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]

"We both know how important the truce is," the armored cape is fully aware that everyone in the room is listening and is speaking clearly enough that eavesdropping isn't too difficult, "and how important perception is. Once it gets out that someone as highly placed as you would strike an enemy here, even one with a kill order, the whole alliance could fall apart."

"Villains can't come to Simurgh fights anyway, and this wouldn't have happened at any other."

"True, but going public with that's not a good choice either. It'd involve saying you were influenced by the Simurgh, enough to kill someone."

The metal band on Cinereal's arm suddenly becomes painfully obvious.

[from_scratch]

Liver's fixed. Cam puts somebody's arm where it goes. And their leg. And their blood.

[wormcan]

"No, Chevalier. You're not going to kill me. Everything she showed me was about Bonesaw. Everything I had heard or seen about her, I was experiencing it. When I woke up... It's true. I was a Simurgh pawn. But she pointed me at Bonesaw specifically, she didn't set me up to target anyone else. I'm as sure as I can be when the Simurgh's involved."

"Yes. Unfortunately that's not very."

[from_scratch]

"Simurgh probably killed the thing that was suppressing Bonesaw's power, and the first thing Bonesaw did was go help people with it," Cam says quietly. The wasted potential is just - if she could have been trusted, if he could have gotten to a point where he could have trusted her enough, her power was staggering, she could probably have bottled the cure for generalized old age and then all he'd have to do was ship it -

[wormcan]

"So the Simurgh wanted this to happen. Maybe that means Bonesaw could have been rehabilitated, or it could be because the Simurgh wanted everyone to see one of the Protectorate's top heroes break the truce. I'd be wary of assuming it was the first one; helping people might not have been Bonesaw's choice any more than killing her was Cinereal's."

[from_scratch]

"Well, there's no way to tell if I could have gotten her rehabilitated now."

[wormcan]

"What we do know is that this wasn't a truce violation. No one chose to kill anyone. The only one to blame is the Simurgh.

Cinereal, I'm sorry. I'll try to get you let out of quarantine early if I can, but we both know what it means that she targeted you."

[from_scratch]

No comment.

[wormcan]

Neither does anyone else.

[from_scratch]

Cam demons the medicals.

[whole_new_can]

Outside, the Simurgh continues Endbringing. She's surrounded by more pieces of Endbringer now, since there were quite a few people equipped with the indestructible material. Every once in a while she absorbs one and her characteristic song gets worse. The defending capes at least aren't completely ineffective; she is taking damage. Just not enough yet.

[from_scratch]

Cam brainstorms, but he's experimented enough on the tissue alone that he knows most of the ideas his mind keeps circling back to won't work. He's indestructible but she can just move him out of the way, and even if he makes that topologically impossible with enough keratin, he doesn't have any parts sharp and rigid enough to do more than ruffle her hair. He could grow arbitrarily sharp claws, but he's only so indestructible, even if he makes them come to single-molecule points they'll soften on contact and barely scratch her.

He sticks his head out the window now and then and applies conventional damage and then goes back to medical demoning.

[wormcan]

The fight and the song continue. A cape dressed as a wizard manages to hold a wing in place while the Triumvirate blasts at it and the current strike team fights to scratch the Simurgh or at least deny her objects to use as weapons. The wizard can't hold it for long, and the wing is freed before any further dismemberment.

If anyone has trump cards up their sleeve, they aren't playing them.

[from_scratch]

Well, no one ever said that fighting the Simurgh was more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

Caffeine. Apply directly to the bloodstream. Medical demoning and Simurgh-inconveniencing.

[whole_new_can]

The Simurgh is inconvenienced. But she's still holding off the heroes. The song gets louder and more varied at intervals whenever she absorbs a piece of the Endbringer material Cam created. Safe distances become greater, and safe times become shorter. Timers count down and sometimes detonate.

Eventually the Simurgh judges that she has caused Tokyo enough destruction for today. One last wave of her wings as some of Cam's shiny new buildings collapse in a growing ring around her, and she ascends back into the sky.

[from_scratch]

Cam flips her off.

And goes back to medical work, because there's still lots of that.

[wormcan]

The few volunteer doctors are predictably overworked and are glad for some superpowered help. The stream of injured keeps flowing as search parties find more, and it eventually dries up. Meanwhile, the heroes' thinkers are plotting out the Simurgh's path during the attack and the variable strength of the scream. They're calculating which parts of the city have to be walled off permanently. Once there's an answer, they give the government the bad news.

[from_scratch]

Damn it.

[wormcan]

At least this involves writing off fewer civilians than usual as lost causes. Cam accomplished that much. It's still a death sentence for the city as it used to be.

[from_scratch]

Cam produces a lot of internal swearing. He keeps it to himself.

[wormcan]

Eventually Chevalier asks him, "Would you be willing to help with the wall? It's one of the more distasteful parts after a Simurgh fight, but it has to be done."

[from_scratch]

"I can put up a wall," sighs Cam. "Give me a blueprint."

[wormcan]

There's a region surrounding the Simurgh's angular flight pattern, no broader than paranoia requires. The space around the border has been flattened by some other parahuman, but Cam can build the border wall itself better than any shaker or Trump.

"You don't have to put up the whole thing," Chevalier says. "If multiple capes do segments and nobody knows which went up last, it helps avoid making people who just fought the Simurgh blame themselves for this part."

[from_scratch]

"Okay."

So Cam just does most of it.

[wormcan]

Avoiding individual responsibility: best part of teamwork. (In particular, there's no need to tell Cam that the segments marked out for later construction were already done.)

"Thank you."

"On something completely different, the Endbringer material. It was a good idea and there was no way to know the Simurgh would do that, but I'm not wearing this armor to the next one. I think you should stop handing it out."