Amelia, Ch 410- Taylor
Scion went flying at Akaihana's attack. Judging by how quickly Lung caved after she pulled him free, I had to assume he was out of the fight. Her armor gave me an idea of all the details of her fight, the use of Crusader's ghosts as power enhancers and batteries was damn effective, though she had to stim twice and wear herself out considerably to make it all happen.
The biotinker details in her armor were kind enough to let me know just how badly she was torn up, and it was pretty ugly. She was exhausted and wounded in ways that Grey Boy's power just couldn't undo. Glaistig Uaine was exhausted. Of the three super trumps we were working with, only Eidolon was still in relatively good shape. I wasn't willing to risk him engaging again without strong backup. We didn't know what would happen to the Endbringers, if he died. A dozen superweapons rampaging alongside Scion would not help our cause.
The Endbringers were in various states of disrepair, many missing entire limbs. Khonsu was using his power to allow them to heal rapidly, but there seemed to be a finite amount of healing rate to share between the Endbringers. Or perhaps Scion's attacks just fucked with their regeneration, like Lily's seemed to.
And Scion's Golden Fire, the name we assigned to when he used that energy attack that just kept burning through the target in a way reminiscent of Crawler's acid, had already killed three of them. Bohu, Gorgon, and Wambeen, who luckily weren't all that potent. Thus far, Wendigo was the only one to take a hit from the fire attack and survive. I was more willing to risk them, but they were our heaviest hitters and the ones most able to take a hit. Too useful to treat as disposable.
Plus, Scion was learning how to fight them. All of that meant it was time for the next strategy. The combined parahuman forces. Avalon's own small army of seven hundred viable combat capes, trained to think like soldiers, not brawlers. Many of them were Japanese, organized and led by Lily.
The Protectorate, Guild. and various other hero and villain groups from across the world, shamefully disorganized if not for my direct commands letting them know where and when to strike. The Birdcage residents, some of whom were stupid enough to imagine they could desert during the battle itself, were disabled and would be dealt with after. Hookwolf, especially. I had taken him for a lot of things, but for some reason it surprised me to discover he was a coward.
And the Yangban, ironically the only force in this collection of rabble that I actually respected as a military. Amped up by the residual boost from Akaihana flooding them with additional power enhancement, they were a force to be feared. Sadly, that power that wouldn't last long. But for now, they were our heaviest hitters outside of the big three.
I ordered movements through their viewscreens, placing the defenders where I needed them. I could track Scion, much as I tracked Leviathan long ago, perhaps I was the only one in the world with that ability. Bugs died in his wake, burned away by his glowing aura of energy.
The Yangban responded to my commands, something I had feared they wouldn't, throwing up a dozen types of shields in the path I commanded. Narwhal moved into their field of power and did the same, creating blades of pure force. Dozens of my phalanx zerg joined Scion collided a heartbeat later, slamming into the combined power of enough forcefields to withstand even Scion's power. Pinning him in place for long would be impossible, but I didn't need long.
Moord Nag's monster, fed the equivalent of no less than ten million human beings, did strike hard enough to crack the seemingly endless array of forcefields, smashing a Scion shaped dent in something that could have tanked a planet killing meteor. It gripped Scion and ripped his head off, then attempted to burrow its face into the neck hole. Moments later, the black monster's head burst out of Scion's stomach region.
I turned my attention to Glaistig Uaine's system. "I need you to teleport every human away from the battlefield. Be prepared to bring them back to the same location. I just need the field clear for the next part."
"As you wish, Queen Administrator." The woman focused through the haze of power stim withdrawal. "The Ferryman."
I couldn't see the copy of Strider, not through the senses I was relying upon and the angles they were all pointed, but I could imagine it. All of the signals I was tracking moved several hundred miles away. Luckily enough, this warzone world was mostly empty.
I found Alexandria, her armor badly stitched together by Yggdrasil, from where Scion had bypassed her invulnerability as if it was nothing. One of the first forced to withdraw from the fight, missing an arm, both legs, and much of her body below the waist. She was lucky, in a way, that the Golden Fire didn't burn her or the armor tuned to her power. He tore her apart manually. "We have time, sending you the Transit coordinates. Victoria and Chevalier will be able to heal you."
Chevalier and Victoria were together at the fallback point. Good that'll make this faster. "Alexandria incoming, you should have time to heal her." They were the only ones who could, after all. I registered all of their confirmations, but had more important things to handle.
Scion retaliated in kind against Scavenger, burning huge swaths of mass out of the shadow creature's body with the golden fire attack. More black shadow flooded in to replace what was lost. Moord Nag was one of the ones we would stagger throughout the fight. She could easily be recharged to well beyond full in a matter of seconds, deplete her power, and then be granted access to the fields of vat-grown supplies. No, calling it that was inaccurate. We are feeding her vat grown lobotomized human infants, half a billion at a time.
Speaking of disposable monsters made by eating people. We had more than one pet single-person crime against humanity to call upon, we hadn't even begun to harness Nilbog's power. "Are your armies ready?"
"Oh yes, gods fighting gods! This is truly the stuff of the grandest epics! We shall have a grand banquet and celebrate for weeks after our victory!"
At least he's enthusiastic. I studiously avoided thinking about what he meant by 'celebrate'.
The next wave started pouring through the shunt field, attacking Scion with reckless abandon. While Nilbog's monsters were, strictly speaking, weaker than the zerg. they had a lot of things going for them in this battle. The fact was they had a huge variety of admittedly weak powers, violated conservation of energy like most powers tended to do, and broke the concept of the square-cube law in half. Also a lot easier to produce. All in all, his swarms totaled almost a million and a half metric tons of mass. Thousands of misshapen creatures, made from the dead flesh that Moord Nag's power left behind.
They were violently insane, humiliatingly disorganized, and died in droves against Scion. Most barely ranked a 6 on the brute scale, with a 2 or 3 in mover or blaster. Some managed to have something akin forcefields, made of this weird dust that converted to a sort of hagfish type mucous when exposed to energy. Sponged up a lot of the damage Scion was dishing out. They were nothing more than one more distraction, another attempt to slow Scion down, cost him power, and keep him off balance.
They were also food for Scavenger. Moord Nag's horror show considered Nilbog's atrocities to be a valid power source, far more valid than the substitute supply we grew for her. As Scion killed them, it only served to make Moord Nag's monster stronger, which bought more time and allowed the Goblin King to convert more of the flesh gardens into monsters to send through the portal, die, and continue fueling the beast. Meanwhile, small goblins swarmed through the corpses, feeding on the dead and growing into new monsters out of the flesh of their dead and joining the battle. To die and be recycled into new monsters and more power for scavenger.
A sickening power synergy that seemed to be doing almost as much to hold him down as Lung had. If the two of them had found each other before we got to them, they might have been impossible for us to defeat.
I watched them fight for thirty brutal, bloody minutes. Teeth, fangs, and methods far too perverse and disgusting to go into detail on, against a man of golden light. Were a photograph taken of this moment in time, we'd have a hard time convincing anyone that we were the good guys. It was like some medieval interpretation of a battle between God and the forces of Satan. He unleashed the laser-swarm attack that worked so well on Akaihana. I was uncertain how much power that cost him, but I hoped it was a lot.
I shunted a reality distortion bomb right on top of his face. It sapped the energy of the lasers, rewriting their reality. They didn't become any less destructive, but they became far less discriminate. I couldn't help but smile as his own lasers began ripping chunks out of his flesh. That's a power he'll think twice before using again.
His golden fire came out again, released against the goblin armies. They burned, their mass lost. The Scavenger plunged in for another attack, and Scion evaded, firing a burst of energy that ripped the shadow in half. It fell amongst the dead, pulling more strength from all the dead and rising again, greatly diminished from where we started. He's adapting.
"Moord Nag, Nilbog. Fall back and rejuvenate your armies." I focused on the next wave. The parahuman armies not consisting of the Yangban. I confirmed that Alexandria was, indeed, back to full. Physically, at least. I wasn't sure if she was capable of feeling pain, but I had to imagine the emotional toll of being torn apart like that would be significant.
"Take to the air." I sent the message to over three thousand people simultaneously, while telling Glaistig Uaine that she should send them back into battle. She followed her instructions.
The goblins kept fighting, they weren't made to be anything other than suicide weapons. The zerg struck next, a chain of more types of energy than I cared to guess, swarms of half living Tinkertech weapons. Suicide bombing monsters full of the best of Bakuda's technology. Reality disruptors, dimensional barricade bombs, time blades.
Some did damage, some achieved nothing, and some we'd never be able to know if they did anything useful or not. I didn't want to use them too long, they weren't unpredictable enough. A single mind, even mine, was not what would win against Scion. Once he adapted to me, nothing I could do would matter. I could not allow that to happen.
Marquis acted immediately after they arrived, calling upon the hundreds of thousands of tons of skeletal remains strewn across the battlefield. Spines and blades of bone sprung up to strike Scion, without apparent effect. A series of blasts fired at Scion. To my surprise, he dived into a much more brutal series of blasts in order to avoid those unleashed by Atropos. He hadn't seemed too concerned about dodging her copycat weaponry. Maybe they just don't have the same potential to harm.
I was about to give orders to allow Lily to fire without risk of hitting allies with her weapons, when Scion turned and fired several streams of power at her. She shunted randomly, the automated protections going off. He followed, and hit her with a wave of golden fire when her defenses were down.
FearConcernWhoWasIt?
I swallowed. We were playing for keeps, this battle. Scion's attack on Dragon meant it was likely that our backup cloning data was destroyed alongside her and her backups. Yes, we had backups of our backups of our backups. Eighteen locations on twelve worlds, each with cores containing Dragon's information and our own, plus the thirty locations of Dragon's Daughter AIs. All were annihilated in a single strike. "We just lost Lily. I... I think Scion was afraid of her power."
LossFrustrationMakeTheBastardPayForIt.
Our forces started shunting over to this new world, whichever one it was. The computers updated and reconfigured the shunt drives, so I didn't have to keep track of that. Zerg and goblins shunted over at my command, the human defenders followed quickly. The Endbringers remained hiding in whatever reality Khonsu took them to heal. They'd be the next wave.
A blade the size of a building appeared from nowhere, stabbing Scion through the gut. Reality distorted as Chevalier's Singularity Cannon fired. A miniature black hole generated by using his power to fold a mass of EB tissue only slightly smaller than Mount Everest into a space the size of a grain of sand. One of the few weapons we had which could actually do damage without being in the same dimension as the target. It also meant the world he used it on would never be habitable again.
Inside the containment field was a gravity well that could trap light itself. But the gravity field outside that containment was distributed more or less evenly across the entire world, creating a tug similar to that of the moon in overall effect. Lunar gravity may not sound like much, but it was enough to create the ocean tides and alter the path of the Earth in space. And this happening over five hundred thousand times closer. Tidal disruptions of this magnitude meant shattered continents.
A black sphere of annihilation ate away at Scion's gut, where the singularity was stuck by whatever Tinker bullshit was holding it there. Scion himself seemed surprised by this turn of events. He gripped the blade, trying to pull it out of his stomach.
Primacy meant a parahuman's powers would find ways to spare Scion from death. But if it were rarefied enough. Filtered through four power interactions, layers of different Tinker designs, a weapon that once started wouldn't stop until it killed... would that be enough to overcome that protection? We'd sure as fuck find out.
I gave another series of signals, sending Alexandria, Legend, Gavel and Dauntless in. Legend ran his power through the reality distorting lens, causing damage where Scion managed to adapt to his normal signals. If he was going to keep regenerating, then we'd keep tearing him to pieces until he finally ran out of resources.
The others used their powers to enhance their weapons. All had a sort of shaker power that granted their weapons incredible power. We'd given Dauntless his new armaments years ago, after using Akaihana's understanding of Bakuda's technology to free him and Alabaster from that time field.
Gavel, we'd given a massive battleaxe less than an hour ago. They were major damage dealers, and since Scion was pinned, there would never be a better time. I ordered them to fall back immediately after. Dauntless and Alexandria listened, Gavel did not.
He got in three good shots, even splitting Scion's head in half before the anticipated retaliation. Several of my phalanx tried to soak the damage, but they couldn't hold against Scion's golden beam of destruction. One more body I'd automatically put in a transport zerg and deliver to Glaistig Uaine. I threw more forcefields in the way, as did Narwhal and some others, breaking up the ray of destruction before it could reach the other fighters.
