The Grimoire's Chosen Ch. 38 (Worm)

A/N: Amelia POV!

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“But that-!”

“Wait, you-!”

“Are you sure?”

It catches Amelia off guard when Victoria and Taylor both pause at her soft spoken words. Even now, it’s hard to accept that she actually has any authority in this situation… but just because it’s hard to swallow doesn’t make it any less true. As the owner of the Lavere Clinic and their hidden sponsor, Amelia has a lot more authority than she ever had in the past. It feels kind of weird though, even now.

Jason looks to her and solemnly nods.

“I’m sure. This power of mine… it hasn’t been wrong yet with the secrets it’s managed to uncover.”

She believes him. Frankly, Amelia wishes she had even a fraction of the confidence and charisma that Jason exudes. In some ways, she felt like she barely knew the man. In other ways, she felt like she could trust him with her life. At the very least, she was trusting him with Vicky’s life.

Frowning most severely, Victoria leans forward.

“The whole point of the PRT is to provide oversight. I may not always like that oversight, but I get why it exists. To have a parahuman in the position of Director… it ruins the entire point of the organization. This could be a huge scandal if it got out…”

She’s right, of course. Amelia finds herself thinking back on the current PRT Director’s tenure. Thomas Calvert… he was better than Emily Piggot had been, but that wasn’t exactly a high bar to reach. Director Piggot had been a bigot who hated Capes and she really didn’t do a very good job of concealing that hatred.

Even Amelia, who had spent so much of her early life trying to be good and trying to help people at her own expense… hadn’t been good enough in Piggot’s eyes. The handful of times they’d met, she got the impression that Piggot had suspicions about the true nature of Amelia’s powers. And sure, those suspicions weren’t far off the mark… but it still hurt to be so thoroughly distrusted when she was trying her damnedest to be a hero.

Indeed, that distrust had been rooted so deeply that instead of just having Amelia heal her, Piggot had worked herself to the point of being removed from her position for medical reasons. Amelia had expected to be called in then, but instead the former PRT Director had simply faded into the background entirely, replaced by the current Director… Thomas Calvert.

Now Amelia finds herself wondering if the transition of power was as peaceful and… copacetic as it seemed. Did Piggot really step down voluntarily because of her health? Or had she been forcibly replaced by Calvert? But then, who was pulling Calvert’s strings? Who was he working for?

“Do you know anything more about his powers, Jason?”

That question comes from Taylor, but it still causes all eyes to fall on Jason again as they await his answer. In response, he frowns and shakes his head.

“I don’t. It doesn’t seem like my ability goes that far. It tells me what someone is hiding, but when it comes to something as crazy as parahuman abilities, it stops at giving me a full description of their powers I suppose. Honestly, I wouldn’t have looked so closely at him if he didn’t show up as red to my senses. He’s an enemy of mine for some reason, whether he knows it or not.”

That was… a relief to hear. Amelia had secrets of her own that she was keeping from everyone, including the people in this room. Secrets that had to do with her powers. But from the sound of things, Jason not only had little reason to peer too closely at her (she wasn’t his enemy after all) he also couldn’t look any more closely at what someone’s powers actually did. Thank fucking God.

Ever since she’d broken away from New Wave and the Dallons, Amelia had… been experimenting a bit more with her abilities. It was like a pressure valve. She’d ignored it for years and nearly exploded in the process, but she managed to work something out before things could get… apocalyptic. Her power wanted to be used for more than just healing people. So Amelia had started doing exactly that. But nobody could know… if they did, they would think she was the next Nilbog or Bonesaw or something.

“I did get something else though, besides just the fact that he was an enemy and had a hidden parahuman ability.”

Amelia jolts as Jason suddenly looks to her. For a second she fears the worst, but then she realizes… it’s because he’s telling her something that Taylor and Victoria already know.

“My core power has started encouraging me to go out and do parahuman activities by providing me with extra points to buy more powers whenever I do something noteworthy. These extra points come in the form of ‘Feats’.”

Nodding to show she understands, Amelia relaxes when Jason turns his attention back to the rest of the group. There was just something so intense about being singled out by the man.

