As it says, it's a Waifu Catalog fic idea starting in Worm.
I don't own anyone except the Main Character.
So how do you picture yourself entering a new world for the first time? Is it awe-inspiring like the Bifrost of the MCU? Flashy like Terminator's time travel? Subtle like Kuroko's teleports? How about the clean refinement of Doormaker's doors or the terrific madness of a 40k warp portal? Regardless of whatever you want it to be, I'd bet that above all else, you'd want your arrival to be dignified. Or if you couldn't manage that, you would at least want to appear casual as you walked through.
I too would have liked for my entry into the world of Earth Bet to be dramatic, flashy, and above all else, dignified. Oh, it was absolutely the first two; having a metallic ring flash into existence before grey fog with lightning forking through it poured through to assemble your new body BLAME!-style is certainly an impressive sight to behold. Unfortunately, it's rather impossible to look or feel dignified when your first step into a new world plants you face-first into a brick wall. A dirty one with still-drying graffiti on it, at that.
As I pulled myself out of the wall's grime and started making my way out of the alley, my HUD finally flickered on and I started up my body's cleaning nanites with a thought. I had no idea who I could run into in — I checked my map — the Docks of Brockton Bay,
Connecticut? Interesting, but not terribly helpful at the moment. In any case, not having my face be covered in neon green paint should help with any social interactions I might have while here.
Turning around, I picked up the shrunken, fused form of the portal frame off the ground, willing my nanites to sterilize it in the process, and slipped it onto my hand in a single smooth motion. I figured that if it could still be activated, I should hold onto it if only to keep the locals from playing with it. If it couldn't, well, it still looked like a cool ring and I wanted it. Though as it resized itself to fit my hand, I was starting to lean more towards my first reason than the second.
Absentmindedly, I sent out a short scanning pulse to find out if there was anyone in visual range. I couldn't passively detect anyone at the moment, but that didn't mean some physical Stranger couldn't have seen my little accident. My scans returned 5 rodents, 6 seagulls,
and several hundred insects within line of sight.
"Fuck." Immediately, I charged and heated my skin while moving out onto the street, carefully watching for any unnatural behavior that could indicate a certain Master's presence. "I don't mean any harm," I placated, "just a minor Mover accident, nothing to get worked up about." If Skitter was here and decided I was a threat, I probably wouldn't be able to get out of her range before she swarmed me. Not without causing a good deal of collateral damage and revealing most of my current trump cards, at least.
After a few tense minutes of shuffling down the road without noticing any errant behavior from the local insect population, I allowed myself to relax. Not completely; I would still be tracking insect behavior on a subconscious band and keeping my subdermal capacitors ready, but I could stop being so actively cautious. Yellow Alert versus Red Alert, would be a good way to look at it.
To clarify, I wasn't concerned about bodily harm when it came to facing Skitter. After all, even this android body of mine should have no issue ignoring all she could bring to bear, barring Atlas. I just really didn't like bugs. Especially bugs trying to get into my various orifices. So if I could avoid a fight with her, I would.
Shifting my attention back to my surroundings, I took a single breath before switching from smelling to chemical analysis. The air here was disgustingly foul with the fumes of old combustibles and rotting fish mingling with the salt in the air. The buildings lining the crumbling, faded road I was following weren't much better. Mostly warehouses with a few brick buildings sprinkled between them, almost all of them were some combination of boarded up, rusting, and dilapidated.
In any case, I needed information, and badly. To start with, my internal calendar was still set for
my time, meaning that I could be anywhere in the timeline. Granted, the lake labeled "Leviathan's Crater" in my map narrowed things down, but that still meant I had a 2-year margin for error to deal with. Not an attractive prospect when the end of the world could be right around the corner.
I considered visiting an internet cafe before immediately discarding the idea. The only one on the map was one that Lis-
Tattletale — frequented, and I wasn't willing to risk the chance of her somehow picking up something legitimately important from me. Like
Golden Morning. Because my entire plan revolved around it. I also wasn't sure if it or any other internet cafes were still active in this city after everything that happened here in canon.
That left private residences and public services as my options, so just public services because getting arrested for loitering would suck. Consulting the map, it looked like libraries were probably going to be my best bet. They were open to the public, didn't have anything I couldn't beat in the way of surveillance, and best of all had computers. My decision made, I pulled up a map and immediately started heading towards the closest one I could find. I had a date to get and a gift to send, after all.
After a few hours of walking, I finally reached my destination: the Brockton Bay Free Public Library. It certainly wasn't in the best shape, given the large patch of fresh brick I spotted while walking to the entrance, but it was solidly built and looked promisingly active. It was also still in better condition than most of the buildings I'd passed getting here and suitably out of the way for my purposes.
Making my way inside, I was rather surprised by how homey the building was. Warm lighting, comfortable-looking chairs, the smell of old paper, I hadn't expected to find anything this nice in this stain of a city. As I continued taking in the library's atmosphere, I allowed myself to relax. I'd forgotten how much I loved coming to these places since graduating high school; the ones at college just didn't have the same charm and 5 years was more than enough time to allow antipathy to fester.
"Not what you were expecting?" I turned to see an older woman approach me from behind the front desk. "Don't worry, everyone has that reaction after seeing the insides of this place for the first time," She smiled, misinterpreting my nostalgia as surprise.
"Ah, not exactly, Ma'am," I replied with a smile. "It was a bit surprising to see a library in such good condition here, but I was mostly reminiscing about how much I love coming to these places."
"Really?" She asked, her eyes lighting up. "That's wonderful! Not many younger people come here these days, especially over the last three years. Terrible business, that, what with Leviathan and the Nine coming back." She shuddered for a moment before returning to normal. "Nevermind that, was there something you needed?"
Well, since she asked. "There is, actually. Do you have public computers here?" Her expression dimmed a little so I backpedaled. "Sorry, my family wanted me to email them when I got here; dangerous streets and all." I lied, rubbing the back of my neck sheepishly. "After that though, I'll be browsing, so I'd appreciate it if you could give me directions to the Science Fiction and Fantasy sections when I get done with that."
Her eyes softened. "Oh, it's no trouble; the computer lab is through the nonfiction section." She nodded towards a series of bookshelves set perpendicularly against the eastern wall. "Fantasy and Science Fiction are in the aisles by the back wall," she nodded to another set of shelves before starting what sounded like a rehearsed speech.
"Once you have your books, please come back to the front desk so I can print you a library card and check you out. As a new member, you can check out 4 books which will be due at the end of the week. And if you have any questions after this, just come back to the front desk to ask them." Nodding, I thanked her and made my way to the lab along the route she outlined for me.
The computer lab was pretty much exactly what I expected from a publicly funded office space; rows of cheaply made tables with old desktop computers on top and old desk chairs behind them. Selecting one from the back row in the corner, I sunk into one of the too-short desk chairs and listened to the quiet shriek of the decrepit computer's boot sequence. I took solace in the knowledge that this would probably only take a few minutes at most.
As I sat there waiting for the boot sequence to finish, I looked around the room. Faded wood-print vinyl-topped tables with rubber lining the sides, shitty wheeled desk chairs with the stuffing partially exposed, and shitty too-thin mousepads filled my gaze. All while being lit from above by the dull, soulless light of humming fluorescent tubes. The computers themselves were just as bad; plastic shells and keys were yellowed with age, keyboards were stiff and barely responsive, the mice had sticky trackballs in them, and the CRT monitors buzzed something fierce. Never before had I been so happy to see the home screen pop up.
Of course, I was happy to see that screen for another reason as well. Because sitting there in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen in all its pixelated glory, was the date.
06/12/2013
"Shit."
Seven days before the end of the world. Lovely.
"Double shit."
Shitshitshit.
Ok, okay. I took a calming breath as my newly synthetic mind went into overdrive. I had significantly less time than I was hoping for, but I could still work with this. Seven days 'til GM kicks off meant a week until S9k kicks off and Dragon gets lobotomized, and — I did some quick mental math — eleven
-ish days until Khepri gets jailbroken, assuming that everything else stays the same. It would be rather tight and I would have to make sure things stayed more onscript than I would prefer, but I could definitely work with this. My first step? Getting Contessa on my side, because my god would I need her timing to have a chance at successfully pulling this off.
As I moved to stand up though, my mind caught on something, or rather, some
one: Dragon. In seven days and God knows how many hours, she would get her mind ripped to shreds by a paranoid addict with delusions of competence and sound judgment. And I could stop that from ever happening with but a few minutes of my time and a couple of strokes of my keyboard. All without ever needing to go to the trouble of actually tracking her down. I set my jaw and pulled myself back to the monitor. There was work to be done.
Of course, that would require my being able to reach her in the first place. I was pretty sure she could be contacted conventionally, but I also knew for a fact that I possessed neither the time nor subtlety to get her a message that way. Thankfully, there was an alternative: PHO. Seemingly everyone who was anyone in Worm had a PHO account, and Dragon was no exception to that rule. It was fairly common knowledge in the fandom that Dragon was a mod on PHO, most likely Tin_Mother, but not for certain. The solution? Send all the mods the same message.
I opened a PM to Tin_Mother after creating a throwaway account and was about to start typing when I hit a snag. How
should I try to convey my information? I
knew I wanted to let Dragon know about S9000 so it could be more easily dealt with, but Jack is a cheating cheater who cheats and I didn't want her to dismiss what I had to say out of hand. I mulled over the issue for a few minutes before reaching a decision and started writing my message.
"S9 is back sometime next week! Got a bright red-orange for next week. Brightedt its ecer been! Sevwral hindred times bright er than at full menbership! Only get red-orange when S9 is a week from hitting a place. Only kno case frend got killed durina phne call to me wek aftet first redorange notice. Chdeckef S9 attack dqtes tp make sire. Wherever they hit, its gonna be bad! Not ime tibverify accourt, gotta keepbmovir!"
I paused and looked it over. It seemed appropriately panicked for a Worm precog with both bad news and a good reason to know what they were talking about. The feeling I was getting from my Networking module seemed to agree, though it also indicated that it was missing something to qualify as a proper gift.
"Heard rumor thst Dragob is mof so sendingbto all mids on PHO. If yoy know Dragon or Thimktank, please send to them to verigy."
With my Networking mod satisfied, I sent it on its way, feeling a small fraction of myself go with it. After a moment, I decided to send the PM to Dragon's main account as well, with an apology for spamming her mod account, just in case.
In the end, I went with a hybrid method. First, I checked Tin_Mother's and another mod's account page codes to see if there were any shared markers related to their shared status, finding three in the process. Then, I wrote a relatively simple two-stage script in my head that would first compile a list of all the users whose profiles had those markers on them, then PM each entry in the list with a copy of the message I sent Tin_Mother. From there, I uploaded the bot using my shroud and shut everything down to hopefully avoid Dragon finding me too quickly.
Glad to be done with my good deed of the day, I stood up and winced as the chair I was using squeaked a complaint at me. If I never had to use another one of these dreary spaces again, it would be too soon. Striding back into the library proper, I tried to relax. Hopefully, a little therapeutic book hunting would do the trick.