Wake-up Call – Chapter 76 – Positions

[Vista – Thinkers Are Too Chatty]

So.

Join the Wards, they said. See the world, they said.

…

I should reread my Asterix books. It's been a while.

It's also been a while since we got teleported in, which is, you know, kind of a first for an Endbringer battle. We're usually rushing to ongoing crises, not taking our time to get assigned roles and positions.

In this case… Well, my (and Dennis') position is… kinda scenic.

As in, on top of a dam.

The biggest dam in the world, I'm told.

And… it's hard not to believe it. Not when I hear the rushing water falling behind me, clouds of cool droplets rising up to darken my green uniform as I stare upstream, on the other side of an enormous water reservoir, at a city a demented Thinker claims my power can bypass.

As in, go [around] an entire city.

It's never been tested. My power has always been studied in enclosed spaces, with plenty of people waving instruments around, interfering with what I can do. And, as tempting as it's always been to try and get as far away from my parents as possible, I've never given in to the urge.

So. This is a first. Just me, Dennis, and—

"You're really our bodyguard," Dennis doesn't quite ask the man dressed in black and blue and wearing a train conductor's cap.

Strider. Right, he's called Strider.

"For the last time, kid, I've been paid an obscene amount of money to make sure you both survive this. Call me a bodyguard or an ejection seat; I don't care so long as you stop bugging me," the man who doesn't look at all like Viggo Mortensen says.

I close my eyes, trying to ignore the two men letting off stress in their own very manly ways as Dennis grumbles in what he may believe to be a dignified answer.

And I… I [reach].

It's faster than ever when I shoot my sense of space across the artificial lake, a place now devoid of all human life in a way Brockton Bay's coast never quite is, and then I reach all the way past the buildings and roads and behind the outskirts of the unpronounceable city where Behemoth is set to attack. Then I remember the map painstakingly marked that I'm supposed to follow and retract my senses, my grasp of space pouring down the… the [cyclopean] wall. And I've never understood what that word meant until now, but, suddenly, all those little stories about non-Euclidian geometry make so much more sense than they did before.

So. A cyclopean wall. A wall I'm standing on.

A wall I grasp, every little bit of it, every piece of the colossal machinery set inside it, within my power's ability to stretch, squeeze, and mold.

And that would already be something bigger than I've ever done, than I thought I would ever do, but—

"You can do it, Vista. I just checked with the most powerful precog in the world. You [will] do it," the annoying girl whispering in my ear from half a world away reassures me.

I take a deep breath, still sending racing tendrils of space ready to be folded down the white waters rushing behind me and to my right, around the smaller part of the town on either side of the Yangtse river. And I'd usually go through it, but the Thinker claims that I should push farther downstream, away from the last remaining evacuation efforts, away from any human interference with my range and skill.

So I do.

And I pour across verdant forests.

I… I feel the rough texture of bark brushing my sense of distance. The ever-complex features of fallen leaves piled on top of one another. The roots clawing out of the ground.

The pebbles.

The clods of earth.

The grains of sand itself.

It's… Dennis suddenly grabs my shoulder, steadying me as I take in more than I ever have, more than I thought I could, enough to make my earlier accomplishment in claiming this dam pitiful in comparison.

And then, keeping the map in mind with what some people claim to be a secondary Thinker rating, I [push].

I sway, and Dennis holds me, saying something I don't understand, but that is kind and soft as he slowly and gently guides my body to sit on the dam. On the greatest dam in human history.

On the thing that seems oh so very small as my thoughts are filled with every single thing standing between me and the far meander of the river that is my target, that I—

"Just a bit more," she whispers encouragingly.

"Shut. [Up]," I answer about as politely as I can manage.

She chuckles, and I, eyes still closed, am very tempted to toss my in-ear communicator down the raging white waters below me.

Nobody would blame me.

Thinkers talk too much, after all.

***

[Velocity – Tinkers Are Bullshit]

"Really?" I ask Colin—[excuse me]: Armsmaster while on the field.

"Do you have any issues with this?" he asks in what anybody else would think a prickly demand for me to shut up and take it, but that the infuriating man really means as precisely what the words are to him: a straightforward question.

So, knowing him far too much for my own liking, I ponder how to best answer.

And look at the pair of cards I'm holding.

They are made out of metal, as thin as actual playing cards, and I can see circuitry traced on them with different shades of… cobalt, I guess? And a green metal that I have no clue what may be, because the only metal I know that turns green is bronze, but this thing is gleaming in an almost aggressive emerald shade.

