216 Confrontation of Feelings
216 Confrontation of Feelings
The irony tasted bitter.
After all that distance and deliberately keeping myself out of Nicole’s life for so long, I ended up getting her pregnant. Doubly ironic, considering my Enhancer rating revolved around self-mastery, bodily precision, and total internal regulation. Of all the things I should have been able to control, this should’ve been one of them.
I told George that Guesswork and by extension, the SRC knew about Nicole’s pregnancy. I added that Guesswork had drawn a line between us, so we should be more careful when dealing with him.
George swore loudly. “That snake. Traitor.”
“Not really,” I said.
There was a pause on the line. “You’re defending him? After he sold us out?”
“He didn’t sell us out,” I replied calmly. “He came to me directly. No ambush. No irreversible damage. This was… a liquidation of a partnership.”
George snorted. “I’m impressed. Didn’t know you knew words that deep.”
“Liquidation isn’t that deep,” I said flatly.
High school drifted back to me how I’d once wanted to be a businessman or how I’d imagined boardrooms and hostile takeovers instead of wars and apocalypses. Maybe that was why I still wore suits whenever I could. Some unfulfilled dream clinging to me out of habit.
A sudden commotion crackled through the phone.
“Nicholas.”
My breath caught. “Nicole.”
Her tone was sharp, wounded. “You’re really heartless, you know that? Leaving me like that. Not even a word.”
That night surfaced in my mind uninvited how one thing led to another.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll take responsibility.”
“You can only do that if you survive,” she shot back. “If you die fighting that thing, responsibility doesn’t mean shit.”
I rubbed my forehead, irritation bleeding into exhaustion. “George,” I muttered into the phone, “how much did you tell her? Or was this on purpose?”
He didn’t answer.
I hated myself for thinking it, but the sting from this felt sharper than Guesswork’s betrayal.
“I’ll survive,” I told her. “I promise.”
There was a brief silence.
“If you die,” Nicole said quietly, “I’ll kill the life in my womb.”
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone.
No. She wouldn’t. She was just trying to scare me. She had to be.
…Right?
The image of Onyx within Nicole slithered through my thoughts, and a chill ran down my spine.
“Please don’t.”
The stress was eating me alive.
Amelia descended from the night like a falling banner, crimson wings cutting the air as she glided onto the rooftop. Her boots touched down without a sound. Guesswork’s visit had been unexpected. Amelia’s wasn’t.
I had been waiting for her.
For a brief, uncharitable moment, I wondered if she had come to betray me too. It would have been neat and symmetrical. Heroes and villains failing, as they always did, to coexist. Still, if someone was going to put a knife in my back, I trusted Amelia to do it to my face. That alone made her more trustworthy than Guesswork had ever been.
I tilted my head. “New colors?”
She was wearing red-and-white body armor now, trimmed with gold. The seams were deliberately exposed, leaving slivers of skin bare where her physiology needed freedom to change. The crimson wings folded inward and vanished into her back as if they’d never been there.
“My PR team,” she said dryly. “They’ve been making me try things. Rebranding, apparently.”
“Why?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Chimera has three syllables. Too long. And it inspires fear more than hope.” A pause. “That’s a problem, given what I’m trying to build.”
I snorted softly. “A global superhero system.”
She nodded. “Something that can represent the hero side of… whatever the hell this is we’re doing.”
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
“Same old,” I replied. “People to murder. People to intimidate. Existential threats. You know. The list grows.”
She gave me a look with half reproach and half understanding.
The world we lived in wasn’t built for unity. Heroes operated locally and independently. A city had its protectors; a region might have an alliance. Politics followed capital, and capital followed territory. City-states in everything but name.
Cape culture only made it worse. Powered versus non-powered. Heroes versus villains. Identity hardened into brand.
If something like the Entity came knocking, the heroes would fracture before they ever rallied. Villains would exploit the chaos. Opportunists would feast. A world-ending threat didn’t just require power. Instead, it required coordination, legitimacy, and narrative control.
A global superhero organization could do that.
With enough reputation, it could rally heroes across borders and shape public opinion. Even offer villains a seat at the table when survival outweighed ideology.
By giving Amelia that role, I wasn’t just empowering her.
I was handing her the scaffolding of world governance.
She studied me for a moment, eyes sharp, searching. “You didn’t call me just to chat.”
“No,” I admitted.
“So,” she said quietly, “why did you call me, Nick?”
“It’s an ultimatum,” I told her.
Amelia’s expression shifted at once. The faint humor drained from her face, replaced by something sharper and more attentive. She raised an eyebrow, signaling she was listening.
“In a year’s time, I’m going to hunt the Entity down.”
She frowned. “Why a year? And why hunt it at all? We’re preparing to fight it here. Together.”
I shook my head. “That’s exactly why we shouldn’t.”
She waited.
“If our world becomes the battlefield against something like that,” I said, “then we’ve already lost. Collateral alone would be catastrophic. Whatever the outcome, there wouldn’t be much left to save.” I exhaled slowly. “It’s better to fight it in another world. Somewhere empty. Somewhere we can afford to burn.”
Her eyes narrowed, thoughtful rather than resistant.
“I’ve seen what it leaves behind,” I went on. “When I infiltrated the NSD. When I confronted the people behind Light. Ruins don’t even begin to describe it. Entire realities hollowed out, scraped clean.” My jaw tightened. “And for reasons I still don’t fully understand, it’s targeting me.”
She opened her mouth, then stopped herself.
“I intend to engage it here first,” I said, “but only to prepare. To draw lines. To set the board. But lately…” I hesitated. “…my methodology’s been changing. I think I’m ready for true change.”
Her gaze softened. “Your condition.”
I looked at her.
She’d hidden the worry and fear well, but my Empathy didn’t lie. It never did. Beneath her composure was something steady and sincere. Concern, not calculation. That was rare in this broken world.
Empathy did more than patch the emotions Intangibility was eroding. It let me see people as they were. Their fractures, light, and rot.
Amelia’s was clean.
“Do you still plan on dying?” she asked quietly.
The question hit harder than it should have.
I remembered the day before the Box. The certainty I’d worn like armor. The way death had felt less like an end and more like a conclusion I’d already accepted.
“I…” The word caught. “I don’t know.”
She studied me for a moment longer, then unexpectedly changed the subject.
“Give me a name,” she said.
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“A hero name,” she repeated. “A new one.”
I stared at her. She looked almost… embarrassed.
“I’m terrible at naming things,” she admitted. “Chimera was just the first thing that came to mind because of how my power works. But if I’m really doing this, I need something better.”
I considered her. The wings. The strength. The symbolism she’d carry.
“Griffin,” I said.
She burst out laughing.
I frowned. “What?”
“Nothing, sorry.” She stifled it, still smiling. “I just… I expected something edgier. Coming from Eclipse.”
I pouted despite myself. “If you don’t want it, forget I said anything.”
“No, no,” she said quickly, waving a hand. “I like it. I really do.” She smiled wider. “I just didn’t expect you to be… decent at this.”
“Hey,” I shot back, “Eclipse is an awesome name. It inspires fear. Awe. Enough that the SRC’s media team still hasn’t managed to bury it.”
She laughed again, this time softer.
The era of the SRC ruling my world from the shadows had to end.
Balance… that was the word Guesswork kept circling, even when he tried to dress it up as pragmatism. He wanted equilibrium, a point where the SRC and people like us could coexist without one side choking the other. If they played along, fine. If they didn’t, then this world would slip out of their grasp sooner or later.
And this time, we finally had the means to make that happen.
The capes here were weaker, yes. Less refined. Their techniques crude, their understanding shallow. This world lagged nearly a century behind others I’d seen. But stagnation wasn’t destiny. I’d forced the first crack open myself with portal technology, allowing multiversal contact. It was proof that there was more to the universe than what we could percieve. Once that door existed, it couldn’t be closed again.
Amelia, with George backing her, was already accelerating the rest. Knowledge about power development, about the ‘source’ was spreading. It contained what we’d learned from that medieval world, distilled from Dr. Time’s ramblings and hard observation. The gap would close. Not overnight, but inevitably.
Amelia finally stopped laughing.
“So,” she said, folding her arms, “why Griffin?”
I shrugged. “Simple. Courage. Guardianship. And honestly? You’re more lioness than tiger.”
She blinked. “That’s your reasoning?”
“The only difference,” I added, “is that now you’ve got wings. And… more.”
She looked away.
It wasn’t subtle. It hadn’t been for a long time. I’d be a fool not to notice how she felt, but I’d also be a worse one to pretend I hadn’t taken advantage of it. I’d leaned on her too much. Used her belief, her drive, and her trust.
Hopefully, it wasn’t too late to stop before it curdled into something ugly.
“Amelia,” I said, “are we friends?”
She snapped her head back toward me, glaring. “You really know how to ruin a moment.”
