Hope Through Overwhelming Firepower 6.8

"Scion? He's..." Taylor's scanning systems quickly divined everything they could about the being. "...Rather interesting. Got those extra-dimensional links all Parahumans do, but a lot more of them. Anyway, what's your point?"

"He's... going to destroy the world." Eidolon replied.

Taylor blinked. "Come again?"

"Scion is going to, at some point in the future, go on a rampage and attempt to kill everyone on every earth." Eidolon repeated.

This was going to be a story. "Well, what's your reasoning then? Because I'm having a hard time reconciling the guy currently pulling a kitten out of a tree with the Death Star." Taylor asked.

"I don't know all the specifics." Eidolon admitted. "But he's not human, and is, in fact, the source of all Parahuman powers. Well, him and his counterpart."

Taylor tapped her chin. "A few of those links did have an unusual load on them, and that would explain what the giant whale thing is up to, as well as why he has all those links. Probably a projection, if that's true." She paused. "Wait, counterpart? I only saw one in that vision."

"Vision?" Eidolon questioned. "Never mind, not important. And that would probably be because the other's dead. Contessa, she's the woman that makes Cauldron work, killed it."

Might be that flesh... garden... thingy then. "Cauldron is the name of your organization then? And what can this 'Contessa' do?" Taylor continued questioning.

"Yes, and Contessa she... wins." Eidolon attempted to explain. "When she attempts something she, assuming it is possible at all, succeeds absolutely. Some sort of unfathomably powerful precognition, I think. There are a few blind spots. You, me, Scion and, well that's it anymore. The Endbringers used to be one, but..." He shrugged. "They're not much of a problem anymore.'"

Taylor briefly processed everything Eidolon said. "Alright but, moving back to the original question, why do you think he's going to go all genocidal?"

"Well, for a few different reasons, I suppose." Eidolon began. "Contessa, before the counterpart managed a last minute limitation of her powers, could see it and Scion, and she apparently saw them doing so. And, well, I was rather inclined to believe them."

"Why?" Taylor pressed.

Eidolon sighed. "At first, it was largely that I was less than inclined to disbelieve the people who had given my life meaning. But, it was only after I stood face to face with Scion that I really believed it. The aura of depression and almost boredom that surrounded him... He doesn't do anything he does for altruistic reasons. At all."

Taylor looked at him, and decided. "Well, you, at least, clearly believe it, for whatever reason." She paused briefly. "Alright then, I suppose I'll take your beliefs at face value." At least, until she could independently confirm them. "Well, ask away then."

"...What?" Eidolon asked, confused.

"You did come here to ask a few questions of your own, didn't you?" Taylor answered. "Not to say my own question list is exhausted; and you will be answering those before you leave." Taylor scowled slightly. There better be a damn good explanation there. "But I suppose I should let you have your chance."

"Oh, right." Eidolon paused for a moment. "Seemed so much easier to phrase in my head." He muttered. "Well... What are you?"

Hmm, she couldn't say that was an unexpected question, instead the question by this point was how to respond... Well, Taylor decided, if he was going to be that blunt... "Terran Imperial Space Forces, Solar System Direct Assistance Battalion Attache, Sixth Generation Interstellar Cruising Decisive Weapon, Buster Machine No. 7!" She dramatically exclaimed. "Or, well, a copy of her. I guess that would make me 7.5 or something." Taylor mused.

"I-what?" Eidolon blinked. "No, I suppose the only thing that matters is that you aren't a Parahuman." His shoulders sagged in relief.

"Eh..." Taylor wiggled her hand slightly. "Sorta. I was going to be your traditional, run of the mill Parahuman, and then stuff happened."

"...Stuff?" Eidolon questioned.

"Stuff." Taylor confirmed. "Basically, when that big creature, who I presume is Scion, began tearing shards of itself off and scattering them around the world-"

"We generally refer to them as 'Agents'." Eidolon interrupted. "Cauldron, I mean. They provide the main control for powers; usage of them is more asking the Agent for help than any action of our own."

"Hmm." Taylor lightly hummed. "Interesting, but that's rather not the case with my own powers. Anyway, shards, or Agents if you want, go flying everywhere with one directly on a path with me." Taylor paused for effect. "And then it exploded, as the original Buster Machine No. 7 destroyed it in the process of trying to find someplace to put the universe destroying black hole explosion she was carrying somewhere it wouldn't damage anything important."

