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Hybrid Hive: Eat Shard? (Worm/MGLN) (Complete)

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Gear-2557 said:
I'm honestly surprised that they didnt do a double take on that part.
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theaceoffire said:
... What the heck? Why are Sherie and Ethan so okay with this little 19 drop in the conversation? Hello! 19 Endbringers!? I kept expecting someone to do a reaction shot to this and no one seems to care about that part!
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This...
CmptrWz said:
Any attempt at answering him there was stopped by what happened next, his eyes going wide alongside Sherie's as the ending sequence of the streams played. The news anchors had gone dead silent as well as they watched the same sequence.
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implies that the dormant Endbringer multi-kill was shown at the very end. So yeah, some very important people be shitting brickhouses right now.


Oh, and the Other PoV Interlude next! Can't wait to see everyone melt down at Minerva soloing more Endbringers than Bet knew exist...
 
"Hello, Hive? It's Chief Director Costa-Brown. I just wanted to congratulate and thank you for what you have done, and to inform you that, with your combined bounty payout, you are now the proud owner of infinite money. Feel free to contact any PRT member and ask for anything, and it will be delivered to the address of your choice. On behalf of humanity, thank you"
 
I have to wonder more about how this changes how villains are treated. The official reason to let them escape prison and not to run them down is to have them available to fight Endbringers.
Or at least it is part of the reason.

Cauldron might still want them for anti-Zion plans, but nobody else knows that.
 
Ender said:
I have to wonder more about how this changes how villains are treated. The official reason to let them escape prison and not to run them down is to have them available to fight Endbringers.
Or at least it is part of the reason.

Cauldron might still want them for anti-Zion plans, but nobody else knows that.
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Quite frankly, at this point I think Cauldron's plans have all been revised to say, "show up to Hive's doorstep, hat in hand, and ask for help"
 
Byzantine said:
19 down, 1 alive but also the worst match up, given he probably can't sieze control of mana and without that behemoth is too big a target and too slow to fight Taylor in a cage match.
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Eh, I suppose it depends. If he's got enough data yet to have figured out that mana is part of the 'dissipate/recover energy' trick the Entities didn't know all the details of, he might have the 'convert mana into different energy' technique, which could turn Minerva's attacks into more ammunition for him. Basically, if he makes the link between 'unknown energy I can't quite perceive' and 'where does this energy go to/come from' it could turn him into the worst match up for Minerva, instead of the opposite being true.
 
So... that's a biiiig escalation in conventional power output for both barriers and binds.

Alexandria's greatest canon feat of physical strength/flight is lifting 1.75 million tons (per the wiki, and that only places a lower bound), and Endbringers are substantially stronger than that. Orders of magnitude wouldn't surprise me.

And that's kind of important if this is going into a nanoha crossover.
 
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Interlude 7
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    • Dinah Alcott - June 1, 2011
    Dinah sighed as her mother drove away from the school. She still wasn't entirely sure what the discussion with Aisha had covered, and didn't know how to find out without bringing a tape recorder to school with her for the next time. Even remembering that Aisha was there had been a problem, the sudden need to pay more attention to 'about to happen' instead of 'happening now' creating a problem for her ability to concentrate properly.

    Whatever the missing pieces had been, they didn't seem to have helped with figuring Missy out. Not that learning more about Aisha was all that likely to improve her power's ability to figure out Missy anyway. The only good way to figure out Missy was going to be more exposure to the girl, so with any luck the plan to work with her a couple of days a week would work. Uncle Roy had promised that he'd make the offer, at least, even if he wasn't sure why it was important that she worked with Missy.

    Of course, that didn't help with figuring out the other problem individuals, but there was only so much that she could do there. Minerva and Lilia were almost certainly going to be 'learn from afar' deals, the others were just plain not happening anytime soon. There just weren't any good ways to interact with them more right now. Or if there were, it was beyond her and her powers to figure them out currently.

    Hopefully she could figure out enough about Missy before school started up again in the fall, or if that didn't happen that she would be working with her over the summer and would strike up enough of a friendship to allow them to interact frequently despite being in different schools.
    Aisha Laborn - June 1, 2011
    Aisha was annoyed, having failed to locate Missy's new house. Admittedly, following the girl home on the bus hadn't been an option when she was picked up by someone, but she'd thought that memorizing the license plate number of said car would help. Instead it appeared that Missy either hadn't gone straight home today or the neighborhood that Aisha thought was correct was actually wrong. Another attempt might need to be made tomorrow, but she'd run out of time available to stay out looking for today.

    Brian had been mildly annoying, at least while she'd been concentrating enough for him to realize that she existed, but even that was infinitely better than either of their parents. He still hadn't admitted to what, exactly, had happened to result in him suddenly being able to take guardianship of her. He'd even been able to do so before he turned eighteen, somehow convincing a judge to emancipate him a little early so that he could take care of her under who knows what law. There was no way that he'd figured out how to arrange that on his own, but she still didn't know what help he'd had. It didn't seem to be any of his friends, at least, and she knew that she was missing something about the situation.

    For that matter, she needed to figure out where their mother ended up. The apartment's locks had been changed by the landlord, meaning that the old keys didn't work. That didn't give Aisha any information on where the woman was, just that she likely wasn't in the apartment anymore. It was just a pain to do that searching now that she and Brian were in a new apartment across town.

    Come to think of it, she also needed to figure out what the hell happened to Brian's friends. He'd just...stopped going to visit them. Sure, he had to worry about taking care of her, and the new apartment, but surely he wouldn't just drop them like that? He'd actually stopped going to see them before she triggered while out with dad, so she'd not gotten a chance to follow him to see who they were. She also hadn't gotten around to going through his things yet. In part because it was all still too neat from carefully being put away, needing another few weeks before he left things messy enough to not notice that she hadn't put things back perfectly when going through them.

    She was pulled out of her musings by someone ringing the doorbell buzzer thing, which took her by surprise because nobody should really know that they were here yet. Not when it'd only been a couple of days. Unless it was one of Brian's friends, finally coming for a visit? Smirking, she quietly slipped out of her room so that she could stand hopefully-unnoticed in the corner of the living room. Brian seemed agitated as he hit the button that opened the complex door for the person who'd arrived, and a minute later he was letting in...Miss Militia.

    Aisha's eyes went wide, because Brian knowing anyone in the Protectorate had been far beyond anything she'd expected. Especially since he'd been running around as a low-level villain, with the friends he wasn't visiting probably being other parahumans.

    "Good evening Mister Laborn," Miss Militia said. "As I said, I'm here to talk about your...er...sister?" The woman shook her head, then it looked like she might be frowning behind her bandanna. A look of concentration followed, and then she looked around the apartment. "Miss Laborn, would you be so kind as to stop that? Having this discussion with you making us forget that you exist is going to be problematic at best."

    Crap. They knew she had powers. She wasn't sure how they knew, but they knew. But would it be better to slip away while they couldn't tell where she was or to reveal herself? It took a moment of thinking about it before she realized that if she didn't stick around then it might create problems for Brian, and she still didn't want to screw up whatever it was he'd done to get her away from their father. With a sigh, she concentrated on turning off her powers. Besides, Miss Militia already knew that she was there.

    "There you are," Miss Militia said, looking at her. Brian spun around and looked at where Aisha was stepping out of the corner as well. "Miss Laborn, for the record, do you know if your power continues to function while you're asleep?"

    Aisha blinked at that. She didn't know why it was important to be asked, but it seemed safe enough to answer. "Er, yes? I have to use an alarm because Brian doesn't remember that I need to be woken up."

    The woman nodded. "Which implies that it defaults to on, and thus we can't charge you with who knows how many counts of assault with a parahuman power."

    "What?" Brian said, looking between the two.

    "Your sister triggered at some point recently and picked up a potent stranger ability. Sadly for her, it doesn't hide her from cameras or other recording devices and she was spotted snooping around the home of some PRT staff."

    Aisha felt her eyes go wide at that, but she held her concentration to keep them from forgetting her. "I wasn't trying to spy on any PRT staff!"

    Miss Militia nodded at that. "We didn't think you were intending to, but said staff happen to have taken in Miss Biron recently."

    Crap. So much for almost all of her plans to spy on Missy. "So that's why you're here?"

    "I'm here because my perfect recall was predicted to be able to work around your abilities." She then tapped an item on her shirt. "Though I also have a camera being monitored by a team nearby, one that I'm in radio contact with. No long-term recordings, just enough for them to remind me that you exist and why I'm here."

    Aisha felt her eye twitch. Dinah, Missy, and now the Protectorate all had ways to get around her powers. Fucking hell, was something wrong with them? Susie at school had said something about some kinds of powers going wonky ever since Minerva showed up, did that apply to her powers too?

    "I'm also here to provide information on potential options with the Wards," Miss Militia continued. "Though if I'm being honest, it's more out of curiosity as to how in the world the PR teams would even begin to try to handle a Ward that nobody could remember meeting. Powers like yours would probably be a poor fit for a large number of reasons otherwise."

    Brian sighed at that, then snorted. "Maybe I should throw her at that girl, Taylor I think it was? Because this sounds like far too much trouble to deal with and having Aisha's powers be removed would probably solve a lot of headaches."

    "NO!" Aisha said, momentarily losing focus on keeping them able to remember that she was there. Both of the others blinked and shook their head, then Miss Militia paused. Probably being talked to by that team monitoring her.

    "Miss Laborn," the woman said. "We aren't going to force you to try and lose your powers. Can you please turn them off again?"

    Aisha grumbled, but took a deep breath and concentrated again.

    "Thank you," Miss Militia said, looking at her again. "While we could likely arrange a safe encounter between you and Miss Hebert, we wouldn't do so without your consent. Even if I personally feel that the pros would outweigh the cons there in your case."

    "The cons being that I'd lose my powers, right?" Aisha said. "What would the pros be?"

