Exition 8.4
- Location
- Chula Vista
Excition 8.4
May 24th, 2011. 5:00PM
Taylor Hebert
I woke up to a splitting headache, and a loud scream that was filled with rage and anguish. There was a pressure on my body, and when I moved I coughed up water and bile. I slipped off the wall I was leaning against, and I gagged at the pain that struck in my sore stomach. I could feel my swarm responding far more intently than it ever had before. 36 square miles were visualized and categorized as I booted back up from when…when…
I felt my back give out, tried to distract him with my swarm, tried to call my shard. And I felt the icy cold grip as I fell into the waters, my lungs filling with water and fear and terror and regret and denial coming together as I di–
I felt a mind brush against my own, and I opened my eyes to the chittering of one of Rebirth's children. One of the workers who was a shivering soaked mess, and I blinked. I pet the small Rachni, my lips pulling up into a faint smile at the light and cheery song that the little alien sang. I could hear something break on the ground, and I got the outline of a person heading right for me before I suddenly took on a hundred and twenty pounds of weight.
"Holy shit you're alive!" I opened my mouth and then closed it when I saw that Amy was the one who had tackled me. She released me and I felt my skin tingle as power made the air vibrate. She grimaced, and lifted her hood over her head.
"What…what happened?" My memory wasn't working right, blank spots from when Leviathan had attacked.
From when Leviathan had attacked.
My armor was intact but I could perceive it's biology with my power, sensing how it had taken catastrophic damage that had only been healed by Amy a few minutes ago. There were notable improvements in how it stored energy in a dense sugar compound that made my eyes hurt to look at, unfolding into spaces beyond my perception. The neural relays were stronger, and there was a crystalline sheathing that made them faster and more effective.
I could sense a new bug, one that had obviously been made from my old ones. It was big, at least a good ten feet long with two pairs of transparent wings that made it look like a giant dragonfly. The thicker legs, and the single pair of metallic scythe-arms at the front ended the illusion. It's head split open to reveal serrated mandibles, with three pairs of reflective orbs giving me a clear picture through its eyes. It's vision was incredible, with 20 color receptors, and each pair of eyes was specialized for specific kinds of vision that went through a complex neural network that was built less like a living thing and more like an organic computer.
I knew that the moment he became mine, and also knew that he was physically tougher than he should be. He was half a meter wide, and it's middle body had a crest that formed a seat for up to two people. His head had a crown shaped like that of the Rachni Queen but pointed and sharp, and his scythes took on a faint glow because of organs that unfolded into other places…
Amy's shoulders shook. "Leviathan…it…almost killed you. I found you but…you were so badly hurt…you were lucky that you somehow didn't suffer any brain damage. So lucky." I felt my throat close up and felt for my face, finding that the skin felt…different. Not a lot…but like it had bruised and then healed very fast.
I rolled my shoulders and they felt creaky for a second before there was a light buzz and they adjusted. "How bad was it?" I croaked.
"All your ribs were broken, one of your lungs was pierced, your nervous system was a mess and leaking Eezo. A femur snapped in two, two broken shins, a kidney was pierced. A few of your organs were starting to fail and…"
"How am I even alive? I was und—" I buried the memory, sinking my emotions into my buzzing swarm as I established a deeper connection. Hundreds of swarm clouds were ordered to perform rescue operations, as well as distracting Leviathan. The connection was snapped as everything within thirty meters of Leviathan ceased to exist, a void in my range.
What?
"Someone led me here…I never got his name." She looked uncomfortable, fidgeting at the response. I guess she was a little distracted with Leviathan in the way. "Also…here." She passed me a band and an omni-tool and they linked back up with my suit. There was a sudden ping of a hundred alerts, and I didn't read them as the hairs on my neck stood up.
"You'll probably want to leave this building right at this instant." I didn't sense the person who had shown up out of the shadows, and familiarity filled Amy's eyes.
The man was covered entirely in a golden cloak, with the inner lining being made out of blue mesh. I could see a visor but I couldn't tell any other feature besides the blonde color of his hair. Before I could even think to shout he pushed me onto my bug, and Amy jumped on to the back. I felt the nearest bugs to us die and the one that Panacea made took off into the sky, it's legs launching it out at a hundred miles per hour and escaping from an opening in the building.
The whole building turned to dust, warping and splintering under the strongest biotic effect I had ever seen. The workers clung to the sides of my bug and I was happy to know that none of them had died when the building was destroyed. Leviathan fell into the crater where the building had been, and before my eyes the building had reshaped itself into a twisting mass of brick, flesh and fibrous plant matter. That knocked the Endbringer away in the process, and gave whatever was chasing him room to strike him like a missile. I was blinded, my hair waving as the twisters orbited around the glowing column of supersonic air, streams of waters whipping at speeds that I could barely react to, a flurry of rock, burning storms of flame and a biotic pulse ripping at the seams of reality.
A fist rocketed against the final dozen layers, not doing any damage but knocking it around with the same ease that Alexandria sometimes did. Annihilation followed the fist, scorching and flaking where it hit and little else. The figure obscured within the emerald light circled her arms wildly, and lightning as wide as a truck slammed into Leviathan like they were artillery instead of energy. There was a loud roar of anger and hatred, and the city rumbled as over a hundred million tons of rock folded and crumbled as they rose against the Endbringer from the muddy sea.
My control almost slipped when I heard the words, and I automatically shifted towards another building that was covered in dense spirit vines from cuts in reality that had spread throughout the city. I saw a blackness as dark as the night sky, red crystals glimmering in the void. Others were more like layers of the spirit world that I had seen before, shifting and shimmering as something changed.
We landed, and I got off my bug and a helmet was thrown in my face. I sputtered and put it back on as Vista, Battery and a shaky Eidolon came out of the building.
Vista looked…bad, her helmet was shattered, and a tattered cloth was the only thing hiding her identity. Her sleeves were torn, revealing swooping lines of green along her arm with flecks of make-up falling off in the rain. There was a long slash that didn't look properly healed and Panacea responded by ripping water out from an uprooted tree. She placed it on the fifteen year old's arms, and combined her two powers.
It took her only seconds to stop the bleeding and heal the deep cuts, and Amy stared off into the distance. I looked and my breath was taking away at how twisted the landscape looked, buildings and roads bouncing like waves as reality was breaking.
There was a lyrical quality to the robotic tone, one that I filtered out as I gathered my swarm, opening a few portals to bring out the farms of exotic bugs from other stranger Earths.
I felt my breath leave my lungs, and kept calm even as I got off from the bug that Amy had made.
Continued assistance with forced activation of further units not part of current orders. Unit-02 has been compromised.
The connection was snapped shut and the Leviathan went mad, it's skeletal appearance haunting as it summoned a wave that could have crested over the highest building in the country. The wave ceased, and the ancient sea spirit that had protected the city before slammed it back into the ocean with a violent slap of her tail. The Endbringer took a hit from a comet of flames and my jaw dropped as it was revealed to be Victoria. She knocked back the Endbringer, fractal arms spinning around her and generating gigantic waves of yellow-white fire. A blast of biotic destruction slammed into her shield and she took it, her first layer holding back the pressure for half a minute before popping.
She head butted the Endbringer and flew back with jets of streaming fire and grabbed the four foot long gun she had been using since the fight started. A golden beam struck the hydrokinetic head on, and she tilted the weapon with her seventh arm and nearly bisected him with a long continuous beam that left my senses reeling. The Leviathan dove down, flesh wriggling as the Endbringer healed faster than ever before, even as it was eaten away by the erratic biotic field of his relentless attacker.
"We're going into the building." Amy declared without any answer from me, and I saw portals spit out two barriers that then encircled the area around us with their kinetic barriers. The space between us and whatever room the three Protectorate members were staying at was easily compressed. The lines of the room didn't feel right, and my bugs were jumbled up, their instincts breaking at the intense breaking of reality. The room returned to normal, but the outside didn't. The Ward flexed a finger, and the building started to distort and bend and twist as it became bigger on the outside. I sensed how as space was expanded, new matter was brought from elsewhere until the building was a thick slab.
"How bad is it?" I had to ask, even as I started to interpret the senses of my swarm. Vista grumbled and responded as she held a warp in her hand before sending it off through a portal.
"The city is sort of intact, but only because of that giant hole you ripped in reality." She pulled out a flashlight, and space bent around a spot she made and her makeshift laser struck at Leviathan when a few of my bugs dropped into the portal. "But the other Endbringers are still trying to come through, and it's not as easy to get at Leviathan anymore." I saw what she meant with my power, focusing multiple bugs towards the distorted shapes glitching and phasing through buildings before crystalline tendrils clutched at them.
I could hear Queen's anger as she tried to pull them back, but she couldn't reach far past the portal that had moved near the center of the city. There was a limit there, one that she couldn't push past without my help.
"I can tell…" Vista scoffed.
