Reconstruction 15.1
All four of us stood there, staring at each other. I was tired, and ready to say fuck it to the Triumvirate, when Alexandria demanded, "What are you doing here, Vejovis!"
I looked at the wielder of Personal Temporal Stasis, and answered simply, "Doing your job. Since you wouldn't."
"What did you-" Eidolon started to say, obviously looking for a fight, and I was ready to teleport away. I didn't want to fight them, but I was pretty much done with fighting, done with this bullshit, done with everything.
"What do you mean?" Legend said quickly, cutting off Shard Management. "We're here, and we wanted to help, but we were trying to get through those walls," he explained, motioning towards the hole I'd cut in the last steel barrier behind me. "Were those yours?"
"A day late and a dollar short," I disagreed. "When I got here it was already starting, which is why Dryad sealed me in. That was, what, hours ago? You can't have been here longer than what, ten minutes?" I checked my phone, only to discover I didn't have it anymore. Right, it was crushed when that Brute hit me. I really need to stop breaking them.
"We were here for nearly an hour!" Eidolon disagreed, "Trying to get through your doors!"
I looked at the man with the power, and mindset, of an Entity and tried to blink in disbelief. Right, no lids. "And you didn't go around? Nevermind, I killed the thing that was creating the monsters, and it worked on bad fantasy logic, so its minions all died when it did. Now I'm going home. I need a shower something fierce."
"You're not going anywhere!" the green-clad man pronounced.
I stopped, priming Marked Teleportation. "Excuse me."
"You're going to need to come with us," Alexandria added.
"Or what?" I asked the woman, having ran out of my last fuck around floor seven.
She floated there, the picture of invincible strength, "Or we'll arrest you."
"For what?" I asked, incredulously. "For stopping the fuckin' Zerg? And it's amusing hearing you talking about the law, Becky."
Legend tried his luck, flying forward. "You're not going to be arrested," he reassured me, shooting a reproachful glance towards the others, "We just want to know what happened. An hour and a half ago Thinkers across the world started going crazy. They were all sure monsters were spreading from here, killing everyone, and that it was going to be the end of the world. We just want to know why."
I knew why, of course. With my Blindspot status, any precog, or powers that relied on it, would be reporting on what happened if I hadn't gone in. "What time is it?" I asked instead. "I lost my watch in that mess, and I'm not going back in for it."
It was Quinn's voice that spoke in my ear, the small device lodged in my ear canal somehow having survived, "It's three fifteen, you were in there for almost three hours."
"It's three-ish," Legend told me.
"Then I warned you guys, what, four hours ago? Then three hours ago I went in, and, since it was obvious that no one was going to help, and I found out the first level was a biohazard, I had Dryad seal me in. Think Nilbog's spores, but faster, and maybe worse," I shrugged.
"Nilbog's spores?" Alexandria echoed.
I nodded, "Yeah, his final fuck-you if you nuke him, except his are more like toned down orks, and these. . . I didn't know what they did, and I didn't want to find out."
"And you expect us to believe you? If they were so dangerous then why aren't you infected?" Eidolon asked disdainfully. "Maybe we should take you in for quarantine."
I hesitated, trying to figure out how to sell this. Given the Slaughterhouse Nine's penchant for diseases, revealing that I was immune to them could be a trump-card I could pull against them, when they thought I should be dropped but was just lying in wait. Maybe if I could spin it, then I could present a lesser strength that would still allow me my ace against Bonesaw.
"Immune to parasites," I shrugged. "Not germs, but anything bigger, like worms, or spores, I can just ignore. It's how my healing works. Not sure why. Can we do this later? You can go poke around if you want, it should be safe." The ground rumbled, some of the structures below giving way and falling down into the pit. "Safe-ish. Maybe have Eidolon slot some kind of protection power."
Looking at him, I couldn't see what he could do, only that he was doing something. It was the problem with Genesis all over again, where I couldn't See her power through her projection, but in reverse. I could tell he was doing something, but I couldn't see what with the actual powers he was accessing somewhere far beyond my Sight.
The world flashed for a moment, a wireframe world devoid of life, or power, except for the three in front of me. Alexandria and Legend were solid, unyielding auras of life and energy, but Eidolon's aura was uneven, like a stormy sea, rippling to form waves with peaks the others did not have. I mentally blinked the Sight away, solidity returning to the objects around me.
"I'm sorry," I said, unconsciously brushing my hair back with my metallic hand, covered in the fabric of my costume. Was it always that long? Legend was speaking, but it was almost unintelligible, though I kind of caught the end of it, something about 'forms'? "I've had a long day, what were you saying?"
"Would you mind coming for us for a quick debrief?" Legend asked, holding up his hands, "You don't have to, and you'll be free to leave, but if you could help us out, we'd appreciate it. Like you said you warned us, but we didn't hear about it. We need to know what we did wrong if we're going to get better."
I wanted to say no, to tell them to go fuck themselves, but the man had a point. And more than that, after everything that had happened, I did not want these people as my enemies. I might be strong, maybe stronger than any one of them, but not together. I could out Eidolon, Eidolon, but I didn't know enough about Legend's power, and Alexandria was just too strong.
I could move fast, but she could move so fast she was invisible to the naked eye. I was stronger in a single strike than she was, but she could outlast me. I could tank any blow, but I needed a recharge, while she could keep going. I might be able to deny her air, to choke her out like Taylor had, but all she'd need to do would be to leave my range of control, or move faster than I could follow, and that'd be it. I wasn't even sure if I could hurt her, locked in time as she was, and lacking any of the dimensional bullshit powers required to deal her damage.
I sighed, letting my shoulders drop. "That. . . makes sense. Maybe not here though? I'm sure if you understand why I don't want you at my place, and I'd rather not go somewhere you could lock me in. I've heard from Boardwalk how you guys work.
"The temporary PRT offices," Alexandria stated authoritatively, not commenting on my accusation. I gave her a skeptical look. Had she not just heard what I'd said. "They are converted offices, not the secure location the old office was."
Lifting off the ground, all I said was, "Lead on."
We were settled in a meeting room quick enough. Alexandria had tried to take us to an interrogation cell, but an unamused look that I, oddly enough, shared with Legend had us moved to a much more comfortable, much more relaxed setting. I sat at one side, my back to the windows, which were solid grey plates to my vision. I took a seat in the middle of the long table that ran half the length of the room, and Legend sat across from me. Alexandria stood, floating slightly behind him, while Eidolon sat at the head of the table.
Piggot was brought in, looking almost resigned. Her first words were "You stopped it?"
"Her, and yes," I agreed. "Alone."
"I was told that sending anyone in was an unacceptable risk," the squat woman informed me.
I glanced at Alexandria, "And when you told them I had solid intel?"
"Unverified intel," the PRT Regional Director disagreed. "I reported it, but you weren't the first one that reported something about that mess out there that turned out not to happen."
I crossed my arms and leaned back in my seat. "One would think predicting Leviathan would be enough."
"That was you?" Piggot asked, confusion and anger rising in her tone, turning to actually glare at the Triumvirate. "Why was I not told?"
"Because it wasn't," Eidolon shot back. "It was Break."
"No," Alexandria corrected, pretending to lean against the wall, "It was not. He only said he could tell us when. That was you?"
Shaking my head, I revealed, "A contact of mine. One who's scared of being known about, for many reasons. Mostly of the 'offer you can't refuse' kind. Another Precog I know confirmed it, and I moved on it, trying to get help."
"How many Precogs do you 'know'?" Eidolon practically sneered.
"More than one."
Even with his face hidden, Eidolon's dislike of me was evident, maybe even reaching into the territory of hatred. Why? Because I wasn't telling him everything he asked? I didn't owe him answers. Legend spoke up this time, "Thank you, Director Piggot, we needed confirmation. If you could please close the door on your way out?"
The woman's irritation at being dismissed wasn't even hidden, but she got up anyways and walked away, back straight. Once she left, Alexandria asked, "Why didn't you contact us?"
"You mean. . ." I made a stirring motion. Legend looked confused, and Eidolon just crossed his own arms, looking more grumpy than uncaring. Alexandria understood what I meant, and nodded. "I couldn't get a hold of Break, and he's the one knows how to contact you directly. He's on vacation, and didn't answer his phone."
Legend stared at me. "What."
"Yeah," I nodded, a little glad I wasn't the only one who realized how messed this situation was, that I wasn't being unreasonable in how upset I was at my 'friend'. "After that happened," I jerked my head towards the city proper, "He and some of the Penumbral Defenders took a vacation. We only got an hour's warning of what was happening today, maybe a little more before the point of no return. I called Break, and left a message. Called my- another contact of mine," I corrected, "and they started locking down. Called the PRT, and got the brush off. That meant I had to handle it myself."
"What about Dryad?" Alexandria asked, "Why didn't she help?"
"She didn't want to fight, and I wasn't going to bring someone like that into a scenario that bad if they didn't want to be," I shrugged, finding myself doing that a lot. My first instinct was to be aggressive, but I was trying to avoid antagonizing them, and a 'what can you do' approach was a good backup. "People like that are more likely to break at a needed moment, and a bad ally is often worse than no ally at all."
Legend nodded, as if he understood, and for all I knew, he did. He didn't know about the worse things his people, his real people, did. Hell, he might've agreed with me, while the other two were the ones forcing people to fight, being the 'hard people making hard choices'. I knew I fell into that category from time to time, but I tried not to live there, and without their pet Deus Ex Machina, they would've likely failed long ago, because they confused 'hard' and 'expedient' with 'smart' or 'correct'.
"What was down there?" he asked, simply, honestly, and I considered the question.
Eidolon shifted, but I didn't pay attention to him. The jerk could go stew in his corner. "I want to be trite, and say it was hell, but. . . a minion maker power let loose to an insane degree. Like you are to Blasters, or she is to Brutes. Different varieties of monsters, but within each type, every single one was nearly identical. Fire controllers, area teleporters, brutish gorilla-things, lightning bugs, assassin creatures that were half-invisible, and more. And then, deeper down, the walls themselves were alive. They had some kind of assimilation mechanic, these scorpions the size of my hand with hypodermic needle tails, but, whatever was in them, my power rejected it. If my main source is to be believed, they'd be able to make more capes into new types of monsters, but by going in like I did they only had as much as they could gather."
"From the capes that have gone missing?" Legend asked.
I shrugged. "Maybe? How deep have you been with the scouting out of the yellow zones."
"No one's been 'scouting out' the area," Eidolon shot back.
Alexandria clarified, "The PRT has decided it was too dangerous. Are you saying you have?"
"No, I was wandering around and picked a fight with a Deep One Elder for fun," I couldn't help but snark.
"Lovecraft?" she inquired, tilting her head in thought, before slowly nodding. "I can see the parallels. Do you think there's more like that?"
I shook my head, "No, I'm pretty certain Mouse and I got them all, thank Christ. Or did you mean Lovecraftian monstrosities?" She stared at me, saying nothing. "They had a little shrine to Dagon, I think, but no, I don't think there's any Great Old Ones out there, if that's what you're thinking. As for other things, like Mi-Gos, Leng Spiders, or Hounds of Tindalos? Maybe?"I offered, unsure. "Powers, wherever they come from, pull on mythology sometimes. So did Lovecraft, in a way. Is it any surprise if they pulled on the same sources, if not the works of the man himself?"
Alexandria regarded me. "You talk as if you think they're alive. Powers," she clarified. It was a bit of a pattern, her making a statement then narrowing it down. Was she trying to read my reactions, and using that to specify what she was talking about? It didn't matter, even if it was a bit annoying.
I shrugged, "Maybe, or maybe wherever they come from is, or maybe I'm just seeing patterns were none exist. Pareidolia's a bitch like that."
