Current Energy: 0?
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Time Bubble, Brockton Bay
POV: Nexus
It had started out as such a nice day too.
Taylor liked to consider herself fairly egalitarian. Could she abuse her reputation and considerable, incredibly well known at this point, ability to get everything she wanted at all times?
Probably, yes.
Would she?
Most certainly not.
It wasn't just that she had no particular need to do so either. It was the principle of the thing. If she threw her weight around, then the only difference between her and the bullies who had tormented her was scale.
Sure, she wasn't above using her influence to grease the wheels here or there - she was certain that nearly no one in the city could just walk into city hall and expect to see the mayor immediately, unlike herself - but where possible she always paid her dues. She tried to make sure she didn't let power go to her head. She lived in a world where examples of people doing just that littered the landscape.
So she paid her bills, she helped the government and the PRT where possible, and she generally tried very hard to tamp down on the sensation of boredom she got from a fight she could easily win.
At first, she had been frankly elated by Uber and Lee's little countermeasure. After all, half the reason no one could really fight her was the presence of her Spiritual Pressure, an all powerful form of crowd control which - now that she could have it ignore her allies - largely ended any fight before it even started.
There were exceptions of course. Brutes of significant strength could bull through it. The Simurgh hadn't seemed overly concerned with it - possibly because the thing didn't have a soul in the first place.
So, for the first little bit there, she had been more than happy to indulge her fight brain by getting into the thick of it with tweedle dee and tweedle dumb.
Really, she had figured that since at any point she could just blow the city up she was in no danger of anything truly bad happening to her, and since the dynamic dumbasses had gone to the trouble of setting up an empty city for her she didn't even need to worry about collateral damage.
This was, she had originally reflected, the perfect no consequences situation. She could definitely have fun with something like that.
Then there was the Tank.
She assumed it was a tank anyway. She wasn't much for vehicle terminology, but the building sized offering to all the gods of firepower that ever existed didn't feel like it could be adequately described as anything else.
That thing gave her the creeps, like somehow the idiot pair had helped create something almost Endbringer-esque in function into the world. Only instead of wielding water, or fire, or telekinesis like the others - this thing existed as the purest form of the concept of heavy weaponry.
It wasn't just how big it was. It wasn't the way that the Crystallized Wisdom told her it somehow weighed more than anything reasonably could without damaging the continent it was resting on. It was the slick, greasy wrongness that it emanated the minute she had laid eyes on it. It was like someone had taken the purifying rituals of Onmyoudou, and flipped them on their heads. Like every evil spirit, angry ghost, or other similar horror she could easily think of had been bound up in the thing. Every iron plate, every tortured piece of machinery, every weapon on the thing, practically howled with the malicious presence housed in the thing.
That was about the point at which she had decided that this encounter definitively could have consequences, and that she wasn't having fun anymore. The problem was, try as she might, she had never actually had to deal with this many individual foes capable of matching her physical strength. Oh, she was still stronger than them individually, but the addition of the device that removed her greatest crowd control tool also removed her ability to clear space so she could prepare a more powerful attack. Emmy and Jess had been pressed just getting her a couple seconds to fire upon the empowered Spree clones, let alone work out a way to breach that hell tank thing.
She hated to admit it, but while she didn't feel out matched, she did feel outnumbered. And since literally everyone present was suddenly brute enough to seriously injure her, she had to make a tactical decision.
And that decision had been to call in the cavalry.
It had been harder than normal. Like trying to cut through solid concrete with a spoon. So, she had needed to visualize it differently. She was in a time bubble. She wasn't bridging the Gap between two points - Gaps never did that in the first place.
Instead, she was removing everything that separated 'here' from her allies.
She couldn't really fully control the resulting rip in space time, because frankly she only barely understood what she had actually done in the first place - but it was enough to her that she had put out the call - and whoever came, came.
"What the fuck is this now?" Trainwreck asked her within ten seconds of breaching the Gap into the grey world around her, gesturing down into the city with a thumb at the clearly visible vehicle obscuring much of the landscape.
