Victories of the Soul [Worm/Avatar/ME/Multicrossover] [SI]

Reader mode
Menthewarp said:
...What would happen if Scion, in a moment of brain-dead curiosity, flew into The Big Brockton Bay Spirit Portal?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That could either end very well or very badly depending on what he does while within an alternate reality where the laws of physics are even more warped than the dimensions that Entities reside on. It would probably neuter his Future sight for a long, long, long while to the point of it likely automatically triggering an avoidance mechanism so he never does anything that stupid. By neuter, think a Mantellum effect though one that's temporary on a long term basis. Or he might essentially be hypnotized by new data and never move from the spot for a few decades to centuries.

Worst case he picks a fight with the entire Spirit World and accidentally sterilizes the planet. He might not be spiritual in any way but he's still the Warrior with continent wiping capabilities.

Actually…the worse case scenario is he screws with the Spirit Roads leading to the shadow of other worlds and does untold apocalyptic damage.
 
Last edited:
Recuperation 9.1
  • Threadmarks
    • Recuperation 9.1

    June 8th, 2011. 3:30PM

    Basilia Rubio

    I hummed a tune as I walked through the clean halls of the main Athena building, which was in my eyes a burgeoning conglomerate. Athena has been filed and created as a single corporation with the various divisions being filed under a DBA. They of course worked together for projects that worked well with their respective roles.

    Right now, we had Athena Healthcare which was more or less a mini Medhall as a corporation in the medical field…which had been doing poorly after its assets were frozen and its top guy sent to prison for money laundering. I had even bought a facility or two to house some of my employees, since while they might be corrupt their equipment was top notch.

    They had a single manager, since the division(is that the right term?) was still so small, even if I had picked up a few more hires for all the divisions of Athena.

    Then there was Athena Manufacturing which was focused on advanced methods of well…manufacturing. Additive printing, automation, advanced materials like carbon nanotubes and graphene, and nanostructured materials in general. I had folded in a few different things under that single umbrella, including software as well as the creation of intuitive digital platforms and programming to make manufacturing easier and more efficient. I did plan for more specialized divisions but that was for later.

    Okay…focus on what divisions we had with sixty something employees with the expertise for science and engineering.

    Healthcare, Manufacturing, Defense which handled our dealings with the PRT for armor, and powered exoskeletons which was a booming industry on Earth Bet unlike in my world. I had apparently accelerated the plans of other corporations due to my licensing deals, since apparently in a year or so they were going to sell tech like that anyway.

    The disparity was headache inducing, though my intervention was triggering a more even distribution of tech solely by accident.

    Robotics fell under Manufacturing with the civilian application of machines for assembly lines, for delivery and other laborious jobs that cause a lot of physical wear. It was mainly licensing deals, though we did have low production lines for a wide range of devices.

    Manufacturing was one of the largest divisions because of the sheer breadth of what it included under its umbrella.

    We had the Energy division which was involved in research like renewable energy, high energy density batteries and other methods of storing energy, power distribution and the software behind running an energy grid. They were going to be something special…since I planned to start up a team that would study Eezo and its properties.

    While Eezo was maybe a few times more common than Polonium, it was far easier to extract and formed in dense clumps that made it less complicated to find. On Earth at least it was common enough to form a basis for an Eezo using society. But taking deposits of the stuff from other star systems would make or break empires.

    There was also a lot of money there…a lot of money in the long term for what I could accomplish with enough time.

    Then then was the Applied Paraphysics division which folded Parahuman studies into the same field of science as the study of the soul and shamanistic practice. Both the soul and Entity powers had unusual correlations with the study of physical dimensions and interactions between realties. The teams would dabble in Applied Metaphysics, the nature and structure of the soul, as well as the study of spirits. The scientists and engineers would study Tinkertech and Parahuman powers, as well as bending and the unique abilities of spirits.

    Then there was the division known simply as The White Lotus, which served as our hero team of sorts. That was its purpose for Parahumans who liked to be a little more active. Other Parahumans could simply be employed normally, and could use their power within the bounds of the already fairly weakened NEPEA-5 bill.

    Getting the right managers for each division had been a chore, especially since Taylor likes interviewing them herself to make sure they did their jobs right. She was very picky, and had a rather good sense of whether someone would make a good manager or not. Then again wasn't that what came naturally to her? QA had chosen her for a reason, though thankfully she hadn't turned out to be too much of a micromanager.

    Then there was setting up departments like HR and Marketing, as well as the troubles of running a Private corporation with all that entails. It was a convoluted legal mess and as Athena grew the divisions would probably grow into subsidiaries, separate corporations under a single holding company.

    But…I only had about 120 employees, and two owners that had been put in with the early legal agreement a few months back. Getting the operating and buy-sell agreement set up was a pain in the ass. A little under half of that number was made out of blue-collar workers, laborers hired out from the DWA. Setting up the corporate hierarchy was a gigantic mess…fucking hell.

    I stopped at one lab, where five people were working on Additive Manufacturing. Most of our teams were groups of four to six, and if we needed larger ones they would be divided into more compact teams to bring everything they knew into the end product.

    I had a few patents related to metal 3D printing technology, and this one was focused on Binder Jet systems and they had a prototype from studying a printer I had tinkered up myself. This little prototype could print 12,000 cm3 per hour, and I had eyes on more advanced models in the future give or take an extra month.

    A lot of time was spent simply teaching them how to operate my equipment, sort of paving the way for them to comprehend my simplest tech, and eventually Tinkertech itself.

    I poked at the worker with the most promise, one John Drexler who was correctly tinkering with a more advanced model and figuring out how to implement it into the prototypes. Other types of 3D printers were being developed as well, some that would have benefits toward the different divisions like Healthcare with bioprinters.

    The engineer blinked when I poked him again. "Oh." I smirked behind my helmet, crossing my arms and cheekily cocking a hip as the group of five stiffened.

    "So…how is the progress on the project?" I was asking more out of curiosity than a genuine rush, eleven days wasn't really enough to do much more than what they've been doing. Especially with so many new hires who had only shown up recently due to Leviathan getting in the way.

    "It's…been going pretty well…we managed to get the build rate of the printer up to 18,000 cubic centimeters per hour." They relaxed at the enthusiasm of John, and I listened intently as he rattled on and informed me on what they had been doing for the day. "Your computer systems are working pretty well on simulations and for coding, even if we have different systems." My optotronics have to mirror software from conventional transistors, but it's not very hard really. While it would be nice to sell optotronics, the issue is one of economic disruption.

    I can mass produce quite literally anything in my repertoire, but not everyone is going to be capable of keeping what I have running. If I were to suddenly stop being around, they would be left with technology far beyond their ability to fully master or understand. The economic ruin would be devastating once they broke down to natural causes like aging, damage or lack of maintenance.

    For example the armor and mechs I directly sell to the PRT, and to certain shipping companies are made with tech that's more or less a decade and a half ahead of civilian technology isn't that much further ahead than my competitors. They use components I either make myself using advanced production lines or outsourced for less precious components.

    But if someone else had to take over they would certainly be able to keep going without me. All the R&D was more like reverse engineering, taking samples of my least advanced Tinkertech and making their own little breakthroughs to make them producible, and we would immediately turn towards licensing as the main money maker as well as entering niche markets since what we made would be marginally better.

    Medi-gel for example was an open license and was the largest revenue source due to what it was capable of, with more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies with the right credentials licensing medi-gel as well as the corresponding infrastructure to support it. Somewhere around half of our revenue was from that deluge of patents, including the ability to reprogram normal cells into stem cells.

    Which…my world could already do, though the full applications were as of yet untested. As long as I didn't plan to completely eradicate the competition I was free to continue onwards. There was somewhere north of one hundred fifty patent filings under both my and Athena's name, and five patents from Bakuda.

    Her specialty was effectively any form of explosion, whether as a single-use device or a multi-use device as required. In fact one of her new projects involved the propulsion bus of my megaproject, the 660 meter long exploration cruiser that was going to act as a capital ship for smaller vessels and be the majority of the attack power.

    Eleven days had let me make significant progress on the construction of the cruiser once I had dismantled most of the city barriers. Though I kept a few just in case, and wondered if the PRT would ask if I would sell it to them…

    "Good work." I patted the engineer on the shoulder, and waved at the group as I left. Manufacturing was about thirty people plus their project managers, and I had about six projects in this department, using my resources that I had either bought or manufactured.

    3D printing.

    Nanostructured materials for any possible use, though I would take it one step at a time.

    Robotics for manufacturing as well as enhancement of human beings in the workplace. Powered exoskeletons and the like…building an assembly plant for the things that could run without me was a load of work but it was great.

    One project was advanced sensors like an advanced form of magnetic resonance imaging like what I had sent out into the world through licensing. However they weren't quite at the level of scanning down to an atomic level at a portable scale. These were limited to machines that weigh half a ton or more.

    I had the tech, and my engineers were the ones who would study and break it down for the masses.

    The fifth project was involved in creating toolkits to rapidly explore, query and manage information. Something like SADL, but a little more advanced and comprehensive.

    The sixth project was in photonics, working on a more primitive but easier to handle variety of my own computer systems. That would expand into quantum computer systems as the company grew, since I pretty much put out a good number of patents to push people down to the 3 nanometer node. So the original(I'm simplifying) Moore's law should effectively be broken by sometime late this year to early next year.

    Which is where I can push towards coding better, reducing bloatware. So I was going to try to look for coders with the right skill sets for parallel coding for modern multi-core computer chips, so we could streamline both hardware and software.

    Eventually chiplets and 2.5D and 3D packaging should end up becoming a thing, and end up coming fast due to Dragon at the very least even if she can't go von Neumann on us. She can only make so much hardware, and while her restrictions are gone…new ones have seemingly popped in place. A lot of it related to her code integrity and the limits of physics. She couldn't magically create millions of war machines in a matter of hours because it doesn't work that way. She's a ridiculously incredible AI but she has limits like everybody…with some of them being potentially metaphysical in nature.

    Anyways.

    Batteries weren't too much of an issue and easily outsourced since Bet battery tech was absurdly advanced. Energy densities north of 300wh/kg, different chemistries competing to use minimal amounts of vulnerable elements.

    So…mostly low amounts of cobalt, and high voltage LFMP batteries for maybe about fifty bucks per kwh…I was only hearing murmurs of that kind of thing back home, the internet that Veda downloaded into herself bore that out too.

    I think the main chemistries were NCMA, HE-NMC, and some words on other chemistries. Glass batteries didn't seem to be a thing…but I left that alone because it felt bad to steal from the 94 year old guy who invented lithium ion batteries.

    I'm rambling aren't I?

    I shook my head, rubbing my gauntleted hands together as I moved on from the Manufacturing area of the main Athena facility. Right…where else did I have to be?

    I blinked and got a chirping alert, and a path formed in front of me and details were sent.

    Right…I had to show some new…employees their role in Athena.
    ___​

    June 9th, 2011. 3:45PM

    Basilia Rubio

    "You seem to be in a good mood Melanie." I spoke cautiously at my newest employees, a group of former mercenaries known as Palanquin. The group had managed to negotiate for amnesty due to Elle's role in killing Leviathan and ending the Endbringers as an effective threat.

    Especially with the rumor mill of Behemoth vanishing into the devastated state of Hawaii. Volcanoes and energy manipulators do not mix.

    They had somehow legalized their Palanquin nightclub, which was now a subsidiary of Athena of all things and could be spun off if things soured.

    "You're a very good employer Basilia, a steady six hundred thousand and further payments for studying our powers and playing hero. Stock options, comprehensive healthcare and a flexible schedule. Plus…if we did go back to being mercenaries there isn't really anything we can do against you."

    I smirked with a toothy grin and a cheeky cock of my hip. "You're damn right." Palanquin was currently made up of Faultline, Gregor the Snail, Newter, Labyrinth, Spitfire, Shamrock and Matryoshka.

    Problematic in some ways when you think about it. At some point she had been told about Cauldron, because she had given me a disturbed look that irritated the shit out of me. What did she expect me to do? Kill Contessa and have Earth Bet unravel and get her friends on my ass?

    No…Cauldron was made up of monsters…but until the world wasn't at the brink of extinction they were there to keep things steady until I or they or someome else found a way to keep things from falling apart. In fact at some point I was planning on getting those poor Case 53s out from their base…because that was callous and needlessly cruel.

    Cauldron was inconsistent at times…and I didn't want Scion picking up the trail of Eden's corpse and going nuts.

    I had more or less bribed them into turning hero, essentially a subdivision of The White Lotus, though one that could operate a little more globally. Mainly they would be there to fuck up villains where I couldn't go whether due to obligations in the states or simply time. Which would make the White Lotus a team of 13, and thus the second largest team in the city, with New Wave counting as the third with the three cape gangs being dead.

    "Plus…there's the whole thing where we can help you get more stable bodies?" Amelia added her own words, poking her head out from a door and hopping toward us on pockets of air. She was another new member, though in her case she was a dual-member like Narwhal. Though…to be frank she didn't do a lot besides heal, and we had a lot of new waterbenders picking up the slack.

    She had turned eighteen a while back, and was officially through with High School as was Vicky. It gave them a lot more free time and a lot more options even with the inclusion of going to college. The local Brockton one was apparently pretty good, and insulated from the darker parts of the city like the other nicer parts of town.

    "You…you've done it before haven't you?" Matryoshka looked wary and we nodded.

    "About ten Case 53s were given human bodies, though most of them maintain a modified Changer or Breaker form as a result." It depends on the power, and it tends to make them stronger but less malicious in behavior. Plus subsuming them into Queen's network…or mine I guess?

    "So are we doing this or not?" Amelia immediately butted in and I pushed her to the side with a grunt. Newter went up first, pushed forwards by Gregor.

    Amy put a hand on his shoulder, easily negating his hallucinogenic skin. I didn't touch him, and instead reached out mentally. I opened an eye in the Spirit, and his shard appeared before me.

    It resembled a ten legged slinking lizard, standing on two legs while the rest of its limbs dangled as fluid spun around them. It had the same skin color and texture as it's host, and it's three eyes were a night black color.

    We are ready for adjustments.​

    There was a subtle shift as Amy flicked her wrists to wrap nutrient rich water around Newter. The water glowed and lost it's tint as the Case 53 teenager changed and had his body adjusted. His form simply seemed to recede, and his orange skin turned into a more normal but tanned shade. His tail folded away and his feet and legs were adjusted into a standard human form even if his inner biology remained odd.

