Jump 390: Worm

Jump #390: Worm
>The Fool: Nonchalance at the threshold of gaining all or losing all.
>Age: 19
>Location: Las Vegas, January, 1982
>Identity: Rogue (-100)
>Drawbacks: (+1200) What Came Before, Forgot My Cell Phone, Wanted, Everything Gets Worse
I'm not going to lie, I took Constantine's words to heart. You know the best way to change the world? Start far enough back that I CAN make a difference. And if I can butterfly away Taylor's mother's death, then all the better. I have other plans for her anyway. In any event, I'm going to be at the middle of a LOT of events, and embracing it and charging in largely means that they don't come to find ME. At least, not as often. Still, plenty of people keep going after my civilian identity because I run a megacorporation that employs tinkers and thinkers...
>Outside Context Problem (Free)
While this is nice, I effectively have this already with some of the perks I've got.
>Opportunist (Free, Rogue)
It helps to know which door opportunity will be knocking on.
>Leave Me Alone (Free, Rogue)
So unless someone has explicitly decided to screw with me, street-level problems won't interrupt my day? I'm happy with no random muggings or mooks attacking me.
>Enlightened Self Interest (1800, Rogue)
So... I always know the best way to help other people with what I do, and the actions I take benefit others, as well as snowballing with my associates and subordinates having a similar (if reduced) effect? Sign me the hell up.
>Best In The Business (1500, Rogue)
Speaking of associates and subordinates, Everyone working for me gets the skill of a professional within a couple of weeks! Further down the chain, the effect is reduced, but still present, heck yes.
>Shard Administration (900)
You know, I've been looking for perks that let me lend my abilities to others. There really aren't that many (barring sacrifical bestowment). But this... perpetual awareness of any perks and powers I've got, and the ability to temporary lend them to someone either singularly or in packages with limitations of my choosing, and the ability to take it back at will.
>Corona Stimulants (600)
I am very much looking forward to seeing what powers this works on. Not to mention trying to replicate it. [spoiler]After five years, the replicated product is equally effective but has a duration of about an hour and should not be taken more often than once every 24 hours. A little leaked onto the black market, but usually is saved for Endbringer battles. Eidolon's not allowed to take the replicated product - he has an adverse reaction to anything but the real thing because he's suddenly burning through his power thrice as fast.[/spoiler]
>Tinker Data Core (300, Rogue)
I've got exhaustive records on various would-be future technologies, but the ones here are pretty much hard sci-fi aside from aspects that require dimensional fuckery, so I'm looking forward to seeing what can be done with this sort of technology. Pff, a couple of lifetimes to browse? That's why CruxCorp is staffed by thousands of LMDs.
>Full Line Up (0)
I have to give my companions the benefit of being imported properly. (And somehow, I fought the urge to give them all Contractor and have them empower a small army of Alexandria package heroes while we're here. Tempting, though.)
>Parahuman: Path to Victory
I actually didn't want this power. I want almost any other power BUT this power. But I don't have enough points to spend to pay for it. At least with something like this I've got immunity to most precogs by default without the need for special dispensation.

In the words of a wiser woman than I, if you don't like the way the world is, you have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time.

I have a tool for that. The Path to Victory reacted... somewhat surprisingly, when it realized that I had other powers. I have many precognitive powers that it could tap without draining its own (albeit sizable) source, and suddenly it had multiple avenues that it could check its own actions against. Aggregate future searching on demand. And certainly it acts primarily as a guide rather than outright manipulating my actions as needed, but frankly I can still pirouette as needed. Hyperkinesis and APM intensifies. As long as I am physically capable of it, I can follow its direction, should I choose.

But for my stay here... I preferred to rely on my own talents instead, so I used it rather rarely.

Usually for cooking.

So, way, way back in the beginning of 1982, CruxCorp opened its doors as a nice little research and tech firm and immediately started pressing the boundaries, if only slightly. Later that year, on the day that a golden man was sighted at sea, a woman in a black suit and a man in a white suit met on an alien world and shook hands as they made an accord.

