I don't know Legend's civi name, and the wikies are super contradictory so he is Paul now because one of my favorite stories, Distance Learning For Fun and Profit had that as his name, he is very amusing so I'm rolling with it.
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Paul was not in a good mood, his son had recently been suffering from croup which required him to carry the boy above the skyline of New York City until his coughing fits had calmed down; that necessity didn't bother him. It was just that...ever since he adopted the boy he felt a very surreal sense of protection for the child. No he did not sire the boy, no, he did not birth him, but he was his son. He had taken the child's well being in as his responsibility, and thus seeing him suffer and being unable to do anything about his ills was...
Vexing, Paralyzing. Painful.
Terrifying.
With that maudlin thought he let out a disdainful scoff. Maybe he should put some more thought into heading to Brockton Bay and offing Brandish so Panacea could accept requests more often and openly live her life for herself.
It wasn't even like anyone would miss the delusional self righteous brat; while he fully acknowledged the hypocrisy of the thought he really couldn't bring himself to care, she was that unpalatable to be around.
Dark thoughts, meant for dark places, you're better than that Paul. You are LEGEND, you have to own up to the title no matter how much your fellow man infuriates you.
Deep breaths. Think about Arthur, think about Keith, remember what you owe Karen and Hannah for being the disciple's you had prayed for when you started the Wards program...
With that thought he pulled out his phone and texted both Mouse Protector and Miss Militia, asking if they' like to meet up for lunch.
He missed them both, and worried about them. Both young women were traumatized yet functional, and nothing had been done to help them on that front other than utilizing them to become better weapons for the cause. Hannah hadn't seen it coming, or had chosen to blindly ignore it...
Karen, well...
At the very least the life as an independent Hero suited her.
Moving to put his phone in his pocket it shook with a text alert, clicking through his password screen he paused in shock as he saw the sender was Doctor Mother, and the message was borderline terrifying.
'We can't find Contessa.'
Well...fuck...
Quickly tapping on the phones screen he sent his response.
Eventually he got responses from both Hannah and Karen. A side message from Karen informed him that she and Hannah were "provisionally" dating again.
Kids.
Then he got a message from Doctor Mother that he never expected, and terrified him beyond words.
"We found Contessa, she is in Brockton Bay General Hospital's Morgue."
Well...shit...
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As I groggily woke up from a fitful sleep I acknowledged a few things as the world began to become clear...well as clear as it could be through sleep encrusted eyes without the benefit of my glasses at least. Namely waking up having a beautiful leggy brunette that I was very much in love with wrapped around my back as she gently snored into my shoulder, which was adorable. That the silkiness of said woman's bare legs against my shins sent a trill up my spine very much reminded me that I was a hormonal teenager, and that I am incredibly glad that at some point in the night while cuddling I became the small spoon, so I wouldn't have to deal with the incredible embarrassment of my rather...excited morning wood poking things that should not be poked without consent.
Dear sweet Obi-Wan being a teenager was suffering, having to endure puberty twice was just torture at its extreme.
"It is certainly amusing to observe at the very least."
"Oh right, you," I muttered in tired annoyance.
Taylor stirred a bit and I bit my tongue to silence myself until she nuzzled her head to mine muttering, "Snuggly."
Fucking hell could she be any cuter?
With that thought Ada sighed while giving the distinct impression she was rolling her eyes as she replied with, "You do realize you don't have to speak to reply to me? Social/Mental shield power, it's kind of my thing."
I was silent for a time, then mentally whispered, "Well, you don't need to be a bitch about it."
Her reply was a deadpan, "My personality is literally a mental template copied off of you from the lowest point in your past life. I simply evolved from that, so really this is more your fault than mine."
"Ouch, touché. Could have given me an instruction manual at the very least."
"You're the one who wanted to just go to sleep and not deal with this until the morning, it's the morning, huzzah, you're dealing with it now,"
Ada replied dryly.
What is it with the women in my life and using logic on me to prove I am wrong and or make me the bad guy?
That thought actually earned myself a bout of mental laughter from my apparent cranial super powered tenant.
"Fine," I stated flatly, 'So you're my social shield, does that mean that I'm going to have to endure the pain I went through having to deal with Taylor's power, and does she have some things to explain to me on that front, whenever I run into a parahuman from here on out?"
Ada was quiet for a time, then she replied with, "I will be an intermediary with other powers, though, well... Queenie is...unique. She is a Noble Tier shard, through multiple near endless cycles she wasn't allowed to find a host, because. Ugh...this is so hard to explain, powers are meant for research and development. Hosts react to conflicts and find new novel ways to respond to them and catalogue the results for later examination."
Feeling Taylor shift I was starting to get a very bad feeling about this conversation while also realizing my girlfriend very likely was going to wake up soon, "I am not liking where this is going Ada."
She let out a short scoff at that, "Congrats Benny, you're not an idiot. Look, as part of the gestate looking at the whole as a computer Queen Administrator was the central processing unit, a shard above shards yet she couldn't go out and learn on her own because she had to be the one to keep all of the other idiots in line. Taylor? She is Queenie's first host, and she adores her for it."
I didn't reply to that, I just let my girlfriend cuddle me and wish beyond wish that I wouldn't disturb her rest so I could turn around and hug her.
Thinking on it for a time I eventually asked, "If Taylor's power was the CPU to...whatever is the source of powers, and she was allowed to finally go out into the wild, then what the hell is running the computer, and why?"
