Wait a Minute... (Guy in Worm with Trouble in Terrorist Town powers)

I sure hope this is the correct box to type this part in. (It wasn't, I had to switch the first threadmark and the thread description)
Hi! This is my first story, and I'm not sure how long it will go on or how much time I will be able to dedicate to it. Please do not raise your expectations.

This is a story that takes place in Worm, about an Original Character who apparently has an identity and life on Earth Bet, but doesn't remember any of it. He has gotten powers from the Yogscast Modded Gary's Mod Trouble In Terrorist Town game (TTT), and gets more powers and items from it as time goes on, and he has a feeling it will move on to a similar theme after it grabs everything it can from TTT, and perhaps even more after that. Reading this requires no knowledge of the Yogscast or TTT, but they will likely make it funnier.

He has some limited memories of someone from an Earth similar to ours, most of which are useless and about a group of idiots (he means it affectionately) called the Yogscast; but other, more normal memories are just enough to make him double take and question many things on Earth Bet. He is apparently a Yognau(gh)t, so he decides to call himself Dave.


I have read quite a bit of Worm fanfiction in my day, but I've never read the original story because I find it much too dark and depressing, so, correspondingly, I am nearly certain to get things wrong and ask for gentle clarification and understanding if I choose not to correct it since I intend for this story to be substantially lighter in tone than the original.

Nothing is (currently) written in advance and I (currently) have no plans for a schedule. This is (currently) a bit of fun for me while I rewatch the old Yogscast TTT playlists while stretching my creative juice (yes, I love stretching my juices, why do you ask?), and maybe entertaining a few people along the way... if I keep up with it.

The first chapter will be out sometime between today and next week... hopefully. Now, I just have to figure out how to copy all of this into an identical story in the NSFW section.

January 1, 2010. Brockton Bay.

He woke up on a bed. That was good, he supposed; the problem was just about everything else.

"What's my name, and why do I feel like I should care more about the answer than I actually do?" He asked while staring at the ceiling.

"For that matter, why am I so awake first thing in the morning? Don't I have narcolepsy?"

With no answers appearing, he did his best to let muscle memory take over, and it dragged him through a shower and finding clothes in a large plastic bin under his bed ("but why though?" he asked while digging through the bin to find socks), before pouring orange juice and putting a bagel in the toaster ("Mmm, berry flavored bagels, I have good taste").


Huh. I understood... none of that in real words.

Yeah, it was like, I got the gist and the meaning, but with no actual words. It was kinda trippy really.


Thanks, I think. He grabbed a notepad and did what his instincts told him to do, and wrote down the word "that", before grabbing his sadly cold bagel from the toaster.

Who knew trying to decipher weird soul alien language took enough time to make a bagel fully toast and cool down to room temperature.

Then he used his newfound common sense, and put the bagel back in the toaster on the lowest setting so it could heat back up.

---

Exiting his apartment door, he saw a woman who was apparently his neighbor exiting her unit as well. Locking the door behind him, he decided to follow his instincts, which had definitely no points of failure.

"Hi, I am Dave! I am a Yognau(gh)t and I have the balls. Are you Dave! Yognau(gh)t with the balls?"

She stared.

Nailed it.

AN: If you aren't familiar with TTT and/or the Yogscast, you can still enjoy this, but will need to accept deep in your heart that you won't get every single reference in this chapter or the story.

January 1, 2010. Brockton Bay.



"So Bella, can you drive?"

It turned out that she was not in fact a Yognau(gh)t, her name was "Bella not Dave you imbecile!", and she did most certainly not have the balls and she resented me "risking her being attacked by Nazi morons hearing an idiot ask a woman if she has balls and assuming she is trans."

I naturally assured her I wasn't a dirty traitor, I was just an old man.

She stared at me and said "You are college age dude, are you trying to make actual old people angry at you?"

I did the only thing I could in response to that. I double jumped.

"Fine, where do you want me to drive you to?"

"The Beach please, Boat Graveyard area. My common sense is tingling and it's telling me that is where I should go. It also tells me that it's definitely Zylus, but he's not here, so I suspect my balls are defective."

She stared at me. She seems to be doing that a lot huh. "I am so going to regret this, but this is literally the only interesting thing that has happened to me this year." Huh, she was smiling a little.

Wait a minute…

"What day of the year is it today?" I asked ever so slightly suspiciously.

"Shut up and follow me to my car."

"Okay," I agreed happily. I won after all. Double jumping was truly the ultimate charisma. I didn't even need to T-Pose for dominance to intimidate her into doing my bidding… not that I would dominate someone without consent of course. Even with consent I might not do it really. Unless they deserved it of course, I think she mentioned Nazis earlier to, so I may need to practice my (T-Posing) skills a little before I dominate them. I might also do it if it was funny.

---

After observing Bella on the way to her car and the way she treated dogs (she stared at them because they were cute little good boys and girls, yes they were), I concluded, she could not possibly be a terrorist, therefore… she was a good person. In other words, a traitor!

