Diversification 19.8
"Alright, everyone ready?" I called out, using the IN to glance backwards, seeing that those who didn't say anything nodded through the eyes of the insects around us, and I reached out with my powers. My Dryad body, at the back, opened her arms and pulled open the wood enclosing the anomaly. The entire construction spun open like an enormous flower, the flattened wooden sections closing up to turn wide shielding into thin bars, revealing the remains of the apartment building, showing the structure to have fallen inwards, a floating black and red vortex inside.
While I couldn't benefit from Déjà's precognitive visions, I could read the reports, and so was ready when the tendrils of solidified crimson energy lashed out, ready to grab anyone that got too close. "Hmm, you got bigger," I noted, unable to See any Shard interference. When I'd closed it up, months ago, it'd been the size of a refrigerator, and I'd dodged its attack, which had ripped apart a couch and brought the shredded pieces of furniture into itself. Now it was probably twenty feet across, and its range had grown as well.
A tendril of Obsidian Oak shot up in front of me, catching the attack, and pinning the tendril down. I felt it start to pull apart the wood, but I grew it out, thickening it, and wrapping around the attack. The vortex pulsed, shooting out more tendrils, and my teammates behind me sprang into action, a spinning whirlpool forming in the air, trapping another arm, while harpies made of emerald light shot forward, trying to grab the others, though several of them were grabbed in turn, pulled towards the vortex, which seemed more like a gaping maw with every passing second.
The constructs dissipated before the reached the. . . creature's main body, but several more were able to grab tendrils, forcing them to the ground as Dryad continued to tie them down. I strode forward in my main body, pulling my sword, and when another tendril hit me, I struck out with the blade, wondering if the tentacle would be cut.
It wasn't, the blow merely slamming the grasping tendril of energy away, seeming to almost stun the limb, which was all I needed to catch it through Dryad, tying it down. Interested, I flicked a disk of Obsidian Oak outwards into the thing's core, feeling as it was ripped away to somewhere else, out of my range. Okay, don't punch it, I smiled to myself, as another tendril arced up over the creature's body, reaching for me, and, looking at it, I realized that the tendrils had all emerged from equidistant points around the creature, the team having taken the ones facing us down one by one.
Flying up, I grabbed the tendril, letting my reinforced costume and metal reinforced skeleton take the force of the blow, to make sure the crystal force field over my hand didn't pop. I could almost feel the tearing effect of the tendrils try and rend me, only to scrabble uselessly at either my shield, or my dimensional cloak. I flew up over the thing, pulling the tendril down and tossing another disk of dark wood at it, growing it out into black bonds that were rooted deeply into the ground.
More tendrils shot out for me, as I now stood on the creature's other side, and I punched one away with my left hand, letting a normal shield pop to enhance the blow, the ground by my feet rippling as a two pronged steel pitchfork shot upwards, which I broke off from the source and used to catch the other tendril.
It tried to curl around the tool to still get to me, but I moved to the side and slammed it down, metal and more black roots shooting up to hold it down, as a man whose hands were covered in ice grabbed another, bringing it to a stop, Dryad securing that one as well.
After less than a minute, we'd gotten the entire thing tied down, if a little awkwardly. "Call Æonic and see if it's good," I ordered the PD member who'd come up beside me, a woman with an armored costume covered in stylized eyes nodding, turning away to do just that.
I hooked in everyone else's methods of binding the creature to the underground root system of obsidian oak I'd grown, and the woman beside me pointed at a space just below the creature, the rubble underneath the vortex disappearing to reveal a hidden tendril, which shot out for her. Spending a shield on my foot, I leapt towards it at speed, intercepting the offending limb and tying it down as well.
"How 'bout now, Beholder?" I asked the woman, who contacted Déjà, to have her use her power on someone else to make sure that everything was taken care of. When I'd asked why they just didn't do so at the end of the day, or maybe once every hour, I'd been told 'We don't always have that long'.
Waiting a moment, Beholder nodded, holding a hand-out, pointed away, and the rubble that'd vanished fell to the ground off to the side, dumped out of the woman's Dimensional Storage power.
It was one of the ones that I'd made, the mutation being the eyes that she now had dotting her body, like Argus, though not to that level. I'd made them hardened, not nearly as vulnerable as normal eyes would be, and had copied that hardiness to her real eyes. Furthermore, when closed, the eyes were impossible to spot, something that had dropped the total amount she could hold at any given time, but I thought the ability to go 'off the clock' had been worth it.
