Reminds me of the Thesaurus from Bored of the Rings.
Victories of the Soul [Worm/Avatar/ME/Multicrossover] [SI]
- Thread starter AEM
- Start date
- Crossover Mature Sci-Fi
Reminds me of the Thesaurus from Bored of the Rings.
- Location
- Chula Vista
I…don't think I've ever heard of that book, is it some type of parody?
Ramification 5.a
- Location
- Chula Vista
Ramification Interlude 5.a
April 17th, 2011. 11:55PM
Thomas Calvert
It's been a complete and utter nightmare trying to get out of the spotlight since my prompt escape from Brockton Bay. I had only lasted in my first safe house for a couple of days, and my second safe house had been found this morning. I was down to fleeing on foot, and was very quickly running out of room to maneuver since I had been labeled a terroristic threat.
From what few informants remained in the PRT, Jotunn had proven to be the puppet of something far more insidious and my indirect involvement with him had proven to be the equivalent of a nuclear hand grenade strapped to my back. Even my power was proving increasingly unreliable, fading where it shouldn't, activating in inopportune times.
Even now despite being hundreds of miles from any major PRT hotspot, very much out in the boonies…I still felt like I was being watched…
…
It didn't matter. I could still survive, I still had my power and the ability to split timelines. I simply needed to keep moving, to try again…and once I had recovered I would take the vengeance I required. This day was a good one so it meant I had time to plan, I already had a 'safe' timeline in place, and would put what little power I had left to continue.
I started.
I took a left turn, carefully examining my surroundings and making use of my skills as a PRT agent. I may have been retired but it didn't mean I had lost what had helped me survive all these years. The forest was large and oppressive but my keen eyes made out the numerous paths and trails created by the trampling footsteps of animals.
It was incredibly dark, but I could make out the eye glow of numerous deer and a few other smaller animals. I kept to the trail, using a compass and a flashlight to navigate. I patted at my weapon, a Beretta M9 with 15 rounds and a Tinkertech attachment that fired an energy beam that could pierce through six inches of steel. It would be very useful in case I was found…but so far it was quiet.
…
Too quiet.
I stopped then, glancing around and finding that all the animals had vanished from sight, a fog rolling in. I quickly pulled out my weapon, swiftly checking it over to make sure that nothing was out of order. This…fog…it felt unnatural. My skin began to crawl, there was a sensation to the air that I found…displeasing.
I heard a whisper.
I whirled, turning my weapon to whatever was making the strange sound, the distant high pitch making it harder to think. The fog had grown, and the trees did not leave even shadows.
What?
There was no warning, in a single instance there was a horrid pain in my stomach, in less than an instant later, a dark mass swept over me and I was swallowed wh—
I startled, falling back and leaning against the tree…and I split the timeline again
I took the right turn.
The forest here was far brighter, and while that internally relaxed me I kept on guard for my own safety. Doing otherwise would likely result in my death to whatever that creature had been. Perhaps it had merely been an angry mother bear, or an aggressive buck. If so then it meant that going the other direction would save me from such a humiliating death.
I smiled as I moved further and further, surpassing the distance I had crossed from taking a left turn. I could hear the burble of a stream, several rabbits lapping at its surface, the pests fleeing at my presence. There was light, and that allowed me to better see the white path that would lead me to a small town that was going to be one of my first resting stops.
I passed by a stark white tree…and stopped as my mind registered the sun-like brightness illuminating the way. The forest was supposed to be dark, and this light was not natural, just as the fog had been a herald of my doom. I lifted my gun, placing my finger on the trigger. There was something terribly wrong here and I would not let complacency be my destruction.
I glanced carefully, turning in a circle so I could get an accurate angle and picture of my surroundings. There was nothing of note except that the animals had vanished from sight again, but instead of a rolling fog there were sparkles of light that reflected back in nauseating detail. I turned and found a void in the light, all of it lensing around a space that made me sick to my stomach.
I stepped back and with little hesitation fired, and when bullets didn't do damage I switched to the beam. I smirked as it shot across the landscape, the empty space flaring and screaming.
My next death was equally quick, my mind's eye catching the shape of a sun before I was burned away to nothi—
I snapped back to my resting place, and despite my trepidation I split the timeline again.
I doubled back, deciding that returning back to the town would be a safer prospect than whatever lingered in this forest. This time I ran instead of casually walked, preferring to make as much distance between this place and myself as fast as possible. Whatever had found me here was dangerous and I could not trust that staying here would be safe in the long run.
I felt a shiver as I heard a distant hiss, the air shuddering with the breathing of something impossibly vast and impossibly angry. I didn't slow my running for a moment, and the hissing grew louder and more intense as the forest began to clear. Trees rumbled and snapped under the weight of whatever had taken up the chase, and I knew that even if I hit the town it would likely follow.
The solution was simple then, place the inhabitants between it and myself and flee to a larger and more well defended town. Any creature powerful enough to tumble forests would be considered a considerable threat to be put down by the PRT and the Protectorate. By then I would be in the wind and free to start up my criminal empire, and I would likely need to take up a new identity…that would take some time and some money.
I was tripped before I could continue that train of thought, my heart stopping at the fleshy nature of the vine as I rolled on the ground. In the process my gun was lost, and I felt dazed as I hit my head multiple times on the way down. I groaned, the pain and the ache of my muscles beginning to catch up with me.
I fell to my knees, and I quivered at the shattering of wood and the crumbling of dirt that follows in the wake of the monster chasing me down like prey. I stood back up, my expression twisting into a scowl.
I would not be humiliated, no…not like this.
Turning to face the thing chasing me proved to be a horrible mistake on my part.
I was met with a ravenous wall of flesh, flowing like a flood of water instead of the rotten mass of impossible meat that it was. My mouth dried at the sight.
I didn't…couldn't move, and I screamed as the wall fell upon me like a ravenous beast. I couldn't move, couldn't feel…couldn't think as I swallowed up, and I clawed my way out like a madman. Before the timeline collapsed I felt the sting of digestive acid burning.
My resting place was being disturbed…and when I tried to split my timeline again I was responded to with a piercing headache, like a drill was carving away at my brain matter. I couldn't move as pain wracked my body, all the pain from my timelines coming together to cripple me. Whispers were drifting in the wind and even in my agony I tried to analyze the situation.
The whispering, the strange sensation of unreality on my skin. I had been more than fortunate enough to obtain the files on the eponymous 'Spirits' and the exact protocols that should be followed. The average spirit was nothing more than a bug, weak enough for even mundanes to take care of them.
But spirits that had gathered together into greater forms were much more powerful and far more dangerous. Which meant I was dealing with something that needed much greater firepower than I had…
But it didn't explain how reality shifted so intensely, the stronger spirits could drag a human into their world, but I knew that this place was still in the physical word. There was…a feeling that told me as much, and the unreality came from what had to be elsewhere.
But if I was being preyed on by a Keter class spirit, or a Host…that would make this make more sense. But that wouldn't help me escape.
…
I heard footsteps, and a sense of dawning horror and terror spread throughout my body. I tried to pull on my power, tried to make my mind escape into a timeline and saw only death.
I split the timelines and saw increasingly horrific things, tortures and pains that made me freeze solid, and within seconds I felt something snap.
All timelines fell away, and my grasp on my power vanished as I was drenched in sweat.
The footsteps grew unnaturally louder, and the fog rolled in for what was likely the last time. Instead of the wall of ravenous flesh that I expected, a single figure was approaching me…and my bleary eyes widened in disbelief.
She was a young woman with straight brown hair, perfectly normal, attractive even for those her age.
Yet her visage invoked primal terror deep in my soul.
She looked at me with closed eyes, her frozen smile provoking shivers up and down my spine. She pressed her hands together in a prayer, and the forest went deathly silent.
"You have angered the Spirits Thomas Calvert." My blood ran cold. "Your actions brought power to an entity that is anathema to them, anathema to all humanity." The fear returned tenfold, and all around me I saw the forest reshape into a true nightmare, fractal shards of madness, trees of flesh, trees of bones and eyes, water that was not water, and a miasma of rage that coated this place.
"I…I…" I could barely express anything at all under the veil of dread in my soul. "Who are you? What are you?" But I could manage those words even under that veil.
"What am I?" The predatory cock of her head made me break out in a sweat. She leaned back, eyes flashing. "An odd question…But I am many things you poor old fool." I glared despite my fear and she snorted, as if amused. "A young girl who struggled with anorexia, a natural tactician, a friend, a girlfriend…" They all sounded so normal.
"You…" She tilted her head again, smiling almost sweetly.
"I am also something greater, a fragment of a beast the size of a world. A beast, an Entity whose hunger knew no bounds. On that day we understood…"
"U-Understood what?" The indignity of being unable to suppress my stutter in her presence galled me to no end.
Her smile showed rows of sharp teeth, and I felt something in my own mind fizzle. "I looked into the void…and it stared back at me. I saw the true nature of reality, and was broken for it…and then reforged into something new." The whispers were rising into a crescendo. "Shattered shards. Broken glimpses of madness. I saw and understood the truth. The Victory was here, and something has changed."
She shrugged. "As for who I am, you will only get to know me as Echidna." The whispers drew closer and I felt the goosebumps rise further.
What is that?
"You could call them my children in a way, though it wouldn't be the most accurate term." The haunting cries revealed the barely human abominations that hid in the shadows. "My friends don't want me hurting you…even if I know what you would do…how you would use me for your own ends. But I am a Shaman…and the spirits want your head. So who am I to deny them?" She smiled and I quail, my mind straining at the seams.
This was madness.
She vanished and the forest came alive with an infinite number of creatures that had no name, that had no faces, that had no logic to their biology. I felt heat in my chest, felt my heart beat unevenly as the denizens of this place flooded in a wall of unholy flesh, water, stone, metal and air.
Please…have mercy…
I raised my gun, firing in terror, in desperation for my survival, for my life. I felt my brain rattle, as something snapped the connection once and for all. I could barely breathe no, my arms were spasming as I ran out of bullets, and the Tinkertech attachment had melted.
My gun was ripped from my hand, and for once in my life I prayed to be shown mercy. Prayed for whatever gods were out there to save me, but the only ones who came to my call were the gods that called this forest home. A being of unholy liquid flesh, launched itself at me, tendrils splitting with disturbing angles and alien geometries. Eyes within eyes, lined with teeth made out of diamond and fleshy pustules. Trees bent and altered into wooden hills of spikes and poison and I screamed.
I threw a wild punch and acid burnt my fist in return, I threw a desperate kick and received a broken rib from an enraged tendril.
The rest of the spirits slammed into me, and as I was swallowed up by the flood of spiritual corpus…
I could hear her voice once more. "I have been very busy quenching the fires rising up across this planet…it seems I have one more to take care of…"
I felt only terror.
AN: I believe I remembered mentioning the Travelers a good while back. I've been…waiting to get to this part for a while now. This wasn't even the original plan for how they'd be introduced…sucks for Coil I guess but…meh.
The second Interlude should be out in two days unless I decide to make some changes. Then there'll be a three day gap before I start posting Arc six.
So enjoy I guess?
April 17th, 2011. 11:55PM
Thomas Calvert
It's been a complete and utter nightmare trying to get out of the spotlight since my prompt escape from Brockton Bay. I had only lasted in my first safe house for a couple of days, and my second safe house had been found this morning. I was down to fleeing on foot, and was very quickly running out of room to maneuver since I had been labeled a terroristic threat.
From what few informants remained in the PRT, Jotunn had proven to be the puppet of something far more insidious and my indirect involvement with him had proven to be the equivalent of a nuclear hand grenade strapped to my back. Even my power was proving increasingly unreliable, fading where it shouldn't, activating in inopportune times.
Even now despite being hundreds of miles from any major PRT hotspot, very much out in the boonies…I still felt like I was being watched…
…
It didn't matter. I could still survive, I still had my power and the ability to split timelines. I simply needed to keep moving, to try again…and once I had recovered I would take the vengeance I required. This day was a good one so it meant I had time to plan, I already had a 'safe' timeline in place, and would put what little power I had left to continue.
I started.
I took a left turn, carefully examining my surroundings and making use of my skills as a PRT agent. I may have been retired but it didn't mean I had lost what had helped me survive all these years. The forest was large and oppressive but my keen eyes made out the numerous paths and trails created by the trampling footsteps of animals.
It was incredibly dark, but I could make out the eye glow of numerous deer and a few other smaller animals. I kept to the trail, using a compass and a flashlight to navigate. I patted at my weapon, a Beretta M9 with 15 rounds and a Tinkertech attachment that fired an energy beam that could pierce through six inches of steel. It would be very useful in case I was found…but so far it was quiet.
…
Too quiet.
I stopped then, glancing around and finding that all the animals had vanished from sight, a fog rolling in. I quickly pulled out my weapon, swiftly checking it over to make sure that nothing was out of order. This…fog…it felt unnatural. My skin began to crawl, there was a sensation to the air that I found…displeasing.
I heard a whisper.
I whirled, turning my weapon to whatever was making the strange sound, the distant high pitch making it harder to think. The fog had grown, and the trees did not leave even shadows.
What?
There was no warning, in a single instance there was a horrid pain in my stomach, in less than an instant later, a dark mass swept over me and I was swallowed wh—
I startled, falling back and leaning against the tree…and I split the timeline again
I took the right turn.
The forest here was far brighter, and while that internally relaxed me I kept on guard for my own safety. Doing otherwise would likely result in my death to whatever that creature had been. Perhaps it had merely been an angry mother bear, or an aggressive buck. If so then it meant that going the other direction would save me from such a humiliating death.
I smiled as I moved further and further, surpassing the distance I had crossed from taking a left turn. I could hear the burble of a stream, several rabbits lapping at its surface, the pests fleeing at my presence. There was light, and that allowed me to better see the white path that would lead me to a small town that was going to be one of my first resting stops.
I passed by a stark white tree…and stopped as my mind registered the sun-like brightness illuminating the way. The forest was supposed to be dark, and this light was not natural, just as the fog had been a herald of my doom. I lifted my gun, placing my finger on the trigger. There was something terribly wrong here and I would not let complacency be my destruction.
I glanced carefully, turning in a circle so I could get an accurate angle and picture of my surroundings. There was nothing of note except that the animals had vanished from sight again, but instead of a rolling fog there were sparkles of light that reflected back in nauseating detail. I turned and found a void in the light, all of it lensing around a space that made me sick to my stomach.
I stepped back and with little hesitation fired, and when bullets didn't do damage I switched to the beam. I smirked as it shot across the landscape, the empty space flaring and screaming.
My next death was equally quick, my mind's eye catching the shape of a sun before I was burned away to nothi—
I snapped back to my resting place, and despite my trepidation I split the timeline again.
I doubled back, deciding that returning back to the town would be a safer prospect than whatever lingered in this forest. This time I ran instead of casually walked, preferring to make as much distance between this place and myself as fast as possible. Whatever had found me here was dangerous and I could not trust that staying here would be safe in the long run.
I felt a shiver as I heard a distant hiss, the air shuddering with the breathing of something impossibly vast and impossibly angry. I didn't slow my running for a moment, and the hissing grew louder and more intense as the forest began to clear. Trees rumbled and snapped under the weight of whatever had taken up the chase, and I knew that even if I hit the town it would likely follow.
The solution was simple then, place the inhabitants between it and myself and flee to a larger and more well defended town. Any creature powerful enough to tumble forests would be considered a considerable threat to be put down by the PRT and the Protectorate. By then I would be in the wind and free to start up my criminal empire, and I would likely need to take up a new identity…that would take some time and some money.
I was tripped before I could continue that train of thought, my heart stopping at the fleshy nature of the vine as I rolled on the ground. In the process my gun was lost, and I felt dazed as I hit my head multiple times on the way down. I groaned, the pain and the ache of my muscles beginning to catch up with me.
