Chapter Text
Chapter 20: Slime after slime.
* September 25, 2011 *
[Level Up!]
"Wha?" asked Danny Hebert.
[Class: Administrator. Level:3]
"Okay..." said Danny.
[Through constant practice, a skill has been created! Bureaucracy Level 1!]
"What does that even mean?" asked Danny.
[Bureaucracy - you understand forms and contracts and legal niceties, the flow of paperwork that keeps a business or organization afloat.]
[Ability to decipher Legalese and withstand the rigors of such systems - 45.1%.]
"It really should be higher than that," noted Danny Hebert. "I've been doing this for over twenty years after all."
Nothing answered him.
"Was that Queen Sage?" asked Danny.
Again there was no answer.
Danny shrugged and continued on reviewing paperwork. With everything going on, there was a LOT of paperwork needing to be done.
The phone began ringing before he could get another paragraph into the contract.
* Zephron *
"What the heck is a 'level up'?" asked Zebediah.
"You got that too?" asked Zephron, scratching his head after the voice had finished.
"What class did you get?" asked Zebediah, scratching his head.
"According to the announcement," said Zephron. "I'm a Level 3 Driver."
Zebediah nodded. "Level 3 Mechanic."
Zephron was quiet for a moment. "What do you think it means?"
"I don't think it means we're capes now, so I'm guessing it's something Bounceback did," said Zebediah.
"Sounds about right," agreed Zephron. "Driver though?"
[Driver Class - Specialist in operating ground vehicles. Driving Skill carries several sub-specialties (ie: Construction, Warehouse, Tracked Vehicles, etc.)]
"Okay, that makes a bit more sense," admitted Zephron.
"What makes sense?" asked Zebediah.
"Ask about Mechanic," suggested Zephron.
"What should I ask about 'Mechanic'? It's kind of obv... oh."
"Zebediah, Zephron?" asked Kurt as he came running up with Lacey.
"Mechanic," said Zebediah.
"Driver," said Zephron.
"Oh, you too," said Kurt. "Well, at least yours makes sense."
"Why, what did you get?" asked Zephron, figuring from Lacey's smirk this was going to be something.
* Medhall *
"You know how we were supposed to steer clear of the Docks and avoid the new cape because she could shut down our capes?" asked Krieg.
"Yes," agreed Max Anders, not costumed at all presently.
"We might have been able to stop her in the first couple of weeks," stated Krieg.
"And then we'd still have the Simurgh hitting cities," said Max Anders. "Did you see the report on the other two Endbringers?"
Krieg nodded.
"They're hiding," said Max. "Endbringers. I've attended Endbringer fights. That I might not have to in the future is both a blessing and a curse."
"Wait. How is it a curse?" asked Krieg.
"No Endbringers mean no Endbringer Truce," explained Max. "Means that when things catch up on the legal end of things, there's much less reason for less-than-lethal measures. There's-"
[Level Up!]
[Administrator Level:3]
[Bureaucracy Skill at 45.4%]
[Parahuman (Shaker) Level:3]
[Because of taking a patient and calculated approach to developments, take a stat increase of 1 to Wisdom!]
"What the hell?" asked Max Anders.
* Secret Base *
[Level Up!]
"Seriously?" asked Leet.
[Parahuman (Tinker) Level: 3]
[By dedicated studying and working with others, you have Dual Classed to Engineer!]
"There's no Gamer class?" asked Leet.
"What did you get?" asked Uber from the next room.
"Tinker Three and Engineer One," called back Leet.
"Cool. I got Thinker Two and Jack-of-All-Trades Two," called back Uber. "Jack has a great skill."
Leet got up from his massage chair and went to the next room to better communicate. "Skill?"
Uber nodded as he set a meal to warm up in the microwave. "Jack-of-All has a skill called 'Basic Everything' which gives me a low chance of figuring out how to fix or operate nearly anything I run across. Base of 20% with 5% per level. Maxes at 50%. You know what this means, of course."
