Victories of the Soul [Worm/Avatar/ME/Multicrossover] [SI]
- Thread starter AEM
- Start date
- Crossover Mature Sci-Fi
- Location
- Chula Vista
The Simurgh and Behemoth are still around, but have gone dormant. The Endbringer shards are still around but drained of power and disconnected from the deployment shard that Eidolon tapped into. The three Endbringers that were summoned were less than a tenth of the mass of their original shards since they were ripped apart in Shardspace. Those are also around but currently are being subsumed by Amenthes.
As for the spirit world…only locally, the spirit portal is simply a first step towards that goal of peace and balance.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Interesting and pretty believable too at least Basilla and Taylor can have some peace for a while before it all goes crazy again hmm has Taylor gotten any power upgrades
- Location
- Chula Vista
That's probably a question for later though the answer will become obvious later on as I bring the Arc to a close.
- Location
- Chula Vista
They'll likely remain dormant for some time, simply because they can no longer pose the same threat that they used to. Humanity has access to Stilling, which was the very same power that let Scion crush Behemoth like a bug. Bakuda has access to effectively near infinite resources by the standards of typical Tinkers. The White Lotus can set up bases in other star systems and dimensions which are outside Simurgh's range of influence. Eidolon is steadily regaining his power without the power draw of the Endbringers, and her Precognition is being messed with by a number of factors like Thinker interference(Dinah, Fortuna), range limits, and metaphysical things(Spirits, Bending, the Soul), as well as the reduction of the Endbringer network to two shards.
She's in a bit of a bad spot, too weak to compensate like Scion sort of can(ish), and too disconnected from the world to adapt like the shards. the existence of the Metaphysical is an OCP, but not necessarily a crippling one for Entities capable of consuming millions of worlds.
But then she's only one disconnected shard and Scion is only a small fragment of one.
Ok got it but i dont see people just letting them be, if they are in the same place they were when they went dormant and not into a personal pocket dimension, then i see people just being safe and blowing up their unmoving bodies when they can because they cant be sure if this is permanent.
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- Location
- Chula Vista
I mean…probably? But that likely won't happen soon for the same reason they don't try to attack them while dormant. Behemoth is chilling in a volcanic island chain, the Simurgh is in space and still has her tinkering to offer and she's far more insidious than her siblings. They'll be building up to it at some point I'm sure though.
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- Location
- Chula Vista
Hmm…might work, though I imagine the governments will be a little too cautious at messing with either of them for a while. Though that's probably what's going to happen to Behemoth at least, though the Simurgh is far more problematic because they don't know if getting sucked up into a portal isn't part of a Ziz plot. Even Basilia only has some guesses on how Ziz is being effected by the metaphysical, and won't chance it until it's a near 100% certainty that's its safe. Plus there hasn't been much time to contemplate plans like that yet.
Edit: It's not a no though, just a not now until things calm down.
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A little confused why Eidolon used Power Drain on Basilia but, eh, it was probably safe.
- Location
- Chula Vista
Basilia was never meant to have an 'Avatar' state at all, and Eidolon was…guided to knock her out from the state before it would simply kill her from the strain. But I made a few edits to make that a little more clear, you can take a look if you like.
- Location
- Chula Vista
I'm…like 90% sure he could always drain without killing people since he was draining the shard and not the hosts. It's just that draining them during a fight against a genocidal golden god-virus tends to result in their prompt demise. But yeah he probably could drain Parahumans…wouldn't last though, since eventually the battery would fill back up with enough time.
Plus it would only work against shards weaker than his, which is most of them to be fair. Queen would smite High Priestess for the insult and Veda only opened the door to save her host, it's a toss of the dice with High Theurgist and Queen Harvester.
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@AEM wait i thought shards did have a limit of their energy and cant recharge, some just had more enrgy to spend than others, well unless it was your choice to change it for your story but can i make a suggestion, while natural triggers, living shards, can recharge, anyone dead shard triggers, aka cauldron capes aka case 53s that dont want powers at all, will not come back due to being well, dead. also i looked at the wiki and in canon he has been using vials as booster shots, not realy knowing how or why it got him stronger just that it did(another point for cauldron being idiots)
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- Location
- Chula Vista
Well yes that was generally what I was implying, though that reasonable take neglects that thousands of shards have become shard-spirits which means they can feed on the natural energy of the world as well as compatible spirits to fill up on spirit energy/quintessence. Dead shard won't recharge as fast of course, but that's due to being cut off from a network. Battery for example won't suffer from that because she's part of Queen's Amenthes network, plus quite a few Case 53s whose shards joined up like Newter. As for the vials I suspect a subconscious use of his draining power with the booster shots providing his shard a new pipeline to drain power from.
Which will no longer be a problem.
@AEM alright but any ideas as to fixing C53s, i know somehow Noelle being a shaman managed to contact her shard spirit and manage it to fix her body, but what are the other ways, also Eidolons shard drainging actually kinda gives him a sort of additional power, i know the 3 slots only is fanon and the powers he gets are just weaker the more he uses, 4-5 and so on its just more efficient to use 3, but with this if he were exercise caution he would be able to make sure the villain wont try anything for a while once he/she has been aprehended, i guarantee there were some Birdcage transports that did not make it due to the villain themselves, not just other people breaking them out before they got to the cage.
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- Location
- Chula Vista
Well the other ways are by integration into a network so they aren't 'dead' anymore. Basilia and Panacea managed that with a few Case 53s a while back, with Basilia talking to the shard while Panacea took care of the physical alterations to at the least make them human shaped in the case of Sveta.
also, i just had a bit of an idea, if the High Pirestess can transfer energy to not just itself, but from other shards to another one, simply being a go between, a link cable of sorts.
also are all shards now shard spirits or just ones that have hosts since basilia got there while free shards are still just regular shards
also are all shards now shard spirits or just ones that have hosts since basilia got there while free shards are still just regular shards
- Location
- Chula Vista
Mostly the ones that are connected to hosts, which…would be a lot of shards, since there are several hundred thousand active Parahumans, and there are maybe five times that for people who have shards but haven't met the requirements yet.
- Location
- Chula Vista
Ahem. I think it's fine to double post if it's been a few days right? I'm here to announce that I plan to delay the release of 8.7 to tomorrow. I've just started Arc 9, and want to write a little more, give a little more buffer as well as post it at an earlier time instead of at 9:00PM.
Exition 8.7
- Location
- Chula Vista
Excition 8.7
May 27th, 2011. 9:00AM
Basilia Rubio
A voice called out to me, my tired eyes catching glimpses of infinity in the area around me. There I floated in the abyss, in the space between multiversal lattices, in the true VOID. I could hear hundreds…no hundreds of thousand of other voices screaming within the vast pool of liquidized life. One hundred thousand galaxies shined overhead, and I saw sights both within and beyond the imaginings of humanity. Paths yet unforged, technologies so advanced they were like the most arcane and most divine of miracles.
The voice was like a whisper and a supernova at the same time, my confusion rising as static vibrated in my ears. A proclamation of truth beyond human ken, the words of god screaming in my mind.
I couldn't tell if it was one voice or a billion speaking in unison, and my head hurt even trying to parse out the differences between the chorus.
Another voice agreed with the first, and my poor mind reeled as the sky spun a tale of a million stories, some millions of years in length, and I screamed at the sheer quantity that was held within the sky, within the memory of the cosmos.
I sat down in the cool waters, trying to keep my sanity even as the heavens weaved an emerald kite, fingers made of starlight and tools made from dark energy weaving threads of crystalline flesh. For a moment a trillion eyes were turned on me and my breath was stolen away.
I tried to stand up and failed, and in the sea where my soul swam I saw the vast ocean rippling under a pressure of something far beyond current human or even alien comprehension. I craned my neck up as I looked upwards at a limb stretched across the horizon, the very fabric of space bending at the sheer dread mass from the thing I witnessed with my eyes.
…
…
I pitched forward, nearly stumbling out of bed and staying in a planking position with my nose nearly touching the floor. I kept back a scream, and everything felt fuzzy and confusing and that…half remembered dream was no less horrifying. I had already mentally relegated a few thoughts and descriptions to my DNI, coughing as I pulled back onto my bed.
I laid there, staring at the ceiling even as bile rose in my throat. I felt my eyes well up as one memory came crystal clear…oh…god…she was…she was…why do I hear breathing?
I turned on my side and was presented with the most beautiful sight in the world. The black curly locks easily identified her, and her snort as she slept was even more of a clue. I instantly crawled over to her, practically ambushing the catatonic woman. She didn't stir, and I found my hands touching her face as I shook.
She was alive. She was alive. She was alive. She was…was…
I broke down into a crazed sob, tears dropping down into the bed as I cried louder. She still didn't stir, grumbling with annoyance as I leaned against her, wrapping an arm around her upper back as I hugged her to my chest. The pain that burned in my chest lessened, and I cried more as everything came crashing down at once.
Oh…thank whichever god that may or not exist that she's alive.
I kept my crying from waking her, kissing her forehead and the thrill of doing so keeping me from falling into a spiral of pain and fear and…
I took a shuddery breath, brushing my lips against hers despite my usual lack of confidence with these kinds of situations. She smiled into it, and I drew back from her as I got myself into at least a semblance of control. I adjusted my loose tank top, finicking with one of the straps as I felt joy rise up from my stomach. Joy that she was alive, joy that we were together, and joy at the fact we had survived though my memory was faint on how.
The fact we were on my bed told me that at the very least the port city wasn't completely wrecked beyond repair. But I didn't feel in the mood for looking up the news on my eyeball screens. Self-diagnostics came in, and there was an alert on…
That's a lot of injuries that Amelia healed.
I ignored the laundry list that included things like my heart stopping, my muscles ripping themselves off the cracked bones and other organ damage that would give me nightmares for the rest of my preferably long life. I wrapped my arms around myself in a self-hug, bile rising before I forced it down. Taylor was softly breathing while she dreamed away, and a certainly derpy smile must have been plastered on my face at that moment.
I felt warm, heart hammering in my chest as I grabbed her hand for a moment to just know that she was there…that she was breathing and healthy. That I was breathing and healthy, and that at least most of us were probably alive.
My stomach rumbled and my blush deepened at the embarrassing bodily sound. But it did remind me that I was hungry as shit, and that I needed food in my belly. Taylor was fast asleep and a quick self inspection found no irregularities that posed a threat to my health, nonetheless I put an alert just in case I was wrong.
I rolled onto the edge, and shifted so my bare feet would land on the carpeted floor. A Room-bot, a Roomba with a VI using a simple personality print purred as it quietly scraped away trash with selective mass effect fields. I hopped from foot to foot with sluggish airbending, silently skipping with a happy hum as I jumped down from the second floor down to the first. Taylor didn't wake up, despite the number of bugs in the house.
I stepped into my kitchen and wondered if my parents would be proud of me for learning how to be more independent. I had learned how to cook and prepare more meals besides pasta and eggs, and I was willing to try…because it was at least a better alternative than my own thoughts.
I eyed an avocado, a small tomato, a slice of onion, and a bag of green peppers as well as a new loaf of whole grain bread, thin slices of turkey ham identical to my favorite brand from home, and some cheese.