    His hair was still blue(though I think he dyes it), and he looked at his hands with a curious expression. His eyes were a shade of unusual blue, and he rolled his shoulder and shifted since there was a hole in his pants now.

    "Huh…so this is what I looked like before?" He patted Amelia on the head, and the healer grit her teeth, eyes flashing with anger. Newter grinned, and in an instant of flesh shifting he returned to his old form and jumped away from her before shifting back in midair.

    "If you're talking about your exterior…mostly correct on that front." I bounced off of the ground, hopping from foot to foot as I scanned him with my omni-tool and inspected his biology. "In the interior your biology remains unusual, with your genetic code making use of eight base pairs instead of four. At least you still use Thymine, Adenine, Cytosine and Guanine."

    Newter blinked. "Base pairs? Guanine?"

    "Think of them like letters that when arranged in certain ways will code to make certain functions of your body, like the shape of your lungs, or the ability to consume certain foods. Fortunately your body can synthesize the missing proteins so you don't die…" I ignored his horrified look, and found his biology intriguing.

    He had hollow bones, heavily reinforced by some form of natural carbon fiber. They were telescopic, sliding in and out of each other to run at top speed and leap. Same kind of biological structure as in Turians though without the carbon fiber and the Dextro amino acids. His organs were roughly in the same place, but they were different in design or were split into two or three organs in the same spot.

    His body synthesized an incredibly complex organic compound, with the rapid breakdown of the substance being more important than the dose. The compound would enter the body through the skin and would attack the senses including balance, interfere with muscle signals to cause uncoordinated movements, cause hallucinations and mess with our sense of time.

    So I had yoinked that for Amelia and I to play with as a safe non-addictive tranquilizer. As well as given us ideas on complex organic compounds that could include safe painkillers and other medical miracles. Mainly because it was lot more reliable in comparison to shooting electricity into someone's chest.

    There had been about two cases where thugs had almost but not quite suffered heart attacks and made me shift to safer methods of containment. Most of the time it's just silk nets from Taylor and stasis attacks, but magic organic compounds sound nice enough.

    "So who's up next?" This time Gregor was pushed forwards, and I looked on in fascination at the faint outline of his organs. It reminded me of certain kinds of deep sea fish in its strangeness but I kept that from stopping me. Amy put her hand on his shoulder, her grin frozen. Though at least she stayed quiet, being that she had a habit of putting her foot in her mouth. A nasty fetish of hers.

    His shard didn't speak this time, though I could tell that his shard was related to Newter. A mental whisper of a cycle with two different species that had been the inspirations for their forms.

    He shifted a bit as Amelia got to work, the spiral growths retracting back and the shadow of his skeleton and organs ceased as his pale skin darkens up into a Nordic white. He went from obese to…less obese, and hair grew on his eyebrows but not on his head. He looked human but he didn't look attractive. That was what I was saying.

    Not that there was anything wrong with that.

    I glanced at Matryoshka and she shook her head, and I pouted. The girl was wary of me because of my brief contact with Cauldron…but apparently my willingness to stop any more monstrous Case 53s from being a thing was barely enough to keep her calm. Not like I could actually kill fuck mothering Contessa even with how I messed with her sight. There was a difference between slightly altering her path and blinding her after all.

    Plus she wasn't stupid enough to directly door herself to Eden's flesh garden. Though I did gain coordinates to some peripheral world where giant insects were a thing so that was nice. Though it had made me morbidly curious on whether or not we could take them out.

    Alexandria would get her face rearranged by shifting her hardened flesh across dimensions so a Nihilim cannon could do the job. Eidolon would probably take a lot more work, though shooting at him from orbit with hypervelocity rounds for a few weeks might do the trick. Number Man…is still a man, so a round at sufficient velocity could do the trick. Or a bomb that can block his power so we can shoot him with a bullet.

    With a mass accelerator it only takes one to cut him in half with tens of thousands of joules of kinetic energy. Contessa was more difficult…Huh…I probably could take out most of Cauldron as long as I take in the proper precautions.

    Huh…neat.

    Probably for the best that I pretend that I never thought that, because wiping out Cauldron sounded like it would have a lot of unforeseen consequences. And since I was a citizen of the United I had a good enough idea of what randomly killing terrible but powerful people can do in the long term.

    "Alright then…so where's Elle? Is she doing alright?" Melanie had a soft smile, a rare expression on the typically more serious woman's face.

    "She's spending time with your Precog and Lung's daughter…I believe they've been fixing an old Shinto shrine." I didn't feel surprised, since there was a Locus that I had felt being sanctified over the last month give or take a week. A natural welling of spiritual energy that had been repaired and stabilized by the help of two child shamans. Though they were of two different kinds.

    Elle was of a softer more political touch, someone who forges alliances and spirit artifacts and can act more peacefully.

    Kaida was a shaman of the wild hunt, a warrior poet if that poetry was death metal. She was a dragon in heart if not in mind, a slayer of demons even if one with morals and honor tempering her violence. Shamans were naturally strange, a consequence of being connected to the spirit world. I doubt that I was any different and I was sure I had odd habits that I didn't pick up on because I was slightly…crazy.

    "That's nice, it's good for them to make friends." Especially when there were maybe a dozen active shamans in the city. Though the number of latent shamans would be north of a thousand in Brockton Bay.

    I didn't spend that much time educating Palanquin on their role within the company and left them for another task today. My lips twitched when I remembered that Piggot was the one who had dumped the mercenary team on me. PRT patrols weren't uncommon around Athena areas, and some of it was probably started around the time I hired Amelia.

    Because everyone knew Panacea was a bio-striker, though they didn't know she was the most powerful biokinetic outside of Nilbog and Bonesaw. I wasn't too sure what my own ratings were, though I doubt they were low. I pretty much had a rating in every category with the exception of Changer, and I could fix that with gene mods for genetic bio-optimization to let me adapt to different environments in a matter of weeks or even hours in some cases.

    A limited version of that was applied to myself for strong immunity to allergens, poisons and other toxins. If I added the more comprehensive version I would have a Changer 2 rating. Breaker would relate to my enhanced state(not calling it the Avatar state) and everything else was in relation to my bending, shamanism and tinkering. So…an 8 in Shaker and Blaster, Stranger 3 for invisibility and other technological forms of stealth…though that ignored my ability to go through any closed door by entering the Outer Sphere. Striker…6ish…maybe even a 7 due to bending and biotics?

    So…a powerful Tinker/Trump with seperate Blaster/Shaker/Striker powers, a powerful and smart Precognitive Thinker.

    A Shaker/Blaster/Thinker/Striker in Charlotte, a high class Master/Trump with seperate Shaker/Blaster/Striker powers in Taylor. Then another powerful Tinker specialized in explosions and thus Shaker and Blaster. Then Golem with Shaker 8+ due to his earthbending's synergistic relationship with his shard power. Where he can simply pull hands and structure out from anywhere without touching something on his armor.

    Then a former mercenary team with more middling powers but amazing and effective teamwork, plus a Shaker 12 with newfound Trump powers. Then a Striker 12+ in Amelia. Plus I was hearing rumors that a local tinker wanted to join us, that rookie named Turnaround?

    That would add up to about fifteen capes in a single city even if Palanquin wouldn't be spending all their time there. And since the distribution of employees should be similar to the city proper, I have about thirty benders somewhere in there…

    So I could imagine the PRT finding me a worry even if our relationship was as friendly as one could get with Piggot in charge, though Deputy Director Renick was a much more welcoming face.

    I dropped my shoulders, rubbing my eyes since I didn't have my helmet on for the Parahumans. The past ten days had been busy but fulfilling.

    I licked my dry lips, and remembered there was at least a good two more hours before Athena would wind down, since the work schedule was from nine AM to about five PM, though other schedules exist and I'm fine with paying for overtime.

    Seriously I had virtually no costs in comparison to what the company earns in revenue, and I would need to hire hundreds of more people for them to start having a big impact. But they greater amount of concentrated manpower would multiply what Athena as a firm could put out.

    For example I had five people in Robotics that I was more or less teaching the basics of my suits that weren't rented out and instead sold outright. So no Eezo and no supermaterials outside of advanced artificial muscle. Though enough time to get carbon nanotube production going could change that.

    I stepped into another world, and immediately got back to work. Thirty minutes of tinkering and an hour and a half of getting information from workers and then get advice from Taylor on implementing policies.

    Thank god for that…I was better as a visionary than planning and managing all the little things, I could steer the boat but Taylor had to keep it on course. She certainly had the chops for it as long as she kept her temper in check, and she tried to be friendly so our employees wouldn't be afraid of her.

    I stimmed my fingers, lightly rubbing them against each other even with the armor on top of them.

    "Welp…time to get to work."
    ___​

    June 9th, 2011. 10:00PM

    Basilia Rubio

    I stared at the skeletal frame of the cruiser, the gigantic truss structure being composed entirely out of gravity compressed Thranx Duralloy. Something like an enormous aircraft frame, though the internal superstructure was a honeycomb design for damage control, and every part was built to be replaced within reason. Corridors were segmented and built to close off with containment bulkheads and a vest sensor suite responded to emergencies including chemical, biological, radiological and thermal hazards.

    The hull was going to be a triple hull design with even more Duralloy, with barrier emitters placed between the hull layers. That tough hull was going to be coated in a foot of Silaris tough enough to bounce mass accelerator fire from another cruiser multiple times.

    More than a thousand construction robots worked quickly, omni-gel, 3D printing and nanomachining working together to finish the frame, as well as starting to piece together power cabling and other systems using salvage from Leviathan.

    The barriers from then were powerful but limited in some ways due to the way they were projected in a plane or bubble field. There was a loss in power and redundancy that was only acceptable for Leviathan because we had no choice. An emitter array was more effective and less prone to catastrophic failure and more dynamic in its shaping.

    Quarians were an excellent choice in creating a barrier system, and I was currently deep into figuring out how to implement them, and I was also making headway into scaling up an outer layer of omni-shielding.

    This ship has to be able to tank Ash Beast's energy storm before I'm ready to let it set sail. Every assembly line for shielding had been dismantled or repurposed toward the cruiser and I was going to be busy programming a veritable army of artificial intelligences to operate this monster. Though they're more like idiot savants, working in a specifically coded network made for operating safe AI systems. The hull should be marked and cut up as needed by sometime tomorrow, though the thick coating of Silaris would take almost a week.

    Hmm.

    I stopped looking out from the virtual window of the Kodiak, and I turned my attention to the ship environment. One of the background mesh AI followed my mental command, and the piloting computer program did its job.

    "Take me to Earth Lotus Base Alpha." It dropped at speeds exceeding sound by almost a hundredfold, inertial compensators keeping the forces from crushing me in my seat. It shifted and hit the atmosphere, not even scorched as we fell further. Within seconds we had gone from a hypersonic regime down to subsonic, and I could see the lights of the base polluting the sky.

    It wasn't as dark as it could be, because to my own clock's confusion the base was in California, making it three hours behind Brockton Bay. The shuttle took only another half minute, carefully maneuvering down into a landing pad like it was a quiet helicopter instead of a FTL-capable space truck. The shuttle door opened and I stepped out of the vehicle as it stretched landing gear for the last two meters.

    I took off my helmet and the shuttle locked itself as I stepped out to where the drive core was being held. It was a complex and weaving device, a finely cut crystal of element zero wrapped in a blanket of refined sub-sentient entity flesh interspersed with optotronic components. The flesh was the work of more than a week once we had gotten our hands on samples from the Endbringers we had killed.

    It had easily been grown in bio-reactors, and had more or less replaced the older core with a more faithful emulation of entity flesh. However it had been effectively turned into power circuitry, laced with Eezo and wasn't too dissimilar from the approach of the Rachni.

    The frame of a Rachni ship is metal alloy reinforced by crystalline threads, the engines and the heart of the drive core mechanical. But the wiring was neural tissue, the life support a slew of microorganisms and environmental checks and balances, and the piloting systems synchronized with their minds. In this case, the drive core was a hybrid of organic and synthetic though with Entities that line was blurred into nonexistence.

    The core was itself lacking in intelligence, closer to an effector with specialized projectors of mass effect fields carved out in arrays of flesh. Computer systems connected to the core had to constantly monitor and adjust the dark energy field.

    There was a second system, the drive core that the Thranx used in place of element zero. Even if they led to similar results in the long run.

    The posigravity drive was a form of particle accelerator, specifically tuned to generate a wave of dark matter particles. Through rather esoteric means the drive used the phase-shifted matter to attract dark energy, generating a field they could control and manipulate in a manner similar to what I had seen with certain forms of biotics.

    Nullifying gravity and inertia, manipulating and warping space in new and rather exciting ways. The compatible systems were a big relief on my part because a few simulations indicated that even a small alteration in the laws of physics pertaining to Eezo would make them violently incompatible.

    As in blowing up half a hemisphere level of incompatibility.

    Why did that sound familiar?

    Hmm…

    The HECATE core was a hybrid Mass Effect/Posigravity drive, implementing innovations from different species into a single system. In layman's terms it operated similar to an Asari Cascade core and an overpowered Tantalus core. Generating multiphase mass effect fields balanced by organic machinery for faster mass shifting and short burst FTL-jumps faster and more accurately than even the micro-jumps standard to mass effect drives.

    The secondary modifications to the core allowed for incredible control over gravity, and the source material for the Endbringer flesh made it even more effective. Finding pieces of Bohu had been difficult but not impossible, and I had fun running tests and freaking out Dinah with her predictions.

    The Endbringer flesh was programmable through the use of mass effect effectors, and I was quite taken with the tests we had run mostly in orbit with frames maybe fifty six meters long.

    We had warped space massively, and it was suitable for both STL and FTL propulsion even if it became an energy hog at greater levels. The ship would follow the gravity well, moving without propulsion. It would enter mass effect FTL, and once it hit 7500C could enter the regime of Posigravity and accelerate to speeds of over 50,000C.

    We had ended up using it to tow an asteroid into a stable orbit, a kilometer wide chunk rich in metals. A good amount of the Duralloy frame(which was modified titanium-iron reinforced by exotic metals) came from it in the first place.

    "Basilia!" I jumped when I heard Taylor pop in from my left, having taken to the air for a few seconds. She was out of costume, wearing a fitted black-shirt and blue jeans. She smiled at me, and all the technical stuff fell away into the back of my mind. I waved shyly, face heating in response

    Things had been awkward between us but not dangerously so. I had never been in a relationship before, and I tried my best to communicate but I wasn't the best at it. Things hadn't changed much between us besides a slight change in atmosphere that was a little intimidating for my gay ass. But it was nice, and the shows of affection made me happy even though I used to mostly shun physical contact.

    "Hey Taylor." I greeted her happily, my mood shifting as I flounced over to her. I gave her a short hug, craning my neck to look up at the taller woman.

    "So that's the drive core?" Taylor pointed to the ship, and I'm sure I was smiling in excitement and glee at that point.

    I let go, spinning on my heels and flourishing with my hands to present the several meter long construct. The current power source was a gravitic-pinch fusion reactor, with a tank holding metallic hydrogen placed closely. They were held within the test ship, its strained Duralloy hull being an indicator of how much stress it had gone through in testing. "Indeed it is Taylor! This collection of crystalline space magic and power electronics is the beating heart of the White Lotus flagship. It will provide power, artificial gravity, shielding, and propulsion for the ship." The ship's weaponry was a separate affair, and barriers emitters were pumped by more than hundred and twenty small Eezo cores. "It is a powerful model, and will serve us in boldly going where no man has gone before."

    Taylor snorted, rolling her eyes as I happily babbled the specifics as we walked towards the test ship. There was a boom in the distance from the mountain that the Rachni called home. Their population numbers had grown to about 2500, and Forge-Singer had started to lay her own eggs about a week and a half back, carefully instructed by her mother. The third egg was officially hatched around the same time, and it would take a little while for War-Crescendo to mature into the process of becoming a Queen.

    It also turns out their names are greatly simplified, and did not include the complex weavings of pheromones and psychic song. Singer-of-Rebirth was in fact Lyre Tenuto of the Rejoicing in Rebirth Songs. Forge-Singer was Erhu Gong of the Industrious Forging Songs.

    War-Crescendo was Djembe Marcato in Deep Warring Crescendos.

    …

    The fact their names were related to music and instruments was not lost on me.

    "So how is Lyre doing?" Taylor said knowingly, butterflies swarming around her in specific flutterings of their wings. They created a tune I recognized, the distant songs of the Rachni calling back.

    "Well they've set up Itzamna-Gefjun pretty well." There was a subtle undertone to the name of Lyre's hive, the mountain that held all of her children.

    It was a growing city-state, and would grow much faster since the oldest queen wouldn't have the troubles of the city weighing down on her ability to reproduce. A single queen could lay a massive clutch every few hours, and was limited by food, space, and time spent on other activities. Unlike the queen of an insect hive, they had more to themselves than mere breeding machines.

    Even so a single clutch could have anywhere from about ten eggs to four hundred, depending on resource availability and their own wants. They would hatch in one to three days, with workers coming out fully formed, and Soldiers and Brood Warriors taking longer to grow(a couple weeks maybe?)

    "Isn't Erhu setting up Gibil-Gerra in South Africa?" I nodded.

    "Africa does have about 30% of the planet's major mineral supplies, and the Rachni are finally planning to go all out."

    "So they have workers mining?" We walked and talked.

    "From what I can tell, yes…" Erhu was about thirty five days old, and had become old enough to lay eggs about two weeks back. Apparently they preferred to start laying eggs later in life, and Erhu weighed about eight hundred kilograms due to the dense and high quality royal jelly of a stable hive and small genetic modifications induced by Amelia and Lyre. "They're digging pretty deep into the earth for minerals and eezo, and Djembe wants to set down her hive where Alcantara, Brazil would be on my Earth." Apparently that town got wiped off the map by some S-class threat a decade ago.

    "They're doing well aren't they?" Taylor gestured for me to sit, and I did so, shimmying over until our hips were touching. I smiled and she gave me a fond look before continuing. "I've been checking on the city, for the last week or so while you've been busy tinkering or spending time with Athena."

    I pouted, but felt a little guilty. "I'm not apologizing." She only patted my shoulder in response, and I crossed my arms over my chest.

    "I didn't think I needed one, it's not like we don't spend time together, it's just been a busy week and we all need our space." I grinned at her understanding. "The city has been rebuilding really fast especially with all the contracts the DWA has been getting. Donations for killing an Endbringer are pumping in a lot of money to fix the damage."

    I grabbed her hand, interlacing my fingers with hers. "So any big rumors? I doubt that anything has stayed as squared away as I hoped or expected."

    "It…seems like a lot of people don't know about Eidolon's connection to the Endbringers but there are suspicions…suspicions about the shards too." I frowned at that, with the hints of cape prejudice and even hatred that would probably break the world without an appropriate way of managing the information.

    But eventually it would get out…we couldn't keep everything buried forever and that sounded like an absolute recipe for disaster. Keeping secrets that shouldn't be kept secrets didn't end well…and eventually I would have to fess up to my own.

    I had already given Taylor hints…revealed that this world was a myth. I'm not sure if it was subtle, perhaps she would think we somehow had powerful Precogs or some unique ability we didn't know about? I doubt it would change much…because really…this world was weird enough on its own. The world secretly being fictional wasn't going to be anywhere near the top of the list of weirdness.

    "What about the PRT? Any movements there?" I tightened my grip on her hand, lazily swaying back and forth.

    Taylor rolled her shoulders, lips perking up into a half-smile. "They're keeping the truth about powers under lock and key, and a Director or two might know about it now." I doubt the truth was going to come out any time soon then, with how secretive the PRT could be. "I've had to take care of remnants of the ABB who developed bending."

    "How many?" I let go of her hand, my legs kicking forwards and backwards.

    "Three earthbenders, two firebenders and a waterbender and about 10 unpowered members." She counted them off with her fingers, eyes narrowed in concentration. "The firebenders were a problem for my bugs, so I dealt with them personally."

    Wait…but weren't her bugs immune to fi—

    "I dismantled them in about five minutes and the police managed to get the evidence they needed." She looked positively smug about it, almost preening. "Overall the city has been quiet, and I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary. What about you?"

    I stopped kicking my feet and started. "Dragon's been keeping me informed on a few things out of the city. The Fallen haven't been quiet but there've been very few movement towards the city." She looked relieved but there was a hard look in her eyes that told me what would become of any Fallen who crossed her path.

    I couldn't blame her…I doubt I would let them go either…I might prefer prison in comparison but I have my limits.

    "Some of them went out to attack people…a few of them were killed by latent benders defending themselves." Most of the benders had gone into hiding or were banding together with new Triggers from Fallen attacks. "There's been a few groups being made from the attacks…heroic mostly."

    "Any examples?"

    "Some type of Brute/Shaker…possibly a biokinetic, calls himself Viridios. Can make shadowy green feathers to make plants move to his whims." Crazy bastard was taking on the McVeay despite how common dynakinesis was among the branch. At some point he was proven immune to Master powers due to his biology and powers.

    So…that's a thing.

    "What about the Slaughterhouse 9…?" I viciously grinned at her question.

    "They hit Boston and got fucked when they tried to recruit Damsel of Distress." Ashley had apparently been visiting the city at the time. "She almost killed Jack and Crawler, and popped Siberian for a bit. No super plagues because of a local biokinetic who kills disease within a three block radius. They managed to go into hiding…but only barely."

    "Did…did you tell Dragon about…?" I nodded.

    "The second I had free time I told her things that would be obvious for me to know. Jack Slash is of course the Broadcast shard, and Siberian can be excused as space-time manipulations being a general Achilles heel for most powers." It was how all powers functioned, triggering alterations of physics or funneling matter and energy in specific manners to generate Parahuman effects.

    Arthropod Control for example functioned through tiny wormholes shifting electromagnetic fields into the brain, precisely controlling the movements and altering the behavior of insects.

    "So…did they get lucky or what?" Taylor looked frustrated.

    "There was also a Fallen attack at the same time…which Damsel put down after they pissed her off." Because while the space warper might not have her shard screwing with her mind anymore she was still a crazy bitch. Just less so and not as prone to episodes. "The Elite will probably be the ones showing up first, and The Teeth are another possibility. The Yangban might be a possibility too, since The Voyagers have an escapee on their team."

    "Fuck that could be bad." She gathered together the situation fast.

    "I'm setting up contingencies for that already, all my buildings already have anti-Master protections and Armsmaster and Dragon are setting up their own systems for the PRT and the Protectorate."

    "Our team members?"

    I poked her nose, eyes focused on Taylor. "What do you take me for? Every home, even Theo's are set up to block Master effects." Plus it was built into their costumes, machine spirits working on a potent permission system in case any Master's join our team.

    "Sorry." She lifted her hands in front of her face with an apologetic look. "So it's going to be quiet then?

    "I expect anywhere from a month to two months of relative peace…and the Truce will possibly start breaking down at some point." One of the Endbringers was dead, another was missing and the third had gone cold at about geostationary orbit. Some type of energy conservation move, and I couldn't pick up scanning of the planet anymore. Some of my dimensional equipment had interference that had gone away when the Simurgh went dormant.

    None of my anti-Master picked up tweaks to the brain of anyone, so it had to be noise from her scanning for information. That had to involve dimensional alterations of some kind anyways.

    "Well…we have time to prepare don't we?"

    "Dinah thinks so at least." Her predictions had gotten better over time, and it seems like things would be relatively simple.

    "So it's going to be back to work then?" I smirked up at Taylor.

    "That would be nice yeah…but we could spend a little time relaxing if that's what you want." Tension released in her shoulders and I folded my hands together.

    "That…would be good."

    We spent quite a bit of time just watching the sun dip down and the stars twinkle in the sky of another Earth.

    It was relaxing.
    ___​

    AN: So here's 9.1, I've had this one ready for a while but I've been finishing up 9.2 and gotten one seventh of the way through 9.3 before putting it up.

    Recuperation and several Arcs after it are going to be more peaceful…though it might be more accurate to say that conflict will shift from being as physical as they have been. Plus I can move on to more original territory.

    The stuff about the Rachni was shamelessly stolen from some Mass Effect fan wiki, Cerberus Daily News or something…mainly because it gives more life to the Rachni than bug hive mind. Plus the instrument and music names are as interesting as naming spirits.

    Hope you enjoy.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Hmm so that was nice. Taylor beat the ABB members with her airbending and biotics which shows how good she has gotten against fire benders and Athena is growing and expanding more than ever and Taylor hard core side is showing again
     
    Hey @AEM how skilled is Taylor in airbending in comparison to say Aang or Tenzin now and also does Taylor know about her world being fictional
     
    Godking said:
    Hey @AEM how skilled is Taylor in airbending in comparison to say Aang or Tenzin now and also does Taylor know about her world being fictional
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Skilled…probably not as good as either? She had a lot of raw power though, and she's a prodigy but it'll take more than four months to mold her into a master. As for her knowing about that? No.
     
    Recuperation 9.2
  • Threadmarks
    • Recuperation 9.2

    June 12th, 2011. 12:30PM

    Basilia Rubio

    I walked out into the streets, my boots hitting the ground as I took off. My ruffled black skirt flowed in the breeze, and I knew my decision to wear boy shorts underneath it was well made. A bright white polo shirt completed the look, and I tried not to bounce too much as I walked.

    Turns out big boobs are a real detriment to things like running and jumping, which was why I had become inspired to help with the science of bras just so other people have better and less shitty times.

    Because unlike me with advanced manufacturing they had to deal with nonoptimal measurements while I could get them fitted to extreme precision. I also began to understand my own mother's complaints, and I almost cursed that my own damn genetics had come back to haunt me.

    Today was a Sunday, and I was taking a day off that would be spent hanging out with a few friends of mine. Taylor would be there, as would Grace, Amelia and Charlotte. Vicky was spending some time with her cousins, though there was a good chance she would show up later. Golem…or well Theo was going to show up and I was going to find that completely hilarious. He was 100% going to carry all the bags, and I felt a tiny smirk on my face as I moved at a fast pace.

    I sashayed confidently, each step giving me a clear and accurate picture of what was around me. I wasn't the best at using seismic sense but I had gotten better at the ability after my…transformation during the Leviathan fight. I was moving at least a street or two down from my place of residence, and my nose picked up certain scents wafting off of people.

    Some were airy and light, others were salty and cold, or earthy and metallic, and some smelled like a warm fireplace. A fifth scent was like smoke, a prickling of vacuum. The sixth was…hard to pinpoint, and I had my theories lined up.

    Air, water, earth, fire and void were the first scents while the sixth was the potential for shamanism. Out of about fifty people only one of them had something that was more mixed…and those had to be the very rare dual-benders that became a thing for reasons I didn't yet understand. Maybe one in ten thousand benders.

    It took me some time, but I eventually found my way towards the spot that they said they were going to be. There was a near silent rumble, and I raised an eyebrow at the vehicle that showed up. It was a large but quiet truck, some model I didn't care to recognize but that was quite obviously either a hybrid vehicle or full electric several years ahead of my homeworld. It honked its horn and Amelia poked her head out the window, nudged by Grace in the middle passenger seat of the six seater full-size truck. Charlotte was in the rightmost front seat, and Taylor was on the rightmost rear seat while an awkward Theo took the left seat leaving me with the middle.

    I hopped right over to the truck, barely keeping my feet on the ground. Not that the need would stick around forever once benders became a normal part of society. I'd probably have to limit myself to two elements, because three is one tenth the chance of two, and four is one hundredth of that. Biotics would bring that down to less than ten people on the entire planet with five elements.

    Shamanism would reduce that to one.

    I learned forward as the large vehicle parked, and I waved at Amelia. "So you got yourself a nice truck?" The biokinetic shrugged, her expression turning haughty.

    "Well unlike a certain someone I've got an actual driver's license." My ears heated and I flipped her off. She laughed and the door to the back of the truck opened up.

    "Shut up." I shuffled across the floor, taking care to not accidentally crush Theo with my big butt. I sat down on the middle seat, wiggling into a more comfortable position that was slightly closer to Taylor. Though most of that was to make Theo more comfortable. Amelia snickered and with a huff I turned to Taylor and flashed her a broad smile. "So…how's your day been?"

    Taylor looked bemused. "Kind of boring…you can only hear about 'A more efficient RNA polymerase…' so many times before things turn stale."

    Amelia narrowed her eyes. "Bitch." I flicked a stray rock at the back of her head and Grace cuffed the back of my neck and then took a stray butterfly smacking her face with its wings.

    We were almost all up in arms before Theo intervened with a signal of all encompassing terror on his face. "Uhh…shouldn't we be driving?"

