Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

[TanaNari]

With enough workers, Taylor could build everything in the time it takes to build one building.

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The Empire State Building is nothing compared to building even a single mile of underground plumbing systems. Plus the sewers. Plus everything else. And in order to actually have the city be a city, you'd need a real plumbing system. Real electrical lines.

Gas lines, too. Maybe. If I were in a world like Bet, I'd switch away from gas utilities ASAP.

Unless you're suggesting Taylor and Amelia, sovereigns of a foreign nation, are going to be allowed to return to doing all the stuff they had to stop doing because they were no longer US citizens? Because politics aren't going to allow that. If they're going to rebuild Brockton Bay, it will have to be one that works as a normal city, not one that works as an Yggdrasil hybrid city.

That and there's no way in hell the Yggdrasil could support that much demand for water and electricity to begin with.

Oh, and buying construction supplies? You do realize there are literally a hundred colony worlds consuming those resources as well, right? The supplies necessary to rebuild Brockton Bay would be better spent making a whole new Brockton Bay, in the same location, on a different earth.


It's not that it's impossible- it's certainly possible. It's that it's not worth the effort of doing. There is no logical scenario that they can do achieve it in any less than a decade. Gathering workers? We're talking tens of thousands of them being needed. Many of whom already have employment building the colony worlds. Purchasing billions of tons of raw materials. That are also being consumed by the colonies. Organizing parahumans whose abilities could be put to use elsewhere.

And that's only after getting permission to do all of it. Meaning talking the US government into doing so. A government that's going to see a lot more value in putting effort into their colonies rather than in a crap city that hasn't been profitable or useful to them in their living memory.

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia, Ch 274


When did I become a healer again? I wondered. Oh, right, when I was responsible for the injuries in the first place, as well as leaving three hundred thousand people homeless. Or dead, can't forget the ones that my orders killed.


Rey's medical training actually proved really useful, letting me affect professional doctor behavior, instead of the piss poor attempts at professionalism than I made as Panacea. I'd somehow managed to forget what it was like being Panacea, in those months I'd spent with Pantheon. The exhaustion and guilt were things I'd managed to leave behind. Good luck having that happen again.


"Okay, Ellen, you're all done," I told the child I'd been working on.


"I found her parents," Taylor told me over the suit. She's using her control override, not actually speaking, she must be really busy. "I'm already leading them to you, it'll be a few more minutes."


"You hear that?" I smiled at the girl, doing the best I could to mean it. "You'll be back together with your family soon."


"Yes," she agreed happily, entirely unaware that I was responsible for so much of her pain. That only served to make me feel worse. She was a cute kid, only six years old based on my admittedly inaccurate power's impression. Tall for her age, and surprisingly cheerful for someone who recently had an eight inch long piece of glass sticking out of her stomach.


That's one of ours, I reminded myself. That's an injury that would not have happened if we hadn't fired that damn weapon. One of many others like her, who were hurt or dead because we wanted to hurt an Endbringer more than we wanted to protect people.


....


"We can't repeat what happened today," I sighed, plopping down on my bed next to Taylor. "Never again." ConcernAgreementSupport. She reached over and rubbed my shoulders. There were advantages to her power, in that she didn't have to physically do work. I still did. The healing pods were good for some stuff, but only some. Surface injuries, like cuts and burns, were easiest for them. Internal damage more likely needed personal attention from me or one of our Tinkers.


And I didn't have the multitasking to handle multiple targets, not like Taylor did at least. Trying to heal two people at once was... well, mistakes could easily be made, some of them might take years to be noticed. Up to and including accidentally altering hormone productions to the wrong sex, or partially rewriting someone's DNA. All of which ultimately meant one thing. There was no shortcut for me to mass heal, because healing was not what my power was made to do.


"I know," she sighed. "We could make all kinds of arguments about how 'necessary' it was, how we needed to let the Endmakers know that we wouldn't allow them to manipulate us, we wouldn't give them the satisfaction. Or that we used the minimal force necessary to lethally attack the Endbringer. That the damage could have been worse, if it had managed to escalate to stage 6. Fuck, even if we didn't use Bolla, that stage five power would have guaranteed the death of the city. But you already know all that, and it's not any kind of comfort."