“Anyways, I got a lot of Feats at once last night for our successful patrol and capturing Hookwolf. Stuff like defeating my first cape, doing my first patrol with other capes, being acknowledged as a Hero by the Protectorate, and even drawing the ire of the gangs down on my head. I was close to purchasing my next power, so when Armsmaster said the Director of the PRT wanted to meet with me, I said yes… mostly because I hoped I would get some sort of Feat like being acknowledged as a Hero by the PRT or something.”

So far, Amelia was tracking with what he was saying. Taylor and Vicky are both nodding along as well. But then Jason grimaces.

“I got a Feat, but it wasn’t that one. Instead, I got a Feat for ‘uncovering my first Parahuman Conspiracy’.”

Amelia’s eyes widen along with the others at that bombshell.

“Damn. So Calvert isn’t just a hidden parahuman, but involved in a larger conspiracy of some kind? Heh, is it still tinfoil hat time if the conspiracy is power-acknowledged and they really are out to get ya?”

Vicky’s joke falls somewhat flat, but based on her macabre tone, she wasn’t expecting it to land. Silence reigns in the living room for a long moment as they all consider what this could potentially mean. Amelia has to admit… she doesn’t like the implications. Calvert might have SEEMED like a better Director than Piggot, but knowing what she knew now, she almost wanted the bigoted bitch back. At least Piggot was upfront about her distaste for parahumans.

“What do we do?”

Jason shrugs at Taylor’s question, looking uncertain.

“I honestly don’t know. I mean, we don’t even know what his parahuman ability is. What if it’s a Master Power? What if he’s ensnared the Brockton Bay Protectorate and PRT with it and that’s why he hasn’t been caught? I mean, they have to have some sort of testing in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening, right? Somehow, he slipped past their protocols. Maybe it was incompetence, but maybe it was something else… something darker.”

A shiver runs down Amelia’s spine at that. The thought of the Protectorate being under the control of a Master Cape was a frightening one. They might not be able to dislodge the bigger gangs in Brockton Bay, but they were still a powerful force in their own rights. If a Master had them, they could do a lot of damage.

“Well… he hasn’t done much yet if that is the case, right? If anything, Brockton Bay has been a little bit safer under Calvert than Piggot. Not by much, but at least a little bit. Whatever his plan is, it seems to involve running the PRT as good if not better than his predecessor at least?”

Vicky’s tone makes it clear even she’s not entirely convinced of that. Just playing devil’s advocate, probably.

Taylor, meanwhile, crosses her arms over her chest.

“That’s cold comfort when you consider that most of Jason’s would-be enemies should be gang members. Calvert might be doing his job well for now, but he’s almost certainly doing it at the behest of one of the gangs in preparation for an eventual takeover of the entire city.”

Leaning forward, Taylor taps the coffee table pointedly.

“That’s how we figure out who he’s working for. We do some research and look into the change in attitude from the PRT towards the gangs since Piggot stepped down and Calvert took over. I bet you, even if its subtle, the PRT and Protectorate have been giving special treatment to at least one of the gangs since the transfer of power. Whoever that is… that’s who Calvert is working for.”

Not a bad idea. Though Amelia did have one question she felt needed to be asked.

“… And then what? If we figure that out, what do we do then?”

Taylor frowns, considering the question for a moment before biting her lower lip and looking to Jason.

“We… could try and deal with it ourselves? If we go after the gang, maybe we can find legitimate evidence connecting Calvert to them from their end?”

Jason hums, crossing his own arms in response to that.

“Could work. It’s a bit of an escalation from patrolling though isn’t it? Going after one gang in particular… I’d say we might not want the heat, but admittedly our actions tonight have already gotten lots of heat on us. Still, who exactly do we think Calvert could be working for here? The Empire? He's black so that seems unlikely. The ABB? I mean, he’s definitely not Asian so maybe not the ABB, but who else even is there?”

They all fall into a contemplative silence for a moment. Some groups come to mind like the Merchants, but Amelia doesn’t think they would be capable of this sort of thing for even a second. And neither does anyone else seeing as the name doesn’t pass from any of their lips. Although…

“There’s Coil. He barely holds territory, but he still exists.”

Vicky’s eyes light up and she snaps her fingers.

“Coil! Holy shit I totally forgot about him! He’s like… super mysterious and weird isn’t he? I mean, everyone assumes he’s a cape, but nobody has ever seen him in a cape battle. And he doesn’t seem to have any capes working for him either, but his mercenaries are like special forces and all equipped with tinkertech! Calvert could totally be working for Coil on the downlow! A big ole conspiracy sounds like it’s right up his alley!”

