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Do Entities Dream Of Crystal Sheep? (Endbringer Lewd Worm CYOA) Chapter 3
🕑 Added 2023-05-13 20:02:21 +0000 UTC-x-
CHAPTER 3
-x-
Evelyn hurtled towards Earth like a meteorite, a courtesy of atmospheric entry and Earth’s gravity. Evelyn was worried about the heat and wind but it didn't seem to bother her too much.
The most annoying bit was that Queen Administrator was forced to adjust her trajectory since Evelyn couldn’t do it herself. She didn't like having to depend on someone else so completely for something that should have been basic, but she figured that astronauts and the folks at NASA and the like did it all the time. It was a learning experience all the same.
She gazed at her expanding view of a planet that was oh so familiar but so strikingly wrong. Landmasses weren’t supposed to be gouged out like that. There were entire chunks of continents that were simply gone. It put things into perspective, the sheer horror of it all, the global devastation and how completely this world's humanity must have collapsed. She could finally understand why the people of this world were forced to abandon this planet and seek refuge in other dimensions.
Evelyn promised to find a way to help the survivors of this cataclysm, one way or the other. It simply bothered her too much to avoid the issue.
Maybe she should open a portal to another world? It should be easy enough to find a way to make one of her own portals permanent with the right powers or tools. But that had it's own pros and cons. She decided to revisit the idea after she was done rescuing Taylor.
Every time she had to move towards a particular direction, Evelyn was forced to hit herself with her ‘Pillar Propulsion Technique™’ to readjust her course. She had no other option until she managed to figure out her abilities better. Her limited telekinesis of her own body didn’t really do anything at a smaller scale, and any increase in force would be too abrupt for her current situation, so she was forced to essentially throw rocks at herself to adjust her landing.
‘I just hope I get there in time. I w-’ Her thoughts was interrupted as she abruptly received another transmission.
[Trajectory]
‘Dammit, I’m going to overshoot aren’t I? You better be alive Taylor. If you die on me, I’ll bring you back just to lecture you on your life choices.’ she promised in her mind, even as she conjured a small pillar of stone to smash into herself.
Only this time, the block smashed into her back with a little bit more force than she intended to, resulting in her hurtling towards the ground at an even greater velocity.
‘Great… at least I’m in the right place this time… Oh God, the ground is closing in. I hope this doesn’t hurt. Wait Do I even have pain recept-’ Her wandering thoughts were interrupted as she felt an impact, and the world went white.
-x-
Turns out not having pain receptors allow you to not feel pain. Go figure.
Unfortunately, the force and pressure of the landing triggered the fucking pleasure receptors that were installed everywhere.
"I would have preferred pain. Why the fuck do I have ple-" She cut herself off as data streamed into her mind.
"Of course it’s to compliment the fucking Hentai Physics. Why did you have to give in to your lust so easily, past me?" She hissed.
"That’s gotta be the first time I orgasmed from falling on my face" Evelyn groaned, her voice unsteady. It was arguably the most concentrated burst of pleasure she had ever felt in her life, and she wouldn’t have felt so conflicted about it if she hadn’t gotten it from smashing into the ground at around sixty kilometers per second.
"If I become a masochist from this I’ll-" Her voice was cut off as her recently dubbed ‘shard-brain’ helpfully pointed out that to accommodate her new powers and directives, she was now receptive to every single fetish conceived. Ever.
She whimpered
Evelyn paused as she went through the list… a list that also seemed to include alien fetishes, and paled further “Oh fuck me-” She cursed.
"Dammit Evelyn, don’t let the horny get to you. Remove, remove, remove, no. Wait, let’s keep that one. You know what? I’ll do this later when people aren’t about to die on me. Let me just get rid of the ones that’ll compromise my combat effectiveness for now." Evelyn got to her feet, even as her legs shook unsteadily.
Evelyn shook her head, clearing her head, and turned her attention towards the ruined city. Her link to Queen Administrator allowed her to observe the strings of her influence, even through pesky obstructions like buildings and walls.
