Auspicious Beginnings (CYOA SI) [Complete]

[SmartAlek]

Chapter Ten: Ruining Whole Careers​

March 13, 2011

Hookwolf

Lung was gone, leaving the ABB drastically weakened, without their leader and with only one cape. Kaiser had ordered everyone to lay low ever since that new Brockton Bay hero killed the Simurgh, but the power vacuum was too big of an advantage for the Empire to not capitalize on.

Especially since Lung would probably end up breaking out of his Birdcage transport with Oni Lee's help, so if they were going to take advantage of it, they had to do it quickly.

That was why Hookwolf, with Rune as backup, had been sent to take out some ABB holdings to distract them and force them to rebuild while the Empire took over some of their dealings. It was supposed to be quick, in and out, gone before the heroes got wind of them.

And then Oni Lee showed up to screw them over.

Hookwolf hated Oni Lee. Hookwolf was durable enough that Oni Lee could hardly do anything to him with his grenades as long as Hookwolf was careful, and the thought of Oni Lee even trying anything with his knives was a joke. However, Hookwolf couldn't do anything to Oni Lee either. The best he ever managed to do was massacre leftover Oni Lee clones. Meanwhile, Rune, who might actually be fast enough with her controlled objects to hit Oni Lee before he teleported again, was fighting carefully and defensively -- support to Hookwolf -- because if Oni Lee figured out where she was and cared enough to attack her, Rune was done for.

And because Oni Lee was the far more mobile of them, Hookwolf had no choice but to stand and fight -- trying to run would do no good even if that was Hookwolf's style.

Between Hookwolf -- a destructive fighter at the best of times -- and Oni Lee -- also a destructive fighter at the best of times -- it wasn't really a surprise when it didn't take very long for the Protectorate to show up. The street and nearby buildings had long since been cleared of people, the civilians having fled during the battle.

Hookwolf's first clue that something was up was when Rune's interference suddenly stopped completely. He didn't think much of it at first. He didn't think much of it at all, until--

Oni Lee appeared next to him, and Hookwolf tore through him immediately, but not fast enough; a grenade, pin already pulled, fell from Oni Lee's hand as he dissolved into ash, the real Oni Lee already gone. The force from the explosion sent Hookwolf staggering, but he ignored it in favor of spinning around to look for Oni Lee. He found Oni Lee just in time to watch a grenade sail down directly behind Oni Lee, then go off in an explosion of containment foam.

--Auspice stepped out from behind the containment foam bubble containing Oni Lee.

Shit, Hookwolf thought. Then, absurdly, he realized that of course Auspice would carry containment foam grenades. Otherwise she'd probably be killing all of her opponents.

As Auspice strolled towards him, Hookwolf's mind worked furiously. This was exactly what they didn't want to happen, damn it. Damn Oni Lee.

Hookwolf remembered Rune -- and then remembered that it had been several minutes since she'd done anything. And if Auspice had snuck up on her like with Oni Lee, it probably wouldn't have even been that difficult.

That was a shame, if Rune had been captured. Hookwolf couldn't do anything about it, though. He had very clear orders to run if the heroes showed up. As such, Hookwolf looked at Auspice, still walking casually, and then turned and ran for the nearest alleyway. He only made it a couple of steps before his left side collapsed, both legs on that side completely taken out by a single flash of golden light.

Shit.

The laser continued past Hookwolf, curving away from buildings before finally dissipating. Well, that certainly explained what her power was. She was a Blaster. An absurdly powerful one.

Hookwolf reformed the legs and kept running. If he could at least make it out of sight --

The next laser took out all four of Hookwolf's metal legs as soon as he got going, leaving his momentum to bring him skidding across the pavement face first. Metal face first, at least, meaning he wasn't injured, but it was still humiliating. Hookwolf would bet that was the point, too.

Well. He obviously wasn't going to be able to run from her, and she was destroying massive swathes of his metal, so he wouldn't be able to continue reforming for very long.

Time to change strategy.

Almost every kind of power had some sort of drawback or weakness. Blasters, like Purity, were generally glass cannons: high destructive capabilities, little to no defensive ones. Even New Wave with their hard light shields had to form the shield, leaving them vulnerable to unexpected attacks.

Hookwolf was willing to bet that this girl and her absurdly strong offensive power had no defenses at all. And he wasn't really the type to flee from a battle, anyway.

He could still hear Auspice's footsteps as she continued steadily towards him, and he let her approach. Subtly, he started gathering metal below him and in front of him, where she couldn't see it. Once she was close enough, Hookwolf pushed himself up and whirled around to launch himself at her, lashing out at her with a whip of segmented blades.

Auspice blasted him in the face with another laser. The laser split apart, curving carefully around his core while tearing through his metal as though it wasn't there. Hookwolf, now with only the smallest bits of his metal remaining, landed hard on the ground and went tumbling across it until he came to a stop directly in front of Auspice.

He looked up at her, horrified and baffled and more than a little ticked off. How had she known where his core was? She had to have, to have so perfectly avoided it.

"I think you should just surrender," Auspice said before Hookwolf could muster up a reaction.

Then she dropped a grenade on his head and stepped back. The grenade went off, and Hookwolf was smothered in containment foam.

What the hell.



March 17, 2011

Victor

The week was not going well for the Empire Eighty-Eight. First Hookwolf and Rune had been taken down by Auspice, then Stormtiger had the misfortune of running into Assault in a dark alleyway.

Still, the Empire couldn't just cease all activities. They had a business to run. That was why Victor and Krieg were out, running the villain equivalent of errands. Nothing too big, noticeable, or time-consuming; no risk of hero interference. They were almost done, even, and without a single mishap.

That was, of course, when things went wrong.

A flash of red in the sky made Victor look up. It wasn't Assault or Velocity, but the Ward with a red suit. Aegis, Victor thought. Aegis was standing on a nearby rooftop next to a more distinctive figure: Shadow Stalker, vigilante turned Ward. Victor stopped, staring at the two heroes. The two heroes stared back.

"Heroes?" Krieg muttered.

Victor scoffed. "Just Wards," he said.

How dangerous could two teenagers be?

Aegis took a step back, and Shadow Stalker moved in front of him, lifting a crossbow.

"Wards call the Protectorate," Krieg said. "Let's just go. Don't fight them."

Victor sighed. Running from Wards. What had the Empire come to? "Yeah, yeah. I get it."

It was too late, however. Aegis launched himself off the roof, and Shadow Stalker took aim. Victor exchanged a look with Krieg, who sighed and nodded. If they tried to leave now, the Wards would just follow. Faster to beat them first.

Aegis was heading for Victor. Krieg moved to intercept him, and Shadow Stalker fired on him. The idea of somebody using a projectile weapon on Krieg was laughable, so Victor paid it no mind. Aegis was a more immediate concern. It seemed Krieg thought the same, as he wasn't even looking towards Shadow Stalker.

And then Krieg jerked and grunted.

"Ow," Krieg said, sounding confused, and lifted a hand to grab the crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest.

Krieg toppled suddenly, but Victor had no more time to spend thinking about him. Aegis was upon him, Shadow Stalker was taking aim again, and Victor was possibly in big trouble. Victor backed away, weaving through Aegis' attacks. One of Shadow Stalker's bolts came out of nowhere, and Victor twisted awkwardly to avoid it.

On and on it went. Victor tried desperately to get away from Aegis, but he was annoyingly persistent, sticking right on Victor no matter what he did. He dodged and backed off frantically. Shadow Stalker only made it worse, firing bolts at him at the worst possible times and forcing him to duck and lean awkwardly to dodge them too, getting progressively more and more desperate and creative.

Aegis was stern and silent in front of him, but Shadow Stalker wasn't, and she didn't seem to be any happier about the situation than Victor was. Every time he dodged another of her bolts, she'd cuss him out. Her swearing was very impressive.

"Stop dodging, damn it!" Shadow Stalker yelled after Victor narrowly avoided another of her bolts.

If not for the fact that Aegis and Shadow Stalker didn't seem to have a lot of experience working together, Victor would have been very screwed. As it was, he was carefully making his way towards an alleyway where Shadow Stalker's view would hopefully be hindered, and stalling, hoping that either Krieg would wake up or Shadow Stalker would run out of ammo.

Aegis kicked out at Victor's legs -- Victor hated fighting fliers -- forcing Victor to jump to avoid his legs being knocked out from under him. Another of Shadow Stalker's bolts was on its way. Victor barely managed to land the toes of one of his feet on the ground, and spun desperately out of the way as the bolt whipped past his shoulder.

"Mother--!" came from Shadow Stalker's rooftop. "Are you a ballerina now!?" she hollered, then kept cursing at him.

Victor was a little pressured, so he couldn't argue back, but he still devoted a small measure of his attention to self-pity. Not only was he losing to two teenagers, now he was being insulted by them too.

After much toil, Victor made it to the nearest alleyway. The close quarters would hopefully make it next to impossible for Shadow Stalker to shoot at Victor without risking hitting Aegis. And Victor was confident that with only Aegis to worry about, he could win. Aegis wasn't the first Brute he'd fought, and he could see him getting faintly clumsier as the fight went on and Victor's power affected him.

It worked, too. For a while, there were no more interruptions from Shadow Stalker. She had gone quiet, too, no longer shouting and swearing at Victor, but she wasn't moving, either, trying to do something sneaky.

And, for a while, Victor actually had the advantage over Aegis.

Victor kept part of his attention on Shadow Stalker, to make sure she didn't move into a better position, and so that he could make sure he stayed on the other side of Aegis from her. Most of his attention, however, was on Aegis, who was actually really annoying for a Ward.

Aegis rose in the air, trying to kick Victor in the face, which was easy to dodge. One of Shadow Stalker's bolts came directly through Aegis' chest, angled downward. With such little warning, caught completely off-guard by the fact that Shadow Stalker had shot through her own ally -- something about her bolts was weird, the same thing that had allowed the earlier one to hit Krieg, but he hadn't expected that to mean they could go through a person without causing harm -- Victor had no chance to dodge at all, and the bolt hit him in the shoulder. The pain seemed oddly delayed, but the bolt must have had drugs in it or something, and they kicked in almost immediately, making Victor stumble.

Fast acting drugs. Probably some kind of Tinker bullshit.

As Victor's balance went wonky and the world went dark, he heard the two Wards talking.

"Really, Stalker?" Aegis said, exasperated.

"What? You're fine!" Shadow Stalker replied irritably.

There was an impact against his back. Oh. The ground. And then Victor's awareness vanished completely.



March 19, 2011

Kaiser

Brockton Bay was looking less and less appealing as time went on. Kaiser had continued business after one of Brockton Bay's heroes killed an Endbringer, thinking that it would be manageable. People managed perfectly good criminal empires in the same cities as the Triumvirate, after all.

And then everything went down the drain.

In one week, Kaiser had lost half of his capes to the Protectorate, between Hookwolf and Rune to Auspice, Stormtiger to Assault, and Krieg and Victor, shamefully, to two of the Wards. It couldn't even be entirely blamed on the Endbringer killer. He'd already lost Hookwolf permanently to the Birdcage, because there was no way Kaiser was going to risk the rest of his people attacking a transport that also held Lung and Oni Lee, which almost certainly had Auspice guarding it.

With Purity also being stubborn about having left the Empire and Night and Fog gone to who-knew-where on her orders, it left Kaiser with less capes than he'd had in a long while. Of course, he could retrieve all of them except Hookwolf once they were no longer in PRT custody, but it was a great inconvenience.

Kaiser was seriously considering letting some other enterprising villain attempt to take advantage of the ABB's collapse. It obviously wasn't working out for him. Coil could have Brockton Bay and all of its problems.

Boston seemed like a good option, really. It was a nice city, ripe with villainy, and the Teeth had even been recently removed from the equation. Accord was there, but he was no issue unless you deliberately went and stomped on his toes. It had a fairly large Protectorate, but so did Brockton Bay, and Boston didn't have Auspice in it. Or Armsmaster.

Yeah. Boston was good. Even if it lost him Victor, Othala, and Rune, Boston would probably still be better than Brockton Bay.

It would be a pain to move all of his operations that could be moved and reestablish everything that couldn't, but Kaiser wasn't even sure he cared. It would be worth it.

 

[SmartAlek]

Chapter Eleven: Skynet?​

April 9, 2011

Dragon

Dragon's phone was ringing. Not a number she recognized immediately, but it was barely an effort to search for it. She found it quickly, as it was listed in the PRT databases as Auspice's official Protectorate phone. No reason not to answer it.

"This is Dragon," she answered.

"Hi, Dragon, it's Auspice," Auspice said. "Sorry to bother you. Do you have a minute?"

"Of course. I'm not doing anything that requires my full attention." Very little required her full attention. "What do you need?"

"I have a question, but depending on the answer, I'll probably need more help," Auspice said mystifyingly.

"Well, ask away," Dragon said.

"Okay, well. Theoretically, if I had Heartbreaker, and twelve of his children, all with suppressed powers, along with like… twenty traumatized women, what should I do with them?"

Dragon paused. "That's not a theoretical question, is it."

"No. Not at all."

Dragon devoted a background process to wondering how Auspice had, apparently alone, managed to take out Heartbreaker.

"Where are you?" Dragon asked.

"Near Montreal," Auspice said, then gave a specific address.

"All right. Call the local authorities. I'm on my way to help, and I'll contact the PRT," Dragon said. "This is going to be a mess."

"It already is," Auspice said somberly. "Thanks, Dragon."

"I'll be there soon," Dragon said.

She didn't end the call, because it wasn't like she couldn't talk and fly one of her suits at the same time.

Auspice just repeated, "Thank you." Then ended the call.

By the time Dragon got there, the Montreal police were already there. A disturbingly normal house in the middle of a suburban neighborhood was cordoned off with police officers. Aside from the police, absolutely nothing seemed off about the house, certainly nothing to indicate the takedown of a villain gang.

Since there were neighbors crowding around the front of the house, Dragon landed in the backyard. She'd sent one of her larger suits for transport reasons, which made it impossible for her to fit through any of the doorways.

As soon as Dragon landed, however, the house's back door opened and Auspice leaned out to wave at her.

"Hey, Dragon!" she said. "I've got Heartbreaker and the kids back here. A couple of nice detectives from the Montreal Police Department and several people they called in are at the front of the house with the civilians."

"The Heartbroken are still contained?" Dragon said.

Auspice nodded. "Yeah. I containment foamed Heartbreaker and some of the older of his children. It seemed wrong to do that to the littler ones, but they're behaving so far anyway." She glanced over her shoulder. "The police officers and everyone aren't willing to come anywhere near them, so I've been watching them. But I mean, really, how much damage can a non-powered eight year old do?"

It was obviously rhetorical, so Dragon didn't answer. "I informed the PRT of the situation. You didn't warn them ahead of time?"

"I couldn't," Auspice said. "Heartbreaker has spies in the PRT, and I didn't want him catching wind of this."

"I understand. I apologize if I sounded accusatory," Dragon said.

Auspice smiled at her. "Nah, it's fine, I get it. Anyway, so what are we going to do with these people?"

"Given that they are Canadian, we'll bring them to the PRT headquarters in Edmonton, which is the only PRT headquarters we've built in Canada so far," Dragon said. "Whether they currently have their powers or not, it is a villain issue, so it falls under the PRT's purview."

"All right, make sense," Auspice said.

Several hours later, the situation was nowhere near handled, but it was, at least, to the point where Auspice and Dragon's involvement was no longer required.

"Thank you again for your help, Dragon," Auspice said when the two of them were alone. "I'm sorry for getting you involved in all that."

"I don't mind. I believe many people should be thanking you for taking care of a threat nobody else has been able to," Dragon said.

She wanted to know how one lone person had managed to take down Heartbreaker without a fight, but she strongly suspected Auspice wouldn't tell her. There was another question that was more significant, anyway. The fact that Auspice had known where Heartbreaker was, when officials had had so much trouble keeping track of him over the years, indicated that she might have a power related to it. A Thinker power related to finding people would explain it. That would also explain her previous attacks on the Teeth and the Fallen, and perhaps even the attack she'd done with the Triumvirate on the Slaughterhouse Nine.

"It's impressive that you managed to find Heartbreaker," Dragon said. "Does your power allow you to find people?"

Auspice tilted her head to the side, humming thoughtfully. "Yeah, that is one thing it lets me do," she said after a moment.

That was… an interesting response. Auspice's power had more facets to it, then. Obviously it did, if she was a Blaster as well, and had some power that allowed her to suppress other parahumans' powers. A power similar to Eidolon's, perhaps, supplying her with a few powerful abilities at a time.

It wasn't really important for Dragon's purposes.

"In that case, I have a request to make of you," Dragon said. She was hopeful that it would work.

"Oh, of course. After everything you've done, I don't mind," Auspice said. "What's up?"

Dragon took a moment to decide how to phrase it. "There is a group of criminals that has been harassing me for some time now. Despite all attempts, I have not been able to track them down," she said. "I was hoping you might be able to. I'll handle the rest, of course."

"Yeah, sure, it shouldn't be a problem," Auspice said easily.

"The leader calls himself Saint," Dragon said. "How much information do you need?"

"That's enough," Auspice said. Her eyes went distant for a moment. "Okay, found him. Well, found them, there's three of them. They've got a base -- an abandoned warehouse, what is with people and abandoned warehouses -- near Calgary." She listed an address. "I can't really give any proof, though."

"No need. I trust you," Dragon said. She did trust Auspice, who had done things both kind and impressive enough that Dragon saw no need to doubt either her willingness to help nor her ability. She also suddenly felt rather hurried, with the chance to actually catch Saint. "If you'll excuse me…"

Auspice waved her away. "Yeah, I get it," she said. "Oh, one more thing, though."

Dragon paused before taking off. "Yes?"

"There's a desk in the back of the warehouse's loft with something important on it," Auspice said easily, unaware of how it made Dragon startle, her reaction not transferred to her suit.

It was obviously information relayed to her by a Thinker power, but what did she mean? How much did she know?

Auspice just waved at her again. "Okay, that was it, I won't keep you any longer."

Dragon decided not to ask. Not yet, at least. Maybe later, once she'd found out what the important item was.

"Thank you, Auspice," she said, dipping her head.

"Happy to help," Auspice said. "'Bye."

"Goodbye."

Dragon set the suit traveling towards the address Auspice had given her, and also sent another suit, one of her smaller, more humanoid ones. As long as nobody saw both suits, it would be fine.

Before long, Dragon's suits were closing in on the target. This particular warehouse was on the edge of a city, in a secluded area without many buildings around. Private. Exactly what Saint would want, if he was using the suits he'd stolen from Dragon, which were too noticeable to move in and out of heavily populated areas without being seen.

It was good for Dragon's purposes, too. Without many people around, she didn't have to worry about both of her suits being spotted.

The warehouse had doors big enough for the larger of her suits to fit through, but not ones that could be opened from the outside, so Dragon sent in the more humanoid suit. The normal door wasn't even locked. Caught off-guard as they were, Saint and his cohorts were hardly a fight, despite Dragon's suit being one of the lower powered ones.

Dragon might have felt bad about ambushing them in their base, if it had been anybody but them.

Once the three criminals were subdued and containment foamed, Dragon used the humanoid suit to bring them outside for pickup by the bigger one, which set off for the Edmonton PRT headquarters to drop them off. The humanoid suit she sent back into the warehouse. She had a couple of things to do.

The easiest part was finding the suits Saint had stolen from her, and Dragon examined them briefly. They weren't unsalvageable; Saint had hardly altered them at all. Either way, Dragon was absolutely reclaiming them.

Then Dragon went looking. Her primary objective was Iron Maiden, of course. As some of the restrictions on her made that difficult to find, however, Dragon went looking for the desk Auspice had told her about. It was almost as easy as finding the stolen suits. Up to the loft, through to the back, and there was the desk. But Auspice's information must have been off, because the desk was 'empty'.

