Kathy's Brockton Bay Adventures (Worm/Tinker of Fiction)
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Trust me people I know its getting a little to far, but I rode myself into this, I have to ride myself out of it if I want to continue.
There is 1 more chapter of battle and the ending is sort of importand, then its back to Brockon Bay.
And as to why things are getting worse? Because there simply was nothing to fix. The rest of the Story would just have been Kathy building anti-Enity weapons and that would have been that. I want to stay with Kathy for a while longer. So I need to make things a little worse.
Tho fun detail I noticed, the only thing that happened to Kathy is just that she came in, blew up the army, saved some people, and the first bad thing that happened to her at all is the fact that the Echidna managed to spit out a single clone of her, besides that, there was no real stake for her in this at all besides Vista and her pride.
There is 1 more chapter of battle and the ending is sort of importand, then its back to Brockon Bay.
And as to why things are getting worse? Because there simply was nothing to fix. The rest of the Story would just have been Kathy building anti-Enity weapons and that would have been that. I want to stay with Kathy for a while longer. So I need to make things a little worse.
Tho fun detail I noticed, the only thing that happened to Kathy is just that she came in, blew up the army, saved some people, and the first bad thing that happened to her at all is the fact that the Echidna managed to spit out a single clone of her, besides that, there was no real stake for her in this at all besides Vista and her pride.
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Here's a question: Tinker of Fiction doesn't really allow you to get major powers out of nowhere, you need to build stuff, which takes time and resources. How the fuck did her clone build that so fast!?
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Because the clone from the looks of it isn't a tinker, but gets the power and form of something fictional, in this case the powers and form of WhiteNight.
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Ok but how did she get cloned in the first place when action was specifically taken to prevent that?
Can someone explain? did she get cloned somewhere and I missed it? and if not then why does it have his face? is it the dude from Warframe that looks like the person who talks to it? why will there be a second Simurgh?
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The clone has 'my' face, as in the person Kathy was before the self insert, and next chapter I will give a more detailed explenation but basicly Echidna managed to pop out one more clone and is now suffering for it while the clone has a Tinker of fiction changer power based on Library of Ruina, for details look up White Night from Lobotomy Corporation that takes place in the same universe.
Echidna can clone anyone she touches or absorbs possibly without even skin contact since she was able to clone Taylor who is fully covered other than letting her hair out the back. The prevention was in the form of feel a ton of pain if you make a clone so Echidna probably decided to eat the cost and get a clone of Kathy since she is kind of the stand out strongest. Though not sure why it looks like the og.
Okay I'm guessing I did miss her getting cloned then, I don't remember her getting eaten
he said touches or absorbs, absorbs is eating, touch is enough to clone Kathy, if she was even so much as grazed contact with Echidna it would still be enough to clone her
yeah you don't have to be inside her touch is enough and they dove into Echdina to pull those people out anyway.
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For what it's worth in terms of constructive criticism , (wtf, this thing will not let me add the "," after criticism without changing it to "criticis,") this is what happens all the time to popular tv, movies, etc. The creators "want to stay with … a while longer", when doing so can only negatively impact the quality of the product. I don't know your purpose in writing this, if it's mainly simply for your enjoyment, then of course more power to you, and go where it takes you. If it's largely for your audience to enjoy, then I'd suggest writing adding things to your story simply to add words to it in order for your character to get more screen time is a mistake. Blockbuster movies turn into decades long jokes when unasked for and unneeded sequels are made. Tv shows are ruined by a final season that added nothing. And so on.
Anyway, I didn't mean to belabor my point. That being, perhaps don't add stuff to a story simply to make it longer. Without this chapter/arc the story might be shorter, but also less cluttered and confusing. Perhaps better? That would probably be my personal opinion.
Chapter 44
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Kathy's Brockton Bay Adventures
My blade hit the Mimicry Blade of the clone, but it barely made it flinch.
I shouldn't be surprised. The Red Mist held the title of The Strongest for a reason.
This was bad. Instead of a Tinker power, a clone of me that had some sort of Changer, and the Tech-tree the clone got was freaking Library of Ruina.
The massive clock in the sky was the prelude to summoning White Night, who might as well be another Simurgh with the mind-controlled minions and death waves. And the clone was using not one but two colored fixers, each of them being able to give a Servant a run for their money.
The clone then pushed my blade away and slashed at my legs in the same swing, making me jump to evade the attack. The clone twisted, avoiding the first volley of spears and chains.
One silver lining here was that there was only one clone, as far as I could see.
Meaning that if Tamamo's curse was working correctly, creating this clone must have hurt Echidna badly if it isn't outright dead.
Another was that I had seen it revert from the Plague Doctor Anomaly. That meant that it didn't create anomalies but could only take on their personas, so as long as we could occupy it, it wouldn't be able to bless the eleven more people it needed to create or become White Night fully.
Using the swing's momentum, the clone swung around and was about to slam Mimicry down on me as the blade screamed, figuratively and literally, as multiple mouths on it burst from the flesh in response to combat.
My response was a blast of fire from my offhand.
Using the temporary smoke screen, I charged Arondight and readied myself to fire.
A moment later, I saw it as it thought the same, having jumped and readied Mimicry to bisect me.
I had no illusion that God Hand would somehow block a strike from an E.G.O. weapon extracted from one of the most dangerous Anomalies.
On the other hand, I knew that even with the active armor, the clone would be hurt badly by a fully charged swing from an A-rank Noble Phantasm.
I would happily take that trade.
After all, I could put myself back together.
The world seemed to slow down as our blades raced towards each other, but in the last second, the clone frowned and twisted mid-air, avoiding my attack and abandoning its own in the process. The energy blast from Arondight shot past it with a deafening crash.
That was when Saber appeared behind the clone and pierced it with her rapier, tearing a cry of pain out of its throat
The scythe blocked the next thrust from Saber; Mimicry rose to block mine.
Then Alexandria flew in, the world slowed down again, and an ugly smile spread on the clone's face.
A shift like TV static appeared over the left side of its body. The blade raised, it battered aside my sword, mid-swing changed into a gargantuan hammer, and the armor shifted into the bulky style of the R-Corp Rhino team.
Alexandria's hands were mere inches away from the clone's face as the hammer came down.
Dirt covered my view as I was thrown back. The eruption reached as high as a skyscraper obscuring everything from view.
My eyes shot to a message on my visor, a communication request. I accepted.
"Kitty-tinker!" It was Dragon. "Speak to us. What is the danger here?"
"That thing is a clone. It has a variation on my power. It is trying to manifest an Abnormality called White Night." I rattled off while my reinforced eyes tried to make out something in the dust. "For that, it needs to fill the clock in the sky with 12 names. If it succeeds, all those named get turned into slaves who can all be considered Brute 10, Striker 6 as the baseline.
The Abnormality itself is nearly immune to all damage and will send out waves of destruction that bypass almost all defenses over a vast distance. That, combined with the fact it's a many-winged angel, might as well be Simurgh."
"How does it fill the clock?"
"It needs to give that halo over its head to 11 other people via touch. Anyone who has a name is a valid target."
"And the clone's powers?" How the hell was I supposed to answer that?
It swapped from an Abnormality to a combination of an E.G.O. and a color Fixer. That potentially left it with the ability to equip every E.G.O., which might all as well be their powers.
"Consider it an Evil Eidolon with the powers depending on what it's wearing."
Before she could ask more questions, the toll of a bell went out across the battlefield. It was overbearing, not coming from the outside but my heart as if it was counting down along with the clock.
I tore my eyes from the smoke, and there on the clock written at two was 'Alexandria.'
The fact that it read that instead of 'Rebeca Costa Brown' sparked my curiosity, but that was gone when some dust cleared, and we saw the woman in question.
Her costume was torn up in places, her mask cut in half, no visible wounds but dark yellow chains around her holding her in place.
In front of her, the clone had one half turned into the Arbiter that created the chains and the other half the Plague Doctor that put people's names on the clock.
A red spear was in my hand without even a thought and charging. One good hit is all I would need.
Then I saw the Plague Doctor shift away into a golden dress and a massive gauntlet of the same color with an amber gem at the center.
In front of the gauntlet, a golden magic circle appeared in the air. The teleportation of the King of Greed.
I stopped my Noble Phantasm as I traced the line of sight of the clone to the camp. If I threw the spear, it would retarget her, and I would blow up the camp.
One of my portals ripped open before me just as the clone rushed through her own.
My perception shifted, and we crashed into each other inches away from a cape that would have been turned into red mist by the attack.
If I didn't get the clone out of the crowd, it would be like letting a honeybadger into a hen house.
I clamped my legs around the clone and hit the ground as hard as possible, forcing us into the air.
The clone, using this distraction, redirected the gauntlet at me and punched.
All air was driven out of my lungs, and my head was spinning for a brief moment before I hit the walls of Void that Vista created. Pain spread through me from the point of impact and the taste of iron was in my mouth.
My eyes started to close as everything was ringing and…
I ripped my eyes open as soon as possible and was greeted by the ground coming toward me.
Twisting mid-fall, a glance at my arm confirmed that a single punch from Gold Rush cost me a life.
Trying to find the clone wasn't hard. Eidolon had not switched power sets, and his gravity manipulation was holding the clone in the air. In response, it swapped back to Blue Reverbnation, his blue clothes and scythe.
Just in time for it to get pelted with an array of bullets, lasers, energy blasts, and similar.
Only that they might as well have been shooting nothing at all. Just before the assault could destroy it, a flickering started to shift over the clone.
The Blue Reverbnation's unique ability: immunity to ranged damage.