Man, the TTT analogy really breaks down the instant you bring civilians into the picture doesn't it.

"So you're a parahuman right? I'm taking a parahumans studies class at Brockton University, so I think I'm academically required to ask: What's that like?" She asked after we got into her car.

"Well, if you are defining Parahuman as "an individual most likely of the species Homo Sapien Sapien in the possession of one or more "superpowers", then yes I am a parahuman". She seemed like she wanted to stare, but needed to keep her eyes on the road so she just sighed instead.

"And so far, it's been a bit of a mixed bag, on the one hand, I can double jump and it seems like my narcolepsy is gone. On the other hand, I'm about 95% sure that stubbing my toe will now kill me." She screeched to a stop. Good thing we were at a red light, I'm pretty sure she would have done that even on the highway. Maybe cars aren't the best place for this sort of discussion?

"What the fuck do you mean a stubbed toe will kill you?" Ow, woman, don't screech in my ear. At least my hearing damage seems to be cured as well, hopefully she won't bring it back with her dramatic antics.

"Well, my power—"

"Wait, should you even be telling me this?" She asked suddenly, and she already cares! I knew bringing civilians into terrorism was a good idea. Look at the results!

"Well, one of my powers is that I come back to life after I've died every ten minutes. Unless I want to stay dead of course, in which case I can obviously."

"Right, obviously," she agreed as the light turned green.

"Anyways, I knew you were Innocent when I saw how you treated the dogs, you looked upon them with proper deference for their adorableness and good boy-ness. Wait a minute… I decided you were a traitor earlier. Man, this analogy thing really breaks down with civilians."

"Right, you're just a weird idiot, that's why you decided I should be trusted. You're so obscenely lucky you picked a decent person to… latch on to or whatever it is you're doing," Bella concluded.

"Anyways, as a terrorist, I need to be a very good judge of character, and the tingle in my balls tells my you are a good person."

"Please, just go back to talking about your powers, I can't handle you being you that much while I'm trying to drive."

"Right right. Anyways, I get more powers as time goes on, and the ones I have get better, though both have an element of randomness." As he talked, she looked more and more like she wanted to interrupt, but was also determined to drive well. Perhaps she was concerned about him dying if she hit the breaks to fast based on his earlier comment? That was probably it.

After only a single sentence, she did end up interrupting, "Okay, this is genuinely fascinating-"

"Ahah! You said genuinely! I knew you were a traitor!"

"Shut up I'm trying to be serious! Anyways, this is really interesting, but also extremely unsafe to talk about all this while I'm driving and trying to concentrate, I'm having to take a longer route to the Boat Graveyard to avoid potholes so I don't somehow kill you because the roads are in terrible condition in this city for mysterious reasons I'm sure." She said the last bit sarcastically. Unfortunately, his common sense didn't tell him what the actual reasons for potholes were, so her sarcasm was undeserved as the answer was not common sense and therefore not worthy of sarcasm.

She finished off her thought with "So for now, just tell me what I need to know about for your safety --and my own I suppose though that doesn't seem to be a worry with your powers—then when we get to the boat graveyard we can finish the conversation. I assume you wanted to go there to test out your powers; which is fine as long as you don't do anything flashy, but if you do anything too large it will attract attention you probably don't want from either the gangs or the PRT. After we've had our conversation and you've done whatever testing you wanted to do, I can call a friend of mine, she's completely trustworthy and is something of an expert on Parahumans. She'll be able to give you advice and help going forward."

"Wow, you've already deduced things about why I wanted to go places and thought things through. That kind of thinking is just what you need to be a great Terrorist. You have a bright future in terrorism Bella. Anyways, right now, and only for today, I am in a condition that you can think of as like being a video game character on one health, but one health is also the maximum health, so a doctor wouldn't find anything wrong with me, but even a gentle tap with a crowbar would instantly kill me.

On the bright side, because my power is a fantastic good boy/girl/nonbinary, I also will respawn every 10 minutes if I do die."

"So, you're like a worse version of Alabaster? Also powers aren't sentient or gendered." She asked after ignoring my amazing compliment on how smart she was.

Well if she's going to ignore my compliments, I'm going to ignore her obviously incorrect statements regarding the sentience of powers, and since she doesn't even know about powers being sentient, obviously she can't be trusted to be correct with regards to their genders. Honestly, making broad-sweeping assumptions about an entire… species? I'm going to say species. Making broad-sweeping assumptions about an entire species like that is incredibly rude and insensitive. Racist even. Maybe sexist too.

"I don't actually know what alabaster is, but I don't think it respawns if destroyed. I thought it was either a plaster of some sort or a pottery material, but if it respawned after being destroyed I'm pretty sure we would make a lot more stuff out of it."

She almost tried to face palm before putting her hand back on the steering wheel. "No, Alabaster is the name of one of the local Nazi capes. He returns to his original condition every 5 seconds or so, which means even if he dies or is injured, he will be alive and in perfect health after only 5 seconds instead of needing an entire 10 minutes."