Why so many eyes? You might ask. Well, the power's interface meant that she had to see what she claimed when she shifted it her pocket dimension, and in doing so the eye 'holding' it needed to be closed, releasing its cargo a half-second after the orb was opened, to better let the Host place what they'd grabbed. She'd then designed her costume to accommodate her mutation, as while half of the 'eyes' on her armor had been decorative, the other half had not been.
Her use of her power had also confirmed my suspicion, as one of the limitations on her power was that it couldn't be used on living things, and she'd grabbed the rubble without the tendril, when she could take pure-energy into her storage, opening her eye again to shoot someone with the same firebolt they'd just tried to hit her with.
Honestly, even with my limitation of only having two eyes, it was one of the powers I'd considered picking up. Given that insects didn't have eyes that could close, in that way, I couldn't pair it with Arthropod Control, and I was still getting used to the next few powers I'd already slotted in the last week.
Dusting off my hands, I looked around. "Alright team, someone tell the boys back home to reclassify this as a creature, not a static anomaly. Either way, this one's locked up tight. Time for the next." Several of the others groaned, and I laughed. "Come on now, we've only got seven left. It's just another day in the Defenders!"
AB
"What the hell?" Herb demanded, looking at me like I was insane. "Fuck no!"
I lifted an eyebrow. "Not really your decision to make," I observed, "but why?"
"Why? Why!?" the man demanded.
"Yes. Why," I prompted.
"Lee," Taylor said, holding a hand up to forestall Herb, who was angry for reasons I couldn't understand, and reasons he didn't seem willing to explain. "You're talking about tearing out pieces of yourself."
"Tearing?" I repeated, confused. "What are you talking about?"
"You're the one talkin' 'bout ripping shit out of your skull!" Herb yelled, and I blinked, understanding the disconnect.
"Okay, there'll be some surgery involved, but if I'm right about this, and I pretty sure I am, we're talking about a thirty second procedure on my end, once we iron out the kinks, and maybe a minute or two for the other person," I argued. "And with Panacea, we'd both be set and ready to go in five minutes, tops."
"Panacea!" Herb shouted, in realization, reaching out and making a pulling gesture. A moment later, Amelia popped into being.
"What have I said about doing that!?" the girl, in a t-shirt and shorts, yelled.
"He wants to rip open his skull!" the man shouted, pointing right at me.
The biokinetic turned my way. "What?" she asked, confused.
I rolled my eyes. "Herb's being dramatic," I told her, with a wave in the oddly emotional man's direction. "I'm pretty sure I've figured out a way to give people powers."
"Don't you already do that?" she asked, miming a sipping motion.
"Not his powers!" the other man bellowed.
"His. . ." Amelia trailed off, before suddenly scowling. "Are you insane?" she demanded.
"I know!" Herb agreed.
The biokinetic walked up to me, stabbing me in the chest with her finger. "Do you know how messed up you were? How long I spent trying to put you back together? More importantly, how much time I wasted?"
"Yeah, how much time. . ." the other man started to agree, trailing off.
Taylor turned a disbelieving gaze the healer's way. "That's what you're mad about?" she questioned incredulously. "Not how hurt he was?"
"I fixed that in an hour," Panacea shot back dismissively, still glaring at me. "But you made me cross my line, and it didn't do shit."
Yeah, that's enough of that, I thought, lifting an eyebrow, and using Mass Material Skating to jerk her back a foot, the girl suddenly waving her hands to try to regain her balance, only to discover that she hadn't lost it in the first place. "And I didn't ask you to do that," I remarked neutrally. "While I appreciate the concern you showed, you don't get to blame me for violating your own code."
"Excuse me?" she demanded.
"Oh hello there Brandish, I didn't see you there," I commented blandly, and she recoiled, as if struck. "If you don't like the comparison, don't assign guilt to me over things I didn't do," I almost sneered, shaking my head, and letting out a sigh, realizing I was letting my annoyance with the girls decisions in other areas get to me. Her quitting the Penumbral Defenders was her decision, not mine, and had nothing to do with this conversation. I turned to Taylor, the only one of the three before me that hadn't exploded on me, or tried to guilt-trip me, or abandoned me when it suited them. "What's wrong with my suggestion?" I asked her.
The girl cringed, hesitating, but rallied, and when she spoke, her voice was tight. "The last time that happened to you. You were gone. For months." Her voice was fearful, and worried, and almost sounded hurt.
"Because, because it was done badly," I explained. "They were, they were torn out of me last time. This time, it'll be different."
"But how do you know that?" she pressed, hands out. "I don't, I don't want to lose you again," she practically whispered, and I felt my anger leak out of me.
Sighing, I reached out and took her hands. "I'm. . . that's not going to happen this way," I told her. Letting go, I reached for a Crimson Oak disk from my pocket. I had Amy's newer materials for combat, as they were stronger, but also the originals for building purposes. With a thought, the surface of the wood rippled as I grew a metallic latticework.
"Okay, so, this isn't going to be accurate in the slightest," I told them, "Because I can only work in three dimensions here."
"Three dimensions?" Herb asked, and I nodded to him, now that the man had calmed down and started acting his age.
I took a half-step out, moving over to look at what I was modelling. The broad structures were easier to remember, if terribly simplified, especially as small as I had to make them, but it was still doable. Frowning, I manifested a sliver of blood red star to melt one section, destroying it, and regrowing it with the right twist, as I'd represented the different dimensionality in a different way lower down the construct.
"Yeah, three dimensions. Shards, in case you haven't realized, are fucking complicated," I remarked with a smile. "It's like this, you can't just go up, or forward, or right, but i̧͘n̛͡, and ǫv͢èr, and c͡l̨͟o͟ck̵̢wi̕s̴̸̕e͟, and b̴͜͟͝l̸̛ù̴̵̕͜é̴͢͞, and s̶̢̢͞͠h̸̀͢a͠r̸̢̛̛p̶̡̢̀, and h̷̡͖̙̬ͧͧ͊̚͟o͒̑͂̍̈́̔҉̸̰̥͎̱̙̟̲̣ṱ̷̠̹͚̰̒̈́ͫ͗͛, also b̸̴̷̺͍̭͈̪̖̲̜̰̜̙̫̯̫̼̙ͯ͛ͪ̉̄ͨͮ̿̓ͅr̡̨̠͙̦̜͕͇̗̦̝̝͚̩͖̥ͦ̈́̈́̉̐͊ͣͦ̎͒͝ǐ̛̛ͫͧ̓͝͏̼̖͕͕̮͇̘̱͟g̸̶̼͚̼͎̪̻͖̪̝͉̼̣̣̹̪̝͚͉ͮ̀̽͒̅̔̆̎ͣ̒̑̏͗̇́͘ͅh̡̛̝͓̻̝̺̝̙̜̗̠̤͈̺̠͇̬͆̌͋̋ͬ̊̈̍̍̾̒̍̎̉͛̍̇́̕̕tͫ̒͗͆͛ͬͯ̒̓͗ͦͫ҉̴̛̞̬̮̥͕̙̤̙͖͉̖͙̮̹̳̝͉͎͡, and some things that I'm still figuring out." I started adding more sections, made of more metals, to represent different phase-states and directionality, getting lost in the artistry for several long moments.
At last, it was done, and I held the roughly football-sized spire, which shone with complex patterns in a dozen different metals. Letting go of the bit of myself that floated over the Sea of Flame, I blinked away the headache that I'd started to get.
"Abaddon," Herb said quietly, all of us looking at him. "When I saw Abaddon, the second time. That's. . . that's one of his scales."
"Scion's, actually, but yeah," I agreed easily. "What did you think an Entity's scales were?"
"Then this. . ." Taylor trailed off, looking over the design.
"It's a Shard. Your Shard, actually," I told her. "Or, at least, my copy of your Shard." I let out a deep breath, pulling the metal tendrils under my skin out, forming a gauntlet, and moved my Shields into place. "And this is what Bonesaw did."
Lashing out, I grabbed the middle, and popped a shield to give me the strength to twist and pull, metal shattering, wires pulling, and a cacophony of screeching metal making everyone cover their ears as I yanked the top two thirds off, leaving the tapered egg a shattered, broken thing, and I froze staring at it. While it was a pale imitation, memories rose up, of pain, of suffering, of agon-
"Lee!" Taylor said, and I realized her hand was on mine, the one not holding the remains of the shard. Shaking my head clear, I continued where I left off. "Right, so this," I said, holding up the ruined power, which was easier to focus on. The damage wasn't the same, but they didn't really know enough to spot that I'd torn it off in a different way than what actually had happened.
"This is what Bonesaw stuck in other people. A lot of the interface," I said, putting down the ruined Shard-sculpture to tap the wrecked base, not looking at it. "Didn't come with, so it only works with someone who already powers, since it-"
"Pairs with the Gemma," Herb finished, and I looked at him, surprised. He shrugged. "For an hour I had Bone-bitch's powers. It's how I helped put you together, at first. I knew what she did."
Somehow, I understand the underlying mechanism of what he was referring to. "Right, because Tinker powers update their Shards with every new discovery they make. Now," I steeled myself looking at the wreckage I'd left behind. "Every golden thread would be bleeding energy, life, and what I did was. . ." I trailed off, focusing on it, growing the metal out to tie up the free-standing metal bits, smoothing out some of the jagged parts, and otherwise stemming the bleeding. "Only, you know, several degrees of magnitude more complicated."
Taking out another disk, it only took a few seconds to regrow my representation of Arthropod Control. "What I want to do is more like this." Focusing on the key input and output routes, I capped them, extending outwards, pulling back the metal covering my right hand and gently lifting upwards, until the entire thing popped free, leaving a base latticework behind. I offered it to Taylor, who hesitantly took it, the girl a little surprised by the weight but holding it to her chest to make sure she didn't drop it. "The power's still slotted, and it should regrow like that one is." I paused a second to grow the broken, but fixed, power a little to simulate the recovery I'd seen before I'd returned. "And might even do so faster, since I'm not bleeding out energy anymore, but it's not the same in the slightest."
"And once it's out? What then?" Amelia demanded, arms folded.
"Take it out of my brain, put it in someone else's," I responded easily, shrugging. "Doesn't really matter where, to be honest, the insertion protocols are already in place and will kick in. Put the skulls back together, heal 'em up, and enjoy your brand-new power. I'll want to calibrate it a little, but that's it."
"That's it," Herb echoed, and I nodded. "That's. . . don't ya get how fuckin' crazy that sounds?"
"Obviously not," I replied, rolling my eyes. "And other than insisting that 'it is', you've not actually said what the problem is."
Panacea scowled, "And if I don't help you?"
I shrugged again. "Then I'll do it myself?" I held up a hand, extending a few metal tendrils from my fingertips, reforming them into scalpels. "It's really not that hard. It'll take me a little longer to heal, since I can't use my copy of your power on myself, but that's it."
The healer's expression got even uglier, so I ignored her, looking to the other two. I had expected the girl to leave the PD, having gotten what she'd wanted from me, and feeling no loyalty in return, as shown by the fact that I'd barely seen her before everything had happened, and not seen her once of her own volition afterwards, but part of me had still hoped she'd stay.
She hadn't, choosing to only be a contractor, and I'd still protect her, like I would the others that worked for me, but I also no longer cared about her opinion.
"What powers?" Taylor asked, and I focused on her. "I know you. What powers were you going to give me?"
"You can't give her more than two," Herb warned. "Anymore would be bad."
I smiled, glad that the other man finally had an objection that made sense. "I know. Framework collapse would be bad, and standard Shard configurations can only handle three distinct formations."
Turning to Taylor, I answered similarly. "M̵e̷t̴a̸l̷ ̵C̴r̵e̶a̴t̸i̵o̵n̸, and T̶r̵e̷e̵ ̸G̷r̸o̶w̸t̶h̸ ̴a̵n̶d̸ ̵C̴o̵n̷t̵r̷o̷l̵, so you could take over as 'Dryad' while I'm busy." Or if I'm no longer able to.
"That's. . . That's why you were explaining to me how the power worked!" the girl realized, eyes narrowing, "How long have you been planning this?"
I shrugged, "'Bout a week."
"Don't start with her," Herb ordered, and I turned a questioning look his way. Thankfully, he knew that he could not command me, and explained. "Ya haven't done this before. Try it with something that's not as important. On someone that's not as important."
"That isn't right," Taylor argued. "I'm not more important than anyone else."
""You are,"" Herb and I spoke at once, and he nodded to me. "It is, Taylor," I continued. "Because of you are, simple as that. I can count the number of people I can truly trust on one hand, and you're one of them." I turned to Herb. "So who do you have in mind? And if it's one of your new hires, I'm going to need to talk with them. Your basic workup won't be enough to trust them enough to read them into the fact that I can grant extra powers."
The man grinned, though it wasn't exactly a happy one, "Don't worry. I've got someone in mind."