- Location
- Earth Prime
I see River's the copy-editrix.
Gold and Relative Dimensions [Worm/Doctor Who]
- Thread starter Ellf
- Start date
- Crossover
- Location
- Earth: Universe Meta - 1
That whole, trying to forget your past, but it slapping you in the face is very Dr. Whoish. Especially before the big reveal that the Dr. didn't genocide his own species. The whole idea of underestimating the Main Characters because they seem nice and/or harmless is another. Meddling in everyone's business just because, check. Taylor just wanting to do this one simple thing, and things spiraling out of control, double check.
I'd say you're ticking all the boxes of a fun story that sticks to the source material. I think the crazy is going for utopia is a classic, so there's no need to worry there.
Keep up the good work.
Lunaryon
Dual Aurora Wave
- Pronouns
- She/Her
To be fair...
"The adventures of a 900 year old man, and whatever whippersnappers he's collected this month run a lot" is the premise of Doctor Who, and it's a stupid premise.
But the series has been going on for over half a century, so it can be stupid, but still be very good. And this is good.
"The adventures of a 900 year old man, and whatever whippersnappers he's collected this month run a lot" is the premise of Doctor Who, and it's a stupid premise.
But the series has been going on for over half a century, so it can be stupid, but still be very good. And this is good.
Bloody moon egg.
- Location
- California
- Pronouns
- It/Its
Rogue 2.5
Ellf
Apprentice Wizard
- Location
- Virginia
Rogue 2.5
****************
I won't deny that I found the capes of this planet somewhat lacking. Sure, the Captains were obvious Alexandria Packages, but the way they held themselves wasn't how any Brute I'd known had. They lacked a sense of confidence in themselves that came from experience, and having only dealt with villains that could only barely be called that, neither of them had it.
Mouse Avenger was a bit better, up until the point it became obvious she was playing a role. I never got the chance to meet Mouse Protector back on Earth Bet; she'd been stitched together with Ravager into Murder Rat before I'd gotten the chance. However, from what I'd read about Mouse Protector, Avenger's role was similar. Which begged the question. How was she inspired by an Earth Bet cape?
"So, just like that, then? Let the cops take over and get their grubby little paws over every bit of evidence. Judoon have those, you know. Paws," the Doctor said as we followed the so-called heroes. "Well, they'd say they're hands, but I know better. I'm clever, you know."
Judoon. Those were the rhinoceros-faced policemen that had been there before. The Doctor had mentioned something about a Shadow Proclamation regarding them. I'd have to ask about that. Later. One problem at a time.
"They looked like hands to me," I said. "But they'd need them to handle their guns, right?"
"Ah, that's where they get you. See, those gloves they wear aren't gloves. They're arm attachments, prosthetics." I saw a wince from Captain M at that. Odd. "They hook into the Judoon's paws to let them have the appearance of opposable thumbs, and it lets them do their jobs as enforcers of the Shadow Proclamation, or as enforcers of the law here."
Okay, so that was interesting. "So the Judoon were probably deployed because of the cape involvement. They certainly looked like they could take a hit."
"Oh, most definitely," said the Doctor. "The Judoon are resilient, strong, and they're stubborn enough that they will deal with any lawbreaker within the law. They'd stop at nothing to bring the perpetrators in."
"We need to find them first," Captain M said. "The Morlocks can deal with Judoon easily, and they'll get away. It's their specialty. Running."
Just like the Undersiders. It really was eerie just how much the bank had mirrored my own bank heist. Even if the capes involved weren't exact replicas, they still managed to get away with their goal.
"Ah, that I understand," said the Doctor. "I like running. Much better than fighting when it comes down to it. Good for the lungs, the legs, the hearts, and it can get you out of trouble quickly."
"Did you say hearts?" Captain D asked.
"Yes, hearts," said the Doctor. "Really gets the blood pumping, running does. But I get the feeling that you three don't do much running. Much more of the fighting."
