I was far out of my comfort zone. It's funny, that after spending weeks fighting gangs it was sitting in this conference room that made me the most uncomfortable.

Carol Dallon, Panacea, myself, and Cheshire sat at one end of the table. On the other side were the CEOs and their lawyers of the five pharmaceutical companies that had been struggling to grow. Jacob Wins, Steven Claps, Survoy Micealis, Joice Day, Lucas Stevens. Cheshire had picked them because of apparent long stand rivalries between the five of them should leave them to keep the prices down if this deal went through. But that didn't stop each of the five drafting contracts that would have put us at a disadvantage. Of course, that just meant Cheshire tore them apart with her basic knowledge, which was then supplemented with Carol Dallon's legal knowledge. Thus increasing Cheshire's ability to tear them apart.

Amy and I sat awkwardly and silently by ourselves. The systematic destruction of the original contract and the following reconstruction as Carol and Cheshire worked off each other without even the slightest bit of planning before hand. And all this because Amy found out that the magic circuits reproduced with the plants.

And now, we are looking at the mass production of healing potions.

"And let's not forget that you could give us fifty percent in royalties on these healing potions, selling them at two bucks a pop, and you would still be turning enough profits to make every other person in the world drool," Cheshire said.

"You could retire in a year if you wanted to," Carol agreed. "So, us asking for ten percent royalties is extremely generous. So generous in fact, that these other stipulations here and here…"

I tuned out as she delved into complicated lawyer babbled that only the CEO's lawyers and Cheshire seemed to follow. I should have felt more excited because honestly, this would set me for life. We are talking about the mass production of healing potions. Even in a normal world, the need for instant heals like this would be incredible. Throw in Endbringers, capes, and all manner of other things and this was incredibly revolutionary. No, that was an understatement. This was literally world changing.

It was one thing to toss a small pebble that casts wide ripples, but we were essentially tossing a boulder into the pond that was world economics.

"You've been more than fair," one of the CEOs, Lucas I think, stated in the lull between Carol and Cheshire. "But I'm a little more interested in the side effects of such a concoction. Whatever you put in these plants that makes them work they way they do, that has to have side effects."

Eyes turned toward Panacea as they waited for a response. She swallowed nervously and spoke slowly.

"Well, there is a small downside." She paused and collected her thoughts a moment, taking a deep breath. When she spoke next it was much calmer. "It isn't a cure all. The theme seems to be that it returns a person's body to a normal state. These elixirs," we had decided 'elixir' sounded better than potion, "only return a person to what is normal. Meaning anything genetic won't be fixed. Any reconstructive or plastic surgery will get reversed to its original form. Implants will get shoved out of the way, tattoos will get erased. It doesn't do anything to stop old age and conditions because of it." Panacea paused and thought about it.

"I haven't tried on amputees, but if I had to guess their limb loss will become part of what is 'normal' for people like the old age is. In addition, shrapnel will need to be removed before a person takes an elixir."

That caused the lot of them to break out into the legal babble that left Panacea and I confused. I wanted nothing more to be literally anywhere else right now. Glory Girl and I could rip several gang warehouses apart in the time it would take for this meeting to get over.

But I couldn't. Panacea and I made these and now we had to be present at a meeting that would actually change the world. But for something with so much impact, it seemed so mundane. The balance of the world at large, reduced to a single meeting where the details were hammered out over a very long boring process.

I let my eye's glaze over as people talked around me for the next two hours. Contracts were redrafted several times. I was asked a grand total of three questions just to clarify things and to ask how much publicity I wanted for this. Past that, I just sat there and suffered for the next three hours.

The world was going to blow up in a few weeks. At the end of the arrangements, it was decided that the CEOs would make a joint announcement a few weeks before the elixirs went on the market. And then, everything would change.

Maybe I was being a little over dramatic. But honestly, this seemed far too normal for such a massive change. Panacea would produce each company a thousand seeds of each plant needed, but once they were in the company's hands it was up to them to grow them. It would take months to get the operation in full swing. And even then it would take many more months to get massive farming set ups going. But slowly and surely, there was going to be an ever increasing flow of healing potions coming out of Brockton Bay and Boston, the two cities the companies we had partnered with were based in.

I sighed and tried to push it out of my mind. Ever since Panacea had discovered that magic circuits reproduced with the plants my head has been spinning trying to figure it out. Lisa wasn't much of a help either. The question wasn't even why they did that, but how. When the magic circuits were part of me it was easy to simply say my power created the magic. But once Panacea put the circuits in the plants they produced their own magic. Granted, it wasn't near anything I could do and they didn't have any way of using it. In fact, the only thing the magic did to the plants increased their resilience, remove their biological clock, and give them the properties needed to be the potions. But the question remains, where is the magic coming from?

As important of a question it was, it only led to more questions we simply couldn't answer. Which was particularly annoying considering I was friends with someone whose power was knowing things.

Letting out a sigh, I pushed the thoughts out of my mind and tried to prepare myself as I stepped off the bus and headed towards Winslow this Monday morning. Lisa right behind me.

Dad had insisted she go to school, and not even Lisa was able to convince him otherwise. Lisa had argued that she could test for her GED, but Dad insisted she get a high school diploma if she could and that was it. Any arguments got nowhere. Which led to me standing outside the front doors of Winslow, trying to convince myself to go inside, with Lisa standing next to me.

"Come on, I'm sure it won't be that bad," Lisa said, giving me a gentle prod forward.