"Wait-what?!"

"And that turned out to be a pretty terrible thing for my mental state." Taylor continued, ignoring Eidolon's panicked exclamation. "The connections the Agent was going to use to give me powers were still there, just with nothing to connect to. So, on one end of an incredibly powerful mental connection you have an average human, and on the other nothing. And let me tell you, human minds are not prepared to directly deal with nothing. But anyway, I'm sitting there with a broken mind and the original No. 7 makes an attempt to fix the problem, by just flat out rebuilding the Agent. Doesn't quite work, as she couldn't restore the 'data' behind the Agent, and so I was left linked to an entirely new emptiness. And so, running out of time, she just shoved her own schematics into the Agent and hoped it would work."

"That's nice and all, but can we go back to the black hole explosion, please?" Eidolon questioned. "Is this something I should be worried about-?"

"Not really." Taylor cut him off. "Nothings likely to come of it and if anything does, you aren't going to be able to do anything about it-I might not be able to do anything about it."

"...Ah." He managed with a slump. "...Parahumans aren't... all that relevant in the grand scheme of things, are we? Even Scion, as powerful as he is, doesn't really matter in the face of whatever you were built to fight."

"Well, no." Taylor admitted. "But what does it matter, do you base your life around being relevant to things?"

"I... I suppose I do." Eidolon admitted.

Taylor blinked. Well, how does one respond to that?

"My life, before I became Eidolon was... bad." Eidolon began. "I don't feel like going into all the little details, but suffice to say, I wouldn't have lived much longer beyond the time period in which Doctor Mother – the leader of Cauldron – found me, and offered me power and life." He calmly removed his mask, and rubbed at an eyebrow. "When I awoke from having the serum administered, I was mighty. I was powerful. I was – and still am, aside of yourself and Scion – the most powerful Parahuman in the world. And I spent a long while contemplating what I would do with this power. Eventually I decided I would be a hero." A hint of grandeur entered Eidolon's voice. "I threw myself completely into the concept, and discarded all else. I abandoned all hope of ever having a family, of holding a steady job, running for office in government, or making a great work of art. And I decided I would make heroism my legacy."

He sighed. "At the time, I thought I would either die of old age, or in some great battle holding off an unfathomable threat to humanity, and I would leave my legacy behind. That people would remember me as the greatest hero and that would be my life. I was... content with this. Happy, even. Then... Behemoth attacked, and I discovered that my powers were fading, and that I was massively weaker than I had been at the start of my career."

Fading? "You seem fairly powerful for a Parahuman as is, are you sure your powers have faded that far?" Taylor questioned.

Eidolon snorted. "At the height of my power, in the days when the Triumvirate wasn't, and we possessed no threats, I could have held off all three of the Endbringers casually. Perhaps, considering how far I had faded by Behemoth, even killed some of them. Speak with anyone who was around when I first entered the scene, the difference is staggering."

He shook his head. "Moving on, it wasn't too long after that when I discovered Cauldron's true purpose, and that I was someday going to have to fight the one thing I acknowledged as more powerful than myself, all the while I was getting weaker. So I threw myself into finding ways to get stronger, of finding that one worthy opponent. Someone I could push my powers to the limits against in the hopes that I would break through something and rediscover my lost power. Even the Endbringers never stayed long enough for me to truly push myself, always leaving before I could break that barrier. I began to despair some."

He let out a humorless bark of laughter. "Most powerful man in the world, in many ways the most helpless. No other Parahuman had a hint of the power I did, and thus I was left with the most responsibility-the responsibility to stop the end of the world. And then... you met a Snake."

"I... did?" Taylor questioned with confusion. "I mean, I've met a few snakes in my time, but I don't think any have had that much of an impact."

"There is a Parahuman by the name of Coil." Eidolon began. "He had the power to split... choices. Make two choices at a point in time, and chose which one he wanted later after he saw the repercussions of each one. He was both a villain, at that point in time, based out of Brockton Bay, and one of the many capes created by Cauldron. He was less than happy with your actions involving the ABB, and your demonstrable willingness to be a hero. So, he split his choices, and made a few attempts to remove you as a source of consideration. One of those attempts, none of us are very sure which, set you off."

Taylor winced. "Let me guess, you guys managed to trigger the Combat Protocols, and never backed off enough to reset them."

"That sounds like a fair assumption of what happened." Eidolon nodded.

