-Amelia Dallon(?) POV-
Amy’s eyes snapped open as the feeling of being crushed under a few tons of concrete intensified. Her heart raced as her hands flew down to her legs in a desperate and futile attempt to free herself, only to find she was only pinned by a single bare leg and a light sheet. And that her own legs were perfectly fine.
What?
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she saw she was in some kind of fancy bedroom, though the furniture looked pretty normal and a little out of place. Not her room or the hospital like she expected, so that meant this was probably a dream conjured up by her dying brain as she either bled out or was crushed to death.
It was a little sad that her brain defaulted to ‘fancy bedroom’ but couldn’t actually come up with decent looking furniture.
Something shifted next to her and Amy saw that she was sharing a pretty large bed with two other people, with another two people sleeping nearby on a blowup mattress. And she recognised all four of them! They were Crystal’s friends and the girl running around calling herself Satan.
Kinda weird that her brain had these four here instead of her family or something. Also weird that they were all just sleeping. Amy thought if she was going to have one last hallucination before she died, she would have picked something more interesting than cuddling with a bunch of her cousin’s friends…even if it did feel really warm and comfortable.
She tried to get up when a soft but firm hand grabbed her shoulder and pushed her gently back down into the bed. Amy looked over to see Satan girl – Rias, a less snarky part of her brain filled in – looking at her through the darkness of the room. Her blue eyes actually looked like they were glowing.
“You woke up earlier than expected.” The curvy redhead whispered. “Sorry, but everyone else is still wiped from today. Go back to sleep, we’ll talk when you wake up again.”
“Wha–” Amy tried to reply, but despite the rush of adrenaline earlier she felt her eyes drooping and her heartbeat slowing down.
‘What a boring last dream…’ was the final thought through the healer’s mind as her eyes closed. Presumably for the last time.
-o-
Amy had fully expected that to be when she died.
So when she opened her eyes again, she was a bit surprised and her thoughts were a little messed up.
On the one hand she wasn’t dead. That was…nice? She wouldn’t make Vicky and the rest of her family sad about her death. Strangely the thought of her sister didn’t send her down the familiar spiral of desire/guilt/disgust/regret that it normally did when she focused on the one person in her life that seemed to actually care about her.
Of course on the other hand she wasn’t dead and from the look of it, the Protectorate had sprung for the help of at least a few other healers to get her patched up and fully healed. No sitting around waiting to heal like the others, no she needed to be healed right away so she could get back to doing her job… healing everyone else.
A soft tap on the door snapped her out of her thoughts and she was only a little surprised when Crystal walked in. Amy had seen her friends last night in the dream that wasn’t a dream so it was kinda expected her cousin to be around. A part of her was still disappointed that it wasn’t Vicky instead.
That wasn’t to say Amy and Crystal had a bad relationship. It was just…different. Distant.
They had obviously grown up together and saw each other a lot - practically forced together at times because both families were open capes belonging to the same team - but that was kinda it.
They would meet up, Amy would put up with Crystal’s more extroverted nature thanks to how used she was to dealing with Vicky, and then they would update each other on what they were doing before splitting up and repeating the whole thing again next week.
“Hi Amy, how you feeling?” Her cousin asked, more quiet than normal but Amy just put that down to Crystal attempting better bedside manners than Amy normally used. She wouldn’t know, she usually wasn’t on this side of the bed.
But now that she mentioned it, Amy realized something. “Fine. Good even. Obviously whoever fixed me up did my legs, but they got a bunch of other things too. I don’t think I’ve felt this good…” ‘ever’ she didn’t finish. Was this how the people she healed felt? No wonder everyone whined for her to fix them every time they bumped their toe even when they really didn’t need it. All the little aches and pains Amy usually had but ignored, poor posture sucked but she normally was too tired to care, was gone and she felt almost energized. “I’d almost say it was worth it, but getting my legs crushed hurt like a bitch. Felt like I was dying the whole time. And I’m sure the PRT is going to want some favors for making sure I’m not a cripple.”
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Crystal flinched, practically confirming Amy’s thoughts.
“Figures. Okay, hit me, what do they want? West coast healing tour? On-call stuff for more branches? Patching up a bunch of their agents?” She would do it, obviously. As much as she hated that she would have to give up more of her normal life to pay back the heroes for saving her, she hated that she was even considering not using her powers to help more people even more. It was evil monstrous wrong to do otherwise.
“None of that. The PRT didn’t do anything so you don’t owe them any. But a lot happened while you were out. Vicky wanted to be the one to tell you but she was up all night and finally crashed, so I volunteered instead.” Crystal said. “Rias offered but…you’ll have a lot to talk about with her later. You should hear about the family stuff from family.”
“Family stuff?” Amy’s first thought was that someone died. That was usually the thing people wanted to keep inside the family, right? But Crystal didn’t seem sad or teary, if anything she seemed annoyed.
“Yeah, New Wave is having a bit of a civil war right now.” Her cousin huffed, like that explained fucking anything!
“What?! Why?!”
Crystal did a very bad job of not looking right at Amy.
“Me? What the hell did I do?” Did they learn something about her? Her thoughts about Vicky? Did Carol finally stop tolerating her presence?
“...you died.”
Amy’s growing panic stopped dead at Crystal’s whisper. Died? What the hell was she talking about? Amy thought back to the fight against the giant monster. The building rumbling, the ceiling collapsing on top of her, Vicky holding her hand as she felt colder and colder…
And then waking up next to the girl calling herself a Devil and who had saved one of Crystal’s friends from a lethal injury.
