7.18 Fairy Tale
12th of June, 2011
"So, I'm going to be a little busy today," I admit while swallowing the last bite of my Sunday pancake, "And I'm going to lock the workshop for most of it. If you need to tell me something, it's going to be easier to just give me a call, alright?"
"What about lunch?" aunt Zoey asks with a frown from the other side of the table, her own plate not quite finished yet, "Skipping meals just to tinker in your workshop isn't healthy, Jacky."
"Dunno how long it's going to take," I admit with a half-shrug, before adding after draining what's left of my glass of OJ, "But if I'm done by lunch, I'll let you know. I can survive for days on magic alone. In the worst case, I'll be fine until dinner, aunt Zoey."
If the way my aunt pulls a face is anything to go by, my reassurances fall on a deaf ear.
"How important is this thing that you want to do today exactly?" uncle Alan asks, giving me a questioning look over the rim of his newspaper.
Vital.
"It's pretty big," I prevaricate with a perfectly straight face, "So I'd say up there. Big weight off my chest if I succeed."
Slowly, the man who looks so much like Papa lets his newspaper drop, his interrogative look turning focused.
"...I see," I don't know exactly what he sees in my total lack of tells, but it apparently convinces him as he nods, "Very well. But don't you dare miss dinner, you hear me?"
"Will do," I feel the corner of my lips quirk up as I nod back, before hopping from my chair under aunt Zoey's mildly aggravated look, "See you later!"
I barely make it to the staircase that I hear Emma hastily excuses herself before jogging behind me.
"Jacky," she whisper-hisses, "What was that?"
"What that?" I give her a puzzled look over my shoulder as I make my way to the second floor.
"Don't mess with me!" my cousin scowls, "Your excuse was so fucking lame both dad and I saw through it. What are you planning?"
"Important stuff," I reply evasively as we finish climbing the stairs, "I just told you."
"You're always doing 'important stuff'. Only this time you look, like, super tense or something," she says.
I stop walking, and side-eye over my shoulder.
The both of us lock eyes, me carefully neutral while she sports a perfect replica of her mother's frown.
"...There are some things I can't say. You know that," I tilt my head slightly to the side for emphasis, "This is one of them."
A beat passes as we maintain the look.
"Tsk," her frown morphs into a fully-fledged scowl as she crosses her arms over her chest while looking away first, "Alright, fine. Go do your thing or whatever."
Her mouth clicks shut and her eyes dart back to me for an instant.
"Just…" she about-faces, "Keep safe, alright?"
I blink, then smile behind her back as she walks away.
"Will do!" I chirp brightly.
I can't help but shake my head as she scoffs while making her way downstairs.
"What even is my life? She's starting to grow on me," I muse aloud while making my way toward my workshop, "Like some kind of parasitic fungus you can't quite manage to get rid of."
{It occurs to me that this sounds suspiciously like a particularly unflattering comparison,} Theia comments in the back of my mind as I open the door.
"She'll earn a better one the day she stops listening to me only because I can erase the Bay in thirty seconds flat," I answer a little drily as the white, sterile lights above sequentially flicker alive, "Are the preparations done, Dell?"
"They are," the ascended Machine-Spirit answers simply as my lizard onesie vanishes in favor of the SNOW OWL Mk.II between two steps, "As of three minutes, twenty-seven seconds ago. The site has been secured and awaits your arrival."
"Good," I answer coolly, "Let's end this shit show once and for all."
I stab a finger heavenward–
~~Evil God Slayer Secret Art:~~
–then quickly slash my hand down, reality getting wrenched apart in its wake.
~~Thronebreaker Passage!~~
Without hesitation, I step in the darkness beyond the portal, which promptly winks shut at my back a beat later.
"Keeps the lights on in the workshop," I comment distractedly as a second set of sterile white lights flickers alive, "It'll keep everyone guessing while I'm away."
{...This brings back [Memories],} Theia quietly comments as the light level settles, giving us a full view of the place I had Dell whip up during the night with the help of a swarm of nanites.
"Not good ones," I reply, my mouth set in a tight line.
{Not really, no.} She agrees, her tone wistful.
