80 Unfucking the travelers.

"Welcome to the first and only Multiverse class colony ship I ever built. Welcome to the Saraswati!" I announced, arms spread wide.

The others looked around, starry eyed as droids came over with the shard extractors I had ordered.

Picking one off the tray, I held it high.

"Ahem!" I cleared my throat.

"Everyone, attention here please!"

"This is a shard extractor. It will take out the brain parasites that give you your powers. Now before I give these out to you guys, I must warn, this is going to be painful. Very painful. Like you will want to die painful.

Which is why, I will be giving each of you a dose of this. " I said, picking up a syringe of CodeRed from beside the disks.

"This won't lessen the pain, but it will heal you right up so you don't get trauma. Now, if you want to leave without giving up your powers, I am fine with that too.

But remember, your powers in a world without powers will be a threat. A threat that people will use against you and your family. That's the nature of power.

The institutions of power will try to control you and use you as weapons or assassins or test subjects if they know you have powers. And they will find out.

You can't hide them forever. You think you can. And maybe you're right.

But you're human too. It's going to be hard. You will probably slip up and reveal your powers to someone.

Then? It's all downhill from there.

So I won't force you to do anything because I know exactly how painful this is going to be.

But it might also be your only chance at returning to a normal life, make some excuse about your absence and then slip back into your almsot nirmal life, locking away this time of your life as a bad dream.

Just laying out the cards on the table.

It's your choice. I'll support you all either way."

I placed the syringe and disc back on the tray and scanned the room.

"Can we try it on one of us first?" Oliver asked.

"Sure. But not you Oliver. You and Noelle will need to stay behind and help with something. I'll send you two back home a couple days later." I replied.

Everyone was silent for a moment as they looked at each other hoping someone would step up.

And someone did.

Sundancer came forward.

"I'll do it." She said.

"You sure?" Oliver asked.

"Or what, you chicken shit? You're going to do it? You couldn't step up to ask for directions, much less ..." She snapped at him, as and he shrunk back, fear in his eyes.

She jerked in realisation, and softened up.

"Ugh...sorry, Oliver. I- I am just confused, frustrated. I didn't mean it."

"...It's okay." He replied, head down.

What a pushover.

No wonder he's used as the team gopher.

"Can we just get over it?" Sundancer asked.

I nodded, sitting her on a chair, strapping her in place, and deactivated her power with my technokinesis.

I picked up a syringe, injecting the CodeRed into her before placing the disc on her back of her neck.

"Ready?" I asked, hovering my finger over the button.

"As I'll ever be." She replied.

"Alright. On three." I said, "3...2.."

I pressed the button.

"Fuck!" She cried out, as the hooks dug into her neck, drawing blood, as grinding and hissing noises rang out amidst the most horrid screams she bucked against her straps, writhing in pains, her body spasming as hard as it could.

Seconds passed as the vial behind the disc began to fill up with prismatic red liquid, glistening in the lights, and the hooks unclasped from her head, leaving her collapsed onto the floor.

Slowly, I pulled off the disc from her neck, revealing a gaping hole in her brain visible to everyone.

In full view, the hole slowly filled back up, as her body regenerated to ship shape again.

A minute or so later, she woke back up with a moan and looked around to find everyone staring at her.

"Uh... what's up guys? Why are you all looking at me li- Ugh!" She grabbed her head, as the memories returned to her and she fell into the chair gasping for breath.

"Th-that ...it hurt..." She shook like a leaf in the wind, "I wanted to die...but ...but....it...I was paralyzed.... it's horrifying! You knew! You knew and you let me do it anyway! Why-"

Flash!

I pulled out the memory erasing gun and flashed her head with it, removing the trauma.

"Aaaand then there's this, the memory eraser, in case you need some help....processing it." I added.

Everyone gave me the dirtiest looks ever, as I just shrugged.

"I did tell you. This is your only ticket to your normal life.

And it's a medical procedure where the disc digs into your brain and rips out a parasite from it. It's going to be painful. You think chemotherapy is painless?"

" Why didn't you give her anesthesia?" Taylor asked, pale faced, "They do that in surgery don't they?"

"Because this..." I said, lifting up the syringe, "is a potent healing serum. It does away with toxins and impurities in the system to heal you. Anesthesia wouldn't have worked."

"Now then, who's next?" I asked.

Everyone looked like they wanted to flee immediately but held on.

"It's necessary...." Ballistic, the hulking guy behind the wheelchair said, stepping up.