I fell to my knees, and I quivered at the shattering of wood and the crumbling of dirt that follows in the wake of the monster chasing me down like prey. I stood back up, my expression twisting into a scowl.
I would not be humiliated, no…not like this.
Turning to face the thing chasing me proved to be a horrible mistake on my part.
I was met with a ravenous wall of flesh, flowing like a flood of water instead of the rotten mass of impossible meat that it was. My mouth dried at the sight.
Mouths within mouths, consuming each other in a feeding frenzy.
Wings and claws, teeth and horns formed in incomprehensibly terrifying angles.
Madness and insanity, rage and hunger manifested in a wall of horror and death.
Wings and claws, teeth and horns formed in incomprehensibly terrifying angles.
Madness and insanity, rage and hunger manifested in a wall of horror and death.
I didn't…couldn't move, and I screamed as the wall fell upon me like a ravenous beast. I couldn't move, couldn't feel…couldn't think as I swallowed up, and I clawed my way out like a madman. Before the timeline collapsed I felt the sting of digestive acid burning.
My resting place was being disturbed…and when I tried to split my timeline again I was responded to with a piercing headache, like a drill was carving away at my brain matter. I couldn't move as pain wracked my body, all the pain from my timelines coming together to cripple me. Whispers were drifting in the wind and even in my agony I tried to analyze the situation.
The whispering, the strange sensation of unreality on my skin. I had been more than fortunate enough to obtain the files on the eponymous 'Spirits' and the exact protocols that should be followed. The average spirit was nothing more than a bug, weak enough for even mundanes to take care of them.
But spirits that had gathered together into greater forms were much more powerful and far more dangerous. Which meant I was dealing with something that needed much greater firepower than I had…
But it didn't explain how reality shifted so intensely, the stronger spirits could drag a human into their world, but I knew that this place was still in the physical word. There was…a feeling that told me as much, and the unreality came from what had to be elsewhere.
But if I was being preyed on by a Keter class spirit, or a Host…that would make this make more sense. But that wouldn't help me escape.
…
I heard footsteps, and a sense of dawning horror and terror spread throughout my body. I tried to pull on my power, tried to make my mind escape into a timeline and saw only death.
I split the timelines and saw increasingly horrific things, tortures and pains that made me freeze solid, and within seconds I felt something snap.
Goodbye…
All timelines fell away, and my grasp on my power vanished as I was drenched in sweat.
The footsteps grew unnaturally louder, and the fog rolled in for what was likely the last time. Instead of the wall of ravenous flesh that I expected, a single figure was approaching me…and my bleary eyes widened in disbelief.
She was a young woman with straight brown hair, perfectly normal, attractive even for those her age.
Yet her visage invoked primal terror deep in my soul.
She looked at me with closed eyes, her frozen smile provoking shivers up and down my spine. She pressed her hands together in a prayer, and the forest went deathly silent.
"You have angered the Spirits Thomas Calvert." My blood ran cold. "Your actions brought power to an entity that is anathema to them, anathema to all humanity." The fear returned tenfold, and all around me I saw the forest reshape into a true nightmare, fractal shards of madness, trees of flesh, trees of bones and eyes, water that was not water, and a miasma of rage that coated this place.
"I…I…" I could barely express anything at all under the veil of dread in my soul. "Who are you? What are you?" But I could manage those words even under that veil.
"What am I?" The predatory cock of her head made me break out in a sweat. She leaned back, eyes flashing. "An odd question…But I am many things you poor old fool." I glared despite my fear and she snorted, as if amused. "A young girl who struggled with anorexia, a natural tactician, a friend, a girlfriend…" They all sounded so normal.
"You…" She tilted her head again, smiling almost sweetly.
"I am also something greater, a fragment of a beast the size of a world. A beast, an Entity whose hunger knew no bounds. On that day we understood…"
"U-Understood what?" The indignity of being unable to suppress my stutter in her presence galled me to no end.
Her smile showed rows of sharp teeth, and I felt something in my own mind fizzle. "I looked into the void…and it stared back at me. I saw the true nature of reality, and was broken for it…and then reforged into something new." The whispers were rising into a crescendo. "Shattered shards. Broken glimpses of madness. I saw and understood the truth. The Victory was here, and something has changed."
She shrugged. "As for who I am, you will only get to know me as Echidna." The whispers drew closer and I felt the goosebumps rise further.
What is that?
"You could call them my children in a way, though it wouldn't be the most accurate term." The haunting cries revealed the barely human abominations that hid in the shadows. "My friends don't want me hurting you…even if I know what you would do…how you would use me for your own ends. But I am a Shaman…and the spirits want your head. So who am I to deny them?" She smiled and I quail, my mind straining at the seams.
This was madness.
She vanished and the forest came alive with an infinite number of creatures that had no name, that had no faces, that had no logic to their biology. I felt heat in my chest, felt my heart beat unevenly as the denizens of this place flooded in a wall of unholy flesh, water, stone, metal and air.
Please…have mercy…
I raised my gun, firing in terror, in desperation for my survival, for my life. I felt my brain rattle, as something snapped the connection once and for all. I could barely breathe no, my arms were spasming as I ran out of bullets, and the Tinkertech attachment had melted.
My gun was ripped from my hand, and for once in my life I prayed to be shown mercy. Prayed for whatever gods were out there to save me, but the only ones who came to my call were the gods that called this forest home. A being of unholy liquid flesh, launched itself at me, tendrils splitting with disturbing angles and alien geometries. Eyes within eyes, lined with teeth made out of diamond and fleshy pustules. Trees bent and altered into wooden hills of spikes and poison and I screamed.
I threw a wild punch and acid burnt my fist in return, I threw a desperate kick and received a broken rib from an enraged tendril.
The rest of the spirits slammed into me, and as I was swallowed up by the flood of spiritual corpus…
I could hear her voice once more. "I have been very busy quenching the fires rising up across this planet…it seems I have one more to take care of…"
I felt only terror.
___
AN: I believe I remembered mentioning the Travelers a good while back. I've been…waiting to get to this part for a while now. This wasn't even the original plan for how they'd be introduced…sucks for Coil I guess but…meh.
The second Interlude should be out in two days unless I decide to make some changes. Then there'll be a three day gap before I start posting Arc six.
So enjoy I guess?
Last edited:
Trooper1023
Look, sir! Droids!
- Location
- NYC USA
Noelle broke from being a Ziz-bomb?!
- Location
- Chula Vista
Nah…she…suffered from an unfortunate series of mysterious events that while they make her…a little nuts, have set her free from the machinations of the Hopekiller.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Damn, out with a new chapter before I can read the old one! Good work! 
His shard/spirit?
A spirit of familial bonds?
A spirit of family that changed (due to trauma/experience) into a spirit of warfare's camaraderie? How peers can become brothers-in-arms? A sort of "blood of the covenant is stronger than the water of the womb."
So she's a human, hosting a spirit inside her? Or her soul has meshed/intertwined with a spirit?
EDIT: Oh, it's Noelle!
His shard/spirit?
A spirit of familial bonds?
A spirit of family that changed (due to trauma/experience) into a spirit of warfare's camaraderie? How peers can become brothers-in-arms? A sort of "blood of the covenant is stronger than the water of the womb."
So she's a human, hosting a spirit inside her? Or her soul has meshed/intertwined with a spirit?
EDIT: Oh, it's Noelle!
- Location
- Chula Vista
Heh yeah…and yep Coil's spirit decided to bail out of sheer terror due to Noelle's presence. While she's not evil she's certainly far more dangerous as a threat with how her power has changed.Damn, out with a new chapter before I can read the old one! Good work!
His shard/spirit?
So she's a human, hosting a spirit inside her? Or her soul has meshed/intertwined with a spirit?
EDIT: Oh, it's Noelle!
Ramification 5.b
- Location
- Chula Vista
Ramification 5.b
April 18th, 2011. 5:30AM
Rebecca Costa-Brown
"So you didn't want us to interfere then?" I raised an eyebrow at an oddly sheepish Contessa as she fussed with her fedora. She had been expressing far more emotion than what seemed normal for her, and while it wasn't currently a problem I have no idea what the consequences of this change would be.
"I…meant specifically as Cauldron, and the events that would play out are…outside my Path." I stared as the implications sunk in, what in god's name did that mean? She glanced at me and spoke again. "I can see that there would be chaos and disaster…and that removing certain factors would result…" there was a haunted look in her eyes, a terror that left me feeling cold.
"Factors like that new Tinker?" Number Man stated plainly, turning towards Contessa with a blank expression.
She nodded. "Any attempts in removing her from the picture results in the likely utter destruction of the human race…that much I can see." I scowled at the idea of some newly emerged cape being the lynchpin for the survival of our species.
"How does that work exactly? Does it result from her Trump powers?" I asked, loosely gripping the table we had picked for our meeting. All of us were at the table for this day. Eidolon and the Number Man were on the right, clearly mulling over a number of topics. Contessa and the Doctor were to my left, and I could easily tell that the Doctor was visibly concerned about our Precog.
Contessa had a very faint smile. "From what I can tell, yes…she quells the Agents around her, slowly turning them onto the side of humanity. Eventually the process will be self-sustaining. If her stabilizing influence were to vanish in this critical time…"
"They would return to what they once were?" Doctor asked, her eyebrows furrowed deeply. To our collective surprise she shook her head.
"Not at all. Those already turned would continue to assist humanity…though Cauldron would certainly perish in the process. But humanity would still have a chance…"
That's…far better odds than we had ever had before, even if it resulted in our deaths. I knew going into this that we would never be heroes, not really…
"What are you leaving out?" Number Man spoke what we were all thinking.
She grimaced. "The turned Agents would remain on our side, but the other Agents would no longer have any checks on whatever is changing their original behavior. Monstrous mutations would become the norm, powers would become unstable and unpredictable, Parahumans would fuse with their Agents to become a collective threat greater than Scion."
…
Fuck.
"So the obvious thing to do here would be to not remove the only person keeping that from happening." Eidolon chimed in, rubbing his head with a scowl. He had been suffering from a series of headaches over the past few weeks, though we hadn't determined the cause. It couldn't be from a disease or a Parahuman effect, but we hadn't yet ruled out a neurological issue.
"Which brings up another development, she knows." The Doctor didn't have the most happy expression, visibly twitching.
I raised an eyebrow. "That was proven to be rather obvious when she created a portal network echoing our own methods. There's not much point to lingering on that problem when she hasn't attempted to out us."
"An oddly trusting statement coming from you." Number Man noted, fingers tapping on the table in a very specific pattern.
"I'm trusting that this Erudition has a sense of a time and place. She's proven to be a largely rational actor at every turn, any grievances she has with us would likely be acted upon only if Scion was defeated."
"I suppose you're right, she has had ample time to reveal Cauldron, and is in fact in a better position to do so…" Doctor Mother still didn't seem convinced.
"That is certainly purposeful, she likely expected potential backlash with her larger movements so created a perfect escape route. Portals to parallel Earths beyond even our reach." I sighed, remembering the numerous attempts to probe those gates. Doormaker couldn't replicate the specific method that Erudition made use of for her portals. So we couldn't access any worlds she has moved into…
"As well as a nearly unlimited amount of resources to build her capabilities, which would make her the most potent Tinker on the planet." Number Man added, his face kept neutral.
He wasn't wrong, her mass production capabilities were already paying Erudition dividends on one Earth, I can't imagine what would be made possible with dozens of accessible worlds. Her…corporation had already surged in income, growing fat and rich off the licensing worth billions of dollars for any corporations in America or beyond.
She had hired over forty engineers, and was planning to teach them how to tinker with her more mass-producible technology. It was…too good to be true…though more analysis would easily reveal the difficulties. Even if she can be explicit with how her technology works, it can take months or years for someone to learn something new.
But…it was a better result than anything that had come before…
"So for now we leave her be…we have more pressing matters to attend to, such as the emergence of this…bending phenomenon." The Doctor moved on, and I then glanced over at her. "There have been at least nine hundred million five hundred and fifty thousand confirmed cases though most of them are concentrated on Shin and less developed Earths. This is a multiversal event, and it seems to be accelerating with time, spreading out from numerous nexus points across every Earth we've currently discovered."
"Right…that reminds me," I spoke, deciding to inform my allies of what I was facing. I opened my palm and with a deep breath I triggered the heat burning inside me. A ball of orange-yellow flame with streaks of white surged in my palm. "I myself seem to have been compromised by this effect…I am apparently a firebender." I expected something of a reaction, but bitter laughter was not one of them from the Doctor.
She waved her arm, and a chunk of rock followed in a ballistic arc. "I've been facing the same issue, and many of our Case 53s have also been manifesting. This bending is powerful…but they won't be able to fight Scion without the backings of capes like Eidolon. It's the Spirits that are proving to be a more useful weapon, if we can only communicate with them."
I nodded. "So far we haven't found many who have manifested as Shamans, it seems to be a considerably rarer ability than elemental manipulation. We've found that strange Eezo substance far more interesting…the ability to alter physics with a simple electric current. But without full understanding of how it functions…our process has been…difficult." I palmed my face, feeling a considerable headache coming on despite having an impervious body.
Contessa flinched, her face paling considerably. I felt my flames sputter, and I knew something was terribly wrong.
"We must act quickly…the request from Brockton Bay, accept it. Bring in as many capes as required…"
Alarm spread across the room. "Why?" The Case 53 like cape had been explicit, and the dangers of a master couldn't be ignored but to worry Contessa. That was something far graver than anything else.
Her fear was plain to see. "Another failure state if we fail to act, another premature end to the Path."
My heart dropped into my stomach.
April 18th, 2011. 7:00AM
???
Deep underground, something grew, tendrils composed only of hate and rusted metal, infused with bionetic flesh and corrupted by waves of ancient and long distorted hatred. That flesh grew around an orb of white light, the last traces of a race that had fallen to the Ascended. Even in death their will remained, even in death their hatred for life remained.
They remembered.
When the rain of black leaves came, when ships fueled by suffering came down from beyond the reaches of Dark Space. When world after world was burned, they who were the Makara refused to surrender, refused to fall to a slavery that would last all of time. So the Ascended would teach them obedience and suffering would be their teacher.
They remembered.
A thousand worlds burned, and each and every time the Ascended tried to harvest the Makara they instead ended their existence, denying the ancient god machines the power of the Bequest that lay within them. Every time that the Ascended would find their chosen, they would destroy themselves and destroy numerous of the old machines in the process.
They remembered.
So instead of a harvest, the Makara would become an example to all those who would come after them. Dark technologies and dark invocations of power best left in the past were thrust upon the Makara. Continents were cracked as the earth turned against those who fought against the Cycle, oceans swallowed up the world in storms made of mile high tsunamis, firestorms ravaged cities and hot plasma melted the crust of entire planets. Atmospheres were torn from their gravitational binds, suffocating billions.
Yet still the Makara resisted.
Stars were detonated to shatter strongholds and break the bonds that united the Makara. Invocations of dark energy flared and sterilized solar systems, entire fleets of warships decimated with extreme prejudice.
They remembered.
The Harvest lasted for nearly a thousand years, losses unseen since the very first of the Cycles, frightening even the First to be elevated to Godhood. With each decade the Makara grew and learned, each fallen god growing their knowledge in leaps and bounds. Their minds were already prepped to understand the underlying physics of creation and what they could not understand was translated through the grand spirits that had helped take them to the stars.
First they learned of their enemy's great and terrible weaponry, multiplying their firepower with magnetohydrodynamic cannons capable of shattering battleships in a single volley, and energy shields that could withstand the city destroying blows of the ancient machines. At the same time the Makara innovated, creating new technology and new machines outside the grand design of the Ascended.
