Chapter 5

Sunday 16 May 2010

Once Lauren woke up, she finally gave in to the urge that had plagued her for days. After the traumatic power drawing on Tuesday, Lauren didn't want to draw random powers anymore. With her two permanent powers, the uncomfortable feeling that came with having no permanent powers was greatly lessened. However, a small persistent urge to draw new powers still remained, and grew larger the longer she refrained herself from drawing new powers.

Of course, she still practiced her permanent powers. Whenever she was home, she had at least two semi-transparent forcefield clones out. She could now work on her homework while having one of her forcefield clones play with William, who was very happy with that arrangement. Another one of her forcefields could keep an eye on Cameron whenever he decided to play around with her tinkertech, or just relax in front of the television. Lauren was surprised how easy it felt for her to pay attention to the surroundings of all clones, while still being able to concentrate on her homework.

Although Lauren had refrained from transforming into a spider because of her personal grudge against the species, she had still transformed into a snake a few times. Additionally, using a bucket of water, she also tested out her jellyfish and octopus transformations. It was fascinating to experience the different kinds of senses those animals had compared to humans, especially as she could experience the human-like senses of her forcefields at the same time as those animal senses.

Power type: Stranger
Threat level: 2
Duration: 2 hours
Synchronization: 50%
Wiki article: Coeligena

Power: When activated, it appears as if Host randomly teleports 80 times per second within 10 feet of her real position. This makes it extremely hard to determine her exact location or event what she is doing, in addition to possibly obscuring other things within that area. Host only sees the distortions if she looks into a mirror.

Power type: Master
Threat level: -1
Duration: 20 seconds
Synchronization: 37 +11 = 48%
Wiki article: Bastarm-e Cheshmeh Anjir

Power: Anyone host sees will only be able to speak Persian, automatically translating their words to Persian when trying to speak any language. (As Lauren does not speak Persian, she essentially has to look the other way or blindfold herself to have any kind of meaningful conversation with others) (What the hell? This is the third time I got a random Iranian mini-village as my Wikipedia article. Additionally, the type, threat level and duration are identical to a previous power. Hence, I assume that Lauren connected to the same shard)

Power type: Blaster
Threat level: 3
Duration: 20 seconds
Synchronization: 91%
Wiki article: Naco, Sonora

Power: As long as this power is active, host will have a personal gun with infinite ammo either in hand, in a pocket or in her bag. Akin to Miss Militia, this gun is bonded to her and cannot be taken. Host can also change the type of the gun into any gun known to her. However, unlike Miss Militia, it can only turn into guns, not knives, rocket launchers or balls of energy. Additionally, host can transform it into a toy gun, water gun, glue gun or even a model gun.

Once she drew the powers, she got a familiar feel from one of the powers. The speech power seemed to be the same as the one she got a few days ago. Apparently it forced other people to speak a certain language. However, Lauren still didn't know the specifics of that power. A more interesting power was the discount Miss Millitia power that appeared in the form of a pistol in her hand. However, before she could even test it out, it disappeared.

Now she was left with the stranger power. When Lauren activated it and looked into the mirror, she began to feel nauseous. Her whole room was blurred by images of herself. Interestingly, her sight was not affected by the blurs in front of her.

Lauren, having passed the initial hurdle of drawing the first random power, decided to grab some more powers. This process went on for some time as she got multiple powers that didn't do anything special and lasted less than 10 minutes. However, as Lauren was getting a bit addicted to the sensation of drawing powers, she continued drawing more sets of two powers until suddenly.

Power type: Breaker/Blaster
Threat level: -1
Duration: Permanent
Synchronization: 40%
Wiki article: Nyal, South Sudan

Power: An area (spherical with a diameter of 5 feet) anywhere within the host sight becomes tropically warm and humid. Host can also choose to not affect an area like this, but then her own body becomes inhumanly warm (47 degrees Celsius instead of 37). Although she somehow doesn't get sick from this (due to her body being in a pseudo breaker state), it still feels uncomfortable. Additionally, this power requires host to eat twice as much as she used to eat because this effect is powered by her own body. Power Synergy: When Lauren transforms into her snake-form, this power keeps her body warm, letting her survive outside even in Brockton Bay winters. Additionally, the sight of the clones can be used to pick an area to warm up. (This is the first permanent -1 power. It is inconvenient, but it could be worse)

Power type: Thinker
Threat level: 3
Duration: Permanent
Synchronization: 6%
Wiki article: Happy Humphrey

Power: Host has instinctive knowledge of wrestling and is able to detect when opponents are trying to physically attack her in any form (Basically a danger sense for anything physical). Power synergy: The danger sense part of her power also applies to her forcefield clones (so it also activates if people try to physically assault the clones instead of her).

Lauren started to feel hot and uncomfortable. Realizing this came from one of the new powers, she tried to push the warmth outwards until she felt all right again. This power seemed to warm up either a small area in sight, or herself. Lauren tried to dismiss the effect, as it didn't seem very useful, but failed. Ugh, another inconvenient power, hopefully it wasn't …

"Shit!"

Lauren realized this power was here to stay. That was very annoying. Now she would always need to keep an area within her sight warm and humid if she didn't want to feel uncomfortably warm herself.

Before Lauren could curse her power and situation, she realized that this was not her only new permanent power. However, she didn't have any clue what the other power did aside from a feeling that it was some kind of thinker power.

Still, it meant that she had gotten two permanent powers at the same time. However, she didn't have the perfect understanding that came with her earlier permanent powers. Did this mean that getting permanent powers was more common than expected?

