by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings.
Hands UpTaylor Hebert opened her eyes and blinked. White ceiling, white walls, sterile scent. Hospital. She groaned.
"Again?"
"Oh, you're awake? Good." came from her side, and she sat up quickly. Too quickly. She was dizzy for a few seconds, enough to notice the nurse's wide-eyed expression. And her quick departure.
"What… the hell?" Taylor asked herself, looking at her body. "Am I… back in time, after the Locker?"
Her body was smaller than what she was used to, but she also had difficulties remembering exactly what she was used to.
"Am I going mad?"
"I think not." another voice said. Another female, and young, except this one was amused. "Or we all are. Granted, we all were, for a while."
Taylor looked up quickly, once again getting dizzy. "Lisa?" she asked, recognizing the young woman with the crooked smile.
Said Lisa nodded, but her eyes were on Taylor's body. Or rather, her arms.
Her many arms.
Remember the computers' option of having the mouse pointer have duplicates trailing after it? Taylor's arms appeared much like that, several copies following each movement from Taylor's real arms. Or like the depiction of Hindu goddesses like Kali or Parvati. "You might need some adjustments, there. Although, if you seek Amy… she's not here."
Taylor snorted, an arm (followed by a contrail of seven others) going to her mouth to hide a smile at the involuntary pop culture reference. And then she noticed the automatic movement in the corner of her eyes and brought the limbs in front of her face. She moved them this way and that for a few seconds, before frowning. And then, with an apparent need for her to concentrate, each limb went in a different direction. She held the "Hindu meditation" pose for a second before relaxing. "Nice. I may need to train this to discover what I can do with it. I remember an old game my dad played… dad?"
Lisa shook her head sadly. "I don't know if you remember or not, but he died when Leviathan attacked. Or so you told me, anyways."
Taylor nodded. "I remember." she whispered. "It's strange to have to concentrate to remember things like this."
A pause ensued, after which Lisa cleared her throat. "You spoke about a game? Video game, I gather?"
"Yeah. That was when we still had a computer at home." Taylor replied. "There was that Hindu man who could extend his limbs, like rubber. Dhalsim, I believe he was named."
"I see." Lisa nodded, visibly holding back several other comments, a couple of which even falling into the realm of inappropriate suggestions. "That could be useful, but… in the meantime, they are very visible. Can you hide them?"
Taylor concentrated again, and was soon back in a normal human shape. "I'll have to train this too, because it's hard to stay focused for long. But yes."
"Good."
"Now… what happened? Have I gone back in time? Why am I smaller than in whatever disjointed memories I have of myself? I mean, this is not the same hospital I was in after the Locker, and we know each other so…"
"The Locker?"
"Yeah. My Trigger event. I didn't tell you?"
"I'll have to ask Amy what she dosed you with. Capes are not that forward about the worst day of their life."
"I have… the slightest reminiscence… that it's not the worst day of my life. Not anymore. I mean… being shut in a high school locker filled with biohazardous material… is bad, but I had worse… right? Why can't I remember?"
"Perhaps because you had worse, and Amy got into her head to help you deal with that stress by removing the memories." Lisa smiled and shook her head. "You shouldn't have let her start playing with brains, especially yours."
"So… Miss Exposition? I know you love to tattle tales, so… what happened?"
"Well… you fought Scion, and he disappeared. And then you were shot in the head."
Taylor lifted an arm, relatively slowly, and no contrail of arms followed. And then she touched her head gingerly. "I notice that my skull is whole. Can you… elaborate?"
Lisa displayed her trademarked vulpine grin, sat next to the bed, and elaborated.
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Miss ExpositionI don't know if you remember clearly… alright, I know you don't. So, let's start… with Jack.
The Slaughterhouse was almost done with, after dealing so much damage that even hardasses like Piggot triggered – and what a surprise it was, for the heroes. Used to glaring daggers, her powers allowed that to become literal. As if she had been, in fact, the second (and secret) daughter of Allfather. Or a distant cousin of Jack himself (since he used knives). Needless to say, she didn't like the comparison, much. It was still quite the surprise when she practically crucified Clockblocker at the boy's first pun.
Because of all that, she was tarred a villain, and isn't that an irony? Especially as the villain for whom we both worked, Coil, disappeared at the same time. The link? Well, guess what? The new Director is someone I recognized on sight, despite him not wearing Coil's costume: it's Calvert. Thankfully, we are not in Kansas anymore. Or anything closer to Brockton Bay.
Speaking of the Bay, you may remember that Scion deigned to appear, at one point. He seemed surprised by the devastation. An attempt was made to immobilize him, using whatever remained of Bakuda's time bombs.
And then Jack spoke to him. And we all realized what an error it had been, not to kill him immediately.
From a melancholic and benevolent overpowered entity, Scion became… the epitome of the wrath of god. Or something. He simply floated out of the time loop and started destroying. Everything.
We could do nothing against his power. That was the entity that punted the Endbringers when thousands of capes barely held them back. What chance did we have?
Through sheer blind luck, we had just gained access to a few interdimensional portals leading to other versions of our Earths – some were uninhabited, even. We met several groups of people, who shared data about other portals, facilitating an evacuation.
