Post by Daystar on Feb 11, 2022 20:29:18 GMT
In so many ways, moving to the Empyrean had been an upgrade for Alex. Millennium City University was one of the only educational institutions in the entire world designed with metahumans in mind, but they were still a college at the end of the day. That meant they had to worry about liability. Keeping students safe came before everything else. Unless some depraved murderer offered to give a guest lecture, apparently. But that meant that the school gym left something to be desired, in Alex's book. Bench-pressing one-ton weights hadn't been a real workout for her in years.
The Society of Superheroes had outfitted their satellite headquarters with a training facility that was designed to accommodate proper heroes, not just kids who happened to have powers. And Alex knew she needed to train. For all her big talk about being one of the strongest people on the planet, she still wasn't good enough. Her track record was, from a certain perspective, a litany of failures. Sure, they called her Sol Invictus now, because she'd never lost a fight, but it had been some time since she'd decisively won one either. In Houston, at Crumple Zone, even back at MCU, all of her opponents had been able to escape before she could stop them. That couldn't be allowed to happen again.
It wasn't just her body that she needed to train, either. It was her mind, as well. 'The victory is in the preparation,' as Doc had quoted to her from Michael Carter's autobiography. Alex would have to be prepared to deal with any number of known and unknown threats, and she couldn't just rely on brute force and improvisation to win the day. So he'd suggested that she try out the Crucible training program, designed by Invictus himself. It had been programmed into the system since day one, and nobody had yet completed it, although apparently Noctua had come the closest. The Crucible was designed to swiftly determine the limits of whoever was undergoing it, and them force them to either break those limits, or be broken themselves.
When Alex had accepted, Doc split himself into three parts, each one serving a distinct function for the exercise. Red would measure the force of her blows. Green would keep track of how intense the artificial gravity in the testing chamber was. And Purple would be testing her knowledge all the while. As the trio of holograms, identical except for their hue, watched, Alex entered the chamber, waiting for the gravity generator to spin up. As it did so, the training dummy came to life. It resembled a headless human torso, with six arms stretching around from its back. Taking even a single hit from one of them would immediately end the exercise in failure. The dummy was constructed from carbonadium, making it virtually indestructible. That meant Daystar wouldn't have to hold back.
"Crucible program engaged. Beginning in three... two... one."
As the training AI finished speaking, Alex threw her first punch. The dummy didn't waver an inch, so she threw another and another, until her fists were moving fast enough that they would have been a mere blur to any outside observer.
"Impact force equivalent: Fastball."
"Gravity equivalent: The Moon."
"Question one: What does the bound quantum state of a strangelet consist of?"
Before the AI was even done asking the question, the training dummy took its first swing, a heavily-telegraphed right hook. Alex didn't miss a beat, shifting her head to the side and continuing her barrage of blows, while she gave her answer.
"An equivalent number of up, down, and strange quarks."
"Correct. Question two: What are the combat applications of a strangelet?"
This line of questioning wasn't much of a surprise. Every part of the Crucible was tailored to the user, including the questions they were asked. Noctua would have been fielding questions about martial arts, Quiver about archery, and for Alex... quantum physics, apparently.
"They can be used to create strangelet bombs, capable of causing all matter they come into contact with to decay into more strangelets. This has an irreversible cascading reaction capable of destroying entire planets in a matter of hours."
That was the kind of threat Alex was spending most of her time thinking about these days. She'd have to deal with things on that level one day- maybe even make use of weapons of that nature and potency. It was theoretically possible for her to create a strangelet bomb, though no Judgement had been given cause to do so for millions of years. Even during the War of Light, they'd mostly refrained from doing so, since the primary combat engagements were between the Judgements themselves, not planetary-scale military forces.
"Correct."
Without warning, the gravity ratcheted up in intensity. Simultaneously, the training dummy took another two swings in quick succession. If the intention was to throw her off-balance, it failed. She avoided the blows and increased the strength of her own by an order of magnitude, the sound of her fists striking the metal now resounding like a gong.
