Capetown, TX. 09/19/2017, 11:03 AM. 61°F,
Overcast. Arc 2: Confluence.
SÀhkö studied the abandoned warehouse with incredulous awe."We're attacking them?" She hissed under her breath to Chrysopoeia, who was crouched next to her.
"Look, they're still villains, alright?" Sandstorm said, prompting Seraphim to shake her head."Yeah," Chrysopoeia agreed.
"I say we kill the leader fir-""Kill!?" SÀhkö hissed under her breath once again.
"Look at them! They're kids."Across the street, the Adept Mages were LARP'ing. Several members in either knight-like armor or mage-like robes were running around the warehouse, hitting each other with foam swords, throwing socks or bags filled with what appeared to be flour, based on the puffs of white cloud on contact, and occasionally one or two would throw balls of light that were obviously parahuman powers. Some were dressed in modern or casual wear, while a few even looked slightly post-apocalyptic. Three guys, who looked similar to each other, were shirtless.
"They aren't LARP'ing right." SÀhkö said, prompting Seraphim to snort at her.
"What? LARP'ing?" Chrysopoeia looked at SÀhkö.
"What's that?" He asked, and SÀhkö whipped her head around and gave him a confused look.
"LARP. Live Action Role Play... -ing. They're playing pretend medieval battles. What did you think they were doing, dressed up like wizards and knights?""Dungeons and Dragons? I think I've heard of that before. Or training for actual battle." Chrysopoeia replied, causing Seraphim to let loose a laugh that she couldn't contain.
"Are... Are they even all parahumans? Half of them look like they aren't even using powers." Seraphim whispered.
"That's because they aren't." Sandstorm replied.
"They have a member on the team, a Trump named 'Rethliel' or some shit. He can grant non-parahumans 0-1 rating powers in a single category. Like give a non-parahuman a Brute 0 power or a Shaker 1 power, ect. You see the three shirtless dudes with white hair? They're brothers. Rethliel is the one that doesn't have tattoos down his arm. The one with tattoos is a Breaker with a fire-form named Fernis. And the last brother with the white hair is a Shaker, named Rition, he can manipulate ink, including tattoos.""LARP'ers and their weird-ass names." Chrysopoeia whispered.
After a few more minutes of talking strategy, or arguing among themselves, the Congenial decided it was time. As a group, the four of them strutted across the street to the Adept Mage's hideout. As they did, many of the LARP'ers began stopping, and staring at the four, unsure what to do. A few parahumans switched to their Breaker forms. A few others had elements or light swirling around them.
SÀhkö took a deep breath.
Okay Jasmin. She thought uneasily to herself.
Just like we planned. Don't mess this up. Don't kill anyone. Don't hurt your team. They're counting on you. They kept walking until they were in the middle of the Adept Mages, surrounded, and everyone was silent. No one had made a move yet, the Adept Mages unsure whether the Congenial were coming on good terms or not. Plus, most of the underlings would get in trouble for attacking first, if the Congenial were here to talk to Myrlyn or another leader.
Then they made their move. SÀhkö gave the signal, a simple nod of the head, and Chrysopoeia reached down to touch the dirt. Before anyone could react, the entire dust/dirt ground surrounding the warehouse turned to copper. A second later, Jasmin reached down and touched the copper, and released energy into it. In that moment, multiple things happened. Almost everyone standing on the copper began to convulse, as if being tasered, and dropped down to the ground. SÀhkö held her concentration as hard as she could, preventing them from receiving too much of a shock, and trying as hard as she could to prevent her team mates from getting shocked at all. Any excess energy put into the copper was routed back into her for absorption. She felt in her mind every circuit between herself and a person touching copper, every tendril and arc of electricity that zapped through the air where a rock or irregularity in the dirt turned to copper, causing arcs through the air like you'd see between the nodes of a stun gun. Then, overpowering all else, she felt a single line. The line connected her through the copper ground, to wiring under a nearby street light.
Oh shit. She thought. Suddenly her consciousness became fuzzy, as it grew. She felt electricity light up the street light. S\In slow motion, she felt the bulb explode and the arc of plasma in the air around the shattered glass. She felt the electricity run through the underground wires like blood through her veins, as they hit each street light on the block and shattered them. Then she felt more. She felt the lights in the buildings around her, she felt the buildings and street lights a block over, and two blocks. She felt a phone booth three blocks away, and she felt computers in an office building somewhere. She felt street lights, felt the impulses change from the red light to the green light. She felt landlines, telephone wires, internet cables, phone chargers in buildings, coffee-makers, televisions, digital clocks, outlets yet to be plugged into. Her awareness began to expand beyond the office and industrial buildings around her, reaching residential buildings, restaurants, convenience stores, and more. For a fraction of a second, she was aware of a bank, six miles away from her, before the next building entered her consciousness, then the next, then the next. She had a mental map of the city, being built as if pouring blue water coloring into a maze, watching it spread and stain out from a central point, it's radius growing ever larger. Eventually she hit a blindingly bright spot, bright as the sun, somewhere far out from her mental map.
It's a power plant. I'm connected to the grid. She thought, dimly aware of anything around her body. Her mind wasn't there, her physical body not hers to control. She was everywhere, and she felt everything. For two or three seconds, she felt powerful, like she controlled the world. She could switch on and off televisions, change the temperatures of an oven, change the time on a clock, all across town. Her powers, for a moment, felt more fine tuned then they had ever been in her life. Her physical body was minuscule compared to the scope of her body now. The city was her body, each appliance feeling like a finger she could twitch, her physical body barely a facial muscle to flex.
Then, it all imploded. She felt darkness, as her consciousness shrunk rapidly, in the span of a second, and she felt the whole of her power not spread out over a section of the city, but in her body. Like water into a drain, all of the electricity in over a quarter of the city, including a power plant, entered her body. Then, she felt blind. She realized that for the last few years, she'd been unconsciously feeling and seeing every current or magnetic field around her, not registering it in her mind, but feeling it like a slight breeze or gust of wind. Now, with the city in a state of blackout, she felt like she was standing in a dark room with no draft. Blind, nothing to see or to feel.
Then she opened her eyes and everything was blurry. Chrysopoeia, Sandstorm, and Seraphim were all back across the street. They had thrown up shields, likely made out of Sandstorm's sand powers, and transmuted by Chrysopoeia. She looked around the warehouse, where people lie on the floor, clothes on fire, twitching and spasming. Then she looked down, and noticed the influx of power towards her had actually melted a path through the copper, drawing several spidery lines around a thick canal of molten metal from her feet towards the nearby street light. Then she realized why everything was blurry. The air around her shimmered with the heat of molten copper, and was ionizing from the amount of electricity in her body. There was a limit to how much electricity she could safely hold without it leaking out and zapping people who came too close accidentally. She was far beyond that limit, and the electricity in her body was leaking out enough to turn the air around her to plasma. She couldn't breathe, and she felt like she were standing in a stove. Finally, conscious thought returned to her, and she said to herself;
What the fuck.Followed immediately by,
How can I safely discharge all of this?!?!