Chapter 6: 06 Updated Wards Part One

We dropped Amy off at home and she made sure to fake scowl as she went up to the front door of her house. The door opened and her mother and sister were there to greet her. Vicky immediately took Amy into a tight hug and pulled her inside before the mother nodded to us and the door shut.

I was soon back at the Rig, thanked the driver, and went to my room. I wasn't surprised that Vista was inside and had waited for me. She already wore her pyjamas, too. There wasn't really anywhere else for me to change, so I did it right there in front of her. I couldn't tell what she was thinking as I did so, only that her eyes had looked me over completely and her face stayed red the whole time.

I thought it was a perfect compromise, because neither of us asked to help the other change, so we technically didn't break Armsmaster's policy of having to wait. I sat on the bed next to her and Vista leaned against me as I put my arm around her.

“Can you tell me about what happened tonight?” Vista asked.

“Yeah. I saw you on the bed all cute and cuddly, so I had to make myself just as cuddly.” I said with a smile and she giggled. “Ohhh, you meant about the hospital.”

“Yes, silly.” Vista said and I told her all about what happened before, during, and after meeting Taylor and healing her. “She triggered?”

“Yep. Twice.” I said and Vista looked surprised. “Amy tried to tell me she couldn't say anything because of patient and healer confidentiality and I almost laughed my ass off.”

Vista laughed, too. “She's not a doctor and she's not bound by the Hippocratic Oath.”

“Not even close! She can't even buy a beer, let alone swear an oath that no one made her swear to.” I said and hugged her close. “Everyone just assumed she was bound by it, just like she did.”

“Wow.” Vista said and rested her head on my shoulder. “What did she say when you told her?”

“Amy's not much of a talker, especially when you shatter her world view several times in a night.” I said with a laugh. “Have you seen her whole face yet?”

“Yeah.” Vista said.

“Have you ever tried to count the freckles?” I asked and Vista giggled. “I knew I wasn't the only one!”

We devolved into laughs and giggles after that and we stayed up for several hours and hung out as we talked about Shadow Stalker and what was going to be done with her and all of the evidence against her.

I kept it to myself that I had somehow unlocked her full power after knocking her out.

*

It took two days for Shadow Stalker to face the music about what she had done. Taylor apparently had a journal and it had been turned over to the police. Once it was announced that Sophia Hess had been arrested for attempted murder, nearly half of the high school had turned on the other two that were involved, Emma Barns and Madison Clements.

The two teenage girls were soon taken into custody and Madison folded like a cheap card table. Emma was the only holdout and kept her mouth shut, because she wasn't prey. Her lawyer father backed her up and was soon involved up to his neck, because the teachers being involved in the conspiracy with the Principal was leaked to the press.

They raked everyone involved in the incident through the mud, Mr. Barnes included, for letting his daughter become such a monster. He also lost his job with the law firm that Amy's mother Carol Brandish owned. The controversy was too much for the firm to ignore and the negativity could not be associated with them.

By the end of the week, Emma had been convinced to plead no contest to all of the charges against her and she joined Madison in juvenile detention. The PRT had them, their families, and Sophia's family, quietly shuffled off to another town. Sophia Hess on the other hand, because she was a cape, was sent to the Birdcage. That was the prison designed to hold criminal capes and someone named Dragon ran it.

*

It had been a great week for me. I got to spend the school day with Missy, spent several hours on monitor duty after school, ate a great meal for supper, and every second evening was training time.

Getting to watch Vista train was a sight to see. She worked much harder than the other Wards and it showed as she dealt with different things, like objects being thrown at her, catching fake speeding cars, shifting mock buildings together to run across the rooftops, and a whole bunch of other things. It was amazing!

Vista came over to me and I handed her a towel. “Thanks.” She said and took off her helmet before she wiped at the sweat on her face. “Okay, Alex. It's your turn to do what I just did.”

“You're kidding!” I gasped and she laughed.

“I am!” Vista said and hugged me. “You need a bit of practice before you can reach my level with years of experience.” She said and then gave me a look that I couldn't read. “Then again, you have a perfect body, right? I think you could handle it a lot quicker than I did.”

I stared at her with my mouth open.

