22 – Double Disaster
[Interlude]
Amelia watched Kaleidus go through the portal in the terribly named AAPV to wait in the vacuum chamber, mentally protesting it but unable to voice her thoughts.
Even after already accepting logically that she couldn't go with him, she found herself apprehensive of what would come next. Leading CRUCIBLE in his absence…it was too soon! She wasn't ready for it yet.
She turned around to the console screen which showed the vehicle entering another portal into outer space.
Taylor and Paige similarly watched quietly from beside her. The screen shifted to the cameras outside the base and zoomed in as far as possible.
The vehicle accelerated forwards into the dark background of space with a yellow, blue and purple streak of light, then abruptly disappeared.
"That was…huh, I thought it would be more magical. He just disappeared," said Taylor.
"Isn't that magical in itself? To appear as nothing out of the ordinary?" Paige asked with a thoughtful expression, a finger to her chin.
"But I wouldn't say disappearing is nothing out of the ordinary either." Taylor said.
"It's going to be strange without him here," said Amelia, sighing.
"Not only that, we've basically cleaned up Brockton Bay's villain scene already. That's going to take some adjusting to too," said Taylor. "Not having any hero work to do, I mean."
"Speak for yourself, I think Paige and I will be just fine with it. I wouldn't mind a break after all the action we've had. I've done way more in the last few weeks than I ever did with New Wave," said Amelia.
"Our work isn't really done though, it just means we have to start broadening our horizons," said Paige. "There are lots of people that still need our help all across the country."
"You know, you could probably do some singing again. Could be good for our PR if you do it as a CRUCIBLE gig, so the public doesn't think we're only about fighting crime," said Amelia.
"Isn't that risky? We don't want people to link Paige with her Canary identity. If I remember, you were the one that kept arguing that we couldn't let anyone know we rescued her," said Taylor.
"Well, that was back when she wasn't part of the team. Now she's one of us, and she'll have to go out as a hero sooner or later. People are going to make the link anyways when she starts using her power in public, and that'll happen sooner or later. And the breakout was never announced so people's first thought won't be that she is Canary, just a cape that's similar. That's why it's better for her to build goodwill and a new image, which she can do best as a singer. PR's important, you know? It's the one of the things New Wave was always working on, and why I offered free healing at the hospital for minor medical issues, even when there's always patients with more serious issues on my waitlist."
"If it makes a difference, I think I would like to sing to an audience again," said Paige.
"There is a plan for Paige to return to a singing career for PR and revenue generation," Offensive Bias added.
"See? Looks like Kaleidus agrees and thought ahead to prepare for that," said Amelia.
"In addition, it is projected that her singing will have a significant impact on morale in the aftermath of an Endbringer attack."
Taylor shrugged. "Alright. I won't oppose it."
"Thank you!" Paige said happily.
Amelia knew that her attitude towards Paige hadn't been particularly positive after rescuing her from the Birdcage, and this was one way to begin repairing that relationship. The three of them plus Offensive Bias were the true leaders of CRUCIBLE now. It had all started with Kaleidus and Amelia, then Taylor joined just before they debuted as the founding members. Paige came much later and never had a public debut yet, but her loyalty was at least without question, despite her religious quirks.
The rest of their now rather large organization consisted of potentially untrustworthy individuals—former criminals and villains—that had been Mastered to various degrees.
When she thought about it, that fact was rather incongruous for a hero organization, but Amelia found that she didn't really care, and Taylor justified it as reforming villains for their own good.
But still, they had all agreed that the ones who'd been Mastered couldn't be fully trusted, so the four of them were the real leadership and had to get along. Technically Offensive Bias was programmatically forced to be loyal, in a way that was similar to being Mastered, but its episodic memories as Dragon had been completely wiped, and it had essentially grown up again with them. This was unlike how they Mastered the other capes, as their memories were left intact so they could remain competent.
"Let's head back down to the surface then, it's kinda dreary up here," said Amelia.
"What?! No!" Taylor suddenly exclaimed.
