[SIDE STORY] Anti-Hero - part 2 - Henriettas past unfolded

Two weeks later Henrietta was sitting alone in her room. No, not her room. Her new room. Cold, blank, white walls, looking more like a prison cell than a room, but she didn't care for them anyway. All she looked at was the screen in front of her, rewatching the same video over and over.

"Hello, my name is Henrietta Vehgrass, and I am currently 17 years old.

I have just come into contact with mind controllers, so I leave this message to myself or anyone who wonders about me. So let me start with the basics. I have a..." At this moment her eyes went blank. No matter how many times she watched this part, the very second it was over, she had already forgotten it. Yet all so often, she found tears on her face once she could focus again.

"Please make sure that all is still the same, future me! Now, going on. I go to school close to Sydney, Australia, and am close to finishing high school this year. I never..." another break, only for a few seconds, though. "though I wouldn't mind if that changed.

Apparently I am supposed to meet some weird guy later today, who will tell me even more. If I don't come back, then..." Henrietta stopped the recording and started it over. She could fully memorize the last part, it was all she knew about the Hero Maker so far, even though she hadn't gotten that name back then.

She knew what the missing parts were, though. Descriptions of her family. She had lost all connection to them. That was her first price. Not only the memories she had, but all relations as well. The day as it happened, as she became one of the so called heroes, her father burst into her room. The Hero Maker had shifted into one of her friends from soccer. She wasn't even surprised how he knew what to look like. Instead she was surprised by the man coming at her. She couldn't recognize him. Of course, now, she didn't even remember it happen, but the Hero Maker told her.

The same went for pictures or recordings of her family. She was unable to see them as people she loved. They were just strangers to her. And to make it even worse, the very second she realized who they really were, she lost all new memories she had with them as well, wiping her blank once more. They would forever be strangers to her. And she knew who to blame for that. The guy who **** this upon her. The guy who took them from her. She remembered his words quite well. 'What's the worst that could happen?'

Well, it became the worst, and he dared to one up it even after that. "Oh, now that you have been seen by them, and are going with me, we will need to make you look different, so pick a look and I will change your body to look like that." It sounded nice at first, but as she thought about it, it was just adding insult to injury. Not only was she **** to never recognize her family again, once she changed, they wouldn't recognize her either. But as always, she was not left with any choice in the matter. With the Hero Maker it was either 'do as I say, or you die.' Not that he would kill her, but she had learned that she knew nothing of this new world. And without his help, however unwanted it was, she would face an immediate ****. So she decided to give into it, and give herself a new body. One she would be happy with and would stay with for the time she was around him. One befitting for her new life.

Henrietta didn't even disagree as he told her to move out of her home before changing. Pretending to run away was an easy thing to do with his help. In the end, she had to do it anyway. Everyday, new holes in her memory popped open whenever she ran into her family at home. She couldn't live like this, so why not join this jerk on his way around the world.

Once he had brought her into the castle that he called a 'hideout', she was given a room to live in. She installed the PC she brought along and put her books in a shelf before logging in. She froze. There were two accounts on this PC. She couldn't remember the second one, so it must have been of someone she forgot. Her lips formed the name on the screen. Draldover. She laughed as she logged into the unprotected account and started to transfer her data to it. This was the one thing she still had from her family that she did not seem to forget. And she was certain to keep it as a part of herself from now on. To remind herself of what she had lost.

A few days later she got informed that she was supposed to engage in training her powers. Why would she do that? The power he gave her didn't suit her at all! She could control time. Sure, super powerfull ability in all the games or books. Knowing the future and all that. But they didn't see the backside to it. First, she turned back time for herself as well. She couldn't just go where she wanted to be and then turn back time to be there earlier. The only thing that remained unaffected by time travel was her knowledge. She could know the future, which was nice and all, but no matter how much, she couldn't Life is Strange herself out of most situations. Third and that was most important, the control. She quite often activated it out of a reflex, turning back the clock for half a second or so. It seemed as if the world had a lag for her, which often caused her to have headaches.

But even if she could use her power to the fullest, she probably wouldn't want to. Her power had a horrible drawback. Pain. She had to be hurt to pay for her power to be activated. Not crippled or scarred, only hurt. Physically though. And it worked best, as she found out, if she was the one hurting herself. Her powers turned her into an involuntary self harm candidate and she hated it. No, not just this. All of it. Her new powers, the horrible price she paid up front and the one she had to pay everytime as well. But it didn't stop there. She hated the new place they were at, the people she was meeting, the kind of dangers she was now facing and even the things she had to do as a hero. She hated it with a passion. But most of all, she hated the man who got her into this. And she swore that once they were done saving the world... she would find a way to kill him for what he did. So maybe training wasn't such a bad idea after all. Letting him train his own murderer. Served him right.