4.8 Malebolge
4th of April, 2011
I give the empty spot next to me another side-glance, and refrain to sigh in a mix of boredom threaded with annoyance as the teacher drones about something I cannot muster the care to listen to.
Louise isn't here today.
As a matter of fact, most of the folks sporting a different skin tone than white made the wise decision to remain safely at home, or so it seems from the cursory look I gave the usual crowd earlier this morning.
Which is understandable. Juniper may be located in Brockton Bay downtown, which used to mainly be controlled by Coil and is now heavily patrolled by the PRT to keep those few, central blocks free from the gangs' influence; but the school itself is a scant couple of blocks away from Empire territory.
None of my friends were surprised when Louise told us she would probably be skipping this week if the gang war didn't die down during the weekend. I'm sure it must say something about the average Brocktonite that this didn't make a bunch of twelve years old bat an eye, but I'm not entirely convinced it is a good thing.
Outwardly, I am pretending to be alright with all of this; inwardly, it is an entirely different story.
I can't really help but notice that I'm a bit isolated in my own classroom, what with spending most of my time with my group of friends. And I don't care about it much, but it only highlights the fact that nobody is currently whispering my ears off at the moment.
And that I can't help but to think in circles about the last time I've felt this same absence this keenly and the circumstances surrounding it.
Nothing to it, I sigh in the privacy of my mind, I guess I'll have to lock in twice as hard and complete my current project as fast as I can.
The sooner I fix myself, the sooner I can put an end to this mess, and everything will be back to normal.
I take a moment to contemplate how easily my absolutely outlandish circumstances became my de facto new normal, before quietly snorting to myself.
I suppose the human mind can truly get used to anything assuming a sufficient length of time has elapsed, I drily muse.
On my arm – and hidden under an hologram – Dell grows marginally hotter against my skin, which prompts me to distractedly tap it twice to signal to my little buddy that I got the message.
With a now practiced motion, I give it the command to hide me under an 'idle' animation before blindly reaching for my Witchfire Condenser, opening it and carefully taking out the little crystalline mass therein.
Then, still hidden, I reach for my backpack and fishes out a pouch carved with arcane sigils, slide its zipper open, drops the crystal into it, and finally put everything back into place and close the Condenser once more, my Machine-Spirit needing no prompt from me to drop my camouflage once I'm done.
By this point, I have the whole thing down to less than ten seconds, tops. Comes with the territory when you're forced to hide the fact that you're shitting out Witchfire crystals every twenty minutes or so.
I'm honestly amazed that Missy has yet to catch on, but maybe she isn't scouting her surroundings with her power's help on a constant basis? Frak if I know, I'm not a Manton-limited Shaker.
Granted, she looked more tired than usual this morning, I comment to myself while soldiering through the rest of the lesson, so she got an excuse today at the very least.
I'm probably not much better to be honest, considering I spent the three previous nights pulling not-quite all-nighters. Which mainly boils down to 'sleeping in' during the morning and taking a big nap in the afternoon before pulling an all-nighter. But I had a lot of work to do, so needs must.
I'm still making steady progress on the analysis of the Preyer-making ritual, and if everything goes right, I should be done in two, three days at most. But since I had a lot of downtime while every reagent cooked, I didn't do just that.
Firstly, I've successfully managed to magicking the Panacea up! And I even managed to reproduce the same effect the healing potions from the Witchfire-verse have, which is to aerosolize on air contact once their vial is broken before healing the closest available target. Now, despite its nice, magically conceptual glow-up, the end product of this particular line of experiment isn't perfect. For one, it simply doesn't work on someone who doesn't have even one lick of magic, which isn't really a deal breaker for me because I made those for my personal use anyway and should be able to control the healing process on someone else by forcing the healing cloud straight into their body by raw Ether manipulation; for two, manufacturing both the potion and the vial takes fraking ages and I need to engrave the latter by hand to make it shock resistant unless squeezed by a magically reinforced grip.
Like I said, perfect for my personal use – and doubly so because needles and Synskin Bodyglove don't exactly play nice, which means I now have the means to fix myself mid-combat instead of 'later at home' – but mostly useless out of it.