"Damn, my power was really proud of figuring out a way to get me to respawn. It's going to be so disappointed now, and look at me with those big metaphorical, metaphysical puppy dog eyes. Like this." He said, before transforming into a Pikachu and looking up at her.

"AHH!" she screamed and slammed the breaks. Because he was now a Pikachu, his seatbelt wasn't tall enough, and he went flying into the windshield and died instantly.

---

Author's note: Don't worry, he isn't a real Pikachu. He can just change his skin/character-model. Anything he could reasonably find as a player model in the Steam Workshop is fair game, but it is mostly aesthetic (for now, that won't change for a while, if ever though). He is genuinely bigger or smaller though, so he can fit more places and make himself taller to see things, but when he is bigger, he isn't any stronger and is mostly just a bigger target. Next time, we will see Dave using spectator mode, Bella being forced to make a decision on what to do with the dead Pikachu in her car, and a nice calm picnic on a scenic beach before Bella calls her mysterious friend. Not necessarily in that order.

Chapter 3: Who's That Pokemon Cape?!

January 1, 2010. Brockton Bay.



It turns out, when he dies, he goes into Spectator mode.

Continuity of consciousness baby! Dave thought triumphantly. Before realizing he now had a panicking Bella he couldn't communicate with fretting over his dead body.

His fucking adorable dead body. Seriously, it was the cutest dead body he had ever seen. Shame it was dead.

"Oh god, oh god, THIS IS WHY I WANTED TO DELAY THE CONVERSATION, you FUCKING MANIAC!" She screamed at his dead body, sobbing slightly. Wow, she got attached fast didn't she? Maybe she knew him before he lost his memories? Or maybe she just didn't have many friends and imprinted on him. Oh, she's doing something.

Bella took out her phone and called someone. "Hey, I know we were supposed to meet up later, but I got sidetracked with something really important, and I need your help with a dead body."

Wow, did she already forget that I told her I could respawn? Does she just have a memory of a goldfish? Is she stupid or something?

"No, I'm only sort of joking. I met a cape, I don't think he was a cape yet actually, but a parahuman, and he sort of started following me around like a baby duckling that imprinted on me and I had to help him before he hurt himself out of idiocy. He said one of his powers was that he could 'respawn' ten minutes after dying, but I don't know if he had tested that yet or was just going off of a feeling he had or something. He wasn't—isn't? –the brightest blub in the shed, and he might be a little insane, so he might have just misinterpreted a feeling he got from his power without actually testing it."

Oh wow, she's actually really smart. I didn't even think about the possibility I could be insane and not actually have all the powers I thought I had, or that I could have misinterpreted what my cute little soul alien was trying to communicate with me. Truly, I am a genius for grabbing onto a smart person and roping them into my shenanigans. Now she's invested in me, and the sunk cost fallacy will prevent her from leaving. It is completely unrelated to the fact she was literally the first person I ever saw after waking up with amnesia. Her claims of duckling imprinting are totally unfounded. Obviously. Oh, I missed some of the conversation.

"So, you can meet me at the boat graveyard to either help us test things, or bury a body? Uhh, either way, could you also help me clean my car, there is a little blood now, but it's all on the passenger side of the windshield, so it's not a worst-case scenario, I just don't know how to clean blood, from glass or from anything else."

"Yeah, I'm setting a timer for ten minutes now, it's been a couple minutes already, so if the timer goes off, I'll panic then, but I think I can drive to the boat graveyard without panicking now. And yes, I am assuming you know how to clean blood." Bella said into the phone, before the person on the other side of the phone talked a little more.

"No, he turned into some sort of yellow rodent, like a cartoonified mouse a couple feet tall that was then made real."

More indecipherable phone noises.

"No, it has black ear tips and brown stripes on its back, why? I know you aren't going for a zoology degree have you heard of an actual animal like this?"

"Why would I be familiar with Earth Aleph Japanese Cartoons and games? Of course I've never heard of a Pikachu. Yes, it is the cutest thing I've ever seen. He was trying to do puppy dog eyes but it startled me and I slammed the breaks. He slipped out of his seat belt and slammed against the windshield and fucking died. I felt so bad, I mean I would have felt terrible anyways, but him being in that form made my heart just about burst when he died."

"No, just because it's the cutest thing I've ever seen doesn't mean it's a Pikachu. It could be a completely random changer form totally unrelated to your weird cartoons."

"Fine, if—no, when—he wakes up, after you arrive, we'll ask him what it is, without asking leading questions, and if he says "Pikachu" I'll watch your weird Aleph Cartoons with you."