"Well, we are superheroes," said Captain M as we rounded a corner, coming to the street the TARDIS had landed on. Captain M seemed to ignore it as she led us to the building behind it. The building's architecture matched that of most of the city. Its glass windows were tinted to reflect the sunlight and not give a good look in, no matter the level one looked at. I couldn't quite see the top from this angle, and I got the slight sense of vertigo when I tried. "If we ran rather than fought the villains, we wouldn't be very good superheroes, would we?"
"How do you determine who's a villain?" I asked. "If this is the first time a warrant's actually been issued for the arrest of a cape, what makes someone a villain?"
"You saw what the Morlocks wore!" Mouse Avenger said imperiously. "And they challenged us. They set us up to fight at the mall, and then they came to the bank. Dastards."
"So, do you base who a villain is on their costume entirely?" asked the Doctor. "No, you were too surprised when the Morlocks actually stole something."
"They hadn't done that before," said Captain D. "It's new."
"So they, what, stole from other villains before?" I asked. "Robbed a casino, got attacked by a giant dragon-man, showed you up when they stopped him?" Okay, maybe that was taking the Undersider comparison a bit far. Loup-Garou was nothing like Bitch other than apparent attitude.
"They never stole anything before," Captain M said. "They just fought us, or they fought the other villains while fighting us."
"And the regular criminal element?" asked the Doctor. "The mood-pushers, the kidnappers, the actual thieves?"
"Gone! They were scared away by the threat of justice!" Mouse Avenger declared.
"When the motorway opened up, people left," Captain D explained. "Repopulated, and the mood pushers were forced out."
"Right," I said, pursing my lips. There was no way an actual criminal element didn't exist, but given they were so focused on the so-called villains, maybe they were subtler here. Odd, but it didn't really matter as this wasn't my town. We finally made it up to the skyscraper's door. "This is your base?"
"Just the penthouse," said Captain D defensively. "But we have an express elevator."
"Why not just fly up?" asked the Doctor.
"We're with you two, and you don't have any movement powers that I can tell," said Captain M. She opened a hidden panel near the door to reveal an electronic palm reader. It seemed that no matter the time period, some security features remained the same. She placed her gloved hand there, and immediately next to the door, a vertical slit in the glass wall of the building appeared, sliding down and up to reach a height of approximately eight feet. Then the slit widened to a full doorway. Captain M gestured to the door. "After you."
I glanced at the Doctor as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver. The tool whirred a bit for a few seconds and then he looked at it and nodded. "When you say elevator, you really mean trans-mat. It's safe enough, Taylor."
The moment I heard it was safe, I stepped on through. I felt barely a weird pulling sensation before stepping out onto the top floor of the building. The Protectors base wasn't unlike the common room that the Chicago Wards had. The floors were a lush red carpet made out of some material I'd probably never guess. Plush furniture that looked practically brand new was set up around whatever passed for a TV here, a fine wooden conference table sat at one corner, and an elaborate electronics set hung on the far wall with a swivel-chair nearby.
I knew that the Protectors didn't have government sponsorship. How could they? They weren't fighting real crime. Even with government sponsorship, the sheer extravagance here would have their budgets evaluated by whatever bureaucracies existed. Heck, I know Defiant had his budget looked at time and again, and he was a Tinker. No, they were beholden to someone else. Maybe one of the group was richer than I thought. Didn't matter much.
The Doctor followed me through a few seconds after I got inside, and he made a few sounds of approval. "Oh, this is nice. Missing some wall décor, but you've got windows for that."
"Your compliments are accepted with grace, Doctor," Mouse Avenger said as she got in, and then she changed her pose a little. "But ultimately, that's not what matters."
"No, it's not," said the Doctor. "You lot need to figure out two things. One. What exactly did the Morlocks steal? Can anyone tell me?"
"It wasn't money," I said with a frown. "The money here is electronic. If they wanted to steal money from the bank, they'd just hack it rather than make a spectacle out of it. They were after something more."
"Something from the vault then," Mouse Avenger said as she stepped over to the electronics on the wall and brought up some sort of holographic screen. She started typing on a light-based keyboard and using hand gestures to move things aside. "The bank does an inventory on what they have at the start of a day, and it's procedure after an attempted robbery to repeat it. They haven't had to use that procedure in years, but it's automatic, run by their computers."
