Ancient Legos
Chapter 4
Flight and Fight
Captain's Log, Earth Date: February 7th, 2011
So.
Things have happened.
Um.
Okay, quick summary then given how I'm currently flying a highly advanced warship on course to tackle the most bullshit of the Endbringers.
Said warship didn't spawn where we thought it would. It popped up above the PRT building, in full view of everyone, and let out an immense pressure wave.
I got chewed out by Piggot, Armsmaster, and even Miss Militia.
Then all the Wards.
Then Dragon.
I had to attend an emergency PR meeting. Glenn Chambers tried his Shipper idea again. Needless to say after the 'discussions' I'd undergone with the aforementioned people I was not in a very good mood.
I may have pulled an Alteran energy weapon out of my pocket and implied that if the PR team didn't let me choose they'd be stunned in short order.
Dragon de-escalated by offering me Shipyard as an idea provided the meeting ended without anyone unconscious.
Anything to get me out of that torture chamber was good with me. So now I'm Shipyard.
I was being chewed out by Piggot, again, when the Hyperion (that's the name of this particular Aurora class) mentally connected with me and gave me an alert.
Collateral Damage Barbie had decided my ship was a good idea to Directly Damage.
Thankfully she didn't actually attack the ship. That would have been all kinds of disastrous. She breached the shield barrier and instead fell out of the sky.
Regardless, the Hyperion started counting down to an initiation of it's Defense Mode, something that is probably not a good idea to let loose above a city full of villains.
After telling Piggot this, the fact I was the only one who could fix it, and that I had to be on the Bridge to do so, Dragon's suit picked me up and ran through the PRT building to the garage. As the only one who could keep up, Vista came with us.
Even at their fastest I had enough time to review and even reply to the thread about the ship on PHO that Dragon told me about. Clockblocker had posted and pinged my new account about Collateral Damage Barbie's sister Panacea calling me out.
I apologized, but also covered my ass. The PRT wasn't nicknamed the Public Relations Team for nothing after all. I figured that I should at least try to give an excuse.
When we got to the garage I deployed the shuttle, we got in, and I punched it out of the way too slowly opening doors.
I might have left a sonic boom in my wake but that wasn't really that important given, y'know, actively arming itself warship above the city I live in.
The shuttle easily connected to the internet so I could watch the PHO thread to see the panic level. It wasn't that bad, to be honest, which was nice. Seems people were taking my warning seriously. And I apparently got the duo of gaming villains to turn over a new leaf by way of implied potential for Sufficiently Impressive Firepower, so there's that. I almost spilled information about how big my ships could get to somebody who was an Eye? And saw everything? Usernames are weird. Anyways, I almost spilled it to them but Missy smacked me via spacetime dickery from across the shuttle.
I blamed her for my silence in the post, as is my right.
Everything was going to plan right up until some fucking idiot shot at the shuttle.
Directly at the spot my head would have been hit.
Hyperion really didn't like that. The time to Defense Mode activating dropped like a stone.
So I panicked and put the shuttle into overdrive. Ignored the collapse of Vista as she cried out except to mentally log it for examination and possible apology later. Ignored Dragon trying to get my attention, just pointed her to the medical supplies. Flew into the hangar bay, landed, waited the seemingly agonizingly long seconds for the ramp to descend, and fucking sprinted to the nearest transport booth.
Was able to actively participate on the PHO thread too, thanks to my mental link with the Hyperion's computer systems. Comms system access wasn't enough to stop the countdown though.
Got to the Bridge, nearly threw myself into the Control Throne, laid back, and interfaced.
Defense Mode Activation stood down. Thank fuck.
Oh yeah, and then I traced a surprisingly high number of active dimensional signatures the ship had picked up.
Found out all Parahumans had a pair of trans-reality portals in their heads, including me.
Found out that Dragon wasn't actually in her suit and due to the shield's active counter-surveillance systems, couldn't be remote controlling it.
World's foremost Tinker is actually an AI. Good to know. As soon as I knew that I made damn sure that no transmissions of any kind could reach her.
