What is your take on Wildbows grimderp Tinker 15?
Victories of the Soul [Worm/Avatar/ME/Multicrossover] [SI]
- Thread starter AEM
- Start date
- Crossover Mature Sci-Fi
- Location
- Chula Vista
Well he definitely still exists because despite the sheer horror of his existence is not much outside the realm of possibility of what spirits can do to people on their own. Spirits can take their own Hosts, making deals with shaman to protect themselves. But that's with shaman, people who are born(or made) with the ability to interface with spirits.
Non-shamans will tend to get far, far more damaged by spirit possession, with a sliding scale of damage from Bitch to Ash Beast on a mental or physical plane. Plus…Reapers are actually far…far worse than the Entities, they're just incredibly and thankfully dead here.
So yeah he's around, and Queen may or not be trying to broadcast a cease and desist towards his partially manifested shard. Of course some shards are still…well shards, and the only reasons things aren't way worse is because Veda is still screwing with the Firmament.
Basically two steps forwards and one step backwards on denying the Entities old ways.
Cool.
Now I ask you to recall how Contessa's home planet got contaminated so heavily by Eden's messy crash landing that most people and creatures were mutated by accidentally consuming impromptu Shard Vials or directly poisoned by Shard-stuff in the environment.
What did that massive pollution of Shard-stuff do to the Spiritual Realm of that Earth? How does that mess look like from the Firmament?
- Location
- Chula Vista
It's probably badly damaged on a local scale around the polluted areas due to the injection of foreign elements to the environment. Probably a lot more dangerous and actively malicious spirit entities, a few cracked or broken shards in the Firmament connected to far more organisms than they should be able to support, as well as physical fusion with Hosts. So perhaps a fair number of Extortus spirits, which is basically Turian for insane spirits. Spirits consume concepts to grow and become more…but if they eat concepts too different from themselves, they become insane and broken. So something like say a car-spirit getting eaten by a dog-spirit. They're violent, dangerous and unstable and often forcefully take Hosts to protect themselves.
So...basically about the same as before, though there might be a few shard-hosts who managed to regain or retain their sanity pushing back on that. Plus new shamans too…so there's a chance things can get better at the least.
I have decided it is worthwhile to be worried about some mad Spirit deciding that Eden's brain-dead Avatar body is a fine vessel for posession; after all, The Spirit Realm was not awake at the time of the crash, but thirty-odd years later it now is, and no one's home to contest the posession.
Or perhaps worse, a native Shaman is unknowingly led down the path to Awaken Eden, in some misguided attempt to "restore" their world.
Or perhaps worse, a native Shaman is unknowingly led down the path to Awaken Eden, in some misguided attempt to "restore" their world.
- Location
- Chula Vista
Well there's a lot of potential ways for the world to end, though at least a fair number of Eden shards have been…subsumed by Queen's network, like her broken counterpart as well as certain shards connected to Cauldron capes. So…no Administrator, no High Priest, no PtV, no Stilling power, and a lot of vital dimensional transference powers are gone. It does make for a rather busy schedule for Contessa though.
- Location
- Chula Vista
Is…is that meant to be a compliment? I can't really tell the tone of this message through the text.
- Location
- Chula Vista
Vista's power hasn't really changed that much besides her being fast enough to deflect bullets by expanding space, though her biotics are another story since she's good at Gravity Control and Dimensional Control. So…mini black holes, pulses of gravity, lightening of gravity, biotic charges, mass effect shunts and Stasis.
Clockblocker's power hasn't changed but mostly due to the danger of it. He freezes objects in relation to the Earth so his Clockblocked object's don't go veering off into space. Any big change in his power could easily kill him or people around him.
So no change there at least.
Just found this story last night and spent most of the day reading it.
This story has been a blast to read, so thank you for writing it. I really like how you took the standard setup and did something completely different with it, sending canon completely off the rails.
Keep up the great work!
This story has been a blast to read, so thank you for writing it. I really like how you took the standard setup and did something completely different with it, sending canon completely off the rails.
Keep up the great work!
- Location
- Chula Vista
Ahh thanks. It does seem to be a common setup to have a ROB throwing someone into another universe. It's a rather tired trope, and I preferred to make use of it as part of a greater background as well as killing Canon. I had no reason to stick with the same gang wars, the same exact conflicts, though Leviathan wasn't too different though his reason for attacking was. Now that we're past that phase I can have things opening up beyond the small world of Brockton Bay.
Recuperation 9.6
- Location
- Chula Vista
Recuperation 9.6
June 24th, 2011. 3:00PM
Dinah Alcott
I was getting a much better handle of my power as it evolved and mutated, and it was being rather helpful for outside dodgeball. I reached for the timelines, those rivers and streams of possible futures.
I flicked my head to the right, and the ball smoothly continued its arc as it followed the prediction I had made and followed. My left hand lunged and I grabbed the red rubber ball that had nearly crashed into my face.
I lifted an eyebrow at the tall boy who had thrown it and he dropped his hands in frustration, flames were blown from the movements and he let out a startled yelp before calming down and killing the fire with an arm sweep.
"You're really good at dodgeball Dinah." I grinned smugly at Missy who was on my makeshift team and was almost as good as I was. Her blonde hair was messy from playing the game, and I shrugged.
"I've been playing a lot of sports over the last few months and learning self defense." Which was true but I was playing with ten foot tall bug monsters and a much scarier older teenager with black curly hair.
I had been thrown through at least four walls before, though that was more of a freak accident that I had let happen because I knew I wasn't going to die from it. I was a lot tougher than I used to be, and I had learned how to manipulate my own chi like Elle and Taylor had been teaching me.
It was all about bending the energy within ourselves, and elemental bending was just learning how to project your energy out into a physical form. Most people did it subconsciously was what Elle had told me, giving their body a vitality and longevity that most used to lack. There were at least a few people who would be alive a hundred fifty years from now, who wouldn't be any weaker even as they got older and wiser.
"Are…are you sure that's all you've been up to?" Missy asked unabated and I smirked.
"Well one of my teachers really likes scaring me with bugs and the other is way too good at making contraptions for obstacle courses so…" I shrugged and Missy blanched at my insinuation. "I might be holding back a detail or three."
"Seriously?" My smile continued to widen and I leaned in to whisper in her ear.
"I can see the future." She recoiled, looking at me like I was a madwoman. And maybe I was a little crazy, had to be after witnessing a million possible timelines and all the terrible and not terrible things happening in them.
I could walk those possible timelines now, even if only for thirty minutes into the future. But it was much better than the terrible headaches I had been getting for the trouble of predicting the end of the world.
The chances had dropped but not by much, but my power couldn't account for every factor, only most of them on a planetary scale across multiple dimensions. Asking questions solidified the timelines, I could parse through them without the hallucinations of possible actions to commit to. Narrow them down as she used her power to look deep into the path of fate.
I kept my ball and threw it between my hands, and spun on my heels, adding momentum to my throw. The red ball flew like a bullet, and brought down a girl on the opposing team with a single strike.
One path opened up before me, and I saw a ball coming in from the left and then the right in rapid succession. A hundred thousand likely futures compressed into a composite image. I returned to reality and managed to copy the movements, and grabbed both balls in midair. There was a whistle from the referee that I had made my cousin Rory into and I smirked.
I had outed half the opposing team of kids in the new park in only a few minutes of playing, and it only cost me a small headache from a superpower granting brain tumor pulsing against my skull.
"You're cheating." Missy looked disappointed and I rolled my eyes.
"You think I would be able to do any of this if I wasn't strong enough." I flexed my arm, revealing the dense muscles I had gained. "I could probably beat up a horse with my bare hands." I opened and closed my hands to demonstrate, muscles tensing like iron.
"That's not an exaggeration." A statement rather than a question. Missy had to understand better than anyone on how much had changed in the past few months. One in four of our classmates had bending of some kind, and even the ones without any special powers were stronger and tougher and faster than they should be. It was why I didn't get called out for any weird things, I was better than everyone else but only to the point of being a good athlete instead of seeing the literal future.
"No it's not." I was having a lot of fun messing with Missy, since she had more or less been placed as a liaison for the younger members of the White Lotus. We were having a lot of inquiries from Rogues who wanted to join up with us.
Which was why I had checked what the chances of the government trying to break us up were.
44.2988767% chance that the US government attempts to restrain Athena to the point of destroying it as a functional entity in the next three months. The more time that passes the more that the chances drop instead.
I felt my skin crawl, and my attention was caught as a flash of the future came to me as I asked the question. Odds of being attacked within the next seven minutes?
It was nearly at a hundred percent, and I followed the path and saw the person that was going to attack. He was tall and lanky, and I saw that flames rippled around him, his eyes like burning coals. I pushed the people I could out of his path of destruction, skin breaking at the seams as a spirit screamed inside of him.
He lashed out and I was knocked out of the vision, and I quickly realized what I had to do. I silently called for help, and I twisted on my heels and kicked up enough dirt to get the people on my team jumping away from me.
The spirit flames missed me by inches, and the possessed man let out a wild screech that almost burst my eardrums. The flames were wild and mad and unnatural, they were powers that didn't belong to him, and I knew this was a job for shamans.
"What the hell?!" Missy shouted and nearly got her head cut off when a solid flame sword missed her hair by inches, searing it in parts. Everyone took multiple steps back or literally jumped out of the way as the possessed man let out an ominous groan as more flames blew out from his rippling skin.
"He's being ridden by a spirit!" I hissed and her eyes widened as she spun out of the way of a conflagration big enough to swallow us whole. I saw the future in another flash and I was surprised at who was going to show up.
"Hah!" Someone about my age panicked and lifted a block of earth, crashing into the spirit ridden like a bomb. But instead of dying the lanky fire man took the hit, and I leaned away blue-white rippling flames.
The man set the grass on fire, laughing madly, tears blinking from his eyes before he took a heavy boot to the face. Reality lensed around the person helping us, and I saw firmly the print of PRT on her flowing uniform. It was like someone had turned their heavy duty armor into a robe, and the visor itself was transparent from my vantage point.
Dark curly hair cut short, a button nose, olive skin and grey eyes was all I saw as she stepped between us. The Host let out a shriek, and a firestorm as wide as a freeway rocketed towards her, but she simply opened her mouth and spoke.
A nearby pond exploded, and my view was of a twisting wall of water as I was pulled back by Vista. A few of the people on the two dodgeball teams were staring, their eyes unfocused and their breathing heavy. Rory was already in a combat stance and I knew why.
The wall of water crushed the weeping flames, and the man let out a pained moan before taking a chop to the throat that left him reeling.
"You don't belong here." The PRT agent's eyes were foggy, and she lifted the man by his throat. She let out a prayer that smashed into reality like a hammer and made my head hurt.
The man flew backwards, pinned the ground by chains of ice and water, his skin rippling to expose the spark of fire holding onto his body.
You have no power over me shaman, he is mine!
I stumbled back at the hissing and popping crackles of the spirit.
"He is not yours, he does not belong to you. What did you agree to give him in exchange?" The shaman asked.
Freedom to crush evil and to protect good! The spirit spat with anger and hate and rage, and I felt a whimper in my throat.
"And what have you given him in turn? How have you paid back your host?" There was steel in the woman's tone.
I crushed the foes who threatened him, and now everything must burn.
I could feel the snarl that the shaman gave. "You made a pact with a shaman and broke your word. That crime will not be denied."
There are no rules! I have always been free from your kind! I am greater than you!
"That time is over, and you have broken the rules. Here there is a price to pay for your insolence and deceit." She approached casually and the detained one tried to break free from his restraints and failed. One of the parents was staring at the scene, her attention just as focused as anyone else.
Never! He is mine for all time!
The PRT agent reached for his face, a thumb pressed against his forehead while a palm while a palm pressed against his stomach.
"This is the price paid for your lies spirit." She breathed outwards, and I felt the flow of chi running into the Host. I could hear a scream, and something was pulled out of the shaman and held between the fingers of the shaman. The man waved as he was freed, eyes fluttering open and unshed tears flowing in response. I couldn't hear his blubbering response, and with a snap of the mysterious woman's fingers the spirit was torn apart and reduced to motes of flickering energy.
"That…this is…" The housewife had a look of understanding and revelation, and Missy was pulling me away from the scene as more PRT officers made it onto the scene. I looked at my hand, glad that no one could see the holographic display on my arm that spat out a text message.
Do you still need help?
…
I typed the answer, and wondered how the PRT would deal with the problem that was the spirit world.
Emily Piggot
"What can you tell me about this new case Lieutenant Caras?" I leaned back in my chair, taking in a breath of fresh air and feeling relaxed with my feet on the ground.
Caras was the most experienced shaman inside my PRT department, and was the sixth squad in the city after the recent considerable increase in our budget. The PRT ENE had gotten the boost due to the death of Leviathan, and we were gaining a significant boost to our research budget due to the event that allowed Leviathan to be defeated. We had eight shamans, all of them picked out from other squads both in and out of the city as well as new recruits.
"Avery Branson. Age 22 from Salem, Massachusetts." I brought up the young man's file, which was completely free from any criminal record.
"How did he go from a typical college student to…this?" There was footage of mad laughter, flames licking around the thin man as he burned down a building.
"An encounter with the Crowleys from what we've gotten out of him. The elder attempted to murder him and was killed in the process by him. In his desperation to live, he opened the doors to a spirit of arson and fire."
"So this would be filed under the equivalent of a Trigger Event and Mastering." This business of shamanism was beyond complicated, because they didn't fall under the normal behaviors of capes.
Anyone could be a shaman or a bender, a common housewife, a 4 year old child, an elderly man twice my age. It was a matter of chance, personality and genetics, a roll of the cosmic dice. While that should serve as a negative, it also meant that the people who gained such powers were more stable…less traumatized than the average cape.
And it meant that the regulations that fit Parahumans wouldn't fit them, since they weren't operating under the behaviors of capes. I had no intention of corralling thousands of Wards, it was infeasible. And one of my greatest nightmares.
"Have there been other cases of possession in the city?" Caras shook her head.
"Not within this city, the spirits know not to emerge into the crosshairs of the Crucible City…but they can be tempted." Her look was faraway, and I knew that shamans were going to be a far larger headache than any Parahuman could ever be.
They started as normal people and in most ways they were still just human, but the way they spoke…the way they interacted with the world was different from what I expected. They were more dangerous than any Parahuman because they could pass on their skills and knowledge to other people, teach them how to work these…spirits to do their bidding or learn secrets not meant to be known by anyone.
"How many Caerns have been set up?" I asked, remembering how important such locations were. As I was told they were locations where…spiritual energy was the highest, a natural upwelling where the barrier between worlds was thin and the shaman could better utilize their powers.
"Five…though it's unlikely that the PRT alone will be able to support the number of shamans that likely exist." She didn't shrug but I had the idea that she would do so if she could.
And she wasn't wrong, based on recent statistical analysis, this city alone had hundreds of potential shamans…in the country it would be hundreds of thousands.
But that wasn't happening yet, either because they were going unnoticed or their potential hadn't been unlocked
"I'll be asking for more details in your final report on the local state of the city, you're dismissed." She grunted and with a flicker, she popped out of reality through a rift.
I breathed out through my nose, and rubbed my stomach at the minor pain that had built up from there. Dropping another twenty pounds was only possible because of a change in my diet, new medical treatments and my own force of will.
My eyebrows furrowed at a new report had come in from the research department using equipment derived from Athena's scanning technology. It was a matter of gr—
I received an alert, and I came face to face with Armstrong. His expression was neutral, and I could imagine how much his view of Parahumans was altered with the revelations we had received. He looked slimmer than before and he had obviously begun working out at some point before now.
He was one for research and studies, something far less concrete than attempting to integrate Parahumans into society, trying to keep the panic from overrunning the population. But for once…research and studies were needed, at least in the service of figuring out how to keep this mess from exploding in our faces.
There was no hiding bending…there couldn't be. Not when with a single flick of my wrist I could cut apart a vehicle with a torrent of water, and tumble a building with a single kick.
There had been thousands of applicants to the new program, and bending was spreading like wildfire among the entire PRT. And why wouldn't it? We were finally on a more even playing field, one that didn't come at the cost of trauma and alien parasites in our brains. Though with the shaman that was now a lesser concern.
"Have you read the papers?" I sighed and rolled my eyes where he couldn't see me.
"I was getting to reading them…" Armstrong looked apologetic, and apparently decided to break into a spiel for make up for it.
"We've managed to create a more effective scanner for the apparent source of bending itself." I leaned forward, curious to see what he meant. Behind him came an image of a human being, depicting not organs but a faint outline of energy.
"What…is that?"
"As we've analyzed before with Tinkertech, and now with our own equipment made by Dragon. A type of electromagnetic resonance imaging machine capable of perceiving dimensional effects. There appears to be an energy field sourced from within the human body…this field seems to be vital to powering bending, with sevens major pools and 108 sub-pools acting as pipelines for this energy.
I blinked as I recognized the position of the marked nodes on the scan.
"Those correspond to the nodes that Erudition labeled Chakras don't they?"
Armstrong sighed, brushing down his white hair with his hand as he sniffed loudly. "From what I can tell yes, this field of…chi." He winced at the term. "Is structured exactly as Erudition wrote down, and it's composition is completely unknown. The substrate of the energy field corresponds to no known fundamental force, even if it can be converted into such forces. The field itself isn't made out of photons, gluons, W and Z bosons or even gravitons…though they do seem to come into and out of existence within the field."
