Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 195- Missy


"Nervous?" I asked Theo.


"A little," he admitted. "Mostly I'm just sorry I won't get to see Aster. I mean, I'm grateful they even worked out this loophole in the first place so I could see K-Purity, I just..." he trailed off, shrugging.


I nodded, understanding. I knew how hard it could be to not be able to see your family. "I'm sure they feel just as strongly," I assured him, leaning my head against his shoulder. I smiled up at him, only slightly annoyed by the fact that I couldn't even put my head on his shoulder when we were both standing, I had to lean against it. "It's a shame you're not dating someone who can literally force space to bend over backwards for you. You'd probably be able to talk her into taking you to visit every weekend with nothin more than a smile."


"Really?" he sounded relieved, though I couldn't really see him through the armor. Riley's right, I decided, he is cute. Even if he is a derp sometimes. "That would be awesome."


"Still gotta get through the mission, first," I pointed out, accepting his arm as it wrapped around my side. He's really bulked up, I realized. Not quite as big as Zach, but then Zach's power had advantages.


"We're just backup," Zach complained. "Shoulda sent us in against Baal. Use the same tactic that took down Hookwolf, and walk away with a smile."


"Dinah gave that one a ninety nine and eighty two," Emma pointed out. To my surprise, Zach didn't immediately react with disgust at her. The numbers were, in order, the odds of us walking away with no serious harm to the group, and the odds of us winning the fight decisively. None of that stupid getting away shit like always happened when I was a Ward. "And another forty three on the unacceptable consequences list."


That last number was always the big killer in our strategies. Very few enemies had much chance of winning against us. Thus far, the Ash Beast was the only threat we asked about that was likely to actually walk away from any serious attempt by us at a takedown. Dragon, in hypotheticals where we had to fight, actually came to an almost fifty percent chance of winning against us, making the two of them the only that went beyond twenty percent. With all the other big missions, it was always things like 'plague released, kills Pennsylvania' and 'sure, if you don't mind Moscow being depopulated'.


Likely had a lot to do with the fact that Pantheon only ever seemed to move on A and S class threats, plus or minus lesser threats that were just too fucked up to ignore, like most of the Fallen.


"Based on what we know, it's probably Lilith's precognition. If we move against Baal, she'll know and they'll have enough warning to prep a defense. Baal's compound is crawling with soldiers, and potential hostages." Trevor supplied. "Scouting mission only. We'll hit him if he leaves his compound to protect any of the Fallen's holdings. We just can't afford to go after him at home."


Zach sighed. "I know, I'm just f-bored is all," he glanced over at Riley, who was currently piloting her Aceso doll somewhere near Memphis. She seemed to ignore his near slip into profanity to this time. Must be busy, I decided.


"We're the emergency team," I reminded him. Technically, Theo was in charge of this particular team, but he either didn't like to confront people, or he didn't see the complaining as needing to be curbed in situations like this. That was a concern I'd bring up by proxy, let the bosses handle it if they felt it needed handled at all. Like a professional. "We'll bail anyone who needs it out. Between the five of us and Khepri's monsters, we cover just about every possible scenario. We're the ones being trusted to be able to handle it if the other teams can't."


Theo squeezed me a bit tighter. Probably not professional to cuddle in the middle of a mission, either, I reminded myself. But Zach's not wrong, it's boring here. And we had to keep our face masks on. The planet might be safe, long as you stayed out of the ocean, but the air was not fun to breath. Survivable, sure, but uncomfortable.


"Those sick fucks," Emma growled. She looked toward us. "Promise me that, if you deploy, you hurt them extra bad for me."


"Why?" Theo asked. At least he knew not to take people at face value.


"Forced breeding," she hissed through her teeth.


Theo's metal started forming around him, and his grip might have been painful if not for the suits between us. "Understood," he answered darkly. He didn't add any more words, but his battlestaff formed a nasty looking serrated blade at the top.


Zach swapped over to his acid burst weapon. Not even close to his most deadly option, but probably the least pleasant to be on the receiving end. I simply flicked my blaster up a notch. Less visible than the boys' toys. "Brute protocol approved," I spoke solely to my suit.


It was another minute before Emma made another announcement. "Houston mission is on. T-Khepri is calling you to her location. All of you. She's approved Vicky to fight Baal."
"One half digested rapist, coming right up," Zach's tone was, perhaps, even darker than Theo's.


As it turns out, however, Zach didn't get to cover Baal in acid. He had to rescue a hostage. I was the one who got to do some real damage. Two shots, the first he ignored. It was enough to kill a normal person, but Baal's power made him really tough. So I set it to a level that was ordinarily reserved for bringing down small houses. Or, in his case, turning his lower half into paste.


The child was crying as I pulled her out into the hall. I half expected her to vomit on seeing the damage Taylor had done to the guards. I knew she held back, given than when she went all out, there wouldn't be bodies left to identify. But looking at the shredded forms of these men had sustained, you'd think they met a pissed off Hookwolf.


"You'll be okay," I tried to tell the girl. She didn't seem to listen, too busy caught up in her borderline hysterics. She's younger than I am, I was disgusted to realize. I extended my power bubble around us, locating an area with a lot of people clustered together. Other captives, I realized quickly. I warped us nearby, used a dialed back shot from around the corner to drop both of them with what was probably nonlethal amounts of internal bruising. I kicked in the door without ever stepping away from the girl clinging to me.


"We're here to rescue you," I told them, activating the armor's voice amplifiers. "Stay here for right now while we clear out the rest of the Fallen. Look after her," I pushed the child toward them. It may have been harsh, but I had other things to worry about right now.


The rest of the mission would have made Sophia proud of me. Probably would have made Gallant cry. I didn't kill anyone, but only because I only aimed for arms and legs. Each shot did damage like a hit from a sledgehammer. By the time the PRT managed to get their men into the compound, I had managed to cripple thirty one Fallen. Sadly, it didn't make me feel any better, but at least I knew they'd never truly recover from those injuries.


.....


"Horus," Purity spoke hesitantly. Her costume had changed, to match her new identity. I had to wonder if the red hair was a wig or a dye job, but either way it looked absolutely natural and matched her new mostly orange costume design. I stood back a bit, this wasn't really my place get too involved. Around us, the PRT was going about the business of collecting criminals and reuniting families. Rather the opposite of what was going on in front of me.


"Ma'am," Theo responded. "Good to meet you."


"You've grown," she volunteered. "I bet the girls are all over you, now."


He looked down. "Not really," he was adorable when he was embarrassed. "I do have a girlfriend."


"Rune's gonna be disappointed," Crusader chuckled.


"I wouldn't know," Theo replied. He didn't sound happy about that conversation topic.


"So, who's the lucky lady?" Purity changed the subject. She obviously saw the same discomfort I did. "Anyone we know?"


I moved the several feet of distance with a single step. "You could say that," I gave a small wave.


"Can't say I expected that," Crusader joked. "So, you and Vista, huh? Max would have a cow."


"My father's opinion means nothing to me," Theo stood straight, this time. "Assuming he even notices me from whatever pit in hell he got dumped into, he should be grateful I didn't decide to get a boyfriend simply to spite him."


Crusader paused. "Uh... fair enough..."


I resisted the urge to laugh. Although, actually, now that I think about it, that's something I wouldn't mind seeing once or twice.


Purity, on the other hand, smiled. "I'm glad to see you've finally started standing up for yourself," she beamed. "I really mean that. I always knew you'd grow up to be a fine man."


"Thank you, ma'am," he went back to being shy. "How's Aster doing?"


"She said her first words a couple weeks ago," Purity responded with a level of pride that I pretended I wasn't jealous of. "And now that she's discovered words, she's a nonstop chatterbox."


"That's wonderful," Theo said excitedly, though I could hear a hint of sadness in his voice. I briefly wondered what Bobby was up to. "I, um, gathered a lot of her things together. And a some other stuff. They're at the farmhouse, in case..." he trailed off.


"Always the thoughtful one," Purity said approvingly. "We'll figure something out."


"Don't mean to cut this short," Crusader spoke up. "But we should probably get to work. You can only pretend to debrief for so long before it looks suspicious."


Theo's shoulder's slumped a little. "You're right," he admitted.


"I'll find a way to make contact, probation be damned," Purity insisted, then she looked over to me. "You keep him from getting too full of himself," she instructed. "Don't be afraid to put him in his place."


I smiled. "Don't worry," I replied. "I can handle that."


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

A/N- Missy hasn't had a chapter in a while. Also, were I a better planner, this might have been written before the last chapter. It doesn't detract from the story to be second, but still, I think it would have flowed a bit better.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 196


"Food, as promised," Victoria announced, handing me a cardboard container that had gone cold a while ago. She passed another one over to Taylor. "You should have told me you'd be having a press conference after the meeting."


We pulled open the boxes. She wasn't joking about the ribs plan. Lukewarm food wasn't exactly my favorite plan, but considering Pantheon's schedule, it was a pretty common part of our diet. Still better than hospital food, at least.


"Lisa still doing her announcement?" I asked.


"Yup," Taylor sighed. "Since we..." she glanced at Vicky. "Retroactive kill order notwithstanding, we have to consider Houston a failure from a PR perspective."


"Are you saying we should have let that fucker get away with..." Vicky's face went hard. She killed someone, I thought for at least the fiftieth time today. My sister straight up killed someone.


"No," Taylor interrupted. "Put me in that situation a thousand times, and I'd do the same thing every one of them. I would have killed him myself, if his power wasn't such a hard counter to mine. We did the right thing."


"So what's the problem?" she asked. "Because this is looking like a pretty mixed message right now."


"It is mixed messages. Even worse, it's politics," Taylor sighed. FrustrationDisgust. "We have to be strong, without making normal people get scared of us. We just reminded them that we can, and will, use lethal force. It's bad enough that we're flaunting our Class S status so hard as a means of intimidation. We just carried out a mission across four states in one afternoon, in a bigger show of force than most countries can unleash. And in the process, we killed one of those parahumans that's supposedly damn near unkillable. That scares people, and scared people do stupid things."


"Welcome to the world stage," I sighed. "Watched by millions, perhaps even billions... and if we fuck up even once, it could result in a civilization ending crisis."


"Well, I always did want to be famous," Vicky smiled. "So what do we do now?"


"As little as possible," Taylor replied. "Now we mostly support our allies. Let them do the job of subduing what remains of criminal elements in their areas. Maybe do some community outreach stuff. Nice, safe, stuff that doesn't frighten people. Build up for the next Endbringer. Unless we absolutely have to, that's our next important mission."


"So more of that hurry up and wait shit, huh?" she sighed. She stood there for a couple minutes, not saying anything as we ate. "I... um... wanted to say thanks for standing up for me after I killed Baal."


"I gave the command," Taylor replied. "Makes it my responsibility."


"We both know I would have gone in without your permission," she insisted.


"And I would have given the command even if you would have listened," Taylor countered. "We both played our roles. Dinah's prediction came true, as they tend to do. Yeah, our image took a bit of a hit from this, but it's really not that bad, and it got rid of one of the worst excuses for a human being left on the continent. Like I said, I'd do it a thousand times out of a thousand."


"You could have thrown me under the bus, either way," Vicky pointed out. "After..." she hesitated. "After what happened earlier, I wouldn't be surprised."


"You were just trying to protect Amelia," she dismissed. "I've done a lot worse for a lot less." I smiled, but opted not to say anything. I spoke through my link, telling Taylor just how grateful I was to her for this. She wouldn't hear words, of course, but the message would be clear.


"Well, that was enormously easier than I thought it'd be," Vicky smiled. "I kinda expected you to be more pissed off about all of that mess."


"Read the press release," Taylor offered. "Pantheon's all about second chances. We founded ourselves on that idea. If I can give one to Emma, and any of us can give one to Riley, then fuck it, you're not so bad."


"We should probably talk about that," I said to Vicky. "I'm sorry about hiding it-"


"No need," she interrupted. "I knew you were keeping a secret, and I wanted to know what it was because I was afraid it might hurt you. Now I know better and we can all go back to normal. Life goes on."


"It doesn't bother you?" I asked hesitantly.


"Honestly, Ames?" she sighed. "Not right now. Yeah, it's weird and all... but I've got other things to think about. Like wondering if every time my parents hugged me, was it only because my power forced them to? Which of my friends were really friends? Did Dean ever actually love me? Did anyone? No offense, but I really have no idea what to think anymore."


Oh fuck. "Wow... when you put it that way," I muttered. "God, I must sound so egotistical." I stood up and moved toward Vicky, pulling her into a hug. She didn't resist, but didn't really hug back. I was vaguely aware that I was making both Taylor and Vicky uncomfortable, which of course made me uncomfortable. "Sorry," I said as I let go.


"No, it's fine," Vicky replied. She was lying, and I knew that from our contact. "It's not your fault that my old power fucked with you like that. And everyone. I should be apologizing for what I did to you."


I cringed inwardly. And then there's what I did right back to her, and I'm still lying to her about. "It's fine," I said lamely. Vicky ignored the lie just as I ignored hers. It very much wasn't fine, but we seemed to come to an unspoken agreement to just let it go.


"Yeah," she offered a half hearted smile. "Well, now that that's settled, I'm going to go talk to Riley and Emma. That fight gave me a few ideas for the armor, then I'll spend the rest of the evening with Mom."


Vicky left the room in a rush, and I looked back at Taylor, not knowing what to say. She didn't have any words, either, simply offering me a pulse of support and trust through the link. It was a good thing to have, under the circumstances. I simply walked over to her. She tossed both our carry out boxes onto the floor in the corner, where the Yggdrasil ate them. I sat down next to her and lay down on her lap.


"Are you okay?" she asked me, stroking my hair.


"Not really," I sighed. "God, this whole time I was afraid of what she'd think about me after she found out. I didn't even think about what this would mean to her. Mom and Dad. Everyone else. Fuck, how selfish am I?"


"You're the least selfish person I've ever met," Taylor insisted.


"Then I'm just stupid," I argued.


"Hardly," she scoffed. "But your sister's good at hiding her thoughts. A lot like Zach."


"I really wish people would stop saying that," I muttered.


AmusementAnticipation. "I think I have a way to cheer you up," she informed me.


Uh oh. "What?" I turned my head to look up at her.


"Give me a few minutes," she smiled. A short while later, there was a knock on the door, which I opened on reflex. Taylor's changeling walked in.


"Umm... Taylor?" I asked, as the doll started taking off its shirt. I looked away, embarrassed.


"Well, we never thought to change my body double to match my new figure," she pointed out. "Which means," she grabbed my head and turned it back to where the changeling was wearing a rather skimpy two piece bikini.


I couldn't help it, I laughed.


"You know," she whispered. "I can think of a lot of things I can do with two of me."


I felt the doll's hand rest on my lower leg. I was no longer laughing. "Like what?" I whispered back. My leg was held by the changeling, and it pressed its thumbs into my foot, eliciting a popping sensation. I gasped, and she smiled.


"I've been reading up on massage therapy," Taylor informed me.


=========

A/N- See. Everything was totally innocent. Taylor knew that Amelia's feet hurt, and is just being considerate. Nothing dirty here at all.

Unless you're a dendropheliac. In which case... hehe... Woodpeckers...

Okay, yeah, I might be having too much fun with the site.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 197- Trevor


"How's the garden, Mushroom?" I asked Riley casually as I walked in.


"Got a full schedule today," she answered. "We got Battery coming to try out her armor, and then Chevalier will be here for his first series of tests. He's bringing the SEB sample. We... might have to keep Rey away from it." SEB, in this case, was our code for Simurgh's tissue samples, which we were going to replicate if at all possible.


"What for?" I asked. Rey always seemed pretty safe, as far as tinkers went.


"He... mentioned something about trying to clone a fully functioning copy with new instincts bred in to let us control it," she informed me.


"Okay..." Never mind. "Is that even possible?"


"Lisa says it's not," Riley answered. "That the material can't function properly without a core attached. Everyone else decided we weren't going to risk it. Big Sis threatened to tell Rapture about his ideas if he ever so much as thought of it again."


"We'll still be growing the samples, though, correct?" I asked.


She nodded emphatically. "Oh, yes, absolutely! It's an incredible material. We can build zerg armor that's exponentially more durable at a fraction of the weight. They'll even gain partial power resistance if it works like we hope."


"That would be insane," I moved toward where Capacitor was stored. It was mostly my project, after all. The most purely mechanical armor suit aside from Tapestry. My hand trembled a little as I thought of it seeing its first real test drive. It wouldn't be the strongest suit to have come from our combined work, but it was my personal project, and capable of taking Battery from a five or so to an easy eight, probably a nine. "So when's Emma expected, anyway?"


"You got about twenty minutes," Riley let me know as she started putting on her control system for Clarice. "Don't let her exceed quarter power for the first ten minutes, let the biosystems adapt to her power first."


"Got it," I acknowledged. I spent the time waiting scanning through the user notes. I was still reading when Emma arrived. She went yellow-shift as she approached. It was, after all, her most suitable powerset for working with Battery's power.


"So, you're that excited, huh?"


"Just got bored waiting for the eye candy to show up," I retorted. I looked around and feigned disappointment. "Lemme know if you see any." I went back to reading.


"Just for that, I'm hogging all the attention when Chevalier shows up." Emma threatened. "Maybe I'll even take a page out of Narwhal's playbook."


"Subtle," I smirked. "At this rate, it won't be long before you sneak into Zach's bedroom with a bunch of Sabah's best scarves and perform a belly dance to the Legend of Zelda soundtrack. There might also be handcuffs involved."


"Don't see it happening," she sighed. "Vicky came along and blew both me and Crystal out of the water."


"Hard to compete with a shapeshifter."


"Can't even be mad," she didn't bother looking up from the computer. "Vicky's awesome. You should totally seduce her. Then I'll have my opening."


"Don't think it works that way," I pointed out.


"You said it yourself: hard to compete with a shapeshifter."


....


Assault came with, to no one's surprise. "So, how's life treating you?" he asked me while Battery was busy suiting up. Her default costume couldn't be worn under the armor, and Emma had gone with to help her get it on for the first time. Once she got the hang of it, she wouldn't need any help, but it wasn't able to support the same merging systems that many other armors enjoyed. A limitation thanks to how her power augments worked.


"I really can't complain," I answered.


"Working with all these girls? I wouldn't be able to complain, either," he joked. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.


"Not really," I avoided looking at him. "I don't get noticed much. Curse of the tinker, y'know?"


"Not really," he shrugged. "But don't let it get you down. Girls like brains, especially the smart ones. And tinker girls are wild in the sack."


"Guess whose top of the line A-class battle armor has enhanced hearing!" Battery shouted from the other room.


"Come on, puppy," Assault shouted back. "As long as you girls have been back there? I'm not saying anything you haven't already figured out for yourself."


I felt Capacitor's first test on my skin. Battery's exotic electromagnetism leaving its residue in the air as she moved so fast that she seemingly teleported into the room. "Don't listen to him when it comes to women," she instructed. Then she blinked. "Fuck that's fast."


"Your power disrupts relativity," I informed her. Putting your Passenger high on the list of possible tools that the Entities use for their star drives, I added silently. "Capacitor stores that influence and amplifies it. In addition, it takes the brunt of the stress generated. Meaning that once fully charged you could use your full abilities for extended periods without much more stress than jogging. Although going into redzone will be similarly painful as your natural maximum power output."


"But redzone is a lot stronger than what you can do naturally," Emma added quickly. "If you stay in yellow, you'll have your normal max, but without any of the usual side effects. Plus all the other stuff the suit can do."


"You can probably get away with using your power for field command," I suggested. "Being able to think twenty times faster than a normal person has a lot of potential in letting you emulate a pretty strong thinker power."


"What's the 'Disruptor'?" Battery asked. She must have seen it on the HUD options.


"Your power weaponized," Emma volunteered. "It distorts the flow of time in whatever you shoot. Nothing we can use to accelerate others, at least not without more tinkers to look at our data and figure something out. But it will create chaotic eddies of slowed and sped up time in a small area. Because of how unpredictable the weapon is, we can't create a nonlethal setting. Don't use it unless you're shooting at something you really want dead. Based on our research, it should even hurt Endbringers."


"Not quite Endslayer grade, however," I qualified. No sense in making her take stupid risks.


She looked at Assault and smirked. "Don't worry, it's not an Endbringer I'm going to use this on."


"But Puppy," Assault pouted. "If you do that, then I won't be able to impart my wisdom in understanding women to the boy here," he put a hand on my shoulder.


"Not helping your case, here," Battery pointed out.


"Actually," I argued. "Assault's been a great help to me."


"Told you so," he smirked.


"I mean, if he can find someone, then anyone can."


....


Battery was obviously thrilled by her suit's capabilities. An overall upgrade to her power on every level, plus enough bells and whistles to make anyone happy. She would be one of the heaviest hitters in New York until we worked out some custom suits for the Adepts, at least. I retreated to my room after a bit, leaving Emma to do the final testing phase. I wasn't needed, and frankly I found Assault annoying. He meant well, I guess, but he was still annoying.


"Hey, Tevor," Victoria caught up to me. "Have a couple minutes?"


"Uh, sure," I agreed. "Chevalier won't be here for a while. What's up? Riley said something about you having upgrade ideas for your armor?"


"No," she answered. "Well, yes, but that's not what I wanted to bring up."


"Okay?" I prompted. Vicky was acting really weird since after her fight with Baal. Then again, she did have to kill someone, I reminded myself. That had to mess with her head.

"So what's the problem?"


"Do you have any plans for Friday?" she asked.


Wait, is she? "Umm, not really," I answered.


"Good, there's a new movie coming out," she started.


Oh god, she is. "Umm, Vicky, it's not that I'm not flattered, but aren't you kinda with Zach or something?"


Her face scunched up in confusion for a second, and then she started laughing. "Oh, oh god," she covered her mouth. "You thought I was asking... no, no. I was trying to hook you up with a friend of mine. Mandy, I'm pretty sure you've met her a couple times."


I knew who she was talking about. Nice girl, if a bit too quiet. She probably would have been a target for bullying, if not for the stories about what happened to Taylor. Not many out there who wanted to risk annoying Khepri, and bullying the shy girl was just begging to earn the personal hate of both girls, so all the students who would otherwise cause trouble were afraid to try. I'm not interested," I informed Vicky.


"What? Why not? You two would make a cute couple," she argued.


"She's not my type," I insisted.


"Don't see why not," Vicky continued. "Sure, she's not a model, but you'll be surprised if you give her a chance."


"Umm, when I say she's not my type, I mean that she and I are more likely to be in competition than date," I offered.


"Competition? For what?" she asked. "Sure, she's smart, but she's not tinker smart."


"No, I mean we're fishing in the same pond," I tried.


"Fishing? Okay, what?"


"Gay," I finally gave up. "I'm gay. As in, not attracted to girls."


She blinked. "Huh."


"Yeah, something like that," I agreed.


"Well," she asked. "I bet I can find you a cute guy, then."


"I'd really rather you didn't," I argued. "I plan on coming out, in costume, after I graduate. I also really don't want people drawing too many lines between my civilian life and my cape life. I already spend too much time around you and Zach at school. So let's just keep it in both closets, okay?"


She shrugged. "Okay, I guess that works," she reluctantly agreed. "Although if you want to throw people off, you might need to find yourself a girl to be your beard. That kid who never dated and then came out as gay after highschool is a clue people will notice."


"You... fuck, you're probably right," I reluctantly agreed.


"I'm always right," Vicky boasted. "Oh, and while I have your attention, I was trying to come up with a belated birthday gift for Zach, and kinda need advice."


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

A/N- whee, expanding other characters!

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 198- Rey


Riley and I examined our samples of Simurgh material. The crystalline pseudo-organics were incredible. "Nothing in this should allow them to be alive," I informed the girl. She no doubt already figured it out, of course, but I was as much asking her to educate me as anything. As much as it galled me to admit it, sometimes, Riley was simply a stronger tinker than I was. Besides, she was splitting her attention between this and watching as Emma and Chariot worked with Chevalier. I hadn't seen our bosses so excited about a power since Lily's anti-Endbringer capability was suspected.


"That confirms Lisa's suspicions," Riley responded. "Endbringer matter is merely a construct, and the real life form powering the creatures exist in another dimension."


"Like the Passengers?" I asked. I had long wanted to know where powers came from, and had read every transcript that Emma and Riley put out on the subject, as well as my own contributions to the theories and discussions. I wasn't as gifted as Riley, though I had Emma beat as far as tinkers went. Her advantage was she didn't have the Taboo holding her back like the rest of us. Still, my part in the dialogue mattered, and helped our research move forward.


"Possibly," she answered. "Lisa's convinced that the Endbringers are controlled by people, not Scion."


"So unless someone's found a way to take control of Passengers, it's a parahuman power involved," I concluded. I'll have to bring up the possibility with Ruth.


"Power combination, most likely," she volunteered. "A team of powerful parahumans, like us."


"A team with nothing better to do than torture our entire world?" I asked. "What kind of sick fucks would do that?"


"The Slaughterhouse Nine," she whispered. Congrats, Rey, would you like some bread with those feet?


"Sorry," I don't know how to handle things like this. "I didn't mean to bring up bad memories." I wished I could talk to Ruth about this, but I couldn't imagine how she'd react to us keeping one of the most dangerous tinkers in the world like this. She was a wonderful woman, and I was prepared to even say that I loved her, but this was Bonesaw, here. That would be a bit much to ask her to accept.


"I'll be fine," she answered, going back to her work. I frowned. There was a time when I thought she was far too childish to be the monster she was. Now it was the opposite. The child was far too young to act so old.


I went back to my work as well. It wasn't my place to get involved. She had her friends, good ones, and they would take care of her. I just worked here. Side by side with some of the most powerful teenagers to have ever existed while solving the problem of a space whale virus god that would destroy the world a decade or two from now.


