AN: Betas are always desired. This snip was beta'd by the lovely @themanwhowas
-x-
Stranger...
-x-
Stranger...
Stranger Lands [WORM] [Armsmaster in Aleph AU]
- Thread starter Selwyn
- Start date
- Superhero
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Statistics (6 threadmarks, 20k words)
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Entry 1.1
Selwyn
Tomorrow Will Come
- Location
- Mongolia
AN: Betas are always desired. This snip was beta'd by the lovely @themanwhowas
-x-
Stranger Lands
-x-
Earth Aleph; Bet's nicer, cleaner twin sister, where world-ending monsters didn't attack three times a year and parahumans were solidly C-list at best. Armsmaster was trapped here, with no idea why or how to get out, leaving him with only one option. Survive. Thrive. And find a way back home.
-x-
Entry 1.1
Why would she attack here?
Madison, Wisconsin was the middle of nowhere. There was nothing worth attacking here. Yet the Simurgh was in the middle of it, building a machine that nobody understood. And Colin had been in the middle of grappling closer to her when the world exploded.
Light and sound burst out from where the Simurgh had been. Colin, along with everyone else without a good handhold, was flung off their feet. He tried to use his grapple to pull himself down, but the world was spinning all around him and all he could hear was a scream, echoing in the back of his mind.
Debris flew around him. He was thrown down on dirt but the world was still a confusing mess of light, dust, and endless screaming. Clutching his halberd, Colin crawled to the closest bit of cover he could find.
It was the hollow shell of a building, windows shattered and walls half torn down. Huddling into the lee of one wall that stood marginally higher than the others, he tried to endure the feeling of the sky falling down.
He wasn't sure how long he stayed like that. For a long while, it felt like everything was gone, leaving him stranded in this seemingly endless whirl storm of dust and noise. He pulled on his rebreather, filtering out the dust, and tried to regain some semblance of calm. Panicking wasn't an option.
He pressed a button on his wrist. "I'm stranded," he called through his rebreather, "requesting help and field info!"
Nothing but static came through. It spat and crackled in a mockery of words, but no matter how much Colin slapped at it, it did not work.
Fuck.
He looked up. The storm was still in full swing, throwing up dust and dirt everywhere and obscuring his vision. There were distant booms and thunderclaps, and he thought he saw something like lightning flashes through the brown clouds of Midwest soil. They lit up the sky sporadically, then was followed by booming crashes that made his head ache, even through his ear buds.
He squinted.
There was a shadow in the dust storm, growing ever larger.
He squinted at it. What the -?
It grew clearer. Closer. In seconds, he knew what it was. It was the townhall of Madison.
"Shit!"
Colin scrambled up and began to run. The townhall building struck where he had been, walls crashing down and falling apart upon impact. Debris and dust flew up against, and Colin ran until his lungs burned, trying to outrace the destruction right on his heels.
Something heavy struck the back of his suit, flipping him over, and the ground was falling away under his feet. He rolled once, twice, tried to stand up and fell down again when the earth rumbled.
Further away, he heard another crash. Now, he knew enough to tell that it was the sound of another building tumbling to the earth like a meteor. Colin stood up and began to run again, trying to orient himself. His halberd went to his back, having no use at the moment.
"Dragon! Legend! Anyone!" he shouted at his bracelet, but even the static was gone. It was completely dead.
It looked like it was only him here.
He ran for however long. Colin wasn't sure anymore. Whatever the Simurgh had done had knocked most of his systems out, leaving him effectively trapped in a heavy metal suit running on auxiliary power. All he could do was race away in a straight line and try to leave the miniature apocalypse scenario before he was killed.
Five minutes passed. Maybe it was an hour.
There were no more falling buildings, at least. The dust was still high in the air, obscuring everything but the weak sunlight. It left the world in a perpetual, copper-hued twilight that offered no hope for direction. He couldn't even see the sun. Trying to use the debris on the ground didn't help, because it seemed like the landscape was shifting every time he turned away. He could have been walking in circles for all he knew.
Exhausted and still groping at his bracelet, Colin collapsed next to a shattered wall sunk deep in the earth. It provided some manner of shelter for him, though its ability to defend him from any other flying buildings was dubious.
It was the best he could do.
Huddling up under it, Colin picked at his bracelet, calling out for help, for direction, for anyone to answer. Black edged on the borders of his vision until he submitted to it, fighting every inch of the way.
-x-
When he woke up, the world was silent again. Colin stared up at the sky, uncomprehending, until something chimed.
Time to exposure: seventeen minutes. Threshold is twenty-five minutes maximum.
His head ached fiercely. Colin tried to sit up, and groaned as his entire body protested. It felt like he'd been Lung's chew-toy for the last hour or so. Sand escaped the crevices of his armor as he straightened. Using the wall for support, he slowly stood. His armor was fine, aside from a few dents, and his halberd was still on his back when he checked.
He took stock of himself first. To his irritation, his HUD was still offline. He had auxiliary but that only accounted for retaining basic mobility. Everything else – his GPS, his information feed, even his clock – was offline.
He looked around. It still looked like he was in Madison. Judging by the ruined shells of buildings all over the place, the Simurgh had thrown the town itself up into the air somehow. There were no corpses around him, so hopefully mostly everyone had survived. To his consternation, however, it looked there was no one here.
Wasn't the quarantine still in affect? Where were the search and rescue teams, the PRT containment squads? At the very least, Dragon should be doing flyovers of the land, helping conduct recovery efforts.
But instead, all was silent.
He pressed at a small button on the outside of his costume. His microphone clicked dead. Even his comms were down.
He touched his bracelet next. Pressing a button, he listened in.
Nothing. Not even static.
"This is Armsmaster, calling in. Reply."
Silence. When he held it up to his ear, all he heard was a soft drone of a dead line.
"This is Armsmaster. Reply."
Nothing again.
Fuck.
Had he been stranded? Had they lost him in the commotion and left him for dead?
Time to exposure: nineteen minutes. Threshold is twenty-five minutes maximum.
The bomb! It was still in effect. So his bracelet was functioning after all. But this only created more questions. His exposure prior to the explosion had been thirteen minutes. How had everything gone to shit in the space of four minutes? Where was everyone?
"Dragon, come in," he tried again. He needed to get the bomb off before it went off. "Dragon, come in. The Simurgh is gone, remove the bomb."
The automatic switch didn't pop. The bomb remained around his wrist, as tight as ever. Would he have to remove it himself?
He pried at it with his fingers first, testing its relative tightness. He remembered a warning from Dragon about how trying to remove the bombs with force would make them go off. It was extreme, but the Simurgh was too dangerous to mince around.
Colin checked his surroundings again. He was as alone as he ever would be. Taking refuge against a wall, he sat down and removed the gauntlet from the bomb-less arm. Putting it in his lap, he gingerly felt out the bomb encircling his wrist. It was slim and close-fitting, but he knew from experience that it had enough power to blow most of his upper body off. There were no latches or clasps that he could feel. It was entirely smooth and his fingers found no purchase on the slick surface.
He opened a panel in his suit. Colin kept a small assortment of tools on himself at all times. A panel on his wrist popped open, letting him pull out the power cutter inside. It was of his own make, created to facilitate the cleanest possible cut for his work. He held it up, and thought hard.
How could he remove the bomb without killing himself?
He touched the bomb again, which was when his bracelet chirped.
Time to exposure: twenty-one minutes. Threshold is twenty-five minutes maximum.
He had four minutes left.
He had two options, as far as he could tell. Either he had to entirely disable the bomb, or delay it long enough to remove it and throw it away. He didn't have time to figure out how to disable it, so he would just have to delay it. He could cut off his hand, but that was extreme. If he really was lost and alone, cutting that off could very well doom him just by blood loss. To cut it, he'd have to use his halberd which was a thoroughly uncomfortable thought.
From his wrist aperture, he pulled out a test light. The little red bulb lit up when he pressed it to the bracelet. So it worked using electricity. He knew how these worked, for the most part, but Dragon switched things up every so often to prevent any tampering from the Simurgh. But this was one he recognized. This made things much simpler.
From his other wrist, he pulled out something else. With practiced fingers, he split open the miniature flashlight and separated what he needed from what he didn't. Wires, metals, and plastic strips were separated from the metal body. His mind worked feverishly the entire time.
It wasn't like Tinker fugue. But it felt just as intense – the driven need to perform under pressure. The bomb must go off when someone interrupts the electrical flow.
He would just have to… cut it open enough that he could reach its internal components, but not interrupt the flow. Then from there, divert the electricity through the hasty system he was building right now. With that, he would be able to cut out the bomb enough to slip his hand through.
With one hand, he reached up to hit the manual release for his helmet. With a soft hiss, the helmet's grip on his head was gone and he took it off. The dry air hit his sweat-plastered skin, making him sigh. His hair stuck to his forehead. Colin wiped away some of the sweat that tried to slip down his temple, and returned to his work.
The system was completed. It was fragile, but it was good enough for him.
He connected it to the bomb's surface first. Then, he picked up his cutter and began to gently slice at the exterior of the bomb.
His hand didn't shake. Little by little, the metal was shaved off. The soft buzz from the system told him he'd succeeded the first step. Pressing his test light to it tentatively made it light up.
Good.
Now was the most dangerous step.
First, he shaved off more of the exterior metal. It went from one side of his wrist to the other, precariously close to his skin.
Time to exposure: twenty-three minutes. Threshold is twenty-five minutes maximum.
Two minutes. Colin forced himself to move slowly. Rushing could very well set off the bomb.
Little metal shavings plinged to his lap. He would then cut it all the way through. His palm was sweaty, making it hard to hold onto the cutter effectively.
It felt like his pulse was trying to jump into the edge of the cutter. Was it just him, or could he feel the whisper of electricity from the bomb?
Time to exposure: twenty-four minutes. Threshold is twenty-five minutes maximum.
Shit!
His hand slipped. The sudden line of fire across his wrist motivated him to commit to the last step. With a tug, he sliced through the rest of the bomb. He gathered everything he still needed with one hand, and tugged the bracelet off with his teeth. Spitting it on the ground, he turned around and got about three meters away before the bomb registered the disturbance.
The force of the explosion was still enough to knock him off his feet. For the second time that day, Colin fell the earth with a grunt.
His wrist was still pained. His hand must've twitched and he sliced a shallow cut over it. It was only a flesh wound, but it was bleeding.
He pushed himself off the ground, panting. A small first aid kit detached from his hip. Cracking it open, he reached for disinfect and wet wipes first. With them, he cleaned off his hands. Leaving the wipes in a small, dirty pile, he grabbed gauze and hydrogen peroxide. He cleaned up the wetness at his wrist, face barely twitching at the stinging sensation. He put the gauze on the same pile with the wipes and pressed a clean one over the cut before taping it down with medical tape.
Everything else went back to the kit, and that went to his hip. Colin grabbed the leftovers and stuffed them into an empty hatch in his armor.
The bracelet was gone with the bomb, giving him no way to communicate with any other cape while his suit was still down. He had to find out where he was. Looking around the ruined landscape, Colin picked a random direction and began to walk.
-x-
He counted in his head as he went. Approximately ten minutes passed with him walking in as straight a line as he could. He passed more ruins, but found the same mysterious lack of bodies. Had he crashed in a place with no survivors or capes? How could that even happen?
In the distance, he heard something. The sound of helicopter blades, chopping through the air and sirens. The hell? No one brought helicopters this close to where the Simurgh had been. And those sirens didn't sound like PRT. Immediately, Colin hurried in the opposite direction, trying to remain unseen. It could be normal people. Or it could be people under her influence, doing… something. Blind trust during a Simurgh battle was foolish either way.
The sun was setting. Using it to orient himself, he walked to where the main road of Madison would be, circling around the origin of the sounds that had no right being here. The closer he to it, the more he recognized the ruins all around. Yet again, he found a curious lack of people.
More than a little disturbed, he went on – until he found something even more disconcerting.
Madison was there. Moreover, he hadn't been inside Madison at all. Buildings stood, ones near identical to the rubble he'd passed. The more he stared, the worse the dread inside him grew.
He looked back at where he'd come from.
Colin had thought he'd been wandering around the ruins of Madison. But no. He'd been on its outskirts. That explained the lack of people but it didn't explain how he got there or why no one would respond to him. There was also the fact that Madison was standing when it pointedly hadn't been.
He was confused. He was lost. And so far, his only choice looked like it was walking straight into a city that shouldn't be standing.
Damnation.
Alright. His choice was clear. He would just have to proceed to Madison and find his answers there.
He took his halberd out again, just to feel its comforting weight in his hand, and began to walk.
-x-
-x-
Stranger Lands
-x-
Earth Aleph; Bet's nicer, cleaner twin sister, where world-ending monsters didn't attack three times a year and parahumans were solidly C-list at best. Armsmaster was trapped here, with no idea why or how to get out, leaving him with only one option. Survive. Thrive. And find a way back home.
-x-
Entry 1.1
Why would she attack here?
Madison, Wisconsin was the middle of nowhere. There was nothing worth attacking here. Yet the Simurgh was in the middle of it, building a machine that nobody understood. And Colin had been in the middle of grappling closer to her when the world exploded.
Light and sound burst out from where the Simurgh had been. Colin, along with everyone else without a good handhold, was flung off their feet. He tried to use his grapple to pull himself down, but the world was spinning all around him and all he could hear was a scream, echoing in the back of his mind.
Debris flew around him. He was thrown down on dirt but the world was still a confusing mess of light, dust, and endless screaming. Clutching his halberd, Colin crawled to the closest bit of cover he could find.
It was the hollow shell of a building, windows shattered and walls half torn down. Huddling into the lee of one wall that stood marginally higher than the others, he tried to endure the feeling of the sky falling down.
He wasn't sure how long he stayed like that. For a long while, it felt like everything was gone, leaving him stranded in this seemingly endless whirl storm of dust and noise. He pulled on his rebreather, filtering out the dust, and tried to regain some semblance of calm. Panicking wasn't an option.
He pressed a button on his wrist. "I'm stranded," he called through his rebreather, "requesting help and field info!"
Nothing but static came through. It spat and crackled in a mockery of words, but no matter how much Colin slapped at it, it did not work.
Fuck.
He looked up. The storm was still in full swing, throwing up dust and dirt everywhere and obscuring his vision. There were distant booms and thunderclaps, and he thought he saw something like lightning flashes through the brown clouds of Midwest soil. They lit up the sky sporadically, then was followed by booming crashes that made his head ache, even through his ear buds.
He squinted.
There was a shadow in the dust storm, growing ever larger.
He squinted at it. What the -?
It grew clearer. Closer. In seconds, he knew what it was. It was the townhall of Madison.
"Shit!"
Colin scrambled up and began to run. The townhall building struck where he had been, walls crashing down and falling apart upon impact. Debris and dust flew up against, and Colin ran until his lungs burned, trying to outrace the destruction right on his heels.
Something heavy struck the back of his suit, flipping him over, and the ground was falling away under his feet. He rolled once, twice, tried to stand up and fell down again when the earth rumbled.
Further away, he heard another crash. Now, he knew enough to tell that it was the sound of another building tumbling to the earth like a meteor. Colin stood up and began to run again, trying to orient himself. His halberd went to his back, having no use at the moment.
"Dragon! Legend! Anyone!" he shouted at his bracelet, but even the static was gone. It was completely dead.
It looked like it was only him here.
He ran for however long. Colin wasn't sure anymore. Whatever the Simurgh had done had knocked most of his systems out, leaving him effectively trapped in a heavy metal suit running on auxiliary power. All he could do was race away in a straight line and try to leave the miniature apocalypse scenario before he was killed.
Five minutes passed. Maybe it was an hour.
There were no more falling buildings, at least. The dust was still high in the air, obscuring everything but the weak sunlight. It left the world in a perpetual, copper-hued twilight that offered no hope for direction. He couldn't even see the sun. Trying to use the debris on the ground didn't help, because it seemed like the landscape was shifting every time he turned away. He could have been walking in circles for all he knew.
Exhausted and still groping at his bracelet, Colin collapsed next to a shattered wall sunk deep in the earth. It provided some manner of shelter for him, though its ability to defend him from any other flying buildings was dubious.
It was the best he could do.
Huddling up under it, Colin picked at his bracelet, calling out for help, for direction, for anyone to answer. Black edged on the borders of his vision until he submitted to it, fighting every inch of the way.
-x-
When he woke up, the world was silent again. Colin stared up at the sky, uncomprehending, until something chimed.
Time to exposure: seventeen minutes. Threshold is twenty-five minutes maximum.
His head ached fiercely. Colin tried to sit up, and groaned as his entire body protested. It felt like he'd been Lung's chew-toy for the last hour or so. Sand escaped the crevices of his armor as he straightened. Using the wall for support, he slowly stood. His armor was fine, aside from a few dents, and his halberd was still on his back when he checked.
He took stock of himself first. To his irritation, his HUD was still offline. He had auxiliary but that only accounted for retaining basic mobility. Everything else – his GPS, his information feed, even his clock – was offline.
He looked around. It still looked like he was in Madison. Judging by the ruined shells of buildings all over the place, the Simurgh had thrown the town itself up into the air somehow. There were no corpses around him, so hopefully mostly everyone had survived. To his consternation, however, it looked there was no one here.
Wasn't the quarantine still in affect? Where were the search and rescue teams, the PRT containment squads? At the very least, Dragon should be doing flyovers of the land, helping conduct recovery efforts.
But instead, all was silent.
He pressed at a small button on the outside of his costume. His microphone clicked dead. Even his comms were down.
He touched his bracelet next. Pressing a button, he listened in.
Nothing. Not even static.
"This is Armsmaster, calling in. Reply."
Silence. When he held it up to his ear, all he heard was a soft drone of a dead line.
"This is Armsmaster. Reply."
Nothing again.
Fuck.
Had he been stranded? Had they lost him in the commotion and left him for dead?
Time to exposure: nineteen minutes. Threshold is twenty-five minutes maximum.
The bomb! It was still in effect. So his bracelet was functioning after all. But this only created more questions. His exposure prior to the explosion had been thirteen minutes. How had everything gone to shit in the space of four minutes? Where was everyone?
"Dragon, come in," he tried again. He needed to get the bomb off before it went off. "Dragon, come in. The Simurgh is gone, remove the bomb."
The automatic switch didn't pop. The bomb remained around his wrist, as tight as ever. Would he have to remove it himself?
He pried at it with his fingers first, testing its relative tightness. He remembered a warning from Dragon about how trying to remove the bombs with force would make them go off. It was extreme, but the Simurgh was too dangerous to mince around.
Colin checked his surroundings again. He was as alone as he ever would be. Taking refuge against a wall, he sat down and removed the gauntlet from the bomb-less arm. Putting it in his lap, he gingerly felt out the bomb encircling his wrist. It was slim and close-fitting, but he knew from experience that it had enough power to blow most of his upper body off. There were no latches or clasps that he could feel. It was entirely smooth and his fingers found no purchase on the slick surface.
He opened a panel in his suit. Colin kept a small assortment of tools on himself at all times. A panel on his wrist popped open, letting him pull out the power cutter inside. It was of his own make, created to facilitate the cleanest possible cut for his work. He held it up, and thought hard.
How could he remove the bomb without killing himself?
He touched the bomb again, which was when his bracelet chirped.
Time to exposure: twenty-one minutes. Threshold is twenty-five minutes maximum.
He had four minutes left.
He had two options, as far as he could tell. Either he had to entirely disable the bomb, or delay it long enough to remove it and throw it away. He didn't have time to figure out how to disable it, so he would just have to delay it. He could cut off his hand, but that was extreme. If he really was lost and alone, cutting that off could very well doom him just by blood loss. To cut it, he'd have to use his halberd which was a thoroughly uncomfortable thought.
From his wrist aperture, he pulled out a test light. The little red bulb lit up when he pressed it to the bracelet. So it worked using electricity. He knew how these worked, for the most part, but Dragon switched things up every so often to prevent any tampering from the Simurgh. But this was one he recognized. This made things much simpler.
From his other wrist, he pulled out something else. With practiced fingers, he split open the miniature flashlight and separated what he needed from what he didn't. Wires, metals, and plastic strips were separated from the metal body. His mind worked feverishly the entire time.
It wasn't like Tinker fugue. But it felt just as intense – the driven need to perform under pressure. The bomb must go off when someone interrupts the electrical flow.
He would just have to… cut it open enough that he could reach its internal components, but not interrupt the flow. Then from there, divert the electricity through the hasty system he was building right now. With that, he would be able to cut out the bomb enough to slip his hand through.
With one hand, he reached up to hit the manual release for his helmet. With a soft hiss, the helmet's grip on his head was gone and he took it off. The dry air hit his sweat-plastered skin, making him sigh. His hair stuck to his forehead. Colin wiped away some of the sweat that tried to slip down his temple, and returned to his work.
The system was completed. It was fragile, but it was good enough for him.
He connected it to the bomb's surface first. Then, he picked up his cutter and began to gently slice at the exterior of the bomb.
His hand didn't shake. Little by little, the metal was shaved off. The soft buzz from the system told him he'd succeeded the first step. Pressing his test light to it tentatively made it light up.
Good.
Now was the most dangerous step.
First, he shaved off more of the exterior metal. It went from one side of his wrist to the other, precariously close to his skin.
Time to exposure: twenty-three minutes. Threshold is twenty-five minutes maximum.
Two minutes. Colin forced himself to move slowly. Rushing could very well set off the bomb.
Little metal shavings plinged to his lap. He would then cut it all the way through. His palm was sweaty, making it hard to hold onto the cutter effectively.
It felt like his pulse was trying to jump into the edge of the cutter. Was it just him, or could he feel the whisper of electricity from the bomb?
Time to exposure: twenty-four minutes. Threshold is twenty-five minutes maximum.
Shit!
His hand slipped. The sudden line of fire across his wrist motivated him to commit to the last step. With a tug, he sliced through the rest of the bomb. He gathered everything he still needed with one hand, and tugged the bracelet off with his teeth. Spitting it on the ground, he turned around and got about three meters away before the bomb registered the disturbance.
The force of the explosion was still enough to knock him off his feet. For the second time that day, Colin fell the earth with a grunt.
His wrist was still pained. His hand must've twitched and he sliced a shallow cut over it. It was only a flesh wound, but it was bleeding.
He pushed himself off the ground, panting. A small first aid kit detached from his hip. Cracking it open, he reached for disinfect and wet wipes first. With them, he cleaned off his hands. Leaving the wipes in a small, dirty pile, he grabbed gauze and hydrogen peroxide. He cleaned up the wetness at his wrist, face barely twitching at the stinging sensation. He put the gauze on the same pile with the wipes and pressed a clean one over the cut before taping it down with medical tape.
Everything else went back to the kit, and that went to his hip. Colin grabbed the leftovers and stuffed them into an empty hatch in his armor.
The bracelet was gone with the bomb, giving him no way to communicate with any other cape while his suit was still down. He had to find out where he was. Looking around the ruined landscape, Colin picked a random direction and began to walk.
-x-
He counted in his head as he went. Approximately ten minutes passed with him walking in as straight a line as he could. He passed more ruins, but found the same mysterious lack of bodies. Had he crashed in a place with no survivors or capes? How could that even happen?
In the distance, he heard something. The sound of helicopter blades, chopping through the air and sirens. The hell? No one brought helicopters this close to where the Simurgh had been. And those sirens didn't sound like PRT. Immediately, Colin hurried in the opposite direction, trying to remain unseen. It could be normal people. Or it could be people under her influence, doing… something. Blind trust during a Simurgh battle was foolish either way.
The sun was setting. Using it to orient himself, he walked to where the main road of Madison would be, circling around the origin of the sounds that had no right being here. The closer he to it, the more he recognized the ruins all around. Yet again, he found a curious lack of people.
More than a little disturbed, he went on – until he found something even more disconcerting.
Madison was there. Moreover, he hadn't been inside Madison at all. Buildings stood, ones near identical to the rubble he'd passed. The more he stared, the worse the dread inside him grew.
He looked back at where he'd come from.
Colin had thought he'd been wandering around the ruins of Madison. But no. He'd been on its outskirts. That explained the lack of people but it didn't explain how he got there or why no one would respond to him. There was also the fact that Madison was standing when it pointedly hadn't been.
He was confused. He was lost. And so far, his only choice looked like it was walking straight into a city that shouldn't be standing.
Damnation.
Alright. His choice was clear. He would just have to proceed to Madison and find his answers there.
He took his halberd out again, just to feel its comforting weight in his hand, and began to walk.
-x-
Nitronorm5688
The Armchair Reader
- Location
- Oakdale, CT
Oh, a wandering we'll go. High ho the mary go, a wandering we'll go.
Good job!
Good job!
Heavy READER
Book Devourer/Speed Reader
- Location
- Fitchburg, MA
Oh Armsmaster story yes! You have my attention.
1.2
Selwyn
Tomorrow Will Come
- Location
- Mongolia
AN: Beta'd by @themanwhowas
-x-
Entry 1.2
Colin waited until nighttime before he went into Madison proper. He waited it out near the highway underpass, where it looked like no one had ventured for years, tinkering with what little he had to try and find a solution.
Yet his mind was occupied. Everything about the city was bothering him. For starters, people were in the streets. Not soldiers, not capes – civilians. They were moving through their everyday lives as if nothing was out of the ordinary, as if the Simurgh hadn't descended from the skies mere hours ago.
What the hell?
Everywhere he looked, he saw normality. He saw no signs of ruined, fallen buildings. He saw no dead people in the streets and no squads of parahumans fighting.
It was just… a city. A normal city, filled with normal people going about their normal routines.
Something was clearly wrong.
Although Madison wasn't totally silent even at nighttime, the day crowd was gone. The first order of business, before anything else, was to get his armor online. If he could get somewhere safe, he would be able to peel it all off and see what was wrong with it. Once that was done, he could look for information.
Colin stuck to the empty streets, eyes peeled for people. Madison was unlike Brockton Bay – it had no reclusive alleys filled with trash or empty warehouse shells hiding illicit activity. It was a city that was still going strong, untouched by parahuman violence. Colin was struck by vague discomfort whenever he saw a building that had been ruined just before. Everything was wrong.
Was it the circumstances or had the Simurgh done something? It could have been both, but he had no time to think about it deeply. The first order of business was shelter and repairs.
He slunk in the shadows as well as a heavily armored man could. His steps were heavy, marking his presence, but at least no one had stopped him yet. He saw a few people in the distance, but they did not approach him.
He passed under a glowing billboard. Looking up, he saw its message.
Black Ram Concert, Tickets Available!
He frowned. Where had he heard that name before? It struck him as vaguely familiar, but he could not figure out why.
He passed the billboard, mind troubled.
Soon, he found himself in an empty parking lot. Colin went to a shadier corner, with less potential to be seen, and sat down with a grunt. He checked his surroundings again, and found no one around.
Okay.
Taking a deep breath, he took his helmet off. The thin domino mask that would protect his identity of his helmet was ever compromised felt oppressive, but he didn't take it off.
His gauntlets followed, with his boots after. He grabbed the manual releases on his chest plate and popped it off. With a hiss of compressed air, it was removed. His back panel came off in much the same manner. Putting it all back on would be a pain, but it was better than wandering around with near useless armor.
The thin black bodysuit he wore underneath the armor did little to insulate him from the Wisconsin night chill, and goose bumps raced down his body as he shivered for a moment.
He pried the auxiliary power battery out of his chest piece. It came out with a little encouragement from his multi-tool. Balancing the little square battery on his lap, he picked up his helmet next. He needed the HUD the most right now – everything else could wait. He eased the visor out and found the normal power transfer socket where it was hooked up to the empty power source in the back of the helmet. Within seconds, he jury-rigged it to draw power from the auxiliary battery.
When he put it on, it was to a working HUD. Letters and numbers appeared in his vision.
He found the time first.
11:24.
He swore under his breath. Back at the fight, it'd been just 5:05. How could so much time have passed? More importantly, how could so much time have passed but the bomb still count its minutes down normally?
The next important thing of note was even more worrying. His news feed wasn't working. For some reason, it was getting nothing. It was all blank.
Why wasn't it working? Connectivity shouldn't be a problem, he was in the middle of a city and there was power. He hadn't had problems with this for years – why now?
Shelve it. Figure it out later.
He still had armor to fix. Turning on the light of his visor, he bent to examine it. The main power source was located in the small of the back, where it fed power to the rest of the suit. When he pried open the panel that protected it, he found out why he'd been stuck on auxiliary for so long.
It was melted.
Not just overloaded, not just damaged. The entire structure was melted, leaving him a mess of slag to work with. He picked at it for a few minutes, trying to see if any of it was salvageable. If he picked out some of the copper and maybe connected it to that, it could work, for a certain definition of the word.
It would be far less efficient than before. Most of its capacity was completely ruined by whatever had melted it down. It would work for maybe… ten minutes of full functionality. After that, he was stuck on auxiliary again, and he didn't know if he could coax the battery to life a second time. It wasn't as if he could use the batteries in his tools – he still needed them to work and they would add only three minutes at best to overall runtime. Not worth the sacrifice.
It was good enough. Beggars can't be choosers. Until he found something to cannibalize for parts, something that didn't belong to someone else, and a secure spot to work in, he couldn't stick around.
He was about the replace the auxiliary battery back into his chest piece when something blinked on his HUD. It was a personal note. His breath caught and for a moment, he thought he could hear his own heart hammer against his ribcage. Hope fluttered briefly but he knew it was false. It was probably just a system alert. The chances of it being useful were astronomically low.
He still opened it.
It was dated from about a week before. It had only one line.
Send Dragon BR audio.
Colin deflated. Of course.
BR… BR… Black Ram. It was a new band he'd recently started listening to, after the AC/DC playlist got too repetitive. This note was just something he'd idly jotted down, not anything that would help him. It was no use, it wasn't like he could take her to a concert… a concert.
Black Ram wasn't a Bet band. It was from Aleph. He'd had to buy their new album from the Aleph channel.
Why was there a billboard for an Aleph concert here? No one advertised between dimensions, it wouldn't make sense. It wasn't like anyone could go… to listen…
The dots connected all too quickly for Colin. It felt like ice water was running down his spine. The lack of capes in the field with the buildings… the silence from the bracelet… the blank news feeds. Most damningly of all, however, was the time. The time difference was six hours between Bet and Aleph.
He wasn't in Earth Bet at all. He was in Earth Aleph. The Simurgh had thrown him here with her explosion.
"Fuck."
With numb fingers, he replaced the auxiliary battery in its place on his chest, leaving his HUD offline once again. Slowly, he dressed. He replaced his armor, latched them back into places, and checked around.
He was alone.
He looked in the direction of the lights. Part of him wanted to go to the local police station and ask for their assistance, but a second thought made him hesitate. He'd been only a child when the portals first opened, but he'd been old enough to remember the tensions and the thinly veiled threats of inter-dimensional warfare. Only the thinnest pretenses of diplomacy had held it back, along with the fact that the portals only transferred radio waves. His vague recall of Protectorate policy on inter-dimensional incidents, once parsed through the lines of legal jargon, boiled down to one word: "don't".
So what? Stick to the shadows and try to work out a way home on his own? Unlikely. This wasn't a movie.
Working alone was dangerous in the best of circumstances. Here, it was more than likely to get him stuck or killed. It could even spark an inter-dimensional war, in the worst case scenario.
The thought made him pause. It was impossible to predict the Simurgh's nebulous plots and trying to do so was an exercise in futile paranoia, but he wouldn't put it past her to have sent him here for that explicit purpose.
Great.
He still needed to get home. His options were limited as of now. Recreating Haywire's work was unlikely – he would need access to his notes and confiscated tech. That would require hunting down and infiltrating the heavily fortified location of the portal.
Not happening.
Before he could follow that train of thought, Colin noticed something; a bare glint in the darkness, barely noticeable if it weren't for his long experience in the field. There was someone there, beyond the lot. And they were watching him.
"Show yourself," he demanded, standing.
Instead, they turned and ran.
Colin cursed. How long had they been watching? What had they seen? His mind retraced his steps - would they recognize what he was doing as tinkering? Or even recognize his armor from news from Bet?
He had seen a camera lens, glinting in the darkness. They could expose his presence here before he could even begin to get established. And the way they ran - something told him that was an admission of guilt, not fear at his demand.
If those pictures somehow got out… and someone was clever enough to look at the obvious rubble patch and match up the news with what was happening on Bet, then his predicament would be leaked with or without his say-so on the matter.
He had only one choice.
He ran after the stranger, hurtling headlong into the unknown.
-x-
Although the person might've gotten a head start on him, Colin was much faster and he closed the distance between them in long strides. The noise from his steps sounded precariously loud in the night, but it didn't look like anyone was awake to take note.
To Colin's suspicion, he noted that his target was staying away from populated areas. Whereas someone looking to lose a tail would run to the nearest people-saturated location, this person stayed in the same dark alleyways and lots that Colin himself had gravitated to. They were now in-between apartment complexes with dark windows, running past alleyway mouths that showed flashes of cars on the other side.
Could this be a trap? Were they trying to lead him somewhere for something?
The thought made him draw his halberd mid-step. There was less than fifteen meters between them; close enough that Colin was sure he wouldn't miss even without his HUD.
He stopped and dropped to one knee. Raising the halberd, he aimed the tip at the fleeing back of the stranger.
He took a second to aim. Then, he pressed a button on the side of the halberd.
With a soft fwip, the net shot out from the tip of the halberd. It immediately caught the runner, making them trip and fall with a yelp.
It was a perfect shot, but Colin didn't have time to appreciate it. He dashed to him, only to pause when there was a sound like a firecracker going off.
He brought his arm up to shield himself, but the crack wasn't from any weapon. It was from the runner, who was suddenly missing from under the net.
Cape, Colin judged grimly. This was going to be more complicated than he thought.
Yet they didn't seem to have gone very far. They were now on the other side of the clearing, wobbling in place. Colin raised his halberd and advanced slowly.
"Don't try to fight," he said, "because I will take you down."
"Oh my God," moaned the runner. They seemed to be disoriented, clearly trying to figure out what they were doing. "Oh God, I'm not doing that again."
"Stand down," Colin continued.
"God, fuck, what the fuck are you? Some kinda Robocop?"
He raised his halberd meaningfully.
"Okay, okay! Fuck, I'm not doing anything, alright? Chill, dude." The runner put their hands up, but Colin didn't trust him for a moment. He was too seasoned to assume every surrender was genuine.
"On your knees. Hands on head. Look down at the ground."
"What the fuck? You're not some fucking cop, what the fuck –"
Colin pointed the halberd at him again. "On your knees. Hands on head. Look down at the ground."
"I'm doing it!" True to their word, they followed his orders.
Colin stayed put for a second, waiting to see if anything would happen. When nothing did, he slowly walked over to the cape, halberd still ready. "Why were you taking pictures of me?" he asked.
"I ran into some guy with a fucking sweet costume, I thought I would snap a few candid shots! I didn't realize you were some fucking soldier or something!"
"Pipe down," Colin hissed. "You're too loud."
"I'm sorry, I'm on the ground being held in place by a fucking freak!"
"I said shut up." Colin crouched down to get a look at the face of the cape. "Now listen to me very closely. I want you to delete every picture you took of me and show me as you do it."
"I'm not –"
"No. Delete those pictures. Now."
The cape, the youth, reached down to grab the camera around his neck. He clicked on a few buttons and there was a little ding each time he deleted a picture. All in all, twenty shots were deleted before Colin was satisfied.
"Twenty?" he asked.
"It was hard to get a good shot," the cape replied, sullen. "Look, will you let me stand up? My knees hurt."
"Slowly. Keep your hands where I can see them."
Colin stepped back to give the cape some space. As he stood, he took in his features. He was a gangly sort of person, with the sort of features that could've belonged on someone anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five years old. The poor light let him discern shaggy hair and freckles, but not much else. Apart from his clearly unhappy expression, he didn't seem to be a threat.
Slowly, his halberd lowered.
He needed to remove himself from this situation, before anyone came to investigate the noise. He retreated from the youth wordlessly, intent on leaving, but the cape waved his hands.
"Wait, wait, hold on. Let's just talk, man."
Colin turned to leave. He briefly considered knocking him out, or tranquilizing him, but it was too dangerous. He could risk hurting what seemed to be, all in all, just a dumb kid.
"No, come on! Dude –"
He couldn't grapple away, it would increase his visibility too much. All he could do was go back the way he came, but he timed it badly. There was a flash of light – headlights, Colin registered – that flooded their location with illumination for a moment. The car turned away as the people didn't seem to have noticed, but the cape behind him wasn't so oblivious.
"Holy shit, you're – you're a cape! The one from Bet!"
Things were just not going his way today. Colin froze, and turned to look at the cape.
There was a tense beat.
His lunge happened a split-second faster than the cape's attempt to run away. He shoved him up against the wall, and pressed a glove against his mouth, stopping the flood of words.
"Listen to me very closely," Colin grit. "This is bigger than you know. Don't make noise and stop trying to run away. I won't hurt you, but you need to stop talking. Do you understand?"
He nodded, head bobbing against the wall.
"I am not out of my own will. If anyone realizes I am here, it could start an inter-dimensional war. Do you want that?"
A head shake.
"Good." An idea came to Colin. It was flawed from the outset and liable to go horrifically wrong in any number of ways, but it was the best option he had right now. "I can tell you more, but I need to go someplace less exposed. If you can help me, it would be highly appreciated. I am going to take my hand off now, don't start yelling."
To his credit, the kid actually didn't. Instead, he said, "I have an apartment. You can go there, if you need."
That might… actually work. Colin eased off him. "Take me there."
-x-
-x-
Entry 1.2
Colin waited until nighttime before he went into Madison proper. He waited it out near the highway underpass, where it looked like no one had ventured for years, tinkering with what little he had to try and find a solution.
Yet his mind was occupied. Everything about the city was bothering him. For starters, people were in the streets. Not soldiers, not capes – civilians. They were moving through their everyday lives as if nothing was out of the ordinary, as if the Simurgh hadn't descended from the skies mere hours ago.
What the hell?
Everywhere he looked, he saw normality. He saw no signs of ruined, fallen buildings. He saw no dead people in the streets and no squads of parahumans fighting.
It was just… a city. A normal city, filled with normal people going about their normal routines.
Something was clearly wrong.
Although Madison wasn't totally silent even at nighttime, the day crowd was gone. The first order of business, before anything else, was to get his armor online. If he could get somewhere safe, he would be able to peel it all off and see what was wrong with it. Once that was done, he could look for information.
Colin stuck to the empty streets, eyes peeled for people. Madison was unlike Brockton Bay – it had no reclusive alleys filled with trash or empty warehouse shells hiding illicit activity. It was a city that was still going strong, untouched by parahuman violence. Colin was struck by vague discomfort whenever he saw a building that had been ruined just before. Everything was wrong.
Was it the circumstances or had the Simurgh done something? It could have been both, but he had no time to think about it deeply. The first order of business was shelter and repairs.
He slunk in the shadows as well as a heavily armored man could. His steps were heavy, marking his presence, but at least no one had stopped him yet. He saw a few people in the distance, but they did not approach him.
He passed under a glowing billboard. Looking up, he saw its message.
Black Ram Concert, Tickets Available!
He frowned. Where had he heard that name before? It struck him as vaguely familiar, but he could not figure out why.
He passed the billboard, mind troubled.
Soon, he found himself in an empty parking lot. Colin went to a shadier corner, with less potential to be seen, and sat down with a grunt. He checked his surroundings again, and found no one around.
Okay.
Taking a deep breath, he took his helmet off. The thin domino mask that would protect his identity of his helmet was ever compromised felt oppressive, but he didn't take it off.
His gauntlets followed, with his boots after. He grabbed the manual releases on his chest plate and popped it off. With a hiss of compressed air, it was removed. His back panel came off in much the same manner. Putting it all back on would be a pain, but it was better than wandering around with near useless armor.
The thin black bodysuit he wore underneath the armor did little to insulate him from the Wisconsin night chill, and goose bumps raced down his body as he shivered for a moment.
He pried the auxiliary power battery out of his chest piece. It came out with a little encouragement from his multi-tool. Balancing the little square battery on his lap, he picked up his helmet next. He needed the HUD the most right now – everything else could wait. He eased the visor out and found the normal power transfer socket where it was hooked up to the empty power source in the back of the helmet. Within seconds, he jury-rigged it to draw power from the auxiliary battery.
When he put it on, it was to a working HUD. Letters and numbers appeared in his vision.
He found the time first.
11:24.
He swore under his breath. Back at the fight, it'd been just 5:05. How could so much time have passed? More importantly, how could so much time have passed but the bomb still count its minutes down normally?
The next important thing of note was even more worrying. His news feed wasn't working. For some reason, it was getting nothing. It was all blank.
Why wasn't it working? Connectivity shouldn't be a problem, he was in the middle of a city and there was power. He hadn't had problems with this for years – why now?
Shelve it. Figure it out later.
He still had armor to fix. Turning on the light of his visor, he bent to examine it. The main power source was located in the small of the back, where it fed power to the rest of the suit. When he pried open the panel that protected it, he found out why he'd been stuck on auxiliary for so long.
It was melted.
Not just overloaded, not just damaged. The entire structure was melted, leaving him a mess of slag to work with. He picked at it for a few minutes, trying to see if any of it was salvageable. If he picked out some of the copper and maybe connected it to that, it could work, for a certain definition of the word.
It would be far less efficient than before. Most of its capacity was completely ruined by whatever had melted it down. It would work for maybe… ten minutes of full functionality. After that, he was stuck on auxiliary again, and he didn't know if he could coax the battery to life a second time. It wasn't as if he could use the batteries in his tools – he still needed them to work and they would add only three minutes at best to overall runtime. Not worth the sacrifice.
It was good enough. Beggars can't be choosers. Until he found something to cannibalize for parts, something that didn't belong to someone else, and a secure spot to work in, he couldn't stick around.
He was about the replace the auxiliary battery back into his chest piece when something blinked on his HUD. It was a personal note. His breath caught and for a moment, he thought he could hear his own heart hammer against his ribcage. Hope fluttered briefly but he knew it was false. It was probably just a system alert. The chances of it being useful were astronomically low.
He still opened it.
It was dated from about a week before. It had only one line.
Send Dragon BR audio.
Colin deflated. Of course.
BR… BR… Black Ram. It was a new band he'd recently started listening to, after the AC/DC playlist got too repetitive. This note was just something he'd idly jotted down, not anything that would help him. It was no use, it wasn't like he could take her to a concert… a concert.
Black Ram wasn't a Bet band. It was from Aleph. He'd had to buy their new album from the Aleph channel.
Why was there a billboard for an Aleph concert here? No one advertised between dimensions, it wouldn't make sense. It wasn't like anyone could go… to listen…
The dots connected all too quickly for Colin. It felt like ice water was running down his spine. The lack of capes in the field with the buildings… the silence from the bracelet… the blank news feeds. Most damningly of all, however, was the time. The time difference was six hours between Bet and Aleph.