"I just want to go home and be normal again." He said.

"Well, come on up then." I said, patting another seat beside Sundancer.

Another couple of minutes and a flash of the memory eraser later, everyone except Oliver and Noelle were done with their extractions and I had four more vials of power granting serum.

I looked back to the rest of them and saw Noelle leaning against the wall, holding her face in her hands, muttering to herself.

"Noelle? Are you okay?" I called out to her.

"Yeah.. I'm.. I'm fine. Just processing some things." She said.

"That so? Okay then. But remember, you can always talk to me about it."

"Hmm....okay..... " She said, hesitant, before continuing, softly, " Do I have to to that too?"

"If you want me to remove your lower half. I can't perform surgery on you if your powers keep interfering with it."

Noelle heaved a sigh and slumped her shoulders.

I patted her tentacles consolingly.

"It can't hurt more than this, Noelle. It's leagues better than being like this, stuck in world not your own, forever plagued by maddening hunger."

"I guess you are right...." She said, looking down at her lower half, her voice betraying her deep exhaustion with her condition.

She wasn't even sad anymore, just tired, of everything.

I petted her tentacles some more before walking back to Tattletale and the others.

Pulling out my portal gun, I opened a portal to Brockton Bay and gestured at it.

"Taylor, Tattletale, can you take Dinah back to her family?"

"Sure." Tattletale said, hoisting Dinah into her shoulders.

"Wee!" Dinah cried, smiling faintly.

Tattletale had gotten closer to the girl in the hour or so that she had had with her, already helping bring her away from her traumatic confinement.

Guess having pericog powers can help with more than tearing into people's thoughts.

As much as her mask of sarcasm and irony hid of her, Tattletale was surprisingly kindhearted, even in canon where she helped Taylor overcome her depression and trauma.

Too bad she couldn't find anyone on her level to give her the therapy she so desperately needed.

But eh, not my problem.

As they made for the portal, Dinah turned to me and nodded.

"Thank you." She mouthed, and waved.

I smiled and waved back before closing the portal behind them.

I stretched and heaved, taking in the room.

The travelers were sleeping in their chairs with Oliver covering them up with blankets, and resetting the headrests to make them comfortable in their recovery.

Then there was Paige, standing around awkwardly, casting me calling glances.

I walked over to her, and raised an eyebrow.

"What happened?"

"Nothing...." She said, turning away, before catching herself.

"I mean...uh...I don't know how to say this...."

"With your mouth?" I replied.

She snorted happily, and slapped my shoulder.

"Not that. It's...." She took a deep breath, "I feel like I'm not doing anything. Like .... you're paying me so much money and for what?"

"Your services?" I said.

"What services? I haven't done anything. I feel like a fraud." She said.

I narrowed my eyes at her.

"I just...want to help." She added.

"You will. When the time is right." I assured her.

"And when will that be?" She asked.

"Actually, today. If you're up for one final job before we turn in for the day?" I replied, mentally ordering the droids to bring out another batch of syringes.

Paige perked up.

"Yes! Of course."

"Alright. I like the enthusiasm." I praised, opening a portal to the armory, returning with a batch of thin metal discs.

"What are those?" She asked.

"Stasis beacons. They hold people in place. It's a non violent takedown device I made." I said, as the doors opened and a droid brought in a large silver suitcase.

"Take that will you?" I told Paige.

She took the case from the droid, picking it up with both hands.

"This is heavy. What's in it?"

"A surprise tool that will help us later."

"You're being cryptic again!" She complained.

"You don't like surprises?" I asked.

"I didn't say that." She replied, "But I'd prefer to know what we're doing before a mission."

"If you insist.." I said opening a portal.

"I do." She replied.

"Fine. We're going to Montreal." I smiled, handing her an anti mind control earpiece.

"No!" She said, her eyes going wide with realisation.

"Yes." I said, with grin on my face.

"We could ...we could.... don't you know the risks?" She sputtered.

"Relax. That's an anti mind control chip. Nothing will happen" I said, pointing at the earpiece.

"Actually scratch that something will happen. Something good for once in this fucking horror show of a world."

She frowned, unconvinced.

"Besides, I promised you didn't I?" I added, "If you stick around a while longer, I'll show you how I turn this world into a utopia.

Tomorrow morning, the sun will rise over a very different world, Canary. And you get to have first row seats to it. So cheer up. And let's go. We have broken hearts to mend." I said, stepping into the portal as she stumbled on behind me.