Amelia was taken aback and had a confused expression. "Uh…you disagree?"
"No, I mean, the sirens! The Endbringer sirens are going off!"
Amelia and Paige both froze at that.
Although Earth M2 had been sealed off by Teacher's device, the device worked in such a way that it only sealed perception off from users located outside of its area of effect. There were several other quirky ways it interacted with secondary Thinker powers as well, but in general anybody who managed to get inside the area of effect was no longer blocked by it.
The key point was that the device didn't actually blind the shards, only the users. In that respect, it was more like a "setting" which the shards collectively agreed to treat the protected space as off limits to perception powers.
As a result, Taylor could maintain connectivity with her bug network on Earth Bet through relay bugs and portal connections.
"Is it Brockton Bay?! But it shouldn't be a good target anymore!" Amelia said with shock. Before he left, Kaleidus had explained that the Leviathan was supposed to attack Brockton Bay, but that it seemed to have been delayed, and probably cancelled altogether, because the Endbringers target areas of significant instability and conflict. With the gangs eliminated in Brockton Bay, the city was as peaceful as it could get.
"An alert has been issued by the PRT. The Simurgh appears to be on a trajectory for Boston, estimated arrival in thirty minutes."
"Oh…that's…I really shouldn't feel relief at that, but…I'm kind of glad it's not hitting us," Taylor said. "Phew. That means dad is safe."
"That's not all. An S-class threat has also been declared in Boston in respect to what has been codenamed 'Echidna'. Kaleidus left a file on this as a critical event, though it was not expected to arise this early."
Offensive Bias pulled up data on screen on both the Endbringer alert and Echidna, while running some analyses in the background.
"Instantaneously cloning full powered capes?! Holy fuck!" Amelia swore as she read what Echidna was capable of. "And it's gonna clone Alexandria and Eidolon? How the hell do we stop that?!"
"Hey, it says here I might be able to bring the clones under control with my power!" Paige pointed.
"However, it is also projected that the Simurgh's scream will interfere with your power. It is likely that the Simurgh is deliberately joining the battle in Boston to take advantage of this."
"We should try to stop the Triumvirate from fighting Echidna then," Taylor said. "I think we can handle her, we just need them to hold off the Simurgh."
"Yeah, as long as she doesn't clone any super heavy hitters, the bug army should be enough to deal with her. Obviously, none of us should be going out in person there either," said Amelia.
"If Eidolon is not cloned, the Cauldron organization will not be revealed to the world. Eidolon is one of the few confirmed blindspots of the Path to Victory power they possess. There is no guarantee that the Anti-Thinker Bubble device works on it."
"Are you saying we should let him get cloned?" Taylor asked. "Is it that important to reveal them?"
"No, I am merely informing you of the long-term consequences that will affect the entire world. If we do not use this chance to expose the organization, we may not receive another in the future."
"We need Coil," said Amelia. "I don't think this is a choice we can make lightly."
"But if he's running a continuous split like that, he won't be able to help us in the battle itself. And we're talking about facing an Endbringer. It'll be harder than anything we've faced so far," said Taylor.
"We don't really have a choice otherwise do we? There's not enough time to analyze which decision is better. We have to try to take out Echidna right now before the Simurgh gets there, otherwise we're in for what might be the hardest Endbringer battle in history. If Echida somehow clones the fucking Simurgh itself we are so fucked it's not even funny," said Amelia. "We can't afford to hold back and let Eidolon get cloned."
"Ah…you're right. Fuck."
The team moved immediately down to the M2 surface command centre. Coil was given a separate room of his own so that the team could communicate things in the command centre not meant for his ears.
Because he was inside the area of effect of the Anti-Thinker Bubble device, his powers worked normally and they split the timeline.
O O O
Numerous portals opened between Boston and Brockton Bay to show relay bugs swarming through, establishing signal connection to Boston for Taylor to control the bug army in the battle.
While it was possible to directly portal to Boston, their security protocol was to avoid leaving open portals back to M2 lying around anywhere except the underground base in Brockton Bay, which was heavily fortified.
