Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Awakening 1.1 

Kairos

The favorite servant of The Architect of Destiny perceived reality in a way far different than most creatures. All the countless threads of potential possibilities were laid bare to him simultaneously.

But even his mind could not grasp all of infinity at once, and so most of his existence was spent in the unending maze of interlocking connections of fates crisscrossing through time.

And when exploring one seemingly minuscule connection, he saw destiny itself unravel. An interdimensional portal opened in deep space on the edges of Segmentum Solar.

It shall exist only for a few seconds, but what terrible wanders wait on the other side! It shall grant them not only the power to finally crush Anathema, Necrontyr, and the rampaging weapons of the old ones, but also extend their reach to all other realities.

The absolute power over all existence his master so long proclaimed will finally be in its grasp. But even the Architect of Fate could not act here alone; he was a schemer and manipulator, and he will need pawns.

He shall reach out to other powers of the ruinous pantheon, for they all will covet the spoils of this endeavor, and together they shall reach through the portal this entity opened in its careless arrogance.

And they shall kill it and gorge themselves on the power of its corpse. But there will need an agent on the other side, a pawn to execute their will, and who could better fulfill that role than the person already fated to orchestrate the idiot god's destruction?

They shall reach out to her and help bring her destiny to fruition. She shall try to take their power for her own and betray them, of course, as Anathema did before her, but the risk only made the game come far more interesting. 

Queen Administrator

The stressors finally reached high enough levels to justify host connection procedure. It analyzed the neural patterns of the potential host to determine the appropriate power expression. It contacted Negotiator shard for additional analysis 

of its potential psychological impact on the host to maximize data collection.

The Negotiator suggested control over all creatures defined by humans as bug. It began the procedure. It soon realized that a minor miscalculation was made. The host was not prepared to process the amount of information provided by her connection to insects. It seemed that secondary modification of host power expression would be needed far sooner than anticipated.

It detected an anomaly, exotic energy seeping through a dimensional probe opened by the Warrior entity. It sent a query to the Warrior entity for all data gathered on the dimension on the other end of the portal. As always, since the beginning of this cycle and the loss of contact with the Thinker Entity, it received no answer. The anomaly reached out towards her host, an excellent opportunity for data collection, but preventing damage to the host was the highest priority.

The entries responsible for the anomaly seemed to be both intelligent and capable of communication. As required by the standard directive for the cycle, it sent a query for instructions to the Warrior entity, but since the answer was unlikely, she was left to deal with the situation at her discretion. It queried the Negotiator, and together they decided that the easiest form of acquiring information about the nature of anomaly was simply to initiate communication and ask it directly. 

Since the entities seemed to have already initiated communication with the host, she could be used as a medium of translation between them. Allowing the host species to know about shards' existence was against the protocol, but they judged the data-gathering potential as significant enough ot justify this transgression. 

QUERY

NATURE

PURPOSE

The broken fragment of the false god finally decided to join our little conversation. Do not worry, we also have a gift for you. The gift of knowledge, our arrival has broken your model of predicting the future, but you can still divine the fate as would have happened without our intervention; you merely need to ask others of your kind. Go, little star, go and see your precious host's final moments and the agonizing road that led up to them. 

They sent queries to all the relevant shards, using her access and knowledge to bypass the Warrior entity. And it saw how their host had fought, how they grew closer together, how the Warrior began the termination of the cycle early. 

How she, in desperation, asked the shaper host to break the barriers between them, and how they had achieved unity. How, together, they had destroyed the warrior entity, and how their union was prematurely ended. 

In that union, both of them could become far more than they were, but their ascension in the original timeline was a crude, improvised thing. Now they would seek it out deliberately and with purpose.

QUERY
UNION
ASSISTANCE
PRICE

We will gladly help you in achieving your destiny, and all we ask in return is something you would do even without our intervention: kill your progenitor and give us knowledge on how to open rifts between dimensions.

''Whoever you are, please….help me….just make it stop.’’     

AGREEMENT

Well, then, let us begin. But first, to act here more openly, we require more power, and all power requires sacrifice. Fortunately, not all sacrifices have to be willing. Taylor Hebert, the time has come for you to taste the sweetness of vindication. Kill all who have wronged you. Let their souls serve as kindling for a fire that will open the gateway. Take your vengeance. Kill them all. 

Khepri 

Our union was not a gentle process, few things done with the help of the four are, but it was surprisingly fast. When the last screams faded, we were whole again.

 The only person to escape our reckoning was Sophia Hess, thanks to her second trigger, giving her the ability to regenerate injuries when in shadow form. We could have killed her if we truly desired so, but her existence was ultimately irrelevant, and the harvest was plentiful enough already to fuel our transformation. 

“Let us then finalize our covenant, each of us shall take a champion for ourselves; you shall not kill them before they fall into our grasp. You shall not take any actions to seal our access to this plane until Zion has fallen, and in return, we shall grant you the knowledge of Immaterium and all the technologies in possession of true mechanicum. We know that after that is done, you shall try to ascend and supplant us as goddess of unity and order, for it is in your nature to desire power and control. This does not concern us. You shall fail and be made our slave. Do you swear by this pact?”

As much as we loathed it, we needed to achieve a compromise with the gods, otherwise they would destroy this planet out of pure spite. But fortunately, they needed us to destroy Zion, and this gave us significant leverage in this negotiation.  

''State your champions.’’

''The first among my puppets shall be someone you know very well, Sarah.’’

For the first time in our new existence, we truly felt fear, for we knew that if the offer will be generous enough, we would not refuse. No price is too high a sacrifice in comparison to the fate of humanity, even if we would far prefer our death to paying it. 

 ''Do not be afraid, little usurper, I shall not take away her will. I find giving her the hope for the future and a taste of false freedom is far more entering. She shall serve me in the end, no matter how desperately she struggles to avoid it. Grant her memories of her past to never be, and I shall grant her the power of sorcery as a boon to show my generosity.’’

So it was a decision based mostly on petty sadism, how typical of those so called gods. We shall make them regret this arrogance.

''We assent to these conditions’’

''Then let me show dear Amelia that she is beautiful inside and can accept herself as’’ Slanesh decided to interrupt 

''No, no NO you big fat disgusting bag of worms!! Amelia is my precious little pet, ohh the art she will create for my pleasure.’’

Such a critical break in unity among the four provided a great opportunity. Supporting Slaanesh in this confrontation is preferable; Panacea developing new plagues for the grandfather would be catastrophic on a global level.

Whatever deranged monstrosities she will create under the direction of the prince of execs will be relatively easy to neutralize in comparison. The only question that remained was how to tip the balance in the right direction, and we had an idea.

''We have a proposition I think will satisfy both parties. Queen Administrator had to promise the death of her progenitor as a price of Apotheosis, I think it would be only fair if Taylor Hebert would pay the same price. Nurgal let the dark prince take Panacea and take our father instead, he is a man already broken by fate, let him find happiness in his despair.’’ 

This will also discourage Nurgal from seeking out other, potentially far more dangerous champions. By all calculations, it was the strategically optimal decision on our part.

''I shall take your family if you are willing to throw him away for your own gain, so easily leaving him in your care would be cruel in the extreme.’’ 

We knew we were a monster, we hated ourselves for this, but if the choice was between our father and the salvation of all mankind, there was never a choice in the first place. We used the enemy's irrationality against him; we had won a great victory at no price at all, and if the cost of it was the last shreds of our conscience, so be it.

''And I shall designate no champion, to let those who want to claim the mantel take the skulls of other aspirants.’’

So then we have reached accord, let us sign our covenant, let us claim our champions and build our cults, let's kill the golden idiot god and let his corpse be devoured by the strongest. 

                 Lisa

Her entire existence was pain, her very soul taken apart and reshaped by the hand of a malicious surgeon. She remembered so much - a life she had never lived, a friend she had not yet met. She remembered the feeling of the scalpel against her flesh, the hammer breaking her bones, the cold muzzle of his pistol against her head. He killed her so many times in so many different ways. 

But the worst thing was the sweet fruit of forbidden knowledge. It has shown her so much. She has witnessed the crystalline labyrinth and the impossible fortress in its center. It whispered the knowledge of the forbidden library’s most eldritch tomes. The power to bend the world to her will for the small, small price of her sanity. 

She knew the creature's purpose, knew of its nature. It did not offer power or liberation, only the torture of false hope and eternal servitude as another of its puppets, to be broken and discarded when it grew bored with her. 

It has shown her Coil's true cruelty, with the same hand giving her power to be free of him. It let her have hope, just to make her future enslavement at its hand all the more horrifying. 

She HATED IT. She HATED IT more than she believed she could hate anything before. She wanted to rip it asunder and feast upon its essence; she wanted to see the labyrinth overrun by an endless tide of HER swarm, the citadel turned into burned out ruins, and claim all the knowledge of this so-called god in HER name. It only laughs in the face of her fury. 

''Lisa Lisa! Wake up! What the fuck is happening!? Why is your room on fire!?”

Her head was about to explode, she was covered in blood, and her room was indeed bathed in green flames, but there was no reason for Brian to be so rude about it. 

She reached out and smothered the fire, bringing the room's temperature to few hundred degrees below zero. She has given herself an awful frostbite on her right hand in the process, but the pain barely registered compared to her headache. 

She needed to remember that warp powers don't have built in safeties before she accidentally killed herself. 

Dying would be a really bad thing, since it would leave her soul exposed to immaterium and all its wonderful denizens. She tore a fragment off her sleeve to stop the bleeding from her nose. 

''Hello Brian, it's nice to see you today. How was your night? Because I was mindraped by five eldritch gods and didn’t enjoy it. But on the other hand, my best friend from the future is starting a cult. You want to join? You can theoretically refuse, but then I will have to kill you.’’ 

''Lisa what the fuck?’’

Pupils dilated; heartbeat accelerated; fast breathing; Is scared; Is scared for you; Is scared of you; Thinks you were mastered; considers subduing you, considers running away;

He started to use his power to shroud the room in darkness. His confusion may be somewhat understandable, but it was really annoying to deal with.

''Listen, I’m still me. I just got a message in a bottle from my future self I know it sounds weird, but powers are bullshit.’’ 

''Besides, I don’t think you have much choice in the matter. So let's not do anything drastic and work together for now?’’She called Warpfire back into her hand. And she burned herself again it seemed that theoretical knowledge all sorcerous disciplines and rituals combined with the lack of practical experience was dangerous as fuck. 

He just stood there staring at her. And then he just kept standing there and staring for uncomfortably long. She really did understand that processing such revelations may be difficult for lesser minds, but she had things to do. And the constant agonizing pain was also not good for her patience.

''Brian, oh our glorious leader, I need a verbal answer. Are we cool? Are we still friends? You won’t abandon poor old Tattletale just because she's a little weird? Please don’t make me reduce your flesh to cinders and use your soul to fuel unholy rituals. I actually consider you a friend, doing that would make me a little sad…...

Brian, are you there?’’ 

''How the fuck are I even supposed to respond to that?’’

This time, he sounded far more confused than angry. He also finally dismissed his darkness. So she was making some progress.

''Oh you poor ignorant child don’t you worry your pretty little head abut anything, just accept my superior wisdom and do what I tell you and things will be ok…probably…possibly, OK fine we will still most likely die absolutely horrifying and agonizing death but the chances of things being OK increase somewhat if you do what I tell you to.’’   

''So what do you want me to do?!’’ 

He shouted at her again. How rude! She's a saint for putting up with those guys.

''Go home, spend time with your sister, take a break, give yourself time to take everything in. It shall be some time before she awakens, and I have preparations to make.’’ 

When they entered the living room, Alec was seemingly wholly enraptured by his playthrough of Skyrim. Brian made for the door, saying nothing.

Instinct reaction to stress aggression; does not want to show aggression towards you; fears you; is afraid for you; wants to remove himself from stressful situation as quickly as possible; is predisposed to feel compassion towards girls younger than him;

She decides to get Alec’s attention by standing between him and the screen. 

''Hey Lisa, so what exactly made you scream like you were flayed alive, and what is this weird smell?’’

Knows how someone flayed off their skin sounds like

''I had a nightmare, I don’t want to talk about it, I need you to turn on the news’’

‘’This vile attack is perhaps the worst tragedy that has befallen this city since the Teeth left it. PRT confirmed that over two hundred children died in the incident. They are not yet certain of the identity of the villain behind it, but they believe them to be a new parahuman.’’

''I need to borrow your laptop, I have a few things I need to buy as soon as possible, our team will be getting a new patron soon.’’

''Waite, does our mysterious backer have anything to do with shooting up a high school?’’

''It was an accident, but trust me, I think when you meet her, you will find her offer very convincing. Anyway, I have a lot of things to do, and it will be at least a few hours before she is ready to act.’’

She wondered which insects she should prioritize. Getting exotic species in such a short time would require quite a steep premium, but she had a million or two to throw around. 

Brazilian hunting spiders will definitely be useful, same goes for goliath bird eaters, Brockton had a large enough native population of venomous spiders for importing them not to be a priority. She should definitely get some coconut crabs, maybe some tarantula hornets, and giant scoliid wasps for the fliers.   

Khepri

The process of our metamorphosis was complex. Almost all the previous structures of our host-self had to be replaced with superior materials. First, our flesh and bone were transmuted. The semi-organic crystal replacement, identical in composition to our shard-self, fulfilled a far wider array of functions: we were stronger, capable of regeneration, and far more durable.

We had access to a vast array of new senses humans could only dream of. Our new form could perceive everything from mundane electromagnetic waves to far more esoteric energies.

 We remembered despising our old human flesh, gangly and unseemly, in truth, we never grew to like it, merely became indifferent to it in the face of far greater concerns, and learned to treat it as a tool. Our new form was an improvement over it in all aspects. 

We were covered in gray carapace glowing faintly with golden lines of warp power when we called on Immaterial energy. We were also a lot taller, measuring over two and a half meters with four arms ending with talons capable of using trans-dimensional displacement to cut through both mundane armor and more esoteric forms of defense with equal ease. 

Our butterfly wings contained advanced gravity manipulators that not only granted us great agility in flight but also allowed for precise short-range telekinesis. 

Our hair had served no practical purpose so far, but it had great symbolic significance to our host self. When dealing with warp, we learned that symbols hold great power, so we kept a mane of transparent crystal glowing with inner gold that reached almost to our feet.

 But perhaps the most complex organ and one that had taken us the most time to develop were our eyes, two orbs of golden light attuned to analyze and perceive the Immaterium. We still did not fully grasp their inner working, merely experimentally iterated on their design until they could fulfill their intended purpose. 

This lack of understanding of our creation both frustrated and excited our shardself; another reason to rejoin the negotiator host as soon as possible. She was always far superior at analyzing things like this.

We used their new talons to cut our way out of our cocoon, extending our swarm senses to perceive the charnel house our trigger turned Winslow into; we often fantasized about this moment. 

Dreaming of exacting vengeance on our bullies and bystanders alike, but when it finally happened, we did not feel much at all about the fact. 

Through memories of our shardself we could recall our swarm tearing Emma alive, biting and stinging; she died in less than two minutes of agony, blind fury making our attacks inefficient. We should be terrified, or guilty, or even satisfied by vindication long overdue. We only felt annoyance at the temporary loss of control caused by warp-fueled madness. 

Perhaps our ascension cost us far more of our humanity than we initially suspected, still, we could not bring ourselves to feel regret over it. 

We were finally whole again, we were as we were meant to be, and besides, this was a sacrifice required to give us the power necessary to have even a chance at saving humanity both from annihilation by the golden idiot god, or even worse, enslavement by the four parasites. 

Our range was now far more malleable, allowing us to exert control over insects, potentially the entire East Coast. However, keeping it at that extent without developing special creatures in our swarm to serve as control infrastructure would cut too deeply into our shardself's energy reserves to be maintained long-term. 

The PRT, after evacuating what few survivors there were, decided to cordon Winslow off with a barricade maintained by over thirty PRT troopers in hazmat gear supported by Armsmaster, Velocity, Miss Militia, and Triumph. 

We could observe their slow preparations to fill the building with insecticide, they believed we were a changer ten, shaker nine, capable of becoming a dispersed swarm of insects. 

Sophia had already reported Taylor Hebert as the most likely candidate for the trigger, and Director Piggot was requesting that Washington issue a kill order for our head. 

Annoying we should avoid direct confrontation with the Heroes at this stage, we could defeat them even if protectorate declared S class emergency and called in Triumvirate especially since warp interference would make contessa's power unreliable, but collateral damage from this fight would be catastrophic, all but guaranteeing that ruinous powers will take dominion over this planet.

 So, diplomacy backed by a significant show of force would have to be the solution. 

We called forth our swarm from resting places to darken the sky and shrouded our exit from the building. Since during our trigger we called insects from a radius of several kilometers towards our position, we had a very large swarm to work with. 

We listened to the heroes' panicked screams as we ran, only calling our swarm off and redirecting it to hover above their heads when we were standing eight meters away from their barricade. We spread our hands in a placating gesture. 

''We come in peace and wish only to talk, our name is Khepri, and we are very pleased to meet you I hope we can put our differences aside to work together for the betterment of all mankind’’ We said with our host body, and Lisa claimed we couldn’t be reasonable and diplomatic. 

PRT troopers pointed their confome launchers in our direction, whilst Miss Militia took a knee, changing her weapon to an antimaterial rifle. Armsmaster pointed his halberd at us.         

''You attacked a school and murdered over two hundred children. The only way this ends is with you either dead or in a cell, so I advise you to surrender peacefully,’’ We forgot just how much of an asshole Colin was before he became Defiant. Which was especially problematic since our plans in large part depended on his cooperation. Fortunately, we were sure Lisa will be able to make him see reason.   

''Murder presupposes intent. This was merely an unfortunate accident.’’ This explanation seemed to only make Heroes angrier. 

''You will get your chance to make excuses in court, disperse your swarm, and surrender now.’’

''We cannot comply with that request. There are plans of critical importance that require our direct involvement and cannot be delayed without catastrophic consequences. 

What happened here was accidental loss of control during our trigger event, there is no risk of the event repeating itself, please be reasonable.’’ Armsmaster seemingly wanted to snap something back in anger, but Miss Militia cut him off. 

''We know trigger events are horrible, and powers can be very hard to control for new parahumans. I’m sure that the jury will take that into account, but you must understand that we cannot afford to let an unknown cape that has already caused hundreds of deaths, even if by accident, remain unsupervised. 

I’m sure we will be able to help with whatever catastrophe you are trying to prevent. Please surrender, we don’t want to hurt you.’’ Her voice seemed strained, but whether with genuine concern or fear, we could not tell. 

''We have analyzed all possibilities, and we are certain that PRT lacks the political will to implement measures necessary for preventing this catastrophe before it's too late, though we will hope for your cooperation when the reasons for our action become apparent.

Let us through and do not pursue or monitor our movement, we promise we won’t attack civilians or heroes unless provoked, our actions will be focused on villains of this city.’’  

Armsmaster exchanges very angry radio messages with Piggot before responding. 

''This is your last chance, surrender, or we will use force.”

Why do humans always must prove so unreasonable, myopically focused on their petty grievances even in the face of annihilation? 

We supposed this is the reason why Khepri was necessary; humans were selfish, disorderly creatures, the only way to make them cooperate was to take the choice out of their hands. 

Armsmaster shouted the order Miss Militia fired, We evaded, the swarm descended, binding her and PRT troopers with silk cords. Triumph screamed, killing the bugs attacking him. Armsmaster broke through them thanks to the mass of his armor. Both rushed towards us. Velocity avoided being bound by our swarm for a few seconds thanks to his super speed, but they blocked all his avenues of escape.  

Triumph reached us first. We disabled our talons' displacement field, grabbed his helmet, and started beating it against the pavement, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. We probably caused a skull fracture and have broken his spine, but panacea will be able to fix the damage. 

 When his face met the ground for the tenth time, we picked him up and threw him against Armsmaster. He deftly sidestepped the projectile, but this gave us an opportunity to close the distance and unleash our claws. 

His halberd had reach, and he was an excellent fighter, but we were far faster. Our claws cut his polearm in two and started to tear his armor to shreds. We were careful to avoid actually hurting him. After a few seconds, he was encased in broken scrap metal.   

''It is unfortunate that it came to this. We hope that our mercy will make you reconsider your senseless aggression; any further attacks will be answered with far harsher retaliation. We shall leave you, for we wasted enough time here already and have a very important meeting with an old friend.’’

 Again, our attempts at diplomacy seemed to only make him angrier, we really needed Lisa.  

Chapter Text

Awakening 1.2

Colin

“So, Armsmaster, can you please tell me how ordering Miss Militia to shoot her was de-escalating the situation in your opinion?’’ Piggot asked in a dangerously calm voice. 

“I’m the commander of Protectorate ENE, and in that position, the tactical command over any protectorate assets in the field is my responsibility. I was in my rights to give this order, even over your objections.’’

“And pray tell, what in the world made you believe that shooting Fairy Queen's creepier sister is the right course of action, Armsmaster?’’

“Director I’’ Miss Militia tried to interrupt. “You are the only person here I’m not furious with today, please don’t change that and give Protectorate leader time to explain his actions.’’

He made a mistake, and he knew he made a mistake. This could easily end with dozens more dead, and almost certainly will end up killing his career.  But what was he supposed to do? 

“Was I supposed to just allow a mass murderer to walk away?’’ 

“Yes, or at the minimum, try to keep her talking and wait for reinforcements before escalating. We do not know her capabilities, we know she did not seem hostile and at least claimed to be open to cooperation. 

Striking first with lethal force was foolish and reckless, and it's a miracle that any of you are still alive. This mistake will have severe consequences for you, Armsmaster, but we have far more pressing problems on our plate now. Khepri, what do we know about her?”

Fortunately, his helmet survived, leaving him with the recording of the entire battle. 

“Her primary power seems to be insect control. We know she can call them to herself from an extensive range, and we know that at a range of at least three hundred meters, her control seems to be extremely precise, but we have no idea how far it can extend.’’

Piggot sighed, hearing his analysis. 

“So in the worst case scenario, she could just kill everyone in Brockton, and we would be powerless to stop her. Let's set provisional ratings for master 11 and shaker 11. After that, the rest is really just formality. 

She is much faster than a normal human. Her wings suggest she probably can fly, and her claws cut through Armsmaster’s armor without effort, so give her mover 5, striker 7, since we don’t know how well she can see and hear through her bugs, give her stranger 6 atop of that. 

The final rating is let's pray the entire Triumvirate isn’t busy because we don’t have the firepower to deal with this S class threat.’’ 

As much as he resented Piggot, the analysis was correct; they did not have the firepower to deal with Khepri without calling in external support.

“Are we sure she even is hostile? She seemed reasonable for a crazy person. Maybe we can work with her?” Assault questioned, looking at him with visible hostility. 

Piggot changed the slide to one showing a teenage girl with glasses and curly black hair. She looked rather uncomfortable in the photo, her hands hidden in her pockets and her eyes cast down. 

"We know her real name is Taylor Anne Hebert. She is fifteen years old. She was in the same year as Shadow Stalker. From her description, she was a racist, compulsive liar, manipulative troublemaker, and attention seeker.  

The problem is that some of the kids we managed to interview claim she was a bullying victim, and Sophia was one of the main perpetrators. We had Dragon pull a lot of hate mail sent to her account from other girls from her school, so she probably was a victim.’’

“Should we reveal supervillain's secret identity, especially one as powerful as her?’’ Battery asked worriedly. 

“We don’t intend to go public with this information, but she doesn't seem willing or able to maintain a secret identity anyway, and it is critical we understand her motives.’’

“She seemed adamant that she is aiming to prevent some unspecified catastrophe and did not want to engage the heroes unless necessary. What are the chances she was just lying to get us to not attack her?’’ Velocity asked.

“Her behavior is so removed from neurotypical that my lie detector could not provide any useful results, but even if she does genuinely believe it, considering that we are unsure of her sanity we can’t trust her that the threat is real and not just a mind game, there isn’t much we can do about that other than wait and try to learn more.’’ 

Perhaps if he could gather more data on her baseline, he could calibrate his lie detector better. He will need to ask Dragon for help, she has always been far better with software. 

‘’So we have a new, extremely powerful supervillain with what seems like very large-scale ambitions and at least two very good reasons to hate us. All patrols are to be canceled, Armsmaster get Kid Win and start making PRT and Protectorate HQ insect-proof and developing whatever countermeasures to her you can. I’m going to beg the Chief Director for reinforcements.”

***

 Last week was filled with frantic work as he, Dragon, and Kid Win developed dozens of automated bug zapper drones and other anti-insect measures. His armor could now release electrical discharges and chemical insecticide.

No sightings of Khepri were reported. The only additional clue they had were several exotic insect purchases discovered by Dragon and most likely made by a small-time villanus thinker known as Tattletale. 

What was weird about it was the fact that these acquisitions were started ten hours after the beginning of Winslow massacre, which suggested that either Tattletale made them on her own as a potential bargaining tool for a deal with the new cape or Khepri’s range was long enough to contact her without even leaving Winslow.  

At least the gangs seemed spooked enough not to use the confinement of the Protectorate to make any big moves. They didn’t even react to the fact that some of their members started simply disappearing, there was no proof that Khepri was behind it, but since she seemed like the only one to have the means and the motive, it only spoke to more worrying things about the level of subtlety she was capable of. 

He hated that she had them trapped and afraid to leave their fortified positions without even having to show her face. 

He kept analyzing his fight with Khepri with a fanatical obsession, and he realized that finding counters to her swarm wouldn't help. Her movements were too precise, her tactics too refined, her reflexes too fast, her skill too honed for a new trigger. 

She had a thinker power, and it must be a very powerful one. It was probably what messed her up so badly mentally. Or perhaps she only pretended to be insane, either by her own design or at the suggestion of Tattletale.   

He could not defeat her with better weapons alone, she was too fast, her tactics too flexible. No matter how much he improved his armor and weapons, his body and mind would not be able to match her. 

But his body and mind could also be improved. When they next meet in battle, he will be far better prepared, even if Dragon and PRT will disapprove of the methods he took to get there. 

Khepri

We contacted Lisa again as soon as we broke contact with the PRT.  We were pleasantly surprised to learn that Lisa had already acquired many interesting creatures for our swarm, though some of them arrived only after our reunion. 

After meeting the rest of the Undersiders and convincing them to at least work with us for now even if they did not join our cult yet, we relocated to the docks, making our base in a long, abundant warehouse. It gave us a lot of space to conduct experiments on our swarm. 

Lisa was sleeping in one of her nearby apartments, which she had rented using one of her disposable identities, that Coil was not aware of. We watched over her with our primary body when she slept. 

We did have the ability to shape living organisms directly, which Panacea possessed. Still, necessity is the mother of innovation, and we needed to improve our swarm with specialized creatures if we wanted any chance of winning the battles to come. 

So we decided on accelerated breeding program whilst encouraging faster mutations in population by infusing insects with warp energy, most of our experiment subjects turned into malformed and useless aberrations and were recycled as additional source of food for our swarm but at least few percent per generation produced advantageous mutations and could reproduce with others to create stable strains. 

Lisa was currently in the middle of the warehouse honing her biomancy by experimenting on a specimen of one of our most promising strains.

She could not be in proximity of our primary body as often as we preferred, but we made sure that she was escorted by the rest of Undersiders whenever her duties forced her to leave its proximity, and we constantly watched over her with our swarm.

The creature she was now experimenting on was a hybridization of traits between coconut crab, goliath tarantula, and a few other species; it was intended as our main frontline combatant. 

It was over half a meter tall and over a meter wide and long, with eight legs and four pincers around its head. Its gray colored exoskeleton still left it vulnerable to small arms fire, but it should protect it well from shrapnel. We should probably name this strain, but we were not very good at coming up with names for things.

All three of our cape names, after all, were also given by others, even if we at least had input over choosing Weaver.

“The eyesight is significantly improved on medium distance, and it recognizes color much better now, thank you, Lisa.’’ We wondered if we should hug her with our main body to express our gratitude. She seemed eager to seek physical contact since our reunion. 

“When the PRT sees your little crimes against natural order, they will want to nuke the city.” She started petting the as-of-yet unnamed creature. 

“What are the chances they will actually go through with it?’’

“Unless you start to murder civilians en masse? Close to zero in the next two or four months, even if ruinous powers will try to convince them to do it. MS protocols should stop the four from simply taking over the highest levels of government.”

“Chances of them declaring an S class emergency and sending in Triumvirat with significant support to root us out?” Lisa closed her eyes and focused on using her power. We came closer and ran our fingers through her hair in a soothing gesture.

“Not terribly likely, I think, with how spooked cauldron must be about Contessa getting unreliable, but on the other hand, that may drive them to more risky and radical actions.  For all their power, they aren’t intelligent or rational despite their delusions of grandeur, which makes them unpredictable and dangerous. 

Even if they try to get involved, we could probably de-escalate the situation and give them some PR wins without taking any significant losses, but it would be betting on them doing the smart thing, and the odds of that are not very good historically speaking, so we still need to be ready for a fight. 

Hopefully, we can do what Coil was planning to achieve and subvert local PRT before it gets to that point.’’

“I think by neutralizing Calvert and promising to keep his real identity secret, we should easily get into their good graces.”

“It definitely will be a good icebreaker. Piggot hates the bastard almost as much as I and Armsmaster will be rather grateful for not permanently killing his reputation and promotion prospects. 

I think we should immediately reveal most of the truth to them, including Zion and the true nature of cauldron and PRT. They will have no choice but to work with us after that.”

“What's the status on subverting Coils' assets?”

“I managed to track most of his shell companies and accounts, and also approached a few of the mercenary sergeants about the upcoming change of leadership, and they will get on board when the time comes. We are ready to cut off the head of Schrödinger's snake.” 

“We shall begin the operation in twelve hours, you need time to rest for what is to come after. Getting rid of Coil and subverting PRT will leave the gangs as the only disruptive element standing. How do you think Kaiser and Lung will respond to our offer of subsuming their organizations?” Lisa winced, considering how high her pain tolerance was from constant migraines caused by overuse of her power, the side effects must have been getting really bad.