"Grinding levels?" asked Leet.
"Grinding levels," confirmed Uber.
* Cauldron *
* September 30, 2011 *
"So far the effect is limited to Brockton Bay," said Doctor Mother. "Radius of forty-two miles so far with no signs of expansion."
Contessa entered the room, looking a bit more tanned and relaxed than usual.
"Do you have anything to add?" asked Doctor Mother.
"Parahuman powers will eventually be solar-system wide and the gamer-effect will be planetary," said Contessa, the ice cubes in her glass of something light green with a little umbrella clinking as she set it down. "It will take time for both though. At least a century to fully expand."
"Is that what Path to Victory tells you?" asked Doctor Mother.
"No, it's what Voice of Gaea tells me, who is behind the 'gamer-effect'," said Contessa. "Everyone affected by that can monitor the development of their various skills and gain in abilities."
"How so?" asked Eidolon, curious though also a bit put-off by this development.
"Farmers can get better at farming by practice, same with chefs and cooking, and so on," said Contessa. "Where you could look and determine that you were at 43.4% of gaining a level in Chinese Cooking for example and that you were going up by .01% every time you made something different within that specialty?"
"People would give up on seeing their totals go up very slowly," said Eidolon.
"People would be encouraged by being able to see progress," mused Doctor Mother.
"People will be people," concluded Numbers Man.
Contessa nodded. "Parahuman is a class with several subclasses. Other parts of the system will be patched or upgraded as time goes on."
"What's the purpose of all this, anyway?" asked Alexandria.
Contessa sipped her drink with evident pleasure before answering. "Human potential. Voice of Gaea has accessed the memories of the worlds that the Entities destroyed before coming here. Most of those had reached a point similar to our own where technological progress was possible but other kinds were stymied. Sheer numbers and population density end up limiting the potential of individuals. Even the hive minds reached a point where they couldn't progress. Stagnation and turning on itself even without the Entities manipulating things."
"The other-Earth colonies would seem to indicate that is less of a problem than it was," pointed out Doctor Mother.
Numbers Man spoke up. "Other countries are demanding access to the tunnel system and establishing their own colonies. Of the colonies established by the United States, El Dorado and Desolation are doing well. Creighton is having some problems with the local dinosaur population, as one would expect. Snowball isn't doing well at all, again as one would expect."
"Space colonies on our Earth have the further difficulty of parahuman abilities not extending beyond the atmosphere. The limitation currently is due to physical limitations and not restrictions applied from above. It will take several years for those to be ready, even with parts being manufactured on Earth and then skylifted." Doctor Mother tapped her tablet a few times. "Lunar base takes three days to reach with current vehicles. When that is complete we can start mining for Helium-3."
Contessa nodded. "Even when the Voice of Gaea system is complete, this Earth will be the only one where it is active so that those who don't want that intrusion in their lives can easily get away from it. All this is for the future though. Our current greatest concern is something else entirely."
"The other two Endbringers?" asked Eidolon.
"Common perception is that they are in hiding. In truth - Bounceback already hunted them down and ate them." Contessa shrugged a little, twirling her drink's little umbrella between her left thumb and forefinger. "She did it quietly because some of the reactions towards her eating the Simurgh were less relieved and more panicked."
"So... what's the problem?" asked Alexandria.
"There's the remaining members of the Fallen, other criminal organizations, Gesellschaft trying to infiltrate on Snowball," said Contessa as she counted off problems on her fingers. "Supervillain groups that are acting up due to the perception that Endbringer Truces are no longer a concern. Supervillain groups that are laying low for the moment but may step forward when they determine there is an opportunity they might exploit. Then there's this."
Contessa's tablet was pressed and one of the large screens in the conference room shifted from the usual background to something entirely different.
"An empty street with piles of clothing?" asked Eidolon, staring at the image.
