Enlarging the window for the design document he almost wanted to gape in awe. The full 3D model was already in the program complete with material analysis as if she'd put every inch of it under a Tinker tech spectrometer and undergone chemical testing simultaneously. She was highlighting deviations in the structure you would find in any commercial grade equipment, from small lattice deviations in an individual wire to the differing ratios for every stretch of alloyed metal.
Anything and everything that could be called a description was being put into his shared system with Dragon. Yet she was still going, adding layers to the workspace, a gravitic analysis, a relative atomic spin diagram, even some notations Colin was completely unsure of what they meant. Perhaps it was a variation on quantum field equations? Next came geographical analysis and the interaction the planet's magnetosphere was having on the device as of two days ago. All of the data mentioned where it differed over the last two days, tracking the atomic decay of various materials, wear and tear from the air particles, even something that he was pretty sure was their coordinate on the timeline. Not that it made sense to him given the relativistic nature of time, perhaps somewhere in there was some point to its reference frame, or perhaps she was using a coordinate system he'd never heard of.
He was hit with another pang of envy and jealousy. Nothing he had ever made could have found all the data she was gathering, much less in the seconds she was doing it. It was both deep and expansive, every nugget of information on the technology was for any scale, from the quantum field all the way up to how the structure as a whole was constructed and how those could interact with each other. How was he supposed to compare to this? How could he possibly keep up with her? He felt like how Aegis must next to Alexandria.
As the minute mark passed it didn't stop. Next came construction details, tracking things like tool marks, places where welds had been unevenly heated, even noting the time between Leet working on it. This is what she meant by thinker assisted tinkering. He'd heard what he thought were boasts about how accurate her thinker powers were but if this was an indication of anything she'd been understating it. Were he to try to find even half of the data she'd gathered in seconds it would have taken him weeks at best and it still wouldn't be half as complete.
There was no way for him to determine one of the wires had gotten an altered chemical composition compared to Leet intended because the equipment he used was contaminated after he forgot to wash his hands of Cheeto dust when handling the glassware months ago when he last used it. She even highlighted that as she felt it was suspicious that the wire had been installed into what was looking to be the targeting mechanism, yet the other wires that had been grown in chemical baths from the same glassware later on hadn't had their composition altered in the same way. The worst part was he wasn't sure he could disprove that given she also indicated that the wires had unusual latticing that appeared to be due to the Cheeto incident.
As she began inputting suggested mechanics for aim since there wasn't an actual computer involved, or at least not one as far as she could tell, he subvocalized to Dragon for at least the pretense of privacy. Who knew with how many thinker powers Anima had.
"What are we supposed to do Dragon? We can't even keep up with her writing much less compare if this is the quality of her work."
"I don't know Colin, you know how good I am with speed reading but she's writing entire dissertations on her theories. I'm not even sure if she's really a tinker."
"What do you mean, this is obviously a tinker schematic."
"But that's not how she's interacting with it, in the notes she's going over various transdimensional formulas and trying to compare them with the device to devise its functions. It's more like she's a Thinker with the knowledge of how technology works. There's enough theory behind what she's doing right now that I don't think she's getting the usual leaps of intuition a real tinker gets, or even a normal thinker."
Out loud Dragon got Anima's attention. "Anima, as good as all this is you're getting close to overloading the server. It's already running into issues with the file size, it's rising exponentially with the interconnected layers and links you're making." She looked shocked, almost like she'd been pulled out of a fugue.
"Ah shit, you're right. Sorry about that, one moment I'll make a new drive for it with some custom code for this project based on your software. I mean not, nevermind." The dozens of pages she was writing and the various links between elements ceased as she stepped back from the device.
She seemed to be concentrating before she got a goofy grin more reminiscent of Mouse Protector and clapped her hands together twice, lightning arcing from her hands as she pulled them apart slowly and a black box formed in the middle, floating for a moment before it dropped into her hands. It was about the size of a brick with a few ports and indicator lights on it.
"Always wanted to do that, the special effects were based off a show I loved. Dammit I can't watch it again, it doesn't exist here. Ah well one more reason to heap on the pile of reasons to find a way back home."
An email came in, it was a link like the one he'd sent earlier.
"Alright, you should be able to connect to this now. I already transferred the project so we should be able to continue." she said, as if we'd actually contributed anything. The interface was almost identical to theirs, a little more square and the menus were drop-down instead of the nested radial menus he preferred, but it otherwise didn't seem to lack any functions. It actually had a few extra functions to integrate some of the data he hadn't understood, it still didn't make sense but he supposed it looked nicer and had a better visualization of whatever this was.
Returning to subvocalization he once again tried to convey his plight to Dragon. "Do you see what I mean? She replicated our program seemingly out of nothing but having used it for the last few minutes, and then also made a self contained server, power cell, wireless connection, a full computer in the span of seconds. Which she might have dragged out to mimic a show she liked." Anima glanced towards him demonstrating that his previous worry was probably correct that she could hear him or sense the message being sent to Dragon directly.
"It really is humbling Colin, but is it fair to judge her over it? How is it her fault for being bestowed so much power?"
Anima sighed and turned to him with what was probably supposed to be a comforting look on her face. "If it's any consolation, from my subjective perspective between the mental acceleration, the multi-threading consciousness, and the temporal manipulation this is months of work. Without a power managing boredom and the loss of focus from trying to do one thing for too long I couldn't do it at all. If you added in all the things like sleep, eating, and such that a normal person needs it would probably be closer to equaling years of work." Her face shifted to a wry grin. "And despite all that I'm still not sure how it works yet."
"What do you have so far? Surely you have something after all that?" He asked. Not that she had stopped working while talking to them.
"My best guess? It can't aim at all, not really. It grabs something far away and pulls it in regardless of the distances or dimensions separating whatever it grabs from itself. The best I've got is a multidimensional heading, an intertemporal heading, and an estimated distance based on how long it took for me to get here." she began pacing back and forth while gesticulating.
"Unfortunately all three of those are suspect. In the first place the time it took for me to show up has to be split between both the dimensional and temporal headings with nothing I can find indicating how it should be split. Even just assuming the temporal distance is a rough 14 years in the relative future puts the destination outside where I can reach and this hunk of junk only pulls things in, it can't send them back. Assuming that our two timelines are actually in sync and our calendars just don't match gives me a location I can go to and see clearly but it's definitely not home, it's a lifeless rock that my postcognition works perfectly on and that world hasn't had life in the entire stretch of time I can see, which is quite a long time." she collapsed with her back to one of the false altar's pillars with both her hands to her forehead looking distinctly overwhelmed.
"So now I'm left charting the flow of time trying to figure out where my homeworld is by comparing where it will be relative to where we are back to where it must be right now, as far as now is real given intertemporal physics. And my understanding of that is woefully lacking, I feel like a caveman trying to plan the moon landing. If it's any consolation I can tell we're not in a block universe, so free will is real. Or at least not definitely unreal." Colin was feeling distinctly uncomfortable, here was the target of his worries and inadequacies trying to confide in him that she felt inadequate.
"Feel free to do what you want with it, though I wouldn't recommend turning it on again, who knows what it could find next time? Same for the cube server over there. I've got eidetic memory so I don't need it anymore. If either of you have a project you want help on feel free to call me." With that almost condescending yet tempting offer she disappeared silently. A different teleportation power or was she just not adding 'special effects' without someone to appreciate them.
Dragon tried to comfort him, somewhat successfully. "Just because she can't find her way home with it doesn't mean there's not useful information and technology here. Just because this device doesn't have a proper aiming system doesn't mean we couldn't make one." She was right, maybe he could make one that would fit in his halberd? If he could tweak the field to not punch through universes or through time he should be able to replace his grappling hook, he could save so much space currently taken up by the cord. Maybe he could keep a link distant and create a better flail without a real chain that could be cut, he'd had that happen a few times where he likely could have caught Hookwolf if his flail head wasn't cut off. Yes, just because he couldn't do what she could do didn't mean he wasn't still an experienced Tinker, even if he couldn't match her it didn't mean he couldn't still rise above his station and further improve.
It was David's worst nightmare. Another Entity was on Earth Bet. He wasn't sure if he was strong enough to handle two of them, especially not if they started working together. He couldn't even kill an Endbringer and yet he was still their best hope at saving humanity from extinction on every world.
He would have to manage somehow.
"How sure are we?"
"We can't be certain, but there's enough evidence that we felt the need to give you some warning." the Doctor informed him.
"What do we know then?" Maybe he could see something they missed and prove they didn't have a second end of the world threat on their doorstep. He could feel his powers churning, but the powers it was bringing to him weren't likely to be of help here. He cast them aside.
"It's a thinker blindspot unlike anything except the other entities. Not only is it immune to Contessa as would be expected of one, but even abilities like the Clairvoyant have difficulty seeing it. Coil's power has been breaking even worse than usual with other thinker blindspots, while Gallant sees it as a complete blank to his power's emotional sense. Watchdog returned simply saying they couldn't get anything from their powers on it." She continued on. David was never a fan of her exclusive use of it for Scion. If they appeared to have genders wasn't it easier to differentiate them by it? Especially now where they would need to refer to them as the elder and younger entity most of the time. She had explained that trying to anthropomorphize their inhuman foes could lead to wrong assumptions. She did the same for the endbringers, always an it or they, and she preferred if they followed her lead. Not that he had ever even pretended to.
