ACL: 58. Behold, the Brick. There are many such bricks, but this Brick is mine. (Patreon)

Chapter 58: Behold, the Brick. There are many such bricks, but this Brick is mine.

Blake IsleySunday, February 20, 2011Type: Psychic

Victini and I were one. Rather than one of us stepping back into our inner consciousness, we shared the driver’s seat. We shot into the air like an angry comet. A blazing corona cloaked us, leaving behind a trail of flame.

Dragon’s announcement repeated through our collar. Ahead of us, capes of various stripes vacated the airspace like starly fleeing a garchomp. Only two figures dared to remain in the sky, Eidolon and Alexandria.

There was a bit of awe at that. Sure, I was Blake “God's errand boy” Isley, but in the days before I’d reignited my aura, I’d also been a child in this world. I grew up looking up to them, if not quite to the same degree as other children. It was my sincerest privilege to fly with them.

One of the Triumvirate was missing. As far as I knew, Legend wasn’t immune to the Simurgh’s scream. As the fastest flyer in the world, he probably arrived first and already used up his thirty minutes in the initial stages of the battle. This was a big part of what made Simurgh battles awful: It was impossible to concentrate our firepower all at once.

‘Can we do something about that scream at least?’ I asked Victini. Calling it a “song” was being poetic. It was actually a screech that struck our sensitive ears the moment we entered the battlefield. It reminded me of radio static dialed up to eleven and designed to be as grating as possible.

‘She doesn’t have lungs,’ Victini pointed out with an annoyed huff. ‘I’d love to shut her up, but she’s vibrating the airspace itself to make that noise.’

‘Disable? The psychic effect isn’t channeled through the air, is it?’

‘I never got the hang of that one, sorry. And no, probably not.’

‘Fuck. At least it’s just us three in the air.’

‘Maybe it doesn’t have to be. That Legend guy would be nice to have back, right?’ Our lips curled into a fanged grin. ‘I’m the “Star of Victory,” remember? Come on, Blake, let’s give them a reason to fight.’

Once upon a time, when the two princes of the Vale fought over a future led by Truth or Ideals, they unleashed disaster upon all of Unova. The quarrel of Reshiram and Zekrom corrupted the Dragon Force beneath the earth, what other regions knew to be ley lines that nourished the land. Blinded by pride, the “heroes” ruined all that they supposedly fought for.

Their father, a semi-mythical King of the Vale, pleaded with Victini for assistance. She took the Sword of the Vale, a literal, mountain-sized castle, and stabbed it into the earth, sealing away the Dragon Force and saving the region.

The twin dragons were champions of Truth and Ideals, but they were just that, champions. They fought in the name of a future only their chosen trainers could see. The one, true guardian of Unova’s present, its people and pokemon, was Victini.

We soared higher as more and more aura gathered in our crest. It shone with orange light as the might of a Legend bathed Detroit. Everyone felt it, the warmth of aura that surpassed both Truth and Ideals. She fought for neither. She fought for those caught between, the home left abandoned in the flames of war.

The Simurgh’s song did not fall silent. It still scraped at the ears, ringing in our heads as she gave her best effort to corrupt and dominate. And yet, though we could do nothing for those who had already fallen, there was a new fire that inspired all below us. It stoked the flame inside every heart, firming their resolve and shielding them from her influence.

And, for a select few, it became a visible shroud that protected them. Eidolon and Alexandria stared at themselves for a moment, blindsided by the sudden influx of power. At her best, Victini could empower even rookie pokemon to take on fully evolved veterans. Given the high baselines of the two Triumvirate members, there was no telling what she could do.

Eidolon was the first to act. There was a sphere of swirling wind around him that gave him mobility. As far as we could tell, it also kept out the Simurgh’s screams. Psychic abilities didn’t actually work that way, but he’d been fighting the bird bitch for years and hadn’t gone crazy yet. There had to be something more to it.

He shot out rays of black that seemed to drink in the light. They’d been as wide as a man’s fist, but were now as wide as an pickup truck. When the Simurgh dodged, the beams struck a rooftop and the whole thing began to corrode and waste away as if by a strong acid.