What? I'm not stupid. We had the Terminator movies on Earth Bet. Even if her creator hadn't built in shackles or a kill switch, someone else probably had.
Oh yeah, and my latest screw up; finding out about the forum account of a feathery death machine, then directly challenging The Simurgh.
On PHO.
Publicly.
Have I mentioned how much below my average common sense I'm batting today?
Shit, there she is!
End Log.
I watched the sensor readout as the Endbringer came through by the cloud cover. She flew down toward my ship like an avenging angel, all her wings spread out to the sides and angrily fluttering. Her travel speed was slow and arcing. No doubt this was to add to her psychological impact. Behind her trailed thousands of meteors like a hailstorm of fire. Space debris. She must have wanted a dramatic entrance.
I had to admit it was an awesome scene.
All the main cannons on the Hyperion turned and locked onto her. Drones were loaded into their chutes. Shields drew immense amounts of power from the Potentia the ship had spawned with to reinforce themselves. Point defense beam arrays deployed, ready to intercept all that burning wreckage that was no doubt intended for my ship.
I mentally made a note to apologize to Aegis, I'd accidentally broken the promise about not making one of the crystalline super batteries.
If I had been sitting up or had my eyes open, I would have screamed a war cry at her. With how I was essentially asleep in the Chair Throne, I decided to use the ship's external sound projectors instead.
On second thought I made sure to start recording this and capturing any video others managed to get. Added the video of the Simurgh's spectacular entrance too, it was only fair to the effort she'd clearly put into it. Maybe I could make a little action video out of the footage.
"AND SO I SAY UNTO THE FALSE ANGEL OF DEATH AND DESPAIR; COME AT ME, ZIZ!"
Her normally impassive and blank face curled into a snarl.
I grinned.
She thrust her arm forward, the hell storm of space debris rocketing towards the Hyperion. It screamed through the air, sonic winds buffeting everything which could listen. My point defense arrays opened up, destroying a lot of the projectiles. Even with them going full speed though there were still just too many individual objects for the limited number of beams to intercept.
They didn't seem like they'd be a danger to the shields. I suppose that's why Alterans didn't give the Aurora more than a small loadout of the point defense emitters.
Oh well.
I charged the primary cannons. The entire deck hummed under my feet, vibrating my body down to the bones. The readouts of the cannons reached 100%, and I fired.
The initial volley of bright blue light, so radiant they shined like a star in one's eyes, exploded out of the barrels of the sixteen cannons which had lock on of the Simurgh. The other sixteen were on the underside of the ship and she wasn't yet in their firing arcs. I intentionally had them spread out so some would hit her if she stayed where she was and others would intercept her if she moved. I knew she had precognitive capability, but knowing something is coming and being able to dodge it are two different things. This way, given the travel speed of the blasts, she would be hit by at least one.
I had a decent hunch that she couldn't predict me when I was inside the shield given her PHO statements about being unable to see the ship, but I was hedging my bets regardless.
She didn't react at all until the blasts cleared the shield. It confirmed my hunch about the shield, at least, but I wanted to see how she fairs against the blasts now that she could see them.
The remaining distance only gave her a second of warning time.
What did she do? Did she dodge or attempt to intercept the blasts with her space debris?
Nope, she let the main cluster hit her.
Ear shattering booms ripped the surrounding airspace apart. Flares of bright blue light and explosions eclipsed the feathery death machine from visual view. My sensors could still see her inside the cloud of near star-level heat and pyroclastic miasma that surrounded her.
Or what was left of her, anyways.
Most of her wings were gone. Half her body was vaporized. Only a very large wing and the upper left side of her body, including her neck and face, were still present.
What the fuck. In one go I'd done more damage to an Endbringer than ever before. I knew Alteran weapons were powerful, but nothing brought the resounding truth of the concept home quite like seeing it firsthand.
Even my Alteran memories didn't really prepare me for their destructive potential.
But even more than that, I was shocked at the Simurgh's behavior. Why did she do that? I didn't even really notice the drumming impacts of her debris against the shields with how surprised I was.
To be fair, neither did the shield strength. It just dipped a single tenth of a percent.
She shouldn't have let those hit her. I wasn't really willing to buy the idea that she didn't see them, they were visually quite present if nothing else. She should have dodged into one of the single boxing in blasts, not allowed the main cluster to hit her!
When the last of the explosions from our first volleys finally cleared, over a minute and a half later, I got to witness an expression I'm sure nobody has ever seen on an Endbringer.
The Simurgh was surprised.
What little of her face and lips remained told me that.
How? She should have known what electron stripped plasma blasts the size and power this ship could produce would do to her.
She turned her gaze on the bridge, narrowing her one remaining eye. Suddenly the speed of regeneration quintupled, her body and wings regrowing from the remaining piece in a few seconds.
Okay. I guess she stopped holding back.
Alerts started popping up all around the ship's shield. Close examination found that something was twisting the very air in hundreds of places around the bubble into vortexes, siphoning gallons of air a millisecond. Out of the tips of those vortexes came spouts of plasma, impacting the shield like primary cannon blasts.
But they were beams.
The Hyperion's shield matrix started dropping percentage points. 99%. Ten seconds later, 98%.
Well then. She'd stopped sandbagging.
My physical lips smirked. My turn.
Every drone port on the Hyperion spiraled open. The entirety of the ship's Drone stores was dumped into their chutes. I turned the ship so that all the primary turrets could target her, ignoring the plasma vortexes for now.
"ROUND TWO, BITCH!" I projected.
All the cannons fired in sequence. One after the other, the drum of the booms of Alteran war sounded out, bursts of light rocketing towards her. Like before she had only about a second's warning before the continual barrage rammed into her. Explosions bloomed all over her body, wings included, as her regeneration fought with the destructive energies unleashed.
She started doing the only thing she could do; dodging. Or trying to, anyways. My turrets were all on automatic at that point, instructed to set up situations where she'd be hit by at least one blast no matter where she went.
Provided she didn't try breaking the sound barrier, anyways. Either she wasn't that desperate yet or she couldn't.
I was going with 'not desperate' given her telekinesis should easily be capable of it.
Oh well. It was my job to make her desperate.
When the blasts had guided her towards the front of my ship, I let loose Wave Two.
Out of each the thirty two drone tubes onboard a thousand golden lights spilled forth. Like undulating streams of light they extended into the atmosphere around us. They formed into arcs of blinding light, going away and out from my ship, then closing on the Simurgh with deadly accuracy.
"My god," I heard Dragon say, "it's beautiful."
I got to see another expression on the Simurgh's face that day. One nobody had ever seen even more so than surprise.
Her porcelain caricature was paralyzed, eyes wide, and face somehow paler than ever.
It was fear.
"THIS IS FOR EVERYONE YOU'VE EVER KILLED, MONSTER!" I screamed at her.
And then, she showed something that shocked me out of my rage.
Acceptance.
Just before the lights hit, she bowed her head and closed her eyes. I was surprised to see a peaceful, relieved smile on her lips. A monster like her shouldn't have been capable of making such an expression.
Before I could reconsider, hundreds of phase shifted nuclear level weapons hit her in a single second. Hundreds more the second afterwards. And even more hundreds the second afted that. For a good half minute, the light, heat, and energy that erupted out from the Simurgh's body was cataclysmic. The atmosphere for five miles around us turned to plasma. The shields struggled under the strain, dropping a solid two percent per second. The ship rocked and bucked in the firestorm like a bronco, the inertial stabilizers not fully capable of countering the turbulence even at maximum.
But eventually, it cleared.
Thank the gods and my own sense that I'd engaged her far, far above Brockton Bay, because otherwise there wouldn't be an Eastern Seaboard anymore.
All the Drones were gone. They'd either been shielded from the apocalyptic explosion by their phase shifting until they hit the Simurgh and exploded or simply were overcome. My ship was scarred by charred swaths of areas where the shields hadn't been strong enough to prevent all that energy from getting through. Almost all the turrets were down or exploded. They'd just kept firing, as I'd told them to, and overloaded because of it.
