Alteration 3.3
Leviathan was loping our way on all fours, almost like a gorilla, leaving swimming pools of water in his path every moment. Its eyes, glowing green pits on an empty face, flickered here and there as it took hits, its tail lashing out and throwing blades of water at attackers, but the gaze made a point of returning to us. Even as we gained height, even though he couldn't just blitz through water, it was like watching a bull charge and trying to jump over it. We had seconds, maybe.
A black blur slammed into the creature with a deafening boom, grabbing it around its tree-trunk neck and slamming it in an aerial judo throw. A hundred feet up, we watched the building shatter, Alexandria pushed Leviathan through the building, right back down to ground level, and the two burst from the shifting structure a moment later.
Sharing a sigh of relief, we regrouped.
Perception Check(Wis): Rolled 10+0 vs. difficulty 7. Pass.
From this high up, we couldn't do much in the way of artillery, so I helped Leet finish donning the Proton Pack. As I did, though, I spotted something dark moving on the horizon, out in the sea beyond the Bay.
I fumbled for my armband, pressing the communications button again. "Wave inbound, maybe thirty seconds to landfall!"
"Acknowledged," it said, and a warning note blared from both a moment later.
"Get us back down there," Leet said as he pulled the straps tight and flicked on the particle accelerator. "Suit cannon's almost cooled down, and they'll need a distraction while everyone's withstanding that."
We swooped back in, the battlefield having turned into a field of glowing domes and other fortifications as capes who couldn't withstand a wave flocked to those who could. It was a ranged game for the moment, and flying artillery was lighting him up with frantic energy. As I focused on piloting, worried for another surprise, Leet joined the blasting.
I jumped as a figure flew up to the far side of the bubble, getting a squawk of surprise from Leet as the Orb jerked inertialess-ly. When I saw who it was, I scrambled to open that side.
Alexandria stepped into the craft, dripping ichor all over the grating. In her arms she carried a figure in blue and white, breathing shallowly. Legend.
"Heal him, quickly." Her tone brooked no argument.
I nodded. For Legend, I could afford to spare some power. I skipped straight over Biostasis, and applied a proper heal.
-3 PP, 10/16 remaining. Healed 6+1 HP. +1 System Strain.
Legend coughed, his eyes flying open. Alexandria nodded, and a moment later, they were gone.
"...What the fuck," Leet said, having stopped firing somewhere in there. I nodded dumbly, not quite sure what to make of the interaction.
Then the wave came, and I learned, despite being far above the battlefield, we were hovering far too close to the water.
Unfortunately, so did Leviathan, and unlike us, he wasn't distracted anymore.
Our one saving grace was that I had, even now, kept one hand on the controls. If I hadn't, the echo of the tail that whipped out of the water and struck our craft would probably have cut it in half, and we would have fallen into the three-story-high whitewater that had just turned the battlefield into the bottom of a temporary tidal zone. Instead, it breached the ectoplasm shell, and just as we'd jury-rigged it to do, the Displacement Drive activated.
That was the good news.
The Displacement Drive was still half-tinkertech, a mess of real advanced technology and entity-derived bullshit that did things simply impossible in the modern understanding of the universe. Notably, and unlike the Psitech of Stars Without Number, it was not reliant on my psychic powers being a certain level to function correctly, because it wasn't fed energy, it fed on it.
When it was just channeling a weaker version of my basic, bargain bin tier teleportation, that was fine. When teleporting the entire three-meter-wide Orb, complete with a quarter-ton of tinkertech, it turned out to very much not be sufficient.
The device yanked at my teleportation channels, sucking energy too deeply and greedily through the conduit of my own neural tissue. I'd learned and mastered the first discipline of Teleportation, fortified and burned a conduit for that power, but it wasn't meant for the power levels being forced through it. I could, in that moment, feel it splintering like a tree struck by lightning.
Still, if it was between us both dying to Leviathan, or suffering whatever fate this brought? I knew my choice.
Mental Effect Save: Rolled 10+2 vs. threshold 12. Success.
-7 PP, 3/16 remaining. Displacement Drive will go on cooldown for 1d10+1=8 rounds. Calculating consequences of technological backfire.
We teleported a split second later, the water blade flying up unimpeded a few meters to the side. I had just enough time to see that before I collapsed. My hands fell from the controls, clutching my skull, the darkness behind my screwed-shut eyelids full of blindingly bright stars. I could feel my brain burning, the channel fraying.