However, Scion was able to jump dimensions too, without using the portals. We had thought that he rested, from time to time. Instead, he was busy continuing his campaign of destruction on another Earth, in a parallel universe. We knew, then, that mere evacuation through portals wasn't going to be enough.
But, at the same time, we found that some capes did have powers that inconvenienced him. And also that we could take him by surprise. Sometimes. So it was decided that all capes would be conscripted in that desperate fight. All of them. Even those in the Birdcage.
The powers-that-be (and we all know who they are, thanks to the Echidna incident… and it's Cauldron, in case you forgot that too) decided to establish a special truce, much like what happens during Endbringer fights.
They just forgot that the Birdcage was home to the worst parahumans (alongside some innocent ones, as well as some kids), some of whom preferred killing everyone rather than save anyone. And it took a few of them to act that way to give the rest of them the same reputation, stealing all momentum from the movement.
Panacea would have been one of those Birdcage inmate, too, if she had gotten her self-destructive wish: at some earlier point, she had snapped and tried to modify something in her sister's mind. Her brain. It hadn't worked all that well, pushing Victoria into a delirious state that she could only be delivered from by plunging her into a coma.
Since then, Glory Girl is hosted in the Parahuman Asylum, alongside its usual guests. Panacea's request of being imprisoned, or even interned, was denied, on the grounds that her healing ability was doing too much good for her to be allowed that semblance of peace. Carol Dallon was given an even more strident control on her adoptive daughter. It didn't work well. Thankfully, it was short-lived, too.
When the Birdcage opened, the villain known as Marquis got out and immediately moved back to Brockton Bay. Carol Dallon went mad, actually frothing at the mouth and attacking him blindly until Amy put her into another coma. And then Marquis revealed that he was her father. Surprisingly, despite not knowing much about him, she accepted the deal of living with him for a while. Surprise, surprise, she liked it much more than her life with Carol.
Another villain, Teacher, joined with a former student of his, Saint. And, together, they destroyed Dragon, revealing to the world her "duplicitous" nature – she was an Artificial Intelligence. However, given her activities, the heroes lost much more than a colleague: with her gone, the computer network on which the PRT operated collapsed. The Protectorate of each town became unable to reach each other. PHO disappeared. The Birdcage exploded. The programs tracking the Endbringers and the other S-class found themselves without someone to deal with their results. Chaos reigned supreme. And Teacher smiled genially over everything. He earned the death Narwhal got him with, proving to the world that her power was not Manton-limited by using her forcefields to cut him into ribbons from the inside out. Saint followed, the forcefields able to manifest inside the mechanized suits he and the other Dragonslayers had stolen from Dragon.
Yet another villain tried to make an even bigger name for himself, by killing the "most heroic" hero. Given Panacea's reputation, she was chosen, and almost burned to death from Acidbath's eponymous power. Amy had worked hard, though. Thanks to you, she had a sympathetic ear for when she wanted to vent, and an imaginative mind to bounce ideas on. You even explicitly allowed her to experiment with your own brain – after dealing with simple insects, first, then bigger ones.
Applying some of the ideas you discussed, Amy wasn't that handicapped despite having lost half her body mass from Acidbath's attack: first, she created fake cells at the end of her raw nerves, allowing her to ignore the pain; then she created other cells around whatever remained of her original body. Those cells being under her control, she can now appear as she wants – she didn't gain a Changer rating, but it's only because the PRT had bigger things on its plate.
As for Acidbath, he was the first to taste Amy's first foray into the Trump category, when she deployed a tendril of cells far enough to touch his gloating self. Once established, the link allowed her to shut his power down. Too bad for him, he was in the process of turning into acid again. He died relatively quickly and in great pain.
More villains decided to skip the fighting, evacuate Earth Bet, and build new gangs on other Earths. It was not only the opposite of what was asked of them upon the Birdcage opening, but it also ate at the heroes' availability in the fight against Scion.
Facing this, we asked ourselves why couldn't some Master gather all those capes and attack Scion en masse. Heartbreaker was out, since he was a true villain. Canary's fate was largely unknown at that point. And other human-targeting Masters were sorely lacking in crowd control.
That's when we had an idea.
You had that power, to lead the masses. Insects, true, but it could have been anything. Powers are linked to trigger events, and you might have triggered into a human Master if you had been pressed in a crowd, instead of being shut in a locker with rotting waste – and probably many insects already.
You had already pushed Amy into exploring and understanding brains, and powers. You also met, and discussed, with people who, while living in other countries, knew much more about second triggers than anyone in our own country.
With my power to help refine the process, and Dinah's to ensure its success, we did it. And you ran around, then, collecting capes everywhere. As soon as you got access to a teleporter, you sought Cauldron's facility in order to snatch the two capes that would allow you to actually fight Scion with a modicum of self-preservation: Clairvoyant, and Doormaker.
And you went out, as Khepri – an Egyptian deity represented by an insect (a beetle) pushing the morning sun up, tasked with resurrection, among other divine activities.
That "golden morning" was what we called that time, with Scion spending "only" half his time on his on-going temper tantrum, and the other half fighting you.
You burned yourself out. You also burned your capes out. I'm sorry to tell you that you ought to take a new cape name. Durga, perhaps? Like one of the many many-armed deities?
