Jesus fuck my head.
It's like someone's taken a cheese grater, a bag of nails and a chainsaw, got them high as fuck on some quality methamphetamine, and then told them to go at it until someone's uglies broke. And it's all happening right. Between. My eyes.
Okay, normally fuck Benadryl and the whole painkillers-for-non-debilitating amounts-of-pain, but I might be willing to kill someone for some oxycontin right now. That, or or some ear plugs to drown out that horrid screeching. It's cutting away at my nerves like a hacksaw and I can feel myself slowly becoming more murderous. I'm going to find the person who set this up and tear them a new one...
Seriously, what the fuck is happening? I go to bed, start dreaming of about whatever it is people dream about (anyone who says they remember REM sleep is a filthy lying liar that lies) and BAM! Symphony of pain. Okay, step one, gather information. Then start thinking about shit. Rationalize the process.
Light lances through my eyes (oh, I didn't have them open?) and the first sight upon my awakening is an angel maybe three times taller than me with an asymmetric set of wings. Then a black blur slams into it and some painfully bright lasers hit the angel. Neither of them seem to do much, but the noise is deafening. Doesn't cut out the keening-
Oh fuck me sideways I'm in the Wormverse. That's Alexandria and Legend fighting the Simurgh. And I'm underneath them all.
Okay fuck step one. Step zero is run. I have no idea how long I've been exposed to Ziz shenanigans and I don't know if people are still on the whole 'kill first, ask questions never' plan for dealing with Simurgh victims. Time to survive and figure everything out in post.
I drag my sorry skinny ass to my feet, and decide to take exactly one second to figure out where the hell I is. The answer is a ruined city filled with knocked over buildings and noise as a dozen different capes fight against the space-whale WMD above my head. The sounds of attacks striking the Endbringer and the debris around it is deafening (literally, I'm 90% sure I'm going to be out an octave of aural range after this shit) but that's fucking sunshine and daisies compared to the afterbirth of the coupling of an angle grinder and a power lathe that is this noise!
Oh fuck, that's the Simurgh's song.
Fuck, how much time do I have? Twenty minutes or some shit? Something like that. Why the fuck am I not running? Fixing that.
It's cold, running. Cold, dry, and the ground is covered in snow. Upside: cold is great for running. Downside: running is harder because I have to stomp through an inch or three of slippery cold in my bare feet as I try to get through the broken as shit streets with debris and random cape attacks falling around me (was that an actual kitchen sink? No, Tinkertech, run faster!).
Wait, bare feet? My nipples are turning to diamonds in the freezing air and the breeze around my privates...
I manage to get out a laugh around the strained breath and rapidly intensifying stitch in my side. Of course I'm naked! I mean, why the fuck not? Why would anything about being inserted into the Wormverse be positive?
Wait.
I allot myself one second of hoping that I have a power. Passenger, if you're there I need you. Let me fly the fuck out of here.
Chaos, crashing, and wheezing as I stomp through the snow.
Nope, no fucking powers. Okay, find a bright side fast or else the Big Zizster is going to convince me to off myself.
So, interesting thing about running through a ruined city? It's a lot of fun, in the 'holy-shit-I-can-die-at-any-moment' way, sorta like skiing way too fast down a slightly-too-difficult mountain. Foot on that block of concrete so that I'll have the height to get over a broken-down car, stutter step so the momentum's there for a leap over a crack in the ground, last minute skip to get over some shattered glass, juke right and push off a wall to break line of sight with a group of capes that may or may not be be acting as a kill-squad...
Fuck fuck fuck. I put more power in my step and keep running.
A few minutes later and the song is a little less painful. I'm so out of breath it's actually laughable (like, I'm actually laughing in between every wheezing breath, and about one in three sounds genuinely happy rather than hysterical. Not a good thing, right?) but I'm not currently in close proximity to the second most dangerous thing on the planet anymore, so I'll count that as a win. Time to take a breather. Just need to scan the surroundings for anything dangerous. I go inside a relatively intact building, go up some stairs, and lean against a second story window, luxuriating in the slightly-warmer-than-outside temperature.
No clothes inside. Fucking proliferation of hipster coffee shops.
Okay, what do my elf eyes see? A ruined city, one with a seriously intense aerial battle above it. Still fucking loud. Capes? No capes super close by. At least, no one without a Stranger rating. Can never be sure with those fuckers. Super-scary-angel-of-madness-and-death? Ol' Featherbrain is off in the distance, and seems to be paying exactly no attention to me. Thank fucking god. Like, I might have enough knowledge to fuck up her plots but that might be part of her plot too. She seems to be playing on the same level as PtV. Lets see, do we have any Ziz-crazed citizens walking around? Nope, just four boys and a trio of girls (two of which are being carried piggyback) running away from the ruin of skyscraper.
Awwww, fuck.
