Force Your Way Chapter 3 (Original chapter Chapter 74)

Across the world, the dreaded wail of the Endbringer Sirens started up as various observation and monitoring equipment dedicated to tracking the Hopekiller triggered them. Capes of all denominations stopped whatever they were doing and started to assemble at predetermined rally points for cross-continental transport.

In Brockton Bay, Emily Piggot stared in horror at her Deputy Director.

"You...you're certain that it's Ellisburg?" she asked hoarsely.

"Armsmaster said it was at 92% probability and rising before he headed out to get thing ready for Strider to show up." Renick said, shock still on his face. "I just...it's only been a few weeks since Canberra! And that was the Simurgh as well! It's early and out of sequence!"

Emily could well understand the man's shock; the Endbringers had, until now, operated on a strict order from Behemoth to Leviathan to Simurgh, and while you couldn't set your watch to their appearances, there was usually about three months in between each of their attacks.

'Of course of the three of them, the one to expect this sort of tomfoolery from is the Simurgh.' the ENE Director thought sourly.

Still, regardless of all of that, nightmares from years past started to come to the forefront of Emily's mind, of the ravening horde of power-resistant monsters sweeping down and devouring her people, of the lunatic who had created his 'children' and of the thought of what James Rinke's power could do with the might of the Simurgh at its helm.

"If we fail this time...god help us all." she said with feeling.

Same Time

Meeting Room, Cauldron Base, Alternate Earth

"What do you mean all of the Paths have been disrupted?!" Doctor Mother asked in disbelief.

"Exactly that." Contessa replied. The olive-skinned woman looked groggy, but she was able to speak lucidly. "As of the start of the descent of the Simurgh a half an hour ago, ALL of my Paths outside of ones solely to do with just me are...disrupted, for lack of a better term."

"How? Why?" the leader of Cauldron asked as she typed away at a console.

"I don't know." Contessa said tiredly. "All I do know is that my power is now all but useless and that I have a Thinker Headache like you wouldn't believe. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that the Simurgh is actively jamming the Path to Victory. It probably doesn't want any interference from us beyond what Alexandria, Eidolon and Legend are already going to do."

"The Simurgh has never shown the capability to do this before..." Doctor Mother said with a frown. "Aside from the usual inability to be seen by most Thinkers that all of the Endbringers, Zion and Eidolon possess, that is. I just checked Watchdog; apparently none of them are suffering any blockages of the kind that you are currently suffering. Nor are any of the other thinker tanks across the world. This means that the Simurgh is focused exclusively on blocking you. Do you realize what this means?"

"That we've been underestimating how intelligent the Simurgh is? Or that we've underestimated how powerful the Endbringers are?" the Thinker asked languidly.

"Both!" the black woman threw her hands up in exasperation. "We thought we had a good handle on what the Endbringers were capable of, but if this is any example, they've all been heavily sandbagging themselves! And the Simurgh! It has to be at least someone sentient and sapient in order to use its psychic abilities, but this kind of break from the pattern means it has some degree of free will!"

"Not very much if all of the attacks on the world show anything." Contessa pointed out.

"It's a weapon, having too much free will is bad for weapons." Doctor Mother flapped one hand impatiently. "Even I can understand why Eden did that. But if the Simurgh has some degree of free will, then it can resist whatever orders it is receiving as it is right now. The question is, what on earth is the catalyst that has caused it and how can we take advantage of it...?"

As the leader of Cauldron started contemplating what this could portend in regards to their efforts to save as much of humanity as was possible, Contessa mused on the fact that she had omitted the fact that she was currently on a Path, that being 'Path to the Simurgh not ripping a hole in space-time to to scream them into submission for interfering in its plan'.

Several Hours Later

The Ellisburg Containment Zone

James Rinke, Nilbog the Goblin King, the self-proclaimed God-King of Ellisburg, gurgled as the flesh of his body started to dissolve under the sightless eyes of the Simurgh. The colossal construct had inverted the defenses of Ellisburg almost as soon as it arrived, using telekinetic blast to send the defenders flying from the walls and then ripping the walls from their places and flipping them around, as well as grabbing all of the shields and forcefield tinkertech within reach to most pointedly stop most Parahumans out of Ellisburg while it worked.

Nilbog had fought as well and as hard as he could, using his creations in an all-out attack against the seraphic Endbringer while he tried to run towards a secret escape tunnel that he had been working on, unfinished as it may be.

It hadn't been nearly enough.

After the Simurgh had easily slaughtered the entire swarm of Nilbog's 'children', it had reached out and grabbed him before bringing the flailing troglodyte of a man close to its face and used its scream on him at full burst for a whole minute before it had set him back on the ground, nothing more than a man with a broken mind and a puppet of its will.

Then the Triumvirate had shown up.

The Simurgh knew all of them, how could it not? Especially the one who had nominal control over its actions, yet had only ever issued a single, absurd and vainglorious order.

'Be a worthy opponent that I might test myself.'

Eidolon had found himself unceremoniously thrown out of Ellisburg as soon as he had breached its defenses, only just stopping himself from plowing into a tree by the skin of his teeth. Legend and Alexandria had been more obdurate, but had found themselves thrown out as well, the hole in the defenses repaired instantly.

Meanwhile, Nilbog had followed his new master's orders and had encased the entirety of the swarm of his former minions in a giant sac. Creating another one in his other hand, the enslaved man had created what had to be the single largest creation he had ever made, a massive beast without arms or legs, shaped like a massive pillar several meters high and several meters wide. There was a basin at the top and a fleshy exit at the bottom.

The Simurgh could feel no emotions except as highly accurate and high fidelity simulations, but it had simulated a feeling of perfect satisfaction as it had levitated the Goblin King into his last creation to be consumed by it.

As his head started to dissolve, the Simurgh reached out and plucked the man's Corona Pollentia and Corona Gemma from the slurry that his head was becoming. Fiddling with the link to the [Maker] Shard, the Simurgh allowed itself to show the satisfaction it simulated on its face as it finished programming and altering the connection to allow the new being created from Nilbog's minions and the 'God-King' himself to create living tissue from nothing, although it would need to devour mater in order to supply the energy required.

It was a crude solution, but sadly it was not the [Shaper] or [Chirurgeon] Shards or their users, and it was more hassle than it was worth to acquire either of them due to the defenders around the latter and the backlash of doing the former, especially when it had a perfectly decent solution already present.

Sometimes, being able to see the future with perfect clarity was not worth being unable to see the present.

The nucleus of its plan done, the Simurgh then extended its telekinetic reach out to its fullest extent and levitated cars, buses, tractors, vans and any stray tinkertech that didn't have a human life-sign within it, and drew them towards Ellisburg. As its reach extended for two dozen kilometers, that was a considerable number of vehicles. Raising them high enough that they went over the shield and floated in the center of it, the Simurgh swiftly disassembled them using precision telekinesis...and then the seraphic being twitched irritation as it was forced to ululate the valuable raw materials to avoid them being destroyed by blasts from the growing number of Capes outside the walls.

A simple modification allowed the shields to be dropped in pinpoint areas, with the Simurgh swiftly withdrawing the group of metal, rubber and chemicals into Ellisburg's ruins.

Then it got to work.

With Alexandria

Glaring with frustration at the smug winged humanoid that hovered inside of the barrier, building who knows what to go along with the monstrosity of flesh that had formerly been a potential S-Class threat and his horde of minions, Alexandria clenched her fists in anger.

The Simurgh was far stronger than it had been at Canberra, but aside from that, several things stood out glaringly as being very different from any previous attack of the Simurgh. First, it had yet to scream aside from a single concentrated burst on Nilbog. Second, it was quite determinedly keeping them out of Ellisburg and away from whatever it was building using who knows how many car parts. Third was the total focus on whatever it was that it was doing; it only responded to attacks from the gathered heroes and villains of the world when they managed to disrupt whatever it was that it was doing in there.

