Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

Amelia, Ch 252


"Lisa," I sighed. "Can I ask you a question?"


"Clearly you can," she replied.


"Where did you find an actual VCR?"


"Online shopping," she replied. She pressed the power button and the viewscreen started up.


"Okay, make that two questions," I rubbed my hand over my face.


"You mean three questions," she answered as she pressed play and the scene started, with one of the news cameras in a language that I didn't recognize, although it mostly had the same characters as English. The man speaking wasn't an English dub over, either.


"Why do you have a VCR?" I asked. Taylor set her hand on the small of my back. On my other side, Riley was cuddling against me as well. After Danny left, she'd come out of hiding. Because, unlike me, she was smart enough to know who was in the room before she did something stupid.


"Well, I recently made my first Billion dollars," she replied. "And I asked myself 'what do you do to celebrate becoming a billionaire?' The obvious answer was to spend money on something stupid and useless. Since I didn't want to house train a pet rock, and it turns out you can only lease politicians, not actually buy one outright, I opted for this."


"It doesn't even actually work," Taylor replied. "She has a remote control system built into the TV system that reads her facial expressions. I'm not sure how much that cost, but we can't even use it because it only recognizes her face."


"My office, my screen to do whatever I want with," she quipped. "Now shut up, the party's about to begin."


We watched as the zerg started shunting in, including the new breed. The Phalanx were something our Tinkers had been quite proud of, a large dog sized monster capable of casting out Khonsu's forcefield as a wall. Not much alone, but put a few of them together, and they could soak up a lot of punishment. They were meant for our anti-Leviathan fight. Maybe even Barghest as well, while we were at it. A way to box in their movement and block their area attacks.


Then the ground rippled, like a splash in a pond. It traveled up the sides of buildings, wrapped around corners. Metallic blades followed after, streaming through the air and slamming into the forcefield projections. Most held, and the ones that caved didn't do much damage. Endbringer insulated Zerg were living up to their promised durability. The Endbringer itself appeared out of nowhere. It was gigantic, in a strange sort of way. More like huge, thin, pillar.


"Another teleporter?" I asked.


"Not exactly," Lisa replied. "It's a space warper. Creates a pocket for itself between points and then folds space in on that pocket to create a curtain it hides behind. Missy's already working on using a version of it, herself. Invisibility and being able to see or even walk through walls are on the list of things she thinks she can do now that she's seen what Bohu does with its power."


The terrain started to mutate where the ripple had passed. The features looked like the industrial level on one of those games Zach played, filled with blades, spiked death traps and terrain made entirely of jagged metal. Zerg regularly found themselves falling into holes, and then being trapped inside, forcing other zerg to spend time pulling them out. The flyers had a better go of it, hammering into the Endbringer from the skies.


Then the other one appeared. She looked more or less like a woman, but with four arms each ending in nasty looking claws. She also had three faces on her head, making her look more than a little bizarre. They were blank at first, and the creature didn't do much other than get knocked around. Alexandria actually slammed Tohu into the side of her brother/pet/other half/whatever and started kneeing her in the face as her claws tried to peel away Alexandria's suit.


It was built off her own biology, and thus as indestructible as she was. The spiked shin guards and other features meant to give her increased combat effectiveness were doing their part, however, leaving nasty gouges in Tohu's face. Then a claw cut through the armor, and took Alexandria's leg off at the knee. The woman drew back, and I could imagine how shocked she was. In all her prior battles, only Siberian had managed to injure her, and that included dozens of Endbringer conflicts.


Tohu emerged from the indent made into the side of Bohu, and I recognized Atropos' costumed face. A serene black face mask with its eyes closed. People started falling back at that point, and the Zerg surged forward, along with a few of the Dragon suits. The Endbringer spent the next few minutes cutting its way through the attackers, its every touch equivalent to Lily's charged weapons. Zerg fell like ribbons.


Lily herself took the front lines, and we got at least one pleasant surprise. Hers and Tohu's powers negated each other. She could hurt the Endbringer, and it couldn't get through her armor to injure her. Until it punched her hard in the gut and she shunted back to Avalon.


Eidolon, Victoria, Crystal, Legend, and a few I didn't recognize hit it with a stream of energy blasts, apparently a combination of freeze-laser and sonic burst were involved, causing massive explosions and cutting into her shell. A clawed hand was blown off by a particularly good combo.


A second face formed on Tohu, Taylor's. The zerg froze. Occasionally one would act, usually to attack someone nearby. But none moved more than a couple seconds at a time. They were functionally removed from the battle.


"I... think I was fighting it," Taylor spoke, sounding more than a little upset by this part of the scene. I coudn't blame her. "Keeping it from taking control. I wish it would have worked better. That I had time to realize what would happen next."