At the time I gave them that instruction I was throwing everything at the Simurgh just to see what would finally take her out. Everything went to hell before I could countermand the order.
I took a glance at the shield readout, despite not really wishing to see how close I'd come to death.
The red three sent shivers down my spine.
Right. So. I scheduled in a good few hours later on where I could ponder my existence and release the immense panic attack I was actively suppressing.
I just fought and beat an Endbringer on my second day as a superhero. 'Panic Attack' doesn't really describe what I was going to experience when I finally let go of my emotional control.
A quick upload of the footage I'd gathered of my fight with the Endbringer was posted to the PHO forums. As shaken as I was, the rest of the human race deserved to know the good news and see how one of our destroyers had been silenced. Today would be a good day for everyone else.
I was feeling guilty on top of the panic. Immensely so. I had a nagging suspicion I'd just killed a person. A person who was doing evil things, yes, but against their own will. There was no other explanation for why she'd been peaceful and relieved at the end.
The Hyperion, picking up on my thoughts, brought up the results of a new scan. I sagged into the Control Throne with exhausted relief.
I was wrong. I hadn't truly killed her. If I'd been anyone else… well, that would be terrifying. All the firepower I'd hit her with and it still hadn't killed her. It just made my guilt evaporate instead.
The only thing left of the Simurgh was a small ball of hyper dense matter within which a trans-reality portal latched into this spacetime. It was cracked and certainly had a compromised integrity, given I could scan the inside of it, but it had survived nonetheless. Even now it was starting to emit new mass, supposedly to recreate her body.
With a smile I directed my beam arrays to scoop it up. The core, for that's what it was, of one of humanity's terrorizing monsters and possible coerced, forced, or maybe even enslaved siege engine disappeared in a white light. I directed it to rematerialize in one of the science labs. It relieved me when the rate of mass creation stopped. Apparently she was content to sit there in the lab until I could get to her.
Her portal was still active, so it wasn't that she was incapable of regenerating. But given the data I now had like the portals in Parahuman brains, the fact Glory Girl couldn't fly inside the shield, the lack of the Simurgh's precog ability working inside the same shield, and the emotions I'd seen on her face before she 'died'...
Something smelled fishy in Wonderland.
The fact she stopped regenerating and hadn't attacked me once her core was inside the shield was just more proof.
Something from another reality was providing powers and probably the control signal for Ziz, if indeed she was being controlled like I suspected.
Before I could handle the shitstorm all that implied, though, I needed to deal with my two other guests. They'd found the Bridge right around the time I started firing on the Simurgh with the main cannons a second time. Now they were standing in front of me.
I set the ship on course for Brockton Bay again and got up from the Control Throne.
I opened my eyes to see an irate Dragon suit and a certain cute Ward clinging to it's side as if she would fall. Missy was paler than she should be, with dark circles under her eyes, and Dragon seemed to be shaking.
They were also both clearly torn between being pissed at me and in awe.
"Oh hey gals," I greeted them. "How's it going?"
My response to their dark scowls was to grin ear to ear.
A/N: And so it goes.
-humo146: Here you go!
-AnFan-n-More: Weldon's power, or at least one of his powers, is definitely the result of a Shard. He is a host. On whether he's a reincarnated Alteran? Spoilers, sort of. He is not a reincarnated anything, I will say that. For the rest of your guess; aspects of it are right and aspects of it are wrong. I'm not saying which :P
Thank you! Yeah, even if it's Crack I try to make my stories good. Ziz took um… a few everything to her everywhere, not just starboard bow, but I'm saving that joke for somewhere down the line. Especially the Galaxy Quest quote. Weldon isn't wearing a personal anything at the moment, but he will definitely be wearing an Alteran Personal Shield (the thing he offered Aegis in the first chapter) at all times once he figures out everything. Even if it might interfere with his powers, he likes his mind being his own and he's gonna get really pissed when he figures out that's not the case. There is definitely a way to modulate the Alteran Personal Shield for those kinds of things, but it's mental, which is why McKay couldn't do it.
