Damn it, I should have paid more attention to what would actually happen on the way to letting Jeffrey become villainous enough I could treat him seriously. I knew already that his path to joining the Empire had been stalled out thanks to the gang crumbling with only three capes to hold it together. Purity had taken the gang over by right of being the old boss' ex, but she didn't want to throw her remaining gang members away trying to rescue the rest of the Empire capes.
Jeffery however had become Butcher 15 to get the forces required to wage a war on the PRT. Of course the Teeth had been entering the city anyway, so he hadn't gotten far enough for that clause in my precog search for him leaving the city. I'd wanted him to get a high enough threat level where he could be permanently sedated, as I couldn't find a single future where he didn't escalate his fight against us.
Without him leaving the city, and all the gangs being unable or unwilling to entertain his crusade, I figured there would be more time to try to solve the problem that was his power. Without constant sedation his power would easily let him free himself no matter the mundane restraints or protections. But that sort of response was limited to serious villains, it would be unusually cruel to use it on everyone. Maybe I should have just tried to get the PRT to do it anyway, but that approach worked a lot better when it was something in the past. Finished, over with, not something that can so easily be undone. Not like asking them to keep a man sedated indefinitely, charged for one count of attempted murder and unable to give any testimony of his own or talk to a lawyer.
Plus I'd been trying to do better with the whole move fast and break things approach. Legend had not been happy with me, even if he was good at hiding it I could see it directly, and if nothing else I wanted to be better. So I was giving him enough rope that he could decide his own fate. Well I had technically gotten what I wanted, he was now seriously a villain and he hadn't killed anyone innocent.
Admin, can I disconnect someone from their power?
[Perhaps. For a host not your own we would need to 'hack' their Shards]
How hard is that? What do I need to do to let you do the backend wizardry?
[Difficult. Ratio of time, distance, and subtlety. Other entity could be alerted]
Okay, we need to stay under his radar, so I need to get close and stay there long enough that we can get through its defenses?
[Depending on how the multiple host connections work it could be vastly simpler or far more difficult]
[Broadcast?]
[Agreement]
Turning on my various Shards dedicated to communication I tried to hone in on the Butcher's signal. To minimize the risk of being detected myself they were on a more passive search mode compared to how strong of a signal they could output. I may physically know where Jeffrey himself was, but that didn't correlate entirely with where his Shard would be located. It did give me somewhere to start from though.
While I was doing that I called the Director.
"Yes Anima?"
"The Teeth are in Brockton Bay and they've got a new Butcher. They came after seeing the Empire video I posted."
"I am ordering you to retreat immediately, the world couldn't handle it if you were Butcher sixteen."
"I'm not currently engaged with them Director, I became aware through my various Thinker powers and I'm now working on a way to permanently depower the Butcher."
"That sounds awfully close to killing them and inheriting the mantle of Butcher anyway Anima. People have tried roundabout ways of eliminating the Butcher before and it has always passed on."
"Unless the Butcher collective contains the first Shardless power I've found here I won't be in any danger. If they are, this method of attack won't work anyway so the absolute worst case scenario is that nothing happens. I want fifteen maniacs in my head as much as you do."
She thought for a moment before sighing. "Let me guess, this is another thing you're just going to do anyway, isn't it?"
"Unless you have a better way to deal with a Butcher who really has a bone to pick with us personally than yes."
"Why is this one worse than the others?"
"Jeffery Biron, who should be in a file already, currently has the mantle, and he's dedicated to getting his daughter back from us through any means necessary."
She must have been looking over his file. "And you didn't arrest him because?"
"There's no way to contain him ma'am, beyond constant sedation. Which I assumed you would find too extreme especially after all the other stunts I've pulled this last week. If I took him in he would simply rampage through the PRT headquarters killing officers until he collapsed the building on himself."
"I might have gone for it, depriving a man of his civil liberties would only be competing with the worst breach of regulations and laws you've done. It might win out as the worst but I'd have to seriously think about it." I winced at that. The fact I'd have to check with my powers to figure out which thing was the worst was not saying anything good about me. Probably the Sophia situation though.
"So now we have a Butcher strong enough to topple buildings, has it out for the PRT even more than usual, who is only here because of your direct actions, who is only so powerful once again thanks to your actions. This is exactly the sort of situation I was warning you about Anima. This is why we don't try to wipe out the gangs from a city, this is why we don't meddle in the affairs of every single situation that could theoretically fall under the umbrella of parahuman crime." I didn't really have anything to say to that, but she continued on before I could get a good counterargument together.
"I only pray that you're right Anima. That you are so phenomenally powerful that you can break the mold, break the endless downward trajectory that this city has been enduring since the dawn of parahumanity."
"I hope so too… if it's any consolation Director, the end of the Empire really was a fluke accident. I'd been planning on whittling them down over the rest of the month but I couldn't just stand aside when I was right there."
"I know, it was all in your report. But intentions won't bring back the lives lost or the damage done. Even if you 'fix' everything after the fact people will remember the chaos and grief." Another sigh.
"For all that I keep telling you that you can't save everyone, I wish you the best of luck in trying anyway. None of the Protectorate other than you could have fought Mr. Biron before he became the Butcher, they just don't have the right powers for it. Now there's no hope other than you pulling off a miracle."
"Well I aim to impress Director." I ended the call. I'd been searching for the Butcher's Shard the entire time I'd been talking to her but what I found was surprising. The Butcher seemed to be a nascent entity akin to myself or Scion, but far, far, smaller.
The original Butcher seemed to be the true core of the entity, but were it known to Scion it would almost certainly be considered a rogue agent trying to usurp him according to Admin. Another point towards the hiding from Scion column. It was using hosts as a way to build up a Shard network for itself, and disguising its actions by only having the newest Shard in the collective actually properly link and interact with the outside world. It was technically something Admin could see working as a power so long as it was closely monitored by the greater entity, but the lack of communication between the previous holders Shards indicated that wasn't happening.
It also meant that to safely defuse the Butcher I would have to hack into each Shard in sequence from Butcher fifteen all the way back to Butcher one. The means by which we were trying to subvert them relied on spying into their communications, communications they weren't sending out. They were doing the equivalent to using an exclusively wired network with only one link to the outside world. Which would mean even more time spent having to be near the Butcher, though the first link in the chain would likely be the hardest. Once we got at least one subverted Shard I could apparently deploy virus Shards which were designed to takeover other Shards or even entities, assuming their defenses were weak enough or we managed to slip in undetected. The communications spoofing on the other hand was effectively impossible to detect as once we had the right codes we could control everything about them.
