108 Raised Colors
I decided to drive back from the college rather than just teleporting away or ducking straight into the Workshop. The main reason was maintaining the impression of normal activity, with regular movements through the city in case anyone got suspicious. The chance of being flagged by some kind of thinker power or monitoring program was incredibly remote, but it wasn't just parahumans that I needed to keep in mind.
It turns out that being part of a community meant people noticed your presence. Usually not in an overly intrusive way, but there was a kind of background awareness that I needed to account for. Getting from one side of the city to the other without using my car or public transportation would be worth at least a passing inquiry.
Plus, it was nice to be able to drive. That might sound strange considering I had advanced jet fighters, tinker tech motorcycles, and various giant robots at my disposal, but I had never actually owned my own car before. All that other stuff was fantastic, but it was also largely confined to my workshop. Being able to navigate the city on my own, even in a vehicle as out of date as my Pinto, was still a novel experience.
"Hi!"
Almost as novel as having Tetra suddenly appear in the passenger seat of the car. Well, not suddenly appear. It wasn't really teleportation because she never really left anything she connected to. It was more about how those connections were expressed to other people.
"Hi Tetra." I said as I rounded a corner. I was well past the point where sudden surprises could throw off my driving, and I'm pretty sure that she knew that.
Tetra was back in her civilian form, with her hair now a conventional red and sporting a clear resemblance to Delphine Mertens, though she wasn't using the accent that she defaulted to in that identity. She was dressed more casually than the previous day in jeans and a patterned blouse. The outfit was actually an expression of her own body, being shaped out of carefully controlled Life Fibers, but showed clear signs that Garment had a hand in the design.
"I suppose you already know about how the 'date' went?" I asked.
There really wasn't any way to get around that. The same effect that tied Tetra to everything she had connected to ensured that she was effectively present at all times. For someone who was so concerned about maintaining connections it was an important ability, but it did mean having time separate from her was effectively impossible. Of course, for an alien lifeform whose entire existence was built around interfacing with other creatures, the situation didn't have the same implications it would for someone with a human mindset.
"That doesn't bother you?" She asked.
"It has some implications if you look at it through a human context." I said honestly. "I understand your situation is different. That it's not about surveillance or invasion of privacy."
Those were still side effects, but kind of unavoidable ones considering what Tetra had become. And considering what the 'conventional' life cycle of a Life Fiber entity looked like, this approach was comparatively unintrusive.
"Survey would like to be able to monitor people the way I do, even if it's not really 'monitoring'." I nodded to Tetra. "But I don't think it would work the same way for her as it does for me."
"It won't. That's something unique to you." The result of taking characteristics inherent to Life Fibers and extending them through divine craftsmanship to something beyond what was possible. Even if something similar could be done for Survey, it wouldn't express itself in the same way.
"A full set of upgrades from the Glove of the East should expand her abilities, but not in the same way as yours." I continued.
And besides, we were going to wait until after the Nine had been dealt with before we put either Fleet or Survey through that kind of effect. It had been a much more significant change for the Matrix than we could have anticipated. With both Fleet and Survey working to maintain the containment of the Nine now was not the time to mess around with that kind of effect.
Tetra nodded and settled back into her seat. "I know, but I think she's hoping for something like it."
"There will probably be something." I agreed. I had never expected the Matrix to be capable of their own version of Elven Enchanting. There was really no telling what could happen with Fleet or Survey, particularly now that my Good Blood power would able to accelerate the upgrade cycle of the Glove of the East even further. "Is that what you're here to talk about?" I asked.
"Kind of, but mostly I thought it would be nice since you'd be stuck in traffic." She said, highlighting a report from Fleet on the flow of vehicles through the city, with particular emphasis on a large stretch of road work that was holding things up on my route back to the Docks.
Unplanned roadwork, I noted, which I'm sure would be a treat for everyone it was affecting. As I pulled away from the college I could see the backup beginning blocks away from the work site. Unfortunately, it wasn't something that could be bypassed without taking a seriously convoluted route that would circle through the outskirts of the city, and estimates put that at a longer travel time. It was easier to just deal with the logistics of the commute as cars slowly dripped through the limited lane access.
Not that I particularly minded a bit of a delay, especially in the wake of that not-date. A not-date that had led to an actual date, to the surprise of absolutely no one. I had been able to practically feel the smug from Aisha in every transmission she had sent from the Workshop, and the rest of the team wasn't far behind her. Even Tetra had a certain air to her as she sat in the passenger seat of my car.
The drive home might have been delayed by recovery work, but it would give me a bit of time to process and digest things. Additionally, the longer I stayed out of the workshop the longer they could operate with the benefit of Temporal Controls. Time was moving ten times faster inside the Workshop whenever I wasn't there, which seriously accelerated our active projects.
"You aren't going to miss out on anything by being here?" I asked Tetra.
I hadn't kept completely abreast of what was being worked on, but there were certain aspects of the Workshop that I had an inherent awareness of. Thanks to the combination of Hallowed Earth and Central Control I was constantly aware of the contents of my Workshop, including everything my duplicates built both officially and in their spare time. While that might have ruined some of the fun they derived from hiding ridiculous projects in remote areas of the Workshop, it did mean I had a continuous understanding of what they were working on when it came to official projects.
They had been busy. I already worked at a staggering rate thanks to my Time powers, but they were pushing the limits of what my crafting powers could accomplish both technically and in respect to the more abstract elements. I could tell a lot of effort was being put into the challenge presented by Jack's passenger and from the nature of what was being made it seemed everyone was involved in that project.
"I'm fine." Tetra assured me. "I've gotten a lot better at handling the different rates of time in the places I'm connected to."
"And you're okay out here?" I asked, looking around as the traffic caused us to slow to a halt. It wasn't exactly suspicious to be giving someone like Tetra a lift, but her human identity had attracted a lot of attention from her role in the charity show. There was a decent chance someone would recognize her.
"That's no problem." She explained. "Aisha wanted to try out some new uses of her power. She had to use a Call Bead, but she thinks this will stop people from noticing me without forgetting me altogether." She looked around at the other cars and pedestrians on the street. She waved aggressively at a woman who was walking by, but they looked right past her without any hint of recognition. "It's working, but it's kind of weird. The connections are different if you're the only one making them."
That was a fairly advanced application for Aisha. It was technically less impressive than her base ability, taking global mind alteration and turning it into a local invisibility effect, but the all-or-nothing nature of Aisha's power had been a source of frustration for her. She had gotten better at controlling it, but more precise applications hadn't begun to emerge until she started working with Call Beads.
I focused my expanded senses on Tetra and could feel the effect of Aisha's power. There was certainly going to be a full write up on this available from Survey and I looked forward to reading it later. From my own observations it was definitely a temporary effect, with the power slowly fading as time went on, but the fact that Aisha could apply it to other people without being physically present was a serious accomplishment.
Of course, the degree to which Tetra wasn't physically present at any location was debatable, but the effect wasn't relying on Tetra's connection to Aisha to maintain itself. Aisha had managed to develop a significant tactical ability, as well as a use of her power that wouldn't set off panic alerts across the globe.
And it was being used to let Tetra visit me while I was stuck in traffic without raising any concerns. There was something endearing about the scale of the abilities that came out of my team and the utterly trivial applications they tended to be directed towards.
"I guess Aisha's taking the situation with Jack seriously." I said.
Tetra nodded solemnly. "Very seriously. She's spent most of the time in the Spiritron Core getting caught up."
"Caught up?" I asked.
"Going over everything we've done already. And reviewing Survey's research on the Nine." Tetra explained.
"Shit." I said without meaning to.
Survey's research was a breakdown of every incident tied to every member of that group both before and after they officially joined. It was the most comprehensive repository of information on the team available anywhere on the planet. And there was a very good reason why people avoided anything to do with the Slaughterhouse Nine. Just the rumors and hearsay about what they did was disturbing enough. The collection of crime scene reports, medical documentation, and testimonials was that Survey had put together was positively haunting.