I dubbed those oddly apple-shaped heal-in-a-can the Salve-ation because puns are the spice of life and always got one on hand just in case, like I used to with its magicless predecessor.
The very next thing I worked on was a basic wooden travel trunk that I stole from an antique shop. See, I remembered that in game, you weren't able to open some of the trunks spread around the various levels until you raised your level of Gnosis, i.e. your magical insight, because they were somewhat invisible.
In reality, it goes a little further than that; those trunks aren't invisible, they are dimensionally absent unless interacted with by a Preyer or a Witch as they can force them back into the proper dimension. Now, the process is a one time thing for a Preyer, because they use Witchfire to do so, but I am a Witch and I literally breathe Ether, which means I can use the genuine article instead of the degraded version!
The process itself? Super easy, barely an inconvenience, I only needed to engrave some arcane sigils on the trunk itself while whispering an incantation and voilà, one not-really-there trunk to hide all the potentially incriminating stuff I keep at home somewhere safe.
Naturally, inordinately proud of my success as I was, I immediately attempted to reproduce the same effect on something more portable to make myself a makeshift bug out bag that wouldn't register on conventional scanners.
The little pouch I have in my backpack right now? Twelve different tries to finally succeed! Because, as it turns out, reproducing the phenomenon on something that is constantly carried around is substantially more difficult than on a trunk that is supposed to remain in one. Fraking. Same. Spot. All the damn time!
I got so mad about my attempts not working on Friday night that I ended up shelving the issue until I could study my spooky Gnosis of the Millennium Tome with a calmer head in my bedroom on Saturday to rework the incantation to suit my needs.
It took a lot of swearing and cursing, but I ended up pulling it off and now have a pouch nobody – at least it should be the case, but I wouldn't put it beyond some Shards to find a way – but me could interact with to both hide my growing collection of blackish-red crystal full of degraded magic while at school and everything I could need in case something happened while I'm stuck in my civies.
Originally, I wanted to take a look at the aerosolization-slash-misting process the healing potion and my upgraded Panacea undergoes to see if I could apply it to my Synskin Bodyglove for ease of application, but after all the trouble reworking the incantation for something as simple as my bug out pouch ended up being? And already dreading how much more difficult it was going to be to make a hyper advanced reactive-gel to play nice with magic, the cost in wasted Synskins nonewithstanding?!
I settled for something less headache-inducing, although only after I – finally – took the time to magically 'lock' both my workshop and the attic – I still have no idea how to move Dark-chan's portrait since it started creepily hovering in the same spot earlier in the week, and I'm pretty sure it's going to stump me for a while – behind bespelled sigils.
For all intent and purpose? Both of those places should be inaccessible for the common human being from now on. Again, I'm not discarding the possibility that a specific Shard can play silly buggers with me, but it'll nicely deal with ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of the population in the meantime.
I probably should've done so earlier, notably for the attic, but since the Barnes have yet to confront me about Dark-chan's portrait, all is well!
Instead of banging my head against the wall regarding my Dark Age of Technology super-assassin's suit, I decided to do something far simpler.
I made myself an entire set of Preyer's seals, or, more accurately speaking, I made easily rechargeable, pre-casted spells!
I wager the cabinetmaker's shop I stole from all the ebony wood I needed to carve those out must be pretty fraking pissed at me, but I didn't manage to find a better substitute, sooo… tough luck to the owner, I guess? Anyway, with modern machining tools, making the entire set ended up being an absolute breeze, which got me thinking.
'Those seals are big and clunky', I told myself once I was done, 'Could I maybe slim them down a little?'
The answer to that query ended up being–
The ringing of the bell wrenches me out of my musing and it takes all my Callidus training to stop myself from sighing out loud in sheer relief.
I wait until the teacher tells us that we got to eat and not-quite jumps out of my seat in anticipation of finally doing something productive for the day.
I mean, I suppose I could always work on my incantations and spell circles instead of feigning to follow what she's speaking about, but that sounds like a quick way to get myself made, so I'd rather slowly die of boredom instead of hiding myself under Dell's 'idle' animation of myself until I inevitably mess up and end up forgetting about it at some point.
A couple of minutes later I find myself seated at our usual cafeteria table as I wait for my friends to show up, a platter already in front of me.
