Blade (UBW!Taylor Worm Quest)

You are Taylor Hebert, fifteen-year-old high school student at Winslow High in Brockton Bay. And you are twisted, broken in some way deep inside. You had been cracking slowly ever since the start of high school, The Locker just finished the job.

Two months ago, you were shoved into your locker, filled with bodily fluids that made it into a biohazard. You wished for anything and everything: escape, to understand why your bullies (including one who used to be your best friend) hated you, the power to make a change, the chance to save others before you die.

And you got it.

Information flooded through you, far more than you ever wanted to know about the bugs and used tampons surrounding you. And exactly what you needed to know about the shoddy lockers. At your command, a screwdriver appeared in your hand, allowing you to dismantle the door’s hinges from the inside. It only lasted long enough for you to escape, but that was enough.

You spent the next two months in therapy and the hospital. You’re lucky you had health insurance -- you heard your doctor joking about double pneumonia or something. You didn’t have much time to experiment with your new powers.

Most of it was just learning how to pretend to be a human being again, how to fake normality.

Nobody knows that you have powers yet. Not your dad, not your therapist, no heroes or villains or anyone else.

You know one thing, though. You want to save people. It’s a stupid dream. People are ever in conflict with each other, and it’s impossible to save one person without hurting another. But you are driven to try, no matter how many times you expect to fail. If you must sacrifice twenty people to save eighty, you’ll sacrifice ten to save ninety instead. Even if you were to live forever, surviving through the universe’s cycle of death and rebirth, you will not give up. This is your pledge.


But enough with the weighty, momentous thoughts. Morning jog is almost over. Today is supposed to be your first day back at school, assuming you don’t chicken out again. For all that talk about saving people, the Trio are still terrifying to you. Either way, you still need to get out of the house for the day or Dad is going to give you trouble. So, what’s the plan?


[ ] Go to school
[ ] Go to the library and get online
[ ] Go downtown and have some fun
[ ] Other (Write in)

 

Here are your powers, as best you know them. You haven’t had time to look into all of them in too much detail, so this is currently based on hints your power gives you and a scant few weeks of experimentation.

Hill of Knives(?): Your power claims this is your soul made manifest. It appears to be a blood-red hill (clearly, the dirt comprising it is very iron-heavy). At its peak is an unidentified but very fancy scabbard, currently empty. In the sky above it, a forge endlessly churns out blades you’ve analyzed. Said blades stick out of the ground all over the hill. In total, the Hill is maybe a few hundred meters across at its widest.
The Hill of Knives(?) currently manufactures the following items:
Knives, assorted materials and quality
Glaive (Oversized) [Menja]
Estoc (Oversized) [Fenja]
Golden Sword[Uber/Link]
Lange Messer [Taylor]
1803 Pattern Light Infantry Sabre [Taylor]

Structural Grasp/Structural Analysis: By concentrating on an object at close range (usually touching it), you can fully understand the structure and design of an object as if you were viewing a blueprint. This ability works faster on some objects than on others, seemingly without cause. As well, using it on a plastic knife in the hospital and some knives at home added them to the output of the forge above the Hill of Knives.

Prana: Your body has a very limited amount of mystical power, which your power refers to as prana. According to the internet, it’s a Hindu term for life energy or vital force. Like MP on the mages in Final Fantasy. All living things supposedly contain some amount of prana, with some beings having more than others. Some of your power expend some of your prana to function, which naturally regenerates over time.

Reinforcement: You can push your prana into objects at close range (usually only touch range). This makes the item more durable and just generally better. For example, your experimentation on a metal butter knife made it sharp enough to slice through meat as if it was, well, butter. Said experiment also revealed that if you put too much prana into something, it detonates violently. You’re still not sure how you managed not to fill yourself full of shrapnel that time.

Alteration: You can force objects into new shapes and add or remove properties from them.

Projection (Tracing): You can create something from nothing, like a wizard or something. It’s pretty awesome. There’s a few limitations, though. Creating stuff expends prana -- the bigger or more complex the object, the more it costs. You can pull items from the Hill of Knives with significantly less cost -- they already exist inside your soul, just waiting to be pulled forth. Items created via projection slowly fade out of existence over the next few hours. The better you understand an object, the higher quality it is when it appears and the longer it takes to fade out of existence. Having blueprints or using Structural Analysis first is therefore ideal. You can also improve the quality of your generated items by having the physical materials on hand that it would be made from. Speaking the words “Trace On” helps you focus your power, making projection better as well. Your power refers to this as an aria, and also seems to indicate that using the aria does… something more than just making the projection stronger and longer-lasting. Using projection to create objects that aren’t touching you takes significantly more prana.
The following notable items are not produced on the Hill of Knives, but are still available for Tracing:
AK-47 with 30-round magazine [Merchants]
Flamethrower with stationary napalm tank [Squealer]
Kite Shield (Oversized) [Fenja/Menja]
Armsmaster’s Power Armor, Mk.15L.Ver26.01 [Armsmaster]
Kid Win's Hoverboard [Kid Win]

Noble Phantasms: Legends and belief instill gear with the power to do more than merely what is physically possible. Because Tracing also mimics the history of an item, it can be used to create copies of Noble Phantasms, which can otherwise not be created with Projection. Gear made in this manner is of slightly lower quality than the original, but multiple copies of unique legendary gear can be made using Tracing if you have enough prana.
You can create the following Noble Phantasms:

Power Suit (Stun Only) [Taylor Hebert] {Power Suit: Evasive Armor of the Completionist Fake Bounty Hunter}:

Spoiler: Power Suit

This facsimile of Samus’s powered armor was created by the supervillain Leet. Though crippled in many ways compared to its source, it was still upgraded as thoroughly as possible by its first and only bearer, Taylor Hebert. It bears memories of seeking out upgrades and of recognizing attack patterns. For a small amount of Prana, it will show the direction (but not distance) towards the nearest upgrade, or nowhere at all if there is no outstanding data. For a larger amount of Prana, If an attack that can be dodged is used against it (regardless of whether it hits), the suit will automatically dodge the same attack pattern for the rest of the battle. This ability cannot break the laws of physics or causality.

Armsmaster’s Halberd Mk.16C.Ver02.01 [Armsmaster] {Halberd: A Library of Weapons}:

Spoiler: Halberd

While already packed full of functions, there’s a limit on how much stuff a given model of Halberd can physically hold. However, each new model of Halberd is imbued by its creator and through its use with the memory of the weapons and uses held by previous Halberds over the past fifteen years and counting. By spending Prana, these functions no longer present in this Halberd but found in any prior model may be made manifest.

Medkit [Leet/Black Mesa] {Medkit: The Impossible Healing Solution}:

Spoiler: Medkit

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.

 

INDEX POST

Character Sheet

1. The Grandmaster (Music)
1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.x (Interlude; Grue)

2. Zero Mission (Music) (Old dead Music)
2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.x (Interlude; Lung)

3. Level Select (Music)
3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.x (Interlude; Coil)

4. Brockton Bay Capes (Music)
4.1,

 

School doesn’t exactly seem like the best idea. You’re pretty much certain that the Trio would bully you again, and that’s not entirely conducive to a learning environment. You do have powers now, though. If you’re willing to join the Wards, you should be able to get a transfer to Arcadia. If not, you can look up what it takes to get a GED, which you suspect is far easier than enduring Winslow High until you graduate.

You can work on that later, though. You haven’t really had a chance to enjoy yourself in weeks, and you feel like you’re going to do something stupid if you don’t spend the day relaxing. You decide to head downtown. It’s generally pretty safe, so even if Dad finds out you skipped school he won’t be too worried.

On a whim, you enter an arcade. You have the occasional fond memory of the machines -- mostly watching other people play or the demo play itself. As things go, a few quarters per play is a lot cheaper than going shopping. The place is pretty empty, probably because it’s the middle of a school day and most adults wouldn’t hang out somewhere like this. You head over to an unoccupied machine: ‘Metal Slug 3’.

You’re not very good at it. That, or the game is just absurdly hard. After your first game over, you opt not to continue playing, instead examining the machine with your power. Sadly, you’re no electrical engineer. Just because you know where all the wires go and how the boards are made doesn’t mean you know what they actually do.

You slide down a few machines to a pinball table themed after the Terminator movies. Here, you perform better. Still nowhere near enough to hit the absolutely absurd high scores. The only names up there are ‘137’ and ‘999’. Weird, most people use their initials or a shortened first name.

Pinball’s fun, though, so you give it a few more rounds before realizing that you’ve been in this arcade for over a full hour. And during that whole time period, there’s been one guy who hasn’t moved from his machine the whole time. Tall, sculpted muscles, very handsome. Not the kind of person you’d expect to see in this kind of place.

You edge behind him, curious to find out what’s kept him playing so long. It’s tetris, and holy shit the pieces aren’t even dropping, they’re just appearing on the bottom of the playing field. Which is invisible, by the way. And credits are scrolling up the screen behind the blocks? This is a thing that Tetris does? The pieces reappear as the credits stop, and the screen reads ‘EXCELLENT MASTER MODE ALL CLEAR’.

And then the guy notices you, turning away as the screen reveals ‘TODAY’S RANKING: 8TH’.

“Sorry, did you want to use the machine?” He indicates behind him.

You really aren’t sure what to say. Your brain decides to go with “You’re really good at Tetris.”

“There’s this guy in Japan, I still can’t quite beat him. Still practicing.”

Behind him, you finally notice his name on the machine. Apparently this is ‘999’.

“You play all these games?” You ask.

“My childhood. My best friend and I have been working through this place lately. This week it’s Tetris. Ever see a grown man dressed as a Tetromino? It’s even sillier than it sounds.”

“I, uh, I’m Taylor,” you manage to communicate. Shit, what are you even doing?

“Daniel. Not Danny, sometimes Dan. Sure you don’t want to give it a go?”

Well, it is Tetris. Even you’ve played it before. It’s fun, even if you’re nowhere near as good as ‘999’. He takes another turn after you, completing the entire game in less time than it took you to lose, but still not beating his best. You trade off for a few runs, Daniel explaining the mechanics of how the individual pieces are more likely to show up if you rotate them more. It helps a little, but the blocks inevitably start falling too fast for you to handle.

You lose track of time, only noticing that it’s after school would let out when Dan’s friend shows up. He’s ‘137’, or alternately Ted. He’s also a lot closer to what you would have expected from someone who hangs out in arcades -- average height, kind of scrawny, glasses. Pretty much your stereotypical nerd.

You cut all conversation short, rushing home. Fortunately, you still get back well before Dad does, so all is well. Over dinner, you just grunt about your day, not sharing anything. You go to bed early, actually catching a few hours of sleep before your alarm quietly wakes you around midnight. This is your chance to start saving people… right?

[ ] Don’t go out yet. You don’t have a costume, you need more sleep, and your power is currently in the sweet spot between too lethal for mundane crime and not lethal enough for superpowered crime.
[ ] Find someone to save. You’ve waited long enough for this chance! You can use Projection for a mask and armor, although you don't know enough about any armor to generate anything that will last more than a few minutes.
[ ] Look for trouble, but just watch. You’re not sure what causes things to be added to the Hill of Knives, but you’ve got a good guess based on the name and what’s already in it.
[ ] Other (Write In)

 

You want to save someone tonight, you really do. But your common sense overrides your dreams and reminds you that you’re not yet ready. Go out tonight and your identity will probably end up revealed and then bad guys will go after Dad and you don’t even really have your power in the right shape to deal with anyone, cape or otherwise. You can’t save anyone tonight, no matter how much that hurts.

You mentally separate the problems into two major issues.

First, you don’t have a costume or mask yet. You can use Projection to generate one, but that has the risk of failing at the worst time possible. Even if you were willing to take that risk, you don’t know anything about armour. You’re a mid-tier Thinker/Striker, not a Brute. If you don’t get some way of dealing with guns and superpowers, one hit and you’ll be dead.

Second, your power doesn’t exactly cover anything that would be useful in a fight. You need to go find some objects to run Structural Analysis on. Something nonlethal like the PRT’s foam grenades would be ideal for not killing ordinary people, and you should find something more lethal like a sword or a gun to deal with some of the capes. You don’t exactly have anything in mind for dealing with something like Lung or Hookwolf yet, but that might be a good idea.

The extra sleep does you well. You have no problems waking up for your morning run, and don’t run into anything of note while you’re on it. There’s a lot you need to do, and you’re pretty sure that as long as you keep better track of time today you can probably get more stuff done. If you’re willing to risk getting home after Dad and having to come up with an explanation for what you’ve been doing, maybe a lot more. Actually, why not short circuit that now?

“Dad, I’m planning on going to the library after school. I’ll be home late, but I should be back before dinner.”

There, all good. Now you have plenty of time.

Pick Three (options may be chosen repeatedly, order may matter):
[ ] Go to school
[ ] Try to meet your new friends at the arcade
[ ] Go to the library and figure out how to get a GED/start working on one
[ ] Go to the library and do some cape research
[ ] Find a weapon for your power (Write in a plan)
[ ] Find some kind of armor, either real or something that you can make with your power (Write in a plan)
[ ] Other (Write In)

 

You want to save people. You’re going to start with yourself. Once you get your GED, you’ll never need to deal with The Trio again. While you’re at the library, might as well do some research to see exactly what you’re up against. After you’ve had a productive morning, it’s back to the arcade to see if you actually have new friends or if it was just a one-time thing. It’s a plan!

GED is pretty straightforward. There’s an exam you can study for. It isn’t a particularly high standard, either. If you put in some time every day, you feel like you could probably handle it in a month or two (roll 1d30 plus the number of times after this that you’ve spent studying this, need a 30 to pass the test. May only attempt the test once per month).


You consider creating a PHO account, but decide not to quite yet. Mostly, you’re just not sure what username you want to use, especially since it’ll probably become tagged as a cape account eventually. For that matter, you’re not sure what your cape name should be.