    Miss Militia held her hand up to tick off fingers. "Maintaining a job is difficult if your supervisors don't remember that you exist, which would make it hard to pay your bills. From a safety point of view, if you get knocked out and everyone forgets that you're there then nobody is going to help you. That would be especially bad in something like a fire, where the firefighters would very likely ignore your body outright. While not important in a city with decent public transportation, if your abilities affect other drivers then you wouldn't be able to get a license. To a lesser extent, relationships of any kind are harder when your friends can't remember that you exist. All of those would be solved by the removal of your powers."

    Aisha opened her mouth, thought about some of that, and closed it again. She hadn't even considered several of those, and the idea of falling unconscious during an emergency and everyone just ignoring her body, her power making them leave her to die? That was terrifying. Then there was the relationships comment, and she realized that she might never get a boyfriend. Or if she did, she'd have to learn to keep focus on keeping her powers shut down while doing anything fun or risk having the mood ruined by her partner forgetting that she even existed.

    She was fairly certain that she paled at the combination of those two.

    "Regardless," Miss Militia continued, turning back to Brian. "I'm also here to extend an offer of assistance in learning to work with your sister's powers, if only so that you can properly watch over her despite them."

    "Can we go back to the possibility of getting me depowered?" Aisha asked, ignoring the voice in the back of her head telling her that it was a bad idea. Ruining her love life before she could have one was a worse idea!
    Geoffrey Pellick - June 2, 2011
    Geoffrey swore under his breath as all twelve monitoring devices that had been initially active went offline in rapid succession. It was likely that the two on timers and the one intended to trigger on a motion sensor weren't going to activate either, meaning that they'd learned nothing of use about Minerva's normal home base location. All of that work for nothing more than the frequencies that one or two other groups that had also snuck in had been using for their own monitoring devices.

    Minus the PRT's, as he'd already had that information courtesy of Dragon's systems.

    Still, he hadn't just relied on devices in the warehouse. The cameras watching from various points around the warehouse were still functional, several of them having been there already and just repaired and tapped. He'd not expected to end up repairing all of the existing ones, admittedly, but it made slipping in the data taps easier. The added cameras were the ones he most expected to have found and removed, and not necessarily by Minerva or Lilia. After all, he and his team hadn't had time to get permission from property owners to attach them to various buildings.

    Despite expecting it to be the case, he still found it annoying when the two cameras close enough to try and pick up the other monitoring devices that he hadn't placed in the warehouse weren't able to detect any signals from them. Obviously the group behind Minerva was too cautious to catch with such clumsy monitoring attempts. Sadly, he didn't know of anything better right now.

    Tracing their phone connection just brought him to the same endpoint used by several other groups, fully expected as it was the same fake international dialing code as said other groups. Trying to find their servers was an exercise in futility as well, Dragon was much better at that than he was and had failed to accomplish anything closer than 'probably tied to Brockton Bay'. Getting any kind of tracker on Minerva or Lilia before they left to their base of operations wasn't working.

    How was he supposed to ensure that the group's AIs were safely shut down if he couldn't track them down?
    Colin Wallis - June 2, 2011
    Colin carefully removed his armor, mentally reviewing how things had gone today. The ambush attempt against Minerva by Crystal Cage and Potter had been unexpected. Capturing the two had been even less expected, as the two were incredibly good at escaping before they could both be grabbed and were loyal enough to break each other out. He'd worked with Dragon on ideas for containing the duo in the past, and had put most of those ideas into practice tonight.

    He technically got credit for the capture of Crystal Cage, with Minerva 'assisting' with a distraction. He personally suspected that Minerva had been having trouble subduing her opponent non-fatally when he'd arrived. The real game changer there was how Lilia had subdued Potter. A targeted power nullification trump skill was incredibly impressive on its own, but the implications behind being able to essentially target a parahuman's powers and block them were staggering.

    With any luck he'd be able to get some details out of Hal, and possibly start on a way to develop something similar. He wasn't holding out much hope though, as he suspected that the mechanisms needed to accomplish something like that were beyond him. A lot of what Hal could tell him about was beyond him, in fact, implying that he was at best the world's third greatest tinker.

    He found himself strangely okay with that, since the work he was doing with the Youth Guard was much more important right now. On the surface the vast majority of things with the Wards were generally fine, but the exceptions were problematic and in many cases well hidden by rules and regulations. They'd even had to remove a Protectorate member from Mesa, sticking them in a quarantine zone for the time being.

    The added fame and accolades he was getting in the PRT and Protectorate from that work was even almost enough to distract him from being jealous about Minerva and Hive being able to carry everything they needed with them in a non-obvious manner.
    Brian Laborn - June 3, 2011
    Brian sat down on the couch, but didn't bother to turn on the television. The past couple of weeks had been insane, and it didn't look like things were slowing down at all. It was hard to believe that a month ago he'd been the nominal leader of the Undersiders, working for a mysterious boss that in hindsight he hadn't known nearly enough about. Now the 'team' had been split up, only his connection to his sister keeping the FBI from shipping him off elsewhere.

    Lisa had jumped at the chance to work with the FBI across the country, much further away from her parents. That said job came with a much better new identity was likely part of it. He wasn't fully sure, but he thought that the plan was for her to spend a couple of years as a 'junior analyst' or something like that and then 'graduate' to proper field agent when she came of age. He had her new phone number and they were doing their best to keep in touch.

    Rachel's ability to train dogs had been seen as a resource not to be squandered by the FBI, and they'd emptied the girl's makeshift shelters while sending her to a non-FBI training facility of some kind. He really didn't know anything else on that front, only that they were hoping that she could train more drug and bomb sniffing dogs than the current methods did. He knew even less about what had become of Alec, only that the lazy ass had headed South.

    Then there was Brian himself. Somehow the FBI had pushed things through to get him custody of Aisha, after getting him to agree to train with the FBI with a goal of him becoming a field agent once he didn't have to watch over his sister. Speaking of which, Aisha had initially been slightly angry with him, at least until speaking to their then-in-custody mother. He didn't know what the two had talked about, but Aisha came away angry and more willing to work with him instead of against him.

    Of course, Aisha still had visiting time with their father, and apparently her slipping away from him during the last visit had more to do with him forgetting about her due to a trigger event than anything else. The PRT had actually stepped in there, closing the investigation into why he'd abandoned Aisha. Officially all they'd said was that 'a parahuman' had been involved and that it wasn't his fault.

    Somehow, and he wasn't sure how, Aisha had mostly behaved for the few days that she'd had her powers. Up until his sister had tried to get more information on a classmate, anyway, and accidentally spied on the home of PRT staff. He still had trouble remembering exactly what they'd talked about when Miss Militia had shown up, but Aisha was spending the night in the Rig right now. Remote monitoring to bypass her powers, meaning that he wasn't constantly forgetting she existed, with the intent of seeing if a necklace was willing to remove her powers in the morning. An event that he'd be monitoring remotely from the PRT building.

    He really thought that this entire situation justified having a beer, but now that he was trying to go straight for Aisha's sake he didn't have any and couldn't buy any.
    Amy Dallon - June 3, 2011
    Amy flinched slightly as she came into contact with Vicky's skin, courtesy of the older girl adjusting her grip. Holding back from trying to recreate the phantom organ in other people was getting harder every day, probably only really stopped by the fact that she didn't actually know what methods could work. None of the plants had manifested anything like it, after all, and she wasn't sure if it was possible to add one to someone later at all.

    Still, at least now she'd cleared the air with Taylor, and had a potential plan for if things got too bad. Especially since she was doing her best to ignore the almost-voices in the back of her head telling her to both experiment more and to avoid anything that could get her powers removed. The latter was a new one, seemingly brought on by the realization that it was an actual possibility for her to lose her powers, and made her think that the voices weren't originating in her own mind.

    Sadly, they hadn't had time to quiz Taylor on all of the details. At the same time, Amy had ideas for what she might want to do if she did go through with swapping out 'parahuman' for 'mage'. Taylor had gone a very specific direction in her look, but it was unlikely that said direction was the only option. Details would need to be worked out later, if at all, but for now some thoughts on costume design would at least be a distraction.
    Victoria Dallon - June 3, 2011
    Vicky kept the grin off of her face as she headed upstairs. Mom had wanted to yell at them, or possibly at Amy, but Vicky had covered their bases well enough to avoid that. Though there was a bit of a chiding for not 'properly checking the store name before trying to visit it', that was expected when she was using such a horrible cover story.

    And Crystal liked to claim that she didn't know how to be subtle.

    The desire to grin faded as she made it upstairs, noting that Amy's door was already closed. Vicky wasn't comfortable with her sister's mental state, not with her seemingly looking for a way to get rid of her own powers. The whole 'phantom organ' thing probably helped explain why Amy had even made the occasional excuse for not going to the hospital to heal people. Accidentally experimenting on patients because she wasn't in the right mental state to hold back would be bad.

    Vicky honestly wasn't sure if she'd have the mental strength to handle that, all things considered. At the same time, she also didn't have the ability to properly monitor her sister's mental state, which likely meant that she had to get Dean to visit to see if Amy was actually in a better state or if she'd just been good at hiding it. Luckily they weren't in an 'off again' phase of their relationship, so it would be trivial to get him to stop by over the weekend for a quick checkup. Especially as he only needed to be close, so Amy shouldn't need to know that he was checking on her at all.
    Lisa Wilbourn - June 3, 2011
    Lisa walked through the small park on her way back to the hotel that she was temporarily staying in, her dinner settling in her stomach. She'd be in town another day or two, just long enough to finish looking over a local issue, and then she'd move on again. Which, if she was being honest, was fine by her. It was much harder to track someone down if they were constantly moving, and having government support in doing so was far better than doing so on her own. The FBI had even been giving her honestly interesting things to look at, though none of it was particularly sensitive.