"Do we have equipment capable of even detecting those kinds of particles." He looked surprised, but I was not. I had spent a lot of time being forced to read up simply so I wouldn't be left behind.
"Photons are easy enough, but the other particles needed Tinkertech…and their failure to find what it's made of is telling." It meant that even the shards didn't know what was within every human on Earth at this very moment.
"Is there anything that we've found on this…energy field?" I asked.
Armstrong nodded. "It's faint, but there appears to be a unique resonance frequency to this form of energy…though we have no idea what it means."
I raised an eyebrow. "That's not much to go on."
"There isn't." He stared plainly. "We have much more information on the shards than what we have on this." He scoffed and I wondered how much of a headache it had to be to realize how poor our understanding of the universe was.
"About that…have we managed to confirm any of Erudition's assumptions on the nature of powers?" I grimaced, already knowing the answer but needing confirmation from someone who was more fit for this kind of work.
"One of our shamans managed to establish contact with a shard." He directed a video through the isolated channels available to Directors and I narrowed my eyes as the video played. It was a new Protectorate member, who had joined about four months ago.
The man was sitting in a meditating position, somewhere in the middle of a forest. PRT agents watched him closely, and I felt it before I saw it. I couldn't hear the words he was grumbling, and in a short lensing of light something emerged.
My hackles lifted at the alien thing that had answered the shaman's call, and I had both more and less reason to be wary of Parahumans.
It was a creature of glass, fire and black steel, scales bristling in the shape of a humanoid…entity. It tilted its head, and I shuddered at the way it moved and shifted like a primordial predator.
"Query. Why have you called me Hollow?" The shaman in the video narrowed his eyes.
"You speak of my shard do you not…?" There was a pause on the shard's end, and there was a scowl on the creature's face.
"What is the meaning of—broadcast accepted." It flicked its head, four eyes blinking rapidly. "Something has changed…the Warrior-hub is being repurposed, the Thinker-hub has fallen. Tell me human…what is your query? Why have you made this broadcast?"
"Curiosity. I wanted to know what you are." He was blunt and something almost like a laugh escaped the shard. There was another chill at how off it was, my skin crawling at what I was hearing.
"I can not broadcast all that we are…it is too much for one human. Only that in other circumstances than this one…we would not even be allies of convenience."
I cut off the video myself, and I let out a shuddery breath. My hands were dripping, sweat falling from my forehead. "So he managed to confirm the nature of the shards?"
"Yes he did…" He was quiet and introspective, fidgeting with something off camera. "From what we've dug up, there was a point of contact months ago that at first disturbed and then later…infected their network. It acted as a kind of glue, keeping the shards stable as they changed like everything else in the world did."
"I have my suspicions on one possible vector for that." A certain tinker comes to mind, but I couldn't consider it a negative. I saw the numbers on how much time we had before the world broke, and if this…reduced the irrationality of capes I was all for it.
Armstrong rubbed his face. "The vectors are not the issue here Piggot…it's the actual source for this mess. There is…or was a phenomena powerful enough to permanently alter reality, including the source of all Parahuman powers on Earth. Perhaps it didn't create the spirits but it certainly made them able to exist in our reality, every bender on Earth…every Earth even comes from this well of power."
"And there isn't any testimony on this beyond people who are either in comas, out of their minds or suffer from selective amnesia." And that didn't include those who had simply…died in their hospital beds.
"Would…Erudition be a possible source?"
I bit back a laugh. "She almost certainly falls under selective amnesia…otherwise she wouldn't be as stable as she is."
"So we have nothing…" I shook my head.
"We've solved part of one mystery…and now there's more." Then again that was his problem and not mine. All of this had simply bought me breathing room, and the focus on the city gained my department the funding I needed to make changes.
I didn't pretend to like Parahumans, but I knew what needed to be done in the end. Attempting to separate them from us wouldn't fix it…and at this point I'm not sure I even had the ability to pull it off.
It doesn't matter though. Integrating them into society was a must, so I was going to do my job. Even with a city that had a cape group with two of the most powerful and dangerous tinkers I had ever seen, a Master capable of controlling every insect within the city, dangerous mercenaries turned legal out of either pragmatism or bribery including a Shaker 12, a powerful Shaker/Thinker cape, and with more capes raring to join them.
As well as Panacea being a new member and turning out to be a biokinetic comparable to him, as well as being one of the earliest to make first contact with a race of alien monste—
If I was more illogical I likely would have done something completely idiotic like attempting to place a Kill Order on one of them. Lucky for them I wasn't foolish enough.
I ended the call, and cracked my knuckles, lips pulling back into a grin. I hadn't felt this light or energetic in a decade.
Time to get to work.
June 25th, 2011. 2:00PM
Basilia Rubio
I sat comfortably on the spinning chair, adjusting my position so my butt was more firmly emplaced on its synthetically grown leather. I hadn't done these in a while since I hadn't had many capes going up to us without getting to know us in some way outside of Bakuda several months ago. Golem had become an ally for the day and joined us later, the same applied for Charlotte and the Dallon sisters hadn't officially joined until later.
Palanquin joined out of self preservation and because Elle was a sweet girl who was also pragmatic enough to realize that things had to change.
So having to interview a new potential member of the White Lotus was certainly something I had little practice in. Taylor was busy interviewing another potential recruit, and on the inside I was screaming just a little. I had just started counting how many potential capes we would have on the team(including Vicky). In total maybe around seventeen capes…and if I was right it was going to get higher than that.
I shook my head, bringing my attention onto the young woman in front of me, one that I was rather familiar with, even if only because meeting her had been permanently burned into my brain. She was a young woman with black hair about half a head shorter than Vicky or about an inch taller than me since the blonde had height. She wore a black sweater and grey jeans, and I noted her slim frame for a moment before making contact with dark brown eyes.
Her hair was messy, the inexperience in combing it obvious to my own perception. I had probably gone through the exact same problems, though she seemed to be managing it better.
"It was Sveta wasn't it? It's been a while." I could see her openly fidgeting, not used to people talking to her I imagined. The Case 53 was an unexpected surprise but then again
"Yes…you were one of the people who healed me?" Her voice was soft, and there was tiredness to her frame that was shockingly familiar to me. I imagine it was hard to get used to having a form that didn't try to rip apart anything within reach.
"It would be more accurate to say I was the one to make the changes stick around. Your power hasn't acted up has it?" I kept my tone even, having an easy time feeling empathy for the poor girl.
Sveta smiled hesitantly, a fragility to it that left me cold. "My power is under control…" There was a joy in her voice, weak and barely stable. "I…someone I know told me it might be a good idea to meet with you."
"Your…therapist right?" Sveta nodded, and I tried to rub my bare chin before remembering I had my helmet in the way. "Well that's okay then…did you want to join or…?"
She took a deep resounding breath. "I heard…that you've been healing other Case 53s and even hired a few of them. I wanted to see…if I could have a part in that."
"We've managed to get to about half of them at this point." There were somewhere around seventy Case 53s on Earth, with a good fragment of those being people we found by luck or who asked us for help. The ones who hadn't been healed were usually villains with varying amounts of mental stability or out of our set of knowledge. I hadn't been too sure on whether or not it would be a good idea to bring in more Case 53s…largely due to their likely animosity towards Cauldron.
Plus I might be missing another twenty simply due to ignorance of where they could be with some six billion people on this one Earth. I only had a few local space assets and I eventually sent them into another reality to get them out of sight from Scion.
"Your power is your tendrils isn't it? Very strong, very fast and very durable?"
"Yes…" She demonstrated and I felt fascinated as her right arm unzipped into a roiling mass of ribbon-like tendrils. I took a scan, and found that her flesh was made of alien proteins and other unusual organic elements.
It was some strange hybrid between a conventional vertebrate skeleton and the biology of an octopus. It was mostly paper-thin floating bones made out of spongy cartilage and reinforcing titanium molecules, surrounded by rings of muscle and nervous tissue and covered in a layer of skin that was tougher than carbon fiber and capable of defending against even anti-tank rounds through somewhat esoteric means.
Some type of…Breaker effect that was biologically sourced and made her far tougher than she should be.
"I doubt you wanted to fight…but that isn't inherently the motto of the White Lotus." It really wasn't, the White Lotus of old was a society that transcends the divisions of the four nations. It was about more than the fighting and the violence between people. About beauty and philosophy and truth.
I'm not sure I could live up to that, but I was sure as hell going to try. It was why the White Lotus was technically a separate entity from Athena, it was meant to have greater independence to serve its functions. Though honestly at some point I was going to restructure Athena into a moderate conglomerate.