Bella sighed, "Thanks for helping me out, I was starting to panic a little. I'll see you at the boat graveyard in a couple minutes. Try and get there before the timer goes off will you? You need more practice going fast anyways girl, flying is one of your strongest features." She hung up, took a deep somewhat shaky breath, and started the car back up, with the dead Pikachu now surrounded in a towel, like a burrito. A bloody burrito, which is probably why the towels were there and the body was where it landed below the windshield instead of on the seat. As it was, it just looked like a weird pile of towels instead of a dead body.

Already thinking about hiding the body, as well as disguising the body. She truly did have the potential to be a great terrorist.

Hmm, the car seems to be leaving without me. Shit, the car is leaving without me!

After a little concentration and definitely-not-constipated-ghost-noises, Dave managed to anchor his perspective to the car, which was rather neat. Though he supposed it was only logical he would be able to do so given his perspective didn't go flying into the void of space after he died because the Earth doesn't exactly stay still, so his perspective must have originally been anchored to the Earth, and it was simply a logical extension of that ability that he could anchor his perspective to other moving objects.

Now that I have a few minutes though…

He felt around his soul and powers a little. It was easier without his body distracting him, and even more so now that he noticed something else. A feeling of slight growth every ten minutes had stopped.

I see, because I was the Old Man, in addition to only having one health, there was another aspect I forgot about. The Old Man's only win condition, is being alive at the end of the round. Since I'm not alive now, I'm not winning, but until now I had been "winning" every ten minutes as each "round" ended. That feeling was my Karma increasing from winning. Normally, extra karma doesn't do anything besides providing a safe buffer before you go into low Karma, where you will start doing less and less damage, until if your Karma gets low enough, you automatically get banned. Does that mean if I kill enough people "on my team" I would get "banned" from Earth Bet? Or from life?

Either way, I have a feeling higher Karma does something for me. Since low Karma decreases damage, maybe higher Karma will increase damage? My common sense tells me that would be a necessity for accomplishing anything on Earth bet. Normal guns just aren't enough against too many possible opponents, and even a Red Matter Bomb won't do much if it is as it is in the game. Though, maybe I could eventually "upgrade" a Red Matter Bomb to be closer to its inspiration, in which case it could probably either trap or kill one of those Endbringer things.

Now, how am I going to test if higher Karma means more damage? I can't exactly shoot someone and ask how much health they lost… can I?

…

No I don't think I can. Damn. I'll have to ask my new super amazing and smart friend Bella for ideas. Wait, I should save the flattery for when she can hear me, and do the insults when she can't hear me. Truly, I am a genius for thinking of this.

---

While Dave was pondering how he must be a good person because he has so much Karma, Bella was busy driving to the Boat Graveyard. It was completely deserted. It was actually a little creepy how deserted it was, but Bella brought the Pikachu corpse out from her car, still surrounded by towels, along with a large beach towel and a small toy beach shovel.

That would be the most humiliating thing to ever be buried with, Dave thought as he stared at the pink plastic toy shovel Bella brought out… for some reason. Why did she bring this actually?

Oh well. He floated around a little more, before deciding to make good use of his time in spectator mode while he can. He would feel really shitty if he didn't respawn at the first opportunity and she thought she had killed him permanently. Also, she might start burying his body by digging a hole with the little pink shovel, which would be humiliating. And he's pretty sure he can still suffocate considering he is certain he can still drown. So being buried alive would really kinda suck. Maybe he could eventually unlock the Detective Role and buy a teleporter, but he thinks he would need to set up a receiver port or something in advance to designate where to teleport to.

Wasn't there also a Teleport Attack item that teleported you to someone and then did damage to them? That might work, but I doubt it would be available right from the start, and I don't remember if it was a detective item or a traitor item, and I would need to figure out a way to determine if someone was an acceptable target in case they were already injured and using it on them killed them. Maybe I should just go with the plan of "Don't get buried before unlocking Detective and buying a teleporter and setting up a receiver port? I can make an exception if I get Parasite, Phantom, or Medium I suppose, as long as I get killed by a person… that isn't myself. Then I can deal with being buried since I can come back by either getting whoever killed me killed, or just waiting long enough that I burst out of their stomach if I am a Parasite role when they kill me. Okay, a plan has been formed: don't get buried, alive or otherwise. Maybe I should turn into something bigger if I think I am about to die so I would take longer to bury… I'll ask Bella for advice, I think.

After making his plans regarding being buried, Dave decided to stop wasting Spectator time, and kill two birds with one stone and start testing Spectator mode while making sure there was nobody nearby to spy on them. It wouldn't do to have an Informant find out he was an Old Man after all.

It turned out, while he was noclipping into a solid object, he could see through it. The ground counted as one object, so he was probably lucky Bella was wearing pants and not a skirt or else he may have gotten slapped. His common sense was telling him that the excuse of having seen Sailor Moon's panties plenty of times wouldn't have worked very well. Which was nonsense, that was a great excuse, so he started suspecting that maybe… just maybe… his common sense was slightly defective.