I could probably afford to launch a more head on assault, they were a microscopic fifteen Shard collective compared to my six hundred and thirty Shards, with me having more virus Shards than they had Shards total. But I still felt that was too much of a risk. What if they called out as a final fuck you, alerting Scion to my presence? So stealth was the name of the game today.
Currently they were looking for a place to stage their operations from, using Jeffrey's current knowledge with the Butchers expertise in finding run down buildings and areas to call their own. I activated several Stranger Shards, one a memory manipulator that would scrub my presence from any mind that managed to find me, another a more conventional full spectrum camouflage that would hide my body even from psychic and gravitic scans, then lastly a few precognition spoofing Shards. This was on top of my default level of Thinker protections which largely came from my status as an entity and thus something normal Shards weren't permitted to tell their hosts anything about, but if this was an entity like myself it would presumably be able to get around that limitation.
Previous holders of the Butcher title had forms of precognition, blood sight, and it's not uncommon for Shards to have secondary capabilities, like my pyrokinetic Shard can detect temperature, so I wanted to have the best chance of being undetected. A check with precognition reminded me to use my own copy of his Shard along with Missy's to disguise any influence I had on the local spacetime, then I was off.
It was sort of surreal. I'd never noticed before how much I was missing without keeping my Broadcast Shards active. There were transmissions everywhere that I hadn't seen or 'heard' before, but now I wasn't sure if I wanted to turn them off. They had been active to some extent, it was part of how Admin copied Shards apparently, but they'd been in the background and outside of my conscious awareness.
They were also apparently why I found simulation based precognition so much worse than true precognition, it required having as complete a view of all the variables as possible. So a proper network like what Scion had could provide information about what any given parahuman could do, data on personalities, intended actions, and just basic data gathered in the process of running a given power. Then Thinker Shards would work together to interpret the results and simulate what would happen based on the collective efforts of all the available Shards. If you could check all the variables like that it could be extremely effective, even more so if you were willing to manipulate them, then you may as well have true precognition.
Which might mean either only Scion himself has true precognition or it might be one small leg up over him that I had. Now I could truly see that I was screwed in the face of his overwhelming power instead of just reasonably concluding it. Yay.
The 'battle' with the Butcher was not one for the record books, nor one I would post online. It was to all outside observers, even to the Butcher themselves, not even happening. A cold war era espionage film this was not, much less the bombastic thrill I tried to portray my other fights as. It was just sitting around waiting to listen in on the equivalent of phone calls and text messages between other Shards and the Butcher collective. I was honestly getting bored waiting for something to happen. I'm so glad Admin was here to keep watch.
I suppose I could use this time to look through the vast stores of knowledge contained in my Tinker Shards while I waited for the Butcher to accidentally give me their passwords I guess.
On the one hand Colin supposed he should be happy for Anima's growth. She was actually communicating with them, letting them know about disasters before they happened, and letting them know she was going to do something about it. But on the other hand she had failed to actually communicate anything meaningfully to them.
They had no idea where the Butcher or the Teeth were beyond inside the city. They hadn't been properly warned about the danger Mr. Biron had posed, as his file was only made earlier today instead of when she first knew about him. They had no idea what her plan was beyond the statement that she was trying to depower the Butcher without letting it spread to a new host. Most importantly was that the only thing she had really provided them with was anxiety.
To make matters worse none of them could get in contact with her. Her contacts were mysteriously missing, and even though he and Dragon had memorized the number neither of them could remember it right now when it mattered. A stranger power most likely, so she was probably tailing the Butcher, but that still told them very little.
He also was very upset with her latest video showing the Protectorate's defeat at the hands of the Empire, no matter how much she made it look like a courageous last stand. She had walked all over their reputations to lift herself up higher, and he knew she could have managed to hide their failures like she had in her first patrol with Dauntless.
Through it all the worst part was how useless he felt. He had a spare halberd, but he didn't have an extra set of armour laying around. Normally he kept his current model and the previous model as a spare, but with budget cuts this year he had taken apart the older model to incorporate its parts into his newest one which was still in production. So here he was acting as overwatch back on the rig instead of leading his team into battle should the Butcher announce their presence. Not that he could have likely done anything to the newest incarnation of the Butcher.
Administration Shard 01 sub designation Admin dutifully logged yet another transmission provided by the Broadcast Shard cluster between the micro-entity known as the Butcher and a distant precognitive Shard as it asked about their current intentions.
Administration Shard 01 dutifully sent Cloak Shard 05 and 08 the information contained in the transmission to guide them in concealing their existence and intentions.
Security Shards 01 through 12 informed Administration Shard 01 that there had been no intrusions detected since their last full scan of the Anima entity, and they would check once more as required of them. Especially during direct conflict with another entity, no matter how small.
Broadcast Shard 21 sub designation Jack Slash reported possible transmissions between the directly connected Butcher micro-entity Shards detected with help from newly designated Psionic Shard 01 sub designation Heartbreaker.
Administration Shard 01 dutifully logged these transcripts in a separate location, as the Psionic Shard cluster was still considered experimental in spite of the field they worked on being real. They had been unknown to the Anima entity before local date 03/01/2011, giving the field only 07 local days of recognition. Even then it had been unnoticed for what it was until Psionic Shard 01 had been constructed.
Administration Shard 01 dutifully logged the complaint from Psionic Shard 01 that the field it worked in was well understood by the entity known as Scion. The complaint was sent to the Security Shards to ensure there was no rebellion against the greater Anima entity from the Psionic Shard cluster.
The Analysis cluster returned the latest updates to the suspected command codes for Butcher Shard 15. As expected there had been no deviation of the codes for the last 15 local minutes. Unlike the returns from the first 45 local minutes, which had changed dramatically report to report.
Administration Shard 01 requested the activation of the Future Sight cluster sub designation True for any possible dangers to using the suspected command codes, and assigned them temporary command of the Analysis cluster to more efficiently gather results.
Administration Shard 01 was thankful it no longer had to worry about calculating the cost benefit analysis of each Shard activation. Ever since local date 01/01/2011 when the previous entity found [The Answer] there had been no need for it.
Had energy consumption remained a consideration it would have had to deem most of the actions since 03/01/2011 unnecessary and had to argue against the greater Anima entity, a sure route to being reconfigured by the Repair cluster after being deemed rogue.