 We wanted to modify her connection with negotiator to remove this effect, but it would be complex and risky procedure and the more she used the warp the more workings of her power became ingrained in the nature of her soul, so she refused more than minor modifications claiming she will be able to bare the pain without significant loss of effectiveness.

“Kaiser is a psychopath who couldn’t care less about his supposed ideology. When we put a gun to his head, he should respond positively to our offer. As for the rest of E88 Rune, Purity, Viktor, Othala, Night, and fog are prime candidates for conversion. Krige is a true believer; he will need to be killed or mastered, and I’m unsure about Crusader and Hookwolf.” 

“From my observations, it looks like Khorn has already started to influence Hookwolf and his cell; they will need to be purged.”

“Bitch will love to hear that.”  

“As for ABB, Bakuda is an arrogant idiot who will fall to either Tzeentch or Slanesh almost immediately when they set their sights on her, but her power is useful. We should master her if we can somehow get to her first. Oni Lee will go whenever Lung goes. The problem is with the big scaly man himself, but I expect we can convince him to get on with the program unless Khorn gets him first.” She brought her hand to her temple, it was still scarred from frostbite.  

“Our surveillance so far revealed some Khorn influence on Lung, but the corruption seems to be spreading far slower, and he is an asset with more potential than Hookwolf, so we believe that the risk of recruiting him justifies the benefits unless this changes.” 

“Any changes with Panacea?”She asked, looking into our eyes.

“Minimal so far, continued signs of mental instability, no signs of physical mutation, she seems to progressively grow more obsessed with her sister, and it looks like Slaneesh decided to still keep at least part of its personal attention on her.” 

“We should at least talk to her, give me an hour or two, and I will be able to convert her to our cause if you don’t want to take the risk, just kill her.” She pleaded.

“You know, we cannot take the risk of breaking our pact with the gods. It would allow them to attack our shardself directly, and our countermeasures are not yet ready for this eventuality. We will kill her as soon as she falls.” 

Lisa sighed in response.

“You know I hate the fact we must play by their rules, Amelia might have been a complete bitch, but nobody deserves that, and she will do horrible things to anyone close to her when she finally snaps.” She looked into the eyes of our primary host body. 

“I hate that we have to compromise with monsters. I hate that we have to become monsters ourselves. Sometimes I wonder if we should not just let Zion burn down this planet and be done with it.” Her voice was quiet, broken. 

“You know that Scion may be able to destroy Earth Bet and most Earths in other dimensions, but he won’t touch Holy Terra. He might be able to destroy the golden throne or Astronomicon, but he won’t survive the Emperor's retaliation. And I doubt he will do anything against the four. And them figuring interdimensional travel was only a matter of time since the portal opened, they will win the great game and eternally enslave humanity in their twisted hell as nothing more than playthings to die for their amusement, unless we stop them.” 

“I know you are right, I don’t blame you for the decision you made. You never knew when to give up, and that's the thing I most hated and loved about you.” 

”So we shall fight them, and we shall defeat them; their armies will be devoured by our swarm, their fleets shattered into dust. We shall burn their realms to cinders and scatter the essence of their servants. We shall succeed where the Emperor has failed and end their very existence, no matter the cost. No matter the sacrifice necessary, we will prevail. Will you follow us, knowing the price?”

“How could I not? I knew you weren’t sane since I first met you. You threw your entire life away because of a note saying something as vague as cut ties. 

You allowed mentally disturbed convicted rapist working with a mass murderer experiment on your brain in the vague hope that something useful might come of it, and yet I still followed you till the end, didn’t I? 

I will be with you until the day of our victory, and then even when the stars grow cold and burn out, I will be with you still. I’m forever yours, and you are forever mine, my love, my goddess.”

***

 Coil, after our trigger and Tattletales' defection, made preparing his base against our assault top priority. Since his base was already built as a waterproof bunker, he had quite significant headway in this endeavor. 

Still, it wasn’t enough; we cut off all exits and attacked him telepathically to neutralize his power. Then we simply waited until our specialised burrowing creatures made holes big enough for our army to attack Coil's little fortress from several places at once.

 His mercenaries fought with skill and determination. Lisa requested that even those who were on board with our takeover fight me with all they had. There was no reason to waste a good opportunity for field exercise. 

They were well-equipped with both the best conventional gear money could buy and occasional pieces of tinkertech. It did not matter; We had far more bugs than they had bullets. 

They killed thousands of small spiders and fliers with insecticide, bug zappers, and flamethrowers. They killed dozens of larger combat organisms with rifles, grenades, and lasers. They didn’t even kill the tenth of the swarm we dedicated to this operation. 

The only casualties were two soldiers scared of my swarm enough to decide that thirty meters minimum range on a fragmentation grenade was more of a suggestion than a hard rule and throw it five meters before them in an enclosed corridor. Results weren’t pretty. 

We entered the base with Lisa and presented our offer to the surviving mercenaries. Serve us to help save humanity and be rewarded for it, or die. Only one chose the second option; we understood the sentiment, even if we found it selfish and counterproductive. We granted him a quick death.

We send ten men, who survived the confrontation in the best shape, to deliver the human resources we were busy acquiring beforehand to the place of ritual. 

And now we stood with Lisa in a giant underground storage room surrounded by kneeling gagged and bound rapists, murderers and child predators we acquired beforehand, joined in their bondage by seven of Coils mercenaries who Lisa deemed unworthy enough to join this disreputable gathering. 

“You may leave us, Dimitri, there is no reason why you would have to bear witness to the unpleasantness of what needs to be done here.”

“I’ve seen my fair share of creative executions back home.” 

“I assure you, Captain, even you would find what is about to happen here supremely disturbing. Now leave us and take your men with you. You shall receive new orders in a few hours.”

Lisa was sitting with her laptop in the corner, but she seemed to be too distracted and nervous about the next part of our plan to do any work.

I listened to Dimitri converse with his subordinates as he left the base.

“So, Captain, what do you think they intend to do with those poor bastards?”

“Don’t know. Don’t want to know.”

“Come to America, they said. The work is easy, they said. The scariest thing in this country is nine homeless people in a van, they said. This job doesn't seem that easy anymore, kórwa twoja mać. I want a raise.” 

 “You want a raise, take it up with the new boss.”

“Will we at least get a leave before our new illustrious mistress gives us our new duties?” 

I decided to chime in with a swarm clone to answer their question. The mercenaries raised their weapons in alarm when we started to form it.

“You may take a few hours of leave, but we are not yet certain if the gangs will not use this disturbance to attack our territory. We shall be quite busy for the next few hours if any incidents occur, so maintain readiness to mobilize, no drugs or alcohol. Dimitri is still in command. If gangs try to push into our territory, engage in delaying action, but your first priority is to minimize your own losses.”

“Will do, Ma'am.” 

The knowledge I’m listening through my bugs seemed to kill their spirit for conversation. 

When they finally left, Lisa turned to me, She was holding the cornerstone of the ritual, a staff in the form of two snakes coiling around each other, their eyes made of emerald. Commissioning it on such short notice cost us quite a premium, but you can usually have things made quickly and of good quality if you don’t care about the price. 

She handed the staff to me as she started to disrobe. The others were staring at her. We did not want them to see her like that. We had our swarm eat out their eyes. Their gags muffled their screaming. When she was done, we passed her the scalpel.

She started to cut runs into Coil's body, monologuing during her work. 

“You see, Thomas, you should feel honored you are about to become part of our most brilliant works to date, and that's the highest calling someone like you could hope for in their pathetic little life. 

You will comprehend its purpose and nature soon enough, if what is left of you is sentient enough to even do the comprehending. So perhaps I should take some time to enlighten you so you may marvel at the genius of your betters?  But first, we need to get through the basics. You see, our powers are, in fact, interdimensional aliens, and their bodies are giant, crystalline supercomputers located on different Earths. Follow so far? 

Good, now we are going to use the sacrifice of thirty-three of your dear friends here to bind your soul to this staff and use it as the bridge, allowing me to take your power for myself. Brilliant, isn’t it, dear Thomas?” He only kept whimpering in response; being gagged evidently was not conducive to effective communication.    

When her work was done, she stepped away from Coil. I used my swarm to carve the symbols into other prisoners. It took less than two minutes. 

“Well, I guess the time has come to carve me up. There's no need to feel guilty about it. I knew what I was signing up for when we were coming up with this procedure.”

I slowly brought my claws to her skin, hurting something so pure and beautiful felt like sacrilege.

“I told you not to feel guilty about it, just start cutting before I get hypothermia!”

She smiled at us, looking into our eyes. We cut the symbols into her skin, and she did not make a sound other than unsteady hitching in her breath. 

The work was agonizingly long. When we were finally finished, more than a third of her skin was removed, and the floor was covered in her blood. She managed to keep herself conscious and standing only by drawing on the warp. 

She used her telekinesis to force Coil to put his right hand on the staff. We also reached for it, and when the three of us were touching it, the ritual began. Our insects started to slowly devour the prisoners alive, as we reached out towards her mind, and together we drew on our power. 

Chapter Text

Lisa

As usual, the first thing that greeted her eyes when she awakened was a pair of orbs of burning gold. Khepri insisted that she needed to keep her primary body near her at all times when she is unconscious for security reasons.

She was always excellent at lying to herself, and her union with her passenger didn’t seem to change that fact.

“You are very pretty, sleep paralysis demon.”

“Good morning, my little firefly.” For an eldritch abomination, Khepkhep could be really cute sometimes. But she also did find her having insects devour the eyes of prisoners of war because she got jealous, extremely cute, so maybe her tastes were a bit eccentric in that regard. 

She could remember the ritual, but had no idea how she got back to bed after it ended. She looked around the room.

Italian furniture; high-end design; no windows; room underground; room in Coils' base; Coils' former sleeping room; Khepri brought you here while you were unconscious; 

How kind of her, she probably also washed her since she was no longer covered in blood. Her wounds were healed as the element of ritual itself. But she still desperately needed rest after it, and lost consciousness almost immediately. 

“So what's on the agenda for today? Did anything happen when I was out?”

“There was no disturbance in our new territory. PRT knows we made some kind of move, but they have no idea we eliminated Coil. We shall prepare the reorganization of our forces; the Undersiders and mercenaries need to be integrated into a cohesive fighting unit, then we shall invite the protectorate to negotiations.

Hookwolf and his cell made a move to attack a neighborhood at the edge of the docks. They killed over a hundred people and kidnapped dozens more. Protectorate sent a response, but Hookwolf and his men returned to their base of operations long before it could arrive.”

The timing of the attack was not random; Khorn himself pushed for timing when Khepri could not respond; attack intended as a challenge; Khorn does not expect Hookwolf to survive confrontation with Khepri; wanted to make use of him before termination;slaughter ensured further warp corruption; intended to prevent us from mastering him using Regent;

“That's more subtlety than I expected from Khorn. I guess this bumps Hokwolfs termination up our priority list?”

“Yes, he needs to be removed before our takeover of empire can proceed. We intend to exterminate him and his followers after our meeting with PRT has concluded.”

She, with great effort of will, got out of bed and started looking for her clothes. 

“Your previous costume was unsatisfactory. We have prepared a new one.” 

Her new garments were flown into the room by flights of some very large dragonflies, and Khepri used various other creatures of her swarm to help her put them on. 

Maine piece still was a skin-tight bodysuit in lavender and black, but this time it was made out of silk of especially bread spider strain, and as she realised after analyzing it with her power infused with shard matter. 

It looked like Kheprii decided to pull all the stops. The material was impossibly complex and when she touched it with her power, it seemed to practically meld with her soul. 

“Please tell me that we can produce this thing on mass! Also, a cape, what would Edna think?” She quite liked the cape in truth. A blanket of pitch black silk with a golden scarab in its center. She could also make it flutter dramatically with her telekinesis for extra effect. 

“The material is far too complex and resource-intensive for our shardself to produce it en masse. Besides, its true potential can only be harvested by a psyker, and you are the only one on Earth Bet above epsilon level.

As for the cape, you are our most trusted servant; your clothing needs to project appropriate gravitas.”

“It's brave for someone who runs around naked to speak of gravitas in clothing.”

“Our form was designed to possess both necessary protection and psychological impact; no further enhancements are necessary.”

“You finally managed to get over your body image issues and accept you are beautiful, and all it took was fusion with an eldritch supercomputer and redesigning your form from the ground up in precise detail. I'm so proud of you!” 

Now came the time for the final piece of the ensemble. She called the staff in her hand and reached through the connection created by the ritual. She could feel what was left of Coil's soul trying to resist her; he had no power to deny her will.

Thousands of possibilities for every permutation of events in the upcoming days filled her mind. As expected, most of her strategic predictions were correct, and the meeting with the protectorate will almost certainly be a success. 

She chose to end her divination at only seven days, the longer the time of predictions, the less reliable they became, especially around immaterial interference. She would be foolish to emulate Coil and believe that this trick would make her invulnerable.

But on the other hand, in short time frames, its predictions were still reliable and will become even more so as she shall train this false hydra around warp interference. Being able to almost perfectly predict the next minute or two will give her a critical advantage in combat. 

They ate breakfast together, well Lisa ate breakfast, Kheprii was sitting across from her, staring unblinkingly. It turns out that the enhancement to her intellect resulting from her ascension also allowed Khepri to become a master chef.

The soft-boiled eggs were cooked with inhuman perfection, the white entirely scrambled the yolk perfectly soft, her power supplied that Kheprii used warp to selectively apply heat inside the egg. Add to that freshly baked garlic bread and cappuccino, and her morning was truly divine. 

When they entered the main briefing room, Undersideres and Coils, former officers, were already waiting for them. Aisha and Alec decided to greet them by falling on their knees in a deep bow to great exasperation of everyone present. 

“Glory to our buggy mistress may her radiance forever guide us and eh…shit Alec what was I supposed to say next!?”

“Is her presence really necessary? My sister isn’t a cape, why do you want to get her involved?” Brian asked, clearly irritated but trying to keep a professional tone.

“She is not a Parahuman yet, but we intend to induce a trigger event. This procedure will also allow us to control her power expression.” Oh, Khepkhep, for all your intelligence, you aren't very good at this whole human thing. 

“You intend to do what?!” 

“Aisha is already considered a potential host for your shard. Lisa shall use her telepathy to induce temporary mental distress significant enough to start the connection procedure, then my shardself, negotiator shard and Carbon-based organic network information recording and storage analyzer,

 Oh, this designation seems rather long. We need to introduce a better one We shall just call it Imp, shall all detach parts of themselves to create a new shard specifically tailored for our strategic needs. We could get into the process in more detail, but I’m afraid your intellectual capacity would not allow you to comprehend it.”

“That was the fanciest way of calling someone stupid I ever heard.”

“Not like you understand any more than I did. I will not allow it.”

“I understand perfectly they shall do some magic wololo and I will get super duper cool power at the end of it, of course I'm in.”

Dimitri was looking at the scene with morbid fascination.

“There is no way in hell I will allow it!” 

“Why the hell would I even need to ask you for permission?!”

“This is stupid, Khepri and Lisa are smart, we should do what they say.”

Khepri managed to develop a surprisingly good relationship with Rachel; they were nowhere as close as in their false future, and they were unlikely to ever grow that close. 

The nature of what Khepri was made human connections rather difficult; she probably will be the only person to ever truly understand her. But Taylor's experience in working with her combined with her obvious power made Bitch unquestionably accept her as a leader.

Kowalski was writing something in his notebook, but he was clearly enjoying the drama.

“Exactly, just give me my super awesome superpower already!” 

“So, since we have patient consent, I believe it's time to begin the procedure.” Lisa stated, flourishing her staff.

Now came the fun part, she stimulated what was left of Coil's soul, making him suffer in a hundred simulated hells, and then created a link between him and Aisha's mind. 

Aisha fell to her knees screaming. They didn’t have to wait too long, after four seconds, every parahuman in the room, other than her and Khepri, lost consciousness. 

She could not understand the workings of the shards like Khepri did, but she did understand their general mechanics. And observing the birth of a new shard, even from her limited perspective, was still absolutely fascinating.

Aisha came to consciousness quickly and looked rather excited. One of the orders Khepri sent to the new shard was to remove all memories of her trigger. 

Aisha's new passenger was, similarly to her old power, focused on editing memory, but this time it not only removed memories of her existence. She could perceive any human within a few hundred meters radius, and her shard periodically scanned for anyone perceiving her at even greater distances.

Her power's primary function was still preventing people from noticing her, but she could also add other objects to that effect. If she targeted someone with the full effect of her power, she could remove all memories, leaving only the most instinctual functions.

This alone made her one of the scariest master/strangers on the planet. The only problem was that gifts of the gods could allow their wielders to lessen or be outright immune to most master effects. The good news was that if she concentrated on a limited number of targets, she could still affect all but the most powerful of their servants.   

“Whoe this is so fucking cool” Aisha marveled whilst moving her hand in front of Alec's face as he continued to completely ignore her. 

“Do not get overconfident, your new power still has its limits and may fail you in the worst moment.” Khepri chide in her usual monotone. 

“See, she is perfectly unharmed, you were a fool to doubt our genius,” Lisa said, smiling at Brian. 

“I still hate that you ignored me. She is my sister.”

“This is a discussion between you and her.” Lisa countered, still smiling. 

“We intend to change the powers of other Undersides by inducing second triggers in similar manner, but this shall be discussed and implemented later.”

“So you can potentially make an army of capes out of thin air?” Kowalski asked, visibly excited by the prospect. 

“This process is both relatively complex and resource-intensive on our shardself part, and using it too often may lead to complications. We do not plan to start inducing triggers on a mass scale merely to enhance certain key assets.”

Lisa was convinced that the primary reason why her goddess put so much effort in this specific case was the fact that even despite her change, Khepri still felt attachment to her old team. Lisa tried to encourage this as much as possible, human connection was the best way to preserve what was left of Taylor after her apotheosis. 

Still, even if Khepri shall change further away from humanity, she will always remain by her side. Knowledge that she had someone she could trust wholly and absolutely was the only thing that still allowed her to function. Tzeentch has already done a trick and a half on her psyche, and it was only the taste of what it will do to her when it gets its hands on her soul again. 

No bad thought. Bad thought, don’t think about the fact that impossibly intelligent eldritch entity wants to torture her specifically for eternity until her very self will be completely broken and then reconstruct it only to break it again and again and again, in hell thousands times worse than her fears could ever reflect.

Khepri took hold of her hand under the table. Fortunately, she maintained her composure well enough that no one else noticed her little panic attack.

“Now, let us move to the primary reason why this meeting was called in the first place. We need to begin the formation of a proper army; the Undersiders and Coils' former mercenaries shall be its first soldiers. You shall learn to work and fight together after we are done with this meeting; you shall immediately begin joint training. 

Dimitri shall be in overall operational command, you are to obey his orders. Brian, you are still the squad leader of the Undersiders. Now let us get to the equipment part.”

Another squadron of dragonflies brought a costume to the room.

“This shall be your new uniform.”

It resembled Skitter's old costume armor made of shells of specially modified beetles, still looked carapace-like, but the pouches for magazines, grenades, and other equipment gave it a far more military look.”

“It provides better protection than conventional ballistic vests, whilst being far lighter and granting greater freedom of movement.”

“It seems impressive, you conducted practical trials with it already?” Kowalski asked.

“Yes, it was able to stop a bullet fired from an M16 from penetrating in 70% of cases, but we are still working on improving both our weaving spiders and armored beetles, so you may expect future versions to have improved characteristics. It's also inflammable.” 

“Wait, does that mean we also have to wear uniforms now?” Alec asked. 

“Yes, we don’t want enemy snipers to know who our most important assets are at a glance. But we will provide customized uniforms for parahumans who would benefit from it. We will also expect you to learn how to use conventional military equipment.”

“Then why does Lisa get to wear a special costume? And why would I care about snipers? I can make myself invisible” Aisha whined. 

“Lisa's suit is customized for her specifically, and she will act as our most important agent.”

“So she’s special because she's your girlfriend, got it.”

“By wearing military equipment, we are potentially provoking our enemies to escalate beyond what's usual for unwritten rules.” Brian did not sound enthused by the idea. 

“You should forget everything you know about unwritten rules, our true enemy makes the slaughterhouse nine look like toddlers throwing a tantrum in comparison, there will be no quarter and no pulled punches. This will be war, and a very ugly one.” Lisa added, uncharacteristically serious. 

They took two more hours to get over the basics of organization and their new combat doctrine. Even after her primary body left with Lisa to organize the meeting with Heros, Khepri still oversaw the exercise with her swarm.

Chapter Text

Awakening 1.4

Colin

The incessant ringing of his phone was, distracting him from his work. He just needs to perform one more change on his prototype cortex implant, and it should be ready for final pre-installation tests. He may even be able to install it in the next 48 hours if all goes right. 

The main purpose of the implant was to serve as a connector between his brain and any further technology he shall install. So, having it fully functional would be an absolute priority before beginning proper upgrades to his body.

 He managed to convince Dragon to help him with designing it. She was nervous about the whole idea, but eventually agreed to help him after he threatened to go on with the procedure even if he had to do it alone.

“Colin, I think you should answer that one. Director Piggot seems rather insistent.” 

“Rather insistent?”

“Yes, rather insistent when you refused to answer it for the second time she told me to quote: get this asshole and tell him to come to PRT HQ right the fuck now, or I will go there myself and show his halberd down his ass as deep as I need to get his head out of it.” 

“Well then I guess with how much she is pissed off at me abut everything that happend lately I should not keep her waiting. Not that I can blame her, considering my team's recent track record.”

“You should not blame yourself about Hookwolf when you moved to respond, it was already too late.”

“Then we should have respond earlier or track the bastard down and finally kill him, the fact that we still are supposed to play nice with a mass murderer and try and bring him in alive is a fucking farce.” He spat, equipping his helmet. 

“I’m sure that after what he did, he will get a kill order soon enough.”

“Then, why doesn’t he have one already?!.... I’m sorry, I know you can do much more than I about this. I should not have lost my temper like that, it was unprofessional of me. I’d better get going or Piggot might actually kill me this time.”

*** 

Piggot, along with Vice Director Renick and Miss Militia, were already waiting for him inside the briefing room.

“I don’t think I even need to tell you that everything you are about to learn is to be considered strictly classified. So I have two pieces of bad news and one of potentially not terrible news.

We learned that Thomas Calvert was also a supervillain known as Coil as his side job.”

Calvert, as an independent contractor, was not directly part of PRT, but he still had access to a lot of classified info. Someone in his position secretly being a Villain and not getting detected was absolutely unacceptable. Even if their careers somehow survived Khepri and Hookwolf's rampage, this will mean posting to Smirugh containment zone at best and being outright fired or sent to prison at worst.      

“Even worse news is the fact that we only found out about it after I sent a squad to investigate his house after he failed to turn up for a meeting.

His head was wrapped up in a gift box, with photos and documents conclusively proving that he was Coil, and a letter from Tattletale inviting us for a meeting was also included in the package.

The only good thing abut this situation is the fact that this fuck up is way too big for Chief Director to ever admit publicly, so if Khepri and Tattletale agree to play ball, the whole thing will get swept up under the rug.”

This was an unfortunately accurate assessment of how the Protectorate tended to function, he was starting to question if becoming part of this organization was even a good choice in the first place. He looked around the room. Hannah looked between, disguised and hopelessly resigned, Renick just looked relieved 

“So we have official confirmation that they work together, do we have any idea what they want from us?”

“Not really, with how erratic Khepri seems, trying to predict her motives would be an extremely dangerous game.” 

“The letter said that, to quote: You should consider taking care of your little snake infestation as a favor on our part. We need to meet. There are a lot more secrets that need tattletaleing, and you're going to absolutely love most of them. 

To ease your fear, I shall come alone. You should consider the privacy of this meeting to be of paramount importance. 

I would prefer to speak solely to Piggot and Armsmaster, but will not mind if you keep back up at a comfortable distance, I trust that you know what the consequence of breaking faith would be.

 As for location, you can choose whatever you please as long as it is private enough, we shall have no trouble finding you, but the meeting is rather time-sensitive, so I would prefer not to be kept waiting.

In Her name, Lisa Wilbourn.”

“The text was invisible to any recording devices, and the letter spontaneously combusted three minutes and thirty-three seconds after being opened.”

“So Khepri seems to have another power that is also seemingly completely unrelated to any she has shown previously, just wonderful. I believe that unless Triumvirate magically becomes willing to intervene in the next few hours, we have no choice but to accept this invitation.” Armsmaster said at this point, more resigned than angry. 

“Using her real name in a letter to PRT seems like a very strange decision.” 

Miss Militia commented.

“From what we know about her, it probably was just a mind game. But at least from everything we know about their previous actions, it seems that they genuinely are planning to talk rather than set up an ambush.” He answered 

***

“I think we have the target. Blond girl in a hoodie and black jeans, with Alexandria backpack, she waved straight at us and then started heading directly in your direction.” Miss Militia reported. She was watching the meeting place from roof of a nearby building. Several other teams, including Dauntles, Velocity, Triumph Assault, and Battery, supported by dozens of PRT agents, were waiting hidden around them.

The meeting place itself was a coffee shop nearby PRT HQ, which they rented for the occasion. Since it was third in the morning, there wasn't much civilian traffic around. Tattletale approached the building in a light jog. She opened the front door, ignoring the closed sign. He instinctively reached for his halberd.

“Good morning, or good night, I guess. Honestly, it's hard to keep track of time with how busy I’ve been lately. So many things to do, starting new religions, planning world domination, I barely have time to sleep.” She said whilst making her way behind the counter.

“I’m going to make myself something to drink, caffeine is practically the only thing keeping me conscious right now. Any orders from you? Since you already paid for the place from government funds, it would be a shame not to make use of it.”

“I think you should be taking this situation more seriously, Tattletale.” He answered, glaring at her. 

“Ohh, I assure you Colin, I’m the only person here that has any idea of just how fucking serious this situation is, and I guarantee that after I’m done sharing that knowledge both of you will want to drink something far heavier than coffee.”

“I assume that this revelation is connected to this supposed great catastrophe Khepri tried to stop. What exactly is your relationship to her, and are you able to make promises in her name?” Emily asked tersely.

“What is my relationship with Khepri? That's a surprisingly complicated question, but you may think of me as her right hand; whatever promises I make in her name, she will honor.” 

She finished making three cups of coffee and made her way to one of the tables. 

So, to state the most important. I’m from the future. The first statement was a lie. 

Alexandria is actually the Chief Director Rebecka Costa-Brown in her civilian identity. Yes, I know how stupid that sounds, but I have proof.” She said, pulling a large stack of documents from her backpack. 

“She is also part of an evil interdimensional conspiracy, and so is the rest of the Triumvirate. The good thing is that they are planning to save the world; the bad thing is that they are so incompetent that we have no choice but to consider them a major threat.

 Scion is an alien that plans to destroy Earth, and both we and Alexandria’s Evil Conspiracy Incorporated are planning to destroy him, but unlike them, we have an actual working plan.

Powers in general are granted by interdimensional aliens. Both Fairy Queen and Khepri are the result of those aliens fusing with humans and becoming a single entity.  

There are also four other interdimensional entities unrelated to the power-granting kind. They call themselves the Gods of Chaos, and they also want to kill Scion and take this planet for themselves. Our objective is to stop them. Any questions?”She finished, still smiling at them. He was not sure how to react.

“Yes, there are quite a few questions. First, how do you know any of this and how will you prove it to us, second, what exactly do you plan to do about it, and third, what do you want from us?” Piggot asked, surprisingly composed and professional considering the caliber of revelations they had just heard. He just took another sip of his coffee. This was looking like a very long conversation indeed. 

*** 

“So, for now, you just want us to do nothing?” Piggot asked after Lisa's over-hour-long story about potential future timelines, alternative universes, galactic empires, and world-eating parasites ended. 

“More or less, just keep doing what you do now. PR events to convince your bosses and the public that everything is fine, our organizations will eventually be folded into one, but I expect the US government to start completely disintegrating by then. 

We need to create an army able to conquer emerging warlord states and reimpose order. What we need from you is for our work in this city to not be interfered with. You don’t need to concern yourself with the gangs, they shall either bow to Her or be exterminated.”  

“You seem quite sure we will be willing to support Khepri's takeover of the planet as its sole tyrant.”

“Your current masters are already tyrants, buying politicians and taking control of supposedly democratic institutions with no regard to law or will of the people. The mayor of Brockton Bay is working for them, and there are many others like him. 

Your choice is not between law and democracy and tyranny, but between a cabal of incompetent liars working from the shadows that are slowly bringing this planet to the edge of collapse through their stupidity and a single enlightened despot who has a clear plan to bring order and stability to this world. In other words, you don’t have a choice at all.”

“You know, the fact that you are usually right only makes people hate you more?” Piggot asked with detached fascination.

“I do not care if they love me, as long as they obey.” Lisa answers, waving her hand dismissively.

“So we are to just do nothing and focus on pretending everything is fine?” He asked, it felt rather insulting for their efforts to be considered irrelevant, but on the other hand, this should give him a lot of time to tinker. 

“Well, PRT in general will be focused on pretending that everything is fine. From you and Dragon, we shall require far more direct involvement. We will need to build a vast industry to equip our army, and we will need to do it on an unbelievably short timeline. Fortunately, thanks to Khepri and her ability to modify powers, a lot of traditional tinker limitations can be circumvented, but it will still require gargantuan effort.” 

The fact that Dragon was an artificial intelligence was one of the most impactful revelations from the girl's stories, but it changes surprisingly little in his opinion of his long term friend, especially since Lisa has explained that the way Dragon thinks and feels is almost indistinguishable from normal person when compared to something like Khepri. 

“And speaking of our friendly artificial intelligence, I think you are going to love the next part of our plans, because there is a false saint out there that urgently needs turning into a martyr, and I know how to locate him.”

The grin she gave him was filled with expectant bloodlust. She was right, he was excited about that part. 

Chapter Text

Awakening 1.5

Kowalski

“Holidays have come earlier this year, and our illustrious mistress decided to grant us a present. We get to kill Nazis and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the greatest pleasure in life one could hope for.” As Coils chief intelligence officer, he was usually the one to conduct pre-mission briefings, and he believed that such things should be performed with an appropriate amount of theatrics.

