Part 772: Faceless

January 29th, 2021. Inside Aevum.

Jason was a busy man these days. Even so, he didn’t want to give up a chance to spend time with his daughter. He stayed with her, hugging and comforting her for thirty long minutes. The two of them idly chatted about this and that. But eventually, the needs of reality started to press on him.

"Dad…" Daisy mumbled. "When are you going to change back?"

Jason pulled away and gave her a weird look. "Change back?"

"Yeah. To the way you’re supposed to look." Daisy said. "I don’t like my dad looking the same age as me. Just use your magic to make yourself all big and strong again, like I remember when I was a kid."

Jason looked at her for several long seconds.

"I… I don’t think that’s going to happen, honey."

"What? Why not??" Daisy asked in bewilderment. "You can totally use your Wordsmithing to do it!"

"It’s not that I can’t, but that I shouldn’t." Jason said, averting his eyes. "That wasn’t who I really was. I guess you were too little to know this, but what you see now is how I should have looked. This is my normal self. When I first obtained my magic, I used it to turn myself into this good-looking beefcake. Muscles, pearly white teeth, a smoothed face, even a slick hairstyle."

He continued. "I did that for a lot of reasons, honey. But the main reason? Vanity. I didn’t want to look like a wimp anymore. I wanted to be big, strong, and cool. I wanted to look like a god among men."

Daisy gazed at her father’s side profile. "Well… when you put it like that, it does seem a little childish. But so what? What’s wrong with changing yourself to look better? Most people would kill to be able to do that. Hell, I would, and I’m already pretty good looking myself!"

Jason frowned. He looked at his daughter and shook his head.

"I can already feel the vanity in your voice, and you’re right, sweetie. You’re a gorgeous girl. A ten out of ten in my eyes. But what you just said really cuts to the core of the problem. I made myself into something I wasn’t. Why? To get other people to admire me, to make myself feel better, and so on. It was all for vanity and… maybe I’m overthinking it, but I now feel that there’s just something innately wrong with that. I can’t put it into words."

Daisy looked like she wanted to argue with her father, but she stayed silent when she saw a flicker in his eyes.

"You know." Jason said quietly. "Before I met your mother… there was another woman I fell in love with. Her name was Amelia… the Black Witch. She told me something once and… I ignored it at the time, but it percolated in my mind, and it’s been coming up in my thoughts a lot recently."

"What was that?" Daisy asked.

"She told me she liked me just the way I was." Jason answered. "She liked my authentic self… not my big-buff-guy persona. It struck a nerve in me at the time, but it wasn’t until I returned to the past and saw my reflection in the mirror that I seriously dwelt on her words."

Jason looked at the wall across from Daisy’s bed. "I changed what I looked like because I was ashamed of who I was… what I looked like. The truth is, I didn’t love myself. I didn’t respect myself. I wanted to obtain love and affection at any cost, even if it meant becoming someone I was not."

"I see." Daisy said, lowering her eyes. "That… I think I get it."

Jason’s expression brightened. "But that’s the thing, sweetheart. I don’t know if I love myself more than I did before, but I certainly respect myself a bit more. Your old man is dealing with… problems. But I know what I can do, I know who I am, and I know what I want to be. The failures of my past are informing the man I want to become. So I don’t know if I should change myself back into Buff Jason, any more than you should put on makeup and turn yourself into some famous movie star actress."

Daisy pondered her father’s words seriously. "So that’s the reason you’re going to remain in your youthful appearance?"

"Oh, NO, haha. That’s not the only reason!" Jason laughed. "I have an even better reason than all of that!"

Daisy blinked. She squinted at her father’s playful expression. "Huh? Like what?"

"Project Great Deceiver!" Jason said, shoving his thumb into his chest. "It’s a lot easier to fool the demons and angels into thinking I’m a weak nobody if I look like a scrawny teenager. They won’t take me seriously, making it a lot easier for me to prep for the future! Besides, if I suddenly strolled into the middle of their armies looking like a gigachad while kicking 10,000 demonic asses, don’t you think they’d realize my powers aren’t what I said?"

