Overhaul: Black Knight is back with us, estimated stupor time 24h
Overhaul: I patched up everyone else, minus the group we’ve found dead at the primary defensive line and in the frigate
Overhaul: too much time for it to work
That was pretty much what Revenant expected. Overhaul could patch people up to about thirty minutes after their death. No one knew why the limit was exactly like that. Was it an undeniable evidence for the existence of souls, one that was officially leaving a corpse about thirty minutes after death? Or more like about twenty five minutes after brain death?
The stupor was there. The more damaged the brain, the longer it stays around. They recovered eventually and completely, if you exclude some occasional nightmares that you never seemed to remember in the morning.
Their casualties were minuscule when compared to the damage they dealt. And yet…
IChoseViolence: we fucked up
WolfgirlBestGirl: yes
BestDad: What?
BestDad: Didn’t we win?
IChoseViolence: Yesn’t.
Revenant sighs. Having that talk from the middle of a corridor is an odd thing, but… commplants are a gateway to many things once considered unnatural.
Also it’s still weird to be reminded that Destro, the man that very nearly took over the United States of America, was a worse tactician than Decay the Eternal Gamer. Then again… Destro was a hundred times the strategist and organiser than Decay was.
And that’s without mentioning the motivational speaking skill. There was no comparison between them there.
IChoseViolence: We did win the battle
IChoseViolence: but
IChoseViolence: we won through brute force
IChoseViolence: we won because the Seekers came prepared for dealing with our original group (so just a handful of ‘Pure’)
IChoseViolence: For that goal, they came overly prepared. The force they sent would completely obliterate us
IChoseViolence: They didn’t expect us to multiply and they didn’t expect us to meet some locals
BestDad: And?
IChoseViolence: They send about one hundred soldiers to catch a group of less than ten people
IChoseViolence: This means that they have large reserves to spare - or we’re just this important to them, especially with the transhumans breathing down their necks
IChoseViolence: hundreds? thousands?
IChoseViolence: this time, we’ve only won because they didn’t expect our numbers to multiply mysteriously
IChoseViolence: they made no notable mistakes in terms of operational command, and if what I heard about them from Humility is to be believed in, they are good at adapting and figuring countermeasures for identified threats
IChoseViolence: what are we going to do when, say, five hundred of those guys come in gun blazing? While already knowing the individualities of previously encountered enemies?
IChoseViolence: and unfortunately their present numbers were large enough that I couldn’t keep any big fighters in reserve except for Demiurge’s group
BestDad: Oh.
BestDad: Yes, that makes sense.
BestDad: From what I gathered from my talks with Virtue, you were the best while operating in a complex environment of multiple organizations that you could manipulate and pit against each other or seize their assets for your own organizations.
BestDad: Operating in a vacuum against a much larger group isn’t your forte, am I right?
IChoseViolence: I have something in the works to change that
IChoseViolence: In the meantime, though, yes.
IChoseViolence: We won’t survive another engagement of this intensity
IChoseViolence: if we lose more civvies we’ll lose their trust and their morale will hit the rock bottom
IChoseViolence: our defences were proven to be ineffective and they won’t stop any sufficiently determined attacker
IChoseViolence: We need to move to Aesculapius to gain some space and cover our tracks asap
BestDad: You think that they will attack soon?
IChoseViolence: I don’t know enough about the situation out there
IChoseViolence: I think it’s time to pick a nuclear option
WolfgirlBestGirl: ???
IChoseViolence: we’re abandoning Black Mamba and Boomslang
IChoseViolence Instead we’re going to use Decay’s wall modifications to place one of the Uragan-B bombs near the outermost defense line
IChoseViolence: also a submerged cable back to Ball Python so that we can detonate it remotely as distraction if Seekers or the transhumans find a way around it (still the same direction and with the sheer yield, it should deal some damage)
WolfgirlBestGirl: aye aye
WolfgirlBestGirl: we’re blowing it either way to destroy the ship and to leave no evidence behind, right?
IChoseViolence: eventually
IChoseViolence: but first we need to get as much resources out of the ship as possible, especially as we still don’t know how much materials are on aesculapius
IChoseViolence: and, well, seize Aesculapius
IChoseViolence: hopefully Demiurge is working on it
BestDad: You trust her?