"Explains how they got it done so quickly," I said. "They knew before we were done talking with the police that something had actually been taken."
"Yes," Mouse Avenger said simply. "The fiends who hide from Justice seem to have taken the contents of Safety Deposit Box 86B."
"Safety deposit box, eh?" The Doctor moved closer to the terminal. "You able to see what's supposed to be inside?"
"Not exactly," Mouse Avenger said. "I have some data taken from the sensors in the vaults, but nothing on what's supposed to be in the box. They are supposed to be private, after all, and privacy is the right of every citizen."
"So, we know they took a specific box but not its contents," I said.
"Wouldn't say that," the Doctor said, pulling out his sonic screwdriver. He buzzed it a bit over the hologram, and grinned. "The New Boston Central Bank has several different kinds of sensors set up in its vault, and all of them would have seen the safety deposit box when it was taken out. Now, assuming the Morlocks were smart criminals, and they were, they would have erased the records if they wanted to keep it hidden."
The hologram swapped to a blank screen, and the Doctor nodded, still waving the sonic. "Now, normally these are kept on closed systems, but I've linked this terminal to the TARDIS and through that to the bank. The sensors that the bank uses are multiphasic, infrared, microscopic, and they have radiation detection so good that they'd see a Sontaran through his suit. Believe me, not a sight you want to see. They look like tiny potatoes. With legs."
The screen flashed to the bank robbery time, showing Bright with her hands around the box and Analyst looking at the camera before back at the box and nodding. The Doctor waved the sonic again and the image zoomed on the box. A wire-frame overlay of something started forming inside.
"Well, that's interesting," said the Doctor as he adjusted the sonic some more and whirred it at the hologram.
"Interesting?" Captain D asked. "What you're doing is probably illegal."
"Sometimes to catch villains you need to bend the law a little bit," I said simply as I looked closer at the box. Something felt off about it. The wire-frame formed into a pointed shape at first, the length of the box, but the central part of the frame was curved. A little window with statistics I didn't fully understand popped up. "What's interesting about it?"
"It appears to be a multiphasic crystalline structure, highly fractal, but the fractals don't only go into the three spatial dimensions. The artifact in that structure is quantum locked yet just the tiniest bit wibbly." The Doctor frowned as the wireframe started adding veins to the stem. "It's far denser than it should be at that size yet the weight displayed doesn't match its density at all."
"So, it's lighter than it should be," said Captain M.
"Yes, light as a feather," said the Doctor, and that had me frowning. No, that really couldn't be right. This was Earth… or dimension… Resh, not Bet. Not wherever everyone had ended up after Scion screwed everything up. This planet might have had capes, but it shouldn't have had anything to do with the Endbringers. I looked closely at the wire-frame.
It certainly was starting to look like a feather. A crystalline, multidimensional feather. It could just be coincidence. Maybe someone made a multidimensional sculpture or something. I was just being paranoid. First alien world I come to has capes, of course I start to look for other things.
"So, have any idea what it looks like?" I asked.
"We'll know when it finishes rendering. Oh that is clever," said the Doctor. "That's a second set of dimensional overlay. That explains the density and weight differential. The mass isn't fully in phase. It shouldn't be possible with the walls up, but it's shunting most of its mass to another reality. And… it's out of phase with our own ever so slightly."
The Doctor waved the sonic around the room for a second and then glanced at it as the light turned off.
I stood. It couldn't be what I thought it was, but there were two beings that could have placed it here. Who knew their reasons though? Precognitives worked in mysterious ways.
"It's… a feather, isn't it?" I asked. "I mean, that's what it looks like."
"Definitely seems that way, but it's not very feather-like except in shape. It should be hard as diamond with these readings." The Doctor looked at me and pursed his lips, and I shook my head. "With these harmonics though, it shouldn't be too hard to scan for it."
"So you'll find the Morlocks then?" Mouse Avenger asked.
"Or a really dense feather," said the Doctor.