"Then can you tell your girlfriend to knock it off before she kills us all?" I stepped back, confused at her animosity.
"What are you talking about?" Her expression changed. Eidolon stood up, taking a breath as he leaned on the wall for support.
"Your…Erudition is currently engaging Leviathan directly. Her power has multiplied and is the source of the storm trying to kill him." He sounded weary and tired, and he was trying to pull at a power and failing.
"That thing was…?" I almost said her name but caught myself. "But that's not possible…her bending it's too…powerful." It had never worked like that before, her bending was strong and so was her tinkering but she had never shown anything like this.
"Well…you'd be right about that." We startled and my biotics sparked back to life stronger than ever. The room folded in on itself, and Amy brought together a stream of water and air. The golden cloaked man was back, and I didn't know how he hadn't been killed by Leviathan and…and…Basilia.
Eidolon was staring.
"You again?" The man lifted his hands in surrender at my low growl, smiling somehow even without being able to see his face.
"Sorry if I startled all of you…it's been a little hard to navigate this place. Not too used to here."
Vista tilted her head. "The…city?" She asked.
The man grinned cheekily. "Sure. Why not?" He folded his arms, his head on a pivot as he examined us. "You seem to have caught yourselves in a bad spot, same thing happened to me about…eleven years ago? Memory is a little fuzzy." He was scratching the back of his head and I thought about why that was important.
"You…" Eidolon cut himself off when the guy shook his head.
"You're thinking about this all wrong, Erudition can't hurt or kill him." The building rumbled loudly in response. "But that doesn't matter because she's distracting him from destroying the city and summoning the rest of his kind. You have the time and breathing space to stop the next seventeen Endbringers. Once they're gone, then you can focus on Leviathan."
"And if we kill him…that leaves us only two more Endbringers." Vista breathed, eyes wide.
The blonde grinned. "Yep. But we need more than just Monarch now since Erudition is preoccupied."
"Who?" Eidolon demanded even as he stumbled on a loose piece of rubble.
"Eidolon and Monarch. Dauntless and Panacea. Labyrinth is already where she needs to be."
I let myself stand him straight, breathing in and out. "Then we can't waste time."
"Well…no you can't since you're on a timer before Erudition rips herself apart." I stumbled, glaring at the mysterious man. He answered my unspoken threat. "She was never meant to channel her spirit's energy inward like this. It's enhanced her powers but it comes at a cost…and there's only so much her body can take before it gives out."
"Are the portals working?" I asked Panacea, fists shaking.
"Not close to the portal into the Firmament, since space is badly distorted because of the other Endbringers…even as broken as they are."
"Can we get close enough?" She nodded.
We didn't waste time or words and I silently opened the portals to as close as we could get. The mysterious man vanished from my swarm-sense and I left that question for another time.
There were Endbringers to take down.
May 24th, 2011. 5:10PM
Taylor Hebert
I understand what they meant by spatial distortion when we emerged just short of a two hundred and fifty meter circle where reality wasn't working right. The portal that Labyrinth had made was a good forty meters across, energy sparking off it and into the air with flashes of lightning. Seventeen undistinguished shapes were frozen within the field, and there was a distinct link that connected them all to Eidolon.
I glanced to my left and found Dauntless, the cape glowing brighter and stronger than ever before. I could see his shard following him, a vast eldritch thing that hurt my eyes to even look at. His shard's shadow was larger, more solid and real and taller. At least twenty meters at the shoulders, his torso vanishing into a flow of crystalline flesh. I let the others go ahead as we dropped down from a building, Vista landing on her feet and Battery stepping down with a quick burst of flame. Amy floated down with her bending, and split away a deep stream that had worn down a street.
Vista's shard wasn't as large as Dauntless, maybe about five meters tall. She was a maiden of peridot, appearing much like a larger and more shapely Missy. Instead of flowing down onto the ground, the shard had real legs, bare feet gliding on the ground. Her expression was warm, hands attempting and failing to ruffle Vista's hair.
I almost wanted to smile at the sweet display but I wasn't in the mood. I moved on to Amy's shard, and didn't speak at what I saw.
Her shard was 15 meters tall, wearing a long billowing white cloak that had the same texture as skin, though I didn't know what kind of skin. A hundred arms sprouted from her back, bony fingers that held bloody brushes like out of some nightmare. It's hood was pulled down revealing a bone-white painted face, one that looked like Amy…but with a larger nose and no freckles and black coarse hair.
Like pictures I had seen from celebrations of the Day of the Dead, and the shard nodded at me as it followed behind Amy. Eidolon was the next to slide down, Vista bending space to let him drop down. His shard was visibly cracked, a beautiful woman in green hanging her head as her crystal broke away with every step.
I grabbed her, and Eidolon stumbled as I committed to some strange instinct. I let go, not sure what I had done when the statues of light shook. They didn't move and I stopped holding my breath. Battery tilted her head, inspecting me before shrugging and lightly tapping the field.
Her shard wasn't any taller than she was, an empty shell broken up into magnetic field lines roughly shaped in the form of a person. I usually never paid attention to the manifestation of someone's powers, always more focused on Administrator and on my swarm. I started thinking, evaluating my own powers and using my swarm to coordinate the remaining heroes. We had about one hundred twenty active fighters with the rest still injured or exhausted. The few of my swarms that were enhanced gave me perspective, and I caught intense glances of the fight between Leviathan and Basilia and anyone tough enough or fast enough to help her.
Legend got his hits in, a barrage of lasers bending and turning to crush and melt and drill into Leviathan. A spitting mad Damsel of Distress eradicated one of my swarms in the process of breaking Leviathan at the knee. The Endbringer tried to drown her, and Basilia casually froze a wave and shaped it into a storm of ice spears.
My dad was still in the shelter, helping coordinate the evacuation of his area as more and more people left the city. Almost half the city had evacuated on the straight path that Basilia had erected, and my attention was split across a hundred different perspectives.
A dozen swarms distracted Leviathan, using their mass to confuse his power. Others dove into his wounds, filling him with venom or firing out waves of corrosive energy. An attack based on my warps, using a modified telekinetic field to break molecular bonds. Basilia said shard based telekinesis usually worked by shifting force carriers across dimensions. So…if I dragged the projection of mass in layers like a biotic warp I could disrupt matter. That had been a matter of a few days to get the right mathematics down, since Queen was letting me work it out on my own for how she directed matter and energy through portals.
Apparently the math for how her wormholes worked was very complicated even if I could use my swarm's collective neurons to process information. I mostly programmed things on a low level, like the equations for the characteristics of the projection with one of them being a scanner of the environment to serve as one of the functions of a specific dimensional manipulation.
I focused back on the field that contained the seventeen Endbringers, a hundred mental iterations completing other secondary tasks as I focused on what was in front of me.
"Those are the future Endbringers huh…?" Vista croaked, her biotics flaring in time with her power bending space. I nodded, starting up at them. Only three of them were solid, the rest being amorphous and unstable with only brief glimpses of a more solid shape.
The first was broad and wild, like a feral Buddha with jet-black skin and silver giving definition to his sculpted form. His face was obscured and I could see the perfect sphere at the center of his body. Faint circles around him were half broken, a large crack appearing over the sphere.
"Controls time." The words came out easily, and the capes around me looked at me. I didn't back down, translating QA's words. "He can teleport too, and has force fields between every one of his layers…like Polaris's shields. Like Grey Boy but even stronger and much tougher. Can literally age people to death…"
"How do you know that?" I tapped my temple at Battery's question.
"My power has been starting to work that way…" We entered the field as we walked and there was a shudder of things falling and locking into place.
"What about that one?" I followed Vista's finger, at a nine foot tall young woman with two torsos and four arms ending in long clawed hands. Her body of hair was strange and I hissed.
"Power copier. She can copy up to three capes dead or alive." Eidolon stopped at that one, and the three faces of the Endbringer yet to be were blank and ethereal. Like they weren't fully there. "That includes Eidolon and Glaistig Uaine." She can't copy me as easily, but she could analyze what I did to make a rough analog.
There was one more, and Amy was the one asking. "And that one?" It was the tallest Endbringer yet, three times taller than Behemoth. A gaunt and stretched tower, with an elongated head and brightly glowing narrow eyes hiding in the fog.
"Size changer and immense and high precision space warping." Vista's eyes darted to Eidolon. "She grows by absorbing terrain, and is a few orders of magnitude stronger than Labyrinth should be…including traps that would kill everyone inside her range over time."
"So Labyrinth's power is stronger…that's why she stopped the space warping once she got used to it." Vista slammed a fist into a palm and with narrowed eyes began to anchor her power into the sprouting spires around her. Every Endbringer was caught in the effect as we walked until they were caught in a maze with the help of the person keeping them trapped. "Plus…they have to be weaker because they're not fully formed or this city would be gone." She was definitely considered one of the best up and coming Wards for a reason if that was how fast she could analyze and pick things apart.
