Chapter 11--The daily life of Amelia Lavere
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A/N: got to thinking about how different Amy would be if she never got adopted by Carol, and then got inspired to write an interlude on how different Amy is in the "My shining plumbob" universe, now that she's been raised by her father, who is an ass who likes to troll everyone out there.
I present to you, the daily life of Amelia Lavere.
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The clock went off, and a feminine hand reached out from under a blanket and it groped around until it reached the right button that turned off the digital clock's alarm.
The teenage girl groaned as she rolled over in bed, trying to ignore the sunlight streaming through her window. She had been up late studying on top of doing her healing at the hospital where she worked, and she was exhausted.
'Just a few more minutes', she blearily thought.
But then she heard her father's cheerful voice from downstairs.
"Good morning, sunshine!" he called. "Time to get up!"
The girl groaned again and pulled the covers over her head. She could hear her father coming up the stairs, and she knew there was no use trying to go back to sleep.
Her father opened the door to her room and smiled down at her. "Come on, sleepyhead," he said. "It's a beautiful day outside."
The girl sighed and sat up in bed. "I know, Dad," she said. "But I'm so tired."
"I know, honey," her father said. "But you have to get up, Amelia. You have school today."
Amelia nodded. "I know," she said. "I'm getting up."
She got out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom to get ready for school. As she was brushing her teeth, she thought about how much she hated mornings. She wished she could just stay in bed all day.
But she knew she couldn't. She had to get up and go to school. She had to study for her finals. She had to do all the things that teenagers have to do.
She sighed and finished brushing her teeth before putting on her makeup. She knew it was going to be a long day.
But she also knew that she would get through it. She always did.
It all felt so pointless though, because it's not like she needed school. The school helped you prepare you for your future, right? But her future was already decided for her, now that she had become Brockton Bay's best parahuman healer and open bio-tinker, though her public relations company tended to keep the bio-tinker bit on the lowdown even though it was an open secret.
Truthfully Amelia hadn't wanted to be known as a healer above else all, but her father had been so happy when he found out what she could do and had focused on the healing aspect of her power.
Her dad had been studying to become a doctor, an orthopedic surgeon, to be more specific when he first got his bone-wielding power. He had been happy at first when he got his power because he thought he could use his power to help boost the healing of his patients, only to be sorely let down when his bone powers weren't exactly good at that. He was also deep in medical school debt at the time, another reason why he had been rather let down when he found out he couldn't be a healing rogue. He would've made SO MUCH MONEY had he been a straight-up healer.
Then after a few slippery slopes and a few mental rationalizations on why committing crimes to solve everyone's debts (but mostly his debt) wasn't that bad, Dr. Michael Lavere then found himself the crime boss who went by Marquis. He didn't have a real gang of his own the same way the other villains did, preferring to be seen as more of an independent villain who occasionally worked with other villains. but he did indeed build up his criminal empire behind the scenes all the same.
He didn't go by some silly name like the ABB or Empire 88 did, though his men did wind up naming themselves "The Marche" without Marquis's permission or knowledge. Marquis hadn't found out until it was too late to correct it as it had entered public consciousness at that point, and by then he was resigned to having his underground organization be known as The Marche.
He would have preferred that it stayed nameless for there to be plausible deniability and to trick his enemies into attacking the wrong targets. But if his men wanted a name and a theme like every other gang so badly then he would simply go along with it.
At any rate, it was no wonder why Amelia's father had projected a little bit and had kept on saying if he had gotten Amelia's powers, he would've never been a villain in the first place. Amelia had picked up on that and then had foolishly decided to officially become a heroic healer publicly to please her father, though she had to create a persona that pretended to have nothing to do with Marquis otherwise they wouldn't have let her work at hospitals.
In her defense, she had been only 12 years old at the time and hadn't known any better. And now her 16-year-old self cursed her 12-year-old self for being so foolish and for wanting to please her father…. Because god, working in hospitals was just so friggin' TEDIOUS!
Michael had been so pleased though, thinking that Amelia was carrying on the family tradition in her way, as his father had been a physician before he bit it due to chain smoking and lung cancer. Michael had sort of followed in his own father's footsteps, though thankfully without the chain-smoking and lung cancer bit. Amelia could heal anything now, but that didn't mean she approved of bad habits like that.
Not that Amelia had been a pushover who only ever used her power for healing, because she was very firm on her stance of having fun with her powers in other ways which her father also supported, thankfully. They had a greenhouse in the backyard and also supported an actual research lab located on the outskirts of the city, that was dedicated to her side hobby of playing around with the bio-tinkering side of her powers.
Thank god for that, otherwise, she was sure she would've had a mental breakdown working only at hospitals by now. But at least the hospital money she got was pretty nice, as it gave her a pretty hefty allowance to spend on anything she ever wanted without having to use her daddy's money. Yes, she was officially a paid member of the hospital staff though she did volunteer for free now and then to keep the good PR for her Panacea persona.
Plus, she also had a third persona by the name of Ebony that strongly resembled somebody that had been irrevocably transformed into a weird-looking creature by their own powers, that she liked to bring out in order to play around in public just in case she was tired of being the hero Panacea.
