The problem with that thought... It is on SB with fewer pages of discussion.
Taylor is DOOMed
- Thread starter mp3.1415player
- Start date
- Crossover
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
There's an amusing MLP fic where the Main Six sing and dance to With Cat Like Grace while 'sneaking' through the royal castle as a heartsong... And nobody notices them even as they dance past.
- Location
- Deep in the Badlands of Equestria
Ok, I need a link for that one, please.
Edit: Although, to be honest, I have to wonder if at some point in her rampage through Hell Taylor didn't end up humming various show tunes as she mowed down demons on her way through.
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FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
- Location
- California
I kept waiting for her to drop Weird Al's 'Trigger Happy' after the 'girls just want to have guns' line.
Isnt my realname
This isn't my real name.
- Location
- Not Here
Right. 216 chapters. 2.2 million words. I don't suppose you know which chapter it's in?
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Not off hand. Somewhere in the middle, I think. After they learn the reason for the loops, but I think before they started getting loops where they replace Luna and Celestia as rulers of Equestria.
EDIT: My mistake. The first "replace the alicorn sisters" loop is early on.
EDIT: My mistake. The first "replace the alicorn sisters" loop is early on.
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9. DOOMed VIII: Realizations of DOOM
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
"Oh my god."
Emily didn't bother to look around to glare at whoever had said that, since she was thinking the same exact thing. The air in the PRT control center was simultaneously hyper-alert and almost stunned silent. Only the sound of humming fans, a number of people breathing, and a few quiet alarms going off every now and then broke the quiet.
"Perimeter established at a quarter mile around the school," one of the control room staff said a few seconds later. "BBPD is evacuating anyone near the event site to a safe distance, with BBFD aid. PRT backup is requested."
"Approved," she replied without looking away from the main screen on which a high resolution image being transmitted from one of the PRT surveillance aircraft was displayed. The VTOL was hovering some half a mile up and away from the place where Winslow used to be.
'Used to be' was definitely the correct term, she thought with dismayed, horrified fascination. Whatever had hit it had completely erased the entire site from existence. Now all that was left was a crater some three hundred yards in diameter and as far as they could make out nearly sixty deep, which was slowly cooling from what had to have been a preposterous temperature. It was certainly more than enough to have vitrified the ground inside it, although what had actually happened to most of the mass of the school itself and the land under it was anyone's guess at this point.
The center of the crater still glowed with some strange greenish energy, the sight worrying her a lot as it didn't match anything she was aware of, which meant it was new. New, as far as Parahuman problems went, which this obviously was, meant trouble.
Always.
Trouble in this case backed up by the evidence that whatever did it could basically vaporize a large building complex in a literal flash of light leaving nothing but a hole she was pretty sure was going to look like something from the old atomic bomb tests in Nevada when it finally cooled to ambient temperature. She had the absent thought about what the hell the city would do with a three hundred yard glass lined hole in the ground. Probably turn it into a pond or something, since there didn't seem to be any other use for it.
She hoped like hell no one had been in the school at the time. It would have been painless, that was about the only bright spot, since they'd never find any traces.
"VTOL-1, orbit left, maintain distance from site," the flight controller said into his microphone.
"Roger, orbit left at constant distance," the pilot replied, the view of the crater starting to slowly rotate although it remained in the center of the image. As the night background of Brockton Bay slid past, she could see a seething mass of emergency vehicle lights in various streets leading towards the former site of the school, all the roads blocked by barricades with their own amber beacons blinking in the distance.
"Radiation levels still read zero, peak crater temperature two thousand four hundred forty degrees and falling, average temperature nine hundred fifty degrees. Crater diameter measures as two hundred and eighty seven yards. Near-perfect circularity." The sensor operator poked a couple of touch controls as he spoke.
"What's causing that green glow?" she asked.
"Unknown, Director. Nothing on record matches."
"Wonderful," Deputy Director Renick muttered from beside her. He clearly also didn't like the implications.
"We can see a few small fires burning in the surrounding buildings, but the collateral damage is remarkably small," the pilot said after he'd circumnavigated about a quarter of the way around the crater. "Thermal interference from the blast site is interfering with our equipment but as far as we can tell there's no sign of motion down there."
"There aren't many people who live close to the school," Renick commented quietly. "It used to be in a fairly good area but that was back when the Docks were active. These days everyone who could have moved has done so, which means there's probably only a few vagrants who are within at least a couple of hundred yards at the nearest at night. Off to the west the closest neighborhood is a good half mile away, although it's less on the north side. Still outside the perimeter we've set up for the most part."
"Thank god for that," Emily replied, still watching the images. The visible light one was showing the grain typical of a camera running right at the limit of its light handling capacity, but it gave a reasonably good picture even so. To the sides other screens showed a view from the night vision camera in the same sensor pod, as well as a high resolution thermal imager. This was showing the crater as a brilliant white spot with almost no variation, dimming to yellows, reds, and finally blues as one moved further from it. The half dozen small fires that had probably been started by radiated heat from whatever caused the destruction also showed up nicely, but luckily didn't seem inclined to grow. One of them was already guttering out.
"Hey, what's that?" someone else in the aircraft said.
"What?" the pilot replied as they all listened.
"Twenty five degrees to port, about a third of a mile towards the south… I thought I saw something on thermal. Several somethings. Heading deeper into the dock area."
"Probably rough sleepers running for their lives," one of the other aircrew said with a faint laugh in her voice. "Which is the sane thing to do."
"I'm… not sure," the sensor operator replied rather doubtfully after a moment. "Looked larger than that. A mix of sizes, actually, but..." He paused, then added, "Nothing there now as far as I can see. Might have been a sensor glitch. Or it was some Merchants who are hiding somewhere now."
"Control, should we do a pass towards the water and chase up that sighting?" the pilot asked.
Looking over his shoulder at Emily who thought for a moment then shook her head, the flight controller replied, "Negative, VTOL 1, remain in position. We'll task another aircraft to investigate but we didn't see anything here so it probably was a sensor fault."
"Roger."
Emily wasn't interested in chasing possibly phantom drug dealers at the moment. In her view, running like hell from whatever had done this was entirely sensible and not something worth bothering with.
Finding out what had done it and what in god's name had happened was far, far more important.
She couldn't help thinking, with a sort of horrified anticipation, that somehow the Hebert man was involved. Not that she had the faintest idea how, but the way he'd managed to slip out of the building without a trace in minutes was… somewhat unnerving. Especially in light of the things he'd said and his obvious mood at the time.
There was definitely more to that man than appearances would suggest.
No one had stopped him since no one had any reason to stop him. They were too busy dealing with the sudden influx of terrified Brocktonians who were jamming every phone line into the facility, liaising with the BBPD who were doing much the same on the direct lines, and trying to work out what the fuck was going on. One less civilian in the building was something to be grateful for. By the time she'd ordered a lockdown having suddenly thought that this might be something one of the gangs was doing as a diversion before they attacked the PRT building itself he was long gone, having simply signed out of his evening appointment with her, smiled at the receptionist, and left. None of the staff paid any attention as they were somewhat busy.
And of course by the time the VTOL preflight had been done, which even under these circumstances was several minutes work, the BBPD had been told not to go charging in since no one knew what Parahuman was attacking, not that they seemed inclined to do that anyway, and all the other emergency preparations had been dealt with… Well, he'd had a good twenty minutes lead. She had no idea where he'd gone, but hoped it was home and out of her hair.
Looking at the screen, she really hoped that was where he'd gone...
So why did she have a sensation in the pit of her stomach that the other boot was gathering speed as it dropped from orbit?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Lots of excitement out there," Danny said as he glanced up from his pizza. Yet another fire engine had gone past, sliding around the corner down the block with sirens and lights going full tilt. It dopplered into the distance, the sound of squealing tires coming back to them as it rounded the corner at the far end of the street. He thought it probably was taking this route to go around where Taylor's school once was, as that entire area was now blocked off from what he could tell.
