Revenant decided that he had the time almost right away, if only because he was fairly sure that she shouldn’t show up for Amplitude's rebirth, as it would only make her psychotic episode more likely.
He had some small thing to do earlier, which is why he told Humility to wait for him in the medbay (it was apparently about medical issues) and that he should be there in an hour. Naturally, things happened in the meantime.
“Boss.” He ran into Decay on the way to his quarters. The man was busy walking somewhere just to stop when he saw Revenant in front of him. “I have a question for you.”
“Yes?” Revenant motions at him to speak.
“How many girlfriends do you need to resurrect before I’ll get to do the same with my wife?” Decay says, prompting Revenant to groan painfully. “Don’t groan me like this! I want to see my wife! I want to taste her cooking, I want to see her smile and I want to pet her ears and tail! That’s how I deal with stress nowadays, boss! And I have a lot of it!”
Revenant, to be honest, feels bad about keeping Decay and his wife separate. It was way too cruel even for him, those two were basically one person in two bodies with how close they were.
The ‘when Hell freezes over’ idiom was generally replaced among the members of the VAA leadership with ‘when Decay and Steelfang have an argument’. It was even less likely than Hell freezing over.
“Alright, alright.” He decides to surrender. “After Kitsune, alright? We’ll resurrect Steelfang right after Kitsune. How does that sound?”
In all honesty, Steelfang's own combat skills were comparable to most of his elites. It wasn’t that much of a concession to make. It’s not like she was going to lounge around, not doing any work.
Decay thinks it over for a short moment. Then he nods.
“Your terms are acceptable, boss.” Decay eventually decides. “On a sidenote, are you planning to date Kitsune too?”
“I’m not sure if I have a choice.” Revenant replies. Decay raises a brow at him. “Onslaught doesn’t accept the word ‘no’.”
“Have you at least tried saying it?” Decay replies, Revenant not sure how to answer it. “See? You want them all to be happy, and you want to pay them back for using their love as a loyalty guarantee. You’re just being a…”
“Don’t…”
“... tsundere.”
“...say it.” Revenant, regretfully, wasn’t fast enough. Prompting him to stare at Decay who lets out a loud cackle. Yeah, at least one of them was happy. “Wow. What a masterful psychological analysis. Any other bit of insight you want to share with me?”
“I’m genuinely happy that you finally realized the true value, beauty and preciousness of animal-themed mutant girls.” Decay nods with a look of a sage sharing their wisdom with the world, despite being a terminal gamer sharing his dweebery. “Wolfgirls like Steelfang are naturally the best, but foxgirls are a respectable choice too, combining some of the best parts of wolf and catgirls and having some benefits of their own. I knew you’d come around eventu…. hey, where are you going?!”
He isn’t having this talk.
***
Onslaught ends up tagging along with him. Hypothermia, naturally, is there too, her professional wheelchair pusher. Revenant is somewhat curious what she is going to do with her free time when Oni regains the ability to walk.
Should he try to teach her some useful skills? Like, say, cooking? Something, anything, that she can keep doing for Oni (and himself)? Merely being there and not being able to do anything whatsoever for them would just make her feel bad. She was that sort of person.
Humility invited them to one of the doctor’s offices in the medbay. They also passed by Overhaul, who was busy doing something to one of the medical machines, probably figuring out how it works in practice.
The AI doesn’t comment on the slight increase in numbers. Then again, he doesn’t exactly expect Hypothermia to participate in the talk. Even Onslaught will probably be playing a more supportive role.
“So, what exactly happened and how does that complicate our situation?” Revenant says once he sits down in a chair right next to Onslaught’s wheelchair. Humility sits in a chair of her own on the other side of the desk - it doesn’t need to sit, it probably does to uphold the aesthetic and appear more human.
“Why do you assume that what I have to tell you will complicate our situation?” Humility asks, tilting its head curiously.
“Because I know how it works.” Revenant replies dryly. “Go on, please.”
“I finished analyzing the DNA samples that you shared with me back then.” Humility replies. Yeah, that was what Revenant expected. “I also wish to thank you for having others share their blood with me too. It has allowed me to achieve quite a few things during the past few days.”
“Anything interesting?” Revenant asks.
