Court of the Golden Queen

[SleepyBird]

For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost;
For the sake of glory, the world paid a cost.
For death of a man, the child was broken;
For the sake of the world, the crown was taken.

She has no alias, and no home. She has nothing to her name. As for as the world is concerned, Taylor Hebert may as well have died months ago. But one thing did survive her - a girl with a reckless ambition. To shackle the ultimate threat to humanity.

For want of a nail, the High Priest was dethroned.

 

[SleepyBird]

The construct known to humanity as The Simurgh descended upon the capital city of the second most southern continent exactly one hour, thirty two minutes, and sixteen seconds ago.

Since arriving, the engine of conflict has caused the direct deaths of 28 hosts, 201 potential hosts, and 2800 non-host potential humans.

While incapable of seeing the present herself, The Simurgh is currently letting the active effects of three powers scorch her front and acting as if 32 passive powers are affecting her when only the gravity manipulation of her creator is altering anything appreciably.

She has had one legitimate tinker creation destroyed by her creator, two false creations destroyed by her creator, and was/will be in the process of quietly synthesizing a viral plague using data from the shard of host: Courtney Jaffe, known publicly as the sponsored tinker Fizzicist.

The plague will use the host's speciality of neurochemistry to alter the existing functions of both living and dead hosts in a way not dissimilar to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy.

This plague will in turn cause the deaths and subsequent reanimations of 22 hosts, 988 potential hosts, and 48000 non-host potential humans.

The direct link between the virus and Courtney Jaffe will be leaked by an American company in order to slander their Australian competitor.

This in turn will strengthen the United States NEPEA-5 bill and further constrict hosts using their abilities for non-conflict related activities.

Of course, this is only what is happening on a world scale; individually, her actions today will cause many present hosts to walk a path more beneficial to her long term goals.

Bastion, a known Protectorate hero, will see his inability to stop shrapnel in three minutes as a sign that he will always be defenseless. This vulnerability will attack him at his lowest moment and in three weeks, he will call an overeager fan a racial slur.

This will taint both his and the Boston Protectorate's reputation, spreading them thin enough that Noelle Meinhardt will cross into Brockton Bay without issue.

South American rogue, known currently as El Dorado (and formerly as Soldado Pérez) will see his efforts in this battle as inconsequential and give up on any and all humanitarian uses of his abilities. Without another world wide teleporter, the North American rogue Strider will find himself with a far larger workload than he is usually accustomed to.

This stress will shrink the amount of non-work relationships Strider has, leading to an overall loss in attachment with anything that brings him joy. This attitude will eventually lead to his death on June 28th, having drunkenly teleported himself to the top of Mount Everest.

Director Tagg will let his post traumatic stress disorder guide his actions with little provocation, urging a national conscription of hosts and damning any hosts capable of manipulating others' actions. While this will not happen in the long term, his actions in the coming weeks will lead to the deaths of six hosts, the imprisonment of Paige Mcabee, and a reinvigoration into operations regarding Nikos Vasil.

The operations will go nowhere as the Guild will stymie any effort from the Protectorate knowing full well that if provoked, Nikos Vasil is perfectly willing and able to kill 148,490 people with him. Although if The Protectorate knew this number in its exact estimation, they would act within the minute, having believed Heartbreaker had a potential yield hundreds of times greater than the actual.

Despite their futility, these efforts to further isolate Master type hosts will force Cherie Vasil into using her powers publicly. This will attract her siblings, Guillaume and Nicholas, who have been sent by their father to capture Cherie so that she might serve as an example for Nikos' other children.

Cherie Vasil will flee her brothers for exactly two weeks, three days, twelve hours, and six minutes before making her decision to become 'too big a fish' to be captured. She will nominate herself into the Slaughterhouse Nine following the death of Mamba in St. Louis.

In seven minutes The Simurgh is going to throw a piece of the Canberra capital building at Dragon's latest suit, the creation of Andrew Richter will deflect the majority of the rubble but in the haze of dust she will not see the Soviet cape Денщик pinned under debris. While he will not die from his wounds, she was the last host that could've seen him, without being able to call for help, his explosive collar will detonate upon being in the Simurgh's range for too long.

Without Денщик serving as his bodyguard, the Soviet ambassador to the US, Мистер Брюс will be assassinated under suspicion of treason. This will strangle connections between the United States government, The European Union, and the Soviets.

While this battle will not result in any lasting changes in the regions of central and southeastern Asia or Africa, it did not need to as many problems for that region became too jumbled and short lived for the Simurgh's use.

The Simurgh tried not to let that irk her, there were many reasons for such a loss in potential but the largest was her 'sibling', Behemoth. Occasionally, the Simurgh would give some thought to the other conflict engines, speculating that her creator might be aware of her plots on a subconscious level.

That would make sense, given for her brothers' propensity to strike in locations with keystones in her plans. But then she would remember the futility of those thoughts and get back to work.

This battle ultimately doesn't matter for much in any active plots, none of them can really be pointed to with a definitive 'this is where it all starts' statement. In truth, the Simurgh built lies upon lies, so many active threads and schemes that ultimately, even if a hundred were destroyed in a single battle, there will always be twice as many more for her to succeed in.

That is who she was and who she will always be, Ziz, the Hopekiller.

The construct made in the image of humanity's dominant religion was/will be in the final stages of creating her plague, with the viral creation already made, all it needs is a powerful enough vaporizer courtesy of the shard responsible for Host: Colin Wallis, one known currently as Armsmaster.

The vaporizer has to be created publicly, with a spectacle large enough to be seen from the Simurgh's main body, something that could be stopped if her creator chang-

A large boulder just slammed into the Simurgh's face, a boulder unaffected by any power save for her own. The simurgh's psychokinetic echolocation stutters for a moment and the future becomes unclear, muddy as hundreds of different hosts take the opportunity to strike at her.

She takes her 'scream' back, pulsing it outward and startling those that hadn't noticed its loss. Something is happening to it, something it did not foresee, it is not The Warrior, nor is it her creator.

In fact, as she focuses her scream upon him, the Simurgh can feel the host of High Priest's discomfort. David grips his head with the same ferocity he's shown for the whole of the battle, tugging at his cloak and mask as something tries to interfere.

This shouldn't be possible, the Simurgh has few blindspots in her perception, the Sleeper, her creator, and The Warrior being the only entities capable of harming her outside of her precognition. She should've seen this coming so why does she fee-

The head of the Houston Protectorate falls from the sky, his limbs going limp as his eyes flutter closed as his cloak whips around him. For a single, blissful moment, the Simurgh has no limitations.

Her range spreads, encompassing the whole continent in less than a second, her scream becomes completely silent and a veritable flood of potential schematics flow into her mind from the tinkers and thinkers of the world. She can begin the simulation in ten minutes, create-

And then, as soon as it came, her freedom was snatched away with the clicking of new shackles.

The gathered hosts watched in horror and fascination as the Simurgh flew upward, pace a hundred times faster than when she descended and though none could tell what exactly was chasing her, the many hosts present knew she was running from something.

She didn't make it far, only barely breaching the troposphere when she felt her body contort and shift against her will. Her perspective altered as the crystalline structure within her began to mutate into something horrible.

Even on the ground, many could hear the Simurgh's new scream, not made from several tiny series of telekinetic microsurgery, but created from a pair of lungs as The Simurgh's lips opened for the first time.

This new scream did not provide her with any new bits of information, nor did it affect any whom heard it, instead, the scream's only purpose was to signal the Simurgh's incredible agony.

Her body began to shrink, limbs and wings growing smaller at disproportionate rates as her milky eyes filled with a bluish-pink iris. She could feel reality itself screech apart like steel, the bonds of the universe shorn away as the youngest disappeared in a flash of blinding white light.

When the corona of light dissipated to something bearable, Alexandria floated up after Legend, their exhausted friend David in her arms.

"What…" Rebecca Costa-Brown was dumbstruck as she turned to her friend, "What just happened?"

Kieth Arben, the world's most powerful blaster and figurehead of The Protectorate couldn't help but shrug his shoulders. Even with his enhanced eyesight, he couldn't catch much of what had just happened to their adversary.

It would definitely go in his formal report but even having just seen it, he doubted the legitimacy. It almost looked like… The Simurgh had shrunk into a normal, if short, human woman.

