After Whumpee breaks out / is rescued by Caretaker, they eventually build up the confidence to reunite with their loved ones.
Most of them didn’t assume anything overly bad happened to Whumpee. They probably thought they were working overseas or something of the like.
Nonetheless it’s been ages and their friends and family are elated to see Whumpee again after so long. It’s a very cheery and sweet reunion for the most part.
In fact, it’s so heartwarming that Whumpee doesn’t give a full explanation as to what really happened to them. It’s a celebration today, they don’t want to bring down the mood. They come up with a vague story as to why they didn’t make contact.
It’s been so long since Whumpee last spoke with their loved ones that there’s a lot of catching up to do. People go around the table explaining everything Whumpee missed, new kids, marriages, new jobs etc.
Then the penny drops as it comes round to Whumpee’s closest old friend / family member, mentioning proudly where they got a new job.
They work for Whumper.
This isn’t necessarily a malicious thing. Whumper’s organisation is technically a legitimate business/government organisation. Their loved one might not know what happens behind the scenes. They might be too low ranking to be told about the darker parts.
But they still work there. Still went inside that building where Whumpee was being kept, acting all friendly with their coworkers like their best friend/sibling/etc wasn’t being tortured and experimented on beneath.
Or maybe they are aware. Maybe they know all the horrible things that happen there, but they’ve been gaslit into believing it’s happening to willing volunteers. Whumpee was anything but willing.
Does Whumpee break the news? Lash out at the audacity to speak so proudly of their job? Sit and grimace whilst they complain about their annoying manager being torture to work with? Just straight up leave?
character A's power is radiation. the way it works is that just as theyre able to make something radioactive in a moment, theyre able to revert it. cure it if you will. they control the radiation. they dont want to hurt anyone. theyre painfully aware of how utterly overpowered they are on a normal day. (setting is not necesarily superhero but powers are quite normalized and society has kinda shaped themselves around them) (sci-fi shit)
an accident happens. A gets trapped in the falling buildings with many other people. Character B's power is inmortality! in the way of extreme regeneration. their cells just keep going! theyre prideful and reckless. theyre friends with character A! they re both under the care of this shady goverment facility that takes care of weird powers like this. point is they know eachother
when the accident happens, character b volunteers to try to help anyone whos trapped or injured considering they themselves go through no risk.
up until they start smelling the airs weird.
charcter a lost control of their powers in the accident (they werent the cause of the accident) and irrated (is . thats definitely not the word but i am not looking it up) their entire surroundings. they themselves are inmune but they likely alredy killed many others survivors and the thought of their power just makes them panic and break down more :/
heres the thing. characters b power cant hold against radiation. your cells working like they actually get paid for it doesnt matter if your dna gets fucked up.
maybe they survive, but if they did, they lost their inmortality. their dna got fucked up. they now have to learn how to live actually being mindful of remaining alive. character a is completely traumatized with the entire "killed a bunch of people" thing but aslo how theyve hurt character b. its bad. angst hours. maybe character b is not even slightly nice about it you know.
maybe character b dies there! an inmortal who was supposed to have centuries in front of them dying because someone lost ahold of their shit during an emergency! i dont think theyd take it very well! dont think its a quick death either. oh and thatd be a lot more trauma for character a. oops.
fucked up character idea and thats only one situation. that power can do sooo many fucked up shit. overpowered character fucking up <3 write whichever ending you like best sorry for the long prompt!!!!!!
Geraldine was sitting on the couch, playing with a small wooden cube. She was pushing and pulling radiation into and out of it, amused by how the structure of the wood was changing. It got weaker one moment, then completely fine in the other. She wasn't supposed to play with her power like that.
See, her power was probably more dangerous than any mortal should've had. Radiation… She could irradiate everything in a one kilometre radius simply by thinking about it, ruining wildlife and people altogether. Killing them. Geraldine tried not to think about it too much, at the same time, it was all she could ever think about. Her days were spent controlling this immense power, and she had to be very careful about the thoughts in her head. One uncontrolled thought and she could kill someone. One intrusive thought and she could irradiate an entire building or city square.
"What's up, Dee?" Deborah asked as she plopped down on the couch next to her.
"I told you not to call me that," Geraldine sighed, setting down the wooden cube. Deborah was one of the only people not keeping her distance from Geraldine; while the rest of the superpowered people under the supervision of the government facility were wary of her, Deborah, on account of her immortality, was not.
"But Geraldine is such a lame name," she lamented. "Dee is fun!"
"I like my name," she said a bit defensively. "Don't you like yours?"
"I like when people call me Deb," she said with a shrug. "Besides, Deborah is a better name than Geraldine. So even if people did call me by my full name, that would be fine."