"Riley, come look at this," I spoke up after about an hour more work. I was watching the clone sample of SEB tissue. She followed my instructions, of course.


"It's summoning mass from nowhere," she responded.


"A lot more," I confirmed. "By my calculations, its current density is akin to a hundred pounds of mass, yet it's only consumed a couple gallons of nutrient fluid material."


"Which means it's still capable of breaking the laws of physics, even without a Passenger connection!" Riley declared. "It actually is tinker tech!"


"It's like a nanotech assembly system that exists in multiple dimensions," I continued. "In fact, each nanite probably only exists partially in a single dimension, allowing them to..." I paused for a second. What was I talking about?


"The mass exists only partially in our own dimension," I continued. "But the properties of all its dimensions still exist in this one. In that way it is a lot like Chevalier's power, and even more like Theo's. His power does resemble the Endbringer mass, at least until a certain density is reached."


Riley's face darkened a little. "Theo's power looks like an Endbringer?"


"A little," I replied. "We know how shards evolve. Maybe one of the power synergies used to build them came from a Passenger that evolved from the same source."


"Maybe," she frowned. "We'll tell Lisa about the theory."


"Have to anyway," I informed her. "According to the computer, we tripped the Taboo at some point."


"Endbringers are Taboo?" she asked. "I always thought they were just power resistant. That's huge."


I pressed a couple buttons. "Flagged as priority," I informed Riley. "Lisa should get back to us right away on it."


"Taboo really sucks," Riley complained, going back to her computer. I went back to mine. This material was insane, and even if it had no other special features to exploit, there was no doubt the next generation of Zerg would be far more powerful. Especially now that we knew we could grow the tissue out of the amnio gel, instead of expensive and hard to manufacture tinker metals. Granted, we still needed those expensive components for shunting and power supplies, but now we only faced about a third of the expenses as before.


Of course, it would mean a new rebreeding program to adapt the zerg to their new physiologies, but at this point Khepri could do that on her own. There was no innovation to that process. Merely time and repetition. Building the new SEB growth shaping system would be far more complex. I started drawing up plans immediately while keeping an eye on the testing machinery. Powers testing would come later, as would 'breeding' it with other EB samples promised in the future, but we could give Emma a head start on her research into the energy properties of the materials.


I was still hard at work when Chevalier was finished with our battery of tests, six hours later. He looked exhausted when I came out, carrying the new weapon I'd grown for him. He looked up at me, then glanced at the gorgeous ivory sword. The SEB blade was flawless, and he wasn't even trying to hide his admiration.


"It is pretty," I said as I held it out for him.


"Very," he agreed.


"It's yours," I informed him. "One part apology for the ringer they put you through during testing, and another part proof of concept. Based upon our testing of your original weapon, this one's almost better even without your power behind it. A little heavier than your decorative ceramic sword, only slightly less durable than the giant blade. Its only real weakness, such as it is, is the size.


"Which is something I can easily fix," he concluded with a smile, taking the blade.


"Careful," I advised. "It's a lot sharper than your original weapon."


"Wait until you hear what else were gonna do for you," Emma's teasing could be mistaken for flirtatious. The girl had a tendency toward celebrity worship, and Chevalier was one of the big names. "Since all the durability is built into the SEB sword, we can replace your giant weapon with a tinker device."


"What would I be expecting out of it?" Chevalier asked, curiously.


"What do you want?" Emma replied. "The Protectorate's footing the bill for this baby, right? And I can make it the size of an RV and you'd still be able to make use of it. Which means I can set you up with forcefields, gravity sheaths, nanothorns, and have space to spare. How about a railgun? Adjustable output, of course, but it wouldn't be hard to build something awesome. Especially if you can use your power on the bullets. Depleted Uranium weight, plus Endbringer durability? In fact, I could probably make it rapid fire! I might have to create a secondary weapon-"


"Umm, Emma?" I interrupted. "You're starting to fugue." Of all the tinkers on the team, she was actually best about avoiding that, but she wasn't anywhere near immune.


"Uh, sorry," she blushed. Or, her body's equivalent to blushing. I doubted anyone who didn't know her would spot it.


"That's fine," Chevalier insisted, offering a winning smile to the pair of us. "I've worked with tinkers, before. I remember the first time I saw Hero come up with something that excited him. But he never thought of using my power to accomplish something like this. I mean, it all seems so obvious now that you've started doing it, but all those years going by without anyone really thinking to build specialized equipment to harness powers this way. You've accomplished something incredible, here."


The Taboo, I recognized. That's why it wasn't until Amelia broke through that we started seeing tinker-power augmentation, and power interactions. Of course, now that the idea had taken root in other organizations, it was only a matter of time until it became the norm instead of the exception. It made me nervous, however. Power interactions seemed vastly stronger than any individual parahuman. What would we do when we were faced with enemies using strategies like our own?


"Here," Emma offered him a card. "This has my personal email. I'll draw up a list of options for you, with a few estimates for costs and equipment requirements."


He accepted it. "Thank you, I'll get in touch immediately after I return home."


....


Ruth looked worse off than Chevalier did. The advantages and disadvantages of video calls. Tinker grade ones, no less. "Rough day?"


"Very," she agreed. "The Vasil children are starting to test their boundaries. Their father used fear to keep them under control, and that's wearing off. For some, it's a good thing. A chance for them to enjoy normalcy. Others are... well, they've started implementing the antimaster drug as a preventative instead of a treatment. It's getting to the point where some people are talking about giving up and locking them all away for life, instead of trying to help them."


"Masters scare people," I replied. "I should know, I am one."


"Fortunately, we haven't faced the nightmare scenario of one of them having a power on the order of Cherish or Heartbreaker himself in any of the children, it's basically the only reason this project still exists," she informed me. "We're trying to find homes for them within the Protectorate's system. So that when this implodes, hopefully there will be places for them to go."


"We came across one of those," I informed her. "Apparently they're implanting compulsions in criminals to stop them from using their powers. The bosses weren't happy to find out the way they did."


"That would be Florence," she sighed. "Tell them I'm sorry about that mess. It was part of our deal. Haven's taken responsibility for her and a few of the children who haven't had triggers. She's one of ones we have the most hope for."


"Well, that's a start, at least," I tried my best to sound compassionate. I was never good at conveying my feelings. Luckily, with Ruth I didn't need to be. Her powers meant that it literally was the thought that counted. She'd know what I meant, no matter how badly I bunged it up. Of course, it cut both ways. I couldn't fake anything past her even if I were the best liar in the world. "I know your powers make you a better expert than I could hope to be on psychology. But, one of the things they teach you early in med school is that you can't save everyone. You do your best, of course, but you have to find a way to come to terms with the idea that you're still human.


She smiled, genuinely. "A very smart, very good man said something like that to me before," she told me. "Thank you for reminding me."


"Hey," I said. "What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn't share the wisdom I've accumulated? Just don't expect me to do it again, because that was all of it."


She laughed.


I hesitated, then asked anyway. "So... you know how we talked about Passengers, and how they try to compel us to use our powers to the fullest extent?"


"Yes," she responded, a little warily. Conversations on the subject tended to upset her a little, and she refused to share why.


"Lisa came to the idea that Endbringers have a human controller, or controllers, recently," I informed. "I was thinking, you could probably apply your power to how they work. You could probably get a lot of data off Dragon to help. It might help you relax some."


"If I can find the time," she quickly agreed.


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

A/N- Woo, Rey gets an interlude! Actually, I'm glad I did his one... more of the loose ends being tied up from the last couple arcs.

Also, I might still do that Rune interlude. Maybe. Anyone know if her actual name is ever mentioned in the story?

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 199- Emma


I watched Chevalier play with his sword for a bit. I resolved to get his autograph, but only after I had something to show him from my tech. The SEB sword was cool and all, for something took no real effort and was grown in a vat. Its weight, durability, and ease with which it cut, well, I imagined Taylor would be overjoyed to have zerg encased in claws and armor like that, and she deserves to be. But Chevalier's folded space power was incredible, and I could do so much with it. What I built for him would be the stuff to impress our namesakes.


I left the boys to play with their toys, and started playing with mine. With some exception to the mobile command system, I had yet to work with anything larger than the biosystems of the zerg, and those were mostly Rey and Riley's project. So little of it was mine. Granted, the best of it was that part, but it still was something I couldn't claim real recognition for.


This sword would be mine, almost exclusively. Endbringer matter belonged to no one on this team, at least. When Chevalier used this weapon, I would be able to point to it and say I made that. I should really do some research on mythological swords for a name.


I retreated to the hidden expanse of lab, and caught sight of Riley doing her part on the SEB tissue. I was still in biotech state, it was best suited for analyzing Chevalier's power, and I hadn't bothered changing out of it, and that meant I instantly knew she was upset. Something that had been happening a lot lately.


I sat down next to her. "So, how's the garden, Mushroom?"


"It's good," Riley answered. "Rey had some new theories on the Endbringers and how they're made. I'm testing the tissue for more clues. If we can find out how the Endbringers are built, then we can find a way to shut them off."


God damn it, I sighed inwardly. I start designing a new superweapon, and Riley goes straight to 'find Endbringer off switch'. I'll never achieve recognition at this rate. "In the same way you can black out Taylor's power?" I asked.


"Kinda," she agreed. "Actually, that's a really good idea. We know they're controlled extradimensionally. Maybe we can reinforce the dimensional boundary and cut off their communications at the source!"


"Sounds like something you should send by Dragon," I suggested. "That doesn't seem like your specialty."


"I know," she admitted.


"What's really wrong?" I asked, putting a hand on the girl's shoulder.


"Nothing," I didn't need my powers to tell me she was lying. She might have needed her powers to realize she wasn't fooling me for a second. "I just... there's this boy I like."


What? "Anyone I know?" God have mercy on whatever poor boy drew Riley's attention. "Has he managed to snag that scarf of yours, yet?"


"It doesn't matter," she sighed. "He's not interested in me. Doesn't even look in my direction like that."


Okay, this is something I think I can handle. "If it's Trevor, I'm afraid you're pretty much out of luck."


"No," she looked toward me. "Trevor's nice, but he's not... up to my standards. I have a number of highly desirable traits for a mate and expect the same in return."


"Ah, yes," I nodded. "I know that story well. Normal people use a number system. One through ten, where ten is the perfect combination."


"Eleven," she answered the unspoken question without a moment of hesitation. Oh, damn, she's got it bad.


"Come on, Tinker-girl, use your objectivity on this one," I insisted. "He has to have some kind of flaw. Everyone does. Come on, find something. If nothing else, he can't be that smart if he doesn't notice you."


"His girlfriend is prettier than me," she answered unhappily. "And nicer. And doesn't kill people."


Nevermind, maybe I can't handle this. "Oh. I can relate to that," I told her. Minus the murder part. Although, with the stuff Vicky was showing me, and my powers, I could be pretty good at it. And what I did to Taylor came so close to being murder that I avoid the label by technicality alone.


"Really?" she asked, her eyes showing the dampness of tears soon to fall. "What did you do?"


"Depends," I answered. "There was a time when I'd have trashed the other girl's rep and walked away with the guy, just because I could get away with it."


"I won't do that," Riley's tears were replaced by an angry determination.


"Neither will I, now," I agreed. "You want him to be happy, too, right?"


"Of course," she answered.


"And he is happy with his current girlfriend," I continued.


"Yes, and if he's not, I'll make him regret it," she added. "She's a great person."


Well, that's narrowing down who we're talking about, at least. "You're not into Zach, are you?"


"What?" she looked at me like I'd just suggested eating live scorpions. And she wasn't Riley who probably wouldn't have a big problem with that idea. "No, I'm not into Zach. That's just gross."


"He's not gross," I argued. "He acts like a dumbass, but once you get to know him he's smart, and funny, and nice, and gentle. Maybe a bit too gentle, honestly. The boy could really learn to be more assertive. Learn than girls don't need to be treated like spun glass."


"And you're still into him," the girl parroted my earlier words.


"Yes I am," I sighed. "But he's interested in Vicky, now, and she's been nothing but good to both of us. The idea of getting in the way of that disgusts me. So I'll just stay out of their way and wish them all the happiness in the world."


"But it hurts," the girl complained.


"I know," I confirmed, pulling her into a hug. "On the plus side, this is what they invented triple fudge icecream for."


"That sounds really good," she mumbled into my shoulder.


Our efforts to eat away our sorrows gave way to the obvious complaining about everything else. For Riley, there wasn't a lot to complain about. She loved school, she loved her new family, and talking about her old life was well outside our impromptu pyjama party. So it wasn't long until we distracted ourselves with something far more fun for both of us, allowing us to forget about things for a while and really enjoy ourselves with things that don't require boys.


....


By the time Chevalier's email came through that evening, we had built several graphical models of his new weaponry, complete with cost estimates and several optional features we might be able to include. There was no possible way we could build everything into a singular weapon. Really, there was enough there that we could build him three systems, and there wouldn't be a shared feature between them.


I could probably call up Kid Win and see what his theoretical modular tech specialty said about maybe creating a collection of systems for him to swap between when he deemed necessary. Then he could have all the options available for use. If, sadly, not at the same time. I mentioned that idea in my notes as well. Ultimately, the email turned out to be three pages worth of typed notes, and then two and a half gigabytes of attached schematics and designs, mostly in the form of 3D model images and schematics.


I left the computer labs near midnight, intent on seeing if Vicky or Zach were up for another late night session. Mom and Dad would just have to deal with me not coming home tonight, either.


"Sorry," Vicky's voice drifted from our exercise room. "You're a nice kid, but, it's not happening." I froze, shifting white. Superhuman hearing and the ability to suppress any noises I might make. Not the best stranger power in the world, but it's what I had to work with.


"Ouch," Zach responded. "May I ask why not?"


"Well, Emma, for one," Vicky insisted.


"Why?" he asked, and three bonus senses loosely related to hearing told me everything I needed to know about his feelings. "I don't want her. I want you." Ouch, indeed. Nothing I didn't already know, of course, but it sucks to hear.


"Living lie detector times a thousand, remember?" the undertones in her voice were more subtle, a result of her power. This hurt her, too. "You're cute in your own way, but I don't have feeings for you the way she does. She loves you. I don't. You're a good friend. That's the extent of it."


"But-"


"And you love her, too," Vicky interrupted. "So don't pretend this is some kind of hardship for you. I'm going to get changed for practice until five minutes after Emma shows up. You're going to apologize to her and she's going to take you back. Then you're going to tell me all about it and I'll congratulate both of you and mean every word of it. If not, there are three places on your body that I can use to make you wish I could kill you. Understood?"


"Uh... yeah," he agreed. Hints of concern and fear entering his voice.


I scrambled to hide around a corner as Vicky turned to walk out the door. "Just so we're clear. If you hurt him, I will punch you through the face."


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

A/N- Emma hasn't had an interlude in forever, either.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 200- Crystal


I got to 'work' early, today. Not that I did much, really, but it was nice to show up and participate. All my classes were in the afternoon, anyway. I spotted Vicky laying down on the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling. "Hey, 'cuz," I said. "You know, there's this thing humans do with their furniture, known as sitting. I know, it sounds really strange, but you should totally try it."


"I'm good like this," she answered. She learned her head back and looked at me upside down. "Zach and Emma really wore me out last night."


I paused for a second. What? No, couldn't be. "Speaking of, how is Zach? I haven't had much chance to talk to him lately."


"Happy," she answered. "He finally made his move last night."


"It took him this long?" I dropped down in a chair. "Jeez, it took him all of three hours to try for the rest of us. He must really like you."


"I shot him down," she sighed.


"Why?" I asked. "I mean, I thought you-"


"I found out what I did to Amy," she spoke. Uh... fuck... maybe it's not what I'm thinking. Please don't be what I'm thinking "My old Glory Girl aura. How badly it messed her up." Oh holy fuck. "Ah, so how long did you know about that?"


"A while," I reluctantly admitted. "Found out somewhere late June, early July. It's been a hectic last few months and I can't quite remember."


"And now I'm thinking about Dean," she added. "You know, we never argued in person. It was always over the phone. That's when we'd fight over how much time he was spending in the Wards. That's when we'd break up over whatever stupid shit we broke up over that week. Then we'd just make up again once we met in person. I didn't even think it was my power. Now? It's the only thing I can think about. Except when I feel bad that I don't feel worse about what happened to Amy."


"Well, Amy did get over it," I offered. "And now she's engaged, world famous, and spends her days stomping whole cities worth of villains while worrying about how to kill an alien space whale virus god. Seriously, did you hear about Indianapolis?"


"No, what?" she asked.


"Apparently a few of the Fallen we missed were hiding out there," I told her. "The PRT found the bodies executed thanks to an anonymous tip. One had his face blown off, one was skinned, and one, well, someone worked him over with a sledgehammer or something like it. The investigators are pretty sure they were there to join one of the local crime bosses after we broke their organization, and he killed them as a sort of peace offering to us. Or at least a 'please don't come over here' offering."


"Really?" her eyes widened. "Fuck."


"Yeah. Fuck," I agreed. "It's really hard to feel sorry for Amy when she's the leader of a team that scares powerful crime lords like that."


"God, when did this happen?" she did a casual twist and rolled off the back of the couch onto her feet.


"Heard it on the news late last night," I told her. "It'll probably feature heavily in the morning meeting. I don't think we can let people get away with shit like that."


"Good, I could really use a new punching bag," Vicky answered. "See you on the battlefield."


"Not so fast, girl," I sighed. "We're not done talking about you and Zach."


"Really? Triple homocide and apparently I was mini-Heartbreaker, and you want to talk about relationship drama? C'mon, Crystal, you're the one who used to make fun of me for that stuff."


"Zach's a friend of mine," I argued. "And you're family. This is important. How'd he take it? Did you at least let him down gently?"


"Not really," she replied. "Both barrels of 'you're a nice guy' and 'we should remain friends'." I flinched inwardly. "But, hey, at least I didn't use 'it's not you, it's me', right? That has to count for something."


"Something," I reluctantly agreed. Seriously, Vicky, what the fuck?


"I also pretty much shoved Emma onto his lap," she added. "Figuratively speaking."


What? "What?" I was stunned. "Why would you do that? Is this just so you don't have to feel bad about turning him down? Because that is either one of the nicest or bitchiest things I have ever heard of in my life, and I can't figure out which."


"I was doing it anyway," she admitted. "Even before... finding out about Amy. I don't know how to describe what it looks like to watch someone pretend to despise someone that they love, but I couldn't just ignore it."


"Yeah, but... what about them just being friends?" I asked.


"And what?" she asked. "I still would have turned him down. Seriously, I mind raped my little sister into lusting after me for years, I'll never know how Dean honestly felt about me, ever. I'm really not interested in being in a relationship with anyone right now."


I put my hand on my cousin's shoulder. It was so rare to see her act like this. "It'll get better. Zach would have understood."


"I know," she agreed. "Maybe I'll regret this, later. Right now? At least this way he doesn't have to be all mopey about it. I feel bad enough as it is, I can at least spare myself other people being miserable around me." She looked me in the eyes. "If I tell you a secret, will you promise to not say anything about it ever again? To anyone. You'll just pretend like it never happened?"


"As long as it doesn't hurt anyone," I agreed.


"I don't want to feel guilty for Zach hurting," she told me. "Or anyone. I can handle making people annoyed or angry. I can handle killing sacks of shit like Baal. But... knowing how bad I hurt Amy... that's enough guilt for one lifetime."


"It's not your fault," I told her. "You didn't know your aura worked like that, and Amy tends to hide things. And even if you were at fault, you shouldn't feel like that needs to be a secret," I consoled. "Feeling bad for doing bad things is fine. Riley does it all the time and it makes people want to hug her."


"Amy would blame herself if she knew," Vicky pointed out. "And that'd just make me feel worse."


"Okay, that's a good reason to keep it from Amy," I agreed. "But maybe you should say that to Taylor. I'm sure she'd appreciate knowing you feel bad for what happened. You really should try to patch things up with her. She is your future sister in law and such."


"Probably," she agreed. "But I feel bad about that, too. If it wasn't for what I did, would Amy be enganged to a straight girl?"


"I've asked that question a few times, myself," I admitted. "And I'm pretty sure the answer is yes."


"What makes you so sure?" she looked at me. Her eyes were a mix of hope and skepticism.


"Taylia," I answered. "They're together because of that link. And that comes from their powers, not anything you did. Whatever's going on with Amy, you didn't do anything like that to Taylor. She is, as you said, straight. And she's engaged to a lesbian. It'd be like if I were dating Legend."


"You would," she smirked.


"So would you!" I exclaimed. "Dude's goddamn hot. But the point is, if that happened, people would be wondering what was up with him, not me. Same deal. Lesbian dating another girl, that makes sense. Straight girl dating another girl, not so much. Taylia's strong enough to make that happen. Adorably, I might add. The two of them are so happy together that it sometimes makes me want to punch them both just so they do something other than smile at each other. So, yeah, that part isn't your fault. Or your aura's fault. Blame the fucking space whale virus gods that are going to blow up and eat our planet."


"That makes me feel a lot better," she sighed.


"Christ, Vicky, the way you were talking... you were planning something stupid, weren't you?"


She looked away. "I'm invoking the 'talk to no one, not even me' promise," she muttered.


"That was only if no one was going to get hurt," I argued. "This, this sounds like someone was going to get hurt."


"It's not going to happen, so don't worry about it," she argued. "It wasn't going to happen at all. Just the guilt speaking."


"You weren't going to kill yourself, were you?"


"What? No!" she exclaimed. "Fuck, how's that suppose to make anyone feel better? Besides, even if I wanted to Amy would just have me brought back anyway. And Riley would probably surgically install a chip in my brain to keep me from trying it again."


"Why don't you just tell me what it is?"


"Fine, but I mean it with that promise," she insisted. "You tell no fucking one, ever. Not even me."


"If it won't hurt anyone," I repeated.


"It'll never happen," she insisted. "I knew it was a bad idea the moment it popped into my head." She looked around. "Okay, now or never."


"Fine, I promise," I sighed. "We'll never speak of it again."


She clenched her hands together and lowered her head. "I thought that, since it was my fault she spent three years like that, with my aura. It'd be fair if I... umm... volunteered myself. Gave her what she wanted."


"What the hell, Victoria!" I exclaimed.


"I know! I told you it was a bad idea and I'd never do it!"


"I hope not! The only thing dumber than that would be if some retard tried to revive the dead entity!"


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

A/N- It's been a while since Crystal got an interlude, too.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 201- Lisa

Crystal was the first to arrive, looking more than slightly shaken. Recently learned disturbing news. Won't make eye contact. Afraid I'll learn details. Afraid I'll use information. Doesn't relate to her. Relates to a friend. Afraid of information upsetting someone important. Afraid I would tell that person. Information will upset Taylor. Crystal's not conflicted in loyalties, doesn't percieve hiding it as a betrayal. Doesn't believe information will hurt the group. I let it drop. Crystal was one of the only people around here whose judgment I trusted. Her and, disturbingly enough, Riley. Says a lot about the rest of the team.


She sighed. "So, did you catch the news last night?"


"Indianapolis, right?"


"That'd be the one, got any ideas?"


"May as well wait for the others before we start that up," I answered. "It's boring, anyway. I know you have better to dish, just the two of us."


"And save you the joy of showing off how you already know?" she snarked. Nervous. Afraid I've discovered the secret. Certain I'll act on the information. Afraid it represents a threat to Pantheon as an organization if I do.


"You just don't want to admit I was right," I smiled broadly.


"About what?" she asked.


"Kinda want to hear it myself," Taylor said as she walked in, already costumed. I watched the color drain from Crystal's already fair skin tone.


"Zach and Emma got back together last night," I taunted. Relief flooded Crystal's face. Wow, I thought. Teasing like this might even be more fun than actually knowing all the answers. Probably not, though.


"Wow," Taylor chuckled. "Fifty bucks says it'll take Amelia and Riley days to put Emma back together once Vicky finds out."


"You're on!" I declared.


"That was not a real bet!" Taylor complained.


"Too late," I insisted. "Vicky's the reason they got back together. Isn't that right, Crystal?"


"Umm, yeah," she agreed just a little too quickly for it to sound casual. "Don't know all the details, but she decided she wants to be single for the time being. Something about, well, it's personal. So she took a page from Lisa's book and, I quote, 'shoved Emma into his lap, figuratively speaking'." Taylor's not surprised by Victoria's sudden choice of celibacy. Knows the cause. Learned during Houston mission. Victoria learned of her aura's effect on Amelia.


"She should have done it literally," I teased.


"Seriously, Lisa," Taylor sighed. "What is with you and trying to get Zach laid? Is he bribing you? Does he have a strangely specific low level master power that we don't know about?"


"I like a challenge?" I offered. Really, I just did it for the laughs. People get so worked up over relationship drama, and I couldn't help but dip my feet into that pool. And then kick the water at everyone else.


"That might even be more disturbing," Taylor sighed. "Amelia's going to be a bit late. Her other little sister has been moody lately, too." Riley's emotions have been in flux since after Dream Girl. No, somewhat before then. Upset, lonely, feels left out. Afraid of losing her place. Emma's improving as a tinker. The zerg project is nearing the limits of what Riley's knowledge can accomplish. Her new project is the brain tech and Taboo. Is frustrated at lack of progress. Is frustrated at a lack of recognition from Amelia for bringing Victoria back.


I rubbed my eyes a little. Using my power too much in planning missions. Moving on seven cities in four states simultaneously takes freakin' work. And I hadn't tapped my new power in so long that I may as well not even have it. "It's okay," I sighed. "We'll just wait for Emma, Lily and Rey to show up. Help yourself to the coffee."


Our morning meeting didn't start until after the kids had left for school, for a few reasons mostly revolving around the rest of us making sure we wouldn't miss it for some issue on that front. Lily arrived a bit ahead of schedule, as was her habit. Emma and Rey, just a little late. Amelia didn't show up by the time I started talking.


"So, first bit," I started. "Have you all heard the news about the Fallen members that were mutilated in Indianapolis?"


"No," Emma confessed. "Fuckers did something to deserve it, I'm sure."


"I heard," Taylor's voice went a little cold. "People killing in our name like that? We have to stop it."


"If it makes you feel better, I'm pretty sure it's bullshit," I offered.


"Pretty sure?" Crystal asked.


"Well, yeah, pretty sure. There's not enough material for me to really turn my power on," I explained. "But I can't imagine that any supposed criminal mastermind would do something this idiotic. I can think of a lot of scenarios, too many. Most of them involve this being a frame job. Either to draw our attention or to deflect it away. Could even be the Fallen, themselves, trying to fake their own deaths. I don't know. Like I said, too many possible ways this could be explained, and that's without factoring in any number of powers that can complicate matters."


"It does, of course, mean we do have to go there," Taylor concluded.


"Absolutely," I agreed. "We can't let people get away with this."


"Killing Fallen?" Lily asked. "If you saw the shit we saw in Tennessee, you'd be all for it. I thought E88's dog rings were fucked up..."


"I'm with her," Emma added. "We can't do worse to them than they've already done."


"The problem is using us as a justification," Crystal corrected. "That's dangerous. We act like we approve of this, for even half a second, and others are going to start doing the same thing. Sooner or later, someone's going to get hurt that doesn't deserve it."


"Yeah," Lily agreed. "I get it. I'm just saying if this is what it looks like, we should go easy on them. Might be better off running the recruitment strategy instead of just stomping on them until they stop moving."


Still blaming herself for Missy's injuries. More cautious now. Perhaps overly cautious, afraid to make a mistake. Wants to allow someone else to control her to free her from responsibility. Sabah. Sabah was deeply upset by what she saw. Lily wants to keep her away from further conflict for a while. Hoping for a peaceful resolution as much for that reason as any.


"I'll keep that in mind," Taylor agreed. "This will be a scouting mission, first and foremost. No decisions until we know exactly what we're dealing with." That earned a nods from Lily, Emma and Crystal.


"I had one of Accord's people write up a draft for you," I told Taylor. "You're on for an announcement at noon."


"God damn it," Taylor sighed. "Is it too late to go back to being a supervillain? I never had to give speeches then."


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

A/N- Lisa hasn't had an interlude in a while, either.

 

[Daunmi]

On a side note, what are the odds Dinah would give...

Click to shrink...

Taylor: "Status report!"
Lisa: *sigh* "Before you start..."
T: "Jesus Christ, what have you done to her?!"
L: "OK! Before. You. Start."
T: "Make her stop!"
L: "Would you care for me to explain?"
T: "Oh yes Lisa, I would love to know why our resident precog is unable to do anything other than laugh and gasp for air between bouts."
L: "I asked a question."
T: "You asked a question?"
L: "I asked. A question."
T: "Oh, well I guess she should answer it then?"
L: "Well, it's gunna be kind of hard, 'cause, uh, what with the lack of being able to breath."
T: "Brilliant. So what are we supposed to do?!"
L: *Grunting, whilst standing up from her incredibly comfortable high back red chair* "Huh. Well, I guess I have to be our precog now!"
T: "What."
L: "Yep. No other option."
T: "How about any other option. ANY AT ALL?"
L: "No use trying to put the breaks on this, it's going down!"
T: "... You planned this."
L: "What?"
T: "You planned this, I know you did!"
L: "Pffft, you honestly don't trust me?"
Riley: *Bursting in through the door* "Lisa! The surgical tools have been secured. Unfortunately Big Sis said she didn't want anything to do with modifying how powers connect to our brains but..." *notices Taylor* "Oh..."
T: *Stares*
L: "You wont believe how little she's charging me for this."
T: "Fffff-"
L: "She'll do it for nothing!"
T: "Lisa!"
L: "LET ME HAVE MY DAY IN THE SPOTLIGHT!"

Originally I was just going to say that they'd have to get Amelia to keep Dinah's body oxygenated as she laughs. Then it ran away from me.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 202- Lily


"We're doing what!?" Taylor exclaimed.


"You heard me," Lisa replied.


"I know I heard you, I just can't believe it," she retorted. "You're basically putting Victoria in charge of a team."


Amelia's head nodded in agreement. "Can you maybe elaborate a little?"


"She and Riley are ideal for the investigation," Lisa insisted. "So we let them handle it. Pantheon needs to show it has the ability to be subtle. Going out in full regalia is going to give people the impression that we found our hammer and are using it to smash everything we see."


"Vicky's not what I'd call subtle," I retorted, and the others looked at me. "I mean, she's cool to spend time with, but she's kinda... well... I'm not really one to talk, but she's a real hothead."


"Yeah," Amelia agreed. "There's gotta be a better choice for this."


"Who else?" she asked. "Can't send you or Taylor, you're too high profile. We have to focus on our lower hierarchy members. Of those we have Crystal, who's not equipped for this sort of thing. No offense."


"I'm not equipped to do something so stupid it borders on the insane?" Crystal snarked. "I'm taking that as a compliment. The part where you imply I'm 'lower' on the hierarchy than you? That's the insult."


"We can't send any of our other tinkers," she continued, ignoring Crystal's comments. "The stuff with Chevalier and the Zerg upgrades are too critical. Zach's staying because he won't be much help in the mission, and it would disrupt Emma since they're in that squishy happy phase of the relationship. Speaking of which," she looked directly at where Taylor and Amelia were sitting. "When are the two of you going to grow out of that?"


"When you stop being a deranged bitch?" Amelia suggested. Taylor gave her fiancee a half hearted backhand that was less a reprimand and more a show of support for the comment in and of itself.


"This is likely to take a couple days," Lisa continued. "Which means Missy's not really an option. We're on thin enough ice with her mother as is. Theo is an option, but we really shouldn't be putting everything on him. He's a good leader, but others need to have their chance as well."


She's right about that, I agreed. Theo really came through for us after I fucked up. Putting him in charge would have made sense to me. Hell, I'd settle for dragging Lisa along and making her the leader for this.


"But Vicky?" Amelia asked.


"Trust me, she needs this," Lisa insisted. "We can send someone else with the group. Lily, would you like to go?"


What? "What?" I asked. Seriously, what the fuck?


"Yeah," Lisa insisted. "You're pretty good friends with Vicky, right? And you're the one advocating we do this the peaceful way. And you scare the hell out of people. When you say you're not there to fight, they'll respond with 'thank god'. You're perfect for this!"


"You're doing this to fuck with me on purpose, aren't you?" I glared at the blond. She was and I knew it. Eliminating all the better options and setting this up to make it so easy for something to go wrong. If I didn't go, there'd be an even bigger mess, and then Sabah would be even more worried. I shouldn't go, she needed me right now, and I sure as hell wasn't going to bring her along. She's been through enough.


"Would it make you feel better to know I already ran this past Dinah?" she smiled.


"We rely on her too much," Taylor complained, but I knew she'd already been persuaded.


"Fuck my life," I surrendered to the inevitable. "What's the plan?"


....


I held Sabah from behind, almost apologetically. "Really?" she asked. "Vicky? Why?"


"I guess she impressed them in Houston," I half lied. "And you have to admit, her powers make her really good for tracking and investigation work. Plus her powers mean she might even be better in a fight than I am."


"Then why do you have to go?" Sabah asked, turning in my arms to look up at me. "I don't want you getting hurt."


"If I go, there shouldn't be any fighting at all," I told her. I won't put you through that, I added silently. "Didn't you get the memo? You're being held by one of the deadliest parahumans on the planet."


"You're not scary at all," she smirked, then gave me a kiss. "Just a cute little kitten."


"Rawr," I whispered, then bit her bottom lip. "A tiger, maybe. I could eat you alive."


"Not if I don't let you," she teased back. I felt my clothes tighten as her power infused the fabric. I could have broken the hold at any time, since my power nullified hers unless I was very careful with how I used mine. But where was the fun in that?


"Seems I've caught the tiger," she put her hand on my chest and pushed me back onto her couch, then straddled my lap and leaned against me. Her next words were a whisper. "Don't worry, I'll still let you."


I smiled up at her. All games aside, I was going to protect her. As long as I can fight, she won't have to.


....


"So, are you excited?" Vicky asked me when I showed up. I glanced at the others. Riley and Theo. It was a well balanced team, I was forced to admit. High end on both offense and defense, a couple fairly powerful thinkers, and a healer if things did go south. I tried not to think to hard about again having to work with Bonesaw again. Naturally, I kept that detail from Sabah. She wouldn't understand.


There wasn't any point in trying to lie to the girl. "Nervous, honestly," I answered. "First time we've been given this level of autonomy on a mission. That takes a lot of trust." The last time was pretty much fed to me word by word. This was, as Lisa had put it, a kind of team building exercise. It probably was a good idea, except for the whole 'trial by fire' part. I really could live without that.


"Really?" Riley asked with a smile.


"Yeah," I confirmed, knowing my discomfort toward the girl was easily detectable by both her and Vicky. Fuck, Theo was smart, he probably knew it as well. If anything, that'd just make my words more meaningful. "This isn't like our missions against the Teeth and Fallen where we had side missions or direct supervision. This is just us on a mission that's going to be front page news no matter how it turns out. If we screw up it makes the whole team look bad. That takes trust."


"I hadn't thought of it like that," Vicky replied. "That's kinda big, isn't it?"


"Yeah." Well, that's a bit lame. "So I'm nervous." We all glanced at each other.


"Hey, don't let nerves get to you," Vicky insisted. "We're still a collection of crazy powerful badasses. We just have to find a killer and explain to them how badly they fucked up. The only hard part is they're only guilty of murdering Fallen. Who fucking deserve it."


"Without starting a small war," I reminded. "If this turns large scale violence, we failed our win condition."


"Shouldn't be so hard," Vicky replied. "I mean, look at us. No one wants to start a fight with us. All we really need to do is ask a few questions. Second anyone lies to us, we know where to look. Pretty easy, all considered."


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

Someone asked for a Lily chapter.

Also, I think I'm starting to get the hang of this telling the story around the main characters instead of through them experiment I've been doing lately. What do you think?

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 203- Riley


Missy opened up the path for us, and led us through. While she didn't need to, it was easier for the others to follow the path if they were led. Maybe Victoria could have figured it out, thanks to the power she got from my Passenger, but it was easier to be led. Clarice followed me, of course.


Our world was finally comfortable to breathe without special help, now. Still a very warm environment, especially compared to the mid fall weather on the other side. That allowed Missy and Theo to say their goodbyes with their faces exposed.


"I'll miss you," Missy told Theo, giving him a quick hug.


"I'll miss you, too," he kissed her forehead. "With any luck, we'll only take a few hours."


"I can still miss you that long," she replied.


They're so cute together. I focused on what Emma told me, about being happy that they were happy. Missy and Theo were my friends, and I would be happy for them. Vicky stepped up near me and put her hand on my head, rubbing my hair. It was nice.


"You know," there wasn't room for doubt.


"Won't breathe a word of it," she answered, then she switched to the private com system. "I take it no one else does?"


"Emma," I informed her, following suit and going over to com. "Lisa, probably, but if she does then she's keeping it to herself."


"Probably doesn't," Vicky told me. "I know more about the flaws in Lisa's powers than she does. Her ability's pretty brute force. Like a battle axe. Lots of power for smashing through obstacles, in exchange for giving up a lot of efficiency and accuracy. Mine's more like a scimitar. I can't get as deep, but mine's faster and more effective at handling the things it can handle."


"How do you know about weapons like that?" I asked.


"Emma asked Zach and I to do her a favor and help her name Chevalier's new weapon," she shrugged. "Besides, with my powers it can't hurt to find a few ideas for weapons to use. Besides, you'd be amazed at how boring things can get with the lack of sleeping."


"I thought you liked Zach," I asked. "Why?"


She understood my meaning. "Hard to explain. Probably the same reasons you have. They're good together, and it just doesn't feel right to get in the way of that."


I smiled and looked at her. "You know, Emma said something a lot like that when she thought you and Zach were together."


She blinked "Really? I guess that means I made the right choice." She wrapped her arm around me. "For what it's worth, I think you did, too. I'm glad Amy decided to adopt you."


"You mean that?" I asked. I didn't need to, my own skills and info coming off Clarice confirmed she was telling the truth. She could hide from my tech, perhaps fool it, but not all of it at once, and not without me at least knowing she was trying to beat that tech.


"Yup," she gave a light squeeze. "Ever since Amy spontaneously grew up into a badass overlady, I've been missing a cute little sister to take on shopping trips and give advice about boys and life. Guess who just got drafted?"


"So, what's the plan, anyway?" Lily interrupted. "We should probably know how we're handling this before we go in." She was right, this was important. And they were trusting us with it. It wasn't because it was something only we can do, it was because Big Sis believed we could handle it.


"First, we go by the PRT and let them know what we're doing," Vicky answered, letting me go, but still staying near. It was a nice gesture. "As much fun as it would be to just solve the problem before anyone even knows we're here, that'd probably just fuck everything." I resisted the urge to tell Vicky to stop swearing. But she was older, so I'd just have to accept adults did that sort of thing, like Lisa told me.


Lily nodded. "Fair enough."


"If we're lucky, we can get permission to see the bodies and the crime scene," Vicky continued. "Between my powers and everything Clarice is capable of, that should give us everything we need. If not, well, I'll see if Lisa can talk the Chief Director into yelling at a few people."


"And if that doesn't work?"


"We go around asking all the gangs in town what they know," she concluded. "All our suits have lie detection tech, except mine. Not a lot of parahumans out there that can really threaten me or Clarice. You two play backup since your powers require a bit more concentration."


"We could use the dimensional viewing tech," I volunteered. "I can look at everything from this side and no one will even know I'm there."


"Wow," Vicky chuckled. "When the PRT calculates our ratings, do you think they even bother to use numbers anymore? Or do they just write 'good fucking luck' down next to our profiles because it's less intimidating that way?"


"Close enough," Lily laughed. "All of our profiles have six page long notations that come out to 'you can't run, you can't hide, and you can't fight back'. Half of us have our own individual trump ratings. Mine's a four for bypassing any possible defence."


"Awesome," Vicky approved, then she turned her head toward Theo and Missy. "Hey, Horus! I'd threaten to leave you behind, but I'm afraid the bosses would blame me for any unplanned pregnancies!"


My friends quickly broke their hug, and I couldn't help but giggle at how sheepish they looked. With one last glance at each other, Missy moved and vanished, taken hundreds of miles in a single footstep. Theo jogged over to us. "Sorry about that, ma'am," he apologized. "Won't happen again."


"Don't be so uptight," Vicky insisted. "I'm not mad at you. Hell, I used to do the same thing. So did Lily, here, right?"


"Yeah, kinda," she admitted.


"So, on to the Protectorate," Vicky's voice shifted to business. "Here's how we approach this..."


....


We manifested atop the roof of the Indianapolis HQ. Or everyone else did, at least. I sat behind in our hidden world controlling Clarice. Alerts went off as guns were drawn and pointed directly at us. A meaningless gesture from them, as Clarice was the only one in the group that could be threatened by a firearm, and it would need to be one with more power than what they were carrying.


"Relax," Vicky raised her hands. "We come in peace."


"Identify yourselves!" one of the PRT troopers demanded.


"Pantheon," Vicky answered, allowing her armor to project her voice. "I'm Victoria. I have Aceso, Horus and Atropos with me," she gestured at us as she announced our names, and I watched the combat alerts adjust as the soldiers' attentions did.


"We weren't informed of Pantheon coming here," the man insisted.


"When a serial killer starts emulating our more public victories, it counts as an open invitation," she pointed out as if it was the most obvious thought in the world. "We just wanted to keep things quiet. I'd say we didn't want the perp to know we were coming, but he no doubt already knows. It'd take a real moron to not realize we'd have to show up for this. But we'd like to keep him from knowing we're already here."


"Pantheon could have sent a warning to us," the man replied.


"Not my responsibility," she replied dismissively. "It's an unofficial meeting, anyway. Just to let you know we're here before we start the investigation. We'll be on our way, now. Please keep this visit quiet."


"Wait!" the soldier shouted. "Director Nicholas would like to have a word with you before you go. He said to let you know it wouldn't take long."


"We can spare a few minutes," Lily suggested to Vicky.


"Very well," Vicky replied. "We're happy to accept."


We were led through the halls of local PRT building. It was still an impressive building, despite not being quite on par with what I'd seen in Brocton Bay or New York. But our trip didn't last very long. For reasons that I didn't understand, all the Directors like to keep their offices way up near the top. Which was stupid, making them less safe and meaning they had to travel further to get to work, unless they came in through the helipad entrance. I resolved to ask someone about that.


Clarice analyzed Director Nicholas quickly and easily. Age 44, or near enough to it. Excellent physical condition for his age, though clearly he'd been dealing with a lot of recent stress and little overall sleep for some months. Further back than the New Delhi crisis, even. I had no way of guessing the source of that stress, as it seemed a bit too recent to be a matter of the job alone.


"I must admit, I had expected Pantheon sooner," he replied. True. But wouldn't have said so if he hadn't heard Victoria's comments from earlier. "I also expected a phone call to let us know you were here."


"Sorry," Vicky replied. Lie. "As you might imagine, Pantheon is quite busy."


"Is that why Gaea chose not to come?" he asked.


"Gaea and Khepri felt their particular method would be a bit... heavy handed," she answered. "We only need to track down the guilty party. There's no need to startle the whole city over the actions of one or two dumb asses."


"No, I suppose not," the man responded. He had an admirable poker face, but Clarice knew he was disappointed. So did Victoria, I was certain. He was also more than a little annoyed with Vicky.


"Mind if we examine the bodies, sir?" Theo asked. He was fully sealed in his armor, which made his voice echo significantly, distorted into something deep and hollow. Coupled with his natural height and bulk, it was unlikely anyone would guess him still a teenager.


"I can arrange that," he agreed. "I'll let the coroner know to expect you, though it will likely be an hour before they're ready for you. We could have arranged it sooner, if we'd known you were coming." Untrue, Clarice told me. It wouldn't take long at all, he was just choosing to delay us. His disguised resentment of Victoria probably played a part of that. But, then, that was the plan from the beginning.


"We understand," Vicky replied. "Would you mind giving us a guide? We need to arrange for accommodations while we're here, and it would be nice to be brought up to speed on the local cape environment while we handle that."


"You expect to be here long?" he asked.


"As long as it takes to find the killer or killers," Vicky replied. "We can't just run around kicking down the doors of every two bit crook and torturing them for information, after all. That's not how we do things."


"I'll arrange something," he agreed.


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

A/N- And Riley's new chapter.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 204- Victoria


The Director assigned us a rather unassuming looking hero by the name of 'Brain' to be our escort. Skinny, in his early thirties with a bit of a pot belly, and a little shorter than me. He was easily the least imposing person in the room, in his business suit styled costume that was just a little too plain to believe it wasn't on purpose. He would probably be the least imposing person in a gradeschool.


And my power was completely terrified of him. Every combat strategy involved 'shunt out, attack from other dimension', and even that didn't work so much as keep me alive. With Theo, my power simply told me I couldn't win. With Brain, it told me that I would lose. He was easily one of the most dangerous parahumans I'd ever met in person, and judging by his emotional disposition, he knew it.


"Mind powers," Riley answered my unspoken question. Can inflict debilitating sensory disruption on the brain. Believed to need line of sight."


"He doesn't," I answered quietly. "If he's in my range, then I'm in his."


"Good morning," he said with a slightly too wide grin. "I must admit this is something of a surprise." Partial truth. My power didn't give any insight further than that, but it was easy to guess he expected Pantheon, just not us specifically.


"It was something of a complicated decision," I claimed. "But we're more than up to the task."


"Yes, you were the one who killed Baal, were you not?" I sensed no ulterior motive, merely curiosity over my power. "Was that... difficult... killing someone like that? Under orders from a superior who couldn't do it themselves?"


"Khepri killed Siberian," I replied dismissively. "Baal was arguably just as bad, if not quite as famous. We had only intended to engage a scouting mission, perhaps lure him out of the compound and then destroy his base of operations while he wasn't able to defend it. My power made it clear I could beat him, if I was willing to kill him. Considering we were about to witness a child being raped, it was the right decision."


"Ah, right, you have different powers after you were restored from being transformed by Bakuda's weapon, correct?" Some tactic to confuse me by changing subjects?


"You've read up on us," Theo spoke up. He was slightly unnerved by the creepy man and his questions as well.


"Of course," he answered Theo. "You've made quite the splash. I've also read up on the Triumvirate and almost every parahuman on the continent ranking an eight or above. One of my powers, you see, superhuman learning rates." He turned back toward me, still smiling that creepy smile. "Speaking of, may I ask your name?"


"Victoria," I replied easily. I watched with amusement at his confusion and annoyance.


"I'm afraid I may have misspoke," he replied. "I meant your cape name."


"Victoria," I repeated. "The Roman goddess of success in battle, from which the word 'victory' originates. Appropriate for a combat precog, wouldn't you agree? My identity's already public, after all."


"Ah, I see," he agreed cheerfully.


"The fact that it confuses everyone and forces them to ask, thus making you that much more memorable, had absolutely nothing to do with it," Atropos added dryly. Over the com system, of course.


"Not all of us can kill Endbringers to get famous," I quipped right back, still paying attention to our guide. "So, what kind of powers are we expecting in town?"


"You don't know?" he asked.


"We know what's in the dossiers," I answered smoothly. "But it would be foolish to assume that's the whole story. Every one of us here has one or more powers, ranking at least a five, that aren't on our list." That shocked him, especially considering how high they put our ratings to begin with. "I'd like to hear what we're going into down on the streets, if it even comes to that. Bad intel is the easiest way to fail a mission."


We spent the next hour and a half getting the full story. It seems the city only really had one major criminal organization with parahumans. A mafia outfit, no less. All other criminal parahumans were either of the sort that didn't draw attention to themselves, or had already been recruited or driven out of the city one way or another. Apparently, the boss had a very 'old school' way of doing things, and claimed to be a blood relative of Capone. Brain expressed doubts about that. Apparently every criminal in the midwestern states liked to pretend they had a famous crook ancestor.


All told, they had eleven known capes on their roster, covering every base. The scariest of which went by the unlikely name of 'Playmate'. Unfortunate connotations aside, she was a shaker 8/master 4/trump 4 whose power was to create board game like scenarios and force people to obey the rules of the game. These games could be incredibly unfair, but there was always a win condition of some manner. She was under no obligation to tell you what it was, however. She even altered powers to obey the rules of the game. She'd be rated higher, but the 'games' were mostly illusions. Dying just meant you lost and were removed from the 'board', no real harm done.


We were also given the name of an excellent five star hotel in which to stay for free. Apparently the PRT permanently rents a few locations for guests. I politely turned Brain, and the PRT behind him, down. We instead rented our rooms from a generic low price hotel chain, much to our guide's confusion and annoyance.


"Trying to keep a low profile," I reminded the man. An answer he seemed less and less happy about every time I gave it. Anyone could see that they wanted our presence in town to be more visible, I just wasn't sure why, yet.


And, finally, we got permission to examine evidence. I sent Atropos and Aceso to the bodies. Riley's powers made her better suited for pulling information off corpses than I was, and as much as Lily may have still really disliked Riley, it was better than sending Theo that way. Riley's feelings for him, and the really weird emotions that Theo had toward Clarice, just screamed bad idea. Seriously, what was up with Theo and Clarice? And was Tattletale high when she decided this was the team to send?


Theo and I handled the crime scene, under the wary gaze of the actual investigators. We used our hover tech to keep from touching anything important, and maybe to show off a little. The three were killed in a bar, after hours. Minimal signs of a struggle. A shattered floor where the one was smashed downward into it. I let my power do what it could, running scenarios that would allow this to happen to these parahumans, and it found nothing. "They weren't killed here," I stated.


"You're certain?" the lead investigator asked. I could read the doubts in his emotions, but there was no certainty one way or the other.


"Impossible to be completely sure, when it comes to powers," I answered. "But the battle was decided before. Either they were killed and brought here to be mutilated, or they were subdued, brought here, and then executed."


"There's evidence of defensive wounds on the bodies," he pointed out. "And a great deal of physical damage in the area indicative of a fight."


"Faked," I answered. "The battle wouldn't have been carried out this way by these parahumans. They would have parted immediately after the conflict started, taking cover. Belthegor was a shaker with control over soil and stone, he didn't even use his power."


"He may have been killed first," Brain suggested from the corner.


"Maybe, but not from the direction the attacks would have had to approach, based on the rest of the scene," I countered, gesturing toward the corner of the bar where the attack would, presumably, have come from. And they wouldn't have been here in the first place. Too vulnerable. They were placed here after being rendered unconscious."


And the local Protectorate just happens to have a parahuman whose main power is damaging people's minds and rendering them functionally helpless. Which was too fucking obvious to be trusted. Plus he didn't show any sign that he was involved. I tapped the private com. "Aceso, how's the autopsy going?"


"They were drugged before they were murdered," she informed me. "Theoretically untraceable substance, broken down into hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide. If it were anyone other than us, I think it would be the perfect murder."


"Except," I prompted.


"Except that's way too easy, because they knew it would be us," she continued. "Besides, I've seen this drug before. Or one nearly identical to it. A west coast chemical tinker produces it, along with super tear gas and a few other things. It breaks down too quickly to form addictive traits in the brain, so it never became popular as a street drug, but there are a number of wealthy individuals who keep the market alive."


