Realignment 7.8
May 24th, 2011. 8:00AM
I looked around, orienting myself as the small crowds parted around me. It had taken me a long while to pinpoint the location of the Voyagers, and I had to admit that Noelle was very good at hiding herself with spirit magic.
I was alone, and the world around me exploded with information. A gift I had picked up unknowingly from my talks with Centralis. It combined seamlessly with my Overlay, and I could perceive radio transmissions and other electromagnetic connections, tapping into them with little flaw.
I wasn't in any visible armor, though a white blouse and blue gym shorts weren't exactly going to provide limitless protection. Which was why they had the same modifications as my pretty black dress, and a hidden shield projector that would wrap around my biotic barrier. The usual affair of course.
I was walking around the Docks, just outside the area where Athena had set itself up in. A few buildings were being renovated, likely former industrial buildings that were being converted into low cost housing. A restaurant or two had opened up, and the number of ships in the Boat Graveyard had dwindled down to about three. The largest was the sunken container ship, easily a quarter of a kilometer in length. Multiple machines were attempting to break it apart, though they seemed to be having trouble of some kind.
Like the ship refused to budge an inch, to give even a single millimeter of its steel up to the ones trying to break it up.
I took a short whiff, and followed the scent of
spirits, the unnatural pressure that they exerted on reality. Noelle was close but since I didn't feel like being the one to approach her I decided to sit down at a coffee shop. It looked nice enough and safe enough, and it had opened up maybe about a month and a half ago if I remembered correctly.
I didn't bother to check the name, and I made my way into the shop. There was a small line, of maybe about three people. I took my place, quietly humming and being thankful I had pockets in these shorts. I didn't bother keeping much of an eye out, since I already had my seismic sense doing its job, and I could pick up electromagnetic waves easily enough.
Even so it was good to be careful.
It didn't take long for the line to shorten to just me, and I smiled lightly once I saw the employee manning the cash register's face. A young black woman maybe about nineteen or twenty years old, frizzy hair pulled back into a ponytail. She smiled back, and I found my order.
"One egg and ham croissant and orange juice." Apparently this place made its own juice though it offers some standard brands. I decided to try out something new and hope for the best that it didn't have an excessive amount of pulp. I paid in cash, and shook my head at how I had managed to keep my civilian and cape life separate.
Officially I was a rich kid who got her parents murdered by the Nine, and unofficially all the money had been emptied out from a few criminal bank accounts which in retrospect was actually impossible. Because hacking doesn't work that way, and the weird ways that omni-tools work give me a major headache to try figuring them out.
There's basically a physical package, as well as interference with communication lines to get into a foreign system. Overload's easy though since that's a directed EMP. It uses mass effect fields to shape the electromagnetic pulse to penetrate throu—
The person behind me coughed, and I blushed and took the receipt from the bemused cashier. I stepped out of the line, and found a booth to sit at. The scent was growing stronger so I knew it wouldn't be more than maybe ten minutes before Noelle would show herself. We didn't have long to talk, since in a few more hours the city would start the Endbringer alarms and evacuate the city. They had remained conspicuous, but they had apparently gone and repaired some of the shelters, and added special Tinkertech shield projectors made by Dragon.
They were rugged and would last up to several weeks without any maintenance. It would have been better to evacuate the city, but trying that would be a complete shitshow, and would trigger Leviathan early. Portals seemed to have the same result, and even if it would work the DPN could only open so wide and could only open so many portals at once before he showed up.
But that didn't mean it wouldn't serve a use in battle, especially since I got the portal opening time down to a tenth of a second. I was pretty much done with refining it, including an ability to have the DPN detect the signature of a specific person to give them temporary permission to access the network.
Most people wouldn't survive even a single strike from Leviathan, if I could portal them before he hits them we can reduce the casualties. He wouldn't be able to damage the network either since the power generation was located on inaccessible worlds, and Bakuda figured out dimensional locking. Which was essentially sending out wavelengths across higher dimensions, disrupting attempts to form links between reality planes. It could be overpowered but it was no easy feat…not at all.
I also had an absurd amount of power flowing through the system, dozens of protium fusion reactors doing their job in keeping the thing running. They would work as needed for what would come next.
