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Yesterday, this was an ordinary twenty-first century city. Today it's a war zone, tomorrow it'll be walled off and abandoned.
A few collapsed buildings, shattered streets, and assorted craters. The place is mostly empty, with scattered groups of mostly humanoid monsters roaming and trying to escape the guarded fence around the city. The most instantly noticeable change is an ongoing wordless singing in the back of the mind of anyone present. By itself it's just a sound. An unpleasant sound, and almost but not quite predictable as if someone were trying to attack the listener's sanity without saying anything, but possible to ignore. But along with it, any time a listener closes their eyes they get flashes of memories. Not their worst memories, but whatever negative ones can stick with them unforgettably. It builds up associations between the feelings in those images and almost anything else. Sometimes there's a recognizable common thread and other times there isn't.
An angel fights off teams of opponents. She's fifteen feet tall, extremely winged, with more wings than is strictly necessary for an angel. Even some of her wings have wings. All of them are asymmetric and varyingly sized. A spherical halo of weaponry surrounds her, firing at her more distant enemies from across the battlefield. Her opponents cycle in and out: a golden man, a man surrounded by a bubble, a woman in a dark costume, all flying. Others make certain to stay away after taking their turn, on rare occasions spending too long hearing the angel's music. Those ones voluntarily self-destruct.
A small group of ordinary humans takes refuge in a house as far from the battle as they can reach. The song is quieter here, and, they hope, less potent. Some of them run away from and back to the house, occasionally calling for help. They haven't found any.
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ertia
"It's..." She's not sure how much she should talk about home. "It's sometimes hard finding enough different things to do, though. Can you think of a good way to keep a steady supply? I can fill time making magic plants and turning rock formations into prettier rock formations and doing dramatic things with lightning but I don't dare fall into a stable pattern."
wormcan
"If it isn't secret, I'd just ask the PRT director. Their job is to handle capes, and you would be the opposite of a problem."
wormcan
"Um," she takes a second to remember the directions for people who don't need roads, "that way. It's the one with the dome and the force field, or, the only one that isn't out in the bay. You can't miss it."
ertia
"Cool."
Emptying the rest of the hospital takes a while, roughly twice as long as it would take most people to walk briskly down all of the hallways, and then Kithabel thanks Panacea again and lights out for the building with the dome and the force field, flying low enough to do minor spot-check urban renewal on her way. This city looks weird but she can still tell the difference between things that are and are not falling apart.
Emptying the rest of the hospital takes a while, roughly twice as long as it would take most people to walk briskly down all of the hallways, and then Kithabel thanks Panacea again and lights out for the building with the dome and the force field, flying low enough to do minor spot-check urban renewal on her way. This city looks weird but she can still tell the difference between things that are and are not falling apart.
wormcan
When she floats in the front door to the public area, she gets immediately recognized. Flying and not wearing a mask will do that.
"Kithabel?" the receptionist asks. "Director Piggot said you'd be in a hurry. I have a list for you, projects she could come up with on short notice if you want to take it and go, but she is going to want to meet you in person."
"Kithabel?" the receptionist asks. "Director Piggot said you'd be in a hurry. I have a list for you, projects she could come up with on short notice if you want to take it and go, but she is going to want to meet you in person."
ertia
"I'm good for a few minutes downtime as long as there's a list ready to go after that."
wormcan
She gets an office number to narrow it down better than "upstairs." Director Piggot turns out to be a heavyset woman with grey eyes.
"Emily Piggot." She extends a hand.
"Emily Piggot." She extends a hand.
ertia
"Kithabel Mereen Swan." Shake. "What'd you want to meet me about?"
Kithabel continues to hover. ...And dusts, while she's at it. It's little but anything's better than nothing.
Kithabel continues to hover. ...And dusts, while she's at it. It's little but anything's better than nothing.
wormcan
"I'd like to know the extent of your powers, assuming you're willing to share, and more importantly your plans while you're in Brockton Bay. The impression I have is that it hardly matters what you're doing as long as you're doing things, and that's very little to extrapolate goals from."
ertia
"I haven't tried doing all the things I could do, but I can fly about two hundred miles an hour, unless you have a better idea I'm planning to live in a flying castle, here, have a bead that will let you get ahold of me if you need me for anything," Kithabel hands her a wooden bead, "I can fix stuff and break stuff and build stuff and create stuff and control the weather and heal and so on. I can't resurrect the dead. Yet. If there's anybody better at keeping me awake and functional than Panacea I can probably get there in a few years, otherwise it'll take me more than a few. I expect to be able to make people besides myself immune to aging soon. I couldn't stop hearing the Simurgh song, even when I stopped hearing altogether for a moment to see if that worked, and I don't have an estimate on when I'll be able to do that. My plans are to do nice prosocial stuff here until here is out of stuff to do of appropriate scope, then go somewhere else and repeat."
wormcan
So apparently it's a bad idea to try to recruit Kithabel into the heroes, as much of a success that could have been. But this is almost as good.
The Director accepts the bead. It looks like a bead.
"The PRT does have equivalent offices across the country. If you keep me informed on what city you're in we can make sure there's a more complete set of suggestions waiting for you." She hands Kithabel a copy of what she was able to get lined up in five hours.
"How much information does this take? I have some stimulants from Armsmaster, would you be able to duplicate them with your power? Cure me without knowing what needs to be healed? Find specific people?
Most capes, for better or worse, go into either crime or crimefighting in some capacity. Would 'nice prosocial stuff' include capturing villains or would you rather avoid making enemies?"
The Director accepts the bead. It looks like a bead.
"The PRT does have equivalent offices across the country. If you keep me informed on what city you're in we can make sure there's a more complete set of suggestions waiting for you." She hands Kithabel a copy of what she was able to get lined up in five hours.
"How much information does this take? I have some stimulants from Armsmaster, would you be able to duplicate them with your power? Cure me without knowing what needs to be healed? Find specific people?
Most capes, for better or worse, go into either crime or crimefighting in some capacity. Would 'nice prosocial stuff' include capturing villains or would you rather avoid making enemies?"
ertia
"If something's going on I don't know about it the magic doesn't take it into account unless I have a particularly clear goal. I can probably duplicate the stimulants okay, I can heal without knowing what I'm healing," she goes ahead and heals Piggot, she just did a lot of healing but something's better than nothing, "I'm not great at information-gathering but I could probably find a person with some slightly creative work, I'd rather avoid accumulating enemies and if a fight locked me down into doing just one or two things for too long that's bad but if you have a serious criminal problem I can help here and there."
wormcan
"We have a few gangs and plenty of minor villains. They're violent but the heroes are keeping them in check."
She places a bottle containing small white pills on the desk in front of her. "If you can duplicate tinker devices, you'll probably also be in demand among the tinkers.
Speaking of demand, I'd ordinarily warn a cape as powerful as you are about being coerced to work for some less than ethical team. That may apply less to you, since to whatever extent you're constrained you're also less useful, but anyone who decides to try kidnapping you might not know that."
She places a bottle containing small white pills on the desk in front of her. "If you can duplicate tinker devices, you'll probably also be in demand among the tinkers.
Speaking of demand, I'd ordinarily warn a cape as powerful as you are about being coerced to work for some less than ethical team. That may apply less to you, since to whatever extent you're constrained you're also less useful, but anyone who decides to try kidnapping you might not know that."
ertia
"I'd probably be hard to kidnap. But I'll bear it in mind that somebody might try."
She dupes the pills. "Do these work on the brain and stack okay with whatever Panacea did for me?"
She dupes the pills. "Do these work on the brain and stack okay with whatever Panacea did for me?"
wormcan
"It's meant to deal with what Panacea couldn't do. Won't keep you going forever, but you'll at least have to sleep less often.
And I've contacted another tinker who can provide a similar effect on a completely different principle. Can't guarantee how it will stack, but I'm guessing you'd want to try."
And I've contacted another tinker who can provide a similar effect on a completely different principle. Can't guarantee how it will stack, but I'm guessing you'd want to try."
ertia
"Sleep is the single biggest drain on my momentum and I'm nowhere near escape velocity on that. I just take one?"
wormcan
"Of these, yes. Of Cask's, also yes, though nobody has ever enjoyed swallowing those. Maybe when a sample arrives you can make it less like drinking a quart of gravel."
ertia
"Maybe, but I don't have a clue if that's essential to its usefulness." She pops a pill.
wormcan
No immediate effect; these aren't magic. But she'll get noticeably less tired over the near future.
"Neither does anyone else, for that matter. It hasn't come up.
For now, I'm sure you want to get back to doing things. When you do need to sleep, we have rooms for allied capes here and in the Protectorate building in the bay. And can make sure you don't sleep unexpectedly long, of course."
"Neither does anyone else, for that matter. It hasn't come up.
For now, I'm sure you want to get back to doing things. When you do need to sleep, we have rooms for allied capes here and in the Protectorate building in the bay. And can make sure you don't sleep unexpectedly long, of course."
ertia
"I can do my own wakeup call, but redundancy won't hurt, so if you don't want a flying castle over your city and I don't need to make one to fill a gap in my schedule I can crash here, sure. Lemme see my list."
wormcan
"I'm sure someone would have a use for a flying castle, but neither of us has the time to plumb the depths of zoning laws that probably don't even exist yet."
The list is mostly things that don't need too many people to sign off on them. Lots of property repairs, some additions, fixing the city's smog problem, a lot of the healing has already been accomplished...the list goes on down through vaporizing unrecyclable contents of landfills and turning some of the police department's equipment into the better models they have in the next town over.
The list is mostly things that don't need too many people to sign off on them. Lots of property repairs, some additions, fixing the city's smog problem, a lot of the healing has already been accomplished...the list goes on down through vaporizing unrecyclable contents of landfills and turning some of the police department's equipment into the better models they have in the next town over.
ertia
Kithabel scans it, asks for a map, and phases through the wall to get in the air again. She does all the things. Smog first, she hasn't done anything air quality related recently.
wormcan
The list is long enough to take her a while.
It also gets her a good view of the city. The place is huge, much larger and denser than cities back home. It might raise questions about how Earth Bet cities function, but some part of pretty much everything could benefit from application of magic so she might wind up with some idea of that.
It also gets her a good view of the city. The place is huge, much larger and denser than cities back home. It might raise questions about how Earth Bet cities function, but some part of pretty much everything could benefit from application of magic so she might wind up with some idea of that.
ertia
The city is interesting. And big! Her territory at home didn't have this many people. Their technology doesn't seem to be as good as sorcery and specialists, but it's certainly inspired them in interesting directions that the direct approach never yielded.