Live fics are the best, right? :D
-KyonSmith13: Thanks! Wanted to try and make it seem like a legitimate forum thread. My experiences on… everywhere (and Reddit) helped me do that.
And yes, Escalation is bestcalation. But what happens when you get the King and Queen of Friendscalation working together? What if you add the Bird of Trolling after an unofficial debut beatdown? That might very well happen. Or perhaps it already has? ;)
Moreover, given basically everyone has guessed it at this point, Replicator Queen Taylor is going to be terrifying. The mechanical race does after all have an essential monopoly on the Von Neumann type of Escalation.
Mua ha ha.
-RoyalTwinFangs: Thanks!
-TheDarkTactician: Weldon is less the maniacal general and the more Overwhelming Force with a Cry of War general. Tinkers are bullshit, but add Alteran technology to Tinkers and it goes to Bullshit Singularity levels.
-Bellastalker: Awesome!
-Krysvun: Spacebattles? I've read many fics on both SB and SV and technically have an account on both. I'll think about putting my stuff there. I'm worried that I'll forget to update one of them though if I do that.
-GreenRana: Sighs. Yes, you and everyone else have guessed it, Taylor will be Replicator Queen.
-edboy4926: Thanks! I'm glad my PHO is one of the good ones. I'm not sure whether my portrayal of how certain characters would post is accurate, but I did my best. And yes, I outed Ziz on PHO on purpose, because I haven't seen it done anywhere either. Plus it actually made sense in the story, an Aurora would pick up her signature interfacing with the Internet in no time flat, not to mention no computer on Earth Bet (Dragon included) would stand a chance against Alteran computers.
On Replicator Queen Taylor and outlines; I was trying not to be super obvious about what she was going to end up doing, but I suppose that's failed. The 'don't read my outline' thing was a joke.
-Legionnas: Toasted, liquified, exploded, vaporized, ripped into subatomic particles, take your pick!
-SkyCaptain502: She came at him and got punked.
-AscendedHumanity: Because cliffhangers allow writers to set up suspense, keep you coming back for more, and it makes it easier (at least for me) to keep writing the story. A cliffhanger, to me, says "Look at all the potential coming from beyond me! Think about it! Write it!". And here's your update!
-suzga: Yeah it went down. I don't really like long-slogged battle scenes and am a firm believer in The Only Winning Move Is Overwhelming Firepower, so this scene could be considered short, but I digress. As for Weldon setting up the SGC or Gate teams: Spoilers ;)
-weirdnoodles: ME! HERE! LATER!
-Eddie Drood: Glad you love the story! Buildup shmildup, going slow is boring. And it wouldn't have exactly worked out with the universe the way it was; Alteran sensors are too good not to trigger this scenario.
Taylor's power is not changing. She has the same Shard and can control bugs. Replicators are, technically, 'bugs', or at least close enough for an uncreative logic based intelligence to think so. Now, what happens when the Replicator's Alteran code detects the interference? That will be entertaining and possibly Taylor's-worldview-changing.
Taylor isn't going to be a Tinker, at least power-wise. Gaining control over Replicators will give her a Tinker rating, but not because of her power. Master subrating Tinker most likely.
Why would Weldon smack down Scion? He's the first superhero. For all Weldon knows, he's a good guy. So far ;)
As for Weldon going into the SG verse: EHHH. Slight problems with this idea, namely that they have a whole lot of Ascended Energy Beings over there, any of which would barely blink against Scion. And I, like anyone paying attention to the SG shows, know exactly how much the Ancients listen to their so-called 'rulebook'. It would definitely be interesting, but I'd have to figure out how it could work. I'll toss the idea in my mental timeline as a possibility.
-jdboss1: Thanks!
-Vandenbz: Ah, I got it. Yeah, the global freakout hasn't even had a chance to really start. The next chapters are going to be very interesting. And hilarious. As for the sniper… Which of those two villains would a certain Blonde All Seeing Eye curse?
