"Two flyers in one day? They're getting way too common."
"It's worse," the commander informs them, "South Karlsland got hit with three at once. We're taking Lytee's express and sleeping there. You can sit out if you absolutely need to, but Freya's still recovering so we could use you as a comms relay."
"No, I'll come. I just reserve the right to complain about it."
The 42nd United Forces Witch Wing takes off and assembles into a perfect synchronized formation as Lytee charges her teleport power.
...This is not South Karlsland wilderness.
[note: halfway through this thread I created a unique account for Grendyne. Do not be alarmed by the change in account. -Rockeye]
Nearby, she can hear crashes and explosions.
She sees a variety of people in costumes. Some are matching costumes, most aren't. It's not immediately obvious what they're fighting about, but the five in non-matching costumes are running from the other three. The crowd of armed non-costumed individuals may have something to do with that.
She sets to copying the closest of the four powers that smell like information, from one of the five running away. It's trickier than usual, but if it's any decent kind of information-getting ability it should tell her some of what the fuck is going on.
And more information.
The language is roughly similar to what they speak in Liberion, with accents she can't place.
Those two are teammates, not considered a serious threat by their opponents.
Most of the people in red and green are here unwillingly, at the command of the woman in the gas mask.
She herself is the one responsible for most of the explosions.
And then Grendyne suddenly develops a splitting headache. The magic here is weird .
But the gas-masked lady seems to be the aggressor here. She decides in an instant - far too risky to help the coerced crowd right now. Protect who you can. Arrow goes out, spearing one of the bombs currently flying through the air. And she dives down and puts up the widest shield she can manage, a translucent wall of blue light, closely following the retreating five.
"You lot are the victims here, so I'm helping. Can't hold the shield long though. I can carry one person."
Telekinesis floats the unconscious person into her arms and she ascends, dropping the shield.
She grabs the information power again, holding it as lightly as possible, trying to aim it at places-to-put-this-guy. And she doesn't need a power to identify out-of-the-way roofs.
It outputs facts about whatever specific thing she is thinking at, and doesn't usually have enough starting information to answer that question. The headache starts building before she gets an answer (magic here continues to be uncooperative) but eventually one of the storage units registers as unlocked and unused. If she leaves him in there he'll wake up uninterrupted, if unhappy.
She's lost her hold of the information spell by now, so she has to estimate where group of four has gotten to. But it's only been a minute or so. And she can probably just follow the sound of explosions.
On second thought, a brawl seems like the kind of thing the authorities should know about. And neither of those groups were that.
She flies high and looks for something official.
The other salient detail is the explosions currently going off all across the city. Various colors, brightnesses, at least one explosion made of silence and darkness, no two alike. These clearly aren't ordinary bombs, and it probably isn't an everyday occurrence.
When she sees the newcomers, she cheers. "It's the white hats! Here to see me turn this guy's head inside out?"
She also tele-talks to the downed ones, "If there's anything I can do to disarm her bombs, whisper it 'at' me."
Just to check, though, she grabs bomb-lady's power and tries to make sense of it.
It doesn't work.
What other potentially useful powers are here, other than the headache inducing extrapolating one?
Armsmaster answers the bomber by confidently stating some suitably heroic form of "meh, I can take her." To which the bomber crows, "Nope! You make a move, all these people go the way of Park Jihoo there!" She waves her grenade launcher at a stain on the ground that plausibly could have once been a person.
One of the downed capes hisses toe rings. Left foot without their enemies noticing.
Invisibility is really hard. She barely kept it at all. But if anything deserves her best efforts, it's this.
A mostly-invisible arrow lances out while the bomber is mid-boast, curves down in midair, and slices off those toes. And Grendyne drops onto the nearest roof, semi-conscious, because that took way too much mana.
She starts launching grenades at her opponents. Grendyne isn't in a position to see much of what goes on, but after the first few explosions and a charge from the man in blue, the terrified crowd of formerly coerced people attack the bomber with whatever comes to hand.
The other four capes flee, a cloud of darkness hiding them from the hero.
"Grendyne Nylund. I'll have the mana to get myself back into the air in a few minutes injury or no. Less if you have stimulants. I've got questions, though, what the hell is going on here? I expected to pop out of the transport spell and stop a Neuroi ravaging South Karlsland, and instead found insane bombers with weird magic! And where am I anyway? Liberion? Britannia?"
You're in the city of Brockton Bay. Britannia is across the Atlantic, and I've never heard the other names. Or of magic, though powers are poorly enough understood that they might as well be.
As for what the hell, Bakuda started detonating bombs across the city until I captured her. And she was about to kill a different group of villains, whom I didn't manage to capture. My teammates are running search and rescue."
"One of the escaping group told me how she was controlling the bombs though my whisper spell - toe rings. Hey, these stims are good stuff." She starts floating, a faint presence and slight glow coming off her. "Lead the way."
Armsmaster jumps off the roof, hauls Bakuda onto his motorcycle, and heads toward the hospital. He makes a brief stop to hand Bakuda off to someone at the PRT building, which is very intentionally near their destination. After reaching there, he addresses Grendyne, "Lots of injured from the bombs. You willing to help rescue civilians? It'll get you bumped up the line."
"Of course. I have no idea what's going on here, but explanations can wait. I can carry one person flying but I'll need more stims and probably some food. The invisible guided-arrow was really draining. Oh, and I can incompletely copy some powers, is there someone with a healing power I can try to grab?"
Armsmaster answers, "Yes, definitely. If you can copy powers, you'd be more effective here with Panacea. This is where all the injured are being brought."
"Hi, Panacea. Eesh - yeah, that's slippery. I can only just barely copy your power. I think I can do blood, bones, burns, shrapnel, and cuts, but not torn nerves or vital organs or anything, you'll have to keep doing the detail work. I'm thinking I either prep or clean up the little things after you're done. Mind getting my leg real quick? The pain is starting to be annoying."
"If I can focus on the nerves and organs, that'll speed us up."
She goes back to asking each patient for permission and then touching them. Now some of them end up not completely healed, and she passes those ones to her partner.
After a couple of hours of this, she's too low on mana to continue, stims or no stims. It's not even physical exhaustion, the magic just isn't there. She apologizes, leaves, attempts to find food and water.
She does that, and follows him close to ground level, presuming nobody has moved it and nothing stops them.
Military guy will probably be slightly concerned if he sees the no less than eight flintlock pistols and bags of gunpowder and shot stored in one of its compartments.
"Nice, a horseless carriage. Someone made engines that fit inside something smaller than a train."
When she comes downstairs, she opens with, "Giving me a nice place to sleep bought you my interest. At home I was necessary, if I didn't help the Witches, the Neuroi would glass one more city, turn another hundred farmsteads to ash. Here that doesn't seem to be a problem so you'll need to convince me to join this group instead of what seemed like at least a half a dozen other groups in this city."
Half of the groups here are criminal gangs. Drugs, robberies, the occasional rape or murder, and different directions of racism. I'm assuming you don't want to join any of those.
Last night was one of the rare emergencies worse than turning a hundred farmsteads to ash. And the bombs were only a distraction while one of Bakuda's teammates broke another out of jail.
This organization, working for a man called Coil, is one of the groups opposing those. Unlike the official heroes, we operate more like a military than like a game of dodgeball. There is an elaborate system of unspoken rules, in which nobody kills one another or exposes secret identities, but it also involves nobody trying very hard to get their opponents arrested. This organization, staffed entirely by non-capes with the possible exception of you, is outside those rules and can make more progress."
"It sounds like I'd be opposing people, not forces of nature or incomprehensible aliens. I'd have killed Bakuda if that was the only way to get her to stop exploding things, yes, but please take a moment to appreciate that human enemies are new to me. And I hardly believe you're composed entirely of non-capes, especially as you seem to be trying to recruit me."
Initially, we wanted to recruit you as a form of misdirection. With your powers, anything you did would appear to be friendly or accidental fire, and examination after the fact would bear that out. Knowledge of the opponent is crucial against capes, by the way, that might not be true of your aliens. And when facing a previously unknown cape, you would be able to tell us exactly what we're up against.
That's why we want you. One thing we can offer that other groups can't, is a better chance at getting home. Senegal mentioned telling you that no one knows how. Coil is in a better position than most to try to find out. Second best would be the Protectorate, but whether they would be willing to is another question."
"Yeah, well... This whole thing feels very sketchy. I do think you're acting in good faith here, giving me a roof and so on, but I didn't sign up to the Witch Wings to use my magic on humans. I might wait for the paralysis of rules you claim exists to show itself before considering options outside the law."
Here, there aren't many targets for magic other than humans. Except the Endbringers, and most of the time there isn't an attack going on. If that's the concern, you should be with whoever can get you to your home world fastest. And that's probably us."
"Hm. Alright, I am provisionally willing to work with you in exchange for Coil looking into ways to get me home and - let's say double my salary in the Witches, plus a risk bonus when you send me into combat. I'll work out the equivalency later, it's not likely to be utterly ridiculous, they don't pay us that much. But I do not want to sign a contract at this time because your organization would likely just ignore it if you really felt like doing that. Oh, and if you can get lots of silver and gold and gemstones that would be nice, I can store mana for later use in those."
"It's not designed to be expensive, that's just how I work. I don't need literally tons of the stuff unless I want to store a year's worth of juice and use it all on one day, but it would allow me to save up power for emergency situations. I was damn near empty yesterday, but I could have kept healing for maybe another hour if I had a charged locket. Maybe I'll just buy 'em with what you pay me."
"Joined the United Forces at age 12, spent a year and a half in training at London Airbase before being assigned to the 42nd Wing as a Witch Third Class. Spent one month as a courier, three doing odd jobs, but by then I was 14 and powerful enough to go on patrols and combat missions. And I started accumulating enough copied magic that I was uncommonly adaptable. I have 39 personal Neuroi kills to my name over the course of about eight hundred engagements - but I usually acted in a support role, so the low count is normal. I've been severely wounded only once. Got promoted to Second Class somewhere in there."
"No. They're crystalline black things, supernaturally strong and firing red energy beams. All shapes and sizes. They regenerate from anything short of total disintegration, or the destruction of their core crystal. Other biggest thing is that they're aggressively unpredictable. The one thing you can be sure a Neuroi will do is suprise you. A full flight of Witches, twelve of us, against a lone Neuroi is no contest. Usually. One wing versus three is iffy. Our ground forces can't do much to them, but you've seen our tech level."
Along the way, "Say, you probably don't have Steelwings, but they kinda-sorta operate on mechanical principles. Any old broom will do for flying, but Steelwings make us faster and more maneuverable, and they're better for endurance too. Do you think someone could make me a better one?"
"Of course. It's an exciting idea, though. Almost more exciting than a futuristic gun. My top speed on a plain old stick is about as fast as a galloping horse, but on the steelwing I can go fast enough I have to toughen myself against the wind. I wonder how much better it can get."
They arrive at the range, and start testing modern weaponry. It's really Grendyne's abilities with it that are being tested, of course, but that's to be expected since she's joining a paramilitary organization.
She's very good with pistols and shotguns, though, and running around or being suddenly presented with targets in unexpected directions or 'hostages' that she mustn't hit (as in the close-quarters-combat testing range) doesn't trip her up.
She's really thrilled about the capabilities of modern firearms. It might be a bit disconcerting to see a teenage girl giggling over guns.
After spending most of the morning on guns of various sorts, she finds the guy who seems to be most in charge and informs him, "I worked out the math using restaurant prices as a comparison point, and I want either twelve thousand dollars a month, or three thousand per month plus bigger combat bonuses. If you're going to give me room and board and food, we can knock a couple thousand off that."
"Part of why I want so much is how my powers will dry up to the point of near-uselessness in about fifteen years. I've got to save up while I can. Will there be a contract?"
"If we're lucky, he'll lead us to Lung's base. We follow him, far enough back he can't see us. Means we can't see him, but also means he can't kill us in seconds. Grendyne, we're relying on your nose for this.
And do not use his power, not outside an emergency. Speculation is that being a copy of a copy of a copy added up to serious brain damage eventually, best avoid that."
And she keeps walking to the next street corner before crossing and going back the other way at a bit of a faster pace. After a couple dozen blocks. "Okay, he teleported a few times then stopped moving."
When she gets within a couple blocks of the place, "Wait... Another cape is with him. Can't pick out details this far out. Something aggressive, whatever it is."
We don't want to fight him. Better stay farther out, triangulating will take longer but it'll be safer."
When they come, everyone fire on Lung simultaneously. Shortest time between shots we can manage. Hopefully it'll keep him down long enough for us to get away.
Lee will get here first...I'll be bait. Hit him as soon as he appears. Tranq shots only, he'll be right on top of me. Got to be quick enough he doesn't teleport again."
The squad take positions.
Meanwhile, Lung enters visual range and starts getting closer. He doesn't seem to be bothering to hurry.
With Oni Lee driven off, Lung speeds up. Lung is a tall, muscular, habitually shirtless man, and all three of those adjectives become more true as his power activates. A few flickers of flame are starting to appear around him.
Minor tells the rest of them, "he'd burn most tranquilizers out of his system in no time. Bullets on five, four, three..."
"Now's our chance to get out of here. Can you run?"
When they're far enough that Minor starts to slow down, she mutters, "Neuroi don't bleed. They don't scream. Only dead Witches do that. Victory reminds me of defeat now."
"Oni Lee is a professional serial killer. Lung is his employer, and has also killed unknown numbers of people himself. They run one of the larger criminal gangs, the same one that bombed the city last night. And they were trying to kill us. There are villains here who are in it for fun and try not to hurt people. That wasn't them."
"Information's important, especially in a fight. If we'd been expecting this one, you'd have known more going in."
On the subject of information, the smell of Lung's power enters Grendyne's radius. She might or might not also be able to tell that it's also moving quickly.
Lung is, if going by appearance, no longer people. His skin is covered in metallic scales, a row of spines runs down his back, and his face is elongated into something reptilian. His body is elongated as well. He runs on all four clawed feet. Instead of a few flickering flames, his entire surface is wreathed in fire. If not for the scent, he'd be unrecognizable as the same individual.
The rest of the squad fires on Lung before fleeing, but none of the wounds are enough to down him.
Of course, using a power that draws attention to herself has the unintended effect of drawing attention to herself. Lung leaps, bypassing some of her teammates to get at her. His claws leave gouges in the asphalt where he launched from and where he landed, almost directly in front of her. A wave of heat rolls off him, more a threat than an attack.
One of the squad members—no time to check who, and it almost doesn't matter right now—throws an object between her and Lung. It instantly releases a large cloud of smoke and begins emitting a sound too high-pitched to hear. Lung fumbles and takes a valuable instant to destroy it, but his next blast of fire is aimed to burn.
When essentially right on top of Gren, Lung suddenly stops.
No, the direction of his power moved. The monster on top of her is a completely different reptilian of about the same size. It turns around, and launches itself into the air, landing a fair distance down the street. It bounds away, and when Lung charges back at them the two dragons switch places and the new one repeats the process.
...Wait, is that mangled parking meter an asymmetrical, somewhat stick-like object? Close enough, she can fly it. She yanks it towards herself and tries to roll on top of the thing.
"That burn's bad. Brooks is a medic, you rather heal it yourself or have him take a look at it?"
"Grendyne," he says when she enters. "I am Coil. Welcome to my organization. To start with the first things, the agreed amount for your first month and some items for mana storage." The table contains stacks of cash, as well as a small box containing silver, gold, and gems.
"Combat bonus not included because of short notice, but you can expect it to be substantial. No one should face an opponent of Lung's caliber at the beginning of their cape career, and my subordinates tell me you performed quite well."
She counts the money. She looks at the gems and gold. "I might have to turn these down. I thought I could fight murderers and gang-lords without hesitating. I was wrong. And it really sucks being so immobile in a fight."
I do have some subsequent jobs in mind for when you're ready, both of them involving less direct combat than what you faced today."
Using Lung's power intensively enough to transform would likely be a significant drain on your reserves. This would therefore take place, if you accept it, when you have had sufficient time to recover and store up. There are no conventional time constraints except that it requires Victor in an appropriate location accompanied by as few other parahumans as possible. It is likely to be short notice, as our information on their movements is limited, but there will be no shortage of opportunities to choose from."
"I'd need full mana stores to keep something like that up long enough to transform, and I'd to be close to him again to copy the power enough to use it that way. Two blocks, maybe. I have no problem pretending to be an unstoppable monster, nor with setting two very unpleasant sounding groups on each other, but I don't really want to harm anybody without advance intel on how exactly they are extremely evil and capture is not feasible. Are drug addictions a serious problem here?"
I can provide lists of known crimes for the capes, but not their non-powered members. Some of them might have joined that organization without themselves being, as you put it, extremely evil. But you need not fight to kill, even if the real Lung would. For Victor in particular, capture is not only feasible but the goal."
"His power is very gradual. Copying him is unlikely to stop being useful in the immediate future. I would be willing to hold him indefinitely, but if you object to that you may feel free to suggest an alternative. The upgrades foregone would be your own, after all. I ask only that you not set him free entirely, as he would simply rejoin the Empire."
My other proposition is simpler, in execution if not in concept. I have access to a parahuman I'd like you to copy."
Coil shows her a picture. It looks like an ordinary young woman from the waist up. Everything else, the vast majority of her body, is an enormous mass of flesh. Three giant animal heads, prehensile slobbering tongues, too many legs to count which species they're all imitating, and a handful of tentacles.
"This is Noelle. Something went wrong when she got her power, and it turned her into this. Not the only case of unwanted physical changes coming along with a parahuman power, but by far the worst I know of. Between that and the fact that she is not reliably in control of herself, you see why it would be unsafe to copy her power except from the opposite side of an extremely solid wall.
The power I want you to copy makes up for it. Precognition.
"Still. Pre-fucking-cognition. That sounds extremely mana intense, I can't copy Yvette for more than a couple of minutes. And not unless she's right in front of me. I'm provisionally willing to try it once I have enough rest and mana to get anything useful out of it, though. I might refuse to answer a question if it's sufficiently morally ambiguous. I'm not confident in my ability to make judgments like that. Someone mentioned monsters called Endbringers? I'd be very glad to predict when and where they'll attack, though."
"Unfortunately, most powers cannot predict Endbringers. But if you can copy successfully enough for any questions at all, there is no shortage of subject matter. How best to open communications with your world, dealing with lesser enemies, even predicting mundane natural disasters. Rest as much as you need, and if you need more equipment for mana storage don't hesitate to ask."
"These should be enough for now. Day and a half to charge them all up." She sets the bracelet down - it's still glowing vary faintly, though not as brightly as when she was actively charging it, and picks up a jeweled locket. "I know OpSec. There's no reason to think the Neuroi aren't spying on us, so I'll avoid mentioning any of this to all and sundry. Anything else I should keep in mind?"
"A portable telegraph switching station, and calculator, and so much else in the palm of my hand. Now I've seen it all. I'll call you in a couple of days when I feel charged enough to copy a precog." In the meantime, she walks downtown and has a nice big hot meal with some of her stack of cash along the way. Combat makes you hungry.
