19

Chapter 19: Sat, Feb 5

Since Crystal wasn't planning on coming over until mid-morning, you decide to pop over and stalk a teenage girl check in on Taylor. At the abandoned building you used for an apparition spot you can see her in the distance jogging and not doing a great job of it. She must have just started recently. You pop near a bus stop and manage to tag her with a tracker and a diagnostic as she puffs by—the infections are gone and the wounds are healed but the lack of sleep and stress are, if anything, worse.

You wait until she's a couple of blocks away before popping away, casting a bug ward spell to cleanse yourself and transfiguring your clothes to look more like a tracksuit. Grabbing some water bottles you put yourself in her future path and start jogging. You do a block and a half before you stop and act like you're tired, puffing and pulling on your water. Taylor arrives a short time later looking wrung out. At least you don't have to overact to be concerned.

"Holy shit, are you okay?" You take a step or two closer to her and move your hands like you don't want to invade her personal space.

Taylor's glasses are fogged up but you manage a basic connection. There's some crazy background information flowing through her head that must be the multi-tasking but you're able to filter it out easily enough. You hold out the unopened bottle as well as hitting her with some medical charms will assist in muscle regrowth and reduce fatigue.

"T-thanks," she pants, and you strike up an inane conversation about the little you know of jogging while checking her mind over. While she's not as directly bad as Amy, she's in a pretty bad state. You can see where she's been tempted to use her bugs to do something to the Trio, but has distracted herself by focusing on her 'horrible pudgy belly' and jogging, which worked this week. You don't know if it'll continue working like in canon, or if she'll snap and suddenly they'll come down with super-crabs or something.

Unfortunately, now isn't the time to try mind-surgery, so you toss the girl a wave and head off in a different direction. Perhaps you could start jogging with her in the mornings and provide some kind of moral support?

Crystal arrives an hour or so later, sits in a kitchen chair and crosses her legs. "Get changed. I want to talk to—" she tilts her head down and deepens her voice, "—Warlock."

"You're about to say some bullshit, aren't you?"

"Get changed!" she demands, so you shuffle in to the bathroom and do so. As soon as you emerge she flies up to you and reaches out to almost touch the mask. "It's not gonna turn me in to a frog, is it?"

Sigh. "No."

Pressing her hand on your mask she pulls it back and cradles one hand to her chest and holds the other up dramatically by her brow. "Oh god! I just cut myself—on the edge." She holds the pose a moment before flying around you and looking you up and down. "Okay Warlock, we need to talk about your fashion choices. If you go out in public, people are going to think you're the villain. Hell, Kaiser wears a crown of blades and looks less edgy, Warlock."

"Are you going to do the deep voice thing every time you say my cape name?"

"Yes."

You hit her with a charm to make her voice sound like a cat and pull your hat and mask off while she meows at you. "This is hazing, and the school said I don't have to put up with it, so nyah." Sticking your tongue out, you shuck the coat and start walking back to the bathroom.

"Me-yow." Looking over your shoulder you see her eyes focused on your ass, so you 'accidentally' drop your hat right before you close the door. She stared so hard you're afraid she might've learned to shoot beams out of her eyes.

When you get to the Pelhams' house you help your girlfriend cart in three bags of dirty clothes and are introduced to Sarah and Neil. Without the tiara on, Sarah has a very unfortunate 'I'd like to speak with the manager' haircut, but otherwise is a very attractive woman, but Neil is a goddamn mountain of a man, and you see a lot of custom doors in the house so he doesn't have to duck down.

After some of the small talk is made, you and Neil end up making lunch while the ladies sit at the kitchen island. Neil seems pretty amused that you changed the battery in Crystal's car. "That's an odd first date, but probably better than the guy who tried to take her to laser tag."

You'd facepalm but you have a knife in your hand so you settle for looking over at Crystal, who has hidden her face in her hands. Looking back over at her father you chuckle. "Seriously? When was this?"

Manpower starts laughing, "Last year. He stood in our house and told me with a straight face that—" he starts belly laughing so you have to turn to Sarah to get the rest of the story. Crystal has turned into a red ball of shame next to her mother.

"That boy said he was looking forward to taking my daughter to do something unusual and new for her." Lady Photon says, trying to keep a straight face by not looking at her hyena-laughing husband.

"Oh. Oh wow." You pound Manpower on the back a couple of times ineffectually as he wipes his eyes. After he's controlled himself you look between Crystal's parents. "He must have been so pretty."

Sarah hides her laugh behind a hand, but Neil gets set off again. Your girlfriend may have overheated, because there's a high-pitched noise coming from that direction.

This is, of course, the point where Amy walks in with headphones and a book. "Uncle Neil, are we doin—" She squeaks and looks around the room, finally settling on you. "Hi?"

You wave one onion-scented hand. "Hey. Lunch will be just a bit?" Worming into her mind you see that the throb of 'Vicky' that occurred whenever Glory Girl's aura touched her has died down, but that just highlights how muted everything else is. To make matters worse, you can detect something adding to Amy's thoughts, little things that don't quite rise to the level of full feelings that seem to be driving her to use her powers. For the rest of the afternoon you manage to keep a handle on the conversation well enough to not raise any eyebrows and instead get a feeling for how her shard is worming things into her brain.

Later that evening as you're looking through what scant tomes there are on mind-healing, you come across a monograph that deals with a long-term love potion patient. It's startlingly close to what's occurring with Amy, and the medi-wizard lays out some work that they did via Legilimency to bring the patient back to something resembling normalcy. Considering that the normal treatment for love potioning is 'Purging potion & Obliviate liberally' it's a step in the right direction. The major problem you see is that it's very long-term and not subtle in the slightest. You'd need to do a lot of staring into Amy's eyes and poking in her brain meat, and you have no idea if that would fly.

C: Hey, dealt with Vicky this evening

C: shield thingy seems to work pretty well.

Good, I hoped it did :J

C: I'm gonna steal the hoodie, can you tinker it tomorrow?

Yup :J