Unbeknownst to much of the world (save certain seismologists and a few higher ups of various world governments) something similar was happening 5,000 kilometers below the crust.

The construct known to humanity as the Behemoth was not scheduled for any sort of attack until the late summer of 2011 and so, as always when he was 'forced' to retreat, the eldest Endbringer nestled himself in the middle of the planet's outer core.

No power could reach him, few devices could detect the relatively small blip in the ocean of magma that was his body. Here, in temperatures that rivaled the nearest star's surface, he licked his wounds and waited to be called upon.

That was his routine, for nearly twenty rotations around this planet's sun, he would leave this pocket of heat, kill as many hosts and nonhosts as he could within his set parameters and retreat when ordered to. It was a good routine, the routine he was built for, so long as he-

For a single moment, the Behemoth could not feel the warmth of his home. His body was but a construct, without any way to sense the world in any meaningful capacity and for a moment, he could not sense the well of energy surrounding him. Not the thermokinetics of the surrounding atoms speed, nor the electromagnetic push and pull of this planet's shield, without his abilities, The Behemoth was blind, deaf, and mute to the world.

The eldest stretched his limbs, the hundreds of thousands of tons that made him up pushed through the molten magma much like his younger sibling swam through the planet's oceans. His sense of the world pulsed and flickered unevenly, different wavelengths of radiation becoming tangible for a fraction of a second before they faded away.

And then, it returned a thousand fold.

The Behemoth stopped moving as a torrent of information flooded him, feeling the tectonic shifts of both this planet and the red world in the further ring, all energies within literal billions of miles became as clear to him as the core spinning below him.

He, for the first time since his activation, was free.

And then, suddenly, he was not.

From a downpour to a trickle, the eldest felt his great power slip through his limited consciousness like the magma between his great claws.

He closed his gargantuan eye, trying desperately to hold on to what he had left when the outermost layer of his body began to fold and crack under a tremendous strain.

A strain that hadn't been worth noticing only a moment ago.

His skin began to fall apart, flaking away into its components as his one eye suddenly went blind with agony, starting to split down the middle as he began to shrink.

The eldest roared, magma bubbling before imploding violently, his body creating a brief vacuum as he disappeared in an unseen flash of light.

Far above where his brother once was, The Leviathan tried to sleep far beneath the waves, his body squeezed into the challenger's deep as the water slowly swirled over his slimy scales.

Unlike his siblings, The Leviathan did not often monitor anything around him, content to let his tremendous power do nothing at all as his four greens eyes dimmed, just letting the natural pull of this planet's moon affect the currents around himself.

The Leviathan had its own routine, and though the routine might not be as ostentatious as watching hosts or the ebb and flow of electromagnetics, it took satisfaction in watching the tiniest fish, shrimp, worm, and cucumber quietly live.

The Leviathan didn't do much of anything really, its purpose was far simpler than its sister and even more dull than its brother. While she killed hope, and he killed sentience, the middle child destroyed habitats.

Hosts took planning to kill, even for the immensity of the first, hopes took even more intricate scheming, but The Leviathan didn't need to focus on such trivialities.

All it needed to do was gradually bring the mass of its control over a target, even the strongest structures gave way to water, even if he wasn't there to speed up the process, eventually everything ocean bound would become silt and foam.

With his instruction, salt water became a weapon every bit as deadly as his sister's constructs or his brother's lightning.

It was inevitable, his power, cities became dust and mud and those who fought him directly rarely gave him pause, even fewer to do it genuinely.

He did not revel in the killing or destruction, he was a lot like his brother in that regard.

He was not to arrive at a target until the last breaths of Spring, he'd always struck targets close to sea and that wasn't likely to change.

It didn't matter, all that mattered was that he abided his instructions, that he-

The water rippled around his body, a pulse strong enough to kill the majority of microorganisms clinging to his scales.

His eyes glowed brighter as his view of the world shuddered. The water… it felt… wrong somehow. Slippery, like his control had been fooled, that the liquid's consistency had suddenly been altered but he could tell from its composite atoms that it was still the cold brine of the Atlantic.

Something was happening, not to the water, but to him, to his control.

And as soon as the idea came to him, he was blind and deaf and adrift like so much rubble he let sink beneath the waves.

And then, he was blinded, his senses ringing as every drop of moisture on the planet became too much against his mind, the smallness of his control had become comfortable but this? It was too much, far too much.

And why was it thinking like this, thinking at all? Distressed because somewhere on the east coast of the United States, someone was muttering to themself, the saliva in their mouth making the words clear for the middle child.

"C'mon, c'mon, this has to work! It has to, I-"

It was sure, this host, this girl, she was the cause, somehow, the contraption before her, its outline made tangible from the heat it produced and the lack of moisture around it, she was somehow-

And then, he was blind again, even more so than before, the water became alien and it felt its great form being compressed under the intense pressure.

It shouldn't be happening, its form was a facade, infinitely more durable than any host had dared to assume before, the intensity of the oceans should've been nothing and yet it could feel it, at first a crack, and then a fissure, splitting his chest like stone and then, suddenly-

Taylor Hebert
February 24th, 2011

The building was shaking, I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise given what I'm trying to do but the dust falling from the rafters above is making me queasy.

What if that's why this won't work? I go through all this trouble, building my machine, selling designs to Toybox, buying samples from Blasto, and it's all because of the Bay's forgotten infrastructure that it all falls apart.

A deranged laugh bubbles up my throat, no, that's not what's going to happen… to be honest I don't know what will happen if the machine collapses.

Best case, The Endbringers die, the bits that made them killing machines destroyed under my power.

Worst case, The Endbringers are free and without their master's limitations, they'll become even worse, no real way to damage them, no real way to slow them down, no reason for them to hold back, we'd all be dead in hou-

And that's why I can't fail, this, my experiment, the past two months of effort, all of this can't be in vain, I have to win this, I have to.

Fidgeting with the monitor for one last moment, mindful that the shaking hasn't turned any dial or flipped any switch, I poke my head up and watch in amazement.

My tinted goggles do little to hide the glare in front of me, the tall glass chambers are incandescent with energy as my quarry is broken down.

I don't know how exactly, the esoterics of most powers, even tinkering is often a mystery even to the wielder. But the truth is, I don't need to know how, I just need to know when and what it takes.

The monsters terrorizing our world aren't biological in the slightest, the samples I got from Blasto proved that strangeness.

They're… crystals, each layer of their body more dense than the last. At least, if my research is correct, that's what they should be.

They aren't alive, well, they are and they aren't. They shouldn't be able to live, without any system inside them, even lacking mechanical options, they should be statues, without muscles or tendons or any way to move them.

Even accounting for their powers, the various kinds of kinesis all displayed, it still doesn't make sense.

Without rotator cuffs, without hinges, Leviathan should crack even controlling the ichor between his layers. Crystals aren't always brittle but there's nothing on earth that should survive that pressure.

And yet, again, it works. It shouldn't but it does, another thing to place on the pile, another how that can't be answered.

But, should this go well, should my machine capture them, mold them, then that will be the last unanswered question.

The machines above and below the chambers belch smoke and spit lightning, demanding I let them rest, demanding I obey the laws of reality even if so many don't.

I tell the machine to fuck off and taste blood in my mouth.

I didn't want to do this today, I wanted more time, more time to calibrate, to plan, to reinforce. But that bitch forced my hand, Canberra would have been declared inhabitable if I'd let myself sit back, all those people would've been locked behind another wall, with snipers on guard towers above, gradually picking off anyone who showed their heads.

I couldn't let that happen, I've had my powers for months now but that doesn't matter, I could have a hundred more years and I doubt I could comfortably say that 'yeah, three Endbringers? Bending them all to my will? Oh just give me a week.'

The hypothetical makes me laugh and I don't have any brain power left whether to say that makes me seem more or less crazy. More right? It's probably more.

The light inside each chamber starts to shrink, the photons and whatever the hell Endbringers are made of starts to condense itself into humanoid forms.

The one furthest to the right is looking around, hair forming out of light and whipping back and forth as she tries to scan her surroundings. The light doesn't look at all how I imagined it, hers shakes and shivers like tv static in the shape of a girl. I tilt my head at her and she mimics the motion, I'm almost mesmerized by the shining silhouette when there's a bang coming from the furthest left cell.