Damnit, I need more time to think out the fucking butterflies! Sure, I could kill Trickster or Noelle (actually, I'd probably need to kill all seven of them, they're still decent friends with one another right now and fuck I escalated to murder fast), but what does that mean? Coil's plans change because he's down four A-listers, Cauldron doesn't get revealed because Echidna doesn't happen. Do the Nine even show up to Brockton Bay? I'm pretty sure that Crawler only came because he wanted to pick a fight with Noelle and that's not even counting the invisible shit that I don't remember. Plus the three or four years before they get to Brockton Bay and all the people that don't die because Noelle needs some fucking munchies.
Seriously. Fuck. Me. Sideways. I need like, five years before I start thinking about fucking up a time stream. Why couldn't I have been dropped off in Europe- wait, right, Nazis. How about Australia? Seems nice. Just go there, say Contessa a bunch of times, and info dump Cauldron. But Noooooo, I get to run into the most morally ambiguous group of capes in Worm and I have to figure out what I'm going to do right now with next to no forethought and I'm still fucking naked!
Rant more about the unfairness of the situation later, plan now. Do I see any possible future where approaching them in the buff works? No. Do I see any reasonable future where I do nothing? No. So time to do my best Solid Snake impression (or was it Big Boss? Lore in that game is more convoluted than the fucking X-Men timeline) and be super fucking sneaky.
As I get closer, I realize that an actual cardboard box would probably be enough to stay hidden from them. They're bloodied, terrified-out-of-their-minds high schoolers fleeing monsters after being torn from their home dimension. Meanwhile, I am a naked college student who is only scared shitless. I jog about a block parallel to them, close enough to make out faces but too far for sound to carry.
Or maybe it's that damn singing in my head that's distracting me from their conversation!
So they keep running, stop to meet a cape who was thrown out of the sky, and I get to watch him warn them away, motioning for them to flee. Why? Then the man's head explodes, covering half of them in cherry-red blood.
Well fuck I do not remember this chapter of Worm.
Something goes bang off in the distance and I turn to look at it. There's a wave of shattering windows and I duck into a partially-intact bus shelter before I get lacerated. Then the shock wave hits and everyone gets knocked over. Once I get up, I look back at the battle and apparently the Simurgh opened up a portal and shit's coming through it what the actual golden FUCK?
Okay, scrapping plan Follow-The-Incipient-Travelers for plan Stay-The-Fuck-Alive. Monsters end up by us, and apparently the teenagers have the same priorities. Wonderful. We all start sprinting in the same direction as the lovechild of an alligator and Cthulhu decides that it wants a snack and starts trying to eat a hybrid necromorph/lobster/gorilla/whatever as even stranger shit continues to pour out of the portal.
My legs begin to make themselves known through the shock (it's not shock, just fucktons of cortisol and adrenaline, get your shit together) and I curse my past self for not hitting up a treadmill more often even as I try to squeeze out another little bit of speed and maintain my balance. Fuck, I need some fucking clothes.
Then the Travelers duck into an alley and something warbles (not the Simurgh's scream and fucking A there it is again!) and my knees go weak. I drop and vomit a green bile onto the ground. Crap. Means I don't have anything in my stomach. Going to need to refuel somehow. Then there's some more scrabbling through the snow. Travelers must be on the move again. It's not that hard to keep up with them but keeping track of them and the monsters that occasionally show up and the various attacks that manage to escape the battle and the length of time I've been in the Simurgh sphere (like, ten minutes, minimum) while dealing with this fucking song IS A LITTLE TAXING.
Then a golden light flows over me and I feel myself stop for a second. Oh shit, did the Golden Boy just clap-of-death us all? Nope, brain still working and heart still beats. But the portal's gone now and the teenagers have started bickering. Can't hear them over the epic fight behind me but now's a good time to get closer.
Whatever it was they were arguing about they're done now, and they're back to moving. The girl who isn't crippled (must be Sundancer, I think) tries to approach a more normal-looking monster and quickly backs off.
Shit. They're Case 53's, not monsters. The Simurgh just opened up a portal to Cauldron's research specimen lab.
I can't even begin to imagine how bad that is.
Fortunately, while my higher functions are busy trying to calculate the odds of finding a Trump 10 that can give me consequence-free powers among the freaks (approximately zero), my animal hindbrain is running the meat sack and has kept me following the Travelers. At this point my toes are all numb and wrinkly and I really need some goddamn shoes.
The Travelers come to a chain link fence and shout at the armed guards, who shout back. It's all indistinct from a few hundred feet away, but the gist is probably 'help us' and 'fuck off Ziz zombies!' Then the Travelers start moving back into the city, find a beat-up-as-shit house, and I take this as an opportunity to find some goddamn pants.
