Amelia, 1.4:
It had been a couple hours as I slogged through the mess. Oh, who the fuck am I kidding? It was sewage. Raw. Filth of a hundred different descriptions. And I could feel every last germ that touched my skin. I grabbed each one. Shaped them. Reshaped them. I could have left it at that, let the organic compounds control themselves. Except that would be too slow. I needed incredible amounts of mass for this. And that's what I would get.
The vinelike organism I made combined some of the best traits of every species I could think of. Left on its own, each tendril could grow over a hundred feet in a day, in an optimum environment. And it could produce a LOT of tendrils from each main vine. Like a jellyfish, it was both a collection of small organisms, and a single organism all at the same time. As long as a cluster more than five cells large continued to survive, it would regrow.
It could eat just about anything organic, and even consume a number of inorganic substances. It was photosynthetic, chemosynthetic, thermosynthetic, even electrosynthetic (actually, that was probably a name for something else now that I thought of it) and... well, whatever you call a plant that can use radiation and sound instead of light. It could eat most forms of stone. Some forms of metal. Any kind of plastic or petroleum product. Literally every organic substance on the planet. And whenever it encountered another of its own species? It fused together, joining the two into one shared lifeform that could trade nutrients and energy between them at remarkable rates. And it even made leaves that were edible and incredibly nutritious. Just... don't think too hard about what it ate.
It helped to focus on that. Kept my mind off the smell.
And then I felt, more than heard, the explosion. I was miles away, but started in that direction nonetheless. I was feeling pretty good, actually. I'd taken on Siberian and... well, 'won' would be overly generous, I supposed. But I tricked her completely. She believed I was dead. The Nine would believe I was dead. I could go on hiding. I could be safe.
Only problem? Well... 'fuck that noise'.
I fought the fucking Siberian. I came away, not only alive, but knowing two of her weaknesses. First- she was shit in a fight. Two years of self defense classes that ended three years ago was all it took to fight against her indefinitely. I only needed enhanced physical abilities because she had enhanced physical abilities. If were were both base-normal girls? I'd have ground that bitch under my heel. Didn't matter that she was probably a foot and a half taller than me, and had the second nicest body I'd ever seen in my life.
Her second weakness... explained the first weakness. She was a projection. Not alive. Not real. A murderous life sized barbie doll. Huh. Sounds like the kind of shitty horror movie that Vicky would have dragged me to along with whatever boy she was trying to hook me up with that week. There was a time I'd have done ANYTHING to avoid that.
Careful what you wish for, right? Thanks for the advice, dead person who's smarter than I am.
I'd make it up to her. I'd stop the rest of the Nine. Fix the damage they, and Leviathan, had done to her city. Fix her, even if it was against her will. Then leave. Find somewhere else to live. Maybe be a one-woman disaster relief in the wake of the other Endbringer attacks. This organism I was using here could do so much. Especially in the areas left uninhabitable by Behemoth. Other, modified, strains could do even more.
I'd prove to her I could be a hero. And if I had to make Nilbog look like a second rate hack in the process? Fuck it, the worst they could do would be to kill me and drag my name through the dirt. Both fates were far better than I deserved.
It took me over an hour to make it near where the explosion took place. I wrapped myself in biomaterial that had, minutes ago, mostly consisted of water, dead animals, and human fecal material. Now it was a solid ton of combat armor in an apelike form.
... If I were in a better mood, I could probably laugh at that. I was riding around inside a giant shit gorilla. Dennis must never know. I made it push up the large manhole cover, and then forced it to shapeshift itself through. It was far too massive to make it out any other way.
I stayed calm as I was pulled out. And that's really what it was, almost like being sucked up through a giant straw.
The area was still burning when I took the opportunity to observe my surroundings. But that wasn't the first thing I noticed.
The giant, crystalline statue of Crawler? That was the first thing I noticed. It was, in its own terrifying way, beautiful. Face turned toward the sky in what looked to be a triumphant roar. Five of his arms outstretched, reaching toward the sky as if welcoming the arrival of God Himself. Flawlessly crafted and surrounded on all sides by devastation. I almost felt ashamed that I noticed the dead second.