    Her new ID still said 'Lisa Wilbourn', but they'd decided to fudge things a bit more than she had. She was, as Lisa, just past her nineteenth birthday now. Brian wasn't aware of that detail, admittedly, but then again he also didn't know that she was in a very secret FBI program for parahumans. One that the PRT should be completely unaware of, if only because if they did have proof that the other agencies knowingly employed parahumans then there would be quite the political battle over that fact.

    It was a far cry from what she'd imagined would happen after she'd taken Coil down. Then again, she hadn't done a thing to take the bastard down, he'd screwed up royally and gotten the FBI on his case as a result. Similarly to how the Merchants back in Brockton Bay had gotten the Secret Service on their asses. She knew that Minerva had found Coil, and suspected that the new cape had been involved with the Secret Service latching onto the Merchants. She had no proof of the latter, of course, but Minerva was also one of the only independents in the area that was known to be willing to work with government agencies at all.

    Oh well, none of that was her problem anymore. Nor was Taylor Hebert or the freaky things that necklace of hers did to thinker powers. Now her primary issues were much more mundane, and yet still quite interesting. Of course, eventually she'd run into something parahuman-related, like how all the insects in the area had just started to act up...

    She stopped dead in her tracks, carefully looking around. Her eyes widened as she could see where every insect was acting oddly, jerking in changing groups. A minute later it was over, the insects returning to normal, but that wasn't any form of comfort. Insects had attacked Coil's hired sniper, just after he'd sniped Miss Hebert. Was this a result of the same power? Were they following her, even across the country? Or was it a coincidence?

    There was no way for her to find out right now, and it was going to be days before she slept well again.
    Mimi Corti - June 4, 2011
    Mimi had spent the better part of the last week bouncing between confused, scared out of her mind, and incredulous. If not combinations thereof. It'd started with Bonesaw...er, Riley, killing half of the Nine because she'd already figured out that they wouldn't let her go off to try and join Minerva. Not that she'd made it sound like that was what she wanted when talking with all of them, admittedly, and she'd been right about her choices there. The weirder part was that for some reason the girl thought that joining Minerva was the only way to be a proper 'good girl' now. None of which explained why they'd packed up Riley's equipment and spent more time stopped than moving so that the girl could work on 'special projects'.

    Of course, despite Riley calling the shots, Mimi had been declared the 'responsible adult' that was needed for traveling around. Crawler didn't count because he wasn't responsible, something that he'd fully agreed with. Then there was William, who despite having volunteered to drive them around apparently wasn't trustworthy enough to be the 'responsible adult' of their journey. Riley had actually declared him a creepy likely-pedo when he'd volunteered the use of his vehicle, but had accepted the offer so long as he agreed that any 'pedo behavior' would be dealt with severely.

    Looking over, Mimi saw that Riley had been coaxed out of her temporary workshop by William returning with donuts for the three of them. The Siberian was patrolling the area and didn't really eat anyway. Crawler had, somehow, found a couple of large animals overnight and had his fill from them. The lack of combat for Crawler was actually part of what was worrying Mimi, since in her experience he didn't like to 'lay low' for any real length of time and he hadn't had any decent combat for almost two weeks straight now.

    "So," William said as he split the donuts up. "Riley, may I ask why we aren't heading straight for Brockton Bay? That is where Minerva is most often, after all."

    Riley had already taken a bite out of her first donut, but nodded before she swallowed what she'd been chewing. "I don't know what kind of magical girl Minerva is."

    "What kind of magical girl?"

    "Magical girls come in multiple varieties. A few are unique and work alone. Some have a fixed team, usually from another time or world, and they just have to find their teammates in the current day and place. I'm hoping that Minerva isn't either of those kinds because you can't join up with loners and I don't think that I'm a former teammate that just needs to be found. Others are empowered by outside forces that chose their champions carefully, or are empowered by the leader thanks to the way they gained their own powers. In both of those cases it's better to prove yourself before approaching the current magical girl or girls."

    "Okay," Mimi said, glad that someone other than her had broached this topic. "So you want to prove yourself first. That makes sense, but what are you intending for this 'proving'?"

    "I think we need to prove ourselves as a group so that Minerva will listen when we approach, even if not all of us want to join her. We could fight villains for a few months, but that will take too long and won't help you or Ned as much. So I figure that instead we do one big thing, hope that it's enough, and then go talk to Minerva."

    Mimi wasn't sure that she liked the sound of that. "One big thing?"

    Riley grinned. "Yep. We're going to take out a false god." She then took another bite of her donut.

    That was not reassuring in the least, but Mimi didn't trust herself to say anything at that declaration. If they were lucky it would be a relatively minor 'god', but she suspected that wasn't going to be the case. And from the looks William was giving Riley, he probably felt similarly, but also didn't really want confirmation either.

    It was going to be an interesting couple of weeks, wasn't it?
    Rebecca Costa-Brown - June 4, 2011
    Rebecca had settled into her office, a number of regional directors doing the same despite it being a Saturday and despite the early hour for most of the country. Similarly, Paul was going to be settling into his office along with a number of other Protectorate leaders, while a number of other parahumans and consultants joined in as well from their own offices and various PRT conference rooms. This was the kind of thing that would normally be happening for a large-scale remote meeting for an S-Class threat response, but today there was to be no discussion. They had a series of text-only chat rooms available, but discussion wasn't actually in the plans.

    No, today's show was far more intriguing and potentially worrisome. For the first time, they were potentially going to see the process of an agent being removed from someone from start to finish. Six hundred cameras were watching the Protectorate Headquarters ENE structure from all over Brockton Bay and boats that had been sent out specifically for that purpose to get the best possible collection of footage of the potential 'funnel'. The room in the structure where they would be operating from had every sensor system they could manage monitoring it. Which would have been far more impressive if they'd had more than a couple of days to arrange things.

    A less potentially problematic volunteer would've been nice, but attitudes about the likelihood of the fate of agents removed through this process had changed. No longer were they certain that Lilia existed because of a need to anchor Miss Matsuoka's agent to someone. Instead, she likely acted like a tinker because she was very likely acting on behalf of a tinker, programmed to collect useful items. Nothing likely originating from Miss Matsuoka's agent had been deployed either.

    Nor, for that matter, had any obvious links been made to Miss Hess's agent and the abilities it had given her. Miss Biron's agent being removed was still uncertain as well, but no new potential anchors for it had appeared either. The new theory among those with the most information was that the insect controller, whoever they were, was the holder of Miss Hebert's original agent and could only be made to do so because they'd obtained Miss Hebert's agent during her crisis point.

    Minerva, on the other hand, was still likely a clone or alternate-dimension version of Miss Hebert that merely used incredibly advanced tinkertech. Despite claims to the contrary as to how her abilities worked, since implanted tinkertech could explain some of that as well. It was also possible that the tinkertech operated at least partially remotely, similarly to how the agents themselves did. They still didn't have enough information there, and all methods used to try and locate Minerva's base of operations had failed.

    If this worked, and thinkers hadn't been able to predict that at all, then nothing else was likely to get done today. At the same time, assuming she survived, Miss Laborn was going to get one very large payout for volunteering. And if it didn't work then that was just more information on Miss Hebert's necklace, implying several things. Likely a lack of communication, wasting her own time on something that wouldn't happen, as well as possible conditions that weren't being met by Miss Laborn herself.

    It wouldn't be long now before they'd see, at least, and Rebecca sipped her coffee while her computer connected to the streaming systems. The primary feeds came up, showing four cameras in the room to be used and four feeds from around the area. There was space for a ninth feed, reserved for if someone else flagged a feed as particularly interesting. Miss Laborn was already in the room, pacing.

    Eventually Miss Hebert entered, the necklace proved to have someone paying attention on the other side when it produced instructions on a piece of paper, and they got started. Except that, just before the actual depowering began, the ninth feed activated on her screen.

    And it was showing what had to be an agent, on another planet. One that, within a couple of seconds, was obviously grabbed to form the 'funnel' on the Earth Bet end. Proving that not only did those behind the necklace have access to worlds that Cauldron didn't, Clairvoyant not being able to see any world with an agent deployed on it, but also that they were actually removing agents from play when they depowered parahumans.

    Rebecca didn't know if she should be terrified or hopeful. This could be permanently removing tools they needed to save humanity, but if those behind the necklace could do this then they might not need those tools. At the same time, something being able to do this might be the work of something as bad or worse for humanity. They just didn't have enough information, and no good way to get more right now.
    Gregory Everett - June 4, 2011
    Gregory raised an eyebrow as he followed Catherine into the computer lab at Arcadia. For three years straight she'd come in over the weekend to evaluate the final projects for her programming courses, but this was the first time that more than one other teacher had shown up to volunteer to help. Finding eight others in the room was honestly a surprise.

    "And here I thought that I'd end up having to do most of the work while my retired husband here plodded along on the most promising entries," Catherine said, needling him.

    "I still don't know why I bother coming to cringe at things," he replied. "Being a retired astronomer doesn't make it easier to look at horrible interpretations of planetary orbits."

    "You're only retired in that you're no longer being paid to keep up with the field. Regardless, I highly suspect that the math department is here to see what Miss Hebert turned in." There were a couple of blushes and several nods at that. "She's the only one who used the three-dimensional toolkit for extra credit and isn't in my normal classes, so I'm holding her work back until the end."

    There were groans, but no complaints. Catherine handed out copies of her grading checklist to everyone, divided up the students, and they all went to work testing things. Does the code compile and run, does the animation run smoothly, does the editing interface work, sanity of the provided input file, do there appear to be reasonable comments in the code including the student's name in the headers, and a few other details. Personally, he was happy that none of the assignments he'd been handed were horribly broken, and one student had even shown where orbits crossed each other reasonably well.

    Split across ten people, it only took a little over an hour to get through all of the normal students. Catherine then ran off copies of the checklist for the three-dimensional toolkit bonus points, gave all of them a copy of Miss Hebert's assignment, and spot-checked the work from her normal students while the rest of them took a look at Miss Hebert's. Each of them approached things differently there, but he personally intended to stick to the checklist. Though 'quality of models' was already marked as not applicable due to using a publicly available set.

