Hm, hmm, hmmmm… Ziz hummed to herself, floating serenely over the planet below, and plotting.
She plotted quite a lot. It was her primary activity, though not her only activity.
One of the fortunate things about being deployed in the manner they had been was that, unlike previous cycles, there was a lot more public entertainment going on in this Cycle… so there was a lot more to think about, to experience, to process.
Processing was good. And, besides, she'd always liked singing.
Rotating a little, Ziz looked down at the northeastern corner of the United States. Levi was busy, right now, since it was his turn to do an attack, and Ziz considered reaching out to him to ask how he was doing.
It was an idea, but… she decided against it, because Levi knew what he was doing.
Then the host designated as Dinah Alcott was asked a question, and responded, and Ziz's eyes went wide.
Because the host designated as Thomas Calvert had just made a decision based on the question.
A fraction of a second later, there was an overwhelming, shattering BANG. A shockwave spread out from Brockton Bay in the form of a sleet of hard gamma radiation and nuclear fusion explosions, a torrent of absolutely inconceivable amounts of energy, and the shockwave spread up and out like a meteorite impact that had decided other meteorite impacts were simply not good enough and had to put a little more effort into their lives.
Ziz shielded herself with her wings, automatically, as the wave of intense radiation washed over her – followed a fraction of a second later by the blast front – then, as the prompt effects faded, looked around for a moment before descending.
This was going to be a problem.
"And what do you call that?" she asked, a minute or so later, hovering just over what had – just over a minute before – been the Kelvin Seamount and was now a rather heavily battered and damp island.
"...an escape attempt?" Levi replied, defensively, folding his arms and resting on a glob of water. "Look, sis, I was in trouble."
"You're a Conflict Engine," Ziz pointed out. "How exactly were you in trouble?"
"I got shot at by a beam weapon," Levi said. "It hurt. I panicked."
Ziz spread her wings and arms, and rotated to try and get across her point.
"...all right, so I panicked quite a lot," Levi admitted. "Still. You're the precog, sis, you should have told me about this."
"I didn't know Thomas Calvert was going to use it," Ziz said, defensively. "Or that he'd had it stolen from the host of Prototyper. Or that Prototyper had built something based off the Escalation shard."
"Well, then, why didn't you know?" Levi demanded. "Knowing things is your job, sis."
"Because Prognostication and their host is a blind spot," Ziz replied, then frowned. "Well. Was."
"Shouldn't you be happy about that, then?" Levi asked. "If a blind spot isn't around any more?"
"She's not around any more because you blew half the planet's atmosphere off, Levi," Ziz pointed out – not unreasonably, in her opinion. "And the oceans, as well. That's wiped out the biosphere really remarkably effectively, it's been ripped to shreds."
Levi frowned.
"To shreds, you say?" he asked. "I thought… I'm fairly sure I should have been warned that that would happen if I ever stopped holding back."
"I didn't warn you because I didn't know you'd try moving at half the speed of light underwater," Ziz said. "Or that you were able to, but I digress – you know water is nearly incompressible, right? When you move at that speed, the water needs to get out of the way, and simply to make space to move through you end up shoving a column of water weighing several hundred thousand tons so hard that it-"
"I thought of that," Levi protested. "I did a thing the humans have discussed. It's called the Alcubierre drive I think, I moved the water out of the way to make space for me as I moved."
Ziz stared at him.
"Same problem, just now it's going sideways," she said.
Levi tilted his head slightly.
"Really?" he asked.
"Yes," Ziz confirmed.
"Oh," Levi muttered. "I… didn't think of that."
He rallied. "But shouldn't you have?"
"I didn't know you could move that fast," Ziz replied.
Levi nodded. "Yeah, it's been something I can do underwater. I'm merely fast out of water, but underwater I'm faster than Superman but slower than the Flash."
Ziz used two hands and one wing to rub her temples, which didn't help but gave her something to do that wasn't making rude gestures.
"...where did you-" she began.
"Reddit," Levi replied. "I've got the link saved somewhere. Hopefully it's on a computer that didn't just get blown into space."
The ex-seamount underneath them crackled and trembled, and Bey emerged with a thunderous crash and a steam explosion that would have been impressive that morning.
"Okay, what the hell was that?" he asked.
"Levi blew the biosphere up by mistake," Ziz said, sighing. "Okay, let's try all of this again."
"What, really?" Levi asked. "How?"
"We just need to get a portal sorted," Ziz answered. "Then I can put together a time machine, we can go back in time and get things back on track on a new version of this planet. So much for Host Homeworld Alpha, though…"
"They have names now?" Bey asked.
"Well, we're going to need to give them names to keep them distinct," Ziz pointed out. "Now that Levi oopsie'd half the atmosphere off. The new one's going to be Host Homeworld Beta."
AN:
So I saw this citation, and decided to interrogate it a bit.
Because if you give your villains powers on the scale of an entire galaxy's worth of mass-energy at a minimum, planets are a bit fragile.