I almost wanted to describe Director Kamil Armstrong as a mad scientist. He was a tall and lanky dark skinned man, a little extra weight around the middle, with a crooked nose and a sharp jaw that almost looked unnatural, his brow gave him what could easily be mistaken for a scowl, up top he had streaks of early grey hairs that seemed a little wilder than the rest of his hair. Yet behind all that was a fairly kind man with a deep interest in the parahuman condition. He wasn't a stereotypical research minded man who viewed capes as nothing more than test subjects, instead his understanding of us tied directly into making him care about us. Or real capes rather, I was quite the exception as I'm sure Admin was about to remind me.
"Anima, a pleasure to meet you." Armstrong opened with, surprisingly fully meaning it.
"Why thank you Director Armstrong, I'm excited to get to work on this project, there's so much good that could be done if we can get it to work."
"Please, call me Kamil, I'm not as interested in formalities as Emily is."
"Well Kamil, where to first?"
He started guiding me towards one of their labs, I'd portalled in nearby it seemed.
"We've got two main tests I wanted to do before we get into any sort of revivals, first is just some scans of the temporal aiming. I don't think it's actually as big of a deal as Emily thinks it is, but we've got the tools laying around so we may as well double check. The other test is I wanted to see if you could create a second body for someone already alive, then we'd do some interviews and other tests while you kept them linked. I feel that would be the best way to determine that you were truly keeping the essence of the person intact."
"That would definitely be possible, though we shouldn't take them out of the building, it's currently set up more for temporal distance than physical distance so without reaching through time it can't get very far before the link would break, leaving us with an accidental clone."
"That shouldn't be a problem. Would you mind setting that up now so we can interview the volunteer while we test the temporal side of things?"
"I'm not sure how safe that would be, I only have a single Shard for this, though I suppose I could use one of the Shards I based this one off of to give temporal data, though we would be far more limited in how far I can aim back in time. The resurrection Shard is specialized beyond the norm with a long-reaching temporal effect that would be dangerous with a more general-purpose temporal Shard. It seems like it would be too dangerous to meddle with the timeline, at least with my current capabilities."
"That should be fine for now, it'll still give us something to work with and once the interview is done we can test the actual 'shard' itself." I appreciated that he was adopting my terminology while talking with me. "What's the danger of messing with time, paradoxes?"
"Effectively yes, if you're not careful you can erase the cause for your initial action, or you can alter memories compared to how things originally happened. Alternatively you can end up creating new causes that have effects again altering the timestream. It's why I'm not just jumping around in time, more limited things like time freezes, loops, or slowing time are all far safer, I can easily make sure that the 'core' timeline remains unchanged with such small alterations. That's also why the method for trying to resurrect people is designed to cause as little alteration as possible, just enough to bring them into the present but nothing more."
The volunteer was a young asian trooper who was actually kind of excited for the test. He figured that either everything would go as planned or he'd get to screw with people for a while with a perfect identical twin until they started to diverge. A bit weird how okay he was with this, but I suppose whatever floats his goat. In seconds a clothed clone body was laying on a provided examination table before I destabilized the quantum state of the new brain and linked the trooper.
"This is so weird." Came out in stereo as [Gou Kurita] tried to get used to his two bodies. If I were trying to create a Shard to do this intentionally I'd have probably preferred to link the mind to a segment of the Shard that would truly house their consciousness. That way they would gain an increase in brainpower with each body they occupied and not have their hindbrains linked, letting them more easily act independently of each other while still sharing a mind. Of course that wasn't what this Shard was supposed to do at all, so Gou had to figure out how to pilot two bodies with only one brain to share between them. I expected he would be able to figure out how eventually, but he very likely wouldn't have the time. I wasn't trying to give him a nearly unusable power, I was trying to bring back the dead.
For now, Gou needed help moving his bodies separately and into different rooms where they would do the interviews. Kamil and I went into a third room with a variety of gear that I could probably understand in seconds of objective time, as much as time can be said to be objective anyway, but it really wasn't worth bothering. Scanners weren't very high on my priority list with how strong my Thinker Shards were, and Lisa's Shard only made them even more effective at figuring out what all the data they were taking in meant. Kamil and a few other researchers gave the all clear for a first test. I reached for a temporal Shard and reached back in time to grip the timestream of a small foam cube they had trained the scanners on.
"Are you getting anything from this, or do I need to do more for you to detect this one?"
"We're getting readings Anima, but if you want to feel free to actually do whatever it is this 'shard' does." Kamil responded. I gave it a few more seconds before pulling the cube from the past into the future, but in the same location. I doubted that anyone else could detect the change to the timeline but to me it was like watching a ripple travel like lightning up the timeline to when I had reached back for the cube. Even the small and insignificant act of removing a foam cube from the past created enough of a ripple that without my own temporal protections it would have stripped the old timeline from my memory, likely instead just making me think I had sent it into the future earlier than I had actually decided to move it from. I actively calmed the ripples to not pointlessly strain the timeline, letting them only propagate throughout the building and maybe a little outside.
The data that had been gathered on the cube had unwritten itself as the timeline corrected for my influence on it, though I had recorded it all, including a spike that was now missing from the 'true' timeline making it appear far more anticlimactic than it really was. A few seconds later the cube returned, having experienced less time than everything around it but otherwise unchanged in any real way. Hmm, if I could see both timelines could I send information back to myself, creating a loop where I calculated and evaluated even faster than I already did? Maybe, but it would be risky to test, and might create a constant quake through time that would likely alert Scion to my presence, which I wasn't too interested in doing until I was more confident he wouldn't just zap me to death for stumbling into his backyard. Hmm, maybe I could try testing in my little time bubbles? It wouldn't be able to affect the primary timeline, but the altered time environment might also interfere with the testing.
"Kamil, you lost some data in the temporal event, may I add that to what you've already collected?"
"You ended up erasing our data? Was that an intended effect of the power or more just a consequence of messing with time the way you did?"
"It's just what happens if you're not properly shielded against it. I grabbed the cube from the past according to my point of view, which erased everything between when I grabbed it and when it was grabbed. So in the timeline correcting for the cube not being there any recordings you took couldn't have been made, so they weren't."
"Ah, what you were mentioning earlier about causality, you removed the cause of our data being recorded, and thus it never was."
"Exactly, and that was for a tiny adjustment just a few seconds into the past on an object that was doing nothing of note other than being observed."
"Of course, I would love to see what we lost. Could you detect others changing the timeline like you just did?"
"Probably, but depending on the scale of the change I'd have to be closer to it. So far I haven't noticed any ripples that would indicate something like that, but theoretically it could simply be so advanced that I'm being overwritten just like your data was." And wasn't that a scary thought? Maybe a temporal Endbringer or Scion were messing with the future or past and I'd be unable to even notice. Okay, that thought can get right out of my head or I'm going to go crazy looking for cities inexplicably disappearing and never being noticed by anyone.
"How close are we talking for something like this? These readings are literally off the chart."
"Well I also quelled the waves from it, so as it is if their Shard had those mechanisms built in, this event wouldn't be detectable by me unless I was practically inside the building. Otherwise it would probably be noticeable to me across the city. The equipment here seems like it's extremely sensitive, so it would easily notice a bigger temporal breach." Maybe it would be a good idea to scan them after all. A subjective day later Kamil got the time to respond.
"So we're not likely having major temporal anomalies going on, nobody's messing with the timeline."
"Probably not, no. If they are, there's literally no point in worrying about it, we can't do anything about it."
We took some more readings on some variations of the power, sending the cube from now into the future, pulling the future cube into the now which briefly gave us two cubes until the 'first' disappeared to show up in the past. The tests themselves didn't take long, but without my help as it could contaminate their conclusions it took them about an hour to analyze all the data gathered from those few tests.
