Broadcast cheats but can't just command every Parahuman on earth it's not Queen Administrator. I joked about Strider earlier but he would need to come fully mastered for it to be fast enough to get the Nine away from the Forge. If Strider showed up the time needed to snag him is long enough for the forge to end the Nine. It wouldn't be as clean as the current plan but it also wouldn't let them get away.
Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)
- Thread starter LordRoustabout
- Start date
Even if a fully mastered Strider teleported away with the 9 I doubt it would actually work. Odds are Joe could just track the teleport. Then they save poor Strider and off the 9.
- Location
- Right Where I Am
The Lamps came before that, but they were the more famous light source.
A Unique Ending (Knaka)
My last omake didn't get threadmarked.
Anyway, I have a new omake.
XXX
A Unique Ending
XXX
"Hey" Aisha said as she walked over. I was currently in Garment's workshop as she wanted to show me some of her new designs. "I have a question."
"What is it?" I responded.
"Do you ever feel like you're living in a movie or something?" Aisha asked.
I blinked and turned to look at her directly. "What do you mean?"
"I mean like everything that's happening feels like a show for someone else. What if we're like a TV show or movie for some people outside of our universe or something? Like we're just entertainment for them?" Aisha elaborated.
I scoffed at that. "Well, in that case, they made a bad casting choice for me. I'm not cut out to be a character in a story. You might make a good protagonist, but if I'm the mentor figure something's gone wrong." I shook my head. "Anyway, there's really no point in thinking this way. Even if it's true we have no way to affect things if we're really characters in a story."
"Yeah, I guess that's true." Aisha replied. "Still fun to think about" She said before leaving.
I put the comment out of my mind as I turned back to Garment. "Seriously, did you have to add dust weaving to that?"
XXX
Despite my best intentions, Aisha's comment took root in the back of my mind. What if we were all characters in some show? How would we know? What would we do in that case? The questions kept coming. No matter how much I tried to distract myself, I couldn't get it out of my mind.
On some level, I knew this was a pointless thought, but logic rarely overcome emotion.
Things finally came to a head once it was time to refresh my duplicate potion. As the duplicates stepped out, both turned to me.
"Alright, we have to do something to get your mind off this, if just to get our minds off this." my first duplicate said.
"Well, what do you think we should do? I'd like to do something, but I can't think of anything." I replied.
"Well, we could build an improved privacy curtain." said the second duplicate.
"Improved curtain? What are you talking about? The privacy curtain is as good as I can make it. There's nothing we can add to it." I shot back.
"Well we haven't added everything we can add to it" mentioned the second duplicate.
I thought on it for a moment. "Superweapons?" I asked.
"Yup" replied the second duplicate.
"But we don't know if that would do anything." I replied.
"At the very least, it would get our minds off of this." answered my first duplicate.
I looked that the two copies of myself staring back at me. "You aren't going to let this go, are you?" Neither of them answered. They didn't need to. "Fine, let's get this over with."
The preparations didn't take that long. In the end, we decided to build an improved copy of my white noise generator that would protect the entire multiverse. Thanks to my various resource powers I could literally build the privacy device out of junk, with the exception of the rare component. Said component turned out to be a recording launched with the original Voyager probe. That would have been a problem for people who didn't have multiple FTL options and the ability to create an atomically perfect copy of the recording to leave behind.
Finally, after several minutes of preparation, the device was complete. A modified Superweapon white noise generator that would block all interdimensional observation beyond the local cluster of universes. For some reason, the device would work as long as nothing inside the range of the device affected anything outside the range of the device.
After all, the local multiverse was my home.
With this, no one outside of a certain range of universes could observe the events within said range.
The fact that said range of universes contained more universes than atoms in any given observable universe was irrelevant.
Hopefully, this would be enough to calm my mind.
With no fanfare, I reached over to activate the device, and then ssssssssSSSSsssSSSSSSSSSSsss------
XXX
A/N
In case anyone is confused by the ending, the joke is that the privacy device cut off our observation of events in the story.
This omake was inspired by a comment I read on another story. I think it was an inspired inventor story, where a commentator mentioned that the MC should prioritize building a device that prevented them from being observed by beings outside of their universe, and another commentator replied that that would be a unique way for a story to end.
XXX
Edit: minor corrections
Edit2: minor corrections
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this is not even a stretch as in if lord want's to end the story this way I wouldn't even be mad. It's completely believable and if I was in his situation I would do the same in universe, it's also a great way to end the story if you don't have the strength or time to finish it anymore. I honestly consider this a potential ending
edit: the best explanation I've seen for a show or something suddenly ending after everything is said and done plotwise like it ties the meta narrative together beautiful and makes complete sense in the context of story
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I think that this would be a cop-out after 2 million words of investment. Meta stories are hard to do well in a way that makes sense, as the author is infinitely more powerful than Joe is as a character. It does not matter how strong he gets, he will still be weaker than infinity.
- Location
- Philippines
In before he notices that the Celestial Forge stopped getting new powers because apparently his power gain was based on observation by something beyond the local multiverse. I imagine that Joe would discuss it for a while with his friends before deciding that at the level of his power, it is worth both the privacy that he apparently never had and being able to finally stop worrying about getting more changes forced upon him randomly.
Yeah, but the point was that it could come an an importune time. Like, say, his date with Crystal. He runs off to deal with it, she follow him to give him back his wallet and/or find out what's up, and when she sees him turn around and open the place's back door she follows him to see why he's suddenly acting fishy.
There's just the minor problem of "the end is coming and the entire Forge may not be enough to stop it" that has me disageeing with that logic. Joe has given up more for less, and given how paranoid he's been I don't see him leaving the Forge to languish. Once the threat is dealt with? Then it's definitely a possibility.
He also has months of time to himself whenever he needs them in the computer simulation, and those sessions don't often give powers either, so his vacation times are solid if he needs them.
Let's goooooooo that's my boi!!! Get in there son
- Location
- Philippines
I don't just mean it in the sense of "It's emotionally difficult to have changes pushed on you dozens of times every day" though, despite it being very valid. I also mean it in a sense where Joe has had dozens of incidents where getting a power in the middle of something has led to a lot of distraction, if not outright trouble for him and his teammates.
And considering some of these troubles Joe had only been lucky to have been able to commit to them immediately, like every time something sapient got dragged into the Workshop by the Forge, it's certainly still an ongoing risk for Joe especially since unlike us, he has no idea what else he has coming. We know that he's not up for anymore Companions like Tybalt, but for all he knows that's something that can still happen to him while he's in the middle of dealing with an S Class Threat or something.
If Joe does ever get the option to stop getting rolls, I get the sense that he will eventually make that choice. He'll definitely deliberate on that decision, talk over it with his friends and team as well as taking his own passenger's advice if he has "enough", but it's not impossible for him to make that choice because of having threats to deal with, not in spite of it.
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Missed spelling there -->> Shielder
- Location
- California, USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Isn't this already canonically true with Joe's creepy demon pen pals who give him souls?
Confession (One Fall Leaf)
Short omake
Confession
Watching the argument unravel around me wasn't a pleasant experience, there were too many tie backs to my own past, and too many ways this situation could be tethered back to me, indirectly or not, for me to ignore.
It had sprung up suddenly, Crystal's family switching rapidly from the tense but friendly situation of meeting their daughter's boyfriend to being beset with the news of Glory Girl's evaluation.
And in that rapidly devolving situation they had forgotten all about the outsider in their midst, leaving me to stew in my own thoughts in the face of their panic, as they desperately searched for a solution to a problem I could solve in a matter of seconds.
All it would take was a mere trinket.
But was it worth it? Announcing to the world that Apeiron could so easily alter powers? And how would I explain my actions? Hell, how would I even get this family to trust my intentions in the first place, after everything.
My gaze wandered as it so often does to Crystal, standing aside from the conversation of her extended family with her brother by her side, biting on her lip in worry.
Yes.
It was worth it.
Which meant that it was time for me to face the situation I had been avoiding for a week now. The realisation was oddly freeing.
Nobody noticed me standing as the arguing reached a fever pitch, and only Crystal had eyes for me as I gently placed my hand on her arm. She leaned into my touch and gave me a shaky smile.
I swallowed.
"Do you mind if we talk in private?" Seeing her uncertain glance towards the argument, I added quietly. "It'll help, I promise."
That drew a more complex, intense look but she must have seen something in my eyes, because not a second later she gave me an uncertain nod.
The walk to what I found was the garage seemed to take an eternity and no time at all as we passed quietly through the darkened house. Crystal shakily lacing her hand through mine as the distant shouts occasionally spiked in volume and echoed through the hall.
"Joe..." Crystal began slowly as we arrived, turning and taking my hand into both of hers. "I know you want to help, but this isn't..." She trailed off as I slid my hand out hers' and reached into my pocket.
Placing down my white noise generator on a nearby work bench, I let the slip of metal speak for itself as it enforced my domain of privacy upon the world. A shudder passed through Crystal as it took hold, her wide eyes slowly shifting from the slip of metal to me with a kaleidoscope of emotions shifting over her features.
"I wanted to tell you for a while now, at freeside beach, when I helped Gully..." I trailed off, my throat closing up in spite of all my training and powers at the frozen look on Crystal's face. "It was cowardice... me not wanting to ruin what we have, so I put it off."
The admission stung; I had resolved myself to move out of that kind of mentality what felt like so long ago, to stop avoiding things just because they made uncomfortable.
To stop being a doormat to myself.
"I'm Apeiron, Crystal, I can help." I swallowed. "I want to help."
Confession
Watching the argument unravel around me wasn't a pleasant experience, there were too many tie backs to my own past, and too many ways this situation could be tethered back to me, indirectly or not, for me to ignore.
It had sprung up suddenly, Crystal's family switching rapidly from the tense but friendly situation of meeting their daughter's boyfriend to being beset with the news of Glory Girl's evaluation.
And in that rapidly devolving situation they had forgotten all about the outsider in their midst, leaving me to stew in my own thoughts in the face of their panic, as they desperately searched for a solution to a problem I could solve in a matter of seconds.
All it would take was a mere trinket.
But was it worth it? Announcing to the world that Apeiron could so easily alter powers? And how would I explain my actions? Hell, how would I even get this family to trust my intentions in the first place, after everything.
My gaze wandered as it so often does to Crystal, standing aside from the conversation of her extended family with her brother by her side, biting on her lip in worry.
Yes.
It was worth it.
Which meant that it was time for me to face the situation I had been avoiding for a week now. The realisation was oddly freeing.
Nobody noticed me standing as the arguing reached a fever pitch, and only Crystal had eyes for me as I gently placed my hand on her arm. She leaned into my touch and gave me a shaky smile.
I swallowed.
"Do you mind if we talk in private?" Seeing her uncertain glance towards the argument, I added quietly. "It'll help, I promise."
That drew a more complex, intense look but she must have seen something in my eyes, because not a second later she gave me an uncertain nod.
The walk to what I found was the garage seemed to take an eternity and no time at all as we passed quietly through the darkened house. Crystal shakily lacing her hand through mine as the distant shouts occasionally spiked in volume and echoed through the hall.
"Joe..." Crystal began slowly as we arrived, turning and taking my hand into both of hers. "I know you want to help, but this isn't..." She trailed off as I slid my hand out hers' and reached into my pocket.
Placing down my white noise generator on a nearby work bench, I let the slip of metal speak for itself as it enforced my domain of privacy upon the world. A shudder passed through Crystal as it took hold, her wide eyes slowly shifting from the slip of metal to me with a kaleidoscope of emotions shifting over her features.
"I wanted to tell you for a while now, at freeside beach, when I helped Gully..." I trailed off, my throat closing up in spite of all my training and powers at the frozen look on Crystal's face. "It was cowardice... me not wanting to ruin what we have, so I put it off."
The admission stung; I had resolved myself to move out of that kind of mentality what felt like so long ago, to stop avoiding things just because they made uncomfortable.
To stop being a doormat to myself.
"I'm Apeiron, Crystal, I can help." I swallowed. "I want to help."
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Tetra's Streaming Career (One Fall Leaf)
Long Omake
Tetra's Streaming Career
Alec had always felt like he was the kind of guy that would laugh as the world ended around him, that he could find damn near anything funny as long as it was interesting enough. Recent events had put a damper on that side of him, made him care about things and worry about a future he wouldn't have given two shits about a month ago.
It was downright depressing if he was being perfectly honest.
Which is precisely why when he turned on this livestream, and his first impulse was to laugh his head off, he felt so damn relieved about it.
"What the hell are you… Oh- fuck." His maniacal laughter had attracted the know-it-all, and upon rolling his head over the back of the couch to side-eye her pale form, he laughed even harder. "Alec, this-this is bad, we need to-"
Alec shook his head, the last peels of laughter spilling out of him as he wiped the tears from his eyes with a grin. "Joe isn't responding, c'mon Tats, take a seat and watch the end of the world with me."
She didn't respond, but she did lifelessly plop down on the couch beside him, not even acknowledging his generous offer of popcorn.
"And this! Is where we have our super secret meetings!" A jubilant voice announced; Proto Aima, the glowing string, demon mink-thing from the summit had apparently been Joe-ified and turned into an overly excitable red haired teen. A teen who apparently had decided to try her hand at live streaming, and was in the process of showing an increasingly horrified, baffled and awed audience around the ridiculous fortress Joe had apparently built for himself.
The chat was flying off the screen so fast he couldn't even comprehend it, but Proto Aima seemed to be managing just fine.
"Yeah, these are the super snails!" She cheerfully responded to a random comment, bouncing over to a large aquarium that dominated one end of the massive, luxurious room. "Apeiron made them little hats." She zoomed in on one of the… well, he had no clue and Lisa was blinking furiously at them, but they definitely did have very nice hats.
He couldn't help it, he laughed again, this girl was an absolute riot.
Even if her streaming this insane shit did set off every organisation on the planet, it'd be worth it just so that future historians could tell their students that the apocalypse was set off by a teenager live streaming their house and pets.
"There's not really much else in here, we don't really have that many meetings to be honest, too stuffy." She announced, flouncing out of the room down what seemed to be a hidden passageway. "Apeiron put in all kinds of fun rooms nearby though, lemme show you the lava ice rink." She spun the camera around to wink at it before skipping her way down tunnel.
"Alec, this is…" Lisa trailed off and Alec resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
"I know right?" He smirked. "I can't believe Joe didn't invite us to his lava ice rink, how does the lava eve- Oh, like that."
"Getting a transparent material that would completely block out heat transfer and thus keep the lava hot enough to glow was the real issue." Proto Aima commented, pointing the camera at the glowing ceiling of lava. "Oh! These are Fleet's little zambonis, they're really cute!"
Sure enough, there was a small army of tiny, perfect zambonis moving in unison across the ice; how that related to Apeiron's speedster, Alec really didn't know, but it was funny. As a plus, one look at those things had Lisa settling down, wide eyes staring at the screen.
Then again, that probably wasn't a good thing.
"Ooooh." The girl on the other end of the stream suddenly froze, jerking the camera towards her and giving the stream a big smile. "Apparently we're getting started guys! Let me show you how the Celestial Forge prepares for combat!"
Before this point Alec had no idea such an energetic, cute announcement could inspire such rampant fear and panic, but only a sucker would bet against that statement having soiled the underwear of at least one analyst. This girl was definitely his favourite of Joe's band of walking nuclear bombs.
He blinked and suddenly they were in a completely different place, it was still grand beyond measure and decorated with the distinctive work of Joe plastered all over the place, but it was in a clear military kind of way, as if the four building sized robots didn't give that away.
"These are the Titans!" The girl informed them cheerfully as if she hadn't just teleported. "Say hi to the chat Ion!"
Tats groaned painfully beside him as the giant and incredibly dangerous looking robot crouched down and shifted its building sized gun into one hand so it could wave at the camera.
"Greetings, designation: 'Chat'." The robot boomed out, its single blue eye flickering in time with its speech.