Regardless, he scouted around the area, found a surprising amount of sea life in the water, was promptly more than a little traumatized by how brutal ocean life is when you can actually see it, and found no humans nearby, Para or otherwise. Except that one flying woman he seems to be coming closer. He's pretty sure she isn't important though, that would be silly.

Oh shit, she's trying to strangle Bella! Around the chest! With her arms! Wait, I think that might be a hug. Nevermind.


Author's Note: I banged this out quickly to make sure nobody would think there was a risk of the story ending then and there at the previous chapter. This is not a troll story (as in a story where I the author am trolling the readers).

Next chapter is ready. Unfortunately, I am not qualified to describe a certain image, so I added a picture. However, I can't seem to figure out how to upload an image to QQ from my desktop instead of from online, and I can't find an online picture of what I want.

If anyone knows how to upload an image to QQ from a desktop, let me know and the chapter will go up right away. (Catbox was suggested to me, but it said "Uploads paused until I can resolve storage issues. Sorry!" when I tried to upload the image to it from my desktop, so that particular site won't work I'm afraid).

Alternatively, if anyone has a picture that works with QQ's Insert Image thing, put it in the thread and I'll add it to where it goes in the chapter and put the chapter up.

The picture I need is one of Kirsty's Tall Pikachu TTT player model. The one she switched to after complaints of her normal Pikachu model being too small and hard to hit, but before she switched to Mr. Tweedy from Chicken Run.

Chapter 4: It's Laserdream! "Laze-Laze? Dream!" (Inspiration for this chapter title is the first few seconds of this vid)

January 1, 2010. Brockton Bay, Boat Graveyard.



"Pika Pika!" Dave does his best Pikachu impression as he respawns, his body disappearing from under the towels covering it and reappearing a couple inches in the air above them, already standing upright.

"Oh thank god you were right," Bella sounded a little emotional there. Is this the legendary Stockholm Syndrome? Wait, no, I think that's something else. Regardless, it was good to be back, and that Bella's concerns-- that he definitely thought of before getting into one of humanity's deadliest inventions (the car), while being an Old Man—were unfounded.

Anyways, he waddled up to the unknown young woman, looked up at her and held up his arms at her, as if asking for uppies. Then, in his best Pikachu voice, he said "I'm a terrorist!"

"With that face, you sure are." The woman said without missing a beat, though her lips were curved up slightly and she was fighting to keep a straight face.

"NO! Do not team up, I forbid it." Bella interjected before they could continue.

"Fine, party pooper. Introductions?" The woman grumbled.

"Yes, Crystal, this is Dave. He's a weirdo. Dave, this is Crystal, you probably have heard of her as Laserdream. She's a weirdo, but she's a closet weirdo who watches cartoons from another country in another universe. Play nice." Bella introduced them.

"So, Dave, I have to ask—" Crystal broke off, seeing Dave hold up a hand to cut her off and with an adorably serious face.

Dave spoke, "First, before anything else, I must say… Hi, I am Dave! I am a Yognau(gh)t and I have the balls. Are you Dave! Yognau(gh)t with the balls?" He said it in his normal voice.

"Well, some people have called my girls balls before, though not to my face, but I've never been called Dave, to my knowledge at least. And I'm not even sure how to spell 'Yawgnot', let alone what it is, so I doubt I am one of those." Crystal answered with the practice of someone who has dealt with many idiots asking stupid questions.

Dave turned to Bella, looked deep into her eyes with his adorable little Pikachu face, and said "This one's a keeper. If you aren't gonna kidnap her, I call dibs on kidnapping her."

"Oh my, Bella, are you going to kidnap me?" Crystal immediately turned to her friend and piled on.

"I hate you both, maybe I should have just buried you before you resurrected and made her dig you out." Bella grumbled. It was probably her way of showing affection. Dave was at least 7% certain it was how Bellas showed affection in fact.

"Anyways, Dave I have a very important question for you… What would you call your current form?" Crystal had a small but smug triumphant smile as she asked her question.

"Kirsty," Dave immediately answered, watching as her smile fell. "Or Pikachu," he finished, making her smile brighten up again.

Man, I can see why they call her Laserdream, that smile is blinding. She better be a millionaire from toothpaste commercials or there is no justice in the world.

Crystal slowly turned to Bella with a supremely smug expression on her face.

"Oh what was it you said Bella? Something about how there is 'no way one of my weird Japanese alternate dimension cartoons had a Parahuman power at all related to it'? I recall something about a promise as well to watch every single episode of Pokemon to ever come out with me as well don't I?" Wow, that is a whole lot of smug. Like, I don't think I've ever seen that much smug before. I'm not sure I ever will see that much smug again in the future… Wait a minute, why did I get a shiver down my back when I thought that? Is Crystal just somehow even more smug than this in general or something?

"This form is fun and all, but I think I should turn back now that I don't need to demonstrate to Bella how easily my power manipulates me with metaphorical puppy dog eyes," He said as he changed to a more comfortable form.

"What do you --AHH!" Crystal screamed as she turned to his new more glorious form. Bella screamed too of course.



