After deciding to copy Panacea’s power I realized that I would need to come in contact with her.

Why? Because in order to receive her biokinesis, I would need to feel and understand it, I would need it to be used on me.

This would require me to meet her at Brockton Bay General hospital, however, this lead to a small problem, How would I meet her?

After all, I couldn’t just see her for without a reason. She was busy healing at the hospital and even if she wasn’t, there was no reason that she would let some random guy meet her, let alone touch her.

I could take the chance of meeting her randomly on the street in locations that she frequented or waiting for her outside of her school. But as soon as I thought of these possible ideas I dissected their flaws.

Regarding the first idea: meeting her in the street. Well, I didn’t know how long it would take me to find her randomly out on the streets. There was a much lower chance that I would. Even if I did, there was no guarantee that she would heal me.

The other option was to go to Arcadia High and wait for her to come out after finishing school. While I could do so and most likely meet her within a day or two, it would mean that I would easily meet New Wave starting with Vicky Dallon AKA Glory Girl. She was Amy Dallon’s sister, who happened to have a forcefield that let her be a flying brick and also had a mind-controlling aura that alternated between complete adoration and absolute terror.

I would probably copy her forcefield but not her master abilities. This would lead me to being vulnerable to her aura and together with Panacea, she could easily knock me out or even accidentally kill me. If I was captured I would end up locked in captivity and have to escape without copying Biokinesis.

While there was a large chance that I could overwhelm Vicky’s forcefield and neutralise her, it meant that I would no longer be able to receive Panacea’s healing. Amy loved Vicky and anyone who would harm her would never receive any treatment from her and perhaps even be purposefully harmed.

So the only option left was meeting her at the hospital, I would have to harm myself to gain access to Panacea. The next problem was deciding under which identity I would meet her. As a civilian who had injured himself?

No, that wouldn’t work. She would instantaneously know that I am a Parahuman. As soon as she touched me she would sense my Corona Pollentia. This meant that I would have to craft an identity that had a power, that triggered.

Perhaps I would meet her under the persona of a fresh trigger who had triggered with a self-harming power? It was a plausible option but still not as perfect. Maybe as a victim of a crime, but then I would need to shoot or stab myself multiple times for it to be serious enough to require Panacea.

This led to the problem of staying conscious. I would lose a lot of blood and I wasn’t sure if I could stay awake long enough to reach the hospital, much less to copy her power. Perhaps as a long term trigger that as a result of not using his power enough it mutilated its user, like Leet’s power.

No, I would need something that wouldn’t cause too much suspicion on her part. I had it! I would pretend that I was a fresh trigger who was testing his powers and got injured? I was aiming to be a hero and save people.

Yes, this one was the best, it was convincing and a common enough occurrence that the authorities wouldn’t look into the situation too deeply. I knew that I didn’t need a secret identity since I technically didn’t exist, so it wouldn’t be a problem to show my face.

If worse came to mind then I could simply enter my Stand’s pocket space and command my Stand to leave.

However, I still had not addressed the issue of actually meeting Panacea. As soon as Panacea touched someone she was aware of every part of their body. This meant that she would know when I would lie to her unless I steered the conversation.

I knew that she was an introvert and rather passive as a result of her mental and physical abuse at the hands of Carol Dallon and Glory Girl’s brainwashing aura. And after all, I wasn’t technically lying. I was a fresh trigger and I could get my Stand to burn my hand. Yes, this is what I would do.

Now to address the next issue. How would I set up the meeting? Almost every worm fanfiction that I read had the main character coming into the hospital and instantaneously meeting her. But that didn’t make sense.

Panacea was a very busy hero and people would fly from all over the US because of her miraculous healing powers. This meant that she was constantly at work healing life-threatening injuries. In order to get healed, I would need to use my powers to jump the waiting list.

It was essential that I would not delay copying Panacea’s power. Not only was it incredibly powerful and versatile it would also grant me the ability to copy master, thinker, tinker and certain stranger powers. Without it, my growth would be very stunted.

I would have to seriously injure myself. At least my arm and chest in order to be seen and at least down to the bone. Yes, my plan should work. However, if I didn’t time it right then there was a chance of dying or at the very least crippling myself.