"Hmm…" I stood back up once I saw that my order was ready, scurrying over so I could get a meal down in my belly. I opened the brown bag, and my nose twitched at the bewitching smell from the bag. I took a bite, and my mouth filled with flavor.
Good.
Whoever made this knew what they were doing, and a cursory chemical inspection revealed a general following of health guidelines. I held the clear plastic cup with my right hand, and opened up a plastic straw. A sip revealed that it was good and without an excessive amount of pulp. It was perfect in every way.
I'll be coming here again if this place isn't destroyed, though since it's close to Athena it should at least be notably reinforced.
I've got a few dozen barrier projectors that would block floods, and divert waters into other dimensions. Testing it against waterbending made sure it was secure against Leviathan grabbing the water back from the other end. Adding some multidimensional wavelength disruption made it a little more certain. Though that didn't mean they wouldn't suddenly get shredded by the sheer force Leviathan has to offer. Though even the weakest barriers offered the resistance of a frigate class barrier, while the strongest were the equals of a destroyer.
He could definitely(well eventually…) punch through them, but it would give the defenders precious seconds or even minutes. And the barriers were mobile as required…anti-gravity platforms essentially.
I was setting up a small scale production line for barriers and Nihilum cannons, and would build as many as was feasible before my time was up. Bakuda had several of her own super-weapons, as well as a vast number of Tinkertech bombs she planned to give to Miss Militia and Dragon, as well as my automated gunships.
I had been reassured that the cannons would cause considerable damage, severing
dimensional connections by collapsing the metrics that allow for shifting between realities. The core was still unable to be damaged, but that was more an issue of the space warping of the core negating the metric I used. A different piercing metric could certainly damage the core, but unfortunately there did seem to be an issue with passing down data from shards to me.
That was…inconvenient, but I'd leave it be until I could figure out why.
So what I had built could sever the connections of most of the layers without requiring hundreds of petatons of brute force energy to simply incinerate their body. From what I could ask, it wouldn't take planet-busting to kill an Endbringer though digging through the layers would never be possible. You needed something capable of rapidly disintegrating the layers before they can be regenerated by hundreds of exatons worth of modified entity flesh. So nano-thorns could get through a good three quarters of their layers, but would be stymied by density as well as how the inner layers alter the behavior of atoms and molecules to function.
Explosions could do it by sheer brute force, the energy input easily collapsing the wormholes. But as the layers get deeper, energy can be more easily funnelled away by space warping. So below a certain threshold you can't kill one of those monsters.
But space warping would screw up their dimensional shifting much faster than they can dissipate the attack, and would shred their layers apart.
To a point.
I sipped my orange juice since I had finished the sandwich, and I tilted my body when I saw one of the customers approach me. I had felt him before with my feet, but I hadn't cared until he turned my way. He wasn't bad looking, tall and well built with a hint of pretty-boy(douchebag) styling to his red hair. He seemed to put a lot of effort into himself, which wasn't a bad thing but I didn't really care much about that to begin with. It's not like I needed anything beyond moisturizing and basic cleanliness habits, though I did need to clean up my act. You kind of have to when you have a few extra areas to clean than before…
I stared at the guy, ignoring my last thought. He was very slightly tanned, likely from going to the beach a lot(or just genetics). There was a
look in his eyes that made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. An arrogance that made his appearance feel fake and unwanted. It instantly got me in a bad mood, and I frowned not bothering to hide my contempt.
Bastard seemed to ignore that when he placed a hand on the table.
He smiled, and I didn't find that smile agreeable. "Hey there. I saw you sitting here alone, thought you'd want some company." His smile wasn't doing shit for him, since everyone I know including
Bakuda and Collin had nicer smiles. "Name's Jake Williams." He offered a hand and I didn't touch him, my grip tightening on the cup that was much cuter than he was.
"Hmm…" The guy's smile shrunk but that didn't stop him from making an ass out of himself.
"Well…I thought that maybe the two of us could hang out sometime, maybe even today? Have some
fun?" His grin turned subtly lecherous and my gut filled with no small amount of disgust.
"Sorry but I'm going to be quite occupied, I've got a lot of stuff on my plate for the foreseeable future." And when I said foreseeable future I meant forever.
"Come on, someone as beautiful as you deserves some good company. I'm a nice guy." The blood drained from my face, my mind conjuring up my foray into online Nice Guys through the medium of YouTube. "Everyone deserves a little fun" His eyes darted where they shouldn't.