"So I guess that’s where Taylor's at.” Evelyn nodded as she received a burst of [Affirmation] from Queenie.
Evelyn angled herself towards the strings, and ran.
The force of her taking off shattered the pavement and left clouds of dust and debris in her wake. As an endbringer, she wasn’t as fast as Leviathan was on land, but she was very, very close. Evelyn cut a straight line through the ruined city, running up large buildings, or even bowling through smaller ones at speeds that would have rivaled a race-car.
Every now and then, she would come across a cape, and they would freeze in terror. She passed them by, giving them only a cursory look, to satisfy her curiosity on how a real superhero would actually look like. Their costumes seemed professionally made, and they were typically far more functional than the ones she’d seen in movies. There were exceptions of course but she felt that it was fair. A costume had to be practical if it needed to survive a cape fight of any sort.
She jumped over a rooftop, and landed near a junction. Evelyn noticed that Taylor was right across the building in front of her. She took a few seconds to prepare herself, before breaking through the walls with enough dramatic flair to make the Kool-aid-man proud.
As she landed on the other side, she was met with a sight that disheartened her. There she was, Taylor Hebert, the hero who saved the local multiverse, standing in front of a portal a stuttering, incoherent mess who looked around with jerky, abrupt movements. It was a bit eerie, how little humanity she could see in her. It was like Evelyn was staring at a really convincing animatronic rather than a real person and it bothered her in ways she couldn't explain. It starkly contrasted Queen Administrator, in a way.
Her heart broke a little at the sight.
She turned her ire at the assortment of humans that crowded the road across her. Evelyn had landed behind Glaistig Uaine, who was only beginning to turn around to face her. Her three ‘shadows’ were quite faster at reacting to her presence, though, taking up a defensive position even as Evelyn passed them by.
She crouched down, pulling Taylor into a hug. Then she forced herself to ignore Queen Administrator’s incessant attempts to take control over her body at Taylor’s behest. A confused but innocent [Query] was sent her way from Queenie’s end to ask why her ‘control stick’ wasn’t working.
[Apologies : Total Access Denied. Concession : Direct Observation] She offered.
[Acceptance] Queen Administrator reluctantly agreed.
Evelyn redeployed her [Domain], the radius in which her Personal Dimension overlaid the world around her in an expanding radius of the same dreamlike haze that had grown so familiar in the short time she knew it. Evelyn stopped it from expanding from beyond the twelve meter mark, though. No need to freak out the ‘spectators’ just yet.
Taylor started to squirm and the capes under her control turned to take aim at her. Evelyn realized that Taylor's mind was still deteriorating, and that she wouldn't be able to calm her down, or explain the situation in her current state of mind.
With a grimace, Evelyn reluctantly transmuted a bit of the air around Taylor’s nose into knockout gas. Taylor slumped, and Evelyn held her limp body to her form tighter. As soon as Taylor’s control over her ‘swarm’ was cut off, the parahumans under her sway scrambled away from them desperately.
Evelyn could see Glaistig Uaine eying the boundary of her [Domain] warily, a frown on her face.
The others, the capes chasing Taylor froze in place. Their faces paled and some of them stepped backwards while others gripped their weapons tighter or clenched their fists in fear and anger. The most prominent reaction, she noted, was disbelief.
“Tell me I’m hallucinating, mate. That’s just a case 53, right?”
“I don’t think so man, The thinkers are all freaking out. I think… I think it’s the real thing.”
They seemed put off by her. She didn't have a reference for how they usually were, but they seemed especially off balance on seeing her changing expressions and its stark contrast with her precise, fluid movements that spoke of an inhuman grace.
Evelyn suspected that they’re all the more freaked out about it, having faced Scion who had acted with a similar dichotomy not that long ago.
Maybe it was because she was expecting them to attack, but as soon as her eyes landed on the parahumans readying their powers, her ‘shard brain’ seemed to kick in and forced her to enter a sort of ‘combat mode’ in order to better fight them off.
Her senses seemed to expand. Evelyn’s eyes started to pick out structural weaknesses in the buildings, she could see which parts of the ground was unstable and which parts were not. She could see the parahumans and pick out their flaws as easy as she breathed, finding the chinks in their armor, the weak points in their tinker-tech, how their powers physically interacted with the world and what it would take to avoid or counter them. While the bit about the powers was complimented by the data packets sent by Queenie, the rest was analyzed purely by her own eyes-, no, her scanners.
In this state, she could see how their eyes went from her long, fuzzy tail that swayed behind her, to how her sleeves seemed to unravel into massive wings, to the perfect symmetry of her face, to the black blood and crystalline flesh within the few crushed layers of her ‘skin’ that were damaged in her landing. Damage that healed right in front of their very eyes.
Maybe it was all of those clues combined, which their mind instinctively recognized what she was, having known the terror her ‘siblings’ inflicted on them their entire lives. But it was the last bit that clinched it for them.
“Endbringer.” Came a whisper, and the world fell silent. The crowd in front of her felt unadulterated terror. She could see that much, but it was tempered. They wouldn’t be running away, having faced something far, far worse not that long ago.
It wouldn’t cow them, but they were still afraid. To them, no matter what had happened, she was still the newest addition to the same group of beings that had inflicted unending horrors on their world for decades.
To them, she was still an ‘endbringer’, one whose powers they had no clue about.
Evelyn analyzed the capes around her one more time.
Her combat analysis figured that they wouldn’t attack her right away, but they would do so as soon as she ‘tried something’. It wasn’t a true ‘combat precog’ per se. It wasn’t even an ability really, but she had enough behavioral data on humans for her mind to come to a conclusion. It may be wrong, but Evelyn had the distinct feeling that this particular detail was spot-on.
‘I need to get Taylor out of here alive, but how do I do that without these idiots going overboard?’ She wondered.
‘Wait, my [Domain] is an extension of my ‘Pocket DImension’, right? It treats my body as a portal.’ Evelyn was sure of that, since she had felt Queenie throwing random objects into the fragment she left with her to see how the place reacted.
‘It’s why my [Domain] works in a radius; its always centered around me. I could keep Taylor there until it's safe to bring her out. Wait, I did leave a ‘wing’ with Queenie, right? Maybe I can send Taylor over through it.’ She speculated.
To test things out, Evelyn focused a part of her [Domain] inwards, and felt herself expand in a way that felt all too similar to her experience back in the Shardspace, as if she was existing in multiple worlds at the same time. This place though, unlike the Firmament, or even Earth Bet, felt right, complete, and it was undeniably hers.
‘That was far easier to pick up than I thought it would be.’ She mused, and tried to push Taylor through.
‘It worked.’ She observed as Taylor started to sink into her body. That was when Evelyn encountered a problem she did not anticipate.
‘Why is she passing through so slowly?’ Even from QA’s initial observations, Evelyn knew that anything pushed through the ‘portal’ should pass through into her ‘world’ nearly instantaneously, like walking through a waterfall.
‘Why- ah…’ Evelyn finally noticed the issue and wanted to groan.
It was the dimensional folding.
The only way to enter her personal dimension was to enter through her body. If she was using a thin, unfolded mass that was only a single ‘layer’ thick, it would be over relatively quickly.
However, if the same was attempted through something like her ‘main’ body, the object would have to pass through every single layer, in every single ‘wing’ unit in the way, until it finally reached the other side… That meant crossing a lot of layers.
She neither had the time, nor the space to unravel her defensive layering to speed things up, so she did the next best thing, and undid her cloak, spreading all her wings and revealing her naked form underneath.
It was embarrassing, standing naked in front of so many people, but she noticed Taylor sinking into the portal far more quickly so she kept at it.
Although, from how they were panicking, Evelyn suspected that they weren’t in the right frame of mind to properly ‘appreciate’ her form. She was a bit disappointed with that -
'Wait, why am I- Dammit, [exhibitionism]. Do I get rid of it? Wait, did I even have this fetish while I was human? I can't even tell anymore.'
‘Why are they panicking so much though? Oh right, I spread my wings, and despite the differences, I look like Ziz a bit, and she can copy tinkers. They probably think that I’m trying to absorb ‘Khepri’ for her powers or something.’
“STOP HER!” A man shouted.
'Well, shit.'
Chaos ensued.
-x-
If it wasn’t already obvious, it was the first time Evelyn had actually fought someone with superpowers.
So, she was reasonably caught off guard when a large volume of debris was thrown her way with a flourish of fractal patterns. Evelyn reacted semi-automatically, allowing herself to move into a reflexive action and shielding Taylor from the projectiles with a wing.
In the same vein, she didn’t stop herself from reflexively counter-attacking by sending a massive pillar of stone in her attacker’s direction until it was too late.
By the time she realized what she was doing, a mass of stone the width of a school bus and eight times as long was propelled towards a woman in a white fur trimmed cloak at speeds close to that of sound .
A telekinetic force smashed into the front of the pillar-turned-beam, slowing it down just enough for the woman to fly out of the way, having moved out of the massive projectile’s trajectory as soon as it was forming.
‘Damn it, war is not the answer, Evelyn.’
Another woman, one shrouded in ash, sent a massive wave of, well, ash at her. Evelyn, having recovered herself, nearly stumbled again in surprise, but recomposed her quickly by leaning into her combat algorithms again. With a firmer hold of herself, she knew exactly what she was doing.
Evelyn turned her body, shielding Taylor tightly with her wings, before taking a page out of Leviathan’s book and swiped one of her largest wings in front of her. A ‘water shadow’ made of highly pressurized liquid Nitrogen doused everything in front of her and froze it in an instant. The temperature plummeted down instantly, and a massive explosion of steam and ghostly white smoke obscured everything.
There was a lull in the battlefield, as many capes recognized the move she had shamelessly ripped off. Evelyn also noticed something wrong with her ‘combat algorithms’ immediately, since she didn't need to be a genius to know that using terror tactics while trying to escape a tight situation was a recipe for disaster. There were exceptions of course but Evelyn knew she wasn't good enough to pull it off without severe collateral damage. A quick [Query] at herself gave her an answer she wasn’t all too happy with.
Her so-called ‘combat mode’ wasn’t set to end things quickly, or even get out a situation unscathed. No, while it would indeed let her keep up and fight with effectively anything she had a frame of reference for, it would go about doing so by following the path of most resistance.
She couldn’t even do anything about it either, since it wasn’t even a ‘power’ really. It was only a collection of tactics and combat analysis left behind by the fucking Simurgh in order to bring her ‘newest’ siblings up to speed.
Evelyn cursed in her head. 'Now I know why everyone is so paranoid about Simurgh plots. She can get you even before you're fucking born, and she probably doesn't even know she did it.’
Evelyn noticed a dragon man wreathed in fire running towards her. He was covered in silver scales and he seemed to be growing, Even as she watched, she could see his frame growing larger, more inhuman, his fire hotter and his scales thicker.
Evelyn could admit that she didn’t pay attention to a lot of the capes in the series, but Lung was simply too recognizable for her to overlook. He was also going to be a menace if she left him alone for too long.
Evelyn expanded her range to cover three blocks, and the capes around her cursed as the thin film that lined the dreamlike haze of her [Domain] passed them by.
She turned to face lung, and the man didn’t even pause, proceeding to lunge at her in an attempt to land a hit on her face. Evelyn slid around his path, dodging the blow, and flexed her mind.
Threads materialized around Lung's surprised form as she promptly wrapped him within a few hundred-thousand layers of perfect graphene interwoven with borophene, reinforcing it even further to prevent it from shattering.
Lung fell over, writhing, unable to break out of restraints made out of the strongest materials known to man.
Lets see you get out of that anytime soon.
It was a good experiment as any to test how far her ability to create things went. Unfortunately, it only seemed she was able to build things out of materials she understood, or had data stored within her 'Shard brain'.
It seemed like creating fantasy materials like vibranium or Nth metal was a no-go until she managed to snag a sample. Still, being able to create anything she could conceivably think of was still OP in her opinion.
