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Ancient Legos [Worm/Stargate]

Reader mode
CH14 - Everybody Gets An Alexandria!
  • Threadmarks
    • Ancient Legos
    Chapter 14
    Everybody Gets An Alexandria!​

    The President pointedly did not give my joke any attention other than a single roll of her eyes. Instead she rounded her desk… The Desk, resolutely, and held out her hand to my superior. Her face was one of a woman who meant business displayed for the world to see. "Alexandria. Always a pleasure. Thank you for coming as soon as possible."

    My empathy told me it was mostly for show, for any Thinkers or Precogs that might be viewing this moment, but I wasn't really sure why. Oh well, secret President stuff, I assume.

    Alexandria accepted the handshake with a respectful nod. "Madam President, it's good to see you again as well," she agreed.

    It was the touch that did it. Proximity wasn't generally a problem with even a little variance which they no doubt had unless the universes in question were incredibly unstable, but soul infused matter interactivity wasn't reduced nearly as much.

    Undetected by anyone else, I was certain, but very obvious to my personal scanners and the much more powerful ones hovering above the building on the Hyperion was the pulse of quantum instability that echoed throughout the local fabric of time when their fingertips met.

    What the fuck.

    The spike wasn't to a level where it would start causing cascade issues, but it was definitely standing out like a road flare.

    What the fuck.

    That could only happen in two circumstances; a temporal or extrauniversal incursion, and clearly Shardlings didn't count despite several of their portals and hosts being in the building… or.

    Or.

    At that moment is when I understood.

    Damn it. I knew she looked familiar!

    "Uh, ma'am?" I spoke up, still hesitant despite everything I'd just discovered. This was the President of the United States and one of the most powerful Parahumans on Earth shaking hands, and despite my misgivings, they should have known, right? Surely they'd had spikes in the past?

    "Yes, Shipyard?" she asked, turning to me. Her friendly and approachable but strong image was still on, but the hint of worry I'd detected was getting bigger.

    Alexandria, meanwhile, was flat out panicking and not showing it. Her Thinker abilities no doubt informed her that I had something pretty damn important to bring up, something which I'd somehow discovered in the last few seconds.

    That panic continued to build… at least, until she thought about it for a few moments.

    "Oh, damn it! You can tell, can't you?" she grumbled at me knowingly.

    "Sorry? But also yes. We uh… we should talk," I managed, pointing below my feet at the place modern media had told me the White House Bunker was. "In a secure location. A very secure location."

    President Brown was taken aback at that and nervously glanced between me and Alexandria. "Shipyard, what could you need to say that can't be said here?"

    Instead of letting me answer, my superior sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "He knows, Rebecca," she deadpanned. "Him and his, if I'm guessing correctly, ludicrously overpowered alien sensors?"

    I cringed back and nodded. "Sorry again, really, I wasn't trying to but it causes a spike and it's standard procedure to watch fo-" I tried to explain, but she cut me off.

    Alexandria raised a hand to get me to stop talking and turned to her… well, counterpart, I guessed. "We were going to have to talk in a secure location about a lot anyway. This just got added to the list."

    President Brown, meanwhile, just stared at me in shock. Then she turned to Alexandria and gave her a very unimpressed look.

    "Trust me. I know. He's just like this," she declared.

    I waved at them cheekily and entirely innocently.

    "At least he's a hero."

    The President sighed. She picked up the phone on the desk and shook her head as she put it to her ear. "I'll call down to the Bunker."


    I opened the door of the bunker's internal safe room and glanced at the two Secret Service… officers? Are they officers, or just some kind of bodyguards? Either way, I talked to them.

    "Hey, just as a heads up, I'm about to completely separate this room from the normal flow of space and time. Is there some kind of special protocol that we have to do to make sure that you don't think I'm kidnapping the president or something? It wasn't in the PRT manual."

    They both took a few seconds to process that. I was impressed, because frankly I thought grasping the concept of nonlinear time was beyond humanity at the current evolutionary step.

    "Shipyard? You can't just abduct the president." The guy on my right, who was very large and very strong-looking, explained to me like I was a child.

    "Hey, I'm not abducting her! She asked! And we're going to be discussing things that are like," I paused, stuck my head back into the room, and yelled my superior's way. "Hey Alexandria, what level of top secret am I supposed to tell these guys what we're about to talk about is?"

    "Eyes Only!" she yelled back, and her… counterpart President looked at her askance.

    Yeah, super helpful, ma'am. Not.

    As the president grilled her for more details on why it was such a high classification, not that I knew how high it was, I turned back and told him. "Alexandria said this is some Eyes Only stuff," I offered.

    "We heard," the woman on my left said.

    "You still can't have the President in there without at least one member of the Secret Service present if you're about to do something that could technically take her out of the bunker," the guy deadpanned.

    "Right," I fired right back. "Any volunteers? I don't know how high that clearance is, but it sounded really high. Either of you got that?"

    "No," the gal admitted. "But the President can provide it to us."

    I shrugged and opened the door. "Nothing secret going on just yet, so… ask?"

    They did.

    The guy got stuck with a new level of security clearance that matched mine, and the gal was instructed to let absolutely nobody else into the room.

    Then I activated the high security isolation function on my armband and bent space and time over my… elbow.

    A pulse of reality distortion swept out through the room, originating from my armband, and I could sense the wheels of reality screaming slightly as the fabric of the universe was balled up, pushed away, and momentarily cut off.

    "That is very strange," Alexandria commented.

    I glanced at the swirling field of dark brown and violet energy that seemed to fade in and out of reality, isolating this pocket of spacetime from the rest of it. The white door was where it was most obvious, as that was outside the bubble, and as such the flowing patterns stood out in stark contrast. "Hmm, I guess so," I commented.

    "Okay now that we're situated," President Brown began, "I would like confirmation of exactly what you claim to have… detected?" she asked, reaching for a term.

    "Yeah, detected works," I nodded. I then held up both my hands and pointed at each of the two women across the table from me. "And I'll come right out and say-" I was going to explain, but my brain kicked in for once and recognized a potential problem. I let one of my fingers swivel to the Secret Service man ineffectually attempting to blend into the wall. "Actually hang on, is he supposed to be able to hear this?"

    "He has Eyes Only clearance now," the President deadpanned.

    I turned to look at Alexandria, raising my eyebrows.

    She shrugged. "He's not the first person who knows."

    Well, that was the permission. Time to tell it. "Okay then, the big deep dark secret I found is that you two are alternate universe versions of each other."

    The two stared at me, shocked.

    Wait.

    What?

    "You… did know that, right?" I asked hesitantly.

    "I…" Brown tried, but swallowed. "No?"

    Alexandria breathed in deep, staring me down, then let it out in a breath that was obviously intended to be soothing. It didn't really work, but she tried. "Shipyard. That isn't what we thought you'd discovered," she declared, closing her eyes.

    Brown managed to get past what was in her throat. "How sure are you?" she asked tentatively.

    "Uhm… one second," I gave instead of an answer. "Lemme double check."

    A deeper telepathic connection to the Hyperion hovering above the building later, I was basically analyzing the scan alert I'd detected on a scale humanity could barely comprehend, much less work with. The incredibly powerful crystal computers of my ship dredged all the way past the Planck just to make sure I was super extra special duper sure. This was too important to be wrong about.

    The results came back clean. The initial alert had been correct. Moreover, they were extremely close duplicates. It was honestly shocking they didn't have identical lives, that's how close they were. But I chalked that up to their presence in this timeline. One of them had been derailed.

    …I just wasn't sure which one it was. They were both so close to the resonance of this timeline, my sensors ran out of resolution and gave up.