"Oh… yeah. Good point." Daisy said, rolling her eyes. Now that Jason mentioned it, that was a pretty damn good reason to stay as he was. "Gotta keep them thinking you’re a ‘dream eater’."

"Exactly, sweetie." Jason said, as he leaned over and kissed Daisy’s forehead lovingly. "Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do need to be going."

"Wait, dad." Daisy said, causing him to pause.

"…Yes?" Jason asked, expecting her to come up with another reason they should keep talking. He didn’t really want to go anyway, and his willpower toward Daisy was paper-thin.

"Before you go back to all your important business, can you drop by and say hi to Farrah?" Daisy asked.

"Jerome’s girlfriend?" Jason asked. "Uh… I mean… I don’t know… don’t you think that’s a little inappropriate?"

"Dad, come on. It’s not like that." Daisy said seriously. "Farrah’s been feeling really down lately, and she won’t tell anybody why. I’m just hoping you can get her to open up. I don’t know her very well, and the other girls can’t get her to open up either."

Jason hemmed and hawed for a few moments, but ultimately agreed. He hadn’t really talked to Farrah Lapis all that much, and if it was just a quick wellness check, it couldn’t hurt.

Jason kissed his daughter’s forehead again, then quickly skedaddled, leaving her in her room.

The Wordsmith reappeared atop a small outcropping near the top of the Nexus Spire. For a brief minute, Jason gazed down upon the world he had created. A sense of overwhelming satisfaction swallowed him as he beheld the realm he had created.

Superior to Volgarius. Better than Heaven. More fearsome than Raphael’s false Cosmic Realm or Satan’s Hell. Jason had never seen such a realm as terrifying in its possibilities as Aevum was. The people living there, including his own daughter, had absolutely no idea just what Jason truly hoped to accomplish.

Aevum was not merely a secretive realm for developing weapons and technology. It was the future stronghold of humanity, and eventually, the Milky Way itself.

Hundreds, thousands, even millions of years in the future, the name of Aevum would send a chill down the spine of anyone who opposed it. The might of Humanity would continuously grow over time, eventually reaching a level that would force those who stood against humanity to bow their heads and bend their knees. If they did not, their heads would fall from their shoulders.

It was a grandiose vision. It was a concept that would not bear fruit for a long, long time. What meager advantages it gave Jason now were minuscule in comparison to the future gains.

Jason had to protect Aevum in its infancy. If the Psions uncovered its hiding place, Dosena would likely lash out and eradicate it after realizing the threat it represented to the Volgrim Empire.

The good news was, Jason had foreseen the dangers of the future. He had placed Aevum near the galactic Core explicitly to hide it from the gaze of the Cosmics among the Volgrim Empire. Even if it emanated a fearsome magical signature, they would have difficulty locating it due to the cosmic energy radiated by thousands of nearby stars.

"I must be very careful." Jason muttered to himself. "One slip-up and I could reveal Aevum’s existence to the wrong people."

Aevum was already capable of sustaining several tens of thousands of people. But could Jason risk bringing them here? Not at all. He was already taking a huge risk bringing the children of the Illuminati here, as well as Daisy’s friends. He didn’t know them well. They were probably trustworthy. But what if one of them wasn’t?

It would only take one flappy set of lips to damn his greatest construct to the depths of hell.

Jason looked around. He used his Wordsmithing to search for Farrah’s mana signature. Even amidst the vibrant leylines of Aevum, Jason was able to sniff her out in a single second.

Farrah was all by herself. She was laying in a field of grass and flowers beside a crystal blue pool Jason had made for recreational swimming. However, since Aevum’s population was so small, nobody had really used the pool for such reasons yet, and she wasn’t wearing a bathing suit either. It didn’t seem she planned to go for a swim.

Jason gazed down upon Farrah, unseen by her. With his vision, he could see every follicle of hair on her head, even from a kilometer above Aevum’s surface.

She had a blank expression on her face, but Jason could tell there was a sense of resignation, perhaps even depression there as well. She seemed to have a lot on her mind.

Jason wasn’t a ‘people person’. He wasn’t great at reading the thoughts of others, unless he cheated by using telepathy. But he didn’t like doing that, since, as he told Daisy, it was an invasion of privacy and trust.