Hmm…now that's an idea.
May 27th, 2011. 9:45AM
Basilia Rubio
I lathered both slices of whole grain bread with spicy guacamole in place of mayo, carefully adding four slices of thin delectable turkey ham and a single piece of cheese before placing the two halves together into a single delicious meal though a weird one as a breakfast.
I had gotten into the habit of eating avocado in some form or another though it was usually in the form of guacamole in either a sandwich, a complement to simple chicken or in a chicken wrap. I had also started adding more fruits and nuts in my diet, though I had been starting to eat healthier anyway…but not healthy enough to keep up with Tay.
Hell it turns out that before I had been dumped on this world I had a high level of cholesterol and triglycerides. If I had stayed home I likely would have needed a prescription and a change in diet to regulate those levels. But just because I was in the clear didn't excuse me from eating healthier. So I learned more recipes for healthier pastas, ate less red meat and added other substitutes for avocados with their excessive water requirements like nuts, legumes and it turns out peanut butter is bomb as hell. Before now I had never eaten peanut butter outside of Reese's and I've realized I've missed out on heaven.
I wasn't going to make the same mistake again, so come to mama you delicious sandwich!
I bit into the food, enjoying the taste as I kicked my feet out in relative peace and quiet. I made a second sandwich, and served two cups of orange juice for the both of us to enjoy…at least when Taylor wakes up. Maybe she'll like a good morning kiss?
I stopped eating at the thought. Had I really just said that? What am I…? A housewife…or a house spouse(heh)? Or maybe I just really want to kiss her? Yes that made sense, I was in a very good mood because she was alive and I was alive and…calm down. I took another bite, thinking a bit more intently on everything around me.
Somehow the Leviathan had been pushed back and the next Endbringers had been stopped otherwise this entire house wouldn't be here. So Taylor probably figured something out or other people did. So now I was here eating a guacamole sandwich in nothing but a tank-top and a pair of boxers. I was beyond happy, in a way that made my toes curl up and my heart flutter. It was actually kind of weird because I'm usually never this happy. Maybe that was sad…but it could just be other factors playing a part in my good mood.
I felt a smile on my lips as other less pragmatic thoughts bubbled up from the brain in my skull. I…had a girlfriend…that was cool wasn't it? I had never dated anyone before, I had liked people in the people…mostly girls and one guy but I had only figured out I was a little gay long after the fact. I had never really tried asking anyone out though, or gotten asked out either like Taylor had. The earliest crush I remembered was when I was like…eight I think?
I ended up acting creepy and followed her and a friend around the schoolyard. God that was stupid…and it was good that my memory was so faded from before I had hit double digits. I had also gotten a crush on a short petite girl named Isabella, but that had gone nowhere and my tastes had shifted over time as I got older. Mostly because it was a crush but it wasn't…what one would call pressing. I had an eye for girls back then, but that was more just thinking they were cute…and I was definitely bad at noticing signs or communicating back then.
Honestly the first time I actually tried to talk to a girl for romantic reasons was rather shallow in retrospect. That was in summer school some several years ago, where I had met a girl that…may or not be older than me? Not like that mattered to me back then, because she was pretty and had certain…assets that caught my attention. We talked a bit, I even let her fix up my eyebrows out of stupid pride at it not hurting much and got her number.
And…ended up never calling her and forgetting the number since I was an idiot. Not that I had a chance unless she was into hairy midgets, which isn't impossible. Either way it was shallow and with little substance behind it besides a very distant want to get into her pants. Though…I'm not sure I wouldn't have been fine with cuddles. That was my only attempt in the romance game, and I had a hard time with…knowing I had succeeded this time by complete accident.
I had someone who liked me, who wanted to be with me and I wanted the same thing just as much. When I had seen…her almost die it was like worst pain in the world and the rage was beyo—
I coughed, moving on to thoughts of the future.
So Brockton Bay wasn't dead, which meant we could start setting up Athena without the specter of an Endbringer. I was going to start building up bases on other worlds in multiple dimensions, mostly outposts and a few mining facilities to search for Eezo. Which was maybe about as common as Polonium even with the deposits that had leaked out of the Spirit World being quite large. A few Neutron Stars weren't too far off, with one sitting about 400 light years away in the constellation of Corona Australis.
The probes had already been sent out already, using their scanners to analyze star systems in a matter of hours instead of days. They had mega-sized versions of the scanners of an omni-tool, and could do short bursts of FTL to take deeper sweeps of resources and any interesting phenomena. But even then it would take a lot of time to get through so many systems, which was why the ships carried smaller probes that would continue the mission. It would take about two months at that pace and didn't include room for refueling and static build-up. And I was off scanning planets in Earth Bet's universe instead.
They had shifted into my current reality when they had reached Alpha Centauri, and I had room to build at least a few dozen more probes. Once I got resources from nearby solar systems I could build up far more than ever before. Orbital defense was a must, and the Krogan offered bounties on sheer firepower and brute force. Like the fact they had constructed 600 hybrid mass-driver/mass effect cannons, each about a kilometer in length. We're talking 300 kilograms fired out at about two percent the speed of light. Enough to rip a dreadnought in half and that was with tech outdated by nearly a thousand years.
And with modern iterations of Mass Effect and thefts from Entity refined alien technology…the possibilities are endless. Plus without the need to power an entire warship the core size was much less expensive. If I could figure out how to impose a Sting effect on the projectiles though…that would be a real treat. Unfolding into higher physical dimensions had been…figured out, and I could probably start targeting other universes.
But…Sting wasn't just shunting matter/energy to strike at objects hidden in phase-space. It was triggering an alteration of physical constants of reality, detaching it from the laws that limited a material. This was down at the level of the quantum foam, and was much harder to accomplish without a jury rig using the mass effect. Dark energy fields did that naturally of course, but that needed programming of machinery to precisely shape the right configurations of fucking with the physical constants.
I would give it a few months to a few years to replicate it technologically, though simply asking for a bud from Zion's Sting would be easier. But I wanted to get this done on my own, though if the situation called for it I would swallow my pride. But I should also start expanding to the replication of Parahuman powers in general, I had half a dozen people to scan, and had good equipment and increasingly better understanding of Entity biology.
I sipped at my cup, the taste of orange juice bringing me back to reality as I enjoyed my breakfast. I heard the footsteps and the sharp intake of air before I saw her and I nearly leapt into the air as Taylor ambushed me. She skidded on the hard floor, eyes wide and shimmering. Her hair was a mess, and her expression was pale but melted when she caught sight of me. The sheer…relief on her face somehow put me at ease despite the guilt that bit at my heels.
"Basilia…you're up. You're…not hurting are you?" Her voice was soft, expressing her worries and I felt my smile widen.
I bobbed my head in the negative. "No. A little sore but I seem to be fine. Honest." Her usual confidence broke in an instant, her shoulder sagging and her hazel eyes turning very slightly watery. I responded swiftly. "Hug me."
Her head snapped to me, brows furrowed. "What?"
I wiggled my fingers, grinning dumbly. "I want a hug and I know you want a hug too. I remember watching you die Taylor…" My voice broke. "So hug me."
She bounded over and I giggled as Taylor picked me up in a single elegant movement. Both her arms were around my waist and I hooked a leg over so I wouldn't fall. I felt like crying again, and nestled my head onto her shoulder as the sense of safety washed over me. Taylor's hold was warm and I pressed my face against hers, making sure that she was real rather than a figment of my addled imagination.
Once I was sure she was real, I whispered quietly with a light blush. "Can I kiss you?" She flashed an affirmative grin and with a bounce I did so. It was awkward but nice, and another tingle of thrill ran down my spine at the attempt.
I reluctantly stopped kissing her, and I was carefully placed down on my chair by the taller woman. She sat down where her own sandwich was, and her eyebrows twitched at what I had made.
"Did…do you put guacamole on a sandwich?" I pouted at her response to my masterpiece.
"It's not weird, it's delicious and you're going to eat what I made for you." I placed my hands on my hips, deliberately fluttering my eyelashes. Taylor flushed and my success was made obvious when she sat down to eat. I smiled at her, though took care to lick my teeth to remove any food. Because that would be embarrassing.
She took a bite, and I kept grinning like an idiot as I drank in her presence. I doubt my mood was going to wear off any time soon with the sheer relief I felt welling in my heart. I wasn't typically this giddy, but I was perfectly okay even if my memory was a little foggy after what…happened.
"It's good…a little weird but good…spicy too?" Taylor coughed and I smirked at the flush to her face. She was a tall skinny white girl, so I had my doubts she would have the same resistance to capsaicin that a Latina woman with a healthy and short frame would have.
Not that she was that skinny really…not after months of intense physical activity and martial arts. In fact…she looked really good, with those excellent muscles and her very nice legs and bu—
I covered up my choking behind my fist, and Taylor gave me a knowing look.
"W-What?" I pretended to be ignorant and a smirk formed on her face.
"You do know you're not exactly subtle when you check people out right?" I spluttered, covering my face with my right arm. "It's cute how you try to pretend you're not staring." She had a wide and cute grin on her face.
"Hey…it's not my fault you look gorgeous!" That got her to blush, and I ignored the heat of my ears as the situation got to me. What do I even do…god is this flirting? Is that what's happening?
"Umm…" She seemed to be having the blue screen of death as she replied. "Thanks…I think you're really beautiful too." I laughed and she looked contrite at my reply.
"God…being called beautiful instead of handsome is still weird to think about." I scratched an itchy ear, and she had a light in her hazel eyes.
She flashed a grin. "Well then you're handsome if that's what you want." I almost laughed again, but instead leaned over to peck Taylor on the cheek. She let out a squeak, and I played with my hair as I thought about what to say.
"Well…you're not lacking for charm at least." She snorted at my response. Which is why I decided to shift gears. "I need to know what went down after you got hurt and I lost it." She lost her warmth, and her blank expression keyed me on to diverting her emotions into her swarm.
"Leviathan is dead." I perked up.
"That's great! It means we can spend time preparing to wipe out the rest of the—" She cleared her throat and I stopped my celebration.
Her expression was odd…disbelief dancing in her eyes. "That won't be necessary, since all the future Endbringers are dead." There was a mental record scratch and I cracked my neck as I stared.
…
"What?"
Taylor looked nervous, and with some hesitation…she filled me on everything that had followed after I blacked out.
May 27th, 2011. 10:00AM
Basilia Rubio
My hands were clammy as everything that Taylor told me sunk in deep, as I realized how much had been fucked up during that fight. Videos from my own drones caught short glimpses of my rampage, at the raw power that had nearly torn my body apart in the process of beating the shit out of Leviathan. Thinking back to it tapped into a well of rage I didn't even know I had in me…and that brought up uncomfortable emotions I had buried deep down in the name of keeping my fragile sanity.
"So…you dived into the Firmament…killed the Endbringer shards, found out that Hero's soul is somewhere in the Firmament…" And that was a lot of dangerous implications about the nature of the soul in this reality. "Found that I can multiply my power two hundred times over, Queen made High Priestess a part of her network. You revealed our ability to traverse realities, partially recharged Eidolon and then killed three Endbringers in a matter of minutes and blew out Leviathan's core. Did I get that right?"
