My shield didn't break once!"
"And what if you had been?" Her mother countered, "What if Oni Lee had been there? Or Lung? What would you have done then?"
"I spent like an hour staking out the warehouse, I couldn't see Oni Lee anywhere nearby and Lung doesn't ever leave his house unless he has a reason to! How was I supposed to know they had a new cape, much less that it was Lung's daughter!? Nobody even knew he had a daughter!"
Her mother clearly wasn't happy with her argument, the woman's face twisting into a scowl, "That's no excuse Victoria. You know better than to ever fight an unknown parahuman on your own, especially one from the ABB."
"I just thought I could take her…" She muttered.
"And you were clearly wrong." Carol said firmly, placing her hands on her hips, "And you are lucky that she isn't as bloodthirsty as her father or, god-forbid, Oni Lee."
The fact that Lung actually had a daughter was still a bit shocking to Vicky. The idea that the man who had fought off basically the entire hero population of Brockton Bay at once now had an heir was something that didn't sit well with the blonde heroine.
Yosei seemed to be much more level-headed than her father was said to be and was definitely saner than Lee, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. Given what Yosei had said, if anything happened to Lung, Vicky had no doubt that the woman would step forward as leader of the ABB.
And Vicky honestly had no idea whether that would be better or worse.
"That's the last of the webs." Amy said from her side as she pulled one more strand from Vicky's head. The blonde sighed in relief, leaning forward to grab a hairbrush that had been set aside and immediately went about neatening her messy hair.
"You think things made by her powers are permanent?" Vicky asked curiously, looking at the now semi-large ball of webs her sister was holding as she began running the brush through her hair.
Amy got a weird look on her face as she rolled the webs into a ball, "Maybe. It's slightly uncommon for things made by capes to stick around permanently, but not unheard of."
Vicky noticed this, "What's up? You just got this weird look on your face." Amy gave her a surprised look for noticing, before frowning slightly.
"We had a bunch of ABB guys come into the hospital today. That's nothing new of course, we get a ton of gang idiots that can't tell the barrel of a gun from their own ass and end up in the ER, but these guys didn't have gunshot wounds or even stab wounds. They were tortured." She looked at the ball of web between her fingers, squishing it lightly, "Ripped out fingernails, flayed bits of skin, electrical burns and signs of drowning, that sort of thing; definitely not accidents."
"So?" Vicky winced as her sister shot her a look as she placed the ball on the table, "Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I meant, isn't that sorta normal? I thought it was common knowledge how Lung deals with people he thinks are traitors. I remember you complaining about something similar a few weeks ago, something about someone inside the ABB being a sadistic sociopath because of the kinds of wounds that were coming in."
Lung was well known for his treatment of traitors in the past. The man seemingly despised them more than he did everyone else, and treated them even more harshly as a result. Only in the past few months it seemed that the gang leader had been handing his problems off to someone else, someone who didn't just burn the traitor alive and leave them for the authorities to find.
It had been causing her sister a massive headache because more often than not, the victims had mental wounds to compound the physical, leading to them needing to be strapped down for the healer to even get near them.
Amy had once said that if she ever found who was causing it, she'd make sure their stay in the psych ward was a long one which was both funny and kind of scary thanks to the face she had made at the time.
Amy scowled at the memory, "And I stand by my words. Those wounds were from someone who definitely enjoys inflicting pain, there's no other way they could be so precise and cruel at the same time." She shook her head, clearing her thoughts, "But that's not weird. Like you said, it's become pretty common recently. What isn't common was a guy we got in the Parahuman Treatment ward."
The Parahuman Treatment ward was a section of the hospital specifically for people who had been affected by a parahuman power. Someone who came into contact with Newter and couldn't handle the high would be sent there for example. Given the lack of lingering powers in the Bay despite the sheer amount of capes present it wasn't often occupied so to hear that there was suddenly someone inside and that they were connected to Yosei was concerning.
"This guy was from the same group as the rest of the ABB victims. Both of his legs, from the thigh down, had been turned to stone. Muscles, tissue, skin and bone, nothing was left alone from what I could tell. It was like someone had taken his legs and replaced them with the legs of a statue." Amy scowled, "My powers wouldn't work on them at all which means they are actually stone. They'll have to be amputated."
"And Yosei was responsible?" Carol asked severely.