And or if she was also tired of being Amelia Lavere, the totally normal daughter of the totally innocent Dr. Lavere, who was absolutely in no way a parahuman at all. Note the sarcasm there.
The monstrous appearance for her villain persona was actually a second bio-suit she had created, and it was more like a mecha-suit than her first one was. Her first bio-suit, she had created for her Panacea persona and it was far more skintight than her second one was. It was mainly just so that she could hide her freckles, and give herself a slightly ethically ambiguous appearance where you couldn't tell if she was simply tanned or really did have that skin color naturally.
But that was rare she did bring out her third persona as Ebony, the tree-like woman, as she only did that once in a while to blow off steam.
Her dad hadn't approved at first, but he shut up pretty fast when she pointed out that he was one to talk, considering all the crap he got up with a dozen body doubles running around and the fact that he had more than 4 personas by this point. Amelia especially liked to bring up that one incident where Michael had been so tired and worn out that he actually forgot which persona he was supposed to be donning that day and almost outed himself before Amelia stepped in to run inference for him.
Not to mention, it was weird that her dad the supervillain wanted his own daughter to be a heroine and not be a supervillain working at her father's side, right?
She was now done applying her makeup, which was a cross between au natural makeup and gothic makeup… that is, it made her look like she was wearing minimal makeup while having a few gothic elements to the "au natural" look, like black lip gloss and slightly smoky eyes. Sadly, not even the foundation could completely hide all of her freckles unless she really caked it on… but having been taught by one of Dad's women how bad an idea that was, she didn't bother to try. She accepted the fact that she was very freckly all over, and so it was impossible to hide them all unless she wore the bio-suit she had made for her Panacea persona.
Satisfied with her look, she went back to her bedroom to change into her school clothes, which was a very casual, low-key goth look that looked like a normal hoodie and jeans combo until you spotted the skull and rose motif on them. Amelia had originally gone all out on the gothic look, even wearing the corsets and the frilly outfits that they called the Gothic Lolita style… but as time went by, she had decided that hoodies and pants were just much easier and more comfortable.
She had however kept the boots with the ridiculously chunky soles, as those stomper boots were ridiculously comfortable and easy to run in despite the fact that they looked like they'd be difficult to walk in. Plus, they made her look taller than she actually was, which she liked a lot.
She raced down the stairs towards the kitchen, where a hot breakfast was waiting for her. It was mostly bacon and eggs, and one buttered toast. Just like how she liked it. Dad even had her favorite spiced tea, which was basically Masala chai with an extra kick to it, freshly brewed and in her favorite teacup by her plate.
Amelia smiled at this. As much as her father could get scary and stern at times, he really had a habit of overindulging her. Many other people might see this as bad parenting, but he very rarely made her eat anything she didn't like at all or was unfamiliar with, and he very rarely refused her whenever she wanted something, be it food or clothes, or anything else really.
She looked up at her father as she sat down, and today he was dressed like…. Ned Flanders??
"Why the hell are you dressed like Ned Flanders today." Amelia wondered out loud, a thoroughly unimpressed look on her face.
"Believe it or not, but I still have to work as an actual surgeon. And unfortunately, I've entered the public consciousness as being this mild-mannered guy who dresses this way. It would be too suspicious for me to suddenly change even after all this time. They all haven't forgotten me completely, after all." Michael said a little bit ruefully, the tone of somebody who only mildly regretted hamming it up and playing up his helpless nerdy but loving father so much that the public now forever saw him as this mild-mannered, glasses-wearing surgeon.
His fifteen minutes of fame was supposed to be up, but nobody forgot yet, at least thanks to a very irritating thorn in his side called Carol Dallon, aka Brandish. As long as she refused to let go of her grudge publicly, his civilian self kept on lingering in the public consciousness.
Amelia giggled. "Poor you. Doomed to be a lame mild-mannered doctor forever because of that bitch."
Michael shot his daughter a look. "What have I told you about name-calling like that?"
Amelia didn't care. "Hey, I'm a lady, so I can call other ladies bitches if I want to. Just like how only black people are allowed to call each other that one word but other people can't."
Her father could only shake his head disapprovingly at that, which made Amelia grin.
They finished up their breakfast, and just as they went to their front door to leave for both work and school, a change overcame her father.
As Michael put on a pair of glasses, his entire demeanor changed completely. Gone were the calculated, cunning eyes alongside his confident and powerful stance.
Instead, what took their place was a slightly timid unassuming man who was otherwise polite and cheerful (most of the time). There was of course the reluctance to draw any attention to himself… which most people might've found suspicious had they not known about his infamous history as one of Marquis's body doubles.
But everyone in Brockton Bay knew about that. It was also a given that Dr. Michael Lavere was very, very lucky that he didn't get the long jail sentence that one would've had for being an accomplice to the infamous criminal Marquis. But thanks to the clusterfuck of a public trial, his lawyer was able to dismiss most charges against him so the worst Michael Lavere ever got was house arrest for a certain period of time and community service.
Had Dr. Michael Lavere acted out of place again, he would've had the book thrown at him too though…. Which went a long way to explain the reluctance to be in the spotlight again. So naturally nobody ever questioned that part.
It was fascinating to watch the "transformation" though, because Amelia hadn't believed that a few simple changes in behavior and the way you moved could dramatically change how you looked… until her father had demonstrated that over the years. It was something Amelia was studying herself so that she could perfect putting on completely different personas for her Panacea form and her Swamp-creature Ebony form.
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School was so dull that it went by in a flash, but apparently, while she was at school there had been a massive pileup on one of the highways, so there were a lot of serious injuries.
So it was Panacea to the rescue, then.
She hurried to her secret location where she normally stored all of her bio-suits and selected the Panacea suit. She stripped off down to her underwear before putting the bio-suit on, which transformed her into a slightly older-looking, red-headed Greek woman with a mild tan. Hey, if she was going to use the Greek goddess's name then she might as well lean into the theme hard.
Panacea's official heroine costume was that of a Greek-styled white and red gown in the ombre pattern, making it seem like she had stained her pure white gown by walking through puddles of blood. The dress was accented with gold and came with a wooden staff that had alive roses growing on it, and on her head there was a golden crown interwoven with alive roses, symbolizing her connection to life itself. And because Brockton Bay could get cold, Panacea often wore a Greek shawl that had the red Greek cross on it, though this red cross had a wreath of green interwoven around it. As such, it became Panacea's official icon.
Amelia had wanted Panacea to carry around a snake like the Goddess herself was often depicted doing, but her father had nixed that and told her she was carrying the theme too far. Not to mention it wasn't very PR friendly considering that plenty of people were scared of snakes. So Amelia had compromised and went for roses instead.
Amelia liked roses due to how thorny they could be, and how fast she could weaponize that in a hurry. It was beautiful, smelled great, and could be deadly. What's not to like about that?
The roses themselves were also interwoven into her Panacea bio-suit so that it could keep the bio-suit nourished and healthy when Amelia wasn't around… and so, as a result, she often placed the bio-suit in a strange-looking pot that was located in such a way that it could get plenty of sun and water without anybody stumbling across it.
Her transformation into the Healer super-heroine complete, she went out to the bus stop to take a ride to the hospital where she so often worked.
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"So now that I have your permission to heal you, here's my next question. Which one would you prefer? Plants or animals?" Amelia/Panacea asked with a kindly smile on her face.
"Huh? What does that have to do with anything." Both the injured man and his family looked confused at the question.
"I'm asking you which bio-mass you'd like me to use to heal you. You see, that's the limitation with my power-- It does this equivalent exchange where I need to use alive bio-mass to heal you… I can't do it with dead things like steak meat. So you can imagine how queasy some people get if I was to use… say, alive rats and sacrifice them in order to heal a person who was on the verge of death." Panacea explained.
Half of that was actually a lie, Amelia could've really just used the humans' biomass if they were fat enough for it to heal them directly. But she liked the dramatic theatricality of it all when she stated that she needed to exchange different bio-masses to heal. And plus it was a good way of throwing people off... If they incorrectly assumed they knew how her power worked, then that meant that she could always trick her enemies out there.
Paradoxically it also led more people to trust her more, because often they assumed that somebody like Panacea was too good to be true. But once she revealed that there was a catch to it, that she needed to sacrifice the lives of plants and animals in order to heal? They then saw that she wasn't too good to be true after all.
It helped boost her image when she would often do this little ritual should the visitors pick animals over plants (which was extremely rare as most were squeamish at the idea of animal sacrifices, even if it was to save human lives). Panacea would do this thing where she would feed the animals, loudly praising them and thanking them for everything they did in the service of humans before finally killing them by turning them into fleshy slurry which she used to heal the humans out there. It showed that she wasn't into killing animals at all but saw it as a necessary evil.
With plants, there was less fanfare, though Panacea would pretend to be highly spiritual about it and comment that she hoped that the healed patients would feel closer to nature now.
Predictably, humans in general often got squicked by the fleshy slurry thing than they did the plant slurry thing. Hence they preferred going with plants, even if Panacea did warn them that going with plants would take them longer to heal.
The upside of keeping up such a silly lie was that many people were reluctant to use Panacea's services too often unless it was truly urgently needed so that Amelia didn't have to waste her time on minor cases like simple broken bones that could easily heal on their own.
Amelia wasn't the sort who liked to heal every minor cut and other stupid stuff like ingrown toenails, after all. If they needed her, it better be worth her time, was all.
The wife wrinkled her nose. "Why do you even need animals to start with? Why couldn't you just use plants every time?"
"Because," Panacea said, as if she had heard that question often, "It takes longer if I use plants. I have to transform the plants into meaty biomass that matches the humans' biological biomass. Whereas it's just easier to convert the animals' DNA into human DNA so that it's more compatible with human bodies. So using animals is faster."
Technically true, but not exactly the whole truth there.
She then said before they could ask the next obvious question, "Plants take me almost 20 minutes to fully convert, while animals are more instant, they only take me a few minutes. Most people prefer the plants though, as seeing alive animals get reduced to meaty slush can often be the stuff of nightmares. I've heard of past patients suffering from mild PTSD because it was just that horrific to see."
She sounded regretful at this… but secretly she wasn't all that regretful about it. In fact, she secretly liked traumatizing and grossing out everyone just a little bit. Her father often accused her of being a teenage edge-lord who was into the shock factor for the sake of it, because as a moody teenager, she liked to get a rise out of everyone any way she could.
