"I think I can tag people and do something transportey to them? I can also use my normal power in dungeons without worrying about property damage."
"Make sure you know where the prisoners are first, but yeah. Try your esper power on me real quick?"
Lucien taps her, and then transports her to him through the kitchen table.
She winds up in his lap. "Okay, useful for evacuating a dungeon but with any luck this one people'll be able to walk out of. Where's Morton Towers?"
"If you two finish up early enough you are both welcome to come back and spend the night here. Or return tomorrow if that works better."
"Oh, fair point, I have my old back-up one on me but not my usual one."
They can do some hurried arts and crafts about this.
Hurried arts-and-crafts later they can go meet Transit out front to get a ride to the Towers.
A tall figure in a terrifying spider silk costume meets them outside.
"Dungeon's a maze of smooth tunnels full of rolling slime spheres - some of them have people who seem to be breathing fine for now. Some of the others are acid and I can't tell if those have people. We have some people who know first aid and a doctor but no proper medical team yet."
"Ugh, my power's not good for getting people out of slime spheres at all. It's normal that they're not suffocating, but they might not be doing it by breathing, dungeons can keep people alive when they wouldn't normally be."
"I can maybe do slime spheres? Or at least make it easy to reach in if that's fine."
"They're still breathing in and out, and there's oxygen in the spheres and not just CO2."
"It still might be helping them survive, if there's slime in their lungs."
"Nothing in their throats but might be in their lungs I can't tell. Should we be armed?"
"Yes, I don't know if bullets will bother slimes but there could be more than one kind of monster."
Then they can briskly walk down the hall and into the apartment to the left, which is open on account of the door being broken down by a passing slime, and then there's a key in the sock drawer and a gun safe in the closet.
"I don't actually know how to use a gun personally and this is no time for me to learn."
"Vallis. I can shoot a tazer and a ray gun and in theory I know how a gun works. I don't want to fire a gun near people but if I get a very clear shot I'm probably non-zero useful with it."
And into the dungeon.
"Largest concentration is that way - second-Lorica do you have a cape name and can you do further recon."
"Haven't picked one yet, and yeah I can run around looking at stuff while it can't see me."
"We can check later generally and use it for this dungeon. Can you report on the left tunnel - should be a curvy hallway with small side rooms with some slimes throughout and hostages in some of the side rooms."
There is the promised pathway with translucent slimes, colored green, blue and yellow. They each contain what looks like a brain inside of them. The yellow and a small number of green ones appear hollow and sometimes contain hostages. Getting closer to the blues causes May's backlash to increase faster. Numerous ordinary-looking bugs litter the walls and flit through the air, some caught in the slimes.
"What'd you need me for if you've bugged the place," mutters Traceless. She counts hostages and keeps going till she found a dead end.
"Each ooze has a brain, the captives are in the yellow and occasionally green ones, the blues have I think more senses than the other colors because they backlash me faster when I'm near 'em! I can point out the ones with captives as I go - there, there, that one -"
"CAN YOU POINT AT A FEW OF EACH COLOR," the bugs request when she's done with that for the slimes in view.
"Do you think it's safe for me to cut open a yellow one and take the prisoner out of it?"
It closes back up around the cuts she makes quickly enough that this is difficult, but if she stabs the brain it'll deflate and stop doing that.
Yeah, she tries stabbing the brain after cutting it doesn't work. When the guy's carved out she picks him up - does he seem inclined to stand -
"Evil pocket dimension, they're a thing now. Let's get you out of here." She escorts him out the portal, flying him past oozes if necessary.
Taylor and Lucien can start clearing oozes themselves - his power isn't able to break them but he can make furrows that intersect near the brains, exposing them enough that bugs can take them out.
"The acidified people might need to be in the hospital as soon as they get out. Do you think you might be able to, like, pull people not to you but to another person you tagged, if I go to the hospital?" May asks Lucien.
"I don't think so - I might be able to have you tag other people and I can go to the hospital and pull them there?"
May holds out her hand to the nearest person who may have been listening to this conversation. Even though it's Skitter.
He is successful.
"Pretty certain I'll be able to tell whether someone is pullable - should I go to the hospital now?"
