Blade (UBW!Taylor Worm Quest)

[Aoinfinity]

[X] Study extra for the GED
[X] Work on your power
-[X] Get more gear? (go to an armory/gun shop and copy everything)

 

[Angelus]

[X] Study extra for the GED
[X] Plan your next caper with Uber and Leet

 

[siflux]

October 1, 2001

Thomas Calvert fumed through the miserable London rain, nearly heedless of the tourist traps around him. Take a vacation, his therapist had said. The whole thing had been a total waste, both of time and money. Ignoring the parliament building, he finally spotted something worthwhile on the other side of the road: a tavern.

"A complete waste," he grumbled as he headed towards the crowded bar. Some old lord-looking motherfucker in a swanky ermine robe stood up, leaving behind some British monopoly money as he vacated his seat. Thomas slumped onto the stool in his place, on the end with his only neighbor a wrinkled old Russian. "Vodka," he declared spitefully, turning towards his neighbor. "You got a problem with that?"

The little bald man swiveled on his stool, staring Calvert down. "If I do, what would you do?"

Shit. A mistake had been made. Not trying to pick a fight, no. But the face staring back at Thomas Calvert was a mirror of his own, that of a man who no longer had a reason to hold back because he'd already lost everything but his life.

The ruskie glared grimly. Thomas focus back at him. The bartender slapped down a bottle of vodka and a pair of shot glasses.

"Hmph," the old man grunted dismissively, spinning back to the bar.

"Who were they?" Thomas asked, pouring himself his first drink.

"My grandchildren. My home. The woman I loved. My friends and enemies. Everyone, by now." The old man took a shot. "I used to live in Fuyuki City, on Kyushu. You never really get over it." He waited expectantly.

"Almost my entire squad. Goddam monsters. And then my job, for daring to survive. Don't know if I even have any enemies, save the one at the center of Ellisburg." Thomas Calvert threw back his glass.

The old man perked up, intrigued. "Zolgen," he introduced himself. "You survived the goblin king's domain? Was he like the myths, or just some pretender."

"No, just a human." Thomas took another shot. "Human with a billion mutant slaves doing his bidding and killing all intruders."

"Jealous?" Zolgen matched his drinking.

"Maybe," Calvert admitted.

"And what are you going to do about it?"

Thomas thought for a minute, ignoring the open bottle. "Should just nuke the place, but I'm not the one with my finger on the button. All I can do is just make sure I never go somewhere like that again without knowing what's inside."

Zolgen poured Thomas Calvert a shot, then took the last of the vodka for himself. "If you ever manage to figure out omniscience, let me know," he stated, leaving towards the bathroom.

It wasn't for another twenty minutes until Thomas realized he'd been stuck with the bill.

---

October 1, 2003
Timeline B

Already half-drunk, Coil trudged through the arid suburban housing in the shadow of the pyramids until he finally spotted what he'd been searching for. Stumbling up to the bar, he started chugging as soon as the bartender got the brandy to him.

"Cheer up. How many times has your life's work been destroyed?," a vaguely familiar voice sounded from next to him.

Thomas Calvert twisted his head weakly to find that goddam old man. From the London pub. Two years ago. He was drunk too. "Just the once, but it's gunna happen again," Thomas collapsed onto the bar. "'s the end of the goddam world, and everybody knows it. What's got your panties in a twist?"

Zolgen stared at him like he was an idiot. "Where did we last meet?"

Oh. Oh. "Yer luck's worse'n mine."

Zolgen nodded sagely. "The world's ending?"

"In like a decade or something. Maybe sooner. Maybe longer. Everyone and everything goes kaput. Probably." Coil groped for his glass, only to find it still empty. "Hey, y'said to find you if I ever figger out omniscience, right?"

Zolgen nodded again.

---Timeline A&B---

"Flip a coin. Imma call it."

---Timeline A---

"Heads." The coin came up tails. Coil shrugged. "Yeah, I got nothing. Just a bunch of asshole precogs who can only agree that we're all doomed."

---Timeline B---

"Tails." The coin came up tails. "Every time," Coil boasted. "And yet I'm still blind and broke and we're all still doomed."

"And what are you going to do about it?" Zolgen asked.

"Thas the same question you asked last time," Coil groaned. "Imma outlast civilization. Rule the ashes, an' anyone left."

Zolgen was quiet, clearly lost in his own thoughts. At last, he spoke again. "Have you ever considered investing in the stock market?"

---

April 1, 2011
Timeline A

The servant laid down a tray: coffee for Coil and tea for Zolgen.

"Sgt. Ellison's spine broke last night," Coil offered.

"I warned you that would happen," Zolgen stated. "And the Mystic Code worked up until that point?"

"Still does, actually," Coil admitted. "The invisibility is making it a lot harder to treat him."

"Don't bother," Zolgen dismissed. "Even if you could fix that, he'll lose enough of his brain by then that he'll be worthless. He served his purpose."

"He did," Coil agreed. "It would just be convenient if equipping someone with one of your Mystic Codes didn't guarantee they'd be going on a suicide mission. Reputation is even more expensive than the triple payout for dying on the job."

"You get a good month of use out of them," Zolgen shrugged. "We've been over this already. If you want them to last longer, I need more time to get them adjusted to their powers."
Coil sighed. "We don't have the kind of liquidity we'd need to pull that off. Give it another year."

Coil drained half his mug, changing topic slightly. "How did things go with the new asset?"

Zolgen grinned, stirring his tea. "Broken already. I hope you took recordings."

"How responsive is she?"

"Not very. The numbers are still there, but that's about it."

"I was planning on using her original personality, you know," Coil complained.

Zolgen shrugged. "Too late now."

"Too late now indeed," Coil agreed, though for a completely different reason.

The two sipped their respective drinks companionably.

"You know, I didn't think you had it in you," Zolgen admitted.

"Had what?" Coil asked.

"The courage to try poisoning me. The foolishness to think it would work. Take your pick," Zolgen offered didactically.

"And what are you going to do about it?" Coil questioned.

"This." Zolgen's arm shot out, grasping around his neck and squeezing with inhuman force.

---Timeline A&B---

Well, that was polonium-210 off the list. How'd he even detect α-radiation? Zolgen should have been a dead man walking who fell apart over the next few days, unknowing of his demise!

Worse, he'd never be able to blackmail the mayor, not with the man's niece so far out of it. Fortunately, Zolgen hadn't been offered the chance in what was now Coil's only timeline. Although that degree of breaking might work out well for Tattletale, when her initiative stopped being useful. Coil put it on his list of things to try.

On to the next experiment, then.

---Timeline A---

Coil called in the captain of his loyal mercenary forces. Well, loyal to the paycheck he provided, at least.

"Sir," the ex-soldier stood at attention.

"Kill Zolgen."

"Yes, sir," The captain saluted and left.

Coil watched his monitors uneasily as Zolgen survived bullet wounds, caning a merc nearly to death before leaving some worms to devour his still-living body and moving on to the next. Bayonets failed to stop him. Zolgen moved methodically through the base from soldier to soldier, squad to squad, slaughtering them as he went. Get some tinkertech weapons to try out next time, Coil noted.

---Timeline A&B---

Physical damage also no good, then. Verify with another test.

---Timeline A&B---

Fragmentation grenade, failure.

---Timeline A&B---

Drowning, ineffective.

---Timeline A&B---

Intense UV, also no good. It was a long shot, so Coil wasn't surprised at that failure at least. He'd need to make a new slate for assassination attempts. And break his new asset himself, since Zolgen clearly couldn't handle it without using excessive force. A supervillain's work was never over.

 

[globalwarmth]

ouch poor dinah

 

[siflux]

ouch poor dinah

Click to shrink...

She's still fine!

...In this timeline, at least. But hey, people getting tortured until they broke was always a thing with Coil around!

 

[Scope]

Guh, Coil aware of magic. Sort of.

That's going to be a pain.

 

[Dcdexe177]

Calling s.a.m.u.s. super arsenal mage unifying specialist-origin to save the kids

 

[siflux]

You roll off the couch and onto your feet. Even with the blackout curtain and closed blinds blocking almost all the sunlight, your body insists that it's time to wake up. Worse, the clocks all agree that you've overslept, though not drastically.

