Current Energy: 10
Current Training: Onmyodo (7/10)
Friday, January 21st, 2011
PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay
You pass two more groups of embattled soldiers on your way through the halls, each one only slightly better off than the last. The PRT seems to have adapted to the Empires Tinkertech fairly quickly, lobbing foam grenades around corners without checking them first - but this hasn't stop a number of casualties and injuries from popping up.
For one, the PRT officers don't have an infinite number of those grenades. Even if they did, they detonate in a fairly limited area, and work better as adhoc cover than an enemy deterrent.
Your Master stops at each group, apparently recognizable enough with her sword in hand and tangled messy hair trailing behind her that the officers don't make too much of a fuss identifying herself. She heals what few she can, her blue aura flickering slightly with each healing, but is ultimately of middling help on that front. The weapons the Empire grunts are using are brutal in their killing efficiency. Whatever they touch superheats, instantly flash boiling any flesh and blood it manages to make contact with. Some of the officers have been lucky enough to merely have their extremities struck, but even with your Master's healing, the most she seems capable of is preventing the near exploded limbs from killing the officers who survive them.
Each injury she encounters enrages your Master more and more, leaving her in a dour mood when you eventually make it to the prison lock up area. You, of course, have been dutifully sweeping the adjacent hallways clean of thugs as you travelled, flickering in and out of existence just long enough to send several groups of gangsters tumbling through the infinite.
You haven't only been clearing the halls nearest to your Master of course. You've been combing through much of the adjacent area, and have picked up a number of enemies that had yet to even engage. You assume your Master approves because she doesn't tell you to stop doing it, even if the overwhelming number of men armed with lethal weapons in the building is highly distressing to her.
The PRT prison wasn't particularly well fortified. Not natively at least. It had the expected array of sealed doors and automated defences - the PRT did so love their foam sprayers after all - but it was, overall, much less secure than it could be. Mostly because the heavy duty cells, were on the now defunct Rig.
It makes sense you suppose. Unless one could fly, most criminals would have a hard time escaping a fortified position over water even if they could escape their confines. The PRT Headquarters however, lacked that benefit.
Much to its own detriment.
You came upon the first signs of enemy action just at the entrance of the prison block. The hallway leading up to the metal doorway was shredded in places, as though a large blade had passed through the adjoining wall, and these gashes began to grow in size and frequency the further down the hallway you travelled, culminating the prison entrance - which looked as though it had been bored through by a massive drill. The automated turrets in the ceiling were sparking uselessly above you, dripping foam to the ground slight as the twitched and buzzed, and a number of Officers who were no doubt set to guard the area are strewn about.
Many of them in several pieces.
It is this final sight that ultimately pushes your Master past the point of faux calm she has been maintaining using her Inner Peace, and into the seething rage that emanates from her now. Her spider-like aura unfurls behind her like a banner, cause slight gusts of air to swirl about the hallway, and she steps forward, before you stop her.
'I'll scout ahead.' You offer quickly, slightly worried about your Master. Aspirant obviously feels the same, because he has shifted to place himself watching her back as she moves forward, huge opalescent fists up and at the ready, one arm slowly shifting as a shield begins to take shape from the material covering him.
She's at least calm enough not to affect him with her aura you guess.
With great care, you drift forward, glancing about as you travel. You aren't surprised by all the dead officers inside the prison - a dark and drab box of concrete with two levels and a number of plain-looking cells lining each floor that looked perfectly inadequate to the task of actually stopping most Parahumans from escaping. The entrance to the prison rests on the lower of the two floors, with a stairway on the opposite wall leading upward. It's actually quite small really. No more than eight cells per floor, though you suppose that's to be expected given that this prison isn't used as frequently as the it's counterpart on the rig.
Hovering patiently - as though waiting for you - in the center of the room is Purity, her outfit having apparently been replaced by a standard jumper - not that you can see it by anything more than it's bulky outline on the womans otherwise impossible to make out frame. You consider this for a moment, watching the woman float serenely in the middle of the prison while watching the door, her fists glowing with contained power.