"In 5 minutes you'll have a ride there, until then you help us clear the dungeon."
It turns out the green ones explode if poked wrong - Taylor blocks most of the resulting acid slime with a wave of bugs but Lucien still ends up with a burned ankle before he leaves.
Fortunately he's going to the hospital anyway. May needs to learn to handle a gun.
Meanwhile.
Chelsea looks like she belongs here, and if she doesn't, then yes she does anyway.
Where is Panacea?
That's fine. Bonesaw's work doesn't deteriorate instantly. She wasn't a Load Bearing Boss.
Panacea has a sister, right? Right. Rummage rummage. Copy. Paste.
Well, now Panacea is looking at her! She's still healing the guy but all of her attention is on Cherish.
"Um, if you say so." She finishes up pretty quickly without making it too obvious that all of her attention is still on Chelsea even if she's looking rather patient.
"Done."
"Do you need to do more of those or can we step out for a moment?"
"We can step out for a moment!" Panacea says, without really thinking over the question. Her heart beats a bit faster as she walks outside with Chelsea and she's still focused on her with an intensity that would normally require constant pushing on Chelsea's part.
It feels gooooooooood to be loved. "I need help. I've had some Tinker work done - I never sought it out, the Tinker and her crew showed up in my hometown to make trouble and I've only just gotten away from them, but I don't know how long it'll hold up without maintenance."
"I can help, of course. Did you let Mom know about the group?" She holds out her hand for Chelsea to take - not touching her herself because that's the rule she decided on - if Chelsea can touch her than she'll wait for Chelsea to do it rather than doing it herslf.
"I really just want to put that entire chapter of my life firmly behind me." Handclasp.
Nod nod, Panacea isn't going to read too much into the words or pay attention to how she's a little turned on nope she is just paying attention to fixing up Chelsea.
"Oh wow there's a lot here - I can make it leave your body? Though uh. Some of it's in your brain and I don't do brains."
...turned on, interesting. "I think some of it's helpful, or would be if anyone were looking after it, but I certainly can't hope to understand it myself and if you think it'll be safest out of me I trust you. Can you tell how long the brain installations will last without hurting me?"
"I think they might knock you out if you're in a lot of pain? But aside from that - a couple of weeks, maybe? There's reinforcing mesh around your organs I can keep from going wrong I'm pretty sure."
"The knocking me out when I'm in a lot of pain thing is recent. I had a cluster headache that wouldn't go away and all she wanted to do about it was torture me more, it took so much work to convince her to put me out and that was how she did it. The headache is gone now, though, so - I guess I have a couple weeks to - live? What will it do when it breaks down?"
"Um - oh. It will. Make you unable to sleep until you die, I think." Panacea is so so torn up and arguing with herself about this.
Panacea bites her lip.
"Um. I-I. I don't know if I can stop if I touched brains." Especially Chelsea's.
"Well I certainly don't mean to do you any harm by asking but it sounds like an awful way to die."
"Do you need a while, should I wait till you're done with regular patients for the day?"
She sits down, still holding Panacea's hand. ...she hasn't introduced herself and should find a smooth way to do it, if she just says what her name is out of nowhere people sometimes realize they feel a weird amount of interest in someone whose name they're only just learning. "I told myself, Chelsea, all you've gotta do is go to Panacea, she'll straighten you right out."
Oh her smile...
It takes only a few seconds, in the end. A trivial fix compared to what she does on a daily basis.
"Done."
Chelsea gets up again. Brushes some of Panacea's hair behind her ear. "I don't know how to thank you enough."
Panacea has some ideas.
She doesn't have any visible reaction to the hair brushing because she has practice with ignoring this sort of casual touch, but it's very obvious from her emotions that it's something she desperately wants, and wants more of than she can ever get.
"It's no problem."
"The organ mesh, does that need to be handled today or can it wait? I could come see you again."
"It can wait." Huuuuuug. She is enjoying this hug the maximum amount without letting it show, hugging back harder than she is being hugged, or burying her face in Chelsea's hair to smell it or anything weird.
It is SO good to be loved. She will stand there hugging Panacea as looooong as she wants.
Then they might stand here hugging for a weirdly long time in this hospital breakroom.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to keep anybody waiting." She lets go.