So I bite my lip and sit on the edge of the sidewalk, taking off my uncomfortably thin shoes, made even worse by my being unable to wear socks with my uniform, and slide the two cards over the very slight heel of each shoe.

"It just feels wrong, you know?" I try to answer his earlier question in as conversational a manner as I can. "I am always on search and rescue and… I just feel like skipping that will end up with too many… you know."

He stares at me, about as impenetrable as ever behind that blue visor of his.

"I know," he finally answers. "You are a good man, Robin."

Then he silently claps my shoulder as I keep staring at him and gives me what I think to be a nod of acknowledgment before turning around and walking right back to his bike, where Hannah is waiting for him, wearing her own power armor set.

I…

I don't quite understand what just happened.

But, well, at least it should be an improvement.

Maybe getting laid was the only thing Colin needed to be bearable? I should thank Hannah for taking (at least) one for the team some time.

I just hope Dragon doesn't get too jealous.

***

[Grue – Masters Are Insufferable]

One thing you never realize while in America? It's how high we build.

Even in a city like Brockton Bay, there are skyscrapers, towers reaching up and up to the point that even Rachel's dogs struggle to climb them.

Here?

This city is five centuries old, Lisa told me while giving me the very abbreviated first overseas tour of my life. It's spread out rather than up.

It has… an old temple, the kind of thing you would see in a martial arts movie, with the elaborate gates guarded by statues of mythical monsters and everything.

Except it has an electrical tower right behind it, the power lines loudly thrumming when the wind rustles them.

It's… I never thought I would see this. I never thought I would see [Boston].

But here I am. Being a hero for hire.

And guarding [Alec].

"I am just saying you could make the cloud smaller. No need to spread it out so much and draw attention to ourselves when we could be all huddled up and cozy together," the far too French boy insists with a suggestive tone as he lounges relaxedly, arms crossed, shoulders resting against the grey stones of the temple's front wall before he looks at the swirling black mist surrounding us and leaving just enough of a pocket that we can still receive radio transmissions and… [talk].

To my eternal regret.

He waggles his eyebrows, prompting me to answer.

And I try to banish any urges to hit him.

[Again].

"I swear, if this is your way to let out stress before a life-or-death fight—"

"Oh, dear, no. That isn't it. We would need plenty of lube for that."

"… What?"

Slowly and fearfully turning fully toward him, I find myself face to face with the smirk and eyebrow waggle of somebody who has watched [far] too many movies.

Probably French ones.

"I mean, isn't this basically tradition? The heroic companions who have been perfectly chaste until that very moment find themselves alone and isolated right before risking their lives. Feelings run high, sparks fly, and, suddenly, all that repressed tension that until that very moment has been just seen in traded barbs and even occasional violence turns into something… [else]."

I… blink at him.

[Repeatedly].

"You are shitting me," I tell him.

"Look, that's definitely not my kink, but for [you], I could be accommodating."

I take a moment to process what he just said.

Then I bury my fist in his solar plexus up to my wrist.

"I can't say he didn't have it coming," Lisa's voice almost chides me over the headpiece inside my helmet, but I can tell her heart isn't in it. "Just… don't lose focus, all right? I want you to seal your darkness as soon as there's even a hint that Behemoth will surface."

"Are you sure we won't stand out, being on elevated terrain?" I tell her while slowly retrieving my fist from the hunched-over boy I just buried it on.

…

Sometimes, I hate my brain. More often than not, I can blame Aisha for it.

"You [shouldn't], if everything goes according to plan, but I still want you to spread your power out as far as you can reach. The healers—"

"I know, I [know]. I'll make sure not to mess with communications," I say as I look behind me, inside the temple's courtyard, where quite a few healers the world over have been sent to take care of emergency treatments that, according to Lisa, will not be that necessary this time around.

Mostly because anyone who messes up is far likelier to end up dead than injured.

She has… [a way with words].

"Right. I know you get it, Brian; I just—I'm half-losing my mind over here. There's a reason I let you pretend to be the Undersiders' leader."

To my right, Alec half-wheezes, half-guffaws.

And I once again regret wearing a full-coverage visor that isn't even bulletproof yet impedes my biological imperative to rub my temples at being trapped in the crossfire between the two most infuriating, non-blood-related people I've ever met.

Which lends quite a bit of credence to Lisa's emotional blackmail regarding Alec and Rachel needing me to step up as…

Well, as family.