"Yeah, that would have been pretty bad." Taylor admitted. "Even more so because, technically, I don't actually register Parahumans as 'human'. My sensors are acute enough that even the smallest meaningful difference is picked up on, and there is little small about a Parahuman's difference. With the combat protocols totally in control, all they would have seen is non-human entities attacking myself, and endangering humans. I don't know how bad it got, but depending upon the scale of the Parahuman attack, they may have rationalized quite a few human deaths as necessary."

"I see... so it was our own escalation that caused the problem." Eidolon noted.

It was irritating that something like that was even possible, but a situation like this was something nobody could have possibly foreseen or prepared for. "Although I can assure you anything like that is unlikely to happen again; the whole thing was basically my own automated systems desperately scrambling in an attempt to make something of the... unusual situation they had found themselves in." She shrugged. "With everything fully repaired, that can't really happen again."

"That's reassuring." Eidolon let out a slight sigh of relief. "As you said, things got bad very quickly. Not even a half hour in, and you had killed the Simurgh, Legend, possibly Alexandria and myself, and were fighting Scion over the shattered remains of North America. It was around that time that Coil chose the other choice, and told us everything. We rapidly verified his statements and... Then spent an embarrassingly large amount of time not accomplishing much of anything."

He sighed. "We didn't quite know what to do; it was only after meeting you at the Leviathan attack and discovering that you weren't a mass murdering sociopath that we regained even the slightest bit of hope. Of course, we simply took that as having more time to 'deal' with you."

Eidolon shifted in his seat. "I think, that was our major problem when we planned for you, we never considered an option other than 'devise a convoluted method to kill it'. Years of preparing to fight Scion, of making terrible and hard choices to do so, left us unable to consider a different method when we faced a threat of similar magnitude."

He rubbed at his forehead. "Maybe if we had talked with you, instead of continuing to squirrel away information, we could have figured something out earlier. Maybe made you strong enough just a little faster, just enough to stop the three Endbringers before they caused the damage they did."

He shrugged. "But it's done, and now here I sit, unable to decide what to do. Regaining my powers, even if I did find that worthy opponent who would push me far enough – you're certainly not it, Coil's story told me enough to figure out that you were 'too worthy' – isn't really relevant anymore. What did I want them back for? To deal with Scion? Not a problem anymore. To maintain my legacy as the greatest hero? Not possible, you've neatly stolen that from me."

He let out a self-depreciating huff. "I can't even hate you for it, I wanted to save people, and leave that as my legacy. If I truly resented you for doing a better job at it than me, could I truly say that I had meant to leave a legacy of a hero?" He shook his head. "No, if I did that, I would never be able to look at myself again. It would mean that I had done all of this, made all of these sacrifices, for nothing more than a power trip." He spat the last words.

Taylor, who had placed her chin at top her upraised fist at some point, sighed. "You aren't going to give me any satisfactory answers to any of my questions, are you?" She could already guess how he would answer. "Besides, there are better people to ask by this point."

Eidolon blinked. "I'm not sure; you haven't actually asked me any."

Taylor waved him off. "Like I said, I now have a better person to ask my questions to. Anyway." She continued. "What, exactly, did you come here to accomplish?"

"I've already accomplished it." Eidolon replied. "I came here to, well, understand things, and find out if you knew what you were. And find out if another event like Coil's story could happen again. You are firmly of the opinion that it can't for... whatever reason. I'm not sure I got your explanation-"

"Well, you understand I'm a highly advanced combat android, right?" Taylor interrupted.

He nodded.

"Well, basically, when the original No. 7 encoded data on herself into the Agent, it attempted to fulfill its primary function and 'use' that data on me in the only way it knew how. That is, using it as a basis to encode me." She explained. "Problem was, the Terran Imperium's technology was so unfathomably far beyond anything the Agent was ever meant to deal with, it could only perform a haphazard sort of 'smash the data at me and see what happens' approach. This, as you might imagine, didn't go all that well."

"I can imagine." Eidolon dryly interjected.

"So I was left with a bunch of half-finished mechanical innards trying, and succeeding, at fixing things." Taylor continued. "Even the mangled and shattered half formed parts of No. 7 it had tried to construct inside me possessed enough will to attempt, and eventually succeed at, automatic repairs" She shrugged. "I, unknowingly, decided to force myself into this whole heroing business before I was ready at... all really. For instance." She offered. "Around the time I beat up Lung, I was running with roughly half a percent of my maximum power output – and that's ignoring all the non-power output related problems I had, like the fact that my combat protocols were taking control at all. Shouldn't be possible, they're basically a list of instructions and reasonable actions to take during combat. Of course, as I was in pressing need of some combat help, the repair protocols manage to wrangle a basic AI out of a list. An AI with way too much access for its own good, but a basic AI nonetheless."