Apparently Gou wasn't doing as well as I'd hoped he would, instead of adapting to the new circumstances because both minds were constantly linked he has difficulty separating the experiences of each. Two sets of sight layered on top of one another, two sets of sounds, touch, so on and so on. It might even start to damage his brain if we continued on for much longer. He especially hadn't been able to react differently in each body, with how synchronized the brains were he could only get out a unified signal to both, which didn't work well if there was any difference between their circumstances. He was even having trouble forming coherent memories, the two halves mixing uncontrollably as the two-way link meant each side could 'correct' the other when something didn't match up.
As soon as the interview was done I painlessly killed the clone trooper, returning Gou to a single body. I reduced the swelling in his brain and helped quell the headache that he'd gotten. For all he'd gone into the test excited he was far from thrilled with how it had actually gone.
"My deepest apologies Sargent Kurita, I didn't expect this test would be so rough on you." Kamil said once I told him the effect it was having on Gou.
"It's alright boss, nothing's too scrambled up here. Pain's already gone, so it couldn't have been too bad, right?"
After Gou left the testing room Kamil looked at me with a raised eyebrow, which looked a little silly with how severe his face naturally looked.
"I healed Sargent Kurita after I unhooked him from the second body. If the test had gone on another hour he might have suffered brain damage. I still could have healed that but I feel a little bad that he had to suffer for my test."
"It's alright Anima, he understood that there could have been far worse outcomes from this, we thought of every possible way it could go wrong that we could and listed them all. Instant death was on the table if say, it had overwritten the wrong brain because they weren't supposed to be in the same time. A temporary headache and being a fair bit disoriented for an hour is comparatively nothing."
I suppose he's right that it could have been far worse, and Gou had still taken on the risk despite all that. Next came some animal trials. A few K9 units had perished in the last year, nothing too unusual for them with the Teeth in town. I wonder how their statistics for losses matched up with my homeworld? Not that I could really check without finding the damn place.
For all that my postcognition could track a being back through time for myself it seemed to get stuck on the moment I appeared in the summoning circle, unable to view what came before, which I supposed made sense if I'd come from the future. This sadly is not Back to the Future postcognition, just because it might be my personal past doesn't mean the Shard considers it the past. I wonder if this world's version of that movie is any different from the one I remember? Hmm, it did come out after Scion appeared but before parahumans really became a thing, so it's probably pretty similar to mine. The sequels might be another story.
The K9 tests went better, this is what the Shard was meant for after all. Each one brought back recognized their handler and was recognized in turn. They underwent physical examinations that unsurprisingly found them to match the dogs before they had died minus any injuries they had accumulated over the years.
As we waited for the K9's and troopers to leave the room Kamil started to explain a bit about the next test. The first parahuman trials
"The group that has accepted our invitation to have one of their members resurrected call themselves the Lich Five. Beyond hero work, primarily bounties, contracts for bodyguard work or protection details, and the occasional Guild work, the team are champions of radical life extension and various types of 'immortality'. As all members have various themes of both in their powers. One of their members was unable to bring herself back as she requires people to fuel her resurrecting herself and was alone in a burning building when the roof collapsed on her."
"The rest of her team tried to save her but were unable to reach her in time. Please excuse two of their members' unusual appearance, their form of 'immortality' is not quite as photogenic as the others." I could practically hear the air quotes around immortality, which made sense if one of them had actually died. I pulled their appearance from his mind, he'd only seen photos of them as they hadn't been out this far east.
"You want to call them to let them know we're portalling them in?" I didn't mind he'd voluntold me to help them get over here; I'd have offered if I knew they needed the help. Plus not too many people would be so willing to let an experimental resurrection procedure be done on someone they knew and cared about. One portal later and the Lich Five stood before me. Well Lich Four and one very crispy corpse in a walking coffin. Two corpses in walking coffins if you counted Cradlegrave, but she was at least still alive in some sense of the word unlike Heartsoul.