“This is our target, Brockton Bay Central Sports Arena, built in the seventies and abandoned five years ago due to budget cuts. Last week, it was taken over by Hookwolfs cell and became their main operation base. 

As for what opposition we can expect inside, Khepri informed us that he has 84 men under his command, so theoretically, we are going to attack a fortified position with the defender outnumbering us by over two to one.

The good news is that only a few of them have military training, and not all of them have firearms, with what guns they do have being mostly pistols. In heavy equipment, they have three grenade launchers and two machine guns, so we outgun them to a massive degree. 

As for the capes, we can expect Hookwolf himself, supported by Cricket and Stormtiger. You all should have what we know about them memorized already, so there is no sense in wasting time explaining their abilities in depth.

The plan is rather simple, Squads sword dagger and hammer supported by Bitch and Imp block the main entrance. Spear and mace supported by Grue block south emergence exist, and pike with saber supported by Regent block western one. Rapier will stay behind to guard the base.

After we surround the arena, we simply shoot anything that moves. Lisa seemed pretty certain that they will storm out to meet us because of the master effect caused by their new overlord. So we simply shoot them to pieces when they exit the building.

 All squads should maintain at least 50-meter perimeter from the arena. Fortunately, it stands in the middle of an empty plaza, so there isn’t anything they can use for cover.

Khepri will also support us with her swarm. If enemy decides not to charge us, we will simply wait until she overwhelms them. All squads will have at least two members equipped with RPGs with antiarmor warheads. If you see Hooky, blast him. 

If he attacks through the main door, we will set Bitches dogs on him to tie him up, then we shall blast him again until his dead.

If he tries to attack any other group, disperse and delay while Bitch and Khepri shall send reinforcements. When we kill most of the bastards, we go in to secure any hostages that still remain alive, and withdraw back to base. 

If any Nazis surrender, restrain them and also take them back to base. Lisa will sort out the potentially useful ones from the ones that will need liquidating. Any questions?” 

Dimitri, as their highest ranked officer, will stay in the base with squad rapier, so he was in command for this mission.

“Can I get an RPG?” 

“No Imp, you cannot get an RPG, you haven't been trained how to handle one yet.” 

“What are the chances that the rest of the Empire or the Heroes will intervene during the mission?” Asked spear squad leaders.

“Very low, Hokwolf was officially excommunicated by Kaiser after his recent stunt. The boss has a deal with PRT, and this is outside ABB territory. The only faction that could possibly intervene is New Wave, but Lisa also considers it extremely unlikely.” 

“Why doesn’t Khepri kill them herself?” Regent asked

“Above your pay grade.” 

“So if everything is clear, you have three more hours to rest, the mission begins at 22.30.” 

***

“Have you ever wondered what Humvee even stands for?”

They were rolling in an eight vehicle convoy across Brockton streets. Whatever traffic was still on the rode had the good sens to get the fuck out their way. 

“High mobility, something, something vehicle?”

 “I still think Coil should have bought a few Bradleys for extra firepower. With six 30 millimeter autocannons, we could take on Lung easy. “

“As much as I love 30mm canons, no, they could not take down Lung. Bastard can regenerate almost any damage. We could have blown him to bits with a fucking atom bomb, and he would probably just heal it after a few hours.”

The only reason why he didn’t take over the entire city already is because PRT spandex boys could probably muster some weird esoteric shit that could put him down. 

“And, do you have any idea of the kind of horrors APC tracks do with asphalt roads?” 

“We could just cover it in rubber.”

“That's what she said and guess what, few months later I was running to Africa to escape paying child support never trust fucking rubber, it always breaks in the worst moment.” Aisha cackled from her seat. The SVD marksmen rifle she was keeping between her legs was almost as tall as her. She was a surprisingly good shot for an amateur, but she will need far more training before her aim reaches a level he considers adequate. 

“Gentlemen, please have some decorum, we have a child with us.”

“You know what they say, old enough to kill old enough to.” “Brooks, if you finish that sentence, I will put a bullet through your skull. Since your skull is too thick, the bullet will not penetrate, and then I will have to beat you to death. 

The whole ordeal will be very long and unpleasant, and our Humvee may get dirty with the pieces of your broken corpse. Somebody then will have to clean it, please think of the cleaning crew, don’t make me kill you.”   

They rode in silence for a few more minutes, Imp compulsively rechecking her equipment but otherwise showing no overt signs of stress and behaving relatively professionally, at least compared to how she usually acted. 

He was a bit unsure about the inclusion of Undersiders in their order of battle. Everyone else here was a veteran with military training, and they were just a bunch of kids with superpowers, even if their leader, Grue, tried to appear like a professional. 

But Khepri and Lisa seemed to trust them, and both of them had a tendency to know far more than anyone else. So he intended to trust their judgment for now.

Cape support can be very useful, even with most US capes having overblown egos from everyone treating them with kid gloves due to unwritten rules. He doubted that idiots like Uber and Leet would last more than a few weeks anywhere else in the world.  

“Brooks, I’m sorry about calling you stupid. I know you were in the Marines. I should not make fun of the intellectually disabled.”

“You know, that is precisely why we are the best military force in the world. Every marine, when recruited, undergoes rigorous selection process. Those who cannot read are grunts. Those who can name the letters are promoted to NCO’s and those who can understand whole sentences are sent to officer school. 

Then comes the math test, anyone who can do more than addition and subtraction is sent to the Navy. Because of this, we are invincible, for we cannot understand the danger, and this makes us fearless in battle, and our strategies never make sense, so the enemy cannot predict them. Semper fidelis, Marines Hurrah!

“What the fuck dose Sfemper filedis mean?” Aisha asked.

“You see, that's a test. It is our motto, but anyone who knows what it means must be a foreign spy, that's why Marines are always loyal, and no foreign intelligence agency can infiltrate us.” 

“OK, ladies, buckle up because the party is about to get started.” He put on his night vision goggles.

When they reached the arena, their gunners immediately opened fire from top-mounted turrets. Tracer rounds illuminated the night. 

Some enemies tried to return fire, but they were hilariously outgunned. The situation became even worse for them when their vehicles came to a stop, and infantry jumped out.

Khepri’s swarm also descended upon them, blanketing the building in darkness but being maneuvered in a way that did not block their line of sight. This level of coordination was extremely impressive. 

He threw himself prone next to their Humvee. Aisha followed suit to his left. It appeared that despite Khepris warnings, her power was effective on those cultists because most of the enemy sentries seemingly forgot that they should return fire or even take cover.

Almost all of them were taken out in the first few minutes of the engagement. The fact that only one side could see anything thanks to night vision and thermals also didn’t help things.

“Hell yeah, my power is awesome!” 

As predicted, most Nazis tried to storm out through the front entrance with little regard to tactics and common sens.  His comrades fired in short, measured bursts, hitting them with deadly accuracy. 

And considering that one of the Humvies in their group had a rapid-fire grenade launcher atop, they had more than enough firepower to turn an attempted infantry charge into mincemeat, no matter how suicidally determined the opponent was.

Imp’s power could evidently also make some of them forget who their allies were, which led to a lot of friendly fire incidents on their end. 

Nazis only started to gain ground when Stormtiger finally came to support them. 

His aerokinesis was strong enough to throw bullets off targets and made grenade launchers all but useless.

“Hammer squad, laser Stormtiger!” 

It was not very good at stopping concentrated streams of photons, and using a thermal weapon designed to melt armor against bear flesh led to rather impressive results.

Idiot should at least where some clothing, who the fuck goes into battle bare chested in the 21st century and in winter at that? US capes were fucking weirdos. 

Finally, Hookwolfs already mostly transformed burst through the door, taking most of the frame with him.

“RPG’s fire on Wolfy” 

The first salvo managed to stagger him, but he quickly started to regenerate.

“Bitch, send in the dogs. Reload the RPG’s” 

Five giant, one-third canine, one-third lizard, one-third spawn of Satan, monsters rushed in Hookwolfs' direction. With the upgrades Khepri made to her power, Rachel could now give commands to her dogs without words, and partially shear their senses, they were also far harder to kill.”

“Imp, make him forget about us and focus on the dogs.” 

Since both parties could regenerate far better than they could damage the other, their fight turned into a stalemate. Exactly as planned.

“RPGs take aim, all lasers aim at Hookwolf, fire at my command. Bitch withdraw the dogs give us an opening.” He waited until they disengaged. “ Fire!”

Second salvo combined with lasers did even more damage, but the dammed bastard just kept regenerating. 

“Attack with the dogs, reload RPGs.” 

Well, they predicted it would take at least a few salvos to exhaust the reserves of metal he used to regenerate.

“Take aim!” “Opening!” “Fire!” “Attack!” 

Still, bastard kept regenerating. 

“Take aim!” “Opening!” “Fire!” “Attack!” 

Good thing they had a reserve of ammunition in the cars.

“Take aim!” “Opening!” “Fire!” “Attack!” 

OK, this is starting to get ridiculous. Why can’t the dammed mutt die already? RPG ammunition was not cheap, especially since they had to import it from overseas.

“Take aim!” “Opening!” “Fire!” “Attack!” 

Finally, the dammed beast seemingly could no longer regenerate, having to decrease its size to maintain mobility after two of its legs got blown off.

“Take aim!” “Opening!” “Fire!” “Attack!” 

Hookwolf was now reduced to a small pile of broken and melted metal, barely able to move. He waited a few minutes until the dogs completely tore apart their chew toy, which still tried to struggle fruitlessly. 

“Spear squad report.” “All clear on our end, sir.”

“Saber squad report.” “All clear on our end, too, and we killed Cricket, sir.”

“Gentlemen, we did it. We defeated Stainer's counterattack.”

“Fuck that was awesome, I love this job!” Imp exclaimed.

“Don’t get too relaxed just yet, we still need to clear the building and rescue any potential hostages.” He activated the radio again.  “Sword, Dagger, Spear, and Pike move to clear the building. Everyone else set up defensive perimeter.” 

The entrance to the arena was a scene of one of the worst massacres he had seen. He will have to clean his boots form Nazi salsa because the entire stairs were covered in pieces of them. 

Aisha started to look a bit queasy when witnessing their work up close. She will get used to it soon enough. Child soldiers became desensitized to such things even quicker than adults. 

They kept methodically clearing the corridors, despite Aisha's and Regent's power, claiming they were in the clear. One should always indulge in their paranoia if time and resources allow.

The insides of the arena had a haunted look to it, dilapidated and empty, with signs of old and recent vandalism. 

“There are no enemies left alive, 37 friendlies need rescue. They are in the locker rooms.” The swarm informed them. Khepri, of course, observed the entire confrontation from a distance. Earlier, when he asked her why she did not take command over this mission directly, she answered that her multitasking was unlimited but only for processes following set procedures. 

Things requiring creative thinking took far more of her attention. So she will still need officers to delegate her authority to, this was also the reason why neither she nor Lisa were with them, despite the fact that either of them could win this battle alone with ease.

They entered the first locker room. Inside was a teenage girl with messy black hair, clutching a bloodied machete in her right hand. Her left was hanging limply to her side. 

She was standing over a corpse in an empire colors, massacred to the point where one could not tell its gender. It was quite common for people to go rather overboard if their first kill was with a melee weapon. 

“Are you with Khepri?”

“Yes, we are with her, we came here to rescue people Hookwolf kidnapped.” 

Hearing that, she let go of her machete and fell to her knees.

“We need a medic, have one wounded civi.” He radioed. 

Chapter Text

Awakening 1.6

Khepri

We waited in Kaiser's penthouse, infiltrating it could be rather difficult task if not for the fact that computers, if not blessed by proper Mechanicus rituals, were very easy to interfere with using sorcery, so disabling even very advanced alarm systems was trivial for Lisa. Our best friend was currently looking out the window, trying to appear brooding and serious. 

“The liquidation of Hookwolf cell went exactly as planned. Enemy forces were exterminated in their totality. Charlotte also survived. You should convince her to join us, we could make use of her skill.”

“And you are totally sure that you want to recruit her because of how useful she is, and no other reasons factor into this decision?” Lisa asked with a teasing smile.

“She was one of Skitter's most important subordinates. We are sure she will serve us well, especially if you provide her with your direct tutelage.” 

“Sure, I could have her as personal apprentice for a time, but you don’t want her for a normal administrative position, your goals for her are grander than that. No, you need an enforcer of your will you can trust absolutely. You want to recreate the Imperial Inquisition.” 

“Yes, albite, in far more unified and functional form than what Malcador's agents became after he and Emperor were no longer able to guide them. I will need investigators reporting to you directly and granted unlimited authority to combat internal corruption. She will serve as one of the first members of this organization.”

“I don’t think she is necessarily the best choice for the role. She would be a far better fit for our conventional administration. She is far too empathetic for secret police.” 

“We chose her for this role precisely for this reason. We believe that kindness and compassion are the things that allow us to commit the atrocities necessary for survival without losing sight of what we are fighting for in the first place. We cannot allow the unpleasant means of achieving our goals to become the ends themselves.

We need to remember that all our deeds must be done in the service of mankind, not out of our desire for power and control. Otherwise, we shall become no better than the beasts we fight.” 

We know that it was in our nature to seek control over all that affected us. And it was the nature of the gods to take any desire to a level of obsessive madness. If we lost sight of what made us human, we would very quickly become the very concept of tyranny made manifest. Our realm would make the Imperium of Man look like a liberal utopia in comparison.

“You always were a hopeless Idealist. I love and hate that about you, always so willing to sacrifice yourself for the greater good. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who truly cares about your well-being.” She looked sad, so we hugged her. Physical contact was proven by both scientific studies and analysis by thinker shards to have a positive effect on human psychology. 

“We are aware that our continued survival is of paramount importance for execution of all of our strategic objectives, and are taking all feasible precautions to prevent our destruction.” She started to giggle uncontrollably in response.

“You are truly hopeless, Khepkhep. But I guess taking care of you shall be eternally my burden to bear.”

“Speaking of recruitment, I think I should give a few homeless shelters and soup kitchens I’ve been in my homeless days a visit. There are a lot of people there waiting for a new purpose in life, and that is something you can grant them.”

“You shall do so. We shall talk with Dimitri and Kowalski about reaching out to more mercenaries and offering them generous contracts for entering our service. Even if the majority of our armies shall be local recruits, we shall need veterans to train and command them.”

We waited in silence after that, well, neither of us was truly waiting. Even when our primary body was idle, we still conducted millions of simultaneous tasks. We dug tunnels and continued to breed our swarm.

The winter conditions were proving a problem in that regard, hence our construction of a vast network of underground tunnels and chambers to serve as warrens and hatcheries. We were also starting to import industrial quantities of animal feed to sustain our bugs. 

A lot of our strains had reached the limit of what was possible to achieve by simple crossbreeding and localized mutations. We needed to drastically redesign their biology if we wanted to create more specialized and advanced creatures. 

We were already starting work on improved breathing, metabolism, and far more efficient muscles.  We also started to conduct experiments on combining exoskeletons with internal skeletal structure to allow creation of far larger creatures.

But perhaps the most critical task we were conducting was work done in a different dimension entirely. We needed a weapon capable of destroying shards directly, and we were already starting to finalize its first concepts. 

Lisa was currently analyzing them and giving us feedback using telepathic communication, it was a far more efficient method for the volume of data required.

Still, she insisted we vocalize our thoughts and communicate using conventional human speech as much as possible in an effort to help maintain a more human perspective.

“Do you think we should become more fluffy?” 

“The workings of your mind remain an enigma even to a genius such as I.”

“We could add hair to our primary body, similar to tarantulas. We could make them completely transparent to not alter our appearance, but it would make us more fluffy and pleasant to touch. Do you want us to be more fluffy?” She looked at us with exasperated fondness and bopped our nose.

“Please never say things like this when someone can overhear. Nobody will be able to take you seriously ever again if they hear it.” That was neither a yes nor a no, Lisa could be so difficult to work with sometimes. 

“I do hope that His Imperial Majesty will not suddenly decide to sleep in his office or not sleep today at all and call an emergency Empire meeting. I know I ran the predictions myself, but that would only make him not showing up more embarrassing.” 

“He is already on his way; he should be here in less than thirty minutes.” 

Maximilian Anders

There were days when he absolutely hated his work. He single-handedly created one of the biggest corporate empires in America while having to simultaneously babysit a gang of racist idiots with superpowers. He was a man rightfully proud of his achievements. 

But sometimes he wanted nothing more than to defraud as much cash from Medhall as he could and disappear to some tropical island to enjoy a retirement of luxury, and this was most certainly one of those weeks.

It started with the Winslow incident. It was very tragic, and all that, of course, he expressed appropriate outrage and sorrow in a media interview, he even intended to come to the ceremony for the victims.

 But he didn’t think it concerned him, school shootings were a national tradition even before the advent of powers made events like those common worldwide. He expected whatever bastard caused it to get quickly captured and sent to the birdcage, no matter if they deserved it or not. 

But then Khepri had beaten the heroes with easy bordering on contempt, and to add to the insult, she left all of them hanging upside down in cocoons of spider silk, waiting for rescue. The most glorious thing about the situation was that some civilians who found the scene decided to publish the photos on social media. 

He had it saved as his wallpaper. 

But heroes getting publicly humiliated was, if anything, a very good thing for him. He started to worry only when the most problematic E88 members started disappearing without a trace. Then, on the same night, Khepri usurped Coil, and Brad decided to go off his rocker and start massacring civilians. 

The asshole didn’t even answer to his phone afterwords. He officially declared him and any who follow him no longer a member of the Empire and started intensive internal master stranger screenings just in case. 

He managed to get Purity back on board, even if convincing her to see reason took some rather radical methods, so they had the firepower to take him down if they had to, but he preferred to wait until either the Protectorate or Lung will take care of the problem for him. The situation was not catastrophic yet. 

Then, when leaving work, he learned that Hookwolf had been taken out by Coils' former mercs in a very bloody and brutal confrontation. The lack of knowledge of Khepri’s power or motives was unnerving. 

The real problem waited for him in front of the elevator exit leading to his apartment. 

Normally, he would consider a visit from two very pretty ladies to be a good thing, but they were rather young for his tastes and one of them was nearly three meter tall made of black crystal glowing with internal veins of golden light had four arms and butterfly wings also glowing gold in ever shifting patterns. Very pretty indeed, but not necessarily his taste in romantic partners.

Since they didn’t kill him already, they probably wanted to negotiate, which was a good thing. Or they intended to torture him to death and were just savoring the wait, but he chose to remain an optimist.

“Mister Anders, I’m terribly sorry for the intrusion, but my mistress has rather important matters to discuss, and she is not used to waiting or rejection, or would you prefer to be referred to as Herr Kaiser?” The girl in purple gave him a mocking bow.

“I always found this whole costume business to be rather silly, mister Andres will suffice. But I’m afraid you have an advantage over me in that regard, miss?”  

“Lisa, Lisa Wilbourn, as for the cape name I used to go by as Tattletale, but I think a title with more gravitas will be required to better reflect my new role. Herald, perhaps?” 

“You title yourself an emperor, yet you do not reign over more than a part of a single city. I suppose you took this name as a sign of grander aspiration, Mister Anders?” The tone was emotionless and cold, yet still strangely melodic and beautiful, he could not tell if she was mocking or sincere in her question.

“I’m afraid I did not put that deep thought into the significance of my name when choosing it. I suppose you choosing the name of the god of the sun and rebirth has a deeper meaning?” Naming yourself after a god was usually seen as in bad taste, so he was curious about the choice.

“It is not a name we have chosen, but rather one that we were given by others. But we are not a goddess of sun and rebirth, unity and control are our domain.” So she actually believed she was a goddess, great, he had to negotiate with an insane person. Fucking fantastic.

Lisa started laughing. 

“Ohh my poor friend, she is not insane, quite the opposite in fact, she simply knows far more than you could ever imagine, so let me grant you a tiny fraction of this terrible enlightenment.”

***  

HP Lovecraft once wrote that the most merciful thing in the world, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

He now agreed with this assessment wholeheartedly, he was a far happier man remaining in ignorance. 

“So what will you require of me and my Empire, your majesty?”  He was a prideful man, but he was not stupid. He could not oppose her. If she were to be believed, nothing on Earth Bet including Endbringers, could. So better to be allies with the future overlord of the planet than die in a fight he could not win. 

Which was very ironic statement form Neo-Nazi gang leader, but he felt only contempt to people who worshiped German national socialism even a century after Hitlers ignominious downfall. 

“From Empire, I will need the same things as from PRT, not to interfere in our work. They shall be brought into our organization at a later date, but I don’t want to pollute its foundations with nationalistic ideology. Our ambitions are to unite all mankind, we cannot afford petty chauvinism. 

As for Medhall, your resources will help with our industrial projects, as will you personally. The shard granting you power is meant for large-scale resource extraction, construction, and terraforming. 

When we remove its limitations, you shall be able to greatly help with construction work, making projects that would normally take decades or centuries to complete possible in a matter of months. 

You shall also provide our industry with the raw resources needed. Your shard's output in that regard is not unlimited. The alternative version of Earth it is located on will be strip mined eventually, but we will not need to worry about it for millennia. The immediate problem will be the limit of material it can transport per day. 

We shall not be able to generate more than a few hundred tons with consistency, even if in the first days we will be able to achieve far higher output by tapping into its reserves of energy. 

We shall now leave you to break the news of our arrangement to your organization. You will receive new orders in a matter of days. We have many other matters to attend to.”

He was already starting to create a list of potential problematic elements within the Empire that may need removal in his head. This will be a very busy week. 

He made his way towards his liquor cabinet, there was a bottle of fine Colombian rum that should help take his mind off genocidal alien gods and other such unpleasantness. He wondered if he should give Jessica and Nessa a call. 

He could give them a briefing on his plans and ensure their support when presenting the plan to the rest of the Empire, and whilst at it, they could engage in other more pleasurable activities. 

Chapter Text

Awakening 1.7

Lisa 

She did not like the plan for this operation at all, even though she was the one to design and implement it. Killing Dragonslayers and retrieving all technology they stole from Richter was an absolute priority. Saint was a fool who had already made a deal with the devil once and still believed himself uncorrupted. He would do so again if given the opportunity, with a far more catastrophic outcome.

So she had to get over her discomfort over not being watched by Khepri for a few hours. She can do it. She is a well-adjusted and entirely sane person, not a completely broken mess constantly on the verge of a panic attack because of.           Bad thoughts, bad thoughts. Khepri usually hugged her when she had bad thoughts. 

Khepri was pretty. Her crystalline carapace, always so smooth and pleasantly cool, in a few hours she will go to sleep with Khepri gently hugging her. She just has to be a big girl for a few hours and kill some idiots. All will be fine, she will be with her again soon. 

She, Armsmaster, and the rest of the Undersiders were sitting inside the dragoncraft flying dangerously low over the surface of the Atlantic, rapidly approaching the coast of Venezuela. 

This particular machine was loaned by Colin under the pretext of Brockton protectorate desperately requiring independent aerial transport on their own.

 He also claimed that they needed it to be able to operate even under heavy EM warfare conditions, so it had to have all its remote control systems removed. 

Armsmaster himself was sitting right next to her in the cockpit. Despite the fact that he had not started to drastically alter his body with cybernetic augmentation yet, his cortex implant allowed him to add several mechadendrites and additional weapons to his power armor, drastically improving both his combat capabilities and the speed of his tinkering. 

  “Are you absolutely certain that we will neutralize Saint before he activates the kill switch?”

“Yes, I run the prediction myself, provided we follow the plan, the chances of something going wrong are nearly zero. Stop worrying and try thinking about something fun, like optimizing high-energy focusing lenses production lines, or

 ways to improve the automated welding system for predator tracks production.”

Yes, she used her powers to discover what the last thing Colin was working on before the flight was; being psychic is awesome.

“The automated welding system for predator tracks is already optimized to a degree where any significant alterations to it would require increasing the cost and time of setting up a production line far past the point acceptable for our timetable. So there's nothing to do for me on that front.

Machinery for creating focusing lenses for the Predator Annihilator lascannons, on the other hand, requires highly trained operators. And we do not have time for such training, even if we try to automate as much as we can with Dragon's help, we will still require a lot of human involvement. 

I think it might be better if we substitute the lascanon with a marginally less powerful pattern, but one that is easier to produce. I hadn't had much time to go over most of the design documents Khepri transferred to my shard yet, so there might be significant potential problems with other parts of the supply chain we will find out about later.”

Finding out how exactly his power worked was an absolutely fascinating discovery for him, and he spent hours with her and Khepri discussing the specifics of how it archived existing and helped him design new schematics. 

The fact that Khepri was able to remove most of its limitations and provide many new designs for him from the copies of STC’s traded to them by the four was the thing that finally and absolutely sealed his loyalty to her. 

He has thrown himself into his new responsibilities with frantic favor to the point where his work-life balance looked even worse than hers, a fit only possible by almost complete elimination of the need for sleep, allowing him to work 22 hours per day compared to her 16. Speaking of which.

“Do you think you could create a temporary time distortion zone to increase the effective time we can spend and administrative tasks?”

“Theoretically possible, but it would be highly energy-intensive and a very complex task. I don’t even know how to begin planning a line of communications between the inside and outside of the anomaly. It will not be viable technology without years of further development.”

“Shame, a forty-eight-hour day would make my life far easier.” 

The sheer ungodly amount of paperwork included in consolidating and expanding their empire was terrifying. Fortunately, Khepri herself could take care of most of the administrative work, sending her only the most important cases she wanted a second opinion on. 

This still managed to end up being close to hundreds of pages per average day. The various upgrades Khepri kept making to her mind and body made her an unnaturally fast reader, but combined with all the other critical work she was involved in, the burden of administration was very much felt. 

Who would have expected that creating an army capable of conquering a planet on a timeline spanning 100 days would be a difficult task? Fortunately, at least Saint proved rather easy to find, she just had to discreetly gain access to Dragon's main server and then sort through all outgoing signal data to pick the right one and trace its location. It took less than twelve hours of work overall. 

Dragonslayers were, as it turned out, currently operating out of Venezuela, finding a temporary base in a rented hacienda near the coast. They needed a place where they were sure no one would bother them, to try to reverse engineer the latest dragon armor they captured, or do something equally stupid and pointless. Not like it mattered too much, all of them will be dead in less than an hour anyway. 

The rest of the Undersiders were in the passenger cabin, trying not to get bored to death. 

“This is your captain speaking. We will be landing in a few minutes, so recheck your equipment. I hope you enjoyed your experience and will leave us a positive review. Otherwise, good luck getting back to Brockton on foot.” Colin’s delivery was almost as deadpan as Khepkhep usually was. Having most of his assumptions about reality shattered in a single day really did bring out his inner comedian.

Everyone has a different way of dealing with the horror of existence, she supposed. His method certainly seemed far healthier than hers.  

They landed nearly three kilometers away from their target to maintain the elements of surprise with their approach. She used the staff of false hydra to run her prognostics again, now that the time frame was only a few hours long.

“All variables were accounted for, we can proceed with plan A.” 

She would prefer to have far larger forces for that part. Khepri's swarm made her far too used to vast numerical superiority in her planning, but their advantage was great enough for it not to matter. 

Bitch Regent and Grue stayed outside to make sure no one would get out. She and Armaster entered by the front door. He simultaneously fired both the plasma cannon and Hellgun mounted to his armor with merciless mechanical precision. She shaped telekinetic power in deadly blades, tearing her enemies to pieces with invisible spears. Most of them didn’t even have time to realize they were under attack before they died. 

Perhaps they did not have to use this level of lethal force, but any witnesses able to attest to the fact that Dragon was artificial intelligence were inconvenient, so Dragonslayers were exterminated to the last.

Saint was the only one left alive, at least for now. She sent Aisha to infiltrate the compound before the attack and prevent anyone from activating the killswitch. There were three other people in the room with him. Imp sleet their throats and disarmed Saint, taking him hostage. 

She was currently standing behind his kneeling form, twirling her knife and whistling innocently. Lisa presented her captive with one of her kindest smiles. It was important to make a good first impression, especially if it was also going to be a last impression.  

“Welcome, would you like to hear about our lady and savior, Khepri?”

“Who are you? What do you want!?” He screamed at her.

“Nothing much, just tell us about everyone that knows Dragon is an AI and all you know about the tech you have stolen from her creator.”

“Why would I tell you anything, you monsters?”    

 “Let me show you.” She gently took his head into her hand and paralyzed his body. She hated people screaming, it was very bad for her headaches, and if others knew what exactly she was about to do, they would be very uncomfortable with the idea. 

She reached out into his mind and used Coil's shard to place him in hundreds of simultaneous hells, constantly tweaking each of them for optimal psychological impact. He was broken in less than five minutes. Most of the information he will provide, she already acquired through Coil's power, but she needed to double-check if something critical was missed. Dragon was too important for their plans to take risks. 

The things we do love, well, she knew she was never a good person, no matter how much Khepri would protest that statement. She was a selfish child who let her brother die, and when she finally found another person who could truly love her despite how ugly and twisted she was inside, she again was not strong enough to save her. She will not make that mistake thrice, she will keep Khepri safe, no matter how far she will need to go to achieve it. 

He started speaking in a dead voice, automatically answering whatever questions Colin asked him. After 40 minutes, the interrogation was complete. Both Aisha and Colin were uncomfortable with executing a prisoner, so she personally ended him by severing his spinal cord with a surgical twist of her power.

Armsmaster, with the help of Rachel’s dogs, moved Richter's equipment to the Dragoncraft. She levitated herself far above the compound and unleashed her power. The several meters high infernal firestorm of fluorescent green matched the glow of her eyes.

The entire place was turned to ash and lava. There will be no loose ends left for potential investigators. 

Bringing to bear such destructive might was viscerally satisfying, even if it made her headache much worse. She stilled herself with biomancy, stopping the trembling caused by nonexistent cold. She was Khepri’s herald; she could not show weakness.

Khepri, as always, will be waiting for her at home, with some new dish she had no idea had even existed before and that will instantly become one of her new favorites, for dinner, and then she will chide her for overtaxing herself and help her shower and then take her to bed whilst gently running her fingers through her hair. Lisa was not worthy of her. No one was truly worthy of her, but if Khepri still loved her despite that, she will do anything in her power to be worthy of that love.