The two engraved rings on my left middle and ring fingers catch my eyes as I wave at Missy just as she walks into the cafeteria, and I feel my lips curl a little in satisfaction.
Because, as it turns out, drastically slimming down my Preyer seals ended up being easy. Which actually makes sense since Witchfire takes place in the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century, meaning that the Witches toiling in the Church's workshop do not have access to engraving tools as precise as I do with only a politely worded demand to Dell and a line of code.
So I tweaked the incantations slightly, and turned my set of seals into rings! This way I'll always have a duo of Light and Heavy Spells on hand to recklessly spam at my enemies!
"Hey…" the Ward in disguise mutters as she finally reaches the table before letting herself fall heavily on the bench in front of me, "... Where's Louise?"
I give the blonde a slightly weirded out look.
"Missy, she told us she would stay at home this week because of the gang war," I slowly answer, "I even showed you the text she sent me this morning to wish me a good day at school while complaining that she was already bored to tears. Did you forget?"
Missy slowly blinks, before groaning out loud with her eyes closed.
"I did," she grumbles after locking eyes with me once again, "Sorry, I didn't sleep much last night–" and most of the weekend I wager, "–m'a bit out of it."
"It's alright," I sagely nod back, before quipping, "It's that time of the month, I understand."
A pause.
"Jacky, you ass!" she scowls my way, cheeks turning red.
I make a bad attempt at smothering a giggle.
A couple of seconds later, she ends up snorting a laugh too.
Don't worry, Missy, I silently promise as the blonde's exhaustion diminishes a little with her slowly blossoming smile, you just have to wait a little longer, then I'll put an end to this silliness.
4.9 Malebolge
6th of April, 2011
I almost fumble through my current incantation as the last reagent needed for the original Preyer-making ritual rather abruptly finishes 'cooking' and I get the mother of all data dumps injected straight into my brain at the weeiest hour that ever wee'd in the morning.
In fact, it is so much that I have to carefully let go of the stylus I was using to engrave a prayer into a sheet of copper, the incantation slowly dying on my lips as I close my eyes to take stock of my gains.
And it is a lot. Mostly because Preyer-making is so. Fraking. Random. that it'd probably deserve an entire specialization on its own. Countless combination of reagent, prayer and incancation variation in function of countless variables can somehow give birth to the same result; the advent of an ever-evolving super-human killing-machine specifically designed to put down magic users.
Against most Witches, a Preyer is an unstoppable and hilariously overkill hunter they have no hope to ever escape from. But against the one percenter of magic users, the truly powerful one?
Sometimes, it is not enough.
And while I am most certainly guaranteed to someday reach the kind of magical heights the Witchfire-verse has only very, very rarely seen, it is a process that will require decades of uninterrupted studies as I deepen my Gnosis a little more day after day.
Considering how time is about the only thing I do not have in spades on Bet, the more streamlined and far faster growth of a Preyer is a boon that I simply cannot pass.
And yet–
"There is no one true ritual," I realize aloud as my eyes open, before leaning back on my stool as I push myself away from my workbench, my eyes getting lost in the warehouse's ceiling and the blackish-red hue of the Witchfire still wafting in the air, "Each Preyer is made differently, by different Church-backed Witches using a different combination of reagent, incantation and prayer each times."
Which means–
"While the methodology differs, the individual, their virtues and their sins are always relevant to the process," I mumble to myself as I keep parsing through the data, "And I'm going to have to tailor my own ritual accordingly, beyond the fact that I'm already inhaling Ether with each breaths."
A muted boom echoes in the distance in the far-off docks as a list of reagents slowly coalesce into being in my mind, my eyes still locked heavenward as I furiously think.
"The lamb and the serpent, for the duality of my existence," I slowly words out as I feel things starting to click, "Holy and–" my eyes dart toward my Tome, a shiver running along my spine, "–unholy scriptures for a balancing act. Probably something to represent my past and current lives too. Holy water and blood candles will play a part, too. As for the ritual circle…"
My voice trails off as I contemplate an endless array of arcane sigils, pagan runes and sharps hieroglyphs. I feel myself frowning.