“It doesn't hurt to try.” Vista said and waved at her obstacle course.

“I... well, I did watch what you did and I could feel you manipulate things...” I said with a soft voice.

Vista put her helmet back on and nodded to me. “I believe in you, Alex.”

I shivered slightly and smiled at her. “Okay, I'll try. For you.”

“Oh, geez. Get a room, you two.” Clockblocker said and fake gagged.

“No one is getting a room together.” Armsmaster said in a stern voice. “I've reset Vista's course and set it to half of her current difficulty. Go ahead, Myriad.”

“Thank you, sir.” I said and slipped on the simple black domino mask that my rescuer had worn. The PRT wouldn't let me copy her costume, so I settled for using her actual mask. It still had a dark red blood stain on it and I refused to let them clean it more than they already had.

My costume was a simple stretchy unitard that had a five pointed star on the chest and a line from each point crossed my body to join the star on my back. Each section was a different complimentary color, as if representing different powers, and I thought it was perfect. Since I was invulnerable, there was no point to wearing armor or wasting money trying to reinforce the cloth or make more protective clothing.

I walked over to Vista's starting spot and nodded to Armsmaster. He started it up and... it was easy. Like really easy. The rubber bullets practically stopped dead as I caught each of them in a near infinite space and their own momentum dropped them to the floor. The car barely moved before I shortened the distance between the front bumper and the windshield and crushed the front of the car like a pancake.

The 1,500 meter race track was crossed with a single step and the multiple building rooftops I had to cross to get back became a five foot long walk as I returned the space to normal, I slid into place back on the other side of the training arena beside Vista.

“Holy shit!” Clockblocker gasped.

“Language.” Armsmaster said and played with his gauntlet, probably to save the recording.

“How did I do?” I asked her.

“I think I'm falling in love with you.” Vista whispered and blushed. “I can't believe I just said that.”

“I do. You're the bravest Ward on the team.” I said and took her hand. “Do you want to come with me this time? You can feel what I did and I'm sure you can do it, too.”

Vista smiled. “I'd like that.”

I looked over at Armsmaster. “Double Vista's difficulty, please. With the two of us, we need the challenge.”

Armsmaster hesitated for a moment, then checked the safety features. He nodded and reset the course and had to get Velocity to bring out another fake car. In fact, he brought out three of them. Two more guns were added to the ranged portion, several baseball serving machines were put on either side of the course, and three of the middle buildings were exchanged for ruins.

I kept hold of her hand and walked over with her to the start. “Don't let go.” I said and let my power out to touch hers.

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Our powers joined together and Vista almost vibrated with excitement as she gave me a happy smile. “I don't think I ever will.”

I smiled back at her before I nodded to Armsmaster. There was suddenly utter chaos around us and both Vista and I walked through it as if it meant nothing. I would do half of the projectiles and she would feel what I did and do the other half in a similar manner. We both had fun crushing different parts of the fake cars and made them into different shapes.

The race track was a laugh and crossed instantly as we returned the balls to the machines without damaging them. The buildings were oddly shaped in the middle, so I used the power to raise them up to match our current height and Vista pushed them all together to give us the same five foot walkway I had made. We stepped onto the last building edge and we both let our power return everything and we were right back where we started.

“I think we need to upgrade Vista's and Myriad's usefulness ratings.” Armsmaster muttered into his gauntlet.

The look on Vista's face told me exactly what she was going to do next, so I puckered my lips and accepted the quick kiss.

“No, seriously. Get a room.” Clockblocker said as he walked by. “I'm going to change.”

“I think we can all call it a day.” Aegis said. “Good work everyone.”

We all waved to him and left to go to the locker room to shower and change. I went to my room after that and wasn't surprised to find Vista there and she was already doing her homework. She had brought over her own collapsible desk a few days ago and she had already set mine up for me, too.

“Thanks.” I said as I sat down and she smiled at me and went back to work. We stayed at it for two hours and packed everything up. Even though it was Friday night, we already had all of our homework out of the way and had the entire weekend to ourselves.

“Alex, I was wondering...” Vista started to say.

“Yes, I'd like that.” I interrupted and she giggled.