A couple of years later, the playboy billionaire that owned CruxCorp abruptly leveraged much of what he'd been doing in the preceding years and consolidated his stakes in various companies, buying out several companies such as IBM, Intel, and so forth, in a single day. This of course was challenged in court immediately, and eventually antitrust concerns were dismissed - the era of the IBM personal computer seemed to stall with the 286, until Crux Computing released new machines, completely changing the chip architecture while preserving backward compatibility. Over the course of the next twenty years, the infinity symbol of the CxC logo was seen on all types of electronics and computers, and CruxCorp raked in truly ridiculous amounts of money while many other companies that would have flourished fell by the wayside. This of course meant many held a grudge, others saw dollar signs, but the CEO and owner of CruxCorp being kidnapped or shot at became something of a tongue-in-cheek thing in the news after the first dozen times it happened.

All of this meant more money to pump into R&D - except that was a front. Everyone there at that time was a life model decoy, refining technologies from other worlds that had been acquired over thousands of years, those billions of dollars funneled directly to Cauldron instead. The only future exceptions that were made were parahumans - Tinkers and Thinkers who wanted to make a living changing the world through advancing technology in the private sector, and get obscenely wealthy in so doing.

In the meantime, research continued with Cauldron. The first batch of vials they concocted were pretty effective, but there was potential for so much more, and I managed to get in on the ground floor and be a part of the inner circle - which put me in a position to maneuver things and help my associates excel in their task, and to keep their morality better than they otherwise might have. Infinite worlds meant an infinite number of people who would willingly chip in to help save the world - kidnapping was largely unnecessary.

Speaking of research, however, there was much more to it than simply picking off pieces of a dead alien god. The Catalyst stood in for the Balance formula, and abruptly it turned out that Cauldron capes were on average as powerful as natural triggers, though outliers were not unheard of - on the level of those such as Lung or Purity. Adapting the Gemini Formula ensured that formulas could be used for more than one client, though powers did always tweak themselves a bit differently for different people. In addition to vials, artificial triggers were eventually induced, though it took several years.

But of course, that wasn't all. There was a clandestine school which opened in 1985, though it went legit in 1989 and eventually opened branches in most major cities nationwide, that ostensibly trained parahumans and potential parahumans in the use of their powers. In truth, the students were subject to several potential methods of empowerment - some were gifted various (if limited) forms of magic, some were already naturally-triggered youths, some were artificial triggers. But the bulk of the students were part of the Power Curriculum Program, and if that doesn't ring a bell, then indexes and railguns must not mean much either. (Doctor Mother was the first student of those powers - according to the dice, she got power nullification. How appropriate.) In 1995, they started opening branches in Europe and South America.

In short, when Behemoth appeared in 1992, there were a lot more heroes who were prepared to defend against him - not to mention certain circles had predicted something big. Those same circles predicted Leviathan and the Simurgh as well. More capes, more variety in power, it made things very curious and the world was not the same as it might have been. Not to mention a number of precogs who weren't shard-based, and thus not limited. The Endbringers sandbagged a little less, and they were often driven off with less of a loss of life due to the sheer number of combatants facing them. Not to mention that precogs COULD detect those affected by the Simurgh, and a handful of telepaths existed who COULD repair the damage, in one way or another.

Powers that are not shard-derived can't be predicted as well, nor be easily affected by shard-based powers. This meant all precogs still ran into issues, but also meant that certain types of powers didn't affect the shardless. Like Jack Slash, who was constantly trying to recruit more for the Slaughterhouse Nine and its numbers kept being whittled down. Somehow he kept escaping, as if he had plot armor, but certain actions he would have taken just never quite seemed to work out as he might have expected.

By the time Taylor Hebert was fifteen, the world was a much different place than it might have been. She had a happy family, a healthy friendship, the local Protectorate and Wards were easily twice the size they would have been... sure, the local villain scene was bigger and more complex, but despite the problems with the world, there wasn't as much of a feeling of hopelessness. The Brockton Academy had a few dozen students, Taylor Hebert and Emma Barnes among them - Taylor was one of the rare telepaths, while Emma was a teleporter. A thing that had saved her life, and her father's, when they were cornered by a gang in an alley at one point. And they both lived happy lives, and when the end of the world came, they faced it with stoic faces and strong hearts.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's rewind a bit.