"Again: I like my name."
"Fine, fine. What were you doing here anyway? There's a large-scale mission happening, don't they need you for those?"
"My power was deemed too destructive to go," Geraldine said, grimacing a little. She knew her power was a bit much, but she still wished she could've helped out with missions a little more often. She had a debt to pay to this facility for taking her in and teaching her how to control it. "What are you doing back here? I bet immortality would've been useful."
"I didn't wanna go."
"What?"
"Yeah, I'm just not feeling it. The mission seemed shady, if this facility wasn't already shady enough. I don't think they're 'putting an end to terrorism' or whatever the cover story is. I think the big boss just wants to take out a few people and he needed an excuse."
"How can you think that? That's awful!"
"Don't you ever have concerns about him?"
"No! He took me in! He helped me! And a bunch of others as well, how can you paint him in such a bad light?"
"He's running a government facility with superpowered freaks who obey his every command."
"Unless they don't feel like it," she said pointedly, and Deborah grinned.
"Well, there has to be someone reasonable on this ship."
"I don't like your attitude."
"That's too bad," Deborah said, stretching a little and getting comfortable. Geraldine was increasingly uncomfortable. She had given her life to this facility, she would've done everything the boss asked of her, and here was Deborah, alleging that he had ulterior motives and using their powers for some devious purpose.
"I think I'm gonna go back to my room."
"Alright, radioactive girlie. See you around."
"Hopefully not," Geraldine mumbled as she made her way back through the winding corridors to her room. Deborah was weird. Best to keep her distance.
—
"Everybody get out!" Geraldine yelled. "Get to the emergency exits and get out of here! The building is very unstable, I don't know how long it's going to hold, you need to get out!"
People were swarming towards the emergency exits. Geraldine was staying back, trying to make sure everybody made it out before the building collapsed. Because it was going to collapse, no doubt; she tried not to think about the fact that she was risking her own life ensuring that most people made it out.
And then, several of the support beams snapped. Rubble was falling from the upper floors, and a bigger piece hit Geraldine in the head. She must've lost consciousness for a small while, because the next time she awoke, she was completely buried. There were small streams of sunlight shining through holes in the rubble, but when she tried to push against the wood and stone, she only made her situation worse.
She had been buried alive.
"Don't panic," she whispered to herself. "Don't. Don't panic."
"Help!" someone else screamed, and Geraldine realised she wasn't the only one trapped under the rubble. "Help, somebody, please, help!"
"Help!" another voice joined in. "Can anyone help me?"
"Don't panic," Geraldine said to herself again, like a mantra. The facility was going to send more people. She would be rescued, she just needed to wait a little.
"I can't breathe!" someone else yelled. "I can't— I can't—"
Geraldine was starting to panic.
"Please!"
"Help!"
"Somebody!"
Don't panic. Help is on the way. It has to be.
Despite her best efforts, Geraldine could feel her power seeping out. She tried to rein it in, she really, really tried, but she could already feel the rubble around her changing in structure. She was irradiating her surroundings, and she couldn't do anything about it.
No, just focus.
She tried to control her breathing, both to limit the radiation and to make sure she wouldn't suffocate before help arrived. She just had to focus. She just had to… just had to…
—
"Expect mass casualties," the boss said, and Deborah did a half-hearted salute.
"Roger."
"Many people are probably buried under rubble, and it's going to be your job to dig them out. We're not sending anybody else into that building, we're not risking lives."
"Understood."
"Geraldine is in there somewhere. We haven't been able to get a hold of her in more than an hour."
"So you think she's trapped as well."
"Yes."
"Understood. I'm going now."
It wasn't the first time Deborah was sent into a death trap. She was immortal, after all — she had nothing to worry about. Aside from, of course, being buried under the rubble as well, unable to suffocate, unable to die, just trapped there for eternity, or until a group found her and dug her out.
She tried not to think about that.
When she arrived on scene, she could immediately hear several people calling out. She tracked them down, digging them out and—
The woman she'd just dug out retched. She didn't look good. "Ma'am, are you okay?" Deborah asked uncertainly, and the woman gave a shaky thumbs-up.
"I'm fine, I just— I feel— I feel weird, but it must just be… That I was buried, and…" She doubled over and vomited again.
Now that Deborah was paying a little more attention to her surroundings, aside from all the screams of the buried, she could smell that the air was a bit weird. She'd smelled this before. During training. When Geraldine was training, to be more exact.
"You should go to a hospital," Deborah said to the woman. "Right now."
"I'm fine, it's just—"
"Go to a hospital. Please. I think there's more here than just the rubble. Go!"
The woman gave her a strange look, but nodded. She walked off, and Deborah continued digging out survivors. They all had the same worrying symptoms: nausea, vomiting, fatigue. It could've been chalked up to them having been buried, but Deborah knew better.
"Geraldine!" she called. She could feel her skin tingling, and she knew, she just knew it was Geraldine's doing. She must've lost control of her power in the chaos. "Where are you? Geraldine!"
No response. So Deborah started digging through the rubble at random.
She found bodies, with skin peeling off, hair fallen out. Dying to radiation poisoning. This wasn't good. Geraldine was poisoning the entire area around herself, and Deborah had no idea where she was.
"Geraldine!" she tried again, and this time, there was a quiet voice that answered.
"Here!"
Deborah ran over and started throwing rocks away. Slowly, painfully, she uncovered a sweaty and pale Geraldine. "You have to turn off your power!" she yelled at her immediately. She herself was starting to feel nauseous from the effects, but at least she was immortal. "You're killing people!"
Geraldine looked adequately alarmed at that. She had to have known she was doing that. But Deborah supposed hearing it outright must've been worse than just imagining it. "I can't," she said, lip wobbling and tears trickling down her dusty face. "I can't, I'm trying, I can't—"
"Geraldine!" She dragged Geraldine out of her early coffin and shook her by the shoulders. "You have to turn it off. You're killing people."
"I can't!" she sobbed.
"Okay," Deborah said, changing tactics. "Then I have no choice." She reeled her hand back and punched Geraldine right in the temple, knocking her out. The radiation wasn't gone, but at least it wasn't intensifying. She radioed headquarters for someone to come and bring Geraldine home, preferably in a hazmat suit or something, and she continued her rescue efforts.
It was fruitless. Geraldine had killed most of the people not killed in the initial crash.
—
Geraldine awoke with a headache, in a room she recognised immediately. It was the one room at base that was radiation-proof. She had spent months here during her early training.
Memories of the catastrophe were starting to come back to her.
You're killing people.
She ran both hands through her hair, grabbing fistfuls as she rocked back and forth on the floor. She had killed people. Again. She'd thought she was out of the woods, she'd thought she could control her stupidly overpowered superpower, she'd thought, she'd thought—
"Geraldine," came a voice from the speaker secured to the ceiling. Her boss' voice. "You're awake."
"I'm sorry," she cried. "I messed up."
"You killed a total of 39 people on site. 12 more died in the hospital. The building site cannot be accessed because of radiation."
"I'm sorry!"
"'Sorry' won't cut it."
"I don't know what to do, I—"
"I could look past the killing of civilians. But you've also damaged one of our greatest assets."
"I… What?"
"Deborah is in the hospital, fighting for her life. She spent too long in the radiation zone. Everything points to the fact that she's not immortal anymore — her DNA has changed, her cells regenerating does almost nothing."
Geraldine swallowed. That couldn't be. That couldn't— Deborah was immortal. That was why they became sort of friends, because she was the only one that wasn't in danger around her. And now she was being told her power was so destructive that it even ruined Deborah?
"I… I…"
"You're staying in that room indefinitely."
"Please, I can make this right. I can go back to the building, I can stop the radiation—"
"You're clearly not in control of your own power. Training will resume. Until you're safe, you're staying in that room."
"But Deborah will survive, right? Right? Please, I never meant to hurt anyone—"
"We don't know if Deborah will survive. And we don't know the extent of the damage. This was your doing, Geraldine. Sit with that."
She heard a click, and the microphone was turned off. She was alone.
"No, no no no no no," she muttered to herself. "Deborah can't die. She literally, physically, can't die. She can't die. She can't."
It didn't matter. Aside from Deborah, she'd killed 51 people. Civilians. Innocent people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. She was trying to save lives, and she destroyed them. Tears were streaming down her face as she tried to wrestle with this fact.
And now, she was trapped. Trapped in this room she'd thought she left for good when her training was over. She was back at square one. And maybe, if Deborah died, she would be deemed too dangerous to keep around. She'd heard of others with destructive superpowers being… taken out back. She'd heard of them disappearing.
"Deborah," she whispered. "Please. Please, pull through."
content: religious whump, living weapon whump, living weapon whumpee, institutionalised whump, lady whump, lady whumpee, lady whumper, child whumpee, minor whump
"Do you remember?" #4374 asked.
Mercy was a sort of tourist attraction, brought along by Joy to visit all the classes in the Church Militant. And this one little girl took a fancy to her. "Remember what?" she asked, hoping her dead-eyed stare would scare her off like all the other girls.
"Your life before the Church," she said, undeterred.
Did she?
She was taken in at 6, as early as can be. She must've had some sort of life before that. Some sort of caregiver even, since a baby, or even a toddler, couldn't have survived on its own. But when she tried to think back to that time, all that came up was a whole bunch of nothing. There was nothing before the Church. The Church was her family. Her past, her present, and her future. "No."
#4374 pursed her lips, big blue eyes boring into her. "I remember. I don't want to remember. I want to be like you."
"What do you remember?" Mercy asked, against her better judgment. She should've cut the conversation short so Joy could drag her along to the next class, but there was something about this girl that made her pause and talk.
"I was out on the streets, getting into all sorts of sin. I wasn't a very good girl. My guardian angel found me late, when I was already 9 years old. So— So even if I want to be like you, even if I want to be a great saint and martyr, I don't think I'll get there. They said… I overheard…" She lowered her voice, and Mercy leaned in to hear her. "I overheard my guardian angel talking with others. She said that out of the ten of us, only about five would make it to the Church Suffering. And I don't think I'm in that five."
"Don't try to assume the paths of God," Mercy said, straightening her back again. "Wherever you end up, God can take and transform it. You may not die a martyr, but there is value in serving."
"But I want to be like you!" she said again, and she sounded so petulant, so childish, and Mercy tried to think back to how she was at the age of 11. She supposed #4374 had only had 2 years of training so far, so it was no wonder she was still stuck in this mode.
"Then train hard," she said. "You still have a year to improve your performance."
Mercy, admittedly, didn't know what it was like to be in doubt about whether she would make it up the ladder and become a saint. She had been an outstanding student from the very beginning, if not in her educational classes, then in her combat classes.
But this one question was nagging at her, in the back of her mind. Do you remember?
Why she wanted to remember all of a sudden eluded her. Good weapons didn't question their origins. Good weapons thought only of the present, the crusades, and the commands of their guardian angels and God. So why? Why was she suddenly wishing she could've gotten a little more time before her guardian angel picked her up and off the street? She was lucky, having been found so early. She had been lucky. Lucky.
"I will work hard," #4374 said, bringing her back to the present. "And I will become a saint like you, Mercy."
"God willing," she said, and Joy grabbed her by the arm.
"Come on," she said. "We still have class 12 to visit."
"Yes, miss."
"Don't forget about me!" #4374 yelled as Joy dragged her out of the classroom. "I will fight alongside you in a few years, okay?"
Mercy didn't respond. Joy would've disapproved. "It was a good idea to take you on this little tour," Joy commented as they made their way through the corridors. "You really inspire the better ones. And I suppose sometimes the ones that are falling behind. Maybe she'll catch up."
"Yes, miss."
"'74 is a good student, when it comes to tests on paper. She's just… How do I put it? She's not the smartest out on combat tests. She definitely has the Spirit, but I guess it's not up to us whom God chooses to favour."
"Yes, miss."
Joy suddenly stopped and turned to her. "Maybe I should put you in charge of some of the youngsters. Teach them a couple combat tricks. Classes 11 and 12 might benefit from it."
"Wouldn't that draw me away from the crusades?"
Joy waved her off. "You can't be out fighting all the time."
"If you think it would be beneficial, I can take on the responsibility."
"There you go. I'll talk to some of the others and see what we can arrange."
Suddenly, a horrible thought weaselled its way into Mercy's head. Even if #4374 made it to the Church Suffering, with lacking combat skills, she would be easy pickings for the stronger students. It was no secret that the Church Suffering killed its own members, pitting girls against each other for combat practice and to practise detachment. And for some reason, Mercy found herself worried for that little girl. It was nonsensical. She barely knew her.
"Mercy," Joy said, snapping her fingers in front of Mercy's face. "Are you listening?"
"No, miss," she admitted, earning herself a slap across the face. But the punishment would've been worse for committing the sin of lying. "I'm sorry. I zoned out."
"Better here than on the battlefield, I suppose." Then she launched into a spiel about this new program she'd thought up, supposedly repeating herself from a few minutes ago, when Mercy stopped listening. She found it hard to keep listening this time around as well, but she followed Joy and nodded along as she explained everything.
Then, they arrived to class 12. Mercy sighed.
These are your sisters in Christ, a little voice in the back of her mind chastised her. It sounded an awful lot like her guardian angel from the Church Militant.
But this was the last class. After this, she would be allowed to go train. Just one more awkward encounter with children who were about to advance up the ladder and kill each other without much remorse just a year from now. And they would ask Mercy all about how she'd done it.
I want to be like you.
Mercy sighed and followed Joy into the classroom. Just one more class.