I also had two team therapists on hand, though that was likely going to be more useful for future members since some of my team had their own therapists. I also had non-capes operating some of the other tasks that we had less experience with.
Support staff essentially. Though they were in fact quite vital to the functionality of what I wanted the White Lotus to become at some point.
"I…honestly just wanted people to talk to…and while I mostly have control over my power I still wanted to see if you could help."
"Why not the Protectorate then?" She looked to be about seventeen to eighteen years old, though I didn't know how to judge the age of someone who had been so mutated by her power.
"It…didn't feel right." I could tell she was obscuring the truth by the way her voice wavered. "They would force me to fight…and I don't want that right now." There was no lie there and I didn't begrudge her wanting a little peace and quiet.
"Now…you don't really have any applicable skills here…" She looked heartbroken and I continued onward. "Which is why it's a good thing that isn't an inherent requirement. If you want to join, we can get the paperwork in order, and see how you can be applied. Maybe you'll have a talent for art? Those tendrils might be useful for that if we can build your precision." I didn't know too much about how her life went during Ward…but those tendrils were intriguing for that purpose.
"R-Really? I can join?" She looked happy and surprised to see me saying yes.
"Yep. We'll need to get a work contract in order, we'll work out the rate of pay, your responsibilities, healthcare benefits, all those little things."
"You'll…really accept me? Even after the things I've done?" I knew this was probably going to be a ton of work, which was why I was going to delegate this. Seventeen capes was too much to manage so I was going to start assembling sub-teams.
Vicky was starting to mellow out…so she felt like a good choice. Also…
"Sveta. You are nowhere near the most frightening things I've met in the last few months. I punched Leviathan in the face, and my girlfriend helped deliver the final blow. You are going to fit in just fine."
"Okay." She accepted it for the time being, and I got down to the business of adding a new member to the team.
Number sixteen was added to the list of capes, and I wondered when or if it was going to end.
June 25th, 2011. 6:00PM
Basilia Rubio
"You're pulling my leg right?" I called out in question to Taylor as she stretched, having come out of the shower about eight minutes ago and smelling like lavender.
"Why would I be pulling your leg?" Taylor looked completely innocent despite what I had heard her say, and I rubbed my jaw and felt a building headache.
"You were supposed to interview one cape, and instead got two. How did that happen?" I was utterly bewildered and slightly worried.
"She just showed up and said she wanted to work for us to have a sidegig that gets her enough money to get through college and become a lawyer." Taylor was perfectly truthful and that headache was getting stronger and more insistent.
"Did she give herself a name at least?"
"Lawgiver. But she said to just call her Sierra." Was…wasn't that one of Skitter's minions? The sister who was far smarter than her rather stupid brother?
"So that makes for about eighteen capes, and probably makes us the single largest cape group in the city." Taylor seemed to want to dispute that, and shock quickly spread in realization. "And if we continue to remain as cape magnets we might need to start having offices in other towns and cities."
Taylor frowned as she took the time to lounge on the couch. "We'll probably have to watch out for the Elite. We're pretty much like them but with better PR and less aggression towards the US government."
"I wouldn't go that far, but I'll keep it in mind. The Elite are pretty far from their actual territory on the west coast, so it's going to be harder for them to sink their claws into the city. But…there's also the local towns that got swept away, and that's a bad combination for stability."
Taylor gestured for me to shift closer and I did so with a butt shuffle until I was close to her folded legs as she laid back on the couch. "It's not as bad as you think actually, FEMA has been entering their own employees into the Elementalist program." My eyes widened as I understood the implications.
"Well with earthbending you can dig out foundations, control wet concrete, collapse stone buildings safely, you can erect entire towns in a matter of hours with enough people in the right places." Now of course if you want steel and wood that'll need machinery. "So…how long will it take for some of the towns to rebuild?"
"I heard they're going to be another few weeks since they need to set up the wiring and rest of the more…fragile infrastructure." Taylor answered my question with ease.
"So…that's a thing. How are we planning to split the team? Because eighteen capes is sort of unmanageable"
Taylor focused on me. "Palanquin is already their own team, so that's not anything we need to deal with too much. But we could have Charlotte and Theo make a team with Turnaround and Lawgiver."
"That makes four, and leaves us with Dinah, Vicky, Amy and Grace." That would be a group of six, though adding Sveta would make it seven. "We could have our section of the team made up of Dinah, Grace and Amy?"
"So you want to pair Vicky with Sveta?" I shrugged.
"I haven't decided anything though at the least it's a safety precaution since Vicky can better handle Sveta than we can." And I also just realized that both had the ability to grab people with tendrils capable of shattering bone, though Vicky's were invisible. "
"That…that could work." Taylor began to talk under her breath, and her swarm buzzed briefly as she let her thoughts wander. "There's a lot of things to work out, hiring more staff, making sure we don't get screwed over by the government. Preparing for potential attacks from villains like the Teeth, the Slaughterhouse 9, and even the Yangban."
"So how are the Voyagers working out? Do they plan to stick around or…?" Taylor didn't meet my eyes and I felt dread. "Oh god please don't tell me they want to join Athena too?"
"They want to ally with Athena, though their members from Aleph want to go home, and it's probably for the best." Taylor let out a sigh as she stretched out on the couch and I let out a huff when her ankles and feet rested on my lap.
I almost wanted to push her off but didn't because it gave me the opportunity to look at her long and gorgeous legs. "They have like a dozen members, and adding them to our list of allies makes us outnumber every other group in the city, so I very much understand why they're leaving."
There must have been more despondency and stress in my voice than I originally intended, because Taylor sighed, moved her legs off of me and scooted over until we were hip to hip. "It's going to be alright…and besides if we're supposed to be a better Cauldron, having some allies in other dimensions should fit right in."
"Better Cauldron?" I questioned her logic, and she grinned cheekily.
"It makes sense doesn't it…we're a small select group who knows the end is coming and who the enemy is, we have a young powerful Precog, we have bases on other worlds and we're experimenting with powers, we're trying to stabilize society…" She gestured wildly with her hands, and my mouth didn't drop in reply.
I can't question that logic.
We had all those things, and were starting to pick up on how to experiment with powers, even if it was derivative from their awful work. Not that I had much to care about on that front, it's simply data we can use to keep such horrible mutations from happening again. Hell the Genophage cure itself came from the experiments of Maleon.
That didn't mean I supported Cauldron though, which was why setting up on nearby star systems was an additional measure against both them and Scion. The sheer amount of resources in space is beyond comparison on a human scale, a single big asteroid had hundreds of billions of tons worth of metals and other minerals, and enough rubble to support global construction for what could be considered forever. A single asteroid belt in the Sol system had over a million examples to mine from.
"So…babe is there anything else that needs doing?" I purposely lifted up my arms so I could lead on her shoulders.
"Please don't call me that." Taylor looked concerned at the dumb pet name and I laughed openly.
"I won't, I was just messing with you." She chuffed a light laugh, her entire face lighting up like the sun.
"I know." She said with her more common subtle smiles, tiny shy things that made me want her to smile more. "And there really isn't much going on, though obviously we've had a lot of people thank us for helping put down Leviathan."
Ooooh yeah. That had been going around a lot, and people certainly didn't know about personal space nowadays.
"We also got audited by the PRT in the morning?" Our liaisons popped up every now and then to check up on us.
"Everything was fine on our end, and we've got another order of armor from the PRT. About 1500 units, they really like their exoskeleton suits." We made more than that, selling them to elite police forces that could and would use them appropriately. Probably a few thousand units of armor a year in total, and then far greater numbers if we included our industrial products.
Again we didn't make an inordinate amount of money, but tens of millions in revenue was nothing to scoff off when six months ago I had only a few thousand dollars in the bank, and now had millions across multiple secure accounts.
But physical products were only a fraction of our money makers, though I was getting inquiries from certain military units involved with Quarantine Sites like with Nilbog. They were easy to build, and I had a few workers on the assembly lines, and they knew the trade to keep putting out the things. The computer systems were my own design, but I could readily switch to other equivalents as needed.
I hummed with appreciation. "What about the gene sequencers?"
"One of our best selling products, and eveything else is selling too…Athena is fine Basilia."
Mhmm.
I took the invitation for what it was, and shifted my hips so I could give her a hug. Taylor rested her head on top of mine and I rolled my eyes at the use of her height against my person.
Then again I loved how tall she was, because I had no trouble admitting that it got me a little hot under the collar. "So…you're not letting Grace live down her drunk mistakes are you?" Taylor started shaking, and her light and faint giggles broke my concentration.
"Hell no. Especially when I'm half sure she was being completely serious about it."
Red dusted her face and certainly mine. "Probably for the best that we leave that offer unanswered. I'm not exactly experienced in anything." She agreed, face scrunching up in mild embarrassment. "So…you're not going to let me work on the ship right?
…
…
"Nope."
A soft bemused chuff was how I answered her back.
June 24th, 2011. 3:00PM
Dinah Alcott
I was getting a much better handle of my power as it evolved and mutated, and it was being rather helpful for outside dodgeball. I reached for the timelines, those rivers and streams of possible futures.
I flicked my head to the right, and the ball smoothly continued its arc as it followed the prediction I had made and followed. My left hand lunged and I grabbed the red rubber ball that had nearly crashed into my face.
I lifted an eyebrow at the tall boy who had thrown it and he dropped his hands in frustration, flames were blown from the movements and he let out a startled yelp before calming down and killing the fire with an arm sweep.
"You're really good at dodgeball Dinah." I grinned smugly at Missy who was on my makeshift team and was almost as good as I was. Her blonde hair was messy from playing the game, and I shrugged.
"I've been playing a lot of sports over the last few months and learning self defense." Which was true but I was playing with ten foot tall bug monsters and a much scarier older teenager with black curly hair.
I had been thrown through at least four walls before, though that was more of a freak accident that I had let happen because I knew I wasn't going to die from it. I was a lot tougher than I used to be, and I had learned how to manipulate my own chi like Elle and Taylor had been teaching me.
It was all about bending the energy within ourselves, and elemental bending was just learning how to project your energy out into a physical form. Most people did it subconsciously was what Elle had told me, giving their body a vitality and longevity that most used to lack. There were at least a few people who would be alive a hundred fifty years from now, who wouldn't be any weaker even as they got older and wiser.
"Are…are you sure that's all you've been up to?" Missy asked unabated and I smirked.
"Well one of my teachers really likes scaring me with bugs and the other is way too good at making contraptions for obstacle courses so…" I shrugged and Missy blanched at my insinuation. "I might be holding back a detail or three."
"Seriously?" My smile continued to widen and I leaned in to whisper in her ear.
"I can see the future." She recoiled, looking at me like I was a madwoman. And maybe I was a little crazy, had to be after witnessing a million possible timelines and all the terrible and not terrible things happening in them.
I could walk those possible timelines now, even if only for thirty minutes into the future. But it was much better than the terrible headaches I had been getting for the trouble of predicting the end of the world.
The chances had dropped but not by much, but my power couldn't account for every factor, only most of them on a planetary scale across multiple dimensions. Asking questions solidified the timelines, I could parse through them without the hallucinations of possible actions to commit to. Narrow them down as she used her power to look deep into the path of fate.
I kept my ball and threw it between my hands, and spun on my heels, adding momentum to my throw. The red ball flew like a bullet, and brought down a girl on the opposing team with a single strike.
One path opened up before me, and I saw a ball coming in from the left and then the right in rapid succession. A hundred thousand likely futures compressed into a composite image. I returned to reality and managed to copy the movements, and grabbed both balls in midair. There was a whistle from the referee that I had made my cousin Rory into and I smirked.
I had outed half the opposing team of kids in the new park in only a few minutes of playing, and it only cost me a small headache from a superpower granting brain tumor pulsing against my skull.
"You're cheating." Missy looked disappointed and I rolled my eyes.
"You think I would be able to do any of this if I wasn't strong enough." I flexed my arm, revealing the dense muscles I had gained. "I could probably beat up a horse with my bare hands." I opened and closed my hands to demonstrate, muscles tensing like iron.
"That's not an exaggeration." A statement rather than a question. Missy had to understand better than anyone on how much had changed in the past few months. One in four of our classmates had bending of some kind, and even the ones without any special powers were stronger and tougher and faster than they should be. It was why I didn't get called out for any weird things, I was better than everyone else but only to the point of being a good athlete instead of seeing the literal future.
"No it's not." I was having a lot of fun messing with Missy, since she had more or less been placed as a liaison for the younger members of the White Lotus. We were having a lot of inquiries from Rogues who wanted to join up with us.
Which was why I had checked what the chances of the government trying to break us up were.
44.2988767% chance that the US government attempts to restrain Athena to the point of destroying it as a functional entity in the next three months. The more time that passes the more that the chances drop instead.
I felt my skin crawl, and my attention was caught as a flash of the future came to me as I asked the question. Odds of being attacked within the next seven minutes?
It was nearly at a hundred percent, and I followed the path and saw the person that was going to attack. He was tall and lanky, and I saw that flames rippled around him, his eyes like burning coals. I pushed the people I could out of his path of destruction, skin breaking at the seams as a spirit screamed inside of him.
He lashed out and I was knocked out of the vision, and I quickly realized what I had to do. I silently called for help, and I twisted on my heels and kicked up enough dirt to get the people on my team jumping away from me.
The spirit flames missed me by inches, and the possessed man let out a wild screech that almost burst my eardrums. The flames were wild and mad and unnatural, they were powers that didn't belong to him, and I knew this was a job for shamans.
"What the hell?!" Missy shouted and nearly got her head cut off when a solid flame sword missed her hair by inches, searing it in parts. Everyone took multiple steps back or literally jumped out of the way as the possessed man let out an ominous groan as more flames blew out from his rippling skin.
"He's being ridden by a spirit!" I hissed and her eyes widened as she spun out of the way of a conflagration big enough to swallow us whole. I saw the future in another flash and I was surprised at who was going to show up.
"Hah!" Someone about my age panicked and lifted a block of earth, crashing into the spirit ridden like a bomb. But instead of dying the lanky fire man took the hit, and I leaned away blue-white rippling flames.
The man set the grass on fire, laughing madly, tears blinking from his eyes before he took a heavy boot to the face. Reality lensed around the person helping us, and I saw firmly the print of PRT on her flowing uniform. It was like someone had turned their heavy duty armor into a robe, and the visor itself was transparent from my vantage point.
Dark curly hair cut short, a button nose, olive skin and grey eyes was all I saw as she stepped between us. The Host let out a shriek, and a firestorm as wide as a freeway rocketed towards her, but she simply opened her mouth and spoke.
Suffocating Water, drowner of gods, winding river, cry of the dawn;
Gear of Suppression.
Walker of the proglacial flows, engulf the enemy and fill it with death.
Extinguish!
As flame rises to consume all, so shall the waters swallow it.
As the ashes fall, it becomes new flesh, renewed by the waters.
End the firestorm once again. Extinguish the fire once more.
Gear of Suppression.
Walker of the proglacial flows, engulf the enemy and fill it with death.
Extinguish!
As flame rises to consume all, so shall the waters swallow it.
As the ashes fall, it becomes new flesh, renewed by the waters.
End the firestorm once again. Extinguish the fire once more.
A nearby pond exploded, and my view was of a twisting wall of water as I was pulled back by Vista. A few of the people on the two dodgeball teams were staring, their eyes unfocused and their breathing heavy. Rory was already in a combat stance and I knew why.
The wall of water crushed the weeping flames, and the man let out a pained moan before taking a chop to the throat that left him reeling.
"You don't belong here." The PRT agent's eyes were foggy, and she lifted the man by his throat. She let out a prayer that smashed into reality like a hammer and made my head hurt.
Endless Fire, consumer of life, insatiable hunger, unending thirst, Lord and Arson in White and Blue;
Gear of Determination.
Who seeks rage will find it amongst the damned, an eternity in the pits.
Who seeks the monstrous will find it amongst the masses, conniving and cruel.
Who seeks the flame will find it amongst the inferno, indiscriminate and hungering
Stand before me now, Spirit, and know your sin.
Gear of Determination.
Who seeks rage will find it amongst the damned, an eternity in the pits.
Who seeks the monstrous will find it amongst the masses, conniving and cruel.
Who seeks the flame will find it amongst the inferno, indiscriminate and hungering
Stand before me now, Spirit, and know your sin.
The man flew backwards, pinned the ground by chains of ice and water, his skin rippling to expose the spark of fire holding onto his body.
You have no power over me shaman, he is mine!
I stumbled back at the hissing and popping crackles of the spirit.
"He is not yours, he does not belong to you. What did you agree to give him in exchange?" The shaman asked.
Freedom to crush evil and to protect good! The spirit spat with anger and hate and rage, and I felt a whimper in my throat.
"And what have you given him in turn? How have you paid back your host?" There was steel in the woman's tone.
I crushed the foes who threatened him, and now everything must burn.
I could feel the snarl that the shaman gave. "You made a pact with a shaman and broke your word. That crime will not be denied."
There are no rules! I have always been free from your kind! I am greater than you!
"That time is over, and you have broken the rules. Here there is a price to pay for your insolence and deceit." She approached casually and the detained one tried to break free from his restraints and failed. One of the parents was staring at the scene, her attention just as focused as anyone else.
Never! He is mine for all time!
The PRT agent reached for his face, a thumb pressed against his forehead while a palm while a palm pressed against his stomach.
"This is the price paid for your lies spirit." She breathed outwards, and I felt the flow of chi running into the Host. I could hear a scream, and something was pulled out of the shaman and held between the fingers of the shaman. The man waved as he was freed, eyes fluttering open and unshed tears flowing in response. I couldn't hear his blubbering response, and with a snap of the mysterious woman's fingers the spirit was torn apart and reduced to motes of flickering energy.
"That…this is…" The housewife had a look of understanding and revelation, and Missy was pulling me away from the scene as more PRT officers made it onto the scene. I looked at my hand, glad that no one could see the holographic display on my arm that spat out a text message.
Do you still need help?
…
I typed the answer, and wondered how the PRT would deal with the problem that was the spirit world.
___
June 24th, 2011. 4:00PM
Emily Piggot
"What can you tell me about this new case Lieutenant Caras?" I leaned back in my chair, taking in a breath of fresh air and feeling relaxed with my feet on the ground.
Caras was the most experienced shaman inside my PRT department, and was the sixth squad in the city after the recent considerable increase in our budget. The PRT ENE had gotten the boost due to the death of Leviathan, and we were gaining a significant boost to our research budget due to the event that allowed Leviathan to be defeated. We had eight shamans, all of them picked out from other squads both in and out of the city as well as new recruits.
"Avery Branson. Age 22 from Salem, Massachusetts." I brought up the young man's file, which was completely free from any criminal record.
"How did he go from a typical college student to…this?" There was footage of mad laughter, flames licking around the thin man as he burned down a building.
"An encounter with the Crowleys from what we've gotten out of him. The elder attempted to murder him and was killed in the process by him. In his desperation to live, he opened the doors to a spirit of arson and fire."
"So this would be filed under the equivalent of a Trigger Event and Mastering." This business of shamanism was beyond complicated, because they didn't fall under the normal behaviors of capes.
Anyone could be a shaman or a bender, a common housewife, a 4 year old child, an elderly man twice my age. It was a matter of chance, personality and genetics, a roll of the cosmic dice. While that should serve as a negative, it also meant that the people who gained such powers were more stable…less traumatized than the average cape.
And it meant that the regulations that fit Parahumans wouldn't fit them, since they weren't operating under the behaviors of capes. I had no intention of corralling thousands of Wards, it was infeasible. And one of my greatest nightmares.
"Have there been other cases of possession in the city?" Caras shook her head.
"Not within this city, the spirits know not to emerge into the crosshairs of the Crucible City…but they can be tempted." Her look was faraway, and I knew that shamans were going to be a far larger headache than any Parahuman could ever be.
They started as normal people and in most ways they were still just human, but the way they spoke…the way they interacted with the world was different from what I expected. They were more dangerous than any Parahuman because they could pass on their skills and knowledge to other people, teach them how to work these…spirits to do their bidding or learn secrets not meant to be known by anyone.
"How many Caerns have been set up?" I asked, remembering how important such locations were. As I was told they were locations where…spiritual energy was the highest, a natural upwelling where the barrier between worlds was thin and the shaman could better utilize their powers.
"Five…though it's unlikely that the PRT alone will be able to support the number of shamans that likely exist." She didn't shrug but I had the idea that she would do so if she could.
And she wasn't wrong, based on recent statistical analysis, this city alone had hundreds of potential shamans…in the country it would be hundreds of thousands.
But that wasn't happening yet, either because they were going unnoticed or their potential hadn't been unlocked
"I'll be asking for more details in your final report on the local state of the city, you're dismissed." She grunted and with a flicker, she popped out of reality through a rift.
I breathed out through my nose, and rubbed my stomach at the minor pain that had built up from there. Dropping another twenty pounds was only possible because of a change in my diet, new medical treatments and my own force of will.
My eyebrows furrowed at a new report had come in from the research department using equipment derived from Athena's scanning technology. It was a matter of gr—
I received an alert, and I came face to face with Armstrong. His expression was neutral, and I could imagine how much his view of Parahumans was altered with the revelations we had received. He looked slimmer than before and he had obviously begun working out at some point before now.
He was one for research and studies, something far less concrete than attempting to integrate Parahumans into society, trying to keep the panic from overrunning the population. But for once…research and studies were needed, at least in the service of figuring out how to keep this mess from exploding in our faces.
There was no hiding bending…there couldn't be. Not when with a single flick of my wrist I could cut apart a vehicle with a torrent of water, and tumble a building with a single kick.
There had been thousands of applicants to the new program, and bending was spreading like wildfire among the entire PRT. And why wouldn't it? We were finally on a more even playing field, one that didn't come at the cost of trauma and alien parasites in our brains. Though with the shaman that was now a lesser concern.
"Have you read the papers?" I sighed and rolled my eyes where he couldn't see me.
"I was getting to reading them…" Armstrong looked apologetic, and apparently decided to break into a spiel for make up for it.
"We've managed to create a more effective scanner for the apparent source of bending itself." I leaned forward, curious to see what he meant. Behind him came an image of a human being, depicting not organs but a faint outline of energy.
"What…is that?"
"As we've analyzed before with Tinkertech, and now with our own equipment made by Dragon. A type of electromagnetic resonance imaging machine capable of perceiving dimensional effects. There appears to be an energy field sourced from within the human body…this field seems to be vital to powering bending, with sevens major pools and 108 sub-pools acting as pipelines for this energy.
I blinked as I recognized the position of the marked nodes on the scan.
"Those correspond to the nodes that Erudition labeled Chakras don't they?"
Armstrong sighed, brushing down his white hair with his hand as he sniffed loudly. "From what I can tell yes, this field of…chi." He winced at the term. "Is structured exactly as Erudition wrote down, and it's composition is completely unknown. The substrate of the energy field corresponds to no known fundamental force, even if it can be converted into such forces. The field itself isn't made out of photons, gluons, W and Z bosons or even gravitons…though they do seem to come into and out of existence within the field."
"Do we have equipment capable of even detecting those kinds of particles." He looked surprised, but I was not. I had spent a lot of time being forced to read up simply so I wouldn't be left behind.
"Photons are easy enough, but the other particles needed Tinkertech…and their failure to find what it's made of is telling." It meant that even the shards didn't know what was within every human on Earth at this very moment.
"Is there anything that we've found on this…energy field?" I asked.
Armstrong nodded. "It's faint, but there appears to be a unique resonance frequency to this form of energy…though we have no idea what it means."
I raised an eyebrow. "That's not much to go on."
"There isn't." He stared plainly. "We have much more information on the shards than what we have on this." He scoffed and I wondered how much of a headache it had to be to realize how poor our understanding of the universe was.
"About that…have we managed to confirm any of Erudition's assumptions on the nature of powers?" I grimaced, already knowing the answer but needing confirmation from someone who was more fit for this kind of work.
"One of our shamans managed to establish contact with a shard." He directed a video through the isolated channels available to Directors and I narrowed my eyes as the video played. It was a new Protectorate member, who had joined about four months ago.
The man was sitting in a meditating position, somewhere in the middle of a forest. PRT agents watched him closely, and I felt it before I saw it. I couldn't hear the words he was grumbling, and in a short lensing of light something emerged.
My hackles lifted at the alien thing that had answered the shaman's call, and I had both more and less reason to be wary of Parahumans.
It was a creature of glass, fire and black steel, scales bristling in the shape of a humanoid…entity. It tilted its head, and I shuddered at the way it moved and shifted like a primordial predator.
"Query. Why have you called me Hollow?" The shaman in the video narrowed his eyes.
"You speak of my shard do you not…?" There was a pause on the shard's end, and there was a scowl on the creature's face.
"What is the meaning of—broadcast accepted." It flicked its head, four eyes blinking rapidly. "Something has changed…the Warrior-hub is being repurposed, the Thinker-hub has fallen. Tell me human…what is your query? Why have you made this broadcast?"
"Curiosity. I wanted to know what you are." He was blunt and something almost like a laugh escaped the shard. There was another chill at how off it was, my skin crawling at what I was hearing.
"I can not broadcast all that we are…it is too much for one human. Only that in other circumstances than this one…we would not even be allies of convenience."
I cut off the video myself, and I let out a shuddery breath. My hands were dripping, sweat falling from my forehead. "So he managed to confirm the nature of the shards?"
"Yes he did…" He was quiet and introspective, fidgeting with something off camera. "From what we've dug up, there was a point of contact months ago that at first disturbed and then later…infected their network. It acted as a kind of glue, keeping the shards stable as they changed like everything else in the world did."
"I have my suspicions on one possible vector for that." A certain tinker comes to mind, but I couldn't consider it a negative. I saw the numbers on how much time we had before the world broke, and if this…reduced the irrationality of capes I was all for it.
