Seizure 18.1

It was amazing how fast a month could pass.

There was a bit of a reaction from the PRT from Taylor's and my capture of Butcher, and they tried to take us into holding to make sure we weren't 'compromised', but as we weren't stupid enough to drop her off ourselves, instead informing them where they could pick her up, their attempts were just a strongly worded suggestion, then a legal threat, which lasted right up until I directed them to ask about Tagg.

Minutes later, I received a thank you, and a request for how I'd like to receive the reward money for Butcher's capture.

I'd let Quinn handle that, and apparently they'd gotten Eidolon to escort her to the Birdcage, which I would've thought was overkill if not for how often those transports got hit. Then again, putting Mr. 'Collateral damage is best damage' in striking range of Ms. 'Kill me and you become me' seemed. . . ill advised, but nothing happened, and she was now in Cape-Australia. I wondered how long it'd take before some idiot killed her thinking they could handle the power.

I gave it a week.

But, after that things. . . well, they calmed down. There was no better way to say it. Weeks passed without crises and it was. . . weird. Work continued, building infrastructure, claiming the Zones, and so on, but nothing blew up, nothing went wrong, there were no attacks other than from the occasional Creature deeper inside the fenced off Zones.

I'd floated the 'dimensional gateway idea to explain the sheer number of new lifeforms, lifeforms, with powers that Panacea could replicate, but while the others thought it might be true, until we pacified the Zones there was no way to tell.

The Green had almost been completed cleared, which was, I was told, done extraordinary quickly. When asked if people had done this sort of thing before, to have a baseline, apparently they had. The sheer variety of anomalies in Brockton Bay was unusual, but out in the Green they'd had other areas where similar problems had happened, just rarely in America. The PRT was proactive in pacifying such areas as soon as they appeared, which was just one of the things that helped Earth Bet's USA feel so much like the one I was used to, at least on the surface.

Canada, England, Ireland, France, Spain, and Portugal were all the same, trying to maintain an air of normality, and generally succeeding. The other nations had either failed, or had never even bothered. Some, like large portions of the middle east, were a giant rolling clusterfuck of combat and shifting boarders, while others, like Switzerland, managed to make things work, except for their capital city, which was a giant quarantine zone. Given what I'd seen of this world, that just seemed to fit.

Because of this, attempts to reverse powers gone wild had happened enough to be well documented, if only in how often they failed, usually catastrophically. To be fair, if we were doing this blind, we'd probably be in the same ballpark of damages, with tremendous losses and outbreaks aplenty, but with my brother's pet Precog on the lookout, and having received a single email from my father when we would've missed something even with that, the cleanup had been doable in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible.

It was in large part of Charlie's gang that the Green was now clear, anomalies bagged, tagged, or fenced off as the recovery, demolition, and construction crews worked hard, something that I made sure everyone was well recompensed for.

The Yellow Zones, on the other hand, were going much slower.

Moving carefully, I'd managed to set up a fence around the Red, and then tried to split up the Yellow into ten different sections, but not only could I not draw straight lines like I could the Green, but there were things in there that could break, cut, and melt through the hyper-dense Crimson Oak wood. However, the things that were doing so kept to the Yellow Zone, the cameras Overwatch set up around the Green/Yellow border showing no activity.

Visiting the Red Zone again, given what was happening in the Yellow, half the fencing was just gone.

That said, forays into the Yellow were still viable, and we'd been chipping away at it, taking care of the individual anomalies we found, cautiously walking the fence forward, but it was slow going.

That was the only thing that was slow, though.

Clearing and construction, already at what I was told was a surprisingly quick pace, had nearly tripled, entire streets searched, levelled, and re-built upwards in shining steel and living wood. Utilities had already been started, each section of the city to be constructed in such a way that it could operate on its own if there was a problem, but also networked when finished to distribute the load with a population density on par with New York, only planned.

But, while I could create wood and metal Ex Nihilo, everything else required funds, but there we were firmly in the black as well. The Crimson Oak lumberyard had started to really get going, the wood barely needing any treating or weathering, though we'd also had to ship the near-monomolecular saws to cut the damn stuff with the orders. I'd been making them myself, but Æonic got his building-focused Tinker, Megalith, to finish her first factory, which produced the things, along with a whole bunch of other items, at supernatural speed.

From there things got odd, as the laws on the books detailing the selling of power-created items, made specifically to screw over parahumans, and the direct companies they worked with, but were barely a road bump when partnered with separate organizations they could trust. Yes, Æonic had to sell us the saws to us for a fraction for what they were worth, but when we sold the raw metals and woods to him for similarly ridiculous rates, everyone made a very nice profit.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg. No, it was Panacea that was the source of nearly half our income, though getting her to accept a hundredth of what I wanted pay her was an uphill battle. Turns out, the ability to sculpt life as one willed it was just a little bit useful. When we sat her down with some actual biologists, well, it'd gone well, then really badly when they realized how pants-shittingly terrifying her power was, and then fairly well once again when they realized she wouldn't do that.

