A Champion in Earth Bet [Worm/Original Setting]
- Thread starter sun tzu
- Start date
Just wondering but couldn't we turn invisible and intangible so that she can't see us?
Yeah she'll know where we disappear and where we reappear but she won't be able to see where we are because her sight is limited to past and future. This way we should be able to scan her safely, right?
Yeah she'll know where we disappear and where we reappear but she won't be able to see where we are because her sight is limited to past and future. This way we should be able to scan her safely, right?
We have no evidence that space colonization is being blocked anywhere but Bet. They'd have to build up a tech base of spacecraft that can fit through a Door, but it's not intrinsically impossible.
E1ChristO
And this world is full of dreamers. Hug Harder.
- Location
- Walnut or LA, in CA
This is the Simurgh we are talking about here. I highly doubt that we can effectively use such a cheese tactic on her.
I'm pretty sure it's stated that Simurgh can't see in the present so invisibility and intangibility should give us time to scan her. Eventually she'd find us but she'd need the tinker shard for that.
- Location
- Brazil
she can't see the present, but she can see bot the future and the past, probably anything between centuries and picoseconds, so she will be able to track us tought the data from the tinkertech that she would have build upon predicting this tactic, except that since she can poach data from the possible future she doesn't actualy need it
Battle from the Mindscape
BATTLE FROM THE MINDSCAPE
Briefly, you split your power pool between mental speed and long-range senses, to ensure no surprise is sneaking up on you for the next few seconds. Flying in a relatively empty spot where no debris can suddenly be made to self-annihilate, you then let go of mental super-speed for a dozen tense seconds, focusing your entire power pool on regeneration. When you take mental speed back, you are feeling much better - most of your bones are now in a single piece, over 95% of your flesh is there, and you have nearly 80% of your skin. From this point, partial regeneration should be able to handle the rest.
One of the Simurgh's advantages, removed.
Now, to remove her other advantages.
The biggest problem with the Simurgh, after all, is that she knows in advance what you're going to do. Take that away, and she actually becomes less of a threat than Leviathan. You just need to be clever about it.
As you fly back toward the Simurgh, you consider the possibilities. How does her precognition work, anyway? Is she somehow able to simulate the world in her head? Does she have a sense that takes an actual look at the future as information travels through time? The fact that her precognition has blind spots (such as your fate control and Scion) would suggest the former, but you're no scientist. If you engage on a course of action that you wouldn't engage on without the fate manipulation power on your side, does she see you engaging on it and failing, or doing what you would do if you didn't have this power?
If it's the former, then her precognition is telling her right now what you're trying to do; it's just not showing your odds of success getting greatly improved at the last moment through fate control.
If it's the latter, then her precognition is telling her right now that you're going to try to get in range of her and then, in a desperate gambit, try to block inter-planar activities, hoping to cancel her powers the way you briefly canceled Gray Boy's time-loop. After all, you're fairly confident that's what you would try if you didn't have fate-manipulation in your arsenal.
Well. On the chance that this is what she believes you're going to try… then you see no reason to dissuade her. And so, as you fly, you time your every moment and action as if you were genuinely enacting the power-nullifying tactic.
And then, as the distance between you and the Simurgh has shrunk to less than twenty miles, an asteroid halfway between you two explodes, yet another matter-antimatter annihilation.
The Simurgh can protect herself by taking cover behind a mountain-sized asteroid. You cannot - if you did, you imagine your "cover" would be the next object to explode. You are thus forced to take an intangible form for several seconds as the explosion washes over you. Having passed through the shockwave, you return to solid form and mental acceleration… but just before the latter power kicks in, lights shimmer before you… and then some kind of blade appears in your path, bisecting your right arm before you can change course.
Concerning. The weapon appears to be some kind of tinkertech device - the blade itself isn't a physical object, but some kind of elongated gravitational singularity, two feet long and less than a micron wide. The shimmering lights were the same that manifested during inter-dimensional jumps earlier - you're guessing whatever device the Simurgh is using to jump between dimensions, it was used to hide this blade, and make it appear in your path when it was too late to dodge and mental speed was unenhanced.
You destroy the weapon with a blast. ...Where does she get all these dangerous toys, anyway?
Wait. From your files, the Simurgh, while not herself a Tinker, can access the powers of every Tinker (and Thinker) within her range. What about the human in that pod? You didn't really get a good look at him, but…
Well. You're finally getting in range of the Simurgh. Close enough to engage in the tactic you would be following were it not for luck-control.
You focus your matter-creation power. The next instant, a sphere of pure omni-metal, two hundred feet in diameter and fifteen feet-thick, forms around you and the Simurgh.
Now, were it not for your luck-control powers, this would be where you focused your power pool on blocking inter-planar interactions to depower the Simurgh - not because you would expect it to work (blocking Gray Boy's time-loop for a few seconds exhausted you, and the Simurgh is an Endbringer), but because you'd be desperate and it would be your last chance gambit.
It's not what you do, of course. Instead, keeping your mental acceleration going, you…
...well, you put everything on hold as you notice three more of those "singularity blades" showing up at the edges of the sphere's interior, hidden as they were behind small debris. Flying gracefully thanks to the Simurgh's telekinesis, they're all heading toward you.
You almost blast one, but stop yourself a millisecond before you do - at a range of eighty feet, with the Simurgh's telekinesis and precognition, either she'd get the blade to dodge, or it would just distract you while the two other blades slice you into ribbons. An area blast centered on your position would be more likely to get all three blades… but, maybe the actual singularities will keep existing for a fraction of second after the tinkertech hilts' destruction, and slice you anyway? You could dodge, of course, but the Simurgh would see the movement before you performed it.
Unless, of course, you weren't behaving as predicted.
Cosmic power flows through your veins and soul. As the living incarnation of Heroism, you declare that in a moment of turning tides and shifting destinies, your power shatters limits. Your secondary power pool surges with excess energy.
Retaining your thousandfold mental acceleration, you divert the entire rest of your power pool to telepathic scanning. All thoughts leave a trace through the psychic planes; whether the brain that generates them is organic or not matters little to a sufficiently advanced form of scanning.
And thus, while the singularity blades rush in your direction, your focus dives into the Simurgh's mind.
Clinical. Methodical. Merciless. Ruthless. Pragmatic. Inhuman. Monstrous. Colossal.
The Simurgh's mind all but defies description. It is not human by any stretch of the imagination. It is closer to the mind of an AI, yet very different from that, too.
It is vast, processing oceans of information in the blink of an eye, maintaining hundreds of rapid thought processes simultaneously and coordinating them with deadly elegance.
It juggles cause and effect, answers arriving before questions are asked. A mere glimpse of this regimented pandemonium would shatter the average human mind.
Yours is not the average human mind.
When you were a fully-powered god, you could keep track of the affairs of the entire planet, almost in real time. As a mere avatar, you do not have quite the same processing power… but your perfect memory can still handle every detail of your millennia of existence. Your will is inviolable. Your drive is infinite.
Pushing through, you analyze the information as well as you are able.
But even as you wrestle with the telepathic scan, the picture it paints is terrifying.
You have gazed into many twisted minds over the course of your existence. Some were scarier than others.
You have gazed into the minds of petty bullies and selfish, self-absorbed fools.
You have gazed into the minds of abusers, sadists, serial killers.
And then… there exists a top tier of sorts, where the truly horrifying belong.
It's in that tier that one might find Nollius - the soulless tyrant of Avalon, the machiavellian master of curses, the immortal sadist who has refined sorcerous torture for a thousand years.
It's in that tier that one might find Astor - the god who embodies Hatred as purely and decisively as you embody Heroism, the very incarnation of hostility and malevolent intent, burning with infinite hatred for all that has ever existed or ever could exist.
It's in that tier that one might find Professor Cryo - the heartless Conqueror of Cold, the irredeemable evil genius whom supervillains the world over look to for leadership, the diabolical schemer without mercy who has managed to stay ahead of the entire world's collected heroes.
And it's in that tier that one might find the Simurgh, Third Endbringer, Terror Drone Seven.
Seven. That number alone is cause for alarm. Considering the years between each Endbringer's appearance, you'd been wondering if you were due for a fourth, but this little clue is still blood-chilling.
The Simurgh's short-term plans focus almost exclusively on killing you - you get the impression that she usually considers a lot more goals simultaneously, but apparently you're pushing her outside of her usual comfort zone right now. Now, her long-term plans… they seem focused on maintaining an environment that can support "the cycle". You can't find the exact nature of this cycle right now, but you do note a stray factoid - whatever the cycle is, the Simurgh considers it damaged beyond possible repair; a lost cause. She doesn't care. Her programmed mission is to maintain an environment for the cycle, which apparently means a world of human conflict, fear, despair, and as many trigger events as possible. She doesn't care about the suffering of humanity. She doesn't care that it is all meaningless, in support of a cycle that is already doomed. She only cares about her programmed objective.
All that despair, all that destruction, all the evils committed by the Endbringers… the result of abandoned, discarded doomsday devices that just keep following their now-meaningless programming without rhyme or reason.
Her precognition… it's not just simulating reality. It's not just peeking at the future. It's some hybrid that combines the two, allowing an optimal ratio of information-per-energy she needs to expend. It extends a long way - several decades into the future, as well as postcognition into the past. Other Endbringers, Eidolon, Scion… those are partial blind spots to her sight. Interestingly, she doesn't actually have any sense showing her the present.
Her visions of the future, however, are horrifying enough:
A Canberran native, who was out of town and triggered when everyone he knew was trapped in a Simurgh containment zone, takes the nation's largest water reservoir hostage, threatening to poison it unless his family is released; the poison ends up spilled into the reservoir, starting a deadly water shortage.
The European Gesellschaft, after laying low for months, assassinating 18 non-white and non-straight candidates to the German Bundestag, less than a day before federal elections; various parties cannot agree on how to handle the electoral situation, leaving the German government in turmoil for nearly a year, helpless to deal with multiple crises.
Storm Rider, a Burmese parahuman warlord, unifying Myanmar under his rule, then waging a war of conquest against Thailand; over half a million die in the ensuing humanitarian crisis, prompting the CUI to invade both countries to "restore order", resulting in escalating conflict as Storm Rider proves surprisingly capable of outmaneuvering the Yangban.
And at some point… 18 months from now at the earliest, 22 years in the future at the latest… doomsday. Billions die across Earth Bet. Many, many more billions die in other worlds. Madman's words come back to you - is that the future doom he was speaking of? Whatever it is, the Simurgh cannot see the actual details of what causes it - another blind spot in its precognition. You can't find more accurate data on the matter right now.
Best focus on the more immediate future. With some effort, you are able to see the battle plan. You are able to see the contingencies. You are able to see the battle the way the Simurgh sees the battle.
The man in the pod is… Leet, the villainous Tinker from Brockton Bay. Apparently, she's been holding him for several days, accessing his mind to build a tinkertech arsenal (and also intending to use him as a hostage if it really came down to it). There's the singularity blades you're fighting right now. There's a device able to teleport things from one universe to another; it is, itself, hidden in a dimension that's neither here nor Earth Bet, but can be remotely controlled from here. There's Leet's pod, which in addition to life support has a quasi-inviolable force-field and remote controls for some of the other tech. There's a massive mass-accelerator built into an asteroid hidden among all the debris, able to shoot a 140-pound projectile at 99.5% of the speed of light. There's a device that blasts a ray capable of turning 50% of matter in an area into antimatter… and it is located on the Moon's surface.
The antimatter weapon, the mass-accelerator and the dimensional teleporter are all located outside of the Simurgh's telekinetic range. She can, however, wield them with exceptional precision using a remote controller floating at the edge of her range, tens of miles from here; failing that, she can use the remote controls inside Leet's pod. Should both remote controls be destroyed, the antimatter weapon and mass-accelerator are both programmed to try to kill you independently (though obviously their programs don't have the Simurgh's precision and precognition), while the dimensional teleporter is programmed to teleport everything from a specific point in the solar system to Earth-Bet's dimension at a specific second a week from now.
You can, with great effort, analyze the Simurgh's shifting battle plans. She's improvising in a way that you suspect she has little experience with - even Scion doesn't push her to the edge like this. She intended for the original blast to kill you… yet, she included these contingencies. You don't have the time to confirm it, but you suspect that she tends to have more plans going on than she lets on, with the ones that succeed giving her the appearance of infallibility. She also expected the second explosion, right after the magnetic trap trick, to kill you… but this time, she was readier to be surprised.
A second ago, she was expecting you to move in a certain pattern before a failed attempt at cutting her off her powers by blocking inter-planar travel, and then get sliced to ribbons by her singularity blades.
Right now, her plans are in flux. She senses that you have not acted in the way she intended, but her every attempt at recalculating the future gets rapidly-shifting results. No wonder - the results change as soon as she sees them because you can see them! You can see hundreds of possibilities even as the Endbringer considers them.
Objectively, you have only been trawling through the immensity of the Simurgh's mind for a few short seconds. Subjectively, thanks to mental super-speed, it is as if you've been exploring it for hours.
You cannot maintain it much longer. The surge in your cosmic power is receding. But that's all right. You have what you need.
Mind-reading goes away. Mental acceleration stays on. Inter-planar teleportation - not of yourself, but of others - stays on.
The singularity blades have been coming at you. You've been seeing their intended path. You just move out of the way. The Simurgh doesn't have enough time to fully adjust; one of them nicks you, barely. A scratch.
Even as the singularity blades flurry, your teleportation power takes hold of Leet's pod - the force-field protects it from physical and energy attacks, but not from this. With a blink, the pod and its occupants are transported to a different plane - one that should be mostly empty space if this were your home dimension, though here, you can only guess if it's the same. When you formulated this plan, toward the end of your exploration of the Simurgh's mind, you could see the possibility briefly showing up in the Endbringer's precognition (of course, that was only a few dozen milliseconds ago); the Simurgh's telekinesis and her ability to access Tinker powers do not cross planes.
She cannot build or modify tinkertech right now. She could, however, still use the tinkertech she has thanks to the hidden remote miles from here, using her precognition for guidance. She could use the dimensional teleporter to get Leet back; you've seen it in her mind.
Which is why, less than a second after teleporting Leet away, you blast.
You're not firing your usual cosmic energy. Instead, you are converting the energy to a wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum - high enough frequency that much of it gets past the omni-metal shell surrounding you, but low enough that most of it still bounces inside the sphere, obliterating the tinkertech hilts of the remaining singularity blades. More importantly, the part of the blast that does get out travels in a cone… toward the location of the remote control. The Simurgh only saw that future becoming a possibility a few seconds ago, while you were reading her mind… and those seconds are not a long enough time for her telekinesis to get the (far more fragile than an Endbringer) remote-control out of the area of your cone attack.
You can't actually sense the remote from here (not without transferring your power pool to long-range scanning, at least). However, judging from the information you saw in the Simurgh's mind seconds ago, you are fairly confident in the success of your attack.
Causality and Tracer Pulse would tell you to obtain more intel on your foe and the situation. You have done so, gazing directly into the Simurgh's mind to learn how she thinks and what she's planning.
Techno-Paladin would tell you to break the problem down into something you can solve. You have done so, using your one power the Simurgh cannot predict, and forging from it a course of action she couldn't see coming.
