Changes 3.4
"What you did was reckless, foolish, irresponsible, and completely against every order you'd been given. Lung is an extremely dangerous parahuman, a known killer, and as you had been warned before you fought him, he is not an opponent we normally allow even experienced Wards to fight. You trampled on the trust Miss Militia put in you by not sending you back to base, and could have died!"
My first meeting with Director Piggot was not going well.
"I am very disappointed in your behavior last night. You are on console duty for the next week, and the only reason it isn't more is because even after you broke her trust, Miss Militia spoke up for you. Am I perfectly clear, Mr. Vanderbilt?" I nodded, numb. I wanted so badly to interject, to explain myself. I couldn't, even if I did have my voice, but I wanted to all the same. This wasn't right. I had caught a murderer last night, and driven off a monster who could have kept rampaging for hours, and I was rewarded with console duty?
I know I had broken rank to do the latter, but what about the former?
Not that it mattered. I couldn't even type it out, since they took my armor, and my phone was in my civilian clothes back at the Rig. I had to sit there and take it.
I was sore and bruised from the near-stabbings, tired from an evening of fighting and running, running and fighting; I was slowly acknowledging the part of myself that had been screaming in terror throughout the chase, that had almost frozen me in terror as he reached for me with claws of silver and blue death; and worst of all, it was Thursday. I had school in two hours, so I had to get from here to the Rig, get my stuff, and get home to change.
But I had to get chewed out first.
Good morning, Brockton Bay.
-Shangri-La-
My first time on console was interesting; learning all the features of the setup, Dragon installing my text-to-speech program (I really needed to do something to thank her for that. Maybe a fruit basket? What do you get someone who can make or buy anything you can get, better?) and controlling the patrols while getting my homework done. It wasn't a hard job.
By Friday, I understood the horror.
The console was so boring.
I had been out on two (or three, counting the Lung fight) patrols so far, on Sunday and on Tuesday; both had seen action, plenty of it.
The average patrol saw action twice, and it was almost always muggings or other violence.
Worse, I couldn't see any of it, and nobody bothered to describe any of it.
Ugh. Five more days of this. At least school was out for winter break after today.
Wait, no – did that mean – more patrols?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
A muffled thump came from the desk as my head hit my crossed arms.
"Vista to Console, we've spotted a group of Empire skinheads, moving to stop their nefarious plans."
I smiled a bit, lifted my head, and typed. 'Got it. Good luck.'
Waiting, listening as short, out of context comments filled the channels;
"Duck!" Duck what?
"Take that!" Really, Clock? Who says that out loud anymore?
Meanwhile, I was here, basically just inputting the original calls' time, which would automatically start saving the logs from that time till I typed an all clear. Woo.
A few minutes later, I did just that as Kid Win took out the last of them, then notified the BBPD of their location.
Ten minutes after that, the group continued on their merry way. Like I said, mind-numbing.
I shifted in my chair, settling in for the afternoon. This was gonna be a long afternoon.
-Shangri-La-
Even my training sessions had slowed down – I was now returning home every other night, and we had shifted from pure fighting practice to other, less combat-based techniques.
Don't get me wrong, I probably should learn yoga, but it did not help my boredom much. Maybe tonight would be better. After all, tonight, I was facing something big, something I had been putting off since my first few days having powers.
I needed to go into my worlds again.
Not the overt version of my powers; I used that regularly enough. No, I had realized, after the fights Tuesday, that I was ignoring my potential. I had possibly infinite worlds, and I was letting my fear of myself stop me from using them. I'd been randomly choosing worlds, but for all I knew, next time I might bring out a world of lava, or open a portal underwater and flood a room, or something. I needed to start cataloging them mentally, or I might really hurt somebody.
Hannah couldn't help me in this, but she would watch me. If I wasn't back in 8 hours, she'd take me to the PRT building's hospital until I did wake up. Until then, she'd be waiting here for me, doing paperwork to pass the time.
I sighed, laid down on the floor. I let myself breathe, in, and out, in, and out. The gems made themselves known as I let my barriers fall, and I let one pull me in slowly.
Disorientation.
A sense of wonder, even with my eyes closed.
An urge to stay here, away from all the shit, in whatever world I wished.
I rebelled, hard. I was panicking a little; these were my thoughts laid bare. I thought I was making progress. I thought I was past all of that, had my priorities straight; but now, I was confronted with the truth.
I still wanted to stay here.
I was still trying to escape.
