Angry Bird 8.3
February 24, 2011, Train Yards - Brockton Bay, 12:04 AM
As I switched to a body near the train yards, I used a feature which we generally didn't have much use for, I joined Lisa, Taylor and me into a group chat.
"Aveek: [Alert] Okay guys, Lisa, you have strategic command, please limit power usage to last at least thirty minutes. Taylor, you have tactical command as usual. I'm ready."
"Lisa: Acknowledged, thirty minutes means more than three hours for me, don't worry, I'll keep my power usage in sustainable bursts. [curious] Aveek, try if you can share zizproofing like you did for Aisha's power. Taylor pick a subject."
A line of glowing fireflies lit up, I flew along them across a couple of blocks till I reached a boy of about 12, squatting on a sidewalk with hands on his ears, face scrunched in terror. Observe told me he was a refugee kid too stubborn and too afraid to follow the fireflies to the nearest shelter. The moment he entered my range I scanned him and applied some mana with the general blocking of Ziz's analysed scanning and telekinesis from my records. The kid immediately sprang up and looked around with large eyes, then at his own body faintly glowing blue, the lack of the scream evident on his face. I added a general heal/clean/refresh on him to improve his mood further.
"Taylor: [Relieved] Looks like it works!. The nearest shelter is almost a mile away, Aveek, will you drop him there?"
"Lisa: [Determined] No need to waste time. Just absorb him, you can put him back after this mess is over."
I concurred, so I rescanned, biomassed and inventoried the kid, who still hadn't had the chance to register exactly what was happening. I created a list of people to bring back and added the scan to it.
Taylor led me around, absorbing the last of the stragglers in the area still not in shelters, there were seventeen, by the fourteenth I could see it descending, initially a pale dot in the night sky, by the sixteenth it was an almost fluorescent white fuzzy thing, by the last one I didn't have time for a good metaphor, because wagons, cars, and tons of scrap from the yards were rising up in the air. Almost lazily they hovered, slowly reaching her height, about 15 metres (or fifty feet) up. No sooner than the first car reached her height, it rotated suddenly as a crimson beam hit it and sent it careening. Multiple exotic looking beams, blasts and projectiles joined it, each hitting a piece of scrap, car or train wagon which were orbiting the feathered terror in weird patterns. I scanned all the beams and powers in effect, just because. Then I tried to scan the psycho bird itself. All my reserve mana drained in a zap.
Scan Failed!
Insufficient mana, dimensional compression detected.
Dammit, it'd take quite a few seconds to fill my tank back. I tried to Observe it instead:
Forethought Prime / Terror Drone 3 / Simurgh
Title: Usurped dreamer
Class: hacked alien
Level: ?
HP: 30M
SP: 4.9Q/5Q (parasite Shard Points)
STR: ?
VIT: ?
DEX: ?
INT: ?
WIS: 0
CHA: ?
Desc: This terror drone is a parasite-brainwashed alien being deployed in the theme of a telepathic angel.
Powers:
Telemetry - Can perceive at a quantum level of detail in a planetary scale.
Telekinesis - Can move things at distances of tens of kilometres - precision increases with proximity.
Extrapolation - Can predict future probabilities at great precision.
Status Effects: Reprogrammed (Parasite), Theme-bound (Shard), Motive-bound (Shard), Trojan Infected (Forethought Prime)
This… this was too much for me to unpack, I sent the Observe result to my team and waited for their reaction while flying to the nearest rooftop with a view.
"Taylor: [Awed] Aliens, they exist."
"Lisa: [Shocked, intrigued] But this one seems beyond first contact for now. Also, the capabilities mentioned here are beyond the wildest of any Simurgh estimates. The telepathy simply being an outcome of its powerset, Also, it's controlled by a shard? Which means a parahuman power? I'm not too sure. Finally, this means it can read the thoughts of everyone non-zizproofed here, so we'd have to be very careful about how much of this info we reveal."
"Taylor: Understood, by the way, I've revealed the zizproofing aspect, Maker, you're asked back at the staging area to demonstrate it."
As I was flying towards the PRT HQ, I heard a coruscating boom, and saw the first feather being knocked off the bird, and a green blur pass it by, Eidolon got first blood it seems.