Then you move on, glancing about the rest of the area. Every Parahuman you've captured from the Empire to date is here. Fog, Krieg, Stormtiger, Victor. But there are some additions that are somewhat less than helpful. Hookwolf is present, his metallic shifting form packed tightly in an open prison cell that obscures him from sight in front of the door. Othala stands amidst the group of captured prisoners on the second floor, close enough to each to touch, and more importantly, close enough to Purity's floating form to reach out to if need be.
Victor appears to have obtained a firearm and a sword from somewhere, though you aren't sure what he hopes to achieve with a longsword and a pistol, even if the pistol does look suspiciously like a scaled-down version of the weapons the men outside were using.
Your Master experiences all this through your eyes at the same rate as you do, and growls in mild frustration, a sound audible to the occupants of the prison.
In your opinion, the best move your Master could possibly make is just to stand in front of the door until reinforcements arrive. There are no other exist to the prison unless the Empire recently acquired a teleporter. For a moment the amusing image of using Hookwolf as a digging tool occurs to you, but you doubt the large man would allow himself to be used so casually as a construction tool.
Of course, Purity manages to ruin this by calling out to your Master when she notices someone in the hallway.
"If you're out there Nexus, we'd like to negotiate." The woman states clearly, obviously accustomed to getting what she wants. Your Master hesitates for a second, turning to Aspirant for his opinion. The boy considers things for a moment, but ultimately calls back out himself, much to your surprise.
"Why should we? You're trapped. If you could beat us you would." He yells.
"...You're right. I have no expectation of being able to defeat Nexus. But we're currently under the building all of her friends are in. If I can't escape anymore, well..." Purity says grimly, raising a hand to the ceiling and beginning to let off a furious glow.
You barely consider it. You're so accustomed to quelling such violent urges in others that the Gap you send to eat up the blast moves practically before you consciously form the thought required to do so.
Which is a mistake.
In order to use your Gaps, you have to manifest physically, which poses the interesting problem of making you physically vulnerable. There is a brilliant flare of white light as you transport Purity's blast - easily as big as the one she used to total the Rig - outside, to the Gap you had originally intended to drop people from if they vexed you. In the same breath, you were also moving your other single portal forward to sweep the woman away - confident that without her present, everyone else in the room will fall victim to your Master's rapid entrance.
This, however, does not happen. It doesn't happen, because before you can even begin to complete that operation, you feel your body begin to boil. You can feel time standing still as your gaze twitches ever so minutely in the direction of that attack that struck you, to where Victor is holding his pistol up, pointed straight at you. His body shifts and twitches slightly as you watch, like the idle animation of a video game character that has been sped up a dozen times over.
You realize, that you might have made a tactical error.
Your Emulation - Yukari Yakumo - is, for all intents and purposes, and unstoppable force in her home dimension. She is feared by all the beings that know of her the same way your kind fears Sting, and for good reason. Her mastery of Gaps is such that she can operate dozens, if not hundreds of them simultaneously. Perfectly wedding defense, observation, and offence. As close to omniscient in combat as it's feasible to be for a single bodied organism of any type.
You are emulating Yukari Yakumo. But you are not her. Your concern for your energy consumption, your stolid desire to remain in this reality as long as possible before a new 'You' is chosen, your clever husbanding of the Gaps you open in order to reuse them later. All of these things were limitations that your Emulation isn't accustomed to, and never considered when entering the fray. Where the original would have blanketed this room in Gaps and swept away any and all attacks, combatants, and problems, in seconds, you were sadly limited in this respect.
And that limitation is something an enemy can capitalize on, in particular, one with a numbers advantage and super speed.
It dawns on you in the single second between life and death, that Othala is standing dangerously close to all of the enemy capes in the room. You don't know much about the woman, but cursory readings from your Master tell you she has the ability to bestow one of several powers on her compatriots.
With that in mind, and knowing your time spent assisting your Master in this particular conflict has been unfortunately cut short, you do the only thing you can. You angle the gap you were moving to capture Purity towards Othala, and reorient things so that the blast of blinding light that the woman is firing bursts straight towards her.
And then your flesh and blood boil up out of your body, and you become inactive.