He wasn't in Earth Bet at all. He was in Earth Aleph. The Simurgh had thrown him here with her explosion.
"Fuck."
With numb fingers, he replaced the auxiliary battery in its place on his chest, leaving his HUD offline once again. Slowly, he dressed. He replaced his armor, latched them back into places, and checked around.
He was alone.
He looked in the direction of the lights. Part of him wanted to go to the local police station and ask for their assistance, but a second thought made him hesitate. He'd been only a child when the portals first opened, but he'd been old enough to remember the tensions and the thinly veiled threats of inter-dimensional warfare. Only the thinnest pretenses of diplomacy had held it back, along with the fact that the portals only transferred radio waves. His vague recall of Protectorate policy on inter-dimensional incidents, once parsed through the lines of legal jargon, boiled down to one word: "don't".
So what? Stick to the shadows and try to work out a way home on his own? Unlikely. This wasn't a movie.
Working alone was dangerous in the best of circumstances. Here, it was more than likely to get him stuck or killed. It could even spark an inter-dimensional war, in the worst case scenario.
The thought made him pause. It was impossible to predict the Simurgh's nebulous plots and trying to do so was an exercise in futile paranoia, but he wouldn't put it past her to have sent him here for that explicit purpose.
Great.
He still needed to get home. His options were limited as of now. Recreating Haywire's work was unlikely – he would need access to his notes and confiscated tech. That would require hunting down and infiltrating the heavily fortified location of the portal.
Not happening.
Before he could follow that train of thought, Colin noticed something; a bare glint in the darkness, barely noticeable if it weren't for his long experience in the field. There was someone there, beyond the lot. And they were watching him.
"Show yourself," he demanded, standing.
Instead, they turned and ran.
Colin cursed. How long had they been watching? What had they seen? His mind retraced his steps - would they recognize what he was doing as tinkering? Or even recognize his armor from news from Bet?
He had seen a camera lens, glinting in the darkness. They could expose his presence here before he could even begin to get established. And the way they ran - something told him that was an admission of guilt, not fear at his demand.
If those pictures somehow got out… and someone was clever enough to look at the obvious rubble patch and match up the news with what was happening on Bet, then his predicament would be leaked with or without his say-so on the matter.
He had only one choice.
He ran after the stranger, hurtling headlong into the unknown.
-x-
Although the person might've gotten a head start on him, Colin was much faster and he closed the distance between them in long strides. The noise from his steps sounded precariously loud in the night, but it didn't look like anyone was awake to take note.
To Colin's suspicion, he noted that his target was staying away from populated areas. Whereas someone looking to lose a tail would run to the nearest people-saturated location, this person stayed in the same dark alleyways and lots that Colin himself had gravitated to. They were now in-between apartment complexes with dark windows, running past alleyway mouths that showed flashes of cars on the other side.
Could this be a trap? Were they trying to lead him somewhere for something?
The thought made him draw his halberd mid-step. There was less than fifteen meters between them; close enough that Colin was sure he wouldn't miss even without his HUD.
He stopped and dropped to one knee. Raising the halberd, he aimed the tip at the fleeing back of the stranger.
He took a second to aim. Then, he pressed a button on the side of the halberd.
With a soft fwip, the net shot out from the tip of the halberd. It immediately caught the runner, making them trip and fall with a yelp.
It was a perfect shot, but Colin didn't have time to appreciate it. He dashed to him, only to pause when there was a sound like a firecracker going off.
He brought his arm up to shield himself, but the crack wasn't from any weapon. It was from the runner, who was suddenly missing from under the net.
Cape, Colin judged grimly. This was going to be more complicated than he thought.
Yet they didn't seem to have gone very far. They were now on the other side of the clearing, wobbling in place. Colin raised his halberd and advanced slowly.
"Don't try to fight," he said, "because I will take you down."
"Oh my God," moaned the runner. They seemed to be disoriented, clearly trying to figure out what they were doing. "Oh God, I'm not doing that again."
"Stand down," Colin continued.
"God, fuck, what the fuck are you? Some kinda Robocop?"
He raised his halberd meaningfully.
"Okay, okay! Fuck, I'm not doing anything, alright? Chill, dude." The runner put their hands up, but Colin didn't trust him for a moment. He was too seasoned to assume every surrender was genuine.
"On your knees. Hands on head. Look down at the ground."
"What the fuck? You're not some fucking cop, what the fuck –"
Colin pointed the halberd at him again. "On your knees. Hands on head. Look down at the ground."
"I'm doing it!" True to their word, they followed his orders.
Colin stayed put for a second, waiting to see if anything would happen. When nothing did, he slowly walked over to the cape, halberd still ready. "Why were you taking pictures of me?" he asked.
"I ran into some guy with a fucking sweet costume, I thought I would snap a few candid shots! I didn't realize you were some fucking soldier or something!"
"Pipe down," Colin hissed. "You're too loud."
"I'm sorry, I'm on the ground being held in place by a fucking freak!"
"I said shut up." Colin crouched down to get a look at the face of the cape. "Now listen to me very closely. I want you to delete every picture you took of me and show me as you do it."
"I'm not –"
"No. Delete those pictures. Now."
The cape, the youth, reached down to grab the camera around his neck. He clicked on a few buttons and there was a little ding each time he deleted a picture. All in all, twenty shots were deleted before Colin was satisfied.
"Twenty?" he asked.
"It was hard to get a good shot," the cape replied, sullen. "Look, will you let me stand up? My knees hurt."
"Slowly. Keep your hands where I can see them."
Colin stepped back to give the cape some space. As he stood, he took in his features. He was a gangly sort of person, with the sort of features that could've belonged on someone anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five years old. The poor light let him discern shaggy hair and freckles, but not much else. Apart from his clearly unhappy expression, he didn't seem to be a threat.
Slowly, his halberd lowered.
He needed to remove himself from this situation, before anyone came to investigate the noise. He retreated from the youth wordlessly, intent on leaving, but the cape waved his hands.
"Wait, wait, hold on. Let's just talk, man."
Colin turned to leave. He briefly considered knocking him out, or tranquilizing him, but it was too dangerous. He could risk hurting what seemed to be, all in all, just a dumb kid.
"No, come on! Dude –"
He couldn't grapple away, it would increase his visibility too much. All he could do was go back the way he came, but he timed it badly. There was a flash of light – headlights, Colin registered – that flooded their location with illumination for a moment. The car turned away as the people didn't seem to have noticed, but the cape behind him wasn't so oblivious.
"Holy shit, you're – you're a cape! The one from Bet!"
Things were just not going his way today. Colin froze, and turned to look at the cape.
There was a tense beat.
His lunge happened a split-second faster than the cape's attempt to run away. He shoved him up against the wall, and pressed a glove against his mouth, stopping the flood of words.
"Listen to me very closely," Colin grit. "This is bigger than you know. Don't make noise and stop trying to run away. I won't hurt you, but you need to stop talking. Do you understand?"
He nodded, head bobbing against the wall.
"I am not out of my own will. If anyone realizes I am here, it could start an inter-dimensional war. Do you want that?"
A head shake.
"Good." An idea came to Colin. It was flawed from the outset and liable to go horrifically wrong in any number of ways, but it was the best option he had right now. "I can tell you more, but I need to go someplace less exposed. If you can help me, it would be highly appreciated. I am going to take my hand off now, don't start yelling."
To his credit, the kid actually didn't. Instead, he said, "I have an apartment. You can go there, if you need."
That might… actually work. Colin eased off him. "Take me there."
-x-
Nitronorm5688
The Armchair Reader
- Location
- Oakdale, CT
Wow. Earth Alph has capes. Barely functional it seems, but capes.
Underground railroad maybe?
Underground railroad maybe?
- Location
- Australia
to be fair, Aleph had capes in canon
Entry 1.3
Selwyn
Tomorrow Will Come
- Location
- Mongolia
Entry 1.3
The already tiny apartment looked even smaller with Colin in it. He had to hunch to fit under the doorframe, and his every step seemed to make the floorboards creak in agony. The kid followed after him, looking both excited and anxious.
Colin checked every room first. The bathroom and kitchenette were both empty. He drew the curtains afterwards and checked the locks twice before he could settle.
"Alright, dude, explain," the cape said as he sat on the couch, looking nervous. Colin had pushed the coffee table to the wall, giving himself the floor space he needed to work. "Like really, man. Even your name would be great right about now."
"I won't tell you my name," Colin replied. He took his helmet off. "You can call me Armsmaster. I thought you recognized me outside, in the alley."
"I recognized your armor, but I didn't know your name. I see your picture in the cape forums all the time, you're like a Tinker, right? With the Protectorate?"
"Yes." He removed his armor properly this time around, until all the individual pieces were neatly arranged on the floor. He felt exposed clad in only his bodysuit and domino mask, but that was why his halberd was right next to him.
"Oh man, oh man, this is fucking wild. Isn't inter-dimensional travel restricted or something? Why are you even here?"
"It was an accident. I wouldn't be here if I had a choice in the matter." He pried the power source out, then the auxiliary battery. Now that he was somewhere with better cover than a parking lot, he could begin repairs.
"Then what's up with the inter-dimensional war stuff? If it's just an accident, I don't think –"
"How old are you?"
"Uh, what?" He looked off-guard, surprised by his question. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"I'll explain once you tell me."
"Twenty-one."
"1988 birth date?"
"Uh, yeah."
"You were born right when Haywire opened his portal," Colin concluded, "You were too young to know what it was like back then. It would've taken a flip of a coin for war to break out back then; people were balanced on the knife's edge. If people don't believe me when I say it's an accident? Well – it could spark something. Maybe not all out war, but even a small conflict isn't exactly copacetic."
It could be anything. Accusations of Bet infiltration, perhaps, or Tinker subterfuge or anything else a sufficiently paranoid government official could think up. And since the Simurgh had been directly involved in his arrival, it would just complicate the already cluttered picture.
Colin wrenched his mind back to his tinkering. "Hey. Do you have any electronics in the house that you don't need?"
"What for? Are you gonna tinker?"
"Yes."
"Oh my God. Yes. Here, let me bring you something." He scrambled off the couch, solemnity forgotten, and went around the tiny apartment, banging and searching. "Will a blender work? Or a light bulb? My name's Blake, by the way!"
"Anything that I can tear down for materials," Colin said, prompting an even more frantic search. In short order, a pile of junk was in front of him – a broken blender, defunct light bulbs, a computer that looked like it was older than the kid who owned it, and chargers with frayed cords.
It wasn't ideal. But it was a damn sight better than what he had previously.
Colin tore them apart with ruthless efficiency, stripping the phosphor, copper, and other useful pieces from their internals. He separated the plastic into the useless pile, then opened up his own armor. He could perhaps build on the old battery and extend his function time by another ten minutes.
His hand hovered over the power source.
Hm. No. It would be better put to use building a basic battery for his HUD instead.
He began to assemble all the pieces together. Batteries were easy for him. While he didn't have the best materials on hand, making a simple battery that could power his HUD was child's play. It would go into the space where the old one in his helmet was, and that could be covered up and insulated with some of the electrical tape on hand.
He heard the sound of a recording starting. Immediately, his hands stilled and Colin looked up with a frown. "Don't do that."
"What?" The phone fiddling halted. "Aw, come on. This is amazing, I never saw anything like this before. Please?"
"Your phone is inherently compromised. That video could get out."
"Just one video."
"No."
"But –"
"Inter. Dimensional. War."
"Alright, alright." Blake stopped his recording, and turned his phone around so Colin could see him delete it. "Gone, okay? But I'm going to watch."
Silence fell for a moment. Colin was content to let it stay, but it didn't seem that was a shared sentiment.
"I'm a cape too, you know. Not a Tinker or anything cool, I just teleport and stuff. The only one in Madison, which is pretty sweet. I get paid sometimes, so people can watch me do it."
Colin thought of Strider, then thought of the teleportation he saw in the alley. The two were worlds apart. Hah, he thought, sardonic. "Are you a hero?"
"What? Oh, no. Aleph doesn't have a Protectorate like you guys do. Um," Blake coughed, "My power isn't exactly the greatest."
"It isn't," Colin agreed, distracted by his work. Unseen to him, Blake deflated.
"Yeah… so, another question."
"Go on."
He watched as Colin rearranged his armor to open up yet another part and examine it down to its components. Since he had it all open anyway, might as well go through some closer examination. It was all rote memory – he'd done this so many times, he could do it blindfolded with one hand.
"Does this mean you're connected to the huge storm thing that happened outside the city?"
Colin's fingers froze for a second, then continued to work. "I will be following up on that," he said, "once I get this done. But why don't you update me while I work?"
"Oh, shit, okay. Well. Not much happened until a huge portal opened up outside Madison. Um. A lot of people freaked and all the news channels were just talking about it. News from Bet said it was the Endbringer, the winged one, Simurgh, and that we should probably stay away from it because of its dangers and stuff. But I saw some people heading out there, so there's that."
It made sense. It was still unsure how much Simurgh could influence Aleph, but there were small experiments to see if there were any dimensional ramifications from her actions on Bet. So far, Madison was the most obvious case of her directly affecting a different Earth. Talking heads would be going wild on Bet.
Colin grimaced. He would have been part of it, if he wasn't stuck here instead.
"And everything else after that gets pretty hush-hush. I think they'll pull apart all the crap that fell through and try to see if there is a portal still open or something. I don't know all the details, really."
Colin sized him up. He was a teleporting cape, which could have been useful if his power wasn't so poorly controlled.
"But what I actually want to know is, like – what's up with your role in all this?"
The armor was reassembled. Colin picked up his halberd next. The net he had used against Blake was already back in its usual place. He opened up a panel. "Do you mean my fight with the Simurgh?"
"Yeah!"
"I can't tell you all the details. Policy."
"That's fine, I just want to hear about anything you can tell me."
No one would have asked him this kind of question on Bet. It struck Colin, even more than all his previous revelations. This tiny, meaningless series of questions drove the reality of his situation in closer than anything else. He was on Aleph, with a cape who treated everything that happened on Bet like it was a particularly elaborate movie, while Colin had lived through it.
"She appeared in Madison today, just past noon. She flattened two blocks of the city and was building something – don't ask me what," he added, before Blake could ask what, "and I was one of the people there, fighting her. Next thing I know, the world is exploding and I wake up here after she finishes destroying Madison and dropping buildings on me. Now I'm stuck here, potentially risking war, and I have no clue if the Simurgh intended just that."
Not for the first time, it struck him profoundly unfair the situation of the two Earths was. Here he was, a denizen of a dying city in a dying world. And here Blake was, blithely asking about these very events like someone asking what happened in a sports game. Aleph was safe in a way Bet could never be, lacking the Endbringers and violent parahumans, and it showed.
It wasn't his fault. It wasn't any of their faults. But it was a bitter pill to swallow.
"Oh, damn. Dude, I'm sorry."
"You couldn't have known." His halberd was fully functional. The inter-dimensional travel that had so damaged his suit hadn't touched his weapon, mysteriously. Accident, or Simurgh? In a way, those two were practically the same. "What I'm concerned about is getting back home. They need me."
His team. His city. His country. Losing even one adult cape would be a massive blow to Bay Protectorate, not to mention the fact that every cape counted in an Endbringer conflict. Every hour he spent cooling his heels here was an hour he wasn't doing what needed done.
"Yeah, I get you. That's heavy."
Colin didn't want his sympathy. It was misplaced on him. At least he had a way to fight back the monsters. "Do you have an internet connection? I need more information."
"Yeah, yeah, I have wifi, name's BL314. The password's under the router."
"No need."
Putting his helmet on, he found the connection. Bypassing security measures, he was connected once again. His HUD was online once more, letting him see the world again.
His news feed remained empty, as it had relied on Bet networks. With a few searches, he found Aleph news sources.
The Simurgh attacked Madison-B, Wisconsin-B. Authorities recommend staying away from the site until further investigation.
Possible new portal in Madison. Will this be bigger than the last?
Charting the Endbringers: What Next?
He skimmed through them all, lips thinning the more he read. There were no mentions of casualty counts or comments from the capes involved. It was no surprise, but it still irked him.
"How's it going?"
"Not well," Colin said, distracted. He continued to scroll through until a few more parahuman-oriented news sources cropped up. These had actual word from Bet, but they were sparse and only from the most notable sources involved.
Madison-B to be quarantined, according to Bet parahuman Legend
Death rates rising as more people are uncovered
Dragon says, Madison-B attack "most devastating Simurgh encounter yet."
It was too limited to draw a conclusion. Details on the inter-dimensional portal that the Simurgh had opened up were limited, which was understandable but unspeakably frustrating for Colin right now.
He needed a way to set up communication between him and the Protectorate. He might even have to appeal to Aleph's US government for –
Blake was moving in his peripheral vision. He'd been content to sit on the couch fiddling with his phone, but he had scrambled over the window while Colin had been distracted.
"Dude! Oh my fucking God, Armsmaster, get over here!"
He was pressed up against the window, eyes wide. "I don't think you're the only one who came through!"
Armsmaster was at his side in an instant. Blake pointed, but there was no need for it. He already saw.
Madison was on fire.
-x-
"It's someone else, it's another fucking cape!"
Colin was suiting up as quickly as he could. All the previous uncertainty had fled now, and he knew what had to be done. There was a villain, and there were people in danger. He needed to help them.
He hesitated before he went to turn on the battery to give him full functionality. He might need it later in the fight, when his suits programs actually became useful. Auxiliary power was enough to keep him moving, which was all he really needed as of this moment.
He would wait.
"Do you know this guy? Who the fuck is he?"
Blake turned his laptop around for Colin to see what he'd pulled up onto his screen. It was a blurry picture, but he could see enough details to identify their culprit.
"That's the Tinker Mosaic," Colin reported grimly. "A villain. Not a man. Woman."
Without waiting for Blake to reply, he opened the window and jumped out. His grapple shot out, and he swung to the opposing building.
Getting to the site of the flames took longer than it should have. Without his bike, his fastest option was to grapple along. On the fourth building, he peered over the ledge to look down at the street below.
Mosaic was on the ground, laughing loudly enough that Colin could hear it two stories up. She was dressed in a suit of armor that looked patchwork, but that was just her specialty at play. In her hands was a massive device, similar to a mini-gun, if a mini-gun had barrels on both ends.
Flame poured from one end, while the other end emitted a glowing blue shield that encircled her. A few intrepid police officers were trying to stop her progress down the street, but their bullets ricocheted off her shield. Most of them rebound into the ground or the buildings, but some had managed to nail the officers.
He activated his battery. His suit seemed to come to life as power surged through it, and Colin no longer noticed its weight on him. Twenty minutes.
Colin timed his leap to coincide with the moment she passed under him. While her shield kept her sides protected, the top was clear.
Careless, he thought. With a grunt, he landed in the boundary of her shielded space, making Mosaic whirl around.
The flames rushed to him, but he was already moving. Her device was long-barreled, letting her pour out the flames without risking getting caught by them. He used it to his advantage as he ducked under a blast of fire and closed the distance, looking to take her down as soon as possible.
Their respective weapons met in the middle with a crash. The flame-producing barrel was pointed away from him.
He triggered an EMP blast from his halberd, but her device did not falter. This close, the heat was near unbearable. No way were they just flames – there had to be some esoteric affect at play. Normal fire did not cling to concrete and asphalt like hers did. Colin could smell the chemicals, but he had no time to consider it further.
"Armsmaster!" she laughed. "I can't believe it. How nice to run into you here."
He didn't respond. Instead, he kicked her in the stomach.
Mosaic stumbled back a few steps, but her armor was tough enough to take the hit. Using her moment of distraction, he swung his halberd at her device. It needed to be taken out of play as soon as possible to mitigate the amount of damage she was doing by just letting the flames go.
He caught the edge of it, but it was not enough. Mosaic yanked on something connected to the barrel of the shield-end, and the blue light snapped back to her, bowling him over in the process. He turned his fall into a roll and recovered admirably, but it was just enough time for Mosaic to reconfigure her device again. The flames stopped and there was an audible clunk as the barrels switched.
The flames stopped. When she pointed the barrel at him, lasers shot out the end.
He was still moving, which let him dodge the violet light. It moved strangely, like it was actively pushing aside the very space around it. It hit the sidewalk, which immediately crumbled into dust. Mosaic no longer focused on creating damage – her attention was all on Colin now as she kept him at bay with her lasers while her shield blocked ranged attacks.
He noticed something. Although her device was capable of widespread destruction, it wasn't even a quarter of what she could do. Was she in the same boat as him, working with tech that badly needed maintenance?
His halberd moved down again, the blade edge facing her.
When she swung towards him for the second time, he made his move.
He rolled to the side, avoiding the barrage of lasers and raced towards her shield. Once he was a few meters from it, he drove the butt of his halberd into the ground and vaulted up. Using her shield as a kick off point, he unfolded his halberd into a grapple again. It bit into the brick of the opposing building and reeled, pulling him up the remaining distance needed to cross her shield. As he fell, his grapple returned.
Colin kicked off the shield again and drove his elbow into the chain, redirecting the grapple's momentum to pass him. The grapple rocketed down to Mosaic instead.
In the limited space of her shield, she managed to maneuver her laser-end to point at Colin. Dodging her was nigh-impossible at this range, but the same applied to her.
The grapple's tines grabbed the device the same time a laser flew up to him. He jerked to the side, but it still tagged his shoulder, disintegrating the armor there. Colin pressed a button on the side of his halberd, and the entire thing froze. Mosaic froze as well, only for a half-second. He let go of the halberd as he dropped but when the time was up, it exploded into glowing blue lines before rematerializing in his hand.
