Chapter 35: An Iron Will

Brockton Bay, NH, USA
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Type: Steel

A storm of emotions raged inside me as I looked down at Cherie Vasil. She was a pitiful creature. She was petty and selfish, cruel and vindictive. Beneath her pretty face, she possessed many traits I detested in people.

Most of all, she'd crossed the line. Family meant a great deal to me. Whether my team or the children I'd taken under my protection, they gave my life meaning. It was no accident; she planned to hold them hostage against me because she knew how much I cared.

It was an unforgivable offense. With that singular thought, she became a threat I couldn't afford to ignore.

And yet, a part of me still felt for her. She was unmistakably a victim, the product of a truly horrific childhood. Twice now I'd grown up an orphan, but I'd happily take my lot over hers.

For all her bitterness and spite, I didn't consider her an evil person, far from it. As a wise man once said, if an alligator bites you, that doesn't make it evil; that makes it an alligator.

She grew up in an environment which objectified women to the extreme. Her own father set the example that women were toys to be abused and discarded at his whimsy. She was taught to think that the only one she could rely on was herself. Her power continuously reinforced the notion that emotions were… insincere, easily fabricated.

I legitimately couldn't think of a more demeaning, crueler atmosphere for a young girl than this. Could she really be blamed for wanting an extra layer of security to ensure my aid?

And yet, yes, yes she could.

We were all the products of our circumstances, whether that be in surrender or rebellion. In the end, our choices were our own. Great men were great because they rose up in spite of such obstacles.

Cherie chose the easy way out. That didn't make her evil, nor was it a sign of weakness, but it made her untrustworthy, unreliable.

I pitied her. I hated her. Both were equally true.

'What will you do, Blake?' Victini asked. Her voice was warm, the gentle glow of a new dawn.

'She can't be trusted,' I replied tiredly. There was no right answer here, the worst kind of problem.

'No, no she can't. You could leave her with the heroes.'

'No way. I refuse,' I dismissed the idea outright. The PRT had good people, but the organization as a whole? 'No. At best, they'll lock her up without even trying to help her. At worst, they'll get themselves mastered. Not to mention, giving her up means letting the PRT snoop around this orphanage to "investigate."'

'Is that what matters most? Helping her?'

'My family comes first, but… yeah. I guess I feel like things could have been different. What I want for her… I want her to be a better person, or at least, have the opportunity.'

'That'll mean fully cutting ties with her family.'

'I planned to deal with her siblings anyway.'

'As you should. The question is about her though.'

'I know. There isn't an easy answer though.'

'What if there is? Why not give her aura?' Victini proposed.

My thoughts ground to a halt. Aura was a gift. It was what made pokemon special. All throughout history, those few humans who mastered it became legends, heroes and leaders of their time. It wasn't something that was supposed to be given out on a whim.

Yes, Amy received it from Victini, but Amy was Amy. She was Panacea, the greatest healer in the world. She healed and saved so many that play the degrees of connection game, it'd be impossible to find a single person on earth whose life she hadn't impacted in some way. She deserved aura.

'And who decided that? Why? Did you think I gave it to Amy because she earned it? Get real, Blake. No one earns aura,' Victini said sternly. Gone was the playful macaron-gremlin; she was all demigod now. 'Aura is a gift, yes, but it's also a test and an opportunity. Amy, you too actually, received it because aura could help you grow into better people. It's not something daddy gives out to his special little snowflakes. If anything, you could make the case that the people who are most broken deserve it more.'

'I… You're right. I'm sorry,' I apologized. What else could I say? Aura was communion. If that was true, it was the perfect solution to this dilemma. 'A part of me feels like it'd be a gift and I… I guess I want to punish her for threatening the orphans.'

'That's understandable. I can see why you might think I'm rewarding her, but the way I see it, she's like the conductor of an orchestra who never bothered to learn an instrument. She thinks she knows what good music is supposed to be like and doesn't know how to appreciate each individual sound.