One of the patients with an acid burn hangs out in the same lobby while he waits for May to finish up, trying not to blame himself for this mess.
There's enough people in the lobby that it's not marked for her to sit down right next to him and -
- ooh?
Huh, when their elbows touched it felt sort of like touching May...
"Excuse me?"
"Uh. Have you by chance had a week of a terrible medical condition recently - or that you're in the middle of I suppose."
"I think you might be an esper - a new type of cape basically. Um, sorry if that was very terrible for you," Lucien adds, trying to figure out how this is his fault exactly.
"You have powers, using them generates backlash which is what you have a lot of for a week before you get your new powers. Backlash can be removed by contact with espers, especially compatible espers which I think we are moderately. Though during the initial week there's only so much you can do with guiding."
"Is that why you're in the hospital, because you have backlash?"
"No I hur-was getting people from a dungeon - an pocket dimension that kidnapped them - and bringing them here using my esper power. I do also have backlash from that so if I seem self-centered or wrong about things that's why."
........she was willing to tolerate some waiting around for Panacea alone. Panacea's eager to be caught, which makes sense considering that Chelsea reached for "sister" and got "lovestruck". This guy she has a short window of time before he becomes less willing to mistrust his observations.
"Are you done with that now?"
"Or, uh, friend. Guiding partner." Possibly he shouldn't discuss his relationship status with a stranger while backlashed.
"Her. Uh, maybe another hour? Or not if she blames me but that's probably backlash."
"Oh, if you're even a little hurt you've got to get it seen. I know Panacea, that's why I'm here - what's your trouble?"
"It's a minor burn, I'm fine really there are other people who need Panacea more." People he hurt.
"Well, she's very quick, she'll have them fixed up in a jiffy and then she can get to you."
"Oh, come on, you saved a bunch of people and need to be in good shape to go do it again next time."
Ugh. She wanted the light touch but it's not working.
Come on, isn't he tired and run-down and anxious and - "If you're sure."
"Mm."
He is! And it's his own fault and he shouldn't make it Panacea's problem.
Restless, trusting - "I'm not a doctor, of course, but if you've got that 'backlash' thing are you sure you're making good choices?"
"Oh, hrm..." That is a fair point and probably he should do something about the ankle.
"And you think if I weren't I'd be getting treated by Panacea?"
"If your partner were here with her ankle like this, what would you tell her to do?"
Well, when it's put that way it is sort of obvious.
"Okay, yeah, I'd tell her to find Panacea like all the civilian victims - she's in the north wing, right?
"You just stay put, you don't want to walk on that foot."
Off to find Panacea.
She's more than halfway through healing the acid victims at this point.
"Oh, hi Chelsea."
She has definitely not spent the past fifteen minutes reminiscing about hugging Chelsea.
"Hey, when you're next between patients there's a hero who looks half about to leave without getting seen at all for his burned ankle, he might need some persuading so he doesn't keep his partner waiting when she comes to whisk the both of them off into the yonder." Wistful yearning, not that Panacea really needs the push.
The wistfulness mixes with the desperation in a way Panacea is already very familiar with.
"Oh, of course. I can go and heal him ....now, all done with this patient."
"This way, he's in the lobby." How about Chelsea visibly almost leads her by the hand and then thinks better of it.
Panacea's hand twitches and she conspicuously controls her facial expression so as not to let the spike in longing show.
It's okay, Panacea, just run away from all your responsibilities to settle in a small town in the middle of nowhere with Chelsea and all your longing will be rewarded.
And here's their third wheel. Chelsea comes up behind him to put a hand on his head, fingers dipping below the hairline, doesn't that feel nice? Isn't that soothing? "This is the one."
The other people in the lobby are going to start leaving now. They're impatient and going to go look for their doctors, fretful and going to go check on their sick loved ones, have decided they hate the stranger next to them as much as they hate their worst enemy and want to be in a different waiting room -
It really is soothing, if awkward and a bit out of nowhere from someone who isn't May.
She can touch his hand and- oh Chelsea's touching is doing such a thing to him. She can almost imagine it doing that to her...
Healing. Yes. There is ankle skin to fix.
