Wolfia: ok I got the cornstarch and the yeast like ya asked
Wolfia: wassit for?
Amy: a surprise, I'll explain when I get there
Wolfia: alright_then_keep_your_secrets.gif
I took a last long drag out of my third cigarette before I flicked the butt into a nearby garbage bin and got on the bus.
Inadvertently, I imagined Vicky's and Carol's reaction to my chain-smoking, and snorted a billow of smoke as I walked. At least Vicky would be worried for me instead of worried how I might affect New Wave's image. It didn't matter anyways. Carol could go fuck herself, and as for Vicky's hypothetical concerns…this wasn't commercial tobacco I was smoking that was filled with tar and other cancer-inducing addictive shit. The dried leaves I was smoking were courtesy of the innocuous-looking potted plant in my room that was originally a hackberry sprout, which happens to be related to the cannabis plant family. Now, it was some frankenplant there was no scientific name for that I modified to have the ideal mix of compounds that reduce anxiety and brain fog, when smoked.
It helped quite a bit, if I was being honest.
It was also something that the me from a while ago would have been sent to the brink of a panic attack to even consider. But I wasn't the me from back then, was I? Not wholly. This wasn't about philosophical arguments about being different people at different times. Not with at least twenty years of memories of another Amy- Amelia Lavere, that is, in a world without superpowers. Especially not with memories of her reading a web novel where I was a side character forced to make some truly horrifying decisions.
I hissed through clenched teeth as I slowly exhaled to calm myself from having touched the topic. Not nearly enough time passed for me to be able to think of that hypothetical future without my pulse spiking.
The worst part was that I could totally see myself winding up as that wretch, the way things were going up until then- after I had that think in the hospital bed after my panic attack, at least. Not that I got to lay on it for long.
Three weeks ago…
After the nurse took off the heartbeat monitor and IV drip off me, I sat up with my head in my hands.
I got…what, implanted with future knowledge that said I'd do some fucked up shit and the- someone else's ability to speak french? What was this, some sort of half-assed Master effect? One of Heartbreaker's kids pushing me into a panic attack for shits and giggles? Then what was the point of the language?
A groan escaped me from the thought of turning myself in for M/S containment, but my pity party got interrupted by a harried nurse asking me to save a girl from septic shock. One called Taylor Hebert, who got pulled out of a biohazardous school locker and had a very active Corona Gemma.
When the bus reached the stop before Downtown, I got off and lit another cigarette, taking a long drag.
Even if I thought that Hebert unintentionally used a Master power on me when she triggered, the timeline didn't line up. The girl's father reported her missing in the evening the day before my own incident.
I spent my lunch break on one of Arcadia's library computers checking some trivia I thought wouldn't raise Thinker alarms. Sarah Livsey being listed as missing. The Travelers being mentioned on the Boston section of PHO. Phir Sē being confirmed on the roster of India's capes. It all lined up.
I wasn't sure what was worse. The fact that I couldn't dismiss it all out of hand, or that I might be trying to find evidence to arrive at a conclusion instead of deciding on one and working backwards from it only because of my other self's influence.
Which brought me to the following thought: outsider's perspective context of parahuman matters wasn't actually the most significant thing that came with the memories.
The other me had ADD and was on the spectrum, without any people around her who could recognize such things, and had to figure all that out on her own. She eventually attended lessons that taught tools she could use to better function as a person with those neurological conditions.
Knowledge of "canon" told me it wasn't my fault that I was susceptible to being led down a dark path. Knowledge other me had of herself, however, told me how to avoid that. I swore to myself I would.
Which I could not, in fact, do if I threw myself at trying to stop the end of the world at my own detriment, as my knee-jerk urge was.
Instead of the "story", what had to change was…me.
I could not save the world if I was perpetually burnt-out and stressed and lonely even in the house I lived in. They tell you on the plane to put on an oxygen mask on yourself before you help others for a reason. 'Physician, heal thyself' as the quote goes. I had until mid-April to sort my shit out.
My panic attack helped me convince Aunt Sarah that Carol wasn't treating me well, and got me moved in with the Pelhams. Alongside the anti-anxiety cigarettes that enabled me to think clearly, it was a good start.