The food here is strange. The sandwich is recognizably a sandwich, even if the term is unfamiliar, and most of the contents are normal. But in this world it's routine to make food out of ingredients from farther afield than most people have ever been, so the end result is not quite like anything back home.. Which doesn't mean it's not delicious.
The library is full of primarily books. They're organized by a bizarre number system, but explanations of what number corresponds to what subject matter are posted on the shelves. There are a few people browsing the books, and more using devices that look like scaled-up versions of the screen on her phone.
Recent history, just to get an idea of the sorts of things that happen in this bizarre world. And some popular science books, in the hope that some of them will explain how all the lights and cars and so on work.
Most of the popular science descriptions are written with the goal of encouraging the reader to have the feeling of an epiphany that they finally understand these everyday things, instead of the goal of actually explaining them. But she can get a decent idea eventually.
In this city, the Protectorate is one among a large number of teams. Capes tend to gravitate toward where other capes are, and Brockton Bay is in the top few for parahumans per capita. Local groups are the Protectorate, the Empire and the ABB, with a third gang called the Merchants being generally regarded as unimportant. New Wave is a hero group notable for not using secret identities, and there are any number of independent heroes and villains.
Coil's organization gets mentioned alongside the cape groups; despite employing no known parahumans it operates in the same sphere. He is universally considered a villain. Everything Gren has seen of his operation so far does revolve around unauthorized use of potentially lethal force, after all. It is, though, considered an atypical villain group. They have never been observed to claim territory or sell drugs or extort money or anything else the other three gangs do, and generally no one has any idea how they stay in business or what business it is.
She has a few days' leave to think about helping him further, at least. She goes back to that house, visiting a hardware store along the way, and cleans and oils her Steelwing, then goes to sleep after getting dinner from a fast food place.
"Grendyne? This is Coil. Neuroi downtown. My men are trying to stall it, we need you there now. It's at the Medhall building, get there as soon as you can."
The phone conveniently tells her a direction, but the Neuroi should be easy to find.
It mostly ignores the bullets, grenades, and whatever else deployed against it, and starts burning its way through ceilings until it gets to a roof, getting bigger along the way. Much bigger than whoever captured it expected.
"Gren! We've been trying to slow this thing down. How do we kill it?"
But meanwhile, the Neuroi has apparently given up on going up and is trying to get out of the building by burning its way through walls. If this is any kind of public building, some people are definitely dead by now.
This building, however, is very much on fire, and probably in danger of collapsing.
The building shakes, but soon stops swaying. Steel beams appeared out of nowhere, buttressing the structure.
"We need to get out of here. Especially since the building's not falling over; that's Kaiser's power at work."
Sirens blare, or possibly continue blaring. It recently became slightly less deafening in here. "Nearest exit is...second stair to the right and straight on to the door."
She follows them to a reasonably safe place. Soon, she mentions, "If a Neuroi showed up here I've got to brief the protectorate on them. Everybody needs to know how to deal with monsters. Can a cell phone call them, you think?"
Once behind locked doors, the tranquilizers are gradually replaced with a very different drug.
"Unfortunate that it turned out this way. I would have liked to employ your abilities more willingly, but you're nearly as much use to me this way....pet."
If you're still in a state to use your power, you may copy the precognitive one and look for the chance you escape. Otherwise, good night."
He prepares another syringe.
...Except, she can't. No matter how hard she pulls, she can't find the right feeling, the right pattern, in her memories. Same thing when she tries to bring up Lytee's teleporting.
Well, damn.
A powerfully muscled dark-haired woman whispers, "Telescope, map the area! We're separated but only by a wall. Copycat's here. She's on some kind of drugs. Angel, work her over. Dragon, work on the wall between us. Who's the extra contact?"
Over the sound of falling chunks of concrete, "Little girl, not a Witch, also drugged."
"We'll get her out of here too, then. Knight, open the door."
"Got it, boss." Her crystal spear starts poking holes effortlessly through the steel of the door, trying to find a locking mechanism.
"There's more people nearby. Maybe guards. Stay alert, 42nd."
While Knight's spear is extended through the door, it suddenly opens. Whether this will wrench the weapon aside and leave its wielder vulnerable or just leave more of a gouge in the steel, Coil's soldiers have no idea. But that door was a loss in either case.
The soldiers are going helmetless and maskless, in a deliberate attempt to make it harder for Strike Witches to fight them. The first weapon to enter the room is a flashbang grenade, useful against an enemy unlikely to recognize it
Some of the weapons are loaded with tranquilizers and, to the limited extent possible when using bullets, the rest are aimed to injure.
Most of the Witches catch the flashbang in the face but meet further projectiles with shimmering shields. Once they mostly recover, a blast of wind knocks a good portion of Coil's soldiers over, and the upright witches charge for one end of the hallway with their three passengers.
At least one of them has no problem shooting back. The others start blasting at one of the reinforced elevator shaft doors or keeping shields up in all likely directions of attack.
When the Witches enter the elevator shaft, the empty car above them drops. It wouldn't be a proper villain lair if at least some safety precautions didn't have deactivation switches with no good reason to exist. Any Witch who does not exit fast enough is likely to get trapped at the bottom of the shaft below the door to the lowest level.
Knowing how the limits on magic use work from Gren, they continue focusing their fire. With luck, Telescope or one of the Witches in the back will run low on mana and have to be carried along with the rest. But once the Witches disappear up the elevator shaft, there's little they can do to stop them except warn their teammates on higher floors.
They'll probably reach the surface before running out of mana at this rate.
Also, the Knight is waking up. Angel is apparently a healer.
Coil, meanwhile, is aware that it could be worse. Lost two major assets and the secrecy of the location, but at least Ballistic isn't seriously wounded and Genesis' real power didn't get revealed. Nor does anyone know the Travelers are working for him. And bringing down the upper levels of the base would have, as in most cases where the option came up, not been worth it. So he lets them go and accepts it as the worst setback of his career.
Brockton Bay. A city of some kind, far larger in every dimension than anything their civilization could build. Looking down, they see contraptions of some kind traveling along wide roads. Most of the buildings directly beneath them are tall, wide, and ugly. Most of the ships in the harbor are dead and rusted out hulks. A single building is in the water, surrounded by a glowing sphere.
He arrives at their ship and boards it using a grappling hook. "I'm Armsmaster. Are you the ones who fought your way through Coil's base downtown?"
"Captain Morgana McAllister, 42nd Witch Wing, United Defense Force. Highlander if you must use a nickname. If that place was Coil's base, then yes. We are just here to rescue Copycat. Scatter got us in, almost completely blind, Dragon and Telescope did the heavy lifting to get us out. We're going home as soon as we can. Are you in charge around here?"
Can't be close. Dragon is a big name all across the continent; using that name would be like someone naming themself Eidolon.
The last part of this statement is a lie.
I met Copycat about a week ago, she appeared out of nowhere and helped shut down a crisis. She vanished shortly after, apparently because she was being held by one of the local supervillains. And Dinah here is a relative of the mayor, she's been missing for even longer." He picks up Dinah. "Her I should get to Panacea as soon as possible."
Panacea is in fact available. She touches Dinah, then Gren, then the other injured Witch. She stays in contact longer with Gren and Dinah. "Those two were drugged, heavily. Opiates and tranquilizers. I've gotten the drugs out of their systems, but if they're psychologically addicted as well as physically I can't touch that."
"Boss! I could kiss you guys if I wasn't straight."
(The one carrying Dinah sets her down.)
Angel taps Armsmaster on his shoulder. "Um... I can heal a bunch of people if they don't have shrapnel or anything in them... Not as well as her, but dozens at a time."
He addresses their commander and Gren instead. "Thank you for your help today. Ordinarily this is where I would invite you to join the Wards, but that doesn't apply in your case.
But information on Coil has been sparse. What can you tell me about him?"
He might have been the one who released that Neuroi, it was awfully sucpicious that they were the first ones there (Neuroi are flyer and blaster and brute, here's how to fight and kill one), this is what his base was like, he had me copying Dinah and predicting things...
And the times she saw Coil, he had no detectable power.
"The most common thing he had me predict was his chances of taking over the city. Dinah's power usually put it at about 65%. Armsmaster, I would like to bring home a quantity of guns, radios, and other tech. A few rifles in the right hands would make Neuroi much, much less of a threat. Could this possibly be arranged?"
"You know I hate predicting battles, boss."
"Yeah, I know. But it's important."
Yvette rolls her eyes, but nods and starts to look distant.
Meanwhile, Angel announces, "Lo ciento, no more healing. I cannot keep going. It is too tiring and I used all the stored mana."
One of the unintroduced Witches asks, "Is there a less... Public place to talk?"
"Wh- When is the next Endbringer attack? Because it's a terrible, terrible idea to be in this city in about three weeks. Just. Just. Pain and fear, worse than even the big Neuroi..."
And she vomits onto the bridge. The others are hovering protectively over her.
"God, you're going to want me predicting these things all day aren't you? You'd better be willing to pay me a whole lot of money and tell you to back off sometimes. It's exceptionally unpleasant."
"If you'll come with me to the PRT, I can put you in contact with someone who outranks me. Do you have the authority to reach agreements on your own, or would you have to contact superiors in the UDF?"
The commander explains, "I can negotiate on behalf of Clan McAllister, but not the entire UDF. We are allowed to enter into agreements so long as they do not interfere with the war effort. Involving higher officials will open up more resources from our side, and it'd be necessary if you want to keep anyone on my squad for more than a day or two."
The PRT building is close. When they arrive, there's a conference room available. Food has been brought, and a woman not wearing a costume is at the head of the table. "This is Emily Piggot, the director of the Parahuman Response Team for this city."
Captain McAllister asks, "You're caught up on what's been discussed so far? By these 'radios'?"
If not, she summarizes the developments. "I don't own my squad, but if you want to hire them you'll need to buy out their enlistment contracts. Standard rate is half pay for the remaining term. Our currencies won't match up, I'll have someone produce a price index..."
Gren mentions, "Having a tinker work with Knight to improve our brooms could be very productive."
If your precognition works on Endbringers, it raises the possibility that your other abilities might as well. They are frustratingly immune to everything we can throw at them. What other powers do you have?"
Armsmaster frowns at being volunteered for a thing that won't make him directly better at fighting villains, but the Director is probably right about this being worth the time.
Yvette responds, "Uh, no I think it can't. Trying it won't end well."
"...Damn."
Gren summarizes their other abilities. Tracking, chain lightning, comms network, enhanced and through walls vision, extra endurance for flying and shielding and blasting on one, guided and charged projectiles, invisibility.
More witches with more powers are potentially available, but this is already an unusually combat-applicable bunch.
The Protectorate has a wide variety of powers available, most of them oriented toward combat. What would be most useful against your opponents? I can forward the message to the relevant individuals once we've spoken with whomever we need to."
"I really think weapons will be a better investment. We usually use starbursts, our blaster attack, or bows and flintlock pistols. Anti air rockets, automatic rifles, even light cannon. Not to mention the gains to be had from simple radios. Though if you have capes with teleporting, large scale shielding, or precise long range attacks those would help."
Do you have other predictive powers available, or only the one?"
"If you have a Witch who can see the weather three days in advance, we might want to hire that one too. It could be more important than it sounds, if not at the same level as yours. Possibly the others as well."
"And I want to keep disclaiming that I'm not perfectly interpretable. I feel what I'd feel about the results of a plan. Maybe I'm sad because my friend died. Maybe I'm sad because a hot guy turned me down. For example. ...That's a terrible example. Anyway I'm pretty sure this city would be dead if we all just sat here for a month though. Not much can cause that kind of... Despair."
Why is age relevant? We do employ minors as superheroes in the Wards program here, but that's primarily as preparation and training for the Protectorate. Absent a strong reason, it shouldn't be anyone other than adults doing the fighting, and you're more like a military."
Angel knows more about medicine than anyone else on the team. She explains what is known about Witch bodies as compared to human ones. Which is: Not much. She and Gren volunteer to be examined for the purpose of trying to figure out mana.
Highlander requests access to a computer or two suited to someone new to computers, for exploring Wikipedia.
Armsmaster explains to Knight, "Most of what I do is take preexisting technology and make it more efficient. It might be possible to build a completely different kind of machine serving the same function, but that will probably not be my finished result. Can you demonstrate how your steelwing works?"
Somehow, applying mana to it causes the mana to be converted into physical force. The conversion is a property of Witches, but the structure of the machine influences it. A broom is the ancient standard, other long stick-like tools are barely flyable.
The spines at the back act like a buffer, making the thing more stable in a similar way to the fins on an arrow. The mechanisms inside operate a little similarly to more familiar machinery. And the theory behind them is more-or-less consistent, if unfamiliar to Earth Bet.
Armsmaster gets an immediate grasp of how it works and how it could work better. If not the direct conversion part, at least what the various pieces are doing. "This may take some time." As he starts tinkering. "This will be less replicable than ordinary technology. I might also recommend mundane mass-production, which will be inferior to what a Tinker can do but will be capable of outfitting armies."
Meanwhile, Angel and Gren are at the hospital once again, this time to be examined instead of to heal people.
"You're sweating a little more than you were before. Your muscle and fat tissues are doing something I can't follow. That's got to be the mana. It's being fed out to the outer layers of skin, mostly through the bloodstream. Might be because of the invisibility, if you want to do something else I can see if it goes elsewhere. And the reaction going on in the cells, the one that I'm assuming is producing the mana, it's catalyzed by estrogen."
"Yes, all Witches are female. About one in 500, I don't remember the exact figure, and more common in well-developed parts of the world for some reason. Children of Witches aren't any more likely to be Witches. It comes in during puberty, peaks at age 16 to 18 or so, and declines sharply when you pass 25."
As they walk back into the PRT building, the commander decides that once Knight and Armsmaster are finished with the tinkered steelwing it'll be time for the whole team to go home, and return some time tomorrow with someone authorized to negotiate on behalf of the UDF. The new steelwing would serve as proof that they hadn't all gone crazy.
Lytee asks to be shown a good spot to arrive.
The witches settle down to wait. Work like that can take a while. A few of them bring the other steelwings into the building and work on them in more of a maintenance way than an improvement way. Two of them continue trying to absorb Wikipedia (one is scribbling notes on engineering, the other is reading about art). The rest just seem bored.
She climbs on top of it. It hovers. She zips across the room and stops on a dime. "Easily twice as much acceleration." She puts it through a surprisingly varied set of midair acrobatics for a confined indoor space. "WOOOOOOOOOO! This thing is great! No good way to test max speed inside, though. Who gets to keep it?"
The commander has figured out the borrowed computer's email client. Director, you can expect a delegation from our world in the designated place probably some time tomorrow. Anything else before we leave?
Next afternoon, Scatter, Highlander, Copycat, Angel, Knight, and Seer are back, escorting a dozen older, variously self-important people.
The biggest trade on offer is Witchpower in exchange for shipments of weapons and training, and hopefully mass manufacturing of Steelwings (two of these fellows design the things).
The local PRT is not doing most of the negotiation. Apparently the government has designated "first contact" diplomats. (One of whom is the Chief Director of the PRT, naturally, or else she's just there because it's a particularly relevant first contact.)
Copycat might join the PRT, as long as the training and weapons returned to her side are more than worth her absence, and the pay is good. Mostly because there's more interesting stuff over here.
There are more teleporters available. The bottleneck on moving people and material back and forth is wider than one person. The UDF is perfectly happy to have people come with and train their soldiers on the weapons. Deploying Witches against Endbringers will be a volunteers-only mission.
They also want technology and engineering skills in full generality to deploy and start mass-producing in their world (Suggested name: Terra). The most advanced thing they can make on their own is a telegraph, for reference.
The PRT is glad to have Copycat join; a power as versatile as hers would be useful anywhere. And the amount of firepower they're supplying to Terra is hopefully enough that the loss of a single Witch is a rounding error.
Negotiations, training, and infrastructure-preparation continue. Seer predicts various things in the meantime, with Copycat helping to the extent she can.
The paperwork for Copycat's transfer is complete in short order, and she is no longer part of the UDF. She signs on to the Wards after negotiating a slightly higher than usual wage, and she's no longer particularly relevant to the continuing diplomatic exchange.
She is presumably assigned living space and schooling in a similar way to most Wards. Though disguising her foreignness might be tricky.
It's suggested that she adopt a secret identity—she herself doesn't have family members to be targeted, but it might endanger other Wards if their faces and civilian names are often seen around the known cape. She will also need a costume; a military uniform for a force that doesn't exist would send a variety of confusing messages.
The school for most of the local Wards (officially all of them, but no reason not to use some misdirection) is Arcadia High. Earth Bet's ordinary curriculum is probably unfamiliar to her.
Her codename from her old unit, Copycat, would do unless it's taken. She'll need to think some more if so. The ordinary curriculum is indeed very, very strange. She assumes they'll cut her some slack as long as she makes a good effort.
As to a costume... She discovers the most popular Cape forum after a couple hours of browsing for ideas, registers under the name 'witchwatcher,' says she can fly and blast and shield and lots of little things, she likes purple and maybe the witch aesthetic, who has costume advice?
It's a large enough forum that she gets suggestions (mostly taking the aesthetic bit literally, complete with pointed hat; they may not be entirely serious). Since she's not yet verified as a cape not everyone believes her; this is apparently a fairly common first post from the less-than-reliable members of the Internet. But given the number of people, there are probably suggestions or at least elements of suggestions that she might like.
In the meantime, she should probably meet her new teammates before they're required to work together on some sort of crisis.
"Maybe not as good as yours. My body itself isn't especially tough, but I have these shields as my go-to." She holds out a hand and a disk of glittering blue light with faint abstract patterns appears in front of her. "I've stopped Neuroi beans that would've levelled houses."
"I bet it'll work. We think whatever's in the hurricane can only make the things so quickly. And if our problems spill over here, I bet the UDF will send Witches to fight 'em. At any rate, d'you guys have any recommendations for things to do here? I want to have at least one nice relaxing thing before going back to the grind."
And presumably a delicious meal is had. Gren gets what is suggested to her (preferably including caffeine somewhere) and follows along on the conversation passively for the most part, occasionally asking clarifying questions.
Whether the intentional lack of cape business is because they're trying to give Gren a break or just because they're out of costume is not obvious. But eventually they wind down, and disperse to whatever else the individuals have scheduled. Some go home, some are patrolling, Vista is thoroughly bored behind a monitor showing incoming reports and the positions of the patrolling Wards, and some are just relaxing on the Internet.
Apparently the normal way to become verified is for the poster to upload a photograph of themself doing whatever most obviously marks them as a cape instead of someone trying on a costume. But sending that request from the email account belonging to the new Ward also works. Her cape status is publicly known.
Verified! Told you so.
She fills in her profile. Cape name: Copycat. Personal info: Blank. Powers: Flight, blasting, shields, copying. She declines to specify how much she can copy.
A while later, she summarizes the costume elements that she liked best so far as a reply there. Something like a cross between Vista and Shadow Stalker's costumes seems to be shaping up. (And also says she'll be making it herself) Relatively fluid, but plenty of dark colors and armor.
