Capítulo 2470: 53
Chapter 53: Tyranny 6-7
Tyranny 6.7
Noelle screeched as the blast drove her back and into the gravel, carrying her five, ten, fifteen feet, as though she had been strapped to a rocket and let fly. The bulging mass of flesh undulated, rippling like the surface of a pond under the power of the blast, and then, at last, it guttered and died.
Sitting on the ground, sprawled out as though I'd tripped and fell, my heart skipped a beat and hope kindled inside my chest.
A blast of light, hitting hard enough to drive Noelle back. That had to have come from Laserdream or Lady Photon, and that meant that New Wave was okay and Brandish must have been fine, now, or at least stable enough that they could come help me.
And even amongst all of the mistakes I'd made tonight, at least it hadn't gotten any of them killed.
But when I turned to look over my shoulder at my savior, expecting to see a woman aglow with her powers, the image of a wrathful, avenging angel, my brain skidded to a halt.
No way.
"Legend," I breathed, because there was no mistaking that distinctive costume, that heroic blue with streaks of white lightning and flames. There was no mistaking the lantern jaw and the lean, muscular physique. There was no mistaking the perfectly styled, wavy brown hair, and most certainly, there was no mistaking the way it all pulled together to make for the most photogenic hero in the country.
Above all else, there was no mistaking the weight that was carried with him. The aura of power and authority, the confidence with which he held himself. Even just seeing him on tv, it had been as clear as it was now that he was in front of me.
And he hadn't come alone. Flanking him, floating at either side and slightly behind, were Alexandria, with the brilliant symbol of a shining tower emblazoned across her chest, and Eidolon, whose mask glowed with green light from under his hood.
The Triumvirate, the three most powerful heroes in the whole country. The three people I'd once told Armsmaster I may be able to match. Among them, the man whose vast and awesome powers I'd once compared my own powers to.
I felt small, looking up at them. Like there was a line, a road I needed to travel, and they stood far away at the end of it. Like I still had a long way to go before I could legitimately be able to claim I was on that level.
What a fool I'd been, to think I was their equal.
Noelle let loose a furious howl, and my head swiveled back around in time to watch her right herself and start to charge, again.
But a glittering wall made of what looked like frosted glass sprang up between us, and she slammed into it instead of me, bouncing off the surface without leaving so much as a scratch behind. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eidolon float forward, hand outstretched, and it became obvious where the wall had come from.
"I'll handle this," he declared confidently. Every part of him spoke of surety. In his stance, in his posture, there wasn't even the slightest hint of a doubt.
Three major powers, I remembered, although I wasn't sure where from. Three major powers, or else a collection of smaller powers about twice as large. Those were his only apparent limitations. How he selected what powers he needed, whether those powers had any limitations (and they probably did), I didn't know. To the best of my knowledge, when it came to sheer breadth, there weren't any limitations at all.
A wave of his hand dispelled the barrier, and it fractured into thousands of tiny motes of light that glittered, then disappeared.
Noelle snarled and righted herself again, but Eidolon just held out his hand and took aim. The air grew thick and heavy, even all the way from over here, and a blast of something — air pressure, maybe, or even gravity — blew her back again, carrying her further away and towards the edge of the arena. The mass of mottled flesh rippled, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.
A part of me was relieved. Whatever he'd hit her with, he hadn't done any serious damage, so wherever my friends were inside of that mess, whatever it was that was happening to them in there, he hadn't hurt them.
But the rest of me worried. I had hit her hard, with several A-rank attacks, using Atalanta's arrows. I'd carved away large portions of flesh — only surface wounds, yes, but only because there was enough there that she wasn't completely obliterated with a single hit — severed limbs and gouged away enough meat for an entire family of cattle, and now, only minutes later, it had all already grown back.
High speed regeneration. It was healing that outpaced even Lung, that had restored lost tissue at breakneck speeds. The kind of power that made it difficult to knock them out of the fight, because broken limbs didn't slow them down and things like poison were metabolized in moments. For sheer speed, it might even rival King Arthur's sheath.
