Chapter 8: Virtue
Thorn manages to not crack over the revelation, although she does need a while to process it.
Like, a long while.
But eventually, she stands up from the chair, and sighs with a combo of exasperation and slight emotional pain before opening her mouth.
"Alright, I'm done processing… well, most of it." She announces, prompting Revenant to nod with well-concealed relief. "I swear, I didn't have a single moment of calmness in my life ever since I met you… then again…" She realizes it, but he doesn't let her say it.
"Yeah, because you apparently met the supposed protagonist." He says, making her groan loudly. "Yeah, sorry, I didn't exactly choose to be the villain protagonist of a superhero comic book, you know?"
"I'm aware," Thorn replies. "You, of all people, have a lot of things that you would want to play out differently in your life. Not being some supposed Author's plaything of a protagonist sounds like something near the top of the list."
Hard to disagree with that. Then again, he has manipulated, tricked or backstabbed so many people that it really feels like karma (not like Thorn believes in the concept and, honestly, neither does Revenant) at work.
The two of them are alone for the moment. Revenant dutifully waited for her to come around, occasionally answering her questions. She was his former classmate, after all. And a long-time co-worker.
That stays with you.
"Probably the reason why you look so much better nowadays." Thorn then comments, surprising him slightly. "I don't think I've ever seen you stay around for so long without an angry scowl or that poker face look on your face since the start of the Second Villain War. Enjoying your free will?"
"I'm just thinking of it as a form of retirement." He admits. "I haven't had anyone tortured or executed and I haven't ordered a terrorist attack or an assassination attempt ever since my New Game+ started. It's been, what? Three days? Four days? That's almost the longest continuous period of not doing any of that ever since the day Archvile finally kicked the bucket." Then he freezes for a moment. "Wait, I forgot about the Vermillion Gamma command bot, it was technically a robotic version of enhanced interrogation. And, to be honest, Humility did that on their own."
Thorn ignores the whole part about tortures, execution, terrorist attacks and assassination attempts. She knows he was doing a lot of that, you don't become the United States' most wanted supervillain by being nice. The other half of the brief speech, though…
"What about the AI?" She asks, and… yes, Revenant expected this sort of reaction. "I don't enjoy the idea of unleashing a self-proclaimed Slaughterer of Billions upon the Galaxy." Or, 'should we kill it together', if you translated that to English.
The big problem with former heroes in the villainous organization - a lot of them had morals left. This made cooperation problematic, at least until living in the underworld either eroded said morals into full-blown villainy or made them embrace vigilantism.
Revenant, somewhat, cannot imagine Thorn doing either. That was an impressive moral spine, one that neither bent nor broke. In a way, she was always the VAA voice of conscience, even if often ignored. All while doing only the things she personally agreed with, despite being his villain lieutenant.
She was surprisingly good at doing things to improve the VAA's public image. Which, well, Revenant was somewhat exploiting her for, with full awareness of the fact. There was a reason why she was left in the dark about a lot of the things that he was doing.
And when she was fed up with all of that, she left. Right in the nick of time, to be honest.
"To be honest, neither do I," Revenant admits. "For purely pragmatic purposes, though. We can expect whatever law enforcement agencies local Mankind has to hunt us for sport over doing that, and that's basically making us the public enemies of about one hundred trillion people. But for the foreseeable future, we need it."
She stares at him for a few seconds before answering. Seeing how their last meeting went, he can't help but be slightly worried. However…
"Very well, I'll trust you with that." She says, surprising him. She must have noticed it (he really got lousy with that nowadays, didn't he?). "I'll trust the current you with that. The you that actually seem capable of smiling, especially when Onslaught's around. The you that's Analyst more than Revenant in all but name."
…
Sigh. Yes, he's definitely getting lousy. Decay doesn't care, Onslaught only knew Analyst, and Clockmaker's social skills were scattered all around (besides, she was too busy thirsting over Humility and being excited over all the new technology she could get her hands on), but Thorn did notice it.
He was… acting out of character. Which was honestly understandable with Onslaught being back alive and him no longer being restrained by the plot.
"Just keep the machine away from me as much as possible." She then adds, with a frown on the verge of becoming an angry scowl. "I'm ready to tolerate its existence, but I'd prefer to tolerate it from a distance."
That's perfectly understandable.
***
As Virtue continues to grow up in the tube, they all take a moment to do a quick journey to the 'open space' that Humility detected. It's pretty much how Revenant imagined it - namely, it's nothing.
Literally just a large, empty hall. Not that far from the resurrection chamber and the improvised barracks. Should be perfect.
"That should work." Thorn makes her professional assessment after looking around the hall. "I will need Virtue for the light and Hypothermia for water if we want me to get anywhere close to the maximum possible output, but… it should work."
"Can someone enlighten me as to her individuality?" Humility decides to speak. "I figured out that it's some sort of a green thumb thing from the context and the colour and texture of her hair, but…"
Thorn extends her hand, her palm facing the floor. A moment later, something materializes out of thin air right above the floor, beneath her hand.
It's an apple tree.
Well, something akin to it. It's more of a twisted combination of roots failing to find purchase into the metal floor (though some of them did manage to gnaw through a metal crate), producing a single, slightly tilted, tree-like protrusion.
There are some branches, but no leaves. And off the branches, some apple fruits are hanging. Their colour is a rather sickly grey.
"Ah, yes." Humility comments from the background. "Creating living plants while spawning nutrients and all the molecular structure of said plants from nowhere at will. How utterly scientific."
He can practically taste the existential horror in its voice. Humility is going to have a stroke when it meets Overhaul or Demiurge, Revenant decides.
Thorn tears one of the apples off the tree and throws it at Revenant. The supervillain looks down at its weird colour and coarse skin, thinks it over, and then throws it at Decay.
"Boss, I fucking hate you." Decay grumbles before taking a bite. To the surprise of them all, he actually doesn't puke and manages to swallow it without looking significantly displeased. "Tastes like wet paper."
He knows what he's saying, Revenant actually caught him eating wet paper because he was hungry, too busy playing a videogame to go prepare something serious and had some paper nearby.
He considered dumping it for a moment in an energy drink to qualify as 'cooking'.
Getting married really improved his diet and general lifestyle. Also, his wife was practically a living saint with the patience she showed for him. Living saint, well, if you excluded the part where… let's just say that even Revenant was somewhat uncomfortable with what happened to her father.
Revenant glances at Thorn in an unspoken plea for an explanation.
"I can create my plants everywhere I want, but the quality and speed of the output depend on the external factors," Thorn replies. She is speaking to Revenant, but actually providing an explanation to Humility whom she just prefers to ignore. "Water helps. Sunlight helps. Soil would help a lot, or in the absence, anything that the roots can drain of nutrients and microelements during their accelerated growth. Unfortunately, the side effect of that process is sterilizing the material."
"In short, individualities can and will violate laws of physics, but when possible they will pick the path of least resistance." Humility comments. "Such as the case presented right here, with Thorn's individuality capable of creating matter from nowhere, but only very basic and mostly dysfunctional one unless it wasn't matter creation but just accelerated transmutation. Makes sense, on some level."
It pauses for a moment, only to start speaking again just as Revenant started to open his mouth.
"It probably creates matter based on light as an energy source, water in either vapour or liquid form and whatever it manages to suck out of the ground." Humility continues. "That should cover most of the molecules it needs to create basic plant life, aside from carbon that it creates out of nowhere or performs some twisted form of cold fusion process to assemble it from other compounds. But the result probably lacks most of the nutrients and other microelements, unless it gets more raw materials and fuel to…"
Thorn glances at Revenant.
"You sure you two aren't related?" She asks. Revenant sighs. Yeah, the Analyst was… very enthusiastic about individualities and very prone towards mumble storms like this one. He got more restrained about it after he became Revenant.
"We're not." Revenant replies, Humility finally going quiet. "But I think that it's not dealing quite well with the fact that individualities are parascientific bullshit. Even I had a phase when it bothered me at night until I rationalized them as narrow reality warping that works under the paradigm of the path of least resistance. Meaning that, as Humility already implied, it won't break the laws of science if it can bend them and it won't bend them if it can avoid that. Simple as that."
Humility doesn't seem happy about science being violated in front of it. But eventually, it seems to get over it.
"After seeing a mass driver that can fire rounds that reach its target at the very same moment they were fired, regardless of distance…" Humility states. "...a universal cognitohazard weapon capable of infecting anything that perceives it, regardless of its species and yes, it includes AIs… and, well, that one planet-killing superweapon that eradicates the target so thoroughly that it includes memories of it, making even the person that pulled the trigger no longer know why they pulled the trigger… I think I'm capable of withstanding this new bullshit without an AI equivalent of a stroke. Especially as all of that has a common element of being an exotech. So, I'm going to treat this whole individuality bullshit as one more case of exotech bullshit and go on with my life."
Wow, the modern Galaxy has to be a glorious mess. Revenant is amused, intrigued and terrified in equal measures.
"Any ideas for obtaining a proper fertilizer?" Thorn decides to ignore Humility again. Revenant has a feeling that this is going to happen often. "Even a small addition of some organic matter should significantly improve the quality of foodstuffs I can produce." Sure it does.
Not to mention obtaining a lot of it is a good way of getting themselves some actual soil. Unless they end up finding some of it, somewhere in this mess of a planet. Except, for now… the situation is a bit complicated.
"Aside from some alien brains and maybe some human waste, nope." He replies. "We'll deliver the former to you as soon as Virtue's up and running." Thorn nods.
"Wait." Humility actually decides to speak. "You're going to eat Vermillion Gamma's brains?"
"First of all, not quite." Revenant replies, while glancing at the AI weirdly. "We're going to have Thorn's plants suck all the nutrients out of them to produce food for us. We've tested her individuality with toxic or even irradiated materials, and the result is still perfectly normal food. So the results of using Vermillion Gamma's brain should be perfectly edible. Second of all, why not? Beggars can't be choosers."
Humility actually seems confused about it. He seems confused about it being confused. They didn't have a lot of resources, so they simply weren't in a position to be irrational about it.
"I…" Onslaught suddenly decides to speak. "... think that you shouldn't mention how we got the food to future members you'll be feeding it. I, for example, think that I slightly lost my appetite now."
Oh. Oops. He didn't think about it, but… Onslaught is from before the Second Villain War. She didn't live through the really tough times.
"So, one of the first things you did after coming to this world was to start organizing a farm, one using corpses of sapient aliens you slaughtered as fertilizer, and seeing completely nothing wrong with that." Humility - the self-proclaimed genocidal AI and the Slaughterer of Billions - announces. "You know what, seeing the state of the Mankind of the 26th century, you're going to fit right in."
… now that's just being mean. Revenant is completely aware of the moral implications of what he is doing, and he knows that it's not exactly the morally best option. It's just the best of the available ones.
"'Using corpses of chaotic evil sapient aliens that routinely harvest human brains as fertilizer'." Revenant corrects the AI. "Also, seeing as we're using their brains for it, it's basically karma at work. Yes, I know that karma doesn't exist and is a heathen eastern concept, it was just a figure of speech. Thank you for your input, Thorn."
Thorn huffs at him, with slight irritation clearly audible. But she says nothing. For now.
***
They end up chatting for a moment about the present state of agriculture. Decay announced that he isn't interested in growing food (only in eating food), and left, helping Onslaught leave as well.
Thorn is mostly getting the technological update from Humility, with neither of them speaking to the other. Instead, the Revenant has to be there to act as the middle-man. Clockmaker is also there, but that's mostly due to the word 'technological' being there.
He is pretty much the youngest of the people remaining in the room (even if Thorn is older than he is by a few months). Why does he feel like a father having to deal with several kids that got into an argument and now don't want to talk with each other?
Turns out that Mankind has mostly gone past the concept of soil-based agriculture… to a large degree, that is. There is still a lot of conventional farming done on planetary surfaces, to the point the concept of Wh40k Agri-World is kind of a thing.
However, outside of that, you can expect a different approach. Hydroponics are apparently treated as mostly outdated, with aeroponics being the new hot thing, at least when farming aboard starships, starbases or closed colonies was involved.
You took a plant, put it in a harness that left it hanging literally mid-air, then sprayed the roots with some carefully calculated doses of nutrients it needed to grow. A bit time-consuming, but used only a minuscule fraction of water that hydroponics or traditional agriculture needed.
It was already starting to be a thing in their times, though hydroponics tended to dominate outside of Earth. Things changed.
However, this actually played in their favour. What they were doing was pretty much spicier aeroponics, circumnavigating the lack of technological background with superpowers. In the end, though, it was a bit too much for them to bear.
They settled on having Decay carve out basins in the floor that would be then filled with water and have as much organic matter (from non-human corpses through human waste to rotten food they failed to eat in time) dumped into it, before having Thorn grow her plants in it.
A big positive of her individuality was that her plants left nothing behind for as long as you grew enough of them to exhaust the supply of nutrients. Nothing. You could make the smelliest, most disgusting pile of sewage vanish entirely in a matter of seconds, taking the smell with it.
During her brief career as an 'actual' sidekick, she ended up participating in an international relief mission to a country ravaged by an earthquake. Her ability to convert all manner of organic waste into edible food allowed her to simultaneously prevent outbreaks of diseases and feed an entire refugee camp.
When cornered, she could make it clear that she could control the way her plants grew to entangle her enemies. When really cornered, she could probably make it clear that her plants don't differentiate sources of nutrients unless she tells them to, meaning that they could easily and quickly devour a living human being.
Individualities were somewhat scary.
***
That whole conversation was somewhat enlightening but also… exhausting. Revenant was mostly motivated throughout it by the fact that once it was all done, he could go and hug Onslaught without any further interruptions. Or the feeling that he was cutting corners and that could come back to bite them all in the asses.
That was a very good motivation. It was also a distinctly non-villainous motivation. To the degree where it actually left him confused a bit. Then again, he was running for the past few years on the 'I want to die the right way' motivation, one that… kind of didn't work.
He couldn't really run on it anymore. And while 'if I won't do it, we'll all die' was a good motivation, maybe, just maybe, he should try picking up some… positive motivations along the way? Something minor? Something remarkably… human? This, in his opinion, works.
Even if it makes him feel like a shonen anime protagonist. Despite death being the only thing that stopped him from being prosecuted by a post-war tribunal for crimes against Mankind.
***
"I get the feeling…" He decides to ask Humility while they are all on their way back to the barracks (to pick up Virtue's clothes) before heading to the resurrection chamber. "... that modern Mankind isn't exactly all that friendly. You know, from your earlier reaction to my refusal to waste available resources."
"Ever heard of Stellaris?" Humility replies with a question. "You know, the 21st Century videogame?"
Okay. First of all, did people still know about Stellaris in the 26th Century? Second of all, Humility was throwing out everything it didn't need out of its hard drive and it somehow left behind Stellaris' know-how?
Now he can't help but imagine Humility spending lonely evenings while playing Determined Exterminators or other Machine civs. Was there a mod that allowed those to - eventually - do a reverse cybernetic ascension and become organic beings?
Revenant was from the 22nd Century, and he only knew about that game because Decay was absolutely fixated on ancient (non-VR) games and pulled him into the meetings of the Anachronic Videogames Club members that he was a part of. A few times, in fact.
"Yes." He replies while noting down the fact that AI assumed it to be a good way of explaining the situation to him. Did he mention his videogame interests during the parts of his story that it apparently had the comic versions of? "What about it?"
"Mankind nowadays is divided between a five-digit number of ethnopolities, scattered all throughout the spectrums of authoritarianism-egalitarianism and spiritualism-materialism, not to mention any imaginable combinations of civics and government forms." Humility replies. "But two things are almost uniformly consistent. They are all either militarist or fanatically militarist… and even the most xenophilic of them wouldn't be considered xenophilic by the standards of your times." They continue walking down the corridor in silence for a few seconds before Humility speaks again. "It's just that kind of Galaxy."
Since the first aliens he encountered are actively harvesting human brains to make wetware CPUs out of them, he thinks that he understands the last sentence.
***
Humility didn't say a thing, but it did stare at Revenant without a single word when it realized that the clothes waiting for them in the barracks - the ones belonging to Virtue - included a colourful spandex bodysuit.
And a cape. Also colourful.
Cape and bodysuit were a mixture of blue, yellow and red. On the chest was a small rendition of the seal of the state of Minnesota.
"Another 'hero' of the People's Liberation Front." He replies. "Virtue, the former Top Hero of Minnesota. You needed to be the Number One to be allowed to incorporate the state seal into your hero uniform."
And damn, if she wasn't a heavy-hitter. Onslaught was a terror in close quarters, but Virtue was a nightmare at almost any distance. Top Heroes in general were terrifying.
The Hero Association had its official Threat Assessment Ranking System (TARS, for short), covering both heroes and villains. Something akin to 'how little shit are we allowed to give to the concept of collateral damage' for the heroes facing villains. All while telling them if the villain wasn't way out of their league.
It didn't always work well, but it was a good if rough summary of the situation.
Thorn was an A-Rank, mostly due to the environmental factors limiting the firepower of her individuality. Onslaught and Decay were S-Ranks, due to high combat capabilities (even if the former never really got to showcase it).
Virtue was an SS-Rank. So was Clockmaker, but in her case, it was mostly due to her organization being a massive thorn in the side, and more of a threat than she was herself. But to be honest, she was also incredibly dangerous in combat.
Revenant was, technically, an SSS-Rank (the highest level), but his Threat Rating came mostly from his underlings, his position as the president of the Villain Alliance and his propensity to respond to ambushes with 'all according to the keikaku' moments.
Which was typically lethal to everyone involved in said ambush.
Virtue, in the meantime, got her SS-Rank designator purely for her combat capabilities. That meant… a lot. Such as the fact that if she didn't like the changed situation, she was probably capable of outfighting them all.
Well, those who don't take risks, don't get big prizes.
***
"You've gotta be kidding me." Humility comments, Revenant almost hearing actual emotions in the kidding word. Like, wow, he didn't know it actually could display emotions in its voice.
The AI is staring at the figure in the tube. Other than her, the only people in the room are Onslaught and Decay. Plus, of course, Revenant. Who doesn't quite trust his new 'organization' enough to let them do such important things without his supervision.
"Understandable reaction." Revenant nods with a thoughtful expression. "She was pretty much a major celebrity with her looks alone. Seeing her in some luxurious female underwear commercial really left an impact, I gotta tell you that much. The body shape alone is…"
"I meant the fact that one of your earliest-summoned villains has a pair of angelic wings on their back." Humility replies. Onslaught actually chuckles in the background, drawing Humility's faceplate to her. Yeah, Revenant was pretending to be a dumbass. It was fun!
"Ehh, she actually thinks they are a bother." He replies. "Keeps getting in the way, a lot of work to keep them clean and shiny, can't even be seriously used to fly. Though they look pretty cool and compliment her individuality for the sake of angelic aesthetics."
He isn't quite ready to give Humility an explanation of how the mutant individualities work. Besides, he is curious to see if Humility will ask about it.
"Hey, tin can, did you ever die in a nuclear blast?" Decay suddenly asks, drawing all the attention to him for a moment and throwing Revenant's plan for the talk through the window.
"In a manner of speaking, yes." Humility then surprises Revenant. Both with the answer AND with the fact that it actually responded to being referred to as 'tin can'. "I did lose one of my previous iterations that way. Why do you ask?"
Previous iterations? Revenant will need to find out what it meant by it. In the meantime, Decay sighs loudly.
"Because everyone in that fucking room, Virtue included, died in a nuclear blast. Aside from me." Decay then says. "I feel like it's foreshadowing or something. And I don't like the implications."
Oh, right. Now that he points it out, it's actually kind of hilarious. Clockmaker technically counted too (if she was there), due to her ship suffering a catastrophic failure of its main power source - a nuclear reactor - because of a stray shot during her attempt to escape off Ceres.
He suddenly isn't sure if letting her build their escape ship is a good idea.
"She died in the same blast as Revenant did?" Onslaught asks. "I don't remember her being in New Liberty when I died."
"No, it was… errr, it was yet another nuke." Revenant replies.
"Wait, so how many nukes went off on American soil while I was dead, exactly?" Onslaught then asks, sounding completely shocked about the subject.
Enough for Revenant to make sure that Chronoshift had the iodine pills in her backpack each time she went to school because he was… maybe slightly overprotective but with actually valid reasons to worry this time.
"I strongly suspect that the Author either thought that nukes were cool or was from Japan and had a grudge over Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Revenant replies, while dodging the subject. Somewhat. "Humility, let her out."
It's time to face the music.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Mirrond44
Mirrond44 Gonna get a quick look at the past chapters to do some minor fixes. I really should have used grammarly properly from the start, sigh.
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