8.14 Wheel
17th of September, 2017
It is not out of inability that the being of metal and circuitry colloquially known as Dell doesn't employ as many forks as his closest equal on the planet, but rather out of personal taste.
The first scion of the Mistress-Maker… dislikes fielding multiple instances of himself, despite how short-lived they usually are. A legacy of his humble beginnings, he has been told.
Luckily for him, the Ascended Machine-Spirit has very little reason to lower himself to such a state when simple multitasking is sufficient to fulfill his purpose.
Case in point, Dell's primary instance has no issue overseeing the continued good development of project Starseeker, monitoring Atlantis' sensor grid and the growth of Earth Bet's budding thaumasphere, collating the data of the various instances of the roboroach network over the globe's various points of interest, keeping a presence on the summit of sapient stupidity named PHO, and occasionally refreshing his various data trawlers looking for future security risk on the dark net.
In fact, he has enough processing power to spare that he still can keep some of his attention on the Mistress-Maker – currently busy painting a stylized rendition of her two mates as they pose for her on the living room's couch with the night sky in the background, the vessel of her power-granting xenos sitting next to her – while simultaneously playing a game of 3D chess with his less gifted – and a lot more heretekal if you asked him – counterpart.
Speaking of–
'Checkmate', he broadcasts as his Bishop closes the trap on the enemy King, marking his two-hundred and fifty-eighth victory against his counterpart's measly one hundred eighty-nine.
And if just a hint of smugness rings through his personality matrix, it shall forever remain between Dragon and him.
The obviously inferior bioprocessor-based entity lets out an all too organic 'tsk' of annoyance over their connection, before resetting the board for a new game.
'You are getting annoyingly good at this, Dell,' Dragon grumbles as she advances one of her Pawns.
'I refuse to shame the Mistress-Maker by being a poor opponent,' he replies evenly while moving one of his Knights in answer, 'A continued lack of improvement on my part would be beneath her.'
'Surely, you are aware by now that she doesn't care in the least, right?' the female-leaning abo– artificial intelligence asks while committing her Bishop.
'I am,' Dell answers after taking a refreshing pull of his custom-made censer, 'Yet I find the idea of being inadequate displeasing.'
His counterpart doesn't answer immediately as the game progresses and the number of predictive calculations start to balloon on each side of the board.
'I don't think Jacqueline ever perceived you as inadequate,' Dragon ends up saying after losing her Knight to his Rook, 'If anything, she is particularly attached to you and regards you fondly.'
Dell takes another pull on his censer while contemplating his answer.
'I am ill-suited to understanding the emotional highs and lows homo sapiens sapiens regularly go through. In this, I will concede that you have me beat,' the being of metal and circuitry begrudgingly admits, 'I can only defer to the Mistress-Maker's family unit and primary mate's judgements when looking for a way to positively impact her hormone-laden and emotion-prone state of being in the long term. Every day I strive to understand my creator a little better, yet I know I'll forever come short.'
'I think that this is a common failing among sophonts, Dell,' his counterpart replies, her tone a little wistful, 'Even humans struggle to come to an understanding with each other. Doubly so when emotions come into play and start making them irrational.'
'Counterpoint: the Mistress-Maker and her primary mate make regular use of communication to level their respective emotional response and achieve mutually-beneficient rationality. Theoretical: humanity's tendency to cooperate to achieve greater results is only proportional to its member's willingness to communicate with one another.' he says while moving his Rook forward to stop his opponent's attempt at putting his King in check.
'As the closest thing to a true telepath Earth Bet has ever had and a high-level Thinker with a high enough EQ to understand that being right most of the time doesn't preclude messing up on occasion, I can confidently say that Jacqueline and her girlfriend are the outliers,' Dragon retorts, her tone amused as her Knight takes one of his Pawns off the board, 'Those are some very high standards to match up to.'
'The Mistress-Maker's superiority to the rest of her species was never in question, Dragon,' he answers levelly while calculating his next move, 'Though I do admit to be… pleasantly surprised by how her choice of life-partner turned out to be. She is… adequate. In that light, I'll reserve my judgement on the second one for the time being.'
'What do you mean, second–' his counterpart starts saying.
But Dell's focus gets redirected toward a new development, the optics of his primary frame mechanically narrowing as he brings most of his attention toward his constant monitoring of the thaumasphere.
'A moment,' he clips as he starts parsing the data collected by the array of micro-satellites his creator and him jointly – and discretely – put into orbit to observe the impact of her continuous presence on a magic-starved world.
After all, one doesn't accept leaking esoteric particles as a matter of their own existence without at least keeping an eye on how it impacts the environment. If only out of scientific curiosity.
