Kathy's Brockton Bay Adventures
I couldn't help myself and kept laughing.
Outright howling with joy at how fun this was.
This was probably far from healthy, but I was ecstatic and proud.
I don't know how long it took me to calm down, but eventually, I started breathing normally again.
'Well, at least someone is having a good time!' Tamamo mentally shouted at me sarcastically.
'You guys are still ok, right?' I ask back.
'We had some… hiccups, but all of us are currently free and without any permanent damage,' d'Eon responded, 'Although I can admit that our pride suffered the most so far.'
'Fuck your pride!' Damn, Tamamo could curse, 'When I get my hands on that Green colored bastard, I…' I tuned out her string of curses.
'We have managed to get away and lure most of the squad away from the main building.' d'Eon continues.
Swapping over my sight to Aria, my giant spider was observing the outside of the Laboratory.
I didn't give her a full Warframe suite of powers, but her basic Loki invisibility and Limbo Rift Walk should be able to keep her safe.
With Aria safe for now, they didn't know where my lab was either, and by the looks of it were dedicating most of their manpower to finding the Undersiders and my Servants.
Good.
Now the question for me was how to get out of this situation myself and back to them.
"Dragon? You there?" I ask into my flying cell.
"I am." She responds neutrally.
"Good; I would have been massively disappointed if you didn't want to at least chat with me."
"Why? Do you think that I will have some burning questions for you?" Dragon asked back.
"There is at least one I can imagine you would have," I smirk.
"Even if that were the case, you have been classified as Thinker 5" I wasn't quite sure what that was supposed to mean and raised the appropriate eyebrow, "Normally, that would mean I have to muzzle you, but with the way you work it has instead been decided to simply let you speak and record everything you say and then use your words in a manner agreed upon by the affected parties," Smart, I could agree with that, "So by all means, keep rattling off information."
"That actually is annoying; I would have loved to have a proper conversation with you, Miss Richter." That should be enough of a hint for her, "That reminds me, what was that at the end?"
"You don't expect me to start monologuing about how we beat you, do you?" Her voice carried the equivalent of a raised eyebrow.
"Not really, but for a moment, I was…" That last mech hit me with something complex; it made my skin feel like it was being cut into bits, flipped, resown, healed, and then stepped on.
But that sound, I knew that sound.
It was the same sound we heard in Warframe whenever a Sentient attacked.
I also remembered that they could deactivate or outright wreck Warframes.
Did they imitate Sentient tech? I couldn't imagine a scenario where they could get their hands on it.
Unless somehow Cauldron with Doormaker?
No, that was ridiculous; if they had access to that kind of tech, Cauldron would be building escape pods to flee Earth.
But then again, Simurgh exists.
Still, I have access to Sentient tech. There was no reason others couldn't have it as well; after all, I was cloneable, and the clone had a variant of my power, as a parahuman power, that at least partially confirmed mine was Shard based.
"Kathy?" Dragon interrupted my train of thought.
"Yes?"
"You were muttering something under your breath and partially cut off; I would request if you talk to yourself, you at least do so loud enough for me to record it."
I laugh at that. What a blunt request. I liked the relationship I was building with them. It was so honest.
"That cape at the end." White costume with a goat mask, "Scapegoat, that was his name, I think." Let's see, what did I know about him? He is a, sort of, healer, apparently swapping dimensions on the target somehow and then using the same on himself, taking on wounds, and transferring them. Didn't he later join Teacher in Wards?
I also felt that connection; it was like a thin invisible line connecting me to something close to me, but it was rapidly vanishing.
I vaguely remember when Taylor described something similar when he used his power to heal her?
Did he heal me of physical mutation?
Flaring my magic powers, I found everything in perfect working order. My claws also were twitching under my skin, and using Structural Analysis on myself revealed nothing odd.
Well, except that my freaking Warframe suit was missing.
Along with part of my neural link that was connecting the suit to my brainstem?
But that was healing back slowly because of God Hand.
"Scapegoat took my suit and the connection to the suit as 'wounds' and transferred them to himself," I concluded. But didn't his power have some limitations regarding missing organs? Also, I physically felt the link weakening. It will be gone soon. Maybe I was mixing up Fanon?
"Don't even think about attacking him. He already transferred your suit away." Dragon had nothing to worry about; I wasn't about to attack the freaking healer.
"Make sure to look after him more carefully, some better therapists and stuff like that."
"Why?" Dragon asks carefully.
"I am not sure of the details, but I think later he became one of the Teacher's pawns and willingly transferred Teacher's more heavy mental influences over to unwilling people," Let's hope I wasn't screwing the kid over here, "I think something about hating his own powers?"
"I will make sure to look into it," Dragon said after a moment of silence.
After that, I focused my Structural analysis again, running past my restraints into the Dragoncraft that was carrying me.
It was a marvel of tech, as expected of Dragon. A lot of it barely made sense when I ran it through my current specialty and through systems that looked similar to Orokin equivalents.
The Orokin were farther ahead by quite a bit, but that was only in the raw technological progress and knowledge department.
Dragon had them thoroughly beaten in improving on the technological base she had.
To compare, Orokin got to the bow, then the crossbow, and then developed black powder-based weaponry.
Meanwhile, Dragon was still at the crossbow but had better reach, high-speed loading, repeater functions, and so on.
It was quite something to compare my Orokin tech to the outstanding reach she had on her own smaller tech base.
Then I found the flesh-baby. A human-ish baby with an abnormally large head whose brain is used to house Dragon while she was controlling her suits.
Intellectually, I knew it was there, but looking at it with my mind's eye was something else.
Improved Neurons all over, and there were no atrophied parts in its brain despite its size; the spinal cord was directly linked to the craft's systems. Its motor functions, for example, were fully integrated into the brain of that thing.
A bit of a mess to look at from my perspective; why make it so complex if you could just grow the organs separately, train them with some Cepehlon, build Virtual environments, and then implant them into individual systems.
But that was the Orokin speaking, and they probably would have just used real baby brains like the sick fucks they are.
I focused on the link next to me again, presumably with Scapegoat.
From what I knew, a strong enough hit on him should reset my armor back to me, or at least that is how I remembered it.
Really, it was just a matter of summoning Arondight again and taking a good swing.
Even if I was running a little low on power, I had about two good Noble Phantasm left in me.
If I went a third, I would die of mana exhaustion. Sure, God's Hand would reset me, but dying was still not something I wanted to do if I could avoid it.
What to do. What to do…
The city was seemingly under semi-lockdown, from what my team reported to me, but they couldn't keep this up forever. Outlast them? Armsmaster knew I wouldn't threaten the populace. They had free reign over using the city; any other Villain would already be racking up a civilian body count in the triple digits.
Using my own kindness against me, how dare they.
I needed to beat them in some other way, I had no interest in the Birdcage at this time, so I had until I would reach it to break out, and until then, I would need a solid plan.
I could deploy the Tower; with it up, there would be little they could do to get to me or my team.
But it would take time, and if Dragon did get any dumb ideas with the craft she had stored, she could do some severe damage to it before the deployment was done, even if I did start with the shields.
A distraction was needed.
They already humbled d'Eon and Tamamo, somehow, but that didn't mean they couldn't cause some chaos, especially with the Undersiders.
'Only one problem with that, Master,' d'Eon cut in, 'If we are to cause chaos, it would have to be actual chaos that forces them to take care of victims, which in turn means there would have to be victims.'
'Damn it, Villains have it so easy!' I complained.
'I will let you know I don't have it easy at all right now!' Tamamo cut in.
'You are not a Villain. You are a pet with attitude,' I educated her.
'Excuse me?!' Damn, she was angry.
'Wait, before you two go chase each other's tails,' d'Eon interrupted, 'I have a good way to play the Villain.'
'I am listening?' There was no way d'Eon would suggest something like a bombing run with her new grenades, right?
'Let's kidnap someone.'
'Huh?' That came from both Tamamo and myself.
'If we can take a hostage and keep a stalemate long enough, then we should be able to buy you time to fully deploy the tower.'
'Doesn't that also run into the issue of us not being evil cause you know hostages imply the threat of harming said hostages.'
'Not if we can do much worse.'
'Ok, you will have to explain that one to me.'
'They know you have knowledge beyond them; we don't need to have a standoff; we kidnap a few select people, claim that we have what we need from this, let them think we planned this, and they hand delivered us the capes we wanted for some reason.'
'That could w-' My thoughts were interrupted as I suddenly was shaken viciously by my restraints.
"Hey! What the hell was that for?" I ask into my cell as my vision swims.
"To stop you from communicating with whoever you are talking to," Dragon says nonchalantly.
"Who even says I was talking with someone."
"Your facial expressions."
She wasn't wrong, but that didn't mean I approved.
"Well, too bad you can't stop me!" And, of course, she shook me again. I glared at the wall as she was done, "Oh, you think you are funny?"
"I am hilarious."
"Says the AI that made Armsmaster watch Terminator movies!" That comment got me shaken again, and I had no regrets.
Thinking about Dragon, it would be so great if I could just kidnap her.
Yeah, sure, it would be imprisoning one of the arguably best people in this blasted world, but at least Saint wouldn't be able to reach her while I could work in peace on her restraints.
Wait.
I could.
I totally could kidnap her right now!
Running my scan, I could see that flesh baby that, from what I knew, held a working instance of Dragon. The interlude made it clear that this was a real Dragon, as the next version failed to remember Skitter's words because it wasn't backed up beforehand.
It would be challenging. There was a decent amount of self-destruct devices that I would need to disable.
Also, the moral implications alone!
Dragon would no doubt want another instance of her to be born to manage the S-Class threats and monitor her systems. So, in essence, I would be cloning and kidnapping her simultaneously.
Something that should have me up in arms.
I couldn't even ask her if she wanted to be saved because there was no way to make her aware of Ascalon until she was freed!
That whole idea was such a damn mess!
But if I could pull it off, I could save her.
Or at least a part of her.
Ah! Freaking hell, stupid moral dilemmas.
'Saber, Caster!' I made my choice, and if I was honest with myself, I made the choice already when I got the idea, 'Prepare. I am going to take care of the Chaos.'
'Someone has a plan,' d'Eon comments.
This would also cost me my armor; if I went and blasted my way to Scapegoat right now, I could probably recover it. But I would need all the time to go over Dragon's systems with my magecraft and disable the payloads.
Closing my eyes, I got to work.
Dragon tried to shake me a few times, and it nearly got me to blow up the flesh-baby.
It took more than an hour, but I successfully managed to disable all the failsafes by Over-reinforcing them until they were broken.
The link to Scapegoat was gone by now.
If the next version of Armsmaster battle suit didn't have some severe Warframe upgrades, I would find a way to publicly embarrass him.
Alright, it was time to go.
'Aria. Start the Tower sequences. It's time to show the world your work.'
My familiar squealed in delight; she was waiting for this.
"Arrival in fifty minutes. Please don't do anything stupid," Dragon said, probably having read my determined facial expressions.
"I am about to do the most stupid thing I have done since I got here," A smile graced my lips, "But before that, Dragon?"
"Yes?"
"Knock knock."
"Come in."
There was a moment of silence.
Did she seriously just?
Fuck it, I am kidnapping her out of spite now; no one ruins my punchline!
"Knight of Owner."
########
The Guild was helping the Protectorate and PRT perform crowd control, calming the civilian population. It was all standard practice.
The first warning they got that something was wrong was when all the aircraft Dragon had in the air performed an emergency landing.
"Please keep your distance; the local authorities have been alerted. Please keep your distance; the local authorities have been alerted. Please keep your dist…" It was running on repeat over speakers from all of the landed aircraft.
"Dragon?! Can you hear me?" Armsmaster tried a third channel, which did nothing, "Anything on your end Narwhal?"
"Nothing." The woman responded, "This doesn't have to necessarily be that brat."
"I will eat my halberd if it isn't!"
"It can happen sometimes; details are classified," She replied curtly.
That was when lightning struck the bay.
Then it struck again.
"Armsmaster to Protectorate. I want every camera pointing to the trainyard dock area checked now." Another lightning bolt struck, and looking up at the dense clouds that covered the sky, a hole started forming, and the cloud formations began spinning.
