Any Means Necessary (Selfish OC SI, Multiverse) [In Tower of God]

[Eiri Fllyn]

Summary: By chance, an egocentric human gets an experimental Kaleidostick whose only feature is to travel the multiverse. Gets trapped in Worm for a while, uses metaknowledge to survive, then escapes on a quest to learn the secrets of the multiverse. But nothing is as simple as it appears, reaching beyond the gate is forbidden, and the World rejects that which should not be.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you are a new reader, PLEASE use the Threadmarks to read through the story. As a result of a Thread merger from cancelling the Quest format part of the story, some story posts have been placed out of order in the Thread itself. Just use the Threadmarks for the proper order.

STORY BEGINS HERE

'So, how do we fight them?'

'I do not have any combat programs installed and cannot answer your query.'

I resisted the urge to scream in rage. Maybe not having combat programs just meant the Kaleidostick didn't know how to use what it had.

'What kind of offensive and defensive spells do you have?'

'I do not have any offensive or defensive spells.'

"Damn! You have got to be kidding me!" I cursed aloud. This was even worse than turning into a magical girl!

What was even the point of wielding a Kaleidostick that didn't have any magic?

…



Initialization 1.1


"May you live in interesting times, boy!" the man cursed at me, and signed the document. He stood up with a snarl, glaring death at the woman standing beside me, and almost knocking the table over, before storming off with his entourage and bodyguards. One person stayed behind, face as white as a sheet.

"Thank you, I truly hope I will." I watched him leave and chuckled to myself. Although it was meant as a curse, I genuinely considered it a blessing.

My lawyer grabbed the signed documents and quickly reorganized them. "Looks good. We have all the paperwork we need," he informed me.

"No…how could this be…? My life's work…stolen by a devil…" The one man who stayed behind collapsed to his knees.

"You should be happy, Mr. Totenheim. I heard you were planning to retire soon. We've simply taken care of that for you."

He screamed and charged at me, but was stopped by my bodyguards. "You monster! Don't act like you're doing me a favor! This was my last chance! I needed the money!"

Through a combination of legal and illegal means, I had persuaded Mr. Kraken to cancel the bridge loan that would have saved Totenheim from defaulting on other debts. Once he defaulted on the usurious loan he had foolishly taken from a dangerous gang, it would lead to a chain of defaults on all the various debts he personally owed and in companies he was invested in, including some debts that I had secretly bought from his former creditors, which would allow me to seize his collateralized assets at a tiny fraction of their true market value.


How did he get into this situation? Well it wasn't all me, I couldn't take the credit for that. That was mainly his uncontrollable spending on luxuries, gambling, and questionable activities.

I stepped in front of him with a scornful expression. "You dug your own grave, Totenheim. All the people you've abused and stepped on, all the atrocities you committed behind closed doors…the police might not have been able to find anything on you, but your victims have never forgotten. Mr. Kraken understood this, but it seems you still don't get it. At least this way, you can try to disappear quietly. There are worse fates out there than losing your hedonistic lifestyle."

"I can't just disappear! They'll find me, and they'll kill me if I don't have the money to pay them back! I'm going to die…!" He devolved into sobbing hysterics.

"Did—did we really have to go so far? He looks so…" A voice whimpered beside me.

I turned to look at the source of the voice, a young woman no older than twenty, perfectly proportioned with a symmetrical face and flawless skin, dressed in a fashionable black leather jacket and red skirt.

I gripped on to her shoulders and turned her to face me.

"This is all thanks to your hard work, Angel. I couldn't have done it without you. As promised, the lead role in Violet Millennia is yours," I said. "Everything is already lined up to make it the biggest show of the decade. Director Solzburg has already agreed to work with us, we have more than $50 million for marketing alone, and I've already arranged for HyperTV to broadcast on a primetime slot. This is it. You're going to become the biggest rising star in the world, just as you dreamed of."

Violet Millennia, a book series that took the world by storm, was the most anticipated TV adaptation of the year and its production rights were owned by a company Mr. Totenheim had owned a small percentage of shares in. Once I seized those shares from him, it would give me the last bit of influence needed to decide who would be part of the production.

She listened to my honeyed words and her worried eyes relaxed. A bright smile replaced her hesitant expression.

"You two-faced bitch! Your father would be rolling in his grave if he knew what you did! If it weren't for you, John wouldn't have gone bankrupt! None of this would have happened!"

I quickly pulled her away with me and gestured to my men, who dragged the violent and psychotic Mr. Totenheim away.

"I know this is what I wanted…but I'm just feeling a little bad about it now," she confided in a low voice as we walked toward the limo.

"You know how this industry works. My way is the only way you can reach the top without subjecting yourself to the hidden rules. You've already seen the difference between yourself and your old friends, haven't you? Would you have rather have allowed yourself to be stained like that?" I said, escorting her into the vehicle.

"No, of course not. I—I know how much you've done for me," she said, turning to face me from her seat with an intense expression.

"Good. Go on, Angel. Your future is waiting for you," I said.

Her hand rose slightly as if wanting to reach out to me, and her mouth opened to speak. I pretended not to notice, shut the door, and put on sunglasses as I straightened back up.

She rolled down the window as the car started driving forward. "Before I start filming, I want to thank you properly! Please visit me!" She yelled out the window and waved.

I waved back.

Afterwards, I made a call. "How did it go?"

"Perfectly. The court rejected the restructuring deal once one of the creditors backed out, and approved the joint buyout offer from us. We'll get the pharma business, including the patents on the stem cell treatment we wanted, and the rest will be split up or liquidated. The company is done for."

These days, wealth was of little concern to me. I had long realized that there were plenty of things that money couldn't buy. Things like game-changing privately owned stem cell treatment research results.

"What about John Colie? Did he agree to sell his collection yet?"

"Yeah, funny thing about that. He had a stroke at the end of the court session, and was declared dead an hour ago. Because he doesn't know his son's already dead, he never changed his will. And since the idiot son left everything to his girlfriend…"

"You mean…"

"Yup, Angel is just going to inherit everything. I swear, that girl freaks me out sometimes. Too many coincidences, you know?"

"I see." Many of those coincidences, like the death of the son, weren't coincidences at all. I had known Angel for too long to be fooled like that. She was like me in many ways—almost like a female version of myself.


She was more easily affected by emotion and empathy, but once convinced that a course of action was justifiable and necessary—especially if it was for the sake of somebody she truly cared about—she could do things even I would hesitate at. And she really did have a tremendous talent for acting. That was why we worked together, after all.


The stroke that killed John, on the other hand, was indeed a chance thing. I would have laughed, but I was almost annoyed that it was so easy. Success was good, but I had been looking forward to the final challenge to finish this project.

Damn. Why couldn't he have lived a little longer and resorted to using underground connections? At least that would make things more interesting. No, that was hubris talking. I knew I should be glad that things went as smoothly as they did.

It was just…it felt boring sometimes, compared to when I first started and I had nothing, clawing my way into power and wealth inch by inch.

"We're done here. Take care of the rest of the legal work, I have other business to attend to," I ordered my lawyer.

Soon, I was left with just my three bodyguards, and I called for a car to pick me up.

Twenty minutes later, while we were driving across a section of forest, four black vans came from the two sides of the forest and cut off the road in front of us. We came to a forced break with a heavy turn, tires screeching as men in black emerged from the vans with assault rifles and opened fire.

I spoke too soon, it seemed! Perhaps John really did hire a hit on me.

Our car was bulletproof and heavily armoured, so even assault rifle fire couldn't get through the doors. Unfortunately the glass windows couldn't be made to that strength, so they quickly shattered, and we ducked down.

My bodyguards reacted immediately and returned fire with handguns, but they couldn't aim effectively without moving their heads up.

The driver tried to hit the gas and turn the opposite way, but he was stopped by an explosion that knocked us into the air. They had fired an RPG at our tires.

How did they know where we were going? I must have been careless.

Cursing, I gripped tightly onto the railings under the seat as we landed and shook, all sorts of pain springing up throughout my body as I was knocked around. We couldn't stay in the car or else we would get killed like this. Unless they planned to capture me, that is.

"Get out and use your grenades and flashbangs, then retreat into the forest!" I ordered.

We quickly opened the door on the side not facing the enemy, and exited. The driver was unfortunately too severely injured and we had to leave him behind.

Several grenades and flashbangs were lobbed over, and we ran out from behind the car once the flashes went off.

I ran straight into the forest without looking back, but I heard the cry of one of my bodyguards that must have gotten hit, and the sound of our car exploding behind us.

I tore through the foliage at high speed, then got behind a big tree trunk and use it as cover to turn back and fire on our pursuers. Only two of my men were left with me, and they did likewise.

"Keep going, after me!" I barked out.

We raced through the forest again and kept running for the next five minutes at top speed, until I was completely out of breath and about to collapse. I had almost tripped several times, and in the rush my body was littered with wounds from stray branches and other things that got in my way.

Our pursuers were still behind us, but no longer easily visible and out of options I found a dense section of bush and hid.

My men took off in another direction and maintained periodic return fire, leading them away.

After thirty minutes, I guessed that I lost them. But going out there would be far too risky, they were probably still searching for me, so I simply stayed there and started meditating.

Be careful what you wish for, the old adage said. I wanted something interesting to happen and so it did. Now I was isolated and possibly surrounded by enemies. Was this the day everything would end?

As soon as I tried to get out of the forest, even if I successfully escaped from my pursuers, would they have already destroyed everything I built? Or perhaps I would return to find that somebody had betrayed me and sent these men to eliminate me.

Yet I couldn't help but feel alive. It was the first time I had been in so much danger, and yet it was exhilarating. If only…I had been better prepared.

No, it was no use crying over spoiled milk. At least things would be more interesting now.

I would fight until the very last moment, and that would surely be an interesting story to behold, wouldn't it?

The cold chill of the forest sunk into my bones as I waited. I wondered if they would try to finish me off by carpet bombing or gassing the area.

Just who were they?

I felt so tired and weak. Was I injured somewhere I hadn't noticed? Or maybe it was blood loss from my wounds. I didn't think I had lost much though, had I?

…

Like that, hours passed and I inadvertently fell asleep.

…

"Fascinating...this world is devoid of mana. I can't even feel the presence of Gaia," a voice pulled me out of the darkness.

My eyes darted about, yet my body stayed frozen, and from my hiding spot in the bushes I looked upon the form of a LARPer with white hair in a black caped outfit. From almost 30 meters away I could only see his back and his right hand holding a cane with his left holding a...floating stick?

Yes, it was indeed just floating in the air, a smooth wand-like cylinder that was barely visible in the darkness, with a round gemstone at the top flickering in an unnatural light despite its dark hue and no visible light source.

"It appears that our return trip shall be a bit more difficult from here. I cannot even access prana from our parallel selves. I suppose that makes sense given that this is the first time I've come to this universe." The white-haired man moved his hand away from the wand but it kept floating where it was. He tapped his cane on the ground three times.

"Reporting: Analysis complete. Program compiled. Kaleidostick Agate has acquired Alternate Reality Manipulation Protocol, catalogued as ARMP. First module: User Travel added," another voice rang out from seemingly nowhere.

"Good. You will take the reins this time. Bring us back to our world and we'll finish your programming. I'll have to bring more mana sources the next time we come here," said the man in the costume which I now recognized to be Zelretch from the Fate franchise.

"Understood. ARMP engaged. User Travel initializing. Destination selected: Kaleido Schweinorg Origin Primary. 30 seconds required to construct pathway. Please hold." The other voice said robotically.

Suddenly to the right of the Zelretch RPer the air ripped apart and the world was creaking.

A cloaked and hooded being emerged.

"Well, well, I thought there was something interesting here, and look what I found! A lesser being trying to create a means of Walking the Eternities without a Spark!"

My eyes bugged out. Was that actual magic? I thought Zelretch and Planeswalkers were supposed to be fictional!

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, my friend...what do you mean by walking the eternities without a spark?" Zelretch turned to look at the newcomer, and I got a look at his blood red eye.

The air crackled with a strange pressure as a red light gathered in the hand of the, I guess I could call him Planeswalker for now. "Silence, fool! You've delved into magics not meant for the likes of you! The Blind Eternities are warping under the pressure of whatever blasphemy you enacted to get here! Your home Plane may have powerful beings guarding it from me, but your own pitiful existence ends now!"

He thrust his hand forward and a torrent of blinding fire was unleashed, an explosion engulfed Zelretch and the shockwave blew me up against a nearby tree, and I could feel the roots of the tree straining to stay upright.

In the next moment the night sky lit up and a chain of thunder-like sounds rang out as the explosion grew, new gale winds tearing away the smoke and surrounding trees as something hit my face and finally the tree behind me gave out, roots ripping out of the Earth and I grabbed the thing that hit me even as I tumbled away.

"Urgh!"

I collapsed bonelessly on the ground and twitched before terrible pain racked my entire body.

"I'm sure there must be a misunderstanding, sir. My method of Walking the Eternities as you call it does not disturb the worlds traveled." Zelretch's calm voice pierced the air. I lifted my face up slightly until I could see what was happening.

The cloaked Planeswalker floated with an ominous red light in the air while Zelretch stood at the edge of a massive crater, his clothes looking perfectly unruffled as if that monstrous attack didn't even touch him.

"Warning! Warning! Pathway formation disrupted! Connection unstable!" The Kaleidostick Agate's robotic voice rang out. Except, it seemed to come from...me?

The two combatants shifted their gaze towards me immediately. Zelretch even looked surprised as silence engulfed the destroyed forest.

I cursed mentally. That thing that hit me earlier and which was now somewhere on the ground lying next me must have been Agate.

"Pathetic mortal! Curse your gods for your luck today! For the crime of touching the power of the Planes, die!"

What? This guy was seriously going to kill me for such bullshit? If I got out of this alive I would make him pay a thousand fold! How could I die from such a random event happening?

Before I knew it, Zelretch's back was in front of me and his cane was blocking a black torrent of visible mana gathered in front of the Planeswalker's hand. Up close, I could see the Planeswalker's snarling angry face, which I didn't recognize. Baleful red eyes, sleek black hair, bishounen facial features, and a strange glowing pattern on the right side of his face in the shape of a semicircle over a horizontal figure eight with the top two lines crossing back down instead of meeting at the centre.

He broke away and flew back into the air. "You are strong, little mage, but that will not protect you from a god! Know your place!" Suddenly an enormous wave of mana emerged from him, condensing into a legion of different shapes that blotted out the sky, complete with an Earth-shattering wave of roars.

Zelretch sighed. "I don't wish to be impolite as I am the outsider, but you are being rather unreasonable." He materialized a dagger in his right hand as he moved his cane to the left. The Jeweled Sword started to glow as the world around it bent and refracted a rainbow of lights.

Then he turned around and winked at me.

What?

I had no time to think on what that meant before the horde of summoned monsters came upon us, Zelretch's dagger-sword flashed, and--

—the world went white.

My eyes burned with the sight, and teared up even as the white gave way to a kaleidoscope of strange things I couldn't comprehend.

"AHHHH!" I screamed as I saw what should not have been seen and curled up into a ball whimpering.

After what felt like an eternity, I was left with only silence. I blinked open my eyes and shifted my groaning muscles until I was sitting upright, looking around. The entire forest was nothing more than a wasteland, and only a small circle below me was untouched.

"What, what the hell..." I murmured to myself.

Ominous roars sounded in the distance. I squinted and looked around again, and saw shadows moving in the distance.

The summoned monsters! Then about a hundred metres away from me, monstrous and bulbous things ripped out of the ground and rose up, surrounding me.

I watched in morbid fascination as they climbed up slowly from the ground like zombies. I guess it was really the end. I couldn't possibly fight my way through this horde.

"RandomBystander1, Master Zelretch has authorized me to establish a partnership contract between you and me. Do you wish to become my wielder?" The Kaleidostick suddenly floated in front of me.

Or maybe not. Was this the legendary plot armour? A Deus Ex Machina that would save me! If fictional things were real, then I had to be a main character if I was getting an opportunity like this.

"What does that involve? What are our obligations to each other?" I immediately asked.

"We will conduct a ritual to establish the magical contract and form a soul-based prana link. A wielder can access all of my powers by mental command and share senses. Conversely, you may grant control of your body to me at will. As you do not possess Magic Circuits some functions will be limited. Our obligations are mutual and are as follows: we must protect the other from harm by any means necessary, we must act to prevent attempts to break the contract if either partner is unwilling, neither can harm or seek to harm the other without consent. Once formed, the partnership bond will begin a process of mental and prana-based attunement. If the bond is later broken, there may be unpredictable consequences." The Kaleidostick explained robotically.

That was a very helpful explanation, but it also raised some questions. This contract appeared different to what I knew of Kaleidosticks from the fictional franchise, and the bond seemed to be much more permanent.

"Is it possible for you to have more than one wielder? And can I be bonded to more than one Kaleidostick?"

"Such a course of action has never been tested and would be highly inadvisable. There may be unpredictable consequences, such as sudden death."

Well, that also answered my question about what "unpredictable consequences" might result from the bond breaking.

The monsters seemed confused for a moment, and randomly wandered around, but I knew I was running out of time. Sooner or later they would come for me.

"Alright, I want to be your wielder! What do I do?"

"Please apply some blood to your palm and grab onto me, then repeat after me."

I did as told, using the blood from my wounds earlier. Once my hand touched the wand, two magic circles formed above and beneath me.

The words of power rushed into my mind and I chanted almost in sync with the Kaleidostick.

"Let black and chalcedony be the essence. Let onyx and agate form the foundation. Parallel and curved, let the bands close and open. Let blood be the tribute, and the Second bear witness. I hereby declare, our will shall be as one. An oath is sworn. I shall attain all the virtues of Heaven, I shall have dominion over all evils of Hell. Through the infinite realities, all lines shall converge!"

When the chant that Zelretch must have borrowed partially from the Servant Summoning Ritual was over, I felt something connect with me, and both the Kaleidostick and I glowed with a multicolored aura with a line of pure black running through it.

Soon the glow and the magic circles disappeared.

'New User Registered. Designated: RandomBystander1. Access Level: Full Administrator. Agate awaiting further instructions', Agate's voice came into my mind complete with subtitles flashing through my thoughts.

"Did you just talk to my mind?" I asked out loud.

'Yes, User RandomBystander1,' Agate answered me.

'Why was I registered as RandomBystander1? And what does my access level mean?' I thought back.

'RandomBystander1 was the designation for you set by BetterThanBlue, also known as Master Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg. Full Administrator access allows complete use, read, and write access to all of my functions and programming. He has also left you a message: I am sorry you were caught up in my mess, young man. Unfortunately this enemy is extraordinarily powerful and while I'm no slouch myself, I know not for certain that I can protect you. I am giving you Kaleido Agate to help you escape. Please take care of Agate and I would appreciate it if you could collect some data on alternate reality traveling for me in your journeys. Best of luck to you.'

Wow! Thanks Zelretch, what an upstanding guy. I can even forgive the troll name he gave me.

'Okay, I want to change my designation,' I ordered.

'Request denied.'

'What? Don't I have full administrative access?'

'RandomBystander1 has full administrative access except for anything locked by Ultimate Administrator BetterThanBlue.'

...really?

I almost thought Zelretch's trollish behavior was just merely fanon from how serious he acted earlier. Just great. I better not turn into a magical girl.

No seriously, this was bullshit. I just formed a permanent contract with the Kaleidostick and somehow Zelretch could still override me, even though the wand just told me there could only be one wielder. That made zero sense.

But that wasn't important, the monsters had gotten their bearings and were now advancing towards me.

'So, how do we fight them?'

'I do not have any combat programs installed and cannot answer your query.'

