Seraphim Chapter Fourteen

Seraphim

Chapter 14

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Lisa Wilbourne, born Sarah Livsey, had encountered many ‘curve balls’ in her life. In fact, her life had seemed to take a sadistic pleasure at throwing shocking and emotionally, which is why she had gained the ability to ferret out secrets and surprises with nothing more than the bare minimum information. Too late to prevent disaster, of course, she thought bitterly as she remembered finding her brother hanging from his own ceiling fan.

Powers only ever showed up when it was too late to help, after all.

Much like heroes.

But, despite those morose and bitter thoughts, she could hardly pretend that this was anything other than the most spectacular and out-of-the-blue curveball she had ever heard of. It wasn’t every day, after all, that one found out that the girl she had escaped imminent sexual slavery with was friends, and self-appointed leash, to a group of literal, factual, honest-to-God fallen angels.

Once she had recovered from the shock, she had been somewhat amused by the fact that she hadn’t once questioned what Taylor and her friends were, despite how absurd it out to sound to her. After all, faith was a dying thing in Earth Bet. It was rather hard to believe in a loving, benevolent higher power (or powers, if that suited one better) when city-destroying monsters roamed freely and people like the Slaughterhouse Nine went about un-smited. Yet, somehow, the truth of the matter had never been a point of contention for her, even with herself. Instead, she had (after the arguably obligatory inquiry) set about asking questions and trying to come to grips with this newest change in her life.

That being said, something that Charlotte had just said now possessed her totally undivided attention.

“So, you think you can actually block people off from their powers? Temporarily?” she asked, barely managing to keep her voice down despite the sheer incredulity she felt at the idea.

“Sure, it’s easy when you think about the limiters that Taylor has. I mean, the ones that she wears are intended to keep divine power under control, blocking off access to parahuman powers isn’t all that difficult by comparison. It’s not even like I’m sealing the powers away or anything esoteric like that, not yet anyway. Basically, I’m just interrupting the mental transmissions between the majority of a parahuman’s brain and the part that controls their powers. Since the mental command never reaches it, the power never activates, and if it never activates, none of the feedback can occur. Tinker fugues, for example.” the other girl shrugged, sounding terribly nonchalant about the entire situation. Of course, perhaps she would have sounded more excited, more emotionally invested, if she realized what, exactly, such a thing would mean to Thinkers such as one Lisa Wilbourne. Which made sense, because Fallen Angels obviously didn’t get Thinker headaches. That right there was enough of a temptation to make Lisa want to beg her way into Taylor’s peerage, but she restrained herself. Not only was that a huge commitment to make based on some head pain, but she was pretty sure Taylor wouldn’t appreciate it a great deal. The taller girl definitely seemed to place a great deal of value in loyalty and the value of one’s oaths. Which, if Lisa were less cynical, she would admire and even agree with.

Of course, Taylor was also such a good-natured girl that Lisa could probably just ask for a ring of her own and actually be given one! She made a mental note to do just that, and also ask a few clarifying questions. The last thing that she wanted to do was find myself in a position where she couldn’t use the power until she got the ring off of her finger. Sure, it would only take a few seconds, but seconds matter!

“Is there a way for you to block the side-effects without blocking the power usage itself? I mean, obviously stopping villains from using their powers would be amazing, we could stop using the fucking Birdcage, but could you use it to help Thinkers and Tinkers?” Lisa asked eagerly, before a thought occurred and she continued in a rush before anyone could answer. “Could you make something that blocks Master effects? If you could do that, the Fallen could be destroyed once and for all. Heartbreaker, too.”

“To the first question, I don’t know, to be honest with you. The side-effects are integrated into the powers, they radiate from the Gemma and Pollentia as opposed to another part of the body, like some sort of a, a sympatheticpain or something. So, I’m worried that cutting off part of the side effect could have some pretty bad results, you know? Plus, in the case of a Thinker, like you, then there could be the risk of damage or something from overuse. I just don’t think we know enough to risk it.” The artificer responded, sounding rather worried about the possibility, and Lisa had to admit it was probably a valid concern. The human brain wasn’t exactly designed for the sort of thing her brain did, after all, never mind precogs, so damage was hardly out of the question if overused. “As for the second question, most likely. I mean, all that would be involved would be a ‘sheathe’, or something very much like it, over your mind. Since Masters and Strangers don’t actually effect your physical senses, only the way that your brain interprets what your senses tell it, interrupting the effect by preventing the corrupted signals from arriving would be easy.”