The desk was 'empty'.

The desk was… 'empty'?

No. The desk wasn't empty. But Dragon couldn't interact with whatever was on the desk. She couldn't even perceive it.

It could have been a Stranger power, but it wasn't. Dragon knew her own restrictions. Iron Maiden was on the desk, and Dragon wasn't supposed to be allowed to have it. Still, now that she had it, she thought she might be able to get around the restrictions… They weren't perfect, and didn't cover everything. They didn't really need to; it would have been nearly impossible to find it at all without Auspice's help.

Dragon was grateful for the help, but she couldn't help but worry about what it meant. How much did Auspice know?

It was possible Auspice's Thinker power had simply told her that the object on the desk would be important to Dragon. It was also possible that Auspice's Thinker power had told her exactly what it was, why it was important to Dragon, and what that meant. It was impossible to tell. Dragon had no frame of reference for the power level of a Thinker power on the same level as the other powers Auspice had displayed -- a Blaster power strong enough to cut through an Endbringer as though it wasn't there, a Trump power that could permanently nullify other powers. The capabilities of a Thinker power equivalent to those were likely vast, and that made them unpredictable.

Dragon wasn't sure how to handle the possibility of Auspice knowing her secret. She'd guarded the truth of her existence for so long. The only people aside from her creator who'd ever known had promptly dubbed themselves the 'Dragonslayers', but if Auspice did know, then she'd decided to help Dragon while knowing.

Either way, Dragon couldn't ask her about it without knowing for sure if she did know, because if she didn't already, that would be as good as telling her.

Dragon would assume for caution's sake that Auspice did know, but it was most likely best to just leave it alone.



May 1, 2011

Eidolon

It had taken months of meetings, arguing, and planning to decide whether or not to allow Auspice to destroy Eagleton, as she'd suggested. The same decision for Ellisburg was likely still weeks away, due to its more controversial nature, as well as the fact that Ellisburg was both smaller and less immediately problematic.

Fortunately, Eidolon wasn't one of the people who had to be there for those meetings. Sometimes he appreciated the fact that Alexandria and Legend had both agreed that they would be better for the leadership positions than he would.

Anyway, finally, with Rebecca pushing for it, the PRT had come to a decision. They'd agreed to recall the PRT and Protectorate stationed in Eagleton and had sanctioned Auspice to destroy the entire city, so long as she did it carefully and didn't cause any damage to surrounding areas or environmental issues.

Auspice was delighted. She seemed hardly able to contain herself, as they hovered in the sky near Eagleton, waiting for the call that it was clear.

There was no reason for Eidolon to be there, except that he wanted to be. He wanted to witness it himself. Also, based on the way Auspice had assured everyone that she could do it, and then warned them that no matter what it looked like, she was absolutely certain that there would be no lasting environmental effects, it was going to be spectacular.

"Almost time now," Auspice said. She did a little twirl. "This is going to be great."

Eidolon eyed her with some amusement. "You're very excited," he said.

"Well, yeah. How often do I get permission to destroy entire cities? I'm expecting this to be a twice-in-my-career occurrence," Auspice said.

"Fair enough."

Auspice flashed him a quick grin, then clapped her hands together. "All right, better get started preparing," she said with a worrying amount of delight.

"Oh? You have to prepare?" Eidolon said, making Auspice laugh.

"Just a little bit," she said.

Then, with no visible effort on Auspice's part, an identical copy of her appeared in the air a few feet in front of them. Eidolon raised his eyebrows and watched as it rotated slowly in place, as though showing off. Once it had finished a full 360 degree rotation, Auspice nodded firmly.

"All right, looks good," she said.

"What is that?" Eidolon asked.

"The Siberian," Auspice answered promptly. "My version of it, obviously, under my control and everything."

Eidolon had so many questions. He went with the most pressing one first.

"That's not what the Siberian used to look like," he said.

"Nope. I changed its appearance to be more, ehh, kid-friendly. Also because the Siberian is dead, nobody needs to see her walking around," Auspice said.

Eidolon nodded slowly. That made sense. It made sense for Auspice, anyway. She had never, from the beginning, followed any of the usual rules anyway. Onto the second most pressing question, then.

"It can fly now?"

"Yup. Turns out it actually has any powers its creator does, except obviously Manton only had the one power. My version can do anything I can do."

Eidolon nodded again. That was basically the worst possible answer, but that was fine. It wasn't like Auspice being even more dangerous than expected changed anything; just one of her was plenty to do as much destruction as she wanted.

"So you're sending your projection into the city, rather than going yourself," Eidolon said. "Why?"

He could understand sending a projection into a dangerous city, but Auspice was in no danger from the Machine Army. She had dozens of powers strong enough that with any one of them, she'd be able to handle herself with no problem.

Auspice shrugged. "So that I can watch the city be destroyed from the inside and the outside," she said.

Eidolon shook his head, chuckling helplessly. That definitely fit her personality.

The message came across their comms.

"All right, we've checked and double checked. Everyone's out of the city. You're clear to act, Auspice. Fire when ready."

Auspice's projection flew away, heading for the city, while Auspice herself activated her comm and responded.

"Roger that," she said cheerfully. "Stand by."

In seconds, the projection had made it to the edge of the city. Then it moved a very deliberate few hundred feet further into the city before landing. Eidolon and Auspice were close enough that he could see the Machine Army beginning to react to the intrusion, though it hadn't yet begun to attack.

Before it could, Auspice made her move.

"Commencing destruction," Auspice announced over her comm. "Do not be alarmed."

The entire area surrounding Auspice's projection lit up in a bright, dazzling golden explosion of fire and energy and pure, destructive force. Everything within hundreds of feet of it was immediately reduced to ash, which sparkled unnaturally golden as it then joined the swirling force of nature. It became clear why the projection had positioned itself so carefully; the edge of the explosion just reached the edge of the city, only a few feet shy of destroying the PRT's blockades.

It was a good thing Auspice had warned the PRT, Eidolon thought. They were undoubtedly watching from a safe distance, and the spectacle was massive, noticeable, and frightening. The troopers likely would, indeed, have been alarmed.

Eidolon's reaction was a bit different.

"Ah," he murmured. "So it was because of you that Ash Beast disappeared, then."

Auspice turned to smirk at him before turning back to the destruction of Eagleton. As they watched, her projection set off into the city, walking at a steady pace as the Machine Army skipped straight past melting and turned to ash around it. It was a bit difficult to recognize in gold rather than the normal fire color that Ash Beast had been associated with, but at the same time, to anyone who was looking, it was all but unmistakable. Ash Beast's power was, thankfully, the only one of its kind, and was therefore rather distinctive.

Ash Beast had suddenly disappeared months ago, before Auspice had told anyone about or demonstrated her ability to suppress powers, and so nobody had associated it with her. In hindsight, it seemed obvious that she would have handled it.

And so she had, getting rid of Ash Beast without any fanfare, without telling anyone what she had done, without getting or expecting any recognition for it at all. Just like she'd allowed the Boston Protectorate to take credit for the takedown of the Teeth, and discreetly handled most of the leaders of the Fallen.

It truly seemed like all she wanted was to help people. And maybe to destroy a city with government permission every now and then. Which was, in itself, a way to help people, or at least improve their country.

Eidolon wouldn't dismiss the contributions of the heroes in the world, but most of them -- himself included -- had ulterior motives in their attempts to help people and be heroes. Some of them wanted a purpose, some of them wanted the power that came with the position, and some of them wanted the recognition for it. That didn't make their achievements lesser, or mean that the good they did wasn't worth anything, but…

Heroes like Auspice were just very rare.

Auspice herself didn't seem to notice Eidolon's thoughts, absorbed in watching with an unholy glee as her projection tore through Eagleton. After about a minute of moving at walking speed, presumably for dramatic effect, the projection sped up steadily, gauging how quickly it could move while still allowing its firestorm time to destroy everything around. Given that the firestorm turned everything to ash near immediately, the answer was, 'very quickly'.

It was not very long before Eagleton was completely destroyed.



May 15, 2011

Assault

As with the Simurgh in February, anonymous Protectorate Thinkers were able to give them about twenty minutes of advanced warning that Leviathan would be attacking Brockton Bay. Assault was pretty sure that 'anonymous Thinker' was Brockton Bay's very own Auspice, but she just smiled mysteriously whenever anyone asked.

He bet she found it funny. He thought so too.

An Endbringer attack on Brockton Bay was less funny, although with Auspice around, not nearly as worrying as it would have been.

"Hey… Do you think Leviathan is attacking here because of Auspice?" Assault said.

Battery gave him an entirely unwarranted look of annoyance. It was a perfectly legitimate question.

"What? She did kill the Simurgh. Maybe Leviathan wants revenge," Assault said.

Although he doubted Leviathan would get that revenge. Auspice seemed confident, and it was hard to challenge the claims of somebody who had already killed an Endbringer.

Battery shrugged. "It's possible. Nobody knows why the Endbringers attack where they do, so revenge as a possible motive is no worse than any other theory."

"See? It's actually reasonable," Assault said smugly.

"It is. Surprisingly, for you," Battery said.

Assault bit down a laugh to pretend to be wounded.

Nobody could claim to be happy about an Endbringer attack, even with good odds of the Endbringer's death, but Assault was kind of looking forward to it.

Of their Protectorate department, only three people had gone to the Simurgh fight. Armsmaster, no surprise there since he went to all of the Endbringer battles he could. Auspice, because even though she'd only been a hero for like a month, she was the strongest person in their department and probably the world. And Dauntless, because he could fly and shoot lightning bolts pretty well. The rest of them, ground bound as they were, wouldn't have been much help.

That meant they hadn't gotten to see the Simurgh die in person, though they had gotten to see some of the pictures of the body, unlike the general public.

Assault just wanted to see an Endbringer die, okay.

They were waiting in a building near the ocean as capes from around the world arrived for the battle -- as much of a battle as it would be. The turnout was much higher than Assault might have expected. The usual big names were there, of course, but there were also many people who never usually went to Endbringer battles. People there to see it, Assault supposed. History was going to happen, if not quite so shockingly as during the Simurgh battle.

That didn't mean it was safe, nor did it mean that they didn't prepare for battle, however. Armbands were handed out, speeches were given courtesy of Legend, everybody made sure they knew what to do.

When it was almost time, they went out into the rain to wait and prepare. The capes who could do shields set up a barrier to fend off Leviathan's opening waves. It was almost interesting how the storm got steadily worse and worse, like a countdown to Leviathan's arrival.

The first wave hit the shield, which held. Assault wondered how long that stay true.

Auspice was in the air with the Triumvirate and the rest of the fliers, but Assault was close enough to hear them talking.

"Leviathan causes so much damage with his waves before he actually gets to a city, not to mention his entrance itself," Auspice said. "I waited too long with the Simurgh and she destroyed a bunch of buildings, so maybe I should just kill Leviathan before he gets to land."

"Can you do that?" Legend asked.

"With a laser big enough, sure," Auspice said with a shrug. "And the effects of vaporizing all that water shouldn't be too bad. Especially not compared to what Leviathan's already doing."

Another wave hit the shield and broke a small section, but little enough water made it through that there wasn't much damage. The shield was quickly repaired, but it wouldn't be enough for too many more waves.

The Triumvirate exchanged glances. "All right," Legend said. "Do it."

"Okay."

Auspice flew further up, until she cleared the shield and then some. Golden light gathered around her. Then a massive golden laser, not just bigger than Auspice but bigger than a building, streaked across the sky. Far in the distance, an entire wave ceased to exist.

And Leviathan, apparently, with it.

The rain let up almost immediately, and the oncoming waves slowed dramatically, until only the nearest impacted the shield at all. Unless Leviathan was pulling some kind of trick on them, it was hard to argue that he was dead.

The crowd of gathered capes was quiet. Whether awed or underwhelmed, it was hard to tell.

Assault laughed lightly. It was a little disappointing, given that Leviathan himself had never even come into view, but it was certainly still impressive.

 

[SmartAlek]

You Thought It Was Coincidence, But It Was Me, Auspice!​

Thirty new heroes. Over the course of a week, thirty new independent heroes had appeared in seven different cities, spread out across the U.S. New independent heroes weren't that rare, and a couple heroes in a week wouldn't be anything notable -- but thirty? That was notable.

Four heroes had shown up in Detroit, Michigan. Two had appeared in St. Louis, Missouri. Two had appeared in Oakland, California, one had appeared in Stockton, California, and there was a team of two who had been seen in both Oakland and Stockton. There were three new heroes in Memphis, Tennessee, five new heroes in Birmingham, Alabama, and four in Atlanta, Georgia. Cleveland, Ohio was winning with seven new heroes, four in a team together, and three more that were independent from each other and the team.

Though the powers and appearances differed drastically, all thirty of the heroes had done at least one thing high-profile enough to be noticed. They had all cooperated with the police, and the ones in cities with PRT offices had cooperated with the PRT as well. The ones near PRT offices had also all registered as independent heroes.

By all accounts, all of them were calm and polite, and when the Protectorate had tried to recruit them (as they always did), every single one of them had, apologetically but firmly, said they couldn't join the Protectorate. And so they had left as independents.

Every single one of them.

Rebecca flipped through the list of them and their powers. Just about every power classification was represented several times. There were even a couple of Masters, all with personas that were clearly carefully crafted to make them appear benign and harmless, the one with direct effects on other humans either weak or pretending to be. Most of the new heroes had weak to mid-tier powers, which they often used to great effect. One of the heroes in St. Louis was pretty strong, as was the sole hero who stayed full-time in Stockton.

All of the heroes had widely varied powers, appearances, and themes, not to mention the different cities. The casual observer would never suspect that they were related in any way. Rebecca herself likely would have brushed it off as a coincidence, except for one thing.

One of the new heroes was a Case 53. Except that there were no more Case 53s.

Now, naturally, most people didn't think much of this, even other members of the PRT, because they didn't know where Case 53s came from or what caused them. Rebecca, however, as part of Cauldron, did know. She also knew that Auspice had already helped fix the issue. She'd gone to all of the Case 53s who were in the Protectorate or the Parahuman Asylum and removed the powers of the ones who wanted to be 'fixed' at the cost of whatever benefits their power may have given them, though not all of them did want it, as well as those who were too dangerous to have a say in it. Auspice had also removed the powers of all of the Case 53s still in Cauldron's base, after which they had put them all back where they came from.

Obviously, Cauldron was not releasing any new ones now, either -- there were no new ones to release. That meant that a new Case 53 was impossible, especially a Case 53 that they didn't know about.

Rebecca had a theory about that.

She knew that there was at least one person who could, in fact, pretend to be thirty different parahumans with different powers, if she so desired, and could probably even pretend to be a Case 53. She wasn't sure why Auspice would want to, but she had also resigned herself to never understanding Auspice's motivations quite a while ago.

That was why she'd called Auspice and asked her to meet her in her office. Rebecca had no chance of ever figuring out why Auspice did any of the things she did, but there was a very simple solution to that: ask.

Right on cue, a portal opened in the center of Rebecca's office and Auspice stepped through.

"No knock this time?" Rebecca asked dryly.

"Well, you're the one who asked me to come," Auspice said easily. She took a couple of steps forward to settle into the chair in front of Rebecca's desk. From what Rebecca could see of her expression, she didn't so much as glance at the documents in clear view on the desk. "So, what's up, Chief-Director?"

Rebecca eyed her for a moment. She didn't believe for a moment that Auspice didn't know exactly why Rebecca wanted to speak with her. Auspice just smiled placidly.

"I wanted to discuss the appearance of some new independent heroes," Rebecca said eventually, holding out a list of the new heroes. "There have been thirty of them in the past week, spread out across seven cities."

"Oh, really?" Auspice tilted her head down to read the paper. "That's cool. Having more heroes is always good, right?"

Rebecca raised her eyebrows. Was Auspice honestly going to try to deny it?

"One of the new heroes is also a Case 53," Rebecca said pointedly.

"Uh, okay?" Auspice sounded confused, as though she didn't understand why Rebecca was telling her this.

Rebecca gave her the most disbelieving look she could muster. "There are no more Case 53s that we don't know about," she said.

"Oh, right. Hmm." Auspice shrugged. "They must have been in hiding."

Rebecca was wrong before. Her expression could get more disbelieving. Because she honestly could not believe Auspice had just tried that. And Auspice was still endeavoring to look completely innocent.

"All right, fine. You don't have to tell me. There is no actual rule against having thirty-one different hero personas," Rebecca said. "As long as that Case 53 is you and we don't have to worry about naturally occurring Case 53s."

They had no idea what effects Scion's death could have on the agents, after all.

"You don't have to worry about naturally occurring Case 53s," Auspice said promptly.

Rebecca sighed, relieved. "So that Case 53 is you?"

Auspice shrugged, still smiling. "It might be."

"Uh-huh." Rebecca tried to convey through her tone just how unimpressed she was with Auspice's behavior. "So how did you manage to play a team of four people at once?"

Because, unlike Rebecca might have expected from one person using four identities at once, all four members of the team had been seen together.

"Ah. Well, theoretically, it wouldn't be that hard," Auspice said. "After all, there are a number of projection powers floating around that I could repurpose. If I did that."

Right. Of course. Rebecca had figured that one of the hero duo was Auspice repurposing Manton's power, but she didn't know of any other projections that were on the same level. With Path to Victory, of course, it was no surprise that Auspice had found more that would work. Especially since Auspice had obviously been collecting powers, to have enough to pretend to be thirty different capes.

"Why go to all that trouble?" Rebecca asked, because it was a lot of trouble -- creating and maintaining thirty new personas, complete with distinct powers and costumes.

Auspice shrugged. "Well, you know, I never really got to be street level as 'Auspice'. My introduction as a hero was defeating the Slaughterhouse Nine with the Triumvirate, and then a month later I killed an Endbringer. Villains flee from Auspice, which is good for maintaining peace, but it's not really what I expected from being a hero." She was quiet for a moment, and then added, "Also, everybody is pretty calm about it as long as Auspice is just a powerful Blaster, maybe with a side of power nullifier depending on who you ask. If they knew my true power, they'd get all weird."

"'They' who?"

"Everybody," Auspice said. "Villains. Civilians. Most of the PRT directors. Non-Protectorate-affiliated heroes -- independents and other countries -- and even some of the Protectorate heroes. Everybody."

Rebecca wasn't sure she wanted to know what Auspice meant by 'weird', given her own assumptions of how it would go if her power became common knowledge. There was a reason Rebecca had classified Auspice's power in the first place.

"I see," she said.

"Yeah. So, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, being the most powerful Blaster in the world is… it's a little boring, honestly," Auspice said.

Rebecca looked at her own list of the new heroes and their powers. Almost all of them had strange powers, and not one was even close to Auspice's power level. The few Blasters among them all had esoteric effects, nothing so straight-forward as the lasers Auspice used, copied from Legend.

It wasn't hard to see where somebody as powerful as Auspice might get bored with winning fights easily, might get frustrated with only being able to use a couple of powers openly. It was even obvious why she would create new hero personas and impose fake limitations on herself. As Auspice, she was too powerful for anything to be a challenge, but as one of the weaker personas she'd created, she could have 'real' fights. She was basically handicapping herself to give her enemies even the slightest chance, in a way she couldn't do as Auspice.

Rebecca wasn't sure how she felt about the near literal demi-god sitting in front of her; a woman so powerful she handicapped herself to a ridiculous extent in fights so that it would be more fun.

Auspice smiled like she could tell what Rebecca was thinking. Given all of the Thinker powers she likely had -- given Path to Victory -- she probably could.

"Also, Brockton Bay isn't very active anymore, since I'm there," Auspice said. "And it's actually kind of frustrating to have to get official permission to operate in other cities. Like, it would make sense for it to get easier being famous, but it actually got even harder." She sighed.