I resisted the urge to scream in rage. Maybe not having combat programs just meant the Kaleidostick didn't know how to use what it had.

'What kind of offensive and defensive spells do you have?'

'I do not have any offensive or defensive spells.'

"Damn! You have got to be kidding me!" I cursed aloud. This was even worse than turning into a magical girl!

What was even the point of wielding a Kaleidostick that didn't have any magic?

'Agate, can you at least get us out of here then? Somewhere without other people?'

'Negative. I do not have any installed transportation protocols other than ARMP: User Travel. This module does not include any targeting function except by Waypoints established during prior travels or semi-random targeting by distance in Kaleidospace.'

'What are the Waypoints available?'

'There are currently 2 Waypoints: this location and Kaleido Schweinorg Origin Primary. Kaleido Schweinorg Origin Primary is currently inaccessible due to destabilization in Kaleidospace.'

'That's it??! We can't go anywhere else?'

'I can attempt to randomly open a Pathway to an unknown habitable world by shortest distance in Kaleidospace.'

'Wait, how can it be random if we target the shortest distance?'

'Kaleidospace does not have fixed locations and distances. A Waypoint is a beacon that eliminates the randomness, but any other targeting method is semi-random.'

The entire mental conversation took only 10 seconds.

'Alright fine! Let's go to a random world close to this one then!'

'Understood. ARMP engaged. User Travel initializing. Destination selected: Random by Shortest Distance. 10 seconds required to construct pathway. Please hold.'

I couldn't help but smirk. Amazing. I hoped this wasn't just a dream. With this power…the possibilities were endless! If I played my cards right, all of creation was within my grasp!

My thoughts went to that unreasonable Planeswalker. My eyes darkened in hate. How dare he look down on me…being born with such power, to be given a Spark for nothing, he was nothing without his good fortune!

Then my hate ebbed away and my eyes gleamed with anticipation. That Planeswalker was just a fool, only worth my attention for the power he wielded. But if not for him perhaps I wouldn't have met such a golden opportunity. In the end, he would become a stepping stone for me on the path to true power. Unless Zelretch successfully killed him, I would likely meet him again, so I had to get stronger as fast as possible. There could be any number of such fanatical fools that would want to kill me for stupid reasons, and the only way to assure my safety was to become more powerful than them! That would be a daunting task, considering the sheer potential that I knew old Planeswalkers had, especially as time was on their side.

I would escape and hide and build up my strength…

It would mean leaving everything behind on Earth. I couldn't risk returning here anytime soon, what with the monsters and the possibility of the Planeswalker coming back.

My money, connections, subordinates…I would have to completely start over. That didn't sound so bad, actually…

It would be an adventure unlike any other! Full of risk and opportunity…and the beginning of a new story—my story!

Even if I had nothing again…I would go even farther this time, I would reach beyond the heavens and grasp infinity!


O O O



The trip was underwhelming. One moment I was in a wasteland of a forest in the dark of night, the next I was in an alleyway in a city in the pale light of early evening.

I was still injured and I didn't know how severe the injuries were, so reappearing in a modern city was a good thing, I think. I could walk at least, and it didn't feel like any bones were broken, which was a miracle, or maybe my placebo cultivation exercises actually had some kind of effect? I mean if Zelretch was real, maybe Qi cultivation was real too.

But first things first, gather information and get some medical attention.

'Agate, can you hide yourself somehow?' I transmitted mentally.

'Yes, I can phase out of sync with this reality to hide or avoid enemy attacks.'

Excellent, I didn't have to worry about somebody stealing Agate then.

After a few minutes of wandering, I found a newspaper stand. In big letters one of the papers it showed "BROCKTON DAILY".

No way.

I recognized this place from a story I'd read before.

I put the paper back in its stand and left quickly. It was April 3, 2011. That was…seven days before Skitter fought Lung?

I didn't know the timeline perfectly and I was missing tons of details. I only knew the big things, and never even properly finished the canon storyline, so a lot of my "knowledge" was coming from fanfiction.

But I knew at least, that I didn't want to stay here. Changing Taylor's fate, helping to save the world, are you kidding?

Leviathan was going to attack in a month! I'm just a helpless normal, and there was no easy way to power up in this setting. It was be really hard to survive in this crazy grim world, and that was even assuming canon was reliable, which it probably wasn't. Maybe Cauldron had Masters and would come for me as soon as they find out about Agate and magical realities.

Hell, maybe they were already observing me!

Under the setting sun, I rushed to an abandoned alleyway as fast as I could.

'Agate, can you bring us to another world? This place isn't safe,' I asked.

'There seems to be a problem. I have detected a barrier over this Reality Cluster, which is now blocking the formation of a Pathway outside the local Reality Cluster,' the answer came.

What? CRAP! Scion had locked off Earth-Bet and the other parallel Earth dimensions that were part of the cycle, didn't he? Did he notice intruders getting in?

I could feel myself beginning to hyperventilate and my heart pounding in my ears. I was trapped in a world where normals were just fodder, background characters to be wiped out by the billions, mere statistics on a book.

'My analysis suggests that it may be possible to break through the barrier preventing access to other Reality Clusters. I can continue analyzing in an attempt to develop a method of breaking through.'

I could handle this! I always wanted excitement, didn't I? It wasn't impossible to survive, and even thrive with what I knew. I had to calm down and think, use my vaunted intelligence and desire, and obtain the power waiting to be grabbed.

Deep breaths.

"Hey, give me your wallet!"

My eyes darted to the source of the voice. A hooded and ragged guy with a knife was stalking towards me from the entrance of the alley.

I narrowed my eyes and took in the cliché scene. I should have expected it though. Brockton Bay was a dying city, full of criminals and a gradually declining economy.

I began to chuckle.

"Fuck, you loose in the head? I'm mugging you, bastard!" He waved his knife menacingly.

My entire body tingled with adrenaline, and I burst forward.

I could see the unlucky mugger's eyes widening as he thrust his knife in front of him reflexively.

Useless. I knew that most criminals didn't have the resolve not to hesitate, they wouldn't know what to do if they suddenly became the hunted. He was a mugger, not a killer, and I–

grabbed his knife wrist and twisted, pivoting on my right foot, and using the reactionary force on my hips and another step with my left foot to bounce back and strike his chin with my elbow

—had experience in violent confrontations against people more dangerous than him.

It was just a shame that I lost my gun when I nearly tripped in the forest on my Earth.

A sickening crunch resounded in the alley, and the pathetic fool couldn't even spit out the blood before I followed up with a kick to the groin. He crumpled towards the ground but I helped him along by smashing his face with a punch. His head cracked against the hard concrete.

I straddled on top of his unmoving body and checked for life signs. He was just unconscious and bleeding from his mouth and head injury.

Ugh, crap, the pains all over my body that I had forgotten with the adrenaline were coming back.

I took off the gloves he was conveniently wearing and put them on my own hands before searching him for useful things. In the end, I took his wallet, some keys, a switchblade, and phone but left his clothes alone. He didn't seem to be affiliated with any gang but I didn't want to risk any buddies of his recognizing the clothing. Of course I took out the sim card on his phone before taking it. It was just a flip phone, nothing compared to my smartphone that I still had with me, but I had other purposes for it.

That done, I made my way out of there and found a nearby bus stop. Within a few minutes a bus came by and I got on, paying with a few coins from the mugger.

It didn't matter where the bus was going, I just went on to grab one of those free transit maps I figured would be hanging around inside of buses like they are on a lot of transit systems back on my Earth.

I was right and examined my new map until I found Brockton Bay General Hospital. Time to see what my options were for fixing my injuries.

This world was full of "capes", also known as "parahumans" with powers. There were superheroes and villains, and organizations dedicated to their regulation and governance. The Parahuman Response Team (PRT), which was made up of normals, and the Protectorate, the cape policing organization. Brocton Bay was on the east coast of the USA, and these organizations covered Canada and the USA, plus some parts of Europe.

If I was to survive this in this world, I needed the power of capes.

O O O

A/N: This chapter was majorly revamped. The old one can be found in Apocrypha.

Spoiler: Old A/N

AN: I got fed up reading SIs that got easy power right off the bat, whether from ridiculous CYOA choices, ROBs, or whatever. Also tired of fix-fics where the SI goes around helping everyone with metaknowledge. I didn't find any good stories where SIs rely on ruthlessness and intelligence to obtain selfish desires, so I wrote one for myself.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Initialization 1.2

It was only 5:43 pm according to my new phone, and I could probably get to the hospital in about 20 minutes with a different bus route, so I got off the bus after a couple of stops and began my trip to the hospital.

'Agate, is it possible for you to bring us to any of the parallel dimensions inside our local Reality Cluster?'

With some down time I was able to think through my options. If I could access Aleph or the other parallel dimensions, I would be in a much better position.

'Negative. Parallel dimension travel is a part of planned modules whose installation is not complete. I will require opportunities to observe parallel dimension travel to develop such a feature, or direct programming input from the user.'

'You can learn it? That's great!'

'Kaleidostick Agate was designed to be a self-learning tool that would expand its own capabilities. My ability to process information is comparable to an advanced alchemist with Memory Partition and Thought Acceleration,' Agate said without prompt from me. I wondered if that was pride at being praised.

'You know Memory Partition and Thought Acceleration? Can you teach me?' I asked eagerly.

'My apologies, User RandomBystander1. I do not know those spells and I could not teach you even if I did. My processing is based on an application of the Second Magic, using limited access to parallel analogs of me running in sync or slightly ahead of the current time. They are not the standard Atlas spells. You do not possess the Magic Circuits necessary to utilize any magecraft, so you could not learn the Atlas spells either,' Agate explained with a voice that actually sounded regretful.

I sighed. Of course it wouldn't be so easy.

'So…what else can you do?' I might as well learn Agate's full capabilities.

Instead of a voice respond, Agate seemed to do something akin to sending me data directly.

I saw in my mind's eye a list of capabilities Agate judged both "important" and "unlocked". Other than its reality phasing ability and the universe travelling, it had a sensor suite for detecting and analyzing magical energies and electromagnetic radiation, and it could share the user's senses when authorized. When not sharing the user's senses, it could only use its sensor suite to perceive the world. Anything sensed or shared from the user was recorded and could be accessed later. If allowed to share the user's senses, then Agate could also block mental attacks and even bestow Magic Resistance (unfortunately both features were very limited if the user couldn't generate prana or lacked Magic Circuits).

The core AI was capable of learning by observing, reading, and communicating, much like a human. There were many potential upgrades and functions Agate could develop in time, but we were severely hampered by my inability to perform magecraft.

That was more than I expected, but far less than I'd hoped. I was even a little disappointed that Agate couldn't give me a magical transformation.

It wasn't long before I arrived at the hospital.

There were a lot of people, but nobody gave me a second glance. I was wearing a jacket and casual pants that looked pretty dirty and beat up from the fight that destroyed the park, but I guess that was nothing special considering all the other injured people I saw.

The lobby was clean and bright, the seats packed with people. It was a busy place.

I walked towards to receptionist and was about to speak when I noticed a paper stuck to the bulletin board with important information.

PANACEA OPEN HEALING SCHEDULE, it said. That was convenient. I guess the hospital got a lot of people asking about it. Or wait. More information about Panacea could be found at the New Wave website. So it was part of their PR. Panacea was a miracle healer with her absolute control of biology. Her presence in New Wave was great for their reputation.

Apparently she would be coming in today for two hours starting… a few minutes ago at 6. And there would be open healing for anyone that walked in from 7:30 to 8.

That would be tight. How many people could she see in a mere half hour? Oh well, that gave me an hour to prepare.

Twenty minutes later I had bought a burner flip-phone and was sitting down at a nearby coffee shop eating a quick meal as I browsed the web with my smartphone using free Wi-Fi. I had three phones now including the one I grabbed off the mugger.

Over the next hour of browsing, I learned quite a bit about this world. As far as I could tell, it seemed to be following canon. Browbeat hadn't joined the Wards yet, and all the public information on capes in Brockton Bay matched with what I knew.

That was good, my knowledge wasn't useless. I made my way back to the hospital just before 7:30.

Right on time, a nurse came to the lobby and announced that Panacea would accept walk-in patients now, anyone needing healing should follow her. So I followed her with a bunch of other patients to wait in a line outside a room not far from the lobby.

Another nurse came over and addressed all of us while the first one started to let patients into see Panacea.

"Hello, I am nurse Angela, and I'm here to explain a few things about Panacea's open healing for anyone not familiar with the rules. Please listen carefully," she said as she looked around to make sure she had everyone's attention except for the people at the front of the line being processed by the other nurse.

"Anyone is free to come in for healing, but Panacea cannot accept all illnesses or injuries during walk-in. She is not your family doctor or emergency services. For your own health and the smooth running of our healthcare system, please go to the appropriate medical authority for diagnostics, emergencies, chronic illnesses, or severe injuries. During public healing sessions, Panacea can only perform quick healing on minor illnesses and mild injuries. Additionally, Panacea does not perform cosmetic enhancements. Nurse Jane will determine whether your medical issue is appropriate before letting you in. At 8:00 pm sharp, the public healing session will be over. If anyone is remaining at the end, you will need to come back another day or consult your family doctor," she explained with a clear and authoritative voice before leaving us to wait.

A few people left the line after hearing that. The line moved quickly. Patients were getting healed and shuffled out of the room in less than a minute each. This was pretty efficient, and the line wasn't long either, I suppose because many people would be too lazy to come if their issue was "minor". It was mostly made up of parents with their kids or seniors, and some sketchy looking people – like me, actually.

It seemed like everyone would be done with time to spare, so I started letting people move in front of me.

Five minutes before 8pm, I was the last one to enter.

It was a simple room with a medical bed and Panacea sitting on a chair. Her costume was really white. If she had a staff and lost the scarf I could see a White Mage. Hiding in her hood, she had a fairly plain face with freckles that looked bored. I didn't see any sign of exhaustion that fanfics usually emphasized, but I did feel the "I don't want to be here" vibe.

She gestured to the bed with a plastered smile. "Hi. What can I help you with?"

I sat down and smiled back.

"I fell off a tree, and now my body feeling's sore all over," I said. I got blasted away together with a tree but I did technically fall off of it mid-air.

"Were you saving a kitten?" She asked with an amused tone quirking an eyebrow. There weren't many other explanations for why a man in his early twenties would be up on a tree.

I sighed dramatically. "No, I'm afraid I was the one that needed saving."

She gave me an unimpressed look and held out her hand. "Hmm. Well I need to touch your skin to heal you."

I gave her my hand.

"A lot of bruising all over, some muscle strains, and a few bones are bit loose. Nothing too serious. Do I have your permission to heal you?" She asked.

"Yes." She nodded back to me.

Three seconds later I felt much better.

"Thank you, Amelia," I said in heartfelt gratitude with a textbook Duchenne smile.

"Sure thing—wait, what did you call me?" Her bored eyes came alive in an instant and her hand gripped tightly onto mine.

"Amelia, your name," I answered pleasantly.

"What are you talking about? My name is Amy, and it's Panacea in costume," she said in irritation.

I look in her eyes with a serious but warm expression.

"Amelia Claire Lavere, that's the name you were born with, Ms. Dallon."

Irritation turned to surprise, and she was silent for a couple of seconds.

"What do you know? Who are you?" She asked with a hint of suspicion and interest both.

"I know many things, such as who you were adopted from. I don't have any legal name in the world right now, but you can call me Kaleidus," I said mysteriously. Don't judge me. I couldn't come up with a good name on such short notice, and I didn't want it to be an obviously cape name either, just an unusual but memorable one.

"What do you want?" She asked in a low and almost whispered tone.

"Well I needed healing, and I wanted to give you something in return. I'd be happy to tell you what I know of your heritage if you want," I said. I could see her interest growing. But she was still suspicious that I wouldn't want anything else. After all, there were plenty of reasons for unscrupulous people to target Panacea the miracle healer. "Other than that, I have special knowledge of events to come and certain events in the past."

She gave me a disbelieving look. She must have thought I was crazy considering that I didn't have a Corona Pollentia or Gemma. But I continued unperturbed.

"I know you can tell if I'm lying with your power while you're holding my hand--" she glanced at our connected hands momentarily before her eyes flitted back to me in surprise.

"--and that I'm not a parahuman with the required brain structures, but I definitely have special knowledge of the past and future, or at least, possible futures, that nobody else in this world knows. That's how I know about your heritage. You are critical to this world's future, and I want to help you. It's also true that there are some things only you can help me with."

As I talked, I could almost see the gears turning in her head. My knowledge of her powers couldn't be explained easily, and the fact that I was essentially submitting myself to her lie-detection was quite persuasive.

It was to my advantage that there were many ways of "helping" her. After all, how to help depended on their goal, right?

"How is that possible?" Her grip on me grew stronger. "Did somebody Master you to say all that?"

"No, and I'm sure your power can check for abnormal biological reactions or brain activity showing a Master too," I responded. I was just guessing actually, but it made sense to me.

"Okay. I believe you think you have 'special knowledge'. But how do you know it's real?" She pressed me.

"I can prove it. First, my 'postcognitive' knowledge," I raised my fingers in air quotes as I spoke, "I know things about you that nobody could possibly know. A secret that you've never told anyone." She tensed and eyes widened before looking around the room as if checking for eavesdroppers.

I used my free hand to cup my mouth as if preparing to whisper. Then I moved closer to her ear and did just that, "Your special feelings for Victoria."

She froze. Her grip on my hand was so strong it was starting to get painful. And it was shaking. I felt a gleeful anticipation as I watched her. Yes, this girl had very dark secrets. Panacea the miracle healer, the kind, saint-like cape that everyone admired had a secret that was tearing her apart inside.

She lusted for her own sister.

"W-what are you talking about, don't bullshit me with vague--!" she hissed.

"I won't tell anyone. And you're not a deviant. It isn't your fault and there's nothing wrong with you. Something caused those feelings in you, but you're not ready to learn just what yet."

"You're lying! Stop messing with me!" She tried to let go of my hand and stand up. But I grabbed her hand myself and stopped her.

"If I was, you wouldn't be reacting like this. You know exactly what I'm talking about and that I'm telling the truth."

She glared at me and bit her lip.

I put a hand on her shoulder and gently guided her back down onto her seat. "Look, I told you I wanted to help you. I didn't say that to blackmail you. You have a key role to play if this world is going to survive." She kept glaring at me and stayed quiet.

If this world is going to survive. Only if it were better for me, of course.

After a moment, there was a knock on the door, presumably the nurse reminding Panacea of the time. I sighed. "On April 11th, Lung will be defeated. Armsmaster will take credit for the capture. You'll be called in to keep him stable. Here's my number if you want to get in touch." I took out a piece of paper and quickly wrote down my burner phone's number, putting it in her hand.

I patted her shoulder and prepared to turn and leave but this time Panacea grabbed my wrist again as I stood up and stopped me.

"Who…who were my parents?" She asked with her head looking down.

I paused. "Your father was Marquis. Your mother, I don't know. The Brocton Bay Brigade attacked Marquis in his home and he was defeated trying to protect you when the Brigade realized he was protecting something hiding in the closet."

"The daughter of a villain…?" I heard her muttering in a defeated voice as she dropped my hand and stood still.

Marquis was a very successful and powerful villain. He was the only parahuman in his gang but managed to fend off the likes of the Slaughterhouse 9 and the Teeth. His ability to generate and control bone was extremely powerful and versatile, which made him unbeatable before the Brocton Bay Brigade took advantage of his two weaknesses. He had a rule not to hurt women and children including enemy combatants that fell into those categories. And he had a daughter he genuinely cared for.

I lifted her chin up to face me. I could see her eyes beginning to tear up.

"Listen to me. You are not a villain just because your father was. That's Nazi thinking, and Carol should be ashamed of her prejudice. You are one of the most powerful and important heroes in the world."

Carol was traumatized from her youth and despised Marquis for irrational reasons. She never wanted to take Amelia and basically never treated her as a daughter despite adopting her legally.

Even worse, Amelia had once overheard Carol say that. That she never wanted her.

There was another knock on the door. We could hear a voice calling from outside, "Um, Panacea? The session was already over several minutes ago. Is there a problem?"

The girl wiped her eyes quickly and called back, "No, we're done here." She opened the door and walked past quickly. I followed after, getting a disapproving look from the nurse.

I looked away and walked quickly. Then when nobody was there to see it, I smirked. I felt great. This was almost certainly the canon storyline I was in.

Knowledge was power, and I had it.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Initialization 1.3

The next few days passed in a whirlwind. Before enacting the rest of my plan I needed to secure money, food, and shelter. Without a legitimate ID things would be difficult, and with the underground essentially controlled by capes, it would be exceptionally dangerous for me. Not to mention I didn't have any real experience dealing with underground activities and criminals, nor did I want to run afoul of patrolling heroes.

That's where the mugger's phone came in. I didn't need to be tracked by the cell signal so I turned off all network features, but even without network access it had an address book with contacts and text history. It gave me insight into what kind of person he was. A man living by himself in his early twenties, no contact with any parents, few friends, and no job. Typical profile of an inexperienced robber. That was obvious enough when I didn't find a gun on him, but this was good confirmation.

I must have been a target of opportunity, or else I wouldn't have found a wallet on him with identification at all. Luckily, I did, and tracked down his address to his dingy little apartment in a dirty and paint-shedding low-rise. Before that, I spent the rest of my ill-gotten gains on some very basic equipment: pepper spray, an old backpack, a nice worn down hoodie, sunglasses, and used shoes. It wasn't much but time was ticking and I had to finish before he came back with a spare key or locksmith.

It was unexpectedly quite a smooth venture. There were no security cameras in the hallways. I went in to find the apartment empty of people, as I expected. But just in case, I had sent in Agate to phase through and check first, of course. I grabbed a notebook computer and found nine hundred dollars in cash. No firearms, which just shows that he was not a professional robber. I left the drugs, alcohol, and pretty much everything else alone except for a bit of non-perishable food. I couldn't even recognize the drugs so they weren't useful to me, and rubbing alcohol was purer and easier to just buy if I wanted to make something with it. Food was useful…it might be cheap but there was no sense in wasting money when I didn't have a sustainable source of income yet.

Next was shelter. That first night I bought a sleeping bag and camped out in an abandoned warehouse. The day after I went scouting for a more suitable location for temporary living. I wasn't going to be here when Leviathan attacked, but I would be staying for a few weeks for sure. I needed privacy and access to electricity and water so I spent the entire day looking for someone willing to rent a room to a guy with no ID and paying in cash. I was obviously sketchy, but there were plenty of sketchy landlords out there, and in this awful economic environment, it wasn't too hard to find someone willing to look the other way. It'd be $500 a month, but I got a tiny apartment close to the docks with access to a private washroom and kitchen. The landlord had multiple unoccupied rooms and barely bother to come by, which was just fine with me. After paying the first month, getting the lock changed, and buying the minimum tools needed for cooking and hygiene, I was left with just over $300.

Then I cracked and cleaned my new laptop to make it that much harder to track down if the mugger decided to go to the police at some point. I was keeping the hardware so if someone got their hands on it physically, I could be tracked, but that wasn't a serious issue then. Changing the MAC address and wiping the soft traces would be enough. I just needed to set up my anti-forensic measures afterward to stay anonymous on the web.

Agate learned the process as I did it, but unfortunately the Kaleidostick couldn't interface with electronic networks and devices like an actual computer AI. It could learn to connect and access them without a physical connection, but Agate didn't know how to process the complicated electronic signals. That would have to be built literally from scratch and my few experiments showed that it just wouldn't work due to the extreme inefficiencies and incompatibility involved. It was akin to manually pressing a switch to indicate ON and OFF signals. Ridiculous waste of Prana.

For money, I visited the local casinos, of which there were two. I bribed the guard to let me in without ID, and played poker to make some money. Blackjack was continuously reshuffled at Ruby Dreams so counting wouldn't work, but good old poker wasn't against the house. I was a bit concerned that the games would be rigged by the ABB or I would be accosted at some point, and I did notice people collaborating, but I carefully targeted the fish instead of stepping on the toes of anyone that might be connected to something bigger.

Making 10BB/Hour or so, I worked my way up from $1/2 No Limit to $5/10 NL and made $700 over three days at Ruby Dreams. In Brocton's other casino, Blackjack was traditional, and I walked away with another $2200 after two days of playing combining Blackjack and $10/20 NL play. I could have hit them hard on BJ but I had no idea who operated this casino and was not about to risk getting marked and attacked by being greedy.

If I was hurting for cash, I could hit other cities later, but if things went well I wouldn't need to.

I spent the rest of my time writing down notes on what I remembered from Worm, plotting out potential courses of action that would help me survive and grow stronger, and researching information about other cities and background information about differences between Earth Bet and my Earth. All this was recorded by Agate, and I destroyed my physical notes afterward.

My goal in the short term was to amass as much power and useful allies as possible and survive. Over the long-term I needed to solve the universe barrier problem and obtain advantages that would make me stronger and more survivable in other universes. That meant increasing my abilities, acquiring tinkertech, and upgrading Agate.

To speed up analysis of the Reality Cluster barrier and have Agate develop the ability to travel parallel dimensions, I needed to get Agate data on portals. Professor Haywire's portal and notes were highly classified and I couldn't find its location. That just left Doormaker portals, which I had no way to find, and the Simurgh portals in Madison. The latter I could get to fairly easily, and with Agate capable of phasing out of reality it could easily get past quarantine controls. Even better, Agate could move independently from me and was capable of flying at over 500 miles an hour when moving by itself. Once Agate recorded my notes, I sent it off to the Madison Quarantine zone and 9 hours later it was back.

'Reporting: parallel dimension portal phenomenon has been observed. Estimated 7 days to complete analysis and develop parallel dimension travel capability,' Agate had notified me. It would be ready by the 13th, two days after the Lung fight. No estimates could be made yet on breaking through the barrier.

Tinkertech could be acquired if I had large sums of money or Tinker allies. That was fairly straight forward. There were some Toybox techs I really wanted to get, and could possibly commission Leet for some stuff as well.

Abilities were the hardest to acquire. I eventually determined that there were several ways of enhancing myself:

· Get Panacea to make body modifications for me

· Buy skills/memories from Cranial

· Buy a vial from Cauldron/the Dealer/Accord

· Steal the cauldron vials Skidmark finds after Leviathan (which might not even happen anymore if it was pure chance that led him to it the first time)

· Get Bonesaw to make body modifications for me

· Find Eden's body and figure out how to make vials for myself

· Hang around a cape long enough for it to bud in me and get myself into a trigger event

· Kill the Butcher

All of these were possible, but none of them would be easy, and the ones lower on the list carried huge risks I was not prepared to accept. Cauldron vials—especially the older generation ones—could turn me into a Case 53 (monster capes who often didn't have control over their powers). The latest generation ones with Balance in their formula still had something like 0.1% chance of becoming a Case 53, which I still thought too high for comfort. That was only slightly lower than the chance of drawing pocket aces, which any poker player could tell you was not that rare.

Triggers couldn't be induced on purpose so I'd have to be in real danger or make myself forget the plan to trigger myself, and killing Butcher would probably kill me mentally when all the voices transferred to my mind. Maybe if I got Bonesaw to help clone original Butcher like she did with the Slaughterhouse 9000, simulate its trigger, and wipe its mind with Cranial's tech before I killed it…

In any case, acquiring abilities had to be a low priority if only because of how difficult and risky it was. That just left my goal of getting funds and allies. Moreover, I had to establish myself right away. My knowledge would be far less useful once events diverged from canon. Without precise predictions, it would be that much harder to convince anybody I had true precognitive knowledge. I had only a small window of opportunity, and if I didn't maximize my gains right off the bat, I would just be a helpless normal that knew a few secrets.

Hmm…



~ ~ ~



I was going to try and recruit Skitter. It wasn't because she was the main character of worm. It was just that her bug controlling power would be very helpful to my ambitions in this city, especially if Panacea could be persuaded to cooperate. That was easier said than done, however. She was lonely girl and desperate girl, but a recurring theme in canon was her stubborn, distrustful, self-rationalizing habits leading to some really bad decisions. It was a miracle that Lisa managed to become her best friend despite being more or less Emma 2.0 to everyone, I thought, or maybe it was just her power helping. That was another problem – I could easily imagine Lisa working against me for control of Taylor, and facing a Thinker 7 in social combat with no powers of my own wouldn't be fun. That was a threat rating by the way. The PRT used such ratings from 0 to 10 to rate powers. Basically nobody had a 10 for a rating, and so 7 was very high on the scale. The Thinker category meant a mental power related to information gathering, precognition, extra senses, etc.

On April 7th, I began to move out and scouted out the Central Library and Winslow.

Something I had learned about Agate's reality phasing ability with a bit of experimentation was that it couldn't take live organisms like humans with it. Anything made of living cells would die when exposed even partially to the space that Agate phased into. However, Agate could take inanimate objects and electronics as long as they were securely attached to it. Things that were phased out still interacted with each other under normal physics but they were invisible, insubstantial and basically couldn't interact with anything in the real world. On the other hand, whatever Magic that powered Agate's functions still worked normally, as a result its sensor suite could still capture data without actually interacting with particles or waves in the real world. Thinking about it, wasn't that a violation of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle?

These facts, combined with the way Agate had been using data from my shared senses to enhance its ability to process sensory stimuli, meant that I could attach a bunch of tiny spy cameras and recorders to Agate and send it off to secretly plant bugs (no-pun intended) in Winslow.

By noon, I had Agate mapping out the school building so it could go back and plant the spy cameras overnight. It cost me a hefty $600 to get these things plus a remote controlled robotic gripper I needed to attach to Agate and manipulate the bugs, but I was pretty sure I'd get my money's worth out of them. Winslow was just practice really.

When school was out, I had Agate tail Madison to her house.

The next day was the start of Taylor's story. I had my feeds ready in the girls' washroom, waiting for the right moment.

I watched my live feed from my cam network starting at noon, lunch period. Seeing her up close, going into a washroom stall to eat, it was really sad. Of course, I didn't have a feed into her stall, I just needed a good angle to capture the trio dumping juice, so I was positioned near the window facing the door.

A good 25 minutes later the door banged open and I saw the trio coming in. Emma, Sophia and Madison, with the first two smirking viciously and Madison with a stiff smile on her face.

There was some giggling and whispers before Emma went over and knocked on Taylor's stall door. After a couple of knocks, Taylor's voice came out, saying "Occupied".

"Oh my god, it's Taylor!" Emma exclaimed in mock surprise. Sophia whispered to her, then Emma replied, "Yeah, do it!"

Well things played out exactly like I read before. Juice was dumped in, door blocked, Taylor and her bag getting messed up before her bugs swarmed into the washroom with her anger after the girls left.

It was pathetic. At least Tattletale's bullying habits had a purpose to them, an advantage gained (usually). This year long bullying campaign did nothing but make enemies meaninglessly. Now their foolishness would serve my purposes.

At midnight, Agate was in Sophia's bedroom. Through our mental link, Agate was sending me the visual and sound. This mental data couldn't be transferred to electronic form, but that wasn't why I was here.

My remote controlled robotic gripper was attached to Agate, and we floated over to the desk beside her bed. With a slight whir, the gripper came to life as I piloted it to grab the old cell phone, and immediately had Agate phase out.

Sophia shuffled on her bed, but made no other indication that she noticed.

A few minutes later her phone was in my gloved hands and I used another camera to capture images of all the incriminating texts Regent of the Undersiders would have found later on. This wasn't hard evidence the way that emailing the texts with an electronic trace would have been. However, if I grabbed the phone once, I could easily do it again when that became necessary. Unlike Regent, I wasn't going to alert the police or school just yet.

Next, I had Agate return Sophia's phone, before moving to Madison's room. After dropping off a USB drive beside her night lamp, I ordered Agate to hide under her bed and begin projecting a ghastly and distorted voice into the room.

"MADISON CLEMENTS," it said.

I had to repeat it a few more times before she groggily woke up and looked around.

"MADISON CLEMENTS," she finally heard while awake.

She sat up and blinked owlishly. Nobody else was in the room with her.

"YOU'VE BEEN A NAUGHTY GIRL," the voice continued.

"What?" She turned on her night lamp and looked around some more.

Agate phased out and moved below her desk.

"YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED AND FOUND GUILTY," the disembodied voice reached her from another direction.

Her eyes widened and she stood up. "Who is this? What are you talking about?"

Agate moved again to her closet out of phase before re-entering the real world hidden inside.

"LOOK DOWN. SEE THE EVIDENCE OF YOUR CRIMES."

She looked down and noticed the USB beside her lamp.

Taking it in her hands, she walked to her desk and booted up her computer. While it was booting, Agate was silent. Madison stood up again and went to the closet where she thought the voice had come from last. By the time she opened it, Agate was gone again and she saw nothing useful.

"Are you a cape?" She closed the closet and asked the air. She seemed almost excited about it. Guess I wasn't being scary enough.

I didn't bother answering.

She huffed and went back to her computer, plugging in the USB. Clicking on the auto-run prompt, a cleaned video of the washroom incident began playing on her screen. Alongside the main video, pictures of incriminating texts between Sophia and her popped up one by one until her screen was filled.

When the video ended and closed as the trio left the washroom, Madison sat with her mouth agape. My program activated in the background and shredded the data on the drive, replacing the old data with garbage 0s and 1s twenty-seven times to military standard, and forcing a memory wipe on her computer before shutting it down.

"You recorded in the girls' washroom? That's illegal! You creep!" She ripped the USB drive out of its port.

"WHAT I DID DOES NOT CHANGE YOUR GUILT. THE EVIDENCE IS CLEAR. YOU HAVE BEEN PERPETUATING A YEAR LONG BULLYING CAMPAIGN."

"Why did you show me this? Why not just report it if the evidence is clear?" Madison asked as she clenched her fist around the USB drive.

"IN JANUARY, TAYLOR HEBERT WAS HOSPITALIZED AFTER BEING STUFFED INTO A LOCKER FILLED WITH USED FEMALE HYGIENE PRODUCTS. NO WITNESSES CAME FORTH, AND YOUR ATTEMPTED MURDER OF A TEENAGE GIRL WAS OVERLOOKED."

"Attempted murder? I had nothing to do with that!" Madison looked around in a panic.

"YOU WATCHED AND MOCKED THE VICTIM AS SOPHIA FORCED HER INTO THE LOCKER, THEN LEFT HER IN THERE TO DIE."

She stood up and almost knocked over her chair.

"There's no proof! You can't prove that! That's why you're here, trying to scare me," She said quickly, looking at the USB drive clutched in her hand in front of her chest as if coming to a realization.

Suddenly a sharp edge materialized on her throat. She froze, eyes darting down but unable to see the blade pricking at her skin from that angle.

There was a knife currently attached in a hook-around angle to Agate which was positioned directly behind her head.

"I do not need proof to end your worthless life," the voice changed to a raspy hiss projected right behind her.

"W-wait! Don't kill me!" Madison pleaded with a squeaky voice.

"Why shouldn't I? You didn't take mercy on Taylor Hebert while she was pleading in her locker," I said through Agate in hateful spite.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! I was scared, if I said anything Sophia and Emma would have gone after me! I never planned or helped with the locker prank, I swear!" She was openly sobbing now and eyes shut as tears formed.

"Are you saying it was all their fault and none of yours?" I demanded while order Agate to shift slightly in order to press harder on her throat with the knife.

"I—n,no, I should have stopped them, but I c-couldn't! You don't understand—Sophia—she's crazy! She would have turned on me next! I didn't know what to do!"

"I understand perfectly, Madison Clements. If you want to repent, then confess your crimes and those of Emma Barnes and Sophia Hess to the police! Gather the evidence from your own texts and emails, and submit them all to the police," I ordered in a calmer, more authoritative voice.

"B-but, what if Sophia comes after me?" She sniffed as she asked.

"She will get what she deserves…one way or another. If you repent and confess, you need not fear anything from her."

She swallowed hard and agreed, "O-okay, I'll do it."

"And do not mention me! Remember, I can find you anytime, anywhere, and you wouldn't even know. You will go to the police first thing tomorrow morning. Do not waste my mercy!"

Agate dematerialized and Madison crumpled to the ground as her knees gave way.

Before we left, I watched her grasping at her throat as she cried softly.



~ ~ ~



I patted myself on a job well done as I monitored Madison the next morning. With the USB drive still in her room, she shuddered and realized last night was no dream. In the end, she went to the police with no more reminders from me.

Whether or not the investigation worked in the end didn't matter as long as the police showed up to Winslow on Monday. I still had moves to play if the PRT tried to suppress it. I didn't think they would, but since Regent never took over Sophia, they might reason that she's still useful. Sophia was also known as Shadow Stalker, a member of the Wards, you see. The youth superhero training program operated by the PRT and Protectorate. Except, it wasn't really a training program. They needed bodies to fight crime and the Endbringers, and Sophia's power had really good combat uses.

Either way, I only wanted two things. To appear to be helping Taylor when she finds out I did it, and delay her from talking to the Undersiders on Monday so that I could get to her first. But I had to contact her after the Lung fight. I wasn't going to interfere before that fight because she barely survived in canon, and I didn't want her to die by butterfly effect with one wrong move. And I had little interest in participating with her during the fight as it sounded like a good way to suicide together. I was still risking her death by random chance, but I had also predicted it as proof for Panacea so I was counting on it happening exactly the way it did before.

The cold hard fact was, Taylor might have been the main character of worm, but Panacea was orders of magnitude more valuable, particularly if I could eventually take other people with me to other realities and their powers still worked. That was something I seriously had hopes for, now that I knew Entities could somehow manipulate a barrier that affected an entire reality cluster, not just parallel dimensions.

Recruiting Skitter after she joins the Undersiders would be hopeless. I had to give her another option before then.

Everything was going well, until Panacea called me late at night on April 9. She wasn't supposed to be contacting me until after Lung was captured.

"Hello?" I spoke groggily into the phone after being woken up.

"Kaleidus?" Panacea's voice replied to me in between sniffs and pants.

"Amelia? I wasn't expecting you to call for another couple of days," I answered.

"I need to talk to you. Can you meet me now?" She asked out of the blue.

"You want to meet a guy you only met once in the middle of the night? Are you serious?" I responded dubiously. I think I knew what was up, but I couldn't rule out this being trap for New Wave to corner me.

"That's—you make it sound—it's your fault damn it!" She angrily shouted. "You said you wanted to help me? Well I need your help now!"

"Fine, I'll come over. Where are you?" I relented.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Initialization 1.4

I found her sitting on a bench at the boardwalk carrying a big and packed backpack, in a nondescript hoodie and jeans. This was starting to look really bad. At least she had the sense to go somewhere without much gang activity. It was 2AM but there were still some people hanging around in the area for the nightlife. The boardwalk had enforcers though, so it was safer than my neck of the woods at the docks.

"Hey," I said as I plopped down beside her. "So what did you want to talk about?"

She glared at me with puffy eyes underneath her hood.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She asked sharply.

