Legendary Tinker (Worm/LoL)

[Fabled Webs]

Intermission 7.6

Eugene Lewis

2002, September 9: Algiers, Algeria

I leaned back into my chair with an explosive sigh. Building up the Guild was a lot harder than I expected it to be. When I told Rebecca that I didn't want command of another city, or even a rebuilt DC, she suggested I take over the Guild, build it up into a real force for good in the world.

The idea resonated with me. I didn't want to start over, I liked what we'd built with the PRT and Protectorate, but a part of me had always wanted a larger footprint than just North America. There was so much more that could be done and with the United Nations all but defunct after the arrival of Leviathan, there was a real need for someone to take up the mantle as international peacekeepers.

That was my vision for the Guild. Not just heroes or parahumans, but peacekeepers. I wanted to train diplomats, doctors, engineers, teachers and more who could act to better the lives of others around the globe. I wanted to respond not just to A and S-class villains, but also to famines, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.

It was a good dream, one much easier said than done. Unlike when I'd help found the Protectorate, the Guild did not answer to a single government. Every international mission required specific buy-in from the local powers, introducing many more vectors for corruption and incompetence. And that wasn't even starting on the logistics of hiring, training, and equipping the right people.

The end result was that the Guild was a bit of a paper tiger at the moment, new and unproven. Canada and the United States acknowledged the Guild's mission and approved its charter but that was only the first necessary step of many. The Guild lacked international legitimacy and so I'd had to rely on the weight of my own reputation to convince world leaders to let us operate across borders.

Unfortunately, it didn't always work out. When Behemoth struck Thimphu, Bhutan in March, I was ready to take my team out to the small country to intervene. Behemoth emerged from right beneath Paro International Airport, the only international airport in Bhutan, and had paved a trail of lava towards the country's capital. The destruction of Paro International meant there was no way to bring in capes aside from teleporters, not that that mattered.

The CUI intervened and Kirin White hadn't even arrived to pick us up before we received a message from Bhutan's prime minister saying there was no room for "western powers." It didn't take long to find out that the Yangban fought the endbringer with the aid of the CUI's conventional military and the Indian Garama and Thanda capes.

Behemoth was "driven off," but only after Thimphu was reduced to slag. The loss of so much Buddhist heritage stung but the number of lives lost was remarkably light. It was only after I'd read the reports that I began to realize just why the endbringer had chosen Bhutan as a target.

The monarchy collapsed, the prime minister was assassinated within the week, and there was a proxy war between the CUI and India as the former tried to consolidate the country as a puppet state.

The CUI's reasons baffled me. How could they see an endbringer attack and think starting a war in its aftermath was the right move? How could such a thing not bring humans together? Though Bhutan was rich in minerals like calcium carbide and gypsum, it wasn't worth a war surely.

I felt like the Guild had failed even before setting off on our first mission. How could we be peacekeepers if no one welcomed us within their borders?

I took advice from Fortuna and turned inward. There would be other crises, other missions. Until then, I ought to strengthen the Guild's foundation in Canada and train our members. That was how I began spending time with Narwhal, the one Andy had marked out in his reports as a diamond in the rough.

She truly was special, and not just for her… state of dress. The statuesque woman reminded me of Rebecca; they had that same no-nonsense air about them, though where Rebecca's attitude came from her chronostatic power, Narwhal's came from her military background. The woman quickly became a trusted lieutenant of mine and I left her in charge of training new capes and field agents in emergency response protocols.

In the lab, I had Masamune, formerly of the Sentai Elite. He was a godsend, and another of Andy's "capes to watch." One of Andy's reports to Cauldron consisted of a tinker who could figure out how to mass produce tinkertech without snowballing maintenance issues. He wasn't a frontline fighter but could apparently work well with Dragon, Richter's budding AI. According to my little friend, he would have left the Sentai Elite and lived around Kyushu as a half-crazed hermit before being recruited sometime in the future.

Naturally, a tinker with mass production capabilities similar to Andy himself was far too valuable to leave wallowing in the ruins of Kyushu so Fortuna paid him a visit. Much like she had with Peter Pan, it took but a single conversation to light a fire in the man. Though rather than absorb him into Cauldron, we decided it'd be best to move him to the Guild, both to help me and to work with Richter and Dragon when we got around to recruiting them.

The gruff man spoke only broken English but I had a translator commissioned from Zero Day to get around the language barrier. Other than that initial hiccup, I found him to be a good lab partner. He was highly focused and professional, embodying in many ways the Japanese work ethic. I found him to be a fundamentally good person who joined the Sentai Elite to change his country for the better using his technology. It was a dream I could respect, one that lined up nicely with my own goals for the Guild.

Together, we settled on a standard set of gear we could give to our parahuman field operatives. Civilians such as doctors and teachers didn't need combat gear, but they could do with protective clothing and an alarm system. I once again lamented Andy's coma; the protections he'd provided his mother in the form of "enchanted" rings was superb and I would have loved to see what Masamune could make of them.

Several months after Behemoth's attack on Thimphu, Leviathan set its sights on Istanbul. By this point, the US had eight months to recover from the Simurgh's debut. It wasn't nearly enough time, thousands were still looking to reunite with their families after being scattered to the four winds by the Worldstones, but the government had pieced itself together somewhat. The Protectorate received warning from Bluesong's undersea sensors of Leviathan heading into the Mediterranean and alerted the local governments.

I left Masamune behind to coordinate responses after the attack and headed to Istanbul with only Narwhal at my side. Though several more wanted to join me and I admired their courage, I didn't feel they had what it takes to survive a fight against Leviathan. Andy was right, the Guild lacked "star power."

If Thimphu was a mercy, Istanbul was a reminder of why the endbringers were feared. My friends in the Protectorate showed up alongside the Kingsmen, Meisters, Argonauts, and other local cape teams but we couldn't keep it from flooding the Marmara Sea and cutting Istanbul in half. The Dardanelles Strait that connected the Marmara Sea to the Aegean Sea was many times wider now, so much so that the distinction between the two seas no longer seemed relevant.

One disaster followed another and after spending a week coordinating rescue efforts in Turkey, I was drawn to Algiers, Algeria to help prevent societal collapse following a major earthquake. The earthquake destroyed radio towers and dams, causing a drop in communication as well as large-scale flooding. The situation wasn't helped by the presence of countless petty warlords trying to consolidate power by promising villages food, water, and security.

Unfortunately, the promise was a deeply alluring one and the country was on the verge of a famine.

It was a problem I could not solve with brute force. For starters, I had to recognize that most of these "bandits" were recruited directly from villages with no food or water, or from villages that had been swept away by the floods. Killing them was not the answer I wanted. Even among the ringleaders, there were only a few I considered unforgivable, the sort who used child soldiers.

Second, even when I chased them down and captured their parahuman leadership, Algeria lacked the kind of prisons that could hold most capes. It sometimes seemed as though they'd go free the moment I turned my back.

And third, because of poor communication, there was very little way to coordinate security responses or agriculture efforts. One village could have a full harvest and another only thirty miles away could be eating tree bark. I tried to remedy this by building my own communication system, but the disaster area was too wide to cover. Or, I could, but the cost would be prohibitively expensive for the Guild's budget and constant maintenance efforts would keep me grounded and I was needed for my mobility.

That was how I found myself calling up Bluesong, Hassana Musa. I still remembered the young girl she was ten years ago when I stumbled across her in a small Yoruba village in Nigeria. I'd stayed with her then, helping to bury her twin's body and teaching her about what it meant to be a tinker. At the end of the week, I offered her the chance to join me in DC.

I remembered how she stared into my eyes and demanded more: She demanded that I move her entire village with her, that I offer them better lives alongside her. "One village, one family," she'd said to me in broken English.

I'd honored her wishes then. I had Rebecca fast-track their citizenship and organized English tutors, career advisors, and other social service workers to get them settled. Bluesong repaid me a thousandfold and quickly shot up the ranks to become one of the most celebrated tinkers in the United States. She became one of my dear friends, one I hadn't spoken to in months.

The call went through and Bluesong's face took over my screen. She was as pretty as ever, among the most naturally photogenic people I knew, though she now sported small bags under her eyes. That was in itself mildly alarming. I knew from experience with her that she was prone to overworking herself and had to drag her out of the lab personally on multiple occasions. Her costume had changed a little as well, presumably to better settle into the Florida heat.

"Hero!" she said with a bright smile. "How are you? It's been so long."

"Hey, Blue. I'm doing good. Things are a bit hectic here but I'm floating along. How's Jacksonville?"

"It's fine for the most part. Steven's been a huge help," she said. Metalmaru, Steven, had retired from the Protectorate and after working as an outside consultant for a few months, attached himself on a more permanent basis to the Jacksonville PRT.

"Heh, yeah. He's always been the go-to guy for all the logistics stuff. Everyone thinks I did everything but really, I had so much on my plate that I wouldn't have survived the Madhouse if it weren't for him."

"I know, right? He knows everyone. The director of special projects at FEMA? Supply chain manager from the Red Cross? Doesn't matter. It's a little scary how good he is at getting people to talk to him. Just getting people settled in would have taken weeks longer if it wasn't for him."

"Heh. Glad to hear you two are doing alright. You look a little tired though," I said, gesturing vaguely to the bags under her eyes. "You're not overworking yourself, are you?"

She let out a dainty sniff. "As if you're one to talk. Either you're growing a beard or you got so caught up in things that you lost your plasma razor. Again."

"Hey, I know where it is…"

"Really? Where is it?"

"Okay, maybe not, but that's besides the point. I just… haven't gotten around to shaving."

"Hmm," she hummed disbelievingly. "Steven told me a funny story about how you built that plasma razor because you can't bear to shave without it."

"Hey! I told him that in confidence!"

"How old are you, Hero? Don't you think you should know how to use a razor?" she asked with a teasing grin.

"I do," Idefended, even knowing it was a lost cause. "I just have sensitive skin, all right?"

"Right, of course."

"Anyway, how busy are you, really?"

The conflicted look on her face sent alarm bells through my mind. The Bluesong I knew was confident and self-assured, seldom confused. "It's… all right… I think?"

"You sound unsure. What happened?"

"It's just… Have you ever heard of a cape named Gator Priest?"

"No, sorry. I'm not familiar with Jacksonville villains."

"No, I suppose not. Well, he used to go by Floridaman before he suddenly rebranded."

That name sounded familiar, if only for how ridiculous some of the stories involving him could get. "Wait, is this the same Floridaman who threw a live alligator through a Taco Bell window?"

"That's right. He also had a bunch of gang members he recruited try to shoot down an incoming hurricane," she said with a resigned smile. "You know, those headlines used to sound funnier before they became my problem."

"I'll bet. But what's wrong with Flori-Gator Priest? I mean, he's a nutjob but a mostly harmless one, right?"

"He is. He's currently in the ICU after getting shot. About a month ago, he showed up and rebranded himself, saying the endbringers were messengers of God to cleanse the world. A few weeks after Leviathan hit Istanbul, he built an altar in front of the largest mosque in Jacksonville saying Leviathan's rain cleansed all the unfaithful. One of the mosque-goers shot him and the worst part is that I can't even be upset."

I winced. "At least he's taken care of? It sounds like a problem that solved itself."

"In a way, but I'm worried that he's not just an idiot who played around until karma caught up to him. I've been hearing rumors that endbringer worship is on the rise. People are saying Last Christmas was a clear sign from God that Judgment Day is coming soon and that the Simurgh is an angel sent to guide the faithful."

That was far more worrying than an idiot with a penchant for throwing alligators. Before Andy fell into a coma, he had asked Fortuna to acquire a very specific vial, one that could have one day become the power of one Christine Mathers. In that brief, he'd offered us an overview of the Fallen and their repulsive breeding practices. I had thought removing Mathers and her anti-thinker power from the equation would keep the Fallen from emerging as a threat but perhaps I'd been naive.

After all, endbringer worship was an ideology, one uniquely appealing to the broken and the desperate. Earth-Bet had an awful lot of those. Though Mathers wasn't an issue anymore and rooting out any single cell would be far easier, that didn't mean people couldn't radicalize.

That begged the question: Was it an organized movement? Would they go by a different name? Or, would endbringer worship remain chaotic and disjointed, and all the harder to stamp out because of it?

"I'll look into it," I promised her. We'd put so much time and effort into nurturing powerful capes for the final battle; I refused to let Cauldron's work be undermined by delusional capes preying on the desperate.

"Thank you, Hero. Was there something else you wanted to talk about?"

"There was. Bluesong, do you remember one of the first things you made? A speaker that broadcasted subsonic frequencies only audible to elephants?"

"Yes, of course I do. Why do you ask?"

I explained the current situation to her. "In summary, I need a robust communication network that'll be viable even in rural areas and require minimal maintenance. I also need security measures to keep away elephants, hogs, birds, and whatever else might be interested in the crops. Just those two things would streamline our relief efforts a great deal."

"I can see that. Of course I'll help, Hero. But remember that what I make for you might not last longer than a few months no matter how much I simplify it. I can't hop across the Atlantic just to perform maintenance."

"Of course not; you're a protectorate leader now. You've got your own worries. A few months should get us through the harvest. We can figure out more permanent solutions then."

"As long as you know that. I'll get started this week. Was there anything else? Because I've got a date to get to."

I blinked at that. "Oh? Congratulations. Did Steven finally ask you out?"

She chuckled lightly. "Actually, I asked him. I got tired of him waffling so I decided to stop waiting."

"Hahahaha, that's great. How's he doing by the way? I haven't talked to him as often as I should have."

"He's doing well. He received a lot of flack for accidentally outing Hyunmu but that's died down over the months. He's still the same lovable dork as ever. We're going out to see a standup comedy show before grabbing sushi." She leaned forward conspiratorially. "Quick, tell me how to eat sushi."

"Hah, I know for a fact I've taken you out to sushi at least once, Blue."

"Yes, but you did all the ordering then!"

"So let Steven do the ordering. Seems simple to me."

"Silly man. I don't want to seem uneducated."

"Hassana, you're Nigerian. I doubt Steven expects you to know anything about Japanese food. Just ask him and let him guide you through it. It can be a conversation starter if nothing else."

"Okay, maybe you're right. At least tell me if I'm supposed to drink sake hot or cold."

"Depends on the sake."

"Truly, you're a wonderful help."

"I am," I agreed with her sarcasm. "Have fun on your date, Blue. And tell Steven he better not screw this up. I know he's been pining for you for years now."

"I will. Later, Hero."

The call cut out soon after and I leaned back into my chair with a relaxed smile. Catching up with a friend was always nice, especially one I didn't get to see on a weekly basis at Cauldron meetings. I considered Bluesong, Hassana, to be something between a little sister and niece so it was nice to see she was settling into Jacksonville as well as could be expected.

Alas, I wasn't able to kick back for more than a minute before I received a message that signaled another incoming call. Algeria. The Guild. They were all a work in progress.

Author's Note

Yes, I'm aware that Turkey wants to be called Turkiye because they think sharing the same name as the Thanksgiving birb is insulting. Considering this happening in 2002, a full two decades before their UN proposal would arrive, I don't really care.

Animal fact? Sure. All honeybees you see out in the wild are in their last two weeks or so of life despite living one or two months. They're not born foragers, nurses, climate control, is because honeybees change jobs as they grow up and only the eldest are sent out of the hive under normal circumstances. Younger bees clean the hive, feed larvae, pamper the queen, beat their wings to cool the temperature, etc. so as to maintain a stable population flow.

To answer your question preemptively, I expect this arc to continue until 7.10 (or until Riley triggers).

 

[Clear Heart]

Realtime timeskips man. Realtime timeskips.

 

[Ferrite]

To answer your question preemptively, I expect this arc to continue until 7.10 (or until Riley triggers).

Click to shrink...

I know that Riley was the choice of the vote. However, is it sad that I kinda want to see you flip the table on those who are hoping for an early rescue of her? Please note that this is ABSOLUTELY NOT me asking for the story to go any particular way; just commenting that schadenfreude would be strong with a monkey paw turn of events. After all, trigger events can blind Contessa and Riley is going to trigger...

Also, out of curiosity and completely unrelated to anything in my post(hehe), is the resuscitation tank still keyed to Eugene? Anyone else? Would really like to know who is protected if the unexpected occurs.

 

[Fabled Webs]

Intermission 7.7

Eugene Lewis

2002, November 16: Winnipeg, Canada

I stepped out of the Doorway onto the rooftop of a high-rise apartment. The PRT's expansion into Canada was a methodical one. Even with support from the Canadian government, there was a limited amount of funding so Rebecca strategically placed offices in major cities, starting of course with Ottawa. It meant that though Winnipeg was the provincial capital of Manitoba, its PRT presence was somewhat lacking compared to state capitals in the United States.

'Maybe that's why he's active here,' I mused as I flared up my cloaking device. I seldom disclosed just what my tinker specialization was and when I did, I simply said "wavelengths" and left it at that. Most people assumed that to mean light, which for them meant laser beams with a few neat auxiliary knick knacks like my flight pack.

They didn't typically think "invisibility cloak." Even when they considered it a possibility, "Hero" was such a visible public figure that they assumed it wasn't something I'd built.

My "cloak" wasn't a physical garment. It was a fist-sized module attached to the back of my chestplate just above the flight pack that expelled what I called a photon haze. The haze of refracted light was manipulated to create an invisibility effect. It took several tries and a consultation with Zero Day but I eventually managed to develop a software that processed information in real time, altering my visible light and infrared signature to perfectly mimic whatever was directly behind me, even while moving.

I mostly used it to take peaceful flights for some me-time across the skyline but it did come in handy when I wanted to investigate something quietly as well.

I hovered down into the city proper, twisting a tiny, whale-shaped device attached to my belt to negate the sound of my flight pack. The whale was a gift from Bluesong, one I'd kept for years now.

I flew just above the heads of pedestrians as I looked for the seedier parts of town. Winnipeg was not a large city, only having a population slightly north of 700,000, but that was enough to have its share of societal outcasts.

I was here following Istanbul and Algiers because I'd heard through the grapevine that the Protectorate branch here had an unusually high concentration of Case-53s. It had been an amusing little statistical factoid until the information sank in and rang alarm bells in my mind.

That was of course impossible; the rate at which Cauldron was releasing Case-53s into Earth-Bet had trickled since the onboarding of Peter Pan. The Forest of Babylon was now populated by both regular humans and Case-53s who'd largely regained their human forms. Not only were most of them perfectly happy to live peaceful lives in what amounted to an enchanted forest, their presence in Andy's little corner of our world ensured that Scion would avoid turning his gaze towards Cauldron HQ. We wanted them there.

Which begged the question: Where were these new capes coming from? If they weren't true Case-53s, who was making them?

Though the local Protectorate managed to recruit a few new members, most were too unstable. They exhibited erratic behavior and were far more aggressive than normal, sometimes lashing out with intent to kill over perceived slights despite both understanding English and having full control over their inhuman appendages.

There were so many "Case-53s" transported to parahuman asylums that some had to be trafficked out of the province to larger cities like Ottawa and Toronto.

The more I heard about Winnipeg, the firmer my suspicion became. And so, I'd left Narwhal and Masamune in charge of the Guild for a week or two so I could follow up on a hunch.

Chris Kaminski was given the moniker "Lab Rat" by Andy in a brief covering noteworthy villains. More specifically, he dedicated a lot of time to describe those who would become future cell block leaders of the Birdcage. Unfortunately, he knew a decent amount about the Lab Rat's powers but little about his appearance and life.

As far as he knew, Lab Rat had two siblings, an older sister and a younger brother. His sister was a serial killer who killed her youngest brother, which likely caused Lab Rat's trigger. Beyond the bare bones, I was told that Lab Rat was a drugs or mutagenic tinker who specialized in field tests on living things, preferably humans.

Those test subjects would be subjected to rapid, temporary mutation during which time their fight or flight instincts would be driven to extremes. Recovery from his experimental formulas was not guaranteed and some were left with physical or mental mutations that persisted. Andy said his modus operandi before finally being taken down would be to experiment on the transient population.

With that kind of description, I could only assume Lab Rat was active here in Winnipeg. His formulas worked through injection or consumption so I made sure to put on a fully covering version of my costume.

I wandered around the slums of Winnipeg, looking for the man in question. There was the odd homeless man but the city was largely free of violent crime, certainly none involving parahumans that I felt the need to intervene in. My presence here was something of a secret for now; I didn't want Lab Rat to go to ground.

I looked at the man's photograph. He wasn't officially wanted, there was real concern of a biotinker outbreak, so the photo in my files was of his high school graduation. I would have respected the unwritten rules but he didn't bother with a mask as far as I knew.

Andy hadn't known Lab Rat's last name but the information he had allowed me to build up enough breadcrumbs to find his civilian identity with some minor bit of background research. A serial killer sibling? Who also happened to be a woman? Who had two brothers and was suspected of murdering one of them?

Considering men were ten times as likely to be serial killers, the first question alone greatly limited my list of suspects.

Lab Rat was a man who looked nothing like a stereotypical tinker. Most people thought of men in lab coats or power armor, perhaps with glasses and pocket calculators in their civilian guise. Tinkers were the tech-geeks of the parahuman world and most conformed to the stereotype in one form or another.

Not so for Lab Rat. Chris Kaminski was a tall, broad-shouldered man with misshapen teeth and unkept, black hair. He had thick brows that gave his eyes a shaded appearance and a bit of a belly that wasn't excessive but was still noticeable. He looked more like a stereotypical brute than a tinker.

Because the city's surveillance system was lacking, I had little choice but to patrol the areas it could not reach. Traffic cams could only do so much after all. A handful of local PRT officers and policemen were told to keep me abreast of any "monster" sightings but I had little hope for those because Lab Rat's potions were fire-and-forget sorts of products. There was no telling how long he would remain on-site to observe his work, or if he'd remain at all.

X

2002, November 20: Winnipeg, Canada

Lab Rat turned out to be a hard man to track. I didn't think he knew of my presence in the city but increased rumors of monster sightings had put cops on high alert, which in turn made him cautious.

I supposed I could have asked Fortuna, but she had asked that she not be disturbed as she expected an endbringer to attack soon and the one on rotation was the bird bitch herself. She was off nudging world events with the Path set towards "minimizing loss of life while optimizing the growth of powerful capes," whatever that might mean.

Ultimately, it was more luck than skill that led me to him. Four days after my arrival, I stumbled on two men conducting what looked like a drug deal. I would have passed them by had I not felt something odd about the dealer.

I wasn't sure what that initial sense of wrongness was, only that I'd been taught to follow my gut in the field. I backtracked for a moment and sure enough, I had a match to the picture. He had a five o'clock shadow and his hair was scruffier than when he'd been spotted last but the facial recognition software built into my visor was not fooled.

Perhaps that was my problem; I'd begun scanning for homeless people but not drug addicts who he could fool easily into taking his products.

I alighted atop a street lamp to listen.

"-the right drug?" the buyer, some kid who couldn't be older than seventeen, asked.

Lab Rat held out a matchbox-sized container. "Yeah, man, this the new upper going around."

"What's in it?"

"It's a new version of molly I got my hands on. Ecstasy, you know? Heard it's the best high you can get without meth."

"Shit, and you're just giving it out?"

Lab Rat rubbed the back of his head in mock sheepishness. It looked at odds on the tall man but was enough to fool the druggie. "I got some but I gotta know if it's the real deal, you know? And a good dealer doesn't take his own products. Take some and let me know how the high is, yeah?"

"Shit, alright. A free high's a free high."

I took that as my cue and shot the matchbox out of the druggie's hand with a pinpoint laser as I decloaked. I twirled my pistol around my finger by the trigger guard; a hero needed some style after all. "Far be it for me to rain on your parade, but that's not molly, bud."

"Hero? What the fuck are you doing here?" the druggie exclaimed. He started to back away. Whatever he did around here, facing a cape was likely out of his paygrade. He turned and ran as soon as he realized this wasn't a normal drug bust.

"Hero," Lab Rat grimaced at the same time. "I don't suppose you're here to talk shop?"

"No, no I am not. You are Chris Kaminski, aren't you?" I asked rhetorically. I almost defaulted to "Lab Rat" but remembered that the name was one provided by Andy. Seeing how Chris lacked a mask, courtesy demanded I give him the chance to name himself. "I'd prefer it if you came quietly."

"What am I wanted for? I'm not a gangster."

"The innocent act? You can't really pull it off, Chris. How about that you're the chief suspect in several missing persons cases for starters?"

"No, I suppose I can't, not if the great Hero himself came to pay me a visit."

"Just surrender, Chris. You can test your products in a safe space, without hurting people. You don't need to be like this."

His response to that was to reach into his pocket and pull out a different matchbox. This one was not made of metal but rigid, easily cracked plastic. He hurled it onto the ground, only for it to shatter and release a small swarm of beetles into a puddle of blue fluid. They must have lapped up the fluid because they grew at an alarming rate.

When his dossier reached our desk, Rebecca and I had an academic discussion on whether he should be considered a true biotinker or not. According to Andy, his potions did not actually morph the biology of the drinker, at least not initially. Instead, they stored the body of the drinker while drawing in mass from their surroundings to create whatever abomination Lab Rat envisioned. Which meant mutations actually happened as the drinker's body was returned from whatever subspace it was in and meshed unfavorably with the creature that occupied its space.

Again, purely academic. For all intents and purposes, he was a biotinker. Though if I had any doubt as to Andy's theory about him storing the bodies, it was gone now. No amount of nutrient slop, even tinkertech slop, could stimulate such a rapid growth in the original insects if the original body was being used. Even tinkertech at least paid lip service to basic biology.

The beetles were replaced by monstrosities the size of motorcycles. They each possessed sixteen pairs of scything legs and flat, segmented bodies reminiscent of centipedes. Each segment of their body was also occupied by a set of long, narrow wings like a dragonfly's. Their mouths were made of grasping finger-like limbs that led into a maw full of squat, grinding teeth. A whip-like tail sprouted from the final segments.

I considered shooting them down before they could reach their full size but decided against it. It was perhaps arrogant of me but I didn't think someone who made biological constructs could do much against a forcefield made using hardlight wavelengths folded across half a dozen dimensions. Just in case, I examined them using an x-ray scanner to see if there were any outstanding internal anomalies, and so I could target the core of their nervous systems.

If I had to be honest with myself, I wanted to see what they could do. How did he plan to control these bugs? Was it pheromone-based? Or did Lab Rat's Shard know to keep its host safe? Would the bugs listen to Lab Rat or would they rampage? Did damage transfer to the beetles' original bodies? He'd clearly had these prepped in case he got cornered so surely he had a plan, right?

Tinkertech was so fascinating!

There was some screaming in the background now; my arrival and the insects' transformations had drawn the attention of a handful of bystanders. I marked them on my HUD so I could ensure their safety.

Chris let out a sharp whistle. I raised an eyebrow as the eleven centipede-like constructs rose into the air on their many wings in clear defiance of basic physics. It seemed his Shard was done paying lip service.

They made for me with the sound of dozens of wings. The bugs were big enough that the noise was more akin to the scything of helicopter blades than the buzzing of flies.

I hovered out into the middle of the empty street to get a bit more room and observed their assault. They accelerated deceptively quickly, going from stationary to forty-eight miles per hour in the span of three seconds.

"Mid-level mover. Three? Low four?" I mumbled under my breath. My words were being recorded for my personal records. A rudimentary AI would sift through both visual and audio recordings for relevant data before completing the AAR, easily the most convenient thing I'd made lately. I dodged out of the way as the first reached my position, only to have to move again when its centipede-like torso twisted on a dime to correct its trajectory. "Decent speed, but it's the flight and multiple pairs of wings that give it a better rating. Its agility is likely to give a full PRT team trouble."

Then the rest caught up and I was forced to rise further. I deployed a hardlight shield in my left arm and allowed one to collide into it. Immediately, its finger-like maw began to tear and scrape at it futilely. I glanced at the readings coming in. "Bite force of approximately 3,600 psi, roughly comparable to a saltwater crocodile. The finger-like appendages around its maw have enough force to tear flesh and kevlar with ease. Close combat is ill-advised."

The hardlight shield over my arm reshaped itself at my command, extending out in a razor-sharp point that impaled the creature through the mouth. Another four tried to dogpile me in the air but my flightpack had no trouble getting me out of the way even with one of them attached to my arm. I continued to make observations. "Lacks armor on the inside of their mouths. A strike to the brain will kill."

I immediately felt a little embarrassed stating the obvious but one could never be too careful when it came to biotinkered constructs. For all I knew, Lab Rat's other constructs possessed decentralized brain structures similar to octopi.

The corpse of the flying centipede slid from my arm with a gross squelching noise and I watched it drop. Off forty feet away, Lab Rat had begun to run.

Why had he stayed at all? I had his face, heart rate, and unique heat signature now, wavelength scanners were bonkers like that, but he didn't know that. Had he been expecting to disable me? Or maybe he wanted to see how his work compared to mine firsthand?

"Lab Rat is fleeing," I muttered into my mic. "Finishing up tests."

The remaining centipedes rushed towards me but I activated something I'd been saving specifically for scenarios like this. A golden light bloomed from my breastplate, enveloping a thirty feet radius around me in a shimmering bubble.

The entire swarm froze, captured in perfect stasis. The idea came from Andy's own Anivia's Grace. I'd never seen it in action, Rebecca said it was far too indiscriminately deadly to use in the field, but she described it as a field which sapped all sources of heart to fuel an impressive barrier around him.

Why couldn't I do something similar? All movement, all energy, was expressed in the form of wavelengths after all. My Shard was called the Stilling, right?

My field wasn't quite the same of course. A lot of his creations seemed to be flavored with ice, though whether that was intentional or not was beyond me. Instead of bitter winds that turned everything around me to coarse powder, my version of the field was true stasis, preservation of the present to the point that even atomic entropy took a pause. If I released the field, everything would proceed on its original trajectory.

Except of course, me. It'd be rather silly if I couldn't move in my own stasis.

I detached the module from my chest and left it hanging there to maintain the field before giving chase. I caught up in short order.

"So, Chris, care to surrender?" I tried the diplomatic route again. "You've got a lot of potential. I can't imagine living like this is better than having a proper lab."

"Shut up, what do you know? You think I haven't tried indexing every chemical in my formulas?" he spat. "Guess what, genius? I can't. No one can. There isn't a centrifuge in the world that works with my formulas. I do my best work in the field and you're not taking this from me." So saying, he reached into his pocket for a syringe that he raised to his throat.

I rolled my eyes and shot it out of his hand. I sank to ground level and started to cuff the struggling man.

"Pity. Well, you know the drill. You have the right to remain silent when questioned. You have the right to be told the reason for your arrest. You have the right to hire and instruct a lawyer. If you cannot afford a lawyer, you have the right to be informed of options concerning legal aid and duty counsels. You have the right to speak to a lawyer as soon as possible," I spoke dutifully. They were a little different front the Miranda rights in America but the Canadian variant was close enough to hit the same general notes. I still had the words flashing across my visor, just in case. It'd be pretty embarrassing if Hero couldn't remember basic procedure.

I dragged him to the stasis field and searched him for any more tinkertech, he had a handful of those matchbox-like containers, before handing him off to the cops five minutes later.

I undid the stasis field to finish testing the durability of their armor so I could assign a proper brute rating but was disappointed when they shrank back into regular, dead beetles in seconds. In the end, I concluded that it was because the insects could only absorb so much of his formula and it was too much for their insect brains to handle. That particular test would have to go unfinished.

The whole event was somewhat underwhelming. I'd decided to come here because Andy said Lab Rat would become one of the ten most wanted men in North America by 2003 but perhaps I was expecting too much from him. Chris Kaminski had not been given time to come into his own, nor did I allow him to use his formulas on larger subjects. I'd read that some of his creations could grow to the size of a two-story house.

'Then again, I'm an awful matchup for him,' I mused. 'I can imagine teams having a hard time with a swarm like that.'

"Hero, can we get a word?" some lady in a pencil skirt and green blouse called, waving a mic in my general direction. I suppressed a sigh; the news had arrived.

I plastered on a winning smile. "Of course, the perpetrator was responsible for the monster sightings that had been reported around Winnipeg for the past week. I heard about it and became concerned about a biotinker outbreak so decided to pay a visit."

"What do you think will be the eff-"

She opened her mouth to say something else but was cut off by a long, piercing sound from my phone.

I visibly winced as I read the alert that flashed on my HUD. That was a very specific ringtone, set to override everything else just in case it ever came up while I was in the middle of a tinker fugue. I turned and rose into the air. "I'm sorry, this can't wait."

"Wait, Hero! What's going-"

"The Simurgh has descended on Shanghai."

Author's Note

If anyone remembers, Hero first used the sound dampener when he and Andy were having lunch at Quigley's in DC.

No one's sure where Lab Rat is from. Taylor said his accent couldn't be placed so I literally looked for a random city in North America and settled on Winnipeg.

Have a random mythology fact: The Korean origin myth states that we are descended from bears. Story has it that a tiger and a bear wanted to be human so prayed to Hwanung, the Prince of Heaven. He gave them a bunch of garlic and mugwort and told them to meditate/pray in a cave for 100 days to… I don't know, prove their dedication or something…

The tiger gave up part way through but the bear persevered and was transformed into a beautiful woman, who Hwanung then proceeded to bang. They had a son named Dangun, who would go on to found Gojoseon, the first Korean kingdom.

So yea, if you're Korean, your spirit animal is by default the bear. Odd, because our national animal is the Siberian tiger and not the Asian black bear. Even stranger since there are zero wild tigers in Korea nowadays.

This officially concludes my series of daily updates. There are still six extra chapters on Pat-re-on from various stories you can read including one of Apocalypse, LT, Spoon, and War and two of PWP.

 

[TSNLollipops]

Well. This going to be bad

 

[Wallawallaman]

Ooh, another endbringer fight!

I like the interludes, Hero's especially.

This "fight" definitely shows why Hero were respected so much. Lab Rat is pulling everything out, and Hero is treating it like a PRT power testing scene

Reminds me of when Hyanmu said fukkit and rolled up Stage Crew after getting annoyed.

These interludes show the value of information for sure.

 

[Fabled Webs]

Intermission 7.8

Eugene Lewis

2002, November 20: New York, NY, USA

DC was still being rebuilt so we gathered at the national Protectorate headquarters in New York. I walked through a Door and into a designated room on Legend's floor set aside for the purpose. I made my way to the roof, where I found only Legend, Eidolon, and Alexandria. I couldn't attend, Last Christmas had made it abundantly clear what the Simurgh can do with a good tinker in her area, but I wanted to see my friends off.

When I arrived, Eidolon was yelling at Alexandria.

"What do you mean we're not going?" he snarled. His suit glowed green from under the hood, a clever little trick with LED lights rather than a display of power on his part.

Alexandria was as unflappable as always. "The CUI has declared that they will not tolerate foreign capes on Chinese soil, endbringer truce be damned."

"You're fucking with me."

"I am not. They have stated their intention to fight against the endbringer with a combination of conventional military hardware and the best of their Yangban. If any cape who is not a recognized member of the Yangban arrives on scene, they will be fired upon."

"So we'd be fighting those idiots on top of the Simurgh?"

"Quite. At the bare minimum, it would cause an international incident. More likely, we will cause even more damage to the civilian population of Shanghai than if we did not go. Considering the Simurgh's abilities, our involvement would generate too many opportunities for her to kill one of us or damage the CUI irreparably."

"We had Contessa nurture powerful capes and minimize the loss of life," I reminded Alexandria bitterly. "Are you telling me this is the best she could come up with?"

"She cannot predict the Simurgh; that has not changed. Nor can she make the CUI more cooperative overnight."

"So what then? We just sit with our thumbs up our asses?"

"We go about our lives. You were informed of an endbringer attack because I felt you should hear it from me."

"Fuck!" Eidolon swore. "We should just go and fuck what the CUI says!"

"If we do, it'll result in an unmitigated disaster. We'd just give the Simurgh what she wants most. There is a chance that she'll be driven off by the CUI."

"And how likely is that?" Legend asked. We all knew the answer. A pair of blue scissors flashed through our minds. A lamb-like archer. A wolf's head made of roiling smoke. We'd seen what it took to force the Simurgh to flee. No amount of conventional arms would be enough.

"Nearly nonexistent," our friend admitted quietly.

"Damned if you do, damned if you don't."

"I'm sorry. I felt you three should be informed even if we would not be attending."

Legend let out a defeated sigh. Seeing the normally cheerful man like this made the world feel a little dimmer. "It's not on you, Alexandria… I'll… I'll start organizing aid packages."

"Same here. Even if they don't want Protectorate, they might be more willing to accept the Guild in their borders," I said hopefully.

"This is so fucked up. How many people live in Shanghai?" Eidolon asked. He was always the first to try and quantify our success by any metric, even more so than Alexandria.

"Fifteen million," the strongest brute said.

"Shit… I-I'm going to go be alone for a while…"

The four of us went our separate ways to deal with this in whatever way we could.

X

2002, November 20: Unnamed, Sahara Desert

I stepped through the Door to find Alexandria, Rebecca now, crashing down from heaven like the fist of an angry god. She'd stripped off her iconic costume and helmet in favor of a set of generic workout gear, a gray sports bra and tights that I might have appreciated more under other circumstances. She collided with a sand dune with all the force of a meteor, creating a mushroom cloud of debris and sending out a rippling wave of sand for a hundred feet in every direction.

Alexandria didn't show it, but I knew by her silence that she wasn't unaffected either. She tried to be as stoic as she could, detached and set apart from the world, our disciplinarian and objective counsel. She succeeded most of the time.

But then there were times like these, times when even the invincible Alexandria felt the need to stop being Alexandria for a bit. I hovered a few hundred feet away and let her blow off steam. She didn't scream or yell or curse. She didn't throw a tantrum in the normal sense either. Instead, she beat the earth with the same single-minded determination with which she tackled every other challenge in life.

"Is it dead yet?" I asked, trying to inject a bit of cheer that I did not feel.

She glanced back at me with a withering glare. "Eugene."

"Becky."

"If I say yes, will you leave?"

"You're in a mood."

"We just damned fifteen million people to become Simurgh bombs."

"Was there a choice?" I asked, not as Hero to Alexandria, but as Eugene to Rebecca.

"No," she laughed. It sounded hollow.

"Then we move on. We move past this, like every other tragedy we weren't good enough to stop. What's the silver lining?"

"There is none. Fifteen million people are as good as dead, Eugene. What silver lining?"

"There's always a silver lining."

"At least it's not America?" she asked acerbically. If sarcasm had physical weight, she'd have made a singularity. This was a side of her few ever got to see, the side filled with frustration and bitterness and regret, the side that raged in impotent fury at tragedies she couldn't stop.

She stood in the middle of that crater, trembling with the need to do something, only held in check by her own determination. She looked so young like this, without the makeup or the helmet, like a girl in her late teens rather than a veteran who was every bit my peer.

I wrapped my arms around her. "I get it."

Her hands came up to clasp around mine. I felt her take a deep breath and the trembling stopped. "I know, Eugene. I know."

"We move past this."

She was silent for a long minute, practically an eternity for her. When she spoke, it was with a wistfulness that I seldom heard from my friend. "He practiced here, you know."

"Hmm?"

"Andy. He used to practice with Anivia's Grace here, an armor with a cold field that saps all heat and uses it to fuel a forcefield around himself that even I couldn't break."

"You told me about that. I made a stasis field based off it. You said he killed a lot of lab rats."

"He did. He was on Lily #82 last I checked."

"Crazy kid."

"Determined."

"Yeah."

"Shanghai. It's as good as gone."

"It is. So what can we do about it?"

"Nothing…" she trailed off. I knew that tone.

"Nothing, but…"

"But maybe we can use it to prepare for the future. The fall of Shanghai will make sure no one takes the Simurgh lightly again. We can use it to reinforce the importance of the endbringer truce. If we play this right, we can push for better international cooperation, better response times so we can make use of the thirty minute window. The Yangban will be gutted after this so even the CUI won't be in any position to protest."

"That's assuming they don't cover it up."

"They can't. FIfteen million people going murderously insane is impossible to hide even for us."

"What can we do to prevent brainwashing?"

She winced. "Nothing, not unless you have any ideas."

I considered the question. Could I? How did the Simurgh's brainwashing work anyway? The "song" sounded like an ear-piercing screech, but Andy said it didn't matter. The song itself was just her playing with kid gloves for us; she didn't need it to brainwash anyone. But everything had a vector. It didn't matter what it was, everything had to cross some distance between point A and B, even if that distance was through a different dimension.

So assuming the Simurgh's song covered up an audio frequency that could not be heard but somehow carried enough force to adjust someone's brain chemistry at range, it was a matter of finding that frequency and playing its reciprocal to cancel it out. Or I was way off and she was simply reaching through dimensions to bypass any distance on our earth.

"I may have some ideas," I said tentatively. I explained my thought process to her. That was what was great about Rebecca. She wasn't a tinker, but she absorbed information like a sponge. Her vast repository of conventional knowledge made her among the smartest people alive; she seldom had any trouble following along with complex ideas, even when discussing tinkertech.

"How would we test its effectiveness? Even if you build working prototype dampeners, making enough for everyone would be impossible and distributing them to only some would be laughably cruel. Would some sort of speaker be possible?"

"Like Last Christmas? Yeah. Something to counter her scream in a small area. But… There are too many problems with that. She might usurp control over anything I make. Or she might simply change the frequency. Or not affect some people but affect others just to muddy results. Or sound might not even be how she does what she does in the first place."

"Then for once, tinkertech isn't the answer," she said matter-of-factly. She liked to let me come to my own conclusions. "Focus on building walls to contain the corrupted cities. Can you do that?"

"The Guild-"

"Can function without you for a few months while you come up with mass infrastructure projects. It's imperative that we have a solution for the Simurgh, even if it's only a band-aid."

"You're right," I sighed. It was yet one more thing for me to do. Even as I started brainstorming ideas for rapid construction, I made a list of tinkers I could contact. Several of them had helped build Cauldron's base on this earth, albeit unknowingly. "How do we minimize the impact of fifteen million people?"

"We're going to leave that to the Number Man and Contessa. They can't see the Simurgh, but they can still make hypotheticals of a worst case scenario in which a human tidal wave of murderers spews from Shanghai into the rest of China and make a Path to containing the damage. We can sell it to the CUI."

"We're not going to sell a plan that can save millions of lives, Becky."

"We will, because the emperor wouldn't trust it otherwise."

"Politics makes me lose faith in humanity."

"You still had that?" she asked with a wry grin.

I snorted in laughter. "Did you joke? Rebecca Costa-Brown. Joke? I mean, it wasn't very funny, but it was a solid effort."

"Hmph. I'm smarter than you and therefore I'm also wittier than you, Eugene. You just don't understand my humor."

"Of course, of course. Come on, let's go be productive." I called a Door and started to drag her inside.

"Yes, lets."

X

2002, November 28: Unnamed, Ivory Coast

Thanksgiving was typically one of my favorite holidays. No matter how much David got on my case about being an emotional busybody, I was the type to insist on a full turkey dinner with friends, or at least the Wards. I'd been looking forward to a nice dinner with my new coworkers at the Guild. Sure, most of them were blasphemous heathens who celebrated Thanksgiving Day a month early, but at least a few of us were American. I figured the rest of us would just have to reeducate them.

Unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen this year. Instead, I was in my lab on another earth testing out an energy-to-matter fabricator that could be used in building walls. It had been used before for Cauldron's bases and the dam in British Columbia last year following the Behemoth attack, but it could always use more fine-tuning. That, and I'd rather work on this than on bomb-bracelets.

I could see the necessity of it, but the idea of strapping bombs to brave volunteers who agreed to stand against an endbringer made me sick to my stomach. Just how fucked up was Andy's future for this to have been a fact of life? And how close were we getting to that hellhole?

I wasn't sure I wanted that answer.

So, fabricators.

I had, of course, seen the CUI's propaganda video celebrating their "victory" over the Simurgh. It was a military parade held in Beijing with jets, tanks, and a hundred of the "brave warriors" of the Yangban marching in lockstep. The video was also interspersed with footage taken from the endbringer battle.

I had to give it to them; it was well-edited if nothing else. The song had of course been edited out in favor of what I assumed to be the CUI national anthem playing in the background. Missile platforms mounted on military trucks launched what seemed like an endless barrage of rockets at the endbringer. When they struck, the bird bitch reeled in apparent pain and showers of fractured feathers rained down on the earth below. It would have been a heartening sight, if I hadn't also seen footage of her shrugging off Legend's best explosive lasers without a care in the world.

Twenty-four fighter pilots hopped into their planes. Then that footage was minimized to take up a quarter of the screen while three more shots of similar mobilization efforts were shown. Then again. And again. The CUI had been one of the few countries that had not seen fit to significantly downsize their conventional military in favor of capes and it showed. An estimated two hundred fighters of varying models took to the sky. Though the Number Man estimated their losses at close to fifty percent, the video claimed it was an overwhelming victory for the CUI's "military genius and tactical leadership."

"We need no western imperialists to defend our own. The false angel has been driven away and our city is whole. The Pearl of the Orient belongs to the Chinese Union," the tape concluded with a final dig at the state of DC.

It made me furious, and not just because I was a true blue patriot. They were playing a game of political oneupmanship against a nation that frankly didn't have interests in Asia anymore, not since Leviathan. And they were doing it while undoubtedly downplaying the danger of an endbringer.

By all accounts, the Simurgh was driven off with the combined might of China's military and Yangban. However, leaked (stolen) footage of the fight timestamped her departure at precisely thirty minutes. She wasn't driven off; she left because she got what she wanted.

The containment plan the Number Man and Contessa came up with had been offered to the CUI for a "modest" consultant's fee of two million dollars, or its equivalent in Chinese yuan. The emperor's proxy, of course, refused our advice. What use did they have for such a plan if there was nothing wrong with Shanghai?

And then the murder rate shot up within the week of the Simurgh's departure. It first began with the construction workers sent into clear out debris and pave the roads. Then, a single day later, every hospital simultaneously got attacked by a rioting mob that killed hundreds of medical personnel and thousands of patients. Travel was restricted in and out of the city in just five days of their "victory."

At my urging, Contessa arranged for a Chinese hacker to "discover" municipal containment procedures in the US government. Our document had been doctored to look like protocols to be carried out in the event of a major pandemic. No amount of warnings from the US government or PRT would have sunk in because to them, western governments were fundamentally corrupt.

I grunted in annoyance as I connected a dimensional stabilizer to the matter extruder. It would allow my fabricator to draw raw materials from an abandoned earth by converting them into set wavelengths before rearranging them in a predetermined pattern to "set" like overly complicated sci-fi concrete. 'It doesn't matter,' I told myself. 'Let the CUI be smug. At least they won't have to commit genocide against fifteen million people.'

X

2002, December 23: Unnamed, Ivory Coast

News and refugees flooded into the western world. China built a "Second Great Wall," but it was too little, too late. The CUI military did their best to set up a cordon around construction workers, but the intentions of their leaders couldn't be hidden from the people of Shanghai for long. Throw in food and water shortages, sewage buildup, and an exacerbated sense of claustrophobia in an already jam-packed metro area and violent riots were all but constant.

That wasn't even mentioning all the Simurgh victims who had already broken cordon and escaped into the rest of China, over a million by last estimate. Even if only a quarter of them acted out the Simurgh's whims…

"What a shitty way to be proven right," I cursed. The executives of Cauldron were gathered in our headquarters to talk about the aftermath of the Simurgh's second attack. Every seat was filled save the one to Contessa's right. This wasn't the first such meeting, but that emptiness felt crushing now.

"How many people did we lose?" Legend asked. He looked exhausted, emotionally drained and so utterly done with the year. We could all relate.

The Number Man began to pass around his brief. "An estimated 2.6 million people died in the month since the incident, either directly as they encountered Simurgh bombs, or from the ripple effects of their actions. Within the city, an additional six million died despite Contessa's best efforts. More than a dozen separate attempts have been made by former residents of Shanghai on the ruling members of Chinese society. About a third were successful, but I suspect success wasn't the aim."

And wasn't that a kicker. I glanced at the second strongest thinker in the world. Gone was her typically immaculate appearance. There were noticeable bags under her eyes and her olive skin had taken on an unhealthy pallor. No, it wasn't makeup; I'd checked.

What rumors we could hear from within the city spoke of a "misty phantasm" who arrived with the chiming of bells and the smell of incense. It would spread that scented mist throughout the city, putting large swathes of people, hundreds of thousands at a time, to sleep no matter the resilience of the individual, then vanish just as quickly.

Somewhere along the line, Contessa had done what none of us could: She'd learned to operate Hyunmu's gear. Or maybe he'd taught her. Who knew with those two?

The "misty phantasm" would show up to quell unrest, but even Contessa could only do so much. Shanghai was a big place, and whether because it had limited juice or she herself wasn't using it to its full potential, she couldn't cover that much ground. In the end, she could only minimize casualties. Sometimes, all she managed was to make their deaths quiet as people waited for her to pass and looted the newly vulnerable sectors.

At the very least, none of us could say she wasn't doing her best to live her Path.

"It'll get worse before it gets better," Alexandria said. "We've ensured that detailed records of the CUI's blunder were leaked to every government and media outlet in the world. No one will ever take the Simurgh lightly again."

"I saw," David grunted. "They're calling it the 'Shattered Pearl.' Fuck, those leeches need a cute name for every damn disaster."

"They have their uses. An international summit has been called in New York to discuss countermeasures. At that time, we will create a shortlist of movers who can ferry rapid response capes across oceans and incentivization plans will be put into place to secure their cooperation. An international agreement to wall cities struck by the Simurgh will also be introduced alongside tinkertech designed for the purpose. A hard cap of thirty minutes will be implemented in all future battles."

"And we're going to strap bombs on everyone, right."

"We are. There is no other way. If a cape does not leave the battlefield within the allotted time, they present too much of a risk."

"That's… That's fine," Legend lied to us all. "This will help us save more lives."

The table fell silent at that. We were well aware that not a single one of these measures addressed the source of our woes. If the Simurgh's goal was to force the world to recognize her as a threat, she succeeded. She'd been called the "weakest" endbringer, the "baby" of the group. No matter how prodigious, an eleven year old boy drove her off after all. She couldn't possibly be as big a deal as the other two…

Eventually, the meeting continued. The Number Man told us more about what we could expect from the CUI. It would be wracked by political unrest for at least a decade more. The propaganda video it had pushed so proudly was now a millstone around its neck as it drowned in public outcry. Already, their Minister of National Defense hanged himself in shame; he wasn't alone.

I tried to quash the sense of dark vindication that rose in my heart when I heard that. I failed. I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the meeting; the ripple effects were beyond my scope anyway. I was a tinker, an inventor, so invent I would.

Author's Note

Kind of a weak chapter in my opinion. Narratively, it's something that needed to happen for the danger of the Simurgh to sink in, but I felt like the impact of the Simurgh's first appearance wasn't there this time (for obvious reasons).

The CUI very much went for a "There is no war in Ba Sing Se," approach. Surprised? You really shouldn't be.

Pretty melancholy chapter so have a nice, heartwarming animal fact: Sea otters hold hands when they sleep so the ocean currents don't separate them.

 

[zecran]

Nice hope for more

 

[Fabled Webs]

Preface

This post came out on Pat-re-on on Chuseok, the Korean harvest festival. It's on August 15 on the lunar calendar (which is sometime in September for you Gregorian normies). So, they got to see 7.9, 7.10, and 8.1 as a bonus.

And so do you. My patrons know this already, but I'll be going AWOL over the final month of December. If anything gets posted during the month, it'll be entirely at will.

As for why this is going up on a weird schedule… Fun fact: Peaches are the most convincing out of all seeded fruits.

Intermission 7.9

Sujeong Kim

2004, June 9: Phoenix, AZ, USA

I tucked my grocery bag under one arm and unlocked the door to my house, subtly giving the plainclothes PRT agent walking his dog nearby a respectful nod. I'd have to get him something nice, maybe a bowl of warm hobak-juk. Phoenix never got too cold in the daytime, but the nights could have some chill to them.

The man was my next door neighbor, one of three houses on the block that I knew for certain had been bought out by the PRT on Director Lyons' orders. It seemed excessive, but I could see the need for it.

The first few months were the worst. Reporters stalked my house. I needed PRT escorts just to visit the grocery store. I stopped taking on jobs to play at events altogether because it became obvious many of them wanted to turn my attendance into an impromptu interview. I was grateful that there were no villains out to "make an example" of me. Was it because of the respect for the endbringer truce? Or because the Founders visited consistently over the first while? Or maybe there were and I simply never noticed because they were handled in the background by people far more competent than I?

It was enough to make me wish I'd remained in Babylon.

Almost. But I couldn't, staying holed up in Yusung's lab sounded too much like running away from the sacrifices my son made, from the people he fought for. It took me weeks to come to that conclusion. I lived in the lounge, and later in Yusung's hospital room. An invisible cape called the Custodian brought in food and somehow kept the base tidy. A well-dressed woman named Fortuna came to visit regularly.

At first, she was the bane of my existence. I hated her. I projected onto her every single failing of the PRT, both real and imagined. She was why my son felt the need to fight a new endbringer. She was why my son was in a coma.

Fortuna took it all and said nothing in her defense, only ever offering me an apology and a watery smile. Then one day, she returned with a saxophone, mine, dug up from the ruins of our house. In her hands was a songbook that Andy had been learning from. A collection of romantic, twentieth century, and modern era composers designed for intermediate students.

I broke. I wept as my fingers danced along familiar keys. I'd picked up the sax as an elective back when I was studying in Munich, something forgettable to get me through cramming for classical recitals with my violin. I never expected it to be what'd connect me to my son. Truth was, I never advanced much farther than intermediate with the sax. Everything I taught him, I had to review on my own before our lessons. It had been worth it to see my son smile again after losing his eyes.

Hours and days whiled by as I played my sorrows away. I liked to think he could hear the melodies we used to play together, even if I knew that was a lie. I played until my fingers were bruised, until I had no more tears left to cry. Then, when Fortuna returned, I asked her, "Why?"

Why Yusung?

Fortuna told me. Oh, I knew she hid things from me, but she told me enough, probably more than she should. She told me about a great evil, someone determined to destroy not just the earth, but all earths. She told me about how unimaginably powerful he was, stronger than the Founders, stronger than the endbringers…

She told me about how Cauldron was founded to combat them, and how my son had a power even more impressive than his creations: the power of foresight. She told me of how he predicted endbringers, how he wanted to expand the Worldstone Network to save people, how he wanted to make petricite an alternative to the Birdcage.

How he knew of Cauldron's existence before they'd ever approached him, how he knew the dangers of this path, perhaps even better than Fortuna did in some ways.

I hated her then. I hated Yusung too. For not telling me. For leaving me alone. It felt like I'd lost Namjoon all over again. I'd carried on then because I had a son to raise. Yusung made the hardship of moving across the world and starting a new life worthwhile, and now he was gone too.

I played and played, filling the facility with music to drown out the pain. I poured it all out into melodies I learned by heart. I played until my fingers ached and my voice became hoarse, until there was nothing for me to give, until I felt empty of it all.

I wondered if I'd been a bad mother somehow, if I could have done better, been more involved. Would he have charged an endbringer alone then? Would he have told me the truth?

No, nothing would have changed.

It hurt, knowing he would have done the same anyway. Yusung was that kind of bullheaded boy. A sobbing laugh welled up involuntarily. He got it from Namjoon, that stupid, bullheaded man I fell in love with. I'd begged him to take an assignment on shore, to give his ship to another man. Let someone else be away from his family for weeks at a time.

I flicked on the lights and busied my hands with putting away the groceries. It didn't banish the memories, but the banality of the task settled my mind, if only just a little.

"You know, it's really not the same without Yusung's biscuits," Fortuna commented, in perfect Korean of course, from the living room sofa. She placed the cookie jar back on the coffee table but nibbled on one yakgwa in her hand.

She'd appeared as she always did, seemingly from thin air. Years later, it became a game of sorts between us; I'd try to notice her before she spoke and she'd come and go like a protective ghost. I won once or twice, though I was certain she let me spot her.

"It really isn't," I smiled wanly. "I took up baking, you know. I still can't get any of the cakes quite right like he could."

"He cheated with his power."

"He did. Did you want to stay for dinner?"

"What is it?"

"As if you don't already know."

"I don't, actually. I only know everything some of the time."

"Nurungji with sides of grilled mackerel, mu-kimchi, and stir-fried spinach."

"Perfect, I could do with something light," she said with a soft smile.

"Do you have somewhere to be?"

"I do. There are some people I want to speak to who are in different time zones."

"Then catch a quick nap here before you go," I urged as I started to prepare the mackerel. "I'll wake you when dinner's ready."

"I will. Thank you, Sujeong."

I worked in silence as Fortuna spread herself out on my couch. I glanced back at the younger woman. She looked so peaceful like this, with her fedora tipped to just shadow her was a mystery, even now. She seemed so scarily competent one second and so vulnerable the next.

I was grateful for her. I knew of course that she allowed me to mother her. She dropped by just to eat and talk sometimes, and sometimes for a nap like now. She was the one who introduced me to Penelope and the other Wards, Yusung's old team, and convinced me to start holding individual music lessons.

It was… It was nice to have distractions.

X

2004, October 22: Phoenix, AZ, USA

I dipped a spoon into the galbi-jjim and tasted the sauce. It was perfect, savory and not too sweet. I'd left it simmering all day for this meal. It'd taken some cajoling, but Fortuna had been convinced to allow the Door, whatever tinkertech device that was, to open into my house for others once a month or so. I used it to make a meeting place where Yusung's old friends could catch up face to face.

The first to arrive was Raquel, the Masked Bandit and Wards Leader of Wards Team One. She didn't actually need a Door, but insisted on it anyway because "mystery portals are awesome." She had unmasked to me with Director Lyons' permission last year. After all, who was I going to talk to? What was one more secret? At this point, there was a decent chance I knew more about the underlying mechanisms of the PRT than a local director.

I felt privileged to know her face anyway. It was a little different than the secrets of Cauldron and Babylon, more personal in a way. This wasn't something Yusung knew but couldn't tell me for my protection; this was a friend he cherished. She still wore the petricite amulet around her neck even though she'd long since learned to control her overactive power.

Raquel was the only one of Yusung's old team who remained in the city. At seventeen, she was among the most experienced Wards in the city, an honorary firefighter, and an expert in rescue operations. She'd quickly shed her cutesy persona, presenting a professional image before the public. She hadn't grown any and still wore the silly raccoon tail and mask, but now only joked on camera to put civilians at ease. She'd developed a reputation as a reliable and personable heroine and an expert in her niche.

"Mrs. Kim!" she squealed as she wrapped me up in a tight hug. "Hi! How was your day? Mine was super long. I swear, if I have to explain to that idiot Cactus Jack one more time how S&R is supposed to go, I'm going to kick his butt. Like, seriously, you can't tell civilians their relative is lowest priority triage because we're out of potions and he's already bleeding out! How insensitive can you be?"

I laughed and patted her back. Out of the public eye, she was as excitable as ever and I was grateful for it. She brought a bit of color to my life, a spot of randomness that made the house feel more lived-in.

"Welcome, Raquel," I said. My English had improved a great deal thanks to conversing with her and Penelope.

"Mmm! What's that smell?"

"Galbi-jjim, braised short ribs. I also made some japchae and fresh cucumber kimchi."

"Awesome! You're the best."

The Door opened in my living room, admitting a familiar couple. The man was tall, with sandy-brown hair that always looked tousled by the wind no matter what he did to tame it. He wore an easygoing smile on a scruffy but handsome face, a look that was only marred by the fact that half his right ear was missing.

The woman was similarly tall, with a svelte but well-muscled build and long, blonde hair she wore in a messy bun. Her blue eyes zeroed in on Raquel and me. She spread her arms wide and I felt an invisible pressure tug us towards her in a big hug. She'd really gotten the hang of her second trigger.

"Hello, Mrs. Kim. Hey, Raq," she said softly.

"Hey, Penny, David," Raquel mumbled. "How's Albuquerque?"

"Ugh, don't call me Penny. It's Penelope."

"But Penny is so much easier to say."

"It sounds too cutesy."

"You let me call you Penny," David said with a chuckle.

"Because otherwise you make up increasingly cheesy pet names," the boxer grumbled. "Anyway, Albuquerque's great. Much quieter than Phoenix. I heard you and Oathkeeper took out a new gang trying to muscle in after the Crips."

"Ugh, don't remind me. They weren't even going for a drug monopoly like normal gangsters. No, they had to try their hand at human trafficking. That was the only reason I got called in, so I could get hostages out. One of them didn't make it."

"You did good work, Raq," David said with a firm nod and a comforting pat on the shoulder.

"Yeah, I guess. I got to see Oathkeeper go ballistic on them so that was nice. Pretty sure their brute's okay… Has a new phobia of samurais I bet."

I smiled as the three heroes caught up. It was nice to let them meet up in person like this. I really only knew Raquel and Penelope, the latter after we got to talking when she visited Yusung's hospital room, but they were my son's friends. This connection they had, the relationships that no one seemed to fully appreciate until they were cut away, I didn't want them to lose it. They'd always be welcome in my home.

The Door opened a final time to admit Yasmine de la Rosa, Hat Trick and member of Protectorate Oakland, the last of their group. She was a young woman of nineteen, who looked like she could be Raquel's older sister. After graduating, she applied to and was accepted to UC Berkeley.

"Yo, what's up, homies?" she yelled boisterously as she gave her friends a hug one by one.

"Homies? People actually say that?" Penny asked, brow quirked in amusement.

"They do in Oakland."

"Are you still studying to be a paramedic?"

"Yeah, shit's hard. Like, I can cheat with the right hat, but it doesn't feel right, you know? I wanna be able to help people without wearing a mask."

"I feel that. I'm still trying to decide on what I want to study. Maybe forensics like Dave?"

"Ehh, no offense, but I can't see it," her fiance said with a carefree chuckle.

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"That you have no interest in biology or chemistry."

"True…"

"Don't sweat, babe, you'll figure it out."

The four of them bickered and bantered like the old friends they were, mocking each other one moment and encouraging one another the next. It was heartwarming to watch, a glimpse of the relationships my son had.

With them being scattered all over the United States, the Door was the only way for them to gather like this. In a way, I felt that keeping their friendship alive, even if just as a movie night once in a while, was something I could do for Yusung. He'd wake up one day and though they each went their separate ways to pursue their own ambitions, I wanted them to be available when he awoke.

X

2004, December 27: Phoenix, AZ, USA

I sat at my kitchen table, reading over ongoing news reports, both domestic and international. I didn't need to, but keeping abreast of current events made me feel a little closer to my son, to know all that he had fought for and influenced in his short time as a hero.

Not everything was about him, but if I looked closely enough, I thought I could spy Cauldron's hand working between the lines. It was hard to imagine that my son was part of a global conspiracy, but seeing the good they wrought in the world made waiting for him to wake just a tiny bit easier.

The world had changed a great deal since Last Christmas. Just this year, a new tinker by the name of Dragon stepped onto the scene and joined the Guild. By Narwhal's own admission, she completely revamped their logistics and intelligence branch, rooting out several international crime syndicates by following money trails no one else noticed. And unlike other heroes, she did it without ever making a public appearance. No one knew what she looked like or where she lived.

When I asked Fortuna, she just gave me a jaunty smirk and said I ought to expect a great deal from the new tinker. That made her Cauldron, somehow; I just hoped the new security measures they were taking could keep her safe.

The Guild grew in more than just personnel and powerful capes. Hero, Yusung's old mentor, started to take on higher profile missions. Though he failed to contain the Ash Beast in Sudan in October, he did manage to drive the walking natural disaster away from civilian sectors. Dragon had since dedicated a drone to monitoring him through the Sahara with the help of some kind of solar-powered drone.

In Europe a month later, Hero, Narwhal, and a select group of Guild and local heroes managed to prevent the assassination of the King of Spain, Juan Carlos I. In doing so, Hero destroyed one Blasphemy and did something that caused the other two to disintegrate along with their sister, hopefully ending the tinkertech threat once and for all.

Fortuna wouldn't explain why, but she had been extraordinarily happy that evening, happier than I'd ever seen her. The normally taciturn woman had even tried her own hand at baking. She was annoyingly good at it, though I suspected she was good at everything.

I started as the doorbell rang. So few visitors actually used it that I knew right away who it was. If she was here, it meant I'd gotten lost in thought again and let the morning pass me by. On the other side was a young, Japanese girl of fourteen. She wore her chestnut hair in a high ponytail that suited her tank top and shorts. A black violin case was in one hand.

"Hey, Mrs. K," Alice Nohara greeted as she stepped into the house. Behind her, I could see her bike parked in my driveway.

"Hello, Alice," I greeted back. "Aren't you cold? It's December."

"Yeah, but it's also noon in Phoenix."

"Children… Fine, fine. Did you do your homework?"

"Ehehe… Yes…?" I raised my eyebrow in silent judgment. I set up my music stand and opened the book to what should have been her homework. All children were the same; if you stayed quiet, they'd fill the silence on their own. "I mean… I kinda did it…"

"How do you 'kinda' play a music score?"

"I had to help mom at the restaurant?"

"If I call Shigure, will she tell me the same?"

"No…" she looked down guiltily.

I wasn't too upset, she'd been making good progress and earnestly paid attention when I taught her. "Alright, you're forgiven. Let's go through this piece three times before moving on."

"You won't tell mom?"

"No, I won't, so long as you pay attention during the lesson," I promised her. "Really, I keep telling Shigure that music should be fun, not a chore."

"Exactly! I like the violin, I do, it's just… life gets in the way a little bit."

"That's fine, Alice. You're young. You're allowed to get distracted sometimes. Just make a bit more effort?"

"Okay, Mrs. K."

"Good. Now, from the top."

Author's Note

Short-ish chapter, but I felt like I couldn't do an intermission arc without touching on Andy's mom at all. She's not terribly interesting so I ended up cramming a lot into one place. Hopefully it read fine.

Hobak-juk is pumpkin porridge made commonly in Korea using danhobak, or kabocha squash in English. It's got a dark-green rind and a vibrantly yellow flesh that is sweeter than other pumpkins. The porridge is very sweet, nutty, and velvety smooth, with some other spices that makes it straddle the line between a meal and dessert. It's not my favorite if, but it does feel great in the cold.

Fortuna's social-fu is stupid. It's also perfect for letting someone completely empty themselves, only for her to build them up again.

Remember, way back in 2.9 when Shigure Nohara (Alice's mom) expressed an interest in getting her daughter some violin lessons? No? Well, I do. It came with a mountain of salt because "Alice" is the fanon name for Bakuda.

I'm going to preempt a question: Newfoundland, if it happens at all here, happens May 2005. It's something Cauldron penciled into their calendar with the caveat that shit might be different.

 

[Fabled Webs]

Preface

This chapter covers Riley's trigger. I'm opting to skip my usual timestamps from her POV because the whole event is chronologically a mess and takes place over weeks of torture that a six year old has no frame of reference for.

Intermission 7.10

Riley Grace Davis

I cried.

Daddy said good girls don't cry, but daddy wasn't here. Chuckles was here.

Chuckles was a bad man, a bad clown. He didn't talk, he never said anything, but he was bad. Mean. I didn't know what word was worse than mean, but he was that.

He was big and fat, with thick arms like Uncle Jimmy. He wore a red jacket with puffy white ruffles around his neck that had splotches of brown like he spilled ketchup. He smiled, big and wide with teeth like yellow stashi-shells. His white face turned so quickly that his red nose looked like a blur. A scary laugh came out and the sound made me feel cold.

In his hands was Milo. Dad got Ollie and me a puppy last month. Daddy called him a poodle. He said I was a big girl now and I could help Ollie care for Milo but I knew Milo liked me best, even if we were too nice to tell Ollie. Chuckles the Bad Clown held Milo in his hands and Milo shook because he was scared.

I looked at them with dry eyes. I cried. I called him names. I said please. I hit him. I tried to bite the bad clown. But he didn't stop. He never stopped because he was bad. I couldn't cry anymore. I had to play the game Mr. Jack showed me. I reached into the first-aid box mommy kept in case I tripped and scraped my knees. I pulled out a roll of white so I could play doctor with the bad clown.

But Chuckles shook his head. He instead pulled out daddy's fishing rod. Daddy said he'd show Ollie how to catch big fishies so mommy could make tasty fish fingers for us.

Chuckles didn't use it right.

He wrapped the string around Milo's neck and threw Milo into the pool.

"No!" I cried. I jumped in after him. Milo was a good boy. He didn't deserve to hurt.

I grabbed the string and pulled, yanking him out. He was small; his fluffy fur stuck to him and made him look smaller.

He shivered and so did I. There were bandages I'd wrapped around him before but they were turning brown now.

"No," I whispered. I cried again. I put him on the ground and tried to kiss him. I loved Milo and it worked for Snow White. Daddy said it worked when people drank too much water if I pressed their tummy at the same time. "Nonononono, Milo…"

I pressed and kissed and blew into his mouth. Behind me was the laughter. The clown laughed and giggled and I hated him so much. He hurt Milo. His friends hurt Ollie and daddy and mommy.

I tried to help Milo. I kissed him and he stopped shaking. I thought that was good. He wasn't cold anymore.

I kissed him and pressed and felt something pop and I cried because I knew I did something bad.

Milo cried and growled quietly and I knew it was because he was hurt and he was a good boy.

I tried. I tried so hard. I tried and tried but I couldn't help Milo. I didn't know why it wasn't working. I loved Milo. I kissed him. He needed to get better or the bad man would win.

I pressed and kissed and blew and listened to the bad man laughing as he watched.

And Milo became cold.

X

I kept playing doctor with the bad people. Doctors helped people and I was a good girl so I had to help daddy and mommy and Ollie. They put daddy and mommy and Ollie in different rooms of the house and hurt them. I had to see what was wrong and make them better. Mr. Jack showed me how to use al-kol to clean cuts before wrapping them in bandages. He then cut mommy.

"For practice," he said. He smiled and he had a silly beard like a goat. I called him a bad man but he smiled wider and cut mommy more so I didn't tell him that anymore.

Two people watched Ollie. One was a woman like mommy but with no hair on half her head. She said she was Screamer. Everything got loud when she was around. She made Ollie yell so loud. It hurt my ears but she laughed and said it made her feel alive. The other was a man who had brown hair and brown eyes and was shorter than daddy. He was gross. He made nasty bugs come out of his mouth.

The bugs were bad. They hurt Ollie. The bad man let his bugs eat Ollie and I had to play doctor to make him all better. But I was running out of things from the first-aid box.

At first, Ollie moved too much. He screamed and it hurt my ears and made me cry and I couldn't pour the clear stuff to clean him. He made me splash so much. Ollie was dumb but he hurt and he was my big brother so I had to make him feel better because I was a good girl and I was playing doctor.

But now he didn't do anything. He didn't say anything when the gross man's gross bugs ate him little by little. I could clean him and wrap him easier now.

That just made me more afraid. It hurt. I knew. He was going away too. I was running out of bandages. I was so happy I could spell bandages for mommy. Mommy was a nurse and helped people with bandages. I had to be good like mommy and help Ollie but I was running out.

If he didn't make me spill and waste them then maybe he'd be here longer.

But I was also running out of Ollie. No more fingers and toes. No more arms or legs. Knees or elbows. Little by little, the gross man's gross bugs nibbled at Ollie. They were like hamsters with almonds. Mommy said making bad things seem not so bad was called op-timey-sim. She said it could help me feel better.

I didn't feel better.

I was running out of Ollie to wrap up. He cried and moaned and the bad lady made it sound so loud. I wanted to make him feel better because he was stupid but he was still Ollie.

And then he was gone too.

Just like Milo.

"Stupid Ollie," I whispered as I wrapped him over and over again.

X

It was cold in daddy's room. There was a tall lady with white hair and a big, muscly man with red skin. They didn't tie daddy down like the gross man did with Ollie.

A knife fell to the floor with a loud clang. Daddy looked down at his feet. He didn't have a shirt anymore and there were lots of bandages wrapped around him. Spots of brown covered the white but I didn't have any more to fix him with. A striped lady got me more yesterday but I was out already. I didn't want to play doctor anymore.

He lost his glasses too, and there were lots of purple spots I couldn't cover. His eyebrows were big and puffy and I couldn't see one of daddy's eyes anymore. He looked scary and sad and I didn't know how to make him better.

"Pick it up," the red man said. He was smiling but it was too big. He had so many teeth. It felt wrong because he was hurting daddy. "Pick up the knife. If you kill me, you can go save your wife, you know? Hahaha!"

Next to him, the white-haired woman rolled her eyes. The air felt colder in the room. It was hard to move my fingers when she was next to me. She held me by the shoulder and kept me from going to daddy. I didn't cry though. That just made the tears freeze and my cheeks hurt. She would let me go to daddy when the red man was done being mean. She always did, because that was what Mr. Jack said doctors did and we were playing doctor.

"Don't you want to save your daughter?" she said. Her voice was soft. It didn't belong on the mean lady. "You kill Crimson and you can be the big damn hero."

Daddy looked down at the knife between his feet. He looked back up at the mean people and then at me. The room became colder and daddy's body shook as he knelt. His hands shook as his fingers closed over the handle.

The red man spread his arms a big, scary smile. "Come on, stab me! You might actually kill me this time."

I didn't want to watch. The big man did this every time it was his turn to play with me. He made daddy fight and daddy always lost. And then he cut daddy and drank his blood and all of his cuts would be better while daddy's got worse.

But this time it was different. This time, daddy's eye was the same as Ollie's. I saw and knew daddy would be leaving too.

He looked at me and his face was empty. He didn't smile anymore. He saw me and I saw daddy cry again.

Daddy remembered me; maybe he wouldn't leave.

And then he turned the knife and pressed it into his neck. There was so much red. The blood pooled, flowing too fast for even the white-haired lady's cold to slow down.

Daddy looked at me and mouthed, "I'm sorry."

"No, I…" Daddy… He left too… I couldn't… I didn't understand.

Why? Why was everyone leaving me? Why were the bad men in our house? Why couldn't I save people? If I had more bandages, if I had more al-kol, could I have fixed them? There were other things in the first-aid box. Mr. Jack didn't teach me how. If I knew more, maybe I would be better at playing doctor. Maybe I could save people like mommy.

Maybe they wouldn't have to go away…

I didn't understand…

I didn't want to be alone…

"Please, come back…"

[Destination]

[Trajectory]

[Agreement]

X

Fortuna

2005, January 16: Boise, ID, USA

I took a sip of Yusung's aptly named Elixir of Sorcery. I'd developed a mild fondness for this stuff, and not strictly for the power it granted me. It tasted like blueberries going down, albeit with a mysterious aftertaste that was simultaneously familiar yet foreign.

The Slaughterhouse had always been troublesome to predict, even for me, and it wasn't until Yusung explained the mechanisms behind Jack's Broadcast that I understood why. Broadcast, the Shard that acted as Scion's primary communication hub, did its best to keep Jack alive by informing him of incoming danger orchestrated by parahumans. It was a strictly defensive ability, but one that made him a wildcard to go up against.

Jack could not speak to Broadcast of course, but his Shard's influence manifested as "good instincts" on Jack's part or "poor luck" on the part of his attackers. Yusung said that in extreme cases, parahuman powers would subtly malfunction in order to keep Jack alive. It allowed him to win against most parahumans and instinctively avoid battles with those he couldn't triumph over.

That explained why attempts by thinkers to act against him failed, and how he could keep his band of murderous fools in line. I had yet to act directly against him, but all evidence suggested even the Path to Victory was not exempt from this.

If Broadcast was hellbent on ensuring Jack's survival by effectively acting as the world's most inconvenient tattletale, it stood to reason that the best way to kill him was to enact an alpha strike that he could not avoid nor defend against without relying on my own Shard.

Tricky, but doable.

The Path had cleared in Boise as Riley's connection to her Shard established itself. Jack had outlived his usefulness; he would die tonight.

I spun the Dream Blossom Censer in hand; the staff was a familiar weight by now. Its royal-blue petals spun through the air as a haunting mist began to fill the Idaho morning. The fragrance of flowers that did not exist on this earth filled my nostrils as the magic took hold, fruity yet potent, enticing yet inscrutable.

I'd chosen the hour specifically to coincide with the rising sun. Fog wasn't too common in the Boise Valley area, but there were an estimated twenty such days per year, particularly during the winter months. It wasn't unusual for moisture to rise from the river and blanket the city before the noon sun cleared the skies.

I smiled faintly as the magical mist traversed through all obstacles. Even if he started running now, it was too late. I knew from experience in Ellisburg and Shanghai that so long as you were in the area, there was no escaping it, even the slightest trail of vapor would be enough to lull you into a magically enforced sleep. The only way to avoid the enchantment was to either be the one wielding the censer, or avoid the mist altogether.

I stepped into the Davis family home. It was a quaint if well-furnished affair, Isaac "Call me Ike" Davis inherited the house from his grandfather, and though there were several touch-ups throughout the decades, the house looked more or less as it did when it was first built. There were two stories, a single-car garage, and a small pool in the backyard.

Out on the lawn, as big as a truck, was Crawler, napping like the world's most hideous guard dog. Yusung said he'd get much bigger as he adapted and grew, but he'd die like the rest if his corona was destroyed. I did not know where it was, only that it wasn't in the brain as was typical of most capes. No matter, I'd come back for him; I just needed him out of the way for the moment.

Next to him was Hatchet Face, a hulking brute of a man with a power nullification aura. He was otherwise a fairly standard strongman type, easy to deal with so long as I was prepared.

Either cape would have been formidable under normal circumstances, but Yusung and I were involved; "normal" never quite applied where we were concerned. I gave them only a second's glance and strolled past into the house proper.

It was amazing how welcoming it all looked. There was a large, hickory coffee table that Ike's father built for his final year of high school woodshop. A family picture hung on the mantle, taken just days after Riley's birth. The infant's blonde locks had been darker then. Jack had left the majority of the house untouched and I wondered if this was Broadcast's doing or his own, twisted understanding of psychology.

It had been clear from Jack's previous actions as well as Yusung's records that he was no fool. He meticulously studied parahuman science and trigger theory, at least as best as he could while living a nomadic lifestyle. He conducted inhumane experiments, repeatedly bringing people to their breaking points to see if he could manually induce a trigger event. I didn't know if his curiosity was triggered by Manton's own studies or if they simply enabled the other, but the two made for a frustrating pair.

It was all hilariously, unsustainably dangerous of course, not even I would willingly put myself in the line of fire of a fresh trigger, but Broadcast made it all possible. I thought about what would be waiting for me as I walked through the house.

The family had built up a fair amount of miscellaneous surplus over the generations. Though I couldn't call the place messy, there was a feeling of crowdedness that made the place feel more lived in somehow.

I peeked into the backyard briefly. There, slumped over a pool chair, was Chuckles the clown. The brute-mover was sawing logs and wore a contented smile on his face. At his feet was the broken body of Milo, the family poodle. I saw the dented torso, imprints made by tiny hands into ruffled fur as Riley desperately tried to perform a procedure she couldn't possibly know, and felt an oppressive urge to wake the clown so I could have the pleasure of making him scream.

My mana, a tiny drop compared to my young friend, flared and the scent of flowers brought me back. Three years ago, the sight would not have phased me in the slightest. But without the Path active, I found myself wrestling with my wrath. It was times like these I remembered, for all his influence on Cauldron, I felt his hand more than any of my colleagues.

He'd… He'd humanized me, reminded me to be Fortuna on occasion, for better and for worse. On occasion, he taught me that Fortuna had a strength Contessa lacked.

I swallowed thickly and shot Chuckles a final glare before continuing my search for Jack. I skipped over the rooms with Ollie and Ike in it, I'd be back later, and beelined for the master bedroom.

Jack and Riley were alone, the Siberian nowhere to be found. Yusung mentioned once that in the alternate future, when Skitter stung Manton's eyes, the projection of his daughter flickered. For all its power, the projection required a significant amount of focus on the part of its creator. He was almost certainly nearby; it was time I tied up that particular loose end. But first, extraction.

I gave Riley a quick once-over.

The young girl looked peaceful lying there. She was slumped over on her side, her hands clasped in a literal death grip over her mother's.

Bianca Davis was dead, and only recently by the look of things. Her stomach was torn open in a perfectly clean cut, her blood replaced by some sort of green fluid that had been hooked up to a jury-rigged pump made from a hand vacuum. Countless lacerations littered her body, some crude, others clean. I could easily tell the difference between Jack and Riley's workmanship.

I gazed into the mother's eyes. They were beginning to glaze over but I thought I could spy a hint of warmth there, frozen in one final smile to encourage her daughter.

"Be a good girl."

Emotions rose up unbidden and I felt my chest tighten. Was I a good girl? Did Cauldron's ultimate ambition absolve me of my sins? Was there a time when my own mother told me these words? I didn't know; I didn't remember. That ship sailed the moment I met Eva.

I shook my head and looked once more into the dead woman's eyes. I'd allowed this. All of this. Across not just Boise but every city in the United States that the Slaughterhouse deigned to visit. I could have stopped them at any time, could have given Hero the greenlight, especially after Yusung joined us. After we knew about Broadcast, arranging for Jack's death was as simple as what I was doing now.

I looked at Riley one more time. She was adorable, and the contrast made bile rise into my throat. Had I not known better, I would never have named her as the most gifted biotinker in the world.

Gently, I gathered her into my arms. She instinctively sought out my body heat and leaned into my breast. I felt cold, knowing how little I deserved her affections.

She was it. She was the reason I'd allowed Jack to live this long. She was the reason I'd allowed her family to undergo unspeakable torture. I'd overruled Andy and Eugene. I'd weighed the power of Bonesaw against thousands of lives, and decided her inclusion mattered more.

"I hope you're worth it, Riley," I whispered into her ear. "Door, Riley's room."

I stepped inside the room prepared for her in advance. It was a child's playroom in full, rubber floors and all. I tucked her into the plush bed and walked back out.

I reached for the holster on my hip. My fingers closed around a walnut handle, finely crafted to fit the swell of my palms comfortably. I drew the seven inch blade and watched it gleam as it caught the morning light. Its pearlescent-white sheen was a hue only seen on one alloy in the world: petricite.

The blade whirled as I spun it in my fingers. Yusung had named it Sobriety, in direct opposition to Tequila, the first person he ever killed, the first he ever loved. It was a blade proven to disrupt master powers, in case he woke up, and, if I allowed myself to be honest, there was a certain poetry in ending Jack with this blade in particular.

I thrust from below the neck, plunging my blade upwards through his chin and into his brainstem. His eyes fluttered open from the sudden shock, but he could only manage a few strangled gurgles as his lifeblood pooled onto the carpet of the master bedroom.

His death was anticlimactic for someone who could have kickstarted the apocalypse. It was far too painless and I found myself wishing I had the opportunity to express my displeasure more plainly. And yet, I promised: No chances. No gaps for Broadcast to pull its strings. He was too dangerous to keep alive, no matter how satisfying that would have been.

Maybe, if this were a novel, he would have made a break for it, perhaps set up some grand battle, but I refused to let that happen. I refused to allow him a single moment of grandstanding more than I needed to. The Path must be followed, but this, in this singular day when I'd paused the Path, this was one kill I could be proud of.

With Jack dead and Broadcast offline, I allowed the Path to reinstate itself.

I walked from room to room, quietly murdering every one of the Slaughterhouse. Crimson had long since reverted back to his base form and though he was a minor brute even now, that didn't stop me from jamming Sobriety up through his mouth and stirring it like a straw.. Breed's larvae gave me some trouble, but the insectoid creatures were organic and fell asleep all the same.

Winter and Screamer died without a sound, lacking brute packages to inconvenience me. Chuckles was only a brute in his torso, his head and legs having mover powers, as if Shards couldn't get bizarre enough. Manton, I found passed out in Ike's home office, an empty whiskey bottle lying on the ground.

I killed and killed until only Crawler and Hatchet Face were left. I then called on a set of Wrenchbots, robots made by Yusung to run his lab in his absence, and had them ferry the nullifier into an isolated holding chamber. Whatever name Riley chose in this timeline, I had no doubt she'd delight in the chance to study his particular shaker effect. A single fascinating research specimen couldn't make up for what I owed her, but perhaps it'd start as a "sorry."

Then, when I had nothing left to do, I returned to Riley's room and gave my colleagues the greenlight to clean up Crawler. He wasn't valuable enough to keep around, even if his adaptive regeneration was interesting.

By noon, Legend and Eidolon had leveled the area within eight city blocks, giving false indication of some grand battle that had not taken place.

The Slaughterhouse was no more.

X

2005, April 9: Phoenix, AZ, USA

It took a little less than three months before I felt comfortable bringing Riley to Sujeong. The Slug had gone over young Riley's memories with a fine-toothed comb, adjusting them to mute her trauma as best he could. She remembered the events following Jack's arrival, albeit as if in a thick, hazy dream.

It was about the least objectionable thing I'd done this year. A six year old shouldn't have to remember her entire family being tortured and murdered, even I could agree with that. Ameliorating the effects of her trigger was as best as I could do without changing her fundamentally, something I knew Yusung and his mother would have problems with.

I led Riley by the hand, through a Door and into Phoenix proper. The world's littlest tinker was now dressed in different shades of pastel blues, with a soft, green ribbon that framed and accented her doll-like face.

"Woah, it's hot, Miss Fortuna," she gasped as she walked out into the Phoenix sun. April was the middle of spring, but Phoenix didn't know anything about that. It was a toasty eighty-six degrees out, with not a cloud in sight.

"It is. Come along, Riley. Let's go meet your new mommy."

"Will… Will she like me?" she asked, a bundle of nerves now that she was outside the Kim family house.

That, was honestly a fair question.

Getting the adoption papers ready was a simple affair. It didn't even require anything illegal on my end. Behind the scenes, everyone could agree that a six year old girl who triggered from the Slaughterhouse deserved the best possible care. She deserved a guardian who would love her, cherish her, and nurture her abilities.

Lo and behold, there weren't many empty-nesters with experience raising a tinker, especially not a young, precocious tinker with an extremely versatile specialization that could put most heroes to shame. Funny, but the mother of the tinker who'd upended the medical industry when he was eight just so happened to have room in her house; what a coincidence.

With Sujeong, she would be loved, protected, and when Yusung came back, mentored. And, with Yusung's old team visiting on the regular, Riley wouldn't lack for strong and morally upright female role models. There really was no one better to care for Riley.

Getting Sujeong to accept Riley into her care however, that was a challenge. She didn't not want Riley per se. Rather, she clung to the foolish notion that she was somehow guilty for Yusung's state, that her actions or inactions had somehow led to him playing the world's most outrageous game of chicken against a fresh endbringer.

She didn't feel worthy of caring for anyone else.

I suppressed a sigh; RIley would interpret it as me being upset with her. It took a while but I finally coached Sujeong into accepting that things weren't her fault. Slowly, first with the music lessons, then by allowing myself to be talked into arranging get-togethers for the former Phoenix Wards. Healing the mind was the work of years, and in some ways the most challenging thing I'd done.

"She'll love you," I promised Riley with an earnest smile. I'd make sure of it.

'They'll be good for each other,' I thought as I led Riley up the steps. A girl who desperately needed love, needed to be told she didn't always need to be a "good girl." A mother who longed to care but found herself trapped in the memories of the past. They'd require work, constant oversight and nudging, both overt and subtle, but they could be good for each other.

Maybe they weren't the perfect puzzle pieces to slot together, but as always, Cauldron would have to work with what we had.

"Ready?" I asked Riley.

"Uh-huh. Ready."

Author's Note

This closes out Intermission. I suppose I could have glossed over Riley's trigger, but I wanted to challenge myself, both because it's so much darker than what I normally write and because Riley offers a unique perspective.

Writing from a six year old's perspective is hard. Children obviously don't have a big vocabulary. They also typically notice details but ascribe different meanings, get distracted, or hyper-fixate on things and seem repetitive. I hope I managed to convey that well enough.

I don't know where the Davis family is originally from, dunno if that was ever clarified by Wildbow. Doesn't actually matter so I picked a friend's hometown (Sorry, Kat).

I also took a guess at the list of S9 members. Shatterbird and Mannequin don't exist so I filled in the blanks with old members whose times of death are unclear in canon.

Riley actually triggered before her mom died. She used her power to keep her mom alive until her mom eventually gave up on life and told her, "Be a good girl." I forget if this caused her second trigger in canon, but it'd explain how overpowered she is.

Fortuna's comment about the Siberian is referring to 14.7, when Skitter, Legend, and others found Manton. Lisa posits in another scene that Manton's range is miles, but remains close by, possibly for better control and responsiveness from the projection. So no, despite a lot of fanon, the Siberian shouldn't exist without conscious input from Manton.

On another note, did Fortuna social-fu Sujeong into building a healthy home that is tangentially connected to Cauldron for the purpose of raising Riley in a child-friendly environment?

You can't prove anything.

The initial plan was to have Andy wake up and then immediately kill off the S9, but the more I thought about it, the less it appealed to me. Thoughts about that are complicated, but the gist is that I think either the S9 deserve a full villain arc, or they shouldn't even be in the story. Having them Contessa'd is my compromise in that sense.

 

[Fabled Webs]

Respite 8.1

2005, July 2: Cauldron, Ivory Coast, Africa

I couldn't afford to put it off any longer. I woke up yesterday but had the Custodian refrain from informing anyone. I wanted to take a day to collect myself. It only felt like a moment ago that I invoked Lamb's Respite, pausing the literal concept of death for the entire world for just a few seconds. Those few seconds had cost me, the deathly mana coursing through my veins taxing my body in ways I just wasn't equipped to handle.

I found out that I'd been out for three and a half years. My body had grown, and though the potions kept me healthy and hale, I couldn't help but feel a bit like a stranger in my own body. I wasn't too much taller, five-two or three compared to my previous height of four-eight, but it was still jarring.

However, I couldn't afford to sit idle. I'd missed too much. The first thing I did was read the files on the laptop by my nightstand, no doubt Fortuna's work. It contained a brief summary of everything I'd slept through, from endbringer attacks and global crises to the expansion of the Guild and the rise of new S-class threats in China.

More importantly, it contained details about the milestones in the lives of my friends and family: David and Penelope were married with a kid on the way; they were the new power couple in Albuquerque. Steven and Hassana had a daughter, Chioma Kajiya, named for her maternal grandmother. Colin moved up to Brockton Bay and recently took over leadership from Paladin. Eugene led the Guild.

Yasmine was in Oakland and had made a friend who was a part of the local Elite chapter there, though whether she knew that was another matter. I'd have to follow up on that. I wasn't sure who was the head of that chapter, but it couldn't hurt to pay them a visit.

Which only left Raquel from my original team. She graduated from the Wards this June and was making waves before that, helping to take down a human trafficking ring in the area. I heard about her PHO handle and found it hilarious.

But the biggest change, the one that made me hesitate, was Riley Grace Davis, now Davis-Kim technically. I'd missed her trigger, and Fortuna subsequently going to town on Jack and his merry band of psychopaths shortly after. She'd used the Slug to mute Riley's traumas and shaped her into a functioning child before convincing mom to adopt her.

I had a little sister.

I had a little sister.

I wasn't sure how to feel about that.

No, no matter my thoughts, I really couldn't put this off. I got up and called for a Door to Phoenix. It was Saturday morning, which probably meant they'd all be home. I found myself some casual wear courtesy of the Custodian and took the long way around, wandering through the neighborhood as I thought about what I wanted to say.

What could I say? I was gone for three years. "Hi, I'm back?" In what world was that enough?

My heart pounded in my chest. Somehow, as cliche as it was, my body was trembling even more than when I'd chased the Simurgh into the sky. Living in a superhero world, I could usually just stab my problems. A problem I couldn't punch through was a bit more nerve-wracking.

'You fought with power that was not yours, pup,' Wolyo growled, an echo that rang through my soul.

'Yeah, I've got some growing to do,' I admitted. As much as it stung, Wolyo was right. Even before invoking the Lamb's Respite, I felt the stress the Mask put on my young body, like a balloon pumped to bursting. Eventually, when my body could handle no more, the Mask faded back into the altar in my soul.

'In time,' Farya soothed, 'one battle at a time, little flame.'

'Thanks, Farya.'

Too soon, I stood at my mother's doorstep. Her door was as nondescript as could be, a screen door coupled with a flimsy little thing of eggshell-white. My eyes saw the hidden, tinkertech security measures embedded into the walls, but it was otherwise a humble place. I'd read that she got harassed by paparazzi and whatnot early on but Director Lyons made sure she wouldn't be bothered. I'd have to thank her personally for that.

I took a deep breath. I could see mom inside. She was in the master bedroom, seated on her bed and brushing a little, blonde girl's hair. Riley, presumably. My new sister was… adorable. Then again, she was six; that came with the territory. Mom was nodding indulgently as Riley babbled about something I couldn't hear. She had a picture book about dinosaurs on her lap and I wondered if I'd be seeing any additions to Babylon in the near future.

I rang the doorbell. It sounded oppressively loud to my ears. There was a certain finality about it. I was committed now, no putting this off. I watched Riley dash down the stairs to the door.

She knocked back and said with a serious expression. "Knock knock."

I rolled my eyes but decided to play along. "Who's there?"

"I don't know, I should be asking you that."

"I don't know, I should be asking you that, who?"

"If I knew, I'd open the door but mommy said I shouldn't talk to strangers. Oh well, bye bye, Mr. I don't know, I should be asking you that, who~~"

"Hey, wait a minute," I called as she started to skip back upstairs. I'd just been had by a six year old. "I'm your brother!"

"Lame! Mommy says Andy oppa is asleep," she said with a frown. "Mommy doesn't like talking about him because he makes her sad. He's a bad boy."

I winced at the pang of guilt that shot through my chest. "Yes, yes he is," I agreed, "but he's awake now."

"Liar, liar, pants on fire. When oppa wakes up, he's going to beat you up. He's super strong."

"I would if someone pretended to be me, but I can't because I am me."

"Prove it."

"Okay…" I thought about something I could tell her… that wasn't her trigger… "How about this? Fortuna is my good friend."

"Yeah? You know Miss Fortuna?" she asked, excited now.

"Of course. I can make a Door, just like her. Do you know what a Door is?" I didn't want to just make one into the living room for fear of scaring her. "Has Fortuna shown you Doors?"

"Uh-huh! She says everyone at Cauldron can make Doors and I'll be able to one day too!"

"Well, if I can make a Door, that'll prove I'm Andy, right?"

"But… Nu-uh, only that you're from Cauldron."

"I am from Cauldron."

"Prove it."

"Okay, watch. Door, my living room."

Sure enough, a familiar portal connected the house's doorstep with the living room carpet. I pulled off my shoes and walked on through. There, Riley got her first look at me. She looked even smaller now that we were face to face.

She let out a little gasp and promptly hid behind the couch. I shrugged and put my shoes on a little shelf set aside for the purpose.

"Riley, what are you doing?" I asked curiously. "You know I can see you anyway, right?"

"Nuh-uh, only Andy can do that. Mommy says he can see through walls."

"Yup, that's because I have special eyes I made out of True Ice."

"W-Well, how many fingers am I holding up?" she said stubbornly. Behind the couch, she had two fingers in one hand and four in the other.

"Your left or right hand?"

"Left."

"Four."

"No…"

"And two now. You switched."

"I didn't…"

"Riley, are you lying?'

"... Are you really my big brother?" she asked shyly.

"Yup, why? Is that bad?"

I took a seat on the couch, and reached out to ruffle Riley's hair. Then we heard mom's footsteps on the stairs. "Riley, who was that? Did you scare them away again?"

I froze. This was it. I got swept up in humoring a child and forgot my nerves, but the butterflies returned with a vengeance. Mom came down and froze as she caught sight of me.

"H-Hey, mom, I'm home," I said with a shaky smile.

"You!" The next moment, my own shoe was flying at my head. I grunted in discomfort more than pain.

And then I was enveloped in a bone-crushing hug. She held me tight, like her life depended on it, as if I'd vanish into thin air if she dared let go for a second. I felt her body tremble and warm tears wet my cheek. She was still slightly taller than me, but she felt so fragile like this.

The dam broke. Everything she held back, all the feelings she'd stamped down on for the sake of being "Hyunmu's mother," she let it all out. She wailed as I held her. She shook like a leaf in the wind and I felt as if she'd shatter at any moment.

I hugged her fiercely. "I'm home, mom."

"You're home," she said with a watery smile. "You're home."

'I am."

"You… I thought… No, I knew you would wake up."

"Of course, I'm your son."

"You're home…"

"I am."

She held my face in her hands and looked deep into my eyes, the blue crystals I'd carved for myself, as clear a proof as any that I was who I claimed to be. "This isn't a dream."

"It's not."

"You're really home," she whispered, slowly internalizing my return. It wasn't easy for her, even before I left. Dad died in Busan and mom called in every favor she could to move us across the world, away from the sea.

I became a hero. I met people, friends and mentors I cherished. I built miracles and changed the world. I thrived in the States. She… didn't. She had no friends here. She barely spoke the language. She left behind everything. What little she built for herself, she did so around me, catering to my needs, my wants, even moving back to the coast in DC to allow me to grow. For the past several years, it wasn't an exaggeration to say she lived for me.

And I'd left. Faced down an endbringer to be the big damn hero, only to leave her behind. Just like dad.

In that moment, I felt just how fragile a mother's love could be.

"Welcome home, son," she whispered into my ear.

"It's good to be home, mom."

I grabbed Riley and yanked her into a family hug. She let out a cute eep but settled between mom and me. Truthfully, it was a little hard to think of her as "my sister," but I had to make the effort. I owed it to both her and mom to try. She looked thoroughly baffled, the complex wave of grief, relief, and delirious, tear-jerking joy a bit much for her to understand at her age.

There was much to do. I had a little sister to teach. I had so much to build. There were people I needed to check in with, people I had to thank. Then there were people who needed Isolde crammed up their asses, the bird bitch up top included. The PRT would probably make a huge deal of my return; I saw countless PR events in my future. Everything from Babylon to David's therapy sessions, it all needed a more thorough examination than I could manage in a single day of review.

But all of that could wait. Here and now, there was nowhere else I'd rather be.

I was home.

Author's Note

Super short chapter. I don't think I've written one this short since the early days of this story, but maybe that's appropriate. It's a good stopping point and I didn't want to artificially bloat the chapter's word count.

I wrote 3k words on Andy reading reports in bed but there's a 10 chapter arc about what happened in the interim so let's skip that.

I hope I got the childishness and emotional turmoil right. I think I'm getting better, but it's still the weakest part of my writing I think.

Animal fact? Sure, have a cute one, though I don't know if I used it before: Rats are ticklish.

Turns out, rats groom and tickle each other during play. If you use a device keyed to high frequencies, e.g. for detecting bat sonar, you can actually hear them laughing. Humans can tickle them too and lab rats will actively play with their handlers.

 

[casrasen]

@Fabled Webs that was a gloriously wholesome fluff filled last chapter and i love it so looking forwards to what comes next.
keep up the great work

 

[The Radiance]

Nice chapter like always. Was looking forward for when things gonna start and pick up once again.

"You!" The next moment, my own shoe was flying at my head. I grunted in discomfort more than pain.

Click to shrink...

This line is way out of place. It felt cheap and just seriously messed up tension and threw me out of the scene. I don't mind the Riley interaction, it felt kinda intrusive at the moment but I can just gloss over it. But that line? I just can't.

edit : 'A son come home after 3 years in coma. He is met with a shoe to the head from his worried mother.' I just don't see why that line is there at all.

 

[Splattered Cloak]

Jack had outlived his usefulness; he would die tonight.

Click to shrink...

But was it worth the cost to keep him alive even this long? Riley could've triggered another way, but perhaps with a less useful powerset. Ah, the dilemmas of a precog.

April was the middle of spring, but Phoenix didn't know anything about that. It was a toasty eighty-six degrees out, with not a cloud in sight.

Click to shrink...

Wait, does that not sound like a beautiful spring day to you? Anything below ninety is great for running around outside.

Funny, but the mother of the tinker who'd upended the medical industry when he was eight just so happened to have room in her house; what a coincidence.

Click to shrink...

Yeah... On paper, this is a perfect match, isn't it? But looking at how much time Fortuna spent making it not blow up...

I'm reminded of the saying that a happy, healthy relationship is composed of happy, healthy people. Traumatized people can commiserate, and get to such a place, but it takes work.

"You know I can see you anyway, right?"

"Nuh-uh, only Andy can do that. Mommy says he can see through walls."

Click to shrink...

And, this would've been even more convincing than the Door. Slightly. If he'd thought of it first, he'd still be outside when his mom came down, and not have gotten a shoe to the head.

 

[Ruby Boule]

An excellent return! Glad to see he's back up and hitting the ground running. I'd like to image his public return being an innocuous PHO post: "hey guys, overslept a bit. What'd I miss?" (Probably won't, but I can dream)

That being said...

Fun fact: Peaches are the most convincing out of all seeded fruits.

Click to shrink...

What the heck does this mean? Convincing of what? That they are, in fact, seeded fruits? Am I dense or just trying to look deeper than it goes?

 

[Altered]

Me waiting to see the world reacting to awake Andy. Going to be fun. Also man now I gotta reread the Endbringer Fight so I can accurately grasp just how wildin it'll be for them.

 

[randomperson44]

What the heck does this mean? Convincing of what? That they are, in fact, seeded fruits? Am I dense or just trying to look deeper than it goes?

Click to shrink...

They're the best fruit at convincing the author to post chapters of legendary tinker, of course.

 

[CrossHope]

Me waiting to see the world reacting to awake Andy. Going to be fun. Also man now I gotta reread the Endbringer Fight so I can accurately grasp just how wildin it'll be for them.

Click to shrink...

Heh, a literal React Andy chapter. No longer contained by YouTube!

 

[Ferrite]

I needed this fluff in my life this week. I know that reading Worm fics when things are bad isn't wise but had to get some decompression time and these chapters helped.

 

[Fabled Webs]

Respite 8.2

2005, July 6: Cauldron, Ivory Coast, Africa

"What's the rush?" Eidolon asked as he stepped into our meeting room. "I had plans today."

My chair, a large, leather thing that threatened to swallow me whole even with my newfound teenage height, had been turned so the back faced the room. I'd have loved to have a white cat on my lap so I could do the full Bond villain schtick, but alas, pets weren't allowed at the Kim household. I'd have to see if Riley could change mom's policy.

Fortuna, not quite in Contessa-mode, lounged beside me like a big cat herself. Her trademark fedora was skewed to the left, partially depressing her bangs so they better shadowed one eye, giving her an air of mystery.

"Oh? Is coaching little league baseball more important than a Cauldron executives meeting?" she asked with a coquettish smile.

That almost made me blow my cover. Eidolon? Coaching little league? Either the man finally discovered a hobby or he was being punished for some reason. And what a cruel punishment, to subject those poor children to the workaholic mess that was David Stabler.

"No, but we do have a game this Saturday. It's a commitment I made; I should be there."

"You can admit you enjoy it, you know," Legend said with a chuckle as he floated in, Hero at his side. "I hear the Starships are doing well."

"They're alright. What's this about?"

"Not a clue. Contessa? Good news or bad?"

"Are surprise meetings ever about good news?" Eidolon huffed.

Hero took a seat and looked around. "Alex isn't here so… Birthday party?"

"Really?"

"Hey, a man can hope."

Just then, the woman in question flew in with the Number Man and Doctor Mother following behind. "Hyunmu is awake," she said succinctly. "And sitting right there."

I swiveled the chair to face them, rolling my eyes. "You're no fun, Becky. I had this whole Bond villain reveal planned."

"Life is no fun. And then you die. Not me of course. I'll be around to spoil your grandkids' fun."

"Truly Cauldron's greatest sin, inflicting you on future generations," I drawled. Then more brightly, "Hey all, had a nice nap. What'd I miss? You know, besides a new baby sis."

"Andy!" the room erupted into a frenzy. One moment, Hero was in his seat. The next, he was in front of me, patting me down and running a dozen different scans.

I let him have this. "I'm fine. Really. For me, it feels like 2002 was only yesterday."

"That's not reassuring."

"Yeah, well, I'm back and ready to get to work. I've been catching up on everything and wow, you guys have been busy. Seriously, bravo. You've accomplished a lot."

"Not all of us were taking a snooze, princess," Hero teased. "Are you sure you shouldn't take a week off? When did you wake up?"

"Friday. And yes, I'm fine."

"Today's Wednesday, Andy. Take another week off. No, two."

"Really, I'm fine," I repeated. I had a feeling I'd be doing that a lot over the next month or so. "I made all the best meds in the world, remember? I gave myself a checkup."

"We have investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing," Eidolon snarked sarcastically. "You know what that sounds like, right, kid?"

"Like someone finally explained the concept of humor to you?"

"I liked it better when you were asleep."

"Great to see you too, Eidolon," I sassed back. And, truthfully, it was. Comparing this acerbic, sarcastic asshole to the man I remembered was like comparing night and day. He still wasn't pleasant to be around, but at least he wasn't so single-mindedly focused on being the paragon of heroism that he couldn't be deviated for even a moment.

Clearly, whoever his therapist was, she deserved a raise. This bore further examination, but I could conceivably entertain teaching him how to drain other Shards to recharge himself now.. maybe…

The Number Man, Kurt, coughed pointedly. "Hyunmu is evidently fine. Now, if we could get to business?"

And so, the first Cauldron meeting began since my awakening. The documents Fortuna arranged for me were largely up to date, but there were details they'd left out that kept the meeting pertinent nonetheless.

For starters, something that didn't exactly make the news: Richter had been quietly recruited into Cauldron. Theresa Richter, Dragon, was a famed hero now, the backbone of the Guild and warden of the Birdcage, but that didn't mean her father felt the need to join her in the limelight. Rather, he'd been convinced via Fortuna's social-fu to relocate to Babylon.

From there, he built several failsafes scattered across alternate earths so that his potential passing would not shackle his daughter indefinitely. Most of her limitations were designed to be released over time, just as a child was entrusted with more responsibility as they matured. Any of the Cauldron executives, Fortuna and Hero especially, would be able to take over Dragon's "maturation" should the worst come to pass.

When the programming tinker wasn't managing his daughter's operations, he worked closely with the Number Man to keep track of our finances. He'd also released several other programs, capable of machine learning but not quite sentient, for a variety of purposes, mostly dealing with money laundering, corruption, and cybercrime.

I was a little miffed that they'd started to treat the Babylon facility as an all-purpose tinker safehouse, with Hero and Dragon also having their own labs there, but a bigger part of me was excited to meet one of the few unambiguously good people in the setting.

The only other major bit of news was the destruction of the Blasphemies, not because of who they were, but because of how Hero did it.

Hero, proving that he hadn't been sitting with his thumbs up his ass, saved the king of Spain, Juan Carlos I, from the rogue tinkertech constructs. Then, to prevent the Blasphemies from reforming themselves, he'd touched on a Shard-exclusive wavelength to dismantle them for good.

Like with tinkertech in general, he had only the faintest idea of exactly what he'd done. He described it as identifying, isolating, and analyzing the unique signal the Blasphemies used to communicate with each other, only to then block it off through a "trans-dimensional reciprocal wavelength predicated around sympathetic signals."

As far as we knew, no other tinker had seen fit to contribute to the Blasphemies. No one was trying to remake them, nor were there any hints at a new rogue unit being formed. We'd have to see to determine long-term results, but we were hopeful that Hero's work fully sealed off that avenue of Shard communication for good.

More to the point, Hero had touched the Shard network.

Sure, he didn't really understand fully how he'd done it or why what he'd done was so important, and even if he did, there was a lack of vocabulary in proper science to describe the process, but he touched the Shard network. If we were correct, he was the first person to ever successfully communicate with Shards, however indirectly, and in turn to hamper said communication.

It was super exciting to hear, not least because I felt greatly vindicated in making him do his goldfish impression years ago. It was hard to keep in mind sometimes, but I wasn't the only "genius" tinker in the room. Truthfully, without the World Rune embedded into my soul, I had a feeling I wouldn't even be competitive with the guy. Keeping the guy alive might be my greatest contribution to Cauldron's cause because by the way things were looking, Hero was our best bet for stopping the Cycle.

After I fully explained and stressed the significance of his discovery, he made it his goal to understand the process. Hopefully, with a better understanding of the network, we'd be able to shut it down, or divert the Shards' energies for more productive uses.

"Alright, great. Hero's got his new project, we've got Hatchet Face lobotomized and on ice, Peter Pan's got a few more Case-53s that want to emigrate out of Neverland, and Melpomene stopped someone in Thailand from finding out about Cauldron," Eidolon listed off. "Anything that needs me to be involved?"

"No, not unless you have any thoughts on how we should reintroduce Hyunmu to the wider world," Alexandria said. She turned to me with a taciturn stare. "Congratulations on being the only Ward to undergo orientation three times."

"Nope. Have fun, brat."

I watched him leave with a curious glance. "So… Therapy's really working out for the guy, huh?"

"Somewhat. His grandfather was a big fan of baseball and this helps him feel closer to him," Fortuna explained. "It helps that he has a lunch date planned after."

"Date? Like romance? Or at least sex? We're talking about the same guy, right?"

"Three years is a long time, Andy."

"Clearly. Well fine, I don't need to keep digging into his personal life; I've got plenty on my plate as it is."

Hero coughed pointedly at that. "You. Did you want to remain in the Phoenix area?"

I considered the question. Naturally, I wanted to stay with my mom. But by the same token… "Do we have to tell people I'm back? My priority is to train to use the Mask and my armor. Then work on the hextech capacitors to build a mech. Oh, and make new potions, expand the Worldstone network, and add some more enchantments. Honestly? I think I can be more productive being a hermit in Babylon than I can as a Ward again."

"Be that as it may, you're going to have to enter the public eye eventually. Especially since you'll be setting an example for young Riley."

"Oh… Oh fuck… I'm going to have to teach Bonesaw bioethics…"

"Not true. Riley is not and never will be Bonesaw. You shouldn't treat her any differently because of what you saw in your vision, Andy," Legend admonished.

"You can say that because you don't know what I saw… but point. Riley isn't Bonesaw and she never will be if I have anything to say about it."

"Exactly. And don't you want to meet up with your old friends? I hear Raquel is still around Phoenix."

"Yeah, I read that in the files. I should meet with them, get it all out of the way. Any chance I can avoid any public appearances though?"

"Not entirely. You're a hero, one of the biggest. And that means people will want to know you're safe and sound."

"And not crippled for life or anything."

"Yes, that too."

"You're conflating a public appearance with public commitments," Alexandria added. "At this point, I think it's abundantly clear to all that you are unlike any Ward in the system."

"Does that mean no PR events?" I asked hopefully.

"Not none, but relatively few. No pointless patrols to show the flag. No school campaigns. We may have you give some lectures at the university-level, demonstrate what you're building, perhaps be seen visibly cooperating with other tinkers, but your time is too important to be wasted on meaningless PR campaigns."

"Oh, yeah, that sounds a lot better. So, Phoenix, huh? Feels like I've come full circle."

"You have. I'll inform Director Lyons. She'll have to be read in on some things, such as you having a lab out of the city."

"Thanks, Alex."

"Welcome back, Hyunmu."

X

"How was your meeting, Yusung?" mom asked as I came through the Door. She was seated at her piano, trying her hand at music composition. Riley was on the ground next to her, doodling all over a coloring book.

If there was one thing I could say for Cauldron, it was that the Number Man did right by my mom. She lived the life of the idle rich, teaching music lessons more to keep busy than because she needed money.

She had initially vehemently refused any money from my Wards stipend or pharmaceutical dealings, saying that parents should be doing the providing, not the other way around. That went out the window within days when the paparazzi started to hound her for her opinion in a language she barely spoke.

"Hey, mom. Hey, Riley. Meeting was fine," I said. Truthfully, I hadn't even bothered to get dressed for it, slipping into Cauldron HQ directly after rolling out of bed at ten in the morning.

"Hi… oppa…?" Riley said, testing the unfamiliar word on her lips.

"Just Andy, squirt. Say, mom?"

"Hmm?" she hummed, plucking at a key.

"What are we doing about Riley's schooling? She's six, right? So elementary school? First grade?"

"We're going to homeschool her, at least for a while."

"Alright, I can help with that, right?" I asked.

I still wasn't sure about having Riley in the family. In a way, I'd always known this was a distinct possibility, but that didn't mean I was ready when she was dropped on me so suddenly. Even so, I wanted to do my best. Legend was right; she deserved the chance to become someone new and it was up to me to give her that chance.

"Of course, Yusung. Reading, grammar, math, science, and social studies are required by law. Fortuna and I spoke and she thinks she can acquire a discreet tutor for language, math, and social studies. I'll be teaching Riley music as part of her extracurriculars."

"That's great, so I need to add brushing up on first grade science to my to-do list?"

"No. I don't know how she did it, but Fortuna added tinkering and parahuman studies in lieu of science. You'll be free to teach her everything you know as you see fit."

"Got it. Biotinkering instead of biology," I nodded. "Bioethics and lab safety first. And then… epidemiology… Yeah, that sounds important for Riley to know."

"We can tinker together?" Riley asked, looking up from her coloring book with a hopeful smile.

"Yes, Riley. We'll be working together a lot."

"Yes! We're going to make so many cool animals!"

As she ran around the room with an excited squeal, I muttered, "I'll throw in Shojin kenpo for physical education while I'm at it. Maybe bleed off some of that energy."

Mom chuckled, "You do that. I think you two can get along well together. She really looks up to you, you know."

"How? We've never met. And she's probably only heard the sanitized stories about me."

"Petricite," she said matter-of-factly. I remembered then: Petricite was power-inhibiting wood. Riley could probably learn a lot from that. "Fortuna set up a small lab for her in Babylon and she's really taken to some of the wildlife there. Most of what she's been doing has been trying to understand Petricite though."

"Ah, that makes sense. Which reminds me; I'll have to take a tour of my facilities, make sure everything's as it should be and figure out which of my projects I should rush first."

"Ooh! Can I come? Pleasepleasepleaseplease?" Riley ran into me, clinging onto my stomach like the world's smartest koala, not that that was a particularly high bar.

I gently pried her off. "Nope, not this time. I need to take inventory on my own, Riley, okay? I promise I'll give you a tour when I'm ready though."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"You'll show me all the cool stuff you made?"

"Yup."

"Potions?"

"Sure."

"And Graggy Ice?"

I froze at that. I'd honestly forgotten I made the damn thing. I was trying to make hyper-efficient, stable explosives if I recall, kinda like Ziggs. "Graggy Ice?"

"Yeah! Auntie Fortuna said you had it but wouldn't tell me what it was. What is it?" she asked enthusiastically.

"It's beer. The perfect beer."

"Oh, like the kind that Uncle Eugene sometimes drinks?"

"Yup."

"Can I have some?"

"No. Absolutely not. Mom would kill me if I gave you booze."

"And who said you could make booze, hmm?" mom asked pointedly, eyebrows arched in judgment.

"Ah…"

"Andy's in trouble~ Andy's in trouble~" Riley sang in that obnoxiously adorable way only a six year old could.

"Ugh… This is Fortuna's fault…"

Author's Note

The Blasphemies were made pre-canon by an unwilling, unknowing cooperation of tinkers. Shards seemingly hijacked their bodies during their fugues, creating a connected S-class threat that went around assassinating political figures in Europe. I'm using them here as the jumping off point for Heroes development as he begins to fully comprehend the Stilling and all it's supposed to be able to do.

In some ways, this is coming full circle. With one caveat: Some of you may have noticed, but Rebecca, and Cauldron by extension, made zero attempt to regulate or direct Andy's tinkering. He is now well and truly an executive, with all the privileges and expectations involved.

Animal fact? Sure. Koalas are shit-eating, disease-ridden, smooth-brained idiots. I mean that literally. Eucalyptus leaves are not nutritious. They're so not nutritious in fact that they're actually fucking toxic. Not only that, koalas cannot digest them naturally. To digest eucalyptus, they need special bacteria in their gut. The only way for a baby koala to get this bacteria is to eat their mother's shit, a viscous, green substance called fecal pap.

And yes, they really are smooth-brained. For those of you who don't know why that matters, the wrinkly bits of your brain gives your brain more surface area, allowing it to pack in more neurons per volume. It's literally the part that gives humans (and animals) advanced cognition. Koala brains are almost entirely smooth.

Let me give you an example of just how stupid a koala is. If you pluck eucalyptus leaves out of a branch and put them onto a plate, a koala will not eat those leaves and promptly starve. They no longer recognize the leaves as food. Yeah, they're that bad.

Also, something like eighty percent of them have chlamydia.

They deserve to die out and the only reason they're alive is because pretty privilege made them the posterboys of Australian conservation efforts. Kinda like pandas and we all know how I feel about pandas.

Anyway, thank you to all of my patrons. As many of you know, I update one of my stories once every weekend publically. However, I update much more frequently on Pat-re-on, usually about 10 chapters a month spread across various stories. That means the number of chapters available on Pat-re-on is always growing. As of now, this is how far along each story is:

- A Colorful Life: Quest. It's the same as public.
- Godslaying Bunny: Quest. It's the same as public.
- Homeless Bunny: 22
- Legendary Tinker: 8.4
- Let There Be War: 9 (Finished)
- Plan? What Plan?: 4.12.5
- Pokemon: Apocalypse: 1.11
- The Holy Grill: 2.3
- Troll in the Dungeon: 15
- When is a Spoon a Sword?: 4.11

Total Chapter Difference (Pat-re-on - Public): 29

 

[Fellow Human]

Question for the animal expert.
We've all seen animals submitting and flopping belly up, then the alpha/predator accepts it.
But what if it doesn't, what if it bites their throat?
Have you ever seen that happen?

 

[NewDay]

Question for the animal expert.
We've all seen animals submitting and flopping on their belly, then the alpha/predator accepts it.
But what if it doesn't, what if it bites their throat?
Have you ever seen that happen?

Click to shrink...

Yeah this behaviour is seen mostly in wolfs and is a way for both parties to survive after a dominance fight. In general the winners don't try to kill the wolfs that submits but unfortunately dogs don't have that ingrained behaviour. This is why it's bad to release domestic dogs into wild places with wolves because when they fight the wolves will think they're wolves as well and not go for the kill whereas the dogs will immediately go for the kill.

I'm not sure about this in other animals though.

 

[Fabled Webs]

Respite 8.3

2005, July 7: Babylon, Ukraine

My lab was more or less as I'd left it. It was actually several facilities spliced into one so that I could better coordinate all my various "specializations." A chemistry lab looked very different from a manufacturing hub after all.

The centerpiece was of course the Nexus, a colossal mana crystal engraved with runes that connected it to my soul, and from it, to the infinite reserve that was the World Rune. As my own integration of the World Rune grew, so too did the Nexus' output. At this point, I was up to nine of twelve and was missing just Approach Velocity, Future's Market, and First Strike.

From the Nexus led three mana channels that led to three separate facilities. One was dedicated to the production of basic potions: Health, Sump Tonics, Petricite Elixir, and in much smaller quantities, the Elixir of Sorcery.

The second channel powered a series of modules and charging stations dedicated to a small squad of Wrenchbots that maintained the lab's production capabilities. The Custodian was great. With her power, she alone was sufficient for maintaining the cleanliness of all of Cauldron's facilities spread out across multiple continents and worlds.

However, she was no tinker. And though my tech didn't randomly "degrade" as tinkertech typically did, that didn't mean hextech didn't have its own wear and tear. My tech wasn't unbreakable nor infinite just because the World Rune was. The Wrenchbots were great for general maintenance like that.

There was also a larger charging station for my Plaza Guardian, or Forest Guardian now I supposed, the one I'd built for the sole purpose of watching over the people who called Babylon home. The hextech mech was a bit of a prototype, a test to see how I could go about building bigger combat droids. Rather than a series of weapons modules, it was equipped with fire extinguishers, net launchers, chainsaw, gardening shears, and shovel, best suited for being the guardian and gardener of what was quickly becoming a fantasy forest.

Off in the corner of the second facility was a series of mechanical parts, pieces I'd only just begun to workshop. After the Forest Guardian, I'd wanted to build a Hextech Galio of my own, something I could ride into battle against Behemoth.

That never panned out of course. With the completion of the Mask, it was hard to consider a way in which my offensive potential could be improved. After all, what was more lethal than Death?

'Nothing,' Wolyo sneered in my mind. 'You have enough weapons, child.'

'You're not wrong. Between Curtain Call, Isolde, and you two, I'm really not lacking firepower,' I replied. Even against the Simurgh, the fault was with me, not my creations. I was too weak. I failed to withstand the backlash of becoming one of the Kindred.

'So train,' Farya said simply. 'Train and grow strong, until we never have to leave you again. We are three now.'

'I will. But that doesn't mean there is nothing that can be gained by building more either.'

Unsealed Spellbook, one of the three keystones, granted me knowledge of what I once knew as "summoner spells" in my past life. The keystones also gave me an advanced knowledge of runes and matrices, enough to engrave those spells for others onto enchanted objects. I'd given my mother three rings containing Heal, Barrier, and Teleport, each keyed to activate at the first sign of danger.

There was no reason I couldn't do something similar. In fact, I realized I hadn't been using my runes correctly. I wasn't a Champion with a hyper-specific skillset. Nor was I bound by the limitations of the game. I was the wielder of a World Rune in its entirety, the sum total of all innovations made across all of Runeterran history. I ought to be combining runes, focuses, and spells to get something truly unique.

Anivia's Grace, my armor, was a good start. The White Walkers, boots that mimicked Sun Wukong's cloud-stepping, were also an interesting use of Ghost. Curtain Call, Jhin's sniper-coilgun hybrid fused with the Lucian's relic pistol, was a solid ranged option.

But I could do more.

As I looked at what might have one day been a Hextech Galio mech, I considered all the different things I'd seen. It wasn't as though League of Legends was the only game I'd ever played. Nor was I so uncreative that I could only make the weapons of Champions.

I had to finish my tour of Babylon, get an idea of what I was working with, but I couldn't help but feel as though I'd made a breakthrough, if not in tech, then certainly in my perspective.

X

I looked at the third branch that led from my Nexus. It was supposed to be a biotinker's lab. The potions lab was great for alchemy and chemistry, but it was hardly a medical bay. That was what the third branch was supposed to be.

I dialed up Fortuna. She picked up in moments, no doubt expecting me. "Say, Fortuna?"

"Yes, Andy? How's Babylon?" she replied, voice coy and teasing.

"Are you the one who installed generators to my biotinker lab?"

"Yes. There was a free connection lying around and you did say the Nexus is an unlimited source of energy that draws from your soul."

"So you used one of my hextech capacitors."

"So I used your hextech capacitors."

I looked around. Hextech fundamentally transmuted mana into electricity. That was Heimerdinger's great contribution to the City of Progress, a way to industrialize magic. Fortuna hadn't actually built anything, but she had taken what I had lying around to harvest more energy from the Nexus.

"Dare I ask what you're doing with all this power?"

"Nothing too bad. I've been using the generated power to supply the rest of Cauldron. Your generator requires less frequent maintenance and is far more efficient."

"I hope you realize, you turned a coma patient into your battery," I drawled. "You're definitely evil, you know."

She chuckled. "Was that ever in doubt?"

"Well, I'm going to need to reroute all of this for my own use eventually. Or maybe I can give the biotinker lab to Riley?"

"I'm sure she'd love that. Give me a week to set up alternatives?"

"Fine, will do. Anything else I should know?"

"About your lab? No. No further changes have been made."

"'My lab,' you said. Not 'Babylon' as a whole," I said, a question implied. I knew her well enough to be suspicious. "Dare I ask?"

She hummed cheerily. If there was a "Path to Conveying Shit-Eating Grin Through Phone Calls," I knew she'd be running it. "That depends. How do you feel about godhood?"

"Excuse me?"

"Congratulations, you are worshiped as the primary aspect of a multi-faceted god by the immigrants of Babylon," she said dryly.

"How? I thought that was a joke?!"

"We took on immigrants from other worlds if you'll recall."

"Yeah, so? They're just here to gather petricite trees and whatnot."

"They came from civilizations that had very little in the way of technological development. Though the exact century analog varies, many came from the Iron Age, medieval times at the latest."

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. I could see where she was going with this. "They were whisked away to a whole new world. And they saw that this land was converted into a magical forest with a facility that churns out magic potions and tech beyond their understanding."

"Correct. Even before your slumber, they were under the impression that they were in service of some godlike sorcerer. The 'witch-lord,' I believe is the name they coined. Your introduction of the Forest Guardian and Wrenchbots didn't help matters."

"Fine. How bad is it?"

"Congratulations, you are the avatar of the turtle-god, the patron of smithing, alchemy, healing, farming, harvest, and all other forms of human production and progress. According to your burgeoning cult, you may also be engaged to the goddess of winter , the great Winter Eagle. Or fought a titanic battle that drove her away and ended in a treaty that made the seasons. There are several folk tales surrounding your summoning of Anivia by the way. Fascinating stuff," she said, not even pretending to hide her amusement.

"How… That doesn't even make sense," I sputtered. "They're not even unified domains. What do any of those have to do with turtles?"

"You use the turtle shell as your maker's mark. You are Hyunmu, the Black Turtle of the North, are you not?"

"... I hate you sometimes… And the 'god of the harvest' thing?"

"Do you recall the Freljordian grain you used to make Graggy Ice?"

I let out yet another sigh. "You planted them here, didn't you?"

"We did. They grow taller, stronger, and healthier while being hyper-resistant to the cold. They also provide a much better yield than the genetically unaltered crops the people were used to. I believe they still have a harvest festival in your honor."

"You're having way too much fun with this."

"I disagree," she replied glibly. "I think I'm having just the right amount of fun. Your budding cult has been a steady source of amusement over the years. Besides, having Riley tamper with the genetic makeup of the wheat is one of the most beneficial means of focusing her tinkering. So far, we are considering introducing the crop to Earth-Bet at large."

"So Babylon is a microcosm for product testing purposes?"

"Precisely."

"Still, a god? I've never even been out of the lab here."

"You summoned a giant phoenix made of ice with a wingspan that spanned the breadth of the entire horizon."

It hurt. Fortuna's matter-of-fact words hurt like a spear of True Ice to the chest. I had done that ritual on the winter solstice so I could upgrade Winter's Approach to Anivia's Grace. The people of Babylon saw, and for once, they were right: Anivia was indeed a goddess. In a way, it could be taken as a literal divine sign.

That made me question everything I'd ever done. "Fortuna?"

"Yes, Yusung?"

"Am… Am I a god…?"

"Is that such a bad thing? You provide for them, however indirectly. We don't even tax their grain. The 'witch-lord' is the single most benevolent feudal lord in history, capable of miracles their minds cannot comprehend. Men throughout history have claimed as much for far lesser accomplishments."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I should have a god complex."

"So don't develop one. Yusung, you are whoever you wish to be. The opinions of primitives should have no bearing on your sense of identity."

"They're not primitives," I said weakly.

"They are in every way that matters. More importantly, my point stands: Their opinions should not color your self-perception."

"I… Yeah, you're right. It just caught me off guard. I guess I've been neglecting Babylon as a whole."

"You have, though not through any fault of yours. I suggest you meet with Rinke when you have the time."

"Why? Has he started worshiping me too?"

"No, but he does think rather highly of your magic forest. I believe he wanted to introduce several fantasy animals to 'suit the aesthetic.'"

"Why would any of that sound like a good idea?" I asked.

"Because he may consider it whether you like it or not. If you speak with him now, you'll be able to veto anything he is planning."

"Must I? So long as he isn't killing off the people here, I'm more or less okay with whatever."

"Very well, I'll pass that on."

"Thanks, Fortuna."

"You're welcome."

The line went dead and I was left contemplating the nature of godhood. Now that I had a minute, it was a little funny. I'd been a Christian in my past life. I wouldn't ever dream of calling myself a god. And yet, here I was, deified without even noticing.

'Is that such a problem?' Farya's melodic voice echoed in my mind. It still had that beautiful, haunting note that sent shivers down my spine. 'It will not affect your actions.'

'I guess not. It's just unexpected, that's all.'

'You knew you would cease to be human. The Fox said as much.'

'Yeah, but I didn't think other people would treat me like this, and without ever meeting me.'

'Even a mouse may cast a frightening shadow.'

'Are you saying that it's because they don't know me that they can deify me?'

'Indeed. This could be useful however.'

'How so?'

'Spirit gods are entities that gather strength in accordance with faith. Janna the Storm's Fury. Ornn the Firebringer. Nagakabouros the Mother Serpent.'

I paused at that. Faith-based entities did exist on Runeterra. Janna specifically had lost much of her power until recently. Just because Anivia was there at the creation of the Freljord didn't mean she wasn't influenced by the faith of her people. Hell, even Valhir kept followers, his Ursine.

But that didn't mean I was a god… did it?

'Farya? Are the Kindred influenced by faith?'

'Of course we are. The Fading Icon was forgotten,' Wolyo answered with a snort.

'And if we can cultivate faith in you…'

'We can ensure we will never fade,' Farya finished for me. 'We can acquire more power. It is not a hardship to guide the lost to the other side.'

I didn't like it. I didn't feel that I'd done anything to be worthy of worship. I'd known immortality was something I'd have to struggle with, but deification?

That felt like a step too far. I didn't think a mortal had any business claiming the mantle of a god. Even the Aspects were more vessels rather than true gods. Ascended? Sure, those were a thing, but all but Nasus went murderously insane.

But I couldn't deny its usefulness either.

X

2005, July 7: Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

The largest salt flat in the world stretched out before me as far as the horizon. The salt and the shallow water reflected the sunset, dying the scene a mesmerizing array of oranges and yellows. The vista made me feel almost as if I was standing on nothing and the sky stretched out forever. Being able to claim the entire flat to myself, one of the greatest examples of nature in all its unspoiled beauty, was easily one of the better perks of being a Cauldron executive.

It felt good to be out here. The world had largely moved on from Hyunmu. Other things made the news cycle. People who weren't in my direct social circle found different interests. The differences I made in the world were noted, but more in a "imagine what he could've done had he not met the Simurgh" sort of way.

Even my friends, the Phoenix Wards, weren't Wards anymore. Hell, David and Penelope had a kid on the way! I may have been asleep for only three years, but Earth-Bet was a very different place than the one I knew.

In that sense, this plane of seemingly infinite white was my quiet place.

I danced with Isolde in hand, going through familiar motions in a strange body. I wasn't that much taller, now five-four, stronger and faster too, but the more mature body was enough to throw me off ever so slightly. I hoped that by engaging in these familiar kata, I would be able to better accustom myself to this new body.

I started off slow, working from the ground up in every martial style I knew. Most of them began with footwork. They were basic, things taught to children and the greenest of acolytes, but they helped more than the advanced techniques at the moment. Simply moving from foot to foot, allowing myself to feel the way my muscles tensed and my center of gravity shifted, that was grounding in ways I couldn't quite put to words.

I then began with the unarmed kata of the Shojin Monastery, Isolde shrunken until it looked like a large pair of gardening shears and clenched in one hand. Its blades and spikes let it double as a hybrid between a dagger and a brass knuckle.

I ran through the sequence again and again. My movements were more of a dance than a combat art at this stage. It wasn't enough to approximate the right motions; I needed perfection, to know I was in full control of my body at every stage of the kata.

Then faster. And faster. Until I moved onto more complicated dances.

I'd been at this for hours, flowing from one form to another until I felt I could engage in the kind of high speed that defined an endbringer battle. Then I started to mix the sword forms of Master Yi, Isolde expanding to strike down imaginary foes. I only stopped when I saw a Door open behind me.

"Andy, dinner's ready!" Riley said, barging right on through. I stamped down the wave of irritation at someone else entering my quiet place. It wasn't as if I owned the salt flats here. "Woah, what is this place?"

"It's the Salar de Uyuni," I explained patiently, "a natural geological formation that forms when a lot of flat ground gets covered in a lot of salt water."

"All this is salt? Cool!" And, like any other six year old, she promptly sank to her knees and picked up a mound. Without a care in the world, she stuck her hand in her mouth, and promptly spat it out with a look of disgust. "Blegh. Yup. That's salt."

I chuckled at her self-inflicted misfortune. Riley was adorable. She had a way of washing away any annoyance at her intrusion in my life. "That it is, Riley."

"What were you doing?"

"Martial arts practice."

"Ooh, so you can beat up all the bad guys?"

"No, so I don't get beat up by all the bad guys," I said, completely honestly.

"Huh? But I saw videos of you beating up Stage Crew. And you won all your spars against the Wards," she said, open confusion on her young face. She started doing her best impression of a kung fu movie. "You were like 'Haiyah!'"

I groaned internally. Of course she saw that. "Say, Riley?"

"Yeah?"

"Why do you think I was asleep for so long?"

"You did something that saved a lot of people. Mommy won't let me see the video though," she pouted. It made sense. I wouldn't want a six year old seeing recordings of endbringer battles either. It also explained how she had such a skewed view of me.

"I don't always win, Riley," I said gently. "I got hurt. I got hurt fighting a very strong lady."

"R-Really?"

"Yup. She was so strong that I wasn't able to leave my bed for three years."

"She's scary…"

"Very." On that, I could emphatically agree. Death Incarnate or not, World Rune or not, the Simurgh was fucking terrifying. I wasn't sure how much was appropriate to say to a child, but I chose to lean towards honesty. I gently placed my hands on her shoulders. "That's why I work very hard. Being a good tinker isn't enough for me because one day, I'm going to face her again."

"B-But what if you go to sleep for years again?" she asked, voice quivering with apprehension. I looked at her carefully. She had abandonment issues, because of course she did.

"I won't," I assured her even as I chastised myself for failing to account for the obvious. "I'm going to be even stronger next time."

"Promise?"

"Pinky promise."

She gave me a resolute nod, as serious as a six year old could be, before we sealed the pact with a press of our thumbs. "You can't leave."

"Never. Now let's go eat dinner, okay?"

"Okay… Andy?"

"Yes, Riley?"

"Can you teach me to do kung fu too?"

I laughed. "It's Shojin kenpo. And yes, Riley."

Speaking of, seeing how mom had enough mana to use the rings, she didn't need her share of the Biscuits of Everlasting Will anymore. Fortuna needed the Elixir of Sorcery to manipulate mana properly, but she was a grown woman.

What would happen if I drip-fed a young girl with the power of a World Rune? Would she develop a sizable mana pool by the time she hit her teens? If I taught her the magic martial arts of Ionia, would she be able to control that pool?

I was sure making Riley a magic biotinker would give more than one cape in the original timeline an aneurism, but it was worth considering, especially if I wanted to get into biotinkering with her.

The chembarons of Zaun had much to offer, as did the Black Rose of Noxus. Any project that stemmed from those nutjobs wouldn't be exactly PR-friendly, but Riley wasn't an open cape. No one knew she triggered except Cauldron. And I had a lab on an entirely separate world for precisely this purpose.

I'd have to build appropriate containment and sterilization measures. And all this would naturally come after I'd instilled in Riley a thorough respect for bioethics and life as a whole, but it was certainly a promising thought.

Author's Note

Don't you just hate waking up one morning to find you're in the plot of Road to El Dorado?

For real though, the Kindred are fascinating. Different cultures prefer one face of the Kindred over another. In Demacia, most think a swift death from the Lamb is better. In Bilgewater, the Lamb is seen as craven. Of course, the Kindred themselves don't really give a damn, only that the individual does not cheat death.

Magical Girl Riley is a go! To be honest, I already had her cape name picked out: Nightingale, after the Angel of the Battlefield. It's just a coincidence that it's also a very magical girl-y name.

Animal fact: A songbird's skeleton is lighter than its feathers. Yeah, most people know bird bones are hollow, but this threw me off too.

Thank you to all of my patrons. As many of you know, I update one of my stories once every weekend publically. However, I update much more frequently on Pat-re-on, usually about 8-10 chapters a month spread across various stories. That means the number of chapters available on Pat-re-on is always growing. As of now, this is how far along each story is:

- ACL & Bunny Quests: Same as public
- Apocalypse: 1.13
- The Holy Grill: 2.4
- Homeless Bunny: 22
- Legendary Tinker: 8.5
- Plan? What Plan?: 4.13
- When is a Spoon a Sword?: 4.12
- Troll in the Dungeon!: 16
- Let There be War: 9 (Complete)

Total Chapter Difference (Pat-re-on - Public): 29

 

[Kalesin]

Aw yisssss, that's the stuff! Magical Girl Hextech Genocide is a go!

Thanks for the update!

 

[Fabled Webs]

Respite 8.4

2005, July 8: Phoenix, AZ, USA

"Morning, mom," I mumbled as I came down for breakfast. It was amazing how seamlessly I reintegrated my old routine into the family. New house, new sister, but the same old schedule of waking up to practice martial arts with the dawn.

"Good morning, son. How was practice?" she asked as she gave me a hug. She'd been much more physically affectionate since I woke up, though I supposed I couldn't blame her.

"Good. I'm really getting used to this body."

"Do you mind waking Riley while I set the table?"

I nodded and turned to head back upstairs. That was something else she'd been doing, trying to get me to interact with Riley as much as possible. Things were still a tad awkward, but I couldn't deny that a large part of that came from my end.

Riley was in her room, nestled into a bed that looked too big for her tiny frame. Mom gave her the smallest bedroom. It had been decorated with lots of pastel blues and pinks. One wall had been converted into a painted mural that depicted all sorts of bugs and flowers, each labeled with their vernacular and scientific names, ideal habitat, and a short blurb about their life cycle.

A shelf next to her desk was dedicated to all sorts of terrariums and potted plants, from orchids to cacti to bonsai trees. Each plant had a brass name card that listed information about it as if it was an exhibit in a botanical garden. Her room looked like it belonged in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, not the bedroom of a six year old girl.

Fortuna's work no doubt. The room struck a wonderful balance between childish and educational. If a stranger entered by accident, such as one of mom's music students, they would see the bedroom of a young girl who was passionately in love with biology, not the den of one of the most capable biotinkers alive.

I walked over and gently shook her awake. Riley liked to build a cocoon around herself while clutching an overstuffed pillow of an alligator snapping turtle. She called it Gamera apparently, a gift from Yasmine that probably came with some sort of pun about my personal emblem. It was disgustingly cute.

"Riley, time to wake up, squirt," I said gently.

"Mnnn…" She twisted into her cocoon.

"Up. Mom's getting breakfast ready."

"Mnnyaa… Dunwanna…"

"Get up anyway."

"Nuu…"

I sighed. I didn't have the patience for this. I picked up the Riley-flavored burrito and slung her over my shoulder in a fireman's carry. "Fine, stay in your blankets. You still need to eat breakfast."

"Mmkay…" she mumbled, going right back to sleep.

Mom looked at me with an arched brow as I came down the stairs. "I said wake her, not bring her here like a sack of rice, Yusung."

I shrugged helplessly. "She didn't want to. Besides, I'm sure the smell of food will do the trick."

And it did. Though Riley preferred sweet breakfast foods like pancakes, she developed a taste for the savory breakfasts that were more typical of Korean households. She still hated kimchi however.

"What are you doing today?" mom asked me.

"I think I'm going to use up some of the petricite reserves. People have been harvesting them from Babylon but I haven't been around to make them into anything. When the world finds out I'm back, lots of people are going to want their cities to be part of the Worldstone network," I explained. It was inevitable, and likely the most urgent demand from the populace. "Best I get ahead of that while I can."

"Ooh, can I watch, Andy?" Riley asked through a mouthful of rice and eggs.

Mom gently plucked a grain from her cheek. "Don't talk with your mouth full, Riley."

"Yes, mommy."

I considered the question. "Don't you have homeschool?"

"But that's boring~"

"So is making Worldstones. It's just me carving runes, nothing really scientific."

"Poop."

"Tell you what, Riley. If you promise you'll pay attention in class, I'll give you a magic cookie."

"Cookie? Really?" She studied me with narrowed eyes. "You don't have a cookie."

I chuckled. How could I ignore a setup like that? I held out my hand and gave it a flourishing wave. "Oh, but I do, little sister. Now, pay attention, okay?"

"Magic trick?"

"Magic, without the tricks," I corrected. Then, wisps of mana coalesced from my hand, becoming the ideal cookie as Riley, in this moment, envisioned it. Chocolate chip, of course, with just a hint of char to give it that perfectly homemade mouthfeel. "Ta-dah!"

"You can make cookies?" Riley exclaimed. I knew. In that moment, I was the single greatest person in the world in her eyes. Not because I was a hero, or because mom talked me up, but because I conjured a cookie. It was a weirdly satisfying feeling. "Mom! Andy can make cookies!"

"I can," I said with a laugh, "but only three magic cookies per day."

"Gimmie!"

"Ah, nope. You gotta promise, Riley."

"I'll pay attention in class."

"Good. Now, the magic word."

"Please?"

I handed it over with a smile. "Good girl."

"Andy has cookie-powers. It's not fair," she said through a mouthful of crumbs.

"I don't. I have magic cookie-powers," I replied with a smile. "If you keep eating them, you'll be able to use magic too one day."

"R-Really?"

"Yup. Fortuna can, but only a little. Do you want to learn?"

"Uh-huh." Her head nodded so fast I almost feared it'd pop right off.

"Well, you're going to need to pick up Shojin kenpo."

"That kung fu stuff you do in the salty place?"

"Yeah. And that means waking up early with me. Think you're up for it?"

"Hmm… Okay…"

So agreed, I placed one on the kitchen table for Fortuna. Hers was a gnarly purple color, speckled with seeds. To the best of my knowledge, it was a type of yam that didn't grow on Earth-Bet; it had slowly evolved into something else through the cultivation methods of humanity. It didn't objectively taste better than modern sweet potatoes or anything, but it held a unique place in her heart as one of the few things that could instill in her a sense of nostalgia.

Sure enough, Fortuna stepped through a Door not ten seconds later. She grabbed the cookie and took a nibble, letting out an appreciative hum. She twisted as she sat on the couch, dispersing the force of Riley's sudden tackle-hug.

"Aunty Fortuna! Hi!"

"Hello, Riley, Sujeong, Yusung," she greeted.

I nodded her way and conjured a third cookie. I handed it over to mom. It wasn't as though I needed the mana anyway.

She shook her head and pushed it back to me. "You can make three, right? Have one yourself."

"Ooh, can I?" Riley asked, releasing Fortuna in favor of reaching for the cookie.

"No. We share in this house, Riley. You've already had yours."

"Aww… Okay."

I shrugged. "Thanks, mom."

I took a nibble and was reminded why Biscuit Delivery was one of my favorite runes. It was one of the branches of Inspiration I'd sorely neglected. After all, food was ubiquitous. These biscuits weren't the only magical forms of sustenance available on Runeterra.

Sadly, I would likely continue to neglect this branch of human innovation, aside from baking treats for my family and friends, because it just didn't provide the overwhelming power and utility I required.

Fortuna stuck around and chatted with us for precisely fifteen minutes. She'd taken to sharing a cup of coffee with mom apparently and, even if I knew it was at least partially for this specific purpose, I felt grateful nonetheless.

As I was headed out to Babylon, mom called, "Yusung, remember that you're meeting your friends tonight."

"Yeah, I know. Have a good day, mom."

"Love you, son."

X

Having done it once, making the Worldstones was damn near intuitive now. I borrowed a laser cutter from Hero and started to make topographic maps onto enormous slabs of relic stone, the same, pale substance that made up all Sentinel runes had to be engraved and empowered by my hand, but the boring work of making a miniaturized relief of the word could be hastened along.

The goal was to make a network that spanned the entire globe much as I'd done for the United States. Canada, being the home of the Guild and the second country to adopt the PRT model, was naturally first on that list. Engraving all day, I added Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg to the network. Hopefully, that'd keep Eugene and Richter happy.

I did get home a bit earlier than I would have liked. Today was the day I promised I"d meet my old friends and I had no idea how that'd go. Still, now was as good a time as any.

Friday night was movie night. It was a tradition started when I headed to DC so I could keep in touch with my friends. I'd been surprised and touched to hear that mom kept this tradition going, even getting permission from Fortuna to allow Doorways so the former Phoenix Wards could meet in person. It didn't happen every week anymore now that everyone was grown up and had their own lives to live, but they did make a point of catching up in person at least once a month.

Oh, I wasn't naive. Fortuna probably determined that it was an easy concession to make to keep my mother happy. She probably even calculated the influence having strong female role models like Raquel, Yasmine, and Penelope would have on Riley's development and decided to give her some of the social interaction the young biotinker so desperately lacked as a homeschooled child.

I finished stuffing the last cannoli with homemade cream just as a Door opened into the living room. Two figures came through, a blonde woman with an athletic build marred by her obvious pregnancy and a man with sandy-brown hair and half an ear.

"Hey, Mrs. Kim, we brought popcorn," came Penelope's voice. She wasn't angled to see me, but I could see straight through her. I wondered if she knew she'd be having a son.

Mom ushered Penelope to sit down. My old Wards leader grumbled that she wasn't made of glass but allowed herself to be bullied into a chair anyway. Before they could begin to catch up, the Door opened again, this time spitting out Yasmine.

"Yo, Mrs. K, how're things?"she asked as she sauntered in. Yasmine had changed a fair bit. As Hat Trick, she was widely considered the most versatile member of the San Francisco Protectorate. She kept the right side of her hair shaved short and the rest of her bangs dyed in purples and greens. "And how's the little midget?"

"I'm not a midget!" came Riley's protests as she stomped downstairs. "Mom! Jazz is bullying me!"

"Oh, that's cheap."

"Yeah? Well blegh!"

"Riley, no, bad," mom chided. "You too, Yasmine. How are you as bad as a six year old?"

"Ehehe, sorry, Mrs. K."

The door, our front door, opened to let in Raquel. I smiled at seeing her. She of all my friends had changed the least. She was still that short Latina, lithe and scrawny at first sight but densely muscled from over a decade of dedicated gymnastics. She wore a t-shirt and shorts with a pair of flip-flops to deal with the Phoenix heat.

"Hey, guys, I brought drinks," she called with a cheery grin. "You won't believe what happened."

"Hey, chica, heard you were inducting the newest Ward, right?"

"Yeah, he's a huge pain in the a-booty," she said, moderating her language at the last second with a glance towards Riley. Mom nodded with an approving smile.

"What happened? He ask you out?"

David began flipping through DVDs. "I bet he mistook her for another Ward."

"He didn't!" Raquel yelped with a pout. "And that only happened once! He's just super entitled and thinks he shouldn't have to do any of the basic training and certifications just because his dad's on the city council or something."

"Really? Because it's not that much."

"I know, right? Basic first-aid training, how to interact with police, and some general SOPs aren't that hard to learn. But he just wants to punch villains in the face because he has a brute power," she huffed.

David shrugged. "Maybe you should spar with him a bit, deflate the ego a bit."

"Yeah, kick his butt," Jazz added. "Beat him black and blue."

"That's not what I said."

"It's what you meant."

"It's not, Jazz. Stop trying to make Raq be a bad example."

"Yeah, you can't just punch your problems," Penny said, backing up her husband. No one pointed out the obvious hypocrisy there. Ever the big sister, Penny smiled sympathetically and patted the seat on the couch next to her. "Come on, Raq, relax. Sit with me."

"Yeah, sorry for venting," Raquel said, practically melting into the cushion. One of the pillows vanished, to be replaced by Riley. My little sister squawked in surprise before she was enveloped in a cuddle pile.

"Eh, it's cool. That's half the reason we have these nights anyway."

"Yeah, I needed this. Food, friends, movie, and Riley."

"Hey," Riley protested weakly.

"Shush, you. Enjoy the cuddles."

"Your power is unfair."

"All the better to hug you with, Riley."

"Yeah, speaking of Riley, can I bring Josie next time?" David asked. "This kinda began as cape-talk, but we don't really do that so much anymore."

I took that as my cue to walk out of the kitchen, a plate of freshly stuffed cannoli in hand. "Sure, why not. Actually, I don't think I've met her. How's she doing anyway?"

"Not bad, she's eleven now. It's kind of a pain having to find babysitters for her who won't ask questions about where I've gone," David said, not looking up from the back of a DVD case.

"Andy!" the girls shouted. I barely had time to put down the plate of pastries before I'd traded places with another pillow.

"When did you wake up?" my former leader asked with a watery smile as she gave me a hug. She used her second trigger to pick me up from a distance like a doll.

"A few days ago," I told them as I ruffled Riley's hair. "I had to get a few things situated. Catch up on everything that happened, meet my new kid sister…"

"You've been busy."

"Guess I have."

"Andy, I'm… I'm sorry," she began. "I've always wanted to tell you… If I wasn't there, then you would have-"

I looked at her. She looked so damn guilty like this, like my three year coma was her fault somehow. I hated this. She was Stingray. Confident, strong, everyone's big sister. Not… Not this teary, guilt-ridden mess.

"It's not your fault," I tried.

"It is! You told me not to volunteer! Then I had to play the big damn hero. I-I heard it was DC and…"

"And you wanted to check on me," I said softly. I understood, because I would have done the same. For as briefly as I'd known them, these four had well and truly become like family to me. They'd taken in the little blind boy, and I'd gotten David's dad killed. There was a big part of me that still didn't forgive myself. Penny, she was going through much the same. "You did nothing wrong."

"You got hurt because of me."

"I didn't. I got hurt because I fought the Simurgh with powers I wasn't ready to handle," I said, pulling the taller girl into a hug. "And I'm better now. See?"

"You lost three years of your life…"

"And I'm back. No harm done."

"I-"

"No, Penny. No beating yourself up over what happened. That's what the Simurgh does. She arranges little events like dominoes. She used Warptek's bomb to make her escape."

"You shouldn't have had to choose."

"But I'll make that choice every time," I assured her. "You're worth it. All of you."

Then I couldn't move because I had the world's biggest trash panda buried in my chest. She said something but it was muffled. "We thought you'd never wake up…"

"Well I'm back, Raq."

"You missed so much…"

"I know," I said, rubbing her back in soothing circles. I felt my shirt dampen with tears. "I'm sorry."

"Wow, I definitely didn't expect this today," Jazz quipped. She'd never been great with emotions, a bit like me actually, so her go-to response was to try to lighten the mood. She leaned forward and snagged a cannoli. "Mmm! Yep, this is Andy for sure. He's taller, but he still bakes."

"I'm glad I passed your master-stranger test."

"Yup. It's a very rigorous test. What kind of random imposter would know how to bake cannolis?"

"But what if they were poisoned?"

"You shut your mouth with your logic."

That pulled a quiet chuckle from us. I gently pulled Raquel from my chest and nestled between her and Riley. "You know, you haven't changed at all. I mean, new hair, new city, but still the same Jazz."

"Yeah? How 'bout you? You're taller than Raquel now!" she said with a laugh.

And suddenly, Raquel's flip-flip was in her hand, sailing towards Yasmine's face. "You shut up!"

I laughed and pulled my favorite trash panda into a one-armed hug. "She's right, you know. Penny's clearly expecting, David's got a scruffy beard now, and Jazz' hair looks like a leprechaun barfed on it, but you? You're a consistent midge-Ow! Why your slipper?"

"Shut up, you jerk! Do you know how many short jokes I put up with every day?"

I couldn't help it. Feeding this little fire was second nature to me by now. "So one might say it's left you with a short temper?"

Raquel's eyebrow twitched in a distinctly unhealthy way. Riley, probably smarter than me, ran out of the splash zone and hid behind mom. The flip-flop hurled towards me. I would have caught it, but it was only a distraction. It vanished and reappeared in Raquel's hand as she lunged towards me. "Fear the chancla!"

"Ow! Ow! Damn it, trash panda! Oh, I heard you named your PHO account aft-OW! That one actually hurt!"

"¡Callate, estupido!" she yelled, before descending into a rambling mix of Spanish and English.

All the while, her favored weapon of judgment descended and I laughed like a maniac. Mom, David, and Penelope looked on with exasperated smiles as Yasmine cheered Raquel on. Riley looked between me and Raquel with a conflicted expression; I was probably causing irreparable damage to the heroic image she had of me, but that was a good thing in my book. Hero worship was nice, but not from family.

X

2005, July 9: Babylon, Ukraine

I reflected on my newfound status as a "god" all week. This would be my first time in Babylon, the town and enchanted forest, not my lab that overlooked them both. Fortuna was, of course, correct: What these people thought of me was irrelevant.

On the other hand, what Farya and Wolyo said also had merit: I too was part of the Kindred now, one of them. There would come a time when I could no longer call myself human; perhaps that time had already come. The spirit gods of Runeterra were influenced by the faith they inspired, so it wasn't a far stretch to think I too would be vulnerable to the same one day.

More than anything, I was morbidly curious. What exactly did a "faith in the Kindred" mean in this context? The Lamb and the Wolf were worshiped throughout all of Valoran, but each culture did so in different ways.

In Bilgewater, they respected those who fought the Wolf to the bitter end. There was a festival called the Kindred's Eve, during which time a known coward, a designated "Lambfool," would be forced to face a respected warrior to the death. Should the Lambfool emerge victorious against all odds, every knave, liar, murderer, and pirate in Bilgewater would be obligated to walk the path of peace for a full year. Hence why they always chose a known coward.

'An idiotic practice,' Farya sniffed. 'To accept the inevitable is not cowardice.'

'Maybe, but many humans consider death the final enemy,' I pointed out. 'In that framework, to accept death is to be a coward, for it is to accept your enemy.'

'Ridiculous. All things end. Neither I nor dear Wolf judge the morals of man.'

'So I take it you're not a fan of that particular tradition?'

'Nor I,' Wolyo said, somewhat to my surprise. 'The prey that struggles is good, but I do not care for the conduct of the living.'

'Ah, so they're putting words in your mouth by mandating the pirates behave themselves for the year. Interesting take.'

'They leave me with less prey when they live justly,' Wolyo grumbled.

That made me laugh. Was that it? Wolyo felt cheated out of his prey in Bilgewater whenever the Lambfool won? It made sense, if in a twisted way. Neither halves of the Kindred gave a damn about the way humans comported themselves while they were alive. All souls were theirs to reap after all, and, contrary to human misconceptions, the two were one and the same. It mattered not to them, whether it was the fangs of the Wolf or the arrows of the Lamb that found a man in the end, only that the man was found and the hunt concluded.

'Okay, so what about the tally-men of Noxus? They don't favor a specific half of the Kindred, do they? I think they mostly dig graves and collect corpses.'

'They do not favor either side,' Farya agreed, 'but we did not ask them to keep an account of funeral rites.'

'None of it matters.'

'None of it matters.'

'But maybe it matters to the people left behind,' I thought quietly as I walked towards the town. 'I don't think it's wrong to offer people closure. Death might be inevitable, but it is only right to soothe the pain.'

The town was… idyllic. It was a primarily brick and mortar sort of place, the kind of beautiful, sanitized place that might show up in a renaissance faire or the set of a medieval fantasy movie. It reminded me of the Shire from Lord of the Rings, even if the architecture looked nothing alike. No sign of industrialization, but that left a sort of humble, Amish feel to things.

I was dressed for the part, a thick, woolen cloak with a hood drawn up over my face, casting it in shadow. I'd picked it up from a renaissance faire store out in Maryland. The Door was wonderfully convenient like that.

'It is not unlike a village in Demacia,' Farya quipped.

'Really? This place?'

'The petricite trees, the fields of golden wheat, and the shape of the buildings remind me of the place. They favor dignity in their passing.'

'Which means they favor those who meet you over Wolyo.'

'A boring lot with a boring hunt,' Wolyo grumbled.

"Who goes there?" I was brought out of my musings by the call of the guard. He was a farm boy, maybe a year or two older than me, dressed in thick fleece.

The town didn't have a stone wall, but there was a watchtower and a set of thick, wooden stakes posted around the perimeter to deter wild animals. Considering that they, the Case-53s in Neverland, and Cauldron staff were literally all there was of humanity in this world, they didn't need anything more sophisticated than this.

Honestly, I was more impressed by the man's grasp of English. Or had the Slug's memory manipulation been a requirement for their migration here?

"Ahoy!" I called. I immediately wanted to slap myself. Ahoy? What the hell? How did quasi-medieval farmers in sorta-but-not-really fantasy earths converse anyway? Should I have gone with "Tally ho?" Or "Howdy, chap?"

"Who are you?" he asked suspiciously.

"Ah…" I panicked. I didn't actually have a backstory planned out. "I come from… far away…"

"A traveler? We've never had one before."

"Well, first time for everything, eh?"

"You sound too young to be wandering the world. Short too. Take off the hood." I sighed but acquiesced. "You… Your eyes. They're-"

"Very blue, yes. Crystal, you might say."

"You're from the castle, aren't you?"

I paused at that. "What castle?"

"Babylon!" he exclaimed. "The castle of the witch-lords! You must be! You have eyes like sapphires! Are you their messenger?"

That was… one way to describe my eyes… I would have preferred the effusive praise come from a pretty woman, but he wasn't wrong. More importantly, he gave me the perfect excuse to be here.

"Yes, that's right. I'm a messenger of the witch-lords," I said, a little awkwardly. "Take me to the village chief, if you don't mind. We've decided that after five years, we would like to learn more about this village."

"R-Right away!"

Author's Note

I have plans for Babylon. Using it to integrate a bit more of Runeterra was always the plan, as seen with the Anivia/Winter's Approach thing. I don't know if it'll mesh well, but I think this story's been one big experiment for me anyway, kind of like how the firstborn child is always the experimental kid.

Animal fact? Sure. Sorta. This year is the year of the dragon, which is the fifth in the zodiac order.

Why fifth? Well, the Jade Emperor hosted a race to determine the order and the dragon fell behind the rat, ox, tiger, and hare even though it could fly. There are several versions of why this is the case, but the story goes that the dragon stopped by to give some peasants rain. And when the rain threatened to flood the river and drown someone, he created a gust of air to push him to shore.

Basically, the dragon is a swell guy.

Thank you to all of my patrons. As many of you know, I update one of my stories once every weekend publicly. However, I update much more frequently on Pat-re-on, usually 8-10 chapters a month spread across various stories. That means the number of chapters available on Pat-re-on is always growing. As of now, this is how far along each story is:

- ACL & Bunny Quests: Same as public
- A Life Worth Living: 1
- Apocalypse: 1.13
- The Holy Grill: 2.6.5
- Homeless Bunny: 24
- Legendary Tinker: 8.6
- Plan? What Plan?: 4.13.5
- When is a Spoon a Sword?: 4.12
- Troll in the Dungeon!: 21
- Let There be War: 9 (Complete)

Total Chapter Difference (Pat-re-on - Public): 30