10.2
Still February 24th, 2011
The next five minutes were a whirlwind of barely comprehensible activity.
I left two Miko Dolls in Chicago. One to guard Panacea, and one to look for the rest of the Nine - it would have to be enough, along with four of Dragon's suits. Ah, and another Doll was staying in Brockton Bay, leaving me with just three to bring along.
I could work with three.
I killed Leviathan with zero, after all.
A couple of seconds after I arrived to the hall of the PRT building, a teleporting cape appeared with a pop, and then brought me to another location in a blink of an eye. And whereas it was late-ish snowy evening in Brockton, it seemed to be a very sunny and warm morning in here.
"Ah, Miko. I'm glad you were able to join us," Legend approached me, offering me a handshake. I took it, and then walked away from the main gathering.
"Okay, Legend, explain what's going on while I prepare," I said, pulling out a Talisman that was supposed to allow the three Miko Dolls to teleport to my coordinates.
"Fifteen minutes ago, a new Endbringer appeared next to the city of Canberra. It looks like a giant withered tree, and it's been given the designation Yggdrasil." Seriously? The World Tree? What kind of a geek was in charge of designations? "From what we understand so far, it's immobile, but it had a ten-mile-wide radius of aggression at the moment of appearing, and the radius has been slowly increasing. So far, it's been using lasers to attack anything that comes within its radius of aggression, and we have… about twenty more minutes before it starts covering the city."
He did not stop his explanation even as the three Miko Dolls - who currently looked like my nearly exact, if less lively, copies - walked through the portal in front of us, and took off towards where the action seemed to be.
"And the evacuation?" I looked at him expectantly.
"That's what most attendees are busy with. Trying to approach Yggdrasil without a Mover rating gets you either immolated, or thrown away if you can withstand the blast. So we've got some of our flyers and long-ranged non-energy blasters trying to attack it, while the rest are helping with the evacuations."
"And you're not attacking it because…?"
"Yggdrasil has some sort of an energy dissipating aura. No matter what kinds of lasers I fire at it, they disappear before reaching the target."
Hm, interesting…
"Got it," I nodded, even as the three dolls, empowered by the standard Endbringer Suite, finally got visual on the Endbringer.
It… really looked like a giant, withered tree. And I did mean GIANT. It was nearly a mile tall and almost quarter mile wide, towering over the city of Canberra like a bully over a sand castle. Its surface glimmered in the sun as if it was made of crystal. In fact… I'd say, it probably WAS the exact same type of material Leviathan's corpse was made out of. If there was anything left afterwards, I was definitely going to harvest it for my crafting needs.
Also, once per heartbeat, its wide corona shone with impossibly bright heat, before coalescing into a painfully luminescent, building-wide beam that shot through the air, one of three to five shots scorching someone right out of the sky.
It was a dreadfully familiar light. The one I still saw in my nightmares now and again.
Sunlight.
WHY did it have to be SUNLIGHT?!
I brought out my emergency ink, brush and paper.
"What are you doing?" Legend looked at me quizzically.
"I think the Dolls should be enough to deal with that thing. But if they're not, I'd rather not risk ruining my ghostly pale complexion," I deadpanned, taking the brush to the paper. He seemingly understood what I meant, or at least thought better than to ask any further questions. I didn't care which, I-
Kamidammit.
Back at Brockton, I directed a Camera Orb to the one person in my group still in the city.
"Brightbug, I need your help," I said to them.
"…What's the matter…?"
"There are two situations going on, I need to pull the last Doll from Brockton Bay. Could you make sure Miko of Miracles doesn't cause a cataclysm while I'm not looking?"
Because yeah, I did NOT trust that woman not to break everything if left unattended for five minutes.
"…Yeah, got it…" they nodded.
It took them a few minutes to get to the place. In the meantime, I went ahead and sent the Miko Doll to Vancouver, and-
A moment later, the Miko Dolls entered the Endbringer's aggression range.
Two of the Dolls were dimensionally shifted, and one traveled through the conventional planes. I decided on this arrangement because I did not see any extra-dimensional properties in Yggdrasil's attacks, but I also kinda wanted it to pay attention to the replaceable Dolls rather than to any capes that did very little to help, but still hung around flinging useless attacks and adding to the number of casualties.
And, well, the Dolls got its attention indeed.
There's this thing about dodging gunfire as a regular human, or lasers as someone with a Mover rating. The only real way to dodge such an attack is to not be where the opponent was shooting. With things like guns, it's relatively easy to determine - as they tended to point the muzzle in the exact direction they shot. But with a sunbeam-shooting giant tree?
You maybe got a millisecond of its light coalescing right in your direction to get out of the way.
I reacted too late, the Doll jolting away from the beam - only for wide column of light to graze it, taking one of its two arms in the process.
"Is something the matter?" Legend asked, still hanging around me for some reason. Maybe for protection?
"Doll damaged," I grimaced.
It wasn't even an issue with the 4D Barrier itself - the bulk of the beam splashed against it uselessly! No, just as I feared, it was the fact that the Barrier was only semi-opaque, with the tree laser packing enough photons to shred the wood that made up the Miko Doll.
I looked at the Talisman I was working on. Only one-third done.
Sigh.
The tree kept shooting specifically at my Doll, and not at the two dozen capes flying around it (I seriously would've preferred for them to go away and stop being useless where they could get themselves killed - but them flying out of the range would've taken too long to matter anyway). I didn't know most of them, though I did recognise Eidolon, who was throwing hyperdense balls of blackness at the thing - pseudo black holes? - while screaming with barely contained rage and desperation. The balls took out small, fist-sized chunks of Yggdrasil, and sometimes 'ate up' its beams if they managed to collide with them - but THAT seemed to mostly happen by coincidence, rather than intentionally. Given the size of the tree, he would've needed a full day of uninterrupted ball tossing to make any substantial progress even if the thing didn't slowly but surely regenerate - which it did.
My damaged Miko Doll narrowly evaded one, two, three massive lasers - huh, they dissipated roughly at the edge of the aggression range - before it failed to evade a sweeping laser shot that also took out three flying capes.
"One Doll down," I grimaced, pulling another Doll back onto the conventional planes.
It took most of my self-control to power through the sheer PRESENCE of so much concentrated sunlight, and I was not entirely sure if this counted as exposure therapy or torture.
Still, this thing HAD to be killed. Even one encounter with this sunlight Endbringer tree was more than I ever needed.
I was pretty sure I knew what Yggdrasil did. Just to test it, the Doll shot out a single short Karmic blast, rerouted onto the conventional planes so it consisted of mostly light and heat - and it dissipated in the matter of a second. Yup, got it. The 'range of aggression' was also the range of its energy control. It took any and all light, heat and whatnot, and stored it - probably in the body, or in the core, like a giant-ass battery. And then, it used all that energy to fire lasers - except, whenever it missed, it could just dissipate the laser at the edge of its control, and repurpose its energy for another blast. And the only reason its range was only steadily increasing was probably because the range of its absolute control grew with the amount of energy stored.
Maybe it even used the sunlight - which was in abundance here, unlike at Brockton… Bay…
"Dragon," one of my Orbs addressed her back at the Rig. "The abnormal snow, is it just in North America?"
"Ah, no. Soon after us, it became an issue in South America, then Europe, Africa and Asia-"
"And Australia is the only continent that isn't neck-deep in the stuff," I concluded grimly.
"Yes. Why?"
"Yggdrasil just made it personal."
It… made sense in retrospect. The Endbringer had likely rerouted most of the sunlight the planet received to itself and its immediate surroundings, amassing enough energy over the past month to launch an attack even if not a single cape shot an energy blast at it.
Which meant, half of my troubles lately were because of THIS absolute bastard.
The Dolls were roughly halfway to the Endbringer, and I activated their Karmic Sonar Visualisation to maybe see if the shitty weather stealing tree also had a 'True Body' like Leviathan.
It did - near the roots, hidden behind what was probably hundreds and thousands of tons of crystalline matter. I… was not sure if the Killbox Array was gonna do the trick at THIS size - but given the Lethal Persuasion enchantment, I could maybe downsize the Endbringer to a more manageable amount of whatever it was made of.
"Okay, this one's done," I sighed in relief, sending the newly made talisman into the communal storage, so that the next moment, the active Doll could pull it out and activate the thing - the previously semi-opaque 4D Barrier blackening like it was yet another pseudo black hole Eidolon was still throwing at Yggdrasil as if it was doing anything.
Next moment, the tree shot another sunbeam at the Doll - only this time, the Barrier didn't let a single photon through. At least, not directly - pretty sure the surrounding surfaces still reflected some of the light at the thing, but not enough to do noticeable damage.
I began making another opaque Barrier, just to be on the safe side.
Also, the moment the frontal attack proved to be pointless, the tree seemingly decided to change things up. Now, large motes of light began appearing all throughout the aggression radius. These motes pulsed exactly once, before shooting a sunbeam SOMEWHERE - there was even less of a tell than with Yggdrasil's corona, so the Doll was taking frantic nonstop evasive actions, its Barrier having to 'eat' the Endbringer's every third, sometimes fourth shot.
In the meantime, my attention was pulled away again, as I promptly dealt with THAT entire mess in Vancouver. Bloody hell, two crises at the same time was two crises too many.
I was able to finish the second opaque 4D Barrier and send it to the third Miko Doll a few seconds before the second one was caught in three simultaneous sunlight blasts that hit from different angles, the Barrier's imperfect cover letting enough photons slip through to scorch the central control unit in the Doll's head, for a moment stunning me as the horrible light overtook the Doll's Camera Orb.
Crud, and a mere two hundred feet away from its target too.
"Second Doll down," I sighed. Bloody sunlight.
The third Doll was pulled back onto the conventional planes - and at this point, there was very little Yggdrasil could do. Oh, it desperately tried to shoot it down, but it took literal milliseconds for the Miko Doll to reach its crystalline trunk, and then go INTO it like a red hot drill into a block of soft cheese.
Crap, I needed a hot shower and a large pizza after this mess.
A moment later, the tree began to phase out of reality - or rather, it attempted to retreat away on the W axis - only for the Doll to follow it along the way, finally reaching Yggdrassil's core, tearing through the material surrounding it even as it desperately tried to regenerate - and then sealing the entire thing with a Killbox Array. Then, it applied a 4D knife to the core - and after a short flash of light, it was cracked and inert.
"Yggdrasil fully neutralised," I sighed tiredly, before switching my attention to what was happening in Vancouver.
I was pretty sure that without THAT OTHER mess pulling at my attention, I wouldn't have had lost the second Doll. Well, at least-
Oh, bloody hell.
I activated yet another Portal Talisman - this time, back to Brockton Bay - and stepped through it just in time to send a Yin-Yang Orb into the face of a vaguely familiar armed woman wearing a fedora of all things. The woman immediately crumpled to the ground, as I turned to Faultline, who sported a fresh gunshot through her shoulder.
"Is it too much to ask NOT to have all the shit in the world come crashing down at the same bloody time?" I grumbled.
Still February 24th. 2011
You know, things overall could be a lot worse for Tana. She had a steady above-board job as a gardener at the Brockton Bay Jinja, she had brilliantly showcased her organisational and bureaucratic skills at Land of Fantasy Ltd, and dealing with an occasional high threat target cemented her usefulness to Taylor's cell.
Yes, she was more than pulling her own weight, meaning the shadowy government conspiracies could not touch her - not without possibly incurring the wrath of Miko of Paradise.
Because that was the strangest part: despite the common sense dictating otherwise, the government's most valuable deniable asset was allowed to grow as much as she could, and she did so - until she grew so damn powerful, nobody could even hope to threaten her, let alone control her directly.
Indeed, the only thing that stopped Taylor from making a successful bid for world domination was that she was surprisingly down-to-earth and unambitious. She was a rare example of a genuinely good person who just wanted to help people - and the ones who were supposed to hold her reins seemingly understood that as long as she was left alone by the powers that be, they could pretend to still control her.
This still made Taylor's friends and family - Danny, Madison, Lisa, Amelia, Victoria, Tana and now Dragon - a possible avenue for trying to control the most powerful Tinker in the world, but it was ALSO the quickest way to incur her wrath, as was just proven by the Slaughterhouse Nine- Five? Yeah, five at most at this point.
Meaning, as long as Tana stayed reasonably cautious, wary and alert, she could prevent any worst-case scenarios from occurring.
The last thing ANYONE wanted was for Taylor to snap.
Which was why, Tana was currently wracking her brain over the situation she found herself in, even as she used one of the Zero Gravity Floating Engines - like the ones that were rented to the DWA, but without the living matter restriction - to move another heavily injured civilian to where Panacea was patching people up around the clock.
Something about this deal with Chicago was making her uneasy, and it wasn't the occasional glance from the Miko Doll (those things gave her the creeps - sure, they were made to LOOK like Miko of Paradise through dimensional holographic cape magic, but they had the most unnerving red-eyed stare, looking at you like you were a bug to be squashed).
She dropped off the injured civilian at the tent, and then, after a second, ran up to one of Dragon's suits.
"Are there any signs of the Nine?" she inquired, and the intricately made mechanical beast turned to her and, after a moment, shook its head.
"No, I'm not seeing them anywhere yet."
This made no sense!
Why would the Nine announce their attack, have three members predictably run into Miko of Paradise, and then retreat into hiding?! You'd think they would at LEAST try to take a go at her life with the Siberian!
…
Wait.
"Are we sure that the rest are here?" Tana looked at the suit questioningly.
"You think- ...Hold on, I'll see what I can find."
It was a distraction.
There was this rather famous prank - releasing three animals, usually pigs or chickens, in a building, all clearly marked with the numbers 1, 2 and 4. Even if all the animals were apprehended quickly, it raised the question of where animal number 3 was - usually leading to the building closing so that the nonexistent number 3 could be caught. Tana was pretty sure that last year, a similar prank occurred in a school in Salt Lake City.
Of the three Slaughterhouse Nine members they already encountered in Chicago, Crawler and Hatchetface were the most likely to itch for a fight, and Shatterbird… she was the group's calling card, announcing the presence of the serial killers ever since she joined them.
The ones that were left were… Jack Slash himself, Bonesaw, the Siberian, Burnscar and Chuckles- no, wait, Tana remembered the news about him being killed a few months ago. There could be an unknown fifth one, but of the ones she knew, it didn't make a lick of sense for the Siberian to wait things out and hide, instead of trying to blindside Miko of Paradise in the middle of her dealing with Crawler.
Meaning, there was a high chance the rest of the Nine were NOT anywhere near Chicago - the question was, where? Did they want to strike at Brockton Bay while Miko was distracted with this city, or did they have some other objective in-
"Confirmed Nine presence near Vancouver," the nearby Miko Doll informed them.
Vancouver? Why-
Wait, that's where Dragon's HQ was! Were they still after her?!
Crap. If Jack Slash managed to seriously hurt Taylor's new friend, there was no saying what was going to happen.
Double crap - Tana had told Taylor that she wanted to fight the Nine if they ever came across the group. She actually wanted to just be able to protect herself from them (and from the governmental conspiracy behind Miko of Paradise) instead, but it felt like the right thing to say at the time!
But... hold on.