I grit my teeth a bit, reaching out with my nonexistent powers. I missed being able to just let my swarm handle the anxiety. A Simurgh feather, or any Endbringer part in the wrong hands was a bad thing. Who knew what the technology of this time would let them do with it? If I hadn't been sure the Morlocks needed to be stopped before, I was certain now.
"Mouse, Captains," I said, drawing their attention. "Do you patrol the city at all? Make a note of where your villains pop up?"
"Of course!" Mouse Avenger said, raising her fist triumphantly. "We show the city that their Champions of Justice do not fail, even when three of their members are off-planet at the moment."
"So, is there a particular place the Morlocks tend to pop up around?" I asked. "Territory that they've claimed as theirs and all that?"
The Doctor looked at me a little funny. I suppose knowledge of supervillain territory habits wasn't exactly something common on Earth Resh, but that didn't matter. If there was a Simurgh feather here, in the possession of any group of capes, something was wrong.
"Not exactly, no. They tend to just set up places for fights along our normal patrol route," Captain D said. "I don't think it's been in a specific area more than once."
"I can pull up the patrol routes and do a cross-reference with their atta—" Mouse Avenger suddenly gripped her head and let out a cry. Shortly afterward, both of the Captains did the same, and the Doctor stood up, sonic screwdriver immediately in hand.
I looked at them, directly at Captain M, and for the briefest of seconds, I heard singing. It stopped the moment I looked away, and I shivered. No. That wasn't right.
"Some sort of psychic interference," the Doctor said. "It's doing a wide-area broadcast. The TARDIS is filtering it out, but they don't have those protections."
"Doctor, that feather, can you find it?" I asked.
"Of course I can. I just need to build a trans-dimensional fea—"
"I wouldn't bother looking, fiend." Mouse Avenger stood up to look directly at me. "Fugitives from justice such as yourself, Taylor Hebert, always slip up. Villain, you will be punished for your crimes!"
"What?" Oh good, the Doctor was confused. The Captains had the same look in their eyes as they lowered their hands. Great. They were probably going to side with their teammate here.
"What crimes are those?" I asked, bringing the confidence I had as Skitter to the forefront. They wanted a villain, I'd give them one.
"Murderer… your punishment will be death!" Captain M said with a snarl.
The Doctor just looked at me and then back at the heroes. "Now, you don't want to kill Taylor, Captain. She didn't do anything here. We were just trying to find the Morlocks and what they stole."
"Those villains will get what's coming to them soon enough," Mouse Avenger said. "But we have Taylor Hebert right here."
The Captains lifted off the ground slightly and Mouse Avenger took two steps forward. It seemed like they were fighting whatever it was that the song was forcing on them, but I knew that couldn't last forever. If this was the Simurgh, they were in no way prepared to block it out and deal with it properly.
"Taylor," the Doctor said as he started backing away. "It's time to run."
I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly.
****************
I won't deny that I found the capes of this planet somewhat lacking. Sure, the Captains were obvious Alexandria Packages, but the way they held themselves wasn't how any Brute I'd known had. They lacked a sense of confidence in themselves that came from experience, and having only dealt with villains that could only barely be called that, neither of them had it.
Mouse Avenger was a bit better, up until the point it became obvious she was playing a role. I never got the chance to meet Mouse Protector back on Earth Bet; she'd been stitched together with Ravager into Murder Rat before I'd gotten the chance. However, from what I'd read about Mouse Protector, Avenger's role was similar. Which begged the question. How was she inspired by an Earth Bet cape?
"So, just like that, then? Let the cops take over and get their grubby little paws over every bit of evidence. Judoon have those, you know. Paws," the Doctor said as we followed the so-called heroes. "Well, they'd say they're hands, but I know better. I'm clever, you know."
Judoon. Those were the rhinoceros-faced policemen that had been there before. The Doctor had mentioned something about a Shadow Proclamation regarding them. I'd have to ask about that. Later. One problem at a time.
"They looked like hands to me," I said. "But they'd need them to handle their guns, right?"