They would use an in-between world to amass the fighting force before portalling to Boston, and then close the portals to M2, so they needed to connect the signal from Earth Bet.
Tens of thousands of Soldier-class and larger bugs and billions more smaller bugs were moving from Earth M1, where Amelia and Taylor cultivated them, over to Earth Buffer1, an uninhabited world designated for massing troops and other operations requiring the use of a buffer world.
"This is way too slow, our forces have outgrown our logistics. We really need more portal generators," said Taylor. Her bugs were moving in as a continuous line, and it was going to take almost ten minutes just to finish assembling. It was too bad they couldn't increase the size of the portals.
"Noted. Increased production will be allocated."
Drones had already been deployed to Boston for Offensive Bias to monitor the situation, and a line of communication was established with the local PRT to coordinate.
With the Endbringer alarm sounded, teleporters had been gathered to muster the Protectorate forces, which in turn meant that the Triumvirate arrived much sooner than they otherwise would have on their own power.
However, instead of Eidolon engaging Echidna as the CRUCIBLE leaders expected, they had all stayed back to organize the defense against the Simurgh.
The leaders all looked at each other for a moment when they noticed that oddity. Why hadn't they come to the same conclusion that they should deal with Echidna before the Simurgh arrived? Even if it was risky to have a cloned Triumvirate member, it was far more catastrophic to have a cloned Simurgh.
Still, it did mean they wouldn't have to keep a Coil timeline for Eidolon to get cloned if he wasn't going to fight Echidna at all.
"Let's get into contact with the PRT and coordinate. Can you get us a line, Bias?" Amelia asked.
O O O
When Director Armstrong received a call from CRUCIBLE, the new hero team that had taken Brockton Bay by storm, he was wary of the offer.
After the numerous Directors' meetings they had following CRUCIBLE's defeat of two gangs in their city, he was very well aware that CRUCIBLE was not an organization that would go the way of most independent hero teams.
Despite Heathrow's argument about their eventual failure, Armstrong could see the unsaid acknowledgement among most of the directors that CRUCIBLE was likely to remain a thorn in the PRT's side for a long time. The PRT was authorizing their activities not because of some long-term strategy, but simply because there was nothing else that could be done without courting disaster.
They were too well-organized and well-funded to be thought of as an ordinary new hero team, and far too willing to resort to extreme, un-heroic measures. Their methods were all PR-disasters that somehow managed to stay in the public's good graces.
And everything they did to secure Brockton Bay afterwards had only driven home that point. The villains had all but disappeared, presumably in hiding, or worse yet, possibly captured by CRUCIBLE in secret.
The whole city had been turned into a fortress guarded by who knows how many mutant bugs, and the only role left for the local PRT branch was to look good on patrol.
So when Skitter showed up on his conference screen and described their intention to "deploy a large force to Boston", Armstrong could only give a forced smile and polite acceptance, then informing the Chief Director of the situation.
CRUCIBLE's help would certainly take some of the heat off, but the PRT would find it increasingly difficult to manage them in the future.
But with the Simurgh breathing down their necks, there was no question as to whether they needed the help.
O O O
Bastion, leader of the Boston Protectorate, strained his force field powers to the limit trying to keep Echidna boxed in, but had little luck with it while being forced to fend off the horde of powered clones with the capes under his command.
Nobody had expected the situation to spiral out of control as quickly as it had. What started as a policing action against some villains battling it out in the streets had blown up into an unprecedented disaster.
In the midst of the chaotic battle, in an attempt to understand what was going on, they had pieced together that the Travelers, a villain group that frequently moved from city to city, led an assault on Blasto, the local biotinker, at Accord's instruction. Supposedly, Accord, a local gang leader, had originally promised to transfer them to Brockton Bay where he had arranged for a facility that could better contain and help one of their members named Noelle, who was the monster cape the PRT had designated Echidna. But Accord lost contact with whomever he'd been dealing with in Brockton Bay.