Thus, while he had hundreds of lived years to learn how to ‘read’ other people, he was still an amateur compared to normal humans who made it their profession, let alone ancient Heroes like Mildred. It didn’t help that he’d spent most of his lived life in Chrona, living alongside crocodiles and working by himself. He hadn’t spent much time or energy on improving this skill.

Even so, Jason could tell something was on Farrah’s mind. Without violating her privacy with telepathy, this much was obvious. He wondered if Daisy had read her mind and determined Jason was the best person to help her. It not only seemed possible, but likely.

Jason muttered a Word of Power. He vanished from the top of the Spire and appeared at ground level a few hundred feet from Farrah. He approached her from the front, his hands casually folded behind his back. When he got close enough, Jason raised his voice slightly.

"Oh! Farrah, is that you?"

He feigned surprise and felt a little relieved when Farrah blinked her eyes, lifted her head slightly, and looked down her body toward her toes, where she saw the Archseer approaching from a distance away.

"Jason? M-mister Hiro?" Farrah asked, quickly sitting up and crossing her legs as she watched him approach. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I was repairing one of the underground leylines." Jason casually fibbed, gesturing toward the ground. "If these break down, Aevum’s operations could grind to a halt. Anyway, I saw you laying there, thought I’d say hi. Why are you over here all by your lonesome?"

Farrah’s eyes flickered. She looked to the right, then left, seemingly expecting someone to jump out and throw a bowl of milk all over her as a prank. Obviously, nothing of the sort occurred.

"I was, um… I was just… thinking." Farrah said.

She didn’t elaborate.

"Thinking?" Jason asked, as he came to a stop some distance away. He stuck his hands in his pockets. "You feeling okay?"

"Yes. I-I, I, I’m feeling fine…" Farrah said nervously.

Her expression turned gloomy. She lowered her eyes to stare at the ground. She started nervously pulling at the grass, plucking out a strand of grass every so often, seemingly unaware she was even doing it.

"You don’t look okay." Jason observed. "Is it something I can help you with? I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want. But just remember, I’m hundreds of years old. I’m actually a really old man trapped in my much younger and skinnier body. Maybe I can offer some insights?"

Farrah chuckled. The look on her face eased a little, but she continued to stare at the ground. She wasn’t good at maintaining eye contact usually, and because of whatever was on her mind, she was even worse than usual.

"Well… I… I um… I don’t know." Farrah mumbled.

Jason waited. He flopped onto his back in the grass, rotating himself so he was laying sideways before her. He donned a pair of sunglasses as he turned his face up toward the tiny artificial sun in Aevum’s sky. Then he folded his hands over his belly and waited.

When Farrah didn’t say anything after a long minute, Jason decided to speak. "Did Jerome hurt you?"

"What? No!" Farrah exclaimed, a look of horror washing over her face. "No, no, nothing l-like that! Where would you get that idea?!"

Jason turned his head to look at her. "He didn’t? But you look so sad. I just thought…"

"Jerome would never hurt me." Farrah said. Even despite this, her expression darkened. "Not deliberately."

The gears turned in Jason’s head. He struggled to think of what could be causing her bad mood, but he just couldn’t place it. Unfortunately, Jason was not Daisy, and he was not Unarin. The latter would have probably deduced what was bothering Farrah within ten seconds and came up with fifteen solutions to her dilemma, but Jason was… a bit slower.

"So… Jerome wouldn’t hurt you deliberately." Jason said slowly. "But… maybe accidentally? Has he grown too strong, to the point he did something that scared you?"

A long sigh escaped from Farrah’s lips. She exhaled with her whole body, a look of exhaustion coming over her face.

"It wasn’t his fault." Farrah finally said, after internally debating whether she should say anything at all. "It’s not even because of him in the f-first place… n-not really. It’s… it’s everyone around here. Everyone…"

Jason raised an eyebrow. Farrah still wasn’t looking at him. "Maybe I’m duller than I thought. I still don’t quite get it. Have all the people here hurt you in some way?"