If it came down to it and they had to carve away at her until they reached the people she was holding hostage… Could they even manage it, before her body sealed closed around the wound? How far would they have to ramp up their attacks to get deep enough? How much risk would they have to put those people — have to put my friends — in just to try and get them out?
Rescuing them, bringing them back in one piece, that was the whole point. Doing it without killing Noelle, either… I, at least, wanted that. Wanted to cling to the belief that no one had to die, here. Because if it had just been about turning her into a smear on the pavement or ash in the wind, I had any one of countless heroes who could've already done it.
"Hey."
A hand landed on my shoulder, and I jolted, spinning, halfway through an awkwardly aimed punch before I realized I recognized the voice and the costume of the person behind me. He backed away, just far enough to get out of range of my fist, hands held up in the universal sign of surrender. A white body glove, armor panels, clock faces on the knees and chest and the mask.
"Don't shoot?" he offered, half-joking.
Dennis.
"Clockblocker," I said instead, breathing his name like a sigh.
"The one and only," he replied, "at your service."
He stepped forward again and held out his hand. "You okay?"
I reached out and took it, let him pull me to my feet.
"Fine," I told him. "Just…a little winded."
I glanced over my shoulder at the fight, at the Triumvirate battling Noelle. Up in the air, Eidolon and Legend continued to blast her, hitting her with beams of light or bursts of pressure, driving her back over and over again, as they flitted out of range of her tentacles and assorted limbs. She moved nearly as fast over the ground, dodging some of their attacks, but getting hit by them far more commonly, to almost no effect. Alexandria seemed to be watching them, hanging back, hovering there, as though waiting for a moment she might be needed.
They weren't doing anything to her, really. Legend was shooting her with lasers that did all sorts of strange and exotic things, like freezing her or setting her on fire or disintegrating swathes of meat, and they curved impossibly in the air to hit, even when she tried to avoid, or forked and split to hit multiple parts at once. Eidolon's blasts were still shearing off chunks of flesh, ripping it away, but it was all only surface damage, and it healed again even as I watched.
I didn't know what they were going to do. How they were going to try and free the people she'd absorbed. Without any of my heroes to provide advice, I was hardly a master tactician, but even I could see this wasn't working.
My head swiveled back around, and looking now, behind Clockblocker, there were misshapen blobs of greyish goop, all hardened and firm. Containment foam, I realized after a second's thought. Just like the stuff they'd used to trap Lung that first night, when I'd met Armsmaster and Miss Militia.
The clones. That was how they were capturing the clones. What they intended to do afterwards… I had no idea. I didn't know what they could do. Did the clones have rights? Would they be treated like real people? Or would they be summarily executed, like mad dogs? Did they deserve to be? I didn't know.
I had no illusions that New Wave had probably killed Claire and Amelia, Amy's clones.
"Is this it?" I asked, gesturing behind me with a sweeping motion. "Our reinforcements?"
It sounded ridiculous, once it came out of my mouth. The Triumvirate were the three most powerful heroes in the entire country. They were the people you called when the enemy was someone no one else could handle, and even then, even the direst of situations would only ever need one of them. They should be reinforcements enough on their own.
And yet, they seemed impotent, fighting Noelle. Like she was too much, even for the vaunted Triumvirate. Like even they weren't enough to defeat her.
A nascent Endbringer, Lisa had said the Travelers thought she was. I was beginning to see why. I was beginning to think it might have been true.
Clockblocker shook his head. "They're the distraction."
Which meant they were holding back, weren't going for killing blows. A little of the tension inside of me unwound. Okay. That… That was good. Better, at least, than the idea that the strongest heroes in the country would struggle against Noelle.
He lifted his hand up to the side of his mask, pressed his fingers against the spot over his ear.
"Hey, Big V," he said. "Think you could make us a shortcut?"
For a few seconds that seemed to stretch out into forever, nothing happened. There was no answer, not even the faint crackle of a voice through his earpiece. Then, suddenly, the line of foam statues spread out, and a clear pathway pushed the world outside it away and I was looking straight into a makeshift command station, where a large group of various capes were huddled around each other.
And standing at the front was a familiar twelve-year-old girl, dressed in her costume, looking none the worse for wear after the trauma that had taken her arm only a few short days ago.
