6.0 Rubicon
13th of May, 2011
I close my human eye and take a deep breath, minutely relaxing as Ether's comfortingly familiar heaviness fills my lungs, and starts thinking fast, really fast courtesy of the Coral now lining my grey matter.
'Theia,' I mentally address my brain roomie, bringing a halt to her – legitimate – list of grievances with my selfish ass, 'I know you're upset with me, and I swear I'll make amends later, but I need you to do something for me.'
A potent feeling of petulant indignation gets sent my way, before she seemingly registers how dead serious I sound.
{...What is it, Jacky?} the Coraline Shard ends up asking after what feels like a couple seconds to me, but probably didn't take a hundredth of one.
'I need you to keep the data about Inversion technology and the Solution for yourself for the time being,' I reply, before quickly adding before she can argue back as I can already feel her indignation rising, 'It's a matter of life or death, Theia. I'd explain to you why right now if I could, but the other Hosts are going to keep me busy for a while and I want to properly take the time to explain things to you. I know I haven't been a good partner to you with my latest stunt, but I need you to trust me on this. This is important, bigger than the both of us even.'
The Coraline Shard falls silent for a moment as she ponders my words, before doing something oh so very human.
She sighs.
{...Alright, Jacky. But you have to tell me why later, you [Hear]?!} I get the mental impression of a glare for my trouble, and can't help but feel my lips slowly curling into a weak grin.
'Always was the plan,' I answer back.
{I'll hold you to that,} she sniffs, {Go talk with the other Hosts or some–} she suddenly pauses.
And I witness something that leaves me both mentally speechless and a little frightened.
{What do you think you're trying to do to MY [Host]?!}
Theia, sweet, always happy, puppy-like Theia, gets angry.
***
Chevalier must've been having a stroke. Has to be.
Either that, or the most vivid nightmare he ever had – one that apparently every other cape having answered the call to mobilize against the S current rank threat shared, if the way they all looked like they've seen their own death and barely escaped was any indication – had left him more off his game than he already suspected.
Jaws thrice his one width, clamping down around his midriff from underneath his feet; too-sharp, too-long teeth tearing through his armor, sinking through his flesh and organs, before the jaws' cackling, scaled owner–
He swallows thickly, ignoring the shiver running down his spine as he tightens his grip around the handle of his weapon.
Like any other cape currently present, he looks toward the tween Tinker – who just possibly made the most inappropriate comment he's ever heard right in front of the Triumvirate – and he hopes for some kind of explanation, an answer, something he can wrap his head around.
Only, he must be having a stroke or something, because the cape's shadow is the most bizarre he has ever laid his eyes upon with his power's help.
Instead of the expected titanic, eldritch giant towering over the grey skinned girl's back, is something entirely different. A humanoid, vaguely feminine figure – on account of its proportion – assembled of broken reddish-grey crystals, bright scarlet mote of something flowing through its cracks and lazily swirling around 'her'; all in all, it isn't so out-there for what he sees on a daily basis when taking a peek at the things shadowing parahumans.
What sets it truly apart though, are its size, roughly on par with the Tinker's own, and its face. Half of it on the left side is made of entirely too many optics, bringing to his mind what he saw when looking at the Nightflyer earlier in the day; but the rest of it is entirely too human-like for him to really believe what his power is telling him.
Concern and anger are written all over the shadow's face, as if it is personally expressing, in excruciating details, how annoyed it exactly is with its parahuman, as if the Tinker herself is able to listen, even if the grey skinned girl still looking at her mutated arm gives no indication that this is the case; then the unknown cape closes her human eye, and her shadow stills for a beat, before her expression turns suddenly murderous as she looks away from the girl, grows the size of an entire skyscraper in the blink of an eye, and proceed to give something he cannot see the beatdown of a lifetime!
[FUCK OFF!]
It ends as soon as it starts, with a wordless scream from the now titanic humanoid shadow, a scream that sends all capes but Alexandria reeling. Then the shadow promptly shrinks back to a size roughly equal to its parahuman to better hang off her back, its arms snaking around her neck, still giving the full might of a petulant and outraged glare at something in the distance.
He must be having a stroke and hallucinating everything he just saw. That's the only thing that makes sense.
"Apologies," the grey skinned Tinker of course chooses this moment to snap out of whatever contemplation she had.
Chevalier stares – and he is probably not the only one – as some kind of green-tinged lightshow sweeps over her body and fixes whatever damages her armor recently took, hiding her partial nakedness and mutated arm from the world once more, although leaving her face bare even as a thick, upside down triangular lock of vibrant red hair comes loose from her hairdo in the exact way needed to hide her eerie, golden eye prosthetic.
"I was lost in my own thoughts. I believe you had some questions?" the tween asks calmly.
A pause, then all the capes present explode with said questions.
But not Chevalier, no; he's too busy trying to wrap his head around what he just saw, and what he's going to tell Costa-Brown about it later when she inevitably comes asking.
***
Rebecca was going to strangle the very life out of Contessa the next time she saw her, this she swears.
Call it a hunch, but she's pretty sure that the Thinker could've averted this entire clusterfuck yet didn't, and if she didn't have a very good explanation as to why she let this shitshow occur without at least giving the rest of Cauldron a heads up, the two of them were going to have words.
She stands front and center amid what's currently present of the S rank threat response team, flanked on each side by Eidolon and Legend, hovering above the ashes and dust of what used to be a quiet American town until today. She's the only one who didn't flinch when whatever sent everyone else reeling happened a few seconds ago. Not because she didn't feel the white-hot stab of pain going through her skull, no, it is merely a consequence of having perfected the total and absolute control she has over her own body over the course of two decades.
