Termination 21.7

Motioning for the others to follow, I lifted off and into the air, Taylor's armored puppet deploying its wings and coming up behind me instantly, the other two girls taking a little longer, Dragon trying to silently ask Grace if she'd picked up anything from the teleport through comms, and my cousin, with just a touch of worry, stating that she hadn't.

"If you're worried about the teleportation grid, don't worry," I stated, as if I was merely guessing. "It's safe, just the kind of thing we can't scale up," I reassured them, "yet. Now come on, if you've been hearing nothing but the PRT's propaganda, you probably think this place is some power-feudalistic hellhole, when nothing could be further from the truth."

They both activated their thrusters, and I skimmed Dragon's compound Shard for the schematics, only to find it turning its metaphorical nose up at my offer of Essence. Huh, that's odd, I thought, but then again, as one of Abaddon's, it was already pretty full up, able to go at full blast for a half a millennia without issue, so it was probably that. The only other Abaddon Shards I could've worked with were Charlie's and Herberts, and I wouldn't go so far as to try and influence them. It was easy enough to split my focus and open up the file Quinn had written to get the information I wanted, Technopathy letting him dump the contents directly from his head into the document. The man had started trying his hand at making art using that method, and it made for interesting pieces, to say the least.

Both girls used the same thruster systems, allowing for fine-point control, able to follow along as I drifted above the city-streets, indicating various buildings and their purposes. It was all technically publicly available information, but the structures were still noteworthy, each one appearing to be both part of the cohesive pattern of the neighborhood it belonged to, following the general aesthetics of the city as a whole, while also containing individualized details that made each building a minor work of art itself, Accord's plan an absolute masterpiece.

Pity that the only kind of piece the man had been was a piece of shit.

"Are, are those angels?" Grace demanded, interrupting my explanation of how the ventilation systems made it so we could have restaurants as part of buildings without making several floors in either direction smell of food, pointing as we passed an intersection, and a two-foot tall, spindly white humanoid creature with a golden helm and pristine wings sitting on the stoplight nodded to us.

"I mean, theologically speaking, no," I smiled, enjoying her reaction. "They're Minions I've created, helpers for New Brockton Bay." The original power had been Imp Creation, but I'd spent a couple days, really closer to two weeks, fucking around with it while it hung high above in my Constellation. The base power had been immutable, it had to be a Minion-creating Master power, the base mechanics already set, and trying to push them too far cause them to snap back the second I let go, like a half-undone lock for my restricted abilities.

However, other parts, like their physical appearance, were less important.

It was as if the power had to be an automobile, and a car at that, but whether or not it was a sedan, a hatchback, an SUV, or a minivan was something it could compromise on. They had to be intelligent, but their disposition was shifted from 'malicious tricksters specializing in sabotage' to 'friendly guardians specializing in support'. Flame-based abilities were shifted to hard-light, Brandish's Hard Light Weaponry slotted into an open slot and able to be used as a base, tweaking and mixing them before I, with Panacea's annoyed support, and once that Shard had 'set' in my own framework, gifted Victoria her now-dead mother's power, along with a good deal of Essence to help speed its growth.

It was a bit darkly amusing, as everyone thought the woman had had the equivalent of a temper-tantrum and left, the idiotic bitch having had the audacity to try and make Glory Girl choose between her mother and her sister, enraged when the girl didn't instant choose the clearly unhinged woman, and had kicked the Brute/Master out of her house. Mick had even managed to grab her after she'd had a knock down, drag out fight with her no-longer depressed husband, unable to take the fact that he now had a spine and blaming me for that too, stating that she didn't need him and storming off.

And, in a few short weeks, her daughter was using her power better than she had her entire life.

Back on topic, more tweaks were made, shifting the mental connection to reflect that of Arthropod Control, though, as they had a will of their own, they could resist direct puppetry. Mind you, with the changes I'd made to their pre-generated mental patterns, they probably wouldn't, but they could. So, after a fortnight of on and off-tweaking, an absolute boatload of Essence, and with the new Shard configuration holding steady, I'd Slotted it, the barely Minor Shard feeling. . . oddly comfortable in ways it was hard to truly express.

Also, once Slotted, I found I couldn't shift it any longer, so I was very appreciative of Taylor's advice to, "Take your time. We're in no hurry."

So I'd started making them, finding I could dump bits of Essence into each manifestation, like they were mini-Shards, but while those crystals drank down the condensed energy greedily, each Minion created through Choir Creation only accepted a single sip, and even then seemed to nurse it, savoring it.

Both girls' suits stiffened when this one leapt down from its station, heading for an older woman who was struggling with a few bags, gently taking them while she opened the door of her car, and used pure-white energy constructs to arrange them inside for her, accepting her thanks with a nod and returning to its perch.

"They. . . put things away?" Grace asked, confused.

"They help," I corrected. "They're smart enough to figure that out, and kick it up the chain if they're unsure."

"Up the chain?" she questioned.

With a flex of will, I pinged the nearest 'manager', a winged creature that leapt down from a nearby skyscraper, coming to hover nearby, this one four-foot tall, with more impressive golden gear and jet-black wings, something that the power had started manifesting only a couple weeks ago. Well, the Shard called it an 'Arch', and the normal ones 'Guardians', but someone had started calling them 'Reverse-Karens' and it had stuck.

And by someone I mean it was Herbert.

"How may I help?" it asked, tone light and almost slithery. We had an issue where non-hosts couldn't hear them, just singing, but they could understand the Shardless just fine, and they were expressive enough with their body-language that it usually all worked out.

"Just showing my Cousin and her friend around. Keep up the good work!" I smiled, giving it a thumbs up.

It nodded, bowing to Grace, then Dragon, stating, "Greetings, children of Abaddon," and then flew back up, like a more aesthetically pleasing gargoyle.

"Huh, didn't know they could identify people by their Shards," I remarked. I had tried to include a little bit of my Power Sight, in addition to enhancing their physiology, but since it was an inherent power of mine instead of a copied one it was harder to track down, and trying to give them my Immunity hadn't worked at all. I'd thought I'd failed completely, as they couldn't identify people's powers, but apparently they had enough to see the base shape of someone's Shard. Neat!

"Anyways, they're around and help, but honestly they're not that big a deal," I shrugged, as we continued.

"What about that?" my cousin demanded, as we turned a corner, and one building was a solid metal block. One covered in wing designs, but otherwise a squat megalith amongst other buildings.

Grimacing, I told her "Trapped Anomaly. Shard expressions that, after Leviathan's attack, and Abaddon's appearance, became self-sustaining past the deaths of their Hosts. That one cuts apart anything that enters its sphere of influence. Well, it tries," I corrected, tapping my own chest for emphasis. "But for most things that's enough. There's a research station inside, and we've got a group that's looking into them, but there's a lot, and this one's pretty static."

"Some aren't?" Dragon questioned, concern in her tone.

"Well, there's the house that tries to eat people, the ghost wolf pack, the teleporting shop's fine except it pretty messily kills shoplifters, THE CUBE, the King-In-Yellow Musk Creepers, and about half a dozen portals to other dimensions."

"What was the fourth one?" the incarnated AI questioned.

Grace, meanwhile, demanded, "You have a house that eats people!?"

"It tries to eat people," I countered. "We've got a screen up, but it occasional tries to send out a. . . 'friendly neighbor', really a Strangered Mastering minion, to try and get people to go inside, but we just kill it as soon as it shows up every couple weeks or so, and we've literally welded the doors shut so it's not like it can actually succeed anyways. And the shop? Not really sure what it is, but it has products pulled from different dimensions. The 'owner', really a Minion, let us put up warning signs, and station a Guardian outside, so it's really just kind of a Darwinian Fitness check at this point."

Dragon shook her head, "No, the thing after that."

"The King-In-Yellow Musk Creepers? Yeah, that one's a little nasty," I sighed. "Someone gave a Shard access to Lovecraft and we've been getting things like that. It's containable, but its spores Master people over time, and then start to change them. Panacea and I can both reverse the effect, if it's caught in time, but there's something about it that makes it come back, even after we atomized the damn things. The fact that they're pretty much fanged sunflowers doesn't help either. Reacts to Elder Sign, which we've checked, isn't actually anything special, but thematic powers are thematic, I guess," I shrugged.

"No, the. . . you just kind of hissed, but it. . ." the Tinker tried to explain. "I know what you meant, but I can't. . ."

"It's Shardspeak," Taylor stated, hovering over to me and lightly smacking me in the arm, as I'd been trying not to use it, but it'd been reflexive. "It's clearer, but un-Triggered people can't understand it."

"My bad," I smiled awkwardly. "Yeah, that thing's, again, currently indestructible, but of the 'we can't scratch it' type instead of just not staying gone. It's also a memetic hazard, and using its name normally carries the effect. Creates obsession with it, until you touch it, and then. . . something happens, but we've had to put down everyone that has. It fades with lack of exposure, thank goodness, and Hosts have an innate resistance as well. Referring to it obliquely, or really directly, is fine, but using the name it gives you is, itself, a vector. Problem is the cage we built over it started to become the new CUBE, but that part isn't indestructible, so we've worked out a schedule for replacing the shell to keep it contained, but it's a bit of a pain in the ass. But, seriously, that stuff's not terribly interesting. We've got people looking into it, and managed to catch the outbreaks before they happened because of Chuck's precog, or, if it would get really bad, Dad sends a message."

"But, wait, that's not his power. Did you give him another one too?" Grace questioned, indicating that I'd apparently gone over everyone else's builds when she picked hers. Part of me wondered what else I'd said.

Shaking my head, I explained, "No, he can pick an outcome and have it happen, right?" She nodded. "So he picks an outcome where he's warned people of things, so he does. It has to be something that he would've found about over the course of the day, so it's a little recursive, but he's the reason we've gotten early warnings about every Endbringer attack."

"The PRT says it was one of their Thinkers," Dragon pointed out.

"And we let them, but no, it was us," I replied. "We told Cauldron, which meant telling chief director Costa-Brown."

Taylor added, "But after what they've been pulling, we're just going to tell people ourselves next time."

Waving a hand as we continued to drift down across the city, I tried to move the conversation along, "But that's neither here nor there. Yeah, there's some stuff that's a little more dangerous, but it's the minority. We've done a lot here, using Shards to spin up entirely new industries. Mind you, some of it has made some of our streams of income dependent upon a single person each," I allowed, "But we're working on that. After all, while no two Shards are the exact same, if they accomplish the same thing in the end then the how matters a good deal less."

And, with my ability to Path Vials, our 'luck' in finding such redundant powers was quite good.

"We've also got a monorail system that's actually surprisingly efficient," I said, as we turned the corner and spotted it, the track sitting fifty feet up, winding through the streets with stations placed for maximum efficiency. "Turns out when you can create rare-earth metals ex nihilo, green energy's surprisingly affordable. Double so when you can use powers to just make the energy in the first place."

"But, wouldn't that privilege people with powers," Grace questioned. "I heard they have different laws."

Her statement wasn't accusatory, for once, and she seemed to truly be understanding that she'd been lied to about us.

". . . Having powers makes you privileged, by definition, because you have powers," I replied slowly, wondering how she hadn't seen that. "Denying that fact seems kind of foolish. And yeah, being a Host does give a person additional societal power pretty much everywhere except the CUI, we've just codified it in New Avalon, but it also comes with stricter restrictions here. Assault of a Shardless by a Host is much more punished that it would be in Bet-America right now, though Hosts going at it, as long as they don't cause, or at least pay for, damages is more accepted. Conflict Drive and all, just don't be stupid about it."

"With you as their king," Dragon noted.

Again, I shrugged. "Everyone I've tried to work with has tried to betray or kill me, some both, and the others have decided to follow me instead." I smiled slightly, "Did you know, when I first came here, I would've been willing to work with Kaiser and Skidmark, if they'd learned to work legitimately? I would've worked with the PRT, and New Wave, and would've been perfectly content to just be another organization, like the Guild is. But experience has shown me I can't, and that everyone that was supposed to do their jobs, their duty, refused to, unless they were made to, and then they hated me for it. The kind of support you receive, Dragon, on a regular basis, has forever been denied to me, my people and I shot in the back by the very 'heroes' that they'd just been trying to help, sometimes literally. Is it any wonder I eventually decided to do it all myself?"

"Not the ABB?" my cousin questioned.

"Some Things Cannot Be Forgiven!" Taylor spat out, the very city around us buzzing for a single moment.

"But Bakuda-" Grace started to argue, and I reached out with my power, silencing her before she said something really stupid.

"Khione, the Merchants were druggies, and known for getting people hooked. We can fix the damage done and the physiological side of addiction. It's not that hard," I detailed. "The E88, while, yes, Neo-Nazis, specialized in violence, but in a way that was generally more societally acceptable. There's a reason they were considered the 'nice' gang. Their fight clubs were mostly consensual, their dog-fighting was messed up but not that bad, and other than that it was mostly protection rackets, some mugging for those that didn't pay, and things that wouldn't be out of place in a mafia movie. One of those that's sympathetic to the mob," I specified. "Now, Grace, you've seen the same precog account I have. What were the Asian Bad Boyz known for?"