Taylor Hebert
Friday, January 21st, 2011
PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay
She could feel it. The exact moment when Emmy flickered out, returning to the space at the back of her mind that was always connected to her. She hated it. She hated it not just because it signified the death of a friend, not just because it indicated she would be down one teammate.
She hated it because it made her feel helpless.
And she hated feeling helpless. Wasn't that the whole point of her powers? She could do anything. Anything at all. She just had to be better. Emmy was always saying it after all, the Multiverse was a weird place. If she were someone else, someone with a more limited power set, perhaps she could allow herself to feel helpless. Or weak. Or just... less. If she had the power to control bugs, there was no way she would be so driven. So focused. Because if she had a power like that, then obviously her failure to fix anything must be because her powers weren't good enough. But that just wasn't the case. With Emmy, she could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. She was unstoppable. Her goals, no matter what they were, could never be out of her reach. Because if she couldn't achieve them with power like this, then the power wasn't the problem after all was it?
She was.
So when the hallway lit up with brilliant white light, followed quickly but the soft almost scream of pain that accompanied Emmy's death, she didn't hesitate. Not even for a single second. She moved, accelerating from where she was and into the room so fast that she was temporarily blinded by the shift. She didn't bother judging the distance between herself and the corner, something she typically did in order to determine when to stop. She just allowed herself to bounce off the wall at speed, redirecting herself the second she located Purity, charging at the woman with a fist extended.
She was angry. Furious, in fact. Enough so that she was, to some extent, aware that she was being irrational. But that didn't mean she was going to allow that rage to turn her into a murderer. So just like all the things she'd been feeling as she made her way into this pit, she shoved the negative feelings into a box with Inner Peace, and locked it up tightly.
Contrary to her expected result, however - which was to clothesline Purity hard enough to break her ribs and hopefully knock her out - she met unexpected resistance. And by 'unexpected resistance' what she meant was - she hit Purity dead on, and felt her shoulder dislocate in it's socket when the woman didn't move a single inch.
With a pained cry, Taylor found herself tumbling along the walkway behind the woman, just barely passing overhead of the other Nazi's present.
'Othala.' She realized, trying desperately to recall what it was that that woman could grant to her allies.
'Pyrokinesis, Invulnerability, Super Strength, Regeneration, and-' She stopped, her instincts telling her she had to move.
'Super Speed!' She hissed mentally, leaping over a bolt of heat from Victor only to have to painfully deflect his sword with her dislocated arm as he positioned himself to gouge out her eye.
Out of the corner of her eye she could see Aspirant charging into the room after her, the impassive face of his helmet somehow angular and menacing as his charge was met by Hookwolf, sending both brutes tumbling across the way and into another cell.
With barely any thought for the matter, she caught herself on a platform of air, thrusting herself out over the open space in the middle of the room and handily deflecting a blast of Purity's power with her sword. On the walkway she had just left, she could see Othala standing primly in place, with a thick fog surrounding her.
She couldn't allow herself to think about it too hard. There were just too many enemies, and it was making it hard for her to get her bearings. Mentally apologizing to Aspirant for her inability to limit who she affected like this, she unleashed her aura, allowing it's pressure to press down on all the occupants of the room.
Prompting Purity to fire a barrage of blasts at her that she was hard pressed to completely evade in this tight of a space.
She could see how things were playing out now. Othala could grant her Invicibility to Fog - which could hypothetically make him into a perfect defence. The same was true of Purity, who's major weakness as an Artillery type Cape was her vulnerability in melee combat. Meanwhile Victor - empowered by Super Speed - was free to use his deadly weapons and superior skill to harry her, preventing her from retaliating.
Something he demonstrated by snap firing his weapon at her the second she let up on her spiritual pressure in order to focus on deflecting any attacks that might hit her or Aspirant below.
She felt trapped. Penned in. She could take on any one of these people easily! Heck, she could probably defeat nearly any combination of them if not for the empowering support of Othala at their back. Worse, she felt sure she was missing something. Didn't they capture Stormtiger as well? Where was he?
The answer, of course, came at the most inopportune time. Namely, in the sudden wave of pressure that washed over her as she attempted to land and pry Hookwolf off of Aspirant, the two of them a writhing mass of shifting limbs and spikes. For a brief second she felt as though she were walking through jello. The air became thick and ungainly. She briefly thought she could smell ozone even.
And then Stormtiger had waved a hand at her, from the position he had taken, hiding against the ceiling when she had entered. And the localized bubble of oxygen she was standing in burst into flames. Taylor didn't have time to think. She barely even had time to comprehend. She just acted, leaping from the spot she had just been standing in with all her strength, and only barely managing to clear the spot before it became an intense blue-white fireball.
Time froze around her as she moved, her entire world slowing to a crawl as she fully understood the situation she was in.
'I'm going to die. Actually this time. I can't fight this many people at once. I can't get to Aspirant to get him away from Hookwolf. I can't stop Othala from empowering the others. I can't stop Purity from filling the room with lasers the second I try to use my aura. I'm going to die, because I didn't think any of them could stop me. And there's nothing I can do about it.' She realized, squeezing her eyes shut against the glare from the explosion she had just avoided, and Purity, shining bright overhead.
'Call my name.' A voice echoed in her skull, like a spike in her thoughts, invasive and yet somehow welcome. Between one blink and the next, she was somewhere else, standing ragged and tired on the palmtop of the giant statue she had last seen in her dreams. She had been here again since then, each time she slept, but nothing had ever happened. She just stared at it's blank face, unable to turn away.
This time was different though. She knew she wasn't asleep. Some dim part of her realized that despite the odd flow of time she was experiencing, she was still somehow, in the middle of combat even as she stood here. Not only that, but for the first time, there was someone else standing atop the statues open palm.
A woman of indistinct features, wearing A vaguely Egyptian outfit
Unlike Taylor, she was staring outward, at what lay beneath the massive statue, instead of at its timeworn face.
"It is at our core, that we are forever embattled on all sides." The woman says mischievously, her voice somehow familiar even though Taylor couldn't quite make out the details of her features themselves. She tried to speak, to ask what was going on, to demand to be sent back to do what she had to in order to save people, but found she couldn't. No words would come from her mouth. So instead, she begrudgingly turned to regard whatever it was beneath the statue.
Beneath her, lay a brilliant emerald expanse. Green, beautiful foothills spread in all directions from the mount upon which the statue rested. And upon those hills marched death. Hundreds of thousands of faceless creatures, each one nothing more than a blackened cutout in reality, marching ever onward towards her statue. Wherever the creatures set foot, the grass blackened and died, and the hills were made into a wasteland.
"And it is in our nature, to respond in kind." The woman continues serenely, seemingly unperturbed by the sight before her.
"Why?!" Taylor finally managed to shout, unable to stare blankly at the happenings around her any longer.
"Because. Those-" The woman says easily, gesturing at the army of shadows, "-and this-" She says, gesturing at the statues defences.
"Are both you." She finishes.
"So what, the ultimate moral of the story is there's something wrong with me?" Taylor hissed back, firmly aware of each second as it ticked past and not at all interested in understanding her 'true self' right this very second.
"There is no moral. Just a story to tell. And you won't know the ending until you say my name." The woman declared sternly.
Taylor really didn't know how to answer that.
Or at least, she thought she didn't. But for some reason, whenever she turned her mind to it. She found there was a name echoing in the back of her head. It had been there for a while now actually. She just hadn't... cared. Spiritual wellness were all fine and good, but she was just much too practical to dwell on the mystical for any extended period of time. She had super strength and a super sword. That seemed more than good enough for her.
But right now, she needed more. And her usual purveyor of such things was distinctly dead.
When Taylor Anne Hebert opened her eyes again, she was back in the prison, and hardly a single second had passed. She could feel her back ache as the remains of the fireball she had just lept from scoured her rear, and the pain of her dislocated shoulder flared briefly back to the forefront of her awareness as she landed in a roll that only barely allowed her to evade Victor shot at her.
She should have tried to fall back. Maybe bust through a wall to get to Aspirant so they could escape. She should have just resorted to maximum possible force, forgoing the honor of a Hero in order to avoid death.
What she actually did, was raise her sword above her head, and mutter.
"Oppose, Nemesis."