Gloating

"You really are a healer," the Flash said after the tenth person I'd healed got up.

"You thought I was lying?"

He shrugged uncomfortably as I blinked us to the next victim. He was getting more comfortable with teleportation.

Seeing all the destruction around us was making him feel more and more guilty. If Dr. Snow's fiancé had been permanently dead, I suspected that he wouldn't be taking this well.

Maybe I needed to try to gain a repair power of some kind. It would be cool to take scrap and heal it back into something new, almost like I healed things.

It would make me a lot more popular back on Earth Bet, too.

"I trusted someone for…a long time. He was like a mentor to be. Then he betrayed us…and caused all this."

"He sounds like a real asshole," I said.

He frowned.

"He wasn't, always. He really taught me a lot, and he helped us until he turned around and betrayed us. It was all part of his plan."

"He could time travel?" I asked, catching a stray thought.

"That's weird," he said. "Stop looking through my head."

"It saves a lot of time, keeps misunderstandings at a minimum," I said.

"You're pretty impatient for someone so young." He looked down a street looking for any more wounded. Ambulances were already appearing, but I'd already gotten most of the worst injured.

Their medical system was as expensive as ours, even if their service was a whole lot better. The ambulances here were bright and shiny. They didn't have dents or bullet holes.

I'd bet their police stations even looked nice.

"My world's dying," I said. "And I gain powers by beating people."

"Dying?"

"We've got city destroying monsters," I said. "Any one of them can easily wipe out a city, and they do."

"You don't have any heroes?" he asked.

I chuckled bitterly.

"The villains fight alongside the heroes, and in every fight we lose a quarter to a third of the defenders. Sometimes we drive them back, and sometimes a city is lost."

He stopped and stared at me.

"Leviathan- he can create tidal waves that wipe cities off the map. Behemoth the hero killer…he can boil blood from the inside out, and he can make everywhere he goes radioactive for the next several thousand years. Finally, the worst, the Simurgh."

"What does she do?"

"Drives entire cities mad," I said. "To the point they have to be quarantined and walled in, left to die."

"That seems…harsh."

"She's a mind controlling precognitive, and she can affect people who were never in her range."

"What?"

"Imagine that a man is considering suicide, but a friend shows up and comforts him by chance. The person the Simurgh affects may intercept that friend until it's too late. They can whisper the wrong word in the right ear, or maybe they simply become mass shooters. There's no way to know."

The reason I was telling him wasn't simply to get his sympathy. This was the kind of person who would feel obligated to help, and I wasn't going to turn down help from someone who could maybe make a difference.

He could help evacuate civilians, or heroes so their bodies were in good enough shape for the treatment. He could do a lot of good if he…

"You can stop tidal waves?" I stared at him.

"I have once," he said.

"It wouldn't work if Leviathan was still controlling them," I said. "But you could literally save millions of lives."

I showed him mental images of all of them, of the fall of Kyushu, of Japan being destroyed. I'd seen them on video, but I'd seen the Simurgh in person.

"You've fought one of them," he said.

"I ran from her," I shook my head. "She used me to reach another universe, one controlled by an evil entity. I still worry sometimes about what will happen when she gets free."

He was quiet for a moment.

"I'll help," he said. "I couldn't live with myself if I didn't. We've got some of our own problems at the moment."

"You had a private metahuman prison in your basement?" I asked, astonished.

"We didn't have any other way to hold them," he said, looking uncomfortable.

"Well, I dropped some of mine off in an empty world," I said. "So, I can't blame you for that. I can't help but think that we could help each other here."

"Oh?"

"I get weaker versions of powers that I can make stronger by use…or sometimes existing powers just get stronger. I'd love to beat your villains up, or if you're tired of holding them, why not just give metahuman containment tech to the prison and jail?"

"We've been thinking about that," he admitted. "It never felt right to imprison them without a trial, but we couldn't see any other way."

"Or maybe that was just Thawne leading you away from any other options," I said. "On my world, I wouldn't trust the government to keep a snow cone cold in a freezer, but things seem to be run a lot better here."

"It's that bad?"

"They need villains for Endbringer fights," I said. "So, they give them free reign mostly. If a villain gets too bad, they're given a kill order, or the Birdcage."

"Birdcage?"

"You have roach motels here, right?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said.

"It's like that, except for people. It's impossible for even the authorities to let someone out of the Birdcage. It's life without parole, and without prison guards. The problem is that sometimes they get it wrong and put someone innocent inside."

He looked horrified.

I needed him to understand, because if he did attend an Endbringer event, someone was sure to start making comments about me.

"Our government is corrupt and incompetent," I said. "But that doesn't mean yours is."

I'd been scanning the cops in the area, and while they had their share of people with problems, they were much better than the general run of the Brockton Bay PD.

They didn't have the same feelings of defeat against an implacable enemy.

