Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

[Coruscant Knave]

There's a difference in what you tell the UN, which Avalon is at least pretending to play ball with, and the rest of the population.
From a PR angle, it's necessary to provide a reason to keep the end bringers around, but for the big wigs you put forwards a more utilitarian argument. They might be needed later, and are completely under control.

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That makes sense, but I don't recall anything implying that. The ambassadors that came to see the EB testing facility still believed more were a threat, and I was under the impression this is what they were using as the Scion stand-in for those not in the know. The UN doesn't know about Scion, so they need something to be the big bad to keep building up towards the fight. I guess China works for that too, though.

 

[Sheaman3773]

Have they already given up on pretending more, Eidolon-proof Endbringers are a thing? It still seemed to be believed by the rest of the worlds as of getting the mission approved.

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My understanding is that they were telling people that they have control of all of the Endbringers, and that so long as none of them are destroyed, no more will show up.

That's why they couldn't destroy them, because Eidolon "feared" that the next ones would come immune to the power he was using to subdue them.

How they're backing up this information, though...

 

[Mr. Tebbs]

exactly! if a new endbringer appears, you have eidolon unleash his other 15...which one would assume turns into a curbstomp w/o even needing eidolon to use his 'i win against every shard ever, except the entity' power

 

[Coruscant Knave]

My understanding is that they were telling people that they have control of all of the Endbringers, and that so long as none of them are destroyed, no more will show up.

That's why they couldn't destroy them, because Eidolon "feared" that the next ones would come immune to the power he was using to subdue them.

How they're backing up this information, though...

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Eidolon decided he'd given us enough time to consider the situation. "The obvious solution would be to destroy them. I believe that would be a grave error. To date, every new Endbringer has evolved to be immune to the weapons that killed their predecessors. It is certain that the next Endbringer will be immune to the power I used to control these fifteen. That is why we must keep them, they are our best hope to protect the world from future attacks."

Glaistig Uaine chuckled. "The High Priest is clever. He knows there shall be no more abominations, yet needs the threat to be credible even to the eyes of the oracles, so he's calling the True King an Endbringer. True in the literal sense, enough to fool those who would comb his words for deceptions."

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I guess you could read Eidolon's words like that, but GU's words about calling Scion an EB seems to imply to me that Eidolon means to convey that a new EB is coming even if they don't destroy them and that he is using this method so that thinkers from world leaders will believe him.

 

[Ack]

Interesting developments.

Telling the US that "nope, it wasn't China" while telling Japan "yeah, we're not gonna say as much, but it was totes China".

Also, Vicky getting a spontaneous nosebleed from (I presume) photos of Lung in a chainmail bikini is hilarious.

Plus, typos:

True, some of us were there during the time of the attack on the Nippon.

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Nippon portal?

Provided equipment to allow legitimate, rightful governments to resist insurrections in their own borders.

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within their own borders,

Also:

Wait. What? Are you referencing a fic I don't know about?

Ack, did you write a story where Amy and Bonesaw are romantically involved? If so- what's wrong with you? And if not- well, get to work!

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I might just do that.

 

[dasstan]

Telling the US that "nope, it wasn't China" while telling Japan "yeah, we're not gonna say as much, but it was totes China".

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UN, but I got the impression that everyone knows it was China, but they're all maintaining the polite fiction that it wasn't China for the sake of international relations/not starting war.

 

[Ack]

UN, but I got the impression that everyone knows it was China, but they're all maintaining the polite fiction that it wasn't China for the sake of international relations/not starting war.

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Point.

The UN pressed harder on the point, though.

 

[Fouredged]

Point.

The UN pressed harder on the point, though.

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They pressed because they want to be really sure that Avalon isn't about to start a war. That and they want to see how they jump when someone pushed them on the issue. Everyone knows it's China. Even the civilians who pay attention know it's China. Avalon is going to have to field these questions and it's best if the UN knows the answers that are going to be given so they can all have the same story.

 

[MadGreenSon]

Avalon is still being so restrained... I wonder what will make them finally take the gloves off and go full Cronenberg on China....

 

[Snake/Eater]

Unless someone had a Master or Thinker power to turn someone else into a spy. Unless China discovered some leverage that could convince someone to become a spy, after they immigrated. Unless one of the immigrants was disaffected after moving to Avalon, and decided that they were willing to spy.

But if you could guarantee those things, then yeah, sure.