As I found out when the Simurgh appeared, it turns out that Endbringers can be communicated with telepathically if you have the means to understand how their minds work. I tried to reach all of them when I realized that, but we didn't talk much - they were about as intelligent as a clever dolphin, and about as human as one. Instead of eating mackerel for clever tricks, they destroyed cities, but... well, it was their function. And they that happened to think that talking monkeys were just annoying. So much for peaceful resolution.

Things I don't regret? Making sure that there were enough human beings with powers of some sort or another so that society didn't become too unstable before it ended... whether shard, esper, magical, or mutant. I actually tried to talk to Scion, the golden avatar, once - and not just with words, but doing my best to emulate his sort of communication. I was, as it turns out, successful enough that he was certainly confused and briefly elated with the possibility of another, until I expressed that there was no need for him to do anything more than act as a gardener, and that when I'd built up sufficient power, I'd return to this time and place and bring Eden back to life properly.

Apparently the second and third words spoken by Scion, his face twisted in anger and scorn, were: "Go away." He didn't deign to communicate properly - reducing himself to using human language was a calculated insult toward me. And so I went, and returned to preparing as I had been doing since day one. Still, diplomacy was worth the attempt.

Regrets? There are a few. Sure, I arranged for the Slaughterhouse 9 to not end up with Bonesaw - Riley triggered, because the precogs in my employ hadn't seen it until it was too late, but the PRT saved her and her parents from the endless tortures and she saved their lives. Of course, everything has a cost, and the cost here was Blasto being press-ganged by Jack Slash. Not only did the S9 appear, but they had various creations that he churned out as mooks, in addition to the various bio-mods that he gave each member. Bonesaw would have actually been BETTER for the world than him - the Nine stayed a major factor right up to 2011, when they were lured to Brockton Bay and slaughtered to a man by Leviathan. Only Blasto escaped.

Speaking of which, Leviathan and Lung got their rematch (after a bit of Path To Annoying Lung Into Actually Getting Off His Ass And Fighting). Lung won - there was no lake in Brockton Bay, though the city was flooded and took some time to rebuild fully. It helped that the Wards had an active telepath that could help coordinate things beyond the simple armbands - Taylor Hebert, or rather Administrator, earned credit for holding everything together as well. She'd been working with the Wards in the months leading up, and though she was basically resting off a headache from coordinating a hundred capes at a time during the fight, it was a successful proof of concept.

Later on... the Slaughterhouse 9000? Despite a lack of Bonesaw, yes, it still happened. Not only were there clones of the Slaughterhouse's members proper, but super-powered mooks. Blasto figured out how to get his creations to have powers of their own. Cauldron didn't have anything to do with the strings pulled on that one, the cape community pulled together behind the PRT in their darkest hour, and they still pulled everything off effectively with Alexandria and Eidolon at the helm.

Jack Slash still got Scion to attempt the end of the world as scheduled, but the instant that his decision was made, around the globe precogs started screaming warnings. And that's when the conspiracy leapt into action; Doormaker and the Clairvoyant coordinated with the espers on staff to begin the mass evacuation of everyone from Earth Bet who was not a parahuman, to an already-prepared alternate world a matter of seconds before Scion's primary weapon would have removed them from existence.

And then the battle was joined, an angry alien god against hundreds of thousands of posthumans, hero and villain alike. The battle raged across multiple Earths, Cauldron working its utmost to try and save as many lives as possible. The casualties were staggering. Eidolon was on the front lines and did the most to Scion of anyone. Scion pulled "you needed worthy opponents" out of his hat, and I froze time and grabbed Eidolon before anything could happen. Gave him a brief pep talk. Lent him one of my powers, because I've perks that enforce sanity and will - there was simply not enough time to do it any other way. And when time unfroze, Scion was interrupted mid-attack by an enraged Eidolon striking him, doing damage through the avatar		.