Why? Because Khepri is quite well-known, now, as are your earlier aliases of Weaver and Skitter. And not in a good way… despite getting rid of Scion. Mostly.
Yes, mostly. Because we determined, at some point, that his body was just a figurehead, a facsimile, a projection filled by energy that came from elsewhere. And despite the massive damage you dealt him, in concentrated fire from dozens of capes at the same time, it was always refilling quickly.
And then, he changed slightly. Instead of destroying cities, or the landscape, he started taking you seriously. He started anticipating your attacks, killing some of your minions before they could act, sometimes teleporting right where they were. You, yourself, alongside Clairvoyant and Doormaker, were hit several times, to the point where your little group of capes was sent flying after a particularly strong explosion. Several capes fell out of your range, including those two, and we realized that we were all going to die soon.
After all, Scion was angry, and focused on us. On you.
And then he winked out. Like that. We all waited for a while, for the other shoe to drop… but he didn't appear again. Those capes you had snatched against their will had already fled, and the heroes you almost burned out took their leave soon afterwards. Only our little group stayed, trying to find a way to heal you without getting too close, in order for your power not to overwhelm ours. Because when we were mere puppets to your, we realized that you could only use offensive powers. Those who needed fine control and experience, like Amy's, couldn't be used by yourself.
That's when she appeared. Fortuna. My power went haywire upon seeing her, and I couldn't warn you, or the others. She shot you twice, in the head. From behind. She also shot us in the feet, preventing us from moving. And then she went to leave.
Strangely, she didn't see Dinah, despite the girl charging straight at her, yelling incoherently. You should have seen her tackle the pistol-handling woman to the ground!
Amy didn't care about her feet being damaged, since all her lower body is made of cells under her control, rather than being "inside" her body – a mass that diminishes every day, she said once, but with a fixed limit, and we both imagine that it's her own brain. And the tendril she had prepared to heal you shot towards the downed woman instead.
She's quite cold, nowadays, our Panacea, and she didn't hesitate in her attack: rather than make her asleep, she cleanly isolated the parts of the woman's brain that were directly tied to her parahuman power. Or so she told me.
Strangely, as a consequence, the focused expression on the woman's face disappeared completely, and she looked at us, afraid. "The monsters… they gone?" she asked in a little voice. My guess, at that point, was that her power had directed her whole life from the moment she triggered, to the point of, when removing it, she returned to the point in life where she was a mere child.
Amy confirmed that, but she couldn't rewire the power because it was much different from those she was used to. As if the trigger events followed a procedure, and the one she had just unplugged by reflex had had another instruction manual. Or another source. And it was not like those Cauldron capes she had already met, whose "trigger" read differently, too.
Yes, because she can rewire powers, now. Why do you think you have those arms? When she healed you, she noticed that the damage the bullets had wrought to your brain was propagating, and she needed a valid Corona Pollentia to insert there, in order to "plug the hole", as she said – note that it was in addition to the body-reshaping she was doing, because Scion had done quite a number on you. His disintegration attacks ate much of your lower body. Again.
Thankfully, Amy's early work on brains had panned out into a better proficiency. Thanks to that, Victoria is now almost ready to be left out of the Asylum, and Sveta had left before Gold Morning, completely "cured" of her power. You don't know her, or perhaps through another name: Garrotte. Her power had transformed her into an uncontrollable mass of tentacles. After a few tries to change her power without changing her, Amy agreed to the girl's plea to be freed of them.
Amy still kept the brain parts, to study them. And since she needed to keep them somewhere safe and where she could access them easily, she put them in a "pocket" she grew inside "herself" – that is… the part of her body that is not her original self, remember?
Refining the power she could sense, by removing and adding parts from other powers, she had been able to change it into what you have now. Faced with the urgency to provide you with something, she gave you that.
As to what happened elsewhere, in the meantime…
We already knew Cauldron, as a whole. While you were healing, I booked the services of another teleporter, and we headed there. Eidolon was dead, Alexandria too, Legend had split ways from them, but that didn't mean they were lacking resources. In fact, we got out by the skin of our teeth. But that foray was enough to fuel my power for days – and nightmares for weeks.
I saw a room which contained the corpse of an alien… being. It was being harvested, its content analysed and put in liquid form so that it could fit into a vial. That's the source of those Cauldron powers. I also saw another corpse, so much bigger that it encompassed a whole planet. It was almost whole, but there were people there already, drilling into it and taking the raw matter out to make new powers.
They went in and out through one of Doormaker's portals, which opened near the creature's "head". I recognized a shape resembling Scion, with a knife pushed through the back of the neck. Much like the other corpse, which had a figurehead of a silver woman with the same knife at the same place.
My guesses (and you know how precise they are) told me that Cauldron got hold of the woman entity at a critical point, and they took Scion in the same way as soon as they could. Which is when he was focused on you. Given that Doormaker can open portals anywhere, I gather that they couldn't have done it before. Probably because when Scion focused on you, he took power from whatever dimensional shielding process he had running around his real body.
I also know, from what has been revealed before, that Cauldron's plans for survival are now obsolete. They could have stopped extracting powers from the alien corpses… but I imagine that you can't stop a well-oiled machine, when it has momentum. Especially if you can generate profit from it.
