Countless Joyful Dawns - Chapter ?? -Part 1: The Ring

AN: Hello all!

There's lots of requests for various epilogue chapters, but this particular story has been rattling around in my head HARD. I can't stop thinking about it!

In order to defeat the plot bunnies that plague me, I've got to write it!

The hook: Elaine's transported by fairies to another realm. Elaine does Elaine things, chaos ensues.

Or: Elaine in a world of superheros is roughly a tier or three above everyone else... but they can hit her from unique angles that aren't allowed in BTDEM. For example, there are some superheros that laugh at the idea of a vitality defense.

I'm trying to be 'true to' both sets of powers. There's a power nullifier in Worm? It works on Elaine's powers, etc. Elaine can't bypass the vitality defense here, but at the same time, nobody's using a skill to extend their vitality.

It's a crossover with Worm, and for legal reasons, it'll also be posted on AO3 while it's going on.

This chapter's about 5k words, and I could've easily split it up into two. I figured I'd give the whole thing to you at once, and to me, this 'makes up' for missing the October chapter like I promised. Once it's done and finally out of my head (seriously, I've had this rattling around in my brain for 6-8 months at least, NOTHING I've done has gotten me to stop thinking about it), I'll go back to the more normal epilogues.

WHILE I HAVE YOU ALL!

I will be taking ONE WEEK OFF in December for Christmas.

And let's be real - I'll be spending half of it catching up or padding my backlog instead of resting.

Enjoy!

===========

I twisted out of the way of the hammer screaming through the air, the massive hunk of metal larger than my body.

Tank it or shield it was still one of the defining principals of my life, and the amount of mana needed to regenerate the hit versus the amount to shield it was an easy comparison. The elf was too committed to the blow to pull it back, and I could see one of Iona’s arrows whizzing in for the kill. Blasted [Mirror Knights], giving everyone trouble.

The hammer grazed my shoulder, completely obliterating it. My arm spun off into the distance while the massive hammer kept going and going and going. 

It took less than a tenth of a second, all told. Felt like an eternity.

The arrow slammed home between the slit in the visor, and the guy dropped. No kill notification though.

“Elaine!” My wife screamed in panic.

My awareness dropped down, and a moment later, my stomach dropped with it.

Around my feet, mushrooms had sprouted in a perfect ring.

Right at the same moment the hammer had been going through my shoulder. The same shoulder that hosted a sliver of cold iron, what protected me from the fae.

The moment froze, one last opportunity for last words. The magic of the fae already had me in its grasp. I couldn’t teleport out, but I could give famous last words. Because the fae were nonsense like that.

A dozen different thoughts went through my head at the same time. 

I love you.

I’ll never stop looking for you.

I’ll find you again.

I summed up all the thoughts and feelings into one heartfelt plea.

“Not this shit again.”

=============

In a flash of light, in a whirl of dancing, in a year that only took a single rise of the sun and setting of the moon, I found myself back in the real world.

Or rather… A real world.

“This is not Pallos.” I said, looking around.

Well. Fine, maybe it was Pallos, but I’d gotten no notifications since landing, and civilization would’ve needed to radically change. Entirely possible, with how stupid the fae could be, but I wasn’t that unlucky. Could I be that unlucky?

Wait! I didn’t need to wait for nighttime. I quickly tried to pray to several gods. Papilion. Seira. Thanatos. Aion. Xaoc. Selene. Lunaris. 

Nothing. Not a peep, not a single point of mana spent. Right then! Observation time!

I was on a major road outside of a city. The roads were both advanced and neglected. Good asphalt was riddled with cracks and potholes. A sign had words in the local language, riddled with holes. I stared at them for a minute, wondering why they looked so familiar.

Then I wanted to smack myself. Then hit myself again. Then maybe double check that [Astral Archives] wasn’t acting up and ruining my perfect memory.

The letters were so damn familiar because they were in the Latin alphabet! The words were in English!

Welcome to Brockton Bay.

I was back on Earth!

A car whizzed by at that moment, with one kid staring wide-eyed at me as they passed at highway speeds.

Whoops. I think I was a little conspicuous right now.

Also, Brockton Bay, Brockton Bay… nope, I wasn’t remembering anything from my readings about a Brockton Bay. 