"And that's what really bothers me, Taylor," I rolled onto my stomach and she straddled my legs to get a good angle for her massage. She was actually physically restless, a counterpoint my exhaustion. "All the justification and excuses. When we started Pantheon, it was to get away from that sort of bullshit. To do the right thing instead of doing the useful thing. When did we forget about all that?"


HesitationConcern. "Leaving aside our reasons for allowing Bonesaw to live?" she asked. I frowned. Riley was- NegationRegret. "I didn't mean it like that. Don't get me wrong, it turned out to be the right choice, both pragmatically and morally. But your reasons were selfish."


I hesitated for a second. "Yeah, you're right," I admitted. "Fuck, for all our talk of making things better, of not being callous uncaring authorities... we're complete fucking hypocrites, aren't we?"


"We've still done a lot of good," Taylor insisted. "Maybe we bit off more than we could chew with the Endbringers. We couldn't have known that there were so many more of them that could exist. We couldn't have known they could be made so damn hard to kill." FrustrationHelplessnessHate. "Maybe we fucked up by kicking over the hornet's nest, but we did it with the best of intentions."


"Still doesn't really answer my question," my sigh turned into a moan as Taylor hit a sweet spot right under my shoulder blade.


"Scion," Taylor answered. "I think it was when we realized what Scion was."


"Yeah, that sounds about right," I admitted. "Things do sorta take a different context when we're talking the end of not just this world, but millions of others. Trillions of people." I squeezed my eyes shut, letting the little bit of tears I still had left out. "I don't want to be that person, Taylor. I don't want to be someone who can kill millions to save billions. I get that we can't save everyone, I get that we'll have to make choices to save some people instead of others. I don't like that, but I can blame it on the monsters we're fighting. But... what we did to Brockton Bay crossed the line. It wasn't necessary. It was us proving a point."


GuiltSupport. "You're right," she sighed. She leaned down and hugged me, as much as was possible in our current position. Her head rested on my back. "Wouldn't that just be the worst outcome? Save everyone, and then look back and decide it wasn't worth it?"


"Yeah," I sighed, trying not to focus too much on Taylor's body pressed against mine. Even if it could have led somewhere, I wasn't in a state to enjoy it. "What's even the point of fighting, if you have to give up everything you're fighting for in the process?" AgreementSupportLove.


"You always were the heart of this partnership," she nuzzled her face against my back.


"Me?" I scoffed. The things I've done.


"Yes, you," Taylor squeezed me. "God knows it's not me. You're the one who wants to save everyone. The one who makes me want to be a better person. I don't really want to think of who I'd be without you. It wouldn't be someone I liked."


"You're getting all sappy on me, Taylor," I pointed out.


"Yup," she answered. "Can't imagine I'd do that before meeting you, either. Speaking of charity cases who you've saved, guess what I just caught your little sister doing?"


"Uh oh," I muttered. "Please tell me it's not completely horrible."


"Well, only for Theo, I think," she chuckled. "And you, maybe. Remember that tech they were using to extrapolate Victoria's DNA based on her appearance?"


"Yeah," I replied.


"It works in reverse," Taylor replied. "Turns out, she's extrapolated a couple dozen possible offspring for herself. What particular combinations between her, Theo, and Missy might look like."


"Uh... I should probably have a talk with her about that one," I replied. "Missy and Theo, too."


"I already did. Turns out, she's made a bunch of them," Taylor informed me. "Emma and Zach, Rey and Rapture, and it comes as no surprise that she's done the two of us."


I blinked. Us. Taylor and I. PleasedWarmLove. "Wow, you really like that idea, don't you?" Taylor chuckled.


I blushed hard. "Maybe..." I reluctantly admitted. "I don't even want kids, and Riley's enough of a handful, but there's something about the idea. Can't help but think about it. Instincts, I guess."


"Yeah," Taylor sighed. Her emotional undercurrents were even a little disappointed, subtle enough that I wasn't even sure she noticed them. Did she want children? That's probably something we should talk about, some day.


"Who knows what things will be like in a few years, though," I amended. "I'd rather us not be role models for teen mothers. Plus, that's one of those things that'd have to wait until after Scion for us to even think about considering."


ReliefAgreement. I smiled. "That's what it all comes back to, doesn't it?" Taylor asked. "Scion, and what we're willing to sacrifice to stop him."


=================

A/N- The next chapter is partially written. And it makes me giggle.

 

[Masked Menace]

Really? What part? The Empire State Building took one year to complete. Nothing in BB is anywhere near that scale.

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Wait what?
...
Okay technically you are correct with that sentence but not in the way you think you are, you have the scale a bit wrong here what happene to BB is way bigger than the Empire State building. Don't forget the entire city has been levelled, it's GONE there is nothing left of it other than a glass crater that is being filled with seawater.

Brockton Bay is said to have been a decently large city so the amount of damage implied here is immense. Now a quick Google tells me that New York has an area of 12 thousand square kilometres. That's big. Well that IS a major city and Brockton bay isn't so let's be conservative and say BB has an area a 1/4 of that. That's still 3 thousand square kilometres. Now I don't know nearly enough about craters to estimate how deep it is but common sense tells me it's going to be not an insignificant number. Even so let's discount that.

Do you know what's involved in building a city? I don't but off the top of my head I can see issues with roads, plumbing (water and sewers), electricity. Those are just the services then you have to somehow figure out what industry buildings need to be built how many houses need to be built you will need to figure out a way to get the city productive all the while the city will be a massive drain of resources.

Somyes theoretically you could rebuild it but it wouldn't be at all worth it and no amount of Parahuman muscle is going to fix that.

 

[pepperjack]

"I already did. Turns out, she's made a bunch of them," Taylor informed me. "Emma and Zach, Rey and Rapture, and it comes as no surprise that she's done the two of us."

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Is it bad that my first thought was that Riley had actually made these? As in, built mock-ups for demonstration purposes?

 

[Cyclone]

Brockton Bay is said to have been a decently large city so the amount of damage implied here is immense. Now a quick Google tells me that New York has an area of 12 thousand square kilometres. That's big. Well that IS a major city and Brockton bay isn't so let's be conservative and say BB has an area a 1/4 of that. That's still 3 thousand square kilometres. Now I don't know nearly enough about craters to estimate how deep it is but common sense tells me it's going to be not an insignificant number. Even so let's discount that.

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Umm, New York has a population of eight million. Pre-Leviathan Brockton Bay had a population of 350,000. The city probably does have a much broader per capita footprint than New York, but six times as much?

 

[powerofvoid]

The first step is to put some people with experience in doing this in a room together and have them draw up an outline of a plan. Then you start reconciling it with reality.

Alternatively, you have Contessa do a Jackson Pollock impression with bugs and get the answer in seconds or minutes.

The nature of Taylor's power is such that, if Amy made creep-guidance nodes for her, she could implement a plan over an essentially arbitrarily large are at once.

Thus, it's just a matter of:

1. Cauldron deciding to help
2. Figuring out how Taylor can administrate the deposition of appropriate materials in appropriate patterns.
3. Having Taylor implement Fortuna Pollock's bug-painting.

 

[sephlington]

Amelia, Ch 274

...

"We can't repeat what happened today," I sighed, plopping down on my bed next to Taylor. "Never again." ConcernAgreementSupport. She reached over and rubbed my shoulders. There were advantages to her power, in that she didn't have to physically do work. I still did.

...

And I didn't have the multitasking to handle multiple targets, not like Taylor did at least. Trying to heal two people at once was... well, mistakes could easily be made, some of them might take years to be noticed. Up to and including accidentally altering hormone productions to the wrong sex, or partially rewriting someone's DNA. All of which ultimately meant one thing. There was no shortcut for me to mass heal, because healing was not what my power was made to do.

Click to shrink...

Logical conclusion? Chevalier the two of them into a physical Taylia, and bam, bio-manipulation with infinite multi-tasking. The munchkin is real.

 

[Fouredged]

One of the major problems is who owns what in a city. You can't just throw a ton of people together and expect them to form a community. There are no jobs, there are no property lines, there are no systems to bring in power/food/water/luxuries. It takes TIME to sort these things out, and the only shortcut is for Pantheon to own EVERYTHING to begin with. I can see the US government not liking an outside power up and owning an American city.

At the end of the day, it is easier and cheaper to build onto existing cities than it is to build a city wholesale. This is why cities exist in the first place. Communities grow easier than they start. With the expansion into alternate worlds going on, tons of cities are suddenly seeing mass exmigration, leaving openings for others to move in. Really, it's just math. Pantheon is better off dedicated the resources to Avelon and letting people move their than to rebuilding a city on a world filled with death monsters.

 

[Snake/Eater]

"And that's what really bothers me, Taylor," I rolled onto my stomach and she straddled my legs to get a good angle for her massage. She was actually physically restless, a counterpoint my exhaustion. "All the justification and excuses. When we started Pantheon, it was to get away from that sort of bullshit. To do the right thing instead of doing the useful thing. When did we forget about all that?"

Click to shrink...

they just realized their personal truth...that they're a part of the problem,not the solution.that they should have realized that when they decided to build nation on a new world,that there was a price to be paid for such arrogance.

I blinked. Us. Taylor and I. PleasedWarmLove. "Wow, you really like that idea, don't you?" Taylor chuckled.

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that was a heart warming moment,it's hard to believe they started on two opposing sides at the beginning of this story and had been only forced to cooperate for a mutual goal of wiping out the S9. Almost every character got their moment to shine in the spotlight of Amelia, which results in a high level of emotional investment on the side of the readers(and maybe the author too).my only complaints of the story were the lack of visual and sensory descriptions of the settings each scene in some chapters,but the writer makes it up somewhat in his fight scenes and his lack of other characters that have no close connection to the cast of Amelia.it's giving the audience of a wider view of the Ameliaverse,to us it's not just it's heroes and villians and monsters,but the humanity of the everyman or everywoman.kinda like Rosary and Shaman,but more.

 

[Fouredged]

Logical conclusion? Chevalier the two of them into a physical Taylia, and bam, bio-manipulation with infinite multi-tasking. The munchkin is real.

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Then he removes Amelia's inability to target herself by giving her the property of "being Taylor not Amelia. Boom, she sets the merge to permanent and they go about turning the world into a giant ball of bio-borg.

 

[Peanuckle]

This chapter is what I feel Cauldron's fall from well-intentioned extremism to plain extremism looked like. "Scion, and what we're willing to sacrifice to stop him."

 

[Myriad]

A/N- The next chapter is partially written. And it makes me giggle.

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You giggled?
Hmm... oh... OH GOD, who all died this time!?

 

[Godwinson]

You giggled?
Hmm... oh... OH GOD, who all died this time!?

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EVERYONE!

 

[Asunder]

It's good that Pantheon caught this early. The problem with Cauldron and canon-Taylor was that when faced with an oncoming catastrophe they let it consume them with the excuse of the greater good and just ended up stagnating themselves.

 

[Snake/Eater]

for this chapter i'm posting Sigur Rós's "Number 1 aka Vaka"it's music video won a mtv award,it matches the mood of this chapter...... god i'm evil.warning you might trigger with super powers....

 

[cosoco]

hypocrits

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hypocrites

Taylor asked

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Taylor asked.

Is it bad that my first thought was that Riley had actually made these? As in, built mock-ups for demonstration purposes?

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That's a totally reasonable interpretation, and Amelia never explicitly says that Riley didn't...

 

[TanaNari]

Amelia never explicitly says that Riley didn't

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Taylor.

 

[dxdragon]

So..... I'm not sure entirely on how each step should go but can't Labyrinth just access another version of Brockton Bay (the city) that is empty due to xxx reason?

Ex: Open path to Zombie! Brockton Bay. Kill all zombies. Replace the city with the crater.

She canonically can reach to other worlds and impose them on local reality.
Simple Solution.

 

[GiftofLove]

So, what ever happened to the thread we got way back yonder that mentioned everything inside Yggdrasil counted as 'part' of it? Such as the people...

 

[dasstan]

So, Commentariat At Large, I have a request to make of you: Can we please drop the fucking Fix Brockton talk? Regardless of how feasible it may with all the resources available in the setting, TanaNari has already stated his intention of not following that plot. Authorial fiat is that it can't be done in a reasonable amount of time.

Accept and push through.

 

[powerofvoid]

Maybe we should make a "Panacea builds a skyscraper" discussion thread...

 

[thebrute7]

I find myself distinctly unimpressed by Taylor and Amelia's reactions to their Endbringer fight. At the scale they are battling on, you can't afford to think like that. You sacrifice 100 to save a 1000 or a million for a billion, and you do it because you can't and shouldn't gamble the lives of the greater whole to save the few.

And yes, they did it to make a point, but they still beat a fucking Endbringer. And what did they really sacrifice? One dying port city on the East coast for a monster that could potentially kill millions? That's a win even if they lost every single person in the city to do it.

 

[powerofvoid]

I find myself distinctly unimpressed by Taylor and Amelia's reactions to their Endbringer fight. At the scale they are battling on, you can't afford to think like that. You sacrifice 100 to save a 1000 or a million for a billion, and you do it because you can't and shouldn't gamble the lives of the greater whole to save the few.

And yes, they did it to make a point, but they still beat a fucking Endbringer. And what did they really sacrifice? One dying port city on the East coast for a monster that could potentially kill millions? That's a win even if they lost every single person in the city to do it.

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What's your opinion on Cauldron?

 

[thebrute7]

What's your opinion on Cauldron?

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Their plans were fucked up and ill-thought out, but were still better than not doing anything about the impending end of humanity.

To put it very, very succinctly and without nuance.

 

[Snake/Eater]

i just finished watching a episode of Battlestar Galactica and decided to make homage omake to the opening credits

Spoiler: opening song:D

"This has all happened before, and it will happen again"
The Endbringers were created by man.
They evolved. They obey.
Some are programmed to think they are human.
there are 43 models,7 are known,3 are lost,
The Father will awake,the Mother will be Slain,
They have a plan.


.............................
i picked the number 43 because in math there is something in mathematics called the Taylor series its a representation of a function as an infinite sum of terms that are calculated from the values of the function's derivatives at a single point.

the Irony is most of the cast are now toasters.

 

[TanaNari]

So, what ever happened to the thread we got way back yonder that mentioned everything inside Yggdrasil counted as 'part' of it? Such as the people...

Click to shrink...

Just so we're clear. "Inside" means "really inside". Parasite level interaction at minimum. If you held a housefly in your mouth (for whatever reason)- Amelia's power wouldn't register that fly as being "part of" you. Being in room in the Yggdrasil wouldn't be enough. The healing pods are enough- you're as thoroughly part of them as a fetus is its mother.

Trying to heal two people at once was... well, mistakes could easily be made

Click to shrink...

Basically- all it would let her do is heal at range. No faster, possibly slower.

The rest was Amelia punishing herself by looking the people she was responsible for injuring in the face. I'm glad you remembered that she wouldn't need to be there with the patient (was so afraid people wouldn't remember that). But you forgot to ask why she'd chose to be.

 

[Snake/Eater]

Maybe we should make a "Panacea builds a skyscraper" discussion thread...

Click to shrink...

your thinking too small,Panacea needs to build a orbital elevator

 

[Daunmi]

Anyone else get the feeling Taylor might have some hang ups regarding children after what happened with The Fallen? Drastically overprotective or constantly worried that something's going to happen to them sort of thing. Yeah, they've got their own world and it's safe, but even after they deal with Scion Taylor still lost a couple dozen children she was devoting her time to in a pretty horrific way, not to mention the teenagers/adults.

Parenthood can be a scary enough thought as it is, without including all the stuff they've had to deal with.

 

[TanaNari]

*Headdesk* Well, on the plus side I just wrote half a chapter. On the minus side, it's a half chapter that I'm not sure I'm going to use today or tomorrow and I have to write a different (at least partial) chapter before I know for certain. So... yeah... this one's going to be late, if at all today.

 

[Snake/Eater]

*Headdesk* Well, on the plus side I just wrote half a chapter. On the minus side, it's a half chapter that I'm not sure I'm going to use today or tomorrow and I have to write a different (at least partial) chapter before I know for certain. So... yeah... this one's going to be late, if at all today.

Click to shrink...

you can take a break to relax and get a clearer prospective of your chapter.there is that option.