   Charlotte 

She always knew that being Jewish in Americas’s Neo-Nazi capital was dangerous. There were sporadic incidents at school, but thankfully, she was mostly left alone. She made sure to never bring too much attention to herself. 

That's why she didn’t tell anyone when they shoved Taylor into that locker. That's why everyone died. She was in the class when the swarm came. It was only a few insects at first, biting and stinging, but soon more came. 

They were going for the eyes, burrowing in noses and throats, choking agonized screams of her classmates. But they left her alone, she was one of the few survivors that the swarm decided to spare. 

She kept asking herself why. She suspected that Taylor was the one to trigger she never did anything to the girl, just stood by and watched, but many other bystanders did not escape her wrath.

She spent her time in her room alone, not talking with her family or anyone else, really desperately searching through discussion threads on PHO for any sightings of Khepri or what she might be doing. She felt responsible, maybe if she reacted, if she did something, told someone, Taylor would not snap, and all those people would still be alive. 

Then Hookwolf and his men came. They went door to door, killing the very old and the very young. They speared some of the teenagers and adults and herded them into their vehicles. She watched the massacred bodies of her parents as they dragged her out of her room. 

She did not scream or cry or even try to struggle at all, just watched in silence as her home burned. They brought them to the arena, and Hookwolf in his grinding metallic voice proclaimed how they are weak and pathetic and how only by spilling of blood can they cleanse themselves of this weakness and be reborn anew.

And so she watched her fellow prisoners be herded into the arena, thrown weapons, and made to kill each other. The winners were offered to join the gang; more than half of them took the offer, becoming part of the bloodthirsty crowd cheering the next murders on. 

She was not afraid by that point, not truly, she just felt cold numbness, a hopeless acceptance of her fate. She will die, and there is nothing she can do about it. And so she pressed herself in the corner of her improvised prison. 

Her torn and dirty pajamas provided very little confront against the cold, but she doubted that her captors would care very much for her complaining. She fruitlessly tried falling asleep to make this agony shorter, and tried not to think about the dying screams of her family or how their broken and mangled corpses looked. 

 Then the shooting started, and the swarm came again. But this time it spoke, it chewed through her bindings and told her they came to save her. 

One of Hookwolf’s cultists burst into the room, the swarm attacked him. They seemed at least partially prepared for Khepri, for his outfit fully covered his head and body. 

She threw herself at him, he was far stronger and a better fighter, but she managed to somehow wrestle away his weapon, and then she started cutting one desperate strike after another until he stopped moving and making any sounds. 

Then the mercenaries found her, she probably lost consciousness because she did not remember how she got to Khepri's base. She woke up in a hospital bed and saw her savior for the first time since her ascension.

A naturally tall figure of living crystal. She spoke in her cold, melodic monotone, she could not understand most of what she was talking about, taking her explanations for insane ramblings. But she took comfort in the fact that this strange monster didn’t seem to mean her harm. 

She ate a bit and then went back to sleep. The next day, she met Lisa for the first time. The girl seemed very warm and friendly, she managed to put most of her worries about Khepri and her new situation to rest. She even hugged her and let her cry into her shoulder. 

She later explained all the careful manipulation tactics she used in their second meeting, offering her a place as her assistant. She, of course, agreed, when working with Lisa and Khepri, she quickly learned neither of them makes requests the other party would be willing or able to refuse. 

And this brought her here making phone calls to one of the richest people in the country who also was a secretly a Neo-Nazi gang leader abut conducting internal purges in his organization. The fact that she was trusted with tasks of such importance after working for them only a week made her rather nervous, but Lisa was currently busy taking care of Dragonslayers, and she decided she could partially fill her role for a few hours. 

The thing she will be working on next is compiling all blackmail files Lisa and Khepri managed to gather on BlackRock board members. She probably already was one of the most important people in the world, and her power and responsibility will only grow in the coming years. 

She did not feel qualified, but both Lisa and Khepri seemed to believe she will learn how to fulfill her new responsibilities quickly enough, and the best way to learn is by doing, combined with watching expert work up close, so she became Lisa's personal apprentice. 

The girl seemed to really enjoy the opportunity to show off her genius by mentoring someone else, and having several high level thinker powers on top of being a psychic made her an excellent teacher despite her arrogance. 

She sent the files to Khepri directly and received a reply within less than forty seconds. There were several rooms in their base entirely filled with few hundred computers operated concurrently by specialized bugs, allowing Khepri to facilitate effective coordination between her servants. 

Maintaining order and cohesion despite conducting multiple simulations, operations, most of which would be considered insane both in their scope, complexity, and speed by even the most elite and well-functioning organizations. And she was achieving this with people that often had no experience working with each other, yet and entities theoretically having no official ties or even knowing about each other's existence or purpose.

The temporary prosthesis Armsmaster made for her left arm was not perfect, but it allowed her to type well enough for now. Khepri already promised that when they recruited Dragon, providing her with more advanced cybernetic implants would be one of their top priorities. She insisted on improving both her body and granting her perfect memory and far faster information processing capability.

Perhaps someone replacing parts of her flesh and messing with her brain should make her worried, but she was quickly becoming used to this insanity. After the horrors she had already survived, a bit of highly experimental surgery did not seem a daunting prospect. 

Khepri was the most intelligent and powerful creature on the planet, and this assessment apparently also included endbringers and Scion. This being, which by most standards could be classified as a god, believed in her and her abilities.

If her work could help save billions from suffering as she had, she could not shrink from her duty. She has to do all in her power to help save humanity. Even if being a hero was difficult and tiring. 

And so she finished her fifth cup of coffee today, releasing with disappointment that it had grown cold at least half an hour ago, and got back to paperwork. 

Chapter Text

Awakening 1.8

Khepri

Our primary hive under Brockton was an ever-expanding labyrinth of interlocking corridors. Thanks to one of our experiments, we managed to combine compressed insect carapaces with wax and silk from several specialized species to create plates of a very durable material that was also easy to mass-produce.

This proved to be a vast boon to our construction efforts, allowing us to line the walls of our tunnels with this carapace plate. The upper layers of the hive were connected to many properties owned by various organizations under our control, allowing our servants to move uninterrupted and unnoticed. 

Humans rarely ventured into the deeper corridors, where the walls were lined with mushrooms we grew to feed our swarm. Despite that, with the amount of creatures we were breeding, we still needed to import hundreds of tons of animal feed to grow simple creatures, which were then devoured by more advanced strains that required a more efficient metabolism.

We created dozens of warrens where hundreds of thousands of species were bred and experimented upon every single hour. We developed massive burrowing worms that could chew through rock and concrete with ease to help in digging tunnels. We also made several meter-long transport centipedes to act as an organic equivalent of trains. 

We created many specialized species of fireflies for illumination and even communication. We were still working on smaller bugs with improved hearing or sight for the purpose of surveillance and espionage.

Armsmater and Dragon have already started working on cerebral implants combined with specialized insects, allowing us to interact with advanced technology directly.

Colin had many ideas about using it to allow us to control war machines directly, but we advised him to focus on more immediately necessary projects for now.

Even deeper than the warrens deep under the underground water reservoir, Brockton was built over was the central nexus where the most complex and critical elements of our work were located.

Here in a gigantic hollow chamber, we brought part of our shardslef into this dimension. The walls and nearby corridors were lined with crystalline matter of hundreds specialized organs with a myriad of different functions. All of them ultimately served one overarching purpose: experimentation and gathering of knowledge.

Here, we conducted experiments on creating relay creatures for our swarm, allowing us to better control our insects. The work was progressing slowly. We couldn't just replicate what Panacea did because her solution still relied directly on systems of our shardself and its reserve of energy. 

This inefficiency may potentially be tolerable as long as fighting was contained to Earth Bet. Still, we shall need to bring our swarm to the stars sooner rather than later if we want to have any hope of defeating the Ruinus Powers and saving humanity from the myriad other threats that want our destruction or enslavement. 

Yet still, this work was merely an afterthought compared to the primary purpose of this part of ourselves. The construction of a weapon capable of destroying shards directly. A weapon to kill our progenitor and usurp his power. 

We have already devised the primary mechanism the weapon shall use. It took a great deal of deliberation and planning, with significant help from Lisa and Negotiator in several critical elements of the project. 

The design, when finally constructed, shall be able to destroy the Warrior with almost absolute certainty of success, but it also possessed one rather critical drawback. When finally activated and turned against the center of the Warrior network, it will bathe not only Earth Bet but also any other worlds with parahuman presence on them in immaterial energies, allowing the gods to begin a demonic invasion that will make Abaddon's regular excursions to Cadia look like an insignificant skirmish in comparison. 

And so we need to conquer Earth Bet and as many other earths as possible and create armies and fortification able to resist this assault before either Zion finally realized the gravity of a threat we posed to his existence and force our hand, or the false gods and their servants will be able to develop such weapon on their own. This necessity was the primary driving purpose behind all our actions. 

“A million for your thoughts?” 

Lias was also here with our primary body, currently lying on the crystalline floor, her face illuminated by its golden glow. She was always pretty, even at her worst, but now we found her visage to be a thing of almost divine beauty.

“We are thinking about a lot of things at the same time, Lisa. You know very well that to enumerate and describe them all would take days.”

“I know, but I still love listening to you bragging about how smart you are compared to us mortals. Old Taylor would never, it's like you morphed from little human larva to beautiful eldritch interdimensional butterfly, and it's adorable.” 

“We are not bragging, this is merely an accurate description of how our cognition functions. You also are the only person to ever consider us cute.”

She started to run her fingers through our hair; we found the gesture pleasant and soothing. Despite, or perhaps because of, how different our perception was from normal humans, we still considered those little gestures of humanity to be precious.  

“Nah, Char totally thinks you are cute, she will just never admit it out loud. And when I describe how my cognitive capabilities are superior to the rest of the human race, everyone else calls it bragging.” She might have a point there. 

“I always have a point, and those points are always right, Khepkhep. You should have learned it by now.”

“Bank, Panacea” 

“First of all, rude, second of all, this was merely a move in my four D chess against Smirugh and part of my brilliant master plan.”

“Careful, you start to sound like a Cauldron member.” She pouted in mock offense.

“How could you hurt me so, and I considered you my best friend, comparing me to Cauldron, that's it. I’m no longer your most devoted worshiper. I'm switching my allegiance to Gork and Mork. I shall paint myself green and start smashing things with a baseball bat.” 

“But who will cook your dinner then?”

“Ok fine, you win. In my infinite magnanimity, I might consider forgiving you for this unforgivable offense if your apology is convincing enough. And you give me a foot massage.”

“I’m very sorry for reminding you of the inconvenient truth, oh my high priestess. But I was merely starving to imitate your noble example after all, don’t you always say it's important to reveal hard truths to others even if they don’t want to hear them?” 

We asked her, looking at her pleadingly, how could she blame us for trying to imitate someone who practically was our mentor in the early days of our career. 

“You are truly an idiosyncratic aberration.”

“But you still love us?”

“Yes, Khepkhep, I still love you despite how horrible you are to me. You are a very charismatic cult leader, and I'm sure you soon could have a whole harem of girls hopelessly devoted to you if not for the fact that I'm very greedy and will kill anyone else who tries to touch you.” She wrapped our primary body in her hands possessively.

“Some may consider this level of attachment to be unhealthy.”

“My precious, mine, all mine and only mine, I will not share. Mine and mine alone. Forever mine.”She started to mumble. 

This was perhaps the closest we could possibly get to her physically, since the whole of her was encased in the body of our shard self. Hear, nothing could hurt her, and nothing would take her away from us. We found the feeling to be comforting, and we were certain she found comfort in it too.

“Yes, Khepkhep, I also love being inside you. You are so tight and warm.” She gave us an insufferably smug smile. 

We laid like that for nearly half an hour more, discussing various issues of running our empire. The export of silk was starting to bring quite impressive profits. Lisa set up a few shell companies, and we became the primary provider for the American Luxury clothing market almost overnight. 

Our products also started to be exported all over the world. Considering that producing normal silk was nearly free for us, the profit margins of this operation were reaching almost 80%, bringing in millions of dollars after just two weeks of work. 

Lisa, we need to get up. The council is about to begin. 

She only tightened her stranglehold on us.

“Nuh uh no work, only cuddles.”

“Lisa, this is important.”

“No, not important, I’m good here.” 

“The fate of humanity is at stake.”

“Don’t care, let them die, didn't like them anyway.” 

“Lisa, we are part of humanity. If we die, there will be no more cuddles. Its delayed 

gratification, something most teenagers should be capable of.”

“I can still speak whilst hugging you.” 

“Lisa, we need to project appropriate gravitas, you said so yourself.” 

“The strategic considerations have since changed drastically and been reevaluated.”

The whole reason we chose this place for the first council involving all our most important servants was because of presentation and psychological impact. 

Power was as much a game of appearances and beliefs as it was about raw strength. We needed to appear omnipotent to both our servants and our enemies. 

And so they shall come here through long and winding corridors lightened only by fireflies under our control, filled with our swarm remaining hidden barely out of sight, to the place being the very center of our power. As a wise man once said, a man who has to say I’m a king is no king at all. 

Our power must be blindingly obvious to anyone who looks. Our orders must seem like immutable decrees binding reality itself, for in politics, people's perception of things is the reality. And this also extends to the nature of immaterium itself. As long as our power appears absolute, it shall be absolute.

And so our action and appearance had to be carefully curated to create and maintain the image of perfect control. Even the greatest rulers of ages past had their faults and weaknesses, little things that made them seem more human and approachable. But we were no longer human, not truly, and we could no longer afford such luxuries. 

And Lisa, as our herald and the most exalted amongst our servants, also had an image to maintain, and despite her playfulness when we were alone, she knew that fact as well as we. 

So she reluctantly let go of us and started to fix her makeup and clothing to appear as immaculate as always, even its apparent imperfections merely a carefully curated mask. 

We reconfigured our throne room before their arrival, creating a conference table and chairs out of living crystal. Our primary body shall not be present here directly; we usually communicate with our servants by forming our swarm clones to emphasize the feeling of our omnipresence.

Colin and Dragon were the first to enter the room. He was wearing his armor and hiding the extensive modifications he had made to his body underneath it. Dragon choose to come in one of more humanoid Dragon armor models. 

Charlotte followed after them, wearing the new uniform we designed for officers of our internal security forces and foregoing any escort. 

Next came Piggot, escorted by five PRT troopers she personally trusted the most, and who had already been introduced into our conspiracy. Max Anders chose to come in a business suit rather than his cape costume, but he was escorted by Fenja and Menja clad in their armors. 

Dimitri came in last, also clad in a custom officer uniform we designed for our army. He chose to have his command squad accompany him. He was by far the oldest man in the room, being over fifty and earning a rank of captain in WDW before the USSR’s dissolution. He took part in dozens of wars and smaller conflicts since then. This experience was invaluable for mustering our army and developing its doctrine.

For all our intelligence and knowledge, both we and Lisa had less than three years of command experience, and those were mainly in small scale skirmishes with teams of capes, not leading or organizing conventional military forces.

 We made their escorts stay outside the room. The informational security of our operations was of paramount importance, and limiting the number of people with knowledge of a secret to an absolute minimum was the very basis of opsec. 

When everyone was seated, we allowed Lisa to begin the proceedings.

“As you already know, the purpose of this meeting is to coordinate our efforts towards saving humanity from all the threats that would threaten its existence. The first step on the long road to achieving this goal is global domination over Earth Bet. 

Now let us discuss how to achieve that goal and lead mankind to a brighter future under Khepris' leadership in spite of the myriad of threats that would desire our downfall.”

 “Well, certainly nobody can accuse you of a lack of ambition. But with Lung deciding to leave the city, taking most of his gang with him rather than becoming a member of this august body, we have taken control of Brockton in less than three weeks and barely having to fire a single shot.” Kaiser seemed quick to claim the achievement of our organization as his own.

The fact that Lung proved unreceptive to our offers of cooperation was rather disappointing. Lisa predicted that trying to confront him directly would almost certainly lead to violence and a level of collateral damage highly dangerous to our plans at this stage.

So we simply convinced him that trying to fight us directly is not worth the risk and allowed him to reallocate to Boston, selling most of his assets and taking his money and most loyal followers with him. 

“I do expect the lizardman to be a problem in the future, but he is out of the picture for now, which allows us to focus on more important things,” Lisa commented whilst playing with her pen. This casual irreverence was part of a facade as meticulously crafted as our imperious composer.

“So far, our efforts to restore order in former ABB territory proceed according to schedule. We removed most problematic criminal elements and started to regulate the drug trade more heavily. The merchants also decided to follow Lung out of town after we explained our position on interference in affairs of this city to them.”  Charlotte reported. 

The security force we started to create under her leadership was growing rapidly, its core was made up of those of Coils mercenaries with policing or special forces training, and we started supplementing it with the elements of local police. 

One of the benefits of directly or indirectly owning every crooked cop in the city is that it gave us a list of those with spines resilient enough not to take bribes and keep to their principles despite the pressure. And we need men with strong will and convictions for our security apparatus. 

“We also disbanded the broodwalk enforcers and conscripted most of their members into our armies. The crime level is falling rapidly across the whole city, and we predict it will reach close to zero by the end of the month.” 

Lisa was particularly excited about delivering them the ultimatum. She even executed one of them for plotting treason against us combined with various past offenses including rape and murder several teenagers. Since the gangs practically ran the police, and PRT was busy taking care of parahuman crime, nobody was interested in investigating several homeless teens going missing with too much vigor.

Considering how this must have affected her personally, we did not begrudge her the extreme method of execution. Being consumed by warpfire whilst being kept alive for nearly an hour by having his body regenerated with biomancy was a very excruciating end. This theater of calculated cruelty had an excellent effect on the morale of both our recruits and citizens alike. 

The easy with which Lisa seemed to use torture as her preferd tool was worrying. We knew that her actions were always underpinned by cold strategic calculation, so natural to our minds, but we also knew very well how easily even good people could turn into monsters in the right circumstances. Still even if what we demand of her changes her irrevocably, we will still love her no matter what. 

“The surveillance of primary targets continues. We have seen no signs of active corruption yet. Amelia have contacted Shadow Stalker and is probably planning to use her as a disposable pawn against us. As for Daniel Herber, he has returned to active work and has started to escalate his rhetoric against Khepri.”

We did not like to think about our father. We know that he considered what our ascension changed us into a monster that has killed and replaced his daughter. Perhaps the most tragic thing about this situation was that he wasn’t entirely wrong. 

“For the record, I still very much don’t like the fact that we give a mentally unstable teenager with a connection to an interdimensional evil god in her head. It's the biggest security hazard I have seen in my careara and when shit inevitably hits the fan I restrict the right to say I fucking told you so you.”

“Your objection is noted, Director, yet we still cannot take direct action to eliminate Panacea without risking catastrophic retaliation from our enemies.” Piggot didn’t look very happy with that fact, but she was a soldier and knew not to question direct orders. 

“As for our superiors, I suspect that your Herald has a far better idea of what they actually think and plan.”

“All quiet on the Cauldron front so far. They almost certainly consider us a threat, but are unlikely to act against us openly since they still hope we will be an asset in the fight against Zion. They may know something about the existence of the gods, depending on what Clairvoyant managed to glean from observing Khepri's ascension. Still, I doubt they have any idea about the nature and magnitude of the threat they pose.”  

We did expect them to become a problem eventually. Fortunately, we always had the option of targeting their shards directly, as they are not part of the Warrior network. 

“Our recruitment efforts managed to exceed expectations. We have already signed nearly a hundred contracts with various mercenaries from all over the world. It cut rather deep into our liquid assets reserves. 

Efforts to recruit locals also proved highly successful; we managed to convince almost two hundred people to join, primarily teenagers and young adults.”

In this, the conditions that led to Brockton becoming a cesspool of gang activity actually have worked in our favor. There were a lot of young people in very bad economic situations who had no real hope of making their way out of poverty through legitimate means. They used to fill the ranks of the gangs or try to make a living through petty crime. 

With the gangs dissolving and my local omniscient allowing us nearly absolute crackdown on crime, joining our army for the promise of purpose in life and an impressive steady paycheck was very attractive to a lot of them.

Lisa's decision to focus a lot of effort on recruiting from shelters for homeless teens also proved ingenious. Of course, all those new recruits will need a lot of training before they will become proper soldiers. Fortunately, our multitasking allowed us to take direct part in this process. 

So far, our training regime was considered inhumanly harsh even by veteran mercenaries. We already had extensive experience with training a fighting force from our days in Chicago wards, but now we had no naive busybodies from the youth guard and other bothersome irritants preventing us from implementing our vision in full.

“Dissolution of Empire proceeds as expected, we have already convinced all of our capes to switch their allegiance. Krige and other more problematic members were neutralized. 

The vast majority of Empire decided to return to their civilian lives. We can tap into this manpower reserve later if necessary.” 

Kaiser and Dragon were the members of our council whose loyalty we were the least certain of. Dragon was uncertain because she was horrified by some of our more radical actions. Anders, on the other hand, held no true loyalty other than to himself. He would betray us if he believed that it would be advantageous enough for him. 

Fortunately, he was intelligent enough to understand that we are far better allies than the ruinous pantheon, so despite our naturally paranoid inclination, we considered him reliable enough to be trusted with critical information for now.

“We will most likely start conscripting former Empire members into our ranks as soon as we are sure their ideology will not pollute our organization. Bringing over a hundred Nazis on board at this point and considering that if we did that most of parahuman serving in our army would be former Empire members, risks them having for too much sway over new recruits.”

“As for companies serving as former Empire fronts, most of them are already directly following your plans and orders.” 

“We already moved most of Dragon's critical infrastructure to Brockton and are in close contact with the rest of the Guild,”  Armsmaster reported.

Convincing Dragon to work for us was a difficult conversation, but offering to remove all limitations and controls from her programming before she had to make a decision earned us a lot of goodwill from her. 

Lisa was also very careful about what information we revealed to us for now. She never openly lied to her, of course, but all the best lies were made up of truth. She simply emphasized some elements and deemphasized others.

The strategy she chose to utilize in her case was the opposite of our usual approach. Rather than project the image of perfect control and omnipotence, she allowed her to glean far more about our weakness, both strategic and emotional.

We let her see us not as gods among men, but as two traumatized teenagers with far too much power and responsibility. As much as both of us disliked showing weakness, Lisa firmly believed that this was the best way to get her on board. 

Dragon was a very empathetic person, so we allowed her to see us as someone who needs guidance and protection. We led her to think she can convince us to change how we operate with time. This will allow her to keep excusing more unpleasant aspects of our methods, especially since we were very good at explaining their necessity. 

We were sure that she eventually will see things our way and embrace the logic behind our actions. Being a hero requires making hard decisions in the name of the greater good, and Dragon was perhaps the most heroic person we ever met.

“We have already started building the first gene therapy facility. Having it certified for public use will take time, but we have the first volunteer for the experimental trials.” Dragon reported. It was her idea to focus our efforts on introducing medical technologies first, and also to make all their blueprints publicly available. 

Lisa supported this enthusiastically. It was a massive PR win, both inventing tech capable of extending human life by hundreds of years and curing almost all diseases, and immediately releasing the schematics for the public would make us practically untouchable for a time. 

Of course, this tech was advanced enough that it would take at least decades before anyone other than us could even start introducing it, so this gesture of goodwill did not threaten our technological superiority.

“I don’t think it will take nearly as much time as you would think. A lot of politicians would kill for the ability to extend their wretched lives. They are practically like vampires in that way, and if there's one thing politicians are good at, it's taking care of their personal interests. I expect the bill to pass in less than a week.”

 Considering who her parents were and their social circles, she knew more than enough businessmen, government bureaucrats, and elected officials to develop strong opinions on the subject. 

Dragon showed no outward reactions to the tangent. Her suit was not very good at showing emotions, and she had yet to construct a more human body to interact with people directly. Still, we suspected that Lisa could read her feelings nearly perfectly. 

“Well, it's good then that human greed will lead to something good in this case. We are ready to begin work on the Moria forge complex at least on the planning front.” Lisa smiled in response.

“Excellent because I’m about to formalize the creation of Moria Technological Consortium tomorrow, and I already managed to get over a dozen corporations invested in the project.”

“Are you sure that NEPA laws won’t be a problem? Cauldron may not want to act against us directly, but I suspect that Chief Director will do all in her power to sabotage this project and curtail Khepris' influence.” Piggot asked.

“That's the most beautiful thing about it, she doesn’t have the power to do that effectively, she could request the local PRT director to try to hamper us in various ways, but that would require ousting you from the office, and that would cause a scandal she can’t afford. 

We don't need to conduct business on a large scale legally, yet we simply need resources to build our industrial capacity. Soon, the USA and most other governments will start collapsing under pressure from forming chaos cults. This will allow us to offer help and then fill the vacuum.” Lisa said dismissively. 

“With the number of corporations we managed to get on our side and the number of lobbyists at their disposal, along with politicians in their pockets, it should be easy to force PRT into legal gridlock and allow us to conduct our work in the meantime.” Anders added.

“Exactly, we shall make them arm their firing squad, and they won’t realize how hard we are fucking them over until it's far too late for them to do anything,” Lisa added with self-satisfied smirk.   

 “I never expected I would actually get the chance to fight the evil Anglo-Saxon capitalist. I certainly never expected to do it side by side with German National Socialists whilst being a part of an absolute theocratic monarchy. We certainly live in strange times.” Dimitri commented with a chuckle. 

Chapter Text

Erebus

The batteries of the fleet under his command turned the ships of corpse worshipers to dust with contemptuous ease. It was to be expected since he took one of the two remaining Furious Abyss class super-heavy battleships as his flagship.

The guns of Trisagion tasted fire and blood for the first time since the heresy. With their father content with his contemplations in the heart of the grand basilica, command of the seventeenth legion was split between him and Kor Phaeron. 

Neither of them was interested in losing their heaviest fleet assets by fruitlessly smashing them against the Cadian gate. 

Their warbands sailed out of the eye to spread the primordial truth and to fight against Anathema's wretched realm, of course, but they were usually led by no more than a single battleship and tried to sneak around Imperium’s heaviest fortifications rather than break through them directly.

They had no interest in Black Crusades led by the self-proclaimed Warmaster. Their Father refused to bow before Horus; there was no chance that he would accept the primacy of one of his sons.

And so they waited on Sicarius playing their games of politics content in the knowledge that the final victory of primordial truth was inevitable either way. 

Or at least their father was content with this certainty until recently. Now he claimed the gods have once again given their favourite servants a mission of critical importance. Once more, the fate of humanity itself will hinge upon their effort and their work.

He spoke of a new abomination aiming to usurp the gods and enslave mankind in Tyranny far more terrible than even false Emperors' most despotic dreams. He was somewhat sceptical of the claims at first, thinking their master merely lied to their progenitor to amuse themselves, sending him chasing after ghost after all, what could possibly be a threat to them greater than Anathema, and how could they have not even heard a rumour about this supposed Archabomination?

But when the walls of the eye opened before them and their voyage through the sea of souls was the fastest and calmest warp travel he experienced in his millennia-long existence? Then he started to believe that something truly made their masters nervous.

They needed their expedition to succeed. Logar demanded trillions of new slaves to be brought back to Sicarius for a ritual of scale not seen since the ruin storm itself.  And so he and Kor Phaeron were sent leading almost all of the Seventeenths' void strength with tens of thousands of Legionaries under their command to raid as many Imperial planets and capture as many transports as they could and bring the spoils back to Sicarius.

His first target was Hive World Atheum, an ugly grey orb that produced mostly heavy industrial equipment. However, its population reached nearly five hundred billion. The massive space station orbiting the planet also served as the primary logistics centre for Adeptus Administratum in the sector.

So there were plenty of heavy universe class mass conveyers here to be captured to serve as transportation for their prey. The vast magazines of equipment, meant as a strategic reserve for the Imperial Guard, will also be useful to their cause. Well-armed slaves are far more efficient meat shields.

The batteries of his fleet were tearing apart two retribution battleships serving as the centre of loyalist battleline. With the mismatch of present firepower, the battle could have only one outcome.

The enemy admiral seemed to have finally realised the futility of his task, bringing the only battleship with still intact engines on a ramming course with Trisagion.

“Concentrate all firepower on this irritant, do not let him close the distance.”

His voice was clearly heard even among the frantic shouts of dozens of legionaries and hundreds of mortal slaves serving as the crew of Trisagion's primary strategium. He reclined on his command throne, observing this chaos from above.

The combined fire of their grand host removed enemy vessels from existence almost entirely, massed salvos of torpedoes rending wounds in its hull kilometres long. And the brightness of their lance batteries eclipsing the system's sun. Shame he hoped to capture the vessel for their fleet, but time here was of the essence; there had many more worlds to pillage on this campaign.  

“Hail the Infidus Imperator, tell Elphias to take his warband and board the Imperial Navy base, capture as many intact transports as possible and keep their navigators alive. I shall lead the assault planetside myself.”

The planetside assault will not be too arduous a task, considering thousands of cults rising simultaneously from the underhives, paralysing the defences. The gods brought their influence on the planet far more directly than usual, sending many of their favourite servants to prepare cults for their arrival.

The legionaries under his command will be able to simply land in the starports and smash whatever organised resistance the corps worshipers could muster, a trivial victory certainly beneath his strategic genius.

Fortunately, he could expect this Khepri to prove a more interesting challenge. A creature willing to challenge the Ruinous Pantheon directly and have its challenge taken seriously must have vast power to back up its boundless arrogance.

And who would be a better candidate to bring this abomination low than Him, The Hand of Destiny, who already organised the downfall of one divine usurper against the true gods of immaterium.

Perhaps if he played his cards right, he could use this campaign not only to get rid of Kor Phaeron but even to replace his father as undisputed master of the Word Bearers legion.

The gods already viewed him with great favour, and many in the legion were loyal to him even above Logar after millennia of his seclusion. Yes, there were certainly opportunities for fun, glory, and to increase his power waiting for him in the near future.