"Good to know," I replied. "Look for evidence of where the were before they got to the crime scene. They were subdued and brought there." So it could be Brain running a double blind, or it could be someone who didn't have access to a mind influencing power. I could have asked him, but that might just piss him off, even if he's innocent.


"Something wrong?" the investigator asked.


"Our instruments discovered evidence of a tinker drug in the victims bodies," I informed him, speaking loud enough to be properly overheard. I noted the reactions of shock and concern from Brain. But, then, I saw very similar emotions in the investigator, and I was certain he didn't have anything to do with the crime. Dammit, if I have to call Lisa and ask her for help because my power isn't good enough... I'd never live it down. She wouldn't let me.


"I'm assuming these instruments are not approved and verified forensics technology that we can submit in court?" Brain asked.


"Afraid not," I sighed. "Luckily, we don't have to prove that they were murdered, just who did it. Unfortunately, now we've got a sudden overabundance of suspects. They could have been brought here from practically anywhere. Anyone with a moving van, some good knives and a sledgehammer could have done this."


I watched the emotions of frustration and disappointment hit both Brain and all the investigators that had overheard. It was, again, impossible for me to know if that was a matter of a greater conspiracy, or simple realization that this crime might not be solvable.


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

A/N- Murder mysteries are fun! They'd be more fun without super lie detectors everywhere. But still fun.

Also: none of you guessed Vicky's cape name. Which is a shame since it's been on the front page since Friday.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 205- Theo


Victoria was really stealing the proverbial show. I'd seen it before, my father was a genius at it, and there was a time when I was younger when he had some hope of grooming me to continue the family business, and had given me a few tips. Even instructed Victor to do the same. Victoria was good at it. Not nearly to the level my father was, of course, and certainly not a match for Victor's stolen talents. But still, she was good.


There just wasn't much her talents could do here, besides look good while doing nothing. The battle occurred elsewhere, and we had no way of knowing where. We left disappointed, if not completely empty handed, to meet with Aceso and Atropos. But a fairly common, if expensive, drug was no kind of evidence.


"So, now that we know we have no leads, what do we do?" Atropos asked, and gave a wary glance at Brain. She and I had been warned that our powers wouldn't shield us from his attack. If it came to fighting him, Aceso was the only weapon we had which might work. It might not even be safe for Taylor's bugs to be in range of this guy. But, for all his power, he was still physically human.


I took advantage of my armor's more or less amorphous shape to look at Aceso covertly. Clarice. She's unfairly beautiful, my traitorous mind told me yet again. As all the other times, I forced myself to remember that she was not real. She was never real. And, as all the other times, it didn't work. It was like telling myself she was dead. How did Zach cope? Oh, right, he didn't have to. She couldn't use this part of her power on him.


I closed my eyes. It's not his fault, I told myself. And he didn't get away unscathed, either.


"Hey, you okay over there?" Victoria asked, tapping on the armor.


"Yeah, sorry," I tried to mean it. "Just lost in thought."


"We're going to stir up a couple hornet nests," Vicky told me. "If your head's not in the game, let us know. We're here for the weekend, we can take a bit of time to make sure things go the best they can go."


"No, I'm fine," I insisted. I wasn't going to slow us down just because of something like this.


"Taking your word for it," she responded. "Okay, so we're still trying to be covert about it. Suggestions?"


"I can show you some of their suspected safehouses," Brain suggested.


"That's certainly an option, any others?"


"Neutral ground," Aceso spoke up. "Every city has two or three of them. Big ones can have lots more. Locations where villains will meet up to discuss major problems, even inviting indie heroes and rogues if the situation's bad enough."


"Would revealing you're in town be considered 'bad enough' for them?" Brain suggested.


"Doubtful," I replied. "They'd rather go to ground and hope we pick off their enemies for them in situations like this. When they ally together, it's for things like a mad bomb tinker blowing up the city one block at a time."


"Our town doesn't have other villains or independents," Brain pointed out. "What would they do under those circumstances?"


"Should still have the neutral locations," I insisted. "Visiting out of towners, friends on the opposite side of the law. Usually the owners of such establishments are well liked by the villains. Even if there's no need to keep them, they'll remain out of sentimentality."


"They're supervillains," Brain scoffed. "They don't strike me as sentimental."


I couldn't help but smirk, fortunately it didn't show through my armor, nor would my tone carry through the echo my power created. "If anything, the criminals are more sentimental than normal people. It's part of the criminal culture. Or, at least, any criminal culture that manage to last. Lunatics like the Teeth and the Fallen play by their own set of rules, of course. But more established criminal groups like Empire Eighty Eight and the Mafia like to pretend they're civil and even cultured. They'll go to absurd lengths to keep that illusion alive."


"Horus is our resident psych expert," Vicky patted my shoulder. "There's a reason I brought him along to the crime scene."


"You have a parahuman psychologist?" Brain asked, sounding more than a little doubtful.


"Of course," Vicky answered. "Why not?


"Just seems odd that you would have powerful parahumans doing mundane careers," he pointed out.


"Blame my mother for that," she dismissed. "She became a fairly successful lawyer in addition to her career as a crime fighter with no secret identity. We have a doctor, a very skilled business executive, even a fashion designer. Just because you're a parahuman doesn't mean you can't have a normal job. In fact, Pantheon encourages it."


"Fascinating," Brain replied. "And how do you plan to locate one of these meeting places?"


"I'm sure there's a place suspected of money laundering that you haven't been able to prove, right?" I asked.


"A few," he admitted. "What do you have in mind?"


....


An 'Authentic Italian' restaraunt owned by the mob, huh? I might have mocked them for playing up the stereotype, but E88's holdings mostly consisted of drug houses and dogfighting rings. Bribing or intimidating enough of the police that they didn't even need to hide it. We of course left Brain behind to return to his bosses. We didn't need the Protectorate here for this. They just didn't know how to think of villains as people.


The greeter's eyes widened. We must have been imposing in our costumes. Vicky and I might have been recognized, we'd been on the news often enough. Aceso probably was, she was a little media darling because she gave them some great sound bites. Atropos, I was certain was identified immediately. The Azrael armor was more well known than most countries. That's what happens when you're an Endslayer, after all.


The man was impressively quick on his feet. "How may I help you?" he asked.


"We're interested in ordering a table," I informed him. With my armor padding my figure and adding a few inches of height, I'm sure I cut an imposing figure. Vicky was letting me take the lead on this one. Criminal culture was something I'd been raised in, and I understood it intuitively. May as well put that understanding to use doing something decent.


"I- I'm sorry, sir, but we don't have any tables available," he lied fluidly. I didn't even need the tech, I could see into the establishment, and the place wasn't much more than half full. Although even that was impressive since it wasn't quite time for Saturday dinner to kick off. It'd be much busier later in the evening. A man with hard eyes watched me from one of the back tables. He's the one, I decided. Not because he was the only crook in the place, but because he was the one who looked confident. He was either a trusted member, or a parahuman. In E88, he would have to be both, but this group may not work the same.


"That's fine," I responded back. "We're willing to wait a while."


The greeter's lips thinned. He had hoped it was a coincidence, now he knew for certain we were there for a reason. "Perhaps it would be easier for you to make a reservation and return later?" he offered. Meanwhile, the scanners in my armor showed that he had hit a button beneath his podium. Some kind of panic button, most likely. They wouldn't attack us, not this openly, but they knew we were here now.


The man inside glanced somewhere I couldn't see a couple seconds later, and then got up and approached us. The social reading tech confirmed what I already knew, he got the permission he needed.


"How's it going?" he asked the greeter smoothly, with the smile of someone who knew he was in charge, and had done this before.


"I was just apologizing to these folks that we weren't ready to receive more guests at the moment," he replied. Also part of the act.


"They can come sit at my table, then," the man offered smoothly. "In fact, put their meal on my tab. Not every day I get to buy lunch for an Endslayer."


Smart ploy, I thought. Something right out of Victor's playbook. Taking food from him would create a subliminal rapport, even though I was aware of the tactic. In addition, accepting a meal from a suspect was basically idiotic, so he'd know how much he had to worry based on whether we accepted. And, for all I knew, his sentiment was genuine. You didn't need to be a good person to have a grudge against the Endbringers.


"That is most generous of you, sir," I answered. "Although we wouldn't want to impose on you and your friends." Of course I intended to accept, but you had to show the initial reluctance, that was just a matter of politeness.


"Nonsense, we'd be happy to have you," he smiled. He knew by my tone that I was accepting. All part of the game. "I'm Angie. Pleasure to meet all of you."


"Horus," I responded as I shook his hand. "This is Atropos, Victoria and Aceso. Apologies for using their costumed names."


"That's fine. I've seen enough capes come and go to understand the score," he smiled broadly as he shook all their hands. He even managed to be charming about it. He stopped at Atropos for an extra moment. "I hope it won't come off as me only doing this for selfish reasons, but would you mind signing an autograph. Y'see, Arianna, my niece, is gay, and it would mean a lot to her. You're one of her heroes." To my surprise, he was telling the truth.


"Oh," Lily hesitated, looking like she wanted to ask us if it was okay. Angie caught on immediately, and it probably didn't tell him anything he didn't already know.


"It can wait, of course," he added. "Let's get you fed first. I insist." He led us in and snatched a few menus with the practiced ease of someone who'd done this often. "You can meet my pals, Joel and Brick. Dunno what Brick's real name is. Not sure he does, either."


The men he named weren't especially notable, physically. Big, but not especially so. Barrel shaped, I think was the term. They wouldn't stand out in a crowd, but they had the same eyes that Angie had when he first looked at me. These are men who've killed before, I was certain of it. They were also clearly hangers on, perhaps even a little insecure in their positions as they glanced at our host for cues. They could be relied on to do exactly nothing but what they thought he wanted.


The next few minutes were mostly small talk about the food, of which he was both familiar and passionate. We made our orders, and Angie's companions were content to let him do all of the talking. Eventually we got to the important question. "So, I hope you don't think it's rude of me, may I ask why you're visiting our lovely city?"


"Probably not the best topic over a meal," I replied, feigning hesitation.


"We're big boys," he gave Brick's back a good smack. "I think we can handle it."


"Don't worry about us," Joel agreed.


"It's the murders of the Fallen," I answered with a quieter voice, as if I didn't want the other patrons to hear. In truth, I didn't care that much, more because I knew we had a place that would make it hard for others to listen in, and the wait staff wouldn't dare.


"That's what I figured," Angie nodded. "Is there a reason you came to this restaurant?"


"Lunch," it was a lie neither of us believed, of course, but such was the game. "We're faced with a bit of a problem. We want to get in touch with the local villains, to see if they have any clues as to who might be trying to frame them for this."


"You don't think they're responsible?" he asked. The suit told me he was shocked by that possibility, and really wanted to pump us for more information without making it too obvious that he was. He was also suspicious I was saying all this, of course.


"It's either a setup, or a single lunatic serial killer," I answered. "Possibly an out of town group hoping we'll come in and clear out the locals so they can move in on the suddenly open market. Hard to say for certain this early in the investigation, but that's why only us four are here, for the moment. If we don't get what we need in a couple days, we might have to bring reinforcements. We cannot ignore a serial killer sending us a direct message like this, but it would be a tragedy to let someone manipulate us into giving them what they want by turning this into a major spectacle."


There was more suspicion than relief by my statement, but then I expected there to be. Still, I had achieved what I'd come here to achieve. My message would make it up the command chain, and someone would find a way to contact us. Probably tonight. No more conversation was had on the subject of heroes and villains, as we talked about stuff already public, like the Endbringer battles. The whole time ignoring our suits' alerts that we were being listened to by hidden microphones.


Angie really did go out of his way to charm Atropos, and in the end it earned him an autographed picture signed to his niece, and he promised she'd cherish it. The whole encounter only lasted at most thirty minutes, but it did seem faster than that.


"Hard to believe he's a criminal," Atropos observed as we left with our doggie bags, intended for Riley who of course missed out on the actual meal.


"I know," Vicky agreed.


"Exact opposite for me," I replied. "Everything about him screamed obvious crook. Of course, I grew up around men like that."


"He reminded me a lot of Jack," Riley whispered her agreement through the coms.


That ended any discussion on that subject.


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

A/N- One day, I might write a Theo chapter I don't enjoy. This is not that day.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 206- Geoff


I rubbed my eyes, willing the sting of too many nights without sleep away. "Hey, Mags, how're things going in your section?"


"Slow," she answered. "There's just too much data here. Even with Richter's keys, decryption is going to take days."


"That's to be expected," I sighed. "We did just capture multiple terabytes worth of information." It had been a timing critical mission, targeting one of Dragon's servers in the middle of a data transfer to another server. To call it stealing would be wrong. In fact, Dragon would never be aware that we had the information, since she still retained a copy of her own. It was still a risk, but her code had changed in the last few months, faster and more chaotically than it should have. We needed to know why.


"Do we at least know what we're decoding?"


"We have the data on Pantheon, including subsections titled 'Avalon', 'Genesis', 'Nemesis' and 'Ragnarok'."


"Well, those names aren't ominous or anything," I muttered. "Put priority on Ragnarok and Nemesis, in that order."


....


"Geoff, you have to see this," Mags insisted.


I turned in my chair and rolled it over to her desk. "What's the news?"


"Looks like our Dragon is trying to build herself a human body," she replied, pulling up the schematics.


"That's not new," I told her. "She already has one."


"No, I mean an honest human body," she replied. "It seems one of the pieces of tech she's working on with Pantheon is capable of converting human neurology into data, and then transfering it into another body. Most of it was memory implantation technology acquired from Toybox, but they've taken it well beyond its original applications. Coupled it with some other tinker tech. Dragon seems to be experimenting in ways to adapt it to her artificial mind, and implant that into a completely organic clone body."


"Why would she do that?" I asked.


Dobrynja chuckled. "Sounds to me like Richter's little Pinochio wants to become a real girl," he suggested.


"Seems she and Defiant are even talking about the possibility of a family," Mags informed us.


It's possible, I thought. But I don't trust it. "Would this let her bypass Richter's restrictions on multiple copies? Could that be her intentions?"


"Maybe," she replied. "Tough to say. I do know she's hit a roadblock in the process. She doesn't understand the tech well enough to adapt it for what she needs. She's trying to find a way to request Pantheon do it, without letting them know what they're doing."


"So she hasn't told them what she is?" I ran my hand over my forehead and through my hair. "That's good information to have. We might need to make them aware of just what they're working with. Look into what she knows about Pantheon. Maybe there's something more we can use."


....


"Y'know that blackmail material you wanted?" Dobrynja looked at me with that face he only shows when there's trouble. "Well, I found a couple of doozies. I'm pretty sure this is the block where Dragon keeps her blackmail material on them."


"Do share," I frowned.


"Turns out, they have another tinker," he answered. "Remember how they supposedly killed the Slaughterhouse Nine?"


Oh fuck me. "Please tell me it's Mannequin," I requested.


"Fraid not," he shrugged. "Turns out she's been on the team since the beginning. The social dynamic program Dragon's using theorizes that Gaea must have joined the Slaughterhouse Nine in order to take control of it from Jack Slash. Specifically in order to recruit Bonesaw for Pantheon. Possibly Cherish as well. She's the one member of the Nine that seems to have escaped Brockton Bay alive."


"Christ," I muttered. They have Bonesaw. "I guess I can't say I'm surprised. Look at the monsters they're using."


"We could use it against Pantheon," Mags suggested. "But considering the power and influence they have right now, I'm not sure it would be enough. They killed one Endbringer and made the fight with another almost trivial. All for the low low price of ignoring the fact that they're the most powerful Class S threat on the planet right now."


"And it would tip our hand," I added. "We do this, and Dragon will know we have this database. And we make an enemy of Pantheon."


"Fuck," Dobrynja cursed. "Even if the authorities wanted to do something about it, what options do they really have? They're buying their law enforcement tools from them. The Triumvirate has equipment built by them. If we had this information three months ago, we could have done something. But now?"


They're untouchable, I added silently. We can fight Dragon, we have the tools for that. But how do you fight the most powerful parahuman force on the planet?


....


"We missed our opportunity," Mags whispered in dread. "I've decoded Avalon. Ascalon won't work anymore."


My stomach dropped. "What?"


"Well, it will," she corrected. "But it won't make a difference. Pantheon has found a way to access other dimensions. Like Aleph, only with a portal that lets people through as well. They found a new world of their own to claim."


"They conquered another earth!?" Dobrynja exclaimed.


"Not exactly," she replied. "It appears the planet they picked was scoured of life millions of years ago. Some kind of massive solar flare or something. They used that Yggdrasil of theirs to completely cover the entire world and are restoring it to life. Building a garden out of ash and stone."


Dobrynja sighed. "Well, that's comforting at least. They can have all the lifeless rocks in the universe, far as I'm concerned. Now how does this apply to Ascalon?"


"She has a fully dedicated backup server there, and she's building another one," Mags informed us. "If we were to use Ascalon, it would purge her presence on our earth, but..."


"But she'd restore herself from outside our reach," I concluded, slumping into my chair. "Richter's safeguards didn't anticipate multiple dimensions. If we got through and destroyed that as well, we'd be in business. But that requires fighting our way through Pantheon's territory to find a building that could be anywhere on the planet."


"It doesn't matter anyway," Mags joined me in deflating. "Dragon's intel on Pantheon is terrifying. Turns out, their leaders are more dangerous than Dragon ever was. Her, humanity could survive. We'd have to sacrifice our technology to do it, but we could survive as a species. If Gaea or Khepri wanted to, they could wipe our planet free of human life in a matter of days. Maybe weeks, when you factor parahuman involvement."


"Fuck," Dobrynja muttered. "Are you sure?"


"I'm sure," Mags confirmed. "Look at Gaea's Yggdrasil. Early in its existence, it was used to wipe a plague off the planet. One specifically designed to be immune to being wiped off the planet. It's a lot like computers. If you can eliminate a virus that trivially, then you can build a virus."


"Anything that can destroy a plague can be used to create one," I stepped the analogy over.


"It took them weeks to cover their world with that plant," she added. "An entire planet subsumed to the point that there is only one lifeform."


"That's intimidating," I acknowledged. "If they turned that plant on our world..."


"They could kill everyone and everything with almost laughable ease," Mags replied. "And that's before considering what Bonesaw might be capable of. But they're not even the most frightening method Pantheon has at its disposal. You know Khepri's power?"


"Controlling bugs, including mutant bugs they build for her to fight the Endbringers," I replied. "She can hear through them, see through them, use their unique senses not found in humans, and she's even figured out a way to use them to emulate human speech." I'd been studying up on them after learning how closely they were working with Dragon.


"She has no upper limit," Mags informed us. "She has a range limit, but Gaea found a way to use the Yggdrasil to extend it. She can handle their entire world, and all the modified insect life on it, simultaneously. The more bugs under her control, the more brain power she has access to. If they did that on earth, she'd be able to have individual conversations with every person on the planet simultaneously with no difficulties."


"Fuck," I muttered. "Even if Dragon were fully unleashed, she wouldn't have that kind of power. There aren't enough computers on earth for it."


"And bugs are everywhere," Mags continued. "If human beings even can live there, bugs already do. Even with normal insects and spiders..." She trailed off, leaving us to think about the devastation you could inflict. Even if she merely used it to destroy food stockpiles, she could win a war against the world. "Dragon at least has to have technology, and technology can be beaten. How do you fight almost all of the life on Earth?"


"They're still human," Dobrynja pointed out. "One good sniper round ends the threat."


"Nope," Mags shook her head sadly. "Remember that mind copy tech Dragon wants to use so she can fuck her boyfriend?" I was shocked. Mags rarely cursed like that. She must be really upset.


"Oh for Christ's sake," Dobrynja sighed.


"Dragon knows for a fact they have used the technology to create backups of themselves," she informed. "She believes they used it to restore several members of their team after New Delhi, including Minerva and Eki. She knows they used it to restore Khepri after they defeated the Butcher."


We've been fighting the wrong threat, I realized. Dragon might be the only thing on the planet that can stop them.I buried my face in my hands.


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

A/N- You guys kept bringing up Saint. Here, have some Saint.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 207- Geoff


"God Fucking Almighty," Dobrynja swore. "I just broke the Nemesis encryption."


Despite Nemesis and Ragnarok being the highest priority, they were also the best encoded, using new techniques that Richter's keys didn't understand. We had to create new programs to decrypt the information they contained. This did mean they were the most recently created files in our captured database, however. It also meant that if we did this again, we might be looking at a completely alien system. We still hadn't solved how was her code evolving so quickly, and as a whole we had started to give up on even trying. Dragon was small potatoes compared to Pantheon.


"What did you get?" I asked hesitantly. After all the news about Pantheon, I had just about given up hope. I had also convinced myself that it couldn't possibly get any worse.


"The Endbringers are made by people," he replied.


It turns out, I was wrong. "What?"


"You're fucking kidding me," Mags muttered.


"Pantheon's convinced of it, and has been sharing information with the Guild and the Protectorate where they find any," he informed us. "Both of them are returning the favor. It's pretty much the world's most prestigious think tank right now."


"So they're all convinced?" I asked. "Could they be wrong?"


"Dunno," he answered. "That behaviorist Tinker from Haven. Rapture, the one working on Heartbreaker's offspring. She's applied her tech to the Endbringer patterns, and she's convinced they're at least partially guided by human beings."


"Partially guided?" I asked.


"That's what they're not sure about," he replied. "They aren't directly controlled the way Khepri controls her monsters, but they're less independent than, say, the Blasphemies or Nilbog's monsters. The closest thing I have to compare them to is Dragon's suits. They're smart in their own way, probably way smarter than any human being, but they're not capable of making their own decisions. Guided, reusable, autonomous WMDs."


"God, just when you think it can't get any worse," Mags sighed. "Dragon might evolve into a threat to all humanity. We don't know if she will, and if she does she might choose not to use that power. Pantheon already can kill everyone the moment they choose to, and haven't thus far. But the Endbringers... if someone's controlling them, then they already are trying to kill everyone. No maybes about it."


"There's also a lot of details in here about what Pantheon has dubbed 'Power Synergy'," Dobrynja added. "They have examples of certain powers becoming exponentially stronger when used with each other. It's how they broke across dimensions, and how their Endslayer weapon works. Plus the obvious example of Khepri and Gaea becoming Class S threats. They believe the Endbringers are created the same way. They theorize that a power similar to Midas might interact with a power like Nilbog's to get what we see in the Endbringers. Not actually them, of course, but parahumans with similar powers. Plus a third for interdimensional access, since the Endbringer power source, and likely their control system, exists in another dimension."


"So yet another potential world threatening conspiracy?" I sighed.


"They're using Nemesis as the de facto code name for the makers of the Endbringers," he informed us. "Thus far it's been more about ruling out suspects. It's not the Yangban or the Thanda, or any of South America's major players. According to this, the behavioral tech suggests a North American being at least one member, probably the leader. Based upon the forms the Endbringers take, whomever is in charge of their creation is most likely male and an avid reader of philosophy and mythology."


"Which doesn't narrow it down nearly enough," I concluded. "I'll send that information to Teacher as well. See if his group can puzzle something useful out of it. Locating the source of the Endbringers... if nothing else, it opens up a lot of possibilities in the future."


....


"Multidimensional space whale parasites?" I just stared at the screen. I started laughing. This was just fucking absurd. "That's it. It officially, literally, cannot possibly get any worse than this."


"Geoff?" Mags' voice carried her concern. "Are you okay?" She put her hand on mine, and I focused on that. Something familiar, someone I could trust. She was always an anchor when I needed it the most. "You should get some sleep. I know things look bad, but we're still here."


"Oh, yeah, I'm just peachy," I fought to steady my voice. "Apparently Pantheon thinks powers come from parasites from another dimension."

"Like Aleph and Avalon?" Mags asked.


"Turns out, there might not be numbers big enough to express how many universes there are," I informed her. "Remember the information we got off the PRT networks about the end of the world? That we thought Dragon might cause? And then we thought Pantheon might cause? And then we thought Nemesis might cause? Well, scratch all of that. Apparently Scion is the real source of Dinah's doomsday."


"How? Why?" she asked, moving her hand to my mouse.


"Because he's an alien and that's how they breed," I told her. "They travel between worlds, using people the way flowers use bees. Giving us powers, and then using our natural tendencies toward violence in order to advance their own evolution. Then, when they believe the process is complete, they eat everything. And I do mean everything. When they're done feeding, only dead space will exist where our world use to be."


"Can't we find another world, then?" Mags suggested. "Pantheon-"


"Won't matter," I told her. "These creatures are going to do the same thing to all of them. When I said everything, I mean everything. Every Earth in every dimension without any exception. Total omnicide."


"Holy fucking Christ," she whispered. "Are you certain about this?"


"Dragon's certain," I offered. "So is Pantheon and the Triumvirate. And remember that shadow organization that Teacher was so obsessed with finding before he wound up in the cage?"


"I remember," she agreed.


"I found it," I replied, tapping the screen. "They're called Cauldron. Somehow, they found the corpse of one of these aliens. What they call 'Entities', and are harvesting it to grant powers. The Case 53s are what happens when something goes wrong in the process. Dragon's been compiling a list of these artificial capes, but it's not stored on the database we acquired. I only know because one of Pantheon's members, Hecate, bought her powers from them."


"So one more giant conspiracy to the list," she laughed unhappily. "Got any idea how powerful they are?"


"Powerful enough to take down Teacher when he prodded them," I told her. "Enough that they functionally own the Protectorate, one way or another. Dragon seems to be legitimately scared of what they're capable of. The Triumvirate are also members, if the snippets of notes in Nemesis are any indication. Which means if we go after Cauldron, we could get a face full of Alexandria's boot."