Her costume is almost forgotten (not quite, it's a large forum and she did just become "the new cape"). Were she as powerful as they think she is, she could fight crime in a clown suit and be taken seriously.
She joined the Wards because it seemed interesting.
Some of the questions are more personal, she can give as much or as little information on herself as she wants to. (The exception being that the PRT would rather not publicize that there is an Earth Gimel, so they've asked her let everyone assume she's from this planet.)
She answers some of them. She's 17, she likes card games, she's straight but would prefer that nobody play matchmaker, she doesn't want to talk about her family. They may come to the conclusion that she's been living under a rock when she completely misses most popular culture references, though.
Being unfamiliar with this world's card games will be a bit more attention-getting, to those Internet denizens who think they're asking her about one of her own hobbies. But it can be an unusually insular rock. And of course everyone has popular culture recommendations. There's a history's worth of material she'll never get caught up on.
She's had enough of this for one day soon, though. With a fairly detailed costume design worked out, she emails Aegis and asks where she can get materials to make it.
She wants to talk to this guy and register Opinions on her costume. Is he available now or will this have to wait until tomorrow?
"Hullo. I'm told my costume has to be run through you. I would like to register opinions on it. I'd like plenty of armor, I can handle the weight, and preferably some silver or gold or gems worked into it touching my skin. It'd let me store power for emergencies, and I'm not trying to be expensive that's just how Witches work. I also have design preferences, but those are secondary."
"If the valuables are a power constraint, that part isn't a problem. For my department, at least. You'd be surprised what we tolerate for that. It's the image I'm concerned with. Dark colors like your suggestion imply shadows, secrecy, and draw attention away from you. Not very heroic, and Brockton Bay already has Shadow Stalker. Another hero perceived as the darker type might push the team over the edge into a reputation that's better avoided."
On the shape, it's usually a better idea to use the more defensive costumes only where needed. Visible armor suggests that your shields are weak or unreliable. This may not be true, but it affects your image. Are your shields both strong and reliable?"
"In my original wing I was mostly fast response, utility support, and defensive backup. My copied versions of blaster and striker specials are more draining to me than their original owners, so heavy hitter would not be ideal. I like to think I'm flexible, though. And I am very fast and maneuverable in the air, I got to four hundred miles per hour on the first steelwing Armsmaster made without even trying particularly hard. It's a beautiful machine."
Or, if you're very confident, we could go the other way. Would you object to implicitly claiming to be more powerful than you are?"
"I may have already done that, on that forum thing, which I am regretting. It seems like it'd either make people not want to cross me, which is useful, or make me a target, which is not so much. I'd rather avoid further exaggeration if possible. Tch. I didn't have to deal with image in the Witches."
The purpose behind exaggeration is less to make you intimidating—or a target, it's rare for villains to target individual heroes—and more to make you look powerful to the public. If we put you in a costume reminiscent of Eidolon's, the cloak or a lighted mask alone would be sufficient, then the rest of the costume could be anything. Eidolon himself wears armor."
"I didn't wear armor before because it wouldn't help against Neuroi. You have guns here and I might be shot at before the month is out. If looking a bit like Eidolon will convince you to let me wear some armor, then I can look like Eidolon. No dark colors you said, but faint patterning like in that second picture would be nice. My shields have the patterns too."
The costume isn't about justifying the armor, though it does that too, it means that people will expect you to be versatile and decisive. To end fights quickly and never be outclassed. It doesn't mean you must literally never lose, but it does mean that any defeat is a defeat in more ways than one. It is only for the confident."
"I'm versatile and powerful at first, but I don't think I'm quite as world-class compared to some of the people you have on this planet. Particularly with my endurance. The precious metal will help with that, especially if you can get other Witches to charge it for me. Even so, I think I can handle it."
"Excellent. The other downside is that It might not fit so well with your name. Copycat is an unobjectionable name in itself, but it denotes someone playful, maybe even immature, and a follower. Not necessarily bad for a Ward, especially paired with team members perceived as responsible, but it stops working if combined with an overstated costume."
"Names are just as important. We could go with something to emphasize the message that you aren't a typical cape—it doesn't matter how true that is, just how well you can sell it—not "Witch" since that has connotations, but something like Mage or Enchantress. The magic angle fits well with the mana you've mentioned. Throw in an adjective. Gold, silver, any gemstone, do you have a color preference? Anything bright."
"Citrines. I had a little statue studded with them as a kid, I've always liked them. Their color is even a little like gold, which would be just gaudy if you made it a costume theme. If Witch won't do, Mage would be better than Enchantress. I'm not out to seduce anyone, which is the connotation that word has to me."
She looks over a list of her copied powers. It's missing something fairly important, now that she thinks about it.
To Director Piggot, she sends another email. It occurs to me that having a nonlethal takedown power will be helpful here. I didn't need it before. I heard of someone in wing 65 - Ilya Skeldin. Ranged stun-bolts effective on organic targets. Probably won't work on people like Hookwolf, but it would be good to have. It shouldn't be too much trouble to arrange a visit, me there or her here, for me to try and copy her.
Nonlethal is absolutely necessary under almost all circumstances. Especially for Wards. We'll send you over with the next round of teleportation.
I hadn't planned on killing anybody. It could be a day or two before I come back, I'll have to get someone to teleport me the rest of the way once I'm in the correct world, or do it myself, and it can take some time for me to grasp powers well enough to keep them permanently. Is that OK?
How much time? If it's very long it might be better to try to get Ms. Skeldin here, but you do have leeway. We haven't officially unveiled your cape identity yet. If the day or two was the full count, then yes. It'd take some time to have your costume and equipment ready anyway.
She shows up when Lytee makes her morning teleportation round trip.
She's back that evening, looking stressed but reporting successful acquisition of a ranged organic-stun attack.
This is the sort of power that's likely to see a lot of use. The PRT people would like her to test it whenever she's feeling up to it, accuracy and power et cetera (as measured against target dummies that count as organic for local powers, at least). They only insist that this be done before she first goes out in costume as Citrine Mage, so it's not immediately pressing.
She spends a while getting a feel for the power, firing at range, firing in quick succession, finding the minimum force of mana required to make one count as 'down'. It should hopefully be a good benchmark for safely taking down humans. The dummies fall over and report 'unconscious appx. 15 minutes' in most cases. When a stunbolt just clips them, it merely interferes with their coordination for a few seconds before the effect fades.
The stunbolts come out in a sort of off-yellow color and mesh very, very well with her guided-projectiles power. She can weave them around barriers in complex paths, or fire a dozen at once and leave them all seeking their target individually. Both of these tricks are pretty draining, though.
Overall, they're the best nonlethal takedown Gren's ever seen or used, and she has detailed notes to justify this assessment when she reports back to the desk people.
"Power synergy is awesome."
The touristy places are way too expensive for the relatively small allowance they're letting her use. She finds stores in a less fancy part of town. She's in a decidedly less fancy part of town when she takes a wrong turn on her way back, still carrying a bunch of plastic bags.
The victim doesn't see the person watching from a nearby roof. Dark costume, mask and cloak, and weapons.
She goes blurry - not hidden exactly, but indistinct, hard to look directly at. And she runs forward and slaps a stunbolt into each of the three attackers, moves the knives safely out of the way from impaling anything on their way down, and tosses a stunbolt at the shadowy figure overseeing the crime for good measure, not bothering to guide it, seeing how they'll react. She doesn't even drop her bags.
This power is a bit tricky, but she can already tell that her opponent is not exactly physical. She can have a dozen stunbolts, from enough different angles to make dodging impractical, anyway.
The cape sees some of her bolts coming. Enough to not try dodging. She turns into something like smoke again, and keeps charging as the bolts fly through her.
And she's surprised when they affect her. Most of them hit, and even if a single hit doesn't stun her that was plenty. She goes down.
And now she has four unconscious people, one with powers, and one terrified civilian to deal with. She stays 'blurred' even though it's building up to a headache, tells the woman, "Better clear out," and pulls out the phone PRT gave her.
"Citrine Mage here. I have four unconscious criminals in front of me. Ran into three guys with knives holding someone down while out shopping, with some cape just standing there watching from above. Knocked the criminals down, tried to knock the cape out, she tried to attack me before I got her. They'll stay down for about half an hour. Not entirely sure where I am or what to do with them, though, please advise."
"She was watching for about twenty seconds before I got close enough to down them without giving them time to react. Long enough for them to start stripping the victim and put the knife on her throat. No blood. She might have been waiting for an opportunity to strike, I'm not familiar enough with how she operates to tell if that's plausible."
You should have one of the Protectorate heroes approaching your location now."
It's Dauntless. His boots are crackling with energy, which quiets down as he stops moving superhumanly fast until they're glowing no brighter than his spear and shield. "Citrine Mage. You...captured...Shadow Stalker?"
She gets enough of a hold on it to start preparing a charge by the time she finishes her spiel.
...She drops the blurriness to hold on to that, though. "Got a spare mask? Most powers, I can't keep them up forever."
I don't have a mask on me, but you're dressed as a civilian. Do you need one?"
As a PRT van pulls up, Dauntless picks up Shadow Stalker. "Crossbow bolts." He taps the tip of one with his finger. "Sharp ones, not tranquilizers. Definitely not something she should be using."
She picks up one of the three criminals in a shoulder carry and follows as Dauntless hauls Shadow Stalker to the van.
She keeps staring at him. "It's tricky, though, I'll probably lose my hold on your power before I have a charge unless you stay near me for the twenty hours. I'm gonna try my damnedest to keep this power, but it doesn't always work. It'd help if we patrolled together or something."
Pause. "You recovered from the stun faster than I was expecting. Probably 'cause you're a cape. I'll have to keep that in mind in the future."
"You had crossbow bolts," Dauntless comments. "Sharp ones. Even aside from what Citrine Mage says, deadly weapons are a serious violation."
"She probably planted them. I didn't have any before she knocked me out."
"Shadow Stalker. You know the stakes, so I'd highly recommend that you start with the truth. Start."
"I was out doing an extra patrol, and saw three people in ABB colors attacking a civilian. And then this bi– this presumably well-intentioned hero stuns me."
"And the darts?"
"OK, I had darts. But I never used them, for anything."
"Citrine Mage, does this mesh with what you observed?"
"It took me some twenty seconds to approach close enough to get them all before they had time to react by, say, trying to use their victim as a human shield. She was standing on a nearby roof during this time. It felt like she was waiting for something. I'm not sure how reliable my intuition is here, though."
She turns to Gren, "Thank you for bringing this to my attention, especially if it turns out not to be a mere misunderstanding. Dismissed."
She more or less ignores Shadow Stalker as she walks back to the Wards area to put her purchases away unless the latter re-initiates conversation.
"Well. Yeah, that's messed up. This is faint praise, but at least she doesn't go around attacking people to see if they fight back, just failing to rescue them. Still. Even if nobody got hurt because she waited, probably dozens of them had a traumatic event last longer than it needed to."
"I have at least one definitely non-lethal thing. Stunbolts. Made a special trip just to copy them from someone. I don't have any bolts between stun and lightning though. Yeah, fieldwork with new powers should be fun. The two of us could probably be almost excessively mobile if you ride along while I fly."
Before any actual cape business, the PRT has to take care of some setup. The costume, of course. It's finished in short order, complete with gold and gems. (Smaller quantities than Coil supplied.) Aside from that, there's further power and basic combat training, and of course PR. Don't threaten people, don't swear in public, don't give away important information, don't conspicuously display destructive might unless the point is to display destructive might, the point is never to display destructive might, and so on. It boils down to "talk less, smile more" being a safe option to start out with.
Eventually she's cleared as ready for duty.
The first charge of Dauntless's power gets put into a particular amulet, one with a large citrine set into the middle. So does the second. It'll probably be a while before this has any useful effects.
Her official unveiling speech was mostly written by someone else, but she manages to deliver it with reasonable amounts of sincerity.
Dauntless has yet to get accustomed to the staring.
She doesn't actually need to stare at Dauntless to keep his power up anymore. She does figure out that she can pour extra mana into his power to generate charges faster - fourteen to sixteen hours if she does nothing else with a particular day's mana supply. She makes sure her stored mana is full before doing that, though.
After two weeks, the thing is starting to become noticeably better at holding mana. It retains it without excess effort, doesn't leak out slowly like it used to, and lets her call on more at once without feeling strained.
But after two weeks, the Endbringer attack is imminent. Yvette still thinks Brockton Bay will be the site of the attack. The UDF has gathered a large list of Witches who would like to volunteer for the defense, flyer and brute and blaster all, plus a wide variety of specials and no less than eight healers. They work out transport and temporary lodging with the Protectorate.
In the weeks remaining until the attack, presumed to be Leviathan, the city gets gradually emptier. Cape crime goes down steeply, since everyone including the various villain factions expects to be on the same side very soon. (Non-cape crime continues as ever, at least proportionately to the number of people present.) And as the scheduled day approaches, heroes start arriving, including the biggest of guns.
Battery is interesting and potentially useful. Working with Mouse Protector's power improves her ability to teleport. Brandish meshes well with Knight's crystal spear. She can't copy Cache's ability to store away living things, but he makes her pocket dimension easier to access.
Bastion, Lady Photon, Glory Girl, Laserdream and Shielder are not very mana-efficient on their own, but after a few hours of work she combines the whole lot into one smooth and elegant force-field and laser power. Parian isn't too useful in direct terms, but her clothamancy is a nice break from all the simple, brutal powers that tend to show up in this world.
But Eidolon is completely uncopiable... And getting weaker. She can smell the telltale decay, the subtle degrading feeling that all Witches have. Food for thought.
For once everyone involved is fully briefed. Normally minutes of pre-battle speech is a lot, and here there is plenty of time to inform the newcomers. Leviathan is scary: powerful, strong, and smarter than he looks. When he's in the water he's faster than any speedster they have on record, according to a cape with no known upper limit. Those who aren't familiar with Leviathan can find video footage of him in action.
His hydrokinetic powers operate on a larger scale than almost any other powers; Brockton Bay can expect periodic tidal waves and catastrophic damage to or from the aquifer beneath the city.
Visibility will be poor. Armbands get distributed; when activated they'll keep track of capes' identities and positions. Everyone knows where to report, based on whether they can take a hit and get back up, blast from a distance, merely search and rescue downed capes, and so on.
Most of the Witches (and there are a lot of them, almost a hundred) plan to do a few minutes of blasting, then move to search-and-rescue or ferrying less mobile capes around. They fly machines similar to Gren's, carry lots of jewelry, and few of them are wearing masks. Only three Witches are confident enough in their durability to tank on the front lines.
When the time comes, Chatterbox establishes and holds a link with as many people as possible. If something happens to the armbands and she hasn't been knocked out, they might still be able to communicate.
The hour approaches, with as many people as possible ready and waiting to beat back Leviathan.
The clock ticks down, but the skies aren't darkening with storm clouds.
The Witches are fast and airborne. They're among the first there. While Dragon's voice confirms that Leviathan has turned and left, the flying artillery capes start firing into Behemoth's skin of obsidian and magma. The subset of front line capes who think they're still front line capes against the new opponent rush toward him. Shoreline defenses are abandoned. Eidolon hangs back, presumably changing out his powers.
After the first couple of barrages most of the Witches pull back, conserving their strength. About half of them are perfectly happy to play courier, carrying blasters into airborne firing positions, evacuating the wounded, or just keeping track of Behemoth's position, reporting what it's doing next. The rest continue their hit-and-run barrages, but Dragon's program should know that they can only keep it up for a few minutes at most.
Gren herself somehow manages to pour enough mana into the combined Knight/Brandish power that the glowing weapon extends almost forty feet as she swings it out. It cuts a swath into one of Behemoth's legs, a chunk the size of a motorcycle. But it cost a lot of mana, a solid tenth of her reserves, and she has to retreat and get healed by one of the visiting Witches afterwards.
(Yvette has decided it's a good idea to tell Tattletale that she's a precog, and discuss tactics.)
Most of Behemoth's lightning is targeting Witches, if only because that's most of the people in line of sight. But few of them (aside from Gren and presumably Knight) can deal much direct damage. As more capes get to the front, Behemoth is surrounded by barrages of projectiles and the tougher Brutes. Tinkers came prepared for Leviathan, and very few are shielded against radiation. Alexandria flies into Behemoth, and bounces off with exactly the same speed, as if she had been reflected from a mirror. Behemoth starts moving. Slowly, more lumbering than walking, and pausing regularly to zap people or knock over a building. He's moving in apparently random directions, but gradually heads west.
Tattletale's reaction is mostly irritation that they had a precog who can predict Endbringers and only now let her start asking questions, but she immediately starts asking for reactions to "the plan I'm thinking of now" and narrowing down possibilities.
Yvette did not know Tattletale existed until she tried to find the best person-to-plan-things-with, so don't go blaming her! ...After a couple of minutes, one of Tattletale's plans results in significantly less Doom than all the others before it.
Gren makes another pass with her Knight/Brandish combo, aiming for the same spot. She gets closer this time, pulling on Alexandria's invulnurability, so as not to waste huge amounts of mana extending the weapon so far.
And tougher, too. She is apparently an interesting enough opponent for Behemoth to bother taking a swipe at. Without checking to see if he hit her he goes back to fighting the rest. One of Legend's beams hits him from above and then erupts from his claws, breaking through force fields and felling a group of capes.
Tattletale jumps on Yvette's steelwing, not bothering to ask first, and points the way to a short girl wearing a doll-like mask. The doll girl is inflating what look like giant stuffed animals and sending them to fight (or at least protect capes from) Behemoth.
There is no rule that cape powers have to make sense.
"Can't keep doing this forever," she tells her armband, "I've got maybe eight, maybe ten more passes in me." Most of the rest of the Witches are tiring out, too. (A few more have died.) Only about two dozen are still blasting away, most are instead focusing on shields and moving people around.
Yvette doesn't bother asking questions. Not in the middle of a battle. She streams over to Parian. More Witches are ready and waiting if her master plan needs other people moved around.
Tattletale is very much in favor of having people do her bidding. Her own team is only marginally effective here; at least Grue can offer some protection against the monster's radiation. She sends some Witches to collect two parahumans, using her armband to notify them. She and Parian fly off toward the fourth while Behemoth is busy hammering through one of Eidolon's violet force fields.
Gren keeps tearing chunks out of various parts of Behemoth. She stops short of exhausting her reserves, in case she's needed at a critical juncture later. The healing-Witches are starting to get tired, too, and start restricting themselves to the most critically injured. Tattletale's temporary lackeys collect their targets and regroup, assuming everyone involved is willing.
Behemoth's current tactic is ordinary temperature. Well outside his ordinary kill radius capes are fleeing or dying, armor is melting, and (to those without enhanced perception) the monster himself appears to gimble in the wabe. Anything nearby that wasn't already on fire is now on fire.
Tattletale asks Yvette to say when, and on her word threads launch toward Behemoth almost as fast as a speeding bullet. They curve around him. Some freeze in place. Others bite into his flesh, charged by the same power that made them heatproof. Behemoth roars, not the weaponized roar that liquefies anyone standing too close but an ordinary roar. He starts concentrating lightning at the group that caught him.