I had forced myself to go through everything. It wasn't pleasant, but it was important to understand what I was dealing with. That wasn't the kind of thing I would want anyone else to see, particularly someone as young as Aisha. Her physical, mental, and chronological ages might have gone a bit out of sync, and she was hardly naïve about the dangers of the world, but that didn't mean she was ready for that kind of thing. Hell, I hadn't been ready for that kind of thing and I had the advantage of extra dimensional memories hardening me against those kinds of horrors.
"She didn't get into the same level of detail, but she wanted an overview of what we were dealing with." Tetra explained.
"How did she take it?" I asked.
"Not too bad." She said, "She didn't know how bad the Nine really were. I don't think most people do. We started taking breaks from that stuff whenever there was an update on your date."
Which made sense if you were experiencing things either ten or forty thousand times faster than the outside world, depending on whether the Spiritron Core was being used. At that speed it was probably like waiting for a new episode of a TV show to be released. The fact that my team was treating my social life like scheduled entertainment really wasn't that surprising, all things considered.
"It was a nice change from dealing with that kind of stuff, and I'm glad it went well." Tetra said.
"So am I." I said with a sigh. "Really, I'm just glad it didn't go badly."
"The chances of that were very low, and Crystal was also hoping for things to go well." Tetra said.
I nodded. I had been filtering out as many of my advanced senses as possible, but even with just basic social understanding it was clear there was mutual interest. That was nice. Or knowing it, being able to recognize that and trust my own assessment was nice. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to interact in a casual situation without a mountain of anxiety overshadowing everything.
"Did you plan on curing her motion sickness?" Tetra asked, because of course she was aware of that too.
"Not in advance, but since it came up, and with the blessing from Apollo from this morning, it kind of made sense." I explained, very slowly merging into another lane as the traffic backed up even further.
"But it wasn't limited to motion sickness." Tetra said. "That was Qi, or Chi, or Ki. Life energy, though not vital energy, and similar but distinct from Mantra, and compatible but not equivalent to mana."
I nodded. The mashup of powers I had received has some complicated interactions, including subtle differences in how certain elements were treated. Some of those differences acted as methods of arbitrary separation while others built on themselves to create a complex conglomeration.
Qi was in the latter category. There were a lot of names for things that counted as the same thing. Generally it was easier to think of it as martial arts life energy, which was sort of magic, but not exactly the same, at least not unless you had magical circuits to handle the conversion.
The other thing about Qi is that it didn't have the same degree of separation that you saw in other supernatural power sources. Something like mana was completely distinct, only coming into play when called upon for specific purposes, but the function of Qi was incorporated into everything from breathing to movement to recovery to emotion. It was a holistic form of energy that had applications for everything from simply improving focus all the way up to firing off blasts of destruction.
Because of that, it tended to leak into other areas. Breathing wasn't just breathing, it was an act of cycling Qi. The focus of 'Qi' that was intended to help guide a punch could call upon vast amounts of energy to turn the strike into something truly staggering. And of course, nearly all Eastern medicine and alchemy was based around it.
Even if Qi hadn't been a thing, my mastery of medicine and healing would have been more than enough to treat Crystal's ongoing motion sickness with a session of acupressure. With that kind of force in play, with the level I was working with, with the elements of Journey to the West being completely true and applicable, it had gone quite a bit further.
Ironically, it was still exactly what I said it was, except the mystical explanations for what was happening were actually entirely true. Qi was a thing in all its forms, from the most abstract visualization of controlled breathing to the insane feats only possible through high level Mantra control. Like so many other elements of my power, I didn't know if it had always been the case or if getting those powers had changed the underlying fabric of reality.
Even if it had always been present, it wouldn't have mattered because people weren't using Qi 'properly'. The theories were there, but the energy and structures weren't able to support any higher-level effects. Just because Qi was a thing didn't mean I'd need to start worrying about people developing superpowers from meditation techniques.
You know, unless their meridians were fortified and energized by beyond divine level medical acupressure.
"Is she going to be able to take things further?" Tetra asked. "Healing is a nice place to start, but Qi can do a lot more than that."
She would know. Life fiber energy was something that was sort of but not quite like Qi, or Ki, or really there needed to be a uniform way of referring to the entire concept. It made sense with the elements that were enhanced by Life Fiber contact, but it was a bit odd that an alien form of energy just happened to match up to Eastern theories of directed life force.
Well, weird in general. By the standards of my power's weirdness scale it barely registered.
"Probably not." Despite the potential involved, I hadn't done anything more than treat her motion sickness. If she kept practicing acupressure or other types of Eastern medicine then there might be additional effects, but that wasn't too likely. Any other effects would need to be trained and cultivated, which wasn't likely to happen.
Unless she did yoga. Modern classes were mostly just stretching exercises, but if the instructor had enough of a spiritual bent, there was a chance that things could begin developing beyond the scope of that initial treatment. That might be something that I should look into just to head off any accidental kung-fu magic antics.
"That's too bad." Tetra said, looking legitimately disappointed.
"Why do you…" Then it hit me. "You want to fight her?" I asked.
She nodded unapologetically. "Tybalt is the only one who uses Qi to fight. Aisha is getting good with it, but she's focused on dodging and sneaking around."
"The kunoichi training." I said. Tetra nodded.
"Which is good, but not the best for big fights." Tetra explained. "Tybalt likes to spar, but Survey only wants to do tactical training for biotics or Valkyrur powers. Fleet always wants vehicle combat, and the Matrix is more interested in defending or cleaning things up after a fight."
I nodded. "We should set up some proper spars once we're done with the Nine." It wasn't like putting down the Slaughterhouse Nine was going to count as a fight either.
Tetra's smile brightened. "And you have your new blood! I can tell it's going to be really strong. We can get everyone to fight together again and see how it works."
"We can test it before then. Probably should, and we'll definitely get more spars in, but I don't think Crystal will be a part of that, no matter what happens with her Qi."
"Really, it would be best if you could fight her." Tetra said. I had to raise an eyebrow in concern at that. "That way she could count for the Arena emulation."
I blinked as I took in Tetra's implications. "Yeah, I'm not sure that's a good idea." I was probably for the best that the warning shot Crystal had taken at me didn't count as a fight by the standards of the Arena. Emulation of enemies was one thing, but this was feeling way too intrusive. "And she's probably not going to want to do anything 'fight' related."
"If you did something like paintball for one of your dates, that might count." Tetra suggested.
Right, because I'm sure Crystal would love a social event where she got shot at. That wouldn't have any bad associations for her whatsoever.
"I'd rather not plan hypothetical dates based on potential for combat emulation." I said. "We have a single date planned. I don't think we actually count as 'dating' until it becomes an ongoing thing." I shook my head. "And besides, she has more than enough to deal with already."
Tetra nodded. "Survey put together a report on Amy Dallon's case."
"Is she getting out today?" I asked as I pulled up the report from the Workshop network. Survey had jumped on the news and taken advantage of the failings of the PRT's information control measures to get the inside scoop on that situation.
"Survey said it's likely, but only with degrees of confidence. High confidence, because Director Piggot probably wants to distance herself from the situation."
"It was certainly one of her less popular decisions." Evidence of the PRT's failings in areas beyond information security. Poor initial decisions reinforced by crisis after crisis and a constantly building sunk cost, probably with the hope of a bailout through outside intervention or an improbable victory.
As much as my reluctance to reach out had contributed to the situation, it was hard to look at the department's behavior with anything but relief for staying away from that trainwreck. It was easy to say the situation could have been avoided with open communication, but that overlooked exactly who I would have been communicating with at the time and what measures had already been put in place before that option was open to me.