Clockblocker took my hand and led me through the distorted space until we were standing to the side of Vista, and she let out a big sigh as the twisted section snapped back to its natural shape, and suddenly, all that was behind me was an empty railcar.
"Where…?"
"An outer section of the Trainyard, not far from the fight," rumbled Armsmaster, who stood at the center of the group. "This is where we've been planning our engagement against the parahuman codenamed Echidna."
He nodded towards me respectfully. "Apocrypha."
I frowned. "Echidna?"
"There's no known record of that cape, neither of her powers nor any alias she may have chosen," Miss Militia explained. "Hence, the PRT and Protectorate chose one befitting her powers and physical appearance."
Something inside me resonated. Yes. That would be what they called her, wouldn't it? Echidna, the mother of monsters, who spawned them from her flesh. How dehumanizing.
"New Wave has already briefed the Protectorate as thoroughly as they were able on the subject of Echidna's powers," said a new voice, and I almost jumped as my heart skittered in my chest. When I turned back to look, Alexandria herself floated down out of the sky to land only a few feet to my left. "However, if you have any new or updated information, now would be the time to share it."
"New Wave?" My brain sputtered for a moment, then hopeful anxiety flickered in my chest. "Wait, how's Brandish? When I left —"
"Dead," was the one word she offered. My stomach dropped to my feet.
No. No, it couldn't be. She was fine, she had to be fine. Lady Photon had said —
But when I turned to Armsmaster and Miss Militia, the former's face was grim and the latter only gave me a sorry little shake of her head.
I could have saved her. If I'd just stayed behind a few moments longer, if I'd just insisted on it, I could have saved her, healed her, and she would still be…
It was my fault. Brandish was dead because of me. Because of me. Because I had been too afraid to do what needed to be done when it had mattered most. If it hadn't been for me, if I hadn't screwed things up so badly, she would never have been hurt, and this entire thing could have been avoided. If I hadn't been such a fucking coward —
"Apocrypha." Alexandria's voice snapped me from my thoughts. "Do you have any new or updated information about Echidna or her powers?"
"N-no." I took a breath, steeled my nerves. Melt down later, I told myself. Amy and Lisa. Save them, now, or else it would all be meaningless. "No. Nothing new about her powers. She still has Amy and… She still has Panacea, and she's absorbed a few civilians from around the Trainyard. They're all inside her, somewhere."
Damn it. Damn it. I'd gotten Brandish —
No. No. I had to keep it together. I couldn't afford to fall apart, here.
Alexandria nodded.
"I see. Is there any other information we need to know?"
Trickster.
"She…has a teleporter," I replied after a moment. "I…don't know his range or his limits. He can swap two objects. That's all I know."
"I see. Thank you." She turned towards the assembled heroes. "Then, this will be our engagement procedure. Priority one will be the recovery of any captured hostages or victims, including civilians and Panacea. If you encounter one and you're not sure if he or she is a clone, use one of the containment foam grenades to immobilize them and they'll be sorted out when this is all over. Priority two is the detention and neutralizing of parahuman codename Echidna. Whatever happens, we must contain her and this incident and prevent her escaping to wreak havoc throughout the city or elsewhere."
There were several nods throughout the group.
"Make no mistake, this is an S-Class situation," she went on. "The danger Echidna represents is no less real than Leviathan or Behemoth, in spite of our lower numbers. I expect each of you to treat this with the severity it warrants."
She waited a moment, sweeping her gaze across them all, but no one spoke up, either to question her or contradict her.
Now that I looked closer, it did look like a small group. Maybe three dozen capes, only some of whom I recognized, and an almost startling number of them were Wards. Most of them were even Brockton Bay natives, like Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Dauntless, Velocity, Assault and Battery, Triumph, plus Kid Win and I think Aegis and Gallant. Grace and Tecton from the Chicago Wards, Revel, along with a few I was unsure of. No Myrddin, who was conspicuous in his absence.
The rest, I didn't know. Some of them tingled faintly at the back of my head, like a memory that dangled just out of conscious reach, a name I knew but couldn't remember, and some were complete blanks.
