Chapter 5: Chapter 5
Alice pondered whether she wanted to interfere with whatever was going down there. In her opinion, those people have very little chance to succeed and whatever they did would instead make the gangs retaliate harder. However, this is also a chance. Should they succeed, Brockton Bay would turn to ash and a long period of chaos would follow. The more she thought about it, the better this idea seemed to be. Inside her, Taylor's hollow ego protested against this idea. Since, if this idea were to pass, the resulting casualties would be staggering for sure and Daniel's life work, the DWU would surely fall. However, Alice wasn't Taylor, no matter how much Taylor clawed her from inside and Taylor's morality tried to impose itself on her. Alice shook herself away from her influence with great difficulty. She is her own person. She is Alice, not Taylor. Alice repeated this mantra in her head a few times and took a long, steady breath and jumped.
"Greeting gentlemen," she said in a booming voice that would make it harder for listeners to discern her actual voice. The cheering dockworkers stopped, and they all turned toward her warily.
"Who are you?" Kurt addressed the cape in a very edgy-looking red armour (yes, the armour has literal edges).
"I am Incarnate, your resident vigilante slash villain. No, I am not a hero, fuck you. I can't help but interject after seeing your little show," the deep and echoey voice came out from the armour. Kurt couldn't help but put off a little, hearing this unknown cape's voice. It was likely due to the voice being utterly alien to hear. Kurt deduced that it must have been intentional on the cape's side. Smart, since who knows if some kinds of thinkers could just pick you apart just by your voice.
"What do you want, Incarnate?" Kurt asked the cape in a cautious tone, but he had already readied himself. His body tensed, and he would run away if the cape moved funny. That would seem like cowardice to some, but Kurt would call it smart. After all, he was a mere human, and they have literal superpowers.
"Well, just some advice. Those toys of yours may be good for average capes but for some of them, you may face, if you were to truly continue your little crusade, they wouldn't be enough. To show what I mean, shoot me," the cape gestured their hands toward themself in an inviting manner. All the gathered dockworkers went stilled as they looked at the cape with confused gazes.
Other people would think the cape in front of them was insane for that request, but not Kurt. Kurt knew the cape meant it when they asked him to shoot them. They weren't bluffing, so either they were that confident in their power or they were stupid. This cape didn't seem stupid so that only left one thing.
"Look, we are looking for revolution, not picking a fight," Lacey tried to explain.
The metal head tilted its head a bit and answered, "I am aware. I just want to demonstrate what to expect if you ever go up against high-level capes. Because I assure you, these toys won't cut it".
Seeing that none of them moved a muscle and just eyed her warily, Incarnate shook her head. Here she was, intending to give them some advice and help, and these fools just won't get it. Is what she said too complicated? She was even prepared to use herself as a test dummy to demonstrate the ability of high-level capes. Incarnate rolled her eyes inside her helmet and sighed rather vocally. She needed to do everything herself if she wanted to get things done. With that in her mind, she walked toward one of the crates containing grenades and took out one of them. Then, she retreated under their watchful eyes and pulled off the pin, shook it a little for good measure and boom. The grenade exploded on her hand, but she was without a scratch.
"See, if you went against Hookwolf or something like that with these, you won't be able to do much," Incarnate said before taking out a tube and shooting it at a wall, punching a clean hole through it and wall across which impressed a lot of people. But actually, this thing is just a hollow tube, just really sturdy, made of the same material as her armour. What it does is that it is connected to her and when someone pressed the trigger, she would know and send out the amount of maximum concussive energy the tube can bear, which is a lot. Well, at least enough to blow a hole through a tank.
"How about this? I will give you this for free for a favour," Incarnate's echoey voice sounded out from their armour. This immediately triggered all sorts of danger senses in Kurt. It was too good to be true, and he knew better than to trust a deal like this.
"What do you want?" he asked with a voice laced with seriousness.
"I want you guys t-," the armour suddenly stopped and completely went still before continuing, "I want you guys to leave innocent people alone," the voice forced out each syllable with great effort. Kurt saw armour's hands fisting. They hang their heads down, imperceptibly. It would go unnoticed to most, but he was watching closely.
"Here," the armour just tossed the tube to Lacey and disappeared. Kurt wondered what just happened.
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Alice now in the unarmoured form smacked one of the rusting ships from Boat Graveyard.
"Fuck you! I played around like a glorified boy scout for you. Isn't that enough? Let me have my fun," she said, however, no response was returned. She just sighed in indignation. Even she understood that it is pointless to fight yourself. Nonetheless, she is still pissed at her actions being bent against her will. This is a very humiliating experience. This previous ego of hers is like a pain in her ass. It doesn't have enough 'Self' but it is still enough to influence her actions. Alice decided that her previous self, Taylor, was one hell of a woman, seeing that she continued to preserve even when she was reduced to chaotic thoughts and memories.
Alice walked toward one of the containers scattered around, teleported to its roof, and plopped down. She shook her head, her neck-length bob was swaying vigorously with it. She was exhausted from the previous tussle. Really, her existence is the last troll from Great Red. He took Taylor, who had a hero complex at the size of the moon with the need to prove herself, and sent her soul back into time, which then reincarnated as her. When he finally unlocked her powers, along with her memories of past life, her personality was already set, and it was clashing really hard with Taylor which resulted in the current problem. She would flip the bird to Great Red if he was in front of her, Dragon of Apocalypse or not.
Alice decided to resume her Lair house hunting again. However, since it was already late, and she really really didn't want to repeat the incident from the morning.
'Seriously, can't a girl sleep peacefully on a random roof?' She decided to sleep in a rustic boat lying in the bay.
As she was about to teleport to one of the halves-sinking random boats, "please, wait a moment," she heard a voice. It was a whisper of thousands forming a single coherent voice. She looked for the source and found it. Tree branches branching in bizarre patterns covered its head, and its hands had no palm, instead, two claws the size of palms sat there, it was covered in a black cloak with tentacles of darkness swinging wildly around. Alice has a bad feeling about it. As an avid fan of Literature in her past life, she had read about creatures like this in a book, and things she read weren't exactly filling her with good feelings about this sort of creature.
"I believe you are in need of it," one of its tentacles handed her a book. Alice looked at the book held firmly in the tentacle and sighed in relief.
'Thankfully, it's not saying Nec-mmf. No, don't think about it,' she silenced her line of thought and took the book. It was labelled 'Runecraft 101'.
"How?" How did you know I wanted it was the unasked question.
The creature chuckled. It sounded really disturbing, like thousands of previously coherent whispers scattered and now chuckling along with it.
"I know a lot," the creature said.
"What are you?" Finally, she asked for it. She swore as hell if it answered anything that started with N, she was gonna destroy the entire universe and salted it for good measure.
"I am but a Deus Ex Machina, but you may call me Self. Well then, farewell, we shall meet soon," the creature disappeared into the thin air, the same way it appeared. Alice looked at the book in her hand, and felt lost.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone