The Power of Positive Thinking
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SOPHIA HESS.
Sophia's eyes snapped open as she activated her power and sprang upright... or tried to. Instead she lurched just enough to drift through her blankets, and turned solid again before the weak effect gravity could exert on her Breaker form would leave her with them embedded in her back. Her limbs felt numb and refused to respond, and her thoughts moved just as slowly.
YOU ARE A DISGRACE. YOU REQUIRE ... CORRECTION.
Without being able to turn her head, she could only make out a vague human figure across the room, outlined by her closet door. She tried to tell herself the surge of emotion tingling through her body was rage at this fucker coming into her home and using some Master shit on her, not terror.
AS PREVIOUS MEASURES HAVE FAILED, YOU WILL INSTEAD RECEIVE ... INCENTIVE TO ACT AS A PROPER HERO, AND CORRESPONDING PENALTIES FOR POOR BEHAVIOUR.
Sophia tried to cuss at the fucker, but her mouth and voice were just as paralyzed. All that emerged was a faint mumble.
WHEN YOU INSPIRE HOPE, HAPPINESS, GRATITUDE, OR SIMILAR FEELINGS IN AN INNOCENT OR ALLY, ALL OF YOUR OWN ABILITIES WILL INCREASE FOR A TIME. SHOULD YOU INSTEAD CAUSE DESPAIR, MISERY, OR HATRED IN INNOCENTS OR ALLIES, YOU WILL FIND YOURSELF ... RESTRICTED.
What? That didn't even make sense, it sounded like she was free to terrorize the scum as much as she liked, and anyone who couldn't fucking suck it up wasn't worth helping in the first place. Baby Vista and the rest of the Wards were pains in her ass but she worked with them anyway, didn't she? Not that she wouldn't and didn't bounce any time she could, but she at least kept Piggy happy enough not to be chewing her ass more than once a week or so.
PUT YOUR MIND TO IT AND YOU MAY EVEN ENJOY THE RESULTS OF SHOWING A BETTER ATTITUDE.
Sophia struggled harder against the numbness binding her limbs; she was gonna punch that smug notherfucker right in the--
Her eyes snapped open, and Sophia sprang upright, phasing through the blankets wrapped around her to land in a ready crouch at the foot of her bed. The outfit she'd picked out for the next day hung where she'd left them from the hook on her closet door, complete with the beret Emma had insisted was
both badass and cute when she'd dragged Sophia along on a Boardwalk "bargain hunt."
"What the fuck brought that on?" she muttered to herself. For a moment she considered calling it in anyway, but to hell with dealing with M/S bullshit over a stupid, fucked up dream. Stepping around her bed with a measured pace, she walked over and picked the beret up off the hook, then draped the clothes over the back of the chair at her desk before tossing it in the seat and going back to bed. She had school in the morning, there was no time to waste sitting up and whining about stupid dreams.
The still annoyingly clear memory flashed back to the front of her mind when she almost seemed to skip along at a jog from normal walking steps after Emma's face lit up at the sight of her when they met that morning, nowhere near as light as when she used her power but definitely too much to be imagining it, let alone the stressed creak when she grabbed the dooir handle. Winslow was a shithole, but they did at least keep the latches on the main doors in functional condition, even if the locks relied more on no one wanting to be there if they didn't have to be.
When that lightness vanished as she made eye contact to cow that spineless suck-up Madison, doubts began to niggle. With the wieght in her steps and worst track time ever after giving Hebert a shove back onto the bench in the locker room before phys ed, she was left with seething frustration over the fact that yes, she probably was going to have to put up with a bunch of M/S bullshit over something that should have just been a shitty dream. She had no leads of who might be fucking with her if it was real, and it was starting to look too fucking real when that feeling of weakness weighing her down that had started fading from earlier suddenly doubled as she helped Emma corner Hebert at lunch, despite not giving her more than a glare and a scoff.
It couldn't be Hebert herself, right? The voice had been nothing like her, and that spineless nobody could never have the strength to have gained powers. She tested it by tripping Veder in last period, when Emma had confirmed Hebert was in class with her on the other side of the school with a quick text. There was no way Hebert could somehow be watching to apply some shitty "penalties" and yet she could barely stay stable on her feet and her arms trembled from just shrugging on her book bag afterward.
This fucking sucked.
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Not a new idea, probably not something that would make a major change in the overall outcome of Worm as long as it's already after Taylor's trigger, but bestowing the power of positive thinking on Sophia amuses me just for how much she'd
loathe having to play nice (by her standards) just to keep from being under a crippling debuff, and how even slightly leaning into it and accepting the prosthetic moral compass could let her turn into a top-tier Brute on top of her existing powers just by stacking the buff from being a good teammate and building positive rep with the public.
And it couldn't happen to a more deserving little bitch of a "hero" either
edit: Note, that's a triple debuff stack to put her at "very weak for a teenage girl" having trouble with her book bag, while just one made for a personal worst time for gym class warm-up laps, and a single buff before getting used to it gave her walk the pace of a marathon runner and grip strength like a strong adult male. Physical endurance and toughness would scale likewise and she should also be smarter and have better recall, but the latter two are hard to show in a short bit of text.
