Scattered 5.8

2001, June 10: Washington, DC, United States

"GAH!" I shrieked like a little girl.

When I returned to the waking world, it was to see Fortuna's wide, brown eyes four inches from my own. She leaned back with a satisfied smirk.

"Cookie."

"Seriously? That's what you say to me?" I quickly checked on mom, happy to see her still asleep. "You're lucky mom's asleep."

"She won't wake for another fifteen minutes. Now, cookie."

I grumbled but gave in, summoning two Biscuits for us. I bit into mine with a satisfied hum, white chocolate raspberry this time, sweet but mellow. "What's up? You don't bother me unless it's important."

"I figured you wanted an update. And, you changed again. A big change."

We sat on my bed side by side as she nibbled on her biscuit. I realized immediately what she was talking about of course: Unsealed Spellbook. "I guess you could say that my place in the universe shifted a bit."

"Care to clarify?"

"I have access to a bunch of magic enchantments now that range from healing to teleportation, or just setting people on fire. That's always good too. Why? Can't see the enchantments?"

"No. Care to list them?"

"I'll send you a brief. Who knows? Maybe one day, I'll be fully invisible to you."

"That would be troublesome," she said with a frown.

I thought about it. Becoming invisible to the Path was always a possibility, but it was Isolde that confirmed it as an inevitability for me. The World Rune was changing me, strengthening my link to Runeterra and therefore my link to the mystical side of the multiverse. The Path couldn't analyze metaphysical factors and the more the World Rune merged with my soul, the more of an anomaly I would become.

"Are we going to have problems if I drop off the Path?"

She was silent for a long minute. "Perhaps we would have. Before, when you were a potential rogue element, you would have been an obstacle to remove or an unknown variable to restrain before you could become a threat. Now, you are Cauldron. My model of your personality is better than Eidolon's because unlike Eidolon, I can still see you and update the model as you grow."

"Even if my powers become blindspots to you, you're confident you know enough about me to predict my movements."

"Yes. You are a known quantity, one who works to kill Scion, one with a true chance at achieving the feat. Rest assured, you are not disposable."

"Lovely to hear, Fortuna," I drawled. "You said you had updates?"

"Yes. I've left a list of people who are being considered for a vial on your desk."

"What about Christine Mathers' vial? Find anyone?"

"Yes. We're going through final preparations to isolate their future operations."

"Do I want to know?"

"Do you trust me to make moral decisions?"

I snorted. "Only if they're the most expedient ones."

"Good. I'm not a moral person."

"Fortuna-"

"They will be tasked with obscuring Cauldron's actions by acting as a front. Those who see and hear them will be manipulated to not perceive evidence of Cauldron's existence. Running interference to prevent Cauldron's discovery is one of the biggest demands on my time so this will streamline the Path significantly," she said with an honest smile. "Thank you."

I searched her face for any signs of deceit, not that I could find any. As always, everything about her down to her microexpressions was perfect, curated and cultivated like a meticulously manicured garden. "I trust you," I said finally.

And, odd as it might be, dangerous as it might be, I did. At the end of the day, we had the same objective.

"Appreciated."

"And David? How's his therapy?"

"He is making progress, but not quickly. Did you expect otherwise?"

"No," I sighed, "I suppose not. It's going to take a minor miracle to unfuck his head. Any chance you can speed it up?"

"Blindspot. Knowledge of my manipulations will likely make him more paranoid and be counterproductive. As it is, Alexandria was the one who approached him, alongside some prodding from Legend."

"Huh, I didn't know that. Good on you."

"Quite. Peter Pan would like to move to Babylon."

I blinked at the non sequitur. It took a bit for me to remember. With a healthier mindset, Rinke settled on Peter Pan instead of just reversing the spelling of "goblin." He took the name saying his mother loved the story. He wanted to be a "friend to the lost." I had mixed feelings about that name and hoped it didn't indicate a childlike regression.

"Why? I thought you had a facility set aside for him and the other Case-53s."

"He wants to live in a magic forest."

Palm met face with an audible slap. "Figures. You realize I'm going to put them to work?"

"Of course."

"Some," I said, "he can move some. I'm okay with him moving his headquarters there, but I don't want a few dozen Case-53s running around without oversight. Some of those plants are delicate. And dangerous, especially the ones from Kumungu. Seriously, if any of them poison themselves, I'm going to watch and laugh… then eventually give them the antidote, but mostly laugh."

"He knows."

"You already set it up, didn't you?"

She smiled. "Of course."

