Diversification 19.2

The others had left, letting me change, and I realized that my dimensional shroud was gone. Only. . . it wasn't. I could feel it, with a sense that wasn't physical in the slightest, and, reaching out an arm, I reached out with my power as well and twisted. The air around my hand seemed to split apart, revealing hair-thin cracks through which prismatic clouds could be glimpsed as they drifted outwards, intertwining around my fingers, and beginning to form a glove. From there, the mist poured out, covering my body, solidifying into prismatic armor as the cracks in reality sealed themselves.

With a ripple of will, the armor smoothed out, shifting to the blood red and pure white of my normal costume. Trying to pull the armor back however, was difficult, as it seemed to resist my desires, but, having spent as long as I had forcing Shards to obey me, it wasn't terribly difficult to make it do as I wished, keeping the invisible, cut-proof micro-layer, but bringing the rest down to approximate a button down shirt, slacks, and shoes.

However, I was acutely aware of the fact that my powers were not active. They had seemed to have not turned off, as much as gone to sleep, and I took a moment to start flicking them on, one after another. Personal Force Fields was first, covering my basic defensive needs. As it turned on, though, I found out that during my sleep it hadn't improved in the slightest despite months passing.

Right, no use means no improvement, I thought, understanding the mechanics of Shard progression a great deal more intimately than I had before. 'Living' Shards refined themselves with use, and in doing so lost other possible aspects, tailoring themselves to their users more and more, not exactly cannibalizing themselves as moving their limited resources around to allow a Host to get the most bang for their entropic buck. That was also why they were both more intuitive to use, and safer, as they took cues from the Host's subconscious, not telling you how to use them, but working as you expected them to, because you expected them to.

It was also why younger Hosts were generally more powerful, as they had less preconceptions on what the power 'should be' for the powers to work off of. It was why Shards, after a certain point, 'jumped ship' from Hosts after they finished development, in their mid-twenties, Daniel Hebert's Shard taking its attention away from him and focusing on his daughter. If the man had a strong enough need, in the circumstances the 'Administration' Shard was looking for, he could still Trigger, but the threshold had raised and narrowed.

The entire theory about it mostly being teens Triggering because of the 'higher stress' wasn't entirely bullshit, but, able to look at things from the back end, I now knew the theory vastly oversimplified things. Being a teen could suck at times, yes, but someone who'd graduated from college and was struggling to get a job, or someone who had just had their first child and finding out there had been complications, was just as stressed, if not more so, than a teenager. However, like most things, it was simpler to pin a single cause to a phenomenon when it was actually a cluster of circumstances and factors working in concert.

And people did so much love their simple solutions.

As opposed to Living Shards, Dead Shards from Vials were pre-set, a specific power configuration formed from a wholly subconscious Q&A session that was over in an instant. With that, the power was fully formed, fully specialized, but with no give or room to change and adapt when a Host's answer wasn't what the Shard thought it was, the fragment of Entity effectively 'Dead' to any subconscious communications from its Host.

Abaddon Shards, like mine, were like Living Shards, but, as the Source Entity was older, and wiser, it could better understand its Hosts. More than that, with Negentropy negating any need to miserly hoard energy, each one had a much, much greater investment of energy to spend.

However, energy was life to Shards, and I'd been bleeding it in droves after. . . after. So my powers had shut off, in an attempt to keep me going. With Negentropy, I'd never truly run out of energy in the long run, but I'd been burning through my reserves, and I had a feeling that whatever created the Negentropic structure, were it to completely run dry, would fall apart.

And then I'd die.

Thankfully, that hadn't happened, and now I had the energy to spare to spend on my various abilities. Without that trickle, they'd remained stagnant, and the broken powers were still drawing on that Source, in order to rebuild themselves, needing a minimum amount to function, and nowhere close to that now.

Flipping down the list, Metal Projection was next, slightly uncomfortable as it filled my body with hundred of threads of Orichalcum. I could feel it through my chest as it formed a secondary weave around my vital organs, in case something was able to pierce my shroud, and able to stiffen in an instant against blunt force trauma. It wouldn't be perfect, but layered defenses were the name of the game here.

Metal Creation was next, followed by Stellar Creation, neither thankfully manifesting, but I could feel them there, ready, and waiting. Shadow Form, the only remaining power of the Boardwalk set, activated fully, my body shifting for a moment, before I turned back, and moved to the next.