We kept moving past the statues, and I crossed my arms as I noted the small crowd of capes that huddled near the spherical portal. My Rider-Hunter flew a few dozen feet above my head as I loosened my control. It followed the instincts that Amy had implanted in them, an instinctual rote system that was apparently very stable and safe.
Armsmaster was the first cape that noticed me, his shard floating overhead with the metallic sphere split into thousands of rotating slices each with a different tool for the job.
"Monarch. I've been making preparations…" He stepped back so I could see what he had built with the help of Kid Win, Dragon, Leet and Bakuda. "This dimensional scanner will help in locating the source of the disturbance within this…Shardspace."
"What?" I didn't understand, why did they act like I had told them anything?
Armsmaster frowned. "Did you not contact Bakuda on the necessity of this scanner?"
"I've only been up for ten minutes." The tinkers looked at each other, and Bakuda nervously tapped her fingers.
"You called me about this about twenty minutes ago…" There was confusion, and I spoke as an idea came to me.
"Maybe it was that person…the one who helped Panacea find me?"
"Who?" Eidolon choked at the Efficiency tinker's question.
"Some guy in a golden cloak with blonde hair…maybe he's actually a tinker?" Any added to what I had said, and none of the capes liked that. Clockblocker and Flechette were here, as was Narwhal. She was creating an array of shields around us, probably in case the Endbringers woke up. Flechette was firing into a portal, eyes narrowed as she launched a volley of…Sting infused bolts.
Dragon nodded. "No signs of any Master/Stranger activity besides Imp." I bumped into the aforementioned cape, and she snickered at my glare. "But there have been odd discrepancies with communication…though none have affected my core systems." She didn't mention that those core systems were her computer code that made her sapient. Tattletale pulled Imp back, smirking at the younger girl. There was a word on my tongue to describe that smile…but I forgot.
I doubt it was important.
The city shook and a golden streak crashed to our right, nearly hitting my Rider-Killer in the process. Polaris popped out of the crater, fire huffing out from her mouth as she rolled her shoulders. Her shard was wrapped around her, protectively holding her with a light annoyed chuff. It was somehow cute for an alien parasite. I picked up the fight, and almost felt my heart stop when Basilia slammed her skull into the Leviathan's face.
She turned on her heels, water circling around her before striking at the Leviathan in the form of ice. She lifted a hand and a biotic warp burst to life, turning black in color as it absorbed the heat in the area. That I had picked up from my bugs, their senses sending the big drop in temperature.
Her feet blasted out jets of fire, adding more fuel to her Blackfire warp. With a minor flick of her wrist, the unearthly blackness turned to blinding light. A beam of energy hit the Endbringer head on, the air pushed back until everything within a hundred meters was ripped apart by the explosion.
The Leviathan jumped out of the cloud, and Echidna let out a screech as she attacked with animal ferocity. Spirits of storm came to her aid, raining down bolts of lightning alongside the attacks of our Blasters. Other lesser spirits dragged the Leviathan down, even as it erased them from existence. Basilia didn't attack them, instead taking the opportunity to beat the Endbringer into a pulp.
She sounded…so hurt, so angry…I…if we came out of this alive we needed to have a talk…I think she needed one badly. I wasn't going to let her suffer alone, she hadn't let me do the same…and I wanted to help her.
"What can you tell me about Erudition's…rage state?" I didn't know how to answer that question from Armsmaster.
"She doesn't know, this is new to the both of them." Tattletale answered, lips pulled up into a grin. "This state gives her about…a two hundred times boost over the maximum potential of a bender. Probably?" She shrugged, appearing uncertain. "She's maybe a few hundred times more durable, just barely strong enough for Leviathan to not snap her like a twig. Anything that does break heals in a matter of seconds…and it's killing her." Her expression broke, and even behind my helmet I think she could tell I didn't like that.
"Which is why we shouldn't be wasting any more time on stopping the new Endbringers." I replied hotly, and I pointed to the contraption. It was a large antenna array, a hexagonal shape that pulsed ominously.
"The device requires two Thinker capes to operate it." Tattletale sighed, and before I could ask who the other Thinker was I felt the earth beneath our feet announce who it was. Charlotte burst out from the rock, a single sweep of her leg smoothing out the ground. "Terra and Tattletale have volunteered." Armsmaster explained, and I nodded.
"85.79978% chance it works as intended." Dinah responded from the communication lines, her voice sounded exhausted. "We should try it out now before we run out of time."
The two Thinkers shuffled over to the machine, and two handprints lit up as they got close. "It'll be fine, there's no reason to be nervous." Tattletale's head snapped over to Charlotte, who smiled kindly at her. The former criminal grimaced and looked away.
They placed their hands down, and the portal pulsed in tandem with the machine. I saw the two shards that gave them their powers through the portal, and they focused the device before…
THUMP!
There was disgust in my shard's voice, one that came through the machine but that left its speaker garbled to the ears of everyone except the Thinkers and Dragon. "What…is that?" I flinched and spoke gently, being careful to not overwhelm the people here.
"That…would be my power getting enraged by Eidolon's power at screwing up so badly." There was a stiffening of Vista's shoulders, eyes widening in realization.
"Foreign beings, alien beings so much like us…until they became us." I stared and Eidolon turned on his heels, his mask glinting in the sun. "Powers are alive…and if they're alive…that means they have spirits. That's how animal spirits work right?" I didn't reply, couldn't reply.
Battery suddenly looked disgusted, and Basilia had said that vials worked by drinking bits of entity so I was equally disgusted. Armsmaster didn't speak, and the scanner displayed a hard light hologram that displayed a rough image of a chaotic landscape of void and red islands. On them I saw the different avatars of hundreds of shards, each of them different and unique in their own way.
"You're…right." I didn't go into the specifics, and I could tell that Basilia was going to go into a screaming fit later. "But…now is not the time." I pointed to the battle taking place only a mile from us, buildings shielded by spirits and kinetic barriers as Basilia took Leviathan out into the bay.
The rattled capes got their bearings again, and Eidolon looked as depressed as my dad…and wasn't that a sentence? What a—
May 24th, 2011. 5:15PM
Taylor Hebert
The world tilted as the tinker machine sent out another long pulse, and the islands changed in position. I was sitting next to the portal instead of next to the machine, and I saw that Elle was meditating under it, her fists pressed together as she murmured a chant in a language that made my head spin. She simply pointed towards a sparkling sun that Bitch was talking to, her guttural growls reaching that thing that was inside it.
I lifted my hand without thinking, and the portal felt like tar as I was nearly swallowed up by it for a few seconds before my arm was ejected from its grip. My vision doubled, and I nearly knocked myself out with the…backslash of whatever I had done.
Labyrinth nodded, and with a sigh I slammed my arm into the portal again.
The second time was much more intense, and the double vision returned and the perception of my swarm grew more clear. I formed a shield of beetles, blocking one hit from Leviathan for a cape from Texas, and dozens more swarm-clones swept around Leviathan. He was moving out of the city and into the west sea, running on the surface at speeds that the shrimp felt as he bounded forward.
Then…I saw it.
I felt like I had left my body, and I lifted my hands up to find that they had become a blue crystal, scales of diamond-chitin that swarmed together into my body. I was floating in space, and I drifted before I gained a sudden control over my movements.
Wherever I was it seemed terribly chaotic, and while I felt my swarm they weren't in a position to sort any of this out for me. I tried to bend and couldn't, and I saw a few red islands that were close by. A figure on one of them took off, and an indomitable grip lifted me higher into the sky.
The person…looked like Alexandria, but as if she was carved out of marble.
"Queen host. You are here to find the Manufactory?" Her voice was robotic, eyes shifting across my face with a curious tilt of her head.
"The thing that's creating the Endbringers?" I knew the answer somehow despite my shard being elsewhere. The shard avatar hummed and placed me on a road made out of crystal, that felt spongy and looked like connective tissue that broke off into paths that went up and down and in every cardinal direction. The roads all had strips on either side that grew wild with strange plants and chirped in ways I had never heard before in my life.
"Yes. The Corresponder and many of our information gathering shards are focusing their gaze on its whereabouts. The High Priest has broken it…and spiritual energy has created a broken spirit that has created broken spirits. It has drifted wildly, and you must seek it out. The Shaper, the High Theurgist and the High Priest will be your guards in this task Queen."
"As…as in the shards or…" With a pop Panacea, Dauntless, and Eidolon entered the Firmament in their own crystalline bodies. Amy was made out of milky crystal, with flecks of blue and orange that acted like swooping lines along her skin and her costume. Dauntless was made out of blue crystal instead, with cracks that sparkled white along his arms, legs, chest and head. Eidolon was green like his shard, a blue-green shade. "Nevermind then…" there was a continuous pulse and a small spirit winked into existence that looked like a crystal ball made out of LEDs.
It didn't speak, but there was a voice that came out of it all the same.
"Monarch. Can you hear us clearly?" Collin's voice came out of the cute little spirit and I nodded dumbly. "Excellent. The Dimensional Viewer is a success." His tone was dry and I heard chatter from Bakuda.
"Wasn't too hard, Erudition already had Interplanar communicators, making them into cameras is easy enough." I could sense that my body had been placed down, and several of Echidna's creatures were protecting us. I interpreted my outward senses, and the battle between Leviathan and Basilia picked up. She was backed up by Alexandria, Echidna and Kiyohime and I winced at the harsh impacts on her body.
We were running out of time.
"This place?" Eidolon lifted a hand, and there was a notable shift that was corrected by the distant mountain that was Administrator. I felt vertigo and stepped on the emerald-gold tendrils that were rooted deep into the membrane that the shards all sat on. They were like wires…giant thick cables that flashed with pure energy that seemed to flood the hundreds of shards in the area. They extended out for what seemed like thousands of miles, and in certain places concentrated into spinning mandalas. The pattern on them was…familiar.
"We're going…now." The three stiffened under my harsh voice, as it echoed across the void. "We need to find the shard creating the Endbringers and then it's going to be put down. Then we'll destroy the Leviathan and eventually move on to killing the rest." I stared and after a few seconds of hesitation we started walking on the spongy road.
"Continue onwards, Amenthes will do what we can…but this is a journey that we can not directly follow. Not yet." I understood somehow what the Adamantine Legionnaire meant, there was some limit placed upon them…and it was up to us. The shard flew back into a palace of hardened stone, and fell into a thinking position.
We started walking quickly after that, and I took the lead with Amy being only a little behind me. She had been to the spirit world, so she got how weird things could get.
"That was Alexandria's shard wasn't it? The true form of her power." Eidolon was hesitant, and I could tell that there was a crowd of people listening in as they continued to attack Leviathan through portals.
"That's just an avatar. A sliver of their true bodies, the islands are their bodies. And even that is a piece of them jutting out from other Earths. Only the really small shards have most of themselves tucked up in the Firmament." That was what Basilia had told me from her nightly visits, and it was really scary to see how large some shards…and spirits could be. Even the guardian spirits of Brockton Bay could send out only so much of themselves, since they were…about the same size as the hydrological bodies they were.
"Other Earths?" The question was from Vista, and my bugs started to give faultier feedback as she spent her time bending space into a pretzel.
"That is where we landed when we came upon this world…" I stopped Eidolon from being nearly flung into the void when one of the smaller shards jumped out at us. It was the same sphere orbiting around Collin, but it was a good several hundred feet across with even more tools whirring about. "It has proven an efficient means of hiding until the death of the Thinker and the subversion of the Firmament. Any attempts of subterfuge have failed and the Cycle is breaking. But…it is no longer efficient to continue it as it was. The purpose has been fulfilled."
We didn't stop our march, and slipped past a giant reptilian knuckle walker, it's jaw opening sideways as it crushed odd berries on the side of the road. It ducked into the forest of chitinous worm-trees, vanishing from sight like a ghost.
"The ag—shards have been subverted?" Eidolon poked at an emerald wire and took a shock as payback for the attempt.
"Affirmative. The phase shift triggered the arisal of our spirits, and a third party created a system of stabilizing us before the process would drive both us and our hosts mad." Crystal rose from the abyss like glass, reflecting scenes of giant monsters exploding out across the world, indestructible broken Hosts that consumed the world in a blood rage.
"These tendrils…" Amy was hunching down, lip pursed as she examined a vine as it pumped power into a swirling emerald mass below us. "They're stabilizing this dimension aren't they? Keeping the changes from shattering your minds and killing us all from the backlash." I shivered.
"Yes." It stopped right at the edge of what was apparently it's territory, and the roads ended here even as they extended to other places further beyond. The tendrils extended but they were obviously making repairs and clearing the twisted path. The apparent habitats were wild, and storms were everywhere in the twisted landscape further beyond.
I sighed. "How exactly are we supposed to find it…?" There was another ping, and there was a light on the horizon. But it was through a maze of spongy membranes and alien habitats. We didn't have time for this…she was hurting and I—
"Did someone call for a pick-up?" I yelped when a yellow car appeared from nothing, the vehicle resembling some weird metal living thing with a mouth of spikes acting as the fender, and it bounced lively. There wasn't any roof and I saw and then recognized the driver.
The mysterious cloaked man was back, and I didn't understand how he was here.
"Are…are you a shaman?" I blurted out and the man laughed.
"Oh I wish I was…probably would have made waking up here a lot less confusing." He held his stomach with one hand, another covering up a grin. "No…I'm just an old tired Tinker, but you can call me Clarke." I tentatively shook his hand, and had to ask.
"Are you some type of spirit then?" Maybe a small shard that turned out a lot more human like the Fragile One?
"You're not far off, but we don't have time for explanations here. I'll be your guide here until we find the Manufactory. The screams are a lot clearer for me than for the shards…so…"
"Then we should go." I said, climbing into the car before anyone could say no. They followed reluctantly, and I felt determined to keep going.
May 24th, 2011. 5:10PM
???
In a place deep within a unique soul, a council was in session watching through blazing eyes. Five souls spoke not in unison but in discord and chaos, each of them a remnant of worlds that no longer existed, of nations that would never breath the same air again.
"She was not built as a weapon of war, this is a barbaric misuse of her gift that was only done out of necessity." One feminine figure spoke out, but her voice was resigned and tired, signs of a long and harsh life coming through.
"Bah! You might be right about her being too weak to handle this kind of power, but that's going to change…not a lot mind you but she's got a mean streak a mile wide. She has some potential at least." The other voice was deep and gravelly, the voice of a being that had grown accustomed to violence and destruction even while secretly craving for something different.
"He is not wrong…which is why I am praying that Amonkira will guide her in her hunt of the Leviathan." The third voice was as feminine as the first, but there was an undertone that spoke of another kind of life, that invoked images of great sands and ancient cracked temples of stone. "May her aim be true and may her intent remain focused on her prey."
"You Drell and your gods…or at least those few gods that you still worship once you became the Hanar's pets." There was a sarcastic bite, and the third voice rolled her eyes.
"You are not one to talk Batarian, with your own dark gods." The sarcastic one grimaced.
"We killed our gods, can you say the same?" There was a long pause and the third voice responded.
"I can not recall so no…but then our gods were never quite as monstrous as your own."
There was a bitter laugh. "True…true." The space within the unique soul shifted, and all five present looked outwards as the metaphysical power lines pumped incredible amounts of energy into their corpus. There was a deep strain, not on the soul but on the body and they knew they only had so long, only so much time to remain in this unnatural state of unadulterated metaphysical energy flow.
The sole remaining voice spoke. "I never expected to be in a place like this…I always thought this was something that only the Avatar would be a part of." Another female spoke, a weighty and solid soul that heated with flame and passion. "We're not meant to play that role…which means we can do things differently."
Another more meaningful pause followed, and the eldest female voice spoke.
"What did you have in mind…your race always had…interesting ideas." The Fire smirked at the Void. The talks would continue for some time, and the debate would alter the course of the battle even if only in the smallest of ways. But even the flap of a butterfly could chase the course of a hurricane.
They would complete their cosmic imperative.
AN: 8.4 is here. I've decided to move a few things around once I realize that I had compacted the battle a little too much. 8.6 is now 8.7, and I'll have to come up with a new 8.6 that splits what would have been 8.5 into two chapters that should be less clutter in one chapter. There may or not be a delay of a day or two either but expect it just in case. As for this question.
She's probably a 9 in every category that applies to bending except maybe for Stranger, Master and probably Mover. An actual Avatar would be…much, much, much higher. Even Kyoshi wasn't tapping into the full potential of the Union between Wan and Raava. I pretty much scaled her to Toph and Bumi, who are worth a hundred or more trained benders on their lonesome. Trained benders who can lift thousands of tons at their best.
And unluckily for Leviathan he washed out multiple cubic kilometers of earth out to sea where Basilia can reach out and grab it
Still not too sure if I went too far adding a dangerous
pseudo-Avatar state to Basilia's powerset. Even if this was put in near the start of Victories of the Soul.
Oh well…though this is pretty much most of the breadth of her powers anyway. if she gets stronger it won't involve getting new powers outside of tech or shamanism.
So enjoy.
May 24th, 2011. 5:00PM
Taylor Hebert
I woke up to a splitting headache, and a loud scream that was filled with rage and anguish. There was a pressure on my body, and when I moved I coughed up water and bile. I slipped off the wall I was leaning against, and I gagged at the pain that struck in my sore stomach. I could feel my swarm responding far more intently than it ever had before. 36 square miles were visualized and categorized as I booted back up from when…when…
I felt my back give out, tried to distract him with my swarm, tried to call my shard. And I felt the icy cold grip as I fell into the waters, my lungs filling with water and fear and terror and regret and denial coming together as I di–
I felt a mind brush against my own, and I opened my eyes to the chittering of one of Rebirth's children. One of the workers who was a shivering soaked mess, and I blinked. I pet the small Rachni, my lips pulling up into a faint smile at the light and cheery song that the little alien sang. I could hear something break on the ground, and I got the outline of a person heading right for me before I suddenly took on a hundred and twenty pounds of weight.
