A/N: This is a non-canon omake, made principally to announce The Wild Hunt going up. So now you know.

I slam awkwardly into the ground shoulder-first, glasses launching who-knows-where, as my attempted stab at this asshole is aborted by me turning human just before I would've gotten her. The asshole herself is still running straight ahead, not even sparing a glance behind herself, still having not figured out she could turn me human by looking at me, calling out, "Get the hell out here, Bernie!"

Goddammit, why is this the part going horribly wrong.

I'm pretty sure her calling for Bernie is a waste of time, because I'm pretty sure Bernie is the man we took out first. He's a tinker, so I figured better to not let him know trouble was coming to knock on their door, just in case one of his myriad gizmos was particularly problematic for us, as well as in case he could just magic up some problematic shit by knowing who we were and what we did. That was easy, and easy to justify: these assholes have been operating for ten years in Colorado, and while the majority of what they do is have showy, basically harmless fights with local Heroes -sort of like if Uber and Leet dropped the gamer theme but also didn't stream their antics to an internet audience- there's been five separate occasions where they broke their pattern. One time they interrupted an attack by the Nine to help fucking Nice Guy escape when a local Villain turned out to be unexpectedly immune to him (I wouldn't have guessed a boring Brute package mostly focused on regeneration would include immunity to Nice Guy, either. She was plenty susceptible to other Stranger powers) and stupidly decided to make it into a public execution, giving time for the rescue to occur. The other four incidents weren't on the same scale as helping one of the crueler members of the Nine escape for no goddamn reason, but it's not like these people are doing good on balance or anything, and the fact that they haven't done anything so awful in the last six months doesn't mean anything -there was a three year gap between the two worst incidents. They could have mended their ways for good, but I'm not betting on it.

So yeah, Bernie, assuming she's referring to Lightswitch, is dead, and good riddance.

Uncertainty Principal (Yes, as in a school principal, why) herself, though, has proven frustratingly difficult to kill. She messes with powers, most readily by swapping them among capes, a trick she's used with Lightswitch to essentially disable other capes while powering him up several times over their career, and... well, if I hadn't spent all this time around Cherie this would never have crossed my mind, but I have to wonder if it's part of why she's been left alone as much as she has. Not only for relatively reasonable logistics reasons -it would be bad to have Alexandria go after the two and end up with her invulnerability and all taken away, potentially permanently given Lightswitch's tinker power is, er, was, not his original one- but also because now I have to wonder how many capes would be afraid of compromising their identity or brand by having their power changed. Which would be a stupid reason to leave these assholes running free, but I still have to wonder.

Regardless, I thought she'd be easy to sneak up on once Lightswitch was dead, but it turns out she's got some kind of power-sensing component, and just woke up and knew where I was before I was anywhere near close enough to attack her.

I'm still amazed their lair is a log cabin in the woods sitting atop a sprawling underground complex. I'm assuming Lightswitch dug it out with his tinkertech, but... why? We keep passing rooms with tables designed to strap someone down to them, which is disquieting, but no people, and no evidence other people have been down here recently, so I have no idea what the hell they've been doing down here, or why they dug out this place. What the hell were they planning that required this much space, that expected to be strapping down this many people, while doing... what? It makes me glad I did make the call to divert from hunting the Nine to deal with them, because I'm having trouble imagining there's an explanation for all this that doesn't make them far worse than I already thought they were.

Anyway, in addition to the power-sensing thing fucking up our plans by itself, she's been constantly swapping Cherie and me whenever one of us is getting close to her, which is more effective than I'd prefer given that Cherie is clearly not comfortable moving as the monster.

Speaking of: "Cherie, stop getting distracted and kill her!" I shout while squeezing my eyes shut. Partly so Cherie will hopefully remain the monster long enough to stab Uncertainty, and partly because every time I've ended up with Cherie's power it's been overwhelming to cope with all the information coming in. I didn't think Cherie got to read nearly this many animals. Imagine if we were in an actual city. The thought is nauseating, and I'm so glad this isn't a worse situation.

I don't even understand how I understand Cherie's power. It's like music in my head, every individual entity represented by multiple instruments playing in synch, which easily leads to hundreds of different instruments to track in my head, and that's already an overwhelming thought but then I somehow intuitively have an idea what the hell each one means. I thought Cherie had figured out her power through experience or something, not through a cheat-sheet where I just know that particular chord is low-key fear. I don't remember my power giving me this much help.

Regardless, this is how I know Cherie was distracted, bothered by something, even if I have no goddamn clue what. Turns out she was serious when she claimed to not be a mindreader. I was so sure she was bending the truth or outright lying about that. I guess there's... tricks to kind of faking mindreading with this? Having an idea what kinds of emotional patterns tend to go with what kinds of thoughts from long experience? Or maybe she bluffs a lot. I'd believe that from Cherie.

Unfortunately, while jarring Cherie's attention gets her scrambling toward Uncertainty, Uncertainty herself has rising triumph. She thinks she's... won? Or something? That doesn't seem right, but she's stopped panicking, stopping running. She calls out, "Nyeh nyeh, can't catch me, losers!" and then there's a very digital-sounding beep, and then her signature entirely vanishes with a brief rush of air toward where she was standing a moment ago.

...

Shit.

It feels shockingly strange to be walking through the relatively dim corridors of this subterranean lair and not be stilettoing on many long, sharp limbs, even once we find my glasses. I haven't been a cape more than a few months, but going back to my old normal doesn't... feel like going back to my old normal. It just feels off, like I broke a leg, had it heal, and have to relearn how to walk with it having healed not quite right. It doesn't help that it's being compounded by having Cherie's power, a constant, omnidirectional awareness of the secret feelings of hundreds of animals, as well as their current positions. No sense of the shape of their bodies, though. Some signatures feel louder, maybe larger than others, where I'm pretty sure the quieter ones aren't wolves or bears, but I don't think I could tell the difference between a hawk and a rabbit. And I'm pretty sure I've got some birds pinging this sense, so that's less hypothetical than I'd like. How does Cherie cope with this all the time? It's mindboggling.

Cherie, frustratingly, seems to have adapted readily enough to my own power, having spent maybe a minute clearly frustrated over her inability to speak when walking beside me like normal people would and then smoothly transitioned to jogging ahead and walking backwards in front of me. I'd grouse about how careless that is, but Cherie is plenty reckless as-is, and now if she takes a spill I just need to glance away and she'll be right as rain. So... in this case it's probably justified, even aside how the tunnels are surprisingly professionally constructed. Very smooth, very flat, no tools lying around to trip on.

I'm still tempted to make a remark.

Then she speaks up, and I realize I'm really badly wrong. "Please tell me you're confidently walking because you know exactly where she is and we're going there to stab her stupid face right now." Cherie sounds incredibly on edge, like she expects a monster will leap out to eat her any second now, and looking closer I can see how the smile she's got pasted on right now is fake. More embarrassingly, her power -my power?- is blaring her feelings at me, and while it's a sufficiently large variety where I'm not confident I fully understand it, what the power is intuitively feeding me is that she's scared, anxious, unsettled, and otherwise unhappy with her current situation. I'm hesitant to put the feelings into words beyond that, this is too unfamiliar to me, but I really should've noticed this before paying attention to her body language. Habit, I suppose.

Now I feel bad-

Hold on now I feel bad?

I come to a full stop, because didn't we work out that my power had surgically removed my ability to feel guilt? This is guilt, I can remember this feeling from before I triggered, I haven't felt this at all since I triggered.

The enormity of getting back my own thoughts, my own feelings dawns on me, and suddenly I'm ambivalent and torn and the instant I recognize that there's a stronger rush of guilt because Cherie is so obviously unhappy with this outcome but the guilt itself gnawing at me is such a relief I'm so tempted by the fantasy of simply... leaving our powers as-is, maybe going home and-

...

... and what? So I'll be a mindreading, mind-controlling teen the PRT has clearly already decided is a villain, my civilian identity blown and now equipped with a power that won't protect me if they decide to attack me in the open with one of Armsmaster's patented tinkertech counters to Master powers and whatnot. Even aside that, I'm imagining a reconciliation with my dad, with this power at hand, and... I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea of constantly knowing in tremendous detail what he's feeling, and I'm not convinced I have the self-control to not use this power if he turned out to be less-than-receptive to my return. And then I'd forever wonder if any part of our interactions was really real or just some byproduct of what I'd done to him.

Fuck.

"-to Taylor, come in what's going on are you focused on her talk to me here?!" Cherie sounds upset. I feel guilty again, feel relief at the guilt, then feel guilt at my relief at my guilt. That's... a disconcerting experience and I hope it stops soon.

Okay, um. Right. Uncertainty Principal. "She's not in my range, sorry, I just-" am struggling with the realization I can have my mind back but only if I'm okay with never talking with my father except by email or phone "-am struggling a bit with your power." I pause, flailing, trying to ignore my hyper-awareness of Cherie's frustration and the hope that's flickering out underneath it. "I had no idea you sensed so many different animals."

Cherie breathes out hard for some reason, a feeling this power doesn't have a convenient tag for rising, and declares, "I know, right? Everyone else in the fam' is all about humans, even dogs and shit don't count, hell little Jean went to the zoo once to see if he could work with monkeys and no dice, but for some fucking reason I get to sense all the birds and cats and yadda yadda going about their animal lives and I never actually wanted to be perpetually listening in to the love lives of goddamned cats."

Cherie has been increasingly leaning into my space, eyes widening and voice turning slightly manic while the power informs me she's... relieved? I think? I'm leaning a bit away from her by the end of this, not sure how to respond, not having expected this response. "Uh... right." Then I recollect myself. Yeah. We should... we should be trying to find Uncertainty, get her to fix this.

... maybe I can convince her to swap someone else's power onto me?...

... well, regardless, need to find her. I resume walking, then almost immediately stop, looking around, and swear under my breath. Cherie immediately goes, "What?" sounding more than a bit alarmed, though the power seems to be indicating she's not that worried? I'm not sure, I don't have enough experience with this power.

I clarify, "I don't remember the number of turns we took and so on, and everything looks different through the monster's eyes so... I'm not sure if we're already lost or if I just don't recognize this spot because I passed through it as the monster." I... don't think this place is large enough we're in serious danger, but I wasn't expecting these two relatively small-time capes to have a massive underground lair. What did they do to get this built? How did they afford it? Did they just... kidnap an earth-manipulating cape or something?