"Good," said Alexandria. "No official assessment has been made, yet, but based upon current information, Echidna is classed as a Master-Striker-Trump-Brute. She requires physical contact, but if she has it, it is likely that you will find yourself unable to use your powers and she will consume you. Once you are inside her lower body, she is capable of making duplicates, each possessing all of your knowledge and memories, along with some variation of your own powers. As far as is known, these duplicates are also beholden to her and possess personalities vastly different from the original."
Some of the capes shifted uncomfortably. A part of me wondered how much each of them had heard from New Wave, if they knew what "vastly different" really meant. If they understood that these clones would not be nearly perfect replicas, but distorted reflections from cracked mirrors.
"This means that you are not to enter melee range unless your power has some sort of power immunity or invulnerability aspect," she went on. "If you're not perfectly confident in it, you will not get within arm's reach of her. Those with such range-based limitations will instead be filling support roles and engaging any clones she might send against us. Blasters and those whose powers are not melee-based will be the main attack force and will engage her at a safe distance. At no point should any of you put yourselves in unnecessary risk, because all you will accomplish is to make everyone else's job harder when we are forced to rescue you, too."
I swallowed, but the words, in spite of the severe, no nonsense way she delivered them, filled me with a bit of hope. "Rescue you, too," she'd said. They reiterated the promise that getting Amy and Lisa and all of the other victims out of Noelle's grasp was part of the plan.
"Be on constant lookout for their teleporter. If you see him, you are to neutralize him as best as you are able, or else notify someone capable of doing so. However, unless and until he engages you, he is a tertiary objective, and we will not be actively seeking him out."
If they even saw him in the first place. The only time I'd seen him tonight was in the first confrontation, outside of Coil's base. Everything else, he'd done from out of sight.
"Are there any questions?"
She swept her gaze around the group again, small though it was. No one spoke up, and she nodded again.
"Good. Then we'll split up into two groups, here. Blasters and long range fighters, you will be working under Miss Militia. She is your team leader, and you will follow her orders. Those of you who will be handling clones directly, Armsmaster is your team leader. Unless the situation changes, his is the first, last, and only word you will respect. Understood?"
A grim chorus of, "Yes, ma'am," answered her.
"Move out."
The heroes gathered split off, flowing together into two separate groups, and then made their way around me and back towards the fight. Clockblocker, still at my side, lingered for a moment, and I met his eyes — or the part of his mask where his eyes would be — before he gave my hand a comforting squeeze and took off at a jog to join Armsmaster's team.
I hesitated for a few seconds longer, not entirely sure which team I should be joining. At this point…it was probably a good idea to Install Medea, use her magic to support the rescue teams, and then wait until everyone was free before fixing Noelle. That felt like it was the safest bet.
I could heal her now, but I still wasn't sure what would happen to all that excess mass, and if her power was the only thing keeping it from crushing and suffocating the people inside…
No, absolutely, I didn't want to take that risk unless and until there was no other choice. Anything that was so uncertain as to carry the possibility of endangering my friends should definitely be left for the last resort.
I still hesitated, though, because —
A hand on my shoulder jerked me out of my thoughts. "Apocrypha."
I blinked, and a flock of butterflies suddenly started buzzing in my stomach, because holy shit, Alexandria was talking to me.
My mouth flopped wordlessly for a moment, but fuck, this was not the time to be getting starstruck, get your shit together, Taylor.
"Yes?"
It came out as more of a squeak than anything else. Fortunately, she didn't comment on it.
"Are you able to keep fighting? Can you keep using your powers?"
And without even trying, she hit on the exact problem I'd been thinking about.
I wasn't sure what, exactly, would happen if and when I hit my limit. I'd come very close, that first night. I'd pushed my power to the point where I'd been utterly exhausted by the time I got home. But if I pushed it further? If I pushed until I collapsed, mid-fight? Could I push it that far, or would every bit of fatigue and exhaustion be put off to the side, left to compound and pile up until I let go of the Install?
That possibility scared me, too, for a different reason. What if I pushed myself too far, to the point that my real body died while I was still transformed? Would I be stuck in that form forever, unable to release it without dying, or would I just drop dead without ever realizing I'd killed myself from the stress?
That was why I wasn't entirely sure what to do, here. If I Installed Medea and went to help, would I just collapse if I pushed myself too far, leaving my friends to suffer because I wouldn't be awake to heal them, or would I manage to save everyone at the end and then quietly die with a smile, a job well done, having made up for my fuckups tonight?
I didn't want to die, but…that wasn't exactly a bad way to go, was it?
I opened my mouth to admit that I didn't know, but something held me back. There was a…a feeling, an urge, that said not to tell her, not to trust her . I didn't know where it came from, I didn't know why, but that part of me, however small, was screaming to lie, lie, lie.
But that was fucking ridiculous. This was Alexandria. One of the Triumvirate, the greatest heroes in the country. If I couldn't trust her, then who could I?
"Only one more time," I admitted after a moment. If she'd noticed or found my hesitation suspicious, she didn't show it. "Maybe… Maybe two more, if I don't do anything strenuous with either one."
She nodded, like she wasn't particularly surprised. She had Thinker powers, I recalled suddenly, so maybe she'd already known anyway.
"And how were you planning to use that last 'charge,' so to speak?"
I chewed on my bottom lip. "Healing. Once it was over, once everyone was rescued, I was going to heal everyone who needed it. Including Noelle."
"Echidna," Alexandria corrected.
"Echidna," I agreed reluctantly.
I hated that name, I realized then. I hated how it framed this situation. How it reduced Noelle to her problem and the threat she posed. But I understood the necessity. The courtesy it provided, by separating who she was now from who she would be if everything worked out. How neatly it could cleave the difference between the rampaging monster and the desperate girl who just wanted to be back to normal.
Some part of me even hated Noelle herself, for taking my friends. Even Lisa, for killing Coil and kick-starting this mess. But the larger part hated myself, for my stupidity that let it come to this.
"And can you do anything else with this power?" she asked. "Or is it limited to healing?"
"I can fight with it," I said. "But…I mean, I've never…pushed myself until I literally couldn't go on. If I drain myself dry fighting and I don't have the strength to heal…"
She nodded. Like she was taking me seriously and not just indulging the little girl playing at hero.
"If we rescue Panacea —"
"And if Am — if Panacea needs healing, too?" I cut across her. Belatedly, I realized I'd just interrupted fucking Alexandria, and my cheeks burned, but I pushed through. "If I exhaust myself and Panacea comes out of there in no shape to heal, either, then we're…we're screwed."
Her lips drew into a tight line, and the faint outlines of her eyes that I could see narrowed, but she still nodded. "A valid point," she conceded. "Do you have any other powersets that might prove useful, that would be casual enough and light enough, so to speak, that you would still be able to switch to your healing power, if needed?"
I hesitated. Barely, for less than a second, as she hovered, waiting, offering her power for use, to solve this entire problem. She was the patient serenity of inevitably, the unstoppable, inexorable movement of a glacier. You will use me, her presence seemed to say. I am the one who can save them. The only one.
But I couldn't. Not her. She was the one hero I absolutely must not use. The only one whose very existence I had to deny.
"No," I lied.
"Then you have the most important job," Alexandria told me. "Unless and until we can free Panacea and confirm her good health, it will be entirely up to you to ensure that none of Echidna's victims die. That means that you will be staying out of the fight, observing at a safe distance, and waiting for the moment when you're needed. Understood?"
She hadn't told me anything that I hadn't already concluded on my own, but even so, something about it chafed. Maybe it was the fact that I was currently nearly useless otherwise, or maybe it was that she seemed to have written Noelle off as an acceptable casualty.
Whatever it was, it had my hackles raising, but I pushed it down and bit out an even, "Understood."
She gave me another nod, then held out her arm, offering her hip to me. "Grab on."
I hesitated, only for a moment, then awkwardly sidled up to her and wrapped one arm around her waist. The arm she held out came down and wound firmly, tightly, around my own midsection, her fingers almost like a steel claw against my stomach.
"Hold on."
And then, we were flying.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
If you want to support me as a writer so I can pay my bills, I hav treon (p a treon . com (slash) James_D_Fawkes), and if P a treon is too long term, you could buy me a ko-fi (ko-fi . com (slash) jamesdfawkes).
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder