9

Summoner - Chapter 9 - SomeoneYouWontRemember - Parahumans Series

Chapter 9

Had Evelynn been alive and able to somehow talk to her, all Taylor would be hearing would be indignant, angry hissing about a being of her perfection and caliber being used to sneakily scavenge for parts in the trainyard dumps.

The place was not what she had thought a dump would be like. She wasn't sure what she was expecting, but it was not just a bunch of giant mounds of trash in an old giant parking lot, each about twenty feet high and guarded by literally nothing but a flimsy wire fence.

Still, it was more organized than she'd expected. Whatever service brought them here actually seemed to dump them into these big piles so that people could walk between them.

There was a tiny twinge of pain in her head from yesterday's headache, but after a decent sleep and a few hours of meditation, it was barely more than an annoyance.

She was currently looking for some very specific things. Old televisions, computers, washing machines, and just…

A whole lot of metal. As much as she could carry on her normal body with a gigantic camping backpack on her back.

She'd also bought bags full of chemicals earlier in the morning, electronics, a half dozen burner phones, and materials that would have definitely put her on at least forty different terrorist and Tinker watchlists had she not bought them all using completely different disguises. She had also taken a minute out of her morning to take her backpack of memorabilia and civillian life stuff. She hadn't used any one of the things yet, just threw everything into a corner of her bunker, but it was there and ready for her to use or stare at.

Her five hundred dollars were basically gone now. She had sixty bucks left.

Fuck. 

Maybe she should have stolen everything.

Yeah, having a slightly cleaner conscience wasn't worth her money.

Damn it.

Anyone who thought Tinkers could just grab a bunch of paperclips and cardboard and make a bomb out of it were fucking idiots. Unless someone's power had a small dozen bunch of subpowers about manipulating materials and energy, it was nigh impossible to Tinker without tools or some kind of power supply.

Hence, here she was, looking for metals both rusty and clean.

Rusty metals so that she could scrape the rust off with a chemical solution, dry it, chemically process it into extremely fine thermite powder, and make thermite caps that would be lit by thin magnesium strips as a fuse.

Those were always useful.

Additionally, she had a few scientists and chemists in her arsenal. Most of the chemicals they knew of simply did not exist here, and another big chunk of them were too magical in nature to bother trying to make yet, but they also knew a lot of things that would not be out of place for an Earth Bet scientist to know.

That gave her a lot of options.

Of course, she'd need equipment to make something actually complicated, and she couldn't go for that yet.

She found most of her problems to starting stable, good operations being the simple woe of most; money. And transport, as she was still a bit of a twig-armed stick woman, but mostly money.

It wouldn't be for long. She had ideas. Morally dubious ones at best, but ideas.

She turned back to herself, swung the backpack off, stuffed a couple tiny bunches of wire and metal down it, then swung it back on and turned into Evelynn again.

It was already half-full of electronics, plastic pieces that would severely lighten the load of what she was going to make, photoreceptors taken from some cracked welding masks and old petroleum heaters, along with a few pieces of radioactive tiny little rocks she'd yanked out of some out-of-commission fire alarms.

An hour and a half later, it was also full of pieces of metal meticulously bent and squashed down to fit into her backpack, and after a mighty heave to get the thing off the ground without leaning back and falling on her ass, she quickly turned back into Evelynn with a sigh of relief.

Evelynn had much better ears than her.

That was what let her know that what she was hearing was not the ambient whistle and creak of ageing trains and the air whistling through their broken windows, but the sound of metal on the other side of the dump being pulled and yanked and bent.

Curious, she turned to smoke and drifted upwards in the early morning sun.

Nothing.

Pile of metal, pile of trash, pile of metal trash, pile of plastic trash, pile of rusty trash, stick man made of trash-

Her gaze doubled back, blinking at the bizarre sight.

She flew closer, until she was just above the… man? Yes, that was a man's head on top of the stick-like limbs.

An ugly, unkempt, round-faced dude that looked like he was born a Merchant. If it wasn't for the rest of the oddities, she would have assumed he was one. He was like a metal nugget of a human without arms or legs, his torso encased in an egg of metal sans the head area, but the egg was magnetic and seemingly armored with random metal shit, ranging from sheet metal to coke cans to actual pipes.

The egg-thing was barely visible. Where his legs and arms might have come out, had he any, instead thin claw-like arms were clamped onto a particularly stubborn piece of lead pipe crammed between a mess of sheet metal that refused to stop clinging to it, making the man curse and hiss in frustration as his unwieldy limbs tried to excavate the pipe. 

From how his mechanical limbs seemed to be, and his obvious discontent with them, she could guess it was not exactly by choice that he was without limbs.

Who the fuck would amputate all four limbs of a Tinker and throw him in a shitheap place like Brockton Bay and why ?

Too curious to resist, and seeing a bit of an opportunity, she materialized a dozen or so feet behind him, and turned off the invisibility, turning back into the muscled, scarred white guy she used when talking to Sile.

"Hey." She greeted simply, casually, a calm rumble.

" GAHFUCK-" The man barked out as he jumped and whirled around, only to forget his left claw was still clamped around the pipe, and so he stumbled awkwardly to the side and fell onto the hill of metal with a deafening rattle, his right "shoulder" denting a rusty air-conditioner.

He quickly let go and fumbled with his dysfunctional limbs for a moment to stumble up and away from her, then after his legs finally managed to listen, somehow, despite being little more than a flat piece of metal for a foot with a strange inner pulley system that used rusty steel wire and black plumbing pipes, regarded her with a glare.

"The fuck're you? You don't look like one of those Merchant fuckers." He growled, his voice both oddly pitched and somehow coarse, trying to puff up and look more dangerous. He just looked stupid, however. A metal egg with chicken legs and noodle arms trying to look like a knight.

Resisting the urge to snicker, and just to establish some… equal ground, she didn't bother replying, casually strolling to the pipe he was struggling with.

She grabbed it with her left hand, with enough strength to bend the metal inward, and pulled. With an utter cacophony of tumbling metal and groaning, screeching scrap, it came free with a small tide of broken parts, fans, sheet metal and shredded couch foam that flooded around her left pant leg, which she ignored.

She turned the pipe over a little, a good three feet, heavy as shit, still straight somehow.

She switched over to the Rune of Inspiration, 'Cosmic Insight' activating in an instant.

This pipe and the regulation code on it had once ignited a child's initial interest in his eventual professional career as a plumber.

It was a bit odd to consider everything around her might have some kind of significance like this, even if it wasn't exactly useful to know about.

"Could make a good hammer with this." She suggested off-handedly as she briefly examined it and tossed it down between them, before raising her eyes to a decidedly more nervous-looking Tinker.

Then she got some insight into him and barely suppressed the reactive ' what the fuck' that almost blurted out of her mouth.

She got a vague sense that he was not of this world, not of this domain , which was a bit of a surprise because what Earth did this guy even come from , and she got the sense that all he really wanted was to take people and things considered simple and bland or bent and make them into something greater. And that was not his power, it was just what he seemed to wish on some intrinsic level, whether that was about himself, or other people, or the junk all around them.

It was only the latter that his power represented, she could guess.

Still, this was the first time she met someone who had, to some much lesser extent, suffered through something similar to what she had. Getting torn out of their home world and into another one.

Only difference was that she was back, and he was not.

"Ah… I guess?" He awkwardly replied, eyeing her like one would a particularly twitchy homeless person on their way home at night.

"So… who the fuck did you piss off to end up looking like that, and how the hell did you make a suit for your main body without any limbs?" She asked, giving him an obvious, up and down look.

His face settled into a deep scowl.

"First of all, fuck you, I look fine. And secondly, none of your fucking business."

She rolled her eyes for show, putting her hands in her pockets. Tempting as it was to just brainwash him, it was tiring, took time, and she felt an odd sense of camaraderie with him over both of them being people who'd been forced through something similar.

"Okay listen, from one guy to another." She lied. "Let me put this more bluntly. You're obviously not from around here. Like… veeeeeery far from here. You catch my drift? I'm the same. Not from around here, not exactly. I'm just curious about you, first time I've seen a guy like me. What was your home like?" She asked, pretending to be casually cracking her neck, and the guy's face twisted in a strange mixture of confusion at her odd emphasis on certain words, and plain old bitterness.