Proto Aima laughed at that, looking absolutely delighted. "These guys are on shield duty today, gotta make sure to keep everyone safe, while we're doing the fighting." She threw a little punch into the air that, despite her size, sent the air whistling.
"It will be our honour to serve." 'Ion' announced, standing back up and slapping its giant gun back into its apparent rest state.
The girl hummed. "Just make sure you guys stay safe out there as well alright?" She didn't wait for a response, instead just smoothly taking the stream with her to a completely new location, one that somehow made the chat even more hyper.
"Survey! You ready to go?" As ever, the woman was gorgeous, hell she was nearly beyond perfect; a living work of art that was almost certainly made by Apeiron. This time however she wasn't wearing a jumpsuit, but rather a thin set of what looked like white and gold power armour, the suit curving around her form flawlessly. In short, it looked amazing, and given that it was clearly Joe's work, it could probably do things that were downright impossible at this point.
She was waiting in a large empty hall, surveying -heh- a dormant gateway made from some kind of tech.
"I was here before you." The woman responded curtly, turning to look at the camera in such a way that left Alec with no doubt that it would be clipped a thousand times before the hour was up.
"Technically…" Their host trailed off with a teasing grin, bringing herself into the shot. Survey rolled her eyes… perfectly.
"You shouldn't have left things this long to explain, already we're seeing responses." Survey gave Proto Aima and thus the stream a disapproving look, which… was probably getting clipped as well.
Sadly his co-watcher didn't share his amusement and was instead trying to dig herself into the couch at Survey's warning.
"I wasn't going to let it go on too long or anything!" Proto Aima shot back, scowling. "I just wanted Apeiron to explain."
"Then why don't you go to him, the sooner the better; he's-"
"-Here." Joe's voice interrupted, a bit deeper and in a more grandiose register than when you'd talk to him out of costume, but still definitely Joe. The camera panned around and…
"Ah, he managed to become even hotter." Alec choked out a laugh at the indignant look on Lisa's face. "If he keeps this up he'll be able to beat people up with his looks alone."
The man had forsaken even his visor at this point, his ridiculously handsome face fully on display as he strode over in his signature outfit, with a curiously technical pair of gloves being the only true departure from the norm. Everything else was the same, just far, far better looking in ways that really shouldn't be possible.
Behind him, the four Titans from earlier had arrived, moving eerily quietly for such massive machines as they took their places on a series of curious platforms worked into the floor on the far side of the hall.
"Apeiron!" Their little streamer called out, skipping over to Joe.
His face softened at the call and he smiled gently at her, something she seemed to bask in. "You enjoying streaming?"
The girl hummed happily in response. "Yeah! Only point zero-four percent of the chat has said anything mean! That's really below average, so I guess I'm doing really good."
Alec jerked in shocked amusement at that, he didn't know how she knew that, but if it was true then that was a downright miracle for a twitch stream.
"Glad you're enjoying it." Joe grinned with more ease than Alec had ever seen from him, before he winked at Aima and the stream. "Just let me know if you want those mean people's legs broken alright?"
"Yeah!" The girl cheered as Alec imagined what hundreds of chatters suddenly freezing at their keyboards would look like, probably a lot like Lisa how looks right now.
"Apeiron." Survey cut in gently, looking at Joe. He nodded.
"The others are almost here." As Joe began, Fleet appeared in a blur, nodding as he touched down. "And a little warning won't save them."
Alec swallowed at that very clear threat as he leaned in to the broadcast, anticipation killing him and probably Tats as well. Yeah, she wasn't doing great.
Joe looked directly into the camera for the first time, the full weight of his appearance powers stealing the show with ease. "Twenty minutes ago, the Slaughter House Nine crossed over state lines into Maine; their target is obvious." And for the first time since the stream began, Alec suddenly didn't feel like laughing. Joe turned to his team. "They want a fight with us, let's show them what a ridiculous idea that is."
The heavy boom of Kataklyzein's spear slamming into the floor announced both his arrival and his approval for Joe's statement, as Matrix peeled up from the floor in a blur of metal behind him.
"Slaughter House Nine is diverting course." Survey announced, adding to the frantic beating of Alec's chest. The camera panned over to the gateway Survey was studying that had at some point come alive with a top down view of sleepy north east American country side.
"Titans, drop the net on them." Apeiron commanded without hesitation, striding over to stand beside Survey as the platforms the Titans were standing on disappeared and they dropped into something.
A second later four plumes of dirt exploded out of the farmland in the four corners of the view, as a blue haze rippled out of those points and quickly encircled the entire map in a massive formation that began swiftly filling in. It was a dome Alec realised, a massive shield meant to contain the Slaughter House Nine; that's what Proto Aima had been talking about earlier.
"Aima, get any civilian remaining out." The girl saluted, passing the camera off to a rather amused Kataklyzein, his relative normality at least allowing Alec to calm down somewhat as he meowed his greetings into the camera.
"Shatterbird is attempting to use her ability." Survey announced calmly before continuing. "Attempt failed, the shield is working as expected. All civilians evacuated."
Apeiron nodded in acknowledgement, surveying the field with a critical eye, while their new streamer panned the camera over to catch a new arrival; Garment, the wholesome big chungus clothes tinker who'd taken the internet by storm.
Lisa choked beside him at the reveal while Alec just kept staring at the stream.
Unsurprisingly Garment seemed a lot less wholesome as she walked into the command room of the Celestial Forge, kitted out in a dress that was clearly made by Apeiron's hand; its incredibly delicate lace glowing ominously with untold amounts of destructive potential.
Kataklyzein grinned out a greeting that she met with a curtsy.
"We're all here, let's go." Apeiron suddenly announced, as the view blinked and they suddenly found themselves in Proto Aima's hands once more, the girl not even looking winded from what was apparently long distance teleport on mass.
A blur that was apparently Kataklyzein charged past the camera and through the gateway, Fleet following in his footsteps after receiving a nod from Apeiron. The rest of the forge followed at a calmer pace, pushing through the rippling surface of the gateway to find themselves standing under the morning sun, between fields of wheat as they looked down upon the Slaughter House Nine.
The group had seen better days as they crawled out of the ruins of their truck that was quickly catching fire, Fleet and Kataklyzein posted behind them, the cat darkly smiling down upon them like… well, like a cat that caught the canary.
"Hello Jack." Apeiron greeted casually, striding artfully down the middle of the road the Slaughter House Nine had apparently been driving down, the rest of the Forge fanning out around him, their streamer included.
A boom echoed through the stream, ratcheting up Alec's tension before a white blur shot across the screen and slammed in Apeiron, fracturing the road and splitting the air. The Forge didn't react to this, calmly looking on as the dust cleared and the stream focused on the bewildered form of the Siberian, her claws failing to penetrate Joe's forearm.
"Survey." Apeiron called out, barely looking at the slayer of Hero.
A rapidly expanding gun pointed past the camera in a seemingly random direction before it fired, spitting out a furious beam that covered the stream in burning white light. By the time it cleared, it was already over, the Siberian chest was simply gone and dust poured off her form, in the blink of an eye she was ash.
The final boss of the Slaughter House Nine, gone just like that.
And there to witness it, standing with a look of absolute incomprehension, was Jack Slash. Alec couldn't lie, seeing that on stream, especially with the little zoom in Proto Aima was doing, it felt so damn good.
He laughed again.
Tetra's Streaming Career
Alec had always felt like he was the kind of guy that would laugh as the world ended around him, that he could find damn near anything funny as long as it was interesting enough. Recent events had put a damper on that side of him, made him care about things and worry about a future he wouldn't have given two shits about a month ago.
It was downright depressing if he was being perfectly honest.
Which is precisely why when he turned on this livestream, and his first impulse was to laugh his head off, he felt so damn relieved about it.
"What the hell are you… Oh- fuck." His maniacal laughter had attracted the know-it-all, and upon rolling his head over the back of the couch to side-eye her pale form, he laughed even harder. "Alec, this-this is bad, we need to-"
Alec shook his head, the last peels of laughter spilling out of him as he wiped the tears from his eyes with a grin. "Joe isn't responding, c'mon Tats, take a seat and watch the end of the world with me."
She didn't respond, but she did lifelessly plop down on the couch beside him, not even acknowledging his generous offer of popcorn.
"And this! Is where we have our super secret meetings!" A jubilant voice announced; Proto Aima, the glowing string, demon mink-thing from the summit had apparently been Joe-ified and turned into an overly excitable red haired teen. A teen who apparently had decided to try her hand at live streaming, and was in the process of showing an increasingly horrified, baffled and awed audience around the ridiculous fortress Joe had apparently built for himself.
The chat was flying off the screen so fast he couldn't even comprehend it, but Proto Aima seemed to be managing just fine.
"Yeah, these are the super snails!" She cheerfully responded to a random comment, bouncing over to a large aquarium that dominated one end of the massive, luxurious room. "Apeiron made them little hats." She zoomed in on one of the… well, he had no clue and Lisa was blinking furiously at them, but they definitely did have very nice hats.
He couldn't help it, he laughed again, this girl was an absolute riot.
Even if her streaming this insane shit did set off every organisation on the planet, it'd be worth it just so that future historians could tell their students that the apocalypse was set off by a teenager live streaming their house and pets.
"There's not really much else in here, we don't really have that many meetings to be honest, too stuffy." She announced, flouncing out of the room down what seemed to be a hidden passageway. "Apeiron put in all kinds of fun rooms nearby though, lemme show you the lava ice rink." She spun the camera around to wink at it before skipping her way down tunnel.
"Alec, this is…" Lisa trailed off and Alec resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
"I know right?" He smirked. "I can't believe Joe didn't invite us to his lava ice rink, how does the lava eve- Oh, like that."
"Getting a transparent material that would completely block out heat transfer and thus keep the lava hot enough to glow was the real issue." Proto Aima commented, pointing the camera at the glowing ceiling of lava. "Oh! These are Fleet's little zambonis, they're really cute!"
Sure enough, there was a small army of tiny, perfect zambonis moving in unison across the ice; how that related to Apeiron's speedster, Alec really didn't know, but it was funny. As a plus, one look at those things had Lisa settling down, wide eyes staring at the screen.
Then again, that probably wasn't a good thing.
"Ooooh." The girl on the other end of the stream suddenly froze, jerking the camera towards her and giving the stream a big smile. "Apparently we're getting started guys! Let me show you how the Celestial Forge prepares for combat!"
Before this point Alec had no idea such an energetic, cute announcement could inspire such rampant fear and panic, but only a sucker would bet against that statement having soiled the underwear of at least one analyst. This girl was definitely his favourite of Joe's band of walking nuclear bombs.
He blinked and suddenly they were in a completely different place, it was still grand beyond measure and decorated with the distinctive work of Joe plastered all over the place, but it was in a clear military kind of way, as if the four building sized robots didn't give that away.
"These are the Titans!" The girl informed them cheerfully as if she hadn't just teleported. "Say hi to the chat Ion!"
Tats groaned painfully beside him as the giant and incredibly dangerous looking robot crouched down and shifted its building sized gun into one hand so it could wave at the camera.
"Greetings, designation: 'Chat'." The robot boomed out, its single blue eye flickering in time with its speech.
Proto Aima laughed at that, looking absolutely delighted. "These guys are on shield duty today, gotta make sure to keep everyone safe, while we're doing the fighting." She threw a little punch into the air that, despite her size, sent the air whistling.
"It will be our honour to serve." 'Ion' announced, standing back up and slapping its giant gun back into its apparent rest state.
The girl hummed. "Just make sure you guys stay safe out there as well alright?" She didn't wait for a response, instead just smoothly taking the stream with her to a completely new location, one that somehow made the chat even more hyper.
"Survey! You ready to go?" As ever, the woman was gorgeous, hell she was nearly beyond perfect; a living work of art that was almost certainly made by Apeiron. This time however she wasn't wearing a jumpsuit, but rather a thin set of what looked like white and gold power armour, the suit curving around her form flawlessly. In short, it looked amazing, and given that it was clearly Joe's work, it could probably do things that were downright impossible at this point.
She was waiting in a large empty hall, surveying -heh- a dormant gateway made from some kind of tech.
"I was here before you." The woman responded curtly, turning to look at the camera in such a way that left Alec with no doubt that it would be clipped a thousand times before the hour was up.
"Technically…" Their host trailed off with a teasing grin, bringing herself into the shot. Survey rolled her eyes… perfectly.
"You shouldn't have left things this long to explain, already we're seeing responses." Survey gave Proto Aima and thus the stream a disapproving look, which… was probably getting clipped as well.
Sadly his co-watcher didn't share his amusement and was instead trying to dig herself into the couch at Survey's warning.
"I wasn't going to let it go on too long or anything!" Proto Aima shot back, scowling. "I just wanted Apeiron to explain."
"Then why don't you go to him, the sooner the better; he's-"
"-Here." Joe's voice interrupted, a bit deeper and in a more grandiose register than when you'd talk to him out of costume, but still definitely Joe. The camera panned around and…
"Ah, he managed to become even hotter." Alec choked out a laugh at the indignant look on Lisa's face. "If he keeps this up he'll be able to beat people up with his looks alone."
The man had forsaken even his visor at this point, his ridiculously handsome face fully on display as he strode over in his signature outfit, with a curiously technical pair of gloves being the only true departure from the norm. Everything else was the same, just far, far better looking in ways that really shouldn't be possible.
Behind him, the four Titans from earlier had arrived, moving eerily quietly for such massive machines as they took their places on a series of curious platforms worked into the floor on the far side of the hall.
"Apeiron!" Their little streamer called out, skipping over to Joe.
His face softened at the call and he smiled gently at her, something she seemed to bask in. "You enjoying streaming?"
The girl hummed happily in response. "Yeah! Only point zero-four percent of the chat has said anything mean! That's really below average, so I guess I'm doing really good."
Alec jerked in shocked amusement at that, he didn't know how she knew that, but if it was true then that was a downright miracle for a twitch stream.
"Glad you're enjoying it." Joe grinned with more ease than Alec had ever seen from him, before he winked at Aima and the stream. "Just let me know if you want those mean people's legs broken alright?"
"Yeah!" The girl cheered as Alec imagined what hundreds of chatters suddenly freezing at their keyboards would look like, probably a lot like Lisa how looks right now.
"Apeiron." Survey cut in gently, looking at Joe. He nodded.
"The others are almost here." As Joe began, Fleet appeared in a blur, nodding as he touched down. "And a little warning won't save them."
Alec swallowed at that very clear threat as he leaned in to the broadcast, anticipation killing him and probably Tats as well. Yeah, she wasn't doing great.
Joe looked directly into the camera for the first time, the full weight of his appearance powers stealing the show with ease. "Twenty minutes ago, the Slaughter House Nine crossed over state lines into Maine; their target is obvious." And for the first time since the stream began, Alec suddenly didn't feel like laughing. Joe turned to his team. "They want a fight with us, let's show them what a ridiculous idea that is."
The heavy boom of Kataklyzein's spear slamming into the floor announced both his arrival and his approval for Joe's statement, as Matrix peeled up from the floor in a blur of metal behind him.
"Slaughter House Nine is diverting course." Survey announced, adding to the frantic beating of Alec's chest. The camera panned over to the gateway Survey was studying that had at some point come alive with a top down view of sleepy north east American country side.
"Titans, drop the net on them." Apeiron commanded without hesitation, striding over to stand beside Survey as the platforms the Titans were standing on disappeared and they dropped into something.
A second later four plumes of dirt exploded out of the farmland in the four corners of the view, as a blue haze rippled out of those points and quickly encircled the entire map in a massive formation that began swiftly filling in. It was a dome Alec realised, a massive shield meant to contain the Slaughter House Nine; that's what Proto Aima had been talking about earlier.
"Aima, get any civilian remaining out." The girl saluted, passing the camera off to a rather amused Kataklyzein, his relative normality at least allowing Alec to calm down somewhat as he meowed his greetings into the camera.