Amelia finds herself nodding along and Taylor looks intrigued. But Jason is wise enough to burst their bubble.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Maybe Calvert is working for Coil, maybe he’s working for someone else. Just because he isn’t Asian doesn’t mean he can’t be an ABB plant, for instance. We’ll do our due diligence and look into things like Taylor suggested, see if there’s any discrepancies that crop up. I don’t want us to just go in guns blazing off of an assumption, no matter how educated of a guess it is alright?”

Deflating slightly, Victoria reluctantly nods.

“You’re right, of course. Besides, even if it does turn out to be Coil… I have no idea how we would even go about attacking him from the villain side of thing. He has territory, but nobody knows anything about the guy or where his actual bases are located…”

Then, Vicky perks up.

“Oh! But you know what we CAN do to prepare? We can do more Blood Magic!”

Wait, what? Amelia blinks owlishly, even as Jason and Taylor both glance at her the moment the words leave Victoria’s mouth. That… didn’t sound like something Amelia should have heard. And yet, Vicky is unapologetic, making it clear that her spilling the beans wasn’t an accident.

“Oh, it’s not a big deal if Ames knows. She’s chill. Besides, we should consider getting her a couple of enhancements too, especially now that we know the PRT has been infiltrated at the highest levels. She’s basically the most valuable cape in the city… at least that they’re aware of. If Calvert really is preparing Brockton Bay for some sort of gang takeover, then they’re going to want to get her at some point too.”

Oh. Amelia honestly hadn’t thought about that. She’d long been sort of protected by her reputation. The amount of healing she did at Endbringer Battles, not to mention she was usually willing to help out the Protectorate both with themselves AND with the villains they wound up injuring during capture, had given her a lot of goodwill in Brockton Bay.

Likewise, she’d made a deal at Somer’s Rock with all the big name villains to have the Lavere Clinic declared neutral grounds on the understanding that she wouldn’t STOP healing them during Endbringer Battles or after capture by the Protectorate and PRT. She also turned a blind eye when someone with an active Corona Pollentia showed up in their civvies to her clinic as well. So long as they paid well and didn’t start anything, Amelia didn’t start anything either.

And yet… Vicky was right. If someone was trying to take over the entire city, her neutrality was probably in danger. Still… what was this about Blood Magic?

Letting out a sigh and giving Vicky a long-suffering look, Jason turns to her with a grimace, causing Amelia to raise an eyebrow in response.

“Right, so… you remember when I passed out and Vicky had to call you in a while back? That was because I got a power that downloaded several years of knowledge into my brain… knowledge on how to perform certain types of magic. Basically, we’ve been summoning demons from Hell, torturing them until they willingly gave us their blood, and then using that blood to perform Empowerment Rituals to improve ourselves in varying ways.”

He blurts all of that stuff out at the end in such a rush that Amelia has to take a second to parse what he’s saying. Demon Summoning? Torture? Blood Magic? Her mouth opens and closes soundlessly for a moment as she stares at him wide-eyed. Just who the hell had she been talked into sponsoring here?!

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A/N: Will try to keep this up to date at the end of every chapter, get on me if I forget please. Though if it gets too out of hand, might have to change it at some point.

Jason's current banked points:

100 Celestial Points

Jason's current banked power:

= A Collection of Magic Rings (300 Points)

Jason's current powers:

= Flash Air (Gained in Chapter 1

= Transformation Pendant (Gained in Chapter 4)

= Keen Eye (Gained in Chapter 4)

= Blood, Death, and Demons (Gained in Chapter 6)

= Alchemical Prodigy (Gained in Chapter 8)

= Staff of Magnus (Gained in Chapter 13)

= Bind and Seal (Gained in Chapter 17)

= Hero of a Hundred Faces: Everyone's Leader (Gained in Chapter 20)

= Minor Regeneration via Blood Empowerment Ritual (Gained in Chapter 23)

= Restraining Order (Gained in Chapter 25)

= Focus (Gained in Chapter 28)

= Scarborough Fair (Gained in Chapter 30)

= Chaos Magic (Gained in Chapter 36)