Bleu-Blanc-Rouge would tell to take away the enemy's advantages one by one. Despite your missing arm, you are in far better health than forty seconds ago; the Simurgh's abilities and thought process are far clearer to you now; her tinkertech resources have been curbed. Advantage: Yours.
Well… the mass accelerator and the antimatter weapon are still online, if outside her direct control. Which is probably why she is currently scurrying to one end of the sphere. Also, why you transfer the entirety of your secondary power pool to intangibility.
This turns out to be a good idea when, two seconds later, the omni-metal sphere shatters with super-strong debris flying in every direction. The work of the mass-accelerator cannon, presumably. Less than three seconds later, the entire area is engulfed in a maelstrom of energy as the antimatter device joins in on the fun.
The Simurgh, for her part, is flying as far away as she can… well, actually, she might just be using her precognition to manipulate events so that one of the two remaining superweapons ends up nailing you. You suspect that's what she would do.
Well. Only one of you is leaving this battle alive. You have to be careful, though - you only have one definite luck control shot left. Well, two if you push yourself. You also have two civilization-killer tinkertech superweapons automatically firing at you.
[ ] Operation We Don't Need No Stinking Plan: The Simurgh is probably more off her game than ever before. Just keep flying around too quickly for the superweapon to aim at you, and keep blasting her. Use luck control to land a hit if needed.
Pros: Gets you on the offense instantly. Cons: There's still no guarantee of the Simurgh going down in one hit, and she might lure you into the superweapons' crosshairs.
[ ] Operation Clear The Board: This time, you actually know where the superweapons are. Take a minute to fly to the mass-accelerator and destroy it. The Moon's too far away to get there in time, but you can hit the general area of the antimatter weapon with nuclear-grade energy blasts.
Pros: With those gone, the Simurgh doesn't actually have much left to fight you with. Cons: Would take several minutes, and who knows what the Simurgh will do in the meanwhile?
[ ] Operation Brain Drain: You can go to the plane where you stashed Leet. From the looks of it, he was in no state to make a meaningful contribution… but you can read his mind at your leisure, getting data on the remaining tinkertech and how to turn it to your advantage.
Pros: The Simurgh doesn't have anything that can target you while you're in another plane, and getting the tinkertech on your side could be a game-changer. Cons: You're no engineer, and there's no guarantee you would get any useful insight from this at all. Besides, when you'd emerge back from that plane, you'd be doing so after giving the Simurgh time to get ready for your return.
[ ] Operation Audie Murphy Tips His Hat: The Simurgh is still guessing what your fate-manipulation power can do. So far, in this battle, you've only used it to help yourself… but you can also use it to give a villain a really unfortunate moment. And getting accidentally hit by your own automated superweapon, leaving you vulnerable to an attack by a pissed-off divine avatar, would be a terribly unlucky incident, wouldn't it?
Pros: Doesn't waste time, and in fact turns the Simurgh's likely current plan to your advantage. Likely impossible for her to see it coming. Cons: Requires one use of fate-manipulation to pull off, and for you to avoid becoming collateral damage yourself.
Briefly, you split your power pool between mental speed and long-range senses, to ensure no surprise is sneaking up on you for the next few seconds. Flying in a relatively empty spot where no debris can suddenly be made to self-annihilate, you then let go of mental super-speed for a dozen tense seconds, focusing your entire power pool on regeneration. When you take mental speed back, you are feeling much better - most of your bones are now in a single piece, over 95% of your flesh is there, and you have nearly 80% of your skin. From this point, partial regeneration should be able to handle the rest.
One of the Simurgh's advantages, removed.
Now, to remove her other advantages.
The biggest problem with the Simurgh, after all, is that she knows in advance what you're going to do. Take that away, and she actually becomes less of a threat than Leviathan. You just need to be clever about it.
As you fly back toward the Simurgh, you consider the possibilities. How does her precognition work, anyway? Is she somehow able to simulate the world in her head? Does she have a sense that takes an actual look at the future as information travels through time? The fact that her precognition has blind spots (such as your fate control and Scion) would suggest the former, but you're no scientist. If you engage on a course of action that you wouldn't engage on without the fate manipulation power on your side, does she see you engaging on it and failing, or doing what you would do if you didn't have this power?
If it's the former, then her precognition is telling her right now what you're trying to do; it's just not showing your odds of success getting greatly improved at the last moment through fate control.
If it's the latter, then her precognition is telling her right now that you're going to try to get in range of her and then, in a desperate gambit, try to block inter-planar activities, hoping to cancel her powers the way you briefly canceled Gray Boy's time-loop. After all, you're fairly confident that's what you would try if you didn't have fate-manipulation in your arsenal.
Well. On the chance that this is what she believes you're going to try… then you see no reason to dissuade her. And so, as you fly, you time your every moment and action as if you were genuinely enacting the power-nullifying tactic.
And then, as the distance between you and the Simurgh has shrunk to less than twenty miles, an asteroid halfway between you two explodes, yet another matter-antimatter annihilation.
The Simurgh can protect herself by taking cover behind a mountain-sized asteroid. You cannot - if you did, you imagine your "cover" would be the next object to explode. You are thus forced to take an intangible form for several seconds as the explosion washes over you. Having passed through the shockwave, you return to solid form and mental acceleration… but just before the latter power kicks in, lights shimmer before you… and then some kind of blade appears in your path, bisecting your right arm before you can change course.
