Discernment 10.1
July 10th, 2011. 10:00AM
Basilia Rubio
"What should I wear?" I hummed out the question as I laid out my clothing for the first official date with Taylor. I was stripped down to my briefs and a lacy black bra that Charlotte and Vicky had somehow gotten me to buy despite my general distancing from more sensual or err…sexy styles of clothing.
I might have become biologically a woman and enjoyed certain outfits considered socially 'acceptable' for women didn't mean I was into
all of it. At least not as of right this instant.
A pretty black dress was a good option but it felt a little too stuffy and formal, and a green sundress was cutesy but I didn't feel in a happy-peppy mood. Something casual should probably work, how about jeans?
I shimmied into a comfortable and loose pair of blue jeans, and scratched my belly as I moved on to looking for a good top. I didn't feel the urge for a blouse, or anything with cute ruffles. Taylor could pull those off better in my opinion.
My gaze dropped to a single black shirt with short sleeves with a yellow five pointed star on its chest. I
pulled the article of clothing towards me, smiling at the successful use of mass effect field based telekinesis. I slipped on the shirt, biting my lip as I adjusted a strap that was chafing a bit.
Events had picked up the pace after I had revealed my ship, the nearly complete vessel clearly impressing on the PRT what the future would look like. There was a little known bill that was making its way through the system, one that I supported due to the sheer amount of effort and work put into refining it.
It was a refinement of NEPEA, a loosening of the rules and the emplacement of a better system to handle Parahumans of all stripes. Mainly because the numbers were going to explode since on a societal scale benders and shamans were little different from Parahumans outside the psychological. Plus some shards are still going to be total assholes no matter what we tell them to do.
Bending was spreading like wildfire, and every PRT member from accountant to soldier was learning, out of self preservation if nothing else. We were lucky bending wasn't automatic or we would've had some 90,000ish people in this city throwing around the elements like morons.
At the moment the police force was going through the motions, learning how to bend through classes taught by the more talented among the PRT instructors. They were likely going to provide the bulk of training simply due to proximity and their given governmental powers. When the PRT employs somewhere around eighty thousand people in the US alone, it's easier to scale things up. Plus there were a number of freaks who could learn what took most people months or years in weeks.
I had gotten firebending down in a month or two, airbending was more than that and biotics was a little easier but had more techniques. Waterbending was my poorest element and earthbending was a
meh skill in comparison to the almost Toph levels of bullshit coming from Charlotte.
In airbending Taylor was my superior, and at one point she threw a
Mako tank mockup with one of her bigger and more compressed blasts. There were going to be more than a
billion benders over the next few years, and getting in front of that mess was going to be the difference between civilization surviving and complete and utter collapse.
Plus from some word on the grapevine quite a few business leaders involved in the creation of NEPEA and litigations against Parahumans ended up with bending of their own or had children who were shaman. And there's cases of people back home making a turnaround the moment it turns out their
own kids are going to be screwed over for being gay or other things by things
they championed.
Because everyone is gung-ho for fucking others over until it turns out to hurt family. Though obviously not everyone was going to give a shit…but some would though and that might be enough on its own.
The cruiser currently had no name, and while it was mostly done there were refinements that needed to be made…and possible insights to be gained by letting other tinkers play with it. At the moment though I only had two tinkers besides myself, and one of them specialized on adjustable and compensating equipment primarily focused on maintaining himself or life processes…
oh.
Turnaround would probably be a good fit for making changes to the life support system as well as making equipment capable of compensating for damage, and being adjusted and tweaked on the fly. His armor was an example of such, essentially made out of a cellular structure that linked together and could be tweaked and receive massive damage without failing. They shifted by way of an energy field, moving to the basic programming he had put into the things.
At the moment I was taking a look at a special heatsink he was making, one that could serve as an upgrade for the lithium heatsink of the stealth drive. The main issue was the offensive systems, because due to the combination of technologies it had superior firepower to any cruiser its size and mass.
The main gun was a cruiser-scale Thanix cannon that was being continuously tweaked. The weapon was an odd one, scaling up more in impact than in raw firepower. A frigate could core a Turian battleship, a monster more than a kilometer and a half long with triple kinetic barrier between the hull layers. Hell if I had gone for a normal mass accelerator, it would hit harder than multiple Hiroshima's. More than eighty kilotons of throw energy.
The energy output of a Thanix projector was…
higher.
Then there was the largest payload cannon at about 540 meters in length for some tactical bombardment with air-burst warheads. Then there was the sandstorm cannon firing charged micro-particles to knock frigates and fighters out of the sky. The third main weapon is four dual-linked
Halcyon cannons.
They were as of now still incomplete systems, because scaling up Stilling to this scale was still beyond Bakuda's expertise and my tentative understanding of wavelength manipulation was rudimentary. The basics are that it was an application involving quantum-scale motion, you take a specific pattern and set it to zero, slowing or
stilling the motion on the macroscale. This was projected outwards in various shapes, speeds and forms and involved a beam of dimensional manipulation to effect properties down at a quantum-scale.
Kind of like Sting but tuned less toward severing physical laws and extending across dimensions and more towards focusing and cancelling such alterations of reality. Then again
most powers trigger small alterations in the local laws of physics to be possible to begin with. Glory Girl's shield was very similar to an Omni-shield but with a better photonic molecule configuration for greater efficiency, and small physics alterations to make it better than it should be…and creating dimensional bridges to negate the consequences of getting hit.
I mean she can still get thrown around of course but not as badly as she should be. The flight was a fifth dimensional effect, triggering alterations of reality to fly. That was one of the warpings I was most experienced with, and I was working out the path to powering it with dark energy invocations on a human-scale.
Sixth dimensional alterations were likely responsible for the incredible durability of a Mass Relay, and enough time would let me figure out how to
build true Relays. However I had nowhere near the titanic amount of Eezo required for even a single pair, though the smaller relay was not out of bounds. Hell the bridge from here to the ninth planet was a pseudo-relay. So I might be able to cheat around the problem with shard magic.
With every step on the ladder of the Entity tech tree we were getting closer and closer to simply replicating their abilities in full or substituting with dark energy reality manipulation. Though to be fair dark energy itself was only one of the outputs of the fifth fundamental force and was likely fundamentally different before it was coupled with the alteration of physical constants.
The weird glowing was more a side effect of dark energy being used up in a way that wasn't normal. Dark energy was
dark for a reason. Though with Thranx tech the glow was negligible.
Our success with growing Endbringer flesh was modest, and it took hybridizing it with other genetics to make the stuff grow within a nutrient pool. The interface allowed us to shape the flesh into the projectors for dark energy fields, and were better effectors for warping space due to coming from Bohu.
While I had the
very basic knowledge of the composition of Entity flesh down, most of it had been limited to facsimiles and bulky machines to warp dimensions. Even the more successful attempts could only go down so far on the scale of construction. Shards were biological picotech, smaller even so much of my work was cheating using dark energy manipulation and spirit world related shenanigans.
I was
close but most of my experimentation was on creating picotech components of my own design. Which was why I had one or two projects coming up that would put together a few heads, mainly Dragon, Armsmaster and Turnaround. His nano-thorns had at least
some structures down at the scale even if it as of yet was unrefined.
Once I got a more complete understanding for shard biology, I could likely build my own
true shards as required. Though the main issue would be feeding them to grow to actual practical sizes, because they needed to eat matter to grow the exotic elements that compose their semi-organic biology. I've had success with creating exotic matter, though not at the scale that Bakuda can manage with her bombs.
The exotic elements could emulate conventional matter, and others possessed metric-altering properties to perform the phase shifting between realities that the Entities figured out with greater efficiency. Not something new but it was difficult to copy, and despite my misgivings the seven vials I had on hand were useful, and I had the ability to differentiate between what led to what.
Turns out the vials provide a direct line to the shards they came from, so I could just talk to a shard to get a good mix for a power, plugging them into the network to stop deviances.
Beast was a shard to create strong Brutes though in past cycles it had been used as a tinker shard. Oculus was actually a cluster shard, a toolset shard for siphoning certain types of signals and forms of matter-energy. Numerology was a distant cousin to Numberman's shard, a calculative engine of vast power. Hephaestus and Niflheim are self-evident, though Niflheim's source shard was one specialized for generating cold and creating and manipulating types of ices using portals and local physics tweaks to divert heat.
Two new vials were neat, Alchemy was an unstable formula related to chemistry and matter transmutation that was only halfway configured to become a tinker shard. It was…very rarely used.
The Well vial was power sources, batteries and better reactors…and if I ever found someone I could trust to take the thing I would have been okay with using it to build better generators for the ship.
All seven shard vials had been
intensively scanned for hours on end by everything I had available from every possible pulsing of EM, ions, neutrinos, dark energy, and to special scanners for dimensional phenomena through emission of certain types of unique hyperdimensional particles.
The scanners allowed for intense detail down to the level of where atoms are, where I found that they were only
kind of crystalline all the way down. They were mostly nanotech, but were likely made up of even smaller subatomic structures to form shards on the fly. My pseudo-shards were much more primitive and bulkier in comparison, and had only worked because I had the math to create a dimensional shift, I needed hundreds of kilograms of the stuff to manage a small shift for one shuttle while real shards could be a tenth of the size…though that mainly worked because they would divert energy from other realities to power the effect.
In fact my pseudo-shards didn't really even make portals to send their own matter between themselves…and were outdated as well. A bit more organic than their modern machine-like descendents, even if they were already quite crystal-like.
Modern shards were something like sponges and fungus combined with computers,
My fakes were nanotech but not quite as effective as their modern biology.
Yet.
It took deep scans to get anything out of them, anything that could be considered structure and order. Shards were made up of a flexible crystal sheathed in a thin resilient polymer coat made mostly from carbon but a good
30 percent of it was made up of elements outside the current periodic table, with a similar percentage in the crystal itself.
It was hard to get the detail because of how dense and opaque the flesh was to light, so I made use of electromagnetic-eezonic field vectors and a neutrino scanner made by Grace to get some better resolution. The crystalline material was semi-organic as expected, but closer inspection found that the crystal itself did form components but this was down at the nanometer scale and again they were opaque enough to require intense manipulations to figure out.
The flesh was a form of exotic smart matter, a…crystal polymer that could be induced to shift density and molecular properties and could phase change between liquid and solid as required.
The smallest components were the snowflake-like elements made up of a slurry of organic and inorganic compounds interlinked in hexagonal 'cells' forming organic circuitry making use of what had to be multiple different computing mediums at once. Molecular machinery that was
beyond my current technology and my own description had to be inaccurate in some way. Shard memory appeared to be holographic, seemingly storing data on a subatomic(if not quantum) scale based on weird transmissions when I pushed apart or destroyed the less dense samples with my tech.
I picked up proteins and XNA fragments, though they were
probably indirectly used as data storage, and more likely were used as part of the nanomachine network of a shard, with the data stored in some type of energy lattice held in place by dimensional manipulation. Probably…maybe?
It was amazing…and
unnerving.
I caught a flash of gold in my peripheral vision and my heart ceased and my vision blurred when I turned around, hands gripping at my shirt until it went taut.
There was nothing but the glint from some circuitry I had been working on and the air returned to my lungs. I shivered and I ignored the spike of fear and terror invoked by a simple glint of the light. There was nothing wrong with some nerves, nothing wrong with…with…
A fist the size of my body rocketed past me, the beast letting out a silent roar as waves of compressed ocean water surged…and I saw Velocity in those waters.
The Mother of Miseries let out a mournful scream, and I swallowed my terror as I heard the screams of the damned.
The golden man hung in the air, all the air stolen from my lungs. I didn't want to d—
I took in a deep gulp of fresh air, smiling fakely. That didn't matter…
I had a date to get to anyway…
___
July 10th, 2011. 11:00AM
Basilia Rubio
I stared at the place that I had been told was the meeting spot for our date, and I was both impressed and disturbed at the rapidity of the repairs made to the city and the addition of new infrastructure. The trainyard had been hard hit, and we were lucky that the separation from the mainland wasn't too substantial. Benders had managed to summon up a stable pathway to set up the stations that were still used while the rest were demolished and a few were turned into parks like New York did for old railroads.
But I hadn't expected what I was seeing here while waiting at a freshly made wooden bench.
The former railway was gone, with only a few historical buildings behind erected barriers, grass growing through the tracks and numerous young trees planted in the soil, with a single healthy oak tree some twenty feet in height that was proudly growing.
A week ago the tree was sickly and full of disease and now it literally sang with life. There were a few dozen people tentatively hanging around and I kind of understood why. The power base of the gangs was scattered and broken, but the people had a decade of terror and oppression from multiple Parahumans still on the brain.
I glanced around but didn't sense her with my feet off the ground and my ARO focused on other tasks. So I checked my breath and found it not disgusting, and I was ready to call her when I saw her head poking up from a crowd. She was about a half a head to a head taller than most of the people visiting the modest park though a few were around her height.
Taylor weaved between people and I felt my lips pull up into a smile as she stepped out of the crowd. She wore a plain grey sleeveless tank-top, and my gaze lifted to the refined muscles that I very much liked. She wore a pair of skinny jeans that had obviously been a product of Vicky's pushiness, and I did my best not to stare.
Much.
I waved my hand in the air, and Taylor turned on her heels to move in my direction once she was free from the crowd. I watched her, shifting one leg on to the other and bouncing it nervously as I realize
I had no fucking idea on what to do.
I didn't go on dates, didn't get girls wanting to date me, and didn't have a wonderful woman like Taylor ready to fight by my side and help make my dreams a reality and…and…oh she's wearing the necklace I made for her too.
"Basilia?" I blinked and then blanched when I saw that Taylor was looming over me, concern in her eyes.
"Sorry just panicking because I have no idea how dates work." I was self deprecating, chuckling at my own expense. Taylor simply smiled and reached for my hands, interlacing our fingers together in a soft show of affection.
"I'm not better off either Silia…" I flushed at that stupid barely used nickname that Elle came up with to make me suffer. "But we have a whole day to figure that out, we can hang out like normal…get everything straightened out." I felt warm and the urge to melt was strong but resistable. Sometimes Taylor really could be so charming. And sometimes she could be incredibly…
incredibly sexy.
I licked my lips, and did my best to put away those thoughts for a later time. I don't know if it was slightly reduced stress or the opposite but I was in a
weird mood if that was what my thoughts were reduced to.
"So what…are we going to just wander around the city for a while, see if there's anything nice to look forward to?"
