{0}
The ship was a rusted old thing, one with several chunks missing no thanks to its position so far out into the bay. It was a shipping vessel, one that was bereft of its cargo and coincidentally placed to maximize the area it would cover to block off the Docks. Perhaps it was the original container that broke the proverbial camel's back; it was certainly the most derelict among the ships in the aquatic graveyard and was far enough away that the only good ways to get there were either through a parahuman ability like flight or the death trap that was the maze of skyscraper-sized abandoned ships in the water, a maze that was pitch-black during the night.
To me, all it took was a simple look and a snap of my fingers.
I stepped onto the deck. The metal clanged hollowly under my feet but remained remarkably resistant to distortion. Spatial awareness told me that despite the damage to its hull, the integrity of the supports for the deck itself was actually relatively untouched. It was an impressive piece of engineering as the total area of the deck was actually quite close to a football field, and part of me welled up in pity at the state it had fallen in. The world, capes, Endbringers, and people were responsible for things to get as bad as they were, and I…
I stared at the sky. The moon was full that evening and it hung like a spotlight over the stage that was Brockton Bay. The characters were set and the plot was running, counting down to the cascade of events that would create a monster out of a girl to stop the apocalypse across multiple worlds. I didn't quite know its steps; I didn't know it like I didn't really know the story of Troy or the stations of the Odyssey, but I had heard about its beats and its end.
Taylor Hebert wasn't someone I'd expected. In what little I had read, she was a girl of steadfast belief, someone who does what they think is right even when the world believes her to be wrong and tries its best to push her down. She was a confused teenager, a scared victim, and a self-sacrificing hero. A figure who is as flawed as they are inspiring.
The girl I met was a paranoid wreck and an ungrateful beneficiary.
I couldn't reconcile this girl with the one in the story. Was this the girl who would save the world? Was this someone you could put the weight of humanity on her shoulders and expect to come out of it as a warrior determined to fight against fate? I'd mulled over it over the course of the week and came to a horrible answer.
You didn't.
You don't expect a girl to just save the world. You don't expect a girl to bear the weight of humanity on her shoulders and expect her to come out of it a soldier ready to tackle the future, head-on. You expect her to lose, to crumble under the pressure, to break and lash out in fits of desperation until she is either too tired to keep going or successful in tearing down her oppression, in which case, she would tell herself she had done enough and roll over into the street and embrace the coldness of her exhaustion for all the blood she'd had to spill.
Taylor Hebert, Khepri, was a shot in the dark. She was a product almost exclusively engineered and designed as a bullet to be used up in the machinations of the manuscript. She wasn't the soldier in control of deciding which monsters to destroy but the ammunition meant to be used up on another's whim. She was the star of the tragedy meant to lose everything in the end.
It was a sobering thought, one I hadn't really thought about as the old me indulged in the works of the fans who were inspired by Taylor's story, which had, in turn, inspired others to become fans of the work of the fans. I'd read their works because they were filled with much lighter tones— a sense of wonder and hope and occasional vindictive yet righteous fury to push back the darkness of Bet. But the best of them were still the ones who retained the grim reality, ones who, instead of letting everything cascade, took the time to look at the beautiful things in the world and decide they were worth fighting for.
"Fight for all that is beautiful in the world," I muttered
What a terrifying ideal.
I stepped over the frames of long-broken windows and stepped into the bridge of the wreck. It was a surprisingly tight chamber, though I suppose the only ship decks I'd seen were ones from sci-fi films. Most of the space was taken up by decades-old equipment, bulky monitors, and processing units that, on hindsight, couldn't really be moved or salvaged without the assistance of at least industrial-grade construction equipment as they had been built into the ship's frame itself. The room still had the navigation maps and posters stuck to the walls, though they were now yellowed and ripped at places where rain brought by storms could get to it from the windows, and half of them were painted over with messages like "SEAFARER RIGHTS" or "JOBS FOR THE DOCKS". Some other paraphernalia was left, things like a moldy Hula doll or a dry snow globe. Most other things— the stationeries, the pencils and pens, and the documents and books— were just rotted completely or lost into the sea.
