HymnOfRagnarok
Let's Rock
She can predict the consequences of us reading her mind perfectly well, and has done so already.
She knows.
A Champion in Earth Bet [Worm/Original Setting]
- Thread starter sun tzu
- Start date
She can predict the consequences of us reading her mind perfectly well, and has done so already.
She knows.
What does this have to do with anything?
She couldn't predict us surviving the first strike either; she actually left the system and went back to BB, yet she built three contingencies.
The Simurgh plays Xanatos Roulette, with multiple plans running to give her an air of infallibility; the Avatar said this in the update.
Go back, read the arc.
There was no Tinkertech involved until after the Travellers were brought over. It was only after that she arrived at the PRT tech vault, grabbed Haywire's shit and built a portal.
Hell, it's outright stated that prior to Madison, the PRT didn't even know she could fuck with technology.
And noone figured out that she could dimension shift because everyone else in the Traveller's building died, and the Travellers kept running.
Afterwards, sure. She set up that tinkertech *before* she shanghaied us though. But when we went in to read her mind, she was actively mispredicting us, making wildly incorrect guesses about our plans even seconds before we read her mind, as she seemed completely unable to comprehend us even planning to read her mind, implying that that scenario was an extreme OCP from her perspective.
And now you're arguing that she had contingencies for exactly that set up well in advance?
It makes sense for her to have contingencies set up for the Avatar surviving - we saw a probability for that case that was very small, but still noticable to her. From her perspective it was luck alone, but killing us was important and she is *very* methodical so she planned for possible absurd luck. The mind-reading on the other hand we saw her having severe trouble planning for, and would have come after a wide range of divergences with quadrillions of quadrillions of more likely scenarios (from her perspective, not knowing anything of Fate Manipulation). edit: the idea here is, that with finite resources she was *capable* of making contingency plans for the former, from her perspective it might even be cost-effective; if she made contingencies plans for things like the latter, she'd have to spend a near-infinite amount of time setting up her ambush and Scion would already be dead or have xenocided everything.
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HymnOfRagnarok
Let's Rock
Exactly that, no. Set up for a situation in which her remote was destroyed by some force (not necessarily the Avatar either), yes. It's a much more likely situation, from her perspective, than the Avatar trying to read her mind.
And I'm not too certain on her being unable to comprehend Avatar reading her mind. She could foresee a future in which she lets the Avatar try by arranging circumstances thusly, and the consequences of doing it. It'd just be a bad idea so she doesn't give an opening.
I also suspect we're talking past each other and am probably going to just give up soon.
I think you have lost track of the argument here.
*I* am the one arguing that she foresaw the possibility of The Avatar surviving the initial explosion and then destroying the remote (accidentally or on purpose) (edit: and destroying Leet or otherwise removing him from the battlefield), and she created a contingency plan for that so she could get back to Bet in that unlikely scenario, this being the exit hatch that we know exists.
*They* seem to be arguing that the exit hatch is useless for her (which means it's a trap for him, since we know she made it). So she must have seen the possibility of the Avatar surviving, destroying the remote (accidentally or on purpose), reading her mind (which he's said he wouldn't do without Fate Manipulation, and she seemed to treat as an OCP scenario), finding out about the programming for what the device does without external directions, and thus the exit hatch will force him to try to get to it, allowing her to kill him somehow. Which wouldn't actually work in this case because he also found out about (edit: and rescued) Leet, which is a viable alternative to the exit hatch with no time limit.
Or that's how I'm seeing this argument.
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[X] Operation Audie Murphy Tips His Hat
The "escape hatch" refers to a:
configured to, by default:
The remote has been destroyed, so it can now *only* do its default behavior unless Leet makes a new remote or something like that.
- Location
- South Africa
yea...
[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.
Because it doesn't matter what preparations she makes while we do this as long as our next move contains a fate manipulation event to throw her off again. Which I said two chapters ago when you all went with attacking her and "not giving her time to think". I doesn't matter if she has all the time in the world to think if we pull off a suitably improbable event that throws her off.
[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.
Because it doesn't matter what preparations she makes while we do this as long as our next move contains a fate manipulation event to throw her off again. Which I said two chapters ago when you all went with attacking her and "not giving her time to think". I doesn't matter if she has all the time in the world to think if we pull off a suitably improbable event that throws her off.
While the Avatar could give himself the fine mechanical/electrical control for technopathy, he doesn't have the required technical skills.
Plus, there's the issue of range.
She already did that. That's why she had a bunch of tinkertech laying around beyond the antimatter weapon, for the highly unlikely possibility that you would survive the first explosion.
She can't really "make a run" for the teleporter. It's in another dimension, programmed to activate in about a week.
