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."
"I've never run into direct interference before." And the idea is- uneasy, like someone saying they can co-opt the eyes in her head. "Panacea back home could mutate my bugs until I couldn't sense them, and whatever the Admiral does to stifle things, of course. But not someone else also capable of controlling them."
"Certainly. Brian- Grue- my team's former leader, he can steal powers, but only for a few minutes. He's never used mine, but he only got that ability a few days before I died."
She touches the scar on her scalp again, lets herself rub her thumb along one end of it instead of suppressing the urge.
That leads to another few seconds of contemplation before he asks, "Would you like to work on learning to either prevent someone else gaining control of your swarm, or on wresting it back from them should they succeed initially?"
"Probably should," she acknowledges. "I- don't think I could handle that right now, though." The idea of touching someone else's control, or letting them touch hers.
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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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"Do you think it is likely there would ever be anyone else in your own world who could possibly do such a thing?"
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She touches the scar on her scalp again, lets herself rub her thumb along one end of it instead of suppressing the urge.
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