I was going to set his balls on fire.
"My answer is still no." I looked at him straight in the eye and was almost impressed by his stubbornness if he wasn't an asshole. He looked away, and I could already tell that he was hiding his expression from my eyes.
He immediately tried to place a hand on his shoulder, and was intercepted by a rapid darting arm. None of the crowd seemed to notice that Noelle had appeared out of nowhere, though a quick reading of virtual memory found she had been here for a good twenty seconds.
"It's a good thing for you to leave." Her expression left no room for argument, and the man let out a squeak when she snarled.
"I…" He tried to protest and immediately pulled himself from her grip with fear wafting out of him. She kept staring, and he ran with his tail between his legs. Once he was gone the
revulsion set in, and I shuddered.
Was that something common? Or had I just been unlucky enough to get the attention of some jackass?
"I guess that's the first time you've ever been harassed?" Noelle slid over into the booth, looking slightly shy at the attention that others gave her at the intervention she pulled.
"I…don't really need to go outside often…so yes." I crossed one leg over the other, lightly jostling it up and down as I answered her. "So…do you want to talk here or…?"
"I've got a place." She replied, nodding seriously.
___
May 24th, 2011. 8:15AM
Basilia Rubio
"You know it's true! Noelle might not be a monster anymore, but this doesn't make what she's doing any less crazy!" Were the first words from Solaire's mouth as we entered the apparent base of the Voyagers. It was a large warehouse where the ABB used to rule, though I had already suspected they had moved in around here with the rumors of numerous bending triads getting crushed by
something.
The team froze when they took sight of me, and I waved politely while a few of them seemed to have gotten well acquainted with whatever insanity that Noelle had thrown them into in the past. Shamans are gigantic trouble magnets because of what they were, and I imagine that's been an ongoing problem for them.
"Hello?" I waved again, and my eyes tracked everyone in the well kept room. Fantasm or Jess was
standing, though she was obviously a little out of practice with how shaky she was. Switcheroo was taking a smoke, and the familiar whiff of cigarette smoke entered my nose.
I gently bent the current to get that cancer smoke out of my face.
Marissa looked a little shocked, and a small amount of shame filled her face. Railgun(Luke?) was in front of her, hands lifted defensively. It seems like the two of them had been arguing though I didn't know what it was about. Fume Hood was sleeping through the whole argument, clinging to what I was 90% sure was a mini chocobo(how do I even know what that is?), feathers ruffling as the cape slept on it. The kid I quickly identified as Alexander Lawson, the child of Amelia and Robert Lawson.
He was slowing at the other end of the couch, twitching and muttering. The arm almost exploded in his grip, his skinny muscles tending to reveal muscle like steel threads.
I left that scene be, and before I could say a word I saw Cody prowling. She looked just like what I remembered her to be, and despite myself I was rather familiar with the kind of anger she exudes. Her brown hair was being pulled back by a curvy and athletic Japanese girl, muttering quietly as she fixed her glowering friend's hair. Though the light blush, and very barely visible smile on her face told another story. I…still had a hard time picturing
Cody of all people as being a girl, and I started to question the competency of the entity or entities that brought me here.
Of course the fact that my only memory of the thing was screaming wasn't a good sign. The fact that my DNA had apparently been
degrading before I had corrected the issue was even worse, and had been rather fucking awful for my psyche that I could have died from cancer or some form of radiation poisoning.
"You are
not easy to poke." I didn't respond to the clone of Cherish, who from what I could tell was much less sociopathic than the original if you could believe it. My cybernetic implants seemed to be kicking in, pushing back against her power. "I can read you just fine though…I think you'd confuse the Simurgh though."
"Neat." There was arguing, Marissa pointing at me as she spoke up to Noelle. Fume Hood was still sleeping, and Cody was staring at me as her friend pulled her away to some other room.
A hand plopped itself on my head, and with a snap of folded space I was somewhere else with Noelle following shortly after. We were in a lab, numerous vats growing organic frames for various organisms. One of the Railgun clones…
No those were vessels, organic entities designed as a channel for a shard-spirit to split itself about 14 times. Three had powers similar to the original, one could only fire small projectiles but could launch them like hypersonic missiles, a second could launch ten tons at low Mach speeds and imbued them with explosive energy. The third was no different from Railgun.