"Shatterbird is attempting to use her ability." Survey announced calmly before continuing. "Attempt failed, the shield is working as expected. All civilians evacuated."
Apeiron nodded in acknowledgement, surveying the field with a critical eye, while their new streamer panned the camera over to catch a new arrival; Garment, the wholesome big chungus clothes tinker who'd taken the internet by storm.
Lisa choked beside him at the reveal while Alec just kept staring at the stream.
Unsurprisingly Garment seemed a lot less wholesome as she walked into the command room of the Celestial Forge, kitted out in a dress that was clearly made by Apeiron's hand; its incredibly delicate lace glowing ominously with untold amounts of destructive potential.
Kataklyzein grinned out a greeting that she met with a curtsy.
"We're all here, let's go." Apeiron suddenly announced, as the view blinked and they suddenly found themselves in Proto Aima's hands once more, the girl not even looking winded from what was apparently long distance teleport on mass.
A blur that was apparently Kataklyzein charged past the camera and through the gateway, Fleet following in his footsteps after receiving a nod from Apeiron. The rest of the forge followed at a calmer pace, pushing through the rippling surface of the gateway to find themselves standing under the morning sun, between fields of wheat as they looked down upon the Slaughter House Nine.
The group had seen better days as they crawled out of the ruins of their truck that was quickly catching fire, Fleet and Kataklyzein posted behind them, the cat darkly smiling down upon them like… well, like a cat that caught the canary.
"Hello Jack." Apeiron greeted casually, striding artfully down the middle of the road the Slaughter House Nine had apparently been driving down, the rest of the Forge fanning out around him, their streamer included.
A boom echoed through the stream, ratcheting up Alec's tension before a white blur shot across the screen and slammed in Apeiron, fracturing the road and splitting the air. The Forge didn't react to this, calmly looking on as the dust cleared and the stream focused on the bewildered form of the Siberian, her claws failing to penetrate Joe's forearm.
"Survey." Apeiron called out, barely looking at the slayer of Hero.
A rapidly expanding gun pointed past the camera in a seemingly random direction before it fired, spitting out a furious beam that covered the stream in burning white light. By the time it cleared, it was already over, the Siberian chest was simply gone and dust poured off her form, in the blink of an eye she was ash.
The final boss of the Slaughter House Nine, gone just like that.
And there to witness it, standing with a look of absolute incomprehension, was Jack Slash. Alec couldn't lie, seeing that on stream, especially with the little zoom in Proto Aima was doing, it felt so damn good.
He laughed again.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Awesome omake, I don't think it would go that way but it was hella fun to read. Proto Aima the livestreamer was super cute, there's a lot of potential in continuing that thread through the clean-up.
Cheers and yeah streamer Tetra isn't something Joe would probably go for, he was also quite a bit more commanding in this omake than he would be in story. I dunno what the clean up is
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I assumed he was playing to the camera as the reason for his slightly OOC action, maybe due to the public perception power he acquired relatively recently.
By clean-up, I meant the planned popping of Greyboy loops and healing of everybody who has been injured (the ones who are still alive) in a SH9 attack which I believe is the plan for immediately after the battle.
After re-reading the latest chapter and seeing the reaction of Crystal's friends, I'm really looking forward to civilian Joe meeting the rest of the family. I think it would be funny if we got a trope reversal where her mother is openly congratulating Crystal for her catch with a fist bump or something. Kind of like that scene in the first Transformers movie where Shia Labeouf's parents see Megan Fox for the first time.
Uppercrust Toiled (Subrosian_Smithy)
Subrosian_Smithy
endless
- Location
- Washington
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Hers
Uppercrust toiled.
Sometimes, when he had still been searching for his cure, he'd wondered what it would feel like to reach the other side; how his relief would last, and whether he would remember his weakness enough to be thankful for his strength.
The likes of Bonesaw and Sphere had fallen through, but the wet Tinkers of America were more than two monsters or three household names. The world was more than America, and once the walls between countries had been as thin as glass to his means, no more than a single step away for a man not yet totally withered on the vine.
Cask of Anchorage, the alchemist, physician treating thyself. Blasto in Boston, who wrung Bonsai from the tree of life. Pharmakon of Portland, a doctor who could kill disease but never treat the patient. Semicolon of the Bible Belt, who cast her birth flesh aside before anyone could stop her. Cranial of Toybox, who could preserve mind and memory but not power or will. L'oeil of Bordeaux, that bionics engineer crawling towards the elegance of life. Autocthon the itinerant mercenary, who carved a bloody line down South Africa. Lab Rat the vivisector, long consigned to the casket of the Birdcage. Jingoro the sculptor, who fled from Kyushu into the thicket of India's cold capes. Knave of Spades, transforming himself as Trump among the Suits.
It had taken Uppercrust only weeks to admit that this was a dead end, a place as far removed from his own specialty as he was from the world - the child behind the pane of glass, the man behind the cell of force, you can look, but you can never touch. It had taken him years longer to really give up, still passing all wet Tinker news across his desk like an apotropaic, just to check and be sure that none of it would ever resonate with his power or be worth gambling on. To know with certainty that he had tested every opportunity at hand, and when he lost, it would be without error or regret.
The final calculus of survival never really left his mind, not before this final effortless cure. How much will I have to give up, if I want to live? If I want to so much as linger in the world?
And that door had always been open to him, if he was willing to give up even more than he'd offered Apeiron. Forsaking control, or autonomy, or power, or life, to preserve the faintest shadow of what he was already going to lose. He'd almost gone through with it, taking Cranial and Cosmist on retainer to see if an acceptable compromise could be reached between his agency and his quality of life; but Cosmist had just laughed when he heard what Uppercrust was running from.
It never gets any better, you know, the Russian Tinker had said, gesticulating through a thick mouthful of analog tape. Do you think you're suffocating now, because you're dying and weak? Becauses I can keep you alive, but I can't give you liberation. You will always despise your limits: our bodies will always be cages, no matter how vast our confines.
Uppercrust could have worked with him without regard for the disrespect and discomfort he felt in that moment, because he was a professional, and he knew the other man was a professional, too; he could have sympathized with Cosmist, because he understood that there were things Cosmist was running from in his own right, the broken glass and shatterpoints which defined every cape's flight from mundanity. But he'd understood at once the pointlessness of it all, the real meaning of the joke that there was no such thing as a 'healing' power, and left the collaboration at once for less bitter pastures.
It wasn't that there were no healing capes, or that all healing powers were secondary applications of a wider powerset, or even that there were no healing powers without side effects. It was that even the parahuman powers which could heal existed for a purpose that had nothing to do with setting things in order or mending the broken. Uppercrust never stopped looking for a treatment or a cure, but he'd never forgotten the black humor in the other man's voice, the knowing insinuation that even if he found health, it couldn't make him happy. It was easy to castigate a woman like Emily Piggot who chose to wallow in her illness; it was hard to disagree with a man who had crawled from the very same sort of pit he hoped to escape.
And now-
Now Uppercrust was pretty sure that Cosmist was just a little bitch.
His workshop sprawled out around him like a hardware depot, Thurin-Ist the beating heart of a growing industrial complex, and he moved from machine to machine with a drive that shocked him even now. He was nothing more or less than human - fallible and weak, an ape stretched out upon the rack, defaced by the indignities of flesh.
It felt like grace, unquestionable and undeserved. The right to move through the world like he was finally alive again, every breath as easy as the last.
In one corner of the workshop he watched a small army of well-paid contractors manufacture his new Tinker rifles, repurposing the hardlight projectors of his shields as photonic cannons. His previous tries at the concept had been sent soundly to the recycling bin: the most he'd ever managed was a kind of long-range hardlight jackhammer which painstakingly jerked a large bullet-sized shield back and forth, and he could never get kinetic uncoupling to work on any installation smaller than a minivan, so the jackhammers would recoil like minivans, too. It had never been worth it, not when he could just ring up one of his contacts and have a gattling gun or a crate of machine guns sent up from downstate.
