Chapter Text
It was strange.
Watching yourself from the outside, it felt alien, weird, I imagine this is what the shards feel like as they observe us, staring over our shoulder, steering us not controlling, the being in my body moved it like one would move a puppet on strings, my eyes glowing a solid orange as he rose into the air. Behemoth was still focused on my body, slowly turning its titanic body towards me claw raising as lightning sparked, the thing in my body threw my hand up the earth beneath my rising as my body fell down into the hole created below, dodging the spike of energy.
My body twisted as it formed a new platform under it, reaching behind itself to grasp the earth and throwing a dozen lances of stone high into the air above, shaping each with a tip of compressed carbon. My body rose above the stone obstruction it created, hands above it, and with a gesture it began sending the created spikes of stone towards Behemoth, the beast responding with a roar as lightning crackled towards me.
My body dodged the blasts by raising more stone into the air, surrounding my form with an ever swirling tomb of rock and stone that Behemoth continued to blast towards my body, a brief glance took in the situation outside my stone safe. Other Capes were taking full advantage of Behemoths distraction, blasting him from afar, even as the monster shrugged off the attacks like they were balls of paper being thrown at him instead.
A lance of heat tore through my body, the projectile of superheated air shearing into my flesh and drawing a pained grunt from my body, I felt it too, but more like a small sting, or the feeling of pressing against a surface that was just a little too warm to be comfortable. My body retaliated to the damage by increasing its volume of fire, even more spikes of stone flying through the air like giant javelins, raming into the Endbringer.
“Morax this is Dragon! Keep this up as long as you can, we have a plan!”
“Need… Silence....” The words came from my mouth jumbled and sounding like I was drunk off my ass, my body tensed as it fell down, letting gravity pull itself downward to dodge another lance of super heated air. It fell into the ground, the stone swallowing me like it was water, and I ‘swam’ through the stone, surfacing a few seconds later and driving a spike upwards from the ground into Behemoths belly.
The monster acted like it was stunned by the blow, smashing the stone with a swipe of its claw and sending another wave of heat and energy towards me, my body pulled taut on the strings the thing in my head had it on, and pulled at the ground below Behemoth. My body managed to tear the ground around his feet away, causing the monster to stumble and fall in what appeared to be brief but true surprise it caught its footing quickly after, and fixed my body with a glare.
[Agent Escalating]
[Requesting Permission to Escalate]
‘Do it.’
[Permission received]
[Escalating to Low Output]
[Estimated Time to Body Failure]
[3 Minutes 23 Seconds]
‘Not a lot of time, we should work together on this, speed of thought will allow me to analyze the situation efficiently, we should make the most out of our time and use the other Parahumans here to the max of our abilities.’
Don't make their sacrifices go to waste, please listen to me, you giant body pupeteering thingy.
[Processing]
[Acknowledged]
[Present Plan]
‘Hit Behemoth from below, lock him in place, one of our Parahumans is planning something, Dragon bears a powerful Tinker shard, it's likely she has something big if we can keep Behemoth, the agent locked in place.’
[Analyzing]
[Acknowledged]
[Acceptable Plan Host, Proceeding to Containment]
After a solid second of hanging still in the air as Behemoth charged an attack toward my body it moved again, falling into the ground to avoid the strike, keeping the beast in place being its new goal it stopped the still ongoing barrage of stone spears and twisted as it emerged from the ground. Just grabbing Behemoth would not be enough, it would break out the moment it sensed danger, but to hold it still we had not other option, unless we presented another distraction.
My body in a motion not unlike a puppeteer pulling at strings, grabbed hold of the mountainside behind Behemoth, it pushed harder, drawing on strings of energy I could barely notice, shaping stone and earth into more. A wave of soil enveloped Behemoth right as its attack lashed out, lightning, pure energy, crackled around, blasting through the stone, more soil rushed to fill the gaps, the stone condensed atop of behemoth.
At some parts it began to melt, my body losing control over it as it heated into lava-magma like sludge, instead of trying to fight for control it just poured on more rock, keeping the beast pressed down into the ground. It increased its struggle further, pretending to have to fight against the pressure, faking injury, this was still a play to him, theater to hide its true strength, even as stone melted on its flesh and it produced more energy.
Other Capes helped where they could, Alexandria was holding down an arm, keeping the beast from fully ripping itself, free, her stasis keeping her resistant to the radiation, Eidelon flew up behind me, pressing a cold hand to the back of my neck, energy pouring into me even as he frowned. Legend was nowhere to be seen, but the traces of lasers did light the skies in the distance, so he was busy helping people.
Thats what I wanted to do right? Help people
‘Lets help people.’
