Mercer
He crouched close to the ground, watching his targets. They were grazing, completely unaware of the second deadliest predator in the world stalking them.
Second deadliest. Ugh.
He stalked a little closer, silent as the grave. His goal was typical; he wanted to comfort them and he had no real idea why, and he wanted to know why. There was a way he could find out, he hoped. He didn't often consume animals, it was just so much more... difficult than consuming humans. His strain simply couldn't work on them as easily. Even Pariah, who made it a point to only eat animals, had trouble.
He walked out of the grass... and the herd of wild horses immediately took note of him and galloped away.
Alex Mercer brought his palm up to his forehead. "Fucking animals," he groaned. Somehow, they could always sense him, always tell he was much, much worse than a mere human. He prepared himself to give chase, it wasn't like there was anything in the animal kingdom that could outrun him, but suddenly his legs felt heavier and a sensation of weight in his guts tugged backwards.
He turned around to see Pariah looking at him cheekily, arms crossed with one brow raised, his four back tendrils limp. "Zeus."
"Pariah."
"Are you stalking... horses?"
"... so what if I am?"
"The mighty Zeus, king of the gods, the infamous Monster of Manhattan and terror of the fearless Blackwatch... is stalking wild animals."
"Is there a point to this, Pariah?" he snarled. Truth be told, Pariah's presence always unsettled him. It was just something that he did, like how Greene's presence had leaked emotions into him, or how animals could always spot him. Pariah's unfathomable power seemed to create an artificial gravity field around him which he could feel in the depths of his biomass despite the fact that it never attracted anything.
"Zeus, you know that you're completely wasting your time. What are you even doing out here?"
"I got the feeling I needed to comfort horses. I don't know why, so I'm going to consume a few."
"And how's that working out for you?" Pariah's back tendrils raised themselves, a pair on either side of him and waving slowly through the air, as if caught underwater.
"It'd be better if you hadn't shown up!" he snapped. "How did you even find me? We're in fucking Tibet!"
Pariah wiggled his fingers, and Alex felt something burn on his left shoulder. He looked over to see a black sludge rise off his leather jacket, form an open hand, and then seep back down to where he couldn't see it. "Tracking."
He bristled, red and black tendril warping throughout his body and providing the briefest glimpse at the demon that lay beneath his disguise. "Pariah... get it the hell out." It was especially unnerving that he hadn't known it was there. How had Pariah kept it hidden within Alex's own body?
"No," Pariah pouted. "I don't want to."
"Fine, then I will." Mercer formed his claws on his right hand and focused on the area the slime had dissolved in. Normally his body was immensely resilient; bullets went unnoticed, anything short of an RPG he could simply shrug off, and even tank shells hardly stung. With a focused effort, he weakened his biomass in the region, and sliced his claws through. He tossed the red biomass away and restrengthened himself.
From the red biomass a small black slime slithered out towards Pariah, who extended his lower left tendril to the ground. The slime rolled up to his tendril and seamlessly melted into it. Pariah, so much shorter than him, shook his head. "You're so confrontational. Truly though, Zeus, why does this 'feeling' bother you so much?" he asked, his top two tendrils making air quotes.
"It's my only lead on Greene," he said. "I've got nothing else!" And that was true. Elizabeth's voice was no longer among the whispers in his head, but her memories remained. Fat lot of help they were; they were impossible to interpret. Filled with a hiss that overwhelmed all noise and grainy, as if they were a video that had been poorly recorded. And there was no sign of a Redlight outbreak anywhere. There was a minor resurgence of the Black Plague in southeast Asia, but the Black Plague was a cough compared to Redlight.
It'd been two months since Elizabeth Greene's presence in him had vanished. She'd come back to life, he knew it! It was only a matter of time before she made another attempt at the zombie apocalypse, and who knew how much damage she'd do before he managed to kill her?
He didn't doubt he could kill her. Not at all. He'd done it before and he'd only grown stronger in the five years since. Then there was Pariah. While Mercer wasn't entirely sure Pariah would actually fight Greene one on one, if he did it would be absolutely one sided.
As opposed to Alex fighting nearly to his own death to take down Mother...