I decided that I would set my hand on fire and let the fire creep up my arm and onto my chest. The flames would burn my body for a few seconds and then I would douse it with freezing water. My flames were hotter than natural fire, so I would have to be incredibly careful.

I summoned my Stand. I had noticed that while it responded to my summons, there was a slight delay. Normally it wouldn’t be a problem but in combat where a multitude of attacks came in the span of seconds a delay of a second or two was very important.

I tried to think of how to solve my Stand problem while at the same time gathering the resolve to burn myself. It was incredibly difficult to hurt yourself knowingly, especially such a serious wound like the one I was planning on inflicting. I hadn’t ever been injured to the degree that I was planning to hurt myself. While I had broken my leg when I was 15 it wasn’t that bad and healed within a month.

I breathed in and out rapidly. This burn was going to really hurt.

As I gathered my resolve I let my thoughts wander. I returned to thinking about the slightly annoying feeling of summoning my Stand. I had to make sure that it was perfect. After all, it was my strongest power at the moment.

Let’s see, what do both stands and projections have that mine doesn’t? Well first they have powers, so does mine. They also have Users, so does mine once again. They also have names, so does mi-. Wait, is that what was missing? A name.

I can’t believe that despite the many hours of experimenting, I only thought about giving my Stand a name now. What should I call my Stand? What about Firestorm? No, it didn’t fit my Stand’s unique traits and it was also too cliche.

How about Whirlpool? But that was also unsuitable. I continued to try to think of names for the next few seconds, before realising that I probably wouldn’t manage to find a name at the moment.

I finally gathered my resolve and decided to command my Stand to burn me now, otherwise, I would just back out. My Stand floated closer to me to allow for greater precision and I commanded it to set my flesh on fire.

I immediately felt the pain. It was so fucking painful. It wasn’t gradually heating up, no it was at a high temperature from the beginning and was climbing quickly. I screamed and screamed in agony.

‘fuck. Fuck! Fuck! FUCK! FUCk! FUCK!’ I chanted in my head as I let out many screams. I was lucky that I was in the docks, the most impoverished place in the city. Nobody cared or interfered in anyone’s business. So no one would come to see what was going on. At most, people would assume that some gang members had decided to hurt someone.

The flames burned brighter and with a much higher intensity than before. I felt the fire leave my control as I stopped concentrating on my stand and merely wished the fire to stop burning. I felt as if my entire body was on fire. I used the last of my consciousness to command my stand to douse me in water.

I blacked out right after.

****************************************************************************************************

As I awoke, I felt the pain. I was currently lying on my back surrounded by a broken concrete floor. It took me a few seconds to stop focusing on the pain and discover that I was on the ground of the warehouse.

I summoned my Stand and surveyed myself through its eyes to assess the damage. The first thing that I saw was the black and red charred flesh that was my torso and the left side of my neck.

Luckily it hadn’t made itself up to my face. My light blue shirt had also melted onto my chest which certainly felt terrible. On my arm specifically my wrist some bone was showing, the fire had melted away the skin and flesh that covered it. All in all my body looked terrible.

I physically couldn’t move my left arm at all. I knew intellectually that damaging myself to such a degree was a necessary step to accomplishing my goal but it certainly made it difficult to focus on completing the current steps.

I felt that I had wasted enough time and I commanded my Stand to pick me up from the floor using his aerokinesis. I knew that if my Stand had any associations to fire then the PRT would attempt to imprison it and then interrogate it.

It would carry the suspicion that it had harmed me. Even if it didn't, the PRT was so hopelessly corrupt that it was possible that fame-hungry heroes such as Armsmaster would desire to simply put a “villian” away for harming a civilian. And even excluding the PRT and heroes, there was still the issue of Thoman Calvert, also known as Coil.

Coil was the villain mastermind that was pulling the strings of all of the main organizations in Brockton Bay. Unfortunately, that included the PRT, he was currently employed there as a PRT consultant. Calvert had a keen eye for parahuman talent and would recruit anyone available with whatever means necessary.

