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Mirage paused for a moment to think, but for the life of her, couldn’t remember this guy’s name. He was incredibly cute and sexy, in a Matthew Broderick kind of way. A definite departure from her usual flavor, but just what the doctor ordered for tonight. He had approached her table after Violet and Kari left. She wasn’t sure exactly why she had invited him to sit down; perhaps it was because the “chance encounter” with Vi and Kari had gone so well. A crowded coffee shop had provided the perfect excuse to share their table and a couple of weeks’ surveillance had provided her a few conversation starters. She had surprised herself by really enjoying their company and had ended up feeling an unexpected connection to the younger women. The young man turned out to be confident and very charming, with a sly smile that lit up his hazel eyes, but she had still hesitated. In the end she let him persuade her to accompany him to a house party on campus. Perhaps she was in a celebratory mood, perhaps she was flattered to have someone trying so hard to win her affection without a clue of who she was. The young man had no idea he was flirting with one of the most powerful and influential people on the Eastern seaboard, he just thought she was pretty. In the end, “why” didn’t matter. She was here with him and he was doing that thing with his tongue, again. She encouraged him to proceed and in a short period of time, rational thought just wasn’t possible. But no matter how fun it was, there was something missing.
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“What was the fight about?”
Violet looked at the shrink through half-lidded eyes. “What fight?”
“The fight that caused you to storm out of your house and spend the night away from your family.”
“Aren’t you supposed to have some kind of, like, privacy thing, where you don’t talk about stuff outside of here?”
The doctor looked at Violet with a bemused smile on her face. “I can assure you, Violet, that everything you say in here is completely confidential. The only way I would reveal anything that you said to anyone else would be if you told me you were planning to hurt yourself or someone else. However,” she sighed, “because of your unique status in the community, there are certain subjects that have priority when we talk.”
“Like me arguing with my mom?”
“Like you walking around pushing people out of your way using your psi powers.” The doctor’s voice had a hint of reproach in it.
“I didn’t know I was doing it.” Violet replied defensively.
“I know.” She said understandingly, “That’s one of the reasons I’d really like to talk about it.” Violet looked down at her hands uncomfortably.
“I’m really good at controlling my powers, you know.” She said in a soft voice.
Dr. Smith smiled. “We’ve all watched you come into your own over the last few years. We’re all very proud of you, you know.” She matched Violet’s tone and phrasing, eliciting a smile from the young lady.
“Sometimes, I wish I was here, you know, instead of with them.”
“Your mom and dad?”
“Yeah, I get treated like a person here. Everyone calls me “Ms. Parr” and listens to me. She won’t even let me get a word in edgewise.”
“Your mom.” It was a statement.
“Yeah. Whenever the demon child messes with my stuff or messes up my life, which is, like, every day, she always takes his side.” Violet’s voice was bitter and her words sharp. “I can’t wait until this summer… I am so outta there.”
“Have you decided where you’re going to college?”
“Stanford.”
“That’s a long ways away.”
“Not long enough.”
“Why Stanford?”
“I didn’t get accepted into Kyutech.”
“Quetek…?”
“Kyushu Institute of Technology.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Not surprising,” Violet said with a sly grin, “It’s in Iizuka, Japan.”
“So you consider Stanford to be a compromise.” Dr. Smith said with a friendly smile.
“Bingo.”
“Did you tell your parents that you applied for this Quetek college?”
“Nah, mom found the rejection letter though.” Violet rolled her eyes. “I couldn’t believe the shit storm that came out of that. You’d a thought I was going to the moon, the way she carried on.”
“She was upset?”
“She was crying for three days.” Violet’s tone was dismissive. “Every night at dinner that week I had to listen to hour long lectures about the importance of family and what it means to be a team.” She rolled her eyes again, “Like they knew anything about being a team before I stepped up… Dad sneakin’ around trying to be a secret hero… Mom trying to pretend everything was normal… I’m lucky I’m not some whack job out on the streets killing normals for the hell of it.”
“Is that what you were fighting about?”
“No.” she sighed. “Dash was being a little prick, and I was trying to teach him a lesson… She… She just never listens to me.” Violet’s sat back in her seat and let her mind drift a bit. “I’m always doing the wrong thing, you know. It never works out for me.”
“What never works out for you?”
“Everything.” Violet looked down at her hands, picking at an imaginary speck of something on her fingernail. “I’m seventeen, and the only real kiss I’ve ever had was from a girl.”
“Is that why you’re having nightmares?”
Violet studied the doctor intently, looking for some kind of judgment or disapproval. Her gaze was piercing and forceful but the doctor didn’t even flinch. After a few moments she shook her head slowly, “I… I don’t know.”
“Is that what you were arguing with your mom about?”
“You just can’t let that go, can you?” Violet asked. “What’s so important about what we were fighting about?”
“You left the house and used your powers unconsciously on people. You were not in control of yourself, and as a result you were not in control of your powers.”
Violet’s eyes flashed. “That’s all this is about, isn’t it?” She said in sudden realization, “This whole thing where I come in here to talk to you about my life. It’s all a front for The Agency to keep their fingers on the pulse of Violet Parr’s ‘dangerous powers’ and ‘unstable mind,’ isn’t it?” The dark haired girl stood up and advanced on the doctor. “You don’t give a damn about me, you just want to make sure I don’t go crazy and start killing people.” She imitated the Doctor’s voice, “Talk to me, Violet. I’m listening,” sarcasm took over her voice, “as long as I think it will protect the sheeple of Metroville.” She could feel her anger rising up around her and knew the shrink was waiting for some kind of sign that she didn’t have control so they could slap some kind of power damper on her. They had them, agent Dicker was always talking about how they were restraining some rogue super or another. Well she wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of that. She spun around to face the psychiatrist. “You just want me to be in control, don’t you?” Violet walked over to the chair where the doctor was sitting and loomed over the woman, “I’ll show you control…”
Fixing her glare on the woman’s face and pouring all of her pent up anger into it, she reached out with her mind and picked up a marker from the desk. As it floated silently across the room, encased in one of Violet’s force fields, she saw a hint of fear in the doctor’s eyes. The doctor who was supposed to be her friend, supposed to listen to her and keep her secrets was actually just another lackey agent that was scared to death of her and wanted to protect the normals from her. She stopped the marker a few inches away from the doctor’s face and removed the cap, letting it fall to the floor. The marker moved steadily down to the doctor’s notepad and spelled out the word “Incurable” over the notes already there.
“I guess that means we won’t need to meet anymore, eh Doc?” Violet walked calmly across the room, the marker still hovering in the air in front of the doctor’s face. “And you can tell your boss that my control is just fine.” With that, she walked out of the room and released the pen. She couldn’t believe she had ever really thought the doctor was trying to help her. The last week had been going so well, her sessions every few days had generally left her feeling pretty good, but it was all just a set up. They were all just trying to control her. Why were they scared of her? Why didn’t they just leave her alone? She wanted nothing more than to fall down and start crying but she wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. She held her head high and strode out of the building.
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"Thanks for meeting me.”
“No problem, Vi.” The tow-headed woman replied with a smile. “You look a little down. Is something wrong?”
“Did you ever find out that someone you thought was your friend was really just using you?” Violet asked. She was looking at her hands, so she didn’t see Chi twitch in surprise.
Chi tried to keep her voice steady when she responded, “Yes.” She said sadly. “Once… Once, someone I cared for very much… someone I thought cared for me very much… He…” She smiled sadly. “It isn’t important, exactly what happened. He just showed me that he didn’t really care about me.”
“What did you do?”
“I walked away and never looked back.”
“Was he… your… um… was he family?”
“I thought… hoped really, that he would be, some day. But it wasn’t meant to be.” She reached out and took Violet’s hand. “Did someone betray you Vi?”
Violet gently pulled her hand away, nervously twisting her fingers together. She knew she shouldn’t say too much to this woman; she was a complete stranger, after all. But there was something familiar, something that felt safe about her and the session with that woman from the agency was still weighing heavily on her mind. “Yeah.”
“I know you don’t know me very well but, do you want to tell me about it?”
Violet just shook her head. “I don’t think so. I can’t really talk to anyone about most of my life…”
“Don’t tell me your dad is a spy or something.”
Violet blushed. “Nothing like that.” She said dismissively. “I just… I just don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well then,” Chi said with a bright smile and a genuine lilt in her voice, “Let’s talk about something else...” She winked conspiratorially, “Do you remember that cute boy with the leather jacket that was looking at us the whole time we were at the coffee house?”
“Yeah…”
“After you and Kari left, he asked me to go to a house party with him, over at M.U.”
“Did you go?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure, at first. He was so much younger than me… But he was so cute and really charming…” As Chi talked, Violet tried to pin down what was familiar about the woman. For some reason she just felt safe when she was talking with Chi and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why.
That night, Violet dreamed she was back on the island with her parents and her brother. They were trying to get away from Syndrome… No, they were trying to figure out how to launch the rocket when Chi stepped out of the shadows and gave them the launch codes. She woke up in surprise. Why would she think that Chi was on the island? But the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. It completely explained why she would feel safe around Chi, if she was associating her with the woman who helped them escape and stop Syndrome’s plan. What if she’s the same person? She tried to remember the woman’s face, but all she got was the hair and the smile, both of which matched Chi’s. But that could be coincidence, couldn’t it?
Violet clenched herself in frustration. Why does everything have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t someone, anyone just be themselves? Everyone wants something from me; why can’t anyone just want to be with me because they like me? She rocked back and forth on her bed, clutching her chest and praying silently for a way out, wishing she could be normal, wishing she could have a normal life.
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Agent Dicker sighed inwardly. “Listen, Skippy,” He said resignedly, “You can’t call Bob and Helen over here and show them a video record of something that happened in their daughter’s therapy session.”
“She’s freaking out.”
“She’s a teenager.” Rick sighed. “She is in a constant state of ‘freaking out.’ It’s what they re best at.” He looked over his glasses at the young agent and pointedly said, “A state that you seem to find yourself in a lot more than is healthy.”
“You saw the tapes of her sessions with Dr. Smith…”
“The completely confidential sessions…? The sessions that are inviolate under federal law…?” Dicker asked sarcastically, “The sessions with the doctor who took an oath to preserve her patient’s privacy…? The sessions that were recorded and analyzed by agents without the knowledge or consent of the patient…? Are those the sessions you’re referring to?”
“Well…”
“Here’s the phone. Why don’t you call up Mr. Incredible and tell him that The Agency violated his daughter’s confidentiality agreement with her doctor. And then, when he asks about his own sessions, you can tell him that his confidentiality was compromised as well.” Rick smiled weakly. “If there are any pieces of you left when he’s done, I’d love to hear how you’re going to explain the whole thing to a federal judge.”
The young agent’s eyes widened, “But, you saw them too… and… and… we’re doing it because it’s necessary… right?” He gained a little confidence, “We have to make sure the supers aren’t a danger to society, right? That they’re controlled and on the right side, right?” He was almost begging.
“Yeah, keep tellin’ yourself that, it’ll help you sleep better at night.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to find a lever. Everyone has a lever, something that they value above everything else. We need to find a lever to use on Violet, to keep her in line.”
“You mean like blackmail?”
Rick rolled his eyes inwardly and shook his head. “We’re not mobsters. I had hoped this ‘Tony’ fellow would provide a stabilizing force on Violet, but he hasn’t stepped up.” He paused for a moment, deep in thought, “We need to find someone she can relate to, someone who she respects and will listen to and then we need to make sure that ‘someone’ is listening to us. Call Lucius, he might know something that will help us.”
“What about the sessions?”
“What about them?”
“What if he finds out?”
“Are you going to tell him?” The agent shook his head frantically. “Then I don’t think there’ll be a problem.” Rick watched the nervous young man exit the room with a sinking feeling in his stomach. If this was the kind of recruit they were getting nowadays, The Agency was in big trouble. He shuffled through the stack of papers on his desk and came to the file he had been trying to get his hands on for a few days. After reading the first line, he sat back and laughed at himself and the mysterious workings of the universe. He read the first line again and allowed himself a genuine chuckle. It was nice to know that the universe had a sense of humor, even when he was the butt of the joke. He shook his head once more and thought: No wonder the kid never objected.
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