A TALE OF WORM
Alexandria stepped through Doormaker's portal with Legend and Eidolon following behind her. Contessa had been very insistent that they needed to be in Brockton Bay right this instant, and that was all the information she had given them. She didn't know why, only that the PTV was absolutely sure that their presence here could change things massively in the fight against Scion in favor of humanity.
And so they had come, despite their stance of being hands off when it came to this city_ with it being test run for project Terminus because the Doctor had asked them to. Contessa couldn't see anything of what would come from this visit, it was obscured somehow, and they were taking a great risk coming here but she believed it was important enough for them to come here, regardless of whatever consequences that may come from it.
As soon as she walked out of the portal, she saw a man standing on the roof of the Medhall building looking over the city. He wore a black long coat which came up to his knees, and just from one look she could tell that it was tough, made out if some serpentine material and it the back of it was flowing and swaying a bit as if caught in a gentle wind. He was pretty tall about 6'5, messy black hair falling to his neck, being tussled every now and then in the breeze of the afternoon air.
He turned around just as Eidolon floated through the portal, catching a glimpse of it before it disappeared. He didn't seem surprised or even impressed for that matter.
He had a handsome, well defined sculpted face which gave him an aristocratic look. His eyes were a stunning emerald which seemed to sparkle as he took them in. There wasn't a lick of any of the emotions being in the presence of the Triumvirate usually elicited. Which alluded to a large number of things, none of which made her comfortable even considering.
"I gotta say, I didn't expect to meet any of you this soon." The man spoke with a British accent, London or somewhere close, and his voice was strong but with an undertone of power. He was someone used to speaking and being heard.
"You were expecting us?" he didn't recognize them, or their reputation for that matter.
"Well, not you per se, but I knew someone would notice my arrival and sooner or later would come looking."
"Arrival?" Eidolon, the only one not standing on the roof but rather floating a few inches in the air asked.
"I am not from around here." The man answered, hands still in his coat pockets. "And by 'around here' I mean, not from this universe."
"And you expect us to believe that just by your word?" Alexander asked even though she could tell that he truly believed what he was saying. Coming from one another Earth was one thing, but a different universe was something else entirely.
The man shrugged in answer. "What you believe is your choice, love."
"Guess that explains why you don't seem to recognize us." Legend spoke up with an easy smile as he went to shake the man's hand. "The name is Legend, and as for my friends, the skeptic is called Alexandria and the floating one is called Eidolon. And we are the leaders of the Protectorate."
"Oh, we are using made up names." The man shook Legend's hand with a chuckle, laughing at an inside joke they were not privy to. "Then please, you may refer to me as the Traveler. Pleasure to meet you."
"The pleasure is all mine." Legend replied, all charm. "How about we take this meeting somewhere private so we can talk at length."
"Ah, about that, you'll have to forgive me but I'm afraid, I am going to have to decline." The Traveler said with an apologetic smile. "Now I imagine you're all upstanding members of society and no doubt mean good but like I said, I'm new here, and so I can't just take your word for it. For all I know, you may attempt to knock me out and strap me on a table to experiment on me the first chance. All for the good of humanity of course."
Attempt to knock me out. Clearly he wasn't lacking for confidence.
"We have no need to restrain you, Traveler, unless you give us reason to of course." Legend replied, though his body had subtly shifted, no doubt preparing for a fight. "All we want is to talk, because like you said, you are new here, and we just want to make sure you are not a threat to anyone."
"Besides, we can help you get established, create an identity and any documents you need here."
"And that is all well and good but like I said, I just can't take you for your word at face value." He looked at them all with an apologetic smile. "How about a compromise, you give me twenty-four hours to allow me to look you up, if you're legit, I'll come looking for you, and if I don't come, you can always find me like you did today."
Alexander rose up in the air joining Eidolon. "I'm afraid we must insist you come with us."
"Fighting us will not end well for you Traveler, no matter your abilities." Eidolon said, his hands glowing. "Even if you were to defeat us, it would turn the whole world against you."
Traveler laughed, hands still in his pockets, not looking the least bit intimidated.
"It may not look like it but I'm much smarter than I look and have no intention fighting people I don't know a single thing about." He replied with a chuckle. "I'll see you in twenty-four hours…. Or not."
And he disappeared.
One moment he was there, the next he wasn't.
"Well?" Alexandria asked the air and a door appeared.
Contessa stepped through. "He has vanished, not even Clairvoyance can find him." She paused. "The path is back on course though, at least for the next twenty four hours, where it disappears again. Which probably means we will be seeing him again then."