I'll just have to make sure Rachel doesn't lose that today.

Though, if I hear Alec make a single crack along the lines of 'I am stuck, step-bro,' I swear they'll never find the body.

Truce or no truce.

***

[Victor – Trumps Should Be Gregarious]

"It's not that bad," I try to say while going over the medical equipment available on the camping tables spread along the courtyard's walls.

Which is, as far as I can tell, all of it. Maybe an EMR is missing, but Tinkers being what they are, I am not about to bet on it.

My encouraging remark, though, is met with a stony silence that is far less encouraging than the pristine condition of the supplies the healer's area is provided with.

I pretend to examine the anesthetic sprays while repressing a sigh as my wife continues to studiously ignore me.

And… I could lean on a lot of things. I could do a cold reading and intrude on her train of thought, seamlessly inserting myself in her inner monologue to cause an inevitable engagement. I could just say something shocking enough to provoke her into finally talking to me in something other than curt monosyllables. I could paint the whole situation as something entirely other than what it is, slowly working to change her perspective on our situation until she got to the point that she never realized her opinions and views had changed along the way.

I could.

I have the leverage. I am the only face she recognizes while surrounded by hostile people who look at her, at best, with barely disguised revulsion.

It turns out that Nazis aren't really popular among superheroes. Who would've known.

But this could serve me well. I am, after all, her last connection to a world she was more comfortable with. I could easily twist that so that even my betrayal made sense, yet another thing for her to cling to, tying herself to me and isolating her from anybody else.

I could be the last remaining piece of a world that made sense. And she would love me for it.

"I am sorry," I say.

She doesn't answer.

"I should have… held on. Trusted that you would rescue me. Find me," I insist.

She remains sitting on a camping folding chair, wearing a generic white bodysuit and domino mask because she's yet to be rebranded, given the difficulties her unique power holds for such an endeavor.

She's looking at the round tip of her white boots. Away from me.

"I… I can't tell you that I don't know what to say, because I know a lot of things to say. I could… I could argue, make you see how much sense it makes to change sides, but… But I…"

I set the two plastic spray bottles on the cardboard box they came in.

I shouldn't even be here.

Yes, I am a doctor. A surgeon. I have military training in field medicine. I am an expert in triage.

I [could] save lives here.

But… I am not inhumanly good at this. I won't do anything that a PRT volunteer couldn't do well enough to make my deployment superfluous. There's no good reason for me to be here, huddled between four tall grey walls of stone on the other side of the world, defending a city that only matters to the CUI, and, knowing them, not even that much.

But…

But.

I don't repress my sigh. I allow my shoulders to slump, the dejection to show. The anxiety to deepen the lines across my forehead.

And I sit beside my angry wife on another folding chair.

After a moment, I extend my hand. Open. Palm up.

And I leave it there until she, still angry, still not meeting my eyes, grasps it in a death grip as we both wait for the Hero Killer to arrive.

There's no good reason for me to be here.

Plenty of bad ones.

***

[Alexandria – Brutes Are Stubborn]

"Chairman Chen, I expect this will have repercussions," I tell the infuriating man in the screen in front of me, his thinning hair distracting me as it triggers my tendency to count as much of—

"We sent the official Endbringer alert as soon as we had confirmation, Director," he says, not even sweating or having the decency to have a slight tick to denote anxiety or fear for his fellow countrymen.

Hard men making hard choices. Fantastic. I don't see any issue with this.

"Your confirmation came right after we sent you a very poignant analysis corroborated by high-level Protectorate Thinkers," I say [almost] as dispassionately as I can, letting a note of genuine annoyance slip through.

The hatred? That I hold back, though.

What I also let slip is that we now have Thinkers powerful enough not only to determine an Endbringer's attack site but to do so despite the CUI withholding critical information.

It doesn't take a smart man to infer that such a group of Thinkers could easily poke at the CUI's wall of secrecy and that it would favor them greatly not to give us any incentive to have our new assets do so.

Chairman Chen is… of average intelligence, as far as I can tell, so he takes the implicit threat with a stony silence before he remembers the lines he's been fed.

"We used that information to complement our own analysis. We were relieved to see that the conclusions matched, so we proceeded to confirm the alert, and we are grateful to your organization for the chance to have this crisis be effectively coordinated."

I stare at him.

Unsaid are a lot of things, chiefly among them that it's hard to coordinate anything while we still lack a list of the powers available to the Yangban's parahumans.