Cherie perks up. It... feels weird, because my intuitive reading looking at her expression and how she holds herself is that she's considerably cheerier, but my intuitive reading of what the power is feeding me is that she's only slightly less nervous. Huh? "Oh, that shouldn't be a big deal, this place is laid out in a grid-ish setup, with corridors labeled as A1 and so on. The stairs came down to G, uh, 5? 6? We should be able to just use the grid as a guide."

Oh. Oh, yeah, I did see number/letter combinations, I was just too focused on the chase... wait, when did Cherie get the mental space to think about that? I'm still feeling like too much of my head is being eaten up by squirrels anxious about... food, probably. Among other things. No, whatever, I don't care, the point is we have a path. I gesture vaguely. "Lead the way, then."

Cherie stares at me for a second, radiating confusion, some more cheer, oh, ew, a slight bit of lust, I did not want to explicitly know that- though. It's a lot less lust than I was expecting. If Cherie's mind is an orchestra, this is some asshole in the crowd humming just loud enough to feel like something's off about the tune but not loud enough you'd be liable to notice the person in specific without knowing they were the issue. Then she pastes a smile on her face, no new joy inside her to match this fake smile, and nods, gesturing for me to follow.

I'm deeply disconcerted by the disconnect between what the power says Cherie is feeling vs what she seems to be feeling. I've always taken Cherie as a heart-on-sleeve sort of person. Being quick to share thoughts that shouldn't be shared has long been one of her more annoying, frustrating qualities. I'm not sure if it's an indication of something having gone wrong in all this power-swapping nonsense -Uncertainty Principal is supposed to be able to modify powers to some extent, it's just that switching them happens to be the fastest thing she can do, so maybe power modification is to blame somehow- or an indication I've been badly misreading Cherie even after spending several weeks pretty much constantly around her. I'm also not sure which possibility I find more unnerving. The first scenario raises the possibility that when I get my power back it will somehow be wrong, maybe even worse than it already was. The second possibility is... uncomfortable...

Fortunately, the walk out of the subterranean network is pretty low-stress. For once, Cherie is not talkative, clearly coming to grips with the sudden change in power stuff. I wouldn't need her power to figure that out, but the power does make it that bit more obvious, with Cherie's tune cycling through anxiety, curiosity, excitement, brief flashes of depression, and a whole host of less identifiable impulses, making it clear there's a lot of thoughts for her to unpack.

The more negative parts of that package provoke my own cycle of guilt, relief from feeling guilt, guilt over the relief, and struggling with my own feelings is enough of a distraction it takes longer than it really should for me to wonder if I should be asking Cherie what she's thinking, or... something. I feel like I should be trying to help, given how much anxiety and other concerning feelings are in there, but I feel deeply uncomfortable acting on this info given Cherie is clearly trying to hide a lot of what she's feeling and I'm only aware of it thanks to this power. Like I'm violating her privacy, and it would be even worse to actually act on the violation. I'm reminded of the time I found Emma's diary, before all this shit started, only I didn't realize it was a diary and the instant I realized what it was I stopped reading, shoved it back where I'd found it, and did my best to forget about her working through... worries to do with her parents, I think, but it's been ages and I did try to forget it. (Now that I'm reminded, I have to wonder how much of my tolerance of her bitchiness was because I still remembered that diary...)

This is like that, except I can't put the diary away, can't stop reading it even as it's being written into.

I feel slimy as hell.

So I decide to focus my attention elsewhere, to feel less slimy.

My first thought is to focus on the animal sounds, but it doesn't work as well as I'd like. I'm overwhelmed by it all, but with each passing second it fades more into the background. Trying to focus on it doesn't feel very distracting, and worse it makes me even more aware of Cherie's thought-stream ringing in my mental ears. I end up latching onto one of the thoughts that intruded in while I was trying to distract myself with animal feelings: how do I feel now about what I've done?

Nilbog is... less painful than I was dreading? I remember that moment he reminded me of Dad, and it hurts worse than other times I've remembered that moment, but I'm relieved to find that I don't look back and find my thoughts alien and incomprehensible. Nilbog was a guillotine's axe hanging over everyone, someone needed to do it, and as far as I could see no one else intended to do it, so I handled it. It was a dumb, short-sighted plan, but I didn't know my power that well and wasn't sure how to test it in more controlled circumstances first, and even at the time, even going in, I knew the plan was kind of dumb, I just underestimated how dumb it was, and got lucky. And I don't find those thoughts... fundamentally different, with my own mind back. If anything, I might be a little grateful to my power? If I felt as I do now, and Nilbog had reminded me of Dad that vividly, I... might've hesitated longer, or been unable to make myself do it. Might've ended up dead, with Nilbog still alive and angry to boot, outcome worse than if I hadn't interfered.

Heartbreaker is a little harder. Cherie is right here, and it makes me acutely aware the man had family, kids. Brainwashed, mind-controlled family, yes, and from what Cherie has said he was a horrible father by any metric, but... now there's something gnawing at me, an awareness that probably there were young children who lost the father they loved and don't even know how it happened or why. I can't get away from a mental image of groups of them crying on each others' shoulders, staring accusingly at me, wanting to know what their father did that he deserved to die, and even though intellectually I still see the logic and can't find it in me to think I was wrong to kill him, emotionally it's... a lot harder. Enough so I'm not so sure I'd have done it at all if my power hadn't eaten my conscience, and enough so I feel like an asshole for ever thinking the Protectorate leaving him running about was a clear sign of incompetence or cowardice. I'm imagining myself as a PRT Director trying to explain to my capes how we need to orphan a bunch of kids, and it's a gruesome feeling, what grows from thinking through that scenario.

The guilt gnaws at me enough I stop pursuing that trail of thought and re-focus on fidgety Cherie, walking ahead and muttering under her breath as we pass signs. She's still anxious, a bit scared, angry to a degree I'm a little startled by, though given how briefly I've had this power I'm not sure I'm not just misunderstanding the intensity scale. I hesitate for a moment, unsure if I should poke this beehive, before asking "How did... your siblings feel about your father?"

The power tells me Cherie is bewildered, though not particularly upset by the question, which is a relief. I was worried it would provoke dark memories, given the hints she keeps dropping. I'm not entirely sure how to parse the ensuing shuffle of emotions -it seems pretty neutral, but it's fast and not everything is clearly 'labeled'- though I do note that Cherie's feelings don't seem to be reflected in her visage whenever she glances back to... make sure I'm still following, I guess? Her face is held in a slight grin, the kind she generally defaults to when she's not whining or angry or... it's her default, is the point.

There's a long enough delay before Cherie responds it takes me a second to connect her response to my question. "Whatever he wanted, mostly." She doesn't elaborate, though I note the dark mood that settles in now.

That is such a gross thought it almost completely smothers how guilty I feel at the nagging mental image of a child asking why I killed their father. Just from the overly-bland way Cherie said it I can tell it's not meant to be a happy statement, and it's... thing is, above and beyond the general grossness of it, I can too readily see how Heartbreaker might have deliberately used the result as a shield. A regular dad has to be at least... not completely horrible for their kid to innocently, sadly ask why you killed their father, instead of thinking something like 'good riddance'. Heartbreaker might have been -probably was- a horrific piece of shit, where some portion of the kids would've been sad at his death not because he was a good dad but because he cheated and made them love him.

That thought raises a different question. I hesitate a moment before asking it, wondering if it's salt in a wound, but now that guilt is gnawing at me I have to know. "Did he do... that to you?"

I immediately regret asking, because this question finally sends Cherie into a dark mood, some mixture of depression, intense anger, low-key fear I can't help but interpret as a worry her father might not be really dead, and other threads I don't have properly labeled by the power but which feel bad on a gut level to hear singing into my brain. Like nails on a chalkboard, but... emotional. Should I apologize? I'm not sure if this is the kind of situation an apology is called for, but I feel like a heel.

Before I can work through that enough to decide whether I should apologize or not, Cherie speaks, her words clipped, controlled, stressed. "Not for more than a year, no." Well. That explains why she was apparently able to plot his murder. Um- "He was the most useless, fuckin' lazy piece of shit. It would've taken him a half a second, once a month or so, to keep me unable to contemplate rebellion. I know, I saw him use his power, my power made it a clear thing, and my power didn't protect me from him at all and he knew it, but he wouldn't put in the fucking effort except for immediate fun or to make things stop irritating him, so as long I was never more than mildly annoying he didn't bother to use his power on me at all." There's a pause before she adds, wryly, bitterly, proudly, "And my power made me real good at knowing when I was pushing up against the edges of his limited patience."

As I'm processing this disturbing info, Cherie crows victoriously and hurtles ahead, as we've apparently finally found the stairs. Okay... now I don't regret killing Heartbreaker at all. Cherie didn't say so explicitly, but I'm pretty sure she's heavily implying he absolutely did Master her on a regular basis before she triggered, possibly even for a bit after she triggered. Also, 'he was too lazy to be reliably a piece of shit' is... it basically tells me I may well have been right to hit him when I did, instead of leaving him to fester. It's a little too easy to imagine that Heartbreaker might've... gone bigger scale once enough powered kids were adults he could just have them do whatever crimes he didn't feel were worth his effort. Or something like that.

Cherie seems to be in a big hurry, rushing up the spiral staircase before I've even gotten to the foot of it, turning into the monster as a result. At least, I assume so, both because that's how that works, and also because Cherie's power is now telling me that the sounds of her mind are... quiet? I'm not entirely sure what that really means. Is this why Cherie insisted her power didn't work so well on me when I was the monster? Some stuff seems more damped than other things, which Cherie never mentioned. Her excitement at finding the stairs wasn't faked or exaggerated, but it went way down when she turned into the monster, much more so than, for example, the background of anger she's been running for... a while. Anger at Uncertainty Principal? Maybe? The anger went down, too, but a lot less.

I have to pause for a moment on the stairs, a little dizzy, coming to grips with the implications. I never felt like I thought differently as the monster, but apparently I did. And I spend -spent, past tense, maybe, hopefully?- a lot of time as the monster. Is this why I ended up killing Mush, without really thinking the decision through? What other decisions did I come at with a distorted perspective, entirely unaware my thoughts were not quite right?