And then Glaistig Uaine decided to crash her party.
One of her spectres threw open its hands, creating a sphere from which a mass of metal shot out, growing into something huge. Evelyn, concerned, transmuted all of the mass into air. The resulting wind blew away everyone in the general vicinity. The Faerie Queen caught herself using another one of her shades. The third was switched out for someone that Evelyn felt was familiar. The hood, cloak and mask clued her into his identity.
' That's Eidolon. Shit.'
He grew visibly agitated as soon as he saw her. Evelyn didn’t want to know what kind of bullshit the shade was about to pull out of his ass, so she decided to act preemptively.
Evelyn flexed her [Domain] and turned the entire three dimensional space around the Fairy Queen into a sphere of water fifty meters across.
Both the shades and their summoner floundered, unprepared to lose both their footing and the sky so abruptly. Then Evelyn froze it solid, the ice spreading from the outside-in, towards the center. Glaistig Uaine had switched out her shades, and stopped herself from choking on the water.
Then she took one look at the encroaching ice and disappeared. Evelyn couldn’t find her anywhere in the area so she assumed that the woman jumped over into an alternate Earth.
Seizing the opportunity, Evelyn spread her [Domain] to its fullest extent, until it stopped at a one kilometer radius centered around herself. She then focused on her own personal dimension the ability was connected to, and dragged it closer for a better lack of the term.
The interference, or rather the 'white noise' it exerted in reality would suppress any and all dimensional effects within its radius she didn't want. It was a good way as any to prevent someone from teleporting or punching their way in.
The parahumans weren’t affected, with how the ability refused to work on ‘sentient’ organics, and she left the already existing portals alone.The dreamlike haze intensified to the point that it was obvious to everyone inside the dome that something was wrong.
All in all, it should keep the greatest threat out of range for now. Evelyn had no misgivings about the Faerie Queen's versatility and knew that she would find her way inside quickly enough if she wanted to. It was Evelyn's hope that her show of force would prevent her from jumping back into the fight.
Her hopes were dashed when she saw a green blur flying towards her in the distance.
Evelyn felt frustrated with the tense situation, and wondered how people managed to cope with high enduring stress situations all the time. Not everyone had the perk of being stuck inside an eldritch supercomputer, and they managed to get over it, somehow.
She was sure that her greatest advantage right now was that they had no idea what she was capable of. As the original book had once brought up, the first endbringer fights were always the worst for the parahumans, and this was no different. She was sure that by the next time she met them, they would have come up with at least a semblance of a strategy. For now, their confusion and hesitation allowed her to rescue Taylor with relatively less difficulty.
Evelyn’s moment of distraction cost her as massive lasers slammed into her back, and she snarled. She used the momentum to twist her way out of further blasts, but they curved and twisted around to hit her anyways.
Evelyn peeked under her wings that were protectively wrapped around Taylor to see if the young woman was harmed. Thankfully, she was fine, as much as the word could apply to her given the state Evelyn had found her in, but she wasn't at risk of dying immediately.
At least she was more than halfway through the portal by now.
Evelyn decided that she couldn't afford to get hit anymore since she didn’t want any further harm to befall her newest charge. So, she decided to switch tactics.
For the first time, Evelyn properly unboxed her ‘Wish Granting’ and ‘Path to Fantasy Fulfilment’ abilities.
Her first attempt to trigger a ‘path’ failed, since the ability explicitly required any ‘objectives’ set to be sexual in nature. She cursed and tried to word things differently, until she eventually managed to settle on something she felt would work.
Thankfully, she could adjust how ‘lewd’ she wanted the situation to be, reducing it in exchange for potency.
Then she brought her ‘Wish Granting’ ability around, and fed the ‘path’ to it.
“I wish for non-lethal [accidents] to curse those who attack me in the next [five minutes].” She spoke aloud for the first time in front of an audience. The reaction was immediate, as people stopped in their tracks.