Temporal Negation and Stellar Negation both flipped online easily, and I was starting to realize that it was only the powers that provided feedback that would be unpleasant, a supposition that proved true as Tree Growth & Control blared in my mental ears the location of every piece of wood I'd ever grown with it, only those in the base clearly defined, but I could tell that bits and pieces had spread everywhere, products of our renewable logging operations.

Bracing myself, Mineral Manipulation nearly drove me to my knees, as I suddenly knew EVERY piece of rock in my area in intimate detail, the power shifting and calming until all I had were vague impressions that I could focus on as needed.

Concern/Worry/Fear blared over the power I shared with Taylor, and I shook my head, pausing, and looking at the bugs still in my room. "No, I'm fine. Just getting used to my powers again. Wait, are you watching me change?" I asked, and the feelings I was getting from her suddenly cut off as she suppressed them.

Focusing on working my way through the others, Marked Teleportation was easy, all of my Marks having long since faded, though that meant I'd have to go to the Moon the hard way again. The power did react easily, and I extended a metal tendril through the bottom of my foot to touch the ground, Marking it. Grue's original power, Shadow Propagation was easy to activate, as was Ice Projectile Projection. The last one I had left, Area Teleportation from Strider hit me with a general spatial sense, but other than telling me exactly where I was, that wasn't so bad.

All of my other Minor powers were gone, for the foreseeable future, but I had slots to fill them with. And, if there was one thing I'd learned from the Nine, it was that, past a single Minor slot for emergencies, slots unfulfilled were slots wasted, and I couldn't afford that kind of weakness.

Moving to the remaining two Major powers, Biokinesis was simple, as there was no feedback, but I took a deep breath, and turned on Acoustokinesis.

Every sound within a mile in every direction seemed to scream in my ears at once, but I was ready, and I pressed down on the power, forcing it into compliance and to shut the hell up!

Almost sheepishly, the power tamped down, giving me a general sense, but nothing specific, only that sounds were happening. Some of the louder ones caught my attention, and I coordinated with the Insect Network to match the sounds and get visuals.

Gauge was testing some kind of weapon in a lab, the shooting ranges, plural now, were in use by a mix of normal people and capes, over a dozen different groups were doing construction of some sort, and so on. All in all, nothing to worry about.

Stepping outside, the others were waiting for me, even if Taylor was making sure to look everywhere but at me, and we set off. Walking through the base, it just felt different. Even as we'd gotten more and more people the place had still felt. . . empty, like a mall that'd just opened. Not spooky, but merely waiting, and slightly odd without the people that were supposed to be there.

Now though, it practically bustled with activity. The floor that our rooms were on was empty, but it was supposed to be, very much an exclusive area. However, as we rose up to the more public floors, there was a general sense of activity that hadn't been there before.

We arrived at an honest-to-god restaurant, where we shown to a balcony table, in a spot that overlooked the central cavity of the Eclipse arcology, the central column of light hiding the elevator to the top a warm orange, simulating the sunset happening above. As we attracted stares, though all of them were at a distance, I glanced at Quinn, realizing this was just as much about announcing my recovery to the world as it was about bringing me up to speed.

The man, as if reading my mind, had only given Herb a significant look, indicating that this was his idea.

Regardless, the wait staff were professional, and we had our drinks, our food being prepared, before we started. Quinn, seated opposite of me, took out a device, placing it on the center of the table. I felt the sounds in the area warp a little, so helped the effect along with Acoustokinesis, the Tinker raising an eyebrow.

"I've lost most of the Boardwalk set, and a number of others, but the core of the Dryad set is intact, even if I've lost the ability to make them autonomous," I revealed.

"You didn't get them back when I killed the Nine that took 'em?" Herb asked, and I shook my head. "Shit."

"They'll come back eventually," I reassured him, and the other two, "but not for a while. That's part of what took me so long."

My ex-friend grimaced, "So it was Shard shit. I couldn't tell, even when I copied your Power Sight, only that something was goin' on."

Quinn nodded in understanding. "That would explain why Flamel's healing tinctures were ineffective. We went through a number of them, but none seemed to have any effect, and she tried a great many."

"I'm just glad you're back," Taylor smiled, resting her hand on my arm, though tightening her grip as she asked, "You are back, right?"

"I'm back," I agreed. "I took care of things on the back end, even if. . ." I trailed off, glancing at my hands. Seeing them practically stained red and purple for so long, or just blackened and burned, it was strange to see them in flesh tones again.

The girl's grip tightened. "Even if?" she echoed.