With her swords, and the flying boots, and the Barriers sewn into her costume... Couldn't Tana actually have her revenge on the Nine...?
Huuuh...
Well, it's as they say - in for a penny…
"We can afford to send people there now that the PRT is helping here. I'm going," Tana told the Miko Doll.
"Yeah, me too," Lisa smirked. Did she itch for a fight?
"I'm pulling in two of my suits here," Dragon added.
"I'd go, but I'm not leaving Amy alone," Glory Girl shook her head.
"Okay. Note that there's only a single Doll out there," Taylor's bloodcurdlingly creepy copy nodded. "If you encounter the Siberian, leave her to it."
Yeah, that was the plan. Even these swords probably weren't enough for the invincible striped cannibal nudist woman.
"I'm authorising the lethal enchantments against the Nine, except Bonesaw and Burnscar," Miko's Doll added, before opening a portal to Vancouver.
Now, which of the Nine could Tana realistically beat with her equipment… Hm… Weren't the remaining ones, barring any Bonesaw modifications, basically regular humans…?
Still February 24th, 2011
There were very few things one could trust when leading the most notorious group of mass murderers in the world. It came with the territory, of course. Some, like good old Alan, may he rest in pieces, would gladly betray him over their ideals. Some, like Ned and James, could attempt to kill him if he got in the way of their fun too much. Some, like the Siberian, would protect the few things they cared for (Bonesaw in this case) with lethal force.
It took a true maestro to know how to play the entire group, tugging at the strings of their wants and needs in a beautiful symphony of destruction. It was something Jack had mastered over the years - because unlike so many people in this profession, he amassed enough work experience to be able to rely on his gut feelings even when he barely had any information to go off.
It's what saved him when so many much more powerful capes died, be it facing the Nine or standing alongside them.
And lately, his gut had been all but SCREAMING at him not to make any sudden movements.
It didn't make sense! No matter where the Nine were, be it in some backwater village with barely any satellite coverage, near a provincial town across the country, in the freezing north near Alaska or trying to reach New Mexico, he ALWAYS felt like he was just one misstep away from a catastrophe! They had fewer and fewer outings to avoid that nebulous danger, the group was inching closer and closer to a full-on mutiny, and he couldn't even understand WHY!
That is, until the news of that new Tinker, Miko of Paradise, reached him.
It was at that moment Jack felt as if a giant invisible hand pointed at his newspaper, and a voice from the Heaven declared that THIS girl was gonna be the end of the Nine if any of them acted out of turn.
And, of course, Alan, Ned and James all wanted a piece of her.
He claimed that he had a plan that was going to be MUCH more satisfying than trying to approach Brockton Bay with their usual repertoire of tricks. Which placated the three for a time - but had ALSO put him on a timer. And hell, he was more than willing to cut his losses and send the three after Miko - but his gut told him that wasn't going to end well for him either.
Things were looking more and more grim with each passing day.
But then - he finally had a flash of inspiration! Something that had a CHANCE to remedy the entire situation - so he brought the Nine to Nevada, and unleashed them onto the Dragonslayers. And yeah, he did not see an issue with letting them let off some steam playing with the mercenaries - and he didn't learn until reading Saint's logs that the playtime had costed them dearly, as Saint hid the exact thing they wanted - a Master device for Dragon called Ascalon - in a pocket dimension, and then blew up the access device.
Alan was determined to restore it and retrieve Ascalon - except, soon after he started the repairs, Jack had another gut feeling - that they had to flee immediately! And of course, being so close to being able to finally solve the world's Dragon issue, Alan refused to move along with them - something that doomed him when a mere day later, Bonesaw had to detonate his tinkertech monitoring device to make sure Miko could not find the rest of them.
And at that exact time, Ned and James decided to mutiny, wanting nothing more than to fight that horrifying girl - seriously, did they not SEE those scary red eyes of hers? Or how she made the Siberian look amateurish in her stalking? Jack would've invited her into the Nine on the spot, if his gut didn't tell him that it was a bad, horrible, no-good idea!
Still, it presented him with an opportunity.
He agreed to send the two out to confront Miko - and sent Shatterbird along with them. She was always eager to please, so it was easy to convince her to bring the two to Chicago, sing there once, and then flee the city. Not that Jack expected her to make it out of there.
And the rest of the Nine? Were going to escape this accursed Earth - there were better places for the group than somewhere they had to constantly look over their shoulders for Miko of Paradise. Jack was NOT risking an open confrontation with the terrifying girl, no siree.
Which was why, right after they got confirmation of Miko being in Chicago (and Bonesaw had to blow up Shatterbird - which she did without even hesitating, good girl!), the remaining Nine began entering Vancouver.
They were in Manton's van - Jack had to introduce the Siberian's Master to the rest of the team, since they had to bring him along so as not to lose the Nine's most physically powerful asset. Burnscar sat in the corner, teetering on the brink of snapping to her meeker self - Jack turned on a lighter to keep her present. Bonesaw was putting her final touches on the three Dragonslayers - now sporting the likenesses of Jack Slash, Bonesaw and Burnscar. Seeing that huge man - Dobrynja - transformed to resemble the prepubescent moppet would've usually been highly amusing, if things weren't quite so nerve wracking.
Especially since the Dragonslayers now carried the exact reinforcements the Nine previously had. Miko had some way to trace tinkertech, he was sure of it - so Bonesaw had to remove all of her enhancements from the originals, and put them into the fakes - who, with a bit of help from the Siberian, were now going to storm Dragon's compound in the north of the city to make the white hats think that was the Nine's target all along.
Their actual target?
Was in the south.
There, in a warehouse on the White Rock pier, was one of the few known portals to an alternate Earth. It had been under quarantine and had a heavy military presence around the compound - but THAT was something the Siberian was well equipped to handle, once she was done pulling attention away from the portal.
If everything went according to plan, in just a hour, the Slaughterhouse Nine were going to have a brand new, Miko-less start on Earth Shin - and something told Jack that-
CRE-RASSSSSSSH!
Still February 24th, 2011
She was still alive, huh.
Damn that Siberian, and her creepy old hobo Master.
Riley was in the grasp of the striped woman, along with Unc- along with Jack and Mimi - all three of them currently stripey and invulnerable. She would've tried to protect the hobo guy at the wheel, but ironically, he was the only one the Siberian could not protect directly.
And unluckily enough, her Master was a former scientist, so he was well aware that if she tried to make the van invincible instead as it suddenly turned over and crashed, the un-augmented remains of the Slaughterhouse Nine would've been turned to paste then and there.
Was it so much to ask for them to just die?
Even the meat puppets were still technically alive - aside from the woman disguised as Mimi. She was lucky enough to have Jack's knee slammed into her head as he went invincible, turning it into mush.
Look, Riley did all she could to make sure nothing was left upstairs, but it was still better that at least one meat puppet stopped moving entirely.
"E-everyone, out!" Uncle- dammit, not Uncle, JACK screamed, panic clear in his voice.
He had been afraid for a long time. He had been so afraid of something - of someone - that he began slipping, bit by bit. Even his control began slipping, as he tried to clench his grasp over the group with all his might.
Over several months, the illusion of him being invincible crumbled right before Riley's eyes, and…
And she couldn't help that hope she felt - hope she thought was long dead - that the monster was finally gonna bite the dust. And Jack was so busy looking over his shoulder and grasping at the control over the group, that he didn't even notice that she was slipping from under his thumb!
She had waited for long, long months, playing along with his increasingly ad-hoc plans, knowing full well that she only had one shot at ending the bastard. The chance that she took just a few hours ago, just as he had his eyes on the finish line to a place where he believed he was going to be free of that omnipresent shadow he was so afraid of.