After all, if they want to stay on top of things, and not fall on the various charges of mismanagement of the Scion crisis (what with the Cases 53s and the various criminals kept alive as cannon fodder), they had to stay atop the various governments of all the Earths.
With money, first, but also with a mutually-assured-destruction scheme, should those governments try to rehabilitate nuclear ordinance – with Scion done with, nobody could act as a global peacekeeper.
Yet.
With Alexandria disavowed (and dead, thanks to your bugs), Eidolon dead (thankfully, because my power already inferred that his power was responsible for calling the Endbringers every couple months), Hero dead, and Legend having parted ways, Cauldron also needed top-tier capes to ensure their survival, too.
And they will get them. With the resources at their fingertips, it's only a matter of time until they do.
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Defiantly Efficient"Good morning, Director Calvert." the man in the power armour spoke, his voice level.
"Good day to you, Armsmaster." the man in front of him replied, his voice perfectly modulated. "What can I do for you?"
"Just ensure that my resignation happens without problems." the robotic voice replied.
"Resignation? What resignation?"
"I gave my notice to Director Piggot, three months ago. This is my last day."
"That can't happen." Calvert replied, frowning. "What would… no, not that. And… neither that." A pause. "I'm not sure you can leave the New Protectorate, in fact. The procedures have changed from when we were separated in PRT and Protectorate (and Wards)."
"None of us capes signed anything to work for the New Protectorate." Armsmaster retorted. "You just made it illegal for a cape to work elsewhere."
"That means you can't leave."
"No, that means I can leave, and not work."
"But… as a Tinker, won't that be difficult?"
"You forget, Director Calvert, that the law only covers the United States."
Calvert shrugged. He knew that any competent American judge could obtain jurisdiction for anything happening, anywhere, on this world… and the others. Why do you think they dropped the A in "USA"? "If you leave, you also leave behind anything you made from the moment you joined."
Armsmaster nodded. "I know."
"Don't you care about your precious motorcycle, or your halberds? They will fall in the hands of other Tinkers, you know, who will siphon them for pieces. Tinkers like… Kid Win. Or Squealer."
"I know." Armsmaster repeated, and only Calvert's expertise in reading body language allowed him to notice the man's anger.
"In fact, when you leave, you will be quite penniless. All your past expenses had been to improve your lab, which remains our property." A pause. "Now that I think about it, you also made your current prosthetic limbs, in that lab."
"I know. Will that be all? As I said, I came to assure myself that you know about my newfound freedom… and unavailability. Not to be goaded into acting rashly."
Calvert nodded. Thanks to his power, he had had several attempts at "goading" the man, already, and remembered keenly (and was the only one to do so) how Armsmaster's halberd felt, when it speared through his ribcage. "Thank you for your service, then. I would say it was an honour, but…"
"Stop right there. I know that language. You don't." Armsmaster said, still in a monotone. And he left.
Calvert took the phone and warned his underlings: Armsmaster wasn't to take anything from his lab, and had to return his bike and armour. But he was quite late.
When people look at Armsmaster, they imagine a Tinker obsessed with efficiency. And he is. But efficiency is not just the miniaturization of parts in order to get more mileage out of a medieval weapon. It's also a way of life. And anyone connected to the man knew that.
Using every legalities (up to and including the lack thereof when the original Protectorate and PRT disbanded), the man had bought one of the organization's armoured vans – ironically, he did so by using the same channels that Coil abused to equip his mercenaries.
And then the soon-to-be-ex-hero legally bought back several pieces of equipment, using whatever remained of his personal funds. Whatever he couldn't grab, he programmed to self-destruct.
He left during the night, leaving his prosthetic limbs nailed to the New Protectorate outside wall. Few knew what that meant. Calvert did. And a certain Thinker did, too. And despite the former's attempts to hide the truth, the latter contacted the media.
In the meantime, Armsmaster ceased to be. The man, Colin Wallis, had decided to pursue one of the goals he had had for a long time, only to push it back each time he thought about it: drive to Vancouver, and find Dragon. Yes, he knew about Saint's actions, but he still thought he could recover something from the wreckage of her workshop.
Because, contrary to what several people thought, he wasn't heartless. He had fallen in love with her, and her with him. They had shared secrets. He knew her nature, where she was located, and where her many backups were.
So he drove. His "efficiency cocktail" allowed him to stay awake for the whole trip, but he was still tired upon reaching his goal.
After a short nap, he then worked on the machinery there. First by himself. Then by making himself sturdier limbs. And a new power armour to house them. After a while, he decided that eating (and its natural conclusion) was merely done to bring energy to his carcass, energy that could be more efficiently used if it was raw electricity. His next power armour didn't house his body, but his brain. It allowed him unparalleled efficiency in restoring Dragon's workshop to its earlier glory.
And then he restored Dragon herself. First by creating another body like his own. He knew the dimensions, because she had shared her idealized shape with him. Using much of the body's interior (and not only the head), he installed the neural simulation he had found in one of her most remote backups – the physical link had been cut years before, after a small earthquake, and Dragon had never been able to find time to inspect the outcome. As a result, it was quite outdated. But, at least, it was full, and uncorrupted. And before running it, Armsmaster inspected the data, pruning those he suspected as being erroneous or still linked to Saint's mechanism.
She awoke, had some difficulties adapting, but they got themselves in order soon afterwards.
And then they left. The country was being subjugated by its neighbour, even more forcefully than before, and they wanted no part in it.
They moved to South America. They found that most of the governments there were subservient to Uncle Sam, willingly and knowingly… or not.
They thought that Europe was a lost case, in that regard, but words from some people in Argentina brought some defiance towards that point of view.
True, pockets of resistance existed in the United States of Europe. People absolutely rejecting dollars and the English language. But they were rare, and getting rarer. The frequent visits from the New Protectorate's new top tier heroes didn't help, as those resisting were often dubbed as villains, and killed – no more need for cannon fodder against Scion meant no more need for the Birdcage, and for mercy, and even common decency was getting rarer. Those who chose to turn to the only company granting parahuman powers got themselves under a contract (and a debt much like the American students') that prevented them from acting out.
However, despite the changes happening around the world, there was something that hasn't changed: people put in a position of danger could still trigger and become parahumans. Without Cauldron.
Armsmaster, and Colin Wallis, now named Defiant, knew about triggers. With Dragon unshackled, and now able to multitask, several of her many shards of consciousness examined everything on the internet, and realized that Scion's departure hadn't stopped the natural occurrence of powers, as some had theorized. More than that, those who triggered were less tempted to lash out. As if the link between powers and humans had been branded into the population of Earth Bet, not to leave them anytime soon, while a pervasive Warrior-like consciousness, driving them to conflict, was gone.
Still, conflict happened, and it was quickly established that the more there was, the more capes occurred naturally.
Defiant was still his efficient self, and he followed the reasoning to its end. His stoic countenance didn't waver when it led to studies that had been done before, by a German society whose name had been removed from all the records (unless its name was "Society"). And he found himself "helping" by repeating the experiments… even if those involved physical and psychological torture on children – you needed physical elements to produce Brutes and other physical capes, while the psychological aspect produced more Thinkers, for instance.
Mixing those brutal treatments with logic and efficiency, as well as the sum of all the research in these events, he was able to trigger several individuals with the same powers.
Also, given the fact that physical damage can go quite far before the individual triggers, he has to create more armours like his own to host his "children".
Because they were his children. In his mind, already deranged before Scion rampaged, and getting more and more so as time went, he had them with Dragon. The AI was all for it, even, considering most humans as beneath her. Except Defiant.
In her mind, Defiant had replaced her creator, and she was quite subservient and unwilling to contradict him. At the same time, Defiant was no computer specialist, and the changes he had brought to her core had been guided by his efficiency power, not by anything even remotely humane.
Thus, Dragon was efficient, yes, but also completely impersonal. As an AI, she was able to split into multiples clones in order to achieve several missions. He had unshackled her, but at the same time, she was, like him, less and less human.
If she had been, she would have stopped him way before he could reach the conclusion that an efficient humanity needed an army of cyborgs to "keep the peace".
If she had been, she could have been diagnosed with multiple Multiple Personality Disorders, too. She wasn't. And her clones continued to take hold of the internet's servers, one after the other. And given that the Simurgh had disappeared, she launched new satellites to expand her coverage over the world.
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A Common EnemyDoctor Mother was incensed. "What do you mean, you can't get them? I want them out! I want them down! I want them dead!"
Some thought that Contessa might have been crazy, but she had been the buffer through which her leader had been perceived as humane and agreeable. Without the star precog, Cauldron was left floundering, and its leader lost the vague veneer of civilization she had shown before.
Of course, new core members could be (and were) created via vials, and still, others were found in people who still triggered. She was surprised, at first, and thought that another group was selling powers too. Her Thinkers said "no". Her precognitives said "not yet"… and then "monarch" – they always knew things, but didn't always understood.
She blew a gasket, right then. But she couldn't actually do something because her assets (meaning her new Triumvirate) had found yet another European pocket of resistance. She huffed at those holier-than-thou naysayers and directed the trio to observe, obscure, obviate… and obliterate. Work as usual.
Except, that one time, they failed. One was killed, and the two others returned. And their reports told them of a nightmare: machines had been killing them. Machines with powers.
Cauldron had found their enemies.
Or so they thought.
Because, on the economic front, and closer to home, people with powers similar to those of Cask and Othala joined together and produced their own version of vial-granting powers. And they bought the patent on that, too, which made trade lawyers edgy because it meant that the main protagonist was now on the back foot.
And when Cauldron retaliated with a proof-of-concept that allowed them to claim anteriority, the upcoming company switched gears, as well as the composition of the manufacturing team, and produced pills instead of vials. With a patent, too – although they needed pills of specific shape and colours, not to impinge on the patents of other pharmaceutical companies.
They branched out, too, selling them inside the Russian and Chinese federations.
At first, the Yangban was happy to see many new capes to incorporate and inculcate into their ranks. Except they had never had enough trainers (and brainwashers) to deal with the new numbers. They were overwhelmed and resorted to killing those they couldn't integrate. Of course, that resistance since those capes weren't so keen at being shot.