You wander over to the kitchen and open the fridge. It's stuffed nearly to the point of overflowing with leftovers. You've been here… is it every day for a week now? Something like that, but you still feel like a guest. The leftovers aren't yours to take without permission, and you don't spot anything else in the fridge.

Despite the fridge looking like it belongs in a bachelor pad, the rest of the kitchen is surprisingly clean. There's nothing in the sink, and all the dishes are either clean or in the dishwasher. Even more shockingly, the pantry is well-stocked with non-perishables. You hardly consider yourself much of a chef, but you know at least a few basic recipes.

Salt. Pepper. Oil. With these three ingredients, you can make almost anything edible. You grab a potato from under the sink, then on impulse take two more. You dice them, throw them in a pan with the aforementioned spices and oil, and fry up the mess. Technically, you think this is supposed to be a side dish, but whatever. You're a wizard-superhero moonlighting as an actress, not a chef.

A bleary-eyes Daniel stumbles into the main area of the apartment. "Tell me this isn't a prank," He mutters.

Oh, right! It's April Fools' Day! "I fried potatoes?" You try. "I made extra, and I'm serving out of the same pan. So if it is a prank, It'll affect me too."

"Have you built up an immunity to iocane powder?"

"What's that?" You ask gormlessly.

"Okay, you need to find some free time in your schedule, because apparently you have at least one classic movie to watch." Daniel starts working a coffee machine. Clearly not the coffee machine, as there's half a dozen, in various shapes and sizes.

"Later, then," you shrug, turning off the stove.

"What first?" Daniel grabs a pair of plates and puts them on one of the tables that isn't designated Tinker territory.

"Gotta study. GED. Never going back to high school." You bring pan and spatula over to the table.

"Can't say I blame you," Daniel speaks through a mouth full of food. "High school sucked. Want some help?"

You nod, only vocalizing a 'Sure' after you swallow. And then you remember that Daniel is also Uber, and is probably really good at it. Well, you'll find out soon enough.


You recreate your study materials as Daniel washes the pan and puts the remaining oven fries in the fridge. Today's topic is economics. Your tutor takes a look at your books and papers, grabs a few blank pages out of the printer, and pushes everything else aside.

"Let's start with the Law of Supply and Demand. Better hope you can keep up, because I'm abandoning this gig once Ted's up. Basically, people make things in expectation that others want them and are willing to pay for them. The more expensive you price things, the fewer will be bought, either because people will each buy less or because not as many people will buy any at all. That's your Demand Curve. At the same time, it usually costs money to make the things you're selling. Sometimes it always costs the same amount, which you can use in the simpler models to understand the concept, but in practice it's cheaper per unit to make lots of something than a few of something. If you know you're going to make a bunch of units, you can rent or buy a factory for a high upfront cost but a much lower marginal cost per unit. So that's the demand curve. Plot 'em both on a graph and you generally get this X shape." Daniel pours himself a mug of coffee while he waits for you to parse the material.

"Is there something special about where they meet?"

"Yeah. Brings us to our first set of assumptions. Law of Supply and Demand assumes an indefinitely large number of people willing to sell stuff to buyers, and that you have to sell to everyone at the same price. Perfect competition is the idea. Everyone wants to charge less than the competition because an informed customer is always going to buy the cheaper of two identical products, so that drives the price down. But you can't sell for less than it costs to make, or you'll lose money."

"But it costs the same amount to make something at that point as you get from selling it."

"Yep." Daniel sips at his coffee. "So, how do you think companies stay in business?"

"Because those assumptions are wrong?" You go back over the assumptions and all the ways they could be reasonably violated. "What if one company can make their stuff for less than the competition?"

"That's a good start, but you're not thinking evil enough," he teaches. "What if they charge each customer exactly the maximum amount they're willing to pay, regardless of what it costs to produce stuff?"

"Isn't that illegal?"

"In at least two different ways, neither of which matter if you aren't punished for it, or if you're fined less than the extra profit you made by doing it."

"We were also assuming that the consumer knows about competing products at a possibly lower price," you remember. "What if competition exists, but they don't know about it?"