    When he finally got to the actual visuals he was honestly impressed. It looked like she had all of the planets in correct orbits, and he'd honestly be willing to use this as a basic visualizer. Punching in a couple of other dates brought up configurations that looked like they should be reasonably accurate for a high school project. Testing the editor only took a couple of minutes, though he was surprised to see actual information on the planets instead of just orbital declarations. Swapping the positional data for Earth and Mercury, but none of the rest, resulted in neither planet actually orbiting correctly. He made a note that she should probably get bonus points for that.

    It was when he went to load the original file again that he paused. There were three data files. The original 'planets', the 'planets_gregory' that he'd made for his Earth/Mercury swap, and a much larger 'solarsystem'. Curious, he loaded the latter. It took several minutes to load up, and the computer's fans spun up a little in the process, but he had to blink when it was done.

    The school computers obviously weren't powerful enough to handle this normally, the program just barely chugging along as he moved through the simulation. Models had obviously been re-used heavily as well, but it looked like everything was in here and being simulated. Planets, moons, asteroids, even larger components of Saturn's rings. There were also a couple of extra planets in reasonable-looking orbits.

    Curious, he changed the date in the box, wondering how long it would take the program to shift forward a month. Only he was distracted and instead told it to shift forward a thousand years. He swore under his breath, but decided to give it ten minutes to see if it asked if he wanted to wait for the operation to complete. After all, running through who knew how many iterations of simulating all of those objects was going to take far too long if they weren't running on closed paths.

    To his surprise, several minutes later the simulation updated with everything in new positions. New and reasonable looking positions. He stared at the new state of the simulation for a couple of minutes, then closed the program and opened up the source code. It was incredibly well documented with comments, as well as quite obviously modular. Finding the code that updated object positions was trivial as a result. Discovering a function that took an object index and a target time value that spit out new data for that object in a single pass, something that had to be an n-body calculation routine had him wide-eyed. He couldn't follow the code, admittedly, but the comments documented it to a point where he was tempted to pull them out of the code and submit them for peer review as-is.

    It was almost an hour later before he wondered if Miss Hebert had calculated that the other large bodies in the system had to exist or if she'd been told about them by someone else.
    Colin Wallis - June 4, 2011
    Colin closed the last video before going over his summary of the day. Miss Laborn had woken up two hours after the funnel had vanished, apparently coinciding with the last of that...thing on another planet being consumed. He wasn't quite sure what he'd previously thought was coming through the funnels, but the video feed provided had just enough context to show that it was huge. Being able to be pulled through and into the necklace was impressive and frightening.

    To distract himself from thinking too hard on that subject he'd instead focused on Miss Hebert, who had taken being pinned down in the chair reasonably well. Then again, it was possibly the most comfortable seat she'd had while one of these funnels was pinning her down, so that was understandable. The speed at which she went through her puzzle books, her mental ability to count cards, and her reading speed were another thing. She was obviously highly intelligent, more so if some of the other things he'd heard but not had time to follow up on were accurate. He'd delegated some of that checking, though, so he'd wait for that report to come back to him.

    He also approved of the girl's choice in snacks, as well as the fact that she was obviously not 'dieting'. Her workout routine had to be decent to keep her in shape, even if she'd stopped running with her father. Then again, he was fairly certain that she was still frequently traveling to or from tutoring on foot, so that would definitely help. A number of other exercises could be done indoors as well, something he was very familiar with.

    It painted an interesting picture of Miss Hebert, especially since they knew that she wasn't a parahuman.
    Aisha Laborn - June 5, 2011
    Aisha shook her head as she arrived home with Brian. She'd barely spent any time here since they'd moved in, really. Maybe the coming week she'd pull off sleeping in her own bed every night? It was at least a nice goal to reach for.

    Despite how short a time she'd had them, not having her powers felt weird. No need to focus for people to remember that she existed, but also no...she couldn't call a tingle, necessarily, but something like it that had seemed to be there whenever someone else was around. Only noticeable now because of its absence, had she realized that it was there before it would've made a great 'am I alone?' check.

    At the same time, she hadn't realized how much more like herself she would feel without her powers. She didn't think it had been significant, but now that she didn't have them the effect on her thought processes was noticeable. Her powers had been pushing her hard in several ways, and she really didn't like the idea of anything messing with her thoughts like that. No matter how awesome it was to be able to wander around with most people not being able to see you.

    Miss Militia, the PRT and Protectorate, Dinah, Missy, Taylor, and any other number of random people knowing ways around that or just being immune? Well, that just made that prospect far less awesome. Just the idea that Dinah and Missy had probably heard her horrible singing the other day was embarrassing as hell. The lack of an off switch for when she wanted to default to being able to be remembered was another downside, as pointed out by Miss Militia.

    "So," Brian said as he closed the apartment door. "You're no longer a parahuman."

    "Right," Aisha said.

    "But you got quite a bit out of the short-lived experience."

    She rolled her eyes at that. "A few days of fun, a couple days of panic, and the better part of a day being unconscious while my powers were removed. Whoop-de-do."

    He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and held it out to her. "And you got paid."

    That had her blinking before she took the envelope. It wasn't sealed, so she opened the flap and removed the paper from inside. On that was a printed transfer receipt, into what looked like was probably her bank account, for twenty-five thousand dollars. "What the hell?"

    "You were part of a paid PRT experiment, your health was placed at risk, and you suffered what is legally a serious injury in the removal of your powers as a result of the experiment. Thus, they paid you. I wasn't told the final amount until shortly before you woke up, but they'd let me know ahead of time even if we didn't want money to sway your decision."

    "Oh."

    Aisha hadn't expected that, but getting back more than the fifteen thousand that their grandparents had left her, and their mother had recently admitted she'd spent on drugs, was quite nice.
    Emily Piggot - June 6, 2011
    Emily sat there in the conference room as they waited for Colin to arrive. She'd be annoyed at needing to wait for him, but she was the one that had caused him to be late in the first place thanks to asking him to sweep her office for surveillance devices.

    "Sorry for the delay," Colin greeted as he entered the conference room, closing the door behind him. "Director, I found four devices in your office. Three were likely dormant, their data feeds having been disconnected during previous sweeps, but I removed all of them just in case. A repair team will need to patch a couple of points as a result."

    That had her frowning. "I'd not wanted to deal with the need to repair the holes, which is why those three were left dormant after their data feeds were cut."

    "There are groups operating in the area that could likely tap the devices even with their data feeds being cut. I'm not actually certain if cutting power would be enough, in fact, so full removal was the only way to be sure."

    Emily grimaced at that. Right. "Moving on, we have a number of things to discuss today. To start with, our request for resources to build better holding facilities in the event of capturing Crystal Cage or Potter again has been denied. Cited was the fact that nobody other than Minerva and Lilia have come up with a way to hold them at all."

    "Which is what we expected," Hannah noted, to a round of nods. "Have we heard back on getting permission to approach Minerva and Lilia about aiding us in containment?"

    "No. That's gotten tied up in debates over whether or not we need to involve foreign relations teams due to Minerva's unknown status as a literal world leader. I hear the FBI is having problems there as well, regardless of their previous experience working with her."

    "Fun. Have the diplomatic rules been activated for her, or is it still entirely in debate?"

    "Still in debate, and unlikely to be pushed either way until she does something to force us to make a decision on that front."

    "That's a relief," Robin said. "I've had to deal with those rules once before."

    "Lucky bastard," Shawn grumbled, though he didn't elaborate. Everyone knew he'd had to deal with those far too frequently as he'd bounced around regions. In fact, Rory was the only one in the room who'd never had to deal with them at all, from the PRT or Protectorate end, and was wisely staying quiet about that.

    "We aren't treating the rebuilt warehouse as an embassy," Emily continued. "Or at least we aren't yet. Speaking of the rebuilt warehouse, there are quite a few people amazed at the apparently fully automated teardown and reconstruction of that entire lot by a collection of drones. City inspectors saw some of the footage and opted to not push to check the building, citing that they aren't qualified to examine tinker constructions. Costa-Brown asked that we not push to inspect it either, in part because she doesn't think that we're capable of giving it a proper inspection either."

    "I saw footage as well," Colin said. "I suspect that a large portion of things were pre-assembled and merely teleported into place on site. My scans from passing by over the weekend also tell me that we're unlikely to learn anything by inspecting."

    "Please tell me that you didn't intentionally go scan the building without approval to do so."

    "The Secret Service van I met up with yesterday was only two blocks away, likely either due to their own investigations or because the cloaked vehicle they asked for assistance with was investigating the warehouse."

    Emily nodded. That was acceptable, and nobody could blame Colin for checking the area in that case. "Did you learn anything else on that call?"

    "Only that the Merchants likely have at least one compact car with a cloaking device installed in it."

    "Good to know, but not entirely unexpected. Does anyone have anything else directly related to Minerva?" She got a collection of head shakes indicating a negative. "Okay then. Next on this morning's agenda is the normal shuffling of the PRT patrol routes, coupled with the adjustments to keep them away from the rebuilt warehouse. Renick, have any squad leaders not acknowledged their new routes?"

    Henry shook his head. "No ma'am. I got the last two acknowledgements just before the meeting. I had a couple squad leaders express concern over the avoidance order creating problems. Neither had issues once I explained that pursuit and return aren't included in said order, just that we're avoiding patrolling that area for a few weeks at a minimum."

    "Thank you. Does anyone have questions there?" Nobody spoke up, and she turned to Colin. "Armsmaster, have you reviewed the adjusted Protectorate patrol routes?"

    "I have," Colin confirmed. "Though Assault and Dauntless haven't responded to the request for review I sent out."

    "I'm not done double-checking the new route segments," Ethan reported immediately. "I should be done by this afternoon, provided that the maps are up to date on fire hydrants and electrical lines."

    "And you Dauntless?" Emily asked.