“You’re a femboy.” Humility replies, Revenant staring at it for a few loud seconds in complete silence. The fact that Onslaught didn’t speak (instead holding her mouth open a little, clearly slackjawed) spoke volumes.
“... what?” He ends up speaking after he manages to recover his faculties.
“You and the rest were translated into existing human genetics.” Humility replies. “Your character design had slight vibes of what’s called a ‘bishounen’, I believe. Relatively slim built, lack of facial hair, this sort of thing, more pretty than handsome. Now, do you remember me mentioning that humans ended up experimenting with how their biological sex works? I believe that you had your looks translated into this particular neogender.”
Silence. Eventually, Revenant speaks.
“Please, please, tell me that you’re joking.” Because honestly, he isn’t sure if he can actually mentally digest that fact. Decay alone won’t let him live that down.
He isn’t even addressing the issue of humans doing something completely pointless once more. What sort of person gains power of shaping human life and goes to materialize stuff straight out of porn, maybe even hentai, into reality?
He’d prefer that guy from the ancient spiderman meme that could heal cancer but preferred to change people into dinosaurs over that. Dinosaurs were at least cool.
“Actually, I am joking and you fell for it completely.” Humility replies. Revenant blinks at it again, only to curse quietly when Onslaught starts cackling in the background. The AI managed to win that one. “You are still within the spectrum of appearance that’s in line with a male gender, just closer to the edge. You’re also, without a doubt, a genetic male. Am I correct to assume that your individuality influences your biological processes?”
“Yes.” Revenant replies dryly while swearing to get a bloody vengeance on Humility for this prank. And on Onslaught for her loud laughter. “Not a lot of them. Better resistance to some poisons which makes getting drunk pretty hard. Nigh-immunity to diseases, which I assume to be a sign that my immune system gets boosted over time.”
“Sounds like Mastery can also improve natural processes which can ‘learn’ naturally, such as your immune system which develops resistance to newly encountered microbes, or your body developing tolerance to some chemicals over exposure.” Humility comments, Revenant nodding. “It probably contributes to things such as developing and maintaining a healthy and clean skin, giving you a more youthful appearance.”
Revenant isn’t particularly happy about being dissected like this. Since his father was built like a Superman and was practically oozing testosterone, it was rather clear that he got those particular genes from his mother. On her side of the family, everyone - boys included - were scrawny.
Just ask Decay. He is actually Revenant’s maternal cousin, although they discovered it after becoming best buddies for life. And no, this wasn’t a coincidence, just one of Archvile’s long-term plans.
Fuck, and he can’t stress that enough, that guy.
“Anything actually useful, please?” Revenant asks. He doesn’t want to give Onslaught more reasons to tease him afterwards. It’s bad enough that she has gotten some ammunition to throw at him already.
“I can confirm the transhuman findings.” Humility changes the subject. “You’re all genetic hybrids of multiple known genetic templates. It’s typically a mix of Humanity 2.0, Pure and Visehradian DNA, with a significant amount of junk DNA predating the Humanity 2.0 Project.”
Well, that sounds pretty great. Final vestiges of hope that Transhuman Alliance’s biologists made a mistake went through the window. That would make their lives significantly easier in the future.
“There are also a handful of genes that are unique to you.” Humility replies. “I genuinely do not know where they came from. They might be Visitor’s own addition where normal human genetics couldn’t make a cut. Those abnormal DNA appears to be connected to what I consider to be your specialties. You have it in fields connected to the brain structure and operations, Destro has it where body durability and strength is involved. In short, wherever and whenever the Pure and Visehradian DNA simply wasn’t enough.”
Right. Revenant remembers comparing Pure and Visehradian’s to Thunderbolt, who could run faster than them both even without his individuality. Suddenly, it all makes an awful lot of sense.
“There was a lot of tinkering with the DNA inheritance mechanism too.” Humility continues. “I could go into an hours-long explanation of how genetics will work in detail, but… I’ll just summarize it. Metahumans as a whole appear to be a separate subspecies of Mankind, akin to what Visehradians have pretty much developed into naturally and what Pure were engineered as. Most of your added elements appear to be dominant, meaning that if you have children with the locals, they will be metahumans.”
A bit of an oversimplification, genetics are a bit more random, but… it made sense. Of course, it brought another problem. Such as the risk of them being caught by nasty people and then promptly used for… ‘producing more metahumans’, to put it lightly.