There are four major villain factions in Brockton Bay, plus some independents. Most of this you already know, but haven’t considered this in the context of your power yet.

The ABB holds the docks. You’re not even slightly asian, so they’d attack you on sight whether or not you were there as a cape. The difference is whether they’d try to rape or murder you. Not fun either way. Fighting Lung is a bad idea, at least for now -- there’s probably some kind of Tinkertech you could copy that could deal with him, you just don’t know what it is. Maybe a sedative or restraint foam in the lungs before he changes too much. Oni Lee is also likely to a be a problem before you grab some more gear, but you could probably copy his grenades if they didn’t kill you first.

The Merchants will attack you if you enter their turf unless you join them -- not something you’re willing to do. They’re druggies and they take sex slaves. Scum who need to be taken down to save others. Skidmark and Mush are useless to you, and Mush is gross. You’re fairly certain that you don’t have enough prana to copy any of Squealer’s vehicle’s yet, even if you copied them. Might be worth doing eventually if you can build up your prana capacity over time.

Coil’s organization holds territory, but they don’t really do much to hurt people. As villains go, you’re okay with waiting on dealing with them. He’s supposed to have mundane soldiers with some Tinker-made guns, sort of like a nega-PRT. If you spot his soldiers, you can probably copy some gear off of them, but they only appear for defense and during operations, and you don’t really want to attack there yet.

Finally (at least among the groups that hold territory), there’s the Empire-88. It’s the fucking Nazis. On the bright side, you’re white, so you’ll probably be safe in their territory until you start attacking them, and still safe in civilian guise even after that. You could easily join them, but again, it’s the fucking Nazis. Not happening. You can’t think of much in the way of useful stuff to copy from them, either. You could grab some giant weaponry from Fenja and Menja, you guess, but they don’t have any fun Tinkertoys to clone. Much as you hate to admit it, their territory is pretty safe, at least as long as you’re white, and there aren’t many non-white people dense enough to still be in their territory after all these decades.

First of the groups that don’t hold territory is the Travelers. They’re new in town, but again, no fun gear. They’re supposed to be mercenary, so nobody needs to be saved from them yet.

Next, the Undersiders. Small-time crooks, no awesome gear. They try to minimize civilian involvement and don’t have any fun gear either. Robbed a casino a few nights ago, but they’ve been lying low since then, and again, minimal civilian involvement. They need to go down eventually, but you can also wait on them.

Finally, there’s Uber and Leet. They’ve done some nasty stuff, like the time they beat a woman to death, but that was a few years back and they haven’t anything like that in a while. Apparently that was for a Grand Theft Auto video. Makes sense, but still bad. Leet has all kinds of fun toys that you’d love a chance to copy, but there’s no way to tell where they are until they start streaming. If you subscribe and keep an eye out, you should be able to track them down as soon as they next start filming.

For heroes, there’s New Wave, the Protectorate and the wards, and the PRT. New Wave as useless to you, but the PRT has restraint foam, which should be incredibly useful. Between the Protectorate and the Wards, there’s Armsmaster and Kid Win. Kid Win has those stun guns for ranged, and Armsmaster has some awesome powered armor and that halberd. With those as primary weapons, you could probably take on anything in Brockton Bay shy of Lung and Kaiser. The Protectorate might have an issue with you copying that gear if you don’t register as a hero first, though.

You’re pretty sure those are all the major players in town. There’s a chance you might have forgotten one or two, though.


As it turns out, you DO have real friends again! Daniel and Ted are both at the arcade by the time you get there. Apparently, Tetris has a multiplayer mode where two blocks drop on the same field, with each player controlling one of them. You cycle through with them for a few hours. Daniel’s significantly better than Ted at the game, but they’re both quite skilled. You spend a lot more time watching than playing despite the fact that you play two rounds out of three.

“Interested in being Internet Famous?” Daniel asks after a while. “Ted and I have a Youtube channel. Video-game themed, of course. You’ll get a cut of the ad revenue.”

“We’re thinking Metroid,” Ted adds.

Noticing your confusion, Daniel explains. “Exploration game featuring a girl in powered armor. Normally I’d play the protagonist, but that just doesn’t seem right in this case.”


Response?:
[ ] Yes! These are your friends, and this is a good chance to copy some powered armor.
[ ] Wait… two guys with Tinkertech and a video game stream? Are you secretly Uber and Leet?
[ ] Not that you don’t want to do this, but you don’t think you have the time. You need to study for your GED.

What about a cape name and a PHO username?
[ ] Write-in. No urgency, but you won’t log in to PHO until you decide on a name.

What to do tonight?
[ ] Gotta save someone. Even if you just fight unpowered people, you can help!
[ ] Sneak out at night to gear up. Gotta get ready so you can save people from capes.
[ ] Sleep. If you stay up all night, you’ll be dead on your feet if you go jogging, or you’ll have to sleep in and miss it. Either way, you’re not ready and can better spend your time sleeping.

 

You’ve never played a Metroid game, but this sounds interesting, and even if it wasn’t, that powered armor is likely to be your first step towards saving others. “I’d love to try,” you tell the two.

“Great! We’ll be busy tomorrow morning setting things up, but stop by here in the afternoon and everything will be ready to go. It may take a while, so make sure you don’t have any other commitments that night,” Daniel tells you.


That night, you dream of blood and fire and swords. But also of friends and heroes, of those you will protect. Ever since you became more than just human and stopped going to school, your life has gotten a lot better.

You talk to Dad over breakfast after your morning run. “I met some new friends and they’ve invited me to hang out. I’ll be back late or in the morning.”

“Where is it?” Danny asks.

“Downtown. It’s safe, and I don’t plan on being outside in the middle of the night.

“Alright, just stay safe, kiddo. I worry about you.”

“Thanks, Dad. Oh, I’ve decided to try for an early GED. I can’t go back there. Can you help me study over the weekend?”

“I’ll clear some time for you. Are you sure you don’t want me to try to get you transferred to Arcadia instead? School is still a good chance to socialize with people your age.”

“That’s actually a pretty good idea. I’ll keep studying for the GED until then, in case it doesn’t work. You don’t need to let it come at the cost of work.”

“Nonsense. Not that what I do isn’t important, but the most important thing is that it pays to keep you happy and healthy. Since you won’t be around this evening anyways, I’ll work on it then.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

You give each other a hug before you head out for the day.


You have a chance to get some stuff done before you become internet famous tonight. You have three time slots, the third of which is pre-emptively locked in for Metroid, as is your night slot. If things wrap up faster than intended, you expect to be so exhausted that you’ll easily fall asleep. For those wondering, it’s currently Thursday, March 24, 2010. You're about two weeks ahead of the normal Worm timeline.

Pick Two:
[ ] Go to school
[ ] Go to the library and study for your GED
[ ] Go to the library and browse PHO
[ ] Find a weapon for your power (Write in a plan)
[ ] Find some kind of armor, either real or something that you can make with your power (Write in a plan)
[ ] Other (Write In)

 

Brian answered his ringing cellphone. Lisa. He hadn’t heard from her in days.

“Rachel’s dead,” She said. Nothing more.

“How?”

“Didn’t listen. Didn’t stay home. Lung baited her with an underground dogfighting ring.”

“Dammit!” Brian swore. “I’m out. I can’t do this anymore. Even if I wanted to, we don’t have enough muscle.”

“We do if Alec stops lying about what he can do, or if we pick up another member.”

“Wait, what else can he do?” Brian interrupted.

“He’s one of Heartbreaker’s kids. The twitch thing means he can take full control over people, even if only briefly. About 95% certain he can hold on to that for a lot longer. Basically, long-term puppeting, even of other capes.”

“No. He does that, we’re all getting a kill order. If he could use his power well enough to survive that, he would have by now. I don’t like that he’s been hiding his real power, but it’s not my problem anymore.”

“I bet he could get away with it if he only did it to other villains. Wonder if Lung’s immune when he’s a dragon.”

“YOU KNEW?” He yelled into the phone. “You could have saved Rachel! Everything could have been fine!”

“It wouldn’t have worked,” The sound of grinding teeth filled a pause. “I know a precog, and we trade favors. Oni Lee was with Lung. Alec would have gotten killed too, and then Lung would be free to finish off Rachel anyway. The fact that Alec could probably control Lung just didn’t seem important before this week, and since then there hasn’t been a chance,” Lisa didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and neither did Brian. “I don’t like it either. I mean, she wasn’t exactly likable and she hated me, but she was loyal and honest and actually did some good in her spare time. When she wasn’t robbing places with us, I mean. She probably could have been a hero if she wasn’t so abrasive.”

“To lost friends,” Brian offered.

“To a girl who didn’t believe in misdirection and just wanted better treatment for dogs,” Lisa agreed.

They took a moment of silence for remembrance. Lisa spoke again next.

“How are you going to get the money to take care of Aisha?” She asked.

“How do you--never mind, of course you know. I hope you understand that my relation to her is a secret. Let anyone know and I’ll hunt you down. This is important, Lisa.”

“I get it, I get it,” She cajoled him. “Actually, her home life is probably a lot like mine was just before I left, and she doesn’t exactly have the superpowers to let her do that. If you need some help figuring out how to help her, I’ll try to be useful. So, how do you plan on getting enough money for the adoption to go through?”

“I don’t know, maybe I’ll see if the Protectorate will take me. Not like any of our operations seriously bothered them. Even the casino belonged to the ABB.”

“Won’t they stop the adoption process if they know you used to be a villain?”

“I’ll talk to them about it first, okay? If they don’t, I don’t know, maybe I’ll get a job on the docks or something. If they lie about it, I’ll leave the Protectorate afterwards. I just,” Brian sighed. “I thought we knew what we were doing. I thought this was safer, was the only way to get enough money fast enough. But the casino job was a good enough haul. If I can keep that and hold a job as myself, that’ll probably be enough.”

“I might work for Coil next,” Lisa offered. “Don’t know about Alec, but he’ll either leave town or join another team. Probably the former. My guess is he’ll try for the Travelers, but they’ve got something going on where they won’t let anyone join them. He couldn’t go for two of the three gangs in town even if he wanted to, and he’s too sane to be a Nazi. Unfortunately, still too crazy to be a hero.”

“So almost every cape in town that I actually get along with is dead, about to skip town, or soon to be an enemy.”

“Don’t worry, we shouldn’t have to fight each other. I’m not planning on committing crime in person when I’ll have minions to do it. I was only doing that before because Rachel insisted on it. I’ve also got personal reasons for wanting to join his group that I don’t want to talk about yet. If you do manage to join the Protectorate, can you see about helping me join up eventually? Depending on how Coil does, they might be the best choice to join next.”

“Sure, but only if you make sure I make it in the first place. I know you’re good enough at this kind of thing to ensure that I get custody of Aisha and get on the team.”

“It’s a deal. Until next time, Erebus.”

“Wait, what?” Brian asked

But it was too late. She had already hung up.

 

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■​

♦Topic: Enbringer Information Thread XXXIV
In: Boards ► Boards ► World ► News ► Main

Bagrat (Original Poster) (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)
Posted on March 2, 2011:

Previous Endbringer attack was Simurgh at Canberra, Australia, on Febuary 24.

Next Endbringer attack is expected to be Leviathan in mid to late May or early June.

Expected locations for the next attack are the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Northeast coast of the United States of America, Columbia, or South Africa.

If you live in a coastal area, please review your escape route to your closest Endbringer shelter. Resources on surviving an attack and living in the aftermath can be found HERE.

(Showing Page 14 of 14)

► CompulsiveGambler478 (Temp-banned)
Replied on March 22, 2011:
Now taking bets. I'm offering 7:15 odds on Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and 8:14 on Capetown. Any takers?

► WhiteKnight (Moderator) (Protectorate Employee)
Replied on March 22, 2011:
CompulsiveGambler, Please don't take bets on upcoming disasters. It's really tasteless.

I will admit that those odds sound similar to what's being tossed around the office, though.

► SaucyAussie
Replied on March 22, 2011:
I'm just hoping Canberra won't get hit again. Just because nowhere's ever been hit twice doesn't mean there won't be a first time, and it’s not like Sydney was that far away.

► NotACape41
Replied on March 22, 2011:
CompulsiveGambler, I'll take that action. A hundred against you on each.
I've heard that the Endbringers like to attack places with lots of capes. Any odds on Brockton Bay? That place has like, a bazillion or something, and it's one of the high-odds zones.
User has received a warning. Please refrain from spreading rumors without evidence. -TinMother

► CompulsiveGambler478 (Temp-banned)
Replied on March 22, 2011:
No go, NotACape. Eastern seaboard's my remaining 7 points on my odds, and that's one of the cities on my shortlist. I'm thinking there or DC, personally. It's amazing how long it’s gone without getting hit, and it’s a swamp. Bet the whole city would just slide out to sea.
I've heard that rumor about places with more capes being more likely to be hit, and I've got to agree with it, which is why Brockton Bay is on my shortlist too.

► CooBee
Replied on March 22, 2011:
You guys are the worst. I'm leaving this thread.
User has been warned. Please stay on topic, or at least leave the thread quietly. -TinMother
​

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 12, 13, 14

You’ll be honest, this is making you a little uncomfortable. One of the last things you want to read online is people gambling whether your hometown will be destroyed by a giant monster. Although this is probably a decent time to think about what you’d do in the case of an Endbringer attack.

There’s no question in your mind. If Brockton Bay is hit, you’d out yourself if necessary to do something to help. You can’t exactly go toe to toe with any of them, since you don’t have a brute rating, but there must be something.

Hmmm. Your power lets you duplicate objects you’ve examined. Endbringer attacks tend to bring out experimental tinkertech, in hopes that it might do something to slow down the beasts. Usually, they don’t work very well, but if one did, you could mass-produce it.