Air manipulation. Some kind of decay beam. Both were top-tier powers for any hero. As for the third… I concluded that his third power must be a less obvious one. He likely had a thinker ability running to help him navigate the chaos or keep his beams mostly on target. Even so, I wasn’t sure how effective he’d be against the endbringer. Vicitini’s boost or no, it didn’t matter much when she could read his every move.

Next to him, Alexandria shot forward, breaking the sound barrier and leaving a visible heat trail in her wake. She punched through everything the Simurgh put in her way until she managed to clip the endbringer’s wing. It was a glancing blow, but the impact sent the bird reeling.

That was the first time she’d landed a hit so far. She was in the same boat as Eidolon. Thinker powers were great, but not when the Simurgh’s precognition was so much stronger.

“Menagerie? What was that?” Dragon asked through our collar. “I’m getting multiple calls from all around Detroit.”

“Safeguard and Victory Star,” we replied. “If Legend’s still around, send him up. We can protect him from the scream.”

“I’ll run it by him. It’ll be up to him if he wants to risk it. She’ll start to target you. Be careful.”

“Come after me, will she? My, wouldn’t that be convenient.”

“Be advised, first responders were unable to fully dismantle her tinkertech.”

“What is she building? Any guesses?”

“Detroit and Windsor had a tinker villain each, ballistics and esoteric field generation specializations. I also had a manufacturing plant here,” she admitted sheepishly. “I suspect my efforts may have played a role in drawing her here.”

“Would those efforts include the blueprints we gave you?” we asked, already knowing the answer.

The Simurgh did not let us talk further. I heard Dragon’s confirmation even as a telekinetic blow slammed into us. We braced against the invisible force with ease. For a moment, the three of us wrestled for control, invisible hands locked in a psychic contest of strength.

By unspoken agreement, neither Victini nor I allowed ourselves to be pushed back. She wasn’t that strong, anyway. She could lift buildings, hurl cars like pebbles, and impart consistent pressure of the same, but so could any number of psychic pokemon.

We broke out of her hold with contemptuous ease. Victini once moved a mountain to get her dragon cousins to shut the fuck up for a bit. What was this in comparison?

We flew after the Simurgh. Searing Shots formed in our paws and we tossed them around like confetti, every shot detonating with the force of a missile strike. They bombarded the sky and wiped every piece of debris or home or building from the airspace, forcing the Simurgh to flee.

Once, when we drew near, she telekinetically grappled Alexandria and chucked her into our path. We slapped the brute-of-brutes aside and wrenched the Simurgh towards us.

Body still clad in flames, we rammed into her face like a meteor. “Flare Blitz!”

The impact rocked us both back, us more than the Simurgh. A spiderweb of cracks spread across her porcelain face even as a spike of pain shot through us. 

‘The Simurgh isn’t organic,’ I noted as we gave chase once more. The oversized pigeon was keeping pace, dodging a combination of our and Eidolon’s attacks with fluid grace. ‘She’s more like a claydol or golurk.’

‘I can see that,’ Victini scowled. Dozens of fireballs homed in on our target, each powerful enough to glass a city street. They were all intercepted with sacrificial debris. ‘She’s weaker than us, but she multistasks better than we do, and she’s learning.’

‘Think she’s like a metagross?’

‘A supercomputer with multiple mental forks? Maybe, no way to know for sure. Still, we have two minds here, don’t we? Keep the sky clear and I’ll blast her.’

Our cooperation was a work in progress. Unified intent didn’t automatically translate to perfect coordination, not even for a shared headspace. Still, we made do by splitting our responsibilities.

I cast out our shared psychic senses wide. Everything the Simurgh tried to pick up, I ripped out of her clutches with vindictive glee. Building? Mine. Car? Mine. Alexandria? Also mine. Duels between telekinetics were contests of possession, just fancy grab-hands.

‘Can I do something stupid?’ I asked Victini.

‘Silly-stupid or effective-stupid?’ she asked back.

‘Why not both?’ A stream of images and impressions passed between us at the speed of thought.