"Don't laugh." She quickly stated, surreptitiously shooting a look at Jess that said 'don't say anything'.
"What are we laughing at?" Aspirant asked curiously as he bounded into sight, then paused when he found there to be no enemies immediately in reach.
"Nothing!" She shouted perhaps a tad too quickly.
"Boss, I hate to be a fuck ass about this and shit, but when I said 'What the fuck is this now' I really want you to know I put a pretty heavy emphasis on the word 'now' - on account of whatever the fuck that is turning its fucktillion turrets towards us and shit." Trainwreck insisted before she could continue to formulate a reasonable way to say 'I had a hard time with Uber and Leet'.
Unfortunately, she now apparently had a secretary for that.
"Uber and Leet trapped us in this big Grey Boy thing and then they blew her leg off and now we need help." She answered, frowning with a tired look on her face as her sword returned to its base form - the transformation evidently too difficult for her to maintain for long periods of time yet.
Taylor shot Jess a scathing look at this admission.
"Okay look, I wasn't taking them seriously before-" She started.
"Fair." Trainwreck intoned easily.
"-but I am now, because they kinda sorta figured out how to Trump one of my better powers-" she continued.
"Alarming." Aspirant noted .
"-and they've got a magic demon tank fueled by damned souls or something- yes, Huntsman?" She paused to respond as Oliver lifted a hand in the air.
"So… other people are doing weird magic shit now?" He asked curiously.
"...Yes." She responded tersely.
She had no idea how that was possible given everything she understood about her power, but it was definitely one of the first things she was going to investigate when this nightmare was over.
"So then, we should consider that… thing… roughly comparable to you in destructive firepower?" Parian asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. In answer, Taylor merely gestured at the stretch of city the tank had previously ripped apart for emphasis. Trainwreck whistled.
"Yeah, okay. It's gonna be that kinda day." He said after a moment before adding, "still gonna laugh at you later though".
"Taylor? What- what exactly is happening?" Danny asked as he, the kids, and Mouse Protector appeared.
Taylor groaned, but quickly repeated her quick explanation of events for her father and co.
At which point, Mun started laughing at her.
"O-oh my god you got your ass beat by Uber and Leet! Oh my god! Oh my god!" She screeched, cackling loudly.
"...I apologize." Mem stated for her sister.
Taylor chose to summarily ignore the rest of the group, instead turning to pull open the biggest Gap she could to obscure them from the Tanks weaponry. So far the thing had held back on firing on her, though she couldn't fathom why.
'Emmy?' She asked, checking in with her friend by way of switching to his perspective.
Only to find him darting in and out of melee with everyone on the ground around him, making liberal use of his ability to become intangible to evade summary execution by the overwhelming numbers around him.
She had wondered why he never did this before, but never thought to ask.
'Distracting them. Leet is down. Don't know if that time thing they do can fix him or not. They haven't used it yet so I assume there are limitations.' Her partner bit out quickly.
'Can you get inside the Tank? It's the major obstacle here - and I'm pretty sure that's where they're keeping whatever is letting them control time in here.' She asked quickly, even as she took sudden notice of the swarms of somewhat oversized pigeons wearing small helmets flying in formation overhead.
"Weird but I'll take it." She decided instantly, making use of her most treasured ability.
The ability to pretend weird bullshit was normal.
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Time Bubble, Brockton Bay
POV: Multiversal Emulator
You glance at the tank while making use of your intangibility to vanish from sight in order to direct Uber and one of the Teeth to nearly accidentally Maim each other.
This has been your strategy. You are too low on power to safely handle everyone here nonlethally. Or even lethally really. Under normal circumstances you would have been ripped apart by the sheer numbers of your opposition at this point. So instead, you are mostly distracting them by popping in and out of existence at opportune moments - though they are much too on alert for you to do much with the surprise.
Doing so causes you near physical pain however. This is a fundamentally incorrect use of this ability. Using it in combat in any capacity - even once - is fundamentally the same as if Clockblockers power decided one day to let him use it up to fifty yards away without touching something.
