by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings.
Backwards Reasons Now…Scion looked down at the hole in his chest in surprise.
"Didn't think we could do that?" I asked. Or "we" asked, rather. We were a conglomerate of minds in one body, even damaged as we were with a leg missing and the other burnt to a crisp – the result of attacks we thought we could ignore thanks to a power nullifier going full tilt (or so we thought, again). Still, this was but a flesh wound: we didn't need them anyway, as we could fly better than almost anything.
And we acted with one goal, all going in the same direction, as there was no "I" in "team". We didn't even know what we were called anymore. Answering to many names was tedious after a while.
Still, that wasn't what was important. What was important was the rift in time and space, appearing just under Scion's golden skin. Beyond that, we didn't see muscles or organs, golden or whatever. Nor did we see the back of an empty body.
We saw a planet covered in quivering flesh. Knowing what it was, we activated several powers in one go (we had trained hard, for this) and delivered a nuclear missile right through the portal. And another. And another. Several more times.
As soon as the Golden Skin reformed, we switched to other powers to attack, ready to defend or redirect or move away from the most destructive attacks… which came slower and slower, until we could bomb away the target without opposition. And, as a particular cluster exploded, the portal collapsed into a point, that blinked, and then disappeared.
We had won. But at what price? And what do we do, now?
Before…We deliberately avoided Crawler's attacks, surprising him with ours, unblockable as they were. Even if his type of adaptive regeneration was useful, we already had many instance of such things, and we clearly needed arms to wield weapons correctly. So we simply killed him.
The goal, here, was to approach Hatchet Face, but not too close. To do that, we needed to get him in the proper state of mind, of course, something we did by killing the other members of their little club. None of them had anything we needed. We still ended up caught by an invisible plague by Bonesaw, which transformed into a flesh-eating acid when meeting our flesh, even in our armour. Ouch.
Her little body didn't last long against Hatchet Face – although, again, we had to position her properly, as it wouldn't do to miss the goal because we ended up depowered. Thankfully, he was a creature of instincts, and when we immobilized his legs, he was quick in letting loose with his axe. We even threw it back at him when he wasn't successfully enough, voluntarily missing him by a hair.
Jack was already dead from a rock dropped from high enough that he hadn't felt the murmur of our powers (or the cumulative yell). Strangely enough, when such an attack happens, a large radius is obliterated, which included the crashing of several cars and vans. Siberian disappeared, never to be found again.
Oh, darn.
Even before…We went to Brockton Bay. The Teeth didn't understand, however, when I told them to hold their fire. I told them in a very derogatory way, pushing them until one of them took an angry shot at me. I had expected Animos, but it was Spree. Still nice.
In the commotion that ensued, our whole gang ended up killed by the Empire Eighty-Eight – who found our previous body only after they killed us again. And then we were Purity, and got rid of those capes we didn't need anymore.
We kept Alabaster for last, of course. The end goal demanded nothing less.
Flight was good, but we needed more of it. Floating aimlessly around New Wave's housings got us a fist through the face, courtesy of Glory Girl. Nice.
Panacea seemed distraught when we left, heading towards a specific warehouse we had taken care of learning about, earlier.
We didn't need Tattletale, thanks to who we got in our first steps, but Grue's ability to block light could work wonders with lasers. Regent's would, too… if our ultimate goal was to fight a normal body. Skitter we could do without, but the girl was relentless in her pursuit and we had to switch to her before we could get the darkness generator. Strangely enough, her administrative power helped manage the many voices we could hear.
Tattletale we had to kill, with insects and starting by filling her mouth, because we knew she would tattle as soon as she saw us. Besides, doing so pushed Grue into action – we had feared to have to go fetch her sister for him to actually do anything more than a choke hold.
As Grue, we went down fast when we erred near Shadow Stalker's patrol route: we knew of their animosity, and the girl always had a spare lethal bolt with her, with his name on it.
And then it was Armsmaster's turn, when Shadow Stalker tried to kill people at the PRT building. Some people rejoiced when she died.
Efficiency and discipline had been part of our goal, because it allowed our incredibly cluttered mind to set apart differences and work better together. Many of the last characters being heroes, too, they took care of the dissenting opinions from the first fifteen-or-so bad eggs.
Further before…"I don't understand." Miss Militia said, looking at her target. The ugly man was doing ugly things, of course, but nothing more than hanging out without his clothes on.
"The Kill Order is effective as of right now." The voice came in her ear. "That man is known to have powers much like Nilbog, and the higher up don't want to take a chance."
She steeled herself. It wasn't her first assassination mission, but it rankled, each time, that she would be chosen instead of another sniper. Still, ever the patriot, she did her duty. And we caught her.
Afterwards, it was child's play to ditch the uniform and skip town. We had a specific step to make in New York.
Lily was quite beautiful, we decided as we laid together. That step hadn't been clear at the beginning, but the way things went had been easier that way. Of course, it made what followed a bit more painful, but it wasn't that difficult to dare her to a little knife sparring. And lose badly.
At the beginning…"Scion is not a parahuman." Doctor Mother concluded her speech. "He's an Entity. He may seem despondent now, but if he awakens, we'll all die."
The Numbers Man nodded. "What do you propose that we do?"
"We have seen what Eden was. We know he is similar. We need to even the playing field. We need a single avatar with as much power. Perhaps more."
"You tried getting people drinking more than one vial, more than once, but it had never worked." Eidolon reminded them.
"The best one for us to use is the Butcher." Contessa spoke up, her eyes following an invisible path towards a goal. "We need to prepare ourselves to intervene… and then sacrifice ourselves towards a larger goal. You, me, and several of our most promising leads."
Several steps later, Contessa's path was ready to coalesce when she met us, as Quarrel, and killed us before heading towards Chicago.
There, we met Numbers Man, who sighed and killed our unresponsive body… in full view of Revel, from the Chicago Protectorate. Resisting arrest, we ended up being killed, again.
And then Revel was dealt with by Eidolon.
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To be continued… or replayed in reverseAuthor's Notes: I hope you went past the possible confusion, or guessed it was Butcher before the Reveal: each time he (or she, or whatever) is killed, the "we" point of view switches to the killer. Style includes flashbacks, obviously.