Concerning. The weapon appears to be some kind of tinkertech device - the blade itself isn't a physical object, but some kind of elongated gravitational singularity, two feet long and less than a micron wide. The shimmering lights were the same that manifested during inter-dimensional jumps earlier - you're guessing whatever device the Simurgh is using to jump between dimensions, it was used to hide this blade, and make it appear in your path when it was too late to dodge and mental speed was unenhanced.
You destroy the weapon with a blast. ...Where does she get all these dangerous toys, anyway?
Wait. From your files, the Simurgh, while not herself a Tinker, can access the powers of every Tinker (and Thinker) within her range. What about the human in that pod? You didn't really get a good look at him, but…
Well. You're finally getting in range of the Simurgh. Close enough to engage in the tactic you would be following were it not for luck-control.
You focus your matter-creation power. The next instant, a sphere of pure omni-metal, two hundred feet in diameter and fifteen feet-thick, forms around you and the Simurgh.
Now, were it not for your luck-control powers, this would be where you focused your power pool on blocking inter-planar interactions to depower the Simurgh - not because you would expect it to work (blocking Gray Boy's time-loop for a few seconds exhausted you, and the Simurgh is an Endbringer), but because you'd be desperate and it would be your last chance gambit.
It's not what you do, of course. Instead, keeping your mental acceleration going, you…
...well, you put everything on hold as you notice three more of those "singularity blades" showing up at the edges of the sphere's interior, hidden as they were behind small debris. Flying gracefully thanks to the Simurgh's telekinesis, they're all heading toward you.
You almost blast one, but stop yourself a millisecond before you do - at a range of eighty feet, with the Simurgh's telekinesis and precognition, either she'd get the blade to dodge, or it would just distract you while the two other blades slice you into ribbons. An area blast centered on your position would be more likely to get all three blades… but, maybe the actual singularities will keep existing for a fraction of second after the tinkertech hilts' destruction, and slice you anyway? You could dodge, of course, but the Simurgh would see the movement before you performed it.
Unless, of course, you weren't behaving as predicted.
Cosmic power flows through your veins and soul. As the living incarnation of Heroism, you declare that in a moment of turning tides and shifting destinies, your power shatters limits. Your secondary power pool surges with excess energy.
Retaining your thousandfold mental acceleration, you divert the entire rest of your power pool to telepathic scanning. All thoughts leave a trace through the psychic planes; whether the brain that generates them is organic or not matters little to a sufficiently advanced form of scanning.
And thus, while the singularity blades rush in your direction, your focus dives into the Simurgh's mind.
Clinical. Methodical. Merciless. Ruthless. Pragmatic. Inhuman. Monstrous. Colossal.
The Simurgh's mind all but defies description. It is not human by any stretch of the imagination. It is closer to the mind of an AI, yet very different from that, too.
It is vast, processing oceans of information in the blink of an eye, maintaining hundreds of rapid thought processes simultaneously and coordinating them with deadly elegance.
It juggles cause and effect, answers arriving before questions are asked. A mere glimpse of this regimented pandemonium would shatter the average human mind.
Yours is not the average human mind.
When you were a fully-powered god, you could keep track of the affairs of the entire planet, almost in real time. As a mere avatar, you do not have quite the same processing power… but your perfect memory can still handle every detail of your millennia of existence. Your will is inviolable. Your drive is infinite.
Pushing through, you analyze the information as well as you are able.
But even as you wrestle with the telepathic scan, the picture it paints is terrifying.
You have gazed into many twisted minds over the course of your existence. Some were scarier than others.
You have gazed into the minds of petty bullies and selfish, self-absorbed fools.
You have gazed into the minds of abusers, sadists, serial killers.
And then… there exists a top tier of sorts, where the truly horrifying belong.
It's in that tier that one might find Nollius - the soulless tyrant of Avalon, the machiavellian master of curses, the immortal sadist who has refined sorcerous torture for a thousand years.
It's in that tier that one might find Astor - the god who embodies Hatred as purely and decisively as you embody Heroism, the very incarnation of hostility and malevolent intent, burning with infinite hatred for all that has ever existed or ever could exist.
It's in that tier that one might find Professor Cryo - the heartless Conqueror of Cold, the irredeemable evil genius whom supervillains the world over look to for leadership, the diabolical schemer without mercy who has managed to stay ahead of the entire world's collected heroes.
And it's in that tier that one might find the Simurgh, Third Endbringer, Terror Drone Seven.
Seven. That number alone is cause for alarm. Considering the years between each Endbringer's appearance, you'd been wondering if you were due for a fourth, but this little clue is still blood-chilling.
The Simurgh's short-term plans focus almost exclusively on killing you - you get the impression that she usually considers a lot more goals simultaneously, but apparently you're pushing her outside of her usual comfort zone right now. Now, her long-term plans… they seem focused on maintaining an environment that can support "the cycle". You can't find the exact nature of this cycle right now, but you do note a stray factoid - whatever the cycle is, the Simurgh considers it damaged beyond possible repair; a lost cause. She doesn't care. Her programmed mission is to maintain an environment for the cycle, which apparently means a world of human conflict, fear, despair, and as many trigger events as possible. She doesn't care about the suffering of humanity. She doesn't care that it is all meaningless, in support of a cycle that is already doomed. She only cares about her programmed objective.