Shaking my head, I told her, "Nothing, just, I got a bit used to um, the Flames. I've described how I perceive my powers, right? The Sea of Flame, and the Constellations of Possibility?" She nodded. "I was there. For a while. A long while." I took a sip of my sweet tea, and closed my eyes, enjoying the taste. Or really any sense of taste. "It was. . . ơd̡̕d."

She blinked at that, "It was what?"

"I said it was odd," I repeated, shrugging, the others sharing worried glances. "But I don't need to do anything there, at least for a bit, and the bleedings stopped, so we're good."

"Bleeding?" the girl echoed, looking even more worried.

Reaching over, I patted the hand that was gripping my arm. "I'm fine, Taylor. It was an issue, and I took care of it. Now, what has happened here, because this?" I waved around us. "Is different. In a good way, but, still, very different."

The others hesitated, before Herb started, declaring, "Killed a couple hundred Fallen."

I blinked, and turned to Quinn, who coughed into his hand. "That. . . requires some context."

The context, as it turned out, was that after the Fallen had tried to set up shop in New Brockton bay, and Herb had killed them to the last man, those Endbringer Cultists had decided the answer was to send even more people to secure the 'Holy Site'. Crazy, but they were Endibringer Cultists, so they'd arrived in force.

Herb had started to explain, only to casually mention that the man had Second Triggered, which had required us to backtrack to what had happened with the Slaughterhouse Nine. I had been present, but out of it, for. . . obvious reasons, and found out about the last Replicant, Shadow & The Mask, though which was Replicant, and which was the Stand, was somewhat vague. Neither Herb nor I had ever Triggered normally, so we had no idea what would make us Second Trigger. If it were Trauma alone, I should have as well, but something in what had happened during our capture had tripped it.

Herb was cagey on the details, only that, in Second Triggering, he'd met Abaddon again, who'd revealed what I'd long suspected.

That we were catspaws.

For whatever reason, the Entity couldn't step in directly, so had pulled us, knowing that we would kill Scion for him. We had as much time as we needed, but we had a task that needed to be completed, one way or another, and I had to make sure it was done.

"Quinn, I need you to track down a Ward named Flechette, and get me a meeting with her. She has a vital power I need access to, and I've been putting this off too long, letting my pseudo-imprisonment control things," I admitted, and the man nodded, looking off to the side to do just that. "And Herb, any word of where your Replicant went?" The other man shook his head. "Okay, so, 'You May Try'. Not the most encouraging of statements, but not discouraging in the slightest. I'll take it. What happened next?"

A slaughter, apparently, the man having Second Triggered his Copycat ability, and only that one. On one hand, that meant his Replication ability wouldn't be uncapped, making an infinite number of Herb variants, but on the other hand, that meant his Replication ability wouldn't be uncapped, making an infinite number of Herb variants. A fair trade, to be sure. However, he didn't just get the hour-limit the power was supposed to upgrade to, but closer to an hour and a half, his power having grown since he'd first gotten it, and was now closer to two hours in the months since, his radius continuing to expand, as did the strength of the powers he copied.

That had led to the circumstances of the Fallen attack, which both my father and my brother had warned us about. After doing a quick circle around the base using a copied version of Mouse's power, as, while his ability to use his Marks faded after a hundred or so minutes, the Marks themselves stuck around for several days, Herb had descended on the massed Fallen like the fist of an angry god. He'd seeded the area with Marked daggers to Hiraishin through them, able to react with superhuman speed thanks to his copy of Gauge's Second Triggered Glimpse.

Calling himself the 'Brown Flash', however, was something that, despite him being proud of it, had some unfortunate implications. Something that Quinn and I agreed on, and Herb agreed to, at least, not brag about it using that phrase, though he insisted he'd still call himself that in his head.

Against the Fallen, the 'fight' had been an absolute slaughter, Break only gaining more powers as he went, and those that survived the initial barrage found a foe with their power, only more so, facing them down, as well as literally dozens of others. And then the Replicants had arrived, all of their Copycats having upgraded when Break's did, having just completed their own runs through Eclipse, appearing around him.

Some of the Fallen, who had come with the profess desire to kill the men and turn the women into breeding slaves for the crime of 'trespassing on holy ground' had begged for mercy.

They had found none.

And, before five minutes were up, they were all dead.

More than that, though, Quinn had been hard at work hacking their electronics and found the location of their hidden compound, in the forests of northwest Pennsylvania. With that information, Mike had swooped in, in Roc form, picked up Herb, and carried him there in a little over half an hour, at which point Herb had turned into a five-headed dragon, and laid waste to the entire compound.

He'd hit with such force and fury, that, at first, the PRT had thought him the next Endbringer, which they named Tiamat. I personally would've wanted to save the people the Fallen had enslaved, but I wasn't there, and, to a certain degree, it could be seen as a mercy.

Interestingly, while there had been public condemnation by various politicians and groups, no one had actually done anything. Oh, Herb had gotten a talking to by Cauldron, but only for not warning them first, and making the PRT look foolish. A lot of finger waggling, a lot of threatening words, but that was all.

It was an interesting lesson in how I'd apparently overestimated, well, everyone. That their principals, standards, and red lines, were only threat displays and empty air. And it was a lesson that suggested that my cautious and conservative approach might have been completely unneeded.

After that, the Fallen had ceased operations across of the northeast entirely. We hadn't gotten them all, but with their central compound, housing dozens upon dozens of parahumans, and thousands upon thousands of others, destroyed, the survivors had gone to ground, and the other Fallen clusters had given the area a wide berth.

We had, however, gained the attention of the CUI, ever on the search for powerful parahumans to enslave to their collective of brainwashed state military cape squad, the Yàngbǎn. They'd launched an attack, but both Medhu and Charlie could only see the current plan they were going to enact, and while Æonic's people could chain precognitions to try and adapt to the responses of what their enemy's reactions of their plans being known would be, there was a limit to that, and the Yàngbǎn had enough Thinkers that our preparations could be seen, and reacted to, turning the entire thing into one giant game of Precog Tag.

Herb had wanted to swing by Contessa to insta-win, but Cauldron wouldn't open a door to him before the attack, likely wanting to wait it out to see what happened. So, instead, he'd copied Gauge's power, and he and Theo had worked as field-commanders, working against them with their five minutes of warning, which meant they could win any engagement, but the Yàngbǎn had split up and attacked from several directions, able to grab a number of our new recruits.

The ones that had gone after me, had died. Screaming.

The Yàngbǎn had grabbed some of ours, only the recruits were all Marked, which meant that when the Chinese forces had fallen back to a concealed rally point, their presence hidden by a piece of precognition disrupting Tinkertech, all they'd done was give away their location.

At which point Herb and the Replicants had descended upon them.

The CUI members had been slaughtered, as had the few teams that had yet to return, teleporting into a trap, and meeting the same fate as their compatriots.

The Chinese Government had tried to extract 'restitution' for the 'senseless slaughter of state assets'.

Quinn had then hacked their servers, sharing the details on who exactly the members of the Yàngbǎn were, originally.

The CUI promptly shut up.

"I'm honestly surprised you offered to help them fight Leviathan," I said, leaning back in my seat, having finished my burger.

"It woulda just been Replicants," Herb shrugged. "Marked to fuck and back, and if they got grabbed, it'd let give us some cause for bells."

"He means 'casus belli'," Quinn elucidated. "A reason for war. The last country that violated the Endbringer Truce was North Korea, which, as you know, no longer exists. However, they turned us down, and lost their fight spectacularly."

I raised an eyebrow. "I know the city was sunk, but how bad was it?"

"Brockton Bay, with a tenth of the capes, but a shit-ton more military," Herb offered.

Trying to imagine that, I frowned. "But short of a nuke, modern munitions don't do shit to Endbringers. Not really."

Quinn sighed, "And now we have video proof of that. There were cameras set up to capture 'the people's victory', and they attempted to destroy the records, but their Tinker-grade encryption was somewhat overhyped, and they spread regardless. I did have several days' worth of practice, courtesy of Æonic's precognitive, but even then I expected better. But that is what you get with a general solution applied to a specific problem."

Given that Quinn's Repair Tinker ability allowed him to intrinsically understand all Tinkertech, in order to repair it in the first place, he had access to the manual of anything he looked at, and, as such, he was probably being too harsh. Then again, it was the CUI, so I wasn't going to say anything in their defense.

So the CUI had gotten their shit kicked in, and there was much rejoicing.

And that was all.

Oh, we'd had a couple Villains try and come in and claim territory, but they'd either been kicked right the hell out, or killed outright, depending on their record. It was a. . . brutal response, but one that had worked, and, again, one that some people had complained about, but one no one had actually done anything over. The fact that, when someone did complain, Quinn had our PR people put out a report on the numerous crimes that were either capital in nature or would have resulted, by sheer dint of their number, in the equivalent of multiple life sentences, also helped.

"But," I argued, "What about those that were run through the system unfairly, like Bitch?"

"Then they shoulda come for a job, not to take shit," Herb had offered unrepentantly.

At which point I'd learned that a good portion of our new recruits were Villains, Rogues, and Rogues that had been deemed Villains when they'd resisted their unlawful imprisonment. Well, unlawful for any system that wasn't so unfair it'd make the authors of the Jim Crow laws go 'maybe that's a bit much?'

Word had spread that we'd take the tired, the maligned, the hunted masses yearning to breathe free, and they'd started to pour in. We had a higher Parahuman population than any other city on the planet, and our justice system had. . . hardened to match. In essence, it was a three-tiered system, but one that had worked. Normal people were at, ironically, the middle, not the bottom.

The guiding philosophy was that, as they were lesser in their capabilities, they were also held to a lesser legal standard, while parahumans were held to a higher one. However, that didn't mean that a normal person's testimony was automatically believed over a cape's, only that the standard of what constituted a crime was a bit more forgiving, at least in a physical sense. Normals could still commit white-collar crimes just as well, but if two Parahumans got into a scuffle, assault charges would require someone actually being injured, and minor bruises didn't count, while punching a random normal person would get you in trouble.

Then, at the top, was, well, me, and the other Penumbral Defenders. It was really a Noblesse Oblige situation where, because we regularly worked for the good of all without being paid for a good deal of it, or were just under paid in general as opposed to what we could charge, we were paid with extra societal protections instead, that would, in turn, allow us to better do our jobs.

On one hand, legally, if one of us went on a killing spree, it would technically not be illegal, but, by those very same proto-laws, we'd be answerable to the other 'elites', and, if the person couldn't justify their actions to the others' approval, they themselves could be made to pay restitution, imprisoned, or killed.

"Wait, we can fucking Master people?" I demanded, having heard that tidbit. "Fuck no!"

Quinn looked at me, "And if you need to command the populace to take cover, with a power like Robin's, in order to protect them?"

"Then I'll warn them and hope they listen!" I stated. "No, change the fucking laws!"

"And should I send someone to go arrest Glory Girl and Gallant as well?" the lawyer inquired. "She has been getting better, but still uses a Master ability in combat, and his ability is a Master power, though weaponized. You have the capacity to choose not to. They do not."

I glared at the man, but he was right. "Fine. Add a provision, then. No Master powers lasting longer than twenty-four hours, after which they need to, un-mastered, affirm they are alright with being mastered again, and then need to, I don't know, check in once a week, and it's monitored tightly. And if someone misses a check in, unless they've got a damn good reason, make the charge against the Master equivalent to rape," I stressed. "If we have to make a special exception due to some power weirdness, then fine, but they need to be investigated to fuck on back, and anyone who screws up the investigation will be charged as an accessory. I'm not going to fuck around on this, Quinn," I informed him.

"Told ya he wouldn't like it," snorted Herb, casting a glance my way. "Took it better than I thought, actually."

"He had a point about Vicky," I shrugged, shaking my head. "Anything else?"

Quinn indicated there wasn't, and he gestured to our empty dessert dishes. "Nothing that cannot wait until morning. I ask that you refill our stocks for Toybox as soon as possible, and I've set the locations of the places to do so to your email. If you're willing to lay in extra, several holding bays have been designated and cleared as we've been talking. We can meet again tomorrow morning, discuss more, and restart construction. Now, if you'll excuse me, I would like to make it home in time to put my daughters to bed."

I nodded to him, and he picked up his audio-scrambler, disappearing in a wave of static.

"You gonna leave the base before we meet tomorrow?" Herb asked, and I considered what I'd need to do. I wasn't tired in the slightest, but I had a feeling that there was far more to this situation than the cliff notes I'd just been given, and shook my head. "Good. See you there," he said, disappearing into static himself, with Overwatch's copied power.

I stood, and Taylor stood with me. "Do you mind if I come with you?" she asked, looking oddly nervous.

"Nah, but I'm just going to be growing a lot of rare earth metals. It'll probably be pretty boring," I warned.

"I don't mind," she quickly replied, and, as I looked at her incredulously, she pinged the Insect Network, showing that she was already doing hundreds of things across the city. "I can work anywhere."

Blinking, I shrugged. "Okay, in that case, let's go," I agreed, offering my hand, which she took, and I teleported us both to the Mark I'd left in my room, grabbed my laptop, and using it to track down exactly where we were going, walking out of my room once again, with Taylor trailing behind.