Fragile

I'd considered simply collecting powers from the villains in my world; the problem was that most villains were in hiding. If I got close enough to them, I could identify them. If they had gangs, I could interrogate them.

However, most villains did not have bases whose locations were known by the PRT. Most villains weren't gang leaders either; more villains were like Uber and Leet. They tended to be individual contractors with a few henchmen rather than leaders of gangs.

There were only a few villains who had known locations, and most of them were too powerful to move, or there were other reasons they were left alone.

The Sleeper was the great unknown. He was so terrifying that no one even talked about what his powers might possibly be.

The Moord Nag had a known location; she summoned a monster that grew stronger the more it killed. It might synergize well with my tendencies to kill a lot of people and monsters.

Even if I never used the power, I could do a lot of good simply by destroying her. After all, she didn't have any deadmen's switches.

I'd have gone after Nilbog, but my experience with Bakuda and with Zombie earth had made me cautious. The last thing I needed was for Dad to wake up and find that I'd turned Brockton Bay and the rest of the world into another wasteland.

A quick google search gave me her general direction, and I was now in a bookstore picking up the books I'd ordered.

"Afrikaans for beginners?" I heard a voice from behind me, "The English to Afrikaans dictionary?"

Vista.

I'd known she was coming in of course, but I was hoping to avoid her. I had less reason to troll her than the others, and after my failure in the zombie world I really wasn't feeling up to the effort.

"Are you going on vacation?" she asked. "I haven't heard good things about Africa."

She'd been offended by the corruption in the PRT, but she'd chosen to stay. She was gathering evidence everywhere she could, but it was slow going.

Vista still believed that the PRT was a good organization overall, but she was afraid that a few bad apples were going to ruin the organization.

Clockblocker was helping her, but the Wards were generally kept away from most of the important decisions.

Being told about a homicidal cape apparently was not something they were kept from.

"Well, I'm going to make it better!" I said, forcing myself to smile.

"Who are you going to kill?" she asked. She looked down at the books in my hand.

They vanished into dust.

NEW LANGUAGE ACQUIRED: AFRIKAANS.

I shrugged.

"Does it matter?" I said. "I don't go after heroes, and Africa is not under the control of the Protectorate."

"It's the Moord Nag, right?" she said. "Her monster gets stronger the more that it kills."

"Maybe," I said. "It's not like I'm planning on killing anybody but Lung, and maybe villains who are real assholes. It'll probably never get to be bigger than a housecat, really."

"And what happens if you kill her?" she demanded. "You'll destabilize the entire region! Warlords will start fighting for power. Thousands of people will die!"

"If you're always worried about consequences, you'll never do anything," I said. "I'll buy this too."

The girl at the register was staring at us, her eyes as big as saucers. Vista was in full costume, and she'd finally placed me.

I'd healed her cousin, apparently, after Bakuda's bombing.

As she handed be the World Atlas, my hand brushed over hers. I pushed healing into her.

"What did you just do?' she asked, her eyes wide.

"You won't have that chronic pain anymore," I said. "There were some cysts in your ovaries that were about to burst. You should go to the doctor more often."

"I can't afford it," she said. Looking up, she said, "Thank you!"

I smiled and I assimilated the Atlas as quickly as I could before turning to leave the store.

Why hadn't I done that as soon as I'd gotten Schrodinger's power? Having mental road maps of most of the planet was a good thing.

It might even help in alternate Earths that were close enough to mine to have the same roads.

"You can't just go around healing people without asking permission!" Vista hissed.

"I don't ask permission when I kill them?" I said. "Why should I ask before doing something nice. Like if I put $50,000 in your bank account right now, would I ask permission?"

She paled.

"Don't do that," she said. "They'd start investigating me."

"Well, if you need help with your investigation, let me know," I said. "I can probably find a lot of dirt that would help."

She paled.

"How did you know?"

"Thinker," I reminded her. "I've got powers I haven't told anybody about, just in case, you know."

Other than telepathy, I didn't really have many abilities that they didn't know about. However, I felt it was good to keep them guessing.

As we stepped out of the bookstore, I asked, "The Protectorate isn't coming to kill me again, are they?"

A large group was approaching, all parahumans.

She didn't know anything about it, which didn't mean much. The Protectorate knew I was a thinker; they probably hadn't wanted her to warn me by inadvertently giving off body language cues.

I sent my eyes out in every direction, aiming high and looking down.

There were capes that I didn't recognize, along with some that I did. I wasn't within range of my telepathy, but Intuitive Empathy suggested that they didn't mean me any good.

"You should probably leave," I said. "I think someone is about to try to execute a kill order on me."

She frowned.

I could tell that she wanted to stay, but she didn't need to be around this. Vista hadn't really seen most of my murders, although she'd seen the aftermath.

"Call it in," I said. "See what they say."

Thirty seconds later she grimaced, and said, "I'm not to interfere."

"Of course you aren't," I said.

With capes of unknown power, I couldn't wait and let them attack me to increase my resistances.

I teleported to the rear of the group. They were attacking me from three different directions, and it would be best to pick off as many of them as I could, all at the same time.