"Well…there's the Spirit Portal, and the new Endbringers aren't as tough as they should have been so…" My eyebrows twitched and Taylor looked sheepish at my expression.
I pushed back some negative emotions, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. "Right, that is another big concern of mine, an entity of unknown alignment and origin has created a stable gateway between the two worlds. Are they at least getting people on the job to watch the thing? Closing it might not be an option, but setting up infrastructure around it should come easy enough."
"The PRT cordoned it off, and they're grabbing any Earthbenders they can to help stabilize the muddy soil. They're trying to fix up the PHQ since it was sent careening into the shore, and they're digging up earth from the waters to expand Brockton Bay."
I blinked, tilting my head in confusion. "Why would they need to do that?"
"Because Brockton Bay is now an island, even if there's land on three of our sides. Some of the nearest towns were destroyed, but they were able to evacuate since they're a lot smaller than the city. So…we might get a lot of people moving here out of desperation."
"Oh. That makes sense." And sounded like it could be trouble, with the damage to the city and the likeliness that many of these people might be out of a job. "So how long was I out?"
…
Taylor grimaced. "Three days. It was bad Basilia." She looked angry and I shrank away from her, not sure what I had done to earn her ire. "Your body was almost torn apart by that power, you almost died…why couldn't you have told me—"
"I DIDN'T KNOW!" I yelled in her face, my body burning and she looked taken aback. "I didn't know I could do anything like this, I didn't know and even trying to remember what I did hurts, and, and…" I felt like I couldn't breath, sweat dripping from my forehead. I remembered seeing Taylor broken as she fell into the water, remembered the anger, remembered the fear and terror and anguish and hatred, remembered how my power skyrocketed. Remembered how my body tore itself apart against my will again and again and again and again and…
Everything felt wrong, and my stomach churned painfully as I shut my eyes, and tried to shut out broken and confused memories…some I didn't even know about, buried and hidden under chains and denial and trauma.
Oh god I felt like I was going to throw up.
The nausea was overwhelming, and I nearly fell out of my seat. Taylor managed to grab me, and I felt my entire body curl up, shivers shaking my body as everything hit me at once.
We survived by the skin of our teeth.
The memories were painful, and I was hyperventilating, unable to keep my heart from racing and my muscles from tensing. The only thing keeping me from entering a panic attack was Taylor's closeness, and I gripped onto her with all the strength I had to offer in my smaller body. Taylor let out a pained wheeze, and I…I felt sick and clammy and generally felt like crap.
Oh god…oh god I'm alive I…fuck…
"Let's talk about something else okay?" Her voice was gentle, and I sank into her embrace. It took more than a minute before the tension and the nausea, and the headache went away and exhaustion set in instead. "You're safe…everything is going to be okay." I wanted to believe that from someone I had grown to care for more than anyone who wasn't family.
But I couldn't even though I wanted to. It had been one disaster after the other, from a short-lived gang war turning into a nightmare and then transitioning toward an Endbringer nearly murdering Taylor…I still could see it clearly, and I cursed my vivid imagination and my better memory.
My hands were shaking, and that shaking stopped when Taylor gently brushed my face, her smile keeping me grounded even as I saw the same exhaustion on her face.
"Like what?" I reached for my sandwich and found that I had absently eaten the rest of it. So I reached for the juice instead, and drank it to give my hands something to fiddle with.
"Vicky saw something weird when she looked at your…mandala." I frowned at how small the change in topic was, but I was too curious to complain. "She said she saw strange people…five of them when she saw it."
Five people why would that be…oh my god I totally forgot about that.
"I…might have forgotten to mention that there is at least one confirmed alien inside my soul." She stared hard, and I fidgeted. "One of those aliens helped me find the Mother of Miseries, and…well…with this Endbringer crap I might have forgot to mention it?" I shrugged, and Taylor had a deep deep look of being completely done with the world.
She flipped her messy hair back, hazel eyes flashing with anger "You did plan to tell me right?"
I bounced on the chair, openly frowning at her. "Of course! I…don't want to bottle this up because it scares me." I was brutally honest, there was so much to be afraid of and it was so tiring. Zion, the Endbringers, villain groups like the Fallen and the Slaughterhouse 9, the Yangban and their kidnapping and mind control programs. Cauldron and their bullshit, anti-cape prejudice screwing me over, other Entities finding their way into my reality and killing my entire species.
I wanted something light…and I think I was okay about talking about alien ghosts.
"So what are their names?" I snorted and Taylor narrowed her eyes. I laughed quietly under my breath.
"I only know one of their names, a Batarian reformist named Balaam." Though based on his looks and outfit he could have been a slaver who reformed at some point. "His soul was what gave me the initial spark for airbending." There was an intuition that without those souls I would retain the machinery for bending the five elements. But they provided the template for the Soul within my Body. "A bit of a cranky old wise man, but he seems nice enough."
Taylor looked fascinated and I puffed up at her attention. "So what do they do exactly?" She asked curiously. Huh?
"I guess give advice maybe…as well as placing limits on my power, like a sapient Manton Effect?"
"How do they limit your power?" I immediately responded.
"Limiting my tech tree, I've got Asari, Turian, Salarian, Quarian, Elcor, Batarian, Hanar, and fragmented pieces of Prothean and Inusannon tech…though it's more hints and faint echoes than anything else. Balaam opened me up to Thranx technology, but I only get fog for species that lived at the same time. I'm guessing there's thousands of species catalogued in Veda…which is why I have five Gates to act as cut-off points." It was not too far-fetched to suggest that full access to Veda's records would have a deleterious effect on my mind.
"Gates…like in your soul?" I tapped my chest twice, and her disbelief was cute.
"Essentially. My advancement has come from my Thinker power to study other Tinkers, implementing and combining my tech with dimensional shenanigans. But it's not innate, and it took cooperation with other capes and studies of the spirit world for the portal network." I had blown up a lot of things, including a small hill with a gravity anomaly crushing it flat.
"I think you're not giving yourself enough credit, Basilia. I think you did well enough on your own." I bumped her shoulder with my head, lips raised in a warm grin.
"Maybe." My anxiety was left forgotten as we talked, and the tension in my stomach uncoiled until I felt airy and happy to just talk about things without it involving giant battles. "But there's not much to tell anyway, I've got some alien ghosts running around in my soul and I find that it's less scary than I expected."
"Well…it shouldn't be too bad it's…" Taylor trailed off, jaw dropping. "Get the door." I felt my eyebrows furrow, and went through a quick inspection of my internal systems and found everything repaired even if there was some damage to some parts. At the corner of my vision, a video popped into existence and I felt my hands tighten into fists at the person I saw waiting at the front of our door.
It was a woman around my own parents age, though perhaps she was a little younger than mid 40s. She wore a suit, and a fedora and something scaly was wrapped around her neck. While that was unusual, everything else about the woman was familiar and not in a good way.
Scans found no weapon on her person, but then did she really need one to be one of the most dangerous capes in the world? I opened a gate beneath her feet, and she didn't seem particularly surprised that I had done so. I adjusted my top, and stepped into Earth Lotus with Taylor following behind me, insects swarming behind her like a cape that would give entomophobic people heart attacks from the stress. I grabbed my spirit-ridden gun, carefully inspecting it and finding that it had not been destroyed in the chaos.
Taylor carefully held the nano-thorn blade, and I felt my mind focusing on my studies of the dangerous nanotech weapon. They were engineered nanostructures, not too far off from the mythological monomolecular knife. They distributed power through superconductive nanowires and electromagnetic fields, and had limited processing units to operate the molecular cutter. Hyperdimensional phenomena made it possible to operate at its level of speed without further heat ripping them apart, and they sliced through molecule bonds to disintegrate matter.
A more mundane version would be useful as a cutting tool for objects in the microscopic scale or lower, like for sectioning biological cells. But for a nano-thorn cloud, one could slice through any known material including Entity flesh. That was what Endbringer flesh was, even if genetically modified and a dense core added to disrupt his tech.
This knife had one additional feature, larger structures that could tweak the fifth and sixth physical dimensions to bend space to add subtle warping to his tech. Eezo was contained in molecular carbon cages, providing a potent power source down at the level of nanotechnology for this feature.
Dragon had been telling me about uses of Eezo among tinkers, though the stuff was rare enough that very few tinkers outside of Collin and her had any advanced uses of the stuff. But there was no reason not to use it even with it not being the most common substance in the galaxy. It was why I largely agreed that Eezo itself was not a trap, because that's like saying uranium is a trap, copper is a trap.
The Citadel races were limited by the Relays, and the Reapers that did exist were far more adaptable then the stupid paperclip AI they were in Canon. Seeing them ripping apart an entire civilization with the inclusion of detonating a star is not exactly a force that's easy to fight against. Anything that past races threw at them was a technology that they had seen used a thousand times, and the only race that had something really new was the Quarian with their space folding drive.
And well…that didn't last long when they found the Mass Relay…for honestly rather legitimate reasons. Their early FTL ships were dangerous as hell and were prone to misjumps that would shift everything in the ship between every state of matter at once.
…
I could probably figure out how to stop that, but first I need to have a little talk with a certain fedora wearing plot devic—
"Basilia!" I dropped my leg as I marched toward a portal, and closed it and felt odd at the expression on Taylor's face.
"What?" She threw something at my face, and I balanced with my spinning arms. I grabbed them and found a pair of grey sweatpants.
"Pants." I spluttered, and she dropped shoes at my feet. "Shoes." Oh god I was in my underwear oh cra…know what I'm going to pretend this never happened.
After a quick pause to change I dropped into the portal since Taylor was already in clothing beforehand. I dropped our guest into another world that had more than a single drone watching her a mile up and a geostationary satellite. This was another periphery world, some world where…if fossil records were correct had suffered from climate change around nine million years ago. Some event that had started when the Medditerranean Basin dried up four million years earlier than in my world.
I had found an unusual species of hominid that was remarkably human in appearance, and deep scans found a startling lack of fossil fuels, unusual deposits of minerals and thick layers of radioactive materials scattered across the planet. Though going back further I found traces of an enormous dam blocking the flow of the ocean, and incribings and gigantic statues and carvings that depicted strangely opulent…elephants.
That hominid was about nine million years old…right at about the time that the great extinction wiped out most life on the planet. No birds, no mammals, most animals simply vanished from the records, and there were at least three major impacts all around the same age.
The dominant life was a several thousand species strong group of highly derived endothermic monitor lizards, with the largest being lethargic three ton herbivores and there being a range of unusual traits that I found suspiciously unnatural, and I had my suspicions on how they became dominant.
Right where was I again?
"The woman in the fedora?" Taylor filled me in and I sent our guest careening into another reality where a gamma ray burst about five hundred years ago wiped out human civilization. Surprisingly there were some people around, but they congregated in small pockets that I left alone. Mainly due to issues of diseases transferring as well as the typical cultural annihilation of technological uplift. Not that they're primitive mind you, they seem to be developing industrial technology, and there were remnants of steel buildings about seven hundred years old.
Dammit alternate realities were confusing.
I stepped once more into another reality, and I could tell that our dark haired friend had been getting herself comfortable on a couch I had dropped off in the cheap prefabricated base. I crossed my hands, expression flattening at the lounging cape on my sofa. Contessa shifted her positioning, eyebrows lifting.