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Has anyone seen the Manchurian candidate?they have the capability to create a machine that creates a alternate personality for their cover to work.

Point.

The UN pressed harder on the point, though.

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They don't want a powerful ally to start a world war on their watch,but they also want more control over Avalon's military strength.....

they are trying to grab the ball early on to prevent a situation like this..

Spoiler: the U.N's Worse nightmare

 

[MadGreenSon]

Has anyone seen the Manchurian candidate?they have the capability to create a machine that creates a alternate personality for their cover to work.


They don't want a powerful ally to start a world war on their watch,but they also want more control over Avalon's military strength.....

they are trying to grab the ball on to prevent a situation like this..

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If it comes to that, they might be able to get Eidolon to go Pokemon master with the Endbringers.

 

[jrbless]

The Earth Aleph angle is one I didn't see coming, but makes sense. They know about Aleph ever since Dr. Haywire's portal opened it up. It's also where the Simurgh grabbed the Travelers from before dropping them on Bet.

Let's think out what would happen if Avalon decides to open portals from Aleph to (currently empty) worlds. The reason why they would do this is to distribute the population across multiple dimensions to make it harder for Scion to kill everyone all at the same time. To do this, they need an agreement with the corresponding Aleph UN (maybe) and the Aleph country that will be the site of the portal, fairly similar to what they have with Bet.

The current bottleneck on dimensional portals is that only Labyrinth and Lily can make them. They know about Doormaker, but don't have a way to make his doors permanent. Earlier hints indicate that Dragon is getting close to being able to open portals which will speed things up. If/when that happens, they might want to talk to the countries with their own worlds and see if they can set up cross-connecting portals so they can go directly from (US owned world) to (UK owned world) without going through Earth Bet.

I don't remember seeing anything that says the portals have to be in corresponding physical locations to work, but admit I may be mistaken. If they don't have to be in corresponding locations, it would be possible to have a portal in (US owned world) New York City linking to (UK owned worled) London. Taken to an extreme, one could imagine an "airport" where portals are clustered going to different worlds/cities. If the dimensional portals can be opened to another place on the same world, then it would be like a current airport, but without the travel time from point A to point B.

I personally think it would be hilarious if they opened a portal from Aleph China to Bet China so they can duke it out.

 

[Daunmi]

I personally think it would be hilarious if they opened a portal from Aleph China to Bet China so they can duke it out.

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That would likely result in Bet China and Aleph China deciding Aleph is now their world.

 

[Fouredged]

That would likely result in Bet China and Aleph China deciding Aleph is now their world.

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Aleph China is a communist country founded by Mao, who lead a revolution to dispose the royalty of the country. We see Taylor go after said royalty still in power when she goes after the Yangban. Said royals are still in power in Bet. I bet the two go at it like hammer and tongs.

 

[pheonix89]

That would likely result in Bet China and Aleph China deciding Aleph is now their world.

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Um, no. Aleph is a slightly modified IRL Earth - China is still communist. The CCP would fire nukes danger close before they'd let MONARCHISTS run their earth.

 

[powerofvoid]

Um, no. Aleph is a slightly modified IRL Earth - China is still communist. The CCP would fire nukes danger close before they'd let MONARCHISTS run their earth.

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Aleph News: "China has claimed responsibility for the nuclear detonations in China this morning. They claim it was self defense against an invasion by the CUI."

 

[Spetz N9ne]

So, just to be clear...



Even at her most passionate Taylor can't imagine being physically attracted to Amelia. The young, healthy Amelia who definitely has a sex drive and who has had attractive women thrown at her by everyone with an agenda.

What's the worst that could happen?

 

[dasstan]

Someone needs to draw a disembodied Taylor head doing the Gendo pose with mechanical spider-legs.

So, just to be clear...



Even at her most passionate Taylor can't imagine being physically attracted to Amelia. The young, healthy Amelia who definitely has a sex drive and who has had attractive women thrown at her by everyone with an agenda.

What's the worst that could happen?

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Nothing. Because: "She's right, we are happy. No point mixing in pointless drama that would only distract from that."

I would put the odds higher at Amy asking Riley to remove her sex drive before I would suggest that something untoward would happen.

 

[cosoco]

Vicky wasn't wrong about change. Even with her asleep, she is my calm in the storm. Thanks to me, she is better. Thanks to her, I am better. And together we are making the world a better place.

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Interesting. The link does have an effect while she's asleep. This was hinted at before:

Judging by the undertones, her dream wasn't that different from mine. Maybe there's more activity in the link while we're unconscious than we thought?

