Things became bad in Brockton Bay after Chakravartin and his gang, New Genesis, showed up.
Naming himself after the ancient Indian term for the ideal universal ruler, he was anything but his namesake. Cruel, ruthless and driven, he possessed the Parahuman power to create a dimensional bubble, one large enough to swallow Brockton Bay whole. When he did so, he banished and locked out anyone whom he did not want in the city. The PRT, the Protectorate, New Wave, the Empire 88, the ABB and the Merchants were all cast out, leaving only the Wards and the Brockton Bay Police Department to hide and presumably fight a guerrilla war against New Genesis.
It is unknown why he allowed the Wards and Police to remain, but a few Thinkers suspect it was conceit. He does not perceive Shadow Stalker, Gallant, Vista, Aegis, Clockblocker, Kid Win, Browbeat or the ordinary human members of the BBPD as threats. At this time, we can only hope that his opinion is wrong.
New Genesis has six members, not including Chakravartin (Shaker 10+) himself, including; Brahmastra (Mover/Blaster 7), Vritra (Changer 8, Blaster 3), Nāga (Master 6 [Serpents], Brute 4), Arjuna (Breaker 6, Blaster 4), Preta (Shaker 5, Master 4) and Manuṣya (Tinker 3 [Biotinker], Thinker 6).
As Dragon, assisted by Armsmaster and as many Tinkers as the Protectorate can spare, hurry to build some way of penetrating the dimensional bubble around the Bay, it can only be hoped that progress is made soon, for the sake of those still locked in the Dimensional Bubble.
-Report on Incident 334562-4 (AKA, the Brockton Bay Bubble)
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Taylor shivered as the wind (how was there still wind inside an impregnable bubble?) blew over her resting place. She had lost everything when Chakravartin and New Genesis had moved in…her house, her possessions…her father.
Her eyes burned as she remembered Vritra, a Changer who turned into some kind of rocky serpent the size of an eighteen wheeler, blasting her childhood home to smithereens with a powerful beam of some sort, killing her Dad, who had been inside it.
The only reason Taylor herself was still alive was because of her Parahuman power, one she had gained not a month before New Genesis showed up. It was, in her opinion, not a very good power. Certainly not good enough to fight New Genesis.
She could turn into air. As in, her entire body became all but immune to physical impacts. That was what had saved her from the destruction of her house; Vritra's lasers seemed to pass right through her harmlessly, as had bits of debris. Whoop-de-fucking-do. She was immune to being hit, but she couldn't attack.
Reflexively, she glared up at what had once been the PRT building, now known as the Varunapasha. It was decorated with gold and other precious metals looted from homes and businesses and had seven towers, one for each member of New Genesis. She didn't know why these bastards had come to her city, but she hated it that they had.
She stiffened as she heard the sound of hissing snakes that heralded the coming of the snake user, Nāga, a spindly little man who could control all snakes within his range, as well as pick up a car to throw it at a building as easily as he might pick up a pencil.
Standing up, Taylor hurried away from where she heard the snakes coming from. She had heard rumours from scattered groups of survivors that Nāga and Preta were gathering people for some reason…people who were never seen again after they vanished. Preta had the ability to drain energy from people within a certain distance of himself. Not to the point of killing them, but to the point of being unable to move and feeling oh so hungry.
Scuttling into the ruins of the building she had been sitting against, Taylor made her way to the remains of the second floor and peered out of the window. Striding down the street was Nāga, wearing only a loincloth and sandals, the sun (again, how was the sun getting into a sealed dimension?) gleaming off his bald head. He was at least fifty, possibly older, and wore a white domino mask.
Wrapped around him and slithering at his feet were an unknown number of snakes. All different types of snakes, modified by Manuṣya to not be cold blooded, slithered in his wake like a living carpet on the road. There were so many that she couldn't see the road's surface.
With a gulp, Taylor turned into her air form. She had evaded him before by slipping into this form as she generated no heat or scent as air, making it impossible to track her using snakes as they used scent and infrared vision to track prey. Plus, as she floated as air, the snakes couldn't use vibrations in the ground to track her either.
"The one who evades us has fled once again." Nāga reported into a radio he removed from the mouth of one of the snakes.
"Lord Chakravakam grows impatient with this one evading us, Nāga." Preta's voice replied sharply, "I have no desire for him to cast us into Naraka before it is our time, so get your overgrown worms to find the one who evades us!"
Judging by the rise of hissing from said oversized worms, Nāga didn't like that at all.
"The fault is not that of my pets and I!" he snapped back, "Whoever this Parahuman is, he or she has all the presence of a Bhūta! I can only find traces of whoever it is! You have had as little success as I, so do not cast the blame solely on me!"
"I only have my own two eyes and ears; you have those of your serpents." Preta replied smugly, "The overwhelming burden of guilt lies with you. Do try and find this Bhūta before tomorrow or we will be punished."
Cursing in an odd language, Nāga stowed the radio again and started heading off, his serpentine minions following him. Breathing a sigh of relief, Taylor used the only part of her power that she liked and flew into the sky, locating the place that she had been heading to since the death of her father a week previously.
The Dockworker's Association Compound.