IChoseViolence: I trust her skills
IChoseViolence: she is worse than me as both tactician and strategist but only by a relatively small margin
IChoseViolence: this makes her better than 99.9% of people out there, and her individuality gives her incredibly ability to develop completely unexpected combat plans that completely ignore what her enemies expect her to have access to
IChoseViolence: I don’t trust her as a person tho
BestDad: I see.
BestDad: I will trust your judgement on her.
IChoseViolence: Thank you
IChoseViolence: Decay, can you do the post-battle clean-up? I’m mentally exhausted.
WolfgirlBestGirl: no problem boss
WolfgirlBestGirl: will call you if something serious happens
***
Let’s be honest with that - leading a battle (especially one with your life on the line) is emotionally and mentally exhausting. Possibly more than actually fighting people, especially when you’re one of the people that were really experienced in the matters of combat. That got used to it.
This was especially common among the ‘true’ masterminds. The sort that had powerful mental individualities. Increased output but also an increased burn-out. An honest(?) trade.
Demiurge tended to go on a drinking (or, sometimes, drug) binge with her girlfriend and/or Songbird. Spyglass and Mindscape most likely had something like this as well, but he had no intel on the latter and only something of a vague suspicion on the former.
It might have included trips to a certain entertainment facility specialising in the sort of entertainment that included copious amounts of leather. That was one way of fighting back against her self-worth issues by giving her an occasion to control someone without a risk of losing everything if she does something wrong.
Still, only a suspicion.
Revenant himself had… nothing, honestly. At least not to the same degree. After a battle was over and he wanted to destress, to empty his mind of the ‘serious’ things for the purpose of prolonging his period of relative sanity and ability to work… he spent time with his family.
A few days of parenting Chronoshift, of playing videogames with Decay (if he wasn’t needed for the post-battle clean-up, otherwise Demiurge or Mastermind could do it instead), the sort of fake daily routine that impersonated what might have been his normalcy if he wasn’t insane.
Revenant was looking for some replacement routine, at least until Chronoshift would be brought back. And even then, his replacement routine would probably simply become a part of a greater whole.
He meets Hypothermia halfway back to Ball Python. She is walking down the corridor, her eyes on the floor. She appears to be deep in her thoughts. So deep, in fact, that she fails to notice the fact that her boyfriend was walking right beside her until at least a minute later.
“Eeep?!” She yelps out, Revenant responding with a reassuring smile. “H-how long?”
“Only a short while.” Revenant responds. “And while we’re away from the battlefield, you should be slightly more aware of your surroundings, Mia.”
He dislikes putting it that way. He knows that Hypothermia is going to take that way too seriously, way too personally. But… yeah, acting like that wasn’t a good idea. And, besides, if he omits her mess-ups completely, she’ll see him as being dishonest.
“I’m sorry.” She looks down, probably at his boots. “I won’t do it again.”
“It’s alright, no harm done.” He decides to cheer her up a little and takes advantage of the direction she was facing to give her a solid headpat. This gets a faint smile out of her face. “What were you thinking about?”
She glances at the direction she was heading towards earlier. The direction towards Ball Python. Once her eyes are back on him, he nods. It’s probably a good idea to give her a while or two to consider what to say in peace.
So, they walk together.
Eventually, she speaks.
“Future.” She says quietly, Revenant glancing at her questioningly. She doesn’t even notice that, being once more focused on appraising the floor in front of her in detail. “Ours.”
“Oh?” Revenant says before giving her a few seconds to respond. She doesn’t do that, so he decides to show initiative. “Anything you want to share with me?”
“Are we going to keep doing that?” She asks. He isn’t sure what she means by ‘that’, although he does have some suspicions. Before he has the time, she decides to confirm his suspicions. “Fighting, I mean.”
Huh.
“I don’t know.” Revenant replies. He is dodging the subject a little. “Do you want it?”
Hypothermia shakes her head. He expected this much. She followed him in his war, but… he never saw even a smallest hint of the same enthusiasm for fighting that Black Knight made into his entire personality.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Then what do you want to do?” Revenant asks back.
“I don’t know.” Hypothermia replies. “I never asked myself that question. Especially after Onslaught died.”
That was… painfully familiar. Revenant didn’t ask himself that question either. He just decided to cut the issue short by dying. He only asked himself ‘how to be dead’ rather than ‘how to be alive’.
“Normally I’d ask you to imagine a few futures and pick the one that makes you feel the happiest.” Revenant replies, Hypothermia glancing at him with a face devoid of emotions. “But I’m fairly sure that we’re already living in your dream future, with Onslaught back.”
“Mm-hmm.” Hypothermia nods faintly. “It’s the best future. She is alive. Destro is alive. Analyst is coming back. I couldn’t ask for more.”
The fact that her biological brother didn’t make it to the list is telling. Way to kick him out of the family tree.
“Well, I’m not sure if I can help you figure this out.” Revenant admits. Hypothermia looks surprised by it. “This sort of thing is something personal. It’s something that every person has to decide for themselves.”
“What’s yours?” Hypothermia asks. He really walked himself into this, didn’t he?
“I… am not sure I have any, either.” Revenant admits. She looks surprised by it. “I was mostly busy dealing with threats and plottwists. We had a lot of them, didn’t we?” She doesn’t answer. “I think I’m still being pretty passive in that field. My plan for the future is whatever you three cook up.”
Hypothermia huffs. Uh-oh. What did he do this time?
“Are you sure that’s how it should be?” She asks.
“I don’t have an awful good track record when making long-term plans for my future is involved.” Revenant says. What he gets in exchange is Hypothermia holding his hand. With the intent of comforting him. “No, seriously. I’m fine with that. Making sure you three are happy sounds like a hard enough job and a decent life goal.”
She’s thinking it over for a moment. Sometimes he wishes that he had a mindreading individuality. He would love to know what’s happening in Mia’s mind when she’s like that. It would make understanding all three of his girlfriends much easier.
“Do you want to keep doing that?” She asks. He gives her a questioning look. “Fighting, I mean.”
And that was a good question.
“I don’t know.” He says once again. Honesty is probably the best policy. If any of them don’t like the truth, leaving the relationship amicably is an option. Lying sounds like something to really establish a grudge. And he doesn’t want that. “I’m not sure if I can just… settle down, completely. But I might take a profession that doesn’t include risking our lives. Like, say, be a counterintelligence officer for some ethnopolity. Something to let me use my wits and experience without getting anywhere close to danger.”
“What about your individuality?” She asks. “What if you get another update?” Aaand… he made her worry.
“It’ll be fine.” Revenant tries to dodge the subject. She stares at him quietly. “I’m still far away from the next update. Overhaul and Chronoshift can patch me up and, besides, this is the 26th Century. I’m sure they can cook up some implant that will automatically anaesthetize me if an update starts.”
She doesn’t seem fully convinced. He makes a mental note to give her an extra hug for that.
The gnawing pain in his brain is still there. He isn’t sure what causes it. Something in his super-enhanced brain? Is it too advanced for the rest of his body, causing some biological problems? Overhaul never found any signs of that. So it might be his individuality shouting at him that it’s reaching its limit.
His own variant of power exhaustion.
He’d love it to be at its peak. He has enough. Archvile’s ‘training’ about dealing with pain is the only reason why he is acting normally without being permanently high on painkillers.
“I hope so.” Hypothermia replies quietly. “I think that I don’t want to fight.” Before adding a bit louder.
He expected that much. She wasn’t a member of the People’s Liberation Front because, while she was pretty much a family member to its leader, she never felt about the cause strongly enough to kill people for it.
It only changed when she had someone to avenge. Oh, she would fistfight God if he ever threatened Onslaught (not like a God would ever have a reason to do that, besides, let’s avoid this sort of situation even hypothetically, Thorn would probably burn him at the stake). But to actually come out and fight someone else while it wasn’t about protecting Onslaught?
Nope.
It did change with her death, when she moved over to protecting Revenant.
“Well, you probably won’t. Unless something attacks the planet we’ll settle on.” Revenant decides to cheer her up. “You’ll spend the rest of your life using your individuality for the sake of art. And, maybe, making slides.”
“Slides?” She asks, blinking at him. That’s the whole reaction he gets out of her.
“Yeah.” He nods. “Imagine making a large, intricate slide outside of our house, the size of it or bigger. Then letting the kids slide down. For fun. And by ‘kids’ I mean, at least in the short-term, Chronoshift, Kitsune and Onslaught.”
The latter two are a bit… childish at times. Revenant and Hypothermia are clearly the more mature ones in this relationship. Even if they are both emotionally stunted to a rather incredible degree.
She looks at him for a few seconds, digesting it. Eventually she smiles faintly.
“That sounds nice.” She decides. “You’d slide down too.” Oh, the absolute betrayal.
“No, I would not.” Revenant shakes his head. “C’mon, that’s childish.”
“You would slide down.” Hypothermia is relentless. “Because Onslaught would ask you to slide down with her. And you’d agree.”
…
“Okay, you’re right.” Revenant sighs, accepting his defeat. “I’d slide.” She smiles at him faintly. It’s much more expressive than he ever saw her be when not in a company of the people she was closest to. “I really can’t say no to her.”
“It’s fine.” Mia nods slightly. “I can’t say no to her either.”
Yeah. She was… the closest thing you get to a true princess nowadays. Came from a supremely wealthy family, her parents (well, just the father) spoiled her as much as humanly possible. But… she was all but selfish. She lived her life feeling useless (which she hated) and ended up dedicating herself to making those close to her happy.
Somehow she managed to combine that with being spoiled rotten. Incredible.
“What are you planning to do once you’re back at the ship?” Revenant decides to ask after a few seconds of awkward silence. “We’re almost there.”
“Mm-hmm.” Hypothermia acknowledges the fact that they are, indeed, almost there. “I dunno. Decay said that it’s time off for me, so I decided to go cheer Onslaught about not getting to fight alongside us.”
Refer to the part where Onslaught hated being useless. Being on medical leave due to Humility fixing some of the muscles in her legs, she was probably incomparably pissed off, even with Kitsune there to keep her company.
On a sidenote, Revenant isn’t sure if he’ll ever deploy her in the field unless the situation is truly critical. If she gets a bullet in front of Destro then, Overhaul on standby or not, Destro is going to commit war crimes. And if she doesn’t fight near him, he’ll be worried constantly.
“What about you?” Hypothermia then asks.
“I left the clean-up to Decay.” He replies. “I just want to rest. The commander’s job is stressful and emotionally exhausting.”
“Do you want me to help you rest?” She surprises him by asking. Then she gets clearly surprised by him being surprised. “Err, I-I mean I have an idea f-for that. But it’s alright if you d-don’t want to, I…”
“No no no!” He decides to stop her from freaking out. Hypothermia showing initiative was actually great. “It’s fine! Just, you know, notify Kitsune. It’s her day, so whatever you want to do, I don’t want you to step on her toes.”
She nods furiously. Does she have something… sexual in mind? That would be surprising.
***
It’s not sexual in nature.
Unless you consider someone giving you a lap pillow to be ‘sexual in nature’. Revenant has no idea if it counts.
He is actually worried that it would be a disappointment. That it would make Hypothermia feel bad about not helping him rest after the fight. Instead, she let his head rest on her lap, stroking his hair lightly, and… that’s pretty much when his memories of the day end.
He didn’t even get to see Kitsune pushing Onslaught’s wheelchair into the room before narrating to her in detail the sight in front of her. Just as Hypothermia (in her otter onesie, of course) was hiding her face in her hands, trying to cover the visible blush over how embarrassing the situation was to her.
The two ended up leaving them to continue their activity in peace.
***
Decay has mostly finished dealing with the post-battle clean up (wounded and dead patched up, most of enemy equipment and corpses almost gathered up) sighs painfully as he sees the Knight casually appear from beyond the curve in a corridor.
No. Not the Black Knight. The friendly local Christian berserker rampaging around the area. Walking confidently towards him as if he owned the place.
There are a few local soldiers around Decay. They were searching through a bunch of dead Endless. Looking through their equipment, cataloguing the finds, deciding what should be sent where.
For some reason he feels like none of those soldiers would be of much use if the Knight decided to be hostile.
For now, they are all letting out shocked gasps, some of them grabbing their weapons. Decay sends them an order through commplants to stand down.
“Hello there, Decay.” The knight says. “How’s your wife doing?”
Oh, so yes. That guy did read their comics. The situation is suddenly awkward. Incredibly awkward.
“She’s doing great.” Decay replies. With an audible pride in his voice. “Planning to drop by? We’re having barbecue ribs for dinner tonight.” Her cooking is to kill for. Seriously. Decay had… issues with basic things, and yet Steelfang (his adorable Awoo to go by the personal cute nickname) was fine doing most of that.
In exchange, he was cherishing her like the lovely miracle she was every moment of his life. And was always there when she asked him for help in something. Anything. At any time.
And they were doing their streams together. They loved playing videogames together in general. Yes. Awoo was perfect and…
Wait. Focus on the knight, Decay. That’s important right now.
“Tempting, but it’s Friday according to my calendar and I’m fasting on Fridays.” The knight replies. Huh, their loss. “I’ve brought your boss a gift.”
