Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

Amelia, Ch 181


"Fuck me," Lily muttered. "Well, we've seen its fucking secret weapon, are you happy now?"


"No, there's still more," Lisa answered.


"How the fuck can there be more!?" Lily asked. "It just killed Legend and Alexandria!"


"Alexandria's not dead," Lisa replied. "Not yet, at least. Aceso, you'll have to clear a bit of ice out of her lungs, but she's alive, as long as you can get to her quickly."


"On it," Riley answered. "Khepri, I need you to help with a couple of the shadowcats."


"Thus far, this one's only been targeting capes," she continued. "It's not doing the kind of overall damage an Endbringer tends to do. It also proves a few things I've suspected about the Endbringers for a while now. Don't worry, I'll fill you in later."


Meanwhile the Endbringer had again been swarmed by the zerg. Taylor had stopped any semblance of holding back, throwing everything she had at it just to bury it under disposable bodies. It didn't appear to be working all that well, as the waves of frustration off Taylor indicated. It was easily fast enough to outrun any of the monsters we had available, and was powerful enough to kill them with relative ease, even down to one tail.

It vanished again, reappearing to kill three more capes. "Oh fucking christ no," Lisa muttered. She forgot to turn off our com before switching on the other. "Everyone! Fall back, take cover!" she shouted through the changeling. "Khepri, activate all the energy shunts!" DreadDetermination.


The various anti-Behemoth systems, which had largely gone to waste in New Delhi, were deployed, blanketing the area with fans and sails and strings. The Endbringer then burst into a pulse of destructive energy, unleashing fire and electricity and sonic energy across the battlefield. Our hologram flickered out.


"Clarice is still functional," Riley announced to us. "Collecting all kinds of data. Heavy on the light spectrum, some other exotic energy effects. And a high power sonic effect that I'm having touble interpreting.


"Transfer your feed," Emma instructed. "Let me have a look."


"The Endbringer appears to be gone," Taylor informed us. "It's hard to be certain, given its powers, but I think it retreated."


"Not a retreat," Lisa answered. "It did exactly what it came here to do. That's how this one will function every time. A battle lasting exactly five minutes and thirty three seconds. Fifty four capes decapitated. And then a fuck you bomb right at the end. It was following a script so obvious that everyone watching could figure it out. It's letting us know that they leave when they choose to leave, not because of anything we have done to force them to.


HorrorDisgust. I didn't say a thing. I couldn't think of any words to say.


....


Hundreds of gallons of Yggdrasil mass were shunted into the city, designed to squelch fires and reinforce streets. The city was damaged, but this wasn't like New Delhi. This could be rebuilt. A lot of capes were wounded, but not as many as one might have expected. The Protectorate hadn't even managed to deploy most of its forces, much less got them here on time. Dragon's personal ship hadn't even arrived, only a couple of her fast response drones.


"I remember during the Brockton Bay fight," Taylor spoke. "When they called Leviathan a 'good day' against an Endbringer. By that standard, this was the best Endbringer battle in history. Not enough people even managed to arrive here for the explosion to be really bad."


Eidolon arrived as we finally started shunting across.


Lisa looked at him. "You chose to sit this one out?" she asked.


"I... decided on a different course," he sighed. "Limited power, remember? I have to apply it where I can do the most actual good. Not knowing what this new Endbringer could do, I couldn't trust to select the right types of powers to fight it. Instead, I found one for the aftermath," he took to the sky as a bright blue green aura surrounded him. His arms outstretch, he waited until he was brighter then the sun, then clapped his hands together. The light burst washed over the city.


I felt the sudden presence of life amongst the people that my Yggdrasil had covered. "Holy fuck... he just brought back the dead," I informed the others. "All of them, as far as I can tell. Everyone the new Endbringer just killed."


JoyRelief. Taylor smiled for the first time since the battle started. "Then we can consider this one a real victory," she declared.


"In more ways than one," Lisa agreed.


"You figured something out, didn't you?" I asked.


"A few things," Lisa answered. "But I'd really prefer to not have to repeat myself. Let's wait for Dragon and the others."


....