I sometimes wondered if the reason so many of our cops took bribes was that they thought the world was going to end, so they were seeking as much pleasure as possible.

"There's been a change in Ronnie's condition," Cisco said over Barry's earpiece.

"I'll race you," I said.

I blinked back to the heroes' base. I'd had a look at it from outside, and I'd been impressed. It was at least the size of a football stadium and I had no idea how much a building that size would have cost even without a particle accelerator in the basement.

Dr. Snow started as I appeared beside her.

"I was warned about this," I said. "Sometimes you need to make some small adjustments in the process."

Grabbing the arm from my inventory, I telekinetically made some adjustments and I placed a small amount of additional nanites in his neck. Had I been a Borg I could have done it all at will, but I could manage with telekinesis.

There were no buttons on the arm; why would there be?

I'd jury rigged an interface using an old laptop and some electronic equipment from Radio Shack.

The computer was on; it didn't lose power while in stasis, and old computers like this took forever to boot up.

"That's…"

"A piece of junk? Yeah. This whole thing is supposed to be controlled cybernetically, but I don't have any inclination to get cyborg parts implanted to control it."

I typed frantically and I noted Cisco looking over my shoulder. "That's not a programming language 've ever seen before."

"It's 25th​ century programming," I said. I'd learned it from skill books to reprogram the replicator. "Things have changed a little since then."

"You're from the 25th​ century?"

"Nope. But I visited the twenty fourth century once, and I picked up some cool tech and skills."

The Flash appeared behind us. Apparently, he'd been diverted to stop three crimes and two accidents.

"There," I said. "It'll be fine now. Resurrecting people isn't an easy process. The Borg tech was designed to deal with the physiology of thousands of species, but that means that you have to account for the variability in species. The damage to his body isn't something the Borg have experienced before too, and so there's a learning process."

His vitals were all returning to normal.

"How long will this take?" Dr. Snow asked.

"Another nine hours maybe?" I asked. "He's a metahuman, which essentially makes him a new species as far as the nanites are concerned."

She was anxious but hopeful.

"Hey," I said. "Why don't you guys tell me about the escapees, and I might be able to give you a hand with rounding them up again."

Cisco glanced at Barry, who nodded.

I was impressed by their computer system. It couldn't hold a candle to the Federation computers, of course, but it looked expensive, and it was a lot better than anything on Earth Bet despite the fact that Flash Earth was only three years ahead of Earth Bet.

"All right," I said. "Let's take a look."

I blinked over the city, and I cast my telepathic and empathic web out wide.

It had only been a little more than an hour since the prisoners had escaped, and so the possible radius they might have escaped to was limited, even if it was growing by the minute.

Despite that, I spent ten minutes using my trash tinker skill to make repairs to the metahuman prison. Whatever they'd done here had caused some damage.

Not all of them would have been able to acquire a car right away and head out of the city, but my bet was that after seeing the singularity they wouldn't have stuck around.

My empathy could work in a half mile radius. My telepathy, though now worked at a much greater range. The problem was the cacophony of thoughts as I searched through them.

There were people desperately calling loved ones still in the city, desperately hoping that they hadn't been killed. Their loved ones were preeminent in their thoughts. Others were simply glad to be alive.

Triumphant thoughts…those were unusual.

The first one I found was Kyle Nimbus, who had turned into poison gas inside a family's car, killing the entire family. He'd pushed the father out of the driver's seat, and he'd ignored the mother and the two children.

I appeared in the middle of the country road he was driving through, too quickly for him to stop. Because I could fly, I could use my full strength to hold myself still.

He hit me, and the car crumpled around me. He hit the windshield, but his body turned into gas as he flew through the windshield.

"Kyle Nimbus, you are judged!" I said.

I wasn't sure what power would affect his gaseous form, so I started with fire.

He screamed, and he reformed in front of me. He was burned over his entire body.

I stuck my finger in his eye, and then I healed him. I pulled my finger out of his eye, and he was left in horrible pain.

"Turn back into gas and I'll burn you again," I said. "I can keep burning you and healing you forever, or you can go ack to prison. I'm sure the family you murdered would like you to take the first option."

He was screaming and holding his eye, but after thirty seconds he nodded.

I grabbed his shoulder and I leaned down.

"You will not kill."

I gave it the force of a permanent hypnotic suggestion, and I felt him shudder as he tried to resist the order. He knew what I had done, and he stared up at me in horror.

I healed him, and I used blood control to clean his face.

A moment later we were in the first of the prisons.

I checked my screen.

NEW POWER CREATED!

PARTIAL INTANGIBILITY!

YOU MAY TURN INTO A CLOUD AND YOU BECOME IMMUNE TO PHYSICAL ATTACKS WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THOSE INVOLVING AIR OR VACCUMS. YOU REMAIN VULNURABLE TO ENERGY ATTACKS.

LEVEL 2

+1 LEVEL PLANAR AFFINITY.

That was going to be really useful.