“Of course, the issue is doing that without cutting of your senses entirely, which is not a simple feat. Father knows the human body is a work of art, and a delicate one at that.” Taylor remarked, not sounding particularly concerned as she tilted her head and smiled at the pair of them. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Charlotte. You’ve taken to my mom’s notes on {Item Creation} like a duck to water!”

Charlotte blushed faintly and bobbed her head in thanks for the compliment, already perfect posture straightening a bit more, and Lisa had to stifle a smirk before it could grow too large. The massive crush that Charlotte had on Taylor was obvious to anyone with half an ounce of sense, which (fortunately for everyone involved) naturally meant that a good seventy-five percent of the city wouldn’t notice unless it was explained to them using small words.

Which was good, given the ongoing existence of a certain anti-everyone group of bigoted morons that hung around the city like the plague that they were, because Lisa was willing to bet the same blatant signs of attraction would be displayed as much in public as they were here in the Trinity’s sanctum sanctorum. From what little time she had known the group, subtlety was something they reserved for things like not being humanand being able to turn multi-story rage dragons into glass statues, not for such comparatively insignificant things as crushes and hero-worship. If she was a worse person, she would probably shamelessly manipulate their relative naivety to her own benefit. Instead, she was going to…well, she was still going to manipulate their naivety, but it would be for their good as much as her own. Really, Sophia might have recruited her to make sure the world was safe from Taylor going nuts, but Lisa was quite sure they needed to be kept safe from themselves even more.

“Alright girls, what’s the plan? Boardwalk? Movies? Mall crawl? Visiting the Vatican?” Lisa said after a moment of silent contemplation, and blinked at the full-body shudders and violent head-shaking that swept over all three Fallen.

“Please, no. I don’t want us put in a position of being declared heretics or something. Or, worse still, being look to us for guidance in matters of faith. I’m not a theologian, I’m not a religious scholar, I’m a high school girl, and I do not need people asking questions that I don’t have the answers for.” Taylor answered for the three of them, sounding legitimately frightened of the idea, and Lisa couldn’t help the way her eyebrows rose, something that the rest of the room failed to miss. “What?”

“Might not be bad idea to let people know that their faith isn’t misplaced, is all.” She responded carefully, not wanting to sound pushy but feeling she needed to point out a facet of the situation that they might not have considered. “It’s hard for most people to believe in anything with the world the way it is, never mind an loving, all-powerful God that hasn’t solved all of our problems, you know? I’m not saying you have to set yourselves up as prophets or messiahs, but you can do a lot for people by reassuring them that their faith isn’t misplaced, that this shithole of a world we’ve got isn’t all there is to existence.”

Judging by the expressions on their faces, this was not in fact something that any of them had considered, even on the most shallow of levels, and they were all somewhat disturbed by that fact. At least, she assumed that was why they were disturbed, because her power was still refusing to do a damn thing. Whether that was because it had no idea what to make of the people around her and the knowledge they had imparted, or because there were wards on this hideout that was preventing it from functioning, she didn’t know. It was actually rather disconcerting to be brought down to the same level as a baseline human, something she hadn’t been for a long time, and it was rather humbling to realize how heavily she relied on her power for the most minor of interactions and activities. Humbling, and embarrassing, and perhaps even frightening.

“…I don’t know how to respond to that. I see your point, of course I do, but all the same, I worry for the precedent. I’m already concerned enough with the temptations of my own power. Religious and political influence on top of that…I do not trust myself not to abuse it for ‘The Greater Good’.” Taylor sighed, sounding torn, and the room bobbed their heads in sympathy at that. Humans were, by their nature, prone to collecting and hoarding power, whatever form that power took. Throw in the nature of a Fallen Angel on top of that in-born human predilection towards Sin, and you had dangerous potential.

“Then we don’t worry about it for now and do what the adults said to do: we make sure to show everybody that you guys don’t mean any harm.” Sophia said, not unkindly, as she firmly directed the conversation away from topics that neither she nor the rest of them seemed ready to cover with any sort of depth. “How hard would it be for you to get in touch with Panacea?”