The last bystander's out of the way now.
So she's covered if Vallis does anything sudden in response to feeling about Chelsea the way he does about his partner, then.
Copy. Paste.
"Panacea already knows about this but I'm actually in pretty serious trouble and need help," says Chelsea, sliding her hand down to his neck for more coverage. "There's some supervillains who may be after me - the worst one who tortured me is dead but I'm scared of the rest of them. I need to get out of town, but if I go without a backlash partner, or without Panacea to help with anything the biotinker left behind before she died, I won't make it very far.
"Come with me?"
"Oh wow, uh. Of course I'll help - why don't we just fight them here? The Undersiders will probably help, or the Protectorate."
"I'm very sure." Trust her.
How's Panacea doing. Would she be doing better if Chelsea held her hand.
Oh....
When Panacea manages to notice anything beyond how they are holding hands she notices how touching Tunnel Teen is making Chelsea feel. She is not going to do anything about this but she could and if she did Tunnel Teen would have such a bad time of it and since she's touching Tunnel Teen it's very easy to imagine what it would look like.
"You've got to be able to respond to new emergencies as they come up, mustn't you?"
"I really think my partner will be able to help us and she'll probably be here relatively soon? I can text her a place to meet and we can pick her up there if we need to move right now though uh, I think there are Protectorate or New Wave members on standby to intervene if there's an attack here since it's a hospital and Panacea works here - right?" he asks, looking to Panacea for confirmation.
"Chelsea can be a bit hasty but so long as she's taking us with her I'm sure it will be fine?" Panacea says, resolutely ignoring her own mild confusion in favor of focusing on the feeling of Chelsea's hand in hers.
Okay, sorry, Vallis's partner, it would be nice if you could keep all this love just because in theory love is infinite, but it's not infinite enough that it won't get Chelsea killed.
Random person who left the waiting room a few minutes ago. Copy. Paste. "I don't think it's safe to trust your 'partner', let alone wait around for her."
Fair point, he met her barely a week ago.
"Mm, yeah okay if you're worried about people allying with the group chasing you she's definitely not the first person I'd go to for help."
"Yeah. I want to fly under the radar. Ankle all better? This way."
Oh, she won't.
Anybody who would have been going to cross their path mysteriously has other business, pinned with indecisiveness behind whatever door they were thinking of popping out of, till they reach her car. She gets in the driver's seat, which does alas occasion letting go of Panacea's hand.
"I don't have a town picked out yet, I want it to be hard to predict where I'd wind up."
"Makes sense - could pick somewhere randomly on a map? Or just choose a random direction and drive I guess."
"You could check the glovebox but I don't know if there's a map in here." She's picking a direction! She's driving!
Drive, drive, drive. "Do you two want me to keep calling you Vallis and Panacea?"
Oh wow, how did he go this long without mentioning his name.
"Lucien. Though maybe while we're actively running away I should use my cape name too? Since it's a sort of cape related activity."
"For flying under the radar a cape name - and a cape costume - aren't really low profile." She can reach over and brush Panacea's hood down from her head without looking away from the road.
Panacea 'accidentally' leans back into the hand.
"My family didn't exactly give me a choice about my name being under the radar - I can try to think of something new?"
Chelsea really is the best human being in every conceivable way.
Maybe there's a way to anagram her name or something like that but less obvious.
"Maybe I should have a nickname too. Only the only one I can think of is from my last name and somebody bad might know that."
Elsie is probably too obvious...
"I'm having trouble thinking of anything I like. Sadie or Sydney maybe?"
Chelsea said 'those' are cute not 'you' are cute, so why does she feel like this anyways.
"Do you want to pick one, maybe?"
"I think you're more of a Sydney. Now me, what should I be called?"
"Hmm, maybe but perhaps that's just what they won't expect me to do. Chloe, Sydney, and...?" She doesn't look at Lucien but it's obviously his turn.
"Awww, Tucker it is. And we all need last names. I don't think anybody knows my high school boyfriend's last name so I'll take that one, Chloe Cartwright."
Probably this should be an easy choice but she isn't sure in which direction it should be an easy choice.
"We can tell random people we meet either but should prooooobably pick just one at least for that specific use case."