"People get worked up about the silliest things," his daughter smiled, half-way through her second pizza and looking like a third one wasn't out of the question. He smirked slightly, nodding, as he returned his attention to her.
She looked good, he thought. Physically healthy, more so than she'd been when she disappeared two horrible weeks gone now, and while a little thinner in the face, seemed in good spirits. He'd noticed immediately that she also looked somewhat older, perhaps eighteen or so, and was definitely taller. Apparently her trip had been somewhat more extensive than normal.
Her eyes met his and she smiled again. He watched her with interest as she looked down and picked up another slice. It was when you peered into her eyes that you realized that the young girl of before had gone through things that very, very few people could possibly have understood or handled.
He was extremely proud of her, even without hearing much of the story yet. And if all the evidence he'd assembled about her life over the last two years before that attack from her supposed best friend and the other two was even vaguely accurate he didn't blame her in the slightest for removing the school with prejudice. And a very large weapon.
Taking another drink, he put his glass down, then picked up one of the thick manuals, printed on something that looked like but wasn't paper, and read the title and date once again. His mouth quirked slightly. "I think you have a lot of things to discuss, Taylor," he said mildly, leafing through the document for a moment, then stopping on one page and inspecting it with interest. "But you sure found some interesting souvenirs."
She chuckled, finishing the pizza and picking up the menu again. As she looked at it, she replied, "That I did. All over the place." Her eyes met his over the menu for a moment. "If I could pick it up, I took it."
"Always the best approach," he grinned. "You never know when something might come in handy."
"Very true," she nodded, before turning and waving to Sergio, who was watching a small TV behind the counter. He looked up at the motion then came over. "That was delicious," she said approvingly, making him smile. "You've got no idea how long I was looking forward to it. I think I'd like another one."
He raised an eyebrow but nodded approvingly. "Same again, or something different?"
"Can I have one of the seafood ones? Extra calamari." Her smile turned a little odd. "I need to eat some tentacles at the moment. Kind of revenge."
He looked at her, then at Danny, who shrugged. "Ah… sure, whatever you say. A large?"
"Yep. Thanks." She waved her glass. "Another sprite too, please."
"Of course. Danny, another coke?"
"Yes please. And some garlic bread."
"No problem." Sergio finished writing on his pad, then disappeared into the kitchen again. The bell over the door rang causing both Heberts to look, seeing a somewhat scruffy man carrying a baseball bat come in. He got about ten feet inside, spotted them, gaped at Taylor who very slowly started to stand up, then turned and hastily left without saying a word. He was distinctly pale under the buzz cut. Outside, they watched him talk urgently to another man, pointing through the window at them.
Taylor waved and grinned widely in a very unpleasant manner.
Both of them quickly ran off.
Danny snickered. "Nicely done."
"Thanks," she replied.
When Sergio came back with the next batch of food, they were talking quietly as Danny flipped through a few more of the apparently inexhaustible supply of manuals Taylor kept producing.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Sitting in a chair in front of one of the consoles Emily studied the monitor in front of her, then glanced up at the big array of them on the wall. The aircraft was still slowly orbiting the site of whatever had turned a school into a hole in the ground, and the dim glow at the bottom of the aforementioned hole was almost invisible now. The crater was still very hot, far past the point of survivability, but was steadily cooling down too. The estimate was that it would reach a safe temperature in about two days at the current rate of cooling, although if it snowed, which was forecast to happen tomorrow, that might take a few hours off.
Nearly an hour of remote readings, including sending in an advanced drone that Dragon had left with Armsmaster some months ago, had shown that there was nothing obviously hazardous at the site. No traces of explosives, radiation, chemical agents, or anything else they could think of were present even at minuscule levels, so she'd finally authorized a manned inspection.
Armsmaster himself had been chafing at the bit and had barely listened when she'd flatly ordered him to keep his ass behind the security cordon. Admittedly she technically wasn't his superior, but he normally followed procedure well enough to have made him reflexively agree. She suspected Dragon was also telling him to wait and not just go charging in like an idiot. They hadn't known, and still didn't know, what was going on, but at least now they knew it appeared safe to investigate.
Assuming that whatever had caused it wasn't still there, waiting…
She shook her head feeling that her paranoia was getting to her. Someone needed to go in, and it certainly wasn't going to be her. Leaving her physical infirmities out of the equation she'd been in the situation of going into an unknown scenario before and still had nightmares about it. This was someone else's turn.
The picture on the monitor she was watching now was from the camera on top of the PRT APC that had taken Armsmaster and a heavily armed team into close proximity of the blast site. Initially he'd planned on going in on his iconic bike but had decided that there was simply too much equipment needed, so the APC was required, which meant it was more efficient to go with it instead of on his own transportation. For once Emily agreed with him. The view gently wobbled as the large vehicle made its way over rubble in the street, giving the camera stabilization system a good workout, then went rock steady as it stopped a hundred feet or so from the rim of the crater. Floodlights on the roof brightly illuminated the entire area like daylight, letting them see just how enormous the hole in the scenery really was.
They couldn't even see the other side…
"Fuck me," the man running comms to the field team said as everyone stared at the screen. "How in god's name could that be done without taking out the entire city?"
There was, as yet, no answer to what was a very good question.
Someone else called over from the side. "Director? I've got Mayor Christner on the phone. He's not in a good mood."
"Tell him we don't know anything more now than we did ten minutes ago and I'll be in contact when we do, but right now I have something more important than keeping the city happy," she snapped.
The man flinched, then rather more diplomatically paraphrased her words to the Mayor as she kept watching the screens. Prodding a control she switched the one she was in front of to the view from Armsmaster's helmet camera, which came up just as he climbed out of the back of the vehicle. He was accompanied by a four man squad in NBC gear, he himself relying on his armor for the same function. Everyone watched and listened as he issued quick orders, all the troopers fanning out across the ground while he walked slowly towards the crater, holding some sort of scanner out in front of him.
"Confirmed no radioactivity detected, no toxins, and no explosive traces, even at close range," he said calmly although long contact with the man let her pick up the traces of trepidation in his voice despite his control. "Significant heat radiating from the site but I can approach the edge for a few minutes before my cooling system is overwhelmed."
"Be careful," Emily said into her mic.
"I was planning on it," he replied dryly, almost making her smile a little. When the man was actually doing his job he was very good at it, so it was a pity he tended to go off on tangents so easily, especially when something annoyed him or he tripped over his own ego.
The view moved closer, until he was standing at the lip of the massive depression in the ground. In the light from the APC behind him his shadow stretched out across it in an enormous distorted silhouette, the center of the crater completely dark aside from the last traces of writhing green energy far below. It looked like an inverted aurora more than anything else.
"I can't pick up anything to explain the glow," he said after a few seconds. "It's nothing like normal ionization, or excitation of the air by hard radiation. The color is wrong for air at this pressure aside from anything else."
"Is is dangerous?"
"Unknown, but I would suggest not except possibly by direct contact, which would be lethal to arrange in any case due to the high temperature of the crater," he replied, sounding like he was thinking about something else. A moment later he knelt down and the view from his helmet tipped to show the inside of the crater at close range. An armored hand came into sight as he prodded the glistening surface with one finger. "Slick. Like glass. Or more accurately, very similar to trinitite, the material formed in a surface nuclear detonation. The temperature required to melt ordinary sand and brick into this sort of substance is very significant, at least three thousand degrees." He pulled out his scanner again and held it over the edge for a few seconds. "It's close to six inches thick at the rim. To do this in a matter of a second or so… Director, it would take the energy release of a reasonably large fusion explosion to produce this result, but there's almost no blast damage in the surrounding buildings, and remarkably little thermal damage."
