Chương 118: Doctor, Doctor

The report after the whole day's events was actually pretty awkward to write. Each event needed its own page summarizing time, place, all the key details for testimony. This was because in case anything we did that technically broke a law needed full explanation for an arbitration agreement we had with the city and the state. The most obvious would be getting that comics store door open.

I've had to open a few doors like that before, and every time even with the owner's consent it was apparently considered criminal vandalism. Meaning they could pretend they didn't consent at any point and sue me or the team. The report meant I had some sort of legal statement confirming there was consent that the lawyers would then deal with. I had to do similar for all three of the old ladies I helped cross the road, and moving the couch, and getting the balloon. Then I got to that Green Meanie encounter.

I actually pondered if I needed to report on it properly. While I did say I was going to find him, I didn't say what I would do when I found him. But that could've been considered a threat anyway. Needed actual reference. I picked up the page and my pen, heading out of my room and knocking on May's. After a few seconds, I heard an "It's open!" Following that, I opened the door and made my way down. May kept her room probably the neatest out of all of us. Mine wasn't dirty but it didn't have much in it.

Hers actually was decorated like a home someone would live in. A small one, a one-room home, but a home nonetheless. She was lounging on a love seat while Samara and Samuel were yanking on her arms, failing to pull her up.

"Come on, May!" Samuel yelled.

"Pleaaase!?" Samara called out alongside him.

"Can't do it guys, I'm sorry," she stated with little emotion behind it. Maybe some sarcasm in her tone, I couldn't tell. Making my way down the stairs, I raised an eyebrow.

"Hey, I had a question. Well, two now. What're they bothering you for?" May sighed.

"They want me to take them to the movies because Sam promised them she would but she can't go alone due to the non-powered staff all having new rules about a buddy system. Jairo and Chris are out bowling because they don't have reports to write."

"So why don't you?" Sitting up a bit, letting her arms limply get yanked by the kids, she shook her head.

"Agent Lafeuillade let me know that she's going to be ready with her ritual soon and will be stopping by in a few days. Until then, I'm not allowed to have any screens near me for extended periods of time. I had to get rid of my TV, my phone is in my drawer, and I'd been trying to read. But it also means no movie theaters."

"Why no screens?" I asked, cocking my head as I finally reached the bottom of the stairs.

"She didn't give me all the details, but she did explain that any black mirrors of any kind — which apparently includes screens, I guess — could produce energies that interfere with the ritual. Regular mirrors too, so I haven't been able to do my face up much and there's a towel over my bathroom mirror. It's not the end of the world, I have to study anyway. Which I'll do once these two bundles of sunshine leave my hands alone." She remarked, that last sentence coming through gritted teeth.

The siblings Sam continued to make squeaky little pleas for compliance, showing surprisingly more stubbornness than I would've expected. Then again, they probably had a lot more energy than us.

"So what was your other question?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, I'm doing my reports for my patrols," I started, holding the paper and pen up.

"I'm mostly done but I had a legal question because of an encounter I had."

"Well, shoot."

"So this villain shows up. Green weirdo calling himself the 'Green Meanie,' just teleports into a crowd and starts making threats. He saw me and started getting nervous, not sure why." Probably because I wasn't good at hiding any violent intentions.

"Turns out he was trying to get to Charlotte, North Carolina instead of Charlottesville, Virginia. Said he'd leave to go deal with Charlotte."

"And what'd you do from there?"

"I said he wouldn't, and that I was going to keep an eye on the news. If anything happened in Charlotte, I'd find him." She hummed in thought.

"Did you say what you'd do when you found him?" I shook my head.

"Did you raise your fist or anything like that? Stance up? Shivvy turn into a big knife?"

"No, Shivvy wasn't with me. He's kind of got a mind of his own and will just… wander off at random. He always seems to find me, and I haven't heard of any trouble caused by him yet, so I'm not too worried." She shook her head.

"I don't see any issues, then. The menacing laws in Virginia are pretty simple. Either you brandish a weapon, or you make a gesture that makes someone feel reasonable fear of immediate body harm. If you were just standing there and saying you'd find someone, legally there aren't many grounds to stand on. You can say you're gonna punch a guy in the face anyway, it's not considered assault." I raised an eyebrow.