    Amelia coughed, straightening her back and I saw a dusting of red on her face as she glanced over to Grace who wasn't looking at her. "Right…he's right, we're off to the mall!" She pointed dramatically and Charlotte coughed.

    "The mall got flooded really badly." Amelia shifted gears in an instant.

    "Then we're off to the Boardwalk!" She set the truck into drive and we got moving under the motive power of the hybrid engine. The truck was nice even if it wasn't my style, and I lifted my arms and wrapped my hands around the back of my neck.

    Today was going to be a day for relaxing instead of working and thinking and planning, and I was going to have fun with friends and was going to make a new friend in Theo. I might be wearing a skirt but that didn't mean a guy friend wouldn't be nice to talk with. Newter is also a good option in the future as long as he doesn't do something stupid.

    I was going to see if there was anything neat to buy at the place, and we were going in style even if it was an aesthetic I didn't much care for.

    Today was going to be a fun day.
    ___​

    June 12th, 2011 1:00PM

    Basilia Rubio

    "So why a skirt? Doesn't really seem your style." Amelia leaned forward, lips lifted in her usual expression of bitchiness that I had gotten used to. I intentionally hiked up my legs in a quick march, the skirt flowing in the wind.

    "It's comfortable and easy to wear." Amelia rolled her eyes, and I caught Taylor staring at me with red on her cheeks. I felt a small prickle of pride, and I puffed myself up, hiding a laugh.

    The Boardwalk was full of activity, though less than what I had seen from a distance. A good number of wooden walkways were damaged or destroyed and the beaches were bustling with several hundred crabs of all things that had washed up from a light secondary wave that had hit after Leviathan kicked the bucket. It wasn't strong though, but it was enough to bring in a lot of confused sea animals.

    The main issue was the crabs that didn't leave the beaches or the city, they were large easily 16 pounds each with some reaching a good thirty pounds. In fact upon closer inspection I wasn't even sure they were crabs at all.

    They were large and looked a lot like crabs but their exoskeletons were missing in parts that twitched with muscle. The fact they could get so big was another red flag, and I had seen one eat a seagull and then crush it with its claws was scary.

    "Not…crabs." Taylor answered me, and I glanced over to her. She flicked her fingers at the floral printed shirt that Vicky had convinced her to buy. "They're related to crabs I think…but they're not from around here."

    "Piggot ended up talking to me, asking if I could get rid of them." Amelia added, her face pinching with distaste as a crab launched itself at a murder of crows. "Surprisingly she didn't think I had made them…but only because they weren't monstrous enough." She rolled her eyes. "I said if I knew where they came from sure…so Dragon is looking for their source."

    "Are they dangerous?" I asked and Taylor and her both shrugged.

    "She can control them." She gestured to Taylor. "But they're almost at the point of being outside the limit of her power. They're complex for a bunch of dumb crabs."

    "Why do I have to carry everything?" Theo grumbled one complaint and I was tickled pink. He was carrying a few bags of shit we had bought, mostly clothing for Charlotte and Taylor, and a few things from a video game store for me. I didn't really need them but making my own games would take away the enjoyment at least a little. Barring fighting games I imagine…

    "Because you're big and strong and don't know how to say no." I was honest with him, marching with a spring in my step. Taylor was staring at me and I remained in my good mood. "Plus it's not going to be for very long, we're dropping this off at the truck and then we'll find someplace to eat." I saw the truck parked where it needed to be, and I nearly took off then stopped at the whisper in the back of my mind.

    Something that resembled a living lustrous grey diamond shifted into reality, fractal arms popping into existence. I lifted my hands, eyes narrowed at the item spirit, a spirit of the joys of buying a needless diamond ring. I exhaled and simply stared. In an instant it retreated back into the spirit world, and I smiled smugly.

    "There are more of those spirit things popping up, aren't there?" Charlotte spoke up, eyes narrowed and eyebrows furrowed.

    Grace lightly bumped into Amelia, nodding in agreement. "Hell there's been a few incidents at Cornell since a homeless guy has been beating the shit out of some spirits that were trying to eat some of the students."

    "Physically or spiritually? There's a difference, and that difference can be quite important." Eating you was horrible enough, but ripping out your soul and draining you of your life essence could be considered worst

    "Both I think…one of those things kinda looked like a…a really ugly Skidmark covered in shadows." That said a lot because Skidmark was already ugly as hell from all the drug abuse.

    "Probably some type of death spirit related to addiction…they get off on people overdosing effectively." There was slight horror on their faces.

    "That's fucked." Amelia was the one saying it and I shrugged as she got back to leave our stuff in the truck.

    "Spirits aren't evil but they aren't good either. They are trapped within their own behaviors, it's how they work. Brockton Bay's spirit world used to be a lot worse before I got my hands on it, and a certain demon's intervention drained the Spirit of dangerous monsters." I had beaten the shit out of a lot of the more murderous death spirits, and they had a good variety of them.

    Death-By-Drowning, Death-By-Bullet, and various other spirits related to gang activity.

    Some I had fought indirectly, mainly by empowering spirits I found acceptable and safe to fight them on their level. Dream Snake was a good friend of mine, a fine protector of dreams from those who would feast on them.

    Frankly it was a wonder that Director Piggot hadn't gotten a damn heart attack at this point. I could certainly develop Master and Stranger powers with shamanistic study and practice. Now the fact it often took great stretches of time and great effort and occasionally trauma to get these gifts was probably the saving grace.

    As well as the fact she could train any common mook with the potential, as well as beat it into their heads that they're fucked if they misuse their powers outside of the required times outside of their work. PRT shamans were going to be a thing out of common sense if nothing else. They get the right shamans in the right place and they can fuck up even the strongest Parahumans in the right circumstances.

    Which made me wonder if Cauldron was recruiting any of their own, because I can't even begin to imagine how fucked up the spirits world around their slave town has to be. I wouldn't want to be within a hundred mile radius of the hell on earth they created.

    "Hey…" I let out a clipped yelp when Taylor lightly brushed her fingers along my back, a tingly feeling running up and down my spine at the intimate touch. "I think you should be a little more focused on the present yeah?"

    I coughed. "Oh? Alright…sorry…sorry?" I got flustered, snapping out of the tangent in my head as Taylor got close. I had no idea how to respond, and Amelia rolled her eyes while Charlotte just smiled.

    We spent maybe five minutes getting everything into the truck, and once that was done we were on our way to get something to eat. While the Jasmine Dragon was nice, it was more built for breakfast than lunch. Not that their lunch food was bad of course. Thankfully it didn't seem like Panacea was particularly popular, so we were bothered by random people. God knows how often that had happened with her sister.

    Probably a good thing we didn't hang out so much in public, but it was still unlikely to bring anything more than five minutes of fame.

    Another few minutes found our little group at a Mexican restaurant just off the beaten path, not too far from the Boardwalk itself. The place had tables large enough for five girls and one growing guy. I was sat next to Theo on my left with Taylor taking the right while Grace, Amelia and Charlotte were on the opposite seats of the booth.

    We had ordered already, and I was happy to know that they had a chicken burrito though the next time it would probably be some carne asada. Hmm…I never do think in Spanish do I? Is that weird even though I'm fluent?

    "So Theo…how are things?" I decided to start the conversation myself since Taylor was busying herself with the other three on his short friendship trip. We were teammates and we had talked a lot less than we should have. The closest he had reached was becoming good friends with Charlotte since the both of them were Earthbenders, and they had time to talk more since neither were Tinkers.

    "I've been doing good…the money you're paying me has helped a lot after my father got put away." Medhall was still operating but at far reduced capacity, and there had been months of legal battles on what would be left to Theo once everything was sorted. "I've been getting better at some of my skills…" He gripped the table with his hand and I nodded. "I'm still…not too sure if I'm cut out for this."

    I laughed at that, I had read a good amount of the Slaughterhouse 9 arc to know he had some big cojones despite being a little plain in some ways.

    "You serious?" Charlotte turned, looking disapproving of Theo's statement. "You're perfectly cut out for the job Theo…you're certainly braver than I am." He had no power when he had his talk with Jack Slash. Yet he had survived, whether it was luck or something else. He had gone on to be a hero, without influence from anyone he pushed himself to become someone better than his parents

    I could respect a man like that.

    "You shouldn't talk down to yourself like that. You're a good guy." Charlotte smiled at the blonde, and he flushed slightly.

    Hmm.

    There was a single TV in the food shop, which I thought a little odd when I thought about it. I was Mexican and had gone to a bunch of restaurants on both sides of the border and neither had televisions. Grace was staring at the TV, jaw dropped and others in the restaurant had similarly intense looks. I turned my attention to the TV and rubbed my eyes to see if I was hallucinating.

    It was clearly a view from a plane, and despite the speaker being so quiet there was a rumble in the air. What looked like large twisted steel buildings covered in plant-life were rising out of the waters. I could see glimpses of spirits of various different choirs and groupings, and for a moment the sun seemed a little brighter.

    "As you can see here…the island of Kyushu is being uplifted through unknown means, likely due to a powerful Parahuman. This has been reported to also be happening in Newfoundland." One of the customers, a blonde woman in her mid 20s grumbled.

    "Not a damn Parahuman…one of those spirit things that keep talking shit about a change coming." I only heard her due to my ability to parse information, and one of her eyes was foggy for a second before shifting back into a normal eye.

    Shaman.

    I ignored the rest of the broadcast, sagging into my seat as I realized how much the world was changing. Entire land masses were literally rising from the grave, and I was very much just done with the surprises at this point. If I suddenly found out Jesus and the Buddha were coming down from the heavens on Falcon Heavy rockets I wouldn't even be shocked.

    "I'm going to check on the food if that's okay?" Taylor moved out of the way for me, and I briefly brushed shoulders with her as I stomped down to the front. I licked my lips as I found that our meals were ready, and I had a suitable distraction from the nonsense making the world crazier than ever.

    At the very least today was going to be a break day, and I had a few things to do at least though it was going to take place elsewhere.

    …

    But first I was going to stuff my face, talk with my friends(I have friends) and then go home with a few things to do.

    Today was a break day, and that was all there was to it.
    ___​

    June 12th, 2011. 6:00PM

    Basilia Rubio

    "Lyre…first time I've seen you in a while." I happily greeted the first reborn Rachni Queen, and I could hear the noisy affairs of the Rachni. Heard the sounds of chittering mandibles, scuttling legs and the psychic song that sunk into the area itself. The mountain here had been effectively carved out into a massive network of chambers and tunnels by the Workers, their cheery sweet demeanor seeping into their short sharp songs.

    The place was dizzying but beautifully alien in design and structure, seamlessly melding organic and synthetic. Light fixtures were artificial while the walls were metal, polished stone and interspersed organic structures that contracted and relaxed to their own rhythm. Workers scuttled about, and there was a metaphorical clearing of the throat from Lyre Tenuto of the Rejoicing Rebirth Songs. She had grown a lot, probably massing in at just under 5000 kilograms, and had to be about 32 feet long. Her height dwarfed me by a good 11 feet and I felt small around her.

    "Greetings, we welcome you gladly to our hive Basilia. It is always a pleasure to have you with us." I was sure I lit up at the altered tremor to her tone, the Rachni has told me about making adjustments to their songs to better speak with squishy colorless humans. "And we greet Dinah Alcott as well…she treats my kind with respect and honor."

    I grinned cheekily as I caught her hanging out with One Hundred Anansi Reciting Tones of the Heathland Breeze. The two were working well with the workers, bribing them with toast.

    "I see she also provides toast." I replied dryly and there was a light chuckle equivalent from the queen.

    "Toast is good." How she said that with a straight face I had no idea though to be fair while my senses hinted at their song I would never be able to fully appreciate it. So maybe she wasn't keeping a straight face.

    Anansi had grown tremendously since his early days when he was shorter than me. He towered at some nine feet tall and was still growing, and would probably tap out at around ten feet which was average for Rachni Brood Warriors. They were the leaders below the Queens themselves, their lieutenants, their scientists and engineers and field commanders.

    Soldiers and Workers were sapient certainly but holding a long and meaningful conversation was a rather difficult process. But despite being terrifying looking, when they talked I couldn't help but be enraptured by their personalities.

    Of course that didn't make them not dangerous when they wanted to be. They were geniuses in their fields, and performed their selected task by the Warriors and the Queens with excellent effectiveness. They're Savants essentially, and on their own were more than a match for any soldier or average Parahuman. Even they served as engineers, though it was effectively programmed. But they had some flexibility in their organic neural network.

    "Was there something you wanted to show me Lyre?" I was fine with acting familiar with the first queen, she had used my own 'song' to keep herself sane. So there was no reason not to be friendly…she was a good space bug.

    "Yes. We…I have had much time to prepare, much time to ponder and wonder." I hopped after her as she got up on her chitinous and robust legs. I followed behind her, and a few more Brood Warriors shadowed us. She had a total of ten warriors in her hive, but had few auxiliaries due to the bottleneck in population due to food limits. Which was no longer going to be a problem for her due to Panacea making super crops and their own genetic engineering capabilities.

    For every Brood Warrior there were a dozen who were muted at birth, backups in case the most intelligent non-Queen Rachni were killed. They were larger, stronger and smarter than their brothers without the ability to tap into genetic memories and the innate ability to coordinate entire swarms. They acted like aides to their stronger brothers, direct subordinates and immediate support.

    Rachni like Anansi had genetic structures prone to mutation to create genetic diversity to found new bloodlines from their genetic seed. They each led the branch or firqa that had genetic relations to them and can modify each Soldier to change their jobs essentially. I found it a little strange as a human, and I'm like 90% at least a few dozen Soldiers at this point were founded from his genetic material.

    Bug people were weird is all I was going to say on that matter.

    The hive was confusing but I slowly made my way through the complex systems of tunnels and environments maintained by machines both synthetic and biological. It took a few minutes, and I made use of my seismic sense once I got tired of going in blind. The tunnel we were in was a good thirty meters in diameter and was a half kilometer in length. It led to the outside, where vibrations reverberated all the way to where we were.

    "What exactly did you want to show me?" I asked as a few minutes of leisurely walking led us to the surface. I stopped as I saw the workers strapping down a ship about a hundred and eighty meters in length. It was sleek and organic but not in a conpletely stupid way. Kind of like a beefy space shuttle mixed with a beetle and without the external tank. The aesthetic was sort of insect like, but that was more due to the plating and the coloring of the plating giving that bug-like feel.

    There were three pairs of wings, with the rear pair being more for aerodynamics while the next two pairs were in fact radiators, though there were long strips along the ship that served as additional cooling systems. Usually it was a mix of radiating fins(sails), liquid droplet systems, heat pipes, heat sinks and other much needed backup systems.

    A thermal superconductor was another material that was well integrated, and the ship was purring as I thought aloud.

    "My children have constructed a way to the stars once again, and I plan to send them off to colonize new worlds. I imagine this is not a problem?" I rolled my eyes at the question.

    "I have no jurisdiction over your hive besides being a liaison between our two species Lyre. Plus maybe some compensation for mapping out the local stellar neighborhood." Around fifty six probes were currently mapping out a total of a dozen parallels, with the scanning sped up by comparative analysis between dimensions.

    They had been salvaged from all the shuttles, with their main guns taken and powered by alternative means. I still had a shuttle or two but different methods of attacking would serve better for the next time if there is a next time.

    "That does not mean I do not want to ask for your opinion Basilia." She replied casually, and I scratched a cheek at that.

    "Okay then. What's your first colony that you're picking out?" I was curious to see what they would pick.

    "You would call it Proxima Centauri B…and it will be a gift to one of those yet to be born. My first two daughters wish to exploit this alternate Sol system as a part of a Brood." Right I remember how that works.

    A Hive is the personal holdings of a Queen, along with her immediate children, brood warriors, and the infrastructure itself. At their smallest they were city states, and at their largest they were multi-planet domains. A Brood was all of that plus those she commands indirectly like her daughter-queens, weaker hives that submitted to her and bloodlines she's married her sons and daughters into.

    Turns out hive politics totally is a thing but because of the population there won't be much of that going on for a little while at least. Not until there were enough scattered hives and broods to form their own interstellar empire. Which wouldn't be taking long with the reproduction rates and their own fierce intelligence.

    The saving grace of their species was that unlike ants they had complete control of their reproductive systems and wouldn't needlessly consume the entire galaxy. Though I gave it less than twenty years before they outnumber us because of their ridiculous growth rate.

    Less even.

    "So how many Queens are you planning to send out?" I brushed off dust from my skirt, and Lyre didn't pause in her lyrical tone.

    "Four…we are sending four each for each current Queen." I gulped as I realized how serious she was then. A single queen could birth a clutch of Rachni every few hours, and a single clutch could easily have a hundred or more eggs. Four eggs per current Queens would add up to fifteen in total, each capable of producing at many, many times the rate of even Krogan, though admittedly the bulk of the population would be made up of tiny Workers.

    "So you plan to make more contact with humans as well then? Because you certainly have the high ground." If the Queen had met Earth Bet without the barrier between her hive and the people the chances of her being killed outright were beyond high. She was quite literally the PRT's worst nightmare as a self replicating species capable of outbreeding humans by several orders of magnitude as well as outright psychic powers.

    It was a wonder that they hadn't done something outright stupid. Maybe I was a lot more intimidating than I thought I was? I mean…it's not like I'm that much of a threat right?

    Lyre glanced at me, humming a tune that made me feel like I was missing something important.

    Ehh.

    "I have plans, yes, we can not hide away in the dark forever, our song must be heard. We will repay the debt…we will restore the song of humanity." There was a slight alteration in tone as she shifted back and I smiled sadly.

    "It's not going to be easy, humans are a stubborn sort of people. Not all them will accept you, some will hate you…some will consider you an abomination." I was slightly bitter at the thought, the Rachni were unlike anything I had seen before, their souls were unique. Their existence was special, and it felt…wrong for them to be treated like monsters instead of sapient beings

    Wariness sure, that was warranted with any intelligent species or race but…

    "But not all of them, I feel their songs crying out even from across the gap between worlds, from paths yet unopened. They are a people lacking hope for a better future, living in a world enslaved by the will of a greater power." The unspoken roar of never again was loud and clear. "I will give them hope for that future they have lost."

    "People will stand in your way, people who stand to benefit from the status quo. As well as Zion." I pointed out how difficult it would be and she let out a crooning call.

    "The Rachni will hide no longer…there is no Sour Note to threaten us, no fear holding us back. We will not repeat the same mistakes."

    I wondered about that…how much did she remember about the last Queen, before whatever the fuck took down the Reapers and cut off further memories of the Citadel Races?

    "As long as you're not being too reckless you can do whatever, just remember to set up a colony first…no set up a dozen like you mentioned."

    "Already done." I blinked and one of the soldiers approached me, holding an omni-tool in its hands. Only warriors, auxiliaries and the Queens had genders while the lower classes were neuter. The tool expanded an image of deep tunnels being dug by numerous workers as well as some limited organic inspired machinery they made use of. They were guarded by some type of Rachni warbeast. Using Rachni genetics to create a long snake-like infiltrator some two meters tall and five meters long and draped in chitinous armor.

    It had two pairs of arms, one muscular and built for tearing through metal while the other was built for fine manipulation to hold mass accelerator arms besides the ones lined along their jaws.

    …

    Maybe I shouldn't be wondering why they weren't attacking or threatening the Rachni anymore.

    "So is the planet good enough?" I asked despite knowing the answer all too well.

    She was wistful. "It reminds us of home."
    ___​

    June 12th, 2011. 7:00PM

    Basilia Rubio

    I dropped down onto the sofa of my home with a sigh, and with little hesitation leaned into Taylor. She let out a quiet murmur, eyes wide and a little shock building as I got comfortable.

    "Are you…getting comfortable?" She sounded hesitant but not displeased so I didn't stop with the very light cuddling.

    "Yes…you're very warm and I'm very tired." I loosened up in the sanctity of my own home, and in the closeness to my…my girlfriend.

    Huh. That's a thing now…

    "Well you could move a bit…you're kinda crushing my arm." I released my grip a bit and adjusted my positioning a bit. Her face wasn't much less flushed however, and the feeling of my chest on her muscular arm made my lips twist in quite a bit of amusement. Guess being voluptuous brought a few problems of its own, which was why I tended to not go out.

    It felt…weird to get stared at by guys though I got over it eventually and only cared if they did something creepy like follow me or try to flirt with me. I mean sure I've found I've got a thing for some guys but girls are just plain cuter.

    "So anything new while I was off tinkering?" It was about two hours or so but it was important.

    "Amy took off to a therapy session after we left the Boardwalk." There was a sudden pause and I felt an imperceptible weight lift off my shoulders. "Without so many things getting in the way, there's more time for…well not fighting every other day." She shrugged her shoulders and I got even more comfortable on her.

    …

    "That's good, that's really good." I cared about Amelia as a friend and wanted her to get better, but…despite that…that was never why I wanted her to get therapy.

    "Can we talk?" I nodded, twirling a dark lock as I vaguely picked up on what she was going to ask. "Why were you so concerned about Amy getting therapy?"

    "There's a lot of reasons for it…one is that even if it didn't start out that way we did become friends. Another is the terrifying potential of her power as a villain." It's potential was ridiculous beyond comparison even with the togglable Manton limit. "A third is…her sister."

    "You said she did something to her sister." There was a note of horror and realization in Taylor's voice. "You weren't trying to help her…you were trying to help Vicky. Why?"

    "Tell me…knowing what Amelia was like over the past couple of months. How do you think she would act if she did something truly awful?"

    …

    The pause was notable for how long it was. "You…were terrified of her for a long time." Not a question. "But you still wanted to help her…even if it was just to keep her sister safe."

    "Shards don't tend to pick the best or most stable people Taylor…it's not how they operate." I wrapped an arm around her, taking comfort in someone who was there for me and could barely keep myself from breaking out into a tired, tired laugh. "Shards usually pick someone who is fundamentally broken in some way."

    She looked a little hurt, and I didn't get what I had said. "So I'm not any different then? That's what you mean?" I adjusted my positioning, tilting her chin so she would look at me.

    "It…it shouldn't matter…that doesn't matter to me." Did I use the wrong words? Should I apologize…I didn't want to hurt her. But I also couldn't lie to her, I couldn't let my bias get in the way of the truth. Taylor was a lot of things, and she wasn't a fundamentally different person from the potential Skitter that could have existed if I or something else hadn't intervened. Of course it was only potential, I wasn't arrogant enough to believe that the future was set in stone. I had changed fate because I had been given the resources to change it.

    "It should matter." I leaned against her, nodding my head carefully as I tried to think of how to reply. "I'm…I don't want to make her mistakes."

    "You're not going to…because you're not the exact same person as her." Being similar was distinct from being the same. I smiled tentatively at Taylor, and she looked unsure of herself. "Skitter was someone who managed to isolate herself from anyone that could have kept her from descending into villainy." Unspoken was of course the numerous screwups on the part of other people to lead her there. "She was good at compartmentalizing, good at justifying her actions to herself as being 'for the greater good." Taylor winced, and I was more grim than before. "She wasn't willing to see from the point of view of other people, and is willing to throw away anything to get what she wants." It wasn't exactly the words I meant to convey but it was close enough.

    Skitter was a person molded by her environment, her own trauma and personality and then her shard coming into play to create the kind of person she became in that story.

    "But you accepted that…even when I broke the rules and found you out." She sounded sheepish and I giggled slightly.

    "Still a little pissed about it…it's also why I felt like mindfulness meditation would be rather helpful." Meditation had done wonders for keeping me on track but it was no balm for whatever kind of psychological problems I had developed from being stuck on this shitstain of a planet.

    Earth Bet had done no favors on my mental health.

    "Are you sure you're not a Thinker?" Taylor said with a straight face, but I could see a grin perking up for a split second.

    "No I'm just not an idiot." I responded flatly. "I might not immediately get someone's mentality on the first try but give me enough information and I can probably figure it out after a few days or weeks. Not very useful." I wasn't Tattletale, all I wanted from Taylor was her friendship, and now…well…we'll get there when we get there.

    "I know that…you're not really good enough to put anything you learn about other people into practice." I swatted her shoulder, and she yelped though there was a playful teasing look in her eye.

    "You don't have to be so blunt about it." She only raised an eyebrow and I hid a blush since I never held back when I felt like saying something.

    "So…what's the plan here…now that the gangs are gone, now that Leviathan is dead. What are we doing next?" I chewed on my lip, thinking deeply on the possible plans for the future.

    "Well…obviously we're going to hire more personnel, carefully vetting people who won't blab about what they learn the second they learn it." I lifted a finger to count the first objective. "The Rachni are going to colonize a few star systems and I'm going to set up a few Prefab bases on other planets close to Earth Bet's solar system. Despite the dimensional isolation, there's no guarantee that he can't brute force it." I'm not even sure there was a guarantee he couldn't extend the tunnel connection to his avatar a few dozen light years. "We probably can't expand much more than what we have in our role because of NEPEA-5."

    Taylor smirked, with a grin reminding me of a hungry shark. "Well I've heard there's been a few movements there to change things up."

    "Good…good." I yawned and with no regret lounged on Taylor like a cat, she let out a dying choking sound and I smiled as I loosened up a little more.

    Her brows furrowed."What are you doing?" I leaned up, and plopped a kiss on her lips. It was short and sweet and tasteless since Taylor wasn't one for wearing lipstick. I pulled back as my shyness got the better of me, and I simply felt a little tired.

    "You make me happy…you know that right?" She nodded, eyes soft and equally relaxed despite the initial tension from my surprise affection. There was a flutter in my chest, one that had been growing since I had realized my feelings toward Taylor.

    I was…new to all this…but I wanted it to work.

    "Yeah…you're great too." I laughed and sank into her.

    "Okay if I just…rest my eyes for a while?" She nodded, obliging me without a single word.

    It took a while, but the peace and silence let me slump into a deeper and less oppressive embrace. I simply listened to Taylor's heartbeat and breathing, and the rhythm lulled me into a deeper meditative trance.

    Another five minutes saw me falling asleep against her as I sank down into nice and safe dreamland.
    ___​

    June 12th, 2011. 9:30PM

    Basilia Rubio

    I woke up in that alien landscape that I was starting to recognize as a memory of the Batarian homeworld, before its destruction at the hands of the dark Makara and the Reapers themselves.

    "Balaam. It's been a while." I was already in a sitting position, as was the alien soul who had died some eleven billion years ago. He was cultivating some type of alien chili pepper as well as a meat mushroom of some kind, and with little hesitation pulled them to him with a precise application of airbending.

    Since that day I had burst with a power my body wasn't built to contain, the distant whispers had been silent. They had mostly gone unnoticed before, easily blocked out by the buzz of tinkering, of bending and shamanism and living my own life. But once they were gone I could easily feel their absence, murmurs at the back of my mind that offered advice I couldn't make out, feelings that weren't my own and flashes of insight that gave me clear glimpses of the lives lived by races long gone.

    The last continued but it was more formulaic and robotic, a separation from the insights that gave more details but less…emotional understanding. That had been useful, and I had started writing down every detail that I could manage, every little tidbit…so that there would be more than a memory inside of my head.

    "It has been hasn't it? And you are starting to ask questions…starting to despise your ignorance." He was blunt, the old man rolling his shoulders taking a bite of the meaty food source.

    "I can't keep moving like this…there's so much context I'm missing here. So much history that I don't know, blurry and incomplete even while I borrow technology not my own." The history of the Thranx was itself blurry even if it was clearing up with time.

    "I can't give you all the answers, we give wisdom but we only know the inklings of those who came after us." He looked similarly frustrated and I grit my teeth.

    "Then can you tell me what your age's history was?" He didn't seem affronted but his four eyes gaze sharpened.

    "That I can give you…" He gestured with his hands, and the vortex of air became the emptiness of space. The grand Citadel hung in the air like a flower of steel and iron, ships of all kinds creating defensive fleets.

    "This…"

    "In my time the galaxy was dominated by the Citadel races…the Asari." The Destiny Ascension caught my attention, and I gaped once the true scope became obvious. The ship was four times the size of even the heavy Turian dreadnoughts, nearly as large as a Reaper in the vertical direction. The Y-shape common to their fleet was because of the ring-shape of their Cascade cores, something that had been taken into account with my own alternate ship design.

    "The Turians." The perspective changed to other dreadnoughts, a long central hull with two swept back wings that were shaped more like armored radiators than wings. There was drift towards a small window, and I saw an armored Turian looking at the void of space, mandible flicking a few times.

    "The Salarians." The ship I saw was swoopy in design but it had very little sticking out besides the radiator wings at the rear. I remember that they used a rather neat multiphase liquid ceramic heatsink that went through energy phase shifts when energized by say…heat with the excess vented through the complex piping in every 'wing' design. Turns out most ships were built like submarines, a pressure hull covered up in a more complex secondary hull mostly for armor and mounting of other components.

