NOVEL WEB Chapter 438: 4
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Rating:
Explicit
Archive Warning:
Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category:
F/F
Fandom:
Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Relationships:
Other Relationship Tags to Be AddedAmy Dallon | Panacea | Red Queen/Original Female Character(s)
Characters:
Amy Dallon | Panacea | Red QueenVictoria Dallon | Glory Girl | AntaresOriginal Female Character(s)New Wave (Parahumans)Butcher (Parahumans)
Additional Tags:
TranshumanismCanon-Typical ViolenceNazi PunchingMental InstabilityPresentation!Eventual FluffThe slope is steep and well lubricatedTeenagersEventual Descent Into VillainyCanon-Typical Amy ProblemsShaper Pokes Amy With A StickThen Bludgeons Her Over The Head With ItRomanceHold My BeerFluff and AngstSlice of LifealmostLGBTQ ThemesBe gayDo Crime!Unreliable NarratorMagical Girls
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:2024-12-10Updated:2025-07-19Words:141,038Chapters:33/?Comments:132Kudos:451Bookmarks:159Hits:29,480
Amelia Fulminate
Kathrine_von_Gilkira_Magnolia
Chapter 4: Þ - Greetings 1.4
Chapter Text
{Test bip, italics, bold, ¹²³}
Þ - Greetings 1.4
ƸÏƷ1.4 {Fan Fact; this fic was originally posted in whole arcs, intended to be navigated with the Ctrl+f function.}
(Saturday, October 23rd, 2010)
It had been a week since Amy had first woken up in that hospital bed with amnesia. Monday had set a routine. Wake up, go to school, work in one of the hospitals until four, do something fun, have dinner at home, be productive, and then sleep. She didn't know what to do on weekends yet. She had some guesses as to what she could do, but nothing concrete.
Dad made her pancakes for breakfast, which was very heartwarming. They sat at the table together as they ate. "I was thinking of going out to a few of the animal shelters in town." Amy initiated between one bite and the next.
Mark looked up from his own food. "Oh?"
Amy licked her lips in order to make them slightly less sticky with syrup. "Yeah. Like, I don't usually hit those places, y'know? And I figure it could be a fun thing to do on the weekend." She placed a finger on her chin as she thought about it. "I'd need to call them ahead of time to ask if they're okay with me doing a sweep, though. Hmm." With her free hand, Amy shovelled another bite into her mouth, and fiddled with it using her biokinesis as she chewed. "Still need a squirrel as well," she mumbled, lost in thought.
"So do you need a lift for that?" her dad asked.
Amy shook her head. "Nah, I was going to take the opportunity to practise my movement techniques," She then added, "But I'd be happy if you just want to use it as an opportunity to get out of the house." She smiled at him.
Amy being so enthusiastic still felt strange to Mark. Before the incident… Amy almost seemed as tired as he was some days, but here she was. It wasn't quite Victoria's endless sunshine, yet it still brought him joy to see his adopted daughter so out there. "Yes, I think I'd like that," he agreed. He took care of himself, and did his best to be there for his kids, but it was always just so, so hard. At least the past week had been a good streak. It, like all those before it, would inevitably end eventually, but that only meant that he would do his best while it lasted.
After breakfast Amy called up one of the larger animal shelters in the city, and talked to them about when and how she could help. As it turned out, they had several volunteers that helped a skeleton crew hold the fort on weekends. Thus, she could swing by anytime in the early afternoon. Amy told Dad that the plans were a go, and so they made plans to leave at twelve. They didn't know how fast Amy could cover long distances yet, so this would be something of a test run.
She texted Vicky — who was already out patrolling — her plans, and then spent a couple hours watching old TV shows she'd forgotten about to pass the time. When noon came Amy buckled her boots, put her costume into a backpack, snapped on her gloves, and then braided her hair. Normally she would manage her hair with her Shaker power, but she didn't want to waste the energy on that when she would be pushing herself so hard.
Mark took the car and started driving across town. Meanwhile, Amy bolted after him in a superpowered sprint. Most of the push was coming from her power. Where her legs fought gravity, her power sped her along at 30 miles per hour. Each stride was unnaturally long and floaty, but the use of her legs still reduced the strain on her power considerably. The wind whipped at her face ferociously, only kept at bay by the sunglasses she'd thought to wear. Vicky didn't have to worry about insects flying into her eyes. Amy was not Vicky, Amy was Amy, hence sunglasses.