We had managed, eventually, to gather the more directly important forces. Alexandria and the rest of the Triumvirate. Chevalier, who was the new head of the Protectorate. I wasn't sure what his powers were, but he carried an impressive as looking sword and armor of pristine white. And of course Dragon, Defiant and Narwhal from the Guild. It was staggering to imagine the kind of influence and power we were hosting right now.


"Impressive," Alexandria declared, looking across the area. "And am I wrong to believe that you've completely covered this world in Yggdrasil? No other forms of life on the entire planet but that which you've created for it?"


I felt a little self conscious at the clear S-class grade power that I had demonstrated. "It was a dead world when we found it," I offered lamely.


"You don't have to pretend you're surprised," Lisa replied. "We know you've spied on our planet before, maybe even crossed over into it. Right now, I suspect we're not the only groups on the planet truly capable of interdimensional travel, but we are both capable of it."


Alexandria nodded "Very well, I won't insult you by pretending otherwise," she agreed. "You were saying you determined something valuable about the Endbringers?"


"I can confirm they're controlled by a human intelligence," Lisa answered. HorrorAnger. "Maybe not in the literal sense. Probably more similar to Dragon's droneships than to our own bioconstructs."


"And you know this because?" Alexandria asked.


"I trust Eidolon's shared what he learned from us?" Lisa asked.


"About what you are calling Passengers, right?" Alexandria answered. Dragon shared a glance toward Defiant and then Narwhal.


"What 'Passengers'?" Chevalier asked.


"They are the source of all powers," Lisa answered. "Every parahuman has a Passenger."


"The Protectorate's researchers call them Agents," Alexandria added. "Although our understanding of them seems to differ from Pantheon's, we have come to a number of the same conclusions. Unfortunately, the information we do have is functionally useless."


"Is that what I see when I look at parahumans?" he asked. "These Passengers?"


ShockCuriousity. "Wait, you can see our powers?"


"Not exactly," he replied. "It's a... like visual symbolism. An abstract of what the power can achieve, in a humanoid representation and left for me to try to interpret."


"What does my power look like?" I blurted out, before stopping to think.


"... Distracting..." he answered, looking away. "Yours and hers," he gestured at Taylor. "I'm not sure what my power is trying to tell me about your powers, but I can tell you that I'm trying very hard not to look." MortificationWorryPride.


"I'd really like to study your power," Emma spoke up. The fact that Clarice was standing next to her prodding at her may have had something to do with it. "We're doing our best to learn more about how the Passengers function, and your ability would probably help a great deal."


"My power sight is, technically, classified," he answered. "I mentioned it only because you already seem to know more on the subject than I do."


"I'll bring the matter up with the Directors," Alexandria spoke. "I have some leverage. There may be some negotiations, but I suspect they'll demand that you share every scrap of information you learn on this matter with them. Now, let us move on to what you believe about the Endbringers."


"Initially I suspected that the Endbringers were Passengers as well. We know they're not human and do not think like humans. They can't comprehend most ideas that are instinctual to us. Although, to be fair, I doubt we could grasp the ebbs and flows of reality and dimensions, or all the insane complexities that our powers can perform. Different doesn't necessarily mean worse, and in this case probably means far superior."


"But it does mean that behaviors would change," Alexandria agreed. "It's the 'Rule of Three' that made you certain, wasn't it?"


"Of course," Lisa answered. "The thing waited exactly thirty three and a third seconds between its jump attacks. Killing three people per tail per jump. Shedding a tail after every third jump, detonating after the ninth. The total length of the battle was exactly three hundred and thirty three seconds. That's hardly a coincidence. In addition, the Endbringer prediction software. If they were truly alien, if they came from the source of powers, it couldn't work on them."


"Makes sense," Dragon replied. "It might also explain why Rapture's technology was so valuable in improving our predictive software."


"In addition, they're still currently active," she responded. "They watched our battle with the Simurgh. I might even suspect they were there during the battle, given the obvious Rule of Three pattern, and how the killing weapon was powered by three parahumans. But it's more likely they were watching through some remote viewing technology built into the Simurgh."


"Do you have any suspects on who the Endbringers' creator or creators might be?" Alexandria asked. "Or what they're trying to accomplish?"


"Not as such, no," Lisa admitted.

=================

A/N- Yay! Chevalier! And one step closer to solving all the mysteries.