Countless Joyful Dawns - Chapter ?? - 6: Accidental Dragonslaying

One down! A dozen more to go!

I wasn’t planning on ruling the place or trying to take over, so I didn’t really care how dumb the local government was going to be when it came to their long-term planning. Letting mercenaries stick around was just asking for trouble, but since I didn’t see Exterreri planting their flag here anytime soon? Eh, I was happy paying Faultline off and calling it a day.

New Wave made a bunch of claims, all of which I was boiling down to ‘they have a reasonable sleep schedule and the kids are probably asleep on a school night’. The ABB was headless, and there wasn’t one person I could go to and talk with all this about. Well, I could go visit Lung in jail, but like. He couldn’t exactly order his minions to stand down for a few months while he was in jail.

The Merchants would probably have to go, and weren’t exactly centrally organized. Just a bunch of lowlifes in a loose organization, vaguely claiming allegiance to each other. But trying to stop a bunch of addicts from selling drugs?

It wasn’t going to happen. Far better to perform a surgical strike on them from out of the blue. Not that taking out their leaders and top managers would really do anything to the Merchants. No, the city needed an economic revival. It was the best way to stamp out the utter poverty at the bottom of the barrel. In short, I was basically going to ignore them until they popped their head out of whatever hole they were in, smack that head, and go back to ignoring them. 

I’d already had a talk with the Protectorate and Wards, and it hadn’t exactly gone amazingly. I was going to give them a day or two to cool off before poking my head in their direction. They were actively working towards peace and quiet, so it wasn’t like I needed them to change what they were doing. After arresting their director and head of the department, I didn’t think they’d want to see me. That tended to get people pissy. No, far better to mostly ignore each other.

Unless they tried to give me shit. Then it was time to make a spectacle and a name for myself, and continue to build the Sentinel’s reputation as a group to Not Be Fucked With. Broadly, we wanted the same thing. I just questioned their competency.

Oh! We did disagree on the whole “Arrest Elaine” issue as well. That was something of a contentious point.

Which left The Undersiders as the next largest gang on the list, by pure members. They were the bunch of kids who’d been robbing the bank. Apparently, in spite of what I’d seen, there was no ‘children fight children, adults fight adults’ culture going on here. Which led to the natural question of ‘why did none of the adults show up?’, which suggested heavily that there were shenanigans afoot of some flavor.

With my ‘gud masc’ still on, I started to fly across the city to where I’d tracked The Undersiders to.

Which was when a huge, fuck-off mech shaped like a dragon blasted down from the night sky, jet engines roaring. Spotlights were trained on me, and I paused, letting whoever it was say what they wanted.

Or try to shoot me. My bet was on that one. People didn’t use high powered gunships to say hi. 

Well… maybe here they did. 

I drifted over a bit as the gunship came in. If - probably when - I had to shoot it down, I wanted to make sure it landed in water or something, not on a bunch of people. That would be violating my [Oath]. Worse, I could actually kill somebody!

I started to make various plans on how I could disable the gunship and rescue the people inside. Teleport in, slice the windshield off, snap the seatbelts, grab the crew and go. Nice and easy.

I did a visible double-take when the gunship ended up close to me. There was nobody inside of it. There were a few odd organics inside the ship, but nothing that registered as a person. 

Huh. A remote-controlled drone? Impressive! Smartest thing I’d seen so far. I’d give my right hand to have remote controlled drones on Pallos. So many of my friends would still be alive if they didn’t have to go into the thick of things…

I let the melancholic thought go. The gunship hovered in front of me, clearly pointing all sorts of heavy ordinance at me. Missiles, machine guns, spotlights…

It was about as intimidating as a kid with a stick. Sure, if the gunship got in a good hit it could sting a bit, but that was it.

“Hello?” I said. It hadn’t opened fire yet, which suggested it wanted to talk. Otherwise, the optimal range was probably further back.