Her power is handy like that.
Where her power isn't handy apparently, is when her eidetic memory keeps insisting that every person present should either be dead or fighting for their life, trapped inside the single most absurdly powerful and intimidating Shaker/Trump effect she'd ever had the displeasure to encounter over the course of her career; and as the most powerful flying Brute in the world, she's Seen Some Shit.
Somehow, somewhat, the very vivid recollection of fighting against an overjoyed, constantly moaning succubus lookalike, the encounter culminating in Rebecca getting gored through by tentacle-shaped hair like her power didn't even matter as soon as her opponent got bored, still manages to take the cake.
A slightly hysterical part of her remarks that she's apparently fated to get humbled by overpowered nudists of all things; first the Siberian, now whoever the fuck this was.
The others, Eidolon included – somehow, Legend didn't get affected, possibly because he didn't get trapped inside the Shaker/Trump phenomenon like them – could lie to themselves all they want; she is certain that this is neither a particularly vivid shared nightmare or a large-scale Master effect.
She doesn't know what this was, but the girl in front of her does, she's sure of it.
Even if one of the Brockton Bay Wards hadn't outed her prior to everyone else blacking out due to what could only be some manner of trigger event – another interrogation to add to the tally – Rebecca would've recognized Jacqueline Barnes. She had read Contessa's file and saw a picture of what she looked like prior to the entire gamut of self-modification the girl apparently subjected herself to without anyone being the wiser, and her face, although now noticeably greyer and paler, was exactly the same as before, down to the rather uncommon hairdo.
Jacqueline Barnes, aka. Nightflyer/Ser Callidus; according to Contessa, someone who would be able to really contribute in the final fight bar being just another body thrown into the meat grinder. Somehow, between the last time Rebecca saw her holding the Butcher at bay while she was busy taking care of the swarm of fliers Echidna had spawned herself, the girl had managed to find the time to craft herself an entirely new set of power armor.
She had another, more recent, recollection of the same girl bulldozing through the same horde of hellspawns – she calls it how she sees it – with the help of varied and extremely potent Shaker effects, despite her opponents ripping through civilians and capes alike with ease and voracity seconds prior; and all of that after she somehow managed to break through the Shaker/Trump phenomenon's boundary when everything Eidolon tried did less than nothing. Even calling for a Door hadn't worked. She doesn't recall seeing much of Nightflyer's bloodbath – the succubus had kept her rather distracted – but what little she saw certainly changed how she was going to approach the upcoming conversation.
Like it or not, the girl standing in front of her was the key to start deciphering this situation, and not only because she had been at the epicenter of the day's latest nonsense.
And right about now, Rebecca kind of wanted to slap her past self across the face for thinking that she'd be able to pressgang the tween Tinker without too many issues; now that she's seen what she could do when properly motivated, her hackles were very raised at the idea of forcing a confrontation. A sentiment that wasn't helped by the fact that, again, the girl apparently found the time to swap her loadout around since the last time Rebecca 'saw' her, and she didn't have the beginning of a clue about her new, slick-looking, scarlet-threaded, shiny white power armor's capabilities. She could hazard a guess that the wing-like extensions at her back hid some kind of weapon system and granted her flight capabilities, since it was the case for its predecessor, but that was about the extent of her insight.
Her career had taught her that confronting a Tinker was always a toss up, and she definitely didn't have the advantage on intelligence she usually enjoyed.
It worried her. After all, the succubus-lookalike had dismissed her, Alexandria, to come pick a fight with the girl calmly looking back at her as questions and accusations start getting flung her way. 'More than meets the eyes' can't even begin to describe the slip of a girl whose current body-language clearly indicates that she had given her the initiative, and that she knew that she knew.
But beyond all of that, beyond her potential lethality and her seemingly relaxed countenance when being actively confronted by nearly a hundred angry parahumans, what makes Rebecca pause is what she sees when looking into the girl's eye.
She sees it every morning in the mirror; despite her age, the girl has Seen Some Shit, which is probably where her current countenance comes from.
Keeping all of that in mind, and currently desiring an answer about what just went down more than a shiny new probationary Ward, Rebecca shifts her plans a little.
"You could identify yourself, for a start," she clips, her tone neutral but brokering no compromises, her practiced orator's speech cutting through the ongoing argument with the ease of a heated blade going through butter.
Best to establish a rapport for a start, it has better odds to keep things non-confrontational this way, she reasons.
The young Tinker blinks, before letting out an awkward little chuckle that sends her inhuman ears twitching.
"You're right, Alexandria," the girl concedes, her English affecting a light, mellifluous French accent, "I guess I'm still a little out of it if I let my manners escape me."
The topmost part of her face gets suddenly covered by a video-gamey, green flash of light, that leaves in its wake an open-mouthed, owl-themed – including carvings depicting individual feathers – mask, its left eye depicted shut, the girl's braided high ponytail flowing out of its top.
"Nictimène, independent hero," a pause, "I'm afraid my debut got a stronger start than I had expected. Today is my first day, after all."
Behind her own mask, Rebecca stares, an endless stream of curses running through her mind.
Because she did that; by allowing the girl to answer her own question, she gave a consummate, professional liar the perfect opening to weave a narrative that suits her, one that she cannot go against without flaunting the Unwritten Rules with the Truce still ongoing.
Rebecca mentally amends her previous statement; she's going to strangle the very life out of Contessa and Jacqueline Barnes both, this she swears.
But not before dealing with this latest, brand new shitshow.
[AN: AH, GOTTEM!
For those wondering, yes, Theia beat the shit out of the Butcher's Shard and sent it packing.
Hope you enjoy, xoxo!]