Duodecimarch Revolution (Warhammer x Metroid x Worm x Transformers Multicross Quest)

In the mean time, headlines!

Daily Tribune: Reports of Seamonsters Escalating in frequency]

Oceanic travellers have in recent days, been increasingly reporting signs of large aquatic fauna not matching any known animals on the planet; some large and/or vicious enough to cause damage to the hulls of ships attacked. One of the most consistent reports is of a large, serpentine creature that reports say "moves faster than sound itself" throughout the water, a "red comet" that announces its presence with a deafening shriek that only arrives after it has smashed its way through parts of the ship. Unusual fauna such as abnormally large arthropods of abnormal durability and size as well as stranger creatures have also been reported. Scientists are at a loss to determine the cause of this, but theories that it may have had something to do with the atmospheric disturbances seen earlier.

Brockton Herald: Snowstorm continues unabated]

Schools and many other services are expected to remain closed for the foreseeable future due to the intensive blizzards rocking through the area as the state of New Hampshire issues a statewide warning for residents to stay indoors in the face of subzero temperatures and extreme snowfall. Parahumans affiliated with the government are busy trying to clear out the snow as best as possible in tandem with snowplow and clearance teams to maintain viable paths for emergency services, but non-essential traffic is strongly advised against. All flights to and from the city have been cancelled or diverted for the time being, with many airlines offering hotel vouchers for passengers frustrated by the inability to reach important cities such as Brockton Bay or Manchester. However, meteorologists are still uncertain as to why the storm suddenly changed its course, but predict that the blizzard should move out of New Hampshire within two days time.

CNN: Neo-Nazi activity continues to rise

Massive increases in far right militia and terrorist activity have escalated following a major battle in Munich; with associates of the ultranationalist Gesellschaft and the Empire-88 among other organisations proclaiming this to be the start of a Judeo-Bolshevik plot to begin a white genocide by attacking centres of European culture and heritage. While footage of the scene remains unavailable, eyewitnesses have reported that the engagement took place following a Gesellschaft lead occupation of the University of Munich that investigators have determined to have lead to the deaths of more than two hundred students and faculty in what is one of the bloodiest far-right attacks in West Germany in the last two years. Empire-88 Spokespeople have announced that these eyewitnesses are simply material agents of the conspiracy and urge its expanding membership to shut out the lies while authorities continue to avoid questioning on how and why these groups are not only expanding, but showing ever larger amounts of armaments and munitions.

BBC: Woman arrested for gruesome murder of Johnson family still insists on Alien defence

Mojisola Ige, a Nigerian immigrant on trial for the murder of the Johnson family that she was serving as a domestic worker for still defiantly insists that the gruesome murder was committed by an alien abduction. While her defence lawyer has attempted worked with an insanity defense, she has repeatedly insisted that while what she saw horrified her, she remains entirely clear of mind. The injuries on the family indicate hours of excruciating torture followed by being dismembered with the flesh disposed of by unknown means that would appear to involve pulling apart the muscle tissue from the deceased. While her defence attorney insists that it is impossible for her to have committed these crimes given the lack of any access to the tools capable of such violence and an inability to be placed at the London Police department's theorised crime scene, the discrepancies have been dismissed by the Prosecution as an attempt by the defence to seek refuge in minor details.

Daily Report: William Manton Remains discovered after enigmatic disappearance

After disappearing for more than nine years, remains positively identified to William Manton have been found by Soviet authorities dumped unceremoniously in the Tunguskan wilderness. How or why Manton was present there remains unknown, but a chance comparison to western dental records confirmed the origins of the skeletal remains, which showed significant surgical injuries that lead to autopsy specialists to theories that the body was dissected while alive by "extremely sophisticated tools, as if he was being studied and he was clearly healed many times after reaching the brink of death." Curiously, the body also shows signs of spending long periods of being within microgravity, leaving experts baffled as to how the former scientist was able to reach space in the first place or how they died.

Der Spiegel: Battle of Munich leaves many questions with no answers

Munich awoke to the sounds of a vicious firefight over one of its most prized and ancient universities involving a massive array of outright military force and unknown parahuman combatants that has left much of the university in ruins. Though the cause or reasoning of the attack is uncertain, the Gesellschaft seems to be primarily responsible for the carnage, including via the deployment of a hitherto unprecedented arsenal of military vehicles and robots. How the Gesellschaft has managed to increase its access to firepower to such a degree remains a mystery, but the inaction by Munich police who seemed to be content to simply allow the attack to occur has caused major discontent and demonstrations within the city, protesting what they see as a Police force more sympathetic to the ultranationalist terrorist group than to the populace they are sworn to protect.

[X]: Speak to Battery for her advice (Minor destress, more information about life in the bay in particular)

(This is an Arne only PoV sequence as I couldn't find any fitting PoV shifts between him and Samus. Maybe I should make "you" second person plural?)


"What do you think Samus?" You asked, taking a moment before adding to the prior statement. "Where should we go?"