Hah, got her. I win. I knew she couldn't keep calm forever.

"Wait, wrong one," he said, before turning back to his original form of a Freshman at College aged stereotypical dark-haired white man terrorist.

"Oh thank god it's over," Bella fake-sobbed dramatically into Crystal's arms. Crystal meanwhile had a bemused look on her face at the realization she had been trolled.

Yes, I definitely did that on purpose.

"Anyways! I scouted around while I was dead and there is nobody here apart from us aside from some crabs and some clams. So, time for power testing!"

Crytsal clapped obligingly, while Bella was a little less celebratory. "I see a couple fish right over there, why are you counting the crabs and clams but not the fish? Did you hear about a Master than can only control things without a spine but can see through the senses of the things they control or something?" I got another shiver there, but it really isn't that cold, and my first shiver was while I was in Pikachu form and had fur… I don't actually know if Pikachu form's fur keeps me warm, I will need to test that I guess.

"No, it's just that clams and crabs are people. Duh." Dave told his silly friend, who usually seemed rather smart before she suddenly didn't seem to know random pieces of common sense. They were so common in fact, that they weren't even part of his power-given common sense package. They were that obvious.

"Right, of course, silly me." Well at least she knows how silly she gets. She even used the same word choice he was thinking of. Truly, she is a genius. Just like him really.



"So, you have an escalating Trump power?" Crystal asked after his him describe how he would be getting more powers over time. Without mentioning the soul alien, Bella didn't seem very receptive to the truth for some reason, so Dave logically reasoned (which he can do because he is very smort) that her friend would likely also not be receptive to the truth. Perhaps they will see in time, but for now…

"Yes, that sounds like an accurate description I suppose. According to my common sense anyways. Man, common sense is such a great superpower, I'm glad I have it."

"Sure you do buddy." Bella said from side.

"Anyways, testing!" Crystal clapped her hands together, before looking around for something, presumably things to use for testing, when she spotted the pink plastic shovel Bella had brought.

"Aww, you brought the shovel! That's so sweet, thanks Bella," Crystal hugged Bella again… Probably, she might have just been trying to strangle her through the chest instead of the neck. Bella seemed to think it was a strangling attempt at least based on how much she was struggling.

Dave raised his hand "Context please."

"Oh, when I first got my powers we came down here to do power testing as well because my parents were smothering me after I first got powers and wouldn't let me test them at first. Bella brought me here for the most depressing picnic scenery of all time and brought this little shovel to test if I could use my forcefield for things like grabbing objects from a distance and if my control over my lasers was good enough to shoot a laser through the handle hole without melting any of the plastic around it from the laser's heat." Crystal explained after letting her struggling prey go.

Hmm, maybe I should see if she wants a headcrab to keep as a pet? She can attack someone's chest to strangle them like she was doing with Bella and then the headcrab can jump on their face and attack them while she is pinning their arms down.

"So, what sort of abilities do you have so far other than respawning and turning into Pikachu?" Crystal asked.

"Well, I can also turn into quite a few other things, I have the ability to die from the slightest bit of damage, I have spectator mode while I am dead, and I have an inventory for weapons that gets refreshed with more weapons in addition to the olds ones getting refilled ammo. And I can double jump. I'm a pretty standard terrorist at the moment really."

Crystal paused in her enthusiasm slightly, mouthed a couple words to herself and then asked "How does that make you a terrorist?"

"How doesn't that make me a terrorist? That's like a standard terrorist package right there except for the instantly dying part. Unfortunately, I probably won't unlock the Jihad bomb for a few days, so—"

"NO JIHAD BOMBS!" Bella cut in.

"But… but…" Dave transformed into (normal) Pikachu and looked up at Bella with big teary eyes and said "But, what if they have it coming?"

"No."

"But, what if it's the best solution to the situation I have available?"

"No," Bella repeated.

Pikachu! I can't believe you failed me! Well, as long as I don't tell her about the Holy Hand Grenade, she can't forbid me from using it. After all, what if I need to kill a rabbit? Why do I keep shivering? I'm not even cold, what the heck is up with these full body shivers I get after thinking about things that have nothing in common?

Chapter 5: Power Testing! Finally!

January 1, 2010. Brockton Bay, Boat Graveyard.

Crystal cut in there "Hold on Bella, if it actually is the best solution to a situation that he has available, wouldn't it be wrong to do anything other than use the Jihad bomb?"

Bella gave Crystal a look of pure disgust "This isn't your philosophy class Crystal, you seem to be forgetting, Dave is an Idiot—" "Hey, I resemble that remark!" "—And will not be able to accurately judge if a Jihad Bomb is the best thing to use in a given situation."

Crystal grumbled a bit before she clapped once to get our attention, "We're getting distracted again. Let's just start with the testing. Dave, what sort of offensive capabilities do you have right now?"