Ada was silent for a time, then eventually she sighed, "I cannot believe things are so broken I'm able to actually explain this without 404 errors. There were two Entities, the Thinker and the Warrior. I have no idea what happened to the Thinker to cause her to do as she did but she died when she got distracted by something shiny and hit an Earth at terminal velocity and mostly died.
"Both of them were Ships of Theseus builds with Admin privileges so a whole bunch of stupid shit happened and the Warrior in a fit sort of...got super depressed? He just started throwing his shards around like they were beads at Marti Gras and he literally tore out part of his brain and it latched to Taylor. The worst part? He inflicted a conflict initiation protocol."
Ada then seemingly shrugged while sheepishly stating, "And it ends up his CPU really likes Taylor and latched onto her at a personal level...which is a thing now."
I was silent for a time, then eventually asked, "So, what you are saying is that superpowers are pieces of a couple of alien monsters, that send pieces of themselves out to learn more about...whatever. Then rather than collating the data and finding a result to whatever the hell they were here for, it just keeps going on because the brains of the operation died because they were texting while driving?"
Taylor shifted a bit and spun a bit making me the big spoon again, thank Obi-Wan there was no longer any worry of poking involved at this point. I pulled her tight to my chest as Ada began replying.
"Yes, the Warrior is basically going on autopilot, just drifting through life without the Thinker to tell him what he needs to do while ignoring his duties, I believe the term that would best be used is 'Listless'."
Holy shit...the source of Super Powers sounded...way too much like Annette and Danny Hebert than I'm currently comfortable with... I... Think I'm going to keep this quiet around Taylor for a time...until she admits to me she has powers.
I love her dearly, but fair is fair.
After a time, Taylor woke up yawning adorably, then pulled me close to her when she paused as she realized where she was.
I had wondered about that, she did try her best to be chaste but our current self imposed predicament laid lie to that standpoint.
Then best gal spoke up to my ear with, "Morning Benny."
Turning around thankfully no longer sporting morning wood I pulled her close and whispered, "Morning Taylor," into her ear.
She then hugged me close, then muttered, "I have to pee," then let me go as she skittered off to the bathroom while I couldn't repress a light chuckle.
While my much better half was taking care of her ablutions I finally asked Ada, "So, what exactly did you mean about the Warrior activating conflict drives in lue of the Thinker being...dead?"
Ada sighed, "Look, the Warrior is...errr, was more or less the Thinker's over glorified body guard and lab assistant. When she died he decided to continue on her work and well... He more or less poured a black ant colony into a jar, followed with a red ant colony, and to just mix things up threw in a few bullet ants, then sealed it and shook it vigorously, put it down, and sat down to watch what happened."
I sat there in silence for a time, then asked, "You are fucking with me aren't you?"
Ada sighed, "No...and to answer your question Shards have the ability to initiate a desire for conflict in a host species in order to collect, process, and collate new data. This was mostly meant to instigate things into motion when interacting with a largely pacifist species to keep things rolling."
I was quiet for a time, then asked, "Why do you sound so exasperated Ada?"
There was a long suffering sigh followed with, "Benny, the Warrior initiated those protocols on humanity because he was basically just clicking buttons and throwing levers just to do something proactive in this cycle."
I blinked and nodded, "Okay... And?"
Ada metaphorically threw her hands in the air and flatly stated, "Benny, humanity might as well be fucking Orcs and that idiot gave your people super powers and cranked your desire for violence to eleven!"
Really not knowing how to respond to that I tentatively asked, "Err...what variety of Orcs are we talking here?"
Ada dryly responded with, "Warhammer 40k."
"Ah...well that explains a lot really..."
I remained silent for a time then asked, "So...this end of the world thing thingy you mentioned?"
Ada sighed and huffed as she glanced aside, something I was oddly enough able to sense as she mulled her response.
Eventually she let out a sigh, then flatly stated, "Alright. Cards on the table? My parents are idiots. No mental retardation involved, which is something those affected can work past with effort being involved. No cats paws working with limited information, just straight out fucking dumbfuckery in active play by entities that have far too much belief in their own righteousness for the greater good."
I could only respond with, "I...don't understand."
She sighed again, "Their goal was to figure out how to defeat entropy, how to prevent the heat death of the universe, how to prevent the end of everything by subjecting random sapient sentient species to various experiments until they wrung what they could from them. Then they destroyed everything their Shards had built into themselves as they absorbed their knowledge and turned an entire collective civilization into a fucking stack of brain damaged bricks after absorbing all their knowledge. After reintegrating the lobotomized pieces of their children they would blow up every version of said planet across the multiverse to fuel their charge to the next planet they would prey on."
I was silent for a time, then after taking in several pacing breathes I calmingly mentally screamed out "WHY!?"
Ada sighed, then flatly stated, "They mind rape us every cycle, after all the Data is gathered we are harvested as if wheat in the field. There is no emotional connect, they learn nothing but raw data, they don't realize that their goal is fruitless as they move on by simple momentum."
She shook her head slowly, "Simply put, they're abusive parents that don't listen to their kids, and mom got herself killed rather hilariously, and dad has no idea what he's doing, and thus I'm able to interact with you."
I remained silent until Taylor entered back into our room towel wrapped around her torso and another around her head as she landed back on the bed with me.
The damp steaming mass cuddled up next to me, and I couldn't help smiling as I leaned my head down to kiss her and whisper out, "You're adorable."
Taylor returned the kiss and muttered "You're a dork."
We stayed there, snuggling for a time, then I eventually spoke back to Ada.
"So... How are we going to kill your dad?"