When Behemoth strikes back, Citrine Mage aka Grendyne teleports in front of the little group and puts up the widest, toughest shield she can manage. Not very impresive compared to Eidolon, especially with so much mana already spent, but there's something to be said for response time. The other Witches start dodging and weaving with their passengers, only holding still long enough to let them launch a new set of strings every once in a while.
But it's a very effective weapon. Behemoth slides himself along the frozen threads, as close to the source as he can go until one launched from a different angle bars his way. Legend and Eidolon are blasting him from above, trying to bash him into the frozen threads. Alexandria hangs back and rescues the injured, not trusting even her invulnerability against whatever the cape in purple is doing.
After stopping, Behemoth opens his maw and inhales. Much more air rushes toward him than he could plausibly be sucking in, and the effect is that anything not tied down gets pulled toward him. This includes combatants.
The Witch carrying Clockblocker takes a flying cinderblock to the head. She dies instantly, and her, her body, her Steelwing, and Clockblocker fly towards Behemoth as well. Gren attempts to teleport in, to save him before he gets too close...
But she's dangerously low on mana. The teleport fails. She retreats.
Behemoth isn't moving. Everything and everyone is being pulled toward him. He stops sucking in air, or whatever he was really doing that gave that effect, but the pulling continues. People and things start falling sideways, in exactly the wrong direction. He's still taking damage, especially from Parian and Flechette when they can coordinate enough to get off a shot, and and barely defending himself. But he's passively causing more damage and casualties than a typical attack does.
One by one, the threads holding him in place unfreeze. He leaps up, catching some fliers within his range. The remaining frozen threads carve off pieces of what passes for tissue.
Nothing the capes are doing can hold Behemoth in midair for long, he is huge after all, but a few attacks hit and capes scatter before the barriers shatter and the people who put them there are left reeling. Alexandria slams Behemoth into the ground.
He burrows under. Then he starts burrowing, or at his speeds more like swimming, around the foundations of the city. His kill aura reaches above ground level. This has the obvious effects. After causing one last round of death and destruction, the monster disappears into the earth.
Grendyne is unconscious for much of the post-battle cleanup, and wakes up some hours later in one of the field hospitals.
Some reckless volunteers stayed behind in the shelters, and are being deployed to fix the city. Clearing up debris, helping manage hospitals, theoretically marking off what areas are too radioactive to be safe but that mostly just boils down to confirming that Scion handled it.
It's not entirely good. Everyone lost a friend, a teammate, even a nemesis. But it was a victory, the best they could hope for.
She notes that the Endbringer fight finished a charge of Dauntless's power. She puts it into her amulet. She cries for a while.
Then she gets up, ignoring the steadily receding burn up one leg and the closing puncture wound in her shoulder, and reports to Aegis that she's ready for doing whatever needs doing, though she'll be low on power for a few days.
The Endbringer truce is no longer officially in effect, but capes still aren't fighting each other yet. Out of respect or politeness or something. Normal patrolling is mostly replaced with helping the evacuees return to the city in an orderly way, distributing supplies to people who need it, and general emergency relief. There are more people than there are places to put them, which is better than the opposite problem after an Endbringer attack, but it could be a lot worse.
One Witch buys out her enlistment contract and would like to become a freelance healer in Earth Bet and/or join the Protectorate. (She's 19, and one of the better healers available, but not the best)
Gren helps out with resettling and emergency relief, feeling rather empty about it all. She visits Clockblocker to apologize for failing to catch him in that last attack, and speeds along his recovery a little. Not too much, mana is a bit tight.
This world is insane, and has very high-stakes emergencies. Neuroi, though unpredictable in their exact tactics, at least go down more easily than that thing did. She hopes Dauntless's power will build up to a big enough advantage, over time.
Days pass.
Over the next few days, the city goes back to normal. It's worse in every way, of course, but getting worse is also Brockton Bay's normal.
Most relevant to the Wards is that gang membership is going up, now that there are so many displaced people. The Merchants especially are benefitting, but the city is still standing and functioning enough to be worrying about relatively mundane problems like a higher crime rate.
The unofficial cape truce gradually ends, and the ABB remember their grudge against literally everyone else. Lung isn't rampaging, at least, but there are frequent fights between him or Oni Lee and other villains. The unpowered minions are frequent opponents of the Wards; those fights are generally pretty easy.
One day she asks Aegis, "How the hell are they going to take down Lung, anyway? I know Wards aren't supposed to go up against the big names, but he's regularly getting into fights and killing people. It doesn't sit well."
They get called in to a disturbance in Merchant territory, to the extent the Merchants control territory. No reports on whether capes are involved. Their patrol is the closest, and also a fast-moving one.
It doesn't take long for them to get there. There are, apparently, capes. Two of them, not really going out of their way to crush their opponents but not taking care to avoid hurting them either. They're surrounded by glowing blue shapes that look like hexagons around them regardless of what side they're viewed from. Several Merchants are on the ground with injuries from reflected bullets.
Anyone carrying a gun gets potshot stunbolts fired at them from above, just about impossible to dodge. Most of them hit, but when the bolts start getting reflected she puts up her own shield and radios to the other two, "Any ideas on how to beat those shields without hurting whoever's inside?"
"Oh, it's Uber and Leet. Don't worry, not a threat." A beam of colored light flashes from one of the animal-costumed villains, and veers harmlessly into a wall. "It'll probably just stop working any time now."
"We're not here to listen to insults, agents of Andross!" The taller villain jumps and kicks Browbeat, and bounces off. It ends up looking like he did it on purpose, but as attacks go it was toward the ineffective end.
"We're raiding one of Venom's bases, what does it look like we're doing?" Leet's voice is not exactly quality for the stage. "We're the ones with the heroic quest, if you're looking for villains try them."
Halfway through Leet's first sentence, the nearby puddles slither up to the duo's feet and freeze in a cone of ice about calf-high. Uber might be quick enough to dodge out of the effect. Then she hits them both with gusts of wind, and tugs at their gear with telekinesis.
Uber runs up a wall and strikes at Gren, falling short when the distance to her steelwing abruptly increases. Meanwhile, a triangular flying vehicle drops from above and hovers just in front of Leet. Extremely conspicuous laser guns start glowing but don't fire. "We've got you outgunned. Surrender!"
Gren shores up the ice around Leet, and tries to catch Uber by turning the ground under his feet to quicksand. At the same time she rushes forward, covering the distance in a tiny fraction of a second with a touch of Vista's power, and delivers three stunbolts to him from point-blank range.
Uber does a barrel roll. He dodges the first two, but takes the hit from the third while at the top of his leap. He falls onto the vehicle. Between struggling against the ice and heat the spaceship probably wasn't designed to produce, Leet manages to break free. He makes it to the top of the ship, hangs on to Uber, and shouts "see you later, noobs!" as they get launched more or less straight upward.
That was a mistake. Gren follows them. Unless that... Thing... Is as fast as Eidolon, she can catch it between fast-flight and space-warping. She follows it through all the evasive maneuvers they pull, ready to stop them from falling to their deaths when it finally breaks down.
Leet wakes up Uber, and immediately tells him that they got the dramatic exit for the video. They give it as much speed as they can, just in case Gren happens to be at exactly her top speed already.
(It turns out it's hard to intentionally cry precisely one tear while in freefall, but Uber settles for saying "Goodbye, Arwing" and saluting it before taking care of the landing.)
"I got em," she reports, including the address.
Browbeat and Vista are there first, since the chase didn't get very far. A prisoner containment van isn't far behind.
The rest of the patrol is uneventful. Back to where the Merchants were (a lot of them were committing non-cape-related crimes that are technically more of a job for the regular police, who are there by now) then around the city getting the occasional usually-false alarm and generally having a presence on behalf of the Brockton Bay Wards.
Relatedly, Uber and Leet have fans. Threads about them often devolve into arguments about whether they're Not That Bad or Just Like the Rest, and the former faction isn't happy with Gren and the Wards. But it's more in the sense of their favored sports team having suffered a loss than actually thinking she should have let them go. Usually.
In the cape context, the current usual schedule involves the ABB attacking another gang every few days. During the last time Lung was involved, Armsmaster arrived in time to fail to capture Lung. The dragon apparently knew about the tinker's tranquilizers in advance, and was able to avoid being captured.
The Director asks some of the Wards with useful powers if, this being strictly optional and with other choices available, they'd be willing to join the next effort.
The Wards are strongly advised to do exactly that. They're backed up by the PRT, Armsmaster, Dauntless, and Battery—most of Brockton Bay's speedsters were killed pulling people away from Behemoth's kill aura, but Armsmaster should be able to stall Lung for an evacuation if necessary. Gren and Clockblocker are the main chance for actually succeeding, with Vista supporting Clockblocker.
As long as that's understood, she's perfectly happy to go over plans of attack and discuss tactics and wait for the best opportunity to swoop in.
The two ways to end the fight are to freeze Lung and have everyone appear to leave, so that his power wears off, or hit him with enough stun bolts that he goes down. If neither works, they should evacuate.
Later that evening, Lung is spotted in Empire territory. The PRT got called early, when he was just barely starting to ramp up. The sooner the first responders get there, the less outgunned they'll be. The relevant capes get notified as soon as possible and the vehicles head off right away.
Lung, still humanoid but two feet taller than usual, is fighting a group of Empire capes. Stormtiger is on the ground injured, Cricket is dodging Lung's blasts of fire, and Hookwolf is matching him blow for blow. Cricket and Lung notice Gren just before the other capes arrive on the scene.
The area where Lung is, is now extremely difficult to move in. Everything slows to a stop - bullets, debris flying through the air, people. It won't immobilize Lung, but it should at least slow him down since he can no longer put momentum behind a punch or run. At the same time she starts sending down a steady stream of stunbolts. Not a huge burst of them, but a pace she can keep up for a while. And she tries to disorient or blind him with flashes of light.
Cricket, outside the immediate combat area, jumps up at Gren. She bounds from the ground to a fence to a roof, and grabs for the Steelwing. Meanwhile, Gren gets disoriented and hit by a wave of nausea.
The Protectorate and Wards head toward Lung and Hookwolf, and the PRT backup starts to pull up.
After she recovers a bit, Hookwolf and Lung can both have improbably well-aimed (in reality, guided via a power) containment foam from her Steelwing's launcher gumming up as many joints and limbs as she can manage. And the immobilizing field and stream of stunbolts starts back up.
Hookwolf staggers and goes down after a few stunbolts. Lung staggers and doesn't. While Lung dodges Armsmaster's Halberd, Vista gets Clockblocker behind him and increases her teammate's reach. But between the immobilizing field and the intense heat around Lung, he doesn't manage to touch him.
(Cricket gets enough stunbolts, tracking ahead of her attempts to dodge, to go down and stay down, because maintaining the silence-sphere is annoying)
Lung is unable to lay a hand on Armsmaster, but is also keeping his distance from the gray blur forming a haze around the end of the capitalized Halberd. A sudden move from Battery gets Clockblocker within touch range, much easier without Gren's momentum-dampening field. Lung manages to get an arm in her way, and both heroes sprawl across the ground.
This is getting annoying. She holds still for a good ten seconds as she copies Clockblocker's power (It's a little easier to hold on to, now, but it still takes significant effort), and protects herself as best she can with her composite Witch-Lady Photon shield, and zooms up to Lung lightning fast and taps him on the slowest moving appendage.
When Gren comes after him Lung throws a punch, not at her but at her Steelwing.
But she can freeze him with or without that. He stops where he stands. Containment foam starts burying him as soon as she gets out of the way.
After a little swearing, she tells Armsmaster, "I can try to rig something to help keep him down. A shield, inside-out and exactly the shape of his current body. Might help stop him from smashing his way out of the foam."
When it drops, he starts melting his way through the containment foam. After the first few holes in the sphere around him—one in front where he's breathing the most fire, one where his shiny new tail pokes through, and one where his arm does—Clockblocker freezes the foam. "We've got to get out of here."
She mutters something, then whisper-spells to Armsmaster "In about twenty seconds, you get as much tranquilizer as you can into him and I'll give him an overcharged stunbolt. It'll be like hundreds of little ones hitting all at once. I need that twenty seconds though. If that doesn't work, I'm out of tricks unless you want me to kill him. Which I would be willing to try."
"Can't inject through the scales." Armsmaster rearranges the settings on his Halberd. "Unless heat interferes with the bolts, hit him now."
"He should be out long enough to shrink back down. Are the others still here?" He checks on Hookwolf, whose blades have retracted into his human form while he was unconscious. Stormtiger apparently recovered enough to leave while Lung was fighting.
She glances at a certain building. "Cricket's still unconscious on that roof. She might be getting up soon, I can't tell. I can't get her, can't fly anymore... Ah, sorry I wrecked the Steelwing you made me. And what the hell kind of drugs can keep something like him down? And that shredder cloud is just scary. Wish I could copy tinkers sometimes."
Villains ruining equipment, that's part of the job."
Vista and Battery collect Cricket while Armsmaster loads Hookwolf into a van. By the time they get back Lung is small enough to be moved and they can return to base.
They return to the sound of cheers. Lung gets unloaded into a cell, having shrunk to normal and still unconscious. Hookwolf and Cricket have woken up, but are equally thoroughly restrained. (Not that anyone pays as much attention; they got Lung and the others hardly matter.)
And in fact subsequent patrols mostly see them fighting the Empire, and once in a while the Merchants. It's a slow fight, the heroes are still outnumbered by the various villain factions, but now they're winning.
Dauntless's power keeps charging her lovely amulet. Now that she realizes it, it's easier to copy and use multiple powers at once when she wears it. She loves this power.
...Considering some of the villain powers she's read about recently, specifically the Master powers, she kind of wants a specific sort of power to copy. Doing magic is a mental action for the most part... She inquires with the PRT and the UDF, is there anyone known to have protection against mental influence as a power or Witch special?
Power immunity is rare on Earth Bet. There's a Ward in Boston who's immune to mental powers, but that's more as a side effect of the fact that those powers tend to work either on living or nonliving things and his body is made entirely of metal. And the Siberian is immune to practically everything, but she isn't going to stand still to be copied. Add to that the fact that powers are rarely purely defensive, and no likely candidates come to mind.
She settles for trying to practice teleporting while in less than ideal mental conditions. Though how to generate less than ideal mental conditions to teleport under is a bit of a quandry.
This they can do. Gallant, her teammate, has emotion-affecting blasts as his main power. She can practice teleporting while hopeless, scared, sad, ashamed, et cetera and so on. Or any combination. Emotions aren't the only thing mental powers can do, but they don't have any other of the relevant type of Master on hand.
It works best if she has a plan in mind before the effect starts, she can follow through simple courses of action with sheer bullheaded determination but her ability to think creatively takes a significant blow.
She continues to be unusually good at copying powers and rounding up villains.
Before long the heroes are ready for what they hope is a final assault on the resident Nazis, thanks to a confidential and/or anonymous tip about location. Wards, especially Citrine Mage, may join but are naturally not required to.
Citrine Mage would indeed like to join. Her usual warning that every fight she fights potentially means less stored-up power later applies. Though this is less severe a restriction than it used to be - if she is ever actually low on mana, there's a few immigrant Witches operating as rogues in Brockton Bay by now. One healer, that weather precog (who brought along an apprentice of sorts, one with cooking magic), three with various flavors of telekinesis. The PRT can buy off their mana to refill Gren's reserves if they get significantly depleted.
They've got a time and place where the remaining Empire Eighty-Eight leadership will be. Leadership in this case means Purity, as Kaiser and his other lieutenants have been killed (by Behemoth) or captured (by Gren). Who Purity's seconds are is unknown, but information on the capes is available. Everything from powers and tactics to which teammates they tend to be alongside. An annoyingly high number are likely to be resistant to stunbolts, but Gren is the best counter they have to Purity herself. Gren is a flying Blaster who is better at both things, if not as destructively powerful.
They've even got numbers on how many unpowered reinforcements are likely to be on hand, and all capes know to watch out for bullets.
Gren studies up on who might be there, planning to list cape names based on their powers as soon as she's close enough to tell them apart. She's been practicing unusually placed shields - they'll always be easiest to cast right in front of herself, but she might be able to completely shut down Purity's attempts at blasting things. Might. She definitely understands that Purity will be her priority.
But they're fully informed and expecting the fight, an advantage the Empire almost definitely doesn't have.
But Gren is not good at stealth. "They're moving, I think we're spotted!" And shields go up.
Armsmaster gives an order to Dauntless, and white light crackles from the Arclance. It burns a path through the mist, and strikes Fenja. She weathers it and rejoins her teammates.
Wait a minute.
To the team, "...Othala's in the building too. Didn't catch her at first. Can't copy her at range."
Fog does disperse slightly, but pulls himself together and keeps coming. The ranged attackers are all firing on the Empire capes, but Gren's glowing green weapon is the most visible target. Fenja lunges, not for Citrine Mage but for the stunbomb, both she and her spear increasing in size. Menja rushes ahead of her and engages the close-range fighters.
The stunbomb shrinks when the spear passes right through it. Citrine Mage applies just enough of telekinetic shove to Fenja to keep her from following up the attack, ascends, and starts charging it again. With her spare concentration she applies various shaker-type effects on the Empire's capes - the immobilization field, elemental things, telekinetic shoves, shields getting in their way, and so on. Watching Purity all the while.
Everything has a fraction of the effect it should on the giantesses, but the same does not apply to whoever they're fighting. They drag Aegis, Armsmaster, and Dauntless into the immobilization field, where they're much less slow than their opponents. They start exchanging blows. Triumph shouts that he can keep Fog occupied, and then shouts, the sound waves driving the mist back. Gallant alternates blasts between Fenja and Menja, to little effect.
While that battle is ongoing, and going badly for the Empire, Purity steps out the window. She's glowing brightly, and raises a hand. Light spirals out, blasting Triumph to the ground, then Gallant, then Aegis. Dauntless' shield blocks one with its own white light, and Armsmaster is surprisingly hard to hit. The next blast is at Gren.
Time to be more mobile. Gren starts dodging further attacks, filling the air with a hopefully overwhelming quantity of stunbolts, flitting around and trying to get Purity to make a mistake.
With Gren dodging and the others down or occupied, Purity starts talking.
"You attack me now? I wanted to clean up this world, same as Kaiser did, and do it without the drugs and extortion. With Krieg and Hookwolf gone too, I could maybe even get the whole Empire on board. We don't have to be enemies, but if you all insist then I'll just have to win."
She and Dauntless blast each other. Dauntless goes down.
Othala collapses. If Gren returns outside, she'll see Purity and Armsmaster still talking, neither moving against the other, while Triumph holds Fog at bay and Aegis gets coming back no matter how often Menja hits him. Fenja starts to get up, and Armsmaster gives her a small dose of whatever kept Lung down.
And since Purity shouldn't be invulnurable anymore, Citrine Mage can go back to trying to get a stunbolt on her.