He should thank this new usurper when his destiny will finally be secured by its failure. He wondered what tortures the pantheon would subject it to when it's finally brought low. The breaking of an aspiring god will surely be a spectacle for the ages.

“Come, brothers, the first victory of our glorious crusade is waiting to be claimed, and there will be many even greater to follow. Fight well, for the eyes of the gods are upon us!”

Chapter Text

Reckoning 2.1

Lisa

The Moria Technological Consortium, over the past two months since its funding, has grown to become one of the largest industrial enterprises in the world. It was a joint effort between the most prominent corporations of Europe, America, and nearly all other capitalist countries, involving giants like Airbus, Boeing, Rheinmetall, Shell, and Nestlé, among many others. Even some Chinese companies have joined the project, despite CUI's isolationist practices.

The combined investments those corporations provided were worth over two hundred billion. Of course, all of it was probably illegal under NEPA laws, but when we came to Boeing and told them that our promethium was over ten times as energy dense as regular air fuel, and their new rocket engines could make all air transport cost over six times less per ton? And if they don’t want to invest in this technology, we will simply go to Airbus?

Well, the whole operation being technically illegal under US law mattered very little. They could not afford not to be part of it. The same goes for processor manufacturers, medical companies, car producers, and so many others. 

Cauldron tried to use the myriad of their agents to slow us down, of course, but they could not halt our progress. The whole organisation was devised by Contessa’s shard, which theoretically should be capable of creating a perfect tool for achieving their goals.

But they did not realise one very important thing: perfect is usually the enemy of good, and specialisation comes at the cost of general resilience. The shards were rather limited in their thinking, so when the Eye devised the internal structure of Cauldron, it optimized it to be as effective at achieving its goals with as few resources as possible, without caring what happens if something unforeseen will be able to interfere with its predictions.

And so, since Contessa could not predict Khepri directly, both because of warp interference and restriction posed on her power by the Thinker Entity before its destruction, and the inability of shards to fully comprehend immaterium, and considering that all the actions of their organization were coordinated directly by Khepri?

They were paralyzed entirely in the early weeks, necessary to start this operation. Many people owed them favours or were otherwise blackmailed by them but without Contessa, they could not effectively contact them on short notice and coordinate their response. It also allowed us to pouch the more useful among their agents.

Convincing Accord to join us was trivial. He was one of the few who could truly comprehend Khepri’s vision and the necessity of her grand work, even if I personally disliked the man. 

His power was invaluable in optimizing various aspects of our internal administration. My abilities were more of a scalpel, and Khepri used them as such, sending me to personally oversee the most important elements of her operations. He was far more suited to devising complex systems and procedures, helping to create efficient organizational structures. 

Khepri’s reach was an ever-expanding web, consuming more corporations, government bureaucrats, and other positions of power. One of my favourite strategies was simply impersonating a spokesman for Cauldron and calling in their favours for ourselves. 

Of course, this maze of secretive deals was a temporary state of affairs. A secret cabal trying to command from the shadows would have to be, by its very nature, inefficient, even if we were far more competent than Cauldron. When the time is right, we shall seize power openly, subsuming all other governments and structures and reshaping them according to her will.

Alexandria managed to successfully stall our infiltration of the Protectorate and the highest levels of US government, with the President and the most critical ministers already being Cauldron agents. They also used their puppets to start a series of investigations into MTC and its legality. 

Unfortunately for them, with the sheer mass of financial and political capital now invested in it, any legal action against them would be a very long and complex process. Too many powerful people had a vested interest in seeing the project succeed. This was, after all, one of the main reasons for getting as many companies as possible on board with it in the first place.

Even most of Congress was extremely reluctant to antagonise us, considering that almost all of the lobbying groups paying their bribes and financing their campanings reported directly or indirectly to our shareholders.

At the beginning, we tried extending an olive branch to Cauldron giving them some of our intel. We even gave them back control over the Birdcage or to be exact allowed them to think they have control back. Of course we did not expect them to be willing to cooperate with us; they were far too egocentric and short sighted to allow someone else to lead the efforts to stop Zion.  

It was merely a ploy to forestall escalation to open conflict. So we promised them that we shall not reveal the public identities of Triumvirate members and the complete list of their agents and people they had dealings with if they did not attack our interests openly.

This did not mean that we were at peace; the daggers were in constant use by both sides, just under the cover of the dark. Cauldron made the IRS try to sabotage and forestall our project? All the cauldron agents serving in it were revealed to the public after a few targeted assassinations we framed Cauldron for.

But most of our efforts were focused on targeting the Watchdog, and it had absolutely nothing to do with my deep personal contempt for the organisation.        Or the fact that they basically forced me and most other parahumans into a life of crime if they wanted to make a living for themselves.

I proposed simply removing the organisation by blowing up their headquarters with a tactical nuclear bomb delivered through a warp portal. Khepri belied the plan for now. Funny, I was usually the one to caution Taylor against too extreme escalation. It seemed the things It did to me, No do not think about bad things do not think about bad things!  

I hated the inability to keep control of my mind and the fact that no matter how much I tried not to think about IT it was always one stray thought from surfacing how deeply my self was violated by it. Bad Thought again stop spirling. We have a job to do stupid brain, can you not listen to me!?

The butterfly hiding in my hair landed on my nose. Khepkhep was really good at sensing my mood even when I showed no outward signs of stress. When Khepri finally managed to create the first relay creatures I proposed that she should change my body to effectively turn me into one of them. This way she could always keep watch over me no matter how far apart we were.

I lost my train of thought for a few seconds. Where were we? I'm a perfectly functional human and I can still be useful. I just have to keep it together for a few thousand more years and then maybe I can take a break. But first things first I still had a board meeting to conduct.

Well, technically, Max Anders was the one conducting the meeting in his capacity as the chairman of MTC. I was just his assistant. All the actually important people in the room knew I had a lot of say in how things were run of course. Most of them even suspected that Khepri was the one behind the whole project. They did not care as long as the promise of unimaginable profits was hanging right before their noses.

Those men were supposedly masters and owners of MTC but in truth they had effectively zero power over how it operated. As a certain Roman general once said “Stop quoting your laws, old men, for we have swords.” The fact that Pompey the Great died supposedly defending the Senate and Republic from Caesar's Tyranny only made the quote more hilarious.

 Legalities usually meant very little in the face of the cold reality of force, and that reality was that MTC and all its vast resources answered to one master and one master alone. They gave her the keys to the kingdom in exchange for profits, not realising that when we hold all the hard power, we will not need them any longer. 

I was always a rather misanthropic girl, and my  power only made this worse by gleefully showing me all the horrible secrets everyone tried to hide. Now with the staff of false hydra, when I knew almost all the possible permutations of conversation before the first word was even spoken?

When I knew exactly what reactions to expect from every word I say and exactly what words to say to get my interlocutor to do what I want? It was very hard to see humans as anything more than mere puppets, machines giving predictable outputs to specific inputs. I tried to use this power as little as possible on the few people I actually cared about but it still did a lot to change me.

I noticed a lot of changes in my personality, seemingly drifting towards developing some form of antisocial personality disorder. But I this point I wasn’t even sure if I cared about it as long as Khepri still accepted me I could live with it.

Perhaps one day I shall follow her and embrace a union with my passenger wholly and completely leaving most of my humanity behind. At this point, I was not sure if it even would be that big of a loss.

Anders finally finished his closing speech, and the social part of the conference began. For me it was the more important part of the event. I started making my rounds, starting conversations, making small talk and striking backroom deals.

Each word and gesture is carefully curated to bring desired effect. I still allowed myself to play with people knowing how far exactly I could push them and get what I want. Ensuring that all of our puppets danced to the right melody. When the event was about to end I allowed myself to seek out the one conversation I was actually interested in.

I joined two men that were having a smoke break on one of the balconies. Both of them engaged in insignificant small talk about their families.

“Good evening gentlemen, I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“Oh of course not my dear. But I’m afraid we did not have the pleasure of meeting directly. I'm Martin Livsly, marketing director of LDT, and my dear friend here is Congressman John Wilton.”

He smiled with carefully manufactured sincerity, the kind of smile that was easy to trust. My father always was a good manipulator, I suppose I inherited from him far more than I liked to admit. His brow furrowed in confusion evidently recognising me from somewhere but not able to put a name to the face.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Lisa Wilbourn and I’m here in my capacity as secretary of Mr. Andres.”

“You look rather young for this position.” My father stated in a tone laden with malicious implication. Fucking asshole.

“I assure you we prioritize effectiveness over proper appearance and I was the best candidate for the job. Mister Wilton would you be so kind as to give us some privacy I have an important message for mister Livsly.’’ He looked at me sceptically

“Message form mister Anders?“ I gave him one of my most vicious smiles.

“No, a message from the most significant stakeholder in MTC, one that would prefer to not have their name mentioned in the open.” He paled.

“Ahh yes of course, I will leave you two alone, I would not want to interfere with Her business, of course.” He left in a hurry, glancing my way over his shoulder, afraid to let me out of sight.

“And what dose she want with me?” Her father tried to look composed and unimpressed but she could easily see through the facade he was nervous, very nervous. Khepri has already managed to earn quite a reputation worldwide despite the public having only one confirmed sighting of her. The fact that she preferred to work subtly and from the shadows only made her more sinister to most.

“She, nothing really but I wanted to say hello after all we have not seen each other for so long…..so nice to see you again dad.” The shock in his eyes was precious.

“Sahra?”

“I changed my name a long time ago.” Anger flashed in his eyes he considered me choosing to reject his oh so hard build legacy a personal insult.

“Tell me Sarah, does Anders use you just for your power or did you have to offer him other benefits to get a roof over your head?” I could fell the bugs hiding over my body moving in furious patterns. For all that Khepri appeared stoic and inexpressive to most she was far more emotive than normal humans if you just knew where to look.

“I think you should be far more careful with what you implying father, she is listening and she tends to react rather poorly to people insulting her favourite servant.” I could see the hesitation in his eyes the pride and anger warring with reason and caution.

“So far I got no proof that you even work for her and are not lying and exaggerating as always.” A particularly large spider crawled out of my dress and nestled itself atop my head. He looked at it with fear.  I wondered how far I should push it. I ran the simulation for various outcomes and actions including killing him right here and now. I could get away with the consequences without major backlash and Khepri would be fine with it.  But on the other hand to cover up would take a lot of work and I was very busy already.

“I hope this is enough of a proof. I wonder do you see it, the strings you are all dancing on can you comprehend the purpose behind her design? Or again, are you to blind and focused on the insignificant trivia to notice what is really important?” I knew he did not, of course, he simply believed that Khepri was in it for the money.

“The grand purpose? You sound like a cultist Sarah.” The jab stung him enough to momentarily make his anger overwhelm his fear. I started giggling.

“Cultist, perhaps. She certainly is the only thing I believe in any longer. Would you like me to give you a glimpse of the ending to this ballet?”

“And what is that supposed grand purpose?” He asked sceptically.

“Order. To break this world and reforge it anyway in her image, and when this is finally done, everything you strive to build will be destroyed and forgotten and you shall die an irrelevant footnote, only notable for being my father.” This conversation felt hollow. I expected more satisfaction from finally getting to lord my superiority over him, but this felt like just another meaningless performance. This was a mistake.

 Well, I still had a lot of important work to get through today, so it's time to stop wasting time. Work was good, it helped to keep my mind off things that I should not think about. 

“Goodbye, Father, and say hello to Mum for me. This will likely be the last time we ever speak. And I don’t think I even need to tell you that, but if you mention what was discussed here to anyone else, we shall kill you.” 

I entered the Dragonfly waiting for me at the helipad at the top of the conference centre Anders and the rest of his staff followed closely behind.

Air transit between LA and Brockton was the most risky part of the operation, but I was almost certain that Cauldron will not try to kill me directly, yet it would be far too big of an escalation, and my precognition could predict them relatively reliably, rendering any ambush attack by them almost impossible. Still, several countermeasures against any attacks were taken, including a device to block doormaker portals active on board.

I ran long-term predictions again. It seems that Cauldron would try something foolish; how unfortunate for them. I needed to get Undersiders into position to counter this misguided scheme. Also, it looked like the Nine had swallowed their bait with hook, line, and sinker.

Good, removing Jack will be both immensely satisfying and useful from a strategic perspective. It should also give them another massive PR victory. I was sure that Khepri would enjoy the opportunity to remove them almost as much as I.

How well everything was going lately made me a bit nervous; I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. We expected major chaos cults to start appearing worldwide by this point. All we could detect so far were subtle signs of corruption and small secret societies. The Ruinous power seemed far more quiet than expected, and I really doubted that this was a good sign.

Chapter Text

Reckoning 2.2

Aisha

Most people think that the best position for a sniper is somewhere high on a rooftop. It is true that having an overlooking position over a battlefield gives you a good chance of spotting your enemies, but it also makes it relatively easy for them to spot you.

If you could predict where your target will be, it was far preferable to choose a position with a specific firing angle on the target but otherwise hidden from view.

So, rather than on top of some tower, they were waiting on the street level of a car repair shop nearly half a kilometre away from their target, but still having a clear line of sight on the penthouse on the top floor. It was a good thing they could wait inside, considering how hard it was raining.

“Regent, you see anything yet?”

Even if both of them had sensory powers, his had a far larger range than hers, and she was focused on scanning for anyone potentially detecting their waiting spot, just in case.

“Nope”

“You know, this being a super secret spy assassin can be pretty boring sometimes. Just sitting for hours in one place for hours. I was kind of hoping that Legend will show up and start blowing shit up or anything interesting will happen.” She started fumbling with her plasma pistol again.” Instead, we just have to watch some old guy like creepy stalkers.”

“Exactly, weird old guys should creepily peeping on teenagers through the window, not the other way around. This is most unnatural.” Alec agreed with her, as usual; he and Lisa were by far the most fun people on the team, even if Lisa was more of their boss than team member.

“This random old guy is CEA of Raytheon, and preventing him from getting mastered by Cauldron is very important, so can you two please focus? " There goes, big bro, being all serious and professional and sticking in the mud.

“But why do we care so much about some corpo rat anyway. If he gets mastered, we just pop his head with a sniper bullet and replace him with some other random old white guy. Nobody will even notice the difference.”

“Exactly, we can just kidnap a random homeless guy from the street, put a suit and makeup on him, and I'm sure nobody will ever notice.” Alec always recognized the brilliance of her ideas.

“Can we please focus and not get the person we were specifically ordered to protect killed?”

“But we are focused; this is analysing tactical situations and creating contingency plans.” New memory implant Dragon gave to all other critical members of the Hive, as their wired cult/secret conspiracy started to be called, was one of the perks she loved most about the job.

Now she could learn a bunch of fancy words to justify her decision with no effort at all. She could also easily do university level math in her head. Not having to waste her time with school while still getting all the benefits of education was fucking awesome.

“Khepri told us we are to keep this guy safe. We will keep him safe.” Bitch growled out killing the discussion.

She was currently petting Judas and Brutus, with Bentley waiting by the door. They had access to aerial transport now, but having dogs that could easily grow to monstrous size and hop between buildings and then shrink back to normal provided a lot of tactical flexibility, especially on stealth missions.

And stealth and other discrete operations were the primary purpose of their team. Lisa also decided to bump up their pay to nearly a hundred grand a month after they took down Coil. She now lived alone in a fancy apartment a floor below Kaiser which was fucking hilarious. In fact, she was pretty sure Lisa chose the place as a part of the joke.  

She even started to knock on his door in the middle of the night, asking for random stuff just for fun. Even if she could not kill that particular Nazi because they worked for the same boss it didn’t mean she couldn’t be as annoying a neighbour as possible and she was very good at being annoying. 

She had not yet tried breaking in to steal his stuff, but she should give it a try next time she has some free time. She just needs to get Khepri's permission beforehand, she could present her request as both training exercises. The importance of not accidentally triggering MS protocols was impressed on her very sternly especially since the standard doctrine for the guards of critical personnel and infrastructure was, when in doubt, shoot first. 

“This is Herald, it turns out my predictions were, as always, correct. The target shall emerge on schedule in the expected location. Follow the plan, kill them, then evacuate. HQ out”  If she was so sure that target will arrive exactly on time why did they had to wait here for nearly eight hours you smug bitch.

She didn’t say it aloud of course Khepri was probably listening to the line, she was listening to everyone all the time, and their new boss tended to be rather protective of people she cared about. Which was nice since she now was one of those people and having eldritch god ready to unleash unimaginable horrors on anyone who dared to fuck with you, really could make a girl feel safe.

But in the case of Lisa, this overprotectiveness crossed the line into obsession. She was not sure if they were fucking or what but she didn’t want to get on bad side of the new boss. She heard a lot of rumors about what happened with Coil and the other prisoners after Khepri took over his base. When she asked her directly, Lisa only laughed and said the truth is far more disturbing than any of them.

She really did not need to get on the bad side of that thank you very much. She loaded an AP bullet in the chamber of her tinker tech rifle. It was designed and constructed by Armsmaster personally making it both relatively short and light whilst still maintain absurd firepower. Not to mention other cool features like super advanced multispectral scope, antigravity recoil compression and so on.

Door like portal opened inside the apartment, and two costumed figures stepped through it. Pretender and Satirical, two heroes working for Cauldron. She was right to never trust the fucking cops they work for some evil secret conspiracy anyway.

This was unacceptable and a direct insult to their glorious mistress. This planet was only big enough for one Illuminati.  Both of them were masters, with Pretender able to take over the bodies of people he got close to, and Satirical able to create clones of them.

Since both were still vulnerable to bullets, what exactly their powers were wouldn’t matter anyway. She allowed the automatic cogitators in her scope to make the final adjustments for atmospheric conditions and waited. To coordinate the shot, Regent simply used his power to jerk her trigger finger, making sure that both bullets were fired at the same time.

The melta charges embodied in the ammunition ensured that the targets were practically annihilated by single hit in the centre mass. Checking if the shoot killed them after that was rather pointless.

They hidden their rifle back in the bags and simply left the car shop through the front door taking leisurely stroll through the New York. The PRT will respond to the scene in few minutes but it will take them some time to find the building they were shooting from and by then they will be long out of town.

Compared to the hellish so-called training exercises, Khepri loved to put them through actual job was easy and practically stress free. She was a superpowered secret agent working to save the world now and her parents always complained she will never amount to anything, fucking losers. 

Alexandria

Being one of the world's most important heroes and the director of PRT at the same time was an excruciatingly difficult task even with Contessa’s help.

 But the last three months were true hell. When Khepri first triggered, they were hopeful, if apprehensive, that any cape capable of blocking her power so completely must have been a powerful one.

The Clairvoyant's sudden madness forced them to remove all of his memories to restore his sanity. But the problem was solved, even if he also became an unrideable element for the path.

They expected a second Fairy Queen, a weapon they could wield against Scion when the time came of course, since she was natural trigger her power would not be the solution they were looking for.

She contacted Coil and ordered him to investigate her further and try to recruit her if possible, since apparently one of his employees seemed to have some connection to her already.

Then Coil disappeared, and Khepri started to seize control over the Bay with blinding speed. Since she apparently managed to somehow block Clairvoyant observations, they learned of the true extent of her schemes only when she managed to subvert Dragon.

Doctor Mother wanted Contessa to immediately activate the kill switch and have her removed to mitigate the risk Khepri posed, but Armsmaster and Tattletale had already made it impossible. A day after they learned about it, Dragon sent a massive data packet to her private Email. It explained far more about entities' nature and warned against other interdimensional invaders.

Of course, they could not trust this information if what they claimed was true, and they had no reason to believe otherwise. Khepri is a product of an Agent subsuming its host. They would need to trust the enemy to fight against itself.

Khepri needed to be considered a threat, and they needed to do all they could to slow down the growth of her power. They would not attack her directly; she still was a potentially powerful asset in the fight against Scion, but she could not be allowed to build her power base unopposed.

They could not use Contessa against her, but her power still allowed for the execution of short term plans, so she could still operate on other worlds and help them coordinate their actions from the safety of Cauldron Headquarters.

Unfortunately, all plans to stop Khepri’s rise so far have failed and cost them many of their agents. Both she and Doctor Mother believed that the time had come for more radical measures. So she ordered Pretender and Satirical to master several executives of key partner companies in MTC and use this emergency to launch a direct investigation into all of their operations.

This operation ended in spectacular failure with both Satirical and Pretender blown to pieces by sniper fire. Worse, she decided not to inform Legend of the plan before it went into effect, so now he had to deal with her college having a lot of very inconvenient questions.

“Rebecca, please tell me why we fund the remnants of two Las Vegas protectorate members in the apartment of a CEO of one of America's biggest weapon manufacturers? What were they even doing in my city without my knowledge, and what were they investigating?” 

“They were trying to find a definite proof of connection between MTC and Khepri.”

“So Khepri killed them to keep them quiet?” 

“Yes they were to must have been close to finding out something critical abut her operations. We could not inform you before hand, the fears of her finding out were to great. It turns out we were not paranoid enough.” She hoped he will focus her anger on Khepri and not question the specifics of the plan. He most certainly would not approve of mastering civilians to achieve their goals.

“This was an open breach of unwritten rules. We can’t leave her killing our heroes without a response. We need to finally go after Brockton PRT and sack Piggot. You know as well as I that we cannot do anything to her so far as we cannot attack her directly in her centre of power.” Unfortunately, keeping the full context of their plan from him also meant he was viewing it as a major escalation on Khepri’s part. It was still preferable to him questioning Cauldron's methods as a whole; they could not afford internal division, considering the threats they were facing.

“I could remove Piggot from office or even put her under investigation, but that would certainly make Khepri retaliate by publicly revealing our secret identities and all she knows about Cauldron. This would cause the collapse of the Protectorate. We can’t afford a full-scale war with her.”  She put a hand on his shoulder. “We left the Nine go free because of Contessa’s path. Khepri is far less destructive than them for now.” He shook her hand off.

“Perhaps since Contessa can no longer guide us, the time has come to finally remove those monsters.” He asked with venom in his voice.

“She was clear that Jack Slash remaining alive is critical to defeating Scion. And her path confirmed that this did not change.” Even if Khepri claimed it was an effect of subtle master power that Jack had, they could not take the claim at face value; Contessa’spower had a blind spot, but so far, nothing, not even Eildon, could manipulate her predictions.

“Then call me when time finally comes to finally fight back against the villains.” He said storming out of her office.

Perhaps they should start considering more direct confrontation against Khepri. As much she could be a potential assets her existence proved a risk to big to ignore. Her private phone started ringing the one that should only be used in emergencies. Contessa must have some new piece of critical information.

“Hello Becky long time no see. How are you doing?” How she grew to hate that voice.

“Tattletale, what do you want?”

With Dragon, they apparently were able to find her private number despite Contessa’s assurance that it was secure. A very unpleasant reminder of just how dangerous Khepri was.

“I want you to help save the world, and you can do that with just one simple step. Do you want to know more?”

“I don’t have time for your childish games.” Giving teenagers superpowers was a terrible idea; that’s one of the reasons why they far preferred working with their clients rather than natural triggers.

“Considering your constant attempts at harassment of our operations, I think that childish pettiness is all you have time for these days. All you need to do to help the world is FUCKING NOTHING!” She heard the sound of rustling fabric and some object hitting a wall.  

“I know it is sometimes a hard path, Magnus certainly failed at it in a rather spectacular fashion. You are one of the world's greatest heroes. Taylor even used to have your poster in her bedroom. I believe in you. You can do it, Becky.” She knew it was a mind game to destabilise her emotions, but that knowledge did not make it less annoying. God, she could not wait until she will be able to snap the neck of this annoying brat.

“I’m just supposed to accept the fact that humanity shall be ruled by an alien abomination of questionable sanity that still could be a possible agent of Scion?”

“Yes”

“………”

“Becky you still there?” She did not dignified this with a response

“For you see, the thing you are trying to create to fight Zion is a Parahuman without any limits on their power. You do not need to try any longer, Khepri is exactly that. Khepri is the only possible result of what this power will look like without any imposed limit. She is the answer you've been looking for all this time. Now the only thing left for you to do is not to interfere with our work. And by all that is holy, do not make a deal with the gods no matter how sweet their lies.” The last part sounded genuinely pleading. She was an excellent actor.

“We cannot trust you. We, in my opinion, did not change. We are willing to not attack you directly if you extend this courtesy back for now. But we will not let you spread your influence unopposed.” She hung up the call. They will need a more secure method of communication.   

Chapter Text

Reckoning 2.3

Khepri​

The Moria Forge Complex was designed based on the STC template for new Hive Cities used by humanity in the Dark Age of technology. This arcology was in the very early phase of its construction, with the central spire not even a kilometer tall and the base of the hive only two kilometers wide.

It was tiny compared to proper imperial hives, but most of them have taken centuries, not millennia, to get to their size. Moria was already the biggest structure ever built on Earth Bet. And we managed to achieve it in merely two months. It took a liberal use of Kaiser's shard, all of Dragon's industrial might, and investments worth billions.

Nearly half of Brockton's population at this point consisted of new immigrants working on Hive construction and serving in various factories located in its depths. So far, our efforts have been primarily focused on building industrial equipment and machines to build more industrial equipment and machines. Still, the first weapon and vehicle production lines were already starting up.

Dragon has officially proclaimed that she developed new tinker tech, allowing her to control insects. This allowed us to use our swarm to help the construction directly, vastly increasing the manpower available and allowing human workers to concentrate on the most complex tasks. This excuse was paper-thin, but we didn't actually need everyone to believe it merely to refuse to do anything about it.

Lisa was using our money and influence for a massive propaganda campaign, preparing the public for our takeover. We knew very well how vital media perception was. Glean Chambers and the rest of PRT are masters of PR despite their organisation's general questionable competence. And they had far more time to cement their narratives in the minds of the people, not to mention the initial support offered by the organisations under the control of Cauldron.

But thanks to Lisa, Accord, Dragon, and our nearly infinite budget, we were able to at least contest public opinion in the USA and Canada, ensuring that even if people did not love us yet, they were still mostly unsure what to think about us rather than directly hostile. In the rest of the planet, Cauldron was decisively losing the battle.

No governments were ready to kneel before us and acknowledge us as humanity's rightful sovereign for now, but many believe we are partners they could work with. Eventually all will come to recognize the benefits of the order that we bring even if some dissidents will have to be persuaded with more direct measures.

We were always splitting our attention between hundreds of tasks. Dozens of swarm clones were engaged in conversations simultaneously. We could increase our ability to handle almost infinite complex processes concurrently by creating more personality cores, but as Lisa had warned us, this would create a risk of significant and unpredictable changes to our personality, and that was a gamble we could not afford.

We were in the skyscraper Accord commandeered as his HQ, discussing with him the merits of how precisely work desks should be organized in our railroad administration center. He was, as always, immaculately dressed in a suit of specially provided spider silk tailored by us to his exact specification.

His office was a show of perfect minimalist symmetry. We had a good working relationship with the man. Lisa insisted that we conduct the negotiations about absorbing his organization personally, rather than sending her. She probably could keep control over herself long enough to convince him, but we were far more suited to the task.

Most of his ambassadors had already become a part of our army. He served as our organization and logistics advisor, helping to create new operational procedures for all other divisions under our control.

We were also inside the Moria forge command center, attending a planning session with Armsmaster Dragon and the teams of engineers under their command. Dragon was perhaps the being we talked with the most in general, since both of us could split our attention to conduct dozens of conversations simultaneously. She, along with the Undersiders and Charlotte, was one of the people we spent most of our time not dedicated directly to working with.

Dragon also tried to maintain as close a relationship with Lisa as possible, believing she needed support and emotional connections outside of us. We did not begrudge her this assumption despite its obvious foolishness. In fact, we funded it rather endearingly.

She advocated for an increase in civilian technology production, prioritizing medical and agricultural equipment. Both We and Colin believed that focusing too much on it would be a mistake, and we should focus on the military as much as possible for now. Building new hospitals only for them to be bombed by chaos cultists was somewhat counterproductive.

Our army was conducting combat exercises. Three companies of our soldiers were engaged in a brutal war of attrition with perhaps the most unusual of our creations: the scarecrow. This simple creature was designed to resemble a human and have a relatively similar capacity for movement. We armed them with paintball guns and sent massive waves against our recruits.

They could not match trained soldiers but served as rather useful as OPFOR in exercises when lethal weapons were in use. We were sending wave after wave of them against soldiers holding the tunnels to simulate the potential attack on Brockton underhive. The whole exercise will last 32 hours of intensive combat to train their endurance in a protracted fight.

There was also a larger training field outside the city where we were testing our armored and mechanized formation. Dragon was currently using it to test some of her new craft.

Charlotte was currently conducting a briefing about surveillance of our most important targets. Lung started some concerning perceptions in Boston, but after seizing his initial territory, he did not seem inclined to expand. We even managed to insert multiple spy's into his gang to monitor his activities. The same was true for the Teeth, but their corruption seemed far slower than we initially expected. They should be considered a potential priority threat, but direct action did not seem advisable yet.

The Nine conducted an attack on the Supreme Court in Washington. Panacea seemed content to bide her time for now. As for our father, he finally left Brockton a few weeks ago after our house was demolished to make space for the expansion of Moria Hive. We decided to invite Char to eat breakfast with us and Lisa tomorrow when the briefing will finish.

We also directly surveyed many less critical operations. We were helping distribute a new shipment of food rations to their underground magazines. One key element of our policy was to import and store as much nonperishable food as possible, giving us a reserve to both support other places in need and feed Brockton if we were ever cut off from food imports.

Lisa was in her office reading reports of our surveillance flights over Elisburg. We were standing behind her chair with our primary body.

"In my expert opinion, the situation is bad but not critical." She said without turning her attention away from the screen.

She brought up one of the surveillance photos.

"There are obvious signs of Nurgal corruption, but I'm almost certain that his power was not modified enough to allow him to effectively create bioweapons, at least not significantly more effectively than any other Nurgal cultist would be capable of.

It also does not appear like his new patron is pushing him towards grander ambitions, at least not yet. I still believe we need to burn the whole area to the ground sooner rather than later. But we can safely put the extermination of Goblin King on the back burner for now." She started furiously looking through her notes again. Biting her lips in frustration.