"Ah, that's where they get you. See, those gloves they wear aren't gloves. They're arm attachments, prosthetics." I saw a wince from Captain M at that. Odd. "They hook into the Judoon's paws to let them have the appearance of opposable thumbs, and it lets them do their jobs as enforcers of the Shadow Proclamation, or as enforcers of the law here."
Okay, so that was interesting. "So the Judoon were probably deployed because of the cape involvement. They certainly looked like they could take a hit."
"Oh, most definitely," said the Doctor. "The Judoon are resilient, strong, and they're stubborn enough that they will deal with any lawbreaker within the law. They'd stop at nothing to bring the perpetrators in."
"We need to find them first," Captain M said. "The Morlocks can deal with Judoon easily, and they'll get away. It's their specialty. Running."
Just like the Undersiders. It really was eerie just how much the bank had mirrored my own bank heist. Even if the capes involved weren't exact replicas, they still managed to get away with their goal.
"Ah, that I understand," said the Doctor. "I like running. Much better than fighting when it comes down to it. Good for the lungs, the legs, the hearts, and it can get you out of trouble quickly."
"Did you say hearts?" Captain D asked.
"Yes, hearts," said the Doctor. "Really gets the blood pumping, running does. But I get the feeling that you three don't do much running. Much more of the fighting."
"Well, we are superheroes," said Captain M as we rounded a corner, coming to the street the TARDIS had landed on. Captain M seemed to ignore it as she led us to the building behind it. The building's architecture matched that of most of the city. Its glass windows were tinted to reflect the sunlight and not give a good look in, no matter the level one looked at. I couldn't quite see the top from this angle, and I got the slight sense of vertigo when I tried. "If we ran rather than fought the villains, we wouldn't be very good superheroes, would we?"
"How do you determine who's a villain?" I asked. "If this is the first time a warrant's actually been issued for the arrest of a cape, what makes someone a villain?"
"You saw what the Morlocks wore!" Mouse Avenger said imperiously. "And they challenged us. They set us up to fight at the mall, and then they came to the bank. Dastards."
"So, do you base who a villain is on their costume entirely?" asked the Doctor. "No, you were too surprised when the Morlocks actually stole something."
"They hadn't done that before," said Captain D. "It's new."
"So they, what, stole from other villains before?" I asked. "Robbed a casino, got attacked by a giant dragon-man, showed you up when they stopped him?" Okay, maybe that was taking the Undersider comparison a bit far. Loup-Garou was nothing like Bitch other than apparent attitude.
"They never stole anything before," Captain M said. "They just fought us, or they fought the other villains while fighting us."
"And the regular criminal element?" asked the Doctor. "The mood-pushers, the kidnappers, the actual thieves?"
"Gone! They were scared away by the threat of justice!" Mouse Avenger declared.
"When the motorway opened up, people left," Captain D explained. "Repopulated, and the mood pushers were forced out."
"Right," I said, pursing my lips. There was no way an actual criminal element didn't exist, but given they were so focused on the so-called villains, maybe they were subtler here. Odd, but it didn't really matter as this wasn't my town. We finally made it up to the skyscraper's door. "This is your base?"
"Just the penthouse," said Captain D defensively. "But we have an express elevator."
"Why not just fly up?" asked the Doctor.
"We're with you two, and you don't have any movement powers that I can tell," said Captain M. She opened a hidden panel near the door to reveal an electronic palm reader. It seemed that no matter the time period, some security features remained the same. She placed her gloved hand there, and immediately next to the door, a vertical slit in the glass wall of the building appeared, sliding down and up to reach a height of approximately eight feet. Then the slit widened to a full doorway. Captain M gestured to the door. "After you."
I glanced at the Doctor as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver. The tool whirred a bit for a few seconds and then he looked at it and nodded. "When you say elevator, you really mean trans-mat. It's safe enough, Taylor."
The moment I heard it was safe, I stepped on through. I felt barely a weird pulling sensation before stepping out onto the top floor of the building. The Protectors base wasn't unlike the common room that the Chicago Wards had. The floors were a lush red carpet made out of some material I'd probably never guess. Plush furniture that looked practically brand new was set up around whatever passed for a TV here, a fine wooden conference table sat at one corner, and an elaborate electronics set hung on the far wall with a swivel-chair nearby.