Lucien is confused and vaguely wondering if fixing his ankle did something to Panacea. Or maybe she just needs a day off or something.
"Uh, oh. Thomas?"
"Perfect." No he's perfectly calm and unsuspicious. We are all fine here.
Sydney is entitled to that opinion.
Driiiiiiving.
"Is there anything else I should know about espers?"
"Uh, I already mentioned the basics... probably we should also do some guiding at some point to get me down to lower backlash?"
"Of course." She reaches one hand behind her into the backseat for him to take.
"Uh, shouldn't you be driving? Also we can guide each other much more efficiently when we're alone later."
"I can drive one handed, but sure. How soon do you need us to stop?"
"Okay. I don't think I'll be able to relax till I'm at least a couple hours away from the last place anybody knew I'd be."
"Yeah that makes sense - do we have enough cash to stay the night somewhere?"
Well in that case Lucien doesn't have much else to stay - maybe he'll check and see what the news coverage of the dungeon was like.
omw to you, are we going to yours after?
At the hospital, where are you at?
They're saying Panacea's missing
Where are you??
You've got to be like twice as backlashed as me and I feel like shit, where are you?!
Wow, that's a lot of texts from her.
He blocks the number and goes back to looking for reactions to the dungeon in the news - seems like it's only being reported on vaguely - probably the city isn't being cooperative with journalists since Skitter and Lucien's involvement is embarrassing but really he'd expect Tattletale to be more on top of getting this covered.
I'm helping a friend. Sorry, can't say specifics. Will let you know when I know when I'll be back. Sorry about leaving so fast.
Well, if he was calm before he's definitely not now.
Aknowledged, what are your orders?
"Your phone. Now. The people I'm running from tortured me, you can get a new phone later." Urgent, urgent, urgent -
Lucien feels extremely terrible about this but he's still going to start typing a reply because his feelings aren't on the flowchart.
- the phone flies out of his hand and into Chelsea's.
So that's what her esper power is and that's why she's got a headache. It's not a bad headache, now, just a twinge.
She throws the phone out the car window.
And he should be guilty about making her do that.
He does! He feels really really bad about it and blames himself!
"Panacea I need your phone, master/stranger protocols."
"The telekinesis is new. I'm an 'esper' now, apparently. It gives me a headache, I guess sort of like Thinkers get - can you solve that? If you can I don't need him and can drop him off somewhere."
Hand. "It's not nearly as bad as it was the first time, but it's making me nervous."
"Still no. I think guiding will probably work while he's out - how long will he be out?"
"Please. Have to get farther from the place we ditched the phone. Are you sure of yours?"
"Anything you want to email yourself real quick before it goes out the window?"
So what PanaceaSydney wants to do is look at Chelsea's face but that would be weird if it's all she did so she needs something else to do too...
"Do you want the radio on or would it make the headache worse?"
"I think it wouldn't do any harm, go ahead and pick something."
She's going to put on country and then Chelsea will probably make fun of her and change it to something she likes after one song.
Nope. Actually she'll sing along to the third song that comes on.
She's only okay and she only knows the one song of the ones the station puts on.
"Can you do that in the car or do I need to pull over somewhere? - there's a blanket in your footwell to throw over Tucker."
"Um. Oh. Stopping would be good."
Blanket goes over Lucien. And then once they have pulled over she can take off her robe. Which she only has underwear beneath. And not be weird about this at all, because this is a normal thing for her to do around Chelsea.
It's so normal and she feels normal about it. There are at least not other cars around in this section of treelined highway.
"In local events, the healer Panacea has reportedly gone missing along with unidentified male and female capes. A search is underway. Listeners are advised to-"
"...do you work on yourself, you might want to look a little different."
There's Big Sunglasses in the cupholder; Chelsea hands them over. "Braid your hair, maybe, there's hairties in the glovebox somewhere."
"- contact the PRT at 522 or online at www dot P R T dot gov slash Brockton hyphen Bay slash tips. The unidentified capes are to be considered dangerous and the public should not engage them. Once again you can contact the PRT at-"
"- and in other news Legend Lights Up Miami, the sequel to Legend Lights Up Seattle, is receiving rave reviews -
"Before the thing with the supervillains I just lived in my hometown. In Kansas. I like the quiet life, just doing completely ordinary things with my loved ones."