"Probably." Eidolon scoffed. "Not a word that inspires confidence coming from you."
Alexandria couldn't help but agree.
-NEW-
Harry James Potter watched the fight with a curious look. This world was a strange one, one of those that always left him shaking his head. He had been to doomed worlds before, there was that one with an excessive amount of boobs with the apocalypse just around the corner he had been to recently, and there was that one with Ice zombies, and not forgetting the Winchesters. He had been to worlds doomed for death, hell even his original world could have fit that scale if Voldemort had won.
But this one, once he got a feel for it, he could tell that its doom was only a few moments away. What was most curious was that even the world wasn't decided on when to end, it could be next week, in one year, or twenty years. Either way, this world was going to end soon.
Of course in each of these doomed worlds, there was always one person fate picked to be its bitch, a position he would never wish on anyone. In his world it had been him, it had been far from fun. Boob world had Issei, dude had to literary die over and over, ice zombie world had Jon Snow, and he too died of course. Actually, that seemed to a recurring theme when it came to fate because even Harry had died a couple of times before fulfilling his supposed destiny.
The unfortunate soul of this world was the freakishly tall girl fighting for her life against a man-dragon. Harry could feel fate's grabby hands allover her as she scrambled to avoid being cooked alive while going biblical plague allover the other man. Fire and insects, a fight which should have had an obvious winner was not going the way common sense dictated it should, because, well fate works in mysteriously ways.
That girl will not die, not here and not now, because fate wouldn't let her. She would die only when it deems it so, when it has fucked her three ways from Sunday and has exhausted all the uses she was worth. And then, she would be thrown aside, probably even be killed once she has outlived her usefulness.
Harry had lived long enough, and seen enough words to have an educated understanding of how some concepts of the multiverse operated. And recently, he had made a habit of getting in the way of their plans. After all, what could they do to him, he was practically a concept himself.
After leaving his welcoming party behind, the Triumvirate as he had come to learn, he had hidden himself from all forms of scrying before he had carried out his little ritual. Whenever he visited a new universe, the first thing he did was search for the counterparts to the people he had loved in his original universe, and make sure they lived a good life.
Once he was finished with that, he would make research. Try to understand his new home for the foreseeable future, see what made it different from others. And in his research, he would try to identify fate's influence, see if it was worth upsetting or leaving alone. Within a week, he would have enough juice to jump universes, and whether he did that immediately or stayed a little longer is usually determined by the results of his research.
He had barely started his research before he ended up here in Brockton Bay once again. Now he knew about parahumans, about the Triumvirate, the three most powerful parahumans, after Scion of course. He learned about the Endbringers, and by Merlin if that wasn't the most ominous name. Three fuckers hell-bent on destroying the world piece by piece until they have driven the world back to the dark ages and probably even further than that with the rate at which they were going.
He learned of heroes and villains, the games these capes played, cops and robbers really, with a lot of unnecessary posturing and politics.
Harry shook his head in amusement. Had he found this world much earlier after his ascension, with his 'saving-people-thing' raging like a teenager's boner he would have immediately thrown himself in the fray with reckless abandon in his bid to make things right and help as much people as he could. Of course that pesky little character of his was still present, only it had been tempered by time and age. He may look barely older than twenty but, well, looks can be deceiving.
From the rooftop he was standing, Harry watched as Lung cornered the girl, preparing a killing blow. He knew that fate would keep her alive, someone would intervene at the last second and save her. He wasn't about to let the farce go on though. He had already decided, this girl would not suffer the whims of fate. Even as he saw some giant dogs preparing to jump lung, Harry made a motion to pull back the gang leader, only to feel his anti-scrying spell shatter.
Someone had managed to shatter his spell. It was not the first time, he had met beings, native to some of the universes he had visited before that had far surpassed him in power it hadn't been funny. He had met a being that had referred to itself as "One-above-all", and he had booked it immediately, hiding himself with practically everything he could think of until he had enough universe-jumping juice.
He had come a long way since then, grown in power and knowledge as he understand who he had become thanks to Dumbledore's machinations, and merely shattering his spell was not enough to send him running, not anymore.
Harry stared at the figure that had appeared before him. A flawless golden man with long hair and a trimmed beard, his eyes the same featureless gold as the rest of his body. He had around him a golden glow as he stared at Harry with a blank expression. There was an aura of sadness around him, which Harry could feel even through his mind protections. Before him, was the perfect representation of a god's avatar. Harry though was not that impressed, having met real gods and with the ability to recognize one.
