Countless Joyful Dawns - Chapter ?? - 4: Tour Guide

I sped my perception all the way up.

The hardest part about arresting Emily and Colin was not hurting them. I was sworn to do no harm, except in defense of myself or my patient. I was flexible enough to recognize spars and other ‘friendly’ activities as not doing harm, and my ability to instantly heal anyone near me weighed heavily on the scales.

Arresting people as fragile as they were? There was never any question of making it happen, the question was how to not hurt them in the process. Slow and careful was key. For a given definition of slow. I could tackle them at several times the speed of sound, but that’d break way more bones than I was comfortable with.

First things first - I opened the door to [Manor], my pocket dimension. It let me do a really good snail impression - carrying my entire house on my back. Bonus, it even automatically added rooms and fields as it leveled up - no need for me to laboriously construct the whole thing!

Bending physics and speeding over to Colin and Emily was easy enough. Then I slowed down, and carefully picked Colin up, throwing him over one shoulder. He fought and protested, of course, but it was roughly as effective as a toddler smacking their parents. Although, I had to give him points for technique. 

Without his armor though, completely baseline human. I grabbed Emily in the same way.

Meanwhile, all the hidden gun nozzles scattered around the room opened up. I finally got to see why they were connected to pipes and containers instead of bullets. A type of Ooze sprayed out of them, rapidly going from liquid to foam. Must be the ‘Containment foam’ they were talking about. It was good stuff! Sticky, clingy, basically impossible to wade through, it would’ve given me serious trouble on the last three steps to get inside my doorway to [Manor].

Good call to hose themselves down along with a hostile! They had some good sense here and there. Why it couldn’t be while they negotiated with me instead, I’ll never know.

However, the ability to teleport stuff around was bullshit. Complete, total, and utter bullshit. Granted, most skills were bullshit to various extent. If this was on Pallos, a Classer - probably Emily herself, actually - would’ve been vitality-reinforcing the containment foam, and not letting me teleport it off myself and my prisoners. As it was, I just needed to telepathically flick it deeper into the room - no sense in giving the cleaning crews more work - and stepped into [Manor]. I closed the door and put down my prisoners. Colin immediately sprang back into a combat pose, and Emily punched me in the face.

“Fuck!” She swore, waving her hand. “Remind me not to punch a brute.”

“Don’t punch a brute!” I cheerfully told her.

“Director. Stand back.” Colin said. I sighed and put my hands on my hips, looking at him.

“Colin, there’s no point in fighting. You’re my prisoners, you’re in my home. A pocket dimension. Even if you did beat me up - somehow - you can’t get out without me.”

“If you died?” Emily was eyeing up some of the swords in the entrance hall. I rolled my eyes.

“I’ve got no idea. Good chance the skill ends, collapsing the entire pocket dimension and simply ending both of you. Why don’t we take a few minutes, have a drink, cool off, then try having a civilized discussion.”

“We don’t negotiate with kidnappers.” Emily hissed.

I rolled my eyes at her.

“Please. You’re my prisoners, I’m not talking about negotiations. No, I was going to give you the tour. Show you the pantry, kitchen, and bathrooms. Let you claim a workroom, see if you’ve got any supplies you want provided to work on your escape.”

“Escape?” Colin said.

I threw my hands up.

“How uncivilized are you!?” I barely refrained from shouting. “Yes, escape. Some people are happy being prisoners, I doubt you are. You’ve got an ethical, if not legal, obligation to try and escape. This is my home. Instead of having you two trying to unbind books to get at gold inlay or tunneling into the walls to try and hide things, it’s much easier for me to say ‘yes, you can try to escape, good luck, what supplies to you need?’, and give them to you, than to try and repair all the damage you’ll inevitably do trying to sneak around. Do I care that you’re trying to escape? Yes. Very much. Am I going to stop you trying? No. Am I going to arrest you again if you manage to get out? Probably, and you can do it all again. Any questions?”

Emily pursed her lips. I had a feeling she did that a lot.

“If-” Colin started to say, only for Emily to slash her hand down. He shut up.