Colin landed in front of her, and was on her before she could react. He rabbit-punched the exposed part of her jaw hard enough to make her rock back, and Mosaic collapsed against her own shield, sagging.
He waited, halberd at the ready, but she did not stir.
The fight was over.
He stood there for a moment. He saw that he still had fifteen minutes left on the clock. Rather than expend them, he switched back to auxiliary. His suit weighed down on him once again.
He checked on her, just to make sure she was actually down, then went to her fallen device. He'd been right; it was far smaller and more simplistic than anything she usually carried. So her tech had been somehow reduced. What was more concerning was why she had staged such an open, obvious attack.
Maybe she knew she was in Aleph and didn't expect anyone to actually beat her.
For that matter, why was she in Aleph too? Mosaic wasn't the kind of person to attend Endbringer battles – what had brought her close enough to Madison, Wisconsin for her to fall through? Did she even go through in the same way he had? He hadn't seen anyone else when he passed through. A different portal, maybe?
He bent down and looked for a way to disable the shield that was still up. Without her to shoot, the lasers were at least gone. With his cutter, he cracked open the side of the device and found a way to disconnect the whole thing from its power supply. He took note of the three different power packs within – three other devices had already been formed together.
The shield flickered, then died. The night was still for a moment. Then the silence broke.
"Step away from the perpetrator and put your hands up in the air."
The police had brought in reinforcements. They were dressed in body armor but still looked less threatening than the usual PRT squaddie. Their fight had moved a fair distance away from the initial place he found her, and the fallen officers weren't anywhere to be seen.
Colin placed the halberd on the ground. Then he put his hands in the air.
His cover was blown.
-x-
The already tiny apartment looked even smaller with Colin in it. He had to hunch to fit under the doorframe, and his every step seemed to make the floorboards creak in agony. The kid followed after him, looking both excited and anxious.
Colin checked every room first. The bathroom and kitchenette were both empty. He drew the curtains afterwards and checked the locks twice before he could settle.
"Alright, dude, explain," the cape said as he sat on the couch, looking nervous. Colin had pushed the coffee table to the wall, giving himself the floor space he needed to work. "Like really, man. Even your name would be great right about now."
"I won't tell you my name," Colin replied. He took his helmet off. "You can call me Armsmaster. I thought you recognized me outside, in the alley."
"I recognized your armor, but I didn't know your name. I see your picture in the cape forums all the time, you're like a Tinker, right? With the Protectorate?"
"Yes." He removed his armor properly this time around, until all the individual pieces were neatly arranged on the floor. He felt exposed clad in only his bodysuit and domino mask, but that was why his halberd was right next to him.
"Oh man, oh man, this is fucking wild. Isn't inter-dimensional travel restricted or something? Why are you even here?"
"It was an accident. I wouldn't be here if I had a choice in the matter." He pried the power source out, then the auxiliary battery. Now that he was somewhere with better cover than a parking lot, he could begin repairs.
"Then what's up with the inter-dimensional war stuff? If it's just an accident, I don't think –"
"How old are you?"
"Uh, what?" He looked off-guard, surprised by his question. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"I'll explain once you tell me."
"Twenty-one."
"1988 birth date?"
"Uh, yeah."
"You were born right when Haywire opened his portal," Colin concluded, "You were too young to know what it was like back then. It would've taken a flip of a coin for war to break out back then; people were balanced on the knife's edge. If people don't believe me when I say it's an accident? Well – it could spark something. Maybe not all out war, but even a small conflict isn't exactly copacetic."
It could be anything. Accusations of Bet infiltration, perhaps, or Tinker subterfuge or anything else a sufficiently paranoid government official could think up. And since the Simurgh had been directly involved in his arrival, it would just complicate the already cluttered picture.
Colin wrenched his mind back to his tinkering. "Hey. Do you have any electronics in the house that you don't need?"
"What for? Are you gonna tinker?"
"Yes."
"Oh my God. Yes. Here, let me bring you something." He scrambled off the couch, solemnity forgotten, and went around the tiny apartment, banging and searching. "Will a blender work? Or a light bulb? My name's Blake, by the way!"
"Anything that I can tear down for materials," Colin said, prompting an even more frantic search. In short order, a pile of junk was in front of him – a broken blender, defunct light bulbs, a computer that looked like it was older than the kid who owned it, and chargers with frayed cords.
It wasn't ideal. But it was a damn sight better than what he had previously.
Colin tore them apart with ruthless efficiency, stripping the phosphor, copper, and other useful pieces from their internals. He separated the plastic into the useless pile, then opened up his own armor. He could perhaps build on the old battery and extend his function time by another ten minutes.
His hand hovered over the power source.
Hm. No. It would be better put to use building a basic battery for his HUD instead.
He began to assemble all the pieces together. Batteries were easy for him. While he didn't have the best materials on hand, making a simple battery that could power his HUD was child's play. It would go into the space where the old one in his helmet was, and that could be covered up and insulated with some of the electrical tape on hand.
He heard the sound of a recording starting. Immediately, his hands stilled and Colin looked up with a frown. "Don't do that."
"What?" The phone fiddling halted. "Aw, come on. This is amazing, I never saw anything like this before. Please?"
"Your phone is inherently compromised. That video could get out."
"Just one video."
"No."
"But –"
"Inter. Dimensional. War."
"Alright, alright." Blake stopped his recording, and turned his phone around so Colin could see him delete it. "Gone, okay? But I'm going to watch."
Silence fell for a moment. Colin was content to let it stay, but it didn't seem that was a shared sentiment.
"I'm a cape too, you know. Not a Tinker or anything cool, I just teleport and stuff. The only one in Madison, which is pretty sweet. I get paid sometimes, so people can watch me do it."
Colin thought of Strider, then thought of the teleportation he saw in the alley. The two were worlds apart. Hah, he thought, sardonic. "Are you a hero?"
"What? Oh, no. Aleph doesn't have a Protectorate like you guys do. Um," Blake coughed, "My power isn't exactly the greatest."
"It isn't," Colin agreed, distracted by his work. Unseen to him, Blake deflated.
"Yeah… so, another question."
"Go on."
He watched as Colin rearranged his armor to open up yet another part and examine it down to its components. Since he had it all open anyway, might as well go through some closer examination. It was all rote memory – he'd done this so many times, he could do it blindfolded with one hand.
"Does this mean you're connected to the huge storm thing that happened outside the city?"
Colin's fingers froze for a second, then continued to work. "I will be following up on that," he said, "once I get this done. But why don't you update me while I work?"
"Oh, shit, okay. Well. Not much happened until a huge portal opened up outside Madison. Um. A lot of people freaked and all the news channels were just talking about it. News from Bet said it was the Endbringer, the winged one, Simurgh, and that we should probably stay away from it because of its dangers and stuff. But I saw some people heading out there, so there's that."
It made sense. It was still unsure how much Simurgh could influence Aleph, but there were small experiments to see if there were any dimensional ramifications from her actions on Bet. So far, Madison was the most obvious case of her directly affecting a different Earth. Talking heads would be going wild on Bet.
Colin grimaced. He would have been part of it, if he wasn't stuck here instead.
"And everything else after that gets pretty hush-hush. I think they'll pull apart all the crap that fell through and try to see if there is a portal still open or something. I don't know all the details, really."
Colin sized him up. He was a teleporting cape, which could have been useful if his power wasn't so poorly controlled.
"But what I actually want to know is, like – what's up with your role in all this?"
The armor was reassembled. Colin picked up his halberd next. The net he had used against Blake was already back in its usual place. He opened up a panel. "Do you mean my fight with the Simurgh?"
"Yeah!"
"I can't tell you all the details. Policy."
"That's fine, I just want to hear about anything you can tell me."
No one would have asked him this kind of question on Bet. It struck Colin, even more than all his previous revelations. This tiny, meaningless series of questions drove the reality of his situation in closer than anything else. He was on Aleph, with a cape who treated everything that happened on Bet like it was a particularly elaborate movie, while Colin had lived through it.
"She appeared in Madison today, just past noon. She flattened two blocks of the city and was building something – don't ask me what," he added, before Blake could ask what, "and I was one of the people there, fighting her. Next thing I know, the world is exploding and I wake up here after she finishes destroying Madison and dropping buildings on me. Now I'm stuck here, potentially risking war, and I have no clue if the Simurgh intended just that."
Not for the first time, it struck him profoundly unfair the situation of the two Earths was. Here he was, a denizen of a dying city in a dying world. And here Blake was, blithely asking about these very events like someone asking what happened in a sports game. Aleph was safe in a way Bet could never be, lacking the Endbringers and violent parahumans, and it showed.
It wasn't his fault. It wasn't any of their faults. But it was a bitter pill to swallow.
"Oh, damn. Dude, I'm sorry."
"You couldn't have known." His halberd was fully functional. The inter-dimensional travel that had so damaged his suit hadn't touched his weapon, mysteriously. Accident, or Simurgh? In a way, those two were practically the same. "What I'm concerned about is getting back home. They need me."
His team. His city. His country. Losing even one adult cape would be a massive blow to Bay Protectorate, not to mention the fact that every cape counted in an Endbringer conflict. Every hour he spent cooling his heels here was an hour he wasn't doing what needed done.
"Yeah, I get you. That's heavy."
Colin didn't want his sympathy. It was misplaced on him. At least he had a way to fight back the monsters. "Do you have an internet connection? I need more information."
"Yeah, yeah, I have wifi, name's BL314. The password's under the router."
"No need."
Putting his helmet on, he found the connection. Bypassing security measures, he was connected once again. His HUD was online once more, letting him see the world again.
His news feed remained empty, as it had relied on Bet networks. With a few searches, he found Aleph news sources.
The Simurgh attacked Madison-B, Wisconsin-B. Authorities recommend staying away from the site until further investigation.
Possible new portal in Madison. Will this be bigger than the last?
Charting the Endbringers: What Next?
He skimmed through them all, lips thinning the more he read. There were no mentions of casualty counts or comments from the capes involved. It was no surprise, but it still irked him.
"How's it going?"
"Not well," Colin said, distracted. He continued to scroll through until a few more parahuman-oriented news sources cropped up. These had actual word from Bet, but they were sparse and only from the most notable sources involved.
Madison-B to be quarantined, according to Bet parahuman Legend
Death rates rising as more people are uncovered
Dragon says, Madison-B attack "most devastating Simurgh encounter yet."
It was too limited to draw a conclusion. Details on the inter-dimensional portal that the Simurgh had opened up were limited, which was understandable but unspeakably frustrating for Colin right now.
He needed a way to set up communication between him and the Protectorate. He might even have to appeal to Aleph's US government for –
Blake was moving in his peripheral vision. He'd been content to sit on the couch fiddling with his phone, but he had scrambled over the window while Colin had been distracted.
"Dude! Oh my fucking God, Armsmaster, get over here!"
He was pressed up against the window, eyes wide. "I don't think you're the only one who came through!"
Armsmaster was at his side in an instant. Blake pointed, but there was no need for it. He already saw.
Madison was on fire.
-x-
"It's someone else, it's another fucking cape!"
Colin was suiting up as quickly as he could. All the previous uncertainty had fled now, and he knew what had to be done. There was a villain, and there were people in danger. He needed to help them.
He hesitated before he went to turn on the battery to give him full functionality. He might need it later in the fight, when his suits programs actually became useful. Auxiliary power was enough to keep him moving, which was all he really needed as of this moment.
He would wait.
"Do you know this guy? Who the fuck is he?"
Blake turned his laptop around for Colin to see what he'd pulled up onto his screen. It was a blurry picture, but he could see enough details to identify their culprit.
"That's the Tinker Mosaic," Colin reported grimly. "A villain. Not a man. Woman."
Without waiting for Blake to reply, he opened the window and jumped out. His grapple shot out, and he swung to the opposing building.
Getting to the site of the flames took longer than it should have. Without his bike, his fastest option was to grapple along. On the fourth building, he peered over the ledge to look down at the street below.
Mosaic was on the ground, laughing loudly enough that Colin could hear it two stories up. She was dressed in a suit of armor that looked patchwork, but that was just her specialty at play. In her hands was a massive device, similar to a mini-gun, if a mini-gun had barrels on both ends.
Flame poured from one end, while the other end emitted a glowing blue shield that encircled her. A few intrepid police officers were trying to stop her progress down the street, but their bullets ricocheted off her shield. Most of them rebound into the ground or the buildings, but some had managed to nail the officers.
He activated his battery. His suit seemed to come to life as power surged through it, and Colin no longer noticed its weight on him. Twenty minutes.
Colin timed his leap to coincide with the moment she passed under him. While her shield kept her sides protected, the top was clear.
Careless, he thought. With a grunt, he landed in the boundary of her shielded space, making Mosaic whirl around.
The flames rushed to him, but he was already moving. Her device was long-barreled, letting her pour out the flames without risking getting caught by them. He used it to his advantage as he ducked under a blast of fire and closed the distance, looking to take her down as soon as possible.
Their respective weapons met in the middle with a crash. The flame-producing barrel was pointed away from him.
He triggered an EMP blast from his halberd, but her device did not falter. This close, the heat was near unbearable. No way were they just flames – there had to be some esoteric affect at play. Normal fire did not cling to concrete and asphalt like hers did. Colin could smell the chemicals, but he had no time to consider it further.
"Armsmaster!" she laughed. "I can't believe it. How nice to run into you here."
He didn't respond. Instead, he kicked her in the stomach.
Mosaic stumbled back a few steps, but her armor was tough enough to take the hit. Using her moment of distraction, he swung his halberd at her device. It needed to be taken out of play as soon as possible to mitigate the amount of damage she was doing by just letting the flames go.
He caught the edge of it, but it was not enough. Mosaic yanked on something connected to the barrel of the shield-end, and the blue light snapped back to her, bowling him over in the process. He turned his fall into a roll and recovered admirably, but it was just enough time for Mosaic to reconfigure her device again. The flames stopped and there was an audible clunk as the barrels switched.
The flames stopped. When she pointed the barrel at him, lasers shot out the end.
He was still moving, which let him dodge the violet light. It moved strangely, like it was actively pushing aside the very space around it. It hit the sidewalk, which immediately crumbled into dust. Mosaic no longer focused on creating damage – her attention was all on Colin now as she kept him at bay with her lasers while her shield blocked ranged attacks.
He noticed something. Although her device was capable of widespread destruction, it wasn't even a quarter of what she could do. Was she in the same boat as him, working with tech that badly needed maintenance?
His halberd moved down again, the blade edge facing her.
When she swung towards him for the second time, he made his move.
He rolled to the side, avoiding the barrage of lasers and raced towards her shield. Once he was a few meters from it, he drove the butt of his halberd into the ground and vaulted up. Using her shield as a kick off point, he unfolded his halberd into a grapple again. It bit into the brick of the opposing building and reeled, pulling him up the remaining distance needed to cross her shield. As he fell, his grapple returned.
Colin kicked off the shield again and drove his elbow into the chain, redirecting the grapple's momentum to pass him. The grapple rocketed down to Mosaic instead.
In the limited space of her shield, she managed to maneuver her laser-end to point at Colin. Dodging her was nigh-impossible at this range, but the same applied to her.
The grapple's tines grabbed the device the same time a laser flew up to him. He jerked to the side, but it still tagged his shoulder, disintegrating the armor there. Colin pressed a button on the side of his halberd, and the entire thing froze. Mosaic froze as well, only for a half-second. He let go of the halberd as he dropped but when the time was up, it exploded into glowing blue lines before rematerializing in his hand.
Colin landed in front of her, and was on her before she could react. He rabbit-punched the exposed part of her jaw hard enough to make her rock back, and Mosaic collapsed against her own shield, sagging.
He waited, halberd at the ready, but she did not stir.
The fight was over.
He stood there for a moment. He saw that he still had fifteen minutes left on the clock. Rather than expend them, he switched back to auxiliary. His suit weighed down on him once again.
He checked on her, just to make sure she was actually down, then went to her fallen device. He'd been right; it was far smaller and more simplistic than anything she usually carried. So her tech had been somehow reduced. What was more concerning was why she had staged such an open, obvious attack.
Maybe she knew she was in Aleph and didn't expect anyone to actually beat her.
For that matter, why was she in Aleph too? Mosaic wasn't the kind of person to attend Endbringer battles – what had brought her close enough to Madison, Wisconsin for her to fall through? Did she even go through in the same way he had? He hadn't seen anyone else when he passed through. A different portal, maybe?
He bent down and looked for a way to disable the shield that was still up. Without her to shoot, the lasers were at least gone. With his cutter, he cracked open the side of the device and found a way to disconnect the whole thing from its power supply. He took note of the three different power packs within – three other devices had already been formed together.
The shield flickered, then died. The night was still for a moment. Then the silence broke.
"Step away from the perpetrator and put your hands up in the air."
The police had brought in reinforcements. They were dressed in body armor but still looked less threatening than the usual PRT squaddie. Their fight had moved a fair distance away from the initial place he found her, and the fallen officers weren't anywhere to be seen.
Colin placed the halberd on the ground. Then he put his hands in the air.
His cover was blown.
-x-
- Location
- Boston
Mosaic's specialty seems disturbingly similar to Kid Win's. What is it, exactly?
Nitronorm5688
The Armchair Reader
- Location
- Oakdale, CT
Looks like exotic energy uses, enabling her to make cannons and armor that run off it, or something.
Entry 1.4
Selwyn
Tomorrow Will Come
- Location
- Mongolia
Entry 1.4
He could tell that the Madison police department had no idea what to do with him. They hadn't from the moment the first few officers crept up to him in the street, up to the moment he sat in a holding cell inside the station.
It would not actually hold him if he didn't want it to. But for their peace of mind, he let them take his halberd and consented to sit inside the cell.
He was sure that they would try to examine his halberd. He locked it so no one ended up hurting themselves with it accidentally. He still wished he had it with him, or that it was in holding by people like the PRT – people who knew what they were handling.
They hadn't even taken his suit from him. He could walk out right now by pushing through the bars and letting their bullets ping off his armor. The longer Colin was in Aleph, the more struck he was by how untouched their society was by parahumans. In the bay, the police had their own protocols for parahumans perps. Here, he was foreign.
The real question was what was happening to Mosaic. He'd advised them to strip everything from her, to remove anything even vaguely electrical from her cell, and put her under constant guard, but he wasn't sure if they actually listened. But they weren't idiots, surely – they had to realize from the show that while he was willing to abide by the law, Mosaic wasn't in the same boat. Taking off her suit was just common sense.
A villain like her, as limited as her tech was right now, was dangerous when not contained properly. If his own incarceration was any indication, her breaking out was a genuine concern. And if she managed to make way to wherever they that had taken his halberd and her device… results would be disastrous.
"Could I speak with the captain?" he asked, a little exasperated, but got no reply. It had gone on like for some time – Colin trying to warn them and being ignored. The most that he had been told was that a parahumans consultant was going to be brought in to handle this case. No one seemed to quite know what they would do with him. Through his helmet's enhanced microphone, he heard them arguing if he even belonged in a holding cell.
So he waited. And waited.
It was half an hour later before someone got to him. The man they brought in was meaty around the waist, dressed in a green wool suit with a poorly matched tie, and balding. Colin looked up as he stood outside his cell, clearly nervous.
"I am the parahumans consultant Michael Langley," he introduced himself, looking so nervous in his role that Colin wondered if he actually dealt with any parahumans prior to this. "Are you the parahuman who was involved in the fires downtown?"
"I was the one who took down the villain behind it," he replied.
There was a weak chuckle at his unironic use of the world 'villain'. "Ah yes, you're a hero, right? Are you registered to anywhere?"
"I am from Earth Bet, as was the villain I took down, Mosaic."
Langley paled. "Bet?"
"Yes."
"What's your name again?"
"Armsmaster."
The man seemed to recognize the name better than he did the suit. He was growing to look increasingly worried. "Why are you here?"
Is that important right now? Colin wondered. "It was an accident. Before we discuss this, I need to warn you about Mosaic."
"What -? Oh, uh, go ahead." Langley drew a legal pad and a pen.
"She is a villain Tinker, estimated at high A-class, possible S-class. Her specialty is scaled tinkering, in which she builds parts of a greater concept and it levels up in strength with each added new piece. She had been making a device that had three separate parts, which means she either had time to tinker after entering Bet, or it was with her when she came through. You must remove anything she could potentially use as a tool from her person and her cell, up to and including the light bulbs. I recommend giving her thoroughly screened articles of clothing to wear and disposing of her own clothes. Furthermore, she should be under constant surveillance, with her hands and feet cuffed so her ability to tinker is neutralized. Additionally –"
"Isn't this all a bit much?" Langley interjected weakly. He had stopped writing early on during his extensive warning.
"Our estimates of her say that she could possibly construct an Endbringer if allowed. She is perfectly capable of breaking out of here without the appropriate cautions taken and her autonomy must be restricted as much as possible until people who know how to handle her arrive."
"The Parahuman Response and Containment teams are incoming –"
"ETA?"
"What?"
"Estimated time of arrival."
"About twenty minutes or so."
"That's too long. Did you remove her suit?"
Langley took on a tone as if he was reciting something, clearly at a loss for what else to do. "In consideration to the rights of a private citizen and the need for further investigation, only her weapons have been confiscated at this time. While experts are looking into ways to remove her suit, strip searches aren't –"
Oh no. Colin could feel his faith in them plummeting.
"You have to remove her suit right now." Colin stood up and Langley took a few steps back when he realized how much he towered over him. "Her threat level is still high with her suit on and she could conduct her break-out with its resources. If you take me to her cell, I can help you remove it."
"We can't allow that."
"Why not?"
"Madison police isn't authorized to handle parahumans matters," Langley stuttered out, "Violaton of a private citizen's belongings by unauthorized personnel is –"
"She is a villain!" Colin snapped, impatient. "You don't understand how it works in Bet. If we don't handle her immediately, she could kill the people here. And she will be out again, and able to do more destruction while she builds up her tech again. Catching her might not be so easy the second time around, so-"
An explosion rocked the station. Langley flinched, but Colin was already moving.
Wrapping his fingers around the bars of the cell, he pulled them out with a squeal of metal. Langley gasped and stepped back, but Colin was already looking down the hall, to where the explosion had come from.
Mosaic was out. He had to get on the scene quickly, before she ran.
"Stay here," he instructed, voice firm, "I will investigate the explosion and deal with her if she has escaped her cell. Trying to interfere will only put you in danger. Call the response team and inform them that she is active, and that they need to hurry up."
Langley stuttered something, but Colin left him behind.
-x-
Mosaic was in the women's section of the holding cells. When Colin barreled out of the men's section, he found that the majority of the station's officers were currently rushing to handle the villain who'd broken out. As he went, moving into the bull pen, he passed by someone on the ground, eyes closed. When he knelt to check their pulse, he found nothing.
So, she already managed to rack up a body count. Colin wasn't surprised, only grimly resigned. His halberd wasn't with him, but that easily resolved.
He activated his battery, bringing his suit online. He pressed a button on the inside of his gauntlet and the air lit up with blue lines, bringing his halberd to his hand.
He listened for the sound of where the police were shooting. Once he determined the vague direction, he tapped the butt of his halberd against the wall, bringing a rough map of the station into his HUD. He followed it until he came upon a grisly sight.
More people were dead. He saw at least two on the ground in puddles of blood. The officers had entrenched themselves in cubicles and behind walls, but he saw their problem. Mosaic was most likely on the other end of the narrow hall she had made her killing corridor, throwing crude grenades at random intervals. A thick smoke obscured her figure and the grenades bounced erratically along the walls, forcing some officers to scramble to different locations to avoid meeting the fate their comrades had.
This had gone on long enough.
He took a breath. Centered himself.
Colin sprinted past the officers, into the smoke. His HUD switched frequencies until infrared turned the world red. He found Mosaic, who had already left the women's holding cells and was slowly advancing. She was suited and her hands were working to make the next grenade.
Parts of her suit were missing. Had she cannibalized them to construct her grenades?
He dashed in to get to her before she finished. He needed to stop her before she threw anymore of those grenades and hurt anyone else.
Mosaic heard him. She scrambled back, readying to throw her grenade, but Colin had his grapple out. The tines closed, forming a loose ball and he sent the flail at her after a few swings to build momentum. His aim was true and the flail struck her hand, and the grenade she had been building was crushed with no chance to go off.
But it didn't seem like he'd actually hurt her. Her suit was stronger than it looked.
He expected her to back away, to try to regroup. To his surprise, she instead ran at him.
He avoided her punch and swung the flail back to return the favor. Mosaic wasn't a push-over physically like most other Tinkers were; she kept up with him easily, sticking close to use the same tactic he'd used against her earlier on him. In the limited space of the corridor, he couldn't use his flail to its full range.
The flail returned to his halberd and the head refolded back into its blade form. He shoved the pole against her chest, making her gasp and move back, but it hadn't actually hurt her. Her suit was reduced, yes, but its capabilities weren't.
"You again," she said, casually, recognizing him through smoke. "At least wine and dine me first."
He swung the blade edge at her middle.
To his aggravation, she avoided it by jumping up, drawing her feet up to her chest. Then she stayed up. Her hands and feet were sticking to the walls, and she used her hidden advantage to crawl along the ceiling to escape the corridor.
Her suit was definitely augmenting her body. She moved faster than any human had the right to, barring Movers. Although he'd caught her off guard in their previous engagement, she was aware that he was here with her this time, and brought the full brunt of her abilities in response.
What followed was a deadly high-speed chase through the station. Mosaic had guessed, correctly, that he would halt engagement to help people in danger. When she wasn't attacking him directly, she was using her mobility and strength to toss people around like toys. Colin had to stop to save them, giving her a few more seconds to move away. Each time she slipped out of his grasp because he had to stop to catch someone, his frustration mounted. He was close to catching her and he would if only the people around him knew how to handle themselves in a cape fight!
It continued like that until she had made her way to the entrance of the station. The glass entryway shattered as Mosaic burst straight through, and glass showered Colin as he followed her, hot on her heels. She was moving too quickly for him to get a bead on her and there were no buildings nearby for him to grapple to.
Mosaic zigzagged, jerking away from him each time he almost caught up. He couldn't stop and take aim at her for either the grapple or the net – if he did, she could just dodge and he would have no hope of catching up by then.
However, as the chase went on, Colin realized that it was no longer about beating her in a fight.
She had no intention of beating him, at least not physically. All she had to do was get away and hide. His time had been whittled down to a bare four minutes and the seconds were dwindling rapidly.
Could he catch her?
Helicopters chopped the air above. A searchlight illuminated the whole street and it barely managed to follow their rapid progress. Colin could hear the police sirens around them too, but all his attention was dedicated to the woman staying just a few meters ahead of him.
Three minutes and thirty seconds. He had to catch her in that time duration or she would get away, because Aleph simply didn't have the resources to handle people like her. He'd seen it in the police station. No one else could catch her, but him.
Three minutes.
He tried to force just a little more speed out of himself.
Letting her get away wasn't an option.
Mosaic suddenly jerked to the sidewalk. She jumped up, doing a hand-flip on the roof of a car, and did a twist mid-air that should've been impossible. Colin saw the glint in her hand, which made him dive down.
The road imploded just behind him. When he tried to rise, he found that he couldn't.
"Do you like that?" Mosaic was still on the car. In a single, elegant motion, she dropped down into a crouch and peered at him. Most of her suit was gone, showing the light bodysuit she wore under it. Both her hands were unprotected, as were her legs. "You made me use quite a number of my back-ups. That's impressive."
She hopped down from her place on the car. Colin struggled, but his body was pressed to the road like a giant hand was pressing him down.
"I'm going to show you my best one yet. Are you ready?"
She ignored the searchlight glaring down at her, and the blaring megaphone ordering them both to stand down. The sirens were getting closer, but all Colin could see was her taking off her chest-plate. It folded under her touch, changing shape as easily as paper.
When she finished, it looked like a giant egg. But then she pulled at its sides, and the egg split apart into a hoop that became bigger than should be possible, bigger than a doorway.
He saw her through the hoop that hung in the air between them. But when she stepped towards him, putting her left leg through the hoop, it disappeared.
"Teleportation," she winked, "I haven't figured out how to go between Earths, but that would be a fun project, wouldn't it? I'll catch you later. Aleph is just too interesting for you to stop me now."
One minute.
Mosaic moved slowly, as if sensing his mounting anger at his impotence and teasing him for it. "Don't worry," she smiled, revealing white teeth, "you'll get up sooner or later. Probably later."
With a mocking laugh, she stepped the rest of the way into her portal and disappeared.
Colin could do nothing but stare as time ticked down. He was still stuck.
Forty-five seconds.
He could hear the cars on the street.
Thirty seconds.
Footsteps. People were running towards him.
Fifteen seconds.
"Put your hands on your head!"
Zero.
His suit died. He had failed.
So why hadn't she killed him?
-x-
He could tell that the Madison police department had no idea what to do with him. They hadn't from the moment the first few officers crept up to him in the street, up to the moment he sat in a holding cell inside the station.
It would not actually hold him if he didn't want it to. But for their peace of mind, he let them take his halberd and consented to sit inside the cell.
He was sure that they would try to examine his halberd. He locked it so no one ended up hurting themselves with it accidentally. He still wished he had it with him, or that it was in holding by people like the PRT – people who knew what they were handling.
They hadn't even taken his suit from him. He could walk out right now by pushing through the bars and letting their bullets ping off his armor. The longer Colin was in Aleph, the more struck he was by how untouched their society was by parahumans. In the bay, the police had their own protocols for parahumans perps. Here, he was foreign.
The real question was what was happening to Mosaic. He'd advised them to strip everything from her, to remove anything even vaguely electrical from her cell, and put her under constant guard, but he wasn't sure if they actually listened. But they weren't idiots, surely – they had to realize from the show that while he was willing to abide by the law, Mosaic wasn't in the same boat. Taking off her suit was just common sense.
A villain like her, as limited as her tech was right now, was dangerous when not contained properly. If his own incarceration was any indication, her breaking out was a genuine concern. And if she managed to make way to wherever they that had taken his halberd and her device… results would be disastrous.
"Could I speak with the captain?" he asked, a little exasperated, but got no reply. It had gone on like for some time – Colin trying to warn them and being ignored. The most that he had been told was that a parahumans consultant was going to be brought in to handle this case. No one seemed to quite know what they would do with him. Through his helmet's enhanced microphone, he heard them arguing if he even belonged in a holding cell.
So he waited. And waited.
It was half an hour later before someone got to him. The man they brought in was meaty around the waist, dressed in a green wool suit with a poorly matched tie, and balding. Colin looked up as he stood outside his cell, clearly nervous.
"I am the parahumans consultant Michael Langley," he introduced himself, looking so nervous in his role that Colin wondered if he actually dealt with any parahumans prior to this. "Are you the parahuman who was involved in the fires downtown?"
"I was the one who took down the villain behind it," he replied.
There was a weak chuckle at his unironic use of the world 'villain'. "Ah yes, you're a hero, right? Are you registered to anywhere?"
"I am from Earth Bet, as was the villain I took down, Mosaic."
Langley paled. "Bet?"
"Yes."
"What's your name again?"
"Armsmaster."
The man seemed to recognize the name better than he did the suit. He was growing to look increasingly worried. "Why are you here?"
Is that important right now? Colin wondered. "It was an accident. Before we discuss this, I need to warn you about Mosaic."
"What -? Oh, uh, go ahead." Langley drew a legal pad and a pen.
"She is a villain Tinker, estimated at high A-class, possible S-class. Her specialty is scaled tinkering, in which she builds parts of a greater concept and it levels up in strength with each added new piece. She had been making a device that had three separate parts, which means she either had time to tinker after entering Bet, or it was with her when she came through. You must remove anything she could potentially use as a tool from her person and her cell, up to and including the light bulbs. I recommend giving her thoroughly screened articles of clothing to wear and disposing of her own clothes. Furthermore, she should be under constant surveillance, with her hands and feet cuffed so her ability to tinker is neutralized. Additionally –"
"Isn't this all a bit much?" Langley interjected weakly. He had stopped writing early on during his extensive warning.
"Our estimates of her say that she could possibly construct an Endbringer if allowed. She is perfectly capable of breaking out of here without the appropriate cautions taken and her autonomy must be restricted as much as possible until people who know how to handle her arrive."
"The Parahuman Response and Containment teams are incoming –"
"ETA?"
"What?"
"Estimated time of arrival."
"About twenty minutes or so."
"That's too long. Did you remove her suit?"
Langley took on a tone as if he was reciting something, clearly at a loss for what else to do. "In consideration to the rights of a private citizen and the need for further investigation, only her weapons have been confiscated at this time. While experts are looking into ways to remove her suit, strip searches aren't –"
Oh no. Colin could feel his faith in them plummeting.
"You have to remove her suit right now." Colin stood up and Langley took a few steps back when he realized how much he towered over him. "Her threat level is still high with her suit on and she could conduct her break-out with its resources. If you take me to her cell, I can help you remove it."
"We can't allow that."
"Why not?"
"Madison police isn't authorized to handle parahumans matters," Langley stuttered out, "Violaton of a private citizen's belongings by unauthorized personnel is –"
"She is a villain!" Colin snapped, impatient. "You don't understand how it works in Bet. If we don't handle her immediately, she could kill the people here. And she will be out again, and able to do more destruction while she builds up her tech again. Catching her might not be so easy the second time around, so-"
An explosion rocked the station. Langley flinched, but Colin was already moving.
Wrapping his fingers around the bars of the cell, he pulled them out with a squeal of metal. Langley gasped and stepped back, but Colin was already looking down the hall, to where the explosion had come from.
Mosaic was out. He had to get on the scene quickly, before she ran.
"Stay here," he instructed, voice firm, "I will investigate the explosion and deal with her if she has escaped her cell. Trying to interfere will only put you in danger. Call the response team and inform them that she is active, and that they need to hurry up."
Langley stuttered something, but Colin left him behind.
-x-
Mosaic was in the women's section of the holding cells. When Colin barreled out of the men's section, he found that the majority of the station's officers were currently rushing to handle the villain who'd broken out. As he went, moving into the bull pen, he passed by someone on the ground, eyes closed. When he knelt to check their pulse, he found nothing.
So, she already managed to rack up a body count. Colin wasn't surprised, only grimly resigned. His halberd wasn't with him, but that easily resolved.
He activated his battery, bringing his suit online. He pressed a button on the inside of his gauntlet and the air lit up with blue lines, bringing his halberd to his hand.
He listened for the sound of where the police were shooting. Once he determined the vague direction, he tapped the butt of his halberd against the wall, bringing a rough map of the station into his HUD. He followed it until he came upon a grisly sight.
More people were dead. He saw at least two on the ground in puddles of blood. The officers had entrenched themselves in cubicles and behind walls, but he saw their problem. Mosaic was most likely on the other end of the narrow hall she had made her killing corridor, throwing crude grenades at random intervals. A thick smoke obscured her figure and the grenades bounced erratically along the walls, forcing some officers to scramble to different locations to avoid meeting the fate their comrades had.
This had gone on long enough.
He took a breath. Centered himself.
Colin sprinted past the officers, into the smoke. His HUD switched frequencies until infrared turned the world red. He found Mosaic, who had already left the women's holding cells and was slowly advancing. She was suited and her hands were working to make the next grenade.
Parts of her suit were missing. Had she cannibalized them to construct her grenades?
He dashed in to get to her before she finished. He needed to stop her before she threw anymore of those grenades and hurt anyone else.
Mosaic heard him. She scrambled back, readying to throw her grenade, but Colin had his grapple out. The tines closed, forming a loose ball and he sent the flail at her after a few swings to build momentum. His aim was true and the flail struck her hand, and the grenade she had been building was crushed with no chance to go off.
But it didn't seem like he'd actually hurt her. Her suit was stronger than it looked.
He expected her to back away, to try to regroup. To his surprise, she instead ran at him.
He avoided her punch and swung the flail back to return the favor. Mosaic wasn't a push-over physically like most other Tinkers were; she kept up with him easily, sticking close to use the same tactic he'd used against her earlier on him. In the limited space of the corridor, he couldn't use his flail to its full range.
The flail returned to his halberd and the head refolded back into its blade form. He shoved the pole against her chest, making her gasp and move back, but it hadn't actually hurt her. Her suit was reduced, yes, but its capabilities weren't.
"You again," she said, casually, recognizing him through smoke. "At least wine and dine me first."
He swung the blade edge at her middle.
To his aggravation, she avoided it by jumping up, drawing her feet up to her chest. Then she stayed up. Her hands and feet were sticking to the walls, and she used her hidden advantage to crawl along the ceiling to escape the corridor.
Her suit was definitely augmenting her body. She moved faster than any human had the right to, barring Movers. Although he'd caught her off guard in their previous engagement, she was aware that he was here with her this time, and brought the full brunt of her abilities in response.
What followed was a deadly high-speed chase through the station. Mosaic had guessed, correctly, that he would halt engagement to help people in danger. When she wasn't attacking him directly, she was using her mobility and strength to toss people around like toys. Colin had to stop to save them, giving her a few more seconds to move away. Each time she slipped out of his grasp because he had to stop to catch someone, his frustration mounted. He was close to catching her and he would if only the people around him knew how to handle themselves in a cape fight!
It continued like that until she had made her way to the entrance of the station. The glass entryway shattered as Mosaic burst straight through, and glass showered Colin as he followed her, hot on her heels. She was moving too quickly for him to get a bead on her and there were no buildings nearby for him to grapple to.
Mosaic zigzagged, jerking away from him each time he almost caught up. He couldn't stop and take aim at her for either the grapple or the net – if he did, she could just dodge and he would have no hope of catching up by then.
However, as the chase went on, Colin realized that it was no longer about beating her in a fight.
She had no intention of beating him, at least not physically. All she had to do was get away and hide. His time had been whittled down to a bare four minutes and the seconds were dwindling rapidly.
Could he catch her?
Helicopters chopped the air above. A searchlight illuminated the whole street and it barely managed to follow their rapid progress. Colin could hear the police sirens around them too, but all his attention was dedicated to the woman staying just a few meters ahead of him.
Three minutes and thirty seconds. He had to catch her in that time duration or she would get away, because Aleph simply didn't have the resources to handle people like her. He'd seen it in the police station. No one else could catch her, but him.
Three minutes.
He tried to force just a little more speed out of himself.
Letting her get away wasn't an option.
Mosaic suddenly jerked to the sidewalk. She jumped up, doing a hand-flip on the roof of a car, and did a twist mid-air that should've been impossible. Colin saw the glint in her hand, which made him dive down.
The road imploded just behind him. When he tried to rise, he found that he couldn't.
"Do you like that?" Mosaic was still on the car. In a single, elegant motion, she dropped down into a crouch and peered at him. Most of her suit was gone, showing the light bodysuit she wore under it. Both her hands were unprotected, as were her legs. "You made me use quite a number of my back-ups. That's impressive."
She hopped down from her place on the car. Colin struggled, but his body was pressed to the road like a giant hand was pressing him down.
"I'm going to show you my best one yet. Are you ready?"
She ignored the searchlight glaring down at her, and the blaring megaphone ordering them both to stand down. The sirens were getting closer, but all Colin could see was her taking off her chest-plate. It folded under her touch, changing shape as easily as paper.
When she finished, it looked like a giant egg. But then she pulled at its sides, and the egg split apart into a hoop that became bigger than should be possible, bigger than a doorway.
He saw her through the hoop that hung in the air between them. But when she stepped towards him, putting her left leg through the hoop, it disappeared.
"Teleportation," she winked, "I haven't figured out how to go between Earths, but that would be a fun project, wouldn't it? I'll catch you later. Aleph is just too interesting for you to stop me now."
One minute.
Mosaic moved slowly, as if sensing his mounting anger at his impotence and teasing him for it. "Don't worry," she smiled, revealing white teeth, "you'll get up sooner or later. Probably later."
With a mocking laugh, she stepped the rest of the way into her portal and disappeared.
Colin could do nothing but stare as time ticked down. He was still stuck.
Forty-five seconds.
He could hear the cars on the street.
Thirty seconds.
Footsteps. People were running towards him.
Fifteen seconds.
"Put your hands on your head!"
Zero.
His suit died. He had failed.
So why hadn't she killed him?
-x-
Entry 1.5
Selwyn
Tomorrow Will Come
- Location
- Mongolia
Entry 1.5
Hiding from the world was no longer an option.
The false gravity's effect wore off, letting the officers pull him up from the ground. They grunted in surprise at his weight, but he didn't focus on them. His wrists were cuffed behind his back. Someone else picked up his halberd.
All around them were people.
Citizens. Reporters. Cameras flashed as they took pictures of him. When had they gotten here?
Colin let them take him away without a struggle. He was exhausted after that fight and chase, and every part of him ached after the way he'd been compressed against the ground. There was visible flattening on the front part of his suit, from where the metal had given way on the road.
They didn't take him to a squad car. He was led to a van instead. From the looks of it, it was armored.
Someone behind him pushed him to a bench. He sat down with a dull thunk, grateful that these Aleph cops at least knew enough to not unmask a cape in the public eye. More people –troopers this time, not cops – followed him in and Colin closed his eyes when he saw that they had rifles, not foamers.
The adrenaline of the fight was leaving him. Now, his entire body hurt.
Back in the Bay, he used to have a seasoned team to support him. PRT agents who knew what they were doing. Police officers who understood capes, and their danger. Being the sole hero wasn't as glorified as he imagined it to be, especially when it left him juggling panicked civilians, ignorant law enforcement, and a villain too smart for anyone's good.
He wished for the simplicity of returning to base, sitting in for a debrief with Piggot, unsuiting, and passing out on his cot for a few hours. Colin wasn't a man prone to homesickness, but he found himself missing what it was like to be surrounded by people who understood what they were doing.
The van jerked into movement.
He opened his eyes. There were letters emblazoned on the bullet-proof vests of the troopers sitting across him. PRC. Were these the teams that had arrived too late to help?
"Took you long enough," he spoke up.
"We were called late," one trooper said tersely. He didn't sound happy. "We only got a call once you and Mosaic were both apprehended."
"I was in a cell for half an hour after that. The consultant said you would take another twenty to come."
"That's enough," the leader cut in. "We're not here to chat."
Colin's eyes lingered on them. A part of him wondered if the PRC ever expected to be needed in the first place. It would explain their unforgivable lateness. His practiced eye caught the slight signs of sloppiness from the troopers – vests fastened oddly, uneven gear placement, and the general lack of order – and he had to wonder if they ever had to deploy seriously for parahuman containment.
It made Colin unspeakably frustrated. Here he had the beginnings of a mess that had escalated from little things; a police force that had no idea what it was doing when it came to parahumans, people stalling the right calls because of second-guessing, and a response team that didn't have nearly as much experience as it should. It had all accumulated to this mess, with at least three cops dead and a villain on the loose. Perhaps these mistakes could be forgiven when it came to handling parahumans like Blake. But Mosaic wasn't that.