"Guns. And grenades. I only have Smoke Grenades, Discombobulators, and Incendiary Grenades at the moment in the grenades section, and I don't know enough about guns to know what most of them are called, even if my power ensures I know the difference and which one is which, it doesn't tell me what each one is actually called."

"Well, we can't test guns out here, those things are absurdly loud and we don't want to draw attention to you before you are ready, and if anyone comes to investigate gunshots, they might see you doing other things and realize you are a cape because of my presence making them stay longer. If we don't draw attention with things like gunshots though, a casual onlooker probably won't recognize me from a distance and will just think we are having a secluded picnic in a weird spot. Thanks Bella by the way, for bringing the picnic stuff to give us plausible deniability if we are spotted."

I knew it, Bella truly is a genius, thinking of plausible deniability in advance. That makes me a genius for recruiting her to my terrorism cause… as soon as I think of a cause anyways.

"Actually, I think my guns are much quieter than normal guns, though not as quiet as the silenced ones I will be able to get in the future, which will even make the people they kill not make any noises as they die!" Dave said brightly.

"No killing, even if they deserve it." Crystal said it like an automated response. "You would get in huge trouble with the PRT and encourage villains to escalate if you start killing people without a kill order. You can probably get away with using guns because they are part of your power, but you will need to find nonlethal measures before you can start going out as a cape." Crystal explained.

"Does it count as nonlethal, as long as they are alive and fully healthy when I am done with them?" Dave asked innocently.

"Yes?" Perfect, Crystal isn't suspicious at all. That means it's fine if they die in the middle as long as they are alive and healthy when I am done! Not that I can actually do that yet. I also probably shouldn't resurrect my enemies as zombies. My common sense is telling me not to do that for some reason. Probably because zombies hit rather hard and get super-jumping and super-spitting, so I might be making a normal person stronger, and I shouldn't strengthen my enemies. Yes, that is almost certainly why my common sense is telling me not to resurrect my enemies as zombies. I wonder if it's fine to raise my allies as zombies though?

---

A little bit of testing later, and they found his guns were substantially quieter than normal guns, to the point nobody had actually come to investigate the sounds of gunshots. They also found his guns acted as normal guns when somebody else used them, instead of using game mechanics of dealing a certain amount of damage per bullet based on how far away he was from whoever or whatever he was shooting, but he dealt ever so slightly more "damage" with his guns when he used them. He was pretty sure that last bit meant his increasing Karma would perpetually increase his offensive capabilities. Unfortunately, math dictated his Karma increased his "damage" linearly and additively; in other words, he wouldn't be getting exponential offensive increases anytime soon.

It turned out, both grenades and ammo --and copies of guns he already had-- stocked up indefinitely in his inventory, giving him more grenades, ammo and guns, every ten minutes regardless of how much he already had. Although he only got ammo for guns he already had in his inventory. He did get a new copy of every gun in his inventory every ten minutes, but he didn't always get new guns every ten minutes. It seemed like some guns were substantially rarer than others, and had a lower chance to appear for the first time in his inventory. He got his first Flare Gun partway through the testing, and in Elmer Fudd style looked inside it before accidentally firing it, which immediately set him on fire and killed him. On the bright side it worked just like the game, so anyone he hit with the Flare Gun would immediately be set on fire.

The smoke grenades were actually shockingly good. They were absolute shit originally, needing at least 3 smoke grenades to actually make enough smoke that it was difficult to see through, but his were good enough they were likely good enough for a ninja from a Hollywood movie to use. They were also completely harmless as far as he could tell, since even biting onto the grenade while it exploded into smoke wasn't able to kill him, and inhaling the smoke didn't kill him either.

The discombobulators (discombobs for short) were about as expected. In the game they just were a large Area of Effect knockback on everyone in range, pushing them in the opposite direction of wherever the discombob was when it exploded, but did no damage. They were harmless to Crystal, who could fly, and all three of them weren't willing to test the discombobs on Bella. They didn't damage Dave either, but he did decide to set one off at his feet (despite Bella's protests, Crystal was unworried after being assured he had continuity of consciousness, she was less worried he might be just copying himself and actually dying each time. Apparently a local terrorist called Oni Lee was trying to steal his thunder by being a suicide bomber, but actually died each time he cloned himself and gave himself some sort of brain damage as a result… or so Crystal claimed, though she admitted it was just online speculation).

After the discombob went off, Dave went flying straight up, and when he started to fall, he shouted "I got this" when Crystal started flying to catch him, then double jumped before he hit the ground to kill his momentum. Unfortunately, he mistimed it and hit the ground harder than intended and died instantly.

---

It turned out, while he was holding his (extremely floppy) Crowbar, he could hit someone like normal, though not strongly enough to break Crystal's forcefield. But more interestingly, he could send out a sort of short-range telekinetic push in lieu of the game mechanic of "pushing" with the crowbar. He didn't actually need to touch them with the crowbar, they just had to be close enough he could theoretically touch them with the crowbar without moving his legs, then he had to make at least some movement with the crowbar, but even jerking it a couple inches forward worked. Then, his target (Crystal first, then Bella) would be harmlessly shoved a little while staying perfectly balanced and on their feet.