He stood and panned the camera around, stopping on a couple of the nearby structures on the other side of the street. All the windows facing them were broken, although Emily thought somewhat cynically this wasn't necessarily due to the blast itself considering where Winslow was. Every building was some form of industrial one, most of them clearly unused. Smoke was coming out of a few windows, and the fronts of every one of them was blackened and scorched, while there was quite a lot of rubble on the street which appeared to have been knocked loose from them in the blast. Even so, the damage was oddly light, whatever had erased the school from existence apparently having been carefully targeted.
She didn't know whether that was better or worse. If nothing else, it showed appallingly good control of whatever weapon or Parahuman ability had done this. And if it was a Parahuman ability, it absolutely terrified her. It made the sort of thing Purity, or even Legend himself, could do look somewhat anemic.
It wouldn't have surprised her to know that even Eidolon couldn't have done it. And that was the worst thought of all.
Briefly considering, then dismissing with a snort, the idea that Behemoth might have snuck up on Brockton Bay then vanished again, she shook her head. No, it seemed unlikely that an Endbringer was doing what was basically for them a practical joke. This was probably the result of a Tinker of some form, quite likely a new Trigger, which was just horrifying. If this was what they started with, what would they do with time to plan?
And if it was an established one, why had she never heard of a nuclear Tinker before?
"Still no result on any search of similar events anywhere?" she asked, turning her head to where Renick and a couple of PRT researchers were trawling through classified files.
"No. Nothing matching this or anything like it," her immediate subordinate replied with a shake of his head. "Not even in the CUI as far as our information shows."
"Armsmaster?" One of the troopers called for the Tinker's attention, causing him to stand up and turn.
"Yes, what do you have?" he replied as he walked over. His camera view followed the pointing finger of the other man to the ground.
"Footprints. Two sets, one from that direction, one from what looks like a car based on the tire tracks in the debris here," the trooper said. Emily and the others studied the images as Armsmaster bent slightly. The first set of prints looked like they were from some sort of heavy boot, in a military style, if she was any judge, while the others were about the same size but less obvious and apparently from a work boot. The tire tracks looked like standard car or light truck ones. They were nicely visible due to the mud on the ground caused by the melted snow surrounding the crater.
"Depth of the prints and distance between them indicates the second set are from an individual approximately six foot three to six foot five inches tall, one hundred and eighty to two hundred and thirty pounds in weight," Armsmaster said after a short pause, presumably having consulted his own computers. "The first set are much deeper, suggesting the person who made them is considerably heavier."
"How heavy?" Emily asked into her mic.
"Estimated at between four hundred and fifty to five hundred and fifty pounds." Armsmaster's voice was grim.
"Which is unlikely unless it's a Brute carrying something heavy, or someone wearing power armor," Renick stated.
"Those are the two most likely possibilities, yes," Armsmaster replied. "Judging by the footprints I would suggest the second one is the higher probability. The individual in question is over six feet tall, again based on stride length. Gender unknown. Second individual is probably male looking at the tread pattern, depth, and arrangement of prints." He looked around, everyone watching as the camera view panned. "The first person came from the direction of the crater, stopped here, turned around, then walked this way."
After he'd followed the prints a short distance, he stopped and turned. "Then they went back, meeting the second individual at this point," he commented, walking carefully alongside the footprints at a safe distance to avoid contaminating the evidence. "Both people were facing each other at close range. Second individual subsequently got back into the vehicle and turned it around, before driving off towards the west, with the first one accompanying them on foot."
He followed the tracks with the PRT squad until they petered out about a block and a half away on a larger road, the snow covering it churned into slush from all the emergency vehicles that had taken this route and erasing the evidence. "The footprints were substantially further apart for much of the time," he finally said, having looked both ways, then turned to look back down the road they'd come along. "The individual was moving at approximately thirty miles an hour at peak speed based on that. I am unable to ascertain which direction they went after joining this road without further data. However they're certainly outside the perimeter at this point, as is whoever met them."
"Collect all the evidence you can and we'll see what it tells us," Emily instructed him as he began moving back to the school.
"Affirmative," the Tinker grunted, clearly already trying to work out what was happening and had happened.
She looked over at Renick, who shrugged. "Looks like it's safe enough for now so we should probably get teams in to check all the surrounding areas for survivors or wounded," he said to her gaze. "And then probably move the perimeter inwards to surround the crater itself. No point moving it outwards as whoever is responsible is long gone by now, I'd think."
Emily sighed. He was right, not that it made her any happier. Apparently they had a massively dangerous power armored Tinker running around Brockton now, one who could remove a significant amount of the scenery through unknown methods for unknown reasons. No part of that made her even slightly happy.
As the people in the control room coordinated their efforts with the other city services, the background sound level gradually rose back to something approximating normality although it was still rather muted. The image of the massive crater on the screen at the far end of the room was enough to make everyone nervous.
The surveillance aircraft kept orbiting the crater for another half hour scanning for anything unusual, until eventually it had to return to base due to low fuel. The second one that had been sent out to conduct overhead scans of the docks, chasing up the possible contact the sensor operator in the first one had reported also returned empty-handed, having found nothing unusual for that area. Plenty of thermal contacts, yes, but they were easily seen to just be the standard junkies and other homeless that called the otherwise largely empty part of the city home. As the aircraft passed over, many of them looked up, then quickly went into buildings, but again that was simply the usual behavior.
About an hour and a half after the event, Renick suddenly swore under his breath, causing Emily, who had spent a while walking around observing the operations before sitting down again to rest since she was feeling the stress make her other problems even more irritating, to look over at him. He was on the other side of one of the console desks, which had a center divider on which monitors and controls for each side were arranged in front of keyboards and desks. "What is it?" she asked. It was unlike him to swear in public, so to speak.
"We're getting reports in that you need to see," he said, his voice shaking with some emotion she couldn't discern. "Just hit the internal network a few minutes ago." He typed for a moment, the screen in front of her switching to display something extraordinary.
Emily looked at it, then froze, staring in shock. After close to thirty seconds, she grabbed the mouse and began quickly paging through the various documents that were being updated on the PRT high security server even as she watched. "Holy mother of god," she muttered under her breath in disbelief. "Ellisburg is..."
"Gone." Renick met her eyes over the partition. "Utterly. Everything inside the walls is simply… gone."
She didn't know whether she should be screaming in joy at the sudden end to the source of all her nightmares for years, or whimpering in terror about wondering what could have done that and how. She settled for reading the report in depth. When she got to the images accompanying it, she froze again.
"It looks like..."
Again, she found herself just trailing off in shock.
Renick nodded grimly. "It looks like that," he said, pointing at the large screen on which the former site of Winslow High School was still displayed. "Only much, much larger."
"Oh, fuck me dead," Emily moaned. "We have whatever did for Ellisburg running around my city?!" Her voice rose as she half stood.
"And Eagleton," Renick said. "And Moord Nag. And, if this latest report is correct, the Three Blasphemies. And about half a dozen other possible A and S class threats all over the planet." His voice was dark and foreboding, as if he couldn't really believe his own eyes.
She dropped heavily into her seat and just stared at the screen. More reports were coming in steadily, all of them showing very localized and very complete destruction via means no one seemed to be able to determine, from widely separated locations almost everywhere. Some of the events seemed to have lasted mere minutes, others could have been over an hour long based on seismic data, but in every case wherever what was doing this had been, nothing living was left. The destruction varied from complete glassing of the area down to individual buildings being apparently torn to pieces by hand, but the end result was pretty much identical each time.
The removal of the threat, usually leaving nothing but ash.
And one of the most worrying parts of the whole thing was that these events had all happened sequentially, but the locations were jumping around all over the place. That implied either more than one source of the damage, which was terrifying, or a single source that could teleport and had global range, which was almost worse.
And now it was here. Somewhere.
Then had taken out a high school? That didn't make any kind of sense she could work out…
The conversation with the Hebert man came back to her and she stopped dead for a moment. Surely that couldn't actually be related to all this?
Emily Piggot shivered, recalling the eyes of the man who had stared her down, and done the same to Armsmaster, without showing the slightest hint of fear but instead a sort of cold rage that genuinely worried her.
"Got some more data from Ellisburg, Emily," Renick said. She shook her head and focused on the screen. An image came up of someone or something wearing some sort of power armor unlike anything she'd ever seen before, dark non-reflective purple in color, with a few glowing lights in places on the helmet. The figure was holding a massive weapon in the process of being fired, the glowing blue beam of what looked like plasma caught in mid-shot. The next frame showed the result, which was a large number of Nilbog's creations being totally evaporated by the blast.
A final image showed the armored person turning to stare directly at the camera, weapon raised and a deep blue glow visible inside the barrel, which was enormous. "That's the point the monitoring teams evacuated," Renick commented, obviously looking at the same thing. "Everyone ran for it. Whoever that is, and whatever weapon they used, it completely destroyed Ellisburg itself and the fringe effects wrecked the containment wall, the guard and monitor posts, all the equipment, everything. Completely ruined by the heat and some sort of massive EMP. This data was being copied to the remote secondary site which is the only reason we have it but everything else was lost."
"Is it only one of them, or a whole team?" Emily asked somewhat faintly, still staring at that picture of the personification of destruction about to fire.
"There's limited data available, since most of the events caused so much damage no surveillance gear survived, or they were in locations remote enough that it wasn't there to start with," he replied. "But we've got this photo as well, it was caught by a security camera in that town in Bavaria I can't pronounce the name of. Again, it was a remote recording one, the security company was about two hundred miles away."
She studied the somewhat blurry image that came up, then compared it to the much sharper ones from Ellisburg next to it. "Looks the same, but it's a different weapon. So either it's one person with an impressive loadout or some Tinker is supplying identical power armor to someone."
"Yeah, that's what it looks like to me. I'm inclined to think it's the same person, myself."
Emily looked at him, then back at the monitor. "That doesn't actually make it less worrying," she said acidly, causing him to shrug.
"Sorry."
Turning to look at the large image of the crater where the school used to be, then at the live-updating map on another one which was showing the ongoing situation out in the city, she shook her head. "God. This is going to get complicated, I can feel it." She returned her attention to her second. "Any word from higher up yet?"
"No. As far as I can tell central command is running around like headless chickens at the moment. It's mostly regional bureaus like us that are doing actual work, which is why it took so long to get these reports. I have no idea what Washington are doing, but it's not helping," he replied with a sour look. "No word from the Chief Director at all, or anyone in her branch. The Protectorate in New York isn't answering, all we get is an automatic response saying they're dealing with a number of problems. We're pretty much on our own at the moment although we could call in help from a few of the local branches if we need it, I suppose. Boston could get us some backup pretty fast."
"Alert them, but hold off on calling them in just yet," she said after some thought, and considerable irritation at how inept some aspects of her organization tended to be when the shit hit the fan. They'd drop everything for an Endbringer attack but anything less than that tended to produce a far more unhelpful response. At times she darkly thought that there was some grand conspiracy to hang local branches out to dry on a sink or swim basis. It wasn't helpful.
"All right." He issued a couple of quiet commands to some of the other people while she stood and inspected the map, thinking hard. "So what next?"
"We try to find this person or persons, and very politely ask them to fuck off if they wouldn't mind," she finally said. "We don't need the sort of trouble they're likely to bring if they stick around. Not in this city."
He looked at her, his eyebrows up. "You think that will actually work?"
"It's worth a shot." She shook her head. "Probably not, but I'd prefer to avoid any combat with someone who can do that and is willing to." Waving a hand at the crater image, she indicated the scope of the problem. "It's a bit more than we're equipped to handle."
"Yeah, I see your point," he admitted uncomfortably. "And if we can't find them? Or worse, if we do find them and they want a fight?"
Emily sighed faintly. "I have no idea at the moment. I just want to make sure it's not us that starts anything, at least until we have a better handle on the situation."
"We'd better make sure Armsmaster isn't the contact with this new one, then," Renick said with a smirk.
She glared at him. "Yes, thank you, that had already crossed my mind. Make sure he's kept well out of the way as and when we locate whoever's involved."
"He won't thank you for that."
"Tough. He'll have to live with it. Get Miss Militia to… No." She stopped, then thought hard. "On second thought, don't involve her either. A weapons cape is not the right one to approach someone who has all the weapons. I can see that going very strange very fast."
"She's one of the best at talking down a new Trigger we've got," he said a little doubtfully. "She's also very calm under pressure."
"True, but I just have this feeling..." She shook her head. "We'll keep her in reserve. Dauntless and Assault. If we find this person, those two are to make first contact."
He stared at her. "Assault?" he echoed somewhat incredulously. "Why him?"
"Because as much of a pain in the ass as he is almost all the time, he's also one of the smartest Parahumans I know, is a lot better at getting people to relax and talk to him than most, and is very good at reading a situation and knowing when to back off," she said with another sigh. "All the corny jokes aside he's one of the better choices for this. Dauntless is… dauntless. He won't escalate the situation either. Velocity doesn't have the right experience and Triumph is too young. Battery isn't someone I want involved either for a couple of reasons, but she can do backup fine. So Assault and Dauntless it is."
After a moment, he nodded. "OK. Hopefully you're right."
"We won't know until we find this person, though," she remarked. "And I hope that's before any of the assholes in the gangs do."
"You think Lung or someone might try to grab them for his gang?"
She looked at the crater image, then meaningfully at him. "I think they might try. I very much doubt they'd succeed. And one crater is already one too many..."
With a small shudder he nodded, then started moving around the room coordinating the various groups in the field. She watched for a moment, then sat again, her back and legs painfully reminding her than she wasn't in good physical shape.
"This city will be the death of me yet," she grumbled, prodding the keyboard to check on the latest reports.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Max Anders looked at the photo on the screen of the phone one of his higher-ranked normal E88 members was holding out. "A new Tinker, hmm?" he said thoughtfully.
"Yeah, just sitting there with her helmet off having a pizza with that older guy," the man said, looking both surprised and somewhat impressed. "Like it was nothing. Mikey said she gave him the glare of death so he legged it, but he's pretty sure she's a cape. I mean, look at that armor! It's got to be Tinker tech, right?"
"I'd think that was likely, yes," Kaiser said, taking the phone and zooming in on the image. The face of the young woman was clearly visible, and she didn't look even slightly worried about being unmasked. He was curious as to why. "Interesting. I think we need to invite the young lady to consider the advantages of our organization. Clearly she's unaware of some of the more unsavory elements that might seek to take advantage of someone in her position."
He gave the phone back and turned to the other people in the room. "Brad, take Victor and Cricket and request that our new friend meets with me, will you, please?"
The cape known as Hookwolf grinned in a bloodthirsty way. "Sure. No problem. What if that other guy gets in the way?"
Kaiser shrugged. "Make sure he doesn't."
"OK." Hookwolf got up from where he was lounging on a leather sofa, motioning to the other two Parahumans mentioned, and all three of them left along with the man who'd brought the phone in. Sitting down, Max picked up a glass of scotch and sipped it, wondering what had happened to cause that enormous explosion earlier which seemed to have every authority in the city running about all over the place like idiots.
He wondered if this young lady was involved. If so, it was an impressive debut.
He'd have to ask her when she visited.
Emily didn't bother to look around to glare at whoever had said that, since she was thinking the same exact thing. The air in the PRT control center was simultaneously hyper-alert and almost stunned silent. Only the sound of humming fans, a number of people breathing, and a few quiet alarms going off every now and then broke the quiet.
"Perimeter established at a quarter mile around the school," one of the control room staff said a few seconds later. "BBPD is evacuating anyone near the event site to a safe distance, with BBFD aid. PRT backup is requested."