Amy wasn’t stupid. The two were definitely connected.
“What?”
“Yeah, you died before we could get another healer to you.” Crystal continued. “Rias was the closest we had and by the time she got to you…”
That…didn’t seem right. Amy narrowed her eyebrows as she thought. That creature was an A-Class emergency at least. The PRT should have been sending response teams by teleporter if not the Triumvirate. But they apparently didn’t show.
Crystal gave her a bit of a breakdown when she asked, since Amy was with the medical team she hadn’t heard the news from Miss Militia about four other creatures attacking around the world. New York had been hit by some kind of giant gorilla that had climbed the Empire State building and backhanded Legend hard enough to knock him out of the city before the local Capes rallied and drove it off, where it somehow vanished. There was a lot of damage to certain buildings but the biggest news there was that the gorilla had killed the Butcher. No one was really sure how that was going to end up.
San Francisco had been attacked by a flying, fire breathing turtle that had not only managed to knock out Alexandria, it had also managed to out-maneuver Eidolon for almost an hour before they were actually able to kill the thing. Thanks to the two members of the Triumvirate responding together and some new Capes popping up to help, they had managed to keep damage to the city down more than New York, but there had still been a lot of deaths and Eidolon had even lost an arm.
Those two attacks had prevented the Protectorate from coming to Brockton Bay since two major cities under attack from Endbringer size monsters were much more crucial than a dying port town and international aid was frozen thanks to another two monsters attacking other continents.
A three headed dragon had rampaged through Beijing, and unlike the other three it was not driven off. For some reason the CUI had been really slow to respond and the entire city had been burned to the ground and the dragon had vanished. And that was tame to what was happening in Africa as a giant moth with enough lasers to give Legend a run for his money along with a stupidly diverse set of other powers was flying around targeting warlords and their armies of mercenaries. It had apparently killed so many that the region was actually considerably more peaceful while the various fiefdoms tried to figure out who was actually in charge. Oh, and the giant fucking death moth had also vanished without a trace.
“Okay, but none of that explains New Wave. Or how I’m suddenly not dead.” Amy was going to have to look up the details of everything Crystal skimmed over, because five more city destroying monsters showing up out of nowhere seemed really important even if two had been driven off and one was even killed.
“Right, yeah, sorry the past day and a half has just been…a lot.” Crystal apologized. “Anyway, you remember the incident with Sam?” Amy obviously did. A powergranting object wasn’t something you just forgot about, especially since all of New Wave had concerns about the not so subtle Master component to it.
“She used one of those things on me didn’t she?” It was the only thing that made sense.
Crystal nodded. “Yeah, turns out they can bring back the dead in some situations.”
Amy stared. “Holy shit…that’s…”
“Huge? Amazing? A total fracking game changer?” Crystal smiled bitterly. “It would be if Rias had more than a handful of them. And she’s not sharing.” Not that that would stop some people, Amy knew. If anything it would make them more aggressive in acquiring Rias’s ability for themselves before all the chances were used up. “It’s what caused the whole mess outside. Rias offered to bring you back but the adults wanted promises and testing she wasn’t going to agree to, so did the PRT. Didn’t matter that you would be alive again, they needed more on top of that. Especially after Rias made a pretty big claim on you.
“So yeah, me, Eric, and Vicky flipped them off while Rias teleported you back here and brought you back. They’ve been trying to break down the door ever since, but Rias put up some kind of defenses somehow so they can’t get in. Doesn’t stop them from blowing up my phone with demands anyway.” She ended, making a face at the thought.
Amy was more concerned about something else though.
“Made a claim on me?” She practically shrieked. “So what, am I just supposed to be her personal healer slave from now on? And you’re okay with that?!”
“Okay, that’s my bad. Let me explain!” Crystal rushed out. “Rias explained when we got back to the house, she takes her Peerage really seriously. It hasn’t come up much because most of them are fine overall but she isn’t going to let them be abused by anyone. And she gave me some numbers on what you were doing in the Hospitals, Amy you were doing sixty hours a week! For nothing! If anything Rias is going to make you heal less just to make sure you do something else with your life.”
What! She couldn’t do that! Amy needed to use her powers to be a hero or – wait a second. Those chess things supposedly turned people into Devils… Amy was a Devil now… it didn’t matter how many people she healed, she was still going to hell.
She needed to not think about that right now. “Okay, so our parents and the PRT didn’t want me being alive without some kind of control over the literal Devil. You, your friends, Eric, and Vicky stole my corpse and then condemned me to eternal damnation for a shot at not being dead again. Sound about right?”
Crystal hesitated, and Amy was just about done with today and she had only just woken up.
“Just tell me.”
“...not all of it was because the adults wanted promises from Rias. Mom and Dad were on the fence but Aunt Carol…didn’t want you brought back at all…”
“Oh…” Ironically Amy felt lighter at that statement. She had spent so long trying to live up to her adoptive mother’s expectations so she would finally accept her that hearing Carol would rather Amy was dead was…freeing. “...right, you said Rias needs to talk to me about a lot of stuff? We should go do that now.” She really wanted a distraction right now.
“...yeah, okay.” Crystal said and gave Amy a quick hug before walking out the door.
Amy followed after, trying to keep the fact she just had a mini heart attack off her face.
For as long as she had her power, any time Amy had touched someone she had gotten a full scan of their biology. But when she had touched Crystal…nothing. For years Amy had struggled with the knowledge that the full extent of her powers would end the world. That when she finally snapped and became the villain Carol always suspected she could be no one would be able to stop her.
And now it seemed to be gone, and she had only had to die for it to happen.