Of course, the consequences of that decision had hit a lot more than just the PRT. The entire city had suffered, including Crystal's family to no small degree.
"I hope that makes things easier for Crystal, but I have the feeling that things are going to get worse before they get better." I said.
"She didn't want to talk about Apeiron, but I don't think she blamed you for what happened." Tetra said.
I nodded. If anything Crystal seemed to have a very honest assessment of her family's situation. She probably wasn't a fan of the person who had brought it to light, but at least had enough emotional distance to not blame Apeiron for the actions of her father and aunt.
Which would have been particularly unfair, considering I never even implied that. Panacea was the one who had jumped to that assumption when I was talking about power dynamics. The fact that it made it into that transcript and ended up being true was completely beyond my control. I know a lot of people wouldn't see things that way, but while Crystal certainly had no shortage of frustration, it at least seemed to be directed logically.
Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. I had already come to terms with my own role in the start of this mess, so I wasn't at risk of descending into a guilt spiral, but I was at least hoping that Crystal wasn't cultivating a secret hatred for Apeiron, and not just because that kind of dynamic at the start of a relationship was the kind of thing you only saw in bad cape dramas. Actually, with the one character as a public identity hero and the other with a concealed identity presumed-villain mercenary with a past connection to the first character it was pretty much the kind of bog-standard recipe for cheap drama that those kinds of shows and movies relied on.
Fortunately, life wasn't a movie, and I understood the irony of that statement coming from someone who was literally powered by fictional universes. Luckily that was just the mechanics and powers, not the conventions of drama and storytelling. At least not beyond what my Fortune Energy decided to arrange, but even that had to have some limits.
At least I hoped that it did.
"That kind of stuff makes things complicated, and I don't think either of us really want complicated at the moment." I explained. Meeting for a simple dinner and attending a campus benefit concert was not complicated. It was the kind of simple normal activity that helped ground you, and considering the fact that we were both flight capable, that was probably an appropriate term both figuratively and literally.
"There are going to be more complications, even if Panacea is released." Tetra said. "Lady Photon has been meeting with the PRT about her case. Based on precedent, it's likely that she can be issued a conditional supervised release."
"Meaning New Wave takes responsibility for her." I said, skimming through Survey's report. They were an established team with Protectorate ties, making them qualified for the role, but it was far from the result Panacea was probably hoping for. "Basically a mix of house arrest and supervised outings that needed to be documented in detail. And she probably won't be able to resume healing."
"With the Shikigami that's not as important as it was before." Tetra pointed out.
I nodded. The talisman spirits of life energy I had built to deal with the medical requests that had been submitted to me had done their job and then some. Their capacity went beyond the specific requests, so they kept working on any critical cases they could find. They were designed to be as subtle as possible, but there was only so long a terminal patient could hold out before people started getting suspicious. Even with effects designed to divert attention, that wasn't going to hold forever.
"That's a stopgap. It would have been nice to get Panacea back, but we can deal with a lot of the cases when we do the cleanup run after the Nine." I said. I was serious about erasing their legacy, and that included everyone who had been injured in their rampages.
It had the advantage of counting as a reactionary measure, and if other patients happened to be seen to during that run I'm sure people would have more important things to focus on than indiscriminate use of healing technology when taking vindictive action against the Slaughterhouse Nine.
"At least if she's not working, you might have a chance to meet and give her the nanites." Tetra said optimistically.
"Maybe." I replied. That was a big maybe, and Tetra knew that. "But I doubt she'll be happy to see me."
Panacea was going to be the most difficult offer by far. I was already meeting with Taylor and had at least informed her I was working on healing technology for her. I'd had no direct contact with Flechette, but she was friends with Weld and operated on a predictable schedule so it should be possible to find some window of opportunity.
With Panacea, I didn't know if I would have a chance to approach her, or how an attempt to speak with her would be received, particularly considering the substantial aftermath to our last conversation. The current circumstances were very different, but some resentment was going to be expected at this point. Particularly since it looked like a significant driver for her extended containment was my comments about her sister's aura.
"Survey included that in the report." Tetra said. "She thinks Panacea will be reasonable about the confinement, but she's not certain about how she'll handle the situation with Glory Girl."
"No one is certain about the situation with Glory Girl, which is the problem." I replied as I skimmed through what had been done on the PRT's side.
Brandish had understandably opposed the idea that there could have been any detrimental aspect to Glory Girl's emotional manipulation field. Unfortunately that involved fighting every initiative that could have seen Panacea released at an earlier date. I couldn't even imagine what that had done to the relationship between her and Panacea.
The entire situation was going to be extremely messy, and it didn't help that how the PRT treated this case would set a precedent for the handling of emotional manipulation powers going forward. As much as people loved Glory Girl, it was hard to give a pass to someone who regularly exposed teenagers to an 'adore me' field. Just the fact that mass, indiscriminate emotional alteration got a pass from the local PRT was something that they were scrambling to justify and defend.
It was almost ironic that, despite everything that had happened to Panacea, all the scrutiny she had been put under, and the intensity of the evaluations to rule out or confirm the presence of some ongoing influence, the biggest problem was going to come from the fact that Glory Girl had been exposing members of the public, usually minors, to emotional alteration for years on end and the PRT had signed off on all of it. That was actually a bigger issue than any long-term residual effects or lasting harm. The power itself was enough of an intrusion to be concerning on its own.
"It's surprising that there weren't concerns about Glory Girl before now." Tetra said. She looked down at her hand. It flickered briefly as the fibers that composed her body lit up across her skin. "I used to affect minds, affect your mind, but I couldn't help it. I didn't even know enough to know it was happening at the time. I'm glad you stopped that. If you didn't, I don't know if I could have trusted my interactions with anyone."
I nodded. "With Glory Girl it was different. They downplayed the situation, and there weren't immediate signs of concern." I explained as the Alchemy constellation missed a connection. "New Wave was popular and Glory Girl was a strong cape. The PRT probably wanted to keep her active in the field and avoid a conflict with her family."
And as a result they had done what seemed to be their typical response to these kinds of problems, kick it down the road and hope people forgot about it. Ignore the fact that a significant portion of the student population of Arcadia would be exposed to her aura on a daily basis at varying levels of intensity. That alone was enough for concern. Indiscriminate use of parahuman powers was kind of a big deal.
Mental manipulation was still a sore spot for me. I'd had time to process the implications of my original trigger and what could have happened if I hadn't received the Celestial Forge, but there were still lines I was very firm on. I had enough abilities that functioned without my control, abilities thankfully classified as 'stranger powers', but even so, I doubt people particularly enjoyed having my personal title jump into their minds whenever my name came up. That was just information, not manipulation, but it was still more than I was fully comfortable with.
"In some departments, parahumans with mental manipulation powers had to file a report every time they used them." Tetra explained. She mentally highlighted a secondary report from Survey on the matter. "They needed to declare the nature of the influence, who had been affected, and provide secondary evidence or testimonials. Improper use of mental or emotional manipulation powers could even compromise arrests or end up being presented as mitigating factors at criminal hearings."
I checked the records. Those weren't universal policies, but the departments that had them had very good reasons for holding to that standard. As they say, regulations are written in blood, which was nearly literal for some of those cases. Needless to say, Brockton Bay wasn't meeting those standards, but I doubt they'd be able to keep that kind of attitude after this controversy blew up.
"We might be seeing something similar put in place for Brockton Bay." I agreed.
Mental influence powers were a mess on every level. It was something that was hard to regulate or even monitor. Most of them were poorly understood and the legislation on parahuman powers could barely keep up with what they were capable of. The stories of what could happen when those kinds of powers ran unchecked were nightmarish. I had looked through reports of more than enough of that kind of thing when Survey was compiling Cherish's backstory.
