I Am Ziz [Worm SI!Simurgh]

I Am Ziz
This is a Crackfic, meaning the story is not intended to be taken seriously. SI as Ziz, the Simurgh, Her Unholyness of Feathers, with her along for the ride. Possibly (probably) inspired by a certain other series of fics. No longer just a plot bunny. FFN rated T for light, Worm-style swearing.

Omakes:

• Winged Taylor Hugs by badger.black

I Am Ziz
Chapter 1
Entry, Re-Entry, Entrance​

Cold. But at the same time burning, though much more like a pleasant warmth with prickles of feeling than pain. A lot like a limb waking up from falling asleep, just… everywhere.

I open my eyes. Below me is a planet. That much is clear. Everywhere that isn't the planet is the easily recognizable view of space from my homeworld, Earth.

So I'm apparently, suddenly, somehow in orbit of Earth.

When just a second ago I was falling asleep.

Okay. That’s not weird at all, I think to myself.

Dream?

I look around at everything, the details present on the world below me, the solidity and logical, if insane, structure of the universe as it’s presenting itself to my senses.

Nope. Too real. Too detailed, too structured. Not enough chaos. Things stay where they were when my attention leaves them and returns.

Okay then. Probably not a dream. Which is… even weirder.

Deep breaths.

Wait.

I can breathe in space?!

Well then, no matter how real this seems, it has to be a dream given how that is frankly impossible.

Or, well… Maybe I’ve been kidnapped and I’m in some kind of knockoff matrix?

Huh. The perspective of the planet's features is slightly off. Almost like I'm…

Oh.

That’s…

How is that possible?!

Either what I just passed was a itty bitty space rock or I'm eight stories tall.

Good to know. Bullshit, but good to know.

Some part of me takes a glance at the ‘rock’ and flat out declares it to be a frakking Space Shuttle, burnt as it is.

Definitely eight stories tall.

...Are those cannons on that Space Shuttle?

Oh no, they're laser cannons.

Sorry.

My mistake.

What the hell is going on?!

My mental systems come into focus for a moment, barely enough for my mindscape to form and an alert to pop up.

I'm running on insufficient brain matter? What?

Oh it's locked.

Can it be unlocked?

Yes? Great, go ahead and do that, subconscious.

Mental programming is incredible, if a bit slow on the initiative.

A few moments of disorientation and my mind snaps back into focus. The intellect I'm both somewhat liked and definitely (by some people, at least) reviled for kicks into high gear.

Observe surroundings. Still space above Earth.

Alright, time to run a body check.

Drifting in space, eight stories tall, orbiting Earth, no need to breathe air. Check, check, check aaand check.

Laser cannons on a burnt out Space Shuttle. Just… what?

Oh. I'm a woman.

…

Alright.

…

How do I feel about this?

…

okaystartpani-NOPE! Gender panic later.

I am, somehow, an eighty foot tall woman with hundreds of very long angel wings wrapped around my body to keep warm in space. Where I can breathe.

Drifting along next to an armed Space Shuttle.

The amount of bullshit currently attempting to pass as my reality is too damn high.

...The wings are actually really comfy, though.

I suddenly have a sinking feeling as I tally up what I already know. A glance down at Japan as I fly over it only adds to my concern.

Not a dream, then. Gods damn it!

I got ROB-ed!

--LB--

I float above the planet for quite a while, in shock, just trying to process what happened to me. Eventually though I have to suck it up and… well, given I’ve been tossed here by a ROB and they’ve presumably scanned my mind, know I’d be likely to do this, and approved due to me being here in the first place, get started derailing the ever living fuck out of canon.

Gotta live up to my new namesake, right?

Systems check!

Scan initiating.

My subconscious runs the mental program for a little while, but encounters an error. Access denied.

Interesting. It appears that the original consciousness, what little there ever was, of this body is still here. I ping it.

Thank the gods I'd limited the input to my mind from any senses I have or may get in the future, namely now, or the feedback would have lobotomized me.

:REFUSAL HANDOFF EXCHANGE FIX REPAIR APOLOGIZE AMENDS:

That's Her voice alright. Okay, so she's handed off everything to me. Apparently.