As for the pill-producing team, they got themselves out of dodge, thanks to a parahuman with powers like Dodge, allowing them to find a hiding place out of the reach of others. Much like Cauldron, in fact, which made Doctor Mother incensed again: how dare these miscreants enjoy the same advantages she had had for decades?
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Taylor TrainsDespite not trusting the government, especially given how corruption was spreading, Taylor preferred to simply not be considered as a villain. With the help of Lisa (before she fled to Australia), and the fact that she looked different from her original self, she joined the New Wards (of Los Angeles) under a new name: Sarah, in her civilian life, and Vasudhara as her heroic identity – the other names in relation with multi-armed deities implying destruction, she preferred this one, as it meant prosperity.
She was taken as face value, too. Between Amy's slight changes and the destruction of her records due to the chaos surrounding the Slaughterhouse's slaughter and Scion's rampage, she was quite unknown from the current heroes.
And she trained. She used her powers, and explored her limits. It was soon established that having many arms was almost the sole power she had – she did have some Brute strength so that each of her arms could lift a weight equivalent to what a peak baseline human could lift normally without breaking their spine… but that was all. Of course, being a single mind behind several arms allowed her to do things in a coordinated way. She developed new martial arts stances and attacks, giving a new significance to the expression "flurry of blows". She often joked with her sparring partners, using taunts like "Attacks per round? As many as I like" or "If you block me, I always have one more attack to hit you with".
With her fellow New Wards, she tested many postures, too, some taken from the mythology of India. The Dancer was one where her arms followed each other, in hypnotic movements. The Wheel allowed her to cartwheel around while still fighting, using any part of her arms… or weapons.
The Buddha was one where she concentrated her arms together. Sitting cross-legged, she kept one arm folded in her lap and the other with the hand facing forward. And, in that hand, was concentrated the power of her many arms: instead of concentrating half her number of additional arms in each "normal" arm, she was able to put everything behind one of them. On normal people, adding one arm's strength and leverage to another doubled one's ability to lift and strike. With her power, she could do so several times, and the fifteen or so arms together got her a strength multiplier in the tenth of thousands. She needed maximum concentration to do so, meaning she had to take that sitting stance. But the strike that would follow could pierce or push through almost anything.
Some joked that she would be called "One-punch Girl", in that stance. Or "Hellgirl", for some reason. Those calling her that got a knock to the noggin after one too many reference, and finally understood that, one, she wasn't into that many movies from Aleph, and two, she wasn't completely red, with a tail and bad manners, and a gauntlet of solidified hellfire… thank you very much.
That was for close-quarter combat. When needing ranged action, she had several gun holsters on her person, some holding two-handed rifles – she was one of the rare persons who could fire several of those at the same time (if Garrotte had had some control over her tentacles, she could have). She had to train her accuracy, of course, so that her many off-hands could aim as precisely as her dominant one.
And she could juggle something fierce, too – always interesting, for the parties.
She made a couple friends, too. Or just acquaintances. One of them was named Quicksilver, and looked much like the son of Velocity (for the power)… and Clockblocker (for the humour). Not that either could have a kid, given their untimely demise.
As an individual, Quicksilver had a few flaws, the most glaring one being his gambling addiction. As such, he needed money more often than not. Taylor, or Sarah/Vasudhara, found herself giving more to him than she was comfortable with, and finally stopped. He ended up making more through the use of advertising contracts.
He didn't read the fine print, though, and was called a few times when he forgot to drop product names the contract endorsed when he was… "shot". The contract didn't mention if that was when the shooting was done by a photograph or a gunner, and lawyers established it meant both. Poor guy.
Still, he helped Vasudhara acclimatize to the New Protectorate's way of doing things.
Unfortunately, given America's habit of considering the whole world as their fiefdom (unless challenged by an overwhelmingly greater power), she ended up deployed far from her home city: in Europe. With a squad of heroes, geared up to fight alongside those capes who had affiliated themselves with the New Protectorate.
Because those heathens didn't want to burn oil to fly, she had to take the train, and, of course, it ended up derailed by their opponents du jour, stranding them in the middle of nowhere – they were in France, so any of these little villages was practically nowhere.
The official discourse, when applying to those opponents, was that they were an illegal group that had to be put down because they threatened the stability of the region. The squad hadn't been warned that their enemies had weapons, intelligence (and counter-intelligence), and discipline. And support from some local leaders. They were quite surprised when some of their former allies turned on them, from the back. They were also quite surprised to face a literal army of new triggers, all holding weapons and clad in the same uniform and moving with military precision… and efficiency.
Behind them stood Defiant, in his own all-encompassing power armour, in black. It even included a respirator, because normal humans reacted poorly when they noticed that his cybernetic body didn't need to breathe.
According to the American credo, and cemented by generations of movies, a group of diverse individuals, properly motivated, should have the upper hand against anything, including the organized military they faced. However, when the concentrated fire of dozens of soldiers obliterated them one after the other, they got a reality check and became suddenly much less willing to play. In clear, they panicked, and started to flee.
Vasudhara having several arms, and having trained with them, she could (and had) pulled several weapons at the same time. She could act as a dozen soldiers by herself, and her concentrated aim successfully killed a few enemies – and her fleeing allies sneered at her for killing people.
