Preamble Chen
Chen focused on breathing. It was a task that took most of his concentration. Each breath sent spikes of pain through his torso. Probably broken ribs, but with all his other injuries he couldn't be sure how many were broken or how badly.
The ABB didn't intend for him to live through this. He knew that. Living in Brockton Bay you got a sense of the temperament of gang members. It was necessary being in the 'Asian' community. The very idea of an Asian gang was ridiculous, something that could only happen with a man like Lung forcing it to happen.
That was the thing about the city. Everyone focused on the parahuman side of the equation. To them the ABB was just Lung and Oni Lee, now supplemented by March and Bakuda. The Merchants were three capes of middling threat level. The Empire was its lieutenants and officers.
That's what made the news, that's what the tourists came to see. It was the flash, not the substance. You never heard anything about the unpowered members beyond a statistic, the arrest of a cape and so many unpowered members. They were overlooked, trivialized, and ignored.
But Lung wasn't the one who had snatched him off the street. Bakuda hadn't been the one to tie him to this chair. Oni Lee hadn't broken his ribs. March hadn't beat him until he could barely see. Just like Skidmark didn't sell drugs on street corners and Kaiser didn't break shop windows for protection money. The gangs made everyone's life worse, but people only looked at the people on top of the heap, not the pile of violence and selfishness holding them up.
Except the ABB, except Bakuda. She had thrown that into chaos. He could feel the bombs in his body. Her surgery had been even more careless than the previous butchery. At least three of the incisions felt infected. She hadn't been concerned with that. He wasn't expected to live long enough for that to become an issue, and if it did, would they care, once he had served his purpose?
That was the real horror of the situation. Not the bombs, but what the bombs represented. Brutal control, the stripping away of the last of the humanity, the personal dignity that a regular person in this city could have. Taking people and turning them into tools.
It brought his mind back. Twenty-two years ago. It felt like a different lifetime, and in a lot of ways it had been one. He had been a student. Almost finished with university and drowning in the dreams of youth, of the future. He remembered the protests. Hu Yaobang had died and it seemed like a turning point for the nation, a chance for a new future. And they were going to make it happen. A bunch of kids were going to change the world with sit-ins and hunger strikes.
Then the capes got involved. Progovernment, antigovernment, opportunists, independents, criminals, and heroes, and villains. Suddenly nobody knew what was happening, what anyone was fighting for.
Not until the aftermath. The C.U.I. rose with most of the officers and corruption of the old government folded into it. Then the Yàngbǎn. Then the crackdowns. It was almost nostalgic. This hadn't been the first time he'd been beaten while tied to a chair.
But he had gotten out, left his old identity behind and found a new life in America, like so many others. It wasn't the easiest life, but it was his, and his to share.
Or had been his to share. Mei and Jun were away from this mess. They were safe, even if that did mean leaving them with Mei's sister. Another week in that house and his wife would probably be ready to charge back to Brockton Bay, despite the bombs and attacks.
He lost focus on his breathing and found himself in a coughing fit as he struggled to regain control. Each cough sent spikes of pain radiating from his broken ribs, bad enough to bring tears to his eyes. The guard on duty barely looked at him. Whatever the man's orders he obviously hadn't been told to put a priority on Chen's wellbeing.
His mind drifted back through the years, to the chaos of the protests. Years later he had seen a report from the other Earth, or what had happened in a world with fewer capes. It had somehow been worse. Once again, the problem wasn't capes, it was people. People who made their choices, and other people who had to live with their consequences.
He found himself coughing again, and this time the guard did look concerned. It wasn't until he managed to get himself under control that he realized the reason for the man's discomfort.
There were sounds of conflict in the distance. Yells, crashes, and the occasional gunshot. Something was happening. Someone was coming.
The knowledge of that fact didn't give Chen any comfort. His eyes darted around the room, the various locations he remembered being trapped. The entire situation was designed by the ABB to draw out their enemy, and Chen was the bait.
Stupid idea. If there was any justice in the world Apeiron would have left him to his fate, but no. The man had tracked him down and was rushing right into a situation designed specifically to end him. When something had happened with the broadcast Chen had hoped that the new cape might have gone against the ABB's plans, but it seemed he wasn't that fortunate.
All he could do was watch the building tension of his guard as the sounds of conflict grew closer and closer. The man, well, the kid really. He couldn't have been more than 16 and seemed to be a rushed recruit, probably someone who grew up romanticizing the gangster life and was now neck deep and utterly unprepared for it. It was evident by the way he edged up to the door of the room while holding his cheap pistol in a bad grip.
Whatever dreams of ambush the boy had been holding died when the wall on the opposite side of the room exploded. The young gang member clumsily spun around fumbling with his gun, only for a pair of metal arms to burst through the wall behind him and seize the boy by the neck. There was a slight electrical sound and the boy collapsed like a sack of hammers.
A tall, robotic shape was just visible through the concrete dust before looking to the other side of the room, nodding, then continuing down a corridor. Chen struggled to turn his head far enough to see the other side. There, just visible in the gloom was the unmistakable shape of Apeiron.
The cape had revised his costume again, now sporting a hood on his long coat and gleaming lenses on his visor. The costume now had a striking, almost military cut, with sharp angles and heavy, intimidating boots. The armor plates that peppered the outfit were also updated, showing more elaborate designs and technical workings.
It was a powerful appearance, but the sight filled Chen with anything but relief. He tried to speak, to warn him of the traps, but he fell into another coughing fit.
Instead of entering the room the man lifted a hand to his visor and shook his head before reaching for one of the pouches dotting his costume.
"Sorry about this." He commented as he clenched the item in one hand before tossing a glowing mass into the air. Chen recognized the magic like effects he had used at the storage yard and tensed as the item flew towards him.
Then Apeiron was on the other side of the room reaching into another pouch.
"Again, sorry, this place is a mess. Need a bit more time."
The glowing mass struck him again, and then the cape was standing with a mass of cabling that had been torn from the wall. A bird of floating crystal plates hovered beside him as he reached for another of those items.
"Last time, I promise. Bakuda really went to town on this one."
And then the cape was leaning over him. The guard was gone and the room was a wreck. Thinking back, he remembered the end of the fight at the storage yard. The power that froze Khepri. Three times it had been used. Now the room was turned inside out and Apeiron was standing closer than anyone should have been able to without setting off a dozen triggers.
"Okay, I've dealt with everything out here, but you're still a mess; but I'm guessing you know that." Chen shifted, but the cape waved him down. "Don't try to talk. I know what your ribs look like." He sighed before continuing. "Okay, bad news? Bakuda really didn't want me pulling a repeat of Saturday on you. There are at least five bombs implanted, and nasty ones. Some kind of really painful spatial thing. The way the triggers are set up it would take five surgeons who were also experts in micro-electronics and signal dynamics to have a hope of getting those out."
Chen slumped in the chair to the extent his bonds would permit. It was what he had suspected, but hearing it gave the situation a sharp dose of reality. At least now Apeiron wouldn't risk himself any further, and could go help people he had a chance to save.
He raised his head and somehow got the sense the masked cape was smiling at him. "So, basically I'm overqualified. Good thing. I was afraid this was going to be difficult."
A blade spun in the man's hand. Glowing red, he recognized the same type of scalpel that had been used to save the other victim at the storage yard, only miles more advanced. Three more tools appeared just as quickly, then the cape went to work.
The blades were so fine that Chen couldn't feel the cuts. Trying to follow the work was beyond impossible. He seemed to be moving in three directions at once, somehow splitting his attention between the different surgical sites with no loss of focus or skill.
The work was fast, faster than Chen could have imagined. Even the device that had been implanted into his skull, beneath the bone, was removed with less effort than an ingrown hair. The cape set aside the collection of cruel, spindly devices that had held Chen's life hostage, flicked the blades through his bindings, then laid a glove on his shoulder.
"Sorry to put this off, but one of the triggers in those things was looking for healing effects."
The glowing lines spread from the glove to the rest of Chen's body. It was better than last time. That might have been the severity of his injuries, but the healing felt faster, more directed, and somehow energizing. As the cape removed his hand Chen sucked in a breath, relishing the lack of protest from his ribs, the ability to move his face without pain. Even his teeth had been fixed.
He shook himself from his astonishment at the miracle and climbed to his feet, looking up at the taller cape. "You shouldn't be here. It was a trap. Might still be a trap. You shouldn't have risked it, have wasted time on me."
For some reason that seemed to amuse the cape. "I can manage. The trap's dealt with, and for the other stuff I'm good at multitasking."
"You can't be that good." The tinker just shrugged.
"I have my drones searching the place, and we're close enough to the servers that I can hack into them from here. I'm getting all the ABB's little secrets. Is that good enough?"
"No." Chen replied. "There are other places, other people who need your help more than I do, with what they're planning."
There was a crash in the distance, presumably one of the robots Apeiron had mentioned, then a cry of warning. Apeiron was attacking the staging area. Cape sighted. Support needed.
The call was in Mandarin, so the cape didn't recognize it immediately. It seemed he had some kind of translation technology or other ability that let him put things together, because he started to look very uncomfortable.
Attacking. The present tense was used. And confirmed sightings, not an attack by robots or crystal drones. "What…" Chen asked.
"Very good at multitasking." The person in front of Chen quipped.
He was attacking the staging area, and attacking the headquarters. But he had used powers and skills iconic to Apeiron. But they wouldn't be calling for help if it wasn't serious at the other site.
"Which…" He looked up at the man's masked face. "Which one is real."
The man rubbed the back of his neck, and somehow looked graceful in his nervousness. "Maybe I'm not quite as real as the other guy."
Chen blinked. Of all the theories thrown around, was this that out of place? With every miracle accomplished, was being in two places at once a step too far?
"Hu." Chen laughed. "Sun Wukong." He muttered, remembering the story from his childhood.
The man seemed to be checking something in his head, then nodded. "Yeah, close enough. Probably closer in some areas."
He looked up at the cape, or copy of a cape, with a questioning glance. "What are you?"
"Temporary." The man saw Chen's expression and quickly amended his statement. "But I'm okay with it, really. Honestly I just want to help, do what I can while I'm here."
Chen gave the figure a long look, then nodded his head. "I understand."
"I figured you might." Then the cape let out a breath and poked at the horrific devices that had been plucked from Chen's body. "You end up pissing off bad people that badly, then you must have an idea about how to handle these things."
Chen gave the man a nod, he was surprised when he received a considerate look in return. "Okay, so, don't want this to happen again, so I figure this might be a decent and somewhat poetic way of throwing a wrench into things." The cape-copy's hands started flying, breaking the bombs down to base components in a flash. "Sorry it's not going to be my best work, but I'm splitting focus here."
The comment about his best work seemed hollow as his hands flew and danced in elaborate patterns. He barely looked at his work, instead glancing around the room, occasionally grabbing a scrap of metal or plastic from the traps he had ripped apart. Parts glowed white under his fingers and were molded like clay before being instantly cooled in an act of instantaneous forging. In his hands the assembly flowed together into a collaboration of unbelievable beauty and grace, a masterpiece taking shape before Chen's very eyes.
Less than a minute and a collection of bloody explosives had been transformed, reworked into a sword. A jian, straight bladed and beautifully adorned. The man placed the sword between them and it sank into the concrete floor like butter.
"What?" Chen started, but the man cut him off.
"Reworked the tech in the bombs into a new weapon. It was nasty stuff, spatial folds down to a two-dimensional plane, basically super compression and destruction, like being slowly drawn through a paper mill. Well, figured the effect would work for a blade, and I'm good at reworking tech, plus it's kind of poetic, so there you go."
Chen looked at the sword questioningly. "You're giving me a tinker sword? That you made in a minute?"
"Oh, no." The man said cheerfully.
Chen was both disappointed and a bit relieved. "Then…"
"It's actually four weapons." He continued. "Mechashifts to pistol, laser rifle, and spear. Also, it's magic."
"Magic?" Chen asked flatly.
There was a sigh that Chen recognized as a sign of long suffering. "Okay, the other guy is kind of in denial about this, trying to logic everything away, but that heavenly sage comment is actually closer to what we do than any dressed up thing about energy fields. I mean, I don't have to live with the idea that I'm suddenly a divine wizard, so I can accept it a lot easier. I can also look at someone in the eye and say 'yes, that is a magic sword, and I'm not going to pretend it's anything else."
Chen considered how he started this day, and his current situation. It seemed, whatever this man's existence was like, he had a decent handle on things. "How does it work?"
He could sense the gratitude from the man. "It's yours. Like, magically yours. You should be able to call to it."
Chen considered what the man meant. What did it mean to call to the weapon? Just reach out with his thoughts…
The sword vanished in a cloud of gold sparks and appeared in Chen's hand. He could feel the weapon in a way he never imagined. It was significant and personal. A marking on the blade in particular seemed to draw his eye.
What else did the man say? Rifle. The weapon shifted at a thought. Then a pistol. Another shift, this time to handgun. Then a third though brought a perfectly balanced spear to his hands, then back to the form of a sword.
It was breathtaking. A power like no other. He knew the quality, the strength. He would know it just from his connection to the weapon, even without the reputation of Apeiron's works.
"Why did you do this for me?" He asked.
The cape merely shrugged. "I could give you philosophy, but really I just thought you could use it to do some good. It's not really a big commitment. For me, I mean. We've been pretty conservative about handing out stuff since the bank attack. As long as you're not going to pull an Aegislash with this I think we're good."
Chen's lips quirked down at the mention of what happened to the leader of the Wards, but he nodded. He didn't understand Apeiron's motives, but he knew what it was to have trust placed in you.
The cape-copy seemed to be considering something. "One second, if we're going this far you probably need some armor as well."
Chen nodded numbly. He was going to say something about how they could make armor with what was on hand, but that was before he had been given a folding space sword made from garbage and tinker bombs.
The man ignored the collection of metal and plastic scattered around the room, instead hunting until he found a scrap of fabric, the remains of some chair padding. Corse, uncomfortable, and pretty much falling apart.
Then the cape flicked the fabric in his hand, causing it to extend to a beautifully embroidered and tailored Tang suit. A complete suit, with trousers and shoes. It looked like it was made out of silk rather than the mess of fabric that had been put into it and nearly glowed in its perfection.
The cape saw Chen's face and shrugged. "I can make clothing pretty fast." He looked back at the garment in his hands. "Sorry, this didn't come out right. It's kind of random sometimes."
Chen nearly cried as the object of perfection was sundered in front of his eyes. Then his heart soared as it was reformed, only this time with an extra feature, something Chen couldn't place beyond the red sheen that was carried by some of the threads.
"There we go." He said, handing the outfit to Chen. "It's only a one star, but it should help. Also bulletproof, which is nice."
The cape turned his back and Chen took the hint. He was in too far now. "One star?" He asked, stripping out of his sweat and blood-stained coveralls. Compared to them the clothing the tinker had conjured was like a dream.
"Physically enhancing clothing. Something I just figured out. Takes someone to peak human performance." The explanation was unnecessary. As soon as Chen slipped into the suit he felt the surge of power and energy. It was like when the tinker healed him, but taken to an entire new magnitude. He turned to find the man handing him a white scarf.
"Concealment. Usually use capes, but this seemed more your style." The white scarf felt like someone had woven a cloud into physical form, and complimented the golden silk of the suit beautifully. It wasn't often Chen would admit to being overwhelmed, but he was cascading towards that state now.
"What do you want?" He asked. "For this?" It was power, handed out freely, and he feared what the price could be. Apeiron seemed like a good man, but he was also a complicated man. That could lead to complicated conditions.
"Okay, simple demand." The cape stated while looking down at him. "Stay safe."
Chen blinked. "That's it?"
He was answered with a shrug. "We really don't want you to die. You seem decent, this isn't a huge expenditure, and it will probably keep you safe, so yeah, that's the price." The man paused. "Though it would be good to know you got to see your wife and daughter again, so I'll add a trip out of the city to the conditions."
Chen smiled at that. A visit to in-laws. Well, there were worse things that could be demanded in exchange for power like this. He would need to have a talk with Mei anyway.
"I think I can agree to…" Chen stopped talking as the man tensed and raised a hand.
"I have to go." He said in a dead voice.
"What?" Chen asked over a crashing sound in the distance.
"Emergency. I need to go. Chen, I can't secure this place, I'm leaving it to you. Please, do what you can for the people here." The man flinched and looked to the side, muttering "Fuck." Under his breath.
"I will. I promise." He assured the distraught cape.
"Fuck, fuck. Okay, thank you Chen. Last thing. I have no idea if this will work. I barely understand it, and have literally just gotten the slightest insight that suggests it might, but here goes."
Chen tensed as the man put a hand on his shoulder and looked down at him. "Chen, there's this principle I've been trying to understand, this effect, but it's kind of a personal expression. I think I was able to understand it because… reflection. It's through reflection that we achieve clarity. Through that we can become a paragon of progress and determination, to rise above challenges. Infinite in perseverance and unbound by doubt."
A gray light began surrounding the cape, flowing into Chen in a surge of energy beyond anything he had imagined. The crashing grew louder and he recognized it as the sound the robot had made when it burst through the wall at the start of this insanity.
"Chen," The man spoke uncertainty. "I release your soul, and by my will commend thee."
There was a flash of gray light, and the wall behind the man burst apart. The robot opened its armor compartment and practically flowed over the cape, encompassing him. Five crystal hawks swooped in and took formation around the armored man as he tensed, thrusters across his armor charging with the sound of capacitors.
"Good luck." The man offered the words in a metallic voice before launching straight up, punching through the concrete ceiling, and by the sound of it several more after that. The crystal hawks trailed after him, leaving Chen standing in a cloud of concrete dust, staring up as a clear section of sky through the exit Apeiron's copy had torn through the ABB headquarters.
He didn't say anything. He felt the power that had been granted him, both from the items bestowed and the ritual that had been performed. He had power now. He had responsibility. Apeiron was dealing with other problems and had trusted this one to Chen.
He would make sure that trust was well placed.
41 Drag Out
When I set off towards my target I moved like I never had before. The energy from life fibers was not something that could be explained with any conventional set of physical laws. Over short distances I was basically teleporting. Not actually, but effectively for all purposes, including my ability to affect the world around me. When it came to attacking or other complex actions I was faster, but not the hypersonic blur I could be when focused on point-to-point movement.
When it came to covering large sections of ground it was a different matter. I could build up speed, but the bursts were once again focused on point-to-point movement. As such I dashed across rooftops at a speed Velocity would have been envious of, but couldn't just appear at my destination in a flickering blur.
That was probably for the best considering my motoroid and drones were still limited by mostly conventional physics, or as conventional as could be expected from machines that were constantly altering the laws of mass, velocity, and general conservation of energy. I could easily outstrip even their top speed, but that was based on thrust to weight ratios and what Fleet could manage with the motoroid's mass effect core.
To be fair that was quite a bit, but still limited him to mostly Newtonian reactions.
As such I was roof running through an exploding warzone as my motoroid and drones trailed behind me at their best speed. The prospect of outrunning them wasn't even entertained. I had a decent chance of catching the ABB leadership off guard, but I had also done that earlier, and the cavalcade of technicolor destruction around me was the result of that particular victory.
This section of the Docks was getting devastated. There was just no way to mince words about it. ABB territory was being locked down with persistent effects that would prevent any response that didn't come from the air. Repeated strikes were being made against areas of Empire and Merchant control, and I could only guess how bad the response would be.
No, wait. Didn't need to guess. Squealer's party barge had been deployed from somewhere near Archer's Bridge and was currently barreling towards the groups of ABB conscripts unfortunate enough to be deployed into Merchant turf. Meanwhile the Empire response was harder to place precisely, but the clear sight of Crusader going full ghost legion indicated they were taking this very seriously. When the Protectorate finally managed to deploy their capes, they were going to be greeted with a very target rich environment.
I could only hope they wouldn't take the stance of letting the gangs fight it out while mounting a token mitigation effort. That may have covered them in the past, but March didn't play by the old rules. Holding tactics weren't viable anymore.
It was lucky that I had managed to contain most of the worst combinations of effects. Thanks to that there wouldn't be seeds of crystal growths spread over half the city by whirlwinds, or waves of reactive material consuming entire streets. The layering of the explosions seemed designed to erode whatever limiters Bakuda had been working under and push them to a new level of terrible. That said, from an outside perspective I doubted my actions would have been apparent to anyone beyond March and Bakuda. To everyone else it probably looked like I was randomly running around starting random dustups with ABB troops.
It was another reminder of just how dangerous this particular combination was and how badly they had been underestimated. The collaboration of just three capes could have wiped out the entire city with minimal effort. And now it seemed that whatever restraint had stayed their hand was being cast to the wind for the opportunity to take me out.
That reminded me of my earlier exchange with the gang's capes. I had needed to take a hard line, just because of the obvious trap contained in any other option. I was a little concerned that it looked like I was inviting this chaos, or at least indifferent to it. That was probably why they made the decision to release the video. I imagine that an all-out fight between Apeiron and the ABB would draw a very different response than an ABB bombing spree. I didn't know exactly how the deployment would shift, but just a delay of a few minutes would make a world of difference for someone like March.
I could already see the impact. Thankfully, due to my initial strikes, there weren't cells of ABB on the Protectorate's doorstep tying up response forces, but it was still a nightmare to move through this part of the city. My rooftop runs were just barely possible, and I was mostly able to ignore mitigating factors like a certain building being on fire, melting, or torn into pieces that were now floating in a gravity field of some sort. More conventional hero forces would be hard pressed to find a way to navigate around this mess.
I had to remember that they also didn't have my scanning tech and coordination systems. Some of the blasts had been Bakuda's version of micro-emp bombs that would have knocked out all active electrical systems and communications. With March directing that effect, anyone who could give a clear picture of the fight was cut off, leaving those responding to the ABB working with limited information mostly consisting of what had been contained in our recent broadcast exchange.
It was something I could help with. There were so many things I could help with, but I was limited in how I could act. The mess of misconceptions and misinformation that had built up around my actions had gotten markedly worse with every exchange, at least as far as the local office was concerned. The mess of assumed abilities and influences was infuriating, particularly when I somehow ended up with the Forge giving me rough equivalents to what they initially assumed my powers were. At this point what was I supposed to say about my capacity for master influence, shaker powers, or the creation of memetic objects?
It was a situation where every bone in my body wanted nothing more but to hide away from the entire situation until it blew over or I found a way to separate myself from it. That was a bad idea when this mess started and it was a terrible idea now. March was relying on a disorganized response, or at least I hoped she was. You never knew with powerful thinkers, and it was one of the most frustrating parts of dealing with them. Still, that didn't change the fact that not just the Protectorate and PRT but every civilian and even military relief force had no idea what they were diving into. That was a problem I could deal with.
Assembling the database was trivial. I found a hosting option and set about assembling the interface and data structures. Once that was done I sidestepped any policies that might limit PRT interactions with information I provided by simply making the information public.
A post to PHO. Links sent to every local media company. Comments on every news story about the current crisis. A direct message to Weld. And, just to show I wasn't playing favorites, an email to the Protectorate tip line.