‘Heh, go for it.’

X

Rebecca Costa-Brown

Twelfth. This was the twelfth appearance of the Simurgh since she first darkened the skies of Lausanne in 2002. This was the twelfth time I’d shared the same sky as her, and, I suspected, the twelfth time I’d fail to deny the bitch what she desired.

There was no such thing as “victory” in an endbringer battle, doubly so with her. Her siblings could be pushed back. If we were lucky, Scion showed up to turn the tide early. But not with the Simurgh. I didn’t know if they had a handshake agreement not to interfere with each other, or she was especially selective with her targets so as to not draw his ire, but she and Scion never encountered one another.

It was both a source of great relief and despair for normal capes. Relief, because they didn’t know about Scion’s true nature. They considered it a small blessing that Scion hadn’t ever been positioned to be brainwashed. Despair, because there was no salvation, no miracle that could possibly spare the Simurgh’s targets.

Still, Eidolon and I flew against her yet again. Legend had taken the first wave. He’d bombarded the sky with so many lasers that she’d been forced to ground her tinkertech somewhere below. It bought us time, though if the specializations involved were any clue, we’d need to be especially wary of containment breaches from this zone.

“Brain scans show no deviations after exposure to the Simurgh’s song beyond tolerance thresholds,” Dragon reported. “Volunteers are behaving normally.”

“It can still be a trick. Menagerie’s aura could be a placebo. No one’s ever been able to counter the Simurgh’s song before,” I said, playing the devil's advocate. Others had tried.

Even as those words left my lips, I wasn’t sure I believed them myself. The fire that cloaked me was invigorating in a way that was hard to deny. I’d never felt anything like this, not before I received my vial and certainly not since I’d entered this quasi-stasis.

I was stronger. I was faster. Everything I understood about my powers suggested that was impossible, but I was seeing visible results. So was Eidolon. We didn’t say anything out loud, but he fought with an eagerness that I hadn’t seen in decades. He’d been declining and a solution seemingly dropped into our laps.

“I’m coming in,” Legend said. “Volunteer-basis as always. Capes who have met the threshold already can make their own decisions. We’ll all submit to enhanced master-stranger protocols after the fact.”

I frowned at that. Keith, Legend, wasn’t someone we could afford to lose in the event that Menagerie was wrong. “It’s too big a risk.”

“This is the Simurgh we're talking about. Isn’t everything, Alexandria?”

“I… Very well. Be careful.”

I rushed the endbringer with everything I had. Or, I tried. Just moving towards the Simurgh was difficult because there was so much turbulence in the air. She didn’t exactly stay still, either.

Every fireball from Menagerie exploded like a cruise missile. Eidolon’s beams cut swathes of inky blackness through the sky. They didn’t hurt me, but the explosions were so densely packed that I could scarcely see at times. I could somewhat ignore the immense kinetic energy involved in those explosions, but trying to hit the Simurgh here was like trying to catch a leaf in a tornado.

Still, I persevered. I had to. Maybe I wasn’t contributing much, but if I stopped, that overwhelming sense of helplessness would close in. So, even if I was just one more variable she’d have to account for, I endeavored to be the most persistent, most annoying thorn I could be.

Legend returned to the skies. He announced his presence with a barrage of lasers that rivaled the other two blasters. Waves of azure light joined black decay and orange flames. They formed a light display that would have been breathtakingly beautiful under any other circumstance. 

Then, I felt the air close around me. My momentum stopped in its tracks despite my best efforts. We’d always known that the endbringers did not fight at their best. They did not pick optimal strategies. They almost seemed to toy with humanity, mocking our best efforts as they tore away at our society.

For a moment, I feared the Simurgh had stopped holding back. We always hypothesized that her telekinetic limit was far higher than she actually displayed. She’d never needed to fight seriously before. But before, we hadn’t had Menagerie, a rising star from Brockton Bay who could seemingly do everything while simultaneously empowering his allies.

My fears were put to rest. A blue glow coated my body, almost invisible amidst the orange flames. Before I knew it, I was pulled eye-to-eye with Menagerie. He’d been on Cauldron’s radar for a long time. We were all immensely proud of him. In a way, he was our magnum opus, proof that we were on the right track.

The Number Man’s figures, backed by Contessa, showed us that eventually, the number of new triggers would reach a critical mass. The PRT’s stated mission, of integrating parahumans into society, wasn’t simple hot air. More than just heroics, it was perhaps the most important mission within its founding charter.

To study the impact of parahumans on society in a controlled fashion, Doctor Mother proposed a social engineering experiment, the Terminus Project. The goal was simple: To see if capes, whether manufactured or rising from the populace, could take hold of a location and establish a stable society.

Brockton Bay was one such petri dish. We would not interfere. Not Contessa. Not Cauldron. Not even me, in my capacity as chief director. They were denied funds and transfers. Gangs were allowed to grow, for they too were potential societal leaders, however warped their values. Like scientists surrounding a petri dish, we stood by and watched.

And then, he appeared: Menagerie, a cape who was rightfully called “changer-Eidolon.” He seemingly had every power under the sun, albeit locked behind various monster forms and on a roulette reminiscent of my old friend. He used that power to take over his city as a hero.

His antics were silly, sometimes downright idiotic. They seemed pointless, until he inevitably was challenged. His reputation for silliness and his work at the hospital laid the foundations.

He was allowed to be scary. People wanted him to win, no matter how overwhelming he was in combat. It was beautiful. He could teach a masterclass on the hearts-and-minds approach. 

So, when he removed Coil, our biggest asset in Brockton Bay, we did not move to save him. After all, the Terminus Project had succeeded. Here was a cape, rising from the people, who was reshaping his society to suit his vision. And here he was, doing it with minimal bloodshed.

I hadn’t realized our newest experimental result had grown this powerful. I hung in front of him, unable to break the telekinetic grip he had over me. This was the first good look I’d gotten at Menagerie’s most powerful transformation.

Victini was… disgustingly cute. I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a rat or rabbit or chinchilla, but nothing this powerful had any business being this adorable. It was almost enough for me to forget that Eidolon and Legend were holding off the Simurgh.

“Alexandria,” he said solemnly. The severity was undercut by how squeaky he sounded, almost feminine. “You are the brutiest brute. You are the brickiest brick.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “This isn’t the time for your antics, Menagerie!”

“Be the brick, Alexandria. Bricks do not think. Bricks do not change course. I throw. You fly straight. That is all.”

“The Simurgh can–”

“Be. The. Brick!”

I didn’t get to respond. I was suddenly looking at the back of the Simurgh’s head. So, my words died in the wind as I did what I’d always done. I flew straight, fist cocked back to punch her as hard as I could.

I missed. She twisted at the last instant, avoiding my fist by a hair’s breadth. I could have sworn the bird bitch was smirking at me.

Then, the world glitched again. I was looking up at the Simurgh now, momentum directly set to punch into her gut. I had the briefest instant to register this before the Simurgh dodged again, a convenient explosion carrying her away.

And again, I was careening towards her, this time from her left flank. My fist connected with earth-shattering force. I struck with more than kinetic impact. Her torso cratered like a clay jar dropped from on high.

Force equals mass times acceleration. It was a formula I could do in my head, but the damage I just did didn’t match the numbers.

I caught on to what was happening. Somehow, on top of being a horrifyingly powerful telekinetic shaker, pyrokinetic, and trump, the flying rat was also a mass teleporter. And he could perceive the Simurgh through the chaos of the airspace just fine so I could add thinker to his list of bullshit powers.

That changed things. Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t have much of an ego. I used to, back when I became the strongest woman alive. Then, I spent two decades losing to endbringers and desperately searching for a hope that seemed as distant as the stars. I was a woman who’d done nothing but fail in every battle that mattered.

So, I did as the overpowered rodent asked. I closed off all thoughts and stretched out my fists in the classic Superman pose. I abandoned all concerns and flew straight, trusting that he could wield me. As he so eloquently put it, I became the brick.

X

Blake Isley

‘Really? “Be the brick?”’ Victini rang with fond exasperation in my mind.

‘She didn’t seem to be contributing much by herself,’ I said defensively. ‘I may as well put her to good use. And really, what’s the difference between Trick and Remote Teleportation, anyway?’

‘Usually, one is for objects and the other is for more general use.’

‘She’s a brick. Didn’t you hear me? She’s an object, too.’

‘Of course. It’s a lot easier when she’s not fighting you, when her psyche isn’t even registering the attempt. A dimensionally isolated mind may as well not exist, is that it? Clever of you.’

I teleported Alexandria directly into the Simurgh’s back, punching her into the path of one of Legend’s beams. ‘Thanks, Titania taught me that. The names we give to different moves, not all of them were there at the beginning.’

‘Indeed. Humans find it beneficial to distinguish between Flamethrower and Fire Blast, but to me, it’s all just varying degrees of fire manipulation,’ Victini said. 

Not once did her barrage of fireballs cease. The tried and true method for dealing with precogs was saturated bombardment. When she had nowhere to dodge, it didn’t really matter what she could or couldn’t see.

Explosions could be countered with directed telekinetic force. Fireballs and lasers could be intercepted with debris drawn from the city below. But with my focus on directing Alexandria, I had the equivalent to a reusable armor-piercing round that could penetrate her defenses and manipulate her position. She was still an elusive bitch, but having an indestructible brick sure made things easier.

For a moment, we had the lead. Her body had cracked in numerous places. Those cracks widened as we hit her faster than she could repair herself. Judging by the determined optimism in the Triumvirates heroes’ auras, this was more damage than they’d ever done to the third endbringer.

Victini and I had our own thoughts. We had no intention of driving her off. That was a “victory” only in the most jaded sense. No, neither of us were in the habit of letting our opponents drag things out; we wanted the bitch dead.

The endbringer was a construct. There were pokemon like that, such as claydol and golurk. Such pokemon could repair themselves with aura and time, or sometimes even sought out materials to repair their bodies directly.

And yet, the Simurgh had no aura. I saw her crystalline flesh knit itself back together. The big ol’ dent we’d left in her dome from our initial Flare Blitz was all but gone. So what was supplying that energy? How did she fix a body with neither spiritual nor physical material?

We were interrupted from our thoughts by the screeching of a missile launch. Then two, then dozens, then hundreds of launches filled the air with a screaming orchestra that competed with the drumline of explosions. From below, we saw oblong capsules rise into the air like bottle rockets.

She finished her tinkertech, whatever they were. I had a feeling that killing her just got a lot harder.

Author’s Note

Boss fight stage two!

Victini apparently doesn’t learn Disable? I thought she did, but nope. She does, however, have Safeguard. Coupled with her ability to buff a bunch of solosis and duosion until they could lift a fucking mountain, I decided she can negate the effects of the scream, if not outright mute the Simurgh.

The Simurgh’s best telekinetic feats are multiple buildings, possibly skyscrapers. She is not, and never was an overwhelmingly powerful psychic comparable to many other characters in fiction. Her strength lies in the fact that she’s a computer capable of multitasking, not her directed power.

Animal Fact: The Evarcha culicivora is a type of jumping spider. They are more commonly called the vampire spider and are found only around Lake Victoria in Kenya and Uganda. They’re tiny, only ~5 mm on average. Unlike vampire bats or leeches, they do not directly suck blood from humans, cows, etc. because they lack fangs long enough to do so. Instead, they prefer their blood pre-packaged in the form of mosquitos. 

They’re only one of two spiders that can be considered “mosquito specialists,” the other being another species of jumping spider found in Malaysia called Paracyrba wanlessi. Meaning, this species prefers a specific type of prey over all others, namely mosquitoes of the Anopheles genus. They’re basically real-life D&D rangers with a racism perk.

Scientists found that these spiders will target mosquitoes over non-mosquitos, females over males, because females are the ones that drink blood. They even fed some female mosquitoes sugar water, only to find the jumpers have a distinct preference for females that recently fed on blood. Considering these mosquitoes are major sources of malaria, spidey boys are doing good work.