"I want to find another town like that. But it'll have to be - defensible - against the villains, against the heroes -"
"The supervillains who showed up in my town and killed all my friends were the Slaughterhouse Nine. I can't come back from that. If they don't kill me they'll Birdcage me."
"Hatchet Face came through by himself first and he was hurting me and my friends killed him. They counted that as though I'd done it myself and considered me one of them."
"Yeah. But I can't go home. Home's gone. So I have to make a new home that can stand up to everybody wanting me dead or Birdcaged forever."
Nod nod.
So, Chelsea was in the Slaughterhouse Nine, under duress but still enough of a member that she thinks people will Birdcage or kill her. Can Panacea look past that?
...Apparently yes, very easily. Maybe this says something bad about her but that's much better than it pushing her apart from Chelsea.
Honestly Chelsea was expecting her to need help with that but seems like she's fine! Yay!
After another hour of driving Chelsea senses an extremely angry emotional signature approaching from the direction of Brockton Bay, fast.
"I'm not sure who, I don't recognize them, but they must have a Mover power."
"Try not to let them kill me, I guess. I'm not really a tactics and combat person."
"Me either..." She helped heal and deal with the aftermath for people who were good at fighting like her -
"It's not anyone from the Nine, so whoever they are, they probably don't want to hurt you."
The highway explodes a couple hundred feet ahead of their car, as a person lands with the force of a meteor.
Chelsea brakes. They're clearly going to have to have a confrontation right here right now, she can't out-drive Glory Girl.
Does she have to un-sister them. She'd rather not but she does not want to die here.
Glory Girl scans the windows of the vehicles around her, finding the right one, and then runs directly at it, using her flight to push herself faster.
Chelsea unbuckles herself so she can fling herself into Panacea's arms.
Glory Girl lands on the hood of the car, denting it. She swings her arm to grab at Chelsea, shattering the windshield in the process.
Glory Girl's feelings are slippery but maybe she should be scared of hurting her siSTER!
Mostly she's just real angry but sure there can be a bit of that why not.
"Let her go."
There's really nothing Chelsea can say that will help this situation. Maybe Glory Girl should be less angry than that.
"STOP FUCKING WITH MY EMOTIONS BITCH!" She punches her hand through the headrest next to Chelsea.
That is NOT the way to get Chelsea to stop fucking with her emotions. Does she need to be Glory Girl's sister too, she can do that.
Glory Girl clenches her fist it hard enough to turn her knuckles white before freezing up completely.
"You - I -"
She slides off the hood of the car and looks down at her hands...
...and flies away.
No, but moving on won't help till they know more about the tracking mechanism anyway, so Chelsea waits.
The world's off-kilter, attempting to spin around two different centers at once and it's nonsensical and dizzying and she can't tell where to look to make it make sense. She'd forgotten Victoria for hours, as impossible as that should be. Her instinct when she panics like is to focus on Victoria and lean on her for support and then it would all be fine because Victoria would always be there for her. But now there are two people to grasp onto for support and they are heading in separate directions and it's pulling Panacea apart.
"Oh no. Something we could find and destroy, or would it be too small - or a few of them -"
"...okay. I'm going to find a store and get us some clothes and we should swap cars too, she's seen this one." She pulls out her own phone, which she is mostly pretty sure Mannequin didn't stick a tracker into. Locates a K-mart.
She drives to the K-mart. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"If you do think of anything tell me, of course."
She parks at the K-mart. "I shouldn't be long."
It is the work of only a few minutes to come out with a few fresh changes of clothes for the three of them and convince a very embarrassed fellow customer that they have Chelsea's keys and vice-versa. New car. New outfits. Off they go.
Sure. The last person to drive this car was apparently a fan of jazz.
Eventually:
A sleepy nowhere not-even-a-town. It's got apple orchards and corn and one household in five has its own chickens. There's a bed and breakfast with one guest room.
Chelsea parks there with the nose of the car very close to the wall of the building, puts a spare article of clothing in the trunk such that it covers the license plate as though by accident, and pays cash.
