Weaver sighed, blinking tiredly as she sent the last of the reports she'd had waiting for her off to the archive department. It had taken more hours than she'd liked sitting in one place, but she was finally done. Unfortunately, it was late enough that everybody sane was probably asleep by now, so that briefing she'd wanted to give her Wolves was going to have to wait until tomorrow.
With one last look around the space that was her "office", she turned off the lights and locked the door, heading to the elevators to take the trip down the length of the Spire that was the primary Awoken government and military building. She didn't even use this office very much, it being more a political and bureaucratic location, but it was where all the items her secretary couldn't handle had been directed.
Walking through the streets of Merina was starkly different without all the people out, but she followed the winding, long path back to her apartment on the inner edge of the unofficial Eliksni section of the city.
At first she'd lived there because it was the only area that she could find a place that wouldn't give her a hard time. After receiving her official commission and then (later) her title, she'd stayed because she preferred living among the families of her House, her crew. She wasn't just another Awoken lording over them but one of them, an outcast who had proven herself, and it let them know that she remembered those who had helped her when she'd needed it and didn't forget where she'd started.
…It also kept the crime down, knowing there was a Lightbearer just waiting for someone to make a wrong step in what was ostensibly her territory.
She'd never understood why she felt so at home like that, so comfortable among the disadvantaged, why she felt so strongly about staying with them, but now she remembered her time as a warlord, with her gang, her people.
She was so different and yet not from Taylor.
The area looked nicer now than it had twenty years ago when it had been practically a ghetto. Partly due to her own efforts in getting support for the area and partly thanks to her Queen telling her to do as she wished with it.
She had a feeling her Queen knew just how grateful she was for that, even if Weaver had only thanked her once.
The Risen woman walked up the curving stairs to the second floor of her building, the substantially nicer apartment she had now a far cry from what she'd first had.
The door was silent as it slid open and then closed behind her, and Weaver dismissed her boots with a thought as she stepped past the foyer.
Not bothering to turn on the lights, she navigated through dark towards her bedroom, through the archways in the walls that were in place of any doors. She hadn't seen the point.
With another thought her armor and uniform disappeared leaving her in her underwear, the Light construct around her head remaining in consideration for the people who lived in the apartments around her.
She moved with single-minded focus towards her bed (her bed, not the Tower's!), slumping onto it without prelude and rolling onto her back…
Only to sandwich a hand between her spine and the mattress.
"Mmmm… Weaver?"
"Eliera?" A pair of bright yellow eyes blinked open drowsily next to her. "What're you doing here?" she asked tiredly.
The eyes closed again and the hand was extracted before reaching over Weaver to attach to her side and pull her closer. "Waiting for you to get back."
"How'd you know when I was getting in?" Weaver asked. "…Or have you been staying here all week?"
A body snuggled into Weaver's side, a head coming to rest next to her shoulder and a nose against her arm. "Guilty." A warm breath blew across her skin. "Sleep now. Talk later."
Weaver hummed in agreement. "'Night, El."
"'Night."
The Risen woman turned into the head of soft hair at her side, inhaling and letting herself drift off into her dreams.
At six-o'clock sharp Weaver's eyes opened. Blinking a few times, she looked down at the head of night's-sky-blue hair on her chest and the pale blue skin beyond it, watching the faint patterns of light that shifted and danced cross across it like the reflections from a pool of water.
After a moment, she started extricating herself from the tangle of limbs originating from an extremely tactile Awoken woman, eventually managing to lever herself out and towards the bathroom.
When she'd done her business and cleaned up, she migrated to the kitchen, rummaging around to see what she had, Kali materializing into existence next to her.
"Morning Kali."
The Ghost's shell pulsed happily. "Good morning, Weaver!"
Weaver blinked. "You seem to be in a good mood this morning," she noted. It was a strong contrast to how uncharacteristically quiet and almost… brooding, the Ghost had been the past few days.
The Ghost's shell rippled, black edges and points flaring up before laying flat again, and Weaver felt an echo of guilt from her partner.
"It's nice to see you so happy," Weaver said, not forcing Kali to respond. Weaver started pulling out ingredients, amused to see she had everything she needed for something she'd loved as Taylor, but hadn't even heard of in the Reef. "What do we have to do today? Meet with the Captains, for certain. Making the rounds so people know we're back, though scuttlebutt has probably gotten that around already."
"We have a review scheduled after lunch for the Servitor rebuilds," Kali told her.
"Right. I'm glad they got another of the Kaliks series back up. That'll at least ease some of the load on the others. If we could just get one of the Orbiks working then we could rely on it to organize the others and wouldn't have to worry about micromanaging the Kaliks units we have so much. Remind me to talk to Keldar about that project he's working on."
"About somehow rebuilding a Prime?" Kali asked, and Weaver nodded as she started mixing ingredients. Some were synthetic compared to what had been natural in her old life, but they were ultimately the same.
"He's got some interesting ideas. And the next-most realistic possibility is using parts from lesser Servitors, but we don't have any to spare," she said.
Servitors were the life and blood of the Eliksni, sentient (and sometimes sapient, in the case of the larger ones) spherical robots patterned after the Great Machine that processed matter and turned it into Ether, which was necessary for Fallen to live. The Servitors allowed the Eliksni to expand beyond their home planet—and any that had been terraformed to match—as it had produced Ether naturally.
Without Servitors, the Eliksni couldn't survive. As it was, there was barely enough Ether to go around. Weaver had been told that the gigantic size that Kells and Archons achieved was in fact the size Eliksni were supposed to be, but the scarcity of Ether didn't allow them to get so large. Fallen would grow and shrink according to how much Ether they were rationed as part of their rank, which was why the repair of Kaliks-8 would mean her Wolves should return to their usual (still small) size with the rations going back to normal.
Prime Servitors were the largest and most important for a House, and the Wolves… didn't have one. It had disappeared after the Reef Wars. The Wolves were surviving right now, without it, but they weren't thriving. There was barely any room for population growth, because the situation was so tenuous, even if nobody was starving.
"Oh! Sedia just sent us a message saying that she can set aside time to see you today if you'd like?"
"Yes, please," Weaver said, holding her hand over the pan she had on the burner to see if it was hot enough. Satisfied, she started combining the last ingredients before moving them to the pan and to cook.
"Alright, I sent her a reply suggesting after the Servitor review," Kali told her, and Weaver nodded, paying attention to the food. "Anything else in mind?"
"I want to dig around and see if there's any power sources in the tech storerooms we could use for Silence. It's practically done besides that, so I want to finish it up as soon as possible," Weaver said.
"Still not sure what it's going to do?" Kali asked, and the Risen woman gave her a flat look.
"It's a laser. I know exactly what it's going to do. Destroy things. I'm just not entirely sure about everything… else. There's just bound to be some weird effects it has considering it's my first try at what's basically a hand-held continuous-beam laser rifle and I was mostly going off gut feelings and instinct for a good chunk of the beam generator and emitter."
Weaver shook her head. "We'll figure it out when we run it through testing. At least we know it won't explode thanks to all the energy calculations." Looking back towards the bedroom, she yelled over her shoulder, "El! Breakfast if you want it!"
Thirty seconds later the Awoken woman emerged from the bedroom blinking the last of her sleep from her yellow eyes before sitting down at the counter.
Weaver finished pulling the pieces she'd had in the pan off and onto a plate, putting the plate in front of the other woman.
Eliera picked up her fork and poked at the squares on her plate. "And what's this supposed to be?"
"If you don't want it, I'll eat it," Weaver told her.
The blue-skinned woman looked between her and the food, wide-eyed, "No that's fine!" she said hurriedly, picking up her knife and cutting into it before shoving a piece in her mouth.
"And to answer your question, it's French toast," the Risen said, finishing making her own plate, and moving the pan away from the hot burner before walking over to stand across from Eliera. "Normally you'd put maple syrup on it, but we don't have any in the Reef, so the next best thing is butter and/or jam."
She pushed what was effectively the strawberry jam over to the woman, having finished spreading some over her own breakfast.
"How d'you know how to make it?"
"I've… remembered my first life," Weaver told her.
Yellow eyes widened. "You can do that?"
Weaver shook her head. "I'm a special case."
For a moment Eliera's face fell slightly—and if Weaver hadn't known her as well as she did, she wouldn't have caught it—and then the Awoken woman laughed. "Well, we already knew that."
The Risen woman rolled her eyes with a smile.
"So… anything exciting you remember? Considering what you're like now, you must've been a superhero or something," Eliera said.
Weaver froze, and El looked at her, studying her for a moment. "…No way. Seriously? I was just kidding!"
The Lightbearer looked away as Eliera started laughing.
"If you keep laughing I won't tell you anything," Weaver said flatly.
"What? Noooo. I'm sorry Ms. Baroness Queen's Blade Weaver—" Eliera broke off into giggling as Weaver shoved her shoulder.
"Shut up and eat your French toast."
Eliera pointedly stuck a piece in her mouth as she looked at Weaver.
Weaver sighed, exasperated. "Anyways, yes. As you so bluntly put it, I was what one might call a 'superhero'."
Eliera grinned and opened her mouth to say something, but Weaver cut her off. "I was also a villain."
Whatever she'd been about to say was gone, and instead Eliera said, "You? Ms. helps-people-cross-the-street? Ms. will-do-whatever-it-takes-to-complete-the-mission?"
"That was actually the problem. I got involved with a group of villains thinking I'd turn them in, but ended up getting caught up in everything and never got a break, never backed down, to the point I was basically running the city. I wasn't a bad villain, I was always trying to help other people, but I felt like the system was too restrictive to work within," Weaver said. "Eventually I got trapped in a situation with no easy way out, and ended up being forced to join the Protectorate, which was our country's official organization for parahumans. Weaver was actually what I went by with them, and being a cape became pretty much my entire life. By the end I think I identified more with that than I did my birth name, which is why it was what I remembered as my name."
"Huh."
"'Huh'? That's all you have to say to that?" Weaver said incredulously.
Eliera shrugged as she chewed another bite. "I mean, when you put it like that I can kinda see it. But even then you're not her, right? Risen are always almost completely different than what they were like in their first life, or at least that's what people say."
Weaver nodded. "I'm definitely not the same. I might have once been her, but I'm not now. I'm not that person. I can see the same bits and pieces, the same tendencies and emotions, but they're part of a new shape."
Eliera hummed. "Well that's enlightening. Suddenly your unnatural obsession with color-coordinated personalized armor makes sense."
Weaver gave her a flat look. "I am not obsessed with my armor. And if you think I'm bad you should have met Glenn, the guy who was head of PR for the entire organization."
"And the giant shoulder pads from the uniform just don't really work for you," Eliera added. "Though I do wish I got to see you in that skin-tight leather more often," she said with a sly smile.
Weaver flushed slightly. "Maybe later. I've got work."
"You've always got work!" El countered.
She wasn't wrong.
"Yes. It's what lets me make food like this and pay rent," Weaver said as she stood and put her empty plate in the sink. "Speaking of which, you're on clean-up. Ready Kali?"
"Yep!" the Ghost chirped at the same time Eliera sung out. "Alright~"
The Risen woman moved around the peninsula towards the front door, materializing her boots once she was in the entryway.
"See you, Weaver!"
"Bye, El," she replied as she opened the door and stepped through it. Just as she was about to close it, she stopped and looked back. "Oh, and I'm going to be getting the Techeun augments sometime this week."
And then she closed the door and headed towards the stairs.
Behind her in the apartment, a golden-eyed Awoken woman sat stunned, before recovering.
"Wait, what? Weaver? Weaver!" Eliera called out. "You can't just say something like that and then leave!"
But she'd already walked away.
Weaver stared at the large spherical cradle and the metal skeletal frame that occupied it inside the hangar.
The meeting earlier with her Captains had gone well, mostly just a review of what had happened in her absence, how training for the few new Eliksni they'd gained in the last few months was going–which she personally took a hand in when she had the time–and what the status of any ongoing repairs or refits for ships was. Whenever Variks showed up she got a report on the Prison, but since he hadn't she'd probably have to go out to it herself, and probably do an inspection at the same time.
She had no doubt the inmates would enjoy that.
She'd also preemptively warned them of the implants she'd likely be getting, as she knew how they were uncomfortable about the Techeuns, though in general they were fairly accepting of cybernetic implants and prosthetics.
Refocusing on the surroundings, she looked over at the Eliksni standing next to her.
«And you truly believe you can recreate Orbiks Prime?» Weaver asked. «I'm not doubting your abilities, merely the feasibility of such a project.»