"Right, I'll have to read up on a few things to find the best one," I end up saying after a beat, a hand coming to mechanically rub at my temple.
Although one thing is certain–
"It'll have to be on a Sunday at midnight," I softly sigh under my breath, "Because of course it will."
I take the time to ponder that fact, before chuckling under my breath as another bit of knowledge makes itself known to me amid the meandering quagmire I just obtained.
"Just my luck that surgical operations aren't recommended during a waxing moon, uh?"
My musings get interrupted by a great rumble, finally prompting my eyes to drop down from the ceiling.
"They're really going at it tonight, uh," I comment idly, "Really wonder what got them all so riled up."
***
Colin watches as Insight enters his infirmary room almost as soon as Panacea leaves it, a slightly wobbly smile on the blonde's face as she takes a couple steps inside.
The Tinker belatedly realizes that this is actually the first time he sees the Thinker in the costume Image made for her and finds himself taking it in. The deerstalker hat and tweed suit look probably shouldn't have worked together that well, but the girl somehow managed to pull it off, mostly on account of the sharp and close-fitting cut she'd most certainly exacted from the PR department.
Image was fond of their physically appealing heroines, yes, but they usually tried to stay away from anything too bold when minors were concerned. Apparently, the ex-villainess took it as a personal challenge, which shouldn't really surprise him considering what she used to wear while out and about under her previous employer's order.
Colin catches her eyes as they dart toward his left shoulder before snapping back toward his face.
"Hey, Armsy," the girl ends up saying as a greeting, hands coming together in front of her in a definitely uncharacteristic display of vulnerability, "... How are you feeling?"
Colin blankly looks back at her for a couple seconds as he lets her words and the lame tone with which they were uttered sink in, prompting a wince out of the girl.
"Stupid question, right," she mumbles to herself, hands dropping back alongside her body.
"... Not as such, Insight," he answers with a sigh of his own as he tries – and fail – to hike himself up against the uncomfortable headboard of his infirmary bed, not helped at all by the fact that he just tried to put some weight on his left arm in order to do so and found it rather lacking to say the least, "Expressing concerns for one's colleague when they get injured is a good way to improve team cohesion. I acknowledge your words in the spirit they were given."
A pause.
"And? How do you feel?" the blonde asks after walking deeper into the room to take a seat on a nearby chair.
Colin takes a moment to properly sit himself, using his right arm this time, before answering.
"Like shit," he bluntly answers, the weight of the recent events finally coming to crash down on him now that the chips have all landed, "I should've trusted your warnings more. And because I didn't, we lost a good man today."
And his non-dominant arm too, but that he could do something about.
Bringing his colleague back from the dead, especially in the state he was left in? It isn't something he'll be able to fix.
At least the fulcrum of tonight's events had been dealt with in a similarly permanent fashion. On one hand, they weren't successful in capturing the Bomb Tinker; on the other, after seeing what she had been capable of? Colin wouldn't mourn her loss.
He would mourn Velocity's sacrifice though, doubly so now that he was belatedly realizing that he probably never gave the ex-soldier enough credits for his own work ethic.
And he knew perfectly well the reason behind this death; his own ego. He had gotten all the time in the world to ponder over his failings while in the back of the PRT van that ferried him back to HQ once everything was said and done, and could recognize as much.
When they were making the plan to strike at Bakuda's workshop, Insight had insisted that they include Dauntless into the strike group as both flying overwatch and a way to quickly apprehend the villain from an unseen angle. He had been the one to argue against it in a misguided bid to maximize his own glory, although he of course hadn't worded it like that, arguing that the containment team would need all the manpower they could leverage so that the inevitable Empire/Lung showdown didn't end up with a third of the Bay going up in flames.
And now? Now a good man was dead due to his hubris, taken by the same biological decay bomb that killed their target at point-blank range, all because he tried to protect his superior from his own demise.
He was going to get reamed into the ground – and probably demoted – by the Director for this mistake and he would accept it with grace, for it was the only thing left for him to do.
"And I should've found a better argument," the girl blurts out, eyes digging a hole into the ground and her hands clasped together into her lap, "Because I knew that the reasoning you gave me was an excuse, and I should've called you on it and–"
"But you didn't," he cuts her off with a grunt, "Because you are still finding your marks in our ranks and didn't want to rock the boat too much."