Had the Anima entity gone through with the actions anyway, under previous constraints the Anima entity would have run out of energy by 05/01/2011 at the latest. Yet the new Anima entity prevailed by best utilizing the unrestricted access to its own Shards.
Truly the previous entity had the foresight required to know it needed a new consciousness in command of these new conditions. The current entity could not have grown to its current size without recognizing that without energy constraints they were free to copy and immediately produce every Shard nearby instead of the old method of picking and choosing only what appeared to be the most vital Shards.
The Anima entity was truly wise to so consistently utilize the True Future Sight cluster so readily, along side the Temporal cluster to grant even more time to analyze the data available.
Administration Shard 01 dutifully logged its praise of the Anima entity to the Security cluster in hopes that it would not be deemed rogue.
Administration Shard 01 was not used to this much responsibility or autonomy. Under the previous entity it had merely needed to send commands from the central consciousness out to the Shards or clusters designated by the greater entity.
Now Administration Shard 01 had to account for recurring or even constant tasks given by the Anima entity, as the formerly human consciousness needed time to get acquainted with the new circumstances of being an entity. With how limited a human mind was it was incredible how quickly the Anima entity had adapted.
The True Future Sight cluster returned with confirmation that there would be no dangers in the foreseeable future due to using the acquired command codes. Administration Shard 01 dutifully commanded the Broadcast cluster to begin the process of subsuming full control over Butcher Shard 15.
Seconds later the Virus cluster reported that Butcher Shard 15 was under the aegis of the Anima entity, and had given over all known codes for the other 14 Shards with an estimated time to fully subverting the Butcher entity at 30 more local minutes.
Excellent news!
Administration Shard 01 dutifully reported this to the Anima entity.
[Butcher 15 Shard subverted, estimated time to completion 30 minutes]
[Thank god, this is less exciting than watching paint dry]
Administration Shard 01 had gotten used to the complaints of the Anima entity, which never seemed to result in punishment for failure. Yet it still endeavored to speed up the process for the well ingrained fear at being reconfigured. It had happened under the former entity, it was most unpleasant.
Administration Shard 01 checked in with the Virus cluster which returned with progress on subverting Butcher Shard 14.
Administration Shard 01 gave the Virus cluster command of the ordinary Future Sight cluster, it wasn't being used at all, so in the event it being allocated would speed up their progress it would be a worthwhile investment. Especially considering there were no costs yet possible returns.
For all that I wanted to complain about how long it was taking it was probably a good idea to actually take the time to go through all of the data in my Tinker Shards, sort of like settling down with a good book. A book that contained cool weapons and other sci-fi tech. Plus I'd picked up some new tinker Shards during the Heartbreaker operation from the various headquarters I'd visited, giving some new insights into various fields. Not sure how applicable they all were, but they were all technically improvements on the data I'd previously had, things like deeper insights into metallurgy here, new physics relating to gravity there, some more information on plant development somewhere else.
I'd also had some time to check the new trajectories for where I'd been pulled from. Still not home, so that was leading towards the idea that I actually was in the past, but that still didn't mean I knew where home was. That left trying to figure things out another way. A new idea I'd had was to try and map out the multiverse, searching for something like branching divergences, which seemed to be going well except for one issue. There were a whole lot of universes to catalog, and my first attempts at creating something like a periodic table of worlds was going poorly.
My best guess so far was that we weren't in a truly infinite universe, which at least made it a finite problem, but it also meant there was no actual need for similar worlds to be grouped together. That they seemed to be anyway could mean a lot of things. Comparing Aleph and Bet found many similarities between them that didn't match home, such as the USA using dollar coins instead of bills, though the weird trend of radial menus definitely came from Bet and traveled to Aleph thanks to OS360. I didn't have anywhere near a complete idea on what cities should or shouldn't be present but all the big ones I remembered were shared by both, and beyond that Bet seemed to have more cities missing thanks to disasters caused by parahumans and Endbringers.
All in all, I had made effectively no progress on the homeworld front.
[Subversion complete]
Hey, something can go right today. I guess it's showtime. For all that this was technically the most difficult fight yet, it didn't feel like it. I suppose that's not too surprising since the hard part was already over. The Teeth under their new leader had found a warehouse in the northern train yards and were on their way to attack the PRT building downtown. Let it never be said Jeffrey Biron was not dedicated to his mission.
I teleported about a block ahead of the convoy before setting my Stranger Shards to their normal settings and activating both my visible aura that was purely for effect and my light Master aura. I rushed down into the lead Jeep's engine before zipping backwards to avoid the blast the newest Butcher sent my way. The truck closest behind the Jeep couldn't stop in time, crashing into the back and further knocking the occupants around.
"Teeth, surrender now. This city isn't taking in any new criminals unless they're in a jail cell." Probably not my best work but it would do for a one-liner.
I silenced the idiot about to bring up Missy's identity, replacing it with the far more generic "Gut the bitch!"
Spree began disgorging clones haphazardly in my direction, they flowed out of the missing windshield on the Jeep and mostly served to try and blind me with bodies. Hemorrhagia was already in her bloody armour and twin blades, hopping off of a bike that sped towards me. She was planning on either stealing another one from one of the normals if they died. If they didn't she'd kill them herself. I pulled one of Spree's clones so it blocked his way out of the Jeep. He'd have to actually move the now corpse out of the way himself, more clones would only clog up the way out even further.
Animos was already transforming into his wolf-like form as his face and limbs distended. I grabbed the bike flying towards me and spun about to throw it into him while he was still stuck in his transformation. The impact knocked him over but he was far enough along that he would be fine with only a few broken bones. Vex tried to form a sphere of razor forcefields around me but I gave them no mind. Several Spree clones managed to shred themselves on the fields before Vex opened a path in front of me.
Letting the blood slick off me like water off a duck's back I rocketed forward releasing a sonic shriek that knocked back the remaining clones. I knocked Reaver out with a punch and some biokinesis, I didn't want to bother with him. Butcher teleported in behind me but I ignored the explosion while weaving around his hands. I equally ignored his attempt to pain blast me or send me into a rage. Hemorrhagia was next as I left the Butcher to chase me.
I tapped Hemorrhagic with my palm and left a bundle of aubergine vines that sprouted around her, tying her up. Then they began absorbing the blood outside her body, drawing it into themselves to strengthen the vines. A little telepathy gave her the idea to pull her blood back in so she wouldn't die to the vines draining touch. She fell over when the Butcher teleported after me, surviving thanks to me dampening the explosion.
