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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
The PRT will do for the time being. If they give her bead to anyone she finds particularly pleasant to work with or who seems to have a good sense of how to prioritize and order tasks for optimal variety, size, and productivity, maybe she'll try to poach them.
wormcan
In the meantime, there's a neverending list of things to do. (This list might be skewed toward things that benefit the PRT, just a little. Directly or in public relations.)
Few of the parahumans are interacting with her directly very often. Their main cape-related activities almost always involve fighting one another, and that doesn't change just from watching her get so much more done while staying neutral. She'll get greeted by a few fliers when they happen to run across her, but mostly her decision not to do any fighting results in her being a nonentity for most cape purposes.
Few of the parahumans are interacting with her directly very often. Their main cape-related activities almost always involve fighting one another, and that doesn't change just from watching her get so much more done while staying neutral. She'll get greeted by a few fliers when they happen to run across her, but mostly her decision not to do any fighting results in her being a nonentity for most cape purposes.
ertia
That's okay. She doesn't want enemies. Enemies get you put to sleep or occasionally sent to alternate universes.
And not having much social life means that she can talk to her beads back home, which she had been assuming wouldn't work until her mother spoke to her.
And not having much social life means that she can talk to her beads back home, which she had been assuming wouldn't work until her mother spoke to her.
wormcan
It also helps that very few people object to what she's doing. No one can say the city's worse off than it would be without her, even if it maybe benefits the PRT a bit disproportionately. She's not duplicating anyone else's tinker products, for instance.
Mostly she gets left to her own extremely helpful devices for as long as she stays here. If she happens to be listening to public opinion about herself there'll be comparisons to that other hero who flies around being useful twenty-four seven.
Mostly she gets left to her own extremely helpful devices for as long as she stays here. If she happens to be listening to public opinion about herself there'll be comparisons to that other hero who flies around being useful twenty-four seven.
ertia
She doesn't have a lot of time to go give people customer satisfaction surveys, but when she hears that the internet exists she - with some trial and error - figures out a magic interface for it which she can peep at between and during work. (She starts to range into other cities, as Brockton Bay cleans up.)
wormcan
The inevitable side effect here is that people start asking for things more directly, any place they think she might see it. Requests range from altering the winning lottery numbers to rescuing trapped kittens from trees and everything in between. Given her schedule, many of these are going to be outdated by the time she reads them.
With her increasing momentum, it now takes less than fifteen minutes to get to Boston or back. It's the nearest major city, and almost twice the size of Brockton Bay. If not quite twice as much that needs doing. Other nearby cities, smaller ones. come with proportionately fewer tasks and usually no PRT office to coordinate with the Brockton Bay people.
With her increasing momentum, it now takes less than fifteen minutes to get to Boston or back. It's the nearest major city, and almost twice the size of Brockton Bay. If not quite twice as much that needs doing. Other nearby cities, smaller ones. come with proportionately fewer tasks and usually no PRT office to coordinate with the Brockton Bay people.
ertia
She really does kind of need a PA. When she's killing time snorting at the lottery number requests, does anybody seem more like assistant material? Sensible requests in places the PRT isn't covering?
wormcan
There's a running joke on some fan sites that Kithabel should just hire this person. Unfortunately there's no single person it refers to. It appears whenever someone posts an unusually well-researched request. These are often ranked by number of people it'd benefit and how, as well as by proximity to other relevant places. The requirement about doing dissimilar things hasn't been made public, but some of the better requests tend to have variety anyway.
And of course most of the Internet is pseudonymous anyway.
And of course most of the Internet is pseudonymous anyway.
ertia
Kithabel makes a brief post that she would very much like to hire some person but is a little too busy to conduct a lot of interviews and if the Internet would like to condense the relevant credentials - a lot - she may get around to looking into them.
wormcan
Hiring henchpeople off the Internet is not exactly normal. Naturally, that just makes it more interesting for the denizens of the relevant sites.
Credentials are the one thing groups of people who talk under pseudonyms are least able to assess. But the masses do what they can. One frontrunner is a forum regular who is thereby as trustworthy as possible under the circumstances, another is a newcomer with inordinate amounts of research and the best track record of having Kithabel adopt their suggestions, and so on.
Credentials are the one thing groups of people who talk under pseudonyms are least able to assess. But the masses do what they can. One frontrunner is a forum regular who is thereby as trustworthy as possible under the circumstances, another is a newcomer with inordinate amounts of research and the best track record of having Kithabel adopt their suggestions, and so on.
ertia
Well, getting it down to two people isn't that bad. Kithabel gives them both her email address and invites them to send her their pitch. Briefly, please.
wormcan
Accord ing to to the second person, they expect to be able to figure out second-order effects of possible actions, in much the same way that fixing the Boat Graveyard benefited Brockton Bay if on a smaller scale. Less like fixing someone's house after a tree fell on it and more like magical water filters to eradicate lead. Not always flashy, but affecting more people. As well as the exciting things, naturally, for variety and publicity.