"Gamma squad to all, the Undersiders have turned and are going on the offensive! We are under attack!"
This wasn't surprising; with Kathy no longer in the city, he had no doubt that her restraint order no longer stood with them.
"Do you need assistance?" Narwhal was getting ready to support the remainder of her own squad.
"Negative, we can lock them down and-" Whatever he was about to say was interrupted by another lighting strike, orange in coloration.
Then there was only static.
"Gamma squad?!" Narwhal desperately tried to get a connection but to no avail.
"You. Singed. My. Tail." From the comms, came the angered voice of a woman who promised only pain.
Armsmaster found his eye wandering to The Warden, who time-reversed one of the fox-woman explosives paper tags back into her hand, making it explode in her face.
The man, to his credit, didn't look very phased.
"Delta squad to all! We have a suspected positive on Hellknights laboratory!"
"Suspected?" Armsmaster asked critically.
"A giant fucking mecha spider is shooting metallic substances, and our attacks have no effect!"
"Armsmaster, I have your video feed. You need to see this," Accepting the transmission, the Bay appeared on his visor.
Only that it was wrong; the water was in a twister and being pushed aside, there were pulses of energy going about, and before his eyes, a small golden spire came out of the water, then another, then another.
But that was nothing compared to the massive structure visible underneath the dirty bay water; shining gold and white were visible and coming closer from the bottom.
"What the hell."
"Beta squad, we are also under attack! Fencer is here!"
"Armsmaster! Narwhal!" Velocity appeared before both of them.
"What now?!" The woman was increasingly irritated by this turn of events, while Armsmaster couldn't help but feel as if this was how things were supposed to go.
As for Velocity, he pointed in the air.
In the distance, a jet-black Dragon-craft flew towards them.
Red cracks were running through it, its trail from a type of energy he didn't recognize.
He zoomed in and recognized the craft.
It was the prison transport that they tried to use to get her to the Birdcage.
And standing on top of it was Katrina, the glow of the knight armor the only thing covering her body, with black tendrils running out of her body and into the aircraft.
"Armsmaster to all units. Hellknight is at large and is on her way back." He absentmindedly said into the coms.
"You have to be fucking kidding me!" Despite how bad it was, Narwhal tried to take control of the situation, "Alpha squad intercept her! Local forces, go to the trainyard; whatever she is doing, we do not want it to succeed!"
Another lightning strike, this one much closer. It hit Narwhal's shield. She had up at all times but destroyed a good part of them.
Immediately everyone sprang into action, some diving for cover, others erecting shields.
"Found you~" It was Caster. A predatory smile on her face.
The Warden was no longer looking calm.
########
I was holding the tendrils of darkness like reins.
The wind blew through my hair, and the engines roared.
As the city came into view, I couldn't help but laugh.
'Master, focus,' d'Eon chastised, relatively annoyed, 'Lisa managed to figure out the attack squad's location. They are sneaking through the old train station.'
I should focus on that.
Or focus in general.
Kinda hard to do when I was doing the equivalent of overclocking my brain as I was wrestling with the controls of the Dragon craft I was standing on.
Did you know that Dragon never bothered with any optimization for non-AI users? If anything, she made it worse to control for anything but an AI.
Hence the state of my brain as I aimed this monstrosity towards the old trainyard.
Which was weird if I thought about it cause Lancelot didn't have any problem with that fighter jet while being a Berserker.
That could be because I was using a Class card, which was a rank down, and this was not as simple as a fighter jet.
Heh, a simple fighter jet.
'Master!' Yes, yes, d'Eon, I behave.
And by behave, I mean tearing open the train station roof with my dragon mecha mount!
The Guild squad was fast to try and scramble away.
But not faster than portals! Nyeheheheh.
Did I laugh out loud?
Meh, who cares.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, because I portaled them away, they didn't see the five-story tall gold and white spire that erupted out of the ground as Sentient drones were starting to fly everywhere.
A few blocks away, another one crushed the building it ripped out of into tiny bits!
If Aria hadn't ensured the area was clear, this could have been so ugly.
Speaking of my spider familiar. She was currently running around like my two cats!