"The gate facilities found these in their exploration of alternate Earths. It is currently designated Earth-32Y. Exploration team included a team of parahumans called the Fourth Street Fantastics, one of whom is a Thinker/Tinker combination called Mister Fantastic. His report was that this world was like our own until the year 1984 when every human apparently vanished overnight, leaving only their clothes. They are currently in quarantine on Earth-10Y to preclude a viral or similar problem." Contessa checked her tablet. "The problem is that if it could occur there, there is a chance it could occur here or on other colonized worlds."
"They just vanished, no other traces?" asked Doctor Mother.
"None. As soon as the team was able to recover records of the day before the event, they returned to the airlock and the base on 10Y." Contessa tapped her finger on the tablet, bringing up the images of a newspaper talking about comet-viewing parties.
"A comet?" asked Doctor Mother.
"Comparing newspapers from that world to our own of the same day, that appears to be the major difference," said Contessa. She shrugged one shoulder. "It is expected that we may run into other worlds that faced disasters like this and we need to know what other menaces to civilization may show up now that the Entities are done."
"We may still face other Entities out there as well," pointed out Doctor Mother.
"Preparations can wait," stated Contessa. "We have been working towards the end of the Entities here for decades. I suggest we all take a month off. Keep an eye out for emergencies but humans, even parahumans, can't keep going for years without needing a break. We have one and can respond nearly instantly if conditions change. Come back refreshed and ready, we are certain to have problems enough that need to be addressed."
"What of the Queen of Escalation?" asked Eidolon.
"She's rather busy at the moment," said Contessa, who then smirked.
"Why does this fill me with a feeling of foreboding?" asked Eidolon.
* Snowball Colony, Earth T-7 *
* March 3, 2012 *
She was Madison Clements, someone trying to put her past way way way behind her. Like most of the people who'd come to Snowball.
The colony of Snowball was not in Brockton Bay. The train line from Brockton Bay to Snowball actually ended up in what would be northern Virginia on Earth Bet. That was because from Snowball you could see a blue line to the North, that line being the glaciers.
They were located in a pine forest and there was tundra between them and the glaciers, but there were mammoths and other animals to hunt because this was one of the no-humans developed worlds.
The main export of this colony were furs, several plants which seemed to be different from any other Earth-variant, and studies of the North American Treecat. Which didn't exist on any other world they'd explored yet.
They didn't hunt treecats for fur, they were at least borderline sapient and might be over that line. Smart, able to use simple tools, but nobody was quite sure how smart or sapient they were yet.
Snowball was not currently self-sufficient. Life was harsh here, even with walls that had been erected to keep the Ice Age predators away from the colony itself there were the usual hardships of a pioneer village on an untamed world. Some people couldn't take the isolation or primitive conditions. Some people couldn't deal with the nearly-constant cold. Snowball was not some vacation spot that could welcome tourism.
Madison made her way to the top of the wall, nodded to Claire as she took over the surveillance post and Claire could go find a spot to warm up properly. They had to keep to shifts and relieve people on time after all.
There was a treecat nearby, they were very useful to have around after all. Dogs and treecats had superior-to-human senses and knew when something was out there that might try to get through the walls. Treecats were better in some ways because they were smart enough to know the local dangers and only alert when there was an actual threat. Those short-faced cave bears were one of the major dangers and the treecats had a special signal they'd give off for those.
It was kind of funny that she had what was basically an arbalest to use on those. You had to keep the weapons covered and oiled to avoid having ice in the gears. Long guns would be better but those were strictly controlled for when the threat was actually coming in. After all, they were still setting things up and being able to make their own ammunition from local resources was still years off.
* Earth T-5, Desolation Colony *
The thin young man got up on the stage, waiting for the inevitable hiss of steam from the locomotive to finish, and then address the crowd of new arrivals.
"Welcome to Desolation, colony of Earth Theta-Five. In case all of you ignored the fine print, we were established two months ago and the area we're in would be considered upstate New York as far as maps would consider. The reason you are not in the local Brockton Bay, is that piece of land being under a considerable amount of water. This is a world where humans never developed, like all the colony-worlds, and it is classified as a Hothouse Earth. Temperatures are on average twelve degrees higher and the scientist types tell me to expect rain a lot more frequently as well.