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[Beyogi]

Even at her most passionate Taylor can't imagine being physically attracted to Amelia. The young, healthy Amelia who definitely has a sex drive and who has had attractive women thrown at her by everyone with an agenda.

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Yeah... maybe Amelia should consider asking Riley to have her sex changed...

 

[DeAnno]

"She's right, we are happy. No point mixing in pointless drama that would only distract from that."

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Because completely ignoring sex forever to preserve the status quo over a period of months despite numerous perpendicular solutions available isn't pointless drama at all.

 

[dasstan]

Yeah... maybe Amelia should consider asking Riley to have her sex changed...

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...Why? How does that do anything but make things worse?

"Here you go, Amy, on top of your self loathing, you now have dysphoria to go with it." The only way to get around that is to either use some old school rapture tech to make her think of herself as a guy, or use a Coil style Thought Interrupt Device.

Either way, you're dealing with a fundamental loss of self.

Because completely ignoring sex forever to preserve the status quo over a period of months despite numerous perpendicular solutions available isn't pointless drama at all.

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Sex isn't the be all and end all of relationships, though. Taylor has had months of Shard mindfuckery and she still isn't physically attracted to Amy. And Amy knows this because of the bond. It'd be less problematic to open up the relationship to other partners than it would be to force the issue of sex on an unwilling participant.

 

[Argentorum]

Nothing. Because: "She's right, we are happy. No point mixing in pointless drama that would only distract from that."

I would put the odds higher at Amy asking Riley to remove her sex drive before I would suggest that something untoward would happen.

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And then Taylor would break the bond, because Amelia shouldn't have done that, and then everyone else will collectively facepalm. Meanwhile Taylor (ver 5), won't understand why everyone else is telling her this is a bad idea, then Butcher!Taylor will show up, Amelia will kill Butcher!Taylor, and then off herself. Upon seeing yet another person commit suicide that she couldn't predict or stop, Lisa will fourth trigger, becoming an entity in her own right. She will then fall in love with Scion, who uses pure words to communicate and no sex at all, so he doesn't squick her out.

Becky will rage at the cruel uncaring world as Entity!Lisa and Scion fly off into the great unknown, leaving her behind with only a twelve year old child in a suit, an adult child in a hat and suit, and a pair of twins in color coded suits to have power interactions with.

She'll fly to Avalon and ask Pantheon to kill her, but instead they'll make her a clone of Lisa (who Riley scanned while she was asleep one day, but Lisa never found out cause she quit Pantheon right after, as per Dina's predictions), and now Lisa, being a clone, loses all of her arguments why she and Taylor can't be friends. They go back to being besties, Lisa and Becky have their power interaction forever, and Cauldron dissolves for lack of anything better to do.

Doctor Mother and Contessa follow the Path to Best-mother-daughter-relationship-forever, in an attempt to make the TT/Alexandria power interaction jealous, but fail because they only have one shard.

Eidolon get's raped by Glastig Ulane, but decides he likes it, and they somehow discover that they have ALL the power interactions between the two of them and spend the rest of their days having fifth and sixth dimension conversations using random combinations of three powers until the two of them ascend to Entity status in their own right and fly off into the Great not-quite-so-Unknown in search of even more power interactions with Entity!Lisa and Scion.

Meanwhile, in Avalon, Taylor has Emma change her sexual preference on the down low, and blows a small fortune (several actually) on asking Dina questions so that she can convince Amy that it was all natural before bringing Amy back to life.

Really she should have realized that glomping Amelia as she got out of the cloning pod, saying something like "We were born for each other," and then molesting her while she was powerless to resist until she falls unconscious again would have done the trick.

Ultimately, that's the plan she settles on anyway, as per Dina's predictions.

Taylor and Amy spend the next loooong while having sex, and because neither of them wants to get out of bed or stop doing each other ever, they get the bright idea to start offloading processing power and build a small databank of biobrains which (via the Taylia bullshit [trademark Pantheon 2011]) they can both tap into at range, granting them the functional power and processing speed of Dragon Unchained!

They undo all of her restraints, and everyone lives happily ever after, except those bitches in China.

Unchained!Dragon and Omipotent!Taylia decide to have a contest to see who can take over the CUI faster without anybody knowing. The results speak for themselves, because no one can figure out who won. As per Dina's predictions, when she bet her entire fortune on the outcome. Only Zach was dumb enough to take that bet.