God, I was pathetic. I had all this power, my family was no longer living paycheck to paycheck, and I was feeling more confident. All that, and I still wanted to run away. I didn't even know why. I just… no. I couldn't just sit here and mope. I'd talk it out come Monday. For now, I was just wallowing in fear and self-deprecation over what was ultimately just a passing idea. It wasn't like I'd actually ever try to stay in my worlds.
Would I?
-Shangri-La-
It took me a few more minutes to work up the courage to keep going, but eventually, I got up and took in the world around me.
I was standing on the edge of a cliff. No, a valley, one so steep and deep I couldn't make out the bottom. The land I was standing on was barren, and while I had no problem breathing, the air felt thin. The sun overhead was a bright white, and the sky was dark blue. The surface of this place was a desert.
The valley, however, was a jungle.
Towering trees like pillars of ocher stone, with needles so black they seemed to eat the light, and giant, complex starburst flowers in all imaginable shades. Other trees below, with vantablack fronds like a giant fern, and branches in crimson like the heart of a ruby. I got glimpses of a valley wall of rippling navy moss that shimmered as it flowed, and pinecone-like growths of burgundy. And this was the top layer; further down there was a distinct shift in density of life, and the valley became shrouded in fog further down.
I kicked out a slab of rock, and began descending into the wilds below.
Man, I needed to get a xenobiologist on our local staff. I was more of a paleontology guy myself, but some of this plant life was just incredible!
I was also beginning to suspect some of it was dangerous, too.
As far as I could tell, I couldn't be hurt like this. I could feel, taste, touch, but not come to harm. That said, no less than three different kinds of plants in this valley had tried something; the pine cone plants closed like flytraps, this one flower had released a powder, and the moss had sticky patches, and I know that's never good.
The weird thing was, why? Why be predatory when there are no animals? No insects, even. My best guesses were both weird ones.
Either my power was all imaginary worlds that didn't have to make sense, made manifest by my whim…
Or, it was a catalogue of actual worlds, minus the animal life, and I was sort of… projecting them to ours.
There was always options three and four, namely 'all of the above' and 'none of the above', but those were no more helpful than one and two.
Option five was just Dennis' overused little catchphrase: my powers are bullshit.
Last thing to check in this area was the fog, to answer the question 'What's at the bottom of the valley?' I had a feeling I might dislike the answer.
Yup. Molten lava miles below. A slip on these slopes would be a very long and painful death, one way or another.
Oh well, file it away for a rainy day. On to the next world.
-Shangri-La-
I began to notice other peculiarities as the night wore on. Some worlds were eerily monotonous, just small variations on a theme, while others were even more varied than Earth. Earthlike worlds were present, but not a majority; plants weren't always green, sun wasn't always yellow-white or small, soil wasn't always dirt, and rock wasn't always stone.
I saw a world of rivers, storms, and waterfalls, cutting into the bedrock to one day form huge canyon systems out of the plateaus. I explored a world that seemed to be one giant, abandoned city, made from classical era materials, like a marble metropolis that stretched to the horizon. I visited the magical forest, and found it to be a more varied world. Glowing, crystal clear waters, mountains of jade, obelisks of starry obsidian, wild fruits of all kinds; and small, abandoned farming villages, built for short residents, with fields of navy grains and purple beans the size of my hand; it truly fit a magical world.
My favorite, though, was the crystal world.
I appeared, disoriented, looking down at the ground. After it passed, I took in the fact that I was standing in a field. A field of tinkling glass shards, sprouting from a glowing sand. Weird. Cool.
I looked up.
The view was that of my floating mountains, but translucent.
Rainbows arced through the air, refracted by floating chunks of diamond.
They fell on craggy trees of amethyst and jade, grass of emerald glass, bushes like chandeliers of the finest sapphire.
I could tell, though, that it was all alive.
Not a sculpture, not a crystal version of another world, preserved and made dangerous; alive, in a way Earth didn't know. It sang, too, as the wind flowed through the grasses and trees, as the light hit the trees a certain way. A music, haunting and beautiful in its discord and rambling, an entire world that sang its own majesty.
It was nice, to just stand there awhile, take it in, but I had to move on eventually. The rest of the exploration went well, but nothing quite so spectacular. A few normal forests, a mountain range, a series of canyons; all beautiful, wild, wondrous; but none so alien, so harmonic, as that world.
Eventually, I returned, leaving the wonders behind, wishing- dangit, I still wanted to stay, didn't I? It really didn't help that the worlds tended towards the awesome, improbable, or otherwise awe-inspiring. I needed to talk to Jessica about this.
I sighed. This was going to be a long winter break.
PRT Threat rating change: Mover subrating increased from 2 to 4. Mandala is capable of drastic increase in running speed alongside previously reported movement augmentation.