Your question on the Simurgh actually inspired me to make it… neither! I decided to strike a nice balance between the two, simultaneously opening up a few more potential shitstorms to descend upon Earth Bet. It's all your fault Vanden! :P
The Alteran Personal Shields will most definitely no-sell Contessa, freak out Cauldron, prompt a response from them, and stop Parahuman powers. Well, some of them. Some are based on Shard dimensional dickery and others come from the hosts' bodies themselves. Generally the ones that treat physics as gentle suggestions will be stopped, though, which has far too many possible implications for me to put in a review reply. Wonder if people can guess them all?
On Case 53s, it really depends again on how they work. If the Shard is actively keeping their body from reverting, then the Shields would revert them, but if it is more like some kind of genetic modification then they won't necessarily do anything. I am definitely implementing that religion idea though, it's perfect to embarrass Weldon with.
Alteran sensors would definitely pick up on Doormaker portals given what they found for Weldon in this chapter. The consequences of that are incoming and Weldon is suspicious. Setting up shitstorms is fun. I can see why ROBs are depicted as trolls, it's entertaining to mess with mortals.
The S9 aren't a threat to Weldon. Though whether or not Crawler can survive a Star is debateable. I know that without access to extra dimensional dickery he'd be destroyed immediately, so Weldon might just slap an APS on him and beam him into the Sun. Alternatively, black holes exist, and the difference between spaceship and starship the PRT didn't know enables getting to one. Nilbog would be difficult to contain if Alterans didn't have nanites, but I'm trying to leave some S-Class threats for Taylor once she ascends to her throne. Heartbreaker is so easy to solve it's hilarious, and good idea about bringing in Regent for the op. As for getting involved with the Undersiders, Blonde Smug Machine is offended you didn't recognize her PHO username.
-Curious Reader: Good! Laughs are the goal after all. Here's the fight scene, I hope matches your expectations. And there definitely are more responses to Weldon's statement and challenge, but Greg had to get off the computer, because, y'know, Endbringer.
-Guest(1): Less ray and more BOOM but here you go.
-Angeloux: Thanks!
-Bob(1): Alteran shields block dimensional and inter-reality shenanigans, yes, else they'd be useless against Drones. No civilization builds a weapon without a defense against it. It did indeed jam the connection between Collateral Damage Barbie and her Shard. Not a stun shield. Yes, Auroras can easily glass planets, and as tough as Endbringers are, they still are just made up of matter. Even super tough matter will break under a high enough level of energy, but Alteran weapons do something else. They act more like disruptors, ripping things apart by destroying atomic links. Just take a look at the Anti Replicator Gun and how it works for evidence of this. The 'superweapon' on Dakara does the same thing, dissolves matter. Due to this proof I posit that Alteran weapons are disruptors or disassemblers more than actual energy weapons. I wouldn't be surprised if their stun weapons disrupt the energy in someone's nervous system to knock them out. Further proof can be found in the fact that Wraith weapons work this way and are based on Alteran systems given how the Wraith came from the Alterans, either via creation or accidentally.
Alteran Drones are essentially the perfect Anti-Endbringer weapon. The very way they work is by bathing in dimensional dickery. They explode too. With big explosions. Also, given how the Simurgh's telekinesis seems to work, she actually can pose a threat to Alteran shields, as evidenced by her plasma vortexes in this chapter, but she can't threaten them while sandbagging. As for her Tinker abilities, it's a little difficult to do anything without material to work with, and while space debris could in theory be used for Tinkering, she chose to use it as projectiles in this chapter due to her severely underestimating Alteran technology. Any guesses why she underestimated it? After all, all Tinker tech should come from an Entity's database. Hmm…
And yes, as if Worm wasn't dark enough, somehow some people thought it needed even more dark. Not even the death and destruction kind of dark but the gross, torture kind. Sigh.
-Bob(2): Yes.
-gaul1: Thank you, hi.
-drake-dragon-101: YES! BASK IN THE TERROR! MUAHAHAHA