I could understand why the PRT didn't want to deal with that particular mess, but the extent to which they brushed it off is beyond negligent. It's the kind of thing that calls into question every assurance that had been offered about the safety of a parahuman power. Honestly, it's no wonder the rest of the PRT and Protectorate are doing their best to try to paint Brockton Bay as an extreme outlier.
That includes the Boston PRT, with my upcoming meeting with Director Armstrong. Manipulation sense is a hell of a thing. While he's taking a very light touch, it's clear that some level of the work he is putting in to facilitate things is intended to help redeem the wider PRT and justify some of the powers available to regional directors, provided they're used responsibly rather than as a means of pasting over past mistakes and kicking problems down the road.
Trying to make the organization you work for look good by doing a good job might technically be manipulative, but it was a level of manipulation I could accept. Considering Director Armstrong had been working out of the camp where the hostages had been relocated with affairs of the Boston PRT handed off to his deputy director, I couldn't fault his dedication to the matter.
"Are you going to come to my meeting with Director Armstrong?" I asked. "I mean, as an actual presence, not in the abstract."
"It's not really abstract, but I know what you mean." She replied. "And I'd like to come. The Matrix is excited about being able to help. I don't think I can help in the same way, but I'd like to meet Director Armstrong."
Which would be another connection, and would probably be seen as a major undermining of the integrity of the PRT if people realized how her abilities worked.
"The Protectorate and PRT have reports on my new form from Dauntless, but they're just descriptions. It will be nice to confirm everything." She said with a wide smile.
"Make sure they're adequately afraid of you?" I joked.
She shook her head. "Aisha still has the highest threat assessment after you, especially after she erased that meme." I nodded. Any hopes of that going unnoticed were fruitless. Apparently there had been near Protectorate wide panic during the entire time I was working with Aisha to reverse the effect.
The car in front of me moved slightly forward in the gridlock. Before I could close the distance the man in the car behind me started leaning on his horn, much to the annoyance of the rest of the drivers. I glanced back and the horn cut out, leaving the man frantically hammering on his steering wheel. As I slowly closed the distance to the car in front of me the man made a final strike that caused the horn to blare once again, and even louder than before. And continued to blare even as he leaned off the horn. And now he was frantically hammering at his horn to try to stop the noise, which may have been more inwardly directed than usual.
Finally, after many desperate strikes at the horn, the noise cut out. The man looked at his steering wheel with apprehension, lightly pressed the horn to confirm it still worked, then was very careful to avoid placing his hands anywhere near it.
Truly, a horrendous use of my powers. Without a doubt I have been corrupted beyond hope of redemption. Meanwhile, Tetra was grinning like a loon while looking at the driver who couldn't actually perceive her.
"But I'd like to go with you and the Matrix. Everyone has been working on the problem with Jack's passenger, so it will be nice to deal with something simple." She continued from the previous point.
"We're looking at over seven hundred extremely stressed people in a confined space. Less confined now, but nothing with that many individuals is going to be simple." I replied. "It's a problem that we can fix, but that doesn't make it simple."
Tetra nodded. "Fewer technical variables, more complicated social dynamics."
It would be nice to think I could just sweep in and mass heal everyone in five minutes, but even putting aside what was probably going to be a lengthy meeting with Director Armstrong, I knew things weren't going to go that smoothly. Improvements in technology and the assistance of the Matrix would save me from needing to perform a series of surgeries like the last time I attempted this. Also, the fact that the bombs were diffused considerably simplified things, but even with those considerations, this was going to get messy.
"Right." I said, "But that's not to say the situation with Jack's passenger is going to be simple."
"There are solutions." Tetra said, which was technically true.
"Yeah." I said, somewhat reluctantly. With my technology and the scaling methods available to me, this was something I could accomplish, even in the time available to us.
Just not accomplish easily, which was kind of a crazy thought. I couldn't remember the last time I had run into a serious technical challenge. Not the needed work-arounds for public response or parahuman dynamics, an actual serious obstacle that I needed to bypass.
Honestly, the scope of my abilities and resources had grown so far beyond any terrestrial threat that the only real concern was the reaction the rest of the world would have to the displays of power I was capable of. There weren't really any individuals or even entire organizations that could actually threaten my team, which reduced most of the challenge to societal management and the prevention of collateral damage.
That was before I had taken on Aisha's suggestion to deal with Jack's influence. Purging the effect of his passenger from Aisha had been a serious project that had relied on the specific nature of her abilities and qualities unique to her passenger. It wasn't a process that could be repeated across the entire network, but she was right about the importance. Without revealing the extent of Jack's influence there would be no way to truly dismantle the legacy of the Slaughterhouse Nine. You needed to show exactly how artificial the entire situation had been if you wanted people to actually disregard them.
And that wasn't even getting into the potential secondary effects. All the subtle nudges that Jack's passenger would have needed to put in place to prevent the development of systems that would have shut down the ability of the Slaughterhouse Nine to operate. I wasn't sure exactly how much influence he had had. The length of his cape career and the nebulous nature of his passenger's influence was making precise modeling a challenge, not that Survey was at all deterred in her efforts to get to the heart of the matter.
Still, even the most comprehensive assessment of what Jack's passenger had done wouldn't have a fraction of the impact of actually clearing that influence from the world. And that was an actually challenging proposition.
There weren't many of those anymore. It made sense that this would be tied to the source of parahuman abilities. For all the assumptions about me being a 'power tinker', that kind of work was still a serious challenge, one of the few challenges left to me.
I mean, that sounded seriously arrogant, but with the scale I was working on it was kind of true. I had enough power that the only serious obstacles were issues too messy to plough through or of such a tremendous scale that they pushed the limits of what the human mind could comprehend.
Passenger Space fell into the latter category, being a semi-virtual form of reality sustained by multidimensional entities that extended across near countless universes, operating on scales of power that beggared belief. There were insane amounts of power possessed by even the most 'minor' passenger, particularly when you considered what it was used for. Great cosmic engines churning away in the background to facilitate the pissing matches between street level parahumans. Like a little league game where the contestants were actually sponsored by nuclear superpowers.
I had an armada of unfathomable scale exploring passenger space wielding weapons that could literally chew through planets and technologies that could warp the very fabric of reality and even then, I was just barely approaching the power level of that insane funhouse dimension. The entire system behind parahumans was so much bigger and more powerful than anyone could have imagined. It was shocking, but then again, no one was really ready for a jump from street level gang conflicts to cosmic struggles for the fate of existence.
Anyone other than me. I had known that was coming. I hadn't known exactly what shape it would take, but from the moment I met Taylor I had understood the scale that I was working against. That I was building towards. In a way, it was what justified the insane power level that was the Celestial Forge. Without this kind of strength backing me up, I don't know how you were supposed to counter a threat as massive as the source of all parahuman abilities.
Well, no. I did. Or specifically, I knew what the components were. Taylor's unbelievably broken master power, Flechette's insanely strong omni dimensional striker ability, something on the part of Panacea, and some insight from Bonesaw. I was very much cutting Bonesaw's portion out of the equation. If needs must I could handle that myself, but I was hoping that I wouldn't need to fall back on whatever that mystery solution was. Still, in the event that I wasn't able to handle things on my own, I at least had taken measures to ensure that the key players would still be around.
Providing I could actually get them their nanites.
"Did you see the 'easy' solution for dealing with Jack's passenger?" Tetra asked.
"Yeah." I said. "Fleet messaged me."
"We're not going to do that, are we?" She asked.
"Probably not." I said. It would mean coming up with a significant workaround, which would require considerable use of psionics, divine crafting, or even more extreme powers, but it was better than the 'easy' option.
That option wasn't easy because it was simple to accomplish, it was 'easy' because the steps were fairly straightforward. Rather than try to advance my existing technologies to the level of undermining the network or building up to the scale where I could repeat what was done for Aisha for every parahuman in existence, all I needed to do was fall back on my major powers.