    I opened my eyes to see the two women, and the Serviceman despite trying not to look like it, waiting on my answer.

    "You two are so close to this timeline I can't even scan the difference beyond Alexandria's obviously crystalline Endbringer body. Which is doing a great job of cheating to look like a human, by the way, compliments to your Shardling."

    They stared at me.

    The Service man stared at me.

    Some woman in a fedora, who'd just walked in through a hole in space just outside my field's silence bubble but inside the reality separation, stared at me.

    Hey wait a minute, I know her! And she probably wasn't a threat, because neither of the other women in the room had reacted to her. Granted, I'd never seen her human form before, but I would recognize my Shardling's closest crystal neighbor anywhere.

    "Oh hey! How are you doing, dog neighbor?" I greeted her with a wave.

    For some reason, I got the impression my Shardling was facepalming at me across realities.

    It was coming along so well! What a complex emotion to display!


    "Oh Becky, you get me the nicest things!" this… Contessa said once I'd let her inside at the direction of the President.

    They did, in fact, know her. And Alexandria was deeply involved with her somehow.

    As long as they both consent to it, who am I to get in between them? I hope they'll be happy together, I thought to myself, grinning at their interactions. And hey, if they need a ride to get a closer look at Contessa's Shardling body, they've just got to ask. Would take a bit to make a portal but I'm sure I can do it!

    Alexandria stared at me, even as I looked between the two of them, with the absolute most confused expression I've ever seen on her, even on TV.

    "You're welcome…" she slowly replied to her crush, eventually. "I think?"

    "Why did Shipyard call you his… dog neighbor?" President Brown asked. "As far as I know, you two have never met."

    Before the lady in the hat could answer, I filled her in. "Oh, that's because she's about five timelines to the side from my dog."

    More dead silence from the President and my leader.

    "What?" I asked.

    Contessa giggled at me. "Shipyard, they're not going to understand what you mean," she told me.

    I looked at her and tilted my head to the side in confusion. "Why? Haven't you told them about my solar system sized crystal dog?"

    "What." That was Alexandria.

    "The best part about this is that you're not even doing it on purpose," Contessa grinned, shaking her head. "Just like you didn't do on purpose what happened to me either."

    What? What did I do?! "Are you okay?" I asked immediately, standing and moving to her side. I began inspecting her head to toe and casting my mind across her extended crystal body in her timeline too. "Did my dog do something to you? I told it to behave!"

    Contessa giggled again, then lightly pushed me away from her and patted my head. "No, no, I'm fine. You actually helped me, though I still don't know how." She giggled yet again and bopped my nose. "And hey! Pull your brain back, that tickles!"

    Oh shit. "Sorry!" I instantly did as she asked, yanking my mind fully back into my own head. "I didn't know crystals were ticklish. My bad. Glad I helped you somehow though!"

    I held my hand out, in a shake.

    She closed my fist, brought it up, smiled at me, and gave me a fist bump.

    We finally remembered we weren't alone, and I looked at my superior and the President with a happy smile.

    Alexandria turned to her alternate version and asked for something I knew wasn't a good idea. "Please hit me, because I think this is a drug induced fever dream."

    President Brown immediately cradled her hand and leaned away from her. "Absolutely not! I value my fingers, thanks!"


    Alexandria did not wind up getting her requested hit. Not even from me, though I offered.

    At least, not physically.

    "I'm sorry," the President stated flatly, "but I could've sworn I did not hear you correctly. How many nuclear capable vessels did you say you have?"

    "I already said they're not nuclear," I grumbled, crossing my arms.

    "Can they cause equivalent destruction to a conventional nuclear weapon?" she shot back.

    "Except for the fallout… probably?" I hedged a bet. There were many mitigating factors on the actual damage a Drone could do, but I got the feeling Brown just wanted the theoretical maximum answer.

    "Alright, then I repeat my question. How many." This time it was not in the form of a question.

    "Ships? Something like 41 at the moment. As for the projectiles, my drones? Around ten thousand, give or take, depending on how full the bays for them are and how many I've assembled recently.

    Alexandria winced. "Fuck," she tried to mutter, but I still heard it.

    Yeah… it didn't sound that good to me either, to be honest. And given how much I'd been slipping into Alteran thought patterns since my evolution, the fact that it didn't said a lot.

    President Brown stared at me for a long, long time after that.

    She turned to Contessa, who had a smug grin on her face which rivaled Lisa.

    Then she signed and spoke again. "Alexandria, get Costa Brown here. We have treaties to sign."

    I blinked, surprised. "Wait, treaties?"

    "Yes, treaties," the President deadpanned. "You're a nuclear, or nuclear equivalent, armed power that also happens to be a United States citizen while outgunning the entire world's current nuclear arsenal several dozen times over. You, and I, have treaties to sign, along with Alexandria and your superior inside the PRT, if we want to avoid mass panic in every other government on the planet."

    I had only one thing I could say to that. "...Oh."


    Learning Alexandria, Contessa, and thus the President and the leader of the PRT had access to some kind of orange portal door system made a lot of things I'd been wondering about start to make sense.

    Seeing Rebecca Costa-Brown walk through one and interact with Alexandria and President Brown was even more enlightening.

    "Shipyard," she greeted me. "I see you've met the President." She took a seat next to said woman, forming another wing to Brown' opposite side from Alexandria. "I do believe I also heard the word treaties?"

    I held up a hand to stop her, then said my piece before anyone could get offended. "Please tell me all three of you know your relation to each other and I'm not popping a bubble here," I pleaded.

    Costa-Brown nodded her head. "I am a clone of Alexandria, yes, we know."

    Huh? "Wait, what?" I asked, taken aback. That wasn't remotely correct!

    The President noticed my furrowing eyebrows and raised hers. "Is something the matter, Shipyard?"

    Alexandria groaned and slumped in her seat. "Okay, out with it, what's the discovery?"

    "Didn't even need you two to touch for this one," I deadpanned. I looked between her and Costa-Brown. "Also alternates. Not a clone."

    The leader of the PRR froze. "W-what?" she asked, and her mind was alight as she faced new doubt on her existence.

    Contessa snorted and shook her head. "Of course Compile would do it like that," she grumbled. "What a hack."

    I had no idea what she was talking about but soldiered on regardless. "Miss Costa-Brown, you, Alexandria, and President Brown are all alternate timeline versions of each other so close my sensors can't tell which one of you comes from this one," I explained, laying my hands on the table. "I'm sorry for apparently bringing up trauma, but take heart. You're not a copy. And, frankly, even though I haven't been in the Wards very long? You're doing a good job."

    Yet another face of Alexandria played out, but this time on Costa-Brown. As President Brown turned to look at her with wide eyes and Alexandria brought her hand to her face, the newcomer looked like she was a deer staring into oncoming headlights.

    "Oh," she squeaked.

    Contessa laughed and got up, walking off to the edge of my field. "I'll get the treaty materials while they reboot," she told me, and sure enough two orange doors opened on both sides of the reality divide as she strolled right on through.

    Well that was frustrating. I already had an eye on the Shardling responsible for the incredible effect able to slice through some of the most powerful Alteran technology I had access to, and if mental presences could eyeball things that annoyed them, I was certainly doing so.

    "That's a huge breach of security, you know!" I called out after her.

    "I know!~" she singsonged, twirling on her heel. "But someone's got to keep you on your toes!"

    "I'll find a way to block it!"

    "I know that too!" she repeated herself. "Good luck~"

    Alexandria started banging her head on the table as the orange doors snapped shut.

