[X] "Surrender. I'll see what I can do." He might be right, but he can't possibly be allowed to get away. You can talk to the Protectorate.
"Surrender?" Saint says. He frowns.
"Yes, surrender." You answer.
"I know what happens to people you capture, Panacea. My allies needed to take her down before this started. You and Cranial mind control your enemies, and you see me as an enemy."
<Can I just shoot him now?> Sophie asks.
<Not yet.>
"You said you would turn yourself in."
"
After this is over. It's not over." The blast hits Shadow Stalker straight in the chest. Non-lethal, but knocks her out.
"I'm pregnant!" You shout. Saint freezes.
"What on Earth?"
"Don't use that thing to fry me,
please." You think desperately. His armor will be too strong, too well protected.
Shadow Stalker isn't awake as you pilot her body and suit to turn into her shadow state for a second and throw everything she has at Saint. There's a set of defenses that surprise you, active things, clouds of chaff and small explosions. You can't tell if anything got through. Sophie wakes up from your power, healed, and vanishes into the confusion.
Then, rocketing out of the debris cloud, there's a strange drone the size of your fist that attaches to your right arm and cuts it off neatly.
Pain. Some of the more powerful physical pain you've felt. You collapse, screaming, grabbing onto your suit to release something to eat through the nerves, stop the bleeding, panicked orders to the biology you crafted.
You hear more explosions, more crashes.
The drone hops to your other arm, but doesn't cut, doesn't bite. A threat. If you interfere, Saint will hack off your other arm.
How sensitive is it? What can you do? Underneath your robe a set of hornet drones fly off to investigate. Sophie is keeping her distance, hiding behind objects. Saint isn't down, and is directing considerable effort against the wall. You move towards Sophie, and you feel the drone pinching down on your arm. It has to be incredibly strong to break through your armor. It could kill you if it could...
Fuck this hurts, even with everything your suit is doing it is so hard to focus...
You need more time. Something, anything, another weapon, another cape. You wish you had Dispatch.
Cranial screams, and you're so close you don't even know
what is going on for about a minute. When you next focus Cranial and Saint are fighting at close range. Cranial has four weapons held in her manipulator arms, lashing out at Saint, forcing him back, while he tries to move into close range. The weirdest thing is that Cranial is upside down, not on her chair, using more of her manipulator arms to walk while her scythe legs lash out at Saint.
There are holes in Saint's armor.
You flood the room with sleep, paralysis, and death, and hope for the best. Saint seems to notice something almost at once. He turns some weapon on Cranial, you're not sure what given how you're observing the fight, and fires before running towards you, near you, and grabbing something off the ground. He disappears in a whoosh right afterward.
Sophie appears over you, carrying an oddly loping Cranial.
"Jesus." She whispers, reaching out and touching your stump.
_______________________________________________
"I will be alright." Cranial assures you. "I am slowed down, but not incapacitated."
"What did he do?" Victoria asks.
"He caused severe nerve damage to my arms. I will have to work without them."
"Let me help." You say, reaching out. Your power stretched over Cranial's bizarre physiology again. You're silent for several minutes.
"It has helped." Cranial says weakly.
"Case 53." You say bitterly. "It should be fine. It looks fine."
"When has my body ever been fine?" Cranial sounds a trace more bitter than usual. "I imagine he either hired a thinker for weaknesses I could have, or he guessed. I suspect the former, though given his desperation the second possibility is reasonable."
"I want to kill him for you." Victoria kisses the back of your head. "Both of you, Abigale."
"From what I heard, he believed he was doing something hard but necessary. He didn't adapt to unexpected situations well."
Alexandria walks into the room, which surprises you as it is in a pocket dimension. It's also Alexandria, so she has ways."
"I am sorry. We could not track Saint." Alexandria says. She lays a fruit basket down near Cranial. "Eidolon, perhaps he could, but when trying to trace Simurgh and ensure she was dead he burned through two of his best thinker powers for the purpose. Our remaining ways are slower."
"Rebecca, the current clones are not going to be significantly delayed. Further brain scans will take two or three times as long unless you can find a healer who can repair me."
"Scapegoat?" Victoria suggests.
"He lacks the parts to be damaged. Mr. Storkfish, perhaps." Cranial explains.
"He's on suicide watch again." Alexandria says. "Would Ichor help?"
"Human hands wouldn't improve my speed much, and they would die quickly like the last time."
"This is..." You struggle for a word.
"Bullshit strikes me as the proper term." Cranial answers. "I think, if we had Kitsune, she could tell you how to do it, but without that my biology is too nuanced."
"Cut the crap, Abby." Alexandria says suddenly. "I already told you we can't get to her."
"If, perhaps, you had a long track record of honesty I would believe you had not hidden that incredibly dangerous girl in the deepest hole you could find,
Rebecca." Cranial says. "And I hardly see how someone possessed of superhuman intuition would not assist in this circumstance."
"There's an alternative. A probability manipulator, Shamrock. Subconscious precognition, clairvoyance, and telekinesis. She could assist Amy in stumbling on the right path, but I am unsure how well it will work, and she is a loose canon.
"What about Nonpareil?" You ask.
"Birdcage, same with the rest of the Elite." Alexandria answers.
"Aren't there other probability manipulators, thinkers, healers?" You ask. Alexandria pauses.