Amy nodded, "That's what he said. He said he tried to run past her and she just glanced at him, her eyes glowed, and bam, his legs were stone. Said it hurt like a bitch to." she hummed, "The PRT were heading in when I was leaving the hospital, so they'll probably have some questions for him. Maybe they'll even be able to fix his legs but I doubt it, they weren't even really legs anymore."
Carol didn't say anything about the use of language as she turned a harsh stare on her eldest, "See Victoria? What would have happened if Yosei decided to use this specific power on you? Your sister can't affect stone which is by all means what Yosei's power can cause and there is no telling whether or not your shield would have stopped a sight-based power. You could have lost a limb at the very least!"
Vicky looked away, a sudden pit in her stomach as she realized just how badly the encounter could have gone, "... Sorry mom." She said quietly.
"Don't be sorry, be better." Carol spoke sternly, before her gaze softened slightly, "Next time something like this happens, call us. You don't know how hard my heart sank when I heard you had been captured in ABB territory. They aren't the Empire, Victoria, they have little interest in keeping the status quo unless it benefits Lung."
Vicky nodded, feeling slightly ashamed, "I know I just thought I could handle her. She was new and I thought that meant she wasn't strong, so I got in over my head. It won't happen again."
Carol nodded with a slight sigh, "Make sure that it doesn't. I don't want to come home to find that you've been hospitalized and Amy isn't able to do anything about it."
She looked around the kitchen at the clock, "Now I've got to go. My firm is holding an important meeting in an hour or so and attendance is mandatory. Everyone is getting called in.."
"You think someone bumbled a case again? Another Jenkins situation?" Amy asked curiously.
Carol sighed, "God I hope not, that took weeks to deal with…" She glanced at the clock again, "Alright, I really need to go. I love you both and Vicky, you're grounded. No patrolling for the rest of the week and no Dean."
Vicky knew better than to argue at this point, and so she just nodded silently, feeling more than a little ashamed of herself and her mother gave a nod in return before leaving the room to get ready.
She and Amy sat in silence for a moment, Amy picking the ball of web up and playing with it once more, before Vicky suddenly realized something.
"Hey, wait," she spoke up, looking at her sister, "Yosei's powers turned her into a spider. What kind of spider turns people to stone?"
Amy shrugged, "If her powers can turn her into a spider, why not something else?" She didn't move her eyes from the webs in her hands, "I don't know what sort of animal can turn people to stone, but powers are weird so it might not be an animal at all. I mean, her dad turns into an actual dragon and those don't actually exist."
Vicky sighed, "Kinda wish she turned into a dragon during our fight, maybe then I'd actually have been able to do something.".
Amy raised an eyebrow at her, "Was it that bad?"
"Worse." Vicky grumbled, "When I tried to end the fight quickly, I flew straight into an invisible web she hung up when I couldn't see her. And then I found out that that wasn't even her, just some clone or something as it disappeared. After that, I didn't get a chance to hit her again before she had me tied up and the fight was over. It was embarrassing."
Amy grimaced, "So you're telling me that the ABB got someone who actually knows how to use her brain? That's not good. We already had our hands full with just Lung and Oni Lee."
Vicky groaned "I know right? At least Lung just stayed in his lane unless someone decided to kick up shit, and Lee normally stays in their territory. There's no telling what Yosei's gonna be doing."
Amy had apparently grown bored of the ball of webs, as she tossed it toward the open trash can, scowling as she missed.
"Whatever she does, it's not like it could be worse than the shit the Merchants have been doing. They've got some new drug in from Boston and unlike literally everything else, their bodies haven't built up an immunity to it so they overdose super fucking quickly."
Vicky shook her head, "Merchants will be Merchants right?"
Amy growled, "Oh don't even give me that! I've had to tread nearly twenty idiots who thought it would be a good idea to snort heroin this week. You can't snort heroin that just kills you!" she huffed, "I swear one of the only rules of being a Merchant is that you're not allowed to have any common sense."
Vicky laughed at her sister's angry demeanor, "True enough I guess. Though I honestly doubt Skidmark of all people has rules." she stood from her chair, making her way over to the fridge, "I'm hungry. You want an omelet or something?"
Amy shrugged, "Sure. I don't have to be at the hospital for a few hours so that should give me a bit of energy."
As Vicky began pulling out the ingredients, setting a pan on the stove to heat, her mind went back to a question that remained unanswered.
What had Yosei been doing in that warehouse in the first place? And even more importantly, where did her Mom put the shredded cheese?