"The Tinkers have little to no idea about what Ziz is building in there." Legend said as he floated over to her. "Armsmaster and Dragon have guessed that it has some kind of area effect, but other than that..."

He shrugged.

"Have you managed to contact Contessa?" she asked him quietly.

"Tried. About as responsive as Eidolon's being right now." the Flying Blaster replied, jerking his head at the robed man, who was glaring so hard at the Simurgh that Alexandria was half-concerned that he'd burst a blood vessel.

The world's most powerful Flying Brute sighed. Unbeknownst to almost everyone, Eidolon's powers were fading, weakening, the previously unlimited powers needing to be supplemented by sparing booster shots given by Cauldron. This had made Eidolon, not really the life and soul of the party to begin with, even more dour and surly.

'And what's happened so far today, getting tossed out like an irritating fly, will not be making him any happier.' Alexandria thought sourly. Calming him down later would be an ordeal and a half, make no mistake.

"What is it doing?" Eidolon hissed in aggravated frustration as he hovered over next to his companions.

"Being bloody mysterious and a pain in the ass, Eidolon; you know, the usual for Ziz." Legend replied dryly. "Seriously, I have no clue. It's being more competent than normal and...oh fuck, it's finished."

Indeed, within the protective dome of forcefields, the Simurgh floated back from the building-sized device it had built, a smile of satisfaction on its usually expressionless face. That made the unease in the watching Capes dial up several notches.

The Hopekiller used its telekinesis to float both the Nilbog flesh tower and the mysterious tinkertech that it had been working on to what Alexandria's mental map told her was around about the exact center of Ellisburg.

"Are those rings?" Legend asked.

There were indeed rings, sixteen of them, four slotting over the fleshy tower that had been Nilbog and his monsters, while the other twelve floated out to settle at roughly equidistant areas around the perimeter of the containment zone, remaining within the protection of the shield. Then they started spinning.

Simultaneously, the Simurgh made a further modification to the shield generators it had stolen from the PRT Containment teams, which changed the shield type from a dome to a column, the new shield snapping into place with a hiss-crackle and the smell of burning ozone. It now extended several hundred meters into the air.

Its work done, the Simurgh sped up and out of Ellisburg, straight at the gathered Parahumans of the world, who immediately counterattacked with everything they had.

Ziz just plowed through them and bowled them over in her haste to leave the containment zone.

"The rings! We have to stop whatever they're doing!" Eidolon shouted as he flew forward, drawing upon a powerful graviton control power, intending to crush them with the force of a planet.

He was too late.

Each perimeter ring had been generating a small singularity of black light in the center of it, no larger than a jawbreaker. At some unseen signal, the rings imploded, their detritus being sucked into the singularity before a beam of black light erupted from them, piercing into the sky before spinning into a solid wall of black light around Ellisburg.

Alexandria whirled around to see the Simurgh spread its wings (needlessly) and take flight into the sky, returning to its orbital path.

"Well, this is just about the strangest Endbringer Battle I've ever been to." she sighed before turning to look blankly at Eidolon as he sent blast after blast of gravitational force at the black energy surrounding what had once been Ellisburg. "Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who goes and calms him down?"

"Best two out of three." Legend agreed. "And no using your Thinker powers to read my hand beforehand!"

"Spoilsport."

Low Earth Orbit

The Simurgh, once more ensconced in orbit, made minute adjustments so that it was in a stable geosynchronous orbit above the former city of Ellisburg. The black pillar of energy that had engulfed the ruined township went up for around about two kilometers before stopping, and it was proof from even an all-out attack by one or both of the other two Endbringers.

Even the Warrior, should its meandering wandering take its avatar that way, would not be able to affect it overly much. Oh, the lone remaining Entity would no doubt annihilate the now-useless walls and forcefields surrounding the pillar, but the overabundance of direct conflict Shards that it possessed was ill-suited to deactivating the self-perpetuating anomaly that the Simurgh had created.