"And they're all working together on the Nemesis and Scion threats," Mags added unhappily. "We can't really play them against one another when there's that to worry about. They're united until those threats are dealt with. And even if by some miracle we did win... it would be like killing a bunch of jackals, only to be eaten by the lion that they were keeping at bay."


"I know," I agreed. "We're just mortals. This is a battle between gods."


"Company!" Dobrynja shouted. Screens flickered to show the approaching person. A woman in an impressive suit. Her features suggested Mediteranean ancestry, but in a world of shapeshifters and tinker grade plastic surgery, that meant nothing.


She casually typed the code to the electronic lock for our current hideout. What confused me was that it worked- the code was irrelevant, it read your fingerprint to determine if you were allowed in. But apparently it worked for her, as the blast door opened. Dobrynja took point, being the only one of us in battle armor. Mags had rushed to get into hers.


The woman regarded us for a half second, then stepped into the bushes, out of our sight. A ball of mud sailed into the room and caught Dobrynja's visor. The woman rushed in a half second later, easily dodging the shots from my tinker handgun without even glancing toward me, diving for cover before throwing one of our wrenches at me. It wasn't hard to avoid at this distance, but I couldn't believe how she moved. How does someone dodge automatic weapon fire?


She jumped toward me the moment I ran out of ammo. Less than half a second later both my arms were behind my back and I existed as a human shield between the woman and Dobrynja and Mags. If either of them pulled the trigger on their better weapons, both the woman and I could be buried in the same coffee can. Something that didn't seem to bother her at all. She dragged me to one of the computer terminals, all the while ignoring the threats issued by my friends.


Seconds of typing later, both their armors lost power, and they were trapped in hundreds of pounds of tinker weapons and exotic alloys.


Suddenly my arms were freed and I stumbled forward. I briefly considered attacking the woman.


"Now we can talk," she spoke casually, without any indication that she had just performed feats reserved for Olympic athletes while being shot at.


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

A/N- What? Cauldron's allowed to do things too, you know.

Also: poor Saint. As if two potentially world ending forces weren't enough, it turns out they're teamed up against A Whole Lot Worse (tm).

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 208- Riley


The others shunted moments after they entered ordered our hotel rooms, leaving only Clarice behind in the room. I sat down to eat the meal, or fragments of meals, that they brought me. The food was really good even if it was leftovers, and especially nice since they didn't need to bring me anything at all. The Yggdrasil was completely safe to eat and some portions of it were more nutritious than any natural food could hope to be. Even if it tasted like mushy apples and tree bark.


In the time they'd been gone, a series of small bedrooms had formed for all of us, allowing us to sleep here instead of inside the building. Our rooms were geoanalogous to the ones we had rented in Bet, and we had the dimensional viewing tech hard at work.


"That looks eerily like my actual room," Lily said as she walked out of hers.


"It's suppose to," I answered proudly. "My Big Sister used it as the model when she grew this one."


"Sometimes I forget just how insane her power is," she muttered. "She can do something this fine detailed from a thousand miles and another dimension away."


"Eight hundred and seventy three point four miles," I replied, having accessed the mapping program I plugged into Clarice. "From your bedroom and this one."


"How do you think I feel?" Vicky laughed. "I remember when she was my mostly helpless baby sister who was afraid to use her power for anything. Now here we are on a planet where she is pretty much a literal god."


"She's just that amazing," I agreed happily, then I hesitated. Clarice's motion sensors detected someone approaching, and strangely the spacial distortion senses I used to navigate Clarice through Missy's power were activating as well. "Umm. Looks like we got our company."


We turned our attentions to the dimensional overlay, allowing us to watch everything. "Ooh, he's good," Vicky noted with approval. "Case 53, looks a lot like Newter, but he's got some really good camouflage so I can't be sure his actual colors. And somehow, he's crawling on a ceiling made of those cheap panels that couldn't hold the weight of a large housecat."


"Doesn't match any records I have," I replied as I ran the description through our databank. "Wish we could have brought the command center with us."


"I'll go greet him," Theo replied as he covered himself in his liquid metal yet again. I smiled as he shunted over. The advantage of his power being so defensively perfect is that I could build his suit for features and battery life, since I didn't need all the armor reinforcement. It wasn't an unusual design, fairly standard equipment profile for the brutes who were receiving our equipment, but I made his better than those. He deserved it.


We watched, using his armor and Clarice to provide what sound the could. I was a tinker and even I didn't know why light could cross like this, but sound couldn't.


"Open the door, take a half step out the door and turn your head to the left and up," Vicky instructed. Theo followed the instructions. "Perfect, you're looking more or less right at him. He can't see your eyes.


"Good afternoon," Horus replied calmly. "To what do I owe your visit."


"Uh... you can see me?" the invisible lizard man asked.


"No," Horus responded calmly. "But I don't need my eyes to know you're there."


"I heard you were asking about us," the man replied. "You made quite a scene."


"Not nearly the scene we could have made," Theo shrugged dismissively. "Honestly, at this point it'd be simply just to request all the villain groups give us their phone numbers. Save everyone the headache of doin' it like this."


"I wonder, did you pick up that attitude from your bosses, or from Kaiser?"


Clarice's sensors noted Theo's heightened emotional state, but he recovered masterfully. "I was hoping to keep that one a secret until after I turned eighteen," he sighed. "I don't suppose you'll keep that tidbit quiet."


"Don't worry, I ain't a snitch," he answered. "So, you were sayin' you don't think we did the killing?"


"This guy's weird," Vicky spoke up. "My combat sense isn't working on him. He might be some kind of really impressive illusion. Keep your armor at full strength, we can't be sure what to expect."


"Probably," Theo clarified. "It's too obvious a setup. Then again, it's also too obvious a setup. It could be you, trying to run a double bluff."


"Wheels in wheels bullshit, huh?" came the dismissive reply. "Nah, we ain't so, wassa word..."


"Machiavellian?" Theo suggested. "Elaborate?"


"Yeah! Elaborate," the voice agreed. "Now, I ain't sayin' this ever happens, mind you, but if it did. We wouldn't leave them to be found. Lotsa places to dump a body out there. Lotsa powers to make sure there's no body to be found. Hypothetically speakin, of course. You bein' here is real bad for our business."


"So who would you sus-" The area was bathed in a soundless white light. I had just enough time to register Clarice's damage alerts before her automatic defenses shunted her over to our dimension. The bitter sweet scent of burnt sugar poured off the changeling. She was still alive under the armor, in as much as she could be called alive. I did a quick estimate of how much heat it would have taken to do that damage that quickly. If it wasn't an exotic power based attack, which of course could break any rule, I was absolutely certain the building was already destroyed.


All this had happened in the two seconds. In the third, Vicky shouted commands. "Spread out! Find the attacker!" I couldn't see what the others were doing, and chose to stay in the center. It was a good thing the dimensional viewer tech had upper limits on energy transfer, it saved my retinas from being burned out.


There was a thud as a large body hit the ground, followed by sizzling. Theo. My world stood still. I moved toward the metal shell, only to hesitate when I got close. The heat from the armor was incredible, hot enough to overwhelm and burn a plant that had withstood New Delhi. One which pulled much of its power out of active volcanoes. I wanted to get closer, but discretion was the better part of valor. I can't help anyone if I burn myself. I accessed the badly damaged Clarice doll, commanding her to move while observing how it was killing her. Perhaps only two minutes left.


She activated her absolute zero weapon, draining massive amounts of heat away from herself and Theo's armor. I hoped my calculations on where to fire were correct, considering all I had available for senses was Clarice's badly damaged echolocation system. Theo's power should be able to protect him. I hope.


The light was still blinding, though it had faded to that of natural flame instead of whatever attack started this. Clarice, with only a little bit of strength left to spare, was used to cut through Theo's armor. At some point it had converted to the standard metal state, meaning he lost concentration on his power. Don't die. Don't die. I screamed internally as my changeling did all the dangerous work of peeling him out of his suit. I didn't speak, I simply stood there operating the controls and idly listing off the symptoms of shock that my body was exhibiting.


The armor was empty. Or at least empty of Theo. The metal was there, and the completely ruined bioarmor was there. Theo was not. How? I was so caught up in hope and confusion and fear that I didn't even notice when Clarice stopped functioning, slumping over the semi molten then flash frozen metal and baked Yggdrasil.


Vicky shouted a couple command that I didn't register. I was too stunned to care. I heard a body land next to me, and a hand rest on my shoulder. "Is... is he?" A voice asked hesitantly. It took me a moment to recognize it as Atropos.


"I don't know," I answered, trying to keep my emotions under control. "He wasn't in the armor. I don't know where he is."


"We'll find him, she insisted, placing her hand on my shoulder. "Now let's get you away from here. We have to regroup and figure out what to do. Victoria's already gone over to help with the fires and rescue survivors. My power's not so good for that. Do you have anything that can help?"


"No," I admitted, allowing myself to be guided by her hand through the blinding light. "Clarice didn't survive the explosion. Do you think Theo will be alright?"


"His armor's indestructible, remember?" She tried to sound comforting, but I could hear the doubt in her voice. "I'm sure he's fine. Just needs us to pick him up."


"Yeah," I responded. Lying my agreement to her lie. I knew we had the clone technology, but I didn't want to think about Theo being dead even for a little while. I didn't want to think about Missy crying. I calmed myself by counting my own tears, and a promise to myself that I would find whoever did this and extract a scream for every last one of them.


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

A/N- I get to torture Riley now!

Aww. Now I feel bad.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 209- Victoria


I shunted over above the motel we had chosen to stay the night in, and the inferno it had become. I didn't need my power to tell me there were no survivors. a hundred feet back, my armor was alerting me to the dangerous heat levels. Easy enough to change that, however. A couple quick cryo blasts siphoned massive amounts of heat and prevented the spread to other buildings. Thanks to whatever tinker bullshit was going on, it would wind up in the batteries of the Ultralisks. Somehow. After that, a few more targeted shots reduced the flames to something approachable. Guess combat precognition extends to firefighting. Awesome.


I dropped down in front of the building, doing everything I could to get my power locked on to whatever asshole torched a building with... whatever the fuck that stuff was. I'd need to ask Riley, all I knew is it wasn't alive and probably wasn't a power, maybe. There was a lot of other stuff coming over my suit's sensors. Riley went all out with my armor's sensor suite, and what she couldn't give me, Emma and Trevor did.


My arm snapped out, grabbing the invisible Case 53 by the arm. "Fancy finding you here," I said with nothing resembling the light humor my words suggested.


"Hey!" he shouted, startling a couple of others who had come here to gawk at the now mostly dead flames. Many of them woefully underdressed for the chill of a mid October night. "Ya gotta believe I didn't have shit to do with this!" My power told me he was telling the truth. Then again, I didn't trust my power against him.


I took off, slowly, while my electrical power recharged the batteries of the suit. That ice weapon drained it fast, and shunting was fucking expensive. "The only thing I gotta do is find out how you survived that inferno."


"I..." he hesitated, and I knew he was about to either lie or refuse to speak. I let the antigrav deactivate, dropping us both toward the ground. "Okay! It was Playmate's power!" I reactivated the field. "Look, we use her to keep us safe. Walkin neutral ground, with rules that you can't fight at all. Even if the other guy wants to fuck us, they can't. Yer pals should be alright. Can't die in her power's field."


Made sense, and my power still believed him, regardless of my suspicions. "Sounds like something that'd be a real hit at the Endbringer fights," I pointed out.


"Don't work," he answered. "They're special or somethin', I dunno. You'd have to ask her how her power works, all I got is rumors."


Atropos' voice came on over the com. "Is Th... Horus with you? His suit's on this side, but he wasn't in it."


My eyes narrowed. "Apparently Playmate was doing her thing," I informed her. "Everyone got out, but Horus isn't with the others saved from the fire."


"Kaiser's kid?" he asked. "Unless he's immune to powers, he should be out." Oh, I spoke out loud. Well, nothing damaging was said.


"We lost Clarice," Atropos added. "What do we do?"


God damn it. "What we should do is call in the reinforcements," I answered to my new de facto second in command. "But what I want to do is fix this ourselves. We're putting this to a vote, though. Call the big guns, or follow my plan and handle this by ourselves?"


A few seconds later, I got my response. "We're in," Atropos replied.


"So," I spoke to my captive. "Do you wanna help find out who napalmed your neutral ground?"


....


"They tipped their hand," I told the girls. "They used a teleporter to deliver that attack, and to abduct Theo. I know almost exactly where they are, but we have to hurry."


"Then we can save him!" Riley exclaimed. She was sitting next to a badly mutilated Clarice. The doll had been split open in a way that my senses were certain came from Atropos' power. Dozens of mechanical bits had been pulled out of its insides and were strewn about, along with segments of two sets of bioarmor.


She's not going to let them live through this, I realized when I got a look at the girl. Her emotions were the slow boiling rage of a murder waiting to happen, and Riley had killed enough times already that she wouldn't blink an eye at another. Fuck. How was I going to handle that? I decided that question would have to wait until after we got Theo back. Depending on how we find him, I might just give them to her, I added.


"Atropos," I instructed. "We're going right now, along with a few of the Mafia capes. I told them we wouldn't wait for them, but I'd keep them updated by GPS and if they think they want to join in, I wasn't going to stop them. Riley, you tell us what you learned while we're en route."


Lily and I shunted over, using her system to do it. "Turn off your defensive power," I instructed her. I waited for her nod, and then grabbed her hand. "I can fly faster." I told her, and pulled her along toward our destination. Our antigrav flight had a max speed of just above three hundred miles an hour. The extra tech loaded into mine afforded me over twice that max speed. Still nothing compared to Sabah's armor, but pretty damn fast.


"They used some kind of thermite bomb," Riley informed as we started in the direction the armor's senses led me.


"So not a power," I replied. "I was pretty sure it wasn't."


"It was sort of," she answered. "The chemical residue is a tinker recipe."


"First tinker tech drugs, now tinker tech chemicals in bombs," I replied. "Does anyone else find that suspicious?"


"Same guy, probably," Riley agreed. "But he's virtually a rogue. Works for the Elite, but all he does is make and sell stuff. It's not impossible that he's involved, I guess, but it's much more likely that he's just selling the weapons."


"Not quite a dead end, then," I replied. "I bet that stuff costs a lot of money."


"Yeah, lots," Riley agreed. "Enough material to do that kind of damage would run a quarter of a million dollars or more."


"So well funded, whoever they are," I acknowledged. "Okay, Atropos, you know the score."


"You kick their asses, I nuke their gear?" she snarked. "I miss the good ol' days when I was allowed to point weapons at people without needing a kill order first."


"Well, next time you'll think twice before making confetti out of an Endbringer," I retorted. "Personally, I think there's something to be said for making your enemies soil themselves just by standing in front of them. Although it's kinda gross when it actually happens."


"There's no way that actually happens," she insisted.


"My old power made it pretty easy, actually," I replied. "But I'm willing to bet you could do it on rep alone. Plus or minus a crossbow bolt a couple inches away from the throat."


We spent the next ten minutes talking about various strategies to, perhaps literally, scare the crap out of our enemies. It wasn't like we could travel any faster than we already were, without Missy around to help.


"There's the building," I replied as we approached the farmhouse well outside of the city. "Theo's alive," I informed them both. "Doesn't look like he's in any danger. A teenage girl in the room with him. Both seem calm and in good health."


"Another captive?" Lily asked.


"Dunno, maybe," I responded. "They're not leaving and I'm seeing no other living being. Shunting over, we'll check things out from the safe side." A second later, Atropos and I were back in the familiarly endless expanse of Yggdrasil.


We dropped into the ghost of the farmhouse, looking around. My powers didn't see any threat to traversing the house. No threat of injury, no real threat of discovery past the occasional floor panel to avoid stepping on. Judging by the age of the building, I would be surprised to learn there weren't creaky boards. Theo wasn't under any apparent duress, sitting in an old fashioned rocking chair, talking to a girl around his age, perhaps a little older.


Her, on the other hand, my power saw as incredibly dangerous. Deadly, even. Line of sight power, if she could see me she could hurt me. She probably wouldn't be able to kill me, but I got the impression that my regeneration and shapeshifting powers were the only reason for that.


"Lily, stay here," I instructed. I activated my stealth systems and watched as all the power to my other systems were quickly draining. With only the cloak active, I had at most twenty minutes of power. I was about to cut that in half. I shunted into the room. I couldn't touch her, either. It was unlikely she could hurt me if I did, but the risk was still pretty high. High enough that my power didn't like the idea. Besides, I had another option. One magnetic pulse later, and we were plunged into absolute blackness. Less than two minutes of power left in my suit.


"No!" the girl shrieked. "You were supposed to stop them! How did you even find me!"


I sense Theo diving sideways, using his armor to propel him quickly away from the girl. So, she was responsible, I thought. I couldn't touch her, I didn't have enough power to reliably blast her with the nonlethals. So I went with the next best option and hit her upside the head with an end table.


To my surprise, the table shattered into pieces that looked like it had gone through a wood chipper. Her power at work, because I didn't hit her nearly hard enough to break the table naturally. Much less to shatter it like that. Still, it was hard enough to send the girl face first into the couch, unconscious. Minor concussion at worst, my power informed me.


I let the stealth function drop. Theo couldn't see me either way. "So, I know there's a story here, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is."


"I'll fill you in," he answered.


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

A/N- And to this bitch, I bequeath a boot table to the head!

 

[Hexed999]

Seeing as there appears to be a demand for Omakes I figured I'd try my hand at one. This is the first time I've written in over two years and my first attempt at writing Worm, so please be gentle.

Without further ado, Zach's close call, or why you should never assume people are talking about the same things you are.



Trevor was enjoying a quiet evening tinkering when Zach burst into his workshop looking like the hounds of hell were after him.

"Dude, thank god you're here, listen I need your help, my life depends on it" The other boy looked genuinely terrified, something that Trevor had never seen before, even in the face of the Simugh.

Trevor felt the rush of adrenaline flow through his system, something that could make Zach fear for his life was formidable, and could either be a huge asset or a huge threat to Pantheon "Ok, let me call Khepri and -"

"NO!" Zach screamed "They don't need to know! We can deal with this ourselves! It's for the best!" With that he grabbed Trevor and dragged him to where his Chariot was, stopping once to crumble to dust and regenerate. Trevor noted that Zach's terrified expression never ceased despite the mental balancing effect his powers normally had. "We need to get up in the air, where no one can hear us" he muttered in his rush, barely giving Trevor enough time to grab his helmet before forcing him to fly the panicked boy into the clouds, well beyond even Khepri's ears.

"Ok" Trevor said calmly, attempting to soothe Zach "What's this all about? Why didn't you want me contacting the others? Are we facing another Master/Stranger situation?" His mind was reaching for the worst possible conclusions, if Gaea and Khepri were compromised then the best case scenario was the fall of Pantheon, worst case was an extinction level event.

In response Zach handed Trevor the laptop that the tinker hadn't realized he was carrying "I need you to delete something from my computer and make sure no one can ever, ever recover it"

...What?

Faced with Trevor's blank stare Zach elaborated "A couple days ago I got curious and decided to see what kind of porn of us there was, most of it was pretty straight forward, usual stuff, you know" Trevor nodded, while he doubted his and Zach's idea of "usual stuff" was the same, the plot of pornos was fairly generic no matter what you were into "One of the more popular videos out there was titled 'Sister appreciation' and I was feeling a bit down about Victoria so I figured I'd see what it was about. I started downloading it but then Emma came to talk to me and I forgot all about it until now and I really need you to make sure no one can ever find out I downloaded it!" Zach was pleading by the end of it

Trevor put his hand on his forehead "you know you can just delete it?"

"But it might not be enough!"

"Why not? Neither Amelia nor Victoria are tinkers and even if they do find out it's not like they can hurt you..." Trevor paused upon realized that there was another member of Pantheon the public accepted as Amelia's sister, the only person who had managed to physically harm since he triggered "It wasn't Victoria was it?"

Zach shook his head "Give it here" Zach handed the computer over and Trevor plugged in a USB that he'd gotten in the habit of carrying around from his days as a spy for the Wards. It contained a program that made all deleted data completely irretrievable without damaging any saved data.

"Here, you computer should be pretty slow for a few hours but no one will every find that video. Just don't download porn of you teammates again ok?" With that Trevor turned to the controls and flew them back to base, eager to be back in his workshop. With any luck he'd be able to complete his current project before something else dragged him away from his workbench.

Hopefully.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 210- Lily


"So, four against a dozen?" I asked. "We're really doing this on the say so of that girl?"


"Doubt they'd bring all of them," Vicky spoke, lazing easily against a tree. "Besides, they're all a bunch of b-listers. If you're scared, I can fight them all myself. Don't worry, I'll let you take a couple selfies next to them after. Y'know, so you can impress your girlfriend."


"Says you," I couldn't help but smile. The girl's confidence was infectious. "You can take all the credit you want. I'm the only one here with 'Endslayer' on the resume. I don't need to prove shit. I'm the biggest badass in any room I choose to be in."


"Says the girl with the rope marks across half her body," Vicky countered. Theo chose to fake a cough and look away, and all I could do was thank my armor for hiding my blushing. Damn it, Vicky. Why would you even say that? "Yeah, that's what I thought," she teased.


"Oh, go fuck yourself. Sideways. With a cactus."


"Wow," she replied easily. "You really are into the rough stuff. Speaking of, I think our guests are arriving."


She gestured toward the cars coming from the west. "Only three," I observed. "They could have piled everyone in."


"Most of them are gonna be normals," Vicky answered. "My combat sense is entirely unimpressed, except by the second car. That's the threat."


"They keep all their capes in the same vehicle?" I asked. "That seems kinda fucking stupid, to be honest."


She shrugged. "Hey, they're probably expecting us to handle the fighting. They're here for mop up and maybe trying to steal a captive or two from us, if they're particularly stupid. They think this is an alliance. And until they say otherwise, we'll keep treating it as such. Pantheon doesn't start fights, we just finish them."


I nodded my agreement. Good line, I'll have to say that one to Sabah. It'd put her mind at rest about things like the missions last week. She was upset by the idea that we were going on the offensive so much. When she joined, it was with the promise that Pantheon was in support of rogues like her, that this wasn't a military organization like the Protectorate. And yet here we were, kicking down doors and doing so much of the same shit that defined what she hated about cape culture.


I was still thinking about the issues in my relationship when the cars pulled up. The men with the guns were negligible. They'd run out of ammo before they scratched me or Horus. Victoria might be in danger, if she wasn't capable of all the insane shit she was capable of. I kept my eyes on the capes. Three men, two women. My suit's auto highlight system lit them up in order as Riley announced the details.


"Cage," he was a bigger man. Clearly older, with gray hair, but still in pretty good shape. "Creates invisible bubble forcefields. Can make them selectively permiable in either direction, giving him a barrier he or his friends can shoot through, or a trap to hold enemies. Upper durability limit, fifty tons of force. Approximately a vehicular collision at 30mph." He's not a problem for me.


The light jumped to the next. "Shockwave. Allegedly Cage's son. Generates fields that explode like landmines. Similar destructive power as his father's defensive one." Okay, so he might be a problem.


"Deadweight," the third highlight settled on a petite brunette. Smaller than Sabah, even, though not quite as little as Missy or Riley. Is this gonna be one of the ones that contribute to little kids having more power stereotypes? "She creates powerful localized gravity up to nine times Earth's normal. Thirty foot radius centered on herself. Isn't influenced by her own power. " Oh, well, that's not so bad. Lots you could do with that, though.


"Arc," the last guy was highlighted. "Electric blaster. Lower power than a police taser, but long range and can jump from target to target without power loss.


The last highlight was the older woman. Twenties or thirties, probably. "Playmate, you already know about." With long black hair, olive toned skin and an imposing six foot tall figure, she looked the name.


"Don't be too impressed," Vicky snarked over the com. "She's got more artificial parts than Clarice."


Well, there are worse ways to spend money, I thought.


Cage approached us. "So, you found your serial killer?"


"We did," Vicky agreed easily. "We found something else that's really interesting as well. A lot of somethings, actually. Let's just say that in that building is the key to destroying your entire crime family. Of course, you probably figured that much out the moment you saw the place. In case you're wondering? Yeah, we'll be using it."


"A double cross?" Cage growled.


"Not at all," Vicky answered. "You're free to leave and we won't stop you. Or you can start a fight, and we're okay with that. We were willing to accept your help fighting criminals. We're not willing to let you kill the captives or destroy the evidence we've found."


"Doesn't give us much choice, does it?" he asked.


"Well, I'd go with 'stop being a bunch of scumbags', if I were you," Vicky shrugged. "There's also accepting our offer to let you go so you can prepare for when we come after you for real. Maybe grab what you can and run like cowards. Surrender. All nice options."


"Or destroy what you have in there," he added. "We'll be doing that. Playmate's already made sure you can't hurt us. Offensive powers can't be used here. Defensive ones work just fine." Bubbles of swirling light formed around us.


"Okay, I lose," Vicky replied, instantly vanishing. Cage didn't have time to react before there was a crackle pop and a scream. Vicky was standing next to a now very unconscious Playmate. "Turns out, her power doesn't work on herself."


I infused my power through my armor and let the wings snap out, shattering Cage's barrier with no effort at all. With my superhuman accuracy and Azrael's computer targeting systems, dozens of bolts fired from the wings. Striking every gun the goons held. The bolts sank into the metal thanks to the precision use of my power. The weapons would never be usable again except as maybe clubs.


"That could have just as easily been your hands," I informed them, allowing the armor's voice enhancement to carry my words. Azrael's wings fanned to their widest span, and then folded slightly inward, pointing at the crooks.