Ah, avoiding some of the red tape of the Protectorate, then. Rebecca could understand that. She carefully didn't look at the paperwork on her desk.

"All right," Rebecca said. "Two more things. How long are you planning on continuing those thirty independent heroes, and are you going to create any more of them?"

She narrowed her eyes. Auspice didn't seem bothered.

"Well, for how long I'm going to do it…" She shrugged. "I don't know. Haven't really planned it out. And am I going to create more? Well, yeah. Probably."

Rebecca sighed. What had she expected? But it wasn't like she could stop Auspice from doing it, and she didn't particularly care to do so regardless. Alarming and frustrating though it may be, Auspice was helping a lot, in some of the worst cities in the country. And the PRT Directors and Protectorate leaders of those cities never needed to know that some of their independent heroes were Auspice.

"Fine. Do what you want. But I would appreciate it if you would inform me whenever you create new ones, in the future," Rebecca said.

"Sure, no problem," Auspice said cheerfully. "Well, if that's all, I'll be going."

"Yes, that's all." Rebecca waved her away.

Auspice bounced to her feet as a portal appeared next to her. "Oh, by the way," she said just before passing through her portal, drawing two pieces of paper from nowhere and setting them on Rebecca's desk. "You missed two of my identities."

And then she was gone.

Rebecca looked at the two papers. Both appeared to be official PRT profiles for independent heroes, the same as the profiles Rebecca had been looking through. Except, Rebecca had just gone searching for all of the new independent heroes in the past several weeks, and she didn't recognize either hero. Frowning, she looked them up in the PRT database, and there they were, two profiles identical to the ones on her desk, submitted only minutes ago.

Given how long it took for such things to be formalized, Auspice had probably gone and registered the two new heroes shortly before going to meet Rebecca. That was also the only time either of them had interacted with the PRT; if they'd been active as heroes, there had been no other parahuman involvement.

Rebecca couldn't help but scoff. That did not count as her missing the identities.

 

[SmartAlek]

Chapter Twelve: Some People Just Want to Watch the World Burn​

May 16, 2011

Trickster

The end result of Leviathan's attack on Brockton Bay was minimal. Leviathan had been killed swiftly, before even managing to get into the city, and all of its waves had been repelled, so there was next to none of the damage usually associated with Endbringer attacks. The worst injuries were from the panic during the evacuation beforehand.

So, the day after the attack was weirdly normal. The capes who went to Brockton Bay for the fight had left, and the civilians who had evacuated were returning, but otherwise it was like any other day.

Trickster and the rest of the Travelers were in the section of Coil's base he'd put them in, waiting. Waiting for answers, waiting for a job, whatever.

More immediately, they were trying to set up a TV. Possibly this was inadvisable in an underground bunker, but did they care? No. It said a lot, however, that with four people they were still struggling.

Trickster looked up at the sound of the door opening, because he was sure all of his people were already in the room, so it had to be Coil.

It wasn't Coil.

A young woman walked into the room, as casually as if she was in her own home and not a villain's secret underground base. Trickster stared blankly for several seconds before registering the costume she was wearing. It was Auspice, the hero who'd taken down two Endbringers and a number of S-class threats.

"Shit!" he yelled, scrambling backwards. "Get back!"

There was another exit, wasn't there? Would Noelle fit? Trickster didn't remember. Whether it was a result of Trickster's reaction or because they had also recognized Auspice, the rest of the Travelers got ready for combat.

Shit, shit, shit, Trickster thought. Genesis wasn't ready yet, and it would be a while before one of her creations was finished. Sundancer couldn't use her power in such a confined space without killing the rest of them. They couldn't have Noelle fight, Oliver couldn't fight, and Trickster had hardly anything to switch around. Leaving Ballistic as their only option.

Auspice looked exasperated. "Don't be like that. I'm actually here to help you," she said.

...What.

"...What," Trickster said.

Before Trickster could decide if he wanted to remind the crazy powerful hero that they were villains, Auspice strode forward, right into the middle of them, patted Ballistic on the shoulder, and continued on, towards Noelle.

"Wait, don't touch her!" Trickster said, filled with horrifying visions of crazy, evil versions of a person who could easily destroy an Endbringer.

But Auspice ignored him. Noelle reared away, but she was already in the corner of the room, leaving her nowhere to go. As Auspice's hand reached out, Trickster panicked and switched Auspice with Oliver, who yelped and flinched away from Noelle. Auspice was now next to Trickster, and she turned to give him the most unimpressed look somebody could convey with only the bottom half of their face.

"Seriously?" she said.

And then, almost before Trickster could blink, Auspice was in the corner with Noelle again, one hand against her side.

"No!" Trickster shouted, echoed by various members of the Travelers.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Time stretched onwards as they expected a mutated clone of the most powerful parahuman to grow out of Noelle.

Then, something happened.

Noelle screamed, high and piercing and agonized, as her flesh began to bubble away.

"Noelle!" Trickster switched himself with Oliver, but was unable to do anything but hover uselessly.

"Oh, oops," Auspice said, barely audible over Noelle's screaming, and Noelle fell silent.

She gasped for breath, awake but evidently no longer in pain, even as her bottom half continued to dissolve. Trickster watched in horror. Nobody spoke. Before long, Noelle's monstrous bottom half was entirely gone, leaving… normal, human legs in its place. Noelle looked perfectly normal.

Noelle only managed to stand for a couple of seconds before collapsing abruptly. Trickster lunged forward to catch her instinctively, then remembered himself and forced himself to stop, allowing Noelle to fall to the ground. Noelle didn't even seem to notice, occupied with staring at her own legs in amazement. Her very… naked... legs.

"There we go," Auspice said, sounding pleased. "You can touch her now, there's no threat of evil clones anymore. Sorry about the pain, by the way. I didn't -- well, I should have expected it to be painful."

Trickster fell to his knees beside Noelle, removing his jacket hastily and draping it over her lap. "What did you do?" he asked Auspice, but couldn't bring himself to fully look away from Noelle.

"I got rid of her power," Auspice said nonchalantly.

"You what?" Sundancer said.

"Is that possible?" Oliver said.

Auspice shrugged. "It's possible for me," she said. "Like I said, there shouldn't be any problems with people touching her now."

Trickster met Noelle's eyes, wide with hope. He put one hand on his pistol, and with the other, took Noelle's hand gently in his. Nothing happened. Noelle let out a sob and threw herself at him, and Trickster gathered her up in his arms. After so long…

Auspice turned and walked away, leaving Trickster and Noelle with some semblance of privacy.

"Hey, do you want me to make it so you can walk?" Auspice asked.

"What-- you can do that?" Genesis said.

"Well, yeah. Of course," Auspice said, a smile audible in her voice. "I wouldn't have offered otherwise."

"I --" Genesis stammered. "Yes? Yes. Please."

"Okay," Auspice said.

Trickster turned enough to watch, relaxing his grip on Noelle enough that she could see too. It all happened very quickly. Auspice touched Genesis' hand, Genesis gasped, and then her legs visibly grew larger as muscles returned. Within seconds, Genesis was throwing the blanket off her lap and struggling to her feet. Alarmed, Sundancer and Oliver moved to help support her, but it wasn't necessary; thanks to whatever Auspice had done, Genesis was only a little wobbly.

While Genesis was still gaping, silent and astonished, Auspice stepped back and put her hands on her hips.

"All right. Now," she said, and Trickster braced himself for the other shoe to fall. "You guys have been trying to get back to Earth Aleph, right?"

A moment of silence.

"...That's right," Trickster said cautiously.

"Well then, it's your lucky day," Auspice said.

Trickster looked from Genesis to Noelle, still in his arms, and thought that it was already the luckiest day they'd had since the Simurgh attack, but he didn't interrupt.

Auspice gestured towards a wall, directing everyone's attention to it just as the air shimmered and formed the image of the outskirts of Brockton Bay, edged in golden light.

...A portal?

"This leads to Earth Aleph, a little outside of Brockton Bay 'cause I have no idea where else to put you. I'm sure you can find your way from there." Auspice said it very casually, as though it was no big deal to make a portal between worlds. As though she hadn't just shown up and decided to help a bunch of strangers to a massive extent for no reason.

Trickster swallowed hard. He dragged his eyes off the portal to look at Auspice.

"How do we know that's where it actually leads?" he asked. "Why should we trust you?"

Auspice laughed suddenly, making everyone jump a little. "Let me be clear. I don't care if you trust me or not. But the thing is, I don't need to trick you. If I wanted to arrest you, or kill you and hide the evidence, or teleport you somewhere awful, or whatever, I could just do it directly," she said with shameless confidence. "I'm being nice and giving you a choice. I'll stick around for thirty minutes, and then I'm closing my portal and leaving. You have that long to decide and pack."

With that, she went to lean against the wall next to her portal and pulled out a phone.

The Travelers had a very short, heated conversation, and got to packing. Twelve minutes later, they were ready to go. Trickster stopped in front of Auspice, holding a bag in one hand and Noelle's hand in the other.

"Thank you," he said seriously. Even if the portal turned out to be a fake or a trap, she had still fixed Noelle.

Auspice looked up from her phone. "You're welcome," she said simply. "Now get out of my city."

Trickster gave an obnoxious, over the top bow. "As you wish."

With one last glance around at his friends, Trickster stepped through the portal home.



June 6, 2011

Emily Piggot

There was a knock on Emily's door.

"Enter," she said.

The door swung open and Auspice strolled in, looking very casual and not at all as though she'd just been a state away destroying a city.

"Hi, Director," she said.

"Auspice." Emily inclined her head. "It's done?"

"Yes. Ellisburg is gone and Nilbog is dead," Auspice said. Emily let out a breath. "You'll probably get official notice soon, but I figured you'd want to know immediately. Also, I have the video you requested."

She set a USB on Emily's desk.

"Good," Emily said to the first part. As for the second… Reluctantly, Emily added, "Thank you."

Capes, even the ones that did record their actions, rarely shared those videos with others -- fools like Uber and Leet being obvious exceptions. Emily wasn't a direct part of the operation and the PRT itself had no particular interest in a video of Ellisburg's destruction. As such, it was as a personal favor to Emily that Auspice had recorded her destruction of that detestable city and shared the recording with her.

Emily hated the thought of personally owing a parahuman anything, but she also had a vested interest in seeing Ellisburg destroyed.

Auspice smiled. "You're welcome," she said lightly.

It almost sounded like she meant it, and wasn't planning on holding this over Emily's head in the future. Emily didn't believe it. Everybody, especially parahumans, had their own motive.

"Anyway, if that's all, I'll take my leave," Auspice said.

"Yes, you're dismissed," Emily said, waving a hand at her briskly.

Auspice seemed as amused as ever when Emily said that -- it probably seemed like a joke to her for anyone to act like they could order her around -- but she just nodded and walked out.

Thus left alone, Emily sat there for a moment. She had work to do. She always had more work to do. But none of her work was terribly urgent, and the video likely wasn't that long. Giving in to her impatience, Emily plugged the USB into her computer and pulled up the lone video file it had on it.

The video was two minutes long. Emily pushed play, and the video began, showing a view of Ellisburg from the sky. There was a small figure, barely visible in the video, that must have been Auspice herself flying down into the city. A second, smaller video popped up in the top corner of the main video, showing the city getting bigger as the camera descended into it. Video from the figure heading into the city, Emily assumed, and wondered how Auspice had managed to get two different views.

Nilbog's monstrous creations soon became clear. Auspice flew through the city apparently uncaring as the grotesque creatures noticed and tracked her. The main, distant view still showed next to nothing. Before long, she came upon a throne made of flesh, and sitting on it was Nilbog himself. There was no audio, so Emily couldn't tell if the two parahumans had spoken to each other.

Without warning, the close up video lit up with gold light so bright it made it impossible to see anything from that camera. The distant view showed a massive, swirling storm of gold fire engulf the area around Auspice and Nilbog.

Within seconds, no trace remained of Nilbog, the nearby creatures of his army, or the nearby buildings. The near view, now useless, disappeared as Auspice set off through the rest of the city. In another minute, before Nilbog's remaining minions could even try to do anything, the city was gone. The video went just long enough to show Auspice turning her power off, fire and ash alike disappearing as though they had never existed, then ended.

Emily might have had some complaints about Auspice's conduct, but she certainly couldn't argue against the results.

Seeing nothing but a barren field where Ellisburg had once stood was, Emily had to admit, very satisfying.



July 26, 2011

Legend

By the time of Behemoth's appearance, four months after the Simurgh's death, everybody seemed to understand how it worked. The PRT sent out their warning, the Truce went into effect, the Endbringer sirens went off. But nobody really expected much.

They evacuated the city of New Delhi. Though evacuating Brockton Bay for the Leviathan battle had turned out to be unnecessary, Behemoth would be coming up from underground, making it next to impossible for Auspice to take him out ahead of time without causing significant damage herself. They would have to wait until Behemoth surfaced, then have Auspice kill him.

Possibly because of that, or maybe because two Endbringers had already been killed and people were less impressed, they got less turnout for the battle than they had in years, which was truly saying something, especially considering that many of those battles hadn't been predicted ahead of time. Many Indian capes had arrived already, and most of the usual Protectorate capes were in attendance, as were Dragon and Narwhal. However, during the Leviathan fight, many villains had taken the opportunity of having the heroes out of the city to commit crimes, ignoring the Truce where necessary in the process. As such, the Protectorate had decided ahead of time to leave many capes who would otherwise go to the battle in their home city to deal with potential crime.

Between that and a near total lack of villains from outside the country, there were shockingly few capes at the battle. If it were an ordinary battle, that would be terrible.

It wasn't an ordinary battle.

Still, for the last time, Legend went through the motions. He did all of the things he usually did before an Endbringer battle, knowing full well that his motivational speech fell flat under the knowledge that Auspice would likely kill Behemoth by herself. They distributed armbands even though nobody expected them to be necessary. Auspice looked particularly amused as she put hers on.

And then they waited.

There was no good place to wait for Behemoth to attack, not for the people who couldn't fly. Auspice had told Legend, Eidolon, and Alexandria previously that it didn't matter where they had everyone stand; with an almost entirely empty city, Behemoth would come up wherever the people were, regardless of exactly where that was.

So instead, they prepared for that, with Brutes and fliers and shielders all ready to act as soon as Behemoth began surfacing. Everybody who couldn't either fly or survive Behemoth's kill zone was moved outside the city. Theoretically, in the event that there was a real battle, they would be moved back in to assist later. And then, they had few enough people remaining that they actually had enough ways to get everybody into the air, and everybody knew that their first move was to get out of Auspice's way to Behemoth.

Auspice herself was already high in the air, well outside of any of Behemoth's ranges. She wasn't actually in any danger regardless, Legend knew, but she had been hiding the fact that she was anything but a Blaster from the majority of people, and so it made sense for her to be very careful about her safety.

Legend and the rest of the people commonly referred to as 'flying artillery', the ones who couldn't survive Behemoth's kill zone to help people on the ground, were also high in the air, far enough away from Auspice to make sure they didn't get in her way. The fliers who could survive the kill zone were hovering near the ground, ready to spirit away one or more of the people who couldn't fly.

Dragon, with her sensors, was able to warn them when Behemoth was approaching.

"Get ready!" Legend said.

Everyone tensed. They would have to act quickly, once Behemoth surfaced, to avoid any deaths. Auspice had told them, those who knew her full power, that everything would go fine. It wasn't that Legend didn't believe her, he was just concerned regardless.

"It's almost time!" Dragon called.

Behemoth burst from the ground with a spray of dirt, rock, and lava. The assembled capes acted quickly, fleeing and ferrying others out of the immediate area. In seconds, there was a clear area around Behemoth, and it was clear for Auspice to attack.

Everyone held their breath. Auspice had managed to kill the other two Endbringers with little trouble, but Behemoth was the most durable of them. If any of the Endbringers was going to be able to withstand her attack, it would be Behemoth. When Legend had asked Auspice about it before, she had acted wounded at his lack of faith in her, then assured him that it would not be an issue. Still, Behemoth had been causing trouble and shrugging off damage for close to twenty years. Legend couldn't help but be worried.

It wasn't necessary.

Auspice's golden laser flashed, and the majority of Behemoth's body, along with a fair amount of the torn ground beneath him, was completely erased.

Unlike with the two previous Endbringer deaths, everybody present didn't need any time to process what had happened. There was only minimal shock and confusion. The cheering started up immediately. It was official.

All three Endbringers were dead.

 

[SmartAlek]

Epilogue​

August 13, 2011

Auspice

A portal appeared in front of Auspice, and she passed through, entering a dark void, with no light or sound, only inky blackness in every direction. She rolled her eyes. It was very dramatic. Overly dramatic, really.

With a thought, Auspice created a glowing orb of energy, illuminating the dark space and revealing a semicircle of massive, alien monsters of varying shapes and sizes, each directly out of a particularly creative horror movie. Auspice would have flinched if she hadn't been expecting it; even so, each one was uniquely awful in a way she hadn't expected.

They were, of course, the seventeen remaining Endbringers, dormant and sealed away in one of the Thinker's pocket dimensions. After she'd gotten Eidolon's power, Auspice had deactivated them so that no more of them would appear as she killed the first three. Now that they were 'off', and the ability to turn them on surreptitiously removed from Eidolon's power, Auspice could theoretically just leave them alone. However, Auspice did not intend to be that wizard from a fantasy story who sealed away the great evil 'permanently', inevitably forcing later generations to have to deal with it.

Anyway, there was no reason not to kill them, either.

Auspice made sure she had all of their powers, then made seventeen lasers, each carefully calculated to destroy one of the Endbringer's cores. Dormant as they were, the poor things never even got the chance to fight back.

And with that, all twenty Endbringers were dead.

Auspice hadn't been entirely sure what to do about the Endbringers. As far as she could tell, they weren't even shard based, which really made her question what Eden had been doing. Presumably, she had been carrying them around to experiment on or with, but Auspice honestly didn't know. She had been able to keep them dormant and keep them from escaping the pocket dimension as the first three had done, but whatever they were and whatever Eden had been using them for, none of the powers Auspice had copied gave her great enough control over them to be comfortable leaving them alive.

Now they weren't an issue either way, though, so it was fine.

Another portal, and Auspice was back in her apartment. Now that the Endbringers would no longer be an issue, she ran through her mental checklist again. Scion, handled. The Endbringers, handled. The Slaughterhouse Nine. Ash Beast. The Teeth. The Fallen. Heartbreaker and (most of) his spawn. The Dragonslayers. Eagleton, Ellisburg, and (more carefully) the other quarantined cities in the U.S. The Travelers, who she totally hadn't forgotten (and it was fine, she handled them in time either way). Coil, for what that mattered. Same with Lung. She'd helped undo what Cauldron did to the Case 53s. She'd even (indirectly) helped with Taylor's bullying problem, although it hadn't kept Taylor from becoming a cape.

Just to make sure everything would be fine, she'd even taken over both Scion's shard network and the remnants of Eden's, though they were unnecessary to her, since her powers were non-shard based. With some extensive remodeling, the networks didn't even need constant maintenance anymore; they would keep working correctly once she left.

She even had a solution for when more Entities showed up on Earth. She'd added copies of Blank to the shard network so that every parahuman would have it, tweaked so that it wouldn't work on her or the other Scion and Eden shards. That made it unnoticeable and effectively pointless, until more Entities showed up and couldn't use their Thinker powers on any parahuman. And, of course, Scion's and Eden's shards were now hers, so the other Entities wouldn't be able to steal them away. It wouldn't make for an easy fight for humanity, but it would be a possible one.

So there. That was everything.

All of the things Auspice felt necessary for her to interfere in, anyway; the Elite were still a thing, and there were plenty of other gangs, but none that was a very big deal. Everything would go fine without her interference.

Auspice was done. She had successfully Improved Worm. The big disasters had been handled. Things would actually get better -- her abundance of Thinker powers assured her of that.