Crosswise, their leader looked like an evil priest, his vestments had what looked like dark blood stains dripping down them. His iconography was upside down, inverted crosses that looked tarnished. His mask was a simple black mask that covered his lower face with another inverted cross stitched onto it.
Wormcoil was the most disturbing to me personally. He had the body of what was once a black labrador that had been infested with Wormcoil himself, the body twisted into an unnatural upright posture with tendrils erupting from all over the body, particularly noticeable in the region where a normal dog would have its paws. He had a spread of tentacles that acted almost like an elephant's foot, while the hands were just a rough collection of tentacles he somewhat tried to make look like hands. Two more tendril coils sprouted from his back giving him an extra set of arms to strike with and presumably Tinker with as he was a parasite Tinker.
The Man in the Corners, what an unreasonably long name, looked sort of like a noir detective, or perhaps he was more going for a lovecraftian vibe with his skin-tone full face mask that made him look faceless. I could easily tell it was little more than a morph suit hood that had some darker spots to help evoke the look he was going for, so he was the most normal of the bunch.
Cradlegrave was a little unnerving because I could see inside her mecha-coffin that acted as both 'life' support and the core of her mech suit. In the center was her corpse, plugged full of tubes and wires that were preserving and maintaining what was left of her corporeal form. The rest of her suit was for mobility and combat, as her ghostly form could only travel so far from her body, the body had to come along for the ride. It was honestly a little depressing looking over her work, it felt low quality even for the materials and time constraints she must have been under. Without the skull and tombstone iconography, or my ability to see its inner workings, it would look like just a particularly large power suit.
Lastly and unfortunately least was Heartsoul, the woman I was to revive. I didn't actually need her corpse, but I suppose if it would make them happier I could return her back to her restored body. It wasn't really her original body though. None of them were, according to my beliefs on what was required to not be merely a high-quality clone, the original people they once were. Their powers all seemed to follow Admin's view on resurrection, that so long as there was no noticeable difference what was the point in doing more? The living being that remained was under the impression it was its original self, all other tests that humanity could do would find little to no discrepancy, so why try to make sure they really were who they thought they were?
Nonetheless they had all worried about it to some extent and came to their own conclusions that they were indeed the same people they started as, so they wanted the latest holder of the mantle of Heartsoul back, who was I to judge? It was for my own peace of mind that I went to these great lengths to find a true method of resurrection, if they had a less exacting standard did that really make them wrong? Either way I would bring her back, even if she very well might not be the same Heartsoul I saw next she had come to terms with that possibility. All I could do by arguing otherwise is torment them all. So I got to work.
Cindy knew this was going to be her end, trapped under a support beam all alone in a burning building. She should have listened to Cradlegrave, the only person left inside had died by the time she could reach her. But dammit she didn't want to leave a child alone to burn. She coughed out a laugh, well she supposed she wouldn't burn alone after all.
The building collapsed a bit more, a crushing weight on her diaphragm as the support had some of the floor above land on it. As the delirium from lack of oxygen began to set in she tried to laugh again. Little Cindy, all burnt to cinders. There wasn't enough air to make a sound.
Just before she could pass out and be free of the agony of being crushed under burning rubble her vision swam as if she were seeing through four eyes, her pain severely lessened before the strange sensation collapsed. She was no longer in pain at all, she could breathe again, she gingerly tried to reach up to what looked like the inside of one of Cradlegrave's coffins, a clear glass above her showing a simple white tile ceiling.
With a hiss the cover to what had to be one of her teammates techno-coffins moved up out of the way as it gently leaned forward to let her stand on her own two feet. Outside she saw some of what she expected, her team was all around her with excitement clear in their expressions, even Wormcoil, who she had grown to know rather intimately over her time with the Lich Five.