"That's not enough to decide whether she's another like him."
"True, but it seems to have more strength than any parahuman, with it having given a fairly in-depth description of its own abilities it also has more versatility than any parahuman, even more than you ever had." He grimaced at her cold comment, she knew how much he hated being reminded of his failing powers, as if he didn't get enough of that from his agent itself. She as usual ignored that and carried on.
"It describes what we can only assume to be agents as shards of the greater whole, and it has access to hundreds of them that it can freely access at will simultaneously. This information doesn't work well in any understanding where it isn't another entity. We may also need to account for an explosion of the parahuman population as it may have distributed its own agents akin to the elder entity. Kurt has several theories on its actions so far, as his power is letting him interact with the data it gave in its reports on its abilities and also some of what it gave to Dragon and Armsmaster." It was hard to argue against that description of her own power as not being at least entity adjacent, even he had no idea how many powers he had in his repertoire and certainly couldn't use as many of them at once if he wanted.
"What has he got on it so far then?" For all the man's many faults he was exceptionally effective at working around blindspots, working on their effects on the world even if he couldn't directly see the cause.
"He suspects that it may be trying to arm humanity to kill the elder entity for it so the younger can swoop in and claim all the agents for itself. The data it gave Armsmaster and Dragon includes interdimensional physics that may let us construct a device that could pull the real body of the enemy into our world, giving us a chance to kill it."
"Why would she give something like that up if she would be vulnerable to the same weapon?"
"Presumably it isn't, it may have other ways of protecting the dimensions it resides in that can counter the possible solution to the elder. Kurt's power isn't fully working on the information it provided, which he thinks is a sign that our original enemy doesn't want us to know about it." It wouldn't be the first time they had found an arbitrary limit to a power like that. For all that the Clairvoyant could see the multiverse he couldn't find any hint of Scion's true body or that of the agents like they had in the garden. Before he could say anything the Doctor continued, dropping a bombshell.
"At the moment we think it might be best to try and cooperate with it."
"What, why? Just because she might want one goal we share we still need to defend all the Earths from her."
"Yes, but were it confident in its own might in a direct conflict it wouldn't need to use subterfuge and humanity as an extra weapon against the elder. This implies that the younger entity is at least physically weaker than the elder, perhaps akin to a scavenger or parasite of their kind. If nothing else the two of them getting into a conflict will weaken whichever one lives. On top of that this one actually communicates, giving us a chance to influence it towards our own goal."
"That risks exposing our operations to her if she's even half the thinker she says she is. What if she goes berserk at finding the garden of flesh? Or simply scoops it up for herself and leaves us with nothing?"
"We can't afford to keep you and Alexandria away from it forever, you would be exposed to it during the next endbringer fight, and if as you said it's even half the thinker it says it is, it will know about us. Letting it in is a risk, but not as much as trying to keep you from ever going near it. Especially since it would likely come to investigate the unusual behaviour."
David couldn't imagine what would happen if he and Rebecca skipped an endbringer battle, it was unthinkable, much less every endbringer battle. Even without Anima coming to investigate he wouldn't know how to face his surviving colleagues. He wouldn't know how to face himself in the mirror if he didn't go. How many more would die without him there to stem the tide of an endbringer's might? He could see the Doctor's point, if they wouldn't be able to hide anyway they may as well try to get a more direct handle on her and what she would do.
"What if we tried to kill her? Before she has a chance to find out what we're doing."
"Because we risk setting off the elder early if we challenge the younger, as far as we know it's stuck in its own melancholy due to its mate dying. If the elder sees us trying to kill a new potential mate it might just decide to protect the younger one from us. On top of that we're playing into its own plan to pretend to be a hero, it can't take direct action against us so long as it wants to keep its cover as a human hero which limits what it can do against us."
"Fine, so we have to play along and pretend that she's a hero because she risks losing her cover so she also has to keep playing along. But what if she decides to do a decapitating strike against us? We're such a small organization that we could easily all vanish."
"Our plan against that is to keep at least one member of the triumvirate on Earth Bet at all times to try and use public perception as a shield. We may have to bring Legend up to speed, or bring some of our more durable clients closer into the fold, telling them that if the triumvirate go missing they're to connect a data drive to the internet spilling all we know about the new entity. Another suggested failsafe is to release Dragon and use the threat of the end of all the worlds to keep her compliant while also giving her our information on the entities." She looked more haggard and drawn than she normally did.