Arc decided to try to be a hero, and blasted me with the full charge of his power. The energy jumped away from my body and through the wings before jumping back to my body. Other than my armor registering a 2% increase in battery charge, there was no effect. Two could play at that game. I altered the bolts and then fired a full volley straight at him. He didn't even have a chance to scream before the bolts passed right through him and turned the car behind him into so much scrap metal.


Then he screamed, falling to his knees in shock and terror, yet physically unharmed. Others around him shouted and cursed, retreating from the swiss cheesed sedan. Let them wonder how I fired my shots through the kid without touching him only to annihilate the vehicle.


"Okay!" Cage shouted. "You've made your fucking point. We're leaving."


"Not so fast," Vicky answered, tossing the limp Playmate over her shoulder. "Walking away was your option before you started this fight. Now you're our captives. Cops'll be here in a little while. Horus, would you mind going into the house and seeing if there's a pair of pants available for the big bad supervillain? Also, you're a witness that I was right and Atropos owes me fifty dollars."


Really? That is both awesome and disgusting. Best fifty bucks I ever spent.


....


"I must say, Pantheon does fantastic work," Director Nicholas was all smiles and praise. "The murders solved, two of their most powerful capes, and enough evidence to break their entire crime family. Incredible."


My hands clenched in the suit as I watched out the window. It was well past midnight, now, though the lights of a city this size turned the late autumn cloud cover into a deep bronze haze in the sky.


"I must admit," Brain spoke up. "I was a little put off by your methods, but I can't argue with the results."


"All in a day's work," Victoria answered calmly. "Sorry for getting you out of bed at this hour."


"No, that's perfectly fine," he answered it. "As much sleep as they've cost me over the years, I can afford a little more."


"So, if you don't mind answering a question," Vicky replied. "Was it worth it?"


His smile faltered some. "Was what worth it?" he asked.


"Your career," she answered. "We figured out what you did. Covering up one crime with another. Mutilating corpses. Fabricating evidence. Buncha other shit I'm not gonna bother naming because the cops will take care of that for us later."


"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," he answered. It didn't take our tech to know he was lying.


"Sir?" Brain looked at his boss. "Is this true?"


"Of course it isn't!" the man insisted. Ah, the wonders of redundant blinking lights in front of my face, telling me things I already know.


"Then you have nothing to worry about," Vicky responded. She leaned over the man's desk pressed a button just moment after it started to beep. "Sorry for the late call, Chief Director."


"I'm accustomed to it," she replied. "Director Nicholas, do yourself the dignity of not trying to lie to me. What we say will remain confidential, right Victoria? Completely off the record, legally speaking."


"We already know the score," she replied. "We don't need his confession to bury him. Have your chat."


"Thank you," she replied. "Nicholas. The truth, as they say, will set you free."


He sighed. "We discovered the bodies of the Fallen when they were somehow dropped in one of our smaller conference rooms, along with a note and some minor physical evidence tying them to the Capello crime family."


"Fits what we know so far," Victoria informed.


"And from there, what happened," Costa-Brown prompted.


"We knew it wasn't enough," he explained. "To say nothing of evidence tampering simply by dropping the bodies there like that. At best, it would be yet another unsolved case. A waste of Protectorate time and resources." He looked toward all of us before his eyes went back to the viewscreen which I assumed the Chief Director was watching from. "After the events in Houston and other areas to the south, I took a gamble. Doctoring a crime scene that would point evidence to the gang it belonged on, while baiting Pantheon here in response to it. I expected them to come in force and deal with the problem for us."


"And that worked wonderfully for you," the Chief Director replied dryly. "Next time you want to do something this stupid? Don't."


Next time? I thought.


"Next time?" Victoria asked.


"Ignoring this one poor decision, Director Nicholas has been an excellent employee and a significant asset to the PRT," the voice over the phone was calm and commanding. "In addition, word of this could... muddy... legal actions against the villains you've worked so hard to put away tonight."


"And the PRT's reputation," I added angrily. The fuck?


"Now," she continued, ignoring my comment. "I would like to believe the PRT has been more than generous in how we've handled of the criminal history of some of Pantheon's members." Oh fuck. "Is it too much to ask you for a similar accommodation, now? After all, the Director's actions here were, if gruesome and poorly thought out, ultimately victimless. In fact, I do believe they've resulted in a net gain for Pantheon. A gain that could easily be lost if this situation became public knowledge."


Oh fuck you, I thought.


"You make a good point," Victoria gritted her teeth. My lie detector continued telling me things I already knew. I would have turned it off, but my newest armor 'upgrade' meant that I couldn't. "But it's not my call to make. I'll talk to my sister in the morning and see how she feels about all of this."


"Very well," Costa Brown answered. Her tone didn't change in the slightest and yet, somehow, she sounded painfully pleased with herself. "I believe in the time I've worked with your sister and her partner, I've come to know them well enough. I anticipate no future problems will arise from this incident. Now, if you please, may I talk with Director Nicholas in private?"


"Yes," Victoria agreed, standing and turning away. I quickly followed after her. How the fuck do I explain this to Sabah?



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

A/N- Vat ah tweest!

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 211- Arianna


Head hurts. Dark. I slowly came to. I was laying face down on what felt like a giant gel pack. It was warm. And smelled like wet grass.


"Oh, good, you're awake," a girl spoke. "Before you do anything, I'm going to explain your situation. I have very powerful taser weapon. I can promise it won't kill you, and I can promise it will stop you. I can't promise it won't hurt you. Then we'll probably have to hand you over to a girl who's very close friends with the boy you kidnapped. She's our healer. I can't promise she won't kill you. Or a whole lot worse. So for your own sake, don't try anything."


I reached out with my power and felt... nothing. Nowhere. All of my anchors are gone. "How... how did you disable my power? How did you even find me?" I managed to croak, despite the pain radiating from my skull. I reached back and gingerly touched the back of my head. It was sore, and my hair was damp.


"Pixie flatulence," the girl answered dryly. "And Santa Claus owes us a favor ever since we saved Christmas from the mole people. Turns out murder, kidnapping, and dropping tinker napalm on a bunch of civilians gets you on the naughty list real fast."


Well, shit. "They weren't in any danger," I insisted. "Playmate's power was already active." I slowly climbed to my feet.


"Yeah, we figured that out, too," the girl replied. "So mind explaining what you were thinking? I mean, most of it's pretty transparent, you want to bring down the Capello crime family. You framed them for the Fallen murders, knowing we'd have to come along and do our thing. When you figured out it wasn't working, you tried to draw the big guns by kidnapping Horus and murdering the rest of us."


"No!" I insisted, and immediately regretted raising my voice. I hissed in pain. "No," I said again, much quieter this time. "I didn't kill anyone."


"Okay, let's say I believe you," the girl agreed too quickly, I realized. She already knew I didn't do it. "Why the fuck did you do all of this? For that matter, your power is strong enough to take them out yourself. Why bring us into this mess at all?"


"I didn't," I told her. "That incompetent Director did. I practically gift wrapped his case for him, and then he goes and sets up a fake crime scene. Then I kinda got my hopes up when you showed. I mean, if he was too chicken shit to handle it, maybe you would. Then I found out you were just going to let them get away with everything like you didn't care at all, so I was trying to give you more reasons to go after them."


"Well, yeah, all evidence suggested they didn't do it," the girl replied. "We kinda need a reason before we start kicking ass. It sucks, but that's how it works.


"Oh, they did it," I insisted. "And a lot of others. Thirty murders that I know about, probably lots more. I just never had a chance to prove it before. The mob's been doing business with the Fallen for years. Buying drugs, selling guns and forged documents and even homeless people. After you happened, those three showed up looking for a place to stay. They were given an overdose of Bliss. Then suffocated."


"And you didn't go to the police?" she asked. "With any of this?"


"They own the fucking police," I growled. I wanted to yell at her, but I learned my lesson last time. "And the courts. And the Mayor. Wouldn't be surprised to learn they own the Director, too."


"Doubt it," she answered. "At least about the Director. If he was on the take, those deaths never would have made it on the news. I have to ask, why are you so obsessed with the mob? And how do you know so much about it?"


Okay, she has a point about that. "Oh, pardon me, I must have forgotten my manners when I was knocked unconscious," I grumbled. "Arianna Capello. Pleased to meet you." I held out my hand to the darkness, but the woman didn't bother taking it.


She laughed. She actually laughed at me. I bit off a smartass remark or stream of profanities. "Sorry," she spoke after a moment. "I'm not about to fall for that trick. Touching you is a bad idea. While we're on that subject, just what is your power, anyway?"


"You don't know?" I asked. "How did you disable my power if you don't even know what it is?"


"It's not," she answered. "One of my powers is combat precognition. It tells me how to beat you. It doesn't tell me why it works, just that it will work."


"Teleporting," I answered. "I can teleport anything I can see into touch range of myself. Anything I'm already touching, I can teleport to anywhere I can see. And I can teleport myself, of course. It's pretty useful."


"Maybe I should have mentioned I have thinker powers. Emotion reading is one of them. Making me a damn near perfect lie detector. Want to explain the rest of your power? Like travelling almost a hundred miles. Pretty sure that's not line of sight. Or how you destroyed that table."


God damn it. "Umm... I can set places. I call them anchors. I can teleport things to or from an anchor like I'm there and can see it." I paused for a moment. The woman said nothing, and I reluctantly continued. "I don't really know how the destroying things works. I just teleport something, but halfway through I kinda cancel the effect. I learned I could do that by accident."


"Show me," she instructed, and I felt something tap my side. I reached out and touched it. A stick of some kind? Too heavy, too thick, too smooth. I focused, and activated the teleport. Without anchors and without the ability to see, there wasn't anywhere I could send it. I obeyed her request and it returned to normal. The process took less than a blink of an eye. The object was gently removed from my hand. "So... Arianna..." she said after what felt like an eternity. "How would you like a job? The pay's slightly less than wonderful, but the perks are amazing."


....


I thought this would be more fun, I thought as I watched police ransack my house in the middle of the night. I glanced over at Atropos. She was even more awe inspiring in person. It gave me confidence, knowing I was standing beside her. She glanced over at me and I looked away immediately.


"What?" she asked.


"Nothing..." I looked down. "Just. Thank you. And I'm sorry. Again."


"Don't worry about it," she responded. "Most fun I've had in a while." She gave a hard look at Victoria, who simply clasped her hands together behind her back.


"Really?" I asked. I chose not to ask what that was about between them.


"At work, at least," she answered. "Murder mysteries, intrigue, politics. We were one scantily dressed actress and a carton of cigarettes away from film noir. I give it a nine out of ten, would recommend to friends."


"Thanks," I smiled.


"Miss Capello?" a man asked as he approached. He was smartly dressed.


"Yes?" I asked.


"I'm Agent Mallory, FBI," he introduced himself. "First, I would like to commend you on your bravery. I know it must be difficult, but you're doing a good thing."


"Not nearly as difficult as you think," I shrugged. "I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm not so fragile. I'm now functionally homeless, you're putting half my living relatives in a cell tonight, and the other half are probably going to hire someone to murder me with piano wire. Wouldn't be surprised if they're already making the phone calls. And I'm a major witness for a federal case that could define careers. Witness protection is a thing I know about."


He blinked. Feels good to know I can still throw people off their game. "Err, as you wish Miss Capello," he recovered quickly. "That does make this a great deal easier."


"I'll be turning it down," I informed him.


"Uh... excuse me?"


"Got a better offer," I told him. "Don't worry, I'll be there to testify and do all the stuff you need me to do. But I've seen my father get to people who were supposedly safe before. I wouldn't be surprised to find out he bought your boss a prostitute for his or her birthday. I can't trust you to keep me safe."


"Miss Capello, I assure you we can provide the best possible security," he continued. "Better than anyone else can offer."


"Except them," I gestured at Victoria. It was fun watching his face and the barely visible look of shock. He was good at hiding his reactions, but not perfect. "They can give me a new name, a new identity, even new fingerprints and DNA. Can you offer that?"


"I... no," he admitted. "I suppose we cannot." He looked toward Victoria. "And you're going to do all this? Why?"


"I found out she's never seen The Godfather and I'm really looking forward to movie night," she replied. "Besides, I have to continue my family's tradition of abducting children from supervillains. It's worked out awesome so far."


===========

A/N- Vicky gets the best lines. It's in her contract.

 

[Daunmi]

A/N- Vicky gets the best lines. It's in her contract.

Click to shrink...

I'm not happy with it but...

"Too bad."
"No!" Tattletale, or Minerva or whatever that bitch was calling herself now threw her hands up as she shouted at me. "It doesn't work like that!"
"Too. Bad. They want me on the team. You guys want me on the team, even if you won't admit it. Write it up."
"Look, Victoria," if it wasn't for my sister trying to keep Tattletale calm, this would have been hilarious... or hilarious-er anyway, "it won't work. We've already got Zack and with the way his power works he tends to, well, run his mouth non-stop."
"I want the best lines. You want me." Something seemed wrong with the room when I said that. I ignored it for the time being. "Ergo, supply and demand, to get me you have to give me the best lines."
That bug bitch wasn't in the room itself, but the contract that had gone flying at some point after the little addendum was requested was being picked up by her things and placed back onto the desk. In order. I suppressed a shiver; there was just something wrong with the way she worked.
"We can't guarantee it." Amy said. Amelia, I reminded myself. Wait...Oh shit, they're going for it! "But... we'll tell Zack to, I don't know, ham it up I guess. Go for the corny lines when he can. You'll have to do the rest yourself."
The top of my head almost fell off, I swear I was smiling that hard.
"Write it into the contract and you've got yourself another cape!"

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 212


I woke up in a nice hug. Taylor decided to be the big spoon... wait, when did she get all the extra arms? "Gah!" I shot up in my bed, only to drag the grasping arms with me. WorryConfusion. I looked down at the thing wrapped around me. Riley's damn spider. I tried to will my heart to stop beating so fast and took some slow, deep breaths. "Don't worry, Taylor, I'm fine." Then I slowly pealed the fuzzy little abomination's legs off of me. It purred at the attention I was giving it like the worlds friendliest, and dumbest, cat. I tossed the thing on my bed and hit the shower.


After that and getting dressed, I walked out where the ever friendly plant spider sat attentively on my pillow. I sighed. "Okay, Snowball, hop up." It climbed up onto me and wrapped its arms around me like a backpack while purring the whole time. I can't believe I'm saying this. "Don't worry, your mama will be home soon."


I walked out into the group area, still toting the albino furball. Lisa just looked at me. "Dammit."


"What?" I asked.


"Well, ordinarily I would have teased you mercilessly for this, but we actually have business to discuss today," she informed. "At least you won't need the coffee. It's already gone cold anyway."


"Blasphemy," I muttered as I took the pot and started pouring the lukewarm fluid into one of the disposable cups. "Coffee is life. And try working at a hospital. You learn to drink this stuff even if it's achieved a solid state."


"Your sister reports her mission as, and I quote, 'complete success, until government corruption fucked us'. Turns out, the PRT Director was responsible for the message we responded to. He didn't do the killings, he just doctored up a crime scene."


Oh god damn it. "Is this going to be one of those messes where we overthrow a PRT office and install our own puppet government? Because honestly that wasn't nearly as fun as I thought it'd be the last time. Now it just sounds like a headache."


"Nah," she replied. "Costa-Brown stepped in and saved the Director's ass. Vicky says she's 'fucking blackmailing us'."


"Is she?" I asked, then took a deep drink of my coffee.


"Pretty much," Lisa shrugged. "Slightly more polite than that. 'We wanna keep this guy, yadda yadda, we've ignored worse from your team's members, calling in the favor' stuff, no big deal. I'm not sure if the Director in question is one of Cauldron's agents or this is just a power play by Cauldron by holding it over the guy's head in the future. Either way, I talked with the Chief Director about it and very politely agreed with her assessment. Something was said about us doing them a favor, and that favors made good currency. You'll have to sell it to your sister later."


"Okay, that doesn't sound so bad," I muttered. Really didn't like us letting this kind of corruption slide, but such was our reality these days. "Anything else?"


"Yeah, Vicky's found a pet mob princess that she's inviting over for tea," Lisa added dismissively. "So, y'know, plan for a new roommate."


What? "What?"


....


"Her power's more like Lachesis than Trickster," Trevor kindly informed me. "Pretty sure she has a cousin Passenger."


"What's a passenger?" Arianna asked.


"I'll explain later," Vicky answered. "For now, they're just what powers come from. The detailed explanation is gonna take a few hours and a bottle of whiskey to wash it all down with. Then some more whiskey. Then another few hours because you forgot it all."


Trevor politely waited for them to finish, then started up again. "She compresses space and time, things go Taboo, and the target moves. If Lachesis' power works like a warp drive, then Arianna's is a wormhole generator."


I looked at him blankly. I wasn't surprised by the 'Taboo' part. Almost every power, if you analyzed its functions deeply enough, stumbled into 'Taboo'. Tinkers were the most obvious, preventing people from understanding the technology that might be used to fight the Entities. All powers that had to do with dimension warping ran into similar barricades. The Entities obviously feared what would happen if we could access Passenger dimensions. The blank look had nothing to do with that. "Explain it in layman's terms?"


"Her power works by creating a tunnel in space and time between two points," he answered. "It also temporarily accelerates her mental functions to process the information when her power's active, giving her the equivalent of several minutes to handle computing that would melt a supercomputer. This allows her to envision a scene, then scan the planet to find a matching location. She then generates a tunnel the physical size of a hydrogen molecule, compresses the target down to that size, moves them through the space between dimensions that we observe in the Labyrinth-Atropos interaction, and decompresses them on the other side. All in a span measured in nanoseconds. Like I said, wormhole drive."


"Holy fuck!" Arianna gasped. I agreed fully. "How do I do all that? I barely passed algebra!"


"It's actually only a fraction of what Khepri does," he added. "Passengers handle incredible amounts of information like it's nothing. This isn't anything new."


"Wow, way to make me feel special," Arianna pouted.


"And she has no Manton Limit?" I asked. Seriously, this could be gamebreaking.


"One," he replied. "Like Lachesis, she can't actually cross dimensions. Even right at the border of our gate, she can't cross it with her power. Not really a surprise. If she was capable of dimension jumping, she could accidentally teleport into any number of dimensions that look almost exactly like ours and never even realize it."


"Whoa..." Arianna muttered. "So there's an existential crisis waiting to happen. Good thing I'm used to those already. So now that we've tested my powers to exhaustion, am I on the team now? I'd like somewhere to put my stuff before the police sell all of it at auction."


"I'll find space to give you a room," I agreed. "We'll need a little bit of time before putting you on the team officially."


"Trust me," Vicky added. "You're not missing out on much. Our job basically consists of looking badass for the press. Pretending we don't know we're badass for the press. Avoiding the press. And making it very clear to the bad guys that we're totally badasses while our bosses are having snuggle time." Vicky had lifted up fingers as she went over each point.


"It's all here in this pamphlet that Zach made." she lifted up a sheet of paper that unfolded like a small map. "See this picture right here?" she tapped the paper. It was one of the photos of me and Taylor sitting under that tree at school. "Yeah, isn't it adorable? We have to make that look intimidating."


"Oh, I love that one!" Arianna agreed happily. "Especially the motivational poster one online!"


I actually facepalmed. God damn it. EmbarrassedAmusedProud. Glad you like it, I thought at my partner.


"Which one?"


"The 'For their one month anniversary, they gave each other a dead Simurgh' one," she chuckled.


"Really?" Vicky asked excitedly. "That one was totally my idea! I made Zach make it, but it's totally mine."


"Seriously?" she asked. "I've got a few ideas of my own! How does 'Diamonds are forever, Endbringers are for play' sound?" I cringed.


"It sounds horrible," Vicky answered with a deadpan voice. Oh thank god. "Which means it's perfect!"


God damn it, Victoria.



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

A/N- A fun little chapter showing how the new girl's power and personality works.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 213


"Have to admit, for a cold recruitment, this works out really nice," Taylor said as she plopped down next to me in bed. She and her dad had worked out a sort of Sunday tradition where she stayed there Saturday night and they spent most of Sunday together. Weekends were sort of a dead time at the base anyway. I usually spent that time with Riley. Or sometimes I just got a nice day off from talking to former supervillains about world threatening crisis. There was a lot to be said about vacations. At least things are getting better, I told myself. Fallen gone, Teeth gone, more and more groups joining our alternative-to-the-Protectorate alliance. Other than the Elite, there no longer were any human threats on this continent that would require our direct intervention. It was nice.


"Definitely could have been worse," I agreed, snuggling up against my partner. Mutant plant spiders just didn't compare. Although Snowball had decided its new place was on Taylor's lap. The thing was cute, in a weird sort of way. I idly scratched between its large, shiny, and numerous eyes.


"Knock knock, lovebirds!" Lisa shouted from outside our door. "I'm coming in! Please have your pants on this time!"


AnnoyancePride. "She only ever does that when she's bringing a visitor," Taylor observed. I, meanwhile, had sent the command for the door to open. Riley rushed in first, while Lisa and Arianna stood in the doorway. ConcernWorrySecrecy.


"Snowball! I've been looking for you everwhere!" Riley chided the gigantic albino spider. It seemed excitedly happy to see her, in as much as the thing had no actual emotions. It quickly hopped off Taylor's lap and scuttled energetically toward its creator. "See, isn't he adorable?" Riley picked up the easily four foot long imitation arachnid. Arianna seemed only slightly put off by the display.


"Umm... sure..." the girl gingerly reached out and patted Snowball, which resulted in much happy purring. "This is easily the cutest spider in the world. I think. Either that or it's the most horrible cat?"


"It's actually made of plant material," Lisa informed. "It's never been a cat or a spider or any other animal. Pretty much a walking Chia pet."


"You made this out of a plant?" she looked at me like I'd just performed a miracle. I guess, in a weird way, it was.


"See, told you she can do pretty much anything," Vicky answered.


"So, umm, what's going on?" Taylor glanced from Lisa to Arianna and Riley. I felt the same concern. We sorta didn't want the newbies around the child formerly known as Bonesaw. That was never the recipe for anything good.


"Relax," Lisa replied. "She's okay with it. Easier to get it out of the way. Like ripping off a bandaid."


"Yeah," Arianna agreed. "Riley's adorable. You two must be so proud."


"Proud?" Taylor asked. ConfusionMisgiving.


"Of your daughter, yes," Arianna replied. "I swear I won't tell anyone that you two created a test tube baby with each other and then accidentally accelerated its growth to the point where she was a teenager."


What? I blinked. ConfusionHorror.


Vicky started laughing hysterically, followed quickly by Lisa. "What have you been telling the new girl?!" I yelled.


"I'm just. Messing around," Arianna said as she laughed so hard that she struggled to speak. "I know. Bonesaw. Not a deal. Can't. Breathe. Pay up."


"Please tell me you got that on camera!" Zach shouted from the other room.


"The fuck do you actually want?" Taylor sighed. ResignationAnnoyanceAmusement. She couldn't hide the smile on her face. Honestly it was kinda funny. I would be getting my revenge, of course, but I gave up pretending not to smile.


"Well, I was just going over new identities with Arianna here, and she's kinda got an interesting request," Lisa informed. "Not a difficult one, but pretty major for us to take care of before all the paperwork is created and passed through the PRT."


"Alright, what do you need?"


"Umm... Vicky said you can change everything, right down to the DNA if you wanted?" for the first time since I met her, she seemed hesitant. One would imagine everything else, plus or minus Bonesaw, would be the scary part, but not in this case.


"Pretty much," I replied. "It's a little imprecise at that level. I can't really predict the changes or understand them. All I do is decide I want the results to be permanent, and my power handles the rest. I also won't be able to change you back to your original genetics afterward. I might be able to get close, but certainly not exact. Too many variables in the code, plus junk DNA, plus innumerable other factors. Once we do something like that, there really is no changing you back."


"But that's okay because we already have your DNA on file for your clone, plus the brain scan," Riley volunteered. "We've had some bad luck with our revival tech and incorrect genetics. Without your original code, we might not be able to restore your powers when we bring you back."


"Good to know," Arianna agreed. "So, umm... you'd be able to turn me into a boy?"


"I... sure?" I answered. "You know you don't need to go to that extreme. I could even make you cosmetically male without doing genetic alterations. A lot easier to reverse that way."


"No, I want the full package," she answered. "Err, no pun intended this time."


"You're absolute certain you want to do it like this?" I asked.


"Ever since I was twelve years old," she insisted. "You're just correcting a mistake nature made. Can you do it?"


RealizationUnderstanding. "Oh... sorry for being so obtuse about it," I apologized.


"Hey, I don't like to talk about it much, either," she shrugged.


"Look at it this way," Vicky added. "We go in, kick ass, walk away with the supervillian mob boss's daughter, and suddenly add a new heroine on our team. Strike me as something people are gonna figure out. This is the best disguise ever. And it's not even like this is a life altering decision or anything. If he doesn't like it, he's back to being a she in a day or two at the most."


"Yeah. It'll be a little more complex than what I usually do when working on people," I told her. Him? Whatever. "The Yggdrasil is easy because it's customized to respond to my power perfectly. You're not. So, first, how old are you?"


"Just turned twenty, why?" she asked.


"There are laws about this sort of thing," I answered.


"Which we'd probably break anyway," Vicky added. "Like I said, this job has the best perks. Ever. Of all time."


"Probably," I admitted. I appraised Arianna. She was pretty tall for a girl, maybe a little taller than Taylor. A nice face, pixie style haircut that suddenly took on a new meaning to me. A fair amount of pudge. Not a huge amount and with her height she carried it nicely, but I'd guess her weight at around a couple hundred pounds. Yeah, there was certainly mass enough to work with. No need for extreme measures to do what needed to be done here. "So, any preferences?"


"Well... I've already got the Italian thing going for me," she started. "So... think you can do a young John Stamos? Sure, he's actually Greek, but close enough."