"Oh yes it will," I muttered as I walked forward, adjusting the satchel that had replaced my backpack. Lisa rolled her eyes at me as we went inside.

Lisa picked up her schedule from the office as we passed it. The secretary gave me an odd look from behind the desk but didn't say anything. Lisa thanked her with a smile and turned back to me. She handed the schedule to me without even looking at and pushing past me.

I followed her out as I opened up the paper and took a look. Unfortunately, she didn't have computer class with me, which I suppose was too much to hope for. But after that we shared classes, which should have been a relief. But instead, it caused a rising feeling of anxiety in my chest.

Lisa walked up with me to Knott's computer class. How did she wear that smile everywhere so easily? Honestly, this was still high school. Shouldn't she be at least a little put off at the idea of going to classes?

"Taylor," Lisa suddenly said. "Relax. You're so stiff it looks like you're about to snap in half." Immediately I forced myself to loosen up, relaxing my shoulders and going into a slouch. Not for the first time, I was glad I had chosen to go with a T-shirt and jeans instead of skirt Lisa had recommended when picking out clothing. It wasn't as concealing as what I used to wear, but it wasn't too attention getting. My hair and mark did that well enough.

Eyes watched us as I walked up to the crowd outside the class door. On the other end of the hall, I could see Sophia standing around with some other girls from the track team staring daggers into me. I haven't even been here for a full fifteen minutes and Sophia had already found a reason to be angry with me.

"I'll catch you later Taylor," Lisa told me with a wink. "Don't get too distracted." I swallowed as she turned away and disappeared around the corner. The one person in this whole school who was on my side.

I took a deep breath and faced the door of the class. It was an easy course and had a mixed class. Some people there had taken her class three times and were part of the advance class while I was with everyone else. Because of the old laptop my mother made sure I had I probably knew more than most of the other students in the same group as me. I might be able to test out, but until then I was stuck with the slow learners. But that was okay, I didn't need this class to challenge me. Quite the opposite. I need this to be the one class where I could relax.

When Mrs. Knott arrived to unlock the door, I saw Sophia walking towards me. The crowd of students was too thick for me to push my way into to avoid her, and moving out of the way would only cause her to pursue me and the end result would be worse. I moved my satchel to the other side so she couldn't grab it or use it to knock me off balance when she walked past. The bag was almost sixty pounds with all the stuff I've been putting inside of it, heavy for someone who's body hadn't be changed like mine but it could still put me off balance easily. My first instinct was to brace myself against her, but she would take it as a challenge. I forced myself to prepare like I didn't know she was coming, not making eye contact with her.

I was surprised when she bumped roughly into my shoulder. Not because she did it, she had done it plenty of times before, but because she grabbed my arm and pulled me closer to whisper something in my ear.

"Be careful who you idolize, Herbert." She roughly shoved me back into the thinning crowd of classmates, causing me to stumble into someone. When I managed to regain my balance she was walking away, her track friends following closely behind her.

Shaking my head and quickly apologizing to the kid I bumped into, I shuffled into the classroom behind the last few students. I would be more confused over what she meant, but at the same time it wasn't hard to imagine someone like Sophia taking a personal offense to something as cute and cartoon as Nova. There wasn't anything I could do about that.

Sitting down at my computer stall I saw Mrs. Knott had pre-emptively dropped a list of all the lessons I had missed. Being part of the slightly less advanced students she didn't give out nearly as many assignments, which was less I had to catch up, and most of these lessons I already knew about. What I didn't know amounted to fifteen minutes of online videos she had linked me to. They weren't anything interesting.

Without much else to do and completely uninterested in what Mrs. Knott was currently saying, I opened up a new tab and started browsing the PHO. Particularly, articles about me.

It was more or less the same. A few new fan thread, the discussion and theory thread was buzzing, and I even found the thread Glenn had mentioned before. It was actually full of a lot of surprising skilled drawings of Nova fighting…. Well, everything. There was one that showed me standing taller than the Simurgh as I pummeled her with meteors. Another showed me blasting Sleeper bubble with my magic. Apparently, it was making more progress than the other energy based weapons had. Some art wasn't as talented as the others, but most of it was pretty good. It surprised me.

Looking a little deeper I found that other heroes had similar threads that had long since gone dormant. Glory Girl and Vista both had one. Some other female heroes with themes of being cute or beautiful all had some. Alexandria had one, but it wasn't as long as others due to the fact that while she was cool, she wasn't nearly as cute as Vista. And in the end, it seemed like that was the main motivating factor for these artists.

Suddenly, an alert popped up on the site that read 'Breaking News'. Looking around to make sure no one was watching and double checking to make sure the computer volume was off, I clicked the alert for the news site it was linked to.

My first reaction was for my mouth to fall open slightly in shock. My second reaction was to clench my teeth together and grip the mouse tight enough that I thought it would break.

On the screen was footage of the PRT building getting surrounded in a forest of blades as Hookwolf burst out of one side of the building. Armsmaster approached him, wielding his halberd, only for a beam of fire shot out of the hand of Viktor to rip up the ground between them. More blade sprouted up out of the ground to surround Armsmaster, trapping him in a cage. Vista suddenly appeared with Miss Militia and Kid Win standing next to her. The latter two fired a single shot of the weapons they were holding, a rocket launcher and some sort of laser weapon, before the three of them took a step back into distorted space and moved safely out of range before another blast of fire came from Viktor.

I took a deep breath and let it out with a frustrated sigh. Hookwolf was breaking out of prison, and I was stuck in school.