He wasn’t above kidnapping and drugging young children, so there wasn’t any doubt that he could order for my Stand to be detained and then break him out. It would make him seem like a villain and the Stand would receive lots of unwanted attention. He would then blackmail my Stand into joining his organization.

Now, this was impossible as it was my stand and it would simply disappear once it left my range. But that would still put me on the PRT’s radar and possibly halt my healing.

So I forced my stand to only use its aerokinesis. It took on the appearance of a humanoid made of wind. I had it shield me from the wind and air in an attempt to lessen the air resistance and thus lower the damage that I would take from the movement. I then jetted off into the sky and flew to the hospital.

My Stand flew us as quickly as possible to the Hospital. We quickly left the Docks and passed the impoverished sections of the city. My Stand quickly arrived at the upper-class area of Brockton Bay, this was where the richer and well off families lived.

At least by Brockton Bay standard, when the gangs had started and the sea trade had stopped most of the rich and influential businessmen had moved to safer cities.

This led to the real estate companies lowering the prices for the properties due to there being no buyers. Brockton Bay was a shithole that was filled with the most parahuman criminals in all of the US. The criminals included the E88, a gang that had over 10 powerful capes in their gang and was famous all over the country as the central hub for neo-nazis and purists.

There was also Lung the cape who had managed to fight Leviathan solo and had fought off several superhero teams, meaning that the only people that lived in Brockton Bay were those who loved the city and those too poor to leave.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Luckily Brockton Bay General hospital was quite noticeable from high up, with all the capes in the city there was a large glowing H on the building’s front to make it seen from far away.

I was sure that it was built after many heroes and villains weren’t able to find the hospital and arrived with worse injuries. The hospital was quite a tall building, something that set it apart from most of Brockton Bay. There weren’t many tall buildings in the city, with only a few Skyscrapers in the upper-class districts.

After a few minutes of mind-numbing agony. I arrived at the hospital entrance and allowed myself to drop down. I had thought that with a little bit of time the pain would dull slightly at the very least, it turned out that instead of dulling it had only grown worse.

My eyes had started to tear up from the pain. I couldn’t consciously control my tear ducts, not with all of my focus spent trying to control my Stand without falling or worse blacking out. That meant that secondary needs such as controlling my tears weren’t as high a priority.

As soon as I landed on the pavement outside the hospital, I collapsed. Unfortunately at the moment, my body was that of a base-line human. I had no enhancements, upgrades or any unique training, this meant that I had quite a low pain tolerance which led to me to have involuntary bodily reactions.

I focused on sending my Stand away to not bring too much attention. I wasn’t ready for my Stand to enter the playing field yet. I was sure that it would receive either a good reputation as an anonymous cape that helped those in need and didn’t take credit.

The other option was that he would receive a bad reputation as a violent cape, perhaps a villain. Either way, it didn't matter, what I needed at the moment was Panacea’s powers after that I wouldn’t need any secret identity. Once I copied her Biokinesis, I would have all the necessary tools to gain all the power needed.

At that point, I would have enough power to defeat all who stood in my way with the exception of Scion and perhaps the Endbringers. I concentrated on Presence, while it was passively activated it would only warn me of threats. I had to focus on it to actually sense everything that surrounded me.

People were already starting to gather around me. One of the bystanders had already run to call for some hospital staff to come and help me. There were a few bystanders who were doing their best to calm me down. I wasn’t faking the amount of pain I was in. By that point my eyes were tearing up, I had serious burns all over my body and on my arm there was even a section that had burnt right through the flesh to the bones.

This had happened during the flight to the hospital. Some of the charred muscle and skin had already fallen off. This resulted in the horrific sight that was my body. Around me was a small crowd that numbered between 6-15 people, most that were just unsure of what to do.

However, there were two or three that were doing their best to help me. I noticed that there were a few people that were filming me and my injuries. I knew that there was now an almost 100% chance that the Protectorate and by extension Coil would know about myself.

This didn’t necessarily mean that I was at risk of being a cape but it would raise suspicions. This meant that I would have to set my plans in motion earlier than I wanted to.