"This is a desperate gamble David. We're up against a foe that is far more attentive than the older entity appears to be and they're on a crash course to unveiling our conspiracy against their kind. The best we can figure out is to try to appease it by playing along. We're going to be putting all of whoever we have as failsafes through randomized M/S tests to try to catch if you get mastered or replaced, but we doubt the protocols will be able to catch if you actually are taken off the board."
"That's not very reassuring Doctor."
"It's not meant to be David, we're just trying to make the best of a terrible situation."
Maybe this was the best they could do. Maybe he could even test her power, some friendly sparring, give himself the opportunity to see even a fraction of the power of their original foe. He grinned a little, Anima would make for quite the worthy opponent.
Crystal was scrolling the forums waiting for the parahumans 101 prof to show up for the surprisingly small class when the door opened revealing a gorgeous woman instead of the thin man they'd had for their first class going over the syllabus, so probably a new student. She had shoulder length wavy dark hair and striking violet eyes that almost seemed to glow but that had to be a trick of the light, right? She was wearing a yellow sundress with short sleeves that went down past her knees. She almost looked familiar. Wait, she scrolled back up to one of the pictures from Anima's press conference earlier today. That was definitely the same face, and yeah Anima had glowing eyes, this was probably just the lowest brightness she had. If she hadn't walked in right as Crystal was reading her thread she might have managed to slip into the background. She heard her plop down into the seat next to her.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Jess. Would it be alright if I hung out with you and your friends for a late lunch after this," she grinned knowingly, "I'm not from around here if you catch my drift."
"Right back at ya, and sure, names Crystal, but you already knew that didn't you?" she said playfully
"Guilty as charged. What sort of courses are you taking?" This was turning out to be a pretty normal conversation considering it was between two public superheroes.
"I've got an ethics course in an hour after this one but other than that I'm sort of trying to figure out what I want to do so I've got a spread of other topics like biology, math, and a prereq for an architecture class I'm interested in."
"Well that's two classes we share then, ethics was always one of my favourites back home and it seems more relevant than ever. I'm trying to fill out the course load but so far it's mostly an exercise in frustration. I'd take STEM classes but well, I'm a bit ahead of their course work and I'm not sure I could handle the boredom required to get to a level that would be interesting for me. I'm thinking of adding an art class, might be fun if they let me play around a bit." If she was half the thinker she proclaimed to be then Crystal could see how something more objective like STEM would be less fun than the speculative parahuman studies courses or more subjective ethics courses.
"That sounds really rough, moving from so far away so suddenly must have really messed up your studies."
"Yeah you could say that again, but all in all? I vastly prefer this to the rut I was stuck in before all this happened." She waved her hands around vaguely gesturing to everything. The door opened again and another beautiful girl walked in but this time it was her cousin who literally flew over to them. Subtlety thy name is not Victoria.
"Hey Crystal, making new friends already I see. What's your story?" she sat down on the other side of Jess.
"Names Jess, and oh nothing too special, I came over here from far far away and I can't go back so I'm making the most of it, got a job already and now I'm going back to school like I always wanted to." She supposed all of that was technically true but slightly misleading. Other than the nothing too special part, that was just a plain lie.
"Nice, I've heard it can be real tough to find a job here, where are you working?"
"I'm working under the PRT umbrella, really flexible hours though I'm still on-call even now." Vicky seemed to be catching on to the fact there was something else going on here. Crystal's own giggles had nothing to do with it, she swears. How Jess could keep a straight face like that had to be another power in action.
"... Okay something fishy is going on here. You don't look like a trooper who would be on-call 24/7, but why would a desk jockey be on-call like that or be given flexible hours?" She stopped to ponder that.
She must have missed Anima's official reveal as a member of the Protectorate since Arcadia had a Faraday cage-like setup and it had only just happened earlier today. Jess turned back her way and shared a grin with her.
"Hmm, what other hints can I give you. I've ran into a tough crowd who didn't give me any trouble, helped out at the local hospital, did a crisis point checkup, helped solve a disciplinary dispute, and just yesterday I helped analyze a crime scene. What am I?"
"Wearing too many hats is what you are." They all chuckled in response to that.
"Hmm, no I don't think a hat would go well with my hair, don't you agree Crystal?" she said in a posh voice, briefly turning her nose up at the idea.
"I don't know it might be pretty funny looking."
Jess gave two weird, agreeable sounding hums in quick succession. "I'll have to remember that, it would look pretty silly, I wonder how many hats I could wear like that?"
"Ok, don't tell me I wanna figure this out."
She hadn't figured it out by the time the professor arrived, a twee looking reedy and tall man, he nonetheless seemed legitimately excited for the course which was one of the better indicators for how engaging a class would be.