Apparently during the near-miss we had a few Second Triggers - and Administrator, Taylor Hebert, an esper, managed to trigger as well. A feat that no esper had accomplished previously, as it seemed that being an esper and being a parahuman were mutually incompatible. She triggered with some sort of master power that piggybacked on her telepathy, and the chaos of the battle abruptly became much more ordered. She had no direct control over everyone... but they were brought into a sort of consensual hive-mind with unlimited multitasking, focused on nothing but the task at hand. A battlemind. The casualty rate dropped by a measure of magnitude at that moment.

While everyone else was doing their part, and although I was on the front lines (if playing support for dimension-hopping), I had others doing the most important part of all. You see... I am the king of the Kaleidoscope, the Sylph of Space. I've several types of biomancy, and applying it remotely is within my power - applying it differently, through holes in reality to the pocket dimensions and across worlds, is much more tricky... but ultimately, doable. Part of the reason why parahuman conflict wasn't more pronounced was my work in disarming the conflict engine present in many shards (but, surprisingly, not nearly as many as I expected).

Tracing those pocket dimensions back to their source had been trickier, and nearly impossible before now outside of the gatherings for Endbringer battles - during the brief lulls in the fight I'd been reaching out, feeling for groups of shards, trying to trace them. Eventually... I found what I was looking for. Signatures tracing back to their origin. I opened portals for the groups, and though I was probably among the very few parahumans who chose not to join Administrator's gestalt mind, I expressed enough for everyone to abandon the battle with the avatar and rush through the gates to over a dozen dead worlds covered in crystalline flesh.  The battlemind splintered, only staying intact in the world with Administrator, but it didn't matter - these held the entities' true bodies. And not all of those worlds were Zion - nearly half of them were Eden. Tactics ceased to be an issue short of 'destroy these parts first'.

The entities were unprepared for an attack of this sort. Most of the shards that were meant to be distributed were safe from the attack, already prepared, but these were the entities' core. Some were annihilated by force, some by tinkers' technology, some by magic. Hundreds of thousands of people working in concert to scorch whole worlds, ignoring the impotent golden god that floated among them, attempting to attack only to find himself unable to hit them, unable to use powers that he'd had moments earlier, unable to remember how to attack. Eventually, Scion winked out of existence at last, as the last of the worlds was charred to a crisp. The entities weren't simply lobotomized as they might have been in another telling of the story - they were outright annihilated.

The safehouse world, Sanctuary, had thousands of pre-built cities, and over the course of five hours went from a population of zero to twenty billion very confused people with room to spare. Of course, preparations existed for this sort of thing - loudspeakers and video screens throughout the cities, prepackaged supplies and communication equipment. When the heroes appeared en masse and it was broadcast on the screens, the populace panicked before realizing that all was well. Sanctuary also had sufficient supplies for celebration.

A very limited number of portals were built in the days that followed, leading to other worlds. Much akin to stargates in appearance, it let many return home, and allowed others to join them - all built with the technologies provided by Tinkers and the Data Core itself. In fact, all of Sanctuary's technology was mass-produced tinkertech, and there was enough Cauldron staff to actually get the ball rolling on setting up an economy as they transitioned from conspiracy to government. Number Man and Accord were absolute giddy at the chance to make this happen.

In a manner of speaking, I regret not having the chance to study the shards more closely until after the end. The final battle permitted me to gather more information in five hours than I had in a matter of decades. They were fascinating, even if they were about as intelligent as a particularly smart reptile, and about as sympathetic to the human condition. Extradimensional symbiotes, trading experience for the use of their powers. I took lessons from this - I'd been lending versions of my own abilities and magic out for a long time now, and I'm fairly confident that I could emulate their functions if I wanted.

Frankly, I have more efficient ways to power pseudo-shards than the entities did, since most of the shards' bulk was in their power source and raw materials. After all, they were meant to spread out for a number of generations before being collected once more. I don't need to have something the size of an office building when I can achieve the same function in something the size of a fist. And that's without resorting to the use of magitech.