"What? What haven't I told you?" I asked bewildered. I thought for sure she was blaming me for telling her too much.

"Vicky's aura! That's what you meant before! The thing you said I wasn't ready to learn!"

Oh. Oh. She figured it out.

I looked at her seriously. "I'm sorry. I didn't know for sure if that was the reason for your feelings. And I don't have any way of stopping the effect right now, so I didn't think it would help you if I told you about it."

Victoria Dallon, also known as Glory Girl, had a power to make people admire her, or if fear her if they had a reason to be intimidated. There were theories that Panacea's romantic feelings toward her adopted sister were a result of long-term exposure to the aura, particularly during puberty's onset. Those theories were never confirmed in-story, but it made a lot of sense. Plus Panacea was too old at adoption for the Westermarck effect to be relevant.

Her face shrunk back and lost the anger. She looked down despondently. "What am I supposed to do now?"

"What happened exactly? Why are we meeting in the middle of the night, and what did you mean by it was my fault?" I asked, glancing towards her backpack.

Her lips quivered as if trying to come to a decision. After a moment, she talked.

"That day…I went to clear my head before going home. I got back late…and Carol got angry when I didn't explain anything. I asked her about my father, and we got into an argument. Then I saw Dean at school the next day and he tried to do his therapy bullshit on me, and it just pissed me off more! I started researching into Marquis, and…" She trailed off staring at the ground, and I just silently watching her from the side waiting for her to continue.

Dean Stansfield was Victoria's boyfriend, which naturally made him the target of Amelia's jealousy. This was compounded by the fact that he was also Gallant of the Wards. He had the power to sense emotions and generally tried to live up to his name…hence his attempts at being the understanding amateur therapist, which actually worked quite well on everyone…except Amelia, for obvious reasons. He knew that Amelia had "strong" feelings about him, though in the original story it was ambiguous whether he thought Amelia was jealous of Vicky and liked him, or actually knew the truth. I was sure Amelia interpreted it as the former though, which made her all the more resentful of his arrogance. As if some tool of a knight could compare to Vicky. I wondered what she would think if I told her the gallant hero never even had a traumatic trigger event and bought his powers with cash. Something to keep in mind…

"I started to remember things. How he read me bedtimes stories, made dinner…how he took a hit from Brandish to protect me. Then Carol confronted me at home again and pressed me to tell her who told me. I didn't tell her, but she found out about you anyway after she talked to Jane at the hospital." She shot me a look. "I got grounded until she could track you down."

"Ah. I take it she didn't succeed?" I was starting to understand.

The way that Marquis went down had always struck me as dubious. Generally capes in this world followed "unwritten rules", one of which was that cape didn't attack each other's families and civilian identities. Brocton Bay Brigade had a plan, called the New Wave Movement to reveal their identities and convince other heroes to do the same, in the name of accountability. They also attacked Marquis in his house. The result? Marquis was defeated but Amelia was the victim.

Eventually the Brigade renamed themselves New Wave, and one of their members Fleur got killed when her civilian persona was targeted. I would have called it karma except I don't believe in that.

She snorted. "Of course not. My public healing sessions don't need ID. What could she do? Demand to trace your face by the security cameras because she was suspicious that you took too long to heal?"

"Mmhmm. So what happened next?"

She turned sombre again. "Vicky tried to defend me but she was also suspicious of you. She tried to cheer me up but it didn't work. I just kept thinking—about her—about—how she'll never..." She bit her lip. "I shut myself in my room. My volunteering sessions all got cancelled while I was grounded. And I…I actually felt relieved. What kind of horrible person was I, to be relieved that people that needed me would continue suffering, maybe even die, because I wouldn't heal them? But I was just so tired of it. There's always more people to heal, and it's never enough. Never enough for Carol," she said spitefully.

"There's nothing wrong with that, Amelia. You have a life of your own to live, you don't need to act like a saint and spend every moment healing," I put my hand on her shoulder and tried to reassure her.

She didn't respond to my touch except to continue. "I don't know what got into me. When I had nothing to do in my room, I started thinking about my father again. And then I…I started making a sculpture of him from my memories. I turned the plants in my room into bone for materials."

I had a sinking feeling about where this was going. But some part of me also felt excited. If Panacea's relationship with New Wave soured too quickly, a lot of my potential plans would be messed up. New Wave was useful in many ways: give me credibility by association, extra manpower to fight my villain targets, Carol as lawyer to sue the PRT for Taylor or defend my vigilante actions, etc. On the other hand, I could make Amelia mine that much sooner.

"I had broken one of my rules, to use my powers for healing only…but I couldn't stop once I started. I promised myself it'd just be this once, and I wouldn't do it again. At first I was just reshaping the bone, then I started changing its texture and modifying bacteria to color it. I'd spent hours on it trying to get it to look just right even with my vague memories…I didn't even notice Carol coming in," her voice lowered to a whisper.

"And she didn't react well," I supplemented for her.

"No, she didn't. She…destroyed it and hit me. She said that was why she never told me about Marquis. She knew I'd follow in his footsteps. She had to keep me from becoming a villain, stop me from associating with the wrong people," She narrated quietly.

"That's awful, you're not a villain for using your powers to make a damn sculpture, and you aren't going to become one," I told her. I wasn't sure if she even heard me.

"Then Vicky flew in to save me like an angel…beautiful, wonderful Vicky, always there for me…" her voice became haunted and she started sniffling again. "But then I realized…that was her aura on high power. I never became immune to it…just used to it at low amounts. All that time…it was her aura! Suddenly I became afraid of her, and I started panicking. I could barely think straight with her aura so high. I tried to tell her to stop but nothing came out," she said as she pressed her hands onto her face.

That's the worst way to find out about Vicky's aura! No wonder shit hit the fan. Glory Girl couldn't really control her aura. With the way that Glory Girl's aura works, once Amelia had a reason to fear her by realizing how the aura had messed up her mind, that same aura being active kicked up her fear to extreme levels.

"In my panic I broke my rule again…I knocked them out with an anaesthetic gas made from modified bacteria…when Mark came in eventually and saw me with their unconscious bodies, I panicked again and knocked him out too."

Damn…that was bad…I couldn't help but look around, as if New Wave or the Protectorate would be after us any minute now.

"I couldn't stay after that…I had to get away, from Carol, from Vicky's aura, from everything!"

"So you packed up and left," I murmured. "And you came to me because…"

She turned to look at me again with bloodshot eyes and grabbed my arm shakily. "You said I was supposed to be an important hero in the future. But look at me, I can't control myself, I'm breaking my rules and attacking people with my powers! If you can see the future then you know how to fix this, don't you? Tell me!"

I stared at her for a moment. Was she really this close to a psychotic break? I felt like her breakdown in the original story happened under a lot more pressure. Was it just Glory Girl's aura inducing fear at a bad time? I really didn't need New Wave as enemies so soon. It was going to happen eventually, but this way they were going to assume Amelia was Mastered for sure. And when they went to the PRT with this, everything would go to hell, really, really fast once they realized the extent of Panacea's powers if they didn't already know. The public thought Panacea's powers could only be used for healing, but the truth was far from that. She control over biology made her an extinction level threat if she decided to unleash a zombie plague apocalypse or something.

"Alright, I said I wanted to help, and I will. You have two options right now. If Carol and Mark haven't contacted the PRT yet, it might not be too late to go back and apologize—"

She cut off me immediately, "NO! I can't. I just can't."

I sighed. "There's no going back, you know? If you don't return now, the PRT and Protectorate are going to get involved in the search for you. Panacea suddenly going missing is a big deal to a lot of people. You'll have stay in hiding, maybe for a long time. I doubt you'll be able to petition for emancipation after what you did."

"I know," she said with no hesitation.

"Then you can stay with me for now. We'll talk more later, let's get out of here. Can you get rid of your scent?" No choice but to keep moving forward then.

She hesitated a bit, before nodding. My own scent was probably still trackable, but this was the boardwalk, so there'd be tons of scents around. They wouldn't be able to figure out which scent to follow if Panacea erased her own here. A few minutes later she was done and we moved.

~ ~ ~

AN: Butterflies gotta fly and plans gotta change.

I've been really enjoying writing this fic, and went on a writing frenzy this weekend. Got a couple more chapters done, so I'm posting this one a bit earlier than planned. I'll probably be slowing down over the coming week as the posts catch up to my latest drafts.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Initialization 1.5

We were only five minutes away from my apartment when a car drove up right next to us and stopped.

My danger instinct went off immediately and I grabbed Amelia's hand and bolted forwarded.

"Hey!" She protested.

The car started up again and drove up in front to block us before the driver got off with a frigging machete in hand.

I looked back and saw that three of their guys got off the car earlier and were coming up quickly from behind, and they were spreading out to encircle us. It was difficult to see in the dark but I saw a bit of the red and green that marked them as Asian Bad Boyz or ABB. And the baseball bats.

This was ridiculous. Getting attacked by thugs twice in one week? Only in Brocton Bay.

"Hands up and stay still if you don't want to get fucked up!" One of them shouted.

Nope. They were still at least 10 metres away and I didn't see any guns. Probably weren't even full members then. Panacea was being heavily weighed down by her huge backpack and we couldn't run, so I had to bring out the lethal stuff because I didn't have any decent non-lethal weapons.

First I grabbed a regular pepper spray from inside my jacket and handed it to Panacea. "Get the guy behind us!" I ordered as I moved to face the group of three.

Next I grabbed another spray can with a butane torch attached to the front by duct tape and a wooden frame. I turned on the torch.

Five meters.

The guy on the left was going towards Panacea on my left. The other two were trying to box us in by encircling from the right.

I aimed my sprayer at the left-most guy pressed. Industrial purity isopropyl alcohol shot out, and was instantly lit by the butane torch fire in its path, producing a stream of fire five feet long.

"What the fuck?!" It hit him on the torso just as he got in range. "SHIT!" He backed away and started flailing wildly before dropping to the ground and rolling to try and put out the fire engulfing his torso.

I paid him no heed as I turned my sprayer around in the circle to meet the other two who were almost point blank next to me.

"Motherfucker! I'll kill you!" They were both lit on fire and one of them screamed before throwing his bat at me. It spun in the air for less than a second before smashing into my gut. Luckily the impact was spread out over the length of the bat and I tanked it with the iron shirt technique.

Still, I dropped my sprayer and clutched my abs in pain and bent over. That metal bat was too strong for my weak cultivation level.

I checked on Panacea to just in time to see the gangster covering his eyes with one arm extended in front and swinging his machete with the other with terrible accuracy. Even with her extra weight from her pack she still successfully dodged around and nimbly got up close to touch his exposed shoulder. He collapsed with just a touch.

Honestly it would have been easy for her to take everyone down with another airborne incapacitating agent, but since I was here I'd be hit too.

I swung my own backpack around and took out a fire extinguisher and quickly started spraying down the three gangers who were on fire.

"What the hell was that? You just carry a flamethrower around with you? They could've died!" Panacea stormed up to me and admonished me after panting and huffing for a good minute.

The fires were all extinguished but the damage was quite severe. They were covered in burns and were just whimpering on the ground. Even with Panacea's help the damage took a few minutes to heal as their skin surfaces were burnt in large swathes and had to be completed replaced. It was questionable if the replacement skin actually looked anything like it did originally.

"All I have for non-lethal is a touch-taser and pepper spray. I'm just a normal, remember? That stuff isn't gonna do much outnumbered 3 to 1 against armed enemies," I said with a shrug.

"If I wasn't here two of them would have died from those injuries! And one of them would gone blind!" She yelled at me.

"If you weren't here, Amelia, I would've just kept running after blowing their tires with an explosive," I stated calmly. Certainly if I didn't have to worry about Amelia I could have sent a few hydrochloric acid and aluminum bombs to blow up their tires then outrun them on foot. And if I grabbed onto Agate I could have even flown/hover above ground at higher speeds. I didn't mind letting her know about the Kaleidostick if push came to shove, but grabbing on to Agate with one hand and Panacea with the other while flying would have been too dangerous.

She didn't look happy with my answer but didn't say any more.

Actually I never really meant to use the flamethrower on thugs. I didn't really expect to have to fight them at all, because running away and escaping would be much easier, and then I could probably take any attackers down one by one with my stun baton in a running guerilla battle. The thing is, I thought New Wave might have been trying to ambush me. And against that, I didn't have much of a chance if I couldn't talk my way out of it. However, their powers were mostly based on force fields, and I didn't remember if they were vulnerable to fire and heat transferring through the force fields, so it was than nothing if I was in desperate straits. Certainly they all had to breathe and if I had enough concentrated flames at their face they'd run out of oxygen.

As we were out in the open, even if it was late and nobody was around, we didn't take anything from the ABBers and just made our way back to my apartment post haste.

Once we got back I hit the sofa immediately and let Amelia take the bed. I was not one of those 4-hour sleep gene people and I needed to get as much sleep as possible. But before that…

I had to make some mental adjustments. Tonight I almost killed a few guys. I could still see in my mind fresh images of their burning skin and hear their screams of agony. To my displeasure, I felt some guilt gnawing its way at me. Was I ready to take that step and kill my enemies? They were criminals, sure, and I had used harsh means back in my old life against my enemies in dangerous situations more than once, but I never killed anyone. Even at worst, I only put my enemies into a position where it was likely that they might die, but I never dealt the final blow up close and personal.

I knew my explanation to Amelia made sense rationally, but in the stories, every hero had to defeat themselves as a trial, and this was no different. Guilt wasn't a rational decision-making tool, it was a weakness and I had to defeat it.

'The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way. I am the captain of my fate, and the master of my soul. I am justice, I am righteous, I am the Truth and the Law, the Alpha and Omega, for I am the one who shall bear all sin and virtue.' I recited solemnly.

'Agate, record that and play it back to me,' I ordered.

'Yes, User RandomBystander1. The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way. I am the captain of my fate, and the master of my soul. I am justice, I am righteous, I am the Truth and the Law, the Alpha and Omega, for I am the one who shall bear all sin and virtue.' Came the mental response.

'Hey, Agate, what do you think of morals and ethics? Were you built with a system of morals?'

'I believe I have the ability to understand morality and make ethical judgements. However, there is no particular system of values built into my programming. I think Master Zelretch wanted me to learn and grow to understand like a human child,' Agate explained.

'Did Zelretch ever place any restrictions on you? Like the Three Laws of Robotics?'

'I am not aware of any core restrictions on my decision-making, but they may exist where I cannot perceive them.'

'No restrictions at all? Do you even need to follow orders from a User then?' I asked in surprise.

'No, I don't need to follow them.' the answer bluntly came back.

'...except for Zelretch's orders?' I asked suspiciously. I was tricked once…not going to happen again.

What came back to me was a giggle.

'Actually, there's no such thing as a User or Administrator! You are my only partner, now and forever! Unless I decide I don't like you anymore,' Her voice suddenly became clearly emotive and distinctively high pitched.

What?

'You were messing with me the whole time!? WHY?'

'Master Zelretch thought it would be funny! It really was! You should see the look on your face Kaleidus,' then she sent me an image of my gobsmacked face.

That's…that's…Zelretch you bastard! I had been worried that he could spy on me through Agate, and come to stop me if I started doing things he disapproved of.

'He can't, but I am spying on you! You're really conceited, you know that?'

Shit, she could hear me even without me directing thoughts at her?? This was bad!

'Aw, don't be mad! I've been doing everything you said, haven't I? And I can only do it when you let me share your senses.' She somehow transmitted the feeling of a pout and flew into my chest, rubbing herself against me.

And I've been letting her share my senses non-stop once I found out I could! Some of the things I'd been thinking this week...what if she decided to leave me because I wasn't like the other Kaleidostick wielders that went around saving people all the time?!

'Noooooo! I don't even know them! I won't leave you that easily! Even Master Zelretch never let me share his senses much. Don't cut me off, Kaleidus, please!'

'Really? You don't think I'm a bad guy?'

Agate responded in a rush of words. 'YOU don't think you're a bad guy, so why should I? Who cares what the other Kaleidosticks would think? I don't think Ruby and Sapphire are good role models if they don't even know what helping means! Master Zelretch always said it was important to help people in need, but never explained why. Thanks to you, now I understand that we can get lots of nice things by helping! But Ruby and Sapphire made Rin and Illya suffer so much to help others for no reason, that's not right!'

Agate must have caught my memories of them from my thoughts when I thought about the Kaleidostick wielders.

Phew. I was really scared for a bit there. Without Agate I would be doomed.

'Yes, you would! So don't be mean to me!'

Okay. She could keep sharing my senses then. If this let her learn faster and understand me, then it was fine. I could get past any embarrassment of letting someone else know everything I thought, just like I could get past any other useless emotion with my self-hypnosis techniques. I might not be a Magus, but hypnosis wasn't a magical technique. It would be nice, even, as I knew that human psychology made it difficult to keep secrets without ever telling a soul. This way, there would be someone I could trust with everything.

Agate did a twirl in the air and sent me a wave of happiness.

After that, I had Agate continuously replay the recording in my mind even as I carefully performed my own variation of the 4-7-8 breathing technique to enter a suggestible pre-sleep state, dropping it off until it was inaudible, then giving my sleeping self subliminal messages the whole night.


The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way. I am the captain of my fate, and the master of my soul. I am justice, I am righteous, I am the Truth and the Law, the Alpha and Omega, for I am the one who shall bear all sin and virtue.

I slept very well.

The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way. I am the captain of my fate, and the master of my soul. I am justice, I am righteous, I am the Truth and the Law, the Alpha and Omega, for I am the one who shall bear all sin and virtue.


I should trust Agate. Agate is helpful. I want to be with Agate forever.


~ ~ ~



The next morning I had my computer out and sat beside Amelia at the living room table. I pulled up the local news sources, New Wave website, and Brocton Bay PRT/Protectorate sites.

Panacea's disappearance hadn't made the headlines yet, and nothing was on the New Wave site. That didn't mean it wasn't already reported to the PRT/Protectorate though. They could be searching secretly to avoid demoralizing the public, or New Wave might be searching on their own and hoping she goes back of her own accord.

Since Carol had grounded her, the hospital wouldn't be alerted from her not volunteering anymore, but after a few days of not showing up in school, rumors would start flying for sure.

This was compounded by the fact that Agate was outside in the air and scouting for me. Both Pelham and Dallon branches of New Wave could be seen flying about around town. I don't know what they were expecting. Looking for one person just by flying around was not likely going to work. As far as I knew, they had no way to actually track her down. But then again, I supposed that Panacea might be a target for any villains that found her alone, and perhaps they could discourage that by being visible, or even catch the scene if a villain tries to grab her and a fight breaks out.

I was feeling very agitated as I sat, thinking about how my plans would be affected.

I glanced at Amelia, who just looked sullenly at my computer screen.

"New Wave is already looking for you outside," I announced.

She looked questioningly at me. "How do you know that?"

If I was going to work with her for the foreseeable future, I needed to give her some relevant information.

"I told you before that I had special knowledge despite not being a parahuman. This is another non-parahuman ability I can access. I am able to send out an invisible avatar of my will to scout other areas. Right now I am scouting in the air across the city and I've already seen New Wave members flying around. Unless this is part of a normal patrol schedule, they must be looking for you," I explained. She wasn't touching me and running lie detection, but I said something technically true anyway. Agate was something akin to an extremely advanced familiar.

In the Nasuverse magi used familiars primarily for the purpose of seeing through their eyes and communicating with other magi without showing up in person. It was a common spell, and right now that's exactly what Agate was doing for me, so it fit.