    "Stupid cheating Shardling," I grumbled.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • CH15 - Aftermath
  • Threadmarks
    • Ancient Legos
    Chapter 15
    Aftermath​

    Captain's Log, Earth Date: February 9th, 2011

    The chime for the end of class sounded. I stood up, yawned, and began to pack up my stuff.

    Dennis coughed on his way by my desk, gesturing down at my papers. He ignored the odd look I gave him and then went over to Chris to do the same. Including ignoring a look that was probably very similar.

    I blinked. Wait, are those designs on Chris' test? I thought. Tinker designs?! And… hold on, why is he designing technological Legos with some pretty important pieces flat out missing? I mean, circuits just don't connect like that!

    Dennis reached him and patted him on the shoulder. The Tinker looked up at him with a slightly vacant expression, but all Dennis did was gesture down at the test and glare pointedly.

    Chris looked back down, realized what he had done, and his eyes widened.

    Regardless of Chris' broken tech, I found myself mirroring him when I stopped paying attention to them and looked down at my own desk.

    While I hadn't written anything except what belonged on my test… on my test, my personal design notebook next to it wasn't so lucky.

    "How the hell…?" I muttered. After a moment's thinking brought up nothing to explain the phenomenon, I merely shrugged at the fact my decidedly non Tinker notebook (well, beyond the moderate psychic field necessary to keep it effectively invisible from the teacher's attention) now had some very detailed doodles of the inside of a fusion reactor and packed it up too.

    Given what I'd written in it, I'd very likely have to start hiding it from everyone else as well.

    I did send a query to my little Shardling, but it replied with a vague feeling of shrugging. It wasn't responsible but it had some ideas. When I asked it to elaborate, it communicated something about bright white lights and broken chains. Whatever that meant. Even with the helpful visuals and sensor logs it provided me, I couldn't make heads or tails of whatever the hell it was trying to tell me.

    I'd look into it later. It couldn't be that important.

    Dennis looked back my way and noticed me putting my book away. He grinned, tossing me a thumbs up, which I returned.

    And then the three of us walked out of math class to the Arcadia cafeteria.

    Yep. Yesterday I made a battleship, defeated an Endbringer, met the President with Alexandria by my side, met the director of the PRT, learned they were all alternate universe versions of each other which I was definitely not allowed to mention to anybody, met my biocrystal dog's neighbor who was apparently some super spy, met someone from NASA who thankfully was not yet another Costa Brown (the more important one to me) and even got invited to spend some time with the Triumvirate too. At the end of that jam packed day even my Alteran biology was flagging and I just wanted to crawl into my comfy Captain's cabin to take a long nap, but no, I had to go receive what was far too many medals for my lax, exhausted, and nearly asleep shoulder muscles.

    Oh yeah, and I was also genetically transformed into a completely different species with so many abilities I might as well add Trump to my power classifications, but frankly that was a footnote in a day like that.

    Then there was the Coil problem.

    That one was an issue for Later Weldon to solve.

    Even with all of the insanity that yesterday had been? Today I was back in school like nothing ever happened.

    Well, almost nothing.

    When I landed at the school, the sheer volume of my peers' thoughts nearly decked me.

    It was bad in DC, but at least pretty much everyone near me had their thoughts in some sort of order and were focused, not broadcasting them with wanton abandon across the latent telepathic potential of the human brain. Even the reporters and politicians were measured in their heads despite what quite a few of them displayed outwardly.

    My school was filled with teenagers.

    It was like standing outside six hundred metal concerts at once, with backup vocals in every other music genre. Only the music was an endless tide of thought.

    I was almost an hour late to classes because of the time needed to restrain my gift as far as I could, enough to hear my own thoughts louder than the rest. My brain should've been unable to process the information… but it was yet another reminder that I wasn't exactly human any longer.

    Walking in that late into the middle of a test wasn't really that bad given it was one of the very, very few times I had an issue like that. Miss Matthews didn't care much, she just handed me my test and told me to sit down.

    I'd always completed tests faster than my classmates. I was used to it.

    What I wasn't used to and indeed even had an ethical crisis over was the fact that as I looked at the test, I realized I knew all the answers verbatim because I was reading them from my teacher's mind. Along with one of the reasons she hadn't given me any grief about being late; she knew I was a Ward, had been told by the principal in fact!

    Those were just the two most notable things I picked up. It seemed that by tuning down and focusing my new telepathy, I'd accidentally set it up so I was funneling all of my frankly excessive power into whoever I was focusing on.

    And I couldn't turn it off either! The best answer I managed to come up with was, well, I also figured out the answers in about a second flat due to my new mind and… ancient memories, so I wasn't cheating.

    Totally.

    Getting the supercharged telepathic focus to at least have a volume control took the rest of the test.

    Anyways, almost immediately upon entering the cafeteria, I heard my new hero name.

    "Shipyard!"

    I barely kept myself from startling. Dennis and Chris noticed this, snickering and then flat out chuckling when I sent them a glare.

    One of the usual gaggle of girls that hung around Vicky, or as was more important to me now than it ever was before, Glory Girl, was the cause of my momentary panic.

    "-Oh my God he's so awwwesome~!"

    "Ya think he's single?" another one asked, interrupting her.

    My face blushed of its own accord and I facepalmed with both hands.

    I could hear Dennis' mocking grin. "Hey, she's cute, you should ask her out," he teased.

    My mortification only increased, a muffled groan of pain escaping my mouth.

    "It happened to us too, you'll get used to it," Chris offered, trying to be helpful.

    I lowered my hands and sent them both another glare. They held no sympathies for me in their eyes.

    I rolled my own and sighed. Guess this was my life now. Gods, it was gonna be hard enough to ignore being talked about out loud, much less what I saw in their heads due to my not exactly well controlled and actively burgeoning telepathy. It was good the entire night, but when I woke up… with the massive power and range boost that it apparently had undergone while I was asleep, it was nearly impossible to shut everything out. Then the parking lot, and the test…

    I was in high school. With girls.

    That made the entire mess even more conflicting.

    Hey, I was a teenage guy. The fact that a not insignificant number of girls were having daydreams about me was music to my… I'd say ears, but telepathy, so brain instead? I also got the distinct impression that part of myself, my Alteran memories, was laughing at the rest of me. Just great.

    What wasn't great was how they were imagining me in those daydreams. I didn't have eight (or more for a couple of them) abs, I wasn't strong enough to carry them in one hand, and most importantly, the lewds were too damn high!

    I shook my head to clear my thoughts, trying extra hard to tone down my telepathy. It sort of worked, but it took a lot of my attention, and the thoughts only shifted to the back of my mind versus disappearing. This was at least an upgrade from this morning where I'd had to put nearly all my focus into stopping myself from outright thinking I was every single person whose thoughts I experienced, and an even larger upgrade from yesterday even though I wasn't remotely as powerful then.

    Yep, the disparity made no sense. Tell it to Alteran physiology.

    I felt the urge to slam my head into a wall.

    And Glory Girl? Despite being a victim of one of my creations… and her own recklessness, well, that didn't seem to deter her at all.

    Nor did Dean's status as her boyfriend.

    Sitting right next to her.

    Her brain was automatically assuming we'd both join in and be totally happy with it, if she offered.

    From what I could tell of Dean's disposition, she was very wrong. Very very wrong. I was a little split on the topic due to my Alteran memories, monogamy wasn't mainstream to us… them, and even less so in the arena of having fun or destressing with your friends with benefits, but Dean definitely didn't share any of those ideas at all.

    ...Wait.

    "Glory Girl," I breathed, just now remembering.