What wasn't so expected was the form of what looked like a PRT office worker, maybe a researcher actually, and a woman with a purple costume with golden armour accentuating the look. She even had an actual cape with a gold border. As she shifted slightly two things caught Cindy's eyes, firstly that the purple outfit seemed to shift like it contained the night sky, but second and most importantly was that she wasn't wearing a mask.
"Welcome back to the land of the living Heartsoul. I'm proud to announce you're the first human to be returning thanks to my power. From what I can see everything looks to be in order, if there's anything wrong just let me know, okay? I've added my number to your work phone as Anima."
A little shakily at first she spoke up. "Thank you so much," she looked at her team, she knew they couldn't normally have afforded what must have cost a fortune. "What do we owe you?" Her warm smile briefly turned into a look of confusion.
"Nothing. If anything I'm thankful your team was willing to let me bring you back, we're still testing out this power so having a quality proof of concept like you will smooth over any issues I would have had. In addition, the data I've collected from your team's powers might help me tweak my resurrection procedure and let me revive those who have been dead for longer than I can currently reach." Ah, right, she did say Cindy was the first to be brought back. Anima's expression suddenly turned serious as she barked out her next few sentences.
"I've got an emergency back in Brockton Bay, I'll open a portal back to Milwaukee for you, goodbye." Sure enough a purple portal opened into their base of operations while Anima disappeared in a puff of purple smoke and a light clap of air.
"Alright Cradlegrave, I hate to say it but you really did tell me so." Cindy's face had a mischievous expression on it, she wasn't a stranger to dying in painful ways. Only a stranger to being revived by someone else, and honestly the process was far less disturbing than her regular.
They all thanked who was apparently the PRT director for Boston and once they were all through the portal it closed behind them.
She tackled Steven and gave his weird doggy face a kiss. It was good to be back.
Marjorie Harris, formerly Marjorie Biron, and likely to once again be called that once her new fiancée sealed the deal, entered her rightful house with glee. Jeffrey always stuck around hoping Missy would get home before her and he could steal some of her time with her daughter. Yet every time she happily reminded him that he was supposed to be gone by now and if he didn't leave she would call the cops on him.
But as she closed the door she noticed something was very, very wrong. The house looked like it had been torn apart, literally. The couch was cut in half, messily with strands of fabric linking the two, a cushion leaking the stuffing inside it. The walls had gouges taken out of them with splinters and dust all over the floor underneath where the holes in the walls were.
Oh she was so going to call the cops on Jeffrey if this was his fault. Neither of them were allowed to damage the house. How was she going to get this cleaned up before Missy came home?
"Jeffrey? Missy? What's going on, is anyone here?" She couldn't see anyone willing to stay in a pig-sty like this, it looked like a living blender had come through here. But a cape wouldn't have left the outside of the house still standing, they would have broken a wall or something in a fight.
Maybe something Jeffery had done or said to Missy made her have a temper tantrum and she figured out how to damage things? She wondered if she could spin this to be his fault and get his part-time custody of her daughter revoked. Maybe even get Missy pulled out of the Wards program, it was clearly teaching her nothing good if she had somehow done this.
She heard something fall at the back of the house, with footsteps following close behind. A crunch of glass here, the coarse sound of a shoe going over the dusty remains of what must have been her nice granite countertops. Then from the darkness of the house, barely silhouetted by the light streaming in through the window, was Jeffery. Sickly angry little Jeffery, glowering at her as if she had done this. He wasn't half the man his brother was, in either sense of the word.
"What have you done to this place you goddamned man-child? I'll have you arrested for this!" She screamed at him, for once unmoving he simply glared at her. Then a haze settled around him as he stalked towards her. The remains of a chair simply disintegrated as his leg passed through it instead of stepping around it like a normal person.
"You bitch! You must have done something to get my daughter taken from me! Well no more. I won't let you stand between me and my daughter anymore, not you, not the cops, and certainly not the fucking PRT!"