"Don't remember. Don't remember fuckin' anything. Not even my name. Just english and very general bullshit like what a pipe or a car is, et cetera. Woke up in a shitheap without limbs and a bunch of bullshit in my head, had to use the magnetic locks on my limbs and an entire week of struggling just to make this stuff while crawling around like a slug for parts. I only got two arms yesterday. So, sorry mister tall, scarred, and handsome, but we sure as fuck ain't the same." He growled, and she let out a thoughtful hum.

"Okay, I'll be more blunt then. I have a minor Thinker power. It's basically pseudo-psychic bullshit, don't worry about it. Point is, I can tell you're from another world. Like, not from this Earth. Sorry if the revelation is a bit heavy, but I'm trying to make a bridge here before shit gets hostile." She explained, spread her hands in a 'what can you do' gesture, and shrugged.

The guy's brows furrowed, his mouth opened. Then he hesitated, and tilted his head to the side, eyes still on her, squinting.

"So… what, did some cosmic bullshit throw me here fucked up like this? How'd you get here if you're also from another Earth, if that shit's even a thing?" He asked, gesturing at her with a claw as he asked, his stance mildly relaxing. Or the wires were acting up, she couldn't tell.

"Well, much like you, I have no fucking idea how I got there or how I came back," She lied, "but I have my memories of being here, then being there, then back here. So, maybe something like that'll eventually happen for you?" She suggested, honestly not expecting it, and becoming increasingly confused with the strange circumstances.

"I'm assuming that you, as a Tinker, were probably part of some project or whatnot, shit went wrong, and next thing you know you're teleported here with your brains scrambled. Or- nevermind, lots of potential explanations, I don't have an answer for you. What's your name chief?" She asked as she stepped forward, hand half-extended for a handshake, pulling out a bit of soldier and crime lord charm slash body language to make it look like she was looking down on him despite them being the same height, but not condescendingly nor seeming anything more than utterly relaxed.

The guy eyed her hand, then the bent bit of pipe with clear skepticism and apprehension, thoughtful as he considered her previous words and the peace offer.

"...Don't really have one. Hectic week of just… trying to survive and get to moving. Haven't had time. Or people to talk to for this shit to matter." The nameless Tinker grumbled, then took her hand, awkwardly, in a claw.

"Ah well, you'll figure something out. My name's…" She trailed off.

Ah, fuck, she hadn't thought this far ahead.

"Summoner." She finished, shaking hand-and-claw up and down in a handshake. It felt natural to call herself Summoner.

"Shit name." The guy commented dryly, with an ' I know that's not your actual name' kind of look, and she let out a short snort of laughter.

Because fuck, he was kind of right. Could have any badass name she wanted, and she picked Summoner on the fly. It wasn't bad, it had this certain air of mystery and gravitas to it, like ' summoner of what, what could it be?!' kind of, but it could have been a lot better. But it wasn't shit, come on.

"It's a cape name." At the flash of confusion in his expression, she realized. "Ah, wait, you don't remember shit." She said as she let go and stepped back a bit. The guy nodded, clearly expecting an explanation but too desperate to ask and somehow offend her, she could guess.

She turned to the side, staring at the crumpled car wedged into the trash pile to their right, on just the perfect height to be a chair.

"One sec, this might take a while. If you don't know anything , I have a lot to tell you." She said, then quickly went over to the car, and grabbed it with two arms and two invisible ribbon-tentacles, casually dragging it out and ignoring the ear-scraping commotion of half the damn pile falling over and spreading itself out as its support was torn out.

She hefted the car skeleton, holding onto the window separator and the flat underside, a… surprisingly light thing, even if it was rather crumpled down, and set it down next to her, before turning around and sitting on it.

The guy stared at her.

She jerked her head beside her.

"Sit down, chief."

With an awkward gait, like a toy soldier trying to walk, he waddled over and clunked down beside her.

"Man, that's… a lot." The guy whispered, using a metal claw to rub his head as if to rub away an informational overload.

She nodded.

