StV: Powers and Responsibilities

"Okay, here's what I don't understand," Cloudburst said softly, as they sat beside the fire. "You can give yourself new powers. You can adjust other people's powers, or give them new ones. So... why did you shove all your new powers into your Blood God form? Why not just give yourself those powers, um, outright?"

Harbinger leaned closer to the fire, closing his eyes to feel the heat on his face. "Given the choice, I wouldn't have them at all. I wouldn't need them. Do you know how many lives paid for those powers?"

Cloudburst shook her head. "I know you fought your way out of the DAAT compound. That's all anyone's said about it."

"I'm a murderer, Cloudburst. Or at least a killer, since it was self-defense. So primus, I don't like the idea of just... strengthening my usual self that way. Secundus, I don't want to get in the habit of using that kind of power. I need it -- my parents are millennia-old gods who might show up looking for Charm and me at any time -- and I need some way to..." He hesitated for a long moment. "...to discourage them if they do. Which is why I've gathered that much power at all."

"Self-defense," she said, and squeezed his hand.

He nodded. "Charm is a talented sorceress, and getting better all the time, but our Mom is also a sorceress and has a power like mine -- and several thousand years of using it to strengthen herself. If we want to be able to force our independence, then we're both playing catch-up -- and that's not even accounting for our father, who has... very definite ideas about how personal power relates to leadership and godhood. Having them both show up would be... catastrophic." 

She nodded slowly. "So you... what? Gave yourself enough power to be hard to kill, but not so much that you're a danger to other people, but still keep the option to go to your Final Form in an emergency?"

He nodded. "Something like that, yeah. Because if I were carrying that much power around all the time, I'd want to use it. I already do, but at least this way I'm not out there doing horrible things to horrible people constantly. I don't want to become Solar."

Cloudburst nodded, then stood and found another log to place on the fire. "Lead us not into temptation," she said quietly. Solar was a famous villain, at least as far as the media was concerned; she was arguably an Anomalous Rights Advocate, but she was also a radical and had publicly incinerated several prominent politicians in at least three countries, and organized other Anomalies to act as terror cells. No, Harbinger wouldn't want to become that. He understood just how double-edged those kinds of actions were.