For the new model he was working smarter, not harder. By studying the destabilization of his shields under controlled conditions, he'd finally completely modeled both their internal geometry and the pattern of their dispersal into unbound photons: his new rifles worked by projecting small, carefully-shaped 'shield bubbles' under immense internal stress, then applying a matrix of shear forces that caused them to explode. The shields were, in a sense, both the projectile and the propellant, a blast of hardlight grit which had taken significant coaxing to cohere as laser rounds and not as cones of shotgun spray. By occasionally rotating between two chambers, the rifles could vent coolant over one overtaxed projector in the time it took the other projector to overheat.
-if he was being completely honest with himself, this assembly line probably still wasn't worth it. There were few enemies he'd ever have to lower himself to fight at this juncture, and few enemies who couldn't be taken down with conventional munitions, not to mention that most Brutes and other high-survivability capes could usually be more effectively taken down with surgical precision or heavy bombardment than massed infantry fire.
But once he'd started testing his new limits, he hadn't been able to stop. Isolating the most exotic components and assembling them by hand for others to install, sinking into inspiration until the secrets of the universe were practically screaming to be heard, rushing to churn out the first thing he thought of and straddling the impossible knife's edge of mass-production. It would have predictable if that was the hidden cost to his devil's bargain, if he'd been high out of his mind in a Mad Science fugure, but the reality was much more embarassing: deep down, buried after years of building 'boring' energy shields, there was still a part of him that just thought ray guns were really cool.
His subordinates seemed to agree, at least, eagerly leaping into 'laboratory testing' with the verve of men and women betting on who would be the best crack shot. Even now they were probably neglecting several gun safety rules in the backyard in order to play laser tag with phasers on the lowest setting.
In another corner of the workshop, he was supervising the assembly of something much more irreplaceable than light rifles. If his old personal-scale shield systems outstripped the best body armor on the planet, the new models were fully turning a corner into the world of Tinker power armor.
As always, articulation was the bane of every mechanical assyst system, and so for the most part he'd neglected it: a series of emitters along a wireframe insert in his costume could produce an array of phased shields around each limb and joint, as if he were standing in a suit of invisible full-plate. By toggling the interference between each sheld emitter, he could allow them to selectively lock together instead of phasing through one another. That was the secret of his standing support system, a complicated trick he pushed to its limits just to let him stand upright for more than a few minutes at a time.
Now he didn't need the support, and he could push further than ever before. He'd gone back to the drawing board, taking inspiration from the Dallon girl, and now each personal shield emitter was paired with an undersuit that continuously measured the exact shape of the person who wore it. A fail-safe computer processor in each each emitter transformed that information into a control template for the projection of a single continuous force field held suspended a milimeter from the skin, carefully following the wearer's movements. As long as you didn't overstress the integrity of the shield, it was superstrength and heightened durability in a single package.
Then he went back to the drawing board again. His best design was still never going to be manufactured in numbers without a lot more help from the Matrix than he was currently comfortable asking for, but he'd managed it for himself. The shield system in his costume projected a complex and well-managed stack of countless increasingly-dense layers at a time, creating redundancy for if one of them was ever broken.
Then he carefully integrated the explosive destabilization principles from his rifle designs. If one of the shields was ever hit hard enough to break, its internal stress would be released along an equal and opposite vector, essentially transforming into a perfectly-angled explosive charge and counterbalancing any changes in momentum. A high-level Brute could punch him, and as long as it was within tolerance for his buffered shield system, he'd just stand in place.
Still, he thought. It might be a good idea to extend lab testing before I wear a suit made of high-energy explosives in the field.
By now he'd almost stopped supervising the production of his tech, trusting his assistants to manage what he'd shown them - he wasn't the type of person to look down on unskilled laborers, disrespect what non-Tinkers were capable of, or hire potential traitors. Only uncertainty stayed his hand, and in the light of Thurin-Ist, there was little uncertainty to be had about the limits of his devices. Only perfunctory checks to make sure everything was within stable boundaries, taking regular circuits around the room.
In the last corner of the workshop, he sagged back into his chair, less as an act of exhaustion than of gluttonous indolence. After the latest hasty round of expansions, it was where he ended up doing his personal Tinkering, now carefully hidden behind several one-way optical screens. The latest version of his costume was lying across a table to his right with the batteries carefully removed, waiting for him to run more checks on it; Thurin-Ist's filing cabinets and papers were off to his left, interleaved with sketches from his final, most cutting-edge project.
Pun not intended. A corkboard was taken up almost entirely by measurements of Apeiron's Final Slashes, all HD photographs and optical analyses, and Uppercrust had gone over them with a fine-toothed comb. The stable confinement of colossal power to an interactive two-dimensional plane.
It was yet another holy grail the boundless Tinker had casually left behind, and one with the potential to advance Uppercrust's science by leaps and bounds. It didn't matter if the secondary spatial shear could only be formed at high velocities, if it was a current of moving space-time, because he'd already more or less confirmed from study that the effect was stable under relative motion and angular rotation. A dual-vector current could be adjusted to the Earth's movement or contained in a cyclical pathway, creating a two-dimensional panel of high-energy warped space that was impenetrable to anything but the strongest Annihilator capes.
But he hadn't gone through with trying it.
It wasn't fear of the physical risks that stayed his hand. Already he was working with incredibly dangerous technology, unleashing the full mechanical force implied by systems that could hold back hurricanes and tidal waves. It wasn't resource limitations or anything of the sort, not now that he was working faster and with better support than he'd ever had in his life. It wasn't even fear of getting caught cribbing notes from his new benefactor; by all accounts, Apeiron didn't mind people following in his wake, as long as they weren't doing evil.
It was the fact that even if Uppercrust knew how to recreate a version of the effect for himself, he still had no idea how Apeiron had done it. And that was normal for dealing with other Tinkers, but seeing it from Apeiron still put him in a mood that was hard to describe.
Everyone who seriously thought about it for more than a few minutes at a time knew that Tinkers were breaking the rules. Maybe the physics was real, but the science and engineering was not: if you could turn a toaster into a nuclear reactor with the supplies you found in your garage when no-one else could, that wasn't science, it was just magic. Everyone knew it, but no-one said anything, because how could they prove it? In a world where a man could shoot fire from his hands, how could you prove that someone else's flamethrower was an anomaly just because it had unnatural fuel efficiency? Weren't the laws of physics tumbling down around all their ears?
And Uppercrust had known that it was proven from the moment he saw Thurin-Ist, even before it had the chance to dissect his schematics, because he understood what all of Apeiron's talk about 'quality boosters' really implied.
Tinkers often had the ability to create high-performance equipment from low-performance components and materials. That meant, by definition, that a Tinker's power could take invisible steps to maximize the performance and utility of everything it touched, arranging matter and energy with a mastery of composition and balancing of forces that put all human hands to shame.
But what if you were a Tinker who specialized in powers, and you could toy with parahuman powers as easily as if they were machines? What would happen if you took that 'performance maximization' and isolated it? What if you distilled all that physical optimization, and overclocked it, and funneled it into something a lot more rustic than a laser pointer or a computer chip?
Uppercrust wouldn't have said it out loud, but he had a feeling the result would look a lot like Thurin-Ist.
A mastery of composition and balancing of forces that puts all human hands to shame... except Apeiron.
Uppercrust's illness ended up taking a higher toll on his peripheral than his central nervous system, disrupting the very feedback loops that told his body how to keep itself alive, but there was a time when he'd had to prepare himself for the possibility of cognitive decline, and he still remembered what he'd learned. The mechanisms that kept a human brain in touch with reality were terrifyingly fragile, and the results spoke for themselves - even without Stranger powers, it was possible for a human being to be so cognitively impaired that they didn't even know they were cognitively impaired.
In this downtime, the closest he came to Cosmist's melancholia was this: he didn't know how he thought the universe worked anymore, and he didn't know how much of what his Tinker power told him about science was really true.