"Same kind of thing, but that one's legal. So these kinds of situations are all covered by the monopoly model. It basically boils down to charging more per product and making less of them, which leads to higher profits for whoever is selling them. Basically, they get to set their price to whatever is on the Demand Curve gets them the most money." (GED status: 10/30 study points!)


You work through confirming Daniel's assertions on your own while he pours himself some more coffee. Eventually, he returns.

"Time for another assumption: Customers can always choose to just not buy something. Can you name some stuff where that isn't true?"

"Food. Power. Medicine, I guess? Anything you need to survive," you summarize.

"Right. And that includes money itself. Everyone needs to be able to buy some things, even if it's just survival necessities, unless they're provided. Sure, there's emergency shelters and food stamps and such, but you effectively can't choose to not have an income. If you have lots of money already, you can just stick it in the bank to get more, or you can let yourself slowly run out. But if you don't, you need to either get a job or fall back on someone else providing you with the stuff you need to survive."

"So, is there another model for that?"

"Same ones work just fine, long as the assumptions hold and you know your supply and demand curves. Skillsets are in demand, and if companies are competing for people with those skills, they have to offer higher salary, until they can't offer any more because they're getting less value back than they're paying in salary."

"But there aren't an infinite number of companies hiring people. If you aren't self-employed, there's usually only a few locally hiring for any given job."

"Depends on the job, but that can be a problem. If you have to choose between starvation and being badly underpaid, most people are going to choose to make less money. If it's bad enough, and they have savings, they'll fall back on that while they try to find a better offer, but especially in a depression, sometimes you just need to take anything, no matter how much they're offering under value."

"Unions!" You blurt out, thinking about Dad's job. "If you can guarantee that nobody will work for too little, they they have to pay people what they're worth!"

"That's one solution. Collective bargaining as a counter to capital. It can swing too far in the other direction, if the union demands more than companies are willing to pay, but in practice it almost never does."

A zombie-like Ted pulls the coffeepot off the machine and pours what's left straight into his mouth.

"That's my cue," Daniel rises. "You should look up 'comparative advantage' on your own. It's the black magic that makes international trade always worthwhile, even if one country is objectively better at making everything than every other country. (GED status: 11/30 study points!)


With the grounding you've been given in the topics at hand, the practice problems don't give you any trouble. You're a little worried about synthesizing everything you've just learned, but you're confident you understand the basics of economics now as an isolated topic. Picking at random between the two remaining social studies topics, you bury yourself in a world history text as you try to ignore Daniel and Ted messing around.

Unfortunately, it seems like your luck has run out. Not in terms of being able to concentrate, but for finding ways to make topics interesting. The world history materials are basically just a dry pile of dates and facts. Your run through US history yesterday has taught you that history can be interesting, either by putting itself in a wider context or by contextualizing other material, but that's not what they did here. No, it's just 'Here's what happened when, and a best guess of why', with the reasons getting better as it nears the present. Rise of civilization, Roman Empire, post-empire feudal period, US revolution kicking off a series of global revolutions, world wars, Scion and capes. Blah blah, you already knew this stuff. No attempt made to frame things as a story or set of stories. Ugh. (GED status: 12/30 study points!)


You get up from the table, plopping down onto the couch.

"Movie time?" Daniel asks. You nod.


One movie later, you settle down to plan for the next video.

"Okay. So. Asymmetric engagement." Uber declares. "We want to make sure that everyone involved has different capabilities and goals. Now, Ganondorf is the officially 'evil' character, who generally starts from a position of power. That's reflected not just in terms of what resources he has, but also his personal power. This is balanced by his difficulty in finding the last few things he needs to win and by an inability to increase in capability during the adventure, as well as his non-responsiveness to assault. He's slow to pivot and primarily dependent on minions until he can deal with things in person."

"If we're doing this organically, that means Leet can't hide whatever it is he needs to be looking for," you conclude.

"That's right. Which is why I want you to do it."

"Me?" You question, taken aback. "Why not you?"

"Of the core three characters, Zelda is the one who knows stuff. Triforce of Wisdom and all. For reasons of verisimilitude, you should be responsible for sequestering the resources needed by both Link and Ganondorf. I'm thinking you should focus on battlefield control for this, both in and out of combat. Ranged attacks with lockdown. High speed and mobility. Weakness of low health and power -- in a straight fight, you shouldn't be able to win against either of the others. Sound good?"