Ugh. The fact that this sounds like a plausible option nowadays really drives the nail of how many issues modern Mankind had.
“I also found signs of the same genetic modifications that made the Visehradian template impossible to bestow to other people.” The AI continues. Yep, the production option sounds even more plausible now. “To be fully honest, you could make a separate population just out of your people, which should lead to the establishment of a stable population with a bigger percentage of the purely metahuman genes. That’s mostly an inner mad scientist speaking, I don’t expect you to act upon it.”
Yeah, he has issues imagining Demiurge staying on the same planet as Revenant unless she was forced to. Also, the whole idea sounds dangerously eugenic to him. And, besides…
“Wouldn’t our numbers be too small for it to work?” Revenant asks back. “You need about ten thousand unrelated people to make sure that the population certainly survives without long-term inbreeding issues.”
“That was before the Humanity 2.0 Project.” Humility replies. ‘Incest is risky because when siblings have a child together, then the chances of them both having identical copies of the same defect gene are comparatively high, and when that happens, even recessive genes become active and cause genetic disorders. However, the genetic clean-up of this project has completely purged the human genetics of such defect genes, making incest a taboo that is grounded in culture and psychology more than biology. Conversely, there is no risk of genetic issues caused by a limited genepool. If we get off this planet with two or three hundred metahumans, this will be more than enough to establish a stable population.”
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Right, Revenant forgot about the implications of the genetic clean-up. That one’s on him. He is still learning about this brand new world and… oh god. There is probably at least one ethnopolity out there that made incest mandatory, right?
Nope. He doesn’t even want to know. He is way too sober.
“I’ve also located a handful of genes that seem to be playing no role whatsoever, yet are most certainly not of any known origin.” Humility decides to return to the earlier subject. “The thing is, I also found them in your non-metahuman praetorians who, by the way, appear to have been uplifted to Humanity 2.0 status.”
What does it… wait.
“Are you telling me…” Revenant doesn’t let Humility continue. “... that those genes are the ones deciding whether one can manifest a meta-ability?” It made sense in the context. In their world, everyone could technically manifest one, the non-metahumans simply didn’t. But out here, there were trillions of people that simply couldn’t manifest it at all.
“I believe so.” Humility replies. “Thankfully, like the rest of your genes they have that hard to crack ‘cannot transplant it to someone else’ clause, or we’d have those a galactic standard in a generation. However, I see no indication of them not being inheritable, which means that your descendants are likely to maintain the ability to manifest individualities. How common were those in your world?”
That answer is actually pretty easy. Revenant was something akin to an expert on that field, after all.
“About one in ten thousand people.” Revenant replies. “Most of them are fairly minor and sometimes completely useless, although even those people still had it easier when compared to normal humans due to the ability to train their body to superhuman levels. The chances were higher when you had metahumans in your family tree, but it was way too early into a phenomenon to be sure of how much. The theory I personally subscribe to is that it depends on the number of metahumans two generations back on your family tree. If half of your parents and grandparents had individualities, the chances of you manifesting one were 50%, up to 100% if they were all metahumans.”
“And the mutants?” Humility asks.
“One hundred percent if any of the parents is a mutant.” Revenant replies. “All of Virtue’s children will have angelic characteristics. But other individualities are inherited separately. So, children of Decay and Steelfang will all be wolf-people, with a 1/6 chance of developing non-mutant individuality thanks to having Decay in their family tree, at least if the theory I mentioned earlier was correct.”
There was math to it.
Revenant + Onslaught = 100% chances of child having an individuality (all four of their parents had them, although their mothers had rather weak ones).
Revenant + Hypothermia = 75% chances of child with an individuality (her parents lacked it, which made their worship of individualities all the more illogical).
Revenant + Kitsune (unless the unexpected happened and it didn’t come to pass, but he fails to imagine circumstances leading to this) = 100% chance of children being fox people and 100% chance of children having individualities.
“Seems that your mutant individualities are operating similarly to Variants born of Humanity 2.5 Project.” Humility decides. “That gives us a more or less a baseline to predict the future developments in that field. We won’t be one hundred percent sure how it works until the children gets born, but it appears that you’re all fertile and that your children most likely won’t be walking crimes against god. You should probably start using contraceptives if you plan to continue having sex, as we’re not in a right position for dealing with pregnancy and childbirth while on the run from space horrors.”