It was so easy too. Just concoct a tinkertech version of invisible ink, that would become visible if exposed to cold for too long - she could do so in her sleep.
And as the Siberian dragged the three of them out of the van, Riley saw the result of her little scheme - the big, bloody red letters on the side of the vehicle, written by one of her Dragonslayer meat puppets. 'S9 HERE'. Plain, simple and VERY visible.
She was not sure why Siberian's creepy hobo master didn't notice it in the rearview mirror. Maybe he was too busy braiding Riley's hair as he controlled the invincible naked striped woman. The creep.
The van had crashed in the middle of an otherwise empty road, a couple of miles outside Vancouver. The fact that Jack was so close, yet so far from his goal… It put a genuine smile on Riley's face.
And right in the path of the vehicle, she could see the welcoming committee. Two of Dragon's suits and three capes, including-
Riley trembled, as she saw a pair of crimson eyes boring into her. It was no wonder Jack was so scared of Miko of Paradise - she looked like even Siberian's presence didn't guarantee their safety.
Good.
"Ah, I've been looking all over for you, Jack," Miko intoned coldly, slowly floating towards them.
"I- I just wanted to leave!" he whined - oooh, were those tears in his eyes? "There's a portal, right there in Vancouver! We could just take it and get out of your hair forever! Please, let us!"
"There is?" she turned her head to the side - HEADS DID NOT TURN THAT WAY! - before continuing. "Too bad you didn't think of that earlier. I'm not particularly inclined to let other Earths suffer your brand of idiocy, and if you didn't try to attack Dragon, I wouldn't have been looking for you in the first pla-"
Next moment, Riley was stumbling to the side, her feet on the ground, as the Siberian MOVED, appearing right before Miko, hand striking to pierce through her head-
CRACK!
Only to suddenly hit against a forcefield, a small crack appearing across its surface.
"Oh? Oooh, I see," Miko nodded plainly, even as the striped woman looked in shock at the sheer lack of damage. "Yeah, that makes sense that some powers have an actual 4D aspect to them. I wonder why so few do…"
Finally coming to her senses, Siberian struck again - another small crack in the forcefield - before she was backhanded by Miko - and sent flying back, albeit with no visible damage.
"I see. And 3.5D enchantments from Lethal Persuasion are only capable of pushing against you… Probably because they're backed up by a 4D Barrier…?"
Siberian went on the offensive again, and the two of them began exchanging barrages of impossibly fast attacks, seemingly at a stalemate - which was actually terrible news for the rest of the Nine, as there were two more capes and two Dragon Suits free to engage the rest of them.
It was at this moment that Mimi decided to flee, and one of the Dragon suits and the cape with the broom - Ordinary Witch - went after her. Riley hoped they wouldn't make her suffer, Mimi was nice when she was in control.
Meanwhile-
"Jack Slash," the one with the katanas - Ghostly Swordsman - said his name as if she was trying to decide how it tasted. "Never thought I'd actually get to take my revenge on you."
Jack - for all that he was at the end of his wits - actually didn't look at her as if she was a threat, despite the way the girl moved with purpose, barely hiding lethality behind the stoic facade. As someone used to working with bodies - including peak physical condition bodies - Riley knew just how dangerous this one was.
Meanwhile, he looked at the other Dragon suit - still hanging in the back, ready to give chase - and then at Ghostly Swordsman, and Riley could well see his thought process. If he was going down today, he wanted to at least take one of them with him.
She would've warned the girl - but there was no need. Riley knew exactly how good Jack was, with and without his augmentations. And even if he still had his - this was a fight he would've normally tried to avoid in the first place. Which just showcased just how much was he slipping.
"I'm quite sorry, little girl, but you'll have me at disadvantage - who are you avenging?" The mad moron chuckled, taking out his favourite knife. "I've been at this for so long that I probably need a reminder."
"I am well aware," she shrugged, unsheathing a long and a short katana. "I don't need you to remember. I just need you to be over with."
Jack opened his mouth to say something he thought was witty - except then, he had to quickly lean back to avoid a sword slash aiming at his throat. He then turned, and took a step to the side to dodge a stab at his torso, and attempted a swing with his knife only to be hit in the shin with a kick so powerful Riley heard the bone crack, but not quite snap.
That was when Jack realised that he screwed up.
Panicked, he deflected a slash of the smaller katana, and misjudged a parry with the long one - and it went through his knife like the thing was made out of paper. Then, Swordsman kneed him in the solar plexus - another crack, THIS one was potentially lethal - and then jumped back from his desperate attempt at a swing from one of his backup knives-
SHHHHHHNK!
And then, Swordsman was already behind Jack, sheathing both of her katanas, as he blinked once, twice - and then fell apart, bisected lengthwise.
"Well. That was surprisingly cathartic," Swordsman nodded plainly, before turning her gaze to Riley.
Ah, right. It was her turn.
She smiled, and pulled her hair to the side, offering her neck. Sure, decapitation was not a nice way to go, but after everything she had done while traveling with the Nine, she did not deserve nice.
She looked to the side - Mimi had been shot with Ordinary Witch's giant laser, that one was probably quick, if painful. Meanwhile, the Siberian - she was just popped by Miko, who was now doing something to the hobo still stuck in the van.
The Nine were done for, and with her own death, the nightmare was finally gonna end…
"What are you doing?" Riley was pulled out of her thoughts by Miko who was now floating towards her.
"Um… Offering Swordsman a clean cut?" She blinked. "I mean, I could do the whole last stand thing, but I figured I've already done enough damage, better for everyone if I go out quietly."
Miko just looked at her… incredulously?
"Now, correct me if I'm wrong, you're… twelve, or something…?"
"I am."
"And you were kidnapped by the Nine when you were what, seven?"
"Six."
"I see. Then no, whatever this is, we're not doing it," Miko shook her head. "I'll probably have to depower you and Burnscar, but I'm not letting you come to harm because a bunch of lunatics kidnapped you and forced you to do horrible things."
Riley blinked.
After everything she had done, Miko just… wanted her to go scot-free…? How did that make any sense? She had killed, tortured, disfigured so many people! She-
"You're just a kid," Miko stated, standing on one knee in front of her and looking at her with those scary eyes - that didn't look all that scary right now…? "A kid who was in a really bad situation and surrounded by horrible people for many, many years. But now, you're out. You were very brave all this time, and you survived. You outlived Jack, and the Nine, and now you can finally return to a normal life. It's not gonna be easy, but you've survived so far - so I know you can do this," she smiled. "And that was a clever trick with the tinkertech paint on the van."
"How did you-" she blinked. Right, Jack was sure she could trace tinkertech, it was why he had her take all of their augmentations out.
"You're gonna be okay now, Riley. Everything is gonna be fine."
So many years of breaking herself bit by bit - and it was this that drove her to tears.
Still February 24th, 2011
It had been some time since Yggdrasil disappeared, and then was fully neutralised. Not by him - once again, not by him - but by Miko of Paradise. And as David floated in the air, staring at where the Endbringer previously dominated the landscape, he failed to stir himself to respond in any possible way.
Over the entire fight, he had been useless. Worse than useless - he wasn't even a minor inconvenience. The moment that girl appeared at the scene, ALL of the Endbringer's effort went into trying to kill her - and it even succeeded TWICE, only for Miko of Paradise to return from beyond the grave, still hellbent on proving to everyone why she was the only one who mattered!
And the worst part of it, David did not see what he could've done differently to save the day instead of letting that horrifying girl do it. He could only have three powers at any given time. In this battle, one was flight, which made sense - without it, he would've been a sitting duck. One was trajectory prediction - which made sense, he wanted to save his strongest forcefield powers for the final confrontation.
But the third one?
First it gave him photon reflection - an absolutely reactive power that relied entirely on redirecting Yggdrasil's shots, and the Endbringer had enough control over its own lasers to weaken them whenever David turned them back. Then, it was a power that created small dark zone pockets of space that absorbed energy from Yggdrasil's lasers - which was not an attack at all! Then, his third power FINALLY cycled to something that dealt damage - micro black holes - except, their damage was so negligible to an Endbringer, he might as well have been shooting a BB gun at it!
And then, in swooped Miko of Paradise, who managed to utterly annihilate Yggdrasil the moment she reached the blasted thing!
How was that even possible?!
Why was David so utterly useless against the Endbringer?! He was supposed to have powers for any situation! He was supposed to be the hope of humanity! He was supposed to be the strongest hero! And if he wasn't-
…
If he wasn't all that… What was the point of everything he had done…? What THEY had done…?
It was one thing to sacrifice your ideals, your principles, your very soul in order to save humanity across countless worlds.
It was another, if all your sacrifices… all the deals, all the atrocities… if they didn't matter one bit in the end.
Someone's hand landed on David's shoulder. Turning, he saw Legend floating next to him, looking with that pure-hearted worry of his.
Not asking anything - not with words.
"Was… Was there even a point to-" David started.
"To us being here? Of course there was," Legend smiled, not quite nailing what he wanted to ask, but landing very close to it. "She can't be everywhere at once. At least, I don't think she can. Someone had to slow that thing down before the cavalry arrived. Everyone who attended is a hero in their own right, especially to the people of Canberra."
"I guess," David sighed dejectedly. This was what he was, then, nowadays? Someone to slow the monsters down before the actual hero, the actual monster slayer arrived?
"Come, let's go meet the others. After this, I really need a hot shower and a tub of ice cream."
"Sure…" He did not look forward to that meeting, but his friend was right - it was better to get it over with.
Soon, they escaped people's attention - and with a commanded 'Door us', they were greeted with a portal straight to the all-too-familiar meeting room - where everyone was already waiting for them.
Rebecca in her Alexandria costume sat ramrod straight in her seat, visibly upset over something. Kurt in his usual dress shirt sat across from her, pretending like he was going over some numbers in his laptop. Doctor Mother was at the head of the table, grasping a cup of extra strong coffee like her life depended on it. The fedora woman stood beside her, her face unreadable.
There was a palpable feeling of dread in the air - far stronger than David predicted. Sure, they just had to fight a completely new Endbringer - meaning, who knew how many more were out there, waiting - but this felt like a bit of an overreac-
"And that's everyone, I guess." A new voice sounded at the opposite side of the table. Jolting, David turned there - and saw that blasted girl, Miko of Paradise, sitting there with an expression so placid and calm it circled back into being horrifying. "Sit down. And for the record: Legend, I'm disappointed in you."
The guy just nodded mutely and sat at the table.
"What are you-" David started.
"Doing here? Oh, that's simple. Your friend here-" she pointed at the fedora woman, who shifted uncomfortably. "-just attacked people under my protection. People who were looking into some sort of a shadowy conspiracy responsible for Case 53s. And she did so during the so-called 'Endbringer Truce', no less. Then, she affirmed to me that this was all 'for the greater good', and brought me here to prove it. What am I GOING to do?" She narrowed her eyes. "I don't know yet. So sit. Down."
There was something in her voice that caused David to try to cycle all three of his powers.
Power to supernaturally pin the blame on someone else? Power to turn off your own pain receptors? Power to play dead really convincingly?
David sat down.
February 25th, 2011
Even knowing that his daughter was the second most powerful parahuman in the world, Danny couldn't help but worry.
Sure, he heard that she killed another Endbringer AND that the Slaughterhouse Nine were all dead or captured - all while Taylor didn't even get a single scratch. But it was already past midnight, and she and Lisa still hadn't returned home. They also didn't call to warn that they were gonna stay someplace else - so he stayed up to wait for them.
Things… rarely truly improved, did they? Back when she killed Leviathan, it felt like she only needed to go through two more Endbringers, and the world was finally going to leave her alone. But today, the FOURTH Endbringer appeared - and if there was a Fourth, could there be a Fifth? A Tenth? A One Thousandth?
Was Danny's daughter doomed to keep on fighting until something went horribly wrong for her?
And he knew Taylor. She was stubborn - stubborn just like Annette. She was never going to back down, to stop putting other people's wellbeing before her own. There was nothing Danny could ever do to stop her from being in the harm's way - and nothing he SHOULD'VE done even if he could.
As much as he wanted to cover Taylor in bubble wrap and stash her someplace safe, she would've hated him for it - and she would've died a little on the inside every moment of being kept away from where she was needed.
And Lisa… Yeah, she knew this even better than Danny - so she stayed around Taylor, if only to save her from the worst of her tendencies.
So, this was all Danny could do. Wait and worry.
Finally, when the clock on the wall had reached two-thirds to 1 AM, there was the sound of keys at the front door.
Leaving his half-empty coffee mug behind, Danny ran into the hall just in time to see his girls come in. And if Lisa looked tired, then Taylor was practically dead on her feet - though once she saw him, his daughter took a few steps forward to half hug him, half hang onto him.
Boy, did she get heavy lately.
"Can we order pizza? Please?" Taylor asked, voice strained and strangely fragile.
What could possibly happen that his frugal, borderline penny-pinching daughter wanted to order pizza, of all things?
"Of course," he nodded. "Vegetable, with, uh… pickles, feta and pineapple, right?"
She nodded.
"You do that, I'll get her into the shower," Lisa smiled a bit wearily.
Yeah. It must've been quite a day for his girls.
February 26th, 2011
This world was utterly mad, mad to its very core.
At any given moment, literally anyone could go through a life-changing amount of trauma, get a superpower that didn't make their life any easier through the universe's shittiest lottery, and make it everyone else's problem. For all that I tried to make things more liveable, more sane for people, I knew my limits - even improving things in a relatively small city of Brockton Bay alone was taking so much of my time, effort and sanity it felt like the work was gonna end me before it was done.
But breaking things?
Oh, breaking things was the easiest thing in the world - all it took was applying enough strength at the right time at the right place.
For instance, I could break the world economy just by harvesting rare materials - be it gold, platinum, uranium or whatever - in another dimension and bringing them to Earth Bet to sell. To make things extra terrible, I could just build a bunch of Floating Engines to do the harvesting, not hiring a single living person in the process - meaning, entire sectors of the economy would collapse overnight, countless people on the ground level losing their jobs, as I alone profited from undercutting them in every way possible. Or I could break the United States, either by picking some barely educated, borderline dementia-ridden fossil who was highly vocal about his Empire 88-adjacent beliefs and had zero political experience - endorsing said fossil to run in the next elections would be SO damn easy, seeing as just the title of the Endslayer alone gave me more than enough political capital for this to actually work… Or, going full insurrection was another way of achieving this, I guess - literally going to Washington and hanging people in charge until they gave me what I wanted. I could also break entire cities by displacing their water supply and their gasoline and disabling their electrical stations - or by literally erasing said cities off the face of the Earth with the Sun Array.
Except, I never did those things - well, aside from that one time with Ellisburg, but you know, extenuating circumstances and all that. I always did my best to minimise collateral damage from my actions, to consult people who were more KNOWLEDGEABLE than me, to always make sure I didn't break ANYTHING that didn't need to be broken.
And then, there was Cauldron.
I put down the papers I was reading, and let out a loud groan. I hadn't even BEGUN doing ANYTHING about this situation, and I was already beyond exhausted.
This was a mess and a half. No, scratch that. This was a 'thirty-one years of breaking things' kind of a mess. For thirty-one human bloody years, they were breaking things with the surgical precision of a wobbly sledgehammer in hopes it advanced their goal somewhat. Oh, they had a very good goal in mind, there was no doubt about that - but the way this bunch of overgrown super-powered BRATS had decided to approach achieving it…
My metaphorical finger twitched towards the 'big red button', before I stopped myself. No, it was not to be pressed in anger.
A stay of execution - that's what I called it. As long as they did as I said, I was going to allow these manchildren (and womanchildren) to keep their precious powers. To keep fighting their horribly mismanaged hidden war.
Each of the shitty little conspirators was now under my direct observation. In case of the parahumans, I also attached a pair of enchanted Floating Engine safety scissors to their eldritch being's tendril - sorta like a balloon. At any point, I could command those scissors to cut through the tendril, effectively leaving the parahuman powerless and dying, unless I got to them within a few hours to detach the remains of alien matter from their noggin. From my previous experience of interacting with these tendrils, I suspected that the eldritch abominations likely pumped their brains full of anxiety juice due to something touching the surprisingly fragile appendage - but I couldn't care less at this point.
The Safety Scissors of Damocles were frankly better than what they deserved.
But still… the proverbial execution had to wait until either the danger passed, or they gave me enough of a reason to go ahead with it anyway.
Breaking was always easier than fixing - and I was NOT going to revel in the former, no matter how much my chest burned, how much my blood boiled, how much my spirit demanded that I let it answer the injustices of the world in kind. It was the cape way of doing things.
And I. Was. Not. A. Cape.
I checked the time. Two minutes until today's emergency meeting. I shoved the printout into my sleeve pocket, walked out of the warehouse, and after a short four-dimensional flight, entered the meeting room at the Brockton Bay Jinja.
Everyone else was already there.
Swordsman and Brightbug looked a bit uneasy - they already knew what this was about. Witch also knew - except, she was already SEEMINGLY over it, and back to her carefree self (even if I could see shadow of rigidness in her posture). Faultline and Gregor likely suspected things, especially given the happenings of that Thursday, though they just projected an aura of professionalism at the moment. Or at least, tried to, as Faultline couldn't help but steal annoyed glances at Coil 2 sitting across from her. Amelia, who OOZED 'I'd rather be anywhere else' energy, sat between the extremely punchable Thinker, and Dragon's prosthetic body - the latter looked like she really wanted to strike a conversation with the healer, but was restraining herself with all her might. Finally, at the end of the table sat Mr. Unison (not Accord, different mask and all), who greeted me with a short nod.
I glanced at the gathered people. Guess we were doing this.
"Since this meeting goes beyond the scope of Land of Fantasy Ltd, we'll keep non-emergency matters related to it to our Monday meeting," I stated and, after a moment, went on with the program. "First, an update. As a result of the happenings on February 24th, we have managed to capture or neutralise the entirety of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Among the captured members were Crawler, Hatchetface, the Siberian, Burnscar and Bonesaw. They were all depowered, with Burnscar and Bonesaw undergoing the standard procedure, and the rest - a modified one. As of this morning, Crawler, Hatchetface and the Siberian have all died while under observation, while Burnscar and Bonesaw show no signs of complications and have made a full recovery."
"Whoa- depowering capes is huge," Coil 2 blinked. "If this gets out-"
"WHEN this gets out," I looked at her plainly, "I fully intend to make the results public, with the intent to make it available both as a punitive measure and a possible venue of treatment for Case 53s and parahumans with psyches severely affected by their powers like Burnscar was. Speaking of, how is Mimi?" I looked at Faultline.
"She finally agreed to eat this morning," the woman noted. "I think being around Labyrinth helps."
"Good. Riley is also acclimating, though it's gonna take a lot of therapy to get her into a healthy mindspace-"
"You're trying to rehabilitate members of the Slaughterhouse Nine?" Mr. Unison asked incredulously.
"I am," I nodded. "One of them was a ward of the Parahuman Asylum, and underwent a power-induced violent personality change while near open flames, which definitely didn't help her as a pyrokinetic. The Nine broke her out of the facility, and used her mental condition to manipulate her into villainy. Without powers making things worse, it should be possible to rehabilitate her." I turned my head a bit, "Another one is a literal prepubescent child, who Triggered and was kidnapped by the Nine at the age of six, and should NOT be held responsible for a situation she was literally forced into by possibly the worst people on the entire continent. Without her powers to complicate things, I don't see why we SHOULDN'T try to rehabilitate her. Do you?"
"I… suppose not," he conceded.
Once the two of them were well enough, I intended to ask Amelia to give the two ex-Nine members a face change, so they couldn't be targeted for any misplaced attempts at retribution - the fault for their actions lied entirely with Jack Slash, who was already dead and possibly cremated after the PRT verified the bounty.
Yeah, we couldn't collect the bounties for the two rehabilitating girls, but it didn't matter one bit.
"Next… At the same time as the Nine situation, I was also dealing with the Endbringer, designation Yggdrasil. The only two things of note about that are that yes, I have a second broken Endbringer Core in my possession, and that I can harvest Yggdrasil's body for tinkering purposes."
"I thought it disappeared," Amelia blinked.
"No, it just tried to escape through extradimensional means. I followed to kill it, and I can easily harvest the stuff that made up its body." With that, I procured a chunk of Yggdrasil's crystalline flesh.
"Wait, is it organic or not?" Coil 2 looked at it quizzically. "I, uh… I'm getting mixed signals here."
Mixed signals, huh…
"I suppose you can think of it as organic, but from a different evolutionary branch?" I shrugged. "I'm pretty sure our Earth didn't evolve any bacteria or fungi to decompose this kind of matter."
"Wait, what? Gimme that!" Amelia practically jumped towards me and grabbed the chunk out of my hand. Then, she looked at it in confusion. "Uh… No, pretty sure this is not organic at all…"
Hmmm…
"As educational as it is, I'm pretty sure this was not something to call an emergency meeting over," Mr. Unison noted, a pang of irritation in his voice.
Right.
I checked the time… Five minutes before the official start of the second part of this meeting (or another one, depending on how you saw it). Good.
"Yeah, this concludes the show-and-tell before the real subject of this meeting," I deadpanned. "We need to discuss something highly sensitive. Sensitive enough that it can't be discussed even within these walls. So, I'd like to ask you all to follow me to a more secure location. Door us, please."
As I uttered the last phrase, a shining portal appeared in the air right behind me.
It said something of the weirdness that permeated my life nowadays, that of all the gathered people only Coil 2 and Mr. Unison jumped at the sight.
"Come along, let's not keep the other party waiting for too long." Who knew what their anxiety-ridden brains, already empirically proven to be incapable of rational thought, would concoct if left unattended, after all.
On the other side of the portal, the other party was already mostly gathered in a large conference room - something I already knew. Eidolon and Legend sat next to each other, both trying to look as small as possible. The pantsless guy was just across from them, clickity-clacking on a laptop, his lackadaisical posture betrayed by the nervous twinge of his brow. The imbiber of lethal doses of caffeine was at the head of the table, a steaming cup of what I assumed to be liquid heart attack grasped between her slightly shaking fingers. The woman in a fedora - damn, was it weird to realise she was my former boss from way before I Triggered - stood behind the coffee maniac, face deathly placid, like she was afraid to move.
The only one missing was Alexandria - she was almost done wrapping up some business in her definitely-illegal, conflict-of-interest-ridden capacity as Chief Director of the PRT. And as the people followed me through the portal one by one - she also entered the room through another Door, gave me a shaky nod, and sat at the table next to the pantsless man.
"Everyone, meet-"
I was interrupted by Coil 2 suddenly erupting in mad, some-screws-loose kind of cackling. The rest looked at her either uneasily or annoyed, as she doubled over cackling… ...crowing… …wheezing…
Bloody hell, was I about to witness death by some sort of Thinking-induced autoasphyxiation?
"Coil 2, your presence here is not strictly needed, and I will remove you if you continue being disruptive," I noted. She calmed down a bit right as I called her, and stopped laughing entirely about two thirds through my warning.
"G-got it, proceed," she nodded nervously.
I glanced over the group seriously. Nobody looked like they didn't take this seriously - well, maybe aside from Witch. But knowing her, she was gonna be just as serious as necessary.
"Everyone, meet Cauldron - the shadowy conspiracy that's trying to prevent the end of the world in the least efficient ways imaginable. Cauldron, meet everyone - they are going to help me audit, restructure, fix or shut down your operations and experiments as necessary. Try to get along, because this is our one chance to save the world, and make sure said world isn't just a bunch of smoking ruins at the end of it all. Take your seats, and Doctor Mother here will proceed with the explanation," I pointed at the coffee-guzzling proud owner of Gucci-brand eyebags that gave Panacea at her most stressed a run for her money.
A minute later, when everyone was seated, the woman was pointing at a giant screen that currently showed a silvery mass of shifting crystalline flesh consisting of countless limbs, doing its best simulation of a 4D effect - like a horror version of a regular eldritch abomination that granted powers.
"This is Eden. It's an alien life form of astronomical proportions-"
"Wait, alien…?" Gregor mumbled, barely audibly.
"-and its life cycle is something you all should be interested in. When it arrives to a world bearing sentient life, it seeds shards of its being on parallel Earths. Said shards, all mountain-sized or larger, connect to sentient beings, granting them powers in order to collect data about their uses. Then, once this alien amasses enough data, it destroys the planet - every version of the planet across the Multiverse - to get its shards back and launch itself to its next target." She made a small pause to let everyone digest this information, "In 1980, this being crash landed on this Earth-"
"Wait, then why- Are we not on Earth Bet?!" Amelia blinked.
"Nope," Coil 2 smirked smugly. "Oooh, is that why this is a more secure location than at the Shrine? But then why-"
"Let her continue," I interrupted coldly. This shut the Thinker up. I nodded to the coffee maniac.
"As it crash landed, it lost several key shards it did not intend to distribute. One of them went to Contessa here," she pointed at the fedora woman, "who saw a glimpse of what these aliens called Entities had planned for us, and was given a power that gave her step-by-step instructions to succeed in any task. Said powers allowed her to reach Eden, and told her how to kill the beast. But before its death, the alien locked Contessa's power, creating blind spots she can't plan against. Which-"
"-is a problem, because there's another entity, it's Scion, and he's a blindspot for her," Faultline concluded, arms crossed on her chest.
"Wait, really…?" Coil 2 blinked. "Why do you think-"
"Oh please. The golden oaf was spotted first in 1982, soon after this other entity crash landed and died. His first deed was curing Andrew Hawke, who then magically became the first hero Vikare, kicking off the age of parahumans. And then, Scion begins flying around the globe, solving crises with all the efficiency of baby's first AI?" The ex-mercenary shrugged. "Plus, he's seemingly got every power in the book, and he's the only being on the planet Miko of Paradise could possibly struggle against - necessitating all of this in the first place."
"It IS Scion," Doctor Mother confirmed. "And for the past thirty years, we've been doing everything we can to prepare an army to face him."
No they hadn't.
"Thank you for your explanation, Doctor Mother," I said calmly, rising from my seat. "Now that we're all on the same page, we're gonna review Cauldron's activities as a part of said preparations. Please try to contain yourselves, regardless of how much you believe someone else deserves a fist to the face, there'll be a time and place for that later on.
Well, at least I was not the only one to suffer through this.
March 2th, 2011
Imagine a graph consisting of two axes: the horizontal one was marked 'MORALITY', and the vertical was 'SMARTNESS'. On the horizontal MORALITY axis, being in the positive meant making morally GOOD decisions, and in the negative - EVIL ones. On the vertical SMARTNESS axis, being in the positive meant making SMART decisions, and in the negative - making STUPID ones.
Generally, if you ran ANY kind of organisation, you wanted all of your decisions to land somewhere in the upper half of the graph, and at the lowest, have a neutral MORALITY score on the average, if not out of the goodness of your heart, then at the very least out of self-preservation for when the chickens came home to roost. For Land of Fantasy Ltd, my goal was to stay as firmly in the upper-right quadrant as humanly possible while not bankrupting the company off the face of the planet.
However, if you were to quantify the entire 31-year-long history of Cauldron using this metric, you were going to see a company that planted itself so far in the bottom left corner you'd think it was their goal to maximise EVIL and STUPID beyond what was imagined possible by feeble mortal minds. Especially the EVIL - it was as if they had a bunch of fork-tongued, devil-horned investors with mixed British-Russian-German accents and law degrees that demanded that Cauldron met their ever rising yearly quota of worldwide human misery - and one Doctor Mother always replied with 'Hold my coffee!', and found a way to overshoot their demands by a wide mile.
And yeah, a lot of this mess had a supposed goal of causing as many natural Triggers as possible - which was mainly EVIL, up until a certain point. Because in some cases, the shadowy cabal kept that course even when it didn't make sense to. Take, for instance, their approach to keeping their headquarters hidden from their main target.
Cauldron's base was built on another Earth as a measure to avoid drawing Scion's notice. Which made sense - as a power-granting entity, the golden oaf had, like, a million sensory powers and MAYBE could hear everything and anything on Earth Bet, making planning against him while staying there a risky proposition. However, if the guy ever got curious and checked this specific parallel world, their entire conspiracy would've been blown right open - so they had to find a way to keep him away.
This was where the situation dipped into EVIL and STUPID territory.
One of Cauldron's main operations was distributing 'powers in a bottle' - vials of alien matter procured from the corpse of Eden. If imbibed, said vials caused a human without powers to develop them through an artificial Trigger Event - or caused a parahuman to just experience one of the worst-tasting substances in their entire life.
All of this was established over the years, as Cauldron scoured many parallel Earths for test subjects. Generally, they picked people on the verge of death, and gave them an out through drinking an untested alien power juice that had as much of a chance of killing them as of saving their lives - more, even, at the very beginning. The statistics for the first tests were absolutely abysmal - up until they FINALLY stumbled upon a stabilising agent somewhere in Eden's body, for every one success there were hundreds, sometimes THOUSANDS of failures!
And even when the vial resulted in creating a parahuman, there was still an issue.
If a person lacked a Corona Pollentia - the necessary brain anatomy to undergo a regular Trigger Event - they either died or gained a power. However, if a person TECHNICALLY COULD become a parahuman in the old-fashioned way of severe trauma, imbibing a vial could result in a possible third outcome: what Cauldron called 'Deviants' (ugh), and the rest of the world knew as Case 53s.
This was important, because over the years, Cauldron noticed that normally impassive Scion had severe negative reactions to Case 53s, and generally tried to avoid their presence. And since Cauldron was the world's sole creator of Case 53s, OF COURSE they decided to capitalise on this to insulate their base from Scion's attention.
Now, you might wonder - how did they approach this issue? Did they create a town for Case 53s to live in, slowly amassing an army of people who owed Cauldron their lives and were willing to fight a cosmic entity out of sheer gratitude and willingness to save humanity?
Of course not - that would've been the SMART and GOOD solution to the problem - dare I say, even the SANE one!
Nah, Cauldron decided that such unquantifiable things as gratitude and free will were not worth squat.
Instead - and stay with me for this one - they decided to convert the lower levels of their off-world base into a giant-ass prison for Case 53s! A literal prison for people who had the gall to have an allergic reaction to an alien power juice!