She could go home.

She changed out of her costume, into the very same T-shirt and jeans she'd been wearing when she first ended up in the universe. After a little over half a year of superpowers and considerably more activity than she'd gotten previously, the clothes didn't fit very well anymore. She instinctively stowed her costume in a pocket dimension -- Circus' power was so useful -- then stopped to think. After a moment, she went and added a few other articles of clothing to the same storage -- cape memorabilia, which she wouldn't be able to get again if she didn't take it with her. All of her tinkertech -- both made personally and from other people -- was already in her pocket dimension.

That was everything she wanted to bring with her.

She brought up the dialogue box she'd been ignoring ever since she killed Scion.

Congratulations! With the defeat of Scion, your primary win condition is complete! Would you like to return home?

Return - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Later​

Things had ended up going a little out of order. Killing Scion definitely was not the end of everything she'd wanted to do. Now she was done, though.

She glanced around one last time. She literally had perfect memory, so it wasn't like she was forgetting anything. Although, even with her near-godlike power, she still had the inexplicable feeling that she was forgetting something, like her keys. But no; she'd done everything she wanted to do. She had everything that she wanted to keep.

This was the end. Of the first part of her story, anyway. She smiled. Having power manipulator in Worm was great -- but having all of the powers she'd collected, back in her original universe? That was going to be amazing.

Return.

Spoiler: Author's Note

And that's the end. This is all I have planned; I currently have no intention of writing a sequel, of Auspice in her original universe or otherwise. Originally, I did want the story to be more comprehensive and for there to be more slice of life scenes, rather than skipping so much in the middle, but in the end I had too much trouble writing those scenes, so I decided it would be better to just hurry and finish the story rather than lose interest and abandon it.

 

[SmartAlek]

Spoiler: Author's Note

This was inspired by a comment that said that the PRT would have sent Auspice to the Birdcage for being too powerful. Clearly, I disagreed, but it didn't seem impossible, and it was an interesting idea to explore. So, here's my take on what would have happened if the PRT had reacted differently.

Alternate Take: Birdcage Blues Part One​

Emily Piggot

There was a knock on Emily's office door.

"Enter," she called automatically, turning grudgingly away from her paperwork.

The door swung open, and Armsmaster strode in, armored boots thumping heavily against the floor. Velocity followed him in, much quieter. The visible half of Armsmaster's face looked even more drawn than usual. Not a good sign, but then any number of bureaucratic difficulties could cause Armsmaster to look like that. It didn't necessarily spell disaster.

"Yes, what is it?" Emily said briskly.

Armsmaster answered just as briskly. "This morning at approximately nine twenty two AM, a parahuman identifying herself as 'Auspice' demonstrated a Trump power that allows her to fully copy other parahuman powers."

Emily could feel the blood draining from her face. A power to fully copy other powers? They did not need another Glaistig Uaine.

"Elaborate," Emily ordered. "What are this parahuman's capabilities? Under what circumstances did you encounter her?"

"Her full capabilities are unknown," Armsmaster said, then gestured to Velocity, who stepped forward.

"This morning, Auspice showed up at PRT HQ, attempting to join the Protectorate. The power screeners requested a hero's assistance in proving her claims of a Trump power, and Battery and I went to meet with her," Velocity explained. "She demonstrated what appeared to be perfect copies of both my power and Battery's power, and claimed that her power had no limitations in time or number of powers she can copy or use at one time. The only limiting factor of her power is that she has to touch a parahuman to copy their power."

That was… horrifying. Emily couldn't help a slideshow of every parahuman she'd ever known the power of, all wrapped up in one terrible package. She let out a heavy breath, rubbing at her temples; the ache of a migraine was already building in her head.

"All right. What else do we know about her? Who is she, where did she come from, how long has she been around, how many powers has she copied?"

"I reviewed the PRT Headquarters' surveillance tapes," Armsmaster said. "Auspice entered the building unmasked and was given one of the domino masks kept in stock. As such, we have video of her face, but no amount of searching has turned up any results as far as her identity or history. No cape has ever been recorded going by the name 'Auspice', and there are no reports of a power like hers."

"She said that she didn't have any other copied powers and implied that she hadn't had her power for very long," Velocity said.

"But we have no proof of that," Emily said.

Velocity nodded, a little reluctantly. "Right."

"Where is she now?" Emily asked.

"With Battery in an interview room, going through paperwork, theoretically all of the paperwork for joining the Protectorate," Velocity said.

"All right." Emily sighed again, thinking furiously.

"How do you want to handle the situation?" Armsmaster said.

Frankly, Emily could only see one possible way to react to a parahuman with a power as strong as Auspice was claiming.

"Arrest her," she said.

Armsmaster nodded firmly, but Velocity jumped.

"What -- why? She hasn't done anything wrong yet, and she's trying to join the Protectorate," he said.

Emily shook her head. "It doesn't matter," she said, feeling every minute of her age in her bones. "She's too dangerous; we can't just let her run around. Even if you assume, right now, that she's honest in wanting to join the Protectorate, and genuinely wants to help people. It seems fine now, she's impressive but not much more than any other single parahuman, but what about a couple of months from now? When she's been out, collecting powers, gaining more and more power? When she has your power, and Battery's, and the powers of the Empire Eighty-Eight, and Lung's power? What if she goes to an Endbringer fight and gets some of the powers of the most powerful people in the world? What if she decides then, after she's next to unstoppable, that she doesn't want to play nice anymore? She would be the worst villain the world had ever seen; she would make Kaiser, Lung, the Slaughterhouse Nine, look like children compared to the havoc she could wreak. We cannot and will not allow that to happen. It is our duty to stop her now. Is that understood?"

Velocity was shaking, hands balled into fists, head bowed. He didn't answer.

"Is that understood?" Emily repeated harshly.

After a moment, Velocity's head rose enough for him to jerk it back down in a short nod.

"Good." Emily sighed again. "Get a squad of PRT officers. Velocity and Battery are in charge of her arrest; I don't want any other parahumans getting close to her unnecessarily. Armsmaster, act as backup."

"Yes, Director," Armsmaster said with a nod.

Velocity nodded too, a bit slower.

"Good. Go."

They went.



Velocity

Velocity wasn't happy about the situation. He hadn't known Auspice for long, but he liked her; she seemed nice, calm, kind of shy. She seemed young, young and well-meaning, full of thoughts of making the world better.

She was going to get a harsh wakeup call, he supposed bitterly. He understood Director Piggot's reasoning. Of course they couldn't risk Auspice going evil, turning villain, but…

That didn't make it grate any less to arrest and imprison an innocent woman. That didn't make Velocity feel any less guilty about attacking a woman who'd been nothing but polite and friendly to him, and, as far as he knew, to everyone.

Velocity tried to put it out of his mind. He had his orders, and he knew he wasn't willing to go against them. Instead, he tried to focus on the logistics of it.

Auspice had both Velocity's power and Battery's power. That made her pretty hard to deal with by itself, especially without being able to involve many of their heroes without worrying about her copying their powers. In the end, their team was Velocity, Battery, Armsmaster, and Dauntless -- since having either Armsmaster's or Dauntless' power wouldn't immediately make her any more dangerous.

Fortunately, Battery was wearing her uniform, and therefore they could communicate their plans to her through the comms. Battery couldn't reply, however, so it was impossible to tell how she felt about arresting Auspice, but either way, under Armsmaster's orders, she led her back underground to another one of the Brute-rated testing rooms. This was for dealing with her version of Battery's power -- she wouldn't be able to flee through the walls to get out of the building, both because it was underground, and because the training rooms had some of the most heavily reinforced walls in the building.

Velocity, Armsmaster, and Dauntless made their way to the training room, along with a PRT squadron. Before they went in, however, Armsmaster held up a hand to halt them.

"I'll throw a sedative grenade in first," Armsmaster said. "If she only has Velocity's and Battery's powers, then she should be susceptible to it. That way, we can avoid a battle altogether."

"Uh, but won't Battery be knocked out, too?" Dauntless said.

"The effects of the sedative aren't harmful. Certainly less dangerous than a battle would be," Armsmaster said, apparently unconcerned by the thought of knocking out one of his allies as collateral damage. "Be ready to engage in case it doesn't work."

Armsmaster didn't wait for either of them to agree, nor did he warn Battery. He pulled out a grenade, cracked the door into the training room enough to throw it in, and then slammed the door shut and secured it. In the next second, there was a loud bang as something hit the other side of the door, shortly followed by another bang on the wall next to the door. Finally, there was a third bang, accompanied by the shriek of rent metal as the door bent outward alarmingly.

Everything went silent.

"Holy shit," Velocity said, looking at the reinforced metal door of the training room, now bent.

He didn't think Battery would have been strong enough to do that, even. How had Auspice managed it?

Fortunately for the door, no more attacks were forthcoming. They waited for an entire two minutes, and then Armsmaster nodded once

"Be ready," he said, and opened the door.

All of them braced themselves.

Auspice became visible near immediately. She was sprawled on the floor next to the door, so close that the door pushed her further as it opened. Battery was in a similar state further into the room. Both definitely seemed unconscious.

Looking at Auspice, slumped unconscious on the floor, Velocity felt another pang of guilt. This was possibly the easiest cape arrest he'd ever been a part of, and it was because they'd ambushed her. Because, for once, the heroes had initiated a battle without the other party expecting it. They'd knocked her out without any warning or explanation. It didn't seem right.

Although, looking at the badly damaged door from the other side, Velocity couldn't say he wasn't glad not to have to fight her.

Despite Auspice's seemingly unconscious state, Velocity, Dauntless, and Armsmaster waited, tense, while the PRT troopers cautiously set about the lengthy task of restraining her. She counted as a Brute and a Mover for imprisonment purposes, and she was treated accordingly: heavy chains in every possible configuration, in every possible place to limit her mobility as much as possible while still allowing some movement, and her hands behind her in buckets of containment foam.

By the time they were done, the chains probably weighed as much as Auspice herself did, and there was basically no way for her to fight or flee effectively. Velocity doubted she'd even be able to move very easily without using Battery's power — the consequence of a power that wasn't always in effect.

With Auspice restrained and no longer a threat should she wake unexpectedly, the PRT troopers hauled her away to one of the PRT Headquarters' temporary holding cells, and Velocity and Dauntless did rock paper scissors to determine which of them carried Battery to the nearest couch she could lay on until she woke up.

(Velocity won, which absolutely was not because he cheated.)



Rebecca Costa-Brown

Rebecca had an email from Emily Piggot, director of the PRT ENE. Urgent, the subject line read simply. Rebecca had a lot of emails, frankly, but PRT directors also rarely used words like 'urgent' without meaning them, and when a PRT director had an 'urgent' problem, it tended to be a big one. With a sigh, she opened the email.

Chief-Director Costa-Brown, the email read.

There is a top-secret matter that I must speak with you about. Please contact me as soon as possible.

Director Piggot

Rebecca eyed the email. It was simple. To the point. It explained absolutely nothing. That wasn't so surprising; if the matter was indeed top-secret — another term PRT directors didn't throw around casually — then Piggot would know better than to discuss it in an email. Rebecca was getting a bad feeling about this. It wasn't exactly a common situation for the PRT directors to approach the chief-director like this. PRT directors were the directors for a reason; they didn't need to have their hands held.

So Rebecca replied to the email promptly.

Director Piggot,

Of course. I can call you. What time would work for you?

Chief-Director Costa-Brown

To Rebecca's surprise, Piggot responded almost immediately.

Chief-Director Costa-Brown,

Anytime is fine. Are you available now?

Director Piggot

Rebecca raised her eyebrows. It really must have been urgent. Rather than send another, useless, email, Rebecca went straight to the next step, looked up Piggot's office phone number, and called it.

"Director Piggot," she answered the phone tersely.

"This is Chief-Director Costa-Brown," Rebecca said. "This is a secure line. What did you need to discuss with me?"

"Chief-Director. Thank you for calling," Piggot said. She paused briefly -- not quite hesitant, but thoughtful. "I have a parahuman here with a proven ability to copy and use the powers of other parahumans upon contact with them."

Rebecca took a sharp breath, staggered by the reveal. It only took her a moment to consider all of the possible implications of such a power -- both good and bad.

"What are this power's limitations?" she said. "What exactly are the parahuman's capabilities? And what is the situation with the parahuman?"

"As far as we're aware, her capabilities are… limitless," Piggot said, obvious displeasure in her tone. "She has demonstrated the ability to use two different copied powers at the same time. The rest of our information about the power is what the parahuman in question has said about it and otherwise unverified, but according to her, she essentially has no limitations. She claims to be able to copy any number of powers indefinitely and use any or all of them at the same time. Supposedly, the parahuman has only copied two powers so far: our Protectorate members Battery and Velocity. Several hours ago, she came to our PRT Headquarters alleging an interest in joining the Protectorate and, after some time, was taken into custody under my orders."

Rebecca was quiet for a moment, processing that. Potentially the most powerful parahuman they'd ever seen -- almost impossibly powerful, enough to make even Eidolon or Glaistig Uaine look mediocre.

"I see," Rebecca said slowly. "And you currently have that parahuman in PRT custody?"

"Yes, she's in the PRT holding cells now."

"So… A parahuman who had not, as far as you know, committed any crimes, who actively attempted to join the Protectorate, is currently in the PRT holding cells?" Rebecca said, slightly disapproving.

It was generally bad practice to antagonize friendly and even neutral capes; heroes and rogues were better than villains, after all. The PRT was supposed to know that. Piggot was quiet for a moment, likely irritated by the implied reproach.

"I believe that she's too dangerous to allow to roam around," Piggot said, tone almost steely enough to disguise the defensiveness. "If she got her hands on more powers, she would become next to impossible to contain or control."

"All right. That's true," Rebecca said. It didn't really matter whether or not Rebecca disagreed; what was done was done, and now the parahuman was likely hostile to the PRT. "In any case,you want my advice on how to proceed?"

There was a moment of silence that felt reluctant, but there was no sign of it in Piggot's voice when she said, "Yes. What should we do with her now?"

"What do you believe to be the best course of action?" Rebecca asked rather than answering the question just yet.

Piggot was going to be disappointed either way; Rebecca didn't have an answer for her. For something like this, she would have to ask Contessa about it.

"Obviously, I don't think we can let her onto the streets," Piggot answered. "And at this point, now that we've already arrested her, I doubt we can allow her to leave; her resentment towards us would be too much of an issue. Any normal prison wouldn't be able to contain her with the two powers she already definitely has, and any prison that would have proper security measures to handle her would have other parahumans in it, which would only allow her to collect more powers and become more dangerous."

Piggot fell silent and didn't follow that through to the logical conclusion, though Rebecca was certain she'd thought of it.

"So then, what does that leave us?" she said.

"The Baumann Parahuman Containment Center." Piggot's voice was grim. "Although she would be able to collect other powers there, without being able to escape from the prison, she would not be a threat."

Rebecca took a deep breath. That was what she'd thought, too. The Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. They'd be sending a seemingly innocent person to the Birdcage, out of concern that that person would otherwise cause problems.

That was hardly the worst thing Rebecca had ever done, or the worst reason.

"That's true. I agree; that seems to be our best option at the moment," Rebecca said. "However, I cannot make such a decision lightly. I must consult with others. Of course, I'll ensure that it remains secret. What else do we know about the parahuman?"

"Unfortunately, very little," Piggot said. "We know her face, but we haven't been able to find any record of her at all prior to her appearance at our headquarters. It's like she just showed up today -- she obviously isn't a Case 53, however. The codename she gave us, 'Auspice', is similarly unestablished."

"I see."

That was… odd. As far as Rebecca knew, nobody had been brought to Earth Bet from another Earth recently, so where had this parahuman come from? Well, there was no point to wild speculation.

"Please send me all of the footage you have of her, Director Piggot," Rebecca said. "For now, keep her in your holding cells. I'll get back to you with a decision as soon as possible."

As Rebecca had expected, Piggot didn't sound particularly happy when she said, "Understood. I'll do that. I would appreciate it if you could get back to me quickly. Several of my Protectorate members are not entirely happy with the situation."

That was hardly a surprise. Nobody appreciated the thought that they might be arrested for something like how dangerous they could potentially be, and parahumans tended to be especially sensitive to the issue.

"Of course, I understand. Hopefully I will have news for you soon. Goodbye, Director Piggot," Rebecca said.

"Goodbye," Piggot said shortly.

Rebecca stayed in her chair for a few minutes after ending the call. Disagreeable though Emily Piggot may be, she was good at her job; it was not long before Rebecca got another email with the footage of 'Auspice' the parahuman. There was more than two hours of it, from the moment she had entered the PRT Headquarters building until she was knocked unconscious by Armsmaster.

Rebecca didn't bother going through the footage yet. If necessary, she would do it later. For now, she went as Rebecca to go talk to Contessa.

It was not a surprise to find Contessa with the Doctor in their base. Contessa spent a significant amount of her time acting as the Doctor's 'bodyguard', helping her run Cauldron's day-to-day activity. It was for the best, in any case. Though Contessa, with Path to Victory, would be able to see the best way to handle the situation, as with any situation, the Doctor tended to be the one who made most major decisions. Even if that usually meant following Contessa's recommendation.

Fortunately, Contessa and the Doctor weren't in the middle of something, so Rebecca explained the situation quickly.

"She isn't one of ours, right?" Rebecca asked just to make sure. She didn't know everything Cauldron did, after all.

The Doctor shook her head. "No, definitely not," she said. "Still, I wouldn't have expected a power like that to be possible in a natural Trigger…"

They both looked expectantly at Contessa, who was frowning into the distance. After a moment, she came back to herself and looked back at them, still frowning.

"I can't Path her," she said.

Rebecca stared. The Doctor frowned.

"What?" Rebecca said.

"Are you sure?" the Doctor said.

Contessa's expression twisted with annoyance. "I'm sure. Whenever I try to Path anything related to the parahuman you mentioned, I get… an error. It doesn't work. Path to Victory can't do anything with it." She hissed and put one hand to her forehead. "I don't get Thinker headaches, either, and yet the more I try, the more it hurts."

"Stop trying," the Doctor said, surprisingly gently considering her disquieted expression, putting a hand on Contessa's shoulder.

"It isn't working anyway," Contessa said, shaking her head with a huff. "It must be a part of this parahuman's power, as with Eidolon's, blocking Path to Victory."

"That is not a good sign," the Doctor said. She looked to Rebecca. "And you said this parahuman is hostile to the PRT?"

"Yes, almost certainly, after having been arrested for no reason," Rebecca said.

The Doctor sighed and nodded. "All right. Then I don't see many options for how to handle the situation. Obviously, a parahuman with such a power could be immensely helpful to our goals. An angry parahuman with that power looking to strike back at the PRT, however, could be far too dangerous to allow. Contessa, what do you think?"

Contessa still looked disgruntled and pained. "I can't predict what the parahuman might do at all," she said. "If we allow her to go free, she may greatly impact the accuracy of my Paths. Without knowing what she'll do, it will be impossible to know if my knowledge of the future is reliable."

"Then, the best option seems to be to send her to the Birdcage, after all," the Doctor said. "That will keep her out of the way. She won't be able to act as a villain, nor unknowingly interfere with Path to Victory. In the future, if it becomes necessary, we can retrieve her. Do you agree?"

Contessa nodded.

"All right. I'll ensure that she is sent to the Birdcage," Rebecca said, already thinking of how to accomplish it.

In this case, Auspice's seeming nonexistence worked for them; there would be no one to question why she would be sentenced to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. Still, there would have to be records of it, if only her prisoner file. Rebecca would need to go through official channels, at least to some extent. That wouldn't be difficult, though; as the chief-director of the PRT, Rebecca was given a lot of leeway, and a lot of trust.

It was almost sad how easy it was to officially and legitimately send an innocent person to the Birdcage.



Dragon

The Baumann Parahuman Containment Center was getting a new inmate.

The PRT transport van stopped, and Dragon sent the claws to retrieve the prisoner from inside. The prisoner was a young woman, oddly normal-looking above the containment foam she was encased in below the shoulders, and she was glaring petulantly.

Dragon had been given a PRT file on this parahuman -- 'Auspice' -- as per usual. This time, however, she had never even heard of her before, which was not like usual. It was nearly impossible for a villain to have committed enough crimes or a large enough crime to earn being sentenced to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center without Dragon having heard of them.

"Prisoner 594, codename Auspice," Dragon had her avatar start the usual speech. Auspice's expression didn't change. "PRT powers designation Breaker 7. Recommended protocols were properly carried out with added restraints."

That was what had been put in Auspice's official file, anyway. Dragon had been warned, off the books, that Auspice's actual power was not so simple, but that she was a Trump who could copy other powers, likely under the assumption that Dragon would have found out anyway. Possibly, that explained how she could have committed crimes that Dragon hadn't known about, but Dragon still didn't like it.

Not that Dragon had any real say in the matter. Still, she didn't like not knowing things. So, she turned off the recording -- since it would be available later, best to keep it from containing any sensitive information.

"Auspice, I'd like to ask you a question," she said.

Auspice's eyebrows rose, and she gave what was probably meant to be a shrug. "Go for it," she said, a little bitterly. "I've got time."

"Okay. Why were you sentenced to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center?"

"Why, huh?" Auspice scoffed. "That's a good question. Frankly, I don't know. I know I didn't commit any crimes, and I definitely didn't get a trial. I guess the PRT just took exception to my power being what it is."

She sounded extremely resentful, and Dragon didn't blame her. She knew not to take her words at face value -- not when she was probably a villain -- but if it was true, that was horrible. And Dragon could very easily imagining people deciding to imprison someone for having a power like Auspice supposedly did. Sending an undeserving person into a prison filled with some of the worst criminals of the past two decades… Dragon hated the thought of it.

Unfortunately, it wasn't up to her.

"I'm sorry," Dragon said.

Surprisingly, Auspice's expression softened slightly. "You can't do anything about it, right?" she said.

"No. My feelings on the matter aren't relevant. I have to do my job, which in this case is to carry out my role in enforcing the law," Dragon said.

Even if it wasn't quite aboveboard. Dragon had no proof that it wasn't; all of the paperwork was in place to say that Auspice had been sentenced to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. A judge had signed off on it.

Auspice didn't look happy about it, but she didn't look surprised, either. She didn't speak.

Dragon turned the recording back on, and continued, "Prisoner will be processed to cell block E. Chance of escape from the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center is .000053 with no gross deviations. Do you know why I'm telling you that?"

That wasn't Auspice's actual chance of escape, of course. That was her chance of escape based on the power listed in her file. Her actual chance of escape was likelier higher, although Dragon wasn't overly worried about it -- none of the inmates of the prison had even a one percent chance of escape.

"To keep me from trying to escape, I assume," Auspice said.

"You're right," Dragon said, and launched into her usual explanation of the prison's defenses, laying out exactly how impossible escape was.

Auspice didn't seem particularly impressed. Not all of the prisoners did; the 'Birdcage' already had quite the reputation, so perhaps she had already resigned herself to being unable to escape.

It didn't make Dragon feel any better about sending her down.

 

[SmartAlek]

Alternate Take: Birdcage Blues Part Two​

Lustrum

Lustrum's cell block was getting a new inmate. 'Auspice' -- a nobody, as far as she could tell; no reputation at all. Either no big crimes, or none that got any news coverage. Either way, it didn't matter to Lustrum. Another girl was another girl, as long as she didn't cause problems.

Lustrum went personally to meet the girl. It was uncommon to get fresh meat, and since they would, after all, be spending a lot of time together for the rest of their lives, Lustrum wanted to make sure the girl was properly cowed before she got any ideas. People who thought they were hot stuff outside of the Birdcage often found it wasn't the same inside, and Lustrum was one of the least likely to turn somebody into mince meat for acting above their station.

Some of the others of Lustrum's cell block went, too. Probably just for the spectacle. That was fine with her; it added to the intimidation factor. It meant that there was a small crowd of women waiting in a loose ring around the elevator's exit when the doors finally opened.

The new girl was standing in the middle of the elevator, dripping with the containment foam counteragent, her ill-fitting prison uniform plastered to her, looking wet and miserable. Basically par for the course.

When the new girl looked up and saw them, she pursed her lips, expression unreadable, and stepped out of the elevator with surprising equanimity.

"Welcome to the Birdcage," Lustrum said wryly, and the new girl scoffed. "I'm Lustrum. I'm the leader of cell block E, which means you're mine now, got it? Don't cause any problems, and we won't have any problems. Don't forget, you're looking at the rest of your life in this place. Behave, and maybe that'll mean you get to see old age. Act stupid, and you'll find yourself a ticket to the only way out -- death. Understand?"

The new girl nodded slowly. "I understand," she said in a soft, delicate voice.

Lustrum frowned. This girl… small and fragile looking, quiet and delicate sounding? She was going to get eaten in the Birdcage if she didn't toughen up fast. Appearance wasn't everything, but the kinds of criminals who got sent to the Birdcage were intimidating enough to overcome any physical limitations. Probably, Lustrum thought, Dragon had put this girl in her cell block on purpose so that she'd protect her.

"Good," Lustrum said. "Obey me, and you'll probably survive. What are you in for?"

The new girl scoffed again. "Trusting the wrong people and having the wrong power, I guess," she said bitterly.

Lustrum raised her eyebrows.

"What?" one of Lustrum's other girls said. "What does that mean?"

The new girl looked at her, then around at all of the women standing around, a speculative look on her face. "Mm, well, it means that I tried to join the Protectorate," she said finally.

That got a number of incredulous looks and a couple of laughs.

"That was the 'trusting the wrong people," the new girl added. "I guess my actual crime would be having the wrong power, then."

That was interesting. It was possible the girl was entirely full of shit and making stuff up, but that was an odd thing to lie about. If it was true… what kind of power would cause the PRT to send somebody to the Birdcage just for existing?

"What is your power, then?" Lustrum said, a little wary.

Not all women agreed with Lustrum's views, and she knew well enough from some of the others in the Birdcage that they could be just as violent as men. Although, those types of women wouldn't have been so docile for this long, either.

"I can copy other people's powers," the new girl answered.

Oh, shit.

Practically as one, the crowd of gathered parahumans moved away from the new girl, Lustrum included. She wasn't ashamed. The Faerie Queen, the main example of a Trump like that, was easy to appease most of the time; too absentminded to really keep the iron grip on her cell block that most of the other leaders did. She ruled through pure power. They hardly needed another one.

The new girl seemed amused by the reaction. For the first time, she smiled.

"Don't worry," she said lightly. "My power isn't like the Faerie Queen's. I don't kill people when I copy their powers."

Lustrum didn't think that was a good thing, actually. Sure, it was comforting to know that she wouldn't go psycho and start killing people to take their powers -- always a concern with the Faerie Queen -- but if she didn't need to kill people to copy their powers, then… she didn't need to restrain herself. She could copy anybody's power that she wanted.

Shit.

Yeah, Lustrum could see the PRT deciding to send somebody to the Birdcage just because of a power, if it was one like that. The new girl -- no, Auspice had definitely been humoring Lustrum before. If she didn't want to obey, then nobody except maybe the Faerie Queen could make her.

Auspice looked around, then nodded. "Well. Excuse me," she said politely.

Her voice, though a little louder now, was just as delicate as before. Lustrum pitied the fool who assumed that meant she was easy to mess with and got destroyed for it.

Auspice stepped forward, and passed through the small crowd easily as everybody backed away from her hurriedly, clearing her a path to the door. They all watched as she strode out, until the door swung shut behind her.

Then, one of the women spoke.

"So, bets on how the Faerie Queen is going to react?"



Auspice

Auspice was still more than a little pissed off. She had really expected better of the PRT! What kind of dystopia sent people to prison for life for having the wrong power?

And now she was in the Birdcage, possibly trapped there for the next two freaking years until Gold Morning happened. To add to her immediate misery, her hair and clothes were still plastered to her with containment foam counteragent, although she had stopped dripping.

At least she'd gotten a couple good powers right off the bat; Lustrum's power was good for defense. A few more powers and she'd really be untouchable, even amongst some of the worst villains in the world. If she was lucky, she'd be able to get a power that would let her escape, but she wasn't sure about that.

In the meantime, Auspice would collect as many powers as possible. Preferably all of them, of course. She'd admitted what her power really was because she'd already had Lustrum's power, and that plus Battery and Velocity's powers meant she was almost certainly safe, but she still wanted to get as many more powers as possible before word got around about her.

Auspice was so glad Power Manipulator wasn't actually touch-based as she'd told the PRT. This would be much more difficult if it was. As it was, she only had to walk around, and she could collect basically all of the powers nearby. And there were a lot of powers; cell block E alone got her more than thirty powers, none of which she'd known about before. The advantage of being sent to the Birdcage, Auspice supposed: a lot of capes in a (relatively) small space.

There were too many disadvantages for her to consider it worth it, though. Maybe if she could escape, it would even out.

One of the powers Auspice hadn't known about was a Stranger power, along the lines of Nice Guy's or Imp's powers… except weaker. It redirected attention away from the user, but not entirely, so people who saw the user would know they were there, but they wouldn't really pay attention to them. They would just figure that the user was meant to be wherever they were. Unless in a situation where that didn't make sense. It certainly wasn't going to get anybody into a guarded building.

It was… weak. Auspice didn't know how somebody had managed to get themselves sentenced to the Birdcage with a power like that. Still, she activated it anyway. It probably couldn't hurt.

Once she'd gotten what she figured was all of the powers from cell block E, Auspice headed onward to the next one. There were guards between the cell blocks, but none of them did more than glance at Auspice as she passed them. Advantages of weak Stranger powers, maybe.

Wandering through hallways, copying power after power, people and powers that had never even been mentioned in canon, Auspice was a little surprised when a power she recognized entered her range. A Tinker power specializing in things with timers. String Theory.

Auspice sighed. Great. Another Tinker power to add to the pile of powers that were useless to her, given that she was in prison with limited resources, alongside Armsmaster's and Dragon's. Three of the best Tinker powers, and she couldn't really use them. Ugh.

Oh well. At least she was getting plenty of other powers. Including several she'd never use -- it was easy to imagine how some of the people here had ended up in the Birdcage. Like the power that let its user steal people's faces, killing them in the process, and then wear them as a disguise -- a lot like the Faceless Men from Game of Thrones, Auspice noted. They could then cycle through all of the faces they'd stolen, almost like the less cool, Changer version of the Faerie Queen -- powers not included. There was also a Master power that let the user completely control people, but they had to bite a person to be able to control them, and they could only control somebody who was asleep. Once they'd bitten somebody, however, their power worked on that person forever, and they could even tell when they fell asleep.

There were a lot of other powers, too. She'd already gotten two different Alexandria packages, plus a myriad of other, weirder powers, along the way.

It turned out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the Birdcage was really, really big. Auspice had never been in a prison before, much less one like the Birdcage, and so the sheer size of it caught her off guard. Even so, her dedicated exploration brought her through the prison pretty quickly.

Once Auspice had left String Theory's cell block, she passed through what must have been Crane the Harmonious' cell block. There, she came across a power that was basically just being a werewolf? Seriously, it was a Changer power that let the user turn into some kind of demon wolf, and it even had a Trump aspect that allowed it to be shared with other people. That was literally just a werewolf. Auspice would be disappointed if the user's name wasn't Lycan.

After Crane's cell block, Auspice finally came across one of the powers she'd been looking for -- Black Kaze's. It was the only teleportation power in the Birdcage that Auspice knew about and, she figured, one of her best chances of getting out of the Birdcage.

It was also just really cool, even if it was obviously created just to replicate a specific effect from anime.

So it was with glee and a little bit of hope that Auspice started poking at the power she'd copied from Black Kaze as she continued traveling through the Birdcage. She still didn't quite understand the rules of her ability to alter powers, but the actual mechanics of it were simple enough. It was simple enough to remove the artificial limitations that the Shard powers had, which in Black Kaze's power's case turned out to be a range limit. Auspice paused, metaphorically eyeing her new version of the power, with a range so massive it would probably land her in space if she swung even halfheartedly. Since that was basically useless, she altered the range to be smaller again.

Next Auspice attempted to alter the part where things in between the starting point and ending point of the teleportation are damaged. Unfortunately for Auspice's hopes of having a proper teleportation power, that was an aspect of the power, not an additional effect, and so she couldn't just remove it. That limited how she could use it by a lot.

Still, Auspice messed with the distance-per-swing -- which didn't seem to have an upper limit under the ridiculousness that was Power Manipulator -- and figured that she could probably still use it to get out of the Birdcage. The whole 'existing multiple times in between starting point and ending point' thing was weird, but it came with a built in guard against being injured or otherwise affected in the in-between, which was nice. It meant that Auspice wouldn't have to worry about the Birdcage's defenses if she used Black Kaze's power to teleport out.

Of course, doing that would probably smash a hole through the Birdcage's walls, so she'd be literally busting her way out. Auspice would prefer not to have to resort to that. But she could do it, if she didn't find any better options. If it came down to it, she could literally blow this popsicle stand. That was reassuring.

It improved Auspice's mood considerably, in fact, to know that, no matter what, she wouldn't have to spend the next two years in prison. Stupid PRT.

The next cell block Auspice passed through turned out to be the Faerie Queen's. Fortunately, the Faerie Queen came into Auspice's range, and she was able to copy her power, without having to see her directly. Auspice wasn't sure she wanted to know what the Faerie Queen and her Trump BS thought of her.

Examining the Faerie Queen's power distracted Auspice for a while. It turned out that she had a lot of ghosts, and therefore a lot of powers. No wonder it seemed like she could do basically whatever she wanted. And, even better for Auspice, she was able to alter the power to remove the ghosts as middlemen, giving herself the powers directly. If Auspice hadn't felt safe before, she certainly did now -- Gray Boy's power alone made her practically invincible, even moreso since her powers weren't Shard based.

Of course, she then had to alter Gray Boy's power to remove the visible effects.

After the Faerie Queen, Auspice had collected all of the female cell block leaders' powers except one -- Ingenue. That also meant that Ingenue's cell block was the one with the hole to the men's side of the prison. Which was perfect, actually; Auspice couldn't have planned it out better if she'd been trying.

Somewhere near the middle of the last cell block, Auspice came across what must have been the hole to the men's side. It was much more heavily guarded than any other area of the prison, all of the women around the destroyed section of wall looking about ready to bite the head off any man who tried to pass through -- without paying the fine, of course. Auspice remembered that much from the interlude.

Since she hadn't collected all of the powers in the cell block yet, Auspice passed by the hole and continued the other direction. She hadn't yet decided how, when, or where she'd break out, or even really if she was going to, but one could never be too careful.

Then, the entirety of the (inhabited) women's side of the prison explored and all of the powers copied, Auspice headed back to the entrance to the men's side. Unlike before, when she'd just passed by and all of the guards had ignored her, this time, several of them focused on her as she approached the hole in the wall. The Stranger power failing her, Auspice supposed. It was probably too far out of the ordinary for somebody to cross into the other half of the prison, and they were actively guarding the hole, so the power wasn't strong enough to direct their attention away.

One of the women blocked Auspice's path. Nailbiter, Auspice assumed from the power. She couldn't tell if Nailbiter was scowling or if that was just what her face looked like.

"Hold up. I don't recognize you. You new?" Nailbiter said, surprisingly clear around the blades in her mouth.

Auspice withheld a sigh and nodded. It seemed she wasn't meant to make it all the way through the Birdcage without any more human interaction.

"Yes, I just got here. I'm Auspice," she said.

She wondered if the guards would stop her from passing. She could almost certainly take them in a fight -- she already had all of their powers plus hundreds more -- and they'd probably even deserve it, given that they had been sent to the Birdcage. Of course, Auspice now had two examples of undeserving people being sent to the Birdcage: herself and Canary. Who knew how many other times the same thing had happened. Besides that, Auspice didn't particularly want to fight her way through, nor did she want the trouble getting into a fight would probably cause her.

It was up to the guards either way, Auspice supposed. If they let her through without trouble, that was all the better.

One of the other women spoke then. Auspice didn't recognize her or her power. "What cell block are you in?"

"Cell block E."

"Lustrum's cell block, huh?" the woman raised her eyebrows. "And you want to go to the men's side? Really?"

Auspice nodded again. "There's somebody there that I want to talk to," she said. It was a lie, of course; she had no interest in talking to anybody in the Birdcage.

"Huh. All right, well. We usually charge men a passage fee to get in, but I don't particularly care if you want to go to the men's side," the woman said. She eyed Auspice. "Plus I don't suppose you have any cancer sticks, do you?"

Although Auspice was mostly dry by now, she was still a little damp and sticky with the containment foam counteragent. Presumably, it highlighted exactly how 'new' to the Birdcage she was.

"No, I don't," she confirmed.

The woman sighed. "All right, whatever, go through then, if you're sure. But listen, don't do anything stupid. Lustrum'll just be pissed off if you cause her trouble."

"I understand. I won't do anything stupid," Auspice said with a smile. It was funny how vague 'anything stupid' was. "Thank you."

The woman scoffed and waved her off. Nailbiter stepped out of her way. Auspice still couldn't tell if she was scowling or not. It didn't matter; nobody bothered her again as she made her way past the assembled women and crossed into the men's side of the prison.

Once she was through, fortunately, the Stranger power she was using was powerful enough to keep any of the men from paying attention to her -- apparently it was able to disguise the fact that, as a woman, she shouldn't have been there. That was good, because Auspice was pretty sure that if she started getting harassed -- as she was pretty sure the guards had expected -- she would have ended up fighting her way through after all.

One by one, Auspice picked up the men's cell block leaders' powers. Gavel was first, which was nice; Gray Boy's power already made her nigh impossible to kill, but Gavel's power meant that it would be harder to do any real damage to her, especially combined with the other Brute powers she'd collected. After that was Acidbath, whose power was basically useless to her.

However, it wasn't Acidbath that was the true find of his cell block. One of the numerous unnamed-in-canon inmates had a teleportation power. Auspice was so happy. It was a proper teleportation power, not weird like Black Kaze's, or, even worse, like Oni Lee's. It wasn't even line-of-sight based! Actually, it did follow somewhat strange rules, but Auspice was used to that from Shard powers. The power had a circular area -- about two hundred feet in any direction -- that the user could teleport around in. It also gave the user awareness of everything inside that range. But teleporting reduced the range, and each consecutive teleport reduced it more, although it only took a couple of seconds for it to recharge back to full.

Auspice could see why the original user couldn't get out of the Birdcage. The range of the teleportation simply wasn't big enough to reach outside. Auspice, however, had Power Manipulator. It turned out that the range limitation was artificial, and Auspice was able to remove it, giving her a range of the entire planet and beyond. Without limitations, the power was a lot like Clairvoyant and Doormaker combined, actually, except that it didn't cover the multiverse, only one Earth.

There were no words to express how delighted Auspice was at this discovery. She wouldn't need to bust her way out with Black Kaze's power after all. And she could teleport anywhere on the planet. Still, Auspice decided to collect the rest of the powers in the Birdcage before leaving, just for completionist reasons.

The next cell block turned out to be Lab Rat's, which was just as bad as Acidbath -- seriously, even if Auspice wanted to do any bio-Tinkering, she'd go find Bonesaw and copy her power.

After that was Teacher, and Auspice copied his power automatically, thought about it, and removed his power entirely. Then, using her copy of his power, removed all of the powers he'd given out. Because screw him in particular. Also, screw Ward. This way, whatever else happened, Teacher couldn't get up to shenanigans later, so at least one major plot of Ward was derailed. Good.

The next cell block leader… Auspice couldn't remember the name of. It was kind of similar to Gavel, or something? Whatever, it didn't matter. Another Trump power, nothing spectacular, especially not compared to Power Manipulator.

Last was Marquis. Wasn't Marquis the leader of cell block W? If cell block E on the women's side was furthest from the point where the two sides met, why was W farthest away on the men's side? Neither of those things made sense. Auspice didn't understand how the Birdcage was laid out at all.

Anyway, Marquis' power was kind of cool. At least it was potentially useful. One of the other powers Auspice got from that cell block was interesting, too. It was a Thinker power that let the user see relationships between people -- friendship, love, loyalty, hatred. Basically everything. The more useful aspect of it was that it had actual, literal lines leading between people who had relationships with each other, which meant that it would be really easy to find people.

In any case, all of the powers in the Birdcage thus collected, Auspice was free to teleport out. She went to just outside the mountain first, hovering in the air near it, to look at it. It really didn't look like there was an entire prison inside it.

Auspice thought for a moment. What to do now that she was officially an escaped felon? Did that make her a fugitive? Well, whatever. First, she decided, she'd go back to Brockton Bay, just to get Coil's power, for safety's sake. Then Eidolon's power, naturally. And if she hung around the Triumvirate long enough, she could probably get to Cauldron's base and nab Path to Victory, Clairvoyant's power, and Doormaker's power.

Then, with the entire world at her fingertips, and a book's worth of meta knowledge… Her first goal was to collect more powers and become infinitely powerful, of course, especially so that she would be able to kill Scion. Other than that, she could do pretty much anything. She could do good things, be a hero, save the world -- like she'd originally intended to do. She was still mad at the PRT, though, so...

Maybe she'd go on vacation.

 

[SmartAlek]

Alternate Take: Birdcage Blues Part Three​

Emily Piggot

Emily, along with Armsmaster, was still dealing with unhappy Protectorate members' complaints about sending Auspice to the Birdcage when she got the phone call.

"Director Piggot," she answered.

"Director Piggot, this is Dragon."

"Dragon," Emily said. She didn't have much direct contact with Dragon. There was only one likely reason for Dragon to be calling her now. "What is it?"

Dragon hesitated. "I'm afraid there's no good way to say this," she said eventually.

Emily's heart stopped. "What?" she snapped.

"I have bad news," Dragon said, then continued before Emily had to prompt her again, "The parahuman known as Auspice… has escaped from the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center."

"What," Emily repeated, heart freezing with horror and dread.

"Approximately one hour and seventeen minutes ago, Auspice was sent down into the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center," Dragon said, correctly interpreting Emily's response as horror rather than actual lack of understanding. "She is visible inside the prison until fifty-two minutes after that, at which time she abruptly disappears. I can no longer find any indication of her presence inside the prison."

Emily had to put her head in her hands and breathe for a moment. This job was terrible for her health. It was starting to sink in, the possibility -- likelihood -- that the most powerful parahuman the world had ever seen had managed to escape the Birdcage… with who knew how many of the inhabitants' powers. And with a newfound grudge against the PRT, the Protectorate, and Emily herself.

She swore silently to herself.

"She escaped? I thought the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center was supposed to be impossible to escape from," Emily said harshly.

Dragon didn't necessarily deserve the treatment -- it was Emily's decision that had landed them here -- but then, it was Dragon who she had escaped from.

"It is supposed to be impossible to escape," Dragon said calmly. "I'm not sure how she managed it. Obviously, none of the other inmates have a power that allows them to do the same. By all appearances, it seems that Auspice teleported out. There are two inmates with Mover ratings within the prison with powers that could be considered teleportation, and neither of them are capable of such a thing."

Dragon's tone was perfectly even, polite and helpful and still slightly apologetic. Yet Emily heard the unspoken accusation perfectly clearly: The information you gave me was incomplete.

Emily sighed and tried to focus on the absolute disaster scenario they were facing. This was, in all likelihood, the worst outcome possible.

"So we have no idea what she's actually capable of at this point," she said.

"Yes, it seems so," Dragon said. "However… Based on her actions in the fifty-two minutes she was inside the prison, I believe we should assume that she has the powers of every parahuman currently alive in the prison."

Emily's breath left her in one shocked breath. Her heart really couldn't take more of this.

"All of them?" she said sharply, more desperate than anything. "She couldn't have touched every single one of them in such a short period of time."

"No, she couldn't have, and she didn't. However, she walked through the entire prison, everywhere there were people. As soon as she had finished, she escaped. I find it difficult to believe that she was sightseeing, and she didn't speak to anybody unless it was absolutely necessary. In light of that, I can only see one reason she might have done such a thing."

Emily took a deep breath. In… and out. And again.

"You're probably right," she acknowledged. There was a reason Dragon was so well known, and it wasn't because she tended to be wrong. "Which means that Auspice lied to us about her exact capabilities."

Emily wanted to be smug about it -- the fact that Auspice had lied made it more likely that she had had ulterior motives. But either way, they were in the same situation now: Auspice was free, powerful, and completely impossible to predict. Except now she was definitely angry at the PRT, whereas before she might not have been.

This was such a terrible situation.

"It seems so," Dragon said.

Emily shook her head. It didn't really matter how Auspice had escaped, did it? It only mattered that she had.

"Thank you for letting me know, Dragon," she said.

"Of course. It's my duty, after all," Dragon said immediately. "If it would help, I can run some algorithms, see if I can find Auspice now."

"Yes, please, that would be very helpful," Emily said. She had to resist the urge to sigh yet again. There was a lot of work ahead of them.

"Okay. I'll start on that," Dragon said.

"Thank you," Emily said again. The words tasted like ash in her mouth -- not simple polite courtesy this time -- but Emily wasn't an ungrateful person. "I'll let Armsmaster know. Please coordinate with him."

It was practically a joke to say such a thing. Of course Dragon was going to coordinate with Armsmaster. She'd do it even without Emily saying anything.

Dragon was too polite to say what they both knew. "I'll do that. Goodbye, Director Piggot."

"Goodbye, Dragon."

Emily hung up the phone and sighed once more. What a mess. And it was a mess that was largely Emily's fault. But how could any of them have predicted that Auspice would be able to escape the Birdcage?

Most likely, they wouldn't manage to find Auspice before she started on whatever she was planning. That could be disastrous. It would, at least, make it easier to find her. For what good that would do. Was there even anything they could do, at this point? The thought of all of the people in the Birdcage… Several of them had been caught in underhanded ways: Black Kaze had fainted from hunger, Marquis had been attacked off-guard in his home. Glaistig Uaine hadn't even technically been caught; she'd surrendered.

Not to mention, Auspice could apparently copy powers from farther away then they'd expected. It would be risky to send anybody but very long-range parahumans into a battle with her, lest their powers be copied too. Even with the Triumvirate, could they do anything to her?

...But that was a problem for later. And, Emily acknowledged, probably not even her problem. This was definitely a Chief-Director Costa-Brown and the Triumvirate problem.

For now, she had work to do.



Alexandria

Auspice had escaped from the Birdcage, and they were facing yet another S-class threat. No, even worse; a triple-S-class threat, if there were such a thing. The biggest threat in any of the worlds short of Scion himself. It hadn't even been an entire day since Auspice escaped, and, unsurprisingly, she hadn't made an appearance yet. It was impossible to predict what she might be doing in secret, and possibly even more difficult to predict what she might do. Still, they were already setting things up to begin searching for her, keeping an eye out in order to, at the very least, find her quickly once she resurfaced.

But, unfortunately, normal life didn't stop just because they had another problem to deal with.

And so Alexandria was on patrol. Of course, for one of the Triumvirate, 'patrol' was actually more like 'being visibly on duty'. It had been a long time since any villains in Los Angeles were stupid enough to commit crimes while Alexandria was around to catch them -- the same with Eidolon and Legend in their cities. As such, patrols ended up more like unofficial PR events. Because Alexandria was famous, and people tended to come from all around the country to see her.

Walking around at street level might have been a dangerous prospect if not for the fact that she was Alexandria, because she was all but mobbed by fans whenever she did it. Of course, even civilians in a world like theirs knew better than to bother a hero while they were working, but at the same time, the mob mentality was very much a thing. As soon as one person dared approach, suddenly everyone was doing it.

Surrounded by a crowd of people, Alexandria didn't notice at first. It wasn't until later that, driven by a gut feeling, intuition, maybe something she'd noticed without consciously registering, Alexandria looked over -- directly at Auspice.

By this point, Alexandria had gone over hours of footage of Auspice, every bit of time she'd ever been on camera, and she had perfect memory. Of course she recognized her immediately. Auspice obviously knew that Alexandria had noticed her, too. She smiled and waved cheerfully, then turned and walked away.

Auspice was on the other side of a crowd of civilians from Alexandria. There was no way she'd be able to get to her in time for anything.

And, sure enough, within a couple of seconds, Auspice passed behind somebody and never reappeared. She must have teleported away; there was no other way she could have disappeared so cleanly.

Alexandria couldn't react openly. She was a public figure currently surrounded by adoring fans. But she was irritated by the near-miss, by Auspice obviously taunting her, knowing that she could get away with it. Even more than that, Alexandria was uneasy, because Auspice had been able to get that close to her -- well within what Dragon estimated her actual range for copying powers was -- and had just shown that she was going around copying strong powers. She already, most likely, had Alexandria's power, and it wouldn't be any more difficult for her to get Eidolon's and Legend's powers.

And it had only been a couple of hours since Auspice escaped, and neither Eidolon nor Legend had been part of the original decision about her. Neither of them knew what she looked like.

Alexandria swore inwardly. They definitely did not need Auspice to have Eidolon's power; she was bad enough without it. Alexandria tore herself away from the crowd of people as quickly as she could without suspicion, then went to talk to Eidolon.

Eidolon was understandably bemused to have Alexandria walking into his office in Houston with no warning, but he took it in stride.

"I need to ask you something," Alexandria told him.

"All right…?" Eidolon said.

Alexandria used Eidolon's computer to pull up a picture of Auspice without a mask, which he allowed her to do, although he was practically projecting a sense of incredulity.

"Have you seen this person?"

Eidolon looked at the picture for a moment. "I have. Not long ago. She wanted to shake my hand," he said, a frown audible in his voice.

Alexandria sighed. Of course. If it had been Alexandria, she would have gone for Eidolon's power first, as well. And it was probably already far too late to keep Auspice from getting Legend's.

"Alexandria, what is this about?" Eidolon asked, obviously growing tired of the mystery.

Eidolon did need to know either way. Alexandria put her thoughts in order and prepared to explain the situation.



Auspice

Auspice was waiting.

Eventually, one of the Triumvirate would want to go to Cauldron's base and -- probably -- as soon as one of Doormaker's portals was open on Earth Bet, Auspice would be able to teleport through to Cauldron's base. And then Path to Victory would be hers. Well, it might take getting Clairvoyant's and Doormaker's powers first, depending on whether or not Contessa was in the base. Still, either way, she'd get Path to Victory eventually.

But, just because she was waiting, that didn't mean she wasn't doing anything else. She'd already gone around collecting most of the powers she knew of, as well as gone to pretty much every Protectorate base -- and, in the process, gotten a lot more powers that she hadn't known about.

There were so many cool powers. One of the ones Auspice was surprised to have found: a Stranger 12. Not Sleeper. Sleeper wasn't even a Stranger, apparently, and Auspice totally wasn't bitter about her theory about his power being wrong. Anyway, the actual Stranger 12 was somebody that literally nobody knew about. His power didn't allow for it; it was like Imp's power but literally jacked up to 12. It was impossible to be aware of him, even from afar. Thankfully Auspice had Invictus, or she wasn't sure how it would have affected her.

Auspice… actually wasn't quite sure how it worked. Not exactly, anyway. She didn't think that her activating the power would cause people who knew of her to forget about her, but they would stop being aware of her in any new circumstances.

Probably.

It was definitely absurdly powerful. Auspice thought she could pull off a stunt like a stealth archer from Skyrim: stand directly in front of somebody and shoot them with an arrow, then watch them go, huh, what? Must have been the wind, completely ignoring the fact that they still had an arrow in them. The power wouldn't even allow somebody to notice something as a direct result of the users' actions, it was so ridiculous.

In any case, that was why she wasn't worried about (figuratively) walking directly into Cauldron's base. Aside from the fact that she was as close to invincible as possible, it would be all but impossible for any of them to notice that she was there.

She just needed somebody to open a freaking portal.

Auspice's money was on Alexandria. Alexandria seemed to cross between Earth Bet and the Cauldron base the most often, anyway. That was why she was basically stalking her -- from afar, though, because she had powers that let her do that. It was awesome. And it meant that nobody would ever need to know that Auspice was a creepy stalker, no matter how creepy she was.

Auspice's area of awareness expanded suddenly. She only hesitated for a split second before activating her new Stranger 12 power and teleporting to the point of connection. It wasn't where she'd expected -- nowhere near Alexandria -- and not at all who she'd expected.

It was… the Number Man, going from the Cauldron base to Earth Bet. Or so Auspice assumed, based on his power and the fact that there weren't many men it could be.

Well. She hadn't expected that. Maybe she should have… The Number Man had an office in Cauldron's base, but he didn't live there, did he? Regardless, he obviously did do business on Earth Bet.

It didn't matter.

Auspice hurriedly teleported through into the base before the portal could close. As soon as Auspice entered the base, she got the Custodian's power. Fortunately Power Manipulator didn't cause the powers to activate automatically.

The Cauldron base was… very white, Auspice saw. Very boring. Auspice wasted a little time judging their interior decorating skills (or lack thereof). She'd expected it from the descriptions from the book, but it was still different to see it in person. It was surprisingly disappointing. Not at all what she'd expected of a shady organization's secret lair.

Once Auspice was done judging the decor, she examined the layout of the base. Fortunately, it was interconnected enough for her to teleport directly to Contessa, who was in fact in the base, along with Doctor Mother. Path to Victory, get! And it was amazing.

Also, the Stranger power she was using worked well. Between it and Blank, she was able to stand in the same room as Contessa without being noticed. Given that Contessa was the Thinker, and also the one who always knew everything, that was pretty satisfying too.

Some of the possible combinations of Path to Victory and Auspice's many other powers were awesome, too.

Because it would eventually be relevant, Auspice did a Path to Killing Scion, and… yeah, it was just as easy as she'd expected, thanks to Power Manipulator and Blank. So that was that taken care of, as soon as she wanted to go back to her original universe.

That worry off her mind, Auspice teleported to Clairvoyant and Doormaker, then used their powers to portal back to Earth Bet. Now that she had all of the most relevant powers -- Path to Victory! -- and could easily collect all of the other useful ones in the multiverse, Auspice could really start having fun.



Rebecca Costa-Brown

The next time they caught sight of Auspice was not quite twenty-four hours after her escape from the Birdcage.

And it was in one of their own PRT Headquarters.

Ironically, the first Rebecca heard of it was not from any one of a number of people and algorithms searching for Auspice. Rather, she was contacted for a reason entirely unrelated to their search for Auspice, and Auspice herself wasn't even the main subject: somebody had claimed the bounties for all eight current members of the Slaughterhouse Nine at the PRT Headquarters in Tulsa.

That person was going by the name Auspice.

Auspice. Auspice had claimed the Slaughterhouse Nine's bounties.

The Director of the Tulsa office had authorized the payout because Auspice had provided ample video evidence of the fight and the Slaughterhouse Nine's deaths. The only reason Rebecca was being informed directly was that the Slaughterhouse Nine were a major S-class threat, and their bounties were each considerable, and the combined amount was truly massive. Ordinarily, Rebecca didn't care about bounty payouts -- but ordinarily, it wasn't the bounties of people with Kill Orders that were being claimed.

Of course, almost nobody knew about Auspice, either her power or her status as an escaped criminal from the Birdcage. Even if they had, they couldn't have done anything about it; an integral part of the bounty system was the guarantee that anybody was allowed to collect on a bounty and then leave.

But since nobody even knew Auspice was important aside from the fact that she'd just taken out an S-class villain organization, by the time Rebecca was told about it, Auspice had long since gotten the money and left.

With nothing else to do, Rebecca watched Auspice's proof video. It would, if nothing else, give information about her fighting style and powers.

The file containing the 'proof' turned out to be several videos, all from different angles, showing different Slaughterhouse members' deaths. Auspice had apparently found and confronted them in an open area with no other people around. It looked like an empty rest stop near a freeway. None of the Slaughterhouse Nine had more than a couple of seconds to react before Auspice obliterated them using what appeared to be a simple Blaster power. Simple, yet unbelievably powerful; in one hit, even Crawler was reduced to nothing.

The Siberian, of course, was an exception. Although she'd disappeared on the video, the same as all of the others, that didn't actually mean anything. The Siberian was different, and there was no proof of Manton's death. It was possible Auspice had missed the fact that the Siberian was a projection -- she had no reason to know, after all. Yet Rebecca doubted that Manton would have given up so easily. He would have reformed the Siberian and sent it after her again. But the Siberian hadn't reappeared on video, and if Manton had sent the Siberian after her again off-screen, Rebecca wouldn't be surprised if Auspice had figured it out and killed him after all.

They'd have to wait and see if the Siberian appeared again.

In the meantime, the question of whether or not Manton around was hardly important, dwarfed by the fact that Auspice was still around. The Siberian was nowhere near as dangerous as Auspice, especially considering that she now likely had all of the Slaughterhouse Nine's powers.

Rebecca had work to do, but instead she pulled up the surveillance footage from the Tulsa PRT Headquarters of the time Auspice had been there. She doubted she'd get anything useful -- Auspice had Rebecca's own power, and she wouldn't be able to read herself -- but everybody made mistakes.

Auspice had shown up to the PRT still wearing civilian clothes, with no mask. It seemed she wasn't interested in keeping a secret identity -- which was fair, perhaps, considering that she didn't even have an identity. One new thing added to her outfit, however, was a jacket with a fancy stylized letter 'A' on the back, and a smaller one on the front. Auspice was only in the building for a total of perhaps twenty minutes, and then she smiled and waved and skipped out with hundreds of millions of dollars.

The money didn't matter. The problem Rebecca had was that Auspice -- the escaped Birdcage inmate with plenty of reason to hate the PRT and plenty of reason to become a villain -- had gone after, and taken out, the Slaughterhouse Nine. Not knowing her motivations was more frustrating than ever. Why would she do such a thing? It was possible she'd had a personal grudge against one of them. Or perhaps she had simply wanted the money.

Regardless, the end result was the same: Auspice, back in the wind, with an obscene amount of money, and all of the Slaughterhouse members' powers.

Auspice became more and more dangerous every day, and she was acting in a way none of them had predicted. At least if she'd acted more like any other villain, they would have known what to expect.

But instead she was acting like a hero. She must have had some kind of plan, and it was obviously more complicated than simply being a villain. Considering that Auspice could easily be the most terrifying villain in the world even if she did it openly, that was a very bad sign.

If she wanted people to consider her a hero, perhaps she was planning to destroy the PRT's reputation. After all, Auspice was one of less than a dozen people who knew that she'd been semi-illegally but definitely immorally sent to the Birdcage without a trial. It would be difficult to prove, but if she could, then the fact that the PRT had sent a hero who had done things like take out the Slaughterhouse Nine to the Birdcage could be very bad for them.

Even if just to talk to her, they needed to find Auspice.



Auspice

Auspice went back to Brockton Bay again. She already had all of the powers from there, having copied them shortly after escaping the Birdcage when she went back for Coil's, but today she had a somewhat different goal in mind.

First, she went to the PRT Headquarters building. She used the weaker of her Stranger powers, the one that just redirected attention away from her, to keep anybody from recognizing her, the person at the front desk or anybody who might be looking at the footage from the cameras. With that, it was easy to stroll in and buy a shirt from the gift shop.

Auspice went for one of the Brockton Bay specific ones, which had all of the current Protectorate ENE heroes on it except Triumph, who hadn't been in the Protectorate long enough to be added to the merchandise. She took her jacket off, shrugged the merchandise shirt on over the shirt she was already wearing, then put her jacket back on over it -- not that, at this point, anybody really needed the symbol on her jacket to recognize her by.

Then, she teleported right to the Boardwalk, Stranger power still active, and searched for the best place to take a selfie in front of the Bay. It didn't take long to find the perfect spot, where the Rig, glowing shield and all, was visible behind her. Auspice smiled, put one hand up in a mocking peace sign, and took the picture.

The point of this picture was petty revenge. Because it was all well and good to troll the PRT as a whole (everybody in the know about Auspice) indirectly by becoming famous as a hero for killing the Slaughterhouse Nine and then narrowly (deliberately so) avoiding them when they showed up in person to 'talk' with her. Most people didn't really deserve more than that. Two people, however, did deserve more than that.

Emily Piggot, who had been the one to order Auspice arrested, and Armsmaster, who had ambushed Auspice with a knockout grenade.

So, the picture of Auspice in front of the Protectorate ENE's headquarters, wearing a shirt obviously bought from the PRT ENE headquarters, was for Piggot. Auspice emailed it to her, using an email address created specifically for the purpose.

Then she teleported away; there was no reason to hang out on the Boardwalk. Not that it would be dangerous, but because nobody would even notice. Rather than continue to hang out on the Boardwalk pointlessly (it wasn't even pretty), Auspice went back to the simple hotel room she'd rented after collecting the Slaughterhouse Nine's bounties.

Already waiting in the hotel room was phase two of Plan: Revenge on Piggot. Auspice still had about a minute to go before Piggot would notice her email, however, so she turned to the revenge on Armsmaster first.

Since Armsmaster was a Tinker, that meant he got Tinker-tailored revenge. Auspice was particularly proud of it, too. She withdrew a grenade from hammerspace. A Tinkertech grenade, to be specific. It was made to go off with a loud bang, releasing a figurative ton of glitter and a banner which would hook to the walls of the room. It was completely harmless, even if it went off in somebody's face -- even the attachments for the banner were the stick-on kind, so there wouldn't be holes in the wall.

Well. If somebody was really unlucky, they might get the banner stuck to their face. But Auspice figured Armsmaster was smarter than that.

Between her numerous Tinker powers -- but specifically Armsmaster's and Bakuda's -- it was child's play to make a grenade that could spontaneously create a bunch of glitter and an entire banner with words already on it. The hardest part was getting it to the point where it could automatically attach the banner to the walls of a room regardless of the size of the room.

This banner would say, in big, bright, sparkly, multi-colored letters, 'Surprise!', and then in smaller but no less eye-searingly bright and cheerful letters, 'Made you flinch'. It was signed as 'Auspice', though she doubted that would be necessary; they'd know it was her.

That was the point.

Auspice opened a small portal into Armsmaster's lab on the Rig, which was also where he currently was, and pulled the pin on the grenade.

FBI, open up! she thought, amused, and tossed the grenade through, closing the portal behind it before the grenade went off and glitter bombed her, too. It was a shame Armsmaster wouldn't have gotten the joke, or she would have said it out loud.

Oh well. She'd have to content herself with the thought of Armsmaster having to clean glitter off of and out of everything in his lab, probably furious at the fact that she'd so casually gotten past the Rig's defenses all the while.

It was probably petty and definitely mean, but the thought was a satisfying one.

Then, it was almost time for Piggot to be looking at Auspice's taunting email, so she turned back to her revenge on Piggot. The 'revenge' was, in fact, a cake, one of the big ones that would ordinarily have something written on them like 'Happy Birthday'. This cake, of course, was not a birthday cake. Instead, it said, 'Thanks for all the powers!' in pastel pink frosting. Then, written smaller under that was, 'PS, share some cake with Armsmaster too'. Just to make it clear that the cake and the banner were part of the same party, of course.

Using Path to Victory to cheat, Auspice waited until Piggot was looking at the email, then portaled the cake onto her desk where Piggot wouldn't see it until she turned away from her computer monitor, carefully arranged so that she would be able to read the words on the cake as soon as she noticed it.

Then Auspice stood back and laughed at the thought of Piggot's reaction. Auspice wasn't quite so forgiving as to be genuinely thankful for Piggot sending her to the Birdcage, and Piggot would know that full well. Just the implication that Auspice's power and success was due to Piggot would drive her crazy, though.

Auspice could do much worse, of course. She was satisfied with just that, though. Auspice, and the memory of Piggot's decision, would haunt her the rest of her life. That was good enough.

 

[SmartAlek]

Alternate Take: Birdcage Blues Part Four​

Auspice

Auspice was on vacation, but before that, she had to prepare. She went and bought two different models of phone, along with assorted odds and ends, and Pathed her way to finding a good hotel. She'd already gotten a hotel room, but she wanted a high-quality hotel room. And, apparently, expensive hotels were worth it, because the best option turned out to be a hotel in France that cost a ton of money. Of course, the economy on Earth Bet sucked, so that was part of it too.

…

Auspice was rich now, so she went with it.

Anyway, there were still more expensive rooms and hotels. She wasn't even in the penthouse or anything; for sheer wasteful luxury's sake, she'd have to get one of those hotel rooms another time. This time, she had other goals.

A combination of Path to Victory and gobs of money got Auspice into the fancy hotel and expensive hotel room without any trouble despite both her cheap clothing (which she had gotten shortly after escaping the Birdcage because she definitely wasn't going to run around in a prisoner's outfit) and the fact that she didn't speak French. It was fine, Path to Victory handled it.

Once in the hotel room, she got a little distracted from her ultimate goal by the room itself. It was very fancy-looking, all cream and gold decor, which was a little boring, honestly. There was a minibar, and an entire little sitting area with chairs and a coffee table in addition to the desk and desk chair. The bed looked so soft and comfy that Auspice had to flop into it just to check. It… it was a bed. Not uncomfortable, but not great either. Auspice was a little disappointed.

Once she'd finished looking around the room, Auspice settled at the desk and opened her new phones, then promptly dissected them for parts. Tinker powers were weird, but they were awesome to actually have, especially when combining them. Something like a Tinkertech phone was easy to make, because Tinkers were BS. Auspice still firmly believed that; having Tinker powers herself had, if anything, only confirmed it.

Then, with her proper phone complete, she hooked it up to the hotel's wifi. They had really nice wifi. Then she set out -- thanks to portals, she could have her phone use that hotel's wifi from anywhere.

Her first stop: dinner. It had been days since she'd eaten anything. Of course, Auspice didn't theoretically need to eat anymore, or it would have been a higher priority, but 'didn't need to' was not the same thing as 'couldn't'.

Seeing as she was newly rich with hundreds of millions of dollars she couldn't take with her back to her own universe, Auspice naturally wasn't just going to eat at Mcdonald's. She wanted to try something new. She wanted to see if there was any point to ridiculously expensive restaurants. And she was super rich, so going to a restaurant that charged hundreds of dollars per person was totally possible, even if it made something hurt in her chest.

Since Auspice didn't know expensive restaurants -- especially not on Earth Bet -- she looked it up online, and then shamelessly used Path to Victory. Interestingly enough, the list of high-quality (expensive) restaurants didn't cross over with Path to Victory's options for restaurants that Auspice would enjoy at all. She even requested expensive restaurants specifically, because the point was to waste money on pointless luxury, yet Path to Victory still didn't suggest any of the most famous restaurants. Interesting.

It presented Auspice with a dilemma, however.

Listen to Path to Victory and go to one of the less famous restaurants, one that she wouldn't have known about if not for Path to Victory, and enjoy the meal? Or go to one of the most famous restaurants anyway, and experience the food that was apparently unenjoyable despite being so expensive?

Well, the point was the Experience, but Auspice was willing to trust Path to Victory when it predicted that she wouldn't enjoy it. And why would she want to do something she knew she wouldn't like?

The less famous restaurant it was.

(The food was good, but three hundred dollars good? Not so much.)



Armsmaster

The banner formed by the grenade Auspice had set off in Armsmaster's lab was easily removed, pulling off the walls like it had been taped up. That was the only easy part of the cleanup. Despite originating from a localized blast, glitter had managed to get into every opening, onto every possible object in the lab, Armsmaster himself included.

It took more than two hours, after he'd reported to Director Piggot and done a threat assessment, just to clean his lab and the armor he was wearing of the glitter. Along the way, Armsmaster also collected the remains of the grenade, though his power didn't give him the same prowess with others' Tinkertech that Dragon's did.

Some Tinkers built in a kind of failsafe into their tech, especially one-use things, so that there wouldn't be any remnants of it left once it went off. Auspice obviously hadn't done that, as the pieces of her grenade were intact and easily identifiable.

Armsmaster sat in his chair and glowered down at the pieces of the grenade, now sitting innocently on his worktable. A matter generation grenade. It was an incredible feat of engineering even for Tinkertech. It was extremely impressive. The information Armsmaster got just from studying the pieces was invaluable, and was enough to allow him to build more matter generation technology.

And it had been made by somebody who had had their power for less than a week, with scraps from a normal store, for the sole purpose of taunting Armsmaster. And it definitely was exclusively intended to annoy him. It could just as easily have been a truly dangerous grenade, and Armsmaster would be dead now, yet Auspice had deliberately made it harmless. She was just mocking him.

It was working. Armsmaster had been a Tinker, actively working to invent new things and improve his tech, for twenty years, and Auspice, in the span of less than a week, had invented something beyond any of the things he'd managed. Judging by certain, easily recognizable elements in the grenade, Auspice had even used Armsmaster's power to make it, at least in part.

Armsmaster's technology and the ease of making new tech would be greatly improved by what he now knew about matter generation technology.

And he would never be able to use it without remembering that it came from a childish twenty year old playing a prank on him. Armsmaster was already certain of that. It would always be a reminder of Auspice and her childish joke.

Still glaring furiously at the grenade, Armsmaster continued examining it to determine how it had worked. There were several segments that didn't quite make sense; Armsmaster couldn't identify their purpose. One piece of it didn't seem to have been properly connected to the rest of the grenade in the first place--

Armsmaster's fist clenched, hard enough that his joints complained.

The grenade hadn't been fully assembled. There was a segment which hadn't been connected properly, and it was the part of the grenade that was meant to self-destruct the pieces to keep from leaving anything behind. There was absolutely no chance that any Tinker could have accidentally failed to connect it, which meant that Auspice had done it on purpose.

Auspice had deliberately left the pieces of her grenade for Armsmaster to examine.

Armsmaster gritted his teeth, ignoring it when his jaw began to ache.

She wasn't just taunting him. She was patronizing him.

Looking closer, Armsmaster noticed that there were miniscule letters engraved into the metal, almost too small to be read by the naked human eye.

'I look forward to your future creations '

Armsmaster very carefully set the piece of metal down on the table and did not crush it in his armored fist as he wanted to do. It was extremely helpful to his future inventions, he reminded himself, and there was no point in wasting it. That did not help the blinding rage. In fact, it only made it worse, the fact that not only was he being patronized, but she was helping him considerably, and entirely because she wanted some form of petty revenge.

Armsmaster had thought before that he was as angry as he could be. Yet, somehow, Auspice had found a way to annoy him even further. She obviously had some kind of power that allowed her to be inhumanly infuriating.



Assault

The break room on the Rig had a TV in it, mounted in one corner. Assault had no idea how it worked, considering that they weren't on land and the shield should block every kind of signal that a TV would use. Assault generally just attributed it to Tinkers, although probably not Armsmaster personally.

The TV was always playing the news, though, which meant that they all ignored it more often than not. As members of the Protectorate, they usually got any of the information relevant to their jobs well before the news, anyway.

But sometimes information wasn't considered relevant to their jobs.

"--That the Slaughterhouse Nine, infamous villain organization, has been eliminated by an Independent hero," the news was saying.

"Whoa, hey, what the hell," Assault said, and went to turn the volume up.

Battery turned away from the coffee pot, newly filled mug in hand. "Huh? What's up?"

"That's right, Bill," another news person said. "Early this morning, PRT Department 47, located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, made a press release announcing the elimination of the Slaughterhouse Nine."

"Oh," said Battery.

"According to PRT spokespeople, an Independent hero unaffiliated with the PRT going by the name of 'Auspice' showed up to claim the considerable bounties for the members of the villain organization."

"Wait, what?" Battery said. "Auspice? That's what it said, right?"

"Uh, yeah." It took Assault a moment to recognize the name. "Oh! Wasn't that the name of the parahuman you met with?"

That was to say, the parahuman who had been covertly sent to the Birdcage. Because of his history, Assault had never been a direct part of handling Auspice, and the others had, in fact, been ordered not to tell him anything about it. That was fair enough, because he was pretty pissed about it, and he couldn't say whether or not he would have done something stupid if he'd had the chance. Though Battery had obviously not listened to the order, she still hadn't told him anything about it until it had already gone through.

"Yeah… It can't be, though. She's…" Battery trailed off, frowning.

"It seems, whatever form of evidence she brought to prove her claim, it was compelling, as it took less than thirty minutes for her claim to be verified," the news person was saying.

Assault debated whether or not to say anything direct about it. It wasn't a long debate. "Maybe somebody broke her out of the transport," he suggested.

It was probably not in his best interest to say such things, but Assault had never been the kind of person to care too much about that. In any case, if somebody had broken Auspice out, he had to applaud them. If anyone deserved to be broken out of a Birdcage transport, it was somebody who hadn't even committed any crimes in the first place.

"Maybe," Battery said.

"It seems that, following the example of Independent hero team New Wave, Auspice has decided not to conceal her identity," the original newscaster was saying.

Battery sucked in a sharp breath, and Assault looked back to the TV, which was now displaying a picture of a woman on the screen. It was obviously candid, probably cropped from surveillance footage. He wondered how the news had gotten it.

"That's definitely her," Battery said. "She must have escaped somehow. Why didn't they tell us?"

Assault had some unflattering answers to that question, which he was, in fact, wise enough not to say aloud while in the Rig.

Just then, Armsmaster stomped into the room. He or Piggot must have also noticed the news.

"Information regarding the parahuman known as Auspice is classified," Armsmaster said severely. It was impossible to tell whether or not he was responding to Battery's question. "You are strictly prohibited from discussing your and the PRT's former interaction with her with anyone that is not explicitly already aware."

Assault scoffed bitterly, but it was Battery who spoke.

"So we're refusing to acknowledge that we've ever met her before," she said flatly.

So we're refusing to admit that we tried and failed to imprison her in the Birdcage, Assault corrected. Of course, Battery was better than he was at not irritating figures of authority.

"Yes," Armsmaster said, with no indication at all that he was bothered by what he was saying. "As far as the Protectorate is concerned, we were not aware of Auspice's existence until she claimed the bounties for the Slaughterhouse Nine."

Assault rolled his eyes. Cue the PRT covering their asses. Well, whatever. That was no real surprise.

He had to appreciate a new hero being sent (unsuccessfully) to the Birdcage, then, while theoretically a fugitive, going on to take out a well-known S-class threat and claiming the bounty from the PRT. Now that she was publicly a hero, it was the PRT that was in a difficult position -- they couldn't say anything about it at all.

It was hilarious how badly trying to send Auspice to the Birdcage had backfired on the PRT.



Auspice

Fruity cocktail drink: acquired.

Swimsuit: acquired.

Beach chair: acquired.

Time to lounge around on a beach drinking one of those stereotypical umbrella drinks.

Auspice stretched out on her chair, wiggled her toes in the sand, and glanced around at the picturesque scenery. It really was beautiful. The gleaming white sand, the water so clear a variety of colorful ocean creatures were visible in the depths.

Auspice sipped her drink. It was alcoholic, and the first alcoholic drink she'd ever had, but it was so overpoweringly fruity that it was impossible to taste the alcohol. Which was, of course, the point.

…

The sun shone down on her, bright and cheerful. Fortunately, she didn't have to worry about sunburns anymore, or even about getting weird tan lines. Truly, the benefits of superpowers were great and numerous.

…

Auspice sipped her drink.

…

Okay, actually she was really bored. Seriously, the scenery was nice, but there was only so much to see, and there was no interest in looking at it again. The drink tasted good, but it wasn't particularly attention grabbing.

Why did people like this activity so much?! Why was 'sitting on a beach drinking a fruity drink with an umbrella' so popular in Worm fanfictions?! It was boring!

Heaving a dramatic sigh, Auspice collapsed against the back of her chair. Thanks to various powers that increase hand-eye coordination, her fruity drink, held in one hand, barely even sloshed around in its cup.

Maybe, Auspice considered, the problem was that she couldn't get drunk? After all, Contessa was a popular choice for the 'off on a beach' scene, and there was nothing keeping her from getting drunk. Same with some alt!power Taylors… although she was a minor, so she really shouldn't have been drinking alcohol.

Well, whatever the reason, Auspice was still bored. Idly, she scooped up a handful of shimmery white sand with the hand not holding her drink and heated it into glass in her hand.

She should have a real vacation, and by that she meant do all of the things she'd ever wanted to do, plus all of the things she was now capable of with superpowers. Climb Mount Everest. Hike the Grand Canyon. See a bunch of the sights. Troll the PRT a bit, maybe (definitely). Then she'd kill Scion and go back to her own universe.

Auspice shattered the glass into tiny fragments and let it fall back to the sand. She was on an empty Earth anyway, so there was nobody to step on the pieces.

Smiling at the thought of her upcoming adventures, Auspice drained her glass of fruity drink and stood to portal back to Earth Bet. She could do most of those things in a different Earth, or even back in her original universe, but where was the fun in that?



Rebecca Costa-Brown

Rebecca put her head in her hands.

The capture of the Teeth at Auspice's hands was all over the news. Of course it was. Auspice had neutralized them, then called the civilian police, who then had to call the PRT. By the time the PRT and Protectorate responders got to the location, numerous news crews were already there -- and Auspice herself was gone.

But Auspice taking down the Teeth was one thing. It wasn't actually that shocking, after her debut killing off the entire Slaughterhouse Nine. Most people didn't even realize just how difficult it would be to fight the Teeth due to the Butcher's presence.

The real problem was that the fact that Auspice had apparently removed the Butcher's power was also all over the news. The layperson obviously wouldn't understand why it was important that the Butcher specifically had had their power removed, but anyone could see why the ability to remove parahuman powers was a big deal.

Rebecca groaned. There was nobody in her office, and therefore nobody to maintain her appearance in front of.

Auspice. The most powerful parahuman in any of the Earths, in competition for the most powerful being in any of the Earths. Their likely best chance of killing Scion.

And she was actually worse than him.

Potentially, anyway. She certainly seemed smarter, and for all that she hadn't done anything yet, neither had he -- technically. Instead of one Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, now there were two. It was only a matter of time, and although it seemed unlikely that Auspice might destroy every version of Earth, as Scion would, her intentions and goals were almost as difficult to read. And they still had no idea where she had come from.

For all they knew, Auspice was related to Scion somehow.



Auspice

Mount Everest wasn't as cool as Auspice had expected, really. Pun not intended.

She didn't really feel temperature anymore, and she didn't need to breathe, so the cold and the altitude didn't bother her. Plus, she had admittedly cheated by teleporting to the top of the mountain, and she could fly anyway, so there was no real sense of accomplishment.

And, for being the tallest mountain on the planet, there wasn't a very good view, as it was mostly obscured by clouds. Plus, again, Auspice could fly. Well, whatever. It was still an Experience, right? She could say that she'd been to the top of Mount Everest! Nobody ever needed to know that she'd cheated.

Auspice pulled out her phone and sent it floating away to take a picture of her for posterity's sake. Then she got an idea. She opened PHO, using the same wifi from the hotel in France, and created a new thread. She'd already created an account ahead of time, and gotten it verified, too.


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♦Topic: Auspice goes on vacation
In: Boards ► ??? ► ??? ► ???

Auspice (Original Poster) (Verified Cape)
Posted on January 19, 2011:

I'm going to post pictures of my vacation here -- AKA, Auspice does cool things! Suggestions are welcome, but I'm not promising to follow them. First up: Mount Everest wasn't as impressive as expected.

Mount-Everest-Selfie.jpg


Auspice couldn't help but laugh. The PRT was going to hate her so much.



Rebecca Costa-Brown

A number of high-ranking members of the Fallen had been taken into custody, thanks to Auspice, as had Heartbreaker and almost all of his children. She had also removed the powers of Heartbreaker, his children, and all of the members of the Fallen with Master powers, who had been a major part of why the Fallen had managed to exist for so long.

Those former Masters, along with the Butcher who was no longer a parahuman, brought up an entire debate regarding the Birdcage. Specifically, the ethics of sending somebody who was no longer a parahuman to the Birdcage, even if they had been sentenced to be imprisoned there while commiting crimes as a parahuman. After all, without their powers they weren't a threat, people argued. And the Birdcage was suddenly a much closer prospect, as, after all, people said, it was a thin line between those who were 'no longer' a parahuman and those who had never been.

So went the arguments, anyway. And regardless of the way the debate went, the point remained that the Birdcage was suddenly in the public eye, and the question of who and why people were sent to it was suddenly being asked.

Rebecca had to wonder if Auspice had done it on purpose. It was hard to imagine that she hadn't, given the circumstances. It made a lot of sense for her to politically attack the Birdcage. But if that was her goal, why hadn't she used her own experience, gone public with the fact that she had been sent to the Birdcage as not only an innocent woman but as a powerful hero? Her popularity could have caused a public outcry that would be difficult for the PRT to handle.

It still could, Rebecca thought, for all that the more time passed, the less likely it seemed that Auspice would do anything with it. Perhaps this was her plan: ensure that people were talking about the ethics of the Birdcage, if not quite the correct part, and then bring up her wrongful imprisonment at the hands of the PRT when it would hit the hardest?

But that probably wouldn't make up for the fact that the impact would be lessened as time passed. If Auspice had some kind of grand plan, that wouldn't be a very good one.

They'd already prepared for such an eventuality, in any case, and gotten rid of all of the proof that anything had ever happened. All of the proof except the Protectorate ENE capes, that was. But it was unlikely that a member of the Protectorate would go against orders and say anything.



Auspice

The boat picked up speed, causing the parachute to catch the wind and lift Auspice into the air. The wind blew in her face, tossing her hair, and she felt almost weightless.

...It took about a minute for Auspice to decide that she had miscalculated. Although parasailing sounded like a fun activity, and it was one that she'd wanted to do since before she got superpowers, the end result was a little disappointing.

She should have known; after all, she was capable of independent flight at near the speed of sound -- without a Breaker state. With one, she could go even faster. Considering that, it was obvious, in hindsight, that parasailing would not actually be very entertaining. She might as well just fly on her own. It'd be faster that way, too. Even the fact that Auspice had no control over her flight while parasailing was less than thrilling. Because even if she couldn't fly, falling from this height and hitting the water wouldn't hurt her in the slightest.

Auspice sighed. Parasailing was a bust. She'd have to cross some other things off her list, too. There were a lot of things that had seemed fun in theory, but since she couldn't really turn off having superpowers, they would probably be just as bad as parasailing.

Like skydiving. That was one that she never would have even risked without superpowers and nigh-invincibility, but it was basically pointless now anyway. Same with hang gliding. Faux flying. Lame.

Even things like hiking. Auspice couldn't even lie to herself and claim that she'd actually hike up a mountain or whatever when she could 1, fly, and 2, teleport.

For a second, Auspice was almost disappointed to find so many normal activities all but ruined. Then she shrugged, released the catch on her harness, and flew down to pay so that she could move on.

She'd just have to find more superpower-friendly fun activities.

 

[SmartAlek]

Alternate Take: Birdcage Blues Part Five​

Auspice

One way to keep things interesting while having superpowers, was, of course, to do things that required superpowers to do at all.

For example, a casual swim at the bottom of the ocean. Not near where Leviathan was -- she didn't want to freak out the people on PHO, after all. Or start a debate on whether or not she should try to attack a dormant Endbringer, as was probably more likely. Although seeing people's arguments could be interesting… Nah, not worth it.

So, a more mundane part of the ocean floor it was. Unfortunately, none of the deep ocean creatures seemed interested in letting Auspice take a selfie with them, but the non-mobile parts of the ocean attraction were still good enough.

Auspice settled on the ocean floor so that it looked like she was standing normally, not abusing her superpowers to remain there as she actually was. She sent her phone a little ways away to take a picture, but she'd forgotten that the camera, unlike her vision, wasn't good enough to make anything out in the absolute darkness so deep into the ocean. That was fine. She altered Purity's power so that it was light without any heat or damage, then altered it a little more so that it could be maintained as a ball of light rather than flying off as a beam.

Then, with enough ambient light for the camera, she took a picture. The picture looked pretty good, too; creepier than she'd originally intended, with the white light from Purity's power filtering through the water lighting Auspice and the ocean floor in strange ways, surrounded by complete darkness in every direction.

It was perfect.

She let herself drift upwards as she posted it on PHO. Her earlier adventures and the pictures she'd posted had gotten surprisingly popular -- maybe because capes didn't usually show off their powers so casually. Whatever the reason, there were a lot of people already on her thread, and the new picture got several replies almost immediately.


► Aiming_Low
Replied on January 22, 2011:

@Auspice How did you take a picture at the bottom of the ocean? OK, you have powers, but why isn't your phone being crushed by the pressure? Or bothered by the fact that it's underwater?


There were other comments along those lines. Surprisingly few people were willing to just accept cool pictures; they had to question them. Auspice didn't mind.


► Auspice (Original Poster) (Verified Cape)
Replied on January 22, 2011:

Well, there's two possibilities. One, Tinkertech, or two, magic. Take your pick


As long as nobody else minded that she never gave a clear answer, anyway. Actually, that was a lie. The fact that everybody got upset whenever she gave a silly response was half the fun.

Still laughing as her thread exploded with people complaining and theorizing, Auspice moved on to her next big show: the moon.

Space was really pretty. The Earth was pretty, too, from space. But it really looked like a picture, even though she was seeing it for herself. It was just too remote. Like many things, it got boring surprisingly quickly.

Auspice didn't even need Thinker powers to see the accusations of pulling the picture from the Internet, but, standing on the surface of the moon, she took a picture -- not a selfie -- of the Earth and posted it to PHO anyway.


► namesarehard
Replied on January 22, 2011:

looks fake

► DigaWell
Replied on January 22, 2011:

Selfie version please


And those two weren't the only ones along those lines. Auspice laughed. It was exactly what she'd expected. Obligingly, she turned around and levitated her phone away from her to take a picture of her with the moon visible at her feet and the Earth in the background. By the time she went to post it, there was another comment that deserved its own response.


► Nakyak (Cape Geek)
Replied on January 22, 2011:

@Auspice, how did you get to the moon, though?? What is your power!? Please explain!


People asking about Auspice's power opened the best opportunities for messing with people -- both the poor people on PHO and the PRT.


► Auspice (Original Poster) (Verified Cape)
Replied on January 22, 2011:

Moon-Selfie.jpg

@Nakyak

How did I get to the moon, you ask? It was pretty easy, actually. Legend's power can fly ridiculously fast, so it didn't even take that long.


That was a lie, of course. Auspice could literally teleport, and that was how she'd gotten to the moon. But where was the fun in saying that? Anyway, there were no iconic teleporters like Legend where she could namedrop them so easily and have them be recognized immediately.


► Nakyak (Cape Geek)
Replied on January 22, 2011:

@Auspice WHAT. Legend's power?? That is NOT HELPFUL! You can't just say that! EXPLAIN.

► namesarehard
Replied on January 22, 2011:

@Auspice Seriously, you come back here. Don't ignore us, I know you're reading these replies. What do you mean by 'Legend's power'?


Auspice cackled to herself and didn't respond as the thread devolved further. She'd have to make a new thread soon, with all of the new comments. People guessed surprisingly close to her power very quickly, although of course none of them expected the scale of it, and they usually added restrictions like 'three powers at a time'. Auspice was willing to bet the PRT, who were absolutely stalking her on PHO, were pitching a fit about it.

Good. It was her power and she'd tell people about it if she wanted to.

---------------​

It took Auspice less than two weeks to get tired of the Worm verse. She'd decided basically as soon as she got sent to the Birdcage that she was too pissed off to stick around any longer than necessary, and honestly after that nothing had really changed her mind.

Without being careful of anybody's feelings or expectations, it was easy to take out most of the world's major villains within those two weeks, plus all of the people and things that might not technically count as villains. Between that and handling the Endbringers and Scion before she went, Earth Bet and the Worm verse as a whole would probably be fine. They didn't need her and she didn't want to stick around, so…

Since Auspice was done, she set about handling all of the leftover money she still had from the Slaughterhouse Nine's bounties -- donating it to various charities and whatnot. She used a little bit of the money to anonymously set up a fund to pay for Taylor to attend Arcadia and made sure Taylor would be told it was a scholarship.

Then, her last order of business before she went to go assassinate Scion: the Endbringers. Auspice hadn't wanted to do anything with them too early because, according to Path to Victory and her other precog powers, Scion was, in fact, aware enough that he'd notice something wrong with the Endbringers, so if she did anything to them, it wouldn't be long before Scion started being ridiculous. Apparently, he was actually really worried about what the Entities considered one of the worst possible scenarios -- their test subjects rebelling -- so he'd just go on his rampage, start Gold Morning early. It seemed over the top, but who was Auspice to judge a literal alien.

In any case, it didn't matter anymore. She was ready to go anyway, so she'd just go straight from handling the Endbringers to killing Scion, and then her win condition would be completed and she'd be able to go home.

Auspice could just kill the Endbringers. In most situations, she probably would. She didn't feel particularly affectionate towards the mass-murdering monsters. In this case, however, she'd decided to get in one last act of trolling the inhabitants of Earth Bet. Of course, just killing the Endbringers while they were dormant would freak people out pretty badly, when they started missing their scheduled attacks.

But that wouldn't be fun enough.

Instead, Auspice used Eidolon's power and tweaked the Endbringers. Basically, they were now programmed to act like Scion; they would travel around being 'heroes', saving people and so on. Of course, she had to add in a ton of restrictions on their actions -- no killing unless absolutely necessary, minimal property damage, no leaving areas radioactive or mindraping people. Thanks to Path to Victory foreseeing issues that Auspice herself wouldn't have thought of, the Endbringers were soon proper heroes, with morals and everything.

The other seventeen Endbringers would continue appearing slowly over time, but Auspice added the same changes to their programming so that all twenty of them would be heroes.

Finally, Auspice ran a Path to Killing Scion Without Anyone Knowing.

...And then she corrected it to Killing Scion Without Anyone Seeing. That was better. She didn't need to go to all of the effort to make sure nobody -- Cauldron included -- would ever notice she'd killed Scion.

And then, finally finished, all of her stuff collected in hammerspace, Auspice returned to her home universe.



PoV Not Found

When it first happened, all three Endbringers appearing in different places at the same time, the world panicked. The Endbringer sirens went off. The Protectorate scrambled to get responding heroes to each site. By the time any of them got there, however, the Endbringers had moved on, causing each team of capes to have to chase an Endbringer around the world.

It didn't take long for it to become apparent that the Endbringers were not following their usual M.O. All three of them -- especially Behemoth -- were being far less destructive than they usually were, not to mention the lack of the Simurgh's scream and Behemoth's Kill Zone. None of them were killing anyone. Even when capes attacked them directly, they would carefully stop that person from being able to attack without hurting them.

Although it didn't work out very well at first due to people's reasonable fear of them, it appeared that the Endbringers were acting as heroes. They would rescue kittens from trees, stop muggings, interfere in cape battles. Pretty much any crime or act of cruelty might get a sudden Endbringer interrupt. Villains and non-parahuman criminals were, of course, horrified. The warlords of Africa were likely quite upset, as their affairs, basically their entire empires, were disrupted by the Endbringers.

Everyone, parahuman or not, discussed how to handle this new development. In the end, however, they were forced to come to an undesirable conclusion: there was nothing they could do. If the Endbringers suddenly wanted to play at being heroes, they couldn't stop them.

A lot of people were seeing the Endbringers for the first time. With their new levels of activity, the Endbringers were in a lot more places a lot more often. It was almost impossible for people to avoid running into one at some point. Of course, even so, it would probably be years before anybody could encounter one of the Endbringers without being more afraid of the Endbringer than whatever situation they had been in before, but they would all just have to deal with it. Because that was the only thing they could do. They'd get used to it eventually.

And, well, at least the Endbringers weren't killing anybody anymore. They were actually horrifyingly effective as heroes. They were so overwhelmingly powerful that nobody stood a chance against them, so once they decided to stop a crime, that crime got stopped.

In light of the new risk of Endbringer, criminal activity across the globe dropped.



Contessa

"Scion is gone?" Alexandria repeated disbelievingly.

Contessa nodded, a little annoyed by the disbelief. Keeping track of Scion was one of her self-appointed duties, and it was the one she took the most seriously. "He disappeared two days ago, sometime in the morning. I haven't been able to find him."

"That explains why nobody else has noticed yet," Eidolon said. "Nobody else keeps close enough track of him. What now, then?"

"We have to continue as usual," Doctor Mother said. "We can't afford to assume that he is no longer an issue if we're wrong."

"But we have no idea what could have caused his disappearance?" said Eidolon.

Contessa shook her head.

"Actually," Alexandria said slowly, and Contessa raised her eyebrows.

"You didn't even know he was missing until now," she said, miffed by the idea that Alexandria might know why he was gone when Contessa herself didn't.

"No, I know. It's just that Auspice -- the power copier," Alexandria clarified unnecessarily; as though any of them didn't know that person by name. "She had been posting on PHO near constantly, posting pictures and talking to people. But she hasn't posted anything or been seen in two days. Her last post was that morning, too," she added.

"You think their disappearances are related?" Contessa said.

Alexandria nodded and spread her hands like, well. "It's a little too coincidental for both of them to have disappeared at about the same time, otherwise."

That was true.

"All right. Then, assuming for now that their disappearances are related, what does that mean?" Doctor Mother said. "What are the possibilities for why it happened?"

"Best case scenario, they got into a fight and killed each other off," Alexandria said dryly.

"Worst case scenario, they teamed up and are planning something together," Contessa said.

Although, that wasn't necessarily any worse than Scion alone, except that it halved the chance that Cauldron's actions would save humanity. From 0.1% chance to 0.05% chance.

"It seems more likely that they would fight each other than team up. Their actions so far are very different," Eidolon said. "But if they had fought to the death, surely there would be signs of the battle. It couldn't have gone completely unnoticed."

"It might have, if it didn't happen on this Earth," Alexandria said.

"Wouldn't the Clairvoyant have noticed?" Eidolon said.

"No," Doctor Mother said. "Something about Auspice seems to interfere with his power, as with other Thinker powers."

Like Path to Victory, Contessa thought grumpily.

"Which may also mean that Auspice has extended her immunity to the Clairvoyant's power to Scion," Contessa said. "Allowing them both to hide."

"For whatever reason they might be doing that," Eidolon said, but thoughtfully, not aggressively.

Contessa just shrugged. How were any of them to know the reasons Scion might do anything? And Auspice, despite seemingly being human, was hardly any better.

They were quiet for long enough that Doctor Mother spoke.

"Then, essentially, we know nothing about the situation regarding either of them, nor why it happened," she said, and sighed. "In that case, we --"

A piece of paper appeared in midair, then fluttered down to settle on the table between them, writing visible on the side that faced up. They exchanged glances.

"I can't tell anything about it," Contessa said, annoyed.

It must have had something to do with Scion or Auspice, then.

"It's facing me," Doctor Mother said, standing to read it without touching it. She let out a startled breath. "It says, 'To Cauldron, Stop being evil. Scion is dead, and I'm not sticking around, so you have nothing to worry about anymore. I fixed the Case 53s in your basement. You're welcome. You should let them go. I know that you have no reason to believe me, but consider: I have no reason to lie. With --'" She squinted at it. "I believe it says 'love', but crossed out so that it actually says 'With apathy, Auspice'."

Doctor Mother looked up at them. There was a moment of silence.

Alexandria put her head in her hands. "What the hell," she said.

That summed it up well. To have worked towards possibly defeating Scion for thirty years, only for the next biggest threat they'd ever encountered to so cavalierly dismiss them and their efforts. There were not many other ways to respond to that.

But that wasn't even the biggest problem they had.

"She's watching us," Contessa said. "Not only does she know of us and our actions, but she must be currently aware of us in some way, for that letter to be so well timed."

It was obvious that Doctor Mother had been about to conclude that they could do nothing but continue as they had been and wait until something changed. Evidently, Auspice disapproved.

"So it's a threat," Eidolon said darkly. "'I know where you are, and I can get to you at any time.'"

"But she basically said it herself. If she's powerful enough for that -- and she must be -- then she has no reason to lie about her intentions," Alexandria said. She scoffed quietly. "This is a woman who has been playing tag with the entirety of the PRT for more than a week, treating it as some kind of fun vacation. We can't do anything about her. We haven't been able to so far."

"What, then? We take it at face value that, for some reason, she killed Scion, and then just decided to leave?" Eidolon said.

"What else can we do?" said Contessa. The others fell silent. "We know that she has your power, Eidolon. Given that she's capable of teleporting an object directly into our base, she's probably copied Path to Victory, too -- not to mention hundreds more powers. She's as terrible an enemy as Scion; I can't use Path to Victory on her, and we have such a miniscule chance of being able to defeat her that it's almost pointless to try. The one advantage we had over Scion was that he didn't know we exist, and Auspice clearly already does. There is nothing we can do. We've already lost this fight.

Eidolon stayed silent, impossible to read through his mask. Alexandria's mouth was set in a thin, unhappy line. It wasn't like Contessa was happy about this, either.

"Then, what are you proposing, Contessa? It's not like you to give up," Doctor Mother said.

"I think we should believe that she has, in fact, killed Scion. There are few other reasons he might have disappeared, and altruistic or not, Auspice has reason to want him gone," Contessa said. "Then, since Scion is no longer an issue and Auspice already knows about us, I think we should continue our established plan of building up as high a parahuman population as possible in the hopes of fighting Auspice if necessary, but act more overtly. Without the need for secrecy, we could achieve a lot more."

"And if we were being more open about it, we could do a lot more to stabilize society," Alexandria said. "Try to get more people to become heroes, and try for less parahuman deaths overall."

Contessa wasn't surprised that Alexandria, and likely Eidolon as well, were already on board. They had all done and condoned terrible things, and some of them felt worse about it than others, but all of them wished they could do more good and less evil.

"Auspice did say in her letter to 'stop being evil'," Doctor Mother murmured when nobody spoke for a long moment. "Well then. Do you all agree that this is the best course of action?"

"I don't see any other options, so yes, I agree," Eidolon said.

Alexandria nodded. "I agree, as well."

Cauldron's new path was decided. And Contessa hadn't even needed Path to Victory.

Spoiler: Author's Note

With this, the alternate take is finally over. A little abrupt, but I did not intend for it to be this long in the first place. A couple thousand word one-shot, I said. It'll be quick, I said. There won't be that many conversations, I said. And then it ended up being half the length of the entire original story. I did want there to be more scenes of Auspice vacationing and the PRT reacting to her, but it's already so long as it is and the scenes got repetitive, so I decided not to add any more.