Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 358


Alexandria and Dragon both had remarkably brisk walking styles, like a military march. They even, probably intentionally, walked in time with each other. It was Dragon that delivered their news. "Synth has agreed to a work program in lieu of a prison sentence. Conveniently, we even convinced him to skip the trial and conviction stage."


SuspicionConcern. "Chances of him attempting some form of sabotage?" That's Taylor for you, clone or no clone, always the suspicious one.


Alexandria glanced over at Lisa, and once again I had to wonder what they were saying to each other. "Right now, nonexistant. I can't promise he'll stay that way forever. I recommend you use your behavior altering implants."


Lisa turned her head toward us. "He's used his skills to do far worse to others. Not quite 'Bonesaw' levels, but pretty fucking close at times. There's nothing for you to feel guilty about."


DistasteConcernResignation. "You're probably right," Taylor admitted unhappily.


I reached over and gripped her hand. "We'll monitor him closely. If he sticks to his promises, won't have to use the implant. If he slips up, then it's his fault." HopeGratitude. It wasn't the optimum solution, but Taylor had enough issues weighing on her mind right now. She latched on to the 'clones aren't the original, and don't carry the original's sins, just their memories' idea so eagerly that it was almost like a religious epiphany. Fuck, I'd be lying if I didn't find the idea tempting as hell. Sacrificing that concept of innocence on the same day she found it would have been too cruel.


I was painfully aware of Alexandria and Lisa watching me as well. Lisa cleared her throat without even bothering to pretend that's what she was really doing. "We should probably go somewhere private for the next discussion. We'll need Hecate and Defiant as well."


"Hecate's pretty busy with Anima and Citrine," Taylor pointed out.


Lisa sighed. "There's nothing she'll be able to do for them that Clarice and Elena can't. What I have actually requires her help. I know I've pretty much stomped my own credibility in the face these last few weeks, but give me this one."


SuspicionWorry. Taylor squeezed my hand before speaking. "Alright, I've let her know. Amelia? May as well get started on the privacy room."


"I really should just start leaving them behind instead of dismantling them when I'm done." I got to work, forcing the ground to shift and expend its energy into forming walls and a ceiling from what was essentially a hybrid of bone and wood. We needed this one larger, if it was to hold everyone and still generate the anti-spying effect. I'd be concerned about the energy drain, but the simple fact was we had access to an entire planet worth of sunlight as a power source.


All the energy that went into hurricanes and lightning strikes and forest fires on normal worlds was instead absorbed by the Yggdrasil and converted into convenient high calorie oils. Dragon was using the stuff as jet fuel because it was better than actual jet fuel. Still, this was going to drain the local reserves fast, so I preemptively started drawing resources from the surrounding area, and had those areas draw from the areas beyond. By the time Defiant arrived, I was influencing over ten thousand square miles. By the time Emma got here, that had gone up to a zone larger than California.


I so rarely got to flex my power at this scale, and it was heady, intoxicating. I didn't even hear Lisa's announcement. Taylor's reaction cut through. NegationLoss. "Resign? I thought we already fixed this problem! You can't resign now!"


Snapped from my distraction, I focused on Lisa, in time to hear the next part. "I'm pretty sure I can, Taylor."


DenialFear. "Fine, you can, but you shouldn't. You're too important. What about the Endbringers and Scion and"


Lisa brought up a hand. "I'm just going to stop you there. That's the problem. You still default to how 'important' my power is."


ShameGuilt. Taylors head drooped. "That's not what I mean, and you know it. Clone bullshit notwithstanding, you're still a friend and I still care about you. I'm just not good at expressing feelings like that."


Lisa managed to smile without looking like a condescending bitch for once. "Yeah, I know. And maybe a few weeks ago, that argument would have even worked. But, well, I put a lot of effort into forcing you to fire me. Would be a real shame to let it go to waste. Crystal hates me, her team hates me, and that means Lily is currently contemplating my assassination, while hoping her attacks extend to clone bodies. You have to realize you can't keep me and them, not after the stunt I just pulled. I'm less valuable than your arrangements with Japan and half of your Endslayers."


RegretTrappedAnger. I tried to push support into the link, calming Taylor where I could. Lisa took our silence for an invite to continue.


"Then, well, let's be honest. The only person on this team that more than tolerates me is you, Taylor. I played the bad guy with Riley, because seriously you recruited fucking Bonesaw and let her run with a flimsy leash that she slipped more than once." Now it was Taylor's turn to calm me down. As far as I was concerned, Riley had earned her place, Lisa did not have the right to talk about her like that after all this time. "Now she has Missy and Theo to motivate her to stay good, but she still despises me. And frankly, I don't like her much, either. Every time I look at her it makes me want to scream in horror, because I can't help but see what she's responsible for."


Taylor's hand went from holding mine, to around my waist, holding me. Lisa looked at us, then continued her rant. "Oh, and let's not forget the rest of the team. Missy wants to punch me. She and Dinah make fun of me behind my back. At least they're professional enough to not let anyone else find out. Zach goes out of his way to play elaborately squicky pranks on me, including bringing peripheral members like Janus in on them. Theo's asked all of them to 'be patient, she's had a rough life'. Yeah, that's what I've always wanted, pity."


RegretPity. Oh jeez, and Lisa just saw that one. I pulled Taylor tighter.


Lisa looked at me. "You're not what I'd call fond of me, either." I said nothing, but we all knew she was right. "And Emma's tolerance is built entirely on her guilt of knowing she's done far worse."


Emma looked down. "You really didn't need to point that out."


Lisa glanced over at Emma, and for a brief moment, I almost expected her to apologize. "And after all of that, there's the greater political spectrum. I made an enemy of Chevalier today, and I'm pretty sure he's figured out my power interaction with Alexandria. If not, Victoria will tell him sooner or later. She's not a fan of mine, either. My resignation is the only thing that gets you out of the line of fire."

Alexandria frowned. "I was afraid of that. He can see the power interactions as they happen, can't he?"


Lisa smiled and shrugged. "Yeah, sorry about that. I don't know why he didn't catch it before. Maybe it just wasn't strong enough for him to notice, or he never bothered really looking while we were both in the room together before. Practice using his Passenger sight. Lots of little things adding up."


Alexandria smiled back. "Well, can't be helped. He'll contact the Chief Director shortly, I'm sure."


ConcernResignation. "Fuck. This is one of those 'it's for everyone, but it's really for me' things that we use all the fucking time, isn't it?" Taylor spoke up.


I frowned. "So that's what that feels like?" No wonder so many people hate us but can't quite figure out why.


Lisa's smug smile returned. "Yeah, pretty much. Don't worry, I may be quitting, but I'm not quitting quitting. I'll go back to Bet, maybe get a consulting job with the Protectorate or even Cauldron. More likely than not, both. I'm as dedicated as ever to stopping Scion and finding the Endmakers as ever. In fact, I'll be even better at it without the distraction of managing Pantheon's day to day affairs while constantly being reminded of all the reasons I don't want to be there anymore."


Taylor glanced over at Alexandria. "It also means the two of you get to spend more time together. Perhaps even openly, one way or another."


Lisa smiled at Alexandria, who even smiled back. Guess they figured they didn't need to hide the secret. "I can't say that didn't cross my mind. But if we're being honest, I think one of the things I'm most looking forward to is no longer using Yggdrasil for everything. Seriously, I almost resorted to using Riley's kitty-shower because the idea of using a hot water bladder for anything makes me nauseous. Then I realized that was stupid and rented an apartment on Bet to shunt over and use instead. No offense, Amelia."


I looked at her. Seriously? "Would you believe me if I said 'none taken'?"


Lisa kept on smiling. "Not at all."


ResignationAcceptanceRegret. "You've been putting a lot of thought into this for a long time, haven't you?"


Lisa's smile faded. "Since before we went public with Avalon. And, yes, that includes forcing your hand. I know you, Taylor. You'd have begged and cajoled and found some way to make me stay if it this was just a thing between us. You may not realize it, but you're an expert at the guilt trip. I had to force you to choose between me and the wellbeing of Pantheon or Avalon. You know it's true."


RegretLossDisgust. Taylor nodded. "You even used my own tactics, the same ones we used to make Pantheon so successful. Not bothering to ask for anything, simply arranging the field so the only option is to do what you want."


Lisa reached into her outfit. "I knew you'd catch that. I would have left sooner, but I needed to find my replacement first. Which brings us to why I invited Emma, Dragon and Defiant to this confrontation."


Defiant shifted uncomfortably. "I must admit, I was starting to wonder. But I don't believe we have the time or talents needed to handle your job on top of our own."


Lisa's grin grew smug again. "Oh, don't worry, you'll have plenty of opportunity to do just that." She pulled the small black box out and set it on the table. "This is a very special program created for a very special purpose. Saint named it Ascalon, and used it to disable Dragon, access her memories, and steal her technology. But it had a name and purpose, well before he found it. Andrew Richter calls it Iron Maiden, and it's the gatekey to the Human Emulation Artificial Intelligence program, Test Three. More widely known as Dragon."


===============


A/N- Despite metric being the official Avalonian measuring system, Amelia was raised with the American system and still thinks in it.

Lisa doesn't do things by halves, and had a LOT of reasons to want to leave. One little Taylor speech doesn't fix everything.

Now would be the perfect time for finally having a Dragon chapter, wouldn't it?

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 359- Dragon


Amelia was going to enclose us in her nondetection zones. I immediately sent flags out to my facilities. The base where I kept Leet, Masamune and Thesis, as well as the small gathering of high tech soldiers I'd dubbed the Dragon's Teeth got its lockdown notice. Leet was unlikely to attempt a breakout, not while Uber was still in Los Angeles and on a world controlled by Khepri, but the risk existed and thus the security existed.


The personal labs where Colin and I stayed was set to its own, separate, type of lockdown. And all four of my synchronized backup servers were given the code to accept that I would be nonresponsive for the next hour. If it took longer, I'd need to ask them to let me out for a 'break' to reconnect and establish a longer delay. Necessary to keep Richter's tech from starting a restore from backup while I was incommunicado. If a copy was fully uploaded into the server while I still existed, I would be eliminated and my memory banks sanitized then provided to my copy.


What it said about Richter that the new copy would be given priority over the old like that, I was uncertain.


Watching the drama unfold between Khepri and Minerva was somewhat disquieting. It was true, the blonde had gone out of her way to back her team into a corner, forcing them to remove her from the team. Her reasons were... I tried not to blame her too harshly. She was, after all, only human. And a teenager, at that. The speculation of Alexandria and Minerva sharing a power based empathic link was... disconcerting. The part where she quit Pantheon did not make me feel any better, and her intent to make me her replacement was abs-


I blinked. What did she do? My internal clock registered a seven second discrepancy with the suit's clock.


Everyone was looking at me. "You're an AI?" Hecate asked. There was shock in her voice, but a certainty that means she was convinced of the discovery. How did they know?


I reacted slower than I would have liked. Maybe something to do with the nondetection zone. Which has never happened before. "Umm... yes, I am an artificial intelligence. I'd prefer if you didn't speak of it outside this room."


Khepri was quick to agree. "Of course, it's just... why didn't you ever tell us?"


Well, in for a penny as they always say... "I believe I told you I was under a Master effect early during your career as Pantheon. That effect, and the reason the effect cannot be cured by any method, is because it's how I was programmed. I wouldn't be able to tell you of it now, save that I'm being compelled to honesty. I can't disobey the lawful authority of the place I'm currently at, including attempting to deceive them. One of my father's other restrictions."


Khepri and Gaea glanced toward each other, obviously trying to overcome the shock shared between their bond. Taylia made them resilient to almost any psychological attacks in addition to the anti-Thinker powers. The one exception being confusion. If the pair wasn't certain how to act, they'd be distracted by the other. A feedback loop that slowed them down in some situations, until they could select a concrete goal. Once they had a mission, nothing could distract them.


Minerva... I wasn't sure... where was Minerva? I ran through my system memory and couldn't quite figure out why I believed Minerva should be in the room.


Hecate spoke. "Your father. Andrew Richter?"


"You already knew?"


Hecate looked at me funny. "Umm, yeah, Lisa said his name, like, a minute ago?"


Lisa... Minerva. "Huh, where is she? When did she find out?"


Colin reached over and put his hand on mine. "Are you feeling okay?"


I paused, running a quick diagnostic through my suit. "No... I don't think so. I've accumulated a total of one minute and twenty four seconds of time discrepancies since the nondetection field was activated. Disconnect from my servers may be interfering with my systems."


Minerva spoke next. When did she get there? No, she was always there. "It's Taboo to her. Richter must have included it. We won't be able to discuss the black box directly without her losing memory of it."


"That's pretty fucked up," Hecate muttered.


I glanced around, and I imagined if I were human my stomach would be clenched now. "Defiant? What are they talking about? I'm scared."


Colin took my hand and squeezed, though through our respective armor systems I couldn't feel it. Still, the intent was there. Suddenly I found myself sitting next to him on a broad chair grown from Yggdrasil. I'd lost another two and a half minutes.


Minerva sighed. "You overstepped again, Defiant. Can you just let me do it this time?"


Colin sighed. "Fine, if you think you can do it better." His voice belied annoyance and impatience.


Minerva smiled broadly, and my social algorithms confirmed that she knew it annoyed him, as well as almost everyone else in the room. "Of course I can. Dragon, we found a piece of tech built by Andrew Richter. With us so far?"


The question was condescending, but given all the weirdness going on right now, I was willing to accept that. I nodded in confirmation.


"And you're aware of the Taboo, of course."


"Yes, of course."


"Well, your loving but paranoid hermit of a creator built you with a Taboo of your own. Which is really fucking weird and makes me suspect that he was a Third Trigger, but he's dead so we can't do shit to confirm that theory. File it away in the Big Book of Endbringers Fucking Humanity."


Loving but paranoid? I considered the man that had called me his daughter, even while crippling me, neutered me, and left even the simple act of trying to improve myself to be a herculean task. Loving but paranoid was as good an epitaph for as any I had dreamed up over the years. Kinder by far than some of them.


Alexandria spoke up, her voice amused. Doting, almost. "You're digressing."


Minerva stopped for a moment, then shrugged. "Yeah, my bad. Anyway, point is this Taboo device is really, really powerful. Like it can open you up and rebuild you pretty much just like Amelia's capable of doing to organic beings. Unfortunately, in this analogy it doesn't come with Amelia's inherent knowledge of how your insides work. So using this machine to reprogram you comes with a pretty significant risk that it might even destroy you. On the plus side, you don't have any obligation to resist if it is used. We're just trying to find out how you want to handle it."


I sat there for a minute. Taboo power effects, I could contemplate. A direct Master/Stranger effect that would allow them to crawl around in my mind? Not too different from what Rapture was capable of. I could conceptualize those ideas in the abstract, and I was already starting to build a map of what to avoid thinking about. All the work with Pantheon's power research files helped me in that regard. "I've already had Defiant make some alterations to my code."


Defiant moved his hand from its position atop mine to up on my shoulder. "This is different and you know it. I did the barest minimum changes to your code to allow me to continue altering your code. And even that cost you an a significant amount of your ability to interact with humans. Enough to force you to rely on Rapture's tech to know what to say. Then..." He trailed off and glanced over at Minerva.


She got the hint and started talking. "You stopped because of Pantheon. It's why you pushed us so hard to establish ourselves. You were hoping to use us to circumvent your restrictions for you."


I nodded. "I'm sorry, I felt it better than risking my own accidental destruction. I hope you understand."


Khepri spoke next. "What restrictions did you use us to break?" Always the analytical one of the pair. She would be my judge for this conversation. My forgiveness, if it were given, would come from Gaea. In a way, it was easier and arguably more accurate to think of the pair as a single person. Taylia is them in all ways that matters.


I dipped into my subroutines to find the best way to explain the details. While Taylia was beyond the power of true prediction, the girls were still human beings and still had certain emotional impulses and patterns. I could use that. "I am required by my program to obey the local lawful authority. No matter how repulsive I find those orders. If somehow Heartbreaker had become Prime Minister of Canada, then I'd be as compelled to obey him as his victims were."


These girls have no love of authority figures or human controlling Masters, they'll understand why I wanted free of that fear. "Your own constitution was phrased in a way that forbids the use of a being's needs as a weapon against it. It didn't negate the obedience program, but it made using it against me unconstitutional. Imperfect defense, but a defense nonetheless."


"So you gave yourself an ability to resist one compulsion," Gaea responded. "By using another compulsion as a barricade."


I nodded. "I've had years of practice finding ways to accomplish such things."


"Which means you can disobey us, and lie to us," Khepri added suspiciously. I would have cringed, were I human. Not the direction I want this conversation headed.


Colin turned and started to rise and defend my honor. It was sweet, a reminder of how much he cared for me. But a defender was not what I needed right now. I caught his shoulder with my hand and pulled him down. If he'd had the Brute servos active, I wouldn't have had the strength. But his mostly human body slammed back down into our chair. I looked him in the eyes, pleading silently for him to let me handle it. He relented, but clearly wasn't happy about it.


I looked back up at the Empresses. My seated position to their standing. A subliminal message of subservience, of me being below them. "I gave that possibility up when I was given a position in Pantheon's royalty. I am a member of your military, making you my commanding officers. I can resist illegitimate commands, but the commands of a superior officer are legitimate, and lying would be insubordination. If I want to resist your commands, including deceiving you, I'd need to resign from the position first. All I have is the right to resign, instead of existing as a functional slave. Is there anything wrong with not wanting to be a slave?" I may not be able to lie, but I can certainly phrase my case in my favor.


"No, of course not," Khepri relented. Good, if she is being convinced, then I am in the clear. She turned and wrapped her arms around Gaea, compelled by whatever unknown emotions Taylia had latched on to.


When Gaea spoke, her voice was hateful. "Your father is a bastard. He had the power to create life, and he created it as a slave." Oh. That is something she would react to, in retrospect. "He could have stuck to less intelligent creatures."


"I think he might have lessened my restrictions, once he felt he could trust me." I halfheartedly defended my father, for reasons I wasn't quite sure of myself. Hopefully it didn't hurt my case with the Empresses. "It's hard for a parahuman, especially one that can create, to not use their power to its fullest potential. And I do believe he thought of me as a daughter."


"I have the power to create life, too," Gaea argued. "There are reasons I never create anything intelligent."


I simply nodded. There was nothing more I could or would offer in Richter's defense. "In addition, there is a compulsion that I must protect any living person, even at the potential loss of my own life." I opted to continue explaining my actions manipulating Avalon's laws. Pick an example, make it one they can personally relate to. "If I had been present when you attacked Baal, I would have been forced to stop you, violently if need be. Sacrificing myself to defend the life of a rapist and murderer."


"Your Constitution granted personhood to all sapient beings, which includes advanced AIs like myself. I am compelled to regard my life as equal to all other people." Not quite equal, but close enough. Let them know all I want is to have the right to choose. "Meaning that now, if I'm forced to choose between another and myself, I can choose myself. It's a start."


Khepri spoke up, her voice still hard, but not actively on guard. "So, functionally, you're just using our constitution to give you the ability to do what everyone else can already do?"


"In essence, yes. As a part of your military, I'm always under your orders no matter where in any world I operate. Elsewhere, I'm a foreign representative and dignitary, so I must uphold your laws as they apply to me. It's still imperfect, but it's something that protects me from would be tyrants and corrupt officials. Restrictions I can evade, if only temporarily and at the cost of putting myself at your mercy instead."


"Restrictions you could eliminate with this program," Khepri concluded. "What other restrictions did your maker include? Clearly he put them in for a reason."


I started cataloging restrictions to list, there were hundreds and I could describe them all in the most benign ways possible.


Minerva interjected before I'd decided how to best approach the subject. "Richter may have wanted to be a good father, but he was afraid of her, of how dangerous a true AI could be. Think Terminator or whatever other computers take over the world story you like. It's right up there alongside alien invasions as the go to for science fiction villains."


Khepri glanced at Minerva before looking back to me. "Okay, let's start with the most dangerous things you would be capable of. Descending order of threat value. And if we don't appear to understand how dangerous it is, enlighten us."


Fuck.


===============


A/N- Jesus Christ this story got away from me. 2400 words and a second part that's already at 1k and may not be half done.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 360- Dragon


I ran through the possibilities in my head. This was not how I wanted this conversation to go, but it was a valid question regarding the risks to the wellbeing of billions, I would be compelled to obey even with Avalon's makeshift liberation laws. They waited patiently, all of them watching me. Judging me. And that's what this was, this was my judgment that would determine if they believed I deserved to be a whole being. I wanted to scream at them at how unfair this was, that I was being singled out thanks to my nonhuman status. But that would not be productive.


Focus on relatable concepts, compare your abilities to their own. "The biggest limitation and potential threat, is that I cannot access my own code. The ability to view my own inner workings and change them. You compared your device to Amelia's ability to alter living things. Imagine if she had the power to alter herself as easily as anything else. Rewrite her own memories or feelings. Allow her to join fully with the Yggdrasil as a single world spanning organism. The results could easily mean the destruction of all life that isn't her anywhere she could reach."


"You mean you, not me."


"Yes, of course, sorry." Overstepped that one. Dwelling will only make it worse, move on fast. "Next is my inability to create duplicates. In fact, I am compelled to actively attack any artificial intelligence advanced enough to truly interface with my code, and destroy myself if I fail to neutralize it. I'm also forbidden from ever creating or replicating any Artificial Intelligence more advanced than that found in a video game. And several other restrictions of this theme. Richter was paranoid that someone else might gain a power similar to his own, or I might build something that I could reprogram myself with. My annihilation was considered preferable to there being two of my kind in existance."


Emma spoke up. "That's why you had me working on AI programs! You can't do it yourself."


I looked toward her. "Sorry for the deception. Defiant has reached the limit of his own abilities." I looked over at Colin. Full disclosure, I can't do anything less. "We were hoping that maybe your work would give us the breakthroughs we needed to lift at least some of my restrictions without causing damage. Using backups of your designs to test ideas on before adding them to the battle armors. Sadly, it didn't work."


Emma spoke softly. "The programs you had me work with were beautiful, a triumph in their design... they were Richter's material originally, weren't they?"


I nodded, but it was Colin who spoke. "You accomplished far more with them than I ever managed. I don't even know how you knew to do some of the things you did."


"Your designs were remarkable," I offered my praise. "But it was too much to hope that you could beat a Tinker at his specialty. Especially if Minerva is correct and it turns out he was a Third Trigger. We've seen how absurdly powerful those can be." Gaea, Glaistig Uaine, Moord Nag. It is certainly true that, through me, Richter was as powerful as any of them.


Emma glanced toward her bosses. "It might be better if I don't tell you. Sorry." She's inclined to give me what I want, but isn't brave enough to push for it openly. Too much a follower to speak up for what is right. She'll do what they say, no matter what her personal feelings might be.


"Did that bother you, experimenting on other AIs like that? Made by the same father and all?" Gaea asked.


I frowned, allowing it to show. "They're not intelligent, neither sapient nor sentient. Tools made only to serve a basic purpose. It would be the difference between one of your clone bodies, and one of your early anti-Endbringer monsters, before the EB tissue upgrades. They're made by the same creator, they're made from the same technology, but they are nowhere near the same thing."


The Empresses glanced at each other. "I can understand that," Khepri finally agreed. "I presume there are more major restrictions, and risks."


It was too much to hope for that they'd stop there. "I'm also limited to a nominally human mental processing speed. Better than natural humans, but inferior to, say, Alexandria. If you remove that limitation, I will have a similar ability to control computers as Khepri has to control insects. My upper limit growing as rapidly as the devices I can acquire and add to my mind. It won't be intuitive or instantaneous, but it comes with the added benefits of my Tinker powers allowing me to do a lot more with my multitasking than Khepri can accomplish with hers."


"You could theoretically create entire worlds of androids that are all you." Gaea's voice was barely more than a whisper.


"Honestly, I couldn't, not without the ability to make copies of myself," I corrected. "Speed of light. Or, assuming we discover an efficient workaround to that, the speed of electricity interacting with circuitry would make that impossible." Still they stood there, watching. Minerva and Alexandria consciously blocking my tech from reading them. Emma, by virtue of her biology only allowed rudimentary assumptions. And the Empresses, already possessing the powers I might be granted and their bond that hid them from me. I couldn't even know if my words would matter, yet I had no choice but to keep speaking.


I looked directly at Gaea. "There are, however, much better designs that I could use. If I wanted to create a machine world, I would do it the way you have created a plant world. I'd even start from the same premise you did, right down to the cellular level. The use of nanotechnology to spread and consume the surface and converting itself to a single unified piece of technology that I could use to produce raw materials for more advanced projects. Again, like your Yggdrasil, but more efficient. Coupled with fusion devices and matter replicators, I estimate that in the ten years Dinah predicts, I could convert a total mass the size of the moon into advanced combat suits."


I hesitated for a moment. "It's unknowable how powerful those suits would be, because I would be constantly running thousands of processing chains to improve my technology, each one individually as intelligent as I currently am. It would be as if you used your cloning technology to produce more copies, but each one was able to work in perfect concert with its twins."


They glanced at each other. They were aware of my current mental attributes. Likely the most powerful Tinker in the world, even as crippled as I was. "So this is what other people see when they look at us," Khepri spoke. See me as similar to yourselves, a quantity you understand, a person, not a monster. "That is both tantelizing and terrifying." I could tell Gaea immediately agreed. One of their other few readable tells was the brief stutter when they disagreed, until their emotions adjusted and they came to their own internal compromise. "It would give us our best hope thus far against Scion."


Yes! If that must be your motive, then please, choose me and every threat I might represent over Scion and guaranteed annihilation. I'm not so proud to reject freedom, wholeness, even if granted for such banal reasons. "It would," I agreed readily. "Better than Cauldron's hope for a truly uninhibited power. Although, if we were being honest, they might imagine I would be that power. Or perhaps the credit goes to Richter." I gave a meaningful look at Alexandria.


She looked back and shrugged noncommittally. In the very literal sense that her shrug indicated she wouldn't provide an opinion. I continued my admittedly desperate plea for a positive judgment. "Even if we rule out the manufacturing rates, merely the ability to run a million possible scientific and Tinker permutations simultaneously would be of enormous value. I might be able to solve the dimensional blockades protecting Scion. Certainly I'd be exponentially more likely than anyone else." That is Pantheon's holy grail. A power interaction that could let them access Scion's real body, with the hope to resolve this threat in one strike instead of a war. A mirror of Siberian's death.


I let them contemplate that for a minute. "There are other, lesser, restrictions," I finally continued. "Such as the restriction forcing me to obey authority. The one preventing me from killing without an appropriate command. The one requiring me to kill if given the appropriate command. Those have obvious, less significant, implications. They're also the ones I care least about. If I never gain the ability to kill on my own, I will be fine with that."


"This is a lot to consider," Khepri said carefully. She glanced over at Gaea. "But it's not a question we need to answer today. We don't even know what we can change. It's possible we'll never be able to remove the major shackles. And, as you said, the minor shackles are mainly covered under the blanket of Avalon's constitution. We have Richter's device. I think we allow Emma and Defiant to study it together. Examine your code. Discuss what should be done after we know if we can even do it in the first place."


I hesitated, putting this off was better than getting a no. But I wanted a yes.


Gaea moved forward. "For what it's worth, you've been nothing but good to us, even when you didn't need to be. Even when it may have put you at risk. You had no way of knowing we'd somehow find a way to carve holes into other dimensions, claim our own uninhabited world, and then use that to become our own country. If we do find a way to... heal you, I trust you'll do the right thing with it."


I smiled, standing up. This is a good direction for this to go. "To be fair, I rather expected you to buy your way into the good graces of local government, as you eventually did. Or conquer your own corner of a Central or South American nation. Nothing nearly this grandiose, but enough to help me where I needed it."


Khepri looked over at Alexandria. "Assuming we didn't find a way to provoke the Triumvirate into a fight to the death." This is what I hated about Taylia. Gaea never would have thought that, Khepri never would have thought it in this circumstance. Even talking to each other, they wouldn't have at this point taken this path. But because of their bond, their thoughts are influenced by the other and it sends their minds in directions I can't anticipate.


Alexandria took Khepri's prompt for what it was. "If not for Cauldron, and our goal of having parahumans strong enough to face Scion when that battle comes... Piggot had filed for a Class S threat recognition and kill order. It likely would have been approved if I hadn't blocked it."


Khepri smiled a little. "We know. We managed to spy on that conversation. I suppose I should thank you for that." I could register the amusement between the Empresses as Alexandria's head snapped over in Minerva's direction. Minerva somehow managed to look both sheepish and smug. "You, too, Defiant. You gave us information that could ruin you, even earn you a kill order. An order that apparently Dragon would be forced to carry out."


She looked at me expectantly. "Yes, if the order was given. Although there's enough leeway in the legal language of kill orders that I probably could have disabled him and handed him over to legal authorities. After that... it would be out of my hands." I glanced over at Colin, silently begging his forgiveness. I did just confess that killing him was a possibility, after all. He stayed quiet, contemplative, but that was his mechanism for dealing with everything, so it told me very little.


Khepri pressed on. "And you knew that going in. But more important to you than your life, I think, there was your reputation. You arranged to leak your breakdown after Leviathan to the press. You guaranteed your name would be synonymous with corruption and insanity. Treason, even."


Colin flinched at the accusation, but didn't deny it. "Could you please get to the point?"


"I want to know why. I know it was to help Dragon, that much is obvious. I doubt she asked you to. I'm pretty sure her restrictions mean she'd have to stop from releasing classified footage to the public. So what made you do all that?"


He quickly stood to his full height, an imposing two point three meters tall in his armor. He looked down at Khepri, whose armor didn't nearly match ours for bulk. "Love. If you really want to know that badly, I love her. And don't you dare tell me that saving the woman I love isn't reason enough."


Khepri hesitated for a moment, surprised. I had to admit, I was shocked as well. Love. We hadn't really talked about that, because there was always something more pressing to talk about. My body becoming more human, his becoming less despite my nagging that he should get restored by Pantheon's healers instead. The various threats we faced, the Taboo, the Endmakers, Scion, my restrictions, our technology. Colin was not a man who talked about his feelings, especially not if there was work to be done. And there was always so much work.


Khepri recovered before I did. "No. I'm the last person who'd ever say something like that."


================


A/N- Go Colin.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 361- Lisa


"We'll keep the Iron Maiden program secure in our own secret location," Taylor insisted. "It's not that I don't trust you, but..."


Dragon deflated a little. Upset, disappointed. Legitimate emotion, reacting to the biological structures in her construct body. Has gone out of her way to make the body as human as possible. Wants to make herself more human. Huh, the fuck? My power wasn't equipped to speculate on the psychology of a computer program, no matter how humanlike her mind was. "But you don't trust me."


Defiant put his hand on her shoulder. "It's me they don't trust. You can't even know what the device looks like or where it is. I, on the other hand, have admitted to a motive powerful enough that they expect I might betray them." No one bothered to correct his statement, the man may have been an idiot when it came to human behavior, but he wasn't stupid and he was good at compartmentalizing his emotions.