"Umm, maybe if you get some pictures?" I offered.


"You don't know who I'm talking about, do you?" she looked disappointed.


"Not even a little bit," I admitted. I looked over at Taylor, who simply shrugged.


"Great," she sighed. "Now I feel old. So, uh, will the process be difficult?"


"Not really," I answered. "You have the mass I need. The rest is the easy part. I can't just pull matter out of nowhere when using my power, and fusing other lifeforms together gets ugly really fast."


"So, if I asked you to make me taller, it wouldn't work?" she sighed unhappily.


"Not without it hurting like hell and taking an hour or two," I told her. "But I can tweak your growth patterns a little. Minor growth spurt, not much different than all the others you go through as a teenager. You'll have to wait a few months to get the extra height, but we can totally make it happen."


"Sounds good to me," she agreed.


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

A/N- I keep making that RvB reference. No one ever spots it.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 214


"That sounds so boring," Vicky argued. "You have all this cool stuff. You should use it mercilessly." I paused to listen, it wasn't like I had much else to do right now. Taylor was off with her dad again. I probably could have went with, but it didn't seem right cutting into their family time like that. Despite the public identity, Taylor liked to keep her father away from her cape life, and vice versa.


"But that's not how it's done!" Riley whined. "It has to be normal or it's not fun!"


"Never thought I'd hear you say something like that," Zach spoke up. "Oww. Riley, please stop teaching people how to not set off my rejuvenation power. It's lost its charm."


"She has a point," Missy replied, completely ignoring Zach's comment. "All the cool toys just get in the way. It needs to be the traditional way. Especially since this is Riley's first time." The fuck are they talking about?


"Really? That's awful," Theo spoke up. "Okay, normal way it is. Missy, you need to change. Vicky, you too."


"No I don't," Vicky insisted. "You can do what you want, but I make this look way too good to give it up. Just check out these curves."


"Yes ma-oww!" Zach exclaimed.


"Emma," Theo continued. "You can find something to put on. Sorry."


Okay, now I have to know. I finally walked into the group area. Riley was closest, wearing a headband with two red puffballs held up cheap aluminum stems. Vicky was dressed up in a very realistic copy of Alexandria's costume, though without the helmet. She'd even turned her hair black.


Missy was dressed up as a knight, although the outfit looked far too realistic to be any kind of store bought costume. I saw Zach and just sighed. "Zach... why are you dressed up like a princess?"


"What?" he put his hand on his hip in a complete mockery of feminine grace. "Oh, I see how it is. Missy gets to anachronistically cross dress and you're not asking her any questions. But when a maaaan does it, suddenly it's wrong."


"I wanted Theo to wear it, but he chickened out," Missy complained.


"He doesn't have the hips to pull it off anyway," Emma teased, putting her arm around Zach. "But now I don't have a costume. Do you know how hard it was to get a dragon costume to go with the theme? From Dragon, no less."


"You're suppose to be giving her armor a biotech interface upgrade," I pointed out. "Not wearing it to go trick or treating."


"Well, it needs field testing," Emma argued.


"Where's Eric?" I asked.


"Oh, apparently he's too old for trick or treating," Vicky informed us. "He's at a party with Crystal, Sabah and Lily. I'll probably swing by later, after the bartender gets too bored to check for ID. It'll be just like old times."


"Vicky," I replied dryly. "You do realize that regeneration means you're immune to alcohol, right?"


"What?" she asked. "Seriously?"


"Yup," I confirmed. "And pretty much every other drug, illegal or otherwise, that you can come across."


"Well, fu-udge me then," she sighed. "No wonder Lung had anger issues. Can't get drunk, there's nothing left to punch, can't even take a cat nap. How is a girl suppose to relax around here?"


"Speaking as someone in the same boat," Zach spoke up. "Whenever I need some good stress relief, I-"


"Finish that sentence and you won't get any 'relief' for a month," Emma threatened darkly.


Zach paused. "Babe, you know I love you, but if you threaten to take away my video games I will have to break up with you."


Emma glanced around. It was Vicky who started laughing first, and then I followed. That was the permission that everyone else needed to join in.


"Umm... I don't get it?" Riley spoke up. We just laughed harder. And then the alarms went off. Fuck.


I pulled out my phone and my stomach dropped. "Endbringer," I stated. ConcernAnticipationFocus. "The prediction tech thinks it's Behemoth."


"He pussed out last time," Zach replied. "I bet a fifty he does it again."


"I'll bet you five grand that you won't keep the princess costume on during the fight," Vicky added. "And it doesn't count unless it's over the battle armor."


"You're on!" Zach ran off, and everyone else started scrambling as well. We needed our costumes, the real ones this time. The others would arrive in their own time. Honestly, we probably didn't need to rush, we had almost thirty minutes of warning time before they could even narrow down the target location. Over an hour of total ready time. New Delhi, we had over four hours of warning, but that was a fluke brought on by the Simurgh for maximum devastation. Over four times the number of capes were there as was typical, and it resulted in the highest casualties of any Endbringer, or for that matter any anything, in history.


I slipped into my standard costume, then opened the floor beneath me so I could drop into the labs. My Dryad was now officially the least advanced tech in the building, but it was still my battle harness. Riley had her Clarice controls on and was waiting for me. "Think I can take Clarice into the front lines this time?" she asked.


"Didn't you just finish making the new one?" I asked.


"Yeah," she admitted. "But she's extra powerful now. I think she's good enough to fight Behemoth."


"Let Taylor handle that," I told her while fusing my armor to my Dryad and climbing in. DeterminationThrill. I smiled. The SEB upgraded Zerg were incredible, and my General was just aching for a chance to really use them. "You focus on saving lives and running analysis with the rest of our tinkers. You're our best hope for learning how they're made, and how to shut down their makers. That's more important."


Emma was busy suiting up as well. Her armor was, well, I wasn't sure how it worked. But it could give her over an hour in her hybrid state, with all the data collection advantages which that entailed. My armor overheard her conversation. "Behemoth's core should be in its lower body, if our estimates are correct," she spoke. "Try to sever a leg if possible, we want the densest EB tissue we can acquire for our tests and future weapon development. Atropos already knows. Sorry I couldn't get the majority of the tech completed. No, thank you. We're about to jump over, see you at the fight."


Who was she talking to? I was about to ask her when I was interrupted when Crystal appeared in the middle of the lab, followed a minute or so later by Eric, Lily and Sabah. "Sorry it took so long," he apologized. "Took a bit of effort to sneak out of the party."


"Our reputations are ruined forever," Lily complained.


"I'm sorry!" he insisted. "I panicked. It was the first thing I could think of..."


"Telling my classmate we were going off for a threesome was the first thing you could think of?" Lily growled.


"It worked, didn't it?" he defended. "Did you have a better idea?"


"How about anything?" she suggested. "Anything at all would have been a better idea. You're lucky I don't turn you back into a girl the hard way."


"Well, at least I didn't say it was going to be a threesome with me," he argued. "So you don't have to worry too much."


Sabah just stood there looking embarrassed.


"Get in your costumes," I instructed. "You can vent your frustrations on Behemoth."


Lily moved toward her armor, giving Eric one last glance. Sabah followed suit, and Eric started putting on his own suit. It was one of the generic outfits. The teams hadn't had a chance to really optimize his power, except to provide tinker bombs to teleport to the Endbringers. He'd mostly be watching from a safe location and rescuing the injured and teleporting the occasional Zerg into combat range for Taylor.


We started shunting over. The mobile command center was already waiting, flanked by over a thousand zerglings and a hundred gargants. Most were the old fashioned variants, but we had plenty of the SEB upgraded versions, shimmering an unnaturally flawless white in the afternoon sun.


"Rey called in," Trevor informed us from the command center. "He'll be catching a ride with Rapture."


We destroyed the Simurgh with less than a quarter of these forces, I smiled. DeterminationCertainty. I looked over at Taylor who was only barely visible, but heading toward us fast. Today the hero killer would die.


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

A/N- Yay Endbringers!

... Also, for anyone who can't figure out who Eric is? Let me preemptively call you a moron.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 215- Taylor


I landed next to Amelia. ConfidentSafe. "Welcome to the party," she greeted.


We took our position, with everyone else forming clusters in front of us. The tech group was the obvious one, with Emma, Trevor and Riley for now. We'd fill out the ranks later with Ray and Rapture, the latter of whom might be instrumental in learning more about how the Endbringers thought and acted as a whole. Clarice would of course swap out with Riley instead of simply stand dumbly off to the side of the platform.


Lisa also took her place in that group. She wasn't a tinker, but in many ways she was better equipped to understand the Endbringers than anyone. With any luck, Victoria's power would be useful as well, but I wasn't holding a lot of hope. A lot of thinkers get pointed at Endbringers, only a rare few have ever got anything useful from them.
Then there was the 'big kid table' with Lily, Sabah, Crystal, and now Eric. It was remarkable how few on this team were actually adults, in retrospect. Eavesdropping was something I normally tried to avoid, but under the circumstances I wasn't so concerned.


"Are you okay?" Crystal asked Eric.


"Umm... not really," he admitted. "This is... I've only been a parahuman for about six months. I've never been in a real fight before, and my first is an Endbringer." Six months and he's never been in a fight? Six months ago was right around the time when Leviathan attacks Brockton Bay. I couldn't even remember the last time my life was so peaceful. Though, granted, things had gotten less dangerous of late. Having an army of monsters did that for you.


"My first real fight was Leviathan," Sabah added, showing a rare amount of initiative. I liked the woman, but she really wasn't the leadership type.


"Yeah," Crystal agreed. "Look, you won't even be in the thick of the battle. We've got an army of bug monsters that are going to do most of the heavy hitting. You just worry about getting people to safety. And that includes keeping yourself safe."


"Thanks," he replied. "I guess I'm just afraid of fucking it up on my first time out."


"Most veteran heroes are afraid the Endbringers," Lily replied. "You'd have to be insane or insanely powerful to not be. Just remember to stay calm and follow instructions. Trust that your team knows what it's doing. We've killed one Endbringer, we can kill another just as easily."


They don't need our help, I decided.


It would be a misnomer to say I turned my attention to the younger group, since I had the ability to focus on both. Zach, Theo, and Missy made up that core for now. They'd normally have all three of the tinkers with them, but those we needed in position and getting all the equipment up and running. Zach, for reasons I really didn't want to speculate upon, was wearing a 'slutty princess' halloween costume over his armor. Their conversation seemed fairly mundane, with Zach teasing Theo about radiation and glow in the dark sperm.


AmusementAnticipation. "You probably shouldn't 'inspect the troops' when your girlfriends right next to you," Amelia teased. "You might make me think I'm not attractive anymore."


I leaned over and gave her a peck on the cheek. "Whatever. We both know you're the one who gets to enjoy all the eye candy. Fifteen people, only five are guys. Of those guys, one is way too old, one was a girl, one is gay, and one is Zach."


"You didn't even mention Theo," she pointed out.


"Because Theo's not a guy anymore, he's Missy's property," I explained. "And if we're being honest, she's one of the capes I think could take us. Let's not tempt that fate. Besides, I'm happy right here." I wrapped my arm around her suit's arm. WarmSafeLove.


"You really know how to butter a girl up," she smiled at me.


"Yup," I agreed. "I know how to butter up exactly one girl. Luckily it's you, or things could get really awkward." AmusedPleased.


Dragon's voice came on over the command center. "Tentative confirmation of Behemoth," she informed our tinkers and thinkers. "Tracking estimates surfacing to occur in East South East Asia."


TrepidationConfusion. Oh, she must have picked up on my emotions. I opened all the coms just so no one was left out. "It's going to be China," I stated, there was no doubt. All the conversations died.


"Probably," Lisa agreed. "It makes sense. We either go for the kill and potentially start a massive international incident, or we let the Endbringer do its thing and make ourselves look weak in the process." FrustrationAnger.


"Another no win scenario," I agreed.


"Dragon's making calls on our behalf," Emma informed us. "Alerting the Chinese government about the potential danger and offering our help. There's a chance that China will accept it."


"They won't," Lisa responded. "What happened in New Delhi is being surpressed as much as possible by the CUI. They don't want to give their people the idea that outsiders are powerful enough to kill the Endbringers when they cannot."


DisgustCertainty. "We're going anyway," Amelia commanded. Riley turned and jogged toward us. Clarice robotically moved into position at her station. "At least we're getting close. Whether we choose to attack, we'll worry about later. If we're lucky he'll go after somewhere else." HopeDoubt.


"I'll relay that back to Dragon, if that's okay?" Emma offered.


"Do it," I agreed. She took a minute speaking into the interdimensional com in the command center.


"Dragon's acknowledged our decision, and is sending more detailed coordinates," Chariot informed us. Why hasn't he ever picked out a thematic code name, I wondered idly. Something to ask him about one day. "I'm uploading it into Lachesis' targeting system."


We waited in silence for a few minutes. "Damn," Emma muttered. "I know it's not a surprise, but Lisa was right. They're claiming they have a plan of their own and that we can fuck off. In words only slightly more polite."


ConcernDisgustDismissal. "We're still going anyway," Amelia insisted. "We are not going to let Behemoth destroy any more lives than we absolutely have to. If they want to bitch about it afterward, we'll deal with the consequences then."


"Damn straight!" Victoria shouted. No one objected, not even Lisa. And I was sure she would have.


"I've got the location," Lachesis informed us. "Chongqing."


She stepped forward, or what would become our forward, which was more to our right. I watched space twist and ripple from her power. Creating tunnels of this size took time for her, more for the risk of accidentally cracking continents than any actual difficulty. Our command center passed through first, guided by Clarice. Then the zerg poured through, using the infrared trackers left behind for them to follow. Amelia and I waited as everyone filed through. We were the last ones to pass through the passageway to our analogue of southern China.


"You know," I smiled at Amelia. "When you promised me an army, I was expecting giant hornets and relay bugs, not anti-Endbringer monsters."


"And when you agreed to be my partner, I was expecting you to help lead the team, not an engagement," she teased right back.


"I helped!" came Riley's muffled shout from her place in Amelia's armor.


In thinking about it, she was right on both counts. "Yeah, you helped," I agreed. "Keep up the good work."


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

A/N- Has it really been 25 chapters since we got a Taylor perspective? Wow.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 216


"Establishing dimensional tunnel," Trevor spoke up after the command center landed in place. "Shunting over the relay bugs." The portable relays were built from slightly modified, especially fast dragonflies. They wouldn't be out of place in any part of the world, so we felt confident we could use them without our presense being noticed. The zerg all served as relay bugs as well, of course, but there was no way to use those without being noticed.


I got my first look at Chongqing. The city was drizzly and dirty and looked cold. The relay bugs aren't going to do well in this weather, I realized. Of course, Taylor was smart. She'd probably fan them out and have them latch under trees or ledges of buildings. Hopefully the native insects would do better, but this was late October, not exactly the best part of the year for bugs. Then again, bugs aren't how you fight Endbringers. I looked at the literal army of zerg around us. Those are how you fight Endbringers.


ConfusionWorry. "They haven't even started the sirens," Taylor muttered. "I don't know Chinese, but there's no panic at all. These people have no idea what's coming."


"Maybe the C.U.I. didn't believe us?" Missy suggested.


"No, the Yangban are out in force," she told us. "Ten full divisions. Two hundred and fifty parahumans grouped twenty five at a time. Near the edges of the city. They seem to be practicing drills. There's also several thousand normal soldiers. There's not enough bugs for me to get a thorough count. They seem to be setting up barricades of some sort, but again I can't be certain."


"Barricades? Against Behemoth?" Lily this time. "Are they on drugs?"


"Tinker tech," Emma spoke up. "I'm running the scans now. It's gonna take a while, this stuff is like Dragon's work. Or mine, even. A hybrid of multiple Tinker disciplines. It's really elegant, can't wait to see how it works. I do recognize what I think are forcefield components, but like nothing I've ever seen before. Please tell me there's a chance we can steal some of this tech in the confusion? Dragon will want to have our babies if we get her some of this stuff. Fuck, I'll have your babies to get my teeth into this."


ConcernCuriousity. "If there's a way to get away with it without violating the Endbringer Truce or starting an international incident? I'll consider it."


"Woo! Bonus mission objective!" Vicky declared. "I'll scout the perimeter and look for weak points. Beats all this 'hurry up and wait' bullshit."


I need to talk to her about playing too many of Zach's games, I thought. "Go for it," I told her. "But our priority is Behemoth."


"Understood," she saluted us in a mockery of military discipline. "Hey, Khepri, mind lending me a couple of the ghost cats? I'm pretty sure we'll need them for this."


"Okay," my partner agreed. Her undercurrents led me to believe that if we had a good shot, she'd okay the mission. We aren't even officially our own nation yet, and we're already committing international espionage.


It was another ten minutes of waiting before Behemoth arrived. A small skyscraper collapsing into the street below heralded the first and most deadly Endbringer. It was hard to place a value on which of the three was ultimately most devastating. They all had their place. Simurgh was, to quote something Zach had said, the 'mind killer', using paranoia and psychological weapons to incredible effect. Leviathan was the city killer, destroying our homes and our security. Behemoth was the hero killer. The one that took our best hopes for the future away from us.


The monster's head peaked out of the rubble, and the people which had moments before been gawking at the collapsing building turned and fled. They should be in shelters, I couldn't help but think. Behemoth opening attack was a roar that thankfully stayed silent from our side of the dimensional shell. Glass exploded even where we were positioned, over a mile away. People dropped in agony around us, their screams as visible and as silent as Behemoth's.


Those nearest the monster. I had to turn away. Skulls had shattered just as thoroughly as the glass, leaving gore and mess in the street. It was all I could do to not be sick within my suit. There were cries on our side, shrieks of horror and disgust. Taylor tried to offer me some comfort through our link, but she was too upset. The best she could maintain was anger and determination. I latched onto that, and returned it in kind. A feeling turned idea turned oath. No matter what the future consequences might be, we would not let Behemoth leave this city alive.


A lance of unidentifiable energy struck Behemoth from the side. His skin went from reddish brown to a neon green color, and then shattered into some kind of crystalline dust.


"Looks like a variant of Bakuda's glass," Riley informed us impassively. Of course she'd be one of the ones who could watch this without looking away. "It won't work. EB tissue is too dense, at most it could influence three layers deep. Superficial. Cosmetic damage."


"Anything that doesn't damage the core is cosmetic," Lisa replied. She, at least, sounded tense and nervous. "I didn't have a good position to see it with Leviathan, and by the time we were really hurting the Simurgh, I had already shunted out. But I'm getting the idea now. Victoria, what are you seeing?"


"A whole lotta nothin'," she answered. "I can anticipate his attacks, sort of."


Three bolts of lightning streaked toward three different Yangban divisions. They were almost annihilated. Moments later, they had reformed as if nothing happened. They have a variant of Zach's power?


"Dude, they're ripping me off!" Zach exclaimed.


"No, it's a form of time manipulation," Lisa replied. "A several second step backward in time, undoing Behemoth's damage. You were saying, Victoria?"


"Those three bolts could have been three hundred, maybe three thousand," she answered. "I'm sensing every possible attack he can make. This is like watching Bruce Lee fight a room full of toddlers, and letting the toddlers think they stand a chance of winning. If Behemoth wanted, this city would already be gone."


RealizationFearFocusDetermination. "Nothing we didn't already know," Taylor replied, her voice calm and commanding. "We know the Endbringers are far more powerful than they pretend to be. We also know we can kill them. If they want to hold back, then so be it, that just makes our jobs easier."


Meanwhile, Behemoth and the Yangban traded blows while the city around them suffered the consequences. At some point, they started switching attacks and combining energy types. Seems we weren't the only ones with cryo blasts, and somewhere they found a cape that could summon serpent like forms made of water. The Yangban's power sharing and amplification techniques meant they could literally flood a city block with the things, forcing Behemoth to boil away the mass even as more came to replace it and the ice power made it all the more difficult to burn through. It was an effective tactic in keeping the monster's attacks from reaching them.


Behemoth unleashed its roar again, shattering the water, the buildings, and countless people.


"One minute and six point six seconds between roars," Lisa replied. "This one's following the rule of threes as well, if a slightly more sinister variant."


"It doesn't have to," Victoria answered. "It could keep that attack going constantly for days if it wanted to."


"Part of the human controller's bias," Lisa answered. "Remember, we're still recording this data for Rapture and Dragon to chew over for patterns and psychological profiling of the Endmakers. Anything you can contribute will only help."


The Yangban switched to another tactic, turning the street around Behmoth into some kind of liquid substance. The matter then warped and moved, wrapping itself around the creature and pinning its arms and legs together. He fell and was immediately fired upon by dozens of energy attacks. Many, but not even close to most, were deflected away by his dynakenetic powers.


"They think they're winning," Vicky informed us.


"By the Endbringer's programming, I think they are winning," Lisa answered. "They follow a script. It's like a video game. The game programmer could easily create a game that instantly kills you in the first four seconds, but where's the fun in that?"


"These fights are suppose to be fun?" Zach asked. "Is Tarn Adams a suspect?" He stopped for a second. "...aaand I'm the only one who gets the joke."


"Oh fuck," Lisa muttered. "He's right. Or my power thinks he's right. The video game analogy might be more apt than I thought. It's possible the Endbringer battles are someone's idea of a game. Like gladiatorial combat on a mass scale."


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

A/N- Losing is Fun!

... Honestly, after you get familiar with the interface, Dwarf Fortress is pretty easy. I quit playing after it became clear that FPS drain would kill all my fortresses.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 217


ReluctantAdmiration. "They're actually very good," Taylor admitted. It was true, we'd been watching the dance between Behemoth and the Yangban for nearly half an hour. One thing that surprised me was there were no losses. Well, there were many losses, Behemoth was doing an excellent job of burning through Yangban groups, only for them to recreate themselves moments later. They focused heavily on mobility and ranged assaults, having a hugely versatile array of tools to escape Behemoth's close range options. And, of course, all the civilians.


"We can take them," Victoria replied dismissively. "They have to call each attack. It slows them down, makes them predictable. The restoration power creates confusion in their ranks as the troops have to adjust to the changed perspective. They also have pretty much no thinker powers in the mess, so they're vulnerable to stealth attackers."


"They probably have other groups with those powers," Lisa informed. "Strangers, too. No sense in deploying powers that won't work on Endbringers in the first place. The C.U.I. knows what it's fighting. In as much as anyone without our intel could know."


HorrorDisgustAnger. "They're shooting the civilians!" Taylor exclaimed.


Reflexively we turned toward the nearest barricade. The dimensional display tech reacted and dimmed the area around us and highlighted the more distant location. It pays to have so many talented tinkers on the team. Taylor was right, of course. The civilians had been retreating toward the barricades, trying to find anywhere to escape Behemoth. Now they were running from the barrier as dozens were mowed down by automatic weapons fire.


The ground beneath me shuddered, at it took a second to realize it was me causing it. The Yggdrasil trying to reach up and block the bullets. An impossibility, of course, from this side of the barricade.


"What do we do?" Sabah asked, her voice small.


I froze. This wasn't something I knew how to handle. These weren't just some gang. This was the single most populous nation on the planet, and if we jumped in we would be sparking an international war. One that we might very well lose to sheer numbers.


"We can't help them," Taylor spoke. "If we do in the middle of a Behemoth fight... it doesn't matter our reasons. We lose our allies. Almost all of them. If the Yangban tries to fight us instead of fighting Behemoth, it'll cost more lives in the long run than doing nothing."


"Fuck!" Vicky exclaimed. "Promise me that after we're done with the Endbringers and fucking Scion, we come back to these fuckers. We can't let them get away with this." She punched one of the shadowcats hard enough to knock the three ton SEB armored creature on its side. It climbed to its feet without even a noise of objection.


"Yes," I agreed. "We'll make our stance known, take this footage to the international community and let them figure out what to do with it. When we start the portal system, we're leaving them out. I refuse to give people like them a world to exploit." DoubtConcern. Taylor was right, I was bluffing about giving this to the world as a whole. Doing so would prove we could spy across dimensions. This was something that Dragon was okay to know about, and it was something we couldn't hide from Cauldron if we tried, so we pretended we trusted them enough to just tell them, but this was functionally the perfect Stranger tech. Unless they invented something that could beat it. Better that they didn't even know to try.


"Is it wrong that I'm suddenly cheering for the Endbringer?" Eric asked. "Like we should just go home and let the Endbringers go after China as much as they like? Because right now, I'm hoping they drop right into the capital and have the time of their lives stomping on a royal family or two."


CruelAnger. None of us said anything, but judging by the quiet responses, I couldn't help but feel most of us agreed with him on this, at least on some level. Certainly none of us felt the need to voice a disagreement.


Meanwhile, Behemoth decided he'd had enough punishment and it was time fight back again. Wrenching himself free of the liquefied earth with a massive leap, he traveled far more rapidly than I would have expected something that size to be able, and slamming into a group of Yangban, quite literally. Caught within the kill aura, they somehow managed to avoid bursting into flame. A defensive power of some sort, I would assume. Whatever it was, it wasn't a match for the incredible strength of the Endbringer, which crushed them without difficulty. That Yangban division was killed permanently.


A stream of exotic energies cut into Behemoth, leaving further gouges in the mostly restored flesh. That's why he stayed so long in the gunk, I realized. It let him regenerate from the damage they'd inflicted, however meaningless that damage may actually be.


"It has to obey the rules," Lisa observed. "If enough damage is inflicted it retreats because it's suppose to, not because it has to, but it's also allowed to buy time and recover. It's a psychological mechanism to punish hesitation and nonlethal attack styles. Encouraging conflicts to be as destructive and aggressive as possible."


"Sounds like everything we've learned about Passengers thus far," Clarice added. "They compel their hosts toward this."