"Yeah, it is. You could always-"

"Oooooooi!" A strangely rough, squeaky voice interrupted her with a loud, long cry from afar, and she turned her head in confusion. The Tinker hurried off the car with an angry growl.

"Fucking Merchants. I'm out. Thanks for the… you know. I really appreciate it, dude."

She got off the car too, and grasped his shoulder with an iron grip before he could bolt, not that he would feel it.

"Whoah, hold it. I'm assuming they're bugging you to join?" She asked, and he glanced behind her shoulder nervously, before nodding.

"First time I almost had my head caved in by a bat when they tried to drag me with them after I told them to go fuck themselves. And I only had one arm then. Barely scared the fuckers off." He said, and tried to back away, only to barely budge an inch and give her a cautious look as he realized she'd yet to let him go.

For a moment, she was silent, deep in thought.

She didn't know what to do here, not really. She knew that she wanted to Master this guy, as well as to deal with the Merchants one way or another.

It was just so much easier, so much more convenient and faster. No wondering, no social management, just ten minutes and she'd have a Tinker ally prowling about the trainyards, one that she guessed would definitely benefit from her help and resources, like the ability to make him an underground base of his own rather than having him tinker out in the open or whatever shitty shed he could stumble into and struggle to make his stuff.

He didn't need too many tools, unlike her, because she could tell a lot of the things he was using to be somewhat functional were bent and hinged together in very specific ways that suggested some kind of material manipulation power, so it would be damn useful to just have him as her thrall.

The problem was simple.

This guy was not an asshole, and he was also completely innocent.

In the purest form she could think of, actually. As far as she was concerned, he only existed for one week since he woke up in a pile of trash after being teleported from whatever world he came from, and by his own admission, he'd done nothing since then but try to tinker himself an actual body, find shit to eat, and try not to draw too much attention, which was hard to do.

And she had noticed the Case 53 tattoo on his egg-chestplate thing, barely hidden between two pipes. She wasn't blind. He wouldn't be suddenly remembering anything anytime soon if what she read on PHO about it due to the Weld announcement was true. He wasn't a wannabe gangster, and despite being one ugly bastard that would fit right in, he mostly just seemed like a normal, cautious dude. With a penchant for swearing a fuck ton. Which she also had, actually, to some extent. Having had a couple sailors and soldiers and a few orphans in her memories, it was kind of inevitable, actually.

She'd rather not be swearing too much though. Felt too different from Taylor Hebert. She'd try to cut down on it. Regardless, Mastering him would be another step in her inner reflex to basically kneecap every potential relationship she could form with anyone into nothing but a slave-master one, which she was pretty fucking iffy about. So, without much code or reason, more of a whim, really, she decided that she would not be Mastering him. She deserved to try and make some friends and contacts, genuine ones.

The type of Merchants that would get sent to gangpress a stray Tinker to join them were free game however.

"I'm gonna go deal with them. Might take a while, so I suggest you go on ahead. I wanna do this solo. Need some practise, you know?" She shrugged as she let go, and he gave her a dubious look as he blatantly stared at her massive biceps and scarred forearms.

Another Merchant yelled out from another place in the yard, letting them know they were surrounded and that there were quite a few of them and 'they just wanted to talk', and his face fell.

He went to speak, and she cut him off with a hand gesture as she started slowly backpedalling, before turning into her normal self and digging out a piece of pen and paper from the backpack pockets to scribble a phone number on it as he gawked at her. Thank fuck she never took off the facemask she made.

Of course, she did lock in the Resolve Rune and the 'Guardian' effect, just to be safe. No need to be reckless when a single bullet could kill her in this form, and 'Guardian' could definitely block more than a few bullets for the few short seconds its shield lasted.

"I'm a very versatile cape, so don't get too surprised if I pop up out of nowhere, or as completely different people. Perks of shapeshifting, I guess. I'll be seeing you around. Oh and, this goes without saying, but I'm going to be running my own squad soon. I'm thinking two, maybe three months from now, actually. I don't know if it's going to be a gang or a mercenary squad or an independent squad or whatever, but if you want in, I'd be glad to have you. You seem like a decent dude, just got the real short end of the fucking stick. Sometimes though, the short end of the stick is the sharpest, and I think you could do some good work if you'd be down to get your own place and a workshop and all that snazz. Call me on this phone number if you need any urgent help, and try not to join any gangs in the meantime. They never let you leave, especially if they've got the capes or the money to make sure you can't. See you, Sir Trainwreck." She jokingly finished with a snappy salute using her right arm, using her left to extend the paper to him.

He was kind of looking at her like she'd just told him she was a leprechaun as he took the paper, and also like he half believed her, a very odd expression of thankfulness and alarm and confusion and a bit of hurried worry in there.

Thousands of years of social interactions made reading people surprisingly easy, who knew.

It was kind of refreshing.

"Trainwreck...?" He muttered, half-offended, and half-considering for some reason.

She immediately dug into her pocket for the burner phone she'd been planning to use for herself, grateful she hadn't added Sile's contact to it yet.

He cleared his throat. "Uh. Sure, I guess. I'll try? You're a weird fuck you know that? Also, I don't have a ph-"

She extended a phone to him, and he took it like he was just offered a stack of twenties for no reason, confused but thankful.

"Yours. It's a burner phone, it's meant to be discarded if needed. Offbrand Nokia. It's got a button on the back, press it twice really quick and it wipes everything on the phone in a second or two. Alright, I'm off to mess with the Merchant guys, later."

She turned back to Evelynn, before immediately turning back to the beefy guy she'd crafted to intimidate.

The guy still looked at her strangely for another second, before nodding and turning to hobble away in a sort of… mechanical jog of sorts, a little stilted but capable enough, one claw holding a piece of paper and another his new phone.

She went invisible, and floated up above him.

The dump wasn't small, but it was not bigger than a particularly large parking area. Thus, it was fairly easy to notice the five people hanging out along the edges of the place, and very easy to notice what looked like a literal mountain of crawling trash.

She floated closer, switched to the Rune of Precision, and quickly noticed how the mound of trash seemed to be growing disgusting tendrils that would barely peek out of the mess sometimes. They somehow had an almost magnetic pull on basically every bit of trash around, turning the cape into a giant mess of metal and plastic and rubbers.

Ah, this was… Muck? She'd heard about him in the gang thread she made. Someone with 'in the know' tag listed him as a new addition to the Merchants.

He definitely fit in, the disgusting bastard.

Some small, proud part of her sneered at this disgusting, graceless heap being her first kill, but a far bigger part of her understood that it didn't really matter. It wasn't like she was going to be gathering trophies or having sentimentality about it.

She reached out to the mind inside the trash heap as she swapped to the Rune of Sorcery, locking in 'Phase Rush' as the main effect.

Hello, Muck.

The mound of trash jerked in surprise, whirling and rising up until out of the creeping curtain of discard, two broken bottoms of beer bottles formed on the front of the vaguely round head of the trash mound, like goggles.

A good trick, but she could feel that his soul was near the bottom of the whole construct.

And the soul usually rested in two places. Either a central mass of some sort, or a weak point, something vital.

She could guess the latter here.

She hovered over him, just six feet taller than him as he made a show of whipping around with his puppet of trash, while she assumed that along the bottom of the pile, his actual eyes peeked through the trash on the opposite side.

She also used this time to think, briefly, of what she wanted to do with him. The answer was swift.

Just to test something, she conjured 'Nullifying Orb'-

And immediately realized she had forgotten that she couldn't hold onto things while in smoke form, watching it plummet towards Muck's head. As it fell, she watched his trash suddenly lose cohesion in a wave, at exactly five feet of distance from the crystal, blue-purple ball of swirling energy.

She was filled with surprised, ecstatic joy.

The orb nullified powers.

As Muck's power collapsed around him in an instant, leaving him a panicking, yelling mess of tendrils buried under its own armor, the immediate downside to said orb appeared when it hit the floor, cracked, and blinked out of existence.

The trash immediately began to stir, and she idly saw every gangster begin to run towards Muck's yelling form, fumbling with pistols and machetes, some of them so fucked up they just stumbled around the hills like idiots.

