On her to-do list, she had marked down several things. Of these things, many had been given the tick. The tick that says ‘done it!’ The tick that says ‘bring on the next one!’ The order and importance may have been a bit random, sorry! There had been a metric ton to think about!

She had contacted Serena. Not first, Mind you. But within the first several boxes on the list. It was a cowardly way, of course. Because despite being brave enough to delve into sewers deep, and fight zombies and vampires, Amelia still felt awkward in awkward situations. She had left a text.

The choice of a text message could have been chalked up to sheer busyness, or twisted around to simplicity and ease. It really boiled down to one thing. She had not felt she could trust herself to leave a voice mail. Not when things were so complicated, and not when she had been as emotional as she had been the day she had left the text. So, text it had been!

The text had said something like “Hey Serena, I am acting my age again! Call me some time. Super busy sorting my life out. Get back to you ASAP!”

Amelia had not wanted to leave Serena in the dark again. After the last time she had vanished, she had done just that! It had been a terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE thing! One does not just ghost one’s girlfriend!

Side bar. Amelia did not know that while she had been deaged, she had gained a girlfriend. And that now, she was doing just that. Ghosting. Again. To her, the adventures of her temporary youth felt like they were a decade past. So, it had not been a personal choice. Not on purpose. Just the unfortunate side effect of the situation. And she had a lot of those.

One of her to-do list things had been to check on her job. Her cop job. Turns out, if you vanish for a month or two and just call in sick the first time, they fire you! Who knew? So. That had been a wash. Short of hiring her brother, the lawyer, to fight for her, she was not certain she could rectify the situation. And him adjudicating on her behalf was all 52 flavors of unethical. As for her other job... she had yet to check!

She had sorted out her apartment situation. Turned out, she’d been smart enough to have routine bank deposits and had built up a decent savings to fill the void. And maybe her brother had helped?

Mansion belongings had either been donated to good Will, or else they had migrated to her apartment. Amelia had no use for teenager clothes, but she kept the note books and stuff.

There were other things, myriad things, but after the first few hours of trouble shooting the day after she had grown up, Amelia had realized she was avoiding SUPER.

Super.

The organization she had infiltrated, with intent to destroy. The organization she had decided was actually pretty okey dokey. That she had worked through, and with. The one that served a purpose. SUPER, the organization she had made a decision about just minutes prior to being deaged. Hence, it had been fresh in her mind.

Now was the time. Now was the time to act on decisions. To clean house, and throw out some things that were of no use to anyone any more. Things like lies.

Amelia had contacted Sabine at SUPER and let her know she was back. And could they talk?

Why Sabine? They’d fought vampire zombies together and Amelia had found her capable. Also, was there rank involved? Probably. Suffice it to say, it just made sense.

They met in an office. She had made an appointment. Niceties were exchanged. Amelia awaited the question of what things they needed to speak of with bated breath. Sipping her coffee. Someone had been nice enough to supply a cup.

Personnel management had been a unique challenge in recent months.

Wait, maybe not unique. Exhausting. That was the word. Sabine was shuffling around possible problem agents, handling de-aged mutants, and dealing with Pippa. She was, in and of herself, a change to her routine.

Agents Hunter and Gage were evidently de-aged with the concentrated dose of the serum, so the antidotes SUPER made available to the public unfortunately had no effect on the pair. They were handling the change well, which made sense; they had no memories of the lives they led the first time.

That situation was not the case for another de-aged agent who made a surprise return in her all-grown-up form. Amelia was back on the map and, as one of the mutants known to the rest of SUPER, Sabine was glad she was the first one Amelia reached out to.

Sabine had Amelia join her in her own office, knowing for certain her space was not bugged. She even, in an effort to be more welcoming to people around her, brought coffee along with her initial pleasantries. Both women could tell they were getting ready to get into the real meat of the conversation.

So why not jump into it? ”So it’s obviously ben a while since your last report. You said you were looking to talk, so I’m listening.”

Where to start, where to start, where to start?

She let out a little breath, almost a sigh, and pushed her hair out of her eyes. Then, she set her coffee down on the desk in front of her.

“There are a few things I wanted to speak with you about. The first is an explanation for my recent absence. For the last month or so, I was de-aged. I got jumped by the lady outside of Xavier’s sister school.” Amelia said carefully.

The exact course of events that had lead to the situation were Hairy and Confusing. First off, she had gone after a SUPER mission that had ended poorly. Secondly, she had confessed to Rebecca about her SUPER affiliation and everything that came with that. Third, she had realized two things simultaneously. 1: she wanted out of SUPER and the secrets she had to keep, and 2: she wanted in deeper than she had ever gone before. Because she had a plan.

The follow up attack had happened after that first meeting with Becca, but the actual deAging event had occurred the day after. The day after she had decided to come clean with SUPER and be an adult about everything, she had, um, not been. But only because she had gone to stake out the mansion for the lady, and ran into her ex-girlfriend, instead.

She couldn’t well TELL Sabine all the gritty details about relationship details, and secrets and avoidances done in order to protect. Such things sounded dramatic, and soap opera-grade convoluted. Amelia had a feeling the last thing Sabine wanted was to hear about some soap opera of a love life. Like sands in the hour glass, these are the days of our awkward lesbians...


The lady had deaged her just after she’d reconciled with her Ex, and... then that had been even more awkward and she hadn’t even realized how awkward until she’d grown up again... she thought. And all of this really had nothing to do with why she’d contacted Sabine Sang, so why was she thinking about it again? Oh right. Because the talk with Becca and the talk with Serena had brought up two wildly conflicting, yet complementary, ideas. And she wanted to both talk about those ideas and simultaneously shoot herself in the foot with a full confession. Because why do one stupid thing when you can do two at the very same time?

“Prior to that event, I had spoken with Rebecca Grey about maybe becoming a SUPER / X-Men liaison. Which would be something to discuss with SUPER, obviously. But something needs doing to smooth interactions with SUPER and the X-men. I have a history with them, and... personal experience regarding the difficulties they have experienced with us in the past.”

Her face was calm as she reached forward and picked up her coffee, took a sip. But was she calm? No. It was acting, of course! She was $@&$ing not!

Dealing with Betsy Button was the greatest load off Sabine’s shoulders. Between the bad press and people in her life suddenly losing a decade, that young old woman made herself a constant frustrating presence. If they had left her along any longer, Sabine would not have been surprised to wake up back in her Theater major days.

Amelia being de-aged seemed fortunately temporary, as opposed to Gage and Hunter. Small blessings. ”Interesting place to get cornered.” She wondered why Button did not gas the whole Mansion, given her agenda. From what Sabine understood, she imagined the Mansion defenses earned their value warding against intrusion.

Feeling patient and pacified by coffee, Sabine watched and gave Amelia time to collect her thoughts. They were in no rush; her next meeting was with Pippa in an hour, and in a worst case scenario, the PR rep could deal with Sabine being fashionably late.

According to Amelia, she was at the Mansion reaching out to the X-Man, Rebecca Grey. Codename Valkyrie, formerly Lodestone. Sabine studied up on the X-Men of this world, understanding they were inevitable. Curious, that Amelia would have a connection to Rebecca or the X-Men. ”Oh? Do tell.” Sabine folded her arms on the table and leaned in, keeping an ever-present smile. ”I’ll admit, I’ve been keen on having a stronger working relationship with the Xes, and a liaison would help there. But first, I’m quite curious; could you elaborate on this history with their team? I would need to trust anyone I put in a position like that, and trust starts with full disclosure. So… disclose.”

Trust. Yep. Who boy.

“Well.” She bowed over her coffee, and took a calming sip. Then, she barreled forward. “This is where that trust starts, because I am extending a lot of it towards you. Please excuse the long story... and um. Please, don’t shoot the messenger?”

Amelia looked Sabine in the eyes for a moment. Or tried to. It was up to Sabine if direct eye contact had truly been met. There was no trace of evasion in Amelia’s direct look. She was telling her stuff as it was, no matter how badly it made her look.