Doesn't mean she doesn't have options, though. She's a highly intelligent super-precognitive who can consider gazillions of future paths when making her plans, armed with ludicrous telekinetic abilities, flying above a shattering planet.
edmantgoog
init high just high
[X] Operation Audie Murphy Tips His Hat
- Location
- Singapore
Actually what can Fate Manip do? Can we Fate Manip and negate precog on ALL actions for 1 crucial second and with enhanced speed and mental execute some "Finish Her" fatality?
Since that was what I was aiming for, I thus choose
[X] Operation Audie Murphy Tips His Hat
Since it's the closest, but if the Fate Manip can do more than make her own weapons hit her, can we try from something more... definite?
Since that was what I was aiming for, I thus choose
[X] Operation Audie Murphy Tips His Hat
Since it's the closest, but if the Fate Manip can do more than make her own weapons hit her, can we try from something more... definite?
HymnOfRagnarok
Let's Rock
Question @sun tzu
If we do Andie Murphy on the Simurgh, can the Simurgh still use it to attack us, or can the weapon still potentially independently track down the Avatar and try to kill him? Or is it done after it dispenses its payload?
Basically, if we use it to shoot the Simurgh, is it still a threat to us afterwards?
If we do Andie Murphy on the Simurgh, can the Simurgh still use it to attack us, or can the weapon still potentially independently track down the Avatar and try to kill him? Or is it done after it dispenses its payload?
Basically, if we use it to shoot the Simurgh, is it still a threat to us afterwards?
Endbringers are stated to get exponentially denser as you get to the deeper layers, so, do expect a lot of mass in there.
With that said, I consider the "spiral galaxy's worth of matter" quote to be dumb, and a flagrant instance of Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale. For my calculations, I'm using orders of magnitude closer to what you get with neutronium.
Dunno who this Andie fellow is, but as for the Audie Murphy strategy... Well, that depends on how the Avatar implements it, doesn't it?
HymnOfRagnarok
Let's Rock
Dunno who this Andie fellow is, but as for the Audie Murphy strategy... Well, that depends on how the Avatar implements it, doesn't it?
No offense, but now's not really the time to be withholding info about this. The Avatar pulled the capabilities of the weapons more or less from the Simurgh's mind, and if it really does come down to how the Avatar does this, then it's something we should know IC.
As it said in the previous chapter (is it called a chapter?), the weapons are already removed from Simurg control. They are now attacking us on autopilot, without the benefit of precog.
HymnOfRagnarok
Let's Rock
I believe you have misunderstood my point.
The Simurgh is trying to get to the weapons to use them against us.
We want to use them against her.
My question is, after they are used against her, will they remain a potential threat to us?
Er... not that I know of. She already lost control over them. It's unlikely to be practical for her to regain control over them, and I don't think we've seen any sign of her trying. Though she'll probably try to trick us in to getting hit by them, using her precog.
Of course. As I said, they're on auto-pilot, her being hit or even killed won't change that. Though they aren't very dangerous to us on their own.
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HymnOfRagnarok
Let's Rock
If the Simurgh gets the weapons inside her telekinetic range, I see no reason why she wouldn't be able to precisely control them.
*facepalm*
No, no it does not. The weapons may have limited ammunition, they may have cooldown periods, et cetera. What condition the weapon is in after it is fired, especially after however Avatar plans to order their manipulation, is a very relevant question.
Especially if it can still fire fast enough to keep shooting the Avatar while he's trying to kill the Simurgh.
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While they were in her range, sure. They are far apart though so she can't fit both within her range, and I'm dubious of her wanting to fit either one - while she could significantly improve their aim, they aren't small or light-weight, so keeping one in range would limit her maneuverability. The author has not hinted at her so much as moving towards them so far, let alone "The Simurgh is trying to get to the weapons to use them against us."
I think we can safely assume they will still have substantially amounts of ammunition left, will still be configured to attack us on autopilot, and will continue to fire at us at approximately the same rate they have been over the last few updates. Unless the matter/antimatter/energy one directly hits the Simurgh, in which case all tinkertech in this solar system will probably *rapidly* cease to be problem. Whether additional shots are fired at us while we're still fighting the Simurgh presumably depends entirely upon how fast we manage to kill her.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Perhaps if they were to KEEP firing on the Simurgh? Rather than "he willed fate to change, that the weapons might fire on the Simurgh and not himself" it was something more general like "he willed fate to change, that the weapons designated the Simurgh as their target" or something to insure they're removed as a threat to us.
I think Fate Manipulation can only produce a course of events that was already possible, if ridiculously unlikely. Their targeting algorithms could get confused a little by just the wrong pattern of noise and fire a shot wrong or even start tracking the Simurgh's motions instead of ours for a few seconds under ideal circumstances, but to actually permanently target her I'm not sure what sort of unlikely event could occur unless the Simurgh had already made a programming error with them... and I can't see her doing that. Unless we could shapeshift to look like her to their sensors... but even then, once the unlikely part was over the Simurgh could forsee the perfect way to undo it.