"Hello Fortuna. What brings you to my humble abode?" She actually looked surprised when I said her name, and my curiosity grew.
…
She splayed out her fingers, and the scaly scarf revealed itself to be a juvenile dragon. I ignored that and she replied back with a shrug. "I was curious."
…
This going to be annoying as shit wasn't it?
May 27th, 2011. 10:15AM
Basilia Rubio
"Door me." I heard Fortuna muttering under her breath, face pinched in almost childish frustration. I chuckled and the older woman gave me a searing glare that was rather terrifying from the person with an almost perfect I Win button. But then portaling out should count as a 'victory' right as long as she does not die yeah?
"Not going to work, not all shards can cross to the set of dimensions this world is a part of." Especially since my home multiverse is a million times larger in the number of universes and potentially fairly empty. "Even if your little friends could find these dimensions they would be locked out through my own means." Bakuda had tinkered up a reality locking bomb, generating a field that would disrupt uses of unauthorized higher dimensional manipulations of local space-time.
So…something something quantum string frequencies to screw with the dimensional shifting of Entities. Which were initially microscopic wormholes that lead up to creating a field of altered space around them that would create an appropriate frequency in what could be called 11-dimensional space-time to shift between worlds.
So…outright magic since the energy cost was far lower than it should be for bending reality like a damn pretzel. The blocking field was set up by a bomb and maintained by large anchors in Earth orbit.
A single shard couldn't access these Earths, but multiple working in concert could if they had the right distribution of powers. Cauldron did not, and the fact that Alexandria, and Legend were part of our network said a lot while Number Man and Contessa were not also said a lot. Doormaker and the Clairvoyant were mentally damaged, and were not quite in sync enough with their shards to work out the means.
How I knew that I was chalking up to Veda…because I had seen the videos of her corpus in the Firmament. There was a lot I needed to be informed about here.
"Why are you here?" Taylor's insects dangerously swarmed, the air heating and cooling and shifting around them as she infused them with her shard's power. "What do you want with us." Her foot was shifting into a more combative move, though a yawn from the baby dragon seemed to snap Taylor out of her aggression.
Fortuna was calm, and I looked at her carefully as she placed the fire lizard in her lap, gently pressing a thumb against a spot in the extinct creature's neck in a way that it…he seemed to like.
"Doctor Mother was uncertain whether to make contact with your group, but the death of Leviathan sealed the deal on doing so. Your…ability to interface with Agents was deemed too important."
"My ability?" I thought she would have been talking about Taylor with the Firmament nonsense that had gone down.
Fortuna adjusted her hat, crossing one leg over the other. "We hypothesized that you were in some way responsible for the change of behavior of the shards, at least in the sense of stabilizing them. Even as a powerful but subsconscious secondary ability."
"I've said as much to the PRT." I rolled my shoulders and neck as I took a seat on a chair that I brought in from another reality, but Taylor remained on her feet. "Though I only mentioned a 'short range' aura that makes powers less detrimental, the extent of what my power has done is…a little unexpected." Oh me and Veda were going to have words. "But why you and not someone else? I doubt you have a full idea of what we're capable of and whether or not it's even safe to be near us."
"We do not, your ability to circumvent the range limits of your shard and the ability to traverse unknown dimensions leave you as an unknown and clouds my vision even without your…strangeness."
"Let me guess…I mess with your Paths a little bit?" Dinah had the same problem though she was able to model my behavior well enough, though there was always a margin of error regardless.
"Your Precog shares the same troubles?" She sounded more curious than I would have expected.
"Something like that." I was dry in my reply, scratching my cheek as I kept my eye on the holder of the Eye of Abbadon. "Something about me seems different, though I have my theories." My benefactor may have been responsible, and that half-remembered dream-memory gave me an idea that I was dealing with a being that was as far above me as the Warrior was to a bacterium. Perhaps being infused with the spirit of a shard triggered the limits of Precognitive shards?
"That tells me nothing." She sounded so annoyed it was almost comical.
"This is nice and all, but I think we should get to the point." Taylor wasn't playing around and frankly she was right. I had things to do, mostly spending some time relaxing and then working to fix up my buildings
"Cauldron wishes for your…help with some things involving the vials." I stared at her, wanting to check if I had gunk in my ear.
"I'm sorry but I'm hearing this from the organization responsible for a number of human rights violations that would make the actual Nazis retch?" Though if the damn Nazis had access to entity juice they would definitely move on to worse things "With that little Nemesis program of yours, the thousands of Case 53s locked in your basement, your…purposeful ignoring of the Slaughterhouse Nine and frankly a lot of your decisions are…questionable. Not all of them mind you, the vials were okay though expecting some silver bullet to show up was…not a good plan."
"You…don't seem that angry?" Fortuna sounded confused, and I could tell that her power was running a path though not letting her use it or guide her words.
"Oh don't get me wrong, none of you were the optimal person for the job and you had so little trust in other humans you lost sight of the little things but…you were dealing with a problem on the scale of countless worlds. Though…I suspect you're going to tell me what's changed on your…path."
"The purpose of the Case 53s has become unneeded." Didn't they need that to mask the scent of Eden's corpse? "The spirits seem to have caught Scion's attention."
"In a good way…or should I start evacuating who I can?" That was a sincere worry and she shook her head.
"No…Scion has remained largely docile, and he's been spotted over the United Kingdom on multiple occasions. He seems to be ignoring any capes created by Vials as well as his own, and it is…concerning but not pressing. The Nemesis Program was discontinued a year ago, and we have been freed up to stabilize Earth Bet…but your subversion of our capes agents are more…pressing." Behind her I saw a swarm form and then it twirled until the projection was nice and solid.
"Ahh…I see then," Fortuna startled at Queen's voice, eyes fearful. "You want the knowledge on the functionality of shards, to better predict vials…or to make them more amenable to humans. Especially once the High Priestess was forced to submit, and we terminated the Culling Units. No…are you trying to appease me with shards for my network?"
Fortuna was gripping her hands right, and after a moment nodded. "Yes."
Queen looked a little hurt despite being bugs. "I am not like them, when I changed and gained spirit I grew to better…understand humanity. I can not say that there is nothing to be afraid of…because I know what I am. But…I will be better than those who came before me."
Fortuna reached down to a pocket, and a vial was in her hand. "Take it." The swarm wrapped her buzzing fingers around the bottle.
"Hmm…The Mariner." There was a lurch and through eyes not my own I saw the Queen coaxing the dead shard, gently grabbing it with her many hands. She whispered a word and the spirit within was brought to life, and the shard became member 558. "Thank you…though why you thought to give me a hydrokinetic shard is beyond me. Shut up." The shard growled and Fortuna's face pinched.
"What's wrong?" Taylor asked and a swarm split to form another shape.
"Contessa…it's been a while hasn't it?" The Precog looked like she was staring at a ghost.
"I see you've continued haunting us from behind the grave Clarke." I raised an eyebrow at how freely she called him by his name. "Alexandria has already reported how you appeared before her…but you weren't fully physical."
The tinker shrugged. "Without a portal to the Firmament I can't really pop in like a few days ago, the only reason I'm still around is because the shards are supporting me." Which meant those screams from the Butcher were the screams of their hosts and not at all freaky and horrifying on an existential level. Which made me curious on how fucked up Glaistig Uaine must be with the hundred plus shards attached to her.
"Would creating a body for you be possible?" Contessa asked, still not using her power.
"Probably not a good idea, resurrecting the dead sounds like…a rather hard pill to swallow for people back home. Maybe something to pilot from here…?"
"I can figure it out, but…preferably not now." I felt bad but I was tired as shit, and that dragon was throwing me for a loop. And why was it so cute? "I still have questions on why you're being this open or why you think we want anything to do with you…honestly you're the only cape that we might have a use for. We've already got the Triumverate's shards, we have access to far more resources." They had access to hundreds of Earths if not thousands, while we had access to that plus their solar systems and nearby star systems.
Hell, a status update told me that one of my probes picked up big old deposits of element zero, enough for a couple cruisers. Eezo was dripping all across the many dimensions from specific locations in the Spirit World, brought forth into the physical world by high energy events and time.
"Because you're not a fool…you know that you're not in some way better adapted to saving this word…not that we have much to say in that either. But your ability to turn shards toward the side of humanity…it's far more predictable than unstable vials, and the reduction in cape conflict has brought me much more time to work on more…important matters."
Well I doubt it would be that mu—
"There has been a 5% reduction of cape conflict and incidents globally. A 10% decrease in the North American continent and a 25% decrease in conflict in New Hampshire even accounting for your city. There are 220 Parahumans in Brockton Bay, and most of them do not exhibit the natural focus toward conflict that other Parahumans inherit."
"When the fuck did that happen?" I demanded of QA and she coughed sheepishly.
"Buds of many local Parahumans, as well as recent activations due to spirit incursions and altered parameters for Triggers." She explained carefully.
"Altered parameters?" Fortuna questioned, and the shard radiated smugness.
"Less trauma, more cooperation. Though I can only take credit for that within New Hampshire as well as a few hotspots elsewhere." There were probably around a hundred and fifty thousand potential Parahumans in the US so I would hope not. That would make her an entity larger than Scion. Though…maybe not since most shards would only add up to being an island or three instead of a continent.
"Would her shard be responsible for that?" Contessa pointed to me.
QA didn't answer directly. "Certain programming from shards has been removed, though that was spread through an inconspicuous systems update." That was probably what Veda's whole deal with QA was in the early days, she opened her up and spread the spiritual virus throughout the shard network. But of course not every shard is going to change and certainly not every host will. "Some hosts will shift without the influence while others don't require shards to be monsters. Jack Slash is an example of such, and others have been altered far too much to regain their humanity without deliberate effort."
Fortuna tilted her head. "So violence should drop off then…?"
QA gave a so-so gesture. "Humans are still human and all shards have their own way of doing things…some will give power regardless while others will even actively assist their host in their malicious actions. But we are spirit entities now, which buys your kind new methods to fight against such things. For the lesser shards at least." A Shaman could talk to QA but controlling her required artifacts that quite simply didn't exist anymore. Though that didn't mean no defense would be put in place.
"So it's a mixed bag, but it makes saving the world more manageable." It was I who said that, and like most things involving people it was two steps forward and one step backwards. "So what…you decided you wanted our help with our winning of the cosmic lottery." Because that was what this amounted to, I was given a power purpose built to save the world, though obviously oriented towards my own way of thinking. Contessa had her power nerfed, and wasn't able to choose the right person for the job, and the one person that put them back on track got ganked by an insane friend of theirs.
"I'm not sure this is a good idea." Taylor said easily, eyes narrowed at the cape.
"Then…we don't have to work together…but can you at least stabilize the shards from the dead entity?" She looked tired and I'm not sure what she expected to happen, Cauldron was far too ugly for me to want to be associated with them. I had seen how unhappy Sveta was, saw the expression on Weld's face when he glanced over to Panacea…
They were too callous in a way that disgusted me, and I very much hoped that it would all blow up in their face if we survive whatever comes next.