    "Huh?" Chris asked, snapping out of another of his little doodling sessions.

    "I second the walking lack of secret identity here," Dennis mirrored, unable to resist putting a slight tease into his words. "What about Vicky?"

    "Is she okay?" I worriedly asked, turning to stare at her.

    I mean, she looked okay. And she did have Amy Dallon, Panacea, to heal her…

    But I remembered the heat her sister had tossed my way on PHO while the stuff with the Hyperion went down. Color me a bleeding heart, I was concerned.

    "Oh, you mean the shield thing?" Dennis asked.

    I nodded, not trusting my own speech.

    Dennis grimaced, but sighed. "She's okay," he assured me.

    The tension visibly and physically left me.

    "I wouldn't recommend apologizing to Amy right now, though," Chris chimed in, answering another of my concerns. This, entirely coincidentally, made my tension come roaring back. He pointed out a robed figure sitting with their hood down next to Vicky using his pencil eraser. "She doesn't look very happy."

    I glanced Amy's way and found that Chris was right.

    Amy wasn't just upset. Her face was an almost literal storm. And so was her mind. The traumas, the concerns, the doubt and the whirlwind of negativity in her head...

    I couldn't help myself. "Oof," I lamented. "Yeah, I'm gonna take a rain check on talking to her."

    That didn't keep me from making a note via Hyperion's mental link to have a very important talk with Amy Dallon.

    The attraction to her sister was understandable, Vicky was ridiculously hot and my brain totally didn't immediately leap to the concept of indulging Victoria's fantasies only with the biokinetic that was Amy as second fiddle, but the rest of her battered soul needed deeper hugs and therapy than anyone but I could provide which put paid to that.

    Well, anyone but me unless there was a telepath somewhere else more powerful than me who wasn't the Endbringer I'd defeated… unlikely to say the least. The PRT Manual did mention they had world class therapists effectively on call, and I was sure I could get one for Amy just by asking with how willing Director Piggott was to bend over backwards for me after I'd saved her, but none of those were telepaths so they couldn't dig into Amy's head like she'd no doubt require, given how stubborn her thoughts were just on a light glance through them.

    More than the therapy and the hugs, though, she needed someone who wouldn't judge her.

    Judging, not usually my thing. Passing judgements and labelling, yes, heatedly and cruelly judging, not a chance in hell. Well, unless you were the kind of person who deserved all that, and more… but there weren't very many of those in the world.

    Amy was messed up. She could be an asshole if she was stressed, the way she'd fired shots at me on PHO prior to my fight with Ziz proved that if nothing else, but she was also not a bad person.

    Just… a lonely girl with the hots for her adoptive sister and a Shardling derived power that would've been terrifying in its scope and power to the old me.

    New, fully Alteran me? I could build something that did what she did, only better, in a day or so with nothing but mundane science, two microwaves, a toaster, five flashlights, a few double A batteries and a banana, to say nothing of if I leveraged the matter printing abilities of my Shardling. I wasn't that impressed.

    "Good call," Dennis approved, knocking me out of my contemplation.

    Welp, not dealing with it today. On to tastier, less complicated things! "So!" I announced, changing the subject. My finger found its way unerringly to the buffet line that Arcadia had in lieu of what other schools would call a food line/torture squad. "Lunch?"

    Chris nodded eagerly. "Duh, Tinkering always makes me hungry."

    "Seriously, how are you still masked?" Dennis asked.

    I rolled my eyes and grinned to myself. Chris really wasn't masked. We cape geeks just thrilled in the hunt, not the capture.

    Plus, you know, all that nasty stuff the PRT would do to you if you unmasked a Ward. That helped deter us too.

    And that's just what they released publicly. The Ward manual got into much, much more in depth explanations and descriptions, so much so that it justified my groups' decisions to not spill the beans quite well.

    Too bad I couldn't tell them. I was finally on the inside… and now there would forever be a divide between my group and I.

    I shook my head again and headed to the buffet line. Less thinking, more eating, and hold the depresso!


    After we all finished fishing what we wanted out of the buffet, I began heading to my normal table.

    Well, I say we. It was mostly me stacking up food on two trays due to my new body's significantly increased energy demands while Dennis watched, slack jawed, and Chris tried to build a cannon out of pizza slices.

    "Why are you going over there?" Dennis asked. "That's the Cape nerd table."

    I stopped on a dime and turned all the way around, staring at him like he was an idiot. After I noticed that yes, he was serious and, upon checking with my telepathy, no, he wasn't currently being a dumbass, I decided to mess with him.

    "Dennis," I pleasantly answered, "I know you didn't recognize me when I joined our little group, but you must have seen me around our school. Now, just where have you seen me? Think hard for a couple of seconds, I'm sure it'll come to you."

    Dennis narrowed his eyes and dropped his eyebrows, displaying his clear lack of amusement. "Ha ha," he deadpanned.

    I merely raised an eyebrow and motioned for him to get on with it, ensuring my food trays didn't get unbalanced. This was important given that it was holding two versus the normal one, piled with food. If I cheated a tiny bit with my telekinesis, nobody needed to know that.

    A scowl joined the unamused expression on my new roommate's face. "Fine. Uhm… Back when we weren't friends, didn't you hang out at the-" he began.

    Then his eyes widened, and he dropped his jaw. "Oh."

    I smirked. "Right. At the cape geeks table. I'm one of them, Dennis," I informed him.

    He groaned, wiping his face with a hand. "How the hell are you gonna hide your thing?" Dennis hissed, composing himself. "You guys almost got me!"

    I grimaced and crossed my free arm over my food trays. "I know, and there's no 'almost'. To give you an idea of the reality of the situation, right before I joined our after school club, we had it narrowed down to you, Carlos, Dean, or Chris here," I stated, pointing my thumb at the once more doodling Tinker. "Funny how that worked out, isn't it?"

    Dennis' eyes widened. "So, wait, when you didn't seem fazed when we revealed our faces-"

    I nodded sagely and closed my eyes. "The wisdoms of the ages had already divined your identities."

    My clock themed, irreverent teammate snorted. "Do you really call yourselves that?"

    "Nope, that's PHO's nickname for us. Blame them."

    "Ah yes, blaming PHO. The good old standby," he chuckled. Then he crossed his arms and frowned, taking this a bit more seriously again. "Are we all really that bad?" he asked.

    "Remind me again what Chris was drawing in Math?" I asked rhetorically. "And also, now?"

    Dennis looked to the once more doodling Tinker and sighed. "Right... but you were doing it too," he reasoned.

    "Yeah, now how the hell do you think I'm gonna be able to keep it from them?" I nodded my head over to the table on the other side of the cafeteria at which my fellow cape geeks were once more debating. Probably my own identity, this time. "I'm not a good actor!"

    Dennis looked at me like I was crazy. "You were on TV!" he pointed out, lowering his voice. "With the President!"

    I lowered my own voice to answer him. "In a uniform, with an obfuscation field over my face and a gun on my hip." I raised my voice back to normal. "That's nothing like this! Not only are they really good friends who know me very well, we're cape geeks!"

    Dennis sighed, closing his eyes.

    "I give it five seconds. Tops."

    My teammate who ritually shied away from procedure groaned. "I'll call in about some NDAs," he agreed, folding like a house of cards. "Probably should've done that a while ago anyways."

    "You really should have," I agreed. "And thanks, Dennis."

    The only response I got was grumbling about having to be responsible as he pulled out his PRT phone.


    I was wrong.

    It was three seconds.

    "So how's it fly?" Jane asked out of the blue.

    Or it would have been out of the blue if their heads weren't basically screaming their intentions at me, much less the badly hidden fidgeting they were all doing.