'I think that if I give her aura, she'll be forced to commune, to truly feel rather than simply manipulate. And who knows? Maybe when she truly understands, I'll give her her power back.'

'You're going to seal away her power?' I asked. I'd been so caught up with whether I should send her to the PRT or not that I never considered that angle.

Limiting her ability to manipulate emotions without damaging her ability to feel emotions in the first place would have required far more finesse than I could bring to bear. But then again, she wasn't an amateurish human posing as a gardevoir; she was Victini, a bonafide Legend.

'Oh, stop it,' she waved off the unintended compliment. 'It's not even that hard. There's a weird brain tumor in her head that I'm going to close off. In exchange, I'll give her aura. What do you think?'

'You're leaving the choice to me?'

'Of course. I told you, didn't I? I won't interfere with your affairs. In the end, these choices are yours to make, and the consequences will be yours to bear. I just wanted you to consider the option in the first place.'

'I… Yeah, I like this plan. Let her stay. Let her grow. And if she does not…'

'Then at least she'll have had a chance, a real one,' she finished for me.

We returned to the present. Telepathic conversations were, quite literally, at the speed of thought and not even a minute had passed when we turned our attention outward once more.

Cherie looked… defeated. Gone was her confident, malicious glower. There was a palpable aura of resigned acceptance around her. Her hair splayed haphazardly on the roof. Her eyes were tired and dull. She'd made her gambit and lost.

"Do it, then," she whispered spitefully. "Arrest me. Be the big damn hero."

"We're not going to do that," Victini spoke as I withdrew. This was as much her show as mine. "You're not going to the PRT, or your father."

"And what? What do you want?"

"A macaron as big as my head would be nice. Oh, one of those pistachio-flavored ones! They're not my favorite, but I'm getting a hankering for pistachio right now for some reason," she joked. "Oh, from you? Learn. Grow. This whole 'emotions' thing that everyone else seems so hung up on, how about you take some time to figure it out, hmm?"

"What are you talking about?" she demanded. "I know emotions."

"You know how to use emotions. You know now to play them like the conductor of an orchestra. You have such a beautiful gift," Victini said sincerely. "And yet, you appreciate none of it. All those melodies at your fingertips, and they're just tools to you."

"Oh, spare me. You think you're the first person to tell me I'm a sociopath? Newsflash, I'm broken. My siblings and I, we're all fucked up."

"Yes, maybe that's the problem. Your power lets you hear emotions as sounds, but that's such a limiting sensation, isn't it? You hear, but you fail to experience. You're like a child who hears a bedtime story; it's all secondhand for you. Yup! We're making the right choice with you, after all."

"What the hell–!"

The air hummed with Victini's presence. This kind of nuanced psychic manipulation was the equivalent of neurosurgery. No, that was exactly what the Legend was planning. I was no parahuman scientist, but even I knew what severing the corona and gemma meant.

Azure flames swirled around us as Victini alighted on Cherie's chest. She reached out and placed a paw delicately over her breast. Her heart beat frantically under our touch. She flinched, as though the flames would scorch her black, but the flames did not harm her even as they seeped into her skin.

Cherie's eyes widened in awe as the spark of aura settled in her soul. The igniting of aura was supposed to be unique for everyone, as varied as there were individuals. Amy, that skeptic hadn't even noticed she had aura until I'd explained it to her.

Me? I had Luca to draw on then. I'd felt the warmth of his soul like my own personal sun. It'd felt as though I'd only just learned to see color. The world had felt so much more vibrant, so much more alive.

I wondered what Cherie felt. Did she interpret aura much as she did her power, as sounds and melodies she could now fully appreciate? Or would she be like Amy, skeptical and in denial of her very soul?

No, that wasn't right. I could see it in her eyes, the realization that there had been a profound change in her. She could not describe it, but she knew it was there. I wondered if it was her power that had made her more sensitive to empathic shifts.