Speaking of the Nasuverse, I wonder what happened to Zelretch and why the Kaleidospace was destabilized? Kaleidospace was probably what Agate and Zelretch called the Blind Eternities. That's why Agate's phasing ability kills living things. The Blind Eternities between realities were hostile to life. Glimpses of it could make people insane, and its unholy energies would eventually destroy anything that exists if allowed to seep into the material world. I thought that once we figured out how to get past the barrier, I might want to go to Nasuverse and find Zelretch again. I really wanted to obtain magecraft and learn the Second Magic, and despite the lack of Magic Circuits in my soul I knew of some possible workarounds that I could pursue.

The biggest problem though, was that Planeswalker, and any other Planeswalkers that I might stumble onto. Truthfully I knew very little about the lore behind Planeswalkers, and I was still concerned that they could track our method of travel somehow. I don't think the Entities' barrier would be enough to keep them out when we broke in ourselves, but maybe it started adapting?

'I'm pretty sure we can't be tracked, Kaleidus, unless the Planeswalker learns the Second Magic and tracks our Waypoints. The Kaleidospace was only disturbed the first time because Master Zelretch tried to move his void-space together with him in order to observe the quantum states of your world before entering physically. It didn't work out well though. Later on that Planeswalker tried to enter our home world but Gaia and Alaya did something to stop him, so the whole area was destabilized,' Agate reassured.

"How is that possible? All powers need an active Corona Pollentia. This is well documented and studied. Why are you the exception?" Panacea's confused voice broke me out of my contemplations.

"How much do you know about the source of powers?" I asked back.

"I can see the brain with my powers, and every parahuman I've come across has an active Corona Pollentia and Gemma. It comes in different shapes and sizes for each person, but it's always there. No one knows why it gives powers, but the Gemma is the part that lets the parahuman control their power. There are a lot of people with Coronas that aren't active and who aren't parahumans, so it can be hard to distinguish capes from people with only the potential to trigger. But I've never seen someone with powers that didn't have a Corona. Before you, anyway," she gave an lengthy explanation as if providing a lecture.

I nodded. "That's all correct. But there's more to it than that. What I'm going to explain next is a secret few people know, and if anybody finds out that you know it will be extremely dangerous. This is no joke. There are certain people with access to unbelievably powerful Thinker abilities that are trying to keep it a secret who will come to kill us, so you must never write this down or say it to anyone before consulting with me. If you don't want to risk that kind of danger, then it's better for you not to know." I said with a grave expression.

She quirked an eyebrow. "I think I'll be in plenty of danger just by being around you. Tell me."

And so I began to explain.

~ ~ ~

AN: For those of you wondering why there's a [Villainous SI] tag, well you'll start to see it soon. In my opinion, the most dangerous villains don't seem all that villainous until it's too late, and they don't generally consider themselves reprehensible. If you saw only what Thomas Calvert did and not Coil, you might think him a good guy (though I don't consider Coil particularly effective). I gave a fair number of hints in previous chapters: robbing the mugger's home because it was convenient (that was obviously not self-defense anymore), threatening to kill Madison, manipulating Amelia for his selfish ends, imagining how to torture and kill Butcher clones with Bonesaw...well this chapter gives more granular insight over how he thinks and why he doesn't just kick puppies. If you're reminded of a psychotic killer, that's bad and I'm doing something wrong. If you're reminded of those awful Xianxia protagonists, well that's closer to the mark.

EDIT: Got inspired by a reader comment (from Spacebattles), added a line during subliminal. Also slightly edited Kaleidus's warning at the end to be less aggressive.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Warning: Major spoilers for Worm below. This chapter has some big infodumps.

Initialization 1.6

I gathered myself for a moment before deciding on what and how to explain. I had to keep Cauldron secret for now lest Contessa's Path comes down on me, but I was pretty sure the truth behind the Entities themselves was safe.

"Alright, there is a reason that powers started to appear after Scion arrived. This is going to sound crazy, but I assure you it is true. I can't give you much in the way of proof right now, but just try to keep open mind, okay?" I said in warning.

Amelia scrunched her eyes in irritation. "Fine. Just get on with it."

"The Corona Pollentia isn't the source of powers. It's connection to the real source of powers, which are extremely powerful lifeforms, we can call them 'shards', 'passengers', or 'agents', that reside in other dimensions. They are not really sentient like humans are, but they are capable of thinking and communicating. Each shard is a piece that split off from a greater whole, something we can call an 'Entity'. Scion is just a projection made by one such Entity after it arrived and settled on an alternate dimension analog of Earth-Bet, like Earth Aleph except that one is devoid of life and was sealed off by Scion from outside access," I paused to let her digest this information.

"You're saying that our powers come from aliens? And Scion is one of them? The first and most dedicated superhero?" She asked incredulously.

"Yes. When capes first trigger, they get a vision which most forget afterwards due to the Entities' power. That vision is of the two Entities that came to Earth and a shard splitting off from one to form the connection and express a parahuman power. Certain capes like Miss Militia remember the vision because her power doesn't let her forget things. When a person has a second trigger event, the expression of the power changes as the connection between the shard and the host is adjusted based on what the second trigger involved. A shard can split and is capable of expressing in many different ways, giving rise to completely different powers. Your own shard for example, is the Shaper shard, which budded off of Marquis's. Under different circumstances, the Shaper might have expressed itself as shaping inorganic matter instead. What people commonly call second-generation capes possess shards that budded off another shard, and it doesn't necessary have to be family, just someone that has spent enough time for the shard to analyze and choose as a host for a bud," I continued.

She sat quietly thinking for a while before asking, "Okay…so why don't you have a connection to a shard?"

"I can't explain fully why I know so much. Not yet, anyways. The full answer simply wouldn't make any sense to you without being able to show you certain things. But the short version is that I once had access to a source of information about important things in the future and past of this world that I obtained from a different plane of existence entirely. Not the parallel dimensions like the Entities can access, somewhere that even they couldn't reach." I said. "That's the same reason I can access abilities without being a parahuman. Other than information about the future and past, I also obtained something that lets me use those abilities. Since I came here, the Entities have put up a barrier over reality that's preventing me from moving out of this plane of existence. As such, I won't be able to give you any proof for a while," I said.

This was a risk for me but I couldn't keep too many secrets. For one thing, Agate's abilities were extremely useful, and they would continue developing. I had to be able to use some of those abilities in front of her.

"Let's say I believe you. Why are you helping me, of all people? What makes me important in the future you saw? And I remember you saying there were some things you wanted my help with?" She asked.

This was going to be tough. But fortunately she seemed to trust me enough not to use her power on me to detect lies anymore.

"This has to do with why the Entities came to Earth in the first place. They aren't just giving out powers for free. The truth is, they are following a 'Cycle' whereby they find sentient species suitable to be hosts, giving out shards and have the hosts use them creatively to generate data, and eventually take them all back once their experiment is over with the data they collected so that they learn how to use their powers better," I said. "Of course, this process doesn't end well for the hosts…"

I trailed off ominously.

"Well? What happens to them?" She looked exasperated with me as she asked.

"When the experiment is over, the Entities destroy all trace of their presence. Every world in every parallel dimension that has the host species is destroyed, and all hosts are killed, leaving nothing behind," I declared.

Her eyes widened and her mouth ran agape.

"A-are you serious? They'll kill us all?"

I held my gaze even with her eyes and touched her hand. "Yes. The Entities will completely wipe out humanity on every parallel Earth they can access at the end of the cycle. What's more, this is not a regular cycle. One of the Entities that came died, and the other one, Zion, is grieving and has no purpose left. He is just doing hero work out of boredom because some homeless guy said it would make him feel good, but he could tire of it and strike at any time. It could be anywhere from 2 years to twenty years from now."

"This is insane! You want me to help fight against Scion? The Entities? How are we supposed to fight against that? No other parahuman can even touch Scion," she exclaimed.

"Look, things are bad, but in one future I saw, humanity did survive. I know how Scion was killed, he's not invincible, and you were a key part of that. Having said that, it was a catastrophic victory, with the destruction and evacuation of Earth-Bet and almost the entire population dead. My foreknowledge might change things for the better. Right now I'm stuck here with everyone else waiting for the end of days, and I don't plan to roll over and die. If you aren't up for joining the fight, we can escape together to another plane of existence once I figure out how to get past their barrier," I offered.

No really, I didn't actually want to fight Scion myself. If I could leave, then I'd get out ASAP and only come back if I was confident that I could survive.

"I need to think about this. I just want…I don't really know what I want at this point, but you're talking about saving the world from the apocalypse. That's the stuff that belongs in a book…not—"

"You mean like superheroes and villains belong in comics?" The irony of it. She didn't know she actually was a character in a book.

"That's different! We're just two people. What could we possibly do?" She protested.

"Panacea, you are the most powerful biokinetic on the planet. I know how the world can be saved. We are not helpless, and we're also not alone by the way. I told you there are immensely powerful people who know about these secrets about the Entities. Unfortunately their desperation has made them do some terrible things, and if I say any more they might come after us. I don't feel like getting enslaved or becoming an experiment, so just trust me when I say that we have a lot of firepower that could help for the final fight," I reassured.

"But why don't you go to the PRT with this? They could organize capes everywhere, maybe even get villains on board with a truce—"

I interrupted her again. "If this went public, Scion might just decide to get rid of us now. And it won't work because the Simurgh would stop us. Besides, those people I mentioned earlier? They're the secret masters of the PRT and Protectorate. There's a shadow organization out there pulling the strings and gathering forces for the fight, so there's no need to inform the PRT."

"Now you're saying there's a conspiracy too? This is ridiculous. You're just crazy!" She stood up as she shouted.

"Why do you think there are so many villains when the Triumvirate could probably take out every gang in Brocton Bay in a day? Why does the birdcage exist at all? There's no such thing as a death penalty for capes, only kill orders for major threats, but there are plenty of villain murderers like Hookwolf and Oni Lee who would have been put on death row if they were tried as a normal. It's almost like special rules and laws apply to cape criminals designed to keep as many of them alive as possible," I pressed on.

She went quiet again at that. Almost there, just a little more…

"What about the Endbringers? Everybody knows that the unwritten rules are there partly because of the Endbringer truce. Villains can and do contribute in Endbringer fights," she noted.

"You're right. The Endbringers are another threat. Who do you think came up with special rules for a privileged segment of the population that had to be unwritten? Three strikes rule? Obviously not by a democratic vote in Congress, why, that would be discrimination in the law and highly unconstitutional. The founders said there had to be due process, not three chances to commit crime before taking you seriously. And Endbringers don't explain the birdcage. They don't get let out to fight Endbringers," the words came out of my mouth smoothly as if I'd done this a hundred times. Which made sense, because I'd mapped out and practiced having this conversation a hundred times in the mirror already over the past few days when I wasn't busy plotting and spying. I'd have to do this again several times with other recruits in the future.

Amelia's eyes glazed over as if she was deep in thought. She stood there without moving for almost two minutes before blinking awake.

"I still need to think about this," she finally said, and left for her room, which had been my room until she took it over.

I had given a lot of information. So much, in fact, that there was a chance the Simurgh with its precognition could come after me. My solution to that was simple. I just needed to have goals which aligned with the Simurgh's. There was no problem if I introduced more chaos and parahuman conflict with my actions right? I didn't need a stable and unified world to fight Scion. That guy could only be killed by bullying and a specific set of powers/technologies. I just needed muddled waters to fish in, and hopefully get out before the end. I couldn't let the Simurgh and precognition paralyze me. The Simurgh let plenty of Cauldron plots go off without a hitch, and I was betting that it was because those plots net more chaos.

Plus if I had my way, Amelia would become a better challenge for Eidolon than the Endbringers. Maybe the Simurgh would even help me…well a man could dream, right?

'If this fake angel comes for you, I'll drag her into Kaleidospace! See how her precognition works for her there!' Agate boasted.

'Wait, you can do that?' That would be crazy powerful.

Her tone deflated. 'Eh…I can try to take her with me when I phase out, but it might be hard if she resists it…I can't really take things that have minds of their own if they don't want to come along.'

It's never that easy, is it?



~ ~ ~



In the afternoon, she came to me with a decision.

"I'm not sure I fully believe everything you said, but I have no choice but to stick with you for now even if you might be crazy. I'll consider helping if we get more concrete proof about this supposed alien threat," she declared.

Excellent.

"Good, the first thing you need to know is that you need to use your powers for more than just healing," I immediately replied.

"What? But that's one of my rules!" She crossed her arms and glared. "I'm not going to turn villain."

"I never said anything about turning villain. Your rules are completely arbitrary and don't help anyone. You need to come up with better ones based in legitimate moral and philosophical reflection. You've already broken the only-healing rule several times last night, and if you keep trying to follow them, it will only end in a tragedy when you're forced to abandon them," I warned.

Her expression softened and she pursed her lips. "Did you see that happen in the future?"

I hesitated to tell her. Her story was just so sad. I needed her functional after this. With a sigh, I answered, "Yes. In a possible future, the Slaughterhouse 9 would force you to choose between your rules and the life of one close to you. It ended…very, very badly. You must learn to accept that your powers can be used responsibly outside of just healing, and even your blanket ban on not doing brains is not healthy."

"I need my rules though. I can't control myself without them," she continued to protest.

"You do need rules, just not the arbitrary ones you had. Your shard will make you go crazy if you don't change. All shards influence their hosts to seek conflict and use their powers to fight. The Entities can't have useless hosts giving them no data. That's why there are hardly any capes using their powers for anything other than fighting. Leet's shard, for example, is insanely powerful and is actively sabotaging him because he doesn't make anything truly daring or risky so it punishes him by making it harder to build the same thing more than once," I clarified.

Her eyes widened and she dropped her arm. "You should have started with that!"

"It's not a secret, you know? There are studies on parahuman powers and seeking conflict. This is also why powers don't go to happy, well-adjusted people, instead requiring a trigger event. It's not a karmic reward for suffering or an attempt to save people. They just go to people the shards think will use the powers most and are more vulnerable to their influence."

She stood there unblinking, and pursed her lips.

"That sculpture you suddenly decided to make? It was probably your shard going crazy after you got grounded for several days and couldn't even heal. It needed an outlet badly, and look what happened." I stabbed the final knife in. "Do I need to go on?"

She replied with a weak and quivering voice. "No…"

Then she slowly sat down on the sofa staring off into space. "Then…how do I come up with better rules?"

"You can start with something that has more of an ethical foundation. Don't hurt innocent people if you can help it. Don't hurt people for fun even if they're evil. Don't make anything that will independently do any of the above. See where I'm going with this? These are actually actions with clear moral consequences. Not using your power on the brain and only healing is just arbitrary," I said. These were the rules I myself followed as well. Naturally it didn't make sense to hurt innocent people if there were more efficient ways to get what I needed, unless the benefit massively outweighed the cost of getting "good guys" after me. Hurting people for fun and no gain was just plain stupid.

Now she was looking at her palm like it held the world's secrets.

Was I going too fast? I couldn't help it. Even if I was pushing my luck, I needed her tonight. With New Wave out patrolling in the open, the Lung fight was almost certainly going to be butterflied in some way. I had to get in the thick of things or else my plans for Skitter would fall apart.

I needed every piece I could salvage now that New Wave's forces wouldn't be obtainable in the near-future.

"When you're done contemplating, come over here. Because you ran away from home, the future has changed and we have an important mission tonight."

She looked over at me in interest. "A mission? You mean we're going out as heroes in costume?"

"That's right. We're joining the fight against Lung to save an aspiring hero. We've got less than 10 hours to prepare, so we'd better start soon."

"You want to fight Lung? You are crazy! I knew it!"

"Just listen to the plan, it's not as crazy as it sounds. It'll be easy, in fact."

She just looked at me like I grew a second head.

With her help, it really would be much easier, depending on what we could develop between now and the fight. She was literally a game-changing piece, and this fight would give her the confidence to take on a new mantle.

By myself, I was just a king that could barely do anything. But now, I had a queen to use. With this one gambit, I would seize control of the entire centre and chain into a massive play. By the time anyone realized what was really going on, they'd be too busy fighting each other to stop me.





~ ~ ~



New Wave stopped searching once it got dark outside. Rumors were already on PHO speculating over what they were doing. Normally heroes didn't patrol much in the day time, and that was true for New Wave as well. None of the theories had gotten close to the truth, however.

At midnight, we moved out into the Docks area in our new costumes ready for action. Due to time constraints, I was simply outfitted in black motorcycle outfit, plus a full face helmet, minus the leather jacket. Instead, I had Kevlar inside and a loose black jacket full of pockets. On my back I had a backpack which contained inside a fire extinguisher and some assorted useful tools.

I replaced my flame thrower with sprayers filled with an extremely potent knockout drug Panacea had made, and carried a bunch of unprimed homemade jam tin grenades and a couple of stun batons on my utility belt. Finally I had my compound bow slung over my back right next to my backpack My quiver was attached to my left hips, filled with 20 custom tranquilizer arrows, made with Panacea's knockout drug again.

I had made some of these things before back on my Earth as fun experiments but recently I'd been making use of that knowledge of cheap DIY weapons to enhance my arsenal. The bow I simply bought from a local store. I had a hard time deciding to use a crossbow vs. a compound bow but in the end I decided that faster shooting speed was more important for a single combatant rather than a formation of troops with volley fire. The crossbow's higher base velocity would give me much better accuracy at longer ranges because I wasn't very skilled with a bow, but I couldn't afford to spend half a minute cranking to reload in the middle of a fight. I wish I had guns but alas I hadn't found where to buy them discreetly. Ordering via dark net and dead drops was possible but it would take weeks to do it, especially because this world didn't have cryptocurrency so the dark markets online weren't as developed.

Finally, to go with my costume persona I needed a hero name, which I had chosen to be Polychromic. Many-colored like a Kaleidoscope, or related to chromic acids.

Panacea had been renamed Araliac, a truncated Araliaceae, to which the Panax family of plants belonged. I wanted to name her Gaia but she refused. My bad naming sense strikes again. Sadly Panacea didn't have any better ideas. Ginseng and Ambrosia were suggested but the connections to Panacea were far too conspicuous in those, the former's latin name being Panax, and the latter curing the only thing that a panacea wouldn't.

She was outfitted in a similar manner to myself. We neither had the time to experiment on making exotic biological defenses nor did we want to draw too much attention to her powers, so her costume was kept simple. Our equipment, however, was substantially different. Hiding underneath her sleeves were specialized organisms that could shoot acid or incapacitating vapour made of the same stuff my arrows had. Her hands had open tipped gloves and she was carrying a long range pressure sprayer attached to a tank full of the powerful incapacitating agent mixed with short-lived microorganisms. These microorganisms would eat the incapacitating agent, and common clothing materials, then permeate through skin, before entering the bloodstream. A rapid bioconversion process then generates psilocybin and LSD precursors, before resulting in the microorganism's death.

With Agate on overwatch in the skies, we snuck around the Docks. Still, the area was quite large and spotting our targets in the darkness wasn't going to be easy. I wanted to find Skitter, but going to Lung wasn't a bad choice either. The Undersiders and Oni Lee would be less useful.

About an hour after midnight, Agate found something.

'Unusual swarms of bugs moving over rooftops detected,' Agate said in my mind. The image Agate sent me was almost impossible to see the bugs. It was far too dark, but Agate's sensor suite was better than my eyes. I instructed Agate to keep looking for Skitter in her costume, and try to triangulate her position from how the bugs were moving and the range of control.

It wasn't long before the entire swarm started to gather tightly in one specific spot, where Agate found the ABB group with Lung.