“How can you agree so fast? You didn't even wait for me to tell you what we'll be doing!”

“It doesn't matter.” I said and took her hand. “Just getting to spend time with you is awesome.”

Vista blushed a little and leaned against me. “What if I said we're going clothes shopping?”

“I'm pretty strong, so I'll be a good mule and carry all your bags for you.” I said and she laughed.

“I want to go hang out on the boardwalk for a while and maybe go for a walk along the harbour.” Vista said, a little nervously.

“That sounds great! The only problem is that I don't have a tuxedo to wear for our first date.” I joked.

“Wouldn't that be funny?” Vista asked with a laugh. “The two of us all dressed up formally and nowhere to go!”

I laughed, too. “Maybe we can get Miss Militia to grab us something and we can actually do that?”

“Really?” Vista asked, her face full of amusement and a slight blush on her face.

“Sure! I've got some extra funds now and we can look up some stuff before we text her.” I said and took out my Ward issued cell phone. “It's easy to shop for me, since it's just a basic suit.” I held my phone out to her. “What kind of dress have you always wanted?”

Vista gave me an odd look. “You're not joking, are you?”

“Nope! Amy and I hit up some rich folks at the hospital waiting for really expensive operations and replacement organs. Believe me, they were more than grateful to be instantly healed and not have to suffer through months of recovery and anti-rejection drugs.”

“No way!” Vista gasped and started looking through some of the different kinds of dresses.

“Yep! We actually had to negotiate our reward down to a reasonable amount, if you can believe it.”

Vista nodded. “You didn't want to be too greedy.”

“You got it! That's right.” I said and kissed her cheek to make her blush. “The last thing either of us needs is a reputation for milking patients for all of their money, even if they are rich.”

“I'm glad you didn't abuse the leverage you had over them.” Vista said.

I chuckled. “I would never do that, especially because Amy made me heal a bunch of cancer patients first.”

“No way!” Vista gasped again and showed me the dress she liked.

“We cleared out the whole ward.” I said proudly and took the phone back to search for where to buy the dress locally. “I also told her we would be hitting up another hospital this weekend as the Healing Duo, Healing Man and Healing Woman!”

Vista gave me another odd look. “It almost sounds like a date.”

“Ha ha! Not likely.” I said and showed her the shop where the dress could be found. “Amy would be more interested in seeing you wearing that than seeing me in a suit.”

Vista caught her breath and stared at me. “No. Way.”

“Yep, she totally bats for the other team.” I said. “I didn't really notice how she looked at the women more than the men while we were working, until we finished the cancer ward and the last woman was a stunning blonde that looked like a much older version of Vicky.”

Vista looked surprised. “Okay. Wow.”

“Yeah.” I said and checked the store to see if they sold suits and smiled. I marked one that was the same color as Vista's chosen dress and sent the information to Miss Militia. She was the chaperone for the Wards on the weekend and would be available all day for us to contact.

Miss Militia replied she would pick them up if I could confirm I would pay her back. I chuckled and sent her a copy of my account balance. She didn't respond for about ten minutes, then agreed to get them for us.

“We're all set for the morning.” I said and put my cell phone away. “Do you want to go watch television in the common room?”

Vista shook her head and nodded at my bed. I nodded back and the both of us climbed onto the bed, on top of the covers, and laid there to cuddle and rest. We both drifted off to sleep soon after and we hadn't even changed into our pyjamas.

*

Everyone on the boardwalk stared at the two twelve year old kids that were dressed like the top of a wedding cake. The girl wore a fluffy and frilly light blue dress that went to her ankles and her hair was done up in fluffy blonde waves. The boy wore a blue suit that matched the dress and his hair was trimmed perfectly.

The kids laughed and carried on for the entire morning, had lunch at Fugly Bob's, ate ice cream for dessert, then they walked along the edge of the harbour and pointed at all of the wrecks in the water and tried to guess what the ship names were.

At one point, Panacea and Glory Girl showed up and asked what they were doing. Everyone heard the boy loudly shout that it was his very first date and it was with the most awesome girl in the whole world. That surprised the two capes, and everyone that heard him, felt happy for him and for the severely blushing girl on his arm that had a huge smile on her face.

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