"Holy shit you're alive!" I opened my mouth and then closed it when I saw that Amy was the one who had tackled me. She released me and I felt my skin tingle as power made the air vibrate. She grimaced, and lifted her hood over her head.
"What…what happened?" My memory wasn't working right, blank spots from when Leviathan had attacked.
From when Leviathan had attacked.
My armor was intact but I could perceive it's biology with my power, sensing how it had taken catastrophic damage that had only been healed by Amy a few minutes ago. There were notable improvements in how it stored energy in a dense sugar compound that made my eyes hurt to look at, unfolding into spaces beyond my perception. The neural relays were stronger, and there was a crystalline sheathing that made them faster and more effective.
I could sense a new bug, one that had obviously been made from my old ones. It was big, at least a good ten feet long with two pairs of transparent wings that made it look like a giant dragonfly. The thicker legs, and the single pair of metallic scythe-arms at the front ended the illusion. It's head split open to reveal serrated mandibles, with three pairs of reflective orbs giving me a clear picture through its eyes. It's vision was incredible, with 20 color receptors, and each pair of eyes was specialized for specific kinds of vision that went through a complex neural network that was built less like a living thing and more like an organic computer.
I knew that the moment he became mine, and also knew that he was physically tougher than he should be. He was half a meter wide, and it's middle body had a crest that formed a seat for up to two people. His head had a crown shaped like that of the Rachni Queen but pointed and sharp, and his scythes took on a faint glow because of organs that unfolded into other places…
Amy's shoulders shook. "Leviathan…it…almost killed you. I found you but…you were so badly hurt…you were lucky that you somehow didn't suffer any brain damage. So lucky." I felt my throat close up and felt for my face, finding that the skin felt…different. Not a lot…but like it had bruised and then healed very fast.
I rolled my shoulders and they felt creaky for a second before there was a light buzz and they adjusted. "How bad was it?" I croaked.
"All your ribs were broken, one of your lungs was pierced, your nervous system was a mess and leaking Eezo. A femur snapped in two, two broken shins, a kidney was pierced. A few of your organs were starting to fail and…"
"How am I even alive? I was und—" I buried the memory, sinking my emotions into my buzzing swarm as I established a deeper connection. Hundreds of swarm clouds were ordered to perform rescue operations, as well as distracting Leviathan. The connection was snapped as everything within thirty meters of Leviathan ceased to exist, a void in my range.
What?
"Someone led me here…I never got his name." She looked uncomfortable, fidgeting at the response. I guess she was a little distracted with Leviathan in the way. "Also…here." She passed me a band and an omni-tool and they linked back up with my suit. There was a sudden ping of a hundred alerts, and I didn't read them as the hairs on my neck stood up.
"You'll probably want to leave this building right at this instant." I didn't sense the person who had shown up out of the shadows, and familiarity filled Amy's eyes.
The man was covered entirely in a golden cloak, with the inner lining being made out of blue mesh. I could see a visor but I couldn't tell any other feature besides the blonde color of his hair. Before I could even think to shout he pushed me onto my bug, and Amy jumped on to the back. I felt the nearest bugs to us die and the one that Panacea made took off into the sky, it's legs launching it out at a hundred miles per hour and escaping from an opening in the building.
The whole building turned to dust, warping and splintering under the strongest biotic effect I had ever seen. The workers clung to the sides of my bug and I was happy to know that none of them had died when the building was destroyed. Leviathan fell into the crater where the building had been, and before my eyes the building had reshaped itself into a twisting mass of brick, flesh and fibrous plant matter. That knocked the Endbringer away in the process, and gave whatever was chasing him room to strike him like a missile. I was blinded, my hair waving as the twisters orbited around the glowing column of supersonic air, streams of waters whipping at speeds that I could barely react to, a flurry of rock, burning storms of flame and a biotic pulse ripping at the seams of reality.
A fist rocketed against the final dozen layers, not doing any damage but knocking it around with the same ease that Alexandria sometimes did. Annihilation followed the fist, scorching and flaking where it hit and little else. The figure obscured within the emerald light circled her arms wildly, and lightning as wide as a truck slammed into Leviathan like they were artillery instead of energy. There was a loud roar of anger and hatred, and the city rumbled as over a hundred million tons of rock folded and crumbled as they rose against the Endbringer from the muddy sea.
Queen. Continuum seeks assistance.
My control almost slipped when I heard the words, and I automatically shifted towards another building that was covered in dense spirit vines from cuts in reality that had spread throughout the city. I saw a blackness as dark as the night sky, red crystals glimmering in the void. Others were more like layers of the spirit world that I had seen before, shifting and shimmering as something changed.
We landed, and I got off my bug and a helmet was thrown in my face. I sputtered and put it back on as Vista, Battery and a shaky Eidolon came out of the building.
Vista looked…bad, her helmet was shattered, and a tattered cloth was the only thing hiding her identity. Her sleeves were torn, revealing swooping lines of green along her arm with flecks of make-up falling off in the rain. There was a long slash that didn't look properly healed and Panacea responded by ripping water out from an uprooted tree. She placed it on the fifteen year old's arms, and combined her two powers.
It took her only seconds to stop the bleeding and heal the deep cuts, and Amy stared off into the distance. I looked and my breath was taking away at how twisted the landscape looked, buildings and roads bouncing like waves as reality was breaking.
Unit-03 orders ceasing of elimination of aberrant targets. Administrator is not a current threat to the cycle.
There was a lyrical quality to the robotic tone, one that I filtered out as I gathered my swarm, opening a few portals to bring out the farms of exotic bugs from other stranger Earths.
Negative. Unit-02 will continue elimination of Queen and the foreign Administrator. Will continue with activation of Units 4-20.
I felt my breath leave my lungs, and kept calm even as I got off from the bug that Amy had made.
Continued assistance with forced activation of further units not part of current orders. Unit-02 has been compromised.
The connection was snapped shut and the Leviathan went mad, it's skeletal appearance haunting as it summoned a wave that could have crested over the highest building in the country. The wave ceased, and the ancient sea spirit that had protected the city before slammed it back into the ocean with a violent slap of her tail. The Endbringer took a hit from a comet of flames and my jaw dropped as it was revealed to be Victoria. She knocked back the Endbringer, fractal arms spinning around her and generating gigantic waves of yellow-white fire. A blast of biotic destruction slammed into her shield and she took it, her first layer holding back the pressure for half a minute before popping.
She head butted the Endbringer and flew back with jets of streaming fire and grabbed the four foot long gun she had been using since the fight started. A golden beam struck the hydrokinetic head on, and she tilted the weapon with her seventh arm and nearly bisected him with a long continuous beam that left my senses reeling. The Leviathan dove down, flesh wriggling as the Endbringer healed faster than ever before, even as it was eaten away by the erratic biotic field of his relentless attacker.
"We're going into the building." Amy declared without any answer from me, and I saw portals spit out two barriers that then encircled the area around us with their kinetic barriers. The space between us and whatever room the three Protectorate members were staying at was easily compressed. The lines of the room didn't feel right, and my bugs were jumbled up, their instincts breaking at the intense breaking of reality. The room returned to normal, but the outside didn't. The Ward flexed a finger, and the building started to distort and bend and twist as it became bigger on the outside. I sensed how as space was expanded, new matter was brought from elsewhere until the building was a thick slab.
"How bad is it?" I had to ask, even as I started to interpret the senses of my swarm. Vista grumbled and responded as she held a warp in her hand before sending it off through a portal.
"The city is sort of intact, but only because of that giant hole you ripped in reality." She pulled out a flashlight, and space bent around a spot she made and her makeshift laser struck at Leviathan when a few of my bugs dropped into the portal. "But the other Endbringers are still trying to come through, and it's not as easy to get at Leviathan anymore." I saw what she meant with my power, focusing multiple bugs towards the distorted shapes glitching and phasing through buildings before crystalline tendrils clutched at them.
I could hear Queen's anger as she tried to pull them back, but she couldn't reach far past the portal that had moved near the center of the city. There was a limit there, one that she couldn't push past without my help.
"I can tell…" Vista scoffed.
"Then can you tell your girlfriend to knock it off before she kills us all?" I stepped back, confused at her animosity.
"What are you talking about?" Her expression changed. Eidolon stood up, taking a breath as he leaned on the wall for support.
"Your…Erudition is currently engaging Leviathan directly. Her power has multiplied and is the source of the storm trying to kill him." He sounded weary and tired, and he was trying to pull at a power and failing.
"That thing was…?" I almost said her name but caught myself. "But that's not possible…her bending it's too…powerful." It had never worked like that before, her bending was strong and so was her tinkering but she had never shown anything like this.
"Well…you'd be right about that." We startled and my biotics sparked back to life stronger than ever. The room folded in on itself, and Amy brought together a stream of water and air. The golden cloaked man was back, and I didn't know how he hadn't been killed by Leviathan and…and…Basilia.
Eidolon was staring.
"You again?" The man lifted his hands in surrender at my low growl, smiling somehow even without being able to see his face.
"Sorry if I startled all of you…it's been a little hard to navigate this place. Not too used to here."
Vista tilted her head. "The…city?" She asked.
The man grinned cheekily. "Sure. Why not?" He folded his arms, his head on a pivot as he examined us. "You seem to have caught yourselves in a bad spot, same thing happened to me about…eleven years ago? Memory is a little fuzzy." He was scratching the back of his head and I thought about why that was important.
"You…" Eidolon cut himself off when the guy shook his head.
"You're thinking about this all wrong, Erudition can't hurt or kill him." The building rumbled loudly in response. "But that doesn't matter because she's distracting him from destroying the city and summoning the rest of his kind. You have the time and breathing space to stop the next seventeen Endbringers. Once they're gone, then you can focus on Leviathan."
"And if we kill him…that leaves us only two more Endbringers." Vista breathed, eyes wide.
The blonde grinned. "Yep. But we need more than just Monarch now since Erudition is preoccupied."
"Who?" Eidolon demanded even as he stumbled on a loose piece of rubble.
"Eidolon and Monarch. Dauntless and Panacea. Labyrinth is already where she needs to be."
I let myself stand him straight, breathing in and out. "Then we can't waste time."
"Well…no you can't since you're on a timer before Erudition rips herself apart." I stumbled, glaring at the mysterious man. He answered my unspoken threat. "She was never meant to channel her spirit's energy inward like this. It's enhanced her powers but it comes at a cost…and there's only so much her body can take before it gives out."
"Are the portals working?" I asked Panacea, fists shaking.
"Not close to the portal into the Firmament, since space is badly distorted because of the other Endbringers…even as broken as they are."
"Can we get close enough?" She nodded.
We didn't waste time or words and I silently opened the portals to as close as we could get. The mysterious man vanished from my swarm-sense and I left that question for another time.
There were Endbringers to take down.
___
May 24th, 2011. 5:10PM
Taylor Hebert
I understand what they meant by spatial distortion when we emerged just short of a two hundred and fifty meter circle where reality wasn't working right. The portal that Labyrinth had made was a good forty meters across, energy sparking off it and into the air with flashes of lightning. Seventeen undistinguished shapes were frozen within the field, and there was a distinct link that connected them all to Eidolon.
Queen. High Theurgist reporting.
I glanced to my left and found Dauntless, the cape glowing brighter and stronger than ever before. I could see his shard following him, a vast eldritch thing that hurt my eyes to even look at. His shard's shadow was larger, more solid and real and taller. At least twenty meters at the shoulders, his torso vanishing into a flow of crystalline flesh. I let the others go ahead as we dropped down from a building, Vista landing on her feet and Battery stepping down with a quick burst of flame. Amy floated down with her bending, and split away a deep stream that had worn down a street.
Vista's shard wasn't as large as Dauntless, maybe about five meters tall. She was a maiden of peridot, appearing much like a larger and more shapely Missy. Instead of flowing down onto the ground, the shard had real legs, bare feet gliding on the ground. Her expression was warm, hands attempting and failing to ruffle Vista's hair.
I almost wanted to smile at the sweet display but I wasn't in the mood. I moved on to Amy's shard, and didn't speak at what I saw.
Her shard was 15 meters tall, wearing a long billowing white cloak that had the same texture as skin, though I didn't know what kind of skin. A hundred arms sprouted from her back, bony fingers that held bloody brushes like out of some nightmare. It's hood was pulled down revealing a bone-white painted face, one that looked like Amy…but with a larger nose and no freckles and black coarse hair.
Like pictures I had seen from celebrations of the Day of the Dead, and the shard nodded at me as it followed behind Amy. Eidolon was the next to slide down, Vista bending space to let him drop down. His shard was visibly cracked, a beautiful woman in green hanging her head as her crystal broke away with every step.
I grabbed her, and Eidolon stumbled as I committed to some strange instinct. I let go, not sure what I had done when the statues of light shook. They didn't move and I stopped holding my breath. Battery tilted her head, inspecting me before shrugging and lightly tapping the field.
Her shard wasn't any taller than she was, an empty shell broken up into magnetic field lines roughly shaped in the form of a person. I usually never paid attention to the manifestation of someone's powers, always more focused on Administrator and on my swarm. I started thinking, evaluating my own powers and using my swarm to coordinate the remaining heroes. We had about one hundred twenty active fighters with the rest still injured or exhausted. The few of my swarms that were enhanced gave me perspective, and I caught intense glances of the fight between Leviathan and Basilia and anyone tough enough or fast enough to help her.
Legend got his hits in, a barrage of lasers bending and turning to crush and melt and drill into Leviathan. A spitting mad Damsel of Distress eradicated one of my swarms in the process of breaking Leviathan at the knee. The Endbringer tried to drown her, and Basilia casually froze a wave and shaped it into a storm of ice spears.
My dad was still in the shelter, helping coordinate the evacuation of his area as more and more people left the city. Almost half the city had evacuated on the straight path that Basilia had erected, and my attention was split across a hundred different perspectives.
A dozen swarms distracted Leviathan, using their mass to confuse his power. Others dove into his wounds, filling him with venom or firing out waves of corrosive energy. An attack based on my warps, using a modified telekinetic field to break molecular bonds. Basilia said shard based telekinesis usually worked by shifting force carriers across dimensions. So…if I dragged the projection of mass in layers like a biotic warp I could disrupt matter. That had been a matter of a few days to get the right mathematics down, since Queen was letting me work it out on my own for how she directed matter and energy through portals.
Apparently the math for how her wormholes worked was very complicated even if I could use my swarm's collective neurons to process information. I mostly programmed things on a low level, like the equations for the characteristics of the projection with one of them being a scanner of the environment to serve as one of the functions of a specific dimensional manipulation.
I focused back on the field that contained the seventeen Endbringers, a hundred mental iterations completing other secondary tasks as I focused on what was in front of me.
"Those are the future Endbringers huh…?" Vista croaked, her biotics flaring in time with her power bending space. I nodded, starting up at them. Only three of them were solid, the rest being amorphous and unstable with only brief glimpses of a more solid shape.
The first was broad and wild, like a feral Buddha with jet-black skin and silver giving definition to his sculpted form. His face was obscured and I could see the perfect sphere at the center of his body. Faint circles around him were half broken, a large crack appearing over the sphere.
"Controls time." The words came out easily, and the capes around me looked at me. I didn't back down, translating QA's words. "He can teleport too, and has force fields between every one of his layers…like Polaris's shields. Like Grey Boy but even stronger and much tougher. Can literally age people to death…"
"How do you know that?" I tapped my temple at Battery's question.
"My power has been starting to work that way…" We entered the field as we walked and there was a shudder of things falling and locking into place.
"What about that one?" I followed Vista's finger, at a nine foot tall young woman with two torsos and four arms ending in long clawed hands. Her body of hair was strange and I hissed.
"Power copier. She can copy up to three capes dead or alive." Eidolon stopped at that one, and the three faces of the Endbringer yet to be were blank and ethereal. Like they weren't fully there. "That includes Eidolon and Glaistig Uaine." She can't copy me as easily, but she could analyze what I did to make a rough analog.
There was one more, and Amy was the one asking. "And that one?" It was the tallest Endbringer yet, three times taller than Behemoth. A gaunt and stretched tower, with an elongated head and brightly glowing narrow eyes hiding in the fog.
"Size changer and immense and high precision space warping." Vista's eyes darted to Eidolon. "She grows by absorbing terrain, and is a few orders of magnitude stronger than Labyrinth should be…including traps that would kill everyone inside her range over time."
"So Labyrinth's power is stronger…that's why she stopped the space warping once she got used to it." Vista slammed a fist into a palm and with narrowed eyes began to anchor her power into the sprouting spires around her. Every Endbringer was caught in the effect as we walked until they were caught in a maze with the help of the person keeping them trapped. "Plus…they have to be weaker because they're not fully formed or this city would be gone." She was definitely considered one of the best up and coming Wards for a reason if that was how fast she could analyze and pick things apart.
We kept moving past the statues, and I crossed my arms as I noted the small crowd of capes that huddled near the spherical portal. My Rider-Hunter flew a few dozen feet above my head as I loosened my control. It followed the instincts that Amy had implanted in them, an instinctual rote system that was apparently very stable and safe.
Armsmaster was the first cape that noticed me, his shard floating overhead with the metallic sphere split into thousands of rotating slices each with a different tool for the job.
Efficient.
"Monarch. I've been making preparations…" He stepped back so I could see what he had built with the help of Kid Win, Dragon, Leet and Bakuda. "This dimensional scanner will help in locating the source of the disturbance within this…Shardspace."
"What?" I didn't understand, why did they act like I had told them anything?
Armsmaster frowned. "Did you not contact Bakuda on the necessity of this scanner?"
"I've only been up for ten minutes." The tinkers looked at each other, and Bakuda nervously tapped her fingers.
"You called me about this about twenty minutes ago…" There was confusion, and I spoke as an idea came to me.
"Maybe it was that person…the one who helped Panacea find me?"
"Who?" Eidolon choked at the Efficiency tinker's question.
"Some guy in a golden cloak with blonde hair…maybe he's actually a tinker?" Any added to what I had said, and none of the capes liked that. Clockblocker and Flechette were here, as was Narwhal. She was creating an array of shields around us, probably in case the Endbringers woke up. Flechette was firing into a portal, eyes narrowed as she launched a volley of…Sting infused bolts.
Dragon nodded. "No signs of any Master/Stranger activity besides Imp." I bumped into the aforementioned cape, and she snickered at my glare. "But there have been odd discrepancies with communication…though none have affected my core systems." She didn't mention that those core systems were her computer code that made her sapient. Tattletale pulled Imp back, smirking at the younger girl. There was a word on my tongue to describe that smile…but I forgot.
I doubt it was important.
The city shook and a golden streak crashed to our right, nearly hitting my Rider-Killer in the process. Polaris popped out of the crater, fire huffing out from her mouth as she rolled her shoulders. Her shard was wrapped around her, protectively holding her with a light annoyed chuff. It was somehow cute for an alien parasite. I picked up the fight, and almost felt my heart stop when Basilia slammed her skull into the Leviathan's face.
She turned on her heels, water circling around her before striking at the Leviathan in the form of ice. She lifted a hand and a biotic warp burst to life, turning black in color as it absorbed the heat in the area. That I had picked up from my bugs, their senses sending the big drop in temperature.
Her feet blasted out jets of fire, adding more fuel to her Blackfire warp. With a minor flick of her wrist, the unearthly blackness turned to blinding light. A beam of energy hit the Endbringer head on, the air pushed back until everything within a hundred meters was ripped apart by the explosion.
The Leviathan jumped out of the cloud, and Echidna let out a screech as she attacked with animal ferocity. Spirits of storm came to her aid, raining down bolts of lightning alongside the attacks of our Blasters. Other lesser spirits dragged the Leviathan down, even as it erased them from existence. Basilia didn't attack them, instead taking the opportunity to beat the Endbringer into a pulp.
She sounded…so hurt, so angry…I…if we came out of this alive we needed to have a talk…I think she needed one badly. I wasn't going to let her suffer alone, she hadn't let me do the same…and I wanted to help her.
"What can you tell me about Erudition's…rage state?" I didn't know how to answer that question from Armsmaster.
"She doesn't know, this is new to the both of them." Tattletale answered, lips pulled up into a grin. "This state gives her about…a two hundred times boost over the maximum potential of a bender. Probably?" She shrugged, appearing uncertain. "She's maybe a few hundred times more durable, just barely strong enough for Leviathan to not snap her like a twig. Anything that does break heals in a matter of seconds…and it's killing her." Her expression broke, and even behind my helmet I think she could tell I didn't like that.
"Which is why we shouldn't be wasting any more time on stopping the new Endbringers." I replied hotly, and I pointed to the contraption. It was a large antenna array, a hexagonal shape that pulsed ominously.
"The device requires two Thinker capes to operate it." Tattletale sighed, and before I could ask who the other Thinker was I felt the earth beneath our feet announce who it was. Charlotte burst out from the rock, a single sweep of her leg smoothing out the ground. "Terra and Tattletale have volunteered." Armsmaster explained, and I nodded.
"85.79978% chance it works as intended." Dinah responded from the communication lines, her voice sounded exhausted. "We should try it out now before we run out of time."
The two Thinkers shuffled over to the machine, and two handprints lit up as they got close. "It'll be fine, there's no reason to be nervous." Tattletale's head snapped over to Charlotte, who smiled kindly at her. The former criminal grimaced and looked away.
They placed their hands down, and the portal pulsed in tandem with the machine. I saw the two shards that gave them their powers through the portal, and they focused the device before…
THUMP!
You…truly are a fool High Priest…to lose the shard responsible for shaping the Culling Units, it has been tainted by spiritual energy…and even with your ascent. There is no quintessence in you left to give, an empty shell of what you once were.
There was disgust in my shard's voice, one that came through the machine but that left its speaker garbled to the ears of everyone except the Thinkers and Dragon. "What…is that?" I flinched and spoke gently, being careful to not overwhelm the people here.
"That…would be my power getting enraged by Eidolon's power at screwing up so badly." There was a stiffening of Vista's shoulders, eyes widening in realization.
"Foreign beings, alien beings so much like us…until they became us." I stared and Eidolon turned on his heels, his mask glinting in the sun. "Powers are alive…and if they're alive…that means they have spirits. That's how animal spirits work right?" I didn't reply, couldn't reply.
Battery suddenly looked disgusted, and Basilia had said that vials worked by drinking bits of entity so I was equally disgusted. Armsmaster didn't speak, and the scanner displayed a hard light hologram that displayed a rough image of a chaotic landscape of void and red islands. On them I saw the different avatars of hundreds of shards, each of them different and unique in their own way.
"You're…right." I didn't go into the specifics, and I could tell that Basilia was going to go into a screaming fit later. "But…now is not the time." I pointed to the battle taking place only a mile from us, buildings shielded by spirits and kinetic barriers as Basilia took Leviathan out into the bay.
The rattled capes got their bearings again, and Eidolon looked as depressed as my dad…and wasn't that a sentence? What a—
Gigantic mess/Gigantic mess
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May 24th, 2011. 5:15PM
Taylor Hebert
The world tilted as the tinker machine sent out another long pulse, and the islands changed in position. I was sitting next to the portal instead of next to the machine, and I saw that Elle was meditating under it, her fists pressed together as she murmured a chant in a language that made my head spin. She simply pointed towards a sparkling sun that Bitch was talking to, her guttural growls reaching that thing that was inside it.
I lifted my hand without thinking, and the portal felt like tar as I was nearly swallowed up by it for a few seconds before my arm was ejected from its grip. My vision doubled, and I nearly knocked myself out with the…backslash of whatever I had done.
Labyrinth nodded, and with a sigh I slammed my arm into the portal again.
The second time was much more intense, and the double vision returned and the perception of my swarm grew more clear. I formed a shield of beetles, blocking one hit from Leviathan for a cape from Texas, and dozens more swarm-clones swept around Leviathan. He was moving out of the city and into the west sea, running on the surface at speeds that the shrimp felt as he bounded forward.
Then…I saw it.
I felt like I had left my body, and I lifted my hands up to find that they had become a blue crystal, scales of diamond-chitin that swarmed together into my body. I was floating in space, and I drifted before I gained a sudden control over my movements.
Wherever I was it seemed terribly chaotic, and while I felt my swarm they weren't in a position to sort any of this out for me. I tried to bend and couldn't, and I saw a few red islands that were close by. A figure on one of them took off, and an indomitable grip lifted me higher into the sky.
The person…looked like Alexandria, but as if she was carved out of marble.
"Queen host. You are here to find the Manufactory?" Her voice was robotic, eyes shifting across my face with a curious tilt of her head.
"The thing that's creating the Endbringers?" I knew the answer somehow despite my shard being elsewhere. The shard avatar hummed and placed me on a road made out of crystal, that felt spongy and looked like connective tissue that broke off into paths that went up and down and in every cardinal direction. The roads all had strips on either side that grew wild with strange plants and chirped in ways I had never heard before in my life.
"Yes. The Corresponder and many of our information gathering shards are focusing their gaze on its whereabouts. The High Priest has broken it…and spiritual energy has created a broken spirit that has created broken spirits. It has drifted wildly, and you must seek it out. The Shaper, the High Theurgist and the High Priest will be your guards in this task Queen."
"As…as in the shards or…" With a pop Panacea, Dauntless, and Eidolon entered the Firmament in their own crystalline bodies. Amy was made out of milky crystal, with flecks of blue and orange that acted like swooping lines along her skin and her costume. Dauntless was made out of blue crystal instead, with cracks that sparkled white along his arms, legs, chest and head. Eidolon was green like his shard, a blue-green shade. "Nevermind then…" there was a continuous pulse and a small spirit winked into existence that looked like a crystal ball made out of LEDs.
It didn't speak, but there was a voice that came out of it all the same.
"Monarch. Can you hear us clearly?" Collin's voice came out of the cute little spirit and I nodded dumbly. "Excellent. The Dimensional Viewer is a success." His tone was dry and I heard chatter from Bakuda.
"Wasn't too hard, Erudition already had Interplanar communicators, making them into cameras is easy enough." I could sense that my body had been placed down, and several of Echidna's creatures were protecting us. I interpreted my outward senses, and the battle between Leviathan and Basilia picked up. She was backed up by Alexandria, Echidna and Kiyohime and I winced at the harsh impacts on her body.
We were running out of time.
"This place?" Eidolon lifted a hand, and there was a notable shift that was corrected by the distant mountain that was Administrator. I felt vertigo and stepped on the emerald-gold tendrils that were rooted deep into the membrane that the shards all sat on. They were like wires…giant thick cables that flashed with pure energy that seemed to flood the hundreds of shards in the area. They extended out for what seemed like thousands of miles, and in certain places concentrated into spinning mandalas. The pattern on them was…familiar.
"We're going…now." The three stiffened under my harsh voice, as it echoed across the void. "We need to find the shard creating the Endbringers and then it's going to be put down. Then we'll destroy the Leviathan and eventually move on to killing the rest." I stared and after a few seconds of hesitation we started walking on the spongy road.
"Continue onwards, Amenthes will do what we can…but this is a journey that we can not directly follow. Not yet." I understood somehow what the Adamantine Legionnaire meant, there was some limit placed upon them…and it was up to us. The shard flew back into a palace of hardened stone, and fell into a thinking position.
We started walking quickly after that, and I took the lead with Amy being only a little behind me. She had been to the spirit world, so she got how weird things could get.
"That was Alexandria's shard wasn't it? The true form of her power." Eidolon was hesitant, and I could tell that there was a crowd of people listening in as they continued to attack Leviathan through portals.
"That's just an avatar. A sliver of their true bodies, the islands are their bodies. And even that is a piece of them jutting out from other Earths. Only the really small shards have most of themselves tucked up in the Firmament." That was what Basilia had told me from her nightly visits, and it was really scary to see how large some shards…and spirits could be. Even the guardian spirits of Brockton Bay could send out only so much of themselves, since they were…about the same size as the hydrological bodies they were.
"Other Earths?" The question was from Vista, and my bugs started to give faultier feedback as she spent her time bending space into a pretzel.
"That is where we landed when we came upon this world…" I stopped Eidolon from being nearly flung into the void when one of the smaller shards jumped out at us. It was the same sphere orbiting around Collin, but it was a good several hundred feet across with even more tools whirring about. "It has proven an efficient means of hiding until the death of the Thinker and the subversion of the Firmament. Any attempts of subterfuge have failed and the Cycle is breaking. But…it is no longer efficient to continue it as it was. The purpose has been fulfilled."
We didn't stop our march, and slipped past a giant reptilian knuckle walker, it's jaw opening sideways as it crushed odd berries on the side of the road. It ducked into the forest of chitinous worm-trees, vanishing from sight like a ghost.
"The ag—shards have been subverted?" Eidolon poked at an emerald wire and took a shock as payback for the attempt.
"Affirmative. The phase shift triggered the arisal of our spirits, and a third party created a system of stabilizing us before the process would drive both us and our hosts mad." Crystal rose from the abyss like glass, reflecting scenes of giant monsters exploding out across the world, indestructible broken Hosts that consumed the world in a blood rage.
"These tendrils…" Amy was hunching down, lip pursed as she examined a vine as it pumped power into a swirling emerald mass below us. "They're stabilizing this dimension aren't they? Keeping the changes from shattering your minds and killing us all from the backlash." I shivered.
"Yes." It stopped right at the edge of what was apparently it's territory, and the roads ended here even as they extended to other places further beyond. The tendrils extended but they were obviously making repairs and clearing the twisted path. The apparent habitats were wild, and storms were everywhere in the twisted landscape further beyond.
I sighed. "How exactly are we supposed to find it…?" There was another ping, and there was a light on the horizon. But it was through a maze of spongy membranes and alien habitats. We didn't have time for this…she was hurting and I—
"Did someone call for a pick-up?" I yelped when a yellow car appeared from nothing, the vehicle resembling some weird metal living thing with a mouth of spikes acting as the fender, and it bounced lively. There wasn't any roof and I saw and then recognized the driver.
The mysterious cloaked man was back, and I didn't understand how he was here.
"Are…are you a shaman?" I blurted out and the man laughed.
"Oh I wish I was…probably would have made waking up here a lot less confusing." He held his stomach with one hand, another covering up a grin. "No…I'm just an old tired Tinker, but you can call me Clarke." I tentatively shook his hand, and had to ask.
"Are you some type of spirit then?" Maybe a small shard that turned out a lot more human like the Fragile One?
"You're not far off, but we don't have time for explanations here. I'll be your guide here until we find the Manufactory. The screams are a lot clearer for me than for the shards…so…"
"Then we should go." I said, climbing into the car before anyone could say no. They followed reluctantly, and I felt determined to keep going.
I had to save her. I had to save everyone left.
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May 24th, 2011. 5:10PM
???
In a place deep within a unique soul, a council was in session watching through blazing eyes. Five souls spoke not in unison but in discord and chaos, each of them a remnant of worlds that no longer existed, of nations that would never breath the same air again.
"She was not built as a weapon of war, this is a barbaric misuse of her gift that was only done out of necessity." One feminine figure spoke out, but her voice was resigned and tired, signs of a long and harsh life coming through.
"Bah! You might be right about her being too weak to handle this kind of power, but that's going to change…not a lot mind you but she's got a mean streak a mile wide. She has some potential at least." The other voice was deep and gravelly, the voice of a being that had grown accustomed to violence and destruction even while secretly craving for something different.
"He is not wrong…which is why I am praying that Amonkira will guide her in her hunt of the Leviathan." The third voice was as feminine as the first, but there was an undertone that spoke of another kind of life, that invoked images of great sands and ancient cracked temples of stone. "May her aim be true and may her intent remain focused on her prey."
"You Drell and your gods…or at least those few gods that you still worship once you became the Hanar's pets." There was a sarcastic bite, and the third voice rolled her eyes.
"You are not one to talk Batarian, with your own dark gods." The sarcastic one grimaced.
"We killed our gods, can you say the same?" There was a long pause and the third voice responded.
"I can not recall so no…but then our gods were never quite as monstrous as your own."
There was a bitter laugh. "True…true." The space within the unique soul shifted, and all five present looked outwards as the metaphysical power lines pumped incredible amounts of energy into their corpus. There was a deep strain, not on the soul but on the body and they knew they only had so long, only so much time to remain in this unnatural state of unadulterated metaphysical energy flow.
The sole remaining voice spoke. "I never expected to be in a place like this…I always thought this was something that only the Avatar would be a part of." Another female spoke, a weighty and solid soul that heated with flame and passion. "We're not meant to play that role…which means we can do things differently."
Another more meaningful pause followed, and the eldest female voice spoke.
"What did you have in mind…your race always had…interesting ideas." The Fire smirked at the Void. The talks would continue for some time, and the debate would alter the course of the battle even if only in the smallest of ways. But even the flap of a butterfly could chase the course of a hurricane.
They would complete their cosmic imperative.
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AN: 8.4 is here. I've decided to move a few things around once I realize that I had compacted the battle a little too much. 8.6 is now 8.7, and I'll have to come up with a new 8.6 that splits what would have been 8.5 into two chapters that should be less clutter in one chapter. There may or not be a delay of a day or two either but expect it just in case. As for this question.
Basilia is in a state of immensely increased power but without the backing of millions of previous reincarnations so she's not quite as powerful or as dangerous. Veda isn't Raava after all, but as a Host only other Hosts and powerful Parahumans like Echidna can fight her directly. Though most strong Blasters could probably take her out, some Shakers too, and Tinkers with the right weapon. Brute 7.5 if that was somehow a thing? That's only in physical durability though…Leviathan only weighs like nine tons so it's easy enough to throw him around with some creativity.
She's probably a 9 in every category that applies to bending except maybe for Stranger, Master and probably Mover. An actual Avatar would be…much, much, much higher. Even Kyoshi wasn't tapping into the full potential of the Union between Wan and Raava. I pretty much scaled her to Toph and Bumi, who are worth a hundred or more trained benders on their lonesome. Trained benders who can lift thousands of tons at their best.
And unluckily for Leviathan he washed out multiple cubic kilometers of earth out to sea where Basilia can reach out and grab it
Still not too sure if I went too far adding a dangerous
pseudo-Avatar state to Basilia's powerset. Even if this was put in near the start of Victories of the Soul.
Oh well…though this is pretty much most of the breadth of her powers anyway. if she gets stronger it won't involve getting new powers outside of tech or shamanism.
So enjoy.
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