I stood in a circle and slowly turned around, memorizing every tree, every branch, every blade of grass. All the way down to the wilting mushrooms at my feet.

The trip had been one-way, but this would be the single best location to try and break my way back to Pallos. Having written everything down in my mental books and filing them properly in [Astral Archives], I drifted a little deeper into the woods. Then I started to hike towards the city, all while planning.

Right. Mission: Return home, by any means necessary.

Resources: Me, my skills, my abilities, and everything I was carrying in my personal pocket dimension. An entire manor, stocked to the brim for an Immortal War, along with a few small trees. I could literally feed a small village for five years with the stocks I had, I wasn’t going to starve. I had enough gems and coins to - oh right! Gold was valuable here! It was going to be awkward at first, trading chunks of gold and maybe some of the less valuable on Pallos - but more valuable here - gems for cash, but after that I should be set shopping wise.

I was originally from Earth, but it was only for a measly twenty or so years two millennia ago, and I’d spent half that time being a snot nosed kid, and the rest a moody teenager. So they didn’t really count… but at least I had some foundational knowledge to not look like a total idiot. Just mostly one. At least once I got into some better clothes.

I wondered what country I was in. The ‘welcome’ was promising, suggesting one of the English speaking countries, but for the life of me I could not remember a Brockton Bay. Maybe it was in Australia or New Zealand or something?

There also weren’t Classers here. Unless I wanted to raise a gigantic fuss, I should keep relatively quiet and subtle with my abilities. I could always get loud later, but it was hard to un-scream.

My first few forays promised to be… awkward. Maybe I should just use the [Greater Invisibility] rune in my chest, sneak into a department store, grab some basics, and leave behind a chunk of gold. 

At the same time, that might cause even more of a commotion, ugh.

The last thing I wanted to do was steal something, not when I didn’t have to. Well, okay, that was a bit of a lie, stealing was in the middle of my ‘don’t do this’ list. Still, better to break some minor cover than steal. What did I have clothing wise that could work? Hmmm… I mentally rifled through my wardrobe, thrilled that I could look at everything from another point of view.

Oh! Yes, this could do. It’d look a little unusual, but I had to remember that people’s perception wasn’t enhanced here. They might not be able to tell the cut, cloth, and style weren’t made anywhere on Earth, at least not by anyone who cared. A solid work tunic of mine for the top, and some of Iona’s shorts as knee-length shorts for me. Sandals were sandals. Again, a brand and quality not found anywhere on Earth, but it shouldn’t be too weird while I made a few quick stops.

Gold was still valuable here, right? Right. How much gold would… oh right, I could just take a look what was for sale, and measure off that.

By Ciriel, it had been a while since I last needed to do a full SERE, operating in hostile territory. Hopefully this one wouldn’t be too bad.

Sighing to myself, I knocked on the trunk of a nearby tree. With my luck, the nearby city would be underwater and on fire by the time I was done.

The highway quickly moved from woods to outlying industrial areas, most of which were rusty and abandoned. Not a great sign for the local economy, or the economy in general. Still, there were upsides to it all - I didn’t have to look carefully before emerging from the woods like some dryad. Once I was walking along the streets, nobody would give me a second look.

I had to slow down a hair to make sure I was sticking within mortal limits, but nobody was tracking me enough to notice my inhuman endurance. Signs of life started to emerge - the city wasn’t abandoned, just that area wasn’t well lived in - but they were their own flavor of depressing. Homeless people and junkies, people really down on their luck and not a trace of social services to be seen. I was starting to think I might be in America. Between the highway, the familiar street signs, and the utter governmental disinterest in the poorer section of society, it felt American.

I subtly healed people as I walked by. Nothing overt, but these people weren’t going to a doctor anytime soon, and I could help. I would help. I just didn’t want to get instantly outed as a Classer. Being too interesting could make my trip home more complicated than it needed to be. I had to be just interesting enough, but once that bell was rung, I couldn’t unring it. 

There was a lot of graffiti on the walls. If it was just a little bit better, and not constantly painted over, I would’ve guessed that the locals had a tradition of painting the walls. Alas, that wasn’t the case, and I found I didn’t miss graffiti. Sure, we had a fair share of it in Exterreri, but it wasn’t this easy. Except for that one brat who’d taken it as a class… but that’s a story for another time.