The odds of them getting to it before someone made them aware of the information from the other sites was minimal, but the point was it was still sent to them, letting me avoid any accusations of working around them in a crisis. The link provided a full map of the state of the conflict zone, clinical assessments of active bomb effects, the deployment of active conscripts, the locations of disabled conscripts, and currently safe routes of travel.
The information was drawn from my sensor sweeps of the area and cut down to key points and relevant data. How much people would trust it was yet to be seen, but enough images were provided that there was a decent chance of it being taken seriously. At the very least it might get some much-needed support for civilians trapped in high risks areas. And hopefully this would throw off March enough to let me avoid whatever she was planning for me.
The Vehicles constellation passed by as I considered that particular unpleasant fact. I was essentially invincible, and yet I had an enemy force planning to kill me. My durability was well documented from my previous encounters and had only improved from there. That was something I had to assume March was taking into account. She had timed her cut-off of the trace to a level that assumed improvement from my encounter with Dragon, and that was just two days ago. I had gotten stronger, but she had built her plans with the assumption that I had gotten stronger.
And, with all that, she still had a plan to kill me. Well, kill me, trap me, critically injure me, or remove me from the situation in some way. The most worrying thing was I still had no idea precisely what she was planning. The three most likely possibilities were her own striker power, a specialized bomb from Bakuda, or a new surprise from Leet.
I think I could probably dismiss the possibility of Leet's involvement. I hadn't seen any sign of his tech since this mess started. There was evidence of his influence, but even the stealth generators being used to obscure the ABB's underground headquarters had the signs of Bakuda's workmanship, not Leet's. Thinking about it I really didn't know what the details of that pair's relationship with the ABB was. The initial night had the feel of mercenary work, probably with a little more personal investment based on Leet's rantings. They responded quickly to my attack on the financial center, but still as their own unit. They were definitely close to the ABB, but not full members, and seemingly not involved in this plot.
Bakuda was by far the most likely source of whatever device they were relying on to take me out. I was significantly less vulnerable to her exotic offerings than I had been on Saturday, but there were still a few that could slip by my defenses. Time and space were hard to defend against, but fortunately also hard to deploy. Bakuda's time bombs might effectively last forever, but they took a critical moment to set in, and there was more than enough time to escape. Spatial bombs were exceedingly powerful and destructive, but also difficult to make and highly limited in their range and effect. She basically needed me right on top of one for it to affect me, and I didn't intend to give her that chance.
Oni Lee could be a terrifying delivery mechanism for bombs, but every automated system I had was operating on the principle of shooting him on sight. He also had to actually get me in a blast without being dusted himself, and also be using something that I couldn't avoid or tank.
Finally, there was March. Her striker ability was probably the most dangerous thing the ABB could bring against me. When it came to even the worst of Bakuda's bombs I could generally resist, evade, or counter them to some extent. March's omni-dimensional explosion wasn't something that could be blocked or countered. Getting caught in it would be devastating, and getting hit by her striker effect would be a death sentence.
It was a good thing I had no intention of ever allowing either situation to come to pass. March needed proximity, either to her attack or to an effect she had generated. Even basic levels of situational awareness would be enough to make sure I didn't literally stumble on top of her, and she had the same lethal measures committed to any sighting of her that Oni Lee did.
That was a fact I had forced myself to accept. I was going into this with lethal intent. I didn't know what the official response would be if my actions resulted in the deaths of ABB capes. Logically you could point to the destruction and death they had wrought and make a simple claim about necessity, but unfortunately the law didn't work that way, not for capes. There was still no kill order. I could probably fight the issue, leverage public opinion, but I would be working against an entrenched power structure with extensive media connections. I was still willing to go through with this, for the necessity of the immediate situation and the world as a whole, but I felt like I was inviting some kind of nightmarish reprisal from the Protectorate for even daring to consider this action without their consent.
I shook my head as I closed towards my destination. I was heading towards the most likely location based on the intercepted text messages, a shipping yard north of the Boardwalk. Not an active one, but one of the few that stayed in limited operation.
The riot that created the Boat Graveyard hadn't completely killed Brockton's shipping industry, but it might as well have. The docks further north were industrial docks. They were one of those ports connected to the arteries of rail freight running across the country. Passenger trains may have died out but rail lines kept shipping goods. Unload a ship on the west coast, haul across the country and load on up the east coast, or vice versa. Lower cost than taking a ship the long way around, and basically an entire industry facilitating world trade that nobody bothered to notice.
Then you had Leviathan hitting port cities and sinking Kyushu. Warlords in Africa and South America. The C.U.I. locking down China, and every surrounding nation on guard against them. Trade dried up, and you didn't need the same number of ports to deal with the flow. Some of them dropped off, and Brockton happened to be one of the hardest hit.
Before the recession this container yard would have been a novelty. Holding some minor overflow from the main docks and maybe seeing the occasional small container ship serving the city itself instead of its shipping industry. In the wake of the Lord's Port closure, it was one of the few docks still active. And really, it wasn't surprising to find the ABB had influence there, given what they brought into the city.
In the old days the dockworker's union would probably have made that difficult, but with the state of the shipping industry I'm fairly certain they were satisfied to show up, manage the cargo, and leave without asking questions. If the gang was able to buy off any official inspections then a section of the city's workforce that was on its last legs wasn't about to start a moral crusade. Just another link in the chain of compromise that had allowed the gang situation to reach this level.
I opened my mind to my network as I approached. Plans and blueprints were of limited use in an area that was nothing but a mess of shipping containers. I could get a rough idea of the arrangement from overhead views, but it would be a mess for long range scanners to punch through, and I certainly wasn't going to personally dive into a maze of the ABB's own construction. Not when any container could hold a surprise from Bakuda shielded from my scanners.
Through the link I also received updates from my duplicates. Because of the neural connection and my enhanced processing speed I was able to get a more detailed perspective through compressed images and information.
"Made it through to the main lab." The first duplicate reported, including a heavy sense of frustration accompanied by details of the absolute trial he had endured bypassing layers of boobytraps and Bakuda's new penchant for defensive explosions. Eventually he had managed to push through the mess of defenses into the heart of the base. Unfortunately, not in time to secure either cape.
"There's some kind of bolt hole, probably leading to the sewers. Sealed with a time stop field. I think it was set right before I got here. Most of the equipment in the lab was trashed, but one piece looks like Leet's work." I quickly reviewed the scans of the broken trapezoidal archway still faintly glowing with a green light. "From the components it might be a teleporter. Be careful out there. Either Bakuda, March, or both could be waiting for you."
The duplicate's report also included an absolute onslaught of security protocols being managed by the combined processing of his implant, omni-tool, armor, and drones. "Bakuda is trying to blow the lab. I'm holding her back, but this is her wheelhouse. I'm into the systems they tried to wipe, and I think I can pull data on the dead man's switch before she can counter my influence."
I shuddered at just a hint of the weight of code the duplicate was managing. The fact that he was fully willing to go to the wire on this and run to the end of his existence was once again concerning, but I couldn't fault him. Not if it brought us any closer to countering that damned cypher.
"Good luck." I transmitted.
"From me as well." The second duplicate echoed, and followed it with a report covering his assault on the second ABB site and Chen's status. The particular mess of explosives that had been set up may be possibly the worst trap Bakuda had managed so far. My duplicate had mercifully managed to save him, but it had been a harrowing experience involving more invasive surgery than I would have ever considered.
After my review of those details, I was at least feeling slightly better about the prospect of my duplicates operating on me in the future. Even actual brain surgery to switch out my implant wouldn't be worse than that, and would happen in much better conditions.
"Bakuda's also trying to pull a detonation trigger for this place. Was actually trying to pull it on Chen from the moment I found him. It's easier to block here, but still not that easy. I'm scouring the place for information, but most of it is hardcopy. Whoever ran their books was old school. This is going to take a while."
"Got it." I acknowledged. "I'm heading in now. Screening force first. I'll try to flush them out, or trigger any countermeasures early."
Both Duplicates transmitted their encouragement and then shifted back to their own tasks. Ideally I would hold back on this assault until I could send one or both of my duplicates first, but I had no idea how long my nebulous element of surprise would remain an advantage. I was actually betting a lot on this move. The city was still burning behind me. Well, burning and doing other things involving exotic and destructive applications of high energy physics. The point was this endeavor was effectively trading my efforts of damage control for the chance at a decapitation strike.
My longer-range scanners were able to confirm activity within the container yard. That alone would be telling enough, given the level of business places like that saw basically never called for any shifts past the normal workday. From an elevated position it was even clearer. All the workers were Asian, and all obviously dedicated gang members. I don't think there were more than a handful of people who looked like conscripts.
As I was considering my approach the Knowledge constellation made a connection to the final mote from the same cluster that had given me memory manipulation, giant robot construction, and horrific biological experiments. The final mote of that strange cluster gave me… more giant robots.
Bigs.
I could now make a specific class of giant robot that was referred to as a Big. Setting aside the name and the fact that this group of powers already covered the mechanics of hundred foot tall 'Megadeus' class robots, the fact that there was a second level to this construction was surprising.
It was also terrifying.
Bigs… well, they weren't normal giant robots. Considering what I could currently build in terms of mecha it would have to be something really unusual to stand out against the extradimensional turbines, the molecular destruction lightsabers the size of a three-story building and the reactors that fundamentally altered all principles of warfare. Bigs were somehow up to the task.
A Big, it wasn't just a robot. Not even 'just' a building sized robot armed with enough firepower to outshine a WW2 dreadnaught. It was something more. If it sounded like I was talking in circles that's because I kind of was. My previous giant robot knowledge from this power had been referred to as Megadei. Bigs were the robots that lived up to that name.
The machine spirits of my Laboratorium had a philosophy regarding the theology of technology. The idea that programs and algorithms weren't just code. They had a spiritual presence. Based on what I saw in their operation and the expanded understanding from my demigod powers there may have been some truth to that. An aspect of the nature of technology that extended slightly beyond pure physical principles.
With Bigs you basically took that idea and threw the word 'slightly' out the window, replacing it with 'excessively' or in extreme cases 'entirely'. Bigs were god machines. They were primordial forces bound to icons of technology and driven towards tasks beyond the scope of mortal ability and understanding. It was a kind of technology I was terrified to even touch, something where even the idea of its existence could have massive implications.
This was power on a scale extending to the limits of the universe, something that a person would need profound character to wield, to have any hope of directing such a creation. A dominus or unrivaled focus and determination. And that was just what was needed to operate the machine.
I, I could build it. I could churn out god machines with the casualness and irreverence of any creation of the Forge. It felt almost sacrilegious to be able to handle these forces in such a blatant manner. Just the fact that this power was hitting me on a level that approached my reaction to the previous monster-maker power, it was telling how profound, dangerous, and humbling this was.
I shook my head and put the production of physical gods out of my mind. I had an attack to plan, and the first few seconds would make or break this operation. Fleet and Survey fed me data and suggestions and responded to my instructions perfectly. It was simple. Kick the anthill and see what came out, hopefully without getting swarmed.
The possible presence of Oni Lee turned that metaphor into a much more literal concern.
At the final approach my motoroid launched into a near vertical climb, hauling my drones behind it. They were linked by kinetic fields and the motoroid's mass effect core could sustain them beyond the range of even my upgraded omni-tool. The robot's ascent took them high above the yard, pushing the absolute limit of effective range of weapons and support systems.
At the same time leaving it well beyond the reach of anything short of surface to air missiles.
The vantage also gave me an excellent view of all activity in the yard. I instantly memorized the specific layout, directed specific analysis of key aspects, and moved in for my approach. This was the tricky part, and so much of the plan hinged on it. If I had a clear target, if Oni Lee or Lung were milling around in the open then this would be a simple matter of directing a surprise attack. If I knew what I was after, and if the place wasn't crammed with Bakuda's new jamming technology, I could have gone in quiet and taken out my target. If the place wasn't such a complex labyrinth of probably trapped storage containers I could have just gassed the place and called it a day.
Well, that last option would actually have pushed me to something of a limit. I had an incredible arsenal of non-lethal munitions, but there were limits on my loadout, and I wasn't quite prepared for mass deployment against a complex structure spread over multiple blocks of area. I might have been able to get everyone, but that would be in the hope that nothing would be triggered, deployed, or have some desperation measure tripped before the gas took effect.
No, I needed to get the capes. That meant I needed to draw attention and monitor response. Fortunately, I was very good at both drawing attention and monitoring responses.
The highest point in the area was a cargo crane that towered over the yard. My motoroid and drones had gotten into position without being noticed partially by using it to cover a portion of their ascent and partially because of a lack of lookouts monitoring the sky, or at least the sky directly above the facility. They had managed their entire climb without alerting any sentries, something I was sure of from both monitoring their behavior and electronic communication.
When I launched from a nearby rooftop in a pulse of life fiber energy and appeared atop the raised arm of the crane, a slam of echoing metal caused everyone in the container yard to look up.
What they saw, framed by the setting sun as it sank lower over the city, was my glowing form, perfectly balanced on the very end of the crane arm, cloak billowing in both the actual wind present at this height and Garment's efforts to support me. In this case the divine boots assured my footing and stability, meaning Garment was free to instead go for the most dramatic movements she could manage from a cloak she personally created. Between her assistance and my new posture powers I stood as an imposing silhouette, gaped at by every member of the ABB currently in the yard.
There was what must have been a terrible moment for the men present. Some looked to their companions for assurance, some mouthed profanities, and uncertainty and panic spread through them like a ripple. A few reached for cell phones, sending desperate requests for instructions or placing calls that mostly went unanswered. It was a situation where I didn't even need Comm Chatter. Between my omni-tool and motoroid everything was perfectly monitored and analyzed. A giant cloud of electronic communication flowed into my sensors as everyone attempted to figure out what you were supposed to do when the end boss decides to show up at your doorstep.
Sadly, it wasn't enough to expose the location of the ABB's powered members. The replies were either absent, automated, or from other gang officers. The general thrust of the instructions could be summed up with one word.
Fight.
Even with the most hardened veterans of the ABB present I could see their apprehension as their orders were processed. I wasn't sure how much they knew about the master plan being set out for them, or what it would take to put me down. I wasn't sure how widely my reputation had spread, or what the average unpowered thug thought about having to face me directly. What I did know is I was wearing supernaturally intimidating clothing posed perfectly and glaring down at them in derision and anticipation.
To say the effect was profound would be an understatement. Without the threat of death hanging over them I think half of the forces would have deserted on the spot. Seconds dragged out as more messages were exchanged. If they were hoping for some brilliant coordination strategy from March it didn't come. She either didn't care about this particular incident or was exercising extreme caution in terms of potential electronic exposure.
One of the braver gang members pulled out a steel tube with a firing assembly. I could recognize the signs of a jury-rigged rocket launcher. Similar equipment was common amongst the conscripts. Adaptation of existing materials, rather than total fabrication of the technology from scratch. Bakuda had obviously been working for volume rather than polish, but that didn't make her creations any less dangerous. Especially not when she had been able to field such an excessive quantity of explosives.
I shifted my gaze directly at him. Over a hundred yards away and partially behind cover and his movements drew immediate response. I could see the hesitation gripping him. Really it was gripping everyone here. Nobody wanted to do this, but they had no more choice than the poor conscripts out in the city. He sighted down the shaking barrel and I could practically see the deliberation behind his eyes. Benefits of the new visor, I had amplified vision without cutting off any part of my field of view. Finally, the gang member steeled himself and pulled the trigger.
There was a burst of exhaust from the back of the launcher as a rocket shot towards me. It must have been three orders of magnitude more advanced than the device that fired it, and clearly intended to do some serious damage. The sight of the attack was enough to bring more weapons to bear and the flares from dozens of launches began lighting up my sensors.
Then it began to rain fire.
I had my motoroid on overwatch. Floating high above the yard and guided by Fleet it had watched the entire exchange. Then it acted. Decisively. Twin miniaturized multilaser turrets sprang to life and began sending forth a torrent of high power lasbolts. Blue-white streaks of light, more from the ionization of the air than the beam itself, rained down on the ABB force. The deafening cracks of what was basically the same effect that produced a thunderclap echoed around the container yard.
The results were devastating. Missiles were picked out of the air, some detonating in exotic effects and some just slagged under the power of the multilaser beams. Precision shots, made possible only with masterfully crafted weaponry and the precise targeting of an A.I., began closing on the gang members. Over extended weapons were shot out of hands, slagging or bursting apart and leaving their wielder cradling injuries. Whatever bravado had kept the forces in the open vanished as they found themselves under a perpetual barrage of heavy laser fire.
Panic spread through the assembled gang members like wildfire. Fleet was, thankfully, attempting to maintain reduced lethality against the unpowered members of the ABB. I was a little less merciful when it came to dealing with people who had signed on with the group rather than been kidnaped and held hostage as a slave soldier. I mean, I got the dynamics in this city were terrible and some of the rank and file probably didn't have much hope of avoiding a life like this, but I had also seen my second duplicate's report on what he had found in that ABB base. The businesses they were involved in, and specifically the nature of what had been smuggled in using containers and sites like this… well, it put me in a mindset where non-crippling injuries were acceptable.
ABB soldiers scrambled for cover as high power lasbolts sent plumes of vaporized cement into the air from every near miss. It wasn't all show. Survey was monitoring everything, trying to piece together any hints of a larger plan or command structure. I reviewed her data as the Forge made a connection to the Magic constellation.
It was a mid-sized mote called That Undefinable Thing. The Undefinable Thing was a soul. It was a power centered around the use and manipulation of souls. Somehow it was actually creepier than the Belmont Alchemy power while also being more cavalier about its subject matter.
In addition to being able to 'manipulate' souls I could make physical tools and containers for their use. I could also use them as raw materials for the production of certain powerful items that would be incredibly useful with the only downside being the required 'raw materials' in question.
Exspheres were a type of crystal that acted as a universal power booster. It unlocked a person's full potential, then multiplied that effect by the number of previous wielders the crystal had had. It was that 'wielders' part where the horrible stuff started. If a person using an exsphere lost control, the crystal would essentially eat their soul and turn them into a monster. That's where that multiplier came from. You got a boost based on the number of people who had either used the crystal until their death or been eaten by it.
There was a solution to the whole 'soul consuming monster transformation' problem. The power also covered the production of an item called a key crest. It acted as a power regulator, not just for the exspheres but for any potentially harmful energy source. It automatically throttled the power to make sure only beneficial effects would be transferred. And it also used souls as raw materials.
So, for the full potential of this power you needed one soul to make an exsphere, one to make a key crest, and then however many you were willing to sacrifice in order to max out your power. Hell, if you were willing to go completely insane with shoving souls into an exsphere you could level the thing up to a Cruxis Crystal. At that point you would be evolving past any limit of humanity to a borderline celestial being, and probably severely damaging your mind in the process.
The entire thing was monstrous on a level that was mind boggling. Even setting aside the revelation that was full confirmation of the existence of souls, the potential for misuse of this power was staggering.
There was at least one aspect of the power that wasn't innately horrifying. That Undefinable Thing also covered how to use souls as a power source. That meant running magic, machinery, or living bodies off of the energy of a soul. While that could be just as monstrous as it sounded, it didn't need to be. The soul acting as the power source could be your own. Running something on the power of your soul extended your awareness to it in a way that was completely inherent. It basically became part of your body, fully understood and innately controlled.
The mechanics of soul power were complex. A soul was infinite, but it could be diminished or grown. No amount of draining could actually wipe out a soul, but its output, the light of the soul, would diminish. Or it could be cultivated. The entire thing was very close to what I'd been experiencing from my Aura, almost to the point of overlap. There was some potential there, but not enough to warrant any more distraction from this fight.
I put aside that power and the included weapon and armor that had arrived in my workshop and signaled my drones. At my direction they broke formation and dove towards the container yard. Five streamlined crystalline hawks trailing storm clouds plummeted towards the already panicked forces. The effect when they struck was devastation on a whole new level. Thunder echoed between rows of containers as fields of sparks spread from their points of impacts.
As the gang members shifted into even higher levels of panic I shifted my attention to the data feeds. With the direct link and sensors of the drones I could start punching through Bakuda's stealth technology. Regrettably it confirmed my fears regarding the level of traps and hidden mines that had been prepared for me. Or I assumed they were for me, as that level of high energy ordinance was overkill for anyone else. If she was on site and running defensive explosions this would have been a very different encounter.
Instead, she was still trying to keep my first duplicate out of her destroyed files. That was something she probably never imagined being an issue. The servers in the lab had been horribly destroyed, wrecked beyond any reasonable hope of recovery. The thing was, my recovery skills went far beyond what was reasonable. I could literally fix anything, and so could my duplicates. Of course, splitting focus between holding off Bakuda's increasingly aggressive attempts to detonate the workshop and microcircuitry repair and database recovery was a trial.
What had already been pulled from the restored databases was concerning. There was data from Leet's work, as expected. It also contained analysis of various capes, including detailed scans of their powers. I was willing to bet that every time someone from the Protectorate or Wards had a run in with the ABB after Bakuda had joined every action they took had been recorded and analyzed. In her build up she had managed to turn the city's holding pattern into a vector for expanding her tinker understanding, and now everyone was paying the price. That was worrying, but had nothing on the scraps of information my duplicate was pulling in his search for her encryption protocols.
Bakuda had data from the Protectorate. I was only seeing the pieces of it that my duplicate was encountering, but it was clear from the content and formatting that this was internal and confidential Protectorate information. Judging by the sheer number of fragments that were being restored, the ABB had managed to access what had to be a tremendous amount of data.
Everything pointed to the use of Bakuda's scanning bombs. I had thought they were deployed in response to my actions, but if she had them available during the attack on the Rig she would have been able to seize entire databases, deconstruct technology down to highly detailed blueprints, and leave the affected equipment in such a devastated state that nobody would suspect it had been compromised.
There were snips of Armsmaster's records in the servers, which possibly explained some of the advancements I had seen in Bakuda's missile tech since Saturday. Going from grenades and mortars with the occasional rocket to tracking micro-missiles was a massive step, and not something easily accomplished. Bakuda's specialty seemed to be able to cover launch and delivery mechanisms to some extent, but not to a level that allowed this kind of precision. Not until she had been able to plunder Armsmaster's technology.
The tech would have been bad enough, but there were other scraps of information that appeared to have been plundered during the assault on the Rig. Security protocols, communication encryptions, response plans, and threat assessments. Information that would have been dangerous in the hands of a layman and absolutely devastating when given to a powerful thinker. Suddenly March's coordination of ABB forces against the rest of the city made a lot more sense.
It was fascinating information, but both me and my duplicate knew that wasn't what was important. The lab was full of fascinating data and technology. Prototypes of bombs, assembly equipment, plans, blueprints, and experimental technology. We could have spent a week picking through everything Bakuda had assembled and amassed, but she wasn't about to give us the opportunity. My duplicate was trying to rebuild a database while trying to stop a tinker who specialized in bombs from detonating her bombs.
It was a losing battle. There was really no other possibility. He was working inside the heart of her operation and fighting against every countermeasure she had been able to assemble within the core of her specialization. He was able to stall her, but couldn't hold out forever.
The only question was if he would be able to secure the dead man's switch before she was able to blow the lab.
