21) Therapeutic

“Hello, I would like to make an appointment with Dr. Harrisburg."

The voice on the other end of the line sounded like a limited intelligence with a faint British accent. It asked me when was a good time for me.

“Next week, late next week. How about Friday, late Friday.”

It’s almost like I didn’t want to go.

The voice explained that there was an opening on Friday of that week and if that would be a good time for me I should lock it down by starting this week.

Which… made sense. I sent it an email with my coverage information, medical background, and personal information.

"Well, that's done. And who knows, maybe some mediocre supervillain beneath the attention of the Circle will do something Friday and get me out of this. In a nonlethal sort of way of course."

I had almost made it through my normal day of classes before I became aware of the Day of the Dead.

While I had been freaking out trying to force what I had learned was eight month year old child out of the wreckage of the building that had collapsed on her, every corpse for several thousand feet around me had started twitching, then flopping around as my efforts to move that one body leaked out to the dead in the surrounding area.

Oops.

It had only lasted a minute or two, and I was so out of it and focused on finishing my work that I didn't hear anyone talking about it. Plus I was looking so bad, that no one brought it up around the person who had obviously, and obliviously, been responsible for it.

I had been aware that I could, let's say, activate more than one corpse at a time. Visions of leading a horde of the undead was the sort of thing teenage me had dreamed of. But the problem was trying to move more than one corpse at the same time was beyond my ability to coordinate that many limbs, let alone all the muscles involved in keeping a body even just standing upright.

When I moved the remains of that girl to mess with her killer, I could barely open my own eyes to watch her make her way up the steps.

But hundreds of bodies, all at once? It was too bad my powers were from being Triggered, if I were a second gen whose powers kept increasing with age, maybe I would develop the ability to control so many corpses.

But I’m not the overpowered main character of some power tripping fantasy, Shimmer and the other second gens on the team were. I'm destined to be the helper guy who gets left behind as the rest of them get so powerful that I eventually become dead weight.

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Oh good, I have something to tell my therapist so he doesn't just focus on my traumatic Trigger event.

T-Rex wandered over to me and leaned up against the wall near the monitor station as the rest of the team lingered over their fried chicken dinner before they headed out for their nightly patrol.

After a moment he started to talk while still looking across the room. “You know, I was a little bit happy not to be the weakest person on the team for once.”

I gave him a questioning grunt.

“I can turn into a dinosaur. An Alter rank 3 due to my other shape having more mass than me. My Mom Chimera can turn into hundreds of different animals, and that's just the ones she's tried. She can mix and match features from all of them along with her human features. As well as altering her size by combining her shapes.”

“Which is why she’s a Rank 5. I only got a Super Rank 4 as a Regenerator 4 since my body repairs all damage when I shift forms, even if it requires generating new mass.”

I looked over at him. "I thought you had a Brute ranking from your dad."

He nodded. “A 3, so I had you beat. But after Syria, there’s talk about pushing you up to a Weird 4. So I’m tied with you at best.”

We paused for a moment as the other three started to clean up their mess, tossing it all in the trash which I would have to take out with me later so the whole base didn’t smell like rotting chicken remains.

At least I always knew where the smell was coming from.

I gave T-Rex a side glace. “Somehow I didn't think you cared about any of that."

He grunted at me, then took a moment to think about what he wanted to say. “I Don’t. Just wanted to bring up the whole making hundreds of dead bodies start to twist and shake as a side note rather than an issue.”

Walking off to join the rest of the team heading out through Manifest’s port he muttered, “Should be a way to use that somehow, I wonder if you can make all of them talk at the same time.”

I made a stop by the morgue later that night, using the plain white credit card like device I had been given with my Concentric City Hero code printed on it to enter.

I could hardly test the ability to make multiple corpses talk with our voiceless Talon troops after all.

So… Talk, no. Howl like tormented souls in hell while thrashing around with near Brute 3 strength with all seventeen people in storage wrecking the refrigerated wall units they were stored in, yes.

So to note. Just like Fable, the more bodies I tried to control, due to my limited ability to do so, the weaker they became. More than roughly three dozen seemed like they would be below Brute 2, and beyond several dozen all I would be able to do is make them twitch a little.

I did more than that in Syria, but I think that was only from the adrenaline fueled panic.

Also, I could only do this a few seconds at a time as getting feedback from all those corpses was intensely confusing and nauseating.

I did get to the waste paper basket in time. Saving the morgue staff from a little extra mess to clean up besides the trashed, battered, and torn up morgue.

At least the corpses hadn’t been damaged since Brutes usually can’t hit anything hard enough to hurt themselves.

I guess my power is actually a lot stronger than I thought, I just lack the ability to use it at that level.

Super world problem I guess.

But it does explain how I can see through Fable’s Rank 4 illusions when my power is active, I might be a Rank 5.

Rank 5 powers don't always seem to follow any rules of logic. Like why would a sense, control, and repair the dead Super power link me up to Shimmer with a permanent long ranged emphatic link?

Because Rank 5, that’s why.

Of course, Shimmer was definitely going to be Rank 5 at some point, and in some ways, she may already be that powerful. So I'm still going to blame permanently linking my brain to an underage girl on her.