No, I needed to orient myself, and that called for a trip to the local library. Read… okay, fine, read all of it, get an idea of what was going on, and then see what my next steps would be. Probably a gardening store of some flavor. Pick up everything I needed to plant my own mushroom rings, grab a shovel, and start working. Getting back to Pallos once I was in the realm of the fae was its own challenge… ah, right, a crown of fresh holly should do the trick. 

Also, I’d need to mess with my healing image, then rip the cold iron out of my shoulder. That wasn’t going to be fun.

My spirits were massively uplifted by finally having a firm ‘from here to home’ plan, and I practically skipped down the road. Plus, if this was America, that meant grocery stores! And where there were grocery stores, there was the most sacred and holy of all fruit, mango.

I wondered if I’d get any funny looks if I bought all the mangos? Cashiers didn’t care, not in a big city. I’d be generous to anyone coming behind me as well. I’d leave one… no, wait, two whole mangos behind.

Yesssss.

Money, mangos - I couldn’t think of a third M to round out the group.

I was tracking everyone around me, and ignoring most of what was going on. What did I care about drug deals? Why should I bother the meth lab? It wasn’t my place, and it wasn’t my responsibility. Even in Exterreri, low-level crimes belonged to the new and low level [Guards], giving them a chance to cut their teeth on easy crime. If they couldn’t handle it, it was up to the local Ranger team.

If they couldn’t handle it, then the Sentinels were called in. 

I was still seeing a bunch of low level crime, and mostly ignoring it. My sanity would never survive otherwise.

Still, it was quite the surprise when some boys with red and green markings lurking in an alley jumped out at me.

“Hand over your wallet!” The biggest boy said. He was taller than me - they all were. The tragedy of being short. I’d gotten over it years ago. I clapped my hands and jumped for joy.

“Oh goodie!” I said with enthusiasm. “It’s been so long since someone tried to mug me!”

“You crazy or something?” One of the other boys asked.

“High, probably. We should grab her.” A third one said.

“Yeah, like you know who to hand her over to once we do. Idiot.” The first one said.

A quick swap - totally unnoticed, nobody would see it - and I was holding all the knives. By all the gods, the utter lack of a projected vitality defense was going to make this place… interesting.

“But why are you trying to mug me, when I have the knives?” I asked innocently, twirling all four knives between my fingers. That was taking a superhuman level of coordination, but maybe they’d just think I was particularly skilled.

“CAPE!” One of them screamed, and the three of them ran away.

“But wait!” I shouted after them. “I never got a chance to give you my wallet!”

Ahh… that was fun. Most people knew not to bother me, occasionally even making way for me when I was actually walking. Someone trying to mug me? Novel enough to be interesting again!

I had completely flubbed it though. I wasn’t wearing a cape, so why had they said that?

Hmmm… well, all questions would be answered in the library. Eventually.

I got directions from a frazzled lady with a baby, and started the long walk over, keeping an eye out for a pawn store, and debating the merits of going invisible and simply flying over there. I was good enough that nobody would catch me.

As I passed by a bank, I briefly got worried. It looked like a bank robbery was going on. Then I looked a little closer, and breathed a sigh of relief.

No broad daylight bank robbery. A bunch of kids were in bright uniforms, posturing and yelling at each other while everyone else was filming. Sure, it was on cellphones and not big, fancy film equipment, but what did I know? If someone was actually robbing a bank, they’d send in adults, not a bunch of kids. The adults present were simply focused on keeping everyone out of the area, reinforcing my belief that the entire thing was a movie in the making.

Or maybe this place had a whole ‘kids fight kids’ crime thing going on. It’d be unusual, sure, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen it. Maybe that’s how they trained up the kids here to eventually become cops? Seemed… unusual, but I’d done weirder things for the sake of levels and classes. Either way, I wasn’t going to step in.

I made my way to the best building in the city, one Brockton Bay Central Library, and headed over to the desk.

“Hi!” I said. “I’m completely new here. Is it possible to get a library card?”

“Do you live inside of Brockton Bay?” She asked. I frowned and shook my head.

“No, sorry.” I said. “Can I sit and read?”

“Go ahead. Sorry I can’t help you more. Let me know if there’s anything I can find for you.” She said, then hesitated. “What’s going on with your eyes?” She asked.

Whoops. Starry eyes. Right. Kinda hard to blend in if nobody else had a System, and nobody had elemental eyes. 

“Errr… it just happened.” I lied. Brilliantly. Nobody would ever catch me at it!

“Sure.” She said, clearly suspicious. 

How!? Why!? 

Oh well, it didn’t matter.

I took a quick look around the library, thankful that it still used the Dewey Decimal System. It took some serious rummaging through [Astral Archives] to remember the system in question, but a plaque was able to help me get a quick refresh. 

Ahh… the library! The store of knowledge! The greatest place in the world! Rows upon rows of beautiful books, the smell of old paper and ink, the sum total of human knowledge in one place! 

I settled into a lovely plush armchair in roughly the middle of the library, and split my thinking into forty different streams of thought. I then cast my mind around, and used [The World Around Me] to help me read forty different books at the same time. History, science, geography. Encyclopedias and research papers. I needed to know what was going on in the world, where I was, and all that.

I wasn’t able to completely stay focused. There was a large amount of fiction that I’d never seen or heard of before, and well, fiction was a great way to peer into a society and see what they valued. Yup. That’s why fully half of my mental processes were busy reading them, while the other half was devouring encyclopedias. 

I couldn’t resist teleporting a few books into my hands, and getting the proper feel of them. Reading the stories with my eyes. Holding the weight in my hands. It was such a different experience, and I snuggled in deeper into my happy place, devouring books at a ferocious pace.

I was reading at full speed. No need to slow myself down, no need to pace myself like I so often needed to do. I had to get as much information as quickly as possible, and I finally got to test a question I’d idly wondered now and then.

How quickly could I read an entire library? Pushed to my limits, how soon could I absorb the totality of knowledge contained within? I stopped paying even a fraction of attention to the world around me, every iota of focus on the books.

Quite quickly, the answer seemed to be. A lot of old history was exactly the same, but at some point in 1980 or so, the world became very different from the world I was used to.

“Unknown parahuman! Please come out with your hands up!”

This place was apparently called ‘Earth Bet’, and in 1982 someone called Scion showed up. A bit later, ‘Parahumans’ started showing up with powers, and everything ended up fairly chaotic.

I was far more interested in ‘Earth Aleph’, because that sounded like my first home, and I diverted almost all my attention that way. Professor Haywire, connection, dimensional travel illegal, art and literature… AH! Aleph had a few superheroes, and their own connection going back. Damn. Not home.

“Unknown parahuman!”

Okay, on the downside - dimensional shenanigans were illegal. On the upside, this was much better than Earth! They actually knew about other dimensions, and tapping into them was a science! Sure, the guy had promptly vanished, but I wasn’t starting from nothing! I had additional projects and things I could do while waiting for my mushrooms to grow!

Heh. For once they’d be actual mushrooms, not soldiers kept in the dark and fed shit.

“UNKNOWN PARAHUMAN!”

I jumped. I didn’t think I’d been that absorbed in everything. There was a man in silver-blue armor shouting next to me. The bottom of his mask was open, showing a neatly trimmed beard. Bad decision - what was the point of armor if it left obvious openings?

Except it could be like the capes… designed to impress, not be functional.

“Hey! Shhhh! This is a library!” I whispered to him in admonition. “You’re supposed to be quiet, people are trying to read!” I went back to doing just that.

“Unknown parahuman.” He repeated. “Please come with me.”

I didn’t take my eyes off my book, but I did huff. Loudly. Twice.

“Unknown-” He said again, and I snapped. Just a little.

“Gods! Can’t you see I’m trying to read here? Seriously, go bug someone else, or find some manners, introduce yourself, and then we can have a polite discussion.” I whispered to him.

In case it wasn’t clear - the guy seemed a little thick - I made a ‘shooing’ motion. With both hands. 

