Summoner Quest (Celestial Menagerie)

Happy new year everyone!
I'm experimenting with a mini time-skip, instead of delving into the minutia of everything. When the situation doesn't call for such details I'll try to just summarize it. This should allow the story to move along just a tiny bit faster. I hope you like it.
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Thursday, 04/21/2011 (8 AM)

On our way back to the Rig as the problem of imprisoning the Butcher was being discussed, I proposed keeping her in the Orb's pocket dimension. Colin asked me if I was sure, saying that in essence, it would mean imprisoning her in my Tinker lab.

I responded that I was aware of that but it was a guaranteed way to keep her contained, not in the long term, of course, it wouldn't be viable. But for however long it took to build a dedicated facility it would guarantee her captivity.

And obviously, I wouldn't just drop her on the ground, we would build something to hold her and maintain her unconscious.

With that decision taken, we got to work as soon as we reached the Rig.

Colin was far too busy to dedicate himself fully to the project. His intervention limited itself to synthesizing the anesthetic.

While we were preparing the Orb to host the Butcher she was put in the most secure room of the Rig. Under guard 24 hours a day, with containment foam ready to fill the room at a moment's notice and constant medical monitoring.

To build the necessary facility a team of builders came from New York, professionals, and experts in building secure facilities. There was some muttering of calling in two Wards from Chicago, Tecton, and Gully to assist with their powers but it ended up being unnecessary. Instead, the work was greatly accelerated by Cressidus, a swarm of Constructio, Digger, Bleep, and Zhuan who was pulled from working on my lab. My panda builder grumbled at that, not liking leaving a project unfinished, but that was more important.

If the workers were surprised to have such unusual help and to work in such a unique location they didn't show it.

And so a project that would normally have taken at least a month was instead finished in three days.

The result was a cross between a cell and a hospital room. It was buried twenty meters below the surface of the palace. It didn't include any door, no stairs to reach it, no elevator, nothing at all. The only way to reach it was to teleport inside, either with me or with Olky.

The only furniture inside was a reinforced medical bed, with emplacements for straps and a stand for an IV drip. The walls were bare and made of steel plate. Numerous sensors were hidden in the room, some in the bed, some under the ground, and some on the ceiling, including four cameras. Aeration was provided through a vent high up on the wall behind the bed, a vent far too small to crawl through. As far as security measures go, the usual containment foam dispenser was included, a paralytic gas could be released, and a forcefield could be activated to cover the walls, protecting them from the Butcher's matters manipulation power. All that was powered by a Flubber generator that I cobbled together in a hurry.

I had no idea how much this cost and I didn't want to know.

As an additional layer of security, I left a few units of Harvest in the room, including one with more Nightmare's sleeping draught.

Once the Butcher was transferred to her cell I, or Olky, would bring a nurse to take care of her bodily needs three times per day.

It was only when the work was finished and when she was securely in her cell that we all let out a breath of relief. The Butcher was, for the time being, secured.

A fully dedicated facility was being constructed by Dragon in some secret and isolated place. It would be fully automated and designed to function with no external intervention for at least a century. That way the Butcher would hopefully die of natural causes and her power wouldn't be able to possess anyone.

That wasn't the only thing I did during that period. Digger finished his study of structural engineering under Miss J, which helped a lot during construction. And to follow on that I started learning calligraphy, to be finished tomorrow, it was an advice from Sifu. He said that it would help me immensely when I start learning Fuinjutsu. And it could only improve my choppy handwriting.

And on that subject, I spent some of my time in the Panda's realm, some of it talking with Sifu about how seals could help me in the future. Either against similar foes or in the worse case if the Butcher did manage to escape. Sifu was perfectly willing to design seals for me, eager for the challenge even.

The problem was finding the right ones. Stopping teleportation was possible but it depends on the exact nature of the power, it may block some power perfectly, only hinder others, and be completely ignored by yet another. There was also the matter of how to apply the seal. Should it be applied to the target, to an area, in which case multiple seals are needed, or to me, stopping teleportation in a radius around me?

Another option would be sealing powers. That would be massively more complicated. Ideally
cutting the link between the parahuman and the Shard would be the best solution, but Sifu would need to study parahuman for that. He could learn some from my link with Solar but my
situation was special in that Solar was also linked to me through the Celestial Menagerie.
Ideally, I would need to summon him to Earth and have some willing Parahuman on hand for him to study.

In any case, Sifu promised that he would work on it, with help from Cho and Zhu. As a temporary solution, he gave me three stealing tags that could seal living creatures with no harm to them, putting them in some sort of suspended animation. They require a good chunk of Chakra to activate and a trickle to maintain, meaning that I must keep them on me. And as a security measure if they were damaged they would release their prisoners. Sadly by the time I got them, Spree and Vex had already been shipped out to the Birdcage. And there was no way I was testing that on my teammate.

In the Panda's Realm, I also trained with my Chakra. By now I could do basic physical augmentation but not for long. I could very briefly adhere to vertical surfaces or gain a boost by pushing away from them. And after the paper-sticking technique, which I would continue to practice, they gave me a more advanced chakra control technique. It was called chakra engraving, you need to expel a precise amount of chakra from your fingertips, to write wooden tablets. It was tricky because too little chakra and you didn't leave any trace on the wood, too much and the hole was too deep and uneven. And you need a steady hand to move your finger and write. At the moment I couldn't do much more than a few uneven lines. A master could do it on paper.

I spent some time sparring with the Pandas. I need to solidify my multiple weapon skills into a coherent whole. My main partners for that were Zei and Huo. Again this was something that I would need to do regularly to make any progress.

Over those three days, I also got to know some of my most recent partners. Domo was the stoic silent type with an almost samurai attitude, kneeling before me anytime I wanted to talk to him. It was more than a little embarrassing. Still, he was more than competent.

Simuroc was in one word insane. The only desire in its mind was to kill any living creatures that didn't belong to the Celestial Menagerie. It had no wish to eat, rest, have fun, or do anything besides killing. I mean my partners didn't need to eat, but they could and they enjoyed it, but not Simuroc. Having it as part of the Telepathic Network was faintly disturbing, and I needed some time with Hug afterward. I resolved to only ever summon it with Mindless Summoning. In any case, I was using Equip Trait to benefit from its pseudo-invulnerability so it was better to not summon it at all.

Among my three most recent partners, Kuja was the most interesting. She was nearly as long as I was tall, with scales of emerald green color. She was a cheerful little thing, hissing a sort of song all the time. For reasons that I couldn't understand, she wore a beret and a scarf. As far as using her as a weapon goes, this proved to be pretty interesting but also sharply limited in scope. I wasn't a fan of the bow shape, it required me, or more like Clank, to transport arrows and a bowstring which needed to be tightened each time. It was far from ideal in case of a sudden fight. We would carry the necessary materials but it wouldn't be my go-to option. Clank suggested creating trick arrows, with explosives, poison, flashbangs, containment foam, and so on. While it did sound really cool, I already had so many options at my disposal that I was reluctant to add a few more only viable in some very specific situations. Seeing that my favorite robotic partners seem to love the idea, I allowed it but specified that it wasn't a priority.

Going back to Kuja, my favorite weapon configuration for her was a spear, with her tail as the spiky end. But she could also do staff, whip, or club. Her favorite was to roll herself into a sort of shield-frisbee to be thrown. While it was fun, it wasn't the most effective technique.

Of course, the main draw of calling on Kuja was her Armament Haki. She could only maintain it for a minute at most before she needed to rest, longer if she only used it only on parts of her body. Every test we ran with it proved how devastating it was offensively and how protective it was defensively.

If I disable Friendly Fire Immunity she could hurt me even with Plasma body, she could pierce through Howard's forcefield, and she could overcome Simuroc invulnerability. Eva's AT-Field proved to be the only exception so far, in that case, it was a contest of will. Without me, at the helm, Eva's will was too weak, the At-Field being overcome after some time. However, if I was in the cockpit Kuja alone couldn't get past it.

Defensively it was no less impressive, protecting Kuja even against esoteric or magical effects. Harvest couldn't phase through it, Malcolm's thunder was grounded, and Scorgem's mind trust was ignored.

And I could benefit from all that using Share Power, this power that until now I've been neglecting because I couldn't find a good enough effect to use it with. Kuja would be added to my list of standard partners. For ease of transportation, I would exploit another underused power, Baby Summoning. As an itty bitty snake, Kuja would sun herself on top of my hat, or sleep under it if it rains. It wouldn't help my image much, but at this point, I just didn't care anymore. I mean an alien was floating near my shoulder constantly, a baby bird was running by my side, my scarf was made of clouds, and I was regularly riding on the back of a dragon or a pegasus, so a little snake on my hat was small potatoes compared to all that.