Taylor nodded. "It's a little easier to walk around without the chances of getting mugged. All the Rehab centers and other systems are…a big help, plus since the unemployment rate is dropping…"
Oh…that had born from talks with the mayor where I had advocated for larger social nets so less people would fall through the cracks. Which were only made possible because the gangs were broken, and we proved to the world that the Endbringers were killable. Now I just needed a way to block the Simurgh's Precog and counter her telekinesis, though I did question how her Postcognition hadn't worked out my tech.
Maybe she couldn't see my past for some reason? Or…the shards were there when the boundaries between our two reality clusters shattered, maybe that had more than screwed with her power. Perhaps the spirits themselves were interfering with her sight?
I benched this train of thought for my sanity.
On the unemployment, while there had been an initial increase from the damage to the city, the money pouring in made repairs go quickly as did bending in mass. There was likely going to be a massive local industry related to teaching it, and we had directly employed well over a hundred people which likely indirectly led to many times that number in jobs.
The level of economic failure in parts of the city would likely continue to drop, but it also meant the possibility of gentrification and the kicking out of people who were no longer needed or wanted in the new economy. I'm not sure I could
solve those problems but I was going to do my best to at least keep that issue more manageable.
A finger tapped on my big nose, cutting off my thoughts. "Are you doing that thing
where your mind starts wandering onto other topics?" Taylor asked, and I leaned back at her tone.
"No…?"
Taylor playfully pulled me from my seat with a small tug of her arm. "You are! It's a pretty rude thing to do."
I smiled dumbly. "You're not easy to ignore Taylor…you are
very easy on the eyes honeybee." She flushed and I flashed a toothy grin, uncaring for how dumb that sounded. "Actually…I just realized this place is perfect for a picnic."
Her eyes widened marginally. "That would have been something to think about
before we came here. We don't have any food here." Besides a few small shops being set up to sell to people that go here.
"Why not though? We have free time, plus…you know…" I made a gesture that was circular and hoped she got it.
Taylor tilted her head and said."You're sure you want to make that trip?"
"I
like cooking with you, it's relaxing and it gives me time to admire you." She looked stupefied, and at the moment I only had eyes for her.
"Okay." I grabbed her hand, and she shook her head.
…
So we were going to make some food and then we were going to have a picnic.
Nice and simple and
safe.
___
July 10th, 2011. 12:00PM
Basilia Rubio
We sat down beneath one of the larger planted trees, a wispy one about half the height and a tenth of the mass of the oldest tree in the park. The food we had brought was nothing special, just two chicken wraps with guacamole for me and a boring ass turkey ham, cheese, lettuce and tomato on whole grain bread for Taylor. I had made some iced green tea with citrus and honey for myself, and Taylor had a bottle filled with the same tea for her own needs. Crisp apple slices added some additional sweetness to the meal.
I had ended up tying back my hair, once I realized the tips were past my shoulders again. I
liked my pretty hair, especially once I figured out how to wash it right and started doing actual self maintenance instead of being lazy.
Even if I had started to lose track of that again.
But I had my limits on the practicality, Taylor might be okay with her long hair but I was not.
We were lying down on a spot that had particularly lush grass, a place that called to me in some ways. I glanced at the spirits that wafted around us, spirits of plants, of community, of air and earth, and the growing aspect of the Park itself. It was young…barely more than a reflection of the material world.
A few wisps of love hung around us, my eyes narrowing in response. At this size and scale of power they were harmless, merely feeding off of the resonance of love rather than stoking it. Any attempt at
tainting my relationship would be met with a fiery fist and oblivion. The wisps knew not to provoke me, if their growing distance was any indication.
"Do you see them?" Taylor asked quietly, carefully, curiously, I knew her feelings by my familiarity with her and the way her tongue flicked and her heartbeat changed and her legs shifted in position even as we were sitting down.
"Always." I murmured back, letting my sweet tea swirl as I moved the bottle it was in. "It's nothing I'm not used to…and they're friendly and helpful enough. They have wisdom and knowledge to share that I was
meant to know." Even so I did not often speak to Void, such things were difficult for even the greatest of shamans, the ones on Earth were content to drift and exist and the ones that came from the space between worlds were dangerous and alien in form and purpose even to the local spirits themselves. Even so…Void was
everywhere.
"What's it like…to be able to commune with the spirits?" There was a burning curiosity in her eyes, and I felt obliged to try and answer her.
"It's an expansion of one's understanding of the world, the ability to smell color and taste sound, to see doors where there are none, to see an additional layer to reality that few others can understand. It's…natural to me, instinctual and…" I fumbled over my words, having a hard time describing what it was like to see the abstract in physical form
"I'm not sure I understand…but it's a bit like my bugs isn't it? It's not easy to put it into words, but you can sort of describe it through analogy." I smiled at her attempt to understand.
"Being a shaman is an experience that is fundamentally at odds with common sense or modern logic, though there isn't a complete lack of one either." There was some logic to spirits simply
because they were concepts given form and flesh. For spirits of fire, it was obvious that many would have weaknesses to cold, to water and suppressants to their existence. Other aspects corresponding to fire would give them additional weaknesses and thus areas to exploit. Rage, anger, passion, all could be turned against them.
It was why Shard-spirits were so dangerous, they had few Bans because it was in their nature to evolve and adapt and become greater. They were at that borderline between spirit and soul, or perhaps their souls were so much more like the spirits than was the norm due to their very nature.
Then again
Koh was a spirit of Void and his power was once unrivaled.
"Basilia?" I turned away from my inner thoughts, ignoring how I 'knew' how powerful the Face Stealer was.
"Sorry." She shook her head, and took a bite from her sandwich, chewing easily and watching me with an odd look. "I'm just thinking, but maybe we should try talking about other things? Else we'll be here all day."
"That wouldn't be a problem, but whatever makes you comfortable." Taylor tentatively let the topic go and moved on to another conversation. "I've been wondering about your family."
My smile broke, my emotions taking a turn for the worst at her words. At what she wanted to ask of me. "O-Okay…I've told you a bit about my dad and mom right?"
"Not a lot. You never really seem comfortable with the topic and I didn't want to overstep myself." That was kind of her…but maybe I should have been talking about it.
I shrugged my shoulders, doing my best not to express too much negativity. "What do you want to know?"
"Anything you're willing to tell me." She was accommodating, and I recalled that natural charisma and gravity that Taylor possessed. It was a dangerous trait but appealing if one could see past appearances. I had done my best to try to push back on some of her…natural need for control. She could be harsh and demanding, but had softened up because while she was nominally the leader I still had ultimate control over Athena and the White Lotus.
At the least she was being more receptive to the thoughts and feelings of others. I tried my best not to be biased, and wanted others to try to be the same…if only to improve themselves, to be able to step back, take a breath and look at something from another angle.
I had a hard time with the same concept, because I was only human. But I tried and that had to be enough, and it wasn't then it was a first step. So I took a deep breath and started talking.
"I'll…talk about my parents first." I wasn't sure if I was saying this to her or to myself. "If you want to know about my dad…he's well…a bit like me but with a much stronger control freak problem." I laughed awkwardly, but there was a tension that almost
hurt as I talked. "He used to be an athlete for a while, until the niche sport he was playing died out in the US."
"What sport?" Taylor inquired and I was almost glad to oblige her.
"Jai alai. Seems popular enough in Spain but not so much so here…so he worked for a non emergency medical transport company for a while. Think of it like a taxi for decrepit people." Hey not every person was old and weak from dialysis, though like a third of them were. "Big transport vans with gurneys, wheelchair lifts and oxygen for the weaker patients. Way less expensive than a five thousand dollar ambulance ride. This was about ten years ago I think?" My memory from my youth was a lot spottier than my current memory and even then I often 'culled' other memories to keep my attention on today.
"What happened?" She asked, leaning back on the picnic blanket.
My lips curled up without my permission. "We ended up moving away from Florida and back to my ancestral homeland of Cali. Not too far from the border which was where most of my family was.
Minus the aunts and uncles I may or not have."
Turns out a good portion of my family whether by blood or marriage were pieces of human garbage and shit.
"What was that?" She sounded surprised at my vehemence.
"My grandfather on my mother's side is a shithead." Was the explanation I gave to her. I didn't feel like elaborating because even what I had overheard about him painted him as a total bastard. Actually quite a significant fraction of my family had some amount of issues varying from high tempers, alcoholism, control issues, unhealthy diets and various amounts of toxicity.
It was…a problem I was at least partially insulated from simply due to distance or lack of social interaction with the more…extreme members of my family. Though it was not quite to the point of being
completely dysfunctional. And I might be letting my own biases exaggerate the problem.
"Oh." I smiled at her reply, and sipped at the bottle of iced tea with a happy humm.
"My parents ended up partnering with some close friends with more money to start up their own transportation business…and it worked out until they started to get pushy and more…insistent. Eventually we split the assets while they kept the name and my dad and mom came up with a new similar name."
"What happened to the company?" Taylor asked.
I nodded with a smug grin. "Turns out funding a business doesn't give you the acumen to run it. We were a healthy upper middle class family even while my parents' marriage fell apart." She frowned.
"Fell apart?"
I bit into a chicken wrap to forestall the need for explain that. "My dad screwed up, and their marriage became increasingly toxic and unhealthy as they fought more and more until…I couldn't take it anymore." I let out an uneven breath, I wasn't much younger than Elle when that relationship shattered after
23 years. "My mom was a bit of a spitfire, though more in the sense of being strong willed I guess? She was a bit neurotic too and I got…tired of their attempts to patch things up before my dad would screw it up again, or they simply stopped being able to stand one another."
"I'm sorry to hear that." I crossed a shapely leg over the other, my expression more sad than anything else.
"Yeah well…a perfect life really doesn't exist though they at least
tried to raise me right and I didn't come out a raging psychopath so they did well enough." I took a more playful tone, and despite lingering resentment towards them…it didn't mean I didn't love them.
"So they aren't together anymore?" She was looking down into her bottle of sweet tea with an odd look.
"Not really. They still work…together but they've got their own lives and while they still snipe at each other from time to time they're on working terms at the very least." It wasn't an amicable separation but neither was it hateful.
"You said you had brothers?" We continued the one sided twenty questions.
"Two of them, my full brother who should be nine this year and my half-brother who should be three." My smile was watery. "They're both a bunch of brats, but at the least I cared about them even if I could be shitty at showing it." God I knew how much of an asshole I was as a brother, and E—my full brother was
good at pushing my buttons.
"Do you have any pictures?" My body froze and my thoughts realigned towards something else.
Did I have pictures?
I shakily checked the secured data of my omni-tool, using the HUD built into my eye. I had downloaded everything on my old phone before scrapping it for parts and to remove all evidence by melting it down into omni-gel.
I found a bunch of pictures, most from before January since I hadn't taken many and was taken on the third if my fuzzy memories were right. Pictures of art I liked including a drawing of Lung, of Hero, and…numerous pictures of both my brother, myself and my mom with most of the ones with myself and my mom being from a trip to DC that got screwed over by the government shutdown a year ago.
Fucking orange bastard…
I pulled out a display glass made to resemble a phone, and showed Taylor a picture of my mom posing with a Barack Obama figure. Her eyes narrowed.
"She…you look a lot like her." She seemed a little shocked. "I didn't expect her to be so…uhh." She shut up and I giggled, but gave her a pointed look for staring at my
mother like that.
"I inherited my looks from my parents, it's to be expected." I replied dryly, raising an eyebrow. "I used to look more like my…dad." I murmured but she heard it just fine.
"Do you have…pictures of what you used to look like?" I searched and found a few from when we posed with life-like figures in DC, I let her look at them and a few from a visit to the Library of Congress and her expression changed.
"What?" I leaned back a bit as she took a nice long look at some of my old pictures that I had
forgotten I had.
"I didn't know you were so tiny." I felt my face heat at the comment.
"I…what?" I leaned back and she easily shifted over, leaning on my shoulders despite her eight inch height and twenty pound weight advantage. "I wasn't
that tiny." Her mischievous grin told me I had fallen into her trap.
"You were
shorter back then than you are now, and you're still rather small." I growled and then melted when she leaned down, pressing into my unprepared back.
"I'm only small to you because you're a giant." She flinched and I kept talking. "A pretty one to be sure, but still…tall. Not that there's anything wrong with that." There really was not. I had a thing for height, one that was probably sourced from my lack of it.
"You okay?" I expressed my confusion, leaning my head back and blinking moisture from my eyes. She looked sad. "You're crying."
I'm what?
I reached for my eyes, and found salty water that I traced back to them. I rubbed them, and tried to calm my shaking body and failed.
"I…I'm fine." The immediate leap towards lying left a bad taste in my mouth and Taylor wasn't impressed if her grave expression was anything to go by.
"No you're not." I felt weak, and nodded limply.
"No I'm not."
"You miss them? Miss your home?" She said what I expected and I lost most of my remaining strength.
"Yeah…" What was there to hide on that front? I wasn't going to hide that from
her because she was too perceptive for her own good. "It's nothing to worry about." I didn't know why I kept putting my foot in my mouth because Taylor looked
pissed.
"Then why are you still shaking…?" I steeled myself, trying to suppress the shakes and barely succeeding.
"I…I…don't know." She must have seen something on my face because she squared her shoulders and stared me down.
"You…don't have to tell me if you're not comfortable. But…you
should open up a little more if you can. You talked about your family…and I think I'll do the same."
"Okay…"
"I'll tell you what my dad has told me when I asked him. My family on his side was…"
___
July 10th, 2011. 4:30PM
Basilia Rubio
I found myself following my instincts, sauntering in the same clothes as on the date with Taylor. There was a scent I was following, one that I couldn't fully identify though it made it no less enticing. I had gotten myself turned around half a dozen times but it didn't throw me off the trail of what
I was telling myself.
"Hey you!" I snapped my head down to a squeaky voice, raising an eyebrow at the small child that had decided to approach me. It was a girl about eight years old, with dirty blonde hair, green eyes and tan skin. Not white, more a pale Mexican with high European genetics, though there was a sense of precociousness that made me wary.
"What's up?" The girl looked at me like I was stupid, and pointed down. I stepped back from the cliff some fifty feet high, brows lifting to their highest peak. None of the places on the new island of Brockton had cliffs this high that I knew of which meant I had moved quite a bit without noticing.
I shrugged, it wasn't that important.
"The pretty lady in the hat wanted to talk to you." Contessa was the first name to come to mind, though she wasn't
why I had walked over twenty miles from the city.
I lifted my shoulders, and the kid walked back towards a small town that was affected but not destroyed by Leviathan. I 'saw' Contessa through my feet, though it was slightly muffled since I had normal shoes on, and thin soles were less effective than the special material that made up the soles of my other pairs.
