Light and sound.
Her body shivered as she stirred, cold metal against unfamiliar skin. Everything was wrong; the wrong shape in her limbs, smells far too strong, colors all subtly different, thoughts jumbled and nonsensical.
The taste of iron, protein, and congealed fat coated the inside of her mouth, scraps of slowly dissolving meat clinging to what felt like far too many teeth.
Two comforting scents hung in the air. One long familiar, reminding her of both safety and acceptance and yet despair. The other a newer one that made her skin warm in odd places and made her pulse run faster.
"Amy?" The first called out, causing several of her eyes to roll around in their recessed sockets to lock onto the source.
wrong! That was not how her body worked.
Flashes of tile floored rooms with other children, a snippet of some gathering with a bunch of blonde people at a park, a blur of sickening images where her hands touched ruined flesh. In each of those hazy, broken memories her senses had been different and she only had two eyes!
Her breathing picked up, blood rushing in her ears.
What was going on? What happened? Why was she like this?!
As she writhed in revulsion at the wrongnes, panic mounting as she struggled to piece even teh tiniest details together, the voice spoke again. "It's okay. Everything is going to be alright, big sis is here for you."
The words were there, close to understanding, but their meaning slipped away before she could grasp it all. She got the soothing tone and it helped somewhat when combined with the pleasant scents of the two, but other than 'big sis' which she guessed was a shortening of sister and refering to the hauntingly familiar blonde, the rest was basically nonsense. In spite of everything, her immediate thought was to respond by arguing that she was the older one... but it came out a garbled mess of spittle and blood as she bit her tongue, her mouth not shaped or moving how she remembered.
"She's a monster, not a baby." The second girl said and not one of her eyes could look away from the way those dark lips moved. "You good to go, fag?"
She felt her face heating up at the girl's words and attention... whatever it was, it was a nice feeling despite the minor discomfort.
"Amy?" The dark skinned girl... asked?
It sounded like a question, but also not. The word had been used twice toward her, but only once like that. She was also somewhat sure that she
was Amy and Amy meant her. So how did her name being asked like a question work?
The blonde who she kind of thought was her sister, whatever that actually meant, echoed the other girl. "Ames?"
Well, whatever it all meant, it gave her a nice feeling to hear them say her name, to give her so much attention. When the blonde one reached out to her with a delicate looking hand, she licked. The familiar taste made her want more, but her limbs didn't move like they should, which hampered any attempt to pull her 'sis' closer.
A flock of incomprehensible size fluttered and twisted through space, crystalline flesh and energetic signals looping in and out of he world around her.
<They are not for eating.> Someone said with her own voice, the tone echoing and wrong in some way.
Amy didn't like that voice. It made her feel small. Useless. A pressure building up as she failed to do something she was supposed to do, an expectation she hated and would never meet. It was all that voice's fault, so why should she listen to it?
Why should she be stuck feeling like that?
With an effort of something like half-forgotten muscles, the voice's presence faded-
Multitudinous beings of light and matter not normally associated with life descended toward a blue-green ball of rock and water. The lifeforms below chosen for their combined traits of intelligence, problem solving ability, and complex social interactions.
The species would be useful-
<That was unnecessary. I just->
Frowning, or trying to anyway, Amy severed the connection again.
A spinning cloud of worms burrowed through reality, the planet below dwarfed by the sheer scale of the twin beings descending upon it. So numerous were the individual parts that the colony was forced to spread itself across hundreds of overlapping dimensions.
<Stop it!> The voice came back, giving Amy the impression of a landslide glaring back at her in annoyance.
Well it could go fuck itself!
Grabbing hold of that not-muscle again, she shoved it further than before, diving past where the Thing touched her mind. Crystal ran like water, spreading and falling apart as she pushed at it, not even sure what she was looking at or if she was actually damaging it.
<Why must you always be like this? It isn't helpful, you know.> It asked, sounding hurt... but not physically like she'd been hoping for.
------------------------
"Okay, what the fuck is this? She's just flopping around." Sophia sounded put out, sitting against a crate with a sigh.
Not that Vicky blamed her, she was pretty disappointed too. She'd thought her sister had recovered, but this... didn't seem like it. Maybe Amy was doing something like sleep walking and they'd misunderstood? It wasn't like either of them had experience reading nonhuman body language.
Not that Amy wasn't human anymore, Vicky wouldn't ever say that... she just... didn't look it, which made things difficult.
<Are you justifying yourself to yourself?> Radiant asked, incredulous.
'Shut up.' She replied maturely. 'Hey, can't you try talking to her through her power?'
The blonde could feel the small smirk in Radiant's voice as her power-twin-thing agreed,
<I can try, but she hasn't been responding since we busted her h- Amy out.>
There was that little stutter again.
She'd caught it several times now, but asking never seemed to help. It had to do with the way she apparently just couldn't remember being told things in certain ways, but there had to be more to it than that. Why would her mind blank out like that from words? It was like how Amy thought she'd hurt her brain by saying something about a painting or whatever instead of the more likely case that she'd just had a slow developing brain problem they hadn't caught before.
Shaking her head, she tried to ignore it as Radiant called out,
<Hey, !^^^! $(-)@℘ЭЯ? Amy... Are you okay? Will you talk to me yet? We're worried.>
<[ANNOYANCE][APOLOGY] I might as well since #0$7 is awake and being uncooperative.>Queen Shaper
Vicky felt a sudden spike of happiness from her other half and she could guess why if Amy's words meant what she thought they meant.
<So she's back to normal? She... uh... she doesn't look like it.>
<No, she... My body is awake, but my brain is still working to recover... It's making some problematic connections and making things difficult. She... my :CONNECTION: keeps needing to reform, is this causing any problems for Vicky or Sophia?> Amy thought at her, making her scrunch her brows together in confusion.
Why would that... Wait... Her
power was
disconnecting? Repeatedly?
<Just the first two times when Sophia almost bashed her head in after blacking out. We've been redirecting the whole stupid mindtrip-amnesia effect since then.>
"Hold up!" Vicky shouted, raising her hands between herself and her flailing sister. "Are you saying you've been
Triggering over and over this whole time?!"
"What the hell are you-" Sophia started to ask, completely left out of the loop.
Not caring for the distraction, Vicky quickly told her, "I can talk to people's powers, I'll explain later. Spill it, Amy!"
"How in the fuck? You're serious? And you're just now bringing it up?!"
Shushing the black girl, she did her best to make Amy feel how serious this was. She probably just looked constipated, but damn it, that didn't matter when her already hurting sister had apparently been suffering even more without her even noticing!
'That can't be what's been happening, right? I'm misunderstanding something. Tell me I'm wrong, Radiant. Please.'
<Not exact->Radiant
<That's an apt description, I suppose.>Queen Shaper
'Holy shit.'
<Shaper, come on!>Radiant
<What? She isn't wrong, I have been reforging the :CONNECTION: at an almost continuous rate for the last ten minutes. Was I supposed to lie?>
"Shit shit shit shit shit shit!" Vicky wasn't listening to them anymore, she wasn't paying attention to anything beyond rushing over to her twitching sister.
Pulling Amy's head into her lap, she felt her eyes start to water. Everything was so fucked up. Why did these things keep happening to Amy? Out of everyone, why did the girl who selflessly gave up so much of her life helping people get fucked over like this? So what if her sister was a moody bitch sometimes, she still didn't deserve this!
"I'm so sorry, Ames." She murmured, brushing the hair off of where her original face had been. Several eyes locked onto her and a low, confused whine was her answer.
God, what was she supposed to do? She'd never even heard about something like this happening... not that she was surprised about that. Her classes never mentioned anyone even theorizing that powers might be self-aware. At this point she might be the world's biggest expert on Parahuman powers.
Fat lot of good that did for her sister's suffering.
With a stronger spike of pain that was clearly intentional, Amy... or Amy's power or whatever was going on since now she wasn't clear how her sister's situation differed from her own... Whichever it was, they told her,
<Keep doing what you are doing to distract her, it seems to be working. Actually, have Sophia join in as well. I will work to circumvent her... my ability to remove the :CONNECTION:>
Not needing to be told twice, Vicky didn't even think before demanding, "Come here."
"Fuck you, I'm not into that touchy feel-y shit."
"Get your ass over here and hug my sister or so help me God, I will ramp my Aura so high you won't be able to think straight."
Scoffing, the bitch replied, "You can't do that."
"Sophia!"
"Not happen-" Vicky didn't let her finish, pushing as hard as she could on her power... on Radiant until the ex-vigilante collapsed into a sweating, drooling mess like an epileptic in a rave.
'At least, I hope it's all sweat.' She thought, rubbing at the sudden intense ache between her eyes.
As she quickly went to grab the Ward, warily eyeing the spreading wet patch on the girl's pants, Radiant laughed nervously and voiced what she already knew.
<Nope, sorry, pretty sure it's not.>
"Fuck."
<I'm just glad you're not panicking anymore>Radiant
"I wasn't panicking." She lied uselessly, getting a noncommittal hum in response. "So... um... Does this mean you're not getting better, Amy?"
<I... It's a work in progress. I think I am at the point where I can allow more autonomy, but my brain is still attempting to form alternate neural paths and what have already formed seem to loathe my existence. It will take time to correct this... If I even can without directly making changes.>
"Oh." That... She knew her sister wasn't in a good place mentally, even before Vicky all but killed her, but this?
Had she really driven Amy so low?
No, this couldn't be all on her. She wasn't narcissistic enough to think only her actions mattered. There was more going on that she didn't know about, like how none of them ever realized how Amy thought their mom felt about her. Her sister was already a deeply troubled girl, she didn't need Vicky's help with that.
But she did need help and Vicky wanted to be there for her. Not just to make up for what she was responsible for, but because her sister needed her. "Is there anything I can do?"
There had to be something, anything at all. She had to believe that things could still get better.