Probably part of the reason why she kept up the act where Panacea prattled on about how life had to be exchanged in favor of saving other lives.
Both the bedridden patient and his wife looked queasy at that. "We'll, uh, do the plants then."
The patient nodded. "Yeah, they say my condition is stable. So there's no real hurry there."
Panacea nodded at this and with that, she called out to the orderlies who then pushed a literal massive cart on wheels that was overflowing with potatoes and onions.
"Let's get started." She said as she grabbed a potato, which instantly unfurled into something eldritch-looking, a ball of writhing plant tentacles that would eventually get reduced into this gross slush that wriggled and moved at her command.
Ahaha, the look on people's faces when they watched this happen in real-time. heh.
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It went on and like that for every patient, save for the one who had an irrational fear of being part-plant and had chosen the hospital rats they bred for Panacea's needs. They would not be deterred, even when Panacea reassured them that all plant and animal DNA was fully converted to human DNA so there was no danger of being part-anything. But they still insisted. Somehow being part-rat was just fine??
Some people could be so weird.
But she had triaged all of the serious cases so that none of them were in danger of having complications, leaving only the ones with mild cases of broken bones that could heal on their own. So she went back to her base where she could stash her Panacea bio-suit and become Amy Lavere once again.
As she peeled the second skin off her real one, her phone rang. The ringtone belted out the "Cha cha Yes, Poppa" song, which meant it was her dad calling her in her civilian form.
She grabbed her phone quickly and answered it, "Yeah, Dad?"
"Hey, honey. I'm sorry to say, but it looks like I'll be home very late. Seems that a certain somebody accidentally scheduled a few of my patients all on the same day. And those operations take hours, so…" Michael sounded both annoyed and tired.
"Oh no. Want me to pick you up some coffee? I was gonna get myself some." She replied.
"What have I told you about drinking coffee at your age?"
She rolled her eyes "That stunts my growth. But you'll pry it from my dead cold hands before I give it up. Do you want the coffee or not?"
".... I'll have one, then. I'm surprised that my hospital hasn't been condemned yet for the swill that dares to call itself coffee. Pick up a coffee from Jumping Bean Bistro?" He sounded hopeful now, as that was his favorite place to get coffee.
"Fine." Amelia was hoping to go to the more trendy Tutty Fruity Coffee Bar that was a favorite of teenagers and younger college students, but she liked that other location too. "I'll see you in a little bit."
She hung up and finished peeling the rest of her bio-suit off before putting her civilian clothes back on.
With that, she grabbed her purse and went out.
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Amelia showed up at Brockton Central, the other hospital where her dad worked as it was the only hospital in the city with an Osteotomy wing.
She checked in at the desk and then went up the elevator toward the floor where he worked.
A few nurses pointed the way when she asked them where he was, and she found him in the room of some kid and his worried parents and he was speaking to them.
"... and of course, Juvenile Scoliosis can be easily corrected with a simple spinal fusion. With that, what we do is realign and fuse the curved vertebrae so that they heal into a single, solid bone. Thankfully his scoliosis is very flexible, meaning it's easy to correct."
The parents smiled at that, and that was when Dr. Lavere noticed his daughter waiting for him outside the room, and he said, "Pardon me, I'll be right back."
As he left to meet with his daughter, Amelia held up a coffee cup with the Jumping Bean Bistro logo on it, which was just the initials done up in a fancy font. JBB.
"Got you the Cuban coffee you like so much, straight black," Amelia said as she handed it over.
"Thanks, you're a real lifesaver." her father seemed genuinely appreciative which made her smile.
"I'll be heading home, then. Got to catch that nature show before it goes off." Amelia's expression indicated that she wasn't really heading home like she claimed, as the next line indicated what she was really planning to do.
"Text me when you get home, so I know you got home safely," he responded, his expression resigned as he knew what she was up to now and she nodded.
With that, she turned and walked away sipping at her own cup of coffee.
~~~~~
An hour later, a towering humanoid form based on the black ebony tree that originated from the Asian continent was seen emerging from the nearby nature parks and out into Brockton Bay.
Now, many would say that it was in poor taste for a white girl to don anything black-related, but Amelia had gone out of her way to make it perfectly clear that her Ebony persona, despite the name, was not that of a dark-skinned parahuman and thus it wasn't blackface.
The Ebony trees of the Asian continent actually had an ashy gray bark on the outside, and so Ebony appeared to be a Caucasian woman that had gray hard bark-like skin, with black leaves and branches for hair. She occasionally sprouted purple flowers in her leaves, just like an actual Ebony tree did. However, that was where the hints of her womanhood ended because in this bio-suit she had massive trunk-like legs and arms, and a completely genderless-looking body that was completely covered in hardened bark.
It was her biological power armor, really, as it enabled her to be ten times stronger and faster than in her normal form. And there was some half-assed attempt at having black leaves as "clothes" for her monster form, just to satisfy the prudes out there who had complained when she had gone bare bark all over.
Again, there were no genitals showing and they still complained! Humans can be so weird at times.
With that, she stalked off into the night looking for any trouble she could stir up.