If the attack comes somewhere else, you’d still like to help. If you’ve gotten involved with the Protectorate and the Wards by then, it’ll be easy. Otherwise, you’ll need to look for transportation. Fortunately, you have an estimated two months to work this stuff out, hopefully you'll already have some big stuff to throw against them. Better to think more on exactly what you’ll do closer to then, when you’ll actually know what tools you’ll have.


You decide to jump straight to the math that’s going to be on the GED. There’s some guides online that recommend studying for the reading comprehension stuff first, but you like math better, and you’re worried that you’ve fallen behind while you were out of school. The material is easier than you expected it to be, mostly being a comprehensive coverage of algebra. You actually covered most of this material near the end of middle school. If the other three segments of the test are this easy, you may not need to study much at all. Still, better safe than sorry. You print out some pages you found online and spend a few hours doing practice problems. (GED study bonus: +1. You might be able succeed on a lower roll than you had previously guessed).


Finally, it’s time for the show. You’ve been waiting for this all day! You head over the arcade without issue. Daniel and Ted are both there, waiting for you. In the middle of the floor on top of a dolly cart is a suit of armor in orange and red, folded at the knees and the waist. A skintight blue jumpsuit is draped over the top of it.

“It’s a little heavy,” Daniel explains. “You’ll need to wear the Zero Suit under it, or you’ll risk destroying the lining of the Varia Suit and getting your skin pinched in the joints. Right arm has a blaster, but it’s only set to stun. You can change in the bathroom and you’ll get an explanation of how this will work afterwards.

You roll the armor into the bathroom and start changing. Even if you hadn’t wanted to, you can’t help but scan the two-layered armor as you put it on. The skintight layer is made of some kind of material that’s like plastic, but it’s just as flexible as the clothes you were wearing before. It’s pretty comfortable -- you could get used to wearing this all the time, if only it weren’t so obvious. Since it’s like plastic, it’s probably more durable than your cotton clothes, but that doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily do much to protect you. There’s a pink emblem on the back, but you have no idea what it means. It is disturbingly skintight -- while comfortable, you would not want to wear this in public without something over it to hide your features.

The power armor is some kind of alloy. Titanium or tungsten, you think, but you’d need to check later. It’s not like you’ve memorized atomic structures yet. You probably should.

The suit is proof against all kinds of hazards. There an oxygen tank under the armor hooked up to the helmet, and a thick layer of insulation plus some heaters and coolers in the suit. The limb servos are massive, for both the arms and the legs, easily carrying the suit’s weight and yours. There’s some kind of computer with an interface in the helmet, controlled by eye movements. You spend a few minutes trying to get it to work before you accidentally call up a set of schematics giving some more information about the suit.

Apparently, there’s something wrong with the blaster, although that’s probably the stun thing you were told about. Apparently, it can also shoot a few kinds of missiles, but that function is both offline and out of ammo. The suit’s structural integrity is maintained by some kind of energy, currently at 99%. You’re almost ready to head back to the main part of the arcade when some kind of pterodactyl/dragon hybrid bursts through the wall, grabs you in its claws, and screeches right in your face. “uuuuRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAghhhhh,” it echoes through your body. Desperately, you shoot it as it pulls you into the air with it. Over and over you shoot your worthless stun blaster, until it finally gives up and drops you.

From five stories up.

Fortunately, the suit is designed to handle this kind of problem. It lands feet-first, shock absorbers in the legs preventing you from taking any damage and not even damaging the suit’s integrity. It is down to about 20% from that attack, though. Not a good sign for its durability.

A new voice echoes in your helmet. Unmistakably, it’s the supervillian Uber.

Dammit, you knew this was going to happen.

“Your challenge is this: find and defeat the evil Mother Brain, hidden here!” A map pops up in the helmet. Useful. Your destination is located in the nicest part of town. “But!” Uber continues, “But! In order to challenge Mother Brain, you must first defeat her four guards. Draygon, hiding deep in the bay. Phantoon, in the Boat Graveyard. Kraid, located here,” Oh fuck, that’s deep inside the Merchants’ territory. Maybe you should just call this off. Dad would be worried if he knew where you were going. “Those three may be fought in any order. And finally, you must take your revenge upon Ridley, who has made his nest on a skyscraper downtown. Only then will the way to Mother Brain open up. Now, this may seem impossible to you, given how much damage you’ve already taken. But hidden throughout the city, we’ve scattered powerups for your suit. Extra energy, the ability to handle underwater movement, all kinds of things. Unfortunately, we were unable to hide weapon powerups to avoid drawing the Protectorate’s wrath, so we’ve made the bosses weaker correspondingly. We apologize for the inconvenience. And in case you’re thinking about abandoning this before it’s all seen through, the nearest boss will occasionally track you down and attack you if you go too long without trying something. The game will end with either your victory, or the destruction of your power suit, revealing what you’re wearing underneath. And remember, you’re on camera until this is over. Now let the game… begin!”

Well, at least he recharged your suit. You’re back to 99%, and there really isn’t much of a choice between seeing this to the end or not. You should be able to use Projection to re-manifest the suit if it’s destroyed, at least. What order to take on the enemies?

Gear obtained for future use via Projection: Varia Suit (Stun Only) [???]

Vote for one or more; the sections will go from most to least votes. No matter where you go, you’ll keep an eye out for powerups. If plans aren’t suggested, I’ll write them myself. Both the bosses themselves and gang members (capes and otherwise) may be a threat.
[ ] Phantoon is in the ABB’s territory, but they only have three parahumans in case they want to get in your way. Should be easiest to deal with that first.
[ ] Draygon is in the bay itself -- no parahumans there. If you’re lucky, that water maneuverability powerup will be there, otherwise the battle will likely be a lot tougher.
[ ] Kraid is in Merchants territory. Even if they decide to stop you, they kind of suck. Your armor should be able to take a few gunshots in a pinch, and you’ve heard something about Kraid being the easiest Metroid boss around school even if you haven’t played the games.
[ ] Sequence break! Go straight after Ridley! You have some idea of what he can do now, and even if the suit can’t handle it yet, and you can probably cheat your way to victory since nobody knows you’re a parahuman. He’s in E88 territory, but much as you hate Nazis, they usually open with diplomacy before trying to murder interlopers, and might be willing to let you go because this is all Uber’s and Leet’s fault.
[ ] Sequence break even more! You know where Mother Brain is supposed to be, and it’s not even in gang territory -- it’s in the region New Wave patrols. How hard could Mother Brain really be? In a pinch, you can probably cheat again to attain victory.
[ ] No. This is too much. Go home, and damn the people across the internet seeing you in a compromising position is cost enough for safety.
[ ] Other (Write In)

 

Right, best to start with the easy stuff. The easy boss, in the weakest gang’s turf. In case you run into any Merchants, you’ve got armor and a stunner now, so there’s not much danger to you, and the issue with lethality is handily solved. You’re honestly looking forward to taking the suit out for a spin when you aren’t being chased around by tinkertech robots.

Given how much damage the other boss -- Ridley they called it -- did to the suit, you decide to start by searching for one of those extra energy powerups. For the time being, you don’t plan on using your powers, at least unless you need to. Keeping one’s powers a secret is incredibly useful. Make them think you’ve only got a knife, and then BAM, face full of minigun rounds, metaphorically speaking. Or literally, you guess, if you can find one to copy.

Following the map, you head into the basement of a crackhouse. Speaking of the map, for some reason the Merchants’ territory is labeled as Brinstar, and you can’t figure out how to relabel it properly. Anyway, crackhouse surprise cape drug bust. You stun everyone inside before they have a chance to attack you, then start wishing you had a cellphone so you could call the Protectorate. Or just the ordinary cops. Not that you’d know what number to call besides 9-1-1. You can only hope someone in a position of authority is watching the stream.

Where the map had a powerup marked out, you find a three-foot cylindrical plastic orange tube with grey metal endcaps and a big letter E on the side of it. You make to pick it up and look for somewhere to put it on the suit, but it disappears at your touch. The suit’s integrity meter shoots up to 199%. Whoever designed this thing clearly has no idea how percentages work.

Oh, wait, there’s no actual percent sign there. It’s just arbitrary units measuring how much damage the armor can take, probably before it’s completely worthless. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to degrade partially with damage, given the encounter with Ridley.

There’s an odd-looking pile of rubble in the corner of the basement you’re in, so you shoot that too and it falls away to reveal a hole in the floor. It’s within your ability to jump back up, so you head down to the sub-basement to find a hunched-over statue shaped like a humanoid bird. At head-level, it holds something like a crescent moon around a ball with the letter C on it in its claw.

“How did they even manage to get this down here?” You mutter aloud.

“Acting is a skill,” Uber responds. “That covers pretending to be a crack addict. Construction and metalworking being skills was most of the rest of it. That and the Chozo statue actually rolls up into a six-foot ball, so it wasn’t as hard to get down there as it looks.

You manage to find two more of the energy tanks without much difficulty, intentionally skirting the area labeled as a boss chamber. No luck finding other special ones like the grey C -- charge beam, the ability to charge up a more powerful shot. It still only stuns, though. You’re not sure what the advantage to it is. Maybe it does more damage to Uber and Leet’s boss enemies?

You follow the map for another energy tank into the abandoned trainyard. It is there that you fear you may have made a terrible mistake. Holding court among the druggies, it’s a greasy man with greasy powers. You’ve seen enough pictures to recognize Skidmark. He’s sitting on top of what is, quite frankly, the coolest minivan you’ve ever seen. It has a dozen arms on each side, flamethrowers strapped to the bottom, and a classic VW Microbus for each wheel, including a spare lashed to the trunk. Random bits of metal are strapped all over the vehicle forming a kind of makeshift armor. Your suit’s visor helpfully picks out some gang members with assault rifles in the ‘wheel’ vans, with most of them in the ‘spare’.

Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. You don’t have words enough to describe how potentially terrible this is. You don’t need the powerup that was here that badly. Still, maybe you weren’t seen yet. Maybe you can just sneak away…

“Boy!” Skidmark calls out. Maybe it’s not you. “You, in the orange armor! Get over here!” Following their leader’s… lead… all the gunmen in the minivanvan train their rifles on you.

This… is not good. And who ever thought that orange was a good color for stealth? It’s like playing on hard mode.

What should you do about the Merchants issue?
[ ] Run. Run run run run escape.
[ ] The Varia Suit is good enough to handle this, right? Push on through! They’ve even got one of the powerups in the area, so you can just think of it like a boss battle. A boss battle that wasn’t planned by Uber or Leet and might end up killing you.
[ ] Other? Also, you should give more specific plans for above if you want them to work better.

Assuming everything works out with the Merchants and you take down Kraid, what part of the game should you handle next?
[ ] Phantoon/ABB/Boat Graveyard.
[ ] Draygon/Not in held territory/Underwater in the bay.
[ ] Sequence break for Ridley/E88/On top of a skyscraper downtown.
[ ] Sequence break for Mother Brain/Somewhere in the nice and safe part of town.
[ ] Ragequit for safety and go home.
[ ] Other (Write In)

 

Time to face the facts. Fight or flight, this is a potentially deadly situation. But these are murderous, thieving, kidnapping, drug pushing, terrible excuses for human beings. You silently hope for Dad’s sake that you survive this, but you’re not willing to run.

You shoot at Skidmark, hopefully before he can react. Unfortunately, years of being shot at for a living have quickened his reflexes. He throws one of his fields in the way of the energy packet.

Which flies right through, hitting him in the arm and giving you enough opportunity to tag him with a few more shots, guaranteeing that he’ll stay out of the fight.

The attack is enough to cause the rest of the Merchants to open fire on you. Fortunately, they’re terrible shots. Your armor is bullet resistant, but each hit drains a little energy and Lieutenant-General Kalashnikov’s masterpiece fires faster than you could otherwise handle. You duck behind the nearest building, and start jumping up its side to get out of where the bullets are being aimed. From the other side of the building, you can hear the roar of the minivanvan moving towards you.

“Looks like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, Ms. Aran,” Uber’s voice sounds in your ear. “Don’t worry, we’ll Sorting Algorithm of Evil this if needed. Try to win on your own, though. Your original could handle this solo.”

The sounds of destruction emanate from the trainyard-facing side of the building. Through the empty doorways and windows, you can see the minivanvan’s hands are full of chunks of rebar-reinforced concrete and wood that once formed the other face of the building. You keep climbing.

From the top of the building, you have a chance to snipe a few of the Merchant gang members with assault rifles. Whoever is driving the minivanvan notices you, and the vehicle opens fire with its front four arms chucking rocks at you. Never have you been as thankful for the suit’s impressive jumping capabilities as you are when you leap to the next building over, firing futilely at the vehicle as you dodge.

“You know, I just realized this isn’t fair,” Uber pipes up again. “Here, have some big, glowing weak points.”

Your visor changes, showing the people inside the minivanvan in orange and red. Unfortunately, they still have windows in the way, and your Stun Beam is non-destructive except against some specific things that Uber and Leet set up. Shooting the windows does nothing. You’ll need to break into the vehicle.

You dodge a few more boulders in passing as you run towards the minivanvan. As you pass near it, the flamethrowers turn on, doing no damage to you at all. Apparently, the giant shoulders double as heat sinks.

The suit allows you to jump first on top of one of the ‘wheels’, and then to the door. The door is locked, so you ram your armored fist through the window, groping around from the lock inside. One of the Merchants unloads a full 30-round magazine into you, correspondingly depleting 30 energy from the suit. While he desperately reloads but before he can think to call for help, you shove your blaster arm through the hole and stun him. You have the door open by the time anyone else can respond to the gunfire.

Without the thin (but to your arm cannon impervious) metal and plastic shell of the vehicle protecting them, the occupants of the vehicles drop fast. You take little additional damage before you stun the driver -- surprisingly, a woman, so it’s probably Squealer herself.

That’s a terrible name. What kind of self-respecting super would name herself ‘Squealer’?

It is only because you had assumed the battle over that you are taken by surprise when one of the minivanvan’s arms punches through itself, grabbing you and pulling you out. It squeezes, instantly taking 20 of the suit’s energy with it.

You quickly recover your composure, remembering that the suit is not just armor and a blaster, but specifically power armor. One finger at a time, you pull the hand apart.

The visor indicates glowy threats inside the bottom four wheels, so you break into those, shooting half a dozen people in each of the wheel-cans, each at their own control console with a pair of joysticks. You figure that they’re controlling the nearest six arms to each wheel as they stop moving when you clear the microbuses.

This time, you look around carefully before relaxing in victory. You see some kind of oversized goblinoid creature that is probably Mush trying to sneak up on you, who startles and runs when you stare him down. All ordinary non-stunned Merchants have long since fled, either when their leader was shot down at the start of the battle or when their flagship was systematically destroyed.

Finally, it’s over. You take the opportunity to run Structural Analysis on a flamethrower, one of the assault rifles, and ammo for both. A sudden silence makes you realize that the suit had been quietly playing music over the radio the whole time.

Gear obtained for future use via Projection: AK-47 [Merchants]
Gear obtained for future use via Projection: 30-round AK-47 Magazine [Merchants]
Gear obtained for future use via Projection: Flamethrower [Squealer]
Gear obtained for future use via Projection: Napalm [Squealer]


After that ordeal, Kraid is almost a let-down. Shoot it in the face, charge beam down the throat, repeat until it explodes into a shower of suit energy restoration pickups. Halfway through it starts blocking shots not taken from high up, but the buildings surrounding it make that trivial. You can only imagine how much harder it would have been if you’d had to use those platform-missiles it was shooting out. Like Ridley but unlike you, Kraid was also capable of damaging your surroundings. The suit picks up Leet running from the area, but refuses to fire at him.

“The traditional reward for beating Kraid is the Varia Suit, which you already have,” Uber notes. “The Varia Suit upgrade allows the suit to handle extreme heat and cold, as well as reducing the damage taken. This allows a measure of increased safety that we’ll reflect by allowing you to pause occasionally. Tell us you need a break, and we’ll see about pausing the stream so you can sleep unmolested. Do keep in mind that other supers may be watching the stream and may take advantage of this.”

Well, that sucks. An upgrade that isn’t.


You consider going straight for the water, but decide against it until you find the gravity suit upgrade. While you don’t have much experience with video games, you’ve at least found that water levels are almost universally terrible, and you trust Uber and Leet to preserve that experience.

You head roughly towards the docks, searching for powerups along the way. You find two more energy tanks, bringing you up to 699 in total. And then, near the docks, you find another Chozo statue. In its hand is a clear cube, with a glowing sphere in the middle of it.

“Hey, Leet, I thought we weren’t doing Morph Bomb,” Uber notes.

You grab the powerup, and the statue starts shaking oddly, a thin layer of stone flaking off it.

“We aren’t. Torizo?” He asks, a girly giggle leaking out.

“Torizo,” Uber confirms, joining Leet’s laughter with his own.

The statue stop shaking, revealing a twelve-foot tall metallic figure beneath it. Its wings stay folded around its torso, but you can still tell what it is. Oh fuck, it’s Lung.

Oh fuck, it’s Lung!

You turn and run. Uber and Leet are still laughing madly. “Can’t run from a boss fight,” Leet chokes out.

“Remember the skip? Should have run before hitting the powerup,” Uber confirms.

“I don’t understand what’s going on, but I think Lung is about to kill me,” you tell them. “Help--”

Anything further you were about to say is cut off when a fireball hits you in the stomach for 50 damage, knocking you flat on your face.

“No, no, it’s a Torizo!” Uber repeats. “Weak spot is the torso, it’s supposed to be glowing purple. Hold on, we’ll throw that on your visor.”

Your visor corrects itself, and you desperately shoot at the target. Lung-Torizo-whatever it is responds with a furious roar for each hit and a variety of fire- and claw- based attacks that you can only rarely manage to dodge. Curiously, it gives you space any time it comes close to backing you into a wall.

You’re almost out of energy when it takes one final hit, screams one last time, and finally unwraps its wings to fly off.

You stand there panting for a minute. Well, that just happened. Did you just beat up Lung? Did you just make Lung really mad at you? Was that even actually Lung at all? “What was that?” You finally ask your backup.

“A Torizo is a miniboss enemy that pretends to be a Chozo statue. They still have powerups, though. We’ll get you a chance to play through this later so you can understand that. That said, you probably just got an unlimited supply of bombs for the suit. I cannot stress this enough: please don’t use them if you can avoid it. You do so, and the Protectorate probably comes down on both you and us like a brick. At the very least, try to stick to midair explosions away from buildings. And don’t try to bomb jump,” Uber does his best to explain.

“What’s a bomb jump?” You inquire.

“Shit. Please don’t try this. Morph Bombs provide enough thrust to launch you into the air. It’s a good way to sequence break in some games.”

“At least those aren’t Power Bombs,” Leet interjects.

“Yeah,” Uber agrees. “This wasn’t part of the plan, so we’ll get you some health back before Phantoon.”

“One more question,” you continue. “Why are the called Morph Bombs?”

“They can only be used while in Morph Ball mode,” Uber tells you.

“What’s Morph Ball mode?”

The two break into laughter again. Uber recovers first. “You haven’t realized you have that capability? Check the interface, see what it does.”

You do so, finding it easily and turning on the mode change. You morph into a ball.

Well, that’s aptly named, at least. And for a mode that basically forces you into a yoga pose for the duration, it’s a lot less uncomfortable than you expected. You change back and look for the correct boat in the graveyard.


Once again, you feel less threatened by the boss than by the gang members you fought on the way. Phantoon tricks you a few times with the way he disappears, and you completely fail to figure out a way to deal with the waves of blue fire he throws around, but he simply doesn’t hit you with enough damage each hit to be terrifying. There’s probably a better way to beat him, but you did your best and are satisfied with any victory at all.

Once more, the boss explodes into a shower of health pickups on victory. Not much further into the ship behind him, you find an upgrade that turns your armor purple-black. It’s labelled as the Gravity Suit, and the interface says it drastically improves underwater mobility.

As you head out of the ship, you notice Leet leaving the area again, dressed head to toe in black, including a black face mask. “Leet, what are you doing here,” you ask him.

“Sshhhhh!” Uber scolds you. “It’s bad form to point out the stagehands!”

“This isn’t a play!” You complain.

“It totally is,” Leet disagrees with you.

Where next?
[ ] Draygon/Not in held territory/Underwater in the bay.
[ ] Sequence break for Ridley/E88/On top of a skyscraper downtown.
[ ] Sequence break for Mother Brain/Somewhere in the nice and safe part of town.
[ ] Pause for safety and go home.
[ ] Other (Write In)

 

“Sshhhhhhh!” Uber shushes Leet. “What happened to ‘kabuki ninja stagehand?”

“Ooops, sorry,” Leet replies.

“You did it again!” Uber complains.

Leet nods, and Uber can apparently see it because the line of complaints is dropped.

“So,” Uber comments, “We have two in favor of this being a play, and one against. By votes, this is clearly a play.”

“But people shot me!” You grumble, walking towards an exit to the ship.. “I could have died!”

“Yes, but you didn’t,” Uber almost interrupts. “Sorry, standard answer to your complaint. We gave you powered armor and even warned you that we’ve got bosses on standby to salvage the situation. Yes, there was a chance of death, but it was small. You took no risks that we wouldn’t have.”

“But people shot me!” You insist.

“You could have run away,” Uber points out. “I like that you didn’t, though. Very in-character.”

“Of course I couldn’t run!” You argue. “I had a suit of powered armor with a stun weapon and there were a bunch of criminals there! And you said I couldn’t run from Lung--”

“A boss fight, specifically a Torizo. Not Lung,” Uber interrupts.

“Anyways, what would you expect me to do?” You finish.

“Call the PRT, staying in place to survey the scene until they arrived unless you felt too threatened, in which case run, using the buildings as cover. Incidentally, we’re very glad you didn’t do that. The PRT tends to regard our art poorly. Philistines.”

“I…” It takes you a moment to figure out how to voice your thoughts. “So, you mean it’s all a play because I was never in any danger?”

“Of course you were in danger!” Uber explodes at you over the radio. “But as purveyors of fine art, Leet and I did our best to mitigate the risk and maximize the odds of your safe survival while minimally damaging the work. It’s a play because there’s a script, which even a ragequit would stay on. If we weren’t filming this but we still gave you a suit of powered armor, would you run across the city searching for powerups and occasionally fighting bosses and gangs?”

“Probably not,” you admit. “So your conclusion is that it’s just a very unsafe play?”

“Going back a point, you’re wearing armor. It’s probably as safe as everyday life in this city gets, with the extra safety balancing the extra risk.”

“I give up,” you concede. “It’s a play, sure, why not.”


You finally reach the water level. As when you first got to this ship, you immediately sink to the bottom of the water. The water here isn’t very deep, so you were able to jump up going the other direction. Immediately, you notice a difference. Rather than being forced to sluggishly fight against the water, the suit aerodynamically allows the current to flow around and through it. Strangely, the water around you feels significantly less dense than you would expect, giving way as easily as air. You’re a little worried that the suit could get trapped underwater, acting like an ocean of air.

“So, how does this gravity feature thing work?” You cautiously ask Uber.

“Gravity Suit. Gravity SUIT. Is the suit fucking purple or not? Did we make you wear stupid purple glowy bits on your chest? Gravity. Fucking. Suit,” Uber rants.

You trudge towards the center of the bay in silence for a few minutes. It looks like the suit’s upgrade has also added a new visor mode that cuts right through the murky depths as if it was surface water without using a spotlight that would give away your position.

“Got a report from IT,” Uber speaks again. “It says, and I quote, ‘The suit uses advanced microgravitic thrusters to simulate fluids of various densities as if they were air by reinforcing your movements to match those expectations. They have their own dedicated hardwired processor in the suit so their calculations don’t impede normal functions. Rewiring it to provide stable flight would require more computational power than your suit can hold. Rewiring it to provide unstable flight can and should be trivially done with the addition of another chip, which would also add the thrusters but not the armor or programming for denser atmospheres such as liquids.’”

You chew on that for a few more minutes. “I don’t know what that means,” you finally settle on.

“I do, but that’s because I’m Uber and you took too long to say anything about it. The physics check out, but humanity has no idea how to do artificial gravitics, much less program something to handle that, make storage dense enough to work for your suit, or handle matter-energy conversion so suit energy directly relates to durability. But Leet is pretty awesome, and he can do that stuff, and that’s good enough for me.”

The gamer duo seem to have made a maze in the middle of the bay. It lacks a roof, but the walls are still too high for you to leap. There’s a pair of energy tanks around, plus another one in grey, labelled as a ‘reserve’ tank.

“It’s just extra energy storage,” Uber explicates. “We mostly kept them in because they were in the source material. In use, they might as well just be normal energy tanks.”

You find a large room in in the maze -- though not the largest -- with ship wreckage all over it. The entryway seals behind you as you pass through it. Some giant seahorses with enormous yellow pouches pass by, burrowing into the sandy bottom of the bay, while a single turret on each of the four walls fire intermittently at you. You jog over to one of the turrets and examine it between shots. The construction is dangerously shoddy: wiring with no insulation, metal so thin you suspect your stun beam could damage it, and it fires so rarely and with such slow-moving shots that you wonder if it’s even intended to do significant damage. You trace the power for the device through the wall, into the floor, and into a waterproofed car battery embedded into one of the other walls. You jog over and ready a mechanical-reinforced fist to punch through and destroy the battery when you’re distracted by a GIGANTIC sea-horse-dragon-creature bursts out of the sand. It swims away, only to return while spitting out spiked balls. Draygon, you assume, corners you against the wall, grabs hold, and starts swimming around with you. You take the opportunity to analyze its structure as well, hoping to find weak points. Instead, the boss enemy seems to be made of a single uniform substance…

Photons? Why is Draygon made entirely of out photons? And how could that even hurt you? Why would your stun beam disrupt whatever it is? Is it actually an illusion, and the reason Leet has been hanging around the boss arenas because he’s been using one of his devices to actually run the boss? Actually, that last part’s almost definitely true; you just assumed he was manning a robot before.

“Hey, you know what Draygon is weak against?” Uber’s voice sounds in your ear. “Grapple Beam! Guess what you never found because you cleared an entire zone at a time instead of going back and forth!”

You quickly struggle free from Draygon’s grip, shooting a charged shot at it. The shot hits its bright yellow belly, which flashes as it takes damage, whatever that means for a being made entirely of light. At least you know how to hurt it.

You trade shots with it for a while, its spikes and melee attacks against your charged stunners. After a few passes, you figure out when and how to jump its melee attacks. After that, it’s only a matter of time until you successfully beat it.

The door that you came in stays sealed after your victory, though. A way opens through the opposite wall, so you cross through. There you find yet another of those Chozo statues that Uber and Leet made. Hmm, there’s more than one, so it was probably Uber unless they’re substantially different or have electronics inside. You call Structural Analysis to mind to find out that this statue, at least, is wired, based around the same claw that holds a powerup. Its power source is entirely internal, this time three car batteries in series.

You stop stalling and grab the powerup, a ball with a pair of straight horns. It registers in your suit as ‘Space Jump’. A closer inspection of the statue’s claws indicates that it can directly attach to the suit’s morph ball mode. When you allow it to do so, it conveniently recharges all your energy.