Particle weapons that could slice apart asteroids, transportation through higher dimensions enabled by their understanding of the spirit realms. Living towers that could crush the Reapers with enormous biotic singularities. Weapons of biology that would destroy their thralls, rivaling the terrible power of their foot soldiers.
In the end…it all proved pointless.
For the Reapers had called upon their very greatest power, the force that had guided them in their unholy Purpose for more than two billion years. In mere moments all resistance was broken, their fleets scattered across the corners of the galaxy. In a panic the Makara either fought back or fled, and were slaughtered no matter what choice they had made. Even fleeing to another galaxy did not save them, as the domain of the Ascended reached even there. Their great spirits proved to be their very undoing as the Reapers plucked from the mind of the machines of pure energy all they needed to destroy the Makara.
With a single attack the Makara's oversoul was broken, twisted and reshaped in a wave of insanity. In the end there was no Reaper that preserved their essence, no true remnant of they who were the Makara.
But they remembered.
The suffering, the pain, the agony of a thousand years of death and destruction kept a fragment of what the Makara had once been alive. Two halves of the dead race had survived the culling, one would be reborn with a ceaseless mission of ending the Cycle, while the other…found life itself anathema.
They had suffered agony beyond comparison, had their minds shattered and violated to a level that few one would ever want to comprehend. So they would inflict an equal amount of pain on all that fell into their dark domain. They would torture and destroy all in their wake for the rest of time.
They would seek races that had compromised themselves to survive, they would watch their development, and once those vulnerable races attempted to become more than what they were?
The Deep Ones would strike them down, posing as great and terrible gods, corrupting their culture into a hollow shell of what they could have been. A divine monument for all of their sins. And they would do so for the next two hundred and fifty million years. Eventually they would be molded into weapons of the Reapers, their broken minds vulnerable to their machinations and their 'chosen' race would consume itself at the very…very end.
The dark half of the Makara had fallen.
So why was she still here…? Why did she continue to inflict pain on the residents of this world, when the target of their ire had long since faded into obscurity due to the ravages of time
The orb flexed her tendrils, gasping painfully at the toxic purity of the air around her. Her all seeing eye saw the strange transforming man who had fallen under her thrall, making use of a potent transdimensional power that she found interesting. His mind had long gone, simply a machine of meat for her goals and ambitions. With her puppet she had acquired more puppets, more samples to study the strange transdimensional powers found in this new world.
She had found more puppets to twist and break, those who thought themselves slayers of dragons. Two had escaped but it was but a trifling issue for a burgeoning god. She still had the sole weapons that gave them power, and she would make use of them.
Yes…she had no reason at all to continue her mission, but she remembered nothing else. All that she once was lost to the ravages of the ages and the ravages of the shattering of spacetime itself. Surviving only by the slimmest of margins, propelled by the death of a cosmos that was but dust in the transuniversal wind. Only one of many relics scattered across the great spheres of creation.
A machine that would continue the last dark wishes of a race dead for billions of years. A Wrath that would continue her Purpose until she was destroyed or the world itself was. She was the dying gasps of the Makara, a dark god of a bygone age even as weak as she has become.
She was The Mother of Miseries.
So enjoy.
April 18th, 2011. 5:30AM
Rebecca Costa-Brown
"So you didn't want us to interfere then?" I raised an eyebrow at an oddly sheepish Contessa as she fussed with her fedora. She had been expressing far more emotion than what seemed normal for her, and while it wasn't currently a problem I have no idea what the consequences of this change would be.
"I…meant specifically as Cauldron, and the events that would play out are…outside my Path." I stared as the implications sunk in, what in god's name did that mean? She glanced at me and spoke again. "I can see that there would be chaos and disaster…and that removing certain factors would result…" there was a haunted look in her eyes, a terror that left me feeling cold.
"Factors like that new Tinker?" Number Man stated plainly, turning towards Contessa with a blank expression.
She nodded. "Any attempts in removing her from the picture results in the likely utter destruction of the human race…that much I can see." I scowled at the idea of some newly emerged cape being the lynchpin for the survival of our species.
"How does that work exactly? Does it result from her Trump powers?" I asked, loosely gripping the table we had picked for our meeting. All of us were at the table for this day. Eidolon and the Number Man were on the right, clearly mulling over a number of topics. Contessa and the Doctor were to my left, and I could easily tell that the Doctor was visibly concerned about our Precog.
Contessa had a very faint smile. "From what I can tell, yes…she quells the Agents around her, slowly turning them onto the side of humanity. Eventually the process will be self-sustaining. If her stabilizing influence were to vanish in this critical time…"
"They would return to what they once were?" Doctor asked, her eyebrows furrowed deeply. To our collective surprise she shook her head.
"Not at all. Those already turned would continue to assist humanity…though Cauldron would certainly perish in the process. But humanity would still have a chance…"
That's…far better odds than we had ever had before, even if it resulted in our deaths. I knew going into this that we would never be heroes, not really…
"What are you leaving out?" Number Man spoke what we were all thinking.
She grimaced. "The turned Agents would remain on our side, but the other Agents would no longer have any checks on whatever is changing their original behavior. Monstrous mutations would become the norm, powers would become unstable and unpredictable, Parahumans would fuse with their Agents to become a collective threat greater than Scion."
…
Fuck.
"So the obvious thing to do here would be to not remove the only person keeping that from happening." Eidolon chimed in, rubbing his head with a scowl. He had been suffering from a series of headaches over the past few weeks, though we hadn't determined the cause. It couldn't be from a disease or a Parahuman effect, but we hadn't yet ruled out a neurological issue.
"Which brings up another development, she knows." The Doctor didn't have the most happy expression, visibly twitching.
I raised an eyebrow. "That was proven to be rather obvious when she created a portal network echoing our own methods. There's not much point to lingering on that problem when she hasn't attempted to out us."
"An oddly trusting statement coming from you." Number Man noted, fingers tapping on the table in a very specific pattern.
"I'm trusting that this Erudition has a sense of a time and place. She's proven to be a largely rational actor at every turn, any grievances she has with us would likely be acted upon only if Scion was defeated."
"I suppose you're right, she has had ample time to reveal Cauldron, and is in fact in a better position to do so…" Doctor Mother still didn't seem convinced.
"That is certainly purposeful, she likely expected potential backlash with her larger movements so created a perfect escape route. Portals to parallel Earths beyond even our reach." I sighed, remembering the numerous attempts to probe those gates. Doormaker couldn't replicate the specific method that Erudition made use of for her portals. So we couldn't access any worlds she has moved into…
"As well as a nearly unlimited amount of resources to build her capabilities, which would make her the most potent Tinker on the planet." Number Man added, his face kept neutral.
He wasn't wrong, her mass production capabilities were already paying Erudition dividends on one Earth, I can't imagine what would be made possible with dozens of accessible worlds. Her…corporation had already surged in income, growing fat and rich off the licensing worth billions of dollars for any corporations in America or beyond.
She had hired over forty engineers, and was planning to teach them how to tinker with her more mass-producible technology. It was…too good to be true…though more analysis would easily reveal the difficulties. Even if she can be explicit with how her technology works, it can take months or years for someone to learn something new.
But…it was a better result than anything that had come before…
"So for now we leave her be…we have more pressing matters to attend to, such as the emergence of this…bending phenomenon." The Doctor moved on, and I then glanced over at her. "There have been at least nine hundred million five hundred and fifty thousand confirmed cases though most of them are concentrated on Shin and less developed Earths. This is a multiversal event, and it seems to be accelerating with time, spreading out from numerous nexus points across every Earth we've currently discovered."
"Right…that reminds me," I spoke, deciding to inform my allies of what I was facing. I opened my palm and with a deep breath I triggered the heat burning inside me. A ball of orange-yellow flame with streaks of white surged in my palm. "I myself seem to have been compromised by this effect…I am apparently a firebender." I expected something of a reaction, but bitter laughter was not one of them from the Doctor.
She waved her arm, and a chunk of rock followed in a ballistic arc. "I've been facing the same issue, and many of our Case 53s have also been manifesting. This bending is powerful…but they won't be able to fight Scion without the backings of capes like Eidolon. It's the Spirits that are proving to be a more useful weapon, if we can only communicate with them."
I nodded. "So far we haven't found many who have manifested as Shamans, it seems to be a considerably rarer ability than elemental manipulation. We've found that strange Eezo substance far more interesting…the ability to alter physics with a simple electric current. But without full understanding of how it functions…our process has been…difficult." I palmed my face, feeling a considerable headache coming on despite having an impervious body.
Contessa flinched, her face paling considerably. I felt my flames sputter, and I knew something was terribly wrong.
"We must act quickly…the request from Brockton Bay, accept it. Bring in as many capes as required…"
Alarm spread across the room. "Why?" The Case 53 like cape had been explicit, and the dangers of a master couldn't be ignored but to worry Contessa. That was something far graver than anything else.
Her fear was plain to see. "Another failure state if we fail to act, another premature end to the Path."
My heart dropped into my stomach.
___
April 18th, 2011. 7:00AM
???
Deep underground, something grew, tendrils composed only of hate and rusted metal, infused with bionetic flesh and corrupted by waves of ancient and long distorted hatred. That flesh grew around an orb of white light, the last traces of a race that had fallen to the Ascended. Even in death their will remained, even in death their hatred for life remained.
They remembered.
When the rain of black leaves came, when ships fueled by suffering came down from beyond the reaches of Dark Space. When world after world was burned, they who were the Makara refused to surrender, refused to fall to a slavery that would last all of time. So the Ascended would teach them obedience and suffering would be their teacher.
They remembered.
A thousand worlds burned, and each and every time the Ascended tried to harvest the Makara they instead ended their existence, denying the ancient god machines the power of the Bequest that lay within them. Every time that the Ascended would find their chosen, they would destroy themselves and destroy numerous of the old machines in the process.
They remembered.
So instead of a harvest, the Makara would become an example to all those who would come after them. Dark technologies and dark invocations of power best left in the past were thrust upon the Makara. Continents were cracked as the earth turned against those who fought against the Cycle, oceans swallowed up the world in storms made of mile high tsunamis, firestorms ravaged cities and hot plasma melted the crust of entire planets. Atmospheres were torn from their gravitational binds, suffocating billions.
Yet still the Makara resisted.
Stars were detonated to shatter strongholds and break the bonds that united the Makara. Invocations of dark energy flared and sterilized solar systems, entire fleets of warships decimated with extreme prejudice.
They remembered.
The Harvest lasted for nearly a thousand years, losses unseen since the very first of the Cycles, frightening even the First to be elevated to Godhood. With each decade the Makara grew and learned, each fallen god growing their knowledge in leaps and bounds. Their minds were already prepped to understand the underlying physics of creation and what they could not understand was translated through the grand spirits that had helped take them to the stars.
First they learned of their enemy's great and terrible weaponry, multiplying their firepower with magnetohydrodynamic cannons capable of shattering battleships in a single volley, and energy shields that could withstand the city destroying blows of the ancient machines. At the same time the Makara innovated, creating new technology and new machines outside the grand design of the Ascended.
Particle weapons that could slice apart asteroids, transportation through higher dimensions enabled by their understanding of the spirit realms. Living towers that could crush the Reapers with enormous biotic singularities. Weapons of biology that would destroy their thralls, rivaling the terrible power of their foot soldiers.
In the end…it all proved pointless.
For the Reapers had called upon their very greatest power, the force that had guided them in their unholy Purpose for more than two billion years. In mere moments all resistance was broken, their fleets scattered across the corners of the galaxy. In a panic the Makara either fought back or fled, and were slaughtered no matter what choice they had made. Even fleeing to another galaxy did not save them, as the domain of the Ascended reached even there. Their great spirits proved to be their very undoing as the Reapers plucked from the mind of the machines of pure energy all they needed to destroy the Makara.
With a single attack the Makara's oversoul was broken, twisted and reshaped in a wave of insanity. In the end there was no Reaper that preserved their essence, no true remnant of they who were the Makara.
But they remembered.
The suffering, the pain, the agony of a thousand years of death and destruction kept a fragment of what the Makara had once been alive. Two halves of the dead race had survived the culling, one would be reborn with a ceaseless mission of ending the Cycle, while the other…found life itself anathema.
They had suffered agony beyond comparison, had their minds shattered and violated to a level that few one would ever want to comprehend. So they would inflict an equal amount of pain on all that fell into their dark domain. They would torture and destroy all in their wake for the rest of time.
They would seek races that had compromised themselves to survive, they would watch their development, and once those vulnerable races attempted to become more than what they were?
The Deep Ones would strike them down, posing as great and terrible gods, corrupting their culture into a hollow shell of what they could have been. A divine monument for all of their sins. And they would do so for the next two hundred and fifty million years. Eventually they would be molded into weapons of the Reapers, their broken minds vulnerable to their machinations and their 'chosen' race would consume itself at the very…very end.
The dark half of the Makara had fallen.
So why was she still here…? Why did she continue to inflict pain on the residents of this world, when the target of their ire had long since faded into obscurity due to the ravages of time
So tired…
The orb flexed her tendrils, gasping painfully at the toxic purity of the air around her. Her all seeing eye saw the strange transforming man who had fallen under her thrall, making use of a potent transdimensional power that she found interesting. His mind had long gone, simply a machine of meat for her goals and ambitions. With her puppet she had acquired more puppets, more samples to study the strange transdimensional powers found in this new world.
She had found more puppets to twist and break, those who thought themselves slayers of dragons. Two had escaped but it was but a trifling issue for a burgeoning god. She still had the sole weapons that gave them power, and she would make use of them.
So tired…
Yes…she had no reason at all to continue her mission, but she remembered nothing else. All that she once was lost to the ravages of the ages and the ravages of the shattering of spacetime itself. Surviving only by the slimmest of margins, propelled by the death of a cosmos that was but dust in the transuniversal wind. Only one of many relics scattered across the great spheres of creation.
So tired…
A machine that would continue the last dark wishes of a race dead for billions of years. A Wrath that would continue her Purpose until she was destroyed or the world itself was. She was the dying gasps of the Makara, a dark god of a bygone age even as weak as she has become.
She was The Mother of Miseries.
___
AN: So after this there'll be a three day gap to build up an extra chapter or two since I'm starting up 6.5, and this Arc should be nine or maybe ten main chapters long. After that there'll be two Interludes, and a long break arc that I'm currently mulling at making it seven to eight main chapters long. Events after that will be a little more spaced out, and I have a general roadmap of what's up ahead.So enjoy.
Last edited:
Outline
- Location
- Chula Vista
As I've been writing, I've been trying to make everything a little more coherent, though I'm sure I've missed things along the way since I'm a rather spontaneous writer, actual full on outlines are…difficult for me to write outside of some generalities for an Arc. Even so, I've decided to put out an Outline for the Arcs that have more then one word put to what will happen to them. Here they are. There'll be more added as I get further along toward the ending. I'll put it under a spoiler for now.
Edit: Made some changes to cut down on unneeded Arcs. Might add more later.
Edit 2: Decided I didn't need spoiler marks anymore, I've got the Arcs down though names may change with time as I solidify the roadmap. I'll put all the earlier one to make this a full roadmap. They are as follows:
Emergence
Permutation
Immersion
Renovation
Rejuvenation
Ramification
Exorcism
Realignment
Exciton
Recuperation
Discernment
Repercussion
Deviation
Teleologism
Prolegomenon
Recreation
Connection
Machination
Exaltation
Communication
Implication
Contemplation
Origination
Extrema
Convergence
Epilogue: Culmination
[/SPOILER]
Edit: Made some changes to cut down on unneeded Arcs. Might add more later.