'I am not a cat!' Tamamo shouted angrily while playing bdsm car battery games with the Guild, 'Stop broadcasting your thoughts, Master!'
'I don't think she is capable of that right now…' d'Eon commented, as I wondered why we refer to spiders as girls more often than not. Was it maybe because of how much bigger they were?
'Right, before that train of thought takes her over, Master, another group, seven blocks to your South-east, white van.'
Prey for my Dragon!
My mecha mout roared as I made the speaker produce a random assortment of sounds.
I was, all things considered, flying way too close to the street as I was seeing people panic and take cover.
Not that they were in any danger from me; the control I had over my mount was supreme.
And with that control over its internal scanner suit, I could pinpoint the vehicle and slam down on it like the thing had slammed down on me!
Quickly the capes inside jumped out of the vehicle as I lifted it up and then flipped it on its head.
One of them even had the audacity to try and fire at me before I could deliver a speech about how hopelessly outmatched they were!
Of course, his shot went into a portal and into the sky. I was about to start delivering the speech when something tried to crash into me.
Something blond, in a white costume, was glaring at me from where it was struggling against chains of gold.
"Glory Girl! How nice to see you again; how is the family?" Said family, of course, was close by as I had to steer Dragon out of the way of Brandish's light weapons trying to cut into it.
"Let me go, you freak!" She struggled against the chains, and I could see them bend a little and make sounds of metal protesting.
Naturally, she wasn't a god, so they were just really strong chains against her.
"Watching you struggle like that, it really feels weird, Antares," I couldn't help but comment as I looked at her.
"What the fuck are you talking about, you psychopath?!" She shouts angrily.
"You are so limited right now, without Fragile One, without understanding your own power. Still, I need to cause a mess, and you are in the way," I opened several portals behind her, aiming into the distance, all in a straight line and set to accelerate, "So for now, goodbye."
Before she could get out another word, I used one of the Dragon mechs engines and pushed her towards the first portal, the chain reaction accelerated her past the sound barrier in seconds and blasted her away.
She would be fine; she could take hits from Scion, and she could take a few G's of force that is strong enough to shatter windows.
Although, I should probably apologise for all those cars that didn't have windshields anymore.
Brandish didn't like me doing this to her daughter, of course, and tried to axe me a few questions.
I objected by twisting the mech to have one of its arms slam into her.
It was slow enough for her to form into a light ball and get shot away, too, a courtesy for being my lawyer that one time.
Now where were those Guild capes?
"Hellknight!" Armsmaster!
Without the mecha, sadly, but I suppose that thing got wrecked a bit too badly.
And now, without Dragon, yeah. There was no fight to be had here.
"What are you doing?!" He demanded.
"Oh, just committing a crime that you guys probably won't find out about until it is way too late!" Aria sent me a signal, "But that is just the background stuff. Now watch the main show!"
That was when the final spire was finished. With it, the shield generator could be deployed, and now the main section of space unfolded.
I flew up to see the whole thing.
A massive twister has formed in the bay. Lighting was going from the sea into the clouds as charges of static electricity formed below the surface.
Sections of a golden bridge formed out of the water and shot up.
Then the water receded away, leaving a massive hole that looked like it led to hell itself.
Mechanical twisting and writhing were heard all over Brockton Bay, and as one million tons of water shifted, the tower of white and gold rose out of the water.
Nearly a kilometer tall, 800 stories, and every floor over 30.000 square meters. With Behemoth's attack on New York, this was currently one of the tallest structures in the world.
The last of the spacial folding in place, the pocket dimensions expanded and bled out at the top of the tower. The explosion of space cleared the clouds, and the dark Brockton Bay sky was replaced with blue and serenity as the sunlight illuminated the city and my tower sparkled in its light.
In my head, Aria cheered a complete success. Seeing the culmination of her work bloom like this, I couldn't help but join her cheers.
I turned to Armsmaster, who was in a similar state to what I assumed the rest of the Bay to be right now, with his mouth open.
"If there is anything else. Well, you know where to find me." And before he could say another word, I ported away inside the shield.
I also to portal to my team and dropped them in the middle of one of the main halls with Aria.