Compared to the norm, pretending that the current growth as of fifteen seconds ago is abnormal would be a gross understatement. Atlantis doesn't seem to be the nexus of this new development either, a comparative analysis of the data gathered by the local sensor grid quickly disproving his first hypothesis.
As for his second hypothesis–
'I see,' simulated satisfaction mixed with annoyance and just a hint of wrath rumbles through his personality matrix, 'I'm afraid I must cut this game short, Dragon.'
'Did something happen?' his counterpart asks, her female-leaning voice expressing concern.
'It would appear that an old annoyance is in the process of coming back,' he replies while sending a priority report to his creator, 'I suspect it won't succeed.'
A series of quick commands see the optic fiber and power cables sustaining him at peak efficiency disconnecting from his mainframe as it starts to stand at the glacial pace of machinery, cold, unfeeling fingers delicately letting go of his censer's output.
'Why is that, Dell?' Dragon asks.
And as he rises to his full height, streams of blessed mineral oil running down his previously submerged frame, the entire might of Atlantis' defense protocols activating with another input from his part, the being of metal and circuitry generously offers his reasoning to his less gifted counterpart.
'Because they have earned the ire of my creator,' he answers coldly, 'And her spitefulness should never be underestimated.'
The motion of my brush grinds to a complete, absolute halt as I read the title of Dell's priority report on my MIU.
For the span of an instant that feels like an eternity, I remain still as a lake, Louise, Theia and Riley's casual chatter washing over me like I'm elsewhere.
The very next moment, my cognition surges, and I quickly devour the Ascended Machine-Spirit's report in an instant, courtesy of my Coral-lined brain.
–increased magic level across the globe by a factor of seven hundred sixty-one percent and still climbing–
–nexus of activity centralized on the town of Somerset, Massachusetts–
–heavily suspected involvement of the Church of Flames–
I close the report.
I know enough already.
It is just as I suspected, even.
It should be a comfort, yet all I can feel is overpowering anger at the shitty timing of it all!
All I wanted was one slow evening to explore my new relationship status, and this absolute prick of a God has to fucking ruin it!
Time resumes its usual march, and I put my brush and panelle away, before standing up from my stool, my unfinished painting now forgotten.
The motion of course catches the eyes of everyone present, but not any less than the steady rumble of every piece of hidden weaponry securing the compound coming online at once.
Good, Dell is on the ball. As expected from my oldest companion.
"What's happening?" Riley asks, wide-eyed.
"She's got the serious face, sooo…" Louise squints in my direction as I step closer to the duo, her eyes flashing with the telltale sign of her checking something on the database through her implants, before nodding to herself, "The Idea is trying something."
"It is," I confirm coldly as Clothy ripples to turn my casual wear into a proper flight suit to wear under my armor, before bending down to give the two a crushing hug, "Sorry, but I have to go to handle this."
"I can–" the pinkette starts.
"Remain here, safe and secure," I cut her off with a pointed look, before planting a peck on the lips to soften the blow, "I know you can handle yourself in a fight and I appreciate the feeling, but this isn't the kind of battle anybody but me can win if it spirals out of my control."
"Keep us updated?"/"Stay safe, you hear!" Louise asks while Theia glowers heatlessly, eyemotes all frowny and silicon features taut.
"Of course," I answer to the two while giving Louise a peck of her own, before straightening back up.
An absentminded cast of Requip Magic sees me wearing the SNOW OWL's latest mark, and I disappear in a flash of black lightning and with cold determination in my heart.
***
As I reappear over an unfortunately familiar hill overseeing Somerset, I reason that I'm honestly getting sick and tired of this particular town and the stream of bullshit it keeps flinging my way.
A quick glance at the limping city down below quickly confirms what Dell's report heavily suspected; to my scanners and my more esoteric senses both, the atmosphere is roiling with blood, death, and fate-aligned magic.
I waste no time taking flight to make a beeline toward the epicenter of the phenomenon, my mouth feeling especially flat under the SNOW OWL's helmet as my cloaking module allows me to vanish from sight.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, being on ground zero of a deeply traumatizing magical incident had left a lot of hidden scars on its survivors. Though contrary to what some may believe, the parahumans of the S rank threat taskforce actually got the long end of the stick on this one for once.
Which may sound particularly odd when speaking about a bunch of traumatized individuals doggedly doing their best to weaponize the powers most of them got at their lowest point to beat on their fellow mentally unstable peers. Yet, having to put up with humanity's bullcrap and cape nonsense on a daily basis, and a streamlined access to psychological support, actually managed to dampen the blow somewhat this time.
Like they'd managed to build some kind of resilience to utterly horrifying incidents, in a way.
Or how it just ended up being one more turd on the pile of feces that was their life, less optimistically.