The figure inside is much larger than the other, probably a little over six and half feet and battering with half formed fists against the reinforced glass. His light is more solid, like a plant cell with a thicker layer along the perimeter and a far brighter luminescence in the center. Even knowing that the container is made out of the best shit Toybox was willing to sell me, I don't doubt for a moment that it will only hold for so long.

Confirming that the other two are in their places, my eyes lock onto the center chamber and spy the middle sibling, his whole body shakes and flows, like the light inside of him is liquid somehow. He places a watery hand against the glass, seeming more curious than inspective like his sister or furious like his brother.

I look away from them and back to the console, I really must be going crazy if I'm already personifying them. They aren't curious or inspective or furious, they're not anything at all! Everything, every tiny little expression or emotion, all of it is faked, an approximation! You can make a program repeat that it's alive but that doesn't make it so.

Confirming that the forms are stabilized, I say a silent prayer to a god I haven't prayed to since I was nine. And, with that done, I push up the final lever and hope to everything that this works.

The machines I've spent months building groan and shudder, the millions of dollars worth of internal components shatter and combust as soon as their jobs are done, someone screams and the lightshow becomes blinding as I turn my head down to the console in front of me.

Even with the goggles and my eyes screwed tight, it feels like I'm staring directly into the sun and that blindness doesn't dissipate until all my machines have stopped the whirring and humming and buzzing and I'm left with an eerie silence.

The emergency lights click on just as I turn my head up and my heart keeps skipping beats as I look at what I've captured.

In the center container is a blonde boy about my height, his skin isn't as pale as I thought it would be. Since his first attack was in Oslo, I figured I'd be looking at someone with a fairer complexion but I wouldn't say the person staring at me is Norwegian.

Of course, how he looks might not mean anything, like I said, everything about them is a facsimile, it would be madness to think any one part of them is more legitimate than the rest. The fact of the matter is, the boy who used to be the Leviathan stands in front of me, with sandy blonde hair, almost neon green eyes, and skin like the sand under low tide.

My eyes flick over to his left and spy the girl laying in her cell, hugging her knees with bleach white hair falling down her back and shoulders. Her skin is pale like a cloud, almost translucent and alabaster. Her face is turned away from me, tilted down into her knees as she rocks back and orth.

The display is masterful, she thinks she can trick me, she thinks that she can pretend to be human that I'll fall for it, that'll I'll give her even the smallest amount of sympathy. It won't work though, I know what she is, I know what all of them are and I won't be taken off guard by approximations of human behavior.

They're not human and I—

The glass on the right chamber bangs with a hollow thud as my eyes turn to the last occupant. The thing that used to be the First stands there, one arm pulling back while the other palm lays flat against the glass.

The man standing in there doesn't look as old as I would've assumed, to be honest, like his brother, he barely looks older than me. His hair is almost buzzed into his scalp, a dark black that compliments a complexion that's only a little lighter. His form is burgeoning with power, even without his former stony exterior, he looks like the peak of what a seventeen year old can be.

He brings a titanic fist against his binding and his newly formed lips curl up into a snarl at the lack of give. His new form isn't nearly as powerful as he's used to, none of them are even a millionth of the same strength they were ten minutes ago.

All of that power and rage, it is mine to withhold from them and that thought makes me falter.

I've done it. I've actually done it.

The Endbringers, the Hero, City, and Hope killers are all imprisoned, any chance of breaking free from me was taken the instant I fired up my machine. The machine itself is in ruins but if I…

I close my eyes and focus inward, trying to find what should be in there.

My technology, my powers, when I first got them I thought they were the cruelest thing anyone could be given. I'm a tinker and like all tinkers, I can create tools that would dazzle any mundane engineer, I can make things that would be me at least on par with other parahumans.

But unlike someone like Hero or Armsmaster or Kid Win, my technology, my speciality isn't fixated on metal and forging, I can't create guns or shields or jet boots. I'm not like Blasto or Bonesaw or any of the other wet tinkers either, even as ghastly as their technology is, there was a time I would've traded mine for theirs in a heartbeat.

No, my specialty, as far as I can tell anyway, is fixated on the complete and utter subjugation of other living things.

It was terrifying when I put the pieces together. My first device, a little beacon about the size of a traffic cone, exploded when I first hit the switch but when the dust settled, I found millions of new minds under my complete control.

