Blade (UBW!Taylor Worm Quest)

You want to save people. You’re going to start with yourself. Once you get your GED, you’ll never need to deal with The Trio again. While you’re at the library, might as well do some research to see exactly what you’re up against. After you’ve had a productive morning, it’s back to the arcade to see if you actually have new friends or if it was just a one-time thing. It’s a plan!

GED is pretty straightforward. There’s an exam you can study for. It isn’t a particularly high standard, either. If you put in some time every day, you feel like you could probably handle it in a month or two (roll 1d30 plus the number of times after this that you’ve spent studying this, need a 30 to pass the test. May only attempt the test once per month).


You consider creating a PHO account, but decide not to quite yet. Mostly, you’re just not sure what username you want to use, especially since it’ll probably become tagged as a cape account eventually. For that matter, you’re not sure what your cape name should be.

There are four major villain factions in Brockton Bay, plus some independents. Most of this you already know, but haven’t considered this in the context of your power yet.

The ABB holds the docks. You’re not even slightly asian, so they’d attack you on sight whether or not you were there as a cape. The difference is whether they’d try to rape or murder you. Not fun either way. Fighting Lung is a bad idea, at least for now -- there’s probably some kind of Tinkertech you could copy that could deal with him, you just don’t know what it is. Maybe a sedative or restraint foam in the lungs before he changes too much. Oni Lee is also likely to a be a problem before you grab some more gear, but you could probably copy his grenades if they didn’t kill you first.

The Merchants will attack you if you enter their turf unless you join them -- not something you’re willing to do. They’re druggies and they take sex slaves. Scum who need to be taken down to save others. Skidmark and Mush are useless to you, and Mush is gross. You’re fairly certain that you don’t have enough prana to copy any of Squealer’s vehicle’s yet, even if you copied them. Might be worth doing eventually if you can build up your prana capacity over time.

Coil’s organization holds territory, but they don’t really do much to hurt people. As villains go, you’re okay with waiting on dealing with them. He’s supposed to have mundane soldiers with some Tinker-made guns, sort of like a nega-PRT. If you spot his soldiers, you can probably copy some gear off of them, but they only appear for defense and during operations, and you don’t really want to attack there yet.

Finally (at least among the groups that hold territory), there’s the Empire-88. It’s the fucking Nazis. On the bright side, you’re white, so you’ll probably be safe in their territory until you start attacking them, and still safe in civilian guise even after that. You could easily join them, but again, it’s the fucking Nazis. Not happening. You can’t think of much in the way of useful stuff to copy from them, either. You could grab some giant weaponry from Fenja and Menja, you guess, but they don’t have any fun Tinkertoys to clone. Much as you hate to admit it, their territory is pretty safe, at least as long as you’re white, and there aren’t many non-white people dense enough to still be in their territory after all these decades.

First of the groups that don’t hold territory is the Travelers. They’re new in town, but again, no fun gear. They’re supposed to be mercenary, so nobody needs to be saved from them yet.

Next, the Undersiders. Small-time crooks, no awesome gear. They try to minimize civilian involvement and don’t have any fun gear either. Robbed a casino a few nights ago, but they’ve been lying low since then, and again, minimal civilian involvement. They need to go down eventually, but you can also wait on them.

Finally, there’s Uber and Leet. They’ve done some nasty stuff, like the time they beat a woman to death, but that was a few years back and they haven’t anything like that in a while. Apparently that was for a Grand Theft Auto video. Makes sense, but still bad. Leet has all kinds of fun toys that you’d love a chance to copy, but there’s no way to tell where they are until they start streaming. If you subscribe and keep an eye out, you should be able to track them down as soon as they next start filming.

For heroes, there’s New Wave, the Protectorate and the wards, and the PRT. New Wave as useless to you, but the PRT has restraint foam, which should be incredibly useful. Between the Protectorate and the Wards, there’s Armsmaster and Kid Win. Kid Win has those stun guns for ranged, and Armsmaster has some awesome powered armor and that halberd. With those as primary weapons, you could probably take on anything in Brockton Bay shy of Lung and Kaiser. The Protectorate might have an issue with you copying that gear if you don’t register as a hero first, though.