The crowd was visibly thrown off for the second time, some of them reeling at the fact that she talked, and then paled as they realized that they heard the words echoing in their heads. Evelyn frowned, and then realized that she had unconsciously [Broadcast]ed while she talked at a ‘low data’ frequency humans could pick up. It was an analogue to psychic communication, and they probably mistook it for true telepathy.
Switching between [Broadcasts] and actual words while talking with QA had Evelyn grow accustomed to doing it unconsciously.
‘I’m digging my own grave, aren’t I?’
She was prepared for another wave of attacks to head her way, and it seemed she didn't have to wait long. Thankfully, it seemed her [Wish] worked. A butch woman riding a monstrous dog crashed into a tinker in forest green and gold power armor that reminded her of a dragon…Bitch and Defiant? Most likely. They fell into a heap in a rather… compromising position. Goddess's cape and clothes got snagged by an exposed rebar, and her attempt to quickly dislodge herself to avoid a stray laser resulted in a gross ‘wardrobe malfunction’. Things devolved into chaos as Evelyn’s would-be attackers flailed around and the ‘accidents’ started to add up into a big mess that reminded her more of an orgy rather than a pile-up.
They eventually wised up and stopped attacking, and stared at each other uncertainly. Defiant, having managed to compose himself stepped forward and Tattletale followed close behind him. Glaistig Uaine also approached from the side, but didn't attack either.
All of them were staring intently at her body as Taylor sank into her torso. The young woman was almost completely submerged into the portal now. Only a few more minutes, and she’ll be safe with her 'passenger'.
"You can talk." Defiant spoke, his words more of a statement of fact than an actual question.
Evelyn considered him for a moment. "I can", she replied, careful not to accidentally mix in her broadcasts again.
"Are you an endbringer?" He asked, only to be interrupted by tattletale. "She is. But she's also different. More human than the others."
"I fall into the same category" Evelyn confirmed. "And I am indeed different. My obj-[Primary Directives] are different." She frowned as she realized that she did it again, as evident by how Lisa and Colin twitched.
Evelyn suppressed the urge to groan by letting her 'shard brain' take control of her expressions and body language.
"Understanding is an effective tool, don’t you think? What you did with the [Warrior] is proof enough of that." Then she realized how threatening that sounded.
'I wonder, is my wish messing with me, or do I just word things poorly?' she wondered.
“Warrior?”
‘Shit.’ Evelyn cursed in her head. ‘Why do I keep having trouble with speech? I might as well have put my foot in my mouth. Its the wish, isn't it? Oh well, I guess that I may as well lean into the role.’
“[War-]” Evelyn cut herself off again, annoyed. “Scion.”
They started, and the Fairy Queen tilted her head.
“Why do you call him that?” Tattletale asked.
“They come in pairs, yes? A warrior and a Thinker. They both have the same pieces, but they use them differently. You know what I'm talking about”
"Does it have anything to do with why you're doing...that." Asked someone from behind, Legend.
"What are you doing with her?" Tattletale asked, a tremor in her voice. She had a sad look in her eyes. She knew something but wanted confirmation.
"I'll be sending her somewhere safe. That is what you wanted, yes? I require her alive, and you want her out of your hair." Evelyn gestured at the agitated crowd, who tensed at the motion.
"She's your Eidolon" the blonde whispered in dawning horror, her power most likely coming to the wrong conclusion. Defiant glanced at her sharply. Evelyn remained silent, deciding not to correct the misunderstanding.
While it galled her to play into the role of an inhuman monster, Evelyn realized that it was simply the easiest way to get them to take her seriously. Even if her actions would be scrutinized and met with paranoia, it would allow her to get away with a lot of things.
Things that would inevitably cause a lot of problems and step on a lot of toes.
"Well, I’ll be off then. I have things to do, places to be, girls to fix."
"Why are you doing this?" Defiant asked.
"What do you mean? Why save a broken girl? Why leave so soon after attacking? Do you [Wish] to know my goals?"
"All of the above." Tattletale interrupted again, preventing Colin from answering for some reason. 'Why does she look so wary though?' Then it clicked. 'Ah I broadcasted again didn't I? Oh, and such a wonderful word to do it to as well. With how I disabled them earlier, they might have caught up on it by now. What do they think of me, I wonder?' Evelyn mused.
Evelyn almost sighed when she realized that she'll have to continue this charade. “I attacked in order to complete my goal. Nothing more, nothing less. I understand enough about humanity to know that conflict will follow you anywhere you go. I don’t really have to do anything. Open up an opportunity with enough people watching to ensure there is a conflict of interest, and that’s all it would take for humans to wage war with each other. If I could already do that while completing my objectives, there is simply no need to go any further than I already have.”
“You can lie”
“True, but misdirection is better, yes? I can tell the truth to your face, and you’ll mistake it for something so incorrect that it’s hilarious.” True, and very ironic words given what was happening.
"What is your purpose? What are you planning?" Defiant asked gruffly. Tattletale glanced at him oddly. “You don’t think she’ll just tell us all her plans, do you?”
Evelyn smirked. “Oh, I think I will." She purred. "You [Wish] for a place to evacuate to, to establish a base of operations, to undo her mutilation in peace, don't you? Worry not, I will open up a portal to an Earth you’re unfamiliar with in a week’s time. It’ll be ready with all the resources you could possibly hope for. Enough to build an entire city anew! Aren’t I gracious?” Defiant froze, staring at her intently.
Evelyn planned on opening a permanent portal anyways, mainly to help out all the refugees who were evacuating Earth Bet, but also because she wanted to get some things done at the same time.
Warning them ahead of time would avoid a lot of problems.
“What’s the catch?” He asked.
“Ah, that’s telling, isn’t it? But I’ll be courteous enough to answer. The 'catch' is that you won’t be alone on the other side. If you ignore the portal long enough, I’m sure something will find its way here. Oh, and I’ll leave you with a surprise I just know you’ll love.” What better way to annoy a science nut than to throw literal magic in his face?
Evelyn was conflicted though. She had thought long and hard about the topic of her Portal's capabilities and how she could use them to help the people here.
Any portal she opens to an alternate world for this purpose had to be carefully picked.
Alternate ‘mundane’ earths were right out. Aleph had context for parahumans, and even had some of their own, and even then they reacted badly when Haywire’s portal was opened. Earths similar to her own that had no context for parahumans at all would react… badly.
They wouldn’t be able to support refugees of such large numbers without undergoing a crisis either.
Setting them up with an empty world was also a recipe for disaster. Parahumans were already a powder keg waiting to go off, and their shards won’t take too kindly to being denied of their precious data... Leaving them alone in a space free of conflict would only cause them to make problems on their own accord.
Science fiction worlds close to their current era were right out. Either side would be more than happy enough to start a war with each other over their limited resources at the slightest excuse. Especially the ones that haven’t entered the space age yet or were close to doing so.
The universes that had entered the space age or had high technology she did know of were either facing apocalyptic scenarios of their own, functioned at a scale that even a full blown Entity would have trouble working around, or were flat out bullshit.
It wasn’t fair to the Parahumans, or even the shards if she opened portals to such worlds.
So that left fantasy worlds.
Evelyn, for all that she had been familiar with comics and manga and fantasy literature, DIDN’T know a lot of worlds that could contest with parahumans without one side steamrolling the other. The issue with the ones that were evenly matched overall, was that they were dark, or fell under the dreaded 'isekai' category. The ones she were familiar with at least. Much of that was an unfortunate consequence of Evelyn’s preference for darker and edgier reading material, but they would have to suffice.
Evelyn suspected that she would also find it incredibly cathartic.
After all, wouldn't it be interesting to watch an edgy fantasy world be shown the error of its ways by throwing a bunch of superheroes and supervillains used to dealing with such bullshit?
Parahumans had their own brand of stupidity but Evelyn believed it could be channeled.
"A monkey’s paw?" Defiant asked, his voice soft.
"Indeed. I will grant any [Wish] you want fulfilled, all your desires and fantasies. But how confident are you about dealing with the consequences?"
-x-
"Parahumans had their own brand of stupidity but I believe it could be channeled" - Evelyn, June 24th, 2013.
