Alexandria. One of the Triumvirate, the three 'top' heroes, some of the oldest, most experienced, and most powerful parahumans on the planet.
They were also a front for the organization 'Cauldron', though only her and Eidolon of the trio were deeply involved with it's inner functions. It was a group working in the shadows to manipulate the world, or rather to 'save' it at any means necessary.
Their crimes were considerable, more to the point I had a hard time justifying them. I would not have minded dark necessities but they were just so...sloppy about it. So arrogant and narrow in their focus.
They had some of the strongest thinkers in the world, those with enhanced awareness and information processing ability but they failed to see the weak points of that. A thinker wasn't necessarily smarter then a normal human, they just had one ability most people didn't.
This ability typically augmented what they naturally had, pushing them further yes, but it also often generated blind spots the more they leaned on it.
Contessa, a woman who was arguably the strongest Thinker in the world was little more then an emotionally stunted child in a woman's body, relying on her power to do everything from planning out her long term actions to speaking to most other people.
As an example Cauldron used their considerable resources to kidnap humans from parallel earths, empower them with parahuman abilities, wipe their memory of all personal information then leave them marked with a easily identifiable brand loose somewhere on this world as a test subject to their endless attempts to refine their empowering process.
If they were simply trying to keep it secret that they could empower other humans then this might be, if not forgivable, understandable given the stakes of their opposition. However they also sold powers to people for cash.
Not openly no, but still openly enough to draw attention. To invite investigation. Enough that in a world where almost everyone secretly dreamed they had superpowers hard enough to jump at the chance to get them regardless of the risks, they still kidnapped people from their families, from their lives, from their very world just to use as an unwilling lab rat on something countless individuals would give anything to take a chance at.
I wasn't so foolish to assume that making capes artificially was an easy process. The method required harvesting and utilizing pieces of a dead extra dimensional entity whose... well 'mate' seemed the closest analogue was still hanging around the planet in the form of a overpowered oddly behaving superhero called 'Scion'. Avoiding his attention would take considerable effort but I refused to believe that their current methods were the best ones either morally, or practically.
And Alexandria was near the top of it all. One of the oldest, luckiest and most influential Cauldron Capes both in the organization and outside of it. A woman whose power gave her not only effective invulnerability, supersonic flight and impossible strength but also absolutely perfect recall. Hence her name, 'The Library of Alexandria', more often shortened to the last, iconic name.
And as much as it galled me, as much as I despised her for it, I couldn't risk attacking her either verbally or physically over the matter for two very good reasons.
The first was simply that I wouldlose, Infernal Exaltation or not. Her body was under a selective continuous temporal stasis effect, which if you added a bunch of sciencey physics words to meant that there functionally was no level of kinetic or thermal force would damage her.
Under Exalted terms it was just shy of a perfect defense. Just shy because there were ways to damage her. She'd lost an eye to one enemy she had thought herself untouchable to.
It was theorized that other powers that interacted with time and dimensional space could probably nail her as well. She also still had to breathe, so if you could stuff something down her gob she couldn't get rid of she'd suffocate just fine.
That last part would be difficult though, because despite being locked in relative time, she was fully mobile in terms of space. A necessity to allow her to do things like blink, move her fingers, and not rip through the planet as it continued it's orbit. The mechanism of this was sufficiently self controlled and detached relatively from earth that she could fly, or apply considerable force by pushing against things.
Really it wasn't so much she was actually strong as she was nearly immovable to anything not herself. Her muscles weren't doing any of the work. I didn't even think most of her biology was even still functioning, but whatever let her move let her move those impossibly tough limbs of hers through anything trying to stop them as easily as they kept her location relative to the earth's rotation and orbit.
There were charms I could use to hurt her but I didn't know any of them, and not a one of them would make a difference in relation to the next issue.
Namely that she was currently holding up a few thousand pounds of sundered masonry that would otherwise crush or block a bunch of innocent people from escaping their position trapped below.
~What is with you mortals and the whole hero complex thing?~
Mostly it was a result of growing up in a society that encouraged empathy rather then try and stamp it out.
~Oh~
Either way I'd let it pass for now. I had other more immediate concerns, regardless of how much it rubbed me raw.
I blinked.
Did I just pick up a point of Torment.
~What now?~
...I had no way of keeping track of that did I?
~I still don't quite get what you're talking about now. Is this something from your crazy game knowledge?~
Yes, and it's important stuff.
~Important how?~
It effected how often I went crazy.
~...That sounds pretty important.~
It was. Fortunately I knew ways to bleed it off... though managing it was going to be difficult from an inside perspective.
That was a future issue though. At least I freakinghopeit was. I couldn't afford to enter a limit break right now.
Okay, most of the immediate people were out. That left those stuck in the shelter. A few had gotten hurt in the confusion and the power was out.
Huh, now where was I going to find a big bright source of light to help out with that? Oh I knew.
"I'm going in to play human floodlight," I informed the two as I slipped past the escaping civilians.
At the least this would give me a chance to stop and plan.