Chapter Sixty-Five – Hover Mode

Emily wasn’t used to being worried about the social abilities of others. Usually worrying about her own was a full-time issue already, but at the moment she was discovering that having more sisters wasn’t just an issue in the ways she expected it to be.

Yes, Aurora had a healthy appetite, so the food budget would be hit a tiny bit harder than estimated, and yes, it meant more clothes to buy and wash, more cleaning to be done, and more room being taken up in their bunker home, but all of that was expected.

What wasn’t was Aurora’s initial difficulties in blending in.

So far, the sister who’d had the hardest time, socially, was Maple, but Maple was just very shy. She liked her sisters, liked spending time with them, but found it hard to speak up for herself. Emily could understand that. Sometimes Emily needed some time to herself too.

Aurora’s situation was different.

It wasn’t that she was shy. Aurora had a nice smile, she was easy to talk to, and she was friendly. She engaged with her sisters without having to be asked, unlike Maple, who was a lot more passive.

Emily was just worried, because while the others ran around, made a mess of things, and were having fun with each other, Aurora was constantly standing to the side, apart and alone.

She wasn’t sure what to do about it. Her first thought was to go to the park. The same park they’d visited a while ago for Maple to show off her newest inventions. It was a quiet enough space that they’d be able to test out Aurora’s powers without interruption, and Emily liked it when her sisters tired themselves out.

It was good for their physical health and great for her mental one.

“Alright,” Emily said. She clapped her hands, getting all of her sister’s attention. And her mother’s.

She had to get to the park somehow, and she didn’t want to ask Sam for yet another ride. Emily was very aware of how much of Sam’s time she was taking up, and it was kind of humiliating and just rude at this point. Minion or no, Sam had a life too.

Emily was starting to look into getting a driver’s licence, something she’d hoped to put off… forever. Her dad was happy about it, at least.

So, to get to the park today, she’d gotten her mom to give her and her sisters a ride. The girls liked spending time with the Grand-Boss anyway. And Emily suspected that her mom was happy to spend time with the kids too.

Emily was… probably not going to give her mom any grandbabies. That would involve dating. And then marrying someone. She couldn’t imagine that ever working out, not when just a couple of months ago the idea of owning a cat felt like it would be a big deal.

Emily shook her head and refocused. She was the centre of a lot of sisterly attention at the moment. It was clear that they all wanted to launch themselves into play, so she only had so long to keep their attention.

“Alright,” she repeated. “We’re here to test out Aurora’s power. So I guess that’s what we’ll start with. Does anyone want to help?”

Maple slowly raised a hand. “I can help,” she said.

“Yeah, me too!” Teddy said. “I wanna wrestle her!”

Aurora laughed. “Sure, that sounds like it could be fun.”

“Uh, wrestling can be… one of the tests, I guess,” Emily said.

“Want me to take notes?” Athena asked.

“That would be nice, yes,” Emily agreed. “How about we start with that forcefield of yours?”

“I’ll need something to run into,” Aurora said.

“I’ll get some sticks!” Trinity cheered.

And just like that, the group broke up, leaving Emily to take a deep breath and try to chill out. She felt a hand gripping her shoulder and glance to the side where her mom was smiling at her. “You know, I only had the one daughter to look over, and she was pretty calm,” her mom said. “I’d give you a book at that age and wouldn’t hear a peep for hours. I’m genuinely impressed by how well you’re handling all of this.”

“Yeah, thank you,” Emily said.

“You did skip some of the harder parts. The terrible twos, the diapers, the–“

“Okay, mom,” Emily cut in. “I get it.”

Her mom grinned. “You’ve grown a lot, sweetie. I’m proud.”

It was a blushing Emily that started the tests proper.

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The first test had her almost calling things off. It involved Trinity swinging a branch that was longer than she was tall, and which required two of her bodies to lift, right at Aurora’s head.

Aurora summoned her antlers, shifted her stance, and met the branch head-on. The stick rammed into her antlers and bounced off with a snap. A second swing had Aurora twisting her head, which wrenched the branch apart and shorn off the end.

Next, Aurora wanted to prove how strong her antlers were by testing them against a tree.

The tree lost.

“Ah,” Emily said as she started to catch on.

Her initial assumption was that Aurora’s power was… not all that strong. A pair of antlers was interesting, and it was a flashy kind of power, but it didn’t seem immediately useful. In fact, it seemed like it would make things a lot harder. Simple stuff like walking through doors would be a lot more complicated with multi-foot-long branches sticking out of the side of one’s head.

But, as it turned out, she didn’t quite understand Aurora’s power correctly, not until it was put to the test.

Her antlers were inviolable constructs. When they crashed into something, the antlers would keep moving, regardless of the durability of what they ran into.

Aurora made a smaller tree bend as she pushed her antlers against it, because her antlers were an unstoppable object and the tree wasn’t immovable.

Eventually the tree creaked, then cracked, then broke apart in the middle.

The antlers didn’t have any real cutting or shearing potential, they were just unstoppable.

Emily realized that Aurora wouldn’t have problems with doorframes. Doorframes would have problems with her.

Walls too. And cars. And at the moment, playground equipment and ever-thicker trees.

“Okay, okay,” she stepped in as her excited sisters were aiming Aurora at a particularly large tree. “Let’s not deforest the entire area, please? The trees didn’t do anything to anyone.”

The next test was a test of strength. Without her antlers, Aurora was… about as strong as a normal girl, if one that seemed physically fit. She was able to wrestle Teddy and pin her down the first time, but Teddy got her in the rematch. Aurora’s longer arms gave her some very good leverage.

With her antlers out, there was no way anyone could really stop her.

Only her antlers were fixed and unmovable. Her rest of her was only as strong as normal, but having perfect leverage, even if it was just from the head, still meant that Aurora could anchor herself and pin or push others with relative ease.

She could also, sorta, hover.

Since her Antlers only moved when she wanted them to, Aurora could fold her legs up, grab onto her antlers, and stay hovering in the air.

She had no way of manoeuvring once there, since it meant locking her antlers in place, but it was still a neat trick. It made climbing trees easy, since she just needed to pin her head in place, then she could climb with her legs, get a good grip, and let go with her antlers to reposition.

Of course, Aurora herself wasn’t any tougher than a normal person. She had scrapes and a few boo-boos by the end of the day, just like all the other sisters that had rough-housed. So, in theory, she could stop a semi-trailer on the highway from a hundred to zero flat. But the truck wrapping itself around her antlers would still slam into her.

Emily wasn’t sure what to do about that.

It was a weird power. Antlers that could only be moved by the person they were stuck to, and nothing else could affect them. Emily wasn’t sure how that would fit into the team’s composition, but they’d figure it out.

“Can you change the colours?” Maple asked near the end.

“Eh?” Aurora said.

Maple gestured to the antlers stuck to Aurora’s head. “Can you change the colours?”

Aurora turned her eyes up, trying to see her own antlers. “Uh. I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” Maple said, clearly disappointed. Then she perked up. “I can make something for that.”

“Are… are you trying to give her RGB antlers?” Athena asked.

“It might be helpful. For signalling. And it would be pretty. You could have themed and seasonal colours,” Maple defended.

Yeah, Emily really wasn’t sure where Aurora would fit, but she hoped that it would work out, in the end.

***

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