The first person is perfectly happy with their current job and just got a raise, and is flattered their Internet compatriots nominated them but no thanks.
The first person is perfectly happy with their current job and just got a raise, and is flattered their Internet compatriots nominated them but no thanks.
ertia
Second person gets a trial run. What would they like to be paid in? Kithabel probably shouldn't be counterfeiting fiat currency.
wormcan
There are still plenty of people who want to hire Kithabel, ranging from sick billionaires to people who want nuclear waste disposed of more absolutely than currently to businesspeople who want some of their stock multiplied. And money is often useful for other things than paying PAs.
Or if Kithabel doesn't like the idea of picking jobs based on who happens to have money, objects transmuted into rhodium are still valuable.
Or if Kithabel doesn't like the idea of picking jobs based on who happens to have money, objects transmuted into rhodium are still valuable.
ertia
Kithabel doesn't mind picking the occasional job based on who happens to have money, as long as she can't just do literally everything. She notifies the PA of her variety requirement, quietly asks Amy about the value of a dollar because adding a little more blackmail material here isn't likely to hurt anything, names a generous salary, and leaves it to the PA to make sure that at least that much is coming in.
wormcan
And she ends up with a continuous list, optimized for variety and usefulness.
Over time she'll continue doing less in Brockton Bay, and start making occasional forays as far as New York for particular tasks. She may end up gradually migrating around New England without having a well-defined center of operations at any given time.
Over time she'll continue doing less in Brockton Bay, and start making occasional forays as far as New York for particular tasks. She may end up gradually migrating around New England without having a well-defined center of operations at any given time.
ertia
That's fine. She doesn't sleep anymore and doesn't need to worry about dragging a sluggish flying castle after her. She's started occasionally trying to teleport, although she hasn't managed it yet.
wormcan
With this much territory she'll have no shortage of building, healing, repairing, and creating things. And, if she's up for it, thwarting the occasional plant-themed supervillain with no allies to seek revenge.
The cape world continues to mostly just politely coexist with Kithabel, but Director Piggot does ask if she's planning to participate in the next Endbringer fight.
The cape world continues to mostly just politely coexist with Kithabel, but Director Piggot does ask if she's planning to participate in the next Endbringer fight.
ertia
Kithabel is not willing to kill people or assume that anyone she merely incapacitates will stay that way indefinitely, thanks.
"Yes, I think so, although I might have to leave briefly if it goes on a long time and my tactics wind up repetitive."
"Yes, I think so, although I might have to leave briefly if it goes on a long time and my tactics wind up repetitive."
wormcan
"They do go on longer than you've been observed to continue on a single project. As much as you can do will help.
It may even be worth backsliding some, in an Endbringer attack where each minute means lives."
It may even be worth backsliding some, in an Endbringer attack where each minute means lives."
ertia
"I can afford hours, longer with a couple of breaks, and I can rotate between healing and fixing infrastructure and attack and transport and defense and go longer that way, but if I slide back too much I might get killed. I'll hold up better defensively if I know in more detail" or any detail "what to expect to be facing."
wormcan
"That depends on which one. The biggest mistake people make when facing Leviathan is to underestimate him; he will have unexpected tactics and he will be faster than he looks. He fights as a Brute would, but is fast enough to avoid most counterattacks and will also weaponize any large water reserves nearby. Against him, you would most likely be holding back tidal waves. Those are his real weapon, and few capes can slow them down directly.
If it's Behemoth, the lightning and radiation are his main weapons as well as his most obvious ones. The more people you can protect the better. There exist capes who can let others go into his radius safely, but if you can give the defenders a sufficiently absolute defense, you'd be the only one who could do it in any numbers. And don't bother trying to blind him; the eye is a decoy.
There isn't very much that's known, of course. They usually have a goal, that's something we don't tell the public, and if anyone figures out what it is then we have an advantage. Last time we didn't guess it was Professor Haywire until too late."
If it's Behemoth, the lightning and radiation are his main weapons as well as his most obvious ones. The more people you can protect the better. There exist capes who can let others go into his radius safely, but if you can give the defenders a sufficiently absolute defense, you'd be the only one who could do it in any numbers. And don't bother trying to blind him; the eye is a decoy.
There isn't very much that's known, of course. They usually have a goal, that's something we don't tell the public, and if anyone figures out what it is then we have an advantage. Last time we didn't guess it was Professor Haywire until too late."
ertia
"Okay. I'm not at an information-gathering advantage, but I can help with the obvious combat and collateral damage."