"They would if he were still using it the way he did when he was younger. But since he joined the team, there've been strict rules and he's held to them. Only with unanimous consensus." Her expression flattens again at the implicit self-incrimination. "And only if it protects the team. I am- I was squeamish about it. But not enough to say 'no, we can't do this.'"
"And was it worth it, do you think?" Despite what he said about mind control being unforgiveable, and his quick flash of rage at hearing how this boy's father had used and abused his own power, he sounds mild and calm and simply curious.
Slowly, Taylor nods. "With Shatterbird, I think it was. She would have killed so many more, and if she'd been in the fight, I don't know if we could have contained Mannequin and Crawler long enough to kill them. The PRT certainly couldn't have risked bringing in the bombers, she could have fried them in the air. We neutralized her, and had a weapon to use for the good side.
"Simply killing her would not have been sufficient?" He's been desperate, fighting what seemed at the time a losing battle against a much more powerful opponent, and he's not entirely sure that he, or at least his side, as he'd not been the commander of the Alliance forces, just of his own Dixingren contingent, wouldn't have taken advantage of such a tool had it been at their disposal. And that despite having seen the horrors that the Rebel chieftain inflicted on not only his foes, but often his own people.
"At the time... her side had just taken Brian. We thought we'd trade them, with her under our control. But they already knew she was compromised. No trade." She sighs, shrugging, and her fingers find the scar in her hair, as they always do when she has to think of Bonesaw.
"And I wasn't ready to- to directly kill a captive."
He presses his lips together, brows furrowed and head tipped down. "It is a hard thing, to kill someone who is helpless and in your power." He knows that in the human world it would be considered a war crime. "But there are few easy decisions for a war leader... and sometimes there are no good ones at all."
"No," she agrees, her voice grim. "Everything about the Slaughterhouse Nine - that was all the worst I've gone through, as Skitter. The hardest. They tried to recruit Regent and Bitch. This... cult of serial killers, wanted two of my friends for members. I wasn't in time to protect my dad, and he got caught in Shatterbird's first wave. I embarrassed Mannequin and in return he came for my civilians. He killed Doctor Foster to laugh at me. I told Sundancer she was clear to take the shot when there were still victims alive in her radius - they wouldn't have survived anyway, but it matters. Shot didn't even kill Bonesaw." She shrugs unsteadily, her throat feeling hollow. She knows most of those names don't mean a thing to Shen Wei, but she has to speak them, anyway.
"I didn't realize Brian wasn't leaving the fight with us, when he was caught. And he had to rescue me.
"And in the end- we lost. We captured two, killed three, but... All that mattered was that Jack Slash not get away. And he did."
The names don't need to mean anything to him; they mean something to her, and he understands the importance of remembering one's dead, and one's failures. A leader is their losses as well as their triumphs, and their painfully learned lessons.
"What do you want to fix when you go back?" he asks, rather than continuing down this path. At least for the moment.
"I know exactly what my deal would be - that the mass fatality event predicted by Dinah Alcott to Coil, myself, and Tattletale on the 12th of May 2011, never take place.
"The world has to keep existing for any wrongs to be righted."
She shakes her head, expression grim. "We'd have to know the right question to ask to know. Her power only expresses the future in probabilities. We know that if Jack escaped Brockton Bay, it would be 4/5 odds within two years, 1/1 odds before eight years. If he died, it would happen in 15 years. The first round of deaths will be at least a hundred million, group by group instead of simultaneous, 93% chance of zero survivors about a year after the event begins." That part is dry, a recitation of what Dinah told them, there in Coil's base, before begging for more drugs to ease the pain of prophecy.
"Jack himself probably can't do this. Spatial distortion powers, the edge of any blade he holds can stretch out to miles long. But he'll definitely go out and start recruiting to refill the Slaughterhouse Nine. It might be a new recruit. It might be someone who triggers because he targets them or their city, or just someone he makes snap - I've seen him do it, he's a genius at it. It might be he sets his sights on the Endbringers and riles them up enough. Or maybe it's just him and he goes through a second trigger event and gets that strong himself. We don't know. But now that he's escaped, we've definitely lost the chance at 15 years to plan."
Shen Wei frowns, brows drawing together as he listens to the dry facts and figures of a staggering horror. "What is the Slaughterhouse Nine? And the Endbringers?" It might not matter that he knows, but the information feels... incomplete without that knowledge.
She nods - yeah, she's prone to tossing around these names. Everyone at home would know them, it's like referencing Santa Claus or George Washington.