They were bugs of course, aphids and ants and beetles, roaches and wasps and bees, all of them basically useless on their own but I could control each of their individual limbs like the fingers on my own hand. My control was absolute, they couldn't resist me at all even when I retreated to my room and they all began to die, either from predators that enjoyed the stationary prey or starvation.

I wept for a good few days, all of my technology, all the schematics and ideas, every single thought that my power provided was all based on control. I remember throwing up when a thought came to me, that all I'd need was space and maybe what was in the WInslow computer lab to build something worse, a device about as tall as me that would permanently enslave the entire Winslow student body to my will.

The only saving grace is that my tech can't survive after even a single use, no matter what it is, be it a beacon for an ant hill or a rifle to control a bird, they all invariably break after a single successful use.

I almost turned myself in after the first weekend back, almost spilled the beans to the PRT about what I was and that I needed to be locked away for everyone's safety.

But then, as I was getting off the bus and staring at the high rise base of the Wards, an errant thought came to me, a self-deprecating joke about taking control of the Endbringers.

But to my surprise, my power gave me a schematic, a design that bordered on impossible just in the resources alone.

I remember being terrified of it, the materials and space and time needed for it, keeping it all as secretive as I could, it… I don't think I've slept for more than four hours at any given time since then.

But I can put all that behind me because just like the bugs I had under my control, I can sense three switches inside of my head, three sets of eyes and limbs and hearts and with a mental click, I open my eyes.

Three different perspectives are fed into my brain along side my own, two sets of eyes lock onto me and the final set slowly looks up from her knees as I make her lift her head up.

It's… not like the bugs at all.

The bugs were easy to control, to juggle their millions of bodies around and make them march and eat and sleep was almost second nature. But the three in front of me… I could feasibly control one but I don't think I'd be able to walk in my own body concurrently.

It's… frustrating, not just for me but… I can feel them too, their minds running parallel but separate from my own.

The Behemoth is enraged, he wants to kill me the second he can, he doesn't know what's happening and that just makes him angrier. He's… lost too, his power, the energy that he could so freely command isn't there and that cold knife of vulnerability is a new sensation that he has never felt before.

The fact that he has sensations to feel shouldn't be possible, he should be as mindless as my notes have laid him out to be. It could be because of my process but… it shouldn't have done this!

My first schematic, by the time I got it done a few days into January, was impossible. It needed to be as large as a city with more iridium and other rare metals than there actually were on earth.

It would've taken me years even if cost and manpower wasn't an issue but it would've done the job. I would've had them as they were before, at full strength at all times and as enslaved to me as they were to their previous Master.

I had to scale it down and of course I then had to scale it down again… and again and again and again but I finally found something that worked! It took months of work, months of selling designs and ideas to people that… that I know are going to misuse them.

It took money and connections that I never want to step into again but I got what I needed, part of Behemoth's eyes, nearly a whole fingertip from Leviathan, and a single feather courtesy of the Mathers clan.

The design I came up with wasn't perfect, it required me to keep them in a near powerless state for… well, I'm not really clear on how long I need to keep them like this but I know I'll be able to break them in over the next few years. Slowly but surely, I'll be able to control them at their maximum and without them around to fuck up the world I mean… I should have plenty of time.

But these forms, they shouldn't have become like this, they shouldn't have thoughts and feelings and… damnit, my brain is getting too fucking fuzzy!

I'm pushed out of their minds like the same end of a magnet and without my dominance, the three of them start testing their chains.

Behemoth closes his eyes and puts both of his hands on the glass, the fingers splayed as he focuses. Fear bores a hole in my chest when two molten handprints form on the surface, the glass turning a faint red but quickly becoming more opaque. The air inside his cell wiggles with heat and I only pull my eyes away when there's a bang in the centermost cell.

Leviathan is throwing himself at the glass, shoulder checking it with a thunderous bang but without any visible damage. And then, to my horror, a second figure stands up with the first, a thin sheen of sweat briefly mimicking his body before it crawls up his arm into a single long blade. The whip scratches at the surface but doesn't cut just as their sister takes a shot at her own confinement.

The Simurgh's eyes are closed as she sits crisscrossed in the center of her cell, looking like a monk in the middle of meditation before she lifts off the ground. Whatever she's doing isn't nearly as obvious as her brothers' efforts but I know instinctively that it'll be the most effective.

I put my hands out in front of me and shout the only thing that comes to mind.

"Stop!"

And to the surprise of everyone present, they do so immediately.

The sweat Leviathan was controlling falls to his left with a small splash as he stops, his green eyes staring at me with confusion. I turn my head left and find Behemoth has put his hands back at his sides, scowling like he can make me melt with a look. The Simurgh has fallen back to the floor, with one hand raised up to brush her albino locks behind an ear.

My eyes fixate on her, on the pale pink iris and the tears welling up in them as she makes the first sound since I brought them here.

She sobs, a choking harsh gasp of breath that just let's lose an avalanche of more cries. The display is… shockingly realistic and I'm only drawn away from it when Behemoth speaks, his voice a baritone like rocks falling off a mountain.

"What has been done to us?!" He screams, punctuating the statement with another smack of his fist against the glass.

"We…" Leviathan answers, voice soft and whispery like mist. "Have been imprisoned."

Their brief exchange has me gulping. They… they shouldn't be able to speak. Even if their new forms have lungs and vocal cords and all the organs necessary for speech, the fact remains that they shouldn't be able to.

The past ten minutes are full of revelations like that and I can't help but think there's gonna be at least a hundred more of them before the day is through.

"You…" I speak, trailing off as I try to find the right combination of authoritative, stern, and unshakeable. "Are all mine. You were killing machines meant to destroy humanity and—"

I stop, realizing an incredible benefit of this process. If they have minds, that means they can tell me where they came from, who created them, why! The second thought people have about the Endbringers (right after the horrific amount of pain and suffering they cause) are their origins, scientists the world over have dedicated their lives to this and I have their mouths unable to lie to me. The excitement leaps out of me before I can stop it and I point to Behemoth as I ask my first question.

"Where do you come from?!" My voice is echoed by silence as Behemoth takes a step back, as if the words have physically struck him when… a dimness overtakes his red eyes.

"I…" he starts, voice far away, before his brow furrows. "I do not know, I… I do not remember."

His answer is slow, his eyes distant as I start to glare at him.

"What do you mean you don't know?" I ask, doubling my glare when he tries to match mine. "You had to have come from somewhere and I know you weren't human befo— you aren't human! You're a machine and every fucking computer on the planet has a schematic, has a blueprint, something—" I put my hands up, annoyance leaking out of me and making me turn away, my fingers tugging at my curls before I turn back, angrily repeating, "Where do you come from?! Who made you?!"

"I do not know!" He bellows back, his eyes fixed on me as something alien fills them, something… brittle. "I cannot remember, I…" he grips his head, his nails digging into his shaved scalp, "I cannot remember, I cannot remember where I come from, who I am—"

"You are not a 'who!'" I chastise, pointing a finger at him. "Look at me!"

He follows my command and I pause for the barest instant at the look he gives me, his jaw open slightly, breathing quickly, there was so much rage in him earlier but he can't stand being without it. I almost stop, but I can't give them an inch, the deaths they've caused, the misery, the… I won't let them in.

"You are not a 'who.'" I repeat, "You are a 'what', an 'it.' Do you understand?"

"Yes," he answers immediately, his large frame collapsing to the floor as he looks between his knees. "I understand."

The resignation in his tone… isn't as satisfying as it should be but I shake off the dissonance as I look to the other two, the Simurgh flinching away but the Leviathan meeting my gaze.

"And you two?" I ask, "What are you?"

The question is rhetorical, if Behemoth can't lie then the others shouldn't be able to either and since the first Endbringer is clueless about his origins then it makes sense the other two are equally blind. I'm not asking what they are, I'm ordering them to tell me their place.

"We are yours," Leviathan speaks up before his sister, the former serpent of Oslo looks at me with calm and searching eyes. His demeanor is perfectly subservient but there's something lurking under the surface, something sinister and shadowy. "We are things for you to use, puppets, tools, we understand."

He saunters up to the class, putting his hand on it and tilting his head at me. Again, the movement is done without hesitance, every little detail done exactly to ease my mind. Only, it does the opposite. I can feel it the way a hunter fears tall grass, positive that even though I can't see it or hear it, the serpent is still there, still waiting to lunge for my throat.

"We are yours and we are eager to work, what would you have us do, ma'am?"

My brow furrows as I step up to his cage, locking eyes with him as I growl.

"I am not stupid." I hiss out through clenched teeth, not even surprised when the cordial air of his gaze is sucked out, leaving behind an emotionless, deadly stare. "You've killed so many people, so many that underestimated you, that assumed you weren't every bit as cunning as her—" I point to the Simurgh to punctuate my statement, feeling grim satisfaction at how she flinches. "But I will never underestimate you, I know that out of all of you, you'd be the one to kill me first."

Leviathan's posture straightens, anger in the set of his shoulders as he takes a step back, eyes a bit more defensive. I'm prepared to run him through the wringer when there's another sob to my right.

Leviathan doesn't look away from me, his eyes are the only thing that moves as I walk to the Simurgh's cell, the newly grounded Hopekiller is openly weeping, tears falling off her face as I sneer.

I keep my head held high as I examine her, this is obviously a trick, a naked attempt to gain my sympathy, like a child that thinks crying will get her everything she wants. I thought someone like her, the world's greatest schemer, would come up with something better.

The thought makes my nose wrinkle, what if that's it? She wants me to lower my guard, she wants me to think she isn't as capable at scheming as she always was, she wants me to see through this.

But what if she's banking on that? I don't see why she'd want that but no one has been able to unravel her plans before they happen, they're always aware the instant their foot is caught in the beartrap.

But… what if she expects me to bank on that? What if—- fuck, this is getting cyclical.

I bang my fist against the glass, startling her to look up at me with wide, pink eyes. She sniffles pitifully and I can't help but squint, there… isn't a shadow like there was with Leviathan. With him, I could read his intent, his thoughts like ghosts behind his actions but she doesn't have that.

I mean, I can feel something, a sniveling little ball of confusion, anxiety, and pain but that can't be right. That would mean her actions are in line with her thoughts, that would mean she—

"I'm not planning anything!" She shouts at me, her voice cracking at the last word. "I… I can't do it, I can't—" she takes in a deep breath quickly and exhales just as fast, her eyes wide and manic. "There's too much, all of this—I can't… I can't see! Why… why—-"

She's hyperventilating, eyes blown wide like dinner plates and hair whipping back and forth, both from the tuning of her head and the telekinetic wind she's kicking up.

"Stop," I order, watching as she painfully makes herself still, her head fighting the motion but unable to stop the invisible force of my will. "What are you talking about?"

"Here!" she answers like I'm the one acting crazy, incredulity staining her voice as she gestures to the whole room, to the whole world. "It's all so fast and… my—" she scratches at her arm, bright red lines rising up in the wake of her nails, "My skin! Why is it always here, always telling me it's touching something! I know! I know! I know already so stop telling me!"

The scratching gets worse like her breathing but before I can intervene, her eyes flutter closed, her spine relaxing as she flops over, fainting to the floor.

The Simurgh… just had a panic attack.

Without her, the room is silent, the other two occupants letting the quiet reign as I take a step back, confusion warring in my guts.

This isn't right, none of this is going how it should be and… I…

My legs start taking me to the door before my mind can spin, both Behemoth and Leviathan yelling something as I push the door open. I barely remember to take off my 'costume' (really just a lab coat and goggles over my regular clothes) before the door shuts behind me, the chilly New England winter hitting me full force as I lean up against the door.

I don't know what's happening, why they're… the way they are but…

I slowly get to my feet, watching through their eyes everytime I blink as I head to the bus stop.

I… I'll be back tomorrow, I'll have decided what to do then.

AUTHOR's NOTE: Hey hey, would you look at that? Another new story, again this one won a poll in the Gaylor discord. The poll being for a nonpolysiders centric story, notice that I said it wouldn't be centric, not that it's off the table.

Because this won the poll, I can't guarantee it will win again/ be updated regularly or ever. But if it does:

Next time on Court of the Golden Queen: Taylor let's them out of the cage, at least to get them some clothes.

 

[August Night]

Very promising. I look forward to seeing where this goes.

 

[Winnie-the-Pooh]

This is awesome!