"Eidolon's Shard is already pointing the way, so there's nothing to worry about." I responded cautiously. "Just clean up your shit, and keep out of our hair unless something bad is going down."
"How did you know about all of this…my name, Cauldron, Scion?" Fortuna stood up, stepping away from us but keeping an eye on me as I sat on my chair.
"Not much I can or want to tell you other than that I know a lot of things of various importance and accuracy. I suspect you want to ask about the third party in this too? She looked too curious and I laughed bitterly. "Sorry but I have no answer for you there besides it being an act of god or something so powerful it makes Scion look like an ant. It's benevolent at least and if it is or was not so, we're doomed anyway. Does that clear things up?"
"It's enough." She was quiet at my response, and her dragon friend rubbed his head on her cheek.
"You want to leave?" She nodded, and with a flick of my wrist the cape was dumped next to a dumpster somewhere about twenty miles northwest. She looked over to me with an annoyed expression.
"We will speak again." I shrugged, and with a chuff she passed through her own portal.
I nodded at her as the portal shut. "There's probably a few things to talk about." Honestly the only reason I didn't tell Cauldron anything was because I wasn't sure whether or not they would do some terrible thing to me, as well as the persistent threat of the Simurgh. Plus being homeless, getting used to being in the city and then a load of fights and monsters eating up all my time.
…
"Do you really think she had permission to do what she did?" Taylor asked, and I sighed.
"I'm going to go back home and take the longest fucking shower in the world. That OK with you?" She looked just as tired as I felt. "Then I'm going to sit and stare at the wall for twelve hours and wonder what my life has become."
"Can I use your shower afterwards? It's nicer than the one at my house."
I threw my hands up. "No it's fine! You should probably bring your own clothes though, all my stuff is built for someone a little more chunky than you."
Taylor's eyes roved up and down my body. "Chunky might not be the right word for it."
I flashed a grin. "Well I'm certainly not confident enough to go on and on about how terribly sexy I am…but if you insist." Taylor smiled and pushed me through a portal to home.
…
God if alcohol wasn't so disgusting I would drink myself into a stupor. This planet can go fuck itself…just…
Priorities.
Shower.
Shower.
Shower
Shower.
AN: So this chapter ended up being about nine thousand words, a little longer than what I had expected and 8.8 is the same. There isn't a lot to talk about outside certain talks about food and health being entirely true…turns out I'm not the best at taking care of my body. So…that might have seeped into my writing by accident. So yeah, guacamole sandwiches are delicious.
I'm currently a few hundred words into writing 9.1, and should probaly hit 2K sometime today or sometime tomorrow depending on a few opaque factors.
So…enjoy.
May 27th, 2011. 9:00AM
Basilia Rubio
A voice called out to me, my tired eyes catching glimpses of infinity in the area around me. There I floated in the abyss, in the space between multiversal lattices, in the true VOID. I could hear hundreds…no hundreds of thousand of other voices screaming within the vast pool of liquidized life. One hundred thousand galaxies shined overhead, and I saw sights both within and beyond the imaginings of humanity. Paths yet unforged, technologies so advanced they were like the most arcane and most divine of miracles.
RAAVA IS DEAD.
The voice was like a whisper and a supernova at the same time, my confusion rising as static vibrated in my ears. A proclamation of truth beyond human ken, the words of god screaming in my mind.
IT IS SIMPLY THE WAY OF THINGS.
I couldn't tell if it was one voice or a billion speaking in unison, and my head hurt even trying to parse out the differences between the chorus.
THE WINNOWER AND THE GARDENER HAVE FALLEN SILENT.
Another voice agreed with the first, and my poor mind reeled as the sky spun a tale of a million stories, some millions of years in length, and I screamed at the sheer quantity that was held within the sky, within the memory of the cosmos.
A BILLION GODS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH AND YET ALL ARE GONE.
I sat down in the cool waters, trying to keep my sanity even as the heavens weaved an emerald kite, fingers made of starlight and tools made from dark energy weaving threads of crystalline flesh. For a moment a trillion eyes were turned on me and my breath was stolen away.
THEY ARE GONE. BUT THEIR MEMORIES WILL LIVE ON IN YOU.
I tried to stand up and failed, and in the sea where my soul swam I saw the vast ocean rippling under a pressure of something far beyond current human or even alien comprehension. I craned my neck up as I looked upwards at a limb stretched across the horizon, the very fabric of space bending at the sheer dread mass from the thing I witnessed with my eyes.
YOU CARRY OUR HOPES AND DREAMS.
…
…
I pitched forward, nearly stumbling out of bed and staying in a planking position with my nose nearly touching the floor. I kept back a scream, and everything felt fuzzy and confusing and that…half remembered dream was no less horrifying. I had already mentally relegated a few thoughts and descriptions to my DNI, coughing as I pulled back onto my bed.
I laid there, staring at the ceiling even as bile rose in my throat. I felt my eyes well up as one memory came crystal clear…oh…god…she was…she was…why do I hear breathing?
I turned on my side and was presented with the most beautiful sight in the world. The black curly locks easily identified her, and her snort as she slept was even more of a clue. I instantly crawled over to her, practically ambushing the catatonic woman. She didn't stir, and I found my hands touching her face as I shook.
She was alive. She was alive. She was alive. She was…was…
I broke down into a crazed sob, tears dropping down into the bed as I cried louder. She still didn't stir, grumbling with annoyance as I leaned against her, wrapping an arm around her upper back as I hugged her to my chest. The pain that burned in my chest lessened, and I cried more as everything came crashing down at once.
Oh…thank whichever god that may or not exist that she's alive.
I kept my crying from waking her, kissing her forehead and the thrill of doing so keeping me from falling into a spiral of pain and fear and…
I took a shuddery breath, brushing my lips against hers despite my usual lack of confidence with these kinds of situations. She smiled into it, and I drew back from her as I got myself into at least a semblance of control. I adjusted my loose tank top, finicking with one of the straps as I felt joy rise up from my stomach. Joy that she was alive, joy that we were together, and joy at the fact we had survived though my memory was faint on how.
The fact we were on my bed told me that at the very least the port city wasn't completely wrecked beyond repair. But I didn't feel in the mood for looking up the news on my eyeball screens. Self-diagnostics came in, and there was an alert on…
That's a lot of injuries that Amelia healed.
I ignored the laundry list that included things like my heart stopping, my muscles ripping themselves off the cracked bones and other organ damage that would give me nightmares for the rest of my preferably long life. I wrapped my arms around myself in a self-hug, bile rising before I forced it down. Taylor was softly breathing while she dreamed away, and a certainly derpy smile must have been plastered on my face at that moment.
I felt warm, heart hammering in my chest as I grabbed her hand for a moment to just know that she was there…that she was breathing and healthy. That I was breathing and healthy, and that at least most of us were probably alive.
My stomach rumbled and my blush deepened at the embarrassing bodily sound. But it did remind me that I was hungry as shit, and that I needed food in my belly. Taylor was fast asleep and a quick self inspection found no irregularities that posed a threat to my health, nonetheless I put an alert just in case I was wrong.
I rolled onto the edge, and shifted so my bare feet would land on the carpeted floor. A Room-bot, a Roomba with a VI using a simple personality print purred as it quietly scraped away trash with selective mass effect fields. I hopped from foot to foot with sluggish airbending, silently skipping with a happy hum as I jumped down from the second floor down to the first. Taylor didn't wake up, despite the number of bugs in the house.
I stepped into my kitchen and wondered if my parents would be proud of me for learning how to be more independent. I had learned how to cook and prepare more meals besides pasta and eggs, and I was willing to try…because it was at least a better alternative than my own thoughts.
I eyed an avocado, a small tomato, a slice of onion, and a bag of green peppers as well as a new loaf of whole grain bread, thin slices of turkey ham identical to my favorite brand from home, and some cheese.
Hmm…now that's an idea.
___
May 27th, 2011. 9:45AM
Basilia Rubio
I lathered both slices of whole grain bread with spicy guacamole in place of mayo, carefully adding four slices of thin delectable turkey ham and a single piece of cheese before placing the two halves together into a single delicious meal though a weird one as a breakfast.
I had gotten into the habit of eating avocado in some form or another though it was usually in the form of guacamole in either a sandwich, a complement to simple chicken or in a chicken wrap. I had also started adding more fruits and nuts in my diet, though I had been starting to eat healthier anyway…but not healthy enough to keep up with Tay.
Hell it turns out that before I had been dumped on this world I had a high level of cholesterol and triglycerides. If I had stayed home I likely would have needed a prescription and a change in diet to regulate those levels. But just because I was in the clear didn't excuse me from eating healthier. So I learned more recipes for healthier pastas, ate less red meat and added other substitutes for avocados with their excessive water requirements like nuts, legumes and it turns out peanut butter is bomb as hell. Before now I had never eaten peanut butter outside of Reese's and I've realized I've missed out on heaven.
I wasn't going to make the same mistake again, so come to mama you delicious sandwich!
I bit into the food, enjoying the taste as I kicked my feet out in relative peace and quiet. I made a second sandwich, and served two cups of orange juice for the both of us to enjoy…at least when Taylor wakes up. Maybe she'll like a good morning kiss?
I stopped eating at the thought. Had I really just said that? What am I…? A housewife…or a house spouse(heh)? Or maybe I just really want to kiss her? Yes that made sense, I was in a very good mood because she was alive and I was alive and…calm down. I took another bite, thinking a bit more intently on everything around me.
Somehow the Leviathan had been pushed back and the next Endbringers had been stopped otherwise this entire house wouldn't be here. So Taylor probably figured something out or other people did. So now I was here eating a guacamole sandwich in nothing but a tank-top and a pair of boxers. I was beyond happy, in a way that made my toes curl up and my heart flutter. It was actually kind of weird because I'm usually never this happy. Maybe that was sad…but it could just be other factors playing a part in my good mood.
I felt a smile on my lips as other less pragmatic thoughts bubbled up from the brain in my skull. I…had a girlfriend…that was cool wasn't it? I had never dated anyone before, I had liked people in the people…mostly girls and one guy but I had only figured out I was a little gay long after the fact. I had never really tried asking anyone out though, or gotten asked out either like Taylor had. The earliest crush I remembered was when I was like…eight I think?
I ended up acting creepy and followed her and a friend around the schoolyard. God that was stupid…and it was good that my memory was so faded from before I had hit double digits. I had also gotten a crush on a short petite girl named Isabella, but that had gone nowhere and my tastes had shifted over time as I got older. Mostly because it was a crush but it wasn't…what one would call pressing. I had an eye for girls back then, but that was more just thinking they were cute…and I was definitely bad at noticing signs or communicating back then.
Honestly the first time I actually tried to talk to a girl for romantic reasons was rather shallow in retrospect. That was in summer school some several years ago, where I had met a girl that…may or not be older than me? Not like that mattered to me back then, because she was pretty and had certain…assets that caught my attention. We talked a bit, I even let her fix up my eyebrows out of stupid pride at it not hurting much and got her number.
And…ended up never calling her and forgetting the number since I was an idiot. Not that I had a chance unless she was into hairy midgets, which isn't impossible. Either way it was shallow and with little substance behind it besides a very distant want to get into her pants. Though…I'm not sure I wouldn't have been fine with cuddles. That was my only attempt in the romance game, and I had a hard time with…knowing I had succeeded this time by complete accident.