At the last shouted word a ripple burst forth heading directly for her before suddenly it ran into a transparent purple wall in front of her hands that shattered when the ripple met the barrier. Had she done that? Was she secretly a cape this whole time?
A commanding voice from behind her probably indicated otherwise. "Ms. Harris, please back away from Mr. Biron, your life is in grave danger. I'll protect you."
As she turned to run she saw a young woman a little younger than she was marching confidently towards Jeffrey in spite of how terrifying he was. She tried to run but tripped and fell before inching away from her approaching ex husband. The cape seemed to grimace a little before continuing to meet him head on.
"You! You took my daughter away from me! You and that cheating whore over there."
More ripples were blocked by yet more purple barriers, they seemed at a stalemate until the new hero she'd sort of been aware of fired a bolt of lightning out of her hand. It arced around one of her shields and shocked Jeffrey who screamed and fell.
The purple hero picked her up by one arm before ushering her through a portal into the PRT building. She recognized it by how many times she had been here to try and argue that her daughter shouldn't be a child soldier for the government. They were in an interview room without one of those mirrors they always had in movies.
"What's going to happen now? What's going on with Jeffrey?"
"I don't know Ms. Harris, I wish I did."
Jeffery woke up, feeling the pain from that bitch's lightning bolt. He groaned as he got up, the rage that had been his constant companion since the day his daughter had been stolen from him even stronger than ever. Without anyone in the house he left for his car outside.
He couldn't find anyone to help him in his quest to save his daughter here. He'd been looking online over the last few days as he worked out his frustration and what his powers were on the house around him. Lung wouldn't take orders from him and was a lazy bastard anyway. The Empire was crumbling without Kaiser to lead them and now lacked the power to even put up a fight against Anima. Every other gang in the city were small fries in comparison.
He'd seen in some show that trying to drive away in a hurry was more suspicious than just driving normally, so even though he wanted nothing more than to put the pedal to the metal and burn rubber out of this hellhole he held his power in check and slowly drove north to Boston. New York was next on his list if he couldn't get anyone there to join him for his revenge. Even just a promise and he would be happy to help them out. They scratch his back he'd scratch theirs.
Super simple stuff. He knew Accord had a bone to pick with the PRT, but he felt the man was too passive, too happy with what he had. The Teeth on the other hand were more chaotic and would be more willing to head to Brockton Bay, it was where they were from after all, and that bitch Anima had already cleared out their biggest competitors there. So all he had to do was head to the bad part of town in Boston, fuck up some Teeth and demand to be let in. Maybe even challenge the Butcher. Then he'd have a whole gang to himself, no need to start from scratch or work his way up to get the boss's attention.
A few PRT vans rushed past him heading towards his house, and as he'd hoped they hadn't noticed him heading out of the city. It was a grueling experience, holding his power fully in check so he didn't tear the car apart around him, no matter how much he wanted to blast some asshole drivers or pedestrians who wouldn't hurry up.
He cut a little loose speeding up the highway passing cars in front of him. He had somewhere to be damn it, these morons didn't deserve to hold him back. Then on an open stretch of road without cars ahead for miles he saw something. A procession of what looked like some Mad Max wanna be hot-rodded cars. He grinned, maybe he could get what he wanted right now, that was one less barrier in the way of getting his daughter back.
As he got close to the lead vehicle, a Jeep without a top on it, he recognized the woman behind the wheel, the Butcher. With only a moment to spare he sent out his most focused blast, not even bothering to roll the window down.
The window gained a spider web of cracks, then shattered outwards. The pulse travelled through the air, little ripples visible in its wake as it yanked the air apart violently, before it passed through the Jeep's window and straight into the Butcher's head. It popped like a grape. It almost felt like he was watching in slow motion with how he could see the ripple warping her features, a moment of shock on her face, before her head was torn apart.
Fucking brutal, you got iced by some nobody on his way to find you.
Fuck off Tom, I had no time to charge a teleport with how little warning I had.
He pulled his car over, getting out and feeling the power sing through his veins. He teleported over to the Jeep in an explosion of fire before roughly pulling the door open and taking out Alice's corpse. He took their bow, their knives, and after a brief moment took her fragmented skull, which he reformed into a mask.
He sat down like nothing of note had happened and continued onto Brockton. The voices in his head arguing with him over whether or not to kill Anima. To him it was simple, either she died to him, or she killed him, and the best way for both to happen was to try to kill her from the get go.
Fuck, I didn't even get to go out in a blaze of glory.
Max Anders sat in his cell alone, doing little more than moping around. It had been such a good plan that was defeated by mere chance.
Yes, it had been a spur of the moment decision, but they only had one day's warning that Anima had the day off. She was scheduled to be across the country chasing down Heartbreaker, which neatly solved the problem of trying to either distract her or fight her head on. If she wasn't there at all he had no real issue. If he wanted to get his people back then they would have to rescue them from the PHQ's jail, they weren't due for a transfer that same day. Sure, he would have burned some of his people on the inside, but a few normals for the two particularly valuable capes was well worth the price.
If he wanted to attack their stronghold out in the bay he needed almost everyone available to make sure they could make a clean getaway. Fenja and Menja would be at a disadvantage inside the relatively small rig, so they could act as rearguard to ensure Lung couldn't simply barge his way into the Empire's territory. He knew that even against the entire Protectorate team minus Anima he would emerge victorious. They had forced them to retreat before, even if never on such a bold offensive.
For a brief moment it had worked. He had the Protectorate at his mercy, even if he couldn't do anything else to them lest he draw the ire of the Triumvirate. All that was left was to get back onto Rune's platforms and escape back into the city. They would likely want to lay low for a bit, but that would drag out the Dragon of Kyushu, either his own hiding or the Protectorate's attempts to regain the appearance of authority.
Then it all came raining down. Suddenly she was there, and she was even stronger than his most pessimistic estimations of her. She moved like lightning and flung around powers like they were popcorn. There was never really any hope against her.
What really sold the impossibility of the fight was whatever sort of master effect he'd been under at the end. She took control of his body in an instant and used him and his power like a puppet. She made him act like a coward. He realized as she had marched over to him that she could have done that from the beginning, but instead she wanted to create another damn video, but this time it was to be of his defeat at her hands.
What could any of them have hoped to do against that? Instantly taking over any opponent was indeed as ridiculously powerful as her eerie dark lasers. Even if she had a short range on it, or a limited number of targets, her ability to instantaneously be anywhere else on the battlefield would let her conscript any foe and either force them to make a crucial mistake or simply point them at their allies. Had any of them been in control of their own actions? Or were they all simply props in her play?
Living with Jess was a thousand times better than living with her mom, Aisha felt. Her house was huge, with all the latest games and a huge TV, and she even had her own computer. They hardly had any chores, though she said there would be some lessons on household things because eventually they would need it in their own lives. Jess made sure they had breakfast that she cooked up for them every morning, and had offered everyone to make them lunches which Aisha took advantage of, and supper was usually this big production with Jess having fun with her powers and those golems she made.
She even helped her with her homework, and actually taught her some stuff about animals that was kinda neat. It was just… she was there for them. Rachel needed help with the dogs and Jess couldn't be there all the time? She made a few robots like in star wars that listened to Rachel and helped take care of the dogs. Alec needed more help with feelings and stuff? She took him into his room and sat him down to talk with him while using her powers to give them privacy. Weirdest of all, Aisha had asked to understand rocket science and brain surgery and Jess taught her it.
It didn't matter that she'd meant it as a joke, which Jess had to have known since she was a psychic. It didn't matter that she was twelve and had no business knowing how to do either of those things nor any real reason to want to. Jess just sat her down and taught her how to be a rocket surgeon. She even set up a room for Aisha to build little rockets in, though had forbidden her from performing brain surgery unless absolutely necessary. Which she guessed felt fair. Even if she itched to put her newfound skills to use.