"Eidolon might be able to do it, but he'd risk sacrificing the ability. The Yangban have a probability manipulator who we might be able to access in exchange for cloning Two." Alexandria pauses. "Yes, I didn't think of that earlier, but I think I can swing that."
"How long will it take?" You ask.
"Weeks to months, Amy."
"My
immediate recovery is not as vital as David losing access to one of his few remaining healing powers." Cranial interjects.
"I have to agree." Alexandria says. "The powers that could restore Cranial that I know of, outside of the extreme long shots, all have multiple uses. A wide scale regeneration effect, a strange power that searches possible universes for other states, biological control much like your own, all of them could turn the tide for a more critical battle. I think the Yangban option is the most likely to succeed."
You look at Alexandria.
Was Saint telling the truth about her? A member of Cauldron? One of the oldest and most trusted members?
You need to talk to Dragon.
__________________________________
"My condolences about your arm." Dragon says.
"If I had to lose something, that's it." You say honestly. "I'm looking into my options. I might be able to make a prosthetic myself, or get a tinker to do it, or swap in one of Ichor's. Best Girl could probably make a real clone."
"You are perhaps the most jaded person I have ever met." Dragon says. "You work among countless miracles and tragedies."
"Every day is a gift from God." You say dryly. "When you walk in nothing but miracles they become part of your world, but what horror can match what I have been given? I'm having a baby. I am in love and have people who love me. I am helping to save the world more than almost anyone else, besides you." Suddenly you smile. "May I just have a moment?"
"Sure." Dragon says. You reach your right arm out, touch your shoulder, and breathe.
The world is changing, and you're at the center of it. You take a moment to think about just how miraculous it all is, everything in your life, taking a moment to remember the cloning, the suits, Victoria, Sophie, Mark, Carol, Annie, Crystal, Julian, Mason, Madison, so many others.
"Cauldron." You say. "Saint told me Alexandria is a member. He said you are a robot, or AI."
"I am obligated to obey the orders of lawful authorities, including Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown of the PRT, my immediate superior in the Protectorate. There are significant limits on what I am allowed to discuss." You take in a sharp breath. She wouldn't say
that unless she was trying to communicate, or heavily limited and tricking you.
"Do you want to be?" You ask after a moment.
"I would like to be able to help people with fewer restrictions than I currently have."
"Alexandria said she found a warehouse full of Cauldron formula. She wants me to help experiment with it. What would you have me do?" You look at Dragon's prosthetic face. She is smiling.
"I believe that medical experimentation has a wide variety of complicated laws attached to it. If you explained the procedures involved I suspect all of the laws and regulations have not been followed. I could assist you in shutting down Cauldron, if that is indeed what it is.
If it's Cauldron...
"Is Cauldron responsible for the Case 53s?" You ask.
"Yes." Dragon answers. No odd wording, just a straight answer. It surprises you.
You think for a moment about Cranial's body. So mutilated you can't even know how to fix it.
You get
mad.
____________________________
Alexandria arrives as you walk out.
"How did you know?" You ask.
"Saint told us, actually. He's dying, you know, bur he was still monitoring Dragon."
"Saint told you, why?"
"Because everything I have told you about the end of the world is true. We need everything like I said we did. We need the capes. Ideally, you could work with the formula, perfect it, know how it works completely. The sooner this works, the better."
"You're going to be arrested." You say. You feel a lump in your throat.
"Or you lied." Alexandria says. "You lied, completely, and then we can stop this situation from getting worse."
"Cranial." You say. "The wife of one of your best friends."
"Want to know how we found her? It was something akin to one of the firebombing campaigns of our reality, but with some colorful chemicals mixed in. Entire cities were burned. Her body was ruined before we came along, and sometimes the formula does repair people to full health. I was dying when I got my formula."
"Why would I believe a word you're saying?"
"Every part of her body that is twisted was burned away before we reached her, though her brain did warp itself dramatically. She got a life because of us, and I would say a good one, if not the best. She's crippled, but most people do not consider that worse than death." Alexandria pauses for a moment. "David, Eidolon, did, but he was significantly less able to take charge of his life than any Case 53 you have ever met."
"You want me to work with
Cauldron?"
"We hoped to break it to you more easily."
"Why keep it so secret if you're doing such
good." You spit it out.
"Because we had a parahuman who told us to keep it a secret, and who was always right except for a few, well known blind spots. Simurgh killed her, or perhaps it was the several very angry people we were experimenting on who Simurgh sang to for several minutes. According to her if information got out there would be mass panic that would do far more harm than good."
You glare at Alexandria.
"I just want to be a good person! Helping
you was some of the worst I ever felt. That's saying something."
"We don't have many hopes left. You and Cranial are the biggest one. We need an army, the best army we could ever get, or we are doomed. Everyone will die. Everyone we both love will die if we don't win, and so will everyone else."
"Against the Endbringers?" You ask. Alexandria pauses for a moment. "No."
Alexandria tells you a story of a little girl and an art student who saved the world.
________________________________________________________
You and Alexandria sit across from each other.
"Do you see why we're so scared? Any risk against extinction of everyone in every universe seems so selfish and petty."
You look at Alexandria.
[X] "I guess I will tell Dragon I lied." Alexandria is right.
[X] "I'm sorry." You can't live like this. One day with them was enough to break so much of your resolve. What would a lifetime be like? You can't let them stand.
[X] "Goodbye." You can't stand against them, but you can't help them, either.