"It's not?" She laughed, prompting greater frustration of the kids.

"It's gotta be a physical attempt to cause or create a reasonable fear of imminent harm. You should understand over half the state, aged twelve and up, has reported having an alcoholic beverage in the past month. Virginia's a drinking state. People get drunk here all the time. They're going to drunkenly threaten each other. If just words were a misdemeanor, the prisons would get overstocked from every bar crawl."

"Never thought about it like that. Then again, I don't really think about drinking anyway."

"Keep it that way. Doesn't do anyone any good," she noted, as the kids let out another whining noise with one bigger pull that actually brought her standing up.

"Guys, guys! We're getting too aggressive now. Let go."

"But you gotta take us to the movies!" Samara whined out.

"I can't," she repeated, more exasperated.

"Actually…" She looked over at me. God damn it.

"I know who can."

"May, I can't-""I'll finish up your report for you if you take them to the theater."

"But I actually like writing my reports."

"You do? Dam-" She shot a look at the kids before finishing that word.

"-Dang it, Jairo and Chris hate doing theirs. I get favors out of them all the time by doing their reports. Look, I'll owe you if you do it. I need to finish reading for an exam. Besides, Sam told me she's trying to earn your trust again since you gave her that chance with the ADU attack." If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. My brow furrowed.

"As a teammate, not as a friend."

"You're going to need to build out-of-mission rapport with her anyway if you want to be effective teammates. You gotta build some kind of synergy again."

"Cover their ears for a second." May complied, producing hard light from her fingernails that swelled around into a pair of parabolas that she hooked over their heads after yanking her hands free.

"Shoot."

"In case you forgot, she fucking tortured me with a shock collar while a government agent beat me senseless. I'm not exactly interested in hanging out at the movies with her." Her face firmed up.

"I know. She knows she did too, and she's so stressed out about it she's barely eating and sleeping. In case you forgot, she's here under the same kind of pretenses as you are. They likely pressured her into it, and when there's two other little lives at stake here," she explained, nodding towards the flailing children.

"That's going to change your priorities."

"That doesn't make it any better."

"Leo. I want to say first, I'm not saying this to throw it in your face. But it's the only way you're going to understand. You know how you were judging yourself after what happened at the raid. Did you want people to forgive you for it? Do you still?" My body tensed up.

"Why the Hell would you say that to m-""Just answer the question." I could feel my fingers digging into my palms. A white-knuckle grip from clenched fists.

"…No. I didn't want forgiveness. Just… every time people kept explaining to me how it was or wasn't fine, and I wasn't interested in that. I know what's fine and what isn't. What I wanted to know was if it was an innocent person or not. What I still want to know. Just that kind of closure."

"You don't think maybe she wants that kind of closure, too?"

"But she knows I'm innocent."

"Not over if she hurt someone innocent. Closure over if she's allowed to even be a scientist and help people anymore after what she did. I bet you were worried about if you were allowed to still help people afterwards, too." Thought about that doctor's office. Telling Tancred I was aware I was going to end up going to the Firmament, even if he assured me I wasn't.

"…I-" I started, unable to give an answer. Silence hung in the air.

"Then you know how bad it is. You wouldn't want to inflict that kind of hurt on anyone, yeah?" Felt almost like those words were coming from her own heart. Not from Sam's.

"I guess," I conceded.

"Do for her what you feel hasn't been done for you. You don't need to enjoy it. Just try it and see what happens. If it doesn't work, give me shit for it after. Besides, you need some luxury time anyway. You've been working overtime on patrols." Even when I thought all the lectures on that whole event were done, another still found a chance to sneak up on me. I kept wanting to say I was over it, but whenever it was brought up everything came back as fresh as the day it all happened. I'd probably never be over it.

Sam would probably never be over what she did, either. She was also the first to try and comfort me instead of lecture me when it all happened. Tancred just tried to reassure me but wouldn't stop talking about it. Chris tried to moralize me with his own beliefs. Sam just hugged me, told me she'd help me. That she'd figure out how to fix my brain. That I was going to be okay. Meanwhile, I never showed her any sort of similar sentiment. Because it happened to me.