“With the protection provided by the Gravity Suit and the mobility of the Space Jump, our heroine finally has the ability to get revenge on the fearsome Ridley, who killed both her birth and adoptive parents, then kidnapped the Metroid that treats her as a mother. It is Ridley who has stolen all the family our heroine has ever had, and it is Ridley that knocked our wonderful actress through a wall and dropped her five stories at the start of the stream. Come check it out on Youtube after the stream is over, and be sure to like and subscribe if you want to see more like this. I know I do!” Uber advertises.

You check the original door to the boss lair. It’s still closed. “So, how do I get out of here?” You ask.

“Shant tell you,” Uber replies. “Half the fun is figuring out how to use your gear to overcome challenges.”

You decide to start with figuring out what Space Jump does. The door thing is probably a measure to ensure you grab it. You start by jumping, testing if it takes you any higher. It doesn’t. You then test the second jump-related powerup you’ve heard about from games, and try to have the suit jump while still in the air. You don’t exactly have leverage, but it seems to work anyways. You try again before hitting the ground. It keeps working. It keeps working for the next dozen jumps, and only stops then because you land on top of one of the walls of the maze. The maze then becomes trivial. You check around for more powerups, only finding one that grants you the useful ability to jump while in ball form (but only once, even with Space Jump).


Looks like it’s time to fight a skeletal dragon in the territory held by Nazis, unless there’s a better plan.
[x] Ridley/E88/On top of a skyscraper downtown. (DEFAULT)
[ ] Sequence break for Mother Brain/Somewhere in the nice and safe part of town.
[ ] Pause for safety and go home.
[ ] Other (Write In)

 

Uber implied that you were supposed to go back and forth across the city, not just tear through an entire region at a time. There’s probably a lot you missed, and you’re concerned both about the risk of the remaining two bosses being stronger than the expect, and about the benefits of having a more capable suit if you Trace it later for your own purposes. With your new ability to effectively fly, you’re confident you can grab anything you find.

You start by further scouring ‘Maridia’, the maze under the bay, but find nothing more. From there you backtrack to the Docks, taking another pass through the rusty ship where you fought Phantoon. You find one of the grey Reserve Tanks in one of the abandoned warehouses next to the docks, but that’s it. Not an auspicious start, although at least you don’t run into the ABB or not-Lung.

From there you head through the Merchants’ territory, aka ‘Brinstar’. The Trainyard is surrounded by PRT, who will probably stop you from continuing this before you find all the upgrades for the Power Suit. You skirt the edges, looking for powerups a little further from the Trainyard. Turns out you missed a few energy tanks last time, as well as a suit visor mode labeled as ‘X-Ray Scope’.

“This is awesome!” You note aloud as you stare through walls, your suit simultaneously taking in the presence of barriers, what it would take to destroy them, and what’s both in front of and behind them. Then you remember something less awesome that you read about something like this. “Wait, aren’t X-Rays ionizing radiation? This doesn’t give people cancer when I look at them, does it?” You ask the suit radio.

“We used T-Rays for exactly that reason,” Uber notes. “Well, it was closer to us not wanting to give each other cancer, but it’s the same idea on a different scale.”

Now armed with the ability to easily find hidden powerups, you take a third trip through the Docks and the Bay, and only after finding nothing more do you feel confident that you’ve found everything. Another pass through ‘Brinstar’ nets you another Energy Tank, another Reserve Tank, and a chance to covertly watch Armsmaster and Miss Militia load the Merchants capes into an armored vehicle and begin escorting the truck out of the area. SO AWESOME.

You finally head towards downtown, labeled as ‘Norfair’, but you stop along the way when you notice a region of the map with a different area label. Apparently, the arcade where you started, still with a massive hole in the wall, is ‘Crateria’, and it held not one but two energy tanks the whole time. Cute trick.

Finally, you hit downtown, controlled by the Nazis. You steadfastly avoid the region labeled as a boss’s lair -- not hard, considering it’s on top of the tallest building. The first cool new power you find is called ‘Speed Booster’. It triggers if you run in a straight line for about 100 feet, at least doubling your speed when it kicks in. The first time you try it, you slam face-first into a wall, coming to a dead stop with a you-shaped dent where you impacted. The suit prevents the sudden acceleration from hurting you physically, but your face burns a little when you think about how many people on the internet just watched you do that.

Further exploration nets you a snazzy boot upgrade that doubles your jump height. From a standing jump, you can actually reach the top of some smaller office buildings now. The height is actually a bit terrifying, so you regularly jump up to your top height to get used to it as you search for more cool suit parts.

The T-Ray scope shows you a powerup underground, unfortunately forcing you to drop into the sewers. Conveniently, someone (probably Uber or Leet) has put a bunch of boards over the sewer water, so you don’t need to worry about getting as dirty. The powerup looks sort of like a multi-pronged hook, and proves to be for grappling.

This is quite possibly the second coolest attachment for the suit. Sure, the Space Jump almost completely obviates the need for it as an exploration tool, but humans are really good at noticing movement in their peripheral vision, and this should let you hang motionless above people or on walls. Even better, the suit is already purple, which should blend fairly well into the night. You’ll have to see if you can manifest just the grapple beam without the rest of the suit for less Prana later.

It’s starting to feel like all the coolest gear is in Norfair. You kind of wish you’d started by going here.

After a bit more exploration, you think you have all the Energy Tanks there are to be found. The normal tanks form two full rows of 7 bars of energy each on your HUD, and above that is a line of four Reserve Tanks. The errors from the Missile function are still bugging you, but there’s not much you can do about that. It’s time to fight a boss.

You Space Jump to fight Ridley, and ultimately win. It’s a lot like how he first threw you into this game. He comes out you with fireballs, tail slaps, and body slams, and he keeps grabbing you and trying to crush you alive. It’s a good thing you went out of your way to get all those extra Energy Tanks, because you end up with a mere quarter of it left before he finally stops moving. You shoot the exploding body a few more times for good measure.

“Unfortunately,” Uber notes, “The traditional powerup received around this time is Screw Attack, which turns spinning jumps like what you can do forever with Space Jump into a weapon. As well, shortcomings of this translation from video game to real life have left out most of the plot, so it’s time for a more detailed explanation. In the source material, Samus Aran’s parents, first biological then adopted, were killed by Ridley, who works for Mother Brain. At the start of this adventure, he also destroyed a research colony in the process of kidnapping the last known Metroid.”

“Roll credits,” Leet butts in.

“Couldn’t avoid a title drop, sorry. The creatures must be destroyed. They’re living biological weapons that drain all the energy out of other creatures, killing them. Worse, Mother Brain was designed to control them. They’re a terrifyingly powerful weapon. However, we can’t use them properly here, both because we don’t want the Protectorate coming down on us before the game ends, and because our Samus doesn’t have a concussive weapon like Missiles to exploit the traditional freeze-then-shatter Metroid vulnerability.”

“So, how can we even call this Metroid when there are no Metroids?” Leet asks his partner an obviously rehearsed line.

“We decided that the best course of action was to upgrade Mother Brain by splicing in Metroid DNA, thus giving her energy draining capabilities. Also, we’re not sure how to actually beat her without freezing capabilities, and she has a T-Rex body. There’s probably going to be a bit of a rampage if our hero doesn’t handle it herself.”

You leg it towards the outskirts of town directly away from the bay, where the last boss is supposed to be. The Speed Booster quickly kicks in, and surprisingly doesn’t turn off when you start using Space Jump. The suit clocks you going at about 500 miles per hour.

“On a technical note, the Speed Booster is only about half as effective as its canonical capabilities. No matter how awesome it would be, throwing a sonic boom around an urban environment is a good way to get a visit from an angry superhero,” Uber fills the otherwise boring but quick and dizzying trip across town.

About a minute later, you hit the edge of the expansive grounds of a mansion on the edge of town. Rather than stopping, you keep going for another second until the enemy should be right below you. Fortunately, the skylight you fall through is already broken.

Your ears fill with laughter as you note that your enemy is just a GIANT brain in a jar surrounded by turrets, not a rampaging kaiju. You scan the turrets and note that they’re self-powered and firmly attached to the walls. Disregarding the boss, you walk into another room, reach blindly into a drawer, and take out a screwdriver that was never there to begin with for a small amount of prana. You walk back into the room, unscrew the turrets off the wall, and throw them as hard as your servo-enhanced arms will let you through the skylight.

Right, boss time. You punch through the thick protective glass around the brain, then shoot it in its cyclopean eye until it collapses. Victory!

Oddly, the floor starts to rise. You run Structural Analysis over it to find that it’s a giant, flying tinkertech platform. With forcefields around the edges and forming a ceiling, preventing you from running. The arena rises through the long-shattered glass you used as an entry into the twilit sky. Something beneath the brain stirs, punching up through the floor beneath it to reveal that you do have a kaiju problem after all. And then, it attacks once more.

On the bright side, the huge, horrifying exposed brain is still its weak point. On the not so bright side, the creature is faster than you’d expect for its size and otherwise completely invulnerable to what your suit can throw at it. You duck and dodge its presumably atomic breath weapon, try not to cower when it roars, and in between it all shoot it back. But the most disgusting part is when it manages to grab you with its massive jaws and drinks a fifth of your maximum life right there, visibly healing its wounds and changing from a somewhat red color to something more serene. Still, you keep at it, learning its attack patterns and dodging all future bite attacks until it finally drops once more. A timer ticks to life in the corner of your HUD: 3:00.

“Oh my, I think that was a load-bearing boss. Better get off the grounds before the whole place explodes,” Uber jokes as the timer ticks to 2:58.

The force field walls around the floating arena are down now, but only because they’re a low ceiling and a set of visible walls forcing you to run a maze on the way out and making your speed booster worthless. The time drops the whole time. 2:14. 1:47. 1:02.

0:24. That’s your time when you make it to the edge of the grounds and jump the fence. Uber instructs you to turn around and have a seat, but you clear another mile first for safety.

As the countdown hits 0:00, a rocket shoots up from the still-flying platform, exploding into the early night sky. Then another, and another. Apparently, the self-destruct sequence was actually a nice fireworks show. A few minutes later, the final volley launches into the sky, spelling out a word that Uber and Leet echo as loud as they can over the suit radio: “D e e R F o r C e!”


“Stream’s over,” Uber notes a few seconds later. “Cam’s returning home, and you can change back and go home whenever. Live viewer count is the highest we’ve had since Tetris, and we could well beat its total numbers in a few weeks. Good job out there, Ms. Aran.”

You run Structural Analysis over the powered armor one last time. You earned this. The fireworks even had a completion note stating you found 100% of the powerups near the end. Sure, Leet will take back the original. But copy or not, the suit is yours, and you feel almost like it’s learned something from its experiences.

Trace upgraded -- Power Suit (Stun Only) [Taylor Hebert] {NP}: This facsimile of Samus’s powered armor was created by the supervillain Leet. Though crippled in many ways compared to its source, it was still upgraded as thoroughly as possible by its first and only bearer, Taylor Hebert. It bears memories of seeking out upgrades and of recognizing attack patterns. For a small amount of Prana, it will show the direction (but not distance) towards the nearest upgrade, or nowhere at all if there is no outstanding data. For a larger amount of Prana, If an attack that can be dodged is used against it (regardless of whether it hits), the suit will automatically dodge the same attack pattern for the rest of the battle. This ability cannot break the laws of physics or causality.


You reach the arcade. Oddly, the wall is already fixed. You change back to the clothes you came in, and roll the suit out of the bathroom. Uber and Leet are there, still in costume, leaving you little choice about giving it back. Their body shapes so obviously match those of Daniel and Ted that you’re a little ashamed it took you so long to be certain about it. It feels like Projecting the suit in the future will be a huge Prana expenditure, but it’ll probably be worth it.

You run back home. Compared to the servo-enhanced stride you’ve already gotten used to even without the Speed Booster, it feels downright slow. Dad’s still awake when you get in, reading something in the living room.

“Hey there, kiddo. You hungry? I saved some spaghetti for you.”

“You mean you made spaghetti specifically because you expected me to come home hungry.”

“Guilty as charged,” he admits. The two of you head over to the table and he drops a heaping portion on a plate for you. “How did things go?”

“I had a lot of fun. There was this video game that I’d never played before, I went running a little, and then there was that unexpected fireworks display. Pretty good overall.”


That night, you dream about the Protectorate, and about the people the Merchants can’t hurt anymore. It’s a very pleasant dream.


What to do tomorrow? Pick Four (Three for the day and one for the night, options may be chosen repeatedly, order may matter):
[ ] Go to school
[ ] Go to the arcade
[ ] Go to the library and study for your GED
[ ] Get more gear for your power
[ ] Patrol some part of the city
[ ] Other (Write In)

 

Lung sat on a stack of crates, surveying the situation. His underlings scurried in and out of the warehouse, the tide lessening but still not stopped. Trustworthy lieutenants handed out weaponry and orders to more ordinary members.

Oni Lee walked in through the wide open warehouse door. Good, he was still minimizing the use of his powers. The cape did his best to struggle up to Lung’s wooden aerial, stopping a level below him. “Trainyard secured,” he relayed.

Lung nodded, needing to convey no more information than an acknowledgement. “The rest of the area?”

“Two groups of Nazi capes, Hookwolf leading one and Crusader with the other. We got set up first, entrenched in the rubble, but there’s no expansion with them pushing in on two sides.”

“Rest. If Hookwolf remains, we’ll attack him at sunset. I’ll destroy the opposition while the rank and file moves in.”

Oni Lee slipped down the crate stack less than gracefully, only barely avoiding fracturing a leg on the way down.

Lung clambered down shortly thereafter with much more skill than Oni Lee. “Deploy two RPG-18s tonight. I will escort them to the Trainyard,” he informed the quartermasters.

On his way out of the warehouse, Bakuda flagged him down from just outside. “Why did you make me give Uber and Leet a bomb?” She asked. “Not that I mind making high explosives, but I thought it was generally a bad idea to arm rival villains.”

“Uber and Leet are no more the enemy than they are villains. They hold no territory, protect no people, demand no tribute. To stop them is to face powerful tinkertech, to ignore them has no downsides. The Nazis ignored the agent of Uber and Leet, but I rewarded her for her unwitting aid. And for Kenta.”

“Kenta?” Bakuda pried, following Lung as he headed towards the Trainyard.

Lung nodded. “When I was young, I knew a boy named Kenta. He grew up without a father, but with a loving mother. His uncle worked at Nintendo, and got him every game that came out. He passed through public schooling well, but joined the Yakuza rather than going to college. And then an angry woman came through, beat up him and his squad, and left him face-down in a pile of drugs, where he simultaneously suffocated and ODed. In his short life, there were few who truly cared about Kenta. His mother and uncle, both killed by Leviathan. The games he enjoyed. And me.”

The two said nothing for another block, until Bakuda reopened the conversation. “What do you mean ‘her’? Uber wasn’t in that suit?”

“I played many of Kenta’s games. Uber and Leet based their latest operation on the Metroid titles, and Samus is a girl. They would not do otherwise. Also, her voice was clearly female on the stream.”

“So, what, I just gave a bomb to a random civilian?”

“No. You gave a sample of a bomb to a random civilian wearing power armor that could make endless copies of that bomb. See if you can get the suit for a sequel series and keep it for yourself.”

“Cool, I could be Master Chief.”

“Who?”

“The guy in the suit from Halo.”

“You know that, but you don’t recognize the Metroid series?”

“Give me a break, boss. Everyone knows Nintendo games are for kids.”

“Speaking of a break, how soon can I expect some results from you?”

“I’ve got a few miniaturized explosives done, the size of grenades but the boom of something ten times the size. Anything better will have to wait until next week. I’ve been messing around with tachyons, trying to make an explosive anti-tachyon pulse that should freeze time in the area for a while. There’s also something in the works that explodes in a classical element, but I haven’t gotten them big enough to be useful. I’m really looking forward to seeing someone step on a mine and get encased in ice. Oh! I just had an idea! I could do a triggered single-use microscale black hole generator! Pop it on someone and BAM, no more someone. I’m going to need a lot more equipment for that, though. Probably enough to build a small particle accelerator to start.”

“It’ll be done. I expect at least three elemental bombs by the end of next week. I’m thinking of Alabaster, unharmed as he usually is but surrounded by ice and unable to rejoin the fight. Perhaps Kaiser himself, stuck in a field of fire. How long do those last?”

“As far as I can tell, forever. They cause a permanent change, and then someone needs to melt the ice or extinguish the fire or wait for the lightning zone to run out of charge. With the amount of energy in there, that’s weeks by itself or minutes at least for a cape.”

“Good. You are dismissed,” Lung announced, continuing onwards. Taking the cue, Bakuda broke off towards her lab. The leader of the ABB arrived at his destination near the former border of his gang’s territory soon thereafter, verified that everything was still in order, and slept until shortly before sundown.


Lung rushed towards the shifting mass of blades that was Hookwolf, taking rapidly-healing wounds all over his body as he closed the distance. He reached his foe, grappling as his skin regrow in metal. “Lee!” He called. His lieutenant appeared next to him, then appeared again back where he came from, leaving a clone in combat. The Lee clone offered his boss a pair of grenades as he pulled the pins on all the other ones he was wearing.

Lung grabbed one of the grenades and stuffed it into Hookwolf’s body. Ignoring the explosively propelled shrapnel and the unusually large blast, he pinned the creature, exposing it towards the Trainyard. “NNRAOWRG”, he roared, his face already distending and robbing him of most of his ability to communicate. In sequence, two rockets impacted the Nazi’s chains and hooks. A feral grin spread across his face as his target’s movements slowed, exposing a glowing core. Lung reached in with one armored claw and crushed it, the core turning back into a heart as the dead cape shifted back to his human form.

Lung allowed himself one triumphant roar before launching himself, still on foot, towards the other battleground. With the death of their leader, the Nazis would likely drop this front, especially if the battle continued long enough for his wings to come in. The draconic being emitted a bass rumble of a laugh as he considered this antithesis of the axis alliance.

“FIRROUGHT RMEEE”, he bellowed, charging towards Alabaster. He spat fire ahead of himself, engulfing his target in flames, but was suddenly shrouded in dark mist. Metal pierce his armored flesh as Night delayed him. He filled the area directly around himself with his flames, and was rewarded with a scream of pain as both Night and Fog’s secondary forms were scorched. When his vision cleared, the Nazi capes had all retreated.

Lung scanned the area for other threats, finding that the Protectorate had arrived. For everyone but him, the fight over. But Lung still had a job to do. He stared at the cape approaching by motorcycle, who stared back.

Armsmaster blinked first, at least metaphorically. With the two both hiding their faces behind masks, it was impossible to tell literally. The hero made a U-turn, disappearing back into the night. Clearly, the tinker still had no way to deal with Lung so late into a fight. The rest of the ABB had gone to ground, leaving nothing to gain but injuries by attacking. Lung began to shrink, his metal coating reverting to skin as he considered the fight at an end. The Trainyard was theirs.

 

Much as you want to get stuff done, you spend half the morning asleep and can barely get out of bed once you awaken. Dad comes in and takes your temperature, revealing a moderate fever which goes away after having chicken soup for dinner. Frustrating, but your power is pretty useless for dealing with mundane sickness.

You decide to spend the weekend morning productively continuing to study for your GED. Once you have that out of the way, you can see about getting a little truth out of Uber and Leet, see where you stand with each other, hopefully get paid like they initially promised. Assuming that all pans out, you want to grab a cellphone so you can call in anyone you take down while patrolling in the future. While you’re at it, you intend to window shop for some extra gear, hopefully copy some functional body armor that doesn’t take more than a third of your prana to manifest. Then it’s home for dinner, sneaking out afterwards to try to track down a cape fight and copy the gear from the fighters. If you run into any criminals on the way you’ll take them down, but you don’t intend to get involved in the cape fight at all. Of course, protecting uninvolved people from getting caught in the crossfire is the highest priority. All in all, you’ve got a plan, and you can only hope it stays useful.


The math section of the GED remains easy. You keep at the practice problems anyways. One of the last things you want is to fail the test and be legally forced to return to Winslow and forced to deal with the Trio again. The library is noisier than usual, with a group of young children in the other room, but you do your best to tune them out and keep solving pages and pages of sample problems. (GED status: 2/30 study points).

While you’re there, you scan all the physical materials you can find for the test so you can recreate and use them without needing to return to the library. Unfortunately, most of what you’re using is digital, and you can’t afford the tens of dollars it would take to print it all out now at 11 cents per page. Still, you have enough for a few study sessions outside the library, and you can always study more here. You just like having options.


You consume the contents of the sack lunch you packed this morning as you wander from the library over to the arcade. You’re more than a little angry about how you were attacked repeatedly last night, but you think you could get over it. You’re still mulling it over when you realize you’re already there. A small TV is set up on a table against the wall, with a white game console and matching controller poking out from under it. Daniel is engrossed in Tetris again and doesn’t immediately notice you enter. Unusually, there are a bunch of other people in the arcade. Some are check out the place in general or the wall that had a huge hole in it for a while yesterday, while others are using the machines. You look around for a minute, unsure what to do.

Fortunately, Daniel finishes his game quickly, getting a new high score. He spots you out of his peripheral vision and turns to greet you.

“Hey, did you see the Uber and Leet stream last night?” He asks, as if he hadn’t been monitoring it the whole time.

Wait, there’s a bunch of people around. He probably wants to maintain a disguise. You could always out him as revenge for everything. That’s the kind of thing that can’t be undone, though, so you decide not to do it quite yet and play along for now. “The whole thing,” you admit honestly. “Why?”

“I figured you’d probably never played the game it’s based on, so I brought in my Wii so you can play it.”

Must not comment on homophones, you think. It’s not like you’ve never heard of the biggest toy from the Christmas season five years ago. Daniel hands you the controller and you take it.

In total, you take about four hours to run through Super Metroid, putting you a little behind schedule for the day. It’s worth it, though. You had a lot of fun playing the game. Afterwards, Uber packs up the TV and console, leaving the arcade much earlier than usual.

“So. Good game?” The supervillain in disguise asks.

“Yeah,” you admit. “But I kind of wanted to talk about--”

“Oh, I have a bunch of other classics you should try sometime,” he interrupts. “Tell you what, Ted and I are pretty much done with this arcade. How about I give you my phone number and you can come over some time and play something from my library.”

Is this an olive branch? You’re fairly certain he isn’t going to use the opportunity to molest you, and even if he tries you can use your yet-unrevealed powers to escape. Or just Mace him. Which brings up a good idea -- you should probably scan some Mace. For that matter, you should probably buy some so you don’t reveal your powers by making it, or in case you run out of prana. Either way, that brings you back to an issue.

“I don’t have a cellphone, actually,” you hint. “Or any spending money.”

“What a coincidence,” Daniel deadpans. “I have an entire paycheck that I’m supposed to pass along to someone.” He swings his backpack off one shoulder, rummages around for a few seconds, then hands you a plain white envelope. You tear into it, revealing a personal check for three thousand dollars.

You stare at it, making sure it’s real. Paper, ink, names -- the only way it could be fake is if the account it’s drawing from is empty.

“This is… a lot more than I expected,” you comment.

“We broke a hundred thousand views for the first time since we did Tetris,” Uber explains proudly. “That’s your cut of the ad revenue at twenty percent. You earned it.” He pauses, giving you a chance to speak, but you don’t seize it. “There’s probably going to be that much again over the next few years from the long tail, but most of the views come from the first few days. If you’d like, it’d be easier to set up direct deposit for it.” He breaks again, but you’re still flabbergasted at holding more money than you’ve had in your entire life, combined. “Actually, I think you’re part of what made the whole thing go so well. If you want in on another video, we’d be happy to find a role for you. Help with the planning and we’ll see about giving you a bigger cut too.”

“I…” you finally collect yourself. “It’s not that I’m not interested, but there are some things we need to discuss privately first. Can we come back to this later?”

“Of course. Just needed to get the offer out there. Cellphone shopping first?”

You end up blowing a solid portion of your money on a top-end Android smartphone, at least partially as a result of Uber’s recommendation and half-hour rant about open source software. You trade numbers with him, also getting Ted’s in the process. You also set up a bank account and, like Uber recommended, fill out some direct deposit information for him. If nothing else, it’ll be convenient not to need to track him down regularly for payments.


By the time you finally manage to ditch Uber, there’s almost no time to browse arms and armor. You grab a can of Mace and rush home before Dad starts to worry. Dinner’s good, but you’re a little too lost in thought to talk much. Dad mentions that there’s been an upswing in gang fighting since yesterday, centered around the Trainyard, which probably happened because the Merchants capes got taken down. You smile at that.

After dinner, you retreat to your room and take a nap while you wait for Dad to fall asleep. You set an alarm on your new phone, which wakes you at 11 so you can sneak out of the house.


You jog directly towards the Trainyard, since that’s apparently where all the fighting is happening right now. Now that you’ve just taken a nap, you have the presence of mind to feel a little bad about that. If not for your actions two nights ago, the area would still be stable, a lot less full of gang violence.

You stop yourself mentally, though not physically. By removing the Merchants, you have made everyone in what was once their territory safer. Both the ABB and E88 treat people in their respective zones of control better than the Merchants did. There will be fewer people kidnapped, fewer kids exposed and addicted to drugs through no choice of their own. Your actions may not have been optimal, but they were an improvement over the previous state of affairs. You should perhaps think a little more thoroughly before you go about upsetting the balance of power again, but you should not regret getting Skidmark, Squealer, and Mush jailed.

You slow down as you first hear the ringing sound of metal clanging off of metal. There’s no roaring, so it clearly isn’t someone fighting Lung, but it’s equally clearly a cape fight because of the lack of gunfire.

You opt to stay completely out of costume, trusting your instincts to summon a barrier if an attack gets too close to you. It won’t do you any good if you get hit by a bullet -- at a mere three hundred meters per second, a bullet can travel three meters in the ten milliseconds it would very favorably take for you to react, double your length from head to toe, and that’s just the subsonic ammo that you can hear coming. Not forming your power suit puts your life in some amount of danger, but there isn’t any gunfire currently within earshot and it would completely give away the fact that you have powers. By passing yourself off as normal, you can grab a weapon or two and still feign ignorance if you get caught.

You inch along, peeking out from around the corner of a building to finally identify the fighters. About two blocks away from you, Armsmaster is dueling against the tag team of Fenja and Menja, the Empire’s amazing 50-foot women. You’re not sure which is which, but one wields a sword where the other carries a spear. Both also carry a shield, though the spear twin’s defensive armament lies abandoned , still huge and leaning against a building. Despite their size and numbers, Armsmaster is still holding them off, though he seems unable to force them on the defensive.

You know what? Forget just watching him load unconscious people into a van. THIS is the coolest thing you’ve ever seen. A live cape fight, not even two football fields away from you! I mean, I guess what you did a few nights ago could count, but you weren’t using your powers and were a little too busy fighting for your life to really watch what you were doing. Maybe you should check Uber and Leet’s recording of the whole thing.

You focus on the giant twins first. Their weapons are of solid quality, reinforced by their power in a manner similar to what you can do, but also grown to enormous size in a way you can’t reproduce. Not only does the growth enlarge the weapons, it also increases the amount of power the weapons can safely carry without breaking explosively under the strain.

New Trace: Kite Shield (Oversized) [Fenja/Menja]
New Trace: Glaive (Oversized) [Menja]
New Trace: Estoc (Oversized) [Fenja]

Your power fills you in with far more details than you’d ever particularly need to know about the exact name for the style of weapon, their historical role, blade shape, and more. The important thing to you is that you now have access to… actually, oversized weapons designed for somebody an order of magnitude larger than you aren’t very useful. The shield’s good, you can always use a premade slab of metal that’s designed to catch and deflect blows, even if it’s only going to be an instant wall. As for Armsmaster…

New Trace: Armsmaster’s Power Armor, Mk.15L.Ver26.01 [Armsmaster]
New Trace: Armsmaster’s Halberd Mk.16C.Ver02.01 [Armsmaster] {NP}: Halberd: A Library of Weapons: While already packed full of functions, there’s a limit on how much stuff a given model of Halberd can physically hold. However, each new model of Halberd is imbued by its creator and through its use with the memory of the weapons and uses held by previous Halberds over the past fifteen years and counting. By spending Prana, these functions no longer present in this Halberd but found in any prior model may be made manifest.

Holy shit, another Noble Phantasm. I mean, you shouldn’t be surprised, it’s tinkertech and Armsmaster is awesome. But this means that, whether or not he knows it, he managed to make a weapon that can literally do more than it can actually do.

On second thought, that’s kind of obvious -- according to every biography of Armsmaster, that’s the whole point of the Halberd. All the other Tinkers have to choose what gear they want to field each day, where Armsmaster just throws it all in his polearm and pulls out whatever he needs.

As you watch, Armsmaster catches Fenja’s or Menja’s sword, whichever of the two it is, between the spear and axe blades of his device. Using the clash as a pivot, he slides inside the amazon’s guard and slaps her shin with the pole of the Mk.16 Halberd. The twin convulses from electric shock, allowing the hero a solid slap on the other leg, compounding the issue and knocking her over. Her twin rushes up to catch her, using the shield to block Armsmaster’s further assault while the one recovers and the both retreat from the fight.

Armsmaster attempts to pursue, but a wall of spikes from nowhere gives the twins time to escape. Kaiser, who was clearly at least present enough to make that, doesn’t appear either, ending the battle.

Armsmaster looks looks slowly around, eventually stopping to stare directly at you. You all but slap your forehead at the realization of your own idiocy. Of course he has night vision and would be able to spot you. Probably thermal vision and a few other modes too, it’s what you’d do. What you can and should do in the future, since you now have access to powered armor that can probably do that.

Armsmaster walks directly towards your position, making a quick gesture with his left hand to indicate to you that yes, it’s definitely you that he’s approaching, not some pile of rubble or something. He’s still over a block away, and he probably has you flagged as a civilian caught in this mess rather than as a potential hostile. You can probably slip away before he gets within easy speaking range of you, or you can stay.

Note: today was Friday/Saturday, March 25/26, 2011
What do?
[ ] You’re not ready to talk to a real hero yet. You haven’t done anything to really earn the name for yourself, and you don’t want to make a bad first impression by fangirling.
[ ] This is freaking ARMSMASTER here! You wore underpants with his crest on it when you were young! Stay and fangirl!
[ ] Volunteer the fact that you have powers and ask what you should do
[ ] Hide the fact that you have powers, but still try to get advice
[ ] Other (Write-In)

 

Oh my gosh, Armsmaster wants to talk to you. To do the whole ‘hero’ thing with you as the civilian he’s protecting. Sure, what you really want is to be in his position, but you’ve been looking up to Armsmaster for your entire life. You’re a little scared that he’ll find out you have powers or something, but getting to stay and squee over a hero in powered armor seems like a reasonable tradeoff for that risk.

You stand as he nears your position. The Halberd and armor are so cool, you can’t wait to try them out later. What’s he going to say, what’s he going to say?

A hatch pops open on the Halberd, ejecting a small object into Armsmaster’s left hand which rapidly expands. Is it a foam grenade? Does he think you’re a Nazi? Have you made some horrible mistake, done something horribly wrong?

“Are you uninjured, citizen?” Armsmaster hands you the teddy bear. Oh. You don’t think you were medically in shock before, but you might be now. “You are safe, now, and do not appear to be physically hurt. Please state any injuries that may require immediate treatment. If none exist, please cuddle the stuffed toy until emergency services arrive.”

This is not the first impression you wanted to make. “I’m fine, actually!” you all but shriek. This doesn’t stop you from cuddling the teddy bear as instructed. It’s wearing a tiny shirt with Armsmaster’s logo on the front. It’s adorable. You’re never getting rid of it. “I, I don’t need any help. I wasn’t hurt. I was just watching you fight the Nazis.”

A light on the hero’s helmet flashes blue. He speaks again, “I would like your name and contact information for the report. You are not in trouble. This is part of a standardized process.”

There’s no reason to lie. You’ve already decided not to run. And truth be told, this is super cool. “Taylor Hebert. I have a cell phone, would that work?”

“Yes.” You rattle off the number. In return, Armsmaster indicates a phone number on the back of the ArmsBear. There’s silence afterwards, which you break. “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.


Sirens grow louder as a PRT-model armored van approaches. Two pairs of troopers disembark and the check the area, then one of the four walks over to you. “Armsmaster,” he greets the hero.

“Sergeant,” he cooly acknowledges. “Please escort Ms. Hebert home. Coordinates have been sent to your GPS.”


Overall, you have mostly positive feelings about the night. You got to check out a bunch of new gear, including a Noble Phantasm. You got to talk to your second-favorite superhero ever, and even got an autograph *and* a souvenir!

You also handed your second-favorite hero a used (but clean!) pair of your panties, gave him your name (and indirectly, address), and got your dad woken up and informed of your nocturnal wandering by a PRT agent. The only thing preventing your total and permanent mortification is the endless loop of the night’s successes you have running in your head to counterbalance it.

Note: today was the night of Saturday, March 26, 2011

What do you want to do today? Pick Three (Two for the day and one for the night, options may be chosen repeatedly, order may matter. You lost an action due to staying up late, sleeping in afterwards, and getting both berated by Dad and getting a delicious breakfast from him in the morning. It was worth it.):
[ ] Go to school It’s the weekend! Hooray!
[ ] Go to the arcade Go to Uber and Leet’s place
[ ] Go to the library and study for your GED
[ ] Get more gear for your power
[ ] Patrol some part of the city
[ ] Other (Write In)

 

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)

 

You’ve always wanted to play a Zelda game. According to the internet, they’re all the rage on Aleph. And after yesterday, ‘like Super Metroid’ is a great way to recommend a game to you.

Daniel gently inserts the cart into the machine, and manages to stay quiet for almost a full ten minutes (you’re freshly out of the sewers, the princess rescued and in hiding) before he starts talking to you about the game. “What do you think so far?”

“Tougher than Super Metroid, I’d say,” you analyze. “I’ve only got the three hearts -- well, four now, each worth two hits. In Super Metroid, I had 100 health per energy tank, so I could take something like ten or twenty hits even before getting more health. I feel like I have a lot less of a margin of error for taking damage.”

“The two games are intended to be played in slightly different manners,” Daniel replies. “They’re both 2D action-adventure titles based around exploration, but the way death works in each is the big difference. In Metroid, if you turn of the game or die, you can only continue from a save station. Here, you restart with an automatic save from the last door you’ve gone through. The only sustained challenges are the dungeons.”

“Like those sewers?” You ask.

“More or less. The proper dungeons are all longer, with bosses at the end and new items inside. The sewers do have an extra heart container at the end and reloading a save brings you back to the start, though, so it’s pretty similar.”

Another twenty minutes of silence from him ends when you get the bow in the first dungeon. “Yay or nay on going for this for the next episode?”

You think as you wander through the dungeon, shooting enemies in their giant eyeballs with your new weapon. “Isn’t this a bit similar to the last one?”

“The focus on melee changes things up, and the trappings of the franchise are completely different. We’d have to focus on something other than the exploration and gradual empowerment, and that’s core to what makes the series actually fun.”

“Majora’s Mask,” Ted interjects from the other side of the room. “The high challenge there is planning how to get everything done within a time limit.”

“Good point,” Daniel tells his friend. “We could avoid repetition by doing a Zelda game in a few eps and we can focus on one of the other games in the franchise to find different kinds of fun.”

“What would I do?” You ask, wandering through the overworld.

“Zelda,” the two boys chorus.

“The MacGuffin?” You ask. “Hell no! I want to do stuff, not sit in a dungeon or a church the whole time.”

“You know what this calls for?” Daniel asks Ted.

“Melee?”

Daniel nods. “We need some Smash in here.” He grabs a prominently placed box and pulls a disc out of it. “Save your game. You’re about to learn that Princess Zelda is awesome.” He puts the disc in a purple cube, presses a button on it to turn it on, and waits for you to finish up before switching inputs.

An orchestral fanfare blares from the speaker as a hand throws a Mario toy through the air. Daniel presses a button on his dayglo orange controller and a voice and title screen announce in tandem: SUPER SMASH BROS. Melee.

Daniel hands you a matching silver controller as he explains the game. “Two-Dee side-view fighting game. Victories by knocking enemies off the edges of the screen. Massive crossover game, primarily among Nintendo’s biggest franchises. Pick Samus if you want. I’m going to show you that Zelda is capable, not just there to get kidnapped.”

He kicks your butt at the game, to the surprise of neither of you. Ted grabs a purple controller for the next round, coming in as some swordsman you don’t recognize called Marth. After you come in last again, Daniel cuts the trash talk to actually explain something.

“Zelda is both one of the top five best character in this game and bottom five worst. I want to teach you a little bit of top tier play with her.” You pick Zelda as instructed. The others wait instead of attacking you once the match starts. “Right now, you’re in the character’s bad configuration. Like this, she’s playable, but she only has one good move. It’s one of the best moves in the game, though. Press Down-B.”

You follow the button combo, and Princess Zelda turns into a goddamn ninja.

“Sheik is normally considered a different character than Zelda, but you can swap between them if you’re inclined towards losing. She’s also solidly one of the best characters in the game, behind only Spacies,” He ignores your look of blind confusion, if he even saw it, “and, depending on who you ask, maybe Marth. She’s absurdly fast, has high priority, and has huge hitboxes on her attacks. All you really need to wreck people with her are fast reaction times. Also, needles, in case you don’t feel like letting anyone recover once they go off the side.”

Daniel has switched to Mewtwo, which you remember from the brief but extensive Pokemon craze of your youth. Like this, the match is a lot closer -- you even manage to kill him once, and you’re pretty sure that you earned it, although Ted helped. Ted continues to wreck you with Marth as well, but it’s a lot easier to dodge with Sheik than it was with Samus. While you still end up in last place, the match ends less than a minute after you’re removed from the match.

“If we did Zelda, we’d handle the big three with me as Link, Leet as Ganondorf, and you Zelda. We could work something out where all three end up on the same side, or everyone working against each other, or some kind of two on one, it really isn’t important right now. The important parts of the planning phase: What would be cool to watch? What would be fun to do? It’ll be a few weeks at least before we do another video. Plenty of time for you to play more and better understand your character beforehand. If you think of anything, just blurt it out, and we’ll figure out what to do with it over time.”


Later that night, you find yourself staring at Lung, and hoping not to see him staring back.

He does.

The broadly built Japanese man turns his masked head directly at your rooftop hiding place for just long enough to clearly communicate that he knows you’re there. And if that wasn’t enough to make it clear, he says something to his minions, who move on without him.

As the gang members leave, Lung stares at your position. As he taps one foot impatiently, you realize that you can either run or fight, but hiding isn’t going to work, and he isn’t coming to you.

You’re terrified, but you remember one very important thing from your cape research. Lung gets bigger and more draconic the more he fights. Right now, he’s just a mundane human. He isn’t growing at all, which means he doesn’t consider himself to be in a fight. Which means that if he changes his mind about fighting you, you’ll have enough time to shoot him first or speed booster your way to safety. Or-inclusive. Run and shoot feels like a good backup plan.

You drop from the rooftop into an easy two-point landing, your suit effortlessly absorbing the shock. Lung speaks first.

“Tinker,” he acknowledges you.

“Lung,” you swallow and, for some reason, correct him. “I’m, I’m not actually a Tinker. I’m just wearing the suit.” My suit, you think to yourself, but manage to refrain from saying. To everyone else, the suit is Leet’s, or maybe Samus’s.

“You were following me,” Lung states. Like it’s a fact, even though you just ran into him right before now. You’d be doubly terrified if you had actually been stalking him, though. “If you fight me, you will lose.”

“I don’t want to fight,” you admit. “But… if you’re going to kill someone, even if I’m going to lose, I’m going to try to stop you. No, even if it’s only for one night, I will stop you.”

Lung emits a strange hacking sound. You tense up to run, but he still isn’t growing. Only after it continues for a few more seconds do you realize that he is laughing.

He finally recomposes himself and responds to your ultimatum. “I was not planning on killing anyone tonight, not even any Nazis, but I do not guarantee their safety, nor their survival. Will you attack me anyway?”

You gulp and crunch the numbers. Right now… nobody is probably going to die, and even if they do, the loss of the most violent members of a racist gang is likely to result in a net gain. If Lung was about to attack heroes, or civilians, or even be on his way to murder, that would be one thing. But as it stands… “Not until you go to kill again,” you confess. “If no lives are at stake, then it’s not yet time to sacrifice myself.”

As the dragon-man turns to leave, you him a question. “Why were you pretending to be a Torizo?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lies smoothly. If you hadn’t been there, you would have believed him. “Perhaps you mistook someone else for me.” He walks away, in the same direction his minions left earlier, as he finishes speaking. “After all, I wear a mask, Hunter.”

Tonight was the night of Sunday, March 27, 2011

You have three day actions and one night action for the next day. Unless explicitly voted otherwise or something special comes up, I’m going to be assuming that Taylor spends the first action slot studying for the GED each day until she takes the test (unless she goes to school, in which case it will be the day’s last action), and the night slot patrolling. This leaves two day slots to vote on. The other two slots are available, but will not be listed in the plan suggestions!

You’ve now been spotted in-costume. You should probably start considering a cape name for yourself. Your powers are still completely unknown, but you might want to tell someone about them eventually. Not a voting thing, just something to keep in mind.