The people in the area, third. Dozens of PRT troopers went through the area, examining the damage. Setting up warning tape and keeping the gawkers back. I was earning quite a bit of attention on that front.
I was probably safe if they attacked. Containment foam only works on something that's not capable of turning itself into digestive enzymes.
The parahumans moving toward me were another subject. Most wearing some weird hazmat suit looking costumes that I'd never seen before. The only one I could get a look at was a boy made of metal that I didn't recognize. I stopped to appreciate him for a moment. Damn, if Victoria had set me up with THAT. And that's all it took. The moment was gone.
One approached and spoke. "Do you have a name?" Now I recognized her. Battery. I'd met her a few times, saved her life a couple times. She was always nice enough. A little overly serious. Most of the Protectorate were. Except her boyfriend, who was almost as bad as Clockblocker. I never asked, but it was pretty clear that he was the one who came up with their names. I knew because it was stupid and bordered on the offensive.
"Are you able to speak?" She asked again. I'd zoned out. I hesitated. I don't have a name to give her, I realized. Not any longer. But still, I didn't want to upset them. And I needed to know what was happening in there.
The suit started shifting, opening up in the middle. Slowly, of course. Its pectoral muscles melting back more like clay than any mechanical certainty. It was enough to reveal my face. I probably looked like what I'd been wading in for the last three hours or so. I knew I smelled like it.
"Panacea?" She asked, seeming a little stunned.
"Yes and no," I replied. "I'm not with New Wave anymore. Am thinking on a new identity," I answered as the body armor settled onto its knees, and I could step out onto the ground.
"Oh," she replied. "I'm sorry. I... Tattletale told us you were killed by Siberian."
I fooled Tattletale? Unlikely. Bitch read me like a magazine cover last time. Probably lied to them, for some reason. "Yeah, that's what I wanted Siberian to think. Can you let me in?" I asked. "I'd like to see what I can do to help."
Battery hesitated. She couldn't quite keep eye contact. "Please trust me. You really shouldn't."
My blood ran cold. "Why? What happened?"
She inhaled deeply and slowly. The air quality here was a nightmare. Hot, sulfurous smells coming off the remnants of the fire. Chemicals used to put out fires that water couldn't. It was bad, even compared to the sewage I just waded through. That suit must be completely sealed.
"I hate having to be the one to tell you this. Glory Girl... she... didn't make it."Amelia, Ch 5
I blinked. My eyes were already watering from the caustic air released from the chemical fires. No. Not like this. Not before I could undo my mistake. I hadn't hoped for forgiveness. I hadn't hoped for her to stop hating me. I didn't deserve either of those things. But for the love of all that is holy, couldn't I fix just this one thing?
Panacea. Universal cure. Such bullshit. I could have named myself GOD and it would have been less pretentious.
I didn't say anything. I simply stood up, walked back over to the armor, which I left envelope me, and I walked up to the PRT cordon. I kept the front of the suit clear, so they could see me. So I could see out with my own eyes instead of the jury rigged bio camera thing I'd put together. It... wasn't all that good, actually. Indistinct. Black and white only. It was good enough to fight Siberian. It wasn't how I wanted to see my sister's face.
No one stopped me. My reputation was pretty strong, here. Maybe they hoped I'd be healing the wounded. Maybe they didn't want to stop me from seeing my sister.
The area was annihilated. Fires had scoured the area, hot enough that there weren't even bodies to identify. Lumps that may have been people, or may have been garbage cans. Some that were probably cars. Impossible to tell. And then... the statues. Only five, including Crawler. "Only" four people and a monster. Three contained in the same full concealing costume I'd come to associate with this whole nightmare.
Two were only identifiable as crystalized from rips in their costume that looked to be claws. The third was leaning over one of the wounded. Held in place forever. Around the openings was a spread of patterns that looked a lot like ice crystals forming on the edges of a window. It took me a few moment to realize that it must have been blood. Turned to... this material.
"What... but... how?"
"One of Bakuda's bombs. Only way we could stop Crawler," Battery replied.
I spotted Victoria. And wished I hadn't. A portion of her costume had been torn away. And more of it had melted off her. Almost nothing left on her, leaving everything to be viewed. There... wasn't enough of her left for it to be indecent. Her chest had been melted to the point where bone was clearly visible. Her stomach... organs were exposed, but most of them too damaged for me to recognize. Her right leg had no flesh remaining between the knee and the ankle. Her left, most of the damage was her inner thigh. Her hands had all but melted off... I had to guess from her trying to claw at the acid on the rest of her.
It had to be an acid.
My body, my mind, they were both numb. I had defaulted to analysis... a behavior I've heard is common for people with Thinker powers, like mine, but had never experienced for myself. I forced myself to look at my sister's once beautiful face.
The left half of was completely melted off. Hair missing. Skull exposed. The jawbone had disconnected from the skull on that side. And, good god, that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was the side that was still intact. Contorted in pain and horror. She was still alive. Still conscious. When the glass-bomb hit.
I couldn't even delude myself into imagining death came swiftly for her. That she was murdered early, and the acid had nothing but a corpse to inflict its horror on. No. Even that would be too much to hope for. I had to live with the knowledge that the last minutes of her life was spent screaming. In pain that I couldn't even imagine.
I turned away, an act that the biofeedback system interpreted as combative. Twisting the organic machine and its arms and legs into a fighting stance. I screamed inside the suit, venting my frustration and rage and guilt the only way I could.
One of two ways, at least. I caught sight of Crawler's body. The suit's muscles clenched, responding to my subconscious body language. It knew what it was told. What my body wanted, even if my mind was unable to articulate.
It wanted violence. It wanted to inflict pain. I was more than willing to act on that impulse.
I charged Crawler's frozen body, and struck with all the power the bioarmor had to offer. The fist collided with forces normally reserved for an enraged elephant. It was a bit of a disappointment, not being able to use my own hands, my own strength. But my power was my strength. My blessing. My curse. And I used it to full effect here.
The initial blow had splintered several of the supporting bone growths, and pulverized most of the musculature in the hand and wrist. Ordinarily, it would take a great deal of effort to mend that kind of tissue damage... but this machine was built with me in mind. More plant than animal. More fungus than plant. It was a perfect cellular machine, and I could patch it back together in heartbeats.
The crystaline body shifted slightly under the force, and even left minor cracks. The followup right handed blow took off one of the monster's smaller arms. And left the suit's other limb damaged. But that was fine, the first had been repaired. Another blow to the center, expanding the spiderweb splintering into the frozen heart of the beast.
Another pair of strikes. Mending. And another. More mending. I was exhausting the suit of all reserves even as I was expanding the damage into Crawler. It was a question of which of us gave way first. It was a close match. But I won. Barely. The suit had what could only be compare to a heart attack. Or a full-body aneurysm. Analogy falls short when trying to apply "death by exhaustion" to a tree.
At least it was still meant to be opened even in death. My power- I've never used it like this before. Or this long continuously. And I still hadn't reached a limit. If anything, I could call it invigorating. For all the suffering I'd been through, all my pain, all my failures and mistakes. My power itself was none of those things. It worked perfectly every time. Forever reliable. Forever mine.
And I would use it. Some of the Nine still remained. Shatterbird, I believed I could beat with effort and planning. And Bonesaw. And Jack Slash. Especially Jack Slash. I would hunt him to the ends of the fucking earth if I that's what it took to end him. It's not like I have anything else left to live for.
I pressed my feet against the "window" of the suit, forcing it out. And then dropped the couple feet to the ground.
Battery and the others had started to approach me. My dead suit. And the shattered remains of Crawler.
I spoke. My voice came out ragged. Raw. That's right, I remembered. I had been screaming the whole time. Of course I hurt my throat. I was going to try again, but was interrupted by a startled shout, and pointing. A pink fog was rising from the ground, in the more densely populated part of the city. And spreading in all directions.
"The hell is that?" One of the other hazmat suits asked. One of the civilians screamed, which was followed by more screaming and panic as the water in the streets started turning an oily reddish color, racing through the streets like fire spreading across a trail of kerosene. Someone else might mistake it for blood. My eye was a little more expert than most.
I turned to the biosuit. Reaching toward it, I noticed that the shell was covered in strange growths. It took me a minute to realize they were mushrooms. Shaped differently. Wrongly. Looking like nothing so much as tiny, repeating iterations of human hands and limbs and faces. I hesitated to touch the microsized forest of body parts.
In spite of its "death", it had started restoring itself to "life" quite readily. It's hard to make a fungus stay dead. I drew from the raw materials, shaped it.
I created a quick-and-dirty variant of my sewer-vine. Which really needed a better name. I'd have to work on that. Alongside my own name. It snaked its way toward a nearby storm drain, finding more of its own already there. Good, it was spreading more quickly than I'd dared to hope. Probably covered close to half the city at this time. Much of it was already in the fog. I created what was, functionally, a model of the human body within one of the larger tendrils. It was a "blank slate", but it was fully, functionally, human. Suitable for organ harvesting, even. Yet still it was part of the root.
Then I had the plant flood the body with that red material. And I observed. Watching as the... were those prions? Three reactions hit me at once. Who I was before... Panacea, Amy... was horrified with the knowledge of what these things would do. Cutting away memories. Faces. Isolating everyone. She would have recoiled in horror.
The new me, was absolutely pissed. That twisted, evil little monster that pretends to be a child was going to murder a city! Possibly half the state unless she had some mechanism to shut this down. I know, considering the history of the Slaughterhouse Nine, that should have come as exactly zero shock at all to anyone ever. But seeing what she was willing to do, watching it happen. That made it all the more real.
Then there was the third. The part I was coming to think of as my power, itself. It... was almost contemptuous. Between the disgust and the rage, there was the part of me that thought 'it would require a child to see this as impressive'.
In that period of three or four seconds, I had already constructed an antidote, and modified the vines to release it into the atmosphere. Bonesaw's disgusting, sadistic, and pathetic little stunt... I shut it down less than five minutes after it had begun.
Next, I would shut her down.
"Find Skitter," I demanded to the Protectorate heroes near me. There was no room for debate. "It's time to end thisAmelia, Ch 6
Battery looked at me. I glared back, wrapping my arm around my vine. Still need a name for this thing. I was drawing up more mass through the central... well, the "animal" part of the construct... basically a bloodstream. While most of the material was more plant than anything, the resource demands were higher than any natural plant, so it needed efficient access to energy. And for that, you had to go animal.
I was encouraging growth throughout the network, forcing its metabolism into an unsustainable level, and using my power to sustain it. My plant, for all its features, was nowhere near as complex as a human body. It was easy to work with. Natural biology was full of redundancies and inefficiencies. This vine had none of that getting in the way. It served whatever purpose I shaped it to. And it could quickly change that purpose if I so desired.
Granted, this was its own weakness. A strain of bacteria or a mold or something would no doubt come into being that could infect it simply from dumb random chance. And when that happened, it would die. It had no defense. Except me, of course.
As I considered this, the mass gelled around me, creating another psuedo-cocoon. I would need my interactive system for this to work. My power alone could achieve a great deal. But it had a great many limits as well.
"I... got Tattletale on the line," Battery told me. "She insisted on knowing what this was about before letting us speak to Skitter.
I grit my teeth. "Fine. I'll talk to her."
I snatched the phone away. "We both know I don't like you. And we both know there's not time enough for this shit. I need Skitter to help me find the rest of the Nine. You guys can handle Jack. I want a rematch with Siberian."
I could almost hear Tattletale's smile. "There's a lot of things you missed out on while playing dead, Amy."
"Not my name," I responded. I didn't bother hiding my emotions. What would be the point? Tattletale would see right through them.
"Good to know. Panacea? No, you dropped that, too," Tattletale continued. Good fucking god, does she realize how much she sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon villain when she talks like this? "To start with. Most of the Nine are gone. Siberian's dead. So is half our team."
My heart sank. "Is Skitter..."
"She's healthy. I wouldn't say 'fine'. But healthy."
"Then get her on the phone. I'd argue it's for the 'greater good', but I doubt that'd motivate you," I probably snarled that last word. "So fuck 'good', or 'justice' or 'heroism'. What I want is revenge against the bastards who killed my sister. And if you cared at all about your teammates, you'll help."
Tattletale sounded far, far too pleased with herself when she responded. "Oh, this I have got to see. We were already on speaker phone, so just explain the plan."
"I can hurt the Nine. Those that remain, at least. And I can reach them anywhere. What I can't do is find them. Skitter's power could let her search the city in minutes. And I can extend her range over the entire city."
"H... how," Skitter spoke. Her voice cracked- not out of hesitation, but from overuse.
"When I used your power against you at the bank. I got a good look at how it works. I can create... beacons. Relays. Extend your range. As much as you can handle, I can give you."
"And when we get Bonesaw and Jack?" Tattletale responded.
Really? She is going to negotiate now? I paused for a second. Huh. That actually works out in my favor. "I'm willing to discuss something more long term. After."
Battery actually gasped at that. Apparently she doesn't like little-miss-healer playing with villains. Well, fuck her, then. Still, this was going to be a problem.
Tattletale agreed, apparently. "We should find a better way to talk. Can you get to us quickly?"
"Not as such, no," I replied. "Skitter... look for a rope in the sewer or storm drain system with your bugs. It'll feel leathery. The insects will probably be instinctively afraid to..."
"Found it," she responded quietly. Damn, that was fast.
"Have some of them start chewing on it. And then go to the sewer at the spot you do the chewing." I kept my senses extended. They actually weren't that far away. Only about a mile. Where the insects had started biting, I had the vine absorb one. Partially. I made note of its brain pattern, and how it responded to Skitter's will. I also formed a tumor of sorts. Turns out they did select the storm drain. Good choice. Wish I'd had that option, but I really needed access to the biomass more than I needed my comfort.
"I'll have your relays ready soon. Call me back when you've found them." A lie. But whatever. I handed Battery her phone and had my cocoon envelop me completely. I created the screen that would let me see through the eyes, hear through the ears, of the blob I was turning into a face.
It took almost ten minutes. But then, it took them almost that much time to reach me. I'd managed to painstakingly assemble what was little more than lungs with a mouth. I didn't even try to make it look like a head. Or a face. There wasn't a point, and I was still forcing the plant to grow rapidly. I wasn't even giving it a real chance to grow via metabolism. It was more like having it swallow masses of material, then I would take control over every living thing and leave the dead for digestion. Subsume, not consume.
Skitter climbed down into the drain. I could tell by her dark costume and the lanky figure, moving in that awkward teenager phase way. I had to admit a bit of jealousy- that girl would have the body of a supermodel when she grew up. My power knows these kinds of things- specifically, what an incomplete system is going to look like when it is finished. She would some day be called 'statuesque'. I, if I was lucky, would be regarded as a 'cute' kind of 'mousy' for my entire life.
Others came with her, but they didn't follow her into the hole, instead opting to stay above. Three if the construct's senses were as good as I thought they were. She leaned against a wall, looking at the thing I had grown. She didn't seem surprised by it at all. Oh, right, the bugs. I hadn't wasted the time to build a sense of touch into this thing.
"Okay," my half-made avatar spoke up. "We're going to have to trust each other for this to work. Set bugs on the vines at your maximum range. Try to keep them as spread as possible, please."
"Before we do this, there's something important that you need to know." Skitter started, although her bugs were already starting to find spots to bite. She had an impressive range for a power propagated through the air like that. Several city blocks, total. I had the vine start to eat... well, subsume them, really. Tie its own primitive neurons into the insects', imitating such lifeforms as the angler fish.
It's not that I couldn't construct a new "brain" from whole cloth for her to use. But this was faster by several minutes. And even with these relays built, it would only extend her range to about a total of a square mile. And I'd need twice as many for the next series of relays. Plus I was worried about doing too much and overtaxing her.
"Our team... they weren't killed by the Nine..." she stated. "We were betrayed by the Protectorate."