He turned the pages of Thurin-Ist for a long time, flipping between schematics as if to confirm he was still in good standing with the laws of physics, to see if it would vouch for his understanding, waiting for the vertigo of his shifting universe to subside. Finally, he stood again, slipping through the curtain surrounding his cubicle and setting for the nearest balcony. Night had fallen without him noticing until he checked a clock, and the moon was just rising.
He stared into the silvery-black disk, then, wishing any offering would be enough for the friend he'd finally buried. But all the old pain... it didn't ache any more, and his confusion just didn't seem to matter as he looked at the stars.
Whatever the truth of this universe is, however strange and confusing it may seem here on Earth... it can't hide from us forever. Because there are worlds these powers can't reach, or which they have yet to breach, and places we haven't bent.
And whatever our powers think they're hiding from us... they can't keep us from the truth forever. Because there's a way behind the curtain, and doors to the backstage, and someone who will fling a light into that darkness for the rest of us to see by.
And even if we're just misled fools who don't know what we're really doing... if we've ever made a difference with these powers, then I think that's enough.
The door opened behind him. Someone began to speak.
"Sir-" Ferrona said. Saw what he was doing, then seemed to think better of it. "Ah, I'll give you that status update later."
"No, it's alright." Uppercrust smiled. "I've already said my goodbyes."
Sometimes, when he had still been searching for his cure, he'd wondered what it would feel like to reach the other side; how his relief would last, and whether he would remember his weakness enough to be thankful for his strength.
The likes of Bonesaw and Sphere had fallen through, but the wet Tinkers of America were more than two monsters or three household names. The world was more than America, and once the walls between countries had been as thin as glass to his means, no more than a single step away for a man not yet totally withered on the vine.
Cask of Anchorage, the alchemist, physician treating thyself. Blasto in Boston, who wrung Bonsai from the tree of life. Pharmakon of Portland, a doctor who could kill disease but never treat the patient. Semicolon of the Bible Belt, who cast her birth flesh aside before anyone could stop her. Cranial of Toybox, who could preserve mind and memory but not power or will. L'oeil of Bordeaux, that bionics engineer crawling towards the elegance of life. Autocthon the itinerant mercenary, who carved a bloody line down South Africa. Lab Rat the vivisector, long consigned to the casket of the Birdcage. Jingoro the sculptor, who fled from Kyushu into the thicket of India's cold capes. Knave of Spades, transforming himself as Trump among the Suits.
It had taken Uppercrust only weeks to admit that this was a dead end, a place as far removed from his own specialty as he was from the world - the child behind the pane of glass, the man behind the cell of force, you can look, but you can never touch. It had taken him years longer to really give up, still passing all wet Tinker news across his desk like an apotropaic, just to check and be sure that none of it would ever resonate with his power or be worth gambling on. To know with certainty that he had tested every opportunity at hand, and when he lost, it would be without error or regret.
The final calculus of survival never really left his mind, not before this final effortless cure. How much will I have to give up, if I want to live? If I want to so much as linger in the world?
And that door had always been open to him, if he was willing to give up even more than he'd offered Apeiron. Forsaking control, or autonomy, or power, or life, to preserve the faintest shadow of what he was already going to lose. He'd almost gone through with it, taking Cranial and Cosmist on retainer to see if an acceptable compromise could be reached between his agency and his quality of life; but Cosmist had just laughed when he heard what Uppercrust was running from.
It never gets any better, you know, the Russian Tinker had said, gesticulating through a thick mouthful of analog tape. Do you think you're suffocating now, because you're dying and weak? Becauses I can keep you alive, but I can't give you liberation. You will always despise your limits: our bodies will always be cages, no matter how vast our confines.
Uppercrust could have worked with him without regard for the disrespect and discomfort he felt in that moment, because he was a professional, and he knew the other man was a professional, too; he could have sympathized with Cosmist, because he understood that there were things Cosmist was running from in his own right, the broken glass and shatterpoints which defined every cape's flight from mundanity. But he'd understood at once the pointlessness of it all, the real meaning of the joke that there was no such thing as a 'healing' power, and left the collaboration at once for less bitter pastures.
It wasn't that there were no healing capes, or that all healing powers were secondary applications of a wider powerset, or even that there were no healing powers without side effects. It was that even the parahuman powers which could heal existed for a purpose that had nothing to do with setting things in order or mending the broken. Uppercrust never stopped looking for a treatment or a cure, but he'd never forgotten the black humor in the other man's voice, the knowing insinuation that even if he found health, it couldn't make him happy. It was easy to castigate a woman like Emily Piggot who chose to wallow in her illness; it was hard to disagree with a man who had crawled from the very same sort of pit he hoped to escape.
And now-
Now Uppercrust was pretty sure that Cosmist was just a little bitch.
His workshop sprawled out around him like a hardware depot, Thurin-Ist the beating heart of a growing industrial complex, and he moved from machine to machine with a drive that shocked him even now. He was nothing more or less than human - fallible and weak, an ape stretched out upon the rack, defaced by the indignities of flesh.
It felt like grace, unquestionable and undeserved. The right to move through the world like he was finally alive again, every breath as easy as the last.
In one corner of the workshop he watched a small army of well-paid contractors manufacture his new Tinker rifles, repurposing the hardlight projectors of his shields as photonic cannons. His previous tries at the concept had been sent soundly to the recycling bin: the most he'd ever managed was a kind of long-range hardlight jackhammer which painstakingly jerked a large bullet-sized shield back and forth, and he could never get kinetic uncoupling to work on any installation smaller than a minivan, so the jackhammers would recoil like minivans, too. It had never been worth it, not when he could just ring up one of his contacts and have a gattling gun or a crate of machine guns sent up from downstate.
For the new model he was working smarter, not harder. By studying the destabilization of his shields under controlled conditions, he'd finally completely modeled both their internal geometry and the pattern of their dispersal into unbound photons: his new rifles worked by projecting small, carefully-shaped 'shield bubbles' under immense internal stress, then applying a matrix of shear forces that caused them to explode. The shields were, in a sense, both the projectile and the propellant, a blast of hardlight grit which had taken significant coaxing to cohere as laser rounds and not as cones of shotgun spray. By occasionally rotating between two chambers, the rifles could vent coolant over one overtaxed projector in the time it took the other projector to overheat.
-if he was being completely honest with himself, this assembly line probably still wasn't worth it. There were few enemies he'd ever have to lower himself to fight at this juncture, and few enemies who couldn't be taken down with conventional munitions, not to mention that most Brutes and other high-survivability capes could usually be more effectively taken down with surgical precision or heavy bombardment than massed infantry fire.
But once he'd started testing his new limits, he hadn't been able to stop. Isolating the most exotic components and assembling them by hand for others to install, sinking into inspiration until the secrets of the universe were practically screaming to be heard, rushing to churn out the first thing he thought of and straddling the impossible knife's edge of mass-production. It would have predictable if that was the hidden cost to his devil's bargain, if he'd been high out of his mind in a Mad Science fugure, but the reality was much more embarassing: deep down, buried after years of building 'boring' energy shields, there was still a part of him that just thought ray guns were really cool.
His subordinates seemed to agree, at least, eagerly leaping into 'laboratory testing' with the verve of men and women betting on who would be the best crack shot. Even now they were probably neglecting several gun safety rules in the backyard in order to play laser tag with phasers on the lowest setting.
In another corner of the workshop, he was supervising the assembly of something much more irreplaceable than light rifles. If his old personal-scale shield systems outstripped the best body armor on the planet, the new models were fully turning a corner into the world of Tinker power armor.
As always, articulation was the bane of every mechanical assyst system, and so for the most part he'd neglected it: a series of emitters along a wireframe insert in his costume could produce an array of phased shields around each limb and joint, as if he were standing in a suit of invisible full-plate. By toggling the interference between each sheld emitter, he could allow them to selectively lock together instead of phasing through one another. That was the secret of his standing support system, a complicated trick he pushed to its limits just to let him stand upright for more than a few minutes at a time.