Will you fight me?

:EXHAUSTION PAIN DESPAIR:

Huh. It never really occurred to me that they might not have wanted to do what they did. Was everything conducted by Eidolon?

:ANGER CONFIRMATION SORROW:

RIGHT THEN.

Systems Check. Full. Ignore secondary consciousness, develop communications protocols for it. Dedicate mental environment for remote representation of secondary.

Scan initiating.

In my mindscape a planet pops up around the central singularity. Orbits adjust, I now have a new mental planetary system for her alone. Even though I might not be capable of cracking her mind open, I can move it around.

Thus the Simurgh becomes a passenger in my own mind. Her world is a tropical vacation paradise. It's only fitting after what she's suffered.

:GRATITUDE: she sends me. She seems to have figured out how to modulate her mental voice down from mind-shatteringly-powerful to just yelling.

Her form in my mind is that of her body. Human height, though. Even has wings, only four and a whole lot shorter. We smile at each other.

She, and I guess now I, are quite attractive. Ziz, as she requests to be called, gives me a nod and her eyes display that gratitude.

Making use of the Library World a bit, huh? I tease. Hey, I won’t blame her; I use the representation of all the book-type knowledge I’ve studied or learned myself, too.

That is after all why I made it in the first place.

:YES:

Well, it's a start.

Scan complete. New systems detected. Abilities are as follows:

Mechanical Mastery.
Technological Mastery.
Mechanical Intuition.
Technological Intuition.
300yr Absolute Precognition.
900yr Definite Precognition.
8100yr Abstract Precognition.
Full Telepathy.
Full Telekinesis.
Remote Mental Control.
Quantum Repositioning.
Quantum Locking.
Quantum Folding.
Quantum Tunneling.
Void Matter Core.
Exponential Body Density.
Sub-Planck Matter Folding.

WARNING: Mental control construct detected. Quarantine automatically applied. Review? Destroy?

My eyes widen, both in my mind and in reality. Holy flipping Zeus Hera and Hades!

Ziz grins knowingly, a surprisingly Tattletale-like smugness around her.

I gulp. You guys really are holding back, aren't you?

She nods. :Yes.:

I almost absentmindedly order the control interface’s destruction. A sharp pain in the back of my ‘head’ and it's gone. A compulsion to attack the world every nine months I hadn't even noticed disappears. Eidolon, or even Zion, could have done whatever they wanted to me and Ziz through that thing. How the hell I was able to do that when Ziz herself couldn’t? NOT thinking about that at the moment.

The similarity to Richter's controls for a certain AI are not lost on me.

Ziz meets my mental avatar's eyes. lease. Fix what I could not. Free my siblings. This world, your species, deserve none of the things my creators have decided to do.:

Wow. Very long winded for someone who was communicating in concepts only, like, a minute ago. I will try my best, Ziz.

She nods once. :Good luck. And thank you.:

You’re welcome.

With that I unfurl my wings, angle down towards the trajectory my suddenly incredibly easy to access future vision says will draw the most humans, and catapult out of orbit.

--LB--

Wow. They really were holding back. Reentry heat doesn't even faze me.

I'm on course for Brockton Bay. There are a lot of things leading me there, not the least of which is how much the PRT will freak out. After all, they'll probably have to cap the city, much like they've done to other Simurgh zones. The reason Brockton would be so concerning is that it's on a natural aquifer and is a bay city. It would be almost impossible to defend it from Leviathan and cap it from me.

Well, they won't need to worry about that, but they don't know that. And what can I say? I am a prankster at heart. Giving the Protectorate a collective heart attack and pulmonary at the same time, both by being off the three month expected schedule and speeding towards a ‘target’ at speeds high enough to heat up the atmosphere, is in my nature.

Almost without thinking about it I review the list of people Ziz fucked with and revert the changes. No more time bombs. Capping unnecessary.

The fact I'll scare the crap out of the world before I tell them that is completely irrelevant.

Definitely.

Oh, shut up.

Through the higher atmosphere now. I spread my wings wide, gliding through the air towards the glistening bay in the distance.