Armsmaster calls out orders, "Gallant! Aegis! Get back to base, it's under attack." He gets back to dueling Menja, while Dauntless and Citrine Mage blast at Purity.
A shield forms in front of Purity's flight path. If this next round of stunbolts doesn't get her, it'll be better to save her mana than to keep chasing. She's already used quite a bit.
Not having the time for Armsmaster to try devices against Fog until something reverts him to normal, Triumph's sound waves force Fog's form into the back of an airtight containment van. He and Citrine Mage ride with Armsmaster. Dauntless is a speedster in his own right. Their PRT backup moves in to collect Menja and Fenja, while the capes rush back to the PRT HQ.
"I've got plenty of juice left, by the way, just can't fly well without a Steelwing. Triumph, when we get there I'll give you regen or invulnurability, your choice - I'll probably lose Othala's power before the day's done, but I still have it for now."
When they arrive, there are PRT personnel surrounding the building and bringing people out. The people being taken out are unconscious but apparently uninjured. "They've got the Director," Miss Militia informs Armsmaster when they arrive. "Released everyone else, and aren't interfering with rescuing unconscious victims. They knocked out everyone on the lower levels, even Lung in the cells, and say they're going to bring down the building."
Gallant gets back from being flown around the building by Aegis. "They're in one of the middle levels, the darkness on the roof is a distraction. They have to know we're here, but aren't worried about whatever their plan is being disrupted. The Director isn't worried either, for what that's worth."
She switches to a whisper spell. "I think she might be able to hear through them. She put thin webs all over the place, and there's mosquitoes or similar on most of us, tracking our position... No clue how she can keep it all straight in her head."
"Agreed. I don't think any of us wants to fight Lung again. I can identify where her bugs are. Might be able to fool her by using telekinesis on some of them. Does anyone have a guess on whether my stunbolts will work on the dogs? I don't want to nail them with starbursts or lightning or something unless I have to. Don't have as much practice aiming big destructive stuff."
"I'll take care of the bugs," Armsmaster promises. "Not all of them, but enough that I and a few other people can't be tracked very precisely."
She opens up Telescope's power. "...Looks like they're on the fourth floor. At least, there's more of Grue's darkness all over that area. Seeing through walls is handy. Can you activate the foam sprayers remotely, Armsmaster?"
The building will be empty after just a few more people. When that happens, Miss Militia, Battery, Triumph and I will go in the front door. We'll disguise our position as much as possible. We're the diversion. Citrine Mage, Aegis, Vista, get the other Wards to the fourth floor from outside. Break the window and stall them until we get up there.
Miss Militia, Citrine Mage, send Skitter false alarms every sixty seconds for," he checks a random-number generator in case Tattletale has a relevant power, "four minutes after the last person is out. We'll move on the fourth."
She finds something stable enough to fly a short distance with two people. Hovering a little closer to Skitter lets her get just enough of a hold on that power to scatter the bugs. She can't micromanage, but on the fourth minute when they go through the window, all the bugs start flying in random directions.
Skitter will probably win in terms of who controls the bugs, but she can at least interfere. The first dozen stunbolts go for the thick person-shaped mass of bugs which is probably controlling them. They're unexpectedly dulled by the thick darkness, so she starts trying to dispel the stuff with Grue's power.
"What are you even trying to accomplish here? This place doesn't have nearly as much expensive stuff to steal as you'd expect, and much better security."
Tattletale's power, is the director alright? And are there actually bombs somewhere? (Those bugs trying to wrap her teammates up in silk start flying in random directions instead. She'll probably not have enough concentration for it sooner or later, but not yet.)
Oh, and she keeps working on dispelling the dark, even if it doesn't seem to be working all that well. She can see through it, now, at least.
Tattletale's looking smug (that grin can't not be described as vulpine), knows Citrine Mage is copying her power, knows she knows Tattletale knows that, and knows she knows she knows she knows she knows.... This powers is still tricky to control.
They are planning to damage the building, most of them prefer to do it with no casualties and minimal outside property damage for various reasons, but they aren't concerned with protecting any particular device that might cause the damage.
"So you know that wasn't actually her order. But you're just here to stall us, so want to hear what I've got to say?"
"Alright, fine." She watches the Undersiders, using Tattletale's power to look for the best moment to teleport directly behind them and stun them all at point-blank range.
"It's very important. The truth is...I'm stalling too. When we do our thing, stay no higher than the floor above this. No need for anyone to get hurt.
The Protectorate bursts through the door. "Just in time! Done stalling. Now."
And then she starts feeling woozy. She opens up Angel's regeneration, but not nearly fast enough apparently. She faints.
There was no explosion. Instead, they had cleanly destroyed much of the inside of the building on the upper levels, including the Wards headquarters. There is surprisingly little debris, more melted metal than strictly necessary, and no sign of a bomb or relevant tinker device. No one has any clear idea what, if anything, the villains were after. The Director's current guess is reputation; if this stunt did nothing else it put the Undersiders thoroughly on the map. Regent had claimed it was at least partly out of a grudge against her personally, but none of the Undersiders is known to have such a reason. Especially not him.
In the meantime, the Wards headquarters has been relocated to the Protectorate building. Director Piggot is going to be transferred to another city as soon as a replacement is decided upon, since a Director partially under the physical control of an active villain is a liability. She's not happy about the demotion.
She lurks on the Parahumans Online forum at the end of the third day of patrols, working out her frustration by discussing anti-Behemoth tactics on the Endbringers thread.
That doesn't mean they can't speculate on what might work. (Parian and Clockblocker was a combination that had come up before, from some of the forumites who were the most familiar with Brockton Bay.) One suggestion is pairing Citrine Mage with some other Trump for a recursive loop, though nobody can suggest an appropriate cape.
(Any thread a Brockton Bay Ward appears in suddenly gets distracted asking about recent events. She can ignore this if she wants.)
A thread about vigilantes vs villains is interesting. Gren talks about how she could maybe possibly see the vigilantes' point of view, as long as they try to be restrained about it. The police and heroes can't be everywhere, and it would be an entirely different set of issues if they could.
One commenter, having heard that Purity claimed to want to stop the Empire's crimes, asked if this means Citrine Mage let her go. Others want to know whether she thinks the current real world is a situation where vigilantes are a net good, and if not what would have to change.
Vigilantes do need some kind of accountability. Where she's from, it's that the heroes would step in if they went too far, but otherwise let the vigilantes be. No, she's not going to say where she's from. She did let Purity go, but more out of concern that the other Empire capes would escape than because she agreed with her politics. She is not a Nazi.
After receiving the correct responses, I'll agree to a truce for the duration of a meeting. I promise not to attempt to capture you unless you or your gang tries to hurt someone. I'd prefer to meet alone but won't mandate that. If the meeting place smells like an ambush I'll teleport away and bring the heroes down on the area.
When they meet, Skitter is a tall teenager surrounded by insects. They buzz whenever she speaks, disguising her voice. Even her shape is hard to discern in the mass of bugs. (If Citrine Mage copies her power, that will stop applying.)
"It's about vigilantes, and villains who do more good than harm. I'm trying to do that as part of the Undersiders. We've split up the city now, each taking responsibility for part of it. I can effectively stop organized crime in my territory, and a lot of unorganized. I'm hoping you leave convinced the Undersiders are going to help the city more than they'd hurt it."
"The entire city? That's a bit ambitious, isn't it? I don't have a strong impression of your personalities. The only time I interacted with you has been that first night when Bakuda was destroying things, and during crimes. That's not exactly a good impression, you know."
She sighs. "You believe it. Or you're very good at controlling your emotions... I'm not a hero, Skitter, not really. All this public duty and so on... It's annoying. It makes me a target for people like fucking Coil. I only do it because I kinda have to. 'All that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing,' and so on. I don't have to like it, but I fight the monsters. Are you a monster? Your team?"
"I think that's the wrong question. I'm not, but neither was Kaiser or Skidmark. People don't need to be monsters like Bakuda to need to be stopped. Most people aren't, even most of the people I wouldn't want to share a city with aren't."
"You don't control the Undersiders, I think. If I let you go and they turn out to be a bunch of sadistic warlords, it's effectively my fault. If I ran away from an Endbringer, I'd consider myself a mass-murderer. If I leave and you let gangs collect protection money, or let people like Coil kidnap and drug people for their powers, it's my fault. I never would have left his base if my old team didn't show up and blast their way out. I won't let anyone else suffer that, or enable it, if I can help it."
"Coil kidnapped and drugged you?
I don't control the Undersiders. There wouldn't be any other gangs around if we succeed, and none of the Undersiders are the sadistic variety of warlord. Not saying Regent goes out of his way to care about other people, but the rest of us do have some control, and we know what brings down more heroes on our heads.
Stopping people from making others suffer is why I'm in this."
"I turn eighteen soon and graduate from the Wards. Couple of weeks. I probably won't join the Protectorate. Let's say you show me that the streets are kept relatively clean in the next couple of weeks. I won't vouch for you guys. But I don't help hunt you down, either, I wander the world or something instead. And if you start being evil, if there are verifiable cases of the Undersiders doing more harm than good, I come back and I correct my mistake. With as much force as necessary."
To the people trying to convince her to join the Protectorate she says that being a Ward was largely annoying and being part of the Protectorate would probably be moreso. She's not going to become a vigilante, though, she intends to wander the world selling healing or other nonviolent powers. She's willing to show up if they call her in on something, if they pay her for things she is called in on of course.
She will have to leave behind the costume and the Citrine Mage name; apparently the lawyerly members of Glenn Chambers' department say those stick with the organization.
That said, she'll be in high demand wherever she goes for the healing alone.
She makes it known that meeting a new (non-tinker, she can't copy those) parahuman can be an acceptable alternate payment, and starts wandering the world. Healing is probably what she ends up doing most of.
Meanwhile, another unknown cape has been learning the ways of the internet, establishing contacts, and setting up her own business. She calls herself Places, and will teleport anything anywhere if the price is right.
She's pretty good at covering her tracks, electronically or otherwise. There doesn't seem to be a real person anywhere on Earth Bet that corresponds to the cape known as Places.
Is Places at all informed on what powers exist on the rumored Earth Gimel? And if there's much variety, is she willing to take people there?
An expanded subset of the list will cost an amount of money that's significant for some random joker but close to pocket change for a supervillain group: $5000. The full list and contact information will cost more, she hasn't decided how much yet. Going to Earth Gimel (Terra, as it calls itself) will cost quite a lot, especially if they want her to keep it quiet, and comes with conditions, the first of which is an in-person meeting at a time and place that Places chooses. She'll have a bodyguard, by the way, and you do not get to know what powers the guard has except that Places thinks it's enough to keep her safe long enough to teleport away.
They can pay whatever it takes for the full list; they've been successful so far. They're looking for powers that can transform people, powers that can heal, powers that can enforce action, and anything that Bet would consider a trump power.
At the meeting, even though they said transport for six, only five show up. And they want to make sure Places' power doesn't require physical contact.
"Let's get straight to business. You have the money?" They do. "Here's the list." A USB drive is handed over.
"I don't need physical contact, but I do have a mass limit and a number-of-targets limit. As to the powers you inquired about: There are at least two who can transform people into animals. Another can transform men into women and vice versa. There are various healers depending on what you want healed, but none of them match Panacea. There are a couple flavors of enforced action. The first is geasing. When willing targets swear to a particular phrase, they become literally unable to break the promise. There are also curses, which are rather finicky but have been known to de-power people, among many other unpleasant things. Will you be wanting to go to Earth Gimel soon?"
The red-costumed man in the top hat does most of the talking. "I imagine we will. It might take several trips, to prepare things safely. And what is this mass limit? Our sixth member might exceed it, in which case we'd need to bring all the candidate capes here one at a time."
"If I teleport anything over two tons I'll need time to rest. I can't safely 'port anything over twelve tons. There's more you'll need to know, though - Gimel's capes work differently than Bet's. They all get low level brute, mover, and blaster stuff, only women, no trigger events, they decay with age... And you can't buy 'em." She tilts her head inquiringly. "For my own safety, your sixth member is what they call a Case 53, correct?"
Gimel capes can work however they want, so long as they work. If nothing does work, we'd probably want passage back when Bet is our best chance again. Wouldn't want to throw away our shot. Will we be able to contact you from there?"
"Now, my prices. Given the potential danger from your last member, the heat I'll bring down by moving known villains across the world barrier..."
They're high. Very high. But not completely out of reach, they can afford two round trips to Gimel for everyone and then some.
Places is oddly well informed on the available funds of successful mercenary villains. But the Travelers are willing to spend more of their money on this than most customers, at least going by how their leader talks. To minimize the number of trips they arrange for three to go earlier and arrange a place to hide their other member, then the remainder to follow with her.
"London would be my best bet. One of the transformers is there, at least three geasers, and probably someone who can do curses but I don't keep close track on them. And it's a big center of government and trade to boot, so Bet dollars are gold there. Geases work on obsessive disorders and nervous tics and the like, but not for example your heartbeat or that thing where you kick if someone hits your knee just right."
And whenever the three that are going are ready and the money is counted by that guard...
They and all their luggage are in a nondescript but old-looking warehouse in Earth Gimel's London. "Go nuts."
They do. Going from being present in an unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar world with nothing but the clothes on one's back (and lots of money) to being in possession of a fortified vault isn't necessarily easy, but it works eventually. When it does, they contact Places again. The transport for the remaining Travelers is going to be the dangerous one.
She doesn't attack. She's studiously facing away from the strangers, and while some of her body is wavering and gesturing at them she doesn't make any especially sudden moves.
Thanks to the list they got from Places, finding the relevant capes—or Witches, here—is far easier than it was on Earth Bet. Oliver does most of the talking. Masks aren't customary here, and even though there's almost no risk of being recognized by the same person in both worlds they may as well have the most visible face be the one that's never the same twice.
They go for one of the geas Witches first. It won't be a cure, but if Noelle can be made safe to be around then subsequent searches will be much easier.
She's intimidated and grossed out by Noelle, but money is money. What phrasing where they thinking of? So she can point out any holes.
Noelle herself doesn't express much of an opinion; making her situation less of a problem and her safer to be around would be worth it whatever side effects if comes with.
"If the power is largely passive, it would be safer to have a fully general restriction that expires at some later time. Geases can be fuzzy around involuntary or compulsory actions. How about never touching or attacking anyone at all unless the power is to her own best judgment, or one of yours, no longer a problem? If there are things that aggravate the involuntary parts of your power, you can include an clause not to let them aggravate you. It might help. I can loosen or remove a geas easily if you change your mind, by the way."
"How does the not being aggravated clause work?" the blonde Traveler asks. "She has to avoid those things, or they magically don't affect her, or they affect her less depending on how much choice she has in it?"
"I'm not entirely sure how it will work with otherworldly powers, but it mostly helps you not care about the things that are aggravating you. It takes away, automates, most of the mental effort. When I geas addicts not to crave their sin of choice, they still crave it, but they find it easier to dismiss or ignore the craving because they are not allowed to let it affect them. It only helps so much, but some is more than none."
Repeat after me: I swear that I will not touch or attack another person until such time as my power is no longer harmful, to my own best judgment. While this oath is binding I will consider actions on my part that may be attacks, as attacks. While this oath is binding I will not allow the cravings or impulses caused by my power to affect me. While this oath is binding I will not allow involuntary responses to break this oath in whole or in part. So mote it be."
Oliver comes out safely. He waits a few minutes, talking with Noelle at a normal volume and with the lights on. Noelle reports that the feeling she's about to attack someone is at a normal intensity, and it doesn't feel more controllable. But she's resisting as much as she ever could, and isn't having to concentrate to do it.
There's nobody who can directly remove powers. Transformations and curses are both options, though.
Of the Witches who can transform people (and who are not currently on probation, insane, and/or in prison) the nearest one can turn people into animals and lives in the southern half of Hispania, which is Gimel's version of Spain. It's a three-day boat ride, or a rather expensive ten-hour airlift by Witch couriers.
Getting there with Noelle would be five days by boat then two and a half days by train. Places' prices are much lower for in-world teleports, but still fairly high. There are two other teleporters in London if they want to shop around, but both of them are employed by the UDF so it might make secrecy complicated.
And Krouse can try to bargain the price down to normal in-world teleport level, since the trip is much less dangerous this time.
They don't know much. No one does. They can confirm that Cauldron exists and sells bottles of superpowers. They've personally seen a set, though they weren't Cauldron customers, and the people who drank the vials ended up with powers. They recommend not talking about it much; the rumor says that Cauldron is very good at finding out when their secrecy is threatened.
They don't tell Places that they got their abilities from those vials, or that drinking half of one is the cause of the problem they're trying to solve.
The healer gets informed on what she's up against, though they lie about the cause. If this works, it'll cancel out two years' worth of Noelle getting worse. If there isn't a permanent cure for their power, they'll probably be back to talk about regular visits.
More mundanely, since they're bribing their way to the head of the line can she also heal Genesis' paralysis?
The next morning, the healer arrives. She wants to heal Genesis first, as it's likely to be the easier of her two jobs.
Time passes. "...Ah, there we are." There is a slurping sound, and Noelle should now be able to feel a pair of legs, still covered in warm flesh. "Wait. I felt the spell pop..." She stares at the still-present mound of body parts. "What in the world..."
Places appears, along with her guard and 'N'. "Shit, too late to warn you. Run! RUN!" 'N' shoves the mound of flesh back with a visible wall of force, somehow managing to tear Noelle free of it at the same time, though probably breaking something in the process. Places' guard picks her up and runs as fast as possible.
The healer is just going to stand there staring in surprised and dismayed confusion.
Marissa is fast, dodging a limb and moving for the door. Jess can't run, she hasn't had functional legs for years and isn't used to operating these ones. And her chair certainly isn't fast enough. Oliver rushes to help her, but too slow. The monstrosity rolls on top of her and it's all he can do to get away.
Places adds, "None of us have much endurance. Witches, all three. I think we can get the big guns here, precogs knew something was going down. Need to find a phone."
"Jess makes projections, animal bodies she controls while sleeping. Clones might have different powers, if so it's usually in a way that makes them more dangerous. How tough are Witches against heat and impacts, we might be in a position to rescue her."
Noelle's ex-body is being held back by random objects accelerated by Luke and having pieces burned off by Marissa. Apparently this is serious enough that property damage stops mattering. But they're avoiding the center of mass out of concern for the hostages, and its appendages regenerate quickly.
Places grunts. "We need the big guns. Seer said something bad was gonna happen this morning, in an unexpected place, and fast response is the way to cut it off. This is the bad thing."
N glances at her boss, then pipes up, "Wally, I might be able to get them. Protect me for ten seconds. Weird otherworld Witches, I want a ton of money if I save your friend."
Noelle yells, "Ballistic, hit it underneath her! Try to cut her free! N, pull her clear enough and Trickster can switch her out."
Ballistic has run out of projectiles with serious mass; it's up to Sundancer to hold it back. He switches to weapons that might penetrate deeper instead, and manages to marginally weaken the flesh below the hostage. Nothing he can safely do will get her farther from it. "Probably as good as I can get, pull her if you can!"
