Ancient Legos
Chapter 16
Prescience
'Sam' finished introducing herself, then headed down the rows of seats to sit down.
Right.
Next. To me.
I narrowed my eyes at her. It was either that or have an accident due to pants-shitting levels of terror, so I chose the less embarrassing path. That said, every single turret on the Hyperion was near immediately pointed right at my position… just in case.
I was pretty sure of the little theory I had, especially given what was currently happening, but I'd be damned if I made a mistake on this and doomed the world.
She sat down, entirely uncaring of my glare, and pulled a copy of the history book we'd been using out of…
somewhere. Great, so she was blatantly and obviously showing me, and most importantly only me, that she had powers. She'd timed it just right so that I was the only one looking at her arms at that moment. Given what she no doubt was, that precision didn't exactly surprise me, but it did completely destroy one of my possible explanation pathways for why all of us at Arcadia weren't totally dead and/or mastered.
Only once she had flipped to the right page, and the teacher had once more continued on in his lecturing, did she look back at me.
"Hi, I'm Sam," she introduced herself again, holding out her hand. There was a genuine smile on her face.
I hesitantly took her hand, shaking it up and down, then pulled my hand back as fast as possible without also tipping off Dennis and Chris, situated on the other side of me, as to my intention.
"Hello," I managed.
She huffed and rolled her eyes. "You don't need to be scared, you know," she nonchalantly stated. "If one of us is scared, it's me."
I raised my eyebrows, surprised. I leaned slightly closer and lowered my voice. "
You?" I disbelievingly hissed. "
You're the one who's scared?" I locked eyes with her and adopted an unamused look. "Last time I saw you, it was on the other end of my
guns! Nearly killing me!"
She nodded, allowing a little of her apparently ironclad control to slip. The trembling of her hands on her book caught my attention. "My point exactly," she refuted. "Need we recap who
lost that fight?"
I blinked at her incredulously. "Excuse me,
I'm not a hyperdense crystalline construct sitting a foot and a half away from
lots of squishy humans!"
'Sam' actually turned to me, then, and frowned. "No, but if what Hyperion showed me is true, you're probably a lot more dangerous than I was before, much less now."
This time my blinking was in confusion. "Crazy feathery destroyer girl say what?"
"You've got
true abilities," she continued, almost reverently. "Not data and physics based, like mine were. I could crunch a ton of information to predict things, but you,
you actually
violate entropy. And time." Her still genuine smile morphed into a grin. "It's fascinating!"
Instead of attempting to unpack that, I just growled. "
How are you here?!" I hissed again. I looked up and down her body, pointedly glaring at her. "
Like this?!"
She leveled an incredulous gaze my way. "Weldon, you left
me, the world's best Tinker, in the
science lab of a
starship.
Overnight. And
all day," she stressed.
I stared at her for several long, heavy moments while it occurred to me just how badly I fucked up.
"...Whoops."
'Sam' giggled and nodded. "Yeah,
whoops," she continued. "While I'm happy you didn't outright kill me, that wasn't the best move if you weren't sure of my intentions."
I winced and nodded, her chastising of my actions perfectly reasonable. "You're right."
She bit her lip, looking off to the side. She took a moment to assure herself, then looked back at me. "
Were… you sure?" she hesitantly asked. The light of hope shone in her eyes, and that voice of reason inside me got really quiet as I was bombarded by the power of cute.
I wouldn't lie, though, not even to those eyes. "...No, I wasn't," I answered honestly. Before her face could fall, though, I hastily added on the reassurance I could give her. "But I had my suspicions! Your actions at the end of the battle were pretty strange."
Ziz stared at me, looking for the lie she no doubt suspected. Finding none, she let out a relaxed breath. "Well, thanks," she said, abruptly looking at me far too shyly for what she was. "For not killing me when you could have."
What a strange week I had so far that her sentence didn't even really register on my strangedar. "You're welcome," I heartily replied. "And… sorry about leaving you up there. But, you know… school."
"And fellow Wards monitoring you, I know," she reasoned. "Still. As your previous, if momentary rival, and now I hope...
friend, I
have to make sure you get this." She leaned closer to me and narrowed her eyes. "Leaving someone you weren't
sure of being good in such an advantageous location wasn't smart."
I rolled my eyes. "Please. I'm not that dumb," I defended myself. Her scoff hit me deep in my core, heart aching with a wound that couldn't possibly ever heal. "Hey, I'm
not! You were limited, obviously, in what you could access. And the Hyperion had orders to dump you into the center of the galaxy if you tried anything I wouldn't allow."
Sam's eyes widened and her eyebrows rose. "Oh," she squeaked.
I grimaced. "Sorry. Couldn't be sure, you know?"
She hesitantly nodded. "And… now?" she asked hopefully, fidgeting, with a bashful smile on her face.
I sighed, leaning back in my chair. "Jury's still out. Brockton Bay isn't domed, though, and I don't hear any eldritch singing, so those are points in your favor."
It shouldn't be legal for an Endbringer to look that hopefully, adorably pleased.
Several seconds passed, and then it dawned on me.
"While I know neither of us actually need to listen to this lecture, why hasn't the teacher told us to stop talking?" I asked. I also pointed my thumb at the two Wards sitting to my left. "And we've said a number of
very concerning things. Why aren't Dennis and Chris flipping out? I know
I didn't put up any ignorance fields..."
Sam looked very proud of herself and squared her shoulders. I got the mental image of a fluffy owl looking pleased, she just gave off that vibe. "I'm controlling the light and air around us to show us paying attention. Every light particle and air molecule."
That shocked me. Not even I could do that, at least not to that precision. My eyes widened and I turned to look at her, a worried expression on my face.
"...What?"
I gulped as I asked my question. "Just…
how hard were you sandbagging in our fight?"
Sam rolled her eyes. "In ours? Not at all. You actually made me use my full capacity. That shield of yours that blocks powers really screws with me," she answered. "I had to resort to twisting air into plasma spears to try and bring it down, which you should know is really difficult. But your real question is how much was I faking at
other fights, and given what I revealed in our fight, you can probably guess the answer." She gave me a sad, knowing smile. "My brothers are the same."
I sighed and put my head in my hands. "That's what I was afraid of," I lamented.
I jumped as Sam put her hand on my back and gave me somber, awkward pats to try and reassure me. "There's a solution, I think, or at least I hope, but we have to be careful," she offered.
I nodded, then something on the board caught my eye. "You know, we should probably pay at least
some attention to this class," I said, trying to leave the topic due to my steadily rising headache.
Sam patted me on the back a couple more times, then withdrew her hand. She no doubt knew I was trying to avoid talking about her brothers, but in the interest of friendship was letting the topic die. "Simulation ending in five seconds. I'll blend it into whatever you do," she announced.
I nodded, sighed, pulled my notebook closer to my stomach, and looked at the board. "Nice to meet you, Sam. Let's be friends," I finalized.
She beamed. "Yes, let's."
I managed to act totally normal for the rest of the class.
Or at least, I thought I did.
When class was over, I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder and looked over to see an unamused Dennis staring suspiciously at Sam.
"Weldon, no offense, but why are you so chummy with the new girl?" he asked, very seriously. That was so out of the norm for him it clued me in to the idea that he was up to something.
"Uh… Dennis, meet Sam, she's my new friend!" I hastily replied. I smiled wide and innocently, trying to look as normal as I could.
"I just transferred in from Immaculata and Weldon was kind enough to be my friend!" Sam added on. She was a
much better actor than me. And cute, so that gave her additional normality points.
None of it worked, though. "Talk. Now," Dennis declared, pushing me towards the door to the hallway outside our classroom. "You come too, 'Sam'."
"Everything's
fine, Dennis!" I insisted.
"Less talk, more walk."
I sighed and shook my head. Oh well. "Fine."
I sensed Chris and Sam look at each other, Chris with suspicion, before they followed us.
Dennis dragged me out of the hallway and into a restroom. Chris and Sam followed along. My time themed teammate pushed me up against the restroom wall, sending me a very pointed look.
I got the memo.
Don't move, or I'm calling M/S protocols on your ass.
I thought it was stupid, but oh well.
That said, I couldn't let the opportunity pass me by, not with Dennis on the other end.
"Why
Dennis!" I gasped, bringing a hand to my mouth, "I didn't know you were into ravaging people against restroom walls! If I'd
known I could've changed into something more… fetching!"
Despite his attempts at being super serious, Dennis snorted. "
Any other time, Weldon, but you're on M/S watch. If this pans out as you being fine, though, I'm getting you back for that."
My eyes widened and I gulped. "...Noted." Then I smirked at him, grinning wide. "Still worth."
"
Weldon."
"Ugh, fine, be like that!"
"Don't make me time lock you," Dennis menaced.
I just rolled my eyes at him. Like he even could.
The moment Sam entered, I was released. Dennis kept ready, though.
"Okay, what the hell," he began. "First you show up out of nowhere,
supposedly from Immaculata, then Weldon here becomes instant friends with you and tries and fails to pass it off as normal?"
"Hey!" I protested.
He shook his head, raising a finger as a warning to shut me up. "I reiterate, what
the hell. You could not be more obvious if you tried. Who are you, and what do you want with us?"
It seemed Sam took that as a challenge, because instead of replying, she began morphing her nanocrystalline body. Not much changed beyond her hair bleaching itself white, and several mismatched wings unfurling around her from her back, but it was enough.
Dennis froze, his face white as a sheet. Chris wasn't much better.
I groaned, whacking my head against the wall I was pushed up against. "How can you be
you and yet be
so unsubtle?!" I complained.
Sam smiled sadly, not taking her eyes off Dennis. "It helps me distance myself from what I was," she explained. Then, something seemed to occur to her, and she sent me a disbelieving look. "Also,
pot kettle much?"
"You-!" I tried, trying to find a suitable response that wouldn't make her words any more solid. "Look, I'm an Alteran! We're common sense impaired!" Aaand
fail.
"I'm not even going to bother to reply to that, you just made my point for me."
Dennis gulped. "What- what is this?" he stammered.
I sighed, allowing my head to slump back against the tile of the restroom wall. "Dennis, Chris, meet… meet Ziz," I answered him, "or Sam, as she insists on now."
Dennis turned his head back to me for the express purpose of giving me a look that told me he thought I'd lost it. "The amount of bullshit in what you just said is too damn high," he declared.
I defiantly met his eyes, unflinching. "I'm not kidding here, Dennis." I pointed at Sam. "She's Ziz. The Simurgh."
"I
was," Sam spoke up, correcting me. She pulled in her wings, her hair coloring in again. "Now I'm just Sam."
"The Simurgh," Dennis repeated, slowly turning back to look at her.
"Yes," Sam patiently reaffirmed.
"Fifteen foot tall destroyer of cities, no,
countries, and fucker of minds."
She winced, looking guilty as hell. "Y-Yes," she stammered.
"The one my friend here
killed yesterday?" Dennis finished, raising his eyebrows in challenge.
My turn.
"I
didn't kill her, Dennis," I informed him.
My teammate spun around again. If he kept doing that, he was going to get dizzy. "Crazy spaceship dude say what?"
Now you know where I picked up that particular phrasing.
"
I didn't kill her, Dennis," I repeated, emphasizing the point. With another sigh, I brought my hand up to my nose to try and rub away the mild amount of stress this little Q&A session was giving me. "I
couldn't. Not with my ship's weapons, even as powerful as they are. Endbringers are a bunch of hyperdense, compressed crystalline matter around a central core." I looked up and met his eyes. "I destroyed her body and damaged the core… but she
survived."
Dennis narrowed his eyes, frowning. He clearly needed to think through the implications of what I'd said.
My other teammate had no such problem.
"You said you killed her," Chris finally spoke up.
Sam snorted.
I smiled grimly. I really didn't want to point this out that soon, but I needed to. Lying to your teammates, no, your friends, is
never a good idea. "No I didn't. I said I
defeated her, and that the Simurgh was never coming back. Big difference. It's… look, it's not my fault if the entire world assumed, and I had her contained."
Dennis snapped out of his thinking zone and waved a hand in Sam's direction. "
This is contained?!" he sarcastically demanded.
I raised an eyebrow and indicated the sky through the ceiling of Arcadia with a nod of my head. "Do you hear any singing? Fighting? Have any urgent need to have the city domed, maybe?"
"That…!" Dennis began, then trailed off. He seemed to take a few moments to consider my statement. "...huh." He blinked with surprise.
Chris glared at me. I'd won over Dennis, and thus it was up to him to make me admit it. Or, well, that's what he believed and his mind was basically yelling at me. "So you lied," he accused me, crossing his arms.
I shook my head. "No. I
didn't lie. I always,
always said I defeated her. Even in answer to a direct question," I defended myself. "If any of you had listened, you'd have noticed that."
Chris scowled. "Lying by omission is still
lying."
"But I didn't omit anything!" I reiterated. "I already told you, I didn't
not answer. That would be omissive lying. I answered, every time. With the correction."
Chris processed that, then his scowl lessened. "That still doesn't make it okay," was his half hearted, final attempt.
I felt guilty again. This time it wasn't for almost killing Ziz, though. "Sorry," I mumbled. "But I
saw something." I gestured to the silent Sam, who was observing me intently. "Sam here, when she was Ziz, accepted death from my drones. At the last second she didn't dodge. She could've." I looked Sam in the eyes, noticing a tear spill out of her calm facade. "You could've dodged."
Another tear escaped her eyes. "I didn't want to," she lamented, sorrow falling from her tone like the tears she tried to hide.
Dennis and Chris were shocked, taken aback, stunned, and filled with a large amount of pity. So was I, just less so on the shocked front.
Only part of that was because Sam was a cute girl now, looking sad and crying.
The other part… Well, I was telepathic too, and she wasn't exactly trying to hide her emotions from me in the first place.
I mentally tossed a note to Hyperion that my telepathy was able to sense crystal people's emotions as well. Which actually made sense now that I thought about it, since I'd been able to sense Alexandria as well.
Dennis sighed and breathed in and out, slowly, to reset himself. "Okay," he stated, "okay."
Sam, still trying to not look too sad, focused her attention on him.
"Okay… what?" she tentatively asked, like she didn't really want to know the answer.
Dennis was psyching himself up for something, but I didn't know what. "Okay, we're going to do this right," he said.
"Do
what?" Sam and I both asked.
Chris was staring at Dennis like he'd spontaneously grown another head. "Are we really doing this?" he asked, warily stealing a glance Sam's way.
Dennis squared his shoulders. "Yeah." He turned to me and put on his best face of determination. "She's not the first villain you've got to go hero." He snickered a bit and shook his head. "She's the
fifth. How the hell you keep doing this- no, you know what, nevermind, I'm
done being surprised and I'm just going to roll with it."
I raised an eyebrow curiously, uncrossing my arms. "Roll with
what, exactly?" I asked. I didn't comment on my villain record, because really, what was there for me to say? It wasn't my fault I was scary.
And if I kept telling myself that I might eventually believe it.
A moment before Dennis replied, Sam's eyes bugged out. Clearly her telepathy, or whatever process she used to scan minds, was working for reading everyone else despite it hitting a wall with my mind.
"You don't even know how much bullshit you are, do you?" Dennis asked, but held up a hand before I could say anything in my defense. "No, save it. You're going to need to. Because as the highest ranking Ward here, I'm deciding to roll with helping you get an Endbringer into the Wards."
Sam went from shocked, to even more shocked… and also obviously heartwarmed, given the dopey grin on her face.
Dennis, meanwhile, blinked several times as what he just said actually went through review, and the surreal nature of it all caught up with him. "I
cannot believe I just said that," he amended.
"... Well when you put it like
that, of course it sounds insane," I grumbled, but there was no heat to my words.
"THANK YOU!" Chris exclaimed, raising up his hands.
Dennis looked to me with slightly narrowed, suspicious eyes.
"...What?" I asked.
"Just checking to see if you grow a set of tentacles or turn into a girl or anything else…
weird. Because
this? This
entire situation sounds like something Void Cowboy made up," he explained.
Sam came up beside him, sniffling a little and trying to wipe away her tears, just so she could pat him on the shoulder. "If it helps, he's upended my existence too," she pointed out.
Dennis turned his head to look at her and grimaced. "Is it strange that it does
actually help?" he asked, bewilderment at the world clear as day.
Another pat and Sam sending me a teasing grin let me know what I was in for the whole time we'd be flying my shuttle to the PRT Building.
Because of course we were going to use it. That's
why I had it in the parking lot. For situations like these.
Granted, I doubt Armsmaster mentally included 'ferrying the Endbringer you want to recruit' in his list of allowances, but if he started complaining I'd just have to toss him another piece of Alteran technology.
Their coffee makers were amazing. Especially for making hot chocolate.
Also, I was definitely going to get bullied by my friends and an Endbringer all the way to the PRT HQ. Yet, somehow, despite what that sentence normally would entail, the only thing damaged would be my pride.
"Having others that can share your pain and feelings tends to help when dealing with trauma," Sam deadpanned.
So, it had started, then.
I did the only thing I could do.
I stuck my tongue out at them.