But even this tiny rocket that she knew now was hardly better than a fancy bottle rocket was just so frustrating to work on. She couldn't stay on any part of the project, or even on the project at all. She'd make doodles on the metal she was going to make the siding out of only to realize she'd put it all on the inside, or she'd get to work on a fuel tank but get distracted playing around with the machinery, ending up with a half a dozen weird shapes that could technically all be used for fuel tanks, but most of which would be impractical on her tiny rocket.
Dedicated high schoolers could put together something of this level faster than she could, yet she knew that she was on the cutting edge of what humanity knew about rockets. She'd even looked up papers on the stuff, understanding the technical terms and fancy equations.
But only about rockets.
She didn't have a clue why certain alloys were better than others for the thruster nozzles, or why certain scales of rocket were better with different types of fuel, or even really how to predict where the rocket would fall once it was out of fuel. She was pretty confident she could land a rocket on top of the house, but only if it still was burning fuel just as it landed.
She'd had a science class where they had made little catapults out of popsicle sticks, glue, and rubber bands, but she didn't understand them. Not like she did rockets.
It made her feel like an idiot most of the time, except here in her little lab where she could make her little model rockets. She'd spent all of her free time that she could manage to focus making this rocket with tools she was pretty sure were beyond anything actual scientists had available to them, and yet it still took her nearly a week to make it. She went to Missy's door and knocked to try and drag her new friend outside to see how cool her rocket was.
"Hey come on, it's finally ready!" Also the only person other than Jess who could get it down if it landed on the roof like she wanted it to.
"I'm coming, give me a moment." Aisha could see past her to Missy's computer which was playing one of the Anima videos again, she really seemed to like them and had gotten embarrassed one time Jess had opened the door to call her down for dinner.
As they went outside Aisha's excitement and worry reached a new height. She knew in theory what her rocket should do when launched exactly from where she put her launch pad down. She knew exactly which way to face it so that the solid fuel would burn just right to create the flight path she wanted, the different fuels burning at different rates to put pressure on the inside opening just a little differently so it could go where she wanted it to. But for all that she knew it wasn't a guarantee. If she'd mixed the compounds incorrectly before they dried, if her metalworking was off even a little, if the wind was too strong, then it would all be for naught and her rocket would come crashing back down to earth.
With bated breath and a space warping Ward at her side she carefully adjusted it just right before lighting the fuse. She stepped back to watch as the wick burned into the tail end of the rocket and it took off.
An initial burst brought it up to about three stories in a second, she'd been worried it would be too much pressure for the little rocket and would cause it to blowout. Then it took a lazy spin while practically hovering as the fins and slower burning fuel barely kept it aloft. Then it sped up a little more when it was aimed back towards the house before the next change in fuels brought it back upright where they slowly burnt out, lowering it to the roof.
"Woohoo I did it!" She took a well deserved victory dance break while Missy seemed amazed at what she'd seen.
"I hadn't thought she actually taught you rocket science. Are you like a rocket tinker now?"
"Nope, this is all skill baby… I guess it's a little like being a tinker but it's not really superhero worthy stuff. I couldn't make like a jetpack or something, even just strapping two rockets to my back would be crazy dangerous. Plus you'd almost instantly run out of fuel."
"That's pretty cool. Kid Win always complained about not really understanding why any of his stuff worked, or more often why it didn't until Jess found his specialty."
They sat there for a little bit before Missy grabbed her rocket off the roof. As they walked back in, Aisha took some of Jess' advice and opened up a little to Missy.
"It kinda sucks being the only person in the house without powers. This is the coolest thing I've got and it can't compare to any of you. Even this was given to me. I just want something that's really me to matter, you know?"
She looked at her for a moment.
"Powers don't fix that. Powers don't really tend to fix much of anything. Jess as always seems to be the exception to the rule."
"Yeah. She's pretty great isn't she?"