I saw Legend swoop in tron-style at the landing spot of the HQ staging area as I neared it. He approached me mid-air from there, "Maker, I'll be your guinea pig for this test."
Huh, "Because of your reset ability?" I asked.
"Yes, just in case, and you've been performing admirably till now, so consider it a show of trust." Man he totally could and did turn a cautionary action into a favour, well, good for him. He was in my disclosed range anyway, so I just shot off a scan by habit, then applied the Anonymity Protocol profiles making him invisible to telemetry and nullifying telepathy, which I realized would prevent the drone from moving him using telekinesis too. The slight blue glow suited him way more than it did me. His eyebrows rose above his mask.
"The scream certainly stopped. And you're sure this stops any further psychological tampering? And how long does this last?"
I nodded, then quickly checked my answer with Lisa before speaking, "Very sure. The Simurgh can not directly perceive you or directly affect you as long as you're glowing blue. This will last 2 minutes after applying."
I didn't think his eyebrows could rise further, he said, "Wait wait, does that mean what I think it means? Let me check." He pointed a finger towards the white terror and fired a laser, I could barely tell from this far away, but it hit clean on the face of the bird bitch.
Legend let out a very uncharacteristic whoop, "I gave it a black eye for the first time! Maker, this is big, this changes things, how many folks can you apply it to, and what's the best way to keep reapplying this?"
I shrugged, "I recommend letting Dragon figure it out with Swarm and Minerva."
Dragon's voice came through Legend's armband, "We're on it, you can go, give us more data on how your attacks affect it while under the effect." Legend nodded and zipped away.
"Taylor: [hopeful] Can you write a macro that will automatically apply zizproofing to anyone in your range?"
I dropped into an ID and tried that, it was not a very complex macro, just had to also apply an ongoing scan all through my range which would detect any person and apply the zizproofing, and I guessed it'd be better to ask for forgiveness than permission and added a scan, clean and refresh with it too.
"Aveek: Yes, done."
"Taylor: Okey dokey, come out of the ID and follow my trail then."
I came out and there was a path of fireflies, I just flew following it around the city, passed buildings, rooftops with capes, and watched my mana fluctuate as the scans racked up. Often I saw other lines of fireflies that brought fliers into my range too. The path looped the buildings every two minutes, it was a mindless task for me, so I engaged in some chatter.
"Aveek: [curious] So what do you think of this Forethought Prime thingy?"
"Taylor: [shrug] It's the name of the dead alien of course."
"Aveek: [confused] Dead?"
"Taylor: [mildly exasperated] brainwashed is as good as dead. Right?"
"Lisa: [contemplative] I agree that it would mean so. But the status effect makes me think Forethought Prime is not completely dead."
"Aveek: [realisation] Ah, the infection."
"Taylor: [curious] you think that there's a chance its original mind is still there inside the trojan?"
"Lisa: [speculative] If I was aware an alien brain worm was going to mindhack me, I'd definitely try to leave something like that in my own mind if I was capable of it."
"Aveek: [hopeful] Well, see if we can find a way to leverage that? Just keep in mind that the enemy of our enemy might not be our friend."
"Lisa: I'm on it. [cautious] Anyway, looks like our terror drone is finally realising something is amiss. Its patterns are shifting…"
I was near enough to see that the feather duster was looking way more haggard than any previous footage I've seen, lots of scorch marks and exotic effects on its body, multiple wings were broken, and a lot of feathers were missing. I realised what Lisa meant, the debris zipping around it was getting more numerous and faster. I guess we needed to warn the fliers about going close to that maelstrom.
"Lisa: [Alarmed] Aveek hide!"
I tried escaping into an ID but felt something hitting me.
I woke up in a backup body a few kilometres away.
YOU DIED
Aaaand then you got better.
Respawn Protocols activated.
YOU'VE RESPAWNED!
You lose 1 level in each action skill.
You lose 1 point from each stat.
Level down: you're now level 26 again.
"Taylor: [Shocked] Ziz squished you!"
"Lisa: [Slightly worried] You've been made! Stay hidden until we figure things out."
Well damn.
