Amelia, Ch 391
I glanced over at Taylor. "Is there any chance we can stop doing these weekly meetings at seven in the morning? There's no better time? Like, maybe noon?"
She smiled. AmusementSorry. "Well, you know what they say. It's always noon somewhere."
I shook my head. "No, Taylor, they don't say that. And if they did it still wouldn't mean it for this."
Our teasing was brought to a halt as the other team leaders made their way into the meeting room. For a group ruling an entire world, there wasn't a lot of us. Simply Taylor and I, Emma, Clarice, Trevor and of course Dragon, who only really ever appeared via hologram for these meetings. Her limited ability to multitask typically meant she kept her android body on Tinker projects, and I couldn't blame her for it. We also really needed to find a new head of our Thinker division. Taylor had taken up that slack, mostly out of virtue of being one of a very small number of people who could tolerate Accord.
I looked at the others. These were all my friends, people I could trust. "Alright, I'm in the mood for some good news. Dragon said something about China finally caving in to some of the conditions."
The hologram nodded. I never ceased to be amazed at how lifelike she was. "Correct. The CUI claims to have tracked down the slave ring, and is returning captives to Pakistan, Japan, and Russia. As such, we'll soon be announcing we've finished our part of the job of investigating our group for possible terrorists pretending to be civilians. The international press will call it a deathblow against a violent militant organization and the war will be avoided."
ReliefAnnoyance. I know, I wish we could have hit them harder, too. PatienceCertainty.
"Beyond that, approximately twenty thousand of the Chinese nationals captured on Khyber have agreed that they'd prefer citizenship on Avalon to a return to China. There would have been more, but a significant majority are criminals. Less than half of those willing are people we'd accept."
DisappointmentResignation. "Better than nothing. Excellent work."
"And that's about the end of my good news." Dragon continued. Oh god damn it. "Our West Coast team has stalled. Boost left the team, prefering to work as a free agent. Anima is still on the team, but she refuses to use her powers. Crystal has officially retired and moved back to Boston."
I sighed and looked down for a second. We used Crystal up and burned her out. Genius Loci's death might have been the final blow, but by no stretch of the imagination was it the only. We should have noticed sooner. Lisa probably did. "She stayed on longer than we were expecting. I'm going to talk to Aunt Sarah about everything. Then probably offer Crystal a job as a liaison with the Protectorate, like we had Vicky doing. We owe her at least that much." AgreementSupportRegret.
Taylor reached over and put a hand on my leg. Through our respective armor sets, neither of us could really feel anything, but it was a nice show of support. "We still have Clotho and Sveta on the team. They're both near Triumvirate tier heavy hitters, and pretty well liked by the media. Dubstep fills the role of blaster and battlefield Thinker. Even without Crystal it's a strong and balanced spread of powers. They're lacking a strong leadership figure, but they don't absolutely need that to stay functional."
"I might have a solution for that." Emma spoke up. "I talked some with Akaihana when doing her power testing."
ConfusionConcernJealousy? I glanced over at Taylor. Of course she felt my response. Don't worry, I'll tell you later. SuspicionAgreementPatience.
Meawhile, Emma continued her point. "-has a number of seconds and thirds in command. She was asking about assigning an entire team to Avalon's Japan analogue. I told her that it was ultimately your decision. But she probably has someone that can take a leadership role."
Emma was generally a good judge of character, at least when it came to outside manipulation, so it made sense to ask her the next question. "So, what was your take on her? Do you think she or the people she'd pick are going to be trustworthy? Can we enhance her powers?"
Emma frowned. Oh, that's not a good sign. "She flirted with every non-cauldron cape that walked into the room. Except Clarice, and I have my suspicions that she wanted to. Which reminds me that I totally need to talk to Zach after this meeting, but that's none of your concern."
ConcernDistasteSupriseJealousy. Taylor rubbed my leg a little. "Not so sure I like the idea of her behaving like that toward our people. Can she tell the difference between natural and artificial capes?"
