Mountain, meet Endbringer

[sturdycoldsteel]

The Fate who calls herself Mountain tried to convince some of her neighbors to allow the occasional mountain in their lands, for stability purposes.

"I meant no insult!" Dodge ball of lava. "I don't intend to interfere, you said no!" Dodge house-sized spear of ice. "I'm leaving peacefully, okay, so stop tearing up the tile!"

"You'll respawn at home. No permanent damage. You interrupted an important meeting, you need to learn a lesson about territory, mountain bitch." Dodge- no, fail to dodge a thrown tree, and then another ice ball. The next sphere of magma is what destroyed that form.




She wakes up, stripped of all her tools and enchantments and even clothes, and groans in pain.

Comments

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Quite sure, yes. That last thing actually really hurt by the way, if you're going for nonlethal maybe remember that I'm not Alexandria."

The rubble is in a slightly different configuration now, but overall this was a sufficiently flashy fight with no collateral damage.

She starts putting up a building.

[mxglam]

And people did see it!

Glam sees a PRT van in the distance from their vantage points and decides to say 'bye.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She shakes her head and turns away. Wouldn't do to be too friendly to the nominally-a-villain. Glam gets a finger-sized rock with Mountain's phone number embedded in it pushed into their palm from range.

Back to building, building, building. Some of the rubble is still glowing red-hot, so she dips it into the river before using it as structural elements.

[peterxy]

The PRT appears and questions her about what she called them for.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Well, Glam tried to convince her to team up. She said no. They fought, she lost. Then Glam left, so she went back to work. She praises how careful Glam was about avoiding collateral damage, but complains that it was just impossible to hit them because apparently they can teleport now ugh.

[peterxy]

The PRT is thankful for this piece of information. They ask her whether she needs medical attention or whether anyone else was hurt and how much structural damage was caused.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She's slightly injured but wouldn't benefit from medical attention. She doesn't think any bystanders were hurt and structural damage was low because her opening move was to whack Glam into the Behemoth rubble with her hammer. It was already thoroughly destroyed, the fight didn't make much difference.

[peterxy]

Very well. They would appreciate any information about the fight, though, including what other powers Glam has displayed.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Glam can make stuff that disappears after a while, block her earth-sense but not at touch range, fling stuff around, take a hit... That seemed to be about it, but it was frustratingly powerful. She could barely see for most of the fight through all the stuff being thrown at her.

[peterxy]

That... is somewhat in line with what they've seen so far, if a bit more relentless than Glam usually goes with.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Well, Mountain was pretty much ignoring anything less until Glam escalated to pelting her with balls of temporary diamond. Flight and toughness make her a target requiring lots of force. She wouldn't throw a boulder at a mugger, but she might try that against a high-level 'brute', it's reasonable.

[peterxy]

That's reasonable. Well, they thank her again for standing up to this villain and for her help with the city, and are on their way.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Her reputation for neutral-leaning-hero hopefully shored up, she wishes them good luck and gets back to the pile of rubble.

Time passes. Jobs come and go. She stops changing the layout of the upper floors of her mountain to let the electrical people plan where wires and fuses and so on go. She hauls the internet things, generator, electrical fixings for the base, and miscellaneous supplies to her mountain and starts paying various people to electrify the place.

How's the press viewing her a week later? Does Glam contact her at all? Any particularly interesting jobs or do they all settle into a routine of clearing rubble, raising and repairing structures, and making raw materials?

[mxglam]

Glam does contact her! And asks more questions about her world because it's just that interesting. Or because they're just that curious, the line's blurry.

As for the press, there haven't been any new pieces since then, but there's an upcoming one about the restoration of New York and how she's the one doing it. Most of the piece is about the government and Endbringer attacks, but they want a line or two from Mountain herself about the whole thing. Laura says whether she should accept it or not depends on the image she wants to have, but if she does accept, she should be careful to only answer things related to the piece itself but be agreeable about it.

And as for jobs, the people who wanted her help mining still do, but they're also grumbling about the fact that she can make the stuff they mine appear out of thin air. NEPEA-3 imposes very heavy taxes on the stuff she sells that she didn't mine, though, so they don't grumble as much.

And there is this one peculiar job...

[sturdycoldsteel]

She idly answers Glam's questions. Sometimes she's not sure about some detail, it's starting to fade from immediate memory some. She'll accept the new media piece.

There's only one of her and Earth is big. Those mining companies aren't actually that much worse off all things considered, and making new stuff is her entire job, well, most of it, back home so she finds herself unsympathetic.

What exactly is the peculiar job?

[peterxy]

Well, apparently someone wants her to help build... something... in a mountain, somewhere. It's very vague, and she'll have to sign a very strongly-termed NDA, but the pay is ridiculously good. The penalties for violating the NDA are pretty steep as well, though.

[sturdycoldsteel]

...Is there an expiration date on the non-disclosure agreement? Even one that's a long time away and doesn't allow her to disclose the whole thing will do, but since she expects to live forever it has to exist. She doesn't explain why.

[peterxy]

...is she really completely indifferent about any possible expiration dates? Like, say, one three hundred years in the future's okay for her?

[sturdycoldsteel]

Well obviously 'forty years' would be better than 'three hundred' but yeah. She doesn't like indefinite promises. Call it the principle-of-the-thing issue if you must.

[peterxy]

Well, from their end, three hundred years is already a compromise from 'forever,' so they'll want to keep that.

Also a few relevant details about the project is that she herself mustn't know the actual location of the construction.

Does she want the job?

[sturdycoldsteel]

...She can do her best to avoid scrutinizing the geography while being ferried around blindfolded, okay. Mostly only because of the pay. And because this is coming through semi-official channels.

[peterxy]

Good! Very good. They suggest sending an aircraft to pick her up from her mountain.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She'll have her builders prioritize the helipad then. Should be ready in a week or two.

[peterxy]

Good. They'll be there, then.

[sturdycoldsteel]

And several days later she's ready to be flown to a mysterious location.