Among my recent acquisitions, I summoned the Gasha Nut three times and it gave me a few gifts. One too specific and with a too big drawback to consider using, a very situational one, and an excellent one. I wasn't sure who to give the last one to. Velocity naturally comes to mind but if he was hurt what was the chance that he could still run to benefit from it? Would a Wards like Aegis not benefit from it more? Synergize with his power better. I would need to think about it.

The Menagerie didn't remain silent during this period. I gained a new partner and one power.

The Naked Mole Bat, which I called Sniffer, was a mix of ugly and cute. Affectionate with me but aggressive with everyone else, including my other partners. Not to the point of attacking them, but she kept her distance if summoned with others. The size of a small dog and with sharp teeth, she was more dangerous than she appeared. Not the most immediately useful but she was welcome to the team.

The power was far more appealing, Adaptive Immunity made it so that if one of my partners was killed, me and all my other partners, summoned at the time or not, become immune to the specific way it died for 24 hours. While I didn't like the idea of any of my partners dying, I could see the appeal. I wasn't keen to sacrifice one to protect the others, or myself, but I suppose that with Mindless Summoning it was acceptable. And it would be invaluable against major threats like the Endbringers. I could sacrifice, even if I didn't like that word it was appropriate, an army of weak partners to the front and that would massively help the following wave.

All in all those three days were extremely busy. I couldn't risk going on patrol while construction was being done in the Orb so I worked from the Rig or the HQ, helping with construction, training, tinkering, or on console duty. I managed to carve just enough time Monday afternoon to talk to Taylor by way of Spy. I informed her that I talked about her situation to Armsmaster and Miss Militia and that they were ignorant about Sophia's action until now. I insisted on the fact that both of them were firmly on her side. While I didn't mention Sophia's probation specifically I said that pushing for juvie would be easier than expected because of past indiscretions on her part.

It was easy to tell that this news did a lot to soothe her worries. She informed me that she had kept a diary documenting all bullying incidents. While I wasn't sure that it could be used as evidence it couldn't hurt to have it on hand. I gave her strict instructions to avoid Sophia every time it was possible and to not antagonize her at the moment. We didn't want to arouse her suspicions. If needed she could use me as an excuse to leave, saying that I required her help to test a partner or something. I would back her up on that.

In town things were far from easy, the ABB was openly pushing toward the former Empire territory. Lung himself, accompanied by Oni Lee, was seen openly on the boardwalk, though they didn't act aggressively, it was a demonstration that they didn't fear the Protectorate.

The Merchants were also making moves, not so much pushing for territory but simply sending their drug dealers way beyond their usual haunts.

And lastly, despite the capture of The Butcher, Vex, and Spree, the Teeth were still present, and angry. Animos and Hemoraghia attacked a PRT's squad car to interrogate the agent on where the Butcher was kept. The two capes fled before Armsmaster and Dauntless could intervene, but not before killing the two PRT agents.

On top of that Reaver, leading a bunch of unpowered members, attacked a grocery store. They took everything that wasn't nailed down, and they killed the owner and two clients.

I couldn't easily describe my feelings when I heard that. Anger certainly, disgust was a given, horror, sadness, and finally landing on rage. Nobody commented when I spontaneously switched to plasma upon learning that. And if the imprint of a fist on the wall bothered anyone they didn't dare mention it to me.

At the moment I was on Console duty again, supervising Hannah who was doing a solo patrol on the Boardwalk. But I would be going back to patrol this afternoon, I was impatient to go back in the thick of things.

I was startled out of my musings when my earbud blared to life with Hannah's voice.

"What the!?" I heard a roar, some screams in the background, then a scuffle, and then the sound of running feet. "Console. Send help, Animos is after me."

[] Alex rushes out himself
[] Alex sends Assault and Battery to the rescue
[] Alex sends out Cressidus, Koops, and Rainbow. Using Harvest units as a relay.

Wordcount: 2742
Excess words: 733
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A busy chapter this time, I need you to vote on three things, the choice at the end here, the ring below, and the classic creature or power.

To whom Alex will give the Heart Ring L-1?

[] Write In.

For the roll, 540 points.

[] Creature

[] Power

Voting will be closed Wednesday at 3 PM GMT