"It’s… it’s my power!" Farrah finally snapped. Her eyes twitched, and she looked like she was on the verge of tears. "You- you brought me here, along with all these other incredible people, but why?! What was the point? I’m just useless, dead weight! My power is worthless! I watch as everyone else g-gets a-all strong, and cool, and they do awesome things… but I’m stuck here with the same useless, crappy power as before!"

Jason started to open his mouth, but the more Farrah talked, the more her emotions started bursting out, as if she couldn’t stop them herself.

"A-and then Jerome comes home every day, b-bragging to me about how much stronger he’s gotten, and it just makes me feel miserable because what do I have anyway? I can change my face? Wow! What a great trick! The amazing Farrah, cornerstone o-of the superhero league! She can make herself look like other, better people! What a joke!"

Jason sat up. By this point, even he could clearly see the problem. "That’s what’s eating you up? You think your power is bad?"

"Of course it is!" Farrah exclaimed. "But I know what you’ll say. You’ll say at least I have a power. I still have something that 99.99% of other humans don’t! Except what does it matter, because we live in a world of angels and demons, and there’s even a demon who can do what I do but way better! THAT’S what’s bothering me! I just have some useless knockoff power…"

Jason’s expression turned serious. He lowered his eyes and stayed silent for a moment, thinking about all his interactions with Farrah.

In truth, he understood she was right. He could offer her some words of comfort, but the truth was that all this time, he hadn’t even really thought of her as her own person. She was always just ‘Jerome’s girlfriend’ in his mind. He had disregarded her power and not thought about her situation at all. Here she was, living among all these amazing people, obviously disregarded by them, and feeling stuck and trapped inside Aevum, becoming little more than an attachment to the ‘real’ Hero, Jerome.

How miserable would that situation be? If she had accomplishments of her own, she could at least stand proudly with self confidence to match. But stuck amidst all these extraordinary people, she was steeping in her feelings of inferiority, her mood worsening every day.

Jason sat there for a long minute. He thought about what he had told Daisy earlier about himself when he was a teenager. He was a lot like Farrah back then. He had felt inferior to other people and immediately sought to use his power to make himself into a ‘cooler’ version of himself. But that was only putting a band-aid on the real issue.

Farrah possessed an admittedly simple power, but it was still something that basically no other humans would ever possess. The issue was, she was surrounded by other superhumans who were, at least in her eyes, objectively superior to her in every way. Even Jason himself could change the way he looked with great ease, possessing superior appearance-changing powers to her.

What was her power again? Jason wondered.

He recalled that she could change the appearance of her face, and… that was about it.

Oh, and she could change the color of her hair too. Jason remembered that Farrah had shifted her hair from blonde to white when he first met her.

Jason got up and walked over to Farrah. She’d gone silent by now, and seemed embarrassed about flipping out in front of him. He sat down next to her, a thoughtful expression on his face.

"So, Farrah. Your power… you can change your facial appearance, and your hair color, right?"

Farrah looked glum. "Yes. That’s all."

"It’s kind of odd." Jason muttered. "Even for a Lowborn, that seems awfully limited. You’re sure that’s all you can do?"

"I’ve tried all sorts of other stuff!" Farrah exclaimed. "Especially after I heard about Emperor Belial. I thought maybe I could change my body more like she does… but it’s no use. I can’t do anything. I’m nowhere near her level."

"It really is strange." Jason said, as he looked her body up and down. "I know of a Lowborn girl whose only power was to change the direction of the wind, which would make her fall asleep from exhaustion. I think your power is better than hers, but only by a little."

Farrah furrowed her brow. She looked like she was about to burst into tears, having her fragile mental state exacerbated by what felt like the legendary Hero mocking her.

"Sorry, I don’t think I’m speaking clearly." Jason quickly said. "I’m not saying your power is weak and useless. I’m saying I think there has to be more to it. I don’t think you’ve tapped into the full extent of your abilities, and part of the blame is on me."

Farrah turned her teary eyes to meet his for the first time. "Y-you really think so?"

There was a spark of hope in her eyes, but at the same time, she looked like she was equally prepared for crushing disappointment. It seemed her mental state was much worse than he’d thought.

"I do. Let’s go to the medical center." Jason said. "I’ll examine you there and see if I can figure out how to boost your powers."

"R-really?" Farrah asked, still in disbelief. "You’d do that for me?"

"Farrah, I’ve really neglected you. I’m sorry." Jason said, smiling while feeling terrible on the inside. "It wasn’t my intention. But since I’ve neglected your needs, I’ll just have to make up for it double-time. Let’s take a look and see if there’s anything I can do to help you out."

Without further ado, Jason teleported himself and Farrah into the same medical facility where he’d been upgrading other people’s MindCores. His daughter was up next, but he hadn’t yet finished the upgrades to his process, and he was fearful he could hurt her like he did Nadia… Jason definitely didn’t want to do to Daisy what he’d done to Catherine. He was not ready to give her a Freudian complex for the rest of her life… by no means.

"Just lay back in this chair." Jason said. He didn’t bother strapping Farrah in, since he wasn’t doing anything invasive today.

Jason started by firing up his lab equipment. Farrah seemed nervous, but there was visible excitement in her eyes. The Archseer himself was going to see if he could amplify her powers. Who wouldn’t be excited?!

Jason started by running a scanner to examine her ‘mundane’ biology. It scanned her cells, examined her skin and bones, and peered within her brain and spine to uncover whatever her metaphysical powers might have altered about her physical self.

Before long, Jason started mumbling to himself. "Hmm… huh… hmm… interesting. Oh, and that…? But it couldn’t… hmm, and this here…"

He was so engrossed in examining the scans of Farrah’s body that when he raised his head and saw Farrah looking at him with teary-eyes, he was taken aback.

"Farrah?" Jason asked.

"D-did you f-find anything?" Farrah asked. "You look… like it’s… really b-bad…"

From her perspective, Jason’s expression had turned so deadly serious that he looked like he’d just found out she had terminal cancer. Farrah was going crazy from his lack of communication!

"Oh! No, no, it’s nothing like that." Jason said, quickly rifling through the paper printouts. He plucked out an image of Farrah’s brain. "See here? There’s a lot of activity in your Hippocampus compared to the other Lowborn. This shows that your metaphysical powers primarily originate from your brain, not your body. And the Hippocampus especially is involved with short and long term memory, as well as your spatial navigation."

He continued. "So, basically, your power is mainly cerebral. What’s curious to me is that based on what I’m seeing, it seems to be primarily focused on your head as a whole. That could explain why only your face and hair change. Could you start using your powers while I scan you? It would give me a better range of data now that I’ve established the baseline."

"Um. Okay. Sure." Farrah agreed.

After a few moments, she started focusing her mind. Her face shifted, and she took on the appearance of Daisy, even mimicking her hair color to match Daisy’s particular hue of blonde.

"Oh! Interesting!" Jason said, looking into his observation equipment as it showed different parts of Farrah’s brain lighting up. "Try changing your appearance to a male one. Can you shift your face into Jerome’s?"

Farrah winced. "You… want me to turn into my boyfriend…?"

"Yes." Jason said, before giving her a weird look of his own. "Don’t tell me you haven’t tried that before?"

"Turning into a boy is kind of weird…" Farrah said hesitantly. "I don’t know, won’t that make me a queer?"

Jason blinked twice. What the heck was she talking about?

"You’re telling me you’ve never made yourself look like a guy before?"

"Well, no…" Farrah said, looking away sheepishly. "I’m a girl. I want to look like a girl. Why would I want to turn into a boy?"

"Farrah." Jason said seriously. "I have more reasons why you would and should than why you wouldn’t or shouldn’t. You know, I’ve even… never mind that. Just do it for me, this once, okay?"

Jason almost stated that he had done the same, making a female version of himself via Jessica Harper, but he opted not to. Only a select few were privileged to know that information, as well as people he’d accidentally let it slip, like Nadia and Catherine.

The fewer who knew, the lower the chance of leaks.

Farrah listened to Jason’s request. After a moment, she nodded her head shyly.

"O-okay. I’ll, um, try turning into a b-boy…" She said.

It took her a lot of effort, and more time than Jason expected. Even after three minutes, she only seemed to be grunting and squirming uncomfortably. Jason raised his eyebrow. It seemed she really felt discomforted by the thought of doing so.

Still, Jason kept monitoring her vitals. Eventually, he noticed the fluctuations of mental and spiritual energy inside her brain that indicated she was activating her powers. He flicked his eyes between Farrah and the monitor every so often.

Eventually, Farrah’s skin started to darken. It turned from white to brown to a richer, darker shade of black as she mimicked Jerome’s skin color. She was plenty familiar with how he looked, so it seemed mimicking his appearance was fairly simple.

Farrah had her eyes closed. She didn’t even realize that her powers were working. Jason, however, did. For the first time, Farrah managed to change the color of not only her face, but all the rest of her body as well! Her nose slightly enlarged. Her forehead became slightly more prominent, and her lower jaw jutted out a little. Once she started successfully transitioning, she seemed to break past a mental barrier, and the rest of her body shifted to look like a much skinnier and more feminine version of Jerome!

When Farrah finished and opened her eyes, she gasped in shock. She sat up in the chair and looked down at her hands and arms.

"I, I, I…??" Farrah stuttered.

"You did it." Jason said, walking over to her with a smile. "You were limiting yourself the whole time. I thought I might need to alter your body’s powers or something, but it seems I didn’t need to. You had the ability in you all along."

Farrah looked like she was in a daze. "This is… I can… change my whole body? Not only my head?"

"I don’t know the exact reason, but it seems you were holding back this entire time." Jason explained. "Maybe some sense of shame? Guilt? Some other reason? Have you never tried to turn into a man before?"

Farrah looked at him, then quickly looked away. "N-no. I haven’t… before. It’s not… in Persia, a woman dressing as a man is… shameful. My mother, my father, they wouldn’t like it."

Ah. Mommy and daddy issues. Jason thought. Nothing to unpack there…

He didn’t voice such crude words out loud. Instead, he smiled encouragingly. "This is just the first step, you know. You forced yourself to turn into a guy, but now I want you to practice all by yourself, in your room or somewhere else. Once you learn how to transition more seamlessly, you’ll definitely be able to turn into different sorts of men and women more naturally."

Jason tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Hmm, but what about your voice? Your physical build and bone structure? I bet this is still only the beginning. What you’ve done now is turn yourself into a crude facsimile of your boyfriend. You need to keep practicing until you can turn into an exact replica of him in a split-second!"

"But what if I can’t?" Farrah asked. "What if I’ve already reached my limit?"

Jason rested his palm on Farrah’s shoulder and gave her a reassuring squeeze. "Farrah, five minutes ago, the ‘limit’ of what you could do was lower than it was now. Instead of constantly second-guessing yourself, try demanding more of yourself. You’re a Specialist, and your specialty is shapeshifting. I’m willing to bet good money you still have a long ways to go before you reach the so-called limit of your powers."

"Oh… okay." Farrah said. She looked skeptical, but she couldn’t help smiling. Her expression was brighter than before. It seemed Jason’s words had caused the intended effects. "Y-you’re right. I’m always so… ashamed. So worried others will look down on me. Maybe that’s been… holding me back… all this time."

Jason sighed. He didn’t know much about Farrah. For her to always be so anxious and nervous, there must be a story behind it. It seemed Jerome was always kind and sweet and loving with her. It was unlikely he was berating or insulting her behind closed doors. Something must have caused her to develop her constant anxiety, but Jason wasn’t certain what it was.

There was always tomorrow, and the day after. They’d made a breakthrough today. Best to leave the deeper questions for later. He’d neglected her for long enough.

"Just keep practicing." Jason encouraged. "I’ll start following up with you from now on. Sorry that I ignored you before… I’ve been busy, but that’s not a good enough excuse."

"It’s fine. You’re the Archseer. You’re a busy man." Farrah said, smiling sweetly. "Th-thank you for helping me. It means… m-means a lot to me."

The two of them said their goodbyes, and Jason returned her to the pool where he’d originally found her.

Now that Jason had weakened the mental limiter holding her back, his thoughts turned toward other matters.

"If Farrah has hidden potential, I wonder about the rest." Jason muttered to himself. "We’ve got a year to train before the demons attack. Every little gain early on will pay out dividends later."

He went silent for a moment.

"I should pay Brian Bozzard a visit…"