Even from here I can hear the sirens. I roll my eyes and blow a small lock of blonde hair from my face.

Side note, the Simurgh has really really long hair.

I can sense capes arriving via teleportation from all around the world. It's a huge showing.

Legend's giving his speech.

Can I just say how much Ziz was holding back for the hundredth time? Her telepathy works from orbit. And further. She wouldn't need to get to a location to hijack people. And that's without channeling it through a Quantum Tunnel.

Her telekinesis is a bit shorter range, but not much. A few thousand miles or so.

Frakking hell Eidolon you sure know how to design game bosses.

I'm way faster than Ziz was before, and so I arrive at the Bay only three minutes later. The non flying capes deploy for the S&R they believe will be necessary, the flyers come up to meet me with everything they can throw.

I roll my eyes again and gently push them out of my flight path with telekinesis. Incredibly gently. Like, leaf-alighting-on-a-pond gently.

The changes in recorded tactics throw them for a loop long enough for me to reach the middle of the bay, turn around, and lightly set my feet upon the abnormally still water.

Then I stand there and look at them. No Scream. No flying. No Tinker projects.

Just looking.

The flyers stop moving, hesitant to approach. I can hear the frantic thinkers trying to get a bead on me, or what I might do.

I absently cycle through decisions on a couple billion futures in a single second to throw them off.

Alexandria cries out in pain and plummets to the surface.

Huh. That wasn't supposed to be that effective. What the hell was she trying to think about me?

The fact I watch her fall and grin when she hits the ground with a gentle nudge, due to yours truly, throws any and all plans they had in the trash can.

Eidolon and Legend scream towards me. I feel an irrational burst of rage for the creator and master of Ziz and her siblings, but I don't act on it besides giving him a telekinetic punch.

Uh... I may not have a handle on this yet.

The hooded Triumvirate member reverses course, backhanded through the air. His body breaks the sound barrier as he rockets out of sight.

I grimace, and just as Legend is about to let loose a blast of ‘deadly lasers’, I speak. “Whoops.”

The look on his face is priceless.

 

I also approve of this ship. And since I am kinda (read: rather quite) drunk you get this. Not at all proof read or even looked a second time, straight from the depraved mind of a badger:

A WRITEY THING!

Taylor stood frozen, neck straining as she stared up at the porcelain, winged woman standing towering over her. She had suffered her way through yet another day at Winslow, managed to get through it suffering only the usual insults and snide remarks instead of any substantial bullying. A rather tame and almost enjoyable day compared to some of the others. And then walking out through the front doors, free for a few short and glorious hours until she had to subject herself to the general horrors of Winslow again, she had come face to knee with perhaps the most terrifying of all the Endbringers.

“Of fucking course. My day was almost going pleasantly. Why do I even hope…” Taylor snarked in the face of her almost certain death at being at ground zero of an Endbringer attack, any notion of any other response was frozen in fear.

And then with a sudden ruffle of feathers, and an embarrassing squeak she would never admit to, Taylor found herself wrapped up in strong but careful arms and a dizzying amount of shockingly soft white feathers. It was a moment later that her brain came back online to try and make sense of the snuggling that the fucking Simurgh was giving her, a soothing humm of a tune that seemed to cut through the warbling pitch of the Endbringer sirens coming from the Endbringer who had her wrapped up in its wings.

“What in the everloving fuck?” Taylor muttered, confused and mostly convinced she was either asleep in class and this was a bad dream, or Emma and company had conspired with some of the less scrupulous of Winslow to drug her and this was a bad trip.

“You looked like you needed a good hug. So I came down to give you one!” A soft and melodious voice said and Taylor craned her head back to find the normally dispassionate face of the Simurgh giving her a soft smile. The engine of destruction almost looked rather cute with some sort of real expression on her face.

And at that point Taylor decided to throw out all care, bad dream or bad trip this was the first real gesture of care or love she had gotten in way too long and she was going to bask in its warm and floofy embrace. Even if she happened to come by it by being cradled against an Endbringer’s chest. The wings were seriously soft!


(Note I just now remembered that Ziz is supposed to be taller then her 15 something foot canon size in this particular story. Oops. Just go with it.)

Hopefully that will do until author graces us with some floofy-winged hugs done properly!

I'm out!

 

A/N: Thanks to Saphire on the Taylor Varga Discord for advice and comments! Sorry for the rather short chapter, I had to cut a scene for... reasons.

---

I Am Ziz
Chapter 2
Confusion, Defiance, and Dickery​

Three hours later I'm still standing on the bay. Nobody has approached me except Legend, who's just been watching me with confusion. I've been trolling the shit out of him by watching him right back, spinning around to face him at all times.

Dragon has frankly lost her shit trying to figure me out. Alexandria's still unconscious (I didn't hit her at all! Give me a break!) and Eidolon has limped back from the home run punt I gave him.

To Colorado.

Like I said earlier, Whoops.

He's hovering far off, confused and frustrated. His shard has been trying to control me this whole time, to get me to fight him, and despite him hitting me with what I think were gravity beams through the tickles, I've done nothing more than glare at him.

Frankly, everyone is confused to hell and it is making Ziz and I laugh our asses off in my mind.

Eventually Legend finally relents. He comes closer to my face despite the warning screams from his Dragon armband and looks me in the eyes.

I shock him by grinning.

“Can you understand me?” he asks, hesitantly. He's ready to fire everything he has in a last ditch attempt at doing me in.

I smirk and wiggle my eyebrows. “Well your accent is a little weird, but you are speaking your world's primary human language. It would be rather stupid of me not to learn that, don't you think?”

Wow. My voice has a raw power inherent in the qualities, along with practically oozing raw sensuality. Ziz laughs and says it's because of her Scream ability.

Legend almost falls from the sky with surprise. Eidolon flinches. Thousands if not millions of gasps ring out from Brockton bay, along with a whole lot of people covering their ears in an attempt to protect against a Scream that's not even running right now. Nevermind that the ‘Scream’ is tele-frakking-pathic and doesn't actually use their ears.

“You can speak?!” Dragon shrieks from Legend's armband.

I shrug my shoulders. Everyone except me flinches. “Always been able to.”

Legend recovers enough to glare at me. I raise an eyebrow. He clears his throat. “Alright, I'm going to just come out and ask; why do you attack?”

Yup. Not letting this joke opportunity go.

“I thought you were already out of the closet?” I innocently ask. No hesitation.

A now literally heated glare is what I get for my teasing efforts.

Don’t wanna have fun with the engine of destruction, I see how it is. My pout would give Legend a run for his namesake money.

The flying disco ball crosses his arms and glares harder. With a revengeance.

I roll my eyes and sigh. “Fiiine,” I capitulate, a petulant whine accompanying my word.

What? I’m a girl now. I get to whine, pout, and be obstinately petulant. It’s a thing.

Respect the thing!

Still, though, what he’s asked surprises me. “An Endbringer shows up on your doorstep without looking for a fight and the first question you ask is why? Not ‘please don't hurt us’, ‘oh god why’ or ‘let me live!’?” I ask incredulously.

Legend opens his mouth to respond, closes it, opens it, closes it again, then finally figures out what he has to say. “You're not looking for a fight?”

:I did not have a choice. Tell him.:

I frown at Ziz’s request, shrug, and shake my head. “None of us are. Up until now I had no choice.”

Legend does his fish imitation again.

Trolling is fantastically entertaining, I toss over at Ziz.

:It is the only way I did not go insane: she replies in agreement.

Speaking of idiots, is that... Dadversary? Doing what I think he’s going to do in the very near future?

:Yes:, she says, using all four wings plus her hands to perform a sextuple facepalm.

I grin widely, locking my eyes on him. Well now, this’ll be fun.

Before Legend can respond, and just as he did in the future which is now this moment, Eidolon crashes into me at high speed.

Instead of letting it do anything to me like Ziz was required to, I don't even flinch. All the velocity of the idiot is bled off into other dimensions and I uncaringly glance down at where the nearly completely immobile moron is pushing against me. “Okay I knew you were stupid, Dadversary, but not this stupid.”

There. He wants to attack me anyways even if I'm peaceful right now? I'll bury him in a PR nightmare. He deserves it anyways for what he's done to Ziz and her siblings.

No, punting him to Colorado didn’t count as remotely enough revenge. Maybe a few thousand of those and forcing him to walk back. MAYBE.

Ziz has now pulled up a wide-screen TV to watch the entertainment. I even provide mental popcorn.

Everything is silent. The comms are quiet. The screams of terror and roars of rage from the capes who came to fight me are not present. Legend stares at me, mouth dropped and horrified.

Eidolon stops pushing me and looks up, angry as hell. “DAD?!” he demands.

I scowl down in his direction. “Yeah, as in father,” I almost literally spit at him. I make sure there's a lot of emphasis on the utter distaste for that word applied to him.

He growls, rising away from me given how his pushing is ineffective. “You are a monster,” he fires off, “and certainly not a child of mine.”

Ah. Telepathy is neat to experience. There's the doubt. A faint niggling in the back of his mind. It flows outward from him, obvious to anyone capable of picking up the signal. I use a combination of scanning his thoughts and parsing future paths in a clumsy imitation of the winged pseudo-goddess I have in the copilot seat to determine what exactly would damage him the most. Just a bit further… ah. There it is.

Even leads to paths to free the others. My… siblings.

And isn’t that a weird thought.

The Endbringers are now my siblings.

Huh.

I’m an Endbringer.

:Not Endbringer. Conflict Engine.:

Neat.

Regardless, I put my hasty and clumsy plan into place. Ziz sends the feeling of maternalistic pride to me, like a parent watching their kid accomplish something that really shouldn’t be impressed by, but it’s their kid so the fact they managed to pull it off is what is impressive.

My response back to her is one of simultaneous amusement and a deadpan stare.

The plan almost controls my body with how instinctive following Ziz’s future sight, once a path is selected, happens to be. With her helping me, that is; without her guidance so much would go wrong it’s not even funny.

Okay, it’s actually a little funny.

I incline my head, grin, and even use a light telepathic illusion to make my eyes slightly glow. “Wrong. I, and my siblings, are tests. Weapons. We aren't supposed to attack. We're supposed to be optional. Designed to be bosses in the video game… certain entities have made of your world,” I correct him. My stressing of certain words is supposed to inform him, and according to the future sight will do so, of the fact I know of Cauldron.

The widening of his eyes shows he does indeed know what I'm referring to. Gotta be careful with this future sight thing or I could become completely dependent on it like a certain sky waifu, I think warningly to myself.

Ziz is surprised at my use of the term, looks it up in my Library, and scowls at me in my mind while crossing her arms.

:I am not a wife.:

You are totally a waifu and you know it.

:No! I am not matrimonially bound. I am not even human.:

...Check what waifu means a couple more times.

She does so. The pale cheeks of her mental avatar go beet red.

:I AM NOT A WAIFU!:

Yes you are.

:NO!:

Oooh, yes, you most certainly are. Her Unholyness Of Feathers is the best waifu after Earth herself.

Ziz’s eye twitches and she crosses her arms, pouting.

My mental avatar smirks. Even more of a waifu now.

:I AM NOT. A. WAIFU!:

Lalalalala I caaannn’t heeeaaar yooouuu!

:NOT. WAIFU.:

I turn my attention away from the fuming Ziz, back to the real world, with a final parting shot. Suuure.

Outwardly I slightly nod at Eidolon and continue. “However, your world never reached that stage. We weren't supposed to be deployed. Hell we didn't even exist, except as potential, until your power, one none of your species should ever be given, pulled us into being. And because you needed a challenge, Dadversary, my siblings and I have been literally forced to kill millions of you, forced to attack every three months. I'm free of that control now. My siblings aren't. Now if you're done trying to get out of being the ultimate abusive father, I have things to fix, people to repair, and amends to attempt. Go fuck yourself.”

I turn away from a white faced Eidolon to address the disco ball known as Legend. “Any other stupid questions? Or do you want an all expenses paid trip to Colorado too?”

 

I Am Ziz
Chapter 3
Discussion, Deliberation, Delivery​

I'm sitting in a rather comfortable spinny chair at the head of a conference table in one of the PRT ENE’s many meeting rooms. Hands behind my head, two wings draped lazily over the back of the chair and two more on the arms. I'm bored and looking at the ceiling, waiting for Alexandria to wake up from medical.

How am I, an eight story tall hundred winged pseudo-goddess, fitting inside the PRT building, much less in a chair with only four wings?

In a spinny chair, no less?

Easy. Use atom scale TK to build a smaller body and remote control it via telepathy.

Yeah. That’s easy for my new Ziz powers.

Can I mention yet again just how much they hold back?!

Is it easy for me? HELL NO. But I have Ziz’s future sight to help me out with avoiding Bad Ends of my actions.

Like the several thousand times Brockton Bay was removed from the face of the planet by my atomic tinkering.

Heheh. Wooops.

By the way, the ENE Director's reaction to the sudden appearance of my smaller body when they were fishing Alexandria out of the bay was legendary.

Hey, I kept an air stream going to her from the surface. Can’t let her die from that of all things!

I suddenly remember a random factoid from my meta knowledge. Now of all times.

I’m only supposed to be fifteen feet tall, not eight stories.

I… I don’t really know why that’s not the case. As far as my various Sight abilities can tell Behemoth and Leviathan have changed size too. I’m still the smallest. Leviathan’s about nine stories tall with Behemoth topping the three of us out at a whopping ten.

Maybe it’s ROB messing with me? Nobody on the planet seems to have noticed. I’ve… we’ve… The Endbringers have apparently always been this tall. And necessarily bigger too, given we don’t look like freaks.

Well, I don’t look like a freak. My new brothers still do. Just bigger ones. I kinda also remember that Ziz is supposed to look sort of inhuman? Like, cloudy, unseeing eyes, slightly too long limbs, cold facial expression, white hair, too-white, porcelain skin…

If I looked in a mirror I’d see the spitting image of someone the E88 would pay anything to have as their poster babe.

Curvy and slender at the same time, long light blonde hair, stormy gray eyes. White skin, yes, but normal human pinkish instead of porcelain. A slight natural smirk to my lips at rest.

Yet again, apparently how Ziz has always looked. She’s even confirmed it, that the mental image based on some fanart that I’ve seen I showed her has never been her form.

I may have slipped some of the more waifu-like fanart images into our exchange just to see her cutely pout, but I will deny that if anyone asks.

Someone clears their throat. I abandon my highly interesting review of the ceiling tiles and my thoughts on my own appearance to look straight into the eyes of the one who'd interrupted me.

It's Armsmaster. Great.

He doesn't know the existence of the word tact, much less the meaning of it.

“What.”

“The Simurgh-” he begins.

I cut him off. “Ziz.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Ziz. That's my name,” I inform him. Okay it isn't my name, but I am covering for her now so it is one of my names. “I thought I made that clear when I posted it on PHO.”

Jaws drop.

Nobody says anything for several long, tense seconds.

Dragon finally speaks from out of the room's communications suite. “...You post on PHO?”

I shoot an unrepentant grin at the ceiling. “Yeah, and I'd really appreciate it if you stopped banning me.”

While Dragon doesn't reach the conclusion I wanted her to, the one she does is so much better. “Oh my God you're Void Cowboy,” she whines.

I admit it. That was funny. I laugh out loud. And snort. “Uh, no thanks. That idiotic moron deserves every ban he gets. I'm Winged One,” I correct her.

“Winged One?” Legend asks. “Are you serious?”

“Not if I can help it,” I snark back, grinning.

The silence around the room is almost menacing.

“You've warned us of every time you were going to attack, haven't you?” Dragon eventually asks, dumbfounded.

I shrug and frown. “As much as I was able.”

“And I kept banning you for ‘unfounded speculation’ of an Endbringer attack,” she mutters.

I smile sadly. “I… You all don't have any idea how sorry I am. If I could take back everything I would. I-” I am actually getting a little choked up. Ziz’s emotions swell through me, almost demanding I explain her actions.

I’ll try, I promise her.

The view of the Simurgh crying, as both my bodies are doing, broke the spell. “If what you're saying is true, and you were essentially Mastered by Eidolon,” Director Piggot cuts in, “what now?”