Seriously? How? Why? This was so stupid! We never got any kind of lore explanation why he could do that! Is it related to his resonance ability? He was sound-themed, some type of vibration, maybe?
Before I could think further, another shift appeared in the clone.
I only saw it for a short moment, a pure, white angel stained with blood, a gold trim all over its body, a hole where a face should have been, wings graceful and littered with golden bleeding gears.
Then smoke exploded away from it, filling everything with a thick, dense fog.
People cried out in panic, and chaos started spreading as no one could see any further than a few feet away from them.
I reached out with my senses and found both Tamamo and d'Eon.
Tamamo was above us but couldn't see anything inside, even with her better eyes.
D'Eon was in the cloud but was having little success finding anything.
Where would the clone go?
It was a clone of me, so it would want to hurt me. It could take a few lives, but killing me would be hard, and it knew that. Otherwise, it would equip some of the more powerful Abnormalities and go right at me.
So what would be the next best thing?
The answer was obvious thinking about it. Vista was somewhere here, which would probably be the goal.
I reinforced my ears and started running. I could hear some panicked shouts, some people trying to establish order but nothing from the clone.
I avoided running people over with Mind's Eye, but I didn't hear anything sounding like a battle.
Then I heard it, it was incredibly faint, but it was unmistakably the sound of a blade sailing through the air, then a cry of pain, and then nothing.
My heart raced nearly faster than I did, but it was already too late when I reached the source. The corpse of a cape was in front of me, cleaved into four pieces in an X pattern.
More fighting sounds made me tear my gaze away and run.
Again I was too late. This time three soldiers, one with his head smashed in through the helmet, the other decapitated. The third got his arm cut off but was still screaming.
He was screaming, so he was alive. He could go into shock from losing an arm. I had to repress the urge to rush and apply first aid.
Always remember the training, those that need help the most get help first. I was not a paramedic right now, but the sentence was applicable.
I threw down a healing pad next to him. It would close the wound and prevent him from bleeding out. His screaming should attract help.
With that, I started running again. I had to intercept the clone to prevent more of this from happening.
But again, this nagging feeling came back. Why was my clone killing them? All it would need to do to cause mayhem would be to bless ten more people quietly, and we would be screwed!
Hell, if it had access to the true Color Fixers, then The Purple Tear was on the list.
What is stopping it from just teleporting away and going from city to city, spawning Abnormality effects? It would be the Endbringer attacks on steroids.
As if reading my mind, the bell tolled again.
Despite the thick smoke, the clock was still visible, and on it, the new name inscribed was Clockblocker.
In my mind, I could suddenly hear whispers, voices talking about apostles and kingdom come.
White Night was getting closer.
I needed to get rid of the smoke right damn now.
Before I could start coming up with ideas, there was a flash of light and the sound of an explosion. Barely visible but still enough to be seen.
I rushed towards it, too fast to stop if I ran into something this time.
What I found was Miss Militia, her arm still raised in the air, having formed a grenade launcher. Vista was behind her, looking with her hands raised in a wasted effort.
And in front of them, a featureless black mask, black gloves, completely soundless and dark as night, two swords having slashed across Miss Militia's chest. No gun in the world would have stopped The Black Silence. She made the right choice shooting a flare up instead of attacking.
Despite this, a scream of rage forced its way from my throat as two spears materialized, replacing the blade. I was close enough.
Barbed Spear…
The clone looked at me, and I saw fear on its face for the first time.
…that Pierces with Death!
Another flicker, then half of the clone was in a purple suit, The Purple Tear, long-range teleportation across dimensions. The second half was an ugly-looking suit of red with eyes and fangs all over. The Nothing There E.G.O. armor. Extreme physical defense and offense.
Gáe Bolg!
Both of those would not be enough. I was only three meters away, the full name was called, and the spear was thrust.
A piercing red light rushed from the tip of the spear, zig-zagging towards the clone. Then, a flash of light and the clone was gone, the spear seemingly hitting nothing.
But then the world shifted, and as if the clone never disappeared, the spear lodged in its heart, the E.G.O. only hindered it for half a second before piercing through it.
The clone shrieked in pain. The twisting spear then bent and threw the clone into the air away from the people. Already I could see thorns pierce its skin in places as the curse took effect.
Then the dying clone materialized a Red page between its fingers.
It was marked with a roman three, and its image was about some dark-eyed creature rising from the mud.
Powder of Life, a revival page. As soon as I recognized it, I jumped, following the clone. Using The Purple Tear, it teleported away as the page shattered like glass.
Looking around frantically, I found it again, jumping close to where it first spawned the clock.
The curse worked; it looked like the thorns started receding, but they spread again.
This meant the clone had access to Abnormality pages, which was terrible, but the good news was that it just had to throw away its only level three page to revive.
As I twisted mid-air and prepared to make a portal behind the clone, another red card appeared in its hand, and then the clone was gone.
No, wrong, it wasn't gone. I could still see it. However, my mind refused to acknowledge that I could point a weapon at it, much less my portal.
Oblivion. The red page healed the user for 40%, fully restored their stamina, and made it so they were untargetable for a short amount of time.
Well, I couldn't target them in any way, but that didn't mean I couldn't prepare in others.
I drew Failnaught from the Gate and put my spear back.
There was no doubt that the clone would swap over to The Blue Reverberation in order to avoid the ranged attacks. But that was the point. As long as I could keep part of it in that state, it would have one side occupied.
And the other side would be dealing with a much different problem.
The clone blinked back into existence, looking much more healthy, but the wound in the chest was still bleeding, and under the cloth, I could see the vines moving, which meant the curse was still working.
Fire started to lick the strings of my darkened instrument, and a portal ripped open in front of both Saber and Caster, one leading behind the clone, the other in front, and I let my flame arrows fly.
As expected, the clone was back at The Blue Reverberation and The Red Mist frantically dodging Saber's lunge. Before the portal closed behind Saber, Armsmaster also jumped through and started laying in to the clone.
Surprising, but not unwelcome, how the hell this man kept up with all of them was beyond me. I suppose that shows you how good of a Tinker he is.
The clone was pelted with my fire arrows while d'Eon kept its attention on the front. Armsmaster focused on staying behind it and using his extended halbert for opportunity attacks.
A signature gray mist around his halbert showed me that he never actually stopped working on the Nanothorn, the bastard.
While all this was going on, Tamamo kept intercepting the clone by placing seals as if they were mines, preventing it from moving too far away.
The occasional hit from everyone combined with the curse spreading did its thing.
No glorious epic showdown was wanted here. I just wanted this monster wearing my face to die boring and unceremoniously.
For a brief moment, I believed my wish had come true as five of my arrows struck the clone, followed by Armsmaster chopping one of its arms off and d'Eon stabbing it through the eye.
Then we all heard the laughter, children laughing in the wind. That was also when we noticed that the clone wasn't bleeding. Instead, it gave us wide mouths all over its head that split open into grotesque smiles before it shattered.
Hundreds of small Cherubs, covering their mouths, eyes, or ears in a parody of the Three Wise Monkeys, rushed out in every direction.
The Crying Children Distortion. Destroy the main body, and it shatters into small versions. Destroy the small ones. It turns back into the main body. It could do this many times over.
I hoped that the curse of Gae Bolg persisted as I started firing arrows into the enemies that again made their way towards the still recovering outpost.
While the numbers initially seemed startling, it was only a few hundred. My output, combined with the gunfire and blaster powers coming out of the camp, only made them last about thirty seconds.
Then there was a tense silence for a few moments. Where would it re-materialize?
I got my answer when another name appeared on the clock. 'The Jolly Prince' cape name, instantly I jumped to get a better view and there, for just a moment, I saw a pair of black wings receding.
Instantly I ripped another portal open and readied my spear.
As I stepped out, I was about to call the true name of my Noble Phantasm to curse it again, but the smoke lifted to show another page in the hand of the clone.
I could vaguely see something green on the page before my entire vision turned the same color. My movement stopped, my shout cut off mid-word, and even looking around was impossible.
Then, in my mind, I heard the clock strike again.
I ignited all my magic circuits at once and over-reinforced the emerald prison filling it until it shattered with a scream from both Lancelot and myself.
My muscles burned as I forced my mana to reinforce my body, damage be damned.
I jumped, and with another portal, I slammed into the top of the Void mirror.
Another Name appeared on the clock. I didn't bother looking.
Instead, the pain was pounding in my skull as I was taking in the battlefield in its entirety. I could feel something warm trickle down my ears.
There, multiple magic circles among the crowd of people were already backing away from them.
The design this time was not the gold circles from the King of Greed. Instead, it was another Arbiter, The Claw. High speed, self-healing, dimension piercing attacks.
Usually, there was no telling which circle it would come out of first.
Then another vision flashed by my eyes, and I knew.
One hand reached for Arondight, the other reaching into my Gate for the Void heart and Enkidu.
I lined up the portals, set them to acceleration, bent my legs, and the world stood still for a moment as I waited.
Only a second passed, but it felt like a small eternity for me as my brain was speeding up beyond what was reasonable, and it showed as my vision was slowly fracturing before me.
A spark, the tip of a claw shooting out of the portal, was all the signal I needed as I shot forward like a missile.
The clone didn't even have a moment to scream as I rammed into it with the Void Grenade in hand, it was still in the shape of a heart, and with a single beat of the heart, the world split apart around the clone and me.
It realized what I had done, but it was too late as the world fell sideways away from us. It was a feeling I doubted I would ever be able to get used to.
It was different this time. I didn't lose my grasp on time and space as the flow of eternity overcame me. The most startling difference was that, looking down, I saw reality, the world of Worm sprawled out beneath us.
The fact that there was a 'down' in the first place nearly made me lose my focus.