"A lot of it is tied into the way her brain works. Like most Trump type powers, her mind is heavily influenced by her Passenger. She can detect parahumans and their strength, she describes the stronger ones as as 'smelling good'. A smell she finds appealing." Well, that's a little disturbing.
Emma took a breath and continued. "And whenever she comes in contact with the bodily fluids of a parahuman, she slowly builds up time that she can harness their powers later. There's a weird combination of amount of contact, freshness of contact, and amount of power she uses that seems to be mere arbitrary shard logic. We suspect her power copy is a breaker state where she makes the Passenger believe she is its host. It would explain why she can't harness breaker or shapeshifter type powers, nor those of Case 53s. I believe that extends to all other Cauldron capes as well."
SuspicionFearLoss. Dammit, Taylor, as cute as the jealousy is, I didn't do anything wrong with Akaihana! ApprehensionSupportLoveTrust.
Although I couldn't be sure I was entirely safe from a being power copied by Akaihana. "What kind of bodily fluids are we talking about?"
"All of them, probably. She confirms blood, saliva, sweat, tears, and both male and female reproductive fluids. Insists she's never been desperate enough to try any others." DisgustShock. Yeah, eww. "But given the broad spectrum nature of her power... like I said, probably all of them as long as it's fresh. The scary part of her power is that if she needs to, she can go nova with the power she has. Using all her powers at full strength, as long as she has enough stored up in the battery."
ShockAweTerritorial. "That's terrifying." Taylor muttered. "Do we have the ability to make an armor suit that enhances her powers?"
"Easily. We tested it with Vicky's blood that we had left over from the Cão/Victoria interaction. It's been vat duplicated several times, so we know we can grow 'fresh' material for her to use. It wouldn't be hard at all to alter a suit so it bleeds parahuman DNA on her. With the matter generation tech used to provide ammunition for Atropos, we could support a combination of four individuals empowering her permanently. Plus all the standard armor features."
PossibilityFocus. Taylor leaned forward. "Vicky is an obvious permanent addition, even if Akaihana can't use her breaker state she's got a broad range of medium level powers that could complement any other powerset. I'd toss Lily on the list. Maybe add Theo and Missy, for the ultimate hunter-killer. Or maybe just use samples from the Birdcage. Her power combined with Glaistig Uaine's would be absurd." SuspicionTerritorial. "Then there's what she might be able to do with, say, my power to multitask blended with three different Tinkers and a dozen changelings keyed to her. It's really a question of how much we're willing to trust her."
That winds up being the question a lot, doesn't it? We can hand out these insane resources, but in doing so we risk raising others up to the point where they could actually threaten us. Akaihana's just one example. If we keep going down this path, setting ourselves up to be the only ones valid against Scion... then we need to be damn certain we're actually valid against Scion. "We'll come back to that later. There's a lot of other things to cover today."
Clarice raised her hand. It was adorable. "Umm, go ahead Clarice."
"Synth managed to break security." She means the brain mod tech. "Fortunately the secondary security measures disabled him without any further incident."
ConfusionConcern. "What secondary security measures?"
"I broke his leg and replaced his kidneys with ones that weren't altered to metabolize the alterations done to his brain. Then I told him that I installed a small bomb in his brain that'll go off if he tries that again. I'm fairly certain he believed it. If not, I have prepared a few other surprises. He'll learn to stop trying eventually."
WorryDistaste. I agreed with Taylor fully on that. There was no doubt about her loyalty, but her methods were fucked up at times. I needed to talk to her. Which made me feel hypocritical because, honestly, her methods were little more than a mirror to our own.
No time like the present to fix that. "Dragon. I have a question to ask. What do you think about how we run things? How we've treated you?" ShockConfusionConcern. Taylor squeezed my leg, as the conversation came to a dead halt. "And please, don't sugar coat things."
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A/N- To be fair, Akaihana's shard probably assumed she'd go around sucking blood or something. Because CONFLICT!