All of this could have been averted if they had listened to him in the first place. Dangerous capes like Mosaic couldn't be treated in the same way a mundane criminal would be – the circumstances weren't the same. The situation wasn't the same. You could disarm a dangerous criminal by taking away their weapons – you could not do the same with a parahuman.
The PRC wasn't entirely without blame too. Their lateness to the confrontation was just as teeth-clenching as the police's ignorance had been. They should have been there. Maybe less people would have died. Maybe Mosaic would still be in custody.
And now Colin was arrested – again – with his cover blown against his will, while a potential S-class villain was roaming free in a world that didn't understand its implications.
There were no windows for him to look out in the van, so he had no idea where they took him to. After what felt like ten or so minutes, the van stopped and the troopers rose. One standing in front, another standing behind him, and they led him out of the van. Two more troopers waited outside, and they flanked him.
Where were these protective measures with Mosaic?
He looked up, and saw that they weren't at the station. Reasonable, since a large portion of the police station had been significantly damaged in their struggle.
The building before him looked old, constructed before the modern bent for glass and steel. They had to still be in Madison, since they hadn't drove very far, but this wasn't a part that Colin recognized. A nudge of a gun barrel in his back prompted to walk, and they guided him into the building.
His first through that it was some kind of converted bunker. The interior was better protected than the exterior would claim, and the walls were soundproofed. "Where are we?" he asked, not really expecting an answer.
"Keep moving," the trooper behind him grunted, and Colin sighed internally.
He couldn't remember the last time that he was subject to this kind of treatment, as opposed to being the one to deliver it. It was beginning to annoy him.
Finally, he was allowed into a room. But before he could sit, a trooper halted him. They uncuffed him, but he was still surrounded by troopers.
"Suit off. Helmet too."
Taking my advice now? Colin thought, scathing, but moved to obey. He would still have his domino mask on, at least.
Under watch, he stripped off his suit. Without power for automated unlock and since he didn't want to hurt anyone by forcefully expelling the panels, he had to go through the slow process of unlatching the whole thing manually. Within a few minutes, he stood before them with his armor in a neat pile, helmet perched on the very top.
"Mask off."
Colin frowned. "What? No."
"Remove the mask now."
"I'm not unmasking myself."
The tension ratcheted up several notches. While Colin wasn't being threatened, he could see their grips on their rifles tightening. To them, his refusal to unmask was obstruction of their duty, not common sense.
The trooper that seemed to be in the lead was beginning to sound impatient behind his tinted visor. "This isn't Bet. You take your mask off, or we do it for you. Our Earth, our rules."
Colin wanted to argue. He wanted to point out exactly how stupid they were being and that he didn't want to be on this Earth in the first place. But for the sake of keeping peace until he talked to someone who wasn't a grunt, he moved to comply. At least unmasking wasn't potentially life-ruining in his case. While it would be incredibly troublesome if his civilian identity got leaked, he had no one he needed to protect. The only people who might be at risk were the other Protectorate members he'd appeared with in civilian identity, but this was Aleph, not Bet. It was only the principle of the matter that was digging at him.
"Alright." He peeled the domino mask off.
Without his mask, Armsmaster was gone. Colin was left behind, feeling increasingly naked. Keeping the peace better be worth this.
A trooper took the domino mask from him. "Pat him down."
Colin obligingly lifted his arms for the pat-down. It was impersonal, at least, not making the already uncomfortable situation more awkward. The bodysuit was really just modified polyurethane, comfortable to wear for long hours, hydrophobic, low-friction, and marked with the Protectorate logo over his left pectoral. His personal logo was under it, slightly smaller but visible. It was skin-tight, so it wasn't like he could hide anything inside it.
"Done," the trooper reported. "Nothing, sir." Colin was cuffed again.
"Alright. Follow me."
He would have to leave his armor? Colin glanced over to it, making the trooper snort. "Not a chance. Come on, we don't have all day."
Displeased, he followed. They took him to a different room, one where he actually sat down. They connected the cuffs to the metal table, keeping his hands two feet apart and bound to the surface. The troopers stepped back and spread out, covering each corner of the room while facing him, guns pointed down but ready nonetheless.
Silence fell. The minutes marched by.
Colin wasn't a man particularly inclined towards excess conversation, though, and he recognized sweat tactics when they were this obviously implemented. Unfortunately for the hopes of the PRC, he wouldn't fall to it so easily. After sizing up the troopers he could see (which meant the ones in the two corners in front of him), he settled back into his chair as comfortably as he could and closed his eyes.
Not for a nap, no.
For a think.
As he let his thoughts wander, they instinctively turned towards tinkering. This kind of free thinking wasn't one he indulged often these days since he was usually swamped with work, but in the absence of anything he could work on, it was all he could do. New ideas filtered through, concepts sprung from the darkness wholesale, and a thousand different ways to improve his existing tech came to mind. The minutes seemed to fall away as his mind worked, processing and building up technology – so much that he would never have the time to build them all, much less make them the best they could be.
He pondered his current armor. He'd taken his heavy-duty suit and halberd with him in anticipation of the Endbringer battle. The helmet also had psychic and empathic shielding; things that he hoped would at least combat the Simurgh and maybe even counter her, in the future. While his lack of power meant that none of these could actually come into play, an opportunity to work with even a car battery would let him bypass that problem entirely. All he needed to do was convince the PRC to stop being stupid long enough for him to get to work.
He still needed improvements as well. His fight with Mosaic had pointed out several glaring flaws in his current armor iteration. A speed booster would be necessary since he couldn't always depend on his bike being available for chases. He needed to increase the amount of kinetic energy he could bring to bear as well, to hit people who could give themselves artificial Brute ratings with their technology. He would also have to build further redundancies in his armor, just so he never fell to a lack of power again. That had just been embarrassing.
Ideas continued to pour into his head. Mosaic's demonstrated abilities had been interesting, especially her laser and localized gravity grenade. If he could make something similar –
"Eh-hem."
Colin's eyes snapped open. How much time had passed? Judging by the silently annoyed look of the man sitting in front of him, long enough. He had a long, lean face that was vaguely equine to Colin's eye and his eyes were obscured by thick, black-framed glasses. He was dressed in a dark, tailored suit and his bony-knuckled fingers were folded on the table in front of him.
"Good nap?" he asked archly. His voice had a curiously breathy quality to it, as if he was inhaling on every word.
Colin gave him an even look. "I suppose."
"Do you understand why you are here?"
"Not particularly, no," he said, sitting up. Colin sensed the fight coming his way.
The man opened the briefcase that he had taken in with him. From it, he pulled out two pale yellow manila folders. Opening them, he spread out papers, some of which had photos taped to them. Colin was too far away to read them, but he saw the photos. The Simurgh. The rubble sight outside of Madison. The police station. There were more, but they were too far back to see.
"I am the head parahumans consultant for the PRC, Edgar Mearing," the man said, "I also work as the liaison between Aleph and Bet's parahuman resources. The government is also mobilizing, so expect the Department of Defense representative to come in as well, with their own parahuman resources."
This was blowing up to be bigger than Colin wanted. He wasn't surprised, but politics had never been his strong suit. He just wanted to catch Mosaic and go home, was that really too much to ask? He stayed silent, waiting for the man to say something that he could actually act on.
"What we're trying to do right now is untangle your case and figure out what's going on. You need to cooperate with us if you want this to work out in your favor."
What happens if I don't? "What do you need?" Colin asked instead.
"First, we need to establish how and why you got here. Once we figure that out, everything else follows." Mearing pulled out a pen and legal pad. Colin thought of Langley, and felt his contempt for Aleph's 'parahuman consultants' rise.
"The Simurgh attacked Madison at approximately fifteen minutes past one," Colin started. "The conflict went on for about four hours. Capes near the scene were caught up in an explosion when a Tinker device exploded. I was one of them. About four minutes later, I was caught up in what I believed to be a giant dust storm. In that time, I passed through a portal into Aleph, along with several other buildings. I was unaware of that at first, but determined it once I walked into Madison."
"While I was in the midst of repairing my armor and determining my next course of action, I realized that I was not the only parahuman from Bet to have entered Aleph. Finding Mosaic, I decided to engage her before she could conduct further harm. After that, I was apprehended by local police along with Mosaic, and she broke out again, prompting a second engagement."
He didn't pause during his debrief, even when Mearing looked like he wanted to interrupt him. It was only after Colin bulldozed through his explanation that Mearing spoke. "…that matches all the evidence that we have. But you didn't mention something else."
"What?"
"The parahuman, Blake Langley, that assisted you prior to your Mosaic fight."
Colin wanted to grimace. He'd hoped to keep the kid, Blake, out of this. Parahuman or not, he was really just a civilian caught up in things bigger than him. "I entered the apartment of the parahuman Blake after encountering him in the street. He let me work in his apartment once he recognized me."
"Yes, after you, quote –" Mearing took a recorder out of his briefcase, which he clicked to play. He pushed a photo over to Colin. It showed Blake in the middle of his apartment, hand up in a peace sign while he pointed at the bits of plastic Colin had left behind. He was grinning from ear to ear.
Blake's voice came out, as eager as usual. "Man, he nearly totaled me in the street, I was like, "I'm gonna fucking die!" but he turned out to be actually pretty cool about the whole thing, and just needed somewhere to go because he was, like, malfunctioning or something. So I let him in to my place. He took my blender and shit to fix his tech stuff, which was way cool to watch."
"Unquote," Mearing added blandly as the recording ended. "A fairly benign interaction overall, which sheds some good light on you. Although at least twenty different laws – possibly more – were broken in your pass-over, it seems that you actually did not intend to pass through at all and that it was all a major accident. In the light of that, you won't be arrested and convicted of illegal inter-dimensional migration. The chance to confirm your identity was also very useful."
"But?" Every Brocktonite had the distinct ability to sense the shit lining on every cloud.
"There are complications with you returning, mainly legal concerns. There is also the problem of what must be done with Mosaic, the parahuman… villain. Not to mention the circumstances of your arrival here." Mearing peered at him over his glasses. "We got into contact with Director Costa-Brown. Bet wants a conference with you before they can decide anything."
Simurgh, Colin thought. While Aleph seemed to be more concerned about the logistics of his presence here, Bet focused on the real problem. Legal hoops aside, there was the question of what this meant.
Whether he was now one of hers.
"When will the conference begin?" he asked, suddenly hoarse.
"Not today," Mearing said as he stood up. "There are still ongoing negotiations between our respective governments. We are also fielding international concerns, so it's more complicated than it may seem. While we obviously want to handle the situation as quickly as possible, it's simply too complex to figure out within a day. We'll get you accommodated, of course, and have you issued a temporary visa for your duration of stay."
Two troopers came up to uncuff Colin. When he was free, he rubbed his wrists. "What about Mosaic?"
"She's… another problem," Mearing hedged, "but everyone has agreed that we don't want you to go after her. Aleph doesn't have the same cape culture or parahuman support system nation-wide like Bet, so any obvious conflicts between you and her could only end up causing more chaos and confusion overall. Instead, we will be mobilizing our military to capture her. "
"She was captured. She broke out because no one listened to me when I told them what they needed to do. And the PRC arrived late."
The troopers he could see shifted, now listening closer than before.
"That was an unfortunate oversight on the part of Madison police," Mearing started, "but in their defense, the only parahuman they actively deal with is Blake Langley, nephew of their local parahumans consultant, Michael Langley."
Huh. Colin tried to imagine any familial relation between Blake and the nervous, portly man from the station, and came up short. "He was incompetent."
"That's not my jurisdiction," Mearing shrugged. "As for the PRC's arrival time… there was a multitude of factors involved. All calls for the initial scene were for the police, at first, and Mosaic was originally thought to be a terrorist of some sort. It was only after we got a closer look at the person behind it that it became apparent we weren't dealing with a terrorist and that different forces were needed. The… lateness, however, has no excuse. The troopers involved will be reprimanded and there will be an investigation to ensure this does not happen again."
"Good," Colin said, even as he felt four glares settle on him.
Mearing nodded. "All we have to say is that you just sit tight and wait until authorities put this into order. Mosaic should be taken out by then, and the two of you will go back to your Earth."
It wasn't ideal, but at least his worst fears were unfounded. Maybe Colin could relax after all. He nodded. "Where will I stay?"
"You will have to operate under your civilian identity," Mearing said, "and your equipment will be returned to you. In that time span, we respectfully ask that you don't actively create new tech. Repairing your preexisting work is allowed – and we will try to help there – but in the interests of everyone being comfortable, try not to do anything more. Anything like that will just set back your ability to return by a few more months of bureaucratic processing."
"I won't," Colin promised, though he was unsure if he would be able to stop himself if a fugue came. They didn't come as often nowadays with him being so busy, compared to his years in the Wards, but they had a tendency to crop up when he had excess time on his hands. He could try and mitigate it with tinkering on his armor and halberd, at least. He would need to figure that out later. Coding, maybe, though that wasn't his specialty.
"Then that's settled. All we have left is to get you settled until it's time for you to make an appearance."
Colin stood up, as did Mearing. He gathered his papers and files and put them in his briefcase before straightening with a bland smile. "Come on, Mr. Wallis."
Resisting the urge to correct him, Colin let them take him out to where a different van, an unmarked plain one, awaited outside. Three other vans, identical to his, also went out and split off on the road. There were windows for this one, letting Colin look outside.
He watched the city lights pass them by, and wondered if he could really go home ever again.
-x-
The apartment they'd given him was a two bedroom. It was plainly decorated, with beige walls and grey carpeting, and furniture that looked like it'd been pulled straight out of the catalogue. Colin walked in automatically, holding the duffle that contained his tech, and nodded along as Mearing spoke in the background.
He scanned all the rooms first. The blinds were drawn a fraction, to minimize visibility. He checked the locks, the location of his keys, then placed his duffle on the coffee table in the middle of the living room.
He sat on the couch then, hands clasped together, and considered his situation.
He was, arguably, better off than he was before. People had listened to him, more or less, and were working to help him. He would get home, sooner or later.
So why did he feel dread?
It all felt… too simple, Colin realized. Nothing was ever this easy when it came to the Simurgh. He had been dumped here for a reason. Nothing was ever an accident when it came to her. Even if his exposure hadn't been long enough to make him susceptible to her influence, she had still constructed the device that had taken him here. He had avoided mentioning the Simurgh's construction of Haywire's tech in his meeting with Mearing, feeling like it was something that he needed to keep close to his chest.
The Protectorate was tight-lipped about the Endbringers for good reason. If this got out, if it was known that an Endbringer with intelligence could construct Haywire's tech, relations between Earths could spoil further. It was simply too risky for him to speak of it. If Costa-Brown thought it was something that needed to be shared, Colin wouldn't protest. But he would not talk of it first.
Then there was Mosaic.
He hadn't been kidding when he said she was a potential S-class. It was only prudence that had kept her from stepping right over the line and lodging a kill order on her head, but Bet's long arm of the law could only go so far.
More than that, she had tried to make her own Endbringer at least once before. What was to stop her from a second try now? Although Mearing had said that they would bring their military might against her, he was still doubtful. She was connected to this – to the Simurgh and to his own arrival here.
Maybe it was his own paranoia speaking. Maybe it was reasonable.
Colin gritted his teeth.
He pulled out his halberd and armor from the duffle. Both looked relatively untouched, and they had been locked to prevent harmful examination. A quick search showed that there were no bugs installed on anywhere.
Colin yawned.
Most of the night had already passed. When he glanced out the window, he saw the sky lit up a pale, cold blue that signaled the imminent arrival of the sun. In between his arrival, his two fights with Mosaic, the police, and the PRC, it was closer to morning than night.
And he was still exhausted.
Sleep tugged at his eyes. He wanted to tinker instead, but his body demanded rest.
He got up to turn the lights in the living room off. Although there was a bed in the other room, he returned to the couch. He went to sleep like that, laid over the slightly too short couch with his halberd tightly clutched in one hand.
-x-
Hiding from the world was no longer an option.
The false gravity's effect wore off, letting the officers pull him up from the ground. They grunted in surprise at his weight, but he didn't focus on them. His wrists were cuffed behind his back. Someone else picked up his halberd.
All around them were people.
Citizens. Reporters. Cameras flashed as they took pictures of him. When had they gotten here?
Colin let them take him away without a struggle. He was exhausted after that fight and chase, and every part of him ached after the way he'd been compressed against the ground. There was visible flattening on the front part of his suit, from where the metal had given way on the road.
They didn't take him to a squad car. He was led to a van instead. From the looks of it, it was armored.
Someone behind him pushed him to a bench. He sat down with a dull thunk, grateful that these Aleph cops at least knew enough to not unmask a cape in the public eye. More people –troopers this time, not cops – followed him in and Colin closed his eyes when he saw that they had rifles, not foamers.
The adrenaline of the fight was leaving him. Now, his entire body hurt.
Back in the Bay, he used to have a seasoned team to support him. PRT agents who knew what they were doing. Police officers who understood capes, and their danger. Being the sole hero wasn't as glorified as he imagined it to be, especially when it left him juggling panicked civilians, ignorant law enforcement, and a villain too smart for anyone's good.
He wished for the simplicity of returning to base, sitting in for a debrief with Piggot, unsuiting, and passing out on his cot for a few hours. Colin wasn't a man prone to homesickness, but he found himself missing what it was like to be surrounded by people who understood what they were doing.
The van jerked into movement.
He opened his eyes. There were letters emblazoned on the bullet-proof vests of the troopers sitting across him. PRC. Were these the teams that had arrived too late to help?
"Took you long enough," he spoke up.
"We were called late," one trooper said tersely. He didn't sound happy. "We only got a call once you and Mosaic were both apprehended."
"I was in a cell for half an hour after that. The consultant said you would take another twenty to come."
"That's enough," the leader cut in. "We're not here to chat."
Colin's eyes lingered on them. A part of him wondered if the PRC ever expected to be needed in the first place. It would explain their unforgivable lateness. His practiced eye caught the slight signs of sloppiness from the troopers – vests fastened oddly, uneven gear placement, and the general lack of order – and he had to wonder if they ever had to deploy seriously for parahuman containment.
It made Colin unspeakably frustrated. Here he had the beginnings of a mess that had escalated from little things; a police force that had no idea what it was doing when it came to parahumans, people stalling the right calls because of second-guessing, and a response team that didn't have nearly as much experience as it should. It had all accumulated to this mess, with at least three cops dead and a villain on the loose. Perhaps these mistakes could be forgiven when it came to handling parahumans like Blake. But Mosaic wasn't that.
All of this could have been averted if they had listened to him in the first place. Dangerous capes like Mosaic couldn't be treated in the same way a mundane criminal would be – the circumstances weren't the same. The situation wasn't the same. You could disarm a dangerous criminal by taking away their weapons – you could not do the same with a parahuman.
The PRC wasn't entirely without blame too. Their lateness to the confrontation was just as teeth-clenching as the police's ignorance had been. They should have been there. Maybe less people would have died. Maybe Mosaic would still be in custody.
And now Colin was arrested – again – with his cover blown against his will, while a potential S-class villain was roaming free in a world that didn't understand its implications.
There were no windows for him to look out in the van, so he had no idea where they took him to. After what felt like ten or so minutes, the van stopped and the troopers rose. One standing in front, another standing behind him, and they led him out of the van. Two more troopers waited outside, and they flanked him.
Where were these protective measures with Mosaic?
He looked up, and saw that they weren't at the station. Reasonable, since a large portion of the police station had been significantly damaged in their struggle.
The building before him looked old, constructed before the modern bent for glass and steel. They had to still be in Madison, since they hadn't drove very far, but this wasn't a part that Colin recognized. A nudge of a gun barrel in his back prompted to walk, and they guided him into the building.
His first through that it was some kind of converted bunker. The interior was better protected than the exterior would claim, and the walls were soundproofed. "Where are we?" he asked, not really expecting an answer.
"Keep moving," the trooper behind him grunted, and Colin sighed internally.
He couldn't remember the last time that he was subject to this kind of treatment, as opposed to being the one to deliver it. It was beginning to annoy him.
Finally, he was allowed into a room. But before he could sit, a trooper halted him. They uncuffed him, but he was still surrounded by troopers.
"Suit off. Helmet too."
Taking my advice now? Colin thought, scathing, but moved to obey. He would still have his domino mask on, at least.
Under watch, he stripped off his suit. Without power for automated unlock and since he didn't want to hurt anyone by forcefully expelling the panels, he had to go through the slow process of unlatching the whole thing manually. Within a few minutes, he stood before them with his armor in a neat pile, helmet perched on the very top.
"Mask off."
Colin frowned. "What? No."
"Remove the mask now."
"I'm not unmasking myself."
The tension ratcheted up several notches. While Colin wasn't being threatened, he could see their grips on their rifles tightening. To them, his refusal to unmask was obstruction of their duty, not common sense.
The trooper that seemed to be in the lead was beginning to sound impatient behind his tinted visor. "This isn't Bet. You take your mask off, or we do it for you. Our Earth, our rules."
Colin wanted to argue. He wanted to point out exactly how stupid they were being and that he didn't want to be on this Earth in the first place. But for the sake of keeping peace until he talked to someone who wasn't a grunt, he moved to comply. At least unmasking wasn't potentially life-ruining in his case. While it would be incredibly troublesome if his civilian identity got leaked, he had no one he needed to protect. The only people who might be at risk were the other Protectorate members he'd appeared with in civilian identity, but this was Aleph, not Bet. It was only the principle of the matter that was digging at him.
"Alright." He peeled the domino mask off.
Without his mask, Armsmaster was gone. Colin was left behind, feeling increasingly naked. Keeping the peace better be worth this.
A trooper took the domino mask from him. "Pat him down."
Colin obligingly lifted his arms for the pat-down. It was impersonal, at least, not making the already uncomfortable situation more awkward. The bodysuit was really just modified polyurethane, comfortable to wear for long hours, hydrophobic, low-friction, and marked with the Protectorate logo over his left pectoral. His personal logo was under it, slightly smaller but visible. It was skin-tight, so it wasn't like he could hide anything inside it.
"Done," the trooper reported. "Nothing, sir." Colin was cuffed again.
"Alright. Follow me."
He would have to leave his armor? Colin glanced over to it, making the trooper snort. "Not a chance. Come on, we don't have all day."
Displeased, he followed. They took him to a different room, one where he actually sat down. They connected the cuffs to the metal table, keeping his hands two feet apart and bound to the surface. The troopers stepped back and spread out, covering each corner of the room while facing him, guns pointed down but ready nonetheless.
Silence fell. The minutes marched by.
Colin wasn't a man particularly inclined towards excess conversation, though, and he recognized sweat tactics when they were this obviously implemented. Unfortunately for the hopes of the PRC, he wouldn't fall to it so easily. After sizing up the troopers he could see (which meant the ones in the two corners in front of him), he settled back into his chair as comfortably as he could and closed his eyes.
Not for a nap, no.
For a think.
As he let his thoughts wander, they instinctively turned towards tinkering. This kind of free thinking wasn't one he indulged often these days since he was usually swamped with work, but in the absence of anything he could work on, it was all he could do. New ideas filtered through, concepts sprung from the darkness wholesale, and a thousand different ways to improve his existing tech came to mind. The minutes seemed to fall away as his mind worked, processing and building up technology – so much that he would never have the time to build them all, much less make them the best they could be.
He pondered his current armor. He'd taken his heavy-duty suit and halberd with him in anticipation of the Endbringer battle. The helmet also had psychic and empathic shielding; things that he hoped would at least combat the Simurgh and maybe even counter her, in the future. While his lack of power meant that none of these could actually come into play, an opportunity to work with even a car battery would let him bypass that problem entirely. All he needed to do was convince the PRC to stop being stupid long enough for him to get to work.
He still needed improvements as well. His fight with Mosaic had pointed out several glaring flaws in his current armor iteration. A speed booster would be necessary since he couldn't always depend on his bike being available for chases. He needed to increase the amount of kinetic energy he could bring to bear as well, to hit people who could give themselves artificial Brute ratings with their technology. He would also have to build further redundancies in his armor, just so he never fell to a lack of power again. That had just been embarrassing.
Ideas continued to pour into his head. Mosaic's demonstrated abilities had been interesting, especially her laser and localized gravity grenade. If he could make something similar –
"Eh-hem."
Colin's eyes snapped open. How much time had passed? Judging by the silently annoyed look of the man sitting in front of him, long enough. He had a long, lean face that was vaguely equine to Colin's eye and his eyes were obscured by thick, black-framed glasses. He was dressed in a dark, tailored suit and his bony-knuckled fingers were folded on the table in front of him.
"Good nap?" he asked archly. His voice had a curiously breathy quality to it, as if he was inhaling on every word.
Colin gave him an even look. "I suppose."
"Do you understand why you are here?"
"Not particularly, no," he said, sitting up. Colin sensed the fight coming his way.
The man opened the briefcase that he had taken in with him. From it, he pulled out two pale yellow manila folders. Opening them, he spread out papers, some of which had photos taped to them. Colin was too far away to read them, but he saw the photos. The Simurgh. The rubble sight outside of Madison. The police station. There were more, but they were too far back to see.
"I am the head parahumans consultant for the PRC, Edgar Mearing," the man said, "I also work as the liaison between Aleph and Bet's parahuman resources. The government is also mobilizing, so expect the Department of Defense representative to come in as well, with their own parahuman resources."
This was blowing up to be bigger than Colin wanted. He wasn't surprised, but politics had never been his strong suit. He just wanted to catch Mosaic and go home, was that really too much to ask? He stayed silent, waiting for the man to say something that he could actually act on.
"What we're trying to do right now is untangle your case and figure out what's going on. You need to cooperate with us if you want this to work out in your favor."
What happens if I don't? "What do you need?" Colin asked instead.
"First, we need to establish how and why you got here. Once we figure that out, everything else follows." Mearing pulled out a pen and legal pad. Colin thought of Langley, and felt his contempt for Aleph's 'parahuman consultants' rise.
"The Simurgh attacked Madison at approximately fifteen minutes past one," Colin started. "The conflict went on for about four hours. Capes near the scene were caught up in an explosion when a Tinker device exploded. I was one of them. About four minutes later, I was caught up in what I believed to be a giant dust storm. In that time, I passed through a portal into Aleph, along with several other buildings. I was unaware of that at first, but determined it once I walked into Madison."
"While I was in the midst of repairing my armor and determining my next course of action, I realized that I was not the only parahuman from Bet to have entered Aleph. Finding Mosaic, I decided to engage her before she could conduct further harm. After that, I was apprehended by local police along with Mosaic, and she broke out again, prompting a second engagement."
He didn't pause during his debrief, even when Mearing looked like he wanted to interrupt him. It was only after Colin bulldozed through his explanation that Mearing spoke. "…that matches all the evidence that we have. But you didn't mention something else."
"What?"
"The parahuman, Blake Langley, that assisted you prior to your Mosaic fight."
Colin wanted to grimace. He'd hoped to keep the kid, Blake, out of this. Parahuman or not, he was really just a civilian caught up in things bigger than him. "I entered the apartment of the parahuman Blake after encountering him in the street. He let me work in his apartment once he recognized me."
"Yes, after you, quote –" Mearing took a recorder out of his briefcase, which he clicked to play. He pushed a photo over to Colin. It showed Blake in the middle of his apartment, hand up in a peace sign while he pointed at the bits of plastic Colin had left behind. He was grinning from ear to ear.
Blake's voice came out, as eager as usual. "Man, he nearly totaled me in the street, I was like, "I'm gonna fucking die!" but he turned out to be actually pretty cool about the whole thing, and just needed somewhere to go because he was, like, malfunctioning or something. So I let him in to my place. He took my blender and shit to fix his tech stuff, which was way cool to watch."
"Unquote," Mearing added blandly as the recording ended. "A fairly benign interaction overall, which sheds some good light on you. Although at least twenty different laws – possibly more – were broken in your pass-over, it seems that you actually did not intend to pass through at all and that it was all a major accident. In the light of that, you won't be arrested and convicted of illegal inter-dimensional migration. The chance to confirm your identity was also very useful."
"But?" Every Brocktonite had the distinct ability to sense the shit lining on every cloud.
"There are complications with you returning, mainly legal concerns. There is also the problem of what must be done with Mosaic, the parahuman… villain. Not to mention the circumstances of your arrival here." Mearing peered at him over his glasses. "We got into contact with Director Costa-Brown. Bet wants a conference with you before they can decide anything."
Simurgh, Colin thought. While Aleph seemed to be more concerned about the logistics of his presence here, Bet focused on the real problem. Legal hoops aside, there was the question of what this meant.
Whether he was now one of hers.
"When will the conference begin?" he asked, suddenly hoarse.
"Not today," Mearing said as he stood up. "There are still ongoing negotiations between our respective governments. We are also fielding international concerns, so it's more complicated than it may seem. While we obviously want to handle the situation as quickly as possible, it's simply too complex to figure out within a day. We'll get you accommodated, of course, and have you issued a temporary visa for your duration of stay."
Two troopers came up to uncuff Colin. When he was free, he rubbed his wrists. "What about Mosaic?"
"She's… another problem," Mearing hedged, "but everyone has agreed that we don't want you to go after her. Aleph doesn't have the same cape culture or parahuman support system nation-wide like Bet, so any obvious conflicts between you and her could only end up causing more chaos and confusion overall. Instead, we will be mobilizing our military to capture her. "
"She was captured. She broke out because no one listened to me when I told them what they needed to do. And the PRC arrived late."
The troopers he could see shifted, now listening closer than before.
"That was an unfortunate oversight on the part of Madison police," Mearing started, "but in their defense, the only parahuman they actively deal with is Blake Langley, nephew of their local parahumans consultant, Michael Langley."
Huh. Colin tried to imagine any familial relation between Blake and the nervous, portly man from the station, and came up short. "He was incompetent."
"That's not my jurisdiction," Mearing shrugged. "As for the PRC's arrival time… there was a multitude of factors involved. All calls for the initial scene were for the police, at first, and Mosaic was originally thought to be a terrorist of some sort. It was only after we got a closer look at the person behind it that it became apparent we weren't dealing with a terrorist and that different forces were needed. The… lateness, however, has no excuse. The troopers involved will be reprimanded and there will be an investigation to ensure this does not happen again."
"Good," Colin said, even as he felt four glares settle on him.
Mearing nodded. "All we have to say is that you just sit tight and wait until authorities put this into order. Mosaic should be taken out by then, and the two of you will go back to your Earth."
It wasn't ideal, but at least his worst fears were unfounded. Maybe Colin could relax after all. He nodded. "Where will I stay?"
"You will have to operate under your civilian identity," Mearing said, "and your equipment will be returned to you. In that time span, we respectfully ask that you don't actively create new tech. Repairing your preexisting work is allowed – and we will try to help there – but in the interests of everyone being comfortable, try not to do anything more. Anything like that will just set back your ability to return by a few more months of bureaucratic processing."
"I won't," Colin promised, though he was unsure if he would be able to stop himself if a fugue came. They didn't come as often nowadays with him being so busy, compared to his years in the Wards, but they had a tendency to crop up when he had excess time on his hands. He could try and mitigate it with tinkering on his armor and halberd, at least. He would need to figure that out later. Coding, maybe, though that wasn't his specialty.
"Then that's settled. All we have left is to get you settled until it's time for you to make an appearance."
Colin stood up, as did Mearing. He gathered his papers and files and put them in his briefcase before straightening with a bland smile. "Come on, Mr. Wallis."
Resisting the urge to correct him, Colin let them take him out to where a different van, an unmarked plain one, awaited outside. Three other vans, identical to his, also went out and split off on the road. There were windows for this one, letting Colin look outside.
He watched the city lights pass them by, and wondered if he could really go home ever again.
-x-
The apartment they'd given him was a two bedroom. It was plainly decorated, with beige walls and grey carpeting, and furniture that looked like it'd been pulled straight out of the catalogue. Colin walked in automatically, holding the duffle that contained his tech, and nodded along as Mearing spoke in the background.
He scanned all the rooms first. The blinds were drawn a fraction, to minimize visibility. He checked the locks, the location of his keys, then placed his duffle on the coffee table in the middle of the living room.
He sat on the couch then, hands clasped together, and considered his situation.
He was, arguably, better off than he was before. People had listened to him, more or less, and were working to help him. He would get home, sooner or later.
So why did he feel dread?
It all felt… too simple, Colin realized. Nothing was ever this easy when it came to the Simurgh. He had been dumped here for a reason. Nothing was ever an accident when it came to her. Even if his exposure hadn't been long enough to make him susceptible to her influence, she had still constructed the device that had taken him here. He had avoided mentioning the Simurgh's construction of Haywire's tech in his meeting with Mearing, feeling like it was something that he needed to keep close to his chest.
The Protectorate was tight-lipped about the Endbringers for good reason. If this got out, if it was known that an Endbringer with intelligence could construct Haywire's tech, relations between Earths could spoil further. It was simply too risky for him to speak of it. If Costa-Brown thought it was something that needed to be shared, Colin wouldn't protest. But he would not talk of it first.
Then there was Mosaic.
He hadn't been kidding when he said she was a potential S-class. It was only prudence that had kept her from stepping right over the line and lodging a kill order on her head, but Bet's long arm of the law could only go so far.
More than that, she had tried to make her own Endbringer at least once before. What was to stop her from a second try now? Although Mearing had said that they would bring their military might against her, he was still doubtful. She was connected to this – to the Simurgh and to his own arrival here.
Maybe it was his own paranoia speaking. Maybe it was reasonable.
Colin gritted his teeth.
He pulled out his halberd and armor from the duffle. Both looked relatively untouched, and they had been locked to prevent harmful examination. A quick search showed that there were no bugs installed on anywhere.
Colin yawned.
Most of the night had already passed. When he glanced out the window, he saw the sky lit up a pale, cold blue that signaled the imminent arrival of the sun. In between his arrival, his two fights with Mosaic, the police, and the PRC, it was closer to morning than night.
And he was still exhausted.
Sleep tugged at his eyes. He wanted to tinker instead, but his body demanded rest.
He got up to turn the lights in the living room off. Although there was a bed in the other room, he returned to the couch. He went to sleep like that, laid over the slightly too short couch with his halberd tightly clutched in one hand.
-x-
DevilinDetail
Salty
Ho boy, those poor military troops sent after Mosaic are not going to have a good time.
Interlude I (Mosaic)
Selwyn
Tomorrow Will Come
- Location
- Mongolia
Interlude I (Mosaic)
Time slowed down to a crawl as Miriam Creed hurtled through the air, impossibly high off the ground. The sky and ground blended into one grey blur as the pilot of the jet she was currently holding onto desperately tried to regain control of the craft. Panic and loss of four of his six fuel tanks stymied him, however, and the inevitable loomed upon them both as more of the ground was visible than the sky.
Miriam heard the roar of another get high above them. He had broken off from his flight path, clearly aiming to get away while he could. But he would not get that chance.
Ten of his compatriots had already fallen after her planted bombs had gone off at the same time. The chase she'd led them on through hundreds of kilometers in the empty American plains had involved plenty of jumping to and from the jets, and they hadn't noticed the bombs planted on their wings until it was too late. There were ten burning jets on the field below them now and their smoke plumes were visible from even this high.
There was no one else around them. She didn't expect there to be any, since sighting of her had only come minutes ago.
These guys had caught her because she had been aware that they were in the area. After the hell of a time the military had in locating her, it was only sensible that they would try to pin her the moment she was close enough.
Her jet spiraled down. Miriam timed her leap to match the exact moment the jet passed overhead. The jet she'd been using as her perch tore in half at the power of her push-off, and the two pieces tumbled in different directions. The last thing she saw was the pilot trying to eject himself, but failing.
Her trajectory prediction software showed the path the jet would take on all axes, letting her execute a perfect grab near the right wing. Magnetized gauntlets kept her anchored and she crawled over the jet.
Metal crumpled under her unrelenting grip, leaving rips in the wing from where her fingers had sunk in. She assessed the wing; looking for the spot she knew where the wing tanks were stored. After a moment, she raised her fist and punched through the outer layers of the jet.
It gave way like rice paper under the force.
With that, the pilot knew she was on him.
To his credit, he did not panic like the others. He broke off from his flight path and shot straight into the air in an attempt to shake her off.
She had to stop her digging to hold on tightly as he moved into a series of maneuvers that would have shaken anyone else off. Barrel rolls, loop-the-loops, and flying upside down did nothing, however, as her suit negated any affect the constant changes in altitude and position might've had. Adjusting her grip, Miriam continued to widen the hole she made.
The jet trailed metal debris behind it as she peeled back the covers. Internals soon joined the faint debris cloud and she reached in until her hand met something large and smooth.
The tanks.
She took a moment to change her position then grabbed the tank. With a brutal yank, she ripped out the whole thing, leaving a gaping hole where it was. It tumbled down to the ground as the jet listed, having lost its balance.
She clambered over to the fuselage tanks. They went out the same way as the wing tanks had, thrown away like so much rubbish.
The jet listed again. But there was a change. The pilot wasn't trying to control the jet anymore – he was directing them into a dive instead. It was barely controlled, but obviously deliberate.
Crashing us both? Not a bad idea.
Futile, yes, but she could admire the spirit of spitting in an enemy's eye as a final defiance.
The final tank in the left wing was wrenched out. It left the top of the jet gutted, barely holding together, but it didn't need to keep be kept whole anyway. The dive evolved into a freefall and the jet flipped over in the air.
There was still several seconds left till impact. Like a spider, Miriam pressed her body close to the jet to minimize resistance and crawled to the cockpit. She punched through the canopy glass, sending the shards flying everywhere wildly.
She first grabbed the struggling pilot by the face. His harness tried to hold him in, but her strength won in the struggle. He was pulled out of his seat forcefully, mask coming with him, and thrown out.
Miriam reached in and yanked at the controls of the jet.
It tilted. Controls were still shit and she was no pilot, but it didn't take much effort to push the handles to make the jet point in the vague direction of she wanted it to go down.
The Great American Plains were rapidly getting closer. Miriam waited a split-second then leapt off the jet, avoiding the crash by a hair's breadth. The wings were immediately sheared off with contact. Miriam landed and rolled and good distance away.
She stopped eventually. Covered in dirt and grass stains, she stood up and dusted herself off. Her helmet unsealed, showing her face. She blinked at the sunlight, but her vision adjusted quickly.
The jet landed in the field where all the others were. Miriam looked around her handiwork, eyes skipping over the gutted skeletons of aircraft, to check if anyone else was approaching. To her disappointment, she was alone.
Oh well.
She strolled over to the half-crumpled cockpit first, and bent down to look inside. A little bit of rooting around (and some liberal cutting) found her the black box. She fiddled with it before finding the access point. She pulled out a cord came from her helmet and connected it. Its contents showed up on her HUD.
The pilot had just enough time to send his superiors a warning over radio before she'd gotten to him. Good to know. She disconnected and the cord slithered back into her helmet.
She tossed it from hand to hand, considering, before throwing it over her shoulder. She didn't need its components, so the recovery team could pick it up if they wanted.
She found the pilot of the jet not too far from it. By sheer good luck, he avoided having the jet land on him after it bounced along the plains before stopping. By sheer bad luck, however, his parachute hadn't deployed correctly to save him.
Miriam kicked him over and glanced at the tangled lines before moving on.
She found the jet she'd taken out second to last. It was twisted around, nose dug into the dirt and its eviscerated half in the air.
To her surprise, she found the still pilot ensconced in the cockpit, looking more dead than alive. He'd taken his mask off, but that hadn't helped him at all. He was breathing weakly, bleeding profusely.
She kicked aside more of the cockpit until she could reach him. She held her boot over his head and brought it down with enough force to crack concrete. His skull caved in without resistance. Quick. Simple. Merciful.
Miriam looked around, a little annoyed at how quickly that had ended. All in all, what had that been? Fifteen minutes from start to finish? Even less?
Too bad Armsmaster wasn't here. He would have offered a much better fight than these people. At least he would have inspired her and shown her the brilliance of his own designs in return.
This entire fight had been one-sided from the very beginning. It had been… boring.
At least now she more or less had everything she needed to start over again. Miriam could admit that it had been deeply annoying when Armsmaster celled her, even if it had been only for a half hour. He had come closer than anyone else had for years, but that could be attributed to her own loss of tech upon passing over.
Well, she could look on the bright side of things. The next they met – and they would, she was sure of it – she would make sure to crush him with everything she had. The only fun Tinker battle was when both Tinkers had their full arsenal, after all.
She didn't have it now, but she would. Soon.
Miram began to pull the newly-downed jets apart for parts. Everything but the best was passed over and she dug deep into their bodies to find what passed for 'high-tech' among the mundane. Many of which was broken or damaged, but that was no hurdle for her.
At least three jets were useless, damaged beyond salvage, but could work with what she got.
For any other Tinker, the sudden loss of one's workshop, tools, and creations would have been an instant death sentence. But she was no ordinary Tinker. Her rating was all deserved, not brought about by associating with stronger parahumans or surviving off cheap tricks.
Her teleportation had effectively put her under the radar for Aleph, giving her the breathing space to gather what she needed to start over again. Several hit and runs on universities for their equipment gave her the tools she needed to remake most of her toolkit. Stolen cars and gadgets gave her the raw materials to build off of. Her suit was rebuilt again and now she could focus.
She would stay covert for now. Their failures brought her vicious delight.
As long as she stuck to Tinker tech, they wouldn't find her. All the satellites, backdoors, and device hacks in the world could not scratch what she herself had made. These poor fools had only found her because she needed what they had to step up her current equipment.
With this current haul, she was ready to get to work.
Miriam piled it all in one place. Five minutes might have passed since she first came down with the last jet. She considered digging for more, but her time was running out.
More would come, she was sure. She was no fool. They were probably rushing to mobilize and send a dozen airstrikes her way. The only problem was that while they could pin her location down, they had no way to keep her there.
All it took was a jump somewhere else.
She pulled out her teleportation hoop again. It badly needed maintenance, but it would do for now. She wasn't counting on it to last for much longer.
The hoop opened and Miriam sent her materials through then stepped in after it. The plains disappeared behind her as the hoop closed and collapsed back into its compact form.
Rock walls replaced the open fields. The cave she was using as her temporary hiding spot was located deep in the Appalachians. It was actually the mirror of the same spot she used on Bet as well, which was the only reason she had actually found it again. Stolen lights and equipment littered the cave's interior.
Her eyes ached at the light change. The adrenaline of the fight was leaving her and the darkness of the cave invited sleep.
But she couldn't. Not yet.
Miriam left the pile on the cave floor and padded over to a small table. It was loaded with ration bars and canisters of fresh water. She ignored the food and pulled a small box from behind instead. Opening it, she pulled out small bandaid-like patches.
Miriam took off a gauntlet. Rolling up her bodysuit sleeve, she pulled the old patch off and tossed it to the cardboard box she was using as her trash. Peeling off the protective cover, she spat it into the trash and pressed the patch to her inner arm.
It took a few moments for the effects to come in.
Tiredness lifted from her body. Her brain felt like it was speeding up, going from forty-five to two hundred. There was a sharp ache behind her eyes, but painkillers would cover that.