First: I will freeze before I wear these pink yum sweatpants. Second: how the fuck are these the only salvageable, non-disgusting clothes in the entire surrounding area? Seriously, the fuck Big Zizster? You couldn't throw me a fucking bone?
Lack of clothes aside, I did manage to acquire a pair of woolen sock and some hiking boots, so my feet won't freeze. That, and I managed to find a knife I like in someone's kitchen. Just in case.
I move to an alleyway that lets me see the entrance to the house the Travelers are holed up in and take a minute to think about what the fuck I should do.
I can't do nothing. A lot of people are going to die if Noelle becomes Echidna, and I don't think I can be okay with that. Okay, never mind, that's is the wrong way to think. What is the end goal? Make sure Golden Morning happens, Scion dies, and try to see if the Winged One can bite it too. What do I need for that? The QA shard unlocked by a broken Shaper shard. Panacea will trigger in like...
Fuck, don't know the time. She triggers like two years before canon (I think?) so just don't fuck shit up in Brockton Bay. Either way, that part will be fine. Pretty sure I won't be moving there anytime soon. Part two is making sure Taylor is a hard-ass with bug powers. That's going to happen no matter what, and I don't remember the Traveler Arc being much of a deal compared to-
Fuck, gunfire. Oh wait, just a bunch of Case 53's approaching the fence and getting cut down by the military for being freaks experimented on Cauldron.
Like, fuck, yeah your plan worked but goddamn did it have a cost, you soulless bastards.
Anyway, Taylor-hardening. That can be any number of things as long as they suck and Taylor survives. So I don't think I have to worry about that. Giving Eidolon a pep-talk might be a good idea to keep him from pussing out like a bitch when Scion does the whole 'congratulations, you played yourself' thing but that falls under 'things I can worry about after I makes sure I haven't royally fucked the timeline'.
Also, stay alive. Plan numero uno. Gotta look out for number one. Plan numero dos is be happy. So the fate of Earth Bet is like, plan three? Or is it priority three?
Okay, preliminary method of action: follow Krouse, because I'm 99% sure he's the one that finds the vials. Decide what to do then and think about it some more.
I lean against the wall, decide against that when I remember that I'm naked and the wall is cold, and stand awkwardly in the shadows of the building holding a knife in one hand with the other dangling in the frigid fucking air.
I'm there for a solid ten minutes.
OH MY FUCK HOW LONG ARE THESE ANGSTY TEENS GOING TO BE BITCHING ABOUT?
I mean, am I a teen? Like, I was a week away from my twentieth birthday, so kinda not? I examine my reflection on the knife. Okay, so apparently I shaved recently and I don't have my glasses (yet another fucking reason I have a migraine today!) and I look like seventeen.
Fuck, I am a teenager.
Okay, is this Ziz thinking or just me finally having time to realize I'm not in Kansas anymore?
And how long have I been in here?
Finally, they leave!
Shit...
So, instead of following just Krouse, I get to follow a teen that grows up into a wack job and two of his friends. One's Sundancer (can't remember her non-cape name) and the other is a guy. Either Oliver, Cody or Luke, not sure which one it is.
Le fuck.
Okay, situation not unsalvageable. I keep following them, making sure to stay a block or two behind and keep out of the deeper snow drifts. You'd think that'd be too close to tail someone but they keep throwing glances to their right at the fence like someone's going to shoot them through it which makes it easy to remain unseen on their left. That, and there's a TON of dust and mist and shit. Like, I could shadow fucking Alexandria in this mist. But she doesn't have super senses right? Just like, supertraining? Was never really clear on that.
Anyway, the kids do a lot of walking along the edge of the perimeter and I have my hands full trying to stay out of their gaze. A hop here, a jump there, and falling face first into a snow drift there (Too. Fucking. Cold.) and a lot of that fucking noise (gonna remember this at Golden Morning, ya filthy feathered bitch) keeps me hidden from them. Does this make me a Stranger 0 or something?
It goes that way for too long (we're all probably 100% Ziz'd at this point) and then our wonderful little winterland jaunt is interrupted by someone (-thing?) screaming. Oh boy, a fight. Never been in a serious one but I figure now's the time to learn when I can blame it all on the big Zizster.
...that won't actually improve things, will it?
Anyway, the three decide to go off towards the screaming (because impulsive teenage behavior), and I have to run to keep up. There's enough snow around that my boots give me a decent advantage over the kids. That, and an extra few inches of leg length.
We're moving for maybe three minutes when we come upon the ruins of a fast food joint (McRonalds? Real original, WildeBorat). Inside are three Case 53's and eight people. Will these three plucky teenagers jump to the rescue? Or will they run away like sensible people and lead me to superpowers in a can? Actually though I don't remember this. May the odds be ever in your favor but I'm not sure how many people survive Endbringer attacks even when they're not also interdimensional refugees. Our Case-53's come in giraffe/praying mantis hybrid, a big, ugly woman, and something with a line-theme. No idea what they do but odds are good they'll fuck me up sideways.