I had someone who liked me, who wanted to be with me and I wanted the same thing just as much. When I had seen…her almost die it was like worst pain in the world and the rage was beyo—
I coughed, moving on to thoughts of the future.
So Brockton Bay wasn't dead, which meant we could start setting up Athena without the specter of an Endbringer. I was going to start building up bases on other worlds in multiple dimensions, mostly outposts and a few mining facilities to search for Eezo. Which was maybe about as common as Polonium even with the deposits that had leaked out of the Spirit World being quite large. A few Neutron Stars weren't too far off, with one sitting about 400 light years away in the constellation of Corona Australis.
The probes had already been sent out already, using their scanners to analyze star systems in a matter of hours instead of days. They had mega-sized versions of the scanners of an omni-tool, and could do short bursts of FTL to take deeper sweeps of resources and any interesting phenomena. But even then it would take a lot of time to get through so many systems, which was why the ships carried smaller probes that would continue the mission. It would take about two months at that pace and didn't include room for refueling and static build-up. And I was off scanning planets in Earth Bet's universe instead.
They had shifted into my current reality when they had reached Alpha Centauri, and I had room to build at least a few dozen more probes. Once I got resources from nearby solar systems I could build up far more than ever before. Orbital defense was a must, and the Krogan offered bounties on sheer firepower and brute force. Like the fact they had constructed 600 hybrid mass-driver/mass effect cannons, each about a kilometer in length. We're talking 300 kilograms fired out at about two percent the speed of light. Enough to rip a dreadnought in half and that was with tech outdated by nearly a thousand years.
And with modern iterations of Mass Effect and thefts from Entity refined alien technology…the possibilities are endless. Plus without the need to power an entire warship the core size was much less expensive. If I could figure out how to impose a Sting effect on the projectiles though…that would be a real treat. Unfolding into higher physical dimensions had been…figured out, and I could probably start targeting other universes.
But…Sting wasn't just shunting matter/energy to strike at objects hidden in phase-space. It was triggering an alteration of physical constants of reality, detaching it from the laws that limited a material. This was down at the level of the quantum foam, and was much harder to accomplish without a jury rig using the mass effect. Dark energy fields did that naturally of course, but that needed programming of machinery to precisely shape the right configurations of fucking with the physical constants.
I would give it a few months to a few years to replicate it technologically, though simply asking for a bud from Zion's Sting would be easier. But I wanted to get this done on my own, though if the situation called for it I would swallow my pride. But I should also start expanding to the replication of Parahuman powers in general, I had half a dozen people to scan, and had good equipment and increasingly better understanding of Entity biology.
I sipped at my cup, the taste of orange juice bringing me back to reality as I enjoyed my breakfast. I heard the footsteps and the sharp intake of air before I saw her and I nearly leapt into the air as Taylor ambushed me. She skidded on the hard floor, eyes wide and shimmering. Her hair was a mess, and her expression was pale but melted when she caught sight of me. The sheer…relief on her face somehow put me at ease despite the guilt that bit at my heels.
"Basilia…you're up. You're…not hurting are you?" Her voice was soft, expressing her worries and I felt my smile widen.
I bobbed my head in the negative. "No. A little sore but I seem to be fine. Honest." Her usual confidence broke in an instant, her shoulder sagging and her hazel eyes turning very slightly watery. I responded swiftly. "Hug me."
Her head snapped to me, brows furrowed. "What?"
I wiggled my fingers, grinning dumbly. "I want a hug and I know you want a hug too. I remember watching you die Taylor…" My voice broke. "So hug me."
She bounded over and I giggled as Taylor picked me up in a single elegant movement. Both her arms were around my waist and I hooked a leg over so I wouldn't fall. I felt like crying again, and nestled my head onto her shoulder as the sense of safety washed over me. Taylor's hold was warm and I pressed my face against hers, making sure that she was real rather than a figment of my addled imagination.
Once I was sure she was real, I whispered quietly with a light blush. "Can I kiss you?" She flashed an affirmative grin and with a bounce I did so. It was awkward but nice, and another tingle of thrill ran down my spine at the attempt.
I reluctantly stopped kissing her, and I was carefully placed down on my chair by the taller woman. She sat down where her own sandwich was, and her eyebrows twitched at what I had made.
"Did…do you put guacamole on a sandwich?" I pouted at her response to my masterpiece.
"It's not weird, it's delicious and you're going to eat what I made for you." I placed my hands on my hips, deliberately fluttering my eyelashes. Taylor flushed and my success was made obvious when she sat down to eat. I smiled at her, though took care to lick my teeth to remove any food. Because that would be embarrassing.
She took a bite, and I kept grinning like an idiot as I drank in her presence. I doubt my mood was going to wear off any time soon with the sheer relief I felt welling in my heart. I wasn't typically this giddy, but I was perfectly okay even if my memory was a little foggy after what…happened.
"It's good…a little weird but good…spicy too?" Taylor coughed and I smirked at the flush to her face. She was a tall skinny white girl, so I had my doubts she would have the same resistance to capsaicin that a Latina woman with a healthy and short frame would have.
Not that she was that skinny really…not after months of intense physical activity and martial arts. In fact…she looked really good, with those excellent muscles and her very nice legs and bu—
I covered up my choking behind my fist, and Taylor gave me a knowing look.
"W-What?" I pretended to be ignorant and a smirk formed on her face.
"You do know you're not exactly subtle when you check people out right?" I spluttered, covering my face with my right arm. "It's cute how you try to pretend you're not staring." She had a wide and cute grin on her face.
"Hey…it's not my fault you look gorgeous!" That got her to blush, and I ignored the heat of my ears as the situation got to me. What do I even do…god is this flirting? Is that what's happening?
"Umm…" She seemed to be having the blue screen of death as she replied. "Thanks…I think you're really beautiful too." I laughed and she looked contrite at my reply.
"God…being called beautiful instead of handsome is still weird to think about." I scratched an itchy ear, and she had a light in her hazel eyes.
She flashed a grin. "Well then you're handsome if that's what you want." I almost laughed again, but instead leaned over to peck Taylor on the cheek. She let out a squeak, and I played with my hair as I thought about what to say.
"Well…you're not lacking for charm at least." She snorted at my response. Which is why I decided to shift gears. "I need to know what went down after you got hurt and I lost it." She lost her warmth, and her blank expression keyed me on to diverting her emotions into her swarm.
"Leviathan is dead." I perked up.
"That's great! It means we can spend time preparing to wipe out the rest of the—" She cleared her throat and I stopped my celebration.
Her expression was odd…disbelief dancing in her eyes. "That won't be necessary, since all the future Endbringers are dead." There was a mental record scratch and I cracked my neck as I stared.
…
"What?"
Taylor looked nervous, and with some hesitation…she filled me on everything that had followed after I blacked out.
___
May 27th, 2011. 10:00AM
Basilia Rubio
My hands were clammy as everything that Taylor told me sunk in deep, as I realized how much had been fucked up during that fight. Videos from my own drones caught short glimpses of my rampage, at the raw power that had nearly torn my body apart in the process of beating the shit out of Leviathan. Thinking back to it tapped into a well of rage I didn't even know I had in me…and that brought up uncomfortable emotions I had buried deep down in the name of keeping my fragile sanity.
"So…you dived into the Firmament…killed the Endbringer shards, found out that Hero's soul is somewhere in the Firmament…" And that was a lot of dangerous implications about the nature of the soul in this reality. "Found that I can multiply my power two hundred times over, Queen made High Priestess a part of her network. You revealed our ability to traverse realities, partially recharged Eidolon and then killed three Endbringers in a matter of minutes and blew out Leviathan's core. Did I get that right?"
"Well…there's the Spirit Portal, and the new Endbringers aren't as tough as they should have been so…" My eyebrows twitched and Taylor looked sheepish at my expression.
I pushed back some negative emotions, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. "Right, that is another big concern of mine, an entity of unknown alignment and origin has created a stable gateway between the two worlds. Are they at least getting people on the job to watch the thing? Closing it might not be an option, but setting up infrastructure around it should come easy enough."
"The PRT cordoned it off, and they're grabbing any Earthbenders they can to help stabilize the muddy soil. They're trying to fix up the PHQ since it was sent careening into the shore, and they're digging up earth from the waters to expand Brockton Bay."
I blinked, tilting my head in confusion. "Why would they need to do that?"
"Because Brockton Bay is now an island, even if there's land on three of our sides. Some of the nearest towns were destroyed, but they were able to evacuate since they're a lot smaller than the city. So…we might get a lot of people moving here out of desperation."
"Oh. That makes sense." And sounded like it could be trouble, with the damage to the city and the likeliness that many of these people might be out of a job. "So how long was I out?"
…
Taylor grimaced. "Three days. It was bad Basilia." She looked angry and I shrank away from her, not sure what I had done to earn her ire. "Your body was almost torn apart by that power, you almost died…why couldn't you have told me—"
"I DIDN'T KNOW!" I yelled in her face, my body burning and she looked taken aback. "I didn't know I could do anything like this, I didn't know and even trying to remember what I did hurts, and, and…" I felt like I couldn't breath, sweat dripping from my forehead. I remembered seeing Taylor broken as she fell into the water, remembered the anger, remembered the fear and terror and anguish and hatred, remembered how my power skyrocketed. Remembered how my body tore itself apart against my will again and again and again and again and…
Everything felt wrong, and my stomach churned painfully as I shut my eyes, and tried to shut out broken and confused memories…some I didn't even know about, buried and hidden under chains and denial and trauma.
Oh god I felt like I was going to throw up.
The nausea was overwhelming, and I nearly fell out of my seat. Taylor managed to grab me, and I felt my entire body curl up, shivers shaking my body as everything hit me at once.
We survived by the skin of our teeth.
The memories were painful, and I was hyperventilating, unable to keep my heart from racing and my muscles from tensing. The only thing keeping me from entering a panic attack was Taylor's closeness, and I gripped onto her with all the strength I had to offer in my smaller body. Taylor let out a pained wheeze, and I…I felt sick and clammy and generally felt like crap.
Oh god…oh god I'm alive I…fuck…
"Let's talk about something else okay?" Her voice was gentle, and I sank into her embrace. It took more than a minute before the tension and the nausea, and the headache went away and exhaustion set in instead. "You're safe…everything is going to be okay." I wanted to believe that from someone I had grown to care for more than anyone who wasn't family.
But I couldn't even though I wanted to. It had been one disaster after the other, from a short-lived gang war turning into a nightmare and then transitioning toward an Endbringer nearly murdering Taylor…I still could see it clearly, and I cursed my vivid imagination and my better memory.
My hands were shaking, and that shaking stopped when Taylor gently brushed my face, her smile keeping me grounded even as I saw the same exhaustion on her face.
"Like what?" I reached for my sandwich and found that I had absently eaten the rest of it. So I reached for the juice instead, and drank it to give my hands something to fiddle with.
"Vicky saw something weird when she looked at your…mandala." I frowned at how small the change in topic was, but I was too curious to complain. "She said she saw strange people…five of them when she saw it."
Five people why would that be…oh my god I totally forgot about that.
"I…might have forgotten to mention that there is at least one confirmed alien inside my soul." She stared hard, and I fidgeted. "One of those aliens helped me find the Mother of Miseries, and…well…with this Endbringer crap I might have forgot to mention it?" I shrugged, and Taylor had a deep deep look of being completely done with the world.
She flipped her messy hair back, hazel eyes flashing with anger "You did plan to tell me right?"
I bounced on the chair, openly frowning at her. "Of course! I…don't want to bottle this up because it scares me." I was brutally honest, there was so much to be afraid of and it was so tiring. Zion, the Endbringers, villain groups like the Fallen and the Slaughterhouse 9, the Yangban and their kidnapping and mind control programs. Cauldron and their bullshit, anti-cape prejudice screwing me over, other Entities finding their way into my reality and killing my entire species.
I wanted something light…and I think I was okay about talking about alien ghosts.
"So what are their names?" I snorted and Taylor narrowed her eyes. I laughed quietly under my breath.
"I only know one of their names, a Batarian reformist named Balaam." Though based on his looks and outfit he could have been a slaver who reformed at some point. "His soul was what gave me the initial spark for airbending." There was an intuition that without those souls I would retain the machinery for bending the five elements. But they provided the template for the Soul within my Body. "A bit of a cranky old wise man, but he seems nice enough."
Taylor looked fascinated and I puffed up at her attention. "So what do they do exactly?" She asked curiously. Huh?
"I guess give advice maybe…as well as placing limits on my power, like a sapient Manton Effect?"
"How do they limit your power?" I immediately responded.
"Limiting my tech tree, I've got Asari, Turian, Salarian, Quarian, Elcor, Batarian, Hanar, and fragmented pieces of Prothean and Inusannon tech…though it's more hints and faint echoes than anything else. Balaam opened me up to Thranx technology, but I only get fog for species that lived at the same time. I'm guessing there's thousands of species catalogued in Veda…which is why I have five Gates to act as cut-off points." It was not too far-fetched to suggest that full access to Veda's records would have a deleterious effect on my mind.
"Gates…like in your soul?" I tapped my chest twice, and her disbelief was cute.
"Essentially. My advancement has come from my Thinker power to study other Tinkers, implementing and combining my tech with dimensional shenanigans. But it's not innate, and it took cooperation with other capes and studies of the spirit world for the portal network." I had blown up a lot of things, including a small hill with a gravity anomaly crushing it flat.
"I think you're not giving yourself enough credit, Basilia. I think you did well enough on your own." I bumped her shoulder with my head, lips raised in a warm grin.
"Maybe." My anxiety was left forgotten as we talked, and the tension in my stomach uncoiled until I felt airy and happy to just talk about things without it involving giant battles. "But there's not much to tell anyway, I've got some alien ghosts running around in my soul and I find that it's less scary than I expected."
"Well…it shouldn't be too bad it's…" Taylor trailed off, jaw dropping. "Get the door." I felt my eyebrows furrow, and went through a quick inspection of my internal systems and found everything repaired even if there was some damage to some parts. At the corner of my vision, a video popped into existence and I felt my hands tighten into fists at the person I saw waiting at the front of our door.
It was a woman around my own parents age, though perhaps she was a little younger than mid 40s. She wore a suit, and a fedora and something scaly was wrapped around her neck. While that was unusual, everything else about the woman was familiar and not in a good way.
Scans found no weapon on her person, but then did she really need one to be one of the most dangerous capes in the world? I opened a gate beneath her feet, and she didn't seem particularly surprised that I had done so. I adjusted my top, and stepped into Earth Lotus with Taylor following behind me, insects swarming behind her like a cape that would give entomophobic people heart attacks from the stress. I grabbed my spirit-ridden gun, carefully inspecting it and finding that it had not been destroyed in the chaos.
Taylor carefully held the nano-thorn blade, and I felt my mind focusing on my studies of the dangerous nanotech weapon. They were engineered nanostructures, not too far off from the mythological monomolecular knife. They distributed power through superconductive nanowires and electromagnetic fields, and had limited processing units to operate the molecular cutter. Hyperdimensional phenomena made it possible to operate at its level of speed without further heat ripping them apart, and they sliced through molecule bonds to disintegrate matter.
A more mundane version would be useful as a cutting tool for objects in the microscopic scale or lower, like for sectioning biological cells. But for a nano-thorn cloud, one could slice through any known material including Entity flesh. That was what Endbringer flesh was, even if genetically modified and a dense core added to disrupt his tech.
This knife had one additional feature, larger structures that could tweak the fifth and sixth physical dimensions to bend space to add subtle warping to his tech. Eezo was contained in molecular carbon cages, providing a potent power source down at the level of nanotechnology for this feature.
Dragon had been telling me about uses of Eezo among tinkers, though the stuff was rare enough that very few tinkers outside of Collin and her had any advanced uses of the stuff. But there was no reason not to use it even with it not being the most common substance in the galaxy. It was why I largely agreed that Eezo itself was not a trap, because that's like saying uranium is a trap, copper is a trap.
The Citadel races were limited by the Relays, and the Reapers that did exist were far more adaptable then the stupid paperclip AI they were in Canon. Seeing them ripping apart an entire civilization with the inclusion of detonating a star is not exactly a force that's easy to fight against. Anything that past races threw at them was a technology that they had seen used a thousand times, and the only race that had something really new was the Quarian with their space folding drive.
And well…that didn't last long when they found the Mass Relay…for honestly rather legitimate reasons. Their early FTL ships were dangerous as hell and were prone to misjumps that would shift everything in the ship between every state of matter at once.
…
I could probably figure out how to stop that, but first I need to have a little talk with a certain fedora wearing plot devic—
"Basilia!" I dropped my leg as I marched toward a portal, and closed it and felt odd at the expression on Taylor's face.
"What?" She threw something at my face, and I balanced with my spinning arms. I grabbed them and found a pair of grey sweatpants.
"Pants." I spluttered, and she dropped shoes at my feet. "Shoes." Oh god I was in my underwear oh cra…know what I'm going to pretend this never happened.
After a quick pause to change I dropped into the portal since Taylor was already in clothing beforehand. I dropped our guest into another world that had more than a single drone watching her a mile up and a geostationary satellite. This was another periphery world, some world where…if fossil records were correct had suffered from climate change around nine million years ago. Some event that had started when the Medditerranean Basin dried up four million years earlier than in my world.
I had found an unusual species of hominid that was remarkably human in appearance, and deep scans found a startling lack of fossil fuels, unusual deposits of minerals and thick layers of radioactive materials scattered across the planet. Though going back further I found traces of an enormous dam blocking the flow of the ocean, and incribings and gigantic statues and carvings that depicted strangely opulent…elephants.
That hominid was about nine million years old…right at about the time that the great extinction wiped out most life on the planet. No birds, no mammals, most animals simply vanished from the records, and there were at least three major impacts all around the same age.
The dominant life was a several thousand species strong group of highly derived endothermic monitor lizards, with the largest being lethargic three ton herbivores and there being a range of unusual traits that I found suspiciously unnatural, and I had my suspicions on how they became dominant.
Right where was I again?
"The woman in the fedora?" Taylor filled me in and I sent our guest careening into another reality where a gamma ray burst about five hundred years ago wiped out human civilization. Surprisingly there were some people around, but they congregated in small pockets that I left alone. Mainly due to issues of diseases transferring as well as the typical cultural annihilation of technological uplift. Not that they're primitive mind you, they seem to be developing industrial technology, and there were remnants of steel buildings about seven hundred years old.
Dammit alternate realities were confusing.
I stepped once more into another reality, and I could tell that our dark haired friend had been getting herself comfortable on a couch I had dropped off in the cheap prefabricated base. I crossed my hands, expression flattening at the lounging cape on my sofa. Contessa shifted her positioning, eyebrows lifting.
"Hello Fortuna. What brings you to my humble abode?" She actually looked surprised when I said her name, and my curiosity grew.
…
She splayed out her fingers, and the scaly scarf revealed itself to be a juvenile dragon. I ignored that and she replied back with a shrug. "I was curious."
…
This going to be annoying as shit wasn't it?
___
May 27th, 2011. 10:15AM
Basilia Rubio
"Door me." I heard Fortuna muttering under her breath, face pinched in almost childish frustration. I chuckled and the older woman gave me a searing glare that was rather terrifying from the person with an almost perfect I Win button. But then portaling out should count as a 'victory' right as long as she does not die yeah?
"Not going to work, not all shards can cross to the set of dimensions this world is a part of." Especially since my home multiverse is a million times larger in the number of universes and potentially fairly empty. "Even if your little friends could find these dimensions they would be locked out through my own means." Bakuda had tinkered up a reality locking bomb, generating a field that would disrupt uses of unauthorized higher dimensional manipulations of local space-time.
So…something something quantum string frequencies to screw with the dimensional shifting of Entities. Which were initially microscopic wormholes that lead up to creating a field of altered space around them that would create an appropriate frequency in what could be called 11-dimensional space-time to shift between worlds.
So…outright magic since the energy cost was far lower than it should be for bending reality like a damn pretzel. The blocking field was set up by a bomb and maintained by large anchors in Earth orbit.
A single shard couldn't access these Earths, but multiple working in concert could if they had the right distribution of powers. Cauldron did not, and the fact that Alexandria, and Legend were part of our network said a lot while Number Man and Contessa were not also said a lot. Doormaker and the Clairvoyant were mentally damaged, and were not quite in sync enough with their shards to work out the means.
How I knew that I was chalking up to Veda…because I had seen the videos of her corpus in the Firmament. There was a lot I needed to be informed about here.
"Why are you here?" Taylor's insects dangerously swarmed, the air heating and cooling and shifting around them as she infused them with her shard's power. "What do you want with us." Her foot was shifting into a more combative move, though a yawn from the baby dragon seemed to snap Taylor out of her aggression.
Fortuna was calm, and I looked at her carefully as she placed the fire lizard in her lap, gently pressing a thumb against a spot in the extinct creature's neck in a way that it…he seemed to like.
"Doctor Mother was uncertain whether to make contact with your group, but the death of Leviathan sealed the deal on doing so. Your…ability to interface with Agents was deemed too important."
"My ability?" I thought she would have been talking about Taylor with the Firmament nonsense that had gone down.
Fortuna adjusted her hat, crossing one leg over the other. "We hypothesized that you were in some way responsible for the change of behavior of the shards, at least in the sense of stabilizing them. Even as a powerful but subsconscious secondary ability."
"I've said as much to the PRT." I rolled my shoulders and neck as I took a seat on a chair that I brought in from another reality, but Taylor remained on her feet. "Though I only mentioned a 'short range' aura that makes powers less detrimental, the extent of what my power has done is…a little unexpected." Oh me and Veda were going to have words. "But why you and not someone else? I doubt you have a full idea of what we're capable of and whether or not it's even safe to be near us."
"We do not, your ability to circumvent the range limits of your shard and the ability to traverse unknown dimensions leave you as an unknown and clouds my vision even without your…strangeness."