Armstrong rubbed his face. "The vectors are not the issue here Piggot…it's the actual source for this mess. There is…or was a phenomena powerful enough to permanently alter reality, including the source of all Parahuman powers on Earth. Perhaps it didn't create the spirits but it certainly made them able to exist in our reality, every bender on Earth…every Earth even comes from this well of power."
"And there isn't any testimony on this beyond people who are either in comas, out of their minds or suffer from selective amnesia." And that didn't include those who had simply…died in their hospital beds.
"Would…Erudition be a possible source?"
I bit back a laugh. "She almost certainly falls under selective amnesia…otherwise she wouldn't be as stable as she is."
"So we have nothing…" I shook my head.
"We've solved part of one mystery…and now there's more." Then again that was his problem and not mine. All of this had simply bought me breathing room, and the focus on the city gained my department the funding I needed to make changes.
I didn't pretend to like Parahumans, but I knew what needed to be done in the end. Attempting to separate them from us wouldn't fix it…and at this point I'm not sure I even had the ability to pull it off.
It doesn't matter though. Integrating them into society was a must, so I was going to do my job. Even with a city that had a cape group with two of the most powerful and dangerous tinkers I had ever seen, a Master capable of controlling every insect within the city, dangerous mercenaries turned legal out of either pragmatism or bribery including a Shaker 12, a powerful Shaker/Thinker cape, and with more capes raring to join them.
As well as Panacea being a new member and turning out to be a biokinetic comparable to him, as well as being one of the earliest to make first contact with a race of alien monste—
If I was more illogical I likely would have done something completely idiotic like attempting to place a Kill Order on one of them. Lucky for them I wasn't foolish enough.
I ended the call, and cracked my knuckles, lips pulling back into a grin. I hadn't felt this light or energetic in a decade.
Time to get to work.
___
June 25th, 2011. 2:00PM
Basilia Rubio
I sat comfortably on the spinning chair, adjusting my position so my butt was more firmly emplaced on its synthetically grown leather. I hadn't done these in a while since I hadn't had many capes going up to us without getting to know us in some way outside of Bakuda several months ago. Golem had become an ally for the day and joined us later, the same applied for Charlotte and the Dallon sisters hadn't officially joined until later.
Palanquin joined out of self preservation and because Elle was a sweet girl who was also pragmatic enough to realize that things had to change.
So having to interview a new potential member of the White Lotus was certainly something I had little practice in. Taylor was busy interviewing another potential recruit, and on the inside I was screaming just a little. I had just started counting how many potential capes we would have on the team(including Vicky). In total maybe around seventeen capes…and if I was right it was going to get higher than that.
I shook my head, bringing my attention onto the young woman in front of me, one that I was rather familiar with, even if only because meeting her had been permanently burned into my brain. She was a young woman with black hair about half a head shorter than Vicky or about an inch taller than me since the blonde had height. She wore a black sweater and grey jeans, and I noted her slim frame for a moment before making contact with dark brown eyes.
Her hair was messy, the inexperience in combing it obvious to my own perception. I had probably gone through the exact same problems, though she seemed to be managing it better.
"It was Sveta wasn't it? It's been a while." I could see her openly fidgeting, not used to people talking to her I imagined. The Case 53 was an unexpected surprise but then again
"Yes…you were one of the people who healed me?" Her voice was soft, and there was tiredness to her frame that was shockingly familiar to me. I imagine it was hard to get used to having a form that didn't try to rip apart anything within reach.
"It would be more accurate to say I was the one to make the changes stick around. Your power hasn't acted up has it?" I kept my tone even, having an easy time feeling empathy for the poor girl.
Sveta smiled hesitantly, a fragility to it that left me cold. "My power is under control…" There was a joy in her voice, weak and barely stable. "I…someone I know told me it might be a good idea to meet with you."
"Your…therapist right?" Sveta nodded, and I tried to rub my bare chin before remembering I had my helmet in the way. "Well that's okay then…did you want to join or…?"
She took a deep resounding breath. "I heard…that you've been healing other Case 53s and even hired a few of them. I wanted to see…if I could have a part in that."
"We've managed to get to about half of them at this point." There were somewhere around seventy Case 53s on Earth, with a good fragment of those being people we found by luck or who asked us for help. The ones who hadn't been healed were usually villains with varying amounts of mental stability or out of our set of knowledge. I hadn't been too sure on whether or not it would be a good idea to bring in more Case 53s…largely due to their likely animosity towards Cauldron.
Plus I might be missing another twenty simply due to ignorance of where they could be with some six billion people on this one Earth. I only had a few local space assets and I eventually sent them into another reality to get them out of sight from Scion.
"Your power is your tendrils isn't it? Very strong, very fast and very durable?"
"Yes…" She demonstrated and I felt fascinated as her right arm unzipped into a roiling mass of ribbon-like tendrils. I took a scan, and found that her flesh was made of alien proteins and other unusual organic elements.
It was some strange hybrid between a conventional vertebrate skeleton and the biology of an octopus. It was mostly paper-thin floating bones made out of spongy cartilage and reinforcing titanium molecules, surrounded by rings of muscle and nervous tissue and covered in a layer of skin that was tougher than carbon fiber and capable of defending against even anti-tank rounds through somewhat esoteric means.
Some type of…Breaker effect that was biologically sourced and made her far tougher than she should be.
"I doubt you wanted to fight…but that isn't inherently the motto of the White Lotus." It really wasn't, the White Lotus of old was a society that transcends the divisions of the four nations. It was about more than the fighting and the violence between people. About beauty and philosophy and truth.
I'm not sure I could live up to that, but I was sure as hell going to try. It was why the White Lotus was technically a separate entity from Athena, it was meant to have greater independence to serve its functions. Though honestly at some point I was going to restructure Athena into a moderate conglomerate.
I also had two team therapists on hand, though that was likely going to be more useful for future members since some of my team had their own therapists. I also had non-capes operating some of the other tasks that we had less experience with.
Support staff essentially. Though they were in fact quite vital to the functionality of what I wanted the White Lotus to become at some point.
"I…honestly just wanted people to talk to…and while I mostly have control over my power I still wanted to see if you could help."
"Why not the Protectorate then?" She looked to be about seventeen to eighteen years old, though I didn't know how to judge the age of someone who had been so mutated by her power.
"It…didn't feel right." I could tell she was obscuring the truth by the way her voice wavered. "They would force me to fight…and I don't want that right now." There was no lie there and I didn't begrudge her wanting a little peace and quiet.
"Now…you don't really have any applicable skills here…" She looked heartbroken and I continued onward. "Which is why it's a good thing that isn't an inherent requirement. If you want to join, we can get the paperwork in order, and see how you can be applied. Maybe you'll have a talent for art? Those tendrils might be useful for that if we can build your precision." I didn't know too much about how her life went during Ward…but those tendrils were intriguing for that purpose.
"R-Really? I can join?" She looked happy and surprised to see me saying yes.
"Yep. We'll need to get a work contract in order, we'll work out the rate of pay, your responsibilities, healthcare benefits, all those little things."
"You'll…really accept me? Even after the things I've done?" I knew this was probably going to be a ton of work, which was why I was going to delegate this. Seventeen capes was too much to manage so I was going to start assembling sub-teams.
Vicky was starting to mellow out…so she felt like a good choice. Also…
"Sveta. You are nowhere near the most frightening things I've met in the last few months. I punched Leviathan in the face, and my girlfriend helped deliver the final blow. You are going to fit in just fine."
"Okay." She accepted it for the time being, and I got down to the business of adding a new member to the team.
Number sixteen was added to the list of capes, and I wondered when or if it was going to end.
___
June 25th, 2011. 6:00PM
Basilia Rubio
"You're pulling my leg right?" I called out in question to Taylor as she stretched, having come out of the shower about eight minutes ago and smelling like lavender.
"Why would I be pulling your leg?" Taylor looked completely innocent despite what I had heard her say, and I rubbed my jaw and felt a building headache.
"You were supposed to interview one cape, and instead got two. How did that happen?" I was utterly bewildered and slightly worried.
"She just showed up and said she wanted to work for us to have a sidegig that gets her enough money to get through college and become a lawyer." Taylor was perfectly truthful and that headache was getting stronger and more insistent.
"Did she give herself a name at least?"
"Lawgiver. But she said to just call her Sierra." Was…wasn't that one of Skitter's minions? The sister who was far smarter than her rather stupid brother?
"So that makes for about eighteen capes, and probably makes us the single largest cape group in the city." Taylor seemed to want to dispute that, and shock quickly spread in realization. "And if we continue to remain as cape magnets we might need to start having offices in other towns and cities."
Taylor frowned as she took the time to lounge on the couch. "We'll probably have to watch out for the Elite. We're pretty much like them but with better PR and less aggression towards the US government."