All that despair, all that destruction, all the evils committed by the Endbringers… the result of abandoned, discarded doomsday devices that just keep following their now-meaningless programming without rhyme or reason.
Her precognition… it's not just simulating reality. It's not just peeking at the future. It's some hybrid that combines the two, allowing an optimal ratio of information-per-energy she needs to expend. It extends a long way - several decades into the future, as well as postcognition into the past. Other Endbringers, Eidolon, Scion… those are partial blind spots to her sight. Interestingly, she doesn't actually have any sense showing her the present.
Her visions of the future, however, are horrifying enough:
A Canberran native, who was out of town and triggered when everyone he knew was trapped in a Simurgh containment zone, takes the nation's largest water reservoir hostage, threatening to poison it unless his family is released; the poison ends up spilled into the reservoir, starting a deadly water shortage.
The European Gesellschaft, after laying low for months, assassinating 18 non-white and non-straight candidates to the German Bundestag, less than a day before federal elections; various parties cannot agree on how to handle the electoral situation, leaving the German government in turmoil for nearly a year, helpless to deal with multiple crises.
Storm Rider, a Burmese parahuman warlord, unifying Myanmar under his rule, then waging a war of conquest against Thailand; over half a million die in the ensuing humanitarian crisis, prompting the CUI to invade both countries to "restore order", resulting in escalating conflict as Storm Rider proves surprisingly capable of outmaneuvering the Yangban.
And at some point… 18 months from now at the earliest, 22 years in the future at the latest… doomsday. Billions die across Earth Bet. Many, many more billions die in other worlds. Madman's words come back to you - is that the future doom he was speaking of? Whatever it is, the Simurgh cannot see the actual details of what causes it - another blind spot in its precognition. You can't find more accurate data on the matter right now.
Best focus on the more immediate future. With some effort, you are able to see the battle plan. You are able to see the contingencies. You are able to see the battle the way the Simurgh sees the battle.
The man in the pod is… Leet, the villainous Tinker from Brockton Bay. Apparently, she's been holding him for several days, accessing his mind to build a tinkertech arsenal (and also intending to use him as a hostage if it really came down to it). There's the singularity blades you're fighting right now. There's a device able to teleport things from one universe to another; it is, itself, hidden in a dimension that's neither here nor Earth Bet, but can be remotely controlled from here. There's Leet's pod, which in addition to life support has a quasi-inviolable force-field and remote controls for some of the other tech. There's a massive mass-accelerator built into an asteroid hidden among all the debris, able to shoot a 140-pound projectile at 99.5% of the speed of light. There's a device that blasts a ray capable of turning 50% of matter in an area into antimatter… and it is located on the Moon's surface.
The antimatter weapon, the mass-accelerator and the dimensional teleporter are all located outside of the Simurgh's telekinetic range. She can, however, wield them with exceptional precision using a remote controller floating at the edge of her range, tens of miles from here; failing that, she can use the remote controls inside Leet's pod. Should both remote controls be destroyed, the antimatter weapon and mass-accelerator are both programmed to try to kill you independently (though obviously their programs don't have the Simurgh's precision and precognition), while the dimensional teleporter is programmed to teleport everything from a specific point in the solar system to Earth-Bet's dimension at a specific second a week from now.
You can, with great effort, analyze the Simurgh's shifting battle plans. She's improvising in a way that you suspect she has little experience with - even Scion doesn't push her to the edge like this. She intended for the original blast to kill you… yet, she included these contingencies. You don't have the time to confirm it, but you suspect that she tends to have more plans going on than she lets on, with the ones that succeed giving her the appearance of infallibility. She also expected the second explosion, right after the magnetic trap trick, to kill you… but this time, she was readier to be surprised.
A second ago, she was expecting you to move in a certain pattern before a failed attempt at cutting her off her powers by blocking inter-planar travel, and then get sliced to ribbons by her singularity blades.
Right now, her plans are in flux. She senses that you have not acted in the way she intended, but her every attempt at recalculating the future gets rapidly-shifting results. No wonder - the results change as soon as she sees them because you can see them! You can see hundreds of possibilities even as the Endbringer considers them.
Objectively, you have only been trawling through the immensity of the Simurgh's mind for a few short seconds. Subjectively, thanks to mental super-speed, it is as if you've been exploring it for hours.
You cannot maintain it much longer. The surge in your cosmic power is receding. But that's all right. You have what you need.
Mind-reading goes away. Mental acceleration stays on. Inter-planar teleportation - not of yourself, but of others - stays on.
The singularity blades have been coming at you. You've been seeing their intended path. You just move out of the way. The Simurgh doesn't have enough time to fully adjust; one of them nicks you, barely. A scratch.
Even as the singularity blades flurry, your teleportation power takes hold of Leet's pod - the force-field protects it from physical and energy attacks, but not from this. With a blink, the pod and its occupants are transported to a different plane - one that should be mostly empty space if this were your home dimension, though here, you can only guess if it's the same. When you formulated this plan, toward the end of your exploration of the Simurgh's mind, you could see the possibility briefly showing up in the Endbringer's precognition (of course, that was only a few dozen milliseconds ago); the Simurgh's telekinesis and her ability to access Tinker powers do not cross planes.