And as for me? My primary objective was achieved, so I continued to work on the remaining goals I had. The next couple of years were spent using the Kaleidoscope to search out shards and tune them. There were only so many of them, but picking them out from their pocket dimensions and tweaking them, making sure they were workable, sometimes reprogramming them or cauterizing them entirely, was a very tedious long-term project. But no less satisfying. The shards have rudimentary intelligences, but some are smarter than others... just smart enough to be dangerous. And I treated them accordingly.

I burned out Taylor's shard as soon as I could - as soon as the conflict had ended - though her esper abilities were still able to emulate the battlemind on a notably smaller scale... regardless, better safe than sorry. She didn't mind, having chalked it up to the insanity of the battle and other powers working with her own. There were a handful of others were too dangerous to let continue past that point as well, and I dealt with them - the Butcher Queen, Sleeper, Goddess, the Three Blasphemies (now two thanks to the battle), I burned out all of their shards and reduced them to normal baseline humans. Not literally burned out - I simply used the Kaleidoscope to reach them, and forced it to draw on its energy reserve until there was no reserve.

Eventually... the shards will divide too much, peter out, run out of power. It might take several of generations, but parahumans would lessen and eventually cease coming about, and the age of parahumans will come to a peaceful end. The other changes I had made will propagate through humanity's gene pool, however, and spread between worlds. Magic. Espers. Mutants. The tens of millions whom I gifted evolution to... by the time parahumans were no longer a factor, the enhanced population would number in the billions. And in time, trillions.

Abaddon is coming, true. Sooner than one might hope. But when he comes, he'll find a humanity united across worlds, ready to fight him on their terms.


Omake: December 2002, when the Simurgh appeared.

"You know, you're kind of a bitch."
>"..."
"Yeah, yeah, gripe at me in non-euclidean alien ways all you want, you're not the only one aiming for a certain goal. And pretending to be an angel isn't going to do any favors, frankly I've already ruined the future. Look, you know what I am, right?"
>"..."
"Stop screaming. I see what you're doing but it's not going to affect me, you idiot - my mind is inviolate, not tied to meat. I'm not one of the locals. Anyway, I know the role you have to play, but I'm going to ask you to have your brothers tone down the collateral damage."
>"..."
"Well it would be awfully nice to HAVE a world left to save. I know you don't care as long as the objectives are achieved, but goddamn."
>"..."
"You are such a bitch. Think of the children!"
>"..."
"Okay, you're right, that was a bit much. Either way, I'm not sorry for making this world better than it would have been-"
>"/.../"
"HEY. Tone it down or I'll paint you blue and punt you to the moon."
>"..."
"Apology accepted. Now look, you may have the BEST precognition, but enough clairvoyants can give a -sufficient- aggregate vision of what's to come. We already know, we're taking measures, but-"
>"...!"
"Will you just listen? Yes, I've got one of them, but I paused the connection temporarily and I'm going to obliviate myself- sorry, yeah, erase my memory of this conversation just to be on the safe side, before turning it back on."
>"...?"
"Well, yeah, I've done it before. And I am in a unique position where I can know for certain that it worked."
>"..."
"So, yeah, time bombs within reason - I know how it's got to go, and all - but at least tone it down a little, please? We don't want to destroy everyone's hopes and dreams forever."
>"/.../"
"Yeah, I know, Krouse is a dick. Like I said, tone it down, don't completely stop. Maybe make it so most of them can be fixed instead of permanent changes? It's not your fault you and your brothers are in this situation, after all, all we can do is make the best of it."
>"...!"
"Well, excuse me for trying to blend in with the local wildlife! Besides, I kind of like people, I used to be one way back when."
>"..."
"I suppose. Anyway, I need to get going, but admit it, you are kind of a bitch."
>"/.../"
"Sure, I'm an asshole. But I'm an asshole who can and will give you a palette swap and punt you to the moon if you keep it up. Goddamn, you Endbringers have no chill."
>"..."
"Oh, I've had enough of this. I swear though, call me an ugly bag of mostly-water again and I'm going to go Godzilla and stomp you flat, smurfette."
>"..."
"CALLING ME SLIGHTLY LESS UGLY DOESN'T HELP- argh. You're just trolling me now. I'm gone!" Bwip.
>"... [Jumpers have no chill.]"