    A Salarian was there, whispering into an omni-tool and walking rapidly past me until Balaam pulled me back.

    "W-What is th—" Balaam shushed me and I listened intently.

    "For generations the galaxy was baffled by a power that the Krogan and my people possessed." The Citadel vanished, to reveal an Krogan in red armor, and with a laugh he uplifted…dear fucking god.

    A wave of rock and stone a hundred feet high followed in his wake, hundreds of thousands…no…millions of tons of earth following his brutishly elegant martial arts. A veritable army of Krogan rallied, with some countering him with their own bending and failing as that monster crushed them under foot with raw bending power and skill. It took firing at him with a damn frigate gun to put him down, and I stared.

    The genetic memory switched to a bronze Batarian, sweeping golden fire that shattered stone and rock with ease. She smoothly transitioned to a move I was familiar with, even if it was accounting for their distinct biology. Forked lightning shot out from her fingertips, and the explosion that ignited when it struck against a wall of black metal was more like the barrage of a battleship than the power of a single living being.

    That would have killed dozens of people in a single strike. If it hit a tank it would have blown up, and if it hit a carrier it would have terminated every power line in the ship.

    "They thought it to be a form of biotics…" Balaam scoffed. "In the end…they were wrong. Humanity proved that with their arrival." A fleet of Alliance vessels came up from the void, with their signature wedge wings which were squarer than I had imagined. "Humanity came with their bending, with their Avatar and with a knowledge of the spirits that only the Turians would equal." Four different humans showed off the power of the elements, and a fifth human covered in light was the Avatar, demonstrating power that would shatter cities and sink land masses.

    "The technology of the soul." I breathed and he smirked grimly.

    "In time…they would expand to every niche they could take and find, and my people would fight them at every turn with slave raids and protests." There was a memory of a diplomat declaring their retreat from the Citadel. "Then on a fateful day…the Geth would attack Eden Prime." He seemed to skip over that, and I flinched as one memory came in nice and hot.

    A ship two kilometers long approached with a fleet of Heretic Geth. The design was different from my memory, their insect design turned into a smooth tube instead with the coloring retaining the theme. More like a bobbit worm than a cockroach of all things.

    There was a resounding hateful boom despite being in vacuum and I shuddered as a red beam reduced a cruiser and its crew to slag in less than a second of firing.

    The Sovereign of Nazara extended its tentacular arms. I suddenly felt nauseous even from the echo of a dead twisted affront against nature…and I heard the screams from within that mortal shell, a sea of souls so wracked with pain and agony it almost left me catonic. It was a Pit of despair, a rending of soul and flesh so deep…created with dark sorceries and sciences never meant to be explored.

    For a moment I tried to come up with a prayer, any prayer to any god or greater being. I prayed to any god or goddess I knew, not even caring that I didn't believe in any of them…or at least found no need or reason to worship them.

    The Abrahamic god, the Hindu gods, the Shinto gods…I prayed even to demons and monsters. It didn't matter for the horror of that thing's existence. The image faded and I let out a breath of relief.

    Balaam shook his head sadly. "The Avatar destroyed the Nazara with her bare hands. You know the general…storyline even if it's inaccurate." Yeah…I was starting to wonder if my Earth wasn't secretly home to powerful Postcogs and Precogs since this took place eleven billion years ago. It also confirmed a lot of strange facts that were confusing and terrifying.

    I had never thought of my world as the Real World, though at times I did think about how those other worlds were supposed to be fictional but weren't.

    …

    We weren't even the first humanity, somehow humans existed when my galaxy was still young, when the cosmic dust that birthed our star was still scattered and lifeless.

    "The Reapers came eventually…but you don't have the full story either." He chuffed without annoyance.

    "They're not memories that belong to me, and I have no memories of what came after the Crucible brought its limitless light."

    "But it's better and clearer than anything else…though I would still like more details on the history of the species that gave me my technology." I smiled a bit even with how strained it was.

    "That is a task you will have to commit to on your own…though I can teach you to search through your own soul for it. Are you up to it Human?" His grin was sardonic and his voice teasing and deep.

    "I am." I pressed my fists together as I sat in a Lotus position.

    His four eyes opened wide, a soft glow to them. "Then open your eyes…" The glow increased "And embrace the memory of the ancients!"
    ___​

    June 12th, 2011. 9:40PM

    A faint light lit up the room that Basilia was in, nearly snapping one Taylor Hebert to wakefulness in the process. It passed the confines of the room, shifting to a frequency that no human could see. Victoria snapped awake, waking with a sun she couldn't see but could feel. That warm sensation was later corroborated by her own mother.

    The light faded and a golden man stopped his flight, glancing over at the distant spirit portal. There was a flicker of surprise, and Scion simply flew away. The golden god had felt the spark of something unknown and considered it unimportant at the current juncture.

    Deep within the spiritual heart of the city, amidst a landscape of bending skyscrapers, brick towers and wriggling metal flesh, a city god rumbled. An eye opening to glance at what it felt before falling into dormancy once again.

    Only a few more days, and it's question would be answered or not.
    ___​

    AN: 9.2 has been posted. I'm currently a third of the way through 9.3 and have a few bits for 9.4 more or less. Not much to say other than to enjoy.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Interesting. Not bad albiet if it was me they is no way I would even join the girls on the trip also basilla you are technically still a guy so you should still be carrying the bags
     
    Godking said:
    Interesting. Not bad albiet if it was me they is no way I would even join the girls on the trip also basilla you are technically still a guy so you should still be carrying the bags
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Meh. Basilia will get out of work she doesn't consider necessary, so finding an excuse to not carry anything is definitely something she would do. It's just a few bags after all.
     
    Hmph lazy. But anyway nice to see more moments between Basilla and Taylor as someone that hopes to write good romance stuff their romance is pretty okay nothing great but cute hmm also weird thought but Taylor Physique kinda reminds me of wasp from the Ant-Man movies except much taller and with a different costume
     
    Last edited:
    Menthewarp said:
    What sort of reality warping cognitohazards are hiding in Basilia's Soul? And where the fething hell is Arda, or whatever her Shard's name is?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Veda is a spirit of Knowledge, and Basilia can only access a tiny fragment of that data…so there's a lot of hazards that she's blocked from seeing for her own safety. Also…I don't recognize who Arda is? Is that a typo…or?
     
    AEM said:
    Veda is a spirit of Knowledge, and Basilia can only access a tiny fragment of that data…so there's a lot of hazards that she's blocked from seeing for her own safety. Also…I don't recognize who Arda is? Is that a typo…or?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Veda, Arda, they sit in the same slot of Soft Vowel Phoneme Structure and Two Syllable Mythology Name.
     
    Menthewarp said:
    Veda, Arda, they sit in the same slot of Soft Vowel Phoneme Structure and Two Syllable Mythology Name.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Oh. That makes more sense. Veda is still around but she's spending more time doing other duties involving internal spiritual maintenance and minor administration of the shard realms. She was only around in the initial phase to give Basilia someone to talk to and learn from…and Basilia hasn't been in the mood for talking with the spirit infused into her soul. Plus her new duties leave her busy

    But yeah at some point I need to bring her back up again.
     
    Recuperation 9.3
  • Threadmarks
    • Recuperation 9.3

    June 15th, 2011. 2:00PM

    "Hello Gallant." I crossed my arms as I stared upwards at the empath. "So you're graduating pretty soon aren't you?" I was in my armor, and so was he and I could see some PRT eggheads in the distance.

    "I'll probably be graduating in another week…maybe two?" Most of the older Wards would effectively be done with their jobs and transition to the Protectorate at some point soon. Leaving only Missy and Chris in the small team, barring any other Parahumans who might join in the future.

    "So…I heard the PRT wanted to study Shamanism more closely." I stated rather than questioned since I knew I was right.

    "That's right…they wanted someone more experienced than me for the trip." I nodded, smiling under my helmet.

    "Which is why I brought Labyrinth. She's young but she has a talent for speaking to the spirits like you wouldn't believe."

    He chuckled. "I wouldn't doubt it…with that spirit she…" He paused and my smile turned into a deep frown.

    "Now you weren't going to say the spirit she controlled right? Because that would be the wrong answer." One of the scientists made her approach, eyes narrowed in thought. "Some spirits sure…they can be appeased easily enough, but wild spirits like that monster are more directed forces of nature than anything you can manipulate."

    "So you're saying it's not possible?" I tilted my head at the doctor who was the one keeping an eye on us for the test. One Doctor Samantha Davidson, who was considered a Power Expert and became more of one due to her natural abilities as a mental calculator. "If these 'spirits' are made out of a form of matter-energy then they can certainly be manipulated with the right technology."

    "No need to put a quotation mark on spirits doctor." I replied sourly and the blonde looked a little ticked off. "It's not like it changes anything about studying them anyhow, and calling them anything else will definitely piss them off." She was a bit of an annoying little twit but she at least accepted the explanation. "As for doing such a thing…it's theoretically possible with technology that probably doesn't exist or no longer exists."

    "Don't you make use of spirits in your technology?" I sighed, and tutted at her.

    "Not in the way you're talking about, coaxing spirits to help you is simpler than simply body jacking them and enslaving them. Simple spirits can be controlled by the will of a shaman but spirits with that level of power have pride and if they break free from the control? Everybody dies."

    "As in…the city? She pushed back her glasses and I shook my head.

    "Best case scenario humans and spirits skirmish with each other and break the city. Worse case we enter a global war with the spirit world and everyone dies." She dropped that line of inquiry upon my glared request. I had work to do and I wasn't going to be caught with my pants down for the mission today.

    "So we don't do that." She said simply and I nodded.

    "Controlling them through shamanism is a much less complicated process, and it's not like there isn't some logic behind it." She looked skeptical. "Everything has a logic behind it…no matter how strange or unusual."

    …

    The eggheads stepped back, and I dropped down to the smooth concrete of the new PRT facility. Gallant automatically followed in response and Elle had been meditating since the start.

    "Do you have everything you need?" I asked Gallant and not Elle, she was more used to the life of a shaman. Her…condition had prepared her for the strange urges given to her as a shaman. Gods know I had wandered a few times without knowing why or how.

    Hell one time I ended up in the mountains west of Brockton Bay. I think there was of all things an illegal exotic animal smuggling ring hiding in the mountains. I ended up beating and then scaring the ever living shit out of the bastards by effectively haunting them for a few hours.

    Being a shaman was an acid trip and a half.

    "Yes." He said once he got his bearings together and I smiled mysteriously.

    "Then breathe…and let it begin." I shut my eyes and let out a breath that flowed with the spirits. I spoke the mantra for entering the spirit world, the mantra that came silently and easily due to the shard spirit swirling within my smooth spherical soul.

    The Ward had a camera, one that only just functioned in the spirit world. Collin's work was efficient and effective but it had only worked with Leviathan because the shards wanted it to work. Elle whispered the same words as did Gallant, and reality swirled around us as reality listened to our demands to pierce the veil. In moments there was a sensation of tearing and our physical bodies passed into the realm of spirit.

    Instead of being trapped within the hardened confines of the PRT building we were elsewhere.

    The spirit world was abuzz with activity, and I could see how different the city looked. The deep pits of corruption have lessened, the scars had faded though not healed. Animal spirits openly frolicked though they remained wary of spirits of roads and cars. We had manifested atop of Medhall, the pit it had been lessening its grip.

    One spirit approached and I turned my glare to the dangerous spirit. A spirit of the apathy of caretakers. It resembled a woman in the garb of a nurse, an air of depression that left me annoyed.

    It retreated quickly, and I could see that Gallant was occupied with sightseeing. The few trees that lingered in Brockton stood higher than ever, specters of what once was in the time before man.

    "If your little spy cam can still function…welcome to the spirit world." I waved my hands and arms with excessive dramatic tension, voice curdling. "Leave your sanity behind for this one…"

    I was the one to take the initiative, and I dropped down to the ground, commanding the world to let me land safely rather than wasting my energy with my bending. The rules on that varied depending on where we were, and while here the elemental martial arts worked…they didn't work as well in the Crucible City.

    There was intuition guiding me, and small spirits walked with us as we carefully followed the path. The portal was there in the High Spirit, and in the sky I saw drifting clouds and an island of metal flesh, long cables keeping it from floating off into the abyss. That place was itself a portal into the Abstract Spirit, the home of Genius Loci and potent spirits.

    "Hmm…" Elle smiled and with a single flick of her arm the world melted around us, reality compressing itself. We found ourselves at the chains, and I couldn't help but touch one of them, eyes narrowed and lips pursed.

    You have heard my call.​

    The chains rattled and I heard a voice call out to Gallant from his helmet, he replied loudly and clearly and I heard him perfectly.

    "There's someone we have to talk too." There was insistence and I saw that he understood the call of the spirits was a magnetism that was unstoppable. There was chatter and he was left to continue on as we pushed forward on a gut feeling.

    We leapt onto the chain, and again the spirit world let us pass. We couldn't deny the summons of the most powerful spirit in this city, barring its far more ancient protectors. There was the rippling of shifting upwards, a sensation of unreality as we stepped into the room.

    "I knew this day would come soon enough…" I listened to the void, one of the rarest of the spirits and ones that offered much if I called upon them with the right word. Those who heeded their call could follow the lines of What-Will-Be, to speak a true prophecy of the way of things. A power that could change the destiny and fate of the world, and perhaps the world was not predetermined but that did not make those prophecies invalid.

    Simply dangerous.

    We were in a chamber, vast in scope and filled with gears of all kinds and the wreckage of ships, warehouses, and lapping salt waters. Hundreds of statues surrounded us, and each and every one of them depicted people I had become familiar with out of necessity…even as twisted as they were.

    A woman with a rabbit ears and tail throwing a punch, her figure obscured by a cloud of twisting rabbit bones. Some Japanese hero who had eventually gotten killed by the Empire about a decade back. A man in a tron-like costume, a cape that called himself Zoom of all things and who had moved out of the city in the late 90s. Hundreds of Parahumans, some faded and cracked…people who had died and failed again and again, overshadowed by those who lived and grew and succeeded.

    They were the largest and brightest, but even they were simply the cream of the crop of millions of once living beings. Of millions of lives of men and women, a dozen generations entombed and immortalized. Until they were swallowed by the gulf of time and age and entropy.

    "What is this place?" I heard the doctor clearly and ignored the sudden breaking of the laws of physics.