Both myself and the second duplicate networked with him, providing what support we could while also dealing with our own concerns. My own actions involved monitoring the container yard and directing the drones in their search and pursuit. The first duplicate lest an open line as he worked frantically to repair and decode Bakuda's computer core, shifting most of the countermeasure work to me and the second duplicate. We split the jamming and interference tasks between us as slowly the information on the dead man's switch started to come together.
It was a thing of beauty, a masterpiece of communications technology, fail-safes, exotic physics, and staggeringly advanced mathematical principles. The portion of the code that served as the key, the source for the effect, was orders of magnitude more complex that what was in play in the field. I was only seeing bits and pieces of it, chunks of a coding structure that dwarfed any communications protocol I had ever seen.
My first duplicate worked like lightning, repairing and analyzing data with all the speed our skill and power would allow. Meanwhile I combined my efforts with the second duplicate as we tried to hold back Bakuda's redoubled attempts to blow the lab. I split focus between my assault on the ABB and the digital battleground as we scrambled to counter every one of Bakuda's numerous and creative detonation triggers.
We lost ground against her efforts. Bit by bit signals slipped through, diverting our attention to attempt to electronically disarm the triggered device. While working to counter that detonation three more signals would slip past. All the while my first duplicate scrambled to make sense of the trove of coding he had been granted access to.
I watched as the situation slipped away from us. A bomb triggered by an ultra-low frequency transmission went unnoticed until it hit a critical point. The device was countered, but not before it linked with a dozen others, setting them to explode in a chain reaction. We fought, but it wasn't nearly enough. Every device we countered set three more to detonate, all while my first duplicate worked, blind to the devastation cascading around him.
Then the blasts started. Powerful, fixed explosions designed to completely remove the building from the face of the planet. Just before the bombs consumed him there was a final compressed transmission from my first duplicate, along with a sense of satisfaction.
Then he was gone, and so was nearly a block of abandoned industrial real estate. I could see the flash of the explosion from my elevated position, followed by the thunderous rumble as the shockwave caught up. All the treasures contained within were lost, all except what had been salvaged by the duplicate who sacrificed himself, the greatest of which was contained within his final transmission.
What he had found was less than I hoped but more than I expected. It was a breakdown of a tiny section of the code. Not enough to block it, subvert it, or bypass it. The threat of Bakuda's death still loomed, but not to the extent it previously had. Because the analysis contained a tiny but essential piece of the signal structure.
The reason the dead man's switch was so impossible was the staggering number of interlinked effects used to convey it. Multiple communication methods for every aspect, making it almost impossible to understand. Until now. My duplicate had managed to parse out a single aspect of the transmission. The mechanism used for communication with the remote bombs. Bakuda's ability to detonate them required return communication. While I couldn't crack the encryption of that communication I now had enough understanding of the effects used to detect it.
I could track Bakuda's bombs. Well, not all of them, but I could track the bombs she implanted in her conscripts. Which meant I could track every conscripted member of the ABB. It was a petty victory, but still held significance. Without being able to freely deploy her forces Bakuda would effectively be shut down. She could still threaten them, but there was a difference between hostage taking and slave soldiers.
Already my scanners were propagating a map of the assembled ABB forces. Bakuda's decision to implant every member of her forces would be her undoing. It didn't matter if they were conscript or career ABB, I had their location.
So, what did I do with it? I considered my next step as drones pursued ABB through rows containers and the Alchemy constellation passed by in the Celestial Forge. I was down one duplicate and currently had no forces active in the city. This was the kind of data that would allow the heroes to mount an effective response, but I couldn't guarantee they would trust me to act on it. Releasing it publicly like I did with my earlier scan data would give away the fact that I had cracked this portion of the signal. I doubted Bakuda could manage a remote change to something this complex, but giving March a heads up would present her with the opportunity to turn what could be a decisive strike against the ABB into a quagmire.
It also wasn't that easy a thing to track. I could manage it, but you would need either a tinker or an expert in the field of communications to recreate it. That drastically limited who would be able to act on this information.
Really, all I could do was send it to the Protectorate and PRT and hope they didn't make a mess of things. I could mop things up after I managed the ABB leadership, but this could at least let the heroes make a difference. Of course, that was assuming they actually acted on the information. I elected to send it to local police, military, and emergency relief forces as well. Knowing that multiple agencies had access to information might be enough to push the PRT into action rather than an analysis spiral.
I left Survey to handle the release while I focused on the container yard. In addition to rows and rows of shipping containers there were also a handful of buildings of various sizes. One regrettable feature of Bakuda's stealth technology was the fact that it blocked long range detection of the newly cracked detonation signal. My drones could detect implanted gang members within a few dozen meters, but I wasn't able to pick out the precise location of every gang member in the facility.
I was, however, able to use the drones' data to locate the sources of Bakuda's jamming fields. My second duplicate had torn apart several similar devices in his push through the ABB base and was well acquainted with them. Enough that the presence of two drones in the area of effect was enough to grant me a targeting solution.
My pistol leapt from the magnetic holster on my hip and into my hand. With a mental signal it expanded, drawing out from its compact form to a shape resembling a high-power rifle. I held the oversized weapon in a single hand and extended it towards the container yard. Advanced targeting systems interfaced with my implant and supplemented by my technokinesis guided the weapon to a direct line to the first of the stealth generators.
With the squeeze of a trigger a power field activated, shearing a speck the size of a grain of sand from the weapon's ammo block. Power fields were a product of my Weaponsmith power, disintegration fields that could slice through any material. The integration of one into my sidearm was the only way to facilitate the use of adamantium as an ammunition source. Specifically, gravity Dust infused volcano forged adamantium that had been alloyed to have the density of osmium.
The penetrating power of the weapon was nearly beyond description, and as such it could be merely pointed towards the position of a generator with the assurance that any amount of intervening material would be about as consequential as shooting through a light covering of spring leaves.
There were dangers to this approach. Shots that went through everything, well, they went through everything. I was basically counting on the low profile of the round to minimize chances of fatally injuring any unintended targets. It was a risk I was willing to take when dealing with official members of the gang instead of conscripted civilians.
The round launched from my weapon with tremendous force, which was totally countered by the inertial plate on my chest. The combination of element zero, high density material, and a ragnite energy source, all worked with my fashion ability to give me a resistance to impact and recoil normally only found in fixed gun emplacements. I was able to fire a man portable artillery piece, in one hand, while perched on the tip of a cargo crane, without moving a millimeter.
Without any evident recoil the force of the shot wasn't apparent until it struck a stack of cargo containers and punched a hole straight through to the concrete foundation of the yard. Bakuda's stealth device, a transmission disk the size of a Wi-Fi router, was ripped apart under the force of the shot. Immediately detailed scans of the area became possible, including the location of every implanted explosive. The exposed ABB members were quickly hunted down by drones, driven out of cover by multilaser shots, or taken out as groups by selective use of non-lethal ordinance.
Sometimes that was a micro-missile of tranquilizer webbing. Sometimes it was dispersed knock-out gas. Sometimes it was magically augmented taser shocks from a drone. Sometimes it was needles of crystalized sedative fired with sniper accuracy from the motoroid's secondary weapons. The point was as shot after shot brought down the fields that provided some measure of concealment entire sections of the yard were purged of active troops. As shot after shot tore through intervening material to bring down stealth fields the area of the yard concealed from my sensors dwindled.
Which is probably why I finally managed to trigger a response from the ABB leadership. Well, I say finally, but it had only been a few moments. I had made my appearance, rained fire and drones on the facility, assisted in the extraction of Bakuda's signal, and started shredding their stealth systems in rapid succession. I'm pretty sure most of the rank-and-file forces didn't have any real understanding of what was happening. From their perspective I had basically appeared, and then the world turned to pure chaos.
It was in that chaos that I came face to face with the villain I had squared off against on my very first night as a cape. Oni Lee's demon mask moved out from the cover of a shipping container and raised a tinker tech launch device. It was a kind of compressed missile launcher, smaller than the shoulder fired variety, but still wielded in both hands and very much aimed towards me. A swarm of missiles blasted forth, trailing smoke in twisting lines as they navigated through the containers to converge on my position.
Then collapsed into dust as a round from my rifle punched through the cape's demon mask, reducing him and all his equipment to ashes.
As vindicating as it was to see a cloud of Bakuda's deadly ordinance evaporating in midair, the feeling was short-lived. Three more copies of Oni Lee appeared across the site and opened up with the same swarm of missiles. I managed to pick off two of the clones while concentrated laser fire punched through the third's meager cover and reduced him to dust, but I knew what was coming next. When the next set of copies stepped out to fire their payloads I was already moving.
I called to Tetra through the Dragon's Pulse and felt her fibers grip my body. Red lines flared through my costume as launched myself in a burst of crimson light. I leapt from the crane with my rifle shifting into its composite carbide/plasma blade configuration. The trajectory of my jump seemed to be taking me beyond the boundaries of the yard, but a flash of gray from the Dust weave in my costume triggered a reaction in the ground beneath me. With a surge of energy, the rock Dust called up a towering range of stone, scattering containers and cutting off the southern end of the storage area.
The monolith loomed a good fifty feet over the ground as it rose to meet me. I flipped in midair and began running along the vertical surface, continuous reactions of Dust causing more of the structure to rise to meet me. In my left hand I secured a sliver of iron and small but perfectly formed crystal from the pouches of my bandoleer. The reagents mixed and flowed into my plasma omni-blade just as the cloud of micro-missiles reached their peak speed.
My motoroid and drones were working as fast as they could to thin the swarm. Any copy that was even slightly exposed was brutally gunned down by any weapon that could reach him. Entire clouds of active munitions faded as the version of Oni Lee that sustained them was dispersed. The motoroid's weapons fired continuously in a deadly torrent, any shot not aimed at one of the copies of the ninja cape being directed at the barrage of tinker tech death. Drones wove through the rows, letting out a continuous stream of electrical and kinetic blasts.
Still, it wasn't enough. I knew it wouldn't be. This was the first time I had personally faced Oni Lee with the full backing of Bakuda's technology behind him. In fact, this time was even worse than what other capes or my duplicates had endured. It wasn't a matter of a few tossed grenades or the odd dumb fired munition. This time I was facing an Oni Lee armed with serious tinker tech weaponry. That lone launcher was putting out a level of firepower in the same ballpark of Bakuda's desperation attack at the storage yard, only multiplied by the number of times Oni Lee could teleport into a launch site without getting instantly killed.
This was the consequence of fighting the combined technology of an on-point Bakuda, a serious Leet, a compromised Armsmaster, all coordinated by a determined March. It was an advancement that would have overwhelmed what I could have brought against it on Saturday night.
Though fortunately not what I could manage on Thursday evening.
The Energize formula imbued into the weapon caused my sword to pulse with energy. With every frantic step against the still manifesting wall of activated rock Dust the energy grew stronger, all while a sky full of death bore down on me. Just as I reached the midpoint of the growing barrier I turned and faced the impending onslaught.
The Magic constellation passed by as I readied the sword. The last time I attempted this I had no idea what I was doing. The effect of the Evermore Alchemy formula was largely untested, I was unfamiliar with the limits of runic enchantment, and I was wielding a blade that had been involuntarily expanded by a recently gained power. The result had been the most powerful attack I had managed to date, but it was barely controlled and effectively a miracle that I hadn't slaughtered everyone in the storage facility.
Those concerns were beneath me now. I had better equipment, precise control, and full mastery of the effect. That wasn't to say it wasn't dangerous. There was a good reason I was attempting this with a conjured wall fifty feet tall and eight feet thick behind me. That said, it was with full confidence that I charged the sword's capacitors and swung it in a quick horizontal slice.
At first nothing seemed to happen. There was a scraping noise that accompanied the swing, like the grinding metal-on-metal sound effect that was always added in movies and video games, as if the blade was being badly drawn with every slice. It was subtle, but you could see the reason for the noise. My last attempt had resulted in a plane of destruction followed by a blast of a scale you only saw at nuclear test sites. Looking at the cloud of missiles I could see such an effect was the consequence of attempting this feat with a dull, shoddily made blade.
There was a distortion in the air following the path of my blade's swing, like a bad split screen effect. The effect rapidly became worse, with each side of the 'image' becoming out of sync with the other. Missiles would enter the gap of the distortion and not emerge from the other side, or move at a different speed than they entered. My entire field of view seemed to be operating on a speed gradient, slower away from the ripple of the slice and faster towards it.
Then there was a sharp ripple in the air as the effect collapsed and the full force of the slash set in. So much energy was being contained in such a thin plane that new and exciting laws of physics were required to explain it. The distorted 'split-screen' effect had become a line of brilliant white. From an external perspective it looked completely inert and stationary, but the effect on the world around it told a different story.
Everything in the air, on both sides of the slash, was pulled into that white plane like debris approaching an event horizon. It seemed like it was being dragged by the force of the wind, but I could tell there were more complicated effects involved, and not just because of the projected mass fields and gravity Dust. Inevitably every projectile that had been launched at me was torn into that glowing rift and flung out into the sky.
The effect of the slash spread far beyond the container yard's airspace. This was the reason for raising the rock barrier, it shielded the rest of the city from the effects. Instead, the horrible vacuum effects sending vortices of wind through containers and sweeping unsecured items into the air was limited to the immediate area. At least until the slash extended past the boundaries of the yard, but with it angling upwards it really was only visible as a white flash followed by a distortion in the clouds.
It was a tremendous display of force, a casual clearing of every attack that had been directed my way and a massive disruption to the environment, but I didn't count on that being enough to stop Oni Lee. The man was famed for his mindless determination. At best this would keep him off balance for a few seconds while the effects of the slash played out. Fortunately. I was ready for that, and already on the move.
I leapt from the wall towards the waterline. The absence of any currently docked container ships made this an easy task. Channeling two different Dust circuits at the same time was a different matter. It was something I would never have been able to manage without Garment's redesign of my costume bringing me more in tune with my Aura. Additionally, the insights from That Undefinable Thing definitely had some applications to the use and nature of Aura. Combined with my level of elemental mastery it allowed me to manage both effects with ease.
A bank of ice rose from the water, providing a stable surface to guide my path around the yard with the other hand I called upon woven pure gravity Dust and channeled it in a series of pulses through the ground of the container yard. Intricate patterns of purple energy snaked under the rows of containers, then, upon covering the breadth of the facility, shifted into a blinding purple glow.
Five glowing paths of gravity Dust trailed out from my position and with a single application everything above them was pulled into the air. Shipping containers, loose equipment, and gang members rose helplessly, like birthday balloons.
To stress a metaphor, some of those balloons were going to be popped.
Five copies of Oni Lee were caught in the gravity effect, pulled from cover and quickly dispatched by either my drones or motoroid. I raced along the water's edge, ice rising to meet my steps while elemental fury rained down on the storage yard. What was probably a carefully arranged maze of containers was thrown into chaos as gravity fields pulled hundreds of tons of equipment into the air, tornados of wind Dust ravaged the area, spikes of earth scattered barricades, and raging rivers of enhanced water washed paths clear of clones and gang members alike.
If I had been willing to go fully lethal I could have unleashed my stored burn Dust and leveled the entire facility in short order. However, with the body count that would create in unpowered members, and more significantly, the potential of catching Bakuda in the effect, I was forced to take a more conservative approach.
Conservative by my standards, meaning instead of just reducing everything within two blocks to a charred crater I was raining Dust, alchemy, and omni-tool effects down on Oni Lee and any portion of the container yard he dared to use for cover. I danced between monoliths of ice, stone, molten metal, and even persistent wind effects, moving over and through the facility without any interaction with Bakuda's traps and March's killing fields. Any time some of his clones managed to launch a flurry of missiles without being immediately dusted, they learned just how easily I could launch blinding slashes of energy from my sword. The sky above Brockton was beginning to look like a patchwork of blue and white as repeated slashes cut through the clouds leaving distortions in the atmosphere, and probably launching no small amount of air into space as a result.
Despite all of that I wasn't able to land a finishing hit on Oni Lee. I had thought the cape had been quick with his teleport and duplication power when I last faced him, but between Bakuda and however March had instructed him he was pushing it to the limit. From what I could tell no actions were taken as his primary self, he would simply leave a copy to act and move on to safety. It was basically the principle my own duplicates had instilled in me, only taken to the absolute extreme. Even connection to the Dragon's Pulse wasn't enough to track his original before it had departed, leaving a chain of five copies behind it.
Even though he had been able to avoid taking a hit the balance of the fight was turning towards my favor. The container yard was literally turning upside down from my actions. Even his largest concentrations of barrages had failed to make it through my combined defenses, and he was running out of avenues from which to strike. I was closing on him, and he knew it.
Which was likely why, after a particularly intense but ultimately futile assault, the masked cape fell back. I couldn't say where, but there was a decided gap in appearances that made me nervous. I set my motoroid on overwatch, dispatched my drones to the intact portions of the yard, and moved to pick off the last of Bakuda's stealth devices.
One, two, three shots dropped jamming fields. Then I lost telemetry. More than that, I lost all my aerial observations. It happened in a fraction of a second, and suddenly all five drones were gone and my motoroid was a stream of warnings and error messages as it plummeted towards the ground. Fleet's onboard program was crippled and didn't know what was happening. Survey was trying to pull together a response. I felt the tension from both programs and the concern from my remaining duplicate as he prepared to rush to my side.
I didn't wait for an answer. It didn't matter what that attack was. All that mattered was it had penetrated my defenses. My motoroid was constructed of materials so durable there was hardly a force on the planet that could scratch them, now it was careening towards the ground in a sparking wreck. My new drones were shielded with kinetic barriers that were durable to such an extent that Purity would need to work to bring them down. They had shattered in less than a second with barely time to recognize the arrival of the attack that brought them down.
I was not waiting around. Survey could pick through those sensor logs later. I hated leaving my motoroid, but it was pure magitek, even in its control systems. What they could learn from it was limited, and I would rather counter their reverse engineering techniques through long range bombardment than any exposure to that attack.
It may have been my connection to Aura, that vague danger sense it provided, but everything was telling me to run. To get out. That whatever their final play was, whatever brought down six aerial units at the same instant was not something I wanted to face. Not now, not ever.
I turned and ran. No, I didn't run. Running would have kept me here too long. I leapt. I practically flew. Life fiber energy surged through my body as I launched myself out of the container yard like a cannonball. Divine boots cratered the ground beneath me as I pushed off with all my force, and shot towards the city.
Every sense I had was operating at its maximum level. Desperately watching for anything that could be a threat. Hunting for the cause, the vector that allowed that last attack. My motoroid was barely beginning to sink towards the earth and I was soaring away at a desperate speed, leaving the site of this battle behind me. And I still didn't feel safe.
For good reason, as it happened. My body collided with a form that appeared in midair, directly in the path of my leap. It was the kind of impact that should have sent me into a completely uncontrolled death spiral. Fortunately, the 'stability' aspect of my divine boots was a serious enchantment, not something to be defeated by things like a complete lack of leverage. So instead, the collision did nothing to me except bleed momentum as the form exploded into ash.
Unfortunately, it seemed that was the objective, or at least an acceptable objective, of the action. Because another form appeared in my path, and another. More and more speed bled off as I plowed through the duplicates that appeared to intercept me. I shifted the position of my sword to bring them down before they could collide with me, but I had already lost most of my speed.
Oni Lee. Of course, it was Oni Lee. Sacrificing himself, probably at March's direction to keep me in range of whatever their attack actually was.
The tactic of intercepting my leap may have worked if my movement was as unpowered as it appeared, but I had resources to call upon. Even without flight systems of the level of my motoroid I had gravity, wind, and burn Dust circuits woven into my cape and clothing that would let me rocket past any interference. I was in the process of activating them when the horrible reality of the situation made itself known.
I had prepared for suicide attacks, but the timing and mechanics of Bakuda's bombs had made the chance of Oni Lee landing an attack unlikely. That was when I had been basing my estimates of his teleport time on past performance and displays during the recent conflicts. That was when I had foolishly dismissed timing as a difficult aspect when March was in play. And that was when I assumed the attack would involve one of Bakuda's bombs.
That was one of the safest bets. Bakuda was a bundle of twisted ego. The idea that she would allow anyone else to bring down the person who had shown her up, who had embarrassed her, it was insane. But apparently March specialized in insane, and had been able to convince Bakuda to take a back seat in their final assault.
Because when Oni Lee appeared above me, and then beside me, and then around me, and then progressively more and more of what would count as 'around' me he wasn't wielding his micro-missile launcher. He wasn't holding some Bakuda super bomb. He wasn't holding any technology at all.
Instead, each copy of the cape held a thick board braced to their arm, like a parody of a shield. Parody because it wasn't going to do anything to protect its wielder. Not with that misty purple pattern sparking across it.
March's striker power, that omni-dimensional explosion, was painted on the board held by every copy of Oni Lee. Somehow, impossibly, Oni Lee was able to duplicate March's ridiculously powerful attack. Oni Lee was able to teleport March's ridiculously powerful attack. With Oni Lee, March's ridiculously powerful attack could be delivered to anywhere Oni Lee could reach and, with her help, timed perfectly to detonate on top of the victim.
Well, in my case on top, beside, beneath, and around. The Magitech constellation passed by as I realized just how nightmarish this trap actually was. Oni Lee was teleporting without any delay. There was no pause to consider his next location. The only explanation was that he was making his first jump with all his following jumps already planned. As such I was effectively swarmed by a cluster of the deadliest attacks possible, mounted on a delivery system that had been specialized for March's power.
The item in question was nearly two feet wide and several inches thick. The combination allowed a huge area for her striker power to be carried, with the thickness ensuring the most powerful variant of it. I was receiving information from the magic scanner in my visor and none of it was good. The snaking trail that was perfectly duplicated on each of the shields surrounding me was sparking down to its last moments. Its very last moments. I had a fraction of a second before the simultaneous detonation of an entire swarm of the deadliest effect possible from a parahuman.
I barely had time to react. Without the life fiber energy coursing through me I would have had no time to react. As it stood it took my training, divine reflexes, life fiber alterations, direct enhancements from Tetra, and the full force of One Thing at a Time just to have a hope of taking any action. Mostly it was allowing me to experience the onset of mind-numbing terror at a rate that would have impressed the most cowardly individual on the planet.
Make no mistake. Terror was the correct response to this situation. I was surrounded by death. Absolute, unquestionable death. All my touted invincibility, the progression from the durability of a piece of steel strapped to my wrist, upgraded to hyper-alloys, then Skyforged metals, then mithril, then enchanted metals, then adamantium, then volcano wrought hybrid materials, then full on divine armor, none of it made any difference against this attack.
A single instance of it could kill me. The assembled blast from dozens of copies would reduce my body to the consistency of chunky salsa, at least what portions of it weren't annihilated by multidimensional effects of the blast.
I was staring death in the face and only had an instant to find a way out. It took much less than that to realize there wasn't an 'out' from this situation. I would be limited to the slightest of actions before the effect went off. March had timed this as close as possible. Whoever, wherever the original Oni Lee was, he would have barely enough time to cast down the bomb board and save himself. Of course, with March what would normally be considered 'barely enough time' was basically a guarantee of success.
I put the mechanism of this trap out of my mind. I stopped thinking about how it had been set up, how this attack mechanism could basically kill any cape on the planet with a decent shot against Endbringers. I didn't consider the implications of this, what would happen if I failed, the aftermath and my very probable death on a single mistake. Instead, I focused solely on finding a way out of this alive.
I couldn't kill enough of the Oni Lee clones before the detonation. My reflexes weren't that fast, and every other attack method was too slow. There was no way to clear the crowd.
So, I adjusted my goal from 'uninjured' to 'alive'. Objective? Protect head and chest. Everything else was expendable in the protection of those two areas. If I left this even technically alive, with a functioning brain and enough heart and lungs to keep it going, then I could fix everything else. I didn't dwell on what that would look like and instead focused solely on that goal. Get out of this technically alive.
The sword was in my hand. My Energize formula had worn off, but that just reduced it from the category of 'tactical weapon' to 'incredibly deadly weapon'. A single second of spare time would have been enough to reduce the clustered clones to mincemeat. I did not have that second. March knew I didn't have that second. That thinker had made sure I didn't have that second.
I could disperse some of them. I had enough time for a single swipe, one arc of death cutting through the cluster. Enough to cut a swath through the crowd of clones, but not enough to save me. I needed more. And I was limited in what I could deploy.
Dust was out of the question. Even with improved Aura control from my costume I couldn't activate the woven effects nearly fast enough to make a difference here. Not even with my mastery of elemental weaponry. Not even the burn Dust, which benefited from my pyrokinesis.
I needed something that could launch an attack with no delay, one that was deadly and one that I could direct. I had a single option, and was already activating it. The effect I could most quickly deploy was the melee contingency of my omni-tool. Going back to its original purpose, sending out a cloud of plasma to clear space for a military engineer who found himself over his head. The way I had used it against Uber, and the way I was using it now.
There was no time for consideration. All my previous thoughts stood bundled in the instant of recognition of the situation. Once I started to act everything sped up to the true pace of the situation. A blinding instant of desperate panic as I tried to save my life from the deadliest combination of cape powers possible.
My right hand gripped the plasma blade and swung up over my head. For me it was like moving through soup, slowly cutting through each copy of the masked duplicator, watching cloth and flesh vaporize under the extreme heat and energy fields of the blade before fading into a cloud of ash. The sweep took the blade in an arc across my chest and over my head, cutting through everybody in its path, and clearing the most dangerously placed of the watermarked bombs.
At the same time my omni-tool surged with energy, redlining its systems to convert stores of omni-gel into clouds of high energy plasma. Even as I swung my blade I felt the warmth of the burning material through my pyrokinesis. That flare of glowing power, crafted by machinery and directed through technology. And now directed through my will.
Instead of the dispersed cloud of burning mist that would normally accompany the release of the melee contingency the effect in play was closer to a slow-motion video of a lightning strike. Concentrated tendrils of high energy plasma snaked out from the omni-tool, forcing their way through the resistive medium of the atmosphere.
Normally this was a non-issue, but normally you weren't attempting a precision strike on a dozen targets in less than a tenth of a second. Trying to bring thermal energy to bear at that speed was like trying to force water through a concrete wall. A rather apt metaphor as threads of plasma forked and twitched their way through the air until they encountered one of their targets. At that point a surge of power flowed forth through the path of reduced resistance, annihilating any clone it touched.
I have no idea what this must have looked like from an outside perspective. The sudden appearance of a mid-air rugby scrum followed by a blue sword flash and the cascading crackle of directed plasma? Would it even be recognizable when viewed at normal speed?
Honestly I was too focused to care. All that mattered was directing my attacks. Every clone that dusted improved my chances for survival. Every extra inch of sword movement, every burst of heat, it brought me closer to living through this. I raced against the dozen glowing clocks that filled my field of vision as I desperately tried to bring down just one more clone before the sparking trail reached the end of its path.
And then it did. Purple blue explosions rippled from every surface. The copies that held them were consumed by the effect, but their work was done. I felt a multitude of blasts tear into my body, ripping, battering, shattering. Nothing made any difference to it. It shredded my costume, ruptured skin, pulped flesh, and shattered bone.
It was an absolute maelstrom of destruction, and not just from the weight of the blast. Every piece of equipment I was wearing was reduced to ruin. Armor plates bent, buckled and fractured, micromanipulators seized, warped and burned out. My omni-tool ruptured, sending a spray of concentrated omni-gel to be swallowed in the chaos. My costume and cape, with all its enchantments, rune work, and Dust circuitry was sundered, placing me in the center of an overload of elemental energy that would have been impressive if not for the competing might of the clustered omni-dimensional explosion that was centered on my body.
And then I was plummeting. I struggled to breathe, blink, or think, but my desperate gambit had succeeded, at least in a broad sense. I wasn't dead. I was alive enough to feel the world drop away and sense the ground approaching all too fast.
My body impacted the surface of the container yard with a wet splat. I had just enough awareness to see the trail of my motoroid's smoking wreck as it followed my example and buried itself into the ground at terminal velocity, casting up a shower of green sparks from its impact site.
The sparks, the magitek emissions caused a reaction, a quick movement that drew my attention. Movement in relation to magitek. Cape. No, capes.
I struggled to shift my body towards the movement. The pain I was in was beyond description. I couldn't even come up with a clever allegory for it. It was just terrible. A deep, personal pain that was sharp, burning, and freezing all at the same time.
With the state of my body, it was no wonder. I might have had better luck trying to find a bone that wasn't broken. I was a crumpled mess of ruined flesh and wrecked equipment. My costume was in tatters, letting me see the devastated state of my body. Well, partially see. My visor had taken part of a blast. Half of it was gone and the other half was shattered, rendering the lens useless. My exposed eye could see, but my vision was tinged red, for obvious reasons.
Still, with some desperate flailing I was able to shift myself just enough to see the beginnings of movement. Figures approaching my position as the Magic constellation passed me by. A man in a red demon mask was in the lead. Oni Lee, with his launcher shouldered and his stride professional. No sense of anger, pride, or determination. The same empty mannerisms with which he always conducted himself.
Behind him I saw the much more apprehensive forms of ABB gang members. Some were armed, but several were carrying small pieces of equipment. Video cameras. They were recording, or possibly streaming this. No matter what they were holding they didn't seem happy to be here, and the reason was clear.
Before the attack the container yard had been turned upside down by Dust effects. Now it had been turned inside out, and also by Dust effects. I could see exactly what had happened. Miniaturization had allowed me to condense an insane amount of Dust circuits into my cloak and costume. Those concerns I had about Garment's dresses counting as tactical weapons? The circuits in my costume were more condensed, efficient, and dozens of times more numerous.
It was an arsenal that could level a city, and it had just been detonated. Within a city. Well, at the edge of a city, but that was a small mercy. March's attack had torn through meticulously crafted control circuitry and let loose blasts of raw Dust in every direction, flying off like the spokes of a wheel. Just from where I was lying I could see a miniature glacier of ice streaking out into the bay, along with a tiny mountain range, a fifteen-foot-wide line of fire sizzling and sparking on the surface of the water, a deep gouge cut into the earth, and a solid, unmoving bank of mist, the result of a release of steam Dust.
That was just what was extending through the container yard and into the bay. I didn't want to think about what had happened to the Docks.
Really, I couldn't think about what had happened to the Docks. I couldn't think about much of anything. The pain was just too bad. On top of every other effect, I was now aware of the sensation of my nerves being electrocuted and a deep seething ache extending all the way to my bones. It was a combination of every type of pain you could imagine, all turned up to eleven and served at the same time.
I knew I needed to push past it. I needed to focus, to activate my nanites, to heal and to get back in the fight. But I couldn't. It was too much pain, too much damage. I wanted to scream, but I could barely breathe. Instead, I settled for vague flailing twitches.
I watched as the roaring wall of burn Dust parted, revealing a towering figure. Ten feet tall and covered in silver scales. Lung had made his appearance. Specifically made his appearance. There were two cameras on him, one on me, and one catching the reaction of his men. Was this going to be spliced together later, or did he have a director somewhere coordinating things? Someone from a local TV station with a bomb in their head, sitting in a control room saying things like 'Go to camera three. Now zoom in for the big execution.'.
I didn't know. I had no idea what was happening. I couldn't focus enough to access my implant, my omni-tool was a wreck, and I had no idea if there was any functionality left in the crashed motoroid beyond the regular sparks that caused synchronized flinches in Lung and Oni Lee.
Lung. Lung was big. Lung was partially ramped up. Lung had been fighting. He had been fighting someone to prepare for this. March had managed that again. She had found Lung an opponent and kept him away from me until she was ready to strike. The question of who he had been fighting was answered by the form Lung was dragging behind him.
White, gold, and red. No, just white and gold. The red was blood. Triumph. Lung lifted the former Ward by one leg and tossed him aside. I didn't know how this had been set up. Isolated while on a patrol when the attacks began? Driven to the container yard, or captured and forced to fight? It didn't matter. All that mattered was Lung had his sacrifice fight. How they had kept that concealed, especially with a cape whose power was super shouting I had no idea. Stealth tech of some description, most likely.
That didn't matter. All that mattered was the lizard man striding towards me. Lung stopped at the front of his men and grinned down with his deformed, fanged mouth.
"So…" His voice was coarse, like it was coming from a throat not designed for human speech. Still, he pressed on, posturing as he went. "The mighty, fallen. Upstarts, ignorant children who think they can challenge Lung, that they know the meaning of power. They all learn. All that have tried to oppose me have paid for their insolence. One more link in a chain of failure."
He gestured towards his side with a clawed hand and a smaller figure stepped through the fog bank. I recognized the short stature, the military uniform in green and red, and the rabbit ears. Though last time I had seen them they had emerged from a peaked cap, not an executioner's hood.
Theatrics. They were making a show of this. That was the reason for the multiple cameras, for the posturing, for the dress-up and the oversized sword that March was carrying. Lung knew I could heal, and he didn't know the limits of my durability. He wasn't going to let himself be seen smashing impotently at a broken cape trying to end his life. He was apparently willing to order an elaborate execution, at least by the standards of a field conflict.
It was a fact I was desperately grateful for. I had no doubt that if blue lines sprouted on my flesh they would cut this short to go for the killing stroke. At the moment I could barely move, much less fight or dodge. But there was one factor in my advantage. I was a paranoid bastard, and while I hadn't prepared for this particular situation some of my obsessive concern was currently paying dividends.
Nanites were not my only method of healing. They were unquestionably my best method of healing, as well as my least costly and easiest, but I had many others. Evermore Alchemy wasn't going to be much help at the moment. Even though I had obsessively carried the components on me I was in no state to mix them. But that wasn't the only form of backup medical alchemy I had on my person.
Healing potions. Ever since I had set out to rescue Weld I had kept a supply of healing potions on hand. Both the true healing potions of Innate Talent: Alchemist and the restorative potions of Natural Alchemy had been continually stocked and, thanks to the efforts of my duplicates, maintained at the peak of my crafting ability and power.
I obviously wasn't going to be pulling an emergency potion vial out of the wreckage of my equipment, but that didn't matter. With these potions the important part was getting them into your body. Drinking was obviously the most convenient method, but having them blasted into your body cavity as you caught a devastating multi-spatial explosion could also do the trick.
I mean, it included a pile of broken glass with it, but in my current state that was the least of my worries.
Immediate exposure to my supply of true healing potions was probably a major factor in my survival. The red liquid of those potions would trigger immediate restoration of the body, and probably was fighting against the damage of March's blasts as they were accumulating.
Natural Alchemy potions were far less magical in their effects. Technically they weren't magical at all, just concentrated natural energy. My buffing natural alchemy potions were currently in the sparking remains of my motoroid, but I had kept the healing potions at hand. As a consequence, I was under the effect of about a half dozen highly potent restorative effects that functioned in a manner far less showy than my nanite healing.
It was a power I had never used before, never shown to anyone. I had to hope that that lack of exposure would be enough to throw off the coordination of the damn timing thinker who had been assigned to my execution.
As March sauntered across the yard with her oversized borderline-novelty sword held lightly she gave no sense of urgency. The giant two-handed blade was held in a light grip and swung back and forth, its tip leaving purple trails in the ground that would spark and burst into fissures the moment she had stepped over them. Trust March to lean into showmanship.
Actually, the entire ABB was putting more work into this presentation than I expected. I had made some pompous stands myself, but it was always towards another purpose. Buying time for a secondary objective, allowing people to get into place, or just fishing for information. I never showed off for the purpose of showing off.
Well, never intentionally showed off. My aesthetic powers didn't give me that much choice in the matter. Even now, lying in a splatter of my own blood, I had a sense I was positioned like something out of a tragic renaissance painting. I could barely move my body, but my posing power was making sure what feeble adjustments I could make were going to look good.
I had a sense that this was very much about the spectacle for the ABB. Brian had said how important reputation was for capes. While I hadn't managed a decisive victory, I had consistently driven off their forces. The ABB was the most dangerous and feared force in the city, and yet every time I encountered their forces they were routed. This was more than an assassination; it was a show of strength.
Specifically, it was a desperate attempt to create the impression that they had power, control, and command of the situation. Basically, anything that would dilute the accurate impression that they had pulled a Hail Mary sucker punch and gotten in a lucky hit against a cape who would otherwise have happily fought their combined forces on his own. Who was in fact doing just that until a moment ago.
March was certainly playing for the cameras as she sauntered towards me. I could feel the potions working, the worst of the internal damage pulling itself together. The more she dragged this out the better my chances, but that was a terrifying prospect when all it would take was one swipe of that stupid sword to end me for good.
I really cannot overstate how stupid that sword was. Even with my mind wracked by pain I was immediately drawn to the impracticality of the weapon. It was the wrong size for her, but frankly almost any blade she would find would be too large for someone her size, so the lack of ergonomics was a minor issue, but one my powers were still happy to inform me of. It was also stainless steel, at least which parts of it weren't cheap enamel or useless decorations. It was a horrible material to use for a blade, but then again March didn't really care about a sword's conventional durability, not with her power.
The look of the piece was a joke, an insult. It was an over designed mess, something out of a bad fantasy movie or video game. Overly detailed embellishments on the blade, a ridiculous spiky guard, the grip lined with a material that looked nice but obviously provided no meaningful traction, and for some reason a short chain dangling off of the pommel.
It was style over substance for someone who didn't need to worry about substance. She obviously just wanted a big scary blade to do her final swing. I could have designed something that would follow the aesthetic directions that mess was going for, look better, and simultaneously actually function as a proper sword.
But none of that was relevant to the situation, it was just a consequence of the powers rolling around in my head. And possibly the distracting aspects of the mind-numbing pain that still coursed through my body as the Size constellation missed a connection.
The young cape giggled as she approached, causing the black hood to crinkle and her rabbit ears to shake irreverently. "So here we are. Little dominos, all falling down."
I could barely manage a cough in response, a glob of blood leaking out and dripping down my chin. The display only seemed to amuse the girl, at least until a thaumic discharge from my crashed motoroid caused a cascade of reactions through the assembled capes.
Oni Lee flinched slightly, a disturbing response from the normally emotionless man. Lung tensed, then turned towards the crash site with what was somehow a more irate look than his partially transformed face normally wore. There was a dramatic response from the collapsed form of Triumph as the hero twitched, writhed, and finally vomited in a visceral display.
I didn't know how much of that was the reaction to the magitek energy and how much was the toll he had taken from going one on one with Lung while I was dueling with Oni Lee. I knew he had some kind of healing factor and a not terrible brute rating. If he wasn't dead yet there was a good chance he would recover, at least depending on how the rest of this mess played out.
It was somehow unsurprising that March had a reaction to the thaumic energy that was diametrically opposed to every other cape present. Rather than tense she seemed to relax, to sink into the burst of power, and react with almost longing as it passed. She paused her advance to give the crash site a long look then turned back towards my prone form.
"Re-markable." She sang. "You really did it. You saw it as well." She whispered conspiratorially. I felt my reforming guts wrench at the implications of her words. "But you didn't use it. Why? If you could pull back the curtain like that, why move on?" She shook her head. "Such a shame. Someone who can reach the agents, but decided to move on. I don't know the kind of look you got, how it worked, but to mistake the finish line for a stepping stone? I'll never understand that."
March… March knew about passengers. Really knew. She wasn't speaking like someone who had read the theory and was working from abstract theories. The reference to a 'look behind the curtain', she had seen them. I didn't know how she had managed that, but somehow she had gotten a look at the mechanics of the cycle. Somehow she had seen how things operated, the mechanics that drove powers, and was working towards it.
My passenger as much as confirmed it. That was her threat. That was the 'worse than the Endbringers' thing she was working towards. The passengers. The source of powers. March wanted access to it for some purpose. It didn't matter what her intentions were, messing around with that was so dangerous that she could have been after nothing but a sightseeing tour and still trigger an unparalleled disaster.
And March had a multidimensional attack. If anyone could threaten the realm of passengers, it was her. This slip of a girl with her childish speech patterns, her ridiculous costume, and her irreverent behavior could trigger a disaster of unparalleled proportions.
March was watching me, watching my reactions. Even with her face concealed I could see how much she was enjoying it. There must be something about thinkers that made them get a thrill from revealing how much they knew to the ignorant and misinformed. I was helpless, in pain, and panicking at the implications of her words and she was loving every moment of it.
"Oh," She leaned over me and crooned. "Is that regret? Disappointment? Someone didn't grab the brass ring when they had the chance and now it's slipping away." The motoroid sparked again and March glanced towards it. "Did you even know what you had, or was it buried under all that other technology? So many new ideas that you let the best one pass you by."
I coughed again. I could feel the potions working and it wasn't a pleasant sensation. I had never tested this kind of formula before, it was created off of the understanding granted by my power, not any practical experience. I knew what it could do, but not how it would act, what it would feel like. I could feel my body coming together, but the sensation of it was almost as bad as the pain.
No. No it wasn't. Nothing was as bad as this pain. The healing sensation was distinct from the pain, but nowhere near as horrible. It was like a million tiny cords writhing through my body. It was distinct, distinct enough to be noticeable over the combo platter of pain being shoved into my mind, but its level of unpleasantness didn't even approach the horrible feeling of my injuries.
"Don't worry." March whispered. "I'll make sure it's put to good use. So many doors opening, and we'll be together again, forever." She paused and looked down. "Well, not you. Shame. Alone forever. And you could have had eternity." She looked to her blade, then paused before reaching towards me. "Oh, one last thing before the last thing. I promised Bakuda I'd give you a present, especially from her. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to get her toys ready before you decided to send that inconsiderate houseguest of a robot, so this will have to do."
With my one clear eye I saw her hand reach towards my face. "Now, don't flinch, or we'll miss the big finish."
I bit down on the pain and held as rigidly still as I could while she traced a line with the tip of her gloved finger. She started on my forehead and moved straight down, passing over my eye. Through my eye. The feeling was electric. Her finger wasn't moving across the surface, it was dipping slightly beneath the skin. Phasing through the material as it left a trail that felt like a swarm of ants beneath my skin.
Her striker power. If it wasn't obvious enough I could see from the purplish tinge that covered my vision as the watermark passed over and through my eye. Then she pulled her hand back and I felt the mark begin to spark, snaking down my face, flaring in front of my vision and terminating on my cheek.
Then it burst. My face split open in a fresh blast of pain. What vision I had went black and I was limited to shadows through the shattered lens of my visor and what I could pull from my other senses over the pain. The first thing being Lung calling out in a gruff voice.
"Enough. Finish it."
With my vision blocked I could focus on other things without distraction. Most of that was pain, the horrible pain gripping my body, but that wasn't everything. I was without my eyes, but I had other senses.
Through my pyrokinesis I could still feel the heat around me. The still roaring wall of flame caused by an expulsion of divinely enhanced Dust from my costume when March's attack struck. The little blobs of body heat signaling the positions of capes and ABB members. Some under the effects of my earlier subdual attacks, collapsed and running slightly cooler than the active members, some of which were running around to provide aid to their downed comrades and some who were attending to the ABB capes, carrying items with their own bursts of heat. Weapons, supplies, or video equipment. The distinction between technokinesis and pyrokinesis was nebulous. I could feel the heat coursing through the equipment carried as well as I could the heat flowing through a gang member's veins.
It was all passive. I couldn't reach out or influence anything, not in my current state, not with my current focus. All I could do was watch and pray. Pray that I would be able to recover before March readied the massive sword and dropped it at Lung's order.
Lung. That massive ball of thermal energy standing like a man. Seeing it like this I wondered how I could have ever missed him. How had he been able to hide during my attack while also fighting his own battle? How had I ever overlooked that conduit to a bottomless well of flame standing on the battlefield.
And it wasn't just pyrokinesis that drew my attention. Lung radiated life force in a way I had never detected before. The Dragon's Pulse from his body was like an entirely different form of existence. Not the cycle of intake, growth and expulsion of energy that characterized most people. Lung burst with life, with power. There was a torrent within him.
What little I could detect of emotions was more than enough to pick up the state of his being. He was angry, and that anger was strength. Not only was he running at a level that would trouble most capes in the city, he was actually holding himself back. The nature of his power, possibly the will of his passenger, stood ready to throw open the flood gates. Faced with a broken, battered, cape seconds away from execution his power was on edge. It was ready for a fight, and making sure Lung was ready as well. Ready for war. Ready for conflict.
Conflict. Was that what had been happening in this city? Passengers loved conflict. It was the purpose of their existence. Anything that facilitated it was encouraged. Anything that allowed them to grow through the experience was rewarded. I had never noticed before, but I had never been focused on the Dragon's Pulse in the presence of a power as naked in its motives as Lung's was.
The response to conflict was not supposed to work this way. It was slow, gradual, and largely inconsistent. I had seen the passengers, been fully appraised on the mechanics of their existence. They were not supposed to respond this way. But Lung's was, and, while the resonance wasn't as clear, so were March's and Oni Lee's. Their passengers liked the conflict I presented and the information that could be gained from facing me. And when a passenger liked something they did what they could to encourage it.
I knew my passenger wasn't normal, but I had underestimated how atypical it was in the eyes of other powers. Whatever they were gaining from facing me was something that normal parahuman conflict couldn't equate to. I was effectively a walking Sechen range for everyone who dealt with me.
The implications were drastic, but I wasn't in a position to dwell on them, just as I wasn't in a position to dwell on the Forge connecting to the Toolkits constellation, connecting to a minor mote that granted me a woodworking workshop. All the connection to the heat energy of my environment, of the flows of chi through the world, wouldn't save me when March was raising her stupid sword and looking to Lung for his signal.
Or so I thought. Combined I could feel the energy pattern of the world around me, the position of March's body posed to strike, Lung raising his arm to signal her, even the pattern spread across the yard by the fading light of the sun as it sank behind the city. I could feel all that around me, but I could also feel the energy within me.