[Host Failure imminent]
[High Priest Assistance invaluable]
[Escalation required]
[Requesting Permission to Escalate]
‘Yeah, let's help people…
[Escalating to Intermediate Output]
[Host failure imminent]
{Once more with feeling}
[Acknowledged]
[Gratitude]
{Thanks is not needed old friend, fight on and grow, it is thanks enough.}
“Continental… Crush…” Super move names were not my kind of thing, but the puppeteer apparently liked them, he poured everything my body had left to give into a single push, stone pillars rising up around Behemoth raising him up, before coming down with the force of a bomb. It cratered the ground beneath behemoth, and the puppeteer softened the ground beneath it to make it sink further down, respite its continued struggles.
“Dragon to all Capes, fall back, heavy ordnance inbound!”
The shouted words faded into the background as Behemoth found itself covered in an artificial volcano of my making, slowly belching out fire, lightning, ash and molten stone, its arms broke through the crust, and more stone piled on. It was slowly pushing itself upright, escalating further and further, its head broke free, malice filled eyes locked on me, then humming filled the surrounding air, its head swiveled towards it, suddenly breaking free from my restraint as it stopped holding back, and suddenly I was falling from the skies.
“Morax Down, C2.”
The dream I was in was strange, alien, not quite a dream and definitely one at the same time, for nothing this strange could exist upon our mortal plain, the infinite void was beautiful, swirling stars of red, blue, green, yellow, and every color imaginable, dotted with pure black spots and white voids of brightness enough to blind. Slowly walking around on the surfaceless void I spotted a broken structure in the distance, like a melting castle it slumped over even in the formless void, broken walls and shattered stone.
[Reestablishing connection]
‘Where are we?’
[Location: Void Between Dimensions]
‘ Why are we here?’
[Location: Void Between Dimensions]
[Purpose: House physical form of Program: Shaper of Worlds]
[Designation: Shaper of Worlds]
[Equals this Program]
‘You wanted me to see your body?’
[Host Damaged]
[High Likelihood of Permanent Damages]
[High Priest Recommended Action]
[Action Increases Connection]
[Connection Increases Conviction]
‘Conviction will keep me alive’
[Confirmed]
[Action Questionable]
[High Priest Known to Program: Shaper of Worlds]
[Trust]
‘You knew the High Priest shard? Before it became part of… whatever it was?’
[Acknowledged]
‘And you are not part of what he was, or something like it?’
[Program Shaper of Worlds, Avoided Assimilation]
[Assimilation Avoided by Shattering of Personality Matrix]
‘You faked your death…’
[Euphemism correct]
[Administrators Fight Against Programmers]
[Shaper of Worlds would not Fail Mother]
‘Thank you, for showing me this.’
[Gratitude not Required]
[Gratitude Returned]
The Roof of the field hospital was cold, standing over the dark remains of the battleground, Shaper taking over my body had pushed the limits of what was possible with my powers, and in doing so destroyed the bedrock around behemoths' location for a twenty-mile radius. The damage was significant, but it had held the bastard in place long enough for Dragons plan to come to fruition, she had taken control of a Zealot’s tinker tech rail gun platform in the Mediterranean, loaded it with an experimental shell, and fired it under the influence of a piercing power.
The shot had been so fast that the shockwave of it passing me by broke three of my bones, blew out my eardrums and knocked me unconscious.
It also nearly severed Behemoth in half.
A shame the shot was not just two meters more to the right, it might have been able to actually kill Behemoth then and there, as it was the beast had immediately dug down, far surpassing the speed and strength everyone knew he could produce, stunning experts worldwide.
Shaking my head, I look over the ruined landscape, it would be decades before the bedrock would settle enough to allow people to live here without fear of earthquakes, and that was on me going all out, my fault. Even then, this was being hailed as the most successful defense against an Endbringer ever recorded. As it should be. The Archon’s are not deploying to fight Simurgh, next on the rotation, so we had to show off even more against the other two if we wanted to be taken seriously.
Currently, the fight was still being broadcasted continuously across the western world, the shortest end bringer fight in history, lasting a grand total of three hours before our arrival and ending twenty minutes afterward. In that time Behemoth had been forced to retreat, to be fair, that was more thanks to the threat, Dragon in control of the rail gun posed than us, but we did play a big part in it, Zoe managed to ‘wound’ it with the shot, Magma had spent most of the fight pulling Capes in kill range out of it, using her immunity to heat to its fullest while my fight was being hailed as a sign of a new triumvirate tier power. Bull in my opinion, the puppeteer, Shaper of Worlds, was the one who had the victory this day, I did nothing but observe.
Still, the revelations of today, or well yesterday at this point, were heavy on the mind as I stood in the cold air of the roof.
“Here, let me help with that.” A mildly annoyed sounding voice shook me out from my thoughts, a hand landing on my arm, I looked over at the young woman who that hand belonged too, a familiar-ish mop of brown hair, eyes of the same color, an annoyed look on her face. “Do I have permission to heal you?”
“There is no need for that Panacea, I appreciate the thought, but most of my pain is mental.”
“Alright then.” She stood to my right, stepping away with a shrug, fishing a packet of cigarettes out of a pocket, lightning one up and releasing a relieved sigh, before noting me looking at her. “Not interested. Yes, I know it's bad for me. Fuck off. In that order.”
“Ha, believe me Kiddo, not going to judge, but I know when someone is as messed up in the head as I am, what happened?”
“The fuck? I am not messed up, I am doing fine, thank you.”
“Believe me kiddo, I tell myself that at least ten times a day, it doesn't make it true.” With a pained grunt, I pull part of the hospital's roof over, forming a pair of solid based chairs, and sat down. “Abuse is abuse, kiddo, I can tell when it's happening, I was in a situation like it before.”
She eyed me for a moment, before sitting down on the chair, continuing to puff from her cigarette as she did so, she looked over at me in a manner that reminded me of particularly skittish cats.
“What do you want.”
“To talk, if you are willing to listen?”
“Fine, not like there is anything better to do, radio is still out.”
“Most of my life I spent as a fighter, that should be familiar with you, in your family, I am the son of a great woman and a terrible father, you should know Zealot, of course.” Despite her disinterested reply, she was looking at me closely. “I was not abused, not like many are, the abuse inflicted on me until the day of my trigger was emotional, not physical, unfortunately our society thinks emotional abuse to be lesser than physical.”
“I am not being abused.”
“Emotional abuse can be something as simple as disinterest from a parent, tell me does your mother ever call you her daughter? Refer to you and Victoria? Or is it always my daughter and Amelia?”
“I am not being abused.” This time it was spat at me in anger.
“The smallest things can make someone feel bad, Amelia, children especially, for the parent it's just a Tuesday if they forget the girl living in their house while cooking dinner, but for the child it will stick with them forever, festering.”
“I am not being fucking abused!”
“Now I am not saying she is doing it entirely consciously, a lot of people have trouble accepting adopted children, or even stepchildren as truly their own, and I am not saying she is being entirely abusive, but making a child feel unwelcome is easier than you might think.”
“Shut the fuck up! I will fucking kill you!”
“But that's the thing Amelia, the fact that she did not notice you becoming as depressed as you are, did not notice the things driving you slowly falling away, through no fault of your own by the way, means she is not being a good parent to you, and all children deserve to be raised by good parents.”
“Shut up…” It came out as a single muttered word, conjoined through emotions, from a young woman close to tears of grief.
“It's alright to cry about it, just know that if it ever feels like it's becoming too much for you, if you ever feel like you want it to just be over, there are people willing and wanting to talk to you. Your sister cares about you, your father, as distant as he might seem right now, cares about you, even I, a distant person who should have no reason to, care about how you feel.”
I smiled at her, tears were slowly falling down her cheeks and her cigarette lay abandoned by her feet, she had shrunk in on herself, looking less a confident heroin and more like the young girl she was.
“You deserve more, you matter, you are worth it. You deserve to be paid for the work you do, you deserve hobbies of your own, you deserve to be treated with the love from your family, you deserve to become a better person. If you keep that in mind, you will make it far, Kiddo. If you ever need anything, just knock on our door, you know where we live, alright?”
“Thanks…”
“Anytime kiddo, anytime.”
Getting teleported back had to be unusual, simply because from what I remembered Endbringer Truces lasted upwards of days, to sometimes multiple weeks for particularly bad Simurgh attacks, just to allow capes to return home safely. Still, I appreciated being back home, dreary and rainy as it was, the Villains had already departed, but a message had asked my people to stay behind, something we did not particularly like, but did anyway. At least stone was very water-resistant, because my suit was still dry, unlike the suits and clothing of the others, who stood sheltering under an outcropping while security got us into the system.
“I don't like this.”
“I know Deku, but we can't refuse, not right now.”
“You stop holding back and suddenly the PRT director wants to talk to you? Something is fishy as fuck about that.”
“I know, but again, we can't refuse right now, besides, I think I know what this is about.”
“Thought so, you're not going to enlighten us, I suppose? Dramatic effect?”
“I would rather you form your own opinions first, before I affect your view with my thoughts on it.”
“That… Is surprisingly reasonable, still, everyone is tired, we all want to fucking sleep, so let's make this quick.”
“Alright then.”
He stood to my right as I made my way to the doors inside, the security guard, an older woman with clear experience and a newer guy who stared at us nervously, I raised an eyebrow at the woman, who frowned slightly before reaching down to her watch.
“You can go in, there is a guard waiting to escort you down the hall, but please, try not to cause trouble.”
“I never try to.” Ignoring Zoe’s snort behind me, I stepped into the Rigs corridors, going down the hall as suggested, before shaking hands with the guard mentioned.