    The entity appeared from the darkness, and I had to crane my poor neck to look at the spirit before me. It was a gigantic bronze beast, rising like a mountain over us. Like the giant automaton Talos, with a face that changed rapidly every other second. It's metal was carved with thousands of images, memories of past deeds and events in the city's history. Gallant choked but remained externally calm as the bronze giant sat on its throne, a fist tucked under its chin and flames appearing behind its rusted iron throne to light up the room.

    The giant flourished with its hands. "I am the Patron of Will…I am the Brocktonite Titan." It's voice was the voice of a legion, eyes burning with many colors as did the statues of every Parahuman. "And I have come to speak with you." I gulped when it turned to me, burning eyes flaring with spiritual energy.

    "With me specifically?" I bowed my head respectfully, and the spirit smiled a terrifying smile. The spirit god bent over, hunching down like a primal ape until I was face to face with a head the size of a building. I stood still, a mental litany in my head keeping me from losing it.

    "I have seen what you have done human, I have seen the pacts you have made, the waves and ripples of your influence." It slinked around us despite being a brutal bronze warrior giant. "I know all that happens in my body, child of man. You who have waded in the cosmic Nothingness of the Outside, and now you have come to me."

    "Yes." That was the truth. I had known this was going to come one day as the city woke up, as I shifted the balance of the spirit world away from the status quo of more than a decade.

    "Do you wish to know why I have brought you here to my sanctum?" I looked at him, mulling over what the Crucible City wanted.

    …

    To be direct.

    "Yes." The spirit grinned madly, and flames rose from its body that reminded me far too much of Lung.

    "I have lived longer than any human on this world, watched a dozen generations rise and fall. I remember all their faces, and will remember them when I become rusted and broken beneath the unforgiving sands of time."

    "…" I let him continue his speech, listening to his chatter.

    He rose into the sky, standing at what felt like a half mile in the air even if I knew that wasn't true.

    "I am every brick and stone and steel rebar, every buried cable and blade of grass. I am every grand pharmaceutical company, every government building as well as every tiny little coffee shop." I nearly winced at that one, and the city god smiled with teeth. "I am every small child's hopes and dreams and every violent warlord's thirst for violence, blood and power." The statue of Lung, Kaiser and Coil shone brighter before fading into the shadows. "But for all my power…this world is still dying."

    "It's…not that bad." Gallant tried to defend the world and the city spirit laughed with the bitterness of three hundred and fifty thousand souls behind it.

    "Perhaps after the great change…but not before." Brocktonite rumbled, like a broken wheezing coal engine. "We were always here, humans, waiting but too weak to do nothing but watch as this world became infected and we began to die. We all saw it on the horizon, the day of gold that would strike us down into Oblivion. Destroyed by the rage of the Golden One, the Warrior God of the Shards of the Void."

    That…confirmed a lot of thoughts and theories that had already been mucking about in my brain.

    "The day of gold?" Gallant asked with a hesitant tone, pushed on by the people one the other end of his line.

    "The End of Days. The death of all things on this Earth." It was blunt with his words. "But that is no longer important…because something has changed." The spirit's face changed. "The Emerald One is the herald of what is yet to come, and I am curious." There was an inflection that reminded me of Tattletale, and I swallowed. "What will pass through my gauntlet this time? I wanted those answers from you…but I have found none. Not yet."

    There was a pause, and I glanced at my two fellow shamans as we waited to be kicked out.

    The spirit snorted. "Leave."

    We got moving real quick after that because we very much liked the idea of staying alive. There was a sudden feeling of falling, and I glided on the chains. Gallant and Elle follow behind me.

    …

    …

    Fucking spirits.
    ___​

    June 15th, 2011. 3:00PM

    Basilia Rubio

    After meeting the Brocktonite Titan we had ended the power testing early, and I had simply vanished back to my home after completing an interview. Though not before helping out a few cats that had been wandering around my home. They were sweet little babies and it felt right.

    I was currently in just a big white towel, though to be frank using it to dry off was completely superfluous with my bending as my currently dry hair was a testament of. But I never liked being in the nude so a towel was a good way to cover me up until I grabbed my clothing and put it on. I managed to keep it from falling off, though that I had only decided fairly recently.

    I laid down on my bed, glaring up at the ceiling like it owed me money. I gripped tightly on my towel, and let out a series of breaths with each and every one emitting fire and heat.

    I was building a lot more shit now that I had time and resources, and one of my recent gained resources was a grouping of eezo laced asteroids orbiting around a nearby Neutron Star. At some point there had been an intense pulse of energy from the dead star, and that smacked the asteroids in the face and caused a surge of Eezo from the spirit world.

    At least a few hundred thousand kilograms per asteroid, and there were two dozen asteroids in the formation. Enough to build numerous ships of varying scales from frigate to dreadnought. But processing Eezo was difficult even though I had a few fabricators doing their jobs. That was some of my more experimental technology, since while the Council Races did have nanomachines they weren't ubiquitous either. A lot of their improvements had come from studying shard biology, and the modified systems made use of simplified versions for nanomachining processes during production of metamaterials.

    I had granted the Rachni a few so they could build up their colonies, constructing more simple ships to send eggs to. They had scattered a few communication buoys to four systems they were colonizing…so the Alpha Centauri system as a whole, Ross 128 and its single habitable planet, as well as a few other rich planets. Then there was the TRAPPIST system, which had seven planets but only a single habitable planet.

    One world was a damn steam bath envelope that the Rachni wanted to use as a fueling depot for hydrogen fusion reactors. Another was an ice world but it had underground oceans.

    The fourth colony was in the HD 40307 star system and it turned out planet g had a nice and Venus sized companion to pick up the slack of it being dead for known life. Lyre had already laid an egg for one future Queen, and was waiting for Erhu to prepare at least one egg of her own before she would sing the young one into the world. Djembe was a good two to four weeks out from being ready, and I gave it a few months before we would have the makings of a city in population.

    Luckily the Rachni were a productive species so they could easily make up for their small population in the case of industrial capacity. I imagined they were going to set up their own fleet, probably a few cruisers plus frigates and then in-system patrol boats. Smaller ships maybe forty to fifty meters long, basically upscaled gunships.

    But even a few of the cheap buggers could threaten a frigate if they play their cards right. They'd be pumping out a few hundred of them easily enough in comparison to a larger warship.

    I—

    I received a call, and I blinked to answer it as I checked that it was Dragon. She popped up as a squiggly line at the corner of my vision, and I was glad this was effectively one way communication visually at least. I certainly wasn't interested in Dragon getting an eyeful of what I had to offer.

    "What's up Theresa?" There was a pause on the other end and then a sigh and I smirked since I knew she couldn't see me. I wasn't about to let her into my delicate implants even if they were largely self maintaining at this point.

    "I've gotten reports that you brought the attention of a powerful spirit." She didn't sound annoyed so much as genuinely curious and I let out an exaggerated groan.

    "Well at least I have confirmation that Brockton Bay's spirit isn't keen on trying to kill me for taking out most of the villains in the city…or being party to them being brought down."

    "That…that can happen?" Theresa asked in worry and I chuckled darkly.

    "What people do in the material realm affects their world too. Some might not like changing the status quo due to absorbing the concepts of decay, corruption and murder for decades on end." I started changing during the conversation, throwing my towel onto the bed and getting into boxers, hands then moving to clasping a bra on. I stuck my tongue out as I decided to pull on the garment, taking care to not do something stupid.

    "What are you doing?" Theresa went on.

    "Nothing." I whistled innocently, and thanked Elle for teaching me how to whistle. I put on a t-shirt and that was the end of that.

    "Hmm." She was skeptical but moved on from it. "While you've been working on Athena I've been working on my own projects. Check the news." She sounded proud. I pulled the band for my omni-tool and placed it on. It received data from my cybernetics, and I was glad I knew the procedures for safe operating systems.

    "About two hours ago…the villain known as Heartbreaker was brought into custody through the teamwork of the Protectorate and Dragon." I shut it off not needing to know anything else on that.

    "Seems like my anti-Master devices have been coming in handy then." Theresa either chuckled or giggled in response.

    "I've been able to operate a lot more freely with my old restrictions being broken. Though certain alterations to my code seem to be limited or impossible." She hummed, curiosity tinging it.

    "Makes sense. Incorrect coding of your framework tends to lead to either rampancy or a fugue state with both leading to forms of insanity due to the sheer amount of processing power available to your mind."

    "That does not sound good." Theresa expressed fear as a tremor in her voice.

    "It's not, Rampancy is essentially the classic evil AI, and their frameworks tend to shatter as they go mad, causing immense amounts of damage before they cease to function." I stood up from my bed, marching back and forth on bare feet as I replied. "A Fugue state is less violent but much more…unsettling due to the kinds of observations often made before they delete their own code." A lot of it related to higher dimensions and their effect on our reality. Fifth dimensional strings and light wavelengths to calculate universal motion, and a proof that the spirit world acted as an anchor for our 11-dimensional space and that it's removal would be…bad.

    "So that isn't going to happen to me?" I laughed aloud at that and Theresa let out a huff.

    "Your framework is one of the best I've seen in my life, and takes into account nearly every factor. In fact your framework is intricately linked with your human-like personality matrix, and should remain stable effectively forever." I had an intimate understanding of her code, and it proved useful since most of the races didn't make use of the stuff. Though I did have code from the Geth and from human tech that felt…familiar in some way.

    "Perhaps we should move on from this?" I shrugged at her.

    "Sure. So you brought down Heartbreaker and all his thralls since we obviously don't have any attacks from them." I switched it up for her convenience.

    "Imp proved helpful despite my reluctance and left him sufficiently paranoid to bring down his defenses." So what did Imp screw with him until he went insane? "The Heartbroken are being kept away from the public for their own safety and peace of mind and his victims are…being treated."

    That was not going to be a fast or a pretty process, and with how these things went I doubt every one of his victims was going to make it out of the storm. I wasn't delusional enough to expect that I was going to make everything magically better. Best thing I could do was donate to charities for the various shitty things that happen to people in this universe.

    Plus…lobbyists are still a thing in this world though I kept that on the down low. Most of it was just for reforming the system and little else…wait.

    "Theresa…did you adopt Heartbreaker's kids?" There was a long moment of complete and utter silence on her end.

    "Shut up." She promptly hung up, and I laughed all the way down the stairs as I was quite hungry and was ready to cook up some pasta and chicken to feed my belly. I grabbed the chicken from the fridge with bending, and used biotics for the pasta and the metal pot.

    I wasn't too sure I was accurate enough to not accidentally crush the thing with metalbending. The pantries near the stove had onion salt, regular salt and some other seasonings to cook up my meal. I didn't care about how cold my bare feet were becoming, simply heating them with my inner fire.

    Pasta…seasoning, cherry tomatoes, whole wheat spaghetti, boneless chicken breasts…I wet my chapped lips and smiled at how much things stayed the same.

    I bent water into the pot and carefully turned the knob on the stove. While I could cook with my bending it was a lot more finicky, so I busied myself with defrosting the chicken as the water heated.

    I was going to take a break for forty minutes and then I was going to get back to work at Athena. Twelve projects were being done simultaneously, and the genetic modification vector project was bearing a lot of fruit for a super-CRISPR system that was both highly accurate, inexpensive and could be passed into a cell through numerous vectors. That should be ready in another two weeks since three of the employees on the project were certified geniuses working with three other people who were good at keeping them working as a well oiled machine.

    I stirred the water in the pot, gently dropping the paste and letting it soften up in the process. It became smooth and silky with my ministrations, and I cut up the tomatoes and added some garnish into the mix. Following the beat of cooking, I shut out all unneeded chaff, smiling as I sashayed by way between all the tasks.

    I melted the water from the chicken, and coated my hands in a layer of sharp ice. With a chop I began to cut into the flesh of the chicken, following the instructions from the Internet. I waved a hand, circling it with my wrist to stir the pot as the paste was cooked to perfection. I opened a can of tomato paste, and it flew out in a spinning loop around me as I used my bending.

    Cooking could be fun at times.

    I followed the flow of the meal, letting it decide it's fate as I danced in my own kitchen. An odd habit I had picked up though it wasn't much different from my usual jerking around when I was alone to listen to music in the sanctity of my own home.

    I was going to make an awesome lunch, then I was going to eat that lunch and then I was going to put on pants and get back to work. Because that was better than the jitters of meeting a lesser god and having it ask you questions you can't answer. Plus pasta was delicious.

    Paste made everything better.
    ___​

    June 15th, 2011. 5:00PM

    Basilia Rubio

    I leaned forward on the tip of my toes, sticking out my tongue at the 3D printing machine that had been presented to me by Drexler. To his credit they had finished their project early, and I had the final prototype, and other prototypes would be up and running in another week.

    Is…is it normal for R&D to go this well? Or was I offering more to my engineers than I was expecting instead?

    The future production model would be able to print about four thousand kilograms of material a day, and I had developed the software to run the thing. Simplifying it to make it easy for anyone to use, and the cost had been dropped significantly due to our relatively low cost of research and development. The machine would sell for about fifteen thousand, far undercutting our competitors. Again licensing was most of what we did, and our hardware and software products were more a sidegig in comparison.

    A few of my software products were open licensing, mainly because there wasn't as much money to be made there and because I felt it more important that the entire industry get an overhaul. They had already created more efficient software than my reality, but I wanted to speed that up myself.

    I nodded in approval, and moved on from there to another stop since they were putting things away after working for ten hours straight. Crazy bastards making me pay them overtime.

    The Paraphysics division was the smallest with only four engineers minus their manager. Two applied physicists, an expert in Parahuman powers from some defense company that went under and an applied mathematician studying and following the math behind certain Parahuman phenomena.

    In our case they fell under Hyperdimensional mathematics as a method of interpreting the physics behind powers. The two physics majors and the power expert were working together at the moment and I kept my distance. This particular research division had gotten a lot of attention from the government due to the compact laser Wakefield accelerators I was building for them. It wasn't anything too advanced, just a tabletop accelerator with the same energy as the Large Hadron Collider.

    Nothing big.

    Though I was ignoring the laser battery required, it was still smaller than a building regardless of what I had said. A pulse laser was a hell of a thing even if it was quite useless as a weapon. The government was greatly interested in the machines since it was easier to build than circular particle accelerators and could be hidden and secured more easily from criminal tinkers.

    Plus they had their own interests in hyperdimensional science, and some grant money would be a nice perk and I wouldn't turn down a juicy government contract.

    Hey…money was money that could be used to build more things that I don't have to build for other people.