"Untrue," Lisa replied. "Yes, they compel hosts toward conflict, but not toward this kind of mindless slaughter. They want evolution, and killing hosts in large numbers limits that. Small numbers of death are fine, of course, but there's a certain point where it becomes a problem. It's why Nilbog stopped with his city instead of overwhelming half the country. Why Jack Slash refused to let his people cross certain thresholds. The Passengers want a cold war. The Unspoken Rules, or something similar to them, are a psychological compulsion. Endbringers are the antithesis to that goal."


"It suggests a host like me," I spoke. "One with a Third Trigger." RealizationFearConcernSupport. I felt Taylor's hand on my shoulder. Or, more appropriately, her suit's interaction with mine. It wasn't quite the same comfort, but it was nice.


"Putting special notes in describing Third Triggers," Lisa replied. "We're drifting dangerously close to the Taboo, here. This could limit our results."


Behemoth leapt again, and then promptly stalled in mid air. He was locked there as the Yangban took the opportunity to fire every attack they had at the trapped Endbringer, which roared and launched streams of lightning at his opponents.


The attacks took their usual toll, shattering already damaged buildings and reducing Yangban divisions in number, only for them to suddenly be restored. It was certainly an incredible power, significantly stronger than the Adepts' leadership.


The lightning around Behemoth stopped tracking toward enemies and turned inward, bouncing along his skin and the scars inflicted by the battle. The monster's skin started to glow white hot with power.


"Oh, fuck," Lisa muttered. "I think they've finally managed to piss him off. This is a new attack."


The Yangbang switched back to the water snakes, putting a huge amount of water around Behemoth. Thirty seconds had provided a quarter mile thick shell of water. Then he unleashed all that power, flash boiling the water and drowning much of the area in superheated steam. It poured forth and scoured Yangban and civilians alike, leaving them with horrific burns. The time manipulation was invoked again. Was there a limit to that power? I wondered.


"I don't understand," Lisa replied. "He should be withdrawing now. They've done more damage than he's experienced in his last three fights combined, and forced him to use a new power. What's he staying around for?"


"Uh... looks like they're starting up that barricade," Emma spoke. "I... have absolutely no idea what I'm looking at."


We looked around us, viewing the polyhedron dome that suddenly formed over the city. It was mostly clear. Behemoth roared again and sent lightning into the shielding. It turned nearly black in the panels that had been struck, then the color faded, leaving the entire dome slightly darker, but uniformed in shade.


"Okay, still don't know what I'm seeing," Emma muttered. "It's diffusing the energy through the field and into the area inside."


"I just lost my bugs," Taylor informed us. "I can't sense them in that dimension."


"The tunnel collapsed," Trevor responded. "I don't know why. Probably something to do with that shield."


Behemoth dropped and rushed the nearest part of the barricade, which was still well over three miles away from him, ignoring everything the Yangbang threw at him. It took him under a minute to arrive, colliding with the shield. Amazingly, it held. And the shield dimmed enough that the city was plunged into instant night.


"Holy fuck!" Emma exclaimed. "I know what it's doing! I think. It's using the energy directed against it to create a localized spatial anomaly. A naked singularity." She paused for a couple seconds as she realized that most of us didn't know what that meant.


"Umm... it's randomly warping the laws of physics inside it. There's no possible way to predict or control it, but the more power that field absorbs, the stranger things are going to get in there. And I mean that in a 'one plus one equals tapioca pudding' type physics breaking."


"Is that even possible?" Lily asked.


"Normally? No," she answered. "In there? Probably not, but things equally impossible are going to happen, one way or another."


"They're trying to kill him by changing reality enough that whatever allows him to function simply stops functioning," Lisa replied. "They're trying to make it so he cannot exist anymore." ConfusionTrepidationHope.


Behemoth attacked again, and our visual vanished. We still had displays from further away, but everything inside the dome was no longer visible. We no longer knew what was happening on the other side.


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

A/N- Ah, if only the cycle hadn't broken. That's the kind of thing that might let the Entities overcome the entropy problem. But Eden had to faceplant into a planet. Dumbass.

 

[Flukes]

So I've been reading this for a while.

And my mental image of Case 53 Emma was really cool, especially at her first appearance with all the ice and whatnot.

My drawn image wasn't anywhere as cool, but might as well post it up.

Achievement unlocked: FANART!

.... this should be a PNG. Weird. Oh well.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 218


"That can't possibly work," Zach muttered. "Can it?"


"Not a chance in hell," Lisa replied. "The Endbringers already can't exist by the natural laws of our reality. What they're doing's going to put one hell of a dent in the fucker. Probably. Even that's questionable. But only attacks that can hurt the core will actually kill an Endbringer."


"Can we break the field?" I asked. "Maybe save the people caught inside? Their lives are being thrown away for nothing."


"No," Emma answered. "Opening the containment now would let the exotic effects pour out into the rest of the world. The results could easily be worse than New Delhi. It might even make our whole world uninhabitable." HorrorDismay.


"And they're using this on their own people," Taylor growled. "When that weapon shuts down, we're taking at least some of those barricades. The whole fucking thing if at all possible. We need to know how that tech works. This is a whole new kind of WMD. It might even be a way to attack Scion directly. If nothing else, if we have it that means they don't."


"And the possibility of an international incident?" Lisa asked.


"Fuck to that," I said, adding my support to Taylor. "They just unleashed that... that! On their own people. No one's going to blame us for doing what we must to stop it from happening again."


"Right. Just making sure," Lisa replied. "Any objections to Operation: World War Three?"


"Umm... if I may?" Trevor spoke up. "If you're willing to cannibalize some of our equipment, we might be able to do this without them being able to prove we were ever here in the first place."


That would be nice. "I'm listening," Taylor spoke for us.


....


The shield was still up, or at least we were unable to scan into its location and Behemoth had not left the containment, almost an hour later. We finished our project within that time. Over two hundred of our zerglings were cut open to remove the shunting components, but we finished our new device. A nearly sixty mile long tube of modified Yggdrasil. Crystal and Vicky were busy pumping it with as much power as they could, and I was adding the amount of power I could by drawing off the normal Yggdrasil mass. We were ready.


"The power signatures are fading," Emma informed us. "Exotic physics effects are being detected. Either it's shutting down, or it's about to rupture. No way to know until we see it happen."


The shields didn't shatter so much as they evaporated, leaving behind a desert of twisted shapes existing without rhyme or reason. Several large slabs of matter had fallen into the blue sand that was all that existed of the soil. Crystals and metals were strewn about. Strange and colorful corals extended out of the sand, and birdlike creatures started falling from the sky and shattering into goo. A goo which struggled to move before breaking down into mist.


"Life?" I asked. "That field created living things?"


"It makes as much sense as anything else," Emma replied. "The laws of reality changed, but they didn't stop existing entirely. They're dying because whatever chemical properties allowed them to exist in the first place no longer apply. As lethal to them as the weapon itself was to the people caught within."


One of the crystal forms shifted and shattered. Beneath was Behemoth. He was reduced to a skeleton. Or, skeleton might be the wrong word. Perhaps more like an artist drawing the proportion lines before getting to the rest of the drawing. Litte more than stick figure with extra details. If anything, somehow, he looked even more terrifying this way than he did with his flesh intact.


"Now!" Victoria shouted, and the ring of plant material shunted over. Taylor had six and a half seconds for the matter to completely encase the ring of barricades and shunt back. Any longer, and its cloaking effect would fail. She did it in five and a quarter. The massive wall of rings took their geosynchronous place in our dimension. Could the theft be attributed to us? I asked myself. Maybe. Our teleportation equipment was already pretty well known, but only a few knew we were using an alternate earth as a planet sized staging platform and at-will base of operations. Either way, they certainly couldn't prove anything.


Behemoth charged the line not far from where he was trapped, smashing into the soldiers who had, not long ago, murdered innocent people who were simply trying to flee. The Yangban moved quickly, opening up with similar tactics as before. This time, the eldest of the Endbringers was done playing games. Now he fired at three divisions instead of one at a time. Now when he shot, he got the whole group. In three seconds, seventy five Yangban and hundreds of soldiers died.


"They broke its program," Lisa spoke in horror. "They follow a mantra of hitting harder than they are hit, and that was one hell of a hit. It's not going to retreat. It's not going to hold back. If we were to try to kill Behemoth now, it's just going to result in a slaughter. It's going to keep killing until it feels it's achieved enough of a body count to match was just happened."


"That could take hours," I replied.


"It will take days," Lisa corrected. "Well, Eric, you get your wish. I don't think China will survive this."


"Is there anything we can do?" I asked. Fuck, didn't we just basically say we wanted this?


"Unless Chariot has a way to evacuate entire cities?" she responded. "No, there's really not."


Behemoth's next attack was a new one. He smashed the stub that was once his fist into the ground and it rippled outward, a shockwave in the earth. Where people were standing, there was no warning. They didn't fall or scream or even see their deaths coming. They simply exploded into gore.


"He's still holding back," Lisa continued her analysis. "Less than before, but that was nothing but theatrics. Taking time to telegraph his attacks unnecessarily. He could easily do that without the stomp."


Behemoth moved into the part of the city which hadn't been functionally removed from the face of the planet. His kill aura no longer simply killed people, it caused the glass of the buildings to melt.


"Radiaton output is off the charts," Emma informed us. "Much higher and your insides would simply liquify. As it stands, lethal exposure would occur in minutes. If you survive everything else for that long, at least. I think he's trying to lure the defenders into following his trail and killing themselves."


"Would the Zerg do anything to help?" Taylor asked. "Slow him down at least?"


"No," Lisa responded. "He'd just burrow underground to avoid them and start killing from beneath the earth. Fighting us in person is... more like a polite formality than anything. He certainly doesn't need to do it."


"So what do we do?" Vicky asked. "Let him go on his killing spree across China until he gets bored and takes a nap? Then kill him after he's calmed down a little?"


"That's exactly what we have to do," Lisa responded. "There are no other possibilities."


The visual display flickered again, and then fuzzed into near nothing. "What happened? Another reality weapon?" Taylor asked.


"Close," Trevor answered. "According to Dragon's tech, her satellites have gone dark as well. It's Scion. He's finally showed up."


"I hate to say this," I spoke up. "But that's good, in a twisted sort of way. The fuckers run from Scion, right? He'll go back into hibernation before killing most of China. Hell, maybe he won't run. Maybe he'll fight back and at least do some damage to Scion."


"We'll have to find out later," Lisa replied. "Whatever else happens, there's nothing more we can do here. Pack it up, head home, and hope like hell he didn't see us watching the battle from this side. The idea of him knowing where to find our dimension worries me.


===========

A/N- And, sometimes, no matter how far off the rails you go, you intersect canon.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 219


Thankfully, China's city killer weapon was designed to be transportable by convoy truck. Ultralisks were more than capable of doing the lifting needed, and with Missy there to do the work, it only took us a fairly short amount of time to put the devices in our storage location. Our Tinkers were quite excited to work with the devices, of course. Or, at least, Emma and Trevor were. At the very least, they were going to talk with Dragon about tech trading. Not really Riley or Rey's specialty. I, meanwhile, was simply in shock. We watched them murder a city.


"Why'd they do it?" I asked as we finally got into our home. I could have asked sooner, but somehow I had to wait until we were inside a familiar setting. Lisa just looked away. She had an answer, she just didn't want to say it.


"Reputation," Eric volunteered. "My father's like that, too. If someone outstaged him, he had to find a way to outstage them right back. You can't run a gang without being the scariest fucker on the block."


"Sounds about right," Theo nodded. "It's about power and image. We killed an Endbringer. They had to kill one or they would look weaker than us."


"They are weaker than us," Victoria replied. "When we kill Endbringers, they actually die. Behemoth lived through their attack."


"They got what they wanted," Lisa informed us. "Behemoth was destroyed."


"Not by them," Vicky retorted.


"The story they tell is quite different," she sighed, holding up her smartphone. "Heroic sacrifice, yadda yadda, shield yadda yadda, prevented Behemoth from destroying China the way the Simurgh did India, more yadda yadda. Victory for the CUI, and proof of the Mandate of Heaven, or whatever bullshit propoganda they're using this week. Doesn't matter what the truth is, they only have to fool their own people. Imperial China has won its internal PR war." DisgustHate.


"By killing millions of their own?" I voiced the outrage all of us were feeling. "They didn't even let the ones who could escape get out. They were gunning them down like they were already dead."


"I wish I could say it was even something so callous as removing witnesses," Lisa replied. "This was... fuck, I guess it's analogy time. Did you know grenades aren't designed to kill people?"


"No," I admitted.


"I do, ma'am," Theo simply closed his eyes and put an arm around a very upset looking Missy. "We can leave, if you want," he offered her.


"No, I need to hear this," she answered. "I want to know why."


"I know it sounds counter intuitive," Lisa continued. "Until you start thinking economics." DreadDisgust. "A dead soldier costs the enemy a patch of dirt and a gravestone. A wounded soldier costs hospital beds, doctors, food and money. It's functionally the same thing here. A good chunk of the city was destroyed, along with all its residents. Now they'll build a monument to all the dead in its place. If the people had escaped, there'd be refugee camps and aiding the homeless. Or, maybe they wouldn't, and they'd just tell the refugees to suck it up. But that would still be disruptive and remind their people that this so called victory of theirs had victims instead of heroic sacrifices. Easier just to let everyone pretend this is a happy occasion."


"That's beyond fucked up," Zach replied. "Can they really do that?"


"Already did," Lisa answered. "In the time it's taken us to get home, their royal family has already declared it a national holiday. Something which, I remind you, no one did after the Simurgh's death. We mourned the lives lost in India as one of the greatest tragedies in human history. China celebrates its dead as heroes, and brags that its forward thinking prevented the damage from being worse. Welcome to propaganda."


"Fuck," I cursed.


"It's not all bad," Lisa replied. "Thanks to this being such a 'great victory', it means they have to stay silent about anything that disproves that claim. They're not going to say anything about the stolen tinker tech. At least as long as we don't say anything about their little mass murder spree, they won't be able to officially complain about us walking away with their doomsday weapon."


"So, basically, we're looking at the glass as half full," Zach replied. He waited a beat. "While ignoring the part where the liquid inside is cat piss concentrate. Know what? Fuck it. I'm done. If you need me, I'm going to be online finding a shooter game that involves mowing my way through a Chinese army. Killing Nazi zombies just isn't going to cut it for me anymore."


"Aww," Riley whined. "I worked so hard on that Christmas surprise, too." AnxiousHorror. We all went silent and looked toward the girl. Every last one of us. She looked at our expressions. "What?" she asked.


"Don't worry," Lisa cut in. "She was just telling a joke." The rest of us breathed a collective sigh of relief.


....


"No, dad, we didn't even do anything," Taylor spoke into the phone. "We geared up before finding out he was going after China. They refused to let us help. Sat around and waited to see if they'd change their minds. Not much we could do without starting World War Three. No, they don't. Scion did it. I think he always could. I don't know why he didn't. Hard to figure out a guy who doesn't speak and spends as much time rescuing kittens from trees as he does stopping volcanoes. Sorry our dinner went to waste." MisgivingReluctantHappy. "Oh, well that's good. I'm just going to stay here tonight, I thought you wouldn't mind. Sounds good. Love you too."


She sighed after hanging up the phone. "How is it that I lie to my dad more now than before he knew I was a cape?" She sat down on 'her side' of the bed.


"Welcome to international politics, I guess," I turned and crawled up behind her.


"Know what sucks the most?" she muttered as I brushed her rather abundant hair off to the side. "This feels like something Piggot would do. Like we're leaving the victims to suffer because the abuser's more useful to us than they are."


"We're not," I insisted. Taylor let out a light moan as I pressed the balls of my thumbs into her back. "It's more like a hostage situation. If we go in now, it's going to hurt a lot of innocent people. Unacceptable amounts of them. China still has almost a billion people in it, and they'll all suffer if we attack the CUI."


"And we have 'more important' monsters to go after," Taylor sighed. "Scion takes priority. Fucking moral arithmetic."


"Even you can't be everywhere and do everything," I offered.


"I probably cou-," she gasped as I sent a pulse of my power through her body, lightly stimulating her entire nervous system. "That's cheating," she finally managed to form words. "That is so not fair."


"Hey, you're the one who used her doppleganger," I pointed out. "You don't get to complain when I use my powers." I pressed my elbow against a spot on her lower back that my power kindly informed me was a prime location. I smiled as she moaned softly.


"I didn't hear you complaining," she replied, pushing her back against me in a way vaguely reminiscent of a cat. For the briefest second, that caused me to freeze up. Her body was so absurdly strong and flawless, reminding me that she was the copy, not the original. I crushed that thought immediately. She's still Taylor.


"I don't hear you complaining either," I countered, hitting her with another pulse that caused her to slump back against me.


"Why would I?" she asked happily. "Oh, by the way, your Aunt Sarah says hi."


"When did you ta-" I hesitated for a second. "Oh. You mean?"


"Yup," Taylor answered. "They apparently decided that it would be wrong to let dinner be wasted. And then she stayed over."


"Eww," I responded.


"I know," she agreed, still leaning up against me. I allowed myself a look down her shirt when she did. AmusedPleasedConfident. "So I'm staying here tonight."


"I should charge you rent," I teased.


"You still owe for that house I got you," she argued.


"Okay," I agreed. "So we're even. Are you feeling better?"


"A little," she replied.


"Good," I scooted a bit away from her and rolled face down over on my side. "My turn."


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

A/N- mood whiplash! I never tire of it.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 220


"Hey, Ames," Vicky spoke as she walked into my brand new office. Yes, I have an office now, instead of just remodeling my bedroom. Once upon a time, that bedroom had been an office that I just created a bed in when I chose not to go home to sleep. At this point, it had been months since I even set foot in that house. Time to give up and simply admit I live at my job. "Your birthday's in May. So why are you celebrating it in the middle of November? Are you in that big a hurry to turn eighteen? Because we can have a perfectly ordinary party, if you're bored."


I hesitated for a moment. She's not going to like this one, I thought to myself. Sorry, Vicky, but I promised myself this when I took my birth name. "It's my real birthday," I told her. "Or my real birth month, at least. Apparently finding out who my birth mother was still isn't an option. And it's looking more and more like my father renamed me after getting me, so nuts to having an identifiable birth certificate."


"And what's wrong with you being Amy Dallon?" Vicky argued, staring me down. "I get that you were pissed at mom. I even get why. But this is like you're saying you don't want to be my sister."


Ouch. "That's not..." I sighed. "That's not what it's about. It's about being me, instead of what other people try to force me to be. I stopped pretending to be Amy Dallon because I wasn't happy. I've found who I am now, who I want to be."


"So you don't want to be my sister," she pressed.


"No!" I repled. "I do. I just... honestly, I want to be your sister now more than I did... before." I looked away.


"Oh, right," she muttered. "I kinda try not to think about that."


I cringed. "I spent the last three and a half years of my life trying not to think about it." At least it's comforting how I don't really find her attractive anymore. Lisa said it was because her aura warped my memory of her. What she really looks like is really very different than what my mind saw. Rose colored glasses, superpowers edition. "You can understand why I'd like to put that part of my life behind me."


"So you'd rather be Marquis' daughter than Mom's?" she asked.


"If you asked me that a few months ago, I would have said 'fuck yes'," I told her. "Now? Yes, as a matter of fact, I think I would have. I still have some memories of what my life was like. Before. They're happy memories. Whatever Marquis might have been, he was a caring father. I'd like to think that, maybe, we'd have a relationship a little like Taylor and her dad. Fuck, even now Danny treats me more like a daughter than either of them did for the whole ten years of my life I spent with them."


"Except the part where he was a supervillain," she argued. "Probably would have turned out more like Eric or Theo and their fathers. Is that the kind of parental relationship you'd rather have?"


"Maybe," I shrugged. "But at least there's a chance. Maybe he would have cared about me. Maybe I wouldn't have been treated like a ticking time bomb or completely ignored or... everything else. You can't blame me for choosing 'maybe okay' over 'guaranteed suck', can you?"


"Was it really all bad?" she asked. I almost backed out then. SupportLove. I drew on my link with Taylor. This was a long time coming, and I'm not going to chicken out of it yet again just to spare Vicky's feelings.


"Other than you?" I replied. "It really kinda was. Sure, it was all first world problems. I wasn't starved or sold into slavery or beaten or molested, so there are plenty of people who've lived through a lot fucking worse. But I was raised to by a father who couldn't love me and a mother that didn't even pretend not to hate me. Parents I desperately tried to earn some kind of approval from for years and at best got indifference. Yeah, I know they're both trying to make up for it now, and I'm even trying to let them. You should thank Taylor for that, by the way, because she's the only reason I didn't tell Mom to get fucked by Behemoth."


"I... that mindlink between the two of you?" she asked. "You're using it right now, aren't you?"


"Yes," I admitted.


"Is that healthy?" she asked.


I paused for a second, thinking back to what I was like before the link. What Taylor was like. What we were like when we went without it. What happened to Taylor, especially. ConcernInsecurityLoss. I focused back on the link. Don't worry, Taylor, never again. She probably got something closer to comfort and certainty. It was still hard for us to communicate more than the simplest ideas through the link.


"Is it healthy for Eric to be Eric instead of Arianna?" I asked. It may have been a deflection, but it was an analogy I could work with as well. "I'm sure there are people out there with really good arguments why it's not. And ones with equally good arguments why it is. He's happy how he is, and he'd be miserable if I, for whatever reason, decided that what he was asking for was wrong. He gets to live the life he wants, now. So do Taylor and I." AgreementCertaintyLove.


"Well, aside the Endbringers and Despotisms and Space Whales," I added. "But we're kinda stuck with those."


She stood there, chewing over my answer. Or, more likely, trying to find an argument against it. "I kinda hate how much smarter you are than me, sometimes," she finally answered. "This philosophy shit isn't my thing, so I can't really say anything without looking stupid or like a complete bitch."


"Yeah, well, Lisa's tried her best to talk us out of it, too," I smirked. "She finally gave up." After Taylor's death and her own Second Trigger. "If it makes you feel any better, we don't leave the link on constantly. It basically turns off when one of us falls asleep. We also have cutoffs that we can can use to deactivate it temporarily. Like when we're going to the bathroom. We don't have a lot of privacy between us, but there are limits."


"Yeah, I get the idea," Vicky scrunched her face in what I had to assume was exaggerated disgust. "So... yeah... you'd rather be Amelia."


"That doesn't mean I don't want you to be my sister!" I exclaimed. "You have to believe that."


"I know. Lie detector, remember?" she tapped the side of your head. "Sure, your link messes with the emotion part of the bioscan some, but I'm pretty sure you can't actually get a lie through."


"Umm, I've always kinda wondered, what does that look like?" I started. "You know... Taylia... how our emotions look to an outsider. Call it my birthday present."


"Well, okay," she sighed. "The first thing is that the two of you don't get angry. Or, not as angry as you should. Whenever anything really starts to get to you, it's quickly replaced by a sort of... intensity... kinda like when my power starts running and telling me what to do to kill something."


"That one's mostly Taylor," I replied. "She's really big on taking action when something looks bad. Kinda like you, honestly. Whenever you get mad, you turn it toward something productive. Like punching Nazis." I wonder if that's part of why I was attracted to her in the first place. That and the legs. Oh, yes, the legs.


"Well, I do love punching me some Nazis," she agreed with a smile. "You also never stay sad for very long. Like, at all. I get the feeling that if I stormed out of here in anger and swore never to talk to you again, you'd be over it in, like, a day or two. And that might be my ego refusing to let me admit you could get over it sooner."


"You're my sister and I love you." I insisted. " I couldn't just forget about you like that. We put so much time and effort into saving you in the first place."


"Believe me, I'm glad you did," she replied. "But it's... fuck, after Behemoth was destroyed, you and Taylor retreated to your bedroom and by morning you were fine. Not even pretending to be fine. You were both honestly over the whole thing."


"We're not over it," I insisted. DisgustDetermination. "We're still going to make them pay for what they've done."


"I know," she replied. "But then look at everyone else. Missy spent some time crying on Theo's shoulder. Lily and Sabah went straight to one of their bedrooms, and I'm pretty sure they skipped their usual nightly routine of wild sex followed by one or the other stumbling back to their apartment next door because for whatever reason they refuse to actually move in together." Yeah, I still wasn't sure what the story was with that, myself.

Victoria continued running down her list. "Zach and Emma both got themselves banned from PHO. Granted, that happens like once every other week anyway, but they really went all out this time. Eric decided to go after the punching bag until his hands bled."


I remembered that, of course. "He said he just needed to work out some frustration and went overboard," I told her.


"Yeah, doesn't surprise me, he's really hung up on that whole 'real men don't show weakness' shit," she replied. "And I got to lay in bed all night cuddling Riley while she whimpered in her sleep. And the next three nights I spent sparring with Zach and Emma and Crystal and Eric while Riley stayed with you. The only person who didn't seem bothered by all this is Lisa. I'm pretty sure she's decided there's exactly one person on this planet that she actually cares about, and it's not the eight or nine million Chinese who died."


ConcernSurprise. "Wow... I didn't realize... are we really that oblivious?"


"Kinda," Vicky answered. "You two get so caught up in the grand mission and each other that there's not a lot of space in those noggins of yours to notice everything else going on around you." RealizationWorryFailure.


"Pot calling the kettle black here, sis," I retorted.


"Hey, I'd be doing the same thing if I could," she argued. "But there aren't any more Nazis left to punch, and there aren't any heterosexual life partners for me to cuddle with in our underwear. Don't say Lisa, because there's literally no one worse."


"What? You prefer Riley?" I teased.


"Okay, I was wrong."


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

A/N- Yeah, I know the formatting got borked in the last bit. Fixed now.