"Gravity equivalent: Earth."
"Impact force equivalent: Freight train."
"Question three: What is the intensity of sound necessary to reliably kill the average human?"
While the Solar Sentinel was seeking the answer in her photonic memory array- with mere seconds to go before her lack of answer disqualified her -the training dummy launched three simultaneous strikes. While continuing to hit it with one hand, as pausing her assault would also fail the exercise, she blocked each of the blows with her other hand at the same time, doing so with such speed that it would appear her hand was in three places at once.
"Two hundred and forty decibels or more."
"Correct. Question four: In ascending order of threat, list all known active entities designated as: Binary."
"Gravity equivalent: Jupiter."
Before Alex could even start to answer the next question, the gravity went from that of Earth, to more that double that, in a single second. She felt it come down on her like a ton of bricks, but held firm, drawing on more of her internal energy reserves to stay upright, while continuing to pummel the training dummy. It was striking back just as fast, forcing her to keep blocking its blows with one hand, until eventually it became obvious she wasn't going to be able to keep it up. Gritting her teeth, Daystar grasped each of the six arms with a telekinetic hand, while returning her other natural one to the task of punching. They were already straining against her invisible hold, but to no avail, at least for now.
"Impact force equivalent: ICBM."
"Executioner, Puh-Pardoner, and--" Alex broke off, surprised as one of the arms managed to wrench itself free and take a swing, which she just barely avoided before locking it back down, this time with twice as much force. She was hitting the dummy with enough power to make the entire station shake, if the training chamber wasn't specially reinforced to prevent that from happening. "And Custodian."
Based on what she'd read, there was some speculation that the Binaries had been an attempt to create an artificial Judgement, albeit with some bizarre built-in emotional weakness. Alex kinda doubted it, though. Either way, the database was pretty insistent that they were a massive threat, maybe even on Alex's own level, if not stronger. Judging by the subtext, Terminus had some pretty strong personal feelings about them, too, though exactly why was unclear.
"Correct. Question five: In descending order of viability, list all confirmed or theoretical methods of killing a Binary."
"Total molecular discorporation, singularities, memetics, and exploitation of the emotional vulnerability."
By now, Alex was speaking so fast her words would have been indistinguishable from high-pitched gibberish, to anybody but an AI. Doc was probably reading her lips, rather than actually 'listening' to what she was saying, but it was the only way for her to get her words out without falling victim to the increasingly intense gravity. Of course, the moment Alex so much as thought that was the moment that he decided to increase the gravity again.
"Gravity equivalent: Earth times five."
In other words, double what she'd already been laboring under. One of Alex's feet slid backwards, scraping a deep gash in the metal floor of the training chamber. She slowly inched it forwards, careful not to lift it off the ground for a second, else she'd surely fall and fail. All the while, she kept striking the training dummy, fast enough that there were streaks of flame accompanying each blow, as the air itself caught fire around her. Most people wouldn't have survived a single blow of that caliber, but there were people who could take everything Alex had already dished out and come back for more.
"Impact force equivalent: Orbital kinetic bombardment."
"Correct. Question six: What is the maximum safe diameter of a Stervos-Pendragon variant Einstein-Rosen bridge?"
"Fifteen miles."
"Correct. Question seven: What are the three most efficient ways of killing a physically invulnerable opponent?"
"Asphyxiation, depressurization, and freezing their internal bodily fluids solid."
Conscious thought was starting to become a luxury Alex couldn't afford. She was no longer thinking about the answers, just reciting them as soon as they popped into her head. That was a good thing, though. No time to second-guess yourself in the middle of a fight. You just had to rely on your instincts and hope you made the right call.
"Gravity equivalent: Earth times fifteen."
The gravity in the chamber tripled without warning. A moment later, as Alex's concentration wavered, three of the training dummy's arms broke free and struck, at a precise series of angles that would make evading them impossible, without also pausing her assault. Feeling her body protesting against the strain, the Solar Sentinel accelerated her perception, making the world around her appear to slow down. It would buy her precious moments, so she could find a way to get out of this without failing the test.
Trying to restrain the arms again wouldn't work. It was taking all her concentration just to keep the other three held back. Instead, Daystar focused on the arms themselves, using her superior senses to examine their molecular structure. Carbonadium was a 'miracle material,' derived using superhuman science, supposedly near-indestructible and capable of cutting anything. But the individual molecular bonds holding it together weren't as strong as the material itself. With impossible precision, Alex began severing those bonds one by one, until the first of the arms simply fell off. Then came the other two, all in the span of the same second, though it felt like far longer from the Solar Sentinel's perspective. The force behind the blows carried them forward, but under the intense gravity, they dropped straight to the ground before they could hit her.
"Correct."
Alex couldn't even remember what the last question had been. The amount of power necessary to keep hitting the training dummy was only getting bigger, to the point where she was no longer entirely sure how hard she was even hitting it. Certainly harder than she'd ever hit anything before.
"Question eight: Excluding all previously-mentioned entities, list all unaccounted extant Class-A threats."
"Surgath. Astra. Myrmidon. Cyrolus. Solorion. Jaeger. The Children of Magnus."
None of the names even called an image to mind. Alex was well past that. They were just empty signifiers. Her focus was primarily on staying upright, and continuing to hit her target.
"Impact force equivalent: Meteor, continental class."
So she was hitting it hard enough to wipe out all life on a given continent. That was good to know. Right now, Alex was in no position to contemplate what that meant. She diverted the barest fraction of her attention to checking her internal energy reserves- and found that they were less than half empty.
"Correct. Question nine: What is the best way to stop a relativistic kill vehicle?"
Another kind of planet-killing weapon. One that was fired at a meaningful percentage of the speed of light. Less than a picosecond elapsed before Alex gave her answer.
"Put myself in front of it."
"Correct."
"Gravity equivalent: The Sun."
Almost thirty times the gravity of the Earth. Alex's knees buckled. She could feel her bones beginning to disintegrate under the stress, and poured as much energy as possible into keeping herself together. She was almost done. Almost done. Almost.
"Question ten: What is the biggest existential threat to life on Earth at present?"
"Impact force equivalent: Meteor, mass extinction class."
This one didn't take much thinking either.
"I am."
"Correct."
A moment later- though from Alex's perspective, more like an eternity -the training program ended. Gravity shut off entirely, and she collapsed into weightlessness, releasing the training dummy's remaining arms from her telekinetic hold. She could feel the extent of her injuries now, after holding them back for so long. It was worse than what had once put her in the hospital for months. Most of her bones were shattered, her internal organs half burst or flattened. But still, she lived. And as she lay silent, too weak even to scream, she felt the light inside of her ignite. Rather than reconstructing her body as it once was, it was rebuilding it better. Her connection to the Sun wasn't yet strong enough for her to shed her mortal form entirely, but she could begin to alter it, the way a Judgement was capable of assuming the form of any species it interacted with.
To Alex, it felt like a fire was consuming every inch of her, inside and out. But it didn't hurt. It just burned through her, eradicating every bit of weakness and insecurity and doubt that it found. For all Alex knew, she had been floating there for hours, when she heard a voice. Familiar, though not exactly identical to the three that had tormented her throughout the Crucible. At some point, it seemed Doc had reabsorbed his 'aspects' back into himself.
"Congrats, kid. You got through round one."
"Sorry, what?"
Though she hadn't even opened her eyes yet, Alex could tell the hologram was smirking.
"Come on, you thought that was it? Twenty-eight times Earth's gravity is nothing. A white dwarf has a hundred thousand times that. And that's nothing compared to a neutron star. You wanna be on that level one day? Then you'd better get used to feeling exactly the way you do right now. Because it's gonna take a lot more than one round in the Crucible to get there."