I resume walking once the dizziness passes, abruptly wondering if the dizziness is more biological than I was just assuming. I was almost always fresh, after I triggered. Am I just... tired?

... no, probably not. I was the monster less than half an hour ago, and I'm fit enough at this point that walking for twenty or thirty minutes shouldn't exhaust me anyway.

Cherie, meanwhile, has apparently gotten to the surface already, and is scrambling about, on edge. I'm not sure why. Just... unhappy with the situation, maybe? Or maybe being the monster is upsetting her? I was bothered a little, initially, by how my cape power was to become a sleepless creature from someone's nightmares. Yeah, that would make sense, Cherie dresses nice and uses makeup and otherwise tries to look like a pretty human girl. I'd probably have stayed upset longer, been more upset initially, if I wasn't painfully aware of my inadequacies as a human being.

When I finally get to the surface, up into the shed this whole mess is hidden under, Cherie practically tackles me. "What a rush!" she gushes, having grabbed my shoulders while I was blinking in startlement. "Holy shit please tell me you've been having fun with this while I was sleeping this is fucking awesome!" Her hands are shaking, her cheeks are red, and her eyes are glittering. Her power also confirms this is pretty genuine -she might be exaggerating a little? My gut feels like the readings are a little less intense than what her expression and vocal excitement and words imply, but it's not like I have experience using Cherie's power. Regardless, she is excited, and it... seems to go hand-in-hand with fear?

"Why are you scared?" I ask, because that intersection distresses me a bit and... honestly, I'm a little weirded out by Cherie's excitement and want to change the subject anyway.

Cherie blinks, some weird drum roll my gut insists represents confusion ramping up in her, her expression losing the excited air in favor of mild confusion. "I'm not scared?" she says, and I'm not sure why it sounds like a question. "This is cool as hell I always kind of wanted to take the blindfold off when we were zipping about but at first I was worried you would attack me if I tried and then later I knew the ride would end prematurely and possibly dangerously if I got a peek at you-"

"Cherie, you're babbling," I cut her off with. The fear is slowly fading, while the excitement is... trending downward, but with intermittent spikes up? I don't know what that means.

Cherie rolls her eyes at me. I... don't feel anything from her I'd say intuitively matches to an eye roll, but I have no idea what that could even be, emotionally. "Alluvva sudden I'm fast, tough, strong, like I've always wanted to be! Like an Alexandria package, but okay minus flight but roof-hopping's cooler anyway get to Batman this shit up instead of Supes-ing it like a lame-o. It's cool." Her attempt to say this in a relatively somber way is rather undermined by her hands still shaking a bit, and the excitement leaking into her voice and through her power.

Wait. "Is that why you like the Dragonslayer suit so much?" I've been pretty weirded out by how enthusiastic she gets about excuses to wear that.

Cherie blinks, gives me a look like I'm an epic moron, opens her mouth to say... I don't know, because she stops with a thoughtful look on her face, the last traces of fear and most of the excitement fairly abruptly giving way for... something not conveniently tagged. Then she shrugs, startles slightly while looking at her hands, and abruptly lets go of me, apparently having only just noticed she was being touchy. "You're gonna need to be the one in the suit until we get switched back, you know," she says very casually.

"Cherie," I say warningly. "That's not an answer to my question."

There's a thrill of intense fear (And a modest bit of excitement. Wha- why?) but then it stops so abruptly I actually recoil physically. Cherie doesn't seem to notice, an evil grin blooming on her face. Like, a full-on reveling in supervillainy sort of evil grin I've never seen from her before. "Heeeeey, you don't get to threaten me anymore." The grin intensifies while Cherie starts having emotional content I don't want to think about, eyeing me speculatively.

I grope blindly for the other component of Cherie's power, and with what feels like a shove point it at Cherie. There's a learning process, identifying that push as fear, this push as lowering her excitement, etc, and in a matter of ten seconds or so Cherie's evil grin morphs into a look of terror and then a... bunch of other unpleasant feelings burst forth? What's the disgust-

Cherie abruptly starts puking, and I'm only barely able to hop back out of reach before it can end up on my boots. "Uh," I say, not sure how to take any of this. Cherie keeps puking, and that confusing morass of bad feelings that happened is... holding stable for the moment. Not getting worse, but not getting better. "Um," I intelligently add, starting to feel vaguely guilty even though intellectually I know Cherie was... threatening me? Or something? I'm not entirely sure what was going through her head, but it was pretty worrying. Is puking a normal fear response? Did I just hit her with so much fear she started puking as just a physiological thing?

After an awkward couple of minutes standing around, waiting for Cherie to be done puking and then done dry-heaving, feeling increasingly like a heel even though I'm pretty sure Cherie was planning something awful, and doing my best to pretend I can't hear Cherie's disturbing storm of unpleasant feelings ratcheting about in ways I don't even slightly understand (Why was there a spark of warm love that was promptly quashed by intense disgust? At least it being accompanied by more vomiting was reasonably intuitive), Cherie finally straightens out and... smiles at me? I can tell she doesn't feel the slightest bit happy, so why a smile? For that matter she's still shaking violently. "We have to reverse this," she says hoarsely, sounding dead inside, still smiling a bit.

"Um," I once again intelligently contribute, unsure if I should ask the obvious question or not. Finally I decide yes, let's... just do that. "What just happened?"

Cherie's smile turns a bit more rigid, that dire swirl of feelings intensifying, and she grinds out, "Not now. I can't. Distract me." After a moment, she adds, "Please," with a stab of regret.

"Um," I provide, disconcerted in the extreme, but Cherie seems... well, she always seems pretty earnest, but this time it's not an earnest cheer and also her power is giving me a direct read on her so... I'm a lot more confident than I'd normally be that she is, in fact, serious about needing a distraction and not just plotting something. A bit of vomit drips off her mouth, prompting me to cringe and point at it. "You should clean up."

"Okay," Cherie says, and while her words are bland and lacking in particular feeling, there's a disturbing rush of gratitude her power reports to me. I... don't get why, and as it's Cherie I suspect I won't like the answer if I ask.

Fortunately, she immediately wanders off to inside the unassuming log cabin, presumably to wash her mouth and so on, so I don't have to make an actual decision. (Yet) Unfortunately, I'm not sure what to do with myself. Normally I'd start searching, confident Cherie would find me readily and hoping I could find a clue or something, but I can't turn into the monster right now and I'm the one with the power to track people effortlessly, not Cherie. And Uncertainty Principal still isn't in range of Cherie's power. Some kind of tinkertech teleporter...

... actually. Maybe I can look up online if Uncertainty Principal and Lightswitch were known to operate elsewhere? The teleporter doesn't have to have taken Uncertainty Principal to a pre-planned safe location, but if I were setting up a tinkertech escape hatch I'd want it someplace reasonably secure, not someplace totally random. So... maybe they have safehouses? Good safehouses would be hidden, but if I can narrow our search zone to specific cities... Cherie has consistently claimed to have a city-wide range. I'm not sure how large this radius actually is, but there's enough stuff I'm sensing that city-size certainly doesn't seem like an absurd exaggeration.

I wander over to where we parked the truck and haul out the tinkertech computer's monitor and keyboard and start searching.

By the time Cherie is making her way back, I have some possibilities, but nothing I'm terribly firm on.

"Holy shit how do you use the bathroom?" are Cherie's first words, once she's zipped in front of the truck so I can see her to make her not the monster. She sounds (And sounds) a little better than... whatever happened a few minutes ago... but is still croak-y and upset. I think she's playing up her disbelief that I've managed to work around my power this whole time, though again still not very familiar with this power so maybe not.

"I don't," I remind her. I know she knows this, she complained about how 'unfair' it was at some point. Multiple times, pretty sure.

"No, I mean-" then she stops, and I really notice how she's doing a bit better emotionally, because she's being thoughtful and introspective right now when just minutes ago she was asking for a distraction, like she didn't want to think about... whatever happened there. I'm brought out of this mild surprise by Cherie speaking again. "You don't use makeup." It's not a question.

I scowl, remembering the last time I wore makeup to school. Fucking Emma. "Not for a while, no."

Cherie flops onto the front of the truck, face buried in one folded arm, and makes an incredibly aggrieved noise. I... am pretty sure she's exaggerating for effect? Her power indicates she's genuinely unhappy, but it seems pretty low-key? It feels, gut-level, like 'argh, this minor annoying thing that doesn't actually matter bothers me', not 'I was just told someone foisted half their work on me'. (Goddammit, Madison) An inarticulate moan of aggravation yawns forth, and then Cherie growls out something angry (No anger that the power reports?) and after a couple of seconds lurches back to her feet and says matter-of-factly, "So you don't have any tricks for how to apply makeup without turning into the squid."

I stare at Cherie like she's an idiot. "You use a mirror to apply makeup." I find myself briefly wondering if makeup would even stick around when bouncing between the monster and human form, but then I remember that back in Brockton Bay Cherie made me up and it stuck around just fine.

Cherie stares back. "That works?" This time her vocal incredulity seems to line up with her internal feelings. Hasn't this come up before?

I'm pretty sure my confusion is leaking into my voice, but whatever, it's not like I want to hide it anyway. "How did you think I was managing?"

Cherie throws her hands in the air, making a frustrated sound that matches perfectly to what her power says. "I don't know! When I hint at my curiosity you ignore it, or miss it, or decide it's ~evil flirting~ and make it clear stabbing will ensue if I don't drop the topic, and I've been perpetually short of sleep for weeks so I haven't exactly done a lot of deep thinking on the topic!" I start to look away, uncomfortable, but Cherie snaps out, "Hey no look at me I can't talk if you don't." Shit. I re-focus on Cherie, suddenly wondering if this is going to be a regular issue. Cherie keeps talking, sounding relieved on both layers. "I'd worked out mirrors helped somehow, but you've never explained this and it's my first time having this power. I went to find a sink, realized I was stuck as the squid, tried looking at myself in the sink's bottom but all I could see was an incomprehensible blur and I stayed the squid and I'd probably have been gone longer but then I remembered your power cleans you up so I came back and lo I'm clean!" She gestures at herself at the end of that rambling sentence, her power telling me she's annoyed but... pleased? No idea why for pleased.

Also, I feel kind of stupid for forgetting she'd be cleaned up by transforming. I... think I puked in my helmet after I killed Heartbreaker, and my power cleaned it up? Not entirely sure given something was clearly being done to my head at the time, but the point is I've already been pretty sure it even cleans up puke.