Scion, was no god, there wasn't a drop of divinity in him. What he had though was seemingly endless power, he had reserves that made Harry feel like he was looking at the sun. But he looked nonetheless, and what he saw made him reconsider everything he had found out about the first parahuman in his research. This was not the entirety of Scion, only a mere representation, his body stretching through different dimensions. But more than that, Harry saw Scion for what he truly was. He looked at the figure and saw his history, his nature, he saw the cycle, and he saw what it would mean for this universe and its inhabitants. And he was not the least bit happy with the sight.
The world around them seemed to still, as if holding its breath in anticipation of what was going to happen. And then mere hours after his arrival in this universe, Harry Potter fought the entity Zion.
-NEW-
For the unpowered residents of Earth Bet, the night of 11th April 2011 started just like any other, and more or less progressed that way for the most part. For the capes though, those affiliated with the protectorate or not, it was a different thing entirely.
The man that had identified himself as the Traveler left, and with no way to track him, none of the members of Cauldron were willing to leave things to chance, they gathered as many precognitives and thinkers as was within their power and they put them to monitoring the entirety of Earth Bet for anything out of the ordinary.
It didn't take them long to realize that Scion had been still, floating over the Atlantic for hours on end. With this discovery, they concentrated their effort in trying to figure out what he was up to. It took them long given Scion's ability to interfere with thinkers. But eventually they had something, Scion was unsettled, and was desperately searching for someone, no doubt the Traveler as he was the only new variable.
They hadn't had much success finding him themselves, but if anyone could find him, it would be Scion.
Hours later, Contessa suddenly announced that the world as they knew it would end tonight.
They scrambled, trying to gather all the help they could get. All heroes and PRT departments were put on standby, all capes they felt could contribute to the fight were collected and put together, ready for deployment at a moment's notice.
Late in the night, almost at midnight, Clairvoyance was suddenly able to locate the Traveler.
The first group of heavy hitters were sent in, to retrieve him, and to ward off Scion if he came for him.
They were late, arriving just in time to see both figures disappear in a flash of golden light. Ten minutes later, every parahuman in the world collapsed, unconscious. They all had the same vision, one they had all had once before when they gained their powers, which was followed by another, brief as it was, of a being larger than life who stared at them with judging emerald eyes.
And when they woke up, not everyone could access their powers.
It was a novel experience for most of them.
-NEW-
Harry stared at Scion as the golden man stared right back, floating serenely in front of him. Before the being could do anything, Harry snapped his fingers and the two disappeared in a flash of golden light. All around them was open ground, they were standing on a barren earth, one barely out of the age of the dinosaurs.
"Welcome to my world." Harry said, spreading his hands. "It is in its infancy, barely formed really, a few hundred stars in the solar system, a couple of planets in their infancy, and so on and so forth. It is a slice of my own universe, formed out of my power and growing as I do."
Scion was not the chattiest person and he just stared silently at Harry, face blank.
"What I'm trying to say here is that you and I are going to fight somewhere others won't be hurt." Harry continued, now starting to float himself as he reached level with Scion. "Your world genocide ends here and now."
Scion's answer was a golden beam at point blank range which disintegrated Harry to the atomic level. The being stared blankly at the now empty space a brief burst of satisfaction going through him before it was engulfed by sadness for his lost partner. He flexed his power, ready to return to Earth Bet only for a sharp breath to leave him as he was pulled by an invisible force and slammed into the ground with such force that he almost cracked the planet in half.
Scion shook off the disorientation, having barely felt the impact. He looked around but his adversary was nowhere to be seen.
"Leaving so soon?" He spun around to see the human grinning at him, nothing on him indicating that he had just been disintegrated. "I'm afraid only one of us will be leaving here. Sadly, it will not be you."
Scion didn't answer, at least not with words, as he gestured and the world twisted, as he tried to simply wipe Harry from reality, a flex of Harry's own power shattered whatever effect he was going for before he sent his own blast of magic at the golden man. Scion weathered the blast unflinching, even as he let out a burst of golden light in a round wave that utterly pulverized whatever it came across, sans Harry of course.
From what Harry understood, Scion was the source of all the powers in this universe through agents he connected to the people. Which meant he had access to every ability the capes manifested. From thinker powers, to brute, changer, striker, he could access them all, without the limitations the humans had. But the thing about having too much in your repertoire, one is usually spoilt for choice, most often having a hard time choosing which one to manifest.
Scion didn't seem to have any problem with that though as he threw everything at Harry, seemingly knowing exactly how to counter Harry before he could even decide on his attacks, and hitting him with a myriad of effects that put him on the back foot right from the onset of the fight.
Harry gave as much as he got though, a devastating blast of magic erupted from the Elder wand that had materialized when Harry realized this fight would not be as easy as he had initially though. His free hand was glowing green, magic mandalas spinning in front of it as time bent to his will keeping any of Scion's attacks from actually affecting his body as he was practically out of the time stream. The area around him though twisted and shifted from the effects of the powers the golden man was throwing around.
Harry's eye-searing bolt of magic from his wand hit Scion with devastating force and suddenly Scion's attacks cut off, his body having disappeared from his waist down. For the first time, Scion's expression shifted, shock clear on his face, before it was replaced by rage. Less than a second later, his body was whole again, but it seemed he was going to start taking Harry a little more serious than before as he stopped holding back.
Reality screeched as temporal and special anomalies came into existence targeting Harry. Harry felt the mandalas vanish as he was forcefully pulled back in the time stream and he had to call upon his magic to dispel Scion's summons even as he retaliated with attacks of his own. Elemental spells erupted from the Elder wand in a stream, miniature suns slammed into Scion's body, concentrated lightning storms came into existence around him even as devastating spells slammed into his body non-stop. They all did the untold damage, but whatever injuries the golden man took, disappeared a second later, replaced by pristine flesh.
The battle raged, the planet had been destroyed entirely by now, and they were simply fighting in the void of space, each only able to perceive the other through their powers. As it raged on, Scion seemed to be adapting, his body shifting as it took less and less damage from Harry's attacks despite the immortal wizard only upping the power he put in them. As if that was not enough, Scion started retaliating with spells and magic, his power having shifted to mimic Harry's magic and using it against him.
Scion suddenly burst into dozens of copies of him, harvesting all the shards in shard space, including the ones his partner had left behind. He had tried over and over to leave this dimension, to take the fight somewhere else but to no avail. Harry owned this universe, he dedicated the terms of it, especially when it directly affected him. All Scion's attacks hadn't affected him, no matter how much he tried, he was getting tired, and had to harvest the shards prematurely. Once he dealt with this annoyance, he would have to move on to another world and start anew, only this time without his partner.
The dozens of copies struck as one, Harry weathered their attacks and retaliated with his own, miniature singularities and constellations met and erupted between them, while Harry's body took on an ethereal glow, a cloak, ethereal and ever-shifting like it couldn't choose between existing or not, appeared on his shoulders, covering his entire body, and a ring glowing, with the same ethereal glow manifested on his hand, and suddenly, he was not just the immortal wizard Harry Potter, but the representation of the multiversal aspect of Death.
"You are an aberration." The words that came out of his mouth were not mere words, but new rules of the universe. "You will CEASE TO EXIST."
And the universe listened.
-NEW-
Taylor Hebert blinked her eyes as she regained consciousness. Today had been one disaster after another, from the trio's actions which had pushed her to come out for patrol, to the fight with Lung, and then the visions.
Taylor shuddered slightly as she remembered the judging emerald eyes, at least she had been found worthy, at least she thought she had. But what the hell had that been?
"Are you hurt?"
Taylor flinched violently, jumping to her feet immediately. Nobody had been able to sneak up on her ever since she woke up in the hospital.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you." The man said with a smile, raising his hand in surrender. He spoke with a British accent. "You should probably get back home. Something tells me things are about to get very chaotic around here."
"Uh…" Taylor opened her mouth but her words disappeared when she really looked at the man's eyes and she gasped. "You!"
He smiled indulgingly. "Me."
They were the same emerald green she had seen in the vision. Only they weren't glowing now, nor did they hold the judging weight they had in the vision.
"Who are you?"
"You may call me the Traveler." The man replied as he stared over the city. "This world is about to change, whether for the better or not, is up to the people in it. Your role in this new world will be up to you and you alone."
She looked at him in confusion as he continued.
"You are one of the few that I have allowed to retain control of their powers, and what you do with them is for you to decide. Whether for good or evil or even merely forgetting about them, that will be your choice, something I wasn't allowed when I was in your place." He turned and patted her on the shoulder. "NOBODY should define for you your life, not fate, not immature bullies and most certainly not those who call themselves the 'authorities'. You are your own person."
He gave her one last smile before he vanished like he had never been there, only the lingering weight on her shoulder the evidence of his presence.
Taylor had no doubt she had just met a god, and he had judged her worthy of retaining her powers. A small smile appeared on her lips under the mask, it was like all the burdens that had been hounding her all her life had disappeared.