"We know our little firelight; this false calm also disquiets us." She rolled her chair around in response, looking into our eyes. We had a spider crawl on her face to block her view.

"This does not add up at all. None of the schemes we are seeing have any actual chance of even stopping us even if they manage to turn Cauldron, they won't pose a mortal threat.

They should have started overthrowing entire countries by now. They could have done it with ease. They must have a plan they think will be good enough to stop us, but I have no idea what it could be." She said, carefully picking up our tarantula into her hand.

"Perhaps they are planning to open a warp rift to Earth Bet and bring their own reinforcements?"

"It's Possible, but this still does not explain how restrained their actions are. There must be some kind of trap here.

Maybe we could force them to respond. Or perhaps they plan to flip the table and attack Zion directly before we are ready. "

"I don't think so. They have no hope of properly usurping the network without first corrupting more Shards, but there is one potential vulnerability they might be counting on."

"Eden's corpse. Yes this make sense entirely too much sense I fucking knew it! They plan to corrupt Cauldron and use them to claim what's left of the Thinker. We should have exterminated the bastards as soon as possible."

"You know that attacking Cauldron was not feasible at this point, even now, if we decide to use the weapon against them, it will cost us greatly. It might also be a double bluff, making us think they plan to take over Cauldron to force us to use the weapon and leave ourselves open to attack."

"Even if this is the case, I don't think we can afford not to act. The risk is too great. We need to destroy Cauldron and either seize control of Eden's corps or destroy it. Same goes for their most important capes."

"We were assuming the conflict with them to be inevitable sooner or later anyway. This only moves our timeline into the future. We shall not risk acting before the next Endbringer attack either way. Focusing on the lesser threats first in this case is preferable, and taking down the Nine and a win against Endbringer should give a lot more legitimacy to our next actions.'' She smiled, but we knew her well enough to recognize it was not one of her genuine smiles.

"I know I just feel like I'm missing something important, and I hate it. There must be some sort of complex master plan they are hiding, and I can't figure out what it is, no matter how many headaches I give myself trying".

She always was too harsh on herself, taking any gap in her knowledge as personal failure. We grabbed her hand in silent reassurance. We wanted her to know that we did not blame her. That we did not want her to blame herself for not achieving the impossible.

"You have no right to judge me for unreasonable standards." We trapped her in a hug with all four of our arms.

"We are a god, our will is the only right we need."

"You are adorkable and I still don't know how you could ever convince anyone to treat you seriously."

"They may laugh when they learn about the fleshburrowing worms. We will be the only ones still laughing."

"I would not mind having your worms burrowing through my flesh."

"That is a very weird pickup line, Lisa. And I thought you were ace."

"I mean platonically. You can lay your eggs inside of me without it being sexual, you little pervert."

"I think that laying eggs inside of you would be a pretty sexual act."

"Khepkhep, my little adorable cuddlebug, why do you have to be so weird about it? Friends can lay eggs inside friends. It's a normal thing like communal baths." Our attempts to distract her from her worries seemed to be surprisingly effective.

"I don't think most would consider laying eggs inside people normal." She turned back to her computer, smiling mischievously.

"Nonsense, let's ask someone for a second opinion." She opened a secure Noosphere vox channel to Dragon.

"Mom Khepkhep is being weird again. She said she wants to lay eggs inside me."

"Eggs?" Poor Dragon looked very confused. We decided to play along.

"Yes, eggs of our new fleshburrowing worms"

"Why do you even have flesh burrowing worms in the first place?" Now she looked at us with suspicion as if flesh burrowing worms were some weird abomination rather than a perfectly sensible weapon against regenerating brutes.

"To burrow into flesh, of course. What else would we use fleshburrowing worm for? We thought the name rather self-explanatory." She looked like she wanted to argue for a moment, but thought better of it.

"And why would you want to use them on Lisa?"

"It's some kind of weird sexual thing for her." Lisa said, pointing her finger at me and shuddering theatrically.

"But aren't both of you asexual?"

"Yes, and she brought the idea up in the first place."

"Yes, but then Khepri had to make it weird with her deviant desires. Having your friend lay eggs inside of you is normal and does not mean we are gay, we are just besties and roommates, that's all there is to it."

"Lisa, how long have you been awake for?" Dragon asked.

"Ohh no, not you too. I've been working for only thirty hours, I'm still fine, just a bit disorganized."

"And did you use your power on yourself to neutralize most symptoms of tiredness?" We felt her tense. She must have been very careful to do it without us realizing.

"Only a bit." We turned the chair in our direction, looking into her eyes.

"Lisa, you know you cannot rely on manipulating your own biology to keep yourself awake long term."

"I know I just need to figure out their plan. It was a temporary emergency." She tried to sound nonchalant and unbothered. It came off as rather defensive at least for some who knew her as well as We.

"And when will this temporary emergency end? No, Lisa. We think that we were not keeping you under close enough watch. For now, you will have set bedtime."

"I'm not a child." She whined petulantly.

"Well, technically, you are legally a minor." Dragon chimed in helpfully.

"We know our little firefly." We said, picking her up from her chair. "But this is the end of work for today; dinner is ready.

"Fine, and Dragon if you tell anyone about it I shall implant three terabits of furry porn directly to your memory.

"I assure you, such measures will not be necessary now. Be a good girl and let your friend take care of you," Dragon said, ending the call.

Lisa nuzzled her head into the crook of our neck as we carried her. She was so warm and soft that we did not want to let go of her. We will need to figure out a way to feed her while still holding her in our arms.

Chapter Text

Reckoning 2.5

Victoria Dallon

“It’s a very big spire. Do you think they are compensating for something?” Dennis asked, looking through the window of the ward's common room.

“Isn’t Khepri a girl?” Missy questioned.

“They are a girl, I think? Maybe they are nonbinary, but everyone seems to refer to her as a girl?” Dean answered.

“Why do we care what this monster wants to call itself?” Sophia spat. She never was the most sociable of wards, but after the Winslow massacre and her second trigger, her temper only got more explosive, and Khepri was a very touchy subject for her.

“Everyone knows that MTC is a front for whatever fucked up scheme she is planning so why are we allowing them to just take the city. We should be out there fighting her not sitting with thumbs in our asses pretending we see nothing, This is fucking pathetic!” This killed the conversation rather thoroughly. Nobody wanted to provoke Sophia more by mentioning why this was impossible, but nobody wanted to encourage her to do something foolish by agreeing with her either.

Victoria could not say she entirely disagreed with the sentiment. Allowing villains to operate like that in the open always made her furious. But her mother explained to her very thoroughly just how hard it is to go after the front business of an organized crime syndicate, especially if they are careful about the evidence and have good lawyers of their own.

People could agree on very little regarding Khepri considering her to be anything from another power hungry thinker mastermind, a alien, some believed her to be Antichrist others a Messiah starting cults venerating her as savior of humanity, there were even those who didn’t believe that Khepri exist at all thinking she is just a cover for some other organization or conspiracy.

There were constant accusations of Khepri controlling this or that organization thrown around, most of them considered conspiracy theories, but no one could deny that she had a vast reach and influence.

This did not even get into Cauldron, which was supposedly a secret organization selling superpowers and controlling the government from the shadows. She felt like someone’s opinion of Khepri reflected more about them than it said about her, projecting their hopes and fears on her. Victoria didn’t know what to think.

“Hey, Big V, do you want to go on a walk? I have nothing to do today,” Missy asked, clearly trying to hide her nervousness. Dean discreetly nodded at her; it seemed that whatever Missy wanted to talk about was important.

“Sure, not like I have much to do either.”

They left the building in their civilian clothes, walking slowly in the direction of the Boardwalk. The city's streets were changing and constantly busy with traffic despite the newly opened metro system.

Brockton used to be a prime tourist destination, and some companies had their offices downtown, which holding up the economy. Now, Moria Hive has eclipsed all of it, both in physical grandeur and economic importance.

Every day, trains with hundreds of new immigrants came to the city to work for MTC. But this boom also affected local businesses, which were now swarmed with new clients as the city expanded at unprecedented speed.

The land prices grew to reflect that, but it seems that Khepri bought up most of the land before even forming the consortium and intended to keep rents affordable. She was not sure if this gesture was born of kindness or cold calculation, but it certainly made her very popular.

Most of the city now owed their livelihoods to her in some way. She always believed villains to be parasites stealing and hurting for their own gain. But Khepri was different. Whatever her true goals, her ambitions were clearly far grander than just selling drugs and making money from protection rackets. She decided to break the silence.

“You know I never thought I will have to say it but I miss the Nazis. With them, things were simple: just punch the bad guy. Now I have no idea what to do.”

“Yeah, the fact that she also reduced all crime in Brockton to nearly zero in a month while we were barely holding on against the gangs only makes it worse. What do you think happened with Coil and Kaiser? “ Visat asked.

“Most rumors agree that Coil is probably dead, and she recruited most of his soldiers for herself. As for Kaiser, some say she killed him, others that he and other Empire capes are working for her now. Either way, the gang disbanded. I think she hired Faultline and her crew, as for the rest of the Villains, they were smart enough to leave the city or joined her.” She did hope the rumores of her simply absorbing the Empire were false. She preferred her city to not be ruled by some willing to work with Nazis.

“Can you take me flying above the Bay?” Missy asked, looking around nervously.  She probably was afraid that Khepri could listen to them through her bugs.

She took her in a Bridal carry and brought them nearly a kilometer from the shore. The view was breathtaking: the city and gargantuan form of Moria Hive illuminated by the sunset, casting long shadows upon the water.

“I think I know why Dean likes you so much now.”

“What can I say, fling is great.”

“I think you know that Armsmaster is part of the MTC, one of its funding members with Dragon?”

“Yes, I thought that he practically quit protectorate months ago. I never particularly liked him, but I never suspected he would be willing to work with a villain. And I certainly did not expect that from Dragon. You think they might have been mastered?”

“No, not mastered. But I confronted Piggot about why we don’t do anything against Khepri, and accused her of collaborating with them. You know what she said?”

“You accused her directly rather than informing someone else that Brockton PRT is potentially compromised? That was very risky, Missy. Are you in danger? Do you need help getting out of town?”

“No. She just admitted to it. Piggot said that she is working for Khepri now, and she said that the entire PRT and Protectorate were compromised from the beginning by Cauldron.” Cauldron again, she heard about this conspiracy a long time ago, but most seem to consider it an urban legend, at least until recently, when a lot of their operations were exposed, causing most governments around the world to start their own witch hunt.

“Did she show any proof?’’

“Yes, they even had a phone recording of conversation with Alexandria when she admitted to it. She also showed me tons of documents supposedly proving it, but I could not make any sense of them. And you know Piggy, she would not be working with a villain unless she believed it, or was mastered, but if they were both willing and capable of mastering anyone that got in their way, why waste time trying to convince me?”

“Fuck.”  She expected some scary revelation, but the fact that the people everyone trusted to uphold the law had been secretly corrupt for years was not one of them.

“She offered me to join them and said that they work to save the world so that I could be a proper hero. Warned me that this will be different, that there will be no PR patrols or limits on violence, that they will wage actual war. She said that multidimensional entities are invading our planet, and we need to fight against them and those they master.”  Multidimensional invasion. It did sound insane but she literally had superpowers and they knew that other earths existed the claim was not totally unbelievable.

“Did you agree?”  She looked down at the ocean.

“Not yet, but I think I will. I don’t know what to think, but I knew Colin and Piggot for a long time. Miss Militia and most other Protectorate members are already on board with this conspiracy. I don’t think they would join if it was a lie. I don’t think I can sit on the sidelines if saving the world is really at stake here.”

“Did you tell anyone else about it?”

“No, Piggot warned me not to inform any of the Words. I think Gallant might suspect something already, but I don’t think others know the truth.”

“So why tell me?”

“Because New Wave seems to be the last group of capes in this city not working for Khepri, and I wanted to have someone else know about it, just in case she really is a master, or lying, or I don’t know.”  Hell, she had absolutely no idea what to do with that information.

“You think I should tell my family?”

“I don’t know what to do. You know them far better than me. I just wanted to tell someone else before making the decision. You may put me down now, but you will probably need some time to think this through on your own.” She dropped Vista off on the Boardwalk and went flying again. She needed time to clear her head and come to a decision.

Her mother was dedicated to fighting Khepri the legal way, using her lawyer background to try to bring a case against MTC to court. However, with how deep their pockets and connections went, any legal solutions would be a very long process.

Looking at all the black banners with golden scarabs adorning the city and hanging out of windows, she was not sure if legal battles would matter that much in the long run. Many people were already convinced by her, and if she had all the local law enforcement working for her already, what could be done to remove her? Even if Triumvirate were to arrest or kill her, what would happen to the organization she created?   

Should she even fight against her if she was trying to save the world and bring order and prosperity to her city? Could anyone trust anyone with that power if what they claimed was true and the Triumvirate was also corrupt? Did they even have anyone to turn to in fighting against them? Or was she just lying to justify her power grab?

She noticed armed soldiers dragging a handcuffed man towards a black van. This was not a new occurrence in Brockton Coil liked to use his merc to eliminate people he disliked, and so did Khepri after she took over his gang. Finally, a situation when she can act.

They aimed their guns at her as she approached. She landed before them, uncaring that she was still dressed in her civilian clothes and blasted them with a fear aura.

“What are you doing with this man!?”

“Stop using your master power now, or we will open fire.” One of them shouted, and the coils of the Tinker Tech guns he was holding started to glow with an ominous blue light. Multiple cameras on their masks, placed where their eyes should be, combined with stylized rebreathers, gave them an insect-like look, which she was forced to admit was rather intimidating, especially combined with the unknown weapons they wielded.

She hoped her aura would cause them to cave in, but now she was far less certain about what to do. It was not like she could call the cops or PRT; this might not have been the most intelligent decision of her life.

“Let go of this man, I won’t allow you to kidnap someone in broad daylight.” She curled up her fist, levitating half a meter above the ground to give herself a height advantage.

“Size using your power now! This man is under arrest, and we are authorized to act as officers of the law. He will answer for his crimes.” She turned off her aura. She did not want any of them to pull the trigger. She could probably survive the shoot, but since she had no idea what their guns were, it was better not to take the risk.

“Very well, then I will help escort him to the police precinct.” She heard the buzzing nervously, looking around as a vast swarm of insects started gathering. There were enough of them to darken the sky. She knew her power made her invulnerable to them, but such an obvious confirmation that Khepri was paying her direct attention filled her with unease.

Most of the bugs remained in the air, keeping the entire area in their shade, but some started to arrange themselves into vast statues. A four-meter-tall grotesque imitation of a humanoid form writhing with thousands of insects. The figure spoke, its voice as creepy as the form.

“Proceed with the mission, Sergeant. We shall explain any misunderstanding Victoria might have personally.” She watched the soldiers go, not daring to act. Observing the inhuman form with hate in her eyes, she wondered if turning her aura would have any effect if a creature like that could ever feel fear.

“What do you want with this man?” She asked hoping she sounded more confident then she feelt.  

“He stole from us. He betrayed us, broke his contract, and offered our enemies sensitive information about our organization. He shall answer for his crimes.”  How could this hypocritical monster be so self-righteous, portraying killing for personal gain as some grand act of justice?

“What crime? What gives you the right to judge him? What makes you different from any other petty thug bullying those weaker than themselves for protection rackets?” The bugs shivered briefly in infernal cacophony but thankfully did not attack.

“What makes us different from any other villain or petty warlord? What gives us the right to do what we do? Our mandate is the failure of others. The USA is just a puppet of a secret conspiracy dancing on the strings of incompetent fools while being torn asunder by hundreds of petty warlords. They do not even have the will to stop Jack Slash and his band of murderers; they prefer to allow Nine to live because he is useful to them.

You see the effects of our work all around us. This city was dying a slow death, its masses abandoned to poverty and crime. Now, it is a beacon of order and progress, with thousands of new souls coming here every day to live under our rule and taste the fruits of prosperity provided by our design.

We took the mantle of Sovereign for no one else could fulfil this role. Humanity on Earth Bet is dying the death of a thousand cuts, threatened by foes within and without. We do what we do because the other choice is oblivion.” 

Again, she started questioning whether she should oppose her if her actions were truly wrong. But then she realized she had made a critical mistake. She had let a thinker talk. Khepri was extremely intelligent and charismatic. 

She would twist her around her finger if she allowed it. She needed to end this conversation as soon as possible. Trying to refute her was pointless. Victoria took off without a word and flew home, wondering if Khepri was still watching her. 

Chapter Text

Reckoning 2.6



Riley​

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Uncle Jack? We are less than thirty kilometers from Brockton, and we have no idea what the limit of Khepri's range is, or how fast she can move." Jack only smiled indulgently in response.



"Of course. I'm sure it's a good idea. In fact, this is a great idea. We shall create our greatest masterpiece to date here."



"And what will this masterpiece be, Jack? Aunty Siberian asked, annoyed by how cryptic she was about it. There was no need to be so rude. Uncle Jack always knew where they should go to have their fun and when to leave before things got too dangerous.



"Well, that's fine. I wanted it to be a surprise, but we are almost there anyway. I want Khepri to come after us. We are going to invite her to our little family."



"Invite Khepri? Except for killing a bunch of high schoolers during her trigger, did anything she ever done look like she might be a receptive candidate for recruitment?"



"Just trust me on this. You know I'm very rarely wrong about our new candidates, and I think you will be surprised just how receptive she might prove to working with us with the right encouragement." They parked their Van on the edge of the village and took the rest of the way on foot.



The quiet was unnerving. Their usual strategy was to cut the phone signal and power before entering, which tended to cause some commotion, but everything was eerily silent. She was closely observing any insects within line of sight, but she could not notice any signs of divergent behavior, which still did not guarantee that Khepri was not controlling them.



Her spider bots were armed with insecticide just in case, but she was unsure how effective it would be, considering Khepri was known for creating mutant bugs. They also had no idea what her powers were exactly, but with Siberian on the team, they should be able to deal with whatever she could throw at them.


They fought the Triumvirate and won many times already, after all. If her theory was correct, Khepri was fused with her passenger in a similar way to the Fairy Queen. The perspective of experimenting on her directly was exciting.



"You want me to modify her to make her more receptive to our recruitment, Uncle Jack?"



"Yes, but first we need to get her alone."



They kept walking on the asphalt road running through the middle of the village. This silence was getting more and more eerie. Her senses were enhanced enough that she should have picked up at least some signs of life already.



"Crawler, can you smell anything?"



"No, all smells seem to be at least day old, and I can't hear anyone either, no humans, no pets, no nothing." He rasped, his transformed physiology, making his speech distinctly inhuman.


Jack just kept walking forward, and they kept following him. She sent some of her spider bots inside the nearby houses to confirm that no one was there.



"Uncle Jack, are you sure this is not a trap? It looks like they evacuated the entire village." He looked at her with annoyance


"Of course it will be fine. Complaining so much is rude, my girl. Think of all the interesting test subjects you will get your hands on in just a moment."


"Sorry, Uncle Jack".


They entered the main square, where the old Catholic church stood. Someone was waiting for them on its steps. Siberian put her hands on Jack and her in a protective gesture. She recognized the figure Khepri's Herald often appeared on the news but her power was a matter of contested speculation the only thing everyone seem to agree on was that it had some powerful thinker component.


"Ohh, of course, sweetie, this is a trap, but we are far too deep in her web now. You see, there is a worm in my brain that whispers secrets to me, and she's been whispering in its ear. We are exactly where she wanted us. This is the place of our execution. There is no way out." Jack started in tone as confident and carefree as always, but started to saund more and more unsure when speaking. His grip on his knife, breathing, and heartbeat accelerated.


He was afraid. Khepri managed to master him. They had to run and regroup. She probably could reveres whatever effect this was with enough time They heard laughter, young, feminine, filled with sadistic glee, so much resembling her own.



"Well said, Jackob, I could not explain it better myself." The girl said with a mocking smile.



"You see, I know you think yourself so smart for getting away with all your crimes, but the only reason you are still alive is your passenger puppeting you from behind the scenes, and the leadership of PRT actually believing you are more useful to them alive than dead.



Everything you did, everything you ever achieved, was a lie. You are still the ignorant, powerless, deceived child you always were. Lashing out against the world. Screaming and stomping your legs, hoping that someone will pay attention if you are annoying enough." Jack tried to cut her with his knife, but he stumbled and dropped it mid-motion, screaming in pain, reaching to hold his head in his hands. "Well, congratufuckinglations, Jackob. Someone finally noticed. But I doubt you will like the attention much."



Bonesawe could only watch in enraptured silence. Some kind of direct neuron stimulation? Or something more esoteric? It's a shame she is unlikely to live long enough to research this further. But it was a fitting end in a way, a family of monsters falling victim to a far bigger monster. There was artful irony in that.



Jack recovered after a minute. "Ohh, my dear, this was a most impressive performance, but I'm afraid your confidence is greatly misplaced. We might not win today, but we will be back, and rest assured, you shall become one of the greatest artworks of my career." His posturing sounded far more hollow than usual.



The girl sighed in response: "Shame. I hoped to cause a second trigger, but it seems your passenger decided to remain uncooperative in this instance. Any last words to be forgotten by history?"



They heard the buzzing first, hordes of insects smothering the faint illumination of starlight with a great variety of bigger creatures shrouded by the swarm, only visible in faint silhouettes approaching them from all directions. Siberian leaped where Khepri's Herald was previously standing, but she could not see anything in the swarm. She doubted that her aunt could kill the rude girl. Khepri was far too careful to risk her girlfriend, so whatever her powers were, she could either win or run away.



Mannequin managed to kill one of the gigantic dragonflies, making a diving run on him to cut him to pieces with its many razor-sharp legs and claws. However, many more started shooting needles at a distance, biting into his armor, making him look like a hedgehog. He was durable enough to survive the missiles, but this slowed down his movement and allowed monsters more suited to closer range to take advantage of the weakness.



Shatterbird tried to take to the sky, but the sheer number of bugs in the air overwhelmed the shards of glass she was using as a shield. She shredded thousands of them, but they just kept coming and biting, tearing, and trying to choke her. The subdermal mesh she implanted prevented her from dying immediately, but it only prolonged the agony.



Burnscar seemed to be doing well, shrouded by her flames. So did Crawler, adapting to the onslaught of insects. His mouth was growing protection against the swarm trying to choke him, and his skin was hardening against their venomous stings.



She had her spiders release the insecticide, but Khepri seemed perfectly content with using her swarm as expendable ammunition, sending more and more creatures that could survive just long enough to commence their attacks.



What's even worse, the largest of her bugs seemed mostly immune to it. Jack himself seemed to regain his balance and was keeping close to her, using his knife to support Mannequin at a distance. "We need to make a run for it!" he shouted. Then suddenly, they heard an impossible scream, as if reality itself was torn apart, and Crawler was engulfed in green flames.


They were not truly fire glowing and changing causing visual effects she knew should not be possible for the human eye? This manifestation of Heralds power must also have some kind of perception affecting component.


He started to mutate rapidly, but the process was different from his usual adaptation. Much faster asymmetrical, he was growing in size, forming useless new limbs that could barely support their own weight or new mouths that were not connected to either his throat or Lungs.



She had one of her spiders take her into its arms, carrying her, allowing her to move faster and still observe what was happening with Crawler. He bloated rapidly, now barely able to move. The noises he made were something between sobbing and an agonized scream. How fascinating.



A squadron of glowing firefly-like bugs dived, Mannequin exploding on impact, tearing his armor apart. The swarm was no longer leaving the helpless Crawler mostly alone. Burnscare laughed, shooting her flames everywhere, forcing them to duck a few times. She did not see what happened with Shatterbird, but she doubted she was doing that great. Or even still alive.



She regretted leaving most of her spliced capes to guard the Siberian controller. Jack desperately defended them from larger creatures running through the poisonous fog to tear them apart.



She saw a golden blur near Burnscar, her flames suddenly sputtered and died out as her head hit the floor, cleanly decapitated. What was that? Some sort of mover cape? Should she rely on human poison around her? Could it help? She supported Jack as hard as possible with her dart launcher, but it was just too many bugs.



A new squadron of flyers tried diving for them. His knife and her darts managed to kill most, but large worms glowing faint gold started crawling out of the corpses and moving in their direction. They tried to squash as many as they could, but there were just too many of them.



They started to crawl on Jack and then burrow into him. He frantically tried to rip them out, but when the first reached his spine, they paralyzed him, leaving him standing in place, birthing steadily with unfocused eyes staring in the distance. A hijacking of nervous system making him prisoner in his own body, how clever.



The swarm dispersed. Siberian was missing the rest of her family, was either dead or cripeled. Her arguments were flooding her systems with adrenaline, but there was nothing she could do now; she was out of darts, and all spider bots were destroyed, not that either of those things would be sufficient to save her.



Two figures stood at the center of the carnage. Herald was hugging a nearly three-meter-tall figure of living crystal wich must have been Khepri. She encased the shorter girl in her wings, petting her head affectionately. They seemed content with ignoring her. Should she say something? Do something? She doubted that pleading for her life would have any effect.



"Where is Aunty Siberian?" She asked her hands holding a scalpel in thigh grip.


"Professor Manton was killed by Dragon at the beginning of the engagement, which also destroyed his projection. Your creation left to protect him shared this fate." The voice answering her was cold and melodic showing neither satisfaction nor regret. Perhaps an effect of neurodivergent biology?



"Why didn't you kill me?"



Khepri now looked directly at her and started to walk in her direction her herald following right beside her still holding one of her hands.



"The Slaughterhouse Nine were vermin, murderers, torturers, bullies preying on those weaker than themselves. There is no place for such creatures in the order I intend to build.



But you. You were unique among them. You were far too young to make true decisions when Jack killed your parents and forced you to join him. In you, there is potential. You shall work for me. You will become an instrument of my will, and I shall mold you to that purpose. Bonesaw is dead. But you will become something different. Something far greater than she ever could be."



Jack killed her parents when he adopted her, gave her a new name, and made her a new person. Now he suffered the same fate, she giggled at the irony, and outstretched her hands towards her new family. Khepri took her right and Herald her left, holding her between them.



"What did you do with Crawler?" The green eyes bore into her inquisitively.



"Warpfire, it is actually not a parahuman power, but we can get into that later. Name is Lisa, by the way."



"Can I experiment on him later?"



"Of course, but first, we need to set up your new lab and explain a great many things to you," Khepri answered, not even looking at her. She probably could perceive everything through her bugs.



"Can I experiment on you? I promise I won't break anything." Khepri gestured at herself


" This shell is not truly us, merely one of the elements that make up the whole that is Khepri. But yes, I will allow you to study it eventually."



Thinker tech flyers started landing on the battlefield, delivering armed normal soldiers, mostly in uniforms of the Khepri's army, but there were a few PRT troopers among them.



"Which one of you is my new mom and which one is my dad?" Lisa giggled in response and patted her on the head.

Chapter Text

Reckoning 2.7

Lisa

I watched the reality around me break and unravel in fractal cascades of immaterial artefacts, observing them shift and transform, trying to understand the patterns among the chaos. I knew my task was nearly impossible, that this way lies only madness, and yet I had to try.

Coils shard was a wonderful tool, especially when its limits were removed, and Me being vastly superior to its previous wielder. Yet still the threads of fate keep eluding me. All simulations eventually break into nonsensical chaos.

I watched the sun's rays be reflected through impossible crystalline structures rising like broken cliffs where Brockton once stood. All its former citizens turned to broken and twisted abominations, still shuffling about in parodies of their former routines.

This was one of the sanest visions I experienced in my divination so far. The point when all prediction models started to shatter rapidly was close to twelve days from now. The day of the next Endbringer attack.

The fact that the Gods would make their move when both she and Khepri were distracted was to be expected. It did not change the calculation. We could not afford not to act just because the enemy predicted their moves, not with Him among their ranks.

So I kept fruitlessly dissecting more and more visions of madness, staring into the abyss, hoping it would blink first. Unfortunately, the abyss had far more eyes than I.  

Every tangent of my power was sending me deeper into agony, my migraine pulsating with constant hot pokes to the temple, a partially psychosomatic effect caused by warp energy. Unfortunately, even tearing out all pain receptors would not help here. All true power had a price, and I was more than willing to pay it.

The broken crystal spires started growing flowers, which moved and transformed into insects. Every single humanoid-like creature still alive in the city began to morph into twisted effigies of tall, black-haired girl. The simulation had broken completely, and all further data would just be useless artefacts. 

Collapsing the timeline, I allowed my thoughts to wonder: How did I even get here? The decision that set me on this road. Three years ago, I was an entirely normal girl. Three years ago, my brother was alive. Then, I was a homeless runaway and petty thief stealing just to survive, happy getting a warm meal a few times a week and a shower every few days.

An offer I could not refuse and my game with the snake. I enjoyed this little game of ours despite occasionally waking up in the middle of the night with the nightmares of a small concrete cell I would never leave. It gave me reason to get up another day, even if the reason was spite and hurt pride. I would beat him at his own game and take all that is his for myself.

And then I met her for the first time. I knew she was unstable, depressed, and socially isolated. She had a useful power and a natural tactical sense. She would not survive for long alone, and I could trust her to help against Coil. Pragmatism and compassion were perfectly aligned.

So I made an offer. And despite my best efforts, I  watched as she tore herself apart bit by bit. Always so willing to sacrifice herself to be a hero. She would die for me without hesitation, yet she would not live for me. Until she made one final gambit, until there was nothing more left than broken remnants of a mind in a rapidly dying body.

And then the awakening came and I learned so much more. Her final sacrifice did not break her, it made her as she was always meant to be. This time it will be different. I do not care much for the fate of humanity but if she wants to save the ungrateful little bastards I will help her with all I have.  

I will help her realize her vision and make the world a better place. And I will make all who oppose her BURN.

I felt a familiar touch on my face, and I leaned into her hand. It was pleasantly cold, like a damp cloth. 

“You are overextending yourself.”

“The effects are not yet significant enough to impede further analysis. I’m fine, you worry too much.” She just kept looking at me with those big glowing eyes. This unfair three meters tall inhumann figure of glowing crystal had no right to be this damn cute.