But the clone still existed, I doubt it had a way of escaping the Void as here it would be cut off from the Shards, but I wasn't one to leave something like this unfinished.
Oath to my King!
The clone looked at me, its eyes wide, its hand stretched out, trying to will something to happen.
Reaching the very end, beyond the boundaries. King on the other side, look at this light!
But at the very last moment, it relaxed, a calm presence falling over it. And then it moved its lips for the first and final time.
Arondight Overload!!!
Moonlight flooded the darkness, shrieks burning worlds filled unexistence, and for a brief moment, the Void became a lake made of moonlight.
The brief moment that it happened, time passed, and as it faded, so did the clone.
A heavy weight lifted from my mind as my fire burned away at me, burning away my sense of urgency.
Then a tug, the chain around my arm was being pulled.
Then like a limb that I had forgotten about, my sense of reality returned to me as I passed the threshold and was back inside the world. Next to me, the Void rift was still raging. Tamamo probably read my thoughts because a moment later, a Torii gate slammed down on it with a bunch of seals, and I saw as the Void Rift slowly fizzled out.
Warning flashing over my HUD, my card-given reflexes twisted me mid-air and landed on my feet.
It took me a moment to get my bearings as my brain was still trying to make sense of the literal fish parade that was making up reality before it settled, and I started experiencing it like a four-dimensional being again.
It might have been the Void; it might just have been the fact that I probably gave myself brain hemorrhaging with over-reinforcing.
I felt d'Eon close to me and holding me as I tried to refocus my eyes. That, of course, was interrupted by my power reconnecting to my brain, giving me the typical short vision of the Entities. Was I getting used to it?
Refocusing my vision afterward and observing the sky, I found what I was looking for, the giant white clock. The names were fading as it was falling apart, its pieces returning to dust before they could hit the ground.
Taking a deep breath as I felt the regeneration kick in and my vision slowly returning to normal. I wasn't sure if that was because of my brain or my eyes, and I didn't care.
I noticed Vista running towards me, Armsmaster and Tamamo close to her.
Repressing the urge to ask how many we lost, I instead turned towards where the clone came from. We still had a job to do after all.
"Kathy!" Vista was out of breath, and her clothing looked even dirtier than before.
"Yes, it's dead, and I don't think there can be anymore." I looked at Tamamo, who, for some reason, didn't look at me.
Checking my inventory, I was down to my last twelve energy pads. This was bad. I used them way too fast.
Once I get back to Brockton Bay, the first item on my list is getting myself a much stronger internal energy source.
"We will take a short breather." I announced," Then we continue to try to sort this impossibly stupid mess out." And what a dumb fucking mess it was. How is this even happening?!
"You are going nowhere." Oh, great, Alexandria still exists. Freaking clone, could have at least done me that favor.
"The fact that you are telling me not to do it makes me want to do it even more," I commented as my blood started to boil again.
"You are endangering the truce with your childish actions. If you do not stop immediately, we will restrain you." I noticed that there was a vague formation close to me. Eidolon in the back with some blasters and Alexandria very close, no doubt planning to ram me, maybe use her speed to carry me as far away as possible?
Plans started forming in my head. I used this moment to vent some heat again and felt my Magic Circuits start up again.
Or maybe they never stopped? I have been running at 150% since Vista called me, and if not for God-Hand, my body probably would have already torn itself apart. Speaking of which, looking down at my hand, the fight with the clone cost me three lives, not the worst, but damn.
"Wait, just wait." Armsmaster was surprisingly the one trying to de-escalate between Alexandria and me. "Katarina, I believe you."
"Ok? I mean, thanks for the vote of confidence, I guess?"
"I mean everything you told us, after what I saw, I would be a fool not to. However, I also need you to believe me when I tell you that you need to stop and listen."
"Ok, I am listening." Also, getting incredibly angry, "Why should I stop trying to save more people?"
"Because we can't risk more of your clones appearing! Look at the pure chaos just one of them caused." He waved his hand into the trails of destruction that were caused.
To my immense displeasure, he was right. I knew he was right, but he didn't stop making me incredibly frustrated with everything that was going on!
My thoughts were interrupted by a commotion.
I reinforced my hearing, and the first thing that stood out was the rhythmical stomping, something big.
Flying up with my gravity wings, I attempted to get a better look.
There in the distance, I saw it.
The lower body of a gigantic white spider with all its eight legs moving it forward. On its abdomen, a massive tree was growing. The bark was formed out of moving mouths. Its branches ending not in any kind of leaves but limbs, bodies, and more faces. Right behind the protrusions, the only bit of color on this thing, pulsating red sacks, and inside of them, I could barely make out humanoid shapes floating in some liquid.
Its grotesque symmetry was only interrupted by the big, bleeding hole at the side of the tree as if something tore its way out from it.
"It paid the price…" I said softly, more to myself than anyone else, as I lowered myself back to the ground. "It chose to suffer the cost of making that one clone in exchange for Caster's curse."
Next to me, the fox girl looked a little pale as she had her hand over her mouth.
"It… survived that?" She finally managed to ask in shock.
"Evidently, but it looks in bad shape. Normally Titans have a much higher healing factor than Endbringers. This one isn't healing." I explained as I had all my minds go over every bit of information I could recall on the beasts.
Looking over the people, I saw Dragoncraft pulling some strange-looking box into the battlefield. A moment later, my power caught up with my eyes, and I recognized it as the bomb.
I was staring at this situation, and for a moment, I felt nothing.
Following that, I grabbed my head and shook it as my anger started boiling again.
"What the everloving fuck is with today?!" I shouted out.
Nothing about this made sense! First, no Endbringer attack in Brockton Bay, then the Travelers stay in Boston. Those I can explain easily enough, but for some reason, they just happened to crash with the Nine in precisely the worst way possible to create a freaking Titan before Zion even bit the dust?
"This is all so incredibly wrong." So I decided to throw all caution into the wind and activated my Parallel Minds, Thought Acceleration, and Reinforcements, going full blast, dissecting everything I knew about this stupid, forsaken, murderous world.
As my mind was going over all the possibilities and every tiny bit of info, I could remember trying to make sense of all that was happening.
First, focusing on everything I knew about Boston. Accord came to mind, but what kind of insane reason could he possibly have for orchestrating something like this?
After that came Cauldron, but this here is not something any of them should be capable of creating, not to mention they would be risking all of Earth-Bet, and that made no sense either.
Jack Slash? Yes, he would want to end the world, but the idea that he could have orchestrated something like this is way out of his league at the level he is at. Otherwise, the Slaughterhouse 9000 arc would have looked much different.
Teacher was still in the cage, and this was in no way connected to him.
I was grasping at straws here. What do I know about the Travelers? Some Ex-Gamer team that got thrown into our world by the Sim…
My mind stopped for a moment as the Puzzle pieces started all fitting. I hated the picture that they painted. I didn't want it to be true because it just sounded too ridiculous.
It had to be wrong.
"Dragon?" I spoke into my coms, hoping that the woman wouldn't answer me.
"Yes, Kitty Tinker?" Damn the woman for being so good at multitasking.
"What is the current position of the Simurgh?"
Dragon's craft transporting the bomb stopped. Of course, it was just for a brief moment as they resumed action immediately after, but the simultaneous lag in all her craft already told me the answer to my question.
"The Simurgh is currently at a high altitude above us."
Vista and Armsmaster took a step back. Alexandria had no change as she floated with her perfect body control. Eidolon balled his fists.
I could only laugh at that. Not even metaphorically, first a snort and then laughter came from me.
This entire situation was way beyond insane. It was a meme made real, and I hated every second of it.
How could I have been so stupid? But, of course, with me planning against them, they would interfere in the most horrific way imaginable.
"Please tell me I am just going insane, and this isn't what I think it is, Saber," I asked my first Servant.
"I am afraid I have no experience in fighting opponents of this kind, Master." She didn't look comfortable with this either.
Some of the people around me were already throwing around suggestions and orders.
Contessa was talking with Alexandria. From what I overheard, apparently, she is trying to read the Simurgh by making theoretical paths that would lead to what they think her goal is.
"Katarina." Armsamster approached me directly. I just noticed that save for Dragon; they all stopped pretending and just called me by my name. "What can you tell us here? How do we deal with this?"
"You don't." What was the point of beating around the brush here? "The Endbringers are sandbagging in the first place. Whatever power you think they have, add at least 100% on top of that. No one here save Eidolon and I could begin harming her."
"There has to be something you know!"
"What do you want? Endbringers have a core. Destroy the core, destroy the Endbringer. Should they think the core is in danger, all their restrictions get lifted, including the Manton Limit, range, and power. Want to know how quickly Leviathan could go to a city and make every fluid in every living being there turn outwards?" I snapped my fingers. "There, that fast, it's done. You have a city inhabited by puddles of blood and bone.
Any attack that can kill an Endbringer must be a direct hit of either enough force to rapture the planet or bypass known physics. And if you don't surprise them, they will make you pay for the attempt even if you succeed by causing untold destruction with the time they have left." I snapped at him, only to finish it with, "Now be my guest and surprise the angel wannabe bitch above us."
"Is that why you told me not to try my Nanothorn project?" He then asked.
"Your Nanothorn would have cut deep into Leviathan, but not deep enough to reach the core, and any damage you do to them that doesn't harm the core is superficial. Not to mention this all is a planned Endbringer attack from her against me, so she probably already has accounted for anything we have!"
Was this how despair felt like?
"What do you mean by that?" Vista, this time asked.
"Every single thing that happened here forced me to spend more and more of my arsenal to deal with this issue!"
"Then the solution is simple, leave this battlefield, go somewhere with little to no population if she follows you," Armsmaster suggested.