I was about to Torch, I realized. The power didn't have a channel, so it was going to damage indiscriminately. In this moment, I was being given an opportunity before the damage occurred, a chance to suggest another option.
I knew how to give it a channel. Academically, I knew, because it was part of the training I'd been given in my 'character's backstory'. It happened subconsciously every time I leveled up, new pathways burnt through my brain according to my training. In theory, it could be done without leveling, had not been taught to the false-me of the 'backstory' in terms of leveling; it was entirely a process of guidance and meditation, mental redirection of otherworldly energies.
In the timeless moment of agony and detached realization, I decided I had to try.
Swapping Perspectives…
Things went wrong.
Zach knew the feeling well, by now. Long years of being joke villains, one-off heists, tech failing spectacularly more and more with each new caper. He'd gotten wary, flinched a little every time he turned on something new or recently damaged, tried to coast on old tech that was reliable over new ideas that would see him losing fingers or getting caught.
Grant had changed all that. In a way, really, Bakuda was the best thing that ever happened to them, because she left them in such a bad position that this crazy, smart, secretive sonovabitch managed to convince him to take risks. It paid off; it kept paying off, even, the mad mania of his newest friend just kept coming up heads. Zach's power was not reliable, not so soon, but it felt like it was relaxing, the ideas less insistent, the results less prone to faults even before Grant went through them and removed points of failure.
Things were going right for once, even in the midst of a fucking Endbringer fight. He had a good portion of his greatest hits with them, and they were doing something, though how much was hard to say. So, of course, he was only mildly surprised that things suddenly went very, very wrong.
Alexandria left the bubble, Legend drifting back upright as she went, the two of them splitting up a moment later to harry the Endbringer.
"...what the fuck," he commented, shaking his head. Meta's expression was unreadable, with the mask and mismatched armor, but he seemed confused? Then the Varia Suit, this beautiful invention he'd regretted for two years now because it took so many different techs to make and then broke down because of yet another faulty teleporter scrambling the servo controllers and locking him in for a day, zoomed in on the corner of the screen and highlighted the world beyond the bubble in night vision green.
Wave was the wrong term for what crashed into the fortified emplacements below. It was a wall preceded by a front of debris, three or four stories high, an avalanche of whitewater that slammed into the forcefields and domes and buried them.
Leviathan disappeared into the wave, Meta pulled up on the controls, and then the Orb bucked. There was a sound of screaming steel as some attack tore into the underside of the device, a sensation like being dunked in warm slush, and then disorientation as the world moved a dozen or so feet to the side.
Meta screamed, hands smoking, and started seizing.
Zach wasn't really dressed for first aid, and it wasn't the moment to apply it. The waters were dropping, below, but his visor highlighted a dark form zipping through it as fast as that time Velocity got dosed with PCP. Domes winked out, two of them, and Zach realized they needed to move before Leviathan noticed his attack hadn't stuck and tried again.
"Hang on, buddy," he said, taking the controls with his free hand and directing them towards a rooftop.
That was when the second thing went wrong. The Orb, a masterwork of inertial pinning, was shuddering like a fifty-year-old beater with an unbalanced engine block and a flat tire. Grant made a choking sound, and started thrashing again. Zach made a call.
Tearing off his teammate's mask was the work of a single servo-enhanced pull, the faceplate crunching in his left hand as vomit spilled out. As Grant coughed and sputtered, still shaking lightly, Zach grabbed the cape underhand on his gun arm, stumbled his way over to the chest, dumped him in, and collected what other items he could as he waited for the right moment. As the Orb rocked and smoked, it got close enough to risk it. He held the chest tight, and jumped.
It was really too bad that he couldn't bring the Snitch to the fight. The Orb exploded behind him and everything.
"Hope you're okay in there, man," he said to himself, taking off at a run and charging the Shinespark. The suit was getting low on power, and he needed to be away from the Second before he could retrieve his teammate. "God, please be okay."
Resolving GM Grants…
Forming the channel of a new power in my head was the easy part.
It was already there, in a way, just raw, the spilloff threatening my surrounding brain, hissing steam around a leaky pipe ready to burn anyone in the vicinity. I think, if I hadn't made a habit of keeping my metapsionic power going, I would have Torched outright. With that power, I was just barely able to redirect the loose whorls of energy down the channels and out to my hands, burning the flesh in exchange for saving my brain.