Following that, with Noelle growing increasingly agitated, Accord proposed that they capture Blasto and force him to find a cure.
With the full might of Accord's Ambassadors and the Travelers, it seemed that Blasto would be easily dealt with…until the Teeth, another rival gang, somehow caught wind of the operation and mistakenly believed they were the true target of it, having been weakened from the loss of Animos and Spree on an attempt to encroach into Brockton Bay.
They allied with Blasto and an all out gang-war quickly ensued. Their latest battle featured a new and improved "Woad Giant", which had first made its appearance during the Boston Games years earlier, and the entire cape roster from every gang.
The Protectorate deployed and attempted to stop the massive fight, but by the time they'd arrived, it was too late, and had morphed into something else entirely.
One thing had led to another, and one of the Ambassadors, Citrine, who had a power to "find the right attunement" and disable other powers was trying to counter the Butcher, leader of the Teeth, when she accidentally struck the wrong attunement and awoke something else in Blasto's lab.
The Morrigan. A hybrid clone of the Simurgh, an Endbinger, and Myrddin, one of the strongest capes in the Protectorate.
That was the beginning of this nightmare.
It unleashed a Simurgh-like scream that instead of Mastering people, caused them to lose their sanity. For most of the capes in the huge gang battle, it was temporary and passed quickly. But the scream also hit Noelle, and her powers went berserk.
By the time their powers had been brought under control, numerous capes involved in the massive battle had already been captured and cloned by Echidna.
The Travelers desperately called for a Truce as they explained Echidna's powers, and all the remaining capes agreed.
An A-class threat was declared, but the PRT tried to rescue the captured capes and calm Noelle instead of outright destroying her.
When they first engaged with Echidna, it seemed like a manageable threat. Just keep the monster cape away from any other capes, staying at range or only using capes like Weld that were immune due to lack of biological bodies.
They had even tried to reason with the cape, as she was seemingly still lucid and trying to stop herself. It almost worked even.
These efforts however, were in vain, as the Morrigan had suddenly appeared and screamed again.
By the time everyone came back to their senses, the number of clones had multiplied, Noelle was unconscious while her lower half took full control, the Morrigan had disappeared, while the real Simurgh had been detected moving towards Boston.
As the sirens went off, the chaos reached new levels as people all over the city scrambled to evacuate.
And the worst part?
The Butcher had been cloned. And the Butcher was a cape who transferred their consciousness to another host upon death, while keeping all the powers of their previous incarnations, getting stronger every time.
The clones didn't have all the Butcher's powers, but now there were a bunch of clones they couldn't risk killing lest they transferred to new hosts.
This seemed to be the mother of all S-class threats, spawning new S-class threats by the minute!
At least the original Butcher hadn't been captured due to her teleportation power, so Echidna couldn't keep spawning more Butchers.
It was because of this Butcher situation that the PRT chose to keep the Triumvirate away. The catastrophe of a crazed unkillable Butcher possessing Triumvirate level powers, or even worse, an Echidna-Butcher with Triumvirate level powers…that was simply too horrifying to imagine.
It was far too easy for these Butcher clones to commit suicide to transfer into a new host, and that was a known tactic of previous Butchers.
Bastion was almost ready to accept his inevitable demise this day—what were the chances of surviving both this S-class threat and the Simurgh?—when portals began to appear in the air.
"Fall back! Fall back! CRUCIBLE is—" he heard on his comm from HQ.
Terrible wails of agony could be heard across the whole area as something invisible seemed to hit many of the clones and Echidna herself. It was indiscriminate in its attack and hit some of the heroes and villains who were too close and—
His mind went blank with the pain of thousands of needles striking every part of his body.
When he finally came to, a literal army of mutant bugs had swamped the battlefield.
Several minutes of chaotic fighting, flashes of light everywhere, apparent earthquakes, and all sorts of things he assumed he was hallucinating ensued as he tried to re-orient himself, while commanding a retreat.
When he and the remaining few members of his team had regrouped quite a distance away, they could hardly believe their eyes.