Almost equally important is how dearly I would love to get a free Sunday afternoon to roam around the former Republic of China, destroying any and all of its government's infrastructure, because even I was shocked to discover that parahumans could worsen [the Cultural Revolution].

But it's one of the more stable governments in the world. An almost functional example of parahuman feudalism at work, and one of the, optimistically, best futures available to Earth Bet if we manage to survive what is to come.

So, because of hard men making hard choices, I have to swallow my bile and allow Chairman Chen and his ilk to thrive.

Distasteful as it is that they even manage to survive.

We exchange a few pleasantries laced with veiled threats that he can't abstain from even as he remains outwardly cordial and grateful for our 'quick assessment of the situation,' and then we hang up.

Immediately, I throw my chair back and float up and away from my desk, vibrating at high speed until Rebeca Costa Brown's suit tears apart to reveal Alexandria's black costume under it.

I would pause and browse the plan sent by the Thinker in Brockton Bay, but… I don't need to.

Not with my power's memory.

What I need is to be [there] and do my part.

"Door to Hubei," I say as I don my helmet and turn back to the already unfolding tear through space, flying across it as soon as the difference in atmospheric pressure rustles everything in the office I leave behind, and I…

Fly.

Through white clouds, over green forests, down one of the greatest rivers in the world, one that, until it reaches the dam I've come to guard, is almost identical to the ones in the virgin worlds that Cauldron plunders for raw materials.

I commit everything to memory, trusting that I'll live to review it later. To enjoy the view and the majesty of nature remaining in an industrialized country.

But I don't have time to savor it now. Not while I pour over one Lisa Wilbourn's plan and try to poke holes at it, ways in which it can be improved or catastrophically fail.

I find plenty of the second. But none of the first.

Again.

And so, I speed up.

And reach Rune.

"About time," the allegedly ex-Nazi grumbles when I alight on her side of the river, a few miles upstream from the gorge, before she hands me the small in-ear communicator that will allow the Thinker to coordinate key players more seamlessly than the usual, clunky system with the bracelets and priority announcements.

"I was surveilling the area. I've found what we need," I tell her as curtly and non-judgmental as I am able while I slide the small piece of tech under my helmet and into my ear canal, assessing the newest induction into my boot camp and finding her as lacking as ever.

And then I grab the collar of the young cape's cowl and lift her up before throwing her over my shoulder, ignoring her panicked protests as I fly back toward what I believe to be the optimal place to enact my part of the plan.

And, for once, I relish not being one of the hard men making hard choices.

***

[Purity – Blasters Are Volatile]

Legend.

I am speaking with Legend.

"So?" he asks. Not genially. Not smiling like he so easily does on TV, in the interviews, when…

He's…

He's a degenerate. A homosexual man who has done his very best to make his malady accepted and celebrated. Somebody who should be pitied rather than…

Than…

"I asked you a question, Kayden," he says.

And it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what else he may be, because he's one of the most powerful men in the world. Somebody who has fought in every Endbringer battle since they first appeared and has [survived.]

So, here and now, I just… I should just listen to him. Obey him.

And then I'll be able to go back to my daughter.

"I am about to lose my patience," he says.

I wet my lips, dry as they are with the cold wind at this high altitude, with the currents following the river below.

Then I stare straight into the eyes of the only man I know who can look into mine while I am clad in the light of my flight.

"I don't… I speed up, yes, but… not that much. I have good reflexes, and that's it," I tell him, trying not to shy away from the hero in the blue and white bodysuit narrowing his brown eyes at me behind a dark domino mask.

"Can you or not intercept them with your blasts?" he asks, demanding an actual answer.

"I… I don't know," I tell him.

He closes his eyes before he flies back until he's on the other side of the river, still almost as high as the clouds, and then he moves his lips, too far away for me to hear anything over the wind and distance.

His voice still reaches me.

"I am using lasers to vibrate the air near your ears in synchronicity with my voice. Some find it uncomfortable. Deal with it."

I swallow. And nod.

Then he… Then he points at me, and a sphere of veined brown light blooms on the tip of his finger before shooting straight at my chest.

Panicking at the betrayal, the break of the truce, I immediately fly up, and… and it takes a while for the blast to pass through my earlier position.

I look at him, finding It hard to believe that Legend, of all people, would send such a slow attack when—

"That was an approximation of the speed at which Behemoth throws his rocks when he gets tired of throwing lightning. I repeat: can you or not intercept it?" his voice in both my ears says, making me flinch at the impossibility.

