Shadowy Penumbra/The Brief Career Of
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
It was past time, Jessica Westwood (Once Shadowy Penumbra) thought. She could get away with not mentioning it forever, now, but she could feel how deep her depression lied. And perhaps by talking about it, she could pull herself out of it.
She pulled herself out of bed, the first time in days she had done this. Her parents kept expressing concern, but she kept lying, and sometimes shouting, at them. It was definitely time, they didn't deserve this treatment from her.
She opened the door that seperates her bedroom from the rest of the apartment, and stepped out. She listens for any sign that her sister is running around, but nothing. Must be at a neighbors. And she made her way into the living room, her father watching television and her mother reading some magazine, not talking. Jessica could feel the strain between them, strain she caused herself by being so difficult.
"Mom. Dad. I'm ready to talk."
Her parents looked up at her, both of their faces full of concern. Both even starting down the same sentence, "Jess, Are you--" and both stopping as they realized they were saying the same thing. Jess took the brief pause to stop them in their tracks.
"It's a lot of stuff. And it's pretty overwhelming. And I should've told you a long time ago. But I'm ready now...So please, just listen."
Her parents nodded silently. Jessica stood there as she began.
"I know there are lots of them, but remember the Rikti attack around here several weeks ago?"
Jessica walked quickly to her boyfriend's apartment, school having let out just moments before. She shivered as she heard the scream of some woman getting mugged by an Outcast. But it quickly vanished from her mind.
She made it about a mile from the high school before the warwalls went down. She felt it before she saw it, the large forcefields that surrounded city neighborhoods created a hum throughout Paragon that everyone got too used to to truly notice, but when they went down everyone noticed.
And then the world rumbled. She was only a few blocks from her boyfriends, and so she made a run for it, as bombs fell and beams lanced through the air. She saw teams of brightly colored heroes flying through the sky, trying to take on the invading menace of the Rikti.
As she ran, the beams lanced closer, until finally once sliced off a piece right above her, and a small chunk of the building landed right on her.
She screamed, as anyone would do really. Her legs crushed by the building, she was pinned and unable to move. She could feel herself weakening quickly.
So close to her, however, laid half of a hero. As she cried for help, a wispy form of energy rose up out of the hero and beheld her.
'I call myself Penumbra. A Warshade of the Kheldians.' It said to her, it's energy touching and surrounding her, its voice already in her mind. 'I believe I can save you. If we bond, I shall be able to heal your wounds."
"A stinking alien?! You got one of those -things- inside of you," her father began to rant.
"No, dad. I had a Kheldian in me. It saved my life...I would've died there." She takes a deep breath and sighs, "Anyway, we were bonded for a while. I even joined the Youth League."
"So that girl that was here, that...that Misako person--" Her mother began, but was interrupted.
"Yeah. She did it...Well getting ahead of ourselves. But it was to help me. I'm sorry I had her lie. She's...actually pretty good. Keep that in mind."
Jessica took a breath and continued, "Shortly after joining the Youth League, I uhm...got a call from someone who sounded like Misako, asking for my help in Bloody Bay."
Jessica ran as fast as she could through the Bay, dodging Shivans as she ran to where Misako said to meet her. She found herself able to tap into Penumbra's energy, and use some of Its powers for herself, though not all...and in combat, she always let the alien stay in control. Less pain that way.
She arrived very promptly to the spot, and there was Misako there. Jessica approached her, asking what's up, when the girl that looked like Misako punched her in the solar plexus, and quickly slipped Zig-style power suppressing handcuffs on her.
Jessica panicked, screamed, tried to beg for her freedom. Not even a hero for a week, and already kidnapped.
She felt terrorized by this ordeal, the handcuffs attached to her also attached to what she was told is a small bomb. It seemed to take forever for her fellow Leaguers to rescue her, and for it all to be just a test to show the Youth League how not to react to such situations...
"This Misako girl kidnapped and terrorized you, and you're saying she's a good person?!"
"Dad...Please. It was a stupid way for her to get her point across. ... Very stupid, but..I'm over that now. She's helped me out tons. Just ... yeah. Let me keep going."
She took a deep breath, again, and continued. "For a while things were okay. Penumbra was arresting Council soldier after Council soldier, foiling plot after plot. But my own life was sucking...Adam broke up with me, and then started spreading rumors around at school..." She fingered the necklace she never took off with a soft smile, "But I met someone. Her name--"
She paused, noticing the look on her parents faces. "Don't even start. We never got that far anyway. Her name was...Is. Is Miranda. She helped so much. She placed a spell to stop all these rumors about me from going around the school, and, uhm, yeah, taught me so much. .. Not that! God! She...Had someone. We just spent a lot of time together, that's all!
"Anyway, she built up a lot of confidence in me...And so one day..."
The sewers. The sewers of Paragon City stunk, plainly. Why villains chose to flock there made no sense. Well, maybe for the Vahzilok it made sense, they probably had no sense of smell.
And that's who Jess was fighting. Jess, this time, not Penumbra. She was using what powers she could manipulate to try to stop a plot of Dr. Vahzilok's.
It was quite a rush. Penumbra was still in a funk, having been led down a month long path by Requiem of the Council. Every base shut down, every soldier arrested, was all a plot of Requiem's and Penumbra was seething. But crime still happened in Paragon, despite that, so Jess thought she'd try to take care of something.
And wow, it was completely unbelievable. Defeating bad guy after bad guy, tagging them for arrest as she went deeper into the awful smelling sewer, until she came upon the form of the Doctor himself. Itself, you couldn't call it human anymore, let alone a man.
It was a long fight. The energy field surrounding Jessica deflecting most of the attacks, but by focusing so much on defense, she herself had barely any energy left for offense, and so it took a while to bring the doctor down and have him arrested.
"Oh Honey, I"m so proud of you," her mother said with a bright smile. As if this one tale of victory was enough to make her supportive of what her daughter had been doing behind their backs.
"Yeah...It was awesome. But...it wasn't going to last. Remember when I disappeared for several hours, and we got into a huge fight about it? ... Here's what happened."
Jessica felt on top of the world, after spending several hours with Miranda again. She knew she ought to feel guilty. She knew she shouldn't spend so much time with a taken woman, but she couldn't help herself. Miranda made her feel complete and whole. It was only a matter of time, she knew, before Miranda saw her completely. After all, Jess was there for her. Min was no where to be found.
And maybe it was this line of thinking that led to what happened next. Like divine retribution for her sins, the Rikti attacked Steel Canyon again. And as she was running from the Youth League base to her home, having stayed up so late she herself would not be much use in the fight against them, a bomb went off just as she went by it.
She flew several feet, before landing, immediately losing consciousness. Her dress was in tatters, her hair burnt completely off of her and much of her flesh ruined.
"No! Why didn't anyone call us?!" Her mother exclaimed, panicking for the fate of her daughter, despite her daughter standing whole and healthy in front of her.
"...My purse was stolen by some idiot right after the Rikti retreated. A fellow leaguer came upon me, and he took me to the hospital. They figured I should have been dead, but...Uhm...Penumbra was doing its best to keep me alive. It since told me it would've taken days to heal the damage enough for me to be conscious and move around...but it never would have healed me completely..."
"No, not her." Exclaimed a worried Miranda, better known to the Youth League as Zalyndra. She had just entered Jessica's hospital room, after using a spell to find out where she was.
She was burnt beyond all recognition, and with the loss of her purse, no one had known who she was. She was just a Jane Doe, a victim of the Rikti attack that in all rights should be dead.
And for Jess, Miranda decided to pay what was the ultimate price. She took more of the power, her connection to beings outside this universe, inside herself and used it to heal the girl completely.
And with that generous act, Miranda was lost. She became more entwined with the being outside this universe she drew her powers from. And as Jess opened her eyes, she saw what had happened and began to cry.
Jess tried to continue the story there, but turned her head, wiping at her eyes. "She...gave of herself to save me. She knew what would happen, that she'd lose herself and...become different. Yet she saved me. But not enough."
She held up a finger, as if to say she needs a minute. She went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, before walking back in. Her mother and father having taken a seat together, at the couch, during the brief seconds she was out of the room.
"She was too late, though, Mom and Dad. Penumbra keeping me alive, like it did...made us more intertwined. You see...Warshades have a history to them. They were evil, at one point, life sucking aliens. And they always seem to have a bit of that addiction in them, still. Always fighting it, and always trying to, uhm...make up for what they did.
"But, Penumbra was still new to all of this. And it was filled with some very dark emotions after being played by Requiem. And those emotions filled me. I became darker, more bitchy to my friends."
She sighed, draining the glass of water she had just poured. "One night when I slept...Just a few days ago...Penumbra left me. I guess it took it all night to untangle itself from me...and it spoke in my dreams, keeping me asleep. It felt that it was...corrupting me, and it did not wish any more disaster to hit. So it left."
"Well, honey, that's probably for the better..." Her father said tentatively, instinctively knowing he was walking on thin ice.
"No! It's not! I'm helpless now. I walk outside, and if a Hellion or Outcast wants to do something to me...How can I stop it? I'm fucked, plain and simple. I'm all alone, obviously no longer able to really be a member of the Youth League. All my friends at school left in the wake of those rumors Adam spread!"
Her mother gazed at her, her eyes full of caring and love, "sweetheart, you'll find new ones. Your life isn't over, you know that. A lot of people live their lives without any powers...You'll find your way. And then you can go off to college...away from Paragon if you want to."
Jess's eyes widened at that. She was long looking at schools outside the state, even outside the region. But her parents didn't want her to go so far from home. To hear them say that blew her mind, "But...You didn't want me to leave the city."
"That...was before. You've been through a lot, honey. We're here for you, but if you need to leave...if there's too much memory here, we'll do what we can." Her mother smiled at her, as her father nodded in agreement.
"Absolutely," he said, "Anything you want, honey. You've been through too much."
Jessica stood there, shocked. This was the most her and her parents got a long in a couple of months. She then smiled, tears coming to her eyes again and she rushed forward, hugging them both tightly.