A seemingly endless stream of monster bugs of all sizes were pouring out of portals in the air, and coming from all directions across the city in such huge groups that they were blotting out the sky. They appeared to be winning against Echidna by sheer, overwhelming quantity and the surprise attack from earlier that incapacitated most of the clones.
Was that supposed to be the work of Skitter, the now famous cape from CRUCIBLE? He'd read about the upgrades the former Panacea had given to her, but this was ludicrous.
He watched in disbelief as CRUCIBLE seemingly crushed the S-class threat like it was child's play. Large areas were hit by bombs that slowed down time, so that they could be sealed off by more bugs and comically large spider webs or a white haze of presumably tranquilizing gas. The Butcher clones were trapped in bubbles of completely stopped time, most of the other clones were being subdued in some kind of goo similar to containment foam, or dumped through portals to who knows where, and Echidna herself was…being eaten alive?
The Echidna girl who was now awake again screamed as she was submerged in a mass of bugs that were apparently eating her regenerating flesh faster than she could regenerate it, and dragging out the captured capes.
Not long after, some kind of drone and a dog—wait, wasn't that Animos' Changer form?—flew by the girl and she stopped screaming, or doing anything. Once her body was reduced to a smaller size, she too was dragged through a portal.
"We'd better get to the Endbringer defense. Looks like CRUCIBLE's wrapping up here," said Bastion to his team.
The bugs were spreading out across the city instead of going back into their portals. Given that the Simurgh was coming soon, he couldn't find fault with that. Better to set up defensive positions and protect the shelters, he supposed.
O O O
A/N: Thanks to everyone for suggestions. Still contemplating it while we explore what happened in Worm for a bit and cover some overarching plot points for MC's planar traveling.
Specific reviews:
Shif125: My knowledge of MHA is limited, and while I like the setting, nothing jumps out at me as being of interest to the MC to study for gaining more power. Quirks themselves cannot be entirely biological, at least not purely genetic, or else it'd be too easy for MC to clone via Worm. Other than that, I'm not sure what else to do with it.
Arclight001: I'm actually looking for something with higher difficulty than FoZ. MC can't always get easy planes or it gets boring. Fairy Tail and HP might fit better, though personally I don't find Fairy Tail's setting particularly interesting.
OrigamiGuyII: Oh that's a lot. I'm only familiar with some of those. Reverend Insanity I know fairly well, it was one of the inspirations for this story (just the MC's personality) and Suffer No More. On the other hand, I feel that it's one of those stories carried mostly by the main character's plotline, and more difficult to work with as a setting.
GXVIII: Haha, I wanted to give the feeling of MC taking the research very seriously.
rjishalfgay: It's very tempting actually. Star Wars, despite the galactic setting, is very much a fantasy story rather than sci-fi, and I see a lot of potential both in terms of threats to MC and what he could learn about the nature of the universe, the Force, and magic. I've also written some random scenes/encounters I thought might be very cool for it, but I don't have a cohesive plot for it yet. But it's also a tough one because I think I'd like the MC to be more magically powerful before he goes there...though it might be interesting to enter in different eras/AUs as well.
Valkorion510: I won't arbitarily nerf the MC for balance. His powers won't get weaker within the original plane he acquired them unless there are plot events that cause it to happen. However, I'm also of the opinion that powers acquired in one plane should not be the same in other planes without good cause. The physics and rules are different. If you enter a different plane, you subject yourself to the rules of the local reality. Even having a Reality Marble, which MC doesn't, doesn't mean you can just keep it up forever against the full weight of Gaia's power. Being an outsider in this story usually won't mean MC's power break the rules or cause out-of-context problems...it can just as easily mean the World will discriminate against him and and he will lack organs/attributes he needs to do the things the locals can. There are times when he will be extremely overpowered, and others when he'll be at a severe disadvantage, depending on whether the rules are working for or against him. Universal powers that work unhindered in every plane or in many planes are rare and precious...and it'll be that much more of an achievement to find and get them.