"Fine, do what you want. You know, by the time we're done, that place is going to actually become a fantasy world at the rate we're going. We've got peasant villagers, advanced machines from lost civilizations, magic plants, and now fantastical fauna."

"Would you be opposed to that?"

"No. It's just a byproduct of our activities, no more than that."

"Indeed."

"Has Rinke had any luck reversing a Case-53's changes?"

"Somewhat, and with varying effects. He managed to reverse some mutations but could not reverse others. Most Case-53s are now at least humanoid, though it is evident that they are changed. Their Shards seem to allow enough changes to optimize the use of their powers, but no further. Will your alchemy evolve to help them?"

"Maybe, but not without killing the Shard."

"After Scion."

"After Scion."

"Send me a full roster of Case-53s who have been exposed to Pan, a before and after."

"I'll let the doctor know."

We fell into an easy silence until I saw mom begin to stir. Contessa rose and got ready to head off to whatever fire she needed to put out next.

I sighed. Talking to her always left me feeling conflicted. Not everything I greenlit was moral. In fact, most things were pretty morally gray. There was a part of me that felt skeevy at some of the things she told me about. But… But they were necessary.

In the end, all I could do was to make their lives better, one small step at a time. The greater good was good and all, but I had to remind myself that the here and now mattered too.

X

Leviathan was coming in about a month, but with the mass production of potions, I didn't really need to get involved directly. Similarly, I read in the news that various cities across the US were building a network of empty refugee camps out of cheap plaster so I wouldn't need to get hands-on with the Worldstone network anytime soon. These municipal governments were receiving some flack from their constituents about homelessness and housing, but that was ultimately beyond the scope of my ability to help. I decided to trust Kurt to handle the numbers.

As a way to balance my time, I decided that adding two more cities per month to the Worldstone Network was a fair compromise. Eventually, I hoped to cover every major metro area in the US and Canada. After that, who knew?

Tomorrow, I'd rise bright and early to train with Armsmaster. In terms of martial arts, I was confident in my ability to hold my own. However, he had a breadth of experience that I could not match through training alone, not to mention the odd dozen gadgets he had to his name.

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Could I beat him? If it came down to a life or death duel, absolutely. The Blitzshield alone would make his armor all but useless. But this wasn't a deathmatch.

No, I had to admit, when it came to holding back and training my skills as a person rather than as a nascent celestial, there were few who could be better teachers. Not a single person, perhaps save Hero himself, worked to improve himself in all aspects of his life as Collin Wallis did.

I was looking forward to getting to know the man behind the beard.

But that left me a lot of time today. Sunday, holiest of days. Typically, I'd head to the nearest Catholic church or parish for a quart of holy water, but Babylon rendered even that trip moot.

With little else to demand my immediate attention, I spent much of the day in the Salar de Uyuni, testing out Isolde and my new magic.

As far as I could tell, Isolde was as close to a sentient weapon as I'd ever made. It was something linked to my soul, and combined with its connection to the concept of life in the Hallowed Mist, it practically had a will of its own. It could cut damn near anything. Metals? Magic? Souls? Didn't matter. It even came with a free shield in the mist and mid-range attacks using needles and spirit-threads.

Hell, with some practice, I should be able to "sew" things and people, repairing clothes or suturing wounds as Gwen did for the Sentinels. I lacked the skills of the Hallowed Seamstress, but skills could be honed over time.

Great. Wonderful. Isolde was a weapon with boundless potential, worthy of being a legend, but also a giant pain in the ass.

Scissors were not traditional weapons. The Shojin Temple had no katas that revolved around scissors. Neither did the Wuju masters of old nor the sages of the Hirana Monastery. The Kinkou, those masters of stealth and assassination, adopted a great many hand tools for use as weapons, but even they never bothered using scissors. The closest comparison was Xan Irelia's blade dancing, but even that wasn't a good parallel.

It would be a long time before I could fully integrate Isolde into my fighting style.

At the moment, the best I could manage was to keep the blades closed. Unlike a regular pair of scissors, Isolde was somewhat unique in that each blade was sharpened on both sides to a single bevel. A cross-section was not a diamond shape like with most swords, but a flattened triangle. Those two single-beveled swords met at their flattest sides to form one blade.

I let out a ragged breath as I thrust forward, one hand clenching the finger ring while the other parried an imaginary strike with my Blitzshield. Isolde pierced the frosty mist generated by my dance, skewering an imaginary foe.

I swept my hilariously impractical longsword out horizontally, cutting a line of frost into the air. My leg followed at the same time, raising a rake of saltwater that immediately froze into a dazzling display of ice crystals. The sweep then turned into a sharp lunge forward with the edge of my shield.