I went out again, scanning for minds.

The easiest way would be to return to get my shuttlecraft; I was sure that it would be able to discriminate metahumans from other people.

However, I still had more than a fifty percent chance of misfiring. I barely paid attention to planar affinities to places where I had a good chance of getting back, but I'd like to be able to return here instead of jumping into a supernova and losing my shuttle or something.

Scanning minds was stressful, but by flying along the main routes out of town, I was soon able to find a second villain.

Roy Bivololo called himself the Rainbow Raider. He was a master, controlling people's emotions. He'd robbed a bank, but he wasn't a murderer, and he was being pleasant to the people he'd convinced to take with him to escape the city.

I blinked into the seat beside him, punched him in the face, and then took telekinetic control of the car which had almost driven out into oncoming traffic due to the driver's surprise at my appearance.

They were a group of college students. I told them, "Everything's fine; I'm a hero. He'll be all right. I'm just taking him to have a nap."

It wasn't a permanent change; by the time it wore off, hopefully they'd calm down.

I dropped him off at the rig.

+1 LEVEL TO TELEPATHY!

LEVEL 15!

YOU CAN NOW READ MINDS WITHIN A 31 MILE RADIUS!

+1 PLANAR AFFINITY.

That would be useful, although there was still the problem of sifting through all the thoughts.

It would be easier if I knew these people personally; I didn't and so I had to search by type of thoughts.

The range at which I could see through people's eyes was a lot smaller, as was my empathy.

The next person I managed to catch wasn't even on their list. He'd escaped from then earlier.

He was a genius, arrogant enough to stay in the city despite the singularity.

Hartley Rathaway was hiding in an abandoned warehouse, where he'd managed to create an impressive laboratory out of junk. He had super hearing but was unable to control it; it caused him so much pain that he'd had to create noise dampening hearing aids.

Appearing behind him, I yanked one of the hearing aids out of his ear, and I yelled "HARTLEY!"

That was enough to put him to the floor. I kicked him, and touched his blood. I might have worried about the same effect as he was suffering, but I was already immune to deafness and presumably to sonic pain.

If not, it'd be an easy way to level up my sonic resistance.

ENHANCED HEARING HAS GAINED 2 LEVELS!

YOU NOW HAVE HEARING WITH EIGHT TIMES THE RANGE OF NORMAL!

+1 PLANAR AFFINTY.

Considering that I was a teenager who'd never ruined her hearing by listening to loud music, that meant that I could actually hear even better compared to a lot of older people.

There was no pain.

I wasn't sure how valuable the power was going to be; I had vastly greater ranges with my other powers, and eventually the power would be more of a nuisance than a help.

I didn't really want to be hearing everybody in a thirty-mile radius using the bathroom and having sex. That would be a good way to go insane, even despite Gamer's Mind.

Still, I dropped him in the prison, and I continued looking.

Shawna Baez was a teleporter, and I was particularly excited to find her. Gains to my blink skill were exponential, and would make it easier for me to travel to other stars. If I was able to get it high enough, I'd be able to travel to other groups of aliens and bypass the Federation altogether.

I was particularly interested in the Ferengi, since they would seemingly sell anything to anyone for the right price.

It took a while to find her. She'd gotten further than the others, panicked about the singularity, and I'd had to fly outside of town to find her.

She was riding on top of a train, and I appeared behind her.

Somehow, she managed to hear me, and she blinked away. She was worried about having to go back in the pipeline; it was that worry that had clued me in to who she was.

My telepathic range was greater than her ability to teleport; she was limited to line of sight.

She was teleporting in a zigzag patter; she thought the Flash was after her, and she never looked back.

I sighed.

Teleporters were annoying to fight; fortunately, she only had human reaction time.

Furthermore, I could read her mind as to her next location, so I appeared there before she did.

As she appeared in front of me, I said, "Stop."

A moment later she was bleeding and on the ground.

BLINK HAS INCREASED 2 LEVELS!

WITH THE BONUS FROM EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE, YOU CAN NOW TRAVEL FOUR TRILLION MILES PER JUMP!

+1 LEVEL OF PLANAR AFFINITY!

Considering that a light year was only 5.6 trillion miles, I could travel three light years in only four jumps. It was totally worth it.

Delivering her to her mirrored cell, I blinked outside.

It had been a profitable couple of hours. Not only had I gotten some nifty upgrades to my powers, but I'd caught some villains, presumably improved my reputation with the team and made it easier to get back here.

I now had a seventy percent chance of reaching this destination, and a couple more villains and I'd pretty much be able to return whenever I wanted.

This place was an all you could eat buffet!

The villains weren't being stopped by the police, and they were mostly keeping their heads down. That meant that I could harvest them in secret once I got my shuttle over here, and nobody would even have to know.

Also, if there were metahumans who had chosen not to be villains, I could either pay them for powers, or possibly hire them to help in one of my projects.

I almost felt like gloating.