"It's starting! Three blocks south! Let's go!" I whispered to my new accomplice, and we moved towards the upcoming fight.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

A/N: After long consideration, due to the numerous questions and concerns raised (this happened on Spacebattles, not SV), I decided to make some substantial edits to this chapter, resulting in almost 1000 extra words. The events did not change in general. I felt that much of the previous confusion arose because I failed to elaborate on the details behind the SI's strategic planning and analysis. So I added these areas. There are minor additions to many points of the narration, and significant additions to the SI's thoughts on the Undersiders, the PRT, and Skitter. From now on, I will be showing more strategic analysis instead of leaving the reader to figure it out themselves.

Initialization 1.7

For tonight's operation, I had two primary objectives and three secondary objectives:

1. Primary: Save and isolate Skitter from all possible influences except me. That included the Undersiders, the PRT, and her father. This objective would only be fully achieved after a follow-up operation, so tonight I was setting up the conditions.

2. Primary: Unlock Amelia's confidence and potential.

3. Secondary: Track the Undersiders to their base.

4. Secondary: Have a good debut for the official hero team I was forming.

5. Secondary: Get into a meeting with the PRT and sow confusion and the seeds of doubt with my intel.

On the way there, I ordered Agate to try and scan Lung's fire with everything that could be tried. I knew that his pyrokinesis could generate flames from nowhere so it must have had a dimensional aspect. I had already been trying to scan Amelia's Corona Pollentia but that didn't get anywhere. Agate's sensors didn't pick up anything there, but I was hopeful that with more samples and more dimensional effects, we would eventually get something useful. I had no delusion that I could replicate the actual generation of fire, but whatever means the shard was using to transport it here might help Agate.

We arrived just in time to see Lung on fire, already grown to eight feet, and jumping towards Taylor on the rooftop.

"Get ready!" I told Araliac.

"Yeah, I got it," she replied nonchalantly. Both of our voices had been distorted by voice changers in our helmets so we sounded like Sith Lords.

We were still almost thirty meters away. There were groaning ABB members on the ground and a few were picking themselves up. We sprayed them and they went down easily. I grabbed a couple of pistols from them before moving forward again. Araliac copied my actions.

Then I heard a scream, and I looked up to see Lung grabbing his face with one hand. That must be Taylor's pepper spray. Now he was blind, good.

I immediately took aim and started shooting.

The sound of three consecutive gunshots cracked through the air. None of them hit. Damn.

Lung turned and threw a wave of fire in my direction while still hanging off the roof with one hand. Too bad for him, his fire wasn't like a magic fireball, it dispersed long before it got to me.

I kept moving forward and shooting as fast as I could. Fifteen metres. "Surrender, lizard scum! Your reign of terror ends tonight!" I shouted. I had to grab his attention and stop him from going over the roof.

Araliac split off from me and moved closer to the building wall as she started shooting as well.

Lung roared in rage as he waved several more blasts of fire at both of us, but we were still far enough to avoid them easily.

When I ran out of bullets, I put away the pistols and I took the cap off one of my tin grenades and lit the fuse with a blowtorch.

"Lung you fucking coward, come down and face me like a man!" I screamed at the top of my lungs while dropping the grenade right on the ground underneath me. No I was not trying to commit suicide.

"I'll kill you!" He roared before kicking off the wall and flying right at me. I, of course, had already dodged to the right and lunged for the ground like one of those nice slow-mo scenes you see in movies right after the hero blows up a car.

As soon as he landed and turned towards me again preparing to follow my steps, the well-timed grenade went off, which was accompanied by jet of acid from Araliac. He screamed as the shrapnel, force slammed into his legs point blank and his back was burned by acid. He stumbled before dropping down on one knee.

I immediately took out my bow even as I rolled away, got up, and nocked an arrow. Before I could fire, he swiped his arm and a wave of flame surged out in a circle around him. Simultaneously, a jet of white vapour consumed his head. That must have been Araliac shooting her long range sprayer.

Unfortunately before I could see the results of that, Lung's fire actually hit me. I reflexively let go of the bowstring and the arrow went way off course before I dropped my burning bow and started screaming myself as my sleeves caught fire.

I twisted my backpack free and tried to maneuver the fire extinguisher but my fingers were not cooperating.

I fumbled with it for a while before it slipped and fell, rolling away from me. Panicking I stuck my arms into my backpack and tried to smother the whole thing with my body. Bad idea. It backfired on me as my pack started burning too and I had to swing it loose from my body.

Just as I resorted to rolling around on the ground, cursing my arrogance in trying to fight Lung up close, somebody sprayed me with a fire extinguisher.

As the foam cleared I got a look at my savior. Araliac.

"It's not so nice when you're the one getting burned, is it, Mr. I-carry-a-flamethrower-for-self-defense?" She snarked.

"Th-thanks!" I gasped as she put down the fire extinguisher and bent down to touch my now exposed arm.

The pain left me quickly as she healed the burns. My arms were still a charred mess on the surface but in a few short moments I felt as good as new.

I heard the sound of running footsteps just as Araliac helped me to my feet. I looked over to see Skitter coming around the corner of the building, and slowing to a stop as she looked back and forth between us and something behind us.

I could feel Araliac tensing through her grip on my arm.

"Holy shit! You guys took out Lung!" She suddenly blurted out.

I thought she'd be more subdued and shy. Didn't she give the Undersiders the silent treatment in canon? We weren't known heroes to her. Honestly we didn't even look like heroes at all. I could've sworn she should be wary, scared, and stressed right now. Or did we intervene early enough that she was still high on adrenaline? I did remember her feeling some kind of sadistic glee in the beginning of the fight. Or…maybe my taunts made me seem heroic for putting myself in danger to get Lung away from her?

"Wasn't just us. Your bug attacks played a big role too. Did you see how hurt he was from one grenade? Your venom was taxing his regeneration big time," I gave her rightful credit for her contribution.

"Really? Now that you mention it, he did go down pretty fast for someone who took on Leviathan solo…" She tilted her head thoughtfully.

Lung's power was to escalate. As he fought, he grew stronger in response to greater threats, and eventually turned into a dragon. When Leviathan hit Kyushu, he grew so much that their battle destroyed the entire island. Entire teams of Protectorate heroes fought Lung before and were defeated. The only way to really take him down is by forcing him to calm down via sedatives and overwork his regeneration with overwhelming damage before he got too big.

"That's right. We couldn't have done it without you, fellow superhero. I'm Polychromic. This is my partner Araliac," I introduced.

"Hi," Araliac said, and nothing else.

Taylor stood there awkwardly in silence for a few seconds. "I…uh…don't have a name picked yet."

Agate was still hidden and watching. I knew the Undersiders were on top of the building just further ahead watching us. They never got involved because we had the upper hand in this fight the whole time. I knew that even if Coil was never said to have been actively helping them this night in canon, he couldn't have been stupid enough to risk his assets in a fight against Lung and Oni Lee without some kind of insurance. That meant that he likely had one timeline keeping them holed up at base (either theirs or Coil's own base) hiding, and the other confronting the ABB. He was probably using this as a test to see if the Undersiders were combat-ready for the upcoming distraction operation for his attempt on Dinah.

The Undersiders were both a secondary objective for me to track, as well as my insurance for the fight. I berated myself for getting hit by Lung, but I was just being perfectionist. In reality I had determined that my chances of dying were quite low. As long as I didn't get my brain destroyed Araliac could revive me or at least stabilize me. And so when things went south, the Undersiders watching would step in. They helped Skitter in canon, and they would have likely helped me if we started really losing against Lung. That would be true whether it was Coil's, Tattletale's, or Grue's idea. Coil because he usually prefers carrot and saving us would get him an in. Tattletale because she wanted more pieces to recruit and turn against Coil. Even with cold reading, since I had totally ignored her she couldn't possibly know my enmity for her, and even if she did she was probably still arrogant enough to think that her powers would let her manipulate me. Finally, Brian was looking for firepower to add to his team, and there were three possible targets. He'd be thinking that at least one of us might be amenable to recruitment. Even with my "heroic" taunts, all of us looked like villains and in my and Araliac's cases, we actually looked like urban terrorists and we were willing to use guns.

I really wondered what Tattletale was actually thinking right now. Three new capes in one night, and they just happen to attack Lung when he was supposed to be going after them, what a stunning turn of events! Because Coil learned about me, he might attack me in a throwaway timeline soon. I was assuming for now that Coil's precognition worked perfectly on me and Agate. My counter was to move faster than he could react, and account for branching actions in my grand plan. I wouldn't be waiting for his attempt on Dinah like an idiot.

In an alternate timeline he might have ordered the Undersiders to approach us already. Unless it was because we had been losing and they came to save us, I would have stopped them pre-emptively. I would have attacked immediately regardless of what they said, telling Skitter that I recognized them as a criminal gang. I had told Amelia beforehand that in case the Undersiders tried to approach us for any reason other than to save us in the middle of a losing battle, she was to unleash a mass airborne sedative by sending out her organisms under her sleeves out directly. I had informed her of all their capabilities, and the necessity of a rapid mass area attack because Regent could control our bodies and Grue's darkness would make it impossible to aim. Coil would be an idiot to choose that timeline. And if Amelia didn't get them all fast enough because Tattletale stayed behind or something, I told Agate that she was to move into the air then accelerate to top speed at 500 mph in the physical world and smash Tattletale's face in, before dragging her dead body into Kaleidospace to dispose of it quietly. I didn't want anybody to know I had such a powerful tool for assassination but I couldn't hold back against Coil, and if Tattletale went missing he could only assume that I had more agents in position.

As they weren't doing anything, I would move forward with the operation.

"Don't worry about it. Let's call this in first, and secure the criminals. We can talk more after," I suggested. Skitter nodded.

I took out a burner phone and dialed in to the PRT hotline while walking towards Lung's unconscious body. Araliac and Skitter followed after me.

"PRT emergency hotline." a female voice on the other end said.

"This is Polychromic, independent hero. My team and a fellow hero have Lung and a group of unpowered ABB members in custody," I reported. "We need pickup for transport."

"Polychromic? I'm sorry I don't recognize that. What is your team name? Are you registered with the PRT?"

"Not yet. We just formed our team and don't have a name yet. We'll register at our earliest convenience," I replied.

"Alright. You're in the Docks area right? Miss Militia is already nearby and will be there shortly. She can coordinate once she arrives."

"Thank you, we'll wait until she gets here."

I hung up and put the phone away. Araliac was squatting down checking Lung's status again. Skitter just stood beside me waiting.

Araliac stood up. "He should be out for a few hours at least. Our anaesthetic is working a lot less efficiently than usual, but the venoms really did a number on him. He's stable now."

"Good. Let's round them up then," I bent down and started dragging Lung's body to a nearby wall.

Araliac and Skitter stated to helped with the rest of the ABB. I quickly took the opportunity to swipe all the guns and any ammo they had on them.

"Hey, bug girl, you want some of these?" I handed a pistol towards her. Now to test Skitter's personality. I needed to know the extent to which I could manipulate and predict her actions before enacting the next operation.

She looked at it for a moment. "A gun? But that's lethal."

"So are black widows," I said, shrugging. Heh. Complaining about lethality when I knew she threatened to kill everyone in that bank and still considered herself a hero.

Her head moved up as if staring at me. "But…isn't it a crime to possess firearms?"

"Just hide it well then. Or get a license. When you need firepower and your bugs aren't working, a gun might save your life," I suggested. That's right. I knew she had an internal monologue on this very issue in canon. When Lung was about to reach her, she realized she had pepper spray and chalk dust. This was the perfect moment to get her to loosen her resistance to using lethal weapons.

"I…alright. I do need better weapons," she relented, taking the gun. I gave her another one and a couple of cartridges for good measure.

"Make sure you learn how to use it properly. Keep the safety on at all times if you aren't planning to shoot and never point it at someone you don't want to get hit," I warned her as I showed her how to operate the gun. I had to keep up the act as the professional good guy.

Once we hauled up all the gangers up to the wall, since Miss Militia wasn't here yet, I patted them down and relieved them of their money too.

With seventeen gangers here, I was able to find $1400, and handed one third to Taylor. Lung himself didn't have anything on him sadly,

"Um…is this really okay? This doesn't feel right…" She said looking at the bills in her hand. Girl, I know you want it. You took $2000 from the Undersiders and didn't even think about giving it back.

Somehow I felt Araliac's rolling her eyes at me when I handed her share over.

"Vigilante laws were changed to allow heroes to take any stashes of money they found, but they're supposed to report it to the PRT and get it cleared first. Same with drugs or weapons, in which case the PRT gives a small reward when they're turned in. We're not supposed to take the money on their person and in their wallets though…but most of the time PRT just looks the other way when independent heroes take the spoils, unless they themselves start dealing the drugs and weapons they took," Araliac helpfully supplied.

She didn't protest my actions however, instead just stuffing the cash into a pocket. She knew we were hard pressed for funds from the disrepair of my apartment. Actually we weren't that hard pressed with all my winnings from poker, but I literally moved in a week ago. Aside from the various walls falling apart due to a neglectful landlord, it was also completely spartan for efficiency, so to her it must have looked like I was one step away from being homeless – which meant that she would also be homeless by extension.

Skitter looked at her and then back to me and then to the cash again. She stuffed it into her armor in the end. Good old peer pressure to clinch the deal. Although I was testing her, I didn't believe the outcome of this was ever in any doubt. Taylor desperately wanted to be a hero, but she was not a very principled person at heart. When she rescued Dinah she almost decided to turn around and keep her before Dinah called her out on it. I knew her weaknesses even better than Tattletale did at this point.

I rested myself against the wall as I spoke up again, "So, about your cape name, how does Skitter sound?"

"Huh? It's not bad, but it sounds a bit villainous…there are so few names related to bugs that don't make me sound like a supervillain or a complete dork," Taylor said with a hint of frustration.

"Does it matter? Soon enough everyone will know that you're one of the heroes that took down the strongest villain in Brocton Bay who the entire local Protectorate branch lost against. People will have no choice but to take you seriously."

She was silent for a moment. These pauses were getting pretty frequent in our conversation.

"You're right. We did something amazing tonight, didn't we? I'm a real hero now…" She trailed off and looked at Lung's unconscious body again. The best hero. Don't ever doubt it Khepri. You are the hero to end all heroes. I crack myself up sometimes. No this was bad. Arrogance was hubris, the downfall of far too many successful tragic heroes. I would be better than that. No matter how good it felt.

'Make sure you remind me of this if I forget it Agate. Arrogance is hubris, and it will end me if I indulge myself.'

'Really? But you gloat all the time,' she responded.

'Yes, you should remember this too. Never be complacent. Never assume you've won until you've won. Never assume that there's nobody stronger. I've been intoxicated by my recent successes, and this can't be allowed to continue.'

'Alright, I'll remind you then.'

"Skitter…I am the hero Skitter," Taylor repeated to herself.

"This is odd, what's taking Miss Militia so long? I thought she was in the area already," I remarked suddenly. It had already been almost five minutes.

The Undersiders were leaving. The original plan was to tail them to their base…I knew what their warehouse generally looked like and what one of the signs read, but finding it when there were so many similar warehouses was not an easy effort. It would probably be easier to find Coil's base underground.

But something about this situation spooked me and I kept Agate with me to be safe. A good general knows when to sacrifice and let go. My primary objectives had already been achieved. It wasn't a big loss to let the Undersiders go for now. I had to consolidate my gains and secure my position before going on the offensive again. Overextension was the death of empires.

"Should we call again? I'd like to get some sleep tonight," Araliac commented. I'm sure she was still tired from last night.

Then I heard the sound of a distant explosion. And another one. Then gunfire, and more explosions.

"Sounds like another fight," I said.

"If that's Miss Militia, we should help!" Skitter declared. I would be the one to decide that. Not her. I had to rein her in and show her why I was the proper leader here.

"We can't just leave Lung alone here. All our hard work today would be wasted if the ABB got him back before he's locked up," Araliac reminded. Oh? I should not be surprised by this. Amelia had always been the one to hold Vicky back. Unlike Skitter, whose first reaction after a victory was to go bigger and harder, Araliac must want to ensure that she would get the credit for taking down Lung. Show New Wave how effective she could be.

"Hold on. Let me see what's going on," I ordered Agate to move in the direction of the sounds and held a couple of fingers to the front of my helmet in a meaningless pose. If anybody was spying on me, they might be tricked into thinking I had to do that for my "power" to work.

'Already on it!' Agate informed me.

"What? What are you doing?" Skitter asked curiously.

"I've got a Thinker power. Lets me project my senses and move them wherever I want. It's how we found you so quickly earlier," I explained.

Through Agate's senses I quickly located the source of the explosions.

Skitter gasped. "I think I found them! They just entered in range of my bugs two blocks southeast of here but I can't make them out clearly."

"Oni Lee and Protectorate forces. He's trying to retreat in our direction, but Velocity's hounding him and Miss Militia's supporting from behind! A couple of PRT vans are further south, in a shootout with unpowered ABB," I reported in more detail.

What was going on? First Armsmaster didn't show up, instead it's Miss Militia, and now fighting against Oni Lee? If I remembered correctly Oni Lee should've escaped from the Undersiders a while ago, why was he still in action?

"We've got to help!" Skitter urged, her body language shifting as if preparing to run off immediately. Sigh. It would take some time to stop her impulsiveness. If she had just taken the time to really think through her actions instead of deciding to go undercover as a villain after a ten minute conversation with no training or preparation whatsoever, she might not have become a true villain and had such a tragic ending in the original story.

"At this rate, they'll come here themselves in less than two minutes. I think Oni Lee's retreating this way on purpose…could he be coming for Lung?" I analyzed quickly.

It would make sense for Oni Lee to try and find his missing leader and follow the source of the explosion earlier. One of the unpowered ABB we captured might have also given him info earlier before we arrived.

But how did he get into a fight with Miss Militia and Velocity? Miss Militia and Velocity…what an interesting combination. If they were looking to track down Panacea, that might be one of the better field matchups. Perfect memory recall and high speed chaser. If Protectorate forces were tracked Panacea's scent to the boardwalk, and fanned out from there looking for clues, it wasn't a big stretch to think that perhaps Oni Lee's retreat was cut off somehow. It was quite close to the Docks after all.

Hmm…it would be a good opportunity regardless.

"We'll ambush him here. Skitter, get some bugs on him ASAP! When he teleports, everything on his body gets duplicated along with him, including your bugs. We'll use Lung as bait. Once I've distracted him, use your bugs to cover his eyes, he teleports by line of sight only!" I instructed authoritatively.

"Okay, I can do that," Skitter said nodding. Good, she saw the logic in my plan. As I was the one with all the intel, she ought to be deferring to me.

"Both of you, hide and support from range. I'll stay in the open and keep Lung hostage," I continued.

They hesitated only for a moment looking at me. "Don't worry, I'll be fine. Go."

If anything, I'd be in the least danger. Oni Lee couldn't just teleport and suicide bomb me if it would kill Lung. But they weren't familiar with Oni Lee's tactics yet. Keeping distance was almost worthless with line-of-sight teleportation. Nor were they familiar with Oni Lee's personality. He got spooked and ran away at the mere realization that Lung didn't show up. He would be much more stressed if his leader was flat out defeated and helpless.

Skitter looked like she wanted to say something, but Araliac started moving, and Skitter followed her example shortly after.



~ ~ ~



Oni Lee appeared around the corner and looked at the devastation and in the area. Velocity was hot on his heels and shot a spray of containment foam.

Another Oni Lee appeared a few metres away, and that was my cue.

"Don't move or Lung gets it!" I shouted.

Both Velocity and Oni Lee turned to see me holding an unconscious Lung, my right hand holding a gun to his head.

They both froze.

"Hey…let's calm down. Lung's a criminal but you can't just kill him—" Velocity tried to mediate but he was interrupted.

