I can think of lots of subtly horrible ways that altering your biology this far could go bad, and you might not even be able to tell until hundreds of years had passed. But there have been people who've had their wings for hundreds of years, and they haven't noticeably developed any horrible problems of either a biological or a mental kind.

Yeah but in hundreds of years I could just do a brain upload if my body's ducked up, whereas if the problem is with my actual brain...

Well, sure, but my point is that neither thing has ever happened in all the long years of Suranse history.

Anyway, didn't I hear somewhere that parahuman powers involve a brain alteration too...? Seeing as you're going to save the world with yours, I assume you're not opposed to them.

Parahumans have a part of the brain other people don't called Corona Pollentia, but as far as anyone's been able to determine we're born with it. There are some hypotheses that getting powers makes us more prone to conflict and that's why capes fight so much, but it's all pretty perfectly explainable by the fact that we suffer horrible trauma to even get the powers in the first place.

Getting wings still seems like the better deal to me. Although I'm certainly glad parahuman powers exist, seeing as yours are going to be crucial to saving the world.

Well, I'm not sure the world would even need saving if it weren't for the parahuman powers.

Mine still would.

Oh. Yeah. Good point.

Although, do you really think the Endbringers are caused by parahumans somehow, or by whatever caused parahumans? I guess it's possible...

Well, prior to Scion, everything was natural and followed nice laws of physics. Then Scion, superpowers bordering on the magical, and giant monsters. Hard to believe they're not all connected. Some religions think the powers were introduced because Endbringers were going to appear, in order to prepare to fight them, but I don't buy that.

Yeah... I can see the appeal of the theory. Now I want to find out what's going on.

You and everyone else. It's all a huge mystery.

Well, maybe we'll find something. It seems like knowing where the Endbringers came from would be useful for world-saving purposes.

Yes, especially because it was only Behemoth and Leviathan for like ten years before the Simurgh showed up, there may very well be others.

Yeah.

If someone is making them on purpose...

I don't even know. I feel tempted to send them a strongly worded letter.

I'd just kill them. I wouldn't even waste time monologuing or explaining how awful that was or trying to convert them to the side of light, just. Dead.

A valid approach. The diplomacy-first thing is just really culturally ingrained, for me. If it turns out to be tactically impractical, given the stakes, I'm not saying no to assassination as an alternative.

Just, even if the Endbringers stop right now the Simurgh has probably set enough in motion that we'll be feeling it for decades.

On the other hand, if diplomacy somehow worked, imagine the power that created the Endbringers being turned to good and useful ends... I don't know. We don't know enough to predict what we'll do.

They are 'the Enemy' here. If we converted them, there would be nothing left to fight. Well, that's not strictly true, threats like Sleeper still exist, but siccing an Endbringer on them is about as far from helpful as possible.

Well, e.g. the Simurgh would make short work of my Enemy if she were going all-out instead of showing up to wreck a city every so often, but that's not quite what I meant.

I don't know if the Endbringers were created, or by whom, but the sort of thing that could make them must be immensely powerful and if they are capable of using that power for anything less destructive, and can be convinced to do it, that opens up a lot of possibilities. I'm daydreaming here, of course, there's no reason to think it could be that simple, but if it was... well, that's why diplomacy is important, or at least one of the reasons. Because a live friend is nearly always preferable to a dead enemy on both moral and practical grounds.

Yes, but if those were ever my options I'd need to check pretty thoroughly that I'm not dreaming. The world isn't that nice.

Effort and persistence can sometimes make the world nicer, I find.

That was probably true before parahumans.

And yet, my opinion is still that if the world is not a nice enough place, that's a sign I haven't been trying hard enough.