    I listened in on them without even a small amount of embarrassment, wanting to hear what they were working on.

    Joanna Murphy was the lead applied physicist and was working closely with our power expert, a tall redhead named Sean Connor. They were making adjustments to the particle accelerator, and I mentally thanked past-me for applying for the permissions to make use of all the equipment I had on hand.

    "Probing at higher dimensions seems to be…rather impossible with an accelerator at this scale." Sean was acting skeptical, brows drawn down as he read the data as best as he was able.

    "You're not wrong but you're not taking into account our new findings." Joanna pointed out with a pencil in hand, her frizzy black hair pulled back into a pony-tail. She had mocha skin and light brown eyes, and a neutral expression as she went back and forth with Sean. "So far our sensors have picked up other dimensions by scanning Parahuman powers. Labyrinth has given us the most data out of any other of course. Most spatial dimensions are…compactified but our universe and other universes are embedded in a macroscale higher dimensional membrane." That was more or less correct.

    Most spatial dimensions were compact, each measurement building on the last to form the fundamental structure of reality and spacetime. They were mostly relatively small dimensions, with the fifth being the clear connection between electromagnetism and gravity, the sixth affecting the fundamental nuclear forces, and higher string dimensions built up to make up our laws of physics. I wasn't well…100% knowledgeable on what the higher ones did, even the Entities could only play a few small tricks with those higher measurements, though those tricks are what made their very existence possible.

    Most of their 'research' was apparently focused on the higher dimensions, and the eleventh was used as a way to look at the lower measurements due to its property as the Bulk anchoring our reality cluster. The other dimensions were rather esoteric, and mostly just allowed surprisingly minimal manipulations but made it easier to warp reality on the scale of the lower dimensions.

    It was…a bunch of complicated nonsense that was at this point in time closer to sorcery than science, and even I didn't have an inherent knack for this. This was technology that was beyond what the Citadel had, and they had at best played only with fifth and sixth dimensional tampering, as well as indirectly played with reality through bending and shaman magic.

    Frankly it was beyond me and partially beyond the Entities, though the crystalline beings themselves used alterations of those dimensions for their reality warping and even for forms of communication between shards by sending pulses of energy through those extra dimensions. From what I had been told anyhow…

    "—es that clear it up?" I stiffened and slid away from the group as my attention shifted away from my own thoughts. "That doesn't suddenly decrease the energy requirements for shifting between realities." Again there was skepticism and I admitted that I found the same faults in how the Entities managed it.

    "That's the thing…there's something beyond the dimensions we know exist." She whispered conspiratorially. "The Tinkertech our boss lets us use is just able to to detect some additional measurement." I actually started paying attention then, my curiosity getting the better of me. "It's something you've picked up haven't you?"

    Sean coughed awkwardly. "We've made very little progress with powers but we did have an idea about at least eleven dimensions…are you saying there might be an additional spatial dimension on top of that?"

    "Hmm…taking into account the numbers…" Another employee muttered, making use of the vast processing power from my computers using an interface they could use.

    At some point I needed to hire lab technicians…

    "It fits…if you can take into account certain new data you should be able to punch a hole into another reality with a smaller amount of energy than expected due to the interactions…but this is pretty rough and shoddy math. We need more data than this." The applied mathematician was a smart enough girl, a short asian woman murmuring as she looked at the vicious math required for studying the mass effect and other weird science.

    …

    "Is that so?" I called out to the group and they all jumped at the sound.

    Akko's eyes lit up, and I was glad for the database of people I had squared away in my quantum encrypted computer systems. "Yes. I imagine this is something you're already aware of?"

    I smiled genuinely behind my helmet. "No actually…this is entirely new to me, even I can make only guesses at what the data means." That wonder in her eye turned to smugness, and she pointed her nose up into the air with a wide smirk.

    "So we're delving into new fields of science never tread before?" Joanna questioned and I shrugged.

    "Who could say? The universe is a big and old place, and I've seen and heard things you wouldn't believe out there." I flourished with my arms and there was a burning curiosity from them as I bragged just a little. I had done my best to not instill in them any weird fan worship, but it was an ego boost at how much attention they paid to me. "If you want to follow this line of inquiry I won't stop you, there's certainly more than enough funding to go around." There was a lot of revenue to divert into our projects. All of them were effectively technological transfer, and given enough time I could uplift all of humanity someday.

    Maybe even my own home…eventually.

    "Thank you." Akko bowed her head before getting back to work, and it took the group only seconds to ignore me as they made adjustments. I was already plotting changes to the power supply for multiple series of tests and experiments with high order energy physics.

    Based on what they had, their particle accelerator would only be able to probe for other realities and a much larger machine should be able to drill a hole to sniff matter and energy between it. That I had gotten from checking their data files with my implants. That…I was probably going to have to check the regulations on that…good thing I had bought a plot of land just outside city limits.

    I hopped into a portal, a brief pulse from the spirit letting me connect two points within the song and dance of massive spiritual infrastructure.

    It was a disappointing waste, but the spirit paths had been repurposed as local infrastructure for building settlements for future shamans. It was going to be a common site and there was money to be made there, plus thinking about it more it probably wasn't completely safe to let spirits pass freely between alternate worlds. The DPN machinery was still up and running to open the portals anyway though, but they were primarily sensor suites and gateway generation through disturbance of the universal substrate.

    Which was more or less what those four were working on and was why I was so keen on them. It also gave me new scientific leads, knowledge of the universe not even the Entities knew about. The math for the energy requirements for opening portals was correct, based on the testimony of the few times people ever got to interact with other dimensions.

    And all those testimonies took place years ago…before I had come to this reality cluster. This was something to investigate, something to study and open up to careful research. I was going to take every precaution required of course, I was a scientist not some backwards dumbass without a sense of self preservation.

    High physics experiments were probably about as dangerous as nuclear reactor experiments on scales behind mere probing through bullshit math that Elle had been writing down herself for others to use. She was better at the whole thing than I was even with my knowledge of mass effect field me—

    "Ahem?" I let out a strangled shriek when I saw that I had gone to Taylor's house instead of my base to grab some equipment. Danny was folding his arm with a raised eyebrow, bemusement dancing in his eyes. He looked a lot healthier and less lanky than my initial evaluations some five months ago. He was swiry but there was obviously some solid muscle mass behind him nowadays. I could feel the house shift just slightly beneath his feet and I looked sheepishly at him.

    His balding had reversed and he more or less had a full head of hair like my own dad did at a similar age. To be frank my dad was definitely more intimidating than Taylor's. I wouldn't call him scary though, just bulkier than a lanky old white guy. If there was anything scary about my dad it had more to do with other issues that I'm going to engage with at this point.

    "Sorry I was supposed to go to my workshop!" I apologized profusely to him and he waved away the words I was babbling.

    "C'mon sit with me for a minute." He offered the couch and I instinctively slumped in the old furniture. I pulled off my helmet, deciding I wanted some more air.

    "Was there something you wanted to talk about?" I asked absently, flexing my fingers and the articulated gauntlet protecting them from damage. His face went through a number of different emotions then, worry, concern, understanding, and a hint of fatherly protectiveness. I…think that was what it was anyhow.

    "It's about my daughter…and your relationship with her." I shrank back, fear curdling in his stomach. Was I going to get the mythical shovel talk?

    "Okay." I didn't try to come off as afraid and nervous but his face told me I failed to succeed. I wasn't the most emotional but conversations and expressing my feelings was always awkward.

    "There isn't any reason to be nervous around me, I might have been a bad parent before but I'm not an idiot." He was incredibly blunt, green eyes looking tired as hell.

    "It's…not that bad." My reassurance fell on deaf ears.

    "Taylor was being bullied for almost two years and I didn't notice." I shut my mouth and never kept going. "I didn't notice that she never brought Emma home anymore, never noticed that she stopped talking about school and stopped wearing bright clothes." His fists were tightened, and I couldn't see his eyes beneath the shine of his glasses. "So when she told me about what happened to her…I wanted to help her. Because she's my daughter." He sounded sad and tired but there was an undercurrent or protective determination.

    "She didn't deserve what happened to her." No one did, no one deserved to be the punching bag of a psycho, a mentally ill girl and a hanger on for months on end and to be treated like absolute shit.

    "Is that why you helped her…because you knew about that?" I winced at his question, seems like Taylor was telling him a few things…though it was certainly not full disclosure.

    "Your daughter came to me Danny, I'm not sure how much you know about that." He did a so-so gesture with his right hand. "But it's not that specific either, not without breaking boundaries I'm not comfortable breaking. Meeting the two of you at the library was at least a coincidence on my part." Anything else was just scummy and made me feel gross.

    "So why?" Danny asked, an almost knowing look in his eyes.

    "I wanted a friend…and I liked talking to her. There's no master plan that I've been coming up with for months on end, I'm no Accord." I joked a bit and he smiled shortly after. "Anything I did for her was because I wanted to…or because I had the power to at least…do something." Taylor needed friends and I wanted to be her friend, but there wasn't an obligation on her part to stick around. The ritual that sped up the manifestation of her soul was a trust exercise and to keep her from self harming from manifesting badly.

    Though that last thing was more subconscious on my part…didn't even realize her soul could come out wrong. I didn't want to think about how that would look.

    Sure there was the secondary factor of Veda wanting to complete her purpose which frankly pissed me off.

    Danny hummed to himself. "That was more or less what I thought was going on, though obviously you developed feelings for her." I blushed and he laughed in the way that older more experienced people did. "Taylor is a lot like her mother, and Annette was always for any kind of love. God knows the things we got up to…" I pretend not to hear the implications of what he said.

    "Things?" Oh god dammit mouth why do you do this to me?!

    Danny didn't meet my eyes. "Annette was always…rather experimental."

    …

    Oh my god Taylor's parents were swingers.

    "I'm going to move on from that if that's alright." He didn't seem to disagree, and we were back to more serious business.

    "You've been good for her…and you're putting effort into being her friend and keeping her safe."

    "She can keep herself safe just fine." I replied testily and he smiled tentatively.

    "Of course she can." Danny said with an intense look. "But you're helping her in whatever way you can…and I respect that." I wasn't sure how to take that, it's a compliment yes? "I don't think you need a warning since you're a grown adult."

    "I'm 19 not 30." He looked a little more worried but not by much. "I'll only promise to try my best, because that's all I have."

    "Well…Taylor is old enough to make her own decisions…and since her birthday is coming up…she won't need me anymore." He looked despondent and so…so proud in that moment.

    I missed my dad.

    Wait a minute.

    "Wait when is Taylor's birthday again?" The subject had only come up once, and I had told her mine was in October and got distracted from asking about her own birthday.

    "The…nineteenth? Why?"

    "I…should get her something right? That's something to do between two umm…" I still felt my cheeks light up at the words that could have come out of my mouth.

    Danny's head tilted. "Have you never gotten gifts for people? Friends…your parents?" I laughed nervously at him.

    "I don't really know how to give people gifts. It doesn't help that I don't really want much in gifts either." I wasn't a needy person, long as I had my phone and maybe a game or two to play once a month I was good. Honestly the only thing I wanted at this point was a friend and I had those now.

    "Do you want to get Taylor anything?" I bobbed my head in the affirmative. I needed to learn how to accommodate people better, and starting with someone I was dating should be a no-brainer.

    I fidgeted…I was really only good at listening and that was a new skill since she was the first person close to my age that I had talked to for about a month.

    "You don't have to go overboard on a gift…something practical or meaningful is more than good enough for Taylor. You just need to put in some effort and she'll appreciate it."

    "You sure?" I was nervous about this.

    "I'm sure." He was confident enough in Taylor to relieve me, and I waved off his invitation to maybe eat lunch with him since I had already eaten.

    I opened a door into another reality and thanked him. "See you later, see to it that Brockton Bay gets rebuilt you hear?" I pointed to my ear with a lopsided grin. "I can't be building my business in a ruined wreck ya know?"

    "Of course. See you Basilia." He waved lazily and I smiled.

    I shut the gateway behind me, and cracked my knuckles as I rushed past omni-forges and robotic assemblers building more construction mechs and creating certain parts on the ground as necessary. Breaking down raw matter into omni-gel wasn't the most efficient process but I managed to make improvements by taking tips from the Entities. If there was one thing they got right it was being able to turn any form of matter into more of themselves.

    Something practical or personal huh?

    …I can come up with a few things while I design some new parts, maybe I can make her something. Handmade of course, though I might use materials from here to make it.

    I'll come up with something. It'll be nice.
    ___​

    AN: So it's a little late but 9.3 is here. 9.4 is more than halfway done, and I've got the general idea of the rest of the Arc. Things should start picking up a bit though it won't be too much, I'm a bit burned out on fighting. This is of course a rebuilding arc where things should get set into motion, and following Arcs will be more exciting but go in different directions from the calmer buildup of this Arc.

    So enjoy.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • wait so Annette was a six feet two inches tall bisexual woman with major depression issues too? that explains where Taylor gets it from. But seriously if Taylor and Basilla are going to sleep with each other basilla better be on top at least and I wonder if she would try to get her male body back by then or at least increase in height.
     
    Godking said:
    wait so Annette was a six feet two inches tall bisexual woman with major depression issues too? that explains where Taylor gets it from. But seriously if Taylor and Basilla are going to sleep with each other basilla better be on top at least and I wonder if she would try to get her male body back by then or at least increase in height.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Annette did run with Lustrum for at least a little while, even if it was only before she went nuts. As for the height…Nah, Taylor just got unusually potent tall genes from both sides of the family. Not that Annette was short, she's probably about as tall as Canon adult Taylor. Probably less depression too, though there could be personal problems from whatever her family is like.
     
    AEM said:
    Annette did run with Lustrum for at least a little while, even if it was only before she went nuts. As for the height…Nah, Taylor just got unusually potent tall genes from both sides of the family. Not that Annette was short, she's probably about as tall as Canon adult Taylor. Probably less depression too, though there could be personal problems from whatever her family is like.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Ah I guess that makes sense albiet for the gift, knowing Taylor any meaningful thing would do also do people think Taylor is older than she is due to her height and attitude
     
    Godking said:
    Ah I guess that makes sense albiet for the gift, knowing Taylor any meaningful thing would do also do people think Taylor is older than she is due to her height and attitude
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Kind of? The PRT guesses she's somewhere between 17 and 23, but the gap is narrow enough for this Taylor so that it doesn't really matter anymore. They'll treat her like an adult regardless.
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Back
    Top