Slowly, Daystar righted herself, and set her feet down on the ground. It had been heavily damaged just by having her standing on it under that much gravity, but already it was beginning to repair itself. She lifted up the severed carbonadium arms with telekinesis and pressed them to the stumps, allowing the self-repairing circuitry to reattach them. Then she turned to face Doc.
"Okay. Let's go again."
The Society of Superheroes had outfitted their satellite headquarters with a training facility that was designed to accommodate proper heroes, not just kids who happened to have powers. And Alex knew she needed to train. For all her big talk about being one of the strongest people on the planet, she still wasn't good enough. Her track record was, from a certain perspective, a litany of failures. Sure, they called her Sol Invictus now, because she'd never lost a fight, but it had been some time since she'd decisively won one either. In Houston, at Crumple Zone, even back at MCU, all of her opponents had been able to escape before she could stop them. That couldn't be allowed to happen again.
It wasn't just her body that she needed to train, either. It was her mind, as well. 'The victory is in the preparation,' as Doc had quoted to her from Michael Carter's autobiography. Alex would have to be prepared to deal with any number of known and unknown threats, and she couldn't just rely on brute force and improvisation to win the day. So he'd suggested that she try out the Crucible training program, designed by Invictus himself. It had been programmed into the system since day one, and nobody had yet completed it, although apparently Noctua had come the closest. The Crucible was designed to swiftly determine the limits of whoever was undergoing it, and them force them to either break those limits, or be broken themselves.
When Alex had accepted, Doc split himself into three parts, each one serving a distinct function for the exercise. Red would measure the force of her blows. Green would keep track of how intense the artificial gravity in the testing chamber was. And Purple would be testing her knowledge all the while. As the trio of holograms, identical except for their hue, watched, Alex entered the chamber, waiting for the gravity generator to spin up. As it did so, the training dummy came to life. It resembled a headless human torso, with six arms stretching around from its back. Taking even a single hit from one of them would immediately end the exercise in failure. The dummy was constructed from carbonadium, making it virtually indestructible. That meant Daystar wouldn't have to hold back.
"Crucible program engaged. Beginning in three... two... one."
As the training AI finished speaking, Alex threw her first punch. The dummy didn't waver an inch, so she threw another and another, until her fists were moving fast enough that they would have been a mere blur to any outside observer.
"Impact force equivalent: Fastball."
"Gravity equivalent: The Moon."
"Question one: What does the bound quantum state of a strangelet consist of?"
Before the AI was even done asking the question, the training dummy took its first swing, a heavily-telegraphed right hook. Alex didn't miss a beat, shifting her head to the side and continuing her barrage of blows, while she gave her answer.
"An equivalent number of up, down, and strange quarks."
"Correct. Question two: What are the combat applications of a strangelet?"
This line of questioning wasn't much of a surprise. Every part of the Crucible was tailored to the user, including the questions they were asked. Noctua would have been fielding questions about martial arts, Quiver about archery, and for Alex... quantum physics, apparently.
"They can be used to create strangelet bombs, capable of causing all matter they come into contact with to decay into more strangelets. This has an irreversible cascading reaction capable of destroying entire planets in a matter of hours."
That was the kind of threat Alex was spending most of her time thinking about these days. She'd have to deal with things on that level one day- maybe even make use of weapons of that nature and potency. It was theoretically possible for her to create a strangelet bomb, though no Judgement had been given cause to do so for millions of years. Even during the War of Light, they'd mostly refrained from doing so, since the primary combat engagements were between the Judgements themselves, not planetary-scale military forces.
"Correct."
Without warning, the gravity ratcheted up in intensity. Simultaneously, the training dummy took another two swings in quick succession. If the intention was to throw her off-balance, it failed. She avoided the blows and increased the strength of her own by an order of magnitude, the sound of her fists striking the metal now resounding like a gong.
"Gravity equivalent: Earth."
"Impact force equivalent: Freight train."
"Question three: What is the intensity of sound necessary to reliably kill the average human?"
While the Solar Sentinel was seeking the answer in her photonic memory array- with mere seconds to go before her lack of answer disqualified her -the training dummy launched three simultaneous strikes. While continuing to hit it with one hand, as pausing her assault would also fail the exercise, she blocked each of the blows with her other hand at the same time, doing so with such speed that it would appear her hand was in three places at once.
"Two hundred and forty decibels or more."
"Correct. Question four: In ascending order of threat, list all known active entities designated as: Binary."
"Gravity equivalent: Jupiter."
Before Alex could even start to answer the next question, the gravity went from that of Earth, to more that double that, in a single second. She felt it come down on her like a ton of bricks, but held firm, drawing on more of her internal energy reserves to stay upright, while continuing to pummel the training dummy. It was striking back just as fast, forcing her to keep blocking its blows with one hand, until eventually it became obvious she wasn't going to be able to keep it up. Gritting her teeth, Daystar grasped each of the six arms with a telekinetic hand, while returning her other natural one to the task of punching. They were already straining against her invisible hold, but to no avail, at least for now.
"Impact force equivalent: ICBM."
"Executioner, Puh-Pardoner, and--" Alex broke off, surprised as one of the arms managed to wrench itself free and take a swing, which she just barely avoided before locking it back down, this time with twice as much force. She was hitting the dummy with enough power to make the entire station shake, if the training chamber wasn't specially reinforced to prevent that from happening. "And Custodian."
Based on what she'd read, there was some speculation that the Binaries had been an attempt to create an artificial Judgement, albeit with some bizarre built-in emotional weakness. Alex kinda doubted it, though. Either way, the database was pretty insistent that they were a massive threat, maybe even on Alex's own level, if not stronger. Judging by the subtext, Terminus had some pretty strong personal feelings about them, too, though exactly why was unclear.
"Correct. Question five: In descending order of viability, list all confirmed or theoretical methods of killing a Binary."
"Total molecular discorporation, singularities, memetics, and exploitation of the emotional vulnerability."
By now, Alex was speaking so fast her words would have been indistinguishable from high-pitched gibberish, to anybody but an AI. Doc was probably reading her lips, rather than actually 'listening' to what she was saying, but it was the only way for her to get her words out without falling victim to the increasingly intense gravity. Of course, the moment Alex so much as thought that was the moment that he decided to increase the gravity again.
"Gravity equivalent: Earth times five."
In other words, double what she'd already been laboring under. One of Alex's feet slid backwards, scraping a deep gash in the metal floor of the training chamber. She slowly inched it forwards, careful not to lift it off the ground for a second, else she'd surely fall and fail. All the while, she kept striking the training dummy, fast enough that there were streaks of flame accompanying each blow, as the air itself caught fire around her. Most people wouldn't have survived a single blow of that caliber, but there were people who could take everything Alex had already dished out and come back for more.
"Impact force equivalent: Orbital kinetic bombardment."
"Correct. Question six: What is the maximum safe diameter of a Stervos-Pendragon variant Einstein-Rosen bridge?"
"Fifteen miles."
"Correct. Question seven: What are the three most efficient ways of killing a physically invulnerable opponent?"
"Asphyxiation, depressurization, and freezing their internal bodily fluids solid."
Conscious thought was starting to become a luxury Alex couldn't afford. She was no longer thinking about the answers, just reciting them as soon as they popped into her head. That was a good thing, though. No time to second-guess yourself in the middle of a fight. You just had to rely on your instincts and hope you made the right call.
"Gravity equivalent: Earth times fifteen."
The gravity in the chamber tripled without warning. A moment later, as Alex's concentration wavered, three of the training dummy's arms broke free and struck, at a precise series of angles that would make evading them impossible, without also pausing her assault. Feeling her body protesting against the strain, the Solar Sentinel accelerated her perception, making the world around her appear to slow down. It would buy her precious moments, so she could find a way to get out of this without failing the test.