Once they were out of the suburbs, Amy moved up to the rooftops. It was slower than her suburb sprint, but better than traffic by leaps and bounds. Pun intended. There might soon be word of an unrecognised parahuman Mover doing a bit of intra-city parkour, but Amy wasn't too worried. There were a bunch of stray independents that never got onto the newspapers.
It took 25 minutes for her to land in the parking lot of the animal shelter. She was certainly winded from the experience. Her heart was thundering blood through her ears for the first time in her life. Over the course of her journey she'd made significant improvements on her technique, mostly in optimising when and how to use her muscles in combination with her telekinesis for maximum effect.
Amy took a moment to change out of her black hoodie and into her costume, taking off her sunglasses at the same time. She snapped a selfie with the shelter in the background and sent it as a quick text to her dad.
Amy D: I made it to the place! Looks like you're getting slow old man! ꉂ(òwó)Mwahaha!
He wasn't actually being slow. Even on a Saturday traffic existed in Brockton, and she'd pick a location near downtown because they had less space for the animals to play in, and thus more health issues. Sunlight was an underestimated resource that had far more than just psychological benefits.
Amy waited around for her dad to arrive for another few minutes, playing with some of the overgrown bushes in front of the building. They were the kind with waxy almond shaped leaves that ended in spikes, a hardy plant, low maintenance. The sound of a car entering the parking lot had her turning around, and when her dad stepped out of the car Amy gave him a brief hug.
He patted her head and exchanged a few pleasantries, then they walked into the building. A little bell jingled as they entered, alerting the receptionist to their presence.
"Hello, welcome to-" The receptionist paused slightly when she saw Amy in costume. "Oh, you must be Panacea, and Mr Dallon?" Mark nodded. "Alright, gimme a second to call up someone to show you around." she said. It wasn't everyday one got to see a hero in action, though she'd be stuck on desk duty. Oh! She should ask for their autographs while she had the chance! "Hey, can I get your autographs?" the receptionist asked after she'd called for the manager.
Amy sighed and walked over to sign the sticky note the young woman had given her, then she passed it to Mark for him to sign as well. They weren't big heroes like Armsmaster or Glory Girl, but it was still cool to meet them. Shortly afterwards a slightly older woman entered the lobby.
"Hello, I'm the weekend manager, but you can just call me Sophie." she shook Amy's hand. "You said you wanted to do health checkups on all the animals, right?"
"Yep, I figured we could just walk through your housing kennels and give all of them a handshake as we passed. Depending on how full you guys are it might take some time, but I basically have all day." Amy exposited.
Sophie smiled, and began to lead them through some doors labelled 'Staff Only'. "That works for us. I don't remember the exact number, but we currently have 50-ish dogs, two dozen or so cats, and 15-ish smaller animals. Some of them are less than friendly, so…"
"It's fine. I'm a cape, I'll handle it." As they approached the first kennel, the dog inside made its way over the edge, putting its front paws up onto the metal between them. Amy reached out a hand and laid it atop one of the paws, immediately freezing the dog in place.
Young, suboptimal diet but within acceptable parameters, minor brain damage from years of reckless activity, teeth need touching up, and some scar tissue in the left leg could be removed. Amy flexed her power, forcing everything into her new order, then she let go and moved onto the next dog. And then the next, and the one after that, again, and again. For two whole hours. Dad went to play with the puppies after the first few Amy went through. Most only had little problems, like the first had, but enough had more debilitating or deadly issues that Amy felt the trip worthwhile. Though she opted to not cure the few that were born deaf, as that would cause more pain for the dogs than it'd be worth.
Then she did the cats — who were all in slightly worse condition overall — and after that she checked the small animals. There was a lot of variety there; a few parrots, guinea pigs, hamsters, rats, lizards, and a singular albino squirrel.
Amy'd been wanting a squirrel… She'd get a squirrel from a tree like a normal squirrel hunting person would. No need to take a perfectly good squirrel from some kid that might want it in the future. She did take a second to fix the poor thing's weakness to sun exposure.
Lastly, Amy checked up on all of the display animals, but as expected, all of them were in perfect health. That's why they were displayed in the first place. In the end, Sophie convinced Amy to do a few photos for the shelter to use as promotion on social media. They were all variations of Amy stone faced with different cute animals around her. It was a little goofy, but it'd be good publicity for both the shelter and New Wave.