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A/N: stopping here, because:
1) it was getting too long, it was 11 pages worth on my word editor program!
2) my muse ran out of ideas on what she could do next.
I present to you, the daily life of Amelia Lavere.
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The clock went off, and a feminine hand reached out from under a blanket and it groped around until it reached the right button that turned off the digital clock's alarm.
The teenage girl groaned as she rolled over in bed, trying to ignore the sunlight streaming through her window. She had been up late studying on top of doing her healing at the hospital where she worked, and she was exhausted.
'Just a few more minutes', she blearily thought.
But then she heard her father's cheerful voice from downstairs.
"Good morning, sunshine!" he called. "Time to get up!"
The girl groaned again and pulled the covers over her head. She could hear her father coming up the stairs, and she knew there was no use trying to go back to sleep.
Her father opened the door to her room and smiled down at her. "Come on, sleepyhead," he said. "It's a beautiful day outside."
The girl sighed and sat up in bed. "I know, Dad," she said. "But I'm so tired."
"I know, honey," her father said. "But you have to get up, Amelia. You have school today."
Amelia nodded. "I know," she said. "I'm getting up."
She got out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom to get ready for school. As she was brushing her teeth, she thought about how much she hated mornings. She wished she could just stay in bed all day.
But she knew she couldn't. She had to get up and go to school. She had to study for her finals. She had to do all the things that teenagers have to do.
She sighed and finished brushing her teeth before putting on her makeup. She knew it was going to be a long day.
But she also knew that she would get through it. She always did.
It all felt so pointless though, because it's not like she needed school. The school helped you prepare you for your future, right? But her future was already decided for her, now that she had become Brockton Bay's best parahuman healer and open bio-tinker, though her public relations company tended to keep the bio-tinker bit on the lowdown even though it was an open secret.
Truthfully Amelia hadn't wanted to be known as a healer above else all, but her father had been so happy when he found out what she could do and had focused on the healing aspect of her power.
Her dad had been studying to become a doctor, an orthopedic surgeon, to be more specific when he first got his bone-wielding power. He had been happy at first when he got his power because he thought he could use his power to help boost the healing of his patients, only to be sorely let down when his bone powers weren't exactly good at that. He was also deep in medical school debt at the time, another reason why he had been rather let down when he found out he couldn't be a healing rogue. He would've made SO MUCH MONEY had he been a straight-up healer.
Then after a few slippery slopes and a few mental rationalizations on why committing crimes to solve everyone's debts (but mostly his debt) wasn't that bad, Dr. Michael Lavere then found himself the crime boss who went by Marquis. He didn't have a real gang of his own the same way the other villains did, preferring to be seen as more of an independent villain who occasionally worked with other villains. but he did indeed build up his criminal empire behind the scenes all the same.
He didn't go by some silly name like the ABB or Empire 88 did, though his men did wind up naming themselves "The Marche" without Marquis's permission or knowledge. Marquis hadn't found out until it was too late to correct it as it had entered public consciousness at that point, and by then he was resigned to having his underground organization be known as The Marche.
He would have preferred that it stayed nameless for there to be plausible deniability and to trick his enemies into attacking the wrong targets. But if his men wanted a name and a theme like every other gang so badly then he would simply go along with it.
At any rate, it was no wonder why Amelia's father had projected a little bit and had kept on saying if he had gotten Amelia's powers, he would've never been a villain in the first place. Amelia had picked up on that and then had foolishly decided to officially become a heroic healer publicly to please her father, though she had to create a persona that pretended to have nothing to do with Marquis otherwise they wouldn't have let her work at hospitals.
In her defense, she had been only 12 years old at the time and hadn't known any better. And now her 16-year-old self cursed her 12-year-old self for being so foolish and for wanting to please her father…. Because god, working in hospitals was just so friggin' TEDIOUS!
Michael had been so pleased though, thinking that Amelia was carrying on the family tradition in her way, as his father had been a physician before he bit it due to chain smoking and lung cancer. Michael had sort of followed in his own father's footsteps, though thankfully without the chain-smoking and lung cancer bit. Amelia could heal anything now, but that didn't mean she approved of bad habits like that.
Not that Amelia had been a pushover who only ever used her power for healing, because she was very firm on her stance of having fun with her powers in other ways which her father also supported, thankfully. They had a greenhouse in the backyard and also supported an actual research lab located on the outskirts of the city, that was dedicated to her side hobby of playing around with the bio-tinkering side of her powers.
Thank god for that, otherwise, she was sure she would've had a mental breakdown working only at hospitals by now. But at least the hospital money she got was pretty nice, as it gave her a pretty hefty allowance to spend on anything she ever wanted without having to use her daddy's money. Yes, she was officially a paid member of the hospital staff though she did volunteer for free now and then to keep the good PR for her Panacea persona.
Plus, she also had a third persona by the name of Ebony that strongly resembled somebody that had been irrevocably transformed into a weird-looking creature by their own powers, that she liked to bring out in order to play around in public just in case she was tired of being the hero Panacea.
And or if she was also tired of being Amelia Lavere, the totally normal daughter of the totally innocent Dr. Lavere, who was absolutely in no way a parahuman at all. Note the sarcasm there.