Before Revenant can answer that, Onslaught pouts all of a sudden.
“Well, I certainly don’t want to stop doing it raw.” She announces, prompting Revenant to groan and Hypothermia to blush lightly behind her wheelchair. “It’s way too much fun!”
“Raw?” Humility says, clearly confused about it. The AI either didn’t hear about it or… wait. Better healthcare dealing with diseases easily (including those sexually transmitted), some alternative and less burdensome methods of preventing pregnancy, and suddenly condoms are outdated and forgotten.
Or, so Revenant suspects. He just doesn’t want to ask.
“We’ll talk about this later.” He decides to intervene and change the subject before Onslaught starts sharing details with the AI. He isn’t ready. Neither does Hypothermia, judging from the faint look of raging anxiety and shyness on her look. “Anything else to talk about?”
“Overhaul mentioned that they are ready to start installing commplants.” Humility replies. “He and Clockmaker went through the technical data they got from civilian technicians and the ship’s database and are certain that they work as advertised rather than being some nefarious mind-control plot of certain evil AI.”
And that? That was a big thing. Revenant was really looking forward to being able to connect to the ship’s network if only because that would make things much simpler in terms of communication.
“Do we know how it would work with individualities active?” Revenant asks. They are back to the ‘what if the whole thing explodes in our brain’ issue.
“Destro volunteered to be the guinea pig, once again.” Humility replies. “He and Decay would be best picks. Destro to see if strengthening individualities would influence appropriate body parts, Decay to see if he would accidentally age it when activating his power. If they do and something bad happens to them, Overhaul can fix them up. Even from death.”
“Sounds like a plan for… today? Tomorrow?” Revenant asks.
“Today, if possible.” Humility replies. “If an attack comes before we’re ready, we can evacuate the tubes and continue resurrecting other people on the run. But we can’t hope to evacuate the medbay. If there are things we want to do with it, it’s best to not waste any time.”
“Fine, do it.” Revenant replies. “If they’re okay with that.”
“Wait.” Onslaught decides to cut in. “What about me? Will I be able to use it without eyesight?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” Humility replies. “Yes, it’s not something that the implants are programmed to do, due to blindness being next to gone from the world. But there is an option to rewrite the system a little to operate through vocal commands. Don’t you want to have your eyesight recovered? With Overhaul it can be done easily, even without involving cybernetics.”
“I’ll pass.” Onslaught replies. “I want the full package. The working eyesight plus the understanding of what I see. No half-measures. I can wait.” Humility nods its agreement.
***
A few hours later Revenant ends up meeting the other half of his favorite murder lesbian power couple. Not his favorite murder lesbian, though. That’s Quicksilver, one of his villain lieutenants that he was yet to summon.
Hey, his organization was run by the policy of an equal opportunity evil, he didn’t discriminate during recruitment. It didn’t matter who you were for as long as you had skills and wanted to work for him.
Amplitude was wearing a leather jacket and a pair of slightly tattered jeans. Wavy auburn hair with some blueish highlights, green eyes. Body-built that was comparable to what Thorn had going, so not a particularly bountiful yet still feminine build.
The Author gave her hints of the butch lesbian stereotype, but without making it too… obvious. The level of displayed femininity was much lower than what Demiurge was oozing, but there wasn’t a lot of the opposite vibe.
She would be much prettier if not for the blinding fury on her face as she storms closer and grabs him by the collar.
She doesn’t get to do much more before Revenant’s pistol is poking her abdomen, his two bodyguards that were accompanying him pointing their rifles at Amplitude from both sides. The situation is… tense.
“You killed her.” Amplitude hisses into his face. “You told me to die for you to save her life and you killed her.”
“Activate your individuality…” Revenant replies calmly, her hands way too hot but no flames around them. “... and she’ll get to see your corpse. Right after you were reunited.” Amplitude’s eyes squint, the woman clearly considering if it’s a good idea. “C’mon. Give me a reason.”
Demiurge runs into the room, Amplitude clearly outrunning her on the way here. Or perhaps she just used her individuality to move faster? It was quite likely. On the other subject, how did she find Revenant so quickly?
“Stop!” Demiurge barks out. “Let him go, it’s not the right moment to look for revenge.”
So there’ll be a right moment to look for it in the future. Something to keep in mind. Then again, he expected nothing else. He can only hope that Demiurge and Amplitude would chill down and see reason. He does feel somewhat guilty over Denver, and he would prefer them to be hit by the same character development that he was.
Amplitude glances back at her lover. Considers her options and then decides to use her brain a little more.
She lets him go. The hot air she emanated grew weaker and more… bearable. Amplitude gives him a rather vicious look.
“If you hurt Demiurge again…” She says, venom dripping off her tongue. “...I’m going to do the same thing to Onslaught.”
She turns towards Demiurge, wanting to walk away from him. She freezes when she sees the horrified look on her lover’s face and feels a barrel of a gun touch the back of her head.
“I think that you forgot about something important.” Revenant announces calmly. “The last time someone hurt a person I loved… I burned the entire country to cinders. The flames I sparked? They made yours look like embers. You’re not me. You’re not even in the same league as I am. Your attempt to parrot me by threatening someone’s loved one? It’s an insult. So let me make myself very clear, Amplitude.”
Demiurge is frozen over. She makes no moves. But it’s clear that she already realized that Revenant wasn’t planning to kill Amplitude. So, rather than intervening, she was observing. Probably learning as much as she could about the new him.
The two praetorians aiming their guns at her didn’t make her any more interested in sudden movements.
“If you threaten someone that I’m close with…” Revenant says. “...I’m going to put a bullet in your head. And I’ll tell Demiurge to haul your bleeding, lifeless corpse to Overhaul for resurrection to teach her a lesson. I’m sure she’ll love it. And I’m going to repeat this punishment until you learn your own lesson.” He pulls his eyes off the back of Amplitude’s head and looks at Demiurge. “Train your dogs better, Demiurge. They are unruly. And I hate that.”
He pulls his gun’s barrel up, Amplitude glancing back at him, before swallowing whatever words she wanted to share with him and walking towards Demiurge. A moment later, the duo vanishes, Revenant putting his gun back in the holster. His praetorians (clearly relieved) put their guns down too.
“Sorry for being lousy with my tongue here, boss.” One of them (Menendez again) says. “But as a person tasked with keeping you alive, I can’t help but think that resurrecting those two was a mistake.”
“Don’t worry.” Revenant replies. “It’s all a calculated risk. Black Knight’s getting up and running next, so you’ll have substantial help in dealing with those sorts of people.”
Menendez glances at him, then says nothing. Yeah. If telling them ‘don’t worry’ would make them stop worrying, they wouldn’t be fit for being his bodyguards.
***
Decay and Onslaught end up confronting him about the incident an hour later, Black Knight busy growing up in the tube. Hypothermia is acting as a wheelchair pusher again, busy pretending she doesn’t exist.
“I don’t like it either.” Revenant retorts. “Amplitude is a mass murderer, Songbird is a serial killer. But I’m summoning villains, whom did you expect? Boy scouts?”
Onslaught says nothing. It’s clear that she expected more people like Thorn, Virtue and Destro. Regretfully, those are a minority among the villains as a social strata.
“Stop talking as if serial killers are a problem.” Decay grumbles. “You’re summoning one right now. Black Knight is loyal to you because you’re giving him good fights and because you broke him out of the death row during the Liberation Festival. He was sentenced to it for forty separate cases of first degree murders.”
“Uhm?” Onslaught appears to be suddenly much more worried. Unlike Hypothermia, she never met Black Knight. Revenant is a bit surprised that she didn’t hear about him. It was Just Cause (one of her father’s ‘friendly’ Top Heroes) that arrested Black Knight.
“He wants good fights.” Revenant replies. “Real combat junkie, fighting to death. Targeted heroes for said good fights. Since he battled people that could fight and when they were fully equipped and capable of fighting, I’ll take him over Songbird who is just a sadistic serial killer ready to kill everyone whom she doesn’t like. Including civilians.”
She was insane. Had a traumatic backstory. Did that justify her? No. But Demiurge should have institutionalized her rather than enable her, for her own good. Ugh. Maybe it’ll work this time? He heard good things about modern mental help.
A few hours until Black Knight is up. They should have first commplants installed by then. All in all, a productive time.
***
Amplitude
Obraz [https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1106241074403483798/1106249247009026079/01363-3all.png]