When the bubble had gone up, Chakravakam had sent out his gang, who struck ruthlessly at the heads of the civilian organisations in the city. The mayor, so scuttlebutt had it, had managed to get away safely, but almost every other high-ranking civilian government official and business leader had been killed. Even the leadership of the unions had been destroyed.
He had then set himself up as dictator and had conscripted various civilians into work gangs in order to convert the PRT building. As far as she knew, The Rig, the Protectorate base in the middle of the Bay, had been left alone, but it was only a matter of time before Vritra or Brahmastra was ordered to destroy it.
Floating down gently, Taylor touched down in the centre of the compound and looked around. There seemed to be no sign of any of New Genesis, but she elected to remain in her air form just in case. Floating towards the locked door of the main office of the Association, she burst into wind, seeping her way through the cracks between door and doorframe before reforming on the other side.
"If I were a criminal, this would make an excellent way to burgle people's homes." She muttered as she made her way through the darkened office building until she found what she was looking for; her father's office.
"'Union Representative, D. Hebert.'" Taylor read softly off the door before entering. The room was well lived in, as her Dad had spent a lot of time here over the years, but especially since her mother had died. The desk was neat, but sitting on the desk was the entire reason she had come here…the photograph of her family that she knew he kept here.
Taken a year before her mother had been killed in a car crash, she and her parents were standing in front of their now-destroyed home and smiling happily, unaware of the tragedy that would rend them apart such a short time later.
Returning to her normal form, she set about gathering what she could from the office that would be useful. Ever since the Empire 88 and ABB had entered a cold war state, her Dad had kept kits at his office and their home in case civil order broke down. Right now, Taylor didn't think civil order could break down any further without the Slaughterhouse Nine being present, so she was grabbing the one he had stored here.
In the closet, there was a rucksack filled with blankets, fire starting aids, a compass, and several other little things that would make surviving in the ruins of the Docks area far easier.
She also, rather reluctantly, went to the armoury that the Dockworkers had built up to resist the encroachment of the gangs and picked up a pistol, as well as several magazines of ammo, for self-defence. Taylor had never so much as fired a water pistol before, never mind a real gun, but these were desperate times and thus, desperate measures were needed.
Peering out of the windows as darkness fell across Brockton Bay, the girl decided that she'd catch some shuteye before moving on. Preta and Nāga seemed to instinctively know the general area of where she was, so staying in one place for longer than a day was not a good idea. Still, sleeping out of the wind and cold would be nice.
First things first.
She closed the door to her father's office, locked it from the inside and then pushed the desk in front of it. Unless the enemy was a Brute or a Blaster, the lock plus the desk should slow down any attempts to get in long enough for her to open a window and vanish in her air form.
Pulling out the sleeping bag that her Dad had used when working overnight sometimes, Taylor curled up in it and hugged the picture of her family to her chest. She fell asleep almost instantly.
When she woke up, it was to the sound of a beast roaring…one she would never forget.
"Vritra!" Taylor hissed in fury. Scrambling out of her sleeping bag, she peeked out of the window to see the form of the Changer, in the serpentine dragon form that she favoured, roaring and blasting at something…or someone…at the edge of the Docks.
Who though? The PRT, Protectorate and New Wave had been banished by Chakravartin when the Bubble went up. Hell, so had most of the criminal Capes. Kaiser, Lung, Skidmark, all of them were gone. Who was left?
It didn't matter. If Vritra was after them, they were pretty much as good as dead…just like her father.
Pain spiked through her chest at that thought. She had been helpless to save her father, unable to do anything more than save herself. The three weeks' worth of practice hadn't shown her how to attack in her air form and so she was useless against Vritra. A pistol would be useless against her.
She looked down sharply as she heard a slight shrieking sound and saw that the air around her fist was writhing and almost visible as it twisted and swirled around her hand.
Taylor snorted. Obviously her power wanted to fight and was showing her what to do. Alternatively, she was going nuts and her mind was jumping to conclusions.
'Either way…it's time to fight.' The Parahuman thought determinedly. Brockton Bay was her home, her city. These bastards thought that they could just waltz in and do as they pleased? Not from here on out. The buck stops here.
With Gallant
"Vista, dodge to the right!" Dean shouted, prompting the youngest Ward to follow his order immediately, which saved her from being smashed by Vritra's tail.
"She's going to use her laser breath attack!" Tattletale of the Undersiders yelled from behind the wall she had taken cover behind.
"Stalker, try and put her eye out!" he ordered.
"What the fuck do you think I've been trying to do?!" the ex-vigilante snarled, "I only have a limited supply of these crossbow bolts and that damn monster keeps moving around so I've wasted three already!"
"Keep trying then!" Dean growled, "Regent, any luck?"
"Fucker barely feels anything I do!" the renaissance faire reject replied, "I'm taking cover!"
Pausing to blast the dragon with a blast loaded with depression, which did exactly nothing like all the other emotions had done, Dean cursed at how things had gone FUBAR. The Wards had joined up with the Undersiders as they, and the Rogue Parian, were the only Parahumans known to have not been excluded by the Bubble, although there had been a lot of friction between the Undersiders and Shadow Stalker before he and Aegis had put his foot down. Parian had joined up as well, but she was hidden in the sewers for the moment.