I watched as Victini tapped the young woman's skull. It was such a casual act, almost whimsical in its simplicity. What would have taken brain surgeons hours was the work of a moment with Victini.

"W-What did you do to me?" Cherie asked. I could tell; she had no idea how to feel. Her emotions whiplashed between terror and awe as she had the closest thing to a religious experience a mortal on Earth-Bet could hope for.

"I sealed your power," Victini said with a happy giggle, "and gave you something more valuable in exchange. Aura is the light of the soul, the light of communion."

"Aura…?"

"I told you, didn't I? Learn. Grow."

"You've killed me. You think my brothers will leave me alone? They'll just drag me–"

"Shh. You act like Blake would ever let that happen. You'll have his protection. Move forward. Start anew. Emotions. Relationships. They have power you can't even dream of."

"I… I don't understand…"

"I know. Until you do, stick around, okay? Blake is a huge goofball, but there's a reason he's dad's Paragon. He just might teach you something."

"So you're going to keep me in a cage again."

"Not a cage. Hmm… Think of it like school, okay?"

"I hated school."

"Deal with it. Now, it's time to go back to sleep."

"Wha-Wait!"

"Remember, if Blake bullies you too much, you can bribe me with macarons."

X

"Good morning, everyone," I said with a stifled yawn. Victini was awesome, but she could be exhausting to host.

"Good morning, Blake," Mrs. Wells greeted me warmly. She handed me a bowl of yogurt, granola, and berries before ushering me out of the kitchen. "You're almost late for school. It's not like you."

"Yeah, sorry, Mrs. Wells. I guess I'm a little tired from my work study. Did you know rabbits can get addicted to food? Like humans with cigarettes."

"Really? I didn't know that."

"Mhmm, too much sugar is awful for them. Dr. Camacho's trying to wean one off fruits and it's a hot mess at the clinic right now."

"That poor dear. I hope it'll be alright."

"I'm sure she'll be fine. She's basically in bunny rehab," I said, subtly eyeing Cherie from across the kitchen.

The older girl looked down at her food and refused to meet my gaze. She quietly ate her breakfast and began cleaning up after the little ones. I didn't know if I'd made the right choice last night, but time would tell.

X

School let out and I immediately headed to the ferry station to get changed. As furious as I'd been and still was with Cherie, I fully intended to keep my word. I'd allowed Victini to depower Cherie in exchange for gifting her aura. As such, she was my responsibility now.

It felt a little like adopting a puppy I didn't plan for. Except, instead of wetting the carpet, she might potentially get lots of people killed. And instead of slapping her on the nose with a rolled up newspaper, I'd have to seriously consider snapping her neck.

Regardless, she was mine to protect now, and that meant looking for her brothers. A part of me wondered if I should give them aura as well, but I'd already seen Faultline's reports. Not only were they completely unrepentant, they enjoyed the rape and murder they got to commit under their father. They couldn't be allowed to run amok in my city.

Unfortunately, tracking them was proving to be more difficult than I would have preferred. Cherie had seemed certain that her brothers would come for her, and she'd been rather hasty in her actions, but I had no guarantee that they were in town at this very moment. So really, it wasn't "tracking" as much as it was preparing for their arrival.

I wanted to pick them up as soon as they stepped foot in Brockton without giving them the slightest chance to prepare. "Spawn-camping," my little brothers would have called it. I had psychics in my arsenal, but even metagross was of limited use in this regard.

That was a common misconception about psychics. Back in my world, people assumed that psychics ought to be able to prevent any crime with precognition. Barring that, they ought to be able to capture any suspect. After all, psychics had foresight, psychometry, and could scan emotions and intentions, right?

All true, but those were each distinct disciplines, with sometimes contradictory mindsets and prerequisites. Precious few psychics could do it all, just as a boxer wasn't a fencer nor a marksman.

If things really were that simple, Saffron City would have been completely crime-free, what with the world's greatest human psychic taking Leadership there. Steven Stone and that monster metagross of his would have had Maxie and Archie strung up like dried sardines before they got anywhere near the Orbs.

But that wasn't what happened. And it wasn't all because ghost and dark types existed either. Those active protections couldn't be on all the time. Even Victini couldn't just find Cherie's brothers, not when we'd never met them before to track their psychic signatures.

First things first, I had to be reasonably sure that they weren't yet in the city. I spent three hours hopping from place to place as kirlia because metagross wasn't suited for the task.

The steel behemoth was a fantastic bruiser, damn near unparalleled in close-range telekinesis, but empathy? Nah, that thing was as ice cold as a porygon. I needed a kinder, softer sort of psychic.

Unfortunately, that meant I received pings from every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Heartbreaker's brats were unrepentant rapists and murderers, but that didn't mean they were causing such heightened levels of misery right this moment. And even though the Empire was gone and the ABB was keeping its head down, that didn't mean the city was free of violent crime.

'The man behind you has a gun,' Victini warned me. She'd been doing a ride-along of sorts, saying she'd like to see a bit more of the city I now called home.

I turned and telekinetically snatched the pistol out of his hand, putting a sharp twist to break the index finger that had been curled around the trigger. 'Thanks, Victini.'

'You're welcome. You're really improving as a psychic, you know. Don't let yourself get so down.'

'All thanks to you.' And it was. The value of having a Legend in your mind willing to coach you through basic psychic abilities couldn't be overstated. I still didn't think I could match a kirlia trained by an expert, but I thought I'd do decently well against any wild one. 'I still can't narrow down where they are though, if they're here at all. We've stopped four armed robberies, one sexual assault, and two drug deals that went wrong already.'

'And were they not worth stopping?'

'They were, but I feel like I'm playing whack-a-mole.'

'We can at least be reasonably sure that they're not around. Or if they are, they're being very careful. The file you got from that Faultline woman doesn't suggest they're the careful type though.'

'True… I think I've gotten as much as a psychic broad area psychic screening can give me out of this.'

'Probably. In a thousand years of life, I've never seen a more crime-ridden city. Not even the slums of Virbank are this bad.'

'Tell me about it,' I agreed. Kirlia fed on positive emotions. Being an emoti-vore in Brockton Bay was a bit like intentionally gargling sewage; it left me with a pervasive unclean feeling that I couldn't scrub away. It was a big part of why I'd avoided practicing with this form for so long.

'If it makes you feel better, even I can't find people I've never met before. I mean, I guess I could peek inside every mind we come across to see what they saw in the past few days, but that'd take forever.'

'Yeah, I figured. I think I'll take another approach though.'

'Oh?'

'I didn't want to make a habit of relying on her, but I'm really not sure what else to do. I think I should pay Lisa a visit. She should be able to make better use of the information I got from Faultline.'

I shifted back and checked my phone. To my surprise, I had three missed calls, all from Amy Dallon. Curious, I called her back.

"Hey, Ames, what's going on?" I asked.

"Menagerie, where are you? Do you have any idea what day it is?" she demanded. She sounded rather frustrated.

"Uhh… Let me check… Wednesday? I'm at the intersection of Pewter Avenue and Sixteenth. Why?"

"You… Dragon came by to pick up oran berries. Did you forget that was today?"

"Ah, fuck. Sorry, Ames."

"I told you about it in school yesterday."

"I got caught up with something important."

"More important than berries?'

"Kinda?" I deflated. "Okay, not more impactful, but definitely more urgent at least."

"Fine, I get it. I trust you."

"Thanks."

"And you said you wanted a drug empire. Bitch, you couldn't rule a chicken coop," she snarked.

"Did she already drop by?" I asked. "If not, I can be there right away."

"Don't bother. Dragon came by in a small, personal aircraft. She picked up the berries I grew but didn't have time to stick around because of some Guild thing."

"I owe her an apology."

"Eh, she seemed chill. I don't think she was actually upset. Oh, and she says she's also started making prototype hammerspace bags and teleporters. She's still working out the science but she's optimistic. Wanna tell me what that was about?"

"Porygon. It's that digital pokemon that made the Legacy of Steel game," I explained. "I had a few blueprints of tech from my old world."

"Your old world had teleporters? Non-tinkertech teleporters?"

"Yup. I figured that if anyone can make good use of those blueprints, it's Dragon. I don't know if they can be mass produced with Earth-Bet's technology, but they should still set her own tinkering forward a few decades. Anyway, thanks for settling that for me."

"No problem. You owe me, though."

"I'm teaching you magic karate."

"You owe me double for that. That shit's torture."

"Do you have any idea how many people would literally kill to train under me?"

"And none of them are on Earth-Bet. Don't think I forgot how you threatened me with jolteon cuddles."

"I have steel today. Not exactly the cuddliest type."

"Victini exists. She deserves more cuddles."

'I do,' she agreed shamelessly. 'I deserve all the cuddles and pastries. Amy's great.'

'You're only saying that because you suckered her into buying you hundreds of dollars in macarons,' I shot back.

'I fail to see your point.'

'Glutton.'

'And proud. This fluff doesn't fluff itself, buster.'

"Victini says she would like to empty your wallet," I drawled.

"Ah… Maybe next time? My family's rich, but we're not that rich."

I shook my head. "No. You don't say, 'Maybe next time,' Ames. What's wrong with you? You say a hard 'No.' Otherwise, Victini will eat the clothes off your back."

"But she's adorable," she whined. "You can't say no to a face like that."

'Exactly, Blake. You're a heartless monster,' the nigh-on immortal rabbit said.

'Incorrect. Amy is just a sucker for cute things.'

'Both these things can be true.'

"I tell Victini 'no' all the time. You're just weak, Ames," I told her. "Anyway, I've gotta go. I'm still not done."

"What are you doing? Since when are you this busy? You don't even have work study today."

"Tracking down Heartbreaker's kids."

"Oh, have fu-Wait, what?"

"Yup. This is the 'more urgent' thing I was talking about."

"Should I tell Aunt Sarah?"

"No, definitely not. I'm not even sure if they're already in the city and panicking around masters sounds like a terrible idea. I've got this."

"Okay, be careful."

"I'm largely immune. And even if I get mastered, Victini would have something to say about that."

"Got it. Later, Menagerie."

"Later, Panpan."

Author's Note

Blake essentially had three standard options when it came to Cherie: kill her off, send her to the PRT, or cut her loose.

Killing her would be valid for canon Cherie, but she's not that person yet. I did say Blake has killed before in his old world, but those were men like Cyrus and Giovanni, people with nowhere near enough self-restraint to avoid poking gods. Blake cannot bring himself to make that kind of decision against Cherie.

Sending her to the PRT was also unacceptable for reasons he explained in-story. They will either abuse her power for their own ends, or she'll use her power to take over whatever prison she gets sent to before walking free. Not only would this reinforce Cherie's internalized worldview that people only want to use her, it would give the PRT reason to investigate the orphanage where she worked.

And obviously, he can't cut her loose. Her judgment is heavily suspect. A part of me wanted to go this route, only to have her join the S9 like in canon. She'd then accelerate their visit and nominate Blake, blaming him for pushing her away. It would have been an interesting dynamic, but this isn't that kind of story.

So, I went with the AtLA method. Not only is Blake a shonen protagonist, there is enough precedence from his interference in Elle's mind that I felt it's okay with Victini's help. I also felt that the parallels between Cherie's power and aura were similar enough.

Jokes… Here's a joke:

Q: Who should you go to if you want to learn about tea?

A: From your tea-cha.

Yeah, I have no idea who comes up with these bilingual puns either. They're so awful they wrap around to being funny again.

Thank you to everyone who paid for my groceries. I have a Pat-re-on and Kofi with dozens of chapters written across my various stories. If you'd like to read ahead, I recommend Pat-re-on. If you're interested in commissioning me, instructions are on Kofi.