Blade (UBW!Taylor Worm Quest)

[CKirk]

To me, one of the most memorable Noble Phantasms that Shirou Traces is Rho Aias. Not only is not a sword; it's not even a weapon. It's a shield. While it was only used by EMIYA and not Shirou (not counting Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA), the major difference between the two in terms of their reality marble is that EMIYA has a lot more prana to work with and is being fed even more from multiple arcane sources (Rin, Grail-kun). UBW itself seems to be limited to bladed weaponry, but tracing does not.



This is pretty much my understanding of the power. Seriously, for someone who's considered to be a shitty mage, Shirou is pretty hax.


I've updated the character sheet to split the stuff that's in UBW versus the notables that are merely cool traced mundane and NP gear. Please correct me if I'm mistaken about anything Nasu.

Also, y'all need to go visit a museum sometime for serious, get UBW finally loaded with an endless supply of nameless swords.

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I was under the impression that it was Tracing and not Gradiation Air *because* it was being drawn from Unlimited Blade Works. That is, if it's not in UBW, he can't Trace it. He can copy it with Gradiation Air, but it's not Tracing. I may be completely wrong though.

Shirou's basically a third-rate magus because he can't do anything aside from Reinforcement and Gradiation Air...Except for Unlimited Blade Works. He's one of like six human mages in recorded history to have a Reality Marble, and that's why he's hax. Remember the first rule of the Nasu-verse: You can break one rule: choose wisely.

 

[siflux]

the first rule of the Nasu-verse: You can break one rule: choose wisely.

Click to shrink...

I chose that rule to break! I shall have the power to break any number of rules!

I was under the impression that it was Tracing and not Gradiation Air *because* it was being drawn from Unlimited Blade Works. That is, if it's not in UBW, he can't Trace it. He can copy it with Gradiation Air, but it's not Tracing. I may be completely wrong though.

Click to shrink...

I don't know for certain either. There just isn't enough information given in canon. However, Gradation Air/Projection seems to be viewed very dismissively by mages. If it could normally be used to spam NPs, this probably wouldn't be the case. As well, even when it's do-or-die, the only magus who throws around NPs is Shirou. Can you honestly say Rin wouldn't have thrown an Excaliblast given the chance? That Kotomine wouldn't have tried Gates of Babylon or Gae Bolg to save his life? And yet even after seeing that it's possible, nobody tries. If spamming NPs wasn't a special property of Tracing/UBW, I would expect the various Fate stories to look very different.

The one rule Shirou breaks is the ability to create *anything* with Projection, even Noble Phantasms (albeit weakened slightly). A normal magus can only make mundane equipment, which isn't enough of a trump card when your life is on the line. His elemental origin and alignment being Sword is what makes it anything close to cost-effective, especially given how poor a mage he otherwise is.

 

[Redium]

To me, one of the most memorable Noble Phantasms that Shirou Traces is Rho Aias. Not only is not a sword; it's not even a weapon. It's a shield. While it was only used by EMIYA and not Shirou (not counting Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA), the major difference between the two in terms of their reality marble is that EMIYA has a lot more prana to work with and is being fed even more from multiple arcane sources (Rin, Grail-kun). UBW itself seems to be limited to bladed weaponry, but tracing does not.

Click to shrink...

Shirou actually Traces Rho Aias in Haven's Feel when Rider takes on Saber Alter in the Grail cavern. It's only 4 petals compared to EMIYA's 7 but considering Shirou is both initially less experience and literally dying of swordification at the time, I'll give him a pass.

I was under the impression that it was Tracing and not Gradiation Air *because* it was being drawn from Unlimited Blade Works. That is, if it's not in UBW, he can't Trace it. He can
copy it with Gradiation Air, but it's not Tracing. I may be completely wrong though.

Click to shrink...

Tracing is technically just the advanced version of Gradiation Air that Shirou created. By following the seven steps:

1. Judging the concept of creation
2. Hypothesizing the basic structure
3. Duplicating the composition material
4. Imitating the skill of its making
5. Sympathizing with the experience of its growth
6. Reproducing the accumulated years
7. Excelling every manufacturing process

You can take in more information and thus create a better copy. What Shirou does by learning an object with Structural Analysis and then reproducing that is not unique or meaningfully different from a standard Structural Analysis/Gradiation Air combo. Literally any magus could do that. The issue is, the more information you have, the more perfect your copy. Unlimited Blade Works allows Shirou to store a near perfect copy of swords and other close combat implements instantly with a glance. If you had enough mental enhancements to take in all the intricacies of a Noble Phantasm, you too could copy Tracing and do it exactly as well as Shirou. The issue is that remembering all of those details is effectively impossible. It's only because Shirou gets to cheat and UBW remembers it perfectly for him that he's allowed to Trace Noble Phantasms. If he didn't have that, then he'd have to content himself with worthless 3rd rate knock offs equivalent to what other magi can manage.

 

[siflux]

The issue is that remembering all of those details is effectively impossible. It's only because Shirou gets to cheat and UBW remembers it perfectly for him that he's allowed to Trace Noble Phantasms. If he didn't have that, then he'd have to content himself with worthless 3rd rate knock offs equivalent to what other magi can manage.

Click to shrink...

Thank you, you did a fantastic job describing all this (some of that looks blatantly copied from the wiki, but that's okay, and the analysis is good). Point still stands: without UBW, which is uniquely Shirou's (and now, Taylor's via Space Whale Magic), copying NPs with projection isn't really a thing.

 

[CKirk]

Thank you, you did a fantastic job describing all this (some of that looks blatantly copied from the wiki, but that's okay, and the analysis is good). Point still stands: without UBW, which is uniquely Shirou's (and now, Taylor's via Space Whale Magic), copying NPs with projection isn't really a thing.

Click to shrink...

Which of course means that, as things such as Rho Aias can be copied (and more relevant to this quest, the Varia Suit), they can be store in UBW

 

[Seru]

Taylor needs to grab Durandal and Joyeux, blades that had true legends, and that had done great things in their lives. Joyeux was the sword of Charlemagne, the HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR. Durandal was the sword of Roland, which would not break, even when driven into a boulder thrice.

 

[Biigoh]

[X] Go to the arcade Go to Uber and Leet's place
[X] Go to the library and study for your GED
[X] Go to the library and study for your GED

 

[MahoGuy]

[X] Go to the library and study for your GED
[X] Go to the arcade Go to Uber and Leet's place
[X] Patrol some part of the city

 

[TheShadow16]

X] Go to the library and study for your GED
[X] Go to the arcade Go to Uber and Leet's place
[X] Patrol some part of the city
​

 

[CKirk]

Taylor needs to grab Durandal and Joyeux, blades that had true legends, and that had done great things in their lives. Joyeux was the sword of Charlemagne, the HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR. Durandal was the sword of Roland, which would not break, even when driven into a boulder thrice.

Click to shrink...

That sounds like a good plan. Where are they?

 

[Seru]

Joeuse is currently in the Louvre... and Durandal is in...France somewhere

 

[globalwarmth]

Next in line is Cortez sword in Mexico, Billy the kidd's guns, and the ones of Bonnie and Clyde.

 

[Angelus]

[X] Go to the library and study for your GED
[X] Go to the arcade Go to Uber and Leet's place

Wow, can't believe taylor gave her panties to armsmaster.

 

[Scope]

"Can-can I have your autograph?" You ask, awkwardly. You quickly realize you have nothing on you to sign, so you reach one hand into a pocket, Trace something, and hand it to the hero.

It's a perfect duplicate of your Armsmaster panties. You bury your face into little HalBear in shame.

Click to shrink...

Ah, the problems of being able to have anything on hand at anytime. Sometimes you forget you can have the stuff you are currently wearing signed as well.

To me, one of the most memorable Noble Phantasms that Shirou Traces is Rho Aias. Not only is not a sword; it's not even a weapon. It's a shield.

Click to shrink...

He never even manifests the physical shield itself either. How does he even do his tracing process (which requires mental blacksmithing or whatnot and mental recreating of everything it went through) on seven (or less) layers of energy, the last of which is flower shaped?

[X] Go to the arcade Go to Uber and Leet's place
[X] Go to the library and study for your GED
[X] Go to the library and study for your GED

 

[ryune]

Thank you, you did a fantastic job describing all this (some of that looks blatantly copied from the wiki, but that's okay, and the analysis is good). Point still stands: without UBW, which is uniquely Shirou's (and now, Taylor's via Space Whale Magic), copying NPs with projection isn't really a thing.

Click to shrink...

That isn't exactly correct. Without UBW an unassisted mage would be unable to reproduce Shirou's feats. Just as an example, I could very easily see Rin reproducing Tracing if not of NPs. She just needs to embed the information of an object and the Gradation Air spell into a gem. The reason she doesn't is because it is hilariously inefficient to do so. Why make a sword that shoots fire and will disappear after the fight(at best) when you could make a gem that produces a massive fireball for the same amount of energy? Now, admittedly, this equation instantly reverses itself if Rin can recoup the costs of using such a gem. maybe if using such low... explosive spells with her gem would allow her to re-use them?

But yeah, the general rule of why Gradation Air is so useless to other magi is because producing something of actual worth with it is so much more effort than just making the object in the first place and it's temporary. Shirou cheats by having a database that he can just pull the needed information from every time he produces an object and major cost savings for swords by being a sword incarnation. Technically, anyone could do it, at least with mundane objects if they had a way of building a database with a mystic code of some sort... or an eidetic memory, that would help too.

Here, I assume that Taylor's shard(should she actually have one) is doing a more specific version of Miss Militia's eidetic memory along with providing scanning duty.

 

[DJK]

[X] Go to the library and study for your GED
[X] Other (Write In)
-[X] Train using your new traceable weapons
-[X] Go to a Museum

 

[Snake/Eater]

[X] Go to school It's the weekend! Hooray!
[X] Go to the arcade Go to Uber and Leet's place
[X] Get more gear for your power

 

[subsider34]

I could not. Stop. Laughing. At this latest chapter. Bravo on creating the best Armsmaster first impression I've ever seen! HalBear was an act of brilliance!

[X] Go to the library and study for your GED
[X] Go to the arcade Go to Uber and Leet's place
[X] Patrol some part of the city

 

[Lon]

I could not. Stop. Laughing. At this latest chapter. Bravo on creating the best Armsmaster first impression I've ever seen! HalBear was an act of brilliance!

Click to shrink...

This really was one of the best armmaster meetings around.

 

[Gryffano]

[X] Go to the library and study for your GED
[X] Go to the arcade Go to Uber and Leet's place
[X] Patrol some part of the city

 

[siflux]

This really was one of the best armmaster meetings around.

Click to shrink...

It helps that he thinks you're a civilian rather than a cape. If you'd revealed your powers, he probably would have tried to pressure you into joining the Wards. Ironically, him not doing so may be more effective as a tactic, even if it is unintentional here.

Halbeard understands the way the world ought to work, efficiently tells people what they can do to better conform to that vision, and then gets incredibly frustrated when they ignore him because humans tend to be very contrary individuals who hate being told that they're wrong.

 

[Lon]

[X] Go to the library and study for your GED
[X] Other (Write In)
-[X] Train using your new traceable weapons
-[X] Go to a Museum

 

[siflux]

First things first. It may be the weekend, but you want to test out of high school as soon as possible. Every day you ditch in favor of studying for your GED is a day you risk getting caught and forced to go to class. Granted, it's not much of a risk, since the cops don't exactly patrol for high school students, especially at the library, but it's possible! All it would take is someone deciding that hunting down teenage girls is less risky than getting in the middle of a superpowered gang fight.

For practice and fun, you expend a small amount of prana generating the books and practice problems you scanned at the library yesterday. You expect the low-quality, mundane objects to last for… actually long enough that Dad might notice them. You can claim you checked them out from the library. Or maybe just destroy them before he gets a chance to see.

All that aside, the math practice problems continue to be easy, and you're getting faster and faster at solving them with practice. Studying at home is also a lot more relaxing than the quiet background murmur of the library. Also, it lets you avoid changing out of your PJs for the half the day. And HalBear is wonderfully fuzzy for cuddles. Okay, maybe it isn't more productive overall, but you still prefer this to the library for when you don't need internet access. (GED status: 3/30 study points).


Now that you've gotten your urge to be responsible out of the way, it's time to have a little fun. You briefly consider visiting a history museum to try to copy more gear for your power, but decide to put it off for now. You have enough to cover the basics. And on that note, you have enough gear that you don't really need to train. Probably. You survived one night out even without armor; with the Varia Suit or Armsmaster's power armor, you'll be guaranteed to come home uninjured.

Probably.

Either way, your plan for today is completely serious. You've been able to ignore it up until now by refusing to acknowledge that your new friends are Uber and Leet, but you can't hide from it anymore. They're villains. They had that one show where they beat a prostitute to death.

And they're your only friends right now, and you're going to give them a chance to explain.

You're so lonely.


You call Uber, and he teaches you his address and how to put it into Dragon Maps. Your new smartphone is so amazing, you're starting to regret letting Mom's death keep you from having one for years. Uber's place -- or Leet's, you're not sure, maybe it's both of theirs -- is a small apartment. You were expecting a house, but you suppose that makes sense if their show was really doing so poorly recently. You ring the doorbell and wait, but not very long.