We'd stuck to ideas utilizing plant life, for a host of reasons, but even with that limitation the nutritional, industrial, and pharmacological capabilities she had were, quite frankly, mind boggling. After some testing, some workshopping, and a lot of throwing ideas at the wall to see what stuck, we'd developed some working products that were already making ludicrous amounts of money.

The top three sellers of the bakers doze creations were a plant that could easily be rendered down to create medical-grade insulin, a fruit that cured migraines in a majority of people with no side effects, and a sugarcane variant that was hardier, grew faster, but most of all had left-handed sugars.

It'd taken a bit for me to understand what the heck that meant, but apparently sugars were chained in a right-handed way, and the stomach was meant to handle it, but while left-handed sugars would taste just as sweet, they, like fiber, would not be digested, providing no energy, but also having effectively zero calories.

And then the FDA had flipped their shit.

And then, a week later, they'd shut the hell up.

Once more I was questioned by Quinn on what I'd done, but it wasn't me, just more actions of Cauldron as I metaphorically stirred the pot. I appreciated it, even if I didn't trust them in the slightest, their standing orders for Herb to capture or kill 'Boardwalk' if he got the chance nixing any possibility of true cooperation, even if one could overlook everything else they'd done, were doing, and would due, all sins, no matter how needless, excused in the face of stopping the destruction of the world.

Regardless, a gaggle of Thinkers had gone over her creations, okay'd them, and now they were patented and selling like nuts. My control over wood didn't help us there, but that's where Hedera came in. Brix's daughter, happy to help, and happier to get paid, was able to create a full year's crop daily. Accord's plans allowed for hydroponics facilities which were quickly built and put into action, the basic water and waste infrastructure finished up at the same time.

The products, bolstered in prestige from being 'approved by Panacea' and whose proceeds were helping to fund the rebuilding of Brockton, were being ordered in numbers that, with the first grow houses built, we were only just starting to match. The sheer economy of scale one could achieve with powers was something that I was only now starting to realize, and how, without the Cape-inatti enforcing the status quo with an iron fedora, things were quickly progressing. And, with so many projects and no impending quandaries, Panacea was having a ball.

It'd been quite amusing to drop in on the girl and casually inform her she was now a millionaire.

As for the rest of the team, everyone had slowly, but surely, found a job of their own. Herb had started running missions, both for Cauldron, but also for us. He needed to do something, I'd found, or else he'd try to find something of his own to do, and then when he got an idea he'd do it without telling anyone.

Working for Cauldron paid him in Vials, but, given he wasn't a Blank like my brother and I, he could work with my father without issue. I wasn't sure exactly what he did, and, to a certain extent, neither did he. My father's precognition, while much more limited in forward reaching scope than Contessa's, still gave him impressive capabilities, as he worked in the background. He said he was helping, but was always cagey on what that actually meant.

Given everything else I was managing, and with my farther working as a warning system for real danger, I was reticent to press him on it. If it were my brother, or Herb, that would be a hard no, but my dad's problem had always been lack of communication, not lack of planning.

Purity, who still hadn't come up with a new name, patrolled the cleared areas, and generally kept up a sense of safety in the workers, even if she didn't actually do much. Mouse came with me on Anomaly neutralization runs, and kept teaching Taylor and Amy how to fight, but otherwise was on her own.

Taylor herself though? She was a godsend. She'd decided she was my assistant, no matter what I wanted, and had done her best to help me in whatever I did. At first I'd tried to convince her that she didn't need to, that her efforts could be better spent elsewhere, but unless I was doing something that completely took up my attention, like attuning the trash-tier Vials Herb brought so they wouldn't insta-kill whoever took them, or was working on my own abilities in a way that might turn dangerous, she was there.

It was. . . nice.

What wasn't nice was the news I was getting this morning. "Run that by me again," I requested, "Because I could've sworn you said we've got heroes."

"We've got heroes," Quinn informed me, smirking. "More specifically, Parahumans have been seen entering the Zones. They tried to access the energy-cancelling crystals, but couldn't breach the shell you constructed, and left when I sent Mrs. Anders to have a few words with them."

"You sent Purity to be diplomatic?" I asked, incredulous.

Overwatch shook his head, "No, I sent her to scare them off. If she hadn't I would've conversed with them through the equipment she was wearing. The fact they fled suggestions that their motives were less than legal."

"Sounds like looters," I agreed. "Why did you call them heroes?"

"Because they are," Taylor said, able to get through the reports faster than I could, her ability to split her attention to read several of them at the same time something I still was having trouble wrapping my mind around. "Overwatch's cameras got a good look at them. They're an independent hero group from Boston."

I sat back, processing that. "Chances they're actually Accord's?" I questioned, looking to the other two.

"Doesn't he already have his Ambassadors?" Taylor asked, in turn, frowning, but Quinn shook his head.

"Chances are good," he informed me. "The question is if they were acting independently, or on his orders."

Groaning, I shook my head. "I told him not to come to my city, but I'm sure he'd play dumb. We could ask Sarah, but that's not actionable intel for something like this."

Quinn chuckled, "That is the point of using Cat's Paws. I doubt if we had captured them, they would've given us anything you could trust. That man's reputation precedes him, even in my circles. I'd advise against making him our enemy."

"Can you tell him that?" I shot back, mulling over the problem. "What're our options here?"

"That's actually something I'd like to discuss with you," the lawyer noted. "Because of our city's unique status, the question isn't what we can do, but what level of public backlash we're willing to endure when others realize we have no restrictions in our borders."

That made me sit up and pay attention. "Wait, what?"

"This area is, in most senses, a Federal territory, but the special orders and dispensations created to deal with areas such as the Simurgh Quarantine Zones, means that laws can be ignored with impunity, in the name of public safety," Overwatch revealed. "How else do you think we can hold American citizens in inhumane conditions like Madison? As the site of an Endbringer battle, all of those exceptions apply to us as well. It doesn't matter that it was Leviathan, as the law does not specify."

"Wait," I repeated. "If that's true, why the hell do we need to worry about that entire financial dance with Chuck's factory?"

"Inter-state trading," Taylor answered, near instantly. "I've been brushing up business regulations," she added, blushing slightly as we both turned to look at her. "Once goods cross state lines Federal regulations automatically apply."

Quinn nodded, "It's a bit more complicated, but yes. Mind you, Business law is-"

"Not your field of expertise," I finished for him, having heard it enough times to see it coming. "So, what, I could just kill them?"

"You could, but the backlash when it's known you can kill anyone in Brockton Bay without legal punishment would be something I'd prefer to avoid," Overwatch noted.

I frowned, "I mean, at the level of power I'm kind of working at, anyone in the Triumvirate could kill someone without trouble, not that Legend would."

Taylor scowled, but didn't disagree, finally saying, "But you don't have the 'Cape-inati' covering things up for you." She hadn't taken it well when Herb had freely reported on the many, many things that Cauldron was having him do. 'Extra-judicial assassination' would be putting it mildly.

"Fair, suggestions?" I asked, not really sure what I could do besides beat them, kick them out, beat them and kick them out, or just kill them outright.

"Call the PRT," Quinn said, and I turned an incredulous look his way. "I'm not expecting them to help, but the fact that you did will let me shift blame and responsibility on them when the parahuman response teams refuse to respond to parahuman criminals with their teams. We could hold them here, but it'd be best if you could remove them."

"I could drop them off in South America," I shrugged. "That way it'd at least inconvenience them."

Taylor nixed that, "You can't leave Brockton Bay though. That's what you told Alexandria."

Shit, I thought, wondering if the half-second it took to drop them off and come back would count. Yes, yes it might. "Okay, no South America. Maybe I could get Mouse to-"

"Wait," Taylor interrupted, and through our shared Arthropod Control I could sense her looking up things the next room over, as several dozen insects interacted with half a dozen tablet computers. "Strider doesn't have to come with the people he moves. It just takes longer."

"So, not useful in a fight, or during an Endbringer Fight, but to express deliver someone to Australia?" I smiled, only for Quinn's head to snap up,

The man looked at me seriously, insisting "Not Australia. Things have been getting unfriendly since the Simurgh attack Canberra. Foreign Parahumans are likely to not make it out alive."

"Wait, really?" I asked, feeling like a broken record, Taylor nodding seriously. "That's probably exactly what Ziz wanted," I had to point out.

"From the outside, it seems obvious," Quinn agreed. "You aren't the first to notice, and there have been attempts to reach out to the Australian government. However, they don't seem to care."

I almost suggested that maybe I should try something. Not because I believed that I was somehow a better diplomat than anyone else, I was almost certainly crap at it, but my status as a Blank might cause the ripples needed to knock that Endbringer's models off-kilter. However, I wasn't the only Blank around. "Reach out to The Neutral Party," I directed my vizier. "He has some contacts that can go. . . unnoticed by those who cast their gazes forward."

"Like you?" the man asked, my immunity to precognition an open secret to my team, though thankfully one that was rarely mentioned outside of secure areas. I nodded. "That might be enough," he smiled, eyes darting to the side the way they did when he was using his technopathy to do something attention intensive.

"Something up?" I asked, as the parahuman lawyer's expression hardened.

"Communication from Æonic," the man said. "Déjà's power has turned up something you should know about."

I frowned, trying to figure out what it could be. "Another breakout attempt from the Zones?" I questioned, getting a nod of assent. Taking a second to check my email, my father hadn't sent me anything, which meant, "More than twelve hours from now?"

"At midnight," he confirmed, Chuckles' pet-precog having double my father's range, but lacking in his ability to play 'what if' games. "But it's more than that."

"What, an attack from outside too?" I demanded, trying to figure out what else it could be. My first thought was the PRT, but Herb, Charlie, and I had taken the Slaughterhouse Nine Target drawback long before we arrived here, and they were past due.

"Not here," Quinn Calle told me. "In fifteen hours, The Simurgh will descend on Washington D.C."