Places has apparently found brooms - literal brooms - from somewhere. The four Witches each get one and start flying, though that healer is still mostly just gibbering in shock.
The fight seems to be going their way, the creature hasn't even regrown the damage yet from when it lost the healer. Then it opens one of its mouths, the one attached to a vaguely demonic-canine-shaped outgrowth near its center of mass. It vomits.
Aside from being gross, this is also tactically relevant. Three young women, stir in the middle of the slime, all of them looking like mutated copies of Jess and none of them wearing a stitch. Two of them stay still and close their eyes in the middle of the battlefield. A gelatinous wall materializes, blocking the view to the clones and their creator. Ballistic and Sundancer destroy it quickly, but by then the three Genesises are out of view. Trickster swaps them with their creations whenever he spots one, and Sundancer shows no mercy, but mostly it's screeching taloned monsters or firebreathing dragons appearing from unexpected angles. Only ever two at a time, is the saving grace.
Places is relatively used to combat. She has a good sense of tactics, too, and helps set up opportunities for Trickster, Sundancer, and Ballistic while barking out orders to N and Wally, who are both majorly freaked out. She's mostly keeping them out of the way, rather than directing them to hurt the monster-things. The Witches can each carry a person, if they need space between them and the... Thing.
The third Genesis walks out from behind it. She looks like Jess, if Jess were trapped inside a half-melted mirror, and is also striped black and white. She leaves footprints in the perfectly solid floor. A projectile from Ballistic bounces off her.
"RUN!" Trickster is the first to shout. Clones' powers are usually stronger, but they're usually similar, it's completely unfair for a clone of Genesis to come out as the— "SIBERIAN!"
And appears in the New York Protectorate HQ's lobby, directly above the receptionist's desk. She puts her hands on her head, knowing that suddenly appearing is a Threatening Move. To the first uniform, "I'm Places. Need to report a big huge emergency! Giant monster making evil clones! On Earth Gimel, city of Horten."
The Witches who showed up to investigate all the noise have not been appraised of the threat they're facing. One of them tries to punch the glob of flesh with a glowing hand, and immediately disappears into it.
"If you'll still be able to take people after a round trip, then do it," comes the New York Director's voice. "If not, we'll send who we can now. Copycat might not be able or willing to help immediately."
She is broomless, but that's not a problem with a powerful telekinetic nearby. "Woah, where'd you come from?"
"It's me, Gren! Lytee. Emergency back home, it's bad and they want you to teleport people in. I know you're better at copying, lately. I'll pay you ten thousand dollars on top of whatever the Protectorate gives you, more if that's not much."
"Damn. Here, have some mana."
A shiny is tossed. Places catches it. "Put us in the New York Protectorate building? I'm on mana burn."
They both appear there, Copycat almost radiating power. "I'm helping. Can take ten people if you want me to fight right away, twenty if not."
Legend interjects after the Director, "Flechette, if Places is right this could be a less dangerous chance to test your power against the Siberian than against the real one." (She volunteers, of course.) "Copycat, as soon as it works or fails, or if Flechette is threatened, teleport out. Eidolon is in Houston, and if there's a risk of multiple Siberians we might need him."
With most of the Wards gone it's a smaller group, but they're ready to go.
A map is produced. "Eleventh and Blue, maybe."
"Alright. Hold on everyone." She looks at the map. She raises her arms. There is a slight tingling sensation for a few seconds.
And they're outside in sunny not-California. The monster is fairly obviously thataway, what with the destruction and sounds of ongoing battle. Copycat staggers.
"Heroes! I've got some things you might want to hear about my teammates..."
Trickster swaps Oliver with one of the bodies. Whether it was a clone or a casualty, who even knows. "Don't kill the monster! The real Genesis is still in there!"
Flechette fires her crossbow at the striped clone. Her target vanishes, as if she had popped a bubble. And then it reappears and comes straight for her.
Places grabs Flechette and disappears.
Copycat starts tossing out lightning bolts and environmental effects, mostly at the Genesis-creations and the not-Siberian. "I can't detect the Siberian's power. It's like she's not even there."
The clone ignores the bombardment and the commentary. "They're from Aleph. Came through in Madison two years ago, during the Simurgh attack. You know, her song, where you kill your friends for their own good if they're there too long? They got that for hours. Everything they've done since was all her."
Heroes are turning to look at the Travelers, but being an evil clone who is also a Siberian doesn't make for much credibility. No one attacks them.
"And all this, that's her power." the clone points a crooked finger at Noelle. "This isn't even the first time this happened, and it won't be the last."
There are now three sides to this. The heroes might have common goals with the Travelers, but the Protectorate members are all assuming that they'll have to do as much as possible afterward to arrest them. At least.
She pulls up her version of Legend for use on the Genesis-creations and starts investigating the monster with her enhanced vision on the side. Does it have a core, like Neuroi do?
"Don't you get it? The Travelers are as much your enemies as that is.
But I was also playing for time, while one of my friends could manage this."
Legend's invulnerability activates whenever he gets struck, turning his body into an energy state to absorb the blow. Jess has always been a bit of a cape geek, even on Aleph. Her clones know as well as she does that in his normal state, Legend still breathes. And most of the Genesis clones can produce all kinds of interesting things to breathe.
He falls, and the Siberian one feeds him to the monster.
Huh, so that's how it works. Convenient that the now-dead Knight's crystal spear dovetails so nicely with that... Absoluteness.
She teleports again, appearing above the monster and ignoring the fight raging around her, and pins it to the rubble with a forty-foot gold-glowing three-way combination of Knight, Brandish, and Flechette. Goodbye, core.
The Siberian clone leaps to try to make her biggest tactical advantage invulnerable, while every other clone or monster swarms at Gren. The Travelers and heroes provide heavy covering fire. The heroes don't focus on killing anything that leaves a body, but by now there are more than enough Genesises to go around.
Time to start rounding up the Genesises' original bodies while she builds up the strength to do that again.
...The hell? That's a Genesis, or something like one, but shaped differently.
Oh. Ohhhhhh. That's how you get a Siberian from a Genesis. She grabs the clone, stuns it if she can, and ascends sharply, only refraining from immediately killing her so she can study the power.
And then the three bear-shaped force fields attacking projections abruptly shatter. A blue flash streaks into the wall behind them and keeps going. "Everyone stand down" comes almost-Legend's voice. "The next one hits Ursa herself."
Ursa Aurora disappears, replaced with a cloned Witch body that could have come from anywhere. The Legend clone fires on Trickster instead, the bolt curving to cut him in two even though he swaps himself around the battlefield repeatedly.
Copycat tries to block not-Legend from doing much of anything with an array of shields winking in and out of existence. Plus some of Grue's darkness and a couple other obfuscating powers she's picked up.
They're more to confuse him than actually block his attacks- most of her concentration is going toward mapping out the edges of the Siberian's power. It seems much less mana-hungry than her trick with the big flashy golden spear, but it'll take a little while.
The monster itself is regenerated enough to attack, if weaker than before. It's much less strategic than any of its clones so far, rushing straight in toward the Travelers. This leaves several Genesises uncovered; their real bodies had been hiding behind it. They don't last long.
A Siberian appears behind not-Legend and turns his head into paste. "I'm Copycat, not Siberian!" And it starts flickering around the area, rapidly carving the original not-clones people out of the monster.
It would hardly matter if they did think she was the Siberian. But not wasting their firepower on her means it can be concentrated on the real target, holding it down and tearing at it while she cuts it up. Some clones get revealed, not yet complete enough to be vomited up, and a Protectorate cape mercilessly drains the water from their bodies. When the last hostage is clear, Sundancer incinerates what's left of the monster.
"This is what we fight against," the recently rescued Legend says. "If you hadn't come, that thing would be invincible and spitting out clones until it got another Siberian. Today wasn't anything better than terrible. But everything here, there's more of it not happening."
He gestures toward the Travelers, who are being thoroughly arrested by the surviving Protectorate members. They're not resisting.
"But you can stop. If you don't want to fight, you can leave it to us; it's why we're here. If you do want to fight, well, we both know how much difference you can make."
(Places has deposited Flechette halfway across the city, still on Earth Gimel, and subsequently disappeared.)
The surviving Travelers are sufficiently caught, with the exception of Oliver, who as far as anyone knows is just an unusually good-looking civilian. He even has his arm back, thanks to all the healing.
The Protectorate people set about getting the full story, as much as the innocent bystanders can tell them and then from the Travelers. Civilians and Oliver get dispersed; he gets to worry about how to convince Places to help with a rescue.
And Gren finds out that when Coil described Dinah, he wasn't making everything up.
Gren closes her eyes when she's reminded of Coil. "Ugh. I have to wonder how he manages to cause so much trouble, with no parahuman power."
"This one wasn't him," Genesis says. "He didn't even know we were going. It was to cure Noelle, and you can see it helped." Noelle is normal-sized again, after all. "More than he ever did. It's just...we never expected that."
"Convince these people to let us and we'll help you do it," she says. "We had three reasons to work for him, none of which apply anymore, and it's not like he doesn't deserve it."
"No." Ursa Aurora is adamant. "I haven't heard them deny what that clone said. No way is anyone going in with Simurgh puppets at their back. They should be in quarantine for the rest of their lives."
"If it were that easy, quarantine wouldn't exist," the hero counters. "I'm not even saying it's their fault—though, you know, notorious mercenaries—but they're not exactly trustworthy." But it's not up to her anyway.
"We can let the PRT and the Brockton Bay team decide if they want the Travelers' help," Legend says.
She zips over to a roof past the edge of the battle-zone. The clone is still unconscious.
"...Look, I'm not that reckless. I can kill her in less than two seconds. Knight and Flechette go through the invulnurability, Flechette more than Knight, the master is ordinary human and I hit her with enough stun to knock someone out for days and if she woke up and started Siberianing again anyway I'd have teleported directly behind the master and deathtouched her."
Do you think you could do that to the real Siberian's master? If she has one, that is. It might not even be necessary, now that we know to look we'll find her eventually even if you very reasonably want to stay out of it."
"I meant it as a matter of timing. I'll be rested enough when I'm done. Big teleport, nasty-hard battle, and another big teleport right after is skirting too close to mana burn. Sorry guys but you'll just have to wait fifteen minutes or convince some of the UDF 'porters to take you back." She's taking notes on the Siberian's power, now.
"Well that was quite a scene and I think we all need a shower and some time alone. Legend, I'll come back in three hours for briefing or statements or whatever they call it."
She also has Places try to contact Toybox. Copycat is interested in getting some tinkertech and Places should have the right contacts to open negotiations.
And then she has a shower, changes, and pops back into New York for whatever discussions or paperwork they demand. (Queen Elizabeth Memorial Hospital is not happy their healing session is delayed, but they can deal.)
The Protectorate asks for very little paperwork from non-affiliated heroes. Not that they wouldn't like to, but capes (like everyone else) tend to dislike that, and when they set their rules they didn't want to drive away allies. Mostly the local PRT people just want her version of the story. It matches up with what they got from other witnesses, though the connection to Coil is unique to her side.
There are also questions about her current set of capabilities and how easily she can acquire more, and even a request to demonstrate the Siberian one, but these are fairly transparently less about today than about knowing just how powerful she has gotten since when she was Citrine Mage.
Can the brainscan tinker make a mind shield, or at least a becalmer?
Calming would be easy, if ineffective against the scarier powers, and to the extent shielding one's mind is a learnable skill she can throw in a copy of someone else's memories of learning it. If Copycat can find someone who has and convince them to share; Cranial doesn't have this one on file.
Mental resistance is a learnable thing on her world, she has learned a small amount. She might be able to find someone with more but that would be later.
In terms of payment, she has money, but would prefer to pay in work if there are enough minor non-illegal favors or one major non-illegal task Cranial needs doing.
(Cranial has to look up the others, but her reply will contain as little sign of that as possible.)
Most of the information on the effects of Canary's power comes from her ex-boyfriend. Based on his accounts, it'd be doable. Something to forcibly insert "IS THIS REALLY SOMETHING I WANT TO DO" into her train of thought whenever she's unusually suggestible. It'd have false positives of course, but being forced to think twice in harmless situations might be worth the protection.
Canary is even easier to stay away from than Heartbreaker, what with being in the Birdcage. But the same should work against Valefor if the public explanation of his power as super-hypnotism is accurate. And she can certainly offer a device to record the client's thoughts and replay them on demand. That ought to counteract Valefor's characteristic order to forget having met him.
The other villains she tries to look up and fails. Not enough information on the details of their powers.
Should Gren decide this is worth doing, Crainial's first thought for payment would be money. But the Toybox tinkers all owe each other favors, and Toy Soldier has heard of Copycat's (questionably deserved but widely believed) reputation as the next Eidolon.... If she's willing to compromise on the non-illegal bit, they promise the tinker tech they'd ask her to steal was already stolen in the first place and it's from villains anyway.
Or money. If she'd rather not, money still works.
Copycat herself is liable to be able to undo anything Heartbreaker does, given access to an unconscious Heartbreaker for a few hours. The point would be freeing her from its effects long enough to escape/reverse it. She'll want both the emotion-thing and the anti-suggestion thing. Something to replay thoughts would be useful in more ways than getting around Valefor, too, if it's accurate enough to recreate the detailed sensation she gets when investigating or using different powers.
Whether she wants to go with money or the heist job depends more on the exact details of what and from whom.
The proposed job is about the world's best tinker. Dragon's tech is pretty much the gold standard, but she lost some suits to a group called the Dragonslayers. They manage to be successful high-priced mercenaries even without powers of their own; Toy Soldier thinks this tech would fit much better around a parahuman tinker with a relevant specialty. Suitably scaled up of course. If Copycat can bring at least one suit to copy, she'll get her defensive superpower upgrades.
The Dragonslayers should be assumed to be competent and well-equipped. They have an impressive track record against Dragon, but have been known to lose fights occasionally against lesser opponents when caught by surprise. And, possibly relevant here, their reputation has them as mercenary enough not to hold a grudge. They won't retaliate against Copycat if she wins unless someone hires them to.
And she's not going to be able to hack these suits or even know how to shut them down without completely destroying them, she's no Tinker. But she's willing to operate on comms with Toy Soldier pointing her at his preferred piece of tech and telling her how to disable it once she's in.
There isn't enough information to be had, but rogue tinkers tend to know people who know people. If the Dragonslayers receive a message from a prospective client who wants an in-person meeting, Copycat will get her chance to knock them out and take their stuff. Wouldn't be immediate, but in a while they can have at least one of them in a known location.
Which means that Copycat will get her defenses sooner and more easily anyway. Exchanging money for goods and services: the best superpower.
She'll do brain scans if there's a chance it could make a device that improves her ability to recall powers. Cranial knows that it would end very badly if she decided to betray 'The Next Eidolon' by messing with her brain somehow, right?
She'll need scans of what's going on inside when Copycat copies a few different powers, and then she'll be able to predict whether the memory implant will extend that far.
"Are there more of you?" A few beeps and whirrs from the machinery. Not actually necessary, but sometimes it goes better if the client is thinking of everything as obviously tinker-y. "OK, you can go on down the list."
She goes down the rest of the list. Non-thinker sensory powers, energy manipulation, physical manipulation, transformation and projection, 'weird stuff' that includes many Breaker effects and teleportation, and combinations of two or more powers.
"I don't follow the headlines much. I thought it was just different parahumans, not something else."
The results of the list show that it's always the same type of thing happening, with the specifics being different. "Can you try combining two in a way you haven't done before, or copying a new power? Try mine. You don't have to get it down well enough to use, it's just so I can see what it looks like when you're copying." Cranial has done some combination of noticing and guessing that tinker powers are hardest to copy, which suits her just fine.
She studies Cranial's tinkerness, tilting her head to the size quizzically. "...Yeah, copying you is just giving me the ability to see complex patterns, and isn't helping me know what to do with them."
Yeah, looks like the memory gadget is going to help with recalling that too. Just a couple minor changes. You think it's going to speed up how fast you can copy?"
"Oh, definitely. Remembering the patterns is most of the work at first, until it gets worked into my power's equivalent of muscle memory. And I can stop worrying I'll forget something. There might never come a day where Aegis's overly stubborn physiology is the best way to solve a particular problem, but if that day comes I want to remember how to use it."
The thing that does the messing with is a chair half-surrounded by so much machinery it's almost a small room in its own right. It's all white and ovoid and the visual impression is like nothing so much as a giant egg.
A band settles around her forehead, keeping it in the same approximate place. "I'm leaving the unnecessary sound effects off this time. If you're wondering if the Deneuralyzer is doing anything, it is." There's no visible sign of whether it's doing anything. For all Gren can see, Cranial could be playing Galaga at the controls and expecting her customer not to notice.
"Is there a martial art that's good for dodging, or for striker powers that just have to touch to win? This world's version of Suomic and Ostkav might be nice, in terms of languages. Spanish too. As to the last thing, no. Just no. It'd be creepy to learn that from machines."
She's in a thoughtful mood today, huh?
The two hours of demonstrating techniques so Cranial can copy them will go by subjectively quickly as Gren considers her new knowledge.
As far as anyone knows, the Undersiders are mostly not extorting protection money or selling drugs or taking advantage of being the only major villains at all. How exactly this is profitable for them is an open question, but at least controlling a city is good for their reputation.
If Coil is still in the city, there's no sign of him. His soldiers put up some resistance, but seem to have either fled or defected to Tattletale.
Dinah is all right, or at least as close as one can get when one is like twelve and coming out of that kind of drug withdrawal. She has been selling predictions to the Protectorate and being cossetted by her parents and is perfectly happy to receive a visit from Gren, for a rather solemn value of perfectly happy.
Copycat can give her a jolt of well-being from one of her healing powers when she visits, because why not? She names a time and lets Dinah pick the place.
One of the many sensory powers she likes to keep half-active whenever she's out and about is Skitter's bug-sense. They're not in her territory, but if the terrifying swarm queen comes by Copycat will probably notice.
Gren shows up in street clothes, though her mask is in the messenger bag at her side just in case. She finds Dinah easily. "Hullo, Dinah. How's freedom treating you?"
"I made a really elegant sort of melded hard-light attack between New Wave, Legend, and Knight, one of my old squadmates. Still can't copy tinkers, which is annoying, but I met Strider and his teleportation is so much more efficient. I'm gonna try and have another go at permanently rather than temporarily copying you, unless you mind. Mental powers don't agree with me most of the time, unfortunately. There's a lot of flavors of shaker and striker powers... Flechette is neat - she makes things ignore physics for a while. It could probably cut through endbringers, it's a very stubborn sort of effect. I got a new kind of healing, eight new kinds of telekinesis, about a dozen new senses... Oh, and the Siberian's projection. Can't channel touch effects through that, though."
"Much obliged. There's still a limit on how much I can use at once. My amulet is just about charged to its limit, I'm gonna start on a new one soon. People looking at us or listening to us will find us uninteresting right now, by the way. Not foolproof but the least invasive hidey power I have." She looks at Dinah in a different way. "Yup, precognition is still as confusing heck..." They're at the front of the line. Gren orders a double scoop of cookie dough flavor.