Superweapons could take any technology to an insane level in exchange for a massive increase in cost, scale, and the requirement of a unique and difficult to obtain component. My Superweapons power applied to the technology I had discerned from Bakuda's control signal produced a doomsday level piece of passenger technology.
The signal was already ludicrously advanced to the point where I had needed to resort to multidimensional modeling to crack it. I knew just enough about the principles for Superweapons to apply to it. Doing so took what was a communication and coordination method into something that could very well give me complete control over Passenger Space.
It was quite possibly the most supervillain act I could imagine. A giant project undermining the very foundation of parahuman abilities. It was the kind of thing that begged for a dramatic countdown, posturing, some kind of momentous speech at the final hour, and the use of phrases like 'moment of triumph'.
And I wasn't going to do it. Not because it was an ineffective solution to this problem. It was more than a solution to THIS problem. It was the kind of endgame technology that made world domination seem petty and unambitious.
It also wasn't because of the scale of what resources were needed for this kind of project. A regular superweapon required funding on the level you only saw from governments or major corporations. That element scaled up with more complex work, and the requirements for this kind for application were tremendous. If I couldn't literally produce resources out of nothing at blinding speed it would never be possible to even consider this. Construction projects that altered the structure of solar systems were minor works in comparison.
No, the reason I wasn't going forward with the 'easy' option was because of the unique requirement. That also scaled with the scope of the technology being produced, and unsurprisingly the component needed to completely subvert the network was a core part of the network.
I would need Taylor's passenger. Not having access to Taylor's passenger, I needed the entire thing. And not just the portion that existed in Passenger Space. I needed all of it, every part spread over every dimension. That was what I needed to collect in order to make this work.
Needless to say, Taylor wouldn't have powers after that. Honestly, if she didn't have effective immortality coming her way, something like that would be spectacularly lethal. Even with nanites, it wouldn't be a pleasant experience for her, and that wasn't even getting into the complexity of the task of collecting the largest passenger we had encountered.
Well, one of the largest. There was another option other than Taylor's passenger, but collecting Eidolon's passenger wasn't much better. Interestingly, his passenger was one of the secondary ones, heavily damaged and clearly running itself down, but still as impressive in scope and complexity as Taylor's. If it hadn't been the key target of a Superweapon project we might never have found it, and definitely wouldn't have realized what we were looking at.
In comparison, Taylor's passenger was also damaged, but damaged in a very different way from Eidolon's. I wasn't close to being able to break down the function or operational methodologies of passengers, particularly not ones on that level, but Taylor's damage looked more like an intentional restriction while Eidolon's was more erratic.
While neither option was really viable, Eidolon's passenger was at least damaged to the point of limited functionality. The exact level of self-awareness that passengers possessed was hard to pin down, mostly because everything from the mechanics to methods of thought changed from passenger to passenger. The fact that a sapient creature could count as the vital component for a Superweapon was disturbing, but considering it was an archetypical supervillain power it wasn't that surprising. At least with Eidolon's passenger it would be closer to kidnapping a brain-dead coma victim rather than a heavily injured person who was still mentally functional.
Setting aside those considerable concerns, the entire endeavor did put any doubts about the scale of Taylor's power to rest. Knowing she was operating on the same level as Eidolon's, if in a different capacity, made her eventual contribution against that endgame threat a lot more understandable.
Of course, even in the face of all those concerns, there was still some consideration towards taking that option, including suggested methods of securing willing assistance from Taylor's passenger, rather than resorting to the kidnapping of a multidimensional cosmic meat computer. Also the suggestion that maybe Taylor would be willing to look at the wide variety of other powers she could be granted in exchange for her passenger. I nixed that line of thinking from any further consideration. Taylor was dangerous enough with the restricted abilities offered by her passenger. I didn't want to see what she would put together if given access to the same catalog as Aisha.
Regardless, pulling off grand theft passenger in the space of less than twenty-four hours wasn't going to happen. The desperate doomsday scenario could remain a desperate doomsday scenario, but that did mean that our remaining options were significantly more limited.
"That's an option, and it at least means that this is possible, but it's not going to be how we deal with Jack's Passenger." I reiterated. Tetra nodded. That was pretty much accepted, but it did mean we had to look at more unconventional options. And when the conventional option was a Passenger Space spanning construct built around the strongest passenger you could find as a way to completely subvert the network, it really put things into perspective for what 'unconventional' could refer to.
Fortunately the traffic was finally starting to move again. Tetra pressed up against the window, looking at the work crews as we passed. They were addressing the fringe damage that had occurred when the ABB forces had pushed out of the docks. Tinker explosives and merged bomb effects had done a number on the area. It wasn't as bad as some of the torn-up sections of the Docks, but it had made it difficult to move through the city. It seemed they were taking advantage of the Chicago team to deal with some of the more critical issues of access, though that did require shutting down a fairly large stretch of the city.
The optics also weren't exactly great. From a logistical perspective it made perfect sense. Dealing with damaged roads would mean that the hardest hit areas of the city would have more access to services and supplies, but on the surface level it looked like work was being directed at minor damage on the wealthier side of the city while significant portions of the Docks still looked like burnt out warzones and a significant part of the northern end had been effectively abandoned.
Checking online, I could see there were already comments on the matter, though the level of frustration being expressed was probably a combination of the traffic and general aggravation over how the entire situation had been handled. Honestly, if I had been losing time during recovery work rather than being able to review data and reports while my team worked ten times faster in my absence, I probably would have shared their sentiment.
Those feelings had been growing and spiked whenever the city's government made another misstep. Or had their existing missteps revealed, in the case of the PRT. That was the kind of thing that could be serious if it built enough momentum, but like with so many things I had to wonder if it would have time to develop into some kind of change for the city, or if that would get swallowed up by the magnitude of what would happen over the coming week.
There was really no way to tell, and I was much more focused on the significant events that were in the works than the potential long-term implications of what had already happened. Not that those implications weren't important, it's just that they would have to contend with a lot of other implications that were bearing down on the world.
Tetra was unbothered by the implication of massive societal change or civic class conflict. She just enjoyed the chance to see the work up close, building one-sided connections to everyone we passed and everyone in the cars around us. Tetra could support an effectively unlimited amount of connections, but we were still easing into things, rather than having her open with a full connection to everyone in the city. A drive through the traffic was a nice way to spend time with her, but it was also an opportunity to ease into building more connections.
Once we made it past the construction traffic began to flow normally again. In moving through the areas being worked on it was interesting to see the effects firsthand. I had Survey's assessment of the Chicago team, but you could see where their assorted powers had worked to shift rubble, patch broken roads, and rebuild surfaces. The work crews were limiting themselves to final checks and finishing work and the entire stretch would probably be cleared by the end of the day. Great for long term benefits, but that was a paltry consolation for people who had spent twenty minutes trying to cross a block of distance.
"You good breaking off here?" I asked Tetra. She was probably recognizable enough to socialize at the gym if she wanted, but the question of what the scary lawyer's sister was doing there would need to be answered.
"Yep." She said, "Though it's not really breaking off."
"I know. You good changing the expression of your connection?" I asked.
"Yeah, Aisha's power is going to wear off soon and Survey wants to run some analysis of the effects." She explained. "Both on me and scans of everyone who would have seen me during the trip."
Given that we were looking at a novel application of Aisha's power, it was probably a good idea to get as much information as possible. Of course, Survey would probably happily have conducted the same assessment no matter what power was being used.
Tetra flickered out as I pulled onto the street of the Gym. Not really gone, but just changing how she expressed her presence. Driving with her had been nice. Completely unnecessary, even in the abstract. She could have called in from the Workshop or maintained any level of virtual presence, but instead we had spent a drive mostly stuck in traffic together.