I had to catch up on sleep and spend time having…fun.
Now I was on my way to address making friends and doing something with my powers other than healing, so my passenger doesn't push me to do something stupid at the worst possible moment.
Hence my present destination, now within sight. A rundown tabletop game store, right on the northern edge of what was considered Protectorate territory, which by all appearances seemed abandoned. The fact that the local furry group- well, only half of them were actually furries, really - used the same tactic as the Undersiders to hide their place did not escape me.
Another cue I took from my other self: if you can't find any friends in real life, then you can find them on the internet! I started with the East Coast queer group's chatroom, then hopped servers until I found one with a cozy overlap of my own interests. By some small miracle, a good number of them were from Brockton Bay and had a hangout spot.
And what does that have to do with using my powers, you ask?
Let's just say that…there's a strong undercurrent of transhumanism embedded in the community, even if members don't realize that thinking that having a tail would be great could mean that. The point being that the vast majority of furries have no trouble acknowledging someone that is not human as a person, which opens them up to the idea of self-modification in nonhuman directions. "Humanity" was not, in fact, inherent to humans. You could also argue that being transhumanist means extending the definition of what is human, in this case, having a different physiology than…let's call it a traditional human. Science fiction writers often explore these themes in cybernetic augmentation.
Anyways.
I had a passenger begging me to experiment with my power, and there was a whole ass international demographic that finds the idea of being an animal person attractive, be it just ears and tail or full-on furry. There was a niche for me to fulfill!
Stepping into the dead-end alley beside the store, I stood before the actually functioning side entrance.
Oh god, please let it work out.
I took a deep drag of my cigarette, briefly frustrated with myself that I didn't allow myself to make it have more than a moderate effect, and flicked away the butt before stepping in.
"Finally!"
A head of hair so bright red it couldn't be mistaken as a natural color sped towards me.
"Hug?"
I raised my arms in assent and let myself be embraced briefly, careful not to touch skin. It really was nice when you can establish some boundaries not to get flashed with their biology.
"So what gives? What's the stuff for?"
The pale girl curiously looking at me had a side undercut dyed fire red with pink tips, green eyes and features more handsome than pretty with a stronger jawline, dressed in a metal band tee and black jeans. Her name was Fia, and she was one of my first online friends I made two weeks ago.
…or so I hope. She seems to find my dry humor entertaining, replies to my DM's and actually initiates conversations. And then invited me to her friend group's lair to hang out. That has to count for something, right?
"You'll see in a minute. Do we have a bucket somewhere?"
Fia whined. No, really. Like a dog, as much a human throat can produce. Though she insists she's a wolf.
"Come on, I'll give you headpats later."
She snorted and left as I walked to the small kitchen area behind the counter and checked the large bag of starch and dry yeast pack. Well…no reason this shouldn't work, but I had to resist pulling out a cigarette indoors.
"Alright, I've got the bucket," Fia came back, raising the bucket and an eyebrow at me, "Now what?"
"Ah, give it here."
I took the stained bucket from her hand and stood there dumbly for a fraction of a second. Drat. I should have asked her to fill it with water too.
"Right."
Luckily, I could finagle the faucet and the bucket just right so that I could fill it two thirds of the way before it started spilling from the angle. Then setting it on the ground, I poured a generous helping of starch into it, threw a cube of yeast in and mixed it with some dirty chopsticks that were sitting in the sink.
Fia watched me with a quizzical look through the whole thing.
"...is this like, something like that non-newtonian fluid thing? Like it's hard when you hit it and stuff."
I snorted at her guess. In a way, I was thankful that she doesn't seem to guess it has anything to do with my powers.
"Let's go sit down and I'll tell you all about it."
I really will. I brought prints with proposals, just in case.
Once we were situated on the couch behind the stained coffee table, I drew in a breath and let it out slowly. The moment of truth.
"Okay. Humor me: what do you know about my powers?"
The redhead slow blinked at me. "You uh, you're a Striker-Thinker. Your power lets you see people's biology and heal them. Nudge some things around too, I think."
I bought some time to respond by dipping a fingertip into the starch slop and checking that the yeast was active enough, and basically gave it a kick in the butt to work faster. Soon enough, in this here bucket I had a couple pounds of living biomass ready to use.
