-trajectory. agreement.-

[from_scratch]

"Hasn't everyone heard of Kithabel? I live in Africa, not under a rock," Cam tells Tattletale. "You, on the other hand, are new to me."

Comments

[from_scratch]

"...I mean, if the simulation's good enough yes that is a problem. And that explains the handicap really well... I can pick and choose what to ask it, it seems like it'll let me feed it safe information sources instead of running off and getting its own... probably okay to ask it if I can ethically ask it whatever I have in mind as an extra check... but that's still just 'I'm pretty cool a lot of the time'."

[wormcan]

"You realize by that logic, a copy of you just died. Your power looked at the inside of your head in exactly that much detail to check your ethics, and then switched off the simulation."

[from_scratch]

"Apparently. Well. That's me. Buncha Earths on the line. I can decide I'm okay with that. I can't go around asking billions of other people if they're cool with the idea."

[wormcan]

"Well, a moral objection to precognition isn't the weirdest I've run across. Is it going to get in the way of stopping the entities?"

[from_scratch]

"Not necessarily. I might be passing up some more elegant solution that I could have used the Contessa power for, but we know now Butchering works just fine, so I can just get a two six five jailbroken and use that to aim black holes, no?"

[wormcan]

"You probably don't want that power permanently, but just touch the copy and you'll have it when you need it. Otherwise yes."

[from_scratch]

"Why don't I want it?"

[wormcan]

"The directly harmful side effects may not apply to you. But even if it can't burn your eyes out of their sockets like it did to him, it's more information than you can process. I wouldn't want to walk around seeing that much all the time."

[from_scratch]

"Fair enough. I could also try to give the Contessa power a really limited question, but I'd need to think of one that wouldn't make it reach too far afield for - anything."

[wormcan]

"And there aren't too many ways a black hole can go wrong. Go for it."

[from_scratch]

Cam touches the two six five.

[wormcan]

The world unfolds and gets bigger. He can see a full circle of everything around him, to a great enough distance that he can make out the curvature of the earth. Earths, rather; it's iterated across too many parallel worlds to count. It's not infinite. There are more worlds out there and more space in each world than he's looking at right now, but this is already several steps beyond a view ordinarily reserved for astronauts.

[from_scratch]

"Trippy," says Cam.

And he looks for entities.

[wormcan]

There are two. They look like gardens or forests growing human body parts instead of plants, one colored silver and the other gold. Each occupies a substantial fraction of the surface of its world. The worlds' histories diverged long enough ago that they aren't recognizable as earths, and they don't seem to have native life of any kind. Cam's four-dimensional vision can also see that each entity has a tiny protrusion, humanoid and barely larger than the human average, poking into Earth Bet from the planet dominated by the body of the entity itself and, in the gold one's case, rescuing a kitten from a tree.

[from_scratch]

Right.

Black holes.

He starts them at the centers of the Earths and grows them simultaneously and as fast as he can.

[wormcan]

Despite having gained more than enough mass to do the job, the planets steadfastly refuse to get collapsed.

And the entities' avatars take notice of the attempt. The silver and gold humanoids leave Earth Bet and head toward Cam. "Toward" involves flickering across dimensions; to an observer on Bet it would probably look like that they just vanished.

He can see the silver woman take a detour to her planet, while the golden man appears on an uninhabited world and fires a laser at a tiny winged figure.

[from_scratch]

And now Cam's singed and also not touching - or particularly near - the two six five anymore and the nifty omniscience is gone. "How the fuck did they no sell black holes," he says.

[whole_new_can]

"Fuck!" Tattletale agrees, as the silver avatar joins the gold one. "And if the bimetallism brigade can handle that, the backup plan isn't going to be any use either."

[from_scratch]

"Can you do anything useful from inside keratin bubbles or should you cut and run."

[whole_new_can]

"Bubbles wouldn't work. Physical barrier doesn't block everything they can do. And I've got teammates to warn." Faultline cuts and runs, Tattletale doesn't. "You kidding? This is the room where it happens. Besides, running isn't likely to work better. I'll take the bubble."

[from_scratch]

Cam bubbles her. Mobility is not his asset in this fight and having a cape attached to his foot isn't a big deal.

They've got to be at least as indestructible as Endbringers, even if they were getting Kithabel to deal with the black holes. He can't try any obvious tricks. "Suggestions?"

[whole_new_can]

"Powers are supposed to have an energy limit. A lot, but finite. Try to blanket some earths in capes without passengers, connected to the sources directly, and hope it bankrupts them?"

[from_scratch]

Cam makes another two six five, in his own keratin bubble, connected toe to toe. "Name me some capes with nice expensive passive powers -" He starts with Crawlers. Crawlers on the most hostile planet he can find.

[wormcan]

Tattletale starts shouting some names. Ash Beast, Gray Boy, preferably on a planet where every square inch is affected by an Ash Beast, jailbroken Sleeper. Even two six five is more power-intensive than he looks.



The entity is unconcerned. Even if that plan worked, it has plenty of fuel and a means of recharging. Possibly two, now. While the Warrior fires another blast that bounces harmlessly off the bubble of keratin, this entity applies the same mind-affecting abilities it used on the sorceress. Nothing works. This is good, in a sense; it confirms that the humanoid has abilities that beat anything shards can do.

The entity provides a portal and summons its sorceress. With the recent improvements in large-scale observation, thinking speed, and multitasking the sorceress is already vastly more powerful than she was yesterday. The entity plants the idea in her mind that she should try to break that bubble.

[ertia]

How dare that bubble try to be unbreakable. What's making it unbreakable? Her friend's helpful powers to cover sorcery's deficiencies fill her in: it's because it's "part of" that fellow there who attacked them with those black holes. Well. He doesn't usually have a bubble, does he? He must be thinking of it in some special way to make it count, mustn't he?

He can't keep that up every microsecond. And her friend has made her so gloriously fast and given her such exquisite timing.

The bubble evaporates.