Hmmm… I suspected she was going to be a hardass about the whole thing.

“If you’d prefer, we’ve got cells you can stay in instead.” I offered. “But then you wouldn’t be able to read up on your rights, the legal system, and caselaw you’re going to get tried under.”

“I suppose you’re going to be judge, jury, and executioner?” Emily sarcastically asked.

I shook my head.

“What kind of kangaroo court system do you have?” I asked. “Arresting officer.” I said, pointing to myself. “I can’t be a member of the bench that oversees the case. Eight judges presiding, no jury, and I certainly wouldn’t be the executioner. Now. Tea, cells, or tour?” I offered.

“Cells.” Emily insisted. I rolled my eyes. The sheer dramatics on this woman.

“Alright then. Colin?” I asked.

“Tour.” He said. “Tea is an inefficient use of time, and I would like to maximize my odds of escape.”

“Excellent! Emily, this way, please.”

I gave Colin the ‘quick’ tour of the place. Given how large the manor was, and how many different rooms, it was quite the task. The cells were first, where we dropped Emily off. Then the million rooms, pantry, library - it was no exaggeration to say I was carrying an entire extra-large estate on my back, with significant gardens and farmland attached.

The entire time, I was plotting and planning. I should’ve come here in the first place. It was comfortable here. My favorite chairs, my favorite foods. At the same time, it was good to get more information. What was done was done, but while I was giving Colin the tour, I was synthesizing all the information I’d gotten, and was coming up with new plans.

“Why is there so much food?” Colin asked when he saw the grain silos.

“It’s the grocery store at the end of the world.” I told him. He didn’t look impressed.

“When the ashes of war block out the sun and cause widespread famine, we will have food.” I quietly explained, looking over the rows upon rows of stored food. “We have enough here to feed 300 men, women, and children for five years. We have enough farmland to grow crops during that time to extend the storage, assuming the right skills are present. It can take that long for the dust to settle, and only then, can I be a bulkhead for the reemergence of civilization.”

“That worry seems excessive.” Armsmaster said. I shrugged.

“I’ve lived it a number of times now.” I said. “I’m simply ready for it to happen again.”

He scowled at me.

“If you have knowledge and techniques, you are obligated to-”

I cut him off.

“I am obligated to do nothing.” I hissed. “I am obligated to render medical aid whenever and wherever possible, and that is it.” Okay, sue me, I made myself a liar in the next sentence. 

The ‘edge of the world’ was fascinating to him, and he started to get a glassy look in his eyes as he ran his hands over the nothingness that marked the boundary of my pocket dimension. I never liked looking at it.

It wasn’t the emptiness of space, filled with vast potential and unlimited distances. It was nothing, the end of the world, the boundary of existence.

I literally had to drag Colin away from it, and continued touring the dozens and dozens and dozens… okay, maybe [Manor] was getting a little large. We needed all the space when packing it full of refugees, or when we got bored and decided to found another organization, but with just the two of us… empty.

“This is the hall of memories. It’s the one place that I will get very upset with you if you destroy.” I softly explained before deactivating the wards and opening the door. I could see Colin’s eyes growing wide.

“What is this?” He asked as we walked through the hallway of stone. Hundreds of thousands of names were hand-carved into the stone in the smallest letters we could imagine, starting at the ceiling and ending on the floor.

“A graveyard.” I told him. “Memories of people who have died, and are no longer with us. Everyone I’ve known at one point or another, and who have since passed on.”

I brushed my fingers over names, their lives springing to mind. Osho, who loved his cows and always brought us milk first thing in the morning. Doted on his daughter, and raised two good sons.

Their names were a column over, next to the people they had married. A few hundred names away from the children they had.

“How old are you?” Colin asked. I did my best ‘mysterious Immortal’ smile.

“Why Colin! Don’t you know you should never ask a lady her age?”

I tapped the stone in a blank spot, near where the names ended.

“Your name’s going to be written here.” I quietly told him, and tapped a space just under it. “Emily’s will be there.”

“Are you threatening us?” He bristled. I shook my head.