“That being?” Decay decides to ask.
“The commander of the Truthseekers Corporation unit that attacked you.” The knight replies. “I hoped to arrest their entire command unit, but… did you feel the ground shaking a little a while ago? They blew themselves up.”
“Shame.” Decay replies dryly. “It pisses me off when my enemies blow themselves up all of a sudden. Trauma from playing Minecraft religiously. Where’s the leader?”
“Right behind the corner I emerged from. Electrocuted into unconsciousness, you should have at least a few hours before he wakes up. But with the implants he has, don’t waste too much time.” The knight replies calmly. Decay squints at him. Is this some sort of ‘I have cookies in my van’ moment? That guy was a cunning one. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Decay gives up and tells the soldiers around him to go and check it out. Through commplants of course.
They leave, glancing nervously at the towering figure in a powered armour. The knight doesn’t move.
“Not afraid of me attacking you?” The knight asks as the soldiers disappear behind the corner.
“Look, man.” Decay replies while scratching the side of his head. “I don’t know what to tell you here. I suck at the whole talking stuff. But after having someone describe the knight biz you’re a part of, it doesn’t feel like I count as a target to you.”
“Even after all the deaths you’ve caused?” The knight asks back.
“You of all people don’t have the right to have an issue with that, considering the way the story ended.” Decay retorts. The knight says nothing. “Why are you here? Don’t bullshit me that it’s just about the corpoguy, you could have just left him for us to find. You wanna talk? I’m possibly the worst guy for that, but if you want to, I’m game.”
“Hmph.” The knight lets out before speaking.. “Was mostly just curious to see the way you guys act. How well your comic selves were replicated. Seeing you from a distance doesn’t give me a lot of data to go by, even if I can assume that you’re perfectly human-like to act around the locals without ticking their stranger danger alerts on.”
“Well.” Decay spreads his arms around. “I’m human. What do we do next?”
“Revenant got Black Knight up and running.” The knight asks. “Was there no one better on the list?”
Huh.
“I can list a person or two that I expected you to be more salty about.” Decay replies. Before realising that it might have meant that the knight didn’t notice Demiurge’s group. Oof.
“You mean Demiurge’s group?” The knight proves his worries incorrect immediately. “Amplitude has a nasty backstory that messed her up and made her vent her anger against anyone connected to the same thing that broke her. Demiurge lashed out against the world for losing someone close to her, you don’t want me to consider that a damning circumstance.”
Good point, Decay decides. Revenant would get angry if someone compared Demiurge to him. Before, if Decay’s knowledge of his kind-of-a-brother is anything to go by, sighing loudly and admitting that they WERE similar in that one matter.
“As for Songbird, she needs therapy, not execution.” The knight continues. “She might be a serial killer, but it’s due to being clinically insane. I can’t even consider her a sinner, you need to be able to make conscious moral decisions to commit a sin.” A moment of silence, then the knight keeps talking. “Black Knight was just getting a hard-on out of bloody murder. No traumatic backstory, no mental issues. That’s significantly more worrying to me.”
Makes sense, now that Decay thinks about it.
“You’re really interested in Revenant’s moral alignment, huh.” Decay decides. The knight nods. “Give him a break. He is doing his best to become Analyst again. He’s totally going to backstab and murder our way out of this maze, if needed, though. But he mostly wants to do that to settle down elsewhere, pick up a hobby, become a working human being AND try to stop Chronoshift from becoming a supervillain. Again.”
“Oh.” He has the feeling that the knight was actually surprised by something. “That spin-off series is canon? Didn’t it really conflict with the tone of the series? Chronoshift building her empire of crime behind Revenant’s back always struck me as weird.”
“Beats me.” Decay shrugs. He didn’t even read the comic. “Anything else?”
“Tell Revenant that I’ll be watching his career with great interest.” The knight says, before simply walking away.
Revenant is going to love hearing about this exchange.
***
At this point I don't know which additional pics of Hypothermia I already posted and where, so I'm going to drop them all the varied AI gens of hers here.
First is the Ultra Rare Otter Onesie Hypothermia.
Obraz [https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1106241074403483798/1106248993794687047/00009.png]
The following two pics will TECHNICALLY be hers but as an OC from certain fanfics (that I ended up incorporating into my original superhero fic that you're reading rn).
Obraz [https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1106241074403483798/1106248995766009906/00498-7638b.png]
Obraz [https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1106241074403483798/1124430719637266503/00138-466300402.png]