"Can you get him just awake enough to walk up with us, I'll keep him calm."
He's so calm. "We're stopping here for the night. Come on, up you get, lazybones." Hup.
And she can get him tucked into bed on one side and snuggle up for guiding.
She can feel Lucien guiding Chelsea and she hates that but also the way Chelsea's responding to it is so good and perfect and for a minute Panacea can forget everything else that's happening and just focus on enjoying that.
Maybe if she falls asleep here she will still be alive in the morning.
Chelsea can get a good three hours of sleep before she's awoken by the sudden absence of Lucien guiding her.
When she opens her eyes she's surrounded.
To the right of the bed a person-sized praying mantis with four arms and shiny red skin stands at the ready - it's a projection, the Master out of her reach.
There's another emotional presence nearby - they should be nearly on top of Chelsea but something about them is slippery, hard to focus on with the distraction of a taser jabbed into her side, ready to disable her.
And in front, a suit with a soft blue glow emanating from underneath green scales, two pairs of arms - a pair with claws and a pair without - and several spokes sticking up and out of its back, humming as they vibrate slightly. The helmet's design gives away who is in charge of the armor - Dragon, the world's greatest living tinker. Or perhaps the suit is remote-piloted - she lacks an emotional presence much like the preying mantis monster.
"Cherish, you are under arrest for 562 counts of aggravated Mastering, 30 counts of terrorism with a parahuman power, membership in a domestic parahuman terrorist organization, and 120 other felony charges. In accordance with PRT execution order 322 your rights are suspended and execution pre-authorized, however an alternative sentence of life in the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center is possible assuming your cooperation."
Panacea is feeling the world torn apart again and doesn't have any ideas whatsoever about anything right now.
What if that metal boy - she can't get his present-moment emotions, but what if he hated all these assholes actually -
He can hate them as much as he's hated anyone else.
"Pretty sure she just messed with my emotions."
"Confirmed. Take no actions until you receive an order from the operational chain of command belaying that."
And then he can be containment foamed.
"I don't want to execute your kill order but I will if we can't be confident in your cooperation."
Chelsea can't exactly be confident in Dragon's confidence what with how she is some kind of emotionless monster!
"It doesn't look like I have a lot of other choices, now, do I."
There's a moment while Dragon has a discussion on private comms, and then one of the sections of her armor pops open to reveal a phone-sized LCD screen facing Chelsea.
"Hiyah Cherish!" says Tattletale, her face on the screen, "First things first, no using your power for anything but what we tell you - I'll be able to tell and so will Dragon and the extra bonus tinker we have helping out. So, bluntly, you're screwed - but don't worry I'm sure you'll make some friends in the Birdcage so long as you don't fuck up this next bit and die. Let's start with undoing what you did to Weld."
"...I can't do that perfectly, I don't have perfect sources to copy from."
"Well, that's not exactly encouraging. Let's go with - hm, can you grab someone who's not here?"
"I meant what can you change Weld's feelings about our friends here to, not who can you Master."
"Oh, I can change those to anything there's an example of, I don't need - his second grade teacher or whoever, on hand, to copy how he feels about them."
"Goody - lets have - oh folks have opinions give me a sec."
A brief private conversation later.
"Can you make Weld's feelings be that Dragon is a generic Guild member, Genesis is an unknown cape, and the misc emotional presence can be a stranger if you caught that one?"
"Only if I can locate examples of those in his feelings. They don't come with labels."
"Course you did, and now you're gonna give her back. Just a change to how she felt 'bout you?"
Makes sense given what feelings Cherish used.
"Okeydokes, well - consensus over here is that you should swap out those feelings for her feelings about Heartbreaker."
"Wouldn't be the first time - hey Panacea we need you to - oh you're not paying any attention to me that's hurtful. One sec."
"Hey sis. Can you think about Heartbreaker? Know that it hurts - hurts for me too - but we can deal with that later in therapy. Love you."
She still isn't having enough coherent thoughts for thinking of Heartbreak to even be an option.
If she were going to decide to die here instead this would be what would do it. It was a mistake for them to do it in this order, she barely got to know Lucien and wouldn't mind putting him back how he was nearly as much and she can still decide to die loved instead of go to the Birdcage all alone in the world.