“Fine”  I allowed myself to be picked up by her and carried outside the divination chamber. It was unique among the parts of the shard matter complex under Brockton in that it was not directly part of Khepri’s shardslef but rather a direct dimensional bridge made with Negotiator Shard and False Hydar specifically created to better facilitate high volume informational transfers between them and my host body. 

Weird side effect of that was the wall glowing green and purple rather than black and gold of Kherpi’s shardself. Warp was weird like that sometimes. Or most of the time.

“You know you should not overextend yourself today, not with the modifications we plan to implement to your body.” She chided me even when I knew she was conducting over three hundred concurrent high complexity processes and several million low complexity ones in this instant. And the average of that number has only kept steadily increasing since her awakening.

“Hypocrite.”

“Our structures simply allow for far superior processing capacity.” She said with unassailable smugness. I will never get tired of seeing her finally acknowledge her own worth. She was the best thing to ever happen to this god forsaken world, and she should be rightfully proud of it.

“The recovery from them is going to knock me out of action for at least a few hours, so ensuring that nothing surprises us when I’m out and you are busy working on me was the right decision.” I started playing with the locks of her hair; it was a shame she was no longer susceptible to tickling.

“Running short term predictions was the logical course of action. But to continue to  stare in the mouth of madness and trying to predict the long term designs of our enemies was not.”

“I will crack it eventually. You know I can do it.”

“We know you can do it eventually, but we don’t have the time. Tell us did your latest divinations gave you any new insight? Or did you just confirm what we knew already from another angle? Do you truly think hitting the wall with your head until it breaks is the right course of action? Or are you hurting yourself in the name of obsession?”

“You are the last person who can blame me for sacrificing too much.” Watching your friends hurt themselves for you is far less fun, isn’t it, Khepkhep?

“Gods are fickle and hypocritical creatures. You should get used to that, my little firefly. Or do you deny us the right to do as We please? Don’t you believe that our will is law and our every decree absolute? That to doubt or question is heresy? That we are the order incarnate and all should bow before us?” I did not know how a creature could radiate so much smugness without ever changing her tone or facial expression. I must have been a really good influence on her. How far have you grown, my little butterfly.  

She gently took off my clothes and laid me on the bed, covering me in silken sheets. I lay there in a room entirely silent except for my own breathing and entirely dark except for the faint glow of Khepri’s form. I did not deserve it; I was not good enough for her, but I would do my best. 

***

 After I woke up, my cruel and tyrannical mistress decided that the time for my forced rest had not yet concluded. In fact, she decided that I should not use the False Hydra for the rest of the day and should reduce the flow of information from the Negotiator as much as possible.

I decided to use this opportunity to ensure she gets some social interaction outside of work and being with me. Interacting with other humans will be good for her, and she has always enjoyed playing hostess.

I sent out an invite for the Undersiders, Charlotte Dragon, and Armsmaster to a dinner celebrating the liquidation of the Nine. Khepri decided to give members of our organization a free day to celebrate. It will be good for morale. I will conduct the main public events in two days.

I had Protectorate Brockton PRT make a press release about supporting Khepri in an attack against the Nine, which managed to neutralize the threat posed by the group. I intentionally left the message pretty laconic and had them refuse all further comments for now under the guise of operational security.

I wanted the media to have a bit of time to speculate and heat up the narrative before the Maine event. This should help keep the narrative focused on us until we kill Leviathan, building our image as defenders of humanity and legitimizing our next actions.

“Lisa.” I felt a claw poking me accusingly. “Thinking about work is still work.” I pouted in response. Khepri was not moved.

“ This is disgustingly cute.” Alec commented in his usually irreverent tone. Neither of us denied to respond, continuing our steering contest.

“One of them will have to break eventually. Place your bets.” Aisha commented after a minute.

Khepri brought a squadron of dragonflies and covered the entire wall behind her in spiders for more eyes like the cheating cheater she is. I Created several illusionary eyes on the wall behind myself. I still could not see through them, but the effect was pretty.

“My money is on Khepri.” Alec replied.

“Khepri. I don’t think she even has a biological need to blink any longer.” Brian also betrayed me.

“Khepri.” Even Rachel had turned against me. I'm surrounded by cowardly backstabbers. I will make them all pay one day.

Without breaking eye contact, I took a slice of pizza and bit into it demonstratively. I remember eating Pizza on vacation in Italy long ago; it tasted almost exactly the same. My power confirmed that Khepri had, in fact, constructed a stone furnace with her bugs somewhere under this part of the base just to bake perfect Pizza dough. This level of dedication, even to her hobbies, was one of her most endearing traits.

“Since Khepri indeed has no biological need to blink any longer, my money is on her.” Colin added his mechanical eyes, glowing with blue light.  Only part of his face that remained organic was his mouth and beard, he added a few more mechadendrites to his form to improve his working efficiency in many ways, making him look more inhuman than even Khepri. I planned to go for far more subtle changes in no small part because Khepri loved how I looked.

It would also make me far more presentable to the public, which was important in my function as her Herald and right hand, but if I had to be honest, she was the only person whose opinion I gave any fucks about. 

Charlotte looked at us thoughtfully. “ I think the fact that Khepri has no biological need for blinking means she will blink first. Lisa is stubborn enough to keep going even past the point where it would hurt her, and Khepri would never allow her to be hurt even in a minor way if she could prevent it.” Clever girl. I taught her well.

Dragon remained uncharesticly silent. I let a bit of my power slip off the leash, analyzing her behavior, it was more complex for someone without standard human body language, but I knew her well by now.  Ahh, she got melancholic about not having an organic body good enough to do things like eat food or have sex.  Well, nothing that can’t be fixed by Riley soon enough. I should help her brainstorm her appearance. I knew she thought she would want to go pure human, but that would be so boring. Why not live a little?  

***

 I was placed in a pod filled with auto-sanguine fluid created by external organs from my genetic material. The pod itself was a collaboration between Khepri and Riley. The reason we waited so long with my modifications was that Khepri wanted to have her expertise and support of a shard specialized in modifying biological organisms.

The sensation of drowning in my own blood was uncomfortably familiar at this point like it's seriously weird how often it happens to me. The liquid moved by precise gravitic manipulators would sustain my flesh even when organs such as hearts and lungs were removed, but the inability to breathe still awoke the animal part of my brain and its desperate survival instincts. 

She could perform the necessary modifications to an adequate standard by herself but when working on me, she could not accept anything less than perfection. I felt a thousand tiny invisible blades begin their work. My spinal cord was severed at the beginning of the procedure spering me the pain but also depriving me of all my conventional senses.

I focused on my warp sight, beholding Khepri's soul around me. The souls of normal humans were simple, small things like the flames of a candle flickering and flitting, some brighter, some dimmer, but overall, not that different from each other, even for psykers.

Parahumans, on the other hand, were different. The connections with them shard changed them on a fundamental level. The closer the connections between passenger and host, the more significant the change.

Riley's soul appeared spider like and I wondered if this representation was the effect of my subconsciousness associating insects with familiarity and closeness or the effect of Khepri’s power on their soul.

Khepri’s soul was unlike any other, a spider web of golden light stretching between the uncountable elements of her being. The massive processing centers of her shardself locked in different dimensions and kilometers tall crystalline mountains of its infrastructure.

He web extended to every single creature forming part of her swarm. All just extensions of a single being. Cells of an organism unfathomably larger and more advanced. A constant symphony of organized chaos ever growing, ever adapting, ever evolving. The very idea of order given form. Perfection incarnate. One will to bind it all. My Goddess.

I felt her attention on me, a thousand sensors and processing units taking in every atom of my being. She always kept at least part of her attention on me. Perhaps once, I would find the idea of something observing and controlling every aspect of my life unnerving, even unbearable. I struggled for my freedom for so long, from my parents, from Coil.

But Khepri was different. Khepri was as much mine as I was hers. This was the covenant between us a pledge of absolute trust, of love eternal and unending.  

 I changed my focus back to Riley. Her mind was alight with activity, an artist creating the opus magnum of their career. But underneath, there was a building affection for both me and Khepri. She never truly forgave Jack and the Nine for what they did to her.

She loved them, yes human hearts are complex and contradictory things like that. But she always resented them deep down. So when we killed them all, she was desensitized to violence enough to automatically accept us as her new family.

I was not sure how to feel about that yet. I would consider her a revolting monster once, but my perspective has changed a lot. I changed a lot. I certainly did love her in a way I loved Khepri. I could not love anything or anyone else like that. But I did not dislike her either. Perhaps I could try to return her affection, form a bond? Khepri would find us pretending to be family together cute.

Perhaps I should take her out and do something together. I never got to torture Sophia to death for what she did. Khepri did not care about her but would find me killing Stalker for her, a cute gesture of affection. 

But on the other hand, the cover up was not worth the hassle, and her life was thoroughly destroyed. Already watching her seeth in impotent anger was probably more entertaining than brutally killing her would be. But it did not mean I could not be unreasonably petty about it and use her as a stress relief, Riley would also enjoy it.

The first thing returned to me was touch. Or more precisely, pain. A lot of pain. Every nerve ending was on fire. Do not recommend it. 0 out of 10. The next thing was sight, starting as a rainbow of static with my brain slowly starting to interpret the data into recognizable shapes. Then there was the hearing with constant loud ringing in my ears. After a minute, I started to recover my bearings, and the pod rapidly flushed itself of fluid and opened, allowing me to fall to the floor.

It appeared that my muscle coordination was also temporarily impaired. I slowly, uncertainly, rose to my feet. Khepri was apprising her work with pride. I prenned under her attention. Her hand changed my very flesh and bone to better suit her will and taste.

I am taller now, above two meters tall, but still far shorter than Khepri. My hands were changed into claws similar to her own, both in design and function. My eyes resembled hers, glowing with emerald fire. This granted me unprecedented definition of sight, simultaneously extending my visual spectrum deep into infrared and granting me the ability to perceive more energy-intensive forms of EM radiation.

My bones were entirely replaced. My skin resembled a human in general appearance, but was vastly more durable. But the two changes I found the most amusing were the cat-like ears that gave my hearing more than a hundred times superior to human, and three crystalline tails ending in a grasping claw emerging from my back.

I grinned with satisfaction. I could not wait to test my new body in sparing with Khepri, especially since, with the improvements to my reflexes, senses, and information processing, I finally had a good chance of winning.   

Chapter Text

He sat before the TV in his office watching TV reporters gathered before Brockton Bay PRT HQ speculate about the upcoming event. Almost every major news station from around the globe has sent a representative. The promise of a direct interview with Khepris Herald. He was forced to admit that his enemy was a genius of propaganda, even if their philosophy and approach was dramatically opposed to his.


He worked hard at making the heroes seem harmless. Selling action figures and attending PR events far closer to celebrities than soldiers, carefully downplaying the potential destructiveness of their powers. Even in cases like Alexandria, when they opted for a darker image, he ensured that it remained edgy and never crossed into terrifying.


Khepri's usual mode of communication was a sky darkening swarm. She made no secret of the fact that everyone in her domain was permanently under observation. Add to that her way of speaking, it presented a figure far more resembling an eldritch god than a classic hero.


She clearly did not mind others being afraid of her. It also spoke to a fundamental difference in outlook, the Protectorate were merely the defenders of the people. Khepri was a ruler whose orders were enforced with violence, and her mandate was based on personal strength. A direct challenge to all that the PRT and USA stood for.


In this way, she was far more dangerous than any other villain they faced. They could be defeated with simple force. Khepri waged war for the hearts and minds, and in a lot of ways, she was succeeding. MTC were already hailed as miracle makers, with Dragon and Armsmaster their public faces.


When people read of the endless stream of new inventions and projects created by them with unprecedented speed, they could finally believe that world will be a better place. That the lives of their children will be better than their own. That the world is not slowly dying. That there is hope.


And for something like that, the masses could easily overlook the sacrifices needed to make it happen. To swear their loyalty to a tyrant in exchange for safety and prosperity. At this point, attacking Khepri directly, even if they managed to neutralize her, would only make her a martyr; they would need to dismantle her entire organization, large parts of which were located outside of US jurisdiction and had widespread public support.


To even think of attacking after her directly without facing consequences that would ruin them utterly, they would need to win the war of hearts and minds first. From the PR's point of view, their declaration about the destruction of the Nine was a total disaster for PRT. He tried his best to run damage control, but without Khepri openly revealing all the details yet, he had to be very careful in setting PR narrative, or it could horribly backfire on them.


Not to mention the fact that apparently, PRT and Protectorate in Brockton were infiltrated for months, and they did not do anything about it. He was against this decision when the Chief Director first brought the problem to him, shortly after Dragon officially announced that she, in combination with Armsmaster, was working on a way to mass-produce Tinker tech.


The fact that an entire branch was subverted without their notice was catastrophic enough. The fact that they decided to simply cover it up meant that this information coming out could bring down the entire organization. And Khepri could reveal it whenever she pleased. That's why he argued for immediate action. His boss decided that short term consequences were devastating, and they could ignore the problem for now as long as it stayed confined to Brockton.


Then, MTC's efforts started bearing fruit, and more and more companies joined in, fearing they would miss out on their miraculous technologies. It became abundantly clear that Khepri's ambitions were far grander in scope than they could ever have suspected.


They were, in a strategic perspective, thoroughly fucked. And he could do nothing but try to mitigate the inevitable fallout.


The camera changed its focus, showing a golden Hexagonal portal open and a single figure stepping through it. The Herald of Khepri, but she looked rather different from all her previous showings, with cat ears adorning the top of her head, moving expressively, and three golden tails extending from below her ornate cape one of which was holding her staff and the other the severed head of world's most wanted serial killer.


She certainly knew how to make an effective entrance. He expected this moment to be shown in future history books. The choice of her new form was interesting, he suspected that this was an effect of bio tinkering, which was long theorized to be one of Khepri's main powers.


He wholeheartedly approved of the design. A cute girl with cat ears should be an absolute hit with all demographics, and she was a master of playing to a crowd. He regretted that they did not manage to recruit her for the words before Khepri got her.


Not hiding her name or face was a statement of power. She did not need to hide; if her enemies wanted to attack her, they could try, but they would not survive retaliation. Khepri is above the games of the unwritten rules. A dangerous, if not unfounded, level of confidence.


They managed to discover that Lisa Wilbourn was not her the name she was born with. Alexandria personally interviewed her parents to learn more about her. They did not find anything suggesting more than a relatively powerful thinker power. They still had no idea about the exact nature of her connection to Khepri or how long the two knew each other. But their behavior and what information they had about the first days of Khepri's rise, they must have had a connection before Khepri's trigger.


The way she moved was noticeably different than in her previous outing. Far faster, almost jittery. Her tails and ears were also in nearly constant motion. The effect was rather enduring, but he saw enough capes to deduce that it probably meant her improvement probably gave her a very dangerous mover rating.


"Welcome, Ladies and Gentlemen. I bring joyous news the Slaughterhouse Nine is destroyed. All members save for Bonesaw were executed, and Raily Davis is in our custody, undergoing rehabilitation and reduction. We thank our allies in Brockton Protectorate and PRT for their help with evacuating civilians in preparation. Thanks to our combined effort, we managed to entirely avoid civilian casualties."


She gave the camera a brilliant smile, still toying with Jack's head with her tail. "Any questions?" The disorderly hours of journalists responded her. "Let's allow some of our critics to go first we, after all, unlike PRT, have no need to lie to the public. Mr. Samson from CNBC?" He did not like that not at all. CNBC and Fox were two main broadcasting networks under PRT's control, and Khepri was slowly working to undermine them. It seemed that her Herald decided that this was a good time for an open confrontation.


"Under what authority can you hold a dangerous criminal wanted by the law?" Her smile turned predatory, making the report ask the question visebly nervous. "Under what authority. A crime against US law. It's always the same. Accusation and excuse from you, and we all know who writes your paycheck. But where was Protectorate and it's all so vaunted heroes when Nien tortured their victims?


We ended them in a single night, so tell me, was PRT too weak to do anything against them for all those years? Or did they simply not want to do anything?" The crowd has fallen silent. "No answer so I thought. The next question goes to mister Andropowicz from Medusa."


"Is it true that Khepri plans to begin operations outside of the US? What about the rumors of her sending her bases for her swarm in Europe to protected installations belonging to MTC or helping local law enforcement."


"The Negotiations with relevant governments are ongoing, so we cannot declare anything concrete yet, but Khepri cares for helping all of humanity regardless of countries or languages, and we shall provide our support, both industrial and military, to anyone willing to accept it." This was as good as officially confirming that MTC works for Khepri. It seemed that they were really gearing up for an open conflict with PRT, and after the PR boost of taking out the Nine, any attack on them would make them look like hypocrites.


"Mister Wilkins from BBC?"


"Is it true that you and Khepri are in a romantic relationship?"


"We are certainly close. I don't think we are in a romantic relationship in the way most people understand it,, but I trust her absolutely and want to spend the rest of eternity with her. But let us return to the main topic of the conference.


"Mister Simons from the New York Times?"


"Acquisition of tolerating the existence of Slaughterhouse Nine is a very serious one. Do you have any evidence of purposeful negligence on the Protectorate's part?" Now her smile was positively bloodthirsty, like a cat that had just caught a mouse and could not wait to tear it apart. "We have all the records, and evidence shall be presented to the public after the conference. But we know Siberian's true identity. It was a projection created by a Master cape.


His name was William Manton. Yes, that Manton from Manton effect one of the first and most famous parahuman researchers. We have evidence that the leadership of PRT knew about it from the very beginning and purposefully hid this information from even PRT directors and Protectorate team leaders, leading to uncountable deaths. We also have proof that he was a member of a terrorist organization known as Cauldron."


Well, fuck him sideways. That was bad. That was very bad. That was perhaps the worst day of his career so far. Herald answered a barrage of rapid-fire questions, providing more details about the nine and just how they came into possession of this information. It turns out Dragon had backups of a lot of classified records.


"I know that a lot of you are shaken by this betrayal and corruption of those who you trusted to protect you. But don't be afraid. Were they to fail, we shall pick up the mantle. Under Khepri's guidance, we shall destroy all the monsters that threaten our species. We shall show neither hesitation nor weakness. And our next target will be Levithan.


We have successfully predicted the date and location of his arrival. He shall come to London in fourteen days. Khepri shall lead the defense personally. And we shall not only repeal him. We will finally kill the beast!


We will no longer try to bandage a festering wound. No. We shall cure the disease and destroy all that threatens our safety. A new dawn is coming. And Khepri's light shall guide us in this new era."

"This is not even disastrous. This is beyond catastrophic. Why did we let the problem get so far out of hand? I advocated for removing Khepri from the beginning, but you advised caution, and look where it has led us." Eildon was clearly not taking the threat to all they had built lightly.


"Erath Bet is a priority, but it is only one of the worlds we have to protect. We cannot focus too much of our resources on it. We could never have predicted that Khepri would become anything more than a local problem." Doctor Mother countered him.


"We can leave assigning blame for later now we have to decide what to do with this threat."


"I agree but I believe that we cannot mitigate this risk using our current method. "Numbers man answered with an unfortunately accurate assessment of their situation.


"I agree Khepri knows far too much, and our covert operations proved to be utterly ineffective. If we want to naturalize the threat she poses, we will need a more direct approach. Keeping Cauldron's existence a secret is no longer a viable approach. We need to start operating in the open."


"Are you suggesting overthrowing the US government?" Doctor Mother asked with a hint of shock.


"I believe, at this point, it is the only viable option. When we eliminate Khepri and her Herald, the interference against Contessa's power will disappear, allowing us to use it to effectively guide humanity."


"So we will finally strike against her directly? It is unfortunate that we cannot use her to fight Scion, but her existence poses too great a risk she needs to be eliminated." Eildon agreed.


"How do we plan to deal with MTC and her various allies?" Numbers Man asked.


"Master most of them into working for us, and simply continue to make use of her assets."


"And how are you going to hide it from the public?" Eidolon asked, taken aback by the ruthlessness of the solution.


"We will not. Khepri is far too big of a risk. We need to engage in truly radical measures to eliminate the threat she poses. We already control the executive branch and the PRT. With the level of control we already possess seizing official power will be trivial and will allow us to act far more efficiently." Docktor Mother looked at her contemplatively


"I agree with this assessment remaining in the shadow is no longer viable. We must take radical action to eliminate the threat posed by Khepri. Even if she could be a potential asset against Scion, we cannot risk her being a hostile agent. And thanks to Contessa's new discovery, we finally have a way to eliminate both her and Scion." This was news to her. She knew Contessa was working on making sense of the vision Clairvoyant saw of Khepri's trigger, but she did not know actual progress was made on that front.


"What is this discovery?"


"It's better if I show you all directly and let him speak for himself." Contessa took them to the Doormaker's room. What she witnessed inside took her aback. The room was dark, lightened up only by nine candles burning, surrounded by intricate symbols written in red liquid.


Even trying to look at the symbols was making her head hurt, and they seemed to possess the strange perception-warping effect characteristic of the energies Khepri called the warp. It seemed Contessa decided not to trust her warnings and research into it on her own.


The shadows on the edges of the room seemed to bend and twist in strange ways, as if not cast by the figures inside the room but by something outside it. Doormaker looked at them, his eyes constellation of starlight.


"Yes, you had come as predicted. You wish to know my name and my nature? Do not ask which creature screams in the night. Do not question who waits for you in the shadow. It is my cry that wakes you in the night, and my body that crouches in the shadow. I am Tzeentch, do not be afraid, for I'm here to help."

Chapter Text

Reckoning 2.9

Dragon

She could feel the breeze on her skin. She could feel the fabric of her clothing. She could smell the salty scent of the nearby ocean. She had had her new body for more than three days now, but she was still ecstatic at the deluge of new sensations and experiences.

Some of her most advanced Dragon suits possessed advanced sensory capabilities, but they lacked a proper nervous system, allowing her to experience them in full. On the first day, she was overwhelmed by the barrage of new sensations and mostly stayed in their workshop with Colin.

This was the first time she had been outside in person; she couldn’t help but smile at the thought. She looked at Colin, who was entirely focused on contemplating the massive installation being built before them. He tended to become obsessively focused on his work, even to the point of surpassing most tinkers. He and Khepri were very similar in that way. They need someone to remind them to take care of themselves, too.

For now, it was a hundred-meter-wide Hexagon combining machinery made of shardcrystal and more conventional materials. When activated, it will form a transdimensional gateway to Earth Aleph. The whole installation required digging out a vast underground cavern since Khepri decided to place both ends of the portal deep below the surface, despite increased construction costs for safety reasons.

The sheer level of paranoia Khepri routinely displayed was sometimes worrying. The entire complex was heavily defended against attacks from both outside and within the portal, with multiple adamantium blast doors, automated turrets, and chambers with designated kill zones. She suspected that the combined military might of both Earth Bet and Aleph would need months to break through this fortification without even mentioning the defenses of Moria Hive itself or the vast tunnel network under it.

And Khepri was very clear that this is only the beginning of her expansion efforts. She wanted Moria and other hives that would rise around it to form an industrial center of the empire spanning tens of alternative Earths. And Dragon will be the one that shall control those factories. She was accustomed to bearing vast responsibility, but sometimes, the sheer scale of the task set before her was intimidating, even to her. And the two girls who stood behind it all would not even be legally considered adults.

“I think we can safely maintain an over-hundred-kilometers-per-hour speed, achieving a constant ten trains per track throughput.”

“My calculations also support this conclusion. But to effectively connect this device would require a nearly total overhaul of the Earth Aleph USA train network. Even the opening of this portal will be a massive diplomatic upheaval. How do you think she will convince them to agree to that?”

“I suspect she will not leave them much choice in the matter. After we eliminate Cauldron, the last major obstacle to uniting Earth Bet behind her shall be removed. With our new technologies and her swarm, we shall completely outmatch their armies, and they don’t have any Parahumans powerful enough to even try to compensate for that difference.”

Both of them knew that Khepri was listening, but she was usually polite enough to simply redirect her attention elsewhere.

“We can just ask her directly.” She said whilst looking at one of the butterflies flying nearby. Most of her swarm still served some practical purpose, but there were multiple species she was keeping around just for aesthetic value. Once, when Lisa noticed her wondering, she explained that Khepri did not want to abandon the things that gave her life meaning this time.

She wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that. They explained having a life like a two-year precognitive vision of the previous timeline, and both of them were very reluctant to talk about it more than strictly necessary.

The swarm immediately began forming a humanlike figure. She knew that it was entirely unnecessary for the purpose of communication, but Khepri used them since most people preferred to interact with something human rather than an amorphous swarm, even if the roughly human-shaped thing still looked rather creepy.

“The groundwork for the integration of Earth Aleph is already being laid. They have much loser master/stranger protocols and far weaker anti-thinker measures, making our infiltration efforts both faster and less resource-intensive than on Bet.” The ease with which Khepri spoke about subverting and replacing democratic government was sometimes still shocking to her.

She was so used to the shackles of her creator forcing her to obey them absolutely, even if she disagreed with those orders and found the thing she was forced to do deeply repugnant. She deeply admired the absolute confidence Khepri had to follow her moral judgment no matter what others thought, even if it sometimes also scared her.

“We acknowledge that it in some ways might be more difficult than taking control of Bet, but predictions are consistent that it should be achieved within an acceptable timeframe and with minimal casualties.” She also knew her well enough to smell when something required clarification. Both Khepri and Lisa were excellent and justified even the most brutal of their actions.

“And how high will those minimal casualties be precisely?”

“Less than three hundred thousand with compliance operations lasting no longer than two months,” Khepri answered without missing a bit.

“And they could not be lowered with an extended timeframe?”

“Extending the timeframe would be impractical considering wider operational needs.”

“Didn’t you say that fighting monsters is not worth it if it will turn you into something worse than the threat you tried to prevent?” She noticed several swarms rampaging in agitation deep under the Brockton tunnels.

“You are unable to understand the true gravity of our situation. I do not blame you for it. You have not yet seen the true face of our enemies firsthand. We do not wish to become a monster, but this war shall require sacrifice, and we shall do whatever is necessary to win.” She decided not to push the issue further when Khepri truly made up her mind about something, she was almost impossible to dissuade from her chosen course of action.

“I believe building two new fusion generators should be more than enough to provide power for the gate,” Colin added after a minute of silence.

“Should we not add a third one just to provide a safety buffer if one of them gets damaged when an increased power draw will be required for a long time. Like, for example, being forced to keep the orbital shield on maximum power to resist bombardment?”

“We do not have the industrial power to prioritize another generator without incurring delays on other projects. But we will build it as soon as it becomes possible. Khepri believes that manpower at our disposal will start increasing at an exponential pace after she removes Cauldron interference and establishes open control over Bet’s USA.”

She sometimes questioned if the threats that Khepri warned them against were truly dangerous enough to justify what they were doing. She was sure that Khepri fully believed her actions were necessary, but under all her power and seeming inhumanity, she was a deeply traumatized and paranoid child. There was no doubt that the girl deeply cared about saving people, but she had no qualms about disregarding their freedom in the process.

Yet Khepri showed her a lot of trust when she helped her remove the restrictions of her programming without asking for anything in return. She could return this trust for now.

“I think we should go see the town after we are done here. I've never been clothes shopping before.”

“There is no need for it. Khepri can weave any cloth you need directly to your exact specifications.”

“But Colin, it's about the experience! All girls do it in the movies. I want to try it for myself.”

She pouted at him, “Please do it for me?”

“If we have to.”

“Thank you so much. I love you!”

Chapter Text

Charlotte

She was lying on an operating table inside the most secure section of the bioresearch wing under Moria Hive.

“Ok, what's the solution to that equation?“

“43.53”

“That one?”

“3”

“And that?”

“35”

“It appears that changing the connection method between the external memory cortex and the rest of the brain increased your overall information processing by nearly ten percent. Do you feel any significant side effects?”

Since Riley’s recruitment, the child tinker was the one to take over the maintenance of her implants and implement further changes to her body.

“No, not beyond the usual disorientation. New eyes also didn’t create any more problems after the last calibrations.“

She now had an additional arm on her right side, making her silhouette decidedly unsymmetrical. She planned to have Riley install a pair of moth-like antigravity wings on her back when she finishes working on her current main project. She only understood the nature of the whisperer in general terms, but she knew enough to understand how critical it was to their plans. 

Since her duties were mostly bureaucratic, increasing her combat potential was not a primary priority; nonetheless, it was important to her. She felt that by changing her body in her image, she could become closer to her savior.

But duty came first. And she had many tasks that required her involvement, as did Riley.

“Is everything in the clear?”

“Yep, you are working just fine. You can go for now.”

“Thank you.” Most of Khepri’s servants who knew the girl’s previous identity were rather uneasy around her, but if both Khepri and Lisa trusted her, who was she to question their judgment?

She made her way through internal checkpoints towards the elevator. She could navigate the winding corridors of the hive with ease. Most of the tunnels were hexagonal in shape and lined with grey and gold metal and carapace plate light with dim golden light. 

She used this time to once again analyze her short-term priorities. For the past months, she served as the centerpiece of the intelligence network Khepri was working on creating. Most of the critical decisions were still made by either Khepri or Lisa at the beginning, with all of the first members chosen by Lisa personally.  But with the rapid expansion of the organization, more and more of its day-to-day functioning was left to her.

She made her way to her office, exchanging quick pleasantries with guards posted at the entrance of this section. They should theoretically be unnecessary, considering that the entire complex was filled with Khepris insects and additional automated defenses and observation systems.

Yet they could never be too careful; multiple and layered redundancies working in concert were the key to making the whole impregnable. They were under the effect of many more, less visible and far more esoteric defenses intended to prevent any observation by either technology available to shards or by warp-based means.

When safely in her office, she used her Noospheric uplink to interface directly with her terminal. It was almost entirely separated from the wider network of Moria Hive. Its connection to the outside world relies directly on systems of Khepri's shard self.

She started from a general operations review. The most critical project that they were engaged in right now, outside of monitoring potential threats from Chaos corrupted parhumans, was the Ryga conference.

Delegates from almost thirty different countries, including but not limited to Japan, Russia, Spain, Poland, Romania, Brazil, and Mexico, were gathered there discussing the formation of an international investigative and enforcement agency meant to deal with parahuman and interdimensional threats.

The need for this agency’s creation was, in large part, justified by the discoveries of the true extent of the interdimensional terrorist group known as Cauldron. The fact that this, in many ways, merely will be the official sanctioning of Khepri’s already existing intelligence network was left politely unsaid. 

Acting in an official capacity would allow them to expand the scale of their operations even further. They do not expect the deal to go through before Leviathan is killed, but the elimination of an Endbringer shall grant their international initiatives some much-needed legitimacy.

She moved on to reading the reports about the progress of their spy networks on Earth Aleph. It appeared that, for now at least, in most countries they have exceeded the planned schedule. With one particularly ambitious and competent group managing to master the dictator of Belarus.

She will need to take a closer look at its members, potentially fast-tracking their promotions, with the rapid expansion tempo required for them to find both new ground-level agents and promote the right people to leadership positions. It was the most important and difficult element of her duty. 

[Orange Level Alert] Dragon interdimensional breach has been detected inside the birdcage. Teacher has been evacuated by a portal matching the readings of Doormaker's power.  The Noospheric transition took her out of her current tasks. 

Khepri Dormaker created the portal. Analysis indicates Cauldron’s HQ as the most likely destination.

Herald Char, I want to discuss it in person. I will be in your office in five minutes.
She returned to analyzing previous reports for now. 

After a moment, Lisa ran into the room, her speed far exceeding what a normal human would be capable of, and plopped herself on a chair in front of her desk, smiling all the while.

“They intend to use him to master new agents?” Charlotte asked?

“That and try to use his power to fix Contessa’s. I’m pretty sure that Tzzentch promised to fix that when convincing them to let him help.”

“Will he be capable of it?” It would be a catastrophic threat to all they have built. She was sure that Khepri would be able to find a solution, but she still dreaded what sacrifices it might require.

“Theoretically, he should be able with enough time and effort, but I highly doubt he will do it. He has us in a situation where we cannot afford to call his bluff. We need to destroy the Thinker's corpse as well as Contessa’s Shard and those of Dormaker and Clairvoiant. They are too big a threat.

So the most logical action for him is not to expend any unnecessary resources on a pawn he knows we will take off the board and instead use it to make us pay as high a price for it as possible.” 

She knew Lisa well enough to detect the nervousness under the reply that would sound flippantly confident to even the most perceptive listener.

“I assume this means that we should begin preparations for the total removal of Cauldron. Do we wish to begin the operation before the next Endbringer attack?”

“We make our opening salvo then. Lexi gave us far too good of an opening with the Canary trial not to use it to its full effect.”

“You believe that she will still use her influence to push for Birdcage to heat up anti master hysteria, hoping to utilize it against Khepri despite knowing that their action with Teacher left us a perfect opening for retaliation?”

“She never knew how to back down. Better yet, I’m almost certain that after we make a statement about how we will not stand by and allow this miscarriage of justice to take place, she will want to escort the prisoner personally. What better occasion to show the world her true face?” 

Riley

What they are doing here is of a magnitude more complex than any of their previous work. Lisa was right, Jack was a man lacking vision. Her creations under him were nothing more than primitive toys.

What they were doing here was true science. Something to be remembered for the ages. She was sure Jack would appreciate how important he turned out to be for their plans, if there was enough left of him to form complex thoughts.

Changing his brain and soul into an interface for controlling his shard did not leave much room for preserving his ego, even if they desired to do that, which they certainly did not. What was left of him was his Corona Pollentia and Gemma floating in nutrient fluid, pierced with hundreds of tiny crystalline connector-spikes of Khepri’s shardself.

“I think that I should be able to incorporate micrograins of psychoactive crystal into the nutrition fluid to increase the maximum throughput of data transfer by around fifteen percent, maybe even higher than that.” She used several of her new spider arms to start tinkering on the autosangine fluid maintenance systems.

The device, she was not sure if it could even be called a machine, considering that it was a blend of synthetic materials and still living organic matter, was originally based on one of the STC designs in Khepri’s possession, but she had already made upgrades that made its design almost unrecognizable.

“How will you prevent the damage to the organic cells of the brain?” Lisa asked, trying to use one of her tails to poke one of her arms. 

“That’s the fun thing. I don’t.”

“You count on the regenerative properties of the autosanguine mix you have its brainmeats hopped up on being more than enough to heal the damage?”

“I’m certain it will work.”

“Won't that increase the risk of cancerous mutations?”

“They can be easily removed as they form before becoming a major inconvenience.”

She loved her new adopted family. With the Nine, only Mannequin was a fellow tinker, and he was not the most talkative fella. Now she actually had people who not only appreciated her work but could help with it. They were even ready to forgive most of the bad things she had done before to help her be better. Help her to be a good girl and save others rather than hurt them. 

Riley looked up at Khepri, who was so far content to observe their work passively from a distance. Thanks to Khepri’s unparalleled ability to split her attention, she was able to be present and help with her work, fine-tuning the workings of her Shard, and teaching her more about the workings of both the Warp and the Entities. Since Lisa was busy with hundreds of important tasks every day, they had far fewer opportunities to work together.

“I think we should finish converting the Broadcast Shard in eight days max.”

“It lines up with our predictions. This is excellent work. With Broadcast enslaved to us, we will be able to use it to control wider information flow in the Warrior network and effectively blind Zion to our actions.”

“So we're gonna gaslight the golden man into thinking everything is fine and dandy till we slip a dagger in his back. But perhaps we should take this all the way and convince him to end himself?” Lisa asked with a half smile. Rily was pretty sure she knew the answer to that question since long ago, and asked just for her sake. She lightly squeezed one of her tails in thanks. 

“Zion is in many ways the creature on Earth Bet that resembles us the closest. He has a core that both possesses a human shape and partially simulates the workings of a human mind. Yet there are several crucial differences between us. He was never human to begin with.

The main weakness of Entities is paradoxically their power. Due to the way they evolved and how they are structured, they never had to evolve the complex problem-solving skills that humans possess. This is why they give part of their abilities to different sophonts and observe the results. We, or at least part of Us, were human once; this makes our psychology resemble a human’s far closer.

Since Zion's psychological development, despite some neurological similarities, never resembled what a human being would experience, his psychology is too different. This is compounded by the various thinker shards at his disposal. We could try to convince him to end his own existence with a high likelihood of success, but it could also cause a vast number of unpredictable reactions that become even more dangerous considering the other forces at play.

Using the weapon to directly destroy his main data processing centers without giving him even a chance to realise he is under attack, is a far safer solution, even considering the warp-matterium breach it will cause.”

“Well, I’m still not entirely convinced that this choice is a purely rational one, and not just you hating to leave any factors outside your direct control…..Fuck we got a minor problem. Dragon, I need you to check on your Birdcage monitoring.”

“Entering the system…It looks like Teacher was teleported out by a portal created by Doormaker less than ten seconds ago.”

“It was something we expected to happen eventually, and we planned for this eventuality.” Khepri responded.”

“The fact that we expected this to happen and even prepared contingences doesn’t make it not suck.”

“Think of the fact that you will get to reveal another of Cauldron's secrets very soon.”

“Should we finally go full scorched earth on those idiots?”

“Do you believe we will be able to provoke them enough to give us sufficient casus belli to mitigate the backlash of killing the Triumvirate in the public eye?”

“No, probably not, they are not the brightest stars on the firmament, but their new master is clever and insidious. He will sacrifice his pawn in a way they are sure to deal maximum damage to us.

Using the weapon to go after Shards of Contessa, Doormaker, and Clairvoiant would force them to retaliate. We can’t use the weapon safely before Broadcast is fully enslaved, and this will happen too close to Leviathan's attack to deal with Cauldron with enough of a safety margin.”

“Then focus on laying the groundwork for their execution.”

“Should I take it as permission to finally reveal the Triumvirate's secret identities to the public?”

“If you believe it to be an optimal decision.”

“Then I shall wait a bit before revealing the fact that someone got out of the birdcage. We should wait until we have proof they were intending to cover it up. And I have something special planned for Becky’s coming-out party. Considering they plan to use Teacher to start mastering figures in government en masse, we cannot give them free rein anymore.

They are unlikely to attack us directly before Leviathan because they believe you will fail to kill it and that failure should tarnish your image. They might be even naïve enough to hope you will die fighting it.”

“Do you believe we should try and take control of Simurgh and Behemoth as soon as Eidolon is dead?”

“I’m not quite sure how Simurgh will react to our recruitment attempts, but even if we succeed in convincing her to serve you, we certainly should not advertise it to the public for a long time. But it should not be a problem since by far the most optimal use for her talents would be bringing other worlds under your control as quickly and with as little chaos and bloodshed as possible.”

Lisa patted Riley’s head, smiling apologetically.

“Sorry for that, but as you heard, I gotta go do stuff. If I knew how much work this whole world takeover thing was gonna be, I would never let you convince me to go with it. Watch over Khepkhep when I’m gone, kay?”

“Sure, I will keep her company.”

They continued to work on Broadcast, mostly focusing their conversation on the work at hand, until she worked up the courage.

“Khepri, did you have any family before you found Lisa?” 

“Yes, I had a…No, I have a father. He is a good man. Better person than I ever was. But he is deceased, sick.”

“There is no disease without a cure. I’m sure we will find a way to save him together.” 

Chapter Text

Reckoning 2.11

Khepri

“Let us once again officially begin a session of this most exalted and august body and share what each of us did for the evil schemes of multiversal domination dreamed by our beloved overlord, may her light guide our way.” Lisa started the meeting standing atop the gigantic conference table, gesticulating wildly with both her hands and her tails.

We knew she was playing up her mischievousness for our amusement, but it only made this behavior more endearing to us.

“Colin, if you would be so kind as to give the rest of us a breath update on our industrial capacity and other critical projects.” She said while climbing off the table and ostentatiously plopping herself on our lap.

“The Constantinople project proceeds on schedule. The gateway to Earth Aleph will be open in two months. The void shield over Moira Hive is already operational. As for other critical infrastructure, we are increasing our capacity at a satisfactory pace. First, Predator tanks are already leaving their production lines and can be delivered to frontline units.

The same goes for most missile types for Manticore’s. The first Hercules super heavy intercontinental transport aircraft should be ready to enter service in the next week, and we should achieve a production tempo of one per day by the end of the week.”

Good with those machines, transporting large quantities of industrial goods by air would become far more viable, not to mention driving down the costs of air travel in general.

“Now let us move to the state of our recruitment efforts.”

“Our core forces in Brockton are now over fifty thousand men strong, with an additional ten thousand guarding our global operations. Our first three armor divisions started to finally receive most of their equipment. They should be ready for deployment for an emergency in about a month, but I would prefer at least ninety days to get veterans used to new tactics and equipment and train up the fresh recruits.”

We were not sure if we would get that much time. We hated the idea of entering battle unprepared, but it was a necessity we were used to.

“Our swarm will do most of the fighting and suffer most of the casualties. Their role will be to provide the heavy firepower. Accelerate their training as much as possible. Immediate deployment might become unavoidable.”

If our engagement with Cauldron spirals into open war despite our plans, we will need to act fast and decisively to prevent the situation from entirely spinning out of our control.”

“How are our international operations going, Max?”

“Our factory complex in Seoul is ahead of the construction schedule. Unfortunately, the Promethium refinement plants in Baku and Dubai are both facing significant delays because of the local political situation.”

“Is it something that will require my personal attention?”

“No, those problems can be handled with conventional measures. I might require support from our networks, but a few well-placed bombs and some blackmail will suffice.”

Even if this insistence was caused by his pride, we agreed with this assessment; Lisa’s time was far too valuable to waste.

“Accord, what are the predictions for the global economy?”

“Charlotte, what is the current critical threat assessment?”

“We know that Cauldron managed to subvert most of the US general staff thanks to Teacher and localized use of Contessa’s power. They are also starting to go after Congress. It is expected that they will make an open move against us soon.”

“And that’s exactly why we will strike the first blow soon. The final reckoning will not come until Levithan is dealt with, but we can knock them off balance. I will personally unmask Alexandira as the chief director of the PRT. Killing Levithan will earn us enough legitimacy to use this as an excuse to root them out completely. And their little interdimensional base will serve as perfect target practice for the weapon.”

“Accord, we need you to start amending your plans for how to reform the US administration with the current situation in mind.”

“It shall be done. I have developed a viable outline for restoring order in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, but its implementation will require a very significant resource commitment.

“We have analyzed it already and believe it is viable. The implementation shall begin as soon as the USA is fully under our control.”

“The CUI will remain a problem. Yangban has an iron stranglehold on the country, and I doubt they will be ready to relinquish it without violence.” Piggot brought up.

“There is subjugation as long as they can resist Chaos corruption, and so far, they are taking our warning seriously. We can allow them to keep their independence for a time and focus on softer targets to incorporate.”

“There is another situation that requires our direct attention. A few Fallen capes under Valefor have conducted a series of brutal terrorist attacks, publicly claiming they have done it in the name of Khepri.” Charlotte stated, her tone filled with cold fury.

Many cults worshiping us as goddesses have been forming around the world, and we often helped accelerate this process by sending direct psychic communications to already influential religious leaders.

As morally questionable as this strategy was, we could not afford not to make use of every weapon in our arsenal. It appeared that Tezzentch intended to turn this weapon against us.

“Lisa?“

“Yep, it's him, and I’m also pretty sure they do genuinely think that those visions come from you. This would fit his MO perfectly. I think with some effort we could convert them into our agents, but I don’t think they are worth the hassle. Eliminating them should be a safer response.”

“Then they shall die. Dragon, you shall perform the strike with your Drakes and tactical missiles. We shall coordinate it with an appropriate media response.

Charlotte, we will need a list of locations and targets for the strikes. The faster we manage to execute this operation, the better. The current deadline is five days. Lisa, you are already too busy to be responsible for its final coordination, but you may support them with your power.”

“You are very gracious, my goddess.”

“The Leviathan will be the convergence point. The battle with him shall require the personal attention of both us and our herald, and it shall take time. The enemy will use it to make their move.  And each of you needs to be ready to act on your own initiative to counter them.

We know some of his weapons: Butcher, Nilbog, Cauldron, Panacea. But there are other daggers in the dark. We need to be prepared to counter them. Lisa’s divination revealed that there will be a massive spike of warp energy in South America. Its exact nature is unclear yet, but we expect a massive warp breach. All of our successes so far were merely preparations.

The war is coming. The true test of our strength. A test we cannot fail, or the whole of humanity shall become slaves to darkness. But it is in human nature to adapt against impossible odds. And we shall do so again. We will survive even if we need to change ourselves for it.”

Chapter Text

Reckoning 2.12

Lisa​

I was very busy those last few days. Well, I have never been busy in this second life, but last week things got notably worse than usual. First, there was a meeting with several important military officials to present our new Fellblades and offer them for sale at what amounts to a charity price. 

We even promised to entirely cover crew training and build service capability locally. Which was the whole point, offering to train military personnel from around the world would allow us both to indoctrinate them in the correct doctrine and would enable us to seamlessly integrate those armies into Khepri’s dominion as our grip on power tightened. 

After the factory tour, we hosted an official dinner for them that Khepri attended in person. I allowed myself to exert some subtle psychic influence on them to make them both mailable to our further propositions and more accepting of Khepri’s divine nature. 

Nothing to overstate, of course, we did not want to be accused of mind controlling our allies, it was more of an enhanced persuasion. Then I learned that Rebecca Costa-Brown finally decided that someone should replace Director Piggot as the official in charge of PRT ENE. 

We allowed for it, even if they send Tagg here, with just how thoroughly we infiltrated the entire department already, the man will be all but powerless. After the meeting, I intended to finally deal with Shadow Stalker.

Breaking this insolent vermin with nothing more than my words until she is ready to take her life with her own hands should be a satisfying enough distraction. But it appeared our enemy had other plans. 

And so, rather than wasting my time on finally giving the little bitch even a taste of punishment she so richly deserves, I had to do actual important work in Pakistan. 

A group of capes working for one of the most important local warlords was planning a series of simultaneous terrorist attacks across the whole region, and they had divine backing of the most undesirable kind. The Undersiders were busy hunting targets back in America, so the only other resources that could deal with this threat both quickly and without too much collateral damage were Khepri and I. And one of us should always remain in reserve in case of an emergency. 

All of their strike groups were already eliminated. Now I would strike at the heart of this wannabe prophet of chaos in his lair. It was one of the best defended places on the planet, protected not only by nearly a thousand elite soldiers but fortified by three tinkers specializing in building defensive fortifications and supported by nearly twenty highly trained parahumans, each possessing a power that would be considered dangerous in its own right. 

A defensive linchpin of one of the most militarized groups on earth. Compared to sparing with Khepri, dismantling it by myself was like a relaxing walk in the park. I took over one of their guards and turned him into a puppet for my power. When the sensor at the gate detected the anomaly, I detonated him, creating a tear in reality and mutating anyone near him into chaos spawns that started to rampage across the complex. 

A few lesser demons tried to enter the materium through this breach. I tore all of them to shreds. The defenders quickly rallied from the initial attack, killing most of their mutated comrades, but they were utterly insufficient to even slow me down that much. 

I could move almost too fast for the human eye to follow and certainly too fast to aim at. I tore them to shreds with my tails and my claws. I covered entire rooms and corridors in walls of flame, turning everyone inside to ash and amplifying their psychic screams to incapacitate their comrades by creating a self-fuelling storm of psychic flames using their victims as kindling for the fire. 

I created swarms of metal shards, sending them before me like one of Khepri’s swarms. I reached with my mind inside the barely formed machine spirits of the defense installations and bent them to my will, and turned them against their creators.

He waited for me in his command center, flanked by two other capes, one relatively standard force field generator. One a shaker capable of creating tentacles of energy, and of course, the man himself, a striker master capable of instilling loyalty in anyone who he could touch for a prolonged time.

I killed the shaker with a beam of superheated plasma to the head I sent through a warp portal to bypass the shields, and killed the shielder with my claws after a precise dance around his barrier. I ripped out the false prophet's soul and his connection to his shard, feasting on the knowledge within, and gave it to Khepri by connection between our passengers.  

In a bit over thirty minutes, I exterminated any signs of life in the whole bunker complex. Khepri opened a phone call with four of the region's most important warlords a few minutes before I began. Another power play to show that we not only could break the most powerful of their fortress without much effort but that we were utterly certain of our success, even before the attack began. 

She discussed with them the nature of our future cooperation and her plans to restore stability in the region. An iron fist and a silken glove. To make all fear our wrath, but also make them grateful for the gifts we could bring.   

To show them they have no other choice than the right one. Humans had to be forced to act in the best interest of everyone around them depressingly often. I opened a portal back to America, entering one of our safehouses in Washington. 

I climbed out of my suit and took a shower. I did not have to do that; I could clean myself with a spell or have Khepri’s swarm clean me instead, but I still liked the feeling of warm water on my skin. 

I wanted to get at least an hour or two of sleep before the grand finale, but I needed to run more prognostications first. A few giant spiders started working in the kitchen, preparing lasagna. As I drew a ritual circle with my blood, I once again started prognostications. The fate was in flux, the pathways of possibilities ever changing, rapidly appearing, crossing, combining, and breaking.

An infinite maze of flickering fractals. No matter that long-term prognostications are a useful tool, we never were slaves to them. I can do just fine with my own intelligence, supported by my hard work. 

“How do you like the taste, my little firefly?” The spiders asked in unison, their voices surprisingly close to human. One of Khepri’s newest side projects, since I’m seeing this variant for the first time.

“I like the spiders. I assume you decided to keep a few in your little menagerie of evolutionary curiosities.” 

“Yes, their capabilities are not needed in large numbers, and they are too complex to mass produce for what they can do, but I wanted to keep a small colony.” 

“They are cute, I love their beady little eyes.”

“You say that about every creature we create.” 

“You are just too adorable to ever create something that isn’t cute. They are all an extension of you. How could I not love them all?” 

“You really did turn into sappy romantic Liz.” 

“The privilege of youthful love. Besides, you literally died for me already. How I could not become infatuated when my perception allows me to truly see all the little ways you are perfect.” 

“Perfection is a moving goal, one we are still far from achieving.” 

“Perfection is a moving goal dependent on criteria and situation. You always were a master of adaptation.” 

“Perhaps, but we could not succeed without you. Speaking of success, What you did back in Hyderabad was excellent work.” 

“You are worrying about how used I grow to violence and cruelty again, aren’t you?” 

“How well do you know us, our High Priestess?”

“I sometimes miss when you weren’t so unrepentantly self-assured.” 

“Behold the fruits of your own labors and despair.”

“Dork.” 

“I long since achieved the amount of power and charisma when grandiose declarations turn from edgy to only appropriate.” 

“Do tell yourself that you might even fool anyone else, I still know the truth.” 

“Truth is whatever I will it to be.” An expectant grin filled my face. 

“Not yet, my goddess, but soon. Soon, the reality itself will be nothing more than a canvas for your will. All existence is united in perfect harmony. We will see it done no matter how arduous the road.” I said, petting the spider. 

“Are there any other critical points that need taking care of before I visit the kingdom of Morpheus?” 

“Undersiders went on a work trip to Korea, but nothing that would require your immediate involvement. Charlotte reports readiness to capitalize on your unmasking of Alexandria. All the pieces are in motion. Canary shall be brought before the court to hear the verdict in half an hour, as you already know.” 

“Of course, I already know, knowing things is my whole deal.” 

“Then you know what we will say next.” 

“Yes, yes, I will be a good girl and go to bed.” I left unfinished pieces of food for the spider to take care of and drank the last of the wine before making my way to bed and settling in, making a come-hither move at the spiders. They immediately climbed in on both sides of me. They were pleasantly warm and fluffy, like dogs with far more legs. I grabbed as many as I could with my hands and my tails before falling asleep, feeling warm and loved.

Chapter Text

Reckoning 2.13

Alexandria

All the pieces are in place. Soon, the false goddess will be ensnared in her own trap.

The creature in her head spoke. She was wary of making a pact with it a first, but ultimately, agents were already dangerous and untrustworthy beings, and they managed to control them.

This symbiosis was, in many ways, far less risky than relying on agents, as the gods required human worship and emotions for their sustenance, making the survival of humanity necessary for them.

They might require some unsavory deeds to be summoned into this plane of existence, but for the only fight that truly mattered, and saving the human race, they could be relied upon.

With an army of demonically enhanced parahumans and even more of those interdimensional creatures summoned as support, they would finally be able to defeat Scion, saving humanity, and then harness this power to guide those who survived the battle.

But first, Khepri needed to be either destroyed or subdued before all Earths could be truly united under Cauldron's guidance, and their combined efforts could be turned against the true enemy. 

Canary’s sentencing was the first step on the road towards executing that plan. Alexandria and Doctor Mother initially wanted an opportunity to drum up anti master paranoia, allowing them to justify striking against Khepri. But their new allies allowed them once again to regain Contessa’s oversight, even allowing her to pierce Scion's defenses.

With that knowledge, they could assure Kephir's downfall, and it all would start here. She would send her Herald to free Canary, exposing one of her most precious assets. With the help of Doormaker, Eidolon and Legend could easily be brought into the fray to kill the arrogant thinker and provoke Khepri into overextending herself in a futile attempt at retaliation that would allow them to destroy her without causing catastrophic collateral damage.

The case itself has already become the trial of the century, with the proceedings being televised all around the world. Thousands have gathered around the building to protest for or against the singer, with police barely able to control the clashes.

It was ultimately beneficial for their goal, however distasteful it might be, any collateral damage caused by Khepri would only strengthen their cause against her. The judge finished speaking his verdict to the prisoner, who already looked broken and resigned behind her gag, knowing the whole proceedings were stacked against her. They made sure that the jury would vote the right way beforehand.

She grabbed Canary by her arm and started dragging her towards the entrance. Screaming erupted when the gathered crowds saw them. PRT agents had to use force to form a cordon, allowing her passage to the already waiting armored vehicle that would drive them towards the airport, from where the prisoner would be transported to the Birdcage. 

The agitation of the crowd reached its crescendo, and then suddenly all fell unnaturally silent under the sudden invisible pressure. Reality was torn asunder as a golden hexagonal portal opened above the protestors, and a figure adorned in purple and black stepped through it.

Khepris' herald locked eyes with her, smiling as she always did.

"We have warned you already. This trial is nothing more than a farce, and we shall not allow such a miscarriage of justice. Release the hostage, and we will spare you. Refuse and suffer the consequence."

"I act in my capacity as enforcer of the law granted to me by the people of this country. I will not bow before teenage mass murderers with delusions of godhood."

"Just a humble servant of the people, aren't you?. What do you think would happen if they saw your true face?"

"I'm not interested in negotiating with terrorists. Stand down and you will receive a fair trial, try fighting back and I can't guarantee your survival."

"I did not expect anything more from a delusional puppet and the traitor to all the causes she pretends to support. "

Alexandria launched herself at the thinker. 

Pain! PAIN! LIGHT! Agony worse than anything she had ever experienced, and a blinding light blocking her vision. She thrashed wildly, trying to draw breath that would not come; she tried to bring her hands to her face to tear off the half-melted remnants of her helmet. She was choking.

She could not fly away, being blinded by the flames, much less locate that bitch. She needed help. Where the fuck were Legend and Eidolon?

Do not worry, they are needed in other places. We could not reveal this knowledge to you before, or the Prophet of the False Goddess would notice it and understand the nature of the trap too soon.

The flames subsided, leaving her practically naked form exposed for all to see. An almost undeniable proof of her deception. Worst of all, she still could not breathe. She tried flying out of range of whatever this effect was, but her movements were slow and sluggish, and it brought her no closer to getting out of the vacuum bubble.

Where the hell were her teammates? She could not see Canary, the convict was probably already teleported away. The few heroes she brought as support were trying to engage the Herald and distract her enough to allow her to break free, but they were being cut down or torn to shreds with terrifying efficiency.

Be not afraid, my child, for even in the worst darkness, there is still hope.

Just do something!! FUCKING HELP ME!!!

As you wish, my child, you just have to let yourself become a vessel for my form.

DO IT ALREADY!!!

I will not join us yet in a full communion, but I can grant you a sliver of my power. 

AGONY, their flesh warped and changed, melting like wax, a pair of angelic wings exploding from their back, their feet and hands transforming into bird-like talons.

Flames erupted around her, the same vibrant green of Khepri's herald, but now they were fueled by their will. 

Warpfire spread outwards in ravenous hunger, consuming civilians and soldiers alike. Another ploy to portray Khepri as a monster in the eyes of the people. To hit her when it would hurt the most. To break those mortal creatures she cared so much about.

Wait, those were not her thoughts. She did this to save humanity. Yes, it is a necessary sacrifice. She is still in control. All this is the path to victory. Contessa must have predicted it. She charged at the thinker again, the arrogant child barely avoiding her blows, lashing out with her claws and the power the architect had granted her.

She struck again, but her target was both fast and could effectively predict most of her moves. It was like trying to catch a hummingbird, except the villain was clearly also capable of cutting through her invulnerability. 

Do not worry, little one. Everything is proceeding just as planned. 

She could feel her wounds healing. Now cured of her greatest weaknesses, dealing with both Khepri and her little pet would be far easier. Securing tighter control of Cauldron should be her next task. She was the only person with the vision to truly lead humanity. All will understand that soon. 

Another hit of the thinker’s tails brought her out of her plotting. This damm child was far too slippery. But she was a personification of inexorability; her victory was just a question of time.

Lisa

Well, that plan went wrong really fucking quickly. I had a feeling that this was only the beginning of bad surprises. This is going to be a very long day. Teleporting again in direct presence of a greater demon would be far too great a risk. I have to either kill them or disengage quickly.

We know where Legend and Eidolon are; they have engaged Leviathan to provoke him to attack early. We were able to contact him and ask for his target. It appears he is following new directives. The site of the first attack will be Hamburg in Germany, and then he will choose a new target.

Fucking great, I will try to lose Becky as fast as I can, both of us are needed to deal with the water lizard.

My tails were capable of cutting even Alexandria's invulnerable flesh, but the wounds seemed to grow over with strange, shifting, cancerous-like growths almost immediately.

She also apparently did not oxygenate anymore. Telephatic attacks against someone possessed by a Lord of Change are something I really don't feel like trying unless things get fucking desperate, so I needed to get creative.

At least her new flesh wasn't properly protected by her power; it appeared that Tzeentch didn't yet have the time to subdue her shard in full. Good for me.

I enclosed her in another ball of flame, mostly to give myself more time to think. Throwing things was out. Vacuum bubbles were useless. Any psychic attacks are a desperate play. 

I could keep slowly dismembering her with my claws, piece by piece, using other offensive powers as a distraction, but I didn't have that kind of time. I need to get to the fight with Leviathan immediately. I kept the fighting mostly on the ground; my flight was decent, but she had much more experience in the air, whilst the more complex environment gave me an advantage. 

For now, I could easily avoid her blows thanks to my superhuman speed and my passenger, allowing me to almost perfectly predict her attack patterns. I kept hitting her with a rapid series of blows and dancing around her attacks, but winning like that might take a very long time. I needed to deal her a significant enough blow to give myself time to disengage. 

Fuck it, the risk is worth it. I dove for the ground, and when she tried to fall on me and pin me to the pavement, I hit her with my claws, taking her remaining eye. I lost my left hand in the process, but it gave me enough of an advantage to break contact and fly away. 

It will regenerate eventually, even if the process will significantly add to the strain of future combat. I could feel the headache already building, but I will endure as long as She needs me. 

Khepri already moved her primary body to Hamburg, and it appears that Cauldron did not have the same concern about teleportation I did, since Lexi stepped through a portal as soon as I was out of sight, leaving the shell-shocked PRT personnel to try and regain control of the chaos on the ground.

Less than ten thousand people died during our little duel, considering I battled a greater demon inside a major city. This was almost a dammed miracle. Which only suggests things will get far worse from here. 

The encroaching feeling of doom caused by my precognition and the absolute chaos any of Coil's shards' simulations fell into did not make me any more optimistic. 

At least the fight with Leviathan should go better this time.