"The Slaughterhouse Nine are a club of powerful capes whose mission is just destruction and destabilization. They come to places that are already strained - like Brockton Bay after Leviathan hit - and fuck it up worse. Jack Slash is the leader currently. Then there's also Shatterbird, who controls glass and silicates to a range of almost 10 miles. The Siberian, who is both immovable object and unstoppable force because she's only a mental projection. Crawler - his power was that anything he survives can't ever hurt him again. Mannequin was a Tinker who specializes in sealed environments. He turned himself into a ceramic giant, all his parts sealed away and protected. Burnscar, fire kinetic, made solid flames. Cherish, who can influence, sense, and control emotions. And Bonesaw, child Tinker who can do anything surgically and make it work, at least for a while." Her voice strains on the last - she's spoken of Bonesaw before.
"Together, they're just this juggernaut of destruction. Shatterbird and Siberian alone could probably level a city together, if they wanted to.
"And the Endbringers are Leviathan, Behemoth, and the Simurgh. They're- maybe aliens, maybe parahumans, no one really knows. Leviathan is a giant Godzilla-type with tsunami and water-generating powers. He sank Newfoundland and destroyed Japan. Behemoth is radioactive and causes earthquakes and magma eruptions. And the Simurgh is- she tore open reality and traded Madison, Wisconsin in Earth Bet for its parallel in Earth Aleph, just ripped them both out of the ground and swapped them, with a ton of destruction. And through the tear came so many monsters, no one knows where from. And anyone close enough to hear her singing eventually does something murderous. Maybe a week later, maybe years down the line, they do something. Kill their kid, try to start a war, something. These days, anyone in her range is kept in quarantine afterwards. Forever. Every time she comes down out of orbit, she fucks up a city, and the physical damage is always the least of the problem."
He positively bristles at her description, at the horror of such beings enacting violence on the helpless simply because they can.
"I thought that... capes are what supposed heroes are called in your world?" Perhaps he'd misheard, though, perhaps all those with powers are called such.
"I'm a cape," she shrugs. "Anyone who uses their powers aggressively - defense or offense. The only parahumans who aren't capes are ones who use their powers for things like - I know one who wanted to do fashion design, or there's a lot in like music and acting, things like that. It's not really common for someone to have powers and not wind up a cape, but it happens, of course."
He dips his chin in acknowledgment, then goes back to the substance of her explanation with that cleared up. "Does no one stand against them other than-" He pauses, frowns, and rewords the question he'd been about to ask- "Your team?" He thinks, under the circumstances, that calling them children is not appropriate, any more than it would have been to call him such at her age.
She looks up at him with a bit of a grimace. "Oh, everybody. No, I'm sorry, it's not that bad on just us. All of them, the Nine and the Endbringers, are considered S-class threats, which means anyone who can go against them should, and anyone who doesn't had better not make trouble in the meantime. My team and the Travelers - the other team working for Coil - killed Burnscar together, but it took us, the official heroes, and the army calling in an airstrike to kill Mannequin and Crawler. We just held them in place so they could.
"And Leviathan - heroes, villains, rogues, everyone with powers from the entire East Coast of the U.S. and Canada came to fight.
"With the Nine, I was on the front lines because they targeted my team. With Leviathan, there was no way not to be. No one's leaving this all up to a pile of morally questionable teenagers."
She exhales, sitting a little straighter to ease the memory of her broken back. "I do always seem to wind up in the pinch point, though. I'm powerful - I downplay here, but we rate powers.
Mover, Shaker, Brute and Breaker.
Master, Tinker, Blaster, Thinker,
Striker, Changer, Trump and Stranger.
"We rate them by threat level - 1-10 for most. Anything above an eight warrants evacuation of nearby citizens and calling in outside teams for backup. I'm rated a Master 10 - I can control an unlimited number of hazardous minions that are hard to deplete and impossible to deprive me of - and a 2 in all other classes.
"What I've seen of your power makes you a Mover... probably six or seven, and a Blaster/Striker. I've never seen you go all-out, so I don't know how high you'd rate there, but high."
"It's strange-" One corner of his mouth tugs up slightly- "My people have had powers for millennia, but no one has ever thought to rate and categorize them in such a way."
He looks up at her, expression a little wry. "I am somewhat... hobbled by the presence of Zhao Yunlan's energy. And at home, on the surface, my power is restricted by the Guardian Token. It seems that even as I was presumed dead, those who made the treaty between my people and the Haixingren and Yashouren feared me enough to write and bind specific limitations upon my power and my power alone into their accords." He supposes it's flattering in a way, but it's also been a great hindrance at times.
"Even when I returned after ten millennia the Token still binds me. Without it-" He tips his head slightly- "My power is theoretically unlimited, so long as I have access to dark energy. It's only one power, as with all of my people, but as my power is to learn I can learn and use any other power I am exposed to." Generally at a much higher level and with greater aptitude than whoever he's learned it from.
"I have," he admits, ducking his chin a little. "Though I've seen no need to use it thus far." He rarely touches the vast majority of the powers he's absorbed over the millennia, though he could enumerate all of them and draw upon any of them without thought should he need to.