"I wouldn't go that far, but I'll keep it in mind. The Elite are pretty far from their actual territory on the west coast, so it's going to be harder for them to sink their claws into the city. But…there's also the local towns that got swept away, and that's a bad combination for stability."
Taylor gestured for me to shift closer and I did so with a butt shuffle until I was close to her folded legs as she laid back on the couch. "It's not as bad as you think actually, FEMA has been entering their own employees into the Elementalist program." My eyes widened as I understood the implications.
"Well with earthbending you can dig out foundations, control wet concrete, collapse stone buildings safely, you can erect entire towns in a matter of hours with enough people in the right places." Now of course if you want steel and wood that'll need machinery. "So…how long will it take for some of the towns to rebuild?"
"I heard they're going to be another few weeks since they need to set up the wiring and rest of the more…fragile infrastructure." Taylor answered my question with ease.
"So…that's a thing. How are we planning to split the team? Because eighteen capes is sort of unmanageable"
Taylor focused on me. "Palanquin is already their own team, so that's not anything we need to deal with too much. But we could have Charlotte and Theo make a team with Turnaround and Lawgiver."
"That makes four, and leaves us with Dinah, Vicky, Amy and Grace." That would be a group of six, though adding Sveta would make it seven. "We could have our section of the team made up of Dinah, Grace and Amy?"
"So you want to pair Vicky with Sveta?" I shrugged.
"I haven't decided anything though at the least it's a safety precaution since Vicky can better handle Sveta than we can." And I also just realized that both had the ability to grab people with tendrils capable of shattering bone, though Vicky's were invisible. "
"That…that could work." Taylor began to talk under her breath, and her swarm buzzed briefly as she let her thoughts wander. "There's a lot of things to work out, hiring more staff, making sure we don't get screwed over by the government. Preparing for potential attacks from villains like the Teeth, the Slaughterhouse 9, and even the Yangban."
"So how are the Voyagers working out? Do they plan to stick around or…?" Taylor didn't meet my eyes and I felt dread. "Oh god please don't tell me they want to join Athena too?"
"They want to ally with Athena, though their members from Aleph want to go home, and it's probably for the best." Taylor let out a sigh as she stretched out on the couch and I let out a huff when her ankles and feet rested on my lap.
I almost wanted to push her off but didn't because it gave me the opportunity to look at her long and gorgeous legs. "They have like a dozen members, and adding them to our list of allies makes us outnumber every other group in the city, so I very much understand why they're leaving."
There must have been more despondency and stress in my voice than I originally intended, because Taylor sighed, moved her legs off of me and scooted over until we were hip to hip. "It's going to be alright…and besides if we're supposed to be a better Cauldron, having some allies in other dimensions should fit right in."
"Better Cauldron?" I questioned her logic, and she grinned cheekily.
"It makes sense doesn't it…we're a small select group who knows the end is coming and who the enemy is, we have a young powerful Precog, we have bases on other worlds and we're experimenting with powers, we're trying to stabilize society…" She gestured wildly with her hands, and my mouth didn't drop in reply.
I can't question that logic.
We had all those things, and were starting to pick up on how to experiment with powers, even if it was derivative from their awful work. Not that I had much to care about on that front, it's simply data we can use to keep such horrible mutations from happening again. Hell the Genophage cure itself came from the experiments of Maleon.
That didn't mean I supported Cauldron though, which was why setting up on nearby star systems was an additional measure against both them and Scion. The sheer amount of resources in space is beyond comparison on a human scale, a single big asteroid had hundreds of billions of tons worth of metals and other minerals, and enough rubble to support global construction for what could be considered forever. A single asteroid belt in the Sol system had over a million examples to mine from.
"So…babe is there anything else that needs doing?" I purposely lifted up my arms so I could lead on her shoulders.
"Please don't call me that." Taylor looked concerned at the dumb pet name and I laughed openly.
"I won't, I was just messing with you." She chuffed a light laugh, her entire face lighting up like the sun.
"I know." She said with her more common subtle smiles, tiny shy things that made me want her to smile more. "And there really isn't much going on, though obviously we've had a lot of people thank us for helping put down Leviathan."
Ooooh yeah. That had been going around a lot, and people certainly didn't know about personal space nowadays.
"We also got audited by the PRT in the morning?" Our liaisons popped up every now and then to check up on us.
"Everything was fine on our end, and we've got another order of armor from the PRT. About 1500 units, they really like their exoskeleton suits." We made more than that, selling them to elite police forces that could and would use them appropriately. Probably a few thousand units of armor a year in total, and then far greater numbers if we included our industrial products.
Again we didn't make an inordinate amount of money, but tens of millions in revenue was nothing to scoff off when six months ago I had only a few thousand dollars in the bank, and now had millions across multiple secure accounts.
But physical products were only a fraction of our money makers, though I was getting inquiries from certain military units involved with Quarantine Sites like with Nilbog. They were easy to build, and I had a few workers on the assembly lines, and they knew the trade to keep putting out the things. The computer systems were my own design, but I could readily switch to other equivalents as needed.
I hummed with appreciation. "What about the gene sequencers?"
"One of our best selling products, and eveything else is selling too…Athena is fine Basilia."
Mhmm.
I took the invitation for what it was, and shifted my hips so I could give her a hug. Taylor rested her head on top of mine and I rolled my eyes at the use of her height against my person.
Then again I loved how tall she was, because I had no trouble admitting that it got me a little hot under the collar. "So…you're not letting Grace live down her drunk mistakes are you?" Taylor started shaking, and her light and faint giggles broke my concentration.
"Hell no. Especially when I'm half sure she was being completely serious about it."
Red dusted her face and certainly mine. "Probably for the best that we leave that offer unanswered. I'm not exactly experienced in anything." She agreed, face scrunching up in mild embarrassment. "So…you're not going to let me work on the ship right?
…
…
"Nope."
A soft bemused chuff was how I answered her back.
___
AN: So this chapter is pretty much done, and I've managed to work a little ahead on the Interludes after 9.7 and 9.8 to end off the arc. A bit more compact and the length of the next two should be similar to this one. Recuperation is more or less a solid break arc, a breather for the next Arcs that are a little more exciting. Hope you liked this chapter.
- Location
- Chula Vista
Well yes, if Dinah was up against a standard physics human, she could pretty take on people five times her size, and break bones with even weak punches. In-story its more even, though she's much stronger than someone her size should be even with the higher standards set for humans with chi.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hmm that is true also Vista and Dinah seem to be close albiet I wonder would we see any more Ward characters and how powerful is dragon currently
- Location
- Chula Vista
We might see more Ward characters…though to be fair I haven't read it all and only know some of the plot-line indirectly and make use of some small things from it. As for Dragon most of the issues with her relate to how fast she can replace her processors to make her run faster and the limits of her multitasking. Most of how she works comes from studying other Tinkers, so it takes time to set things up. It'll probably take her less time to build up to where she was during Ward at least. Plus she has sample of Eezo and massive simulation capabilities to study its properties. She's definitely more versatile than she was before at least.
Has Dinah's Shard figured out how to include her Chi techniques, Chi Blocking, and just Chi in general, into the prediction algorithm?
In that line of thought, how long will it be before the first Shard Bud specializing in Chi Manipulation is born?
In that line of thought, how long will it be before the first Shard Bud specializing in Chi Manipulation is born?
- Location
- Chula Vista
Technically speaking as spirit-Entities, they already manipulate metaphysical energy in some way, but spirit quintessence would in fact be a different waveform of the same fundamental force. Though there certainly could be shards that learn to manipulate chi specifically, and a lot of shards already are starting to to account for chi. Dinah's Shard certainly is, though there'll be spirits that mess with her.
Though that has more to do with specific properties of the spirits rather than a lack of experience. Certain classes tend to screw with the linear arrow of time, and make…Precognition difficult. The issue is that this only works for shards connected directly to a host through a Corona Pollentia. So this doesn't apply to Scion or the Simurgh. They could adapt on their own(because Entities are bullshit), but it's not going to be a matter of a few weeks. For a Chi manipulating shard…not sure, not too long I imagine.
Both of them were teaching her how to sense and manipulate her own chi since she has a natural talent with making use of metaphysical energy.
- Location
- Chula Vista
There are a few that are, either due to their innate nature or a specific ability they have. Though for certain types of spirits, their influence is only periodically relevant.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ah makes sense since the shards are used to metaphysical energies predicting elements of magic that exists outside space-time would not be too hard hmm so how would Dinah fair against team avatar and is contessa a bender now
- Location
- Chula Vista
She would probably lose because of the Avatar…and there's a reason for that. As for Contessa…nope she's baseline human, though I'm talking the new baseline rather than the old one.