One of the panels on the ship rotated around, and a video screen flickered to life. A nondescript woman’s face was on it, reminding me strongly of Maximus. So bland in appearance that it was notable. I didn’t automatically think she was a spy, unlike when I’d first met the Ranger, thousands of years ago.

How time flies. How our first friends and oldest memories define us.

I put on my best smile and waved.

“Hello, Elaine. I’m Dragon.” She said.

“Hi Dragon!” I said, pleased to meet the extrovert helping Armsmaster out. Sure, I’d arrested him, but still! The world needed more people like Dragon.

What followed was a rousing and impassioned speech from Dragon, extolling all of Armsmaster’s virtues and explaining why I should let him go. I swear I paid attention, no matter how similar it was to other, similar speeches I’d heard before. The speeches always helped highlight the traits a society found valuable. 

“...and lastly, you can’t just arrest the members of the Protectorate!” Dragon finished.

I held up a finger.

“But they’re not law enforcement.” I said. “They’re part of no recognized government. How would you behave if the friends of a gangster you just arrested came up and demanded you release them?”

“But-” Dragon started to say, but I cut her off.

“Recognized government.” I said. “The Exterreri Empire doesn’t recognize the United States, Canada, or any other nation on Earth Bet. I’m authorized to normalize relations, but until then?” I shrugged. “Gangsters. Gangsters committing war crimes. I can’t tolerate that, not as law enforcement myself.”

Dragon was getting a very far-off look in her eyes, then her screen suddenly flickered.

“Hello, Elaine. I’m Dragon.”

Okay, that was weird weird. Like ‘advanced stage brain cancer’ weird.

“Hi?” I said. “I know? I think we just had this conversation? Look, all debates about your friend aside, do you need medical help? Because I’m a healer, first and foremost. I’ll happily heal you up, then we can go back to arguing jurisdiction and law.”

I paused, expecting a brrrpt smartass comment about ‘debating with an unarmed opponent’ or something equally scathing from Auri.

But no. She was on Pallos, and I was lost in an unknown land.

Focus.

“Um. No? Thank you for the offer, but I don’t believe I need any medical assistance at this time. If you would release…”

Dragon said almost the exact same speech again.

Something was wrong… but if she didn’t want to get healed, and was outside of my radius, there wasn’t much I could do right now. Heavily armed gunship, nobody inside, hovering over a lake?

“Dragon, I apologize. We already had this conversation. I’m not letting them go. Now, would you like to leave? I don’t want to shoot down your craft, it looks very well made and quite expensive.”

She sighed. 

“I’m sorry, Elaine. I can’t do that. I need to bring back Armsmaster and Director Piggot.”

I shrugged. Diplomacy tried. Diplomacy somewhat successful.

Well, no sense in letting people know what was coming.

I flashed several beams of burning Radiance, several times hotter than the core of the sun, through the dragoncraft. I hit a lot of important, expensive-looking components, then moved the beams around to thoroughly chunk the craft. 

Which was when I was hit with a bolt of utter agony. Paralyzing, white-hot pain wracked my entire body, completely disabling me. I thrashed in the air as I fell, trying to find something, anything that would make me feel better. 

I hadn’t felt pain like this in hundreds of years. It was overwhelming, all-encompassing. I screamed and screamed and screamed, clawing at my face and arms to try and get some relief.

I hit the water going fast, and continued to try and scream as water filled my lungs.I sank to the bottom of the bay, landing on a sunken ship as I fervently prayed that this pain would end before I drowned.

Eventually, my mind cleared, and I shot up and out of the water, quickly [Teleporting] to clear my lungs.

By Ciriel, what the FUCK was that?! 

Somehow, shooting down the unmanned ship had been a massive [Oath] violation. The only thing I could think of was Dragon was actually a gnome or something similar, with extremely good stealth capabilities. So good that I hadn’t seen her, and I’d accidentally caused her great harm.

Shit. Dragon!