A meter thick wall of bone caught the blast, disintegrating into pieces. I flinched a little when I registered the biofeedback of Marquis' armor. He felt that. He feels all of it. His power included proprioception like mine. He could feel bone, but more than that he felt bone. Where the material under his control shattered, it felt to him like his own bones were breaking. Suddenly I had a great deal more respect for Amelia's father, at least in terms of his combat ability.
I ordered Chevalier to stop his part of the attack.
This whole time, Sundancer had been working to charge Lustrum to a grade of power she'd never before reached. One more last minute power interaction. Lustrum had become a glowing monster not terribly different than Lung at his peak. Also like Lung, Lustrum was empowered by both Galvanate and Othala, or whatever she was calling herself now. Covered in a multitude of limbs and possessing her own gravity field, she slammed into Scion with an unstoppable fury greater than those who had come before her. As if she had something personal to prove in this fight.
The part where one of her many clawed hands went immediately to ripping out Scion's genitals only added to that suspicion. Sundancer kept charging her microsun as the pair grappled. Lustrum was tough enough to withstand him, though each attack he unleashed cost her limbs of her own. Then the sun came down on top of them, blinding us to the conflict. Whether or it would hurt him to be caught in what amounted to the third nuclear inferno he was bathed in in as many hours, it would certainly improve Lustrom's chances.
"Fall back, it's time for the Endbringers to get another shot at the target. Eidolon, are you ready?"
"We're ready. I think we're going to lose Gigant if we use him in this one."
I frowned. "Your call, you know how they fight better than I do. Can you hold a ten minute sequence without him backing you?"
"I can have Quetzalcoatl pull some extra material from the damaged Dragon's Teeth ships. That should fill the gap."
If I do that, then we'd be missing potential crew and weapons for the final blow. I'd need to be even more conservative with the Dragon's Teeth in future cycles. Judging by the dimming of the inferno engulfing Scion and Lustrum, I didn't have a lot of time to decide. "See what you can do with the destroyed bioarmor and vessels that are clearly destroyed. Strip it from the damaged and destroyed zerg. After that, if you still need to use damaged ships, go ahead."
....
We were doing it, we were succeeding. Beset by several different strategies, none lasting for more than a few minutes at a time, Scion couldn't adapt. When he learned to fight against one, we'd replace it with another. Indiscriminate attacks that were working against Nilbog's swarms failed against the Yangban's shared powers.
Concentrated high intensity attacks that were a threat to the Yangban's phalanx strategy weren't nearly as useful against the hit and run strategies of the various hero and villain teams. And by the time he could find a way to fight that organization with precision attacks, it was time for Nilbog and Moord Nag to join the attack. Or I'd mix it up with a blend of Dragon's Teeth joining in battle alongside the Protectorate, have the Protectorate fall back and send in the Yangban. I was loath to use the Dragon's Teeth- they were, possibly, the only ones capable of delivering a true deathblow against Scion.
And through it all, I was coordinating the battle from a thousand miles and however many worlds away. Organizing the cycles, using my zerg to plug holes in the defense and the offense. Shields to protect lives, offensive firepower to cause damage for the combinations that didn't have that advantage, strafing and distractions. Throwaway troops. Disposable armies that Scion could never afford to take his attention off of, despite them never really being a decisive portion of the battlefield at any given moment.
Despite his powers, he wasn't infinite, he wasn't perfect, and for reasons I couldn't comprehend he gave away the powers that would allow him to fight us.
He was only finally starting to adapt to the system I'd masterminded, so it was time to switch to the real heavy hitters for the third time. I opened communications with Eidolon, Akaihana and Glaistig Uaine. "Have you recovered enough?"
"We are ready, Queen Administrator." I felt Glaistig Uaine's armor shift as she stood. "The High Priest and the P- Akaihana, has seen to it that all of us are able to fight at full strength."
"I used Khonsu's field to give us a couple days to recover and prepare for battle. We've worked out a few new strategies to employ."
Hmm, that's interesting. The problem is that the stim drugs deplete the Passengers. We can fix the damage on the human side, but less so the costs to the things that grant us our abilities. The long term consequences of abusing stims and time manipulation would probably be disastrous. A fear that didn't matter in the slightest right now. If we didn't win this war, there would be only one long term consequence. If our strongest lost their powers, but succeeded in destroying Scion, then that was more than acceptable. Avalon would care for its heroes after.
I sent the signal and the Yangban fell back, to be replaced by another swarm of zerg, a different variant of powers and shields. More of Bakuda's weapons. We started this battle with a total of almost half a million zerg. The most powerful army to ever be made by man. We still carried that title, though we were down to less than a quarter of our starting numbers. Thanks to that preparation, we'd lost less than a third of our capes. A third that still totals nearly three thousand people.
But we were losing some of our strongest in that battle. Vicky and Chevalier alive by luck. Alexandria disabled until those two could recover. Lily, Legend, Gavel, Lustrum, Black Kaze, Genosythe, Moord Nag. Lung was alive, but in no condition to join the battle. It was likely he lost his powers permanently.
Nilbog was working overtime to produce yet another wave of monsters, but that wasn't going to be fast enough for what we needed right now.
And this was the damage Scion could do when we didn't let up. We outnumbered him a thousand to one at any given time except the Endbringer wave. We never gave him a chance to adapt. We were shredding him constantly, and still he looked as if he was bored. He took the time to rip Alexandria's limbs off. Not her head, which would likely prove fatal. Her limbs. He killed the zerg and the suits and the goblins with quick efficiency, so I knew he knew how to kill efficiently. The capes, too, usually. But sometimes he selected someone to murder slowly, like a child pulling the wings and legs off an insect.
Our trump trio took position around Scion, and encased him in a shimmering tripod of red light. I couldn't see into it, I had no idea how much damage it was causing. Hopefully an awful fucking lot, because the bioreadings on the three of them suggested this was the result of a double dosage of the power stim drug, and all the layers of power boosting that Akaihana could provide the three of them. They must have been planning to immediately retreat back to the Khonsu time bubble for recovery if this didn't finally kill the bastard.
Then I stopped in my tracks. The power Eidolon had used, years ago, to enslave the Endbringers. There was no word, simply the idea of not moving. And so we didn't move, we couldn't even imagine moving. I watched as the Dragon Teeth suits crashed to the ground. FrozenTrappedNoNotNow!
Eidolon, Glaistig Uaine, and Akaihana stopped fueling the triangle they were using on Scion.
I watched, helplessly, as he hovered above the three people who had done so much to hurt him across the four hour long conflict. A single blast and we lost all of them. I thanked my lucky stars that the others had fallen back, that all he could kill were zerg, goblins and Endbringers. But we'd lost. We could not fight. We couldn't even try to.
Moments later, he stood in front of me. He reached out and placed his hand atop my head.
[PATHETIC]
If I could have fallen and wept, I would have. Amelia's presence in my mind and soul, even during the feedback loop Lisa taught us about so long ago, was never this horrific. I felt him lift me off the ground, and heard the cracking sound as the EB-Reinforced armor splintered under his grip. The helmet fell away, exposing my face. He gripped my throat with his other hand, squeezing slowly.
[CONTEMPT]
I couldn't even feel Amelia's presence through Scion's hateful will. The zerg armies were silent. Even my own thoughts were a dim star in an otherwise pitch black void.
Then he dropped me. I vaguely wondered if my spine was broken. It didn't matter, he was just going to kill me now anyway.
[INFERIOR]
He turned toward Amelia. I'd fallen in such a way that I could watch. [LOSS] I wished desperately then that I could scream. He was going to kill her and he wanted me to watch. He casually glided over to her. The Yggdrasil wilting where he passed. As with me, he casually reached out to her. She wore a great deal more armor than I did. He ripped it open like it was tissue paper, exposing her to his gaze.
He didn't look at her with anything resembling desire. This was more the gaze of a serial killer in training, about to torture the neighbor's dog to death for barking too loud. He gripped her by the throat, extracting her from the armor. FearPainNoNONO!!!
[DISGUST]
He held her there, dangling a foot or so above the ground, unable to even struggle against his grip. If not for the fear and pain flooding our link, I would think her already dead.
[WEAK]
AngerRefusalLETMEGO! Amelia dropped to the ground. Scion stumbled back, his arm had come off at the shoulder. It was replaced almost instantly, and I could move again. I called upon the zerg, while climbing unsteadily to my feet. Scion simply rose into the sky, and with a gesture, we were coated in golden fire.
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A/N- They've actually hurt him a LOT more here than in canon.
Two to go.