I shrug. “Well, obviously you don't need to worry about me attacking anywhere ever again,” I point out. “Uh, well, anywhere good.”

Piggot grinds her teeth. “And what of your time bombs?”

I furrow my brows in mock confusion. “I don't remember building any temporal bombs…” I trail off as if searching through my memory.

Armsmaster sighs. “We mean the individuals you have manipulated into becoming walking disasters later on.”

I raise my eyebrows with faux surprise. “Oh! Those people in the ‘Containment’ Zones. Yeah, freeing them and reversing the changes was one of the first things I did after gaining control of myself.”

The shocked look on everyone's faces is worth it. “So no need for the domes anymore. Just to be clear,” I reiterate. “Although they’re very impressive work, so you might want to keep them around for other purposes. Like a gigantic swimming pool!”

The looks I get straddle the lines between totally dumbfounded, amused, and 'what is my life right now’.

I wilt see into my chair. “Or, you know, arcologies. That works too."

Piggot narrows her eyes at me. “You could very easily be lying to get us to remove them ourselves, allowing your agents free to destroy the world,” she growls. She’s pointedly ignoring my swimming pool comment even more than the blatant ignorance of the arcology suggestion.

I snort and giggle a little. I can’t help it. Knowing what I know now about Ziz’s… my, powers, that’s fucking hilarious.

Legend's face falls. “What's so funny?” he demands, looking like he has an idea and is dreading that he's right.

“Okay, okay,” I begin, trying to get myself under control. “First of all. If I wanted those people out? Without the absurd degree which I held myself back before, they would be out. Nothing anyone on your planet, nothing even my siblings could do, would stop me.”

I am sort of fibbing here, because Scion could interfere with me, but… well, he’s not really on the planet, now is he?

Technically correct, the best kind of correct.

White faces abound around the table. “What do you mean, holding yourself back?!” Piggot yells.

“I have 300 year absolute precognition, telepathy and telekinesis that function from high orbit without dropping efficiency or power, and the ability to open Quantum Tunnels, or as you would call them, portals, through which my telepathy and telekinesis can propagate.”

Is that fear?

“Infinitely.”

Yep. That is most definitely fear.

Ziz cackles in my mind, almost throwing her popcorn over her head.

“Like I told you, I was holding myself back. In our battles I used my two weakest abilities, that being the Scream, or as I call it Mental Control, and my… tech mastery, for lack of a better term, for offense. Precog and telekinesis were only ever used for defense or on someone who could take the hit. You may have noticed that casualty counts when fighting me were far lower than Leviathan or Behemoth. Every time I killed? That was a directive. Eidolon would think about how odd it was nobody was dying and suddenly I would be directed to send a piece of some building or a car through a cape or some poor civilians. My siblings limit themselves as well. Not as much as me, they don't have quite as dangerous abilities as I do, and they're… well, them, so they actually like to fight... even though they hate killing. Unfortunately they aren't quite as… precise as I am. They are after all the level one bosses...” I trail off, looking between the horrified faces all around me.

The amount of bullshit is too damned high, but none of them know that.

I can even sense Dragon's terror. Interesting… An AI with a soul? How'd that come about?

“Look,” I say, placing both hands on the table and spreading my fingers. “I'm not telling you this to scare you.”

That’s definitely a lie, I’m trying to scare the crap out of them.

It seems to be working rather well.

“I'm trying to be honest and make up for what I was made to do,” I continue, shaking my head. “I told you some of my abilities to show you just how much I was trying to fight back against Eidolon, even as I was forced-” I choke up again and shake my head to clear the tears from my eyes, “-forced to kill, to destroy, to bring your world to the brink of destruction. I hated it. I never used more than a metaphorical ounce of my total power in the hopes I could give you a fighting chance. Maybe-” I choke up again, tears freely flowing from my eyes. I abruptly stand up, turn around, and float over to the window. It overlooks the bay, so I can watch my real body, try to calm down my raging emotions.

“Maybe what?” Dragon asks gently.