Or that's my understanding of how it works.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Yeah, the issue at hand is that Fate Manipulation lets us take a possibility that is not zero and become 100%. Which means that we'd be able to actually hit her with something.
Since the chance for her getting hit by one of her superweapons while firing randomly is non zero, it means we can make it happen.
Since the chance for her getting hit by one of her superweapons while firing randomly is non zero, it means we can make it happen.
Fire in the Sky
FIRE IN THE SKY
(I've been waiting to use this song!
)
You've shattered the Simurgh's plans. You've destroyed most of her tools, taken away her Tinker abilities, destroyed her remotes. She's all but helpless.
Or is she? If you were in the Simurgh's shoes, would you be writing this battle off as hopelessly lost?
No, of course not. You'd keep trying to win, or at least survive, by doing something clever. Maybe, using your precognition, you'd maneuver your foe into the crosshairs of your automated superweapons. Maybe you'd rely on your perfect postcognition to duplicate the tinkertech devices you've built earlier from scratch. Maybe you'd dive for safety into the molten core of the planet below. Or something. You're a smart guy, and you don't believe in hopeless situations. The Simurgh is a smart terror drone, and it almost certainly doesn't consider this situation hopeless. You won't make the mistake of treating this battle as already won.
And the thing is, this is a battle that must be won. Not only because your death would be a terrible blow to the fragile Earth-Bet. Not only because your loss would leave your own world perilously vulnerable to the doom coming for it. But also because the Simurgh, monster among monsters and murderer of hope, cannot be allowed to go on. So long as the Simurgh exists, hope in Earth-Bet will be a delusion. So long as the Simurgh exists, Earth-Bet is doomed to tragedy and despair. And so long as a iota of energy flows through you, there is nowhere left for the Simurgh to hide!
Resuming mental super-speed and slow regeneration, you fly about, ignoring the scratches you get from sharp pieces of omni-metal shrapnel being flung at you telekinetically. You need to kill the Simurgh. You can't leave her the time to recover and enact a counter-plan.
You need an attack powerful enough to hurt her, preferably even kill her.
You need your attack to actually hit despite her precognition.
You need to attack while defending yourself from her superweapons, and anything else she can use against you.
You need to do it in a way that counters her own plans, which probably means enacting a plan you wouldn't enact without fate-manipulation on your side.
Over the next few subjective minutes (a fraction of an objective second), you ponder all those requirements. As you do, something occurs to you:
Over and over during the course of human History, you have watched strategists, warriors, schemers, game-players and other masters of conflict learning and teaching this lesson: The best attack is also a defense that disrupts the enemy's plans. The best defense is also an attack. Economy of action.
The Simurgh's most likely plan right now is getting you struck by her superweapons. Sure, you're flying around too quickly for them to properly target you… but with her precognition, she can manipulate events just right so that they nail you anyway.
If you had no fate-manipulation abilities, what would you do? Well. You would clear the board. You would teleport next to the mass-accelerator, obliterate it, then try to destroy the antimatter weapon with long-ranged laser blasts, so that you could focus on killing the Simurgh while having one less thing to worry about.
But it's been several seconds since you've last disrupted the Simurgh's information flow. Time enough for her to have a new plan. She can probably see a future you teleporting next to the mass-accelerator. If you were to guess, she's probably flying around, striking you with debris, in a specific manner so as to influence your timing. Get you to teleport next to the mass-accelerator right on cue for the antimatter weapon to detect you and fire on it, obliterating you with the ensuing explosion.
Unless… well, that specific insight isn't born of fate-manipulation. Meaning the Simurgh can probably predict you predicting it. So, maybe she's actually planning on you not enacting that plan, getting nailed by the superweapons right here instead.
Ah, right. The usual problem of dealing with the Simurgh: Whatever plan you pick, she knows about it before you do and has already prepared the best possible counter.
So, instead, you perform something she can't predict. Something you wouldn't do without fate-manipulation.
You go insubstantial, and fly right next to the Simurgh.
Without luck-control, that'd be a terrible plan. While intangible, you can't blast her, or really do anything with your regular powers. You're safe from her attacks, yes, but she's also safe from you for the duration. On the surface, all this accomplishes is giving her more time to plan. Normally, you wouldn't do it… and so, she presumably did not predict it.
She flies at high speed away from some debris, and you follow at hyperspeed. The next second, the mass-accelerator fires its payload at near-luminal speed; a projectile with kinetic energy five orders of magnitude beyond the Hiroshima explosion harmlessly passes through your insubstantial form.