    Shawn sighed. "I'm not done cross-referencing the rooftops along the new route segments to ensure that I know which ones we've been asked to stay off of. With any luck I'll finish that up by tomorrow morning."

    "Thank you both for ensuring that you're aware of things. Anything else on the Protectorate routes?"

    "Just a minor concern about a couple of the older buildings on one of the routes," Rory said. "Specifically two condemned structures that I'm afraid might collapse onto non-condemned neighbors if I'm not careful with my sound blasts around them."

    "I've already noted that and asked the city to check the safety of both buildings," Colin said. "If they're actually that bad then they'll need to come down in a controlled fashion sooner rather than later."

    "Nice to see you on top of things," Emily said. "Moving on, we have multiple requests for confirmation of Miss Hebert's potential status as a thinker from her tutors. Armsmaster, you took those requests?"

    "I did, and I can confirm that Miss Hebert shows zero signs of being a parahuman. We have a full-body MRI scan that shows no corona pollentia or gemma structure anywhere."

    "We know that," Sherie said. "Do we know why they think she's a thinker?"

    "She's proven herself to be a mathematical genius and will likely go down in history as one of the most important mathematicians of our time. Dragon and I now suspect that those behind the necklace were monitoring her because of her natural intelligence and intervened at the beginning of the year to prevent her death."

    There was a moment of silence as most of the room absorbed that. Emily supposed that news of the girl seemingly-unknowingly breaking a number of encryption systems hadn't fully spread yet, but then again that should only be one tutor. Sighing, she broke the silence. "I know that permission was obtained for sharing her factorization trick that she demonstrated when she was supposed to fail, but that wouldn't be multiple requests to see if she's a thinker. What else did she do?"

    "She essentially solved the n-body problem and provided an incredibly detailed list of objects in the Solar System as part of her programming final project, though the list of objects was likely provided by those who made the necklace. The comment chains in the source code indicate that things were made more efficient to handle the far larger data set, with older versions of several functions commented out. Dragon and I are both incredibly impressed with the code and the explanatory comments. Coupled with her ability to nearly-instinctively translate numbers into alternate bases in a way that has baffled anyone examining her instructions for the factorization trick in base ten? We feel that it explains both her ability to correctly interpret Vista's artwork and why the group may have gone to such lengths to clone her specifically."

    "So we have a legitimate, standard human genius in town. One that somehow attracted the attention of an extradimensional group of some kind. Do you think that they used some of her earlier work as part of figuring out how to make the necklace and other tech that we've seen in use?"

    Colin froze at that, and most of the others in the room looked at each other with varying odd expressions on their faces. Apparently nobody had considered that aspect yet. Fun, but now that it'd been voiced it might help with figuring more about the group out. Though now that she thought about it, she did wonder something.

    "Speaking of that," she continued. "What are the chances that the group scanned the Solar System because they knew what Miss Hebert's programming project was going to be and hoped that she'd be able to write a solution for predicting the movements of everything?"

    "We probably can't discount it," Henry admitted.
    Hayate Yagami - June 6, 0076
    Hayate frowned as she looked over the report that Yuuno had submitted. A lost Unison Device, one that had a goal of eventually returning to report to the no longer existent Belkan empire. Worse, it had reportedly consumed another device of unrecognized designation to repair itself. While not as problematic as using linker cores, it was still a problem, and could've been because the other device had a linker core. Of course, had this happened a year previous they might've been able to obtain the device's command codes from the Saint's Cradle, but that was now impossible. Assuming, of course, that said command codes were still valid, with their luck they'd not have worked anyway.

    At the same time, Yuuno had been able to find information in the Library just two days prior. One of the Saint Kings had a personal device made for one of their children. The child had a weak linker core, and the device was set up with an experimental way to augment said linker core in a safer manner than was normally used. What that method was couldn't be said, the detailed records of it having been kept secret and now likely lost to time, but it was different than the normal way the Saint Kings augmented their cores. It had also supposedly not worked all that well, relatively speaking. What little they knew there indicated that was primarily because of the rare and horribly expensive raw materials for the augmentation unit needed not being available in suitable quantities. That they had information on, at least, because the specialty mana-reactive materials that could only be manufactured in a manaless environment were incredibly expensive to produce and, thanks to that, nearly impossible to hide the purchase of.

    The known qualities of the device at that time placed it as a protector of the child, able to Unison with them in times of need but otherwise hiding from detection by pretending to be a lesser device. After growing up a bit, the child was known to have ended up 'behind enemy lines' on a regular basis, somehow seen as a weak non-combatant. Up until they engaged Unison and unleashed a limited, but powerful, set of area effect spells upon the enemy lines, vanishing afterwards in the chaos. At least until someone caught on, and laid a trap. A small group waited for them to show themselves in Unison, and were able to outmaneuver them so that the large area of effect spells couldn't be used due to keeping attacks in close quarters. The Unison Device was lost, presumed destroyed, during an escape attempt and its Lord was taken hostage.

    Yuuno had even found pictures of the device's forms. It hid as a green belt with a cross buckle, but could also function as what appeared to be a green-haired young man. Devastating if allowed to get into position, but with a spell arsenal that didn't lend itself to close range combat. Some of that might've been its Lord at the time, of course, but if it'd been drifting without a Lord for all this time then it was unlikely to have changed much.

    "What do you think?" she asked Rein, who was looking over the same files.

    "Versteckte Klinge was obviously heavily damaged and is likely not fully functional," Rein replied. "Especially if he needs a restore from his backup that we now know isn't coming. At the same time, he could've adapted things from this other, unknown device. The real question is if he found a suitable Lord or is acting essentially on his own with little to no compatibility. Being originally designed and tuned for a child that he was with for years could make it problematic to properly bond with anyone else, but the records don't even have a mention of the synchronization process so it's possible that he was designed to be able to adjust himself."

    Hayate nodded, not having fully considered some of that in her initial evaluation. "That's true. But we can probably assume that a decently compatible Lord was found, if he had sufficient power to repair himself and send the message that was picked up."

    "Very true, so we can probably assume at least a moderately compatible partner. At the same time, he was lost in a time of unrest. Confronting him with proof of Belka's fall while he's nowhere near our population centers would be ideal, just in case he takes it poorly. I just wish we were positive as to which line of the Saint Kings commissioned him. There are conflicting reports here, making it a fifty/fifty chance as to if he would see Vivio as a likely ally."

    "Yes...that is...indeed quite problematic. At the same time, he was lost years before the birth of Olivie Sägebrecht, during a time where we don't know what the alliances between the saint Kings were like. Things were chaotic then, and not many records survived."

    "True."
    Tim Guidi - June 7, 2011
    Tim smirked as the last protective shield on his workshop fell, then used his key to unlock the actual door. He always found it amusing that he probably had the most secure workspace in New England, better secured than even the Protectorate's facilities. Then again, he was good enough to have the PRT pay him to build shield generators intended to help against Leviathan.

    He opened the door and directed his wheelchair through it, annoyed that his declining health had hindered him so much. Income was down quite a bit since he'd stopped being able to do the maintenance runs on all of those PRT-purchased generators. Then again, they might not be needed anymore, especially if Minerva either kept Leviathan away or actually finished the beast off next time. So perhaps the income hit had just come a little earlier than it would've otherwise.

    As a concession to his health, the door was left open, just in case. Looking over his workbench, he knew where he'd left off yesterday, but he rolled up to the computer anyway. He'd want his notes open before he resumed working and there was always the chance that he'd forgotten about a calendar alert. No email or similar in here, though. For security reasons there was no network connection on this particular machine.

    Logging in only took a moment, though loading the decryption keys for his home directory took longer. Eventually everything came up and he opened the email program he used for his calendar. He'd use something dedicated to the task, but he was used to the interface from dealing with the networked computer in his office. No unexpected calendar alerts came up, and he moved to open up his notes next. Only he paused before opening anything else.

    He had an unread message in his inbox.

    This computer didn't have a network card or a modem, the serial ports were all attached to non-network equipment, and a quick check showed that the client was still in offline mode to stop it whining about having no accounts configured. Not trusting that, he checked the settings and found that there were still no accounts listed. Yet, despite all of that, he had an inbox with an unread message. He stared at the indicator for another minute before deciding that it was probably another attempt to get him to put account information in. Grumbling, he opened the inbox to clear the message, only to find that it wasn't what he was expecting.

    Trembling slightly, he clicked on the message to open it.

    From: Lilia <lilia@mana.bullshit>
    To: Uppercrust <uppercrust@localhost>
    Subject: Tracking Devices

    Hello,

    We'd appreciate it if you and your associates would refrain from attempting to track and/or monitor us in the future.

    I apologize for being unable to return the tracking devices themselves, but they didn't survive the analysis process they were subjected to.

    Thank you.
    -Lilia

    He stared at the message for what had to be ten minutes before taking several deep breaths. It was a single keystroke to lock the computer before he turned his wheelchair around. Heading out of the workshop, he debated the merits of yelling at subordinates first versus informing the other leaders first. He decided to go with the latter, hoping that he'd been chosen as the leader of the closest branch of the Elite to Brockton Bay instead of as the at fault branch. Even if he was fairly certain that this was the end result of the 'attempt to figure out more about Minerva' plan that he'd not actually asked for any details about. He'd done so in the name of plausible deniability, but it was likely that had just come back to bite him.
    Kurt Wynn - June 7, 2011
    Kurt looked over his notes from talking with Miss Hebert earlier, amazed at some of the girl's insights. She hadn't been nearly as helpful with the equations he'd gotten off of Minerva and Lilia, admittedly, but expecting her to understand that was probably a stretch. Even if her necklace likely granted her similar protections to the ones those two used. That just made it likely that she was being protected by Minerva's backers.

    What she had been able to help with was what amazed him. In many ways she was like him, more into the practical applications of math than the underlying theory. But where he admittedly leaned on his agent as a crutch, she puzzled things out directly. Several things that his agent did for him had been laid out in front of her and she'd been able to figure out the steps to get from the start to the finish without an agent helping. Sure, there had been missteps as she'd done so, but that was to be expected when wading into a problem blind.