Speaking of, Cauldron really fucked the dog on that one, didn't they? I mean, what's the point of making a brainwashed mutant army if you aren't going to send them at the monster you're trying to kill? Or were they there to throw Scion off the trial? Fuuuuuck my knowledge of Worm canon sucks. Also, fuck this is cold!
The Case 53's stop talking and the line person (a girl, I think?) goes up to one of the hostages and fucking absorbs them. Some more talking that I can't make out and she goes to absorb one the ugly-woman Case-53 and why are you attacking a cape Krouse?
Krouse takes his makeshift spear, stabs the mantis motherfucker in the side, twists it, and pulls.
Holy fuck.
Then he does it again. I'm still too far to make out the sounds.
Hey, vomit tastes bad.
Krouse, you crazy shit.
Okay. Mantis guy Mountebanks the fuck outta there and the other two (Still not sure if the guy is Luke, Cody or Oliver) kind of ran off, not sure where to. Was a bit busy vomiting to pay attention. Then Krouse starts moving forward real confident-like to finish off the other pair of Case 53's. Then the cape he killed comes back and gets one of those freaky scythe arms around Krouse's neck. They kick him around a bit and say some stuff that I can't hear but fuck every part of getting closer to these crazy shits and would you look at that, Sundancer also decides that attacking the cape as an unpowered person is a good idea. Doesn't work out for her nearly as well (gets pimp-slapped into a soda machine by the Brute-y looking person) and Krouse does something and the long-necked motherfucker gets a new mouth on his neck that's vomiting red and goes back into smoke and the maybe Cody/Luke/Oliver person is cowering in the back just like I'm cowering up here-
Wait what?
Doesn't matter, I have to move. Krouse is running away, and the Brute (gonna call her Brute) is pursuing. Never mind. Krouse isn't even out of that plaza and I'm barely off my knees when Brute catches him. He tries to stab her hand and his own splits open (Wound reflection? That might be really fucking broken if I have to fight it). Then some guy in a robe and another guy in blue and silver power armor drop out of the sky.
Wait. Robe. Shit. Who pretends to be a wizard? Myrddin. Power armor. Who wears blue and silver?Armsmaster.
Fuck, two of the scarier capes just showed up.
I drop to the ground (fuck the snow is cold) and keep my eyes trained on them. Both of these guys could ice me in a flat second. Myrddin waves his staff at Krouse and he disappears. What? Did Myrddin just send a person to the fucking shadow realm or some shit? Armsmaster makes a cloud of smoke, Brute stagger back, and then gets lit on fire.
Damn, you a cold one Armsmaster. Also, back to the cowering?
Am I a coward?
Holy shit I'm a coward.
While I'm having my little pity party, Armsmaster throws a canister on the ground and puts some red tape around it, then he and Myrddin leave.
Then there's silence.
What the fuck?
Everyone is gone. The hostages bugged out, and the teenagers are gone too. It's just me on a mountain, looking at an empty plaza.
Okay. Time to start thinking. I move a little closer to the plaza, careful to keep low to the ground and out of sight, ducking between chunks of shattered city (jeez, they really did a number on this place). How do I live through the next few days? First, I need to get out of the containment zone. Given that I've been Ziz'd, I don't think they're going to allow me to just walk out. So I'm going to need powers. Ideally something that also lets me tank a hit, as well as move like a bat outta hell. So that means either triggering (like I have a shard in my brain, waiting to activate, HAH) or I need to filch a vial.
I settle in behind a rock, stare at the plaza, and think. So, Sundancer's power is probably useless. Like, it'll make something other than a sun for me (probably) but that doesn't get me out. So not that. Trickster's might give me a mobility power of some sort, so maybe. Fuck Ballistic's power. Like, it's broken as all shit but it doesn't get me out. Whatever vial Genesis took (I think Manton also took it?) might be useful so I'll keep that in mind. Cody's whole "flicker back in time" thing is probably worthless for escaping (and not actually time travel, just really accurate simulations, like Coil's thing).
And I'm not sure what Noelle's vial was supposed to do. Like, it might be a Trump vial of some sort? But it also copies regular people, so where's the Master element?
Arggggggh where is a nerd when you need one!
Krouse comes back in and I mentally swear. I still don't have a plan on how to deal with this shit. He takes all of five seconds to compose himself before sprinting into the cordoned off zone. Uh, that's not good. Rule seven of dealing with the scary alien superweapon: if they leave shit lying around, blow it up and kill everyone who came in contact with it, because it'll probably break you mentally. Lovecraft rules, dumbass. I follow behind (because I'm not sure what I'm going to do but it probably involves stopping this shit somehow).
Then Krouse opens up a metal case. Inside are six vials with Cauldron's logo on them.
Fuck.