There was a moment of silence, as we drifted over to one of our lumber-operations.

". . . oh," was the entirety of my cousin's response, small and almost meek.

"Yes, 'oh'," Taylor stated flatly. "I've looked into you, Khione. You fight villains. You don't save kids. Judge us when you've broken up a sex slave ring or three, and seen what other people do."

"So, like I keep saying, can we please talk about the good things here?" I prodded, a little annoyed, and this time my cousin nodded, looking over to the rows of vibrant green, dark blue, and ash-gray trees, the last had iridescent surfaces that caught the light and caused the normal-seeming wood to shimmer subtly with a hundred colors. "Like this! Our main operation up in the northern part of the city handles the distinctive obsidian and ruby lumber that you've probably seen exported, but Panacea, G-Gnome, and a team from Arachne Assemblages have been tinkering around with some other variants for Midgar, Balder's Gate, and Edoras respectively," I grinned, the reactions, if subdued, from my two visitors, showed they were clearly impressed, and I was happy to show off what my people had come up with to my family.

"Could I have a few samples?" the AI requested. "And are you not worried about invasive species issues?"

"These things do not grow easily, not naturally," I reassured her. "And they don't pollinate, so there's no cross-contamination issues either. And sure, though I think you'll be interested in our room-temperature superconductors."

Dragon's suit jerked in the air, the woman spinning about to stare at me. "Your what?"

"Power created, of course, but they're not Tinkertech themselves, so they don't come with those issues. We'll see those on the way. So," I prodded, though gently this time, "you guys want to argue about stuff you don't understand, you want to argue about stuff you don't have all the information on, or you want me to show you around, like I offered."

"I said I was sorry," Grace shot back defensively.

"No. You didn't," Taylor pointed out.

"Sorry," my cousin told the girl, turning back to me. "Please show us around?"

"With pleasure," I replied.

AB

Hours later, we were wrapping things up, and Grace had finally started acting like I remembered her being from before I'd come to Earth Bet. More than that, it just felt. . . nice, to have everything I'd done appreciated by someone from my family. My father refused to talk to me, my brother was. . . my brother, Herbert just kind of existed, and, if I was being honest, I knew my mother's reaction would be something along the lines of 'That's nice, but why haven't you done more?'

To have Grace be honestly impressed?

It. . . helped.

And seeing her face when we stopped at the 'Firenado Mongolian Grill', built around the flaming tornado Anomaly that we'd pinned down the specifics of, was hilarious. The lowest level of that building was a research station, and if something went wrong we'd built in shields that'd snap shut, but it was one of our more famous locations, and really encompassed the spirit of New Brockton Bay, and our taming of the several hundred Anomalies that had been left behind after Leviathan's attack.

Finally, they were heading out, not wanting to stay the night, Dragon and Grace both saying they had a lot to think about and look into. One of Dragon's transports had come in, and submitted to our scans without an issue, where it was now being loaded with crates full of all the samples, goods, and so on I was giving the two girls. Why they didn't take that transport here was a good question, the answer of which turned out to be 'We thought the suits were less threatening.'

Which, if, for instance, Grace's suit wasn't what she'd taken with her to fight Behemoth, might be a good point, but, admittedly, an astonishingly large percent of people wouldn't make the connection. The fact that, the couple of times I'd switched to 'Nephilim' to handle particularly pernicious Villains attacking New Avalon, they hadn't promptly shit themselves and surrendered, given that my fight with Echidna had been broadcast globally, was a testament to that fact.

"I'm sorry I couldn't meet you in person," Grace commented to Taylor with a smile, her helmet off as the last box was being loaded.

"Meet the admitted Master in person? Hard pass," my teammate declared. "I'm not even in New Brockton Bay."

A flash of anger crossed my cousin's face, my partner having not thawed to her presence at all, and, while Taylor was being a little rude, Grace didn't have much room to complain, given how she'd acted before she'd realized she was in the wrong. "I. . . I understand," the power-copying girl admitted, hanging her head a little. "Maybe later."

"Much," Lady Bug agreed.

"It was good meeting you both," Dragon told us, breaking the awkward silence that spread. "And I do apologize, Vejovis. I didn't realize some of my information sources were compromised. Even after Khione revealed Cauldron's existence."

Waving away the apology, I told her, "People make mistakes. You didn't do anything to hurt us, you just didn't help us, which we're kind of used to, unfortunately. I'm looking forward to working with the Guild in the future. If you need help, don't hesitate to ask. We might say no, but nothing is lost in you doing so."