Dad's favourite of the bunch was one of Amy sitting on his lap, whilst holding a golden retriever that had a parrot on its head, making a four stack of sittings that he thought was cute.
ƸÏƷ1.4
(Friday, October 29th, 2010)
After her shift at the hospital ended, Amy didn't make her way home. Instead, she changed into civilian clothes plus sunglasses, and made her way North via the rooftops. She could've gotten Vicky to fly her, but she'd just be looking at trees for a bit before leaving.
She was visiting a local bonsai nursery there in the city. It was a small hole-in-the-wall place near the heart of Brockton's Japantown. Odds were that it was used for money laundering, though Amy wasn't there because of that. She just wanted to look at the plants for a bit.
It was interesting to see how the internals of the trees were changed in comparison to healthy versions of those trees. To compensate the nursery for letting her poke at their plants for a bit, Amy helped grow a few extra nice trees for them. Bonsai was a lot like jewellery, and Amy could turn coal into diamonds, metaphorically speaking.
On her way home, dashing from one roof top to the next, Amy spotted a welcome sight near the edge of the roof she was running across. A black cat was waking from a nap due to the less than quiet sound of her sprinting. She'd been wanting a small mammal to work with for some time now. Sensing opportunity, Amy diverted course towards the slowly rousing feline. It tried to run, but before it could, Amy managed to get within six feet of it and lift it off the ground with her manipulation field.
Amy smiled at the small mammal, showing her teeth. "Well ain't you a snack. We're going to get up to so much fun together!" she declared to the frozen furball, reaching out a hand to pat its head. His head, she noticed, as her mind's eye was filled with his body structure.
His mind wasn't nearly as fragile as the insects she'd practised on, but Amy was still careful as she removed his stress, fear, and dread. She twisted his emotions around her finger, filling him with contentment in her presence, and altered things — like his habit to randomly scratch stuff up with his claws — in order to make him more house friendly. Once he was a happy cat, Amy scooped him up into her arms, and then continued her way across the rooftops at a speed only slightly slower than before.
"Now what am I going to name you?" she asked herself, looking down at the furry feller as they sped along. Hmm, she wasn't going to let him keep his reproductive capabilities anyways, so why not just remove his gender entirely? It would be interesting experimentation on the nature of gender dysmorphia, and it'd let her name him something silly, like Katie the cat, or Kathy, or Katelin. Wait, no, it should be something Japanese, like… Kazumi. She would name him Kazumi. 和美,と書くと.
Amy had been having a strangely easy time learning additional languages. She was still only a few dozen hours of study in, but she knew some basic essentials already. Korean was definitely the easiest of the major Asian languages they had in town, yet alas, Kazumi was Japanese. Oh well, Jeong-Suk would have been a mouthful to say, so maybe it was for the best.
Knowing that Carol likely wouldn't approve of Amy spontaneously getting a pet, she decided to be sneaky about it. So when Amy got home she opted to go around back and float up to her window, instead of walking through the house with the cat in plain view. Kazumi-kun — for now — was put to sleep under Amy's bed, whilst Amy herself snuck back out the window, so that she could visibly enter the house by the door.
"I'm home!" she announced as she entered. There wasn't any reply. Oh, right, duh. The driveway was empty. Vicky and Dad were both off doing some basketball event thingy, and her mother was doing whatever it was that she spent her weekends on. Amy was yet to find out what that was, but that was mostly from a lack of trying.
Feeling a little silly for sneaking unnecessarily, Amy walked upstairs to her room and spent the rest of the day interneting. There was always more to learn, always one more thing to catch-up on. She would never run out of wiki entries to read.
ƸÏƷ1.4
(Saturday, October 30th, 2010)
Amy was wearing a dress, for once. Specifically, she was wearing a red sundress underneath a leather jacket, because she was going on a date. A double date set up by Vicky. She also had some makeup on, and had done her nails to look like a variety of red and white flags, i.e. Switzerland, Japan, Greenland, Canada, etc.
Amy spotted the mall from a mile away. "Drop me," Amy said when they were close enough. Vicky obliged, letting Amy fall out of her arms. Amy increased her air resistance, allowing her to glide down dramatically next to her sister. Luckily, years of superheroine experience meant that they both had on exercise shorts under their skirts.