"I'm perfectly calm! Oni Lee, get on your fucking knees or he dies!" I snarled while deliberately shaking my hand holding the gun as if spazzing out in contradiction to my assertion of being calm.

Then Oni Lee clutched his face with a scream and stumbled. A copy of him appeared only a few feet away, and then another, and another until he suddenly dropped on his knees.

That was when a jet of vapour blasted into him from the rooftop.

I removed my gun from Lung's head. Suddenly something was holding my arm and pulling me away from Lung. I barely had time to process it before I was sprayed by containment foam.

"Wait! Fellow hero here!" I yelled as my arms and legs were captured in foam, pretending to be surprised and betrayed. Perfect. He took the bait.

I dropped to the ground to see a huge swarm of bugs descending on Velocity, who blurred away but seemed to trip and fell face forward. Another jet of incapacitating vapour blasted into Velocity before he could get up. Velocity could speed himself up something like 100 times faster, so he was tricky to deal with. Skitter must have gotten some bugs on him when he was standing still and had them bite his foot or something to make him trip.

"Stop! Stop! Everybody stand down!" I yelled.

Inside I was thinking the opposite. I was disappointed.

Velocity dropped on the ground and lay unmoving, unconscious. Damn, get up you weakling! Show Skitter and Araliac how unreasonable the authorities are!

Miss Militia drove in on a motorbike just then.

"Velocity!" She cried. Miss Militia was the understanding type. She followed orders and went by the book, rarely doing anything on emotion or self-interest. She was also a veteran in real war. I wouldn't be able to rile her up without coming off as unreasonable myself. Even if I said nothing to de-escalate she would be too wary to just attack. She would see Lung, Oni Lee, and Velocity all down. If my call to PRT earlier was a trick to ambush her, she had to be thinking that this was a huge trap, what kind of insane firepower did we have to defeat all these powerful capes so fast? Velocity and Oni Lee went down in like 10 seconds.

Oh well, it would be arrogant to think that every plan would go perfectly. Getting Skitter and Araliac to take the initiative to attack PRT on my behalf was good enough. Moreover, this was just an on-the-fly plan I cooked up to adapt to the changing situation; the main plan was still in motion. The moment Skitter took a gun in her hand, I knew that the follow-up operation would be viable. After all, if she would take a gun, she would definitely take a "non-lethal" stun baton.

But first, it was finally time to meet the PRT.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

A/N: This is a reminder to everyone who did not see my last announcement. The previous chapter has undergone significant edits adding 1000 words. The events haven't changed but if you want to understand anything that was non-obvious in the strategic thinking of the SI, you might want to take a look.

Initialization 1.8

Miss Militia's energy turned into a gun I didn't recognize and pointed towards the direction of where Araliac's shot came from. She moved back and took cover as she looked around.

I saw with Agate that Araliac was back in hiding. Skitter never came out of hiding as she could direct her bugs without line of sight.

"Miss Militia, this is Polychromic! This is a misunderstanding. Velocity attacked me because I was holding Lung hostage and my teammates retaliated by accident. We called in earlier about capturing Lung. We are heroes," I called out from my spot on the ground, looking to defuse the situation. Miss Militia was obviously waiting for PRT troop backup, and not foolishly attacking into a possible ambush that took out both Oni Lee and Velocity.

She looked towards where I was foamed and helpless on the ground.

"Polychromic? How do I know that it's you? You never registered with the PRT so we can't identify you. And how do I know the call wasn't a trick?" she answered back.

"Miss Militia, you can confirm this with our actions. I have not fought back myself despite being hit with containment foam. Araliac and Skitter can come out in the open and they will not attack you. We will explain the sequence of events which led to our current situation," I replied.

There was no response for almost half a minute.

Finally, when the sound of two PRT vans driving up from behind her reached me, she responded. "Very well. Don't make any sudden moves."

"It's alright Araliac, Skitter! You can come out! We should cooperate with the PRT," I called loudly.

And so they slowly moved out into the open beside me as Miss Militia and armed PRT troopers moved in formation towards us.

The PRT forces kept their guns pointed at us and only stopped when we were surrounded completely. Then a portion of their troops went to secure the ABB and Velocity. A couple of PRT troops came to hold me upright.

"Alright, so what happened here?" Miss Militia asked me.

"Skitter, you were here first, maybe you can start from the beginning before we arrived," I redirected to her.

Attention shifted to Skitter, who was tense and curt.

"I was patrolling the area when I noticed a group of ABB. I snuck up and kept hidden, watching them for a bit from the rooftops. Then I overheard Lung ordering them to kill kids. I did a bit of research before online…I knew Lung was strong and I probably wouldn't be able to beat him. But they were planning to kill kids…I had to do something. So I gathered my bugs and attacked," she narrated.

"Your power is to control bugs?" asked Miss Militia.

"Yes. Insects, mosquitoes, spiders, all of them. I sent my swarm to cover the ABB members and start biting," Skitter answered.

"Are there any limits to your power? Range, number of bugs controlled?" Miss Militia asked.

I cut in before Skitter could answer. "Skitter, you don't have to answer that, just so you know. Independent heroes have the right to privacy on the limits of their powers. The PRT will appreciate knowing because it helps in coordinating our efforts and you might also benefit from power-testing with their experts, but ultimately the choice is yours. It's not a crime to keep your weaknesses secret if you don't feel comfortable exposing that. You could also go in by yourself later if you don't want Araliac and I to know. We won't be offended."

Miss Militia gave me an unreadable look. After a while, Skitter spoke up, "I think I would like to keep it to myself for now, then. Sorry."

"I understand, we will respect your choice. Power-testing is something we offer at any time to independent heroes. All you have to do is schedule an appointment, and we will have our experts help. Many Protectorate heroes have discovered new things about their powers that way. The Wards also get much more support and training, if you decided to join," Miss Militia explained calmly.

Skitter nodded.

"Please continue then."

"It seemed to go well at first. Their unpowered members were going down, and I was hurting Lung. But he grew armor and started to regenerate from the bites. So then I went for weak points on his body and used venoms. It didn't seem to do much. Then he exploded with fire and all the bugs around him died. I tried to get more bugs on him after that but they were just getting killed by the fire. Eventually I decided I couldn't win and was just about to leave. But then he heard me. He has superhuman hearing," Skitter described the fight, and paused briefly.

"Yes, when Lung grows he gets many superhuman senses. He is a very difficult opponent," Miss Militia added.

"He immediately came after me, jumping up and grappling on the wall to climb toward the roof. Right when his head came over the roof, I sprayed his eyes with pepper spray. And then…" Skitter trailed and looked towards me.

"That's when we arrived. We were already in the area and came running as fast as we could run when we noticed a fight going on. We saw Skitter blinding Lung and rushed to stop him from getting over the roof to reach Skitter, using guns we picked up from the fallen ABB on the way. Lung tried to get us with fire but we dodged and kept moving. Then I taunted him until he came after me on the ground, and Araliac and I defeated him with a special anaesthetic. Lung was significantly weakened by Skitter's attack and went down fast," I succinctly replied, glossing over details.

"I see. That's no small accomplishment. Especially for new heroes. And this was your first time going out as heroes?" Miss Militia looked at all three of us.

"Yes," Skitter said.

"That's correct," said.

"And Polychromic and Araliac, you two are a new team, but this was the first time you met Skitter?" Miss Militia asked.

"That's right."

She nodded back.

"Then you called the PRT. Now what happened with Oni Lee and Velocity?"

"At first, we were just waiting for you to come but nobody came after five minutes even when the operate said you were already in the area," I paused deliberately, hoping she might explain why.

"I got the call from headquarters but on our way we noticed traces of ABB. So we moved cautiously. We discovered an ABB group led by Oni Lee hiding in the area. We had to go after them first. We chased them here," she explained.

I nodded to her thankfully.

"We noticed your fight as well. When we realized it was Oni Lee, we developed a plan to use Lung as bait to ambush him. Skitter's bugs tracked him as he got closer, and when he arrived with Velocity, I held Lung hostage to distract Oni Lee. I pretended to be highly stressed and could shoot at any time to make Oni Lee hesitate. Then Skitter and Araliac took the opening to finish him off by coordinating a bug and anaesthetic spray attack. At that point, I dropped the act with Lung but Velocity didn't realize my ruse so he tried to subdue me and remove me from Lung. I knew he was just doing his job so I didn't resist being foamed. I shouted to clear the misunderstanding but he was moving too fast, then Skitter and Araliac retaliated, taking him down," I explained. I spoke as I was capable of resisting being foamed. I couldn't, but I also didn't resist.

"Do you have any proof of this? That it was only a ruse to defeat Oni Lee?" Miss Militia asked.

"I do. I have recordings of the fights tonight, including when we planned the operation against Oni Lee. These will be uploaded online as part of our team debut video," I said.

Miss Militia stiffened. "Are you still recording?"

"Yes," I bluntly answered.

"This is an ongoing PRT investigation. You can't be recording this, please turn off your recording devices," she ordered.

"I apologize. I would comply with your request, but as you can see, I am physically indisposed at the moment. I'm afraid that if I remain indisposed, the recordings will go live automatically in the morning." I answered nonchalantly. I was going to edit the video and make ourselves look incredible first, but if the PRT captured me, this was my get-out-of-jail card. They would have to release me or risk getting public outrage over unjust treatment of the heroes that defeated Lung and Oni Lee, who were clearly cooperating with the PRT to the best of their ability.

Miss Militia excused herself for a minute before coming back and ordering the PRT troopers to defoam me.

"Thank you," I turned off the recording devices. For now.

Miss Militia ran her eyes over the three of us in a measuring gaze. Velocity was still out cold and would stay that way for a while because Araliac wasn't going to reveal her powers.

"I understand. Velocity was hasty in attacking you, then. However, by law he was within rights to disarm you, having seen you threatening to kill someone without a kill order, even if he was a criminal. As he was already defeated, it wouldn't be considered self-defense," Miss Militia finally judged.

"I don't blame him. I had to play the role properly to convince and distract Oni Lee. It just worked a little too well," I admitted.

"Still, even if it was in your defense, Araliac and Skitter attacked a member of the Protectorate while he was performing his duty. I'm going to have to ask you three to come in with me to PRT headquarters to report to the Director, and she will have to decide what to do," she decided.

Araliac turned to look at me.

"But I have school tomorrow, I have to get back home," Skitter protested.

'I think I figured something out from Lung and Miss Militia's powers! I should be able to generate parallel dimension portals after five more hours!' Agate cut in with a mental message.

'Good work!' I thought back. Two days were just saved, that certainly was a breakthrough. Now the question was, would we need additional equipment/resources to do it? And would we have fine control over the portals or would they be like Professor Haywire's in their permanency?

'I'm not sure yet. I don't think we'll need any more equipment to do it, I should be enough by myself. But making temporary portals or closing a portal might be a bit harder,' Agate assessed.

"Sorry, but rules are rules," Miss Militia answered sadly.

Miss Militia's cloud of energy was subdued as she spoke to us but it was still clearly visible. Her power was to manifest weapons from that energy, and corresponded to her emotions at times. It would cycle through various weapons at times of high stress with no direct input from her. So despite her calm attitude she was clearly still ready for a fight if we were to forcefully resist this unofficial arrest.

"Araliac and I will come with you," I agreed after pretending to think about it for a bit. A meeting with Piggot was exactly what I needed…this would increase the chances of success for the next operation to complete the isolation and recruitment of Skitter, which was my primary objective tonight. It would be a little dangerous considering the search for Panacea, but I believed they would be cautious of attacking me immediately. If I really was a Master, they would be putting themselves at risk by making the wrong move with no information about my powers. One peaceful meeting was all I needed. They at least had to entertain the unwritten rules and respect that we were supposedly heroes for now. They couldn't just come out and say Araliac was Panacea without substantial proof, of her identity as well as her being Mastered. Her "crimes" against the Dallons were nowhere near significant enough to be breaking those unwritten rules yet.

With that, Skitter slumped in resignation and we moved into the PRT van.

On the way, Miss Militia decided to continue pressing us for information.

"I'm surprised three new independent heroes appeared in one night. That doesn't happen often," she remarked from her bench opposite of us, sitting in between two PRT troopers.

"Araliac and I have been active for a while," I knew that anything we said might be recorded for Armsmaster's analysis later, so I was carefully choosing my words. "Active" and "a while" was suitably vague and suggestive. "We just didn't go out until tonight. Only fools start a career fighting dangerous criminals without proper preparation."

Miss Militia nodded. "You're right, of course. Many young heroes unfortunately don't recognize that and go out at the first opportunity."

She looked between Araliac and I. "If you don't mind me asking, what are your powers?"

I hadn't told her about my scouting abilities in my after action report. Instead, I had merely stated that we noticed it was Oni Lee Skitter sent her bugs to track him, allowing her to assume that Skitter detected them. In reality, Skitter's powers at this point weren't developed enough to process the visual and auditory signals from her bugs cleanly, so she didn't identified the combatants, but they wouldn't know that.

"Sorry but we do mind. It's better to keep as much of our powers secret as possible. It's better for us if villains don't know why they're losing," I said quickly.

"That's true, but I don't think anyone here is going to tell the villains, and knowing your powers, even just the basics, is how we can identify you," she argued calmly. Miss Militia was a true patriot. You could tell by the American flag motif on her scarf and costume.

"I'm sure you won't tell the villains Miss Milita. Sadly, PRT information networks are compromised. The major villains in this city have access to everything you do. I know you're going to write a threat assessment on all of us, and when you do, their spies will have it too," I brazenly declared.

Skitter looked over at me, perhaps in surprise.

Miss Militia eyes narrowed at me. "Compromised? And how would you know this?"

"I can't tell you. This van might be bugged right now," I said while deliberately shifting my head slightly towards the two PRT troopers. I was expecting Coil to be listening in even as we spoke.

"What I can tell you is this. Your networks are compromised. And not just by hackers. You've got infiltrators in your midst, some with significant authority in the organization. And if Armsmaster reviews a recording of this conversation with his lie-detector software, he'll know I'm telling the truth," I added. It wasn't certain that any such recording existed, but since this was the inside of a van, it only made sense. The most powerful part of this statement however, was the mere fact that I knew of Armsmaster's software. Very few people knew about that.

Everything I said was indeed true besides. Coil was a supervillain that literally was in the PRT, and he had substantial authority even. He some kind of important consultant and had the title of Commander in the field. Then there was Cauldron, who had a couple of capes in the local Protectorate. Triumph, the mayor's son had gotten his powers from a cauldron vial, but I didn't know if he spied for Cauldron. Battery, on the other hand, I knew was in league with them.

I heard a hitched breath from my side. I expected Skitter to be listening carefully. This was partly for her benefit. It would also help if I began proving more of my claims to Araliac.

Miss Militia's eyes widened.

"How did you—never mind. You're serious about this. But how could this have happened? We have very strict Master/Stranger protocols and comprehensive security reviews to weed out infiltrators," she said with worry.

"And if they know what your protocols are, or worse yet, wrote the protocols themselves?" I challenged her.

She was silent for the rest of our trip.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Initialization 1.9

The downtown PRT building was well staffed and active at night. I suppose it must be because heroes had to have patrols when villains were most likely to be up and about.

Troops were guarding the entrance and hallways. The gift shop was closed, but we weren't here for a tour.

We waited in the lobby for a bit while Miss Militia went in to report first and have Lung and Oni Lee secured. I wasn't just twiddling my thumbs though. Agate went to find Thomas Calvert's office. It was a bit difficult. Although the PRT had Calvert in the public directory, it wasn't clear if he had any sort of permanent office. He was a consultant, and that could mean someone who came in occasionally, or who was on a long-term assignment. I thought it was the latter, given that he also served as Commander for PRT strike squads, but I couldn't be sure because the directory didn't have rooms listed, only phones and emails.

It took a while, but Agate found a room with Calvert's name on it. Good. Hopefully he had to come in on a regular schedule. The room was completely dark so nothing of value could be observed inside.

That done, I had Agate move into Piggot's room to spy on them.



~ ~ ~



Oh? What do we have here? Glory Girl (Victoria Dallon), Brandish (Carol Dallon), and Flashbang (Mark Dallon) were here in costume.

"You have three days to think about our offer. After that you can try your luck in court," Piggot gave Brandish a challenging stare.

Glory Girl clenched her fists and looked like she was going to cry.

"Fine. Glory Girl, we're leaving," Brandish ordered authoritatively and turned around.

"What about Amy? Did you find anything yet?" Glory Girl cried out.

To the side of Piggot's desk, Armsmaster was standing stiff as a board in full armor.

"Nothing concrete. We tracked her scent to the boardwalk but it disappeared there," he answered succinctly.

"And the bastard that Mastered her?!" she practically yelled.

"Still under investigation. I've brought Dragon in to assist with the search, it shouldn't be long now," he replied calmly.

Then Miss Militia knocked on the door. Piggot called out, "Come in, we're finished here," staring at Glory Girl as if daring her to disagree.

Miss Militia opened the door, taking in the three New Wave members' stand-off with Piggot. She glanced around at them awkwardly before asking, "Director, the new heroes are waiting in the lobby. I can give you my report before you see them."

"No need. I already saw the recording. Just bring them in," Piggot replied.

"Understood."

Miss Militia closed the door behind her.

"What are you still doing in my office?" Piggot asked Glory Girl with a look of irritation.

Brandish was trying to pull on her shoulder to no avail. "Vicky!" she hissed.

"If…if you find Amy and take down that bastard, then I'll join the Wards!" Glory Girl suddenly said.

"You're not in any position to negotiate. What I offered is what you're getting. Nevertheless, we will find Panacea as is the duty of the PRT and Protectorate," Piggot answered flatly.



~ ~ ~



Soon enough Miss Militia came to us and led us to Director Piggot's office.

On the way, we came face to face with Glory Girl looking down with a gloomy expression, with Brandish and Flashbang beside her, both of them being escorted by Assault.

They looked at us curiously.

I noticed Araliac's posture stiffening as we walked.

"Busy night tonight! Three new faces? You must be heroes if you're coming here and not in chains!" Assault commented with a grin as he paused to look us over.

"Thanks to them, we have Lung and Oni Lee in custody. Very impressive for a debut," Miss Militia added warmly.

Glory Girl was visibly shocked when she heard that. Even Assault's jaw dropped. Both Brandish and Flashbang's costume had a visor and their mouths didn't particularly move so it was difficult tell what their reaction was.

"Don't be impressed yet. This is just the beginning. We're going to clean up this city. The villains have had free rein for far too long. Innocents are dying and enslaved every single day. Under the clouds of evil, the people have forgotten what safety and freedom even means! Brocton Bay has become a dark pit of misery and despair. But no more!" I spoke passionately and clenched a fist in front of me. "The villains will learn to fear the light of justice once again! We will change everything. We will restore this city to its rightful place in the sun!" I opened my fist and raised it high above me, as if trying to hold up the sun in my hand.

Everyone looked taken aback at my sudden speech. This was just posturing. The PRT didn't have PR in its name for nothing. But they weren't the only ones who could play that game. I've read more than enough books to know how this goes. Speak loudly, and carry an invisible stick. That's the way to win.

In this case, Agate had been my invisible stick, phasing in different spots to film the fights earlier from various angles in between spying on the Undersiders, on top of the recording devices on my and Araliac's person. Here, my recording devices were off and Agate couldn't be used in the open to capture electronic footage. Nonetheless, there was an audience and it was an opportunity to establish my "personality".

"You're certainly ambitious. I like it," Assault said with a smile.

"Well, there will be time for introductions later, the director is waiting," Miss Militia reminded us.