She was sitting down on a flat smooth stone, crossing one leg over the other in a casual fashion. There was a confidence that I lacked even at my best, one that put Taylor's best intimidating stances to shame. She was moving her lips, obviously speaking to someone, though without visual contact I couldn't tell what she was doing. She was calm though, her heartbeat impossibly steady and her breathing was normal.
I turned a corner across a hill of craggy rock, and found the woman most key to Cauldron's continued existence. She was in the same outfit that was her signature look, expression blank though her heartbeat rose a bit in response to my approach.
"What do you want? I asked placidly, wanting to get back to what I was looking for.
"You were not meant to be on my path today…but then at times it seems destiny likes being funny." She was almost emotional, a low drawl that had to mean she was pissed off.
Void whispered, so quiet and barely perceptible to my ears. A silvery light flickered at the edge of my vision. "You'll be useful then." I gripped onto Fortuna, and she looked decidedly shocked as I pulled her into the spirit world. There was a taste to the air, tainted by something foreign and yet familiar. The Outer Sphere was in turmoil, spirits angry and annoyed and they called for me in their language of the Root.
I stepped without hesitation, up and out into the High Spirit where the looking glass was far less clear. I followed my instincts, let something beyond mind and logic guide me and my passenger across the meandering roads of the Wild Spirit.
We popped into the town directly, and Contessa pulled out a green cloak, finding it laying around and giving it to me. I nodded and put it on, and my omni-tool was used to make a simple mask.
"I know where we need to go." Contessa said plainly and I followed, the woman smoothly stepping towards the threat I was seeking to stop. A person stood in the way, and I saw that it was a grey haired woman with widening eyes.
"Are you here for
it?"
"We are." She stared for a moment and made a motion of zipping her lips, eyes twinkling. Fortuna's lips twitched and we were met with no more interruptions as I felt the disturbance in the spirit world. The town looked tired and sounded tired, and I squared my shoulders at the loud scream that came from the rending of reality. I left Fortuna free to do her part and began to murmur as I started to work on
my part.
There was a forest filled with fog, and Fortuna kicked off the ground and jumped up into the trees. So that confirmed the presence of a soul, not that I lacked the ability to check, though turning it off was best because it was too distracting outside certain circumstances.
Instead of avoiding the fog I marched into it, and opened the World Eyes. Numerous people were trapped in the fog, from people about twice Contessa's age to
half my own. I couldn't move them because they were being held in place by black tendrils that bent the fabric of reality.
I let out a breath, one that pushed back at the fog, one that flashed with the light of the spirits. Biotics lit up in a one-two-three neural flick, a barrier brought to full strength as I followed my gut and stopped at the center of this mess. In the trees was where Contessa laid down her attacks, her pistol spitting heavy bullets at the creature creating the warping of spacetime.
The spirit entity materialized, and my blood ran cold even as I gained an edge in understanding.
Glass rose up, scintillating edges forming a comprehensive shape and order as the being compressed a vast bulk into a single body. A storm of shards, with each fragment a well of spinning spacetime. A near-infinite edge to its glassy makeup, it stood on four crab-like legs, black-red flesh pulsing and holding up an elongated serpentine form made out of glass teeth ending in a black demonic mask with no eyes, mouth or nose.
It was the spirit of a shard that had forgotten its name, and with no name it was a creature in fear and terror and pain, trying to make connections with humans and unable to out of a lack of experience with its new form. It was taking bullets and receiving no real damage from them, but that wasn't the point of it.
The spirit
screamed and I fled into a biotic charge, each shard of glass cutting through matter and erasing it where it stood. The fog swelled, and my eyes narrowed as it charged up a blast of energy that if it hit…would wipe nearby buildings to the former community park from existence. Each filled with dozens of scared innocent people.
I threw back my arms and let out a shout, my borrowed cloak waving in the building wind. I opened the doors of my mind, body and soul and
asked.
INDOMITABLE VIRTUE, ADAMANT AEGIS, UNSTOPPABLE FATE,
GEAR OF THE HUB
RISE TO THE CALL OF A CHILD BOUND TO A FATE NOT OF HER CHOOSING!
WHAT CONFLICT WILL COME, BECOME THE SHIELD OF THE INNOCENT!
WHAT ABERRANCE COMES, FREE THE MIND AND EXPOSE THE TRUTH!
WHEN ONE SUCCUMBS, FORM A LINE OF IMPERVIOUS ARMOR;
GREATER THAN STEEL AND STRONGER THAN NATIONS.
THE BATTLE LINES ARE SET; RESTRICT THIS ONE'S TRAVEL.
As I spoke there was a shimmer and that great and terrible droning beam was stopped by a barrier of countless spirits of virtue and duty, guardians of the innocent and protectors of the world. The whirling edges shredded reality, but even they could not penetrate. I bounded away from the beast, taking Contessa with me in a blast of wind and biotic force. The town held, shimmering with a bright and wondrous light. She threw out her arm, and with grit teeth pushed with all her might to kick an mostly uprooted tree onto the spirit as it ran flat out. That bought us the precious seconds I needed.