"Our current census, not including you new arrivals, is 1,002. That includes the people trying to farm this little place so if you only see a few hundred on a regular basis - that's why.
"There's a motion to rename Desolation to Petersville after our illustrious founder, but that'll wait till our one year anniversary for a vote.
"Signs are posted. If it says 'No Trespassing' then don't freaking go there unless authorized. We mean it. There are no hospitals or emergency care centers, no ambulances, no lawyers ready to say your stupidity or inattention is the other guy's fault. This is a frontier with minimal resources, so keep in mind that things are a little more rough than most of you have had it.
"We have exactly two capes here. Skipjack who is a terrakinetic and very very busy. If you see him, he'll be the one in the steampunk-engineer costume. He'll also most likely be busy as hell. Do not bother him, there's a project list for him in the City Hall and you can petition to have something done there if you need rocks moved or a plot of land leveled.
"Our other cape is a dog handler named Rachel. She does tracking and hunting and likewise has a project list at the City Hall. Do not approach her directly, see notes about us not having a hospital or time for people being stupid. If you see her, you'll know. She mainly sticks to the outermost ranches so she's easy to avoid.
"Housing is to the right. General store is right there. Saloon is down the street and the right, just listen for music. We have an 'Old West' aesthetic going, that's partly deliberate and partly practical. Get the jokes out early and move on.
"The Doctors are Desirae Gutierrez and Enrique Danvers, and they get enough work without you seeing them for anything not serious. Clinic is off to the left with the big red cross on the placard. That's it. Take your luggage, find a prefab place where the placard is empty. Put your name on the placard when you claim it or you might find someone else claiming it. You got a work slip so find that next. Walking is the main way to get anywhere.
"The main danger here is there's a snake that's size 'Oh Hell No' and is a constrictor. If you see one, get help and we can haul the damn thing off or kill and render it. Sheriff Peters is our main lawman, he has a deputy named Kojak. No relation to the TV show. That's it - get a move on. If you have further questions, I'm usually at the saloon. I'm Joe, I'm the bartender on day shift."
* Creighton colony *
"So that's The Wall there," pointed out Taliesin, their guide. "First permanent structure built on this side. For obvious reasons."
"How big are the predators?" asked Bounceback, thinking that eating one and getting a new form to Mimic could come in handy.
"Biggest predator we've seen nearby is about the size of a very large bear," said Taliesin. "The biggest herbivore we've seen is about half the length of a football field."
"Seems pretty small compared to what you see in those Aleph movies," noted Danny Hebert.
"Those Aleph movies completely skew the predator-prey ratios, the need for large territories for both herbivores and carnivores, and... oh excuse me. Bit of a sore point with those of us in the profession how much they get wrong," said Taliesin, his Irish brogue getting stronger until he caught himself. "Anyway, over there is where we have the tannery. Dinosaur leather looks to be one of our bigger sellers. Also the feathers from the various raptor types. Some of them have remarkable plumage."
"That explains the hats," noted Danny Hebert, making a gesture towards a hat-seller whose wares all seemed to have various colored feathers in them.
Taliesin glanced at Bounceback, who'd just gone from human-form to blue-blob so she could perch on a railing and look out over the shopping avenue.
"A question?" asked Danny Hebert.
"It's known, or at least spoken of, how your daughter there went through all sorts of crap and some people even said she died," said Taliesin.
"I've heard that, oddly enough," admitted Danny as Taylor shifted back to human and was looking on curiously.
"Yet, pardon me, you seem quite cheerful and well-adjusted. More so than most of the parahumans I've met," said Taliesin.
"I try. Your point?" asked Taylor.
"Is that why the name 'Bounceback'?" asked Taliesin. "You reached your low point in life and then decided you'd get better - bouncing back from that point?"
Taylor nudged her father with an elbow. "See, Dad. Some people DO get it."
* END *