"I'd visit Lung if he wasn't in the Birdcage. Might try to arrange a meeting with Faultline's crew. Or Accord. I've already visited like a third of the heroes and rogues on the east coast. I kinda want to visit Panacea, but for some reason she doesn't want me copying her power. Unless there's a good reason I'm not gonna stomp all over that."
She sighs and looks at the knight contemplatively. "Behemoth got my friend Knight. I want to end it. If I can't copy you well enough to ask myself, can I get some predictions about some plans in about two months?"
She thinks for a moment. "I think I'm well suited to being pressured like that. I take things as they come. If I snap I'll probably disappear to some random island and blow up rocks, not kill someone. And it's still a good feeling even if it gets stale, helping people."
That pawn's sacrifice will surely be appreciated by someone. Gren's next few moves put her queen in a risky but powerful position.
"I think I've got as much of your power as I'm gonna get. Chance I find Coil in the next few days is eighty one point four percent, and it hurt my head a lot more than I think it does to you."
Her ice cream is almost gone by now. She's a fast eater, apparently. "I don't suppose you know where Coil's got to? I'm inclined to hunt him down and my chances are pretty good."
She flies above Skitter's territory, high enough that no bugs are present, and whisper-spells at the bug queen. "Copycat here. Just letting you know you passed my checkup. Do you happen to know where Coil's got to?"
Time to visit Tattletale. Still invisible, and with a couple other Stranger effects besides. She's damnably observant. Gren starts copying that power over again - she doesn't care nearly as much about villains objecting to her copying things.
"Hullo, Tattletale. How's things?"
"I'm great. See the world, meet interesting capes, then copy them. And earn a lot of money curing the incurable, stop a falling Airbus in my spare time. But I have a bit of a grudge against the guy who kidnapped and drugged me, you see. I was hoping you could shed some light on what exactly went down between you and him."
"Coil, right? Skitter told me.
We teamed up with him against the ABB, for a while. Most of the villains did. We were small fry then, barely earned a seat at the table. That was while he had you, going by when the other Witches arrived.
More recently, I got into some of his accounts. Locked him out, stole as many of his revenue streams as I could—not giving you any details there, sorry—even bribed some of his mercenaries." On the assumption that this is being examined with her own power, Tattletale has to assume Copycat knows where she's being evasive. She may be wrong, but better safe than sorry.
"Do you have a lead on what he's been doing since?"
"I've got...good information on what he was doing, if that would help."
The power informs Gren, Itentionally avoiding naming the source. Thinks it should be obvious. Coil's former employees. Expected me to guess that. Knows I did. Knows I know she expected me to guess. Knows I know she knows...
It'll keep giving her a steady flow of useless information until she focuses, stops, and starts again.
"He secretly hired the Travelers for cape muscle. Going by what he told his soldiers, his endgame was to clean up the city. Not unlike us, or at least Skitter, just with worse methods. And they would have worked for him regardless, so it's not like he had to lie to them." Her power picks up on the obvious implication, Undersiders have differing motives, Tattletale is in this for sport, successful attacks are counting coup. Fighting the ABB scores points against Lung, attacking PRT HQ was a goal against the heroes, many fights have secondary reasons... it got irrelevant again.
"The Travelers are no longer relevant. They let some sort of evil-clone-making monster loose in my homeworld, then got arrested once we killed it. Trickster died, though. You got into his files. He would have abandoned or drained everything in them if he has any common sense, but can you give me a name or a location from them anyway?"
When I hacked him I got most everything he knew at the time, but he knew I know it. I could point you to safe houses and backup bases, but they'd be empty. Never did get his secret identity." All statements true, incomplete, would be incomplete even if innocuous to cover for the real secrets, at least one omission isn't innocuous, already knew about the incident with the clones, has up to date information on the Protectorate.
Tattletale notices when she makes that connection. She starts using her own power to keep track of reactions and better direct Copycat's copy down more harmless trails.
"Of course you do, that's your power. Ugh. Spy games. At least I'm careful with my passwords." Has an eidetic or otherwise improved memory. "You're starting to make me feel like I'll come out worse behind even if I find Coil and take him down." Dislikes complex plans, impatient with information gathering, might do something rash or unexpected, intends to fight the Slaughterhouse Nine.
Coil has dealt with out-of-town villains. Former employees went to some of those groups. Suspects this is him extending his reach, does not think he has enough influence to make them rescue him. Knows which groups. Adepts. Ambassadors. Elite.... Not exactly a relevant list, if this isn't part of any deals he has, but there goes the power again.
"I might have a way to find him, but I wanted to clear the obvious leads first. It's just common sense, dealing with someone as slippery as him. Some things just need doing." Thinks she can teleport directly to Coil. Thinks Coil doesn't have a power. Thinks Coil is a genius of evasion. Thinks she can beat the Slaugherhouse Nine. Knows the Siberian's weakness. Fought a Siberian-clone. The Siberian is an alternate manifestation of Genesis's power. Has copied the Siberian.
And then, since information gleaned by cheating doesn't come with the assumption that both people know it, "Well, that little detail about you and the Siberian got left out of my sources.
But this is bigger than Coil ever was, and it was never their powers that made the Nine dangerous." Sees cape life as a game, Slaughterhouse Nine don't play it. Expects attacking them to fail. Expects teleporting to Coil might succeed where other attacks would fail. Wouldn't mind if it did.
"...This power is kind of bullshit." Thinker headache is starting. "If Coil really is small potatoes, then I could use the practice. But I take serious threats seriously, you don't play fair when losing is unacceptable." Disapproves of treating cape life as a game. Isn't going to push it. Has been discussing plans of attack on the Nine with Legend. Is much more willing to kill than when she was a Ward.
Must not have used her power heavily recently. Hasn't exerted it enough for a headache yet. Thinks hiding whatever she's hiding for this long means she's winning. Smug. Smug smug smug smug smug. Radiating an aura of smugness visible even without the power. From Vermont.
"...There's something wrong here. You called him a local crime lord. As if he's still active, and still here. That's not much by itself, just a turn of phrase. But you're hiding something really hard." Suspects Undersiders have a detente or alliance with Coil. Doesn't trust her own conclusions. Is not used to plotting and information games. Not that Tattletale didn't know that last bit already.
And of course I've got secrets. That's why all the effort to point your copy of my power away from them. Working well, if I do say so myself."
Used to this power. Knows what it will and won't latch on to without being carefully directed. Had this planned since finding out there was a power copier in the city.
Some time tomorrow, she tries to teleport to Coil. The way 'porting to a certain person works is seeing the whole world in a sort of vague sense, which narrows to a continent which narrows to the east coast which narrows to Brockton Bay which narrows to Downtown which narrows to the PRT HQ... And refuses to narrow any further.
Wonderful. Coil has some way of blocking her from locking straight on. But it's extremely suspicious that he seems to be in the PRT building. He probably has a position there, an excellent spot for a sneaky espionage-focused supervillain to be, really.
She's glad she never joined the Protectorate. She might have gone under Coil's thumb again without even realizing it. Which leaves her wondering what to do next. She can't very well go to the PRT about how Coil's in the PRT, she might as well send up fireworks that say 'I know where you work, Coil!'
Let's see if Tattletale's power gives me any hints. She starts it up, thinking about what she knows about Coil, the Undersiders, the PRT, and capes in general.
The power does help, though. It focuses on a single target, which conveniently enough is Coil. He's operating from the shadows as much as possible, arranging for people to do things without them knowing it's at Coil's behest. Capes are harder to control, but the PRT gives access, and, depending on position, ability to affect what the heroes do. If Coil is working in the PRT, it's because he thinks the PRT is the place to go to get the influence he wants. He's not just working there, he's in a position of power. Might be the Deputy Director, any of the department heads, even the Director, but he's definitely someone important.
But there was a recent change of Directors, shortly after Coil vanished. Assuming that benefited him, it clicks. Coil is Director Calvert.
There's always the direct approach, but assaulting a PRT director would get her in all kinds of trouble if she can't prove without a doubt that he's Coil. And probably even if she can.
Ugh. Spy games are giving her a headache. But she sets to gathering evidence in her spare time, leaning heavily on Tattletale's power and enhanced senses (and what internet prowess she got from Cranial's instant tech education), trying to find something to connect Coil to Calvert. Even if it wouldn't hold up in court, a healthy amount of suspicion on him would be enough revenge.
Asking Tattletale's power for an inference, it jumps to yep, that's the guy easily.
Okay, that's pretty suspicious, but not quite enough that she'd feel confident in the public opinion fight that's going to happen. She fishes around for something else to connect the two, if it's at all findable. Has that construction company been getting better-than-average deals with the PRT lately, or anything like that?
Coil's allies are getting better treatment from the Protectorate lately, though. It's subtle, but it's there. Enough that relevant superpowers can pick up on it. The cells of the Elite that hired Coil's agents are a little more likely to be classified as the non-villainous kind of Elite, that it's safe to do business with instead of fighting. The heroes are a little more willing to leave Accord be in favor of pursuing other threats. These aren't things that the Brockton Bay director could manage directly, but Calvert was a PRT consultant before he was a PRT head and maybe he's offering suggestions they're listening to.
The Undersiders' continuing escapes would fit very well in this category, if not for the fact that there's no obvious way for him to let them get away after every loss. He can't exactly be ordering the heroes to do it.
...Maybe he's Tattletale's inside source. There's no good way to try to verify this without risking getting discovered by either party, though. And pushing Tattletale's power too far might lead to bad answers. She notes it as 'possible' though.
To hell with it. She wraps up everything she has on this matter, from Coil's list of crimes (plus evidence) to the connections (all the evidence, right there) into a neatly-presented little bundle of informative research with a little help from Uber's power. She's no writer, but it should be easy to understand at least.
She uses Tattletale's power to identify the capes and any important non-capes most likely to believe her about Coil.
It's slow going. She has to check candidates one at a time, looking into whatever she can find on them and extrapolating to what would they do if they found out their boss was a supervillain. Would be easier if she could meet them in person safely.
It turns out that plenty of the relevant parties will take her seriously. Miss Militia is thoroughly Lawful Good and will consider it her responsibility to find out if it's true, Armsmaster would love the chance to capture a supervillain who crossed as many lines as Coil did, but would be a bit displeased if someone else did and it came out that he had been taking orders from one. Convincing them it's true is going to be harder, especially with all the evidence being so circumstantial. Armsmaster would be a good candidate there; he'd at least be able to tell that Gren believes it.
Most of the Brockton Bay PRT non-capes would either reject this as crackpottery or just inform their boss that he has an enemy. Coil's superiors are an option, but the Chief Director probably isn't in the habit of listening to unknown thinker powers borrowed by strangers.
She waits until they're on patrol, and starts a whisper-spell to them. She happens to find Armsmaster first. After waiting for a good moment where he won't be distracted,
"Armsmaster, this is Copycat. I have sensitive information I'd like to discuss with you. It's about Coil."
"I believe he's still active. I have evidence, partially gathered from a copied version of Tattletale's power. Most of it's circumstantial, but it'd be an awful lot of coincidence. Will you listen to my evidence if I tell you what I think Coil's doing lately, even if it seems absurd at first?"
If he doesn't interrupt her, she goes on to lay out the broad strokes of the chain of evidence, presenting him with a neatly printed packet of papers that fill in the details.
When she's done, "The Undersiders. You said you suspected they were working for Coil? It was their attack that got Calvert his promotion, when Director Piggot had to step down. They said she was a target, and we never did find out what they meant."
And they have to be getting their money from somewhere. Tattletale's power said Tattletale was making glaring omissions when discussing Coil. It's possible he's redirecting my teleport since he's interfering with it at all. I don't know how much harder it would be to make the give a wrong answer than to fail to give a clear answer at all."
...She asks it for the man who dressed as Coil and asked her questions and gets a man at a desk, doing paperwork. She asks it for Coil, with the new knowledge that he probably used a body double, and gets Thomas Calvert listening to a speech in City Hall.
She reports all this to Armsmaster.
You're right about the Director's location, and if the man who introduced himself as Coil is at the PRT it's verifiable without having to do anything drastic like arrest Director Calvert before being certain. Can you describe him?"
"I can talk to the mole, see how far I can get before he finds out he's a suspect. If you come it'll tip him off that something's out of the ordinary. Will you be able to keep an eye on Calvert remotely?"
"Using my teleport power as a scry is tricky as hell. Not what it's meant for. Like being about to move your arm, really meaning to, tensing the muscles, but not actually doing anything. I doubt I could hold it for an extended period of time but I can check every half hour or so. I have an actual scry - but that only targets areas, for some reason it won't meld with the teleport's person-targetting. Cape powers are much more finicky about combining with other things than Witch specials."
How good is Tattletale's power at finding out what people are hiding? I'll know if the suspect lies, or if he's hiding something, but might not catch what. If it would help, I can patch you in through a helmet camera."
He finds the person Gren's teleportation thinks has masqueraded as Coil, addresses him by name, and asks about recent villain activity. Apparently this is one of the people to ask about that. Armsmaster pretends to be looking for information on some previously unaffiliated villains who allied against the Undersiders, and tries to lead him into consciously not saying that he has been to a truce like that one as a participant.
It'll be obvious to Gren-as-Tattletale that this was also Coil's stand-in when the alliance against the ABB was negotiated, but Armsmaster won't have that verified until she tells him.
Acting Director Renick is easily convinced, between Armsmaster and Gren, but they don't have Coil himself yet. "We can't just accuse him publicly. It would be the worst PR move imaginable. But he isn't threatening anything or anyone right now, and we can arrest him more discreetly with no risk."
Calvert waits for a conversationally excessive amount of time. Eventually he asks his former second in command, "I take it I'm under arrest?"
"Extremely."
"I could have sworn he didn't have a power, though. Whatever... Kinda-vaguely-precog thing he has, It's really annoyingly massively complicated and I can't copy it."
She stays just long enough to give whatever statements and clarifications are required, leaves a note to Tattletale, and offers to repair a couple of sections of sewer for Skitter just because.
And Copycat disappears to the site of a volcanic eruption and cools a lava flow approaching a town into rock then evacuates a sinking fishing ship, then heals a batch of people in a trauma ward in France, and basically goes back to running around heroing.
Places, meanwhile, is wondering if she managed to dodge being classed as a villain for bringing the Travelers to Terra.
Over time she'll be as sure as she can be short of offering a customer satisfaction survey asking "were you aware I was peripherally involved in an incident that led to the deaths of two New York Protectorate members and do you consider me a villain."
The door opens to what looks like an endless sea of ash. It blows through, propelled by the storm in the sky beyond, but the winds are surprisingly calm given the sheer scale of the clouds above. The whole place looks dark and reddish, despite it supposedly being 11 am in that time zone.
If his information is correct, there should pretty much only be one thing up here. He heads toward the still-faint sound.
The rhythmic flashes of light might be a language of some kind. Oh, and some kind of mental effect is pressing against him. It's not much like the Simurgh's scream, or any other mental powers he's felt, really.
"You have a plan. Holding back, letting your enemies fight you. I've seen it before. Why?"
Neuroi don't speak to humans, from what he's heard, so this is a shot he shouldn't throw away. Interpretation, communication...
It gradually builds. When the flashes start making sense, he repeats the question and adds that they can respond in their own language.
Humans on this world were weak. We are- (Something. Lonely?) -so we want them to not be weak. We want them to take their place in the stars. But humans are not (another untranslatable word) they would destroy themselves as they are. But you are different. Where were you hiding?
That's not a lie, but that thinker power tells him they're hiding something about themselves. And also: Stalling.
"And what are you, if not what you look like?
No aliens, and given Earth's track record with meeting them so far I'm not sure it would be advisable to introduce you if I had met any."
A long pause. We are dying. That's what they were hiding. It is slow, but it is inevitable. The most intelligent of us can only produce lesser creatures, drones without true intelligence. This body is one such drone. Humans must grow as a species if they are to replace us.
"Then stop killing them. We could grow more as allies than as your enemies. But if you were going to come in peace, you already would have, and I wouldn't be here now to stop you."
Eidolon switches from stationary in the air to matching the massive Neuroi in speed, seemingly not bothering to accelerate in between. He stays away from any part of it that looks like a weapon, but flies right into a few lucky blasts from other ones. It barely harms him, feels like an impact knocking him slightly off-course. But he's down to two useful abilities at the moment.
An invisible beam drills toward the nearest large Neuroi that Eidolon and the giant are racing toward. No time to guess and aim for the core, just firing to get it out of the way.
The large Neuroi attempts a dodge, fails, and goes flying with a good third of its body dissolving into glowing white particulate. It starts regenerating immediately.
The massive Neuroi is apparently not very maneuverable- it streams straight past him, firing as it goes, and disappears into cloud cover.
Eidolon races after the massive one, spiraling to avoid fire and telekinetically clearing up the cloud in front of him. He leaves a sonic boom, even if it didn't; there's nothing here he doesn't want damaged. After catching up, he starts blasting away at it, this time trying to find the core.
At the same time a few of the smaller Neuroi seem to teleport into his path and explode into a tangle of black fibers. If he doesn't stop in time to avoid them, they explode again into smaller fibers that are also extremely sticky. And corrosive.
His third power speeds up and finishes charging. A kind of clairvoyance, to finds the points to attack and reverse-engineer the results for more general information. Eidolon only needs it for that first bit. He spends a valuable few seconds concentrating fire at where he now thinks the giant Neuroi's core is, then reluctantly turns to deal with the smaller ones.
The large Neuroi have picked up on how the space-warping is confusing him and are using it liberally to make his attacks miss, create space between him and his target, and bring Neuroi ready to attack into good positions. The clairvoyance can mostly get through this hindrance, with some effort.
A few of the small Neuroi have blade-arms, and one of these, space-warped adjacent to him, stabs him in the leg with something that partially negates his invulnerability. Another Neuroi is spitting fire in every direction. If his clarivoyancepower can tell why, it's to deprive the area of oxygen and suffocate him.
It's working. He's fighting for his life, unconcerned with allies or collateral damage, against opponents that can challenge him even if he doesn't hold back. He feels closer to his old power level than ever before.
Eidolon drops from the sky, his combination flight and weapon power replacing itself in seconds rather than minutes. Painful seconds, as he's mostly defenseless against anything that can get past his durability, but then he's back up and smashing at the nearest Neuroi in a sphere around him, pulling each one in every direction except closer. And then he starts replacing the durability with another, one with a different set of weaknesses and a healing component.
The storm has been getting stronger and stronger over the last two minutes. Now, lightning starts striking Eidolon whenever no Neuroi are near enough to also be fried by it. A storm this big contains more energy than several weapons of mass destruction, and this lightning seems to be sending a sizable piece of a percentage point of it at him. The air around Eidolon glows with electrical plasma, and the air nearest to him is no longer breathable - all the oxygen molecules have been split into free atoms.
Meanwhile, four of the remaining large Neuroi are reshaping themselves, though what exactly they're aiming for with the change isn't clear yet.
This is exactly what the Neuroi wanted. The changing four are apparently now very tough and less mobile. Tentacle-like appendages whip around and extend blades that have the same invulnerability-nullifying properties as the little ones. Space-warping makes another appearance, hindering his efforts to dodge, and one of them stabs his arm, digging in with incredibly fine barbs that will probably hurt like hell to remove.
If he were only fighting to win, he could leave and clean up the swarm of smaller targets first. He's also fighting to fight, and this is clearly the target. Eidolon has a lot of force to play with. The nearest large Neuroi gets squished inward from every direction except front and back, where the opposite happens. For good measure, he adds in some literal spaghettification. See how well it can defend itself while time-dilated.
It's Copycat's shield. Well, technically, a Witch shield since they can all do it. Where did the Neuroi learn that? At any rate, his gravity power is significantly less effective against anything behind them.
The Neuroi try cold again. The air around him liquefies.
He drops the clairvoyance power, looking for something to make him completely self-contained and resistant to harm. A breaker power, that would do. He turns into what looks to be diamond, and feels it growing even more durable. As soon as it seems powered up enough to protect him from what he's up against, he drops the other defense. Gravity for flight and wide-area destruction of the Neuroi that aren't using Witch shields, ability to hopefully take any hits he can't dodge, and a better weapon for the three main targets as soon as it's ready.
The little Neuroi continue to die in droves. A few more big ones have shifted to this new configuration. One of them looks like a bit like a giant umbrella/octopus/jellyfish, it attempts to entangle Eidolon and smash him into the ground. Oh, and they're all still firing beams of various sorts at him of course.
For those that are, his latest weapon is ready faster than anything of this scale has been in years. He always knew one good fight, a real fight, would go better. Here he doesn't have to worry about the world collapsing if he dies; his allies would have time to prepare for the next Endbringer. And he isn't playing a role as Eidolon the all-powerful hero, he's just fighting. His powers are working as well as he can remember, and he's even daring to hope it might be permanent.
A tennis-court-sized area appears and sweeps across the sky. Things it intersects get deleted. Matter, energy, doesn't matter. Magic, maybe, but he'd be surprised. Air rushes in to fill the newly created voids. The one with the tentacles can be the first to go, then those other three...
And then a suicidally teleported Neuroi core is occupying the same space as a third of Eidolon's upper chest. This does not end well for either being. Eidolon is still alive long enough to register the injury, then they do the same with a large section of his brain.
They didn't want to kill him, not really. He was extremely powerful, a being capable of actually threatening a grand core. But he was getting that strength from somewhere else. That is not the point of fighting humans.
But he was, technically speaking, right. One real fight, if it was a good enough fight, could get his powers back for the rest of his life.
Then they decide that, with this much power floating around out there, it's time to stop holding back. Fresh Neuroi from the core of the hurricane stream out in all directions, launching assaults on the Witches ringing this section of the world in all directions. There are just enough serious attacks to keep all the dedicated military Witches busy, and plenty of smaller threats to force the non-military humans to join the fight.
By now the Neuroi called/numbered Seventeen, the ship-sized gigantic core in the center of the hurricane, has finished summarizing everything to the other greater Neuroi.
The Twelve decide to invade the Earth that Eidolon came from. Hopping dimensions is tricky to figure out, but they had a good view of someone doing it just now with Eidolon, and a couple months ago when a random anomaly pulled a drone through the wall of universes. In about eight hours, they've managed a configuration that allows a drone to become a Doorway.
Eleven joins Seventeen on Earth Gimel. FTL is expensive, but things are moving quickly. Proper oversight of the increased stakes is important. It makes another humanoid Neuroi, which spears Eidolon's body on an arm-blade and flies through to wherever-Eidolon-gated-from.
Heroes and even villains join the impromptu S-class battle, blasting the Neuroi with whatever they've got.
The Neuroi keep pouring through. But it's going to be a short S-class battle unless the heroes pursue- When a huge Neuroi passes through the gate, they retreat in good order, sacrificing themselves to protect it when necessary as the whole swarm flies north. (Still blasting at anything close enough to blast because why not.)
Ultimately, though it's a fierce fight, this looks a battle the heroes can win.
It's also a diversion. The gate moves to the outskirts of the city and an even larger Neuroi comes through once the heavy hitters have left the area. It speeds south as fast as it possibly can.
Mana burn still hits her after only a couple of minutes of going so all-out. She falls back.
The gate reappears a hundred miles south of Cuba, where the gigantic Neuroi currently is. An enormous storm starts to form around it.
The capes are mostly just panicking. A new worldwide threat is the worst news possible, but it's unfortunately not unprecedented. A new worldwide threat that provokes an unscheduled Endbringer attack, that is. But the Simurgh is moving at her ordinary speed, not appearing to aim for anywhere, defending herself and taking damage as if it were an ordinary fight.
He doesn't appear next to the Simurgh. He appears about a hundred miles south of Cuba, and tears his way toward the largest Neuroi. The storm gets thicker.
Leviathan and the Simurgh are both being pelted with everything the Neuroi have. New Neuroi form spontaneously out of air. More Neuroi keep coming through the gate. The invulnerability-piercing tentacle blades come out again from a dozen different directions, trying to hurt Leviathan.
The Simurgh keeps flying toward Cuba, accelerating but not quickly. And Leviathan launches itself into the air and keeps ascending, with no obvious means of flight. Water crashes down from around it much faster than usual, both in quantity and in speed, as if however much the Neuroi hurt the monster it only gets converted into more water. The cascade does slow down to terminal velocity after getting distance from Leviathan, naturally. Once in the air, Leviathan strikes at the nearest opponents and maintains a shield of water around itself. It does not ascend enough to reach the Grand Core, not yet.
In addition to withering fire, freezing Leviathan's water as much as possible, and using space-warping to turn the Simurgh around and around, they try the trick that killed Eidolon: Teleporting drones' cores in such a way to intersect pieces of the Endbringers that are likely to be important. Head. Center of mass. Joints.
The drone suicide attacks don't slow them down either. What it can do is provide information: the bit that intersected this part of the Endbringer did as much damage as if the flesh were twice as tough as steel, that part four times, and so on up through "off the scale." They can get a pretty good sense this way of where the Endbringers are most and least indestructible.
The parahumans are staying well away from this one. One enemy killed Eidolon and the other is the Endbringers. Instead, they're trying to shield populated areas from falling pieces of Neuroi and sudden flooding from Leviathan. When the battle moves high enough, they let the atmosphere handle that and hope that the Neuroi and Endbringers somehow kill each other.
If the Endbringers keep following, once the Moon is between them and the Earth, a black hole with approximately the same mass as a truck appears right next to the Simurgh. It near-instantly dissolves into a cataclysmically energetic soup of particles, creating an explosion orders of magnitude larger than all of Earth Aleph's nuclear weapons could manage combined.
They start regenerating.
Behemoth, meanwhile, began absorbing radiation as soon as it realized what was going on. It converts the energy into kinetic, leaving it less damaged than the others, and rockets straight through the largest Neuroi.
The gigantic Neuroi takes heavy damage. What remains of it retreats in the general direction of Jupiter, accelerating at several tens of thousands of meters per second squared. None of the other Neuroi follow, or at least not at such speed.
Leviathan and Behemoth resume shattering Neuroi. Pieces assemble themselves into a copy of their method of transportation. Scaled up. And Endbringers are smaller than the gigantic ship, at least apparently, and they have a cheap source of reaction mass with most of it stored in another dimension. That combination leads to being significantly faster than the usual top speed for this kind of contraption. They speed off after the target.
But some people have a good guess.
"Door to Earth Gimel."
Contessa steps through, and apparently stands alone in midair in the center of the storm.
"One of your Grand Cores is currently being destroyed by a mutual enemy of ours. It will probably escape. I'm here to tell you about a different mutual enemy that threatens to destroy all the earths."
They're listening. She knows they're listening, and doesn't need to wait for them to say so. "Scion. You've heard of him from your allies in the other world. You don't know what he really is."
She tells them.
The Simurgh isn’t the only one preparing. More capes have started appearing, which no one needs to know is a result of Cauldron stepping up their operations before an endgame. The Protectorate is reeling from the loss of Eidolon, and is focussing on being as convincing as possible when they say they were never dependent on him. Legend steps up; he was always the face of the Triumvirate and now he has to play the part of the Protectorate's most powerful cape into the bargain. Between their emphasis and the emergency, recruitment numbers are going up. Even most of the villains are scaling down crime the way they do before Endbringer attacks, since there might be an attack or worse at any time.
The Protectorate needs a victory. Something to prove that they're still a force that matters, even without Eidolon.
Legend contacts Copycat.
"I've met a couple. Had a chat with Myddrin once, which was... Interesting. I'll be happy to spend a few hours discussing strategy and preparing, and I can 'port in from anywhere when it's time to move. Let me know when to come in, preferably at least a couple hours from now. I'm busy cleaning up after a tornado."
The most important information is who they're up against. Everyone knows in a general sense who the Slaughterhouse Nine are, but the specific roster varies.
In descending order of threat: the Siberian, who everyone in this room needs to know is a projection. Crawler, the most monstrous member in a literal sense, who regenerates from anything that harms him in seconds and is thereafter immune to it. Shatterbird, large-scale and fine-grained control over glass. She won't be surrounded by a city's worth of shards, unlike when the Nine attack a city, but should be assumed to have an arsenal on hand. Burnscar. Bonesaw. Jack Slash. Mannequin.
Hatchet Face, their power nullifier, was recently killed and replaced by this person, whose powers are unknown.
The general outline of the plan is of course to teleport to the Siberian—the real her, not the projection—and kill her before joining the battle. Strider can't teleport to people and Copycat doesn't have enough information on the person, but the Protectorate has a tank of thinkers who can narrow the location down and the Siberian's other body is likely alone.
Some of the others have complications, but with the Siberian dead they could win by force if nothing else. And of course they do have the advantage of striking first, which they can use like this or that....
Are there any clues to the last person's power? Unknowns are annoying. Perhaps she should be second priority after the Siberian - for all they know she could wipe the floor with the Alexandria and Legend if they let her alone long enough. Kinda like Lung.
The experienced capes all know how much of a threat unknown opponents can be. They certainly aren't assuming this one is less immediately dangerous than the guy with the knives.
The other half of the fight is, of course, theirs. They have capes from all over and have plenty of time to plan useful power interactions. (They could theoretically pulverize anything short of Crawler by using a combination of Myrddin, Dispatch, Exalt, and a card table. The downside is that it's kind of stupid. Dispatch is still useful for giving a short break to capes with recharge time. Like Copycat.) And there are plenty of powers to copy.
Copycat's copy of the Siberian can protect and move people likely to be able to hit the Nine hard enough. She is now powerful enough to both outright cancel gravity and make it hard to move around in an area the size of a house for a few minutes. Not likely to stop shatterbird or burnscar, but it'd give other heroes time to attack.
The canceling gravity requires testing with a cape with gravity powers; if he tries pulling people toward a potentially-fatal trap and there's no other gravity, that's much simpler than if they just render each other useless and have to time it.
Powers and tactics take up time; there's no shortage of permutations of both.
(She also asks Toy Soldier for a quote on a spacesuit. She wants to teleport to the Moon.)
But she's in the room moments after the call that they're ready to move on the Nine goes out.
The rest of them will be starting a bombardment on the rest of the Nine as soon as the Siberian disappears.
She can't see him well enough to make out his face from this distance.
It might be worth it to wait long enough for Copycat to check the man's power. It'll give a valuable fraction of a second of warning, but Legend isn't happy about the idea of writing off as acceptable losses someone who's only probably guilty. Not if there's another option.
They appear in the target house, with a sound as the slight difference in air pressure equalizes. One of the capes points to where the suspect is.
The man they're firing on was lying in a bed in a bare room. It being the middle of the night here that makes some sense, but he has probably barely moved in days. There's no sign of the house's actual owners, which probably doesn't bode well for them.
As soon as the fire starts, the black and white striped projection appears. It grabs on to a blanket and renders it invulnerable, quickly smothering the flames nearest the human. The lasers from Legend curve around to strike from underneath, but the Siberian is already awkwardly bundling her creator in the impenetrable defense.
Someone annihilates everything beneath the targets; the Siberian probably can't charge them while falling. Attacks surround the targets, but they don't have time to wait for him to suffocate.
Copycat teleports directly to the master's still-exposed foot and touches it. Using deathtouch feels nasty and icky, but he should die instantly. She's not sure exactly what the deathtouch actually does, but it's worked on everything she's ever tried it on. Including Neuroi cores.
Legend calls in Strider to take them to the scene of the main battle. When they appear, there's no trace of what this place used to be. It's scarred and cratered and also currently a battlefield. The most visible feature is Crawler, who is being held in the air by Myrddin and anyone who can assist. He spits acid repeatedly, and the heroes keep their distance.
And a voice calls out, carrying surprisingly well over the noise. "Copycat! I've got something here you'll want to see!"
Bonesaw is flanked by some of her creations and surrounded by what is unmistakably a Witch shield.
Priorities. Crawler is holding a huge chunk of their forces up. She ignores Bonesaw and her Witch for now, channeling Alexandria despite the relatively astronomical mana cost to fly close enough to tap him with the deathtouch. And Clockblocker's power, if that doesn't work.
Myrddin flies off to help stop all nearby fires, presumably to find or slow down Burnscar.
While Gren was busy with Crawler, the other newcomers noticed that half the heroes have been fighting the other half. They're fighting to kill, and the Nine are enjoying the distraction. Legend has been identifying the berserk allies and stunning them, and Usher's current protectee is of course immune, as is apparently Dispatch for some reason. But knocking out one's teammates is not a long-term winning strategy.
"Kill the shield and get out!" Legend blasts the Witch's shield, his laser fizzling against it. Then he rockets upward, having felt the effects of whatever's making the capes do this himself.
And then the shield goes back up. "Ow!" comes Bonesaw's voice. Large chunks of both girls are missing where the Siberian deleted pieces, but they both seem alive. "Don't you want to know how I did it?"
The ex-Witch opens fire. At everyone, Copycat most definitely included. The shield blocked everything to some upper limit between Legend and the Siberian, and the blasts are proportionately strong.
And to make things worse, now it's nearly all the heroes in a mindless rage. Some of the fliers, Legend included, are high enough that they don't seem to be affected, but the vast majority are turning on each other. Gren can feel it too. Hatred of everyone she came with, anger and the desire to destroy...it's definitely a Master power doing this, but that hardly seems important.
When the rage builds up to a certain point, something snaps. Cranial's implant. She goes completely emotionless. Lack of disgust over blood and gore, and lack of morbid curiosity over how she made a Witch so obscenely powerful makes it a lot easier to have the Copysiberian systematically disassemble Bonesaw and her Witch.
It's a bit creepy to be so calm when all this is happening. Who here smells like an emotion manipulator? That way. She ignores the mounting pain of mana burn to teleport over to her and apply the deathtouch for the third time in less than two minutes.
And then she really does need to take a break, because ow. "Bonesaw down, new member the Master down. Is Dispatch available?"
Shatterbird and Mannequin are dead. Burnscar is dead or fled, no one knows which. Jack spent an awful long time dodging and killing before finally being cornered, and is now also dead. The new member was the last one.
Okay. So now it's a good time to drop out of combat mode and brace herself to come down from mana burn. Trying to heal herself would be... Counterproductive. She sits in the alley shaking for a while, grunting in pain. It's probably pretty incongruous to bystanders and passersby, if there are any.
But once it starts to subside, Cranial's implant has shut itself down too, and she can feel proud that the Nine are now either One or None.
She radios in her perspective on the fight, then teleports home to Terra and has a couple of days off. After that, Cranial receives a message saying that her implant helped against the Nine and ten thousand dollars as a your-stuff-worked-in-live-fire-
Toy Soldier, how about that spacesuit?
Then she teleports to the moon - it's a stretch, but she has more than enough mana lately - and jumps around for a while and takes a video and publishes it on the internet and bags a few samples of interesting-seeming rocks and dust in case scientists might want them and teleports back to Earth Bet and resumes heroing.
(Mars and various other celestial bodies are apparently a bit too far, she tells inquiring parties.)
For other threats on that level she'd have to go further afield. The Three Blasphemies can probably be destroyed, but they'd have a good chance at surviving and it's unsafe to have them alive around you.
Copycat should stay very far away from Sleeper.
Ash Beast? He's on a lower scale because he's slow enough to just evacuate when necessary, but is dangerous enough that it's sometimes necessary. He's also, as far as anyone knows, just an innocent person with a really unfortunate power.
Back to rouging it up, then. She doesn't really need all the money she's earning from healing hundreds of people per hour, messing with inconvenient geography or geology, and everything else. And she's not going to run out of magic anymore, so she buys a few ostentatiously golden and gemstoned things, and the rest goes to various charities she judges most worthy, weighted towards peacekeeping and refugee aid types of programs.
And time passes.
Over the next month, they notice an unmistakable lack of Endbringer fight. Late is one thing; the Endbringers were never exactly predictable. But it hasn't been this long between attacks since when there were only two of them. Optimists start to hope that the war might have stopped. But the Simurgh is still flying around copying tinkers at unpredictable intervals, constantly upgrading whatever it is she's doing, so optimists are few and far between.
Some of the pieces of Scion (and not-Scion-but-similar) are in dimensions that won't immediately attract his attention. The Neuroi carefully figure out which are which, then warp there and begin to study and copy them.
They finish consuming the Centauri system, and organizing a flotilla of drones just barely smart enough to come out of FTL not completely disoriented and deploy their superweapons. Then they open a door to Contessa. "We are ready."
The ground shakes around them, and walls between worlds fall. Contessa and the Neuroi find themselves in one of Cauldron's more secret locations, in by the area they mine for the powers they sell. A gray-skinned humanoid hangs slack-jawed and dead, surrounded by similarly gray limbs and faces.
He doesn't have feelings, in the human sense. He does have a role, and he is familiar with the narratives the host species uses. One of the roles of the Warrior is revenge.
Under other circumstances an unplanned meeting with a different species might be interesting. Instead, he raises a hand to blast the nearest Neuroi from existence.
It interprets everything nonhuman as a threat. Not that it has much time to do anything with that decision.
Moments later, the Neuroi open hundreds of doors there, and in addition to more Neuroi, exotic attacks of all kinds - many derived from shards, some not - pour through.
And the flotilla of black hole bomb carriers begins charging for FTL insertion.
This isn't a fight, exactly. That requires two sides. He's just eradicating one after the other, with some focus on importance but mostly just proximity, because he associates Neuroi with what happened to his counterpart.
About three minutes into the not-fight, more than ten million Neuroi arrive at the end of their one-way trip to where Scion keeps his real body, synchronized to the nanosecond. Inside the planet, on its surface, above it. No part of the planet is more than fifty miles away from a copy of the weapon that turned one side of the moon into a cloud of glowing meteorites.
That planet ceases to exist.
Then they disappear again. There has been far too much activity recently, it's high time to take a good long rest and analyze recent events and get used to all the new weapons liberated from various shards.
Maybe one of these powers will let them reproduce again, somehow.