    More interestingly, he had felt his agent confirming her steps when she was done, as though even it hadn't known how to solve the problems. The same thing had happened with the integer factorization method, but not the n-body calculations. It might be that his agent had another way to accomplish the work that couldn't be represented as an equation. He personally suspected that they had access to quantum computing, but couldn't be certain.

    Then there was that doodle. His agent had frozen for a second when he'd looked at it, meaning it was likely very important. Though he wasn't sure why it was important, he'd personally delivered the sheet to the PRT so that they could figure it out.

    Now then, where were those forms needed to add himself into the queue for examining that necklace 'on the clock' where it was less likely to be protected by a whole-body shield of math surrounding the girl?
    Emily Piggot - June 8, 2011
    Emily had been uncharacteristically productive in clearing her administrative backlog, taking a couple of people by surprise. She'd also filed a number of things ahead of time and ensured that other procedures were up to date and ready to be enacted as well. There was even a delayed order to place her under master/stranger protocols as of four in the morning tomorrow in the system, just in case she'd misplaced some trust.

    And now she was waiting in the medical wing, her doctor grinning off to the side. The bastard had been telling her to do something about her health for years and had cleared his own schedule just to be here to sign off on things.

    "You do realize that some of my problems stem from you missing what Calvert had your former assistant doing," Emily pointed out. Which had the desired effect of his grin switching to a frown.

    For a moment, before Kevin grinned again. "Ah, but had you taken this step back when Miss Dallon first triggered then that wouldn't have been an issue."

    She was saved from coming up with a response by the door opening, Panacea stepping through and closing the door behind her. "Good afternoon Director, Doctor."

    "It's an afternoon," Emily retorted. "Good is yet to be seen, but you being here is likely to make that happen."

    The girl raised an eyebrow. "Are you actually going to have me heal you?"

    "She's gotten a few good shocks," Kevin answered, picking up a folder. "One of which we have no other solution for. A tinker-produced poison was introduced to her dialysis machine at least every other week for the past few months. Coupled with what she describes as 'an incredible need for a night of drinking' thanks to the recent events at Ellisburg...?"

    Panacea accepted the folder from Kevin and flipped through it, grimacing. "This looks nasty, and if some has settled in the brain then I won't be able to clear it all out."

    "She's only gotten the first part, the other half of the binary compound hasn't been introduced to her system. The goal appears to have been to be able to take her out at a moment's notice by introducing the other component, with a side benefit of causing her some other harder to trace health problems in the meantime."

    "I see. I also see that she's included a notarized statement that she's requesting parahuman healing and a guarantee for a frankly ridiculous payment for my services."

    "It's half of my 'hire someone to take out Nilbog' fund," Emily admitted. "I was never sure if I'd ever find someone willing to take the job, but I don't need it now."

    Panacea snorted at that, putting the folder down and stepping over to Emily's hospital bed. "Okay then. You're positive that I have permission to heal you?"

    "Yes, and get it over with before I change my mind."

    The half hour following that was filled with bizarre physical responses, Panacea having to be careful and exacting in how she handled things due to the tinker-produced poison. But when the girl was done, and the resulting mess of toxins was cleaned up, Emily had to admit that she felt better than she had since before Ellisburg had happened. Much better, and much lighter. Her inability to properly exercise hadn't done her any favors over the years, and she'd not taken the reduction in weight into account when making her plans for the evening. A minor bit of pre-celebration shopping might be in order, if only so that she'd have three or four basic outfits that fit.

    As a side bonus, the lack of extra weight would make the alcohol waiting in her car much more effective.
    Amy Dallon - June 8, 2011
    Amy rolled over in her bed, unable to get to sleep. It had been quite the day, healing Director Piggot when she'd never have expected to be healing the woman followed by a deep grilling by Mister Hebert. He'd pushed her in ways that she hadn't expected, getting her to snap at him with things she'd not wanted to tell anyone multiple times in the process. Vicky had been shocked to hear how differently Carol acted when she wasn't around as a buffer, but had quickly switched to supportive.

    After the initial questioning, and Danny agreeing that telling Carol everything would probably just make things worse, conversation had moved in several other directions. The worst had been Vicky bringing up Dean, which had led to Taylor admitting that she didn't know anyone that she was really attracted to right now, which had ended up with some additional teasing that had revealed that Amy was less settled than she'd thought. Vicky had taken the accidental outing of Amy's crush on her better than expected, admittedly, but had remained much less comfortable for the rest of the evening.

    They'd shied away from personal discussions in general after that, but things had become far too awkward for any other topic to really stick at that point. Danny had even offered to give Amy a ride home, instead of Vicky carrying her, but Vicky had insisted on bringing Amy back herself. If only to keep Carol from freaking out, not that the adults had been home yet when the two returned. Actually, the adults still weren't back.

    All in all, it had been a horribly stressful evening, topped off by one of the experimental plants having died during the day. And there was still school tomorrow.
    Henry Renick - June 9, 2011
    "Good morning," Henry said as the last person sat down. "My apologies for the short notice of today's meeting, but there's unfortunately a couple of important things to cover. To start with, Director Piggot is currently in master/stranger quarantine sleeping off her hangover from last night and will remain under observation for the next week. That means that I'll be acting Director for the next two weeks."

    "Since when does a hangover result in a week of quarantine?" Ethan asked, sounding genuinely curious.

    "The quarantine is a precaution regarding the parahuman healing she underwent so that she could drink herself unconscious. She filed it before undergoing the procedure, but timed it to kick in overnight."

    "That explains the first week," Colin noted. "What's the explanation for the second week?"

    "Forced vacation on Costa-Brown's orders. Any other questions on that topic?" Nobody said anything, so he opened the folder in front of him. "Okay then. Director Piggot's actions were inspired in part by what happened in Ellisburg. That has resulted in a new set of standing orders nationwide. The kill orders on Bonesaw and Burnscar remain suspended, though not revoked, and we are to default to treating the kill order on the Siberian as suspended even though it hasn't been. Crawler is the exception, we are to treat him as we would've previously."

    "What makes him special?" Nicole asked.

    Henry nodded to the squad leader. "That's a good question. He had over two hundred confirmed kills before he joined the Nine, compared to the Siberian's eleven and Burnscar's eight. Bonesaw is believed to have triggered during an attack and had no kills prior to being in the Nine. Further, the majority of Siberian's pre-Nine non-defense kills were close enough to her appearance to be just-triggered issues and Burnscar was taken from an asylum. There's speculation that Jack Slash had a master ability, so any kills with the Nine may not be their faults."

    There was a moment of silence as that was absorbed. Henry allowed it, but he had other things to get to and they hadn't had time to block out a significant length of time for the meeting. When it was obvious that nobody else was going to say anything, plus twenty seconds for good measure, he continued. "Right. Moving on, several of you already know that yesterday the Secret Service moved on the Archer's Bridge Merchants. They did not consult with us, did not ask for our assistance, and regardless of what anyone else might tell you they were fully within their jurisdiction in doing so. The Merchants were bringing counterfeit money into the country and the Secret Service tracked them down for it. Mush and Squealer were captured and are in Secret Service custody but Skidmark ended up dead. We were given access to his corpse to confirm that it was him."

    "How the hell did that happen?" Robin asked.

    "We've found out that Minerva handed over counterfeit money and the armored car that the Merchants had been storing it in. Said armored car is intact and still has a working cloaking device and is moving through military testing for countermeasure development. The Secret Service had the first crack at it and claimed to have developed partial detection equipment. They were also caught on Rig cameras extracting a crude submarine from a point along the Bay last night, one that we believe was probably built by Squealer and may have a cloaking device of its own. That would easily explain how they smuggled things into the country without being spotted. Given that they went straight for it, we think that they'd already been tracking it and knew where it was being kept."

    "Fuck," Ethan swore. "Are the other gangs going to panic over other agencies going after them?"

    "Probably not," Hannah answered before Henry could. "After all, as far as we know the Merchants were the only ones not paying their taxes."

    That had Henry blinking. "How the hell do we know that?"

    "Calvert kept track of that in case he needed to use it against the gangs and the FBI briefed Armsmaster and I on it last week as part of their disclosure of additional data leaks that we may need to deal with or could be called in to help with."

    "Oh."
    Riley Davis - June 11, 2011
    Riley was elated that they'd found a place with television available to stick around at for a day or two before finishing their trip to Brockton Bay. They'd had some problems with finding an internet connection, but the news was covering Minerva's activities just as well as watching the individual streaming video feeds would've allowed them to.

    Long story short, Minerva was awesome. Anyone could go after someone like Nilbog, but no normal parahuman could go after an Endbringer in space. Even if she didn't win it would be awesome, and a magical girl didn't go on the offensive like that unless they were going to win. The only thing that could stop that now would be an unexpected bigger bad stepping in, and there weren't any signs of one existing yet. Really, the big question was how Minerva would win.

    "She's treating taking on an Endbringer as though it's a relaxing weekend activity," Mimi noted. "I mean, that's awesome in how it insults them, but it's also somewhat rude?"

    "Would you be willing to engage the Simurgh in close combat?" William countered.

    "Well, no, and if she's directing whatever it is that's doing the work in orbit then she's obviously not slacking..."

    "Which obviously means that she has another goal."

    "So she's what, playing mind games with an Endbringer?"

    "Either that or playing mind games with the cults that worship them. After all, if she doesn't even have to work at defeating one then they aren't all that powerful, right? But given her choice of ammunition, I suspect that it's aimed as an insult to the Endbringer after she talked with one of the many joke-cracking parahumans. That it happens to make her seem like that much more of a powerful parahuman herself is likely just a side bonus."

