It ended up being the ride home. They offered medical assistance but I waved that off. The Navigator of Unknown Skies was already patching me up at a speed just fast enough to be visible. There was a bit of a speech but it was by a PRT officer, not any big hero. Someone came and collected my armband which was kind of a shame as I was just realizing just how awesome the thing really was.

Oh well, it's not like I could make use of a specialty tool like that anyway. Well, not outside maybe hocking it to some crazy collector for some cash anyway.

After that it was mostly just getting sorted back into groups and getting transport. My anima had simmered down from the 'living bonfire' level at this point, though I was still glowing pretty bright, so there weren't any 'Are you going to set me on fire with that thing?' questions. That was convenient.

Less so were the numerous looks everyone in the Brockton Bay Contingent were giving me. Well not everyone, most of New Wave passed me right over, but I was pretty sure the only reason Krieg and Armsmaster didn't immediately lay into me with a recruitment speech was the waning protection of the truce, and their own problems dealing with aftermath of the attack.

That was going to end up being annoying as hell I could already tell.

But that was a future issue, right now I was just to freaking exhausted to care about. My mote pool was tapped out, my body was worn out, and more importantly on a purely mental level I was nearing my limits. I'd lost my world, my life, a substantial hunk of my memory, no small slice of my sanity and even a decent chunk of my humanity.

I also was planning to assassinate someone soon which was weighing on me like you would not believe.

~Don't tell me you're backing out now~

Combat was one thing, murder was another. Though I wasn't sure if it was even possible to find a more acceptable target to 'cut my teeth on' in that regard.

~...Riiiiiight. I'm just going to assume this is another one of those stupid mortal things that I'm not really supposed to get~

That would probably be for the best.

When the teleporter grabbed us up to mass transport back to the Bay my shaping defense pinged. This told me two things, the first was I hadn't wasted the precious and limited pool of free 'potential' I'd been given to play around with back in the chrysalis when I bought the thing, even if The Simurgh hadn't exactly brought an effect that 'counted' against me.

It also told me that this entire mess from the when I'd engaged the Endbringer to being shipped home had happened in less than an hours time.

That was... kind of nuts. Didn't these things normally take hours?

Then again with Ziz I guess you never could tell the real side effects until long after.

Hopefully I dodged that particular bullet. Then again maybe not. My nature was that of a walking pseudo reality that basically forced itself onto an alien existence in the shape of a person. The surface relationships were basically the same, cut me, I bleed, tell me a joke I laugh, punch me I punch you back harder for picking a fight you really shouldn't have.

But the inner workings, the fine details were all messed up. The rules I ran on were alien to thei rnative setting, much less something that worked on relatively standard Earth Physics. I was basically a larval Azathoth currently pretending very hard that they were human and getting it... mostly... right. Which was simultaneously awesome yet also deeply horrifying. It also meant I might have been alien enough that The Simurgh outright could not use her normal tricks on me. Hell, depending on how the whole 'outside of fate' thing played out, it's possible she never even saw me. At least until I put my shadow back on.

Or maybe her micro fine telekinesis was just an attack that was not shaping, and simply skill so beyond human I hadn't even registered it until she did whatever she pleased to me.

That was arguably as terrifying as the eldritch abomination thing.

~Uh...~

Right right, there was no point in worrying about that now.

~Are you kidding me? That shit is exactly the kind of thing you should be worried about! Why are you not worried about this?~

There wasn't a point because I couldn't do anything about it. Just like how I couldn't do anything about having been kidnapped by supposedly fictional eldritch abominations, transformed into a magical kung fu demigod then shoved into a different fictional setting far away from my friends, family, job, life, and dog.

Not that I was bitter about that at all.

~...~

The power was nice though. Even if it cost me hunks of my sanity and humanity. I could grab up a lot of the early stuff without much issue, even some of the later things I didn't really find disagreeable considering the power they offered and just what I was facing. There were many, many worse options.

Hell considering how strange the Yozi mentality was compared to my own they probably thought they were doing me a great big favor. I mean who could object to being handed power when they could have been tossed into a harness for the screaming cathedral.

But none of that mattered right now. What mattered was that I needed to get a place to sleep, to recover my power, to find resources and to survive.

Wasn't it.

~...Yeah that sounds like a good plan~

I sighed as I looked out at the city. This next bit was going to be hard... I had no clue where to start looking for my target outside of a name.

Now I could work with just a name but it'd still take time and I wasn't in the best of shape to start off an intense search. Preferably I needed at least a few hours sleep. More practically, at the very least I could use some food.

I was about to step out when Armsmaster called out, "Wait a moment."

I stopped and looked at him, caste mark still burning on my brow, "Yeah?"

"You're new in town aren't you?" he questioned me.

"Fresh in," I grunted not exactly in the mood for this.

He continued despite my obvious irritation, "Not many fresh in would jump at the chance to fight an S-Class threat. That was pretty heroic behavior," he said trying his best to sound praising.

"I don't want to hear-" I started before a thought hit me.

"Tell you what," I said switching tracks, "You put up for lunch, I'll listen to your pitch."

He grunted, clearly disliking the way this had turned.

However he also looked over, "There's a diner not far from here that's not to bad," he offered.

I grinned, "Tell you what, you're making a good first impression."