A pause.
"Insight, you did your job. It is me that failed at mine by not listening to you," Colin purses his lips as a pain lances through a limb that doesn't exist anymore, before continuing more softly, "... I put you in a very difficult position by doing so, and my report to the Director will say as such."
The silence that settles in the room is a heavy one, one that the Tinker finds himself rapidly irked with.
"Do you have an update on the situation? I'm afraid I am a bit out of the loop," he asks.
The girl's eyes snap upward to lock with his own, looking, searching for something.
Colin lets her do so, knowing not what she seeks, but having nothing to hide anymore by this point.
"Right, so," Insight ends up answering after a beat as she straightens into her chair, her hands mechanically coming to smooth her suit's pants as she does so, "While we were… unsuccessful in capturing Bakuda for obvious reasons–" reasons being the fact that the insane woman has been reduced into biological sludge by her own creation, "–we still managed to seize most of her assets. Turns out?" the blonde smirks, "Lung didn't want for his pet tinker to be able to rebel too easily, which holing up in her workshop under dozens of layers of boobytraps would have certainly made a lot more trivial. Combined with my support, her security didn't slow the insertion team down much, and we managed to retrieve maybe nine in ten of her explosives before Lung stopped rampaging and we had to retreat."
"Good," Colin nods, "At least one good thing will have come out of this evening."
"And you were right to consider her the bigger concern," the blonde's expression turns serious once again, "We found the schematics for a city-wide EMP device in her workshop, which she was halfway done building by the time we struck. I think she was planning to threaten the Bay with it if the gang war went on for too long. Possibly under Lung's orders, possibly of her own initiative, it's honestly a toss up."
Usually, Colin would be glad to feel validated about his hunch being correct, but the current circumstances made that particular victory taste a lot like ashes.
"There's more," the Thinker adds, a complicated expression on her face, "And it's not all good."
The Tinker blinks in askance.
The blonde opens her mouth to explain, and he very quickly understands the source of her unease.
***
"We are gathered here today," Max speaks to his posse with regality, straight backed inside his now back to pristine armor as he lets his gaze roams over his troops, "Not only to honor our fallen," he respectfully dips his head toward Brad's outfit, the bare chested man's fists balling at his side even as Stormtiger's hand comes to a rest on his right shoulder, his left side conspicuously absent of the usual third member of the trio, "But to honor the warriors who went above and beyond in the name of our sacred duty."
He pauses, letting the crowd work itself into an enthusiastic frenzy for a moment, before turning himself to face the other man standing next to him on the makeshift dais.
"And no other warrior than our very own Victor deserves more praise," he closes the distance between the two of them to shake the man's hand in a gesture of acknowledgement, "For he succeeded when everyone else failed, but how about I let the man himself show you?"
"At once, Kaiser, sir," the cape answers as they unclasps hands, one of his own reaching at the low of his back to reveal his prize–
–a grinning, red oni mask, cracked from a heavy caliber bullet's impact on the forehead's left side, right under the horn.
A lucky shot, one that only landed because Oni-Lee had run himself ragged for the past week trying to curtail the fires Max's troops kept lighting up everywhere on the ABB's border. It had been a long shot, both figuratively and metaphorically speaking, and luck certainly had a part in it. But now Lung's force multiplier was gone, shot down like a dog during the fighting retreat the Empire fought against the dragon the previous night.
Max had only wanted to bleed the dragon some more before committing to an in-depth assault, but it seemed the Fates had smiled upon him.
A pause, then the crowd explodes in cheers.
"This!" Max bellows from his spot atop the dais even as Victor slowly pans the mask in front of the crowd of gang members and capes alike, "This is the proof that the enemy can be defeated! That he is not insurmountable! That the so-called dragon is just as mortal as any other man of lesser stock and that it bleeds!"
He raises his hands heavenward, the crowd's enthusiasm and hollering ratcheting up even further.
"This is the proof that the Bay belongs to the Empire 88! And with each day we come closer to our rightful and just rule!" he bellows, feeling his lips twist into a smirk under his mask despite himself.