“I worked alongside the X-men for several years. Just like I’ve worked alongside SUPER for the past couple of years.” Note the crucial numbering there. Couple. 2, 3, maybe 4. Not longer, nope. “Loyally,” she went on. “Which, I guess, is a key point here. The loyalty. Seeing as I am not the Amelia Mellitus who came from your side of the rift.”

She grimaced, but moved on. Hopefully, the woman would not shoot. “Nothing for it but to yank the bandaid off. I spoke of personal experience in dealing with SUPER relations because your SUPER agent Mellitus came through the rift, abducted me, and assumed my identity. I escaped from SUPER labs on the other side, and made it back here to my side of the street. I tracked her down, confronted her about our differences... in the hope we could resolve them like adults...” Haha.

“During the clash a third party, a psychic, came and did something... and next thing I knew, I woke up and looked down and other Me was unconscious. And seemingly brain dead. So. I took her to SUPER headquarters location, this side of the rift. Which I somehow suddenly knew. Damn psychic. And— what? Well. I guess I brought her home. And it just sort of happened but I guess it was only natural that I assumed her identity right back. And like I said,” she clutched coffee in both hands. Still warm. Her cheeks matched the heat. “I’ve been loyally serving SUPER’s goals, ever since. I think SUPER is needed. I think it serves a purpose. Some mutants can be quite dangerous.” Me, for instance! She thought.

“I think it is important to note that I did follow SUPERs MO while joining up. ‘Collect, assimilate, analyze, and report information’, right? Well. I did do that. Mostly, I wanted to learn. To understand what kind of organization would willingly abduct and experiment on mutants, for the greater good. And if I’m being direct, that’s only due to personal experience. I think it’s really good SUPER has dialed back that side of operations.” She finished, calmly. Important to note the dry calm of her tone. Otherwise, one might have thought her ‘heated.’

Working with mutants meant being prepared for the unexpected. Sabine would never pretend to be prepared for everything, and plenty of the occurrences in her life caught her by surprise. A fool acted like they were one-step ahead of the game, but she focused on keeping at its heels, always ready to catch up in the face of a new revelation.

She could feel something surprising coming from Amelia, and that was before the young woman all but pre-emptively apologized for what came next. Never a great sign. Sabine held her eye contact, her face non-descript and waiting for more.

Amelia working with the X-Men made no sense compared to the files documenting her time in The AV, but the picture became clearer when Amelia admitted to being the doppelganger from the MROverse. Well; clarity was subjective, like the background of an image coming into focus at the cost of the foreground growing blurry.

Of course, the easiest way to keep the whole picture in focus was to get things in black and white, and she needed black and white answers from this Amelia. Fortunately, gent Mellitus was never exactly short on words, and she held to that standard. The story would sound made up to someone more skeptical, but psychic interference, mind twins, and two consciousnesses co-existing sounded as plausible as the de-aging messiah they recently arrested.

And still, Amelia argued that she had done her part as a SUPER Agent. And she was mostly right, barring the de-aged MIA. Of course, being an Agent was more than getting tasks done. ”So. You’ve been operating under half-truths and false pretenses for years now, correct? Concealing information that would be imperative to national security.” Her tone was not strict or leading, it was just the plain stating of facts.

There was another fact in Amelia’s last statement; she was not the only one glad they scaled back the more questionable operations of SUPER’s past. ”And I’m correct in assuming the way you handled things—the very, very questionable way you handled things arose from your concerns over what SUPER would do with a two-minded pseudo-double agent. That is… fair.” It was hard to deny how the mad scientist types would have loved to dissect her figuratively and literally with a situation like that.

Sabine sighed, folding her arms on the table. ”Alright, potential Agent Mellitus. Let’s keep the honesty going. How long have you been debatably compromised? Am I dealing with two Amelias or one cohesive combination of two minds? Given how you speak of the events, I think it is safe to assume the Amelia of this world is the dominant mind?” Knowing what they were dealing with would help Sabine decide a final verdict for Amelia’s fate.

The poker face was real good. It didn’t give much away. No stray blink or twitch of the mouth clued Amelia in to what the woman thought of what she had said. Her fate was in Sabines hands, and all Amelia could do was wait.

Waiting was something she was used to, after all these years. And Sabine called her out on just that. Amelia opened her mouth to respond, then thought better of it and closed it. Because there was sure to be more coming. And there was. So much more.

All of the things Sabine called her out on were fair. At no point at Amelia expected Sabine to be like “oh, that’s cool. Anyways.” She had not expected Sabine to praise her on her lies and machinations, to give her all due credit for her deceit. Although fooling a government organization full of canny individuals with uncanny skills at espionage (or whatever) did seem to her a cause for some degree of, if not praise, then begrudging respect.

Sabine called her out on her half-truths and said it was a matter of national security. Said her methods were questionable, very very questionable, and called her a pseudo double agent. All hope was not lost, though. That glimmer of hope, that silver lining, was that Sabine called her potential agent Mellitus rather than former agent Mellitus. That made it sound as if she would start from the bottom, but— it was something.

Sabine finished, and Amelia was left to answer several questions. She decided to work her way back.

“I’m the Amelia from this world.” She agreed. “I have no blind spots. No gaps. At most, a bit of her personality, and some of her more useful memories, rubbed off on me.”

If she were missing things, how would she know? A journal? Hadn’t Sam suggested a journal? Fir the moment, her perception was all she had. And she perceived no noticeable holes in her memory. Unless the other woman’s memories filled them in, like in one of her favorite books. Suspecting anything like that, though, would seem wholly paranoid. So she told what she believed to be truth.

“The mind thing happened before the rift closed. Like, right before. Shortly after I escaped, which can be verified.” She didn’t explain her escape. Plenty of time for that later.

“You’re correct, I worried Super would react highly negatively in the event that it learned my true identity. They had me in a cage for over a year. Ran tests on me. They even bought me a nice straitjacket! So I think I was valuable to them. I thought they would want me back.” More quietly, Amelia added “And that’s to say nothing of the possibility some might have blamed me for what happened to my alternate self. Even though that was the psychic. I’ve worked law enforcement and I know how that works.”

Cops protect their interests, take care of their own. Get revenge for their buddies. Settle scores. There was little doubt in her mind that government agencies like SUPER were filled with people brought from similar stock.

“So, yes.” She concluded. “I have been been operating under false truths and half-pretenses for years. I have no way of knowing if SUPER would have been kind or not. I feared for myself and my loved ones. I couldn’t chance it. Guess I’ll find out now.”

Amelia looked Sabine dead in the eye, and did not shy away.

National security? “For the record, I never withheld anything that would have affected National security. I just kept it from you that I had the real Amelia’s trappings. Friends. Family. A girlfriend. That sort of thing.”

Dead in the eye. Did not even. Blink.

Okay. One blink made it by.

Sabine handled everything from interviews to interrogations in her time with SUPER, so if Amelia was looking to judge how things were going, she would have to look elsewhere. Sabine was a mirror, but at a moment like this, the reflection went blank. The goal here was not to make Amelia comfortable; it was to find answers and determine her fate.

If Amelia was looking to lie, she might have suggested the former Agent persona held more control, or at least maintained a presence. This was the Amelia of the MROverse, of that, Sabine was confident. There was no benefit to her own agent to lie about that unless she was looking for a way out, which was not the pretense of the meeting.

Through it all, Sabine kept in the forefront of her mind what kind of SUPER Amelia was dealing with through this endeavor. Initially, she was dealing with SUPER at its worst and most clinically efficient. Maybe it spoke to her survival instincts and the progress SUPER was making now for her to come clean? She knew how her old superiors would handle this, which is what gave her pause.

Be better.

Sabine held Amelia’s gaze, weighing her fate and waiting for the girl to blink. Just because she had made up her mind did not mean she wanted to give up control of the meeting. She held the silence for a moment before finally grabbing papers from her folder. ”You will be submitting yourself to a meeting with Alpha division so they can confirm with a telepath that you did not play an intentional role in the termination of your doppelganger.”

Sighing, Sabine scribed her instructions, along with offices Amelia would need to go to for follow-ups. ”Following that and confirmation of your story, you’ll go to medical for a physical so they can determine if there are any aftereffects of what you went through, knowing your actual recent medical history. There will also be mandatory psychiatric appointments, as we would require for any agent who experienced a loss in the field or a major interaction with a high-level psychic. This was obviously both.”

Sabine slid over a small stack of papers. ”And it should go without saying, you will be on Probationary status going forward until your psychiatrist and reporting officers deem necessary.” Sabine looked back up, squarely meeting Amelia’s eyes. ”Any questions?”

The weight of that gaze was significant. So Amelia waited. And waited. For the reply. When she got it, she just nodded. Uncertain what else to say. At this point maybe nothing was the safest thing to say.

A meeting with the psychic division to test her and check her out. Read her mind. Fair. Deep, but fair. Amelia did not like the idea of psychos rooting around inside her mind, but then, she had nothing to hide. Denying SUPER the basic response would make it look as if she did.

After the psychics went at her and her story was confirmed, she would have to get a physical. Get all her actual data: that was alright.

A psychiatric appointment. Rebecca would be thrilled. Hadn’t she promised the woman she would look into that? Yay! Promises, kept.

The probation period hurt but it was par for the course.

Amelia met Sabine’s eyes.

“I have no questions.” She said, carefully. Not terse. Not dull. Hopefully, the Right tone. “All of those things are fair. What I would expect. Thank you.” Was she actually thanking Sabine? Yes. Yes, she was. “This whole thing has been on my mind for a long time. Getting it out, getting it sorted, and dealing with the consequences. Those are the important part.”

“I want to be someone SUPER can trust. Someone you can rely upon.”

She glanced at the papers.

“As for the x-men / super liaison idea... we can discuss that after my probationary period has ended, if you think it proper. Or not. I still think it’s a good idea, whoever you assign to the job.”

Psychics freaked people out. They freaked Sabine out. They were also thankfully rare, and SUPER was less dubious morally in how they used them these days. Ami was not being required to comply with an inspection, but if she wanted to stay with SUPER, it sounded like an appropriate requirement. Ami might be earnest, but if she was a spy, Sabine would lose her job for not doing her due diligence.

Because heaven forbid Sabine invite spies into SUPER.

Assuming everything was on the up and up, Amelia would be put on probation, though the younger woman seemed to think that would restrict her more than it did. ”You can still serve as liaison to the X-Men, Mellitus. As an agent in probation status, I’ll still be working you as normal; we can still use more hands on deck. You’ll be working alongside designated partners in the field. Agents I can trust,” she clarified. ”Once you’re back on that level, you’ll be given more free reign. So yes, I’m sorry, but you’re basically getting chaperones for a bit.”

Sabine stood from her seat, offering Amelia a hand. ”So psychics, psyche evals, and a more senior agent to hold your hand while you are doing your job. If you can deal with all that for the time being… welcome back to SUPER, Agent Mellitus.”

Yup. She had made the right call. Super awkward, very dangerous, reputation tarnished (possibly forever). But, yes. They needed to be open about these things. And she had promised she would seek help regarding the whole psychic... mind meld... thing.

Sabine said she could still be liaison? She’d have to speak with Rebecca about that. Or Mirror. Or Sam. Whoever it was who truly ran things. Perhaps all of them, at once? Yeah. That sounded about right. Gotta get things out in the light of day. Once she’d gone through probation, or possibly sooner. She nodded at Sabines statement. Working as normal. So, soonest. She’d get the paperwork in order.

X-men // SUPER liaison. Her. She’d just be working with a partner. Still. Felt, dare she say, good? So long as she did not presume too much. There were hoops to go through, goals to meet, loyalties to prove. But she’d be proving them for herself, and not pretending to be some ghost.

In the back of her mind, a thought shifted. Stirred. A ghost. You? OooOoooo. Heh. Possessive, much? Had she thought that? Seemed a bad time for levity. Super serious. But... heh. Ooooooo.

She took Sabines hand. “This is going to be... interesting. Thank you for everything, miss Sang.”

((End thread.))