They both landed gracefully, and Vicky pulled out her phone to text Dean. "M'kay, they're both here already, loitering near the fountain." she told Amy as they approached the doors. It was a day before Halloween, so there were plenty of people trying to get in some last minute shopping. The white tile clicked under Amy's boots as they navigated through the crowd. A large number of paper streamers decorated the pillars and hung across the ceiling, being a holiday eyesore that made intrusive, arsonous thoughts pop into Amy's head like weeds.
They turned a corner and the fountain became visible. Amy started scanning the area for Dean, whom — unlike her own date — she at least knew the appearance of. Vicky spotted him first, she pointed him out to Amy and they started walking over to where he was chatting with some other boy.
Vicky waved at them to get their attention, and shouted "Hello gentlemen, the ladies of the hour have arrived!" Hm? Did Vicky know who Dean was talking to? Must have been one of his friends that she'd met, and then they bumped into each other whilst Dean was waiting for the two of them. Vicky gave Dean a peck on the cheek, then turned to Amy. "So, introductions! Ames, this is Michael." She gestured to the dude Dean was talking with.
He was average sized, but with an above average physique, and had a mop of short brown hair on top of his head that when paired with his blue eyes gave him a plucky kind of look.
"And Michael, this is my sister Amy." Vicky finished.
Amy shook his hand. "Nice to meetcha," she greeted, then looked around the area again before turning to Vicky. "So you said that both of them were here?" Amy asked.
All three of them turned to stare at her. Vicky frowned. "Um, yeah, Michael," she said awkwardly, nodding her head to gesture towards him.
"What about him?" Amy asked, much to Vicky's confusion.
"He's your date." she clarified.
It took Amy a second to compute that, and when she did her face scrunched up like she'd bitten a lemon. Was this some sort of prank? No, Vicky would joke sometimes but pranks weren't really her thing. Then Amy's face un-scrunched and her eyebrows rose to near her hairline. Oh, Vicky didn't know, somehow. Or maybe it'd changed? But it would make sense as an explanation as to why Amy supposedly hadn't liked these double dates before.
"Okay, it's cute and all, but what's with the faces?" Vicky inquired.
Welp, might as well say it. "Vicky, I'm gay." Poor dude, Michael, she felt kinda bad for him, getting set up on a date that would've been doomed to fail.
Vicky looked at Michael, then to Amy again, going back and forth a few times. Her mouth formed and 'O' as the statement solidified in her mind. Michael looked like he was constipated, and Dean inhaled deeply as he brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose.
"I am so sorry," Vicky apologised immediately, to both Amy and Michael. "I didn't know."
"I see that," Amy snarked, crossing her arms. She then took a moment to mentally uncoil herself, relaxing her posture marginally. "So, y'all wanna go watch a movie or somethin'? I know that Pirates 3 came out several weeks ago, but it might still be in theatres. Pretty sure people are saying it's better than the Aleph version from a couple years back."
They stared at her dumbly for a moment. Dean took the initiative. "Um, sure. Guess we can just be four teenagers hanging out, instead of a date."
"Yeah," Michael agreed. "Sorry you had to come out like this." he said to Amy empathetically.
She shrugged as they began making their way towards the in mall cinema. "Heh, until two minutes ago I thought I was out already, so nothing's really changed from my perspective."
Michael nodded, being well aware of Amy's publicly announced amnesia. Vicky stepped up next to her as they walked. "So… women?" she asked in a poor attempt at smalltalk.
Amy sharply exhaled through her nose in amusement. "Vicky, you have a boyfriend. I'm sure he'd be glad to exposit to you all the reasons someone might be into pretty ladies."
"Expound," Dean corrected incorrectly, both would've been viable.
"Okay nerd," Amy bantered back. He wasn't actually trying to argue grammar, she could tell. She then stage whispered to Michael, "Yikes, get a load of this guy! I bet he's a riot at the parties."
The movie was fun. Lots of swashbuckling and silly pirate talk. It was definitely better than the Aleph one. Completely different plot too, but that wasn't much of a surprise. Pirates of the Caribbean: Through Dark Tides was probably Amy's second favourite of the set, only behind the Aleph version of the first movie in its gobsmackingness.
.
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