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[] Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Part 3
Heatwave 9.18
Monday, June 20
You hold the feet of the armored suit in place while Samantha pushes the shoulders to stand the suit upright. Once you are sure that it will not fall over if left alone, you cancel the telekinesis that has been buoying the majority of its weight and move back to look at all three suits of power armor standing proudly in front of a plain concrete wall. This wall is not the wall of the warehouse Tim had claimed in Philadelphia, however. It is a wall of Dragon's manufacturing plant. "I still can't believe you're moving," you say quietly.
"It's not a big deal, Taylor," Tim says as he sets up his mana collectors and plugs one of them into Mandy's case. "I'm not actually leaving Philly. I'm just moving my workshop here. Once teleportation comes into play, the physical distance between my apartment and my lab becomes immaterial. Not to mention, Dragon is willing to share the raw materials she gets in bulk that I had to isolate from scraps, and since she can now understand magical physics, we might be able to come up with designs that can be mass produced. Just between us?" He looks over your shoulder at the door and leans in. "She's mentioned that she has had an idea for a while about creating power armor that can be produced and maintained by regular mechanics. If she can arm and armor PRT agents or other law enforcement officers, just think of what a difference that could make."
"I call it the Dragon's Teeth plan," adds a voice from the side, and both of you turn guiltily to find the diminutive form of the world's foremost Tinker floating down to meet you. "A bit of self-congratulation on my part, I suppose, though the name technically comes from Greek mythology. Just as Cadmus and Jason killed a sacred dragon and sowed its teeth to create an army of deadly warriors, I planned to design and redesign the blueprints and set them up to a deadman's switch. If the Dragonslayers or someone were to delete me or destroy my server, they would celebrate only for their enemies to be even more dangerous with my death. Not exactly how the myth goes, I know, but…" She trails off with a shrug. "Trust me, I'm very glad I no longer have to worry about that, but now I have no reason to hold back."
You think about that for a moment, regular people suited up in power armor that lets them go toe to toe with parahumans. That was the entire point of building them in the first place. Tim has only made three, but if it truly did become something that could be made on an assembly line? Forget a paradigm shift; it would utterly wreck the current system.
"How did Kurt and his gang react when you told them they would no longer have access to the suits or the lasers?" asks Samantha with a jerk of her thumb at the two rifles now hanging from a rack.
Tim frowns and shakes his head. "I didn't tell them. Moving here has an advantage on that side of things too, much as I hate to admit it. It's easier to move than it is to create a security system that will let some of the Privateers in and keep out the others. It's also a lot easier to circumvent a physical lock than a distance of almost three thousand miles. Especially when they don't know I'm here. The only thing I'm leaving behind is the surgical suite, and that's only because it would be too much of a hassle to bring it piece by piece when it's also the thing that is the least dangerous if someone else gets their hands on it. Or at least the hardest to use for nefarious purposes."
"I have to admit that I"m quite jealous of your teleportation," Dragon cuts in before the mood can fall too far. "All three of you can teleport wherever you'd like. I'm stuck flying there under my own power or in a ship."
"Sorry about that," Tim says, "but I didn't exactly design your abilities like I would have done were I creating a Unison Device from scratch. They manifested spontaneously based on the knowledge you already had."
"Couldn't you build something to teleport you from one place to another? You're both Tinkers, after all," Samantha points out.
"It's more difficult than that, I'm afraid. As much as I would love to have a transporter pad straight out of Star Trek, what few prototypes have been developed have all proven unreliable, even dangerous."
"Except…" You turn to find Tim pulling up a screen and throwing a familiar formula onto it. "Tinkers – true Tinkers – work with forces they have no understanding of. We know to some degree how magic works. We have an equation for teleportation. What's keeping us from trying to use it in a machine?"
Dragon drifts over to take a closer look at the equation. "If I'm reading this right, it would take a great deal of computational ability and a capacity for independent action to use this spell as written. Isolating a couple of functions, though… That might be possible.
Might be. Teleporting an object from where it is to the pad, or from the pad to a specific set of coordinates, but not both."
"So we split them up. Push and pull." The equation changes, and a second screen appears with the beginnings of a three-dimensional diagram. "Set up one pad so it accepts coordinates and teleports objects there, and the other to pick up things from another set of coordinates."
"Or a beacon!" Now Dragon is getting excited. "We start on the 'pull' unit first, and program something to transmit its coordinates so the pad picks them up. The armbands I make for Endbringer battles do that already so that search-and-rescue teams know where to find casualties. I could adapt and reprogram one to send the signal and see how that works. If it does, we could start working on a new version of armbands to give to S&R teams in time for the next fight."
"Plus you can give the pad your own coordinates. It wouldn't work to send you anywhere without the 'push' pad, but it would let you come back to the workshop immediately should anything bad happen."
The conversation quickly devolves into Tinker-talk about the exact mechanics, and you and Samantha take that as your sign to leave. "I need to pick Vista up for her check-up in a bit, though I don't know if Tim wants to meet her here or in Philly. You're still planning on meeting with that Enforcer?"
You nod. "Lanster wanted to talk about the Endbringers and parahumans. I figured the best place to do that would be the Protectorate Museum in New York City. It has an entire room dedicated to the Endbringers' appearances and attacks, so they'll have more to go off of than just what I can tell them."
A couple of minutes later, you teleport into the skies over Manhattan Island and fly to the coordinates you gave Lanster, in this case a small cafe only a few blocks away from the museum you want to take her to. A nearby alley gives you a quiet place to transform back into your civilian garb, and you make your way inside. From the admittedly very few times you have seen her, you half-expected her to being in an obvious military uniform, and so that was what you started looking for until your eyes found a young woman with bright red hair sitting in one corner. You have to look again to confirm that yes, she is wearing high-cut shorts and a tank top with a pair of off-brand sneakers. The outfit and general attitude she projects takes years off her appearance.
"Taylor," she greets when you walk up.
"Lanster."
She shakes her head and tosses an empty coffee cup into the trash can a few feet away. "You can just call me Teana if you want. I'm off the clock right now. Mostly."
"Mostly?" you can't help but ask.
"Well, the information will be applicable to our work," she says cryptically, "but taking a day trip to get it instead of accessing your global data network qualifies it to be a day off as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, where is this museum you mentioned?"
It is a quiet walk to the building and through getting a pair of tickets, but soon you are inside the much cooler interior and walking through the various exhibits. Lanster stops in front of a larger-than-life poster of the founders of the Protectorate and turns to you. "Who are these?"
"Alexandria, Legend, and Eidolon. Hero as well, though he died many years ago to a villain called the Siberian," you whisper. You can't blame her too much for not knowing who these people are, but it would still sound suspicious to anyone listening in. After all, how could anyone native to Earth Bet not know who the Triumvirate are? "There's a plaque on the bottom with their names."
"That's less helpful than you might think. Device-based translators work just fine with speech, but interpreting written language is always a hassle and doubly so when trying to be covert. I'll probably need to rely on you to tell me what they say," she says with a faintly sheepish expression.
Reading plaques is not exactly a chore, and you find yourself learning a few things yourself as the pair of you wander around. Finally you get to the part of the museum you want her to see: the history of the Endbringers. The circular room is split into thirds with a ring of computer screens in the middle, the text that is scrolling up a never-ending list of the heroes who died fighting the monsters as well as the statistics of civilian casualties and property or environmental damages of each attack. Lanster is struck dumb at the recreations of the monsters on display, and you guide her over to the tallest, a figure made up of jagged black crust with red lines painted on it that cross randomly over its body.
"
'Behemoth was the first of the living disasters collectively called the Endbringers'," you read out loud. "
'He appeared on December thirteenth of 1992 near Marun, Iran. Though the heroes who would later become the first of the Protectorate were already on-site to help with the earthquakes preceding his arrival and thus were quickly mobilized to fight him, the oil fields of Marun were completely obliterated. This led to a gasoline crisis that lasted well until March of the next year. This first fight had immense casualties, a trend that would continue any time Behemoth appeared, leading to his nickname of Herokiller
'."
"This is the one that manipulates energy, correct?" Lanster asks. At your nod, she continues, "And despite armies of your parahumans being assembled, no one has managed to inflict any mortal wounds? Merely damaged it enough that it retreated, and when it returned it looked as though it had never been in a fight?"
"Why are you asking if you already know so much about them?" you can't help but point out.
"I want to make sure my information is right. How can I understand what your people face if I have made bad assumptions?"
You cannot argue that point, and she wanders over to the other displays and lets you read the signs scattered about. It is a quiet Enforcer who follows you as you leave the library. A faint tune plays on the air, and it is enough to draw her attention to the ice cream truck parked on the edge of the curb. "You have
eisahne on this planet?" she asks, a faint gleam in her eyes.
"We call it ice cream, but yes. I wouldn't say no to one myself, actually. Any flavor in particular you'd like?"
One of the steps leading to the museum makes for a respectable bench, and you sit while Lanster stares in incomprehension at your chocolate ice cream while licking her own strange peach scoops. "Why would anyone put cocoa into
eisahne?"
"It's a very common flavor. One of the most popular. Why is that odd?"
"I just find it strange that there are so many flavors that aren't fruit. Those are all the flavors I remember, though I will admit it has been a few years since I had any."
You blink at that comment. "You haven't had any ice cream in years? Is it against Enforcer policy to have dessert or something?"
She laughs, the sound light and relaxed. "Not at all. Midchilda has a relatively cool climate, though, so
eisahne is not as popular there as it is on warmer worlds. The last time I had it was…" She closes her eyes in thought. "It was the summer before I went into the Military Academy, so I must have been ten years old at the time."
"…You entered a military academy when you were ten years old?" Now
that is a twist you did not expect, and you are unsure how you feel about it. Even if she is using the phrase to describe military high schools rather than boot camp or something, ten is still far too young for her to enter one.
Lanster notices your surprise, but rather than comment on it she faces forwards and takes another lick from her cone. "I and many others. I already knew I wanted to join the TSAB and become an Enforcer like my brother, so there was no reason not to go ahead and join."