It had been the strike to my face. That petty act of sadism, that last injury, had triggered a response. The Dragon's Pulse let me feel the energy of my own body, the way it shifted based on health and injury. When March split my face, I felt the disruption as my body was damaged. Then I felt part of it snap back. Part of the energy coursing through my body instantly restored. Regenerated. The immediate recovery that was only possible from a lifeform whose healing abilities defied all physical explanation and understanding.
I had been surrounded by bombs of unbelievable power, all of which had blasted inward. The result was devastation, and the surface of my body was ravaged. It was a miracle that all my limbs were still attached, though that was marginal in some cases. I was being held together by divine fortitude and healing potions, which were the only effects that allowed me to survive the blast and the shrapnel of my equipment that had been embedded into my body.
Through the panic, the pain, and the threat of death I had forgotten exactly what was included in my equipment. Who was included in my equipment. The writhing within my body wasn't due to the natural alchemy potion. The snap back of life energy following March's power splitting my face wasn't my own. And the red strand hanging from my mouth wasn't blood.
As the final rays of the sun slipped behind the city and the yard was cast into the deep shadows of sunset I opened myself up to the power that had been embedded within me. I felt that familiar presence. The warm, caring, slightly petulant outlook was nowhere to be found. Instead, it was confused, frightened and angry.
I extended my mind through the Dragon's Pulse and felt the link to my own life energy. The scale of damage communicated through the link took that anger to full blind burning rage. Lung dropped his arm and March prepared to swing her final blade.
And the world turned red.
The blazing crimson light burning from my body was no normal illumination. It had a physical presence. An aura blasted out from my prone form, sending wind and dust billowing, and knocking the normally assured thinker reeling, sliding back and struggling to keep her footing.
The pulsing energy was enough to push my body from the ground. I struggled and planted my feet, feeling my torso lifted by the sheer weight of power flowing forth. With a surge of energy my body levered over my knees, lurching upright and then collapsing into a forward hunch, all while blazing red fibers writhed forth from my injuries.
Life fibers could draw strength from two sources. Bio neural energy, and blood. Up to this point Tetra had only been exposed to neural energy. Sometimes in extreme amounts, and sometimes to the point of being a serious threat to those around her, but she was always limited, restricted to what could be channeled through the surface of the body. Through contact with skin.
The energy that could be gained from blood was on a completely different level. My own durability had effectively negated any chance of accidental exposure, even while using her in the field. Then, in a single instant, March had coordinated a blast that drove the life fibers clinging to the surface of my body deep within my tissue.
The blast had been horribly damaging for Tetra, but life fibers could regenerate like nothing else in the universe. The damage from the explosion had been devastating, but it was an attack from which she could quickly recover. And she found herself in a strange, frightening world.
Surrounded by a medium of the greatest power she had ever encountered, but cut off from everything she knew. I was too injured, in too much pain to feel her through the Dragon's Pulse, leaving her alone, panicked, and angry. She wanted the familiar, she wanted security, and she wanted to be safe.
Then March had split my face open, and she was able to glean what was happening. That I was hurt. That I was in danger. That I needed help.
This, the burning blasts of crimson light acting as a physical force on the world, the desperate flailing of her fibers as she struggled to hold my body together, the pure, unlimited rage burning within her at those who would injure her, me, us, it was the result of all those things coming to a head.
Tetra was powerful in her base form, just from the power she could pull from the surface of my body. Now she was wrapped around my organs, through my muscles, in my veins and parallel to my nerves. She was surrounded by blood, the truest form of power for a creature of life fibers. Blood. No, more than that. It was divine blood. All the power of my demigod physiology that had allowed me to endure her surface drains with trivial effort was flowing into her now, the strength of blood boosted by divine ichor.
She had no context for what she was currently experiencing, and I was right there with her. The power of life fibers was already intoxicating, but this was beyond anything I had felt before. It actually caused a laugh to bubble to my lips. Well, a wet, panting sound that probably the closest thing I could manage at the moment. The sensation coursing through me from the life fiber energy was enough to drive the pain from my body. It was her first blood. Wait, first blood of a Greek demigod. Greek first blood. That was…
"Proto… Aima…." I spook the Greek phrase with a mad grin on my slumped face, a burning strand of life fibers hanging from the corner of my mouth. I didn't need to see, really couldn't see, but could feel the presence of those around me.
Fear. There was fear everywhere. From the reactions of the Dragon's Pulse to the simple biological reaction of blood being pulled from the faces of the gang members, causing a drop in the temperature of their skin. Even Oni Lee and March were registering caution and confusion.
But not Lung. Whatever he was feeling was impossible to read over the torrent of excitement from his power, his passenger. The excitement for the coming conflict was palpable, no matter how he tried to restrain it.
Whatever spell had been cast; March was the first to push through it. It made sense that the timing thinker would try to regain the initiative. She raised the stupid sword and pointed toward me. "You…"
Her voice died as I lurched upright, levering too far and feeling my head snap back. Feet planted I pulled my body forward and lowered my head to face her. Tattered scraps of a costume clung to my body, interspersed with open wounds and broken equipment. The face I lowered to her was concealed by half a visor, shreds of a mask, and a deep vertical fissure where the right eye would be. I could feel the heat from Tetra's glowing fibers as they zigzagged across the gap, working to pull it closed.
The same effect was happening across my body, red fibers frantically trying to close wounds, reinforce damage, or just wildly flailing through the air in an attempt to find any purchase.
I couldn't really see March, but I could feel her. Feel the position of her body, her movements, and even her intention and hostility through the Dragon's Pulse. My will, my anger, was united with Tetra. She was the cause of this. She would pay.
She adjusted her hold on the blade and opened her mouth to say something, but it was drowned out by the sound of exploding concrete. My movement left a furrow in the foundation of the container yard where I had stood. My sudden arrival shattered the ground beneath March's feet. She probably would have lost her footing if not for the fact that I had the wrist of her sword arm in a vice grip.
I could feel her mind, her power, her energy at work, groping for a way out of the situation. A way to turn things to her advantage, the way she always did. That wouldn't happen. Loose fibers from wounds on my arm wrapped around March's wrist, burning through her costume and causing the rabbit cape to scream and flail. I pulled an arm around my body and struck out, catching the thinker in the side without releasing my grip.
Even with the speed of my movement I could see her try to twist her body to absorb the force. The strength of her timing power, active even while being overwhelmed. At best it saved her from instantly being killed by the blow. I felt bones snap as my fist connected with the tiny cape, both in her torso and in her arm where my grip held her. The impact tore her from my grip in a bloody motion and sent her flying, painfully bouncing along the concrete before stopping dead against a cargo container.
Without a second thought I bust forward again, launching myself at Lung before the hulking cape could react. This time there were no complicated holds, no elegant maneuvers, no strategy. Just a straight shot. A direct hit to the center of his mass.
Scales shattered under the force of my blow and the ABB's leader went flying. There was none of March's bouncing on the concrete. He launched in a direct line that embedded the man into a shipping container, collapsing it and the surrounding stacks on top of him.
Silence reigned through the courtyard. I knew that I needed to strike, to stop them. To finish Lung off before he could get any stronger. To end Oni Lee to remove the threat he posed. To make sure March stayed down for good. But I couldn't.
Because the pain came back.
I dropped to a knee and screamed. My body was finally intact enough to express the total agony I was feeling. I let every ounce of the horrible feeling gripping my body flow into that sound, and cried out to the heavens. I swear I could see the containers shake around me.
I didn't know why it was hurting so much. Yes, I was horribly injured and held together by a patch work of alien parasite tendrils, but that shouldn't explain why the worst hurt wasn't coming from my injuries. It was coming from everywhere else.
And then I saw it.
Snaking across exposed flesh, at least what parts that were intact enough to see, was a burning red line. And then a jagged yellow line pushing its way to the surface. Then a gray fissure. Then a sharp green twist. Then an angular blue chain of polygons.
Dust. When March had split me like a party piñata and sent overpowered dust effects flying in every direction not all of it had been blasted outward. Just like how Tetra had been driven into my body a portion of the Dust woven into my clothes had been infused into my flesh.
I knew Dust could be used by embedding it into your body. I knew and I never even attempted it. That was because the process was both dangerous, difficult to control, and intensely painful. Even if you could withstand the damage the very nature of dust would set off every pain receptor it encountered. It was an agonizing process and an absolute last resort.
And that was assuming you were infusing a limited area, or using a couple of crystals. Not that you took divinely enhanced Dust and drove it into the deep tissue of your body. It was no wonder I was in agony. I was carrying a motherload of Dust that was firing without any direction or control.
I watched helplessly as the dust patterns that had bubbled to the surface began to glow, spark, smoke, frost over, or in the case of one line of rock Dust, begin to merge with the concrete beneath my hand. I did not have the Aura control to direct this. I barely had any Aura control to begin with. All my work with that power had been facilitated by the training wheels that were my costume and shield. Now the costume was in tatters and the shield was wrecked.
No. No, the shield wasn't wrecked. I didn't know how I knew that, but despite the twisted remains of the adamantium band on my wrist being clearly visible I knew the shield was fine. It… it was the runes. The soul-bound enchatment. That was more than just a base emulation, a teleport effect. It was an act of magic that had been crafted by divine perfection. A true emulation of Miss Militia's power, and Miss Militia didn't lose access to a weapon just because it took damage.
I could feel the link. The connection between myself and the icon of my Aura. I needed it, desperately, as a way to access my Aura, to mitigate the damage of the Dust in my system. That need, the burning necessity made the connection grow stronger.
This wouldn't be easy. It wasn't like calling the weapon from a distance of a few feet. This was restoration to its true form after catastrophic damage. A return to start, to the beyond perfect form that had been infused into the item.
I was running out of time. The dust was spreading, growing stronger. Even with the durability of my remaining shreds of costume helping me endure the damage the pain would leave me incapacitated. The Forge helpfully informed me that Clothing constellation had made a connection, Super Sea Snails. A little aquarium of ten special sea snails whose shells could empower clothing in… confusing ways.
Putting that aside and fighting through the pain I raised my left hand into the air. Burning lines in a dozen hues danced across it as the Dust continued to advance. My fingers convulsed in pain, warping my hand into a twisted claw. I bit down and focused on the link. It was there. I could reach it. It would come if I called, if I screamed for it.
"TRAUMA!"
A glowing gray mass bust from my body, warping around my hand and forming into the gauntlet and shield of my Aura weapon. A clawed metal glove extended from the tips of my fingers to past my elbow. A disk of serrated metal was mounted on the forearm, a nest of cruel barbs, spikes, and razors ringing the glowing reticle of the lantern. Beneath the shield a spool of razor wire was mounted next to a grapnel launcher.
As I watched, red strands of Tetra's fibers began wrapping round the black metal of the shield and gauntlet. It seemed to be driven by equal parts curiosity and excitement and the fibers wove over the surface, through joints, and along edges of the blades. With a final twist the mass secured itself, assigning a crimson pattern to the black metal and linking it to the life fibers coursing through my body.
There was a gray shimmer and the Dust coursing through my body, well it didn't settle so much as hold position. The pain dropped from mind numbing to merely arduous. It was like a weight falling from my shoulders, and with a final push of will I climbed to my feet and called to my nanites.
I felt the shudder go through the ABB grunts as the blue lines slowly spread over my body. Then I saw their reactions as the nanites closed the fissure in my face and rebuilt my eye. Wounds Tetra had been knitting together closed on their own, and bones and muscle were reformed. The mess that was my torso was quickly repaired, making me acutely aware of what a dangerous state I was in, and how lucky I had been to avoid immediate death.
And how I wasn't out of the woods yet. Tetra was still embedded inside my body. The nanites couldn't resolve the situation. She was effectively fused with several parts of my body, including vital organs. The extensive training that I had done with her, and her exposure to my blood, was causing a level of biological confusion. The extraction would be a delicate, directed process, not something I could manage with split focus in the field.
And there was another issue. Blood. Tetra was still surrounded by my blood, and she had no understanding of its importance or how to regulate her behavior. She was still drawing in blood to fuel herself, and would continue until there was no more blood. I hadn't noticed how light headed I had been getting before the nanite restoration reversed the effect. Now the reality of the situation was sinking in.
I had just gotten the Tailor power. I knew what life fibers were capable of and how to work with them. How to safely work with them. Part of that meant knowing the dangers of working with them, the risks they could pose.
The idea of blending a person with life fibers was theoretically possible, but that was theoretical in the extreme. The idea that maybe, somehow, some form of symbiosis could be induced. In ideal conditions. If you started very young and eased in over the entire period of childhood development. Trying it on an older child was just torture that would end in failure. Trying it on an adult was just a complicated form of execution.
My physiology protected me from some of the worst effects, but there were certain problems that couldn't be countered. The rate at which my nanites could restore blood was currently faster than Tetra was consuming it, but she was getting stronger, and that meant her drain was accelerating. Not quickly, but consistently. If this fight drew itself out I would start losing ground. Two guesses as to what happens if you run out of blood, and the first one doesn't count.
I was pulled out of my contemplation by the sound of wrenching metal. Silver claws punched through one of the containers in the pile created by Lung's impact. A gout of fire flowed out as the gap was ripped wider, peeling open the steel and revealing an empowered Lung, over twelve feet tall and wreathed in fire. His body was beginning to shift away from a human form, with digitigrade legs and an extended neck, as well as an expression of inhuman fury on his face.
I felt Tetra's drive to charge in and annihilate him, but I forced myself to hold back. This was a bad match. Lung was approaching the point where he could heal off almost anything, and he was advancing quickly. Much faster than normal. Meeting force with force would only accelerate that growth. Every piece of equipment I had prepared for this was wrecked. A quick check through my shield showed March's blast had even reached my subspace pocket, damaging the equipment stored there.
Stupid omni-dimensional blast.
I needed to hit him hard enough to put him down in one shot, but with Oni Lee's presence I wasn't sure I could manage that, and any drawn-out conflict would make things worse. If I was in a better state I might be able to field craft something or use alchemy, but that just wasn't possible while maintaining nanites, holding back Tetra's inhuman anger and managing the dust in my system.
The smart thing would be to make sure March was finished, fall back, and reconnect with my remaining duplicate. It was still hard to focus on my implant, but he had messaged me the instant he learned about the attack. Help was coming. I didn't need to get caught in a fight.
Then I felt a twitching sensation on my right hand. My eyes dropped and I froze. A tattered and stained white glove was pulling itself together, patching loose threads and making links to torn sections of cloth. I felt the same set of actions beneath the gauntlet on my left hand. Across my body the shredded remains of my costume began to shift, moving from a ragged collection of scraps into as close to a fashionable arrangement as possible. Threads flowed together, material was sewed into new shapes, and even some of the protruding life fibers were worked into the design.
The design. Garment. Garment had been hurt. Not just a few holes and tears to a dress she was piloting, but serious damage to the gloves, to the core of her being. I had never worried about her when she came with me. My Fashion reinforcement power extended to all the clothing I wore, including Garment's gloves. They were some of the most durable items on the planet when connected to me.
And March's blasts had torn through that durability like nothing. I didn't know what would happen to Garment if the gloves were damaged, but I was seeing it now. The gloves acted as the focus and anchor for Garment's spirit and powers. With them in shreds she was reduced to a fraction of her former strength.
What would have been a lighting quick repair complete with summoned materials was a slow ponderous shifting of fabric. Still, even in her reduced state, even while damaged and broken she was trying to help me. To do what she could.
Anger burned within me. The rage I had been holding back broke through. Maybe I would have been able to keep it under control, but Tetra was feeling the same thing. She didn't understand the nuances of it, but she knew who Garment was, she liked Garment, and she knew that Garment was hurt.
The Dragon's Pulse linking us became a feedback loop, reinforcing each other's fury, anger on behalf of the person feeling anger, repeated until the rage was a palpable thing. Until I was glowing like a red sun and ready to rain destruction upon my enemies. I was racing against Lung's power and my own limitations. Even with nanites restoring me, eventually Tetra was going to outpace them and bring disaster for both of us. But Garment had been hurt. None of that mattered. All that mattered was beating the person responsible. All that mattered was stopping Lung before I ran out of blood.
Before my body is dry.
Lung tried to move first, dropping his body and shifting as to charge. I was flying towards him before he got the chance, colliding with his torso and sending him skidding back along the ground while I clawed at his face and neck. I moved to bring the barbed mass of my shield down onto his neck in a thunderous swing, but he shifted suddenly. A pair of bony growths from his back gave him enough leverage to twist his body to the side and protect his head.
Instead, the mass of Aura enhanced adamantium cut into his arm. The shield wasn't designed for slicing, it was too cruel a weapon for that. With the strength of my swing and the sharpness of the material it punched through the flesh of Lung's arm, but did so like a meat grinder. The complete opposite of a clean cut, it left a ragged bloody stump where his left arm used to be.
The Dragon roared and spit a blast of fire into my face. I ignored it and shifted my right hand from frantically clawing at Lung's face and neck to a solid grip on his damaged left arm. With a single jerk, I tore the appendage from the remaining strands of viscera that held it to Lung's torso, then brought it down like a club.
At this point Lung was pushing fourteen feet tall and the arm was nearly the same size as me. That didn't matter in the face of life fiber strength, but did matter to a dragon man who took a blow from a weapon that held about six percent of his body weight directly to the forehead.
Lung's head snapped back and impacted the pavement. Unfortunately, with the speed we were still moving and Lung's snake-like neck, that saw his head pulled under his body and then caught, causing his body to flip, throwing me off.
I twisted, and prepared to move in to finish him, but was greeted by the sight of Oni Lee posed with his micro launcher. Shifting targets, I dashed forward and reduced the copy to dust, only to be greeted with the sight of two more versions of the cape on the stack of crates.
They opened up with the launchers and I was made acutely aware of my lack of ranged weaponry. I resorted to launching my grapnel, keeping one hand on the razor wire to control it. The action served to infuse the attack with the Dust that had continued to boil to the surface of my body, turning it into a sparking, burning line of death.
A quick flick sent the wire whipping through the oncoming assault. Even with Aura my control wasn't fine enough to catch all the missiles, but the arcing dust energy took care of any I couldn't reach.
That meant I had the opportunity to see exactly what Bakuda had prepared for me in that launcher. Not all of the missiles detonated, but the ones that went off were terrifying. Warped space, deleted areas of matter, what looked like tiny black holes, and of course a sputtering time stop effect, its missile too damaged to properly deploy the time prison it contained.
I was moving to finish Lung off, but more copies of Oni Lee appeared to intercept me. Some I managed to catch before they could launch attacks, dropped with either unarmed strikes or the edges of my shield. With an idea of my dashing range, he started appearing further back to take firing positions. My grapnel and razor wire was deployed again, burning and slicing through copies.
It looked like I might be overwhelmed, but incredibly Tetra started mirroring my actions. Burning cords of life fibers extended from the seams of my former wounds and lashed out against copies of the masked cape. Burning wire and glowing thread cut through the night, reducing every copy they touched to ash. With Tetra's help the defensive stand turned into a running battle, chasing the teleporter through the rows of containers, over the devastation from both my earlier assault and the mass release of Dust when I was ambushed.
Oni Lee was teleporting at close to the limit of human perception, dropping copies the moment the previous one formed. I was cutting them down almost as fast. Dust burned over my skin, turning simple blows into explosions of elemental might. Entire teams of clones were taken out with a single swing. Missiles were burned or frozen out of the air, and Tetra acted independently, slicing down any copy that showed its face.
I was running along the side of containers, bouncing between monoliths of ice or rock dust, or swinging on the path of my grapnel. It was a level of mobility that was pushing a true teleporter to his limit. A limit he finally reached when I launched myself skyward from a stack of shipping containers and spotted the assassin cape amassing duplicates in a sniper position, perfectly arranged to ambush the path I had considered taking.
A grapnel buried itself in the ground in the center of the clones, followed immediately by the impact of a furious cape with a body writhing with red threads, covered in glowing scars, and wearing Garment's best attempt at a field-sewn Barbarian Chic outfit. Not that they had time to appreciate it as I spun, lashing out with every weapon at my disposal. Wire and life fiber cut through the clones, leaving me in a cloud of ash. I readied myself of the next appearance, the follow up attack, but it didn't come. Then I saw the wall.
Specifically, the energetic red splatter painted across a wall of containers. Oni Lee, with his rapid teleportation, had finally been an instant too slow. The attack had caught him. Maybe not entirely, but enough to cause serious injury.
Had he slunk off to lick his wounds, or was he preparing a final desperation attack? Whatever the case, he was no longer in top form. Judging from the spray it had been a fairly serious cut. Either he was running to get medical attention or he was going to bleed out in minutes. Either way, it gave me enough time to go after Lung.
A roar and the sound of bat wings answered that thought. With two heavy beats the form of the Dragon of Brockton Bay rose over the container yard, silver scales highlighted by the last rays of the sun.
Despite the rumors, it was actually unconfirmed that Lung could grow wings. Most people's opinion on the matter was basically 'sure, why not?'. Basically, if Lung got to the point of flying he was so far out of your depth that you might as well call it a day. Don't stick around to take pictures, just let him be.
Which was honestly good advice. This was a faster advancement than Lung had ever shown before. Dragging this out would only make putting him down more difficult. Retreat was the best option.
Which is when the Forge decided to give me another present. I had gotten several powers since my arrival at this conflict, none of which were the least bit relevant to the situation at hand. It seemed the Forge wanted to make up for that lapse, at the worst time possible.
In spades.
The power was another from the Toolkits constellation. It was a tiny mote called Armor-Shift Manufacture and provided a small machine for my workshop that would take any piece of armor placed inside it and grant it the ability to change form to accommodate any shifts in its wearer's body. It also came with two tiny motes. The first was called Martial Artist: Muay Thai. It granted all of the basics of Muay Thai, as well as several advanced principles and techniques. It also had the unique feature of covering how to apply the technique to a different form.
In case the pattern wasn't obvious from the first two abilities, what they were working to facilitate became clear with the third. It granted me an incidental mote called Beast Change! - Inostrancevia, and suddenly I was a little less human. Another power had warped my genetics, this time granting something called the zoanthrope gene. A genetic feature that facilitated a person's transformation into a hybrid of man and animal. Potentially any animal that did exist or had existed in the history of the planet.
It was a completely scientific way to make a person a werewolf, or were-anything, really. I was a 'natural' zoanthrope, but there was engineering potential here. It was possible to create artificial versions of this state, particularly with my powers and knowledge. Another free, monstrous power up that I could suddenly inflict on people.
And it was power. Even without the transformation being triggered I could feel the energy, the strength and instincts burning beneath my skin. It was a state that was enhanced by the life fibers. That aspect of genetic advancement that was specific to life fiber energy was combining with the unique features of the zoanthrope gene, driving it to new heights of power, and new heights of rage.
And that was expressing itself now. The zoanthrope gene could express itself in any way. Any possible animal. And what animal did I get? Not a wolf, tiger, bear, or shark. Not anything that would show up on heraldry or as the mascots of sports teams. Not even something people would have heard of. No, my form was obscure, confusing, and of questionable utility. I hoped that wasn't a comment on me.
My zoanthrope form was an inostrancevia. A saber-toothed dinosaur wolf from a quarter BILLION years ago. It wasn't even fair to call it a dinosaur, since it predated even the earliest examples. It was a predator from the dawn of creation, outside of time and anything recognizable to it, but still driven and dangerous.