"You've got nothing else," Pariah said, his voice seeming to come from everywhere at once like it always did. "Because there is nothing else. I know you want to hang on to some doubt, I do. It's the safe thing to do, right? But it'd also be safe for Dana to sleep standing up so she has a smaller chance of getting hit by meteors. Zeus, there's being cautious and being paranoid." The virus, half Mercer's size, crossed his arms. "Just stop."
He snarled. The biomass along the sleeves of his jacket prickled into a spiked black mass. His left hand reformed into the pronged clamp of the whipfist while his right arm shifted below the elbow into his trademark six foot blade. "What if I don't?"
Pariah sighed excessively, his glowing purple eyes flickering. Childishly, Pariah tossed his head back. "Really, brother? That's your solution to everything? Hit it until it stops being a problem?"
"Hasn't failed," he said. It was simple. Pariah was obviously going to try and bring him back before he was done here. Solution: beat the little fucker into the ground until he couldn't. Alex Mercer dashed at Pariah, blade ready to slice into him.
As his blade came down, Pariah sank into the loose soil, melting like slop. Mercer's blade hit nothing, and Pariah was nowhere to be found. Immediately, he knelt and tensed his legs, before leaping several stories into the air.
Not a moment too soon; the ground he stood on a moment ago erupted with groundspikes, black spires fifteen feet tall with razor sharp points. Pariah's unique twist on groundspikes also gave them spiked grooves running down the side that promised anyone who avoided the impalement a laceration at minimum. Mercer evaded them all and, at the apex of his jump, spread his arms and legs out. Then he pulled them in and dove straight down like a bullet, ready to slam all his strength and mass onto the region below.
Before he could, the groundspikes flowed back together and reformed into Pariah. Pariah's left tendrils lashed outwards, lengthening, and grabbed him mid-dive. He was tossed to the side with horrific force, and before he could attack the tendrils they let go and retracted to their normal length. He found his balance instinctively and got back up, ready to go at Pariah a second time.
Pariah wasn't willing to let him. He held up his left hand and clenched a fist. Black tendrils warped around the fist, a dark smoke-like substance pouring off. As Pariah did that, something in Alex's body stiffened, wires spread throughout his body locking in place and not letting him move. He did notice, however, that it didn't have as much of a grasp on the twisted coils of his whipfist, so he instantly shot it out.
Pariah's eyed widened when the sharp claws of the whipfist approached him. Mercer's whip encountered great resistance when it hit Pariah's body, but his strength was still enough to puncture through his body and latch inside of him. He pulled his whip back...
... but Pariah wasn't the one who moved.
The smaller virus dug in his feet and it was instead Alex who flew towards him. His eyes widened as he closed in on Pariah, who formed silver daggers on the tips of his tendrils and morphed his hands into claws. Alex hastily encased himself in armor, but Pariah's claws tore through his torso regardless. The wound healed, but he had lost a terrible amount of biomass. His whipfist was suddenly free and he found himself face down on the ground, again immobilized. In his peripheral vision, Pariah streaked around to in front of him.
He clucked his tongue and dismissed his weapons. "Zeus, stop it. This is absurd. You know, Dana's worried about you." That got his attention. Dana was worried?
"Dana's worried?" he said, voicing his thoughts.
"Of course she is!" The pressure holding Alex down abated, and he leaped up. "You just up and vanished after your little 'episode', and we don't hear from you for a month! And when I finally do track you down, you're in Tibet, of all places, hunting animals instead of humans." Pariah stomped, and the ground around Alex ruptured. Before he could react, thick black tendrils reached up and coiled around his arms, waist, neck, and legs. He snarled like a caged animal and thrashed against them, but even his demonic strength couldn't overpower Pariah's constructs.
He hated to admit it, but Pariah outclassed him in every field. He had more strength in one arm than Alex did in his entire body. He took RPGs like Mercer took bullets, and could run a lap around Manhattan in the time it took Mercer to cross Central Park. And his powers! Every day, it seemed like Pariah pulled a new trick out of his ass. A crossbow. Eerily familiar balls of purple lightning. Burrowing underground. The ability to take a disguise without first consuming them. It tore at him, the very concept that he was not the toughest predator on the world was anathema, but he had no idea how to change that.
And so, Pariah held him easily. "I know you're worried about it, Zeus, but just face it!" Pariah's entire form flickered with black tendrils. His glowing purple eyes flashed into a sun-bright green. "She. Is. GONE!" He said with a roar. A conical blast erupted from the little 'kid's' mouth, a black shockwave that tore apart the tendrils holding him and piercing his armor without a care. Biomass was ripped from his body, weakening him dramatically. Alex Mercer was sent flying, head over heels, and even his prodigious balance wasn't enough to stabilize himself before he hit the ground with a thud. With a groan, his weapons and armor dissipated back into the form of their creator.
"Please, brother. Just come back with us." Mercer looked up to see Pariah looking genuinely sad. His tendrils hung limply along his back, and his violet eyes didn't glow as intensely.
Alex stood back up and spat a glob of red biomass, the virus inside deactivated. "Fine. Let's just fucking go back. I can worry about this damn urge some other time." He missed Dana. He wanted to go home to Manhattan, his hunting grounds. Back to humans, who were so much easier to consume. Back to his sister.
And besides, the feeling was gone now.
***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***
Twilight Sparkle
She rolled over in her bed and got out with remarkable swiftness, yawning and stretching. She didn't really want to get out of bed, given how last night had been the first time she had slept in her own bed in a month, but there was so much to do. She had to help Spike dust the library, and then she and the girls were going to go help out Applejack on her farm, which would take up the better part of the day, and after that it was helping out anypony in town who needed it. Twilight suspected a lot of ponies would need it.
She trotted into the kitchen, where Spike had already made breakfast, and sat at the table. Her list for the day was next to her plate.
"Thanks Spike," she said, beginning to pick at the waffles. It was lucky she'd thought up a food preserving spell before leaving Ponyville to fight the infection. She really didn't want to imagine how much food had spoiled around the country.
"No problem, Twilight." He also started digging in. Meanwhile, Twilight levitated her list for the day to her, making sure to memorize the times on it. Eight to ten thirty, cleaning the library. Ten thirty to eleven, gathering up the girls. Eleven to six, helping Applejack. Six to sleep, research on medicine and disease. Of course, that was all rounding, given time for interruptions, and traveling.
Breakfast passed in silence, as did the library's cleaning. Books were still in their place, since obviously nopony had been by to check out any. Still, the entire building had acquired a fine layer of dust, and since she and Spike had only arrived home late last night, only after a good night's sleep did they have the time to clean. It went smoothly and uninterrupted; nopony came to the library even though they were open. For once, Twilight understood why. Everypony was busy.
Before too long, the library was clean. It wasn't exactly spic-and-span, but all things considered it was good, and just in time to meet up with the girls, too!
"Alright Spike," she said to him as she slipped on her saddlebags, stuffing her list into the left one. "I'm headed out, I'll be back at six. Think you can hold down the fort until then?"
He saluted. "Sure thing, Twilight. Have fun."
She grimaced and trotted to the door. "Yeah. Fun." Then she slipped outside.
The weather had been scheduled to be partly cloudy, however there was a distinct emphasis on 'partly'. Twilight could see Rainbow zipping back and forth, moving clouds into place and forming water vapor with her hooves. As she passed by her, Twilight waved at her with a forehoof, and Dash returned the gesture before zipping off, having a lot of slack to pick up with the weather team's reduced membership. Twilight headed off towards Sugarcube Corner.
As she walked, she couldn't help but let her gaze wander around, taking in all that had changed in Ponyville now that the Outbreak was past. Now that it was over, the true damage was evident. Empty, dark homes for sale at a fraction of their regular price, with no buyers coming. The Ponyville Post Office, with a help wanted sign. The Market only had a small fraction of the normal number of stands out. No carrots. No sweets shop, only pastries. Each sign, innocuous on its own, resonated deeply with Twilight. She'd known those ponies. Okay, perhaps not known them, but she'd talked with each of them on at least one occasion.
Twilight's head snapped around in surprise at seeing a spot of black. It was Mayor Mare walking and talking with a changeling. The latter held a stack of papers in their magic as the two discussed... something. She was too far away to hear, though she imagined it was regarding housing some changelings who were moving into Ponyville for food purposes.
Before too long she entered Sugarcube Corner, where the Cakes were already at work, baking fervently to make up for all the sweets that had spoiled over the duration of the Outbreak. The bell rang as she opened the door, and again when it closed behind her. The shop was empty except for Flitter sitting alone at a table, enjoying a brownie.
Mr. Cake was at the counter, and gave her a warm smile. "Good morning, Twilight."
"Good morning, I'm here to see Pinkie. Is she available?"
He nodded, his smile growing just a touch weaker. "She just got off her shift, she should be in her room right now."
"Thanks." She passed by him to the stairs and climbed them, knocking on Pinkie's door. There was a pause, and then Pinkie opened the door to her overwhelmingly pink room.
Her face brightened up into a light smile. "Oh, hi Twilight!"
She smiled softly in return. "Hi, Pinkie." Both of them drew together into a hug. It was terrible. Not the hug, that was fine. But what was terrible was that, while herself and the girls had all survived the Outbreak, all of them had lost family. Anypony who had parents beforehoof had lost them. While the Cakes, who were as good as family to Pinkie, had escaped unscathed she had lost both her parents and two of her sisters to the virus. The only exception had been her sister Maud, who'd actively fought the infection before being struck down by the Plague Goddess herself. Both Twilight and Pinkie had lost their entire families in a matter of weeks, and it was... good to have somepony who could relate to her.
Was that selfish? She was already going to get inheritance money, she... she had enough, right? Right?! Right.
They pulled away. "So Twilight, what did you need? Ooh, ooh, don't tell me. You need me to go help Applejack with her farm because she asked you last night very kindly?"
Hit the nail on the head. "That's right, Pinkie. You're free right now, right?" She nodded vigorously. "Alright, then let's head out. Rainbow should be getting everypony else."
"Okay." Just okay. No 'dokie lokie'. "Let's get going. Ooh, I almost forgot!" Pinkie zipped back into her room and zipped back out with her saddlebags on. "Can't forget to bring snacks!"
"I thought Rarity was bringing lunch?" Twilight asked with a tilt of her head.
She went crosseyed when the pink mare bopped her snout. "Snacks. Big difference, Twilight."
Twilight backed away, suddenly intimidated. "Yep, big difference!" she squeaked. "Alright, lets head out."
Pinkie nodded and bounced after Twilight. She tossed a quick farewell to the Cakes, and they were off to Sweet Apple Acres, walking through the eerily empty streets of Ponyville. Fairly soon they arrived at Applejack's home, where the orange mare was already waiting for them, along with Rarity. Applebloom was probably off at school.
Twilight briefly reflected how miraculous it was that the CMC had chosen to go on a trek to the Crystal Empire from Appleoosa when they had; if they hadn't, they would've been there when Elizabeth had snatched up the town with her virus. A lot of Ponyville's refugees had been in Appleoosa, including Big Mac and Granny Smith.
Which was a large part of why they were coming to help Applejack; she definitely couldn't look after the farm and Applebloom on her own, she'd demonstrated that much a while ago.
Now that Twilight thought about it, the farming industry as a whole had been hit particularly hard. Maybe it wouldn't hurt for her to start up a backyard garden or something...
"Howdy," Applejack said as they arrived on the porch, circling around her. "Girls, thank ya'll so much for coming ta help."
Rarity waved it off with a forehoof. "Think nothing of it, darling. We're friends, and friends help friends."
"No Rares, really. I don't know... I don't know how I can make it up to ya'll. Without... without Mac and Granny, a-and with 'bloom still in school - "
Rarity interrupted her with a hug. "Easy, Applejack, easy. You know that we're here for you; Rainbow Dash doesn't have the monopoly in loyalty, you know. I'll help you with your harvest, even if I do have to spend an extra hour scrubbing the dirt out of my coat."
"Yep! Just point us where you need us!" Pinkie piped in.
"Alright. Twi, I never was the one really lookin' at the finance books 'n all that. I know the Princesses have been comin' out with new tax laws with all the... stuff that's happened."
She nodded. Twilight could've also helped out with the field, measuring soil acidity and all that, but with the first snowfall scheduled in a week there was no point. "I'll take a look. Where are they?"
"They should be in Mac's ro - Mac's old room," she corrected morosely.
"I'll see if there's anything I can do," she said, slipping inside the house. She saw that it, too, had been dusted since Applejack had returned. Twilight had been there before; not too many times, but enough times to find Big Mac's room, empty of everything but a bed, a nightstand, and a fine layer of dust that Applejack had yet to clean off. Twilight levitated a heavy ledger to her from the nightstand and flipped it open, revealing scrawling mouthwriting of various finances and incomes that Applejack's family had done in its operation. She flipped to the current date and summoned a pot of ink and quill from her saddlebags. Then she trotted out of the room towards the dinner table, set the book down, and got to work.
Numbers and calculations came easy to her, and while there had been notable changes to the tax codes, they were few and major instead of numerous and inconsequential, so she'd already memorized them. There was a long line of undone numbers, and Twilight got set to going through it, calculating expenses and revenue that Big Macintosh and Granny Smith hadn't been able to before the evacuation of Ponyville.
Twilight let her mind wander. She tried so hard to fully wrap her mind around the sheer magnitude of the Outbreak, but she just couldn't. She knew intellectually that Equestria's population had been just over six million, but that never really made an impression on her. Even growing up in Canterlot, with its population of five hundred thousand, it seemed like more ponies than could fit in the world. Equally baffling was that almost ninety percent of those ponies were gone.
All of Canterlot was gone, which was absolutely... absolutely terrible. Ignoring the obviously very... personal effect it had on her, the brain drain Greene's enslavement of Canterlot had caused was immense. Some of ponykind's best and brightest were gone. The entrepreneurs, such as Fancy Pants, or savants such as Octavia. A vast amount of the wealth of Equestria - not bits, wealth - was simply gone, their knowledge evaporated. All their hard work had been for nothing!
She was worried about Fluttershy, too. She was taking it hard, and had all but sealed herself in her cottage the moment they returned to Ponyville. It was obvious that the pegasus felt she was largely responsible for the Outbreak - the mere idea of which made Twilight twinge in anger - but couldn't she see that wasn't the case? After she had told all of them what happened, in the week while Elizabeth moved all her infected to the island, it was obvious that they'd only won thanks to Fluttershy. First there was the massive burst of harmony magic before the final confrontation with Greene. And second was her initial delay.
Fluttershy had stopped the infection dead in its tracks for an entire week, when all they could do with Princess Celestia's blood was slow it for four days. Without Fluttershy the infected would have consumed Equestria and overrun the Crystal Empire before they even had the idea to use alicorn blood. And without the Crystal Heart, Queen Chrysalis would've been vulnerable to the infection. Elizabeth would have defeated the Princesses and turned her gaze on the rest of the world with no Alex Mercer coming to stop her.
Twilight shuddered at the mental image. Elizabeth Greene, infecting and conquering, unchecked and unrestrained. And once she'd enslaved the world... well, then it was easy to assume that nothing would happen. Forever.
And Fluttershy thought that she was to blame. And maybe she was, for some things such as not leaving Elizabeth, but what could she really do? Greene had still, after all, control over where she went by suppressing the virus.
Still, Fluttershy was tearing herself up with guilt. Maybe after helping on the farm they could go see her, instead of Twilight retiring to the library to learn about nosokinesis.
Oh, and that book of spells by none other than Starswirl the Bearded himself, courtesy of Princess Celestia. She couldn't wait to read into that one!
She continued working, knowing that outside her friends were dealing with the more physical aspects of farm work. She felt uneasy about that, as if she were getting off easy, but she knew that she was by far the most mathematically inclined out of all of them. This was where she could do the most good. Where she could best help Equestria recover.
The road before them was long and arduous, but they would endure as they always had. Not even Discord himself could keep Equestria down long. This was just another in a long line of challenges. Surely the most damaging one, but one all the same. They would recover.
They always did. It'd take decades, maybe even centuries for them to rebuild their numbers, but for now?
They'd just take it one week at a time.
4626764
Well there is another theory why Mercer killed all of the Evolved. Mercer are tired all the struggles and bullshit happens to him and decided to end humanity. Then Heller came and able to resist his power, he saw a way out. So he prepared for final battle and ensure that every Evolved was at the battlefield so he can eliminate them and lets Heller kill him so all the problem will be on Heller shoulder. Thats why he said welcome to top of chain instead of cliche villain said like how could the plan not work.
It seems that the end has just begin.
START THE GRIFFIN OUTBREAK ARC!
The only problem I have with this chapter is Pariah's power-level. He would be strong, yes, but I find it hard to believe he would so out-class Alex. And if your thinking about that line from McMullen, don't forget that it's all guesswork.
Ignoring he's not even cleared to know Pariah exists, let alone anything about him, his line doesn't make a lick of sense. Life does not have a grand purpose (unless you want to get into Religion, and then most Religions aren't about making a perfect being), and the non-encoding regions of the genome are that way for a reason. They serve literally no purpose other than as a buffer against UV radiation and the like.