    I groaned and pitched my head forward into my hands. "I told you, Dennis!"

    Said Ward teammate of mine looked at all the grinning, knowing faces at the table, then to Chris who had zoned out and was doodling again, and finally back to the rapid nodding he got when he raised an eyebrow questioningly.

    "Don't worry, we're ready to sign those NDAs," Chuck informed him. He planted a meaty hand on my shoulder and lightly swayed me side to side. "One of us is one of you now, and that makes you, our friend."

    Zelte agreed with her fanciful, overdramatic nod of affirmation. Namely, she bobbed her head faster than a rock concert's mosh pit. "Friends don't betray friends." To illustrate this, she held up her hand… and ignited a small fire right above it. A… green flame which sorta also looked like some kind of water?

    The rest of the table crowded in to block off sight from everyone else almost automatically. I found myself doing the same before my brain registered what I was seeing.

    Wait, what?

    "Hold on, since when can you do that?" I asked, shocked.

    Dennis seemed even more amazed, and he was alternating between shooting accusing glares at me and wondered ones at Zelte.

    "Since the fire across the sky thing," Zelte giggled. With a flurry of her hand, the 'flame' flickered out. "Don't blame him, Dennis, he didn't know."

    Dennis looked at her with clear incredulity, then at me when I shrugged.

    "Even if I did know, you heard our motto," I lamented.

    "Friends don't betray friends," we all repeated, in mostly joined unison.

    The smirks on our faces didn't really help Dennis, but he just sighed. "Weldon, I don't know where you found these guys-"

    "The Web," I interrupted him, bumping fists with Mack.

    Dennis looked mildly annoyed at the interruption. It was entirely fake annoyance, if my telepathy was trustworthy. Which, you know, it seemed to be; not even Alexandria had been able to keep me out. "Right, I don't care," he sighed. "You're good people and I wish there were more of you." He finally sat down fully, closing into the circle, and plopped his tray in a hastily evacuated space. "Give me the lowdown on what you all know. And Weldon, do your… surveillance stopping thing."

    I nodded, focusing on the area around us, as Dennis became enraptured by the Brockton Cape Geek Alliance. Or, at least the Arcadia part.

    I only remembered to reach up and yank Chris down into the impromptu huddle circle after I was done weaving what was effectively an illusion around the table.

    In that meeting, Dennis and Chris had their eyes opened… and promises for NDAs were extracted from all.

    Even Evangeline. Though she was rather… touchy about the subject.

    Lewis got the best reaction. He told Dennis he wanted to bring up several loopholes with the PRT… but only after he was done exploiting them as an example.

    If Carlos, Dean, or Missy had been at that table, they would've probably been able to talk him down, and then overcome the complaints of the rest of us when we called them party poopers.

    Carlos, Dean, and Missy were not at that table.

    Carlos was somewhere, Dean was with Vicky at the Cheer Table, and Missy didn't even attend our school.

    No, to stop the onslaught of what in retrospect were bad, but incredibly fun ideas, we had Dennis, Chris, and I.

    Chris folded when Dennis and I teamed up.

    Dennis wasn't slowing this down for anything; if he had any part in it, which he totally did, it was to speed the train up by strapping rocket boosters to it and shovelling his own ideas for how to mess with the PRT into the train as a form of jet fuel.

    Also, I learned that it was my fault that Zelte triggered. Turns out she had a fear of fire I didn't know about. After her run for her local Shelter had been abruptly interrupted by me and Ziz setting the sky on fire, she had the worst day of her life.

    I apologized endlessly, was forgiven, and then mercilessly teased for my role in blowing my own secret to my group and giving one of them superpowers indirectly anyways. Somewhere in the middle every single one of them thanked me for getting rid of the winged Endbringer, too, but then it was right back to messing with me.

    My friends in a nutshell.

    Also, I had my Shardling tell Zelte's to behave itself and gained another biocrystalline puppy in my own little but still growing network instead, which was honestly becoming distressingly familiar at that point.


    History, my second to last class of the day. Ironically it was this class that got barely any benefit from my new genetic disposition, Alteran memories, or my powers. Not like Science, my next class, in which I was probably going to totally and utterly destroy the concepts of difficulty.

    Too bad I couldn't show my classmates how the universe really worked. I was sure Zelte would love to get her hands on some naquadah.

    But noooooo, Armsy had to give me a responsibility lecture. No overhauling the scientific fields Weldon, no rewriting the history books Weldon, don't use your telekinesis to write anything on the whiteboard, Weldon.

    I sighed and shook my head. The guy was thorough.

    As much as I complained in my head, though, I knew he had a point. I might've had no chance of a secret identity with the group in the school who were my best friends and also had an obsession with figuring things like that out... but that didn't mean I needed to announce my identity to everyone else.

    After all, as funny as it would be to see the look on my teacher's face when I filled in about fifty million years of Ancient history, my secret identity would be blown so hard it'd make what I did to Ziz look like a stroll in the park. Also, this was recent history class, so I wouldn't even get any credit.

    I still felt guilty about that, by the way. The Ziz thing. A feeling which was only compounded by the fact that between the snafu at the PRT with Dragon and Alexandria, my healing of Director Piggot, meeting the President, the massive clusterfuck that was the reality of who Alexandria and the President were, signing treaties as a sovereign nuclear armed power (for bonus 'it wasn't us!' points for the US), then the press conference, and finally NASA's turn to go nearly catatonic at the mentions of what my tech could do…

    Well, I'd left her core on the Hyperion. All night. And then I had to come to school, which meant I couldn't even check up on her.

    Even Hyperion's beam system wouldn't help me there, as while it could transport me out of school and back, I didn't yet want the PRT to know about Ziz surviving. Not until I got a look at her.

    The problem was, I'd had two tails/bodyguards all day.

    And as much as Dennis and Chris were good friends and my teammates, I had no doubts they'd call Piggot on my ass so fast it'd look like they achieved personal FTL.

    Even Dennis.

    "Class, I'd like to introduce you to someone," our teacher announced.

    I sat up. Finally something interesting, something that wasn't just memorization. History is easy if you have eidetic memory, and I had that before my powers. Before my genes got rewritten.

    Needless to say, I barely paid attention anymore. It was all I needed. The teachers had tried tripping me up all day today, but I guess after I repeated Mr. Edinborough's entire lecture on English folk literature back to him, word spread through the teacher's lounge.

    The door opened, and in walked a girl. Nice figure, blonde hair, white skin. She seemed to be fond of white, given how much of it she was wearing, and when she arrived at the front of the class and waved, I found that her irises were also a pearly kind of white.

    She had a theme figured out and stuck to it, I guessed.

    ...Wait. Something about those features was kinda familiar.

    "This is Sam. She's a new transfer from Immaculata and will be joining this class rotation beginning with the entire day tomorrow," our teacher introduced her. He glared at Dennis, who was about to open his big mouth. "Play nice."

    Dennis closed his mouth and held his hands up, the very picture of innocence.

    Sam then spoke up. "Thanks for not flipping out," she thanked us, for some reason. "My eyes tend to freak people out." Oh.

    Another of my classmates in the class shrugged. "Hey, we go to school with Glory Girl and Panacea," she reasoned. "After Vicky, you'd have to be pretty strange, or a cape, to faze us."

    Several 'Hear Hear!'s rang out from the class. I would've joined them, but I was busy trying to figure out what was bugging me about… Sam.

    She smirked, locking her eyes directly onto mine. "Oh, I dunno," she sweetly replied, her voice sounding just a little more musical. "I might just surprise you."

    For some reason I got the feeling that she was talking to me.

    I raised an eyebrow in her direction. She just grinned, so I allowed my rein on my new senses out a little.

    My senses examined her body head to toe… Oye, no, not that way! I found out that she was very much not human. Maybe a Case 53? Her eyes were weird, but still… I mean, it was almost like her body was made up of trillions of tiny little crystal machines, with a much denser core-

    And then I got it.

    I couldn't help myself, gulping hard. Those eyes, her love for white… feather white. And her smirk.

    I'd seen them before.

    Yesterday.

    Fifty miles above Brockton Bay.

    "I can't wait to be your friend," she said, once more speaking directly to me.

    Oh, shit.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • HAH ZIZ THE TROLL. This is great, and well worth the wait. Looking forwards to whats happening next, cant even hypothosize anything because i havent gotten past episode 1 of SG1 yet. The whole random garbage bit was a lovely callback tho!
     
    Rebecca's body double being her from another reality that never got cancer is not one I've ever seen before, and yet it also makes more sense than anything else. Though President Brown… yeah, Director Costa Brown and President Brown have to be seen together, and the President being in the know of Cauldron doesn't make people somehow not noticing they are perfect twins make sense.
     
    Cheetored20 said:
    HAH ZIZ THE TROLL. This is great, and well worth the wait. Looking forwards to whats happening next, cant even hypothosize anything because i havent gotten past episode 1 of SG1 yet. The whole random garbage bit was a lovely callback tho!
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    I wish you godspeed and good fun on your adventure into Stargate! Might I recommend starting with season 4 episode 6 if season 1 is dragging on a little bit? It's one of the best episodes.

    And yes, Alterans really can do some bullshit with random garbage.


    Starfox5 said:
    And that was whe Greg realised he fucked up. Wonder what Lisa is thinking about that.
    Click to expand...
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    Where's Greg?

    kingtaso01 said:
    I have not laughed so much with Alexandria in any other Worm fic. The amount of curve balls he's sending them is literally making me lol so hard people are worried for me.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Glad to hear I've successfully destroyed your sides! Victory is mine!



    Xero Key said:
    Rebecca's body double being her from another reality that never got cancer is not one I've ever seen before, and yet it also makes more sense than anything else. Though President Brown… yeah, Director Costa Brown and President Brown have to be seen together, and the President being in the know of Cauldron doesn't make people somehow not noticing they are perfect twins make sense.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    President Brown and Alexandria are not perfect twins. But yeah, I hadn't seen it before either so I thought it would be a fun avenue to explore. They have access to other timelines. Why wouldn't everyone get an Alexandria?
     
    Last edited:
    I love Stargate, and Worm crossovers, though "this is crack" doesn't tell me much.
    I used to hate crack like from steretypical AO3 fiction. It's only relatively recently I've learned there is good crack.
    A comedy with moderation and plot, that isn't 100% crack non stop, without cringe OOC who act like they're 12 year olds shit posting online.
    SI eating popcorn while PRT is trying to bother them, great. Batdad? NOPE. Serious characters should stay serious, so the MC and comic relief characters have something to bounce the humour off.
    I do like when a powerful or knowledgable MC is above the petty/minor(to them) problems of the locals, and trolls them while giving them a hand.
     
    TCGM said:
    I wish you godspeed and good fun on your adventure into Stargate! Might I recommend starting with season 4 episode 6 if season 1 is dragging on a little bit? It's one of the best episodes.

    And yes, Alterans really can do some bullshit with random garbage.




    Where's Greg?



    Glad to hear I've successfully destroyed your sides! Victory is mine!





    President Brown and Alexandria are not perfect twins. But yeah, I hadn't seen it before either so I thought it would be a fun avenue to explore. They have access to other timelines. Why wouldn't everyone get an Alexandria?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Its more that episode 1 is too long and is hitting my anxiety trigger. Otherwise i probably would have watched the whole thing by now.
     
    Xero Key said:
    Have you watched the film that spawned it? Also long and obviously things changed when it became a show, but a lot of the first part of SG1 is basically catch up of on the film.
    Click to expand...
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    Yah, i watched that first. Was pretty good. I still go back and watch the first dialing scene regularly.
     
    He left the Simurgh's core alone, on his Ancient spaceship, while he was distracted for an extended period. The Simurgh has now shown up with a new body. The question I have is... what else did she do on/with the ship? The Simurgh has done some neat things with tinkertech during previous attacks, after all...

    Also my mental image of her new body is Louisa Ferre from Strange Journey, which doesn't help matters
     
    CTrees said:
    He left the Simurgh's core alone, on his Ancient spaceship, while he was distracted for an extended period. The Simurgh has now shown up with a new body. The question I have is... what else did she do on/with the ship? The Simurgh has done some neat things with tinkertech during previous attacks, after all...

    Also my mental image of her new body is Louisa Ferre from Strange Journey, which doesn't help matters
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Even at her processing speeds, she probably couldn't do much more than convince the ship to maybe make her a new body via Replicators. Maybe. Ancient Tech is pretty off the walls crazy with how it's genome locked and the various other stuff Entities don't have a defense for.
     
    YAY!!

    My All-Time-Favorite Worm fic is still alive and kicking :)
     
    CH16 Prescience
  • Threadmarks
    • Ancient Legos
    Chapter 16
    Prescience​

    'Sam' finished introducing herself, then headed down the rows of seats to sit down.

    Right. Next. To me.

    I narrowed my eyes at her. It was either that or have an accident due to pants-shitting levels of terror, so I chose the less embarrassing path. That said, every single turret on the Hyperion was near immediately pointed right at my position… just in case.

    I was pretty sure of the little theory I had, especially given what was currently happening, but I'd be damned if I made a mistake on this and doomed the world.

    She sat down, entirely uncaring of my glare, and pulled a copy of the history book we'd been using out of… somewhere. Great, so she was blatantly and obviously showing me, and most importantly only me, that she had powers. She'd timed it just right so that I was the only one looking at her arms at that moment. Given what she no doubt was, that precision didn't exactly surprise me, but it did completely destroy one of my possible explanation pathways for why all of us at Arcadia weren't totally dead and/or mastered.

    Only once she had flipped to the right page, and the teacher had once more continued on in his lecturing, did she look back at me.

    "Hi, I'm Sam," she introduced herself again, holding out her hand. There was a genuine smile on her face.

    I hesitantly took her hand, shaking it up and down, then pulled my hand back as fast as possible without also tipping off Dennis and Chris, situated on the other side of me, as to my intention.

    "Hello," I managed.

    She huffed and rolled her eyes. "You don't need to be scared, you know," she nonchalantly stated. "If one of us is scared, it's me."

    I raised my eyebrows, surprised. I leaned slightly closer and lowered my voice. "You?" I disbelievingly hissed. "You're the one who's scared?" I locked eyes with her and adopted an unamused look. "Last time I saw you, it was on the other end of my guns! Nearly killing me!"

    She nodded, allowing a little of her apparently ironclad control to slip. The trembling of her hands on her book caught my attention. "My point exactly," she refuted. "Need we recap who lost that fight?"

    I blinked at her incredulously. "Excuse me, I'm not a hyperdense crystalline construct sitting a foot and a half away from lots of squishy humans!"

    'Sam' actually turned to me, then, and frowned. "No, but if what Hyperion showed me is true, you're probably a lot more dangerous than I was before, much less now."

    This time my blinking was in confusion. "Crazy feathery destroyer girl say what?"

    "You've got true abilities," she continued, almost reverently. "Not data and physics based, like mine were. I could crunch a ton of information to predict things, but you, you actually violate entropy. And time." Her still genuine smile morphed into a grin. "It's fascinating!"

