Stupid Clever Question of the Week...

So if Sister Psyche attempted to "piggyback" on Mirror Spirit... would that be the equivalent of dividing by zero?

I don't get it.

Tentacles.

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I suppose that, strictly speaking, you would currently the answer is undefined, so it's not too different from dividing by zero.

However, the in this situation, the answer is undefined because the powers are not clearly defined.

Does Sister Psyche's mind riding ability count as an attack? What sort of attacks does Mirror Spirit have the power to reflect back?

So, I'll go out and say that, even though both answers are the same, what happens is not defined, they're undefined for entirely different reasons and are hence nothing alike.

And I'll guess that Steelclaw knew that when posing the question, so I'll stick with my original "I fail to see the clever."

Maybe some Sapphic action would happen

Actually.... THIS is more like what I had in mind...




The Shattering of the Mirror

Shalice lay face down on the floor, feeling her heart, which had performed its function faithfully for so many years, now pump her life from her body in slow, steady beats.

They had come to the warehouse as they always came to such places; following leads down a path that never quite seemed to be straight. There had been no choice, of course. While she had saved the world several times with the help of her many allies, this particular mission, though much smaller in scope, had seemed no less immediate and vital.

Her nose tickled and itched. She found herself without the physical strength to lift her arm to scratch it. The eye on the same side as the itch seemed to view the world through a thin red lens and she realized belatedly that the tickling was likely caused by the uneven trickling of her own blood.

She heard fighting in the distance and hoped the rest of her team was doing better than she at the moment. Justin was not with them. He had taken an alternate team to follow up on another branch of their investigation. She had ended up with Back Alley Brawler, Mynx and Mirror Spirit. They weren’t used to working together and that lack of experience had contributed greatly to the chaos that erupted soon after their entry into the warehouse.

Rumors had persisted through the Paragon City underworld that Crey Industries had developed technology that would render the hospital teleportation system inaccessible over a blanket area. This rumor had been confirmed when the entire team of eight heroes had ransacked a Crey Lab and found the schematics for the equipment. Positron had studied them and even his armor had been unable to completely mask his reaction.

The technology was real. And it was out in the open.

They had thought it a lucky break when they realized only one functioning unit of the tech was in existence. However, their elation was short lived when they discovered two bills of sale; one to Arachnos and one to the Malta group. Neither were dated, though both held addresses for delivery. They assumed one was a current order and the other was for future production and delivery, but which was which?

The heroine known as Sister Psyche closed her eyes. She could feel his arms around her once more. She could smell her husband’s distinctive scent and the solid muscles of his back as her own hands slid up to return his embrace. So secure. So confident and reassuring. There was nothing in that brief clasp to indicate it might be their last. There was no goodbye in their parting.

“Be safe,” he had murmured in his clipped and always tightly-controlled voice.

There was solace in the sure knowledge that Manticore WAS safe. She knew he was safe because her team had been the one to draw the short straw. She hadn’t seen it yet, but she was sure the Teleportation Suppression Device was somewhere in the Malta warehouse.

She knew this because she was dying and yet still here.

She opened her eyes again, vaguely alarmed when her vision did not instantly clear. Everything seemed to swim in and out of focus for a time, making the hallway seem to grow and contract around her with each killing beat of her heart. Long years of mental discipline allowed her to bring herself back into focus. She was alone except for the bodies of the Malta operatives around her. Even the sounds of fighting had faded even further away until she could barely discern the light pops of gunfire.

She knew what she had to do, and in that moment she was eternally grateful that it had been her who’d been shot so horribly in the first moments of the ambush. Of all her team members she was the one best suited to survive such injuries without teleportation back to her and Justin’s mansion. She just needed someone, anyone, to be close enough to cast her psychic essence into. Once she was “piggybacked” onto someone she could survive indefinitely. Such an act also had a side benefit of preserving her original body, so it was even possible that it would keep until surgery could restore it.

The problem with this power was proximity. Her target had to be close, not quite touching perhaps, but at least close enough for her to see. At the moment the only people she could see were all dead.

She sensed more than heard light footsteps behind her. Her eyes widened in surprise and stung from the salt of the blood that dripped into them. Someone was there? But how was that possible? She should have sensed the mind-presence of anyone approaching. Had blood loss really rendered her THAT weak in such a short time? She grit her teeth, drawing her inhuman resolve around her like armor. She didn’t care who it was nor how they’d snuck up on her unawares, they were her key to survival whoever they were.

She reacted the moment even the slightest part of the mysterious other appeared in her line of sight. She had only an instant impression of a delicate slipper adorning a small foot before she released her power.

Mirror Spirit.

She had attempted to read Amhee’s mind before. The results had been odd and a little disorienting. Her telepathy had bounced harmlessly off the stoic young woman’s defenses and returned to its source. For the briefest and most confusing of moments, Sister Psyche had actually found herself reading her OWN mind.

This time was different, however. This time she wasn’t just using simple telepathy, she was using the most powerful and invasive of her abilities. Additionally she was using the entirety of her being behind the transfer, fueled by desperation and the impossibly powerful memory of that final hug with her husband.

“Be safe.”

Shalice opened her eyes to darkness. The blackness that surrounded her was complete and all encompassing. She was standing but had no sense that there was anything under her feet to support her. She assumed she was standing simply because she felt like she were upright, that’s all. Utter emptiness stretched out and away from her in all directions but for one other object.

The mirror was directly in front of her, some four feet distant. What should have been her reflection, however, was wrong. It was her in the mirror, looking back at her with a considering and speculative gleam in her eyes. However, the mirror Psyche was not dressed in her heroic working gear, but rather a cheerfully yellow sundress with blue flower stitch work along the hem. She recognized the dress immediately because she had worn it not three nights ago on a nicely romantic evening with Justin.

The mirror image of herself twirled in place, hands wrapped in the skirt’s sides and holding it out. Shalice blinked as she realized it was herself modeling the sun dress in front of a mirror. She frowned slightly and leaned in closer, a bit disconcerted when her so-called “reflection” didn’t move to match her motion. In the very center of the mirror’s surface was a hair line crack, barely discernable.

All at once she felt a pressure and she began to understand. She had somehow, despite the nature of Mirror Spirit’s powers, managed to penetrate the mystic barrier that surrounded the other hero. She was inside some part of Amhee’s mind, but the powers of the magical mirror which was the center of that woman’s being were still striving irresistibly to eject her.

“No,” she whispered as she threw her own insurmountable psychic strength into anchoring her presence there. “It’s too late to go back now. I can’t let you win this.”

The pressure built and built. It was physical and psychic all at the same time. Her body screamed as her muscles strained against that incredible insistence. Her mind drew in upon itself, her calm and resolve deepening as she harnessed more and more of her own power to match against Mirror Spirit’s.

There was a low creaking sound; as though something else were feeling the strain of that awful battle of wills and was buckling under it.

Crack!

Sister Psyche fell to her knees, gasping for breath. The pressure was gone now. All of it. All at once.

She looked up and gaped at what she saw. In front of her were now two mirrors, side by side and joined so closely that only by running her fingers over their surface could she detect the seam between them. In one mirror she still twirled and cast considering eyes at the sun dress she would soon buy. In the other a young, strawberry haired girl sat with the light of joyous anticipation in her eyes before a brightly decorated cake with seven candles in it. Atop the child’s head was a pointed paper party hat with the words “birthday girl” emblazoned on it.

The girl leaned in and blew out the candles.

“Wait… wait…” she muttered, holding a hand up and pressing shaking fingers against her forehead. “What’s going on here? What… what is happening?”

The pressure was building again. Slowly. Like a tide that was more than patient enough to wait the full course of its ascension to full swell. Trying to push her out. Trying to follow its true nature and repel and reflect back that which assailed it.

“But… I’m still here,” she whispered again even as she marshaled her strength to fight that horribly growing push. “I beat it, didn’t I?”

Then she couldn’t think anymore. Could do nothing but fight that horrible press, the current of an incoming tsunami of power focused entirely on unseating her. She screamed in violent denial as she flung all of her being into that titanic struggle.

Crack!

Another victory. Another mirror.

This time it wasn’t her image in the mirror, but someone else’s. Aurora Borealis was in the mirror’s center, using her powers to fight against the massive mechanical form of Babbage. Shalice realized that though the image might not be her current body, it was still HER image, just back when she had been riding shotgun in Aurora’s mind.

“But… that doesn’t make any sense…” she said, aware of the pressure building yet again. “I don’t remember ever fighting Babbage when I was with Aurora.”

Crack!

She’s in her late teens in the newest reflection. She is beaming, with a smile so wide and bright she can almost count all her teeth in it. Her image is wearing a flat topped cap and a gown in the colors of her old high school. She is standing behind a podium and delivering a speech that she can not hear. The sash of the valedictorian is about her shoulders.

“No,” barely a whisper… more breath than sound. “Oh, no…”

Her heart begins to race in her chest because she KNOWS that is her high school graduation. She knows she was valedictorian of her class and can even remember spending hours upon hours writing, scrapping and re-writing her speech. She can remember laughing with Justin as she told him of the experience and how frazzled she had been.

“I’ve been less nervous facing hordes of Arachnos soldiers than I was trying to get that speech exactly right,” she had told him.

But she couldn’t remember actually giving the speech. She couldn’t remember anything at all about her graduation.

And the tide captured her attention once more.

Crack!

Another mirror. Another memory that was no longer her own.

Her first kiss with a boy whose name lingered at the tip of her tongue but refused to proceed any further. He had asked her out the day before but the day their date was supposed to occur was gone from her mind entirely.

Gone from her mind entirely.

Her eyes flew open as she began to think she knew what was happening. The mirror images of herself were not mirrors but memories. HER memories. Mirror Spirit’s powers were so incredible, so unassailable, that she was not able to get all of herself through that guardianship. However, each time she won one of these conflicts she had been able to get a piece of herself through. Each mirror before her was actually an anchor of herself, a small shard of her psychic being that she had managed to sneak past the wall of Amhee’s defenses.

“I can do this,” she said, squaring her shoulders resolutely despite the weariness that tried to weigh them down. “I just need to get all of myself to the other side of her power… even if I have to do it one piece at a time. I’ll worry about reassembling myself once I’m through.”

Crack!

Learning how to drive.

Crack!

Fighting the Rikti and nearly losing herself in the battle.

Crack!

A day spent in the backyard of the Mansion with Justin and a picnic that had ended in love.

Crack!

“No!” She screamed suddenly, lurching forward to hammer her fists against the unyielding glass surface of the newest mirror. “No, please! Don’t take that from me! Don’t take that away!”

In the reflection she stood in her bridal gown. Her hands clasped within Justin’s. They were repeating the words that would join them forever together and were completely lost in one another’s eyes.

She crumpled to her knees, sliding down the uncaring surface of the mirror that separated her from that precious memory. She sobbed hysterically as she tried desperately to remember something from that day… anything from that day. But there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

She felt the rising tide of the Mirror’s power again. One day of memories for each victory. One day of memories over such a long, long life. She felt bone deep weariness and desolation sweep over her, but despite that her will dragged her upwards to her feet once more. Even knowing that every victory she won would diminish her, would leave less inside her to goad her to keep fighting…

What choice did she have? What choice?

She turned her eyes away from her wedding day and threw herself once more into battle.

~vVv~

Foreshadow stood beside Mirror Spirit’s bed, looking down at her placid seeming face and holding her hand. Across the room Manticore had assumed a similar vigil over the body of his wife.

Brawler and Mynx had found the two women side by side, so close they were almost touching. Sister Psyche’s body had been riddled with bullets but was, miraculously, still alive. Amhee hadn’t had a mark on her, but she was unresponsive to their calls.

The successful reclamation of the Teleportation Suppression Device had been overshadowed by the desperate race to save Psyche’s body from death. The surgery had lasted for hours but the doctors were confident she was no longer in any danger of death. The mystery of Mirror Spirit’s condition was much more puzzling.

Despite his moniker, Foreshadow had no clairvoyant abilities. His was an ancient soul but still tied solidly to past and present. All at once he wished desperately this were not the case. He would have given nearly anything to see how this chapter of his many lives would play out.

Across the room, Manticore was speaking to his wife in low, urgent tones cracked and warped with barely contained terror and tears.

“Shalice? Darling?” Foreshadow saw the knuckles of Manticore’s hands which clung to his wife’s were white with the strength of the holding. “Can you hear me? You have to come back to me, dearest… Come back to me… I’m right here waiting… You’ve always waited for me… Now I’ll wait for you to come back to me… I’ll wait until the end of days if I need to… just please… oh please… come back…”

Foreshadow looked away, embarrassed and feeling as though he were trespassing on that intensely personal scene. He redirected his gaze to the still waters of Mirror Spirit’s face.

A single tear had escaped one of her depthless eyes and blazed a silvery trail down her flawless cheek.

Oooooh, that was GREAT writing, Steelclaw! d b

Please, feel free to share such fanfics at any time.

Good lord man! So, your an author in real life right?

Bravo!!

More please.

Okay, I...*speechless*

That was AWESOME! More, please!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hyperstrike English does not borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar.