[Blood & Tears: Phase 32] On Attack
Hope and the gang get a call from the Network Core, and Hope tells Wade that even without the Auditor, they have people capable of holding their own against the invaders.
warnings: Movieverse (as-yet unnumbered Earth version; NOT Earth-616/Main Comicverse) with bits of the Wolverine Gameverse and B&T ficverse mushed onto it. incredible amounts of AU and technobabble. some more shameless exposition, lol. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus s*** and f***).
pairing: Logan/Wade (with hints of Nate/Wade and Nat/Wade).
timeline: other than "right after Going to War," doesn't matter.
disclaimer: i doesn't owns the movies or the characters. or the assorted objects of pop culture reference.
notes: 1) Tony's one of those characters that either worries about everything while pretending not to worry about anything, or worries about everything and doesn't bother to pretend otherwise. you have now met a Tony who doesn't bother to pretend. 2) i think the conversation with Natalie makes it clear what her priorities are: she wants the thief stopped first, and then they can worry about cleaning up after him. needs of the many, etc. 3) and the other secretly awesome part about Earth-505 -- it's got itself a giant cold-storage facility of high-entropy subjects who volunteered to be imprisoned rather than erased. more details on that will be in the Fateverse Glossary.
visit The Fateverse Glossary for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.
On Attack
Hope pulled a clean shirt on and sighed. Part of her wanted to quit, wanted to curl up in a corner and hide, wanted to cry like a baby… But she’d already wasted too much time. She’d sat alone in the dark for three hours while her father worried and everyone in the compound was left ignorant and panicking.
Three hours. She was honestly a little surprised they hadn’t done something desperate like turning off the limiters on various high-entropy operatives at the compound. There was a lot to be said for the ability to detonate matter at will or remake existence…but most of it was pretty negative, and the twins tended to get a little over-excited without their limiters.
She looked at herself in the mirror-her face was pale, and her eyes were still puffy from all the crying she’d already done.
No. She didn’t have time to shed any more tears.
On the bathroom counter, Kali beeped and flashed blue. ~Full dataread from Central Database complete.~
So Hope shook her head at herself and grabbed the Node. “Transmit it to the base computer. Tony and Dr. Richards need that info.” With one last deep, cleansing breath, she opened the door and strode back out into the war room.
Their visitors were still eating, talking to Tony between bites.
The Traveler looked so steady and in-control…just like Wade always had. And now she was the Auditor, and she had to learn to be the same. Everyone would be counting on her. Whole timelines would be counting on her. Wade had never failed an auditing assignment.
“I meant for you to take a bit of a break, Tony,” she said pointedly, hands on her hips. “You’re looking especially neurotic today. Take a deep breath, go get some coffee.”
Tony gestured between a clipboard and the Traveler. “You-but they-the Auditor’s dead and we’re in the middle of an invasion-we haven’t had word one from the Network-of course I’m looking especially neurotic!”
She took him by the shoulders and half-shoved, half-dragged him to Steve. “Cap, take this. Feed it some coffee and make it relax for five minutes.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Steve replied bemusedly.
Just as she was going to sit with the Traveler and ask him about his first-hand experience with their enemies, the central computer beeped.
~Incoming transmission from Network Core.~
Dr. Richards bustled to the table console. “Verify user identity of sender.”
~Sender verified: Data Analyst 109.~
Hope waved the Traveler over. “Punch it up, Dr. Richards.”
The mad scientist pressed a button, and the projection of the compound became an image of a woman in an Analyst’s uniform. She had brown hair with a white streak through it, and a certain expression of well-meaning pomposity that Hope associated with her father.
“Okay, that is not fair,” the Traveler complained. “You’re even hot as a chick. Bet I’m not hot as a chick…”
The Analyst pursed her lips. ~You must be the Traveler. I’m glad you’re already on the scene, but I need to speak with the Auditor.~
Hope nodded. “Hope Summers AR553-Omega,” she said.
The Analyst returned her polite nod. ~Natalie Summers NC288. Auditor, we received data to the effect that custody of Node 218 Kali had transferred due to phase-leveling. Please give your father my condolences.~
“Thank you, Natalie,” Hope’s father said, stepping up to the table.
For a moment, the Analyst simply looked at him and blinked. Hope wondered what was going through her mind. It seemed like…jealousy? Then she looked at Hope again. ~Auditor, according to the DBA, someone has stolen sixteen Nodes and is probably after more. Is Kali secure?~
“Fifteen, actually,” said the Traveler. “And he’s only got fourteen now. Oracle’s at the bottom of an ocean somewhere, and he left Archimedes with the team that attacked here.”
“And yes, Kali is right here,” Hope finished.
~You’re still engaged with the enemy?~
The Traveler wiggled a hand. “Sort of. The Hunter’s MIA, but his buddies are trying very hard to get Kali.”
The Analyst’s eyes widened. ~The Node-thief is unaccounted for?~
“That’s what I just said Nate-Nat, sorry. But don’t start with the lecture on irresponsibility and ‘you should be out doing blah-blah-blah,’ because one of your manlier counterparts offed the Auditor and made my princess cry. This is a matter of horrible vengeful pride.”
“Wade, stop mentioning that part,” Hope hissed in mortification.
The Analyst frowned. ~Make it quick, Traveler. Some of the primary bundles are still at risk-and several of them haven’t made first contact with the Network yet. When Anthony made the last Node, he modeled it off one of our Keepers. We haven’t put it through any exhaustive testing, and I’m sure it was thoroughly user-locked, but this Hunter guy cannot get that Node.~
“Okay, which Node?” Hope prompted.
~Node 250 Eight-ball. It’s a Priority Alpha, Auditor-that Node was modeled on the Savant, and I’m not actually sure it’s bound by the Smart Node Laws.~
Hope frowned. “You don’t know? How can a Smart Node not be bound by the Laws?”
The Analyst flushed. ~Well, Auditor, to be quite frank, all data on Eight-ball is top-classified, and I don’t have the clearance for it. All my information beyond name and number is hearsay from the Node’s designer. Anthony regards the thing as the most brilliant toy he’s ever built, which is slightly worrying.~
“Enthusiastic Tony Starks have that effect on people,” Dr. Richards admitted.
A top-classified Smart Node modeled after Keeper 056. Hope had to agree that this ‘Hunter’ could not be allowed to capture the Node. “All right. My clearance should let me query the DB for more info on that Node. We’ll take care of that as soon as we get rid of our unwelcome guests.”
The Analyst slowly nodded. ~All right,~ she said. ~Good luck, Auditor.~
And the transmission cut out.
“God,” muttered the Traveler. “Fucking pompous know-it-alls.”
“I apologize for my multiple existence,” her father said drily.
“Liar; you like being pompous. Who the hell is ‘the Savant’?”
Sighing, Hope took a seat at the table. “Keeper 056, a mind-only Keeper who traces timelines better than Nodes do. He leads the Timeline Demolition Squad, and he’s never had to spend more than two months local time on a collapse.”
“Oh, them,” muttered the visiting Logan. “Not sure how reassuring that is: ‘your timeline destroyed in under two months or your money back.’”
“Mr. Logan, if that Node has intuition, and this Node-thief gets it, the entire multiverse is screwed.”
“Nice, a little crystal ball with a personality and a sense of intuition, that’s brilliant. Does this super-technology-stuff kill all common sense?”
Hope scowled and gripped Kali. “Kali, query the Database again. I want the full Node ident for Node 250.”
~Query acknowledged,~ the Node said.
“In the meantime,” said Dr. Richards, pressing more buttons on the table console, “I believe we received the dossiers on the five invaders.”
Five files appeared over the table-vital stats, abilities, immunities, notable timeline events.
“Who got all this info?” the Traveler asked, propping his feet up on the table (and disrupting a few lines of text at the bottom of Evil-Nathan’s file).
Hope subsided into a thoughtful squint while the text scrolled. “Um. We have Keepers whose job is strictly recon. Mostly, it’s done by a particular Steve Rogers, the Cartographer. When we need info on a branch and we don’t have it, he moves several Nodes to neighboring branches for the preliminary scans; if it’s safe enough, he goes in with his primary Node, Magellan, and does a scan of the resonance phase and any electronic data the branch keeps.”
“Never heard of the guy.”
“I’m not surprised; we keep him away from Wades, because his signature does weird things to their minds.”
“A mind-bending Cap with a Node named Magellan. You seriously cannot make this shit up.”
She rolled her eyes and looked at him, but he was already distracted with twining his fingers through Logan’s. It hit her then, that no matter how much he might think and talk like her father’s husband, he was a very different Wade. She still didn’t know why he called his Logan ‘Jamie.’
She could cheat. She could borrow her father’s powers and sneak a peek.
Hope shook her head at herself. She didn’t like borrowing other people’s powers, because it was an awkward and finicky process, like suddenly growing an extra limb that she didn’t really know how to use-Wade once said that most Hopes had a better grasp on that aspect of their powers than the pure resonance, but she really couldn’t imagine ever finding it easy. The first time she had accidentally borrowed from a high-entropy subject had scared her to her bones, and she had never again questioned their use of limiters.
“Anyway,” she went on, turning her eyes back to the files, “the Auditor used to have the job of filling in blanks. If a timeline wasn’t safe for the Cartographer, they sent the Auditor. He was considered to be the single most capable agent of the entire Network.”
“Well, we see how that went,” drawled Logan.
The words stung, but she mutely acknowledged that he had a point.
“You guys have anybody likely to be helpful in a fight against this kind of firepower?” the Traveler asked after a while. “And the last time I was here, there was chai. Very good chai. And I want one now.”
She blinked at him, vaguely realizing that he didn’t know he’d said anything wrong. “Uh. Yes. Right. Doreen, could you?”
Doreen looked at her, motioned toward Hope’s father with her tail.
Hope nodded.
Quickly, Doreen hooked Nathan’s arm and tugged him toward the door. “Commander, you look like you could use some of that coffee Tony went to get.”
When the door hissed closed, everyone in the room breathed a sigh of relief. Hope found a pen and threw it at the Traveler. “Dad’s the one who always made Wade’s chai. But thanks for reminding him that his husband is a spatter on the wall of a dark room.”
“Too soon?” he asked with careless would-be innocence. “Returning to my question, and the fact that we’re facing down nasty, hard-to-kill people.”
“Yes, a few. Our timeline is very, very stable, so we have a null-res containment facility where we store certain powerful high-entropy subjects on a strictly voluntary basis. The ones whose powers we have the tech to reliably limit have some degree of freedom, and if we happen to need some backup on a tough re-tuning, we can turn off their limiters and let them have full use of their abilities.”
He tilted his head as he watched the files scroll for a bit. “Got a Wanda?”
“Got a set of her twins,” Hope replied.
“Close enough. Them, plus me ‘n Jamie, plus your molecule-dissolving dad… That oughtta do the trick.”
She sat up a little straighter. “If you want, I could…I mean, I can use other people’s powers a little…”
“But you don’t like it,” he said, as if he’d been reading her mind. “And the twins scare you.”
“That’s-no-Will’s a really nice guy.”
“Who can unmake the world.”
She sagged in her chair again. “…okay, yeah, Will and Tom kinda scare the crap out of me.”
“Good. Means you’re not an idiot like your father.”
.End.
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