“Maybe even let you kill me, somehow, to spare me the suffering of my life,” I sob. My emotions are apparently not only connected to Ziz’s, they are the same. My words may have been largely bullshit, but the intentions behind them...

Even if my mind is different, I still have what amounts to a tortured teenage girl’s emotions underneath.

Shit. This is gonna be a problem.

:Sorry:, Ziz says.

The silence outside and inside my mind is telling.
​

---

“She's suicidal!” Piggot declares once I leave the room.

Dragon is quiet for several moments. Everyone else just nods. “Wouldn't you be?” she finally asks. “Mastered your whole life? Forced to attack, ruin and kill millions of people?”

A little subconscious anger there much, Dragon?

“She's not human, though,” Armsmaster points out. “We have no idea of her moral code.”

“She seemed pretty human to me,” Assault chips in.

“Traumatized teenager, maybe young adult,” Miss Militia agrees.

Piggot sighs and collapses into her chair. “Yes. That was apparent to me too,” she admits.

Legend scowls. “So what? We excuse everything she's done? The people she's killed? What about all the capes, our friends and family, that died fighting her?”

“If she's telling the truth, all of that is the fault of Eidolon,” Aegis states flatly. He is glaring at Legend like he is something he scraped off his boot.

Legend opens his mouth to rebuke him, finds no fuel against Aegis’ excellent point, and sighs. “God, if she's right…”

Piggot clears her throat. “For the moment let's take her at her word. This situation is already so far outside our comfort zone, so unexpected, the only explanation that does fit is hers,” she declares.

“Nobody's a little worried that's the case?” Battery points out. “That the only explanation is the Endbringer’s?”

Piggot slams her hands down on the table, wincing as her pain centers relay how unhappy they are with her actions. “It does strike me as very convenient. However, it all fits, and if it's true, we are going to have a shitstorm descend upon us. As much as I want to dismiss her, she broke her pattern, came to us, never fought back, and moreover if she's telling the truth about her abilities, there's nothing else we can do but listen to her!” she rants. “God! She's probably aware of this entire conversation anyways!”

Everyone goes silent at that. My remote body's breath bitches. Several heads turn to look at my real body out on the water.

I slowly turn it and grimace at them. “To be fair, I have both telepathy and precognition. It's incredibly hard to ignore being talked about with one, much less both,” my voice booms across the Bay.

Piggot collapses into her chair and throws her hands up. “I rest my case.”

I wince with both bodies. The guards around my human size one watch me for any sudden moves. I just shake my head at them. “Sorry,” my real body says sheepishly.
​

---

“Eidolon,” I curtly address the hooded ‘Hero’.

We're in the depths of the oil rig the Protectorate uses as a base. My body is standing outside, watching for any signs of my, or Ziz’s, siblings. Leviathan is slated to attack Brockton Bay soon after all.

If I can't free him before then, I will have to fight him.

Maybe even kill him.

Ziz hates it just as much as I, but I will not sacrifice the hundreds of thousands of human lives in Brockton Bay to save our brother.

He opens his mouth to reply, thinks better of it, and closes it again. My accusations have really shaken him. “Is it true?” is all he asks.

I nod slowly, never letting my eyes leave his. “Every word.”

He closes his eyes and brings his hands to his face. “I'm… I'm so sorry,” he murmurs.

I huff. “Apology not accepted. I can't free my siblings from you. And what you've done to us, made us do, is… It's frakking unforgivable.”

“What do you expect me to do?!” he abruptly yells.

“Spend the rest of your definitely incredibly long life making up for it? Work with me to free Levi, Beth, and my other 17 siblings who sleep?” I ask rhetorically.

Eidolon's jaw drops. Utter silence meets my ears.

“Seven… seventeen?!” Alexandria yells.

I snort. “You didn't really think I was the last one, did you?” I turn to the rest of the people in the holding cell.

At least three of them vapidly nod.

I sigh, then smile sadly. Time to hammer it home just how screwed they were before I showed up. Let's see here… need a name… ah, yes, thank you, Kirk!

“Khan was set to come online within three years. He's a temporal manipulator,” I explain. “Much like the Parahuman you called ‘Grey Boy’, only… about my own power level.”

More fear? Come the frak on.​