"Approved," she replied without looking away from the main screen on which a high resolution image being transmitted from one of the PRT surveillance aircraft was displayed. The VTOL was hovering some half a mile up and away from the place where Winslow used to be.
'Used to be' was definitely the correct term, she thought with dismayed, horrified fascination. Whatever had hit it had completely erased the entire site from existence. Now all that was left was a crater some three hundred yards in diameter and as far as they could make out nearly sixty deep, which was slowly cooling from what had to have been a preposterous temperature. It was certainly more than enough to have vitrified the ground inside it, although what had actually happened to most of the mass of the school itself and the land under it was anyone's guess at this point.
The center of the crater still glowed with some strange greenish energy, the sight worrying her a lot as it didn't match anything she was aware of, which meant it was new. New, as far as Parahuman problems went, which this obviously was, meant trouble.
Always.
Trouble in this case backed up by the evidence that whatever did it could basically vaporize a large building complex in a literal flash of light leaving nothing but a hole she was pretty sure was going to look like something from the old atomic bomb tests in Nevada when it finally cooled to ambient temperature. She had the absent thought about what the hell the city would do with a three hundred yard glass lined hole in the ground. Probably turn it into a pond or something, since there didn't seem to be any other use for it.
She hoped like hell no one had been in the school at the time. It would have been painless, that was about the only bright spot, since they'd never find any traces.
"VTOL-1, orbit left, maintain distance from site," the flight controller said into his microphone.
"Roger, orbit left at constant distance," the pilot replied, the view of the crater starting to slowly rotate although it remained in the center of the image. As the night background of Brockton Bay slid past, she could see a seething mass of emergency vehicle lights in various streets leading towards the former site of the school, all the roads blocked by barricades with their own amber beacons blinking in the distance.
"Radiation levels still read zero, peak crater temperature two thousand four hundred forty degrees and falling, average temperature nine hundred fifty degrees. Crater diameter measures as two hundred and eighty seven yards. Near-perfect circularity." The sensor operator poked a couple of touch controls as he spoke.
"What's causing that green glow?" she asked.
"Unknown, Director. Nothing on record matches."
"Wonderful," Deputy Director Renick muttered from beside her. He clearly also didn't like the implications.
"We can see a few small fires burning in the surrounding buildings, but the collateral damage is remarkably small," the pilot said after he'd circumnavigated about a quarter of the way around the crater. "Thermal interference from the blast site is interfering with our equipment but as far as we can tell there's no sign of motion down there."
"There aren't many people who live close to the school," Renick commented quietly. "It used to be in a fairly good area but that was back when the Docks were active. These days everyone who could have moved has done so, which means there's probably only a few vagrants who are within at least a couple of hundred yards at the nearest at night. Off to the west the closest neighborhood is a good half mile away, although it's less on the north side. Still outside the perimeter we've set up for the most part."
"Thank god for that," Emily replied, still watching the images. The visible light one was showing the grain typical of a camera running right at the limit of its light handling capacity, but it gave a reasonably good picture even so. To the sides other screens showed a view from the night vision camera in the same sensor pod, as well as a high resolution thermal imager. This was showing the crater as a brilliant white spot with almost no variation, dimming to yellows, reds, and finally blues as one moved further from it. The half dozen small fires that had probably been started by radiated heat from whatever caused the destruction also showed up nicely, but luckily didn't seem inclined to grow. One of them was already guttering out.
"Hey, what's that?" someone else in the aircraft said.
"What?" the pilot replied as they all listened.
"Twenty five degrees to port, about a third of a mile towards the south… I thought I saw something on thermal. Several somethings. Heading deeper into the dock area."
"Probably rough sleepers running for their lives," one of the other aircrew said with a faint laugh in her voice. "Which is the sane thing to do."
"I'm… not sure," the sensor operator replied rather doubtfully after a moment. "Looked larger than that. A mix of sizes, actually, but..." He paused, then added, "Nothing there now as far as I can see. Might have been a sensor glitch. Or it was some Merchants who are hiding somewhere now."
"Control, should we do a pass towards the water and chase up that sighting?" the pilot asked.
Looking over his shoulder at Emily who thought for a moment then shook her head, the flight controller replied, "Negative, VTOL 1, remain in position. We'll task another aircraft to investigate but we didn't see anything here so it probably was a sensor fault."
"Roger."
Emily wasn't interested in chasing possibly phantom drug dealers at the moment. In her view, running like hell from whatever had done this was entirely sensible and not something worth bothering with.
Finding out what had done it and what in god's name had happened was far, far more important.
She couldn't help thinking, with a sort of horrified anticipation, that somehow the Hebert man was involved. Not that she had the faintest idea how, but the way he'd managed to slip out of the building without a trace in minutes was… somewhat unnerving. Especially in light of the things he'd said and his obvious mood at the time.
There was definitely more to that man than appearances would suggest.
No one had stopped him since no one had any reason to stop him. They were too busy dealing with the sudden influx of terrified Brocktonians who were jamming every phone line into the facility, liaising with the BBPD who were doing much the same on the direct lines, and trying to work out what the fuck was going on. One less civilian in the building was something to be grateful for. By the time she'd ordered a lockdown having suddenly thought that this might be something one of the gangs was doing as a diversion before they attacked the PRT building itself he was long gone, having simply signed out of his evening appointment with her, smiled at the receptionist, and left. None of the staff paid any attention as they were somewhat busy.
And of course by the time the VTOL preflight had been done, which even under these circumstances was several minutes work, the BBPD had been told not to go charging in since no one knew what Parahuman was attacking, not that they seemed inclined to do that anyway, and all the other emergency preparations had been dealt with… Well, he'd had a good twenty minutes lead. She had no idea where he'd gone, but hoped it was home and out of her hair.
Looking at the screen, she really hoped that was where he'd gone...
So why did she have a sensation in the pit of her stomach that the other boot was gathering speed as it dropped from orbit?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Lots of excitement out there," Danny said as he glanced up from his pizza. Yet another fire engine had gone past, sliding around the corner down the block with sirens and lights going full tilt. It dopplered into the distance, the sound of squealing tires coming back to them as it rounded the corner at the far end of the street. He thought it probably was taking this route to go around where Taylor's school once was, as that entire area was now blocked off from what he could tell.
"People get worked up about the silliest things," his daughter smiled, half-way through her second pizza and looking like a third one wasn't out of the question. He smirked slightly, nodding, as he returned his attention to her.
She looked good, he thought. Physically healthy, more so than she'd been when she disappeared two horrible weeks gone now, and while a little thinner in the face, seemed in good spirits. He'd noticed immediately that she also looked somewhat older, perhaps eighteen or so, and was definitely taller. Apparently her trip had been somewhat more extensive than normal.
Her eyes met his and she smiled again. He watched her with interest as she looked down and picked up another slice. It was when you peered into her eyes that you realized that the young girl of before had gone through things that very, very few people could possibly have understood or handled.
He was extremely proud of her, even without hearing much of the story yet. And if all the evidence he'd assembled about her life over the last two years before that attack from her supposed best friend and the other two was even vaguely accurate he didn't blame her in the slightest for removing the school with prejudice. And a very large weapon.
Taking another drink, he put his glass down, then picked up one of the thick manuals, printed on something that looked like but wasn't paper, and read the title and date once again. His mouth quirked slightly. "I think you have a lot of things to discuss, Taylor," he said mildly, leafing through the document for a moment, then stopping on one page and inspecting it with interest. "But you sure found some interesting souvenirs."
She chuckled, finishing the pizza and picking up the menu again. As she looked at it, she replied, "That I did. All over the place." Her eyes met his over the menu for a moment. "If I could pick it up, I took it."
"Always the best approach," he grinned. "You never know when something might come in handy."
"Very true," she nodded, before turning and waving to Sergio, who was watching a small TV behind the counter. He looked up at the motion then came over. "That was delicious," she said approvingly, making him smile. "You've got no idea how long I was looking forward to it. I think I'd like another one."
He raised an eyebrow but nodded approvingly. "Same again, or something different?"
"Can I have one of the seafood ones? Extra calamari." Her smile turned a little odd. "I need to eat some tentacles at the moment. Kind of revenge."
He looked at her, then at Danny, who shrugged. "Ah… sure, whatever you say. A large?"
"Yep. Thanks." She waved her glass. "Another sprite too, please."
"Of course. Danny, another coke?"
"Yes please. And some garlic bread."
"No problem." Sergio finished writing on his pad, then disappeared into the kitchen again. The bell over the door rang causing both Heberts to look, seeing a somewhat scruffy man carrying a baseball bat come in. He got about ten feet inside, spotted them, gaped at Taylor who very slowly started to stand up, then turned and hastily left without saying a word. He was distinctly pale under the buzz cut. Outside, they watched him talk urgently to another man, pointing through the window at them.
Taylor waved and grinned widely in a very unpleasant manner.
Both of them quickly ran off.
Danny snickered. "Nicely done."
"Thanks," she replied.
When Sergio came back with the next batch of food, they were talking quietly as Danny flipped through a few more of the apparently inexhaustible supply of manuals Taylor kept producing.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Sitting in a chair in front of one of the consoles Emily studied the monitor in front of her, then glanced up at the big array of them on the wall. The aircraft was still slowly orbiting the site of whatever had turned a school into a hole in the ground, and the dim glow at the bottom of the aforementioned hole was almost invisible now. The crater was still very hot, far past the point of survivability, but was steadily cooling down too. The estimate was that it would reach a safe temperature in about two days at the current rate of cooling, although if it snowed, which was forecast to happen tomorrow, that might take a few hours off.
Nearly an hour of remote readings, including sending in an advanced drone that Dragon had left with Armsmaster some months ago, had shown that there was nothing obviously hazardous at the site. No traces of explosives, radiation, chemical agents, or anything else they could think of were present even at minuscule levels, so she'd finally authorized a manned inspection.
Armsmaster himself had been chafing at the bit and had barely listened when she'd flatly ordered him to keep his ass behind the security cordon. Admittedly she technically wasn't his superior, but he normally followed procedure well enough to have made him reflexively agree. She suspected Dragon was also telling him to wait and not just go charging in like an idiot. They hadn't known, and still didn't know, what was going on, but at least now they knew it appeared safe to investigate.
Assuming that whatever had caused it wasn't still there, waiting…
She shook her head feeling that her paranoia was getting to her. Someone needed to go in, and it certainly wasn't going to be her. Leaving her physical infirmities out of the equation she'd been in the situation of going into an unknown scenario before and still had nightmares about it. This was someone else's turn.
The picture on the monitor she was watching now was from the camera on top of the PRT APC that had taken Armsmaster and a heavily armed team into close proximity of the blast site. Initially he'd planned on going in on his iconic bike but had decided that there was simply too much equipment needed, so the APC was required, which meant it was more efficient to go with it instead of on his own transportation. For once Emily agreed with him. The view gently wobbled as the large vehicle made its way over rubble in the street, giving the camera stabilization system a good workout, then went rock steady as it stopped a hundred feet or so from the rim of the crater. Floodlights on the roof brightly illuminated the entire area like daylight, letting them see just how enormous the hole in the scenery really was.
They couldn't even see the other side…
"Fuck me," the man running comms to the field team said as everyone stared at the screen. "How in god's name could that be done without taking out the entire city?"
There was, as yet, no answer to what was a very good question.
Someone else called over from the side. "Director? I've got Mayor Christner on the phone. He's not in a good mood."
"Tell him we don't know anything more now than we did ten minutes ago and I'll be in contact when we do, but right now I have something more important than keeping the city happy," she snapped.
The man flinched, then rather more diplomatically paraphrased her words to the Mayor as she kept watching the screens. Prodding a control she switched the one she was in front of to the view from Armsmaster's helmet camera, which came up just as he climbed out of the back of the vehicle. He was accompanied by a four man squad in NBC gear, he himself relying on his armor for the same function. Everyone watched and listened as he issued quick orders, all the troopers fanning out across the ground while he walked slowly towards the crater, holding some sort of scanner out in front of him.
"Confirmed no radioactivity detected, no toxins, and no explosive traces, even at close range," he said calmly although long contact with the man let her pick up the traces of trepidation in his voice despite his control. "Significant heat radiating from the site but I can approach the edge for a few minutes before my cooling system is overwhelmed."
"Be careful," Emily said into her mic.
"I was planning on it," he replied dryly, almost making her smile a little. When the man was actually doing his job he was very good at it, so it was a pity he tended to go off on tangents so easily, especially when something annoyed him or he tripped over his own ego.
The view moved closer, until he was standing at the lip of the massive depression in the ground. In the light from the APC behind him his shadow stretched out across it in an enormous distorted silhouette, the center of the crater completely dark aside from the last traces of writhing green energy far below. It looked like an inverted aurora more than anything else.
"I can't pick up anything to explain the glow," he said after a few seconds. "It's nothing like normal ionization, or excitation of the air by hard radiation. The color is wrong for air at this pressure aside from anything else."
"Is is dangerous?"
"Unknown, but I would suggest not except possibly by direct contact, which would be lethal to arrange in any case due to the high temperature of the crater," he replied, sounding like he was thinking about something else. A moment later he knelt down and the view from his helmet tipped to show the inside of the crater at close range. An armored hand came into sight as he prodded the glistening surface with one finger. "Slick. Like glass. Or more accurately, very similar to trinitite, the material formed in a surface nuclear detonation. The temperature required to melt ordinary sand and brick into this sort of substance is very significant, at least three thousand degrees." He pulled out his scanner again and held it over the edge for a few seconds. "It's close to six inches thick at the rim. To do this in a matter of a second or so… Director, it would take the energy release of a reasonably large fusion explosion to produce this result, but there's almost no blast damage in the surrounding buildings, and remarkably little thermal damage."
He stood and panned the camera around, stopping on a couple of the nearby structures on the other side of the street. All the windows facing them were broken, although Emily thought somewhat cynically this wasn't necessarily due to the blast itself considering where Winslow was. Every building was some form of industrial one, most of them clearly unused. Smoke was coming out of a few windows, and the fronts of every one of them was blackened and scorched, while there was quite a lot of rubble on the street which appeared to have been knocked loose from them in the blast. Even so, the damage was oddly light, whatever had erased the school from existence apparently having been carefully targeted.
She didn't know whether that was better or worse. If nothing else, it showed appallingly good control of whatever weapon or Parahuman ability had done this. And if it was a Parahuman ability, it absolutely terrified her. It made the sort of thing Purity, or even Legend himself, could do look somewhat anemic.
It wouldn't have surprised her to know that even Eidolon couldn't have done it. And that was the worst thought of all.
Briefly considering, then dismissing with a snort, the idea that Behemoth might have snuck up on Brockton Bay then vanished again, she shook her head. No, it seemed unlikely that an Endbringer was doing what was basically for them a practical joke. This was probably the result of a Tinker of some form, quite likely a new Trigger, which was just horrifying. If this was what they started with, what would they do with time to plan?
And if it was an established one, why had she never heard of a nuclear Tinker before?
"Still no result on any search of similar events anywhere?" she asked, turning her head to where Renick and a couple of PRT researchers were trawling through classified files.
"No. Nothing matching this or anything like it," her immediate subordinate replied with a shake of his head. "Not even in the CUI as far as our information shows."
"Armsmaster?" One of the troopers called for the Tinker's attention, causing him to stand up and turn.
"Yes, what do you have?" he replied as he walked over. His camera view followed the pointing finger of the other man to the ground.
"Footprints. Two sets, one from that direction, one from what looks like a car based on the tire tracks in the debris here," the trooper said. Emily and the others studied the images as Armsmaster bent slightly. The first set of prints looked like they were from some sort of heavy boot, in a military style, if she was any judge, while the others were about the same size but less obvious and apparently from a work boot. The tire tracks looked like standard car or light truck ones. They were nicely visible due to the mud on the ground caused by the melted snow surrounding the crater.
"Depth of the prints and distance between them indicates the second set are from an individual approximately six foot three to six foot five inches tall, one hundred and eighty to two hundred and thirty pounds in weight," Armsmaster said after a short pause, presumably having consulted his own computers. "The first set are much deeper, suggesting the person who made them is considerably heavier."
"How heavy?" Emily asked into her mic.
"Estimated at between four hundred and fifty to five hundred and fifty pounds." Armsmaster's voice was grim.
"Which is unlikely unless it's a Brute carrying something heavy, or someone wearing power armor," Renick stated.
"Those are the two most likely possibilities, yes," Armsmaster replied. "Judging by the footprints I would suggest the second one is the higher probability. The individual in question is over six feet tall, again based on stride length. Gender unknown. Second individual is probably male looking at the tread pattern, depth, and arrangement of prints." He looked around, everyone watching as the camera view panned. "The first person came from the direction of the crater, stopped here, turned around, then walked this way."
After he'd followed the prints a short distance, he stopped and turned. "Then they went back, meeting the second individual at this point," he commented, walking carefully alongside the footprints at a safe distance to avoid contaminating the evidence. "Both people were facing each other at close range. Second individual subsequently got back into the vehicle and turned it around, before driving off towards the west, with the first one accompanying them on foot."
He followed the tracks with the PRT squad until they petered out about a block and a half away on a larger road, the snow covering it churned into slush from all the emergency vehicles that had taken this route and erasing the evidence. "The footprints were substantially further apart for much of the time," he finally said, having looked both ways, then turned to look back down the road they'd come along. "The individual was moving at approximately thirty miles an hour at peak speed based on that. I am unable to ascertain which direction they went after joining this road without further data. However they're certainly outside the perimeter at this point, as is whoever met them."
"Collect all the evidence you can and we'll see what it tells us," Emily instructed him as he began moving back to the school.
"Affirmative," the Tinker grunted, clearly already trying to work out what was happening and had happened.
She looked over at Renick, who shrugged. "Looks like it's safe enough for now so we should probably get teams in to check all the surrounding areas for survivors or wounded," he said to her gaze. "And then probably move the perimeter inwards to surround the crater itself. No point moving it outwards as whoever is responsible is long gone by now, I'd think."
Emily sighed. He was right, not that it made her any happier. Apparently they had a massively dangerous power armored Tinker running around Brockton now, one who could remove a significant amount of the scenery through unknown methods for unknown reasons. No part of that made her even slightly happy.
As the people in the control room coordinated their efforts with the other city services, the background sound level gradually rose back to something approximating normality although it was still rather muted. The image of the massive crater on the screen at the far end of the room was enough to make everyone nervous.
The surveillance aircraft kept orbiting the crater for another half hour scanning for anything unusual, until eventually it had to return to base due to low fuel. The second one that had been sent out to conduct overhead scans of the docks, chasing up the possible contact the sensor operator in the first one had reported also returned empty-handed, having found nothing unusual for that area. Plenty of thermal contacts, yes, but they were easily seen to just be the standard junkies and other homeless that called the otherwise largely empty part of the city home. As the aircraft passed over, many of them looked up, then quickly went into buildings, but again that was simply the usual behavior.
About an hour and a half after the event, Renick suddenly swore under his breath, causing Emily, who had spent a while walking around observing the operations before sitting down again to rest since she was feeling the stress make her other problems even more irritating, to look over at him. He was on the other side of one of the console desks, which had a center divider on which monitors and controls for each side were arranged in front of keyboards and desks. "What is it?" she asked. It was unlike him to swear in public, so to speak.
"We're getting reports in that you need to see," he said, his voice shaking with some emotion she couldn't discern. "Just hit the internal network a few minutes ago." He typed for a moment, the screen in front of her switching to display something extraordinary.
Emily looked at it, then froze, staring in shock. After close to thirty seconds, she grabbed the mouse and began quickly paging through the various documents that were being updated on the PRT high security server even as she watched. "Holy mother of god," she muttered under her breath in disbelief. "Ellisburg is..."
"Gone." Renick met her eyes over the partition. "Utterly. Everything inside the walls is simply… gone."
She didn't know whether she should be screaming in joy at the sudden end to the source of all her nightmares for years, or whimpering in terror about wondering what could have done that and how. She settled for reading the report in depth. When she got to the images accompanying it, she froze again.
"It looks like..."
Again, she found herself just trailing off in shock.
Renick nodded grimly. "It looks like that," he said, pointing at the large screen on which the former site of Winslow High School was still displayed. "Only much, much larger."
"Oh, fuck me dead," Emily moaned. "We have whatever did for Ellisburg running around my city?!" Her voice rose as she half stood.
"And Eagleton," Renick said. "And Moord Nag. And, if this latest report is correct, the Three Blasphemies. And about half a dozen other possible A and S class threats all over the planet." His voice was dark and foreboding, as if he couldn't really believe his own eyes.
She dropped heavily into her seat and just stared at the screen. More reports were coming in steadily, all of them showing very localized and very complete destruction via means no one seemed to be able to determine, from widely separated locations almost everywhere. Some of the events seemed to have lasted mere minutes, others could have been over an hour long based on seismic data, but in every case wherever what was doing this had been, nothing living was left. The destruction varied from complete glassing of the area down to individual buildings being apparently torn to pieces by hand, but the end result was pretty much identical each time.
The removal of the threat, usually leaving nothing but ash.
And one of the most worrying parts of the whole thing was that these events had all happened sequentially, but the locations were jumping around all over the place. That implied either more than one source of the damage, which was terrifying, or a single source that could teleport and had global range, which was almost worse.
And now it was here. Somewhere.
Then had taken out a high school? That didn't make any kind of sense she could work out…
The conversation with the Hebert man came back to her and she stopped dead for a moment. Surely that couldn't actually be related to all this?
Emily Piggot shivered, recalling the eyes of the man who had stared her down, and done the same to Armsmaster, without showing the slightest hint of fear but instead a sort of cold rage that genuinely worried her.
"Got some more data from Ellisburg, Emily," Renick said. She shook her head and focused on the screen. An image came up of someone or something wearing some sort of power armor unlike anything she'd ever seen before, dark non-reflective purple in color, with a few glowing lights in places on the helmet. The figure was holding a massive weapon in the process of being fired, the glowing blue beam of what looked like plasma caught in mid-shot. The next frame showed the result, which was a large number of Nilbog's creations being totally evaporated by the blast.
A final image showed the armored person turning to stare directly at the camera, weapon raised and a deep blue glow visible inside the barrel, which was enormous. "That's the point the monitoring teams evacuated," Renick commented, obviously looking at the same thing. "Everyone ran for it. Whoever that is, and whatever weapon they used, it completely destroyed Ellisburg itself and the fringe effects wrecked the containment wall, the guard and monitor posts, all the equipment, everything. Completely ruined by the heat and some sort of massive EMP. This data was being copied to the remote secondary site which is the only reason we have it but everything else was lost."
"Is it only one of them, or a whole team?" Emily asked somewhat faintly, still staring at that picture of the personification of destruction about to fire.
"There's limited data available, since most of the events caused so much damage no surveillance gear survived, or they were in locations remote enough that it wasn't there to start with," he replied. "But we've got this photo as well, it was caught by a security camera in that town in Bavaria I can't pronounce the name of. Again, it was a remote recording one, the security company was about two hundred miles away."