The monstrous appearance for her villain persona was actually a second bio-suit she had created, and it was more like a mecha-suit than her first one was. Her first bio-suit, she had created for her Panacea persona and it was far more skintight than her second one was. It was mainly just so that she could hide her freckles, and give herself a slightly ethically ambiguous appearance where you couldn't tell if she was simply tanned or really did have that skin color naturally.
But that was rare she did bring out her third persona as Ebony, the tree-like woman, as she only did that once in a while to blow off steam.
Her dad hadn't approved at first, but he shut up pretty fast when she pointed out that he was one to talk, considering all the crap he got up with a dozen body doubles running around and the fact that he had more than 4 personas by this point. Amelia especially liked to bring up that one incident where Michael had been so tired and worn out that he actually forgot which persona he was supposed to be donning that day and almost outed himself before Amelia stepped in to run inference for him.
Not to mention, it was weird that her dad the supervillain wanted his own daughter to be a heroine and not be a supervillain working at her father's side, right?
She was now done applying her makeup, which was a cross between au natural makeup and gothic makeup… that is, it made her look like she was wearing minimal makeup while having a few gothic elements to the "au natural" look, like black lip gloss and slightly smoky eyes. Sadly, not even the foundation could completely hide all of her freckles unless she really caked it on… but having been taught by one of Dad's women how bad an idea that was, she didn't bother to try. She accepted the fact that she was very freckly all over, and so it was impossible to hide them all unless she wore the bio-suit she had made for her Panacea persona.
Satisfied with her look, she went back to her bedroom to change into her school clothes, which was a very casual, low-key goth look that looked like a normal hoodie and jeans combo until you spotted the skull and rose motif on them. Amelia had originally gone all out on the gothic look, even wearing the corsets and the frilly outfits that they called the Gothic Lolita style… but as time went by, she had decided that hoodies and pants were just much easier and more comfortable.
She had however kept the boots with the ridiculously chunky soles, as those stomper boots were ridiculously comfortable and easy to run in despite the fact that they looked like they'd be difficult to walk in. Plus, they made her look taller than she actually was, which she liked a lot.
She raced down the stairs towards the kitchen, where a hot breakfast was waiting for her. It was mostly bacon and eggs, and one buttered toast. Just like how she liked it. Dad even had her favorite spiced tea, which was basically Masala chai with an extra kick to it, freshly brewed and in her favorite teacup by her plate.
Amelia smiled at this. As much as her father could get scary and stern at times, he really had a habit of overindulging her. Many other people might see this as bad parenting, but he very rarely made her eat anything she didn't like at all or was unfamiliar with, and he very rarely refused her whenever she wanted something, be it food or clothes, or anything else really.
She looked up at her father as she sat down, and today he was dressed like…. Ned Flanders??
"Why the hell are you dressed like Ned Flanders today." Amelia wondered out loud, a thoroughly unimpressed look on her face.
"Believe it or not, but I still have to work as an actual surgeon. And unfortunately, I've entered the public consciousness as being this mild-mannered guy who dresses this way. It would be too suspicious for me to suddenly change even after all this time. They all haven't forgotten me completely, after all." Michael said a little bit ruefully, the tone of somebody who only mildly regretted hamming it up and playing up his helpless nerdy but loving father so much that the public now forever saw him as this mild-mannered, glasses-wearing surgeon.
His fifteen minutes of fame was supposed to be up, but nobody forgot yet, at least thanks to a very irritating thorn in his side called Carol Dallon, aka Brandish. As long as she refused to let go of her grudge publicly, his civilian self kept on lingering in the public consciousness.
Amelia giggled. "Poor you. Doomed to be a lame mild-mannered doctor forever because of that bitch."
Michael shot his daughter a look. "What have I told you about name-calling like that?"
Amelia didn't care. "Hey, I'm a lady, so I can call other ladies bitches if I want to. Just like how only black people are allowed to call each other that one word but other people can't."
Her father could only shake his head disapprovingly at that, which made Amelia grin.
They finished up their breakfast, and just as they went to their front door to leave for both work and school, a change overcame her father.
As Michael put on a pair of glasses, his entire demeanor changed completely. Gone were the calculated, cunning eyes alongside his confident and powerful stance.
Instead, what took their place was a slightly timid unassuming man who was otherwise polite and cheerful (most of the time). There was of course the reluctance to draw any attention to himself… which most people might've found suspicious had they not known about his infamous history as one of Marquis's body doubles.
But everyone in Brockton Bay knew about that. It was also a given that Dr. Michael Lavere was very, very lucky that he didn't get the long jail sentence that one would've had for being an accomplice to the infamous criminal Marquis. But thanks to the clusterfuck of a public trial, his lawyer was able to dismiss most charges against him so the worst Michael Lavere ever got was house arrest for a certain period of time and community service.
Had Dr. Michael Lavere acted out of place again, he would've had the book thrown at him too though…. Which went a long way to explain the reluctance to be in the spotlight again. So naturally nobody ever questioned that part.
It was fascinating to watch the "transformation" though, because Amelia hadn't believed that a few simple changes in behavior and the way you moved could dramatically change how you looked… until her father had demonstrated that over the years. It was something Amelia was studying herself so that she could perfect putting on completely different personas for her Panacea form and her Swamp-creature Ebony form.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
School was so dull that it went by in a flash, but apparently, while she was at school there had been a massive pileup on one of the highways, so there were a lot of serious injuries.