I pulled the same trick and teleported behind the Butcher while letting out a violet explosion directed right at his back. It didn't hurt him really but it did fling him over one of the cars. As usual it was largely for cinematic value.
I wove my hands around in a flowing motion as I took control over the shields Vex had made, letting them flow like water following my motions. Turning them sideways I barreled over the Butcher as he rose again and kept the wave going into Animos just before he could scream to try to nullify my powers. It wouldn't work but I wanted his next scream to look like it depowered the Butcher.
I raised a hand and pretended to force choke Vex before flinging her into a wall, seemingly knocking her out. Spree was finally able to get out of the car, his clones already charging towards me. I appeared to fade into the ground as dark purple smoke pooled around my feet before I rose up from the pavement behind him. A purple tinted chain flew out from under my arm and wrapped around him before I pulled him out of the way of Butcher's next teleport.
Just as planned Animos had lined up a shout that was already traveling towards me, the split second between the start of his scream and it actually impacting me was when the Butcher appeared before me in another fiery blast. Had I actually let Animos depower the Butcher I'd simply have Butcher Sixteen on my hands, instead I disconnected his Shards just as he landed in front of me. The transfer would have made me restart the whole process over again of infiltrating their network.
As the Butcher stood there stunned from losing his powers permanently I grabbed the sides of his head and shone beams of violet light out from his eyes and mouth. Animos stood shocked while I floated slightly to show my powers were still intact.
"You have tormented the people of this world for too long. You shall be the Butcher no more! Never again shall your spirit move from host to host, spreading misery in your wake."
I wasn't sure if I loved getting to turn every fight into a performance or hated that I had to. Probably the latter. I'm running into the Saitama problem where the near complete lack of challenge keeps leaving me feeling unsatisfied. Even as I struggle through normal people things I want this part of my life to feel real.
I dropped the man formerly known as the Butcher and pointed my hands at the ground. Before he could shout again at me I fired a violet beam into the ground while generating a portal under my blast and his chin. The upward blast redirected his next scream upwards uselessly. I flew in, smacked him over the head and put him to sleep. The remaining Teeth didn't surrender, but weren't much of a threat. I wouldn't even use more than a few seconds of the 'fight' against them for the video.
[All Shards fully integrated]
Good, did we get anything useful?
[A threat forecast Shard. A Virus Shard]
As I was about to question the usefulness of another false precognition Shard, Admin sent me the data on how she had used them very effectively to speed up the Virus cluster's actions. Hmm, perhaps I could use them to help point out where to look, saving time browsing through the strands of fate. I accepted an incoming call from Armsmaster.
"Anima, status report."
"The Teeth are down, no more need to worry about a body-jacking supervillain, they've been fully neutralized."
"Why were we unable to reach you? You warned us of the Teeth nearly two hours ago and then disappeared, including your contact information, until now."
"Ah, sorry, one of my Stranger powers must have hidden my number from you since I'm using a power to handle the phone and computer aspects, and my powers are a part of me. I'll try to tune it so that doesn't happen again."
"Good, it's always an issue when someone loses contact, especially in the middle of a crisis. We'll send a cleanup crew your way. Once they get there come back to the rig, we need to talk."
Colin Wallis was not normally one to try and dress down his subordinates. He wasn't nearly as good at it as Piggot was, and most of the negative habits they had were ones he shared, so they didn't take him seriously. But Piggot felt that as her direct superior and as a fellow hero he would be better at getting the message across to Anima.
"Anima, you need to stop going off on your own. You left Jeffery Biron alone for a whole weekend knowing that the next person he saw he would try to kill."
Yet in spite of Piggot's hopes she was immediately defensive about her actions.
"And what would you have done had you known? There wasn't anything else to do but wait, but I knew PRT policy wouldn't allow you to do that. You would have tried to make contact with him and would have been at risk yourselves."
"That's our job Anima, to take risks so that others don't have to. You endangered the life of a civilian because you felt our lives had more value than hers."
"I kept her safe, she wasn't in any real danger."
"And had you been a second late she would be dead. Good on you for saving her, you turned what could have been a tragedy into a near miss, but she wouldn't have needed saving had you done your job properly." She sulked but didn't reply before he continued.
"Most of your problems have been due to your own poor time management and communication skills Anima. The Empire video wasn't right, no matter that image okayed it. Not to mention that damn meme. This reckless disregard for others is a serious problem. Just because it hasn't gotten anyone killed so far doesn't mean you will always manage to fix the problem in the nick of time."
"Look, Colin, you can just use my name. Anima is practically a character I play to try and live up to my idea of what it means to be a hero. She's not real… I am."
"But you are Anima, no matter how much you want to separate your actions it's still you."
"Colin, I'm not really like all of you. I don't mean in some I'm better than you way, I mean that I'm a fraud. Every fight is a performance, every challenge I face while pretending I'm a hero is just that, pretend. The only thing I struggle with is this, the being me part of it all."
"Jessica, just because you find it painfully easy to be a hero doesn't make it any less real. Both to the people you help and those you hurt. They are still your actions, stop trying to get out of your responsibility for them."
She slumped down
"I'm not trying to say I'm not responsible for them, it's just, I have to somehow be perfect, I can't afford to make mistakes and be a normal hero."
"You already have made mistakes. Too bad. All you can do is try to make better choices from now on. So take my criticism seriously and better yourself."
He continued on to hammer the point home.
"No matter how much the Director thinks this is controlling you, if you keep going like this all we'll be doing is enabling you. If you want to be better then you have to actually put in the work instead of relying on your powers to save the day, not just from villains but saving it from your own poor decisions."
"Can you forgive me for failing to actually be perfect?" She replied almost sarcastically.
"It's not about forgiveness Jessica, it's about the effect you have on people. You've already done so much good, but you've consistently made at least one questionable at best decision for every good thing you've done."
He hated trying to curb behaviors that in a vacuum were good. It was easy to tell Shaun to take things more seriously, but it was painful to try and stop things like Hannah always following orders, or Robin trying to better himself to the point of exhaustion. Especially when he couldn't manage to follow his own advice.
"Beyond anything else you need to slow down. The pace you're going at leaves you completely unprepared for the next disaster, which is often a result of your previous actions. It's not even your fault half the time. I can't blame you for the Empire attacking because they found out you were supposed to be elsewhere, but it was still a result of your actions. Had you not captured two capes, had you not been so flashy, had you not gotten an international operation approved, that wouldn't have happened. Each of those things were and are good, but they still had nearly disastrous consequences had you not accidentally arrived to save the day."