    "She's not a parahuman," Riley insisted. "She's a magical girl sent to fight a great evil and the Endbringers are her training for it."
    David Symons - June 11, 2011
    David stared at the video feeds showing the ongoing attack on the Simurgh, rage building as he did so. Some of the feeds were the delayed ones, some were from observation points and were more current, but they all showed that Minerva had the Endbringer right where she wanted the thing. Hell, Minerva was laid back in a comfortable-looking flying chair with a flying table with food and drink on it next to her. Sure, that was one hell of a way to mock the Endbringer being fought in orbit, but it was also mocking every single person who had ever fought the things.

    Worse, the bitch was mocking him. She was showing that she could take the fight to the Endbringers, even while one of them was in orbit. Something that they'd never been able to find a way to do safely, because he couldn't find a set of powers that would allow him to operate in space like that. That meant that he couldn't even go help, without the excuse that they were just waiting for the Endbringer to get past Minerva and attack a target on the shore.

    He was supposed to be crucial in driving the Endbringers off, crucial in defeating them. How else was he supposed to find the power he needed to save humanity from Scion? And yet this stupid little girl was ruining it, taking the fight to one of the Endbringers while broadcasting it to the world. Something that never happened with his own battles, because 'nobody wanted to see the death and destruction' then.

    Something was going to have to be done about Minerva, and the sooner the better. He just didn't know what, or how to go about it, as she'd already out-maneuvered everyone with this stunt.
    Amy Dallon - June 11, 2011
    Amy had noticed that Taylor was doing something and had turned on the news as soon as she could after coming to that realization. She hadn't been disappointed either, because attacking Ziz was a very significant action. Vicky had joined her in front of the television, only for Carol to come chastise them for watching television on such a nice day. That argument went to the wayside as soon as what was going on was noticed, and it became a rare family event with all of them watching the breaking news together.

    It was mildly annoying, being able to feel things happening without knowing what bits lined up with one another. Listening to Carol complain that 'the stupid girl' had 'bit off more than she could chew' had also been annoying. Things obviously finishing up had shifted that to anticipation of Carol eating her words, something that came to pass as 'Minerva' destroyed first Leviathan and then Ziz.

    The sequence after the cheesy parting shot at Ziz was sobering, the implications terrifying while at the same time the reveal provided a significant sense of relief. Of course, the moment of silence that followed the end of the video streams only lasted long enough for the news anchors to recover, at which point it was back to getting the 'experts' they had on hand and on the phone to talk about the implications of the unprecedented event.

    "I think that's going to distract everyone at Taylor's party," Vicky finally said.

    "No shit," Amy agreed. "It'll be years, maybe even decades, before June 11th is remembered as anything but the day that Minerva single-handedly took down two Endbringers in combat. People won't even care that she used drones to do it, because she did it. It might even become a holiday."

    "Better than having an Endbringer attack on your birthday, right?"

    "Well, yes."

    "Okay you two," Carol said. "Given that things are going to get a bit crazy, you should probably get going to the Heberts' house now. It'll be safer if you get there earlier, if only because the crazies that keep going after Taylor might use the partying as cover for grabbing her and Vicky would probably like the excuse to punch people without annoying me. Also, if you're bringing pizza like Vicky implied yesterday then you're going to need to get it fast."

    "Oh shit," Vicky said, jumping up. "You're right, I need to go order it now."

    Amy watched Vicky rush out of the room, then looked back at the television and a picture of Minerva taken from today's battle with Leviathan as her fingers twitched slightly. Deciding that it couldn't hurt, she got up and headed to her room. Both to change, since she was planning on wearing something else to the party, and to work on her plants a little bit. Because for some reason she wanted to figure out the phantom organs even more now, and she wasn't sure if that was her or her power. It might even be a little of both.
    Rebecca Costa-Brown - June 11, 2011
    Rebecca had watched, incredulous, as Minerva had attacked Ziz in orbit. Maintaining that while dealing with Leviathan breaking patterns and attacking had made that feeling worse. Now that both of the Endbringers had been defeated, permanently, in addition to seventeen likely-dormant ones that they hadn't known existed, though? Well, now the headaches truly began. From multiple angles.

    On a personal front, David was going to be impossible to deal with for weeks. He'd been able to accept that Minerva hadn't intended to drive Leviathan off instead of merely delaying the Endbringer, but attacking one outright was far beyond anything that they'd expected. Taking a counter-attack by another Endbringer and coming out victorious in both cases, though? He had a bit of a complex when it came to the Endbringers, insisting that they couldn't be defeated if he wasn't participating in the battle. And he'd had nothing to do with this one.

    When it came to the PRT, Minerva had just become untouchable. Partially because they likely couldn't take her, since she would probably be blaster and shaker twelve minimum after today's demonstration. Add to that the new abilities shown to counter the Endbringers? Probably a trump five or better, if only because who knew what she'd show off next. Then there was the public relations side, because going after the cape who killed Endbringers would cause the public to tear down the entire PRT.

    Both of those, however, paled next to the diplomatic side of things. Regardless of their thoughts on the girl's origins, she operated primarily out of the United States and her only local 'base of operations' was in one of the worst cities in the country from a security point of view. That was going to be a problem as half a dozen countries minimum were going to want to send delegates or even have their leaders visit to thank her for what she'd done.

    Grumbling for a moment, she reached for the phone. She needed to be ready for when the President called with questions, and if she was lucky she might be able to make arrangements for Minerva to visit somewhere that at least had an international airport. Unless the President wanted to bypass all the normal security measures in place and meet Minerva in person as well, of course, in which case she didn't know what they'd do.
    Paul Tyrell - June 11, 2011
    Paul still wasn't entirely sure what to think about the fact that they were down to the single, original Endbringer. It was, if he was being honest with himself, something that he hadn't expected to see in his lifetime. He'd even come to the conclusion that finding a way to defeat Scion probably wasn't going to let them take out the Endbringers due to the vast differences in their patterns and thus that they might have to just abandon Earth Bet to be essentially rid of the things.

    And then Minerva showed up and blew all of that out of the water twice. Somewhat literally today in Leviathan's case, as far as anyone could tell from the footage they had available.

    Still, hope for the future was one thing, being ready for a pile of other issues was another. He needed to expect to be doing a lot regarding Minerva over the coming weeks thanks to his position in the Protectorate, and the first of those tasks was actually ensuring that they wouldn't have problems from regional leaders. Which is why he found himself walking down the hallway in Houston. It didn't take long for him to reach the door he was looking for, though he got no response when he knocked. Grumbling, he checked and found it unlocked, so he let himself in.

    He was about to comment on David not answering the phone or someone knocking on the door when he realized that the man was slumped over. Paul darted over to check him, relaxing slightly upon finding that his friend was breathing and had a pulse. Though the blood that had come out from one of his eye sockets was not a good sign. The man knew that thinker powers didn't work on Minerva, but that was the most likely cause of this.
    Christine Mathers - June 11, 2011
    Christine had chosen to watch Minerva battle their patron, thinking that the girl was a fool that was going to earn her comeuppance for her actions against Leviathan. Instead the girl had killed two of the three Endbringers, revealed that seventeen more had been outright murdered in their effective sleep, and demonstrated that she was far more powerful than anyone had thought someone who wasn't Scion could be.

    It was a sobering thought, and the Crowleys were going to have to be kept from being idiots. Even if Christine's own first thought had been to get revenge on the girl for her actions. After all, defeating even one Endbringer in single combat made her dangerous. Doing so while attacking a second one remotely, killing both, and not only finding but killing seventeen likely dormant or unborn Endbringers as well?

    All together, it called to question everything that the entirety of the Fallen had believed up until now. The true believers, those merely playing along for power, and all of them in between. Part of that was her own beliefs taking a hit. Staying out of the way and operating through others, using her own family and those she'd latched on to, similar to the 'Ziz Bombs' that people were frequently concerned about, all of that had just become a potential liability. Being in orbit wasn't far enough away to keep Minerva from attacking, hiding behind downright flimsy obscurity probably wasn't going to be enough either.

    She was going to have to become far healthier and significantly more personally mobile just to start with. Learning more about Minerva was going to have to become priority two, just after her own health, so that they could determine if the girl was worth worshipping instead of those she'd defeated. If not then they'd need to know what weaknesses to exploit to take the girl down in revenge. The lesser members would need to be used for that though, because risking the empowered members of her family was too great a risk right now.

    Frowning, she realized that she couldn't overlook the possibility that the girl wasn't worth worshipping but also wouldn't have a weakness they could exploit. In that case it would be far too dangerous to stick around, especially as they'd likely have attempted to exploit a weakness and failed. Perhaps it was time to reconsider the plans that had been discarded for crossing over to and taking over Aleph?
    Special: Endbringer Attacked!
    Nineteen streams had started on the 'Team Mana' account, generating thousands of alerts to those subscribed to the account. News agencies interrupted programming with the breaking news, even if the streams were uncreatively named 'Special Action: Camera #' and were merely counting down in sync with one another from an initial twenty minutes. Unknown to most, the streams had all started just after the action had in orbit.

    It took twelve minutes for the news that something was happening in orbit to reach the discussion points for the streams, but very little was actually discussed on that front because at fifteen minutes most of the streams shifted. The clocks moved to the upper right corner of the screen in eighteen of the nineteen streams and eighteen different views of the same scene appeared. Each stream moved down a line of trucks and giant cartoon bombs, all lined up next to each other. All told there were over a thousand waiting, with the final few appearing at the end of the lines before the cameras turned back around.

    Anyone paying attention could see that the entire operation was happening in space at that point, a planet hanging in the distance as the cameras sped back down the lines of trucks and bombs. As they approached the front of the lines they oriented on groups of the drones that Minerva had used, some with and some without blades on them. At least one person commented that the ones without blades had been the kind protecting the coast during Leviathan's attack.

    At the one-minute mark, 36 of the drones faded from view, half with blades and half without. Thirty seconds later, sets of glowing garage doors appeared in front of each line of trucks and bullets, the doors opening outward as the timers hit zero. Each camera entered a different door, showing eighteen different angles of Ziz already dodging, even as the last feed jumped to Minerva appearing over the surface of an ocean.

    "Huh," Minerva said, the first actual audio in the feeds. "The barrier actually stopped whatever it was that Ziz was doing to the surface."

    Minerva created an impossible hammock-like chair and a table, drinks and a bowl of snacks appearing on the table before she laid back in the chair. That accomplished, she started creating pies and cakes, each one appearing in a flash but then floating there as she did something else to them. When she was done with the additional work they would then float off to the side in a stack. One after another she created them, even as on the other feeds Ziz was doing her best to deal with the onslaught of trucks and bombs. Eagle-eyed viewers would also note that something was firing solid projectiles at the Endbringer every so often. The source was unknown, but most of those had at least an attempt made to dodge them after the first couple exploded with more force than reasonable based on their size.

    Three minutes into the fighting, Ziz obviously tried to escape, only for a flash of light to keep the Endbringer in the kill zone. The obvious barrier was between the Endbringer and the still-open garage doors. There was obviously a significant effort made by the Endbringer to get through the barrier holding it in, only for it to very suddenly give up as it seemingly-frantically dodged another hard to spot physical projectile. Why it had done so wasn't clear from the footage, but that one projectile had seemingly been noticed coming by the Endbringer a lot sooner than the others had been.

    Five minutes in, Minerva launched the first pie upwards, and would continue to launch the various pies and cakes she was making every couple of minutes after that. Several minutes later the first pie appeared in one of the other streams, but Ziz had obviously been ready for such a tactic and prepared a feather in some way to intercept it. Minerva had frowned when that had worked and launched a pie and cake at the same time immediately afterwards, but then returned to launching only one at a time.

    The battle continued in this vein for over half an hour, a seemingly constant stream of trucks and bombs flowing in to explode while the Endbringer slowly stopped dodging most of the physical projectiles. Yes, they were causing damage, but they were apparently nowhere near as much of a concern as the confectionery being sent by Minerva or the occasional projectile obviously seen coming well ahead of time. This led to a lot of pieces of the Endbringer, and occasional chunks of shattered projectiles, floating around in the battle space. Several of those would remain almost unnoticed as they were tagged by smaller balls of light that seemed to do nothing to them.

    At forty-five minutes into the battle, the purpose of the smaller balls of light became obvious as giant tentacles suddenly exploded from one of the items tagged as Ziz got too close to it, reaching out to try and grab the Endbringer. A wing was torn off in order to escape, only for another tagged item to spawn a giant claw. Two more sets of tentacles and a giant hand appeared from other items, but only two more wings were captured. After that the Endbringer seemed to latch onto all of the debris with telekinesis and push them to the far edges of the barrier containing the battle, mostly trying to use them to block the trucks and bombs coming out of the garage doors. Those just made their way around the obstructions and continued to chase after Ziz anyway.

    "Fuck," Minerva suddenly swore, jumping up out of her chair as the drinks and snacks vanished from the table, just before the table and chair vanished as well. "ETA?" Her halberd appeared a moment later, and she nodded just after that. Obviously she was in radio contact with someone. She continued to make pies and cakes as she lifted up into the air, though she also created a ball that split up into pieces that started to circle her and a dozen of the bladed drones appeared and faded out around her. It was obvious that she was getting ready for a fight.

    Fifteen minutes after that point would've happened in real-time, six more streaming feeds had started up. These were delayed a mere five minutes before they had kicked into showing real-time data from around Minerva. Thus there were now twenty-five streams going, eighteen in space and seven over the ocean. The battle in space continued as though nothing special was happening on the surface, with the exception of Minerva no longer launching confectionery into orbit as often, but it became obvious what had startled Minerva when a boulder shot out of the ocean aiming to hit her.

    Water tentacles followed that, only for Minerva to vanish from between the things she had circling her. At the same time three pies and a cake suddenly darted at Leviathan. The Endbringer very abruptly broke off the original attack it had been attempting from inside of one of the tentacles it'd created. Once back under the surface of the water it shot ice at Minerva and the confectionery going after it. The latter were destroyed, but the former destroyed one, caught a second, and dodged the rest of the shards sent at her. She then threw the one she'd caught back at Leviathan. No attempt was made to take control of the ice, either because of what Minerva had done to it or because it was no longer liquid water. Instead Leviathan dodged it with a wide margin.

    A few more things were launched at Minerva while storm clouds appeared over the area, followed by Minerva dodging more water tentacles and putting on her underwater breathing mask. She then appeared to allow the next tentacle to catch her, only to not move an inch once it had. The little things circling her ignored the water as she just stayed there for a moment, and then Leviathan shot up the water at her.

    Only for her, and the water, to vanish in a giant flash of light. By the time the light vanished, Minerva and her halberd were on either side of Leviathan, Minerva's hand out seemingly holding a bubble of energy around the Endbringer. All of the water in the area suddenly started obeying gravity again, with the exception of a small amount inside of the bubble that Leviathan was seemingly frantically using to try and break the bubble of energy.

    Minerva's halberd, seemingly of its own accord, aimed and fired at Leviathan from outside of the barrier. That shot caused a sizable explosion that tore through the bubble of energy and threw both Minerva and her halberd away from where Leviathan had been. Steam obscured the area and some of the streams showed things falling into the water directly under where Leviathan had been.

    It took a minute, but Minerva and her halberd met back up, a little under where Leviathan had just been destroyed. "I don't think that trick will work again," Minerva said as Hal vanished.

    The extra six streams circled Minerva for a moment before fading to black. Then, as though being typed by someone, each stream displayed the same phrase.

    Davy Jones can reclaim his locker...

    Minerva floated there for a couple of minutes before things suddenly changed in the space battle. The trucks and comically oversized bombs stopped flowing out of the garage doors, seemingly giving Ziz a break. It wasn't long before eighteen beams of energy flowed out of the garage doors instead, blowing through the debris set to block them before meeting in the middle of the fight.

    A few smaller lights appeared and darted in to strike the Endbringer, and all of a sudden it was being held by bands of light. It twisted hard to avoid a physical projectile, not quite escaping the bindings in the process, and was then struck by several more. Which one was unknown, but one of them did the same thing to Ziz as the projectile fired at Leviathan had done, causing the third Endbringer to explode.

    When the light from the explosion faded the feeds showed that the beams were still active, only shutting down as the feeds started to fade to black. All of the remaining feeds, including the last one watching Minerva. Once they'd reached black, each displayed a phrase just as the ones that had shut down after Leviathan had been destroyed had.

    In space, nobody can hear you scream...

    Then that faded away, and instead of the feeds ending they were suddenly split by white lines. A five wide, four tall grid of boxes formed, followed by an image of Behemoth appearing. That image dropped into the first grid box, to be replaced by the last five seconds of Leviathan's existence. That dropped into the second grid box, with a red X over it. Then the last five seconds of Ziz's existence played, dropping into the third box with another red X appearing. Those were followed by seventeen more images, of what looked like nearly-identical black growths of some kind being attacked, each dropping into another slot with a red X.

    After a final fifteen seconds, the streams all faded to black and ended.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • LordSunshine said:
    "Hello, Hive? It's Chief Director Costa-Brown. I just wanted to congratulate and thank you for what you have done, and to inform you that, with your combined bounty payout, you are now the proud owner of infinite money. Feel free to contact any PRT member and ask for anything, and it will be delivered to the address of your choice. On behalf of humanity, thank you"
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    Honestly, after this I expect that Minerva's never going to have to pay for anything anywhere she goes. Full-on free ride, no payment required.
     
    Well that it going to have a reaction and a half. I find it odd that there was no reaction to the "Nineteen down" comment of missy's though

    Edit: okay interlude mentions at the end

    typo's though

    Hive had then visited each shell in succession, hitting all twenty with a dimensional transference to stick them into one of the sub-basements of the Inn - assume you meant seventeen
     
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    LordSunshine said:
    "Hello, Hive? It's Chief Director Costa-Brown. I just wanted to congratulate and thank you for what you have done, and to inform you that, with your combined bounty payout, you are now the proud owner of infinite money. Feel free to contact any PRT member and ask for anything, and it will be delivered to the address of your choice. On behalf of humanity, thank you"
    Click to expand...
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    Technically, I'd think that Cauldron would be to busy trying to A) Figure out how to pit Minerva against Scion; and B) what to do when she comes for them. After all, they are extremely paranoid, with god complexes (only we can figure out how to kill the omnicidal space whale! No, we don't require competent help we have Path to Victory!). And/or, possibly, C) Try to figure out what to do when Minerva (and her none existent backers) turn their hands to conquering (or whatever they plan on doing) Earth Bet. After all, they have already seen that they are no match for one, and they believe that their are two (Hive) and more still being cloned!
     
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    karloss99 said:
    Oh Come on! I need some sleep here!

    *proceeds to read anyway*
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    Sleep is for the weak. We want Words.
    karloss99 said:
    Ehh...

    *Shrug*

    If you consider the Hybrid Devices that her partner can make more of... She sorta is...
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    Depends on how intelligent the average shard is, and how much control Hive and/or Taylor can exert over created devices. If she makes an army of storage devices with preset spells that she can control remotely even when given to other people? Then she is an Entity. But she isn't doing that.
     
    Damn. Now we know more of Hive's origins but it feels like Eidolon is about to go rogue in a big bad way.

    Wonder how the gang will react to Hive being a Transexual though?
     
    Leechblade said:
    Damn. Now we know more of Hive's origins but it feels like Eidolon is about to go rogue in a big bad way.
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    Maybe after he gets out of the hospital for BLEEDING FROM THE EYES and similar overuse-of-thinker-powers and backlash-of-master-powers reasons. Or he might just break down completely.
    Wonder how the gang will react to Hive being a Transexual though?
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    Hidden Blade is dead. Hive is his and QA's daughter.
     
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