It caught me off guard, hearing it, but I managed to get my mental bearings.  “You didn’t ask for your powers.  I’m sure even doctors get worn out, they hate their job, they have bad weeks.  Except doctors have fellow staff members, they have friends and everything to go back to, and they’re adults.  You’re still a teenager.  You started doing what you were doing at a time when most people didn’t.

That’s it. Give me that “bad at picking the right thing to say” badge, Taylor.

You didn’t have the maturity and the defenses against the pain you were seeing that doctors pick up over the course of the first twenty-five years of their lives.”

I’m sure people regularly underestimate how much mental pressure doctors deal with on a daily basis.

She shook her head.  “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t make me feel better, I deserve to wallow in misery”?

“Don’t make me out to be a good person.  Bonesaw has a better idea of who I am than you do.  Maybe I wouldn’t have thought so, three days ago, when she first met me, but then I fucked up.  I proved her right.  Every fear I had about being like my dad came true.”

Ah, yes, the final piece – the Glory Girl situation.

She laughed briefly, and it was a dark utterance with no humor in it.  “No?”

“Everyone knows how you visit hospitals.  How many people have you helped over the past three years?

Uh-oh. Sensitive topic.

How many lives have you saved, how many people have you rescued from a lifetime of misery?”

Taylor has a point, but she should try turning her own logic towards herself. Yes, she failed to save four people when Mannequin attacked. But she did save a lot of other lives. Maybe if she thought to ask herself this question, she could start looking at her own accomplishments positively.

“I hated it,” she said.  “It was such a burden.  So many long hours spent around sick people, and I got numb to it, I stopped caring.  Do you know how many hours I’ve spent awake at night, wishing my powers would just go away, or that some circumstance would come up where I’d make some excusable mistake where they would eventually forgive me, but where I couldn’t visit the hospitals anymore?”

This is something Amy has needed to admit to someone for so long. She did, once before, but she still needed it.

And it’s one thing to open up to Gallant. He was the kind of guy who just forces you to open up by looking past your defenses in the first place. Now she’s opening up to Skitter, a villain who doesn’t have that quality and whom Amy hated up until a minute or two ago.

Maybe it does make it easier that she’s already abandoned that life, but still.

“I… I don’t want to strike a nerve, or say the wrong thing.  I’m not very good at picking the right thing to say.  But I forgive you.  I know you were tired.  You were overworked.  You had no reason to like me or to do me any favors.  And you healed me anyways.”

For someone who claims to not be good at picking the right thing to say, she’s absolutely on a streak of picking the right thing to say.

I think she’s gotten better at it, honestly.

I could see her tense.  Would she storm off?  Lash out at me like Bitch would?

Hmm, I don’t think so. I think she might actually appreciate that Taylor acknowledges this. Especially since one of her long-standing problems has been that few others did.

Not gonna lie, I’m beginning to see this as a potential ship on the redrom (love) side rather than just blackrom (romantic hatred) like before.

She just fell silent, avoiding eye contact with me.

“I don’t think you’re a monster,” I said.

Damn, Taylor. I’m this close to just straight up revoking your right to say you’re not good at picking the right thing to say.

I think this is exactly what Amy needed to hear from someone, anyone, right now, and Taylor just backed it up with reasons that show that she’s not just saying it, she actually understands.

“Heroes,” Amy muttered.  “Right.”

Called it! …kinda.

“Are you a candidate?”

She fidgeted again.  “Bonesaw nominated me.”

“Do you know why?”

Bitterly, she said, “Why do you think?  She thought I’d be a good fit.  And because my powers complement hers.”

I wonder if someone

in-universe is going to put the pieces together re: each Slaughterhouse member picking someone who had something notably in common with themselves.

A good fit?  “Just based on my interactions with you, I wouldn’t have thought.”

I mean, she does have a spiteful streak, or used to at least. But not so much that it makes her fit into the Slaughterhouse Nine.

Maybe this is how Taylor learns about Amy’s relation to Marquis, which is the main thing that could cause Amy to wonder whether she would fit in.

“No?” she asked, sarcasm in her tone, “Why wouldn’t you have thought?  You heard what Tattletale said.  I’m the daughter of a villain.

Oh yeah, I suppose she did hear that much before.

I haven’t been nice, I haven’t been merciful, or forgiving, or considerate.  Instead of giving you a second chance, I was spiteful, I toyed with your feelings, and things spiraled out of control.  You know how much trouble that caused for my family?

Wait, “toyed with your feelings”? Is she talking about the hospital encounter, or… is she not actually talking to Taylor anymore?

The director of the PRT and Legend and Miss Militia were all at my house, lecturing all of us about how serious these events were and how sensitive relations between the various factions were.”

Okay, yeah, sounds like the hospital encounter. I should probably reread that sometime soon.

“A non-cape.  I don’t know the details, but she’s in a secure location.”

That’s a pretty decent way to put it.

Amy fidgeted.  “I’m getting out of here.”

Aaand this is where she needs to be told about rule 8.

“Where?”

“Away.  I don’t want to be a part of any of this.”

“You can’t leave.”

“Why not?  I can find a place to hole up and hide until it blows over.”

It needs to be in Brockton Bay, though.

“So long as you’re in Brockton Bay, they’ve got someone who can watch you.  Can watch any of us.  She reads emotions, and apparently uses them to find us from half a city away.  It’s probably how they found the candidates in the first place.”

Yep, and you can’t go out of Brockton Bay, or they’ll consider the game won for them.

“Then I’ll leave the city.  I was going to anyways.”

“Fuck, I wish I still had the list.” I muttered.  At a normal speaking volume, I said, “No, you can’t leave town, either, because Bonesaw prepared a plague or something.  If you are a candidate and you leave the city, they’ll use it.  They explicitly said they were using it as an incentive for the two heroes that they picked as candidates.”

Oh right, now I remember! It was mentioned in the encounter with them by Ballistic’s base last Arc.

Wait, shit, that would be one of the main reasons why that Arc was called Plague, wouldn’t it.

I could have pressed for more details there, but I suspected she’d keep to the conversation better if I gave her the info instead of demanding it.

Probably true, yeah. I like how Taylor is handling this so far.

“They’ve set themselves a time limit to test and eliminate the six candidates.  Their goal is to test the candidates and kill the ones who fail, until there’s only one.  Our goal is to save them.  So when Tattletale figures out you’re here instead of with your family, and when we know that the sixth candidate is apparently a hero, it gets our attention.”

Honest and to the point. That’s good.

I give it a 78% chance that Panacea is about to deny being a hero.

“Who- who are the other candidates?”

“Regent, Bitch, Hookwolf, Armsmaster-”

Alright, not immediately at least.

Also I guess she’s about as surprised to hear Armmaster listed as Sierra? Although she was there for him being confronted about his actions in Extermination, so who knows.

Alternatively, Taylor might be stopping because she’s unsure how to mention Noelle.

“Armsmaster?”

“Yeah.  Though it might be like Cherish is doing to Regent, more to screw with him than for legit reasons.”

Nah, this one’s legit. It’s nice to see Taylor seemingly giving Colin some benefit of doubt now, though.

“Ok.”

“I can see it, though.  I’ve interacted with him.  He really did cross the line during the Endbringer attack.”

“And the fifth?”

I do wonder how much of this softness is Taylor wanting to avoid Panacea being put off by Taylor’s old antagonistic view of Army.

I hopped down from Lucy’s back.  “I just want to talk.”

“I can’t outrun those dogs, you’ve got me outnumbered and you’ve probably got more weapons than me.  I think you’re in a position to do whatever you want.”

Yeah, I suppose that’s true.

Panacea does seem a bit dejected. There’s less… spite in her voice. The Panacea we met at the bank robbery would likely try to do something rather than just accept defeat without a fight.

“Good,” I said, “Because like I said, I just want to talk.  I could get rid of my weapons if that would make you feel any better.”

“It wouldn’t, really.”

Even besides the sense of apathy here, the dogs are weapons enough regardless of how many smaller ones they throw to the sides.

I saw her step back a little, and I could tell she was ready to bolt.  We were in a position to catch her, for sure, but it would be more detrimental than anything.  If we chased her down, any dialogue I had with her afterward would be an interrogation, not a conversation.

Does she feel like she can run after all?

I suppose at least she could keep her distance from Taylor right now, now that she’s off Lucy, but otherwise bolting wouldn’t do much unless Panacea went somewhere the dogs couldn’t follow.