So it was Panacea to the rescue, then.
She hurried to her secret location where she normally stored all of her bio-suits and selected the Panacea suit. She stripped off down to her underwear before putting the bio-suit on, which transformed her into a slightly older-looking, red-headed Greek woman with a mild tan. Hey, if she was going to use the Greek goddess's name then she might as well lean into the theme hard.
Panacea's official heroine costume was that of a Greek-styled white and red gown in the ombre pattern, making it seem like she had stained her pure white gown by walking through puddles of blood. The dress was accented with gold and came with a wooden staff that had alive roses growing on it, and on her head there was a golden crown interwoven with alive roses, symbolizing her connection to life itself. And because Brockton Bay could get cold, Panacea often wore a Greek shawl that had the red Greek cross on it, though this red cross had a wreath of green interwoven around it. As such, it became Panacea's official icon.
Amelia had wanted Panacea to carry around a snake like the Goddess herself was often depicted doing, but her father had nixed that and told her she was carrying the theme too far. Not to mention it wasn't very PR friendly considering that plenty of people were scared of snakes. So Amelia had compromised and went for roses instead.
Amelia liked roses due to how thorny they could be, and how fast she could weaponize that in a hurry. It was beautiful, smelled great, and could be deadly. What's not to like about that?
The roses themselves were also interwoven into her Panacea bio-suit so that it could keep the bio-suit nourished and healthy when Amelia wasn't around… and so, as a result, she often placed the bio-suit in a strange-looking pot that was located in such a way that it could get plenty of sun and water without anybody stumbling across it.
Her transformation into the Healer super-heroine complete, she went out to the bus stop to take a ride to the hospital where she so often worked.
~~~~~
"So now that I have your permission to heal you, here's my next question. Which one would you prefer? Plants or animals?" Amelia/Panacea asked with a kindly smile on her face.
"Huh? What does that have to do with anything." Both the injured man and his family looked confused at the question.
"I'm asking you which bio-mass you'd like me to use to heal you. You see, that's the limitation with my power-- It does this equivalent exchange where I need to use alive bio-mass to heal you… I can't do it with dead things like steak meat. So you can imagine how queasy some people get if I was to use… say, alive rats and sacrifice them in order to heal a person who was on the verge of death." Panacea explained.
Half of that was actually a lie, Amelia could've really just used the humans' biomass if they were fat enough for it to heal them directly. But she liked the dramatic theatricality of it all when she stated that she needed to exchange different bio-masses to heal. And plus it was a good way of throwing people off... If they incorrectly assumed they knew how her power worked, then that meant that she could always trick her enemies out there.
Paradoxically it also led more people to trust her more, because often they assumed that somebody like Panacea was too good to be true. But once she revealed that there was a catch to it, that she needed to sacrifice the lives of plants and animals in order to heal? They then saw that she wasn't too good to be true after all.
It helped boost her image when she would often do this little ritual should the visitors pick animals over plants (which was extremely rare as most were squeamish at the idea of animal sacrifices, even if it was to save human lives). Panacea would do this thing where she would feed the animals, loudly praising them and thanking them for everything they did in the service of humans before finally killing them by turning them into fleshy slurry which she used to heal the humans out there. It showed that she wasn't into killing animals at all but saw it as a necessary evil.
With plants, there was less fanfare, though Panacea would pretend to be highly spiritual about it and comment that she hoped that the healed patients would feel closer to nature now.
Predictably, humans in general often got squicked by the fleshy slurry thing than they did the plant slurry thing. Hence they preferred going with plants, even if Panacea did warn them that going with plants would take them longer to heal.
The upside of keeping up such a silly lie was that many people were reluctant to use Panacea's services too often unless it was truly urgently needed so that Amelia didn't have to waste her time on minor cases like simple broken bones that could easily heal on their own.
Amelia wasn't the sort who liked to heal every minor cut and other stupid stuff like ingrown toenails, after all. If they needed her, it better be worth her time, was all.
The wife wrinkled her nose. "Why do you even need animals to start with? Why couldn't you just use plants every time?"
"Because," Panacea said, as if she had heard that question often, "It takes longer if I use plants. I have to transform the plants into meaty biomass that matches the humans' biological biomass. Whereas it's just easier to convert the animals' DNA into human DNA so that it's more compatible with human bodies. So using animals is faster."
Technically true, but not exactly the whole truth there.
She then said before they could ask the next obvious question, "Plants take me almost 20 minutes to fully convert, while animals are more instant, they only take me a few minutes. Most people prefer the plants though, as seeing alive animals get reduced to meaty slush can often be the stuff of nightmares. I've heard of past patients suffering from mild PTSD because it was just that horrific to see."
She sounded regretful at this… but secretly she wasn't all that regretful about it. In fact, she secretly liked traumatizing and grossing out everyone just a little bit. Her father often accused her of being a teenage edge-lord who was into the shock factor for the sake of it, because as a moody teenager, she liked to get a rise out of everyone any way she could.