Edit 2: Decided I didn't need spoiler marks anymore, I've got the Arcs down though names may change with time as I solidify the roadmap. I'll put all the earlier one to make this a full roadmap. They are as follows:
Emergence
Permutation
Immersion
Renovation
Rejuvenation
Ramification
Exorcism
Realignment
Exciton
Recuperation
Discernment
Repercussion
Deviation
Teleologism
Prolegomenon
Recreation
Connection
Machination
Exaltation
Communication
Implication
Contemplation
Origination
Extrema
Convergence
Epilogue: Culmination
[/SPOILER]
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Trooper1023
Look, sir! Droids!
- Location
- NYC USA
Is that Ziz there at the end?!
- Location
- Chula Vista
Nope it's something far worse and far more ancient, and thankfully much less capable of enacting the same machinations as the Hopekiller due to that age.
Alex Prior
We are Many
- Location
- A charming, foreign port
I feel like this is a perfect time to say OH FUCK.
Wasn't the Mother of Miseries something from 40k?
Wasn't the Mother of Miseries something from 40k?
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
...Path to Victory is becoming a Spirit, isn't it? Technically, Contessa is one of the few natural Eden triggers, so her Shard is alive. A sophont PtV? Shit.
Taylor probably grabs the biggest WMDs Basilia has and uses them to get bloody vengeance.
Oh... or that.
*ahem*
Is his shard becoming a Spirit? Or maybe the Endbringers are manifesting their own spirits and are fighting back against Eidolon's control? I mean, his control is subconscious and thus somewhat halfhearted, and Scion's certainly not directing them. If Shards that are little more than biological computers running on "MOAR DATA" software can become Spirits, why not the Endbringers? Though, I suppose that the Shards have unfathomable amounts of raw data providing that boost. And Endbringers are kinda lacking that, since they're mostly left unformed until they're released --since in canon each new one had a sort of defense against the way the last one was defeated... IIRC. Of course, this is fanfiction so you can do anything you want and change anything you want. I'm basically just navel-gazing, really xD
Of course, it could just be stress. Or maybe karma's a bitch and Eidolon has cancer?
Probably a mixture of Shard restrictions and Spirits smacking Doormaker aside for trespassing.
And the numbers are growing exponentially? Until benders are more common than nonbenders? And these benders will outnumber parahumans by metric-fuck-tons? And Shamans will be the new equivalent to parahumans? Excuse me while I laugh in Cauldron's face! (*Evil, Delighted Smile*)
I forgot, can c53 shards become spirits? Because if so, then OOOooh boy, they're not going to be happy when they see the state that Cauldron's put their hosts in. And if Vial Shards can change the biology of a human to be fucked-up-but-survivable upon consumption/triggering, then I wonder if Shard-Spirits can alter the biology of their host upon their ascension to spirithood? Maybe polish the rough edges of off of the more extreme hosts, using collective data (pinged from other shard-spirits) or gathered/observed from the humans that are constantly in the place (Dr Mother and Number Man).
And no, I'm not just saying that because it'd be so very amusing for Dr Mother and the Number Man to be faced with all the c53s that they've caged --who are also suddenly their biological children.
A new species, remnant from an ancient Reaper cycle? One that Earth Bet was a part of, eons ago? And this species is reawakening due to Old Magic/Powers Returning?
- Location
- Chula Vista
Some of wha you've said is spoiler territory, though for benders I can answer just fine. The percentage of benders should be between 10 and 80 percent depending on the world and population, due to things like random chance, spirituality and genetics. Earth Bet for example will have 25% manifest as benders and biotics, while Aleph will be at 20%, and Shin is at 27%. Everyone else will still manifest souls, so you'll have most people be at Brute 3 since it's pretty standard for people in ATLA to survive impacts and hits that would break most RL humans.
So think Ty Lee or Equalist chi-blockers, and then you've got the shamans who have their brand of magical bullshit that would give Eidolon a run for his money(which only applies to prodigies or ancient masters)
Also yes Case 53 cape shards do turn into spirits, and quite a few Eden shards have already been converted. Including a few that Basilia doesn't even know about.
As for the Mother of Miseries? She can't really be quantified as alive anymore, with her species long since terminated by the Reapers. She came to this planet the same way Basilia did, though with thankfully far greater damage. Otherwise it would be time to leave the universe.
Tisaku
Head Chief Thinkomancer
magnetohydrodynamic
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
So I have a killer headache right now (I get frequent headaches and migraines, nothing unusual), so I apologies in advance if I come across as rambling or slightly-incoherent. Just some random questions about shard-host relationships. We know that most shards are largely indifferent to their hosts, but that there are also examples of some bias --Victoria, Leet, and canon-Taylor.
But then there are the few shards who seem to genuinely like their hosts enough to overcome that instinctual parasitic nature, like Victoria's shard. Even as a "low-sophontic" being, it still altered its ceded powers to provide Victoria the abilities to overcome/adapt to dangers. Even if we say that Victoria and Leet's respective shards are on the extreme ends of the bellcurve, then that still allows for the opportunity for others to exist out there, with varying gradients of grey between these two binary opposites. My question is basically this: Contessa's basically spent her whole life under the thrall of her power. Is this going to affect the relationship she has with her shard-spirit?
Edit: if that's what's actually happening to her
My personal headcanon is actually very much in line with this fic's take on shards (a little like praticularly intelligent animals, following an instinct to gather data). My personal headcanon extrapolates this a bit more, once you take into account the parasitic nature of most shards. If the shard is gathering an adequate amount of data, it allots more power to its host (like Taylor's range increasing) as a reward, but also to encourage further growth.
And buds are also kind of interesting. If the originator-parahuman is gathering conflict, then the bud is more likely to closely resemble the original shard (Lazerdream's pretty similar to her mom, and Shielder's pretty much the same). But if you look at Carol, who spends a lot of her time as a Lawyer, instead of cape-ing, then we can understand why Victoria's powerset strays pretty far from her mom's (Master/Shaker effect, shields instead of weapons). I, personally believe this is because the shard has to add some "spice" to the power, whether that's from data collected from the originator-host, or from previously acquired data, in order to generate more data. Of course, this is confused a bit with the nature of trigger events, but it's still interesting to think about.
And buds are also kind of interesting. If the originator-parahuman is gathering conflict, then the bud is more likely to closely resemble the original shard (Lazerdream's pretty similar to her mom, and Shielder's pretty much the same). But if you look at Carol, who spends a lot of her time as a Lawyer, instead of cape-ing, then we can understand why Victoria's powerset strays pretty far from her mom's (Master/Shaker effect, shields instead of weapons). I, personally believe this is because the shard has to add some "spice" to the power, whether that's from data collected from the originator-host, or from previously acquired data, in order to generate more data. Of course, this is confused a bit with the nature of trigger events, but it's still interesting to think about.
But then there are the few shards who seem to genuinely like their hosts enough to overcome that instinctual parasitic nature, like Victoria's shard. Even as a "low-sophontic" being, it still altered its ceded powers to provide Victoria the abilities to overcome/adapt to dangers. Even if we say that Victoria and Leet's respective shards are on the extreme ends of the bellcurve, then that still allows for the opportunity for others to exist out there, with varying gradients of grey between these two binary opposites. My question is basically this: Contessa's basically spent her whole life under the thrall of her power. Is this going to affect the relationship she has with her shard-spirit?
Edit: if that's what's actually happening to her
- Location
- Chula Vista
Hmm…in some ways you're right, the exact relationship between a shard and their host is going to actively affect how they manifest as spirits. On average it'll be a benefit due to active communication between them and other shard-spirits, though there can be exceptions. It'll mostly help people who are on the edge of the cliff, people severely effected by their shards into doing…rather immoral things like Damsel of Distress. But if they're already past the event horizon, like Manton or Jack Slash they won't suddenly turn good.
Contessa is an odd duck among Parahuman's, since she's essentially been on her Path since at least the early 80s. She has her own psyche but it's been left to the wayside due to her power. The scenarios that can arise from her shard's conversion are practically infinite, with the worst of course being a Titan Fortuna event(which ain't happening, just to clear that up...though it could in an alternate bad timeline)
Her shard has to be among the most intelligent shards due to its power to path untold number of futures and possibilities. So yes there would be an effect on their relationship, and the exact nature of their relationship will be…probably a very odd one once I decide to get to it.
Edit: Also your post is perfectly coherent.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I mean, sprinkle in the fact that Contessa likely has opinions, feelings, and thoughts on Cauldron and Cauldron's deeds as a whole, but ignores them for the sake of the Path --in an ever-downwards spiral of soul-staining bloodshed --and you can see why I think that Contessa is one of the most tragic figures in Worm. She might not've earned redemption, forgiveness, or even mercy, but Contessa is one of the few who can say "every act was for the greater good" and both mean it while also being true.
I, personally find her to be a more sympathetic character than the rest of Cauldron --save for Hero, maybe, who was growing increasingly discontent with Cauldron's direction before his death.
I wonder if Contessa's multi-decade, full-immersion (or as good as) in her power will affect the Shard's personality. I mean, we don't know how PtV itself feels about Contessa. On one hand, Contessa's Paths generate conflict by the planet-loads. On the other, we don't know if the Shard tweaks its power to "reward" Contessa for that conflict or not. I mean, I suppose that we could point to the fact that Contessa doesn't really suffer Thinker-headaches as one point in the Shard's favor? Maybe also that, other than the restrictions placed upon it by Eden, PtV doesn't really seem to restrict Contessa's access to the power?
But since canon tells us so little about PtV itself, there's a lot of room for guesswork and creative freedom. But don't feel pressured to involve Contessa beyond what you want. I navel gaze and ruminate and muse about literature a lot and will enjoy whatever you decide on, engaging with it just as much. This is your fic, write what you want and what you enjoy ^.^
Oh, good! The horrible thing about migraines as a whole (and some particularly bad headaches) is that they kind of... blur your thoughts. You know how being in pain can distract you from thinking? It's like that, but your thoughts are less "drowned out" or "blended" and more "unformed" or "misshapen," if that makes any sense.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah Contessa is a pretty tragic figure similar to canon Taylor in ways albeit at least this fic Taylor seems to be more happy and also why is she taller and more goofy (with basilla) than before
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Exorcism 6.1
- Location
- Chula Vista
Exorcism 6.1
April 20th, 2011, 10:30AM
Basilia Rubio
"You're…you're insane aren't you?" I laughed as the Dallon sisters gave me looks of outright terror. They sat far back behind dense kinetic and plasma barriers, a new design that made use of a kinetic barrier's ability to confine matter. Plasma would disrupt laser weapons though it would come at the expense of high energy expenditure.
Which wasn't much of a problem with the combined electromagnetically and gravitationally confined fusion reactor powering them. Gigawatts of power output isn't exactly a difficult prospect with that level of confinement of high energy hydrogen plasma.
"I have no idea what you're talking about Amy, I'm a perfectly sane woman." The two sisters were looking at me in abject horror, and even Taylor was a little wary of my crazed smirk. The only other person who shared my enthusiasm was Bakuda, and I could hear her mad cackling from the other side of the room.
"Hah! I knew there was something I liked about you. Your love of destruction is almost equal to my own. Come on then…fire her up!" Grace squealed, literally hopping like a rabbit on crack. It was fucking adorable even as it was scary at the same time.
"What the hell even is that thing?" Vicky's shield had expanded into a bubble of influence, and I couldn't blame her for the fear.
The experimental weapon was the work of weeks of design left on the backburner for more practical technology. I had decided to construct one anyway in what was basically a tinker dick measuring contest.
Which was funny since we lacked the needed body part to measure…
It was a square but elegant weapon, a four foot long barrel that was being held down by potent mass effect fields and electro-hydraulic presses. The recoil would quite literally shatter a human body, and its Eezo core was ruinously expensive.
I smiled, and Vicky flinched. "I'm glad you asked my flying brute friend! This little guy is the Adroit, a heavy rail-cannon making use of electromagnetic rails and mass rails to accelerate a half kilogram slug to about 5% the speed of light." All the blood drained from their faces, except for Grace who giggled.
"That's…insane." Amy's face would be a precious memory, and I felt my smirk rise.
"Perhaps it is insane my friend…but it's a weapon, and a weapon must be tested." The trio of girls tried to deny my right, and I denied them back. Bakuda met my eyes and nodded.
"So…does this button activate the Adroit?" Her shit eating grin was priceless and I responded silently in the affirmative. She pressed it to the strong protests of our teammates.
There was a short build up of energy, as the rail was pulsed with ungodly amounts of electricity, as dark energy was utilized to bend reality like a pretzel to accelerate it even further. The heavy weapon was sighted toward a solid iron target about ten meters thick and several hundred meters away.
The sound that sounded from the war cannon was beyond orgasmic, and I felt a pleasurable quiver run up and down my back. The shocking blue-shifted explosion that followed was deafening, and the air turned to plasma along the path of the super weapon. My eyes didn't even register the slug, only catching sight of the after trail of heat and torn apart air. The iron target had flash heated to iron vapor as expected, and a trail of destruction followed where the relativistic slug bored into a mountain.
Bakuda had stiffened. "Oh god I think I clima—" I cut her off with a smack to the head, my face flaming.
"Okaaay. TMI Grace. TMI." She blushed.
"Sorry…forgot your girlfriend was watching." I shrieked and swatted her again, she managed to dodge running off with a cackle. Taylor was staring at me, and I felt self conscience at all the insects buzzing around the place. Her eyes darted over to the sisters before darting back to me.
She beamed.
I…what was I thinking about again? I think I forgot…?
I tittered at the holo desk, lifting up my shirt to remove the heat that was building in my chest. Amy rolled her eyes and I almost flipped the bird at her before thinking about it more and deciding it was not worth the effort. Even then I wasn't really that angry, I was actually feeling pretty good right now despite some of my worries.
The past three days had been calmer than when Taylor fought Lung alongside Dauntless, Armsmaster and Dragon, and only two from when Dinah made her unauthorized debut. The entire city had been at a low simmer of war, with fighting routinely breaking out between the ABB and the Empire, and fighting between the Empire and the Empire. There was no official name for the group made up of Othala and Menja along with a few Empire benders and three times that number in non benders.
Most of that group's time has been spent fighting the corrupted and insane bits of the Empire, which thankfully only had Jotunn and Crusader since the rest had been sent to a Parahuman Asylum due to their…experience.
Too bad he was enough on his own with the monsters he made out of people.
Fortunately(barely…) it seems he wasn't melting down people to create his beasts, just taking pieces of them to create compactified orbs that would switch with the original to form into abominations of science.
Because that's so much better.
Purity had pretty much gone off the grid, though a deeper check of the rumor mill made things a little clearer. Three 'new' capes had shown up out of the blue, with their names being Mist and Twilight led by a Blaster named Beacon.
Yeah…to be frank the only reason nobody has guessed who they really are is because they use their powers differently. Mist isn't quite as dense in his form, and he selectively erodes inorganic matter. Twilight has different habits for how her little transformation works, and in fact on rare occasions she has been seen transforming into her other form…and Beacon is…
Rainbow colored.
They've also been seen with Tinkertech equipment that I'm pretty sure belongs to a certain AI. Tech that I'm 90% sure wasn't stolen…also bracelets on their legs but that was something I found for myself.
So Purity had fled to the hero's side whether out of pragmatism, or fear which made sense with the decimation of the Empire. Kaiser was out of the picture and thus Max Anders was out of the picture. He had managed to find a healer but then found himself arrested for money laundering and fraud.
A lot of money laundering and fraud…though in truth he was probably in a Parahuman prison somewhere, though I'm not too sure if he would go to the Birdcage or not. At least his power would probably show up again at some point…
Which reminds me…
"Could you all leave for a few minutes, I need to speak with a few certain beings." The trio's eyes widened and Bakuda had already left to build more deadly bombs, including biotic emulating ones. Warp bombs, gravity bombs, so on and so forth…
They left, and I crossed my arms over my chest as two sheepish shard-spirits materialized. Administrator buzzed quietly, her form reshaping itself rather routinely. The second spirit was a new one, resembling a patchwork of quilt, leather and…skin.
"You're new…Tantra am I right?" The spirit was a quiet one giving a nod but little else. I coughed, rubbing the back of my sore neck as I thought deeply about what this meant. "Now…I haven't gotten this chance before but tell me exactly what happened with that kid? I know he triggered, but why?"
"I wanted to save him." QA replied first and her honesty wasn't hidden or obscured in any way.
"So you decided to bud along with two other shards?" She nodded and I wondered why the third hadn't shown his face. From what I could tell the third shard had contributed a teleporting ability transmitted through Aiden's birds, on top of a very neat telekinetic manipulation of their outer layers…essentially saturating them with a physics altering field.
"The child was going to die…my host did not want him to die…so I aided him. Switch felt the same…even if he cared much less." Tantra added with a slow rub of her felt hands. She looked much like her host, though she didn't wear the mask that hid her ethnicity. There wasn't much of a need for that however with the constant swirl of fabrics obscuring her face.
"Right…I can understand that…which is why I'm asking these questions. There are a lot of people in danger in this city at any one time, is this the first time that a shard has budded?" The pause was much longer than I had hoped, and I wondered how many others had been gifted with power.
"This…is my first bud, I contributed the most to the Prince Administrator with modules from Tantra and Switch contributing to his shard. There have been about two dozen buds in the city though they are…mostly low key." QA explained concisely.
"Like Charlotte?" The two shards looked at one another, and I frowned. What was I missing?
"Charlotte was more incidental, the product of a Noble shard that had decided to bud after remaining with a sole host for more than 25 years. It was mere chance that it's bud had found Charlotte as a suitable host." So her shard got caught up in the wave of phase alteration spreading outwards from Brockton Bay?
I could hear Veda rumble away, silently confirming my question as she continued to work on chipping away at a new section of technology we had discovered. I could catch glimpses of gigantic vessels that would generate an area of massive positive gravity, warping space to exceed the very speed of light. Their tech wasn't far off from the eezo using races, though in what way I couldn't be sure.
"Could you tell me about some of the buds?" I started on a new path of conversation, and QA nodded with a minor frown. I didn't need the maximum info possible, just a tidbit or two.
Administrator clasped her heads together, and Tantra faded back to her home. "Efficiency, Compensation, and Adjustment budded to form a hybrid Brute/Tinker." QA made a display out of a swarm of insects, moving them precisely and using her beams like a surprisingly high fidelity pixel display.
Efficiency was Armsmaster, Compensation was Aegis, and Adjustment was Browbeat. Based on their powers that meant that this new tinker was probably focused on highly compact and efficient biomechanical tech meant to be implanted in his or her or their own body. The exact nature of how it worked would depend on how well those traits were translated to the shard.
"Anyone else?"
"Negotiator, Mien, and Bailiwick rallied together to form a new shard…though it would be more accurate to say that Negotiator and Mien bullied the foggy old fool into being reconfigured, leaving only the minimal requirements to keep his host functional." The disdain in the Administrator's voice was real.
Who…the fuck is Bailiwick?
I blinked, and my nose scrunched up at the appearance of Skidmark, god even without his presence my nose recalled the smell. From there the shard was repurposed and refitted with hardware and software modules from Lisa's shard with some added bits from Gallant. An Eden-Scion hybrid shard.
From what my eyes gleaned of the code they combined to form a discrete thinker ability that would basically make the trigger an amazing lawyer or detective. An emotional sense added extra data, and would give her a unique insight into structuring laws and moral guidelines.
That was along with her ability to create forcefield marks which besides being repulsive, could also channel her thinker powers into them to obtain data.
Neat.
"I suppose that's not so bad, you're trying to help people instead of pushing them to conflict. At the very least it's better than what you've done before." QA rubbed her head, blushing lightly in her avatar form. In that moment she reminded me a lot of her Parahuman, and I liked the thought of a blushing Taylor.
The spirit smirked and before I could be relentlessly and mercilessly teased I had a call coming in from…Collin?
I accepted the call, and blinked repeatedly at his request.
April 20th, 2011. 11:00AM
Basilia Rubio
I stepped through an emerald green portal, and grinned at the improvements that had been made to the design of the Dimensional Paths Network. They had trouble with emergency portal openings, taking much longer to open up a spirit pathway but being more than sufficient for escaping say…the Birdcage.
One of the recent modifications involved the power plant, with improvements to the emitters and Eezonic waveguides allowing for increased drawing of dark energy. There were ways to keep Eezo from degrading, specific equations that would reduce the strain to draw more energy as well as bigger more efficient fields. The other modification was distributed power systems, drawing from solar, geothermal, wind, fission, and fusion, as well as specially placated spirits to open and close Brane shifting portals more effectively.
It's…been in the works for a while but it took time to implement the changes.
There was a shift in the wind and my skin crawled as I glanced down to the block school that was currently shut down. I could see a dark miasma through its damaged windows, and the sensation of a pressure on spacetime was heavy and unsettling.
Winslow wasn't a very happy place huh?
I jumped, and then landed softly on the ground while numerous PRT troops marched out from their vans. Two Wards were close by, and I identified them easily as I launched myself at a steady pace. I was alone this time, as Taylor was spending her time using her bugs to discover and infiltrate Empire strongholds. All of them were locations marked by fights that had broken out between Lung and the broken Empire, precise marks that he left behind for us to find.
It…really pissed off Piggot to have to be reliant on him for information so the PRT now has their own drone division, following my example on a less advanced scale. They were also altering their computer systems, some of Dragon's work that would start trickling down. Integrated 3D crystal optronics that while they didn't have the same processing capacity as my eezo doped optronics were a little easier to make and immune to EMP, highly heat resistant, and could be programmed by normal software engineers. Well…mine could be programmed by normal ones as well but of course they still need to learn more modern coding language and machine learning.
Which was why I was introducing a lot of coding libraries and toolings that would help with scientific computing. Basically trying to introduce methodologies that have taken off in the distant future of the year 2020 but had only been in the early days in the 2010s…and very much nonexistent in the 2000s.
Which to me are officially retro.
…
Huh.
One of the Wards waved me over, and I recognized that stupid knight get up anywhere. I sauntered over, getting my drones to take high fidelity scans of the vicinity and feeding them back into my own head.
Electricity was shut off as was water and any other utilities…there was movement inside, and I could sense the spirit world pressing down on the physical plane.
"Hello Gallant…" I greeted the older Ward, who was currently on the edge of becoming Protectorate within the next few months. Strangely enough he hadn't been aged up much, which made sense since it was mostly people within a certain range that were older. I…hadn't yet determined why that was, though it could have been because of random chance for all I know.
"Erudition…" Gallant was being a little quiet today so I moved my greeting to another Ward. Another person who had been aged up from my original perception, which made research into how accurate my own knowledge was rather difficult.
"Hi Vista." I politely greeted the fourteen year old who was still a little under a month away from turning fifteen if I remembered her birth date.
Which was creepy to think about.
The Ward smirked, and I almost giggled when she shifted into a rather heroic pose without even thinking about it. She expressed confidence in her strut, and that lifted my confidence in response. "Hey Erudition." She waved casually, her smile wide as if happy to see me. She wasn't very tall, but at my height that would still put her at 5'3ish. "It's been a while…"
I smiled back. "I wouldn't call a few days a while now Vista, you'd think with Clockblocker on your team you'd have a better sense of time." She almost groaned but managed to remain professional.
"Please don't…" I giggled, and then pivoted my head and took in information from my drones. PRT troopers and Assault were currently huddling around what I was quite sure was a manifested spirit giving off loud pulses of anger that made me and Gallant flinch.
"Fuck it's loud." There was a connotation to the way he said it that made me think it wasn't just his power.
"In what way specifically?" I leaned forward and he leaned back, and Vista looked at us curiously. I guess they hadn't told her yet or she was just forgetting a few things.
Gallant grimaced but didn't go for subterfuge. "I've been having…difficulties with my power, sensing strange things. They think it's a symptom of…well."
"You're a Shaman is what it is, you've probably been sensing spiritual disturbances for weeks now. But without the full knowledge of what you're experiencing it must have been a nightmare to deal with." I actually felt sympathy for him, without the knowledge being partially beamed to my head…god that would be awful.
Vista started. "Wait…is that what was happening to you…why didn't you tell us?" She sounded a little hurt and Gallant looked away.
"Piggot wanted to keep it under wraps, it's mostly been some tests using procedures that Erudition passed to the PRT on training Shamans. It's why we were both here to meet her…you have more experience than anyone who isn't patrolling elsewhere." Vista didn't seem convinced though the experience part may have given her a small ego boost.
"That's…" I lifted a hand, and Vista paused in whatever rant she was going into.
"It's not unfair, the life of a shaman is a rather difficult and dangerous path. It was best to keep a private eye on him until he has a little more control. Which begs the question, how are you with spirits?" I responded to the both of them, as well as asking a question of my own to Gallant.
He scratched his helmet almost shyly. "I have some skill with them, I can call them to me if I try…and I can see into the spirit world on my own. I…can talk to a few and convince them to help." I glanced over to his left shoulder and felt my heart flutter. It was a tiny little thing, a spirit of healing, kindness, and water. It was basically a pink slime, like living Tylenol with a cute itty bitty face.
"I can tell…you've got your little buddy there don't ya?" Vista looked over to her teammate's shoulder, and I felt her power surge to twist space and dimensions in a respectful way. The spirit squealed, projecting its voice into the physical plane. Vista blushed, and I could tell she found the little guy adorable.
"Yeah…he's been hanging around me for a while, apparently I can tell him to heal people and he'll do it. Though I usually need him to…" A compartment opened up in his suit, and I almost squeed at the little water bag with a smiley face on it. It glowed as the spirit possessed it, and it formed a little hand to wave.
Oh god it's so cute!
I reached out, patting the little guy's head with the widest stupidest smile on my face. He was just a little baby spirit, a total cutie!
…
Okay I was getting distracted here, I still had a job to do here. "Anyway…" I coughed politely, and the two got serious. "I see there's a spirit over there, would you mind coming along for some spirit negotiations? Get to see what's it like for yourselves?" I lightly patted Gallant's shoulders and while he looked a little uncomfortable he didn't say no.
I stepped forward and they followed in sync with me, as I approached the huddle of nervous PRT troopers, and Assault. He looked to be speaking rather amicably with whatever spirit had decided to manifest in the physical world. Hopefully that said good things about the spiritual being's tolerance of humans.
"Excuse me?" The troopers stepped back and I lifted my hands as their hands drifted down to their weapons. Assault was the calmest of the bunch and I smiled as he greeted me.
He gave a wide friendly grin. "So the woman of the hour has arrived, nice to meet ya." He was perfectly sincere to my reading, and that painted a better picture of him regardless of whatever faults or defects he must have. Being human and all…
"Hello Assault, I can see that your other half isn't here. But more importantly…who are you entertaining right now?" I shifted my body to catch a good angle, and my smile froze at the bastard. Assault's smile diminished.
"Uh…?" I didn't pay attention to the kinetic manipulator as I saw red.
The spirit was about man sized, resembling a multicolored kaleidoscope proboscis monkey. His giant nose bounced and I could see the fear in his eyes as I leaned forward. A spirit of childish mischief, humor, and laughter. A rather harmless spirit that I had encounters with…
"You!" I seethed in indignation and rage at the sight of the damn spirit currently talking with bewildered PRT officers. Gallant was looking at me like I had grown two heads but I didn't care. "What in god's name are you doing here in the material plane you motherfucker." I stomped forward, and the PRT troopers took two respectable steps back. "Didn't I tell you what would happen if I caught wind of you again?"
"What the hell did he do?" Assault sounded concerned, and I took a series of breaths to keep myself from strangling that dumb bastard of a spirit. It didn't work very well in calming me down, but it kept the spirit alive at least.
"Spirit of his type are often pranksters at heart, this guy has proved to be a rather vexing individual of his subtype." I arched my back, taking my lessons to heart on this one.
Take a deep breath.
Then exhale.
Take another deep breath.
And exhale.
Assault was a little less wary now. "So what? Did he steal a sock from your washing machine?" My brows pressed together, and I absently chewed on my lip to avoid another outburst. The monkey bastard smiled rather cheekily and I thought about smacking him up in the head.
"No…he stole something a lot more private." I growled, glaring at the spirit from behind my helmet. Assault smiled, his own eyes filling with mirth.
"Wait…are you saying he stole your unde—" I grinned.
"Not another word out of your mouth." I was polite, and I moved on to doing my job as a shaman. I gestured for the mischief spirit to approach, my whispers being enough for it to speak.
…
The spirit fidgeted. "Shaman…it hasn't been fun anymore," there was a combo of sadness and indignation that fit weirdly together. "Various upstart spirits have taken residence…in my home, congregating around some foolish human girl. I enjoy a good prank more than anyone but…those aren't pranks. Something…is bolstering them, a dark and powerful force. The balance is being upset…"
"Can you tell me anything more specific, numbers, the types of spirits partaking in the hostile takeover of this school?" The mischief spirit grimaced but acceded to my request.
He hissed. "Hmm…last I checked it was a dozen spirits of malice, sadism, violence, misery and rage…led by a rather brusque Terror spirit. Is that all then?"
I sighed. "Yes that's everything, I'll kick them out and get you your home back. Better the kids than me…" the spirit grinned and before the eyes of the PRT it flashed back to his native reality. They looked a little worried and I decided to placate them as best as I could. "If you're worried about where he went, he's back in his home…just keep a good hold of your socks and private clothing." They looked utterly flabbergasted and I rubbed the back of my neck.
Assault started. "So is that everything? Because it might be a good idea to take down these…spirits if they're holding a girl hostage."
I rolled my eyes at his naivety. "They're not taking a human hostage, they're feeding off of her negative emotions in a horrific feedback loop. There's no need to sugarcoat it." He looked rather horrified and I shrugged.
There was a pulse of altered reality, the miasma growing darker and a smell of sulphur and brimstone hitting the air.
…
Right, we need to take care of that.
April 20th, 2011. 11:15AM
Basilia Rubio
I lifted up a new shotgun that worked a little more effectively for Urban work such as the interior of a haunted school. Vista and Gallant were to my right while Assault was to my left. I took the front most position, taking point if you would since I had the heaviest barriers and armor. Nothing short of an anti-tank gun would be able to pierce through my shielding, and I had contingencies for attacks that would damage or shut off the emitters.
Surprisingly there were a few PRT troopers supporting us elsewhere, and it didn't take much effort to figure out why when one of them lit a fire in the palm of their hand. The rest were actually airbenders shockingly enough, which was probably much safer from the standpoint of damage.
Hopefully they had enough training to not screw themselves over, though based on their movements they were definitely beginners. But that still means acrobatics beyond human levels and powerful air blasts and air slices. The firebender would be fairly effective, since most spirit's had trouble with more spiritual related attacks.
Sort of.
"So…what…kind of gun is that?" Vista whispered, her power distorting reality in some form of probing attempt. She had apparently learned from getting sucked into the spirit world, and could use her own senses to pick up abnormal activity.
"Typhoon double barreled shotgun. Fires a buckshot patterned APP blast, it'll pretty much pulp anything it hits. Good enough for more…cramp conditions."
"APP?" Gallant added a question.
"Accelerated particle packet, fires a compressed ball of particles. Not as good at getting through shielding but deadly once it gets past them." I answered cheerily, and they leaned back a bit.
Sorry.
"You don't have a lot of offensive Tinkertech that isn't deadly huh?" Vista's statement was a little hurtful, I was no Bakuda.
"I still have a few stun grenades, and all of my drones have stun weapons too." I gestured with my finger to a single drone, the machine pinging with its radar and other sensors for contact. "I'm starting my own production line for containment foam too…so yeah." I rolled my shoulders, and sniffed with my nose. Gallant did the same, and my nostrils flared at the scent of sulphur and hate.
"We're getting close aren't we?" Vista noted. A few drones came back with data, with a few of them having considerable acid damage.
Shit.
"Yes…okay not to alarm anyone, but do any of you have acid resistant armor?" The group paused, and the heroes nodded though the troopers did not. I sighed, and with little fanfare commanded my drones to coat their armor with Omni-foam configured against acid. Though that was on standby until I got permission…
"So who's in command here?" I asked the troopers who were largely doing their own thing. Assault obviously was here to keep an eye on the Wards but I was sure the PRT had their own command structure. One of the PRT field agents turned to me, and her footsteps were familiar.
"We've met before…"
My eyes widened. "Samantha Clemens…should I call you captain or…?"
"Captain would be preferable, yes." Her response was dry, and I got to the point.
"Would it be alright for my drones to add an extra layer to your armor? They've already synthesized an acid-resistant foam, it would only take a few seconds to apply it to your armor." The captain glanced in my direction from the point they had taken up. I could hear radio chatter as they spoke between each other and I could tell that the Protectorate heroes were on the channel based on their expressions.
"That's acceptable…so go nuts." She was a rather level headed individual, so I gladly gifted the four troopers with a layer of acid resistant material that had been tested with both synthesized Thresher Maw stomach fluids and Rachni dissolving acid. As well as a few of Bakuda's acid bombs…they proved highly resilient.
Once that was done we were plunged back into silence, the miasma in the building creating an uneasy aura to the environment of Winslow. There was a sensation of being trapped, of being compressed into a small space that left my stomach a little queasy.
There was a reason I hadn't brought Taylor along to this.
I had pinpointed the center of the unnatural Verge, the air was faint and unreal as the two worlds converged at this section of the planet. Most of my drones had taken images, and I frowned at the small figure obscured in the shadows of the spirits. I was about ready to give those by my side the intel when…
"What…exactly does being a shaman entail for me?" The emotion manipulator broke the silence with a serious look and I pitied the poor bastard.
"Have you ever played an RPG?" He nodded very slowly and my grin under my helmet became sardonic. "You know how they often have a bunch of quests that range from the inane fetch quests and escort missions to fighting giant monsters for shitty pay and no thanks?" There was a dawning sense of horror from the young man, and I almost felt bad for him. But I didn't want to be left alone to suffer with the spirits, so Gallant would have to pay the price.
"No…no…" his horrified words were music to my ears.
"Yes, my friend. Welcome to the rest of your life, helping baby duckling spirits cross roads and negotiating with or fighting monsters as big as mountains and dangerous enough to eradicate cities and countries. You'll be a mercenary hobo wandering the spirit wilds, placating creatures of eldritch mentality and unphysical existence."
"You sound a bit bitter." Vista's observation wasn't new, but I didn't have any more time for banter here.
"It's not the time anymore…" I hushed her as we approached the center point, a dark fog reeking of death and of negative qualities. I pressed forward, and I felt my instincts scream at me. Something was bolstering the power of the spirits here, beyond the loop with the teenager hunched over an empty broken locker.
Vista reacted faster than even I, launching a warp directed by her power directly into a shadowy serpent. It hissed in anger, it's scales glowing in an eerie amber light. Viscera was splashed onto the walls, sizzling as spirit acid began to slowly dissolve the paint and then the metal.
I calmly shot it in the face with a load of excited particles, cracking its skull with a single blast. The sadism spirit's seven eyes filled with glee, and it lunged with all the speed and precision of a viper. The captain was its first target, and with a sigh she let out a burst of flame into the beast's open mouth. It twisted in the air, flaps flaring to allow it to glide back down onto the ground.
"Shit…that thing is huge." Assault cursed, and I agreed with him. The dark viper was at least fifteen feet long and incredibly fast. Vista scowled and her biotics flared as she extended her power, and my eyes blinked as the hallway lengthened several fold. There was a lot more room to maneuver as her power bent space into a pretzel, as physical mass was changed through microscopic dimensional shifting.
Three blasts of air caught the spirit straight in the face, and it got back up with the swiftness expected from a spirit. It spun, its tail blurring and launching Samantha into the lockers, denting them with the sheer force it exuded.
"Weak…" It launched at what it perceived to be a downed opponent, unable to resist the temptation of inflicting suffering. Which was why I laughed when it took a fire bomb to the face, burning out its eyes in the process.
It seemed to flinch at the sound of my voice, of my laughter.
Interesting.
I tapped Gallant on the shoulder and he glanced at me. "Gallant…could you launch positive emotions at him, I have an idea."
He smiled lightly. "What kind of emotions?" He readied his power, and the spirit looked visibly concerned, rattling fiercely.
"Anything that often results in laughter…Mamba here doesn't seem to like it." He pointed a finger, and in a tenth of a second a compact beam struck the serpent. It started to laugh and vibrate, and something cracked within its core. I threw myself with a blast of wind, and with a grin I blew the monster's head off. It broke apart into motes, and the black mist seemed indignant.
"What did you do?" Assault sounded curious.
"Found one of its Bans, all spirits have limits on their behavior…lust spirits will never be chaste, violence spirits will always ache for a good fight. They can also add additional Bans to grow their power, and this guy had a weakness to positive laughter. So…"
"He's dead?" Assault completed my sentence and I continued my approach toward the fog.
"Pretty much…now finding Bans tends to be difficult, but massive amounts of trauma to their body will also do the trick if need be. So…you shouldn't worry too much about average spirits, it's the old ones you should watch out for." I palmed the fog, and with a wave of my arm and a low mental mantra I began to push back against the will of the spirit of Terror maintaining it's toxic miasma.
I gestured at the wall, and Gallant began to shoot at the fog with tuned emotional blasts. I swirled my arms, and a gale began to blow away the caustic fog, decaying with the influx of chi and positive emotional energy.
I pushed back with my own force of will, and the airbenders gathered their own whirlwinds. Vista rolled her shoulders, and she with great difficulty, expanded the numerous vents, and with the airbending of the PRT troopers they pushed the dissipating gas into the AC system. In the short term a damaging prospect but better that there was damage to the school than damage to the people trying to save it.
That seemed to trigger a reaction, not from the malicious spirits taking the school as their territory but from the natives that had been forcibly kicked out from their homes.
From the classrooms there emerged a single spirit, one that resembled a smarmy school teacher made out of light and paper, with its curves identifying it as either a woman or a very dainty man, or perhaps it was neither.
Spirits don't tend to conform to human perceptions of gender, species or even biology and logic.
The troopers faltered and I could hear the spirit hiss in protest, and with a lyrical shout of poetic English it unleashed a blast of words, pushing back the darkness. More spirits joined, angry shouts of territorial indignation uniting disparate spirits in a single goal.
To regain their homes.
Eventually with time and work and effort the noxious death cloud was dissipated and I bit my lip at the gathering of invasive spirits. Almost all of them had humanoid forms, dark foggy flesh that was wrapped in chains of blackened metal. They had anywhere from no pairs of eyes to up to three pairs of dark red orbs. Red lightning fed the dark entities, and they huddled around a prone redheaded girl. Their forms fluctuated slightly, claws and teeth vanishing and then regrowing in mere seconds.
About half of them were around 5'6 to 5'8 in height, resembling an athletic teenage girl in appearance. The Wards paused at their appearance and even Assault seemed to be taken aback. They were mostly spirits of sadism, malice and violence, dozens if not hundreds of motes of similar nature that had fused together into five entities. There were three purebred rage spirits that obviously did not get along, likely originating from different sources. Two grey misery spirits were far taller at about 6'2 to 6'4 with beanpole frames.
Again black chains solidified their essence, making them stronger than what they were supposed to be. Their source of sustenance had almost certainly vanished with how faint they were…but they had found a new source of sustenance, and had been claimed by a master. Something terrible hung in the air, and I felt disgust.
It was the twelfth spirit that spelled trouble, twice the height of a man and with a a form that was beyond horrific, invoking fear merely with a glance at its mutant body. It's body was chitinous, multiple pairs of spider limbs supporting its long serpentine body which extended outward for twenty feet in the crowded space it was in. It's upper half resembled a human, with the exception of its scaly skin, and mandibled face it was positively uncanny, and almost invoked anxiety at the sight.
It's tail flicked ominously, three distorted dog heads growing like tumors and barking and howling in multi-toned flares of sound. It's back was covered in hundreds of dirty surgical needles, pulsing with electricity and thunder. It's skin was colored a sickly green with a thick layer of ooze that dripped with disease and poison.
Jesus.
It's neck extended upwards, until it hung some twelve feet off the ground, rearing up to reveal a quadruple false eye pattern on its chest, unblinking flat eyes staring back at us.
"Call it in…now." I whispered to Assault, and the terror spirit flared it's mandibles, revealing a lipless mouth. There was a splatter of viscera and blood as another set of limbs emerged from its back, flesh emerging to form flaps for powerful wings.
"Spirit. Why are you upsetting the balance? Why have you manifested in this place?" I spoke with the certainty required of all shaman's, because without the willpower needed to perform…we would fall to the monsters that go bump in the night.
"We were offered power, we were offered freedom…just as the Alastor was offered power, but unlike him…we accepted our new Master." I flinched when the spirit's body briefly looked…mutilated. The other spirits circled around their spiritual better revealing the girl they were feeding off of.
You've got to be kidding me.
The exhausted and thin faced visage of Emma Barnes became clear, and I continued my questioning while we still had the time.
"Who offered you freedom, spirit?" The dozen spiritual entities became deathly still, and the chains of what I thought were metal…but were in fact silvery bone glowed in a reddish hue.
"An offer of a feast that never ends, a day where our kin will swallow up Gaia in its entirety. An offer from the Mother of Miseries…from the last Dark God." That was about what I had expected, and my keen eyes caught on to the chains tightly wrapped around their bodies.
"Aim at the chains." I tapped into the frequency they were using, even muddled as it was by the interference of the aberrant spirits. "Everything you've got…and Vista, think you can plop that girl over here?" I added the question at the last moment. She didn't reply but I had the idea that she was saying yes.
…
We had barely any warning at all.
Vista flinched, and twisted reality as the dark spirits screamed a warcry of pain and agony, their bodies bulging as pustules flowed with a power unknown to man. Emma was saved at the last second, a spirit nearly clawing her head off if it wasn't for Vista's space warping. We were moved back as she warped and shifted distance and pinched and unpinched space. I couldn't stop the insidious call of the strange abomination that had hidden from my sight.
Vista didn't waste time, and she tore a hole in reality, expanding an empty vent until it was large enough to fit a dozen men. We threw ourselves through the expanded area of localized spacetime. The school rumbled, and I could hear the moan of the enraged native spirits. As I ran with Emma in tow, I did my best to cleanse her of the taint of the warped spirits. Gallant helped, his spirit friend Blob Bob purifying the putrid corpus feeding off her negative emotions.
Reality recoiled as if insulted, and the top half of the school was dissolved in an instant of time. The PRT vans drove back as the school began to shake itself almost to pieces, and I swallowed as the dark spirits emerged fully in view of the people for the first time.
All the spirits emerged doubled in size, their chains turning into soft feathery ropes of fungal growth pulsating red with hatred. The lead Terror spirit started to laugh in tongues of nonsense filled with an incomprehensible insanity, and an aura of pressure spread outwards for more than a hundred meters.
The darkened spirit spread its wings as a 24 foot tall monstrosity of nature and primordial magic. A mouth had formed where it's once false eyes now blinked in comprehension and perception. It smiled with a maw of teeth made out of metal and tongue and lightning and hellfire.
"SO SAYS THE MOTHER. THE VYASA MUST DIE." There was a rising pulse, and I swore as I rolled past a lightning strike aimed from one of its dog heads, spittle flying from their mangled jaws.
Crossbolts skewered the ground where the PRT troopers and the Protectorate capes had been standing, phasing in reaping shadows of toxic gas.
"Oh…fuck…" The dark spirit's eyes widened and it shook violently.
BWOOM!
An arc of purple lightning struck in a zigzag line along the ground, and I cursed my luck.
This…was…FUCKED!
April 20th, 2011, 10:30AM
Basilia Rubio
"You're…you're insane aren't you?" I laughed as the Dallon sisters gave me looks of outright terror. They sat far back behind dense kinetic and plasma barriers, a new design that made use of a kinetic barrier's ability to confine matter. Plasma would disrupt laser weapons though it would come at the expense of high energy expenditure.
Which wasn't much of a problem with the combined electromagnetically and gravitationally confined fusion reactor powering them. Gigawatts of power output isn't exactly a difficult prospect with that level of confinement of high energy hydrogen plasma.
"I have no idea what you're talking about Amy, I'm a perfectly sane woman." The two sisters were looking at me in abject horror, and even Taylor was a little wary of my crazed smirk. The only other person who shared my enthusiasm was Bakuda, and I could hear her mad cackling from the other side of the room.
"Hah! I knew there was something I liked about you. Your love of destruction is almost equal to my own. Come on then…fire her up!" Grace squealed, literally hopping like a rabbit on crack. It was fucking adorable even as it was scary at the same time.
"What the hell even is that thing?" Vicky's shield had expanded into a bubble of influence, and I couldn't blame her for the fear.
The experimental weapon was the work of weeks of design left on the backburner for more practical technology. I had decided to construct one anyway in what was basically a tinker dick measuring contest.
Which was funny since we lacked the needed body part to measure…
It was a square but elegant weapon, a four foot long barrel that was being held down by potent mass effect fields and electro-hydraulic presses. The recoil would quite literally shatter a human body, and its Eezo core was ruinously expensive.
I smiled, and Vicky flinched. "I'm glad you asked my flying brute friend! This little guy is the Adroit, a heavy rail-cannon making use of electromagnetic rails and mass rails to accelerate a half kilogram slug to about 5% the speed of light." All the blood drained from their faces, except for Grace who giggled.
"That's…insane." Amy's face would be a precious memory, and I felt my smirk rise.
"Perhaps it is insane my friend…but it's a weapon, and a weapon must be tested." The trio of girls tried to deny my right, and I denied them back. Bakuda met my eyes and nodded.
"So…does this button activate the Adroit?" Her shit eating grin was priceless and I responded silently in the affirmative. She pressed it to the strong protests of our teammates.
There was a short build up of energy, as the rail was pulsed with ungodly amounts of electricity, as dark energy was utilized to bend reality like a pretzel to accelerate it even further. The heavy weapon was sighted toward a solid iron target about ten meters thick and several hundred meters away.
The sound that sounded from the war cannon was beyond orgasmic, and I felt a pleasurable quiver run up and down my back. The shocking blue-shifted explosion that followed was deafening, and the air turned to plasma along the path of the super weapon. My eyes didn't even register the slug, only catching sight of the after trail of heat and torn apart air. The iron target had flash heated to iron vapor as expected, and a trail of destruction followed where the relativistic slug bored into a mountain.
Bakuda had stiffened. "Oh god I think I clima—" I cut her off with a smack to the head, my face flaming.
"Okaaay. TMI Grace. TMI." She blushed.
"Sorry…forgot your girlfriend was watching." I shrieked and swatted her again, she managed to dodge running off with a cackle. Taylor was staring at me, and I felt self conscience at all the insects buzzing around the place. Her eyes darted over to the sisters before darting back to me.
She beamed.
I…what was I thinking about again? I think I forgot…?
I tittered at the holo desk, lifting up my shirt to remove the heat that was building in my chest. Amy rolled her eyes and I almost flipped the bird at her before thinking about it more and deciding it was not worth the effort. Even then I wasn't really that angry, I was actually feeling pretty good right now despite some of my worries.
The past three days had been calmer than when Taylor fought Lung alongside Dauntless, Armsmaster and Dragon, and only two from when Dinah made her unauthorized debut. The entire city had been at a low simmer of war, with fighting routinely breaking out between the ABB and the Empire, and fighting between the Empire and the Empire. There was no official name for the group made up of Othala and Menja along with a few Empire benders and three times that number in non benders.
Most of that group's time has been spent fighting the corrupted and insane bits of the Empire, which thankfully only had Jotunn and Crusader since the rest had been sent to a Parahuman Asylum due to their…experience.
Too bad he was enough on his own with the monsters he made out of people.
Fortunately(barely…) it seems he wasn't melting down people to create his beasts, just taking pieces of them to create compactified orbs that would switch with the original to form into abominations of science.
Because that's so much better.
Purity had pretty much gone off the grid, though a deeper check of the rumor mill made things a little clearer. Three 'new' capes had shown up out of the blue, with their names being Mist and Twilight led by a Blaster named Beacon.
Yeah…to be frank the only reason nobody has guessed who they really are is because they use their powers differently. Mist isn't quite as dense in his form, and he selectively erodes inorganic matter. Twilight has different habits for how her little transformation works, and in fact on rare occasions she has been seen transforming into her other form…and Beacon is…
Rainbow colored.
They've also been seen with Tinkertech equipment that I'm pretty sure belongs to a certain AI. Tech that I'm 90% sure wasn't stolen…also bracelets on their legs but that was something I found for myself.
So Purity had fled to the hero's side whether out of pragmatism, or fear which made sense with the decimation of the Empire. Kaiser was out of the picture and thus Max Anders was out of the picture. He had managed to find a healer but then found himself arrested for money laundering and fraud.
A lot of money laundering and fraud…though in truth he was probably in a Parahuman prison somewhere, though I'm not too sure if he would go to the Birdcage or not. At least his power would probably show up again at some point…
Which reminds me…
"Could you all leave for a few minutes, I need to speak with a few certain beings." The trio's eyes widened and Bakuda had already left to build more deadly bombs, including biotic emulating ones. Warp bombs, gravity bombs, so on and so forth…
They left, and I crossed my arms over my chest as two sheepish shard-spirits materialized. Administrator buzzed quietly, her form reshaping itself rather routinely. The second spirit was a new one, resembling a patchwork of quilt, leather and…skin.
"You're new…Tantra am I right?" The spirit was a quiet one giving a nod but little else. I coughed, rubbing the back of my sore neck as I thought deeply about what this meant. "Now…I haven't gotten this chance before but tell me exactly what happened with that kid? I know he triggered, but why?"
"I wanted to save him." QA replied first and her honesty wasn't hidden or obscured in any way.
"So you decided to bud along with two other shards?" She nodded and I wondered why the third hadn't shown his face. From what I could tell the third shard had contributed a teleporting ability transmitted through Aiden's birds, on top of a very neat telekinetic manipulation of their outer layers…essentially saturating them with a physics altering field.
"The child was going to die…my host did not want him to die…so I aided him. Switch felt the same…even if he cared much less." Tantra added with a slow rub of her felt hands. She looked much like her host, though she didn't wear the mask that hid her ethnicity. There wasn't much of a need for that however with the constant swirl of fabrics obscuring her face.
"Right…I can understand that…which is why I'm asking these questions. There are a lot of people in danger in this city at any one time, is this the first time that a shard has budded?" The pause was much longer than I had hoped, and I wondered how many others had been gifted with power.
"This…is my first bud, I contributed the most to the Prince Administrator with modules from Tantra and Switch contributing to his shard. There have been about two dozen buds in the city though they are…mostly low key." QA explained concisely.
"Like Charlotte?" The two shards looked at one another, and I frowned. What was I missing?
"Charlotte was more incidental, the product of a Noble shard that had decided to bud after remaining with a sole host for more than 25 years. It was mere chance that it's bud had found Charlotte as a suitable host." So her shard got caught up in the wave of phase alteration spreading outwards from Brockton Bay?
I could hear Veda rumble away, silently confirming my question as she continued to work on chipping away at a new section of technology we had discovered. I could catch glimpses of gigantic vessels that would generate an area of massive positive gravity, warping space to exceed the very speed of light. Their tech wasn't far off from the eezo using races, though in what way I couldn't be sure.
"Could you tell me about some of the buds?" I started on a new path of conversation, and QA nodded with a minor frown. I didn't need the maximum info possible, just a tidbit or two.
Administrator clasped her heads together, and Tantra faded back to her home. "Efficiency, Compensation, and Adjustment budded to form a hybrid Brute/Tinker." QA made a display out of a swarm of insects, moving them precisely and using her beams like a surprisingly high fidelity pixel display.
Efficiency was Armsmaster, Compensation was Aegis, and Adjustment was Browbeat. Based on their powers that meant that this new tinker was probably focused on highly compact and efficient biomechanical tech meant to be implanted in his or her or their own body. The exact nature of how it worked would depend on how well those traits were translated to the shard.
"Anyone else?"
"Negotiator, Mien, and Bailiwick rallied together to form a new shard…though it would be more accurate to say that Negotiator and Mien bullied the foggy old fool into being reconfigured, leaving only the minimal requirements to keep his host functional." The disdain in the Administrator's voice was real.
Who…the fuck is Bailiwick?
I blinked, and my nose scrunched up at the appearance of Skidmark, god even without his presence my nose recalled the smell. From there the shard was repurposed and refitted with hardware and software modules from Lisa's shard with some added bits from Gallant. An Eden-Scion hybrid shard.
From what my eyes gleaned of the code they combined to form a discrete thinker ability that would basically make the trigger an amazing lawyer or detective. An emotional sense added extra data, and would give her a unique insight into structuring laws and moral guidelines.
That was along with her ability to create forcefield marks which besides being repulsive, could also channel her thinker powers into them to obtain data.
Neat.
"I suppose that's not so bad, you're trying to help people instead of pushing them to conflict. At the very least it's better than what you've done before." QA rubbed her head, blushing lightly in her avatar form. In that moment she reminded me a lot of her Parahuman, and I liked the thought of a blushing Taylor.
The spirit smirked and before I could be relentlessly and mercilessly teased I had a call coming in from…Collin?
I accepted the call, and blinked repeatedly at his request.
___
April 20th, 2011. 11:00AM
Basilia Rubio
I stepped through an emerald green portal, and grinned at the improvements that had been made to the design of the Dimensional Paths Network. They had trouble with emergency portal openings, taking much longer to open up a spirit pathway but being more than sufficient for escaping say…the Birdcage.
One of the recent modifications involved the power plant, with improvements to the emitters and Eezonic waveguides allowing for increased drawing of dark energy. There were ways to keep Eezo from degrading, specific equations that would reduce the strain to draw more energy as well as bigger more efficient fields. The other modification was distributed power systems, drawing from solar, geothermal, wind, fission, and fusion, as well as specially placated spirits to open and close Brane shifting portals more effectively.
It's…been in the works for a while but it took time to implement the changes.
There was a shift in the wind and my skin crawled as I glanced down to the block school that was currently shut down. I could see a dark miasma through its damaged windows, and the sensation of a pressure on spacetime was heavy and unsettling.
Winslow wasn't a very happy place huh?
I jumped, and then landed softly on the ground while numerous PRT troops marched out from their vans. Two Wards were close by, and I identified them easily as I launched myself at a steady pace. I was alone this time, as Taylor was spending her time using her bugs to discover and infiltrate Empire strongholds. All of them were locations marked by fights that had broken out between Lung and the broken Empire, precise marks that he left behind for us to find.
It…really pissed off Piggot to have to be reliant on him for information so the PRT now has their own drone division, following my example on a less advanced scale. They were also altering their computer systems, some of Dragon's work that would start trickling down. Integrated 3D crystal optronics that while they didn't have the same processing capacity as my eezo doped optronics were a little easier to make and immune to EMP, highly heat resistant, and could be programmed by normal software engineers. Well…mine could be programmed by normal ones as well but of course they still need to learn more modern coding language and machine learning.
Which was why I was introducing a lot of coding libraries and toolings that would help with scientific computing. Basically trying to introduce methodologies that have taken off in the distant future of the year 2020 but had only been in the early days in the 2010s…and very much nonexistent in the 2000s.
Which to me are officially retro.
…
Huh.
One of the Wards waved me over, and I recognized that stupid knight get up anywhere. I sauntered over, getting my drones to take high fidelity scans of the vicinity and feeding them back into my own head.
Electricity was shut off as was water and any other utilities…there was movement inside, and I could sense the spirit world pressing down on the physical plane.
"Hello Gallant…" I greeted the older Ward, who was currently on the edge of becoming Protectorate within the next few months. Strangely enough he hadn't been aged up much, which made sense since it was mostly people within a certain range that were older. I…hadn't yet determined why that was, though it could have been because of random chance for all I know.
"Erudition…" Gallant was being a little quiet today so I moved my greeting to another Ward. Another person who had been aged up from my original perception, which made research into how accurate my own knowledge was rather difficult.
"Hi Vista." I politely greeted the fourteen year old who was still a little under a month away from turning fifteen if I remembered her birth date.
Which was creepy to think about.
The Ward smirked, and I almost giggled when she shifted into a rather heroic pose without even thinking about it. She expressed confidence in her strut, and that lifted my confidence in response. "Hey Erudition." She waved casually, her smile wide as if happy to see me. She wasn't very tall, but at my height that would still put her at 5'3ish. "It's been a while…"
I smiled back. "I wouldn't call a few days a while now Vista, you'd think with Clockblocker on your team you'd have a better sense of time." She almost groaned but managed to remain professional.
"Please don't…" I giggled, and then pivoted my head and took in information from my drones. PRT troopers and Assault were currently huddling around what I was quite sure was a manifested spirit giving off loud pulses of anger that made me and Gallant flinch.
"Fuck it's loud." There was a connotation to the way he said it that made me think it wasn't just his power.
"In what way specifically?" I leaned forward and he leaned back, and Vista looked at us curiously. I guess they hadn't told her yet or she was just forgetting a few things.
Gallant grimaced but didn't go for subterfuge. "I've been having…difficulties with my power, sensing strange things. They think it's a symptom of…well."
"You're a Shaman is what it is, you've probably been sensing spiritual disturbances for weeks now. But without the full knowledge of what you're experiencing it must have been a nightmare to deal with." I actually felt sympathy for him, without the knowledge being partially beamed to my head…god that would be awful.
Vista started. "Wait…is that what was happening to you…why didn't you tell us?" She sounded a little hurt and Gallant looked away.
"Piggot wanted to keep it under wraps, it's mostly been some tests using procedures that Erudition passed to the PRT on training Shamans. It's why we were both here to meet her…you have more experience than anyone who isn't patrolling elsewhere." Vista didn't seem convinced though the experience part may have given her a small ego boost.
"That's…" I lifted a hand, and Vista paused in whatever rant she was going into.
"It's not unfair, the life of a shaman is a rather difficult and dangerous path. It was best to keep a private eye on him until he has a little more control. Which begs the question, how are you with spirits?" I responded to the both of them, as well as asking a question of my own to Gallant.
He scratched his helmet almost shyly. "I have some skill with them, I can call them to me if I try…and I can see into the spirit world on my own. I…can talk to a few and convince them to help." I glanced over to his left shoulder and felt my heart flutter. It was a tiny little thing, a spirit of healing, kindness, and water. It was basically a pink slime, like living Tylenol with a cute itty bitty face.
"I can tell…you've got your little buddy there don't ya?" Vista looked over to her teammate's shoulder, and I felt her power surge to twist space and dimensions in a respectful way. The spirit squealed, projecting its voice into the physical plane. Vista blushed, and I could tell she found the little guy adorable.
"Yeah…he's been hanging around me for a while, apparently I can tell him to heal people and he'll do it. Though I usually need him to…" A compartment opened up in his suit, and I almost squeed at the little water bag with a smiley face on it. It glowed as the spirit possessed it, and it formed a little hand to wave.
Oh god it's so cute!
I reached out, patting the little guy's head with the widest stupidest smile on my face. He was just a little baby spirit, a total cutie!
…
Okay I was getting distracted here, I still had a job to do here. "Anyway…" I coughed politely, and the two got serious. "I see there's a spirit over there, would you mind coming along for some spirit negotiations? Get to see what's it like for yourselves?" I lightly patted Gallant's shoulders and while he looked a little uncomfortable he didn't say no.
I stepped forward and they followed in sync with me, as I approached the huddle of nervous PRT troopers, and Assault. He looked to be speaking rather amicably with whatever spirit had decided to manifest in the physical world. Hopefully that said good things about the spiritual being's tolerance of humans.
"Excuse me?" The troopers stepped back and I lifted my hands as their hands drifted down to their weapons. Assault was the calmest of the bunch and I smiled as he greeted me.
He gave a wide friendly grin. "So the woman of the hour has arrived, nice to meet ya." He was perfectly sincere to my reading, and that painted a better picture of him regardless of whatever faults or defects he must have. Being human and all…
"Hello Assault, I can see that your other half isn't here. But more importantly…who are you entertaining right now?" I shifted my body to catch a good angle, and my smile froze at the bastard. Assault's smile diminished.
"Uh…?" I didn't pay attention to the kinetic manipulator as I saw red.
The spirit was about man sized, resembling a multicolored kaleidoscope proboscis monkey. His giant nose bounced and I could see the fear in his eyes as I leaned forward. A spirit of childish mischief, humor, and laughter. A rather harmless spirit that I had encounters with…
"You!" I seethed in indignation and rage at the sight of the damn spirit currently talking with bewildered PRT officers. Gallant was looking at me like I had grown two heads but I didn't care. "What in god's name are you doing here in the material plane you motherfucker." I stomped forward, and the PRT troopers took two respectable steps back. "Didn't I tell you what would happen if I caught wind of you again?"
"What the hell did he do?" Assault sounded concerned, and I took a series of breaths to keep myself from strangling that dumb bastard of a spirit. It didn't work very well in calming me down, but it kept the spirit alive at least.
"Spirit of his type are often pranksters at heart, this guy has proved to be a rather vexing individual of his subtype." I arched my back, taking my lessons to heart on this one.
Take a deep breath.
Then exhale.
Take another deep breath.
And exhale.
Assault was a little less wary now. "So what? Did he steal a sock from your washing machine?" My brows pressed together, and I absently chewed on my lip to avoid another outburst. The monkey bastard smiled rather cheekily and I thought about smacking him up in the head.
"No…he stole something a lot more private." I growled, glaring at the spirit from behind my helmet. Assault smiled, his own eyes filling with mirth.
"Wait…are you saying he stole your unde—" I grinned.
"Not another word out of your mouth." I was polite, and I moved on to doing my job as a shaman. I gestured for the mischief spirit to approach, my whispers being enough for it to speak.
…
The spirit fidgeted. "Shaman…it hasn't been fun anymore," there was a combo of sadness and indignation that fit weirdly together. "Various upstart spirits have taken residence…in my home, congregating around some foolish human girl. I enjoy a good prank more than anyone but…those aren't pranks. Something…is bolstering them, a dark and powerful force. The balance is being upset…"
"Can you tell me anything more specific, numbers, the types of spirits partaking in the hostile takeover of this school?" The mischief spirit grimaced but acceded to my request.
He hissed. "Hmm…last I checked it was a dozen spirits of malice, sadism, violence, misery and rage…led by a rather brusque Terror spirit. Is that all then?"