Given most of my experience with traffic involved a cramped family car with barely suppressed hostility between me and my sisters, it was a pleasant change. Tetra and I were technically related after the imperfect chimeric fission that had separated us, so I could confidently say it was one of the best family drives I'd experienced.
I left my car at the gym's parking lot and walked back to my apartment. If I was being serious about my cover it would probably help to have some secondary location that I could vanish into, but that was a minor concern. This was already more than was probably needed and I could worry about a more robust cover later. Especially considering what that 'later' would imply for the state of the city.
I checked in with the Workshop as I climbed the exterior stairs to my apartment. Projects were being wrapped up and prepared for review and follow-up. It was fairly standard stuff, except for the hours of work that had been completed while I was out. It was hard to feel bad about taking time off when it meaningfully boosted the efficiency and output of the entire team.
I locked the front door of my apartment behind me and stepped into the closet, moving through to the entryway of my Workshop and personal reality. As I did my form shifted, with my civilian appearance giving way to my cape costume and heroic build. It wasn't a deception on either side, just a change in expression. I had felt the true expression of self that was the manifestation of my Aspect. Anything else was a compromise, the only question was to what degree.
It did make it a lot easier to reconcile the changes that my body had been subjected to. Between Mental Fortress and the gaining of my Aspect there was never any doubt to who I was, even with the combined collection of memories and abilities powering me. It might have taken the intervention of cosmic forces, but I was actually comfortable with who I was.
Of course, that wasn't the case for every version of myself. Normally my duplicates would be well ahead of me in terms of self-actualization, but the way Temporal Controls extended the duration of the potion has less than beneficial effects on them. My last pair of duplicates had run into overtime thanks to the ten times speed difference between the Workshop and the outside world.
It wasn't a damaging or dangerous condition, but my duplicates existed in a very specific mindset, one that did not hold well past its intended duration. The virtual nature of the Spiritron Core allowed some buffer room, but actually accelerating time inside the Workshop had the effect of essentially overclocking them, and not in a good way. Both duplicates were very ready to check out as soon as I got back.
So ready that they had prepared a portal to the omni-sphere for psionic update and download right outside of the entryway. I could see both of them waiting impatiently on the other side of the spatial aperture with one making a show of looking at his watch and the other tapping his foot in a very obvious manner.
"Okay, I know it's important, but you get that this comes across as a little messed up, right?" I asked as I stepped through the portal.
"Inherently temporary manifestations here." The first duplicate said with a frustrated gesture. "The messed-up thing is stretching the duration beyond that 'inherently temporary' period."
"Which is fine when needed or if the schedule is critical, or if you get caught in traffic." The second said, shooting me a look. "But not exactly something that should be drawn out more than it has to be."
I nodded. I had mentally linked with my duplicates. I knew how their minds worked. Looking at things from an outside perspective only gave you half the picture. I had spent enough time working through this particular philosophical minefield already. A slight change in the dynamic as the consequence of another ability was pretty much expected.
"And it's not like we don't have continuity of existence. Now come on, into the omni-sphere." The first chided, gesturing to the psionic amplification chamber.
I nodded and moved to prepare for the mental link. The omni-sphere had been upgraded again, this time using the feedback loop of the Glove of the East. It had taken what was already a titanically powerful instrument of psionic amplification and turned it into something that went beyond even those lofty parameters.
I didn't get a full breakdown of the improvements before the link opened, mostly because once the mental connection was established to my duplicates that link was unnecessary. The link didn't just allow information to be shared. That was something I could already manage with my level of telepathy. No, this level of connection allowed the full weight of an experience to be transmitted. Not just the work completed or the discoveries made, but the entire thought process with every moment of inspiration that has sprang up during development. Not just how a particular project was done, but every moment from its inception to its completion. Every idea that was considered, implemented, or discarded.
The link had already carried a spiritual weight thanks to the extent of the powers used in the omni-sphere's construction, but with the improvements in performance and efficiency I was much more aware of the process. The iterative development of past duplicates building on what had come before them, first from simple records and instructions and then through the memories they had shared with me. Memories that felt strange and distant, until they didn't. Until they were experienced through the perspective of the next set of duplicates. Effectively I was maintaining a stream of continuity that I could only spectate, but not fully engage with.
It was a heady process and one that I could get overly philosophical with. Unfortunately, that would need to wait for another time because I had become privy to exactly what everyone had been working on while I had been on my not-date with Crystal.
"How is this a surprise?" Aisha asked. "I thought you knew everything that was made in the Workshop."
She was insufferably casual given the scale of what had been done.
"I knew they were building the focuses, but they build a lot of things." Often as a precautionary measure. "I thought it was for your research, or some kind of testing, not that they were being handed out to the entire team."
"Well, this is my research. I mean, sort of. All of the colors are completely different. It's better to have people focus on each of them individually rather than to try to juggle all of them at once." She explained.
The 'colors' meaning the impossible colors from the Prismatic Laboratory. The colors that were more distortions in the fabric of reality than any kind of actual shade or hue. Distortions that were somehow cast into light and pigment. The colors that existed as a mental presence as much as a tangible object.
Colors that were now spread across the entire team with a disturbing variety of items dyed in shades of impossibility.
"And they need the colors?" I asked, trying to piece together exactly what had brought this on. Unfortunately, my duplicates' reaction had been mostly unbridled enthusiasm at the idea of building new types of advanced Arcane Focus rather than considering exactly what the goal was.
"Probably." Aisha said. "You've seen the analysis about trying to undo Jack's mind whammy, right?"
I nodded grimly. This was the consequence of the 'easy' method being rejected. Without that the only options were either a slow buildup to a massive project of engineering that would push the very limits of my technical abilities, or the use of the more esoteric aspects of my power set. For that, the colors certainly qualified.
"I can understand expanding research, but why assign specific colors?" Garment perked up at that. I understood her interest in that type of coordination.
Additionally, stumbling into this kind of situation was probably the only thing keeping me from being grilled on every aspect of the coffee date, by the rest of the team, assuming Tetra hadn't shared the details with them already. She was currently showing off a collection of Violant accessories to Garment, accessories that she had conspicuously failed to mention during her drive.
Yeah, everyone knew exactly what they were doing here. This had all the markings of a careful approach dressed up as a simple oversight, even if I couldn't confirm as much with my manipulation sense. And they knew I knew, and I knew they knew that I knew. Which just meant we didn't need to dwell on the pretext.
"This stuff is complicated. Like, really, really complicated." Aisha explained. "I've got a kind of surface level understanding of how it works, but diving into anything other than Irrigo is a nightmare. And not just in the actual nightmare causing effects of some of the colors, so it's probably good that Fleet doesn't need to sleep."
Fleet was currently sporting a rather sharp jacket in Peligin. The coat would have looked nice enough in the black shades that appeared when you tried to record that color, but the actual depth and complexity of the unnatural color was something else.
"Actually, even Irrigo is hard to manage." Aisha continued. "I know the other colors can do more, but I'm not going to be able to get much out of them." Her face turned serious. "At least not in the amount of time we have."
I nodded grimly. This was a rush project, even with the extra time that could be squeezed from Temporal Controls. But that rush introduced inherent risk. Manageable risk, but still more risk than I wanted to subject my team to. As durable and resilient as my team was, that didn't mean much in the face of effects that changed how durability and resilience worked. The strongest material in the universe was pretty much meaningless against inversion of natural laws or concentrated expressions of nothingness.
"Okay, you're already committed to this, and I understand where it's coming from. I'm not going to fight against it." Honestly, I was happy when the rest of the team took their own initiative, though I kind of wished it had involved something a little less dangerous than the Prismatic Laboratory. "But are you sure this is the best way of handling things?" I looked around at the various examples of that impossible rainbow of color.
"We could have doubled up and focused on the colors one at a time, but there are levels of overlap. It makes more sense for each person to take their own approach." Aisha explained. "Besides, everyone got their first choice of color."