“I don’t need to.” I told him, not bothering to rise to the bait. “I will outlive you, that is a fact. And when you die, when your friends die, they will have a place on the wall. You will not be forgotten, so long as I live. Immortality, if only in the memory of a single soul.”

Colin had nothing to say to that.

We finished the tour in the entrance hall.

“Do you have a list of supplies you’ll want?” I asked him.

“Yes. My…” He rattled off a long list of jargon that I had no reference for. I knew what a hammer and screwdriver were, but he appended so many extra words to it. 

“Also, I’m not seeing any power outlets.”

I grinned at him.

“Well. That’s going to make escaping a little trickier for you, isn’t it?”

He looked distinctly unamused at my comment.

“Oh! Right! One last thing.” I told him. “You’re responsible for Emily. Good luck!”

I sped my perception back up, and opened the door. I was expecting a hostile response on the other side, and the PRT/Protectorate did not disappoint. Wall of containment foam, agents, a few of the superhumans hanging around.

I flickered through all of their defenses by teleporting myself a few times, and sliced through the PRT headquarters like a knife through hot butter.

The first thing I did was visit the armory. The containment foam they had was like a dream come true! A safe way to capture people? A way to contain people? I didn’t need to joint lock and awkwardly carry people around? YES PLEASE! Frankly, I wanted to bring a bunch of it back home with me, and see if any Ooze Classers could duplicate the stuff.

I could imagine it now. Get a skill for the stuff, arm Rangers with turquoise gemstones with the skill, and be able to seamlessly capture people. With how Classers worked, our ability to take people alive was not quite as good as we wanted. Containment foam could change all of that.

Wonderful stuff, and I wasn’t exactly on friendly terms with the locals.

It only took a thought to rob the entire armory of both their grenades, and their backpack launchers with nozzles. I left right before the sirens went off, and the armory was filled with containment foam.

Slowpokes.

I flickered over to Armsmaster’s lab - well, the one in the PRT building - and looted everything not nailed down, putting it in a pile in the room he’d claimed as his workroom.

He could sort it out. I’d grab his supplies from the Rig… eventually.

I wasn’t a complete ass, and I didn’t liberate cash from the employees. There was a modest amount of cash on hand in the building itself, and things like ‘secured vault’ meant absolutely nothing when I could perceive the inside and simply teleport things that were close enough to me into storage.

Cash secured!

Also… it was cash. Paper cash. My spell to duplicate objects would work on it! I had absolutely no problems counterfeiting the money if I needed to.

Actually… if everyone else was as dumb here as the PRT was, that could be a way to pressure the government in a non-violent way. Duplicate millions and millions of dollars, and literally make it rain cash on cities. It’d make me quite popular, it’d make the government look bad, and it was a relatively safe and ethical way to put pressure on the government, by threatening their monopoly on the mint.

If I wanted to be really mean I’d duplicate their printing press… if that was possible. Heavy machinery was an entirely different ballpark to cash, mass mattered.

Then I left the PRT building and went shopping. I picked up a bunch of clothing, then hit up the gardening store, paying cold hard cash for everything.

I might’ve stored the cash in my freezer just to make that joke. The look of utter befuddlement as the cashiers handled cold money was hilarious.

 I had shovels, mushrooms, dirt, and everything in [Manor], but I didn’t have local supplies. I was not going to introduce new plants to the area, or new pathogens in the soil. Well. Not in large scale, not deliberately, anyway. Anything people-related I was happily purging, but plants were a whole different ballgame.

I was impressed at how resilient people here were. Mad bombers going on a rampage? Mall’s still open, please ignore the stores that are now a lava pit. 

Outfitted, I went out to the spot in the woods where I’d first come to Earth Bet, dug around, put down native fertilizer and soil, and sprinkled mushroom spores all over the place. 

Then I headed back into Brockton Bay.

If I was going to be the only law in the area, I had to take it seriously. I couldn’t arrest Emily and Colin, and leave it at that. They weren’t the only ones committing crimes that I had to act on.

The Empire 88 had to go.