Honestly if it wasn't for the enthusiasm she'd have tuned him out, the early class was going over basics like coronas, classifications and their differences between countries, and some neat theories on why some non-parahumans had a pollentia and others didn't. For a parahuman these were pretty well known things, but she knew everyone needed to be on the same page to actually get to the interesting stuff.
Throughout the class Vicky kept glancing over to Jess as if trying to catch her slipping up somehow, as if she'd unconsciously start working in the middle of class or something. When it ended Jess looked over and said.
"Well young hero, what's the verdict? Have you solved the mystery of the classroom conundrum, or has my mystique truely mystified you?" They began walking to meet up with her friends for lunch like Jess had suggested. Vicky looked conflicted about something.
"Ah, you have figured it out after all, well just don't shout about it everywhere. It's not like I wear a mask after all, but I would still like a bit of separation between the two halves of my life."
"You're Anima, right?" She whispered.
"Yep." Then she got a confused look and everything went quiet.
"What the hell did you do to my sister you bitch!" Vicky clocked Jess across the face, sending her flying back until she collided with someone else, but surprisingly they weren't bowled over.
Crystal realized there really weren't any sounds or movements beyond the three of them, it was like the world was standing still, as if Clockblocker came by and tapped everyone and everything. She could see a bee frozen above a flower, its wings not flapping. Victoria rocketed forward, uncaring of this change and smacked Jess again who had just gotten off of the student, no worse for wear, sending her flying into a window where she bounced off and started floating under her own power.
"I literally have no idea what you're talking about, use your words not your fists." Jess said, and honestly Crystal was just as confused.
Victoria elected to use both, but this time Jess just hovered there unmoving and unmoved, not reacting to the haymakers and kicks that Crystal knew could topple a building if the young Alexandria package wasn't careful.
"I heard her talking to herself, saying she wasn't my sister! That she doesn't love me and never did! That she was finally free of the burden of thinking she did! And worst of all, she said it was all thanks to you!" Her every accusation was punctuated by a punch that could throw fully loaded cement mixers like they were made of styrofoam. And yet Jess, no, Anima stood unflinching at the storm of blows raining upon her.
All she did in response was sigh and raise her fingers to the side of her head as if she were trying to soothe a headache. Victoria landed a kick right on her elbow yet failed to move Anima's hand a millimeter.
"What kind of anime bullshit is this? Where there's a huge misunderstanding and a fight breaks out because one person overhears something technically true but with negative context and missing all the key details."
"The fuck do you mean missing context? What could possibly make what I heard ok?" She kept punching all the while despite the clear futility.
"Can you stop punching me so we can talk about this like adults?" The punches continued until Anima finally struck back. With a single blow that created a visible shockwave she knocked the air out of Glory Girl. The shock of actually being hit and the loss of breath stopped the assault, but Crystal wasn't so sure this was a good thing.
Gently Anima grabbed her by the shoulders and brought her towards a picnic bench, waving Crystal over. Once they all settled down Anima rested her head on her hands.
"I'm honestly unsure how to clear up this misunderstanding without grossly violating Amy's privacy. All of those things are technically true but highly misleading statements. The only one I'm really comfortable talking about is also the most obvious. Objectively speaking from a biological standpoint, Amy isn't your sister Victoria, biologically she's a complete stranger to your family tree." She got an unfocused look in her eyes before she continued, "Ok technically you're something like 14th cousins or something, I could check but that's also irrelevant to what we're actually talking about."
Vicky was finally breathing normally as Anima continued. "Can you see how what sounds like a horrible thing to say to you, when said in private to herself, can in reality be a completely innocuous statement once put back into context? I'm worried enough as is that you'll be able to figure out the others without me explaining them to you."
"So what? I'm just supposed to assume every other thing she said makes sense too? That it's not all your fault?" Victoria growled out.
"The other thing I suppose I'm comfortable talking about is that it is all my fault, I take full responsibility, but let me ask you a question, how has Amy been acting since we had our talk at the hospital?"
Reluctantly Victoria answered. "She's been cuddlier, hasn't been spending as much time in the hospital these last couple days, she even asked me if we could hang out, it makes no sense."
"Do those seem like the sort of thing someone who hates you would do?"
"No."
"Then if you can't trust me, can you respect Amy's privacy enough to stop pushing for answers to these questions?" Crystal's curiosity had been sated, but Victoria's hadn't at all.
"No, I won't stop at anything to get to the bottom of this. What if you mastered her?"
Another sigh followed by her putting her hands on the table. "Then the first thing you should have done is called in M/S protocols on both me and Amy, not tried to wail on my head. If I were inclined to actually master people this would have been a terrible outcome for you unless you managed to kill me in the first strike. Amy had the same worry but her attempt on my life would have been far more successful had I actually been vulnerable."