"You are right, except that there is one problem with that idea." At his questioning look, I pointed towards the giant Titan walking towards us.
"We can deal with that on our own! You have done enough. Without you, we would most likely be all dead or cloned, but your fight is over."
Another snort escaped me.
"This is a direct order from the Triumvirate, Katarina." This time, it came from Alexandria, "Stand down!"
I ignored her, of course.
"Armsmaster, I know you can deal with this. Again, Dragons bomb is more than enough for it." I wonder if they somehow could see how tired I was through my body language.
"But if I do nothing, those six hundred people over there will die." I can already hear in your heads, oh, it's only six hundred people against the good of the world. "And I have exactly one last card up my sleeve."
I could feel it before I saw it. The purple six-pointed star of the Element of Magic. It was floating above my head. How it got out of the Gate, I had no idea.
That was also when I noticed their presence in the back of my mind. I thought I pushed them away, but they were always there waiting to be used.
I would have expected them to be oppressive, powerful, waiting to be fired like a loaded gun.
Instead, I found them gentle and calming. There was no pressure exerted on me. They just waited for me to make a decision.
"I use the Elements and risk my current chief weapon against the Endbringers. I don't act then; I risk becoming exactly like the people I hate the most, risk becoming like Alexandria. People who have thrown away all their humanity for the sake of the rest of the world."
I wanted to look over to Saber to search for some kind of hint of what I was supposed to do, but I knew I would find nothing but a blank face. This was my decision, my moment to decide who I am.
"You don't have all of them." Armsmaster pointed out, trying to assure himself, "We have one of them in lock-up."
Except that they never left me, not really.
I mentally followed the connection to what I could only assume was something like a secure Tinker-tech storage to the red gem that was sitting locked up in a glass container.
When I raised my hand, it was right there, no grand teleportations or special effects. It was just there as if it always was in my hand.
In that moment, I despised whatever force put me into this stupid body in this stupid world, making me do stupid decisions.
But as quickly as that anger began, it faded away too.
Slowly I raised my hand to my helmet and undid the manual locking mechanism making it unfold fully. I could feel the wind going through my hair.
"What am I even doing?" I ask myself looking up into the Void sky, with its swirling colors and alien beauty, "I always have been a fool. Why would that change now?"
"Last warning," Alexandria said trying to be intimidating by speaking more quietly, "If you don't stand down you will be declared an S-class threat on the level of the Slaughterhouse 9."
With a calm smile, I turned to Alexandria.
"I will never be like you."
She tried to rush me, but it was too late. Rainbow-colored light erupted as the gems started spinning around me, the light pushing her away with her hand stopping inches in front of my face.
Behind her, the other capes sprang into action, Eidolon surrounding me with some energy. So many shaker effects came from him and the capes around. An itch on my skin, the air was becoming solid, and blasts of all kinds were trying to hit me.
And it all melted around me as the Elements spun faster and louder as the light became too bright, forcing everyone around me to shield their faces.
I could feel a gentle pull lifting me as I was the center of a storm.
Another pull, this time, it was coming not from my body but my mind.
I accepted and, as one, opened all my magic circuits, letting power stream out to join the Elements.
It was pulsating with my heartbeat, every beat gathering more and more energy until it was near overwhelming.
And then it exploded.
For a moment, I couldn't see or hear anything. No feeling on my skin, no smells, no taste.
Then in the dark, six lights danced before scattering in all directions.
Only the orange one stayed, floating gently towards me. As it got closer, it revealed itself to be me, a mirror of myself, smiling brightly at me. Before I could say anything, she enveloped me in a deep hug, and I could open my eyes again.
I was sitting at the foot of a tree, the tree being on top of a hill. Below me, I could see people in the grass, many of them slowly waking up one after the other.
The Void mirror above us was gone, and seemingly all of Vista's space warping was undone.
No traces of destruction were left, just green forests and plains in the distance. And further away, the remnants of the military camp Dragoncraft and helicopters started up, and people ran around.
D'Eon materialized next to me, coming out of her spirit form with her hand outstretched and her ever-present smile.
I was about to reach for her hand, but a sudden pain from my chest made me coil up and gasp for air.
"Kathy?!" d'Eon was about to reach for me, but then black sludge burned away from me and made me scream in pain as I could feel it escape from my body.
It only lasted a few short seconds but left me on the ground breathing heavily.
Reaching towards my chest where I felt it come from, I found the class Card. Pulling it out, I looked it over.
What used to be Berserker was now Saber. They removed Lancelot Madness Enhancement it seems.
"Now you are just showing off," I said to the Elements. I couldn't feel them any more save for Honesty, who just gave me self-satisfied smugness.
Next to me, Tamamo also woke up. At first, I didn't even notice she was there, and she had a perplexed look on her face. Vista, seemingly in a deep slumber, was hugging her tail. I shot a picture, it was excellent blackmail.
"What now?" Saber asked me as she surveyed the situation.
"Simurgh doesn't seem to be descending yet. Either it's to lull us into a false sense of security, and she has some other insane plan that this will escalate into, or she is waiting for something." I took a deep breath. The air was incredibly clean, free of all the dust that was thrown about in the fight. "Before we return home, I need to talk with Eidolon. If the Simrugh doesn't do anything during that period, we can consider this fight over."
Standing back up again, I felt a little lightheaded but shaking my head a little dispelled that.
"Watch Vista for a bit?" I asked them.
"Of course." Saber said
"Can I wake her up, please?" Tamamo looked a little uncomfortable with her hugging her tail like that, but it looked too adorable for me to stop.
"Nope." And before she could protest, I had already portaled away.
########
Eidolon was staring at the scenery. What else was he supposed to do?
How could one react to this madness other than watch it?
In the distance he could see all his friends and various leaders trying to bring some sense of order back into this situation.
His Thinker power pinged him, and he turned around, seeing the girl he was starting to consider the greatest annoyance he had ever met.
"Are you proud of yourself?" He couldn't help himself but ask as she stood in the shadow of a tent, her armor and face seemingly clean of all traces of the fight.
"You know, for a very long time, I had no idea what kind of person I am. With today, however, I know. So yes, I am very proud." She had a strange smile on her face as she said that.
"And what kind of person is that?"
"A fool that is trying to do the right thing." She announced proudly. How she could be proud of that, he couldn't understand.
"So what, are you here to brag about it? Rub it in my face, how powerful are you?"
"That would certainly be the act of a fool, but not of one trying to do the right thing. No, I am here to tell you that you are looking at the entire problem the wrong way, Entities, Endbringers, Shards, Agents under your naming, or Passengers if you prefer Bonesaw's naming."
He tried not to show it but couldn't entirely stop his body language tilting his head.
"You think of them too much as evil gods, supernatural beings, spirits. They are organisms that obey the laws of physics like everything else." She did a dramatic pause, "This includes the laws of energy conversion and entropy. A parahuman power coming from a natural trigger can last between two hundred and three hundred years before it runs out of energy and dies. A power given by a Vial depending on how high grade it is lasts around forty to fifty years."
She started walking around while talking, seemingly lost in her own words.
"And like every somewhat intelligent system, it will stave off the power loss by shutting down non essential systems first, like the ability to generate black holes or matter erasure beams."
He finally got where she was going with this, and he didn't like it one bit.
"You don't need the right opponent. You need to stop wasting battery power so that when the big day comes, you will have something left to use."
"That is easy for you to say when the whole world doesn't rely on you." He wanted to shout but managed to keep his voice in check.
In response, she looked at him, judging with her piercing eyes.
"You know what I hate the most about you Cauldron types? Your reckless abandonment of the way humans solve problems." She shrugs, "I can understand you and your ego, thinking that the world needs us. Maybe that is why I don't hate you compared to Alexandria."
"But the world doesn't revolve around us, and it shouldn't. If the world has to rely on one man to keep it together, then it's the world that is wrong and needs to be fixed." She then looked over the crowd of people, seemingly unaware that behind the tent, Alexandria was getting in position. "Of all the people here, who do you think is the strongest cape?"
Following her eyes, he surveyed the crowd. He spotted Contessa, Numberman, Legend, and the various Protectorate heads, but he knew a trick question when he heard one.
"You will no doubt tell me."
"Armsmaster." she said with a sly smile to which Eidolon could only raise an eyebrow behind his mask. "Nearly everyone here is incredibly powerful in all kinds of ways, but cape-wise? Of course, the man has flaws like everyone else, but he goes into battle with the equivalent of a screwdriver, a folded knife, a kitchen sink, and probably some potato chips, with his only advantage being that he can fit them on a single arm."
"You and me? We are hammers, and hammers have their uses, but a hammer doesn't solve every problem."
Eidolon couldn't help but laugh at that.
"Well, aren't you the height of hypocrisy after the stunt you just pulled."
"It seems that way, doesn't it? However, there is one big difference between that and this."
"Do enlighten me."
"All the power I have? It's borrowed from other people and other places. I am not one Tinker. I am hundreds of Tinkers working together to reach where I am right now." She still had that stupid smile on her face he couldn't place.
"How am I any different to that, you could argue I am hundreds of capes after all." Eidolon shot back.
"The difference is in the method." She said while shaking her head. "You, and by extension Cauldron, are chasing a shadow, a shadow of your full power, a shadow of a power that might exist that can kill the Entity. What you instead could be doing is looking at all the power you already have and work with that.
What I am trying to say is, stop thinking that there is that one solution, that one power that might just fix the problem. It doesn't exist. If it did, you would have found it by now.
And before you ask, yes there is a way to recharge that battery."
Eidolon's posture went rigid at that.