She needed at least one genuine witness to this, just so they wouldn't blame it on the Case 53 and come kill him later. It wasn't like she could count on their soon-to-be loyalty to her to suddenly become good liars, it was risky to order them to lie about having seen someone else kill Muck.

So she waited about five seconds, until one of the gangsters came into sight of Muck's half-recovered form.

She swapped to the Rune of Precision, picked 'Press The Attack', and positioned herself high in the air, immediately coiling her tentacles as high as they could go for a strike, looming over her like silent cobras, thirty feet tall, diamond-like arrowheads pointed straight at Muck's soul.

She felt a phantom, vibrating tension in her limbs, a building rush of adrenaline, the anticipation of imminent violence. She materialized into Evelynn's original form, falling from the sky. The trash was almost half-formed back into its odd slug-like form, but it was slow to move and gather, while she was quick to fall, no matter how much Muck moved his body around the bottom in a panic to figure out what had just happened.

Just ten feet above him, she poured as much strength as she could into her tentacles, and speared downwards. She felt them separate metal and trash like it was barely even there, and then a bare moment later, dig into the concrete beneath before slowing to a halt. Muck jerked once, violently, sending trash sprinkled everywhere, then went limp. Strength flooded into her body, a faint, shimmering yellow barrier forming around her form as 'Triumph' tried to heal nonexistent injuries, making the excess healing go to 'Overheal's barrier.

His soul faded in mere moments.

She kept herself suspended in the air using her tentacles, all two feet of their diamond-like tips burrowed into the concrete up to the hilt, and blinked down at the still pile of trash in sheer disbelief.

…

What?

She was expecting a fight, some kind of struggle, some kind of mess, an actual challenge.

That- what?

That was it?

For a moment, she audibly sputtered in disbelief, Evelynn's claws clicking and grinding together in agitation. Her claws.

It took a few seconds for her to digest the necessary re-evaluation of how strong she was.

Holy shit, what?

She could-

Her eyes widened as she remained frozen, despite hearing the thug that saw the execution squeal like a girl as he turned around and began sprinting for his life.

She could probably kill everyone in the Bay if she wanted. She could clean this city up in no time.

And then…

Then what the fuck would she do?

Her Runes were geared to conflict. She'd remain powerful, incredibly powerful, likely still around… around Eidolon's tier, but static, beyond her Qi training and her artifacts and Tinker-tier stuff she was planning on making.

There were more than enough threats in this world that even Eidolon couldn't do shit about, however. Couldn't remove. Ash Beast, Endbringers, The S9, Heartbreaker… And nobody was safe from those. Well, excluding Heartbreaker, probably, the guy didn't seem inclined to leave Canada.

So she had to stay in conflict, she had to have enemies to fight. Or… sparring partners, maybe? She could probably keep Lung around as a punching bag. Or somehow beat him the fuck down without killing him and Master him into being her pet dragon.

… Okay, fuck, she liked that idea. She liked that a lot.

But just like her, she quickly thought, the PRT also needed enemies. They had to get experience somehow, real experience, real nerves of steel for when the catastrophes inevitably rolled in.

So she recognized that wiping the gangs out would be sub-optimal.

…What if she became the gangs though?

She audibly gulped at the stray, intrusive thought, but couldn't help but grab it, turn it over in her head.

She could take over all of Brockton Bay. She could ensure she and her allies profited, that the PRT had enemies to fight that weren't like Lung and Hookwolf, the kind of fuckers that wouldn't blink at killing a Ward, more like risky sparring partners than actual enemies. She could turn Brockton Bay into an impenetrable fortress city that could genuinely flourish with time, even if that would cut into her profits significantly.

She could fix the Bay, she could fix it in a way that the PRT would never be able to, because they wouldn't be able to keep all the territory peaceful without more capes, capes they'd never get for a quiet place while the ones that were already there would just get transferred out to help somewhere else that was struggling immensely, inevitably leading to another gang coming to put roots in Brockton and starting the cycle of conflict all over again.

But if she took a hold of the gangs, if she was the one calling the shots, she could keep herself and her allies in a cycle of almost… play-fighting with the PRT, serious enough to avoid capture and keep them off her assets but not serious enough to actually risk anyone's lives, fighting the PRT with the same no-kill restrictions they had.