They had come up for the first time in a week to scout out the land and had had the misfortune to run in to Vritra in less than ten minutes. Kid Win and Aegis were knocked out or buried under rubble, Vista's power was disabled, probably thanks to being incompatible in an area under Chakravartin's power, and the rest of them were unable to do much more than irritate the Changer. Even Bitch/Hellhound's mutated dogs were only able to slightly wound the dragon. The only reason they had lasted this long was thanks to Tattletale's Thinker ability deducing weak spots in Vritra and Grue casting his darkness over the head every so on to give them a couple of seconds worth of breathing room.
It was only a matter of time before the rest of New Genesis showed up and then they would die. Dean had heard of what they had done to the civilians and knew that these people were like Nilbog and the Slaughterhouse Nine; they didn't obey the Unwritten Rules, so they would be killed.
As Vritra opened its mouth to fire another blast of its laser breath, a transparent sphere the size of a beach ball slammed into the side of it and exploded, sending the massive dragon flying into a nearby building.
Dean whirled around to see a girl, almost completely transparent and seemingly made up of air, floating in mid-air and generating another ball in her hands. Vritra roared and turned to face the new threat, unleashing a laser that went right through the floating girl without doing any kind of harm.
"Vritra! You will die here!" the girl yelled and held up her air orb, "This is for my Dad, you bitch!"
With a scream of hatred, she flung the orb at the Changer's face, just as the dragon opened its muzzle to fire another beam at her. It swallowed the orb and a few seconds later, it detonated, blowing the jaws off Vritra in an explosion of blood and gore.
Not being one to pass up an opportunity, Bitch ordered her dogs in while Vritra let out a muffled roar of agony. Bulked up to the size of rhinos and as ferocious as any big cat, the three beasts ripped in to the dragon with renewed vigour, with Dean and Shadow Stalker adding to the damage alongside the new girl.
"Get the dogs back! I'm going to finish her!" the air girl yelled. Bitch nodded and recalled her dogs with a high-pitched whistle. The newcomer hurled two air spheres at Vritra's head, the dragon unable to dodge thanks to the pain it felt. With a pair of loud explosions, Vritra's head blew up as the two orbs detonated nigh simultaneously.
As the corpse of the dragon flopped to the ground, it slowly reverted back to its human form, an Indian girl, completely naked and missing her head completely.
"This way!" the air girl hissed and beckoned them towards her.
"Clock, dig out Aegis." Gallant ordered, "I'll grab Kid Win."
The leader of the Wards was unearthed swiftly and the Undersiders and Wards followed the flying girl to a compound that had belonged to the Dockworkers Union. Scaling the wall was easy for the huge dogs and Shadow Stalker just phased through the wall.
"I'll open the door." The air girl said and vanished through the cracks in the door. A minute later, the door opened and they were ushered inside.
"I think I speak for all of us when I say thank you for intervening." Aegis said as he sat on a chair in the lounge. The air girl had gone around and shut all of the blinds and curtains so they were reasonably safe from being spied upon, "Another few minutes and the rest of New Genesis would have been on us."
"Not Preta or Nāga." The girl said, "They've been hunting me for a week."
Dean's eyebrows shot up at that. "You've avoided the snake user and the drain field user for a week?"
"Nāga's snakes can't see, smell, taste or feel me in this form." She explained, "And Preta's a lazy bastard."
"Breaker or Changer, do you think?" Vista asked Clockblocker.
"Breaker. She still keeps a human form, unlike Brandish or that monster Vritra." Tattletale answered for him, "So what do we call you?"
The girl allowed the lower section of her face to become somewhat opaque again and smiled. "Call me...Anemoi."
For those of you who don't know, Anemoi was the collective name for the four Greek Gods of the Winds, as well as the lesser wind deities. Although the names of the villains here resemble those from Asura's Wrath, they are based in Indian mythology.
As I put some effort into this one, I might write it. Then again, I might not. Something I think would be cool if someone wrote a 'Worm Characters read the possibilities of Taylor Hebert's powers' fic. Can you imagine Clockblocker in that? Funny as hell. If anyone wants to write that, PM me.
Breaker: 8 (Able to shift into a form made completely of air and wind. Almost completely invulnerable in this form. Does not require air to breath and she essentially has no organs while in this state. Is able to freely alter the size of her form, from one inch high to Endbringer height.)
Shaker: 6 (Able to generate shields and blasts of air over a large area.)
Blaster: 6 (Able to use regular air blasts, as well as solidified blasts to cause more damage, cutting blasts that shred the target and create air explosives that send out shockwaves and cause serious damage.)
Mover: 5 (Unable to touch the ground in her Breaker form, able to levitate and fly very rapidly. Able to teleport via the air to any location within her line of sight.)
Stranger: 4 (Able to freely alter the transparency of her Breaker Form, from completely invisible to fully opaque. Able to become intangible and pass through anything not air-tight.
Striker: 3 (Able to imbue her physical blows with solidity in her Breaker form, as well as adding cutting effects to them as well.)