I moved through the equipment over to the captain's seat. Perhaps it was just made with better weatherproofing, but the captain's chair was in much better condition than the rotting and moldy state of the other seats on the bridge. It didn't mean it wasn't moldy anyway, as I'd soon found out when I sat on it. I looked out the window and noticed that, though it was now blocked by a few other ships and debris, the cargo ship had been turned towards the city.
I wondered what its captain thought while seeing the city. Did he see a community on the decline or the hope for its people to rise again? I'd read a little about Capt. Gardner in one of my History classes while taking up the issue of the decline in shipping in America, but nothing about him was really said other than he was arrested and sentenced to nearly two decades in prison.
Earth Bet was full of people like him, people who can make drastic decisions for their convictions and beliefs, whether it be for good beliefs or bad ones. If Taylor Hebert couldn't save the world, maybe there would be another actor that would be molded into the perfect bullet. Maybe someone else would come along and deal with the threat. It was a cowardly belief, I'll admit, but… wasn't that a reasonable thought for a 15-year-old?
But then I wasn't really 15 in the truest sense of the word. I had the memories of a man who had experienced the end of his society and died incapable of making a change for the better. I had access to a great and terrible power that was capable of bringing civilization to a halt myself. I was now the spiritual heir of a dubiously fictional character who was fully capable of sacrificing herself to save her world.
And it wasn't just that. If I was right, the playbook of Bet now had an additional scriptwriter dictating its story, one that was determined to tell its narrative by letting the world crash and burn, then try all over again if they weren't satisfied. The Honkai— though I suppose Ruination would be a more meaningful term for English speakers— was an actor that doesn't play by the rules. In fact, it actively tries to impose its own rules, and the results of that usually end with the destruction of the existing order and the collapse of society. It was a literal transcendental power from what the game literally called the Imaginary inserting its narrative into the world without caring about the destruction it creates right until the end. Then, like a dissatisfied playwright, it resets the date and decides to retell the story again.
And as a Herrscher, I was supposed to be one of its emissaries, but for some reason, I was given the ability to rebel and make my own narrative; the bearer of the Authority of the Void was allowed to see the world from the eyes of a human and given the freedom to make her own decisions.
And the first thing I did was to hide myself away. Because I wanted to stay human.
"Fuck!"
The front portion bridge of the ship screeched as it was folded open like it was made of wet paper instead of metal. Spacetime was my bitch and I felt and saw the way it surrendered to my anger and made the portion of the structure fall outwards as if gravity had decided it was going to pull in that direction with the force of a moderately close star. My senses as a Herrscher tingled with the feeling of Honkai energy that had been expelled into the area by the blast. None of that registered on my mind as the image of how an unsuspecting Bet would fare against the next Herrscher, who, if the playbook doesn't change, would have Authority over Thunder and all things electromagnetic.
Herrscher powers weren't a joke. In the game, Herrschers were the harbingers of doom, the angels of death. They bring with them legions of monsters borne out of the energy (that the game eponymously calls Honkai energy ) that they only have to exude like leaky nuclear power plants, which had the additional benefit of being both an infinite source of energy and a multidimensional zombie space plague. And this wasn't even factoring that Herrschers have the power, have the Authority over concepts, usually objective concepts. My Authority, for example, was Void. It meant I was a lord of spacetime and dimensions, capable of pulling things from the chaos of creation and sending it back in there. Combine all the spacetime capes you could think of and you would have something approximating me, probably. How the hell one was supposed to get all of that from a concept that had a pretty fluid meaning, I didn't know, but it was what it was.