I knew that the Protectors didn't have government sponsorship. How could they? They weren't fighting real crime. Even with government sponsorship, the sheer extravagance here would have their budgets evaluated by whatever bureaucracies existed. Heck, I know Defiant had his budget looked at time and again, and he was a Tinker. No, they were beholden to someone else. Maybe one of the group was richer than I thought. Didn't matter much.
The Doctor followed me through a few seconds after I got inside, and he made a few sounds of approval. "Oh, this is nice. Missing some wall décor, but you've got windows for that."
"Your compliments are accepted with grace, Doctor," Mouse Avenger said as she got in, and then she changed her pose a little. "But ultimately, that's not what matters."
"No, it's not," said the Doctor. "You lot need to figure out two things. One. What exactly did the Morlocks steal? Can anyone tell me?"
"It wasn't money," I said with a frown. "The money here is electronic. If they wanted to steal money from the bank, they'd just hack it rather than make a spectacle out of it. They were after something more."
"Something from the vault then," Mouse Avenger said as she stepped over to the electronics on the wall and brought up some sort of holographic screen. She started typing on a light-based keyboard and using hand gestures to move things aside. "The bank does an inventory on what they have at the start of a day, and it's procedure after an attempted robbery to repeat it. They haven't had to use that procedure in years, but it's automatic, run by their computers."
"Explains how they got it done so quickly," I said. "They knew before we were done talking with the police that something had actually been taken."
"Yes," Mouse Avenger said simply. "The fiends who hide from Justice seem to have taken the contents of Safety Deposit Box 86B."
"Safety deposit box, eh?" The Doctor moved closer to the terminal. "You able to see what's supposed to be inside?"
"Not exactly," Mouse Avenger said. "I have some data taken from the sensors in the vaults, but nothing on what's supposed to be in the box. They are supposed to be private, after all, and privacy is the right of every citizen."
"So, we know they took a specific box but not its contents," I said.
"Wouldn't say that," the Doctor said, pulling out his sonic screwdriver. He buzzed it a bit over the hologram, and grinned. "The New Boston Central Bank has several different kinds of sensors set up in its vault, and all of them would have seen the safety deposit box when it was taken out. Now, assuming the Morlocks were smart criminals, and they were, they would have erased the records if they wanted to keep it hidden."
The hologram swapped to a blank screen, and the Doctor nodded, still waving the sonic. "Now, normally these are kept on closed systems, but I've linked this terminal to the TARDIS and through that to the bank. The sensors that the bank uses are multiphasic, infrared, microscopic, and they have radiation detection so good that they'd see a Sontaran through his suit. Believe me, not a sight you want to see. They look like tiny potatoes. With legs."
The screen flashed to the bank robbery time, showing Bright with her hands around the box and Analyst looking at the camera before back at the box and nodding. The Doctor waved the sonic again and the image zoomed on the box. A wire-frame overlay of something started forming inside.
"Well, that's interesting," said the Doctor as he adjusted the sonic some more and whirred it at the hologram.
"Interesting?" Captain D asked. "What you're doing is probably illegal."
"Sometimes to catch villains you need to bend the law a little bit," I said simply as I looked closer at the box. Something felt off about it. The wire-frame formed into a pointed shape at first, the length of the box, but the central part of the frame was curved. A little window with statistics I didn't fully understand popped up. "What's interesting about it?"
"It appears to be a multiphasic crystalline structure, highly fractal, but the fractals don't only go into the three spatial dimensions. The artifact in that structure is quantum locked yet just the tiniest bit wibbly." The Doctor frowned as the wireframe started adding veins to the stem. "It's far denser than it should be at that size yet the weight displayed doesn't match its density at all."
"So, it's lighter than it should be," said Captain M.
"Yes, light as a feather," said the Doctor, and that had me frowning. No, that really couldn't be right. This was Earth… or dimension… Resh, not Bet. Not wherever everyone had ended up after Scion screwed everything up. This planet might have had capes, but it shouldn't have had anything to do with the Endbringers. I looked closely at the wire-frame.
It certainly was starting to look like a feather. A crystalline, multidimensional feather. It could just be coincidence. Maybe someone made a multidimensional sculpture or something. I was just being paranoid. First alien world I come to has capes, of course I start to look for other things.
"So, have any idea what it looks like?" I asked.
"We'll know when it finishes rendering. Oh that is clever," said the Doctor. "That's a second set of dimensional overlay. That explains the density and weight differential. The mass isn't fully in phase. It shouldn't be possible with the walls up, but it's shunting most of its mass to another reality. And… it's out of phase with our own ever so slightly."
The Doctor waved the sonic around the room for a second and then glanced at it as the light turned off.
I stood. It couldn't be what I thought it was, but there were two beings that could have placed it here. Who knew their reasons though? Precognitives worked in mysterious ways.
"It's… a feather, isn't it?" I asked. "I mean, that's what it looks like."
"Definitely seems that way, but it's not very feather-like except in shape. It should be hard as diamond with these readings." The Doctor looked at me and pursed his lips, and I shook my head. "With these harmonics though, it shouldn't be too hard to scan for it."
"So you'll find the Morlocks then?" Mouse Avenger asked.
"Or a really dense feather," said the Doctor.
I grit my teeth a bit, reaching out with my nonexistent powers. I missed being able to just let my swarm handle the anxiety. A Simurgh feather, or any Endbringer part in the wrong hands was a bad thing. Who knew what the technology of this time would let them do with it? If I hadn't been sure the Morlocks needed to be stopped before, I was certain now.
"Mouse, Captains," I said, drawing their attention. "Do you patrol the city at all? Make a note of where your villains pop up?"
"Of course!" Mouse Avenger said, raising her fist triumphantly. "We show the city that their Champions of Justice do not fail, even when three of their members are off-planet at the moment."
"So, is there a particular place the Morlocks tend to pop up around?" I asked. "Territory that they've claimed as theirs and all that?"
The Doctor looked at me a little funny. I suppose knowledge of supervillain territory habits wasn't exactly something common on Earth Resh, but that didn't matter. If there was a Simurgh feather here, in the possession of any group of capes, something was wrong.
"Not exactly, no. They tend to just set up places for fights along our normal patrol route," Captain D said. "I don't think it's been in a specific area more than once."
"I can pull up the patrol routes and do a cross-reference with their atta—" Mouse Avenger suddenly gripped her head and let out a cry. Shortly afterward, both of the Captains did the same, and the Doctor stood up, sonic screwdriver immediately in hand.
I looked at them, directly at Captain M, and for the briefest of seconds, I heard singing. It stopped the moment I looked away, and I shivered. No. That wasn't right.
"Some sort of psychic interference," the Doctor said. "It's doing a wide-area broadcast. The TARDIS is filtering it out, but they don't have those protections."
"Doctor, that feather, can you find it?" I asked.
"Of course I can. I just need to build a trans-dimensional fea—"
"I wouldn't bother looking, fiend." Mouse Avenger stood up to look directly at me. "Fugitives from justice such as yourself, Taylor Hebert, always slip up. Villain, you will be punished for your crimes!"
"What?" Oh good, the Doctor was confused. The Captains had the same look in their eyes as they lowered their hands. Great. They were probably going to side with their teammate here.
"What crimes are those?" I asked, bringing the confidence I had as Skitter to the forefront. They wanted a villain, I'd give them one.
"Murderer… your punishment will be death!" Captain M said with a snarl.
The Doctor just looked at me and then back at the heroes. "Now, you don't want to kill Taylor, Captain. She didn't do anything here. We were just trying to find the Morlocks and what they stole."
"Those villains will get what's coming to them soon enough," Mouse Avenger said. "But we have Taylor Hebert right here."
The Captains lifted off the ground slightly and Mouse Avenger took two steps forward. It seemed like they were fighting whatever it was that the song was forcing on them, but I knew that couldn't last forever. If this was the Simurgh, they were in no way prepared to block it out and deal with it properly.
"Taylor," the Doctor said as he started backing away. "It's time to run."
I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly.
Well. That isn't good. Smurgh being more subtle? Wanting payback for Scion or Dadaversty? Or someone who learned to copy her?
- Location
- USA
They were already on her trail. Trying to take Taylor out first is probably the right call for her, unless she was going to skip straight to confessing and letting the Doctor decide what to do with her, and most people... don't.
esotericist
A Weary Hand
- Location
- Lacey, WA
Well, that escalated, and this time all it took was Taylor standing there.
- Location
- USA
My money is on a returned Eden.
- Location
- In the depts of despair.
My money is on an Earth Bet Thinker who got a power that influence large, as in planetary large, crowds and has been directing the local setting to create a parody of Bet during Skitter's time and now found something worth the effort of ruining his long term plans in order to adquire far more power.
esseresse
R'lyth Power Make-up
- Location
- divorceville, state of depression
- Pronouns
- They/Her
Why did I hear this in the voice of ZARDOZ?
Ellf
Apprentice Wizard
- Location
- Virginia
This chapter was such a pain to get out, plus I had my wedding in the meantime. However, 2.6 and 2.7 will round out the episode, and we'll be ready for Episode 3: Touchable.
Preview line: "What's a dame like you doing with a guy like him?"
"None of your business, Al."
"Lady, in Chicago, it's all my business."
Preview line: "What's a dame like you doing with a guy like him?"
"None of your business, Al."
"Lady, in Chicago, it's all my business."
Castle_Bravo
The user formerly known as Nuke_Equestria
I don't know why you guys are guessing, the last chapter reveled who the villain was. It's one of Emma's crowed who's gone crazy and is having herself turned into the Simurgh.
thefluffyone
Big Ego for Something so Small, eh?
- Location
- Earth
I'm just waiting for the big reveal of the villain to Taylor, only for her to go 'Does the Simurgh know you're playing pretend?'
And then Bam, Simmie herself pokes her head through a portal to stare disapprovingly.
InterstellarHobo
Cosmic Vagrant
- Location
- No Fixed Planetary System
You managed to capture the Dr. Who story feel very very well.
I am interested.
I am interested.
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
And then Harry Dresden accidentally sets the building on fire.
ecs05norway
Zenryoku Zenkai!
Actually, it's been mentioned in some of the official novels (especially around his 7th incarnation) that he makes a habit of, after an adventure, going to an earlier point in the local timeline to create such accounts.
I recall at one point he donated a mansion to UNIT to use as their headquarters when they were in a budget crunch.
Evonix
Aspiring Lovecraft antagonist.
- Location
- Canada to 2 sigmas
I read through Cyber and I don't get why Taylor forgave the doctor for what he did? Companions tend not have much of an ideology before The Doctor comes in and replaces theirs with his own but I don't see Taylor being so easily swayed, for that matter why didn't Taylor bother trying to make a reasoned argument with the cyber man?
- Location
- Earth: Universe Meta - 1
I felt it was because she recognized that she wasn't in her right mind. Things would have been different had she made those decisions without the mind altering affects. As is, it's just one of those things.
What in particular do you think she should have a grudge about?
Evonix
Aspiring Lovecraft antagonist.
- Location
- Canada to 2 sigmas
How he destroyed them all, if they were simply put somewhere else for exsample Taylor could have studied them, she saw great potential and although she was not in her right mind I think the possibilities the cybermats represented and what the cybermen are trying to do and her stuck unable to funementaly change it is something that would stick with her, plus later on I imagine she would want a swarm to use and would resent it's distruction. Also I wanna see what the cybermen would do when faced with a few textbooks on game theory and learning AIs, it really shows many of the cybermen's policies as quite... Illogical.
- Location
- Earth: Universe Meta - 1
True, him destroying the cybermats is annoying, but the way he did it seemed to be an all or nothing solution. The fact they were so dangerous also helps explain it. However, I'd say the big reason is he seemed sorry about his actions, and is waving fancy things in front of her face.