Which was why the team was now playing as an eldritch version of the Sentai Elite. And I decided not to mention that comparison to Garment because there would definitely be a push towards coordinated uniforms, except given the effects those colors could have in large enough concentrations, that wasn't likely to end well for anyone not specifically shielded by one of the very advanced Arcane Focus items that had been built into each of the colors.
I had returned to the workshop to find out Aisha had handed out incredibly dangerous items of literally incomprehensible power to the entire team with limited concern for the consequences. I'd complain, but the magnitude of the hypocrisy would be more than I could endure. I wonder if this was how Tattletale felt whenever she learned of some new initiative or invention I was ready to deploy? Maybe I should be a bit gentler when we had our daily check-in.
I turned back to Aisha. "I'm not worried about them picking colors that match their personalities or outlooks. I'm worried about the consequences of working with specific colors."
"You mean influence? Because the duplicates deconstructed Ren's adaptations and built them into everything being used. Everyone's shielded from the mental effects, which shouldn't be a problem for most of the team, but given how this stuff works…"
"No, I get that, and it was a good idea." I assured her. "I'm worried this will affect how people approach things. This isn't like making a decision based on personal taste or basic utility. You're aligning yourself with an altered aspect of reality."
"You're worried they're going to change their approaches to use the colors better, and that's going to have some knock-on effects because these are crazy impossible bullshit nonsense even by your standards." Aisha filled in.
I shrugged. "If the colors can do things that can't be accomplished by anything else, there's going to be a temptation to use them that way. I don't want the Matrix to feel that they need to change their approach to get the most out of cosmogone or for Fleet to try to embrace peligin by altering the way he approaches situations."
Aisha nodded. "I get that, but these colors are tools. I know they're horrible deviations from the true course of the natural order and all that, but they weren't distilled into easily usable dyes and lenses because someone wanted to see what a spatial distortion colored suit looked like. There's a point to all of this, even to stuff like Gant."
There was a slight fluttering followed by an unnerving sense of wrongness. Tybalt's new cape, dyed pure Gant. A color that looked dirty brown in pictures but was somehow less than nothing when you experienced it personally. It was what was left when you began with nothing and started taking things away. The color was inherently dangerous and unsurprisingly Tybalt had been the only person willing to use it. Even for a demigod of war, that seemed to be pushing some uncomfortable limits.
The other applications were less drastic. The deep dread of peligin had an inherent synergy with the monstrous and unknown. Fleet's nature as a Divine Beast gave him an advantageous relationship with the concerning nature of the color.
The Matrix had embraced cosmogone, which was a surprising deviation from the apocyan that had been left to me. It possibly spoke to the gradual shift in their outlook, where their focus has moved from the cutting-edge perfection that only I was capable of producing to an appreciation of any level of improvement and refinement.
Assuming you were talking about other projects, of course. They still maintained the exact same opinions regarding the tiers of nanobots, with a resolute refusal to accept Tier 3 nanobots for anything less than a temporary emergency situation. Quality standards continued to hold back a gray goo apocalypse.
Tetra had gravitated towards Violant's permanent connections, something that fit her quite well, though it seemed almost unnecessary in the face of her own abilities. Maybe that was the point, considering what that color was capable of. A memory that always remained in the mind, wielded by a being who could maintain any connection at its strongest level. I didn't know where that would go, but it was probably one of the few ways that Tetra could break new ground.
I was quite surprised to see Survey had chosen to experiment with Viric. Simple examples of it, like a tinted visor and shawl, but the color wasn't focused on knowledge or connections, it was the color of sleep, dreams, and knowledge that slipped from your mind.
The interface between Survey's new viric focus items and her scrying artifacts was going to be interesting. I'm pretty sure she'd be able to look into people's dreams, or dream-like states, even when she was remotely scrying on them. As I watched she finished her final checks before taking a portal back to her scrying chamber to maintain her observations, only now with eldritch enhancements.
That element of the focus items was probably what drew Survey to the color. A chance to obtain information that had been lost, not just forgotten but the ideas and recollections that never fully registered. The equipment was focused on the use of the colors, rather than subjecting people to their effects.
The best example for that would be Aisha. Irrigo was an insanely appropriate match for her, and between the nature of her power and her hairpin she was able to wield the color without any of the serious detrimental effects it was capable of unleashing.
Actually, I was pretty sure all of these colors would have been much, much worse in the world they originated from. Given the nature of some of the things the colors were sourced from, it was likely that careless use of these effects could draw attention from things you'd rather not get the attention of. That was a world that included both soul trading devils and flesh warping squid men, neither of which seemed particularly notable in the scale of threats that world could offer.
Looking around, Garment was the only member of the team who hadn't selected a color. Or maybe it was better to say she hadn't selected a single color. She was helping to coordinate the experimentation and use of the other colors and stood ready to integrate any application that was discovered into her work. She was reasonably well protected from the secondary effects of the colors, so was probably the best to manage things.
Provided she didn't let her love of fashion get in the way of safety measures. Yeah, this was going to get complicated.
"So, a full breakdown of all of the colors in nature and application." I said to Aisha as we moved to the edge of the room. It wasn't hard to see where that was going. Aisha nodded along.
"I'm not saying this is going to be the answer, but if we can figure this out, along with that burning language…"
I nodded. "It might work. It's a backdoor approach, but if we can pull things together…" Well, if we could pull that off, it might be possible to just rewrite reality to account for the changes we wanted to make. Which was a terrifying prospect and would probably come at some tremendous unseen cost. One that we wouldn't realize until we had invested enough into the project to make us reluctant to back off.
I mean, that was the standard Faustian method and we were dealing with knowledge from Hell. Frankly, I'd be disappointed if there wasn't some horrific surprise waiting behind all of this analysis work.
"Even if it's not a magic bullet, it can still help with other projects, and I think psionics would work particularly well with the powers. It basically carried through. There's also curses and large scale magic, but the duplicates explained the problems with setting up something like that for passengers rather than people." Aisha explained as she ran through the other options.
"You're really committed to this." I said, watching her carefully. I could feel the turbulent emotions sitting under that ironclad dedication.
She let out a breath. "I saw Survey's records." She shook her head. "Not all of them. I didn't have the stomach for that. I can't believe you went through all of that back when we were loading the Spiritron Computer."
"Yeah, it wasn't fun." I said carefully.
"No wonder you were always a mess afterwards." She said quietly. "I thought it was the Simurgh or something like that, but this is almost worse. I mean, I knew they were bad. Everyone knew that, but the scale, how long things have been going on with nothing being done…" She took a long breath and let it out. "Fuck. It's messed up, and it needs to stop."
"It will." I said. "The Nine are done, they just don't know it yet. As for Jack's passenger, we'll figure something out, even if we have to personally invade Passenger Space to pull it off."
That got a weak smile out of her. "Sorry for being so emotional about this."
I shook my head. "I know what they did. I know everything the Slaughterhouse Nine has done. I'd be worried if you could see that without getting emotional."
Aisha smiled. "You know how kids dare each other to watch stuff about the Slaughterhouse Nine?" She asked. I nodded. Not something I had personal experience with, but the point had been brought up often enough with respect to keeping my Sphere Moonbase set. "I've seen a couple of the clips. Mostly didn't want to seem soft when people bring it up." She shook her head. "That was bad, but it's nothing like the full scope of it. Shit, they don't even report on it. Like, the stuff they did earlier this year alone, and nobody talks about it."
I nodded. "Public policy. Could be part of Jack's influence, depending on how many parahumans are involved, or it could just be bad ideas compounding on themselves."
After all, nobody really wanted to get into the scope of what society was dealing with. The Endbringers were a taboo subject for a reason, and most other S-class threats got bundled in with them. Everyone knew that things were getting worse, but the sheer helplessness of it made any attempt to address the problem feel pointless. Better to keep your head down and hope someone else could save the day.