Belatedly, it occurs to me I should probably apologize for running Cherie ragged, now that she's mentioned it. "Sorry," I say, and then when Cherie is just confused (Visibly, but also according to her power), I clarify, "For not letting you sleep enough these past few weeks."

Cherie blinks again, and now her power is telling me she feels... mortified? Is that right? She doesn't look mortified, smiling after a second like she so often does, her power insisting she's only a little happy. "Uh, thanks. A bit... weirded out by you apologizing now..."

Absently, I remark, "I've got my conscience back, seems like. Lotta stuff feels a bit shitty, in retrospect." Why did I do the thing with the face, when she first came into my house? I remember it pretty vividly, but now it feels a bit like watching one of those movies where the camera view is a specific person. Like yes, I remember it literally through my own eyes, but my thoughts back then don't... click, like that same movie having the viewpoint character narrate over a scene. Another person's thoughts, a perspective I can't really agree with.

Cherie, meanwhile, has sucked in a startled breath. "Aaaah shit that was a thing wasn't it."

I re-focus on Cherie. I wasn't looking away, but my mind was elsewhere for a second. "I don't... see why you're concerned. It's not like you feel guilty about anything anyway." And she's done some pretty awful things...

Cherie grins nervously, her power insisting she's plenty nervous and not so much grin-y. "I, uh, didn't... actually mention the full results from that particular battery of tests." She cringes, clearly expecting me to be mad, and I instantly feel bad. Ho- how have I been treating her?

... later. I do my best to not sound mad, even though I am a little mad, because fuck now I feel retroactively guilty and I'm not even entirely sure what I'm feeling bad about. "What," injecting some exasperation into my tone in vague hopes it'll... seem like I'm joking? "Did you forget to mention my sex drive being removed, too?"

Cherie looks momentarily gobsmacked. "Holy shit maybe it did I didn't even consider that." She's... feeling pretty bamboozled. Um. Oops?

I sigh and wave a hand. "Sorry, that was... meant to be a joke-" Cherie looks gobsmacked again, power confirming she's not faking, I'm not entirely sure why but moving right along, "-just... please let me know what you didn't mention."

Now Cherie is actively wary for some damn reason, like she expects to be bitten. Nonetheless, she clearly powers through, pastes a smile on her face -fuck, that's actually kind of creepy with her power insisting no actual happiness is present- and answers the question. "Like, we tested sadness, right?" I start to respond but she just bowls over me, starting to get excited? "But while you did get sad I was hitting you with a lot more sadness than you were evincing, like normal people would've been curled up on the floor, a sobbing wreck flashing back to the saddest memory they had-" mom, dead, Emma, turned against me "-but you just kind of had tears brimming but not quite leaving the eyes."

I blink at that. My power had limited my ability to get sad? I... what?

Cherie's still talking, oblivious to how intensely weirded-out I am. "And okay the other results from that test were straightforward enough but I've been picking up on a lot of little weird things where your behavior doesn't fully match my power reports and I've been nursing some less sure suspicions like I've been wondering if maybe your power was doing something to avoid you getting depressed, wondering if it's been making you quicker to anger, wondering if those are the same thing..." She pretty obviously abruptly remembers that there was an actual point to this, embarrassment invisibly spiking as she takes a second to marshal herself. "So, uh, point is it goes a wee bit deeper than... just guilt going bye-bye."

I stare at Cherie in mild horror, unsure how to take being told that in myriad small ways I was a very different person post-trigger. I... am back to wondering if I even want to switch back. Cherie's power is intrusive and makes me feel like a creep, but I'm apparently me again in some fundamental way. Do I really want to lose that?

... fuck, I'm spitballing escaping that horrid shit by inflicting it on Cherie.

Cherie, meanwhile, abruptly brightens, completely oblivious to my souring mood. "Holy shit, it doesn't hurt anymore!"

I frown slightly at that. "Did... you have an old scar or something-"

Cherie's waving a hand dismissively, eyes closed for whatever reason, grinning, interrupting me with, "No no no, daddy wasn't about-" Her mood abruptly dips. "-er, mostly wasn't about the physical abuse, I've always been fine." There's a conspicuous pause before she adds, "Physically."

I stare doubtfully at her, a bit horrified at how she went straight to Heartbreaker as a potential explanation for scarring. I'd actually been wondering if she got hurt in one of our fights without me noticing and then never bothered to mention it. It hadn't even crossed my mind her father might plausibly have been the reason. I consider, for a few seconds, Cherie's smile dimming a bit during the quiet, if I should clarify that, or if it would bother her to have it pointed out. Eventually I decide I can raise the topic later, where I can't take it back if mentioning it seriously upsets her, and try to... gloss over that for the moment. "Then what do you mean 'it doesn't hurt anymore'?"

Cherie's smile drops off her face entirely for a second, her power informing me she's horrified and embarrassed for... some reason... good to know for sure my power didn't take away horror, I guess? I'm not sure what that's about, in any event, and really uncomfortable asking about it given I only know because Cherie's power makes me a creepster just by existing. Maybe I'd have screwed up the courage if given another minute, but Cherie pushes the smile back onto her face before I can get there and says, "Hahaha um please tell me you won't get mad and whack me with mortal terror again? Please?" The second 'please' is uncomfortably earnest, bordering into desperation. (I'm not sure if Cherie's power doesn't draw that distinction, or if I'm just not understanding the relevant signals) It's a bit creepy in conjunction with the fake smile.

"Um," I find myself saying, not wanting to pre-commit to such a promise given it's Cherie, but also vividly remembering the still-unexplained vomiting and just generally weirded out. "I can't promise I won't get mad, but I'll... try to not use your power?" There's a weird, minor reaction when I say 'your power', but it slips away too fast and it wasn't clearly 'labeled' so I'm not sure what that means.

There's an uncomfortable stretch of silence where Cherie is staring at my jugular, which... I don't think she's ever done that before and am a bit weirded out by it... before she sighs, smile slipping off her face. "I killed one of my brothers."

"Um," I say, on the one hand pretty appalled but on the other hand connecting this back to 'it doesn't hurt anymore' to infer she was fucked up by killing her brother but on the other-other hand a bit creeped out by how she's apparently relieved to be free of that guilt. "Er," I add, wondering if I should've actually killed her ages ago after all, all too aware that she has my power now and I got back up after being shot in the head one time so how the hell could I kill her now? "What was the context?" I finally force out, hoping it'll make sense in context and pretty sure it won't.

Cherie winces, which is a bad sign. She takes a minute to respond -an actual solid sixty seconds of yawning silence while I just stare- which is a much worse sign. Her power is mostly indicating embarrassment, which I don't even know how to take so I'm just ignoring it. "In my defense, I had a really shitty family situation?"

Now I'm really worried.

I cover my eyes for a second, unsure how to take this, then remember Cherie turns into the monster now and stop that, trying to ignore how I know Cherie gets aggravated initially and then feels a pleasant surprise when I stop covering my eyes. "Just... give it to me straight. I think the dread is... probably worse than any concrete scenario." God, I hope so.

Cherie looks briefly apologetic, with her internal feelings being... antsy? Before speaking. "Jean-Paul was one of the powered sibs, he ran away, did so successfully, Daddy got extra-shitty and overprotective-" Overprotective? Heartbreaker? "-and I resented the hell out of Jean-Paul. So, uh, I actually came to Brockton Bay because I stumbled onto his PHO profile when trying to figure out where to look for you and I wanted to punish him for abandoning me." There's a pause where I can see and hear the gears turning in Cherie's head, and then she swears under her breath and says, "That came out wrong. Can I try again?"

I shake my head, feeling sick. "No, that... that sounds- never mind. You felt guilty, and now you don't? Right?" That's what she was implying, but I want to be sure.

Cherie's eyes shoot back and forth like she's looking for escape routes, embarrassment and horror surging again, but finally she resolves herself with a sigh and admits, "Yes. I thought killing Jean-Paul would make me feel better, and it really fucked me up instead, it's, uh, why I came to your house without warning that one time-"

I blink at that as it really hits me what Cherie is saying. Up until she said this, I was thinking of this as Something From Before Cherie Met Me, like she killed her brother back home, spurred on by Heartbreaker or something, but that little detail of timing brings home in a sudden rush that no, this happened in my hometown, after Cherie first talked to me. I interrupt Cherie with, "Was he... was he at least a shitty sibling?"

Cherie cringes, and I already have an idea of what she's going to say before she confirms that feeling with, "Nnnnnot... exactly. I, uh, was really mad because we were closer than average and I didn't get warning when he left, or have him try to bring me along, and given my power he must've never even considered it or else I'd have picked up on some clue, if only in retrospect." She pauses for a second. "Please don't do emotional shit to me, I'll explain why later but right now can we move on really really fast? Like maybe you've picked up where Uncertainty Principal is, or Dragon is coming in to arrest us so we conveniently have to run, or something?"

I sigh, feeling... depressed, I guess. I think I'm getting sufficiently inured to learning of the Vasil family history that it's just washing over me as More Horrible Shit. "No, nothing of the sort," I say, double-checking internally to be sure. No, Uncertainty still isn't around. "Can you at least tell me why you seem happy about this... guilt thing?"

Cherie stares at me in silence for ten or twenty seconds, complicated feelings going on inside her that I see no sign of on her face. Has she always been that good an actress, and I just never realized? Eventually, she blandly says, "This has been eating at me for weeks. You know part of why I don't complain much about your death-march shit? Because it lets me not think about how it's my own damn fault my favorite brother is dead and I can never apologize or fix that." There's an intense impulse, something I find myself wanting to call murderousness, and though I can't see her hands with our current positions her arms are vibrating in a way that makes me think her fists are clenched far too tightly.

Then she abruptly looks away and swears under her breath, while I'm feeling guilty again. "Should- should we find you a... therapist or something?" I ask, guilt gnawing at me so hard it takes me a second to remember that we're hunting the Nine and they really need to be handled as soon as we can manage it.

Before I can even consider whether I want to retract the offer, Cherie very sarcastically, bitterly says, "Oh, yeah, sure. Just walk in with one of the infamous Heartbreaker's infamous children, sit her down with some shrink, and explain how she had a rage dragon sic his unfeeling assassin on her dearest brother because he had the gall to get away first. Pay said therapist with your very legitimate money that surely won't get the PRT breathing down our necks, because of course a regular human being's response to that situation is going to be to calmly do their damn job, and not at all be panicking and phoning up the PRT for protection the second they think they can get away with it. Oh, sure, I could terrify them into compliance, make them sure they can't escape and I'm always listening in, but what the fuck good is a terrified therapist, if they even know how to deal with cape shit?"

Over the course of this extended rant she's leaned in closer and closer, and by the end of it is gasping for breath, very obviously quite angry. Cherie's power confirming that it's real feels a bit gratuitous. Cautiously, I say, "Okay, not a therapist, then, but we could... try to do something?"

Cherie stares at me for a second, then shrugs and says, "No need! I'm aaaall better now." A smile sneaks its way onto her face, unforced and coinciding with mounting relief. Um. "Guilt's gone bye-bye! We can just... forget about Uncertainty, and carry on like this, yeah?" Er.

On the one hand, I've been tempted by exactly that possibility. On the other hand, this feels irresponsible and exploitive, shoving my power onto Cherie. On the third limb, Cherie is saying she wants to stay swapped. On the fourth limb, Cherie's decision-making ability may be compromised by the very power she now has. On the fifth limb, Uncertainty Principal is unlikely to cooperate with the ethically-safe scenario of swapping back, checking whether we still both want to have each others' powers, and then swapping back if we stick to that opinion.

I sigh, and point out, "You just told me there's other consequences. What makes you so sure you haven't lost... something about yourself you like and want to keep, but is easy to overlook?"

Cherie gets weirdly angry about that and hisses out, "Says the asshole who made me go to a Simurgh fight."

My jaw works for several seconds, the words refusing to come. Wow. I really was being a colossal bitch, wasn't I? My voice shaking as I say it, I finally settle for the relatively neutral, "Point." Cherie keeps glaring at me, and after a second I look away and loudly announce, "I think I have some leads on Uncertainty Principal."

To my intense relief, Cherie doesn't press that particular topic any further, and doesn't object to me wanting to finish Uncertainty Principal, or even make any pointed remarks about avoiding switching back. She accepts readily enough that my original reasons for wanting to deal with Uncertainty Principal remain applicable, and even points out herself the worrying weirdness of that underground bunker.

Unfortunately, while my first instinct is to head to the nearest town that might contain a bolthole and start hunting right away, an issue I haven't dealt with in months rears its ugly head.

I need rest.

Cherie laughs for several minutes when I tell her to stop at the first hotel we see. Weirdly, having her power confirm she finds it genuinely funny makes it easier to bear, feel less like she's laughing at me. Which feels irrational, but... okay? I'm okay with letting this go and just... going to sleep as soon as I can.

Passing gas stations and similar feels weird. Cherie's power feeds me real-time info on position and disposition of everyone in a tremendous radius, and while I'm not getting body language or conversation I can still make a pretty good guess as to the general shape of interactions, especially with just the extra bit of context of seeing the place itself. The bored person, slightly annoyed with the angry and impatient individual? I hadn't specifically guessed a store employee and customer, respectively, before seeing the gas station, but it made perfect sense once I did.

It feels a bit less skeevy than perpetually listening in to Cherie's feelings, I think because I don't know these people well enough to construct a meaningful... mental image, I guess... of the people in question. If, say, the angry customer was someone I knew who was scrupulously nice anytime I saw them, I might feel like I was... cheating, basically, discovering something I'm not supposed to know that isn't really my business. As-is, it's... a brief picture of a stranger I never expect to run across again.

The actual arrival at a hotel is... a lot more uncomfortable. I can tell the clerk is broadly unhappy before he sees us, and even though it doesn't show on his face at all I'm still extremely aware of every little bit of unhappiness he experiences, from seeing us at all, when he glances at Cherie smiling and has a stab of resentment, when he gets impatient when I'm slow to get out the cash (Cherie normally handles check-in and so on, but with her turning into the monster now... I don't want to take the risks involved), and a dozen more little moments I would never have noticed. Without Cherie's power, I think I'd have taken him as clearly tired but polite enough. With Cherie's power, I can't shake the impression he's got an unhappy life and is taking it out on customers and possibly other people, too.

It only gets creepier when it occurs to me that I could make him happy so very easily. I'm at least able to talk myself out of that one: some weird fake happiness could be suspicious and would be very temporary, regardless, not helping him at all. Maybe even make his life worse if it... screws up his learning process, or something.

... it's still really bothering me, though. Like when I knew Nilbog was a looming problem, being ignored, only instead of the solution being killing a man, I want to help this guy... get therapy, or get into a job he'd be happier in, or something more clearly good.

I'm honestly not sure how Cherie manages to be so... casually callous, with this power sitting right there, laying bare people's hidden suffering.

In part to distract myself from how creeped-out I feel, I ask about exactly that as we're bringing the last essentials into our room for the night. "How can you stand knowing so intimately people are hurting without doing anything?"

Cherie turns halfway toward me as she sets the box she's carrying onto the room's one table. She starts out staring blankly, then looks visibly confused, and her power indicates this is basically accurate aside more please-stop-telling-me mild lust. Eventually, she counters with, "Why do you care about them hurting?"

I blink at that. "Because that's bad?" I don't bother to try to hide my exasperation.

Cherie rolls her eyes at me, genuinely exasperated by, I guess, my own exasperation. "Real convincing logic, Miss Murder."

I blink again, confused. "I did that to help people." I'm pretty sure we've talked about this before.

Cherie sighs, and her power tells me she's annoyed. Wait, annoyed? Why? "You did that because it made you feel better," Cherie says extremely matter-of-factly, like I'm a small child that needs help understanding that gravity is a thing.

I stare some more before remembering to set my own box on the TV stand thing. That done, I re-focus on Cherie. "You think I killed people because it felt good?"

"Duh."

I stare for several seconds, words failing me. "Cherie, those were some of the most miserable moments of my life." Not... quite as bad as the locker, or my mom's death, but... "Nilbog reminded me of my dad." Cherie's eyes widen for a second, and even once she gets her surprise visibly under control her power is still telling me she's very shocked and confused. "Even aside from that, I nearly died several times while I was fighting the goblins, and Dragon shot me." Cherie is no longer able to hide her surprise, jaw hanging a bit open. Her power indicates she's also a bit horrified, though I wouldn't know it from her face. "I lost chunks of limbs and had my eye shot out and I didn't know I regenerated so well when those happened. Then when I went after Heartbreaker, it was a long, frustrating search followed by being squicked out by hearing him have- getting busy-" Cherie winces and nausea rises up, which makes me feel bad but not enough to stop before I finish this. "-and then when I killed him some cape bullshit dredged up the- dredged up trauma, made it worse than ever, I was scared out of my mind." Cherie startles internally when I say 'scared'. Why? "I don't do this for fun, Cherie."

There's a lengthy awkward silence while Cherie processes all that. I'm still not familiar enough with her power to guess what, exactly, the mess she's experiencing means, and I don't even want to try so I'm not going to figure it out, but even without her power singing her secrets into my ears she's pretty obviously rocked. Eventually, she smiles brightly, and I'm unsettled because I know this smile, this is one of her most common smiles, and her power insists she's not got a bit of happiness in there. (Even that mild lust has died down, thank god) "But you felt better, afterward, right?"

"Only after I killed your aunt." Which feels weird, but... it really did help. Somehow.

Cherie actually recoils at that, and bites out, "Fuckin' what," fake smile thankfully gone in favor of a more appropriate scowl.

I shrug, still carefully watching Cherie so she stays human, keeps her voice. "I don't- I experienced it, and I kind of remember it, but I'm not sure I could explain it. The other times, though? I felt worse. Always worse."

Cherie is spooked, though I can only tell because her power is saying so. "Then why- why would you keep doing it?"

"To help people."

Cherie backs away slowly, and I notice I'm leaning toward her, fists clenched, shaking a little. Angrier than I'd realized. God. Cherie thought I liked doing this? And joined up anyway? I just... what did Heartbreaker do to her? Or is she really so... fundamentally fucked-up? I hope not. I still don't like Cherie, not really, but it'd be pretty horrible to have spent all this time with her, had her help me so much, only to conclude she was... literally born evil or something awful like that and have to figure out how to kill her. Murdering her as repayment for services rendered. Horrible.

I'm assuming it's Heartbreaker's fault, and fixable, because the alternative is just...

Over the course of a minute I manage to relax, more or less, straightening up and clasping my hands behind my back when I can't think of something to do with them... at which point the lack of adrenaline pounding leaves me crashing. "Look, Cherie, I just... really need to sleep. Can we talk about this in the morning?"

Cherie is still incredibly nervous underneath her fake smile I've never seen through before today, antsy and afraid and confused and horrified, but manages to (fake) cheerfully say, "Sounds good to me, boss."

We stare at each other for a minute longer while I wonder if I should call her out on the faking, but exhaustion -so strange how it feels wrong to be exhausted, given I've spent so little time as a cape- hits me all over again and I just can't deal with this right now.

It takes me longer to go to sleep than I'm expecting, what with remembering I should brush my teeth now and then remembering I don't have a toothbrush, and a half-dozen other things I haven't thought about in months...

... but I'm out like a light within seconds of my head touching the pillow.

Cherie

GodDAMNIT.

Never stopped to think, not about the basics. Just assumed she got a kick out of things. Spent all that time theorizing why she enjoyed the murder for justice while I fucking forgot to check if she was actually enjoying it!

Fffffuck, I should know better. My number one complaint is how often people aren't looking for the fun in life. The college students going out of obligation to their parents, or because going to college is The Done Thing in their social circle, no motive underlying it aside thoughtless conformity. The many, many employees who hate their job, hate their customers, but gotta work to keep a roof over their head and food in their belly so they grit their teeth and do it anyway. The teens who go along with their friends because they're scared of being abandoned, never mind they don't enjoy the drugs and are terrified when shoplifting. The adults who hate their spouse but feel they should stay together for the sake of their kids.

I've crashed these people's lives SO many times, and so fucking many of them spend so much time not pursuing fun. I SHOULD KNOW THIS.

Brain, why. Is it because she's a parahuman? Have I just internalized an inane notion that parahumans are an exception just 'cause me and Daddy and most of the sibs and a couple hometown capes all go for the fun? IS THAT IT?