Eidolon didn't seem sure how to respond to that. "You were... repairing up till now?"

"Yep." Taylor nodded. "And, well, I shouldn't have tried to do anything much while repairing, unpredictable things can, and did, happen. Like that time I tried and accessed the Algorithmic Imaging Drive before it was anywhere near ready. You might remember it as the time Precognition collapsed." Taylor pointed out.

"What was that anyway?" Eidolon latched onto that idea. "We're also fairly sure the Simurgh had an... unusual reaction to it, considering it was smacked fairly heartily into the ground just before it happened."

"That." Taylor began. "Was me attempting to utilize the Algorithmic Imaging Drive to perform Algorithmic Image Propulsion." She paused as she tried to figure out a way to explain it to Eidolon. "Algorithmic Image Propulsion is, basically, a form of Alcubierre drive. In layman's terms, a really poor way of explaining it would be that I perfectly calculate the mass of the space in front of me and behind me, and then preform a really advanced math equation to set the mass behind me much higher, and set the mass of the space in front of me into outright negative terms."

"Negative... mass?" Eidolon tried to wrap his head around the idea.

"The mass difference results in me moving forward on a wave of collapsing space at two or three times the speed of light at the lower end, and hundreds of billions at the higher." Taylor continued. "What's really ridiculous about this is that there's no real energy expenditure involved – the 'Algorithmic Imaging Drive' is little more than a compilation of mathematical equations so advanced they have tangible effect on reality itself. Of course, there's a slight problem with that." Taylor brought her thumb and for finger close together, but not quite touching. "Namely, rewriting reality with math has hellish effects on causality, and I didn't have access to enough power to compensate through the physical canceler. So, basically, a bunch of things happen at once. At one point, it works, and I ram the Simurgh at a little under seven hundred times the speed of sound. At every other point... you get the event you've probably heard of from Dragon."

Eidolon opened and closed his mouth a few times. "God... what could you possibly have fought that required something like that?"

"Heh." Taylor chuckled slightly, and looked off into the distance. "We called them the Space Monsters. Generic, I know, but that's what they basically were. Monsters, from space. Luckily, they don't appear to actually exist in this universe, probably because their creator doesn't either. But anyways, they were incredibly powerful; a single cruiser equivalent in the fleets they fielded could do this." Taylor materialized an image of Titan after the Titan Variable Gravity Well had awoken in her hand. "To Titan. And they casually fielded enough to densely pack a sphere of space eighty AU wide. In the final assault on the galactic core, there were tens of billions of them." The image changed to a view of the Milky Way galaxy with a large dot of red at its center. "You see that dot? During the final battle it was impossible to find a single Space Monster further than a quarter of an AU away from each other – and those were the outliers."

Eidolon frowned, and shook his head. "I'm sorry; I just can't contemplate that kind of scale. And you're telling me you won that fight?"

"For a certainly value of 'won'. We had to envelop eighty percent of the galaxy in an FTL propagating black hole, but we took out enough that we weren't really threatened anymore." Taylor finished.

"...Eighty percent of the- Ugh." He sighed. "I suppose it doesn't matter. There are more things I could ask, although at this rate I don't think I would ever run out of things to ask, but I kind of need to go back and face the music." He winced. "You see I kind of... never got permission to say any of the things about Cauldron I did. So now, I need to go back to base, figure out what to do with my life, and hope Doctor Mother can't figure out how to glare me to death." He wryly remarked. "And considering trigger events, that's a much higher chance than I'm really comfortable with."

"Mhm." Taylor hummed noncommittally. "I suppose I have things to do as well, there's only so long the press will hold off before their greed overcomes their self-preservation and they start battering down my door." And she had a golden man to greet. "So I suppose this is fair well for now, Eidolon."

He nodded, and turned to leave. He hesitated just after opening the door. "...David."

"Hmm?"

"My name, it's David." Eidolon turned to her, and put his mask back on.

"...Alright." Taylor nodded. "Fair well then, David."

With nary a further word, the door closed behind him.