She scratched at her hair in irritation, and that’s when I noticed it again, brown giving way to faint red at the tips. Not dye. Mutation. Her power evolving, rewriting her piece by piece.
“You just had to say it out loud,” she complained.
I exhaled, thinking. I’d meant to stop at the ultimatum, but some things shouldn’t be half-said.
“There’s someone else,” I told her. “A woman. Someone I hoped I’d never see again.”
Her posture stiffened.
“I tempted fate,” I went on, voice lower. “And it decided to answer. One thing led to another.” I swallowed. “She’s pregnant.”
Amelia was quiet for a long second.
“Who is the unlucky gal?” she asked.
“George will tell you,” I said. “When he does… I hope you’ll help them. Both of them. Mother and child.”
She let out a long, weary sigh and rubbed her face with her hands.
“You really are a cruel man,” she muttered.
I didn’t argue.
“Is there something you want?” I asked her quietly. “If there is, I’ll do my best to give it to you. As long as it doesn’t cross my principles.”
She scoffed. “Selfish man.”
If anyone else heard me talk about principles, they would’ve laughed. Eclipse, the butcher of factions, lecturing about lines he wouldn’t cross.
Amelia stepped closer, close enough that I could feel her breath. Before I could speak, she caught my chin between her fingers and drew herself up. I didn’t pull away. Her hand slid to my shoulder, steady and warm, and then her lips met mine.
It wasn’t gentle.
The kiss carried frustration, longing, and something dangerously close to anger. Her teeth caught my lower lip, hard enough to hurt. A sharp sting flared, copper blooming on my tongue, and then she pulled back just as suddenly.
A tear slipped down her cheek, her eyes still locked on mine.
“Have you figured it out now?” I asked softly.
She nodded once. “We can’t be friends,” she said. “And I don’t like you.”
After a pause, her voice faltered just enough to betray her. “But you’re precious to me.”
Blood welled where she’d bitten me. I wiped it away with my thumb and sealed the wound with Biokinesis, the flesh knitting back together as if it had never been broken.
“Thank you,” I said. “For being honest.”
I hesitated, then bowed my head slightly. “And… I’m sorry.”
The truth had been clawing at me for a while now. My Empathy wasn’t just perception. It wasn’t passive. It carried the same signature as Silver’s. As Onyx’s. Not manipulation in the crude sense, but something more insidious: resonance. Understanding that pressed itself into the heart and quietly rewrote distance.
I didn’t want it to be true.
But reality had never cared what I wanted.
I remembered Deadend. Silver. Onyx. How affection had bloomed so naturally it felt earned and true, until Onyx, dying, confessed what she’d done that me falling for her hadn’t been a coincidence. How her Empathy had tried to make me forget her, to spare me the pain. How even then, it failed.
And now I was on the other side of that equation.
I had been manipulated by psychics more times than I’d liked. And here I was, doing the same thing without meaning to.
“I know,” Amelia said suddenly.
I looked up. “Since when?”
“Wamond,” she replied without hesitation.
She turned away, her shoulders rising and falling as her emotions settled, smoothing themselves into something steadier.
“I knew something was off,” she continued. “I knew your presence made things… easier. Clearer. But I stayed anyway.”
“Why?” I asked.
She glanced back at me, thoughtful. “Because I don’t think it’s about control. I think it’s about understanding. Putting yourself in someone else’s place. Letting two hearts overlap just enough to change both. I think that’s the nature of the Empathy you wield.”
She smiled brightly and genuinely, unguarded.
“I believe what I feel is real,” she said. “And I believe what you feel is, too. Even if you don’t notice how you’ve changed.” She tapped her chest lightly. “You saw the light in the world in me. I saw its darkness in you. We met somewhere in between.”
I stared at her, unsure what to say.
“How do you even know all that?” I finally asked.
She laughed softly. “You silly.” She pointed to her nose. “I can smell powers, remember? And with the Chimera source, I can perceive more than I used to.”
Her expression sobered. “That’s how I know when you die, it won’t be simple.”
She turned away again. “So you have to survive.”
Silence stretched between us.
“Is that all?” she asked at last.
“That’s all,” I said.
I felt her anxiety ripple through my Empathy, but beneath it, something else was rising. It was neither fear nor sorrow.
Challenge.
Courage.
Amelia stepped onto the edge of the rooftop and leapt without hesitation. Midair, her body twisted and unfolded, wings erupting in a storm of crimson and white as she became a griffin. She beat her wings once, twice, and soared upward, cutting through the sky until the clouds swallowed her whole.
I watched until she was gone.