Good. The mass-accelerator needs a little over ten seconds to reload. Plenty of time for another thing the Simurgh couldn't predict.
So far, you have used fate-manipulation to help yourself. Saving your life twice. Getting a brief boost in power.
That's not, however, the full extent of that power's capabilities. It's not restricted to your luck.
Your power pool shifts. No longer intangible, your body is now solid… and completely immune to energy attacks, as it conducts energy like a superconductor does electricity. In this state, you are safe from the antimatter weapon. You become vulnerable to the Simurgh's telekinetic strikes (slightly) and to the mass-accelerator (or will be in ten seconds once it has reloaded), but you can blast the Endbringer.
You do not. Not yet. Instead, you reach out to fate. You seize destiny. You declare what turn events now take.
Up on the Moon, over two hundred thousand miles from here, the automated antimatter weapon tries its best to track you down despite the distance, your fast movements, and the massive cloud of debris obscuring its sensors' perception.
You declare that, faced with such murky data, the program makes a mistake. For the briefest of instants, it confuses one fast-moving object with another nearby one.
You grin at the Simurgh.
You suspect it is an optical illusion, but for a tiny moment, it looked like the Endbringer's eyes were opening really wide.
And then, the ray hits the Simurgh.
You are engulfed in pure whiteness. Every frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum is saturated beyond even your cosmic senses' ability to evaluate. There are so many neutrinos traversing you, that you can actually feel a physical push from the minuscule fraction of them that collides with your body.
The explosion that broke the planet below is nothing in comparison. This must be closer to… what? A quadrillion H-bombs? A quintillion? A sextillion? It's too big for you to estimate.
The light fades, and space around you has been… cleared. Gone is the debris, the asteroids, the magma floating around you - all of it is being swept away by an expanding wave of energy. A glance in the direction of the mass-accelerator reveals nothing left there. The planet below you has been vaporized. The Moon, far more distant, is still there… but its surface, or at least this side of it, is now boiling magma. Neither of the two remaining superweapons had the resilience to survive something like this.
And at the center of that cataclysmic explosion? The Simurgh. The ablative armor of the third Endbringer is gone. All that is left of Terror Drone Seven - a part apparently exempt from this particular chapter of the laws of physics - is its skeletal core, which is now filled with cracks and fissures. With so much of the Endbringer gone, it is trivial for your cosmic senses to detect its control core, at the base of one of its wings.
The Simurgh's skeletal core has no facial features. Somehow, its body language still conveys a sense of resignation as, your expression once again serious, you let out a slow-moving, high-power blast. Pushing your fate-manipulation to the point of exhaustion, you ensure that the blast strikes the Endbringer's control core and destroys it utterly.
You then instantly go back to an intangible form, just in case there's another attack coming. You stay in that form for the next several minutes, using your cosmic awareness to thoroughly scan the Endbringer.
No hidden surprises. The Simurgh is well and truly dead.
"He got her. He actually got her."
Several pairs of eyes watched with wonder.
"Now what?"
"Now, we verify that it's really the victory it looks like," said Alexandria. "Contessa, path to…"
When he had gotten yanked through the air and away from the city, Leet had been incredibly confused at first.
When he'd realized the Simurgh had abducted him, he'd screamed. Ironically, he couldn't hear the Endbringer's signature scream; he wasn't sure if that scared him less, or even more.
He'd lost track of time, helpless prisoner of the scariest creature in the universe while she built her arsenal. He'd spent whole days praying to God for help. At some point, he'd started praying to Scion. At some point, he started praying to the Avatar. Had he actually started praying to Shigeru Miyamoto, or had that been a fever dream? Eventually, he'd just slid into silent, catatonic despair.
Then the planet below exploded. Armaggeddon. The Avatar was there, fighting the Simurgh.
And then, blackness. A dark space without even the light of the stars. For a moment, he thought he had died and gone to the hereafter, before realizing he was still in his pod, surrounded by filth.
And then there was light, as the Avatar appeared.
"Leet, can you hear me?" Obviously, this conversation requires the application of your communication powers.
The villain nods almost imperceptibly, and you go on: "I have killed the Simurgh. I'm just wrapping up loose ends, and hopefully then we can both go home. I'm scanning your brain right now, just to be on the safe side. From the looks of it, you're safe." Well, he's a traumatized, broken man, but hopefully therapy, rest and relaxation can fix that.
Of course, there's the matter of actually going home. You could wait a week for the dimensional teleporter to activate, but without the Simurgh's precognition, it would be incredibly difficult to position yourself at the exact right spot to take advantage of it. You could work with Leet to replicate dimensional-travel tech, though there's no guarantee you could pull it off.
Or… Well… When you were trawling through the Simurgh's mind, certain details just jumped at you. Her thought process about the dimensional teleporter. Some of possible future chains of events she was considering. It was almost as if…
Well. Time to put it to the test.
Once again, you engage your inter-planar travel power. This time, however, you look deeper than you have in millennia. And you see.
Oh, you can see the various planes of reality. That is to be expected. However, you can also something else. Other universes. Other Earths. Other dimensions.
You do not have the slightest idea how this is even possible, but somehow, an astronomical number of universes have been connected, stacked upon each other as if they were merely parallel planes. You don't need Madman's physics-breaking technology to travel between these worlds - you can cross from one to another on your own power!
You test that hypothesis by crossing over to the dimension where the Simurgh stashed the dimensional teleporter. It works. Leet, still with you, gasps (possibly at seeing for the first time the corpse of the Simurgh, which you are also taking with you).
You blast the machine to monoatomic dust. It's a pity to destroy such potentially useful technology, but you are loath to leave operational anything designed by the Simurgh; there might be a trap you are not aware off.
Your next destination is Earth-Bet.
Taylor - Weaver - wasn't entirely sure what to do. The ever-growing assembly of capes, under Legend's command, was mostly just waiting for a new development while the Endbringer sirens kept blaring.
It was interesting that Tattletale was talking to Legend. If she were to make a guess, the Thinker's contributions to the Leviathan fight had earned her some notice.
It was odd, seeing Uber with the Undersiders. Especially after he and Leet had almost gotten them killed not so long ago. But then, not so long ago, she'd been one of them herself. Things changed quickly.
It was Brian - Grue - who approached her.
"Hey."
"Hey."
"So… First time we see you since Coil's arrest. How are you holding up?"
"I'm… fine, I guess. I'm back with dad. We're much better now. I told him about the whole thing."
Grue's head jerked. "You did? He saw the rest of us out of costume."
"I explained the unwritten rules to him. You guys don't need to worry. Besides, we're likely being moved to Boston."
"Oh. Boston, huh? Bigger city, but lower cape-per-capita than the Bay."
"I guess. How are you guys doing?"
"Fine, fine. Tattletale got a big paycheck for helping with Leviathan's autopsy, so we can afford to stay out of trouble, mostly." He paused. "Bitch is still mad at you."
That wasn't surprising. Truth be told, she wasn't sure how she felt about it. Her first meeting with Bitch/Rachel had been violent and angry. After a while, she'd made a genuine effort to become her friend. She valued the progress she'd made. But the girl had had no compunction at all about leaving Dinah Alcott to her fate, and that had been a bitter pill to swallow.
And what now? What had the Simurgh done to the Avatar? What was she going to do to Brockton Bay?
Then she sky parted.
The Avatar flew through it, with some kind of pod and… something that looked a lot like Leviathan's corpse, but with a size and general shape that suggested…
And then, a hologram of the Avatar addressing her. His communication power, she realized.
"People of Brockton Bay, this is the Avatar speaking. A few minutes ago, the Simurgh used inter-dimensional teleportation resources to pull me into a trap. I have fought her in that other dimension, and was able to destroy her. This threat has passed."
Taylor was vaguely aware that she had stopped breathing.
Then, there was a flash. Strider, bringing in Alexandria. The Triumvirate heroine flew next to the Avatar, speaking through the armbands. "Alexandria here. A PRT Thinker tank has been monitoring the fight. We can confirm everything he just said. Endbringer down."
You glance, with some surprise, at Alexandria. "You were able to observe the fight?"
She frowns. "The PRT has some resources that we would have preferred to keep secret. However, it's worth playing some of our hidden cards on the table… or at least admitting we have some hidden cards… if it keeps the majority of the public from guessing, for years to come, whether the Simurgh is really dead, and if you're the real Avatar or some doppleganger she set up.
"Speaking of which…" she glances at the Simurgh's corpse.
"Should I bring it to the same place as Leviathan?"
"God, no. We'll manage with just one of those for the time being. No, we want you to destroy this thing. Preferably in full view of everyone."
You smile at that. You understand the value of symbols, after all.
And so, telekinetically raising the Endbringer's remains up in the air, you spent the next dozen seconds gathering a colossal amount of cosmic energy in your arm, before unleashing it upward in a world-shaking torrent of annihilation that destroys every last physical trace of the Simurgh.
And all over the city, the people cheer.
You imagine that, considering what just happened, you are about to spend a lot of time in PRT interview rooms, asking a whole lot of questions and undergoing extensive monitoring. You can't blame them. With that said, you could push and emphasize one aspect…
[ ] It was only a partial picture, but you were able to see several terrible visions of future doom in the Simurgh's mind. You emphasize the need and opportunity to stop them… as well as the need to investigate the mysterious future event that kills billions.
[ ] You already suspected it, and the glimpses into the Simurgh's mind have confirmed it: There are more Endbringers than those known to man. It would not surprise you if more were to emerge. You emphasize the need to prepare for future battles, maybe discover more about the Endbringers prior to that.
[ ] Your home dimension remains as frustratingly inaccessible as before, but Earth-Aleph and countless others are open to you. You emphasize the potential for good, should different worlds band together.
(I've been waiting to use this song!
)You've shattered the Simurgh's plans. You've destroyed most of her tools, taken away her Tinker abilities, destroyed her remotes. She's all but helpless.
Or is she? If you were in the Simurgh's shoes, would you be writing this battle off as hopelessly lost?
No, of course not. You'd keep trying to win, or at least survive, by doing something clever. Maybe, using your precognition, you'd maneuver your foe into the crosshairs of your automated superweapons. Maybe you'd rely on your perfect postcognition to duplicate the tinkertech devices you've built earlier from scratch. Maybe you'd dive for safety into the molten core of the planet below. Or something. You're a smart guy, and you don't believe in hopeless situations. The Simurgh is a smart terror drone, and it almost certainly doesn't consider this situation hopeless. You won't make the mistake of treating this battle as already won.
And the thing is, this is a battle that must be won. Not only because your death would be a terrible blow to the fragile Earth-Bet. Not only because your loss would leave your own world perilously vulnerable to the doom coming for it. But also because the Simurgh, monster among monsters and murderer of hope, cannot be allowed to go on. So long as the Simurgh exists, hope in Earth-Bet will be a delusion. So long as the Simurgh exists, Earth-Bet is doomed to tragedy and despair. And so long as a iota of energy flows through you, there is nowhere left for the Simurgh to hide!
Resuming mental super-speed and slow regeneration, you fly about, ignoring the scratches you get from sharp pieces of omni-metal shrapnel being flung at you telekinetically. You need to kill the Simurgh. You can't leave her the time to recover and enact a counter-plan.
You need an attack powerful enough to hurt her, preferably even kill her.
You need your attack to actually hit despite her precognition.
You need to attack while defending yourself from her superweapons, and anything else she can use against you.
You need to do it in a way that counters her own plans, which probably means enacting a plan you wouldn't enact without fate-manipulation on your side.
Over the next few subjective minutes (a fraction of an objective second), you ponder all those requirements. As you do, something occurs to you:
Over and over during the course of human History, you have watched strategists, warriors, schemers, game-players and other masters of conflict learning and teaching this lesson: The best attack is also a defense that disrupts the enemy's plans. The best defense is also an attack. Economy of action.
The Simurgh's most likely plan right now is getting you struck by her superweapons. Sure, you're flying around too quickly for them to properly target you… but with her precognition, she can manipulate events just right so that they nail you anyway.
If you had no fate-manipulation abilities, what would you do? Well. You would clear the board. You would teleport next to the mass-accelerator, obliterate it, then try to destroy the antimatter weapon with long-ranged laser blasts, so that you could focus on killing the Simurgh while having one less thing to worry about.
But it's been several seconds since you've last disrupted the Simurgh's information flow. Time enough for her to have a new plan. She can probably see a future you teleporting next to the mass-accelerator. If you were to guess, she's probably flying around, striking you with debris, in a specific manner so as to influence your timing. Get you to teleport next to the mass-accelerator right on cue for the antimatter weapon to detect you and fire on it, obliterating you with the ensuing explosion.
Unless… well, that specific insight isn't born of fate-manipulation. Meaning the Simurgh can probably predict you predicting it. So, maybe she's actually planning on you not enacting that plan, getting nailed by the superweapons right here instead.
Ah, right. The usual problem of dealing with the Simurgh: Whatever plan you pick, she knows about it before you do and has already prepared the best possible counter.
So, instead, you perform something she can't predict. Something you wouldn't do without fate-manipulation.
You go insubstantial, and fly right next to the Simurgh.
Without luck-control, that'd be a terrible plan. While intangible, you can't blast her, or really do anything with your regular powers. You're safe from her attacks, yes, but she's also safe from you for the duration. On the surface, all this accomplishes is giving her more time to plan. Normally, you wouldn't do it… and so, she presumably did not predict it.
She flies at high speed away from some debris, and you follow at hyperspeed. The next second, the mass-accelerator fires its payload at near-luminal speed; a projectile with kinetic energy five orders of magnitude beyond the Hiroshima explosion harmlessly passes through your insubstantial form.
Good. The mass-accelerator needs a little over ten seconds to reload. Plenty of time for another thing the Simurgh couldn't predict.
So far, you have used fate-manipulation to help yourself. Saving your life twice. Getting a brief boost in power.
That's not, however, the full extent of that power's capabilities. It's not restricted to your luck.