    Instead of attempting to unpack that, I just growled. "How are you here?!" I hissed again. I looked up and down her body, pointedly glaring at her. "Like this?!"

    She leveled an incredulous gaze my way. "Weldon, you left me, the world's best Tinker, in the science lab of a starship. Overnight. And all day," she stressed.

    I stared at her for several long, heavy moments while it occurred to me just how badly I fucked up.

    "...Whoops."

    'Sam' giggled and nodded. "Yeah, whoops," she continued. "While I'm happy you didn't outright kill me, that wasn't the best move if you weren't sure of my intentions."

    I winced and nodded, her chastising of my actions perfectly reasonable. "You're right."

    She bit her lip, looking off to the side. She took a moment to assure herself, then looked back at me. "Were… you sure?" she hesitantly asked. The light of hope shone in her eyes, and that voice of reason inside me got really quiet as I was bombarded by the power of cute.

    I wouldn't lie, though, not even to those eyes. "...No, I wasn't," I answered honestly. Before her face could fall, though, I hastily added on the reassurance I could give her. "But I had my suspicions! Your actions at the end of the battle were pretty strange."

    Ziz stared at me, looking for the lie she no doubt suspected. Finding none, she let out a relaxed breath. "Well, thanks," she said, abruptly looking at me far too shyly for what she was. "For not killing me when you could have."

    What a strange week I had so far that her sentence didn't even really register on my strangedar. "You're welcome," I heartily replied. "And… sorry about leaving you up there. But, you know… school."

    "And fellow Wards monitoring you, I know," she reasoned. "Still. As your previous, if momentary rival, and now I hope... friend, I have to make sure you get this." She leaned closer to me and narrowed her eyes. "Leaving someone you weren't sure of being good in such an advantageous location wasn't smart."

    I rolled my eyes. "Please. I'm not that dumb," I defended myself. Her scoff hit me deep in my core, heart aching with a wound that couldn't possibly ever heal. "Hey, I'm not! You were limited, obviously, in what you could access. And the Hyperion had orders to dump you into the center of the galaxy if you tried anything I wouldn't allow."

    Sam's eyes widened and her eyebrows rose. "Oh," she squeaked.

    I grimaced. "Sorry. Couldn't be sure, you know?"

    She hesitantly nodded. "And… now?" she asked hopefully, fidgeting, with a bashful smile on her face.

    I sighed, leaning back in my chair. "Jury's still out. Brockton Bay isn't domed, though, and I don't hear any eldritch singing, so those are points in your favor."

    It shouldn't be legal for an Endbringer to look that hopefully, adorably pleased.

    Several seconds passed, and then it dawned on me.

    "While I know neither of us actually need to listen to this lecture, why hasn't the teacher told us to stop talking?" I asked. I also pointed my thumb at the two Wards sitting to my left. "And we've said a number of very concerning things. Why aren't Dennis and Chris flipping out? I know I didn't put up any ignorance fields..."

    Sam looked very proud of herself and squared her shoulders. I got the mental image of a fluffy owl looking pleased, she just gave off that vibe. "I'm controlling the light and air around us to show us paying attention. Every light particle and air molecule."

    That shocked me. Not even I could do that, at least not to that precision. My eyes widened and I turned to look at her, a worried expression on my face.

    "...What?"

    I gulped as I asked my question. "Just… how hard were you sandbagging in our fight?"

    Sam rolled her eyes. "In ours? Not at all. You actually made me use my full capacity. That shield of yours that blocks powers really screws with me," she answered. "I had to resort to twisting air into plasma spears to try and bring it down, which you should know is really difficult. But your real question is how much was I faking at other fights, and given what I revealed in our fight, you can probably guess the answer." She gave me a sad, knowing smile. "My brothers are the same."

    I sighed and put my head in my hands. "That's what I was afraid of," I lamented.

    I jumped as Sam put her hand on my back and gave me somber, awkward pats to try and reassure me. "There's a solution, I think, or at least I hope, but we have to be careful," she offered.

    I nodded, then something on the board caught my eye. "You know, we should probably pay at least some attention to this class," I said, trying to leave the topic due to my steadily rising headache.

    Sam patted me on the back a couple more times, then withdrew her hand. She no doubt knew I was trying to avoid talking about her brothers, but in the interest of friendship was letting the topic die. "Simulation ending in five seconds. I'll blend it into whatever you do," she announced.

    I nodded, sighed, pulled my notebook closer to my stomach, and looked at the board. "Nice to meet you, Sam. Let's be friends," I finalized.

    She beamed. "Yes, let's."

    I managed to act totally normal for the rest of the class.

    Or at least, I thought I did.


    When class was over, I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder and looked over to see an unamused Dennis staring suspiciously at Sam.

    "Weldon, no offense, but why are you so chummy with the new girl?" he asked, very seriously. That was so out of the norm for him it clued me in to the idea that he was up to something.

    "Uh… Dennis, meet Sam, she's my new friend!" I hastily replied. I smiled wide and innocently, trying to look as normal as I could.

    "I just transferred in from Immaculata and Weldon was kind enough to be my friend!" Sam added on. She was a much better actor than me. And cute, so that gave her additional normality points.

    None of it worked, though. "Talk. Now," Dennis declared, pushing me towards the door to the hallway outside our classroom. "You come too, 'Sam'."

    "Everything's fine, Dennis!" I insisted.

    "Less talk, more walk."

    I sighed and shook my head. Oh well. "Fine."

    I sensed Chris and Sam look at each other, Chris with suspicion, before they followed us.


    Dennis dragged me out of the hallway and into a restroom. Chris and Sam followed along. My time themed teammate pushed me up against the restroom wall, sending me a very pointed look.

    I got the memo. Don't move, or I'm calling M/S protocols on your ass.

    I thought it was stupid, but oh well.

    That said, I couldn't let the opportunity pass me by, not with Dennis on the other end.

    "Why Dennis!" I gasped, bringing a hand to my mouth, "I didn't know you were into ravaging people against restroom walls! If I'd known I could've changed into something more… fetching!"

    Despite his attempts at being super serious, Dennis snorted. "Any other time, Weldon, but you're on M/S watch. If this pans out as you being fine, though, I'm getting you back for that."

    My eyes widened and I gulped. "...Noted." Then I smirked at him, grinning wide. "Still worth."

    "Weldon."

    "Ugh, fine, be like that!"

    "Don't make me time lock you," Dennis menaced.

    I just rolled my eyes at him. Like he even could.

    The moment Sam entered, I was released. Dennis kept ready, though.

    "Okay, what the hell," he began. "First you show up out of nowhere, supposedly from Immaculata, then Weldon here becomes instant friends with you and tries and fails to pass it off as normal?"

    "Hey!" I protested.

    He shook his head, raising a finger as a warning to shut me up. "I reiterate, what the hell. You could not be more obvious if you tried. Who are you, and what do you want with us?"

    It seemed Sam took that as a challenge, because instead of replying, she began morphing her nanocrystalline body. Not much changed beyond her hair bleaching itself white, and several mismatched wings unfurling around her from her back, but it was enough.

    Dennis froze, his face white as a sheet. Chris wasn't much better.

    I groaned, whacking my head against the wall I was pushed up against. "How can you be you and yet be so unsubtle?!" I complained.

    Sam smiled sadly, not taking her eyes off Dennis. "It helps me distance myself from what I was," she explained. Then, something seemed to occur to her, and she sent me a disbelieving look. "Also, pot kettle much?"

    "You-!" I tried, trying to find a suitable response that wouldn't make her words any more solid. "Look, I'm an Alteran! We're common sense impaired!" Aaand fail.

    "I'm not even going to bother to reply to that, you just made my point for me."

    Dennis gulped. "What- what is this?" he stammered.

    I sighed, allowing my head to slump back against the tile of the restroom wall. "Dennis, Chris, meet… meet Ziz," I answered him, "or Sam, as she insists on now."

    Dennis turned his head back to me for the express purpose of giving me a look that told me he thought I'd lost it. "The amount of bullshit in what you just said is too damn high," he declared.

    I defiantly met his eyes, unflinching. "I'm not kidding here, Dennis." I pointed at Sam. "She's Ziz. The Simurgh."

    "I was," Sam spoke up, correcting me. She pulled in her wings, her hair coloring in again. "Now I'm just Sam."

    "The Simurgh," Dennis repeated, slowly turning back to look at her.

    "Yes," Sam patiently reaffirmed.

    "Fifteen foot tall destroyer of cities, no, countries, and fucker of minds."

    She winced, looking guilty as hell. "Y-Yes," she stammered.

    "The one my friend here killed yesterday?" Dennis finished, raising his eyebrows in challenge.

    My turn.

    "I didn't kill her, Dennis," I informed him.

    My teammate spun around again. If he kept doing that, he was going to get dizzy. "Crazy spaceship dude say what?"

    Now you know where I picked up that particular phrasing.

    "I didn't kill her, Dennis," I repeated, emphasizing the point. With another sigh, I brought my hand up to my nose to try and rub away the mild amount of stress this little Q&A session was giving me. "I couldn't. Not with my ship's weapons, even as powerful as they are. Endbringers are a bunch of hyperdense, compressed crystalline matter around a central core." I looked up and met his eyes. "I destroyed her body and damaged the core… but she survived."

    Dennis narrowed his eyes, frowning. He clearly needed to think through the implications of what I'd said.

    My other teammate had no such problem.

    "You said you killed her," Chris finally spoke up.

    Sam snorted.

    I smiled grimly. I really didn't want to point this out that soon, but I needed to. Lying to your teammates, no, your friends, is never a good idea. "No I didn't. I said I defeated her, and that the Simurgh was never coming back. Big difference. It's… look, it's not my fault if the entire world assumed, and I had her contained."

    Dennis snapped out of his thinking zone and waved a hand in Sam's direction. "This is contained?!" he sarcastically demanded.

    I raised an eyebrow and indicated the sky through the ceiling of Arcadia with a nod of my head. "Do you hear any singing? Fighting? Have any urgent need to have the city domed, maybe?"

    "That…!" Dennis began, then trailed off. He seemed to take a few moments to consider my statement. "...huh." He blinked with surprise.

    Chris glared at me. I'd won over Dennis, and thus it was up to him to make me admit it. Or, well, that's what he believed and his mind was basically yelling at me. "So you lied," he accused me, crossing his arms.

    I shook my head. "No. I didn't lie. I always, always said I defeated her. Even in answer to a direct question," I defended myself. "If any of you had listened, you'd have noticed that."

    Chris scowled. "Lying by omission is still lying."

    "But I didn't omit anything!" I reiterated. "I already told you, I didn't not answer. That would be omissive lying. I answered, every time. With the correction."

    Chris processed that, then his scowl lessened. "That still doesn't make it okay," was his half hearted, final attempt.

    I felt guilty again. This time it wasn't for almost killing Ziz, though. "Sorry," I mumbled. "But I saw something." I gestured to the silent Sam, who was observing me intently. "Sam here, when she was Ziz, accepted death from my drones. At the last second she didn't dodge. She could've." I looked Sam in the eyes, noticing a tear spill out of her calm facade. "You could've dodged."

    Another tear escaped her eyes. "I didn't want to," she lamented, sorrow falling from her tone like the tears she tried to hide.

    Dennis and Chris were shocked, taken aback, stunned, and filled with a large amount of pity. So was I, just less so on the shocked front.

    Only part of that was because Sam was a cute girl now, looking sad and crying.

    The other part… Well, I was telepathic too, and she wasn't exactly trying to hide her emotions from me in the first place.

    I mentally tossed a note to Hyperion that my telepathy was able to sense crystal people's emotions as well. Which actually made sense now that I thought about it, since I'd been able to sense Alexandria as well.

    Dennis sighed and breathed in and out, slowly, to reset himself. "Okay," he stated, "okay."

    Sam, still trying to not look too sad, focused her attention on him.

    "Okay… what?" she tentatively asked, like she didn't really want to know the answer.

    Dennis was psyching himself up for something, but I didn't know what. "Okay, we're going to do this right," he said.

    "Do what?" Sam and I both asked.

    Chris was staring at Dennis like he'd spontaneously grown another head. "Are we really doing this?" he asked, warily stealing a glance Sam's way.

    Dennis squared his shoulders. "Yeah." He turned to me and put on his best face of determination. "She's not the first villain you've got to go hero." He snickered a bit and shook his head. "She's the fifth. How the hell you keep doing this- no, you know what, nevermind, I'm done being surprised and I'm just going to roll with it."

    I raised an eyebrow curiously, uncrossing my arms. "Roll with what, exactly?" I asked. I didn't comment on my villain record, because really, what was there for me to say? It wasn't my fault I was scary.

    And if I kept telling myself that I might eventually believe it.

    A moment before Dennis replied, Sam's eyes bugged out. Clearly her telepathy, or whatever process she used to scan minds, was working for reading everyone else despite it hitting a wall with my mind.

    "You don't even know how much bullshit you are, do you?" Dennis asked, but held up a hand before I could say anything in my defense. "No, save it. You're going to need to. Because as the highest ranking Ward here, I'm deciding to roll with helping you get an Endbringer into the Wards."

    Sam went from shocked, to even more shocked… and also obviously heartwarmed, given the dopey grin on her face.

    Dennis, meanwhile, blinked several times as what he just said actually went through review, and the surreal nature of it all caught up with him. "I cannot believe I just said that," he amended.

    "... Well when you put it like that, of course it sounds insane," I grumbled, but there was no heat to my words.

    "THANK YOU!" Chris exclaimed, raising up his hands.

    Dennis looked to me with slightly narrowed, suspicious eyes.

    "...What?" I asked.

    "Just checking to see if you grow a set of tentacles or turn into a girl or anything else… weird. Because this? This entire situation sounds like something Void Cowboy made up," he explained.

    Sam came up beside him, sniffling a little and trying to wipe away her tears, just so she could pat him on the shoulder. "If it helps, he's upended my existence too," she pointed out.

    Dennis turned his head to look at her and grimaced. "Is it strange that it does actually help?" he asked, bewilderment at the world clear as day.

    Another pat and Sam sending me a teasing grin let me know what I was in for the whole time we'd be flying my shuttle to the PRT Building.

    Because of course we were going to use it. That's why I had it in the parking lot. For situations like these.

    Granted, I doubt Armsmaster mentally included 'ferrying the Endbringer you want to recruit' in his list of allowances, but if he started complaining I'd just have to toss him another piece of Alteran technology.

    Their coffee makers were amazing. Especially for making hot chocolate.

    Also, I was definitely going to get bullied by my friends and an Endbringer all the way to the PRT HQ. Yet, somehow, despite what that sentence normally would entail, the only thing damaged would be my pride.

    "Having others that can share your pain and feelings tends to help when dealing with trauma," Sam deadpanned.

    So, it had started, then.

    I did the only thing I could do.

    I stuck my tongue out at them.
     
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