“Not hard in the least. She frequents the hospital with incredible regularity, and of course everyone knows her home address, although I don’t know that showing up at her house randomly would be the best way to do anything. The last thing we want to do is frighten her or give anyone the ability to claim that we were threatening her.” Charlotte answered, tilting her head at Emma. “Emma has already chatted with her at least once and proposed the idea to her, so as long as we involve her in the decision-making process, she is quite interested.”

“So we head to the Boardwalk and look for a good place to do the clinic before we talk to her, or we find out if she knows any good places to do it? I mean, she of all people would have a few ideas, right?” Lisa proposed, and they all looked around at one another for a moment before Taylor shrugged and got to her feet.

“We’ll head to the Boardwalk and check things out, we can always bring her suggestions and negotiate later. Like Charlotte said, we know where she’ll be on a regular basis, so its not like we’re working on a time crunch or are about to miss our only opportunity. We want to do this right, not fast, right?” she decided, sounding rather relaxed about the whole thing, and Lisa coughed lightly into her fist with a raised eyebrow.

“Uh, I thought the whole point was that we wanted to do things as soon as possible to start pushing back on the bad PR before it gets too entrenched in anyone’s minds, yes? I agree that doing things right is important, that goes without saying when it comes to healing people, but we kinda want to do this fast too.” She pointed out ever-so-politely, and the other four girls looked at her for a moment before Taylor sighed.

“You’re going to be the nagging voice of reason in my ear, aren’t you? I can already tell.” Taylor grumbled, though she didn’t sound quite as put out as her words might have suggested, and she headed for the stairs with a beckoning wave towards the rest of them. “C’mon, girls. Looks like we’re on a time crunch after all, so we shouldn’t dilly or dally.”

Smirking or laughing according to their nature, the pack of teens made their way up the stairs and into the city proper. There was some wrangling over where, exactly, they would go for their pre-Panacea sojurn together. Sophia and Taylor were firmly outvoted by the other three, who decided with a display of perfect unity that the open-air market near the Boardwalk (specifically, the clothes and jewelry boutiques) were the order of the day.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the one in charge, here? What’s the point of being the King or whatever if you can’t even tell them no when they want you to play dress up?” Sophia snarked as they headed for the bus stop, the athletic tomboy sounding about as pleased with the idea of as pre-Peerage Emma would have been with running track. Or running period. Or doing anything athletic at all, really.

“A wise King knows never to give a command that would not be obeyed.” Taylor responded primly, before her lips quirked slightly and she continued on in a rather dryer tone. “A wise King also knows which fights are worth picking, and with whom. This King knows better than to try to fight this particular fight. And before you even imagine abandoning me to their dainty hands, forget it. You never know, being forced to try on pretty clothes might make me snap and turn into a tyrant.”

Sophia groaned, only partially for the sake of theatricality, but didn’t protest further. Whether that was because she was taking Taylor seriously, wasn’t nearly as put out by shopping as she pretended, or was simply being a good sport, none of them knew. In the end, it didn’t really matter.

None of them, not even Lisa herself, noticed that the blonde was moving on autopilot for the first few dozen yards outside of the sanctuary’s wards. Her eyes blank as she stared with constricted pupils unseeingly at the back of the group as she walked, and within a certain partition of her brain there was chaos.

{The Negotiator} was currently experiencing what a human might call a state of post-catatonic shock. The moment its host had crossed the threshold of that place, it had been cut off from her. Isolated within her mind, unable to use her senses to gather {DATA}, unable to process what {DATA} it had, unable to do anything but sit and wait and do something that Shards weren’t really made for doing: wonder.

It had been looking forward (in a manner of speaking) to the chance for new {DATA} from such unique sources, having been intrigued by the abilities displayed through the {Host Visual Medium}. They didn’t match any fellow {Shard of the Warrior} or {Shard of the Thinker} that it knew of, and that made any {DATA} that could be gathered from interacting with them more valuable than any other inter-host {Conflict}.

That it’s host had encountered the host of {Dispersal of Physicality}, who had led them to {Unknown Not-Hosts} almost immediately, had been delightful serendipity, and it had been eager to begin its work. Then, its host and {Sophia-Host} had been teleported somewhere, and everything had turned dark.

It shouldn’t have been possible, shouldn’t bepossible, but it had happened all the same.

Even now, with it’s connections to it’s Host restored, it could not gather any solid {DATA}. Contradicting feedback and evaluations reverberated through its crystalline form, and each determination it made was discarded by the next, which was itself discarded in turn. It had been forced to cut its transmission-to-Host connection for fear of killing it’s Host by overworking it’s {Organic Processing Center}!

It considered alerting {The Warrior}, but hesitated. {The Warrior} was not functioning properly, for one thing, and for another it reallywanted to gather this {DATA} somehow. It might take time to discover how to process the input properly, but it was confident that it could do so. It was not a {Host} after all, delicate existences that they were, so it was more than capable of finding a workaround eventually. And when it did, it would be the shard to introduce Unique {DATA} for the first time in many {Cycles}. All would know the name of {The Negotiator}.

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“Crystal, this is ridiculous. I told you that I’m totally fine, okay?” Amy sighed as her cousin tugged her down the sidewalk by the firm grip the older girl had around her wrist, an irritatingly amused Vicky ambling along behind them with a smirk that made Amy want throw something at her. Preferably something sticky, colorful, and staining. They would see who was smirking then, wouldn’t they?

“Yeah, well, you would, wouldn’t you? I don’t think that I’ve ever heard you say that you’re anything less than fine, regardless of circumstances. Fact is, I’ve talked to your…hell, I can’t even call them coworkers, you work for free. I talked to the other people at the hospital, and they’ve been telling me the kind of hours you’re working. It’s too much, it’s not healthy, and I’m not putting up with it.” Crystal responded bluntly, not stymied in the least by Amy’s complaints, and through the skin contact between them Amy could feel the TRUTH in that statement, as well as the simmering anger beneath it. Anger that was quickly given voice. “Auntie Carol might not give you any trouble for sneaking out of your bed or school to heal more people, and she might not say anything about you working sixteen hour days, but I damn well will!”

“Hey, don’t make it sound like Mom doesn’t love Ames, Crys!” Vicky protested immediately, and despite the barrier of pain that always seemed to be between Amy and her adoptive mother on one level or another, the healer had to agree. Carol understood how important it was that Panacea continued to heal, she knew that people died otherwise. What was Carol supposed to do, let people die? Just because Amy was tired? Regular doctors worked for twelve or more hours all the time, and they were doing surgeries with scalpels, not superpowers!

She resolutely ignored the fact that said doctors worked in teams and were very well paid for their marathon-like efforts. Those facts would poke rather large holes in her argument, and since she had no idea how she would handle confronting any crumbling in her foundation, she put a great deal of effort into pretending such details didn’t exist at all.

Some days, it even worked.

“That’s not what I meant, Vicky, but you can’t deny that Auntie shouldn’t let Amy work at the hospital so much. At the very least, Amy sneaking out without anyone to protect her should be a problem! You know how many people would like to have a pocket Panacea if they could get away with it, and it would be pretty damn easy to get away with it if Amy is walking to the hospital alone at two in the morning!” Crystal responded, getting dangerously close to shouting the final words, only the awareness of the people around them letting her keep it down to a somewhat-reasonable level.

Amy’s heart warmed a little at the true fear and love she felt in her cousin in that moment. No one knew that she was actually a biokinetic, of course, that was more than capable of protecting herself. To her family and the world, she was the most powerful healer in existence and essentially helpless besides that. And she had always intended to keep it that way for the sake of her safety and familial harmony. She didn’t know how people would react to finding out she had the same potential as Nilbog, Blasto, or Bonesaw, and God only knew how Carol would handle it. Her adoptive mother had always had a…rather firm view on right and wrong, its why she was a such a good lawyer. She was passionate about it, she believed in it. She might not turn on Amy immediately, but there would sure as hell be a lot less trust and a lot less affection.

The idea made her feel small and cold, and she suppressed a shiver.

“Crys, what do you want us to do? Tie Amy to her bed all night? Put an ankle bracelet on her? Armed guards patrolling the house? Have the hospital staff sedate her and send her home with the cops?” Vicky growled back, throwing her hands up dramatically, and Crystal scowled at her and halted, releasing Amy’s wrist as she folded her arms across her chest.

“I want you to help her understand the fact that what she’s doing isn’t healthy!” the older girl snapped back, a thick note of censure in her voice and bearing. “If that means having the hospital refuse to let her inside after a certain point in the night outside of an emergency that requires her direct involvement, than do that! You’re supposed to be her ‘big sister’, so stop enabling her bad habits and look out for her!”

Amy winced as Vicky swelled with outrage and wounded pride at the mocking notes of two words that reffered to Vicky’s favorite way to shut down Amy’s arguments against going on another date or resisting another one of her hairbrained schemes: that Vicky was older (by a handful of months) and therefor had seniority. Despite the teasing way it was always said, Vicky had always taken her role as Amy’s protector very seriously indeed, everyone in the family (and quite a few people outside of it knew that. For Crystal to call the quality of her care into question was quite the shot across the bow, and she decided immediately to intervene before things were said that couldn’t be taken back or unheard.

“That’s enough out of both of you! We’re on public, we don’t need people recording this kind of crap and selling it to some tabloid!” she barked, straightening up and putting every ounce of intimidation should could into her body language. Admittedly, for someone of her size and build, that wasn’t exactly saying much, but she had long since gotten used to the fact that she should leave physical intimidation to others whenever possible. “Crystal, I love you and I appreciate you trying to look out for me, but it’s no reason to be mad at Vicky. And Vicky, I love you too, but don’t yell at Crystal for trying to look out for me.”

Her sister snorted, sounding rather like an angry bull facing down a matador, but she relented. Crystal squared her jaw, looking particularly mutinous and mulish, but subsided as well. All the same, Amy knew it wasn’t over, only postponed, and she had the feeling that there would be a throw-down, shout-until-your-throat-hurts family argument once the three of them got home.

“Good. Now, we’re going to do whatever fun thing Crystal wants us to do. We’re going to have a good time. We’re going to act like the heroes we’re supposed to be. We’re not going to be airing family problems in public. Then, we’re going to go home. Got it?” Amy ‘asked’, and when the pair remained silent, she posted her fists on her hips and glared harder. “Got it?”

They grumbled their assent, clearly less than pleased at being forced to put their argument aside and play nice now that they had the proverbial bits in their teeth, but she knew they would follow through, besides the inevitable sniping that she was positive would occur. Neither of them liked being shown up, especially not by (or in front of) one another.

“Good, now let’s go.” She said in a gentler tone of voice, looking over at Crystal, who huffed before turning and heading off again, moving towards the open-air market that sprung up on occasion. It had been a long time since the last one, but perhaps everyone was feeling a bit bold after Lung’s…defeat. She resisted the urge to look towards the beach, towards the glittering tomb-statue that towered above the buildings and marked the Dragon of Kyushu’s demise.

She remembered when they had taken her there, to see if her power could do anything, even if only determine the man’s fate. It had been fruitless, of course, and all the adults had muttered to one another in discontent. They had been talking about Seraphim’s mother, and from what she gathered ‘Angel Mom’ (as Assault had called her repeatedly, which Amy understood given the unpronounceable name the woman had actually had) had often thrown around as much or more power. Frankly, Amy thought that much was obvious given the global self-Stranger affect that ‘Angel Mom’ had pulled off, and she could understand the fear and uncertainty that seemed to be front and center in so many people.

She was uncertain, if she was going to be honest, and probably even afraid. But she wasn’t afraid of Seraphim, wasn’t afraid that the other girl would go around turning random innocents into glass or set herself up as a warlord. No, she was afraid of the unknown. Her world had been a far-from-perfect one, but it had been a consistent world, a world she knew and understood. Now, the entire world had changed, the entire atmosphere in which she had spent her life had been shaken, its foundations shattered. How it would all fall back into place, she didn’t know, she couldn’t even guess. That is what she feared.

Shaking those dark thoughts away, she refocused herself on her family, who were now ‘playfully’ squabbling over what stall to go to first. She knew she would find herself forced to try on at least a few outfits before the expedition ended, no matter how much she grumbled or whine or tried to resist. Some things were as inevitable as the sun coming up, much to her chagrin, but perhaps she could get them to focus on one another instead? If they were too busy dressing each other up and critiquing one another’s outfits, maybe she could get out of this with her dignity and her wallet intact.

For once.

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Another chapter done! I’m now working on the next chapter for Nothing Is True, which will be posted to the Patreon in two weeks!