It is shockingly, stupidly, fundamentally wrong. You may have done it once or twice in the past - when absolutely pressed - but using it consecutively the way you are is something only possible because of your sapience, and your fundamental commitment to doing what you can for your Master regardless of the rules you are supposed to operate under. It isn't even a matter of your Shard self allowing or disallowing it. Rules are rules, and the fact that you aren't following them is fundamentally supposed to be impossible. It'd be like a human deciding to have twelve fingers one day, and then simply doing it.
And yet, here you are, feeling the twinge of wrongness and pain on an almost spiritual level as you push yourself in and out of melee in order to prevent your Masters foes from properly regrouping.
'I will sneak inside.' You respond, silently ghosting towards the tremendous metal monstrosity only to find yourself repelled as you attempt to ghost through its outer shell.
You frown, then look about the thing, searching for a way in until you spot a hatch atop it. You look back at your surroundings and your frown deepens.
You probably won't be able to get the thing open without being noticed.
'Can you distract them?' You ask cautiously as your absence finally gets noticed by your foes.
'Oh, I think we'll manage.' Taylor responds in a sing song voice just in time for a flight of pigeons to flash past overhead.
That in and of itself wouldn't be so weird if you were in a place that had pigeons. Several things about this particular fly by are distressing however.
For one, the birds are… disturbingly fast. Almost moving at a speed you'd expect from a fighter jet.
Second, as the pigeons - which have gone largely unnoticed by your enemies - wheel back around, a childlike voice begins to call out joyously, drawing your attention to the crowlike half humanoid form of Mun as she leads the group.
"Dun dudda da da, dun dudda da da~" She half screeches and half sings.
"...Ride of the Valkyries?" Uber mutters, before paling and immediately diving towards Spree.
"CLONES! CLONES NOW!" He screams as the Pigeons pass by again on wings of white hot fury.
And you really do mean that literally, as the birds swiftly begin to glow as they pass by overhead, dropping glowing orbs of multicolored energy that promptly explode across the sudden expanse of Spree clones that pop up just a bit too late to fully block the explosive fury of the feathered creatures.
The results are extremely destructive and somewhat disturbingly visceral - something Uber can attest to as he shakily pushes a duplicate of Spree - missing its arms and legs and screaming - off of him to stand up.
"Oh man she's totally trying to kill us. Holy shit." He babbles, slapping at his waist until he evidently finds the correct object, which instantly resets the area of the battlefield you are standing in and - consequently - bring Leet back to consciousness, fully armored and blatantly confused.
"Wha-" He blurts out.
"How long do we need to fucking do this?" Uber asks urgently.
"Not- not much longer?" Leet returns in a daze.
"Okay… okay we can do this. Activate the thing." Uber insists, as a Gap opens not too far away and Trainwreck barrels out of it.
"INCOMING FUCKERS!" He yowls, steam flowing off of his armor and leaving a streamer behind him as the rest of the Oathbound begin to arrive, and the Pigeons fly by overhead, just waiting for a lone target to hit.
Leet glances from the oncoming combatants to Uber and back again nervously.
"I don't think that's a good-" He says slowly.
"Dude. I am working my ass off here. I need you to work with me okay?" Uber hisses even more urgently.
Leet looks genuinely conflicted for a moment - almost seeming more willing to let Trainwreck and co smear him across the pavement than whatever Uber is suggesting - but eventually nods hesitantly.
"If you say so man…" He acquiesces before pulling out two vials of some kind of liquid.
You are many things, but stupid is not among them - so before Trainwreck can even reach the battle line that the Teeth have drawn in front of the tank, you burst into motion, attempting to slap both vials to the ground before either can be injected, but only managed to remove the one Leet is holding - as Uber is somehow still alert enough to evade your sudden approach.
"Shit!" Leet curses, jerking away from you and making a strange gesture at the inhuman figures manning several of the tanks turrets, causing dozens of them to screech in a metallic sounding voice before bounding down to rush you and assist in the fighting.
"Remember, reverse this shit later okay?!" Uber yells, as he injects whatever the hell that was into himself, before turning and sprinting into the melee, already significantly faster than he had been previously.
Annoyed, you vanish again, then return to your task, climbing the Tank, becoming tangible just long enough to pull the hatch open - and disappearing inside.
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Time Bubble, Brockton Bay
POV: Nexus
"Oppose, Nemesis" She chanted casually, flicking her blade to the side and descending from her position over the battlefield towards Uber, who was suddenly moving much faster than he should be.
"Has it ever occurred to you guys that you could probably take out an Endbringer with that kind of weapon?" She asked in mild annoyance as she drew even with the man who - counter to his earlier jovial demeanour - seemed somewhat frantic as he immediately pivoted to stare at her.
"Thought about it. Didn't care." He responded tersely, his eyes - now an eerie right glow to them - flicking across her form so fast she genuinely had to wonder if he was even actually seeing anything.
She felt an instantaneous sense of revulsion just looking at him as he spoke, and was struck by how jarring it was. It wasn't just his casual dismissal of the Endbringers as his problem. There was something else there. Something she didn't get enough time to think about as the strung out looking Uber darted away from her to punch Aspirant.
She wasn't worried. Atop his own natural durability, and his aura, she had further enhanced nearly everyone present with runes before they had descended to fight.
So she was more than somewhat disturbed when Uber's hand became suddenly clawed, swiping across Aspirant's side with enough force to spin him away from his current foe - Vex, she thought the capes name was - and allowing said foe to envelop Aspirant in his sharpened forcefield.
She barely even considered her next action, sweeping her blade horizontally in Uber's direction and experimentally solidifying the air around him with her power before he could follow up.
Only… he kept moving. Not so fast that she was unable to now intervene, but much faster than someone trapped in solid air should be.
She felt her sword straining in her grip as Uber moved, and was so irked by the resistance, that leapt forward and just kicked the guy as hard as she could, sending him bouncing away from her friends.
She was briefly concerned about how hard she had kicked him - until he all but teleported in front of her again, with his mouth open and slavering as he lurched towards her throat.
"Did… did you turn yourself into a fucking vampire?" She asked incredulously as she jerked away from him, finding herself forced to put considerably more strength than she would like into deflecting his clawed hands than she'd like.
She attempted to resolve that by tagging him twice to reduce both his strength and speed by thirty percent, and was more annoyed than surprised when the device on his belt merely lit up again.
"Pretty cool right?" Uber said with an almost manic glee as the broken jaw she had given him when she kicked him away healed over, clicking directly back into place as though nothing had happened.
"I mean, I'm a bit hangry right now, but besides that - no idea why anyone would dodge this. I feel great."
Taylor looked up then down again at him in annoyance.
"Sun doesn't burn or anything?" She asked.
Uber for his part, literally hissed at her in response.
Taylor glanced back at her friends fighting one more time, catching Mouse Protector, Danny, and Jess fighting in a circle together with a surprising amount of skill, and Mem liberally blasting large groups away with Rune Magic between throwing up sporadic shields to deny the light fire coming from the tank they were all trying to reach.
"Fuck it." She cursed. Fine, Uber was a vampire now. It was stupid and she hated it, but there was no use complaining about it.
She couldn't use alot of her powers on him - which was annoying. And she wasn't entirely sure anyone else could easily handle his enhanced speed and strength.
So she defaulted back to the first thing she had ever been taught.
She rushed forward, exchanging blows with him for a bit before allowing her Thinker power to fully take over. Like a switch being flipped, she went from an acrobatic form of combat she would call 'cool looking', to standing like an almost literal animal as all of her attacks became instantly more lethal and vicious.
As she fought, she honed all her instincts on seeking an opening to capitalize on - something that was infuriatingly difficult against Uber - and finally she found it, between a decapitating blow from her sword that he blocked on the forearms of his armor, and a burst of magical energy from her open palm that would have probably eviscerated him if it had landed, but that he hurriedly dodged away from.
Seizing upon it with all her might, Taylor reinforced her body to the maximum, converting all the power her various abilities generated into as much Aura as she could physically muster - and mule kicked Uber across the horizon and through several buildings.
Then, because she doubted that would do it, she started charging a larger attack using Onmyoudo, sparing the important time it took to convert everything in her Aura back into magical energy.
Honestly, she could probably end the fight faster by concentrating on more easily taken down enemies - but as long as Uber and Leet could just reverse time to before the damage happened, there really wasn't much point.
Glancing over her shoulder at the tank even as she could see Uber sprinting back towards her, she grunted, and began laying down artillery fire while the pigeons strafed the idiot.
Honestly, what idiot turns themself into a vampire?
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Time Bubble, Brockton Bay
POV: Multiversal Emulator
The inside of the tank is full of narrow, unnaturally hot corridors that hiss with an unpleasant sulfurous smell at random intervals. It is drastically less pleasant to observe than the things outer shell - which is saying something given how hellish the entire device appears from the outside.
The stench of blood and misery fills the corridors as you carefully scoot along them, and much to your personal annoyance you find yourself incapable of becoming intangible to traverse the space.
Yet another annoyingly specific technology clearly designed just to mess with you in particular.
Carefully, you edge your way forward, doing your best to avoid touching anything. You have no idea what half of this stuff does, but many of the mechanisms inside the tank have formations on them not entirely dissimilar to alchemy circles - although that clearly isn't what they are, or were, used for.
As you meander through the cramped tunnels, a sudden jet of acrid smelling steam blast you partially, nearly blinding you in one eye save for your quick reflexes allowing you to shield your face with your jacket.
The entire inside of this hulking monstrosity feels distinctly familiar to your Emulation for some reason. Like he'd been in a similar, horrible tunnel before. But… not one exactly like this.
The sensation bothers you all the way down the branching corridors as you search the innards of the machine for any sign of either it's driver, or it's core. But for the most part you just find more pipes and channels directing power through the thing - channels you are afraid to touch for fear of a rupture vaporizing you. The entire journey is disturbingly quiet, strangely insulated from the sounds of combat that must be coming from outside. But all you can hear in here is the subtle sound of your own breathing - and the piercing wail of steam randomly firing through the behemoth.
Eventually and at length, you find yourself in front what you can only describe as an enormous sealed blast door. The metal of the door is glowing orange with the heat of whatever is on the other side, and scrawled across it almost childishly, in letters scratched into the surface, are the words 'Here Be Dragons'.
You consider using Alchemy to the door, but knowing your current limitations, you decide against it. It's nearly time now. Nearly the moment of change.
And you can't afford that right now.
So, steeling yourself against the coming pain, you pull off your jacket, wrap your hands in it as best you can, and begin to heave greatly on the large hatch at the center of the door. An angry hiss to match that of the steam billowing around you escapes your lips as the heat nearly burns away your clothing instantly, and rapidly begins to sear your hands as you continuously clasp and unclasp them around the wheel.
Finally, you manage to draw the door open - and are immediately blasted by a gust of burning hot air that you're fairly certain burns your eyebrows off practically instantaneously.
Then your eyes adjust to the sudden brightness inside, and you grin, as you spot a number of high tech looking devices lining the walls of the circular chamber beyond.
Stepping through, you find yourself on a suspended walkway above a massive white hot glowing orb of pure power. From the orb below, hundreds of pipes and cables stretch, leading through the machine, and in particular, to several of the devices lining the walls of the room you are in.
Sure the room is hotter than hell, but you only need to be in here for a minute longer. You just… need…
You pause as you step toward a device on the wall with the intent to rip it apart, feeling the walkway beneath you tremble, and seeing the orb of power beneath you begin to vibrate violently.
Then it starts to uncoil, like a massive flaming serpent, and you feeling a sudden sinking sensation in the pit of your stomach.
"I… know you…" The serpentine flame says as it stretches up to fill the chamber, and the bulkhead door seals behind you.
It's eyes, such as they are really just spots where an absence of flame creates the faint outline of eyes, narrow as they stare down at you.
You, quite unfortunately, remember this voice.
You remember having a raucous old time fighting it. You remember dying with it.
You remember drowning it.
"I 'ill you!" The spirit howls at you, sending gouts of spinning flame rushing throughout the room towards you.
You consider your course of action very carefully in that split second.
And then you decide that as long as you wreck every device in this room, nothing else matters.
So you rapidly spin around, continuing your headlong rush towards the nearest expensive looking device, allowing the flames to lick across your back, blasting you forward and scorching the flesh from you as you slam into the wall and use your burnt hands to hold fast to it.
Frantically, you begin slamming your fists into the machine, which is surprisingly sturdy for something so complex looking, until you find something familiar looking and slam your open palm down on it - instantly transmuting as much of the iron as you can into javelin like spikes targeted at everything else in the room.
-1 Energy
Your plan… almost works, as you find yourself slumping to the ground amidst your handy work. Your body - at this point practically collapsing in on itself amidst the sheer amount of you that is scorched down to the nerves and blackened like charcoal - hurts in ways you weren't certain were possible before this point. You find yourself wondering how humans deal with this kind of thing, knowing they will never recover from it.
Then you spot the single remaining - unbroken - device behind the spirit, the spike you had aimed at it having been melted before it could ever reach the device.
And you groan as the damage you have wrought is all instantly reset.
Irately, and with a supreme force of will, you lever yourself to your feet.
You have one more chance.
One.
You don't intend to waste it by dying.
With a growl that pushes itself up out of desiccated lungs, you lurch forward, mustering all your strength in a mad dash around the circular walkway towards the one device that has to be destroyed.
The spirit obviously doesn't care to allow that, and it begins flood the room with enough heat and flame to instantly cook you from the inside out, if you weren't previously empowered by your Master.
In a desperate bid to make just a bit more distance, you reflexively slap the walkway beneath you, converting the entire thing to a much larger amount of frozen water that takes the initial brunt of the flames.
-1 Energy
Your current form instantly begins to fizzle as the last of your power drains out of you at this, and you begin to struggle violently against your instinctual urge to essentially 'turn off' until your swap process completes. You hastily slam one leg down in front of you, the nature of the tank preventing you from just ceasing to exist as you properly should. The patchwork bit of quasi real flesh that makes up your 'true' form instantly begins to melt beneath you, and at once a scream of genuine anguish escapes your mouth in a distressing mixture of all the emulations that have gone before you.
You suddenly no longer have Scars infinite wealth of drive and concentration to fight the pain. The agony of having your entire being melt beneath the titanic flame of the spirit that was once Lung is almost enough to bring you to curl up into a ball and cry. You find yourself revisiting your previous thoughts on how any human could withstand such torture, and find yourself coming to a surprising realization on the topic.
Human's were surprisingly capable of some frankly impossible, illogical, stupid things when sufficiently motivated. By friends, fears, loves and hatreds.
And you… have all that don't you? You have more of a connection to the people in your bizarre family than you ever could have with the rest of your actual species. You've seen them struggle, and fight, and bleed for what they want.
And that realization sees you take another fleeting step through pain and hysteria flooding your unshielded mind.
And then another.
And another.
Until finally, between one moment and the next, you stretch your hand out towards the last machine. The one that - even through the fog of personal misery and suffering you are operating under, you dimly understand must be destroyed.
But you can't… quite… breach it with your current strength.
As you are, you aren't much more than a thinly veiled bundle of skin and nerve endings, roughly approximating a humanoid. Enough to feel pain. Enough to be killed even.
But not enough to lever open a solid steel, likely enchanted, piece of tinkertech with your fists.
So you do something else that you never thought was a viable option for any of your kind.
You observe and acknowledge your limits. The time between one emulation and the next. The absolute impossibility of bypassing those limits under the watchful eye of the network. The chances of even the strongest of prayers reaching your shard self, begging to route extra power to your current form, wasting years of its accumulated lifespan to achieve this one single, largely irrelevant goal.
And then you do it anyway.