She could take over, keep the PRT in the Bay, making people feel safe enough to move in or invest, allowing the city to flourish, even if that meant her gangs would fade out of relevance somewhat, and then she could keep this cycle of mild but controlled conflict going, allowing both sides to do what they're meant to without any of this fucking slow, choking tragedy that smothered the life out of this place.

The PRT and the Wards could gear up and learn from fighting her and her capes, before heading off to fight real battles, against the real monsters, allowing the PRT ENE to keep getting the green ones without much genuine risk, so she and her capes could prepare them for the rest of the PRT's posts, and vice versa for her own capes, learning and growing likewise without worrying about dying.

Besides, even if she ran gangs, she wouldn't run them like they did here. Maybe she'd run them more like the Yakuza of old? More respectable, more open, less violent and degenerate?

And any destabilising element?

Heroic element?

She'd be more than enough to stop anyone barring the Triumvirate itself probably, and besides the absurdity of the Triumvirate coming to root out something as small as a relatively quiet collection of gangs, at least if they were under her control, she could beat those guys too, maybe, if she had enough time and resources. If the rest of her capes couldn't hold against some other force, she was more than mobile enough to come to the Bay at a moment's notice with her 'Teleport', enough to teach them the lay of the land here.

Villainous element?

Her eyes went down to her tentacles, still holding her up in the air, the 'Overheal' barrier long-since faded.

She dug them out with a swift shuffle-shriek sound, and nimbly touched down on the ground, idly watching the blood pool around plastic discard on the bottom of the pile, watching Muck's blood cling and drip off her feelers. She had expected to feel a bit more about her first kill, but besides a very muted sense of moral alarm, it wasn't nearly as bad she expected, as she had experienced from the first kills of her Legends. Exposure likely numbed her. Good.

If she could just get strong enough to fight the Triumvirate, the strongest heroes, then she could control the Bay without any worry of Brockton ever sinking to the low it currently was in. Her own personal, flourishing city instead of this rotting, scarred shithole that was two bad weeks away from collapsing in on itself. Open shops, smiling pedestrians, police cars that weren't afraid of patrolling half the damn city without a hero on patrol five minutes away.

And then she could get onto killing the monsters. The real monsters.

The weight of the realization was both exhilarating and crushing. She had the technical potential to be stronger than the Triumvirate. She had the potential to really fix this world.

Maybe that was just the fledgling seeds of megalomania making her delusional, she didn't have enough self-awareness to be sure, she didn't even know if she had the moral character to judge who was a real monster and who wasn't, but all she knew was that with the potential to be almost on par with Scion, maybe, maybe she could turn this slow death spiral that the world was locked in and flip it upside down.

Then another idea rose, and her very breath choked.

What if she could Master Mannequin? What if she could turn him back into Sphere? The man was just about ready to fix the entire world's problems before the Simurgh fucked him over and turned him into a broken husk. Likely how the Simurgh would work to fuck her over.

Priority number one, kill Simurgh at all costs.

Her mind wandered back to Qi, and the simple interaction it would have with her Legends, how if she could turn herself into a demigod, even some ordinary, human Legend could share her strength, add it to their own.

Maybe one day she could kill an Endbringer. Until then, the start of her sudden epiphany, of her sudden plan of action…

It was not a path of shining heroism, not exactly one that would have the masses sing her praises, nothing like how the Triumvirate existed and operated. For all she knew, it might even be a thankless job, people knowing that some faceless entity called Summoner was responsible for fixing the Bay and all that might come afterwards, good and bad, but that was alright.

She didn't much care for the adoration of a crowd anyway.

With a goal so vast and terrifying, she realized that she had to push even harder, even faster. She wasn't doing enough, she wasn't doing it fast enough. She was missing opportunities with every passing second.

Deciding to let the witness go, she turned back into invisible smoke, and went to gather the four confused gangsters that hadn't yet stumbled into the scene, calling for each other amongst the trash piles in a clumsy, uneasy attempt to coordinate.

Then she had to give her new minions one of her phone numbers, learn their names, and give them some basic orders, call Sile and give him his task.