BUT ONE OF MY COMPLAINTS ABOUT TAYLOR IS WHAT A DOWNER SHE IS.

I had a literal superpower for peeking into Taylor's thoughts! I have the prior experience! I complained to myself about how boring and no-fun-allowed she is!

How did I fuck this up?

I circle again as the razorsquid, too agitated to hold still. This realization sucks on its own, but this day has just been one thing after another. Losing my power freaked me out all by itself, then Taylor tripped memories of the shit Daddy used to do to me and I vomited, then just when I was getting over all that we had to start seeing people and I just cannot cope with not knowing what they're thinking. The hotel staffguy who checked us in -was he actually one of those guys who's basically chill and okay with their job? I DON'T KNOW! I CAN'T TELL! I was sure this garbage was easy, but without my emotion-sensing kit it's like I've forgotten how faces work. He smiled; polite? Genuine? Blatantly fake? Flirty? Skeevy? Relaxed-on-drugs? Reminded of a fond memory?

Just him is bad enough, but it's EVERYONE.

I still really, really want to keep the murdersquid power just because it's amazing being able to think about Jean-Paul again, no drama, no fighting down tears, none of that shit. Like okay yeah I still miss him a bit, frustrated I did that to myself, but this is such a huge improvement...

... but doing without the emotion-sensing kit looks like it's going to leave me a nervous wreck within a week. I'm starting to get why Taylor keeps stabbing problems: it was so tempting, when he was turning around to get our key and so I was the black lagoon's squiddy cousin, to just lunge so I could stop agonizing over what was actually going on in his skull. I'm amazed all over again that Taylor didn't go Killer all over her schoolmates. Like okay yeah she didn't switch to the murderous mollusk straight from emotional omniscience so it's a bit of a difference, but jeez, this is so stressful and the murder button is right there, begging to be pushed.

... is this what the squirrels were about?

I'd love to ask Taylor, but she's snoring. I'm... really surprised to learn she snores. And not dainty, girly snores like Pauline did, either, I'm talking chainsaw snores that would drive me up the wall if I was actually trying to sleep.

Point is, she's dead asleep, no ambiguity on that front, and after being fucking tired of Taylor running me ragged for weeks I'm a little too aware of how hypocritical it'd be of me to wake her to ask a trivial question.

Also, I'm not entirely sure how I'd do it anyway, given the razor limbs and all. Yeah, I'll just poke Taylor to get her attention... with my blades. Great plan! Much smart!

Not.

Anyway, point is I'm stressed, today has sucked, I don't even want to think about what Taylor has been picking up from me given her tendency to jump to weird, judge-y conclusions, and even though there's a lot to like about having the monster and its attendant abilities, I'm not actually sure I can take it long-term.

I circle again, and then remember makeup. Normally I'd have remembered makeup when I needed to sleep, clean myself up in the bathroom before laying down, but hey, I don't sleep anymore!

Fortunately, I already know from working on Taylor that makeup is still an option, won't fucking vanish the instant I blink. Haven't tested the full range of possibilities, but...

... I walk into the bathroom, flip on the light, and get a good look at myself in the mirror...

... I can at least- oh come on.

It ate my stripe! It fucking ate my stripe! I like that part of my look, I had to win an argument with Daddy to get him to let me do it instead of refusing because we can't stand out!

And dye takes time. If it ate blush I might have been able to quickly re-apply it before meeting someone or whatever, but I can't just apply dye five minutes before showtime! It doesn't work like that! It's already been a pain getting opportunities to re-dye my hair without Taylor getting on my case, mostly did it while she was stalking prospective targets and whatnot, but now it's just gone?

I heave a tremendously depressed sigh and work on getting rid of what of my face has stuck around. Which is a pain in the ass, given if I look a bit too far away from the mirror whoops I'm a beastly thing and can't keep on with that! God, is this why Taylor doesn't bother with makeup? Hmmm. Also pertinent is that she clearly doesn't take advantage of not sleeping to touch her face up. Maybe she tried, but found it enough of a nuisance she didn't keep at it...

... wait. What happened to my acne? I had acne, I was careful to cover it up this morning, it's gotten kinda bad in the last week. Not un-hidable bad, but it's been spreading beyond the bridge of my nose.

Did... did the regeneration wipe my acne?

Holy shit, Taylor looks that rough when her power is magically staving off one of the more pain in the ass bits of being a teenager? Uh. Wow. I really have no idea how to feel about that. I suppose she could still bloom into a gorgeous adult lady in a couple of years, but I'd honestly been assuming at least half the not-very-pretty was acne and so on.

Once I'm done with my face, I decide to clear up my nails, too. Might as well, given I may have to reconsider my entire look. Ugh, no red stripe, face looks different in ways I can't quite pin down...

The process of dealing with my nails is disconcerting. I've been running hot pink nails, same as I largely defaulted to before Daddy died, and initially it seems like the nail polish is refusing to come off, which has me temporarily worried this monster power business has decided pink nails is part of my default look or something... but no, it is coming away, it's just the nail underneath is a similarly vivid shade of pink. Well, not the nail, exactly, I can see the nails themselves are their usual white color, but where the nail is flush with my skin it looks pink. That's... confusing.

A quick look at Taylor's nails, abusing the squid's eerily perfect night vision -something Taylor really downplayed, wow- confirms her nails are the same shade of pink. Huh. I'd assumed she was using nail polish. And she's still got this color even though she doesn't turn into the monster anymore.

Weeeeird.

I'm not entirely sure why Taylor's power would be doing this. It seems pretty weird and random as an arbitrary targeted thing, and given Taylor is sleeping and guilting and so on now that we're switched, the pinkness doesn't seem likely to be a maintained effect. So... a lingering side effect from the... transformation doing its reset thing?

... are nails naturally pink if one is in good health?

Seems plausible, I guess, though not anything I'd have guessed before...

Well. I guess I won't be bothering with hot pink nail polish, uh, possibly ever if we don't get swapped back. So... hooray?

I'd love to do a close check of the rest of me for any other weirdness, but trying to look down at my belly or similar always ends with me staring at my squid-self. I manage to get a decent enough look at my legs, arms, back of my shoulders, and hey even my ears, but much of my torso is now a mystery beyond my ability to see without assistance. It's like not being able to see your feet once you're fat! Only a lot weirder, and something I've actually experienced.

Toenails are less vividly pink, but still pink enough I kinda doubt I'll be coloring them in that vicinity so long as this persists. What I can see of my skin looks different in ways I can't pin down, and now I wish I'd actually been the sort to take selfies so I could compare before and after. I don't think I'm more muscular? Something is bugging me about my look. Taylor never mentioned anything like this, but given long experience with her I can't help but suspect she genuinely didn't notice a sudden healthy glow in spite of constantly being forced to stare at herself in mirrors to do basic shit like clothing.

Okay, so... fuck, no stripe... god. Maybe type of dye matters? Or maybe there's other ways of coloring hair I could try. I dunno, mushing red berries in my hair? I really don't wanna give up on the stripe...

I abandon this topic as too depressing, and abandon the bathroom by extension. Circle in the room again, 'cause seriously I have infinite energy and an itch to use it. Remind myself that I'm no longer hurt every time Jean-Paul lurches into my brain, and then spend several minutes basking in the feeling of not hurting when I remember getting Lung to make Oni Lee kill Jean-Paul. Ahhhh yes, so much better. Just wish it didn't come with constantly stressing about everybody we meet... I thought all those socially awkward losers were just, like, being dumb, but maybe this is vaguely like what they experience normally? The not knowing, feeling like you should know, and worrying you're going to do or say the wrong thing because the insides of peoples' heads is a blank box to you?

Hm. Would I normally feel guilty, looking back at all the times I rolled my eyes at those folks and sneered at them in my head and sometimes to their face, with thinking about this? I wanna say no, but I didn't think I'd feel guilty about killing Jean-Paul until it actually happened. So... maybe?

Whatever, it really is nice not hurting when thinking about Jean-Paul. I might buy myself jeans again! Okay, probably not, I don't actually like jeans much they never look great on me and they're a bit itchy and all, but look, I can think about the possibility again without my stupid brain jumping to Jean-Paul and punching me right in the heart! That's worth reveling in!

Huh. You know, what would I have done if I'd been like this back when Jean-Paul got shanked? Like, I've got a half-formed thought here connecting to Taylor's kill-streak, somethingsomething not dissuaded from the stabinating because no feeling bad... though she just told me it all sucked... whatever! Other thought I'm lingering on is the existential despair shit. Like, I felt bad because fave sib dead, but I also had a wee bit of a total breakdown because I was aimless and shit. Would this have made it easier? I kinda wanna guess 'no', but it crosses my mind there's enough little bits of change attached to this whole thing that I really can't know. Not without really thorough testing, at least. The murder button has been so tempting. I've been dropping that in the hammering nails sort of box, where I solve lotsa problems with emotional manipulation because it's so easy so surely Taylor is murdering because her power makes it an effortless option, but... like, Daddy doing shit to me -thanks monster body, the much-more-limited nausea is helpful for introspection!- didn't feel like an external force imposed upon me. There's a reason I know people rationalize the shit out of emotion power bullshit. I did it without recognizing it while knowing Daddy had such a power and used it on fam.

So, like, if the murder button is so tempting because this power has rewired me to make murder seem a desirable option by default, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between rationalizing that with 'it's so easy!' vs just genuinely thinking the easiness is why I'm focusing on it so readily.

Hmmmmm.

Ya know, this might even explain the thing with her jerkface, Shade Sticker or whatever? Like, mental inertia, or however you'd call it. Pre-trigger Taylor wasn't a killy sort, she already had modes of thought of how to handle that situation, and the murder button was sufficiently, uh, sneaky? Hide-y? Trying to make itself not obviously a change, so Taylor wasn't going to re-examine old plans and all, or at least not without something pushing her to re-think prior decisions where it'd seem natural.

Not sure how well that theory holds up, might need to ask Taylor some questions later to sound out this situation, but something in this area could explain why I've had so much trouble mapping out Taylor. Like wandering around a downtown area, everything's nice and urban and makes sense, and then you turn a corner into a literal swamp, and your nice tidy map of city blocks and streets and so on doesn't fucking help anymore. Or something, I dunno. Metaphors.

I take a second to check on Taylor. Nervous -or whatever- energy, not much to do, why not.

Anyway, not sure how to feel about the possibility of an artificially tempting murder button in my own head. It doesn't really feel like a big deal on the face of it, but that'd be kinda the point, wouldn't it? On the other hand, it's not like I've been put off by Taylor's whole murder shtick in the first place. Not so long as it wasn't aimed at me, anyway, which hey! Problem solved!

So like the Sinister, Satanic Murder Button is an intriguing theory, but I'm kinda left unconvinced it matters whether it's a real thing or not. It's not like I stabbed the check-in guy and then remembered all the reasons why I don't do blatant shit that'll definitely get trouble on my ass.

Well, unconvinced its realness matters so long as I'm the one with the power of turning into a tentacled whatsit, anyway. I will absolutely keep that theory in mind if we get switched back.

Ugh, so much energy. It's like... draining to be this energetic. What the hell, how did Taylor cope? Speaking of Taylor, let's check how she's doing-

Aw, fuck. She's doing the scrunchy face thing the brats did when they had nightmares.

Cuddling it is.

Taylor

When I wake up in the morning, I vaguely recall having had dreams of... some kind. Something about... killing Nilbog? My dad? My dad who was Nilbog? It's already slipping away, but I can remember it started out something like that. A nightmare. I certainly didn't miss those...

When I open my eyes, it's to Cherie staring me in the face, grinning, while her power informs me she's hyped. I think that's why I don't startle out of my skin when she blurts out, "Boo!" right in my face almost immediately after my eyes open.

I sigh. "Cherie, you vomited when I used your power on you yesterday. You really shouldn't be trying to startle me. I might reflexively use your power on you."

For once, the look on Cherie's face is strongly in line with what her power is reporting: dawning realization laced with horror, transitioning into embarrassment and nervousness. I'm not really surprised when she grins (fake) and, with a nervous laugh, says, "Ah, yeah, got it. No surprises without a good reason, yep." I raise an eyebrow at that qualifier, because it's Cherie so I can't help but suspect 'it would be hilarious' would constitute 'a good reason' to her mind, but decide not to press the point. She's the one who suffers if she does it anyway, even if I don't like surprises. Instead, I haul myself out of bed, tired and finding it bizarrely discomfiting. I'm reminded of a summer vacation where I didn't wear socks unless I had to go out somewhere, where it took a few days for walking around without socks to stop feeling uncomfortable. And then wearing socks indoors felt uncomfortable for a few days after that summer vacation ended.

My stomach is bothering me, too. Feels weird. Like... god, this feels familiar, why can't I place it...

... my eyes drift over the hotel room, dresser, TV, hangar space, mirror, sink, bathroom...

... and I abruptly remember that it's been months since I used the toilet.

...

I ended up taking a shower, too, ignoring Cherie's rising feelings of aggravation and impatience. Just luxuriating in the feeling of warm water running through my hair and all. I'd forgotten how relaxing a good shower could be.

I get out, turn to look at myself in the mirror, and Cherie tears around the corner -I catch a glimpse of a red blur before abruptly it's Cherie, it's a bit unsettling- and to my surprise her aggravation melts away as soon as she sees my reflection, turning into mildly disturbed confusion, though her face is carefully blank in a way I've only occasionally seen from Cherie. "What?" I say, exasperated.

"You look... uh, relaxed." I get a moment to absorb that before she continues. "I just thought you got your relaxation time while I slept or something, not that you were perpetually stressed."

I blink owlishly at Cherie's reflection. "Your power just directly tells you about emotions." Oh, great. My hair has tangles. I haven't had to brush it for months, I don't even have a brush...

Cherie makes a wavy motion with one hand. "Stress is one of those things I infer from shit like anxiety and fear existing. When sibs got sick, if it made them crankier or more depressive I knew about that, but I didn't get directly told they felt like crap."

Oh. Huh. Is... is that why she's pushed me too far a few times? She did apparently think I enjoyed all this cape stuff... it would make a lot of sense if she was assuming I was in a good mood and so not readily bothered by her being annoying, and was just wrong...

... oh, Cherie probably has a brush, come to think. "Do you have a brush on you, Cherie?"

Cherie doesn't visibly react, but her power indicates surprise and confusion. It doesn't last long, though, her eyes darting to my hair. "Uuuuh, yeah, of course. Can't get it, though, no hands."

Oh. In a purse or something. "Mind if I borrow it?"

Cherie shrugs. "Feel free." There's a brief, intense stab of resentment that vanishes so quickly I'm not sure I didn't imagine it, but from there Cherie and I cooperate to locate her brush (Not her purse; it's in a luggage thing she stole from the weird slaver group), and then I'm brushing my hair... initially on a bed, but I'm out of practice, and quickly switch to brushing in front of the mirror so I can see what I'm doing. (It doesn't help much... but it does help, so I stick it out)

All that done, I remember I'd been meaning to ask... "So what was the vomiting about, exactly?"

There's a stab of anxiety that I... don't think shows on Cherie's face? I see something, maybe... I don't get much time to think about it, though, as Cherie's expression gets very bland and she remarks in a similar tone, "I have a lot of very unpleasant memories involving someone forcing me to feel a certain way out of nowhere."

... oh. Oh. Um. I... can't believe I didn't guess that on my own. "Sorry," I say, unsure how to take Cherie's stab of surprise in response. It even shows on her face. Are -are apologies that unusual for her to hear?... they probably are, aren't they? And now I'm feeling a bit green, getting just a little more insight into the Vasil family life. I... yeah. I don't regret killing Heartbreaker, even with the power switch, pretty damn sure. "I'll not be doing that in future." Er. I amend it with, "Not unless I have a good reason, like... another Master power at work or something." Hopefully this situation won't last long enough for it to matter.

I'm still not finished brushing my hair when Cherie's anxiety spikes and she blurts out, "Can you look up hair dye alternatives? While we're driving, I mean."

Um. "Er. Why?" It's not like it's an unreasonable request, but it's so weird.

With a fierceness that catches me off guard because her power confirms it's not at all an act or exaggeration, Cherie says, "The transformation ate my fucking stripe, and I want it back." After a second Cherie clearly notices she was leaning aggressively into my space, spikes embarrassment, and smooths out her face while leaning back, arms clasped behind her instead of fists clenched in front of her. She's still mad, though.

Then I notice that, yeah, that red streak is gone. "Oh." Weird. That's the same color as her monster form, at least what I saw. "Your monster form is red. Same shade even, I think."

Cherie is briefly pleased, though it doesn't show on her face at all, then anxiety comes to the fore just before she asks, "Is it a red stripe?"

I catch myself staring at Cherie, and deliberately focus on my hair again. Mostly done, now. And thinking back... "I don't think so-" Cherie is... weirdly crestfallen to hear that. "-but I only caught a glimpse." That buoys her mood a little, but she's still strangely in the dumps over this, and I dunno what to make of it. "Is-" I hesitate, unsure how to word this, and finally give up when Cherie doesn't do anything but stare hard. "Is this a thing where I even want to know the explanation for why you care so much?"

Cherie clearly mulls the thought over, which is sufficiently ominously upsetting I'm about to say I don't want to know when Cherie says, once again bizarrely fiercely, "It's mine. Not much was mine, in the fam."

I wince a little, but honestly... it's not like I have siblings. This might just be a normal sort of frustrating with larger families. The Heartbreaker horror show was probably especially horrible and I am not lingering on that thought, but I can imagine knowing someone casually who doesn't come from so fucked a situation still wanting something that's very much their own without it requiring a horrific story behind the want. I can... hope that it's something like that here, too, not something supremely fucked.

"Yeah, I can look into alternate dyes." I was going to include 'if it's important to you', but she already said as much and I half-suspect it will set off a rant about why it's important to her and I'll regret hearing the story behind it.

The relief that shoots through Cherie is so intense I feel sick as-is. I'm not sure what to make of the fact that she only looks moderately relieved. I'm starting to think Cherie just habitually downplays or hides her real feelings, and that... seems likely to be Heartbreaker's fault. Somehow. I'm still not asking; somehow, whatever my imagination conjures up never manages to live up to her reality in horribleness. (What kind of father buries their own kid alive?) Cherie follows it up with a (somewhat brittle...) smile I'm pretty sure is genuine, a sharp nod, and saying, "Good. Great! Thanks a ton, boss, I really appreciate it." I know and it's freaking me out, I deliberately don't actually say.

There's a lull while I re-focus on getting the tangles out of my hair and Cherie turns away to do... something. I can't hear anything, and her emotions aren't telling much of a story, and also I'm trying real hard to not listen in if I can. I'm... trying really hard to ignore that I'm pretty sure the hotel clerk is making out with someone or something of the sort, I hate that I just kind of know that's happening. Feel like such a creep. Ughghgh I can feel Cherie's moment of triumph so vividly I'm hearing the Ah-ha! she would probably be saying if she could.

Then she shows back up in the mirror carrying... what is that? "We should totally dye your hair," Cherie says without preamble. I boggle in response because what the hell Cherie? but she just rolls her eyes at me, gives the container a shake, and starts rambling. "I've been thinking this for weeks, the Protectorate ambushed you on your doorstep and all, they gotta know who you are and what you look like and all that jazz, we really shoulda done something to make you look less you to avoid them catching you in broad daylight, and I never brought it up before because I wasn't sure how we'd actually do it with the monster thing." She gestures sharply at her own hair and angrily-but-triumphantly (Confirmed by her power to be essentially accurate...) says, "And I was totes justified, turns out!" Then she grins and waves the container in my general direction. "But now we can, for sure. And should." Now she's giving me a Look, and her power is... making me think she's expecting serious resistance?

I don't respond immediately, still working on my hair's worst sections. She... has a point. I... I like my hair, but it really is a way to finger me a bit more readily, and... dying it is... less permanent than cutting? Actually, is it? "How permanent is hair dye, anyway?"

Cherie startles internally, but externally she just looks closer at the container, then says, "This stuff? It's permanent hair dye." I make a face, but Cherie keeps talking -I'm not sure she noticed. "But there's stuff you can do with soap to get most of it out, later, and you can dye it back to close your original color." Then she shrugs. "And hair grows fast anyway."

That's true, but I've got years of growth here. "Not this, not that fast," I note as neutrally as I can. I'm... not sure it comes out very neutral. This is the only part of my look I like.