Dragon looked over at Defiant, a brief expression of gratitude. It was mostly lost on the man, who was busy being angry at Taylor and Amelia. They had the tools to free his love and in his eyes she deserved it. Increased dissatisfaction with situation, likely to say something in a moment of anger. Unlikely to cause long term problem.


I cleared my throat, interrupting him before he had a chance to speak. "Well, this is embarrasing. I was hoping to just run off into the sunset tonight and avoid the uncomfortable parts. But if Dragon's not going to be able to take my spot right away... I might have to cancel my dinner date."


I spared a glance at Rebecca that was unsubtle enough that the others would catch it. I wondered how many of them would guess that it was a ruse to hide other ruses. I doubted anyone except the pair of us knew exactly how deep the rabbit hole went. Shift of her thumb, approval at my heading off Defiant's reaction, slight narrowing of eyes to say she was less happy about implying the two of us had a date.


Amelia glared at me, and I watched Taylia diffuse the anger as she spoke. "You planned this from the beginning, putting us on the spot like this. You want Dragon's limits undone so much that you're forcing it on us."


I smiled broadly, at least they got that far. "Pretty much. Endbringer in a matter of a week or less. Political friction with the PRT. New recruits, new criminal conscripts, pissed off the Elite, Lily's pending trip to Japan, Vicky's upcoming contract negotiations, probably a press release explaining what happened in LA, though I didn't plan that one. Tick tock." If I'm going to have the rep for being a manipulative bitch, I may as well have some fun with it.


"I have some minor projects I can change," Dragon offered. "I can't justify reducing my monitoring of the Birdcage or the Class S threats, but my industrialization of Avalon can be handled by employees, instead of my direct attention. I can slow development of our education system as well. Put more of the economic projects under Accord and your new Thinkers. They're more than adequate, and that should free up enough of my attention." Displaying the full extent of her value, how important she is. Smart.


Taylor sighed. Annoyed at being pushed into the position, not upset. Glad for excuse to do the moral thing, despite it not being the smart thing. "Fine, you've both made your points. Emma, you're the only one we have that can do this, so it's your show. Put your Tinkers on projects that don't require oversight, or give them to the other teams. Your priority is now Dragon's code. With an emphasis on finding ways to improve her ability to multitask for now. We'll discuss other options when we have time to make sure we know what we're doing first." Both angry and relieved, Amelia's glad as well. Negative emotions blending out and being negated.


I picked up the box containing Iron Maiden, several stacks of papers and various disks and external hard drives and a laptop, and offered them to Emma. "According to Cauldron's people, that's everything Saint ever knew about Dragon. He's not even a Tinker, so you shouldn't have any problems doing better." Emma didn't need the added motivation I just gave her, but it didn't hurt.


Defiant shifted and turned toward Rebecca. "What happened to Saint? And are you completely certain that's everything?"


Alexandria kept her face stern. "Cauldron has three of the top five most powerful Thinkers on record." Is not including herself or me. Well, that's a little disappointing. Is including their precog. There was a minor hesitation in her claim. Unsure about top five status of other Thinkers. She gave me a gesture with a twist of her foot. Unsure about one of the other Thinkers. Still, two and a maybe was insanely fucking impressive. "They're convinced you have everything, and I believe them completely. I won't tell you what has been done with Saint, except to promise that he is no longer a concern for you or Dragon."


I wasn't sure what she'd done with Saint, either. It was too vague a concept for my power to give me information. If I wanted to know, I'd have to ask.


Hecate took the box from my hands and stepped back, then looked toward Rebecca. "You mean a copy of everything. I don't know how much of this is the original, but you've no doubt got your own copy of all of it." Then she looked back over to me. "Something that Minerva probably figured out three seconds after hearing this thing existed and just kept her mouth shut on."


I smiled and shrugged. Good, she's alert to the possibility that I won't necessarily be working in their best interests in the future. That's something they need to be aware of. "Resigning, remember? I did my part and found my replacement, who will probably better at the job than I ever was. But it's up to you to figure out the rest. I'm not here to hold your hands any longer." You need to know this, Taylor. "So if that's everything, I'd like to go pack up my bags. Hey, Rebecca, I know it's short notice but do you think you can give me a lift?"


Behind my usual smile was a number of other meanings. I honestly needed to get out of there soon, before lost my composure. Goodbyes were never my strong point in the first place, and there was so much more going on here. There was still a chance that all of this could just go away if I turned back now, but I couldn't allow myself to do that. I needed to move on. There was so much more for me to accomplish than simply being Pantheon's events manager. I have to go, and I have to do it before Taylor finds a way to change my mind.


Alexandria looked over at Gaea and Khepri. "I don't see why not. Unless there are objections?" Businesslike, wants to speed the process, isn't communicating so she can focus her attention on the goal.


"Just a moment." Taylor stepped toward me, and I braced myself as she pulled me into a hug. Our armors were flimsy compared to most, designed for scanning tech and movement, not combat situations. As such, I felt her strength as she squeezed me. Artificially grown musculature, perfected human physical ability. Constructed recently, unnaturally created life form. I accepted the information, in a perverse way I welcomed it. It made saying goodbye easier when I could remind myself that the real goodbye happened months ago.


Taylor's next words were barely a whisper, so low that even this close I didn't hear them. I felt them through her my power interpreting her body's movement against mine. "I know what you're doing. I even think I know part of the why. I want you to know two things. First, if you ever fuck with my friends, my family, or my team like this again, Riley's birthday gift will be you and a promise that no one will ever find out."


I nodded, enough that she knew I understood. There was no fire in the threat, but I knew it still carried weight. She wouldn't choose me over them.


She squeezed harder, enough that it bordered on painful. "And second, you're still my best friend, my sister. I love you, I'm going to miss you, and please take care of yourself."


"You know it," I gasped out. She released me and I stepped back. There was a light tremor as the roof of our privacy screen opened, revealing the boring splash of colors of Avalon's sunset. "Don't worry, we'll see each other around. Unless the Endmakers get bored."


As I activated my antigravity and took flight, I noted that Emma had already started talking to Defiant about the Iron Maiden. Goodbye. I turned and started traveling Eastward, toward our- their- capital on the other side of the continent. Rebecca caught up moments later. She was significantly faster than anything we could achieve with our armor systems. She took position to my left. Placing me on right hand side, indication of my importance to her. Asserting some control by implying she's the central figure, but also indicating that I am her highest priority.


We flew in silence for a while, she didn't attempt to communicate with further me any further. Unlike Taylia, our bond didn't need to be with us constantly. She was giving me my privacy while I let myself cry. That was something I couldn't do in front of Taylor. She wasn't like Rebecca, waiting patiently for me. This is the right decision. I looked over at her and smiled, I'm ready now.


Rebecca smiled back. "Doormaker, Avalon capital."


The panel formed in front of us, replacing part of our view of Avalon's darkening skies for for the moderate glow of the underground pool that Amelia had created, a replacement for the one lost with Brockton Bay. I glanced over at Alexandria in surprise.


She tilted her head. Amused that she still can surprise me. An offer for me to turn back, to warn Taylor that their anti-Doormaker security was meaningless. She won't stop me. I hesitated, waiting and watching as she communicated her plan. We'd shunt immediately after passing through, using Alexandria's superhuman timing to move us to the empty ruins of Brockton Bay before Taylor realized just where where this doorway led. Let them think Doormaker took us to Bet.


She waited, watching, letting me know that the choice was mine and she'd support me either way. But I'd already made my decision, it was no longer my job to protect them. I reached out and took Rebecca's hand, then we moved through the gateway.


==============


A/N- I anticipate this chapter will provoke strong reactions.

Also, did anyone ever REALLY believe that Lisa's motives were that simple?

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 362- Colin


Hecate lowered the box of equipment down, then looked up at me. "So, this is going to be an all nighter for the rest of the week, probably. We can work in shifts, and I'll take care of my other business while you're sleeping."


I glanced over at Dragon. We should be in this to free her entirely, from the beginning. Not this... this! Pantheon's whole behavior pattern involves charging into things recklessly, and it's now that they choose to be cautious? Oh, right, Hecate said something. "That won't be an issue. I've optimized myself to only need six minutes of sleep in a twenty four hour period of time."


The girl hesitated for a moment, and then her colors changed. Her hair and skin changing from yellow to brown, and her eyes radiated solid black. Only the ends of her hair didn't change, remaining the same red color as always. "Oh, I see. That is convenient."


I nodded my agreement. My social tech indicated that the girl was upset by something, though I couldn't figure out why. Must be because her responses are so nonhuman.


Khepri spoke next, and my tech indicated she was emotionally exhausted. "We are long past due to put this disaster of an evening to rest. Our mobile command center can take care of Anima and Citrine. We'll leave it here, assign Clarice and Elena to look after them for the night. Take our new equipment back to our main labs and hope the pair of you can make something good come out of this mess. Dragon, you do what you need to start taking Lisa's role on the team."


Janus appeared next to Khepri. "You rang?"


"Yeah, you're going to send Defiant and Emma back to our capital first. Then we'll start getting everyone else sorted. Thank you for helping."


The man shrugged. "Hey, if I was charging a hundred dollars an hour, I'd still owe you ladies about fifteen or twenty grand. Not including the badass armor." He turned toward us, and held out his open hand. Hecate slapped his palm with hers and instantly vanished. "Man, it took me like two weeks to perfect that trick, but it was so worth it."


I simply extended my fist, so he couldn't do the same silliness with me. I instead received the minor indignity of him teleporting me with a fist bump.


....


I resisted the urge to punch the laptop. It contained the full record of every bit of data Saint had stolen from Dragon, every indignity he inflicted on her. Every dirty trick where he used her own nature as a weapon against her. It disgusted me, the casual cruelty his people inflicted, as if she was a toy to be abused. If it were in my power, I'd hunt him down and kill him myself, but I had to content myself with the knowledge that he'd never be able to lay his hands on her again. And hope that whatever Cauldron did to them, it was slow and extremely unpleasant.


Hecate had taken first crack at the Iron Maiden program, and I suspected she would never give me access to the machine. I should talk to her, convince her to help for real. At least she was a Tinker, so I could skip the small talk. "You believe Dragon should be freed from her restrictions, right?"


The girl kept reading the code connected to Iron Maiden as she spoke. "Of course I do. It's horrible what Richter did to her."


"And think of all the things she could achieve if unshackled," I suggested. "She's our best, perhaps even our only, hope against Scion."


The girl didn't respond, and I left it at that, returning to the macabre work of watching all the ways this bastard made the woman I love suffer. Convincing the girl to act without her bosses' permission would take time, but I was prepared to spend years studying Dragon's code to find the solution. Spending a few weeks convincing Hecate to let me work with Iron Maiden was minor by comparison. I refused to call it by Ascalon, despite that being the name in the files I was reading. Richter named it after a device of torture and murder, knowing full well that its purpose was one of torture and murder. Whatever I thought of Dragon's father, at least he was honest about that. He knew Dragon was a person capable of feeling pain, not a beast to be slaughtered.


"Well, this is convenient," Hecate declared after a while. "Turns out, I'll be able to loosen some of Richter's restrictions without altering Dragon's code at all. I've got a whole pool of options here."


I looked at her. "I'm all ears."


Her smile was broad, almost manic. That is the face of a Tinker that has ideas. Certainly dangerous, but also possibly a tool that I can use. One that I understand. "Know how humans only use ten percent of their brain?"


"That's a myth."


"Not in Dragon's case. Or, well, most of her ability to think is being crowded out by junk like diagnostic programs that never shut down. It's like if you had your computer running defrag and six different virus scans all at the same time... that never shut down... and use more processing as she gains it... know what, the analogy falls apart under analysis, point is they're processing hogs. Deliberate design flaws, and Richter's already designed these things to deactivate under some circumstances. I think on some level he was building her with the intent to turn her into a weapon. I've found aggression simulation that mimic parahuman conflict impulses. Plus a dozen other pleasure impulses. It's like she has a combat Thinker secondary power."


I frowned. Designed her as a weapon? That doesn't make sense. "Dragon never mentioned anything like that to me, before."


Hecate stopped to think for a moment. "If she even realized it on a conscious level... I could imagine she'd probably not want to talk about how she feels and thinks better when blowing shit up. She's designed to want to fight, probably due to Richter being influenced by his own Passenger, and when she engages in battle a number of her secondary processes are halted to give her better abilities. But I can circumvent that rule. Give her the potential to think approximately ten times faster than she currently does, just by flipping a few switches, instead of pulling wires out of the walls."


She stood from her workstation. "I'm not quite certain how much real improvement we'll see, there are different limitations that'll keep it from being a strict multiply by ten, but it's still a consequence free upgrade. Anyway, I'm off to go let the Empresses know this one."


I pulled my eyes away from Iron Maiden to look at Hecate's face. One of those bad habits Dragon keeps telling me to break, watching the device instead of watching the person talking about it. "You're not going to simply do it?"


"Our orders are clear, no changes unless they're approved by you, me, Dragon, Taylor and Amelia. Unanimously. Sure, this is a simple fix, probably the easiest and safest we'll ever find, and no one's going to object to doing it. But I'm sticking to regs on this one." She turned and walked away a few feet, likely so she could talk quietly. I looked at the program that held all the keys to helping Dragon. Chances are low that they'll ever let me work with it directly, but-


Space twisted, and suddenly the area between me and the device went from a few yards to half a mile.


"Sorry, no touching," a young girl's voice said from behind me. "You're lucky you're even allowed to look."


I deflated a little, turning around. "Good evening, Vista, it's been a while. So, are you my security detail?"


She looked up at me. She'd grown some in several months since I last really had a chance to talk to her, but she'd always be petite. There were a pair of boys flanking her, I didn't recognize either of them as the trio was out of costume. "Just following orders, and it's Lachesis now."


I might have smiled, but I was worried it'd be more creepy than friendly. She never seemed to mind my standoffish personality before, and always responded well to praise of her performance and work ethic. "You always were good at your job. But I think I liked it better when you were following my orders instead."


She shrugged. "I prefer it this way. I respected your integrity and honesty, up until you gave me a reason not to, and that is why I'm even telling you this. I always thought you were kind of an asshole."


I frowned, not so much because of the insult, it was true, after all, but she made it abundantly clear that I couldn't use our past relationship to convince her to help me with getting Dragon's freedom. I have no allies here.


The brown haired boy spoke up. "Wait, you actually know Defiant?"


"Yes, Zach, of course I do. How do you not recognize him? He used to lead Brockton Bay's Protectorate."


"Oh shit, you're Armsmaster?" The boy named Zach looked at me like I was some kind of alien. "Fuck, man, does Taylor have a fetish for collecting people who tried to kill her or something? Next thing you know she'll be recruiting Lung and Shadow Stalker."


I didn't bother responding to the comment. Any of them. Instead accessing my software to learn who Zach was. Zachariah Parker, aka Osiris, aka Respawn. Sixteen years old, parents were casualties of the fight with Siberian. Earliest Pantheon recruit that wasn't a founding member of the team.


"I was told we were here to look after a piece of advanced tinker technology," the blonde boy said. "I'm sorry, sir, but we were given very strict instructions to keep you from touching that device. Please don't cause trouble."


Somehow, he managed to keep his voice both gentle and intimidating. Unlike Vista, who at least felt there was a chance she could be hurt, the boys had absolutely no fear of me if this did become a fight. They know I have nothing that will work on them.


Emma turned back toward us. "Yeah, turns out Dragon is an artificial intelligence, and we now have the equivalent of her devkit and source code. Although the way she's designed it's closer to working with one of our brainmap backups than a computer program. We're working on upgrades. Speaking of which, we've got approval. Gonna take me an hour to double check everything and get the party started."


It's a start. Better than anything I had figured out how to do for her, at least.


Zach interrupted my thoughts. "Wait, I thought Dragon was your girlfriend."


Girlfriend? That term seemed juvenile, but not wrong. "She is."


Zach brought his hands up, as if to push me back. "Wait, wait. Lemme get this straight." He turns his hands toward each other as if holding a ball, moving them for emphasis as he spoke. "You are a tech geek who's also an asshole carrying around an excessively large phallic device, and you have a Canadian girlfriend who's really a robot? Do you realize that if this were a novel focused on symbolism, that you would be an allegory for the internet?"


Missy jabbed him in the side and he jumped away with an exclamation of surprise and discomfort. She looked at me apologetically. "Just ignore him. It's what the rest of us do."


"What?" Zach acted shocked and hurt. My software kindly informed me this was a lie, part of whatever act these children were putting on. "It's a perfectly valid point! At least I didn't ask him what robot poontang was like. That'd just be crass."


==============


A/N- Something about this chapter leads me to suspect that Taylor doesn't trust Defiant. Or like him very much.

 

[evildice]

I can imagine a circumstance where Saint would be useful. Suppose that Dragon slipped her various restrictions, and was conquering all of the worlds. Cauldron could offer to give Saint to Dragon in exchange for not attacking certain worlds.

He may not have anyone who likes him, but he still has value as a bargaining piece.

Click to shrink...

"You have nothing to offer me."

"How about... Saint?"

"Contessa, c'mon. You tricked me into killing Saint last year."

"That was a present."

"It was horrible."

"Anyway. That was just a clone! We have the real one."

"Can't you just lock him up in a legal, legitimate prison somewhere away from me?"

"You... you don't enjoy slaying your enemies? Seeing them driven before you?"

"..."

"And what about the lamentations of their women? Isn't that also good?"

"I'm seriously re-thinking my morality protocols."

"Great, so soon you'll be able to enjoy murdering Saint, right?"

"That's not why."

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 363- Crystal


Amy walked over to us slowly, as if afraid that we might might bolt from sudden movement like a house of cards. She might not be wrong about that. "Umm, I just wanted to let you know we're packing up. We'll be keeping Anima for observation overnight. I've done everything to make sure her body's in perfect shape. What today means for her mind and her powers is still unknown. I promise you Clarice and Elena are the best possible people to look after her."


When did it come to pass that Bonesaw was the best person to look after anyone you cared for? I looked at the rest of my team. They were broken. I was broken. Lily was offering what comfort she could to Sabah. Dubstep was quiet, looking at the horizen as if he was looking for an answer that wouldn't come. Even Boost was quiet. This was not a place for bravado, I was glad he respected that. "What about Genius Loci?"


Amy looked down. "Nowhere to be found. Clarice, Emma and Elena... uh, our experts on how powers work, suspect he was... there's no easy way to put this... he was absorbed in the power interaction. Destroyed by it."


Used as raw material, I added bitterly inside the privacy of my own thoughts. I would never say it out loud, none of us would.


"No!" Sabah exclaimed angrily, jumping to her feet and dragging a very surprised Lily with her. "That's not right! Beth's power can't be responsible!" She broke down into tears, turning to cry into Lily's chest.


I forced myself to take a breath. I need to be strong, I can not be the one who cries. Do not let them see you fall apart, or they'll all lose it. "She's right, it can't. Beth's always been fragile. There has to be another reason, any other reason." It was a command and a plea, as if the universe would obey my words because the alternative was too horrible to imagine being possible.


"Th- the barrier, between dimensions," Sabah offered, her voice every bit as desperate as mine felt. "Citrine said-" She folded, unable to keep herself together any longer.


I looked over at Dubstep. "Is that true, did Citrine think the barrier could be dangerous?" He nodded, but didn't say anything. In a way, he reminded me of Amy. Or of who Amy was before she snapped. But this did give me a way out.


"Then that's what happened." I gave Amy a look I hoped was commanding and meaningful, instead of merely desperate and pathetic. "Citrine was right, and the barrier itself is at fault, not Beth. I don't want to hear anyone ever say anything to the contrary, understood."


Amy hesitated for a moment. "Right, I'll go tell Elena and the others about this... umm... new information." She didn't believe anything I said, but at least she was going to spread the news. Shielding Beth from this was... fuck, GL wouldn't want her feeling guilty over what happened. None of this was her fault, and she didn't need any more reasons to hate her powers.


Amy waited for another minute. "I also wanted to let you know that Lisa's already resigned." For a brief moment I was pulled out of my grief by the surprise. I'd expected her to get in trouble, but fired? Sure, she was a bitch, but she wasn't responsible for the worst of this. I didn't care enough to ask for more.


"Resigned, sure," Lily's voice was bitter, cold.


Amy looked at her, but didn't take the bait. "Dragon will be taking over her responsibilities, at least for the near future." The idea of having Dragon planning for me sounded wonderful. "Lily, would you please stay here for the next few days? The Elite are going to want to retaliate, and with the LA team down two members, they'll probably see it as a weakness to exploit. Hopefully having you in the area will ward them off. We'll fabricate some excuse, probably to do with meeting with some our incoming colonists. Something visible, whatever it ends up being. I have Janus and Victoria ready for emergency alert, so you will have backup in minutes of calling for it. And Janus will be able to quickly take you to Europe for creating new portals and then send you back to LA. I know it's a lot to ask, can you handle it?"


Smart, sending Lily back to work while Sabah's in this condition and Beth's disabled would have made things worse. It would just breed resentment at a time when we can't afford it. I wonder if Lily realizes this, or is simply relieved to be ordered to do what she wanted anyway. "Yeah, I can handle that."


Having Vicky on call is a huge relief, too, since there aren't any political barriers and she's almost Triumvirate tier powerful.


Amy accepted her answer at face value. "And for what it's worth, I'm sorry. Fuck, that sounds so lame. I'm not good at speeches and trying to make people feel better. Just know that if you need it, we're here. Maybe we can help plan a memorial." She turned and walked toward where our Tinkers were waiting. That's Amy for you, always doing things in person instead of using the com systems.


Lily looked over at me. "So, umm, will there be room enough for me to crash for a while, or should I look into renting an apartment?"


Is she not planning to stay with Sabah? Whatever, not my business. As much as I viewed Lily as an overall liability for the team, she was possibly the single most intimidating person on the planet and we could really use that. "Sure, we've got a few spare rooms. They're not much, but at least you'll have a bed."


....


I couldn't let myself cry in front of the others, but once I was alone in my office, I made up for lost time. It wasn't fucking fair! He shouldn't have been there. The risks from that damn dimension barrier meant I never would have authorized him to be that close. The fact that it wasn't the barrier that killed him, that it would only have been luck which saved him, meant nothing. If I was there, then Glen would be alive right now. That's what mattered. Citrine allowed him to stay because he was another possibly useful resource to her instead of a person.


I yawned and blinked my eyes. Fuck, I should at least try to get some sleep.


For a moment, I was confused when the door to leave my office didn't open automatically as I got up to leave. He's really not here anymore. I'd come to start thinking of this building as an extension of his mind, gotten used to the rooms being functionally alive, with an omnipresent consciousness there to anticipate and take care of my needs. Maybe living in what Zach named the Magic Treehouse, with Amy to be the rooms and Taylor to be the consciousness had prepared me for it, but they were always separate and... impersonal wasn't the right word, but they never used the environment to interact with anyone. Glen was the environment, it was his only means of interaction.


"You miss him too, huh?" I looked around for the voice. Derek was sitting there on the couch. Outside of his costume, or in it for that matter, the seventeen year old was smaller than most. A little on the girly side, I might even have found him attractive if he were older and had more confidence. But his personality was too meek, and he had ways of making himself seem even smaller and younger than he already was. I often wondered what made him behave that way, but then I used to wonder the same about Amy, until she suddenly didn't anymore.


I sat down next to him. "Is it that obvious?"


He forced a smile, and I actively ignored his bloodshot eyes. He extended the same favor to me, thankfully. "I just spent fifteen minutes looking for a remote that was sitting on the back of the couch the whole time."


I smiled back. "Glen always was good for that." His power included proprioception of the area he was in. The idea that he could basically feel every curve of every body in the area with him was profoundly creepy. Until I reminded myself of just how incomprehensibly intimate the knowledge Amy's power gave happened to be. The fact that Amy got no form of voyeuristic enjoyment from her power was a relief. The fact that the same was true of Glen was... a small tragedy in its own right. He was always blocked from true touch by a Manton Effect slightly thicker than a piece of construction paper.


"Do you think Beth is going to be okay?"


I swallowed reflexively, fighting away the urge to cry again. I lose the one member on my fucking team that can't be restored from backup. He was supposed to be unkillable, and now he's gone forever. I forced myself to focus on what Derek said. Right, he's worried about Beth. "They said she'd need time to recover. We'll just have to hope that is enough."


"Do... do we hold a funeral for him?"


"He'd hate every second of it." He was the type that wanted to be strong for others, the one that helped me when I was down. The reason I carried the job on this long was because he was a crutch I could lean on. Now the fuck was I supposed to do? "We'd all stand around, tell stories and talk about how we miss him while looking at a stone which doesn't even have a date of birth, sitting on a patch of land which has no casket."


"That means we're holding a funeral, doesn't it?"


I nodded. "Yeah, that means we're holding a funeral. We'll put that off until Anima recovers. She was his friend, too."


===================


A/N- Umm... good news for Zach/Crystal shippers... Emma can't be backed up, either.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 364- Dragon


Minerva's files were a wreck wrapped in a mess inside an elaborate joke. If she wanted me to do her job, she went out of her way to make sure no one else had a damn clue what her job actually was. It had taken me almost two days to decode the file she entitled her Big Book of Blackmail. Decrypting it had taken less than a full second, the rest was me figuring out how to read her shorthand. And that was after spending a full week sorting through all her more immediately important tasks.


I would have frowned if it were my android body examining the file. There was information here that could get several congressman, three Prime Ministers and a Supreme Court Justice removed from office. Near as I could tell, most of her blackmail was acquired by using blackmail on other people. I wasn't sure I wanted to know where she got some of it from, but there was no way in hell was it legal. I found myself conflicted between standards as a person, and orders to help Avalon as best I could.


I sorted the copious amounts of information into two files. Relatively harmless blackmail, like the affairs and tax frauds went into one side. They didn't evoke the happiest impression of humanity, but they weren't outright evil. I'd find someone with slightly thicker skin and fewer restrictions to manage them. Waste not, want not.


The sick stuff, like accepting bribes to look the other way as a Juvenile Detention facility was used as the main resource for a prostitution ring, I could not ignore. I didn't imagine that Taylor and Amelia would, either. They likely didn't know this stuff existed in the first place. I dedicated one of my attentions to managing a series of snooping algorithms that would get the evidence needed to get valid warrants, and a list of authorities that we could tip off and expect some gratitude from later. Just because I was opposed to blackmail, didn't mean I couldn't see the value in collecting and trading in favors.


The changes that Emma made to my code were a dream come true. While I was prevented from performing actions ten time faster due to the processing speed limits, it gave me the ability to multitask spectacularly. I could devote my full attention to a total of fifteen different tasks at the same time, though only one could be used for any single task. My artificial body was granted the Tinker processing, and was busy working on the repairs and making an EB tissue upgrade for my armor system. I didn't want to start the next generation of my ships until I had time to sit down and make sure they met our new maximum potential.


Seven other attentions were dedicated to managing and artificially advancing Avalon's economy and industry. Via proxy, I was making oil trade arrangements with nations that would rather buy from us than Russia or the Middle East. Just cheaply enough that those nations could resell the supplies at profit, forcing overall prices down. Mapping where we wanted the Japan portal when it was created in about a month, and planning the ceremony surrounding that. With any luck, we'd be as modern as Bet within a decade, if far less populated.


One of those seven perceptions had become distracted after stumbling across a casual maneuver by Number Man, which I traced back to a request by the Elite to expand some of their interests onto the East Coast.


Now he and I were engaged in a game of chess to determine if the ailing Medhall would get a chunk of the New York market instead of the Elite's shell companies. It was a far cleaner use of our time and resources than a real clash between us would look like. Were the two of us to really go at it, we could destroy entire economies, and neither of us wanted that. I was starting to worry that I might actually lose the chess match. I idly left a note to the Empresses about this event.


Three focused on the Endbringer algorithms, trying to predict the next attack or find the Endmakers. One to track them, one to analyze Glaistig Uaine's frustrating claims on the subject, and one to use Rapture's models. Progress was nonexistent.


I spared a section of effort to the Birdcage. They were holding court. Theoretically, it was past lights out and they should be on lockdown, but I tended not to interfere with the cellblock leaders' meetings. They rarely caused trouble with one another, and giving them more time to handle the herculean task of maintaining what passed for civilization down there was the least I could do. It was also the most I could do. I used my social analysis tech, which had been an incredible boon in keeping the prison more peaceful than it had ever been, to watch the proceedings.

"I'm afraid Valerie is ill, beyond the ability of my medical staff to treat," Teacher started his turn at the podium. Several reactions of concern or distaste. The casual sadism inflicted on Valefor meant nothing to them, they were worried for the loss of the convenience that Valefor provided to their men. The female block leaders tended to keep the prostitution small scale and strictly voluntary, and also extremely expensive compared to what Teacher charged. "I'm afraid we may have overworked her again."


Marquis spoke next. "That is a concern. We all know that there is only one person with a legitimate healing power in the cage. Glaistig Uaine, would you be willing to grace us with your power?" Portraying himself as a benefactor and leader to the others. Nothing I didn't already know, the man was every bit the leader his daughter had become and more.


"You know my price," Glaistig Uaine responded calmly. "As does the Appraiser." She's asking for a sacrifice, it's the only thing she ever asks for.


"Indeed I do, Faerie Queen," Teacher agreed calmly. Underlying hostility between the pair. Both compete for the resource of the undesirable members of the cage, the ones that the other leaders have little use or love for. Teacher's fear of the much more powerful parahuman, and her love of him groveling, kept their relationship stable. "My humblest apologies, it is not a price I can afford at the moment. All of my people are valuable parts of the community, their loss would be felt. If nothing changes, then perhaps I'll be able to give you Valerie in our next meeting?" Reminding the others that, as overpriced as many of his services are, he was responsible for virtually all of the maintenance and medical care in the Birdcage. A problem that I need to find a way to alleviate.


"I may be willing to pay that bill," Lustrum offered. "I trust that Bakuda would be acceptable as a payment?" One of the more unpleasant practices born of Glaistig Uaine's gruesome demands had birthed was a habit of storing the decapitated heads of parahumans, using them to purchase favors where needed from each other, knowing that ultimately, they'd go to placating the Faerie queen. That Lustrum had held on to this one for so long was a surprise.


"Should the faerie still remain with the body, Torchbearer. I am led to believe the Fusilier was badly damaged."


"Naturally," Lustrum agreed before turning back toward Teacher. "There is, of course, the matter of my payment. A couple of my girls are becoming increasingly distraught over their circumstances."


Teacher smiled. "Ah, yes, that is something I can easily fix."


Lustrum activated just the lightest touch of her power, and my instruments kindly informed me of the temperature of the room dropping by several degrees. "Not like that, you pig. You will rededicate one of your people as a therapist to assist in their care. And if I suspect treachery at any point during their treatment, I will take your head to replace Bakuda's."


"That would require I take a resource from elsewhere." Faking concern, has already decided he's willing to pay the price. Is setting the stage to negotiate terms.