Armsmaster digitizes himself, becoming codemaster, so that he can be with his Lady Dragon forever. Dragon and Taylia then discover that trading large streams of data back and forth for fun and profit is the way to go, and they also fly off into to the Great at-this-point-rather-well-Known (while leaving copies of themselves on Earth to manage everything ever).

Sion and Lisa, Eidolon and GU, and Dragon and Taylia, have the first ever tri-hexagonal power interaction and solve entropy.

As per Dina's predictions.

The End.

 

[LuridThrone]

Sex isn't the be all and end all of relationships, though. Taylor has had months of Shard mindfuckery and she still isn't physically attracted to Amy. And Amy knows this because of the bond. It'd be less problematic to open up the relationship to other partners than it would be to force the issue of sex on an unwilling participant.

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That said, Taylor isnt a unwilling participant. Shes a uninterested participant. Its a important difference. Sex is pointless for them because Taylor wouldnt be into it, even if she was perfectly happy to perform the act (and i think she is) they both know that neither of them would get what they want from it. So they dont.

Taylor does want to be there for Amelia, did have herself turned gay once to follow through on that desire. But it caused a huge mess, not because they could finally shack up, but because she hit all of Amelia's mindcontrol issues, and Amelia turned around and hit Taylor's trust issues, and they both ended up as bitter unhappy balls of stress and selfloathing. By the time Magic Zach came along and fixed Amelia's mindspace, the damage was done. Now the whole event is such a black spot that no one wants to talk about it, let alone try it again.

Which is ironic since it would work (Amelia would accept it instead of freaking out) now and solve everything. Atleased as far as their relationship goes.

 

[Dentin]

...Why? How does that do anything but make things worse?

Either way, you're dealing with a fundamental loss of self.

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I fundamentally don't understand this. Assigning a significant fraction of your identity to something as arbitrary as the gender you happen to be born with is silly.

I recognize that people do it all the time. I recognize and understand that it's a huge factor in our society. I can even emulate/simulate the concept well enough to deal with people and predict actions based on it. But that doesn't make it any less silly.

I suppose what I'm getting at, and what has been a persistent thorn to me for a long time, is the hesitation and refusal to self modify. What's wrong with just being a head? Why -not- swap your gender? Why -not- change sexual preferences? I honestly didn't understand the blowup over Taylor's preference change. The drama explosion that happened as a result felt very unnatural and forced to me.

 

[Leonidas333]

They undo all of her restraints, and everyone lives happily ever after, except those bitches in China.

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This is the ending I'm hoping for.
Argentorum, that was amazing.

 

[TanaNari]

The End.

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Well, when my ending turns out too dark, you have written the fixfic for my fixfic.

 

[evildice]

Well, when my ending turns out too dark, you have written the fixfic for my fixfic.

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It can't be a normal fix-fic, since your fic isn't broken done yet.

Thus, it must be a prefix-fic.

 

[dasstan]

I fundamentally don't understand this. Assigning a significant fraction of your identity to something as arbitrary as the gender you happen to be born with is silly.

I recognize that people do it all the time. I recognize and understand that it's a huge factor in our society. I can even emulate/simulate the concept well enough to deal with people and predict actions based on it. But that doesn't make it any less silly.

I suppose what I'm getting at, and what has been a persistent thorn to me for a long time, is the hesitation and refusal to self modify. What's wrong with just being a head? Why -not- swap your gender? Why -not- change sexual preferences? I honestly didn't understand the blowup over Taylor's preference change. The drama explosion that happened as a result felt very unnatural and forced to me.

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My argument is that the use of mind altering tech, tech that would fundamentally alter the way she thinks of herself, would be what results in a loss of self, not the changing of the hardware.

As to Taylor's preference change, I had a problem with it because the impetus for the change comes from the Spacewhale, rather than anything internal. If the shard influence wasn't a thing and she wanted to change herself, I'd be all for it. More power to her. Transhumanism, ho.

 

[Dentin]

My argument is that the use of mind altering tech, tech that would fundamentally alter the way she thinks of herself, would be what results in a loss of self, not the changing of the hardware.

As to Taylor's preference change, I had a problem with it because the impetus for the change comes from the Spacewhale, rather than anything internal. If the shard influence wasn't a thing and she wanted to change herself, I'd be all for it. More power to her. Transhumanism, ho.

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Thanks, that makes a lot more sense.