I sighed. "Yes that's everything, I'll kick them out and get you your home back. Better the kids than me…" the spirit grinned and before the eyes of the PRT it flashed back to his native reality. They looked a little worried and I decided to placate them as best as I could. "If you're worried about where he went, he's back in his home…just keep a good hold of your socks and private clothing." They looked utterly flabbergasted and I rubbed the back of my neck.
Assault started. "So is that everything? Because it might be a good idea to take down these…spirits if they're holding a girl hostage."
I rolled my eyes at his naivety. "They're not taking a human hostage, they're feeding off of her negative emotions in a horrific feedback loop. There's no need to sugarcoat it." He looked rather horrified and I shrugged.
There was a pulse of altered reality, the miasma growing darker and a smell of sulphur and brimstone hitting the air.
…
Right, we need to take care of that.
___
April 20th, 2011. 11:15AM
Basilia Rubio
I lifted up a new shotgun that worked a little more effectively for Urban work such as the interior of a haunted school. Vista and Gallant were to my right while Assault was to my left. I took the front most position, taking point if you would since I had the heaviest barriers and armor. Nothing short of an anti-tank gun would be able to pierce through my shielding, and I had contingencies for attacks that would damage or shut off the emitters.
Surprisingly there were a few PRT troopers supporting us elsewhere, and it didn't take much effort to figure out why when one of them lit a fire in the palm of their hand. The rest were actually airbenders shockingly enough, which was probably much safer from the standpoint of damage.
Hopefully they had enough training to not screw themselves over, though based on their movements they were definitely beginners. But that still means acrobatics beyond human levels and powerful air blasts and air slices. The firebender would be fairly effective, since most spirit's had trouble with more spiritual related attacks.
Sort of.
"So…what…kind of gun is that?" Vista whispered, her power distorting reality in some form of probing attempt. She had apparently learned from getting sucked into the spirit world, and could use her own senses to pick up abnormal activity.
"Typhoon double barreled shotgun. Fires a buckshot patterned APP blast, it'll pretty much pulp anything it hits. Good enough for more…cramp conditions."
"APP?" Gallant added a question.
"Accelerated particle packet, fires a compressed ball of particles. Not as good at getting through shielding but deadly once it gets past them." I answered cheerily, and they leaned back a bit.
Sorry.
"You don't have a lot of offensive Tinkertech that isn't deadly huh?" Vista's statement was a little hurtful, I was no Bakuda.
"I still have a few stun grenades, and all of my drones have stun weapons too." I gestured with my finger to a single drone, the machine pinging with its radar and other sensors for contact. "I'm starting my own production line for containment foam too…so yeah." I rolled my shoulders, and sniffed with my nose. Gallant did the same, and my nostrils flared at the scent of sulphur and hate.
"We're getting close aren't we?" Vista noted. A few drones came back with data, with a few of them having considerable acid damage.
Shit.
"Yes…okay not to alarm anyone, but do any of you have acid resistant armor?" The group paused, and the heroes nodded though the troopers did not. I sighed, and with little fanfare commanded my drones to coat their armor with Omni-foam configured against acid. Though that was on standby until I got permission…
"So who's in command here?" I asked the troopers who were largely doing their own thing. Assault obviously was here to keep an eye on the Wards but I was sure the PRT had their own command structure. One of the PRT field agents turned to me, and her footsteps were familiar.
"We've met before…"
My eyes widened. "Samantha Clemens…should I call you captain or…?"
"Captain would be preferable, yes." Her response was dry, and I got to the point.
"Would it be alright for my drones to add an extra layer to your armor? They've already synthesized an acid-resistant foam, it would only take a few seconds to apply it to your armor." The captain glanced in my direction from the point they had taken up. I could hear radio chatter as they spoke between each other and I could tell that the Protectorate heroes were on the channel based on their expressions.
"That's acceptable…so go nuts." She was a rather level headed individual, so I gladly gifted the four troopers with a layer of acid resistant material that had been tested with both synthesized Thresher Maw stomach fluids and Rachni dissolving acid. As well as a few of Bakuda's acid bombs…they proved highly resilient.
Once that was done we were plunged back into silence, the miasma in the building creating an uneasy aura to the environment of Winslow. There was a sensation of being trapped, of being compressed into a small space that left my stomach a little queasy.
There was a reason I hadn't brought Taylor along to this.
I had pinpointed the center of the unnatural Verge, the air was faint and unreal as the two worlds converged at this section of the planet. Most of my drones had taken images, and I frowned at the small figure obscured in the shadows of the spirits. I was about ready to give those by my side the intel when…
"What…exactly does being a shaman entail for me?" The emotion manipulator broke the silence with a serious look and I pitied the poor bastard.
"Have you ever played an RPG?" He nodded very slowly and my grin under my helmet became sardonic. "You know how they often have a bunch of quests that range from the inane fetch quests and escort missions to fighting giant monsters for shitty pay and no thanks?" There was a dawning sense of horror from the young man, and I almost felt bad for him. But I didn't want to be left alone to suffer with the spirits, so Gallant would have to pay the price.
"No…no…" his horrified words were music to my ears.
"Yes, my friend. Welcome to the rest of your life, helping baby duckling spirits cross roads and negotiating with or fighting monsters as big as mountains and dangerous enough to eradicate cities and countries. You'll be a mercenary hobo wandering the spirit wilds, placating creatures of eldritch mentality and unphysical existence."
"You sound a bit bitter." Vista's observation wasn't new, but I didn't have any more time for banter here.
"It's not the time anymore…" I hushed her as we approached the center point, a dark fog reeking of death and of negative qualities. I pressed forward, and I felt my instincts scream at me. Something was bolstering the power of the spirits here, beyond the loop with the teenager hunched over an empty broken locker.
Vista reacted faster than even I, launching a warp directed by her power directly into a shadowy serpent. It hissed in anger, it's scales glowing in an eerie amber light. Viscera was splashed onto the walls, sizzling as spirit acid began to slowly dissolve the paint and then the metal.
I calmly shot it in the face with a load of excited particles, cracking its skull with a single blast. The sadism spirit's seven eyes filled with glee, and it lunged with all the speed and precision of a viper. The captain was its first target, and with a sigh she let out a burst of flame into the beast's open mouth. It twisted in the air, flaps flaring to allow it to glide back down onto the ground.
"Shit…that thing is huge." Assault cursed, and I agreed with him. The dark viper was at least fifteen feet long and incredibly fast. Vista scowled and her biotics flared as she extended her power, and my eyes blinked as the hallway lengthened several fold. There was a lot more room to maneuver as her power bent space into a pretzel, as physical mass was changed through microscopic dimensional shifting.
Three blasts of air caught the spirit straight in the face, and it got back up with the swiftness expected from a spirit. It spun, its tail blurring and launching Samantha into the lockers, denting them with the sheer force it exuded.
"Weak…" It launched at what it perceived to be a downed opponent, unable to resist the temptation of inflicting suffering. Which was why I laughed when it took a fire bomb to the face, burning out its eyes in the process.
It seemed to flinch at the sound of my voice, of my laughter.
Interesting.
I tapped Gallant on the shoulder and he glanced at me. "Gallant…could you launch positive emotions at him, I have an idea."
He smiled lightly. "What kind of emotions?" He readied his power, and the spirit looked visibly concerned, rattling fiercely.
"Anything that often results in laughter…Mamba here doesn't seem to like it." He pointed a finger, and in a tenth of a second a compact beam struck the serpent. It started to laugh and vibrate, and something cracked within its core. I threw myself with a blast of wind, and with a grin I blew the monster's head off. It broke apart into motes, and the black mist seemed indignant.
"What did you do?" Assault sounded curious.
"Found one of its Bans, all spirits have limits on their behavior…lust spirits will never be chaste, violence spirits will always ache for a good fight. They can also add additional Bans to grow their power, and this guy had a weakness to positive laughter. So…"
"He's dead?" Assault completed my sentence and I continued my approach toward the fog.
"Pretty much…now finding Bans tends to be difficult, but massive amounts of trauma to their body will also do the trick if need be. So…you shouldn't worry too much about average spirits, it's the old ones you should watch out for." I palmed the fog, and with a wave of my arm and a low mental mantra I began to push back against the will of the spirit of Terror maintaining it's toxic miasma.
I gestured at the wall, and Gallant began to shoot at the fog with tuned emotional blasts. I swirled my arms, and a gale began to blow away the caustic fog, decaying with the influx of chi and positive emotional energy.
I pushed back with my own force of will, and the airbenders gathered their own whirlwinds. Vista rolled her shoulders, and she with great difficulty, expanded the numerous vents, and with the airbending of the PRT troopers they pushed the dissipating gas into the AC system. In the short term a damaging prospect but better that there was damage to the school than damage to the people trying to save it.
That seemed to trigger a reaction, not from the malicious spirits taking the school as their territory but from the natives that had been forcibly kicked out from their homes.
From the classrooms there emerged a single spirit, one that resembled a smarmy school teacher made out of light and paper, with its curves identifying it as either a woman or a very dainty man, or perhaps it was neither.
Spirits don't tend to conform to human perceptions of gender, species or even biology and logic.
The troopers faltered and I could hear the spirit hiss in protest, and with a lyrical shout of poetic English it unleashed a blast of words, pushing back the darkness. More spirits joined, angry shouts of territorial indignation uniting disparate spirits in a single goal.
To regain their homes.
Eventually with time and work and effort the noxious death cloud was dissipated and I bit my lip at the gathering of invasive spirits. Almost all of them had humanoid forms, dark foggy flesh that was wrapped in chains of blackened metal. They had anywhere from no pairs of eyes to up to three pairs of dark red orbs. Red lightning fed the dark entities, and they huddled around a prone redheaded girl. Their forms fluctuated slightly, claws and teeth vanishing and then regrowing in mere seconds.
About half of them were around 5'6 to 5'8 in height, resembling an athletic teenage girl in appearance. The Wards paused at their appearance and even Assault seemed to be taken aback. They were mostly spirits of sadism, malice and violence, dozens if not hundreds of motes of similar nature that had fused together into five entities. There were three purebred rage spirits that obviously did not get along, likely originating from different sources. Two grey misery spirits were far taller at about 6'2 to 6'4 with beanpole frames.
Again black chains solidified their essence, making them stronger than what they were supposed to be. Their source of sustenance had almost certainly vanished with how faint they were…but they had found a new source of sustenance, and had been claimed by a master. Something terrible hung in the air, and I felt disgust.
It was the twelfth spirit that spelled trouble, twice the height of a man and with a a form that was beyond horrific, invoking fear merely with a glance at its mutant body. It's body was chitinous, multiple pairs of spider limbs supporting its long serpentine body which extended outward for twenty feet in the crowded space it was in. It's upper half resembled a human, with the exception of its scaly skin, and mandibled face it was positively uncanny, and almost invoked anxiety at the sight.
It's tail flicked ominously, three distorted dog heads growing like tumors and barking and howling in multi-toned flares of sound. It's back was covered in hundreds of dirty surgical needles, pulsing with electricity and thunder. It's skin was colored a sickly green with a thick layer of ooze that dripped with disease and poison.
Jesus.
It's neck extended upwards, until it hung some twelve feet off the ground, rearing up to reveal a quadruple false eye pattern on its chest, unblinking flat eyes staring back at us.
"Call it in…now." I whispered to Assault, and the terror spirit flared it's mandibles, revealing a lipless mouth. There was a splatter of viscera and blood as another set of limbs emerged from its back, flesh emerging to form flaps for powerful wings.
"Spirit. Why are you upsetting the balance? Why have you manifested in this place?" I spoke with the certainty required of all shaman's, because without the willpower needed to perform…we would fall to the monsters that go bump in the night.
"We were offered power, we were offered freedom…just as the Alastor was offered power, but unlike him…we accepted our new Master." I flinched when the spirit's body briefly looked…mutilated. The other spirits circled around their spiritual better revealing the girl they were feeding off of.
You've got to be kidding me.
The exhausted and thin faced visage of Emma Barnes became clear, and I continued my questioning while we still had the time.
"Who offered you freedom, spirit?" The dozen spiritual entities became deathly still, and the chains of what I thought were metal…but were in fact silvery bone glowed in a reddish hue.
"An offer of a feast that never ends, a day where our kin will swallow up Gaia in its entirety. An offer from the Mother of Miseries…from the last Dark God." That was about what I had expected, and my keen eyes caught on to the chains tightly wrapped around their bodies.
"Aim at the chains." I tapped into the frequency they were using, even muddled as it was by the interference of the aberrant spirits. "Everything you've got…and Vista, think you can plop that girl over here?" I added the question at the last moment. She didn't reply but I had the idea that she was saying yes.
…
We had barely any warning at all.
ARISE CHILDREN OF THE DARK, HARBINGERS OF THE EVERENDING NIGHT;
GEARS OF SHADOW AND TWILIGHT.
SHOW ME YOUR STRENGTH, SHOW ME YOUR CONVINCTION!
GEARS OF SHADOW AND TWILIGHT.
SHOW ME YOUR STRENGTH, SHOW ME YOUR CONVINCTION!
Vista flinched, and twisted reality as the dark spirits screamed a warcry of pain and agony, their bodies bulging as pustules flowed with a power unknown to man. Emma was saved at the last second, a spirit nearly clawing her head off if it wasn't for Vista's space warping. We were moved back as she warped and shifted distance and pinched and unpinched space. I couldn't stop the insidious call of the strange abomination that had hidden from my sight.
SO SHALL THE DARK GODS RULE ONCE MORE, AND SET THE WORLD ABLAZE.
SO SHALL THEY SIT ATOP THE ZIGGURAT, SO SAYS THE MOTHER!
SHOW ME YOUR LOYALTY, SO YOUR CHOIR WILL ASCEND!
MAN
WILL
FALL.
SO SHALL THEY SIT ATOP THE ZIGGURAT, SO SAYS THE MOTHER!
SHOW ME YOUR LOYALTY, SO YOUR CHOIR WILL ASCEND!
MAN
WILL
FALL.
Vista didn't waste time, and she tore a hole in reality, expanding an empty vent until it was large enough to fit a dozen men. We threw ourselves through the expanded area of localized spacetime. The school rumbled, and I could hear the moan of the enraged native spirits. As I ran with Emma in tow, I did my best to cleanse her of the taint of the warped spirits. Gallant helped, his spirit friend Blob Bob purifying the putrid corpus feeding off her negative emotions.
Reality recoiled as if insulted, and the top half of the school was dissolved in an instant of time. The PRT vans drove back as the school began to shake itself almost to pieces, and I swallowed as the dark spirits emerged fully in view of the people for the first time.
All the spirits emerged doubled in size, their chains turning into soft feathery ropes of fungal growth pulsating red with hatred. The lead Terror spirit started to laugh in tongues of nonsense filled with an incomprehensible insanity, and an aura of pressure spread outwards for more than a hundred meters.
The darkened spirit spread its wings as a 24 foot tall monstrosity of nature and primordial magic. A mouth had formed where it's once false eyes now blinked in comprehension and perception. It smiled with a maw of teeth made out of metal and tongue and lightning and hellfire.
"SO SAYS THE MOTHER. THE VYASA MUST DIE." There was a rising pulse, and I swore as I rolled past a lightning strike aimed from one of its dog heads, spittle flying from their mangled jaws.
Crossbolts skewered the ground where the PRT troopers and the Protectorate capes had been standing, phasing in reaping shadows of toxic gas.
"Oh…fuck…" The dark spirit's eyes widened and it shook violently.
BWOOM!
An arc of purple lightning struck in a zigzag line along the ground, and I cursed my luck.
This…was…FUCKED!
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Aah. Hello Winslow. Good to see that Sophia left a lasting impression.
- Location
- Chula Vista
That's what tends to happen when you're a sadistic bully for well over a year. Certain entities are formed…from such events.