"However it will help you exactly nothing in the grand scheme of things, the Entity has its own version of Path to Victory and will activate it the moment you start becoming a problem. Want to know the amount of steps Scion needs to kill you at your full power?" He didn't want to know.
"That is all I wanted to tell you. As for you, Alexandria," she turned her head just as the hands of the woman in question shot through the tent, trying to grab her, only to pass through her body as if it was air. "Go fuck yourself." And with a raised middle finger, she disappeared.
He finally recognized her smile; it was one he had not seen in ages.
It was genuine happiness.
My blade hit the Mimicry Blade of the clone, but it barely made it flinch.
I shouldn't be surprised. The Red Mist held the title of The Strongest for a reason.
This was bad. Instead of a Tinker power, a clone of me that had some sort of Changer, and the Tech-tree the clone got was freaking Library of Ruina.
The massive clock in the sky was the prelude to summoning White Night, who might as well be another Simurgh with the mind-controlled minions and death waves. And the clone was using not one but two colored fixers, each of them being able to give a Servant a run for their money.
The clone then pushed my blade away and slashed at my legs in the same swing, making me jump to evade the attack. The clone twisted, avoiding the first volley of spears and chains.
One silver lining here was that there was only one clone, as far as I could see.
Meaning that if Tamamo's curse was working correctly, creating this clone must have hurt Echidna badly if it isn't outright dead.
Another was that I had seen it revert from the Plague Doctor Anomaly. That meant that it didn't create anomalies but could only take on their personas, so as long as we could occupy it, it wouldn't be able to bless the eleven more people it needed to create or become White Night fully.
Using the swing's momentum, the clone swung around and was about to slam Mimicry down on me as the blade screamed, figuratively and literally, as multiple mouths on it burst from the flesh in response to combat.
My response was a blast of fire from my offhand.
Using the temporary smoke screen, I charged Arondight and readied myself to fire.
A moment later, I saw it as it thought the same, having jumped and readied Mimicry to bisect me.
I had no illusion that God Hand would somehow block a strike from an E.G.O. weapon extracted from one of the most dangerous Anomalies.
On the other hand, I knew that even with the active armor, the clone would be hurt badly by a fully charged swing from an A-rank Noble Phantasm.
I would happily take that trade.
After all, I could put myself back together.
The world seemed to slow down as our blades raced towards each other, but in the last second, the clone frowned and twisted mid-air, avoiding my attack and abandoning its own in the process. The energy blast from Arondight shot past it with a deafening crash.
That was when Saber appeared behind the clone and pierced it with her rapier, tearing a cry of pain out of its throat
The scythe blocked the next thrust from Saber; Mimicry rose to block mine.
Then Alexandria flew in, the world slowed down again, and an ugly smile spread on the clone's face.
A shift like TV static appeared over the left side of its body. The blade raised, it battered aside my sword, mid-swing changed into a gargantuan hammer, and the armor shifted into the bulky style of the R-Corp Rhino team.
Alexandria's hands were mere inches away from the clone's face as the hammer came down.
Dirt covered my view as I was thrown back. The eruption reached as high as a skyscraper obscuring everything from view.
My eyes shot to a message on my visor, a communication request. I accepted.
"Kitty-tinker!" It was Dragon. "Speak to us. What is the danger here?"
"That thing is a clone. It has a variation on my power. It is trying to manifest an Abnormality called White Night." I rattled off while my reinforced eyes tried to make out something in the dust. "For that, it needs to fill the clock in the sky with 12 names. If it succeeds, all those named get turned into slaves who can all be considered Brute 10, Striker 6 as the baseline.
The Abnormality itself is nearly immune to all damage and will send out waves of destruction that bypass almost all defenses over a vast distance. That, combined with the fact it's a many-winged angel, might as well be Simurgh."
"How does it fill the clock?"
"It needs to give that halo over its head to 11 other people via touch. Anyone who has a name is a valid target."
"And the clone's powers?" How the hell was I supposed to answer that?
It swapped from an Abnormality to a combination of an E.G.O. and a color Fixer. That potentially left it with the ability to equip every E.G.O., which might all as well be their powers.
"Consider it an Evil Eidolon with the powers depending on what it's wearing."
Before she could ask more questions, the toll of a bell went out across the battlefield. It was overbearing, not coming from the outside but my heart as if it was counting down along with the clock.
I tore my eyes from the smoke, and there on the clock written at two was 'Alexandria.'
The fact that it read that instead of 'Rebeca Costa Brown' sparked my curiosity, but that was gone when some dust cleared, and we saw the woman in question.
Her costume was torn up in places, her mask cut in half, no visible wounds but dark yellow chains around her holding her in place.
In front of her, the clone had one half turned into the Arbiter that created the chains and the other half the Plague Doctor that put people's names on the clock.
A red spear was in my hand without even a thought and charging. One good hit is all I would need.
Then I saw the Plague Doctor shift away into a golden dress and a massive gauntlet of the same color with an amber gem at the center.
In front of the gauntlet, a golden magic circle appeared in the air. The teleportation of the King of Greed.
I stopped my Noble Phantasm as I traced the line of sight of the clone to the camp. If I threw the spear, it would retarget her, and I would blow up the camp.
One of my portals ripped open before me just as the clone rushed through her own.
My perception shifted, and we crashed into each other inches away from a cape that would have been turned into red mist by the attack.
If I didn't get the clone out of the crowd, it would be like letting a honeybadger into a hen house.
I clamped my legs around the clone and hit the ground as hard as possible, forcing us into the air.
The clone, using this distraction, redirected the gauntlet at me and punched.
All air was driven out of my lungs, and my head was spinning for a brief moment before I hit the walls of Void that Vista created. Pain spread through me from the point of impact and the taste of iron was in my mouth.
My eyes started to close as everything was ringing and…
I ripped my eyes open as soon as possible and was greeted by the ground coming toward me.
Twisting mid-fall, a glance at my arm confirmed that a single punch from Gold Rush cost me a life.
Trying to find the clone wasn't hard. Eidolon had not switched power sets, and his gravity manipulation was holding the clone in the air. In response, it swapped back to Blue Reverbnation, his blue clothes and scythe.
Just in time for it to get pelted with an array of bullets, lasers, energy blasts, and similar.
Only that they might as well have been shooting nothing at all. Just before the assault could destroy it, a flickering started to shift over the clone.
The Blue Reverbnation's unique ability: immunity to ranged damage.
Seriously? How? Why? This was so stupid! We never got any kind of lore explanation why he could do that! Is it related to his resonance ability? He was sound-themed, some type of vibration, maybe?
Before I could think further, another shift appeared in the clone.
I only saw it for a short moment, a pure, white angel stained with blood, a gold trim all over its body, a hole where a face should have been, wings graceful and littered with golden bleeding gears.
Then smoke exploded away from it, filling everything with a thick, dense fog.
People cried out in panic, and chaos started spreading as no one could see any further than a few feet away from them.
I reached out with my senses and found both Tamamo and d'Eon.
Tamamo was above us but couldn't see anything inside, even with her better eyes.
D'Eon was in the cloud but was having little success finding anything.
Where would the clone go?
It was a clone of me, so it would want to hurt me. It could take a few lives, but killing me would be hard, and it knew that. Otherwise, it would equip some of the more powerful Abnormalities and go right at me.
So what would be the next best thing?
The answer was obvious thinking about it. Vista was somewhere here, which would probably be the goal.
I reinforced my ears and started running. I could hear some panicked shouts, some people trying to establish order but nothing from the clone.
I avoided running people over with Mind's Eye, but I didn't hear anything sounding like a battle.
Then I heard it, it was incredibly faint, but it was unmistakably the sound of a blade sailing through the air, then a cry of pain, and then nothing.
My heart raced nearly faster than I did, but it was already too late when I reached the source. The corpse of a cape was in front of me, cleaved into four pieces in an X pattern.
More fighting sounds made me tear my gaze away and run.
Again I was too late. This time three soldiers, one with his head smashed in through the helmet, the other decapitated. The third got his arm cut off but was still screaming.
He was screaming, so he was alive. He could go into shock from losing an arm. I had to repress the urge to rush and apply first aid.
Always remember the training, those that need help the most get help first. I was not a paramedic right now, but the sentence was applicable.
I threw down a healing pad next to him. It would close the wound and prevent him from bleeding out. His screaming should attract help.
With that, I started running again. I had to intercept the clone to prevent more of this from happening.
But again, this nagging feeling came back. Why was my clone killing them? All it would need to do to cause mayhem would be to bless ten more people quietly, and we would be screwed!
Hell, if it had access to the true Color Fixers, then The Purple Tear was on the list.
What is stopping it from just teleporting away and going from city to city, spawning Abnormality effects? It would be the Endbringer attacks on steroids.
As if reading my mind, the bell tolled again.
Despite the thick smoke, the clock was still visible, and on it, the new name inscribed was Clockblocker.
In my mind, I could suddenly hear whispers, voices talking about apostles and kingdom come.
White Night was getting closer.
I needed to get rid of the smoke right damn now.
Before I could start coming up with ideas, there was a flash of light and the sound of an explosion. Barely visible but still enough to be seen.
I rushed towards it, too fast to stop if I ran into something this time.
What I found was Miss Militia, her arm still raised in the air, having formed a grenade launcher. Vista was behind her, looking with her hands raised in a wasted effort.
And in front of them, a featureless black mask, black gloves, completely soundless and dark as night, two swords having slashed across Miss Militia's chest. No gun in the world would have stopped The Black Silence. She made the right choice shooting a flare up instead of attacking.
Despite this, a scream of rage forced its way from my throat as two spears materialized, replacing the blade. I was close enough.
Barbed Spear…
The clone looked at me, and I saw fear on its face for the first time.