"I know what I want to do...but what about you? You let me lead you around a lot. Maybe the eagle needs to choose where he goes?" She said, the pet name making you flush a bit. The moment she figured out your name meant Eagle, which is to say, within a second of hearing it, she liked to call you that. You hadn't the slightest bit of avian theming to yourself beyond a love of the sky, but it never diminished her fondness for the name.

"Well...I really would like to see our ships." You said with a slight laugh at the end before she flashed you an emote-avatar of her face beneath her helmet with a wide grin and an emoticon with playfully sticking her tongue out at you.

"You mean our babies hrm?" She said as you felt like trying to find a rock to hide under as you fumbled around for any sort of counter.

"I uh...well...they've got our eyes." You said, feeling a bit lame as she giggled, shaking her head a little and pulling in a little closer while you drew her in a bit more.

"But we never did finish that vidset of Igimok you know...maybe if we have some time..." She said, humming slightly as she drew closer, to outsiders the affection you often displayed while in armour was hard to understand, but inside your suit felt like just another part of your body, the contact you had no less real than if you were in plain clothes. Warm and inviting after a lengthy combat period against an enormous number of foes. It was nice to have someone to just relax with.

"Mmh, are we going to pick at the technical flaws or are we going to have it as a backdrop for..." You said, seeing an opportunity to get her to show some embarrassment as she sent you a blushing emoticon and gasped a bit before giggling and looking away, then back to you, then at the ground and then gave you a nod.

"Mmmh, we could do both?"

"Yeah, it's not like we can't embrace while watching something, right?" You said as she just gave you a bit of a smirk beneath her helmet, catlike and coy.

"But let me finish, alright?" You said, raising a finger, getting a nod from her as you for a moment; wondered how those visions of futures of the two of you in conflict could have ever come about. What sort of paths of fate lead to becoming the blue and green snarling monster in that faceless helmet? Did coming here avert that? Or was it part of the road there? You brushed that aside, trying to instead focus on the present of finishing your sentence before she found another angle to interrupt you with.

"I mean...okay, I think I know what you're going to say but...go ahead!" She said, trying her best to not blurt out the answer her distant sight could perceive. It was a chore for her, the desire to just show that she knew rattling against her skull. But she held her tongue for now, shuffling slightly on restless legs.

"Well...we're going to this city Brockton Bay right? So...I know we can just go through the internet here for data but, a local would know best, yeah?" You said.

"It's true...I had my suit post some automated queries but they don't even have any response A.Is so I'm still waiting on most of the answers! Ugh, it's so boring to have to wait for a reply some times..." She said, sighing as you paused, blinked, and then looked at her again.

"...How many...posts did you make?" You asked.

"A few." Okay knowing her...you flicked through the internet here and did a double take as your armour ran a trace for queries posted from her explorer suit and found about....

"Six thousand eight hundred and seventy one...two..." You said as she repeated "Yeah a few."

"Huh, you disabled some of the overflow filters to get that out. Seems kind of rude to put those up there..." You said, pondering, didn't they have people with accelerated perceptions of time here? Seems awful demanding to completely automate post-overflows to nonsapient programmes and thus force everyone to operate at baseline human speeds of reading and response. She was right, this was absolutely inconsiderate.

"I know! Ugh...but yeah, Battery first; then we can check the other stuff out you know. Maybe talk to Nightcaster and Eudaimonica too about the..." She said before you finished.

"The Well of...Cosmic Vagueness." You said, not quite understanding why it was called the Well of Furies when you felt neither rage nor saw any greek winged women in its presence.

"The Well of Glowing Loudness." She added.

"The Well of Uncertain Intentions." You one-upped.

"Hey...if you guys are talking about me, let's try to get a move on alright?" Battery said with a sigh, overhearing your conversation and making the both of you stumble slightly to the side, having been too caught up in your little mind games with each other to realise that she was close by; not having paid her signature in the causeways of fate much heed due to not considering her a threat. You exhaled and gave her a nod, Samus doling out one of her famed thumbs ups...well...it was famous in your circles.

"Battery, maybe we should find a quieter place?" You say, getting a nod of agreement out of her as she raised a finger to indicate to Assault that she didn't want him following before walking with you and Samus to a human designated recreation room being vacated by Soviet personnel going back to their duties, giving you a quick nod before walking out. She looked at Eudaimonica and Nightcaster and then gestured to them.

"You two, come here...bring your uh...friends but I'd rather not have them interrupting me with ancient entity mystery speeches if that's alright?" She asked, getting a nod out of the two as they hopped on over, entering into the rather expansive looking room with a number of entertainment machines that looked...primitive but you supposed they were enjoyable.

Elsewhere there were comfortable looking couches, a selection of books, board and table games, and it seemed that the personnel had finished up with a session of some sort of roleplaying game about adventure in the far future. It looked...kitchsy and quaint, and the date of "ten thousand A.D" struck you, a native of the 51st millennium, as more than a bit retrograde. It looked cute though.