He hesitated, and I could hear him subvocally talking with people, who were responding on his headset. I wasn’t going to let in that I could eavesdrop, but what was going on was quite interesting. A woman named ‘Dragon’ was berating ‘Armsmaster’ - the guy in front of me? - to be nicer to people, be aware of social norms, and to try following them now and then.

I felt a little bad for the guy. Sounded like me, except without the centuries of practice to be half-decent at things. On the other hand, at least he had his own Iona! Someone whispering ‘oi, don’t do that’ in his ear. Quite literally, in this case.

“I… apologize.” Armsmaster gruffly said. “I am Armsmaster, of the ENE Protectorate. We would like you to come down to the station and answer a few questions. If you want.”

“That’s the local law enforcement, right?” I asked.

“Yes.” He said. “Would you perhaps happen to have a C tattooed somewhere on your body? Perhaps in all the red loops on your arm?”

I looked at my marriage tattoos, which stretched from my back to my fingertips.

“There’s probably a C in here somewhere, yeah, why?” I asked. 

“Do you have all of your memories?” He asked.

“Yup! I’ve got a skill for perfect memories.” I said.

“A skill.” He said, like the concept was perplexing to him.

I decided not to enlighten him. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him yet. He was getting a lot of pity points by reminding me of me when I was a dumb kid.

I stretched and got up, all while my nose was stuck in the book. 

“Alright.” I said, then got a Devious Plan. A plan so cunning, even Fenrir would never be able to solve the case!

Okay, fine, maybe it wasn’t that good.

“Could you help me check out a few of these books?” I asked. “We can read and talk. Oh! And maybe pick up a few mangos on the way? Pretty please?”

His jaw was working ferociously, while Dragon was whispering in his ear that getting my cooperation for the price of a few loaned books and a couple of groceries was nothing, and that making a good impression now could be more ‘efficient’ for him achieving his goals.

Efficient seemed to be the magic word.

“Alright. Follow me.” He said.

I teleported about forty books into a precarious stack, and slowly wobbled my way over to the checkout desk. The whole time, I was furiously reading everything else, trying to pack in as much information possible. Around that time, I realized there was nobody else around. 

Huh. Where did everyone go?

I put the pile on the desk, and did my best to lean over the counter. Why they made it so high here, I’ll never know.

“Hello!” I called out. “Excuse me!”

Armsmaster muttered something, only for Dragon to respond.

“The top 10 books have been checked out in my name.” He said. “There are limits, you know.”

“Poohey. Okay, wait one minute please.” I said.

I put the top 10 books off to the side, and started to rip through the pile in front of me. As each thought process finished with a book, I started on a new one, sometimes doubling or even tripling up. They were informational books, I could start in the middle no problem.

“We need to go.” He said tersely.

“You need to go.” I corrected. “I am perfectly happy here.”

“Would you like a mask?” He said, offering me a black domino mask.

“Um. No?” I said. There had been a lot in literature about parahumans and masks and everyone made a huge fuss over them… I just couldn’t see the point of it all. Someone needed to explain it to me with small words.

He gritted his teeth, but the voice in his ear talked him down. I’d have to figure out how to send Dragon a fruit basket or something. Gods bless the extroverts trying to help the socially inept, and since their blessings were rare, I’d see what I could do. Paying it forward, in a way.

Finishing up with the last book, I followed Armsmaster outside, where a couple of vans were waiting with a bunch of goons.

No, seriously. Black, featureless masks, black armor, weapons, the whole nine miles. I’d seen people trying to build an evil empire with better-dressed minions. I climbed into the van, and we were off!

“Hi! I’m Elaine!” I said, offering a hand to Mike. If he didn’t want me to spot his name, it shouldn’t be sewn into his underwear.

Mike said absolutely nothing, and the trip continued on in silence. Mostly. I could hear Armsmaster talking with console about me. Something about a case 53, but not? Ah well, that was future-Elaine’s problem.

Going to see the authorities was great! I could explain what was going on, they could kick my problem up the food chain, I’d eventually get to someone who could actually help me, and then I could go back home! I let my mind take in everything going around me. It was one thing to see a map of Brockton Bay and memorize it, it was quite another to see it from the ground floor.

Basically everywhere my sphere of perception reached though, things were bad. A beating going on in an apartment, armed thugs getting ferried around in transport vans, and the quality of everyone’s health was terrible.

