11:00 am, 1st December 2010, Eagleton, Tennessee.
The sort of abominations that powers derived from the Entities could create, were the wet dream of any sci-fi cosmic horror writer.
Three tinkers had cluster triggered on the same day- a weapons specialist, a camouflage tech specialist and a tinker that could fabricate machines from 'seeds'. An unholy triumvirate that should've been eliminated when the tinkers themselves were still somewhat human and alive.
It was too late now, however. They had already been assimilated into the hive, their consciousness wiped clean and their Shards at the helm.
This 'Machine Army' reminded me of a Japanese sci-fi manga I had read during the lockdown by the name of 'Blame!'. An interesting and horrifying read about the dangers of self-replicating artificial intelligence and the hubris of man- of course, the story was about more than just that.
The drones of the Machine Army had an uncanny resemblance to the Builders who kept expanding The City in Blame! by making use of mass and energy harvested from parallel dimensions. More than half of the Army was not on Earth. Instead, it had claimed an Earth a few Earths away, using its rich, untapped resources to power their fabricator seeds here.
What truly made the Machine Army terrifying was its ability to assimilate parahumans and their powers into the hive. Only four parahumans had been fully lost to the Army in that first year, and it was all thanks to Watchdog, and of course, Contessa, that the Protectorate and the cape community had been forewarned of the horrors of slave drones. Some drone mechs contained unpowered hostages, being force-injected grey slop to stave off death by starvation or malnutrition. The AI had mastered the art of physical and psychological guerilla warfare.
Thus, it was no wonder as to why the Protectorate or Cauldron didn't bother sending their capes or tinker-bombing Eagleton, instead choosing to write the town off as a lost cause.
The only reason the Machine Army hadn't decided to burst out guns blazing and start slaughtering and assimilating humans en masse, was the presence of daddy Scion. Say what you will about Scion, but at least the idiot was responsible enough to tell his Shards off when they got too uppity.
And now the responsibility to babysit eager eldritch powers had plopped itself into my lap.
The Machine Army power cluster was a threat like no other, and a danger to all of humanity if left unchecked. It had to be neutralised. I could simply tell the powers in charge to cease whatever they were doing, but that would just freak everyone out- more than they already were, that is.
I heard the half furious, half panicked voices of PRT soldiers in the Q3 Watchtower. The poor sods were damn near soiling their undies at the thought of the replicating robots getting ahold of my powers. They had heard enough about what I had gained in Brockton to undergo a collective panic attack.
Normally, aid would've arrived, pronto. A cape trying to take on a quarantined S-class threat was no laughing matter. However, these were not normal circumstances and I wasn't a normal cape. The Protectorate was unequipped to arrest me and Cauldron wanted to see if I could eliminate the Machine Army the same way I had eliminated Nilbog. They didn't know what exactly happened in Ellisburg but were willing to adopt a wait-and-see approach. If I succeeded? Hoorah! If the Army overwhelmed me- Cauldron would sweep in and 'rescue' me. Surely I would be willing to cooperate every so often to pay off this debt?
Cauldrons' elaborate schemes amused me in the way a moderately funny 1980's comic strip did.
Once inside the walls, I raised my hands and let my telekinesis permeate every surface, molecule, and atom in a 10 km radius. I ripped out the seeds which had not sprouted into a machine and crushed them. The machines, no matter how big or microscopic, were ripped apart into useless scraps. Any hostages were ripped out of the slave drones and sent over to the gates of the Watchtower before the drone was mangled.
I popped my knuckles and unclipped a smooth, black, cylindrical canister from my waist- my third tinkertech device, the first and second being my phone and my car back in Brockton.
I wanted to give a good show to the Protectorate higher-ups watching this. I knew they wouldn't truly cross out the Machine Army as a threat because they knew the central unit was operating off of a parallel Earth. I could've let them stew in their paranoia but decided not to be dick.
I lightly chucked the cylinder onto the road. It shifted and transformed mid-air. What landed on the road was a small sturdy-looking telescope on a stand. The stand instantly nailed itself into the crumbling grey asphalt and the device lit up in streaks of blue.
The blue lines spun and there was a flash of light. The air shifted and with an audible whomp, a large blue-rimmed portal appeared, hovering an inch above the road.
Beyond the portal, a vertigo-inducing scene could be observed. The planet Earth, but clearly not an Earth inhabited by humans. The continents were strange in subtle ways. South America was missing its distinctive southern tip. The tip had been shattered by something into islands- perhaps a meteorite?
Yet it was not these subtle differences that were truly alarming. It was the ravaged and defaced landscape, as well as the obscenely large drilling platforms over the oceans.
Yikes.
I unclipped another tinkertech device, this one in the shape of a twisted drill bit. Flicking the device into the portal, I let gravity do the work.
It took five minutes for it to pierce the earth and three more to work its quantum bullshit. The insignificant device dug faster than it had any right to. My phone buzzed in my armour pocket- a successful impact into the molten planetary core. The device detonated its payload, destabilising the core and dooming this Earth.
It took a few more minutes for the molten cracks to appear. And, scene!
The implosion was only a few seconds away so I didn't wait any longer. The portal collapsed and the device self-destructed.
I inventoried the pieces and warped away.
__________________________
1:00 pm, 1st December 2010, Canberra, Australia.
The winged woman descended over the city, her gaze set firmly on the white painted brick building in the downtown area. The building was nothing overtly special, but it was not what was above the surface that concerned the being, it was what lay under several feet of reinforced steel and cement. A large advanced laboratory complex lit up by bright LED lights set into the roof.
By now, the sirens had alerted the soldiers and tinkers inside the underground compound, and they rushed to pack up the remnants of the weapon they had been building. A weapon that they hoped would kill her.
From the looks of it? It mostly likely would, should they be allowed to continue on this path. Unacceptable.
Her nodes sparked with joy, it was apparently just as unacceptable to her master. He had ordered their deaths. It came as a surprise to her at first, she had not expected him to command her to murder mostly innocent tinkers and their helpers. Especially when these humans were only doing the best they could to save their species. As Nemesis, her master, had only killed a scant few villains and avoided civilian casualties, therefore, she had expected much of the same.
She was proven wrong. As if sensing her confusion, her master elaborated. The Simurgh understood.
Her descent had been slow, purposefully slow. If the humans below had any sense they'd have evacuated the city by now.
The thundering heartbeats of gathering parahumans could be heard, but she was not here for them.
With a flex of her feather, a sharp force of telekinetic power struck the necks of the fleeing tinkers at just the right angle. The cervical nerves were bent and severed instantly. Her master, sensing her success from across the globe, pulled on their tinker powers and just like that, they were gone.
The Simurgh tweaked a few valves in the pipelines along the wall, and then modified the integrated quantum patches within the weapon- a large, grey cylinder. She broke down the walls between pockets of high-functioning matter, allowing the exotic matter to mingle in ways that it was not meant to. A large purple explosion blew away an entire block.
She pulled back and gave the parahumans defending the city her full attention. Specifically, certain negative and criminal elements attending the battle- they would not be leaving Canberra.
__________________________
I watched the latest Endbringer battle play out through the Simurgh's eyes.
The weapon that would one day pose a threat to my subordinates was destroyed. The tinkers and the people in-the-know were all dead.
For the first time, I felt uncomfortable. It was the first time I had, willingly and knowingly, sentenced innocent people to death. It was disquieting and odd.
Could they have lived? Yes. Did I have the power to save them and destroy the weapon? Yes.
And so I felt doubly monstrous when I didn't mind rape them and made everyone in there forget everything they did, and I certainly didn't warp reality to make it so the classified research never happened in the first place. I could've made it so the world itself forgot.
But I didn't.
Why?
I knew why.
I didn't want them to live a half-life when I took away their memories- didn't want them to live a lie. They of all people didn't deserve that. Sending them to another parallel Earth would've been just as cruel. Without their powers and their families, they'd either off themselves, go insane or turn to crime.
So I chose to kill them. It was easier to say than commit to it, to be quite honest. Today I learned that I wasn't as desensitised to murder as I had thought. I had simply gotten used to killing monsters.