Charm Learning Shard (Worm/Exalted) (COMPLETED)

You wake up in pitch darkness - and that alone is enough to tell you that something is very, very wrong. You, sleeping? You must have been either terribly injured, or drugged. You call forth a pair of mind hands for light and blearily try to find any clues as to which it is.

The IV feed attached to your arm could go either way, but the way you're shackled to the bed is quite suggestive. And either whatever they gave you is messing with your sense of balance, or the rocking sensation indicates that you're on a boat.

Well then. You'll just go with 'drugged' until further evidence presents itself. You remove the IV with a mind-hand. You suspect that you were not meant to wake up at all, but whoever captured you misjudged the amount of sedative needed to keep you under. Shitty Brute powers saving the day once again.

The restraints prove to be shockingly durable, completely shrugging off your charm of unmaking. Some kind of Tinker material, then, because mere steel would not be able to do that. And the bedframe is made of the same stuff, you discover, so you can't just disassemble that either.

Wow, you think as you shapeshift you hands and feet small enough to slip your bonds, someone wasted millions of dollars on an attempt to keep you confined. Slipping free of the cuffs (and subsequently also removing a catheter, but let's not talk about that), you sit up in bed and look around.

The room you're in is fairly small, with barely enough space for two hospital beds placed end to end. Yes, there's another bed behind yours, occupied by an unconscious Banshee. And here you thought kidnapping you was ballsy.

You remove her IV as well, and perform a closer examination of the room while you wait for her to wake up. The walls are made of more of the same Tinker material, raising your estimation of how much this cost by an order of magnitude. Maybe two. You also find the outline of what must be the door, but whatever mechanisms are keeping it closed are all on the other side.

The room is, as far as you can tell, completely airtight. Which explains the humming device with the pressure tanks under your bed, that industry and forge wisdom identifies as a carbon dioxide scrubber. A model that functions with no electronics whatsoever - because electronics are made of silicon, and you do not want to put any silicon in the same room as Banshee, sedated or not.

There are no cameras - either because they couldn't figure out how to make them without silicon, or because they didn't want to compromise the structural integrity of the cell by leaving holes for cables. It's almost cute, the way they think they're sufficiently paranoid.

But rather than protecting them, it just means they don't know you're up and about. You grin nastily in the darkness (you're not worried about making noise, either, because you don't spend this much effort on kidnapping Banshee without also soundproofing the shit out of her cell).

But speaking of Banshee, you need to get her out of the cuffs too. Alas, you never did pick up a proper flesh-warping power before Panacea went nuts, so you can't repeat the same trick. The locks are as over-engineered as everything else in the room, with all sorts of fancy features meant to make them harder to pick - that industry and forge wisdom helpfully tells you all about.

Between that, and the ridiculous dexterity of your mind-hands, you have the first cuff off her in no time at all. By which you mean, well, perhaps an hour. It's your first time picking an actual lock, okay, and your toolkit consists of exactly two IV needles (you're not about to unmake the CO₂ scrubber for parts, for reasons that should be obvious).

Banshee is stirring by the time you get the last cuff off.

"What happened?" she asks. "Where are we? Why is it so dark? ...why are you naked?"

You explain what you've discovered and surmised. Kidnapping, sedatives, miscalculated dosage. Extremely secure cell.

"So, desert time?" she asks, entirely unconcerned.

"We could do that," you agree. "But then we couldn't find out who did it, or explain to them why it was a bad idea." There's the matter of provisions, too - you have made it through the desert without water before, but it's not something you look forward to repeating.

"Oh, I like the idea of that," she says with a smile that's not friendly at all. "But-"

You hold up a hand. "Do you feel that? I think we're slowing down."

"...I think so too."

"Right. Unhook yourself, and get ready to fight."

"Unhook..? Oh."

You make your way over to the door, politely ignoring Banshee's curses as she works the plastic tube free. The door, however, remains closed. Instead, the entire cell is hoisted into the air. You maintain your balance like the graceful crane you are, but Banshee yelps as she almost falls off the bed.

When you're set down again, the rocking motion is still there. Did they just transfer you to another boat? No, a couple of minutes later you feel a much stronger acceleration, followed shortly by the world tilting upwards.

"A seaplane," you conclude. "Our kidnappers are certainly pulling out all the stops." When it becomes clear that no one is coming to check on you, you sit back down on your bed. "Looks like we'll be waiting for a while yet. How much glass are you packing?"

"As if they'd leave me any glass?" she says incredulously, gesturing at her naked form.

"Man, running with the S9 sure made you soft, huh?" Imagine being so dependent on danger-Thinker support that you don't even plan for being kidnapped, stripped naked and chained up inside an indestructible box. "Good thing I'm here."

You slip off to the side and squat down where the bed shields you from view. You might not be overly self-conscious about being naked in front of her, but there are limits. When you stand back up, you present her with a large - if somewhat smelly - glass marble.

"This," you say, "is what being sufficiently paranoid looks like. I expect better from you in the future."

---

With a dull flight of indefinite duration ahead of you, you take the opportunity to finally finish up studying Banshee's power. Something you really should have gotten done long ago, if you really were as paranoid as you claim. But knowing that it would always be around later, you kept putting it off in favor of, well, everything else that was fucking your schedule in the ass. It's not as if Endbringers are vulnerable to glass.

You lean rather hard on this one, trying to shape it to your will. Ideally you'd want something that can conjure glass, rather than control it, because one smelly marble is less of a trump card than you'd like. Perhaps too hard, because when it finally sticks to your soul, it looks broken. Where are the power conduits?

No wait, that's not a break, it's a plug. One that fits perfectly into the weird truncated power you got from Newter's vision quest, way back when. You carefully bring them together.

Golden light fills the room, and hundreds - thousands - of glossily translucent black butterflies fly forth from your hands, only to shatter against the not-steel of the far wall.

Banshee hums a note, and the shards rise to dance in the air. You pluck one out with a mind-hand and bring it closer to study. Obsidian, that explains the color. A good news, bad news situation. The good news is that you're now carrying around a much larger reserve of emergency glass at all times, with none of the previous discomfort. The bad news apply entirely to your kidnappers.

"Nice," Banshee says. "Can you make more?"

Sure you can. It takes a bit of mental effort, connecting both parts of the power across the starscape of your soul, but nothing like the gargantuan hodgepodge you assembled to take down Behemoth. By the time the plane starts to descend you're almost waist-high in razor-sharp glass (a much better idea than it sounds, due to the company you keep).

As soon as wheels touch the runway, your knife is summoned into your hand and fully charged. Three long slashes open up a triangular doorway in the overpriced wall-stuff. Mind-hands lever it out of the way, revealing a rubbery white material beneath. Soundproofing, you assume. You reach out and lay your hand against it, only to find out that it too resists unmaking. More Tinker bullshit, or was it simply cast in one piece?

Still, whatever the white stuff is, it wasn't made with durability foremost in mind. Your knife may be spent, but your mind-hands are able to rip and tear the material, if slowly.

"Don't sing quite yet," you warn Banshee as she shifts impatiently. "I know you could do it faster, but they might hear you as you break through. We want this to be a surprise."

She fidgets, and starts to hum several times before catching herself while you tear away more and more material. How thick is this thing, anyway? You feel the plane coming to a stop, and the cell being hoisted up again.

"Hurry," Banshee says.

There! Tearing away the last bit of soundproofing reveals the ridged steel of an ordinary shipping container. That, you can unmake.

Fifteen seconds later the entire wall falls away, freed from the brackets and rails holding it in place. You throw yourself back into the cell and away from the opening. The mass of obsidian knives you were about to face-plant into pulls away in the nick of time, flowing over and around you to go shooting out of the hole you made. You have just enough time to be shocked at how much you must subconsciously trust this former S9 member to have pulled a stunt like that, before Banshee starts singing.

The sound of shattering glass and screams of pain accompany her song. Whatever was moving your cell has stopped, the machinery and/or operator taken out. Banshee sedately floats forward in a cloud of obsidian, which starts to form into her customary angel costume as soon as she's outside.

Only to be interrupted by a lance of light searing into her from above. She falls.

Shit! Your mind-hands grab the piece of inner wall you cut away and push it ahead of you as you leap after her, activating your own flight just enough to land softly beside her. A quick glance around shows you to be on a small airfield - no surprise there - with your former prison just about to be lowered onto the bed of a truck. You appear to be on the outskirts of a city, with skyscrapers visible in the distance. You don't recognize the place, but didn't really expect to either - you're not exactly well travelled.

Looking up, you see the cape who shot Banshee hovering above. He's wearing a red suit and broken red mask. Broken over the mouth and the right ear to be precise, which tells you that it used to contain a microphone and earpiece that did not like Banshee introducing herself. Unfortunately the man himself appears uninjured.

That's all you have time to see before he gestures towards you and you have to bring the piece of wall up to block another beam. Banshee, however, proves that she is down but not out as a cloud of obsidian flies up towards him. Peering around your shield you see him get cut to ribbons and start to fall, only to pop back to where he was a moment later - fully recovered but with his costume even worse for wear.

Lasers and Alabaster-style immortality? If it wasn't for sorcerer's sight, you'd think you just found another Trump like yourself. Not that you understand what sorcerer's sight is showing you. The cape is suspended in a web of glowing lines, some leading all the way to the distant city, others spreading out across the airfield. The web if shifting, too, almost if-

Yes. Another node in the web - another cape - comes flying over the shipping container. Forewarned, you thrust out with a mind-hand at extreme range and manage to stab him in the chest before he can get a bead on you. Then a second later he's fine again, and firing a laser that you only barely manage to block in time. You stab him some more to get him to back off.

They are sharing powers through the web, you realize. And there's another ten or so of them spread throughout the immediate area, all of them converging towards you. You drag Banshee off to hunker against the cab of the truck. This lets you have some cover from the rear, but unlike your makeshift Tinker-alloy shield, you do not trust it to absorb lasers in the long term. Still better than trying to make a run for it over open ground.

On a happier note, Banshee is rapidly emptying your cell of obsidian, and filling the air with same. Even as more and more of the Yangban - for it is clearly them - arrive, they are kept too busy restoring themselves to manage a coordinated offense. Wait, you mean restoring each other, you can see the little licks of power reaching out between them.

Some of them are flying, others zoom back and forth along the ground - trying to flank you, or possibly just trying to get away from the glass storm. Some of them try to put up forcefield bubbles to protect themselves - but the bubbles are not soundproof, and they invariably trap at least a few shards in there with them. So they are still getting sliced up, only slightly slower. Bubbling up is also an excellent way to gain Banshee's attention, and the bubbles quickly pop under the increased bombardment.

Despite having to focus almost entirely on simply keeping each other alive, they do still manage to get the odd laser off. But each beam is quickly interrupted by them having to be restored, and they can't manage a proper barrage. So far you've managed to catch every attack on your shield.

In other words the entire battlefield is a horrible, screaming, bloody mess of a stalemate, and their morale is unbelievable. Literally, you don't believe it. They must have some sort pain nullification and/or mind control mixed in there that you're too busy to pick out with sorcerer's sight, or they would have routed twice over by now.

Oh, no, you get it now. That's not healing, that's time travel. They're constantly sending each other back in time to before they were injured, so none of them actually remember any pain. No wonder they're having trouble coordinating their attacks - with the pounding they're taking they're barely experiencing the passage of time at all.

Over the next minute they do gradually start switching tactics, though. Some of them conjure vacuums to try to drag your shield away from you or pull Banshee out of cover, but your mind-hands hold strong. Thank Manton they can't make a vacuum covering you, because that would cut off Banshee's sound-based power in an instant.

One strange attack comes out of nowhere and leaves every inch of your exposed skin - which currently means all of it - covered in a thin layer of ice. It's almost a relief, actually, because the residual heat from their lasers was starting to get uncomfortable. The ice quickly melts under the cherry-red glow of your shield.

Banshee's song stutters, and enemies appear to flicker across your vision, changing positions from one moment to the next. They're using their time rewind power on the both of you too, trying to disrupt your concentration. But it has little effect when you're just hunkering down and defending yourself / telekinetically killing everything that moves. Neither of you need to know what you were doing two seconds ago to understand what you need to do next.

One of them almost gets you when he sneaks around behind you and starts cutting through the truck itself with a sustained laser. But you're able to deduce his position by the strands of the web reaching back to connect him to the others, and warn Banshee in time for her to send a gale of glass to meet him. The strands of power connecting him to the web flicker out, and don't come back.

Ha. With him going off on his own, none of his comrades were able to get line of sight on him in time to reverse his mortal injuries.

A slightly smarter fellow realizes that the shipping container suspended above you is a potential weapon, and turns his laser on the, uh, the crane vehicle thingy holding it up. He's interrupted before he can finish, but others take up the job. It's not exactly quick or subtle, though, and you have plenty of time to lift up Banshee and get out of the way.

Or so you thought - instead of falling straight down, the back end of the container drops first, causing the whole thing to swing forward. Then when the front end falls, it hits the cab of the truck and tips sideways on top of you. You're forced to throw Banshee out of the way, and your shield along with her.

You don't have time to get yourself out of the way, and you hear a joyous exclamation in Chinese as it lands on top of you. A few of the others start to join in, only to swallow their words when the tendrils of your shadow form slip out from underneath and reform, unharmed. Joke's on them, now you have a properly laser-proof backstop and don't need to worry about them sending a bigger group sneaking behind you.

Banshee, to her credit, never stopped singing at any point during this. But she seems disoriented, less able to react to what's happening. Three people manage to bubble up long enough to take proper aim, and you're not going to be able to block them all. You manage to catch two of the beams on your shield - it's now glowing more yellow than red, but still holding strong.

The last beam - you make a snap decision to not throw yourself in front of it. Banshee is a critical asset in this fight, yes... But between the two of you, she's the one who still sports Bonesaw-brand subdermal armor, and you know first-hand how well it handles heat-based attacks. Her song finally cuts off - but the song itself is just window dressing. The sound that actually propagates her control is generated directly by her power, not by her throat, at frequencies far above human hearing.

Despite the apparent silence, the storm of glass surges with renewed fury as she lashes out in pain. The three attackers are shredded (and instantly restored), and for a while no one manages to coordinate another attack. You don't think she can keep this up for long, though.

Then again, it's not as if you've been sitting idle this whole time. No, you've been studying the web, trying to trace the origin of the time rewind power. There! The Case 53 towards the back of their formation. You grip your knife, waiting for the right moment.

A man shifts position, a shield bubble pops... leaving you with a clear line of sight towards your target. You stab out, and a golden beam shoots from your knife to strike the rewinder - leaving him unhurt, but powerless. The same attack that brought Behemoth low. This technically outs Poltergeist and Esper as the same person, but every camera and communication device has already been destroyed by Banshee's song, and the witnesses will die momentarily.

Suddenly unable to restore themselves, the Yangban start dropping like flies. They are still getting regular regeneration from somewhere back in the city - multiple sources of it too, if you're any judge - but that only helps so much when your organs are 60% obsidian by volume. Finally the last one goes still, and obsidian rains down around you as Banshee releases it from her grip.

You slump down, letting your shield fall to the ground. The Behemoth-Felling Strike takes an awful lot out of you, and between it and all the obsidian you conjured, you're about as tired as you've ever been. But you can't rest now. You need to check on your partner.

Banshee's breathing is fast and shallow, and there are terrible burns all down her left side, speckled with globs of black glass that melted onto or into her. She's also scraped and bleeding all over from rolling naked across the tarmac when you threw her. But despite all that, her expression is gleeful. "We got them," she pants.

"Yeah. Can you get up?"

"Don't think I can. Manage the control. To fly right now." She's meant to have pain overrides along with the subdermal armor, but you know how it goes with tinkertech. One of these days you're going to have to bite the bullet and emptiness endow yourself enough surgical skill to get in there and do maintenance.

Despite her words, Banshee struggles against you when you try to lift her up, insisting that she can at least walk. She sort of can, as long as you support almost all of her weight with a pair of mind-hands. "Let's find you some painkillers," you say.

She stops walking at looks at the distant buildings for a while. "Yes. Painkillers. And a lesson. For those who. Would oppose us."

Certain applications of her power do not require fine control, after all. You watch a wave of shattered car windows travel down a congested highway at the speed of sound, until it washes over the city itself. Countless fragments glimmer in the sunlight as skyscrapers are denuded. It's beautiful, when you're too far away to see the people.

You could perhaps have stopped her. But you didn't. The CUI committed an act of war when they violated your borders and abducted your citizens. For their hubris, a Banshee raises her voice, and a city goes silent.

===

Spoiler: Updated status

Charms:
Taylor: All-Encompassing Sorcerer’s Sight, Terrestrial Circle Sorcery
Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price
Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet
Aegis: Ox-Body Technique
Browbeat: Shaping the Ideal Form
Dragon: Implicit Construction Methodology
Kid Win: Industry and Forge Wisdom
Lung: By Rage Recast
Vista: Mind-Hand Manipulation
Cricket: Mantis Form
Faultline: Charm of Lesser Unmaking
Labyrinth: Hell-Walker Technique
Othala: Verdant Emptiness Endowment
Rune: Sometimes Horses Fly Approach
Shadow Stalker: Bloodless Murk Evasion
Miss Militia: Nightmare Fugue Vigilance
Circus: Graceful Crane Stance
Ballistic: Crack the Sky
Crusader: Shell-Cracking Atemi
Purity: Eagle-Wing Style
Flechette: Pattern Spider Touch
Regent: Distracting Finger-Gesture Attack
Jack Slash: Blazing Solar Bolt
Murder Rat: Unstoppable Lunar Wound
Siberian: ???
Animos: Soul-cleaving Wound
Cuff: Willpower-Enhancing Spirit
Shatterbird: Death of Obsidian Butterflies

Spoiler: A/N

There are certain requirements for writing a Worm fic that is faithful to the source material. And while I've hit the Taylor happiness requirements with room to spare, I'm way behind on my 'pointless and tedious cape fights' quota.

Besides, what's even the point of having 'all the powers' if you never get to use them?