The man I was targeting was dressed in a costume patterned after Behemoth. After I blinked in close enough, I realized that I was being attacked by the Fallen.

They'd taken exception to my seemingly banishing the Simurgh, and they anticipated getting my bounty from the PRT and rubbing their faces in it.

Eligos died without even knowing what hit him as I punched him in the back of the neck. I could now lift eight tons, and it was easy.

BLADESTORM IS LEVELED UP BY 3 LEVELS.

YOU NOW DO 800 HP OF DAMAGE.

LEVEL 16.

That was…fair.

Apparently Eligos had an ability like Stormtiger's, to slash out and do wind damage. I wouldn't complain about a little more damage, but it was a little underwhelming.

He was in the bed of a pickup truck with a man in a delicate looking mask with no eye holes; the mask represented a woman's face, with while and silver feathers on flowing white clothing.

He was wearing a corset!

He was lifting his mask.

"STOP," he said, and something gave his words more resonance than they normally would.

"No," I said, and I drove my thumbs into his eyes before crushing his skull.

"TELEPATHY IS INCREASED BY TWO LEVELS. YOU MAY NOW READ MINDS WITHIN A RANGE OF 640 FEET. YOU MAY CONTROL ONE MIND WITH A 70% CHANCE LESS ANY RESISTANCES. LEVEL 7."

The drivers were normals, but they were members of the fallen too.

They were speeding down the road at seventy miles an hour, and so I simply inventoried the car and let them continue skidding down the road.

One of them didn't make it, and the other was barely breathing.

I stepped on his neck and then I blinked to the next location.

Normally the three families of the Fallen worked independently, but sometimes they lent members to each other.

They were an Endbringer cult, but the different families had different beliefs. The Wichita branch were the most fervent; they mixed Christian beliefs with Endbringer worship.

They used crack and meth, mostly homegrown.

The next truck I attacked was coming from the north. It held members of this family. There was a bodybuilder with biblical verses tattooed on him. He had a monstrous fish on his back, with tentacles as a costume. His mask looked like a gutted fish.

He called himself Dagon.

I appeared beside him in the bed of the truck, and I lashed out, only for my fist to be caught in a tentacle made of water. It was stronger than I was.

I inventoried the water, but more reappeared almost as quickly as I inventoried it. He was a hydrokinetic, and I found that I suddenly wanted that power.

Leviathan was likely to ne the next Endbringer on the list, and it was unlikely that I could level up the power enough in the time we had left to be able to match him. However, it might help me to save lives by creating pockets of air in the middle of the typhoon.

-50 HP!

DEHYDRATION DAMAGE!

THIS DAMAGE BYPASSES PHYSICAL RESISTANCES! FORTUNATELY, YOU DO NOT HAVE BLOOD AND AREADY HAVE AN 80% RESISTANCE TO DEHYDRATION!

+1% DEHYDRATION RESISTANCE.

"Clockblock," I said, and I reached out, not for him, but for the water between him and the cab of the truck.

A single cubic foot became time-locked, and the truck kept moving. It slammed into him at seventy miles an hour, and he went flying out of the truck.

I blinked after him, and before he could recover, even as he was spinning and skidding on the street, I clockblocked his head.

His body immediately went limp, and the water around him dropped to the ground.

With all signals from the brain stopped, his breathing and heartbeat immediately stopped. It would only last for two seconds, though, so I plunged my hand into his chest.

NEW POWER CREATED!

HYDROKINISIS!

YOU NOW CONTROL A 10 FOOT BY TEN FOOT BY TEN FOOT CUBE OF WATER! YOU MAY ALSO DO 10 POINTS OF DAMAGE PER LEVEL TO INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE NOT RESISTANT TO DEHYDRATION DAMAGE AS YOU WITHDRAW WATER FROM THEIR BODIES. SOME BEINGS AUTOMATICALLY HAVE 100% RESISTANCE, LIKE ROBOTS, TIMELOCKED BEINGS AND SOME FORMS OF UNDEAD. THE AREA YOU CONTROL DOUBLES IN ALL DIMINSIONS WITH EVERY LEVEL. DAMAGE INCREASES BY 10 POINTS PER LEVEL. THIS BYPASSES PHYSICAL RESISTANCE.

That was going to be very useful! If I was able to pull the water from Brackish pools, I could make salt, which might be useful on cannibal earth!

A boy was shooting sparks of fire. They hit me, piercing into me, but all I felt was a warm sensation inside. I saw a girl beside him; she was dancing, and she hit me with fire.

A third girl hit me with smoke.

The smoke didn't do any damage to me, but it burned off the material of my outfit.

My Armani!

I'd forgotten to change out of it, and they'd destroyed one of three suits!

They called themselves Phobos, Mania and Deness respectively.

I blinked into the back of the truck, behind both of them, and I smashed their heads together. I felt their heads crush under my hands.

FIRE CONTROL HAS INCREASED BY +2 LEVELS!

FIRE CONTROL HAS INCREASED BY +2 LEVELS!