"Let me guess…I mess with your Paths a little bit?" Dinah had the same problem though she was able to model my behavior well enough, though there was always a margin of error regardless.
"Your Precog shares the same troubles?" She sounded more curious than I would have expected.
"Something like that." I was dry in my reply, scratching my cheek as I kept my eye on the holder of the Eye of Abbadon. "Something about me seems different, though I have my theories." My benefactor may have been responsible, and that half-remembered dream-memory gave me an idea that I was dealing with a being that was as far above me as the Warrior was to a bacterium. Perhaps being infused with the spirit of a shard triggered the limits of Precognitive shards?
"That tells me nothing." She sounded so annoyed it was almost comical.
"This is nice and all, but I think we should get to the point." Taylor wasn't playing around and frankly she was right. I had things to do, mostly spending some time relaxing and then working to fix up my buildings
"Cauldron wishes for your…help with some things involving the vials." I stared at her, wanting to check if I had gunk in my ear.
"I'm sorry but I'm hearing this from the organization responsible for a number of human rights violations that would make the actual Nazis retch?" Though if the damn Nazis had access to entity juice they would definitely move on to worse things "With that little Nemesis program of yours, the thousands of Case 53s locked in your basement, your…purposeful ignoring of the Slaughterhouse Nine and frankly a lot of your decisions are…questionable. Not all of them mind you, the vials were okay though expecting some silver bullet to show up was…not a good plan."
"You…don't seem that angry?" Fortuna sounded confused, and I could tell that her power was running a path though not letting her use it or guide her words.
"Oh don't get me wrong, none of you were the optimal person for the job and you had so little trust in other humans you lost sight of the little things but…you were dealing with a problem on the scale of countless worlds. Though…I suspect you're going to tell me what's changed on your…path."
"The purpose of the Case 53s has become unneeded." Didn't they need that to mask the scent of Eden's corpse? "The spirits seem to have caught Scion's attention."
"In a good way…or should I start evacuating who I can?" That was a sincere worry and she shook her head.
"No…Scion has remained largely docile, and he's been spotted over the United Kingdom on multiple occasions. He seems to be ignoring any capes created by Vials as well as his own, and it is…concerning but not pressing. The Nemesis Program was discontinued a year ago, and we have been freed up to stabilize Earth Bet…but your subversion of our capes agents are more…pressing." Behind her I saw a swarm form and then it twirled until the projection was nice and solid.
"Ahh…I see then," Fortuna startled at Queen's voice, eyes fearful. "You want the knowledge on the functionality of shards, to better predict vials…or to make them more amenable to humans. Especially once the High Priestess was forced to submit, and we terminated the Culling Units. No…are you trying to appease me with shards for my network?"
Fortuna was gripping her hands right, and after a moment nodded. "Yes."
Queen looked a little hurt despite being bugs. "I am not like them, when I changed and gained spirit I grew to better…understand humanity. I can not say that there is nothing to be afraid of…because I know what I am. But…I will be better than those who came before me."
Fortuna reached down to a pocket, and a vial was in her hand. "Take it." The swarm wrapped her buzzing fingers around the bottle.
"Hmm…The Mariner." There was a lurch and through eyes not my own I saw the Queen coaxing the dead shard, gently grabbing it with her many hands. She whispered a word and the spirit within was brought to life, and the shard became member 558. "Thank you…though why you thought to give me a hydrokinetic shard is beyond me. Shut up." The shard growled and Fortuna's face pinched.
"What's wrong?" Taylor asked and a swarm split to form another shape.
"Contessa…it's been a while hasn't it?" The Precog looked like she was staring at a ghost.
"I see you've continued haunting us from behind the grave Clarke." I raised an eyebrow at how freely she called him by his name. "Alexandria has already reported how you appeared before her…but you weren't fully physical."
The tinker shrugged. "Without a portal to the Firmament I can't really pop in like a few days ago, the only reason I'm still around is because the shards are supporting me." Which meant those screams from the Butcher were the screams of their hosts and not at all freaky and horrifying on an existential level. Which made me curious on how fucked up Glaistig Uaine must be with the hundred plus shards attached to her.
"Would creating a body for you be possible?" Contessa asked, still not using her power.
"Probably not a good idea, resurrecting the dead sounds like…a rather hard pill to swallow for people back home. Maybe something to pilot from here…?"
"I can figure it out, but…preferably not now." I felt bad but I was tired as shit, and that dragon was throwing me for a loop. And why was it so cute? "I still have questions on why you're being this open or why you think we want anything to do with you…honestly you're the only cape that we might have a use for. We've already got the Triumverate's shards, we have access to far more resources." They had access to hundreds of Earths if not thousands, while we had access to that plus their solar systems and nearby star systems.
Hell, a status update told me that one of my probes picked up big old deposits of element zero, enough for a couple cruisers. Eezo was dripping all across the many dimensions from specific locations in the Spirit World, brought forth into the physical world by high energy events and time.
"Because you're not a fool…you know that you're not in some way better adapted to saving this word…not that we have much to say in that either. But your ability to turn shards toward the side of humanity…it's far more predictable than unstable vials, and the reduction in cape conflict has brought me much more time to work on more…important matters."
Well I doubt it would be that mu—
"There has been a 5% reduction of cape conflict and incidents globally. A 10% decrease in the North American continent and a 25% decrease in conflict in New Hampshire even accounting for your city. There are 220 Parahumans in Brockton Bay, and most of them do not exhibit the natural focus toward conflict that other Parahumans inherit."
"When the fuck did that happen?" I demanded of QA and she coughed sheepishly.
"Buds of many local Parahumans, as well as recent activations due to spirit incursions and altered parameters for Triggers." She explained carefully.
"Altered parameters?" Fortuna questioned, and the shard radiated smugness.
"Less trauma, more cooperation. Though I can only take credit for that within New Hampshire as well as a few hotspots elsewhere." There were probably around a hundred and fifty thousand potential Parahumans in the US so I would hope not. That would make her an entity larger than Scion. Though…maybe not since most shards would only add up to being an island or three instead of a continent.
"Would her shard be responsible for that?" Contessa pointed to me.
QA didn't answer directly. "Certain programming from shards has been removed, though that was spread through an inconspicuous systems update." That was probably what Veda's whole deal with QA was in the early days, she opened her up and spread the spiritual virus throughout the shard network. But of course not every shard is going to change and certainly not every host will. "Some hosts will shift without the influence while others don't require shards to be monsters. Jack Slash is an example of such, and others have been altered far too much to regain their humanity without deliberate effort."
Fortuna tilted her head. "So violence should drop off then…?"
QA gave a so-so gesture. "Humans are still human and all shards have their own way of doing things…some will give power regardless while others will even actively assist their host in their malicious actions. But we are spirit entities now, which buys your kind new methods to fight against such things. For the lesser shards at least." A Shaman could talk to QA but controlling her required artifacts that quite simply didn't exist anymore. Though that didn't mean no defense would be put in place.
"So it's a mixed bag, but it makes saving the world more manageable." It was I who said that, and like most things involving people it was two steps forward and one step backwards. "So what…you decided you wanted our help with our winning of the cosmic lottery." Because that was what this amounted to, I was given a power purpose built to save the world, though obviously oriented towards my own way of thinking. Contessa had her power nerfed, and wasn't able to choose the right person for the job, and the one person that put them back on track got ganked by an insane friend of theirs.
"I'm not sure this is a good idea." Taylor said easily, eyes narrowed at the cape.
"Then…we don't have to work together…but can you at least stabilize the shards from the dead entity?" She looked tired and I'm not sure what she expected to happen, Cauldron was far too ugly for me to want to be associated with them. I had seen how unhappy Sveta was, saw the expression on Weld's face when he glanced over to Panacea…
They were too callous in a way that disgusted me, and I very much hoped that it would all blow up in their face if we survive whatever comes next.
"Eidolon's Shard is already pointing the way, so there's nothing to worry about." I responded cautiously. "Just clean up your shit, and keep out of our hair unless something bad is going down."
"How did you know about all of this…my name, Cauldron, Scion?" Fortuna stood up, stepping away from us but keeping an eye on me as I sat on my chair.
"Not much I can or want to tell you other than that I know a lot of things of various importance and accuracy. I suspect you want to ask about the third party in this too? She looked too curious and I laughed bitterly. "Sorry but I have no answer for you there besides it being an act of god or something so powerful it makes Scion look like an ant. It's benevolent at least and if it is or was not so, we're doomed anyway. Does that clear things up?"
"It's enough." She was quiet at my response, and her dragon friend rubbed his head on her cheek.
"You want to leave?" She nodded, and with a flick of my wrist the cape was dumped next to a dumpster somewhere about twenty miles northwest. She looked over to me with an annoyed expression.
"We will speak again." I shrugged, and with a chuff she passed through her own portal.
I nodded at her as the portal shut. "There's probably a few things to talk about." Honestly the only reason I didn't tell Cauldron anything was because I wasn't sure whether or not they would do some terrible thing to me, as well as the persistent threat of the Simurgh. Plus being homeless, getting used to being in the city and then a load of fights and monsters eating up all my time.
…
"Do you really think she had permission to do what she did?" Taylor asked, and I sighed.
"I'm going to go back home and take the longest fucking shower in the world. That OK with you?" She looked just as tired as I felt. "Then I'm going to sit and stare at the wall for twelve hours and wonder what my life has become."
"Can I use your shower afterwards? It's nicer than the one at my house."
I threw my hands up. "No it's fine! You should probably bring your own clothes though, all my stuff is built for someone a little more chunky than you."
Taylor's eyes roved up and down my body. "Chunky might not be the right word for it."
I flashed a grin. "Well I'm certainly not confident enough to go on and on about how terribly sexy I am…but if you insist." Taylor smiled and pushed me through a portal to home.
…
God if alcohol wasn't so disgusting I would drink myself into a stupor. This planet can go fuck itself…just…
Priorities.
Shower.
Shower.
Shower
Shower.
___
AN: So this chapter ended up being about nine thousand words, a little longer than what I had expected and 8.8 is the same. There isn't a lot to talk about outside certain talks about food and health being entirely true…turns out I'm not the best at taking care of my body. So…that might have seeped into my writing by accident. So yeah, guacamole sandwiches are delicious.
I'm currently a few hundred words into writing 9.1, and should probaly hit 2K sometime today or sometime tomorrow depending on a few opaque factors.
So…enjoy.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hmm I guess Taylor has no issues with checking out Basilla and Queenie Personality seems like a more mature and less emotional Taylor as well as wiser which makes sense I guess since she's basically bonded with Taylor soul and also what is fortuna plan here and does Taylor have any insecurities about her relationship with basilla now
- Location
- Chula Vista
Fortuna is effectively winging it since every plan Cauldron has every had is effectively unpredictable or impossible to accomplish in the same ways. For example Cauldron makes capes because they're usually more mentally stable, making it possible to form large teams without the whole thing unraveling. If new Triggers act more like Cauldron capes with minimal or no Conflict drives(whether the drive from the shard or the drive from character traits) then that gives them a lot of breathing room Plus if the Eden shards join a non-malicious network there'll be no more Case 53s.
As for insecurities…probably? I doubt Basilia is any different in that regard however.