"And then you'd be growth, exploration, and eventually versatility as Link?" You try.

Uber nods. "Should include some kind of respawn system, too. Losing combat shouldn't be a game over here, or there's no reason for any of us to do the temporary team-up then betrayal thing that makes three-way warfare so interesting. Sleep on it, we'll throw in ideas for win conditions tomorrow."


You stop by home for dinner with Dad, filling him in a little on what you were up to since yesterday. Mostly, you talk about Daniel tutoring you. You don't quite feel ready to tell Dad about the whole superpowers thing. Or the Internet Famous thing. Or the sneaking out at night to save people thing. It's fine, you're doing your best to stay safe. You'd just make Dad panic needlessly and then he'd overreact to it all.

You wait in your room for Dad to fall asleep before sneaking out like you've usually been doing. You're about to suit up when your phone buzzes.

Still up for that patrol? It's Kid Win.

Very yes, you shoot back.

Me and Vista will wait for you here, he sends you a map link. You've gotta get here in the next half hour or we can't wait any longer. We gotta tell the Protectorate you're going to be with us too. All good?

On my way.

Between Speed Booster and Space Jump, all you need is a nice, straight patch of road to pick up speed and you can virtually fly to your destination. You drop in on the Wards a few minutes later. There's an extremely long and curly handlebar mustache drawn onto Kid Win's helmet.

"Don't ask," he pre-empts.

"April Fools'?"

"Clockblocker," he nods. "No time to clean it off, and nobody wanted to trade patrols tonight."

"Can we go through former Merchants territory?" You ask, changing the subject. "I was hoping to find Squealer's lab."

"You've got that T-Ray vision mode, right!" Kid Win exclaims. "I bet you could find it just by passing by! I haven't gotten to look through another Tinker's lab beside's Armsy's in ages. Vista, can we do it please please pleeeeaaaaaaase?"

Vista sighs. "Just don't forget to keep watch for bad guys. We're here on patrol, not on a mission. But there's no reason we can't do that somewhere specific."

"Thank you!" Kid Win bursts. Wow, he's really excited about the prospect.


Petty crime is thin on the ground. Without parahuman support, most of the Merchants have gotten themselves arrested or pressed into one of the other gangs by now. You run into a few groups of gang members, but they're clearly on the prowl for each other, not for civilian targets. Not that anyone around here is dense enough to be out this late.

Between the way you can see the gang members before they can see you and your three-to-zero parahuman advantage, you don't have any trouble taking down any of them you come across. Unfortunately, waiting for police pickup takes most of your time. You do manage to confirm some more of where Squealer's workshop isn't, as well as that the Protectorate don't seem to know where it is yet either despite having her in custody, but apart from enjoying your time with Kid Win and Vista and taking a few violent hoodlums off the streets, your night isn't particularly productive.

Today was Friday, April 1, 2011

Feedback on your role in the upcoming Uber & Leet (& Arsenal?) video? (Pick One)
[ ] Asymmetric warfare with yourself as long range/control-type in battle and infowar for non-combat sounds good
[ ] Actually, I had a different idea… (Write-in)

Next Day's Day Plan (Two votes, up to two more if you cannibalize morning study or evening patrol):
[ ] Study extra for the GED
[ ] Plan your next caper with Uber and Leet
[ ] Work on your power
-[ ] Get more gear? (Write-in)
-[ ] Experiment? (Write-in)
[ ] Other (Write-in)

 

[globalwarmth]

[x] Asymmetric warfare with yourself as long range/control-type in battle and infowar for non-combat sounds good

[X] Plan your next caper with Uber and Leet
[X] Work on your power
-[x] Get to scan a normal gun shop and visit a museum's weapon collection.

 

[CKirk]

[X] Asymmetric warfare with yourself as long range/control-type in battle and infowar for non-combat sounds good

[X] Study extra for the GED
[X] Plan your next caper with Uber and Leet

 

[Silver W. King]

Feedback on your role in the upcoming Uber & Leet (& Arsenal?) video? (Pick One)
[X] Asymmetric warfare with yourself as long range/control-type in battle and infowar for non-combat sounds good

Next Day's Day Plan (Two votes, up to two more if you cannibalize morning study or evening patrol):
[X] Study extra for the GED
[X] Work on your power
-[X] Get to scan a normal gun shop and visit a museum's weapon collection.