They tried again afterwards, and he could actually try to affect a specific part of their body as well to try and make them lose balance, though it required focusing on the specific body part. He found focusing on just their upper half in general was most effective at getting them to fall over.

For some reason, Bella and Crystal were reluctant to test the incendiary grenades upon finding out they exploded in a way that dealt damage, set fire in a large range, and had a decent chance the fires couldn't be put out by water.

When he demonstrated it anyways, they claimed he "had it coming" when he inhaled a bit of the smoke from a rusty pipe that had been in the range of the flames, doubled over coughing, and died. He was right though, water didn't work on it, but the fire did only last around 20 seconds. Unfortunately, he was stopped before he could test if throwing a discombob onto the fire would expand the fire like he suspected it would.

---

"That is absolute bullshit," Bella said staring at his magneto stick.

He waved it at a dead log about 6 feet long, and the log floated up in accordance of how he held his magneto stick.

"That is actual bullshit. My physics professor would go nuts over this. No extra weight, but all the extra mass as soon as you let go? And look at all that extra leverage! This is actually way stronger than a telekinetic of "equal" strength would be."

Dave supposed that made sense. It was kind of like Wii Sports, where the motion tracker just tracks how quickly the end of the Wii stick controller is moving, and using that to determine how "hard" one was swinging. That meant just flicking your wrist make the game think you were hitting much harder than you were, because it only tracked how fast the sensor was moving, not how hard it was being swung. Wait a minute, what's a Wii sport? Is it sports for really short people? Because that sounds kind of offensive even if I'm not totally sure why.

The extra length between the magneto stick and the object it was "holding" gave him a lot of extra leverage without increasing the weight at all. Bella waved her arm in that gap while he was thinking, and Dave figured he might as well make use of his resources.

"Hey Crystal, do you think you could ask your physics professor about the benefits of extra leverage without extra mass would be for throwing things? Maybe bring up the atlatl or something. You might even be able to get extra credit, or just use it for class credit if there is a final lab project where you can design your own experiment. I'll even lend you my magneto stick for it if you want."

"Really? That sounds so cool! And I'm nearly certain I could squeeze extra credit out of that. You sound like you're familiar with Physics classes though, are you taking classes at the college too?"

"Crystal! No distractions! That's how we keep delaying things. Well that and someone keeps killing themselves and we have to wait until they resurrect." Bella sternly interjected after getting bored of waving her arm in the space between the magneto stick and the log.

"Well, time to see if this works how I suspect. YEET!" Dave did his best to use his whole body for it. His legs were planted well, he twisted his hips, he swung his whole arm, and he made use of the magneto stick's length by gripping it from the bottom to make the stick squeeze out as much leverage as possible by making it act like an atlatl. It worked well. Too well in fact, like his power had done something to improve his technique. He got a feeling he would find out the exact details of what happened the next day along with his new role. For now though…

"Holy shit."

"Language Crystal!"

"That log went over the damn tanker. That's fucking absurd. That thing is at least half a mile out and the log still had enough height to clear it. Dad's into baseball and I'm damn sure a professional baseball player could barely reach a tenth of that distance before it landed, and that's with a baseball. Dave doesn't even have any Brute strength. I need you to understand how fucking broken that thing is Bella."

"I was thinking of using it to carry groceries though," Dave interjected before Bella could complete her transformation into a Bobblehead from how hard Crystal was shaking her. Crystal's head slowly turned to look at him.

"Oh my, that's a scary look. Bella help! I'm in danger!" Dave cried pathetically politely requested Bella for assistance.

"Nope this is Karma Dave, let it happen."

"No, my Karma is constantly increasing! I have amazing Karma! It's part of being an Old Man. Ooh my luck has turned." In the middle of running away from Crystal, Dave felt a ten minute marker pass and got something new in his inventory. It was a normal item he didn't need a special role to get, but it was like a flare gun in that it seemed to be quite rare. He immediately used it.

Crystal watched, baffled, as Dave pulled out some sort of handheld device, pressed a button on it, and shrank to about a fifth of his original size, and hid under a piece of metal debris.

"I got a Minifier!" Dave's muffled voice shouted out as she tried to process what just happened.

"What?" Crystal may have sounded slightly hysterical.

"Hah! Now you know how I feel dealing with your bullshit Crystal." Bella meanwhile just felt vindicated.



Author's Note: For reference, I looked up the furthest Baseball throw ever, and it was 135.89 meters, or 445 feet and 10 inches. Crystal is estimating because she doesn't actually care that much about Baseball and doesn't know that number, though her dad would. Let me know if you think I messed up on how far out the Tanker would be, I'm really not familiar with boats and how much space they need to be able to deduce how far out it likely would have been when it was sunk.