"They took you even thought you were only ten?"
"Of course." Now she looks at you, a faint smile on her lips. "I noticed that when we were gathering information on your culture. Your society places a strong emphasis on age and how old you have to be to do certain things. The TSAB cares more about your ability. If you have the tactical acumen and leadership skills required of an officer already at a young age, you'll be made an officer in short order. If you don't have them, it doesn't matter how old you get, you'll never advance in the ranks."
"…But
ten?"
"Or younger. Admiral Chrono Harlaown is the brother of the Enforcer who took me under her wing and helped me get into the force, and he was already a full-fledged Enforcer when he was nine years old." You stare at her in shock, and she nods. "It probably didn't hurt that his mother is a high-ranking officer herself, so he grew up surrounded by military knowledge and doctrine, but advancing that far that quickly was all him."
That knowledge sits heavy in your head, and you have to know. "How old are you? I think my estimate of your age was a little high now."
"My twenty-first birthday is in a couple of months." She takes a bite of the waffle cone itself and hums in delight while you stare at the
lieutenant commander who isn't even old enough to drink yet. "Anyway, I didn't call you to talk about myself. I don't like how the information you and Dragon have given us is shaking out. There's something very off about the Endbringers."
"Off," you echo, forcing yourself to focus on the conversation at hand. "That's one word for it, I guess. I would have gone for dangerous or terrible or apocalyptic, myself."
A shake of her head, and Lanster looks around to make sure no one is watching before she calls up a screen in her hand. You look down at it to find that it shows a strange and horrifying chimera, half a human body sitting upon an undulating mass of metallic flesh. "You have experience with Endbringers?" you are eventually able to ask.
"Depends on how you define 'Endbringer'. This comes from our archives, a picture of a particularly infamous Lost Logia called the Book of Darkness going out of control." She dismisses the screen. "I have no proof of what I am about to say, obviously, but my suspicion with what I do know? I think the Endbringers might be Lost Logia that have woken up. Maybe their programming is corrupted; maybe this is exactly what they were built to do. I can't say for sure."
"
More Lost Logia? How would they have even gotten here?" you ask.
She shrugs. "I have no idea. The Al-Hazardans could have put them here as a planetary defense system, but when they finally activated they couldn't distinguish friend from foe. They could be a relic of the Warring Ages, extinction machines that crash-landed on this planet for whatever reason. Same if they were made during the Unification War. There just is no telling for sure.
"Truthfully, how they got here isn't the issue. It's why they woke up and what to do about them."
What to do about them? Does that mean what you think it means? "Tell me if I'm wrong, but that sounds like you want to help fight them." Lanster nods, and a short war is waged within you before you warn her despite your worries. "Even after seeing the list of casualties? If you and Erga and the others join in, there is a good chance one or more of you will die."
"I know. That's the risk we take whenever we engage a Lost Logia. But it's also our job, what we have chosen to do. Even though we do our best to keep our interactions with worlds like yours to a minimum, an activated Lost Logia or three is reason enough for us to involve ourselves."
"And if they turn out not to be Lost Logia after all?"
"Then it is still a humanitarian effort, and one I don't think we can morally or ethically excuse ourselves from." She leans forward and looks squarely at you. "Taylor, I don't like the numbers I saw on the display in that museum. If I'm right, and I hope I'm wrong, your societies are failing in large measure due to the destruction being wrought by these things. If they are left unhindered, all societies on this world may well collapse, and after that…"
"And after that?" you ask when it is clear she doesn't want to continue. "Lanster. After that what?"
"After that, there will no longer be organized resistance. The human race on this world, and possibly on all worlds in this cluster, could very well face extinction."
You stare at her, no words coming to mind in the face of her prediction.
Lanster pops the last of her ice cream in her mouth. "I will discuss the matter with Admiral Tucson, but right now I'm giving the Endbringers a preliminary categorization as Class-2 Lost Logia due to the fact that as far as your people have determined their activities have been limited to this world. That will give us all the latitude we could possibly need to lend our aid."
Well then. As welcome as their assistance would be, you can't help but wonder how to arrange it. "I suppose I need to introduce you to the Protectorate, then," you think out loud. "Maybe you could pose as a new hero team? Or I could get back in touch with Alexandria—"
"I would prefer that you do not do that, actually," Lanster interrupts you. "Despite expanding the scope of our mission, it is still a covert operation. We do not intend to operate openly except during a fight against the Endbringers. We will not intervene in any other internal issues of your world, including law enforcement such as your Protectorate is involved in. Defeating and sealing the Endbringers is as far as our authority can or will go." She wipes her fingers off with a napkin and holds her hand out to you. "Can you accept that?"
You reach out and take her hand. "You're willing to help fight the Endbringers and save my planet. I don't think you understand just how much getting rid of them would mean to us. Thank you."
"Thank me when they're gone for good."
When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In Teana's case, that means anything weird and world-threatening must be a Lost Logia running amok because really, what else could it possibly be? That being said, if you look at what the Book of Darkness's defense program looked like when it went all out, I can't blame her for this misconception.