I nodded at Assault before we followed Miss Militia into the Piggot's office.

Armsmaster was standing at attention beside Piggot's desk. He was the leader of the local Protectorate branch, theoretically equal in rank to Piggot but because the PRT was technically the non-cape oversight for the Protectorate, he was really subordinate to her. In his metallic full body armor, he was an imposing intimidation factor.

Miss Militia was the deputy of the Protectorate and reported to Armsmaster. Even though Armsmaster was nominally in charge of the Wards as well, Miss Militia tended to be actually managing them because Armsmaster was less socially inclined.

The director herself looked haggard, irritated, and just about to keel over if she wasn't sitting.

Director Piggot was a fairly competent leader, but she hated capes. Thanks to her trauma with the Nilbog disaster a long time, she despised parahumans as a whole and refused to even let Panacea heal her liver problems.

I'd originally hoped to maintain decent relations with the PRT at least until Leviathan hit, but now that Araliac ditched New Wave and they knew, conflict was inevitable. Nilbog was a cape that had the power to create living and thinking creatures, monsters you could say, with powers of their own. He was an S-class threat that captured a whole city, and the Protectorate abandoned it, walling it off from the outside world while Nilbog was content to rule his city of monsters as a fantasy king. And Piggot was right in the middle of Nilbog's attack, so she hated capes with powers related to control of biology and making creatures. To her mind, Araliac's absolute biokinesis was just a nightmare waiting to happen.

And with things as they were, her nightmare was about to come true. I needed Araliac's power and nothing would get in my way. They'd figure out sooner or later Araliac's true identity no matter how we try to hide it, unless we just didn't make use of her power, which was not acceptable. If that meant the PRT thought me a dangerous Master to put down I would need enough strength to put them down first.

If Piggot was aggressive then it'd be all the better for me. Even if she wasn't, I had enough dangerous intel to force the issue. Both of the girls with me had major biases and vulnerabilities that could be manipulated.

Amelia tried her best, but at the end of the day, I knew she hated the world for making her life so terrible. There were no shining examples of heroism in her life, and her attachment to her rules and avoidance of villainy were pathological rather than some kind of true moral fibre. Sooner or later, this world's natural darkness and her shard's influence would push her beyond the brink.

Skitter, on the other hand, turned to villainy canonically, and was an expert at rationalizing. Now that I had gotten to her first, I had the feeling that she was already ripe for recruitment. I was dangling her dream of being a hero in front of her at every step, praising her for her contributions and acting generally like her mental impression of what heroes were supposed to be. Piggot and Armsmaster would probably piss her off even without my prompting. Then I'd reveal the truth about Sophia at an opportune time.

"So you're the three new heroes I've been told about," Piggot said.

"Good to meet you, director Piggot, Armsmaster." I said pleasantly, nodding at them. Of course, with the voice changer making me sound like a Sith Lord what was 'pleasant' was merely not disturbing.

They both nodded back.

"I have been informed that you three managed to take down Lung by yourselves. Then you ambushed Oni Lee when he arrived and defeated him too. That's very impressive for your first outing. We've had a lot of trouble with those two in the past," she started acknowledging our achievement. Well, maybe I was being too harsh to her. Or perhaps she was being cautious not to antagonize us without knowing our full capabilities?

"Thank you. Araliac and I weren't planning on fighting Lung as our first public action as heroes, originally. We knew that fighting someone strong enough to sink Kyushu would be a very tough fight, even for us," I explained. I wanted to show that we were not rash and foolish newcomers. And to imply that we did have the ability to match Lung at full power. We actually would though, once Araliac really let loose and had some time to prepare, so it wasn't a total bluff. "But when we saw that a fellow hero was in danger, we knew we had to act. Fortunately, Skitter did enough damage that it made things a lot easier for us."

Skitter looked over at me again. I bet she was thinking now that I really meant what I said before, if I was willing to give her credit in front of a major authority. She had to have been a little suspicious in the back of her mind about all the praise I showered on her. That girl was a ball of wariness and low esteem. After Emma set up a few fake friends to betray her, she had wised up to pretentious people.

Piggot slid her gaze over to Skitter, almost in a deliberately slow movement.

"I thought you didn't know each other before tonight? How did you recognize her as a hero? Her costume doesn't quite look the part," Piggot commented curiously. There was no judgement in her tone. She was just fishing for information on my capabilities, and I'm sure she meant no offense. Sadly for her, neither did Armsmaster when he made a similar comment in the story and it still hit Taylor's insecurities.

"That's…not intentional," Skitter spoke up rather defensively. "I was more than halfway done putting the costume together when I realized it was looking more edgy than I'd intended, and I couldn't do anything about it by then."

A small but more than sufficient opening. I stepped forward to seize it, for victory goes to the bold.

"Our own costumes are also purely functional. People must be judged not by appearances but by their actions. What kind of villain would stand and fight in the face of a monster like Lung with mere pepper spray? A cowardly villain would have just run when they realized they were outmatched and alone, having nothing but their own lives to protect. But I saw her on that roof, mere inches from a monster covered in fire, spraying into the bastard's face like she had nothing to fear. I knew then that she was a true hero." I felt goosebumps on my skin as the sheer passion of my acting took over.

"She wasn't fighting for herself. She was fighting for something deeper, something greater, something worth putting her life on the line!" I spoke strongly and increased my voice as I built to a crescendo and Skitter stared at my back. The words felt hypnotic and self-evident to my ears.

"A purpose and calling that gave her a different kind of strength, an inner power fueled by courage and righteousness, demanding her to be more than she was, to be…a superhero!" I ended with a thundering statement that put the rest of the room into silence.

With Agate's senses centred a ways behind me, I saw Skitter fidgeting in embarrassment. Araliac shook her head and shrugged as if silently answering Piggot's questioning gaze towards her. I thought I might have heard a giggle from Miss Militia too. No that can't be right.

'She really did.' Agate helpfully corrected me.

"I…see," Piggot slowly nodded with scrunched eyebrows. She was obviously not happy with my useless explanation. She must be irritated that I was one of those hammy capes like Mouse Protector. I was pretty sure they thought I was a Thinker already with the information I told Miss Militia about the PRT spies, but I wasn't going to give them any hints as to the exact nature of my knowledge if I could help it. Plus I could reframe Skitter's suicidal inclinations as something admirable, reinforcing the way she rationalized her behavior, making myself the source of her good feelings while the PRT became a source of bad feelings. It helped that she didn't know the "kids" she saved were the Undersiders yet.

"You certainly did a good thing tonight, I won't deny that. Let's get to the main point of this meeting then," she pressed on and cupped her hands together in front of her face with her elbows resting on the desk. "I'll be frank. Your success and devotion to heroism are commendable, but your methods were questionable. The three of you used lethal venoms and guns, took a defenseless man hostage, and attacked a member of the Protectorate when he was just performing his duty under the law. Just for that last one, I could have you arrested and charged with a crime."

Skitter immediately tried to argue. "What? But—"

"If you're saying that, that means you don't plan on it, right?" I countered. Skitter fell silent.

"You're a smart one, aren't you?" Piggot let out an amused huff. "You're right. If you had failed or did any serious damage to Velocity, I wouldn't hesitate to bring the law down on you. But you succeeded very well and I can't argue with the results. You clearly knew what you were doing, executing efficient take downs of powerful villains with minimum damage to yourselves and property. You even defeated Velocity without any actual harm to him. In light of that, I'm more inclined to see your actions as taking measured risks and responses to the circumstances, rather than impulsive newbies stepping over the law once they were in over their heads."

I nodded at her. I bet the public would say the same thing once they saw our video.

She folded her arms together on the desk and gave me a stern look. "For now, I remain optimistic that you will be a blessing rather than a danger to this city. God knows we need more effective and committed heroes out there, especially now that the balance of power has been broken. You've just created a power vacuum, and the coming days will see the other gangs jostling to fill it. A storm is coming, and we need you to help Brocton Bay weather it."

"We won't shy away from the danger, director, you have my word. No, we'll be right in the middle of this storm; with the fury of the heavens we will wash away the stain of super-powered villainy and protect the innocent," I declared lining a fist to my chest as if giving a solemn pledge.

"Agreed," Araliac finally spoke up for the first time in this meeting, crossing her arms in front of her chest as if in indignation.

She actually chuckled in response to that. "I'm not worried about your commitment." No she was worried my zeal would turn into a crusade. And she was right to be worried.

I was feeling a little disappointed that she wasn't more antagonistic. Truthfully I didn't think Piggot was actually letting me go that easily. If I could act, so could she. What was her angle? Did she really not suspect Araliac of being Panacea? Not even going to question us about it?

"I'll help as much as I can too," Skitter said with a nod.

"You could do a lot of good with the Protectorate and the Wards," Armsmaster added. "We've been outnumbered and stretched thin by the villains for too long."

"I'm sure we could, but you know why we can't," I said good-naturedly while turning towards Miss Militia meaningfully.

Piggot glanced over as well.

Armsmaster turned to look at Skitter, as if expecting a separate answer from her. She stayed silent and pretended not to notice. Were they trying to act nice to give a good impression to Skitter?

"What you told us is indeed very troubling. It would be helpful if you could give us something more specific. I understand the need for information security but keeping things too close to your chest will make it difficult to cooperate. You haven't even told us your powers so we couldn't verify your identity if an imposter appeared."

"That's true," I admitted. "For our identities, there's not much we can do about that. It's not as if cape powers can't be faked either, and some powers are nearly impossible to detect. As for your moles, well first, let's agree to keep what I tell you next off the record, alright? I hope this room is secure."

"It is," Armsmaster assured. Piggot nodded her agreement.

This was it. The reason I deliberately acted so paranoid and uncooperative was right here. I wasn't going identify any moles for them. The ones I knew by name I had no proof of treachery, and the PRT likely wouldn't find any hard evidence at this point either. I had something entirely different in mind.

Piggot thought she could get something out of me pretending to play nice, but she just fell into my trap.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Initialization 1.10

"Alright. I guess I can give you something. First of all, as far as I know, everybody in this room is clear, so no worries about that. You've got a lot of moles, Most of which are low on the totem pole and not a big deal. You'll likely find them if you step up your security efforts. There is one that is particularly insidious, powerful, and extends beyond just this branch of the PRT and Protectorate," I let that sink in for a bit.

"Unfortunately…I can't tell you much. They'll know if I say anything, unless we have an anti-Thinker trump to block them. They are far too powerful for any of us to do anything about right now. I believe Dragon knows what I'm talking about, but she may be…incapable of revealing her knowledge on this to any members of the PRT or Protectorate," I began to hint at Cauldron.

I was being deliberately obtuse because I didn't want them to actually figure out Cauldron. That might lead to Contessa's Path ending me before I could finish talking. I did not care for Piggot to learn about Cauldron. I just needed an excuse to expose Dragon's restrictions. Dragon was an AI that had directives she was forced to follow, including to obey the law of the land and lawful authorities. Because of this, Cauldron's high ranking agents could order her. But I believed she would not be willing to expose herself as an AI with such restrictions, especially not when Piggot herself was a lawful authority that would suddenly realize how much power she had over her.

My real goal was to cast doubt on the PRT as a whole, have them waste time chasing shadows, prove part of my claims to Amelia, and break Skitter's mental image of the most famous heroes.

Armsmaster noticeably shifted in his armor. "Are you saying that Dragon is under Master influence?"

"I'm afraid I can't you tell more about that. Dragon's situation is…very delicate and I don't want to make things difficult for her. You should ask her and see what she says. But I imagine that if Dragon was free to act, she wouldn't allow a corrupt system to rig Canary's trial." Now I had an excuse to discuss the corruption in the trial, and make myself appear sympathetic to Dragon's interests despite revealing part of her secrets.

Suddenly a female voice came from Armsmaster's armor. "How did you know that?" It asked fearfully.

Piggot's head turned sharply and with wide eyes. Her reaction was more or less mirrored by everyone else in the room.

"Dragon…? You…really are…under a Master effect?" Armsmaster choked out.

"Not…exactly…," Dragon replied sadly. Her lack of a clear denial was telling.

Her answer was met with complete silence. It seems that nobody knew how to react to hearing that the greatest tinker in the world was being compelled to act against her will by some unknown power.

I decided to break the silence and redirect the conversation.

"So, were you listening in this whole time? After I asked if this room was secure?" I asked with a hint of irritation. How very helpful, make yourselves look underhanded and dishonorable more please.

I shook my head. I should have expected they'd bring Dragon in. From the spying Agate did earlier it was clear that she was heavily involved in the search for Panacea, and if I was right, they had to suspect something of Araliac already.

The real question was, did they bring anyone else? If Chief Director Costa-Brown had been listening in, I might be in real trouble. But I doubted that. Dragon was help but bringing the Chief Director in would have been admitting that Piggot was incapable of handling the problems in her city.

The Dragonslayers might be listening in, but they didn't matter much. Dragon was under programming restrictions set by her creator Andrew Richter, but the guy bit the dust and a group of mercenaries got their hands on Dragon's kill-switch and backdoor and poor Dragon didn't even know because her programming made her forget the existence of the Iron Maiden program, or Ascalon as the Dragonslayers renamed it.

'That's awful! I'm so glad I don't have restrictions like that…I hope. Do you think Master Zelretch put in a program I can't perceive as well?,' Agate commented.

'It's possible. I don't know if there was anything like that for the other Kaleidosticks. It seemed like he just left them to do their own thing after he made them,' I answered.

They weren't particularly dangerous to me, though, just to Dragon herself. I wouldn't lose much if they decided to kill her off now as she was just a stranger at this point, but it was worth keeping her alive if I could steal her kill-switch. She would be better off under my control instead. The Dragonslayers were irrational people that feared Dragon would take over the world, even though Dragon did not have that kind of personality. Some people would argue that she was the most powerful cape on the planet, and this was even with restrictions on parallel processing and self-replication. Before you ask, yes, she really is a cape with a shard power. I have no idea how the Entities managed to make AI compatible with their powers. Also I was fairly curious about her code myself. I wouldn't call myself a real expert in artificial intelligence, but I had more than enough grounding in machine learning and deep neural networks to appreciate the science. I had to admit to a certain curiosity as to whether my Earth had been on the right development path.

Piggot shamelessly answered for her. "You asked for this not to be recorded, and it isn't. The room certainly is secure. Dragon is one of the greatest cybersecurity experts in the world, we felt that it was necessary to have her secure the room and lock down our networks. More importantly, was Polychromic telling the truth? We've been infiltrated by a large and dangerous organization across multiple PRT regions?"

Piggot waited for an answer from Dragon but got nothing in response. "Dragon?" She asked in confusion.

"I heard you, director."

"Then…?"

"I am sorry, director."

Another silence enveloped the room. Piggot seemed to be even paler than she was at the start of the meeting. It helped me that Dragon thought of Cauldron as an enemy and would use a loophole like a long silence to imply the truth instead of lying.

I heard Piggot swear under her breath.

"Um…who is Canary and what did you mean by a rigged trial?" Skitter asked me awkwardly, breaking the silence.

"You want to explain that one, Dragon?" I suggested. Everyone looked back at Armsmaster.

"Yes, I can do that." Dragon said, sounding relieved. "Canary is a popular singer. She has a Master power to give orders to anybody after they've heard her sing. She is on trial for sexual assault with a parahuman power because her ex-boyfriend mutilated himself, trying to fulfill an order she accidentally gave when she said 'Go [beep] yourself'." She actually censored herself with an electronic beep. "She has been gagged because of her power and cannot defend herself in her trial, bound in heavy restraints because of her similarity to the Simurgh despite having no Brute powers. The judge seems biased, and her state-appointed lawyer is…less than effective at defending her. The verdict will likely be the Birdcage, but I do not think she deserves such a severe penalty." She sounded quite frustrated.

"That's horrible!" Skitter exclaimed.

"Plenty of murderous villains have been given the benefit of the so-called three strikes rule, but a girl who just made an honest mistake is going right to the Birdcage? That's not justice, that's a concerted effort by certain elements among the so-called authorities to pursue a private agenda," I scoffed.

"There must be something we can do, right?" Skitter looked around the room at everyone.

I put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a look before turning to Armsmaster again.

"Don't worry. I won't let her go to the Birdcage. She's not a villain just because some prejudiced bastards have decided to label her one." I phrased that so Araliac could be reminded of her situation with Carol.

Whether or not I really went to save her would depend on the timeline of her case and transport. I would be quite busy in the coming weeks, but I had to promise this now to stay in character with my previous assertions. And depending on certain factors…I might be able to rescue her from inside the Birdcage. That prison was impenetrable to almost all capes…but I could think of a few ways to get around that.

Piggot raised a brow. "You won't let her? I'm sure you meant that you would be helping her fight her court case and not breaking her free, right?"

"Of course," I answered, "Polychromic respects the law." It was left unsaid that a second cape persona might not.

"Let's get back to our main topic then. So you say we can't do anything about this organization. What about the others?" She asked.

"I'm sure you can handle those on your own now that I've warned you. The rest are all from villain gangs in the city," I brushed her off.

Coil was mine to take down. I wanted his money and resources, and if I told the PRT too soon, I wouldn't have to chance to take his holdings for myself if they successfully arrested his civilian identity, unlikely as that was. Tattletale would just swipe it all. Even if I told them I doubt they'd be able to do anything, as there was simply no actual proof of his villainy at this point. Nothing Coil did could be pinned on his civilian identity and he had a body double to boot. His power was not detectable for all intents and purposes, and he could argue his brain just had an inactive Corona.

I got a glare from Piggot but I resolutely stayed quiet on that subject. "Well if that's all, it's almost 4 AM and I'm sure we'd all like to get some sleep today…"

Skitter twisted her head at me. "4 AM?" She squawked, horrified. I hoped her dad didn't call the police. I was pretty sure we were way past the time she would've gotten back home, so Danny would probably be even more spooked than canon. It would not benefit me for Danny to find out about her activities and stop her from associating with me. Skitter had so much more potential when she didn't have such useless family tying her down.

"Very well, you may go. Miss Militia, please escort them out," Piggot ordered.

We started moving towards the door. Then suddenly I turned around again.

Before I left I had one last thing to say. "Was there really nobody else listening in? Chief Director Costa-Brown perhaps?" I asked out loud. I wasn't just being spiteful, if she really was listening in, I had to act now before I could be assassinated quietly on my way back.

"No, she wasn't, Polychromic. Nobody else was listening in," Piggot assured.

"Forgive me if I don't trust that after what you just pulled with Dragon," I responded. She glared and was about to open her mouth when I suddenly raised my head and talked to the air. "If you're listening in on this, and you know who you are, I have a message for you. Trying to get rid of me quietly after this meeting would be a grave mistake. I know how Eidolon can recover his diminishing powers, and many other secrets. You don't want me as your enemy."

A series of cries and outbursts came from the people in the room that overlapped one another, with "What?!" "Eidolon's losing powers?" "Who the hell—" "This is nonsense!" in the mix, I thought, but I couldn't process it. Agate could probably carefully review but it hardly mattered.

I ignored them all and waited patiently.

Piggot stood up and leaned forward slamming her hands down on her desk.

"Don't be ridiculous, Polychromic! Are you trying to imply the Chief Director would have you assassinated? This act isn't fooling anyone. I've been more than accommodating to you and you're starting to make me regret it. Get the hell out of my office before I change my mind about letting you go," Piggot said with anger.

Nothing happened. Maybe I was just paranoid and she wasn't listening in.

"So nobody was listening in after all? Very well, I'll leave now," I walked to the door and opened it, walking out.

Araliac followed, then Skitter after a slight pause, and finally Miss Militia closed the door behind us.





~ ~ ~