She cannot build or modify tinkertech right now. She could, however, still use the tinkertech she has thanks to the hidden remote miles from here, using her precognition for guidance. She could use the dimensional teleporter to get Leet back; you've seen it in her mind.
Which is why, less than a second after teleporting Leet away, you blast.
You're not firing your usual cosmic energy. Instead, you are converting the energy to a wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum - high enough frequency that much of it gets past the omni-metal shell surrounding you, but low enough that most of it still bounces inside the sphere, obliterating the tinkertech hilts of the remaining singularity blades. More importantly, the part of the blast that does get out travels in a cone… toward the location of the remote control. The Simurgh only saw that future becoming a possibility a few seconds ago, while you were reading her mind… and those seconds are not a long enough time for her telekinesis to get the (far more fragile than an Endbringer) remote-control out of the area of your cone attack.
You can't actually sense the remote from here (not without transferring your power pool to long-range scanning, at least). However, judging from the information you saw in the Simurgh's mind seconds ago, you are fairly confident in the success of your attack.
Causality and Tracer Pulse would tell you to obtain more intel on your foe and the situation. You have done so, gazing directly into the Simurgh's mind to learn how she thinks and what she's planning.
Techno-Paladin would tell you to break the problem down into something you can solve. You have done so, using your one power the Simurgh cannot predict, and forging from it a course of action she couldn't see coming.
Bleu-Blanc-Rouge would tell to take away the enemy's advantages one by one. Despite your missing arm, you are in far better health than forty seconds ago; the Simurgh's abilities and thought process are far clearer to you now; her tinkertech resources have been curbed. Advantage: Yours.
Well… the mass accelerator and the antimatter weapon are still online, if outside her direct control. Which is probably why she is currently scurrying to one end of the sphere. Also, why you transfer the entirety of your secondary power pool to intangibility.
This turns out to be a good idea when, two seconds later, the omni-metal sphere shatters with super-strong debris flying in every direction. The work of the mass-accelerator cannon, presumably. Less than three seconds later, the entire area is engulfed in a maelstrom of energy as the antimatter device joins in on the fun.
The Simurgh, for her part, is flying as far away as she can… well, actually, she might just be using her precognition to manipulate events so that one of the two remaining superweapons ends up nailing you. You suspect that's what she would do.
Well. Only one of you is leaving this battle alive. You have to be careful, though - you only have one definite luck control shot left. Well, two if you push yourself. You also have two civilization-killer tinkertech superweapons automatically firing at you.
[ ] Operation We Don't Need No Stinking Plan: The Simurgh is probably more off her game than ever before. Just keep flying around too quickly for the superweapon to aim at you, and keep blasting her. Use luck control to land a hit if needed.
Pros: Gets you on the offense instantly. Cons: There's still no guarantee of the Simurgh going down in one hit, and she might lure you into the superweapons' crosshairs.
[ ] Operation Clear The Board: This time, you actually know where the superweapons are. Take a minute to fly to the mass-accelerator and destroy it. The Moon's too far away to get there in time, but you can hit the general area of the antimatter weapon with nuclear-grade energy blasts.
Pros: With those gone, the Simurgh doesn't actually have much left to fight you with. Cons: Would take several minutes, and who knows what the Simurgh will do in the meanwhile?
[ ] Operation Brain Drain: You can go to the plane where you stashed Leet. From the looks of it, he was in no state to make a meaningful contribution… but you can read his mind at your leisure, getting data on the remaining tinkertech and how to turn it to your advantage.
Pros: The Simurgh doesn't have anything that can target you while you're in another plane, and getting the tinkertech on your side could be a game-changer. Cons: You're no engineer, and there's no guarantee you would get any useful insight from this at all. Besides, when you'd emerge back from that plane, you'd be doing so after giving the Simurgh time to get ready for your return.
[ ] Operation Audie Murphy Tips His Hat: The Simurgh is still guessing what your fate-manipulation power can do. So far, in this battle, you've only used it to help yourself… but you can also use it to give a villain a really unfortunate moment. And getting accidentally hit by your own automated superweapon, leaving you vulnerable to an attack by a pissed-off divine avatar, would be a terribly unlucky incident, wouldn't it?
Pros: Doesn't waste time, and in fact turns the Simurgh's likely current plan to your advantage. Likely impossible for her to see it coming. Cons: Requires one use of fate-manipulation to pull off, and for you to avoid becoming collateral damage yourself.
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
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[X] Operation Clear The Board: This time, you actually know where the superweapons are. Take a minute to fly to the mass-accelerator and destroy it. The Moon's too far away to get there in time, but you can hit the general area of the antimatter weapon with nuclear-grade energy blasts.
I think this plan has the best chance of success. The major con is "what if the Simurgh pulls something out of her nonexistent sleeves", and that sort of double-guessing is exactly why the Simurgh has lived this long. No second-guessing. She will do what she will do. Let's eliminate the known variables.
I think this plan has the best chance of success. The major con is "what if the Simurgh pulls something out of her nonexistent sleeves", and that sort of double-guessing is exactly why the Simurgh has lived this long. No second-guessing. She will do what she will do. Let's eliminate the known variables.
Is there some reason we can't just leave right now, and come back at our leasure? As far as I understand, the Simurgh is incapable of dimensional travel right now, and doesn't have any tinkerers in the current dimension that would let her change that.
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
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On the other hand, we finally have the upper hand and she has no means of backup. Do we really want to give her time to change that?
Clearly we made the right choice last vote.
I'm gonna say NO WAY to:
Operation Brain Drain - We've already seen things from the Simurghs perspective; adding Leet's perspective doesn't contribute much
Operation We Don't Need No Stinking Plan - This stupidity again? It's still an awful idea.
Maybes for:
Operation Clear The Board - The downside is that it gives her time, but since you're taken away all the big ways for her to exploit time, that's not such a big deal.
Operation Audie Murphy Tips His Hat - It's a good plan, but if it doesn't work right the first time we're screwed.
I'm voting
[X] Operation Clear The Board
...but I could be persuaded to tipping Murphy's hat by a decent argument.
I'm gonna say NO WAY to:
Operation Brain Drain - We've already seen things from the Simurghs perspective; adding Leet's perspective doesn't contribute much
Operation We Don't Need No Stinking Plan - This stupidity again? It's still an awful idea.
Maybes for:
Operation Clear The Board - The downside is that it gives her time, but since you're taken away all the big ways for her to exploit time, that's not such a big deal.
Operation Audie Murphy Tips His Hat - It's a good plan, but if it doesn't work right the first time we're screwed.
I'm voting
[X] Operation Clear The Board
...but I could be persuaded to tipping Murphy's hat by a decent argument.
I don't think we're capable of it either. Despite the fact that one of our vote options involves it, I don't think we actually have the ability to reach Bet on our own.
Only if we are fairly sure that she won't be able to leverage said time into something useful. What do you anticipate her doing with the time that would come back to bite us?
We used Inter-planar teleportation to shift Leet out already. And it is a vote option.
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
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The more time we give her, the more likely she is to find a way to get Leet back.
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One of the other big things to keep in mind, is to not try and work with her strengths. It isn't gonna end well to try and beat her at her own game in anything she excels at, we've learned that.
greatoz
Debonair Djinni
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- The Other Place
[X] Operation Audie Murphy Tips His Hat
I mean, I could argue the strategic advantages of this, but honestly? I'm voting for this solely because of howGodUsdamned hilarious/awesome this'll be if it works. It's not obviously suicidal, and that's good enough for me. And that plan name. I mean, how could you turn that down?
I mean, I could argue the strategic advantages of this, but honestly? I'm voting for this solely because of how
Planes versus Dimensions
This is stuff that's come up before, but it was blink-and-you'll-miss-it, so it bears restating:
As far as Earth Gimel and the Avatar understand things, there's travel between planes, and travel between dimensions.
Travel between planes is going to a space that's part of our universe - its psychic plane, its Limbo, its Hell, and a variety of others, with varying local rules and degrees of accessibility. While some planes are a pain in the ass to get in or out of, with most of them, sufficiently advanced magic can do the trick, as can various technological means. The Avatar can do it, as can various other powerful people.
Travel between dimensions is going to a parallel universe. That's normally considered completely impossible. Somehow, Madman is able to do it, and Venture Industries are (semi-reliably) doing it with their (only partially successful) attempts to replicate Madman's tech.
The Avatar can perform travel between planes (or block it), with some exceptions. He has never been able to travel between dimensions, though.
And no... though you've ruled out over 50% of possible locations.
As far as Earth Gimel and the Avatar understand things, there's travel between planes, and travel between dimensions.
Travel between planes is going to a space that's part of our universe - its psychic plane, its Limbo, its Hell, and a variety of others, with varying local rules and degrees of accessibility. While some planes are a pain in the ass to get in or out of, with most of them, sufficiently advanced magic can do the trick, as can various technological means. The Avatar can do it, as can various other powerful people.
Travel between dimensions is going to a parallel universe. That's normally considered completely impossible. Somehow, Madman is able to do it, and Venture Industries are (semi-reliably) doing it with their (only partially successful) attempts to replicate Madman's tech.
The Avatar can perform travel between planes (or block it), with some exceptions. He has never been able to travel between dimensions, though.
One use.
And no... though you've ruled out over 50% of possible locations.
It doesn't feel like anything, there is only the cycle.
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Can we give ourselves Technopathy? The Simurgh is controlling her devices with stupidly precise telekinesis, what if we added to Audie and skipped to the next step of machine control with Technopathy for greater precision, along with the fate-manipulation, or using the fate-manipulation to ensure it working, rather than putting everything on fate-manipulation?
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[X] Operation Audie Murphy Tips His Hat
I'll go for the hail Mary, if only because the more time we give Simmurgh, the more screwed we're gonna get.
I'll go for the hail Mary, if only because the more time we give Simmurgh, the more screwed we're gonna get.
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
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- Spaaaaace~!
[X] Operation Audie Murphy Tips His Hat
Bit of a gamble, but I think I like it.
Bit of a gamble, but I think I like it.