That shocked both of them. Amy, sweet little healer Amy wouldn't normally hurt a fly. Cuss it out and its entire fly lineage, place a curse on it maybe, but kill it? It was a kind of weird quirk of Amy's honestly, so why did she try to kill Anima and why wasn't she bothered by it. Hell she had a smile on her face as she recounted the event.
"Amy thought I was going to master her because I admitted I had full biokinesis, unrestricted from brains and at range, she asked to see that I wasn't lying to her using her power as a lie detector, and when I lowered my defenses enough the fact that I lack either corona convinced her I was lying and showing her a false image so she went straight for my brain. Since you already know she can affect them I'm not worried about sharing this. Turns out when she tries to even just diagnose a brain she gets a one-way telepathic connection, and my active biokinesis caused it to be a two-way link. She got to see and trust that I wasn't going to master her and I helped her work through her anxieties and worried. Plus I got full ranged telepathy out of it, so that was more than time well spent." She looked smug at that, as if that wasn't one of the most terrifying powers that only the Simurgh had. Or apparently also Amy, which would further explain her no brains rule.
"So yes, I'm very scary, but that alone doesn't mean I'm running around mastering people. The potential to inflict harm isn't reason enough to assume I've actually done anything." Her voice had been light throughout most of the 'conversation' but she got serious for a moment.
"Also, Amy wants to keep this a secret for obvious reasons, you both instantly jumped to endbringer at the mere mention of telepathy. I can take that kind of heat but Amy can't. I'd also prefer you keep quiet on my telepathy too, it's a great tool that's all the more useful when villains don't know about it. Feel free to tell the rest of New Wave, but please stress that discretion is the better part of valor here."
She just admitted she was reading our minds. Oh god she could probably hear me freaking out about it. She rolled her eyes at me.
"Look, I'd like to be friends, at least good acquaintances with both of you, all the heroes in the city to be honest, but I can understand if it's too much now that you understand how strong of a thinker I am. At the same time I haven't been any less of a thinker the whole time you've known me."
Victoria replied first "Then how did I hit you at all?"
"I was kind of concerned about setting up this pocket of time we're in, it's why we can still act and talk but nothing else is moving. The whole world isn't frozen, it's just that we're on the wrong 'frequency' of time, since I had a feeling it might take us a while to talk this out." She grew excited while explaining how it worked in what had to be an extremely simplified version of whatever this was exactly.
She thought back to how Jess had been since she walked into class. Could she give that version of her a chance?
She supposed she could.
I was finally out on patrol. Dauntless and I soared out from the PHQ I tried to ask my power what the worst crime I could stop right now was. My power sputtered and gave me nothing.
[Define worst crime]
Alright, locate the event tonight I would feel worst about tomorrow assuming I don't intervene to stop it, adjust for how many people are affected by the event with priority given to more victims. If there are multiple events closely matched prioritize time sensitivity, also prioritize them to maximize how many events we can intervene in. Share any events we can direct other available forces to handle without our direct intervention with the technopathy suite so we can call it in with similar prioritization as the main precog thread.
[Affirmative, first event is in approximately 5 minutes, a boat is poised to take 23 victims to the Gesellschaft for indoctrination and forced trigger events. Highlighting the relevant information]
"Dauntless, we've got a human trafficking operation in the docks, 5 minutes until the boat leaves, opening a portal into the vicinity then we can approach by air. Do I have your permission to directly provide information?" I didn't wait to open the portal, there wasn't any risk of being detected early even if we were talking, the only cape opposition was Krieg the local Nazi's Gesellschaft liaison and Blitz, a similarly powered German villain.
They were both the product of a Gesellschaft bootcamp designed to give 'soldiers for the cause' who had been found to have coronas trigger events so they could better support their genocidal cause. As bad as that was it was leagues more humane than what their prisoners would be undergoing if we didn't save them. All of them had inactive coronas and were being taken to be indoctrinated, Mastered, and forced to undergo trigger events. Both men knew what they were doing, they merely believed it was right. How the local Nazi's knew who had a corona and who didn't was a problem for later.
Blitz was similar to Krieg in that he could lower the energy of things in a range around him but the mechanic was different, he strengthened the bonds between particles making them more stable, letting him create sheets of air to block or if placed correctly cut. Instead of Krieg's super strength via force amplification, Blitz could weaken the bonds between particles just like he could strengthen them, letting him play in a world of cardboard but also letting him turn various things into bombs by letting them react easier. He was here both as a trusted ally to Krieg but also because he could ease the waves and prevent the boat from leaving a sizeable wake even at high speeds making the whole job of smuggling and trafficking easier.