 

[ECS05norway]

[X] Asymmetric warfare with yourself as long range/control-type in battle and infowar for non-combat sounds good
I honestly can't think of anything better here.

Next Day's Day Plan (Two votes, up to two more if you cannibalize morning study or evening patrol):
[X] Plan your next caper with Uber and Leet
[X] Other (Write-in) - Hang out with the Wards

 

[DJK]

[X] Asymmetric warfare with yourself as long range/control-type in battle and infowar for non-combat sounds good

[X] Study extra for the GED
[X] Work on your power
-[X] Get to scan a normal gun shop and visit a museum's weapon collection.

 

[Dragonin]

Feedback on your role in the upcoming Uber & Leet (& Arsenal?) video? (Pick One)
[X] Asymmetric warfare with yourself as long range/control-type in battle and infowar for non-combat sounds good
Next Day's Day Plan (Two votes, up to two more if you cannibalize morning study or evening patrol):
[X] Study extra for the GED
[X] Work on your power
-[X] Get to scan a normal gun shop and visit a museum's weapon collection.

 

[slicedtoad]

"Because those assumptions are wrong?" You go back over the assumptions and all the ways they could be reasonably violated. "What if one company can make their stuff for less than the competition?"

"That's a good start, but you're not thinking evil enough," he teaches. "What if they charge each customer exactly the maximum amount they're willing to pay, regardless of what it costs to produce stuff?"

"Isn't that illegal?"

"In at least two different ways, neither of which matter if you aren't punished for it, or if you're fined less than the extra profit you made by doing it."

Click to shrink...

Tell me to shut up if this is to off topic, but how is this illegal? Provided it isn't fraud or price fixing, maximising profit is always the goal. If you aren't colluding with other companies, I don't see how setting the price to the maximum people will pay can be illegal...

 

[ryune]

Tell me to shut up if this is to off topic, but how is this illegal? Provided it isn't fraud or price fixing, maximising profit is always the goal. If you aren't colluding with other companies, I don't see how setting the price to the maximum people will pay can be illegal...

Click to shrink...

Price gouging is a thing.

 

[siflux]

Tell me to shut up if this is to off topic, but how is this illegal? Provided it isn't fraud or price fixing, maximising profit is always the goal. If you aren't colluding with other companies, I don't see how setting the price to the maximum people will pay can be illegal...

Click to shrink...

Axiom: a given item may be of different value to two different people. For example, a gallon of milk usually has positive value to most people, but not to someone who's lactose-intolerant, or already has a fridge full of twenty gallons of milk.

As such, the maximum price two people will be willing to pay for an item is not the same.

Illegality #1: Price Discrimination. There are many ways to keep this legal -- modulate prices over time, or hold the base price high while giving non-discriminatory discounts (ex. age discounts, not race or religion discounts) to match more people's price points. And when you can pull that off, that's good. But it's a fine line that's easy to cross into illegality.

What I was intending to describe in the text was the case of the seller having a 'god algorithm' that gave them the max price a buyer would be willing to pay and charging them that.

Now, there's no way for a company to do that without significant Market Power. Illegality #2: in real life, that would involve falling on the wrong side of anti-trust laws. Consumers are generally modelled individually as price takers, but collectively as price setters who rapidly drive price towards equilibrium. Given perfect information and perfect competition, that happens very fast. If you can force people to pay an arbitrary price for something, you likely have no competition (a monopoly). Or maybe you have good enough information control that people don't know about your competitors, which I believe is legal so long as you aren't actually actively suppressing information about them.

Law is complex, and selling to everyone at the highest price they're willing to pay is indeed the goal. Government ideally serves to help protect the individual citizen here.

 

[slicedtoad]

Axiom: a given item may be of different value to two different people. For example, a gallon of milk usually has positive value to most people, but not to someone who's lactose-intolerant, or already has a fridge full of twenty gallons of milk.

As such, the maximum price two people will be willing to pay for an item is not the same.