…that Pierces with Death!
Another flicker, then half of the clone was in a purple suit, The Purple Tear, long-range teleportation across dimensions. The second half was an ugly-looking suit of red with eyes and fangs all over. The Nothing There E.G.O. armor. Extreme physical defense and offense.
Gáe Bolg!
Both of those would not be enough. I was only three meters away, the full name was called, and the spear was thrust.
A piercing red light rushed from the tip of the spear, zig-zagging towards the clone. Then, a flash of light and the clone was gone, the spear seemingly hitting nothing.
But then the world shifted, and as if the clone never disappeared, the spear lodged in its heart, the E.G.O. only hindered it for half a second before piercing through it.
The clone shrieked in pain. The twisting spear then bent and threw the clone into the air away from the people. Already I could see thorns pierce its skin in places as the curse took effect.
Then the dying clone materialized a Red page between its fingers.
It was marked with a roman three, and its image was about some dark-eyed creature rising from the mud.
Powder of Life, a revival page. As soon as I recognized it, I jumped, following the clone. Using The Purple Tear, it teleported away as the page shattered like glass.
Looking around frantically, I found it again, jumping close to where it first spawned the clock.
The curse worked; it looked like the thorns started receding, but they spread again.
This meant the clone had access to Abnormality pages, which was terrible, but the good news was that it just had to throw away its only level three page to revive.
As I twisted mid-air and prepared to make a portal behind the clone, another red card appeared in its hand, and then the clone was gone.
No, wrong, it wasn't gone. I could still see it. However, my mind refused to acknowledge that I could point a weapon at it, much less my portal.
Oblivion. The red page healed the user for 40%, fully restored their stamina, and made it so they were untargetable for a short amount of time.
Well, I couldn't target them in any way, but that didn't mean I couldn't prepare in others.
I drew Failnaught from the Gate and put my spear back.
There was no doubt that the clone would swap over to The Blue Reverberation in order to avoid the ranged attacks. But that was the point. As long as I could keep part of it in that state, it would have one side occupied.
And the other side would be dealing with a much different problem.
The clone blinked back into existence, looking much more healthy, but the wound in the chest was still bleeding, and under the cloth, I could see the vines moving, which meant the curse was still working.
Fire started to lick the strings of my darkened instrument, and a portal ripped open in front of both Saber and Caster, one leading behind the clone, the other in front, and I let my flame arrows fly.
As expected, the clone was back at The Blue Reverberation and The Red Mist frantically dodging Saber's lunge. Before the portal closed behind Saber, Armsmaster also jumped through and started laying in to the clone.
Surprising, but not unwelcome, how the hell this man kept up with all of them was beyond me. I suppose that shows you how good of a Tinker he is.
The clone was pelted with my fire arrows while d'Eon kept its attention on the front. Armsmaster focused on staying behind it and using his extended halbert for opportunity attacks.
A signature gray mist around his halbert showed me that he never actually stopped working on the Nanothorn, the bastard.
While all this was going on, Tamamo kept intercepting the clone by placing seals as if they were mines, preventing it from moving too far away.
The occasional hit from everyone combined with the curse spreading did its thing.
No glorious epic showdown was wanted here. I just wanted this monster wearing my face to die boring and unceremoniously.
For a brief moment, I believed my wish had come true as five of my arrows struck the clone, followed by Armsmaster chopping one of its arms off and d'Eon stabbing it through the eye.
Then we all heard the laughter, children laughing in the wind. That was also when we noticed that the clone wasn't bleeding. Instead, it gave us wide mouths all over its head that split open into grotesque smiles before it shattered.
Hundreds of small Cherubs, covering their mouths, eyes, or ears in a parody of the Three Wise Monkeys, rushed out in every direction.
The Crying Children Distortion. Destroy the main body, and it shatters into small versions. Destroy the small ones. It turns back into the main body. It could do this many times over.
I hoped that the curse of Gae Bolg persisted as I started firing arrows into the enemies that again made their way towards the still recovering outpost.
While the numbers initially seemed startling, it was only a few hundred. My output, combined with the gunfire and blaster powers coming out of the camp, only made them last about thirty seconds.
Then there was a tense silence for a few moments. Where would it re-materialize?
I got my answer when another name appeared on the clock. 'The Jolly Prince' cape name, instantly I jumped to get a better view and there, for just a moment, I saw a pair of black wings receding.
Instantly I ripped another portal open and readied my spear.
As I stepped out, I was about to call the true name of my Noble Phantasm to curse it again, but the smoke lifted to show another page in the hand of the clone.
I could vaguely see something green on the page before my entire vision turned the same color. My movement stopped, my shout cut off mid-word, and even looking around was impossible.
Then, in my mind, I heard the clock strike again.
I ignited all my magic circuits at once and over-reinforced the emerald prison filling it until it shattered with a scream from both Lancelot and myself.
My muscles burned as I forced my mana to reinforce my body, damage be damned.
I jumped, and with another portal, I slammed into the top of the Void mirror.
Another Name appeared on the clock. I didn't bother looking.
Instead, the pain was pounding in my skull as I was taking in the battlefield in its entirety. I could feel something warm trickle down my ears.
There, multiple magic circles among the crowd of people were already backing away from them.
The design this time was not the gold circles from the King of Greed. Instead, it was another Arbiter, The Claw. High speed, self-healing, dimension piercing attacks.
Usually, there was no telling which circle it would come out of first.
Then another vision flashed by my eyes, and I knew.
One hand reached for Arondight, the other reaching into my Gate for the Void heart and Enkidu.
I lined up the portals, set them to acceleration, bent my legs, and the world stood still for a moment as I waited.
Only a second passed, but it felt like a small eternity for me as my brain was speeding up beyond what was reasonable, and it showed as my vision was slowly fracturing before me.
A spark, the tip of a claw shooting out of the portal, was all the signal I needed as I shot forward like a missile.
The clone didn't even have a moment to scream as I rammed into it with the Void Grenade in hand, it was still in the shape of a heart, and with a single beat of the heart, the world split apart around the clone and me.
It realized what I had done, but it was too late as the world fell sideways away from us. It was a feeling I doubted I would ever be able to get used to.
It was different this time. I didn't lose my grasp on time and space as the flow of eternity overcame me. The most startling difference was that, looking down, I saw reality, the world of Worm sprawled out beneath us.
The fact that there was a 'down' in the first place nearly made me lose my focus.
But the clone still existed, I doubt it had a way of escaping the Void as here it would be cut off from the Shards, but I wasn't one to leave something like this unfinished.
Oath to my King!
The clone looked at me, its eyes wide, its hand stretched out, trying to will something to happen.
Reaching the very end, beyond the boundaries. King on the other side, look at this light!
But at the very last moment, it relaxed, a calm presence falling over it. And then it moved its lips for the first and final time.
Arondight Overload!!!
Moonlight flooded the darkness, shrieks burning worlds filled unexistence, and for a brief moment, the Void became a lake made of moonlight.
The brief moment that it happened, time passed, and as it faded, so did the clone.
A heavy weight lifted from my mind as my fire burned away at me, burning away my sense of urgency.
Then a tug, the chain around my arm was being pulled.
Then like a limb that I had forgotten about, my sense of reality returned to me as I passed the threshold and was back inside the world. Next to me, the Void rift was still raging. Tamamo probably read my thoughts because a moment later, a Torii gate slammed down on it with a bunch of seals, and I saw as the Void Rift slowly fizzled out.
Warning flashing over my HUD, my card-given reflexes twisted me mid-air and landed on my feet.
It took me a moment to get my bearings as my brain was still trying to make sense of the literal fish parade that was making up reality before it settled, and I started experiencing it like a four-dimensional being again.
It might have been the Void; it might just have been the fact that I probably gave myself brain hemorrhaging with over-reinforcing.
I felt d'Eon close to me and holding me as I tried to refocus my eyes. That, of course, was interrupted by my power reconnecting to my brain, giving me the typical short vision of the Entities. Was I getting used to it?
Refocusing my vision afterward and observing the sky, I found what I was looking for, the giant white clock. The names were fading as it was falling apart, its pieces returning to dust before they could hit the ground.
Taking a deep breath as I felt the regeneration kick in and my vision slowly returning to normal. I wasn't sure if that was because of my brain or my eyes, and I didn't care.
I noticed Vista running towards me, Armsmaster and Tamamo close to her.
Repressing the urge to ask how many we lost, I instead turned towards where the clone came from. We still had a job to do after all.
"Kathy!" Vista was out of breath, and her clothing looked even dirtier than before.
"Yes, it's dead, and I don't think there can be anymore." I looked at Tamamo, who, for some reason, didn't look at me.
Checking my inventory, I was down to my last twelve energy pads. This was bad. I used them way too fast.
Once I get back to Brockton Bay, the first item on my list is getting myself a much stronger internal energy source.
"We will take a short breather." I announced," Then we continue to try to sort this impossibly stupid mess out." And what a dumb fucking mess it was. How is this even happening?!
"You are going nowhere." Oh, great, Alexandria still exists. Freaking clone, could have at least done me that favor.
"The fact that you are telling me not to do it makes me want to do it even more," I commented as my blood started to boil again.
"You are endangering the truce with your childish actions. If you do not stop immediately, we will restrain you." I noticed that there was a vague formation close to me. Eidolon in the back with some blasters and Alexandria very close, no doubt planning to ram me, maybe use her speed to carry me as far away as possible?
Plans started forming in my head. I used this moment to vent some heat again and felt my Magic Circuits start up again.
Or maybe they never stopped? I have been running at 150% since Vista called me, and if not for God-Hand, my body probably would have already torn itself apart. Speaking of which, looking down at my hand, the fight with the clone cost me three lives, not the worst, but damn.
"Wait, just wait." Armsmaster was surprisingly the one trying to de-escalate between Alexandria and me. "Katarina, I believe you."
"Ok? I mean, thanks for the vote of confidence, I guess?"
"I mean everything you told us, after what I saw, I would be a fool not to. However, I also need you to believe me when I tell you that you need to stop and listen."
"Ok, I am listening." Also, getting incredibly angry, "Why should I stop trying to save more people?"
"Because we can't risk more of your clones appearing! Look at the pure chaos just one of them caused." He waved his hand into the trails of destruction that were caused.
To my immense displeasure, he was right. I knew he was right, but he didn't stop making me incredibly frustrated with everything that was going on!
My thoughts were interrupted by a commotion.
I reinforced my hearing, and the first thing that stood out was the rhythmical stomping, something big.
Flying up with my gravity wings, I attempted to get a better look.
There in the distance, I saw it.
The lower body of a gigantic white spider with all its eight legs moving it forward. On its abdomen, a massive tree was growing. The bark was formed out of moving mouths. Its branches ending not in any kind of leaves but limbs, bodies, and more faces. Right behind the protrusions, the only bit of color on this thing, pulsating red sacks, and inside of them, I could barely make out humanoid shapes floating in some liquid.
Its grotesque symmetry was only interrupted by the big, bleeding hole at the side of the tree as if something tore its way out from it.
"It paid the price…" I said softly, more to myself than anyone else, as I lowered myself back to the ground. "It chose to suffer the cost of making that one clone in exchange for Caster's curse."
Next to me, the fox girl looked a little pale as she had her hand over her mouth.
"It… survived that?" She finally managed to ask in shock.
"Evidently, but it looks in bad shape. Normally Titans have a much higher healing factor than Endbringers. This one isn't healing." I explained as I had all my minds go over every bit of information I could recall on the beasts.
Looking over the people, I saw Dragoncraft pulling some strange-looking box into the battlefield. A moment later, my power caught up with my eyes, and I recognized it as the bomb.
I was staring at this situation, and for a moment, I felt nothing.
Following that, I grabbed my head and shook it as my anger started boiling again.
"What the everloving fuck is with today?!" I shouted out.
Nothing about this made sense! First, no Endbringer attack in Brockton Bay, then the Travelers stay in Boston. Those I can explain easily enough, but for some reason, they just happened to crash with the Nine in precisely the worst way possible to create a freaking Titan before Zion even bit the dust?
"This is all so incredibly wrong." So I decided to throw all caution into the wind and activated my Parallel Minds, Thought Acceleration, and Reinforcements, going full blast, dissecting everything I knew about this stupid, forsaken, murderous world.
As my mind was going over all the possibilities and every tiny bit of info, I could remember trying to make sense of all that was happening.
First, focusing on everything I knew about Boston. Accord came to mind, but what kind of insane reason could he possibly have for orchestrating something like this?
After that came Cauldron, but this here is not something any of them should be capable of creating, not to mention they would be risking all of Earth-Bet, and that made no sense either.
Jack Slash? Yes, he would want to end the world, but the idea that he could have orchestrated something like this is way out of his league at the level he is at. Otherwise, the Slaughterhouse 9000 arc would have looked much different.
Teacher was still in the cage, and this was in no way connected to him.
I was grasping at straws here. What do I know about the Travelers? Some Ex-Gamer team that got thrown into our world by the Sim…
My mind stopped for a moment as the Puzzle pieces started all fitting. I hated the picture that they painted. I didn't want it to be true because it just sounded too ridiculous.
It had to be wrong.
"Dragon?" I spoke into my coms, hoping that the woman wouldn't answer me.
"Yes, Kitty Tinker?" Damn the woman for being so good at multitasking.
"What is the current position of the Simurgh?"
Dragon's craft transporting the bomb stopped. Of course, it was just for a brief moment as they resumed action immediately after, but the simultaneous lag in all her craft already told me the answer to my question.
"The Simurgh is currently at a high altitude above us."
Vista and Armsmaster took a step back. Alexandria had no change as she floated with her perfect body control. Eidolon balled his fists.
I could only laugh at that. Not even metaphorically, first a snort and then laughter came from me.
This entire situation was way beyond insane. It was a meme made real, and I hated every second of it.
How could I have been so stupid? But, of course, with me planning against them, they would interfere in the most horrific way imaginable.
"Please tell me I am just going insane, and this isn't what I think it is, Saber," I asked my first Servant.
"I am afraid I have no experience in fighting opponents of this kind, Master." She didn't look comfortable with this either.
Some of the people around me were already throwing around suggestions and orders.
Contessa was talking with Alexandria. From what I overheard, apparently, she is trying to read the Simurgh by making theoretical paths that would lead to what they think her goal is.
"Katarina." Armsamster approached me directly. I just noticed that save for Dragon; they all stopped pretending and just called me by my name. "What can you tell us here? How do we deal with this?"
"You don't." What was the point of beating around the brush here? "The Endbringers are sandbagging in the first place. Whatever power you think they have, add at least 100% on top of that. No one here save Eidolon and I could begin harming her."
"There has to be something you know!"
"What do you want? Endbringers have a core. Destroy the core, destroy the Endbringer. Should they think the core is in danger, all their restrictions get lifted, including the Manton Limit, range, and power. Want to know how quickly Leviathan could go to a city and make every fluid in every living being there turn outwards?" I snapped my fingers. "There, that fast, it's done. You have a city inhabited by puddles of blood and bone.
Any attack that can kill an Endbringer must be a direct hit of either enough force to rapture the planet or bypass known physics. And if you don't surprise them, they will make you pay for the attempt even if you succeed by causing untold destruction with the time they have left." I snapped at him, only to finish it with, "Now be my guest and surprise the angel wannabe bitch above us."
"Is that why you told me not to try my Nanothorn project?" He then asked.
"Your Nanothorn would have cut deep into Leviathan, but not deep enough to reach the core, and any damage you do to them that doesn't harm the core is superficial. Not to mention this all is a planned Endbringer attack from her against me, so she probably already has accounted for anything we have!"
Was this how despair felt like?
"What do you mean by that?" Vista, this time asked.
"Every single thing that happened here forced me to spend more and more of my arsenal to deal with this issue!"
"Then the solution is simple, leave this battlefield, go somewhere with little to no population if she follows you," Armsmaster suggested.
"You are right, except that there is one problem with that idea." At his questioning look, I pointed towards the giant Titan walking towards us.
"We can deal with that on our own! You have done enough. Without you, we would most likely be all dead or cloned, but your fight is over."
Another snort escaped me.
"This is a direct order from the Triumvirate, Katarina." This time, it came from Alexandria, "Stand down!"
I ignored her, of course.
"Armsmaster, I know you can deal with this. Again, Dragons bomb is more than enough for it." I wonder if they somehow could see how tired I was through my body language.
"But if I do nothing, those six hundred people over there will die." I can already hear in your heads, oh, it's only six hundred people against the good of the world. "And I have exactly one last card up my sleeve."
I could feel it before I saw it. The purple six-pointed star of the Element of Magic. It was floating above my head. How it got out of the Gate, I had no idea.
That was also when I noticed their presence in the back of my mind. I thought I pushed them away, but they were always there waiting to be used.
I would have expected them to be oppressive, powerful, waiting to be fired like a loaded gun.
Instead, I found them gentle and calming. There was no pressure exerted on me. They just waited for me to make a decision.
"I use the Elements and risk my current chief weapon against the Endbringers. I don't act then; I risk becoming exactly like the people I hate the most, risk becoming like Alexandria. People who have thrown away all their humanity for the sake of the rest of the world."
I wanted to look over to Saber to search for some kind of hint of what I was supposed to do, but I knew I would find nothing but a blank face. This was my decision, my moment to decide who I am.
"You don't have all of them." Armsmaster pointed out, trying to assure himself, "We have one of them in lock-up."
Except that they never left me, not really.
I mentally followed the connection to what I could only assume was something like a secure Tinker-tech storage to the red gem that was sitting locked up in a glass container.
When I raised my hand, it was right there, no grand teleportations or special effects. It was just there as if it always was in my hand.
In that moment, I despised whatever force put me into this stupid body in this stupid world, making me do stupid decisions.
But as quickly as that anger began, it faded away too.
Slowly I raised my hand to my helmet and undid the manual locking mechanism making it unfold fully. I could feel the wind going through my hair.
"What am I even doing?" I ask myself looking up into the Void sky, with its swirling colors and alien beauty, "I always have been a fool. Why would that change now?"
"Last warning," Alexandria said trying to be intimidating by speaking more quietly, "If you don't stand down you will be declared an S-class threat on the level of the Slaughterhouse 9."
With a calm smile, I turned to Alexandria.
"I will never be like you."
She tried to rush me, but it was too late. Rainbow-colored light erupted as the gems started spinning around me, the light pushing her away with her hand stopping inches in front of my face.
Behind her, the other capes sprang into action, Eidolon surrounding me with some energy. So many shaker effects came from him and the capes around. An itch on my skin, the air was becoming solid, and blasts of all kinds were trying to hit me.
And it all melted around me as the Elements spun faster and louder as the light became too bright, forcing everyone around me to shield their faces.
I could feel a gentle pull lifting me as I was the center of a storm.
Another pull, this time, it was coming not from my body but my mind.
I accepted and, as one, opened all my magic circuits, letting power stream out to join the Elements.
It was pulsating with my heartbeat, every beat gathering more and more energy until it was near overwhelming.
And then it exploded.
For a moment, I couldn't see or hear anything. No feeling on my skin, no smells, no taste.
Then in the dark, six lights danced before scattering in all directions.
Only the orange one stayed, floating gently towards me. As it got closer, it revealed itself to be me, a mirror of myself, smiling brightly at me. Before I could say anything, she enveloped me in a deep hug, and I could open my eyes again.
I was sitting at the foot of a tree, the tree being on top of a hill. Below me, I could see people in the grass, many of them slowly waking up one after the other.
The Void mirror above us was gone, and seemingly all of Vista's space warping was undone.
No traces of destruction were left, just green forests and plains in the distance. And further away, the remnants of the military camp Dragoncraft and helicopters started up, and people ran around.
D'Eon materialized next to me, coming out of her spirit form with her hand outstretched and her ever-present smile.
I was about to reach for her hand, but a sudden pain from my chest made me coil up and gasp for air.
"Kathy?!" d'Eon was about to reach for me, but then black sludge burned away from me and made me scream in pain as I could feel it escape from my body.
It only lasted a few short seconds but left me on the ground breathing heavily.
Reaching towards my chest where I felt it come from, I found the class Card. Pulling it out, I looked it over.
What used to be Berserker was now Saber. They removed Lancelot Madness Enhancement it seems.
"Now you are just showing off," I said to the Elements. I couldn't feel them any more save for Honesty, who just gave me self-satisfied smugness.
Next to me, Tamamo also woke up. At first, I didn't even notice she was there, and she had a perplexed look on her face. Vista, seemingly in a deep slumber, was hugging her tail. I shot a picture, it was excellent blackmail.
"What now?" Saber asked me as she surveyed the situation.
"Simurgh doesn't seem to be descending yet. Either it's to lull us into a false sense of security, and she has some other insane plan that this will escalate into, or she is waiting for something." I took a deep breath. The air was incredibly clean, free of all the dust that was thrown about in the fight. "Before we return home, I need to talk with Eidolon. If the Simrugh doesn't do anything during that period, we can consider this fight over."
Standing back up again, I felt a little lightheaded but shaking my head a little dispelled that.
"Watch Vista for a bit?" I asked them.
"Of course." Saber said
"Can I wake her up, please?" Tamamo looked a little uncomfortable with her hugging her tail like that, but it looked too adorable for me to stop.
"Nope." And before she could protest, I had already portaled away.
########
Eidolon was staring at the scenery. What else was he supposed to do?
How could one react to this madness other than watch it?
In the distance he could see all his friends and various leaders trying to bring some sense of order back into this situation.
His Thinker power pinged him, and he turned around, seeing the girl he was starting to consider the greatest annoyance he had ever met.
"Are you proud of yourself?" He couldn't help himself but ask as she stood in the shadow of a tent, her armor and face seemingly clean of all traces of the fight.
"You know, for a very long time, I had no idea what kind of person I am. With today, however, I know. So yes, I am very proud." She had a strange smile on her face as she said that.
"And what kind of person is that?"
"A fool that is trying to do the right thing." She announced proudly. How she could be proud of that, he couldn't understand.
"So what, are you here to brag about it? Rub it in my face, how powerful are you?"
"That would certainly be the act of a fool, but not of one trying to do the right thing. No, I am here to tell you that you are looking at the entire problem the wrong way, Entities, Endbringers, Shards, Agents under your naming, or Passengers if you prefer Bonesaw's naming."
He tried not to show it but couldn't entirely stop his body language tilting his head.
"You think of them too much as evil gods, supernatural beings, spirits. They are organisms that obey the laws of physics like everything else." She did a dramatic pause, "This includes the laws of energy conversion and entropy. A parahuman power coming from a natural trigger can last between two hundred and three hundred years before it runs out of energy and dies. A power given by a Vial depending on how high grade it is lasts around forty to fifty years."
She started walking around while talking, seemingly lost in her own words.
"And like every somewhat intelligent system, it will stave off the power loss by shutting down non essential systems first, like the ability to generate black holes or matter erasure beams."
He finally got where she was going with this, and he didn't like it one bit.
"You don't need the right opponent. You need to stop wasting battery power so that when the big day comes, you will have something left to use."
"That is easy for you to say when the whole world doesn't rely on you." He wanted to shout but managed to keep his voice in check.
In response, she looked at him, judging with her piercing eyes.
"You know what I hate the most about you Cauldron types? Your reckless abandonment of the way humans solve problems." She shrugs, "I can understand you and your ego, thinking that the world needs us. Maybe that is why I don't hate you compared to Alexandria."
"But the world doesn't revolve around us, and it shouldn't. If the world has to rely on one man to keep it together, then it's the world that is wrong and needs to be fixed." She then looked over the crowd of people, seemingly unaware that behind the tent, Alexandria was getting in position. "Of all the people here, who do you think is the strongest cape?"
Following her eyes, he surveyed the crowd. He spotted Contessa, Numberman, Legend, and the various Protectorate heads, but he knew a trick question when he heard one.
"You will no doubt tell me."
"Armsmaster." she said with a sly smile to which Eidolon could only raise an eyebrow behind his mask. "Nearly everyone here is incredibly powerful in all kinds of ways, but cape-wise? Of course, the man has flaws like everyone else, but he goes into battle with the equivalent of a screwdriver, a folded knife, a kitchen sink, and probably some potato chips, with his only advantage being that he can fit them on a single arm."
"You and me? We are hammers, and hammers have their uses, but a hammer doesn't solve every problem."
Eidolon couldn't help but laugh at that.
"Well, aren't you the height of hypocrisy after the stunt you just pulled."
"It seems that way, doesn't it? However, there is one big difference between that and this."
"Do enlighten me."
"All the power I have? It's borrowed from other people and other places. I am not one Tinker. I am hundreds of Tinkers working together to reach where I am right now." She still had that stupid smile on her face he couldn't place.
"How am I any different to that, you could argue I am hundreds of capes after all." Eidolon shot back.
"The difference is in the method." She said while shaking her head. "You, and by extension Cauldron, are chasing a shadow, a shadow of your full power, a shadow of a power that might exist that can kill the Entity. What you instead could be doing is looking at all the power you already have and work with that.
What I am trying to say is, stop thinking that there is that one solution, that one power that might just fix the problem. It doesn't exist. If it did, you would have found it by now.
And before you ask, yes there is a way to recharge that battery."
Eidolon's posture went rigid at that.
"However it will help you exactly nothing in the grand scheme of things, the Entity has its own version of Path to Victory and will activate it the moment you start becoming a problem. Want to know the amount of steps Scion needs to kill you at your full power?" He didn't want to know.
"That is all I wanted to tell you. As for you, Alexandria," she turned her head just as the hands of the woman in question shot through the tent, trying to grab her, only to pass through her body as if it was air. "Go fuck yourself." And with a raised middle finger, she disappeared.
He finally recognized her smile; it was one he had not seen in ages.
It was genuine happiness.
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DALuc1f3r
(Verified Boojum)
- Location
- Scotland
hey hydralisk, glad to see you managed to push past that block, fingers crossed this is the last one.
i could kinda see in my head you getting past it in the same vein kathy decided her path, and forgive the pun, chose to be 'Honest' with herself about what kind of person she is, unwilling to throw her 'Humanity' (in the spiritual sense, not the biological) away for the sake of the nebulus 'Greater Good' and deciding to take things as they come, come hell or high water.
at least that is my interpretation of events.
i could kinda see in my head you getting past it in the same vein kathy decided her path, and forgive the pun, chose to be 'Honest' with herself about what kind of person she is, unwilling to throw her 'Humanity' (in the spiritual sense, not the biological) away for the sake of the nebulus 'Greater Good' and deciding to take things as they come, come hell or high water.
at least that is my interpretation of events.
True.
Doesn't make sense, but true.
Call it WB not thinking things through.
WB is constantly changing stuff. The youth guard was introduced after the quest. Didn't think about what an aura would do to a depressive and just uses WOG to wave away any dependency Amy would have to justify her actions etc.
I also think he changed Taylor killing Aster.
I also think he changed Taylor killing Aster.
- Location
- United States
The funny thing is all of this really was a Simurgh Plot, but had nothing to do with Kathy at all. If anything, the plot got messed up by the Nine being the Nine...
- Pronouns
- Masculine
Deelicious chapter.
And if Alexandria tries something, there is no reason at all for Kathy not to out them all.
Very, very satisfying chapter!
As ever, this is amazing and I always hunger for what your muse brings us!
Now, time to see what comes next... because with this bullshit handled, its probably time for the beginning of the end. Considering the Nine are probably fucked. Did Jack even survive?
And if Alexandria tries something, there is no reason at all for Kathy not to out them all.
Very, very satisfying chapter!
As ever, this is amazing and I always hunger for what your muse brings us!
Now, time to see what comes next... because with this bullshit handled, its probably time for the beginning of the end. Considering the Nine are probably fucked. Did Jack even survive?
Granz Tacz
Swirl Sky Roo
- Location
- Under Stone Steel
Did Kathy just Thanos snap the problem?
- Location
- Brazil
I mean she did bring out and use the resident deus ex machina/plot device/all-powerful mcguffin to solve the problem.
Did Kathy hit Simurgh with a friendship beam?
Also was anyone listening and able to infer what Kathy meant when she was telling Alexandria she didn't want to become like her by striping her humanity.
Edit: Actually how is Simurgh keeping track of her? She keeps re triggering everytime she comes out of the portal.
Also was anyone listening and able to infer what Kathy meant when she was telling Alexandria she didn't want to become like her by striping her humanity.
Edit: Actually how is Simurgh keeping track of her? She keeps re triggering everytime she comes out of the portal.
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