Your power pool shifts. No longer intangible, your body is now solid… and completely immune to energy attacks, as it conducts energy like a superconductor does electricity. In this state, you are safe from the antimatter weapon. You become vulnerable to the Simurgh's telekinetic strikes (slightly) and to the mass-accelerator (or will be in ten seconds once it has reloaded), but you can blast the Endbringer.
You do not. Not yet. Instead, you reach out to fate. You seize destiny. You declare what turn events now take.
Up on the Moon, over two hundred thousand miles from here, the automated antimatter weapon tries its best to track you down despite the distance, your fast movements, and the massive cloud of debris obscuring its sensors' perception.
You declare that, faced with such murky data, the program makes a mistake. For the briefest of instants, it confuses one fast-moving object with another nearby one.
You grin at the Simurgh.
You suspect it is an optical illusion, but for a tiny moment, it looked like the Endbringer's eyes were opening really wide.
And then, the ray hits the Simurgh.
You are engulfed in pure whiteness. Every frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum is saturated beyond even your cosmic senses' ability to evaluate. There are so many neutrinos traversing you, that you can actually feel a physical push from the minuscule fraction of them that collides with your body.
The explosion that broke the planet below is nothing in comparison. This must be closer to… what? A quadrillion H-bombs? A quintillion? A sextillion? It's too big for you to estimate.
The light fades, and space around you has been… cleared. Gone is the debris, the asteroids, the magma floating around you - all of it is being swept away by an expanding wave of energy. A glance in the direction of the mass-accelerator reveals nothing left there. The planet below you has been vaporized. The Moon, far more distant, is still there… but its surface, or at least this side of it, is now boiling magma. Neither of the two remaining superweapons had the resilience to survive something like this.
And at the center of that cataclysmic explosion? The Simurgh. The ablative armor of the third Endbringer is gone. All that is left of Terror Drone Seven - a part apparently exempt from this particular chapter of the laws of physics - is its skeletal core, which is now filled with cracks and fissures. With so much of the Endbringer gone, it is trivial for your cosmic senses to detect its control core, at the base of one of its wings.
The Simurgh's skeletal core has no facial features. Somehow, its body language still conveys a sense of resignation as, your expression once again serious, you let out a slow-moving, high-power blast. Pushing your fate-manipulation to the point of exhaustion, you ensure that the blast strikes the Endbringer's control core and destroys it utterly.
You then instantly go back to an intangible form, just in case there's another attack coming. You stay in that form for the next several minutes, using your cosmic awareness to thoroughly scan the Endbringer.
No hidden surprises. The Simurgh is well and truly dead.
"He got her. He actually got her."
Several pairs of eyes watched with wonder.
"Now what?"
"Now, we verify that it's really the victory it looks like," said Alexandria. "Contessa, path to…"
When he had gotten yanked through the air and away from the city, Leet had been incredibly confused at first.
When he'd realized the Simurgh had abducted him, he'd screamed. Ironically, he couldn't hear the Endbringer's signature scream; he wasn't sure if that scared him less, or even more.
He'd lost track of time, helpless prisoner of the scariest creature in the universe while she built her arsenal. He'd spent whole days praying to God for help. At some point, he'd started praying to Scion. At some point, he started praying to the Avatar. Had he actually started praying to Shigeru Miyamoto, or had that been a fever dream? Eventually, he'd just slid into silent, catatonic despair.
Then the planet below exploded. Armaggeddon. The Avatar was there, fighting the Simurgh.
And then, blackness. A dark space without even the light of the stars. For a moment, he thought he had died and gone to the hereafter, before realizing he was still in his pod, surrounded by filth.
And then there was light, as the Avatar appeared.
"Leet, can you hear me?" Obviously, this conversation requires the application of your communication powers.
The villain nods almost imperceptibly, and you go on: "I have killed the Simurgh. I'm just wrapping up loose ends, and hopefully then we can both go home. I'm scanning your brain right now, just to be on the safe side. From the looks of it, you're safe." Well, he's a traumatized, broken man, but hopefully therapy, rest and relaxation can fix that.
Of course, there's the matter of actually going home. You could wait a week for the dimensional teleporter to activate, but without the Simurgh's precognition, it would be incredibly difficult to position yourself at the exact right spot to take advantage of it. You could work with Leet to replicate dimensional-travel tech, though there's no guarantee you could pull it off.
Or… Well… When you were trawling through the Simurgh's mind, certain details just jumped at you. Her thought process about the dimensional teleporter. Some of possible future chains of events she was considering. It was almost as if…
Well. Time to put it to the test.
Once again, you engage your inter-planar travel power. This time, however, you look deeper than you have in millennia. And you see.
Oh, you can see the various planes of reality. That is to be expected. However, you can also something else. Other universes. Other Earths. Other dimensions.