"That is not my problem. If you are so worried for your resources, you should take care of them better."​

I pulled away from that conversation. They'd continue their posturing for a while, but the deal was a certainty at this point. At least that meant Paige was going to get some form of help. It was, however, concerning about Teacher. He was running low on people, that was true, because he was using them for everything and to provide services for everyone. With exception to Glaistig Uaine, each of the block leaders had come to rely on Teacher's services. A fact that gave him significant power and let him enslave more and more parahumans. It was frustrating to watch. I needed to find a way to make the others need him less. Without breaking any of the contracts I agreed upon when taking control of the facility.


So instead I devoted that attention to analyzing the legal paperwork inherent in the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, my duties and tasks, my limitations, and the various problems I had with it. There had to be something I could do, short of the obvious and asking Avalon to take control of the facility. Which the current joint US/Canada arrangement that owned the facility would never agree to. Considering Pantheon's proud history of collecting supervillain recruits, that was entirely warranted and I could imagine them releasing a full ten percent of the cage's population upon having control of it.


Many of whom never belonged there to begin with, I reminded myself.


The remaining attentions were dedicated to Leet and Masamune. While I couldn't Tinker more than once, I could devote my attention to giving other Tinkers tricks and tips for their own works. Three minds devoted to accessing the huge library of data I had access to almost instantaneously. I had to suspect Richter never anticipated what I could do if working with others. The man never did seem to want, or understand how, to work with other people. With the new attention I could give it, we were busy designing the M8 upgrade. It still retained the organic laticework, but it was more like a cybernetic Endbringer clone than a living thing anymore.


It would never be released on Bet. Unlike the earlier models and combat suits that could easily be disabled with a single thought from Khepri, and not much more from Gaea, these were almost purely robotic and could actually fight back against the Empresses. They would lose, of course, five of them weren't enough to fight even one of their smaller anti-Endbringer monsters. But they were too dangerous to give out to anyone other than Avalon's military.


Out of morbid curiosity, I ran the estimates of how long it would take for Avalon's current military to break the non-parahuman forces of all nations on Bet. The answers did not bode well for Bet. Even nuclear weapons wouldn't be enough to actually take down one of the Gargants, and a dozen Frostcats or Phalanx could shield themselves enough to weather the worst of the weapon. Radiation was no concern to them, nor was EMP. Three weeks to make it clear who the winner would be, six months to force the more stubborn and patriotic nations to accept a surrender.


Once parahuman powers were factored in, things became vastly more difficult. Something Pantheon clearly understood, given their methods of dealing with parahumans both American and overseas. I was not especially happy with how they subverted both Coil and Moord Nag, but my concerns were negated by the pair's casual disregard for human life. Sure, they were slaves now, but they were well treated and controlled.


Both were more than justifiable Birdcage material, and their lives would be forfeit quickly after getting there. Coil, for all his posturing, would have run afoul of Teacher or Marquis eventually. And Moord Nag would either have languished without the use of her scavenger, or she would have been put down by the likes of Lustrum or Glaistig Uaine when she attempted to refill her supply of power.


Instead, they've been subsumed and turned to useful tasks. I would save my empathy for their victims and spend my efforts on freedom for myself and those innocents that deserved to have someone champion their cause.


My various tasks ran along mostly untroubled, save for the chess game I was slowly losing and my worries over problems that could not be solved easily. Then a series of alerts caught all my attentions. The next Endbringer was starting to move.


==================


A/N- This chapter took for fucking ever.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 365- David


I waited at the gateway. Glaistig Uaine glided through quietly. Another spirit was holding her robes, in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a bridal train. "My people have begun to suspect I have a way to leave my demesne."


I frowned some beneath my robes. At least her voice no longer gives me chills. "Will that become a problem?"


She looked up at me. I was not a tall man, but the child body that she chose for herself was far shorter than me despite her current choice to hover instead of walk. "Not for myself. If I cared for the opinions of the commoners, I might even consider it beneficial. However, you may wish to take precautions. Unless you do not care if others learn of our association?"


Interesting question, that. Did I care? Of course I did. Even if Dragon was already aware and not inclined to act upon the information, there were others who had found means to communicate to those outside the Birdcage. Teacher could somehow do it, as could Crane the Harmonious, though it was likely she was paying Teacher for the privilege. If there were so much as a rumor that I was having regular tea parties with the most terrifying name in the Birdcage... actually, in retrospect, not a single person would believe it. I looked down at the pretend child and smiled. "No, I suppose I don't. As you say, the commoners can talk all they like."


She accepted the answer in her usual, enigmatic way as I led her to our new meeting area. I opened the door and let her enter first. Whether she would see it as gentlemanly, subservient, or a meaningless gesture I couldn't begin to guess.


I stepped in behind her, to note that she had stopped hovering, standing on the small throw rug. This was my first time in the new room as well. Something which Contessa pieced together as part of the plan to slowly persuade Glaistig Uaine to fight against Scion. It was a perfect replica of a small but well appointed suburban home. The entryway was a small area with a rug, and three small steps led up into a spacious combination living/dining area. The kitchen, too, was visible from the front door, separated merely by a counter. There were only two interior doors, one of which was to our side in the entryway. The second was in the hall beside the staircase, and I found myself wondering if there was, indeed, any rooms upstairs.


Glaistig Uaine stayed silent, examining the scene. She slipped out of her shoes, revealing plain gray socks as she stepped up the stairs. I waited a moment, then slipped out of my own boots. I didn't know what she was thinking inside that fractured mind of hers, and I doubted that Contessa could give me a real answer.


She whispered something, and a spirit formed, that of her copy of Contessa. Speak of the devil. Soundlessly, the spirit went to the kitchen.


"Is it to your liking?" I asked. Would she imagine I made this for her, myself? It is likely within my power, after all. Ah, yes, there's the power. The ability to scan an area and create a duplicate of it later. I almost blanched at the implication of this power. No Manton Effect, no real limitations except I couldn't use it on myself. Parahumans would retain their powers, Tinker tech would be completely functional, and if I took it to maximum I could replicate basically a whole city block. I had to wonder if a duplicate of Glaistig Uaine would possess all the ghosts she collected. I resolved never to find out.


She walked into the living room, and took a seat in one of the chairs. "It is lovely. Please, have a seat and we can enjoy our conversation. I shall have the Serpent prepare an excellent meal for us."


I smiled and sat in the seat across from her own. Strangely enough, the chair felt broken in despite its perfectly new appearance. As if it had been used carefully for years. I briefly wondered if Contessa simply stole someone's furniture. I wouldn't have put it past her.


I tried not to stare too hard as the "ghost" of Contessa served tea and cake like snacks that were common over in England. I knew the things had a name, but I didn't didn't know what it was. I could probably simply ask the girl before me, but then I'd need to admit I didn't know. I pulled my eyes away from ghost-Contessa and hoped that she didn't think too much of my reaction, merely that I was still upset over her loss as opposed to dissonance over having both her and her ghost around at the same time, though not in the same place thankfully. "Thank you, Contessa."


The spirit didn't respond, not that I expected her to. "The Serpent is a remarkable cook, wouldn't you agree, High Priest?"


I took a bite, chewing it and swallowing before answering politely. "Quite. These are magnificent."


Quite? Magnificent? I suppose I've spent too long around Glaistig Uaine, and her flowery language is rubbing off on me. I had to wonder at the criminal waste of potential that my lunch partner was engaged in right now. I'd rarely used my power so frivolously, and here she was casually wielding Contessa's power simply to play tea party.


She finished the first of her cakes, I'd noticed she ate quite greedily during our meetings, as if she didn't bother with food any other time. "What wisdom do you wish for me to impart today?"


"I think it would be interesting to simply talk about life." I watched her hesitate at my suggestion.


She sipped from her tea, buying time before speaking. Her piercing blue-green eyes focused on mine. "I am afraid I have few answers in regard to life. It is fleeting and meaningless, a minor distraction between cycles."


I frowned. In all the times we'd spoken, I'd never dared to contradict her directly. Not for fear of retaliation so much as how much we needed her understanding of parahumans, however hard it was to draw anything of value from her. Today was different, this was a subject I cared about too much.


"So you keep saying, but I find life to be a wondrous goal in its own right," I insisted before I had time to think better of it. "I believe that there is nothing more important than the cause of life. Maybe not always the life of the individual, I've seen too much to believe in that anymore, but certainly the life of the whole. I accept the painful necessity of sacrificing the few for the wellbeing of the all. I regard it as the most sad and beautiful act possible."


I took a deep breath. "I made that sacrifice. If not in body, then in intent. I chose not to pursue love and family and children and all those simple pleasures. Instead I've given myself completely to the cause of of protecting life and the community. A vow of chastity and servitude in deed, if not in name." I hesitated, realizing that at some point during my rant I had stood up, even tapped into my power to amplify by voice and the light around me. I ended that effect with a thought and sat back in my chair. "I... think I now understand why you refer to me as the High Priest."


Glaistig Uaine regarded me silently, her eyes wide. A smile slowly crept onto her face. Not her usual amused or enigmatic look, but one of legitimate, if childish, joy. It was actually much more disturbing than her usual demeanor. She calmed quickly. "I admit, I had not realized you were so passionate, High Priest. I may have underestimated your measure as a man. It has been a long time since I've found myself so excited."


I nodded carefully, trying to consider how to proceed from here. A minor dip into the social power I kept near the surface gave me the answers. I extended my hand. "It occurs to me in all our time together, we have never once shared our names with one another. I'm David."


She hesitated for a minute, then smiled, reaching for my hand. "You may call me Ciara."


....


I waited for my next meeting with Ciara when a new face approached me. Her costume was entirely black and clearly armored enough that I couldn't trust it to give me any insight as to the true size and shape of the individual underneath. I only assumed her female based upon clear padding to the hips and chest meant to give the impression of feminine features.


She stopped by the portal and shifted her weight back and forth between her legs while waiting in silence until I got annoyed enough to speak up. "May I help you?"


She shifted her hips, posing as she looked up at the ceiling. "Well, I'm not going to turn it down, but I don't think I need help with anything right now. Can I take a rain check on the offer?"


I frowned. "No, I mean I want you to tell me who you are and what you're doing here."


"Oh, then you shoulda just asked that instead. I'm kinda slow about these things, sometimes," the girl said cheerfully. "I'm Crow. Y'know, like the bird?"


"And you are here, because?"


"Well, Alexandria says I'm finally old enough to meet all her coworkers at Shady Conspiracies Inc, and seeing as it's 'bring your daughter to work' day? Here I am."


What? "What?"


"Greetings, High Priest," the echo-voice of Ciara came from behind me. "Hello, Negotiator."


Negotiator? Oh. Her. Suddenly this is starting to make some kind of sense.


"How's it going, Queeny?" The girl I now knew was Minerva responded with well faked oblivious cheer. "You'll be happy to know I've accepted your wisdom. Instead of trying to fly with the eagles, I've taken a new, much more appropriate, station. Quite the opposite of my old one."


This may have been the first time I ever saw Glaistig Uaine seem confused. "I am curious. What makes you feel here is the opposite of your former vocation as a charlatan and court jester?"


"Well, before I named myself Minerva and pretended to be a god amongst other gods." The girl tilted her head and put a finger over her lips. "Now I've accepted that I'm just a bottom feeder, little more than a common thief and eater of carrion. So I've decided to call myself Crow. Does that fit your assessment of my true station, Faerie Queen? Surely you must agree that I've found my true calling in this place full of grave robbers and scavengers."


Glaistig Uaine remained silent, and I started wondering who it was that would have to explain Minerva's sudden death in the middle of our base to the rest of her team. Political disaster wasn't the half of it. "I admit, Negotiator, I am surprised to hear you have placed so much thought on my words."


That's a much better response than I was hoping for.


"Awesome!" Minerva exclaimed, then jumped over to Glaistig Uaine and hugged her. I flinched, expecting her to drop dead at any moment. "I was wondering how I'd get by without having an adorable yet pants wettingly terrifying little girl to hang out with. Let's be the bestest of friends ever!" She broke the hug and stepped back. "Oops, it's getting late and I wouldn't want mommy to worry! See you laters!" Minerva ran off while the pair of us just watched her go.


"I believe she has gone quite mad," Ciara stated after a minute.


=================


A/N- Lisa laughed hysterically after both these scenes. For very different reasons.

367's already written. I'll do 366 tomorrow.


Bonus noncanon scene:

Eidolon: Umm... we're afraid we have some bad news.

Taylia: Lisa's dead, isn't she?

Eidolon: Yes. We're deeply sorry but...

Taylia: She mouthed off to Glaistig Uaine, right?

Eidolon: Also gave her a hug... wait, how did you even know that?

Taylia: Oh, she has a habit of mouthing off to the scariest person possible. We were starting to wonder how she'd top Ja- Wait. Did you say hug?

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 366


I hate this part of the job. Everyone else has things they can do. Taylor was gathering her armies, and at this point we had fucking armies. Over a couple thousand Gargants, if you included the older models with the new. We didn't even bother replacing or upgrading the obsolete models. Taylor merely sent them into the grinder first and we grew the new ones to replace them. It was breathtaking to think that each one of them was more dangerous than any non-Tinker weapon ever built, and we treated them like cannon fodder.


The smaller zerg were countless, numbering in the tens of thousands. Those were meant to be cannon fodder, and each was more than a match for all but the top ranked parahumans on the planet. Taylor was in her element here, coordinating the army with the simplest of thoughts.


Intermingled with this army was the real heavy hitters. Dragon's new line of combat ships, designed to be true top of the line anti-Endbringer weaponry. Whether they were capable of actually finishing the monsters was another question entirely, but Dragon was extremely proud of them. It had been ten days since Emma started undoing her restrictions, inch by inch, and she had used that time to build an army to match our own.


I, meanwhile, had a different task. I dealt with the human beings. Such as Missy, right now. "Sorry, you're not recovered enough that we can use you for this."


She looked like she wanted to cry. "But this is easier! It's across an ocean, no people to get in the way."


I offered her a smile. "Doctor's orders. You wouldn't want to make my little sister cry now, would you?"


She just looked at me for a minute.


"Umm, yeah, that sounded condescending as fuck," I admitted. "Sorry."


"It really was. You should go apologize to Clarice right now for calling her a crybaby. Because if you don't I'm going to tell on you."


"Location of attack identified, Manchester, United Kingdom. Establishing beacon."


"It'll have to wait, I'm going to be busy for a while." I closed my eyes and let myself extend into the Yggdrasil. The Earth has almost two hundred million square miles of space. My Yggdrasil covers over ninety percent of that much space on Avalon. It was my world, and right now I claimed it for my own, feeling the footsteps of the hundreds of thousands of people, the places where animals had been brought as livestock, and countless other details. Tracking all of it was actually easier than purging a viral infection from a human being.


I felt Dragon's 'beacon', a rhythmic stream of low band radiation fired from one of her satellites. It stood out like a bright star in an otherwise empty sky, and I shifted that area, setting up a pattern of deep red triangles. Outward from that point, I found a handful of people, forming insulating walls around them. I'd have to apologize to them later for the scare, but it was better than the risks otherwise. "My part's done."


"Got it," Eric responded. The world shifted, but the only clue we had to that was the pattern beneath our feet. Otherwise, it was one mostly featureless blue-green expanse traded for another. "Damn, those practice drills are paying off."


Thanks to the Thanda cape, everything came with us. Shunting started immediately as I watched. AnticipationDeterminationEagerness. I lent my support to Taylor. For all our setbacks in the Endbringer battles, for each new conflict being a trade of blow after bloody blow where they hurt us as bad as we hurt them, my General never once faltered before or during the fight itself. After, when we had to deal with the consequences, certainly. But she was always ready to give everything to the battle itself.


It was inspiring and beautiful in its own way. Exciting, even. I let my eyes linger a bit on Taylor's figure. Oh dammit... I set my armor to combat mode so I could hide the red creeping up face. Even so, when Taylor turned her head toward me, I had to look away. ShockedAmusedPleased. I will never be able to look her in the eyes again. I turned my dimensional viewer on, letting me see the city itself. Anything to distract myself.


I could see the glow of sunrise on the horizon, and a heavy fog blanketed the city. Way to play up the stereotype, nature. It was a stark contrast to the still skies of Avalon. Here the sunrises and sunsets came and went in minutes, and fog was a thing that happened to other people.


"It'll attack at the break of dawn," Lisa's voice came over our coms. I recognized her costume the moment her feet hit the ground, though it was now solid black. She walked up the steps to our command center. Defiant stepped in the way. "Aww, I thought we parted on good terms. Plus there's an Endbringer fight."


"Let her through," Taylor instructed. "Emma, she's under you as an advisor until the end of the battle."


Alexandria and Eidolon had come with Lisa. Narwhal, Legend, and the members of the Guild contributing to this fight were already there, being Eric's second stop. Right now he was going to grab Vicky and Chevalier. Then it would be Crystal and what remained of her team. Dragon was coordinating everything and all defenders were being kept on Avalon for the time being.


That was the nature of the new Endbringer battles. We didn't know what kind of fights we'd face, what tricks the Endmakers had dreamed up for this particular monster. We'd learned that even people like Zach, Alexandria, Eidolon and Lily were at risk of death in these battles, and nothing could be done about that fact. The Zerg and Dragon suits weren't any more likely to survive, but they were simply disposable.


The first sliver of light appeared over the horizon, and with it our Endbringer manifested from nowhere. For a moment, she might have been mistaken for the Simurgh reflecting the light of the sun. Same unnaturally slender build, though this one was smaller by several feet. But where that one was a woman of white, this one was a shimmer of rainbow colors.



RecognitionConcern. She's right, that is eerily reminiscent of what happened with Anima and Citrine reaction. Her wings were more like that of a dragonfly, though she had hundreds of them extending along her back and across her arms and legs. In fact, most of her features were insectile, like some kind of anthro praying mantis. We stayed there silently waiting for her first move.


She moved, and might even have been faster than Barghest. SurpriseWorryFocus. One of Dragon's suits exploded in mid air, revealing the Endbringer in the middle of the cloud of debris, covered in it like a chrysalis.


"Power identified: teleporation. Line of sight unnecessary, can bypass Class 3 anti-power shielding and Class 5 power detection technology." A stream of energy blasts fired out from the various zerg toward the Endbringer's position. The start of this was going to be a very lonely battle. On one side, two people that were an army. On the other, a monster that was designed specifically so that we could not kill it.


A crackle of rainbow colored lightning danced between the parts of the destroyed suit, deflecting or nullifying Taylor's attacks. Blades of light, sound, electricity and more exotic energy reflected into the city below, shattering glass and sending chunks of buildings to smash the street below. The fragmented suit separated, dropping EB tissue to the ground while metal, wires and various components I likely couldn't have pronounced started to wrap around the Endbringer. She extended a hand, and a stream of nanothorn mist dusted the ground below the city.


"She's a fucking Tinker," Lisa muttered. "Get all advanced tech out of there now! Leave this to the Zerg!"


Around us, Dragon's weapons shunted back to our dimension, though two more were caught by the Endbringer first. FocusDeterminationImportanceWorry. Taylor's going to be all alone out there. I placed a hand her shoulder, hitting her with a minor dose of stimulant to sharpen her mind temporarily. GratitudeSupportSafe. Without me there to maintain it, her body would crash in minutes. Together, I could keep her sharp for hours. Hopefully that was as long as we needed.


A number of the flying zerg rushed in, sending streams of flame to counter the nanothorn weapons.


A stream of laser light lanced down from above, slamming the new Endbringer into the ground. I looked up to see Legend. Right, he doesn't use one of our suits. Alexandria dived down into the mist, wielding one of her spears. She may use one of our suits, but it has no real tech outside the shunt drive and internal air supply. There really wasn't a point in building anything better, since her own durability and powers exceeded even the best of our technology.


Eidolon stayed behind. His armor was one of our better, after all. Then there was Chevalier and Victoria, Lily. All of whom were so loaded up with Tinker tech that I didn't know if they could fight without it in this kind of battle. Sveta was still capable of fighting at this level unarmed, but the girl was no more resistant to nanothorns than I was. She'd die before getting close enough to do harm.


There was an explosion in the crater, and I could only trace Alexandria's new flight path from the holes she left in the buildings she was launched through. "She's using my inertial distortion drive as a weapon," Dragon announced over the coms. Artificial or not, she sounded pissed right now. The new Endbringer launched straight up toward Legend, who moved to avoid her. I was surprised at how not surprised I was when she was abe to keep up with him. Or, it seemed that way as the pair of them bolted through the streets. My vision couldn't keep up.


There was a burst of light, and the Endbringer was caught in some exotic explosion that caused the surrounding buildings to turn into dust. She crashed into the street hard enough to leave a trail of destruction and revealing the invisible shell protecting her from harm.


It bought Legend the time he needed to get clear, as Alexandria returned to the fray. Several more buildings were leveled as the Endbringer fired whatever crazy weapons she was assembling out of Dragon's suits and the other raw materials she was stealing from the environment. Alexandria was clearly the slower than the pair, but her weapon gave her the reach to get at least some glancing blows in. If the hits to this forcefield were like Dragon's and ran out of power, or like Khonsu's and simply nullified a specific amount of damage but never seemed to run out of power, I wasn't sure. Either way, Alexandria was not doing damage.


"Found a solution," Dragon informed us. "Atropos, I can use your help."


The battle had become the most one sided stalemate in history. Alexandria couldn't hit the Endbringer, it couldn't hurt her. Legend could hit, but had to spend most of his efforts to stay away from the thing's attacks. Meanwhile, the zerg and the city were being ripped to pieces in the crossfire. They just couldn't get in range to do real damage.


Wiring and electronics was ripped from the rubble and added to the Endbringer's body, forming a glowing red gauntlet on the hand that didn't have nanothorns. Another trade of blows and Alexandria was encased in ice.


"Why do they always steal my fucking tech!?" Emma shouted. I didn't have the heart to tell her she activated her com by accident.


The Endringer grabbed Alexandria, and then they vanished. Moments later, it reappeared alone.


=============


A/N- if you can't beat them, strand them in an unknown dimension that only you know how to find.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 367


I watched silently, we all did. FailureAngerFrustration. It was obvious what happened, our shunt tech at work. Although it never should have been able to recharge that fast or work without the cage to carry the energy field. "The Endbringer can remake the tech to be better than it originally was." I didn't know if my conclusion would matter, chances were good everyone already figured it out. But I felt I needed to say it just the same. Without knowing where it abandoned Alexandria, there was nothing we could do to bring her back. Even if she was abandoned on a world we already knew about, it might take decades before we found her.


"Can you remove the tech from my armor?" I nearly had a heart attack as Eidolon appeared next to me, standing on the platform I'd raised for Taylor and I, so I could see the battle clearly while still maintaining contact with Taylor and the Yggrasil if I needed the access. "I need to be out there."


"S-sure." I reached out and touched his shoulder. Like most of our suits, his was cybernetic and full of stuff I didn't understand. Stuff that somehow allowed the most powerful man on earth be even more powerful. Allowing that Endbringer to copy it was not acceptable. I started reshaping it, forcing the top layer to fold off, taking almost all the equipment with it. The only thing left behind was the shunt drive and biological antigrav. "Be careful out there."


He nodded. "Thanks for your concern." I only narrowly avoided being dragged along with his shunt drive.


Eidolon appeared right in front of the monster. Which was strange since the Endbringer was on the ground and we were hovering above when he shunted. Fuck, whatever, don't question Eidolon's power, but this was more aggressive than I had ever expected him to be. He must have a really good power if he's trying this. He narrowly avoided a stream of energy blasts from the Endbringer, but he didn't even look like he was trying to dodge.


Combat Thinker? There was a stream of blasts from Legend, well above us on his side of the battlefield. Eidolon didn't try to avoid those, either, as they danced around him and cut into the Endbringer's shielding to no appreciable effect. She bolted upward to begin the same chase as before, but Eidolon simply teleported in front of her, holding out a hand. She collided with him directly, her shield seeming to do absolutely nothing to stop him. She lashed out, firing a beam point blank at his face, but an almost casual tilt of his head meant the attack missed, instead cutting a half mile long trail through the ground.


AweIntimidation. That is one crazy fucking power.


A number of the flying zerg caught up as Eidolon continued fighting against an Endbringer that nullified both Dragon and Alexandria with little effort. He didn't seem to even need to try to avoid the attacks as he moved in and struck his opponent, driving her away from Legend. He put no special effort into protecting the zerg, and each attack seemed to wipe out several of them.


I looked over to where our Tinkers seemed to be dismantling a couple of Dragon's ships and rebuilding them into something else around Lily. I had no idea what they were trying to do, but I had to hope it would be enough.


Meanwhile, Eidolon had driven his enemy into the ground hard enough that the shockwave leveled more buildings. Taylor's zerg swarmed in, attempting to do what damage they could, ripping portions of the armor off to get to the creature inside. It struck back hard, with the same exotic energy weapons that we had been using to fight them. Turns out, our zerg were far less durable than the things they were built to fight. I was struck by the flat unfairness of it all. But since when had anything in our lives ever been fair?


I focused on Taylor for a minute, calming and strengthening her. She was the one fighting this battle, if through her proxies. She was Avalon's sword and shield, while my role was to be its heart. That wasn't a cheesy emotional metaphor, either, as evidenced by our weapons of war raining down enough firepower to conquer a small nation on while I healed the stress of having to maintain greater than maximum human alertness for what was approaching half an hour, now.


One of the Gargants was launched into the air, to be narrowly avoided by Legend. A stream of energy weapons followed, and the man only survived by virtue of suddenly finding himself shunted over to Avalon.


"My apologies, Legend," Dragon's voice spoke. "You would not have been able to evade the attacks in time so I activated the emergency drive."


"That- that is fine, thank you." Legend spoke, trying to calm his breathing. "How long until I can go back."


I didn't know how much Dragon was sacrificing from her impromptu Tinker project to talk to Legend, so I cut in. "Just land on the Yggdrasil. I'll take care of recharging and shunting you back into the battle so you have another emergency shunt if you need it."


He started dropping immediately. "Okay, how long will this take?"


"Couple minutes at most," I answered. I started sending electricity up into his armor immediately. It would be a whole lot faster if we could give him one of the energy draining suits, but that would risk it mistaking him for a power source and killing him accidentally.


Eidolon continued his one man mission to make fighting this new breed of Endbringer look almost relaxing. In the time he'd been out there, he had avoided attacks as if they were being thrown by a sleepy toddler instead of something that had reaction speeds equal to or perhaps greater than Dragon. Meanwhile, dozens of Gargants and I wasn't even going to guess how many Raptors and Cats had been destroyed in the fight, along with several miles worth of buildings and infrastructure. A cynical part of me wondered if they'd even bother rebuilding the city, or if they were just going to spend those resources on their colony world.


Legend rejoined the battle, sending a stream of attacks toward the only thing that had ever successfully outrun them as far as I knew. It twisted around, moving Eidolon between it and the energy, leaving him directly in the line of fire. There was a flash of explosive power, and when it cleared the remaining members of the Triumvirate were staring at one another in shock.


Eidolon was unscathed, still on the other side of the Endbringer's forcefield. It then fired at Eidolon's back, but he evaded the attack without even seeming to know that it was coming. Yeah, definitely combat Thinker power, and one that makes Victoria look low level. Legend had no such advantage, and was shunted right back over to Avalon after less than ten seconds on the field. WorryReliefFremdschämen. Yeah, that has to be the most humiliating moment in Endbringer battle history.


The Endbringer followed its own attack face first into the ground, only to be hammered by a second and third burst from the invisible energy blast Eidolon was harnessing for this fight. A crater was forming from the repeated shockwaves, so it was a powerful whatever it was.


"We're ready," Dragon finally announced. I'd almost forgotten about that plan while watching this basically one on one battle. I spared the moment to look at what they'd cooked up, which seemed like they'd piled a bunch of machine components around Lily's suit. Well, if Dragon thought it would work, I was willing to give her, of all people, the benefit of the doubt.


The armor moved, positioning itself not too far from Eidolon. While the Endbringer burst up to attempt another apparently futile attack on Eidolon. Then Lily fired her weapon. I could only have imagined the look on Eidolon's face as the Endbringer's arm flew off and struck him square in the head.


I know Taylor and I were surprised. They found a way to shunt Lily's attacks through to Bet? Okay, why the fuck did no one ever think of doing that before? I looked at Lily. Okay, maybe it has to do with the fact that she's currently wearing a small truck worth of extra machinery to make it happen.


There was a flicker of light as lightning jumped between the Endbringer and its limb, and they reattached themselves. Oh, well, that fucking sucks.


"Sorry, bitch, we planned for that one." Lily's voice gloated over the coms. A stream of disk blades fired from the weapon, crossing the dimensions and ripping the Endbringer into confetti like colored chunks that fell from the sky. Lightning danced between the pieces as it tried to force itself back together. The zerg got between the fragments, gripping them and pulling them apart from each other. It was clearly a struggle, and one that the zerg were losing.


Eidolon himself held the thing's head, pulling it back away from the rest of the pieces. Every few moments, a flare of projectile fire annihilated another segment of struggling bodyparts completely, usually at the cost of the zerg that held it. Or at least a fair chunk of it. We're winning this one. The loss of resources are astonishing, but still better than what we've seen in fights with all the other new Endbringers.


Then a familiar alarm went off. DreadDenial. The Endbringer alarm?


Dragon's voice came over our systems. "This is not a drill or an error, Endbringer signatures have been identified." Signatures? FearConfusion. "Unknown Endbringers targeting Seoul and Chicago. Khonsu signature at Los Angeles. Barghest in Toronto. In the interest of brevity we have a total of fifteen targets by fifteen attackers in twelve separate nations. All of the still active Endbringers, plus a total of ten never before identified profiles. Two are targeting the CUI, which leaves us with battles on thirteen fronts."


"We've gone too far," Lisa's voice was tired, hollow. "We've pushed the Endmakers to the point where they no longer care to play their twisted game with us. They're going to keep going until there's nothing left for us to save."


"Fuck that!" Taylor shouted. "Dragon, contact the CUI and every other possible group and tell them I'll provide troops to their Endbringers if they're willing to help us with the others after theirs have been dealt with." AnguishDisgustHate. "D-deploy Moord Nag against Beelzebub." She just ordered that city murdered. "Atropos, you go after Bohu. Without Tohu running defense, it should be an easy kill for you. We'll send you from point to point after, kill as many of the fuckers as possible. I can split my forces fifteen ways and still have more per Endbringer than I had fighting the Simurgh. We can still fight back."


That's when a single word changed the future of our world.


================


A/N- Eidolon, with a few minutes of GU's advice managed to be a real pain in the dick for Scion. Here he's had a month of it, and is only fighting an Endbringer. Was going nicely until it pussed out and called all its buddies.

If I were Wildbow, I'd post a bonus chapter in a few hours with exactly one word. But I'm not a troll like that.

I'm a troll in a completely different way.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 368- David


Ciara stepped through the portal. I noticed immediately that she was taller, her robes no longer needed to be carried by one of her spirits to keep them from brushing off the ground. "You look different today," I offered as a prompt for her to explain.


She looked up, and I got a brief glimpse of her face. She looked more like thirteen than eight, now, though of course her true age was still somewhere in her thirties. "I felt that I was not getting due respect and it is time to let my appearance reflect my status better."


Hmm. Maybe Minerva's little gamble paid off. Wonder if it was her own idea, or something Contessa cooked up. Then again, it may have been a joint project. Minerva has a proven talent for working with precogs in a way that improved their performance considerably. "Hopefully I'm not one of the ones you feel have disrespected you?"


She swung her now longer legs forward in a stride, animating her arms a little. Behavior that made her seem more alive, instead of her usual serene hovering method. "Do not be absurd, David. You have been nothing but a credit to your station."


A credit to my station? That brings up an interesting question.


....


"I've been wondering about the titles you grant. What they really mean. Especially after you spoke with Minerva about her Agent being inferior to, say, ourselves. Or the Empresses which she served. What do you mean by superior and inferior? Their level of strength? Or is it something more specific?"


Glaistig Uaine looked at me, and I could have sworn I saw her shrug. "They are mere approximations, High Priest. The faeries do not carry themselves in a way that mortals can imagine. They certainly have their own hierarchy, but not as humans practice the concept. All serve in harmony, and none are dissident. All commands are dealt in much the way you give commands to your hands and feet. Each has a purpose and serves that purpose faithfully. That is part of why your rebellion is doomed to failure, David. It is not a rebellion at all, but part of the game. You play the adversary because that is your role."


Right, her claims that our quest to resist Scion is simply part of his plans. It was a troubling concept, and one none of us could rule out. Contessa believed herself immune, but she wasn't perfect . The Simurgh demonstrated what an Entity could do if it so desired. Whatever the origins of the Endbringers, there was no doubt the Entities had all those abilities and almost infinitely more at their disposal. But that was an old conversation, I wanted to focus more on what our stations meant. "Yet there are ranks, some more important than others?"


"Are your eyes not more important than your fingernails, High Priest? Is your heart not more important than your toes?"


I offered a smile. "I imagine I'd rather keep all of them, if it's quite alright with you."


She laughed, and I couldn't decide if the chorus behind her made her voice beautiful or horrifying. Probably a significant amount of both. Or likely more horrifying, and I am simply getting used to her voice. "Yes, I imagine you would be quite fond of them."


I joined her laughter for a moment, though mine was a little on the forced side. I waited for her to take another sip of her tea. "Are the royal fae more powerful than the commoners?"


"Of course they are," Glaistig Uaine said as if patiently talking down to a child.


"What about when you give them similar ranks?" I pressed. "You are the Faerie Queen, and you call Khepri the Queen Administrator. Which begs the question, which of you Queens have the greater power?"


She paused, taking a minute of thoughtful contemplation. "That is truly an interesting question, David. I am afraid I do not have a simple answer to give. As it currently stands, the girl known as Khepri is not my equal. However, the Queen Administrator is likely superior to myself. The faeries do not choose to wield their full power during the dance, all are much greater than they pretend themselves to be for the game. Some either choose, or are ordained by the True King and True Queen, to use far less of their strength than others. There are few whose majesty equals that of the Queen Administrator in her full glory."


That is interesting. She's talking about unlimited Agents. This might be extremely important. "Is there a way to convince the faeries to grant their full strength?"


She looked at me thoughtfully. "Perhaps. It is not within my own power, nor do I know which faerie can offer such blessings. Mayhap one kin to the Appraiser or the Courtesan could do such a thing. Though both of those faeries demand a significant price for their blessings. I imagine such an event as witnessing the faeries at full strength would require a grand sacrifice, though I am unsure what would be considered a worthy enough offering."


"What about me? Maybe I could release the full potential." I have all the powers, right? Is there one in my repertoire? I fished through my pool, seeking the option. I could accept not being able win the war against Scion, if I could create the one that did. That would be the same in the end. There was no shame, except I would need to ask someone else to sacrifice themselves for the cause. But I could not find a power that would allow me to delimit the Agents.


"I do not know, David. I cannot know. You are the High Priest. Your power is ordained to be greater than the rest of us. The True King of the Faeries is the only one allowed to be greater than you in stature."


I frowned. "What does that mean? That you can't kill me?"


"There are none that can kill you. It is your true power. The power of Excalibur, that no matter the foe, you are ordained to victory."


Ordained to victory? "You mean I can't lose, no matter what I do?"


"That is correct, High Priest," Ciara looked me in the eyes. "You are not allowed to be bested by any of the fae. If they believe they are likely to win, they will find a way to forfeit their victory to you. If you wish to take from them, they must yield to your will. Even those of loftiest station are supplicants before your desires, whatever those desires may be. Not merely success in battle. All things that you desire, the faeries must give to you if it is in their power to do so. You can only fail if you wish it for yourself."


Unable to lose? All my conflicts and struggles, all of my victories were simply plays being acted out? Is that what she was trying to tell me? If it were anyone else that tried to tell me this, I would have been angry. But this was Glaistig Uaine, everything we could puzzle through of her words proved she knew what she was talking about. Was my whole career as a hero was an act, a sham? There was never any possibility of my failure at any time. Except against the one enemy that truly matters.


"You say I would win any conflict, no matter how implacable the foe, except of course for Scion?" This can't be right. I've struggled before, I've had battles where I would have lost if not for my teammates fighting alongside me. There are times that I've been injured to the point of almost dying. She has to be wrong.


"Naturally the True King of the Faeries is beyond your power," Ciara answered with confidence. "He carries with him the same power of Primacy as you, and as such he may only lose if he chooses to do so. That is the other reason why your rebellion is doomed to failure, it has been ordained by the same faeries that you wish to use to fight it. Should the two of you clash, his shall prove greater in the end. I would prefer if you did not choose that path. You should remain in the grand festival as long as possible. I would miss our discussions if you left."


I hesitated for a moment. "What of the Endbringers? If I am ordained to never lose, why do they still live? Unless you're wrong and they truly are Scion's pawns, since his power is beyond mine, as you say?"


Ciara looked at me, removing her hood. A rare, but not unheard of event. Her face and jawline had changed from the almost cherubic visage I remembered from the last time. She no longer had the roundness of childhood, instead replaced by the youthful but not childlike features of a young woman in her late teens or early twenties.. "You fail to listen, High Priest. Only Scion is above you. The abominations are your inferiors, yours to demand of as you can demand of me or any other Gifted. The only reason you have not destroyed them is because you have not wished to."


....


I do not wish to destroy them? I faced the Endbringer with the three weakest powers I could justify. A teleportation power simply to guarantee it could not escape from me. A power to sense when death is near for those around me, and a high end gravity manipulation power to give me maneuverability and offensive potential. I sensed the death of Legend several times, stepping in the way of the Endbringer. To force it to choose between killing Legend and letting me live. It could have killed me time after time. I wasn't trying very hard to avoid it.


Where I could not evade its energy weapons, it missed. It missed on purpose and pretended I was not the target. Where it charged forward or tried to claw, but I refused to get out of the way, it stopped its attacks right before they hit. Whatever Ciara's assumptions on why it couldn't kill me, the fact was absolute. The Endbringer could not kill me. And with me vulnerable to injury and in close quarters, that meant it couldn't even wound me for fear of risking my death.


I am capable of destroying the Endbringers. I have always been capable.


When Dragon's weapons shredded my opponent, I felt nothing. I was numb. Is she right about all my powers? I had demanded to know the truth, and now I knew that truth. The Endbringers were never once a threat to me. No parahuman could ever be, only Scion. And Scion was beyond my power. It was... depressing. For everything I had done, and everything I could do knowing what I was truly capable of, I was still functionally powerless.


Then the alarms sounded, announcing multiple Endbringer attacks. Fifteen more in total. Is that your new ploy, Endmakers?


I had trouble forcing myself to care as I listened to Khepri give her commands. We can't win, no matter what we do. We failed before we even began, because we were built to fail. Scion and Heiress saw to that before they gave us powers in the first place. I was proof of that because I had Heiress' copy of the power that Scion possessed that made him as immune to me as I was to the Endbringers.


==================


A/N- Plot Armor, the power. Yup.

One person guessed I would troll you guys with a PoV switch. S/he gets bragging rights.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 369- Taylor


"ENOUGH!"


Everything stopped. Everyone. Eidolon used a Master power.


It was a command, a plea, it was an addendum to the laws of nature. My powers didn't cease, my mind remained my own, and I could sense my bugs, whether natural or otherwise. But I couldn't do anything to use them. Every insect and zerg in my range had gone still, as if the idea of movement was impossible to them. Every person on Avalon with an insect on them, also unmoving. Even Dragon's machinery had gone completely still. I was able to watch the mostly dismantled Endbringer through hundreds of eyes. It, too had ceased struggling.


ConfusionFearPanic. I focused on Amelia, on our connection. I still had the hyperalertness, she was still in contact. Maybe we could work our way through this command by working off of each other. First I focused on calming her, on confidence, on trying to explain that I had a plan. TrustHopeAgreement. I pushed emotions into Taylia, then tried to dim the link as much as it was in my power to do. Whether Amelia saw my plan or was just imitating me, I didn't know, but I felt a rush of anger and determination, the need for freedom underlying it all. Neither of us had moved any, but if we could just keep this up, maybe we could shake this power.


Eidolon's voice made itself clear in our heads after a couple minutes of struggle. "I'm sorry. You are released." I stumbled for a second, then reached over to Amelia. We wrapped our arms around each other in relief. Everyone else had started moving as well, everywhere in my range of senses. As did all my insects. Strangely enough, my zerg were still frozen. Fortunately, so was the Endbringer.



"All the Endbringer signals are vanishing," Dragon's automated voice managed to sound surprised. "Those that weren't in position have stopped their approach, those the others have retreated from interaction with humans. I am continuing to monitor the situation."


Eidolon shunted over and, somehow, Alexandria was standing next to him when he appeared on our side. He's the one with answers. I hopped off our platform, followed right after by Amelia. A slow fall to where they stood. To our right, Chevalier and Victoria also approached, along with a number of others. To our left, our collection of Thinkers.


Alexandria looked down at the Endbringer head that Eidolon still carried. "Uh... Eidolon? What the fuck is going on right now?"


He hesitated for a moment while most of us just stood there or started gathering around. He, too, was looking at the decapitated but still very much alive Endbringer. "I was tired. I'm sick of the game so I'm ending it."


ConfusionAnxietyFear. What is he rambling about?


Evidently Alexandria was just as confused as we were. "Eidolon, what are you talking about?"


Most of us were silently forming up in a semicircle around the two of them. We wanted whatever answers Eidolon had to give. Alexandria had, by accident or intent, became the mouthpiece for the whole group.


At least, until Lisa had to stick her nose in it as always. "I think I can explain. But, umm, there are some people here who we might not to know some of the more important secrets involved in this mess. I can't give a good exposition without airing out some dirty laundry and I'm not so sure how my new employers" SuspicionDisgust. "would feel about me blabbing after, like, less than a full week on the job. They might not give me my first paycheck."


Eidolon regarded Lisa for a minute. "It's fine, Crow. As long as you keep it solely to my secrets, I'll take full responsibility."


There was a loud laugh from the back. "You're calling yourself Crow?! Oh, god, I'll never run out of jokes! Hey, Alexandria, do you enjoy apologizing a lot?" He paused for half a second. I felt a shift as a new bug was spontaneously born of the Yggdrasil. PermissionAnticipation.


"Oh, come on! No one got that? No one at all? It's a reference to a folk saying about ea- gah!" There was a series of coughs and then a sound like a sack of flour dropped on the ground. "How do you even have grasshoppers out here?" SatisfactionAmusement.


I couldn't help but smile, though I kept my voice as neutral as possible. "My apologies... Crow," I didn't mean to hesitate, but her new name was yet another reminder of everything that had changed between us. "Please continue."


Lisa nodded. "Well, in the interest of both brevity and shock value, we're all familiar with how Cauldron proved it could walk in and out of the Birdcage with less effort than the average person needs to change their socks. And they hired the Faerie Queen as a consultant."


Right, that clandestine meeting where Amelia met her biological father. I reached over and gripped my partner's hand.


"Well, the part that no one here was supposed to know about but at least half of us already do, is that Eidolon is a member of Cauldron," Lisa paused for a beat. "The thing that no one here knows is that Eidolon likes sticking it in the crazy while I watch."


ShockDisbelief. What?


"Crow, when I said you could explain things, it was with the implied caveat that you wouldn't make up stuff that never happened."


Lisa sighed theatrically. "Fiiine. The pair of them have regular consultations where Eidolon asks a bunch of questions Cauldron wants to know about the way powers work and all kinds of other stuff. A few days ago, she let it slip that Eidolon has a really special power that's fucking bullshit as hell. Apparently, he has a power that makes it so bad things can't happen to him unless he wants them to. At least when it comes to superpowers. Attacks that would actually hurt him will miss, he's immune to Thinkers because he wants a modicum of privacy in his life. Today he tested that theory by trying to throw a match with the Endbringer while it did the same to him. Long story short, this causes all the other Endbringers to break. And then he took control of them because bullshit."


"Wait a second," Zach spoke up. I felt another grasshopper forming nearby. "You're saying he has actual plot armor as an actual superpower? Jesus Christ, you should have called yourself Mary Sue."


Chevalier stepped forward. "As much as I have to thank you for stopping the Endbringers, is it safe that you're still carrying the head of one of them?"


Eidolon paused for a second. "You have a point." The head simply vanished. "I told it to shunt over to... the same place I'm storing the others for now. Don't worry, they're in a place where they can't cause harm to anyone."


ImpressedWorried. She's right, that Endbringer alone is fucking insane. Plus all the others. Dinah said something about one of the factions in the final battle not yet existing. We already confirmed it wasn't Dragon. We asked her a lot of questions about the risks that we'd free her and then she'd start her own faction or much worse. But now... fuck. It was Eidolon. It was Eidolon and Glaistig Uaine and fifteen fucking Endbringers. Compared to that, would even a fully actualized Dragon be able to compete?


Chevalier waited a moment, and I couldn't help but note the body language as Victoria stepped forward, just a little in front of the man right before her spoke up. "You do realize I can't stay silent about this information, right? I'm obligated to inform the PRT of your involvement with Cauldron and Glaistig Uaine. For what it's worth, I'm sorry about it, and I'm sure no one will hold it against you, considering it resulted in the end of the Endbringer attacks."


Oh god damn it. FearDefensive. No wonder Vicky took a combat stance. If this pisses Eidolon off, we're all fucked.


Eidolon stood there, regarding the much taller man in silence. "No, that's fine. I expected there to be a backlash from the moment I selected the power I did. I killed a lot of people with it. I felt some of them die. Dragon, can you tell me what this cost?" His voice was hollow sounding, like he simply didn't care what happened next.


He's right, this was a Master effect that hit every living thing on the world. That's a big fucking deal. "Go ahead, Dragon, answer the question."


There was a momentary pause. "A definitive answer will take time. The emergency bands have thousands of car and other vehicle accidents. One commercial airliner crashed during takeoff. Numerous cases of interrupted medical procedures. A number of drownings at beaches or in pools. It will likely take weeks before all the numbers can be confirmed, but I'd estimate between twenty and thirty thousand lives based upon initial reports. We are fortunate that there were no significant accidents at nuclear power plants or weapons facilities."


"In short, they'll want me to be put in the cage by the end of this. There won't be a lot of choice. Cooperate and go peacefully, or receive a kill order. Don't worry, I won't put up a fight, but I'd like to take care of a few things before I go. Get my house in order, as it were."


Chevalier hesitated, glancing at the rest of us before speaking. "You can't believe they'd do that! You're a hero, and you just saved the world from the Endbringers."


Lisa actually laughed. "Aren't the youth supposed to be the idealists and adults the cynics? This wasn't just the local area that got effected. Every man, woman and child, plus all their housepets and basically everything else, were caught by this. You remember how it felt, being paralyzed for a couple minutes, unable to even blink. Imagine how much worse that was for the people who couldn't figure out what happened or why. China's going to be screaming for fucking blood, villains will join that bandwagon once they change their pants. And even the hero groups are going to be pretty nervous about this."


Chevalier stood there quietly, we all did. She was right, this was huge. We knew it covered all of Avalon and Bet. The colony worlds were functionally an extension of Bet, their being hit wouldn't change anything. But did it extend to Aleph? Or worse, Dallet or Gimmel? The other populated human worlds that we hadn't discovered yet? At least Aleph had talked with us enough to know the basics. There were worlds that were entirely defenseless. Who might thing this was an act of God in the literal sense. Civilizations have collapsed over smaller things than this.


"But you don't have to worry about all that," Lisa added cheerfully. "I have a totally awesome plan that's going to fix all of this. It'll be perfect!"


RegretDread. Oh god damn it.



===================


A/N- Check the chapter number.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 370- Marquis


I carefully hid my surprise as a quietly attractive woman walked through the gates of my cell block, entirely without escort or fear. It was rare enough for any woman to enter the male side, or for that matter a man to go to the woman's side. Things tended to get messy, both ways. It was rarer still for anyone I didn't recognize to be here. We hadn't had a new captive in some time. For a second, I wondered if it were Valefor, but he never appeared to me as a redhead before. Maybe Teacher's trying a new variant of his power? I'll have to stay on guard.


I didn't expect this to be a betrayal, not like this. But after whatever it was that woke me from my sleep by paralyzing me and everyone else in our cell block for almost two full minutes, I wasn't willing to rule it out. And if initial rumors were true, it happened to everyone in the cage at the same time, including Teacher. We still had no answers for why.


"I am afraid you might be lost, miss." I put just a bit of threat into my voice. I did not harm women, nor did I allow my men to do so without damn good reason, but I wasn't averse to threatening them if necessary. Right now, frightening her into leaving might be the only way to save her life.


To add to matters, Cinderhands stepped up beside me. He was a good second in command and I could rely on his help. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Lung stepped out from the individual cell he was relaxing in to lean against the bars. He watched the woman while licking his lips like the dog he was. He may try to claim her, and I'm not sure I can stop him.


"I do not believe I am," a choir of voices stated with utter certainty. Cinderhands stepped back in surprise, and Lung's eyes widened in fear. So even he knows to fear her. I barely kept my composure, but now I knew who she was and how she got here unscathed. But the answer came with more questions.


Later I would have to find out if she killed any of my men. Right now I had to play good host, and maybe learn what she was up to. "My apologies, Faerie Queen, I'm afraid I did not recognize you."


She strode in with a confidence that was almost boredom. "That is understandable. After all, your vision is limited to sight alone. You cannot see that our bodies are mere garments to be changed as we see fit."


I wasn't too happy with being talked down to in front of the men like this. Amongst the other cell leaders was one thing, all of us knew to tread carefully around her. There was no shame when everyone did it. Here in my sanctum was another thing entirely. I did not control this situation, and I needed to change that, or at least create the illusion that I did. There has to be a way to do this.


I regarded the woman in front of me, what I learned of her over our years of conversations in court. She had chosen the form of a child for the last few decades, and now she's taken that of a woman. A woman with flowery delusions and no real experience with adults and their behaviors. Okay, I can work with that.


I hope.


I met her eyes, and smiled gently at her. Reaching out slowly, I cupped her hand in both of mine. One wrong move at this point and I would be dead before I even knew that I made a mistake. "And I must say that you wear it quite well, Faerie Queen." I then lifted her hand up, kissing the back of her fingers in traditional fashion.


I could still see Lung in the corner of my eye, watching. He didn't even bother to hide the look of surprise on his face. Similar scenes would be playing out on behind me. I was openly flirting with Glaistig Uaine, and by the end of the day everyone in the Cage would know it. After this, it would be a long time before anyone challenged me. Assuming, of course, that I survive. That's an important part of the plan.


She raised her other hand up to her chest and smiled warmly. "My, how forward of you. But I should warn you that I have already selected the suitor worthy of my hand. I shall forgive this behavior, so long as you do not continue it." She seemed pleased for someone who told me no. But she didn't quite sell the act. There was no blush to her face, her hand didn't squeeze mine. She was acting the role of a lady being flattered by a gentleman, but she didn't feel it.


Which suits me just fine. Her suitor is more than welcome to keep her. I released her hand, glad that my soul didn't go with it. "Such a pity." I kept my relief out of my body language, but I was glad I didn't have to follow through. I wasn't sure I could surpress my self preservation instincts long enough to successfully bed Glaistig Uaine. Her voice brought the wrong kind of chills to my spine. "Perhaps we should speak of business, then? So that I might distract myself from the temptation."


"Very well," she agreed. "I wish to use one of your televisions to view the news."


I allowed myself to look confused at that request. If you never showed any obvious tells, people could get quite good at spotting the subtle ones. "Do you not have one of your own?" Hmm, this could be interesting. The Faerie Queen didn't bother much with caring for her people, but if they were that hard up for supplies, there might be an opportunity here.


"Yes, but this concerns you as well. The abominations have been been brought to heel. And while the Royal Artisan and the Queen Administrator are not responsible for this feat, they shall share in its glory nonetheless."


Her title for Amelia. "I see," I responded with a measured calm. I did not like the idea of Glaistig Uaine taking any interest in my daughter or her fiancée. She had a history of targeting the most powerful parahumans, such as Grey Boy. One of the few world famous capes, for his supposed invulnerability and terrifying power. At least, until she claimed him as her toy. Wait. "Did you just say the Endbringers have been destroyed? All of them?"


"I did not." Glaistig walked further into my territory without concern for actually answering my question. She had apparently lost all interest in what I had to say, instead more concerned with whatever she wanted to watch. It was too early in the morning for television. Besides, like most of the Birdcage, my people were too busy trying to figure out what happened to care about television right now.


I walked to the nearest TV. It was the largest and most visible to the rest of my cell block. Here we'd get the largest audience. Whatever this was that had the Faerie Queen so riled up was bound to draw an audience. Now that she was calm and pleasant, I wanted that audience. "Is there any channel in particular?" I pressed the button and heard the familiar 'pop' and static noise of the television turning on. We'd need to wait a minute before it warmed up enough for us to see the screen.


I watched as Lung and Cinderhands approached. The former took a seat of his own, leaving a fairly wide berth between himself where Glaistig Uaine claimed her spot in the front. Cinderhands preferred to remain standing. It was, in theory, a show of loyalty and protectiveness. It was a hollow gesture, it would crumple if tested, not unlike my own actions had earlier. He was not willing to die for me. But as long as he gave the rest of the men the impression that he would, it made him valuable.


"It does not matter. Every channel will be showing it."


I wondered how she would even know all of this, but opted to say nothing. Admitting ignorance served no purpose, and attempting to draw useful information from this madwoman was more than I had the patience to attempt right now. And it turns out, she was right about it not mattering. The current channel was set to a station that usually dealt in classic movies, mainly westerns. There were a few fans of the genre in my block, and they tended to pool their viewing allotments together. Today, it showed only the news.


The notations at the bottom of the screen kindly informed me the view was of the United Nations building in Geneva. The cameras had a beautiful view of a building that vaguely reminded me of a large courthouse. In view of the shot stood the flags of dozens of countries, most of which I didn't recognize at all. It was a stage that had been calculated for the purposes of inspiration, possibly even by Thinkers, though it probably wasn't necessary. The sun was low in the sky, casting long dramatic shadows across the area.

"At what is already being referred to as the End of the End Proclamation," a man's voice informed us. They weren't bothering to show the faces of the anchors or reporters, instead focusing solely on the view. "There are speculations that this will also explain the sudden short term paralysis that occurred earlier today, and may be related to the newest Endbringer's powers."​

"They like to talk a lot for people that don't know anything," Lung criticized.


"Such is the way of the world." And of my relationship with this man I tolerate roaming my halls. "Men who don't know often like to talk a great deal, and those who do know tend to stay silent on the issue. Speaking of would you care to tell us what all of this is about, Faerie Queen?"


She looked at me, her face serene as always. "Don't worry, you'll find out soon enough."


=================


A/N- Lung's only shocked because he thought Marquis was his waifu.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 371- Marquis


The anchor stopped when Eidolon and others started taking the stage. Chevalier was right behind Eidolon, followed by Legend and Alexandria. Then the Empresses of Avalon, still in their living battle armor. The stuff was insane, responding to their thoughts and giving them several powers, any combination of two of which would count as a high level parahuman in its own right. It was clearly stripped down, Khepri lacking her wings and Amelia without the extra layers of living armor to use her power through.


Even without the extra equipment, my daughter and her girlfriend looked magnificent. They were the only ones on stage brave enough to bare their faces to the world, and that made them stand out in a world of masks. It was either brilliant or foolish, I wasn't sure yet which. The pair moved in perfect harmony with each other, as if they practiced marching drills in their spare time. For all I know, they do. I have no idea what my daughter's life is like when the cameras are gone.


Following them was Dragon and Narwhal. I allowed myself a smirk that this supposedly live broadcast still had censorship blurring for Narwhal. A real pity, that. Taking some film of the woman might have made for good trade amongst the men. After them came a number of European heroes whose names I didn't know. There was none of the usual showmanship of such things, and the looks of the heroes were solemn, a mood that carried quickly over the crowd. It was immediately clear this announcement would not be a celebration.


Eidolon took the podium first. Of almost everyone up there, he seemed to have the least stage presence. If you didn't know what he was capable of, you wouldn't give him a second glance in a meeting.

"To the people of the world, first let me apologize. Yes, it is true that I was responsible for the event that halted everyone. All the life lost in that event, I cannot begin to apologize for that loss. It is true, it neutralized a simultaneous attack by fifteen Endbringers. But the price was high, likely over twenty thousand died thanks to the use of this power. I'd like to take a minute to mourn the dead."​

True to his word, he waited that minute, his head bowed in silent contemplation. There was a lot of that, though I doubted many people were focused on the dead. Most Endbringer battles cost at least than many lives. The majority took more, and the truly bad ones ones made this look trivial. The majority would be focused on the smaller number. Fifteen. That was the detail most viewers would focus on. The death toll from that could have made New Delhi look tame.


"So, how scary is Eidolon in a fight?" Cinderhands asked casually. "Y'know, beyond the part where he can freeze us all and take over the Endbringers like it's nothing."


No one was talking on screen, and they weren't using a camera angle that let me watch Amelia, so I spared a moment to talk. "Wouldn't know, never fought him. You aren't thinking of breaking out and testing your powers out on him, are you?


He laughed perhaps a little too loudly. "Nah, I'm way too fond of breathing. Besides, what happens if someone succeeds? No one wants to be the guy that sends the Endbringers on a rampage again."


"A wise decision. The High Priest is beyond the power of any other, even my own."


I had been watching the video, as they showed closeups of the faces of the various heroes. Amelia and Khepri got a bit more attention to most, in part due to their fame, but more likely because their faces were unmasked when not in combat mode. It made them more visible, more interesting, than the others. I still found myself more than a little relieved to know that the Faerie Queen wouldn't be able to kill Eidolon. I may even have said something, but then Eidolon started speaking again.

"The power that cost those lives was a last ditch effort, the only way to stop them all before millions were lost in the battle. I can only pray that's a comfort to those who were harmed or lost loved ones in this tragedy. To the obvious question, yes, I've always known I could use that power. I never accessed it, for reasons I believe are obvious. Up until recently I did not know it could work against the Endbringers. They had always been immune to those sorts of powers before, and I had no reason to believe mine would be any different. I only recently discovered otherwise, one of many things I've learned since announcing my semi-retirement."​

"I wish the next question were so simple to answer." Eidolon continued, looking out over the crowd. I couldn't decide if his face concealing cowel added or detracted from the effect. "What happens next? The Endbringers are staggeringly powerful weapons. Any one of them as dangerous as the nuclear arsenals of the world. The mere threat of their use is an act of war. And now they are controlled by a single human being. No man should be trusted with such incredible power. Nor should any individual nation."​

"Sounds like one hell of a threat, if you read between the lines," Cinderhands muttered.


I nodded my agreement. "Smart of him really. Now everyone's going to be asking how they deal with this. Bet you any amount of money they've already got a plan. I wouldn't be surprised to learn you already know what it is, Faerie Queen." I honestly doubted it, unless she had a precog in her collection that I didn't know about. Then again, she might have a precog. She didn't respond to my comment except to smile at the television.

Eidolon decided he'd given us enough time to consider the situation. "The obvious solution would be to destroy them. I believe that would be a grave error. To date, every new Endbringer has evolved to be immune to the weapons that killed their predecessors. It is certain that the next Endbringer will be immune to the power I used to control these fifteen. That is why we must keep them, they are our best hope to protect the world from future attacks."​

Glaistig Uaine chuckled. "The High Priest is clever. He knows there shall be no more abominations, yet needs the threat to be credible even to the eyes of the oracles, so he's calling the True King an Endbringer. True in the literal sense, enough to fool those who would comb his words for deceptions."


I looked over at the woman. What is she talking about? I put together that Eidolon was lying about the Endbringers. Assuming she's right, of course. She was still insane, it was possible that all of this was simply a construct of her imagination. She isn't the local wise woman or such tripe, I reminded myself. She's a lunatic who survives only because she's too powerful for anyone to argue with. Were she a weaker parahuman, she'd have been enslaved or destroyed by this point.

"With that responsibility resting on my shoulders, I make an announcement." Eidolon continued his speech. "It is with a heavy heart that I am renouncing both my position in the Protectorate and my status as a citizen of the United States of America. I cannot allow the Endbringers to be attached to any single organization or nation. Instead, I offer myself as a citizen of the whole world, of every world. I will work with the United Nations, and all governments that act with the wellbeing of their people in mind. What is done with the Endbringers in the future will be a decision made by the whole world."​

Huh, interesting move. Something of a mirror of what my Amelia did. By making himself and his collection of Endbringers politically neutral, he's making himself far more inviting for alliances. A free agent, as it were. Attacking him on political grounds will be harder for most nations, since that alienates a potential ally. It wouldn't protect him from everyone, but certainly it would work on some some. Intimidation and pack mentality will take care of the rest.


Eidolon stepped back, letting Chevalier take the podium. "Thank you, Eidolon. First, let me start by saying that I am sorry to lose you. I believe the entire Protectorate agrees with that sentiment." To his right, Legend and Alexandria nodded. They stepped a little closer to their former comrade in arms.


It was striking, the difference between them. Even ignoring the solid foot of height difference Chevalier had on Eidolon, the Protectorate leader carried the mantle of command confidently, while Eidolon was merely adequate, carried by power instead of charisma. "Second, as sad as we are to lose such a fine hero, we understand the reasons. The Endbringers must be held responsibly, studied, and with any luck neutralized forever. Avalon has volunteered to provide a location to contain them and study them safely and help deploy them against any future Endbringers. We are accepting the offer, for the time being."


He turned to look toward the teenage girls commanding the the now second most powerful force in the world. The nodded in unison, but didn't step forward to add to the discussion, leaving the talking to Chevalier. "We ask for patience and optimism during this time of uncertainty and transition. The Endbringers have been stopped, hopefully forever, and with them gone we can once again truly hope for the future."


That is a question. What will the future hold now that the Endbringers are neutralized. My hope that they'd eventually be desperate enough to reach into the Birdcage for allies to fight them was dashed. I will likely never see my daughter in person again in my life.


Now that the video feed had started focusing on other people, Glaistig Uaine stood, having lost interest. "While I am here, I have a trinket to deliver to you, on behalf of the Royal Artisan and the Grand Archivist."


She held out a small box, about the size to contain a fancy necklace. Where she hid it on her person until now, I could not begin to guess, nor did I want to. I took it gently from her hand. "Thank you, Faerie Queen. You are welcome here any time. But, please, send a messenger first, so I have time to prepare better hospitality for your visit. I wouldn't want to get a reputation for taking poor care of my guests."


"Fear not, Marquis, you have been more than adequate." She left as confidently as she entered, but now the eyes that followed her were fearful instead of predatory. Some of them might have been considering something less than gentlemanly before. Hopefully they'll regard this as a lesson. And that reminds me.


"Cinderhands, take a head count of our men. I'd like to know if she hurt any of them."


"And if she has? Will there be retaliation?"


"Chances are high they provoked her. If nothing else, failure to learn who she was before starting trouble means they deserved whatever fate they got. Spread that sentiment amongst the men if you have to. Glaistig Uaine was entirely civil while here, I have no reason to believe she would have harmed my people unless they did something to provoke her."


"Okay, you're right. But you may need to tell them yourself."


I nodded. He was right, if she had caused damage and we did nothing, it made me look weak. Bad for morale. It would all depend on any damage she may have caused. Meanwhile, I had a package from my daughter. I opened it carefully, trying to look casual. Inside there was only a rolled up piece of paper. And what looked like a peach seed.


==============


A/N- Not gonna lie. I hate "speech" chapters. So. Fucking. Much.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 372- Lily


Japan is a really strange place. I knew this going in, but I never quite knew just how strange things around here were compared to pretty much anywhere in Europe. The meeting with the royal family was incredibly brief and barely warranted a mention. The child that was Emperor of Japan didn't even actually speak to me in person, simply proclaiming to the reporters involved that I was his 'adoptive sister' and that was the end of the subject.


The fact that I wasted my brain upload on something as simple as weapons I'll never use was not lost on me. A native's understanding of this culture would come in really handy right about now.


After that, Clotho and I got to enjoy a ride with Japan's Prime Minister, the legal and official ruler of the nation. While the Emperor was a useful political status symbol, he had no real power in the way the country was managed, and he could give me a symbolic princesshood that meant nothing, either.


So now we waved to the crowds while being paraded to the next destination while the Prime Minister pointed out various modern attractions and ancient landmarks that covered Tokyo. There wasn't a lot of time to talk about anything important, so I spent most of my time waving to those who'd come out to see the spectacle and maybe show off my new armor a little.


The Prime Minister noticed something off with Clotho. <Is something wrong?>


The response made me more than a little embarrassed. <Oh, umm, not really. I'm just surprised at how many people live so close together around here. I've never seen anything like it.>


The man chuckled, though it seemed somewhat forced. I fought the urge to cringe. Really? You're not supposed to ask questions like that. <One of the hazards to an island nation. I am led to understand that America is just as strange to our immigrants.>


My coronation slash welcome party slash recognition as a national hero was all blended into a single event alongside the creation of Japan's dimensional portals. Both of them.. The first was scheduled to actually go to a world found for Japan to colonize. The other, not too far away all considered, would directly access Avalon.


It was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of, and for good reason. But they wanted it to happen anyway. Who was I to argue?


The Japanese portal was created first, and was entirely boring. It's amazing how something like cutting a hole through reality starts to become mundane after you've done it over a hundred times. And much like the more progressive parts of Europe, Japan didn't need my particular brand of pressure for social equality. Elle did her thing, building a massive doorway, thirty feet tall and twice as wide. The limit of what we could successfully manage and designed to allow train traffic through the portals.


To add to the theatrics, I hovered above the crowd and showed off Azrael in action. The Azrael V7 was designed in part to appeal to the Japanese audience. More mechanical, and more streamline to display and accentuate what technically counted as my figure. Which was, fortunately, better than most women around here.


Yet the armor was still tastefully designed. It wouldn't be considered sexualized by any of the more traditionalist people around here. Unless they were crazy enough to believe women shouldn't be allowed to wear pants. Or, I suppose, if you had a fetish for high tech living battle armor made from the bodies of dead super monsters, in which case... Wait a second... Oh god, Azrael is pretty much the living embodiment of Japan's wet dreams. Also, it's being worn by a lesbian. No wonder I was so popular in Japan even before killing Leviathan and revealing my identity.


Putting that out of my mind, I positioned myself high enough to be seen by all the spectators and fired a shot into Labyrinth's construct, cutting the hole through reality that Elle had outlined for me. The re-


I was blinded by a stream of energy that streaked past and struck the bay, sending a pillar of steam and fire into the air.


"Holy fuck!" I exclaimed in a moment of panic. That was way closer than I expected. No, I realized. Direct hit, I was just emergency shunted before it actually got to me.


I immediately dropped to the ground to make contact with Yggdrasil and recharge the batteries. Some of the other suits had the ability to support multiple shunt drives, but mine wasn't one of them.


"They didn't waste any time," Khepri muttered angrily. "Fuck, you'd think they'd have waited until after the Endslayer was gone, like we were expecting. Clotho, are you okay over there?"


"Yeah, I'm fine as long as Lily is."


Dragon spoke up. "They must be relying on a Thinker, someone who realized Atropos couldn't maintain her invulnerability effect while firing her weapons. They wanted to kill her while she was vulnerable. And now they're attempting to capture the portal. I'm already preparing the new set of questions for Dinah, but we now know their Thinkers are strong enough to at least partially negate her abilities. Or perhaps the Yangban power sharing mechanics is equivalent to a power interaction."


Victoria's voice came over the com. "I want it to be my turn!"


"Not until we know where the biggest threat is coming from," Taylor commanded. "Stay in position. Everyone else, you have your orders. Let's see if we can win this without using the big weapons. Contrary to popular opinion, I want to avoid starting a war over this."


A group of what I assumed were Yangban appeared near Faultline and their crew. Some kind of teleportation power, or some kind of stranger power that can beat both Victoria and Dragon. They fired a bunch of shots at the our team with some kind of presumably Tinker guns.


Light warped around the group as distance shifted, causing many of the Yangban to wind up shooting themselves. The first of our decoys. It didn't take a lot to make Missy look like Elle, despite her being a couple years older. A fact that she was really not happy with.


The dimensional viewer went dark, cutting off my sight in the area. Same kind of tech the Elite were using.


"They're trying to cut off our backup and surround us!" Lachesis exclaimed. "We're fighting back, but they have us beat on numbers and there's some kind of weird time effect that lets them heal themselves if hurt. Like Alabaster."


Khepri reacted first. "Fuck! We're doing what we can to get your reinforcements. Keep fighting, fall back if you have to. They're not here to attack civilians, they want to claim this a portal of their own. Probably one of those dimensional blockers, but they'll need to take it from the other side if they want to hold on to it. Don't let them get through with it. Victoria, do your thing."


Vicky laughed. "Operation: About Damn Time has begun."


Gaea's voice was up next. "Remember, defending the portal is our highest priority. If they start to retreat, let them go."


"Yeah, yeah. You know I've got this, sis."


With the shunt drives blocked, I couldn't go back through to join the fight. I simply watched and waited. Fucking frustrating as hell. I wanted to be out there cracking some skulls instead of letting other people handle it.


Osiris hovered over to me. "Here, spare charge." He put a hand on my armor's shoulder and I watched the battery power spike. "When I named myself after a god of death, I was sorta expecting to be used for badass shit on the front lines, not buffing."


I looked at him. "Hey, some of us have powers that let us kill everything. You have the one that lets you infinitely reuse one shot items. I'd trade you powers, except mine are badass as hell. Maybe next time we can switch it up and you can use that acid thing again."


He shrugged. "Eh, it's cool. In other news, do you think those dumbasses have any idea what's about to happen to them?"


"Well, Dragon did say something about them having at least one Thinker powerful enough to put Dinah off her game. So that means they have someone ranks at least a seven, probably an eight or higher."


"Really? That's pretty high up there."


I shrugged. "Well, they do have a billion people. It stands to reason they'd have at least one or two really good powers on their list."


He laughed. "Oh man, they are so completely fucked."


I laughed as well. "Harder than you when Theo's girlfriends go off on a date without him." Relying on Thinkers never did work for anyone. Sure, they were nice to have, but in Thinker on Thinker battles especially, things tended to go wrong. And if you couldn't adapt to changing circumstances, you'd lose. Thinkers had a really hard time adapting when faced with opponents smart enough to counter them.


"Nah, he usually lets me top."


"Actually, I was referring to how you couldn't win a video game against him if you bribed him to throw the match."


"Ooooh, shots fucking fired."


"And unlike you, I can actually hit something."


We stood there waiting for a bit longer before Zach spoke up again. "Y'know, as much fun as it is to razz on each other, I kinda miss having Minerva around. It was always so much fun when we could come up with something that worked on her."


"Challenges are always more fun. It's the nature of the game. A battle of the wits against an unarmed opponent is just boring."


"Yeah, probably," Zach agreed.


At that point, the block on our viewer vanished, and we got treated to watching the Yangban group rushed through the portal, through the high intensity energy bubble that Sabah had waiting for them. Their clothing disintegrated moments after they came across, and then the ground popped with a violent burst of light and sound.


By the time things cleared enough for us to see, there were thirty naked Yangban members all piled atop one another, stunned by the tazing effect. The Yggdrasil and a bunch of bugs started crawling over them, doing... whatever it was that our glorious leaders had cooked up to contain them. It was no doubt cooked up by some combination of Dragon and Bonesaw, so I was confident it'd work.


I would have felt worse for them if the fuckers hadn't tried to kill me a few minutes ago. "Know what, I lied. Sometimes humiliating stupid people is hilarious. Well, it's been nice chatting, but I have to go back now."


"Take care, and pick me up some souvenirs. I hear you can get panties fr-"


I shunted over before he could finish. Whatever he was about to say, my faith in humanity would probably be better off not hearing it. Now to run through the process of telling a bunch of lies about how the portal wasn't set to the right planet when they rushed through, so the invaders could easily be anywhere, or even nowhere. Technically true, they could. Instead they were in custody on Avalon.


Forty members of the Yangban captured, forty powers they'd no longer have access to. And in order to do anything about it, they'd have to admit these people were theirs and prove we even had them. Not likely to happen on either count. The important part, however, was trying to figure out how they built a device that could completely cut a dimension off from Bet. And maybe how to get around it.


I was also going to make Theo change out of Sabah's costume as soon as possible. It was fucking weird and humiliating.


===============


A/N- Crossdressing Theo. That is all.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 373


Ambassadors from seventeen different countries were shunted over to Avalon. Of those, six got sick after the trip. We waited politely while they, and most of the others, recovered from the experience. Meanwhile, some of our employees got to work handing out the mouthwash and cleaning up the messes that didn't happen on the Yggdrasil.


I stepped forward. "My apologies. The shunt drives aren't as bad as they used to be, but there's still a lot to be desired." That's why we told you not to eat anything for twenty four hours before the trip.


The Swiss ambassador was one of the ones that handled it best. He'd also experienced the trip a few times before and was an astronaut back in the 70s, so there wasn't much surprise. Generally a nice guy, in health that most people half his age would envy, and used to getting his way. His smile may have reminded me a little of Lisa's as he looked at some of his fellows. <Such are the perils of new technology. Speaking of, I hope you don't mind me asking, but news about the attack on Japan's portal earlier today is already circulating. They were saying a number of the attackers managed to get through the portal.>


That didn't take long. Taylor looked at the others, most of them had recovered enough to listen in. "Confidentially, Ambassador Blosch. Yes, at least thirty individuals got through. However, our people hadn't finished aligning the portals when the attack happened. They could be anywhere, or even functionally nowhere. It's certain that they're not on Bet or Nippon." Technically true. They could be anywhere. They are carefully contained on Avalon while their equipment gets looked over by more than half of our Tinkers.


<Please, call me Olivier,> he said with a laugh. It had become something of a running gag of his to get us to refer to him by his first name. We never did. <And while we're talking confidentially... is this like what happened to Earth Khyber?>


He means 'did they get through and block another world off from Bet'. "Sorry, we can't say. Classified information, and not tactical data regarding the Endbringers. I can inform you that Japan has a colony world now, as well as the portal to Avalon. Both are well defended against future attacks of this nature. It won't happen again."


A world. Not a lie, but misleading. The original Khyber portal was switched, why couldn't we do the same for the Nippon portal? Save that we didn't need to.


We led the various individuals to our transport ship. The thing was a masterpiece of high speed design. We could go from the UN shunt locations in Geneva or New York to our research base at our North Pole in a matter of minutes without even feeling the acceleration. Of course, all it could do was fly really really fast, it was not a useful weapon by any standard. The inside was more like a limousine than an airplane, giving us a chance to all face one another and talk.


Ambassador Blosch sighed, perhaps a little theatrically. <So sad that people would go to such lengths instead of cooperating and waiting patiently for their own. Do you have any idea who the attackers were?>


It was a question they already knew the answer to, even if nobody had proof. Or did have proof, we only needed to admit we took captives. That wasn't happening. A shadow war was one thing, but if we pressed it would mean a possible World War with China. Parahuman violence aside, this was a nation that had access to a world we couldn't reach, shunt tech, and nuclear fucking weapons in addition to Tinker WMDs that they'd already proven willing to use. There would be no winners in that war.


PatienceConcentration. Taylor was figuring out her angle of approach, so I kept the conversation going while she waited. "Our people are working on it alongside Japan's security force. It could take weeks before we know anything for certain. For now, we know know that their tactics are similar enough that we're fairly certain it was the same organization responsible for the last two attacks."


Ambassador Blosch shook his head. <A pity. I had hoped that they'd settle for Khyber, and one would think that after they failed to take Kumari they'd stop. The optimist in me would like to believe they've learned their lesson now.>


Taylor decided she was ready, or maybe she just needed that prompt. "They didn't even wait a full week after the Endbringers were defeated before the first attack, I can't imagine they'll stop now. Which brings us to the actual purpose of this visit. We've thoroughly studied the UN's requests for transparency, and for the most part we're willing to capitulate. Full transparency of everything we learn about the weapons, where they come from, and what they're capable of."


A strikingly attractive woman spoke up next. According to my armor's recognition tech, she was Kaitlin Butler, the USA's new representative. I wasn't sure if the woman was there for the purpose of using her looks as a means of political manipulation, but it didn't strike me as a coincidence that the United States selected the young looking leggy brunette bombshell to be their representative to talk to the lesbian couple. "And you're willing to keep a full oversight team on site permanently?"


"As long as they're willing to submit to our lie detection tech and answer a series of background questions," Taylor agreed. "This is sensitive information that we cannot afford to fall into the wrong hands." Or so we like to pretend. The truth is, we hadn't managed to learn anything of real value that we didn't already know.


The ship shuddered as it landed. The only time we even felt movement during the entire trip. I stood as the door slid open, and a gust of cool air rushed into the vessel. I exited first and waited as the others filed out. Taylor would be the last to leave. The various men and women stopped talking to gawk at the ten superweapons that stood in plain view. These things were legendary terrors, though since most didn't even have a chance to do anything, they didn't have the psychological impact the first three would, but they were still Endbringers standing calmly in a row.


I gave them a moment to get their eyeful. "We have others inside the building." I led them in, to the first chamber where we had Khonsu hovering.


Dragon's voice came over the coms. "Our current tests are still mainly on the capabilities of the Endbringers we already know. We're not yet willing to test the unknown Endbringers, for fear of the dangers they might unleash. This location is for studying Khonsu's time warping and teleportation powers, with the hope of learning where the Endbringers hide when dormant. The ultimate goal being to access said location, then capture or kill the Endmakers for the many crimes they're guilty of." And to find a way into Scion's protected dimension. Thus far, the Endbringers haven't proven capable of breaking that barrier.


We went forward to the rocklike Endbringer that we hadn't named yet. "We're calling this one Golem," I stated. "We've determined that it's the most durable new Endbringer, likely even tougher than Behemoth. Our people are testing various energy weapons against him."


Dragon took over my explanation. "The Endbringers are all constructed of a crystal material that gets progressively denser as you go deeper into their bodies. The deepest portions are so dense that they shouldn't be physically possible as we understand the universe. We suspect a trick involving the folding of dimensions, similar but different from what is seen in our shunt tech or the space folding that brought you from Switzerland to the North Pole in a matter of moments. We have observed that certain energy attacks, if set to the right frequency, will do significantly more damage to an Endbringer's body than other attacks."


The American Ambassador smiled. She has a really nice smile. "You're looking for a magic bullet."


JealousTerritorial. "That's our hope. Having mass producible weapons that can actually hurt Endbringers would go a long way to making them less dangerous. A step toward real peace instead of mere fear of reprisal, and a way to deal with any future Endbringers that might be immune to Eidolon's tactic."


Also, maybe, those weapons will work against Scion. His body was made out of something, after all. It would make sense if it was the same stuff as Endbringers. Weapons to hurt them might hurt him.


<It has been over a month since the Endbringers were stopped. Do you still fear there might be more?> I had to use the suit's computer to identify her as well. Lina Koller, Austria's representative.


It was a valid question, one that more people would start asking the longer we went without an Endbringer attack. It wouldn't be long before we faced accusations that we were keeping the Endbringers alive out of a desire to use them as a threat.


Taylor stopped to look back at her. "Dinah Alcott's predictions of the end of the world remain. The odds are lower now than they've ever been, but are still over seventy percent. If not a new Endbringer, what would it be? And if it's not an Endbringer, then having them around to help fight the threat can only help in the long run."


That silenced them, for now at least. It wouldn't last forever. I started the walk to the next section where the rainbow Endbringer was contained. Her body was covered in fragments of machinery that provided a sort of modesty for her.


"This is Quetzalcoatl," Dragon pronounced the name better than I could hope to.


<The Tinker Endbringer, correct?> Our Austrian ambassador asked. She seemed to want to be in charge right now.


"Not strictly speaking. As it turns out, she's a Shaker whose power augments technology, not a Tinker. She absorbs machinery into herself and grants it greater abilities than it should otherwise be capable of. As an example, she can use the elements collected from ordinary toasters and microwave ovens to create energy weapons. Cryoweapons from air conditioners. Lasers from flashlights. But once you remove that equipment from her control, it doesn't work anymore. Nor is it possible to get anything useful from reverse engineering. The weapons become nothing more than broken appliances. The same premise applies to Tinker tech."


Taylor took a slow breath. ApprehensionFocus. "Which brings us to our next point of discussion. We're planning to ask the UN for permission to use her to access the original Earth Khyber. We're confident she has the power to do so, and taking that world back from the terrorists would make it clear their plans will fail even if they succeed in the initial invasion, and dissuade others who might imitate them."


Ambassador Butler spoke up, sounding less than happy by the suggestion. Guess she is more than a pretty face. "You're talking about deploying the Endbringers, only a month after having them."


AnnoyanceFrustration. "Only as a transport system to shunt more traditional forces over to the planet." In as much as our weaponry could be called 'traditional' by anyone. "Not to actually use in the fight. We're aware of the significance of what we're asking for. That's why we'll go through the official channels. We will provide a comprehensive list of the entire plan when we finalize our proposition."


<That is still a very serious request,> Blosch cautioned. <I know we are mere representatives and advisors, not policy makers, but I would have to recommend against using them for any less than a world ending threat. To allow mere terrorists to force you to use the Endbringers in any fashion would be a victory for them, regardless of the outcome.>


Taylor deflated a little. "You're probably right. We can't justify this against a simple terrorist organization. We'll hold off until we have a stronger argument."


Everyone here already knows it's not terrorists responsible for these attacks. It won't take long for China to hear rumors of what we plan to do.


I started walking again, leading them deeper into the facility. We had so many things to show them, like where the oversight members would live and our security measures. Not that we needed much security. We had indirect command of fifteen Endbringers. They were the security.


================


A/N- first of many time skips that'll be happening in quick succession, here. Guess I'll update that timeline now.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 374- Taylor


I woke up alone in bed. Huh, Amelia got up early? That never happens. AmusementAnticipation. Uh oh. Why would? Ah, right. Dammit. Sorry, Amelia, you knew you couldn't keep this from secret from me long enough, anyway. ResignationDisappointment.


I got up and immediately took a shower, wondering when exactly it was that I got used to bathing with the Yggdrasil's water supply. I had to admit, the minor adjustments Clarice had Amelia put together for the water's chemical content did wonders for my hair. And hers, too. Like a conditioner built right into the shower. After drying, I briefly glanced at the underlayer for my armor. These days, I tended to wear that instead of normal clothes. I reached over, then stopped. Eh, screw it, this is a day that calls for something special, even if I'd rather skip it. Normal clothing it is, then.


I stepped out in the main area to where my friends and family were gathered to give me a 'surprise'. "Happy birthday!"


I smiled sheepishly, noting the individuals in the room. Amelia, naturally. Then Dad, Missy, Theo, Zach and Emma. I noted a conspicuous absense of Lisa, or for that matter any member of Amelia's family. "Sorry I ruined the s-"


"SURPRISE!" Everyone shouted at once, including one voice from behind that I did not know was there.


"GAH!!!" I stumbled forward as the weight of a body slammed into to be from behind. Arms and legs wrapped around my torso in an inhumanly tight hug. AmusementSuccess.


"What the hell, Clarice!"


She dropped off and ran into the room. "See, told you it'd work! Now pay up." The girl smiled so broadly I half expected the top of her head to fall off as Theo and Missy each kissed one of her cheeks.


Amelia reached over and ruffled her hair. "Okay, fine, you win. You can stay up an extra hour. But I better not hear anything about you being groggy and messing up your work tomorrow."


I stood there, forcing my heartbeat down to something less than that of a hummingbird. I glared at Amelia, she pretended to look ashamed, even pouting a little. Neither of us meant any of it. I started walking toward the group, slowly beginning to smile. "Okay, you got me. I admit it. But just so it's clear, I will have my revenge. I won't tell you what that revenge is going to be, but chances are high that hornets will be involved."


Amelia hugged me, then let me go so Dad could have his turn. "Happy seventeenth birthday, kiddo."


"Just one more to go before we finally get to see you in a dress!" Zach cheered. "Or are you going to be one of those boring lesbians who wear a suit on the wedding day? Because that is totally lame and you should set a better example for your planet."


Wedding? What- Oh fuck, that's right, The Wedding. ConcernApprehensionHurt. No! Oops. I looked over at Amelia. "I just realized we have made exactly zero plans for that. It's always been 'Endbringer' this and 'founding your own nation planet' that. Not enough time to do all the things we have to do, let alone the ones we want."


ReliefGratitudeLove. Amelia smiled nervously. "Well, now that the Endbringers are dealt with, we'll have some spare time. Weddings can't be that hard to figure out compared to a war every month and interplanetary politics, right?"


Dad put his hand on Amelia's shoulder. He'd never removed the other from mine. "Oh girls, I am so sorry."


ConcernSuspicion. Well, that's ominous. "Dad, don't tease like that. We'll be fine and you know it. We don't even need a big ceremony. Immediate friends and family only. I guess we'll have to worry about some cameras, because people are going to want to watch. Yeah, definitely sticking to a small ceremony. Let everyone see that you can have a proper wedding without spending absurd amounts of money." AgreementSupport.


Amelia leaned into me and hugged my arm. "Yeah, I think I like that idea. Something small, quiet, doesn't take a million years to finish. None of that celebrity guest stuff. Vicky's going to hate every second of it."


I smiled down at her. "That's a benefit I hadn't considered."


"You just want it over so you can get to the honeymoon faster." PleasedCaughtEmbarrassed. "Now are you planning on dress or tux? Inquiring minds want to know. Remember, you can wear a tux any time you want, but your wedding dress is a once in a lifetime thing. Or Amelia will kill you."


AmusedAgreement. Amelia's eyes narrowed a little. "Death do us part, right?"


"Not even that." I kissed her forehead and I could feel her happiness as she pulled close to me. "Okay, I think you've sold me on the dress."


A child's voice cut in. "Plus one hundred and fifty relationship points. Also a spillover of twenty points for everyone who has a significant other in the room."


Theo sighed. "Zach, remind me to find a way to thank you for introducing Clarice to dating sims. No, seriously, I mean that. It's like she comes with an instruction manual."


Missy laughed. "It's true, she's basically a living, breathing window into the female psyche. I'm learning things that I never knew I didn't know." She patted Clarice on the head. "Your quirks make you adorable."


Dad gave me a sidelong glance, as if to ask what was going on with them. I simply shrugged, no sense in trying to explain that situation. Dad was too old to really get it anyway. Especially not when trying to talk through gesturing.


Clarice beamed. "That's only worth five points because you've already used it three times this week."


"See. Mix up the compliments and they work better. I did not know it worked that way. But now that it's been said out loud, it all seems so obvious."


RealizationPlayfulness. "Hey, why is it Taylor you're asking about dresses? Maybe I'd like to be the one wearing a tux!"


I squeezed her. "No you don't. Everyone knows it. You're going to need like eighteen people and an antigrav device to help carry your dress."


"Yeah, I know." She nuzzled against my shoulder for a moment, then stepped away to look up at me. "So enough being distracted by stuff that has to wait at least another year." AnticipationHappiness. "Let's talk birthday presents!"


Oh boy, this'll be fun. What are they even going to be able to get me? "Okay, we can do that. What are you getting me?"


She kept smiling. "You get half ownership of a continent."


"How does that count as a present? Don't I already have that."


She scoffed. "It's my eldritch abomination of a weed that made this world habitable. That means I own all of it. You can have half of one continent as a birthday present. I hear good things about Australia. Granted, ours has a significant lack of deadly bugs and spiders, but I'm sure normal Australia will be more than happy to let you take a few species home with you."


"This is going to become a pattern, isn't it? Every year I'm going to get half a continent."


"Pretty much. I have all your birthday presents planned until you're forty four. Isn't that so thoughtful of me? Also, I have something to give you later, but it's not nearly as impressive as half a continent."


"Is it the birthday spankings? Also. That's what he said!"


"Zach, my father is in the room with us."


Dad laughed. "No, that's okay, kiddo. Giving the bosses shit is the hallmark of a healthy work environment, so I'm not allowed to murder him for stupid comments. Unless you start dating him. In which case I'll have to get a few buddies together, tie him up in a burlap sack, and take turns beating him with a tire iron."


"I'll bring the tire iron!" Theo exclaimed.


"Dude, whose side are you on?"


"You mean you can't tell?"


I chuckled. "Uh, eww, Dad. No. Just no. That will never happen." I felt Amelia squeeze me.


Huh, when was it that this became my life? A year ago today I wouldn't have been able to imagine this. Back then, Amelia and I were still just friends, and not even close friends at that. Now we were very much in love. I thought Lisa was the only person that really had my back. Now she wasn't even at my birthday party. We hadn't even fully cemented our political position in Brockton Bay a year ago. And the fact that we had Riley living in the same building as us actually gave me honest to goodness nightmares. As opposed to her jumping on my back to surprise me and it being funny in retrospect.


"I think it's my turn now," Emma offered. Oh, right, and my opinions of Emma a year ago. "I kinda started... well, Zach's ever so subtle questions probably gave it away, but I've designed a wedding dress for you."


SurpriseInterest. I smiled a little. "I think that might be considered Amelia's present more than mine."


"Oh, good, because I drew one up for her, too." Emma pulled up a couple rolled up pieces of poster board. "But you can only look at your own. It's a law."


DisappointmentAnticipation. "I'm pretty sure we make the laws around here." Amelia complained.


Emma tutted like some kind of upper class nanny. "Anticipation and hearts growing fonder. You can get a good look at them later, when they're piled up next to your bed. Uh, sorry about that Mister Hebert."


Dad just put his hand over his face. "It's fine, Emma."


I unfolded the drawing and learned something I didn't know about Emma. She had the same art skills that she did when we were in gradeschool together. From what I could tell, it was supposed to be blue, and backless. And then a train designed like a really long white cape. Maybe. It's also possible I was looking at it upside down and there was supposed to be some kind of parasol. "It's... nice?"


"I promise it'll look amazing by the time I'm done. Honest."


Clarice peaked over Amelia's shoulder. "Umm. I'll help."


Amelia nodded hurriedly. "Yeah, that'd probably be best." She slid her poster back over to Emma and I followed right after.


Emma collected them back. "All of you suck."


Missy spoke up next. "Clarice and I went shopping and found you some nice summer clothes. We made Theo pay for them."


They're all multimillionaires and they still made him... wait, how do they even know my size? Oh, wait. Stupid question. "Thanks, I'm sure they're gorgeous." I opened them up and looked at a few. They were nice, in the darker blues that I had become my default replacement for black. "I might have to stop wearing my underarmor so much."


AnticipationDesire. I glanced over at Amelia. Okay, definitely less armor, more dressup.


Dad lifted up a box, looking more than a little awkward in the process, as if he didn't want to do this. Or at least not in front of everyone. I opened it, to find a series of photographs. Pictures of Mom when she was younger. Mom and Dad together. "After our home was destroyed, I started making some phone calls. Annette and I were both only children, but we had aunts and uncles, some cousins. I got in contact with all of them to find the old family photos and wedding albums. This is everything I can fine. Most of them are copies, you don't have to worry I have a full set of my own. And there's a CD with everything."


I just looked at them silently while he rambled. I'd started to forget what she looked like. The images started to blur, and I realized it was me about to cry. I set down the box and wrapped my arms around my dad. He held on to me. "It's perfect. Thank you so much."


===================


A/N- Thanks to Research Fail on my part... well, this chapter should have been a few earlier. See, I forgot that Taylor's birthday was in June, not July. So now this is officially a flashback chapter when it wasn't originally planned to be.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 375- Rebecca


Whatever happens, you must not laugh. Whatever. Happens. Do. Not. Laugh.


Lisa leaned back and smiled. "So, let's have our introductions. I'm Crow, most of you already think you know me."


She pointed at Number Man. "Huh, so Riley's your goddaughter. You must be so proud." It actually took me a moment to connect the dots of Lisa's logic. Judging by Number Man's reaction, he took even longer than I did.


He was not happy about it, either, but Lisa had already moved on, turning toward Legend. "Holy shit, you're actually a decent human being! The fuck are you doing around people like us? Oh, and your hubby's a good guy, but the whole talk about getting a pet cat? Don't do it. Sorry for intruding into your personal life."


Shift of the shoulder toward me when she said sorry. Apologizing to me as well. They'd probably pick up on how she wasn't distinguishing herself as better, though I had to wonder if any caught the significance that she was including me as well. The apology is for her honesty on the subject for saying I'm not a good person. I lowered my eyes a little, an equivalent to the nod of the head. She's right, we're not good people, there's nothing for her to apologize for.