Using Presence I sensed the two Paramedics running out to get me with a stretcher between them. I soon saw them with my own two eyes as they cleared the crowd without much difficulty.

Now that the crowd had been told what to do they moved almost instantaneously and the few men that had been trying to reassure me that I would be alright were the last to move.

The Paramedics must have been on a break since they were usually positioned with ambulances. I also noticed that one had a fresh coffee stain on his thigh, he must have been drinking his cup of coffee before hearing the frantic bystander who had rushed into the hospital to get help.

As we made our way into the hospital I was rushed to an emergency room. Almost immediately a male doctor came and introduced himself as Dr Smith. He started checking up on me and immediately started bombarding me with questions. “When did this happen? Where is the most painful? Where I was at when I was burned?...”

After a few minutes, he determined that I couldn’t be healed by normal technology. I required Panacea. If it was just the wound they could stabilize me long enough for Panacea to deal with more urgent cases.

But due to the high chance that the wound was already infected, I was likely to die within the next few hours. Normally this wouldn’t be the case but because of how dirty and full of discarded drugs the docks were, the bacteria there were much more toxic.

Dr Smith and a few nurses told me to wait, Panacea would arrive soon. A few minutes later I sensed a teenage girl walk down the hall to my room using Presence and I saw her as soon as she entered.

Panacea was a young girl. She was wearing her costume. A robe with a large red cross on her chest and her back. Her hood was down and her scarf was tied to her waist like a sash. But her face was what really made an impression.

She wasn’t incredibly beautiful or attractive if anything she was a bit below average. However, her expression showed just how different she was compared to the usual doctors. They usually pretended to smile when they saw a patient or did their best to reassure them.

But her face had her emotions shown clearly on her face. Boredom, mixed with apathy and hints of hatred. Of course, as she got closer, she covered it up with an artificial smile that would have convinced me that she was happy if I hadn’t known how much she hated being in the hospital.

Using Presence I focused on reading her body’s movements and I noticed that her body was slightly trembling and her eyes were blinking rapidly. This was an indication that she was incredibly exhausted and stressed. She was burnt out.

When I was younger I had watched a few documentaries that had stated that a high percentage of surgeons and medical staff who were overworked and stressed out would burn out.

If they didn’t take a break and go to therapy then they would either quit their profession or they would commit suicide. The burden of being in charge over a person’s life and death is a very stressful position, something that most people are unable to fathom let alone do.

The job itself, tending to a patient for a good few hours while maintaining their concentration was incredibly exhausting. While Panacea could probably heal the worst injuries in minutes, it didn’t change the fact that it was still incredibly straining. There was also the social aspect.

They had to reassure the patients and tell them that they would be okay. They also had to deal with patients' families, it wasn’t an easy job. Panacea was like a celebrity, people wanted her attention and who knew what kind of obnoxious people she had to deal with.

This insight let me understand that she probably wouldn’t care about me and just want to move onto the next patient. As she stepped closer I saw her eyes slightly widen when surveying the damage. Most patients don't come into the hospital with such gruesome injuries.

She motioned for the doctor to leave and most of the medical staff left leaving only a nurse. She touched me and began surveying the damage at the same time I focused on her touch with all of my being.

She began healing me in complete silence. I felt my body’s flesh breakdown and move towards my injured torso and arm. It was a miraculous sight, in front of my very eyes my overweight body was becoming thinner as my fat was converted into raw biomass that was used to repair my body. These thoughts were pushed away as I focused on copying her power.

After I copied her Biokinesis, I moved onto copying her thinker power which let her sense and understand biology. I surveyed her body using her hand as a connection to her body and focused on her brain. It was there that I looked at all her nervous system using my rudimentary knowledge of biology.

There was so much going on, especially in her brain. Using what I found there I managed to translate it into sensations and managed to copy her secondary thinker power. It was more difficult than expected but the payoff was worth it. Her power was simply amazing.

As soon as I copied her thinker power to know the body I knew everything that was going on in her body. I suddenly knew the normal human template. I had received millions of biological blueprints that made up the world’s biology, this included animals, plants and even bacteria.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t as well versed in these things and neither as Panacea. She focused primarily on humans so while I had theoretical knowledge I would have to experiment on the necessary specimens to accumulate the necessary knowledge to understand how to operate on these lifeforms.

But I did know how a normal healthy human being should look and focused again on Amy. This would be my first opportunity to use Biokinesis on another creature. I wanted to first scan her body, I knew that Glory Girl’s aura should have inflicted long term harm to her body and I wanted to understand it.

I scanned her body and the results showed that she suffered from a bit of malnutrition (easily fixed with a balanced diet), some weakness (probably from the stress) and a mild shortage in vitamin D. The body received vitamin D from being in the sun for a sufficient amount of time(Probably being indoors for too long).

However, all these issues were quite common according to my new medical knowledge. What really stood out to me was her brain. There was a difference in comparison to the average human in her Amygdala, Hippocampus, Prefrontal Cortex, Hypothalamus, Cingulate Gyrus, Ventral Tegmental Area.

All these areas in the brain were in charge of emotions. Translating the brain’s thoughts into understandable language meant that she wasn’t mentally healthy and there was also a major difference in the romantic love section.

Amy was mentally abused since she arrived in the Dallon household, this meant that she had low self-worth, zero confidence and anxiety. There were a few other issues that were a result of her emotional abuse but they were the primary issues.

On the other hand, her thoughts on a romantic relationship were all about her sister Victoria “Vicky” Dallon. This wasn’t natural, rather it was the result of a long term artificial master effect. This was because of Vicky’s aura. It had twisted what should have been sisterly love and affection into forced feelings of romantic love.

Now I had so many options on my next few steps. I could kill her right at this moment ending her life. I could program a virus that would kill her over the week, over months. I could tweak her brain slightly to change her feelings of love toward Glory Girl to myself.

I could do so many things but I decided against them. I wasn’t quite sure how this would change canon and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to change it quite yet. So while she was healing me I set several mental blocks that would work in her subconscious.

She would be unable to stop any of my creations without my express permission. She couldn’t scan my brain, change it or hurt it. She couldn’t cause any harm to me, this included verbal, or physical harm.

She couldn’t spread my secrets and she most certainly couldn’t make any indications that she had any of these restrictions. She would also want to listen to my words as long as they didn’t go against her worldview. I also made it so that I would seem like a good person and she would slowly warm up to me and care about me on the same level as Victoria.

Now with these blocks in her subconscious, it would seem to her as a simple gut instinct or a bad feeling. If she truly tried to break these commands she would forget what happened, erase all evidence and return to a point prior to the situation.

All this occurred in the few minutes that she healed me, now while she technically could read my mind and stop me from placing these blocks. She would have to focus on reading my thoughts. This meant that she would have to stop her or at the very least slow down her healing of my burns.

She hadn’t. So she didn’t know about my placing the blocks and even if she discovered this now, she wouldn’t be able to do a thing. I waited until she finished healing and healing my body. All of the burns had disappeared and I had lost most of my fat.

She looked at me with a tired look on her face. “You will be experiencing some temporary weakness for a few days. You will also need to eat more, I burnt through your fats, luckily there was enough stored up in your body to substitute the damaged tissue.”

“Then it was lucky that I packed those pounds, right? See this as a sign that it’s ok ta’ let loose and enjoy yourself. Me mum’s always tellin’ me that I have to look af’er my weight and eat healthily yada, yada, yada.”

I made an effort to seem annoying and shallow. That mixed with my deliberate Scottish accent would hopefully cause Panacea to leave more quickly. I had lived in Scotland for a few years and had picked up the Scottish accent, but when I deliberately made my accent incredibly difficult to understand.

“No, that isn’t right at all. Mr...?”

“Thomson, John Thomson. Nice to meet you Panacea, thanks for fixin’ me up. I really appreciate it.”

“As I was saying, no you should eat healthily. While I was healing your injuries I noticed that your liver was slowly being damaged. It means that it wouldn’t show but over time you would become sick and eventually die in your late 40s to early 50s. I fixed it but you shouldn’t go back into your prior eating habits.”

“Wow, thanks for tellin’ me. I'll be careful, I promise.”

I could tell that I was getting on her nerves. She looked like she wished that she could disappear from the room in a heartbeat. It surprised me that she didn’t ask me from where I was, most people, when they heard me speak, would stop me and try guessing.

“One last thing before I go. I noticed that you have a Corona Pollentia. I don’t like making assumptions but I think that your injuries are a direct result of either being in a cape fight or testing your power. Am I correct?”

I froze on purpose. This was why I came up with the cover story that I planned earlier. I would really have to use all of my non-existent acting skills.

“How, how do ya know that?!” I said nervously.

“Please calm down, Mr Thompson. I am a healer and thus under the Hippocratic Oath. I cannot harm you. That in addition to the unwritten rules make sure that I will not reveal what I have learnt today to the public or any other organizations. This includes the Protectorate.

Do you know what the unwritten rules are?”

“Yeah, I do. Read ‘bout it on the forums.”

“Good, then you can tell me how you burned yourself.”

“Well, I was plannin’ on testin’ my powers on a larger scale. Ya see I am a pyrokinetic, I shoot fire from my hands. I just recently got me powers. I've wanted to be a hero me whole life, I finally had the oppor’unity to help others.

I would probably join the Protectorate after I had an achievement or two under me belt. But my power ain’t that safe. The fire only comes out of my hands, me hands are the only parts of me body that is immune to heat. Before today I had only been playin’ with harmless things.”

I didn’t exactly have any examples but that didn’t stop me from quickly coming up with them. “I tried to use it to light a cigarette which worked and then tried to create small shapes. Today was the first day that I was gonna test them out on a large scale. I went to the docks in the early hours of the mornin’ on purpose ‘because there weren't meant to be lots of people.

I arrived and started out small. In the beginning, it went well but as I became more and more confident I lost control and I by mistake aimed up and the flames crept up my arm. At that point, I lost consciousness. And I woke up at the hospital.”

She looked at me with some suspicion on her face wanting to poke holes in my story, but the exhaustion won over her desire to stop me. I was truly lucky that she only started asking questions after she had left my side.

It was a foolish move to leave a newly triggered parahuman with clear offensive abilities without any means of neutralizing him. She was a striker and I should have been either extremely traumatized or at the very least emotionally unstable.

But I knew that she was probably confident that nobody would try to hurt her. She had probably assessed my emotional state when healing me and knew that I wasn’t feeling hostile. Even then I assumed that she knew that I was aware of the concept of not harming the healers.

After all, if you hurt them no one would heal you in your time of need. Well, that and whoever harmed her would have to face the full brunt of the Protectorate and the Brockton Bay gangs.

“I believe you,” she said.

“Now there is one last thing that protocol dictates. I know that you don’t want to join the Protectorate, but you need to join a team. The statistics show that independents usually die within the first few months. I would prefer that you didn’t join the villains but I know that there is a much higher chance that you will.

Unfortunately, that is how the system is constructed. But at the very least will you try your very best to not harm innocents?”

This was the first time that I saw a genuine emotion on her face that wasn’t boredom, exhaustion or apathy. There was an earnest desire to protect the innocent.

I agreed instantly, it didn’t cost me anything and it would get Panacea off my back.

“Of course, I promise you that I will never harm the innocent as long as I can.”

She looked at me intently and I projected my desire to help save this world to her. It seemed she liked what she saw as she turned around and started walking out. I called out to her “Thank you for saving me!”

She didn’t make any movement to indicate that she had heard me but I noticed using Presence that she had to restrain a slight frown on her face. As soon as she left I summoned my stand and entered his pocket dimension. I knew that I had to scram, she was probably going to tell Glory Girl about me.

My stand turned into air and drifted out. I smiled inside the pocket dimension as I mentally ticked an important step off the list. Yes, so far my plans were going along perfectly.

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Hi everyone

Sorry for not updating for so long, I had my exams coming up so I had to study for them. I spent so much time on them… Still haven’t finished but with the Coronavirus I finally had the opportunity to continue writing.

So here’s the chapter, enjoy!