The forth applied the power to himself to create a straight line supersonic Mover power with Brute applications due to the kinetic energy from such speed.
"You and Noelle have been working with each other for a while haven't you?" The synergy was terrifying. How did they do this?
"Rey makes the bodies and I provide the animating force behind them. His normal creations are a little easier to control as well…"
Rhizome didn't seem to care about his identity, and I honestly was just tired of cape bullshit at this point. "Figured out an organic radio, I can just transmit orders with a press of a button." He displayed a roughly square mass of fungus, and a genetic analysis with my equipment found that it made use of octopus DNA to create a touchscreen. There were organic receivers based on electroreception as well as eyes and neural networks…that must have taken a lot of trial and error.
"How exactly do these things work?" Noelle got to me before Blasto could.
"My power…it used to be the ability to consume people and then create clones from them by forcing buds from their shards." Her flesh unfolded around her left arm, revealing a dense mesh of different appendages before receding back and leaving only grey scales. "Honestly…I could pretty much clone anything that was alive, but they're not as useful." I think I remember that, but that was a while back now.
"And how did it change?" I was curious.
Noelle shrugged, her smile revealing sharp teeth. "I can still still clone anything I touch…but they're much more stable, and my power is a lot more controllable and modular." She demonstrated her changed power as another arm expanded, her hybrid corpus warping and flexing before disgorging a shard-spirit into the physical world. I recognized it as a fragment of Vista's shard, but it's expression was altered to create a storm of warped space that would shred all matter in its path.
It could also fold space to create a shield, bending projectiles around itself with the warping of reality. More limited effects could safely move people around it to protect them from being squished by an attack they can't react to.
"Oh I get it…you can touch someone and then create a shard-spirit from the flesh of another shard. Then Rhizome creates a vessel for them with his vats so they don't need to exert so much energy to stay in this world." Shards had no problem with the material since they were themselves sort of hybrids of the material and the spiritual. And it provided protection from damage, allowing them to hide away in Shardspace while they pilot Rhizome's meat suits.
She was basically a flesh based Glaistig Uaine, with a bit of Teacher mixed in to give people powers.
Holy shit she was a
power manipulator.
"You've got it right." The shard-spirit poked me, its eldritch form shifting as it examined my form. Rhizome sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose before pointing toward another humanoid body. He left with the generated spirit in tow.
"So why does he need to make physical bodies for them? Couldn't you just make them bodies?"
"They'd be human ones…and that creates a lot of headaches I don't want to deal with." I could hear Empathy laughing at something in the other room, almost cruel but far enough away from the edge to be normal instead of dangerous. "Cherry is much nicer than the original but…it's a little ethically questionable to make weapons out of human beings. So shard buds are the go-to for now, unless I can figure out how to make a more suitable body."
"Plus I imagine those bodies are a lot stronger and more resilient than human ones right?" Noelle smiled a bit, eyes shadowed by her hair.
"Usually yes, and Rey has managed to weave some power expressions into their physical bodies. We've got three different models of sorts. Jinn are support, like the Jaunt Jinn, Nymphs are the same like the Codec Nymph." The aforementioned shard-weapon revealed itself, a sleek golden entity that seemed to dampen reality. "She's the product of a meeting with Accord's Ambassadors."
So Citrine then.
"And the others?"
She shrugged. "Golems and Banshees are our offense, they hit hard and fast or they're very physically resilient. We have two Adaption Golems from Aegis, so that's interesting." I saw the weapons and blinked at the two behemoths, both were about nine feet tall, with their form shifting quickly and their pillar-like legs held off the ground by flight.
That wasn't terrifying at all, especially when Echidna had probably eaten at least a few people and Rey was wanted for at least one murder, drug trafficking and multiple cases of assault and property damage. Though I suspected all the biological weapons were on a biological level
unviable, unable to reproduce or do much outside being vessels for small shards. And Noelle's enormous body mass came from her shard rather than mountains of human and animal corpses.
There was a pause then, a moment of introspection and sensible thought. I had come here for a reason, and some final questions had to be made while I still had time.
"About what happened to you…to us. What do you remember?" There was a sense of discomfort on her face, but she seemed ready.
"I was fighting with Cody when it happened…he…
she had tried to touch me and I almost lashed out…when I saw it." I closed my eyes, remembering the void that still haunted me in my dreams. "After that it was like I had been hit by napalm, and it
hurt. It was like someone was ripping me apart and putting me back together, not knowing how to fix me…and with some of the people there….they didn't get fixed at all."
"I only really recall flashes of that myself." I didn't really want to remember, because that sounded like an utter nightmare. It made my stomach churn and I felt a little faint.
Noelle fussed with her hands. "And when I woke up again something had changed about me…so many voices, so many echoes of the world that lay on the other end of that hole in reality. In those flashes…I saw something of my reality there, a possible future. I'm sure you understand what I mean Basilia."
…
She knows.
…
"You know about my world then?" I sent my voice on the breeze, outside the prying ears of Rey. That plus a few other subtle uses of technology isolated what I had said. "About what it's like?"
Noelle nodded. "When the two universes drew close together, things seeped through on both ends. I knew things I shouldn't have…and that set me on the course I'm following. I doubt I'm the only one."
"You're going to fight Leviathan." I started without preamble. "That's why Solaire was so angry. Because well…to be frank it's completely insane to
want to fight a goddamn Endbringer." I laughed nervously, scratching my right cheek. I didn't even want to fight him, and frankly I was mostly just going to be there to provide technical support for my weapons.
And…it felt cowardly to simply operate from another world and let others take care of it.
"I have to fight him…I can't
not fight him, and Marissa doesn't understand that." The shaman looked so frustrated.
"Why? Why do you need to fight a monster like that?" She paused, slit eyes staring at me with a reptilian gaze that would give most people chills. Which meant very little when I was slowly acclimating to Taylor's occasional creepiness, Amelia's periodic scary ramblings and the general factor of Rachni and spirits being
terrifying.
"Why huh?" She muttered to herself, appendages uncoiling from her back as she turned away from me. A circle lit up on her back, a rotating pattern with two layers circling around each other in a particular frequency. Such a thing I had seen before, in my nightmares and in the dreams of the abyss within my own strange soul.
"Yes." I replied solidly to Echidna.
She turned back around, and I saw the shadow that hinted at her true form. Something so vast it boggles the mind, and etched with complex self aware code. She closed her hands into shaking fists.
Noelle sighed. "I made a promise…and I intend to keep it."
___
May 24th, 2011. 12:00PM
Basilia Rubio
I looked out to the horizon, at the distant dark storm that was moving at an almost intentionally slow pace. The Rachni Queen was looking out at the ocean as I landed, and I felt a second song weave into the air. One that sounded curious and young and
innocent.
"What's her name? I asked Singer-of-Rebirth, and the alien queen let out a quiet click.
"
Basilia…this is Forge-Singer." The new queen was a tiny one in proportion to her mother, maybe about the size of a medium dog. She was twitchy, and her attempt to communicate grated at my senses. The first queen quieted the newest, and I saw that several Workers were preparing the special blend of jelly used to nourish the Queens.
I lowered myself a bit, smiling at the strange little baby alien. "Hello there." She ducked a bit behind her mother and I grinned in amusement. "You're a sweet little baby aren't you?" Despite being an insectile horror Forge-Singer gave off the vibes of a shy puppy more than an alien menace. She didn't speak, instead whispering to Rebirth. The Queen whispered back and the little one drooped and retreated into a gate.
"
She will be one of many new Queens yet to come, and it is why I must fight. I must fight to create a world where we will be free. Free from the shackles of a Cycle of a genocide and violence."
"This isn't like with the Mother of Miseries Rebirth." I warned her. "Leviathan doesn't have a secret part of himself that doesn't want to kill us. He's a killer of tens of millions of people if not more, and if he wanted to kill us he could just crush the land beneath us and sink a continent." Lung's fight with Leviathan hadn't mattered at all in the end, he had sunk Kyushu with little effort. They were holding back by who knows how much. Though I did have the suspicion that they were probably not holding back so much in power but instead restraining themselves in tactics.
Like what had happened at New Delhi…I ended up having to look that up from what I had from the plot line of Worm. Seriously I was lucky I had offline google docs with a timeline and a chapter synopsis…though that was rather general when you think about it.
"
I will not change my mind." I let out a huff, knowing that Rebirth was set on becoming a part of an Endbringer fight. There wasn't anything I could do that would stop her, not even sending her back to Earth Lotus would help. With how smart her species was I didn't doubt that she would find a way to make her way across realities. Especially when she was only about twenty miles away from a working sample of the technology required.
"Do what you want then. It's your decision to make." I couldn't interfere with her, I didn't have the right unless she hurt others and only if those people were innocent. Even if they weren't they would…deserve the common courtesy of most human beings. Unless it was Jack Slash…he can rot in hell for all I care.
Rebirth vanished in a gust of biotic force as she teleported, and I sensed Taylor before I saw her. She dropped down with a jitter to her movements since she was still getting used to the flight abilities granted by her powers. The exchange of force could get her up to eighty five miles per hour, since most of the well was used to make the suit more durable or to power attacks in combination with her own biotics. A single large green beetle was following her, a creature about one hundred sixty pounds in weight.
"How's your Giant Rhinoceros beetle working out?" I was casual with my prodding, sitting down on the roof of the main Athena building. The building had been a warehouse that I tore down and rebuilt into a multiple story monster, more than large enough to house a few hundred people.
"He's a lot tougher than any other bug I've used before, and he's cool." She patted the monstrous beetle on its head with a smile in her voice.
That beetle was part of an experiment of mine, I had at least several hundred thousand species bouncing around in my soul. Almost all of them weren't well
people in the sense of a Rachni or an Asari but they were there. A Si Wongi Giant
Beetle sounded like an excellent choice with their ability to reach several thousand pounds, and being domesticated too.
Wonder if a Buzzard wasp would be too outside of her power…if not that's a man sized death machine that could one day shoot energy beams and tank bullets.
Thresher Maw was probably a step too far and they were almost uncontrollable due to their natural earthbending. Which is exactly as frightening as you can imagine. Throwing around buildings, boring through kilometers of rock to chase even Krogan down like mere prey.
That was probably a good way to get a Kill Order since Thresher Maw spores can survive orbital impacts to spread as needed. Hell they could even survive on asteroids and may or may not even be native to Tuchanka to begin with.
They certainly fit in though.
"How's Golem?" Taylor sighed, and I knew that wasn't the best of the worst signs. The child of Kaiser had been difficult to manage not for very any reason involving being unpredictable but a dose of distance that he placed between us and him. He was still new to this, his powers had only shown up a few weeks ago and I didn't expect him to just straight up join us off the bat.
His costume was basically on loan until we could convince him to join. While I didn't care about things like having a gender balanced team, it didn't mean I didn't want guys on the team.
"He's been getting less skittish, but I think he's been really rattled with what went down with Kala." Taylor was looking at the horizon like I was as she spoke. "But since I started training him he's been calming down a lot, his power is really strong when it's combined with his earthbending."
"He can project hands and limbs from any surface right, with a bias for anything covered by earthbending?" She gave a thumbs up, her hair lightly shifting in the growing breeze.
"If he joins we'll welcome him, he seems nice enough. Way better than his dad at least." And wasn't
that the truth, his dad was an opportunist using racism and hatred for his own means and his mother probably was a raging murdering racist.
Which is probably why Kayden isn't going to stick around for long. Based on what I've…
found in PRT databases, once Leviathan mows down the city she's to be transferred to deal with other white supremacist cape groups across the country. As well as remnants of Gesellschaft that had smuggled themselves into the United States.
They weren't going to last long in this country.
"Well yeah it's nice to have another guy on the team." Taylor looked at me and I paused as a funny thought came to mind.
Did any of that shit about gender matter to me beyond an abstract sense? I looked like a girl, and had all the
bits. But I had been male before, and the only changes in behavior involved having to wear bras, tying back long hair, hygiene and getting gross looks from a fraction of the male population. Plus that whole deal with color perception differences between men and women.
I think it was at least partially biological, though culture could also play a part. I seemed to do fine with both color differentiation and rapid movements however. So maybe my brain is just wired differently?
Wait…but my brain already
is wired differently since I'm on the spectrum. That's not exactly a clue…
I hummed, crossing my arms around my heavily armored stomach as I stared down at the people on the streets.
"I'm going to remind you now…how many Cannons are you building, and did Bakuda's tagging system work? What about the number of ships, and did you get what Vicky asked?" Taylor lightly knocked the glass on my helmet, and I chuckled.
"We've got about a dozen cannons fully completed and tested, and if the timeline holds there should be another dozen online by the time Leviathan makes landfall. We have twelve heavily shielded gunships that will carry two cannons each to replace conventional mass accelerator arms. Bakuda managed to construct five Halcyon cannons, and Dragon is probably dusting off less effective copies for her suits. She's going to wield one of them, another will go to Vicky and the rest will find their way into the hands of a suitable Brute." Alexandria might be a good fit, though there had to be other options. A few extras will probably be built just in case, Leviathan is a tough bastard.
"And Vicky?"
I raised a hand, biting my lips. "Vicky's request has already been sent off, just like Amelia." Everything was falling into place but I knew it wouldn't be enough. This was one of the most powerful beings on the planet, one that had crushed nations. I wasn't weak, in fact I was probably one of the best tinkers in the world at least in breadth if not in experience or skill. Dragon was probably the only one that could be better than me due to her Tinker/Thinker power.
Though others could surpass me in the firepower department like String Theory.
Though my power kind of worked the same way…actually it wouldn't be dishonest to say I had something like slots for different tech bases. One was Mass Effect divided into different convergent branches, while the other was Dark Energy manipulation through particle bombardment. So not too far off from being a Tinker Eidolon. Though with only 'two' slots as of now.
"So we're prepared then?" I rolled my shoulders, grimacing.
"As best as we can be with the circumstances, and we still have some more time since he's still far off." The storm was tiny on the horizon but that wasn't going to stay the case for long. "How's your dad…has he started preparations?"
"They're still trying to get rid of the tanker, but I don't think they're going to make it in time." I saw that it was true, and I felt something
off in the air around the ship. "I really hope he doesn't try to stick it out." There was a worry in there, worry for the little family she had left.
I didn't even have that did I?
I bobbed my head. "Well your dad is pretty hard headed and stubborn, it makes sense that he'd be this determined. I'm sure you get some of that from him." Though I suspect she's got the blood of both her parents running strong in her veins. Annette Hebert was no damsel of distress that's for sure from what Danny has told me in the few opportunities we had to talk.
I clenched my fists, I feel like it would have been nice to meet her mother. I don't think my mom would get along with her. My mom is no wallflower, but she was never what one could consider politically active or heavily invested into knowledge. But who knows, maybe they would have enjoyed their different and unique perspectives?
We took some time to allow the quiet to linger, and I also prepared numerous other contingencies. I wasn't stupid and knew just how things could go wrong in a matter of seconds in a world like this one. I wasn't going to take my chances with Murphy's Law screwing me over.
I was bringing every tool on the table for this, every machine, every litany of power and every bit of technological know-how I could offer in what time I had left.
"Basilia." She said my name, and there was a change in her tone and in the atmosphere itself. "I…wanted to say I—" A harmless droplet hit her helmet, and I saw the clouds forming as a consequence of the distant storm making its way on a steady course toward the city. The rain was pitter pattering on the ground, and my heart dropped into my stomach.
A whining sound hit the air, the nasal boom echoing its message across the city. From my vantage point and the magnification of my helmet, I saw the UWA hastily stopping their scrapping of the vessel. A single tiny dot that a nearby drone revealed as someone around my age, who was lightly touching the ship's hull. More drones came online, from about a hundred to nearly two thousand across the city. Other AI-operated mechs and droids activated, serving in less combative roles. From the west I saw the signatures of numerous vessels coming in at great speed.
The orders were clear, and I could see all my employees being evacuated and the fusion reactor spooling up to bring the kinetic barrier up to full power. Six Athena buildings did the same, and projectors were quietly distributed across the city as needed.
I jumped off the building, literally flying at top speed toward where I needed to go. Taylor followed me, easily speeding ahead of me with her lighter framed armor and her stronger airbending.
4 more hours.
…
4 more hours before Leviathan makes
Landfall.
___
AN: So after some extra time I have this chapter written out along with the Interludes and most of 8.1, and 8.2 should be started sometime today. Which means we'll be hitting the Leviathan…which makes me really glad I outlined out a lot farther than this.
With how often other Worm stories die once they reach Leviathan. This will pretty much mark where things will start changing more drastically than they already have. So enjoy that.