She studied the somewhat blurry image that came up, then compared it to the much sharper ones from Ellisburg next to it. "Looks the same, but it's a different weapon. So either it's one person with an impressive loadout or some Tinker is supplying identical power armor to someone."
"Yeah, that's what it looks like to me. I'm inclined to think it's the same person, myself."
Emily looked at him, then back at the monitor. "That doesn't actually make it less worrying," she said acidly, causing him to shrug.
"Sorry."
Turning to look at the large image of the crater where the school used to be, then at the live-updating map on another one which was showing the ongoing situation out in the city, she shook her head. "God. This is going to get complicated, I can feel it." She returned her attention to her second. "Any word from higher up yet?"
"No. As far as I can tell central command is running around like headless chickens at the moment. It's mostly regional bureaus like us that are doing actual work, which is why it took so long to get these reports. I have no idea what Washington are doing, but it's not helping," he replied with a sour look. "No word from the Chief Director at all, or anyone in her branch. The Protectorate in New York isn't answering, all we get is an automatic response saying they're dealing with a number of problems. We're pretty much on our own at the moment although we could call in help from a few of the local branches if we need it, I suppose. Boston could get us some backup pretty fast."
"Alert them, but hold off on calling them in just yet," she said after some thought, and considerable irritation at how inept some aspects of her organization tended to be when the shit hit the fan. They'd drop everything for an Endbringer attack but anything less than that tended to produce a far more unhelpful response. At times she darkly thought that there was some grand conspiracy to hang local branches out to dry on a sink or swim basis. It wasn't helpful.
"All right." He issued a couple of quiet commands to some of the other people while she stood and inspected the map, thinking hard. "So what next?"
"We try to find this person or persons, and very politely ask them to fuck off if they wouldn't mind," she finally said. "We don't need the sort of trouble they're likely to bring if they stick around. Not in this city."
He looked at her, his eyebrows up. "You think that will actually work?"
"It's worth a shot." She shook her head. "Probably not, but I'd prefer to avoid any combat with someone who can do that and is willing to." Waving a hand at the crater image, she indicated the scope of the problem. "It's a bit more than we're equipped to handle."
"Yeah, I see your point," he admitted uncomfortably. "And if we can't find them? Or worse, if we do find them and they want a fight?"
Emily sighed faintly. "I have no idea at the moment. I just want to make sure it's not us that starts anything, at least until we have a better handle on the situation."
"We'd better make sure Armsmaster isn't the contact with this new one, then," Renick said with a smirk.
She glared at him. "Yes, thank you, that had already crossed my mind. Make sure he's kept well out of the way as and when we locate whoever's involved."
"He won't thank you for that."
"Tough. He'll have to live with it. Get Miss Militia to… No." She stopped, then thought hard. "On second thought, don't involve her either. A weapons cape is not the right one to approach someone who has all the weapons. I can see that going very strange very fast."
"She's one of the best at talking down a new Trigger we've got," he said a little doubtfully. "She's also very calm under pressure."
"True, but I just have this feeling..." She shook her head. "We'll keep her in reserve. Dauntless and Assault. If we find this person, those two are to make first contact."
He stared at her. "Assault?" he echoed somewhat incredulously. "Why him?"
"Because as much of a pain in the ass as he is almost all the time, he's also one of the smartest Parahumans I know, is a lot better at getting people to relax and talk to him than most, and is very good at reading a situation and knowing when to back off," she said with another sigh. "All the corny jokes aside he's one of the better choices for this. Dauntless is… dauntless. He won't escalate the situation either. Velocity doesn't have the right experience and Triumph is too young. Battery isn't someone I want involved either for a couple of reasons, but she can do backup fine. So Assault and Dauntless it is."
After a moment, he nodded. "OK. Hopefully you're right."
"We won't know until we find this person, though," she remarked. "And I hope that's before any of the assholes in the gangs do."
"You think Lung or someone might try to grab them for his gang?"
She looked at the crater image, then meaningfully at him. "I think they might try. I very much doubt they'd succeed. And one crater is already one too many..."
With a small shudder he nodded, then started moving around the room coordinating the various groups in the field. She watched for a moment, then sat again, her back and legs painfully reminding her than she wasn't in good physical shape.
"This city will be the death of me yet," she grumbled, prodding the keyboard to check on the latest reports.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Max Anders looked at the photo on the screen of the phone one of his higher-ranked normal E88 members was holding out. "A new Tinker, hmm?" he said thoughtfully.
"Yeah, just sitting there with her helmet off having a pizza with that older guy," the man said, looking both surprised and somewhat impressed. "Like it was nothing. Mikey said she gave him the glare of death so he legged it, but he's pretty sure she's a cape. I mean, look at that armor! It's got to be Tinker tech, right?"
"I'd think that was likely, yes," Kaiser said, taking the phone and zooming in on the image. The face of the young woman was clearly visible, and she didn't look even slightly worried about being unmasked. He was curious as to why. "Interesting. I think we need to invite the young lady to consider the advantages of our organization. Clearly she's unaware of some of the more unsavory elements that might seek to take advantage of someone in her position."
He gave the phone back and turned to the other people in the room. "Brad, take Victor and Cricket and request that our new friend meets with me, will you, please?"
The cape known as Hookwolf grinned in a bloodthirsty way. "Sure. No problem. What if that other guy gets in the way?"
Kaiser shrugged. "Make sure he doesn't."
"OK." Hookwolf got up from where he was lounging on a leather sofa, motioning to the other two Parahumans mentioned, and all three of them left along with the man who'd brought the phone in. Sitting down, Max picked up a glass of scotch and sipped it, wondering what had happened to cause that enormous explosion earlier which seemed to have every authority in the city running about all over the place like idiots.
He wondered if this young lady was involved. If so, it was an impressive debut.
He'd have to ask her when she visited.
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SanguisAnima
Σ Series Z10/0 Group A 4A-GELU Mk1
- Location
- nowhere important
It looks like we have our first casualties volunteering as sacrifices for She Who Is Rage Incarnate...
- Location
- Here there and everywhere inbetween
Just a few words for these dead men walking "Are you tired of living" if so I have your graves stones right here that say "Poked the black hole of rage"
StrangerDanger51
Novice Writer
- Location
- New Zealand
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Kaiser...
You dun Goofed
You dun Goofed
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
Good riddance to Hookwolf. He will not be missed.
- Location
- brazil
You know normally i would say that you don't , but in this case yeah i really want to see him 'talking' to her even if it will be a very short conversation.
- Location
- Home
He heard from it but didn't link it yet, not like the PRT/Protectorate have either.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Oh my... Funny is too wimpy of a rating considering how hard I've been laughing the entire time I read that.
Oh, he suspects this "new tinker" might be responsible for the crater. And still is planning to strong arm her into the E88. It's not going to end well. Breadroll is not a demon. He's no where near as dangerous as a demon. But he'll die just as easily.
Oh, he suspects this "new tinker" might be responsible for the crater. And still is planning to strong arm her into the E88. It's not going to end well. Breadroll is not a demon. He's no where near as dangerous as a demon. But he'll die just as easily.
Wolfman217
Oh No! Oh No! Oh No!
- Location
- England
Doom's about to go Wolfenstein me thinks.
- Location
- Sol;Terra;EU;D;NRW
The Taylor demands that Nazis fuck off while she is enjoying Pizza. Otherwise they get the pineapple special.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
The protection racket goons were smart, they decided to leave quietly. Then they made a bad life choice, they informed Kaiser of the "new tinker eating pizza".
- Location
- So near, yet so far
Man, Empire is just really good at this social manipulation thing. They always found the biggest buttons to push. I mean entirely wrong (in fact worst) and suicidal buttons but they still found them with unerring precision.
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- Location
- Earth
Time for a Wolfenstien crossover