You looked back at Battery as she sighed and undid her mask and goggles and wiped her face with a disposable towel before taking a swig of an electrolyte drink for as long as she could before she looked at you with exhausted blue eyes even as she looked at herself. Doubt was filling her mind, the Well had spoken directly to her too, and you could only guess at what she told her.

"Is something the matter?" Samus asked before she shook her head and looked at the four of you as you found your seats.

"Is it uh...alright if we don't do this in power armour?" She said, getting a nod out of both of you as you allowed your armour to dissolve into light, a blink coming from her in surprise as she expected you to step out of the exoskeleton or something similarly backwards. Your black and red and her blue and cyan zero suits both faded afterwards, leaving you in the civilian clothes you had ready in zero-point form. Dark blue coat, cyan shirt, snugly but not overly tightly fitting olive trousers and black shoes; her in a green jacket with an orange shirt, blue trousers, and brown boots.

"...You know I was expecting something weirder from...what year are you from? In your reality?" She asked.

"Fifty thousand and fourteen by your calendar!" Samus said with a cheerful grin on her face as she leaned in a bit closer and smooshed her cheeks after putting her elbows on the table and making a kissy face as you chuckled and turned your head around to look at Alice and Jospeh after they had lowered their masks and eyewear; noticing the both of them were staring at the two of you rather hard.

They flushed when you and Samus looked back at them, muttering something about being sorry for staring as they talked to each other briefly.

"Why are they so god damn cute?" Alice said, the redhead flushing pink on her cheeks as she folded her arms and huffed.

"I was expecting like...cyborg woman not...god uggghhh..." Nightcaster saId before Battery snapped her fingers to get their attention.

"Okay I know you're teenagers so attractive people make your blood rush right to your genitals but please, can we focus?" She said, seeming to be tired more than anything else as she looked at the table and then laid down a tablet she borrowed from Bumblebee's minicon earlier and after taking a second to find where the file she needed was located; tapped it and pushed it to the centre of the table.

"I didn't grow up in discount San Francisco, and to be honest Brockton kind of makes me depressed since to be frank; it's a bit of a mess. Overpriced rent, IT yuppies, pathological hatred of homeless people, and you need to drive to get anywhere worth going to. Makes a girl miss the rat infested, silent hill-esque subways of the big apple. At least I didn't have to feel self-conscious about being content with four wheels and an engine when some silver spoon brat shows up in a tricked out Renault." She said, giving you the feeling she had a lot of this just boiling inside of her for a long time.

"What do you mean discount San Francisco? Is it...lower price?" Samus asked, not quite getting the expression before Battery made a bitter laugh.

"God I wish. A bit over median income in a city where rent for our apartment is four thousand dollars a month; if I weren't with Assault I'd be broke and even with him that's...god sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't sell my dignity to make ends meet. I didn't understand why so many villains got their start killing their landlord until I saw my first rent bill." She said, running her hands through her hair and sighing.

"Which brings me to my other point. The Bay is like those...things we fought back there."

"It eats people?" Joseph said before Battery shook her head.

"Undead. The Blue-collar work's gone and left town, but the city's growing with rural techie types and overseas finance industry guys. The heart of the city's stopped beating, but they're shooting it up with the black arts of desk jockeys. But a lot of those boys and girls are from parts of the country not happy to run into people who don't look like them." She said as you looked at the picture of a gang offering the Nazi salute to a man in heavy but crude looking armour as he stood at a podium in an abandoned warehouse, the hateful symbol of the swastika unfurled behind him as your skin crawled at the sight.

"Especially after Japan got piledriven by leviathan and we settled a bunch of Japanese refugees here. Probably only going to get worse after the cranks waving the rising sun flag have started clashes with the legitimate government and people started running for the hills and the Soviets started talking about intervening before civil war breaks out." She said, taking a second to look at her phone and letting out a sad sigh.

"She doesn't like what she sees on the news every day..." Samus whispered to you, you got that much, and to be honest the state of this planet gave you an immense appreciation for being born in the time you were. Pre-spacefaring earth history always seemed so grim.

"Oh I know what that's like." Alice said, rapping her fingers on the table and looking glumly at the ground.

"How's that?" Battery said, taking another swig of electrolyte drink to try and replenish her badly depleted reservoirs of fluids.

"After the Praetorian war eight years ago well, the government tried to settle the people from Praetorian Earth on our Earth when they were driven out of their home timeline by...I guess you'd call them monsters?" She said, Joseph nodding in response.

"Yeah Paragon City metro area went from... thirty-two million to forty-five million people after we dumped Imperial City's population there? Still trying to settle all the refugees but I know a lot of my Praetorian friends get called a lot of nasty names." Joseph added. Stuffing that many more people into an already massive city seemed like the height of hubris to you. Why not distribute them to other urban centres?

"Forty-five million people...On Rhode Island?" She said in disbelief.

"I mean...Paragon's way bigger than the state it's in but yeah." He said. According to your knowledge of Earth geography, it'd absolutely have to be given that Rhode Island was smaller than some cities outright. Why would a city get that large on such little land in the first place is beyond you.

"Okay so...Praetoria...Guessing that's another timeline? You just...integrated an entire alternate Earth?"

"Well, they had way fewer people since they had a nuclear war and a giant war with like...nature itself. But it's still a billion people. But well, they kind of started it? Mirror Universe and all, kind of douchey Evil Empire kinda thing." Alice said.

"Do you have any gang activity from those refugees?" She asked, looking somewhat curiously as the two gave a nod.

"Well then you'll know what it's like having to deal with that. Biggest ethnic gang besides the white nationalists are the Azn Bad Boys; lead by a guy who calls himself Lung, mostly just want to expand their turf and control. The Azn bad Boys got re-" You mouthed the word and made a look of stunned disbelief. Samus made a double-take and then looked at Battery as if she had grown a second head and whispered to you.

"Is this some kind of... twenty-first-century joke? That's such a stupid name." She whispered to you while Eudaimonica and Nightcaster were trying their best to contain their laughter to simply corpsing rather than doubling over.

"I...think she's serious...I'll, I'll ask."

"...Azn...Asian...are...are you serious? That's their name?" You said, harrumphing a bit.

"...Yes? I know it's...dumb but their leader is a Chinese man who can turn into a dragon who started asking for everyone to call him the Chinese word for dragon...I don't think he's good at names." She said with a sigh and a shrug.

"Lot of smaller time gangs too...but recently we've had a major uptick in triggers we can't really explain. Lot of disappearances too. Especially with Homeless people. Major increase in sightings of monsters too. The police don't care about the second one, and we don't get called unless there's confirmed parahuman involvement." She seemed to be disgusted at that particular regulation as she clenched her fist, gritting her teeth a bit before shaking her head and looking back at you.

"But you know...I care...I want to help, and every time I see some child in rags spending the money she begged for on posting missing fliers for her parents my heart shrivels up and dies. And a lot of these kids end up going straight to the gangs because nobody else gives a shit." She said with disgust as she showed another picture, the same armoured man lifting white children onto his shoulders like some sort of avuncular figure, a picture clearly meant to demonstrate him as a caring father figure as he stood amidst the lost and dispossessed.

"This guy is Kaiser. Besides Lung, he's one of the biggest parahuman gang bosses in the city. And for the longest time I had no idea where his batch of sister fuckers were getting their heavy artillery, money, or fancy gear from but well...looks like it was from actual honest to god Third Reich storm troopers using him as a puppet." She said, shuddering at the thought.

"Are you going to be alright? You saw a lot in that facility." Samus said with gentle concern. "It's understandable if you're feeling overwhelmed. This is a lot to take in." She said, trying her best even though she was speaking to someone half again as old as she was as Battery gave a faint smile.

"I mean...I have to be...when I touched that fragment and that goo...I saw...God...pure power? The big swirly thing of fate? And she said...I was interesting? That she liked the lengths I'd go to in order to have the power to protect things...people I care for. And...holy shit I am not ready for the attentions of something like that. I could feel her lay my entire life out in front of me and all she cared about was that I was...interesting?!" She said, clearly on the verge of a breakdown of some sort as her breath hitched.

Actions:

(Pick two, specify whether Arne or Samus should pick them)

[]: Try to shift topics away from the Well of Furies and towards more personal questions
[]: Encourage her to think she's worthy of the cosmic fountain's attentions
[]: She's already gotten the attention of one extradimensional power granting entity, what's another on top of that? (Not an ideal option but will be funny)
[]: Try to refocus back on Kaiser
[]: Try to refocus back on the Bay itself
[]: Try to see how the mission in Munich...or this whole day as a matter of fact; really affected her, she's seen a lot in the process of a few hours.
[]: Write in (you may make up to two)

(I accidentally ordered diet instead of regular soda when at a restaurant with my wife so now I'm caffinated and can't sleep so have this informational on one of the major villains on the house.)

Armin Ziegler is the Twelfth Person to hold the title of Fuhrer following Adolf Hitler (1933-1960), Reinhardt Heydrich (1960-1982), Wulf Spitzer (1982-1987), Rudolph Koenig (1987-1999), Werner Bergmann (2000-2010), Heinrich Burgdorf (2010-2023), Hermann Kreps (2023-2030), Felix Jodl (2030-2044), Karl Stirner (2044-2050), Friedrich Steiner (2050-2072), and Konrad Engels (2072-2093). Coming to power after the death of Konrad Engels due to an assassin's bullet delivered by the anti-nazi resistance from a colony timeline conquered by the Weltreich, Ziegler is a deeply ambitious man and dreams of unifying all the "worthies" of humanity entirely under his aegis and fully melding the Weltreich into the Nictus Empire with the Herrenvolk at its helm; dominating over other favourites of the Nictus such as the Council Empire or the Empire of the Darkened Sun.