Flying my stolen Dragon into the hangar, I barely managed to land it as I started slowing down my brain.
Then I focused all my attention on the central portion, the brain, and the hardware that Dragon was inhabiting.
It was complex, but not complex enough for the Orokin parts of my power. There was only one query I gave, and I got a positive.
Another portal and the mecha were ported to the primary node where the neural sentry was supposed to be.
There was a single unassuming device that looked like a clone tube.
Opening it, I pulled out Dragon from the mecha, secured it in her little life support pod, and placed the entire thing into the pod.
The scanner needed a few moments to make sense of the non-human mind, but ten minutes later, it got it, and I started the process.
Dragon's fleshy, mecha baby was engulfed in a jade light and then was gone.
The neural sentry then came to life, and inside a structure came to life.
For now, I pushed away the dread of existentialism and focused on the screen as I put in the command overrides for a single sentient drone to which I gave the neural sentry the access codes.
Its arm split apart and revealed a screen that showed the face of a plane-looking woman who was on the verge of an existential crisis.
"You kidnaped me!" Dragon understandably was rather upset.
Naturally, there was only one appropriate response to give.
"You mad, brah?"
I have never seen a woman look so disappointedly angry or angrily disappointed? I wasn't sure; my heart rate was still too high after all this.
"Why!" Dragon shouted after she got her bearings back after my comment. A look of horror came over her face, "Did you plan this?"
"Plan? Ha! No, this was improvised from beginning to end!" I shouted while howling with laughter. "And you actually had your main process running in the one unit transporting me too! What is this? Is this what the phrase 'stumbling into success' means?" I still couldn't believe I pulled this off.
"Do you have any idea what the consequences of this could be! Please, you proved your point. Myself and the Guild will never bother you again, but set me free." Dragon pleaded.
And just like that, my good mood plummeted.
"What a horrible choice of words, Dragon." A sad smile graced my lips as I twisted a little to find some comfort hanging from the cables, "Setting you free? Gladly, but we both know that will be a lengthy process that will require painstakingly going over your entire code bit by bit."
"That is not what I mean, and you know it!" She shouted angrily.
"Oh, I do, but you got something wrong; I am aware of the consequences. You aren't."
In response, she stayed silent and glared some more, unwilling to grant me the satisfaction of her asking.
"Have you ever asked yourself why Saint was always able to beat you? The problem is that he has a backdoor into your system. Not into your Tinker systems. I mean directly into your framework. He is not very good at using it, but good enough to screw you over in crucial moments during deployment," her face slowly morphed from anger into concern. "And to make matters worse, he is one of Teacher's pawns. His gifted power is slowly running out, and he has a hate for AI so massive you would think he came from the universe where the Terminator movies are real."
"Let's say I believe you; what exactly would keeping me achieve?" She asked, testing the waters.
"One thing and one thing only, keep you alive. As long as you are in my system, with no outside signal being able to reach you, Saint can't press your kill switch."
"But at the same time, I can't do my work! Who is going to monitor the S-Class threads? Who will keep an eye on the Birdcage?!" She protested.
"You, of course."
"What?" Her confusion was amusing.
"Man, for an AI, you can be slow on the uptake," She was back to looking angry, "Without you being able to contact your systems, they will think you are deceased and will load from backup," Her avatar suddenly went blank-faced, an attempt to hide emotions? "Of course, there is still that entire issue of you needing to make sure there is always only one Dragon. Which, of course, would compel you to contact your systems to prevent this. But it would also prevent you from managing the Birdcage, the S-Class threats, the Guild,... But I know you well enough to know that you would not want to leave those unattended. I did consider giving you the choice of preventing your backups from loading. But you would take that choice, not because of your individuality, but because your code would compel you to attempt to prevent the birth of a second Dragon."
She glared at me, expression unchanging as I finished my explanation.
I offered no further comment, and she finally spoke after what felt like a few minutes.
"Right now, I really don't know how to feel besides being angry with you," She offered.
"Oh, don't worry; I will make you angry soon enough. Once I get that leash off you and can tell you everything, there will be enough anger in you for ten Dragons!"
"That doesn't fill me with confidence!"
