VT - Chapter 55 : Red Queen Averted? Too Soon to tell...... (Patreon)

Disclaimer: Worm belongs to the one and only absolute chad, Wildbow. Enough said.

Brockton Bay

–Amy “Panacea” Dallon–

Getting off the medical floating wing that was created to protect the medical staff, she looked around and, after checking if anyone was watching her, quietly slipped away into the restrooms. The floating building had multiple sections, and it even had external restrooms, for some reason.

There were still people inside the hospital, as Grand Chariot had converted the entire thing into a free hospital, where everyone and their Grandma were coming to get their free checkups, especially since it was going to be open only for the next three days.

Tens of thousands of people who could not afford to see a doctor will come here to get a checkup. That was an objectively good thing, and she could get behind doing it as volunteer work, especially since the Endbringer Truce was active and she would not have to worry about gangbangers shooting each other up, but after spending hours in an enclosed floating container, breathing recycled air and watching the most important fight of the century happen within miles of her, she was tired and just needed a break.

A smoke break, to be precise. One of the older doctors handed her two smokes, with an understanding smile, but then shook his head firmly when she asked for more, leading to her stomping out of the building to find a nice spot to get a smoke in.

The weather was nice for it as well. With Leviathan gone, its control over the weather too was gone, but while Leviathan could bring about quick changes to the weather owing to its power, the dissipation of the storm clouds had to happen naturally, and it took time. Which is why she was thankful she was wearing her cape uniform, which was just a thick Doctor’s coat, when she stepped away from the restrooms as well, before sitting down on the stairs and looking at the empty plot of land behind the floating medical building.

Lighting it up, she took a puff and exhaled, feeling some of the tension in her body leave with that smoke. She sighed in relief before taking her time. She had to savor these two, as the asshole doctor had not given her more, and she was pretty sure no one else would even give her one!

She should have brought her hidden stash from Brockton General, but things happened so fast that she had no time to do anything on her own before she and a bunch of doctors, nurses, and medical supplies were thrust into a floating futuristic building that was probably safer than any building in Brockton Bay.

The fact that it could just fly away in the face of approaching danger, with enough speed to quickly get out of Leviathan’s hydrokinesis range, was enough to light up the faces of all the doctors who were with her inside the building.

Grand Chariot had this whole spiel about doctors and just how valuable they were and what all was being done to protect any doctor who was brave enough to come to an Endbringer battle, ready before everyone got inside the medical floating bunker.

It was clearly just to improve morale, and it worked, as the doctors got to work as fast as they could, getting everything ready to make sure that their first patients were given the best possible treatment. While the doctors had gotten everything ready, she had browsed through some of the features built into the building.

It had its own power supply, could supply filtered water using a variety of methods, had bunker level security to make sure that even if something hit the exterior, the interior would be fine, had multiple sanitation levels that were totally automated, and more.

It was built with a specific purpose in mind, and she couldn't help thinking just how much it would have cost had the government built something like this. In the hundreds of millions, easily.

The facility had a bed capacity of over 1500, with more that could be added in case of an emergency. Tools that she had only read about, and medical scanners that were the size of a tablet when they should be the size of an old computer. All kinds of stuff that the other doctors all fussed over, leaving her to just stand there and do her standard procedure of sanitising herself and the space around her for when the injured capes came pouring in.

After all, she was going to have to prioritise the lives of the capes, in place of the civilians.

No one had officially ordered her to do that, but she knew what they expected of her, and that was ensuring that the cape who reached her alive would stay alive for the next Endbringer battle, or maybe for the same Endbringer battle.

This was her first time participating in one directly, but the presence of Grand Chariot and the medical wing was more than enough to make her nervousness evaporate away.

After that, she was told that in case she needed it, there was plenty of processed biomass available, and the quantity of it just made her raise her eyebrows, as it was quite something. With that much biomass, she could heal dozens, maybe even hundreds of capes of many different injuries, without having to rely on their internal fat stores. Most capes already did not possess much in the way of extra fat, well, at least the ones who were combat oriented and thus on the front lines, anyway. So, having all that extra biomass would have been a godsend when she needed it.

Fortunately, after what felt like hours, but it was a much shorter time period, they were just told that Leviathan had retreated.

Just like that.

It had taken a while for the people inside the medical wing to understand what had happened, and when it did register, cheers broke out everywhere, as the dozens of TVs inside the building began showing exactly how it had happened, over and over again.

All that left them with a lot of medical equipment, a small army of trained medical professionals, and no patients whatsoever, at least from the Endbringer battles, so Blue Shield from Grand Chariot had come up with a plan to take care of the civilians nearby, and everyone had agreed without much protest.

At least for now, everyone was in a good enough mood to take care of everyone. She wondered just how long that enthusiasm would last when a fifth of the city came to get their free checkups.

Shaking her head, she looked at the last smoke she had before lighting it up. She was not needed inside, so might as well get the most out of her break.

They should be here soon enough, and she wanted to get it over with before—

A familiar feeling entered her mind, making her body relax instinctively, even as she panicked and tried to hide it but—

“Oh my GOSH! Amy!” Vicky shouted in faux outrage as she landed in front of her, doing the signature three point landing that they both knew was just lame.