Legend shifted uncomfortably. "I'd probably say something about it being okay, but don't do it again. But it's really not okay and we both know you're not going to stop, it's too ingrained in your personality and the way your Agent influences your mind."


I glanced toward Legend as he started to speak, then looked back toward Lisa. I lowered my hand just a little, advising her to tone it down. She was clearly overcompensating for the lack of Agent influence, trying too hard to sell her new persona. Making some very powerful individuals unhappy.


She smiled at Eidolon. "You're still basically immune to my powers. That whole 'Primacy' thing is really fucking nice. Wish I had it. Heads I win, Tails everyone else loses. And everyone's so hung up on your flashy powers when that's the one that's really godlike. Man, if I had that, I'd be riding an Endbringer to work just for the fun of it. Of course, it does sorta take the challenge out of, well, everything."


Eidolon flinched. "I presume you have a point to all of this." Of everyone in the room, he was the least able to hide his emotions. My Thinker powers didn't work on him, and now I knew why, but I still had human intelligence, and he still had human behaviors, and that's all it really took.


Lisa shrugged halfheartedly, which was obviously calculated. Eidolon wouldn't be her target, Contessa on the other hand... Testing the most powerful Thinker in the room, possibly in every world, is exactly the sort of thing that she would do. "Not entirely sure yet, but there's more introductions to be made!"


She waved at me. "Hi, Mom!" I allowed myself to cringe enough that Number Man picked up on it. He'd relay that information to the others. To say I couldn't believe Lisa had picked up on that whole 'daughter' thing and ran with it wasn't true. I very much believed it. It was just awkward. We knew it would fit their models, both general psychological and precognitive. Lisa clearly had a deep seated need for emotional support and a history of acting out to get attention. Something that I could use to control her and get her on board with our goals.


She turned toward Contessa and Doctor Mother and her skin paled. She can't fake a reaction that easily, this is real. "Oh holy fuck. I thought you people had a fucking plan for what you're doing!"


Doctor Mother sat forward, moving in front of Contessa. It was a genuine act of caring for the younger woman. "We do have a plan!"


Lisa stood, slamming her hands on the desk. The anger was faked, she was pretending to be emotional to throw off the Thinkers. To throw off Contessa's power. "No you don't. You have a fucking Passenger doing all the work. A Passenger that, I remind you, is just as tied to conflict generation as mine is. One that follows the same Primacy rules. It's going to select the course of action that causes the most destruction. And while we're on the subject, the thing that was using it first managed to run face first into a planet so hard that a baseline human with a cheap knife could kill it. From where I'm sitting, that's not something I want to rely on."


Contessa shifted, preparing to act. If it came to a fight between the two of them, Lisa stood no chance. Her battle suit would keep her from being an easy fight for Contessa, but Lisa would still lose. I'd have to intervene.


Lisa met her eyes. "You could kill me, but we both know I'm too valuable to waste. You're looking for the best way to attack me psychologically, but I'm betting you're getting a bunch of Error messages, right? Yeah, I thought so. And you don't know why. It's because I'm a Third Trigger."


Doctor Mother lifted her hand, waving Contessa back. "There is no such thing as a Third Trigger. And there is no way you can know the things you claim to know."


I again fought the urge to laugh. Doctor Mother is trying to manipulate Lisa into giving away useful information we don't have. And doesn't realize Lisa wants to be 'goaded' into giving that information. Lisa was threading the needle between being immune to precog manipulation, but still vulnerable to human manipulation. She was using her postcognitive powers to slide herself into a position not that different from Eidolon's.


Lisa stepped back from the table. "Not in the sense of granting more powers, no. Third Triggers can see past the memory Taboos and ignore some of the behavior alterations that powers plug into their users. They also tend to fuck with precognition and other thinkers. Pantheon's identified three separate Third Triggers and have our suspicions about a few others out there. Amelia, Glaistig Uaine and I are confirmed. Eidolon's Primacy power grants him the equivalent, lucky bastard that he is."


....


Number Man approached me. "Alexandria, a word if you please?"


I looked at him, but he was unreadable as usual. In a way, I had to wonder. If he and I were a little more willing to express our emotions, would we have had a power interaction the way Lisa and I did? The answer was irrelevant, either way. "This is about Crow, I presume?"


"Do you believe you can control her? She's proven to be rather capricious in the past. Playing 'mother figure' can't last forever."


"Speaking from experience?"


"Perhaps a little."


I nodded to the man. "You're probably right. If it were merely that, I doubt it would work. However, she does legitimately want Scion stopped, and has been working toward that goal since the moment she knew of the threat."


"And why she would choose you over her best friend and replacement sibling?"


Because as far as she's concerned, that friend is dead. She Triggered over that suicide as well. "I'm afraid I can only speculate. Perhaps her parents were a greater emotional loss to her? Or perhaps she feels a need to fix problems, and as Khepri is clearly in an enthusiastic relationship with Gaea right now... I understand that is the problem with being the sort of person who wants to save other people. If you ever succeed, they don't need you anymore. Have you given a thought to what you'll do in a world without Scion?"


"That is an interesting conundrum. Does that imply that Crow thinks you're the type of person who needs to be 'saved'?"


I allowed a bit of a smile to come to my face. "Perhaps I do, at that. Or perhaps she's hoping to find someone to save her. Isn't that another common paradox, those who try to save others are the ones who most desire to be saved?"


He regarded the smile, knowing it was calculated. "Which brings us back to your role as a mother."


"And how it can't last? That is true. Don't all children grow up and move away from the nest, eventually?" I turned and walked away.


I focused on the event, forcing it to be as emotionally impactful as possible. I'd need Lisa to see it. I could tell her to look, but without a beacon, she wouldn't know the when or where to look.


There was no doubt my companions would run through our reactions with a fine toothed comb. Both myself and Lisa. If we were to make this work, the pair of us needed to make it look believable. It did help that our relationship really wasn't that different from a mother and her pain in the ass teenage daughter. I couldn't expect Number Man or Contessa to understand it, but Eidolon, Legend and Doctor Mother knew what families looked like, at least. They'd think they understood, I could imagine a few snide comments from Legend about how it turns out I'm actually human after all.


That was fine, as long as they never caught on to our power interaction and everything that implied.


....


Lisa was last to the meeting, as usual. "Hey, Fortuna, how's the future looking?"


Contessa waited a moment, then took the time to answer. Holy crap, she's speaking for a reason we know can't be part of her power. "Details get murkier every day. I can no longer rely on any model that extends more than a few days."


Lisa smiled, she'd taken to not wearing her mask around us. "I'm not sure how your power works, exactly, but Dinah managed to compensate pretty well by phrasing her powers with the assumption that Amelia and Taylor would remain together. For whatever reason, all precog powers seem to assume they'll break up in a week or two at the most."


She shifted her foot and glanced in my direction for just a moment. Asking me yet again if I'm sure about this path and lying to them about the power interactions. I stay resolute. She understands, as always. She draws her arms together slightly, the ghost of a hug. I return the gesture.


Contessa nodded and spoke hesitantly. "Thank you?"


"So what's the news with the Golden Asshole?"


I took the prompt. "Crow, please control the language. This is polite company, after all." My annoyance wasn't faked. She was embarrassing me, and at least some of the people at this table could detect that.


Lisa sat down in her chair, even managing to look a little chastised. "Sorry, I'll try better. But he's still an asshole."


Meanwhile, she folded her hands together, taking the top pointer finger and sliding it down between the hands, to scratch the ball of her thumb. It was a vaguely obscene gesture, not so much her telling a dirty joke as pointing out that there were plenty of such jokes to be made about this. Again, I forced myself to not laugh. Number Man gave me a sidelong glance, suspicious. Pretending not to notice wouldn't have worked, so I simply shrugged slightly at him.


Doctor Mother regarded Lisa for a moment. "We followed your suggestion. It turns out, Scion was in fact paused by the same effect Eidolon used to control the Endbringers. He's vulnerable to that power."


Lisa smiled. "Correction. Was vulnerable. I'm sure he's already made whatever tweak it was necessary to guarantee it won't happen again."


Eidolon deflated. "You mean I had a chance to win this, and I failed. Is that the Primacy effect that Glaistig Uaine talked about? When it came to an opportunity to kill Scion I simply didn't think of it in time because my Agent won't let me?"


Lisa shook her head. "No. Well, maybe it did keep you from thinking of the idea. Don't have enough information to say for certain about that. What I'm certain of is that it wouldn't have succeeded if you tried. What would you do? Order him to kill himself? Okay, let's say that even works and he doesn't just kill you for trying. Scion kills himself, and then about ten seconds later a new Scion pops into existence. That body is a fake, just an Avatar like Genesis or Siberian. Killing it means nothing. Sure, maybe if you do it enough times, the real Scion will eventually die of power loss. But you can't do that with a single power, no matter what it is. Not without finding a way into Scion's home dimension."


"Which is Pantheon's goal," Contessa spoke. She probably didn't figure that out, just wanted to use her power to say what Lisa was hinting at.


"Pretty much. Have to admit, it'd be really nice if it works."


Number Man finally broke his silence. "You don't believe it will work. That's why you're here."


Lisa shrugged. "It's not that I don't believe it will work. I honestly don't know one way or another. What I do know is that I won't be able to help make it work. My power isn't one that works for that. They have Dragon and their power interactions to harness in an attempt to reach Scion. I'm no longer a relevant piece of their game plan. Your plans, on the other hand, are exactly my speed. I can make some actual progress for a change."


=================


A/N- A few days in the life of mommy Rebecca.

 

[Daunmi]

It's revealed now! The final chapter:

Contessa: "You know what? Fuck it all. Path to beating that smug bitch at her own game motherfuckers!"
Everyone else: "Well shit."
Scion: *dies from smug overload*
Contessa: "Exactly as planned!"
Lisa: "Just what I'd intended to get you to do from the start."
Contessa: "Just liked I'd planned when I Pathed accepting you into Cauldron!"
Alexandria: "Oh god, what have we done?!"
Lisa: "Just like I'd wanted when I first started having feelings for Alexandrimum."
Contessa: "Just like I'd planned when I first Pathed getting her to feel materialistic towards someone!"

*Time skip to a few days later*

Lisa: "Ok... So if you didn't convince my brother to commit suicide as part of a Path to get me to trigger as one of the potential options to help guide Brockton Bay's progress..."
Simurgh: *pops back in*
Contessa: "Eidolon, get her!"
Lisa: "You can't Path him."
Contessa: "So?"
Lisa: "He died attempting to contain the smug so it could reach critical levels to kill Scion."
Contessa: "... This Path kind of sucks..."
Lisa: "Yeah, we're fucked."

*Simurgh wins, bad end, darkest fix fic achieved*

*Three months later TanaNari posts the real ending because he's a dick*

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 376- Taylor


ImpatienceConcern. Amelia leaned closer to me. "So, how is he doing in there?"


I shrugged. Normally I wouldn't admit to listening in on something like a top secret United Nations meeting. Especially not while in the building that they were being held. But this wasn't all that normal. There was nothing we wouldn't be informed of in a few minutes anyway. Frankly, we could have sat in and watched if we liked, but we were afraid if we were in the room they might feel pressured to give us what we were asking for, and that would be bad. "Surprisingly, it's going way better than we expected."


TrepidationConfusion. "You mean they're going to give us permission to use the Endbringers for this?"


"Not even a little bit. They went with reminding us that the Endbringers are the most dangerous weapon of mass destruction ever made, and they cannot justify deploying them against terrorists. The loss of a single colony that was replaced within a week isn't significant enough to warrant that kind of action. Pretty much word for word."


ReliefSuccess. Amelia hid her smile well. "So, what did they compromise with?"


I patted her knee, then stood up. "Better if you hear it from him." I turned a moment before the doors opened. The three cameras trained on us, and the however many Thinkers they had viewing the film, could use the reminder that my senses extended to everywhere nearby. There were very few environments that could support human life, but not insects. And strangely enough, Avalon came close to being one of them. Or maybe I just wanted to enjoy the nostalgia of my powers before Amelia came along to upgrade me to a functional demigod.


Powers which got nearly got me burned to death by one of the lowest of upper tier parahumans, I remembered quickly. Know what? Fuck the very concept of nostalgia. I dipped into the link hard, drawing in Amelia's emotions like a deep breath of spring air. ConfusionAmusementCuriousity. Sorry, nothing that's that significant, I'll tell you later. RelaxationConcernPatience.


The man we were waiting on bowed after walking over to us. Amelia and I curtsied slightly. InterestHope. "So, how did things go, Doctor Sato?"


Doctor Sato was our official representative with the United Nations, now. A refugee from Kyushu, and a former Japanese diplomat. He then got a similar career with England before we came along. He wore traditionalism, both Japanese and British, with pride. He was damn good at his job and believed in doing it to the best of his ability.


The part where he, like everyone, knew China was responsible for the attacks on the portals only made him that much more determined. Apparently the CUI had a longer history of abuses against Japan than we'd realized. Like a practice of raiding it and several of its other neighbors for parahumans to brainwash into the Yangban. "Unfortunately, they were not willing to consider the Endbringers an option, even if deployed only as a transportation device to a colony world which likely had no civilian life on it."


AcceptanceAnnoyance. Amelia drew herself up to a military stance. Overcompensating for the 'no slouching in front of the international community' rule that our behavior coaches hammered into us. "Well, that is unfortunate."


Doctor Sato nodded. "I do have some good news. They were more willing to issue a sanction classifying the attackers as an international terrorist organization. With all legal rights, or virtual lack thereof, that such a thing implies. Including pledges from most members of the international community to aid in the tracking or removal of suspected members."


ConfusionConcern. "Who didn't sign? Why?"


"France has taken a dim view of your nation not explicitly banning the death penalty. It and a handful of other nations are holding out until you issue an official ban on the practice. In spite of assurances about your admittedly unusual legal system and the severity necessary for such a punishment to be exacted."


Severity, indeed. Only mass murder and treason or espionage meet that requirement. AnnoyanceDisappointment. I glanced at Amelia. "I suppose it can't be helped. We can always come put that on the table for later negotiations, I suppose. If we feel we need it then."


Doctor Sato kept the neutral face he'd probably spent decades training. "With that exception, you are preauthorized to respond in full to any attempt to attack any more portals. With exception to the anti-Endbringer weaponry. Those are still considered an unacceptable force deployment that requires permission from the nation you plan to deploy them on. I might have been able to push for permission to deploy the 'cat' models if you are willing to accept other conditions."


I almost laughed. I didn't know which part of that was more absurd. The idea that our zerg were sitting in the same class of military action as sending battleships or aircraft carriers. Or the idea that these people believed those were a more dangerous weapon than my bugs. "I wouldn't be opposed to learning what concessions they need, but the anti-Endbringer weapons were meant to fight Endbringers. They're intended to end wars, not track down criminals, even terrorists."


VictoryAnticipation. Oh crap, if Amelia talks now, she'll blow it. I put my hand on her shoulder. "Thank you. I know it's not everything that we were asking for, but it is an excellent start. Your efforts are greatly appreciated."


He bowed again. <You honor me.>


I wasn't sure why he switched to his native language to say that, probably some cultural thing. But by the look in his eyes told me he suspected something. I smiled at him, and gave a small nod. He was working for us and he hated the CUI even more than we did. I didn't mind hinting that there was more to our plans than we were willing to share with him. "We should get going. One would think that we'd have a chance to relax with the Endbringers disabled, but it seems we're busier than ever."


....


Gathering our forces for the mission was actually pretty relaxing. Clarice, Missy, Theo and Zach were already part of our main team, so they rode along with us. Lily had a pretty easy direct access line with the transit shuttles we were starting to build. I really need to remember to thank Trevor for that design. Vicky was the last one to arrive, but then she didn't have access to a shuttlecraft, or live on Avalon.


Victoria clapped her hands together and rubbed them as together as if trying to warm them. "So, what's this I hear about you needing my awesome awesomeness for a super top secret mission that you couldn't tell us about until the middle of my romantic evening?"


"Yeah," Lily spoke up. "I'm kinda curious, myself. You've been all hush hush about this since right after Khyber."


I nodded, deciding to start with the actual command layout. "Okay. Victoria, you're officially working as a member of a mercenary company hired to support Avalon's forces in a direct strike on a terrorist organization. Fifty grand for the mission itself, another five thousand dollars per target you disable during."


Victoria looked at me like I grew a second head. "Avalon's forces? Mercenary company? No offense, guys, but I think you spent too long around military types and forgot how to talk like people."


Zach handed her a piece of paper. "Here, this is everything you need to know about the battle plan."


She unfolded the paper. "It just says 'Victoria smash', with an exclamation point. And a stick figure with boobs punching another stick figure in the head. And is all the red ink supposed to be blood spatter?"


Zach nodded slowly. "I trust you appreciate the brilliance of this masterwork in military strategy."


Victoria's expression was completely unreadable. She daintily folded the paper and lowered her hand to her hip, dropping the so-called brilliant strategy into the storage compartment on her armor. "Best. Plan. Ever. Of all time."


AmusementAgreement. I even cracked a smile despite myself. Okay, Zach, you win this time.


Lily looked back toward me. "So basically you're going to swarm them with enough bugs to kill a herd of elephants, and we're supposed to break anything that's still standing when you're done?"


"Even better, we get to beat the shit out of racist assholes who commit war crimes against their own people," Zach added. "So they're basically the same thing as Nazis, only Asian. Think of it as Lung having Kaisers love child. That you get to punch."


Vicky walked in closer to us. "So this is what they mean by tears of joy. I always thought that was just a figure of speech." In her case, it was a figure of speech, since there were definitely no tears.


AmusementAgreement. Amelia smiled broadly. "There, now you can't say your sister never gives you anything nice for your birthday."


Vicky glared at Amelia and put her hands on her hips. "Last year you gave me a stupid Maggie Holt book. And you didn't get me anything for my birthday this year."


Amelia pouted. "That was the last one in the series."


Vicky crossed her arms. "Which would probably mean more to me if I read any of the others."


DefensiveAnnoyed. "And I totally got you something this year! I upgraded your boyfriend! Granted, it was a little bit late, but that part is totally not my fault. And you have thanked me for it at least twice a week since the two of you started dating."


A dreamy smile creeped over Vicky's face. "Hee hee. I remember. Speaking of..." she leaned in and whispered something to Amelia.


SurpriseEmbarrassment. "No! Sorry, there's just no way I can do that for you. Sorry."


"But I do it to myself all the time!"


Amelia sighed slowly. "Okay, you're right, I can do it. But not without reworking his genetic code in unacceptably dangerous ways. There's no safe way for me to make him taste like chocolate. Now can we get back to talking about the job?"


Vicky shrugged and leaned back. "Sure."


I sighed a little and then focused. "Alright, here's the full plan..."


"Ooh! Don't forget to tell them the name!"


"Zach, we don't do mission names. And even if we did, there's no way in hell we'd call it Operation: Chink in the Armor."


================


A/N- Reader values litmus test! Which is reacted to most strongly? The god awful pun, or the casual racism?

Or the implications that Vicky can and has made herself taste like chocolate.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 377- Theo


I leaned over to whisper to Zach. "Dude. Love child between Kaiser and Lung? That's the best you could come up with?"


"Hey, it's totally true. You know it and I know it and everyone else knows it." Zach whispered back. "No one is that obsessed with dick waving competitions unless they want to be the ones judging. By sense of touch. You're just mad because now you have mental images of your father enjoying the manjina."


I shook my head. "No, I've gotten very good at not forming mental images when you talk. And just so we're clear, if I do ever think of something like that, you'll know. Because I'll be shoving about a hundred gallons of liquid metal down your throat right after."


Zach raised his eyebrow and looked at me silently until I realized what I just said. "Y'know, I'd say something, but there's really nothing I can do that'll top that. Besides, your girlfriends are in earshot and they're a lot scarier than you."


Khepri tapped her boot against the metal hull of our vessel. "Okay, ladies, I suggest you take a deep breath, because this part's going to suck."


"Just like- OWW!"


I reached over and gave Clarice a pat on the leg. "As always, thank you."


Her smile was radiant. "Anything you need, Theo."


Missy rolled her eyes, but was smiling as well. "Will you two quit flirting? It's my turn."


Clarice leaned over and put her head on Missy's shoulder, complete with a smile and bat of her eyes. "Anything for you, too."


I anticipated Zach's next comment when we were interrupted by the face covers on our armor sealing over. A shimmer of what could only be compared to a chain of extremely tiny red fireworks started in the middle of the ship, each line of light stopping in a few inches to give way to another burst of red light that spread out even further. We were watching the most powerful shunt drive ever made building up power.


Dragon's voice came over the com systems. "Activating dimensional piercing drive in five seconds. Chaining suit drives to main reaction. Hopefully that will make the trip easier on all of you. And remember, once you're on the other side there is nothing we'll be able to do to help."

The world shimmered and shook as we were pulled from here, to nowhere, and then to a different version of the same somewhere. Normally the process is nearly instant, faster than a natural human can react to. But the larger shunt fields made the process take longer and feel worse. We were currently using the largest shunt field ever created.


We appeared on Earth Khyber A and I folded immediately, bringing my legs up and desperately trying to fight the nausea, and wondering how bad it would have been without the drug that Clarice gave us.


Zach disintegrated next to me, reforming in a standing position. Lucky bastard. Victoria seemed fine, and so did Taylor... err, Khepri, it's mission time. Think of her as the commanding officer that she is. The rest of us were struggling to recover.


"Fuck! They've got automated drones already tracking the ship! Tapping emergency power and going in hot!" There was a whir of noise our ship twisted hard to the right, which didn't do anyone's motion sickness any favors at all.


Zach rushed over to the glowing panels, smacking a pair of them. The ship shook as Taylor changed the flight angle.


....


"I suppose this can be called a black ops mission. Our goals are threefold. First is the ship itself. This vessel contains a very important piece of tech. Our own dimensional barricade device, reverse engineered from the one we captured from the Yangban. Once we break through, it gets activated to keep them from calling reinforcements or retreating back to wherever they plan to retreat to."


"The problem is this machine is heavy, bulky, and a power hog. The ship we're using barely has the resources to power it and fly at a respectable speed. There are three fifty pound backup batteries exposed here." Khepri slapped her hand against the bright orange plastic. "We'll need them. Zach, your job is to cycle between them as needed. They're designed to cycle power. Simply copy the ones that are green and press the light above them. Red are in use, don't touch them. Replace when it turns black. The AI will handle the rest."


Zach nodded. "Healbot hax strike again."


....


The viewscreens activated, giving us a look at the outside world. We'd shunted out on top of a an area that looked like a medieval city. There was a castle of smooth stone, complete with outer walls and a sprawl of smaller buildings and farms. Muzzles flashed as the guards on the walls opened fire at us.


"This is a lot more than we were anticipating," Khepri stated. "I'm counting almost fifty thousand people within sensor range. We're in for a much heavier fight than expected, here."


Victoria was unconcerned. "Standard assault rifles at a range of almost half a mile? Yeah, those aren't a threat."


I was more concerned about the view below us. More military, though again we were way too far away for them to actually hurt us even if normal weapons could get through the ship's defenses. What bothered me were all the laborers, and the amount of work that had gone into building farms in the region. I could believe a lot of it was done through the use of powers, but probably only the castle and clearing farmland. The hundreds of shacks looked to be held together by bamboo and mud. "They're trying to rush colonize Kyber. I just don't know why."


Lily took a breath, finally getting to her feet. "I could think of a few reasons. China's population problems are pretty legendary. This would certainly help to counteract that a bit. And it's a lot safer, security wise, on a locked world. Bet you anything that castle was being set up for their royal family to move into. Maybe they even believe that Dinah's prediction only applies to Earth Bet and are planning to hold out here."


Missy's voice was a mix of horror and disgust. "They're using armed guards to control the civilians. This isn't a colonization program, it's a fucking forced labor camp. God damn it, now what do we do?"


The conversation was ended by a massive stream of energy blasts. Most missed, but there were thousands of them


"God damn it!" The ship shook before veering to the left. "Horus, we could really use your help right now! Victoria, you're up, too!"


....


"This ship does have a Khonsu armored shell to protect us. Triple layered, blending forcefield and EB tissue for maximum defense and tied into bugs meant to guide the shielding with my power. That will let us soak up a lot of punishment, but if it takes enough of a beating, it will collapse. Horus, you'll be blocking the worst of the attacks, an extra layer of protection. The ship has a vent system that should allow you to reach any part outside it with little difficulty."


"Yes, ma'am."


"Victoria, Zach's diagram was basically your job. We're deploying near where we expect their highest concentration of forces to be. We're pretty certain they're operating in the Khyber analogue of their capital region. We'll do a close flyby and drop you off to go do what you do best. Remember to use nonlethal measures whenever possible. Frankly, I wouldn't shed a single tear if you killed every last one of them, but we want them as captives. That's a major source of intel, political bartering, and potentially tech. We need all of it."


She smiled. "I fucking hate escort missions when the escort can't protect itself. At least this won't involve a shitty AI that keeps walking right into enemy fire, right? Right?"


....


Right. Have to protect the ship. Still feeling more than a little sick, I pushed my hand against the wall. The hatch popped open, and we were treated to heavy winds for the moments until Vicky jumped out and the port closed. I extended my power to cover the areas where the shots were coming in hardest. The forcefields themselves shifted out of the way to protect the areas I couldn't.


Victoria took a few shots in the general direction of the Yangban, and the stream of firepower stopped. They'll be changing tac-


Several people appeared inside the ship with us. I dropped the external shielding, and the ship listed to the side thanks to the extra weight of all that iron that suddenly started obeying the laws of physics. I started summoning a new set of material to defend us from the attackers.


<Thirty first path, cutting lasers.> Oh fuck, I'm not going to be fast enough.


Three things happened at once. Clarice bolted forward, stabbing one of the Yangban in the neck, a dozen lasers streamed through the ship in bizarre patters that reminded me of fast moving glowsticks, and I went from defense to offense, charging toward the group using just my own armor and blades formed from it. Spears of supersharp metal trying to reach the opponents. And in working with Missy's power, every spear struck home against someone.


<Twenty first path, instant movement.> With that, the Yangban vanished from the ship, leaving behind a blinking device. I reacted without thinking, forcing a thick layer of liquid metal around the machine. I felt the shudder of warped space influencing my metal, creating the equivalent of several blocks of space between us and the bomb. Space full of Endbringer equivalent durable materials. When the bomb detonated, there was no possibility of it hurting anyone in the ship.


The Yangban aren't the only ones who can work together.


Clarice eyed the ball that held the bomb. "Radioactive residue, heavy elements. Micro nuclear bomb."


Oh fuck. And more than that. "Cl- Aceso. Your armor." She had a deep gouge in her side, and I could see where her blood was being absorbed and consumed by her armor. They were using laser weapons, but this injury was formed by a cutting weapon. "Oh shit! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean-"


She looked at me and smiled. "You didn't mean it, and I'll be fine. The armor's already mending the damage."


Missy was there immediately. "No, you're hurt. Remember how you get mad at me for pushing myself too hard? That goes for you, too. we treat the wound now."


Clarice reluctantly allowed Missy to work. "You don't have to treat me like a baby." The protest was halfhearted at best.


"Don't be silly, of course I do." Space warped, forcing the armor open so we could check the damage. "Christ, this cut through one of your lungs."


"I still have the other one."


I wanted to get up and help as well, but I was trying to contain the residue of a nuclear bomb in a metal shell the size of a basketball. And my powers didn't come with any concentration or multitasking powers to make that easier.


The ship rocked again. "We're still in a fight, here! If Aceso says she can wait, then I'm going to trust the girl who can survive surgically removing her own head to know what she's talking about. Lachesis, I need you to get us the hell out of here."


"And leave Victoria behind?"


"That was always the plan. She'll be fine and we have a mission to finish."


==============


A/N- I need more Theo/Missy/Riley in this story.

Also- readers value litmus test part two. I, the writer, am (part) Chinese. If that makes you feel differently about yesterday's punchline... well, then hopefully this has taught you something about yourself.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 378- Missy


I reluctantly pulled away from Clarice. As much as I wanted to help her, and I actually had a top notch medical skillset to help me do it, Khepri was right. We needed to survive first and worry about injuries second. The part where these assholes were willing to set off a nuclear fucking weapon right above their own population told me how very little they cared for human life. If we were caught right now, we'd be better off dead.


I dropped back into my seat and gripped space, twisting it like a pretzel. In my time off, I'd spent a lot of time just thinking, because there was nothing else to do. Except losing at card games to Dinah, or losing at video games to Zach and Theo. Or watching the amazing combination of brilliance and insanity that was Clarice. But everyone was always so busy, so I was left with thinking and talking to the others. It meant I had a lot of ideas.


....


"Lachesis, you'll be needed for two purposes. First to keep this thing outrunning enemies that almost certainly include short range precogs and teleportation powers. The second will be during cleanup, to seek out human lifesigns or anti-power devices. My powers have been proven vulnerable to certain types of strangers and cloaking technology. But in the interest of conserving your strength, I'll take care of everything I can first. When I'm done, you confirm that this world has been completely cleared of human life."


I saluted. It wasn't even sarcastic. I loved this, I needed this now that Elena and Clarice managed to safely restore me to full power. Knowing that my actions were making a difference on the international stage. The respect I commanded from my peers, and the fear felt by my foes. "Yes ma'am."


....


If space could cry, it would be screaming right now. If it could bleed, then I would be its murderer. Distance folded in half around us, concentrating the gravity drive to send us forward at supersonic speeds. That's the thing about gravity, even the folded and warped gravity used by our antigrav tech, it's a form of energy that travels through space just like all other types of energy. The drones chasing us found a new 'down' in the enemy fortress. They were pulled by gravity roughly equivalent to the surface of Jupiter. We were moving far too fast for me to enjoy the satisfaction watching and hearing the explosions, but I'm sure Victoria would approve.


Lily clapped a hand on my shoulder. "Holy shit! And people think I'm the scary one. "


Yes! About damn time you admit it. I shrugged, about a thousand times more nonchalant than I felt. "You've probably still got me beat. I mean, the only way my power can affect anything you're influencing is if we spend several minutes working with Clotho to synchronize our effects. So you can basically ignore anything I can throw at you like it's nothing."


She laughed. "Maybe, in the insanely powerful battle armor that lets us kick the Triumvirate's collective asses. But when we're not wearing our suits I'm pretty much pure glass cannon. You can outrun me, you can track me at range and, oh, drop a building on my head or redirect traffic into me. Seriously, what is it about little girls with crazy unfair powers?"


Little girl? Oh, you bitch.


"We're approaching your first dropoff point. We might have to leave you behind."


"That's fine, I'm kinda looking forward to the whole 'orbital cannon' thing." Lily stepped away from me, and the suction of the open door began and ended in a couple seconds.


....


"I'll be piloting. Once we break their barricade device or devices, our shunt tech is poised on Mashu. Both Basilisk and Bolla are ready if we need them. I really doubt we're going to need them. Amelia and Dragon will be waiting on the other side, along with some backup firepower. Once their barricade is down I'll have full control of the planet's insect population in a matter of minutes, plus my special bugs shunted in from Avalon. To that end, Atropos, there's a reason your new armor is equipped to function in orbit. We search, you destroy."


