[M&M 3e] Defying the Future IC

[Quellian-dyrae]

For a moment, after Watcher spoke about Doctor Proxy, a kinda minty smell rolled off of Lily, coupled with a flat stare. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it, letting the matter pass.

Doctor Proxy had attempted to subject Watcher to mental domination, and he still trusted them? Lily didn't know the whole story, it wasn't that she couldn't conceive of a course of events that would make both those facts non-contradictory. But it was still weird, and the most obvious one was that the attempt in fact hadn't failed. Watcher being compelled to trust Doctor Proxy implicitly while believing the domination attempt failed seemed to be easily the most likely explanation.

She made the active effort to devalue that probability in accordance with her identified bias against the Watcher, and could not know if she had succeeded...but even giving a substantial penalty for likely bias, that conclusion still seemed more likely than reasonable alternatives, to her.

When Nope requested they not use the title of superheroes...well, it was weird. Truth be told Lily honestly didn't really feel like a "real superhero". Watcher's excitement at seeing them in action did seem kinda...incorrect, in a way. They were a bunch of people who (she was pretty sure?) all had had powers for less than a month, and when you get right down to it probably didn't much know what they were doing, and Watcher was talking about them like they were the Justice League or the Avengers or something.

On the other hand, it wasn't like the comic book heroes always knew what they were doing either, it wasn't like they were without flaw. The four of them may have been new to their powers and may have been in over their heads, but they were trying, and they might have a chance to succeed where nobody else did. Did that make them superheroes?

If you forced her to answer, then no. Lily Woods would have to admit that even so, she did not feel like a superhero.

But...she did believe that Floral, the image of Floral that existed in her head, the ideal she was trying her best to live up to, to make real however imperfectly, that Floral...could in fact be a superhero. Would in fact be a superhero, if she could be more than a figment of Lily's imagination.

And that meant, then, that Floral would act like a superhero. She wouldn't shrink from the title, or the responsibility it conferred.

...But she also wouldn't look upon it as a symbol of status to be claimed. "I mean, we are going out and using crazy superpowers to fight bad guys while wearing silly costumes," she replied to Nope with a light laugh. "What else would you call us?"

Imperfect. Even as she said the words, she felt they were imperfect, weren't what the Floral in her head would really say, if she actually existed as a real person in the real world.

But for the time being, they were the closest that Lily Woods could come.