Now he didn't need the support, and he could push further than ever before. He'd gone back to the drawing board, taking inspiration from the Dallon girl, and now each personal shield emitter was paired with an undersuit that continuously measured the exact shape of the person who wore it. A fail-safe computer processor in each each emitter transformed that information into a control template for the projection of a single continuous force field held suspended a milimeter from the skin, carefully following the wearer's movements. As long as you didn't overstress the integrity of the shield, it was superstrength and heightened durability in a single package.
Then he went back to the drawing board again. His best design was still never going to be manufactured in numbers without a lot more help from the Matrix than he was currently comfortable asking for, but he'd managed it for himself. The shield system in his costume projected a complex and well-managed stack of countless increasingly-dense layers at a time, creating redundancy for if one of them was ever broken.
Then he carefully integrated the explosive destabilization principles from his rifle designs. If one of the shields was ever hit hard enough to break, its internal stress would be released along an equal and opposite vector, essentially transforming into a perfectly-angled explosive charge and counterbalancing any changes in momentum. A high-level Brute could punch him, and as long as it was within tolerance for his buffered shield system, he'd just stand in place.
Still, he thought. It might be a good idea to extend lab testing before I wear a suit made of high-energy explosives in the field.
By now he'd almost stopped supervising the production of his tech, trusting his assistants to manage what he'd shown them - he wasn't the type of person to look down on unskilled laborers, disrespect what non-Tinkers were capable of, or hire potential traitors. Only uncertainty stayed his hand, and in the light of Thurin-Ist, there was little uncertainty to be had about the limits of his devices. Only perfunctory checks to make sure everything was within stable boundaries, taking regular circuits around the room.
In the last corner of the workshop, he sagged back into his chair, less as an act of exhaustion than of gluttonous indolence. After the latest hasty round of expansions, it was where he ended up doing his personal Tinkering, now carefully hidden behind several one-way optical screens. The latest version of his costume was lying across a table to his right with the batteries carefully removed, waiting for him to run more checks on it; Thurin-Ist's filing cabinets and papers were off to his left, interleaved with sketches from his final, most cutting-edge project.
Pun not intended. A corkboard was taken up almost entirely by measurements of Apeiron's Final Slashes, all HD photographs and optical analyses, and Uppercrust had gone over them with a fine-toothed comb. The stable confinement of colossal power to an interactive two-dimensional plane.
It was yet another holy grail the boundless Tinker had casually left behind, and one with the potential to advance Uppercrust's science by leaps and bounds. It didn't matter if the secondary spatial shear could only be formed at high velocities, if it was a current of moving space-time, because he'd already more or less confirmed from study that the effect was stable under relative motion and angular rotation. A dual-vector current could be adjusted to the Earth's movement or contained in a cyclical pathway, creating a two-dimensional panel of high-energy warped space that was impenetrable to anything but the strongest Annihilator capes.
But he hadn't gone through with trying it.
It wasn't fear of the physical risks that stayed his hand. Already he was working with incredibly dangerous technology, unleashing the full mechanical force implied by systems that could hold back hurricanes and tidal waves. It wasn't resource limitations or anything of the sort, not now that he was working faster and with better support than he'd ever had in his life. It wasn't even fear of getting caught cribbing notes from his new benefactor; by all accounts, Apeiron didn't mind people following in his wake, as long as they weren't doing evil.
It was the fact that even if Uppercrust knew how to recreate a version of the effect for himself, he still had no idea how Apeiron had done it. And that was normal for dealing with other Tinkers, but seeing it from Apeiron still put him in a mood that was hard to describe.
Everyone who seriously thought about it for more than a few minutes at a time knew that Tinkers were breaking the rules. Maybe the physics was real, but the science and engineering was not: if you could turn a toaster into a nuclear reactor with the supplies you found in your garage when no-one else could, that wasn't science, it was just magic. Everyone knew it, but no-one said anything, because how could they prove it? In a world where a man could shoot fire from his hands, how could you prove that someone else's flamethrower was an anomaly just because it had unnatural fuel efficiency? Weren't the laws of physics tumbling down around all their ears?
And Uppercrust had known that it was proven from the moment he saw Thurin-Ist, even before it had the chance to dissect his schematics, because he understood what all of Apeiron's talk about 'quality boosters' really implied.
Tinkers often had the ability to create high-performance equipment from low-performance components and materials. That meant, by definition, that a Tinker's power could take invisible steps to maximize the performance and utility of everything it touched, arranging matter and energy with a mastery of composition and balancing of forces that put all human hands to shame.
But what if you were a Tinker who specialized in powers, and you could toy with parahuman powers as easily as if they were machines? What would happen if you took that 'performance maximization' and isolated it? What if you distilled all that physical optimization, and overclocked it, and funneled it into something a lot more rustic than a laser pointer or a computer chip?
Uppercrust wouldn't have said it out loud, but he had a feeling the result would look a lot like Thurin-Ist.
A mastery of composition and balancing of forces that puts all human hands to shame... except Apeiron.
Uppercrust's illness ended up taking a higher toll on his peripheral than his central nervous system, disrupting the very feedback loops that told his body how to keep itself alive, but there was a time when he'd had to prepare himself for the possibility of cognitive decline, and he still remembered what he'd learned. The mechanisms that kept a human brain in touch with reality were terrifyingly fragile, and the results spoke for themselves - even without Stranger powers, it was possible for a human being to be so cognitively impaired that they didn't even know they were cognitively impaired.
In this downtime, the closest he came to Cosmist's melancholia was this: he didn't know how he thought the universe worked anymore, and he didn't know how much of what his Tinker power told him about science was really true.
He turned the pages of Thurin-Ist for a long time, flipping between schematics as if to confirm he was still in good standing with the laws of physics, to see if it would vouch for his understanding, waiting for the vertigo of his shifting universe to subside. Finally, he stood again, slipping through the curtain surrounding his cubicle and setting for the nearest balcony. Night had fallen without him noticing until he checked a clock, and the moon was just rising.
He stared into the silvery-black disk, then, wishing any offering would be enough for the friend he'd finally buried. But all the old pain... it didn't ache any more, and his confusion just didn't seem to matter as he looked at the stars.
Whatever the truth of this universe is, however strange and confusing it may seem here on Earth... it can't hide from us forever. Because there are worlds these powers can't reach, or which they have yet to breach, and places we haven't bent.
And whatever our powers think they're hiding from us... they can't keep us from the truth forever. Because there's a way behind the curtain, and doors to the backstage, and someone who will fling a light into that darkness for the rest of us to see by.
And even if we're just misled fools who don't know what we're really doing... if we've ever made a difference with these powers, then I think that's enough.
The door opened behind him. Someone began to speak.
"Sir-" Ferrona said. Saw what he was doing, then seemed to think better of it. "Ah, I'll give you that status update later."
"No, it's alright." Uppercrust smiled. "I've already said my goodbyes."
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AntaeusTheGiant
Child of Gaea
- Location
- Lawrence, KS
OMG that was wonderful!
CnidarianMessiah
Totally not a flying polyp <whistles innocently>
- Location
- Cooling Water Intake
Will we get to see the same events from the point of view of the peanut gallery in the workshop?
And did they eat popcorn while watching?
"Popcorn made by the same type of corn that's used to make Lembas, dipped in butter hand-made from milk from the Cow that Jumped Over The Moon!"
"Lembas isn't made from Corn!"
"It is now!"
I'm not sure Joe would command his team like that even for the camera; he veers away from that kind of thing in examples like the summit meeting; which, granted he didn't have that power then, but I think this more comes down to Joe's core values as a character. I just went for the more commanding aspects because it made the dialogue easier and I just wanted to put a bow on it before bed.
Ah, I assumed you were talking about some kind of writing clean up for adding it to the omake threadmark thing. Nah, I probably won't write a part two.
The original context for the streamer bit btw was I was thinking about how Roustabout will convey the fight in the fic itself, which reminded me of some comment I half remember from Jack Slash in bcf where I think he implied that he wanted to livestream his attack. That then led into the realisation that if Joe wants to discredit Jack as a symbol then showing the world his defeat would be the best way to do so, and if Joe finds out about Jack's plans then it seems like a natural evolution.
- Location
- The Temple of the Winds
Joe is protected, but Crystal isn't...