Greg Vs Raid 9-15: Something Something Something White Mage (Patreon)

Chapter 14: Interlude - Something Something Something White Mage

“-ot asking for the impossible, Amy, I am asking you to do your job!”

“I am! I was there all morning!”

“You left before noon! Your shift wasn’t over. That’s not a full day. That’s lazy.”

“I wasn’t feelin-”

“You are never ‘feeling well.’ There is always an excuse. The city needs Panacea. Try to act like it.”

The slam of the door was a gunshot in the quiet sterile hallway, cheap wood rattling in its frame as Amy stomped through. It wasn’t enough, just that one sound. 

Loud as it had been, all Amy wanted to do was slam it again and again and again. She wanted to feel the frame splinter, make enough noise to drown out the echo of Carol's voice still ringing in her ears from her way up the stairs.

Lazy.

The word stuck itself deep under her skin, a splinter of glass working its way deeper everytime she heard it echo. Amy didn’t even bother to turn the lock as she slumped against the door, back to it as she let out a long breath. What was even the point? Privacy was a privilege, not a right in this house. 

And that privilege didn’t last all that long when at least two out of the four people in this house made it their job to either forget it existed or disregard it entirely. Amy let out another sigh as she let her hood fall back and took a step away from the door.

Her room was its own little cell, posters tacked and splayed all across the walls. Bands she hadn’t listened to in years, actors she never even cared about but Vicky looooved taking up important space in her field of vision everytime she stepped in here. None of it mattered though, barely any of it was hers, and none of them were anything she cared about. It was all just sisterly bonding stuff Vicky assumed she must love too. 

All that really mattered to her in this room sat on her shelf; all of it arranged by height and subject matter, organic chemistry next to cellular biology next to advanced anatomy and pathology. Past that, it was just her bed; pink and white sheets that were only saved from being covered with kitty patterns or flowers or flowery kitties because for once, she had put her foot down.

The young healer stumbled towards the bed, legs shuffling her forward more than anything before she just let herself… drop. Collapsing on the edge of her mattress like a pile of some of Crystal’s dirty clothes, she groaned back at the springs, her hands clenched tight into white-knuckled fists.  

Her costume, all white and red and suddenly annoying, felt too heavy and too rough on her skin all of a sudden; everything that made her Panacea.

Off. Ten fingers grabbed it from below, pulling it over her shoulders all at once, as a grunt spilled out of her lips. Get it off.

She lay there, eyes closed, as she tried to ignore the distant sounds of Carol stomping around in the living room, professional pumps a sound she was used to. Lazy…

Carol hadn't shouted it. Not that she needed to when she just said it like she did anything else, like it was just facts and you should be glad to be hearing it from someone who bothered to provide you with the truth. Just speakin to everyone like she was disappointed in them for existing and not living up to whatever perfect example she had made up in her head as her standard. 

I'm not lazy.

But something was wrong, though. As much as she didn’t want to give Carol anything to go at her with, something had been off for days now.

And it all started when she touched him.

White Knight.

“...Greg Veder.”

No matter how much everyone looked up to the city’s new golden boy, his real name was a bad taste in her mouth, oily and unwelcome. The cape everyone in Brockton Bay loved, the “shining symbol” of the city who fought an Endbringer and lived. Victoria couldn't stop talking about him, voice full of that bright breathless awe Amy had learned to tune out years ago, back when Dean was still fresh and new and they hadn’t broken up four dozen times already.

It made sense, sure.

But she still hated it. Mostly for one reason. He's just a fucking…

She almost hissed, rolling over to stare at her ceiling. A total fucking retard.

The absolute worst kind of blowhard, nothing actually smooth or real or sincere the way she'd grudgingly give Dean credit for. No, he was like someone had mixed the worst parts of a football jock and some basement-dwelling geek together, all big muscles and a bigger head and that irritating arrogance.

Shiny straight teeth. Thick blond hair. Perfect smooth skin. Bright blue... blue eyes...

Stop.

Her hands clenched tighter in her lap, nails digging into her palms hard enough to hurt.

Just a walking talking personification of everything she found irritating. That stupid cocky grin, that over-done drawl in his voice, the way he just swaggered around like he owned every space he walked into. 

On top of that, it was almost impossible to forget how Victoria's face lit up when she talked about him.

Don't.

And worse.

Worse was the spike of... something... a something she absolutely refused to name or acknowledge .

Ugh.

And he looked so weird too, that soft babyface sitting on a body that was just... too much. Too dense, too built, too wrong for someone who talked like a theatre kid with brain damage.

An anomaly.

A freak.

Downright stupid, too, the way he'd offered her a "boon" like he was some character in one of Vicky's bad romance novels she kept hidden under her bed with the manga she thought Amy didn't know about. A voice so fucking full of himself it made her want to throw up. How did he not hear himself? How did anyone just eat up his shit? All those performative jokes, the constant winks, and that grating need for attention painting every word out of his mouth.

Every single thing about him just made her wonder how this literall dumbass could have possibly fought Leviathan the way everyone said he did.

How.

But touching him…

Amy clenched her fists tight, a shudder starting at the base of her skull and went all the way down, vertebra by vertebra as it traced its way down her spine. Her hands unclenched without her permission, palms slick with sweat like she’d just gone for a run.

A-annoying.

The memory was there anyway, always popping up in her head, no matter how hard she fought it. Touching his arm at that dinner, his skin, everything he couldn’t hide; all of it was a cascade of information, a tidal wave of biological data so complex and layered she might as well have stuck her tongue in an outlet.

Not human. And at the same time…Too human.

All of him down to the cells was so hyper-efficient it made no sense, mitochondrial output so off the charts she was surprised he wasn’t radioactive, the signal-to-noise ratio in his nerves so impossibly clean…

It was… God, it was…

She didn’t have the words for genetic code so dense it shouldn't exist, couldn't exist; all of it so much less like biology and more like… 

Amy licked her lips, breathing coming heavier the longer she laid there, staring straight up at nothing and no one. To make it worse, everything about him was written in a way she could almost, almost understand if she just-

Stop.

None of it made sense but all of it made her want more.

More data, more input, more.

Everything about her power wanted… wanted to dissect him, map him, and tear him apart cell by cell just to see how he worked. She wasn’t sure what she’d give just to feel all those cells alive in a way she wanted to copy, another look at that sheer overwhelming rightness in his system that made her body feel like a rough draft.

Like she was the mistake and he was the correction.

For a second, she was drunk on him.

Then her hand jerked back, and she was stumbling, a gasp loud enough to pull her whole family’s attention right to her. Everyone was staring, confused and concerned, while the echo of that biological siren song still rang in her ears.

What is wrong with me?

Apparently, everything.

After the dinner, she'd been sick with something that could have been a bad cold or a fucked-up fever. With a temp spiking as high as 101.3 and phlegm coming out of her throat thick and dark to make her worry for a few hours, it was pretty damn fucked up.

The nosebleeds too…

That had been a bit worrying, but she’d been too sick in bed to do much about it.

Carol couldn't say anything about it, either. She couldn't even throw "lazy" at her, because the symptoms were real and undeniable.

Not like she didn't try.

Still, though, ever since then, even after the "cold" had passed, Amy couldn’t deny she still hadn't been feeling right.

Right.

For one, her power seemed to be... on the fritz, as best as she coulddescribe it. That first night after the dinner, she hadn't felt the normal background pressure; the low-level awareness of the biological world humming around her had all just gone numb.

She hadn’t thought much of it that night, even when Vicky badgered her with questions; she’d just thought she was sick, right? What else could it be?

She still didn’t know, but she knew one thing.

Her power was different.

For one, it drained her now. That just wasn’t right.

Healing had been her life; it had been easier than breathing. And now, she had what was pretty much the equivalent of asthma, as best as she could describe it. She couldn't even process all the information she used to, not in as much detail at once, everything buffering and stuttering like streaming HD on dial-up. Healing too much, too long, or too fast, made her feel like she had just run up several flights of stairs. She couldn’t explain it, the exhaustion deep in her bones, the phantom ache in her marrow that made no sense because marrow didn't even have nerve endings.

Hell, she'd tried to heal a shattered tibia at the hospital this morning after hours of work, and had to stop halfway through. Too dizzy, too nauseous, the room had been spinning as she stumbled back. She was so out of it she had to leave the attending physician to finish with a cast, with pins and screws and actual orthopedics.

A cast.

Humiliating.

The look on Dr. Chen's face, that mix of pity and professional concern, had been worse than any of Carol's lectures. Worse because it was kind, because he'd asked if she was okay, if she needed to sit down, if she wanted water.

Amy scoffed as she pushed herself off the bed, going from sitting up to standing in one smooth motion. Annoyed energy carried her legs over to her vanity, Amy barely thinking as she stared right at her reflection in the mirror.

Her eyes took in her brown curly hair, a frizzy halo of chaos she could almost never tame no matter what product she used. All of that packed over freckles dense enough they nearly hid the pink underneath, forehead to chin and covering the rest of her.

Do I look... different?

It was an insane thought.

But, for some reason, she couldn't shake it.

Amy leaned closer, breath fogging the glass, as she took a second look. Huh… Her skin looked paler, freckles standing out more against it; even the dark circles under her eyes seemed lighter, somehow, not as deep. But there was something else, something in the actual shape of her face she couldn’t even name.

Stop it.

Amy groaned, too frustrated to do anything else, and gripped the edge of her vanity mirror, fingers wrapped tight around wood.

Then, with a sharp crack, a piece of the trim splintered in her hand.

Wha- Amy stumbled back, a gasp leaving her lips as she stared at the broken piece of wood in her trembling fingers. I didn't even... She gulped quietly, no words leaving her open mouth. I didn't even try.

She definitely hadn’t squeezed that hard. Absolutely hadn’t meant to break anything. All she’d done was hold it, just gripped the edge to steady herself and the wood gave way like it was nothing.

The broken piece dropped from her fingers like it was burning her, clattering on the floor with a sound that was too loud to her ears as her heart hammered against her ribs.

Aimy looked down at her hands, both of them still shaking.

The skin seemed tighter, maybe, she wasn't sure. She flexed her fingers, watching the tendons shift under the skin, metacarpals more prominent, everything so much smoother.

She felt stronger.

Not by much. But it was there.

No.

That wasn't possible. She couldn't use her power on herself, it was the first rule, the most fundamental limit. A hardwired restriction she'd tested a thousand times in a thousand ways and it never worked, never, not once.

But then...

"...the hell is this?"