Probably part of the reason why she kept up the act where Panacea prattled on about how life had to be exchanged in favor of saving other lives.
Both the bedridden patient and his wife looked queasy at that. "We'll, uh, do the plants then."
The patient nodded. "Yeah, they say my condition is stable. So there's no real hurry there."
Panacea nodded at this and with that, she called out to the orderlies who then pushed a literal massive cart on wheels that was overflowing with potatoes and onions.
"Let's get started." She said as she grabbed a potato, which instantly unfurled into something eldritch-looking, a ball of writhing plant tentacles that would eventually get reduced into this gross slush that wriggled and moved at her command.
Ahaha, the look on people's faces when they watched this happen in real-time. heh.
~~~~
It went on and like that for every patient, save for the one who had an irrational fear of being part-plant and had chosen the hospital rats they bred for Panacea's needs. They would not be deterred, even when Panacea reassured them that all plant and animal DNA was fully converted to human DNA so there was no danger of being part-anything. But they still insisted. Somehow being part-rat was just fine??
Some people could be so weird.
But she had triaged all of the serious cases so that none of them were in danger of having complications, leaving only the ones with mild cases of broken bones that could heal on their own. So she went back to her base where she could stash her Panacea bio-suit and become Amy Lavere once again.
As she peeled the second skin off her real one, her phone rang. The ringtone belted out the "Cha cha Yes, Poppa" song, which meant it was her dad calling her in her civilian form.
She grabbed her phone quickly and answered it, "Yeah, Dad?"
"Hey, honey. I'm sorry to say, but it looks like I'll be home very late. Seems that a certain somebody accidentally scheduled a few of my patients all on the same day. And those operations take hours, so…" Michael sounded both annoyed and tired.
"Oh no. Want me to pick you up some coffee? I was gonna get myself some." She replied.
"What have I told you about drinking coffee at your age?"
She rolled her eyes "That stunts my growth. But you'll pry it from my dead cold hands before I give it up. Do you want the coffee or not?"
".... I'll have one, then. I'm surprised that my hospital hasn't been condemned yet for the swill that dares to call itself coffee. Pick up a coffee from Jumping Bean Bistro?" He sounded hopeful now, as that was his favorite place to get coffee.
"Fine." Amelia was hoping to go to the more trendy Tutty Fruity Coffee Bar that was a favorite of teenagers and younger college students, but she liked that other location too. "I'll see you in a little bit."
She hung up and finished peeling the rest of her bio-suit off before putting her civilian clothes back on.
With that, she grabbed her purse and went out.
~~~~~
Amelia showed up at Brockton Central, the other hospital where her dad worked as it was the only hospital in the city with an Osteotomy wing.
She checked in at the desk and then went up the elevator toward the floor where he worked.
A few nurses pointed the way when she asked them where he was, and she found him in the room of some kid and his worried parents and he was speaking to them.
"... and of course, Juvenile Scoliosis can be easily corrected with a simple spinal fusion. With that, what we do is realign and fuse the curved vertebrae so that they heal into a single, solid bone. Thankfully his scoliosis is very flexible, meaning it's easy to correct."
The parents smiled at that, and that was when Dr. Lavere noticed his daughter waiting for him outside the room, and he said, "Pardon me, I'll be right back."
As he left to meet with his daughter, Amelia held up a coffee cup with the Jumping Bean Bistro logo on it, which was just the initials done up in a fancy font. JBB.
"Got you the Cuban coffee you like so much, straight black," Amelia said as she handed it over.
"Thanks, you're a real lifesaver." her father seemed genuinely appreciative which made her smile.
"I'll be heading home, then. Got to catch that nature show before it goes off." Amelia's expression indicated that she wasn't really heading home like she claimed, as the next line indicated what she was really planning to do.
"Text me when you get home, so I know you got home safely," he responded, his expression resigned as he knew what she was up to now and she nodded.
With that, she turned and walked away sipping at her own cup of coffee.
~~~~~
An hour later, a towering humanoid form based on the black ebony tree that originated from the Asian continent was seen emerging from the nearby nature parks and out into Brockton Bay.
Now, many would say that it was in poor taste for a white girl to don anything black-related, but Amelia had gone out of her way to make it perfectly clear that her Ebony persona, despite the name, was not that of a dark-skinned parahuman and thus it wasn't blackface.
The Ebony trees of the Asian continent actually had an ashy gray bark on the outside, and so Ebony appeared to be a Caucasian woman that had gray hard bark-like skin, with black leaves and branches for hair. She occasionally sprouted purple flowers in her leaves, just like an actual Ebony tree did. However, that was where the hints of her womanhood ended because in this bio-suit she had massive trunk-like legs and arms, and a completely genderless-looking body that was completely covered in hardened bark.
It was her biological power armor, really, as it enabled her to be ten times stronger and faster than in her normal form. And there was some half-assed attempt at having black leaves as "clothes" for her monster form, just to satisfy the prudes out there who had complained when she had gone bare bark all over.
Again, there were no genitals showing and they still complained! Humans can be so weird at times.
With that, she stalked off into the night looking for any trouble she could stir up.
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A/N: stopping here, because:
1) it was getting too long, it was 11 pages worth on my word editor program!
2) my muse ran out of ideas on what she could do next.
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