Miriam pulled her sleeve back down and snapped her gauntlet back on. She was running low on stim-patches, unfortunately, and she had no clue if there was a way to contact Toybox's pocket dimension from Aleph for a fresh batch. She would just have to make do and prioritize producing her own version later.
The urge to sleep never left, of course. It was there, hovering at the edges of her mind. The stim-patches only pushed it to the background. But she couldn't rest – she had more to do.
The grand vision was in her head again. She saw a new master work, begging for her to throw herself into making it again. It would take her a lot of time to build up all the smaller parts, but she would – could – put in the work for something so sublime.
Was that why she was here, perhaps? For a simple raid on Haywire's tech to turn into an Endbringer attack out of the blue – it really all fit in so neatly, didn't it?
Miriam rubbed her eyes with the heel of her palm then got up to organize her haul and continue her work. Once again, she found her mind returning to the topic of her arrival here and all that entailed.
The Simurgh. Armsmaster.
She could admit to herself that it had been her own curiosity that made her spare him in the end. Oh, she had thought to kill him at first – why wouldn't she? – but her need to know stayed her hand.
While he would ultimately end up being trouble, something told her that there was a reason, a purpose, for their arrivals. The Simurgh had a plan, one so vast and incomprehensible that it was probably only her who understood their scope.
It was just like her visions, in a way.
As her hands automatically sorted out what she needed and began to work on them, her mind continued to wander.
These separate events would come together for something greater, and Armsmaster was needed. He had to stay here, as did she. Neither of them could leave when things hadn't come to fruition.
He was going to try to leave, she knew. The bug she planted on him after their second fight had confirmed that. It had clung to the back of his knee up until he was taken in by this world's equivalent of the PRT – PRC – and switched passengers immediately afterwards to the man Edgar Mearing. Listening to him had proven most enlightening.
It was kind of Aleph to try to find a peaceful resolution to this. But Miriam was not here for peace.
The conference could not be allowed to move forward. She would have to accelerate her build time to stop it in time, but she would live.
She visualized the template of her first line of parts as her hands worked. Metal was welded, circuits were broken and rewired, and she cut, rearranged, and connected it all until she was satisfied.
The rest of her master work awaited her. It was still rudimentary, still small, but that was fine. She would continue building each part, and they would connect into a greater glory. From her hands, more and more parts came out. With her stock of raw materials, she made little gadgets within minutes, guided by the visions.
They were all individually weak, but once they were connected, it was a whole different story.
Hours passed. Miriam paused only long enough to eat a ration bar and sip water before she returned to her task. Each piece she completed was laid out in its designated position, ready to be connected once everything was done.
After she arranged it all, Miriam skipped back to take a better look. Observing from the ground was no good. With a few skips, she was up the cave wall. Bracing herself against several thick stalactites, she stared down.
Long flares of reworked metal swooped out. They glittered in the harsh light, beautiful when witnessed from so high, almost crystalline.
It was only a pair of wings, but it was uniting already. As Miriam observed it, the pieces began to connect in her mental picture. To her mind's eye, the parts that she made seemed to know where they fit, how they connected, and drew together with magnetic attraction. She could see each way one part slid into another, the way the entire structure improved with each addition. It was glorious in its inevitability.
And it was barely even a fraction of what she envisioned.
Her grand vision. Her master work. Her own Endbringer, of steel and technology.
-x-
Today was the 29th of December. It was the day of the conference, but Miriam had plans for that. With this, Bet would have to take a massive step back and then no one would want Armsmaster to leave this planet. Bet wouldn't touch him with the presence of the Simurgh being confirmed and Aleph would need him.
The final piece snapped into place and Miriam felt something in her exult.
It was completed.
All fifteen feet of it was standing, wings tucked in close to keep them from brushing against the cave walls. It stared at her listlessly with wide, blind eyes. She examined it head to toe, visualizing every single piece that had gone into its construction.
She could see its flaws. It was structurally weak inside. It probably wouldn't withstand a nuclear bomb, but that wasn't the point here. It wasn't about how strong it was – it was about how it looked.
Every experienced cape knew the game. Half the play was reputation. Whether you were weak, whether you were strong, the ultimate result depended on what other people thought.
The Slaughterhouse Nine were left alone because they had built their reputation on extreme brutality and the absolute destruction of whoever that stood in their way. The Triumvirate were respected because they projected untouchable power, reinforced by the entire country backing them. In that vein, people were strong because people thought they were.
She had created a life-size replica of the Simurgh, close enough in appearance that even the blindest Aleph citizen would know what it was meant to be. It would show everyone involved that this couldn't be resolved with hush-hush military operations and discreet conferences, and that to think otherwise was a fool's gamble.
You did not hide what the Endbringers did. The Simurgh was involved and everyone would know.
This was about making a statement.
"Wake up," Miriam said, and her creation lifted its head. She smiled.
Her teleportation hoop had been dismantled and remade into a much bigger gate, attached to the farthest cave wall. It was much less stable, but it was now big enough to let the machine pass through. One use, now or never.
She tossed aside the wrapper of the ration bar she had been gnawing on. Rolling up her sleeve, she replaced the old stim-patch with a fresh one. When she put her helmet back on, the stimulant was already surging through her system, bringing the world into sharp focus.
She was exhausted. How many hours had she slept this entire week? Six? Eight? It didn't matter. Her mouth tasted like sawdust from how many bars she ate, but at least there were no hunger pangs. This was the final lap and she would not falter.
Her heartbeat hastened. The weakness of the flesh could be forgotten when something greater beckoned.
The gate flickered to life, barely holding on between the four disconnected points of the former hoop. She could see the peaceful view of the Washington Monument beyond it. To the people on the other side, it would look like the sky itself cracked open.
With a leap, Miriam was up on her machine's shoulder. Holding tight, she directed it to the gate.
It was slow at first, moving with exaggerated care so its gargantuan wings did not disturb the cave ceiling. As it pushed through the gate, however, its movements got freer, slinkier.
Miriam pushed her hand out at the Washington Monument first. It was not necessary, but it felt good.
Its metallic fist grabbed the top of the monument, crumbling the tip. The rest of its body followed, casting a titanic shadow over the peace. Multiple wings flared out, free of the gate's confinement, and they glittered in the light. From its false mouth, hidden speakers played the closest audible mimicry of the infamous scream, piercing the sky.
Miriam felt a laugh bubble up from her as the first screams of fear started from below. The time for hiding was done.
Let me show you what a real parahuman looks like!
-x-
Time slowed down to a crawl as Miriam Creed hurtled through the air, impossibly high off the ground. The sky and ground blended into one grey blur as the pilot of the jet she was currently holding onto desperately tried to regain control of the craft. Panic and loss of four of his six fuel tanks stymied him, however, and the inevitable loomed upon them both as more of the ground was visible than the sky.
Miriam heard the roar of another get high above them. He had broken off from his flight path, clearly aiming to get away while he could. But he would not get that chance.
Ten of his compatriots had already fallen after her planted bombs had gone off at the same time. The chase she'd led them on through hundreds of kilometers in the empty American plains had involved plenty of jumping to and from the jets, and they hadn't noticed the bombs planted on their wings until it was too late. There were ten burning jets on the field below them now and their smoke plumes were visible from even this high.
There was no one else around them. She didn't expect there to be any, since sighting of her had only come minutes ago.
These guys had caught her because she had been aware that they were in the area. After the hell of a time the military had in locating her, it was only sensible that they would try to pin her the moment she was close enough.
Her jet spiraled down. Miriam timed her leap to match the exact moment the jet passed overhead. The jet she'd been using as her perch tore in half at the power of her push-off, and the two pieces tumbled in different directions. The last thing she saw was the pilot trying to eject himself, but failing.
Her trajectory prediction software showed the path the jet would take on all axes, letting her execute a perfect grab near the right wing. Magnetized gauntlets kept her anchored and she crawled over the jet.
Metal crumpled under her unrelenting grip, leaving rips in the wing from where her fingers had sunk in. She assessed the wing; looking for the spot she knew where the wing tanks were stored. After a moment, she raised her fist and punched through the outer layers of the jet.
It gave way like rice paper under the force.
With that, the pilot knew she was on him.
To his credit, he did not panic like the others. He broke off from his flight path and shot straight into the air in an attempt to shake her off.
She had to stop her digging to hold on tightly as he moved into a series of maneuvers that would have shaken anyone else off. Barrel rolls, loop-the-loops, and flying upside down did nothing, however, as her suit negated any affect the constant changes in altitude and position might've had. Adjusting her grip, Miriam continued to widen the hole she made.
The jet trailed metal debris behind it as she peeled back the covers. Internals soon joined the faint debris cloud and she reached in until her hand met something large and smooth.
The tanks.
She took a moment to change her position then grabbed the tank. With a brutal yank, she ripped out the whole thing, leaving a gaping hole where it was. It tumbled down to the ground as the jet listed, having lost its balance.
She clambered over to the fuselage tanks. They went out the same way as the wing tanks had, thrown away like so much rubbish.
The jet listed again. But there was a change. The pilot wasn't trying to control the jet anymore – he was directing them into a dive instead. It was barely controlled, but obviously deliberate.
Crashing us both? Not a bad idea.
Futile, yes, but she could admire the spirit of spitting in an enemy's eye as a final defiance.
The final tank in the left wing was wrenched out. It left the top of the jet gutted, barely holding together, but it didn't need to keep be kept whole anyway. The dive evolved into a freefall and the jet flipped over in the air.
There was still several seconds left till impact. Like a spider, Miriam pressed her body close to the jet to minimize resistance and crawled to the cockpit. She punched through the canopy glass, sending the shards flying everywhere wildly.
She first grabbed the struggling pilot by the face. His harness tried to hold him in, but her strength won in the struggle. He was pulled out of his seat forcefully, mask coming with him, and thrown out.
Miriam reached in and yanked at the controls of the jet.
It tilted. Controls were still shit and she was no pilot, but it didn't take much effort to push the handles to make the jet point in the vague direction of she wanted it to go down.
The Great American Plains were rapidly getting closer. Miriam waited a split-second then leapt off the jet, avoiding the crash by a hair's breadth. The wings were immediately sheared off with contact. Miriam landed and rolled and good distance away.
She stopped eventually. Covered in dirt and grass stains, she stood up and dusted herself off. Her helmet unsealed, showing her face. She blinked at the sunlight, but her vision adjusted quickly.
The jet landed in the field where all the others were. Miriam looked around her handiwork, eyes skipping over the gutted skeletons of aircraft, to check if anyone else was approaching. To her disappointment, she was alone.
Oh well.
She strolled over to the half-crumpled cockpit first, and bent down to look inside. A little bit of rooting around (and some liberal cutting) found her the black box. She fiddled with it before finding the access point. She pulled out a cord came from her helmet and connected it. Its contents showed up on her HUD.
The pilot had just enough time to send his superiors a warning over radio before she'd gotten to him. Good to know. She disconnected and the cord slithered back into her helmet.
She tossed it from hand to hand, considering, before throwing it over her shoulder. She didn't need its components, so the recovery team could pick it up if they wanted.
She found the pilot of the jet not too far from it. By sheer good luck, he avoided having the jet land on him after it bounced along the plains before stopping. By sheer bad luck, however, his parachute hadn't deployed correctly to save him.
Miriam kicked him over and glanced at the tangled lines before moving on.
She found the jet she'd taken out second to last. It was twisted around, nose dug into the dirt and its eviscerated half in the air.
To her surprise, she found the still pilot ensconced in the cockpit, looking more dead than alive. He'd taken his mask off, but that hadn't helped him at all. He was breathing weakly, bleeding profusely.
She kicked aside more of the cockpit until she could reach him. She held her boot over his head and brought it down with enough force to crack concrete. His skull caved in without resistance. Quick. Simple. Merciful.
Miriam looked around, a little annoyed at how quickly that had ended. All in all, what had that been? Fifteen minutes from start to finish? Even less?
Too bad Armsmaster wasn't here. He would have offered a much better fight than these people. At least he would have inspired her and shown her the brilliance of his own designs in return.
This entire fight had been one-sided from the very beginning. It had been… boring.
At least now she more or less had everything she needed to start over again. Miriam could admit that it had been deeply annoying when Armsmaster celled her, even if it had been only for a half hour. He had come closer than anyone else had for years, but that could be attributed to her own loss of tech upon passing over.
Well, she could look on the bright side of things. The next they met – and they would, she was sure of it – she would make sure to crush him with everything she had. The only fun Tinker battle was when both Tinkers had their full arsenal, after all.
She didn't have it now, but she would. Soon.
Miram began to pull the newly-downed jets apart for parts. Everything but the best was passed over and she dug deep into their bodies to find what passed for 'high-tech' among the mundane. Many of which was broken or damaged, but that was no hurdle for her.
At least three jets were useless, damaged beyond salvage, but could work with what she got.
For any other Tinker, the sudden loss of one's workshop, tools, and creations would have been an instant death sentence. But she was no ordinary Tinker. Her rating was all deserved, not brought about by associating with stronger parahumans or surviving off cheap tricks.
Her teleportation had effectively put her under the radar for Aleph, giving her the breathing space to gather what she needed to start over again. Several hit and runs on universities for their equipment gave her the tools she needed to remake most of her toolkit. Stolen cars and gadgets gave her the raw materials to build off of. Her suit was rebuilt again and now she could focus.
She would stay covert for now. Their failures brought her vicious delight.
As long as she stuck to Tinker tech, they wouldn't find her. All the satellites, backdoors, and device hacks in the world could not scratch what she herself had made. These poor fools had only found her because she needed what they had to step up her current equipment.
With this current haul, she was ready to get to work.
Miriam piled it all in one place. Five minutes might have passed since she first came down with the last jet. She considered digging for more, but her time was running out.
More would come, she was sure. She was no fool. They were probably rushing to mobilize and send a dozen airstrikes her way. The only problem was that while they could pin her location down, they had no way to keep her there.
All it took was a jump somewhere else.
She pulled out her teleportation hoop again. It badly needed maintenance, but it would do for now. She wasn't counting on it to last for much longer.
The hoop opened and Miriam sent her materials through then stepped in after it. The plains disappeared behind her as the hoop closed and collapsed back into its compact form.
Rock walls replaced the open fields. The cave she was using as her temporary hiding spot was located deep in the Appalachians. It was actually the mirror of the same spot she used on Bet as well, which was the only reason she had actually found it again. Stolen lights and equipment littered the cave's interior.
Her eyes ached at the light change. The adrenaline of the fight was leaving her and the darkness of the cave invited sleep.
But she couldn't. Not yet.
Miriam left the pile on the cave floor and padded over to a small table. It was loaded with ration bars and canisters of fresh water. She ignored the food and pulled a small box from behind instead. Opening it, she pulled out small bandaid-like patches.
Miriam took off a gauntlet. Rolling up her bodysuit sleeve, she pulled the old patch off and tossed it to the cardboard box she was using as her trash. Peeling off the protective cover, she spat it into the trash and pressed the patch to her inner arm.
It took a few moments for the effects to come in.
Tiredness lifted from her body. Her brain felt like it was speeding up, going from forty-five to two hundred. There was a sharp ache behind her eyes, but painkillers would cover that.
Miriam pulled her sleeve back down and snapped her gauntlet back on. She was running low on stim-patches, unfortunately, and she had no clue if there was a way to contact Toybox's pocket dimension from Aleph for a fresh batch. She would just have to make do and prioritize producing her own version later.
The urge to sleep never left, of course. It was there, hovering at the edges of her mind. The stim-patches only pushed it to the background. But she couldn't rest – she had more to do.
The grand vision was in her head again. She saw a new master work, begging for her to throw herself into making it again. It would take her a lot of time to build up all the smaller parts, but she would – could – put in the work for something so sublime.
Was that why she was here, perhaps? For a simple raid on Haywire's tech to turn into an Endbringer attack out of the blue – it really all fit in so neatly, didn't it?
Miriam rubbed her eyes with the heel of her palm then got up to organize her haul and continue her work. Once again, she found her mind returning to the topic of her arrival here and all that entailed.
The Simurgh. Armsmaster.
She could admit to herself that it had been her own curiosity that made her spare him in the end. Oh, she had thought to kill him at first – why wouldn't she? – but her need to know stayed her hand.
While he would ultimately end up being trouble, something told her that there was a reason, a purpose, for their arrivals. The Simurgh had a plan, one so vast and incomprehensible that it was probably only her who understood their scope.
It was just like her visions, in a way.
As her hands automatically sorted out what she needed and began to work on them, her mind continued to wander.
These separate events would come together for something greater, and Armsmaster was needed. He had to stay here, as did she. Neither of them could leave when things hadn't come to fruition.
He was going to try to leave, she knew. The bug she planted on him after their second fight had confirmed that. It had clung to the back of his knee up until he was taken in by this world's equivalent of the PRT – PRC – and switched passengers immediately afterwards to the man Edgar Mearing. Listening to him had proven most enlightening.
It was kind of Aleph to try to find a peaceful resolution to this. But Miriam was not here for peace.
The conference could not be allowed to move forward. She would have to accelerate her build time to stop it in time, but she would live.
She visualized the template of her first line of parts as her hands worked. Metal was welded, circuits were broken and rewired, and she cut, rearranged, and connected it all until she was satisfied.
The rest of her master work awaited her. It was still rudimentary, still small, but that was fine. She would continue building each part, and they would connect into a greater glory. From her hands, more and more parts came out. With her stock of raw materials, she made little gadgets within minutes, guided by the visions.
They were all individually weak, but once they were connected, it was a whole different story.
Hours passed. Miriam paused only long enough to eat a ration bar and sip water before she returned to her task. Each piece she completed was laid out in its designated position, ready to be connected once everything was done.
After she arranged it all, Miriam skipped back to take a better look. Observing from the ground was no good. With a few skips, she was up the cave wall. Bracing herself against several thick stalactites, she stared down.
Long flares of reworked metal swooped out. They glittered in the harsh light, beautiful when witnessed from so high, almost crystalline.
It was only a pair of wings, but it was uniting already. As Miriam observed it, the pieces began to connect in her mental picture. To her mind's eye, the parts that she made seemed to know where they fit, how they connected, and drew together with magnetic attraction. She could see each way one part slid into another, the way the entire structure improved with each addition. It was glorious in its inevitability.
And it was barely even a fraction of what she envisioned.
Her grand vision. Her master work. Her own Endbringer, of steel and technology.
-x-
Today was the 29th of December. It was the day of the conference, but Miriam had plans for that. With this, Bet would have to take a massive step back and then no one would want Armsmaster to leave this planet. Bet wouldn't touch him with the presence of the Simurgh being confirmed and Aleph would need him.
The final piece snapped into place and Miriam felt something in her exult.
It was completed.
All fifteen feet of it was standing, wings tucked in close to keep them from brushing against the cave walls. It stared at her listlessly with wide, blind eyes. She examined it head to toe, visualizing every single piece that had gone into its construction.
She could see its flaws. It was structurally weak inside. It probably wouldn't withstand a nuclear bomb, but that wasn't the point here. It wasn't about how strong it was – it was about how it looked.
Every experienced cape knew the game. Half the play was reputation. Whether you were weak, whether you were strong, the ultimate result depended on what other people thought.
The Slaughterhouse Nine were left alone because they had built their reputation on extreme brutality and the absolute destruction of whoever that stood in their way. The Triumvirate were respected because they projected untouchable power, reinforced by the entire country backing them. In that vein, people were strong because people thought they were.
She had created a life-size replica of the Simurgh, close enough in appearance that even the blindest Aleph citizen would know what it was meant to be. It would show everyone involved that this couldn't be resolved with hush-hush military operations and discreet conferences, and that to think otherwise was a fool's gamble.
You did not hide what the Endbringers did. The Simurgh was involved and everyone would know.
This was about making a statement.
"Wake up," Miriam said, and her creation lifted its head. She smiled.
Her teleportation hoop had been dismantled and remade into a much bigger gate, attached to the farthest cave wall. It was much less stable, but it was now big enough to let the machine pass through. One use, now or never.
She tossed aside the wrapper of the ration bar she had been gnawing on. Rolling up her sleeve, she replaced the old stim-patch with a fresh one. When she put her helmet back on, the stimulant was already surging through her system, bringing the world into sharp focus.
She was exhausted. How many hours had she slept this entire week? Six? Eight? It didn't matter. Her mouth tasted like sawdust from how many bars she ate, but at least there were no hunger pangs. This was the final lap and she would not falter.
Her heartbeat hastened. The weakness of the flesh could be forgotten when something greater beckoned.
The gate flickered to life, barely holding on between the four disconnected points of the former hoop. She could see the peaceful view of the Washington Monument beyond it. To the people on the other side, it would look like the sky itself cracked open.
With a leap, Miriam was up on her machine's shoulder. Holding tight, she directed it to the gate.
It was slow at first, moving with exaggerated care so its gargantuan wings did not disturb the cave ceiling. As it pushed through the gate, however, its movements got freer, slinkier.
Miriam pushed her hand out at the Washington Monument first. It was not necessary, but it felt good.
Its metallic fist grabbed the top of the monument, crumbling the tip. The rest of its body followed, casting a titanic shadow over the peace. Multiple wings flared out, free of the gate's confinement, and they glittered in the light. From its false mouth, hidden speakers played the closest audible mimicry of the infamous scream, piercing the sky.
Miriam felt a laugh bubble up from her as the first screams of fear started from below. The time for hiding was done.
Let me show you what a real parahuman looks like!
-x-
Oh my fucking god, they gave a top rank Tinker all the time and resources she needed to work through her tech tree, those morons. 