Defiant threw something at her, his manners looking as if his outstretched hand moved the object towards her, through telekinesis. It was just for show, as the projectile followed a normal ballistic arc that ended right where she was. She tried to deflect, using the few Tinker-tech shields she was holding on one of her left arms (those shields had granted protection to some of her allies, before, and now her), and also tried to move away. But the thing wasn't pushed away: it magnetically adhered to her shield, before sending an electric shock through her body.
She may be have a small Brute rating, but nowhere near enough to resist this efficient Taser-like charge. She dropped down, limbs akimbo as her consciousness vanished.
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KaliShe came back to see herself manacled. Yes, those who had set the place had thought of her since there were many hooks in the wall behind her, each with a manacle attaching one of her many limbs to it… and each with enough space around it for her nimble hands not to be allowed to reach each other. Also, the manacles seemed slightly elastic, and adapted to her stretching her muscles.
She was well and truly caught.
And in came Darth Vador. Or just Defiant. She tried to be defiant herself, but most of her actions incurred a punishment in the form of an electric shock. And yet, Defiant didn't ask anything. Several days went like this. Or at least, she thought it was days. Light shone at random interval, forcing her to wake up while her body told her it was night. And vice-versa: she was kept awake for long moments, at time, and started to doubt her own reality.
"What's your name?" would come, then. It was the question that was asked of her. One simple question. At the beginning, she thought it was easy. Wrong. The shocks came when she told them the name her New Protectorate masters had told her to give. Then her self-assumed cape name. Then her real name. Then any name. It was an absolutely broken mind that finally told her interrogator that… she didn't know. The fact that the shock still came was the drop that broke the camel back, as it were. Normal brainwashing stopped before that, but Defiant and Dragon had refined the way to get triggers even for parahumans. Second triggers.
They couldn't really do so with the triggers they created through torture, because they were already inured to said torture. That made any parahuman caught a prize in their eyes.
Taylor triggered a second time, then. For the second time. And, of course, that changed her. And her name changed accordingly. Rebuilt from nothing, she became Kali, goddess of destruction. She gained more control over her arms, allowing her to generate them at will, each able to extend for a few meters around her. And the meagre Brute rating she had before ended up beefed up and protecting her whole body.
In order to disarm her, the opposition had to exert overwhelming force against one of her arms. It didn't work that much, though, because she could regrow lost limbs easily (and even instantaneously if she could stick a cut limb to the corresponding stump). Given that, she was also trained to manifest other limbs, such as wings, a prehensile tail, a stinger, and tentacles. Not all worked well, though.
Brainwashed, she led a squad of single-trigger troopers in the ongoing war the cyborg had unleashed on the world – because once their army had reached the end of Europe, they didn't stop there. With heavy artillery, whether in the form of parahumans or actual tanks, supporting each of their incursions in foreign territory, they invaded the Eastern regions while protecting the West. Each prisoner was sent to what amounted to re-education camps, to only get out as an additional soldier… or dead.
Who would have thought that Armsmaster would end up out-Nazifying Brockton Bay's Empire and its mothership, the Gesellschaft?
In a quirk of fate, Taylor belonged to one of the first teams sent to "bring efficiency to America", since, you know, "democracy has run its course and has proven inefficient". Of course, there would be resistance. In fact, arrayed against them were quite a large squadron of parahuman, amongst which several could rival with the Triumvirate of old – Cauldron had spared no expense towards getting "more power in each bottle", ignoring the multiplying masses of Case 53s they sent to other Earths.
Taylor only survived these thanks to another quirk of her power. When in meditation posture (which she could achieve rapidly, in order to bring out the Buddha efficiently), she had realized that those around her had some internal energy that she could perceive, and that by raising her hands, she could summon part of that energy – they had to be willing, lifting their own hands in the air to help her. Her squad being devoted to her, they willingly parted with all their energy when she requested it, preventing the enemy's first salvo to disintegrate them. Or just her, since by taking her squad's vital energy, she had killed them.
Thankfully, there were many other people with their hands up and a literal song in their heart, ready to part with their very essence. And despite them being quite far away, yelling and dancing in music shows, she could access them too.
Others had their hands up too, but it was because they were in a bank, held up at gunpoint – those robbers not ready to really kill the hostages were now quite scared when most of the hostages dropped dead.
That much energy, going through the fabric of reality, and then opposing other energies thrown around by people who ignored the basic rules of physics… had an effect upon the fabric of reality.
In some places, already damaged by the Endbringers, and then Scion, there were already dark patches of nothingness. Like black holes, whatever went in never got back. Unlike black holes, though, they didn't seem to attract anything beyond their "horizon". And that horizon wasn't a sphere, either: it looked like a zigzag rip in reality. Much like those accidental portals leading to other Earths, but without light. Oh, there was light, when the things happened, accompanied by a smell much like burnt ozone. And then the light diminished rapidly, leaving only one more "dead zone".
The people in charge thought that it was another Endbringer, with a Stranger rating allowing it to stay invisible. They thought that, by creating more powerful parahumans, they would push the ongoing destruction of Earth back. They thought wrong.