This Authority, combined with everything else, made every individual Herrscher a planetary threat if allowed to roam free for long enough. Off the top of my head, the first holder of the Herrscher of the Void's core was able to portal asteroids from deep space toward the Earth as meteors— before the Will of God bullshit that happened in the latter half of the Second Impact. The Herrscher of Rimestar, the combined form of the Herrschers of Ice and the Stars, had threatened to pull an Ultron atmospheric drop with an iceberg the size of a small continent. The Herrscher of the Flame in the game's Previous Era had burned down the entirety of Australia.
So if civilization were to be able to survive its technology malfunctioning and its electromagnetic field getting tampered with, there were still ten other Herrschers to consider. If the Entity gets involved in the defense, then I'd wonder how the world would survive as the Honkai escalated appropriately against the Golden Man.
As it stood, I don't think Earth Bet had a chance. The civilization in the game had a decent shot because its world was effectively united under one banner and its predecessors were able to place a weakness in its opponent. Earth Bet had its work cut out for the former and was entirely unknown in the latter. If the Honkai really was coming to this reality, then it was going to need all the help it could get.
And I wasn't even sure if I had the strength to give it.
I wasn't even sure I deserved to help.
The sound of a distant helicopter knocked me out of my reverie. I saw what I'd done to the bridge; the entire front portion had been ripped away as if Leviathan himself had reached over and torn the windows and consoles out into the deck. And of course, I'd done that completely by accident.
I looked over to the city, fearing I'd been heard. There was indeed a helicopter flying over the Docks, but it didn't seem to be heading toward the Boat Graveyard. I looked closer, cheating a little by making a small, transparent portal (as opposed to my usual opaque ones), and saw that the helicopter was following two figures zipping through the sky. Both of them were clad in white, but one was actually covered in light.
New Wave and Purity?
I watched as the two figures zipped across the city, with Purity trying to lose the other flier and occasionally making a blast that forced the other cape to evade. Their fight quickly went to a different part of the city. I could keep watching by making a different portal, but… that required a bit more legwork on my part, and if the air was any thicker with Honkai energy, any idiot coming to the shipwreck would catch a disease that slowly turned them into a zombie or, even worse, a Honkai beast would spontaneously spawn and attack the Bay.
I decided then and there that it was about time to go home. I sighed and jumped off the bridge, landing on the deck three stories below with a roll and a groan of metal flooring. I walked to the bow where there was a noticeably lower concentration, half-sunken into the water as it was. I formed a portal to the Docks, and from there, I started jogging home.
{0}
I stretched over my table, yawning at the same time. Some of my cramped-up joints clicked and a few of my restless muscles got a chance to relax.
"Say, Greg," I said as the boy sat down on the seat in front of me. He startled.
"Aah Veronika? Um, how can I help you?"
I tucked my arms under my head and tilted my face up a bit so that I was looking at him. "What can you say about the capes of the Bay?"
Greg opened his mouth and closed it, blond bowl-cut swaying as the expression on his face clearly showed that he was thinking about his answer. I thought about his reputation in the stories I'd read from my old life; that of a creepy and nerdy motormouth with no sense of subtlety or tact that had a crush on Taylor. The real him was some of that, but mostly, I could see a passionate boy who wasn't all that socially adept, so his way of trying to connect to others was by sharing what he liked and connected to.
I sort of envy that, having things you're passionate about. Drawing and making stories hasn't felt as fulfilling as it had been in my past life, and it wasn't like I was particularly good at making friends. Girls didn't like me because I was apparently pretty, while boys become disinterested when they realized I was more interested in getting good grades than reciprocating affection. Or at least that was before Winslow when I became a pariah that was less mistreated and more feared.
In a way, he was able to relate to others better than I was.