Trying to restrain the arms again wouldn't work. It was taking all her concentration just to keep the other three held back. Instead, Daystar focused on the arms themselves, using her superior senses to examine their molecular structure. Carbonadium was a 'miracle material,' derived using superhuman science, supposedly near-indestructible and capable of cutting anything. But the individual molecular bonds holding it together weren't as strong as the material itself. With impossible precision, Alex began severing those bonds one by one, until the first of the arms simply fell off. Then came the other two, all in the span of the same second, though it felt like far longer from the Solar Sentinel's perspective. The force behind the blows carried them forward, but under the intense gravity, they dropped straight to the ground before they could hit her.
"Correct."
Alex couldn't even remember what the last question had been. The amount of power necessary to keep hitting the training dummy was only getting bigger, to the point where she was no longer entirely sure how hard she was even hitting it. Certainly harder than she'd ever hit anything before.
"Question eight: Excluding all previously-mentioned entities, list all unaccounted extant Class-A threats."
"Surgath. Astra. Myrmidon. Cyrolus. Solorion. Jaeger. The Children of Magnus."
None of the names even called an image to mind. Alex was well past that. They were just empty signifiers. Her focus was primarily on staying upright, and continuing to hit her target.
"Impact force equivalent: Meteor, continental class."
So she was hitting it hard enough to wipe out all life on a given continent. That was good to know. Right now, Alex was in no position to contemplate what that meant. She diverted the barest fraction of her attention to checking her internal energy reserves- and found that they were less than half empty.
"Correct. Question nine: What is the best way to stop a relativistic kill vehicle?"
Another kind of planet-killing weapon. One that was fired at a meaningful percentage of the speed of light. Less than a picosecond elapsed before Alex gave her answer.
"Put myself in front of it."
"Correct."
"Gravity equivalent: The Sun."
Almost thirty times the gravity of the Earth. Alex's knees buckled. She could feel her bones beginning to disintegrate under the stress, and poured as much energy as possible into keeping herself together. She was almost done. Almost done. Almost.
"Question ten: What is the biggest existential threat to life on Earth at present?"
"Impact force equivalent: Meteor, mass extinction class."
This one didn't take much thinking either.
"I am."
"Correct."
A moment later- though from Alex's perspective, more like an eternity -the training program ended. Gravity shut off entirely, and she collapsed into weightlessness, releasing the training dummy's remaining arms from her telekinetic hold. She could feel the extent of her injuries now, after holding them back for so long. It was worse than what had once put her in the hospital for months. Most of her bones were shattered, her internal organs half burst or flattened. But still, she lived. And as she lay silent, too weak even to scream, she felt the light inside of her ignite. Rather than reconstructing her body as it once was, it was rebuilding it better. Her connection to the Sun wasn't yet strong enough for her to shed her mortal form entirely, but she could begin to alter it, the way a Judgement was capable of assuming the form of any species it interacted with.
To Alex, it felt like a fire was consuming every inch of her, inside and out. But it didn't hurt. It just burned through her, eradicating every bit of weakness and insecurity and doubt that it found. For all Alex knew, she had been floating there for hours, when she heard a voice. Familiar, though not exactly identical to the three that had tormented her throughout the Crucible. At some point, it seemed Doc had reabsorbed his 'aspects' back into himself.
"Congrats, kid. You got through round one."
"Sorry, what?"
Though she hadn't even opened her eyes yet, Alex could tell the hologram was smirking.
"Come on, you thought that was it? Twenty-eight times Earth's gravity is nothing. A white dwarf has a hundred thousand times that. And that's nothing compared to a neutron star. You wanna be on that level one day? Then you'd better get used to feeling exactly the way you do right now. Because it's gonna take a lot more than one round in the Crucible to get there."
Slowly, Daystar righted herself, and set her feet down on the ground. It had been heavily damaged just by having her standing on it under that much gravity, but already it was beginning to repair itself. She lifted up the severed carbonadium arms with telekinesis and pressed them to the stumps, allowing the self-repairing circuitry to reattach them. Then she turned to face Doc.
"Okay. Let's go again."