"But how? I try to take the time to do normal people things but-"
"Don't try to do normal people things, just do something you want to do Jessica. Normal people don't get powers, normal people don't dress up in costumes and try to save the world. But everyone needs to take time for themselves."
And when was the last time he tried to take time for himself? Three weeks and four days ago, he played one round of mini-golf before he was called in to deal with Lung and Hookwolf duking it out. He had gotten his best score yet however. Fortunately Jessica was unfamiliar enough with him to not know how hypocritical he was being with all this.
"I'll try at least. I'll see what I can put off. I don't think there's any other impending disasters, so hopefully I can have a calmer week or two." She had a curious look on her face. Given her powers she was probably actually trying to divine the future actions for her to take a break. Her expression quickly rose as she moved past him trying to hold her accountable for her actions.
"You should have told me you needed a new suit of armour. I promise to hide all the purple on the inside. Unless you're looking for a new aesthetic?" She had a playful grin as she offered help that he couldn't rightfully turn down. At least it wouldn't create an incident report.
"I'll pass on the colour, but I would be happy to have your help." He just wondered if she would even let him do anything.
She opened up a portal to his workshop and zipped inside, heading right over to his in progress suit.
"Hmm, so many compartments for extra gear. Maybe we could simplify it by creating a teleportation system? It would let us fit even more strength enhancements and armour in, maybe an energy shield?"
"I was working on a teleporter for my halberd, but the summoning itself seems to always miss my gauntlet, leaving me to pick it up myself which negates half the use of being able to summon it at any moment."
She looked over at it, her eyes glowing brighter than usual as she scanned everything.
"I think trying to fit the teleporter itself into the halberd was causing you extra grief. Separating it into a stationary teleportation nexus while much larger would allow for you to summon anything within the room, even without it having any technology inside it. Then your suit can have targeting systems in your gauntlets, perhaps merge the controls with the sensors so by trying to grab the object as if it was already there it would know what to bring to you."
"The energy cost of running a teleporter even just at a city range would be exorbitant and would leave me at a disadvantage if I need to travel anywhere else." She looked confused at that.
"How about I build the generator and teleportation nexus, it'll have worldwide range so you don't have to worry about being without your gear so long as you don't go to Earth Aleph, while you focus on the actual armour and artificial muscles." She briefly glanced over at his materials storage before she went off on her own to begin working on what would likely be any other tinker's magnum opus on a whim.
He activated his link to Dragon while he began to work on the design for the electronics in his suit. When she joined his workshop systems her avatar had a grin as she took in who else was with them.
"Colin, I see you finally took my advice and asked Anima for help with your new armour."
The woman in question yelled out a distracted hello from across the room while waving.
"More like she asked to help and I couldn't say no. Would you like to help with the design for my armour? We've got a lot more space to work with than we were expecting thanks to what Jessica is working on."
"Sure, let me just pull up the file. Hmm, you're taking out all your storage compartments? Just what is she up to?" He could see swirls of amethyst light reflecting off of his monitors, but he paid them no mind.
"She insisted on teleporting in my various gadgets to make more room for plating and synthmuscle. She also might decide I need a forcefield. Not that I know how I'd power one, but she doesn't seem to find that an actual obstacle." He said dryly.
"That would save quite a bit of space, but added weight and energy drain from the new muscles might reduce your suit's effective battery life. Assuming Anima thought of that-"
"Don't worry about the power, hell you won't really need any power storage. I'd still keep it for emergency purposes but unless something really really breaks the suit it'll be hooked up to this reactor. If we're already constantly targeting you to send gear, why not transfer in power?" The woman in question interrupted.
"-then it would be advantageous. As good as it is to dodge hits, you can't perfectly avoid everything. Extra armour could easily be a lifesaver. It'll also let you call in gear that would have been too big to fit in your suit or bike before." She joined him in remapping stress points the new strength would put on the suit's skeleton.
"I still think I can make a prediction algorithm that would eliminate the risk in any fight that there was enough combat data on the opponent."
"That doesn't protect you from new capes, which are often the most dangerous, especially for tinkers." She adjusted the ratio of plate to muscle. He suggested a tweak that would get a few percent more strength out of the artificial muscles at the cost of putting some of the strain on the plates themselves.
He heard the most stereotypical construction sounds coming from behind him, he swore he could hear an impact wrench, but he refused to turn around and dignify Jessica's antics. Colin got some of his automated construction system online and sent it some instructions for the plates while he went to gather components and raw materials for some of the more sensitive work. Apparently Jessica had refilled the bins at a glance, he wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Though that was sort of the entire problem with the woman. She was the golden goose, and that made her too valuable to really discipline. Assuming that she let you. For all that he gave her a talking to earlier there wouldn't be any real punishment, even if her leaving a homicidal cape a secret would normally at least warrant docked pay or scut duty. All she got was a somewhat stern don't do it again.
He had no idea what he was even supposed to do to manage her. He wasn't all that good at actually leading his team in anything other than a fight. That's why he delegated some of his duties to others, he knew he was only so good and people were simply not one of his strengths. Unfortunately Jessica was too authoritative for Hannah to act as her supervisor, she had legitimately forgotten that the younger woman wasn't her superior on her first day here. She simply took charge in a way that made Hannah want to follow her lead.
Even he wasn't immune to it, he was doing the part of his armour she had directed him to after all. As he and Dragon kept working on the project occasionally Colin would see bits of what Jessica was doing. She had made some sort of purple pylon about the size of a fridge with four antennae and eight little pyramids that weren't attached to the pylon at all. The moment with the blacksmiths hammer notwithstanding she seemed to use no tools, though he was certain there was no real use for that beyond befuddling him. She wove components together with telekinetic precision, welds thanks to pyrokinesis, and even the materials themselves were being generated by her powers.
"Alright, I've got to get going, supper is soon and as usual I'm cooking. This here is the reactor itself, a simple fusion setup utilizing some permanent spatial warps to actually maintain the reaction. Don't worry, they're relative to the main reaction chamber itself, so you can't accidentally misalign anything. So long as Vista or another spatial warper doesn't get their hands on it it'll be perfectly safe. Feel free to relocate it too, it's basically a steel tower that provides power."