There was another ripple, and a wash of blades that slammed into the unshielded, unmoving zerg. None were damaged too much, but the way they stood there ignoring the impacts was caught by the cameras. I almost asked how the cameras weren't being destroyed, then I realized how stupid that question was. "They wanted this to be seen on film?" I phrased it as a question, but I already knew the answer.


"Near as I can guess," Lisa answered. "We always talk about Ziz as the one who plays mind games, but that's not true. They all do. It's just that she was the least subtle about it. The next part really clinches it, however."


A flat area formed where buildings and traps use to be, and Tohu landed in the middle of it. A second later, most of Pantheon was suddenly there in the center. Tohu lashed out immediately, catching Taylor in the face. My fiancee and I clutched hands tighter. This is the second time I watched her die.


Then the Zerg turned on us. One of the gargants stomped on my suit and it was clearly fatal to anything in the armor. Riley whimpered and buried her face in my shoulder. I had to wonder how she survived, being in the suit as well. But given the way she'd modified her own body, I guess it wasn't too much of a stretch. Theo wrapped himself, Missy and Sabah in his liquid metal effect. The pair of them were given small gaps to find their weapons through. Turns out, Sabah's power does a remarkable amount of damage against Endbringer tissue. The trio even managed to destroy a few of the zerg in the immediate area.


The Dragon suits, in an uncomfortable mirror of the Simurgh fight, also took to attacking the zerg. Clad in the same Endbringer based armors, they were remarkably evenly matched. Cannons against tusks, servos agaist biomechanical muscle. The zerg probably would have won on numbers alone, but the Endbringer decided it wasn't so patient as to wait for that.


Somehow, the cameras kept rolling, and even picked up the screech of Tohu's third chosen power, the scream I knew as Shatterbird. The armor ceased functioning and a storm of glass broke from the suits and the parts of the city that hadn't been converted to mechanical death traps. A mass of it came to touch range of Tohu. And then she rained it down on the heroes. It perforated Theo's shell and I could tell there wouldn't be any survivors in there. The zerg, no longer slowed by Dragon's weapons and driven by the Endbringer's will, unleashed everything they were capable of.


A couple minutes of this, of Riley and Taylor holding onto me for dear life while I was too busy staring in stunned horror to have any reaction at all. That's how long it took before the zerg vanished, with a few exceptions of ones that had been damaged enough that their shunt drives had shattered.


"That's when Trevor got everyone out, as best he could. Once on the other size the zerg went back to passively waiting for commands," Lisa narrated. "Somewhere during that glass storm, Crystal, Zach and even Victoria were hit. Along with dozens of other people."


The other defenders were driven back, until Eidolon and Victoria, the left half of her costume missing, were the only ones close enough to do any fighting. I did my best not to ogle my sister's slightly more than partial nudity. Instead focusing on how the fight itself. The way they moved was eerily similar. "He was using a copy of her power for this, wasn't he?" I asked.


"Exactly the same power," Lisa confirmed. "Reflexes, combat sense, the whole nine yards."


The terrain shifted again, and people were vomited from the ground, only to be slaughtered by the blade traps in almost cartoonishly gory fashion. Some of them were close enough to the cameras that their screams could be heard.


"Fucking christ," I muttered. "Those were the people in the shelters, weren't they?" No one answered me, but then, they didn't need to. I already knew the answer.


The fight continued. Despite the fact that the city was lost, and only two heroes remained on the battlefield, the fight continued. The pair of them coordinated beautifully, their combat precognition keeping them perfectly in synch as they used their attacks to do what little damage could be done. Eidolon's attack seemed pretty damn effective, stripping layers off the monster.


"That lasts another few minutes," Lisa informed me. "This tape's been edited."


There was a sudden change of scene. Vicky and Eidolon were still there, and then Vicky vanished. The glass storm turned toward him alone. And then it stopped, all the blades falling to the ground. Eidolon started glowing, and the environment started to simply vanish around him, spreading slowly outward. The traps collapsed liked they'd been reduced to water that was then turned to steam, and the Endbringers themselves started to melt. Then the cameras, finally, stopped working.


"What the fuck was that?" I asked. "Right there at the end? I thought he was running out of power."


"That's the full actualization of Eidolon's newest favorite power of choice," Lisa answered. "His copy of what Emma uses to access her hybrid mode. It steals power from the environment and lets him recharge his batteries. And when I say 'power', I mean 'all of it'. Heat, electricity, momentum, the forces holding molecular bonds together, gravity. If it's made of energy, it's fair game."


"Did... did he kill the Endbringers?" I asked.


"No way of knowing right now," Lisa replied. "They vanished. But whether turned to subatomic dust, or retreated to their wherever they hide, we won't know until a year or so passes."


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


A/N- Yeah. Tohu and Bohu are assholes.

Eidolon has a very showy disintegration power that actually grants him more energy instead of depleting it. So things are looking up on the anti-Scion front?