I look away from the entropy-reversing Turnstile, make my way toward the chair facing the wall-mounted monitors, and let myself fall heavily into it.
"Now, for the hardest part," I lace my hands behind my head as the screens turn on, all but one showing the dreary shores of the Thames, "Waiting."
***
"Contact," Dell's robotic voice wrenches me away from an idle simulation shortly after midday, "Quarry located on D-7. Switching to the main screen."
I can't help but tense and lean forward at his words, my elbows dropping on my knees.
Behind my back, I hear the Turnstile turning on, and I very purposefully keep my eye on the camera feed showing Scion brooding under a bridge, eyes empty and lost in the distance.
I find myself wondering if this is where Kevin Norton, the most powerful man in the world, met him for the first time, and if this is why he never went back after the first time.
Despite its eldritch nature, Scion radiates sorrow.
Abruptly, the Turnstile stops, and in the back of my mind, Theia's breath hitches.
Ten, twenty, then thirty seconds pass. The golden dumbass remains perfectly still, the perfect picture of a man forever stuck in the bargaining stage of grief.
Then, out of nowhere, his avatar does a full body twitch, his eyes snapping downward in alert.
Not even a heartbeat later, his entire right side starts glitching, and his perpetually anguished features distort in confused anger.
But it is only the beginning. More twitches, more glitches overtake the construct in the shape of a man, anger leaving place to bewilderment at first, then something more primal, almost universal, even.
Fear.
I barely catch what happens next, despite having a very good idea of what is going to happen, as the avatar explodes into an incoherent golden cloud when an incredibly fast and sudden dark blur collides with it.
Not even a heartbeat later, the golden cloud completely vanishes, as if it had never existed.
"Primary target's elimination confirmed," Dell rattles, the display on the main screen changing for another, "Continuing observation."
The unnatural beauty of the Simurgh comes next, the false angel hovering high in the sky above the Kármán Line, lithe, graceful, and entirely inhuman as always. Except the Endbringer isn't looking so hot right now, as it stands frozen in unabashed shock.
This time, it is incredibly easier to see what happens as a crimson trail wreathed in black ghostflames cleave through her, before vanishing in the distance a tenth of a second later.
On the screen, courtesy of Dell hacking into the satellite monitoring it, the angel remains stock still for a heartbeat longer, before starting to fall to the Earth down below.
"Secondary target's elimination confirmed," quiet satisfaction radiates through the otherwise neutral tone of the ascended Machine-Spirit, "All relevant data has been secured. You're clear to proceed, Mistress-Maker."
I take a breath, slowly exhale, then promptly stand up to make my way to the Turnstile.
{Good luck out there, [Jacky], Theia whispers in my mind as I step inside the entropy-reversing machine.
I quietly snort at that.
"Cute," I murmur as the SNOW OWL's full helmet snaps into existence the moment I trigger the Turnstile, "But I've already succeeded."
#Main Systems Online#
My hand automatically drifts down toward the vials of M-Panacea strapped to my hip as the process starts, only for me to blink in surprise when Theia and I smoothly disconnect this time around. After all, it hadn't gone smoothly to say the least the last time I stepped into one of these things. I chalk it up to having already survived the disconnection once; my brain and Gemma must have adapted since.
The Turnstile comes to a halt, and I take a step into the inverted world.
"You've got all the timings, Dell?" I ask aloud while making my way toward the designated teleportation spot.
"I do. Including the one of your return," he answers evenly.
"Then," I stab a finger heavenward, before snapping my hand downward.
~~Evil God Slayer Secret Art: Thronebreaker Passage!~~
"Let's go assassinate a god and his angel, shall we?"
I jump through the newly formed portal, and find myself freefalling soon after.
Understandable, since I've reappeared kilometers above Earth Bet's surface. Near the Kármán Line, to be specific.
#Activating Combat Mode#
Not even a tenth of a second later, the generator of the SNOW OWL roars alive, and I level and take flight accompanied by the death knell of an entire species, Coral burning, and burning well.
There's no hesitation, no doubts in my mind as I follow the flight path Dell gives me, even as I crank my cognition into overdrive.
Soon, I lay eyes on my slowly rebuilding first quarry, and cold, steady anger burns in my belly.
The feathered bitch's machinations almost cost me everything, and since this precognitive buffoon happily meddled with things beyond its understanding, it almost ended up dooming an entire world, perhaps even the whole of the multiverse, to something far more eldritch and Evil than it is.
On instinct, two C-Power Swords appear in my hands as my approach nears its end shortly after it manages to put itself back together, Dell finding its core only mere seconds before impact.
Wouldn't you know it? The thin line cutting right through just happens to pass by the control node hidden in one of her wings' joints.
My grips tighten around the handles of my two swords, and magic gushes out of my magical container.
~~Evil God Slayer's–~~
Completely unimpeded, not even a whisk of telekinesis slowing me down, I fly right next to the Simurgh.
~~–Blasphemous Wings Maxima!~~
My blades flashes, and reality hiccups as something denser than the core of a star gets cut in twain in two jutting arcs of light-swallowing darkness.
"That was for putting me through hell on Earth, you fucking cunt!" I let go of the mental acceleration, my swords, and the raw, seething hatred I've nourished since Somerset with a scream as I pull away on a yellow-scarlet trail.
"Mistress-Maker," Dell admonishes, his tone stern, "This is not the time."
"I know," I grumble while cutting my boosters and letting my reactor 'die', "I just needed to say it out loud."
Abruptly angling my flight path down, I make another rapid up-down snap motion of my hand that stretches to a crawl as my cognition speeds up once again.
~~Evil God Slayer Secret Art: Thronebreaker Passage!~~
Quick on the uptake, Dell doesn't hesitate, and triggers the SNOW OWL's stealth module right as I cross the portal.
It won't do much against the golden moron, but it'll stop people from realizing I'm the one responsible for his 'disappearance'.
Trusting Dell to know where we're going, I once again follow the flight path he gives me as we reappear a few kilometers away from our target barely a meter above the Thames.
My reactor and boosters stay quiet as I glide just shy of the sound barrier, narrowly dodging the support beams of the few bridges on my path.
Soon enough, my sensors land on the unstable multidimensional cloud that passes itself as this world's foremost hero.
There's no quiet anger rolling in my gut this time around, merely calm clarity of purpose as I take a diving stance, my two arms fully extended in front of me with my hands back to back.
~~Evil God Slayer–~~
I let go of a slow breath even as my fingertips get coated in black ghostflames, instincts and magical calculations joined together for one purpose, and one purpose only.
~~–Secret Art:~~
My magic flares as the cloud starts to coalesce back together, and my field of view narrows behind my mask as I fly the last few meters.
~~Despotic Breakthrough!~~
Ten fingertips dig into the avatar's not-flesh moments before it finishes pulling itself back together, the servos of the SNOW OWL and my muscles screaming under the strain as I wrench an opening apart–
–before squeezing–
–my way–
–through.
On the other side of the tunnel, an alien landscape of grey-red crystalline unflesh greets me, both the SNOW OWL's scanners and Dell warning me that the atmosphere is quite unsuitable for a fleshy human being.
The Warrior's true body stretches beyond the horizon in every direction possible, and for a moment, I find the task unnaturally daunting.
Then my reactor roars alive once again and I level, flying high above the eldritch landscape.
"Alright," I mumble under my breath, "Gotta cut him down to size first."
"Allow me," Dell cooly says as my flight reaches its apex under a seemingly forever darkened skyline, full of hauntingly dark grey clouds casting my surroundings in permanent twilight.
Two. Four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Sixty-four. Dell releases the Adamantine Lacrima-infused autonomous drones slaved to the SNOW OWL in a continuous wave at my back, and they quickly form a spell circle without me asking.
"What are you doing?" I ask aloud, acutely aware of our window of opportunity slowly closing down.
"This," he simply answers while forwarding me a spell circle on my MIU, and my eyebrows climb straight to my hairline.
Under my helmet, I open my mouth–
"Ensmallen," Dell's voice echoes in my ears like a thunderclap that sends a ripple through the local dimension.
One moment, the Warrior's true body spans a continent.
The very next, it would easily fit inside Brockton Bay, its surface pokemarked everywhere by giant holes boring dozens of meters deep.
"...Fuck me," I whisper under my breath in astonished awe.
I had no idea Dell could do that!
"I suggest you hurry, Mistress-Maker," the being of silicon and circuitry says in his robotic tone, "The spell isn't going to last long."
My jaw clicks shut, and I become aware that the drones have started drawing another magic circle, one I know intimately.
I stab my right index heavenward, frowning in focus under my mask.
~~Evil God Slayer–~~
Ethernano erupts out of my body as lines of ghostflames start crisscrossing the sky, and I grit my teeth. The draw is just as bad as yesterday's, except this time I'll be running on fumes once I'm done here.
~~–Secret Art:~~
Down below, crystalline unflesh stirs, and starts to pull itself apart into the form of a giant who'd make Lovecraft applaud its aesthetic.
~~Terminus Absolus!~~
But it is already too little, too late.
Reality quivers, and vantablack lances of pure acausal and hyperdimensional energies rain upward, and I realize with a start that, no, the Titan hadn't been putting himself together.
It had been falling apart all along, only looking whole because it was inverted relative to me.
When the spell ends, the Warrior's true body looks pristine once again, and his titanic Avatar rests like a perfect vigil, unaware of its future.
I can't help but stare at it a moment longer, engraving the scene in my memory.
The end of thirty years of an uncaring, grief-stricken dominion, courtesy of an idiot savant playing god with humanity while waiting for its partner to stop playing dead.
"Mistress-Maker, we have to leave," Dell urges me.
"...Yeah, yeah, we do," I answer a little quietly, solemnly almost while getting a feel for my reserves as Dell reestablishes our cloaking.
Nearly spent, but I still got enough left for one last spell.
Coincidentally, I only need one.
~~Evil God Slayer's Thronebreaker Passage!~~
I squeeze my way through the dimensional breach I've previously made–
–and I–
–stumble on my feet as I touch down back at the Turnstile's teleport spot, the portal at my back snapping shut.
I dry-heave a little, having the rather uncomfortable impression that something is pressing against my ribcage, but that's just my magical container running empty.
#Activating Standby Mode#
"You need to step inside the Turnstile in seventeen seconds to close the loop, Mistress-Maker," Dell calmly says.
"R-Right," I stutter a little while taking a halting step forward, "Let me do just that."
The spiritual soreness is heavy, pungent almost as I cross the last few meters, but I still manage to enter the Turnstile right on time, Dell triggering its activation without my say-so.
Halfway through, I nearly pass out as Theia reconnects with me, and only remains standing because the SNOW OWL doesn't allow me to fall over.
{[Jacky]! Is it done?} my brain roomie presses on as I gingerly step out of the Turnstile while invisible.
'It's over, yeah,' I answer mentally while leaning against the nearest vertical surface, before letting myself slowly fall down on my ass against it, {Feel free to give Shaper the good news once past-me starts the loop.'
'In the meantime, I'm just gonna sit down for a while,' I let out a heartfelt mental sigh.
{You earned it,} she comments warmly, {And after that?}
'We have a couple errands to run,' I explain with my eyes closed, 'Then… then we'll see.'
The only reason I don't fall asleep on the spot is that Dell vanishes my helmet as soon as past-me steps into the Turnstile. And I end up cursing him aloud for that.
Then I laugh, something real and unrestrained, because for the first time since I've gotten my power, since all of this started…
I finally feel free.
[AN: *celebratory paper horn sound*
*deadpan voice*
Scion is dead. Yippee. Oh, and the feathered hoe too, I suppose.
*cracks a smug grin*
Remember when Jacky told Becky that a silver bullet quickly loses its value when it gets known? Well, it was always the plan to have Tenet's Inversion technology being used to spearhead an alpha strike from a completely unsuspected angle by reverting entropy to kill the closest thing to a god the setting has. Not too many ways to successfully pull an assassination against two beings who can see you coming, unless you use something they don't understand against them!
Now, this isn't the end of the fic. We still have a few chapters to cloture this arc, some interludes during the timeskip, and a final arc once Jacky and her friends are all grown up.