The prison was divided into three levels. The first one was regular Case 53s, numbering 2048. I repeat. Two thousand and forty-eight Case 53s. It's as if someone took the entire parahuman population of a city like New York, multiplied it by two, and shoved them all into a prison three to four times more populated than the Baumann Parahuman Containment Centre! Then, there were two more levels with an overall population of nearly half the first one - the second containing 'interesting' powers Cauldron decided to research (yeah, treating them like glorified lab rats, FUN!), and the third - for Case 53s with 'abstract mutations'. The latter ones were kept under a different containment method each, essentially resulting in perpetual solitary confinement, WHICH WAS A DAMN FORM OF TORTURE EVEN IN SHORT BURSTS!
And the only way Cauldron ever designed for those Case 53s to be released? Well, that was another FUN thing to learn.
See, on Earth Bet, Cauldron usually SOLD their vials, typically for large sums of money to gang lords and rich people (SMART+EVIL decision, for anyone wondering). And a paying customer could ask for a Nemesis - a cape who was 'programmed' to lose against them in a fight, essentially acting as a reputation boost. And if their STUPID PRISON got overpopulated and a Case 53 was a particularly unlucky kind of lucky, Cauldron designated them as said Nemesis, erased their memories, brainwashed them to oppose the paying customer and LOSE to them, and dumped them someplace near where the paying customer could get to them after their debut. Which was STUPID, EVIL and also a WASTEFUL disregard of human life.
If there was no paying customer like that, and the STUPID PRISON still overflowed? Yeah, the Case 53 was lucky enough to JUST have their memory erased before they were left to fend for themselves somewhere on Earth Bet.
This ENTIRE SYSTEM seemed to be designed to maximise human suffering for little to no return! Which was to be expected since between Number Man, Contessa, Alexandria and Eidolon, the Cauldron leadership had three and a half capital 'T' Thinkers on staff - except Doctor Mother wasn't a parahuman, and allegedly was at the helm of their organisation! Was… Was she so damn USED to having her pet Thinkers provide her with all that information and solutions pulled out of their collective superpowered asses that she forgot to USE HER BRAIN AT ALL?! WAS HER GREY MATTER JUST THERE TO SLOSH IN CAFFEINE LIKE AN ANATOMY PIECE IN FORMALDEHYDE?!
I…
I had to distance myself from this issue before I decided to take a page out of the Siberian's book and wore someone's entrails as a very gaudy scarf.
So - I threw Faultline at the problem.
She had been trying to help the Case 53 cause for longer than I'd had powers. She was ALSO one of the smartest parahumans I knew (her initial line of work notwithstanding), and was already used to speaking her mind around me. So, I knew I could trust her to approach the issue with these people's best interests in mind, and tell me what had to be done, not what I wanted to hear.
And today was our first meeting regarding this issue. We were in Faultline's temporary office at the Cauldron compound, on the first basement level - directly above the STUPID PRISON. The room clearly served as a place where she could quickly organise her notes and thoughts, and lacked any personal touch whatsoever - which made sense, considering she had only had a few days to take a measure of what she had to work with.
"So. Talk to me." I looked at the woman who still wore her welding mask, making her face unreadable - but I could see from her posture alone that the short time she'd spent around the compound had taken a toll on her.
"Well, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is, I had Number Man create an easy-to-access database with information about every Case 53 on Cauldron's record. The bad news is, Cauldron barely cared to document things about them as people." There was a clear distaste in her voice. "It's usually their world of origin, the situation they were found in, maybe information from papers if they had some on their person. Some don't have a full name, or even a name at all."
"It's not perfect, but it's something," I sighed.
"At the very least, it would allow them closure," she nodded. "We're going to offer this information to any Case 53 pro bono, I assume?"
"Of course. As long as they want to know about their past, we'll offer the info to them. And I'm thinking… If someone wants to know more than this, we could look into it beyond Cauldron's documents." I thought about it for a moment. "We could use Cauldron's portals to access those worlds again. Meaning, we could go there, and pay a local private investigator to bring us more info on the person the Case 53 was before. Maybe they even still have a living family, or friends out there."
"That would help," Faultline agreed, "though not everyone would take the plunge. Learning about their past could just lead to more heartbreak, after all."
"Well, if they don't want to know, that's for them to decide. We'll just be there to provide the opportunity," I looked at her seriously. "What about the Case 53s here though?"
There was a slight change in her posture, a moment she tensed, a strain of barely contained fury, before she evened out into something resembling being at ease.
"It's… It's bad. Some of them have been here for years, maybe decades." Yeah, literal YEARS of confinement could be loosely classified as 'bad'. "I recruited cell block representatives to talk to their neighbours, speak about options. About one in every ten prisoners is willing to stay at the compound for the sake of keeping it secret, if provided with a higher standard of living. Roughly four out of ten would like to join the active war effort against Scion, as long as they don't have to spend time around this place anymore. Another three out of ten would just like to leave, either to the world of their origins or someplace that can accommodate them. And the remaining ones…"
"…want Cauldron's heads on pikes more than anything else?" I took a gander. The ex-mercenary nodded. "What about the options of tinkertech aids and depowering plus cosmetic changes?"
"More than half of people wanting to leave wanted depowering, plus some percentage of the other groups wanted it eventually. And after we showcased the examples of Newter's and Gregor's aids, about 9 out of 10 of Case 53s who didn't want depowering wanted tinkertech aid instead. Also, some changed their minds from depowering to tinkertech."
"I see that I'm going to be extremely busy in the following days," I sighed. Thinking about it… Yeah, maybe I had ONE option that didn't require me to pay attention to crafting around the clock - seriously, depowering HUNDREDS of parahumans and making THOUSANDS of tinkertech devices was gonna take me hundreds, even thousands of manhours - and there were OTHER things to worry about!
For example - the fact that the Case 53 exodus was gonna lower the 'Scion Deterrent Score' Cauldron was trying to maintain to ensure the cabal's secrecy and to keep the golden oaf away from Eden's corpse at the deep sub-basement level of this facility. Cauldron could always relocate, of course - but a hypermassive alien corpse was another story.
We were lucky even one out of ten people agreed to stay - with the way they were treated before, even this was astonishing!
Hm… Could I maybe 'multiply' the remaining Case 53s 'dimensional shadows' to create an illusory screen with the same effect Cauldron tried to achieve? Maybe. Otherwise, this called for the return of the Sun Array at Eden's location, in case Scion ever showed up around the facility.
Maybe both.
Kamidammit, I HATED the Sun Array.
"So, what is our next step…?" Faultline pulled me out of my thoughts.
"Right. We're gonna use that dimension you practiced flying the FEV Palanquin in, pull people out in waves. Look through Cauldron's database for people with powers that would allow them to build, produce food or heal. If there are any matches with people who want to help against Scion or to just leave the facility, they're the first wave. I'll hire some architects and other experts to help them out, so that the logistics of the settlement make sense. Then, we'll need instructors, trainers, people with fighting experience and those knowledgeable in tactics. They'll be our second wave. Then, we'll continue pulling people out as the logistics will allow us. I… think I'll also add a few Arenas to the settlement, as a part of the training deal. In the meantime, draw from Cauldron's treasury to improve the standard of living in the facility, and have Alexandria and the Number Man make arrangements in advance to house those who want to go to Earth Bet."
"What about the group that wants revenge?"
"They'll have to wait until Scion is a nonissue. They can bide their time at the settlement, or at this compound, whatever works for them. Just… I know they're victims here, but we can't risk the entire world because they couldn't wait until everything wasn't on fire to start guillotining people. So please. Please make sure I don't have to step in to stop them."
Faultline just nodded in return.