You’re pretty sure those are all the major players in town. There’s a chance you might have forgotten one or two, though.


As it turns out, you DO have real friends again! Daniel and Ted are both at the arcade by the time you get there. Apparently, Tetris has a multiplayer mode where two blocks drop on the same field, with each player controlling one of them. You cycle through with them for a few hours. Daniel’s significantly better than Ted at the game, but they’re both quite skilled. You spend a lot more time watching than playing despite the fact that you play two rounds out of three.

“Interested in being Internet Famous?” Daniel asks after a while. “Ted and I have a Youtube channel. Video-game themed, of course. You’ll get a cut of the ad revenue.”

“We’re thinking Metroid,” Ted adds.

Noticing your confusion, Daniel explains. “Exploration game featuring a girl in powered armor. Normally I’d play the protagonist, but that just doesn’t seem right in this case.”


Response?:
[ ] Yes! These are your friends, and this is a good chance to copy some powered armor.
[ ] Wait… two guys with Tinkertech and a video game stream? Are you secretly Uber and Leet?
[ ] Not that you don’t want to do this, but you don’t think you have the time. You need to study for your GED.

What about a cape name and a PHO username?
[ ] Write-in. No urgency, but you won’t log in to PHO until you decide on a name.

What to do tonight?
[ ] Gotta save someone. Even if you just fight unpowered people, you can help!
[ ] Sneak out at night to gear up. Gotta get ready so you can save people from capes.
[ ] Sleep. If you stay up all night, you’ll be dead on your feet if you go jogging, or you’ll have to sleep in and miss it. Either way, you’re not ready and can better spend your time sleeping.

 

You’ve never played a Metroid game, but this sounds interesting, and even if it wasn’t, that powered armor is likely to be your first step towards saving others. “I’d love to try,” you tell the two.

“Great! We’ll be busy tomorrow morning setting things up, but stop by here in the afternoon and everything will be ready to go. It may take a while, so make sure you don’t have any other commitments that night,” Daniel tells you.


That night, you dream of blood and fire and swords. But also of friends and heroes, of those you will protect. Ever since you became more than just human and stopped going to school, your life has gotten a lot better.

You talk to Dad over breakfast after your morning run. “I met some new friends and they’ve invited me to hang out. I’ll be back late or in the morning.”

“Where is it?” Danny asks.

“Downtown. It’s safe, and I don’t plan on being outside in the middle of the night.

“Alright, just stay safe, kiddo. I worry about you.”

“Thanks, Dad. Oh, I’ve decided to try for an early GED. I can’t go back there. Can you help me study over the weekend?”

“I’ll clear some time for you. Are you sure you don’t want me to try to get you transferred to Arcadia instead? School is still a good chance to socialize with people your age.”

“That’s actually a pretty good idea. I’ll keep studying for the GED until then, in case it doesn’t work. You don’t need to let it come at the cost of work.”

“Nonsense. Not that what I do isn’t important, but the most important thing is that it pays to keep you happy and healthy. Since you won’t be around this evening anyways, I’ll work on it then.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

You give each other a hug before you head out for the day.


You have a chance to get some stuff done before you become internet famous tonight. You have three time slots, the third of which is pre-emptively locked in for Metroid, as is your night slot. If things wrap up faster than intended, you expect to be so exhausted that you’ll easily fall asleep. For those wondering, it’s currently Thursday, March 24, 2010. You're about two weeks ahead of the normal Worm timeline.

Pick Two:
[ ] Go to school
[ ] Go to the library and study for your GED
[ ] Go to the library and browse PHO
[ ] Find a weapon for your power (Write in a plan)
[ ] Find some kind of armor, either real or something that you can make with your power (Write in a plan)
[ ] Other (Write In)

 

Brian answered his ringing cellphone. Lisa. He hadn’t heard from her in days.

“Rachel’s dead,” She said. Nothing more.

“How?”

“Didn’t listen. Didn’t stay home. Lung baited her with an underground dogfighting ring.”

“Dammit!” Brian swore. “I’m out. I can’t do this anymore. Even if I wanted to, we don’t have enough muscle.”

“We do if Alec stops lying about what he can do, or if we pick up another member.”

“Wait, what else can he do?” Brian interrupted.

“He’s one of Heartbreaker’s kids. The twitch thing means he can take full control over people, even if only briefly. About 95% certain he can hold on to that for a lot longer. Basically, long-term puppeting, even of other capes.”

“No. He does that, we’re all getting a kill order. If he could use his power well enough to survive that, he would have by now. I don’t like that he’s been hiding his real power, but it’s not my problem anymore.”

“I bet he could get away with it if he only did it to other villains. Wonder if Lung’s immune when he’s a dragon.”

“YOU KNEW?” He yelled into the phone. “You could have saved Rachel! Everything could have been fine!”

“It wouldn’t have worked,” The sound of grinding teeth filled a pause. “I know a precog, and we trade favors. Oni Lee was with Lung. Alec would have gotten killed too, and then Lung would be free to finish off Rachel anyway. The fact that Alec could probably control Lung just didn’t seem important before this week, and since then there hasn’t been a chance,” Lisa didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and neither did Brian. “I don’t like it either. I mean, she wasn’t exactly likable and she hated me, but she was loyal and honest and actually did some good in her spare time. When she wasn’t robbing places with us, I mean. She probably could have been a hero if she wasn’t so abrasive.”

“To lost friends,” Brian offered.

“To a girl who didn’t believe in misdirection and just wanted better treatment for dogs,” Lisa agreed.

They took a moment of silence for remembrance. Lisa spoke again next.

“How are you going to get the money to take care of Aisha?” She asked.

“How do you--never mind, of course you know. I hope you understand that my relation to her is a secret. Let anyone know and I’ll hunt you down. This is important, Lisa.”

“I get it, I get it,” She cajoled him. “Actually, her home life is probably a lot like mine was just before I left, and she doesn’t exactly have the superpowers to let her do that. If you need some help figuring out how to help her, I’ll try to be useful. So, how do you plan on getting enough money for the adoption to go through?”

“I don’t know, maybe I’ll see if the Protectorate will take me. Not like any of our operations seriously bothered them. Even the casino belonged to the ABB.”

“Won’t they stop the adoption process if they know you used to be a villain?”

“I’ll talk to them about it first, okay? If they don’t, I don’t know, maybe I’ll get a job on the docks or something. If they lie about it, I’ll leave the Protectorate afterwards. I just,” Brian sighed. “I thought we knew what we were doing. I thought this was safer, was the only way to get enough money fast enough. But the casino job was a good enough haul. If I can keep that and hold a job as myself, that’ll probably be enough.”

“I might work for Coil next,” Lisa offered. “Don’t know about Alec, but he’ll either leave town or join another team. Probably the former. My guess is he’ll try for the Travelers, but they’ve got something going on where they won’t let anyone join them. He couldn’t go for two of the three gangs in town even if he wanted to, and he’s too sane to be a Nazi. Unfortunately, still too crazy to be a hero.”

“So almost every cape in town that I actually get along with is dead, about to skip town, or soon to be an enemy.”

“Don’t worry, we shouldn’t have to fight each other. I’m not planning on committing crime in person when I’ll have minions to do it. I was only doing that before because Rachel insisted on it. I’ve also got personal reasons for wanting to join his group that I don’t want to talk about yet. If you do manage to join the Protectorate, can you see about helping me join up eventually? Depending on how Coil does, they might be the best choice to join next.”

“Sure, but only if you make sure I make it in the first place. I know you’re good enough at this kind of thing to ensure that I get custody of Aisha and get on the team.”

“It’s a deal. Until next time, Erebus.”

“Wait, what?” Brian asked

But it was too late. She had already hung up.