And once Lucien's feelings about Chelsea and May are fixed, Glory Girl is going to step just barely in to range, electrocuffs rigged to disable her if she's mind controlled to try anything, and Chelsea should do the same copy paste from Heartbreaker to her.
Fine. Fine, whatever.
Everything was fine back in Kansas. Nobody even noticed. She is an infinitely better neighbor than Nilbog.
She misses Afton.
And then, after Glory Girl has stepped away and Panacea, Lucien, and Weld have left the area via a helpful self-driving truck, there are some questions for Chelsea to make sure they didn't miss anything egregious. They know about the hospital waiting room but fixing people's opinions about random strangers isn't worth the risk.
Dragon sedates Cherish - Birdcage transport will take a bit to get this far out and even longer to get to the prison given that she's too risky to transport on a highway and they'll have to use backroads. Still, not so long that Cherish can't be unconscious until she's safely locked away.
Lucien curls up in the truck, trying to figure out whether any of this was his fault.
"Depends what you mean by the whole time. I arrived on the scene with Dragon et al. - Imp stop it you are giving me way more backlash than I need to guide him."
"I could but how about you just let people acknowledge your existence for a while."
"She was very nice to have around in the bed and breakfast, I'll give her that. Seven out of ten would go on a stealth mission with again."
Aisha smiles.
Shit no, May will think they're becoming friends or something. Better give her another eye roll.
"I certainly hope not. Espers're supposed to be slaying monsters, not kidnapping each other across state lines with mind control."
"D'you want to just go back to sleep, I can cope if you're too tired to chat."
Twelve hours later, a PRT transport van drives through forested hills, on its way towards the Birdcage with a driver and a single sleeping passenger.
A tree crashes down, the van swerving to avoid it only for the falling tree to inexplicably swerve too - falling to crush the hood of the van. The driver falls unconscious a moment later. There's an alert sent out - one of Dragon's suits will be on there way.
The tree, massive and sturdy, twists around the van like a tentacle, ripping most of one side of the van off entirely.
The base of the tree opens up, a figure stepping out and towards the prisoner.
Panacea doesn't talk on the way back to Brockton. Or after that, when her mom assures her she'll be setting up therapy to start tomorrow, her dad tells her they're just glad she's safe, and her sister hugs her tighter than is strictly speaking healthy.
She begs off to go and try to get some sleep as soon as she can, knowing she won't be able to. When her head hits her pillow she can hear the crinkle of the adoption papers she found a week ago - showing that her birth father was the villain Marquis. She knows they've been afraid that she'll end up like him. If they knew what she could do they'd be more afraid than that.
She thought that having only one center would make her feel better, but instead she feels even more unmoored than before. She'd broken her rules, messed with Lucien's brain, and seen up close the monster she'd feared she could become. Seen her up close, and loved her anyways.
And been loved back, that much was obvious every moment she was touching Chelsea - there wasn't anything partial or any walls held up. Just... love, with a freedom she could never get from Vicky.
Put like that, the choice is obvious. No rules left to stop her, and a ticking clock till the chance passes forever.
Victoria doesn't need to talk anymore. Panacea's hung onto her every word since they met and if she's going to stop she needs... silence.
She works out her plan as she holds Vicky still - she's been on a birdcage transport before, when ordinary sedation wasn't working. She knows the route they'll take. She'll need transport of her own but she has some ideas about that...
The pieces falling into place, she starts shutting off parts of her sister - like turning off the lights before she leaves, each organ disappearing from her perception as it dies. She can't bear two centers to her world - she's learned that much. So she's saying goodbye to her sister. For forever, till tonight.
She touches the sleeping Chelsea. It's easier than any wound she's ever healed, to make sure Chelsea will reciprocate in full the feelings Panacea will soon have for her.
The van has fail safes to prevent its prisoner from waking up alive, but none of them are a problem so long as Panacea's here.
Chelsea stretches awake, eyes still closed like she's trying to hold on to a scrap of a lovely dream, and she turns toward Panacea like a sunflower to the dawn.
One last change, to make her touch feel better than Lucien's ever could.
And then, at last, true love's kiss.
