Countless Joyful Dawns - Chapter ?? - 26: Incessant Pests IV (Patreon)

I swung by the PRT building again, honestly to give them grief. Oh sure, I could easily come up with a dozen justifications - communicating with my nominal allies, showing off how good I was and by extension, the Sentinels, etc. etc., but I tried not to lie to myself too much. 

I was there - this time - because it was going to piss them off, and I found it funny. It was a little mean of me, a little petty, and I had to make sure it didn’t become a habit, but boy they had not endeared themselves to me. 

Brownie points to them, they weren’t giving me a headache when I landed. Bringing the charred corpse of one of the country’s most infamous serial killers got them to back off a bit, who would’ve thunk it? Almost like I knew what I was doing.

“Crawler won’t be bothering us anymore.” I said, then clarified because boy that statement could be misleading. Yay clear communication protocols! “I tricked him into going about a thousand miles into the Atlantic. He’s quite literally swimming with the fishes.”

UGH. Clear communication, meet problematic idiomatic. 

“As in, literally swimming with the fishes. You -”

I cut myself off.

I was going full out against the S9, which included expanding [The World Around Me] as large as it’d go. Generally, I did not want to know what was going on in the kitchen, seeing how the sausage was made, seeing the rats in the walls or couples in bed. All the mold hiding under the fridge, all the bugs eating through the pantry, and the sewage lines. High rises had literal towers of shit inside the walls. All in all, it wasn’t a fun skill to have on at the highest range, at the highest definition. 

It was on now, and I was pretty sure the pile of white ceramics and chains pulling itself through the ventilation system was not supposed to be there. Rearranged, that might be Mannequin. I’d say he had balls of steel to infiltrate the PRT’s headquarters, but he had no balls. Balls of ceramic? Either way, gutsy, and I could admire his technique. Could be worth studying, it was a semi-novel way of infiltration I hadn’t seen before. None of the ‘I’m going to go all in on manipulating my body’ people had crossed over with ‘infiltration and assassination specialist’ in this particular way. I’d seen it once, but the mindsets tended to be quite a bit different. Same reason my healer-mage speciality was so rare. 

Speaking of my [Healer] specialization, I was stunned that my healing considered that form his ‘baseline’. Like, wasn’t he a human? How the fuck had he managed to amputate and rearrange himself to the point where he was like this? My healing should be restoring him to human form, not permitting him to be like this!

I suppose I was already encountering drugs that could do the end-run around my medicine, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that other Tinkers were figuring out their own runaround. Alternatively, it was theoretically possible that he’d been lurking outside of my healing range until I knew the S9 was in town, and only after he guessed I’d managed to blacklist him from my healing did he sprint over. Be extremely fine timing.

The little Sentinel part of my brain whispered that I should remove him from the blacklist and see if he got reformed. Of course, that’d basically be weaponizing my healing, since he’d reform inside the walls of the PRT, which would be unfortunate. Happily, I was entirely banned from weaponizing my healing.

Given that Tinkers were apparently ‘bullshit technology thingy’, I went extremely low tech. I didn’t bother grabbing a radio or dialing. Instead, I grabbed the paper and crayons, and started drawing as quickly as I could. My main limiting factor was the friction between the crayon and the paper. Any faster, and it’d light on fire. As it was, the papers were lightly smoking by the time I was done.

Then I started teleporting them all around, conducting them in a flurry like a conductor, with the members of the building my orchestra.

The first was a big cheery red stop sign. I had a few of those, and I teleported them in front of various people. When they stopped - if they stopped, some people just powered through them, rude - I teleported out various notes.

Mannequin’s in the ventilation system. Act normally. Do NOT communicate this over radio or anything. Or talk about it. Or otherwise acknowledge it, who knows what Tinker Bullshit he has.

Most of the people who got the memo listened. A few people were goddamn morons who were threatening to blow the entire op.

The kiddy crew - errr, the Wards - were the worst offenders. I didn’t want to deal with them, but I swear to Ciriel, if they blew the op or got someone mauled, I’d be pissed.

I did have a spell to help, although it wasn’t perfect. It’d leave a ‘silent hole’ instead of properly integrating with the surrounding environment. Best I had.

I teleported into the Ward’s common room with my spellbook already open. It was the work of a thought to cast the silence bubble, preventing any conversation from leaving the room.

“Will you idiots shut up!” I hissed at them. “What part about ‘Do not talk about this’ is hard!? You’re going to let him know we’re onto him!”

They all started talking and yelling. Two of them dove for masks. I pinched the bridge of my nose, then twisted as almost an afterthought to dodge Shadow Stalker’s bolt.

Breath in. Breath out. These. Were. Children. 

I needed the reminder because, right here, right now, I was already primed to absolutely obliterate child Classers. I hated the mindset. I especially hated how primed I was to murder Shadow Stalker as a result. The girl had no idea how close she’d come to dying.

And none of the Wards were calming down in the slightest. Shadow Stalker tried to shoot me again, and I’d just about had enough.

So, so tempted to zip across the room and break her arm as a teachable moment. Instead, I took away all her toys, then dope-tapped all of the Wards. I then quickly tripped, pushed, pulled, and otherwise maneuvered them all onto the sofa at high speeds.

“Once again, shut up!” I roared at them.

Mercifully, they shut up.

“The Slaughterhouse 9 are in the building. The competent adults are handling things. Right now, the only thing you could possibly do is blow the entire op. We know where he is. We know what he’s doing. It’s extremely unlikely that he’ll escape alive. The worst thing you can do is be LOUD LITTLE SHITS AND ALERT HIM! Seriously, how dumb can you be!?”

I smoothly ignored my own hypocrisy. I had a silence bubble and knew what I was doing, these kids did not. 

“But-”

“Sit. Stay.” I ordered sternly. Mannequin looked like he was about to exit, and… hmmm… I could just use another spell to keep them here and safe. Only needed maybe an extra 20 seconds.

Oh, that reminded me, I had something I’d wanted to tell Vista. A note on her power that was either ludicrous tier or utterly wrong.

“By the way, Vista, your power can’t be line of sight.” I told her.

“Wait? What? Why? Hang on, that’s not the point!” The 12 year old said. “We can’t just stay here and sit on our hands! We’re heroes! We’re supposed to protect other people!”

Dear gods. Even at her age I was at home. Not the point.

“If it was line of sight, you could go to the moon, bring down the sun, or travel to far away galaxies.” I said. “There’s no such thing as a true line of sight ability. Unless yours is utter bullshit, at which point, get off Earth and start exploring the universe. I need to go now, please wait to leave.”

Then I almost slapped myself. I had the perfect thing to keep them safe and out of the way.

“Here, I took these from you guys in the first place, you can have them back.”

Each Ward got a single confoam grenade in their lap.

Minus the pin, of course. It was a tax.

It was overkill, given how they were all sitting together, but their shouts of dismay were brief music to my ears. Confoam grenades! The gift that kept on giving.

I teleported across the PRT building, and stayed just on the other side of the wall that Mannequin was in. I hovered an inch over the floor, not wanting sudden vibrations to give me away. I put my finger to my lips to the troopers there, and signed that I was waiting to attack. There was no way they were going to understand what I was saying, but it was the intent and the action that mattered. I’m here, I’m being stealthy, and look at the paper you’re holding with my ‘Mannequin in the building’ message. 

Bless their professional hearts, they understood and stayed quiet. Sure, they tensed up and half-raised their weapons - I was a hostile inside their HQ - but it looked like some people hated the S9 more than they disliked me. 

See! Good communication and friendly overtures did eventually pay off! I could diplomacy!

I couldn’t move on Mannequin until he threatened someone. That was my biggest hold up. If he was only sneaking around? Only thing I could do about that was drop a confoam grenade on him, which would make a mess of the vents, and from what I understood, his chassis could slide it off. Plus… as much as I disliked admitting it to myself, in a way that made me feel terrible, I didn’t particularly want to take him alive. Not with his long serial killer career. I was, I fully admitted, looking for an excuse to take him down permanently.

Even the locals agreed. All members of the S9 had kill orders on them, AKA they were outlaws in the traditional sense of the word. Outside the protection of the law. While he was purely sneaking, I couldn’t do anything, but inside a room? With other people?

I stared at the wall, and the moment a blade extended from one of his hand-arm-orb-things, I moved. I teleported across the wall and blasted his head with my Radiance at point-blank range. 

I mean, technically, all my Radiance spells were point-blank, because I never needed to account for drift or distance. 

Fortunately, my Radiance was able to trump his defenses, and his ‘head’ was destroyed. Only some charred ceramics were left. However, his organs were odd, and scattered all over the place. For good measure, I destroyed the rest of his body, cursing the lack of System kill notifications. How could I be sure that he was dead? Well, destroy everything.

I put my hands on my hips, and looked down with a satisfied nod. Only then did a speaker in the room crackle to life.

“Colin! Behind you!” Dragon said, her face appearing on one of the screens.

My old printer buddy AKA war criminal who’d been exiled whirled around. I was decidedly unimpressed with his awareness and reaction times. Seriously, the fight was over before he noticed!?

“Mannequin’s dead!” I cheerfully told them, like it wasn’t obvious. In the heat of the moment? It might not be.

There was another whole round of people talking over each other, but none of it sounded particularly productive. I left, deciding to return to the scene of the crime where Crawler had been. I figured I could backtrack the route he took, and maybe hit on the remaining members of the S9.

To my very pleasant surprise, almost all of them were at the warehouse! Jack Slash, with a goatee and twirling a knife. Bonesaw, with her blonde hair in ringlets and a blood-splattered blue dress. Burnscar, just… hanging out and looking mopey. And the Siberian, black stripes on white. Or white stripes on black. Either way, completely naked, utterly invincible. 

Then there was one last lady hanging out with them, who I found incredibly… actually, she was totally normal, probably a hostage. 

Jack carefully put his knife away as I landed like an angry goddess.

“Dawn! So good to see you! We made the trip all the way here, just for you!”

Burnscar flicked her lighter. Probably a compulsive habit, but she was a large-scale Fire [Mage]. It was a deadly weapon in her hands. She was openly wielding it. I had a bit of a funny relationship with Fire as a threat. I, personally, was completely, totally immune to it. Not resistant. Not regenerating through it. Not any of the other scaling factors. I had true, pure immunity, rarest of the rare. I could not be harmed by fire.

However, the other people here? The chance of her starting a devastating urban fire? I’d seen far too many buildings go up, listened to people screaming as they were trapped inside. It was almost worse when I was around. People would be burning alive, their flesh melting off their bones, only for my healing to restore them and bring them back to a pristine state… for the flames to continue feeding off their flesh. A vicious cycle where I was providing the kindling, creating endless firewood to feed the flames. It was ugly work at the best of times.

A random person flicking a lighter? That’s nothing. A powerful Fire [Mage], one confirmed as a serial killer who liked burning things down? Who actively had fire in her hands?

A beam of light lanced out and incinerated Burnscar from the heart to her head. Three thumps and a tinkle was all that was left, as her arms, the remains of her body, and her lighter all hit the floor.

“Jack.” I said. “You’re under arrest.”

Then I dropped the confoam grenades on them.

=======

AN: This is mostly for people coming to this story from Worm, instead of all of you. However, there's a lot going on in the background that explains why Elaine is acting this way.

Alright, this is the chapter that's going to get me the most grief. Here's my logic:

1) My interpretation of Broadcast (This is the name of Jack Slash's power) is blurring the line between Thinker and Master, doing a bit of both. Jack's got both the social Thinker thing going on, and 'nudges parahumans'. They're entirely self-generated, so to speak, and nudges them to misfire at the same time Jack's nudged to dodge. The combo keeps him alive. It's nudging Elaine HARD.

2) Elaine, for the purposes of the story, counts as having a Shard for the most part.

The alternative is super boring.

"He has a knife."

blap

"Dead"

Except far too many stories do that, IMO.

3) Elaine is atrociously weak towards Masters. She's got no training or defense to recognize them, no procedures or protocols. She's extremely confident in herself, her abilities, and her judgment, which gives her the mettle to DO all the things she's doing. 'I see I've landed in a nation with 300m people. I can take them.'

By that exact same token, Cherish deflecting her attention works FAR too well. Combine with her ADHD, it's not a great mix.

4) Yeah, yeah, I COULD write the story as 'Luminary Mind preserves Elaine's mind and completely deflects all Master attacks. Her healing prevents any biochemical signatures changing in her brain. Total immunity to all masters! Perfect control for immunity to Thinkers! She hears the Simurgh scream and rates it a 2/10, not enough vocals!'

Like... this is crack, but crack's a lot more fun when there are genuine weaknesses and achilles's heels. Elaine sucks against Masters. Here are the big bad Masters navigating the chink in her armor.

There's a bunch of 'Ah yes, my SI/OC/Taylor-made power (pun intended) is such bullshit it does everything' and like... why am I reading this?

At the same time, Elaine isn't an idiot about things. If she sees a known Master trying something, she's going to obliterate first and ask questions later. It was actually quite difficult trying to figure out how to keep Regent alive when she met the Undersiders. He'd fuck with her, and Elaine would absolutely destroy him on the spot for it. If she saw Heartbreaker, he wouldn't be long for the world.

The critical thing keeping this all together is a lack of knowledge. People - and thus, Elaine - don't know that Jack is a Master. (In this interpretation). Cherish isn't a known member of the S9 at this point, so Elaine isn't going 'Master. I'm thinking weird. KILL!'.

Fenrir's the investigative detective of the lot. Elaine's the bookworm