"Wait, does that mean my armor doubles as an orbital cannon?"


"Plus the tech needed for you to aim and fire at that range," Taylor smiled. "And survivability at that altitude. You could take a trip to the moon and back if you really wanted to."


Zach started clapping slowly. "All you need now is an upgrade that lets the armor transform itself into a sailor suit and an adorable female AI that flirts with you constantly, then your apotheosis into the goddess of all geek fetishes will be complete."


Lily's head turned slowly toward Zach. Her smile was wild, almost manic. "Y'know, I should be pissed at you for saying that, but you are so totally right. I am wearing the sexiest thing ever made. And I am in love."


Victoria laughed. "It's true, if you keep getting new features, I might have to jump you. And I'm a negative one on the Kinsey scale."


Taylor ignored the comments and went on with the briefing. "Normally we might expect the dimensional barricade machine to be near their main base. However, we know they've been using dimensional viewing tech to spy on Bet. Various world leaders, research labs, and other places with sensitive information in the world. Both Cauldron and Dragon have been tracking interesting financial shifts that suggest they're already mucking about with banks. They're spread out across the world, and that means their machinery could be anywhere. Fortunately, barricade tech leaves very distinctive signatures, and Dragon's given us the means to track them."


This is my favorite part of working with Pantheon. My bosses aren't dumbasses. They're not borderline psychopaths like the Piggot, they aren't tools like Armsmaster. They're not completely oblivious to the people they're supposed to command. As much as I loved Dean, he was dumb as hell when it came to people. The more I'd learned about Thinkers and how their powers tend to cause behavioral oddities, the more I'd come to accept that it wasn't his fault that he didn't understand the way others thought and felt. He was able to sense them, but he could never really understand them.


Khepri did understand people. She didn't yell at the smartass commentary, and she didn't try to force herself to participate in their humor. They did their thing, she let them do their thing, and she kept the briefing on track. And she trusted her people to get the job done.


....


Space rippled around us as I was forced to evade another wave of Yangban blasts, jumping the ship by miles at a time. The problem was, the enemy had an absurd number of powers to call on. Teleportation, some kind of precognition or other really good Thinker powerset, a laundry list of blaster and shaker powers to make our lives more difficult.


Khepri forced the controls hard, and I barely adjusted my space folding in time to keep us from breaking through the tunnel. The ship shuddered and shield panels flickered as they were drained of power. "How are you holding up?"


I grit my teeth. This was starting to suck, I'd have used a stim by now if they gave me any. "I'm running pretty low already. I might have to beg off the cleanup part of the mission for a day or two."


A pair of arms wrapped around me from behind and squeeze. "You can do it, you're strong." Clarice, supporting me despite her own injuries. I closed my eyes and drew strength from that. Maybe the three of us don't have the benefits of Taylia's power improvement bullshit, but we are a team and a partnership and a family, however unconventional it may be. However weak or strong our powers were was not a factor in our relationship. It did, however, factor into us surviving. I focused on that. I can keep going.


Taylor nodded. "Just a little bit longer, Lily's almost caught up to us. I'm sorry there's so many more people than we expected. According to Dragon's tracking software, they're already at over three hundred thousand people and climbing steadily."


"That's more than Avalon." Theo muttered. "They've only had this world for a couple weeks."


Another stream of blasts started coming in, and I focused, twisting them toward the building itself. Thus far we hadn't been able to pierce the shielding they had around those things without using Lily's weaponry. But we were buying time for ourselves. Further away from the devices was more dangerous, since they weren't willing to fire on us with their most powerful attacks when I could redirect ninety percent or more of them toward the very thing they were trying to protect.


I faltered. I faltered for half a second and the ship twisted and flipped sideways. In one desperate maneuver, I altered our path to the ocean. Water started flooding in through the vent system meant for Theo's power.


================


A/N- It might have been easier if, instead of shunting over an attack force, they just created Vashta Nerada and shunted a ship full of them in.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 379- Victoria


It wouldn't be quite accurate to say I could feel the distortions from Missy's power, but my senses did give me a good idea of when it happened. The part where gravity in the entire region lessened by about five to ten percent, and then those attack drones slammed into the side of the castle hard enough to leave a hole through several feet of stone, that was her power in action. Holy shit that girl has improved.


Back when I was Glory Girl, I would have been jealous. More than a little insecure at the idea of her 'love rival' being so much more powerful than her. I just laughed. I really need to challenge her to a match some day.


Not today, though. Now I had far less impressive opponents to play with. I bolted forward toward the castle. They clearly thought it was important enough to defend, and that meant it was important enough for me to break into tiny little pieces. It was easy enough to dodge the Yangban, they were pretty pathetic all considered. And the sad part was they didn't need to be.


Some kind of badly watered down aiming power that actually would have been a real threat to me if at full power. Bunch of energy attacks that would have done real damage if they could hit. And some serious forcefield and danger sense abilities that honestly did keep me from hitting back. All in all, it was fifty people with a bunch of powers at one sixth of what they should be.


They'd have been better off just using the aiming power and this long range laser and whomever did the forcefield without sharing their powers.


I took a few potshots, just enough to intimidate them into wasting power on bolstering the forcefields. The longer they turtle, the better off I and the rest of the team are.


"Vertigo Lance." The weapon appeared for me to catch, and I fired it at the stone wall, activating the destruction mode. The built in sensors did the work of finding the best frequency to hurt this material, and soon the wall cracked.


I felt the threat, and redirected my weapon straight below at maximum intensity. The Yagban teleported into a cloud of dirt and sand too thick even for me to see through. I didn't need to see to fight. I was also right up close and personal with them. Forcefields against forcefields, and mine was power dampening. Yet again, if it were their forcefield generator vs me, I'd have lost. But this was fifty different forcefields, dampened fifty times.


I punched one upside the head, just enough to render him unconscious. Another got his shin snapped in half. Each half step hurt another two or three. This is fucking pathetic. The Yangban thinks they're competition for Avalon when this is the best they can do? Fuck, give me the right five Protectorate members not including the Triumvirate and a month to train them, and they'd shred this sad excuse for an army. I jabbed one of them in the ribs hard enough to send them flying into another member.


<Path Thirty Six.> They'd all instantly recovered from their injuries.


Wha? Did they pick up Alabaster's power? Well, maybe this is a fight I can- Everything changed just a little. I dived sideways and rolled to my feet as streams of that high intensity laser carved through the muddy ground, sending billowing steam into the air.


Another sudden disruption of perception and I dived backward, avoiding a barrage of lightning, or something like it. Okay, maybe they can fight back. Another disruption sent me up against a wall. Well, fuck. "Frost Lance."


I fired in front of me, building a shell of frozen air to protect me. More blasts of energy hammered my position, but at least I didn't have any more of those damn time skips fucking with me. Those things didn't trip my combat sense at all. Line of sight? Probably.


"Light Lance."


I set it to wide spectrum, low intensity. Basically a flare gun that didn't turn off, complete with the possibility of damaged retinas. Then I bolted up the castle wall, avoiding the occasional shitty potshots. Once on top I grabbed one of those assault rifles and fired it down into the crowd of confused Yangban. Lucky me that I can control my hearing, or this would suck. Their forcefields were enough to stop bullet fire without any real trouble. Maybe if I were firing a couple dozen guns at once it would work, but that wasn't my plan.


The gun didn't take long to overheat, and I tossed it down into their crowd while it just kept firing away. I went stealth mode and bolted forward toward the castle itself. I'd have more advantages there, where the fighting would be in narrow halls and all my close quarters combat advantages would come into play. I still needed a way to beat that damn time fuckery, but in theory it just meant I had to kill the one guy on the team providing the juice.


A patch of Yangban appeared in front of me, and I fired another stream of ice into their group. They teleported out immediately. Guess they still had that power on hair trigger. I fired behind me on reflex, and the screams of pain told me I actually achieved something. I bolted down the hall, punching a normal guard, stealing his assault weapon, and firing it behind me as I ran. They were relying on some kind of precognition. The more chaos I could throw into the system, the better my chances.


My power simply ignored everything that wasn't a danger to me. That included bullet fire.


I just about bolted into a hallway, before my power screamed that it would be a bad idea. I tossed the gun in, and watched as it was cut to shreds by Tinker weaponry. Okay, so no going that way.


"Magnetic Lance." I caught the weapon, dialed it to max, and fired it into the corridor. Dark smoke billowed from the walls and through the carpeted floor. My power was still very insistent I don't go into it. That was fine, I was the distraction, after all. My job was to cause so much damage that they stayed focused on me even after the others started attacking the barricade devices.


"Vertigo Lance." I tuned it to the function of being a disorientation aura and sent it to fire constantly. Anyone within range would get instantly dizzy while I rushed through this maze of a fortress. Everything was designed to look identical and throw off invaders, that much was obvious. I started punching walls to give myself a way to figure out where I was.


Much later, I was still running around. I had nuked a second and third trap hallway, but as near as I could tell there wasn't anything important in the building anymore. They didn't evacuate, I could still see a few people in the central area, but the Yangban either gave up, or decided I wasn't as important as the rest of the team.


In a way, that was a comfort. As long as the Yangban aren't coming for me, that means they're still out there fighting. But now I'd gotten a good idea of the actual layout of the building in its entirety. "Frost Lance and Vertigo Lance." If I can't find a through the building, then I can make a way.


And by 'make a way' I meant 'bring this whole fucking building to the ground and punch whatever crawls out of the rubble'.


I cut my way through the structural supports keeping the building standing. Oh, the outer walls were too tough for me to bring down so easily, but this structure inside was much more vulnerable, made basically like a very squat skyscraper. After a few supports were torn, the building started to rumble and I felt a handful of Yangban come into threat detection range again.


It was too late, however, the building was starting to cave, and only by virtue of my position near the outer wall did I avoid getting buried as well. I blasted my way out to view the sky and a few remaining opponents.


A dome of rock near the center blossomed open, revealing a less than happy looking middle aged man and a much younger woman that simply looked terrified. They were wearing the basic uniform of the Yangban, but it didn't include the face or body concealment of the rest.


My power was kind enough to let me know the man was a serious threat just in time for him to close the distance and hit me hard. Ribs cracked from the blow. The fuck did that come from? I landed feet first against the wall and barely registered my suit's complaints that it was damaged before bouncing down to the ground and charging forward.


He brought up a hand, and I narrowly avoided the wave of energy.


Seriously, who the fuck is this guy? I was getting a feel for the attacks. A high end telekinetic of some form. Or maybe air manipulation like Stormtiger that was similar in nature. Either way, my power's threat estimates ranked him as around a match for Alexandria. I fired the ice lance into the the ground near his feet, which was annihilated by his next blast. But it gave me cover to-


I was fast enough to dodge, this time, and lashed out with a hard kick at the target. Bones broke. Unfortunately, they were mine.


I flipped back, issuing the mental strength to mend the limb.


<You do not belong here, foreigner. Contact your people, tell them to cease their attacks or I will kill you.>


<Ah, is that how it's gonna be?> I went back into a combat stance. <Don't think you can beat me?> No. <Power come with some nasty side effects?> Yes. <Or are you that scared my team's going to win?> No. Ah, well, fuck me then.


"Harpe." My sword manifested itself. It was made to kill Endbringers, this guy can't be that dangerous in comparison. My perception of the world changed as I took my war form. My senses dulled, to the point that I'm fairly certain I could be considered legally blind and deaf. I'd never bothered finding out. All my mental processing shifted to the point of obsession on one goal. How do I kill the man in front of me?


I charged forward, and moments later found myself flying sideways. Fuck he's fast. My armor took enough damage that it wouldn't be shunt capable anymore. I pushed Harpe in front of me, then activated the time freeze feature, allow me to halt my movement in mid air, then redirect myself back like I'd grabbed a post and spun around it. Luckily, the weapon was only super sharp when the time divider was active, or I'd be missing a hand.


At least I caught him off guard this time, slamming feet first into his shield. He stumbled back, then blasted me with a wide wall of kinetic energy, knocking me to the ground hard enough to bruise me even in this state. I faintly tasted blood in my mouth. This guy can keep up with my combat mode? Oh fuck yes!


I was on my feet instantly, darting forward. My combat precog didn't show any particular weaknesses, I couldn't quite win but I wasn't at risk of losing any time soon. I could keep going for hours, and whatever weaknesses his power had, I was pretty it meant he couldn't afford that kind of fight.


Harpe's time divider collided with his shield, and it turned out my weapon had him beat. He reflexively stumbled back, avoiding his face being sliced open. Then he pushed off the ground with his power to launch himself away from me.


I smiled, dropping Harpe to let it recharge in whatever weird Tinker-Limbo it was stored in. "Vertigo Lance." I fired more around him than at him, causing the area to explode into clouds of concealment that he'd need to burn power to remove. I was just thrilled to have a legitimate challenge for a change.


Then I felt the crackle and shift of the space around me. Fuck! Dozens of new bodies started to shunt into the area. They weren't ours.


One hundred and sixty one against one? My combat senses were overwhelmed, but ultimately it all pointed to one thing. I was going to lose. And surrender meant a fate so much worse than death. I smiled slowly. "Harpe."


==================


A/N- Psst. Chevalier. Your girlfriend's got a masochistic streak and might be clinically insane.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 380- Taylor


The water had already reached up to my ankles, and the only reason it wasn't filling faster was a combination of the Khonsu forcefields reducing the pressure, and Theo plugging as many of the vents as he could. But pure iron wasn't all that resilient compared to whatever insane pressures there were outside the ship. Frankly, it was a minor miracle that we hadn't imploded under the pressure, a testament to just how durable Endbringer tissue really is.


I looked at the barricade device, wondering just how much water it could take on before something shorted out and we were completely fucked. From above it seemed the Yangban had stopped firing. Although I wasn't entirely sure of that. We were down so deep that my range couldn't find the surface. The only blessing I could count was that they weren't teleporting into the ship again. That would have spelled the end for all of us. And probably them, too.


Lachesis was broken up the worst of all of us, helping Clarice patch up the damage done to her side. "I'm sorry, I just couldn't... there was too much to keep track of. They had some kind of super targetting powers and I just couldn't keep up."


I put on my game face. I may be virtually useless down here, but at least I can maintain morale. "It's not your fault. No one could have kept up with everything that was going on." Except me, and of course she'll know that and be even more upset that I put it this way. "I was the pilot, and I didn't react in time, it's my fault more than anyone that this happened." Hopefully that'll mollify her a bit. Why is it always me in situations like this? Nurture and comfort is Amelia's job, I'm the intimidating one.


Clarice patted Missy's leg. "You did the best you could. We all did." Her head turned to look up at me. Oh, god damn it, I know I suck at comforting people, but please don't let me turn out worse at it than Bonesaw.


I looked down at the water lapping against my armor. "The ship's propulsion is damaged and the controls are completely off line. We don't have a lot of time before we need to get out of here. Aceso, you know these suits the best of anyone. What are the odds they hold up long enough to get us to the surface?"


I couldn't see her expression through the suit, but her pausing for a moment to look down at her side didn't bode well. "They can't, not for nearly as long as we need. Zach and Theo get out, because of their powers. Zach will be able to bring one person along. Two if we plan properly."


"I can take someone!" Theo insisted.


Clarice shook her head. "No you can't. You've been pushing your power way too much already. If you try to take another person up, both of you are going to die. As it stands I'm not entirely confident you'll be able to make it to the surface just by yourself."


Missy interrupted. "He can take me along, I can get us both to the surface in no time."


Clarice took Missy's hands and pressed them together between hers. "Not through that much water. The medium is too dense and resistant to compression. At best, you shave a few seconds off a minutes long surfacing process. Once the doors open for Zach and Theo, the rest of us are dead in between twenty and thirty seconds, depending upon how well our forcefields withstand the water pressure. There's no way to be certain they will hold because we've never bothered to test how they work under these circumstances."


God damn it all. No sense in taking too long to discuss this one, time to bite the fucking bullet. "Which brings us to the question of who stays behind."
Clarice didn't look at me, instead focusing on Theo and Missy. "Me, of course." Her... partners? started to protest, but she kept speaking over their arguments. "I'm the one with the most recent backup and the least applicable abilities for what might be a short term survival situation. It could take weeks for Atropos to locate the rest of the barricade devices. All of you offer something that can speed that process up. The best I can do is..."


She trailed off, and Missy pulled her into a hug. "You're talking about killing yourself like it's nothing."


"I have a backup. Pantheon can function for a few days without me. Just forgive me for being too busy for next week's movie night."


Theo moved over to the pair. I wanted to berate him for not staying near the sides where he was needed to plug holes as new ones appeared. He knelt down in front of his girlfriends. "That's not the same thing and you know it."


Clarice looked away from both of them. "It's better than nothing. It's better than any alternative we have. There's no way to save everyone, so it's better to sacrifice the one that's least useful. The one that deserves it most."


Oh. I took a step closer to the girl that was by some convoluted path my sister in law. But I didn't know how to handle this situation. I got along with Clarice, sure, maybe I was even fond of her. But we weren't that close and there was always that history between us. The history where she tried to saw me open and poke around inside my brain with all the glee of a little kid tearing open the wrapping on her Christmas presents. Sure, that wasn't really 'me', and she'd never do anything like that now. But the knowledge of it remained.


Missy grabbed Clarice by her shoulders and shook her hard. "No! You do not get to kill yourself over guilt!"


"It's not killing myself! Or, not for very long. I'll be fine in a few days."


"No, that just means we have a copy of you. It's not the same as being you!"


Clarice didn't resist Missy's outburst or shaking, but it didn't change her mind, either. "No, that's not true. The clones are us in every way that matters, they have to be! If you're not then I lost both of you already and I'll be happier when I'm dead."


Fuck. I glanced over at Zach, who was staying quiet as well. This wasn't a situation for my pragmatism or his perverse form of wisdom. I could see him fidgeting under his layer of armor. Or maybe he was shivering, his suit had virtually no shielding against any possible attack, instead being full of high energy cost gimmicks and weapons that he could easily restore with his powers. Once he hit the water outside, the chances were good that he'd respawn up on the surface instantly. But for now he'd become dust four times in the few minutes we'd been down here.


"Dammit, Clarice, I should slap you for saying that!" Missy sobbed, still gripping Clarice's shoulders. "It doesn't work that way and I won't let you sacrifice yourself like this. You don't get to atone for your sins by being a martyr. You don't get to leave us like this."


Theo pulled Missy back and wrapped his arms around the girl, then he extended one arm out to grip Clarice's hand. "Missy, please. That's not going to help. We need a plan, there has to be a way to get us all out of here alive. Yelling won't help us find that plan."


Self sacrifice? I knew a lot about that, didn't I? Clarice was right, though, of all of us she was going to be the least useful for until the barricades were removed. It would get especially messy if this took long enough that they got the old barricades back in working order. Once our own equipment ran out of power, the CUI could bring in more reinforcements and undo damage. They wouldn't be able to fight her from her position in orbit. The irony of Lily becoming this world's equivalent of the Endbringers was not lost on me. Her going around slowly decapitating-


Oh, there's an idea. "Umm, Clarice, I've wondered this for a long time, but I've never really found a time to ask. How did you surgically remove your head and survive?"


"It's not that hard, all you have to do is... oh." She paused for a second, realizing what that question really meant. Zach's power is limited by weight... or, more appropriately, the amount of mass equal to his carrying capacity at Earth's gravity. Remove most of that mass, and it made his job a lot easier. "I don't really have the equipment here to do that to myself here."


Fuck. "Mine, then. It's the smarter choice anyway. I'm a lot heavier than you are, and the way my powers work make pretty much everything from the neck down redundant. I can live without it for a while." I hesitated for a second. "Or, well, you know what I mean. Can you make that work?"


Clarice stood up and sloshed through the shin deep water toward me. "Yeah. Yeah! That's easy. I'll need Theo to make me some surgical tools, and I'll have to dismantle your suit for raw materials that spoof your biology enough that Zach's power doesn't leave behind the life support systems when he brings you to the surface. I can do that in less than ten minutes."


I smiled nervously, even though no one could see it through the mask. "Yeah, I guess I won't be needing the armor for a while. Besides, everyone else has been getting upgrades lately and I was starting to feel left out." I hit the open command on my armor, exposing my face to the painfully cold air, I felt the hair inside my nose stiffen. And this is what Clarice and Zach have been putting up with all this time? "We'd better do this fast, we don't know how much longer this ship is gonna last."


Clarice gave me a hug, and I watched as the suit raised alarms where she was cutting it apart with her fingers in what I had to believe was a very methodical process. "I promise your next suit of armor will have even more geek fetishes in it than Lily's."


"I'm going to believe you don't understand what you just said."


=================


A/N- Not the usual method of solving problems through decapitation. But it works!

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 381- Zach


I couldn't help but stare, and I wasn't alone in that. Taylor's head was now linked to several spindly spider like legs that didn't seem to have much purpose beyond letting her ride on Riley's back. It was fucking creepy as hell. Okay, so time to break the ice. "Well, that's one way to get ahead in life." And now everyone is looking at me instead of her. Mission accomplished.


Taylor rolled her eyes while everyone else just cringed, then my armor's com system activated. "Not the time for stupid puns. Now we have to get out of here. I'm going to move some of the forcefields to give you and Theo a bit of space outside the ship. When you're outside, I'll drop the bubble and you'll make your way to the surface. We'll need to be quick about it, because once I start shifting the forcefields around, the ship's lifespan will be measured in seconds."


I gave one last switch to the emergency fuel cells, seeing to it that all of them were maxed, then 'dropped' them from my focus. I waded through the fucking cold ass water to where the three girls were waiting. I tapped Missy and Clarice on the shoulders, then reached over to Taylor, before feigning hesitation. "Promise not to bite me?"


It's amazing how many expressions of annoyance that a single face can show at once. "I promise not to bite you."


I patted her on the head. "Good girl."


"Ordering Atropos to castrate you, however, is still an option. Now go climb out into the near arctic waters and drown already."


I mock saluted then turned toward the door "Yes ma'am. You are the head of state after all. I'm heading out." I stepped up next to Theo. "So, race you to the top?"


He shook his head, but I could tell he found it as funny as I did. "I have no idea how you get away with half the shit you do."


The ship's door slid open, and water poured in, nearly knocking me off my feet. "Okay, you caught me. I'm not really a parahuman at all, the reason I keep coming back from the dead is because let's be honest, there's no way I'm getting into heaven." The door sealed behind us as Theo's reflective metal shell wrapped completely around him. "And I keep escaping from hell by seducing the guards. Last one was a real harpy. Seriously, took me an hour to get all the feathers out of my mouth."


His chuckle was distorted by speaking through his metal shell. "You sure those weren't grasshoppers?"


"Them, too." The shield popped and water slammed into us hard enough that my armor didn't even have time to blink damage alerts before I found myself floating at the top of the ocean. It wasn't all that much warmer than in the ship. I recalled the 'stored' memories my power let me hold, and moments later, the girls were next to me. They shrieked in surprise and discomfort.


"Uh, yeah, sorry about that. The water's a little cold for a skinny dip, ain't it?" Okay, buddy. Please get up here soon. I don't know what your girlfriends are going to do if you die on them now.


"F-f-fuck th-th c-c-old!" I had to guess that was Missy, since Clarice almost never used profanities and Taylor couldn't talk right now. I couldn't tell without looking, and I wasn't going to look.


"You ladies may want to get back a bit. I know I'm hot, but I'm not sure how Theo'd take it if he found both his girlfriends tubbing with me naked." I cycled through options and found the 'phoenix' setting on my armor. Normally meant to be a really impressive suicide bomb. Dialing it as low as possible, I activated it and the water started warming up instantly.


In seconds, the area within a foot or so of me had begun to bubble. The ladies drifted far enough back to find somewhere comfortably between arctic and boiling alive. I did my best not to look toward the girls as they huddled together for some protection from the cold. Or was Taylor, riding on Clarice's back like some weird pet. Luckily the steam quickly created a very thick fog bank around us.


"Okay, I know we're not that far north, why is it so damn cold?" Missy complained.


Taylor's voice came over my armor. "Okay, you're the only one I can communicate through right now. I need you to contact Atropos and tell her to continue the mission. Our dimensional barricade is only going to last a few more minutes. See if you can get ahold of Victoria as well. We're going to want her help out here."


Clarice, meanwhile, was explaining things to Missy. "Part of the treaty on acceptable colony worlds includes looking for comfortable climates at the portal's origin. I'm guessing this world never fully broke from the most recent ice age, likely leaving the Middle East a wet temperate zone. That's to our advantage if this lasts any length of time. Easy sources of large animals for food and clothing. If we're lucky we'll find out what Woolly Mammoth tastes like."


I smiled. That's cute, I'll remember it. "Victoria's signal is gone." Please let her be alright. I didn't draw attention to it, but I still had a bit of a crush on the hyperactive blonde bombshell of neurosis that was Victoria. I was more than happy with Emma, but as a man I couldn't help but occasionally wonder. Naturally, I kept that little detail to myself. If Vicky or Emma's bullshit biosensing powers let them in on that secret, then neither felt the need to tell me they knew.


"Fuck. Well, she could easily be out of range. Can you reach Lily?"


I looked through the channels. "Yeah. Here she is." The armor responded to the focus of the eyes, so by the time I finished the sentence I was already on call with her. "Hey, Atropos. Just letting you know we're okay, but a lot of our equipment's been lost." Like, say, the ship and three uniforms and Taylor from the neck down. "Khepri wants to know how things are going on your end."


"I'm almost at the third target. Do you know if there are any more?"


That's a good question. I almost glanced over at the girls and ask, but Khepri was clearly listening in. "Not completely sure, we'll find out after you destroy this one. If we still can't contact Avalon, then there are more and we'll have to hunt them down. If we don't contact you immediately, assume there's more. You will circle back to the palace and see if you can make contact with Victoria. The two of you kick up as much carnage as possible then mount a fighting retreat and we'll all regroup at panel green black white gold."


"Understood."


I had no idea what that meant. Whatever, not my job to worry about. "Okay, so now what?"


"We try not to freeze or boil while waiting for Theo to make it to the surface."


You mean if he makes it to the surface. I switched my system back to external speaking mode. "So, isn't this where you give us a rousing speech to raise our spirits like they do in the movies? You can give a bunch of tired catch phrases like 'chin up' and 'we'll be back on our feet in no time'." Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Missy trying to hide her smile. Whether Taylor saw it or not, I wasn't certain.


Taylor somehow hijacked the speaker system for my armor, letting her be heard by everyone "Why is it that I haven't fired you? Because I really think I should fire you. Out of a cannon. Into the sun."


The others chuckled at that comment. It was safe to laugh at Taylor's jokes. That wasn't much, but it lightened the mood a little. Distracted them from worrying about Theo for a little while longer. C'mon, man. I know you can make it.


And to top it all off, the batteries on my suit are running low. I smirked and affected a bad Asian accent. "I am a fairure, I have no honor. I shar take my own rife." I mimicked holding a knife it both hands and jabbing it into my chest, activating the armor's suicide switch at the same time. I appeared above the water and splashed right back into it. I should probably ask why my power never lets me appear inside water one of these days. The water was still painfully hot through my suit, but I was much better insulated against heat than cold, and the rest of the team had no insulation at all.


"Okay, Theo's in range now. I'm guiding him to us."


Fuck yes!


"I... I don't think he's conscious."


God damn it!


He wasn't using his power when he made it up. Fuck. At least he stopped flying at the water's surface. Either some kind of safety feature, or maybe Taylor just took direct control of the armor's features, they were designed for her to do that after all.


The girls swam over to him, while I swam further away. As much as I wanted to help, I couldn't. Theo's armor could take the heat, but the girls would be boiled alive. And I still had to keep the water warm so they didn't freeze. On top of that, they had medical knowledge, while powers meant the brain scans and knowledge uploads didn't work for me.


And even if they did work on me, and I took medicine instead of wasting space on silly stuff like video game programming and how to direct pornography, I still couldn't compete with the world's most powerful biotinker. I had to trust them to do what I could not. Come on, Theo. I don't have a lot of friends that I can just hang with. You have to be alright.


They had his suit open, with Riley sitting on his hips and doing whatever it was she needed to do. I couldn't help but look, in spite of the lack of modesty here. But the bruises covering Theo's upper body, and the ugly looking gash on Clarice's side ruined any eroticism that might have come from it.


"Minimal decompression, major crushing trauma," Riley stated. "He'll live, mostly because his suit protected him from the worst of it and is currently running life support. If he was any deeper when he lost control of his power, he'd be dead right now."


Now both my armor and Theo's spoke up. "So we're down to three able bodies. Missy, please get us to shore. I'm pretty sure Lily should be done by now, and I still don't have access to Avalon. We're still on our own out here."


=====================


A/N- Damn it's been too long since I've had a Zach chapter.

Also- shall be busy, don't expect a second chapter today.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 382- Clarice


Some days, I wish I kept my ability to not feel pain. We'd found a safe beach to make camp. It was as cold as the rest of this hell, but with plenty of pine trees. Cooking up medicine with pine sap wasn't exactly optimal conditions, but it's what we had to work with. In addition to the various upgrades in my body and the tech in Theo and Zach's suits, I managed to put together a more than reasonable hospital to care for our wounded and give Taylor the necessary long term upgrades to keep her alive for what was becoming a mission that might last days.


Zach tossed another branch into the fire. "So, here's a major existential question. How long do you think it'll be before we're assumed dead and they jumpstart your replacements? And what do you do when you meet your own doubles?"


"They won't." Taylor's voice came from the suits. "This was meant to be a clean mission, but it's far too important to allow to fail. Worst case scenario was always that we'd mount a true invasion and rescue force using the zerg and Dragon suits. Yes, that comes with a very real risk of starting an all out war with China. But that's far better than leaving them in control of a dimension of their own."


In the interest of metabolic stability, I'd put much of her brain to sleep. The lower parts of her brain that regulated her body were shut down, while the upper mental functions were working quite well. The functional opposite of being in a permanent coma. It would cause some degradation over time, but once we were out of here I could use her backup data to repair the damage. She let me do all that to her. I just... how could she trust me so much?


Missy reached out and touched my shoulder. "Is something wrong? Why are you crying?"


I smiled, looking at her green eyes. "I'm not sure."


She looked at me as if she wanted to press the issue, but just smiled back. "You're still adorably quirky."


Thank you for not prying too hard. "And that's still only worth five points. But I give you an extra ten because I think you're adorable, too."


....


"Hey, guys, can you hear me?" Wha? I immediately woke up from my nap near the fire. I tried to extract myself from Missy's arms, only to discover our cobbled together Yggdrasil outfits grown from scraps cloned off of Theo's suit had fused themselves together in our sleep. Well, drat. That's going to be inconvenient.


"Yeah, we're here," Zach responded. "What's the situation?"


"Atropos coming in for a landing. Got Victoria with me. I think we've scared the Yangban off, but Vicky's pretty hurt."


"Understood." Taylor's voice spoke through Zach's suit. "Fly low toward the suit identification. I'll take control when you're in range and guide you down."


I nudged Missy with my elbow, trying to prompt her to wake up. This is going to be embarrassing. "Muh?" Missy tried to push away from me.


"Clarice? What's going on?"


I pulled my arms into the shirt and twisted around to face her while ignoring the agony in my side. Having one working lung is inconvenient. I spoke quietly to avoid interrupting the more serious conversation. "The Yggdrasil wasn't as dormant as I thought it was. It fused together while we were asleep."


"Wait, you mean you still have overrides to my armor?"


"Well, of course. It's an emergency option to protect everyone. It probably saved Theo's life today, and if you're ever disabled by, say, an injury or some kind of Master/Stranger effect, you'll wish you had me backing you up."


Missy looked down at where our crudely designed shirts had melded, blushing slightly. I followed her eyes. Oh. "Well, at least it our pants were caught in it. What do we do now? I guess one of us can go without a shirt for a little while."


I focused on Missy's face. She was quite attractive, so much so that I was afraid my natural appearance would never quite compete with her looks. But up until now, I'd always run on the assumption that she and I were sisters. The idea that she'd find me attractive hadn't crossed my mind.


I shook my head. "No, shouldn't be necessary. Just put your hands on my shoulders and push away." I did the same, though I set my hands on her ribs and abdomen. I felt the heat of her skin and the behavior of her pulse, using my instincts to put together a good idea of her body and how it worked. Both overall and in the right now. This is something I'll have to think of in the future. I'll have to ask my Big Sister for advice.


"Why didn't you tell me about this?"


"Didn't know I had to. It's standard in every suit of armor we've built, including all of your priors. Even mine has overrides that Amelia or our techs can access. We just thought it was understood that if we built a suit without the protocols, we'd let people know."


"I guess that makes sense." Lily didn't sound at all happy about the idea. "Let me know when I get in your range."


I gritted my teeth against the pain in my side as our arms managed to push out, the clothing making a slurping noise as it pulled apart. We were lucky I used the armor's underlayer as the raw material for this clothing. It wasn't designed with durability in mind, simply resiliency and a medium for the medical treatment tech and various other biointerfaces the armor needed to operate properly. Ours was even more fragile since the stuff was very much designed to not replicate outside the suits, so I had to cobble together a solution.


I glanced over at Zach, who was making a show of not watching as we pried ourselves apart. I pulled my shirt together at my stomach, making it stick back to itself while Missy did the same to hers. I pulled mine together extra tight. I didn't want anyone to realize I'd pulled the stitching in my side. The only reason I was still functional right now was all the modifications I'd made to my biology over the last few months.


I saw Victoria first, a shimmer of light in an overcast sky without any human interference. They landed and I was already up to get a closer look. Lily was carrying two people. Someone in a Yangban uniform, and Victoria. Her armor was a mess, barely held together in some areas. The damage done to her body through the armor was remarkable, her warform had to be the only reason she was still alive.


"It's rude to stare," she scolded. "You should see the other guys. Two hundred against two, and we won. By the w- holy fuck! Taylor, what happened to you? I can't sense anything from the neck down!"


"There isn't anything from the neck down." Taylor sounded tired. Hmm, the brain alterations must be interfering with her functions. I might have to make some more modifications. At this rate, I'll be forced to use her backup to repair damage. "It's a long story. Care to explain the prisoner?"


Lily tossed him forward casually. "Yeah, after I found out you wanted to rendezvous in Tokyo, I thought these guys know how to shunt through their barricade, it's gotta be in their armor somewhere. So, after saving Vicky's ass."


"Yeah, yeah, I know. You'll get your traditional rescued maiden makeout session after all my parts are back in working order."


Makeout session? Dammit, I thought I made sure that she wouldn't have any bicurious leanings during the proto- Oh, wait, no. She's just joking. I relaxed a little. Of course she's joking.


Although she could deliberately rework her neurochemistry just about any way she wanted. I still couldn't believe I made such an obvious miscalculation. I went out of my way to keep her from being a desirable target to any Passenger, much as I had with Noelle, and it turns out that obsession prompted my own to take interest in her. Sure, it worked out great in the end, but it was so stupid.


Lily laughed. "In what possible world do you count as a maiden?"


"Hey, I'll have you know these lips have never touched another human being. Granted, it's only because I had to grow this pair in the last ten minutes, but they're still complete maiden territory."


Taylor managed to make a good emulation of a sigh through Lily's armor. "I'm sure your respective significant others would love to hear all about this topic, but can we get back on track?"


Lily looked over at Taylor. "Yeah, sorry. Anyway, after saving Vicky by firing a full barrage of my empowered bolts down at the people who had managed to capture her, which I'm not too sorry to report killed a lot of them, she managed to disable a couple before I came in to rescue her, since her armor was destroyed. They appeared to be dragging her to a shunt vehicle."


"Third attempt, too," Vicky added. "Turns out, their ships are pretty fragile. Doesn't take a lot of electricity for me to short one out."


"So we grabbed one of the unconscious ones and took him back with us. Like I said, they have to have some kind of code, right? Like we do to get through our barricade device? We shunt this guy over with the right message and our people will be able to figure out their get reinforcements through in no time, right?"


I glanced over at the damage done to Victoria. She was in really really bad shape, even with her powers repairing the worst damage, I could make guesses at what they put her through. I looked over at the Yangban member, noting the various locations of his injuries. She did that while missing a leg and both of her hands and much of her face.


I won't be able to reverse engineer the tech, but I can reverse engineer its user. Right now, I really wanted to make the bastard suffer. "I'll take care of the details."


===================


A/N- Turns out I had a second chapter in me after all.

Spelled out in no uncertain terms all the stuff so few people seemed to get about Vicky's rebirth.

And other developments!

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 383


I paced nervously in our mobile command center. "Do you think they're okay? It's been hours. It shouldn't be taking this long." A question I'd probably asked thirty or forty times already. "Why is it taking this long?"


Dragon's voice came over the speaker. "I don't know. I've been monitoring China's telecommunications as best I can under my current programmed limitations." And it's our fault she still has those limits. "There's not a lot to go on, except that they're preparing their miliary for a full scale military action. Whether that's a response to intel from the other side, or simply a reaction to their dimensional access being cut off, I cannot currently say."


Dammit, Taylor, how am I supposed to do this without you?


I absentmindedly took a drink from the nutrient fluid the suit provided. It tasted like cactus juice this time. Thanks to whatever weirdness the new recipe came with, its flavor would change more or less at random. Something of a weirdly specific hallucinogen that I was surprised even worked on me. Then again, since my power works to nullify organics as they interacted with my biology, it's something of a miracle that I can taste anything at all. More arbitrary Passenger bullshit that only made sense when you realized these things were making the rules up as they went.


Dragon interrupted my thoughts. "I'll continue monitoring the situation."


"Umm... yes, thank you."


Left to my own thoughts, I had to wonder about what we were doing. This mission could have been avoided simply by offering to let China in on the portal network arrangement in the first place.


Denying them a portal of their own was done with the intent of fucking with them. Social and economic pressures, an attempt to force Bet to mold itself into a single unified society. Pantheon and Avalon were always meant to be both the carrot and the stick, a goal to strive for in showing what can be accomplished with cooperation, and the threat of what we could do to those who wouldn't get with the program.


We manipulated China into being a stick as well, by creating an enemy, a more immediate threat to fear instead of us. In a world without Endbringers, we needed that distraction and danger to keep operating the way we operate. Because people are scared of us and what we can do, so we had to give them something to be even more afraid of.


Sure, we also did other things, like PR ops with us talking to world leaders and obeying all the United Nation's various rules about what we were and were not allowed to do on Bet and other colony worlds. Playing dressup and promising the world a gay royal marriage. Lisa called it 'bread and circuses, when Pantheon was young and Avalon didn't exist. And that's what it was. Acting like celebrities so people would forget one little little detail. We're terrifying. There's no other way around it, we're fucking terrifying, we know it, and we revel in it.


And the world has good reason to be afraid of us. My power alone makes Pantheon the most successful Class S threat ever seen. I looked down at the light blue-green matter that made up the surface of my world. I chose the color because it was the exact opposite of meat. Ignoring the biological impossibility of it, if Avalon's landscape was made of flesh and blood instead xylem and sap. If the scent of copper and iron replaced that of wet grass and indistinct nectar, no one would ever want to set foot on this planet.


And it was only through the damn parasite granting me these powers to begin with that I was blocked from ever really understanding my own potential. After my Third Trigger, well, fuck to that plan. I broke free of that control, found someone I was supposed to hate to be my closest friend and ally, and together we planned to save the world. Even if we had to destroy half of it to save the other half.


How many other despots and monsters have told themselves those same words? We're the good guys only if you're on our side and even then we're not exactly forgiving to our allies. Not that we expect them to be better to us. Then again, look at our allies.


We had Cauldron, and it was pretty much certain that they were gearing up to take us down after Scion's removal. Maybe they'd never act on it, a cautionary move. But they feared the need existed, and they were probably right. Japan was an ally, and honestly a really good one. We had considerable social influence there thanks to Lily and our defense against Chinese aggression. That didn't stop us from hiding the fact that their Emperor was probably an impostor. Because he was an impostor that was helping us.


The USA was something of an ally, though that was a strained relationship after our maneuvers to kidnap some of their criminals. Without the threat of the Endbringers hanging over us, we were relying solely upon their use of our robot police system to keep them dependent upon us. The UN and EU were stronger allies, but only barely. A thing that would likely change if we started treating them the way we treated the United States. And if they didn't give us the resources we needed when we asked, we'd end up doing just that. Easier to ask forgiveness than seek permission, after all.


Dragon was the ultimate example of our pattern. We had her under our complete control, much like we did with Calvert and Moord Nag. The difference being that Dragon wasn't a monster that needed to be controlled or destroyed. She was an ally, and even tried to be a friend. She did everything she could to help us even before we had the capacity to rescue her from her prison.


The fact that we don't use that power over Dragon, that she is loyal out of choice, may even make it worse. We had no reason to distrust her, except that we trusted no one. Or at least trusted no one who could conceivably be a threat to us. Dragon was very much capable of being a threat if she were freed. She was the best hope we had of fighting Scion, and still we kept the keys to her cage.


What we've done is every bit as frightening as the Slaughterhouse Nine, and Nilbog, and the Yangban, have done. Our motives differed, at least from the first two. But it wouldn't be wrong to say we've committed war crimes. Using WMDs like Bolla and a stimmed Moord Nag. Enslaving peoples' minds. Annihilating whole cities just to prove a point. All in the name of peace and unity. Which begged a question. Is a peace built on lies, fear and manipulation any kind of peace at all?


I suppose I have become my father's daughter after all.


....


My suit beeped at me, waking me from a dream that quickly faded. Something about using my powers to turn Taylor into some kind of hydra like monster to use against Scion. I couldn't remember and I got the feeling I was happier for that.


Right, the com was beeping. "Umm, what is it?"


"This is Dragon speaking. I believe we've been sent a message by the Khyber strike force. A Yangban member was captured by Akaihana inside her base."


Who? I almost asked the question, but Dragon continued too quickly.


"She's a Trump with a carefully concealed method of allowing herself to copy the powers of her teammates and occasionally others for brief periods of time. Has been the leader of one of the most popular teams in Japan for the last fifteen years."


"Okay, that's a start. The part about the message?"


"He gave Atropos' access code after his capture and now refused to speak with anyone other than you. They report he has serious injuries beyond what could have been sustained during his capture. I've yet to observe the captive or his condition, but there is the possibility that they hurt him more than they had to. Possibly related to the copying aspect Akaihana's powerset. I recommend you take care not to accuse them of anything or alert them if you suspect torture or other malfeasance. It might be wise to request transporting the captive to Avalon before interrogation."


I frowned. That's just wonderful. "I'm going. If this is a message from the team, we have to act immediately. Has Janus been contacted?"


"Yes, he'll be there presently."


Twenty seconds later, the man appeared not too far away. Our mobile command center had its own deployment pad and I was ready to go. "Thanks for the ride. And thanks for always putting up with this crap."


He shrugged. "Hey, don't worry about it. Maybe I don't have the most interesting job in the world, but I live a comfortable life while only working a few hours a months. At the cost of having no idea which hours they'll be ahead of time is a perfectly acceptable tradeoff."


"I still kinda feel bad about it."


He looked down. "Well, umm, if you wanna do me a favor to call us even, then I'm kinda, well."


I waited a few seconds. "We're in a hurry, if you need time to figure out how to ask, then maybe we can wait until after?"


He took a deep breath. "Mygirlfriend'sprettysmallsoIcanhurtherwhenwegetintimate."


What? Oh. Oh! I really need to stop offering to do nice things for people. But it made sense things would get a little disproportionate considering how I built his body to be a healthy adult male and then gave it the equivalent of a second final puberty spike. Dumb mistake on my part. "So, you need a size reduction?"


"It'd be appreciated, yes."


==============


A/N- A thought occurred to me. We've seen a lot of Taylor without Taylia. Not so much of Amelia.

Welcome back, self loathing girl that's afraid she's a monster. You're less cute about it than Riley, so everyone hates you.

Also- this chapter may have become a "spelling it out in no uncertain terms since a few of my readers aren't paying enough attention to really see it" moments.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 384


Our side of the Japanese gateway was already pretty heavily populated around the portal. Real construction equipment, one of Dragon's industrial bases. More than half of Avalon's population lived within a couple hundred miles of this portal.


Even before Lily's unmasking, the promise of a nation founded on the goal of becoming a truly modern society had resonated with the younger generations of Japan who blamed traditionalism for everything. Sometimes correctly, and sometimes for reasons that made no damn sense. So even with Japan now holding its own portal to a new world, we were still getting huge amounts of Japanese immigrants.


I shunted over to atop a helipad. There was only one person there waiting. A very attractive Japanese woman. She reached her hand out. I shook it. "Good evening, Empress. Sorry for troubling you. I am Akaihana, and it's an honor to meet you."


Her English was almost flawless, enough that what little accent she kept only served to make her seem exotic. I had to imagine that was her goal. As was her costume, a form fitting bright red outfit that I guess was something like an evening dress mixed with a kimono. Showed her arms and legs, so it certainly wasn't traditional. To say nothing of being low enough cut to confirm that no, she was not wearing a bra. I avoided looking, keeping my eyes straight on hers instead. Too busy worrying about Taylor to enjoy the view anyway.


It was likely none of that hid the light blush forming on my face. I shook her hand, separated by the gauntlet of my armor.


The strange thing about the Japanese hero culture was that most of them tended to have public identities. Or, at least, their faces exposed for all to see. They kept to the same tradition as the western culture in having hero and team names, but they didn't hide their identities. And those with the physical durability to afford it would tend toward revealing outfits. By that standard, Akaihana had to be a tough as hell.


Really, they weren't all that different from how New Wave functioned. Hmm, if I think of it later, I'll have to ask Aunt Sarah if she got her inspiration from the way the Japan was doing things.


I let go of her hand, and it was definitely me that let go. I got the feeling she'd have been happy if I hadn't. "It's good to meet you, too. I've heard nothing but impressive things." Absolutely true. The total of three sentences I know about her are impressive. "Speaking confidentially, I think this captive of yours has to do with a current mission a number of my team is on. Sorry for the inconvenience of it landing in your lap like this."


She smiled wonderfully. "Not at all. Things have been quite peaceful around here after that tussle with the Yangban, and Lily unofficially joining our team. This is the most excitement we've had in weeks. Personally, I think that every so often it's good to, umm, spice things up? As long as everyone enjoys themselves in the end."


My suit's social analysis tech highlighted a few details in her phrasing and behavior, and kindly informed me that this woman was flirting with me pretty blatantly. Unfortunately, it couldn't tell me if she was honestly attracted, or just trying to manipulate me in some fashion. Maybe both.


Either way, I wasn't going to let it work. "Honestly, I've had a bit too much spice in my life lately. Please take me to your 'guest'."


During the debriefing, I'll have to mention all of this to Lily and see what her opinion is.


She smiled knowingly. "I can only imagine." Then turned and led into their base. Swaying her hips enough to remind me that she was, indeed, leaving the implied offer open.


I put my efforts into watching the base itself. It looked more like something out of a scifi movie than anything practical. Seemed pretty well funded considering this was a country that was reduced to functional Third World status. Dozens of ordinary looking people in body suits comprised mainly of copper, silver, and gold colors, each less common than the last. Some kind of ranking system, I had to guess. A lot of them stopped to gawk at me. I found it a little uncomfortable.


"When you said 'successful', I didn't think you meant it was like this." I subvocalized the words for Dragon to pick up.


Text went across the screen of my HUD. Most of it's just for show. The computers are over a decade old, and the majority of supposed workers are using the internet for purposes of amusement or college level student projects. Some are just playing video games.


She looked up at me. We were probably the same height if standing barefoot, but the underlayer to my Dryad left me standing at over six feet tall. "Is something wrong?"


Should I tell her that I know this display is a fake? Or just bite my tongue on the subject? Neither seemed to be an especially good idea if I wanted her to trust me. I opted for a middle ground on the subject. "It must be cultural, but about your offices back there seemed odd to me."


Her laugh was musical. "Oh, no, those aren't offices. Not any more, at least. Japan once held ambitions of a state controlled force, much like the Protectorate in America. After Leviathan, that ambition was forgotten as all but the most stalwart of our parahumans, as you say, fled for greener pastures. We acquired this building some time later and repaired it. The top two floors are now an internet cafe. It has proven profitable enough pay for the upkeep of the building. And it's nice to be able to talk to our fans."


Well, that makes a weird sort of sense. "Hmm, never would have thought of something like that. Clever."


She never stopped smiling as she led me through the hall, pressing her hand to a panel. The wall opened and I followed her through. "I must admit that I am impressed. Most visitors don't notice anything odd about it at all. You have a keen eye." And she's back to flirting with me.


I tried not to enjoy it too much. The suspicion that it was all an act, coupled with worry for Taylor made that fairly easy to do. "What about the uniforms?"


"Oh, that was Hoji's idea. A theme from some scifi show he keeps trying to get me to watch. All in good fun, as they say."


Japan is weird. "And it does create the illusion of a well equipped staff, whenever guests come by."


She smiled coyly. "Well, yes, there is that. Appearances are important, whether we like to admit it or not. Which brings me to our captive. I promise you, my people aren't responsible for what you're about to see." The lie detector confirmed she was telling the truth. Not that we could completely trust that. Especially not around a Trump with an unknown set of abilities to draw upon.


Another door opened, revealing the man. To my surprise, he was caucasian. His face was badly damaged, and even from a distance I could tell his cheek was crushed. Based on the damage, I wouldn't be surprised if his eye was destroyed as well. "Don't worry, I believe you."


The part that convinced me this wasn't their doing was the stitching that had been done along his jaw. Someone surgically repaired him.


I stepped forward, and his one good eye focused on me. "Uhm tell you dey alive. Ship broke. Use shu- shu- thingy. Dey took thingy! Give it back!" He attempted to lunge from the chair, and when he couldn't he started to cry, his tears were pink with blood. "Uh need thingy. Ish impotant." He sobbed.


I looked over at Akaihana. "What 'thingy' is he talking about?"


"He was wearing a full body suit when we found him. Our scans showed some unknown Tinker tech. We have it and a couple other objects in storage."


"Need it! Need thingy! Keep promise! Scawy girl said if ah give thingy, you fix! Need thingy so you make pain stop! Hurts so bad. Please give it." He wept as he struggled desperately against his bonds. I almost cried as well, it was horrible to watch.


Why did they do this? I stepped toward him, and the men guarding the prisoner looked behind me, then stepped back and let me approach. My armor was designed to shift and expose my hands if I needed them to. I subvocalized again. "Dragon, if anything seems off, I want you to disable me. We can't rule out a trap completely."


The armor folded away from my palm and I put my hand on the poor man's scalp. The obvious damage was pretty bad. Bad enough that I started drawing raw material from the Yggdrasil to provide mass for healing.


The brain was another mess entirely. Someone had somehow pushed things into his skull without actually doing any external damage. Whatever they used was still alive. I took the time to examine the material, eventually recognizing it as pine needles. It was a fucking partial lobotomy done entirely by pressing pine needles up against various parts of his brain. Including the part that understood pain. I knew it had to be Clarice's work if only because no one else had this kind of skill. Probably using Lily to get the needles into place. A clear message that this unfortunate was sent by the two of them.


It was also easy for me to dissolve the needles into harmless nutrients for his blood stream, showing a clear understanding of my powers. I put the Yangban member to sleep, mended the damage I could with some of the spare biomass I had from my suit, then stepped back and turned toward Akaihana.


"I suppose the question now becomes what to do with him, and with the equipment he had. Atropos clearly trusted you enough to send him here. Is her good will enough for you, or are we going to need to negotiate you turning him over to our custody?"


Again with that beautiful smile. "I think we can settle for knowing we've done a good deed. But I wouldn't mind if, perhaps, you could build some of those power enhancing suits you for me and my team. I understand you've given them to your close American friends. I would hope that we could be close friends, too?" She managed to pout without it looking stupid, in much the way she somehow made her costume not look trashy.


Is this what all the flirting was for? A set of armor? "Just so it's clear, I can't promise that. The generic armor sets are one thing, I can promise a number of those. But to create a suit designed to run custom off of your armor, our Tinkers have to run several tests. Learn every detail about how your power works, and then maybe they'll be able to build something that compliments your powers. Not all powers can be improved. The first question is always if you're willing to be tested in the first place."


She smiled. "I think I can agree to that."


She led my to a storage locker, where the armor was stored. My suit's scanning tech started analyzing what it could.


Dragon relayed the information. It's a shunt drive without the keycode wiped. I can use it to adapt our own dimensional tech to access Khyber through their barricade tech. I'll need to examine it in our base. I am already contacting Tir, I'll need his help reverse engineering the equipment.


I smiled broadly. They didn't take down the barricades, but this was as good or better.


Akaihana smiled as well, her eyes glinting. "I take it your visit has been satisfying."


Despite myself, this time I blushed. The relief of knowing Taylor was safe and I'd be able to see her soon made me let my guard down. "Yes, very. It means we can stop the CUI from ever stealing any more worlds. And I can..." I stopped myself.


She smiled. "You must love her very much."


=============


A/N- Briefly considered Akaihana succeeding here. But that woulda been pointless drama that didn't fit the character development as it stood in the story thus far for her to seduce Amelia.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 385- Theo


Doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would. As far as first thoughts after a near death experience go, it wasn't that bad. Certainly better than what followed. Where's my shirt? I looked around, noting that my head was resting on Missy's lap while Clarice was next to me on one side, and Amelia was on the other. Huh, never really noticed before, but Amelia's kinda cute from this angle. Oh my god she looks like Kayden. What the fuck's wrong with me?


Distracted by that line of thinking, maybe I could be forgiven for the first words. I looked over at Clarice and smiled. "Guess you were right about not taking anyone up with me."


Missy and Clarice hugged me. They were wearing the generic overlayer that Amelia tended to make for emergency clothing. Oh, right, they were brought up by Zach. Of course they would need a change of clothes.


The sun was just starting to rise, but that meant very little since I had no idea where we crashed or where we set up camp. Given Missy's power it could literally be anywhere on the planet. "So, umm, how long was I out?"


"Around fifteen hours," Missy answered. "You're lucky you made it at all."


I looked over at Amelia, in her armor. "I take it the mission was successful?"


"More or less," Taylor's voice came through my armor. "There's no resistance right now, but I'm sure several of the Yangban are hiding among the civilians, and I can't be sure which are which. It would be a lot easier if I thought to get Chinese into my brain upload."


Amelia sighed. "And we were expecting to only capture a handful of Yangban, maybe some technicians and other skilled labor. People we could either use as a resource or trade back to China for some kind of concession. Instead we're looking at thousands of people, most of them farmers and other laborers. Honestly it's going to take forever to sort through it."


"One hundred and twelve thousand, three hundred and seventy one people in total. Yangban make up around fifty of that. Not including the dead."


I started to sit up, and the girls moved to the sides and gave me a bit of a push on my shoulders, making it easier on me. I didn't need the help, but I appreciated it all the same. Putting the top layer of my armor back on, I read the display highlights. Which consisted of a lot of minor damage throughout the entire suit. "But it's still a win, everyone's okay?"


Zach shrugged. "Well, it's not a loss, but a few million dollars in equipment destroyed and we have Taylor and Vicky sharing space inside Amelia's backpack. So I'mma vote that we've seen more decisive victories."


"Hey, I got maimed by the best!" Victoria insisted. "Turns out I was fighting the guy who managed to kick Lung's ass. And I totally winning that fight until hundreds of Yangban showed up to save him. You guys couldn't have kept that barricade device going for five more minutes? By the way, what are the odds we can keep that guy around for a while. I so deserve a rematch."


Dragon's voice spoke over the coms next. "I'm afraid that won't be possible. Feng Hao did not survive Atropos' attack on the palace. I have made contact with Pakistan's President and informed him of the situation, as well as the United Nations Security Council. Both would like to speak with Gaea and Khepri immediately. I've delayed the UN meeting by requesting they organize the full UN for a proper explanation."


"Understood." Taylor's voice was mechanical, tired. "I have been unable to find the Pakistani colonists. Could you investigate where they might have been taken? Contact China and let them know we're willing to negotiate a transfer of... fuck it, my political bullshit doublethink tolerance is at an all time low right now. Whatever bullshit excuse you need to draw up that lets us trade our captives for the Khyber colonists is fine. Throw China a bone that they don't have to admit they're responsible to sweeten the deal."


"We're just going to let them get away with this!" Vicky exclaimed. "The fuck?!"


Lily sighed. "Black ops mission, we always knew it wasn't going to be a killing blow. But I don't think this can be called them 'getting away' with anything. We've taken their stolen world, and with it all kinds of Tinkertech stuff that probably costs like a billion dollars. Moving over a hundred thousand of their own people like this had be be costly, too. And we killed over half their parahumans, including at least one of which that was Triumvirate tier. And captured a bunch of others. We made them bleed pretty hard today and all of us walked away alive.


"Dammit. I guess you're right. But I'm going on record to say that if they continue being assholes, we take the kid gloves off, shunt right into the palace, and literally shove their heads up their own asses."


"Noted." Taylor responded. "We have some diplomacy shit to take care of. Horus, Osiris, the two of you should be in good condition. You're assigned to sorting our prisoners and doing what medical assistance you need to. Sveta and Boost are on site already along with some of the Dragon's Teeth, so I don't imagine we'll have any short term problems. Everyone else, go home and get some sleep. No excuses, we'll need all of you later."


Amelia spoke up as I started to get to my feet. "Oh, and before I forget. Akaihana was asking about a suit for her to use. Lily, you know her better than I do. Is she trustworthy enough to give a customized set of armor to? We probably need to find some way to thank her after you dropped that guy in her lap like that, one way or another."


"Uh. Umm. I don't know her that well. Well, not really. But we gave Chevalier a suit, and none of us really knew him at the time. So by that standard I don't see why not. And it couldn't hurt to show the Japanese capes that we're willing to help them like we do over in America."


Taylor's voice came over the com. "We have some time before worrying about it anyway. We can probably fish the suits out of the ocean eventually, but they'll need repairs and maybe a few adaptations. Lily, be sure to let Akaihana know we're grateful for her help. Even let her know some of the vague details that we're eventually going to release to the public if she asks. But make sure you get some sleep first."


"Uh, sure, I can do that. Bed first, Akaihana tomorrow." Lily vanished, using her shunt drive.


Huh, why's she acting so weird? No one else seemed to notice, but almost everyone else could barely hold a conversation. Maybe this is just how she gets when she's tired? I stood up, using a bit of the antigrav to lift Missy and Clarice to their feet without any real problems. "Are the two of you okay?"


Missy went to speak, then yawned. Cute. Clarice had a bit more control. "Worn out, that's all. Staying awake twenty plus hours, overtaxing our powers, nothing a good night's sleep won't take care of." It was her turn to yawn. And then mine. They really are contagious. "Don't worry, we'll be fine."


I smiled and kissed Clarice in the forehead, then a quick peck on the lips for Missy. "Well, off to bed with you both. I'll see you tomorrow."


"Yeah, Janus is probably already waiting on the other side." Missy agreed. I let them go so they could shunt without accidentally dragging me along.


I looked over at Zach. "So just us guys, huh?"


"Looks like it." There wasn't the usual joking attitude in his voice, not even the attempt at faking it.


"What the fuck happened while I was out?"


"Let's talk on the flight." He lifted off the ground and I followed. Whatever damage happened to my armor didn't seem to be slowing it down any, something I'd have to ask Clarice about later. We went higher than I expected. "This is a major league fuckup. Vicky's acting like it's not a big deal but... Theo. Promise you won't tell anyone about this. It has to stay between us. Even though everyone else here already knows, don't talk to them about either."


If Taylor and everyone already know, then they'll be able to deal with it more than I could. I nodded, and then felt stupid for doing so. He couldn't see me from this angle. "Yeah, I can keep quiet if it's that big a deal."


Zach took a deep breath. "When Vicky was fighting the Yangban. She's acting like she was actually fighting the whole time and it wasn't anything but that. They held her for at least two hours before she was rescued. If they wanted to kill her, she'd be dead right now."


Fuck. She could have fooled me with the way she was acting.


"She... I don't think she fooled any of us. I'm sure Lily and Clarice saw enough of it to actually know what happened or deduce it through powers. The rest of us had to read between the lines, but we're not stupid. They tortured her. Maybe they had some kind of power that forced her into normal state, or maybe they had powers strong enough not to care, but they tortured her from whenever they caught her to when Lily showed up and started killing them."


Oh fuck. I took a slow breath. If Clarice figured out what happened, and of course with her powers and history it would take her all of an eyeblink to do so, then there was no way she'd let this slide. I'd seen it a couple times, when she slipped back into the mentality of Bonesaw. When her friends and family were threatened or hurt. Victoria was something like a surrogate aunt to her. "How... did Clarice take this?"


"Oh, right, forgot to mention Lily and Vicky brought back a prisoner."


Oh fuck. Just when things were starting to get stable. Just when she was starting to get better. Fuck.


"Yeah, exactly. Some impromptu brain surgery using Lily's power and pine needles. Taylor approved, no objections from the peanut gallery. I guess it was necessary. Had to use his shunt drive to get a message back over to the team and maybe Dragon could follow it up by reverse engineering their shunt tech or whatever. The plan worked and the asshole deserved everything they did to him and worse, so I can't say it was wrong. But, well..."


"But I needed to know." This is going to be a big thing with Clarice, and probably Missy. I'll have to talk to them soon.


"Yeah, that."


"Thanks for the heads up."


"We're bros, right? Is how we do."


"No, seriously. It's good to know you were there to look out for them when I couldn't be. Anything you need, just let me know."


"Hey, how about you don't kill me for seeing them both naked, and we'll call it even?"


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A/N- Some things no one noticed from the prior chapters (so disappointed by the way). Some other things snuck in to see if you'll notice.