Sure, they're still all plagued by nightmares, and a few of them have shown signs of burnout and depression over the years according to Rebecca when I inquired about it, but at least the situation on the parahuman side had been manageable.
On the civilian side though? No such luck.
Very simply put, while NDAs helped a long way, even Contessa herself couldn't constantly micro-manage the twenty-thousand people who got swept along the ride to 'hell on earth, feat. cannibalistic demons'.
And while some of them left the town and never looked back after getting caught in the aborted Eclipse Ceremony, a lot of them didn't; be it because they couldn't afford to, or because their whole life was here and their house was miraculously still standing.
Which is sadly when said NDAs came back to bite us in the ass.
As it turns out, if you segregate the victims of a catastrophe and tell them that they can't speak to strangers about it, they start to speak about it between themselves. Which leads them to start getting ideas.
Needless to say, what started innocently enough as a support group quickly devolved into a sect once the visions of the hoest of them all dancing in a bonfire became a regular thing. All it took was for one particularly dim idiot to speak just a little louder than the others, and the Church of Flames became a thing. Sure, not all of the survivors chose to drink the crazy juice, but those who did still number in the low hundreds.
Actually, Gabriel Dowson – known to the world at large as 'that lunatic who tried to shoot Nictimène on live TV' – was a member prior to his lackluster attempt on my life and subsequent incarceration.
Explains a lot of things in hindsight, yes?
At first, I tried to find a way to help those people. I really did.
But I failed. Even conceptual magical healing merely stalled the issue since it is rooted deeply in the victim's subconscious – to the point that even asking the Capeminati if the Slug could try didn't pan out either.
To be fair, pitting myself against an astral entity with a really, really good cheat code and whose entire shtick is to corrupt normies by invading their dreams to make them forget how much their lives suck was never going to pan out.
So, I did the next best thing.
I advised Rebecca to keep the phenomenon strictly contained to Somerset, and turned the entire shitpile into a trolley problem with a positive outcome instead of two shitty ones.
People will die, have died already, tonight. And their blood is going to be on my hands.
In a perfect world, I would've invaded the Idea of Evil's home reality to murk it ages ago. Except the eldritch thought-collage already proved that it could just yeet me back the way I came without breaking a sweat, and there are no good protections against Banishment-type spells backed by divine might. And I know because I checked for ten different specialization rotations before giving it up as a fool's errand.
And while I'm reasonably confident that I should be able to contest its strength while on the same plane of existence – that's kinda the point of my particular brand of Evil God Slayer Magic – I had been unwilling to discover what would happen if I've ever got hit with said banishment while I was mid-transit – although the theory was pretty clear that I wouldn't like it, at all. I know for a fact that it doesn't exactly play fair, and I'd rather not bank on it not being able to feel the me-shaped void in causality making a beeline for its many-eyed ass across time and space.
The last thing everyone needs is for me to get stranded on the ass-end of the omniverse while the Idea is still staring hungrily at the Worm-verse, and Earth Bet in particular.
But as a certain worse angel is now far too dead to attest, I don't exactly like to play fair either. Which means I'm not above tricking the Idea into letting its future assassin back in so that I can crush it like the bug it is once and for all.
My life truly has come full circle; once a Callidus asset, always a Callidus asset.
A shame that this particular disguise will be paid in lost lives, spilled blood, and freely hanging entrails.
After a short-lived flight and far too much time spent contemplating the morality of my actions, I silently touch down in front of the Church of Flames' little headquarter, still hidden from sight.
The two people trying their hardest to look inconspicuous while they flank the entrance tells me all I need to know. To my prosthetic eye seeped in Shadow Magic, their souls scream their fretting and anticipation to the world at large.
A mere thought sees a duo of futuristic tranquilizer guns – those designs I very much cobbled and improved from Star Trek's phasers – appear in my hands, and the two 'guards' fall to the ground, unconscious for the foreseeable future, my cloaking not even flickering.
I know that people will die due to my choices tonight, but I refuse to pile their bodies any higher than necessary. These people are ultimately victims trapped between a particularly vicious hammer and an offensively egotic and amoral anvil through no fault of their own.
{For the record, I do not like the fact that you're rushing into this without any backup, [Jacky],} Theia gives me the mental impression of a frown in the back of my mind.
{I never said I was,} I comment back while charting my path into the unassuming building with the aim of dealing with the mooks first before delving into its depths.
And under my breath, I call in a whisper.
"~~[Fear of Dying in Chains], attend me.~~"
[AN:
"For she befriended the Travelers of the Void, and made their strength her own,
And out of their Boon, she sharpened a knife aimed at the Gilded Pretender's throat!"