Rising from the ranks of the SS, Armin Ziegler used to study architecture before joining the Schutzstaffel and then working his way up the ranks until he could assume position of Fuhrer in the vicious power struggle that followed his predecessor's death; having his loyalists liquidate the other claimants before a civil war could brew and promising the conquest of a new world for the Reich as its economy began its usual process of stagnation and decline whenever its expansion had taken a pause. Applying the same energy he learned in the Hitler Youth to the contest of proving himself to be the only worthy leader, he bullied or browbeated everyone into proclaiming him to be the new, true Fuhrer and swore himself in as the absolute ruler of the Weltreich, promising an end to the stagnation and the backsliding of his predecessor and a new age of unity and conquest.

A believer in Himmler's monotheistic Germanic religion and a proud student of Hitler's "racial science", Armin Ziegler is also a devoted afficianado of metahuman studies, particularly interested in the Well of Furies that gave the famous Reichsman his powers; as well as the Red Spider who continues to bedevil the Weltreich to this day. His interests have apparently lead him to some manner of success, as he has survived more than forty years as Fuhrer; longer than any before him, and does not age and assassination efforts all find themselves failing even when they confront him on his own. What sort of incarnate power he has taken is anyone's guess, but Vanguard; Primal Earth's primary shield organisation against extraterrestrial or dimensional threat; regards him as a threat on par with that of Tyrant's Praetorian Empire, perhaps more so.

While the Weltreich's technological progress has stagnated relative to the amount of time it has existed due to the forcing of science to comply with Nazi racial doctrine and the elimination of most potential talent for not fitting said racial doctrine or expected gender norms, the Weltreich still commands formidable assets simply from the time it has existed and the amount of plunder it has been able to acquire; especially under Armin's extremely ambitious expansion programs. While the initial attempted invasion of Primal Earth some nearly thirty years ago; headed by the Reichsman and his Amerika Korps; ended in failure and the capture of both the Reichsman and his team, Ziegler has never lost sight of his prize of Primal Earth for daring to thwart his designs.

He has studied the failures of the first invasion, the Rikti War, and the Praetorian-Primal war and has come to believe that so long as the next invasion avoids the bottlenecking that the first one suffered from; they should be victorious, especially with a lightning offensive to prevent the Primals from picking at the columns of his Reich the way that they did at Marcus Cole's Praetorian Empire. Particularly now that the Primal Earth version of Marcus Cole; Statesman; has been dead for more than eight years and their version of the Red Spider; Lord Recluse, sinks deeper into malaise with the death of his former best friend and arch-nemesis.

Ziegler has fully revived and endorsed the cult of personality, proclaiming himself to be a Fuhrer as great as Hitler, having his portraits be mounted on equal level to the founding Fuhrer in a move unprecedented in the Weltreich's history. Charismatic, with an architect's grandiose vision for master plans and grand success, and cutting a distinctive profile with sharp chin, neatly kept hair usually hidden under a peaked cap, and his ominous black uniform, Ziegler's blue eyed gaze stares down upon the Reich with the disdain of a conqueror upon the already conquered. What he has is not enough, and the multiverse awaits his Reich's conquest and order. With the Nictus urging him onwards, he prepares for war to "save" humanity from the Coming Storm, and extends his network of patronage and allies across multiple realities.

He has made amends with the Council Empire, the Empire of the Darkened Sun and other Nictus affiliated alternate timeline fascist states to form the Cosmic Axis, which he plans to use as a bedrock for a unified Human Reich purified of inferior stock. He has drawn those loyal to the National Socialist cause in realities where the Third Reich was vanquished such as the 5th Column on Primal Earth and the Empire-88 and Gesellschaft on Earth Bet in the Shardworm Metaverse to his growing Axis, with the intent to soon bring about the vision of Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer for all humanity. A purely Aryan populace free of all traces of immorality, Judaism, Communism, mongrelism, slavicness and other such diseases of humanity. *

*As the Axis America timeline in CoX has rather little lore due to being a throwaway mission backdrop and some context for portal corps lore I had to expand massively to create the Weltreich faction. Especially since they were, for the most part, day one content from 2004 that received few updates afterwards.

"Battery, you fought until your knuckles bled! Even without any augmenting armour. Even before Eudaimonica and Nightcaster came here you were fighting so well!" You said, trying your best to wedge into her uncertainties. The attentions of that...thing were overwhelming to be sure, you weren't entirely sure on whether having the notice of something like that was good or bad...you didn't get the most benevolent sensation from the being, but you weren't given too much choice on whether or not to accept her gift.

"Look I..." She started, almost as if she was about to make a revelation, something buried inside by years of shame looking for a chance to emerge. People who might keep quiet, people who hold no investment into what she is now. But she swallowed again and shook her head, rubbing her face and looking at her drink longingly. You didn't quite get what she wanted out of it, was it not sweet enough? Was the taste of the colourings unpleasant? As far as you can tell it was perfectly normal flavoured electrolyte water with blue colouring.