Illegality #1: Price Discrimination. There are many ways to keep this legal -- modulate prices over time, or hold the base price high while giving non-discriminatory discounts (ex. age discounts, not race or religion discounts) to match more people's price points. And when you can pull that off, that's good. But it's a fine line that's easy to cross into illegality.

What I was intending to describe in the text was the case of the seller having a 'god algorithm' that gave them the max price a buyer would be willing to pay and charging them that.

Now, there's no way for a company to do that without significant Market Power. Illegality #2: in real life, that would involve falling on the wrong side of anti-trust laws. Consumers are generally modelled individually as price takers, but collectively as price setters who rapidly drive price towards equilibrium. Given perfect information and perfect competition, that happens very fast. If you can force people to pay an arbitrary price for something, you likely have no competition (a monopoly). Or maybe you have good enough information control that people don't know about your competitors, which I believe is legal so long as you aren't actually actively suppressing information about them.

Law is complex, and selling to everyone at the highest price they're willing to pay is indeed the goal. Government ideally serves to help protect the individual citizen here.

Click to shrink...

Oh, you meant setting the max each individual would buy at, I misunderstood that, thanks for the clarification.

 

[Akuma-Heika]

[X] Asymmetric warfare with yourself as long range/control-type in battle and infowar for non-combat sounds good
[X] Plan your next caper with Uber and Leet
[X] Work on your power
-[X] Get to scan a normal gun shop and visit a museum's weapon collection.

How long do we have before the GED? I cannot remember, but I am assuming it was less than a month away, otherwise we would get 30/30 by default as long as we didn't give up the morning studies.

 

[siflux]

How long do we have before the GED? I cannot remember, but I am assuming it was less than a month away, otherwise we would get 30/30 by default as long as we didn't give up the morning studies.

Click to shrink...

Looks like you can just schedule your exam for whenever. You take 'em at testing centers. Same kind of thing you do to get a lot of certifications in things. So yes, you can keep studying for as long as you want to keep spending time on it. The biggest issues are when the next academic year starts, whether you think you'll have time in the future, and how much you like me trying to be entertaining and vaguely educational about a wide variety of topics at a surface-level-but-probably-not-high-school-depth-level.

 

[Akuma-Heika]

Looks like you can just schedule your exam for whenever. You take 'em at testing centers. Same kind of thing you do to get a lot of certifications in things. So yes, you can keep studying for as long as you want to keep spending time on it. The biggest issues are when the next academic year starts, whether you think you'll have time in the future, and how much you like me trying to be entertaining and vaguely educational about a wide variety of topics at a surface-level-but-probably-not-high-school-depth-level.

Click to shrink...

Thanks for the reply, the business model questions you discussed were actually college level, but likely to have been touched upon in HS. I remember Demand Curve and the Competitive Price being taught in HS, but a lot of the side things were things I learned in college. Still were entertaining though.

 

[Xanothos]

I just finished bingeing this story, and I must say, I am thoroughly enjoying it. That said, my vote:

Feedback on your role in the upcoming Uber & Leet (& Arsenal?) video? (Pick One)
[X] Asymmetric warfare with yourself as long range/control-type in battle and infowar for non-combat sounds good
Next Day's Day Plan (Two votes, up to two more if you cannibalize morning study or evening patrol):
[X] Study extra for the GED
[X] Work on your power
-[X] Get to scan a normal gun shop and visit a museum's weapon collection.

 

[Angelus]

[X] Asymmetric warfare with yourself as long range/control-type in battle and infowar for non-combat sounds good
[X] Study extra for the GED
[X] Plan your next caper with Uber and Leet

 

[Terenak]

shame we aren't more physically fit/trained and don't have the proper equipment of it, I'd like to do the battlefield control bit but also actually go full Sheik, especially if we do the "temporary team-up then betrayal thing" that Uber was talking about.

[X] Asymmetric warfare with yourself as long range/control-type in battle and infowar for non-combat sounds good
[X] Plan your next caper with Uber and Leet
[X] Work on your power
-[X] Get to scan a normal gun shop and visit a museum's weapon collection.


Edit: Woops, that's what I get for not checking dates, sorry.