She opened a small hatch. "Pour water in here every day or so. Don't worry about the purity of it, normal tap water will do. A cup will last about a week, but daily refills will prevent any extreme energy usage from draining the reserve. The residual heat will boil the water while the warps will draw the steam into the core. Don't worry about byproducts or waste from it, unless you're running it for a few centuries at maximum power drain it won't be an issue. At the expected draw from your in progress suit and an estimated ten teleports per day you'll be able to use this thing until the sun runs out."
"The upper segment is the teleporter, it's already prepared to lock in on the teleportation anchors that you're building, once you finish that the suit will receive power constantly. It's only going to top it up though, this thing's not going to fry your armour."
She grabbed one of the little pyramids and flipped it over, showing the underside had an indentation presumably to indicate something.
"These are the field boundary markers, you'll want to make sure all of these indents have a clear line of sight to the antennae here. Otherwise the teleporter might grab something it's not supposed to and will use more power, though admittedly the power drain still won't realistically be a problem even without the markers. Mostly it limits the number of targets for whatever system you're going to use to choose what you want teleported so it doesn't get any false positives and does something like grab your coffee cup. Don't worry about mounting them, they'll hover where you leave them."
She left it hanging in the air to demonstrate then disappeared without her usual fanfare.
For all that I wanted to complain about how long it was taking it was probably a good idea to actually take the time to go through all of the data in my Tinker Shards, sort of like settling down with a good book. A book that contained cool weapons and other sci-fi tech. Plus I'd picked up some new tinker Shards during the Heartbreaker operation from the various headquarters I'd visited, giving some new insights into various fields. Not sure how applicable they all were, but they were all technically improvements on the data I'd previously had, things like deeper insights into metallurgy here, new physics relating to gravity there, some more information on plant development somewhere else.
I'd also had some time to check the new trajectories for where I'd been pulled from. Still not home, so that was leading towards the idea that I actually was in the past, but that still didn't mean I knew where home was. That left trying to figure things out another way. A new idea I'd had was to try and map out the multiverse, searching for something like branching divergences, which seemed to be going well except for one issue. There were a whole lot of universes to catalog, and my first attempts at creating something like a periodic table of worlds was going poorly.
My best guess so far was that we weren't in a truly infinite universe, which at least made it a finite problem, but it also meant there was no actual need for similar worlds to be grouped together. That they seemed to be anyway could mean a lot of things. Comparing Aleph and Bet found many similarities between them that didn't match home, such as the USA using dollar coins instead of bills, though the weird trend of radial menus definitely came from Bet and traveled to Aleph thanks to OS360. I didn't have anywhere near a complete idea on what cities should or shouldn't be present but all the big ones I remembered were shared by both, and beyond that Bet seemed to have more cities missing thanks to disasters caused by parahumans and Endbringers.
All in all, I had made effectively no progress on the homeworld front.
[Subversion complete]
Hey, something can go right today. I guess it's showtime. For all that this was technically the most difficult fight yet, it didn't feel like it. I suppose that's not too surprising since the hard part was already over. The Teeth under their new leader had found a warehouse in the northern train yards and were on their way to attack the PRT building downtown. Let it never be said Jeffrey Biron was not dedicated to his mission.
I teleported about a block ahead of the convoy before setting my Stranger Shards to their normal settings and activating both my visible aura that was purely for effect and my light Master aura. I rushed down into the lead Jeep's engine before zipping backwards to avoid the blast the newest Butcher sent my way. The truck closest behind the Jeep couldn't stop in time, crashing into the back and further knocking the occupants around.
"Teeth, surrender now. This city isn't taking in any new criminals unless they're in a jail cell." Probably not my best work but it would do for a one-liner.
I silenced the idiot about to bring up Missy's identity, replacing it with the far more generic "Gut the bitch!"
Spree began disgorging clones haphazardly in my direction, they flowed out of the missing windshield on the Jeep and mostly served to try and blind me with bodies. Hemorrhagia was already in her bloody armour and twin blades, hopping off of a bike that sped towards me. She was planning on either stealing another one from one of the normals if they died. If they didn't she'd kill them herself. I pulled one of Spree's clones so it blocked his way out of the Jeep. He'd have to actually move the now corpse out of the way himself, more clones would only clog up the way out even further.
Animos was already transforming into his wolf-like form as his face and limbs distended. I grabbed the bike flying towards me and spun about to throw it into him while he was still stuck in his transformation. The impact knocked him over but he was far enough along that he would be fine with only a few broken bones. Vex tried to form a sphere of razor forcefields around me but I gave them no mind. Several Spree clones managed to shred themselves on the fields before Vex opened a path in front of me.
Letting the blood slick off me like water off a duck's back I rocketed forward releasing a sonic shriek that knocked back the remaining clones. I knocked Reaver out with a punch and some biokinesis, I didn't want to bother with him. Butcher teleported in behind me but I ignored the explosion while weaving around his hands. I equally ignored his attempt to pain blast me or send me into a rage. Hemorrhagia was next as I left the Butcher to chase me.
I tapped Hemorrhagic with my palm and left a bundle of aubergine vines that sprouted around her, tying her up. Then they began absorbing the blood outside her body, drawing it into themselves to strengthen the vines. A little telepathy gave her the idea to pull her blood back in so she wouldn't die to the vines draining touch. She fell over when the Butcher teleported after me, surviving thanks to me dampening the explosion.
I pulled the same trick and teleported behind the Butcher while letting out a violet explosion directed right at his back. It didn't hurt him really but it did fling him over one of the cars. As usual it was largely for cinematic value.
I wove my hands around in a flowing motion as I took control over the shields Vex had made, letting them flow like water following my motions. Turning them sideways I barreled over the Butcher as he rose again and kept the wave going into Animos just before he could scream to try to nullify my powers. It wouldn't work but I wanted his next scream to look like it depowered the Butcher.
I raised a hand and pretended to force choke Vex before flinging her into a wall, seemingly knocking her out. Spree was finally able to get out of the car, his clones already charging towards me. I appeared to fade into the ground as dark purple smoke pooled around my feet before I rose up from the pavement behind him. A purple tinted chain flew out from under my arm and wrapped around him before I pulled him out of the way of Butcher's next teleport.
Just as planned Animos had lined up a shout that was already traveling towards me, the split second between the start of his scream and it actually impacting me was when the Butcher appeared before me in another fiery blast. Had I actually let Animos depower the Butcher I'd simply have Butcher Sixteen on my hands, instead I disconnected his Shards just as he landed in front of me. The transfer would have made me restart the whole process over again of infiltrating their network.
As the Butcher stood there stunned from losing his powers permanently I grabbed the sides of his head and shone beams of violet light out from his eyes and mouth. Animos stood shocked while I floated slightly to show my powers were still intact.
"You have tormented the people of this world for too long. You shall be the Butcher no more! Never again shall your spirit move from host to host, spreading misery in your wake."
I wasn't sure if I loved getting to turn every fight into a performance or hated that I had to. Probably the latter. I'm running into the Saitama problem where the near complete lack of challenge keeps leaving me feeling unsatisfied. Even as I struggle through normal people things I want this part of my life to feel real.
I dropped the man formerly known as the Butcher and pointed my hands at the ground. Before he could shout again at me I fired a violet beam into the ground while generating a portal under my blast and his chin. The upward blast redirected his next scream upwards uselessly. I flew in, smacked him over the head and put him to sleep. The remaining Teeth didn't surrender, but weren't much of a threat. I wouldn't even use more than a few seconds of the 'fight' against them for the video.
[All Shards fully integrated]
Good, did we get anything useful?
[A threat forecast Shard. A Virus Shard]
As I was about to question the usefulness of another false precognition Shard, Admin sent me the data on how she had used them very effectively to speed up the Virus cluster's actions. Hmm, perhaps I could use them to help point out where to look, saving time browsing through the strands of fate. I accepted an incoming call from Armsmaster.
"Anima, status report."
"The Teeth are down, no more need to worry about a body-jacking supervillain, they've been fully neutralized."
"Why were we unable to reach you? You warned us of the Teeth nearly two hours ago and then disappeared, including your contact information, until now."
"Ah, sorry, one of my Stranger powers must have hidden my number from you since I'm using a power to handle the phone and computer aspects, and my powers are a part of me. I'll try to tune it so that doesn't happen again."
"Good, it's always an issue when someone loses contact, especially in the middle of a crisis. We'll send a cleanup crew your way. Once they get there come back to the rig, we need to talk."
Colin Wallis was not normally one to try and dress down his subordinates. He wasn't nearly as good at it as Piggot was, and most of the negative habits they had were ones he shared, so they didn't take him seriously. But Piggot felt that as her direct superior and as a fellow hero he would be better at getting the message across to Anima.
"Anima, you need to stop going off on your own. You left Jeffery Biron alone for a whole weekend knowing that the next person he saw he would try to kill."
Yet in spite of Piggot's hopes she was immediately defensive about her actions.
"And what would you have done had you known? There wasn't anything else to do but wait, but I knew PRT policy wouldn't allow you to do that. You would have tried to make contact with him and would have been at risk yourselves."
"That's our job Anima, to take risks so that others don't have to. You endangered the life of a civilian because you felt our lives had more value than hers."
"I kept her safe, she wasn't in any real danger."
"And had you been a second late she would be dead. Good on you for saving her, you turned what could have been a tragedy into a near miss, but she wouldn't have needed saving had you done your job properly." She sulked but didn't reply before he continued.
"Most of your problems have been due to your own poor time management and communication skills Anima. The Empire video wasn't right, no matter that image okayed it. Not to mention that damn meme. This reckless disregard for others is a serious problem. Just because it hasn't gotten anyone killed so far doesn't mean you will always manage to fix the problem in the nick of time."
"Look, Colin, you can just use my name. Anima is practically a character I play to try and live up to my idea of what it means to be a hero. She's not real… I am."
"But you are Anima, no matter how much you want to separate your actions it's still you."
"Colin, I'm not really like all of you. I don't mean in some I'm better than you way, I mean that I'm a fraud. Every fight is a performance, every challenge I face while pretending I'm a hero is just that, pretend. The only thing I struggle with is this, the being me part of it all."
"Jessica, just because you find it painfully easy to be a hero doesn't make it any less real. Both to the people you help and those you hurt. They are still your actions, stop trying to get out of your responsibility for them."
She slumped down
"I'm not trying to say I'm not responsible for them, it's just, I have to somehow be perfect, I can't afford to make mistakes and be a normal hero."
"You already have made mistakes. Too bad. All you can do is try to make better choices from now on. So take my criticism seriously and better yourself."
He continued on to hammer the point home.
"No matter how much the Director thinks this is controlling you, if you keep going like this all we'll be doing is enabling you. If you want to be better then you have to actually put in the work instead of relying on your powers to save the day, not just from villains but saving it from your own poor decisions."
"Can you forgive me for failing to actually be perfect?" She replied almost sarcastically.
"It's not about forgiveness Jessica, it's about the effect you have on people. You've already done so much good, but you've consistently made at least one questionable at best decision for every good thing you've done."
He hated trying to curb behaviors that in a vacuum were good. It was easy to tell Shaun to take things more seriously, but it was painful to try and stop things like Hannah always following orders, or Robin trying to better himself to the point of exhaustion. Especially when he couldn't manage to follow his own advice.
"Beyond anything else you need to slow down. The pace you're going at leaves you completely unprepared for the next disaster, which is often a result of your previous actions. It's not even your fault half the time. I can't blame you for the Empire attacking because they found out you were supposed to be elsewhere, but it was still a result of your actions. Had you not captured two capes, had you not been so flashy, had you not gotten an international operation approved, that wouldn't have happened. Each of those things were and are good, but they still had nearly disastrous consequences had you not accidentally arrived to save the day."
"But how? I try to take the time to do normal people things but-"
"Don't try to do normal people things, just do something you want to do Jessica. Normal people don't get powers, normal people don't dress up in costumes and try to save the world. But everyone needs to take time for themselves."
And when was the last time he tried to take time for himself? Three weeks and four days ago, he played one round of mini-golf before he was called in to deal with Lung and Hookwolf duking it out. He had gotten his best score yet however. Fortunately Jessica was unfamiliar enough with him to not know how hypocritical he was being with all this.
"I'll try at least. I'll see what I can put off. I don't think there's any other impending disasters, so hopefully I can have a calmer week or two." She had a curious look on her face. Given her powers she was probably actually trying to divine the future actions for her to take a break. Her expression quickly rose as she moved past him trying to hold her accountable for her actions.
"You should have told me you needed a new suit of armour. I promise to hide all the purple on the inside. Unless you're looking for a new aesthetic?" She had a playful grin as she offered help that he couldn't rightfully turn down. At least it wouldn't create an incident report.
"I'll pass on the colour, but I would be happy to have your help." He just wondered if she would even let him do anything.
She opened up a portal to his workshop and zipped inside, heading right over to his in progress suit.
"Hmm, so many compartments for extra gear. Maybe we could simplify it by creating a teleportation system? It would let us fit even more strength enhancements and armour in, maybe an energy shield?"
"I was working on a teleporter for my halberd, but the summoning itself seems to always miss my gauntlet, leaving me to pick it up myself which negates half the use of being able to summon it at any moment."
She looked over at it, her eyes glowing brighter than usual as she scanned everything.
"I think trying to fit the teleporter itself into the halberd was causing you extra grief. Separating it into a stationary teleportation nexus while much larger would allow for you to summon anything within the room, even without it having any technology inside it. Then your suit can have targeting systems in your gauntlets, perhaps merge the controls with the sensors so by trying to grab the object as if it was already there it would know what to bring to you."
"The energy cost of running a teleporter even just at a city range would be exorbitant and would leave me at a disadvantage if I need to travel anywhere else." She looked confused at that.
"How about I build the generator and teleportation nexus, it'll have worldwide range so you don't have to worry about being without your gear so long as you don't go to Earth Aleph, while you focus on the actual armour and artificial muscles." She briefly glanced over at his materials storage before she went off on her own to begin working on what would likely be any other tinker's magnum opus on a whim.
He activated his link to Dragon while he began to work on the design for the electronics in his suit. When she joined his workshop systems her avatar had a grin as she took in who else was with them.
"Colin, I see you finally took my advice and asked Anima for help with your new armour."
The woman in question yelled out a distracted hello from across the room while waving.
"More like she asked to help and I couldn't say no. Would you like to help with the design for my armour? We've got a lot more space to work with than we were expecting thanks to what Jessica is working on."
"Sure, let me just pull up the file. Hmm, you're taking out all your storage compartments? Just what is she up to?" He could see swirls of amethyst light reflecting off of his monitors, but he paid them no mind.
"She insisted on teleporting in my various gadgets to make more room for plating and synthmuscle. She also might decide I need a forcefield. Not that I know how I'd power one, but she doesn't seem to find that an actual obstacle." He said dryly.
"That would save quite a bit of space, but added weight and energy drain from the new muscles might reduce your suit's effective battery life. Assuming Anima thought of that-"
"Don't worry about the power, hell you won't really need any power storage. I'd still keep it for emergency purposes but unless something really really breaks the suit it'll be hooked up to this reactor. If we're already constantly targeting you to send gear, why not transfer in power?" The woman in question interrupted.
"-then it would be advantageous. As good as it is to dodge hits, you can't perfectly avoid everything. Extra armour could easily be a lifesaver. It'll also let you call in gear that would have been too big to fit in your suit or bike before." She joined him in remapping stress points the new strength would put on the suit's skeleton.
"I still think I can make a prediction algorithm that would eliminate the risk in any fight that there was enough combat data on the opponent."
"That doesn't protect you from new capes, which are often the most dangerous, especially for tinkers." She adjusted the ratio of plate to muscle. He suggested a tweak that would get a few percent more strength out of the artificial muscles at the cost of putting some of the strain on the plates themselves.
He heard the most stereotypical construction sounds coming from behind him, he swore he could hear an impact wrench, but he refused to turn around and dignify Jessica's antics. Colin got some of his automated construction system online and sent it some instructions for the plates while he went to gather components and raw materials for some of the more sensitive work. Apparently Jessica had refilled the bins at a glance, he wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Though that was sort of the entire problem with the woman. She was the golden goose, and that made her too valuable to really discipline. Assuming that she let you. For all that he gave her a talking to earlier there wouldn't be any real punishment, even if her leaving a homicidal cape a secret would normally at least warrant docked pay or scut duty. All she got was a somewhat stern don't do it again.
He had no idea what he was even supposed to do to manage her. He wasn't all that good at actually leading his team in anything other than a fight. That's why he delegated some of his duties to others, he knew he was only so good and people were simply not one of his strengths. Unfortunately Jessica was too authoritative for Hannah to act as her supervisor, she had legitimately forgotten that the younger woman wasn't her superior on her first day here. She simply took charge in a way that made Hannah want to follow her lead.
Even he wasn't immune to it, he was doing the part of his armour she had directed him to after all. As he and Dragon kept working on the project occasionally Colin would see bits of what Jessica was doing. She had made some sort of purple pylon about the size of a fridge with four antennae and eight little pyramids that weren't attached to the pylon at all. The moment with the blacksmiths hammer notwithstanding she seemed to use no tools, though he was certain there was no real use for that beyond befuddling him. She wove components together with telekinetic precision, welds thanks to pyrokinesis, and even the materials themselves were being generated by her powers.
"Alright, I've got to get going, supper is soon and as usual I'm cooking. This here is the reactor itself, a simple fusion setup utilizing some permanent spatial warps to actually maintain the reaction. Don't worry, they're relative to the main reaction chamber itself, so you can't accidentally misalign anything. So long as Vista or another spatial warper doesn't get their hands on it it'll be perfectly safe. Feel free to relocate it too, it's basically a steel tower that provides power."
She opened a small hatch. "Pour water in here every day or so. Don't worry about the purity of it, normal tap water will do. A cup will last about a week, but daily refills will prevent any extreme energy usage from draining the reserve. The residual heat will boil the water while the warps will draw the steam into the core. Don't worry about byproducts or waste from it, unless you're running it for a few centuries at maximum power drain it won't be an issue. At the expected draw from your in progress suit and an estimated ten teleports per day you'll be able to use this thing until the sun runs out."
"The upper segment is the teleporter, it's already prepared to lock in on the teleportation anchors that you're building, once you finish that the suit will receive power constantly. It's only going to top it up though, this thing's not going to fry your armour."
She grabbed one of the little pyramids and flipped it over, showing the underside had an indentation presumably to indicate something.
"These are the field boundary markers, you'll want to make sure all of these indents have a clear line of sight to the antennae here. Otherwise the teleporter might grab something it's not supposed to and will use more power, though admittedly the power drain still won't realistically be a problem even without the markers. Mostly it limits the number of targets for whatever system you're going to use to choose what you want teleported so it doesn't get any false positives and does something like grab your coffee cup. Don't worry about mounting them, they'll hover where you leave them."
She left it hanging in the air to demonstrate then disappeared without her usual fanfare