Mini-rant over, good story, and since it's still set as "incomplete", cant see what happens next.
4723012 THAT'S MY THEORY! Summarized atleast.
I feel so strange when I see other people talking about my Head-cannon. Yet so happy at the same time.
4723082
Note: I should have credited you, kinda in a rush though
As they say: Moar!
4723061 Life does have one inherent purpose and that is to survive. It's why we eat, why we reproduce, why we continue to change and evolve; if we didn't do these things we would die out. It's not a higher purpose per se, but it's a common instinct that pretty much defines our existence and the existence of all life on Earth.
There is also an issue with your argument against McMullen. While I will concede that what he says doesn't make sense at face value, the message behind it does make quite a bit of sense.
The phrasing used by McMullen implies that Pariah's entire body functions on a unique trait of the Redlight virus: being able to repurpose what would otherwise be cancer into something akin to hyper-evolved stem cells. In essence, Mercer and Pariah are walking, talking masses of redundant cells that can be adapted to any given situation at an insane speed. So, if what McMullen was implying was correct, Pariah would be able to control every part of his body down to the genetic level at will, and be able to naturally manifest the traits of any organism on Earth, which could very well be considered the pinnacle of evolution. Alex can do this as well, but he takes shortcuts by consuming other organisms.
As for McMullen's knowledge of Pariah, it is guesswork, but it's very educated guesswork. After all, he was able to figure out Pariah existed in the first place because he saw Elizabeth's body showed signs of having given birth and, while he could never be permitted to see any specifics, he could still find enough information to confirm his suspicions and work from there.
Two questions:
1. How the hell did they get from New York to Tibet?
2. Why did Mercer feel the need to go all the way to Tibet to consume horses?
I'd love to see Fluttershy explain her feelings about Greene to Twilignt.
4723927
A) It's been two months. Plane, boat, or just walking north, crossing the arctic icepack and then walking south west.
B) I expect pure restlessness sent him to Tibet. Or maybe he just likes his horses to be Buddhist. Could be something like kosher. I dunno.
4723527 I don't mind, take my idea and use it as you wish. I'd be happy to see it spread.
4723775 That's a interesting look at it. But I hold issue with Pariah being able to form any traits without some sort of basis to work off of. He could have a accelerated evolution, which could help him get up to snuff, but that would only work on traits he already has, and only when what he has isn't good enough (being locked in a lab isn't the best place for being challenged physically). To form new traits, he'd need someway to get it in the first place, maybe conscious will, but then that would require some understanding of what he is even trying to do. Say he wanted to form spider webs, but without already knowing how they are made, there are billions of possible combinations of various chemicals and ways to combine said chemicals. This process would be infinitely easier if he used Alex's method and ate a spider for it's genes.
4724767 It's less about replicating the process exactly and more about producing something that has the same properties and perhaps improving upon it.
Why make a fixed web when you can shoot it out and control it as an extension of your body?
There's also the fact that Mercer was able to create things like the Whipfist solely out of his own ingenuity, instead of absorbtion or observation of another organism.
4729541 That's mimicry, just takes a bit of creativity to do. That is very different from actually copying the skill. And as I said, it still requires knowledge of the principle you are mimicking, how would he make something like a spider web if he doesn't know what spider webs are besides blind luck?
4729783 "Creativity" is the keyword here. Even if they don't have a organism to reference they can still adapt for specific tasks.
Wall-running, gliding, devastators, whipfist, and thermal vision are all examples of creative ingenuity instead of straight mimicry on Mercer's part, though you could say that they are a given as far as gameplay is concerned and that Mercer as a character probably drew some inspiration from what memories he had at the time, including animals and man-made objects.
I concede to you on this one, but the argument still stands.
4730959 Except, Pariah is a kid. A 40 year-old kid, but still a kid, locked up in a lab for his entire life. How creative can he be, when he knows next to nothing about the world? He might be able to figure out how to wall-climb (it's rather simple for shape-shifters), but thing is, would he even consider it a possibility? None of the scientist people climb the walls.
4730985 Here is my response.
"Okay, I can't remember who or what the hell I am, but I know that I can regenerate, jump a twelve-foot high fence, tear a man apart with my bare hands and absorb his entire body, shapeshift into other people, and sprint faster than an Olympic athlete without breaking a sweat. Can I run straight-up a building?"
Logos.
4731082 Yes, you know that. Pariah doesn't. He probably barely knows English, for I have a hard time seeing scientists actually sitting down and teaching him crap. Read Outcast, it is how I imagine Pariah.
4731137 Read it. Pretty good. Shame I don't head to fanfiction.net more often.
Moving on.
The point I was trying to make is that logic tends to take the back-seat on these kinds of things. The interpretation in Outcast is very realistic, but then we have this interpretation and we're trying to make our own conclusions off of it.
Maybe Pariah is absurdly intelligent, like the Pillar Men from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, or has some kind of psychic ability like the Hive Mind. Maybe he ate one of the scientists at some point.
Regardless of whose making the better argument here, all I can say is I'm having fun here. My coat, my hat, and a good portion of my sanity are all hanging on the rack at the moment and I LOVE it!.
4732444 I like the realistic interpretations. They're realistic. And those Pillar Men are over 102,000 years old, they have become smart over time, through experience. And even if Pariah had a hive-mind, he'd still need to get his info from somewhere, and he didn't start a giant infection to get more minds.
I don't know if your referring to this argument/debate, or this story, but I agree either way.
4732543 I was referring to the debate we have going here, but the story is on a whole other level of enjoyable.
The Pillar Men spent most of that time in suspended animation, yet they could learn how to speak a new language and how modern technology works within minutes or even seconds of being exposed to it. That is supposed to be one of the inherent abilities of their race.
I was also referring to the already existing Hive Mind. Greene and Pariah were around for decades, so they could have been in contact with one another for a long time, even before Greene started infecting everyone in New York.
You're also working off the assumption that Pariah still has a child's mental faculties, which I find is flawed in and of itself.
Children do lack experience and the knowledge gleamed from that experience, but this rarely means that they are less intelligent than an adult, much the same way that an adult is not necessarily of lower intelligence than someone that is much older than they are. I have seen many people, all of whom are no less than 30 years older than I am, assume these things many times, only to be proven wrong time and time again by children below the age of ten, then not learning from the experience when it is proven that their preconcieved notions have been shown to be invalid. If anything, it seems that children and young adults are more intelligent because they are more willing to accept that they are wrong about something.
...
My apologies for the small rant there. Ageism is one of my buttons.
In Pariah's particular case, parralels can be drawn between him and his mother. Greene, dangerous as she was, sat and did nothing for years, and many assumed that this was because her mind had been utterly destroyed by Redlight. They were, of course, proven to be very very very wrong.
4734662
Ah, honestly I don't know much of anything about them, just what a quick glance at their wiki told me. But even if they spent most of their time in suspended animation, that still leaves a lot of time out of it. Probably have had lots of experience figuring out new languages and technologies. But yeah, they are still crazy intelligent.
While possible, I find it implausible. Greene was kept a good distance away from Pariah, farther than I would expect the hive-mind to extend without extra power from a bunch of zombies.
And I was not referring to mental faculties, I was referring to experience. I know very well that age does not very well correlate to intelligence, especially if the individual happens to have perfect memory (which is sorta a cheat in the regards of learning). But in my opinion, it doesn't matter how smart you are if you do not have the necessary experience and context to apply that too. He has seen next to nothing of what the world has to offer, thus his imagination is rather limited to the few things he has seen. If he got out, and start exploring with Alex or on his own (though that probably would end with a lot of dead people by accident), then he would probably start learning a lot rather fast, even without consuming anyone (assuming he can. Greene couldn't).
And I half agree with you on the Greene thing. Pariah can leave whenever he wants too, but why would he? Those laboratories are all he knows of the world, and beyond that all he can see is desert. He has no reason to believe there is anything beyond that desert, and the desert itself isn't very interesting. He probably heard tales of other places from eavesdropping on the guards/scientists, but they might as well have been speaking of a whole another world. Like in that fic.
4735378 If memory serves, the Pillar Men went into suspended animation by turning into stone (hence the name "Pillar Men") some time around 100 BCE and woke up some time in 1938, so it's a pretty big leap.
Case in point: One of the Pillar Men who had been asleep the longest, Santana, not only learned how automatic firearms worked just by watching them in use(against him of course), he took the bullets lodged in his body and fired them back out through his fingers, with devastating effect.
...
Someone is going to read this somewhere down the road without knowing what I'm talking about and think;
"What is this guy smoking and where can I get some?"
4736398 That stint would have only accounted for 2,114 years of their 102,000 life-span. Who knows what shit they had going down WAY back when. Apparently at some point they figured out ways to use acupuncture (of all things) to turn people into other things, and the human body is a lot more complex than a gun.
4736477 The Pillar Men's natural abilities largely supplemented the need for technology: When Kars and his comrades wiped out the other Pillar Men the extent of their race's technology was limited to typical stone-age tools like spears, even though they were the most evolved creatures on Earth.
The exception to this is the Stone Mask that Kars himself invented in an effort to overcome the Pillar Men's weakness to sunlight and, by extension, the Ripple.
The Stone Mask, as you probably know, is activated through contact with fresh blood, at which point it burrows into the wearer's skull and hits various acupuncture points in the brain. This enhanced the already formidable natural abilties of the Pillar Men to such an extent that four of them (Kars, Eisidisi, Wamuu, and Santana) were able to easily wipe out every other member of their race. It could also turn ordinary humans into weaker versions of the Pillar Men that they could then feed upon for greater sustenance than ordinary humans. These enhanced humans(most notably Dio Brando) are the Jojo version of vampires.
4723082 what do you mean by heller taking all of the problems?
4742058 The responsibility. It's sorta a noblesse oblige kind of thing. Alex had the power to "help" humanity, a power no-one else had, so it fell on him to act and actually "help" humanty, despite he generally despises them. But then came along Heller, and when Alex couldn't simply consume him, he realized that Heller might make a decent replacement, and shoved all the responsibility on him with that last fight.
4742331 ooh I get it. So he saw heller as like a better "teacher"?
4742989 Not really, just someone else who could do the job, so Alex doesn't have to. As I said, Alex despises people in general, with only a few exceptions (Dana, for example. Kept her safe even in P2), and wouldn't care if the world burned as long as those few were safe. But Noblesse Oblige. He had to atleast TRY to help Humanity, doesn't mean he has to try particularly hard, as shown with the half-assed attempt that was Prototype 2. If he was really trying, the world would have been conquered within a week, but instead he kept to New York for no real reason.
4743016 in the begining when he turns heller into a evolved is there a reason why the infected attack him anyways. And why is it that if heller is supposedly in secound command there are other evolved that attack heller like Dr. Koneing and try's to get him killed before heller even fights him?
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When not given any particular instruction, Infected are little better than wild animals. Alex never told them NOT to attack Heller, so they did their own thing.
Heller was not second in command, he was just another Evolved. Koenig tried to have him killed because he was trying to prove to Mercer that he was wrong about Heller being worthy of being Evolved or somesuch (Alex probably really didn't believe that, and like I said, was really half-assing Prototype 2. Maybe Evolved Heller knowing he would rebel for the heck of it, only trying to put him down when he got too annoying), and also land himself the position of Second in Command.
4744488 Whoops, that's actually a typo. Supposed to be 'to their side easier than hers'. Fixed, thanks.
4743893 Pretty much what I said, though the way you worded it is much better.
Chrysalis got a massive power boost that leveled the playing field and Celestia severely underestimated her opponent and got careless. Later on, Chrysalis did the exact same thing with Armor and Cadence.
In short, everyone was getting cocky.
This post-Outbreak world you've created is quite interesting. There's probably all kinds of stories that could be told about rebuilding and the new relationships with other races (such as the Griffins) that emerges if you ever feel the mood. You wouldn't even need any attention paid to crossover elements, beyond their aftermath.
The only thing that bothers me about Greene's set up is that they'll have to open a hole or something to go get the blood, unless the bubble lets non-Infected through.
4743235 one last question good sir what exactly was mercers plan with Miya or Amiya heller? I never really understood that was he trying to turn her into a Elizibeth green say that she would be the "mother" of the "new world"
4747421 Probably just as bait for Heller. Again, Alex's plan made zero sense if he was honestly trying. However, if he just wanted Heller to come and get him, then all the bullshit he was spouting makes more sense, it wasn't really his plan, just was a evil sounding plan to make sure Heller gave it his all.
So many dead... Bonling, Lyra, Derpy...
Cya
Raziel-chan