"You know something," Eidolon accused. I finally turned to look towards him, at what he'd likely thought was the position of power in the room, when instead the arrogant child had just sidelined himself. "About powers."
"I've got theories," I said, opening my hands in a 'so what' gesture. "Everyone's got theories, I just tend to try to avoid assuming things I'd like to be true, are. Sometimes I even succeed."
"Any other theories?" Legend asked. "We might be able to help shed some light."
"Is this room secure?" I asked in turn, having been careful not to name anything. At his nod, I said "There's more Endbringers, but they're waiting for something, and they're not just trying to kill us. That's why they've been holding back, like I tried to tell you."
"How did you know?" Eidolon demanded, "Your pet precog?"
I resisted the urge to call the dick a hypocrite, and shook my head. "No, common sense. If they wanted to destroy things, to 'bring the end', there's better ways of doing it. Why does Behemoth show up miles away from his target, instead of coming up right next to it, or through it? Why doesn't the Simurgh just orbitally bombard us, or are you suggesting she doesn't have the capability? And why does the Leviathan act so clumsy at times, but at others is the picture of grace? It makes no sense."
"And you were the one smart enough to figure it out?" he challenged.
"A nine-year-old could figure it out, if they had access to the footage of the attacks," I argued right back. "There's assuming your foe is just stupid, and then there's being stupid yourself. Once you looked past what name they got saddled with, it was obvious."
This time it was Alexandria, "What was obvious?"
I looked at her incredulously. "They're testing us. They attack high-value targets, and we're forced to defend them. They hold back, to an insane degree, like an adult teaching a child how to fight, but if the kid half-asses it, they're going to get bruised. Even Ziz does it."
"You call Madison a bruise?" Legend asked, sounding offended. I wondered if he'd lost someone there.
"Globally? Yeah." I replied. "It's what, three hundred thousand people? The London attack would've been worse, but you fought her off there. You were serious. But for Wisconsin? How many people showed up for that one? How many people fought their hardest? And because of that you lost, and were hurt, and taught not to half-ass it again. It doesn't matter how hard you fought," I added, seeing the anger on his face, "It matters how hard everyone fought, or if you were able to fight hard enough to match their expectations, to pass their test."
"And what kind of test was that!" the wielder of Absolute Territory demanded, pointing out towards the ruins of Brockton Bay.
"We prepared; we were ready," I told him, not taking offense to his being upset at the lives lost, but knowing better than to mention my Status as an Endbringer Target. What I was saying might be true, but it could just as easily be true that with three Endbringer Targets, the attack was tripled in intensity, or cubed. "And with our being ready, Leviathan took off the kid gloves. Only we weren't ready, not really, only forewarned, and we did nothing with that time. We had no Tinker devices put in place, with the hours I gave you. We had no cohesive teams, ready to work together and counter Leviathan's particular brand of bullshit. We had no strategy other than 'everybody pile on the enemy', like bad movie ninjas, only one in, what ten of us heavy enough hitters to do something to it. One in twenty? In thirty?"
I shook my head, "You guys had Vista out there, a child, and if I hadn't been training her, Leviathan's opening move would've killed a third of us and wrecked the city on its own. I'm glad she was able to help, she's likely to be close to the Shaker version of you when she gets a better handle on her powers, but the fact that she was there out there, with Gallant of all people, shows how badly prepared you were for this. The man shoots somewhat damaging emotion beams. What the hell was he going to do against soggy Godzilla?"
"You've been training Vista?" Legend asked. "When?"
"When she tracked me down, if only to thank Boardwalk for saving her life, and found out I was training Glory Girl, and her boyfriend," I shrugged. "Interesting power, and she was getting better on her own, but was stuck thinking in normal paradigms, focusing on her. . . I want to say her strengths, and not her weaknesses, but that's wrong. On what her power could obviously do, instead of what it could do. I helped her consider different angles."
"And now you think a new Endbringer will show up?" Alexandria asked. "Now that we 'passed' their test."
"But we didn't," I disagreed.
"I must've missed it when that monster got shot out of the city," Eidolon sniped.
"Exactly," I nodded, knowing agreeing with the asshole would piss him off more, pointing out something he'd missed, when he couldn't be bothered to listen to what I'd just told him. "He was ejected by one person, however they did it. He wasn't met, and forced to retreat, like they all were beforehand, he was physically removed from the fight." I paused, having a horrible thought. Killing them triggered the next one, but, for all the talk I was doing about not falling into assumptions, wasn't I assuming all the same? Were they as collectivist as I thought, trying to avoid the western tendency to focus on individuals and running the Entity's functioning of billions of sentient pieces working towards a great goal too far?
Just because event A triggered result X, that didn't mean that event B couldn't also trigger the same result. An Endbringer had never been, to borrow Victoria's term, 'yeeted' out of a fight before, at least not in canon. Eidolon wasn't the cause of their attacks, I'd checked myself, his ability allowing him to access shards, not some hidden fourth power to direct Endbringers, and, even now looking at the man, I confirmed that wasn't something he could do.
Him needing 'worthy opponents', awakening the Endbringers and subconsciously controlling them, never made much sense anyways. As masterful a psychological ploy to tell him that as it was, preying on his sense of entitlement, power, and importance, it didn't fit everything else. Eidolon, who believed himself the best of the best, the most powerful of all parahumans, of course was the cause of the world's greatest threats past Scion himself. It couldn't be completely unrelated, or the work of the very same evil creature they were trying to kill. No, it had to have been his doing. As horrible as it was, Eidolon being responsible for the Endbringers also served to affirm just how special Eidolon was, how he was the cause of world events, and central to everything.
Only life didn't work that way.
Life wasn't a videogame, all your quests paused while you went out and did what you want, nothing happening unless you were involved in some manner. Everyone else had agency, for good or ill, and that meant that you could be blindsided by something that you could never have seen coming, had no reason to prepare for, and, ultimately, wasn't your fault. Didn't make the front bumper of life crashing into your shins on what was supposed to be a crosswalk any less painful, but it happened. God knows I'd been blindsided by it enough times.
But, as much as I'd clung to canon, more and more I was finding how flawed it was. Yes, we got explanations for why things happened in the story, but we so rarely got to see it happen ourselves, with data and experiences instead of just being informed by characters of dubious accuracy and veracity. With that in mind, was there going to be another Endbringer attack? Did we not have months, but weeks, or even days?
Would it be Behemoth, or would it be The Simurgh, or even Leviathan? Would it be Khonsu, or did he only come about because it was a time-based power that did the most damage to Behemoth in India? Would it be something else entirely? I didn't know, and I hated it.
"Fuck," I swore, getting their attention. "Okay, that might be enough to trigger another attack, but it's been weeks, so we can only hope that, if they do keep to their schedule, that we'll have time to prepare."
"And if it's not, it will be Behemoth?" Alexandria asked, getting the attention of the other two men.
"Maybe?" I shrugged, having already told her that I got a very limited, very precise vision of the future, "Have we done enough that Delhi is no longer the target of choice? I have no idea how they pick their targets, only that it's at the point they can do. . . I want to say the most damage, but it's more like enough damage."
"How do you know this?" Eidolon demanded.
"You didn't tell them?" I asked her in return.
"Eidolon doesn't read reports," she explained, with a perfect poker face, turning to shoot a challenging look at the man when he made an outraged sound. "Vejovis received a precognitive vision from another parahuman that has already greatly degraded in quality, due to the changes he has already enacted. One of those pieces of information is my civilian identity, as I was unmasked, though he did not state how."
"Cape with duplicating touch. Copies seek to destroy what the previous one valued. Yours started talking immediately, making sure to broadcast it faster than Dragon could shut it down," I supplied, purposefully ignoring the absolute douchenozzle who was stewing in his corner, resisting the urge just to punch him in the face and take him down a notch. Or five. "Though in that timeline Brockton Bay still existed as a city, so who knows if that'll happen again."
"You know more," Eidolon accused, once again, and I wondered if that grab bag of both dicks and powers was on some sort of loop.
I rolled my eyes, "Yes, David, I do. No, I don't know your last name. A lot of stuff happened in the next three months, though, again, without Brockton Bay being a thing that exists a good deal of that isn't going to happen. It's not going to be controlled by parahuman warlords, so your experiment isn't going to happen, at least not in that way," I told Alexandria. "People were pretty pissed about that one. Knowledge of the Warrior also set off a global panic, though goldenrod, the dumbass demi-deity he is, didn't really notice."
"And what did I do?" Eidolon demanded, and I resisted the urge to shoot him, even if only because my gun broke a while ago, when I'd first stumbled into LOCK's area of effect.
I shrugged, "Nothing really." It was true too. Other than showing up to Endbringer fights, and turning on those who were trying to help him defeat Echidna, I couldn't remember him actually doing that much. He showed up to the last fight against Scion, but did more good as Glaistig's Shade than he ever did as himself.
"You're lying!" the arrogant asshat declared, his body starting to glow. "Tell me what happened."
Go fuck yourself, is what I thought, just about sick of this self-important fucktard. What I said was "You sold out your allies to an S-class threat because you weren't winning fast enough."
"I wouldn't!" he declared, standing up, his chair knocked backwards, his eyes starting to glow through his mask.
"With your powers weakening like they were?" I spat, feeling off. "Yes, David, you did."
What was I doing? I was trying not to escalate, but I couldn't stop talking! Looking at him, Seeing him, his powers were hard at work, but I didn't know what they were doing, though it was quickly becoming apparent.
Alexandria moved forward, "Eidolon, that's enough!" she rebuked, but the self-proclaimed prince of parahumans wouldn't be stopped.
"What else happened? What happened to me?" he pressed, and the glow around him brightened.
"You died," I informed him, venom dripping from my words even as they were forced out of me. "You tried to take on Scion by yourself, to prove you could. You were doing a passable job in a brute-force fight, that being the limit of your creativity, but crumbled like the little bitch you are the second he used a Thinker power on you." Regaining control of my mouth, but not my fury, I spat, "And that's why you're Mastering me to tell you this, because you can't handle not being important."
"David!" Alexandria snapped, but the glow brightened, the pressure increased, and I had enough.
Ripping off a piece of the wooden table, I infused it with Momentum, and hurled it at his arm even as he start to say "What-". Legend started to glow brighter, but it was too late, and the small piece of shrapnel hit. Without stopping, it tore straight through his arm as if it wasn't even there, blasting it to a gooey paste and hitting the far end of the room in an explosion of drywall, Aerokinesis blocking it from going any further, though it did leave a nice-sized hole to the outdoors.
In a blur, Alexandria was on me, grabbing me by the throat and pinning me to the wall behind me. I could see her move, but she was fast. Very fast. Faster than I could ever be in a fight, as I was now. She didn't slam me hard enough to drain a shield, but her grip was tight. Without even meaning to, my own arms came up to grab her own, a reflexive motion.
To my metallic hand, she might as well have been carved from stone, only I already knew that I could break stone. Her costume didn't even feel different, her power covering her clothing, just like Victoria's did.
To my real hand, though, she was soft. Muscular, of course, but her costume had texture, and my own grip on her arm made small dimples in the fabric, and I knew I could dig in harder if I wanted to. I could only see her mouth, the rest of her face covered by her silvery helmet, but her firm frown froze, her lips opening the barest amount in surprise.
In a flash, she'd let go and was on the other side of the room from me, even as Legend, hands glowing, was staring in horror at Eidolon. "You killed him," he said, almost to himself.
He wasn't dead, I could see that, but his power was still, not doing anything. Right, Uncalibrated Shard, it won't auto-activate to save him. More than that though: "The idiot didn't even have a Brute power?" I asked in disbelief, shaking my head. "Fuck, okay, I'll heal him."
Flying over to him, that little bit of shrapnel had done a number on him. His arm was gone, and he was bleeding heavily. Taking off the fingertip of the glove covering my real hand, I squatted down, flipped up the torn edge of his cloak, and put a finger on the bloody mess of his shoulder. Sending a steady stream of healing his way, his power, which had been getting fainter, stayed as it was. Part of it tried to reach out to me, but I mentally batted it away so instinctually that I hadn't even realized I'd done so until it was already done, his own power retreating like a scolded child, though slowly brightening.
"So, fun fact," I stated, going for conversational, but my anger bled through, as I resisted the urge to lobotomize the dickehead I was healing, "when I get Mastered, I get angry at the person in direct response to the amount I'm being Mastered. No, I don't know why. No, I can't control it. Gallant's normal beam just makes me get annoyed and think unkind thoughts. A full brainwashing Master, of which there were a few dozen down there, sent me into a homicidal fury, which actually helped. Kind of. It's weird," I explained, the words coming out far too easily, so I focused on only saying what I wanted them to know instead. "So, when this limp-dicked douchenozzle decided that Mastering me was a great idea, well, I went from annoyed, to angry, to thinking he should get his arm broken for his insolence. How was I supposed to know that, of the three powers he had when he was actively attacking me, that none of them were Brute powers?"
"Y-you, you assaulted a member of the Protectorate. You're under arrest," Alexandria pronounced, but with none of her normal calm, stuttering a little though she got it under control.
"You guys sent Canary to the Birdcage for a single offense of Human Mastering, and she wasn't a trained hero, nor was she using it on purpose," I shot back, getting annoyed in a way that was completely natural. This was not the time to do this, nor the setting. "So rather than turn this into a pissing match which I may not win, but neither will you, Rebecca, I'm going to stabilize this fucking shit excuse for a hero and fucking leave. God, it's shit like this that made me want to not talk to you idiots at all. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. This is elementary school morality people!"
The bleeding had stopped, and he seemed fine. I gave him a bit more, just in case. Standing up, his power had already brightened a bit, and I wanted to be gone before he woke up. "So, good talk, maybe leave the spoiled brat at home next time; no I'm not healing the arm, and Panacea likely won't either. I think Accord might have someone that could, or the idiot could just slot a regeneration power."
Flicking the blood off my hand, so I wouldn't catch the stupid, I turned to leave, flying towards the door. "Wait," Legend said, and, despite my best instincts, I did. "I have one more question. Request actually."
I shot an unimpressed look at Alexandria, who was already rallying, the fluctuations in her power smoothing out as she got control of herself. "Only because it's you asking, and I reserve the right to tell you to go fuck yourself. Shoot."
"Join us," he said, and I turned fully to look at him incredulously. "You want to help, and you could do more help with us. David's. . . David's my friend, but he's also an ass, and I'm not surprised by what he did as I should be, but I didn't know he was, or I would've called off this meeting. If you really have that reaction, you wouldn't be the first like that we've known about, so what you just did would not be your fault. You're strong, and either smart or lucky. Either way, Cauldron could use your help to help others."
For a second, I considered his offer. It was tempting, and not in a way that had anything to do with powers. However, I, oddly enough, knew more about the organization he worked for than he did. I let out a long sigh, "If you were running it, Legend, I would. But you're not. I don't know how much of what that messed up clone of Alexandria's said was true, but if even half of it was, I'd be leery of joining. Add in the fact that you've got that piece of barely-sentient dickcheese as a member?" I asked, waving towards the still unconscious Eidolon, "and that's a hard no. I don't want to leave Brockton Bay, or what's left of it, and I want the Warrior dead just as much as you do, but I can't take the orders of someone who leans so heavily on Thinkers, with how flawed that approach is. That doesn't mean we can't work together, if the cause is right, but you won't own me. Can you live with that?"
I looked at the other man, hoping he said yes. I wasn't bluffing, I didn't think I could win a fight against Cauldron. I could side-step Contessa and Clairvoyant, but the Triumvirate were no joke, the arrogant asshole whose blood was staining the rug nearby notwithstanding. Legend nodded after a moment, smiling at me, "I think I can. Maybe we could-"
"Incoming!" I yelled, as I felt something coming in way too fast to be natural, and way too big besides.
Legend turned to light, zipping out of the room, and Alexandria beat me to Eidolon, blocking him with her body while I stood in front of them both.
Whatever it was hit with the force of an artillery shell, breaking apart the wall and sending shrapnel everywhere, though it bounced off my shields easily enough.
"Don't hurt him!" an irritatingly familiar voice called. "He didn't do nuthin'!"
The dust settled, and my absentee friend stood in the wreckage of the room, looking around desperately. His eyes locked with my mask, before looking past me to Alexandria right behind me, and Eidolon behind him. Legend flashed in a moment later, hands glowing, though that light flickered and died. "Break?" the Blaster asked incredulously.
"I'm sorry!" the man in question apologized to me. "I left my phone in my room, and then I got your message, but it was like hours too late, so I got here, and called, but then some guy named Overwatch said you got taken by the tri-thingy, so I came here as fast as I could, but there's guys with guns outside, so I thought you were gonna get disappeared or somethin', so I bust in, but that's not happenin', and I fucked up again, and I said I wouldn't, and I'm so sorry man!" he let out in a rush.
Legend seemed to blink behind his mask, processing that statement. "We don't disappear people!"
"Yes you do," Herb and I replied as one. "You guys paid me to," he continued.
"You don't, Legend" I added, motioning back to the other two as I stepped away from Alexandria, very aware of her place at my back. "They might, and Harbinger absolutely does."
"Who?" Herb asked.
"Numberman, he used to run with the Slaughterhouse Nine and old habits die hard," I explained. "You left your phone in your fucking room?" I demanded in turn.
"I was on vacation!" Herb practically whined. "And I thought if there was something your pops could give us warning!"
"Dude, OpSec!" I practically hissed, glancing over to see Alexandria watching us, with her eidetic memory. "And he did, but only an hour's worth, and our other contact dropped the ball as well. Our allies decided they'd rather button down then send help, the PRT was useless, as usual, and there was a Bioweapon aspect so I had to leave the others home. I really could've used you and your cousins' help, instead of dropping feet-first into a fucking woodchipper made of powers and blood."
"What was it, I don't remember anything that bad happening the first time!" he asked in turn. "Nothing was supposed to happen 'till the Teeth showed up!"
"And Brockton Bay was just a bit waterlogged that go 'round, not drowned and full of SCPs!" I shot back. "Think Echidna, by way of the Zerg, down to the nebulous hive-mind and adaptational repurposing of other Parahumans, likely their corpses. Explains what was fucking cleaning up the bodies, other than those lion-dogs, and the Deep Ones, and maybe the phoenixes. Phoenixi? The birds made of fire."
"Fuuuuuck," he swore. "How'd you. . ." he trailed off, looking at the others. "Later?"
"Later," I agreed, turning back to Legend and Alexandria. "So, yeah, good talk, but I'm fucking leaving. You're welcome for saving your assess, and now I'm going home to take a shower, get this fucking moron up to speed, maybe see if I can get a fucking phone surgically implanted in his fucking skull, and then I'm going the fuck to sleep, because today has sucked, and I'm fucking exhausted. Either of you have an issue with that? You can talk to Break later, but, fair warning, getting a straight answer out of him is like getting humility out of Eidolon."
Neither of them responded, and Eidolon started to groan.
Ignoring Herb's "Dude, I'm not that bad!", I grabbed the back of his shirt and flew out the hole he'd made, putting a hand to my ear. "Okay, take us home," I told no one in particular, assuming someone was watching us, and used a Mark to go back to the command room, where a sea of wide-eyed stares met me. "Can we do this later?" I asked.
"Fuck no!" replied Amelia.
I sighed, as Herb gave the room a cheery wave.
