this is crazy

[from_scratch]

Cam is watching a new recording of Atriama, tail swishing in the gap in his couch, and doesn't stop to pause the show when he feels a summons go by.

Comments

[wormcan]

The fact that he can be doing things continuously was not part of his stated power set. But that's fine, his employers already knew he was hiding things because who goes around restoring countries for free.

So one minute Cam is building a harbor full of ships fully loaded with miracle cures to be exported, the next he's walling off some not-quite-cleared-up nuclear accident sites.

All of this is extremely public, of course. The government announces that there's a helpful parahuman, doesn't announce their doubts about his motivations, and hires a lot of people to help with demolition. He no longer sends people running in fear; even for those citizens who think it's obviously a deal with a devil of some kind, it's a deal that isn't going to backfire right this minute.

[from_scratch]

Still, he leaves off the wings and tail for now.

Does he get assistants? Trustworthy, human assistants who can handle his correspondence and maybe hold chalk?

[wormcan]

Assistants yes, human yes, trustworthy depends on what for (they're probably reporting to the prime minister unless Cam wants to take the trouble of hiring his own), and of course no one knows the importance of the chalk.

[from_scratch]

Cam will take assistants who report to the prime minister. With some rigmarole and much private musing he arranges for there to be a circle of bent carpet fibers in a room where nobody can get without his authorization, design extending juuuust under the wall such that -

"Sousuke, can you vacuum the place? That end of the room first, please."

- it hasn't happened to come up that he can make vacuum robots yet.

[wormcan]

And the circle gets completed by Sousuke, certified human.

[from_scratch]

And Cam keeps an eye on the camera feed from the room.

...And he checks to make sure that Sousuke vacuumed in the correct direction, which he did.

.......And watches the camera feed some more.

Fuck.

Cam leaves the circle open for an hour - it was a generic circle, he needed results, this place is a mess! - but there's no way that no angel in the entirety of Heaven has picked up a legit summons. He's a fluke. He is going to have to do this himself.

...Where has his summoner's tracking device got to?

[wormcan]

The city of Takamatsu, plus or minus a decade. Cam's summoner is about as far southwest as anyone still lives, or at least he was before Kyushu's grand reopening.

[from_scratch]

Okay. Cam keeps an eye on that. Drawing attention to the guy doesn't seem likely to help, but he wants to know if he leaves the country or starts spending much time at a hospital or anything.

Back to work.

[wormcan]

None of those things happen.
After a bit more upgrading of the country, Cam gets an email from himself.

Do exactly as we say or your summoner dies.

There follows a warning to not even try taking him out of Takamatsu, and a set of surprisingly innocuous instructions.

[from_scratch]

You don't have to fucking threaten Cam's summoner to get pomegranates. Why is someone threatening Cam's summoner to get pomegranates?

If they wanted a nuke he'd probably go try to protect the summoner and not make any nukes, but pomegranates? Pomegranates it's worth paying whoever this is off the once, to see if any more information might be forthcoming about who the fuck they are, how they know anything about where he came from, and whether they can follow through.

Cam puts pomegranates where the extortionist wants pomegranates. It doesn't actually say not to follow the pomegranates, so he lurks.

[wormcan]

Cam can lurk pretty surreptitiously if he wants to. And as he hovers above a fruit basket in an unremarkable part of China, he sees it get picked up by...no one at all.

Eventually a bystander stumbles across the pomegranates and collects them because why not. Well, nothing else about the extortion has made sense so far.

[from_scratch]

Cam sends himself an email recording this event, in case the extortionist was going to come by later and wonder where their pomegranates went. He puts a tracker on the bystander.

[wormcan]

The bystander is very quickly confronted by people in uniforms. If Cam's surveillance is detailed enough to pick up sound, it's something about smuggling and suspiciously out-of-season fruit. Turns out "I just found it" isn't very convincing.

[from_scratch]

Right, fruits have seasons. That. Is a thing. How much trouble is this bystander in...?

[wormcan]

More after it escalates to them accusing him of colluding with the rebels. (Rebels: apparently a thing?) He denies it, he runs, they take aim,

[from_scratch]

, their guns stop working and Cam steps out. "He wasn't smuggling. The pomegranates were mine."

[wormcan]

This completely fails to deescalate the situation.

"Rogue cape!" The guns are pointed at Cam now, though who knows if they're trying to fire or just threatening. The officers are talking into radios instead of to him. "The rebels have parahumans. Need backup now."
And after an impossibly short response time, a squad of uniformed parahumans appears and starts firing on Cam.

[from_scratch]

"I don't think I fall within your jurisdiction!" objects Cam. If he doesn't want to just fly away his options are basically "get shot" or "try to dodge, fall over, and also get shot", so he just kind of sits down on the street. "As you can see I am a white person and as you could know by not living under a rock I've been working for Japan! If there is somebody I should have told before paying China a visit or something I'd be happy to keep that in mind in the future!"

[wormcan]

The fact that he's also been working for another country isn't better. What's almost as concerning is that when the squad approached Cam they didn't feel a reaction they were expecting. He's blocking One.

Not that they're questioning him about it. One of the figures in the flowing uniforms shouts "Thirty-first path!" and they switch from ineffective stun bolts to ineffective lasers.

[from_scratch]

"If you want me to fall over and die I really can't help you but if you'd like to have a conversation I'm all for it!" says Cam encouragingly.

[wormcan]

Words can probably describe how uninterested the assailants are in talking, but don't because they're not interested in talking.

Electromagnetism, vacuum, edged forcefields. At one point even the ground flows upward around Cam's ankles and solidifies.

[from_scratch]

Well, that one's mildly inconvenient. Said ground is pushed out of the way by water. They don't wanna talk, Cam doesn't wanna knock them all out, now Cam has wings and is flying away.

[wormcan]

Since the distraction is just about to end, a gunshot takes the opportunity to go off. Several gunshots, close together. Three of the identically masked capes fall and two of them get back up while slowly healing.

[from_scratch]

...Any chance it's obvious how that happened?

[wormcan]

No.

The capes appear to be doing a good job of finding people and cutting them down without taking further losses, but there's no sign of how they're locating targets.