To manage the inconvenient power, Lauren created a clone near a window whose purpose was to move the tropical area to the back garden. That way, it wouldn't inconvenience anybody. Unfortunately, this wouldn't work when she went to school, so she would have to find a solution for that problem later.

During breakfast, Lauren noticed that she was feeling much hungrier than normal. Just eating her cereal was not enough to still it. She needed a full second serving before it was sated. Hmm, was this a side effect of one of her new powers?

As she was eating, Lauren informed her family of her newfound inconvenient permanent power. Of course, her father sees this as another reason to inform the PRT and join the wards so that her school can help her with inconvenient powers. However, this power could easily be worked around by moving the tropical area to a corner of the room, so Lauren didn't see a reason to give up her independence.

The whole family went to church service once they were finished eating. The attendance for churches had dropped once the endbringers showed up and started killing people en masse. However, Lauren's father remained a devout believer and raised his children as Christians. Lauren personally believed that God wanted humanity to overcome the problems that came with the advent of parahumans on their own, and grow stronger from it. Becoming a hero herself to stop the villanious parahumans in the city would hopefully help with that.

During the service, Lauren had to remain somewhat focused on keeping the tropical area in a corner or the church. However, thanks to her newfound experience with multitasking, she was able to follow the service just fine.

Just before the service ended, the pastor was suddenly interrupted by the dreaded Endbringer sirens.

Lauren felt relieved when the Endbringer sirens stopped after having gone off once. That implied the Endbringer was not attacking anywhere near Brockton Bay. The sirens going off twice would imply that another city within a few hundred miles was attacked, which might have caused spillover damage like Leviathan's floods or Behemoth's earthquakes. Lauren hoped to never hear the third siren, which would have marked the end of Brockton Bay.

Lauren brievely thought about joining the heroes in the Endbringer fight before immediately rejecting that line of thought. Her current powerset would be utterly useless against the ridiculous durability of the Endbringers, and not very useful for search and rescue, given the lack of a mover power. The pointed look she got from her father also perfectly summarized his opinion on her ever joining Endbringer fights.

"You don't have to worry about me going off to fight endbringers, I'm not stupid!" Lauren whispered to her father to reassure him.

Once they got home, Lauren turned on her laptop to check PHO for this endbringer attack, while at the same time letting a forcefield clone sit on the couch next to her father who was turning on the television.

It turned out that the Simurgh was targeting the CUI. Specifically, a city on the east coast called Ningbo. In the following hours, dreadful reports of the attack came in. Due to the reputation of the CUI and Yangban, practically no capes from outside of the country came in to help, mostly out of fear of being kidnapped by the Yangban. The triumvirate did come to help, and Eidolon managed to get a few hits on the Simurgh, but without much support, they didn't do nearly enough to stop the Simurgh.

At the end of the fight, it became clear why the Simurgh had chosen to attack this City. Apparently, the CUI had one of its largest military bases here. Additionally, that base contained a shitload of ballistic missiles, which the Simurgh happily fired on all nearby large population centers.

The civilian death toll of the attack ended up in the millions, most of which were caused when the largest group of missiles struck Shanghai and its surrounding cities. Additionally, half of the Yangban capes were killed sometime during the fight, as well as a few of the small group of out of country heroes. The city of Ningbo had to be walled off, and reports of the CUI brutally shooting down anyone who tried to leave the city were already coming in.

All in all, this was probably in the top 5 of the most deadly Endbringer fights in history, and by far the most deadly Simurgh attack. Most of the so-called Endbringer experts were baffled at the aggressiveness of the Simurgh during this attack, but then again, confusing people by switching up tactics was exactly what the telepathic precog monster would do.

Lauren looked at her left heel and wondered. Would the cyborg heel make her a blind spot for the Simurgh? Or would the Endbringer find a way around it? Being a blind spot for the Simurgh would be invaluable if Lauren would someday be strong enough to actually help in Endbringer fights.

While she was watching PHO and the news, Lauren had grabbed a few temporary powers to see if she could get more, hopefully helpful, permanent powers to get to a level where she could actually do stuff in Endbringer fights. However, all powers ended up being inconsequential and temporary.

After Lauren read a report on Eidolon's heroic actions during the Endbringer attack, she became curious about the different powers he used in Endbringer fights. Lauren searched Eidolon's wiki page, old Endbringer reports and PHO for information on his different powers and which ones he tended to use in Endbringer fights. She made a file on her laptop and wrote down all powers he used per Endbringer fight. This task would probably take a few days to complete, but Lauren reasoned that gathering information on the Hero with a powerset so comparable to her own was definitely worth the time.

Within a few hours, Lauren already noticed his tendency to use a similar group of three powers in Endbringer fights. He mostly seemed to use one power that let him fly at high speeds, one defensive power that either gave him a high brute rating or some sort of forcefield, and one ridiculously powerful offensive power. When Lauren compared her own powers to those of Eidolon, she couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed. None of her own powers came even close in power to some powers he had displayed, like matter annihilation, large scale cryokinesis or the ability to fire massive laserbeams.

However, Lauren's power seemed to have two advantages over Eidolon's. Lauren could already hold 7 powers compared to Eidolon's usual 3 and that number was increasing over time, leaving aside that one of her powers was worse than useless and Lauren had still no idea what her last permanent power did. Additionally, Lauren could not find any mention on Eidolon having tinker powers, which was a big plus for her own power.

AN: I hope you guys liked this chapter. From this chapter onwards, I will start including small timeskips when nothing of note happens. The tinker inventions and new permanent powers Lauren might get during these timeskips will usually be written down in small pseudo flashbacks (If no event of note happens during a day, I roll for 4 powers and write them down if they are permanent or tinker).