Amy: Monster 1.3

You sighed.

Already in the bathroom you simply disrobed, tossing the pink shirt which Vicky had bought for you off into the laundry pile as you tuned the waters just right for a nice hot bath. You felt, like going out.

Still next to your skin, what had once been a simple plant clung, drinking in water and storing a little in a new succulent layer which you’d added, the waxy substance which all palms used to keep from being dried out or over watered now acted to help hold in the moisture between the bloated layers, their cellulose outer walls stripped and altered to allow a greater level of both growth and shrinkage than the usual cellulose armoured cell-wall of a plant normally would.

You gloried in the shower, the water sweeping down across your skin, down across your creation too. The feeling of rightness so very strange even as you let yourself become accustomed to the entire process, still you fiddled with and shaped what was slowly becoming unrecognizable as a plant.

A careful brush of the now reformed glove piece against your nipple sends a slight thrill though you, not something you normally indulged in, especially with the awkwardness of the usual image which came to mind when such activities began.

Still this new... whatever it was. Which had come over you, was all at once liberating and terrifying.

You knew the monster in the mirror which you could no longer contain, which you no longer wanted to contain.

And yet the very idea of rejection stung hard.

“Fuck my life.” You sighed, even as the warm waters streamed over you in blissful heat, you could practically feel it in your pores as the steam rose up, engulfing you. Thoughts of her elegant neck, the perfect curve of her hips, those strong gentle hands, and piercing eyes consumed you.

You shuddered in both pleasure and self-loathing, as you shifted your gaze down to your creation.

“Well… dam. I guess you can be a masturbation aid or something... I don’t even know why I made this thing.” You sigh, fully aware of it being mere impulse by which you’d done this. The way it felt right against you, burrowing into you was strange, and somehow you didn’t regret it. But then you remembered Ivan, and your good mood crashed.

You were surer than ever that that Merchant tinker had fucked with something inside of your head.

Ok, fuck it. You’re biggest secret was still intact... you were just sliding a bit.

You got out of the shower, a little more confused, a little more happy than when you’d gotten in as you slipped on your bathrobe and headed back to your room. You almost slipped on a magazine strewn about within your room. Some Parahuman Watch junk, you remembered that it had some pictures of pretty blonde PRT girls posing next to Mouse Protector in her own cheesy ‘sexy’ version of her outfit, the huge Mickey Mouse eared helmet on top of the bikini armour which settled on top of her head made for a laughably amusing sight.

You smiled and frowned a little all at once. You’d always liked Mouse Protector, but such mags were usually things that Victoria collected, not you. You preferred books for spending your time with.

So what if you liked Kafka and cheesy romance?

You kicked the offending mag up into your hand, Hah! Manual dexterity! Then with a bit of a straightening of the creases, you stuck it on your desk.

Even as you struggled through the draws to grab a pair of panties, you couldn’t help but think back to Mark... you could cure him, just as you’d done for Ivan, you could fix him so he’d never have a bad day again. Make him the happiest man in the world...

... make him the dad you didn’t deserve.

The thought made you throw yourself back against your bed, still half dressed.

You wanted to do it.

Mark deserved it.

Vicky deserved it.

Hell even Carol probably deserved it.

But you did not. You didn’t deserve the man who would come of the other end, the man who would actually try his hardest to be more than just a fixture in your life, withdrawn into himself as he was assailed by his own personal demons. You didn’t deserve the love care and attention which would come from him. And worse of all was knowing that you could have changed it for him all along save for the rules which now you’d carelessly broken.

Your rules which felt like so much smoke to you now as you thought about them.

You continued to toss on clothing. It was spring, nearing the edge of summer. Warm enough for tee-shirts and all. You chose something long sleeved. You’d always hidden yourself in such, and now you had more than yourself to hide.

You’d go to the library.

Take your mind off of Mark, and the many ways in which you could do this thing for him... avoid it maybe for a little bit longer. Maybe look it up and figure out what people actually knew about it as compared to what your powers told you?

It was worth looking into at least you figured.

Do it by the book right?

Maybe you could figure out what the regime for the anti-depressant drugs were, surprise everyone with something ‘you’d been working on’. Something that seemed like a work-around around the issue of your ‘inability’ to affect the Brian.

Maybe.



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Several somewhat frustrating hours of research later, diving though the biology books and whatever you could find on the internet, and then piecing together the fucking arcane language of the scientific community... you managed to get absolutely nowhere beyond everything you should have known that you knew.

At least you could now name some of the compounds which you knew intrinsically by the described effects and touching Mark right after a bout of his meds.

You’d spent most of the rest of the time fishing around, grabbing books from the fiction section to cool off.

A horror novel from Aleph seemed pretty cool, something about a strange fungus from space that twisted people into shroom farm horrors, spreading its influence slowly across the USA.

A bit funny since with the slow spread and random immunities to the same thing would have had a bare and limited threat with any number of heroes to take care of it quickly. Of course then you had to take into account bastards like Lab-Rat, and Nilbog, who gave bio-tinkers the worst kind of name.

It was an interesting exercise that helped push back the feelings of futility which this excursion had evoked.

Idly you stroked your creation from its position under your drab brown shirt.

Ok, so this hadn’t been the most productive day, but at least you’d read a good book and that was worth something. Or so you mused as you walked out, head down and face half hidden in the too wide turtle-neck of your shirt. You left, more concentrating on your creation than anything else.

…turning a corner only to collide with another parahuman.