A snort escaped her as she saw that it was just Vicky. Had it been Carol, she might have been tempted to just run inside the wing and activate the security features that ensured that no one could enter without express permission, a feature she had learned while browsing through the list of things the medical wing could do just out of boredom. But since it was Vicky, she just smiled, leaned further back, and smoked right into Vicky’s face.

An exaggerated coughing session later, both of them were sitting side by side on the stairs that ended just a bit below the ground, telling her that she was currently sitting on a floating building.

“That is still a bad habit, and I don’t condone smoking in any way, shape, or form,” Vicky said in her earnest girl voice and persona. Something she had created for the camera; when she had to shoot commercials or even the cameos in many commercial projects, she was all too happy to do without charging them a dime. Vicky was just the type of person to want fame and exposure, without chagrin too much for it.

Of course, nowadays she charged a lot, but all of that money went straight to Carol who did nothing but invest and save it, not understanding that the world was going to shit anyways, so might as well enjoy the money they are making right now.

……Well, maybe not. Seeing Grand Chariot, not defeat, but even repel Leviathan, had been a sight for sore eyes. The fact that it could be done meant that there was hope. So, maybe, in a way, she did support Grand Chariot’s actions. She still maintained that their initial move of escalating the gang wars in the city was still stupid, even if they did have the overwhelming muscle required to wrangle an entire city like Brockton Bay to order.

As for Vicky’s statement about condoning smoking, she smirked at her, “That’s just because you can’t smoke without coughing. You are too much of a weakling to try it.”

Deliberately smoking in her face, even as Vicky just coughed and did not provide any defense to her statement, was quite fun, especially since she was in one of her good moods, something that had not happened in months.

For once, she did not have this burden hanging over her head to just go to the hospital and heal everyone she could see, with nothing but thank you as a reward, only to return to a cold home that felt more akin to a hotel to her these days, then wake up and go to school that she hated, and then go work at the hospital, doing a job she hated.

She hated it, and she hated the fact that she hated using her powers to heal everyone. Well, not everyone, her mind supplied to her darkly, her mind flashing to all the brain patients that were still there in Brockton General, all on life support only because she refused to deal with brains out of fear of becoming a mind controlling villain.

“Come on!” Vicky slapped her knees and stood up, making her snap out of her thoughts. Looking up at the radiant smile on her face, she took Vicky’s hand and stood up as well. “Give me a tour of the fancy facility. I was floating out of the building before, but it warned me that entry without authorised personnel was forbidden. I guess it meant that only patients could have come in?”

Following her, she replied, “Yeah. It is a precaution taken by Grand Chariot, both for safety and for sanitation purposes. They have hard light projections that can take the patients and make sure they are not jostled.”

“Really?” Vicky squealed, “Just like mom’s powers?”

Her mood dimmed at the thought of Carol and having to face her after all of this, but she replied, “Yeah, but they can be shaped into anything we want, as long as the power budget is there.”

“And how big is the power budget?”

She smirked, enjoying the way she knew something that interested Vicky immensely, as she led them to the control rooms that she had partial access to. “Let me show you.”

Vicky giggled, “Ooh. Fancy. They have a whole control room, huh?”

“Yeah, but most of everything can be controlled by tablets, by voice, or just by using these bands that they gave us.”

Vicky leaned forward to inspect the sleek band on her wrist. “Like the ones Dragon gave out? But these look much smaller than hers.”

Yes, they were much smaller but had all the features one could want and more.

Her interest in the control room was much higher than her band. Vicky went about exploring the room, and she just sat back as Vicky did so, as operating it required this band, and without it, Vicky could press all the buttons she wanted; nothing would happen.

As Vicky moved about the control room, deliberately pressing buttons and pulling levers for shits and giggles, she opened the band as the notification light was on and read the first warning that she had gotten from the band.

She expanded that notification, as her eyes widened when she read what it was.

Warning - Master effect detected. 

Perpetrator - Vicky Dallon (Glory Girl)

Effect - Love bombing, Emotional imprinting

Victim - Amy Dallon (Panacea)

Effects - A heightened level of attraction, sexual or otherwise, with overflowing positive feelings as a result of dopamine being flooded by the brain. 

Power efficacy - Low (For short term exposure)

Long Term Effects - Irreversible attraction to the Master. Brainwashing into becoming a puppet.

More effects to be studied.

____xx___

Brockton Bay

–Ashley Brent–

Hopefully, that should be enough to give Panacea a wake-up call. After going through some of the things that Grand Chariot had on her, she honestly could not understand why they did not just kill her and be done with it.

It was legitimately what she would have done, despite her distaste for killing people for things they had no control over.

An unrestrained biostriker was being Mastered by her own sister, all the time, for years on end, and no one noticed.

The potential for disaster here was the same as or even beyond that of an Endbringer attack.

She was looking at a S-class disaster, walking around in a doctor’s coat.

So, she had taken the warnings to heart and decided to take baby steps.

Hopefully, this should help her realise that she was being Mastered and confirm that for herself.

After that, she could see what she could do to remove Amy Dallon from the Dallon Family. That was a walking time bomb, and the longer Amy had this mindset, the bigger the disaster was going to be when she inevitably exploded.

Looking at the dozen things she had to coordinate, on top of doing stuff like this, she sighed and got to work.

She deserved a raise after this; that much was clear.