We both watched their ship leave, Taylor silently communicating, ~Check yourself for bugs.~

~Can't you already tell?~ I teased, in a good mood, but still Strode us to a sensor room, just in case. When the scan came back clean, I shot my teammate's puppet an 'I told you so' look, and she had it sigh.

"Thanks. Sorry. It's. . ." she trailed off, and I Strode back to my office, where Taylor was waiting, the girl having made sure to stay well out of Grace's range as we moved, with me directing our visitors to help her maintain that distance.

The girl was frowning, deep in thought, and I moved to my desk, seeing a message forwarded to me, marked high priority from Quinn, and coming from. . . the Pope? WTF? Before I could read it though, my partner slowly stated, "Your Cousin? She's creepy. Like Emma was, after she'd made friends with Sophia. When I didn't know she wasn't mine anymore. We're not friends. But she acted like we were. And the way she was treating you. . . she kept telling me stories, while you were out. About before you came here. Told me you used to be fat, like that matters. Did you really wear an eight-foot scarf to school for a year?"

I laughed, remembering it. "That thing? It was only a few months every winter, and it was closer to eleven feet long. Wore the damn thing like I was a ninja, or the fourth Doctor. I think it looked rather cool, to be honest." With a thought, I shifted my clothing to include it, a little bit of Aerokinesis making it flutter in the breeze.

". . . how were you not beat up constantly?" she asked, incredulous.

"Because while I was fat, I was also muscular. Lineman, remember?" I smiled. "I also regularly got into the middle of other fights when they started to go bad. Kept anyone from getting too hurt. Read my high-school's rules, and only strikes were considered 'fighting', so I used holds and throws to break them up without getting into trouble. It was always before math class too," I mused. "Either way, when you're the guy who regularly gets in and man-handles other fighters easily, it stops being nerdy and starts being cool."

". . . Sure. And you weren't stabbed? Or shot?"

"Taylor, my school wasn't Winslow, it was a regional high school in the suburbs," I replied. "Only had a knife pulled once, and the idiot had no idea how to use it, so I stripped him of it and held him down until someone got the school resource officer, and that kid was suspended, then expelled, because it wasn't the first time he'd pulled shit like that."

The girl sighed, "Right. You didn't even have a single gang in your town, didn't you?"

"Earth Tav isn't Eath Bet," I smiled. "The level of violence which is the norm here you just didn't see back there, and remember, Donald Trump was president, instead of just a businessman who was killed by a Villain, because back there Shards don't exist. It was a very different place."

"Right," Taylor told herself, shaking her head. "Maybe that's why she seems. . . It's just. . . different. You know?"

Giving the girl a flat look, but unable to hide my amusement, I replied, speaking True, "I'm the power-king of several city-states in something that only resembles my America, and there's a good chance that I'm biologically immortal, as is anyone I care about through my healing. I think I know what you mean by 'different'."

That got me rolled eyes and a paper thrown in my general direction, which I deflected into the trash. "Fine. But your cousin. . . why was she acting like we were friends?"

"That one's easier," I replied, pulling back on my voice, needing to keep in the habit. "There's this thing called a 'parasocial relationship', where one side feels like a friend," I stated, motioning out the window, "while the other side has no idea who the other person is. Happens with media use, with celebrities and the like, but especially for anyone makes videos where they 'speak' to the viewer. In your case. . ."

It took her a moment, but she groaned. "She read that book, so she knows me, but I don't know her. That's so messed up. Wait, you didn't act like that, and neither did Herb! You were, well, a lot, and really over the top. Like, by a lot. But you both wanted to be my friend. You didn't act like we already were. And like I was doing something wrong by not going along with it."

"Grace's younger," I started to say, getting a flat look in return. "I know, 'she's older than you',' I added, guessing her words and getting a nod of agreement telling me I was correct, "but she's less. . . weirdly thoughtful than I am, I guess? You know I'm weird, Taylor. And you know Herbert was just copying me."

"That. That makes sense," my teammate admitted. "But weird isn't bad. And I still don't like her."

"And you're allowed to," I reassured her. "But Grace's a good person, just one who can get distracted and misled. You'll see. Even if she decides not to join the PD, her being with the Guild, especially with Dragon no longer bound in AI chains, it will be a good thing. Now, what's this about the Pope emailing me?" I questioned, bringing up the message in question to my main monitor.

Taylor just blinked, nonplussed. "Wait, the who?"