We landed and I chanted once again, eyes widening and throat clearing in preparation.
UNBREAKABLE CONNECTION, UNSLIPPING THOUGHT, BINDING CONTRACT;
GEAR OF CONTAINMENT.
ANCIENT AS STONE AND INEVITABLE AS DEATH. TO THE WRATHFUL SHARD;
RESTRICT!
Spirits came to my aid, pulsing radio waves becoming as solid as rock and steel, lashing together a rope of spirits of connection and broadcasting. The spinning storm of glass faltered and I smiled.
AS IT STRIKES AGAINST ITS EMERALD FORTUNE;
RESTRAIN!
AS IT YEARNS TO FIGHT AND DESTROY;
DENY!
The beast of broken shards let out a warble, black light radiating and slowly burning through its short lived chains. I trusted that this being would serve a greater and better purpose, and I trusted my own thoughts to the task at hand. Fortuna was convenient as a source of the spirits I needed and I grinned once more. They swirled around her, and I continued. A hand filled with nothing and I chanted.
INAUDIBLE VOID, UNSAID QUESTION, RELAY IN THE FOG, ORIGIN OF PROPHECY;
GEAR OF RECOGNITION.
THE TERM WHICH ONCE WAS CALCIFIED, NOW THE ANSWER AWAKENS.
THE TALE THAT GUIDED ALL LIFE HAS RETURNED FROM THE ASHES.
YET THE NAME WHICH BROUGHT THE WORLD FORTH IS FORGOTTEN.
UNCOVER!
A chain snapped and Contessa's bullets flew true, energy was set off in waves and another chain snapped. I simply continued to do the task I was
made for.
ELDER OF LOST KNOWLEDGE, BURN AWAY THE DARKNESS!
CHRONICLER OF LEGEND, OPEN THE DOOR TO A NEW FUTURE!
MASTER OF THE FATES, LOOK INTO THE BROKEN SHARD AND SHOW;
ITS NAME, ITS PURPOSE, ITS NATURE.
SHOW ME YOUR NAME, FEARFUL WYRM!
TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!
___
Doctor Mother held a vial, a new one that had a particular strong percentage of the Foreign Element. She kept the vial far from her, especially once there was a pulse, and a flicker of
something passed through her. A name came unbidden for what she could call this shard.
"Fang." There was a brief sensation of solitude, and the Doctor sighed.
___
July 10th, 2011. 5:00PM
Basilia Rubio
I hadn't stayed long in the town, parting ways with Fortuna who had been giving me a confounded expression that I had promptly kept as a permanent memory in my brain. I hadn't offered them healing because they already had their own waterbenders, and I wondered how many benders were in New Hampshire since they were more than forty five miles away from Brockton Bay. Fortuna had other business to attend to, since the removal of the spirit as a factor opened up a path or some bullshit. As well as revealed other things she needed to take care of…
The shard spirit had followed me home, though it had fortunately retreated into the Outer Sphere, and was searching for an empty world to call home. It was a large shard, some once broken fragment fro—
"Basilia…what the
fuck is that?" Vicky startled me, eyes wide as she wildly pointed at the shard. I turned and the shard-spirit tilted its flexible neck made out of crystalline interlocking teeth, and I understood her mortal terror. It hadn't changed in appearance much, though it's blank mask had turned white and ugly scrawl made it resemble a smiley face.
It didn't help.
"Vicky…meet the Fanged Self. A shard that forgot its name and tried to eat a town." She looked at me like I was crazy, but that was impossible, I was perfectly and completely sane. Hell I had an
excess of sanity, and could give some away if needed.
"Why…when?" I had no idea what she was about so I kept going.
"About thirty minutes ago, and the implications of shards manifesting in the physical world has started to set in. Plus there's the readings from the portals that indicate that there are multiple portals to other realithidden across the world and causing problems. It's nothing complicated."
Her concern was visible. "Are you okay?" I twitched violently.
"No. Not really."
Does the Vyasa-hub require assistance?
…
Sometimes I really resent the circumstances of my life.
___
AN: So this chapter was delayed a bit because I was busy writing another story and it was late when I remembered I needed to post it. Probably a bit too much technobabble, but that's the thing with having a Tinker SI. Though it does let me talk about how Shards could function…in a fictional universe rather than in reality.
Regardless of how it may or may not work it's fair to say that shards are bullshit Clarketech with nearly limitless processing power and energy storage and distribution mechanisms.
As for this Arc? It's going to involve quite a few things, mainly the more subtle consequences of being the epicenter of the death of an Endbringer. As well as other consequences of course of being an unwilling SI to begin with.
Because I see in a lot of them how they are generally able to deal rather well with being dumped on another world, and I have only a few I've read where that isn't true. Basilia isn't magically shielded from trauma and emotional problems for one thing.
Those are simply challenges she'll have to deal with.