Uber lets you in, displaying a living space that is somehow immaculately clean. This is strange because every available surface and quite a bit of space besides is covered in electronics. There's the giant TV taking up most of a wall with more game consoles than you recognize attached to it. There's the multiple computer towers, each hooked up to multiple monitors. And there's a series of tables surrounding a very comfy chair, covered in all kinds of tools and spare parts. Leet -- Ted, you correct yourself, they're not in costume right now -- sits in the middle, toying with a dissected controller. He looks up briefly, registers your presence, and goes back to ignoring you.

Uber directs you to a seat in front of the massive TV. "What do you want to play?" He asks. "I've got a number of recommendations if you want."

No. Games later. Serious first. This is important, dammit! You steel yourself, take a deep breath, and force yourself to ask the question that's been eating away at you for the last two days.

"The, um, Uber and Leet. The show. You killed a women. On camera. Beat her to death. I don't know if you're bad people, not anymore, but I don't feel comfortable about that. I promised myself I'd give you a chance to explain. But I don't think I can be friends with a murderer."

"Why is it always the GTA ep?" Leet grumbles from the other side of the room.

Uber, on the other hand, takes the question in stride. "Neither of us have ever killed anyone. If you don't believe me, you can walk now, but it's the truth. Stay, and I'll explain."

You believe Daniel. You want to believe Daniel. If he says that's what happened, you'll gladly listen to his explanation.

"First, I'm going to explain why you thought I was a murderer. This is not a rhetorical question: If you were to classify Uber and Leet on the spectrum of heroes to villains, how would you describe them?"

"Villains," you answer immediately. As if it's obvious.

"That's what the Protectorate and the PRT would like people to think. But it's inaccurate. We're rogues. Like Parian, the superpowered tailor downtown. We don't fight crime. We don't better ourselves by taking from others. We're just in it for the art, and hopefully for a little profit."

You nod. That makes sense. Except for the part where they force people into their shows. That seems kind of criminal and villainous.

You mention this.

"To me at least, what's important is that there's a few lines we won't cross. Beyond even the unwritten rules almost all capes hold to, I mean. Informed consent before doing any harm. Uninformed consent for anything active. Risk minimization and safety measures for bystanders and actors. Think about how we handled the most recent video: You were asked first, and we made sure you were as safe as possible during the Event."

"That makes sense," you agree, "But what about the apparently-not-murder on camera? On the GTA video."

"Like I said, informed consent. Believe it or not, we hired an actual prostitute for the episode who was into that from the ABB. A major masochist. I took her to just shy of comatose in the video. If you want something to laugh about, that Event was how I discovered that I'm not a sadist. I have no plans to do anything like that again, even for the art."

"Safety measures?" You prompt.

"I spent days ahead of time practicing how to non-fatally seriously injure people and how to quickly and easily check someone's vital condition. In case of overdoing it, Leet made a proper medkit," Uber indicates a white metal box with a thick red plus hanging on the wall, "That we haven't needed yet. I stuck to limb and body shots to avoid brain damage. We paid her for her services, and even though it wasn't in our agreement, Leet and I were in agreement that we should pay her hospital bill. Panacea cured her a few days later and that was it. She even thanked us for hiring her afterwards."

New Trace: Medkit [Leet/Black Mesa] {NP}: Medkit: The Impossible Healing Solution: Despite its size, this medkit contains only one thing: a giant syringe, full of a mysterious green liquid. When injected, it recovers up to a quarter of the patient's maximum health. Oddly, touching the kit while injured causes it to permanently disappear, healing you as if you had injected yourself with its contents.

Proper medkit indeed. Even if Uber is lying, this has been a profitable trip already.

"If you didn't kill her," you ask slowly, "Then why did the news reports say you did? Why didn't they report it as hospitalization, later treated by Panacea?"

"We're supposed to be villains, remember?" Uber explains. "The Protectorate and PRT are government agencies, interested in maintaining the perception that they're the good guys and everyone who isn't one of them is a bad guy. Have you heard about Canary?"

You shake your head no. Uber continues his rant.

"Paige Mcabee. Parahuman rogue singer. Accidentally mastered her ex into genital mutilation. Now, I'm not a fan of what she did, but it was very clearly an accident, a case of an idiom being forced into literal interpretation. The government is clearly pushing for her to get the Birdcage, which you can tell by looking at any of the trial footage. They have her in full Hannibal Lecter getup, ostensibly to prevent her from using her powers. As if that isn't a form of persuasion and they couldn't just gag her if that's what they really wanted. Her lawyer's so incompetent they could probably declare a mistrial if it wasn't pointless once she inevitably gets convicted. My point is," Uber forces himself to pause while he calms down, "Government agencies hate rogues as a concept. Toybox? Viewed as rogues too. They don't want people to think about parahumans as anything but a bunch of government employees or violent criminals. We're rogues, but that's not what the government wants you to believe."

"And besides," Leet admits, "It's actually kinda useful when people think we're stone-cold killers. Gets us a lot more respect."

This is really all… something to think about. This is heavy. You're not sure what to think about it for now, except that your new friends probably aren't capital-E Evil. Instead, you opt to distract yourself with video games.

"Let's stick to the Super Nintendo," Uber suggests. "Collection's over here. I recommend Chrono Trigger if you want an RPG today, or Kirby Super Star for an easy action game. A Link to the Past or Super Mario World if you want something a little harder than that -- they're all kind of like Super Metroid. Oh, and speak up if you feel inspired for any future shows."


Video games are fun. Having friends who are not murderers is fun. You didn't realize how stressed you were until afterwards, when it was all gone. You head back home, have dinner with Dad (spaghetti again), then sneak out once you're sure he's asleep. You have no plans to be brought home by the PRT tonight. No, tonight Dad will never know you snuck out.

To be a hero.


Gearing up hardly takes a thought. Armor is mandatory, and of your best options, one gets you mistaken for an established hero, and the other is a Noble Phantasm. It takes almost all the prana you have left to manifest the Varia Suit, and it won't even last the whole night, but it provides both offense and defense, and besides, it's yours, a fact that manifests both in the feeling of rightness in wearing it and the slightly cheaper prana cost to recreate it. Sure, it isn't the original, but your power makes a damn close copy.

You could probably Trace one of your weapons, but definitely not the Halberd with how little prana you have left. If there's something your mace spray and stun cannon can't handle, you can deal with it at the time.

You find yourself leaping along the waterfront. You could 'fly' with your space jump, but it's way too hard to observe for crime through all the spinning. Building hopping keeps you out of sight, traveling quickly, and able to quickly scan multiple perpendicular blocks at a time.

And that's when you see him: the man in the dragon mask, surrounded by Chinese thugs. The man who gave you an endless supply of perfectly-real, actual-object-destroying bombs. Grenades, really, since the explosions only have about a foot and a half radius. But still! It's Lung! Again! And this time, he doesn't know you're there. He's undoubtedly on his way to fight someone, but you don't know who. What should you do?

Today is Sunday, March 27, 2011

There are two independent votes: What game to play (which will probably become the next U&L mission if accepted) and what to do about Lung. Please vote on both separately.

Game:
[ ] Chrono Trigger
[ ] Kirby Super Star
[ ] The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
[ ] Super Mario World
[ ] Some other SNES game
-[ ] Which one?
[ ] Some other console entirely!
-[ ] Console and game?

Lung:
[ ] Do. Nothing. Maybe the dragon won't notice you and get angry.
[ ] RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
[ ] You're Samus right now, right? Be the bounty hunter. Collect the bounty. Fight.
-[ ] Battle strategy? If you don't vote on one, it'll start out as 'shoot him in the face until he stops trying to murder you'.
[ ] Scout Lung for later. Follow him, see what he does, but stay out of whatever brawl he gets into.
[ ] Something else? (Write-in)

 

[CKirk]

[X] Chrono Trigger
[X] Do. Nothing. Maybe the dragon won't notice you and get angry.

 

[Prince Charon]

[X] The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
[X] Do. Nothing. Maybe the dragon won't notice you and get angry.

 

[Scope]

[X] The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
[X] Do. Nothing. Maybe the dragon won't notice you and get angry.

Finally get an actual blade for use! Maybe even the medallions.

 

[zagan]

[ ] Chrono Trigger
[ ] Do. Nothing. Maybe the dragon won't notice you and get angry.​

 

[Stained-glass]

[X] Chrono Trigger
[X] Follow Lung figure out what he's up to stop him if he is going to do something bad, else scout.
-[X] Hit hard and fast with everything you got. Just gotta go for the quick KO.

 

[DJK]

[X] The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
[X] Do. Nothing. Maybe the dragon won't notice you and get angry.

 

[Biigoh]

[X] The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
[X] Do. Nothing. Maybe the dragon won't notice you and get angry.