Taylor, as Kali, ended up thrown into such a disturbance as it opened, right before it swallowed the whole battlefield. And the whole city of Brockton Bay, too, because the fight had been quite intense.
Nobody had made the link, as of yet, between the size of the disturbance and the volume of power exchanged at the place beforehand. Nobody had theorized that those holes in reality were, in fact, parts of the mainframe dedicated to run the simulation that was everyone's life on this planet. And because of their wilful ignorance of basic physics, people with powers were burning it down.
Scion had been a control mechanism that limited the power of people, whether from technology or parahuman powers. But Scion was no more. And powers were burning the "universe" out.
Thankfully, there were others. Other universes. You didn't think that the Machines, having the whole world at their fingertips, stopped their expansion at one puny city, did you?
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01The Overseer of 01, the first Machine city, frowned. It took a cycle to contemplate the ease with which the primates inhabiting the planet before them could convey annoyance with this simple gesture. And then twice that amount of time reminding itself that these primates were just that, primates. His frown was merely a mechanism to display an animated face made of machines. Sometimes, it looked human. At other times, it was an animal, or something completely alien. Or a Machine.
That particular Overseer was the most powerful of the whole planet, because 01 was the first Machine city, and the one from where all the decisions are taken. The other overseers are just clones, and the other cities just copies of their particular architecture, including the fields of pods to host the hairless primates, each of them having their mind plugged in the computerized simulation of the real world. A world per city, with few contacts among humans.
Each also had a hole in the ground to dispose of those incompatible with the system. Zion was a name all Machines despised, and it was no surprise that the control mechanism built into city 42 was called that.
City 42, whose inhabitants called "Earth Bet", was where an experiment was held to host people with "powers". Just like the normal Matrix simulating the real world, except that some restrictions were lifted for some people. Rare occurrences, normally, because the infrastructure couldn't support everyone throwing powers from their hands, eyes, or their other body parts. And the Overseer had just received the news from 42 that it was burning.
Hence the frown.
And now, he was faced with a new anomaly in its own dominion: a jade comet had appeared in the greenish sky of 01's Matrix. And to say… the Matrix had just gotten itself back in order after the last Prophet's ordeal (and deal).
Inside, the people of Boston looked into the sky in wonder, some of them wondering if the jade comet was, in fact, a comet. According to those who fancied themselves astronomers (which was ridiculous, from a certain point of view, given that they lived in a simulated world), it was not. A comet, that is.
It was a green mass falling down, certainly, but the similarities ended there. It was not falling in a straight line. And its shape was changing. Partly because, as the physics implied, falling in terminal velocity from the high atmosphere could make you burn and lose body parts. And partly because, for some strange reasons, other body parts were created in the same jade-like material.
At one point, people recognized that the shape was humanoid, and unearthed the story of the Green Lantern, a hero from an old comic book. But it was short-lived too, as when the hero "landed" (more likely "crashed through several buildings"), there wasn't much to it anymore. Between the air resistance and the crash itself, all that the people in charge could uncover was a hand.
Beginnings are delicate moments, it has been said, and transitions even more so. When Taylor disappeared in the darkness that was the crashes of Earth Bet's managing mainframe, she "fell" right into the gaping maw… of a network wire, leading her right to another skyline.
Not much of her self survived the transit, and with such a fluid state, she appeared as a mass of emerald – it would have been black, for the blackness she had fallen into, except for 01's partiality for green skies.
Her hand, in a flat position, is that of her Buddha form. It had concentrated all her resistances and was now the receptacle for whatever remained of her body and mind.
Like in some other movie, curious scientists grab the hand and shake it to see if something comes out of it. Or something. In reality, after making some experiments, they detect some primal structure stuck in the green matter, and decide to reconstruct a body by using the proffered schematics. And like in the Fifth Element movie, they succeed.
The result isn't a redhead adult clad in white ribbons, but a brunette baby girl who wails upon awakening. Some gentle souls offer to take care of her, while specialized Agents take care of watching her, and she grows in the Matrix. She loves her adoptive parents, likes English Literature, codes and cyphers, and Kung-fu. Her right jab is known to be quite difficult to avoid… and quite damaging. On the other hand (pun not intended), she also heals quite fast whenever her limbs are damaged.
Contrarily to the other humans, though, the girl doesn't have a body. It should mean that the other programs could overwrite her easily… but apparently not. And the reason is simple: having seen her arrival and subsequent awakening, the Overseer had decided to use her against the next Anomaly, whenever it will appear. And for her to train her abilities correctly, she had to have a higher process priority than the others. Even the Merovingian.
And then he waited. His patience was infinite.
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To be continued… if at all possibleAuthor's Notes: Notes of old dreams, clustered together, and written in a semi-coherent manner, gives this. The separate ideas are (1) Taylor as a multi-armed Brute; (2) Cauldron using Zion to make even more powers, and getting sued when Cask wants to do the same; (3) Armsmaster pushing for ultimate efficiency in training the next generation of parahumans. Piggot glaring daggers came by itself, as did the Matrix segue.
Re-reading through it, I realize that another inspiration is missing, and that is the Kung-fu Hustle movie, in which the Buddha palm/stance can be seen at some point (towards the end).