With a twist of my wrist and a pulse of mana, the Blitzshield let out a cone of electric current more than bright enough to disable any normal opponent.

I used this makeshift chance to take a step back, readjusting my sword into a reverse grip. Then, my grip fumbled as Isolde's tip clanged against the ground, jarring my hand at the weakest moment. The pair of azure scissors fell into the flat with a splash.

"Shit," I grunted as I reached down to pick it up.

The form I was practicing was a combination of an intermediate-level foot technique taught to the Shojin acolytes, some basic sword forms Master Yi used to stretch in the morning, and a bit of improvisation on my part. Ideally, I would have blinded my imaginary opponent, taken a step back, and released a set of spirit-needles in the same motion, targeting the vitals or immobilizing them before lunging forward in a reverse-gripped slash for the kill.

It didn't turn out how I envisioned. As I found, switching the grip of your weapon mid-fight was pretty damn hard and almost never done in the heat of the moment. Sure, European knights sometimes gripped their swords by the blades to use their pommels as maces, but while it was a legitimate technique, it wasn't exactly commonplace to do so.

I shrank Isolde down and began to twirl it around on my fingers, then stopped.

"I feel so fucking stupid," I groaned.

I ran through the forms again. This time, when I stepped back, I shrank Isolde and hooked a finger through a loop, swapping grips with ease. Three spirit-needles lanced out at where an adult human's throat, heart, and kidney would be.

That was one more thing to work on, the needles. My new eyes made me supernaturally accurate; I could pierce the eye of a fly if I wanted, but that didn't mean much if my control over these needles was lacking. I could loose them just fine, but unlike Gwen, I couldn't manipulate their trajectory mid-flight.

Something for later.

X

After hours of martial arts drills, moving meditations, and dubious attempts at forming my own combat style, I returned back to my house to relax for the evening. Or, as close to relaxing as I allowed myself.

In front of me sat the dossiers Fortuna dropped off this morning. Each file contained the name, photo, date of birth, location, self-professed reason for seeking powers, their actual reason for seeking powers, a psych profile, their proclivity towards villainy or heroics rated on a sliding scale from one through seven, and the price they were willing to pay for a Cauldron vial.

Not that the last one mattered all that much. With Kurt gaming the stock market and the money from our pharmaceutical empire rolling in, the number of zeroes on a client's checkbook meant nothing to us. To be honest, at this point, our price tag was more about making them feel like they were purchasing something valuable, which they were. If they felt as though they were acquiring a priceless good, they would be far more likely to treat the favors they owed us with the gravitas they were due.

It wasn't as though Fortuna enjoyed the intimidation and leg-breaking. It was a giant waste of time for all parties involved. The fewer "renegotiations" she needed to facilitate, the better.

"God, just thinking that makes me feel like I'm part of a mafia," I groaned. Sometimes, I wondered just what kind of bullshit organization I'd gotten myself mixed up in.

I went through reports like these once every two weeks or so. I knew that making the vials was a painstaking process, one Doctor Mother never rushed. Though the list of candidates typically contained over a dozen names, only a handful got a vial every month. Most of them weren't even in North America. After all, the US was our seat of power. Cauldron didn't need vials to influence US politics in our favor.

No, most vials went to local warlords, heroes, and influential figures across the world where we could call in a favor, one more puppet to dance on Fortuna's strings. That was if they were released into the wild at all. Just as many were used to experiment with, resulting in several Case-53s every few months.

Still, I insisted on going over the dossiers to see if I could recognize a name here and there. Maybe, if I vetoed a name, I could prevent a tragedy. If I could, for instance, prevent Shatterbird's abusive father from dosing her unknowingly, I could keep her from genociding Dubai. A single veto from me could save thousands, potentially millions of lives. It wasn't even out of the question that I could then use that vial to create a worthy hero.

It was a heavy feeling.

So I read. No one from the United Arab Emirates was tapped to purchase a vial, not yet, so I could table Shatterbird for another month. But I did encounter a name I recognized: Thomas Calvert.

He was a tall, black man with short-cropped hair, trimmed brows, thin lips, and a prominent cleft to his chin. He was thin, not so gaunt as to be a health concern, but definitely lanky. I knew that as Coil, he'd exaggerate his appearance with a black bodysuit and a white, coiling serpent.

Ellisburg had not happened thanks to Rinke getting his head screwed on straight, relatively speaking. Instead, Thomas was Lieutenant Thomas Calvert of the New York PRT, decorated for eight separate successful missions this past year alone. He was commended for his excellent leadership and "cool head under fire." In fact, Alexandria had marked him as a possible candidate not because he could be easily manipulated, but because he fit the mold so perfectly.

In a word, he seemed the ideal image of a stern but dignified soldier, the kind of man who could be expected to get things done.

She thought he could be a stabilizing influence in whatever city we left him.

How ironic then that this soldier would let ambition blind him. I knew him for what he was: a coward, traitor, thief, kidnapper, murderer, and an enabler of more of the same.

I could forgive most of those. It galled me to admit, but I knew Fortuna had done far, far worse. What I couldn't forgive was Dinah. Memories welled up unbidden. Phoenix. The Red Sands. La Torcha. Lawless. Camille.

A blaze of azure light washed over me, my Ymelo bathing me in the stability of my convictions.

I took a deep breath. I could do it. All I had to say was "Door, back of Calvert's head."

It'd be easy. No one but Cauldron needed to know. I could end him, end the suffering and misery caused by a petty snake who dreamed of the stars. I could keep Sarah safe. I could keep Brian from wrapping a gilded noose around his own neck. I could save Brockton Bay so much heartache.

Would the city have been so awful without Coil constantly playing the factions against each other? Could the heroes clean up the Bay?

I could find out. All it'd take is one sentence. One little snip of Isolde or one single needle into his brainstem.

My fingers reached for Isolde even as it enlarged in anticipation.

Another pulse of blue quelled my cold fury.

A breath. Then two.

I allowed the calm to set in. The Ymelo reminded me of why I joined Cauldron. I wanted to make them better, to be their moral compass and guiding light, to ensure that they did not abuse the tremendous power and privileges they possessed.

"Can I throw that away like this?" I asked myself. Even to my own ears, my voice trembled with uncertainty. "Can I execute a man for crimes he hasn't committed yet?"

It was the Hitler conundrum. If you could go back in time to murder an infant Adolf, should you?

I let out a shaky breath. No. The answer was no. If you could go back in time, you could adopt the dumb shit and beat some morals into him. Sure, it wasn't easy, but the right path rarely was. For all of Fortuna's vaunted Path, the truth was that there was no such thing as fate and killing baby-Hitler was the easy way out.

"I… I can't kill him. Not like this."

I sat in my room and allowed the silence to fill the air. I tapped into the Ymelo, searching for anything, any tiny detail I might have overlooked. It wasn't long before I found it.

"The Terminus Project. Brockton Bay only became the way it was because of the Terminus Project, Cauldron's attempt at cape feudalism."

The Terminus Project was a bit more complicated than that in truth. Kurt's projections hinted at a grim reality: Some time in the near future, everyone would have powers. Terminus was therefore Cauldron's way of preempting that. They wanted to create precedents for good parahuman leadership and allowed different styles of capes to flourish without direct Cauldron oversight, some villains, some heroes.

"Except, even then, Coil is a failure. Legend was an exemplar of what a good parahuman leader should be. Coil… wasn't."

I realized then that as much as I hated Calvert and all he would do if left unchecked, he was a symptom of a greater problem. The Terminus Project needed to be overhauled in its entirety. I simply could not accept that this was the best way to nurture parahuman leaders.

I scribbled several notes and Doored them to Doctor Mother, Fortuna, and Alexandria's desks.

Terminus is a failure. We need to talk. -H

Author's Note

Contessa is still hard to write. Shocker. But she's getting better. She's at least Pathing a way to seem human. More importantly, the biggest change was her acknowledging the need for a Shard's death., albeit after Scion. The Cycle can only be broken with the absence of Shards after all.

I'm reasonably certain I'm using the term "bevel" right in terms of knife-making to describe Isolde, but I can't be sure. As far as I'm aware, a "bevel" is the slope your knife edge takes. Most kitchen knives are "double-beveled," meaning that the edge tapers into a triangular slope from both sides of the blade. Some knives, particularly Japanese sushi knives, tend to be single-beveled to suit a chef's handedness.

If you think about Gwen's scissor-blades, it makes sense that the inner edge of each blade would be single-beveled so the blades can rub against each other to cut better. Similarly, if you look at her model closely, you can see that the outer edges of her blades are also sharpened.

Now we get to why the Ymelo was so important. It lets him make rational decisions when, by every logic, he shouldn't be able to. Isolde is the most powerful item he's ever made, only overtaken by Winter's Approach when it evolves. But the most important? Ymelo's probably up there.

He's very much following the Ned Stark school of "If you cannot bring yourself to swing the sword, perhaps that man does not deserve to die."

Ain't morality a bitch?

Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. You can find them all on my Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/fabled.webs.