I looked up at Fia, whose expression changed to a patient smile, and sighed. She'd already guessed that I was trying to get at something important to me.
"I…I'm really grateful that you guys didn't make a big deal about me being Panacea or ask me to heal or give you smooth skin and shit," I began slowly, "And for inviting me to your secret hangout spot, yeah?"
Alarms went off in my head for what I was going to do, but I had to make a show of trust first to get anywhere.
Fia grunted a "Fumu" at me, the weeb. "And you're very welcome!" she smiled.
"Okay," I breathed in. "Fia, my power isn't healing," I blurted, skewedly.
The redhead's cheer quickly faded into somber attention at that.
"I'm…I'm a biokinetic, yeah? I could do anything with sufficient biomass."
I pulled a clump of the starch slop into my hand, first changing its color to a bright blue via mutant chlorophyll, then shifting it into a bonsai tree, which then became a twitching fish in my hand before I turned that into an algae jelly that didn't feel gross in my hand.
"Anything. Down to microscopic stuff. I'm basically a striker version of Bonesaw. Except I'm sane." Arguably.
Mustering the nerve to flick my eyes back up from my hand, I saw that despite some tightness around her eyes, Fia wasn't scared. I used that to plow on.
"P-powers want to be used, yeah? I'd be fine if my power was to heal, but it's not. It's to change anything alive into something else that's alive. But I don't want to be a villain, and the PRT might start all kinds of stink if I show that I can do this sort of thing because people are scared of wet Tinkers. So…"
I swallowed, pulled my sleeve up and put my hand with the algae into the starch slop, pulling mass up my forearm. While I raised my arm back out, the mass coating it solidified into snakelike scales of a pretty, coppery sheen, with inch-long black claws tipping my fingertips. On my palm, I added dark gray pads on the fleshy underside of my fingertips, a horizontal pad on the underside of my knuckles and another pad at the heel. Turning my arm over, I grew copper-green feathers around the outer edge of my elbow on a whim, then rested my arm on my knee as I flexed my hand experimentally.
A trill of satisfaction and excitement shot through me, and I couldn't help from smiling toothily. It really did feel as good as other me imagined.
Some shuffling beside me broke me out of my thoughts, which made me remember that I was actually in the middle of something. Turning towards the sound, I found Fia leaning forward with wide, eager eyes looking between me and my scaly arm, having connected the dots to the idea I wanted to get across. If she had a tail, it would be furiously wagging.
"So I was thinking that I need to use my power in a way that wouldn't cause problems, and- and you and the others would like it if I gave you like, ears and tail and stuff," I finished lamely, "We can discuss first what kind of attachments you want, or maybe a meat 'fursuit'-"
"Amy, are you kidding?!" The redhead near-yelled at me with her hands on my shoulders, voice edged with mania, "Fuck's sake, you made me bring out my serious face just to give me a glorified partial? Just change me directly into my wolf fursona, come on, you've got my permission!"
"Fia," I began with the most serious tone I could muster, taking her arms off my shoulders and holding her hands in front of me, "No."
"But whyyyyyyyy," the brat whined.
"It's as much for my own safety as it's for yours, Fia," I stressed, "I'm being serious. Healing's easy because all I've got to do is stitch things together and it doesn't matter if someone's internal organs aren't exactly the same shape as before. But this? What if I make a mistake and I can't get your nose or something just like it was before I gave you a snout? And then we get in hot water because someone reports you to the PRT because they think a Changer didn't do their homework when stealing your identity?"
Fia clicked her tongue and looked away mulishly, deciding to look at the scaly arm I held one of her hands with instead. "Dammit, why do you gotta be so responsible? Fine, we'll do it your way."
"If I'm going to do it, I don't want to half-ass it, yeah? But…" I trailed off, making the redhead raise an eyebrow at me, "I can just change your ears and make the tail grow on you instead of attaching them, if you want. I'm not touching your face though!"
And just like that, Fia's mood flipped to excitement again.
"I want beans on my hands too! And on my feet!"
AN: Where's the rest of "the guys"? Uh, they're out at work and running errands and stuff. Yeah. I'm totally not still workshopping what the hell I want. Totally.