You do not have the slightest idea how this is even possible, but somehow, an astronomical number of universes have been connected, stacked upon each other as if they were merely parallel planes. You don't need Madman's physics-breaking technology to travel between these worlds - you can cross from one to another on your own power!
You test that hypothesis by crossing over to the dimension where the Simurgh stashed the dimensional teleporter. It works. Leet, still with you, gasps (possibly at seeing for the first time the corpse of the Simurgh, which you are also taking with you).
You blast the machine to monoatomic dust. It's a pity to destroy such potentially useful technology, but you are loath to leave operational anything designed by the Simurgh; there might be a trap you are not aware off.
Your next destination is Earth-Bet.
Taylor - Weaver - wasn't entirely sure what to do. The ever-growing assembly of capes, under Legend's command, was mostly just waiting for a new development while the Endbringer sirens kept blaring.
It was interesting that Tattletale was talking to Legend. If she were to make a guess, the Thinker's contributions to the Leviathan fight had earned her some notice.
It was odd, seeing Uber with the Undersiders. Especially after he and Leet had almost gotten them killed not so long ago. But then, not so long ago, she'd been one of them herself. Things changed quickly.
It was Brian - Grue - who approached her.
"Hey."
"Hey."
"So… First time we see you since Coil's arrest. How are you holding up?"
"I'm… fine, I guess. I'm back with dad. We're much better now. I told him about the whole thing."
Grue's head jerked. "You did? He saw the rest of us out of costume."
"I explained the unwritten rules to him. You guys don't need to worry. Besides, we're likely being moved to Boston."
"Oh. Boston, huh? Bigger city, but lower cape-per-capita than the Bay."
"I guess. How are you guys doing?"
"Fine, fine. Tattletale got a big paycheck for helping with Leviathan's autopsy, so we can afford to stay out of trouble, mostly." He paused. "Bitch is still mad at you."
That wasn't surprising. Truth be told, she wasn't sure how she felt about it. Her first meeting with Bitch/Rachel had been violent and angry. After a while, she'd made a genuine effort to become her friend. She valued the progress she'd made. But the girl had had no compunction at all about leaving Dinah Alcott to her fate, and that had been a bitter pill to swallow.
And what now? What had the Simurgh done to the Avatar? What was she going to do to Brockton Bay?
Then she sky parted.
The Avatar flew through it, with some kind of pod and… something that looked a lot like Leviathan's corpse, but with a size and general shape that suggested…
And then, a hologram of the Avatar addressing her. His communication power, she realized.
"People of Brockton Bay, this is the Avatar speaking. A few minutes ago, the Simurgh used inter-dimensional teleportation resources to pull me into a trap. I have fought her in that other dimension, and was able to destroy her. This threat has passed."
Taylor was vaguely aware that she had stopped breathing.
Then, there was a flash. Strider, bringing in Alexandria. The Triumvirate heroine flew next to the Avatar, speaking through the armbands. "Alexandria here. A PRT Thinker tank has been monitoring the fight. We can confirm everything he just said. Endbringer down."
You glance, with some surprise, at Alexandria. "You were able to observe the fight?"
She frowns. "The PRT has some resources that we would have preferred to keep secret. However, it's worth playing some of our hidden cards on the table… or at least admitting we have some hidden cards… if it keeps the majority of the public from guessing, for years to come, whether the Simurgh is really dead, and if you're the real Avatar or some doppleganger she set up.
"Speaking of which…" she glances at the Simurgh's corpse.
"Should I bring it to the same place as Leviathan?"
"God, no. We'll manage with just one of those for the time being. No, we want you to destroy this thing. Preferably in full view of everyone."
You smile at that. You understand the value of symbols, after all.
And so, telekinetically raising the Endbringer's remains up in the air, you spent the next dozen seconds gathering a colossal amount of cosmic energy in your arm, before unleashing it upward in a world-shaking torrent of annihilation that destroys every last physical trace of the Simurgh.
And all over the city, the people cheer.
You imagine that, considering what just happened, you are about to spend a lot of time in PRT interview rooms, asking a whole lot of questions and undergoing extensive monitoring. You can't blame them. With that said, you could push and emphasize one aspect…
[ ] It was only a partial picture, but you were able to see several terrible visions of future doom in the Simurgh's mind. You emphasize the need and opportunity to stop them… as well as the need to investigate the mysterious future event that kills billions.
[ ] You already suspected it, and the glimpses into the Simurgh's mind have confirmed it: There are more Endbringers than those known to man. It would not surprise you if more were to emerge. You emphasize the need to prepare for future battles, maybe discover more about the Endbringers prior to that.
[ ] Your home dimension remains as frustratingly inaccessible as before, but Earth-Aleph and countless others are open to you. You emphasize the potential for good, should different worlds band together.