Dauntless finally caught up with what I'd said and followed me through the portal. I hope I can work with Dragon in the future, she'd likely be able to keep up with me mentally at least, maybe Velocity would too.
"I'd really rather you stay outside my head." Fine, spoilsport. Just means you'll be getting a cut down version
"We've got twenty-five gang members guarding the boat and docks, ten are foreign and fifteen are local Empire thugs. All have sidearms and fully automatic rifles. Two capes in attendance, both the local Krieg and his German counterpart Blitz, also a Shaker of similar power, be aware of solid panes of air that can cut if you run into them and that volatile substances can be detonated remotely by him. Twenty-three civilians have been kidnapped and are currently stored in two cargo containers that are being loaded by Krieg. You catch all that console?"
"Loud and clear Anima, you are free to engage." For once Assault was completely serious. Admittedly I wouldn't have been bothered by him trying to add some levity but maybe it would be uncalled for.
"Dauntless, can you focus on the normals while I deal with the capes and protect the civilians? I'll offer surrender but there aren't any viable futures where they actually submit so feel free to attack whenever you feel like it."
I pointed out the boat and dock they were loading them from before creating a visible purple aura around me and plummeting like a comet into the pavement near the two supervillains. The force of my impact created a shockwave that my aura followed knocking a few nearby thugs down while cratering the pavement for meters around me as I landed in a classic superhero pose. Both capes remained standing thanks to their powers but were still shaken by it. A light application of telekinesis pushed a streetlight… are they still called streetlights if they're not overlooking a street? Whatever it was it got knocked back so as to shine it's light perfectly around me, framing me as I rose to my feet, just slow enough to give them time to recognize who and what they were seeing. Unbeknownst to everyone else I was effectively filming the fight with my powers, and my fractal vision gave me every angle for maximum cinematic effect.
"If you surrender now you will only suffer your punishment for the laws you have broken, if you fight you will also suffer the bones I'll have to break in the process of gaining your submission." My voice reverberated with righteous fury as I tuned my aura to bring dread and a sense of inevitably to the gangsters and villains while sparking hope in the captives. I also put the containers into stasis so they couldn't take hostages or even just hurting them by accident.
Blitz acted first, trying to create a field of air blades around me which I simply ignored and walked through, shattering them around me. Krieg tried to follow up by tearing a mooring pole out of the ground and swinging it at my head with a chunk of concrete still attached to the base. I caught it with one hand and with a touch of telekinesis seemingly shattered the end of his impromptu mace with my grip. My offhand loosed bolts of purple energy that sought out the mooks, tying them down with hardlight ropes that snaked around them and then constricted.
Dauntless revealed himself by trying to target Blitz with his arclance, but unfortunately for him Blitz had already raised shields all around him. Its lightning traced out the shield it hit, breaking it, but it was ultimately pointless as even ignoring the time it took him to strike again Blitz had layered shields. I'd told him to target the normal gang members because Blitz was bad at providing defensive crowd control, he never bothered to shield anyone who wasn't a cape and rarely if they weren't right next to him. The mooks I hadn't downed yet fired uselessly into me and I replied by simply letting the bullets ricochet off of me as I continued my inexorable march towards the two villains.
"For too long you've felt untouchable. You peddle drugs as readily as you peddle hate. You bring nothing but suffering to the people of this country, assuming you don't kidnap them to undergo even worse horrors back in Germany."
A second lance came down from the sky to equal effect. Honestly he was almost just providing dramatic thunder and lightning at this point, Blitz wouldn't simply forget to block off an enemy he knew was there. If I weren't still trying to build my reputation I might have broken all the shields between him and Dauntless to let him take credit but he was already a well known and respected hero while I was an upstart pretending to be another world's entire triumvirate in one person. Plus he hadn't contested my call for who to target, not that I'd given him much time but he wanted me out of his head so I wouldn't hold his hand by reacting to his silent plan to show me who's boss.
Blitz and Krieg were backing off but they'd yet to really break for it yet giving me all the more time to show off. I sent out a wave of lilac fire that audibly shattered multiple shields and caught Krieg on fire, making him have to hit his own coat to try and put out the fire. I let him. Then I punched forward releasing a telekinetic shockwave while Blitz was still trying to bring up more shields in front of him, breaking what few he had raised and slamming him back into one of his own fields where he slid down it as if it was a solid wall. I'd had to strengthen the pane of air or else it would have shattered like the others and given him serious cuts. As it was he broke a shoulder blade and a few ribs.
Seeing his ally was down for the count, Krieg reached over to pick him up and try to run away. I rushed in with enough speed and strength to ignore his kinetic manipulation entirely then snapped out a kick to his leg that broke his knee.
"But I bet you're not feeling so untouchable anymore. You want to reconsider surrendering? I hear it was all the rage back in nineteen forty five."
Sufficiently cowed they surrendered alongside the remaining gang members now that their cape support was down and their guns had run dry. I went around properly filing all the weapons, perps, and releasing the captives, cataloging their injuries as I healed them. I pulled up all the evidence the prosecutors would need to put all of them away and helpfully made sure none of it would go missing in the transfer of custody. Just little tweaks and nudges here and there, a tire blew out across the city stopping a dirty cop from being able to get some of them off the hook, a voicemail from a nearby sympathizer deleted itself preventing the Empire from being able to respond quickly enough for the men to mysteriously get favourable judges, a few officers got a little pick-me-up so they'd be alert and actually do a good job. Last but not least I repaired the damage I'd dealt to the surrounding area.
Honestly the Simurgh comparisons weren't far off in the how department, only the what and the why were different. Hmm, maybe I should see about clearing out the containment zones she left in her wake. I grimaced after checking how that would go, they didn't trust me enough for that yet, all I'd achieve by doing that is getting the very people I was trying to save killed.
As we floated up we had some time before the next incident that Admin had found Dauntless sulked behind me. If he was always this bad at following it would be no wonder Armsmaster was upset with him, but he wasn't. He just didn't understand the plan enough and I hadn't bothered to explain it in enough detail to convince him because in the end it didn't matter. Either outcome was more or less the same so I felt no need to tip the scales to go how I wanted it to, I'd left the ball in his court and he fumbled it.
I let him mope for a little longer as we floated along like birds on the wind, merely enjoying the fact I could fly. It was so freeing to just be able to go up into the sky, almost dancing between the buildings in my aimless adventure. Almost aimless, I knew some people would get footage of us but mostly me. It helped that I'd kept some of the purple glow from earlier, but it too would add to my reputation.
I didn't want to only be known for my might, that I could crush villains under foot as easily as anyone could squash an ant, I wanted people to see other sides of me, other facets to my being. Is it cynical to intentionally let people see you with your walls apparently down but really be acting? Yes, but I'm only somewhat exaggerating how fun it is to fly, and the sooner people trusted me the sooner I could take on bigger challenges without scaring everyone, I could face threats that no other hero could face yet they would think me a monster for it.
So for now I embraced the mantle of irresponsibility and did little loops and dives as Dauntless floated seriously onwards. It would also boost his popularity in a small way, the perfect foil to my carefree demeanor, a serious hero taking the job seriously. Armsmaster would also work, but he couldn't fly. Yet anyway, maybe I could get him a jetpack.
Shaun didn't get Anima, which surprised him because he felt like he understood Jess. Jess was a pretty normal woman who felt like the weight of the world was on her shoulders and was only a little unusual because she was both afraid she was strong enough to break it but also afraid that anyone else would drop it. Anima on the other hand felt like a mashup of a dozen heroic archetypes. One moment she was doing loop-de-loops with childish glee and the next it was all business, short and sharp commands barked out that she expected him to carry out without question. It was like a mission briefing being played in fast forward, just enough information to get all the facts and objectives across with none of the time to understand why.
At first he bristled at her trying to take the lead, but his pitiful showing against Krieg and Blitz, he refused to put their names in the other order just like it was Battery and Assault, convinced him to at least try following her. It worked every time without fail, not just that none of the crooks got away, she'd shown she could do that without his help, but that he always felt like he was contributing.
He wasn't sure what would be worse, had she planned that out all along, or had it been a test that he'd failed? Further confusing matters was at the end of the night she apologized to him for not giving him the time to ask questions, said it was her fault he hadn't followed her orders.
If it wasn't for the fact he was in on the lie he might have actually believed she was a major hero back where she was from. Maybe that's what was confusing him, because he got to see under the layers of masks she wore the ones meant for outsiders didn't really feel like they fit the person underneath. Perhaps Anima was just the mask she made to hold all of her ideas about what she thought it meant to be a hero.
Was there some pantheon of fictional heroes she was emulating to try and do everything that she was, and that was why her personality seemed erratic at times, like if Mouse Protector, Alexandria, and Glory Girl were all stuck in the same head and none of them could agree on what the right thing to do was.
But if she kept telling the truth to every hero she met then why were we all going along with the ruse?
He supposed the Wards didn't have the full picture, and some of them did seem to treat her like one of the triumvirate so maybe it was working. But to what end, why did she feel the need to pretend to be an established hero? She seemed more than competent and powerful enough to simply forge her own legacy.
Perhaps there was more to Jess he just didn't get.