And it had a target. I had a target. Lung was hanging over the container yard, burning like a second sun. I didn't care if he was taunting me, or trying to draw out the conflict. I didn't care about the time limit from Tetra's blood drain. I didn't care about the fact that I had no concrete plan to put him down beyond 'hit him harder'. I was directing healing nanites, holding back the massive Dust incursion in my body with barely controlled Aura, and struggling to regulate the emotional link with Tetra. There was nothing left to address the fresh set of primordial predator instincts blooming in my body.
I stood up and roared, an action which drew the attention of Lung and the remaining gang members who were still scrambling through the site, carrying out old orders, seeing to injured comrades, and for some reason still recording the confrontation well past the point of any useful propaganda for the gang.
My roar dropped in pitch and took on a guttural quality. Containers rumbled as my bloody roar echoed across the facility. Bristly hair rippled over my body and I felt the positions of my bones shift. The clothes I wore may have been shadows of their former selves, but they were still constructed with my power. They would always fit, even if the person wearing them turned into a Lopingian-era werewolf. My face extended into a muzzle and my teeth transformed to saber like fangs. Muscles expanded, taking on new characteristics and power, and my hands and feet grew claws.
I crouched, digging the claws of my feet into the steel of the container beneath me. Remains of my divine boots had shifted enough to allow that purchase. Specifically, the purchase of a launch platform. My new body, a monstrous form covered in the glow of life fibers, nanites, and Dust, coiled like a spring, and launched itself into the air, directly into the path of the fluttering dragon man.
Lung saw me coming and made a token effort to avoid my charge. Token and ultimately futile, given the speed at which I moved. That would be categorized as blinding just under the influence of life fibers. Adding Dust, Aura, and zoanthrope genetics meant there was no hope. I instinctively drew on the fresh knowledge of Muay Thai and met Lung's flying form with the mother of all knee strikes, driven directly into his chest.
With no leverage to resist the impact Lung's wings folded as both of us were launched over the bay. My strike had shattered the armor of his chest, but the lack of resistance was favoring Lung. Most of the impact of the force was transferred into velocity as we careened out over the water. Lung struggled with my eight-foot form. Less than half his size, but exponentially stronger. His desperate flailing was totally ineffective against my might as I clawed up his torso, opened my mouth wider than any creature that wasn't part crocodile should be able to manage, and sank my saber teeth into his snake neck.
The scales meant to protect him shattered and buckled under the force of my bite. I was running on pure instinct, immediately shifting my grip and using the leverage afforded by my jaw to rain knee and elbow strikes upon him. Lung roared and twisted his own head to try to snap at me with a mouth full of flaming teeth. The flames were ignored and I felt his monstrous metal fangs warp or shatter against my durability.
A swipe from my shield as the Magic constellation passed by was enough to cause him to rear back and shift grab for me with both hands. He tore me away, taking off a chunk of his neck as he did so. I could already see it beginning to heal, a sign we were approaching a critical level of his growth. With a desperate motion he threw me towards the surface of the bay and frantically beat his wings to gain altitude.
With enhanced animal agility it took a fraction of a second to steady myself. A fraction more to plan my next move, and another fraction to set it into motion. By the time I reached the water's surface I had my legs beneath me, posed to strike. The instant I met the liquid I kicked with all the force I could bring to bear.
It was like a bomb had gone off. The water launched itself away from my foot. I swear I could see the exposed seafloor in the aftermath of the impact. But just for an instant, then I was rocketing back into the air, directly at Lung.
The cape was bigger now, at least twenty feet, and appeared to be growing smaller secondary wings. Whether they improved his agility or he was just more prepared, this time he actually managed a decent effort at dodging my attack. He tucked his wings and rolled out of the way while bringing up a hand to shoot a stream of fire. This wasn't like his previous efforts, not a dispersed blast of moderate flames. Instead, it came like a jet from a cutting torch, only directed as a focused, long range weapon.
I may have been drowning in prehistoric instincts, managing nanite healing, containing an arsenal of Dust, and moderating a bloom of evolutionary life fiber energy from a being that was slowly killing me, but that didn't mean I was going to let something like this pass. Lung was trying to use fire. On me. A random, sloppy, dispersed, and lazy version of flame manipulation. The art of life, of creation, used as a blunt instrument. Even through all the ways I was splitting my focus, I was insulted.
I twisted in midair, letting the stream flow past me. Then I reached out and grabbed it. Burning air flowed under my hands without shifting my grip. I used the stream for leverage, swung my body around, and bounded up the line of fire directly towards Lung's flying form.
It is a unique experience seeing pure shock on the face of a creature that left any practical human expressiveness behind three transformation stages ago. Seeing a fanged x-shaped mouth hang open as a prehistoric wolf man climbs up a stream of fire to kick him in the face warmed my heart in a way that had nothing to do with my proximity to a thermal effect that could liquify steel in an instant.
Lung's jaw turned to powder under the force of my strike, and the blow took most of his head with it. The cape flailed randomly, pulling out of my path and leaving me to careen into the sky. I rolled to steady myself and sighted on Lung's form. The damage to his head hadn't finished him, despite probably being enough to pulp the contents of his skull.
Right. I bit down on the conflicting focus and instincts I was dealing with. Regenerator cape. That meant a core somewhere in their body. Usually the head, but not always, and usually not for serious regenerators. No doubt other people had tried to end Lung's transformation with cranial trauma, and it had probably gone as well for them as it was for me.
I took a moment to appreciate the insane height I had reached as my velocity dropped off, leaving me hanging in the air over the bay. Lung sputtered below me, the damage to his head slowly reversing, but beyond the immediate fight I had the whole city spread before me. The Rig stood over the bay, still scorched and broken from Saturday's attack. From my height I could see the impact of the ABB conscripts at work. Fires, occasional explosions, flashing sirens, and the presence of more exotic effects. The time frozen mess that was Bakuda workshop stood out, as did the concentrations of lights, clouds, and colorful flares where ABB territory bordered the areas held by the Merchants and Empire. However, none of them held a candle to the impact of March's strike against me.
The point where it had happened was clearly visible, right at the western edge of the container yard. It was clear in that it was the center of a starburst of multicolored Dust effects stretching out from the point of impact, extending for multiple blocks. Every effect I had woven into that costume had been violently discharged in a display that could be shown on a map of the city.
Glowing lines of crackling shock Dust, the flaming trail of burn Dust, multiple ice walls, or rock Dust creating either a line of monoliths or a sudden fissure in the ground. Water Dust splitting the earth to create a new waterway, or wind Dust causing a corridor of gale force conditions. Gravity Dust compressing trees and buildings to near collapse, or causing everything in its path to float.
Mercifully the effect was limited to the 'industrial' areas of the north Docks, which were currently only really industrial in terms of zoning rather than economy. Still, it was harrowing to see how far the effects had spread. It wasn't as intentionally dangerous as Bakuda's weapons, and thankfully most of the truly dangerous Dust expulsions, burn Dust, lightning Dust, or even that new magma Dust, had been directed towards the bay or boat graveyard. There was a line of ice Dust cutting through the north end of the boardwalk, and all manner of strategic Dust types active inland, but that should be mostly property damage in an area with little activity.
At least I could say my exploding wardrobe did less damage than Bakuda's coordinated attack forces.
My moment of hang time expired and I started to drop again. I set my sights of Lung, seeing the dragon nearly recovered from my last attack. I fired a grapnel and the anchor bit into the dragon-man's armored back. Before he could react I launched myself towards him, leveraging the razor wire to add a spin to my motion. With my shield extended I blazed past Lung, raking the barbs and spikes of my shield through his spine with all the speed my dive and rotation would allow. I tore through him, leaving a bloody mess of his spine and shredding one wing.
He steadied himself with blasts of fire, being careful to direct them away from me, while his wing healed at a terrifying rate. My trajectory continued towards the bay, but a second grapnel line swung me towards the wall of ice that had extended from the container yard.
I landed on top of the frozen edifice and stared up at the recovering gang leader. Lung was fighting for altitude, working to stay out of my range until, I assume, he built enough strength to damage me. I doubted that would happen, but I was working under other limits, and would reach mine before he reached his. At that point I would be abandoning the city to a fully ramped up Lung, something a full alliance of Brockton's Capes would be hard pressed to stop.
A sudden message broke through the chaos of my mind, priority codes screaming directly from my implant to my gray matter.
"Get clear!"
My second duplicate was here. It was easy to forget, despite the seeming lifetime from March's attack, mere minutes had passed. The pace of combat, particularly when operating under the effect of enhancements, was insane.
As was my duplicate's opening move.
The world turned red and the sound of tortured air echoed through the city. A crimson beam cut through the sky and struck Lung dead center. I could see the shadow of his form within the beam, a smoldering silhouette within a field of white. Particles flaked off from his form, and I recognized the full expression of the weapon, opened at maximum power for the longest duration possible.
When it finally had to cut out a blackened, emaciated shape hung in the air. Stubs of wings failed to keep it aloft even as feeble jets of flame were directed towards the ocean in an attempt to stay in the air. His right forearm and most of his left leg was missing, and he looked half dead.
But Lung was healing. Two lasers might have finished him off, but at this point, with him careening past twenty feet in height, it just wasn't enough.
Which is probably why my duplicate decided to respond with a follow-up maneuver that is generally known as 'all the missiles'. Please understand, that is not an exaggeration in the slightest. He fired everything, regardless of relevance to the current situation. If the munition could be loaded into one of the motoroid's launchers it was now flying at Lung.
The result was a field of death that made Oni Lee's duplicated missile swarms look conservative. Over two hundred warheads, launched in miniaturized form and unfolded midair on their way to the target, bore down on the charred form of the parahuman gang leader.
I will give Lung credit. With the life he has lived, and the amount of time he spent in the cape community, he obviously recognized death when he saw it flying towards him. He immediately reversed the flow of the fire jets keeping him aloft and dove straight towards the water.
I watched as Lung's rapidly healing body disappeared under the waves, followed by a swarm of missiles that made Bakuda's bombardment attempt from Monday afternoon look like a firework show. I clung to the top of the wall of ice as the detonations started. And continued. And continued some more.
It really was a lot of missiles.
I became aware of communications efforts from my duplicate. Actually, I became aware that there had been communications efforts from pretty much the instant I was struck by March's ambush. The combined distractions had kept me from even noticing them, much less addressing the situation. It was lucky that my duplicate had been there to step up. He'd even contacted the local authorities on behalf of Triumph and to warn them about March, both critical tasks that I'd been too distracted to even think about attempting. I focused on the various personal crises I was managing and tried to spare enough mental space to reply.
"I'm… okay." I attempted. Interfacing with my implant was hard. Just forming words to send in that format was suddenly a major effort. "Situation bad. Some stuff… From the healing…"
"I know." Replied my duplicate. "Don't worry, I have a full breakdown of events and your current medical condition."
I frowned and tried to sort my call logs. "How…?"
"The nanobot matrix." He replied. "When I couldn't reach you, or your copies of Fleet or Survey, I was able to contact the nascent A.I. of the nanobots in your system. They knew how to interface with the neural implant thanks to switching out the processors, so they were able to keep me apprised of the situation."
I spotted the duplicate's motoroid flying towards me with drones in formation and unnecessarily waved it down with a clawed hand. Between the constant cycling of my blood, the life fiber energy, the animal instincts, and the tremendous amount of Dust still in my system I was feeling… Well, lightheaded would be an understatement. I was lucky to still be functional.
I shook my head. This was important. "The nanobots… couldn't tell you everything. There's… something. Through the Dragon's Pulse. Lung, or his passenger. It's responding to threat." I took a breath and focused again. "We set him off. It's like nothing else. Growing faster. Less restrictions." I looked out over the bay. "That might not be enough."
The motoroid arrested its momentum with a burst from its thrusters and turned its scanners towards the bay. The duplicate's response was all the confirmation I needed.
"Fuck."
I didn't need to ask for clarification as the surface of the water breached. What came out, propelled mostly by jets of fire from its fore and hind limbs, had obviously been through hell. The fact that it was rapidly healing didn't seem to be much of a comfort to a creature that looked more like a collection of raw hamburger stapled to a skeleton than any kind of living thing.
Lung was back. He was healing. And he was pissed.
"Here." Came my duplicate's message. "Take the potions. They should ease the strain from Tetra, at the very least."
The flying suit began dispensing a handful of potions. Looking at the vials I briefly considered how to handle them before just throwing them en masse into my primordial wolf mouth and chewing them like a handful of Gushers. Oh, the advantage of extreme durability and regeneration.
Instantly I felt a sense of relief as the bodily systems I had been struggling to keep ahead of Tetra's drain received a massive boost. It calmed me to the point where I could really appreciate how screwed I was.
Lung was over thirty feet tall. He was full-on Leviathan height, with all the power that state entailed. The actual Endbringer in question hadn't been able to overpower him at this point. It may have been the trauma, desperation and mental strain, but I didn't know how we were going to handle this. Just the weight of power flowing off of Lung was deafening, at least by the standards of the Dragon's Pulse. It was so overwhelming I couldn't even feel my duplicate's chi from within the armor.
No, I definitely couldn't feel my duplicate's chi. There was no trace of it within the armor. He wasn't inside the armor. He had sent an empty suit. Meaning I was facing down Endbringer Lung with a handful of equipment, an empty motoroid, and a serious medical crisis.
"Where are you?" I struggled to message my duplicate.
"Okay, don't be mad."
I considered his response and decided that yes, I was most definitely going to be mad. "What are you doing?"
His answer came as a rapid data string. "When I saw that Lung was ramping up I figured we'd need more help. I didn't know the reason for why he was getting so strong, but that's kind of academic anyway. Also, I know you probably wanted to be the first to drive it, so sorry for cutting in line."
I looked at Lung's rapidly repairing body towering over the bay, and considered what an appropriate response would be to a situation like then. Then I considered what my duplicate would be able to bring to bear. Then I stopped considering because I saw exactly what he had done.
Nearly fifty feet of Super-Ceramic Composite Gundarium Alloy launched itself over my position and into the gang leader. For the second time that day I got to see a truly shocked expression on a face that really shouldn't be capable of expressions, much less shocked ones.
The mobile suits were capable of being deployed directly from the warehouse with a few minutes deployment time. The question of how that worked was one of those aspects of the Forge where no answer was available. It just did. At a signal from me, or from my duplicates, a suit would take a minute to prep its launch, then a few minutes to arrive at its destination. The route it took, the mechanism of moving from a sealed workshop to the real world, or where exactly it entered the outside universe was something the Forge wasn't concerned about. The suits could be deployed if called, and my duplicate had made the call.
And as a result, he was now piloting a giant robot into combat with Lung. The mobile suit swooped down on Lung, four 60mm Vulcan guns spitting shells into his body at the speed of a rotary cannon. The damage was negligible with Lung's regeneration, but served to distract him as the duplicate drove the Gun-EZ into a flying tackle.
For the first time in the fight that Lung was the one who found himself out of his weight class. The mobile suit had almost twenty feet on him, and was hitting at full thrust. Once again, fighting from a flying position came to bite Lung in the ass as simple Newtonian physics saw him carried out, across the bay and away from the city.
I have to admit I was more than a little envious of the sheer exhilaration conveyed from my duplicate as he piloted our giant robot into a slug match with an enormous monster. It was a petty gripe, and I was immensely grateful for the situation. I took a breath and tried to steady myself.
And suddenly found it much easier to steady myself.
The Forge had just made another connection. It was a midsized mote from the quality constellation called Secret of Steel. The power itself was actually an instruction manual, a text on Japanese smithing techniques. If followed precisely it could produce items that were significantly beyond what should be possible from just their material and craftsmanship. Edges that could cut through steel, nearly indestructible armor and simple tools that functioned as well as modern technology.
But that wasn't what was significant about this power. Like how Armor-Shift Manufacture was a fairly basic item with massively disruptive supplemental powers, Secret of Steel's real significance was in the powers that came bundled with it.
For one, the Secret of Steel was immediately applied to my lantern shield. More than that, it actually created an effect where the shield would advance with me as I grew in skill and power. What skill, you ask? Why the comprehensive understanding of ninjutsu that I had just been blessed with, including the use of my lantern shield, or more specifically its wire component, as my metaphorical 'sword', or expression of offensive power.
This wasn't basic ninjutsu either. It came with the full stealth and deception side of things, as well as introduction to ki manipulation. As in magic ninja trick ki manipulation. Oh, and I had ki now, which was basically a new flavor on what I'd been doing with chi control or the Dragon's Pulse.
The expanded understanding of ki was actually the really significant part of the ability. The power granted me an understanding of Sei Ki, or internally focused energy. It was an art that taught the mechanics of inner calm, centeredness, and clarity of thought in battle. All things I desperately needed right now. With a single breath I felt the strain of balancing so many conflicting forces melt away. I could focus, I could think, and I could actually function properly, even under my current physical strain.
That strain was also slightly mitigated by another power. Master's Body, or the body of a martial art's master. I wasn't totally there yet, not all the way to 'master', but what I had been granted was enough to reduce the stress from life fibers, embedded Dust, and my own zoanthrope transformation.
The power also came with a philosophy. Katsujinken, the life-giving fist. Contrary to every destructive and overwhelming mental change I had endured, this was one I could see myself fully accepting. It was the simple view that you should protect those who cannot protect themselves and improve the lives of those around you. That purposefully killing is not something that should be sought out, and was akin to defeat. That peace was something worth fighting for.
What was probably most comforting was the fact that it was a set of principles, not an obligation. I was free to embrace or reject the ideals of the philosophy, to stray from the path and try to find my way back. The important thing was the fact that it had effects that facilitated its ideals. Holding the principles granted a calm demeanor and the ability to set people at ease, and allowed the chance for a dialog before fighting.
It was everything I had neglected, and exactly what I needed as a cape. Unfortunately, not precisely what I needed at this moment. Looking out over the bay with newly gained calm and focus I saw a mostly restored Lung squaring off against my duplicate. The time for dialogue had passed, and was unlikely to be productive against Lung anyway.
Peace and nonviolence were worth striving for, but force in the defense of another was fully acceptable within this philosophy. I would have to fight to win, to do what it took to stop Lung and protect the people of this city. If that ended his life it wouldn't be a victory, but it would let those living under his yoke know a measure of peace. I could accept a personal loss for the safety of those who couldn't fight for themselves.
With my mind clear I felt my implant link with the copy of Survey on the remote hub and the version of Fleet running on the motoroid. I also recognized the signs of my nanobots interfacing with my neural implant and the other systems of my body. In response to an expression of concern from Survey, Garment twitched the clothing of my abbreviated costume, much to the A.I.'s relief.
I took one final breath and focused on my Sei Ki. The mechanics were still unfamiliar, the sensations strange, but I could feel the interactions of powers within my body. With a force of will I was able to sever the link between my zoanthrope genetics and the still surging life fiber energy.
Primal instincts dampened even further than they initially had. I suddenly felt control over the state, the change. With a sinking sensation my bones shifted, my claws disappeared, and my body shifted back to a human shape.
Well, except for the extruding life fibers, patterns of active Dust and circuit tracing from a set of nanites trying their best to keep the entire mess alive and upright.
In the distance the mobile suit had drawn both of its beam sabers. The saber granted from Anaheim Degree was a mass of high energy plasma bound in an I-field of Minovsky Particles. Nothing but contained thermal energy, and of dubious usefulness against Lung.
The beam saber from Exotic Compatibility was an entirely different beast, and beyond the superficial similarities barely deserved to be in the same category as Anaheim Degree's plasma sword. It was a bound ionization field of charged particles that caused any matter exposed by it to rip itself apart. It was a disintegration sword, one against which thermal resistance meant nothing.
Which was how my duplicate was facing off against the recovered Lung. The plasma blade in his suit's left hand began to warp in shape, spreading over the handle in a broad plane. Combined technokinesis and pyrokinesis, generating a plasma shield, a defensive compliment to the annulation blade in his right hand. An improvised beam shield, one that could be used for physical and energy defense.
Lung dove towards the suit and quickly learned the folly of that strategy. Launched fire blasts were deflected by the pyrokinetic abilities of the my duplicate or the burning shield protecting his robot. When the beast of a cape closed to grapple the beam saber shot out, cleaving through Lung's torso and shearing off an arm and one of his four wings. The dragon narrowly avoided the second swipe by launching himself backwards with the force of his pyrokinesis, but the suit engaged its rockets and pursued him.
I focused on the situation at hand. My mind wasn't clear enough to craft or perform alchemy, but at least I was no longer blindly charging into a fight with a villain who relied on people blindly charging into fights with them. My duplicate was in an airborne mecha duel with the dragon man, something I was still envious of, but unless his disintegration sword got an exceptionally lucky hit and caught Lung's core it was only going to be a holding action that would make things worse.
I had no idea how to fix this situation, but thankfully I wasn't the only one who could. I opened my communication protocols to my duplicate and A.I.s. and raised the question.
"We need a way to defeat Lung. At this point anything that causes less damage than he's likely to cause if he slips past us will be entertained. We need a solution and have limited options."
My duplicate was the first to chime in. "You were right about him growing fast. He's putting out a lot of energy. Probably going to be a threat to the suit's armor before long, either physical or thermal, though I can mitigate that with pyrokinesis. I'm working on field upgrades, but I'm not sure if I can stay ahead of him."
It was weird hearing the idea of modifying an in-use vehicle from an outside perspective. I knew I could do that kind of work, but hearing someone else say it, or work it into a battle strategy, was kind of unsettling.
"Plus, I've got less than twenty minutes of duration left." The duplicate continued. "And with the state you're in I don't want you downing another potion outside of lab conditions. Not with that much Dust in your system. It could pop the next batch the moment they form."
That was a grim thought. Another timer we were working under. And as much as the recent powers had helped my mind and body endure this mess I knew how dire the situation was, and knew that I couldn't hold out forever. We needed to resolve this and get back to the workshop to find a way to fix things.
"Solutions to the current conflict would likely involve effective containment, removal of enemy from areas of threat to civilians, or complete destruction beyond the ability to recover." Survey listed. "Initial and secondary options are unlikely with current resources, tertiary option is possible, but will require extreme measures."
I swallowed as Fleet broke in with his own suggestion for the tertiary option. The nanobot matrix also had some ideas, mostly connected to rather extreme alchemical principles. I wasn't that comfortable with the idea, and even less so with it being suggested by my A.I.s, but I accepted the necessity.
At the very least Lung was currently away from shore and isolated from the city. Whatever action we needed to take could be done without interference from the city. Any plan to remove, contain, or subdue a rampaging Lung would be a delicate operation, and it was a mercy that we could act without opposition.
Which, of course, was when a sonic boom cracked over the city drawing my eyes up to see a contrail turn into a downward dive. A path that no commercial airliner would take. Fleet provided me with scanner data of the craft while Survey helpfully informed me that Dragon had arrived six minutes ahead of her earliest estimated arrival time.
I swore under my breath as Dragon's suit turned towards where the mobile suit was engaged in a midair battle with Lung, now closer to 35 feet than his earlier 30. If he was growing in response to threat then Dragon would not help matters. The Knowledge constellation passed by as I considered my next action.