The Captain at her side shifted. «Yes, Captain. If we have the materials, I believe that this is possible. I have studied the Servitors for many, many cycles.»
«Well, alright then. What you've shown me so far is promising, so I'm giving you permission to get whatever materials and people you need for this. I'll have a formal approval filed this afternoon, with the glimmer and shards coming out of the R&D budget, which I feel is appropriate for a project like this.»
«Thank you, Weaver-K— Captain,» Keldar replied.
«Of course. I understand how important this is to the House. Finally having a Prime will ease a lot of the pressure we currently face. What do the others think of this?»
«Some do not believe. Others, have hope. As you say, it will be good to have a Prime again,» he told her.
She nodded. «Good luck. I will check in with your progress in… say, two weeks?»
Keldar just signaled acceptance, and Weaver turned to leave the hangar.
'Well, that's good news at least,' she sent Kali. 'Now for Sedia.'
'Now for the weird techno-priestess,' Kali agreed. 'How much you want to bet she's going to ask you to take down your barrier?'
'That's a fool's bet and you know it,' Weaver replied.
She'd would be lying if she wasn't at least a little apprehensive of meeting with the Techeun. What with the uh, reputation they acquired. From what she'd heard the description of Witches might not be so far off the mark. More Macbeth witches than Harry Potter, but still.
Isolationist women with mysterious supernatural abilities who could divine the threads of Fate.
Also her Eliksni really did not like them at all.
So yeah, Witches.
Thankfully at least one of them was never too far from the Queen, so it made Weaver's life easier, not having to fly out to another outpost or something.
Weaver made her way from the hangars and complexes of her Fallen until she once more was recognizably in Merina. From there she made her way towards the Spire, but instead of taking an elevator up–as she would to get to her office–she took one down, into the levels below the surface.
Once she got to the right level, she stepped off and made her way through the hallways towards wherever Sedia would be meeting her.
…Which turned out to be an oddly normal-ish room with pair of chairs and a table in it, the Techeun already sitting and working with a datapad. Though the room did have more digital interfaces around the room than was typical, as well as slate-grey and blue stone panels on the walls that probably served some unknown function.
Sedia was covered to a degree that the only the skin of her hands and a section from her nose to her neck were visible, not even her eyes standing out. Her head lifted up, and that was the only sign Weaver had that her attention had shifted.
"Hello Blade. You have need of the Techeuns?" Sedia asked, her voice calm and oddly natural for what Weaver had heard of them before.
"More… something you make use of than your services, really," Weaver replied. "The augmentations that help you control your powers. So in a roundabout way I suppose, yeah."
"Hm. Yes. Our Queen mentioned as much. That we should provide you with what you may need to rein a psychic ability. It is unprecedented that one not of the Techeun Order would receive–or even need–such a thing …almost as unprecedented as a human Lightbearer becoming our Queen's personal weapon, one could say. But it is not our place to question our Queen, merely follow her command," Sedia told her.
Weaver didn't respond.
Sedia looked back down at the datapad. "Could you please describe what your… power is like? The Queen has already provided us with some details, but it would be best to hold the whole picture to understand what is needed. It is psychic in nature, correct?"
"I… guess you could say that?" It was uncomfortable to consider, since the only thing that was truly considered psychic in Taylor's world was the Simurgh. But… that didn't make it any less true, considering what her power had been like, at the end. What it was like, now. "The simplest way to describe it would be control. Within a certain range, I control living things. I see what they see, hear what they hear, everything. But… it's also more than that." And this was what made the 'psychic' thing so true. "I'm inside them. I can feel their emotions, their thoughts, their memories, except it's separated by one degree, put into the context of my own memories so that I can understand it. Like having a conversation using an interpreter."
And that wasn't so wrong, was it? Her passenger had been that interpreter, and was only able to draw on what it knew as well to understand things, and the thing it knew best was her.
"Maybe with time, practice, I could have figured out how to remove that requirement, had access to everything directly, but there wasn't exactly time and I was rather… focused on the task at hand."
Also extremely hobbled and incapable of understanding normal communication at all by then. Contessa was the only one who managed it and that was with her do-anything power. Decoding other peoples' thoughts and memories would have been far beyond her.
She had been well and truly broken at the end.
Sedia nodded. "The Queen said that it is the result of an innate connection you have? Rooted physically but with metaphysical resonance."
Resonance?
More like there was no separation. During Gold Morning she and her passenger had been a tangled medley thrown in a blender and set to 'puree'. Their roles had merged and become so conflated and confused that she'd been relying on it to move her body even as she commanded it like a puppeteer. To speak for her even as she had the base thoughts, which were mixed up with its impulses.
Now at least, with the Light, they were more easily distinguished. Her mind no longer relied just on physical brain matter, and there was none of the agnosia or dissociation that had plagued her before.
But still, all walls between them had been torn down. "Resonance" didn't even begin to explain it.
"There's this extra cortex in my brain, essentially. That's where it's based," Weaver said simply. "The connection, that is. Messing with it messes with my powers. Originally I had a much wider range, but I could only control simpler organisms. There was a life-or-death situation and I had someone change my brain to give me more, and that's why it's the way it is now."
Sedia nodded, making notes on her tablet. "Any augments involved will be solely focused on your mental abilities as per the Queen's orders, and will thus be restricted to your central nervous system."
What she'd expected, then.
"Would you be willing to disable the suppression so I can receive a baseline reading of your neurology and what the effect is currently like?"
"Do we need to go somewhere for that?" Weaver asked.
"No, this room is normally used to collect information on phenomena, so it will suffice," Sedia said. "One minute should be enough. If you are ready now?"
Weaver blinked. Well, okay then.
For the second time in as many days, she tore away her division and felt relief that both was and wasn't hers.
There was only one thing within her range, and her control felt… fuzzy for a moment, before it suddenly snapped into place.
It was so complex, and she felt both surprise and intimidated awe from the one in her grasp, coming through as the memory of the moment Alexandria had appeared at the PRT building when Skitter had been outed.
Weaver could feel a hum around and within Sedia, a power that was so innately hers and different from the capes she'd held before. It was a harmonious meld that was balanced precariously, and without that balance there would be nothing all. She could feel the augments embedded in the skin and awareness both, the sharpness and strength they gave her, like raw steel honed into a razor's edge, the flexibility they gave to her abilities in a way she'd never have naturally, the way the power within her moved and flowed, a raging river directed with intentional efficiency by the implants.
She could feel her own presence through the Techeun, and wasn't that a weird sensation? The telekinesis she held was nothing new, but the telepathy? With a flex she could read her own thoughts while reading her own thoughts in an endless loop that threatened consume her entirely.
And there was still more, things she didn't entirely understand, complexities and nuances that were beyond her right now without studying them, whispers of things she could touch and see beyond which she didn't have time for.
Her Light barrier blinked back into reality, letting both her and Sedia taking gasping breaths, Sedia likely from the shock of being back in control of her faculties, and Weaver from once more carving out and locking away a part of herself.
"That was… very, discomforting. I can see why you would want to control such an ability if permanent suppression is not an option?" Sedia said.
"It's not," Weaver replied shortly, to which the Techeun nodded slowly in acceptance.
"My sisters and I will analyze the data and contact you once we have designed the proper configuration for what will be required," she said.
"If that's all then?" Weaver said.
"That will be all for today. Queen's blessing be upon you, Blade," Sedia replied.
Weaver stood. "Thank you. And you as well."
Sedia tilted her head in acknowledgement, before turning back to her datapad, leaving Weaver to exit the room and head back to the surface.
"Well that wasn't uncomfortable or anything."
Kali materialized next to her, floating freely. "Tech witches are weird."
Weaver just looked at her Ghost with a raised eyebrow, to which Kali rolled her optic. "You know what I mean."
"That honestly wasn't too bad. It could have been worse. Like constantly speaking in cryptic riddles. I knew this one person who refused to speak any other way. Glaistig Uaine was seriously messed up. At least the Techeuns are straightforward enough."
"Just when I think your old life can't get any weirder, you have to prove me wrong." Kali's shell rippled. "But whatever. That doesn't matter. Now come on! It's time to go find some gun parts! We've got a shooty laser to finish!"
A/N: Kali continues to remain Best Ghost.
This is a little rough, also my first chapter post in god-knows-how-long, so feedback is greatly appreciated (thought that's not exactly different than normal, I suppose.) If you find anything weird don't hesitate to let me know.