"I'm hardly the star member of the Brockton Bay Protectorate. I know a lot of the young girl aspirants in the area hope they can be like me but well...you know women's soccer?" She said, rapping her fingers against the table.

"Boy's world huh?" Eudaimonica said, getting a nod out of her as she looked at the table.

"More female than male parahumans yet there's more than two men for every woman on the team. And I'm just kind of the basic bruiser on the outfit. I hit things fast or shock people. Not an all hours tank like Adamant or a walking arsenal like Armsmaster or the other walking arsenal in Miss Militia. My powers aren't really...flashy and I feel so out of my depth with this weird magic and monsters bullshit. And now I'm being told there's aliens among us and we're going to have to refight world war two? I just..." She said, sighing as she looked forlornly at you, upwards at you despite being about fifty per cent older than you. You were more than thirty centimetres taller than she was, and it was sometimes easy to forget that she was older than you besides being more...filled out in some places.

"I wanted to just help my dad as a little girl, help him with bad guys getting out of jail. I got my powers, didn't know how to properly use them, but I somehow screwed my way up to the top. Now...I feel like I'm lost all over again. I'm just some New York White Girl who can barely afford rent. I'm not cut out for this cosmic charade show. What am I supposed to do...just...punch every Nazi like Indiana Jones? Can I fistfight an entire alien invasion? How am I in any way, up for being picked for some goddess' team?" She said, looking glumly as you recognised an opportunity to speak.

"What you did there was so brave! Even with baseline genetic coding, you have so little time to live but decided to risk everything in a situation even I didn't really understand!" Just the thought of someone putting themselves at risk with that many timebombs lurking in her genetic code made her seem so selfless to you. Her hair would probably start fading in colour by her fifties even, yet she went halfway around the world into the thick of it right behind you.

"Yeah it's...not often I'd see someone just rush into that much fire without any extra protection. I could maybe, craft some sort of armour for you with the fabrication bay on my ship?" Arne said, eyeing her up in a way that made Battery raise her eyebrows, though she lowered them when she realised that his attention was entirely innocent, not lingering anywhere inappropriate and only taking as long as he needed to figure out her dimensions exactly as he mentally worked out the proportions of his design.

"I...look I can't just ask you for a handout like that."

"You've more than worked for it! Come on, how many foes have you taken down today?" You said, blurting out a bit as she stopped to have a think and ran a few numbers before shaking her head.

"I lost count after the hundredth or so Nazi I clobbered."

"Nine hundred and thirty six!" You said, offering her one of your distinctive thumbs ups and smiles as she shrugged.

"You've taken out thousands." She said. "But well..."

"That just means you have something to try and catch up to. Think of it as a challenge! You've got what it takes to handle yourself. And with what you've been given, just think of all the good you can do with it. I didn't well...start like this." You said, sitting down after noticing you had stood up a bit in your chair and crossing your legs.

"Nah I figured you came out of your mom in the power suit." She said as you squinted a bit.

"That would be anatomically improbable." Arne said before you thought and then whispered to Arne that you thought it was most likely sarcasm, causing him to flush and look away in embarrassment at having missed the joke.

"It's okay...it took me...longer than I'd have liked to figure it out." You said, a bit of pink on your cheek as Battery had herself a small laugh and shook her head.

"Man I'd like to meet your parents one day, just get to know who raised you two like this." She said as you made a small frown and looked away a bit awkwardly, and her eyes shifted with realisation almost all at once as she muttered an "oh" followed by a "Sorry..." as she looked back at her hands as if they had some kind of stain on them.

"What's wrong?" Eudaimonica said before the central crystal in her tiara whispered in the infernal language into her ear. "The threads of those who birthed them were cut long ago with great violence." It said as she paused and looked away with a sigh.

"Well uh...if you want my opinion. If you've already gotten the attention of one extradimensional entity, what's two right?" Arne said, trying to break the silence as best as he could. The shadow of Nightcaster recoiled as if he had spouted some kind of curse while the glowing crystal in Alice's tiara dimmed briefly, but you nodded and grinned at a very confused looking battery who seemed to outright stumble backwards in surprise.

"...Two...what are you talking about Arne?" She said, her face contorting into an odd expression of bafflement and trying to recall anything that might have prompted him to bring that up.

"I've never seen anything like that before. Not like...the Well of Furies."

"Your abilities originate from a symbiotic fragment of some sort of larger entity that's bonded to you via a special organ that you've developed for interface with it." Arne grabbed at some paper and one of the erasable pens and quickly drew up a sketch with speed so great it seemed that the diagram he was making was being loaded into existence rather than being drawn to the eyes of slower to react people.

It made perfect sense to you, his mapping out of her altered physiology, how the fragmentary being had wired itself into her biology with a note that the entity had seemingly ceased any of its own thought functions, how it channelled energy into her body and supercharged her cells into a high electromagnetic state that allowed for massively increased power in tandem with a temporarily bolstered physiology able to deflect heavy munitions and break the sound barrier and even some of the math equations he applied to try and lay out his proofs.