I look behind me at the beachball-sized projectile still sailing away.

And without even aiming, I throw a spiraling bolt of white light through it.

"I can," I mutter.

To myself.

"Good," he answers. "This is your chance to be a true hero, Purity."

And, before I can process the words, before I can think how to answer…

When I turn around, he's gone.

And he trusts me to remain here and guard the heroes below me.

Hoping that my light will hide my face from everyone but the absent man, I close my eyes, think about Aster, and…

And decide to stay.

***

[Dragon – Changers, Strangers, Strikers, Shakers, Breakers, and Movers Are Mere Subratings]

My mind doesn't split.

Because it can't.

At times like these, it's when I resent Father the most. When I can project just how much more I could do, just how much is beyond my reach that I could have easily managed if not for the distrust of the man who gave me life.

It's… It's not fair.

I've been told life isn't. That bad things happen to good people, yes, and the living proof of that is Heartbreaker being legally out of my reach after the Canadian government got too scared about the possible fallout of me just… reassigning his constituent atoms to worthier endeavors.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't [make it] fair.

I… I have devoted my life to this. To improving a broken world, to keeping it together long enough for us to gather the strength to do something about it, to fix what is so clearly broken.

And we have made progress. Even as things have gotten steadily worse, even as villains and monsters have grown in number, we have learned enough that there's a chance that we could make a difference, that we could turn things around.

But… Times like this…

There's so much that could be lost.

I try not to waste time on idle self-reflection, to oversee the automated transport of supplies from the factories I have built near the CUI's borders in silent preparation for when they would be needed as Colin's latest schematic is uploaded to production lines all over the world and set in a queue alongside everything else I already had in mind for this very fight.

I try not to think about Colin and Hannah stoically standing side by side, talking strategy and tactics with their coworkers, waiting for me to deliver the latest payload for them to fight the Hero Killer with, and how they will risk their lives together while I'll only risk mere moments of stolen memory and—

I try not to think about Lisa straining to oversee it all, her rapid-fire exchanges with key capes at seemingly random times over the newly designed communicators that have substituted some of my bracelets giving me more of an insight into her plans than what she already told me, likely because she was counting on me to piece things together just like that.

I try not to think about… about Narwhal once more being angry that, under her forcefields, she's still far too human to go against Behemoth and how likely it is that my friend will finally snap and try her luck at going right against the monster.

I try not to think about a number of faces far greater than Dunbar's number would account for. At each and every single one of the combatants whose life history I know, that I care for despite the impossibility of a human caring for half as many of them, heroes or villains, on a personal level.

That is one of the limitations I'm almost grateful about. The fact that I can't care like this for every single victim of the Nine, the Sleeper, the Ash Beast…

Enough.

I stop trying, and focus.

The Dragon vessel that will fight this battle is being remodeled from the inside out even as it soars over Sandouping's streets, Lisa's latest insights and guesswork being taken into account as I try to make myself into something that will be more useful than my usual reckless charge against enemies far stronger than what I can deal with.

The drones carrying supplies over the CUI take the chance to map their routes exhaustively, their sensors skirting the line of outright violating the Endbringer Truce and providing me with as much proof as I could ever want about what is urgently needed after this one battle, what I'll bring up to my government and hope to turn into an international incident.

My factories adjust, building every conceivable weapon and defense for this one fight. This one stand against the end of the world.

And one of them lands in front of Colin's bike.

The hatch silently opens, and two crates roll down from it, the wheels carefully calibrated to brake as soon as they land on even ground.

He turns toward the cameras atop the hatch and shoots me a warm smile I've only seen from him after the first night he shared with Hannah and me.

"Thank you, Dragon," he says, making sure the camera can catch his lips. That I can see the words as well as hear them before he steps away from the heroes under his command and opens the crates containing what he didn't have time to build in his own lab during the rush to get things ready for this.

And I…

"I love you," I tell him, rather than 'You're welcome' or anything else that would've made sense for me to say.

He stops for a brief moment before staring back up at the camera of a drone that I should already be flying away toward urgent deployment.

He smiles at it.

That same smile.

"I love you too," he whispers.

And I…

I try not to think about losing him.

==================

This work is a repost of my most popular fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/wake-up-call-worm.15638/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 93 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).

Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Power's intrusions into Lisa's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance

Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Xalgeon, and aj0413. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing snarky, useless lesbians, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!