"Well, on the heroes' side, there's the Protectorate, the Wards, New Wave, and a bunch of independents. For villains, we have the Empire, the ABB, a new group calling themselves the Merchants, and a thief gang calling themselves the Undersiders. If I were to break it down, well, the Protectorate's made up of…"
For the next few minutes, I just listened to him recount the active capes in the Bay. There were a few interesting bits here and there like the Empire not having Night and Fog or the fact that Hookwolf had been caught and sent to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center a few months before I arrived at Brockton. But mostly, my mind drifted off to the topic of the past 2 weeks.
The days following my minor breakdown passed by in a slow crawl. I'd been listening to the news and some of the local gossip, but it looks like no one was reporting any zombification. On the other hand, I didn't try to talk to Taylor again, but I still kept a lookout for her, especially when we had classes with either Clements or Barnes. Taylor noticed, of course, and she kept giving me odd glances every once in a while when she thought I wasn't looking.
Meanwhile, my relationship with Barnes had become something of a Cold War in the school. It was interesting when I heard the first bits of propaganda against me; from innocuous things like I was poor or that I had no parents, to the typical extreme ends like I was a slut or an Empire 88 member.
Then I heard the counter-propaganda and had to do a double take. There was a section of the school that genuinely believed that I was some sort of survivor from a rich background. There were stories of me apparently braving Leviathan at sea on my trip to North America from Germany. One particularly interesting rumor was that I already had people in the police and PRT (the latter of which wasn't exactly wrong) and that I was friendly with the mayor.
It reminded me that I soon needed to find an excuse to check on Dinah Alcott, if only so that I could teleport to her house if the bank robbery ever happens.
I'd mostly ignored the social warfare. That kind of thing wasn't really something that got me invested, though considering how long I lasted in one area before, part of me probably believes that it'd be meaningless since I'd have to move away again soon. I'd spent most of my free time just answering homework so that I wouldn't need to do it at home. Hardly anyone came up to talk to me… except for Tammi.
Tammi continued to ask me to join little trips outside of class and occasionally attempted idle chatter during breaks. I politely ignored the invitations, but the conversations weren't exactly something I could avoid when she sat right beside me.
At least she avoided conversations about my… origin, now. Instead, she'd bring up sports of all things.
Apparently, she'd moved up to the top dog position in the track team since Hess got expelled. Since then, her regime had apparently picked up; weekly training become bi-weekly and her weekend mornings to be spent lapping the Boardwalk, her diet suddenly began to matter, and the coach had her buy an entirely new set of sports attire. The treatment hadn't been limited to just her, too; at least half of the team was given the "successor training" treatment. Hess apparently ran like a real bitch.
In spite of myself, I found her athlete woes interesting. There were tidbits of how best to breathe during a run, the proper way to carb load, which running shoes were scams, and where best to buy them. I'd actually caught myself nearly agreeing to go with her for a run on Saturday. She'd caught it, too, and even clicked her tongue in a greatly exaggerated manner that was pretty clearly in good humor.
Occasionally, she'd bring her friends. Erika and Theresa were more like your standard rich girls if ones whose interests lay in sports. Erika was in cheerleading and a lot of her stories were either about boys' or girls' politics. Theresa was someone who used to compete in basketball before health issues caused her to stop in her first year, so now she spent her free time theory-crafting the various teams in Brockton.
All things considered, they were pleasant people to be with if you had to avoid certain topics. If that was all there was, I'd be friendlier with them. The problem was… I wasn't quite sure what the problem was. Something about Tammi. There was something in the way she looked at people sometimes that made her look intense. Also… well, my space sense pinged off of her oddly, kind of like there was something there that also wasn't there. I got that feeling from a few people I'd pass in the street, in school, or in the neighborhood like Mrs. Herren, who I still think looked way too young to be married.
I didn't look into it, though. It wasn't my problem to deal with.
The bell rang just as Greg was winding down with his theoretical counting of Merchants (Skidmark, Squealer, and possibly Mulch). A few minutes of students rushing to their seats later, Gladly walked in with a smile on his face.
"Class, I have with me some sign-up sheets," he began. "We're having a field trip to the PRT Headquarters."
---
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