Cherie shrugs again. "Then just let it grow out, make the roots showing part of your look if you decide you want to go back to black ultimately. It's really not a big commitment." All very matter-of-fact, a lot more than I was expecting. Then she grins, holding up the container. "Black transitioning into red would look great."

I wrinkle my nose at that. "If I have to dye my hair, I'd rather not be a redhead." I can't stop the full-body shudder at the image of looking like Emma this calls to mind.

Cherie starts to open her mouth to raise an objection, but stops as the shudder ripples down my spine. "Uhhhhh. I'm missing something here, aren't I?" she asks.

My jaw works for a bit before I manage to grind out, "My ex-best friend is a redhead."

Cherie drops the container, swears, catches it before it hits the floor, than mournfully stares at it and remarks, "Well, there goes that idea." Then she brightens up, and cheerfully (Genuine cheer, even) says, "Should I go get blonde then? We can be sisters!" I give her a flat, unamused look, and she's not even slightly remorseful. Not even internally. What, really? That bit is completely genuine? Ugh, of course Cherie is being completely genuine when she's being a... a... I dunno. Unrepentant, I guess. Ugh.

Then she surprises me by saying, "But seriously if redhead is off the table, blonde is probably the best choice." I raise a skeptical eyebrow, but don't say anything -almost done with the brushing, want to make sure I haven't missed anything, it takes focus. "Like the goal here is to make you inconspicuous, where people looking for Taylor Hebert, The Girl With A Big Mass Of Dark Hair not only won't think they're looking at Taylor Hebert but won't think to pay you any attention." She's... really into this. I'm a bit weirded out by how genuinely enthusiastic her power is insisting she is. "So sure we could give you acid blue hair, but that would stick out in people's memory, and even people not looking for one Taylor Hebert are still going to remember and maybe mention the girl with a halo of blue frizz when people go around asking questions." I wouldn't even want... whatever the hell she means by 'acid blue'. Cherie plows on, possibly not noticing my lack of enthusiasm. I mean, her power isn't relaying anything relevant? I think? "So ideally we give you a reasonably real regular human hair color, the kind of thing you don't need dye or cape fuckery to get, and also we keep it pretty far from your natural hair color, that way people won't see a brunette in the dark and interpret the brown as black and wrong-yet-right-ly ID you. Which with redhead out basically means blonde, because white or grey is Old People Hair and there's no way you're passing for a granny."

I'm starting to wonder when she'll run out of breath. Though... laid out like that... that actually sounds annoyingly sensible? I want to shoot this down, but... I'm not sure I should.

Oh god, Cherie's still talking. "And hey, black roots with blonde hair actually looks cool! Like your hair is growing out of an inky well of shadow, it's great." I can see the skeptical question forming on my face, and apparently Cherie can see it too, because she blandly remarks, "One of the sibs has naturally black hair, and had to dye it one of the times we went to ground." I try very, very hard to not notice the roiling mess of unpleasant emotions this memory apparently calls forth for Cherie. I don't succeed.

Finally done with the brushing, I turn to face Cherie, and... well, stare for a minute. Externally, she keeps grinning. Internally, she starts being confused and slightly upset, though that... latter bit could just be the memory stuff I'm failing at not noticing. Eventually I sigh and go, "Fine. We... might as well."

"Great! We'll need to shop, then actually do the dyejob tonight -we've got like an hour left in this hotel, right?- but then you'll be fabulous!"

I don't like the way she says 'fabulous', but I limit myself to sighing, feeling like I'm going to regret this -feeling like I already regret it.

The shopping is... not what I was expecting.

I'd been expecting Cherie to drag me along, possibly literally at times, pepper me with questions on what I liked the look of while largely ignoring whatever I actually say, and spend twenty minutes on something that should take two, chattering the whole way with barely any opportunity to get a word in edge-wise.

That's about what happened when she helped me pick out new glasses, after all.

Instead, she beelines straight to the hair section, narrows in on blonde dyes, eyeballs three possibilities, asks me which one I like, and immediately puts the other two away when I point at the pale-ish shade, followed by bustling straight to the register. The whole way she is tense as hell, and only talking basically the bare minimum necessary. She conspicuously avoids eye contact with the cashier when we go to pay, as well, which is... weird to see Cherie doing. She still smiles at the guy, but sort of smiling at his... chin, I guess. (Though the cashier doesn't seem to notice anything off- ew, I did not need to know about that little bit of lust!) I haven't shopped with Cherie much, but when I have she's always looked people right in the eye and been just... generally chatty and direct. Not... nervous.

It's incredibly unsettling to see Cherie this way, not to mention confusing. I'm pretty sure my power didn't make me more socially awkward than the bullying already had. Mostly sure. Okay, I didn't notice all the other changes- fuck. Maybe it did make me more socially awkward somehow.

Cherie's mood thankfully picks up once we're back in the truck, and she brightly says, "You got it, boss!" when I give her directions for the city I'm thinking might have a bolthole for Uncertainty Principal. (And Lightswitch, but he's dead now) Her mood improves further when I ask her to be quiet while I look into the hair thing; she actually starts humming, which I'd long sort of suspected was a good mood thing with her and now her power is blaring at me that yes she's doing better.

Less than thirty minutes later, I've got a few possibilities to try, but the one that goes over best is, of all things, using cherry juice as a natural red dye in case my power is purging inorganic materials or something. I'm not sure why Cherie is so tickled by that possibility... she just keeps giggling and repeating 'cherie juice' under her breath. At least, I'm pretty sure she's saying that and not just 'cherry juice' -she's muttering quietly enough it's possible I'm just mishearing her. But giggling over 'cherry juice' is even more concerningly insane-seeming, so I'm just going to assume she finds... something... funny about the phrase 'cherie juice'.

I have mixed feelings when we stop at a grocery store to pick up some cherry juice. On the plus side, the insane giggling and muttering completely stops. On the minus side, I can't not notice her stress ratcheting up several orders of magnitude. I don't even need her power to know this is happening, the horror is painted right on her face as she stares at the entrance from inside the truck, watching people stream in and out with shopping carts. I can see her trying to work up the nerve to open the damn door. She doesn't screw up that bit of courage for at least a minute.

The whole thing is sufficiently depressing I finally tell her, "I can go get it."

Cherie starts to make some kind of protest, but it's pretty clear her heart is not in it. Her power informing me of the relief flooding her feels gratuitous, honestly.

My first impulse once I'm a few feet from the truck is to be relieved I can at least get a break from experiencing Cherie's stress secondhand. Around the point at which I'm inside, grabbing a basket, Cherie's power insistently walking me through her ongoing emotional contortions reveals this relief to be hopelessly naïve. She's at least less stressed, and with this level of removal it's harder for me to formulate guesses about what she's stressing over, so it's a little less terrible... but I'm not really away from her stress. It's like the difference between watching a friend break down (Stop thinking about Emma stop thinking about Emma stop thinking about-) vs watching a sympathetic character on TV break down; the latter is easier, yes, but it's still heartbreaking.

Attempts to distract myself with other people's emotional... signatures, that's the term Cherie uses... in a desperate attempt to stop being so aware of Cherie's pain are... less than stellar. In the first place, it illustrates that Cherie wasn't lying or exaggerating when she said she knew about everyone in her radius, all at once. I'd been imagining something... well, like having a birds-eye view of a city, everyone lit up, able to zoom in and focus on individuals, but only one at a time. And that's not it at all; what's going on with Cherie is just a constant, gnawing thing in the back of my mind. Even when I get so focused on looking for cherry juice I almost bump into someone, my attention not on them, I somehow still have attention on Cherie...

... and everyone else in this horribly huge radius. How?

The other reason it's not a great distraction is that it gets me really thinking about the assorted unhappy-to-miserable signatures around me, some of them probably in this very store. My first impulse is to go find these people and try to help. This impulse is throttled by the awareness that, from their perspective, I'd be a creepy intrusive weirdo who knows too much. Also, it would probably out me as a cape. So. Dumb plan.

But just ignoring them now that I'm so aware of them makes me feel so incredibly shitty. Like I'm walking past someone screaming in agony, clutching a broken limb, and paying them no mind. The closest I've come to this before is a couple times when a child was screaming bloody murder and I wasn't sufficiently confident the parent was actually being shitty to want to jump in -and this is at least five times worse.

I honestly don't know how Cherie stands this at all, let alone 24/7 for years.

The rest of the drive is largely in mutual silence, aside intermittent moments of Cherie asking when she needs to turn next or the like and me answering her question.

Then I groan aloud, and Cherie asks me, "What?" in this moderately panicky way.

I gesture at the computer. "Uncertainty Principal's's been spotted-" I ignore Cherie saying Great! "-and she's in Berlin."

There's a long pause while Cherie processes that, and compares it to our current location somewhere in the northern part of the American Midwest. "Shit."

"Yeah," I say unhappily. "We'll have to stash the tinkertech. No way airport security lets those through."

The silence that follows would, I suspect, normally not bother me. In this case, though, I can hear Cherie's emotions throwing out dozens of question marks. I'm not really surprised when she speaks up. Well, not by the act of speaking up, sounding confused. "Why would we fly there when we can fly there?"

It takes a second to connect her words to the Dragonslayer suit. I cross my arms and make a skeptical noise. "I doubt it can cross an ocean before running out of battery."

"Hell-o, did you not bitch about them hitting, like, Africa and Russia and shit?"

I want to complain about the condescension, but she's got a point.

Eventually I sigh. "This will delay hunting the Nine... weeks? Months? I hate this."

Cherie is moodily thoughtful, I think, which weirds me out. Cherie? Moody? Thoughtful? Both?

Then her mood inexplicably spirals upward rapidly. Something prepares me for the exact moment she suddenly shouts, "Whoohoo, we're going backpacking in France!"

My jaw drops and I stare at Cherie. She doesn't seem to notice. "Cherie, Berlin is the capitol of Germany."

"Oh." Cherie is briefly put out, but then that surge of cheer comes back? "Whoohoo, we're going Nazi-punching!"

I sigh to myself and decide to ignore Cherie being weird again, returning to my research.

God, I think to myself in short order. Cherie's right. We are going Nazi-punching, as I learn more about this 'Gesellschaft' Uncertainty Principal has aligned herself with already.

Cherie is going to gloat when she finds out, isn't she?