Eudaimonica looked at it as if her brain was about to fry and Joseph produced a holy symbol as he stumbled back at the math. "Away with you accursed equations!" He hissed before stumbling out of his chair and falling onto his back while you looked down at Joseph.

"Are you okay? You shouldn't make those sorts of displays on those chairs. They're not meant for being tipped back!" You cautioned as he gave a thumbs up and wheezed.

Battery though, looked at the math in front of her as if Arne had written complete gibberish and at the diagram he had drawn out as if he had just vomtied out an abstract art museum's entire gallery before her eyes. The different colours Arne had used to make it more visually clear and distinct only making her even more confused as she looked at the paper and tilted her head.

"...What?" She said, looking at one of his charts and tracing her finger along the x-axis and then looking at the anatomical diagram he had sketched up and then back at him.

"...Are you saying I've got...space crabs?" She said.

"What, no! It's not at all like owning pet crabs grown in zero gravity!" You said, shaking your head as if she herself were spouting absolute gibberish.

"No I mean..." Battery said as she looked at the diagram and rotated it around to find a perspective that would make it more sensible to her.

Alice leaned in and whispered to you and Arne. "She means like, crabs as in like, lice that get onto your pubes." She said as you did a doubletake at her and then looked at Arne and then back at her.

"...Sexual parasites? Not at all, gods of my clan, not even a little. She's got no signs of sexually transmitted disease. Why would I?" Arne said as he ran his hands through his white hair and looked at the table and then at you with a silent plea for help.

"We're not trying to say she has a sexual parasite infection! It's not even a parasite it's...you'd agree its a symbiont right Arne?" You said, looking back at him as he gave a nod.

"It's not a parasite, it's got a mutually beneficial relation with the host. It's a mutualistic organism." He said, wriggling his fingers to add some emphasis to his explanation as the colour of his cheeks started to fade back to their usual pale hues.

"Yeah. You provide it with data and it provides you with a set of abilities transmitted into your cells through its extradimensional fractal conduits." You said with a nod.

"Samus, Arne, are you saying I've got an alien in me?" Battery asked.

"Well..." You said as you tried to think of a more tact way of saying it before Arne blundered to his explanation straight away now that his mind was going. You were trying to be less blunt, he was trying to be less wilting when expected to speak; unfortunately this meant he often just...spoke.

"It's not at all unique to you. All the parahumans from your metaversal cluster I've been able to study have a fragmentary entity like this attached to them. Some of them seem to be brain dead or dormant while others still seem able to influence behaviour in some way, such as encouraging or discouraging certain behaviours and pushing aggression responses. So I was just thinking that maybe if I could get a few to examine more closely, perhaps in a raw form I'd be able to isolate their central mass and-" He said before Battery shook her head, blinked, stared at him for a long while, then looked at you, and then at the other two in the room.

"What about them?"

"No that's just magic." Arne said, seemingly a bit crestfallen at having been interrupted.

"Just magic?" She asked.

"Yeah, it's completely separate from your power source, which is also distinct from the...Well." He said before it started to dawn on him that something was amiss when a long silence permeated through the room and he started to scratch at the back of his hand, looking between the others in the current room in an attempt to discern why everyone had stopped talking before you laid your hand atop his and moved the scratching hand off.
"Arne." You said softly as he rested and relaxed, looking towards you and smiling a bit.

"So everyone's powers on this planet..."

"You didn't know?" You asked, frowning a bit. It seemed like something you thought would be the top priority for their society to figure out and were kind of at a loss as to why they wouldn't have figured it out by now. You put your whole life into understanding every single facet of progenitor technology and biology that you could so that no aspect of your abilities would be beyond your comprehension.

"...Nooooooooooooo?" Battery said as she looked like her brain had just expanded, trying to understand the diagram in front of her.

"...Can I...show this to people?" She said.

"Obviously yeah!" You said before Wheeljack crackled in over the Intercom.

"+You know I was uh...trying not to inform them about that. Thought it'd be rude. But yeah, it seems to be a quirk of your metaverse. Fragmentary portions of some larger being I'm trying to figure out in my spare time. Also good news, we have averted the inversion of the flow of time in the local area. So claps out for me!+" The Autobot chief scientist said as you gave him an enthusiastic clap followed by Arne while everyone else just looked kind of stupefied by the sheer insanity unfurling in front of them.

"But uh, Battery, do you have a name?" You said, realising that you never really pried into her first name.

"Samantha." She said, undoing her pony tail and letting her brown hair fall down to her shoulder blades with the longest sigh of relief that you just instantly sympathised with. Letting your hair down after a prolonged day always felt like a rush.

"Hey! We can both be called Sammy!" You said with a wide grin, clapping as Arne nodded.

"Might get a little confusing." He said with a slight coy smirk on his face that made you roll your eyes before turning back to her.

"Well...I don't think I quite uh...got the favour of what you're suggesting I did...but well, from what I've seen you four's vote of confidence means a lot."

"Oh come on we're not like...big deals back home. I'm just another Mastermind." Alice said, shrugging her shoulders as Joseph nodded.

"Hey, I think you're cool still even if I'm still in training. Do you know how rare it is for people to get any response out of Well relics and Incarnate Shards?" He said, now having both you and Arne's full attention and curiosity.

"Given what the Well said to me, I'm guessing very?" She said.

"You'd be right. One in one hundred metas. You're a one percenter!" Joseph said as Samantha had a laugh.

"I wish I had a one percenter salary kid. Hah...well...god...that reminds me, do you two have any place to stay besides with the giant robots?" She said, scratching at her hair a bit.

"That goes for you two as well." She added.

"...Uhhh...we can crash in another dimension I guess?" Alice said before Battery shook her head and wagged her finger.

"Nuh-uh. You guys are staying with me. Ethan's pretty big on wanting kids so we've got some spare rooms. I'm...not sure I'm ready to commit to that but hey. Looks like we get some use out of it right? I'll just bring out the spare mattresses." She said as you looked at Arne and gave a wide grin.

"Sleepover?!" You said to him as he nodded.

"Yeah that, seems to be the case. Spring mattresses and old radiator heaters...like a museum piece." He said, thinking to his memories of what 21st century living accommodations were like.

"Well, look...I was a kid too so I'm not going to ask you to sleep in separate rooms just...don't wake the neighbours?" She said.

"Oh it's okay, Arne and I don't really sleep a lot...we'll be quiet. Promise!" You said with your hands clasped together. That was something of an understatement, you didn't have to sleep so you never really bothered unless there was nothing to do. Though given that you'd be away from your vessel's workbench you might end up being forced to take a nap to pass some time. Sitting around at night waiting for things to happen sounded dreadfully dull.

"Alright. Now...warning. I'm affiliated with a government law enforcement team and they're not super keen on unregistered vigilantes. I'm going to have to clear things with Piggot and the others. It's..." She said, pausing and procuring her phone and looking at the time and mouthing "what the fuck". "Okay it's still going to be pretty early in the morning when we arrive and most people are staying home. I know some places that try to stay open even when the weather's frightful though. And god willing, the Christmas songs have stopped playing by now." She said, resting her hand on her cheek and smiling as the two of you looked at each other and gave a nod while Alice and Joseph whispered to each other.

"And uh...red and black, please keep the dungeons and dragons monster manual menagerie out of sight when we're in civvies. People in the Bay would freak if they saw the legions of darkness and hellfire dancing on the steet." She said, clearing her throat as she gave them a pointed look and stared at Joseph's shadow folding his arms in disgusting and kicking at a roll of paper on the floor before detaching itself from him and going to a corner to sulk.

"Aww come on you hurt his feelings!" Joseph groaned as he stood up and tried to walk up to his shadow and pat it on the shoulder only for it to push him away in a display that made you snigger.

"...Okay do I need to apologise to the shadow?"

"I'm pretty sure they're just being melodramatic, their motions are incredibly exaggerated for attention," Arne said, taking a second to analyse their movements.

The shadow extended a middle finger towards Arne who flinched at the rude display. "W-wha? Come on! What did I do to warrant that?" He said, making a frown and a pout while Battery had a belly laugh and you and Alice started to crack up into laughter.

A knock at the door was heard shortly afterwards.

"Pardon me, would you people care to offer me some of your time?" Piggot said before your armour; in its zero-point state, sent you a message from Bumblebee.

Bumblebee: Hey, if you'd like to hang out by your ships, I've got something cool to show you guys!
Bumblebee: If Piggot is trying to get your attention, I can have someone occupy it for a bit, or I can wait if you'd like.
Bumblebee: Though I think your ships have something inside of them waiting for you...hrm.
Bumblebee: On the other hand, Kyrion's got some news for you they think needs to be said in person.

But Joseph raised a hand. "Hey, if you need some time to have a chat we could uh...hop on over to the shadow realm for a bit and talk about the incarnate...doohickeys. Just saying, we're gonna have to like...do it at some point but well...up to you really."

Actions:

All options destress a bit.

[]: Let Piggot in (Further briefing about Brockton Bay from the PRT. Start relation with PRT and Earth Bet American heroes.)
[]: Go off with Eudaimonica and Nightcaster (Continue forming friendship with Eudaimonic and Nightcaster, help familiarise yourself and the Worm characters with the incarnates and well of furies, prepare for relations with Primal Earth heroes.)
[]: Meet up with Bumblebee (Develop friendship with Bumblebee and autobots, deepen relation with the Autobot force and autobot party options, and check on your ships.)
[]: Discuss things with Kyrion (Greater leads on Chozo and Alimbic presence on dimensions such as Earth Bet and Primal Earth, establish greater connections with Section 13, introduce to new team mate option.)
[]: Write in