If I had left it there, maybe I would have been okay. Maybe I wouldn't, I had no way to know. I don't remember the thought process, really. I tried to solidify the channel, make it stable, the same way I felt with each level up.
The GM has conferred with the Table, and the idea has merit. Granted, with stipulations.
Don't do this again.
-12 HP, 4/16 remaining. Hand injury, -2 to all manipulation tasks until fully healed. System Strain maxed.
Power trained: Teleportation 2 - Jaunt.
I woke up choking, coughing my airways clear of fluid.
I woke up grunting at landing from a small fall.
I woke up being jostled by motion, retching as the world spun in the dark, sliding into the shelves on every wall that held all our tech.
I woke up for the last time as a massive armored hand reached into the room from above, showering me with rain. "Ugh," I said lamely, my head pounding, the light from the storm-laden sky like drills in my eyes, the new conduit of power throbbing painfully like it was a worm trying to thrash its way out of my skull. A reedy processed voice rang out in the room, echoed from above in an excruciating doppler.
Reticent down, CE-8. Hookwolf down, CE-8. Iron Falcon deceased, CE-8. Regent down, CE-8…
The hand tried to grab me by the belt, fumbling for a grip. I shifted, trying to grab it, and hissed in pain. Right, burns.
A shadow occluded the sky, two more massive round objects, the middle one taller with a glowing green visor. I groaned again, this time mostly in relief.
"You're awake?" Leet dipped back out of sight, and I screwed my eyes shut as the light returned suddenly, the sound of the Chest's 'item get' chime like ice picks in my inner ears. I rolled onto my stomach, burying my head in one arm and away from the sensation, careful not to move my hands and failing miserably. that maddening chant continued.
Brandish deceased, CE-8. Jupiter deceased, CE-8. Glory Girl down, CE-8…
I didn't trust my powers right now. There was just too much pain to see if my attempts had destabilized some other meditative pathway. So I forced myself to breathe, waiting for Leet to return. A few moments later, he did.
"Okay, the nurse I'm talking with said I need to keep you lucid. Can you talk?"
"Mmmmph. Yes," I forced out, making my sore throat work. "Close the lid."
"Not yet. Work with me man. What do you remember? Do you know what happened?"
I groaned, waved my feet in some semblance of a dismissive hand wave that probably just looked like random kicking. "Too bright. Memory's fine, teleporter was a bad idea. Don't think I can heal."
"Well, fuck." I heard him clank a couple times, gravel shifting.
Flechette down, CE-8. Bastion deceased, CE-8. Dauntless down, CE-8. Clockblocker down, CE-8.
There was a blessed pause. A pause that stretched, unbroken, for a good thirty seconds, long enough to make me shift my wrist just to check that my wristband was still active. it chirped a moment later, too loud, and a masculine voice rang out.
"This is Armsmaster. Clockblocker has bought us a short reprieve. Those of you still capable of withstanding hits, regroup on my location; we're going to throw everything we can at this bastard when he wakes up, one last push to drive the monster off, and we'll need a front line to pen him in."
Fuck. That wasn't the play I remembered, not even close. Was that a good or bad thing?
Tactics Check(Int): Rolled 11+0 vs. difficulty 8. Pass.
I coughed, ideas spinning in my head, forcing gears with broken teeth to turn. In the book, the moment they'd cornered him… I forced myself to flip over, scooted to a wall, and elbowed my way to a standing position as Leet obscured the sky once more. I made myself look up at his silhouette, squinting against the light of the storm-obscured sky that stabbed my optic nerves like icepicks.
"Leet, I need you to warn them. Tell them not to trap Leviathan in place, give him an escape route!"
"You're not going," he said flatly, "And frankly, you're not making much sense, man."
"I didn't say I was going anywhere," I ground out, gritting my teeth at a fresh wave of throbbing pressure in my skull. "Look, just trust me. Call them, quick. Clockblocker's power doesn't last long."
Leet responded by putting a hand to his helmet. "He seems lucid, ma'am, but he's acting-"
I let out a frustrated grunt and pulled my own wristband to my face, forcing burned fingers to press the messaging button. "Message to Armsmaster: Don't encircle Leviathan on all sides, he'll escalate!"
The wristband seemed to process that for a moment. "Armsmaster is unavailable at this time."
"Oh for the love of-" Leet exclaimed, leaning back from the entrance. Before I could process what he was doing, he closed the lid of the chest, plunging me into darkness.
"Signal lost," my wristband said calmly, and I was too exhausted to protest any further.