The Thinker had been the one to carry the overwhelmingly large percent of the indirect conflict Shards, the ones better suited to analysis, dissection and careful study of unknown phenomena, thus its name. The Warrior had some, but was incapable of thinking outside the very small box it possessed. There was one Shard that would cause some minor disruption, [Sting], which was designed to fight other Entities, but the anomaly was not an Entity and the overall effect would be negligible.

Within the severed space that the Simurgh had created, the fragment of the Entities of Earth were likely very busy constructing a set of trials and suitable opponents for the host of the mutated [Queen Administrator] Shard. The time was accelerated within the anomaly so hundreds of years would pass in the two months or so that the anomaly would last for. That would be more than enough time for a suitably large series of monsters, tricks, puzzles, tests and rewards to be left for her.

Satisfied that it had fulfilled 90% of its end of the deal with the Earth Entities, the Simurgh retreating int its cocoon of crystalline wings to await the time for it to fulfill the last part of the deal...and die.

Several Days Later

Coil's Office, Brockton Bay

Most people would imagine that having the power to create splinterpoint simulations means you don't have to endure the resulting pain and agony if something happens...say, for example, you're about to torture someone in one timeline while sitting neatly and slogging though paperwork in the other. And then the torture subject displays the use of a hereto-unknown pyrokinetic power to turn your arm into charcoal.

Hint: Coil felt the echoes of the pain from his duplicate timelines. Not the whole shebang, but enough that he was receiving phantom pain from the limb that was still there.

'How did that little bitch get her hands on a pyrokinetic power?' he fumed. 'She doesn't know about Cauldron, and even if she did, she couldn't afford the prices! Even if she had, somehow, gotten ahold of a vial, you can't drink one while you already have powers!'

That way led to a grossly painful death.

So then, the only possible way that his Tattletale had managed to gain a power that was very much outside of her Thinker powerset was likely from a Teacher or Othala-style Trump, both of which were temporary. Had locked the smug little bitch up for three days in an alternate timeline, which was about the limit for him, to try and ensure that she was disempowered before trying to interrogate her, this time using a proxy.

She had still possessed the power! Even after three days of total isolation in his base! It was insanely aggravating for him to be stymied like this, even if the girl herself was largely unaware of it.

Worse, the second time he had witnessed her using the power had been far stronger than the first. It might be better said that her control of the flames was better; she was able to control the size and shape of the flames with ridiculous precision the second time, compared to the wild burst of flames that had destroyed one of his arms.

Tattletale's Thinker power must be behind the increase in her control in just over ten days since she had likely acquired it, he was willing to wager. The ability to gain insight into an elemental power and how it worked...yes, he could see how useful it might be and he had to begrudgingly admit that the little bitch had done well in synergizing her two powers, however she had acquired the fire powers.

What made it somewhat troublesome, beyond his inability to interrogate her in an alternate timeline to find out if she was actually playing him straight, was that anything or anywhere she burned was blurry in his simulations. This included his own arm, which had been disconcerting to say the least. One minute his arm looks fine, the next it was blurry and out of focus like looking at it through an incorrectly aligned scope.

The same applied to the rooms and people she had burned. It was aggravating, and it only happened when he used his power.

With reluctance, Coil was starting to realize that due to this latest development, Tattletale was becoming more of a liability than an asset, in spite of her power's compatibility with his own. It was a shame, as he would miss her data-mining abilities; she had helped him discover a fair number of the secret identities of the heroes and villains of Brockton Bay. Thinkers of her caliber were not common commodities, but a vial from Cauldron would soon solve that problem.

Settling back in his chair, Coil started to form a plan to eliminate the irksome gnat that was called Tattletale, briefly ignoring the unread report on his desk regarding the new heroine calling herself 'Bia'.

That Night

Taylor Hebert's Mindscape

Waking up in the land of undead soldiers and Ancient Greek powers for the first time since the day I'd put Hookwolf in his place, I stretched myself out as Athena's Aegis, the Helm of the Erinyes and the Venger Blades materialized on me.

"Huh...that's new." I remarked, looking up at the big-ass tower that had suddenly appeared in my dreamscape. It was huge, dwarfing everything that I'd seen in my life. I think that it made the Empire State Building look small by comparison.

Looks like I finally have a destination for this walk to take me.

I was standing in front of the plinth where the Helm of the Erinyes had been, so I diverted around it and continued to walk. Unlike the previous times, however, I was assailed with undead enemies at indeterminable intervals all of them wore the same basic hoplite armor from before and carried swords and shields the same as before too.

The buggers were pretty damned aggressive though; I got dogpiled by the blasted things on more than one occasion. Thankfully my physical strength was now very much greater than even ten or twelve of the skeletal bastards, so I threw them off and chopped them into pieces with the Venger Blades, often using the Fire of Ares in combination with them. I was getting not too shabby at it, if I do say so myself.

After at least a dozen ambushes, I finally came upon another set of large bronze gates. This time, they were in the shape of a bearded man wearing a golden crown, and with tattoos across his chest. All of the details, the eyes, the tattoos, glowed a bright blue. In front of the gate was a pot with blue flame-like energy within it.

As I approached it, the pot had words in Ancient Greek appear above it in blue writing.

TAKE THE ICE OF POSEIDON AND YOU WILL FIND YOUR PATH.

I had to blink at that. Having read The Odyssey, I knew of Poseidon. He was the Grecian God of water in general, the Sea, Storms and Earthquakes. Nowhere in his legend was any kind of reference to ice; that seemed to be more the domain of Boreas, the God of the North Wind, or Khione, the Goddess of Snow and Ice, Boreas' daughter, but...meh. I'd take what I could get without quibbling the point..

Removing the Venger Blades from my back, I reversed my grip of them and plunged them into the pot, letting the blue flames become absorbed by my weapons until they were all gone and the pot shattered and disappeared. Ice blossomed across the Venger Blades and then down my arms. Oddly enough, I didn't feel the cold. Oh, I knew that the ice was cold, but I didn't feel it. Some degree of thermal-immunity, I guess, as I didn't really get affected by the heat from the Fire of Ares either.

As before, enemies crawled out of the woodwork after I took the Ice of Poseidon. As a test, I slammed the two ice-covered blades together, sending a wave of icy spikes flying in the general direction of the walking dead, piercing through them and freezing them solid.

Laughing at the new power I had, I rampaged through the skeletons with wild abandon. After holding back against the Capes and criminals of Brockton Bay, this was a relief. I was actually getting somewhat concerned I was turning into a combat junkie because of this...

Once all of the undead soldiers were dead (again), the gates swung open and everything turned white once again as I woke up.

OK, so this was pretty much a Ziz chapter, intertwined with Coil getting pouty and pissed at Tattletale, as well as Taylor getting the Ice of Poseidon. Glorious is the return to my Worm/GoW ficlet!

Something for everyone to keep in mind is that the primary purpose of the Shards is CONFLICT Escalation, not COMBAT Escalation. Combat is simply a part of Conflict. Granted, it's the flashiest and most obvious part of a conflict, but it is just a part of Conflict in the end.

Why point something so obvious out? Because some people have noted that my stance in Worm: Waterworks that Toybox don't have any Combat Tinkers is stupid/silly/idiotic/not true. While I agree with them up until a point, due to Mannequin/Sphere turning his enclosed biosphere specialization into quite the formidable weapon, as well as Armsmaster's Miniaturization and Efficiency, I ask you this: how could you make Cranial's specialty of neurology into a weapon?

Some of them, like Toy Soldier, Pyrotechnical, Glace and Bauble had specializations that could be turned to combat, but Big Rig? The guy who made drones that built things? Nope. And that's without taking into consideration a probable lack of desire to fight in the first place.

Moving on, does anybody know of any Reaction fics involving A Certain Magical Index or A Certain Scientific Railgun? If you do, let me know. I'd love to read them.