FIRE CONTROL IS NOW LEVEL 12! YOU CAN CONTROL ALL FIRE WITHIN A FOUR MILE RADIUS!

YOU CAN CREATE FIRE DOING 600 HP OF DAMAGE!

Holy crap.

I could literally destroy entire cities with this. The damage wouldn't destroy buildings, not at first, but once they were on fire, they'd continue to be on fire.

What would I get from smoke girl?

My fist punched down, only to stop an inch from her nose.

She was my age, and she was incredibly shy. She wasn't completely innocent; no one could be being raised in the family she had been.

Her smoke power didn't discriminate; she'd had to build a costume out of her own hair which was skimpy because it destroyed her own costumes as well as that of others.

Her body was tattooed in an effort to make it look like she was wearing more clothes than she was.

She'd been forced to do this by her family, despite her reluctance, and ultimately she just wanted to get out and live a normal life.

I flicked her forehead, and as she fell unconscious, I touched the blood that was coming from her nose.

NEW POWER CREATED!

DISINTEGRATING SMOKE! THIS SMOKE COVERS A TEN FOOT RADIUS CLOUD AND IT DEALS 100 HP PER LEVEL. THE RADIUS OF THE SMOKE AND THE DAMAGE DEALT DOUBLE WITH EACH LEVEL. THIS ONLY AFFECTS NONLIVING MATERIALS, AND DOES NOT AFFECT PARTS OF YOU THAT ARE NON-LIVING, SUCH AS YOUR HAIR AND NAILS.

Level a power like that up enough, and I could literally disintegrate entire buildings. That had been what her family had wanted her to do, and it was the reason she'd been considering leaving.

That bit of humanity was also why I wasn't going to kill her. I wasn't going to heal her either, but she'd wake up with a headache and free from her family.

I'd have the PRT make a deal with her as long as she didn't destroy my suits again.

Ultimately, that was the fault of her family, and they were going to pay for this.

The truck had slid to a stop, and the norms inside were shooting at me. I ignored the bullets, and I inventoried the girl and then released her on top of a building nearby.

We'd skidded to a stop beside a three-story building, and it was easy enough.

I was still nude, and I considered for a moment before switching into a pink hello kitty hoodie. I hated this hoodie; it had been given to me by Emma before everything had gone to hell, and I'd hated it when she gave it to me.

Besides, maybe it would be more humiliating for them to be killed by someone in an outfit this ridiculous.

The men in the truck were still shooting at me. They'd already reloaded, and so I telepathically spoke to one of the men.

"Your cousin as been cheating on you with your girl. Nobody would know if you killed him now; you could always blame the crazy bitch."

He shot his cousin in the head. A look of horror appeared on his face.

"How could you kill your cousin! He wouldn't cheat on you! What kind of person kills kin? Maybe you should…"

He'd put a gun in his mouth before I could even finish my mental spiel.

Flame appeared all around me, destroying the hated Hello Kitty hoodie.

There was a cape on the building opposite me, and he was gesturing at me.

"Bladestorm," I said, and as he fell, I teleported to his side.

FIRE CONTROL HAS INCREASED BY 1 LEVEL!

YOU CAN NOW CONTROL ALL FIRE WITHIN AN EIGHT MILE RADIUS. LEVEL 13.

The damage I'd taken had already healed, and I turned as I felt a teleporter appearing within my range. She was a slender woman. She called herself Batitbat.

Intuitive Empathy screamed at me, and I barely managed to dodge in time.

His name was Chort, and he was as strong as Alexandria. He wore a wolf pelt with goat horns on it, and he'd been mastered by someone.

Armored skin covered me, and I lashed out, but he dodged me!

Someone else was lending him a danger sense. His eyes were glowing yellow.

I appeared behind me, but he hit me.

-200 HP!

+1% PHYSICAL RESISTANCE!

Fuck!

I found myself flying backwards through a building, the walls collapsing after me.

They were teleporting to meet me on the other side, and so I blinked into the air, seeing Chort going through the area I had been.

He was incredibly strong, and although he was nowhere as durable as Alexandria, he was just as strong. It was likely that he was more durable than I was.

It required 10,000 hit points to do a single point of damage to me in my normal skin. In my Armored Skin, that increased to 100,000,000 hit points to do a single point of damage.

His skin was tougher than mine, and I had no way to deal anything near that kind of damage. He was faster than he should have been, likely due to having that overwhelming level of strength.

He was also flying directly toward me, his body propelled by his massive strength, even as I felt Purity trying to blast me.

She wasn't doing it of her own will. She'd been mastered by someone too.

STATUS EFFECT!

FRAGILE!

-2 LEVELS OF ARMORED SKIN!

EFFECT WILL LAST FOR FIVE MINUTES!

Someone on the ground had hit me with a status effect; it meant that for the next five minutes, my damage resistance had been cut to one tenth normal.

If Chort hit me, I would take 2000 hit points. I didn't have anything near that.

I didn't have a choice.

"Planeshift," I said.

I felt a hand around my ankle as the world vanished around me.