As I watched Lung dove in close enough to slash at one of the torso plates of the mobile suit, only to fall back on the thrust from jets of flame as the beam saber almost removed his neck and shoulders. All the while the trail of jet exhaust signaling Dragons arrival grew closer, seeming to accelerate as it did.
That was really just a result of the fact that the suit was dropping from a cruising altitude of around 40,000 feet. A plane that seemed to crawl across the sky was really blazing through the air at insane speeds, it just looked peaceful from a distance. The same could be said about Dragon's suit. From a distance, tranquil white dot inching through the sky. Zoomed in, nightmarish mechanical beast swooping towards you.
From Fleet's relaying of the motoroid's sensors I could see the structure of the suit. It was a new model, about 45 feet long, with the feeling that it had been intended for local operation rather than her usual rapid response. In fact, she may have red-lined the turbines to get to the city in time. She probably was already en route when the attack started.
And now she was headed to my oceanic battle with Lung rather than to provide any support with the situation in the Docks. Survey informed me that this new model was called the Cetus, so maybe a battle over water was an appropriate move for a suit named after a sea monster.
There was a limit to what I could tell about the structure and armament of the suit in its current form. Everything was folded down to a minimum profile to facilitate aerodynamics. It looked like her normal quadrupedal design with some impressive secondary armaments and a long 'neck' and 'tail' area.
This was not a situation I wanted to deal with. I still wasn't sure the exact nature of the mental effect Dragon was under, but it was absolutely clear that she was compelled to oppose me. There was a chance that she would prioritize Lung, but I had no doubt that the second he was dealt with she would be after me.
There was also the problem that Dragon was coming into the battle with a new suit, a suit she had built after declaring her intention to pursue me. I didn't know what that thing was armed with, but it was a safe bet that the loadout would lean much more heavily towards counters to my abilities than to Lung's.
There was a flare of discomfort as the balance between embedded Dust, life fibers, new genetics, and nanites shifted slightly. I took a breath to center myself, feeling the digital or spiritual connection to Fleet, Survey, Tetra, Garment, and even the nanobot matrix. It reminded me I wasn't in this alone. Sei ki could keep me focused, Katsujinken could moderate my approach to the situation, and the people around me could help. Wanted to help.
I opened myself up to their assistance, to whatever they could do. Their options were limited, but they wanted to help any way they could. Garment was doing everything she could to hold my costume together, which was all she could manage and something I was grateful for.
Tetra had managed to recognize that the blind overpowering rage that resonated between us was not helping the situation. She was trying to regulate her feelings, but was still scared, uncertain, and confused. I tried to reassure her and expressed gratitude for her moderation of the emotional link.
Survey was operating in a limited capacity. She was functioning from a copy on the remote QEC hub and the version running on my duplicate's omni-tool. Fleet was sharing the motoroid's processing space and sensor data with her, as well as drone controls, but she was in a more limited position than she was used to being. Mostly she was providing summaries from reports in the city and analysis of other sensors with a feeling of frustration for not being able to do more.
Fleet was, surprisingly, not operating the giant robot. A quick check confirmed that the primary version of Fleet had documented the mobile suit on its arrival to the workshop, but hadn't made modifications or installed a remote copy. He was about as disappointed by that as I was, but was content to provide support based on what was actually a much more comprehensive tactical modeling history than anyone would have guessed. That was probably where his anti-Lung suggestion had come from, and regrettably it was something we might actually need to act on.
I was fascinated to see both the level of engagement and advanced development that was demonstrated by the nanobot matrix in my system. The divinely crafted nanotech had taken actions to manage communications when I was effectively incapacitated, monitored my medical condition, provided moderate support, and independently interfaced with Fleet, Survey, and Tetra to a limited extent. It was an unexpected ally and one I was grateful for.
And I would need all the support I could get. I needed to get into that fight, both to support my duplicate and to run interference from Dragon. Huh. I would be fighting both Lung and Dragon. That wouldn't be likely to get confusing. I put that out of my mind, approved the various proposals, and gave the signal to move out.
As Fleet launched my motoroid into the sky with the drones trailing behind it I looked down from the ice shelf at the lapping waves of the bay. The hardest part of this fight had been the environment working against me. Fighting a flying opponent over water wasn't ideal, but it was also the best way to avoid collateral damage.
It wasn't like I hadn't prepared for this kind of thing. In addition to the motoroid's flight systems I had a half dozen ways to address my limited three-dimensional mobility. It was just that they were either unavailable or inapplicable in this situation.
Direct action from mass effect fields, Dust weaves, micro thrusters, or elemental weaponry all relied on actually having those things in a state that wasn't a shredded mess. The near total loss of equipment wasn't something I had prepared for. I had other options, but those relied on being able to focus on either alchemy or pyrokinesis, and my focus was very much spoken for at the moment.
So, my flight options were limited, but that didn't mean I was unable to act. What I was about to try would probably have been technically possible earlier in the fight, but only if I was willing to accept a complete lack of control and precision. If my boots were fully intact maybe I could have opened with it, but they were running at reduced capacity.
Reduced capacity for something that was on the level of gods was still pretty impressive, and when combined with my latest power it was more than enough to handle this. I tensed, and then launched myself out towards the bay as the Forge missed a connection to the Resources and Durability constellation.
The moment I hit the water I kicked down, beginning a rapid stride that took me on a path following my motoroid. Just running on water wasn't hard. Anyone who could move at seventy miles per hour would be able to manage it.
Okay, maybe it was hard, but I was working with a different set of metrics.
The thing is there's a big difference from being able to stay above the surface while maintaining speed and actually having any sense of control or maneuverability during the act. My boots were the kind of thing that could manage it, and were certainly helping now, but most of this was the result of my new training in ninjutsu.
Even setting aside the supernatural applications of ki that were possible through that art, it was incredibly specialized in grace and precision. A master of ninjutsu could manage this without any external equipment or support. I wasn't quite at that level, but my skill was more than enough to operate under the circumstances.
I blazed over the waves without leaving so much as a line of foam to mark my passing. The actual experience was odd and difficult to describe. I would say the closest analogy would be like trying to run across a muddy field in smooth shoes. It required constant effort to stay upright and control the direction of my movement, but I could do it.
I could run on water.
And I was basically racing Dragon to the scene of the fight. Well, referring to it as a fight badly undersold the spectacle of watching a rocket powered giant robot with a laser sword have an airborne duel with a demonic burning lizard creature.
Lung had at least learned to fear the mobile suit's beam saber, but was now attempting to work around it. He was using his smaller size to his advantage, combining his wings with the thrust of his fire blasts to out maneuver the suit's rocket propulsion, trying to come in from blind angles and undefended sides. He would happily ram into the suit's burning shield, spitting fire and snapping with his snake-like neck before either being thrown off or having to dodge a beam saber strike.
Fleet was providing support through the motoroid's weapons and creative use of the drones, but with the heavier ordnance expended the best he could manage was attempting to create openings for my duplicate to abuse. There had been some early hopes of success through chaining the electrical attacks of the drones into a burst of lightning that was of Olympian scale, but Lung had managed to take out one of the drones on the last attempt at a strike, and was on guard for that tactic now.
That's the thing. Lung was fighting smart. It wasn't what you expected from someone generally known as a 'rage dragon', but it was well within his ability. Brutes weren't actually dumb, and that went double for the ones who managed to become a gang leaders in control of a major portion of a large city. Time was on his side in this fight, not ours. I needed to get into the conflict, and hopefully before Dragon swooped in.
When I did reach the scene, well, my options were somewhat limited. I was a giant ball of life fiber enhanced strength, but with limited ability to apply it. My shield was fantastic as a defensive and mobility tool, but had never been intended for direct offence. I was still crackling with a dangerous amount of Dust, but it was difficult to apply in a meaningful way.
I needed a weapon, and I found that need answered by an unexpected source. A source that had proved to be an extremely stalwart ally through this entire ordeal.
My nanobots answered my call. The intelligence sustained by them was too basic to handle real speech, but it was advanced enough to recognize a need and propose ways to address it. The nanobots had been designed as an assembly system, but the designs that had served as their base were some of the most advanced I had access to. They were capable of incredible utility, as demonstrated by the proposal they presented.
The A.I. was simple, but it understood its purpose. Thus, just as Fleet had fun building operational simulations of any vehicle he could and Survey worked to collect and analyze every piece of data possible, the matrix worked to prepare for assembly. It had linked with the computer core, and as such copied, analyzed, and assessed every design stored within that system. And, while it wouldn't be equivalent to the works created with the benefits of my powers, it could emulate that technology.
I elected to trust the design, selection, and assembly mechanics to the matrix. It wasn't something I could be actively involved with, not in my current state. I could get to the battle, and I could fight. For everything else I was willing to delegate. And it needed to be delegated quickly, as I was rapidly approaching the scene of the conflict.
Well, about a hundred feet beneath the scene of the conflict. That was the consequence of dealing with an airborne duel. I was probably lucky that this wasn't being undertaken at the flight ceiling of either of the combatants.
Also, it was clear why my duplicate had called the Gun-EZ. The Leo, in addition to being less powerful, wouldn't have been able to sustain this level of aerial combat. I was surprised the Gun-EZ was doing as well as it was, and suspected that might be the result of those 'modifications' my duplicate mentioned.
The matrix signaled that it was ready to begin weapon emulation. I gave them the go ahead and quickly set my trajectory, then leaped.
Any hope of a surprise attack died as Lung's head swung towards the massive explosion on the surface of the water, then quickly shifted to track the cape launching towards him with the speed of a railgun round. I felt nanobots flow through my system towards my right hand, seeping out through the rips in Garment's glove to take the form of a blade.
But there was more to it than that. Tetra's fibers were being pulled from my body and worked into the composite of nanobots that was forming the sword. I quickly realized what had happened. The matrix didn't stop analyzing technology just because it was out of the workshop. They had observed the fibers' interaction with my shield, and how Tetra was able to emulate my wire attacks. They had extrapolated from that, somehow interfaced with Tetra, and found a way to integrate life fiber reinforcement into what would otherwise be a fairly basic sword.
Nanobots were brilliant, but there was a limit to what they could form when using themselves as building blocks. Just from a basic level, they couldn't make an edge sharper than their smallest component. While that was still miles sharper than a conventional blade it wasn't monomolecular.
Life fibers were sub- monomolecular. Their structure had a base level that was closer to a spatial distortion than a living being. They were enigmas of physics capable of incredible feats, and the matrix was completely willing to take advantage of that. With Tetra's reinforcement what would have at best been a short sword formed into a monstrously long slashing instrument of gleaming red metal.
It was a single edged blade, moderately thin, but that was mostly in comparison to its length. Nearly ten feet of blade, a weapon that would be completely impossible to use in any situation but open-air combat. It grew into shape as I shot into the sky, completing its formation just as I reached striking range.
I don't know if he knew what was coming, or if he had just learned to constantly be on his guard, but at the first sign of my arrival he rolled out of the way, hiding his wings behind his back and bringing up all four limbs to protect himself. As such the attack only cost him an arm and a leg, rather than, let's say, splitting the difference.
I shot past and evaluated the damage. Butchery was of only middling use against him. Lung was perfectly happy to fight without any of his limbs, and the damn things grew back so fast that it was barely an inconvenience for him. It was the reason why Lung had a reputation for being unstoppable.
That said, it was also past the point where retreat was in any way an appealing option. Lung had hit the point about five feet ago where he could level the city. Right now, my only real option was to see this through, one way or another. If I couldn't stop Lung before my various timers hit zero then the results wouldn't be much different than if I left now. No matter which way this turned out, I was in it until the end.
The roar of turbines echoed over the water, drawing my attention to Dragon's arrival. She was air braking for everything she was worth, switching from her suit's aerodynamic form to one suited for VTOL operation. As she pulled towards us, weapons rising to full readiness, I wondered for a brief moment if she was going to try to take me and leave Lung to his rampage.
Instead, her opening barrage targeted ABB leader. Concentrated laser bursts, cannons that fired charged particles, lightning cannons, a set of missiles that burst into containment foam, and a kind of hard light beam were unleashed from the craft. It didn't take more than a moment's assessment to tell me that the bulk of those weapons were designed to be highly effective against technology, with the rest being designed for combat against highly durable targets.
Lung may not have had any technology to be disrupted, but his nervous system didn't seem to enjoy the exposure to that much electrical energy. I doubted the containment foam would accomplish much, but the hard light beam hit him like a truck, launching him even further from the city.
Unfortunately, with Lung temporarily departed, Dragon turned towards me. My duplicate launched up, and I shifted my fall to land on the shoulder of the mobile suit. My motoroid and remaining drones fell in around me as we squared off against Dragon's suit.
"Hello Dragon."
It didn't matter that we were fifty feet apart, or the fact that I was using a normal speaking voice when surrounded by high winds and the roar of nuclear rockets and jet turbines. It didn't even matter that there may have been specific protocols about speaking with me.
This was the power of Katsujinken. A philosophy of peace with power to back up its principles. Combat could not start without the chance for dialogue. A real chance, not a compromise. Lung was careening away, but he wouldn't get a chance to recover while we were speaking. We wouldn't be ambushed or miss a critical opportunity. We were protected from any factor that would have made attempting discussion an unacceptable risk.
That was the power at work. It wasn't exactly a temporal effect, at least nothing that could be quantified or abused. We were still talking for the time we were talking. The world wasn't frozen, but at the same time nothing was happening. It was closer to a video game cutscene, or maybe dialogue segment.
The point was, thanks to this power I could finally attempt to avoid another misunderstanding that would make a bad situation even worse and allow the villains of the city to gain more ground.
"Apeiron." Dragon's voice sounded delighted, even as her suit took an aggressive stance. "I must confess, I hadn't expected something of this level from you. I must learn not to underestimate you."
"I assure you, this was reactionary, self-defense really." I looked towards Lung's careening form. "Though I admit some of it has gotten away from me."
"I can see that." Three types of energy dancing across my skin in varying levels of severity would be somewhat noticeable. "There was some concern about your condition, following the encounter at the Docks."
The reminder momentarily disrupted the internal forces I was trying to balance. I was reminded of the timer I was under. My duplicate's healing potions were already dropping off, and I wouldn't be able to stay ahead of Tetra's drain forever. He was right, I needed to get back to the workshop and get proper medical treatment.
With respect to Dragon's comment about the Docks, Survey confirmed the ABB broadcast, and the significant reaction to it, both locally and online. I didn't have time to get into the speculation, but this was probably going to be worse than the aftermath of Saturday night.
"I assure you, I have it under control." I lied. "And on the subject of our previous encounter, I assure you I will keep the details to myself."
"That's hardly relevant to the current situation." It was phrased to sound dismissive, but I could hear the weight of the relief in her voice. Whatever restrained her had some cracks in its control. Fortunately, I had become somewhat used to dealing with individuals with limited abilities to communicate. It was a relief to know there was something under the control.
Even if it was just a second layer of control designed to lull me into a false sense of security. But hey, paranoia was the order of the day when dealing with masters. I'd seen that firsthand from the Brockton PRT.
"If you say so." I conceded. "Tell me, do you actually have anything that can stop or contain Lung in this state?"
"Local policies specifically prohibit any coordination with you over this or any other matter." She replied in a frustrated voice. "Though in the interest of a public statement on potential weapon hazards, I am not loaded with any significant munitions, at least none on a scale that could disable Lung in his current state, nor any containment measures of such a level that could restrain him." There was a pause before she continued. "Such a statement should be interpreted as a general edict in the interest of public safety and not directed at or be taken as an indication of coordination of approval of prohibited individuals."
I smiled behind my mask. "Of course." And then frowned. This was bad. My options and time frame were shrinking. I needed to act quickly, and that meant drastic actions. "So, your plan is to drive him off?"
"That is the only appropriate option presenting itself. A running battle may be able to put enough distance between him and the city that the time needed to return would result in the loss of most of his power." She responded.
That was an exceptional long shot. The idea that you could put enough space between the city and Lung, even with Dragon's weapons, wasn't likely, there was also the fact that Lung got faster as he ramped up. If he was even half his current level by the time he got back to Brockton there would be nobody who could stop him.
I looked over from my perch on the shoulder to the head to the Gun-EZ, then up at my motoroid. It looked like those desperate plans might have to be put into place.
I just wished that Fleet wasn't so excited about the idea.
"There might be something we can do to resolve this." I offered.
"We?" Dragon asked.
I bit down and shook my head. Katsujinken and Sei Ki might help my focus, but I was still under a lot of stress. "Don't worry about it. Just know this is going to be seen through, one way or the other."
The suit bobbed its head. "I can't agree to anything, but I will continue my original objectives and can state that Lung will remain my primary priority for the duration of this conflict."
So, a reprieve, and an admission that whatever armistice we were working under would indeed be a temporary measure. With that it seemed whatever time Katsujinken was able to steal in the name of peace had run out. Lung had rallied and was burning a trail towards us. Dragon's turbines roared and I shifted my grip as my duplicate engaged the suit's fusion rockets.
The Vehicles constellation passed by as we shot to meet the monstrous gang leader. The time bought by Dragon's attacks hadn't done us any favors in the long run. The cape was even larger now, and healing at a frightening rate.
Dragon, with a suit actually built for aerial combat, pulled ahead and opened with another salvo. Lung was ready for it, tanking the lesser attacks and managing to take the hard light beam as a glancing hit. It sent him spinning wildly, but he was able to keep in place.
He steadied himself from the spin and rounded on Dragon, hands and teeth alight. His flames had shifted over the course of the fight from campfire orange to blinding white. His base attacks were currently outstripping the cutting beam he had attempted to use against me.
Dragon turned into a roll, but the searing flames left glowing trails across the fuselage of her suit. I knew what was going to happen even before she did. Whatever internal sensors Dragon installed in her suits ,they didn't outclass my ability to automatically detect flaws and defects in machinery. She had damaged her turbines to arrive in time, and the sudden thermal expansion was stressing subsystems that were compromised by the strain of her flight.
A burst of smoke began to trail from the underside of Dragon's suit, and she instantly lost maneuverability and started to struggle to stay in the air. Lung took a sharp turn, ready to close on the tinker.
I didn't even need coordination with my duplicate to decide what to do. The mobile suit's rockets overloaded themselves, sending us forward at a tremendous speed. Just as Lung was reaching out for Dragon with burning claws a glowing shield of plasma bound in an I-field slammed into him. The impact caused him to lurch in mid air and threw me from the suit's shoulder.
Actually, it was more of a leap. I was still together enough to plot out the dynamics of the impact and take advantage of it. The extended shield slammed into Lung's body, causing his head to flail forward. At the same time, I shifted my enormous blade to a two handed, downward grip, and took to the air.
The fibers linking the blade to my body felt strange, particularly while changing grip, but they also presented an opportunity. I focused through the clarity provided by my shield and drew upon my Aura. Dust responded to Aura in a completely unique fashion. Precise control could accomplish anything Dust weaving could manage with nothing more than a vial of powered crystals.
I was not going for anything so grand. My goal was much simpler. A dangerous amount of Dust was coursing through my system, as were active life fibers and probably any number of other dangerous materials. I couldn't do anything about them, but I could channel the Dust. Especially if I had a vector to send it through. Such as a network of fibers through my entire body, all leading to a weapon ready to plunge into a titanic flying monster.
I had no idea if this was a good idea, or if it represented any reasonable way to use Dust. What I did know was I wanted the stuff out of my body, and I had the perfect vector and ideal target for it. Across my body dozens of patches of Dust flared as they were activated and channeled towards my sword. The immense blade pulsed, then swelled as entire crystalline formations began to pepper its length. The pain and frustration that had come with it faded, channeled towards the object of my fury.
For the third time I got to see a very human look of surprise on an inhuman face as I launched forward and plunged the energetic, burning life fiber blade into Lung' forehead.
Lung was currently close to forty feet tall, and every inch of him lit up with the discharge of energy. I swear I could see his skeleton through his flesh like something out of a cartoon. Scales cracked and exploded from his body. One wing turned black with frostbite and a portion of his shoulder petrified. A claw exploded in a burst of wind as the giant cape flailed wildly, roaring out blasts of white/blue flames as he did.
The thrashing sent me flying from his head, basically splitting his skull in half as I was flung into the sky. The strike had drained almost all the traces of Dust from my body, and left me feeling drained in an entirely new sense.
It was clear now, the Dust had been horrible for my body, damaging me in ways I never considered, but the stress of it, particularly when mitigated by other effects, had been triggering an adrenaline response that had kept me going. Basically, it was what had happened to the Undersiders on Saturday, but taken to a horrific new level. I had been running off of stress chemicals, and now those chemicals were dying out.
I looked at Lung's charred, twitching body and allowed myself a moment of hope, hope that we may finally have done enough damage to end this madness. The mobile suit was still engaged with him, and at that moment was winding up for a final strike.
And then everything went wrong.
Lung was still firing blasts of superheated plasma. To say they were being fired blindly would be too kind considering the state of his head. Randomly would be a better term, or maybe instinctively. The thing was, targeted blasts can be predicted and avoided. Random blasts can't.
Isn't there a saying about how the best swordsman in the world isn't afraid of fighting the second best, he's afraid of fighting the worst? Someone who's never held a sword before and has no idea what he's doing. Someone as likely to stab himself as his opponent, or both.
Random flailing blasts. That's how one of Lung's claws found its way past the shield to the side of the mobile suit while burning like the sun. That's how a stream of atomizing plasma was able to cut through armor designed for a class of warfare the world had never seen. That's how a burst of reactor material was sent venting through a hole punching straight through the suit, fracturing plates across the torso, scorching and warping joints. That's how Lung's focused plasma blast ended up shooting through the chassis of the mobile suit, stretching towards the distant city. That's how the shield and saber flickered out, the fusion rockets cut off, and fifty feet of war machine began to drop towards the ocean's surface.
I was hanging in midair, half dead and watching the strongest attack I had ever landed be healed away by a flailing mindless beast who more resembled a pinwheel firework than any kind of serious opponent. Dragon's options were limited as she worked to dodge the random blasts. I didn't realize exactly how bad the situation was until she launched a salvo of missiles.
The rockets streaked through the air approaching the ABB cape, then began behaving erratically, then sparked, and finally went completely out of control, either burning out, prematurely detonating, or spinning off in a random direction.
Fleet's sensors were able to confirm my fears. Minovsky particles. The Gun-EZ had suffered damage to its Minovsky Ultracompact Fusion Reactor. The breach had saturated the area with Minovsky particles. Worse, they had been blasted in the direction of the city. Minovsky particles didn't have a massive spread, but they held cohesion extremely well. At the very least we were looking at a strip of affected space extending across the bay and probably into a portion of the city. I could already see lights going out in the North Docks, marking an area about two blocks wide as it cut into the city. The complications of my fight causing yet more problems for the citizens of Brockton.
I'm not sure Lung even noticed the disruption effect as his head recovered enough to focus on Dragon once more. I found myself suspended by one of the remaining drones as I watched the conflict play out. The field interfered with conventional communications, but the drone's presence was an assurance that my duplicate was still alive.
Which meant my motoroid was intact as well. I looked up at Fleet, cut off from normal communication, but recognized his initiative from how the suit had been positioned. We were out of options and running out of time. We were down to the last resort.
All that remained was getting Lung into position.
I stared down at the monstrous creature currently dogfighting with Dragon. I was in no shape to deal with this situation. I was mentally and physically spent. I was running off fumes, nanites, and fading healing potions. My body had been through enough hell that I wasn't even sure what I was anymore, and I just missed a connection to the Time constellation. I was the worst person to take on this fight.
But I was the only one who could do it. Lung may have been big but he wasn't strong enough to hurt me. His fires might have gotten stronger, but he was fumbling with an art that I had been born to. He might have been vicious, but I had a righteous cause.
I could do this, because I needed to do this. With the strain of the Dust that had been attacking my body cleared I focused my mind and reached out to the matrix. The sword was disassembled and absorbed into my body. With a signal my shield collapsed back into its wristband form. I connected with the nascent A.I. of the nanobots and sent them to begin their new construction.
Silver gold liquid emerged from my shoulders, forming into the shape of vectored repulsors. Personal flight on a level I didn't have the focus of clarity to deploy before. The flailing threads of life fibers calmed and wrapped themselves around my flesh, granting me a temporary boost to their already impressive strength. I breathed and felt the heat of Lung's fire, his truly dangerous ability, but one that wasn't his to fully control. Before I could only sense and defend from the heat. Now I was its master.
With a signal the drone released me from its mass field and I dropped towards the conflict. The repulsors on my back fired, launching me down like a bullet. Lung was so occupied with Dragon he barely reacted to my presence, shifting in his usual tactic.
Clearly not anticipating my mid-air course correction. Or the sudden shift to zoanthrope form.
Lung was the size of your typical townhouse, so please understand fighting him was like fighting a piece of architecture. The damage I did as it impacted him felt more like vandalism than injury. I climbed and scraped across his body, using my claws for grip and repulsors to maintain footing. Even with the strength of my blows being able to leave massive craters of shattered scales and pulped flesh, it wasn't enough to stop him.
I knew this. I knew his strength, his size, his regeneration. It didn't take long for Lung to completely ignore my presence. An ant crawling across his leg, or a mosquito in his ear. Annoying, but nothing on the threat posed by Dragon.
That was what he was focused on, and that was what clued him in to something being wrong. Lung, at this size, was capable of throwing out levels of heat that would boil steel. It didn't take more than a few exchanges for him to realize he was coming up short in the fire blast department, and to go looking for the cause.
It was rather easier to find. Even when you tower over someone by the height of a building you're not going to overlook them when they're running around with a miniature sun in their hands.
This was the meaning of pyrokinesis. Control. Direction. Purpose. Not randomly throwing flames, but directed action. When it came to the manipulation of flame, intensity was drastically more important than volume, and a true test of skill. Anyone with a fire-based power could throw out flame. A few people could direct it. When it came to concentrating it, well that was the real test of your mastery of the art.
And that's what I had done. Siphoned flame from Lung's fire blasts, maneuvering bursts, and aura, and concentrated them into a two-foot-wide chunk of solid thermal energy.
The shard of glowing plasma in my hand was beyond anything Lung could dream of producing. It was something that could barely exist within a conventional setting. Even with all conductive properties suspended the radiant energy alone would have destroyed any material on earth at the distance I was holding it.
Lung looked down and watched in horror as trails of white plasma leaked from his active flames, feeding the shard in my hands. He reared and raised a hand to swat me away.
And was met with the sound of fusion rockets and a plasma shield to the face.
Field repair. My duplicate had managed to contain and fix a reactor breach. I was impressed by the feat, but stunned when I saw the state of the mobile suit.
It was fixed, but not through any conventional repair. The blasted section had closed, but done so with a ropy, organic texture. The entire suit moved with an unnatural fluidity, and what had previously appeared to be fixed limited joints showed the pattern of corded musculature.
It was the nanobots. They were intended for manufacturing, but their base designs were full-on gray goo nano swarms. They were a type of technology that could absorb and assimilate without limit. A tiny sample of them would be able to subvert and weaponize an entire city. They were more than capable of subsuming a mobile suit when properly directed.
And they were being directed. A familiar set of circuit-like lines was spread across the surface of the mobile suit. Directed nanite control from my duplicate, managing the repairs, direction, and, as I watched in amazement, upgrading of the suit.
The Gun-EZ was an incredible machine, but somewhat poorly armed. It would have been due for a major refit to get its arsenal up to snuff. With an onboard nanotech colony that wasn't necessary.
Weapons and gun mounts grew out of the surface of the mobile suit. Dozens of armaments, all different and all insanely powerful. Before Lung could act he found himself bombarded by a full salvo of laser fire, exotic energy, hard light, energy propellant, concentrated plasma, flash fabricated missiles, and bursts of exotic physics.
Whatever he'd been planting to attempt was lost under the weight of fire. The mobile suit raised it's shield arm and signaled me.
"Ready!"
I nodded and kicked away from the exploding monster, adding more momentum to the beast's assent. With careful timing I hurled the shard of concentrated thermal energy towards lung's chest Just as my duplicate stressed his pyrokinesis to the limit, expanding the mobile suit's beam shield in size and strength.
The shard struck Lung and released its energy in a single blinding burst. Really, the only comparable force would be a nuclear explosion, but those tended to be less focused. The specific shape of the charge launched Lung into the sky, thousands and thousands of feet up. My duplicate held the plasma shield against a force that made rocket exhaust look like a gentle breeze.
When the blast cleared Lung was a dot in the sky, a stunned and burning, and probably badly injured speck at the heights of a commercial airliner.
Dragon shifted her suit from beneath the cover of the nano-enhanced mobile suit's shield. Her main systems were still in operation, but I could tell some of her technology was struggling under the effects of the Minovsky particle I-field.
I got the sense that she was taking a hard look at the mobile suit before she spoke through her external speakers. "What…" She paused and turned more towards the now rather biological looking face of the mobile suit. "Who is that?"
The suit's eyes flashed and it spoke through its own external speakers. "That is not relevant to this situation. Lung is the priority."
I honestly didn't know if that was my duplicate, of if I was hearing the first spoken words of the matrix. Either way Dragon seemed to accept the response. "That wasn't enough." She commented. "Heat resistance and durability. He's recovering and rounding on us." I could hear the concern in her voice as she spoke.
"It wasn't supposed to finish him. It was supposed to get him away from the city." I explained. "Thinner air will also help reduce the collateral damage."
"What are you…" She tried to ask, but a building blue light in the sky cut her off.
"You're going to want to brace for this. It's going to be bad." I warned her, and clung to the shoulder of the mobile suit as it dove towards the water. She held position for a fraction of a second before diving after us.
I could barely see what was happening, it was just too far away and I was without any sensor data. I really didn't need to see it anyway, not with the level of plans and simulations that Fleet had provided in support of his proposal. He, or at least the copy of him running on the motoroid wasn't going to survive this, but he was okay with that. It was a duplicated motoroid, and I'm sure he couldn't imagine a better way to go out.
When the duplicates had shown me the mass effect core they had planned to install in my new motoroid I had made a joke about an FTL motorcycle. Well, Fleet didn't take that as a joke. For Fleet it was dead serious, and something that deserved dedicated consideration and modeling. And as such, when the call went out for any plans that could put down Lung, Fleet had been ready.
I had never expected him to suggest FTL ramming.
Our path took us out of the I-field, allowing me to link to my duplicate again, which meant communication with Survey, and with Fleet. I could view the sensor data from his position so high in the air that the curvature of the earth was visible and you could see the sky shift from blue to black. I could see the floating form of Lung, blackened and injured, but still refusing to die. I could see him turn a skeletal snake head towards the blue glow of Fleet's charging mass field as the motoroid shifted from robot to motorcycle form. I could see the corridor of mass effect projection form, bending the laws of physics on their head. And I could feel Fleet's satisfaction, conveyed through a final transfer of data for all his other copies before he engaged his engine and launched the motoroid at relativistic speeds.
Lung was fifty feet tall, rapidly regenerating, and insanely durable. He had stood up to an Endbringer, defied the forces of the C.U.I., and maintained a hold on Brockton Bay for nearly a decade. At full strength there was no telling what he could survive, what it would take to put him down, but looking up at that blue streak that turned into a spray of burning white tearing towards the horizon, I think he may have met his match.
Then my concerns were more along the lines of 'Oh shit, shockwave' as the consequences of performing an atmospheric FTL launch, even in thin atmosphere, became apparent. The blast drove both of us towards the water, with the suit taking the brunt of it. I had enough time to see Dragon's craft go under before I was submerged myself, the shock shifting me back to my human form. I kicked up, managing to push myself through the surface of the water with one burst of life fiber assisted strength and the force of my improvised thrusters. Floating above the bay I took in the aftermath of the attack.
The sea was parting. Well, not literally, but there was a shockwave effect moving through it. I watched the wave mount as it approached the city, rising high enough to wash over the boardwalk and soak coastal areas of Downtown. Weirdly, the arrangement of Dust effects centered in the North Docks acted as a breakwater, preventing the effects of the blast from reaching shore.
It was a mercifully light cost to the attack, and the reason we had pushed for as high a launch as possible. An impact at sea level would have sent a tsunami level wave at the city, and probably every coast from here to Boston.
And I had just killed someone. He was a monster, sure, but it was still an intentional act of murder. Even if I didn't pull the trigger I signed the death warrant. With every aspect of my mentality ready to dismiss the event or congratulate me for it, my Katsujinken made this feel like a failure.
I was kind of grateful for that. For the fact that there was some moderating force in the Forge that held human life as valuable. As important. Even if I had to feel like crap for saving the city from Lung, at least I felt like crap for the right reason.
Oh, and a connection to the Toolkits constellation. Prismatic Laboratory, a workshop addition specializing in exotic light and colors. Very exotic. Also, some additions. A candle that could actually hold off death for ten minutes, but only once every ten years. And two sets of 'connections', relationships with groups of people who would send small gifts and tokens of affections. And the groups I got were squid monsters and… demons?
I was pulled out of my concerning contemplation when I received a message from my duplicate.
"Taking the suit back to the Workshop. Your ride should be here soon. She'll get you home."
Before I could ask for clarification I heard the sound of repulsors. Not the approach of repulsors, but the sound, immediately and directly on top of me. I looked up and found a familiar set of purple armor floating above me.
I smiled at sight. "The duplicate contacted you?"
The bottom of her helmet retracted and Aisha flashed me a grin. "Couldn't let you have all the fun." She turned towards the sky where the aftermath of Fleet's suicide run was still visible. "Lung dead?"
"Probably." I admitted.
"Good." She started calmly before tuning back to me. "So, you look like shit, and the other guy said you'd probably collapse the second this was over." I swayed slightly, having to leave the control of my repulsors to the nanobot matrix that had constructed them.
"Yeah." I confessed. "That's about right."
"Right." She gave a confident nod, but I could hear the worry in her voice. "Uh, haven't really put this to the test, but I think I might be able to cover someone else with my power, providing you don't like move or talk or anything." She added uncertainty.
I gave her a tired nod. "If not, the armor has stealth tech. Should be able to conceal us if we're careful."
"Well, I'll have to take your word for that. Mini-Fleet is handling most of the driving on this thing, and I can barely work the helmet on my own." Oh, right. She'd had the suit for what, a few hours? If that. "And he is insufferably proud of that." She pointed towards the sky.
I turned to look again, but found myself light headed. I was adrenalin crashing bad, and I didn't want to think about what would happen if I passed out and lost nanite healing.
"Fuck." Aisha exclaimed. "Okay, just go limp or something. We can work this out."
I wasn't really comfortable being hauled from my great victory like a sack of potatoes, but there was no way around it. Aisha activating her power on another person was a complicated process, with more than one incident where I panicked and tried to activate my own repulsors before just absorbing them at her insistence.
It really did work better if I didn't do, say or even look at anything while she was hauling me. Apparently it took a lot of concentration, so it was really Fleet who was handling the 'flying' part of things. Regardless, she managed to get us to the back door of Garment's shop without being noticed, then helped me fumble with the workshop key in one of the back rooms of the studio.
By that point Tetra's drain was well beyond what my nanites could cover. I was half unconscious and light headed, barely noticing the duplicate who met me at the door. From that point everything was a series of sounds and blurred images.
"Help me get him to the clinic. The drones can help, but I need to keep him calm."
"He kept talking about the Docks, the container yard. His motorcycle crashed there, and the other ABB…"
"We'll deal with it. Here. Get him onto the medical bed."
"What's going to happen?"
"It's a mess. Damn is it a mess."
"What's that red stuff? It did this? He never told me about it."
"I won't have time to explain. I'm down to my last minutes. Here, help me get those gloves off him."
"Right. Wait, is that Garment? Is she going to be okay?"
"She'll be fine. She would have healed in a day, but I can fix her. Look, we can fix anything. It's a power. And here, take this."
"What am I supposed to do with this? I thought they didn't work for me?"
"They won't. After I'm gone make sure he drinks it. We have loads of them, and Fleet and Survey should be able to help. Probably Garment too, providing I can… Yes!"
"Thank God. Are you okay?"
There was a sense of motion in the room and I felt gloved fingers caress my face. I tried to focus, but my eyes were heavy and my vision was tinged dark red.
"Crap, I think he's fading."
"You mean…"
"No, just about to pass out. I need to take over the nanites." I felt a hand on my chest, and suddenly the focus I'd been driving myself to hold was no longer necessary. Another load removed from my shoulders. I could relax. "And we need more healing potions. And scanners. Crap, this is going to take some serious work to fix."
"What can I do?"
"Listen to Survey. And Fleet, and the next set of duplicates. They're going to have to take point on this. Make sure he can take the potion. It shouldn't duplicate Tetra…"
"Tetra?"
"The red stuff. You haven't met her yet."
"Her?"
"Later, or the next guys will explain. Point is, that's the big problem and it won't copy along with him. Give them enough time and they can fix this. If not… Well, listen to Garment and Survey and do what you can."
I didn't like the tone of that statement, but the conversations in the room were sounding further and further away. The last thing I remember before fading into sleep was the sensation of a gloved hand squeezing my own hand in a reassuring grip.
Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
Valuable Memories: Bigs (Big O) 300:
You have knowledge related to any particular concept-the construction of Megadei, the nature of memories, Bigs, or the creation of chimeras. Paradigm will have a vested interest in you, and will protect you and provide you with funds if you work for them.
That Undefinable Thing (Tales of Symphonia) 300:
Even if you can't describe it, you can still manipulate it. You can now make physical tools and containers for souls, as well as gaining the knowledge of how to use the soul as a power source for magic, machinery, and living bodies. Given proper resources (raw souls), you can create Exspheres and Key Crests which can then power the things mentioned in your place.
Anything powered by their user's soul is known intimately to them, inhabited by the soul the same way a body is inhabited by a soul. It becomes in all ways an extension of the self, for good or ill. While the soul is infinite, it can be diminished and grown. Take care.
Iconic Outfit (Tales of Symphonia) Free:
This outfit is rugged, stylish, and undeniably YOU.
Questionably Practical Weapon (Tales of Symphonia) Free:
You're fighting with that? Really? And merchants will sell you more and more deadly upgrades? If you want this can be a well crafted mundane weapon instead.
Workshop: Woodworking (Warehouse) 100:
Each purchase of this adds to your Personal Reality Workshop needed to perform specific type of craft, which is to be specified when purchase is made. It comes with a basic set of tools and supplies. Good for fixing or creating all sorts of things, although any complex parts or nonstandard supplies will have to be brought in from outside. Additional purchases can add different types of Workshops to your Personal Reality or expand existing ones. Anything built in one of those workshops is fiat backed to be restored to its original condition within 48 hours if damaged or destroyed.
Sea Snail Shells (Splatoon) 300:
You have a small breeding population of around 10 Super Sea Snails, large snails with crystalline, conical shells. The snails are hermaphroditic but and they live for around 15 years. They're more than they seem, though they provide an invaluable service- Their shells can be used to imbue hats, shirts, and pairs of shoes with extra Ability Slots, or reroll the abilities of a clothing item with 3 full slots. This kills the Sea Snail, but if you're careful to keep up the population then eventually you might have an entire wardrobe of 3-slot clothing. Also, they're delicious when cooked right.
Armor-Shift Manufacture (Bloody Roar) 100:
A small machine - big enough to hold a massive pauldron or two - that gives any pieces of armor or clothing placed inside a specific quality: When their wearer changes form, the armor and clothing changes form with him / her.
Beast Change!: Inostrancevia (Bloody Roar) Free:
You can freely access your Zoanthrope form, becoming a monstrous humanoid that is a horrific combination of human and beast. Reptile, mammal, avian, amphibian, piscine, it does not matter what. If it existed in Earth's lifetime, you can choose it. (Yes, this includes Dinosaurs. No, it does not include microorganisms.)
Martial Artist: Muay Thai (Bloody Roar) Free:
Pick one martial art from Earth's history & various cultures. You now know the basics of this art, as well as a few of the more advanced moves. More beneficially, you know how to apply this martial art to your Zoanthrope form - and combine the two into a deadly style of combat. Wrestling forms and dances are also accepted if they can be theoretically used in combat.
Secret of Steel (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) 400:
An illustrated guide created by the greatest master of weapons the world has ever known. It keenly details the techniques, methods and setup required to create weapons using traditional Japanese techniques. This text goes beyond that however, and if the directions are followed perfectly it can be used to forge weapons, armor, and tools that are far better than anything that could possibly be made even with the most advanced metallurgic technology. Objects created—while still composed of steel—will be significantly stronger than steel and can withstand blows from a Martial Arts Master. Blades made using these techniques will be preternaturally sharp, able to cut through stone, steel and perhaps even more with proper strength and training. Such bladed weapons will almost never lose their edge and require virtually no maintenance. Armor made using these techniques is nearly indestructible and will never rust or corrode. Normal tools will work with such efficiency that even primitive tools can accomplish feats of scale equivalent to highly advanced modern technology. For example, a scythe made with these techniques could harvest an entire field in the same amount of time as a combine harvester or a simple hoe could do the work of a tractortowed plough.
Katsujinken (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) Free:
Those who follow the path of "Katsujinken" or "life giving fist" hold that the true purpose of martial arts is to protect those who cannot protect themselves and improve the lives of those around them. People who follow this viewpoint view the death of their opponent as tantamount to defeat and shun those who purposefully kill. By embarking on this path, you develop a kind and calm demeanor, capable of setting just about anyone at ease. So long as you hold to this philosophy, you will be able to have a brief but significant dialogue with your opponent before any act of open combat.
Sei Ki (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) Free:
Ki is the life force, energy or breath that flows through all living things. Martial artists harness their Ki to perform amazing feats of strength and abilities, with master's able to channel their Ki into effects that are truly superhuman.
Those who utilize Sei Ki seek to focus their Ki inwards. In battle this results in an inner calm and centeredness that lends itself well to thoughtful action and awareness of surroundings. Those who have Sei Ki will be able to master techniques that do not rely on power or anger but on wits, talent and skill. Sei users will be more likely to come up with new inventive solutions in combat and will frequently have moments of insight that may turn an unwinnable battle in their favor.
Weapons (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) Free:
Martial artists who embark on the path of weapons will seek to master a physical implement to augment their fighting style. These tend to be much more lethal than unarmed fighters, but are at a disadvantage when disarmed or caught without their weapon. Whenever you fight with a weapon corresponding to your martial art, you will find that you consistently deal more damage and are more accurate with your strikes than if you fought unarmed.
Martial Arts Ninjutsu (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) Free:
All who enter this world know at the very least the basics of their chosen martial art as well as its various strengths and weaknesses. The more styles you choose to study, the longer it will take to incorporate them into a cohesive and usable whole. You may also choose any realworld martial art not listed here if you so desire. You will however remain a novice in your style unless you can somehow obtain a master or worthy sparring partner.
Ninjutsu A martial art believed to have once been practiced by the shinobi of Japan. This style is based primarily around precision, stealth and deception. Its users are particularly skilled at kneading their ki, allowing them to engage in maneuvers and techniques that to the untrained eye appear like magic. It is both an unarmed and armed martial art.
Master's Body (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) Free after 10 years:
You possess the body of a master. You are very near tireless, capable of fighting for days without sleep and only limited food. You never run out of breath, and will still be able to engage in vigorous physical activity even after extreme exercise. You now have access to a limitless logarithmic growth of your physical strength, durability, speed and agility.
"Sword" - Lantern Shield (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) Free:
You receive a "sword". Not necessarily a literal sword; rather a tool that you carry into battle and which you place your heart, soul and trust in.
If you selected weapon however, you receive your choice of melee weapon. It acts and functions as though it were created using the "Secret of Steel" making it more durable than most weapons formed using modern metallurgic techniques. As you grow in skill the weapon will as well, allowing you to hit slightly harder, swing slightly faster and strike with greater accuracy than you would with any other mundane weapon. By the time you have reached master status, you will be able to use this weapon with robotic precision, able to cut or break through a modern tank. Of course without this weapon you will be unable to do nearly half of those things, but that is the price paid when one embarks on the path of weapons. You may instead choose an existing weapon you have to receive this benefits, but it must be compatible with your martial art.
Prismatic Laboratory (Fallen London) 400:
The principle of acute observation is light! And to that end, you have fashioned a workspace of lenses, liquids, critters and crystals to focus upon recreating a spectrum of lights fantastic. Ah, the impossible palette: those colours only seen in the Neath! You may not always produce something like it, but you will produce their inks and lenses in time.
St Andrew's Candle (Fallen London) Free:
That candle you had so long ago. It feels heavier now, perhaps it has fed upon your sins, perhaps it too has changed as you have. St Andrew's Candle no longer burns low, for indeed it resists all attempts to extinguish it. But in the case of your sudden and fatal injury, it flares in brilliant ignition, granting you ten more minutes of life and action as it burns itself down from wick to stub. It will not heal your injuries, but it will prevent new ones from forming. Should you survive and reverse your fatality, the candle will not and will only renew itself at the beginning of a new jump or after ten years post-spark. The light it gives is a true Neathy light, a reminder of your time in the Fifth City.
Connections: Hell (Fallen London) Free:
Those amber eyed Devils have taken a shine to you. From their Westernmost halls, to the Brass Embassy on Ladybones, there's not a tempter who doesn't know you. Their gifts include nevercooling brass, poisonous wine, masquerade invites, chemicals, and a few bottled souls that strayed away from the archives. Cannot take with Church.
They will send you gifts every fortnight as payment for some obscure service. Similar factions may be present in future jumps.
Connections: Rubbery Men (Fallen London) Free:
Ssaloshagosh? How do you spell that? They risk stonings and harsh glances as they make their way to your abode, but by some alien measure it is worth it. Their slimy packages reveal amber of various colours, tiny unusual skulls and pocket change from ancient cities. Cannot take with Revolutionary.
They will send you gifts every fortnight as payment for some obscure service. Similar factions may be present in future jumps.