Which ironically was pretty much what had happened. It was almost offensive, that kind of mindset actually paid off, but that wasn't going to stop me from doing what I could to save the planet. And damn if it didn't need saving.
Even if that required leaving everyone on the team to play with a twisted aspect of existence until we figure out how to press control Z on Jack's passenger, all while Garment works to incorporate any developments into her summer line.
"I should at least be glad you didn't rope the Kerbals into this." I said.
Aisha shook her head. "They're tied up with their own projects." She frowned. "And they don't like my planet."
"Really?" I asked.
She nodded grimly. "They said the entire system was a convoluted abomination of irrational gravitational mechanics." Aisha said scornfully.
"Ah." I said. "That was necessary to get a daily cycle at lunar orbital distance. The sun and moon are orbiting at more than ten times the distance for a twenty-four-hour orbit."
"You could have just let the planet rotate." Aisha said, but I shook my head.
"The stability was an important element for the defensive aspect of the system. The center had to hold, not spin." I explained. Aisha scrunched up her face.
"See, that's the kind of magic that's less fun. It's fine when it's wands, runes, and energy blasts, but then things get all symbolic and everything goes to hell." She said smugly.
"You read Maggie Holt and you don't like symbolic magic?" I asked skeptically.
"That's symbolism that makes sense. It's one to one, not 'the planet can't rotate because it will be less stable defensively'. Seriously, how do you draw that kind of connection?" She asked. She was putting on a show of being exasperated, but I could tell she was enjoying herself.
"Unnatural Skill with enchanting. Symbolic links are a lot more flexible when you're operating outside the laws of nature."
"Right. And speaking of which…" She turned back to the show of impossible colors being flaunted on the floor of Garment's workshop.
"That's a bit more unnatural than even my unnatural skills." I replied.
"Makes sense." She said, "I mean, all this is kind of a gamble. I mean, I'm sure we'll learn plenty from it, but the whole thing is built on the hope that the principles will come together or we get extremely lucky with Heretical Adaptation."
Because of course that would be included in all of the impossible color items.
"If this doesn't work out we'll figure out something else." I assured her. "Even if I have to park in the Spiritron core and train until I can attack Jack's passenger psionically, or combine my Aspect and Attribute, or unlock a Mantra level powerful enough to handle it."
She smiled. "You make it sound like we're spoiled for options."
"Having options isn't the same as having good options, or easy options. But we have options." I said with a smile. "Though I should probably get going and let you fully explore this one."
"Yeah, Temporal Controls are crazy. Without the nanites I'd probably be crazy jetlagged from it, but the amount we can get done is just insane."
"Well, sorry to get in your way." I joked.
"It's okay, I know you can't help it." She replied in a similar tone. "So what, more duplicates and calling ahead?"
"The hostages are being held in an army training camp with excessive security. Dropping in unannounced wouldn't be the best idea." I replied. "And be careful while we're gone."
I didn't know how she might top this kind of thing in terms of risk factors, but I wasn't about to tempt fate.
"We will. Good luck. And I'm glad we can finally deal with that situation." She said.
"Me too." I said, then paused as I felt a connection to the Personal Reality Constellation. There was a slight rumbling through the Workshop, but much less that typically accompanied the addition of new Personal Reality components.
"Okay, what was that?" Aisha asked.
"Upgrade for the robots." I explained.
"The sorting bots or the ones in the Arena?" Aisha asked.
"The sorting robots." I said, "The upgrade's called Maintenance Systems and it's pretty significant."
"How significant?" She asked even as I was loading in a report for the rest of the team, but Aisha wasn't quite on the level of live neural interface updates just yet.
"Minor side of it is that they can now provide basic cleaning and repair services to the Workshop." I explained.
"Right, and the non-minor side?" She asked.
"They got some of my powers." I explained.
Aisha blinked. "What?"
"All my tech production and repair skills, even the supernatural ones." I pulled up a three-dimensional model of one of the upgraded robots. "Nothing based on magic or divine qualities, but anything that involves repair or technology production is automatically shared by the robots."
"Okay, that… that's a lot right?" She asked.
"Objectively it's a lot. Practically, I'm not sure how much use we'll get." I explained. "The Matrix could already handle most technology production that didn't need my direct powers, and there's not much overlap between my strongest crafting abilities and 'technology production'." I shrugged. "Maybe if it covered upgrades as well, but as it stands it's kind of underwhelming for something that lets me mass produce a good portion of my powers."
"The kind of thing that would have been absolutely insane a week ago, but just gets completely overshadowed now?" Aisha asked.
"Kind of. It's still useful, just not the complete game changer it would have been." I replied. If I didn't already have the Matrix, it would have been incredible, but apparently I had gotten ahead of potential upgrades.
Still, it only consumed a small portion of my accumulated reach. I was a little nervous going into a meeting with Director Armstrong with enough reach to secure a major power banked up. That seemed like asking for trouble, but I wasn't going to put things off any longer.
I handled the duplication potion first. With the new run of projects there was a lot of equipment they wanted copied as well, including my transformer body for potential hybridizations. It was a bit complicated, but ensured my next set of duplicates had everything they needed for the rest of their duration. Which hopefully wouldn't run too far past the default endpoint, though with Temporal Controls that endpoint was barely twenty minutes in outside time. If I was meeting with Director Armstrong and dealing with the hostages, there was no way to make that deadline.
Which my duplicates accepted, even if they were a little grumpy about it in advance. I left them to their projects and teleported to my office. Using the untraceable advantage of the office phone meant cutting off the link to Passenger Space, meaning Survey was reduced to communicating through the quantum entanglement communicator until I finished my call. The bandwidth was a significant step down, but Survey bore it with good grace.
She also provided me with a visual reference for Director Armstrong via scrying. The man was sitting in the main office of the Army Reserve training camp that was being used to house the hostages. The room had been turned into a kind of command center, with various officers from the Boston PRT present.
I knew from Survey that Director Armstrong had been present since the hostages had arrived the previous night, and his lack of sleep was apparent on his face. He was personally dealing with the situation at the camp, having left the management of the Boston office to his deputy director.
Apparently, the practice of not turning yourself into a lynchpin for the entire department meant that in the event of an emergency there were competent people you could delegate to. It also helped if you were following standard procedure most of the time, rather than excessively hammering directorial mandates, meaning that lower ranking officers could actually step in when needed, despite not having the same level of unquestioned authority.
There were no shortage of complaints about how things had been run in the Brockton Bay PRT, but that wasn't the point of this meeting. Or it wasn't the sole point of this meeting. I'm fairly certain a decent amount of venting from both sides would be entirely appropriate.
I lifted the receiver of my office phone and placed the call to Director Armstrong. Just like the previous day, a particular ringtone sounded from his cell phone. Unlike the previous day, he recognized what was happening.
"I need the room." He said as he reached for his phone. The rest of the officers set down their work and left immediately. Armstrong discretely checked the screen, then as soon as the last of his staff were out of the room he answered the call.
"Hello, Apeiron?" I could tell he was doing his best to mask the exhaustion in his voice as he spoke.
"Hello Director Armstrong." I replied. "I was wondering if this would be a good time for me to stop by. I understand you have a situation I would be able to assist with."
I could see a combination of relief and exasperation in response to the flippancy of my statement, which was largely what I had been going for.
"Yes, I would very much appreciate that." He said, sinking back in his chair. "How soon can you arrive?"
I smiled. Probably sooner than he expected.
Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
Maintenance Systems (Personal Reality) 100:
This upgrades Your Robots so that instead of just sorting and fetching they now automatically upgrade with all tech production and repair skills you gain and now provide basic cleaning and maintenance services for anything in your Personal Reality that you know how to fix or repair. They are going to be practically invisible unless you look for them.
ozlykofficial.wixsite.com