It made me want to unleash my healing. I’d kept it tightly close to me, both my healing and my aura, for a wide variety of reasons. The biggest one? I didn’t want to be that Immortal who was ruining everything for everyone. If I was healing every little scratch and bruise as they formed, children wouldn’t learn caution. Healers would have no patients, gain no experience, and wouldn’t level. I’d single-handedly completely stagnate an area from growing in that particular field, and there were side-effects I’d seen quite a few times.

Half those issues didn’t exist here. I was happy to go ‘full heals’ during an Immortal War, and for the decades after, as we picked up the pieces and attempted to rebuild civilization. I only slowly ramped it down after an [Apprentice Healer] came around, and slowly showed them the ropes on mundane injuries, while keeping lethal injuries from happening. In polite society, one was aware of one’s aura, and the impact it had on others.

At the same time, there were no healers here. Okay, there was one proper healer, but not a [Healer]. She wasn’t getting any levels or experience. I had no idea on any further details about her - my reading of the world was more concerned with facts and the like than current events where I was - but… hang on, I could just ask.

“Hey, what can you tell me about Panacea?” I asked Mike. A few heads snapped towards me.

“Why do you want to know?” They were fairly hostile, but like… in a cute way. I could stand there for a week while they riddled me with bullets and barely feel it. They were what, 20, 40 years old? Still so young, without a proper aura of malice and hostility. 

“We’re both healers!” I said. “I want to make sure I’m not stepping on anyone’s toes.”

“Healer’s have to be vetted and certified before they can begin.” Mike said, but they all relaxed.

Okay, fine then. Tell me nothing about Panacea. Still, there was no talk about people leveling here, so I doubted I was taking experience.

What I was about to do would probably be a dick move to doctors, nurses, and hospitals in the North East, along with a good chunk of Canada, but eh. The healthcare system was such shit in the first place, they could all take a break.

By the same token, the culture here was weird. I’d grown up in it once upon a time, and like, I knew there was a whole thing about personal autonomy that was quite a bit stronger than anywhere else I’d seen. It wasn’t all wrong - the Tuskegee Syphilis Study cast a long shadow, and was merely the tip of the iceberg when it came to atrocities - but it didn’t match my understanding of the world.

In Exterreri, in practically every nation on Pallos, it was not just legal, it was considered a moral and ethical imperative to act in a situation as bad as I was seeing here. 

I was well aware of the pitfalls of utilitarianism. I wasn’t about to start maniacally cackling and creating broad programs to “improve” everyone’s lives. I was well aware I was going to throw a wrecking ball through quite a few careers, and piss off the few people who absolutely did not want medical intervention an ungodly amount.

But I couldn’t exclude them from my healing. I couldn’t read people’s minds, and find out not just their surface feelings on the matter, but their deeper concerns. What were the numbers? How many children had cancer, untreatable in this era without magic, and how many grouches who wanted to try a ‘natural remedy’? How many people were gasping their last in an accident, to every self-possed busybody who had nothing better to do than to kick up a fuss?

I was mentally framing things in my mind to tilt things a particular way. Let me try again, and see if that fixed anything.

How many broken fingernails would I fix, only to revisit the horror of flesh being played with and molded by outside forces? How many toothaches would be fixed, only for prosthetics to go flying? The world had no way of handling healing decay rates… although eight years of life before pseudo-neurological diseases set in a few cases was better than nothing in virtually every case.

No, in this particular instance, healing was the correct move. I might be a little biased - I was sworn to heal, and to my large hammer, everything looked like a nail - but I wasn’t going to let the old man bleed out in an alleyway. 

It only took a flicker of thought to pull up the image in question.

The range on [Healer’s Aura] was 4,321 km. The range on [Universal Cure] was 81.2 km. 

Radius.

I pushed the image to the max.

Then I healed people.

I healed everyone. 

[ding! [The Elaine] leveled up! 2025 -> 2027

Str +392

Dex +392

Speed +1568

Vitality +1568

Mana +3921

Mana Regeneration +19601

Magic Power +7840

Magic Control +7840

]

A heartbeat later, the bombs went off.