Even though I know all of us aren't here of entirely our own volition. That we've all been told to do things we normally wouldn't. To protect what little we had from being taken from us. Wasn't that what I wanted to be a hero for? To protect people who couldn't protect themselves? How did I even let it get to this point? God, I fucking hated moral deliberations. I rubbed my palm against my face, trying to wipe the stress off as though it were a physical stain.

"Fine." May's features softened as she lifted the ear-covers on the kids, putting her hands on her hips.

"Alright guys, Leo's gonna take you and your mom to the movies." Samara and Samuel cheered, rushing over to me and grabbing my hands to pull me along. I fought off instinct to resist the pull, knowing the kids wouldn't really be able to react well to my strength. This resulted in me getting led up the stairs and off to Sam's lab, having dropped my report and pen in May's room. Maybe she'd finish it for me. No idea. Getting yanked through all the crap she left strewn about was loud enough to get her attention.

She saw me first and seized up before noticing her kids pulling me.

"W-why are they dragging you?" I took a deep, heavy breath before speaking.

"The kids want to go see a movie, I guess, and I'm the only one who can accompany you guys right now for your buddy system." She raised an eyebrow.

"You?"

"Yeah. May asked, and I'm uh… not gonna leave the kids missing out on something they might enjoy."

"Are… are you sure?" I nodded.

"Yeah, it's fine." Her features began to brighten up a bit, a clearly nervous half-smile.

"Well, I-I appreciate it. Let me just get dressed up and ready. The- the kids took their baths already, so they should be fine. D-do you need to clean up, or…?" I shook my head.

"Showered as soon as I got back from my patrol. I do that every time."

"O-okay. And uh, Shivvy, he would probably not be allowed in a theater."

"He's off doing his own thing right now, I haven't seen him all day."

"Oh," she noted, eyebrows raising.

"You just let him wander off?"

"You've held him. You know there's no keeping a grip on him. He's been pretty well-conditioned at this point. He might even be helping with cleaning up the stray Wyrdwood." She nodded.

"I… I guess. Alright, let me get dressed and we can go." She scurried off, heading up the stairs to the other half of her room where her kids were. She must've had a changing area there. After a few minutes of trying to amuse two overly excited children, she came down in more regular attire instead of a lab coat, and was leaning on some sort of crutch-cane contraption that tied around her arm.

"…Since when do you use that?" I asked.

"The roads all have uneven surfaces and there's a lot more walking we'd have to do. I can mill around in my lab all I want but if I'm going out, it's a lot of strain on my joints and-""Walking?"

"… Yeah? I don't have a license and you don't either. Neither of us have cars. I don't think Billy would be willing to drive us ou-""Did you forget I can just jump there?" She began to protest, but the kids cheering out at the notion of me jumping completely usurped any protesting power she had. It took just a couple minutes of me leaping from building to building to get to the movie theater. We landed out behind it in an alley, so as to avoid anyone noticing our landing.

The entire trek was the kids screaming in excitement while Sam occasionally yelped in fear. She definitely wasn't used to moving at high speeds. When they finally climbed down, the two children gushed about it.

"We went so fast!" Samuel called out.

"Is that what being in a plane's like?" Samara was more jittery about it.

"The wind got my hair all messed up," she chattered out with a laugh.

"Should've asked for a barf bag…" Sam let out exasperatedly. I shrugged.

"I didn't think you guys would get that much of the aftershocks. I thought my whole thing being gravity would extend to you guys."

"No, no, it did, I didn't feel like, inertia. I just get motion sick in fast-moving stuff." We made our way into the theater, when a topic I should've asked much sooner finally cropped up in my head.

"What movie are we supposed to be watching anyway?" The two kids pointed to a poster. Off to the side, a blurred out image of a smirking man. A pretty famous comedy actor. In the center, a smiling baby dressed in a onesie styled like a doctor's scrubs. Below it, the title: Doctor Baby"…I think I'm getting second thoughts."