"Of course," he assures her, looking back up quickly and blinking at her with that ridiculous deer in headlights look of innocence. "I would never interfere with your control other than in a dire emergency."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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"But we shouldn't be keeping her."
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"And I wasn't ready to- to directly kill a captive."
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"I didn't realize Brian wasn't leaving the fight with us, when he was caught. And he had to rescue me.
"And in the end- we lost. We captured two, killed three, but... All that mattered was that Jack Slash not get away. And he did."
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"What do you want to fix when you go back?" he asks, rather than continuing down this path. At least for the moment.
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"The world has to keep existing for any wrongs to be righted."
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"Jack himself probably can't do this. Spatial distortion powers, the edge of any blade he holds can stretch out to miles long. But he'll definitely go out and start recruiting to refill the Slaughterhouse Nine. It might be a new recruit. It might be someone who triggers because he targets them or their city, or just someone he makes snap - I've seen him do it, he's a genius at it. It might be he sets his sights on the Endbringers and riles them up enough. Or maybe it's just him and he goes through a second trigger event and gets that strong himself. We don't know. But now that he's escaped, we've definitely lost the chance at 15 years to plan."
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"The Slaughterhouse Nine are a club of powerful capes whose mission is just destruction and destabilization. They come to places that are already strained - like Brockton Bay after Leviathan hit - and fuck it up worse. Jack Slash is the leader currently. Then there's also Shatterbird, who controls glass and silicates to a range of almost 10 miles. The Siberian, who is both immovable object and unstoppable force because she's only a mental projection. Crawler - his power was that anything he survives can't ever hurt him again. Mannequin was a Tinker who specializes in sealed environments. He turned himself into a ceramic giant, all his parts sealed away and protected. Burnscar, fire kinetic, made solid flames. Cherish, who can influence, sense, and control emotions. And Bonesaw, child Tinker who can do anything surgically and make it work, at least for a while." Her voice strains on the last - she's spoken of Bonesaw before.
"Together, they're just this juggernaut of destruction. Shatterbird and Siberian alone could probably level a city together, if they wanted to.
"And the Endbringers are Leviathan, Behemoth, and the Simurgh. They're- maybe aliens, maybe parahumans, no one really knows. Leviathan is a giant Godzilla-type with tsunami and water-generating powers. He sank Newfoundland and destroyed Japan. Behemoth is radioactive and causes earthquakes and magma eruptions. And the Simurgh is- she tore open reality and traded Madison, Wisconsin in Earth Bet for its parallel in Earth Aleph, just ripped them both out of the ground and swapped them, with a ton of destruction. And through the tear came so many monsters, no one knows where from. And anyone close enough to hear her singing eventually does something murderous. Maybe a week later, maybe years down the line, they do something. Kill their kid, try to start a war, something. These days, anyone in her range is kept in quarantine afterwards. Forever. Every time she comes down out of orbit, she fucks up a city, and the physical damage is always the least of the problem."
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"I thought that... capes are what supposed heroes are called in your world?" Perhaps he'd misheard, though, perhaps all those with powers are called such.
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"And Leviathan - heroes, villains, rogues, everyone with powers from the entire East Coast of the U.S. and Canada came to fight.
"With the Nine, I was on the front lines because they targeted my team. With Leviathan, there was no way not to be. No one's leaving this all up to a pile of morally questionable teenagers."
She exhales, sitting a little straighter to ease the memory of her broken back. "I do always seem to wind up in the pinch point, though. I'm powerful - I downplay here, but we rate powers.
Mover, Shaker,
Brute and Breaker.
Master, Tinker,
Blaster, Thinker,
Striker, Changer,
Trump and Stranger.
"We rate them by threat level - 1-10 for most. Anything above an eight warrants evacuation of nearby citizens and calling in outside teams for backup. I'm rated a Master 10 - I can control an unlimited number of hazardous minions that are hard to deplete and impossible to deprive me of - and a 2 in all other classes.
"What I've seen of your power makes you a Mover... probably six or seven, and a Blaster/Striker. I've never seen you go all-out, so I don't know how high you'd rate there, but high."
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He looks up at her, expression a little wry. "I am somewhat... hobbled by the presence of Zhao Yunlan's energy. And at home, on the surface, my power is restricted by the Guardian Token. It seems that even as I was presumed dead, those who made the treaty between my people and the Haixingren and Yashouren feared me enough to write and bind specific limitations upon my power and my power alone into their accords." He supposes it's flattering in a way, but it's also been a great hindrance at times.
"Even when I returned after ten millennia the Token still binds me. Without it-" He tips his head slightly- "My power is theoretically unlimited, so long as I have access to dark energy. It's only one power, as with all of my people, but as my power is to learn I can learn and use any other power I am exposed to." Generally at a much higher level and with greater aptitude than whoever he's learned it from.
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"Give a girl a little warning if you do."
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