I flew over to the wreckages, and started to look through it. Trying to find a body, a scrap of evidence that she was hurt, that she needed help. 

There were a lot of technological scents, for lack of a better word. A lot of oils, chemicals, and related. Nothing biological. No human blood, or any other fluids.

Plenty of fish blood. It was a good reminder that the ocean was filled with fish piss, and there was a reason I didn’t go sniffing in large bodies of water.

No body. If I’d injured her, I hadn’t broken skin. Maybe a broken bone or two. But that didn’t explain the sheer size of that violation.

I checked my System log and winced.

10 levels?

I’d lost 10 levels for that!?

That was on par with murdering someone!

Holy shit, no!

Don’t tell me I’d murdered Dragon!? It was possible I’d annihilated her so thoroughly, there wasn’t even the scent of burnt flesh.

Fuck. I’d enjoyed talking with Dragon.

Wait… hang on. Something wasn’t adding up.

If she had brain cancer, she would’ve been close enough for me to heal. I hadn’t blacklisted Dragon from my healing, so my healing and my Radiance would’ve clashed head-on, rapidly draining my mana. That didn’t happen. She was far away enough that my healing wasn’t hitting her… but close enough that shooting down the ship was murder?

Without a body?

What the fuck was going on!?

Wait, oh no. 

I knew what had happened.

Dragon must’ve been one of those ‘Breakers’ that could turn into something entirely non-human, and I’d killed her Breaker form. 

Fuck. That was going to be bad.

Well… there wasn’t much I could do about it. I blipped inside of [Manor], and headed over to the memorial wall. Along the way, I met Colin, obsessively working in one of the rooms. He’d jury rigged… wait, what? That was… okay, I had no fucking idea how Tinkers worked, even seeing one work. Except that it was giving me a headache.

“Hi Colin! Do you know Dragon’s real name? I think I killed her, I wasn’t trying to. Sorry.”

It wasn’t exactly my most elegant way of breaking the news, but I hadn’t felt pain like that in centuries and was more than a little punch-drunk.

Colin paused, then slowly put down his tools before spinning on his chair to look at me.

“What makes you think you were able to kill Dragon?” He gruffly asked.

“I shot down one of her ships, and I think she was in it.” I explained.

“Dragon is a Tinker.” Colin slowly explained. “She’s famous for remotely piloting her ships. She’s survived multiple Endbringers taking down her craft, I doubt you were able to make it stick.”

He turned back to his tinkering and ignored me. My eyebrows scrunched up in confusion.

I’d certainly gotten someone with that.

Was… could Dragon resurrect herself? Powers were weird as heck, so… maybe?

Still, if I’d told her boyfriend - did the two of them know they were dating yet? - that I’d killed her, and he’d just shrugged and moved on with his day, maybe she was fine. Going to be fine?

I was torn between wanting to put trust in my System, and wanting to trust the locals, who knew the situation a lot better than I did. 

I split the difference, as I had to do so many times. I wrote down Dragon’s name on the wall, and made a tiny asterisk next to it. Doubt that she was truly dead.

There were hundreds and hundreds of asterisks on the wall.

A few of them had even returned. The latest had been at 16 years from the time we thought he’d died.

The longer I lived, the more aware I was of the sheer scope of the absolute miracle I had performed for Night.

For if the record was now set at tens of thousands of years, there now existed faint hope for all the other stars on his memorial.

I spent a timeless moment mourning, then turned around and left.

I’d need to add tens of thousands more names if I didn’t leave Brockton Bay and get back home, and that didn’t happen by standing around and moping.

I sped over to the loft where I’d tracked The Undersiders to. It was easy enough to peer inside.

Four teenagers, all doing their own thing. One on a computer, one playing video games, one punching a bag, and the last one doing the ‘oh god I have no social skills and I’m in a social situation don’t be awkward DON’T BE AWKWARD’ thing.

I sympathized.

I flashed down to the door, and knocked.

Shave and a haircut, two bits!