Next Day’s Day Plan (Two votes):
[ ] Go to school
[ ] Study extra for the GED
[ ] You have a paying job now, right? Go play games with Uber and Leet
-[ ] Let’s work on a different game or franchise than Zelda
[ ] Get more gear for your power
-[ ] How?
[ ] Other (Write-in)

 

Today’s a school day! If you can avoid it, you’re never going back. And you can certainly avoid it today, and make the path towards avoiding it even easier if you spend that time at the library. Education is important, and you’re going to make sure you get one, no matter how much your teachers and classmates conspire to stop you.

The books and practice problems you made yesterday have disappeared overnight. Were they even there when you got home? Next time, you’ll check more closely, you resolve. You weren’t caught with it, so no worries for now.

Library time is study time! You’ll spend the morning with loads of (admittedly easy) algebra problems, take an early lunch to recharge, then it’s back to the math. And after that, video games work. You have a job now. Like dad.

Oh wow, you’re going to be a high school dropout. At least the GED will still let you get into colleges.

Library’s quiet this morning. It feels more productive, even if not by much. Factoring polynomials remains easy. You learned this in middle school, how is it a proper test for exiting high school? An entrance exam, maybe. Still, you prove just how easy it is by doing practice problem after practice problem, as fast as you can and perfectly accurate. (GED status: 4/30 study points)

You talk a quick walk around the block while you eat the sandwich you packed, piling your study materials up in the meantime by one of the computers. When you get back, you log on to PHO.


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■​

♦Topic: Super Metroid
In: Boards ► World ► United States of America ► Brockton Bay ► Villains ► Uber & Leet
Uber (Original Poster) (Verified Awesome)
Posted on March 25, 2011:
New video’s up here. Samus really outdid herself. Leet and I are seriously considering having her back on for the next episode. Highlights are the boss fights, of course, but the whole thing is pretty good. We were pleasantly surprised that Samus hit 100% completion -- actually, 102%, since the Torizo encounter was unplanned.


Leet’s just glad the power armor didn’t fail. We’ve been wearing his body armor since the beginning, and the Power Loader was an unarmored strength-boosting exoskeleton, so we were seriously worried the suit would fail during creation. Looks like we’ll be able to re-use it in the future. We’re both excited for Halo: Combat Evolved, and the suit will finally let us do Mega Man. It really opens up a lot of options while we can keep it running.


Please watch the video or buy some merch! ‘9999’ and ‘1337’ shirts are still on sale through the end of the month. After that, it’ll be limited to what we have left in stock. Your support and the ad revenue keeps us in business!
(Showing Page 4 of 4)

► AllSeeingEye
Replied on March 25, 2011:
Samus, if you see this, can you PM me? I wanted to thank you for what you did to the Merchants. They nearly killed me and my friends once. Let me buy you lunch or a beer or something.
​

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4


You’ve already developed fans! Well, at least a fan.Sure, it isn’t under your still non-existent cape identity, but it is for your actions, and that’s what’s important! You knew people would be better off with the Merchants gone, but that still felt great. You decide how to deal with your fan before getting back to math practice. Another day or two like this and you’ll finally be able to move past math you could do in your sleep. (GED status: 5/30 study points)


“Smash Bros or Link to the Past?” Uber asks.

“A Link to the Past,” you respond. Uber proved his point pretty well yesterday. Despite usually being the damsel in distress, the princess can be pretty awesome. Plus she has a bunch of ninja gear that you can’t wait to copy.

“You can take a number of the Dark World dungeons out of order,” He comments as you work your way through the second dungeon. “It’s an important strategy for speedrunning.”

“Don’t you still need to clear them all?”

“Sure, but the critical path through the game can be shorter if you do them the right way. Plus, a lot of the tools help you get around more easily.”

“What about the other Legend of Zelda games?” You ask him. “Can you take dungeons out of order there?”

“Depends on the game,” He analyzes. “Original NES game is pretty buggy. Link’s Awakening lets you sequence break heavily, especially if you use the glitches in the game boy version rather than playing DX. Ocarina of Time? Only through glitches. More recent games like that and Twilight Princess are much more averse to legitimately letting you play through the game out of order.”

“So, that’s not part of what makes it a Zelda game to you?”

“It is, though. Got the Miyamoto quote about it?” Uber says that last part back to Leet, who’s been Tinkering again today while you play.

“Yeah, one sec,” Leet messes with a computer for a minute or so. “When I was a child, I went hiking and found a lake. It was quite a surprise for me to stumble upon it. When I traveled around the country without a map, trying to find my way, stumbling on amazing things as I went, I realized how it felt to go on an adventure like this."

“So, that quote is by the original series dev,” Uber explains. “That’s why the original game has hidden caves scattered all over the world. That’s why some of the games build the map as you go. That’s why Okami is a Zelda game, theming aside.”

“But that’s not the only thing that’s fun with this game,” You struggle to put your thoughts into words. “I mean, I like collecting tools, and how most of them both help you get around the world and help you fight--that’s it!” You realize. “The fights. The challenge of beating or evading a roomful of enemies. Of figuring out how the various tools interact with them, making a plan, and executing it.”

“Physical challenges, puzzles, and exploration, all in a world that doesn’t break suspension of disbelief. Standard high fun, really.”

“High fun?”

“People like things that challenge them, but are still beatable. That push them to their limits and that make them think, that make them grow in order to overcome them. Low fun is electrocuting the pleasure center of your brain. High fun is overcoming a complex challenge by discovering something about it and using your resources against it.”

“How does someone overcome a challenge through a video?”

“They don’t,” Uber explains, “But they can live out the challenge vicariously through it. They can guess at how to beat it and feel exultant if they figure it out first or happy that the protagonist prevented their mistake from happening. If it’s fun for the player, it’ll be fun for the viewer.”


You armor up with your Varia Suit as you head out for another evening’s patrol. You could claim that you’re building an identity with it, or that you’re using it because it’s a complete all-in-one solution for protection, mobility, and nonlethal takedown, but you really just keep using it because it’s your favorite of your two suits of armor. Because it’s yours.

You roof-jump the edge of the Trainyard, looking for people in danger, but tonight seems a lot quieter. Maybe the gang war is already settling down as the two sides agree on new boundaries. Maybe you just guessed wrong about where the fighting would be tonight.

Two helmeted figures pace the street below you, clearly on edge. One turns his or her head in your direction and waves, pointing you out to the other.

Is everyone going to spot you when you do this? Clearly, you need to work on your stealth if you want to avoid being found. Not that being spotted is an inherently bad thing. Meeting more capes tends to be to your advantage, either as potential allies or people you need to deal with urgently.

The cape pulls a board off his back, revealing himself as Kid Win of the Wards. The two get on, both barely fitting, and hover up to where you’re standing. You take the opportunity to scan the board as it approaches -- only a mundane hoverboard, if you can really call a hoverboard mundane. You don’t understand the physics behind it, but the fact that it isn’t a Noble Phantasm is indication enough that it isn’t doing anything truly impossible, just stuff you don’t understand. Being able to create hovering platforms will be convenient and fills a hole in your mobility, but your suit is otherwise a superior option for getting around.

New Trace: Kid Win's Hoverboard [Kid Win]

“Hey, is that Leet in there or the pilot from the video?” Kid Win asks.

“From the video. Leet made the armor, but it was made for me, and it was my using it that made this copy of the Varia Suit notable. It’s mine.”

“Aww, you’re not a Tinker, then?” He pouts. “I wasn’t expecting you to be, but I was still hopeful, you know? Three other tinkers around and two are villains and the last never has time for me.”

“Is it really that big a deal?” Vista buts in. This close, you can make out the forest-green and white color of her costume. Even if you hadn’t recognized that, there’s only two girls on the Wards, and this very clearly isn’t Shadow Stalker.

“It really is. I can barely figure anything out without someone to bounce my ideas off of who understands what I’m talking about.”

“Hey!” You interject. “Uber and Leet aren’t villains. They’re just misunderstood Rogues.”

“Ugh, a fanboy,” Vista mutters.

“No, really! Uber has this whole lecture on how they don’t technically commit any crimes. And also about how someone called Canary shouldn’t be put in the Birdcage.”

“He at least has that much right,” Vista agrees.

“What are you doing out here?” Kid Win asks, bringing the conversation back on topic.

“I have the suit, so I wanted to be a hero.”

“Good luck with that. Tinkertech needs to be maintained frequently, and Uber and Leet are already planning on how they’re going to reuse it next.”

“The PHO post?”

Kid Win nods.

“If something happens, it’ll happen. For now, I can save lives.”

“Good way to think about it.” Kid Win compliments you. “Long as we’re all here, wanna patrol with us?”


The three of you don’t run into any other capes, but you still feel satisfied by the night’s results.

New Traces: Assorted [Kid Win] gear

Today was Monday, March 28, 2011

Name vote is still ongoing!

If you want specific [Kid Win] gear, please note it in the comments!

Next Day’s Day Plan (Two votes, up to two more if you cannibalize morning study or evening patrol):
[ ] Go to school
[ ] Study extra for the GED
[ ] Continue playing games planning with Uber and Leet
[ ] Get more gear for your power
-[ ] How?
[ ] Meet up with AllSeeingEye for lunch
[ ] Other (Write-in)

 

Today is going to be a great day! Today, you will finish studying math so trivial you could have done it years ago, and will only have to endure it again in your studying during your review segments. Seriously, it’s a chore forcing yourself to complete the practice problems, but you are nothing if not thorough, and above all else you don’t want to fail your GED exam.

Dad’s already gone to work by the time you leave your room. Hopefully, he won’t notice that your morning run is rapidly transmuting into nighttime patrol. At least you’re still getting the same exercise -- more, actually, especially when you run into people you can help.

As you ride the bus downtown, you finally remember that your new phone has an internet connection. The only reason this isn’t completely embarrassing is because of just how new it is. It’s okay to learn things.

You navigate to PHO and private message AllSeeingEye. I’m too busy to meet up today, but I’d love to meet up sometime. Maybe in a day or two? By the time the message is sent, you’re already at the library, and then it’s study time until school would let out anyway. (GED status: 6/30 study points!) (GED status: 7/30 study points!) (GED Math segment fully studied!)

Other than completion, the major bright spot of the early afternoon is your slow conversation with AllSeeingEye.

No problem, just let me know when you’ve got the time. No offense meant, but can you do something to prove you were Samus? Something like taking a pic of the armor, holding a sign with today’s date on it? I don’t need your face or anything, or even a picture necessarily, just proof you were the one in the suit. I can give you Leet’s address so you can ask him for the shot.

Actually, I stayed in contact with him after the episode. you message back. I can get the shot later, no problem. Even if Ted isn’t okay with you taking the shot, you can always just Trace it onto yourself at home.


Speaking of which! You text Daniel and Ted as you approach. This phone is actually really convenient. But… you won’t use it when it’s unsafe. There’s no issue using it when you’re just walking or on the bus, but behind the wheel of a car? You don’t drive yet, but you couldn’t do that to anyone your guided kinetic slug might hit.

Daniel lets you into the apartment, but you don’t settle down immediately to get gaming. First: “Hey, apparently I have a fan. Can I take a selfie in the armor for them?”

“Only if we get to be in it,” Ted insists.

You scribble out a 3/29/2011 on some paper and roll the armor towards the bathroom to change. It’s still on its cart for easier transportation. You take a quick selfie in the bathroom before returning to the main room for one with Uber and Leet -- they’re masked by the time you get out. A splitting wedge dangles loosely from Leet’s fingers, matching sledgehammer resting against the wall, while Uber poses for the shot with a brilliantly gilded sword.

The sword....

It’s electroplated, not gilded, your power fills in, as its history rushes through you. Hand-forged by Uber, its complete lack of tinkertech and decorative nature belies its quality. Even though you haven’t unlocked it yet in the game, you instantly recognize it for what it is: the fully-upgraded sword of evil’s bane, and a beloved weapon with which Uber is surprisingly well-practiced.

Link’s Master Sword. New Trace: Golden Sword[Uber/Link]

“You’ve been waiting to use that sword for a Legend of Zelda episode for a while, haven’t you?” You ask.

“Yeah,” He smiles faintly. “We just… haven’t had a good setup for it yet. I wanted to do more than run through the motions with it.”


With that, you settle into gaming, still in the armor. By the end of the evening, you’ve been through all the dungeons, but you refuse to drop into the pyramid and complete the game until you reach 100% item completion. You’ll finish it up tomorrow.


After you change out of the Power Suit, you upload the picture for AllSeeingEye and you text Kid Win, with whom you traded numbers last night. Not that lacking his number would stop you from contacting him: you could just recreate his phone identically to how it was last night and look up the number off it. But that would be really awkward if you messaged him, and it doesn’t matter because you actually have personal numbers for Vista and Kid Win. Well, for their cape guises, at least, but that’s what you want right now. You don’t know it, but your photo is on the top of /v/ by the morning.

You patrolling tonight? You ask. I’d like to do another joint patrol tonight.

The reply is prompt: Not tonight. Want me to ask the others?

Sure.

About fifteen minutes later, he gets back to you. You’re almost home by then. Ugh, it’s just Shadow Stalker on patrol tonight, and she only gets partnered with the grown-ups. Still interested?

You’ve already copied Armsmaster’s gear, and if Kid Win really thinks you won’t enjoy it, you’ll trust his judgement. Besides, more ground will be covered if you don’t patrol with a Ward. If you don’t think I should, I won’t. Just tell me when you’re up again, okay?

I’m not allowed to say when I’m scheduled ahead, but I’ll let you know as soon as it starts.


Once more, you slip out after dinner and take to the streets in your Traced armor. You stick to the border between Nazi and Other Axis Powers territory, catching a few groups of fighting gang members in the act. You don’t directly save any lives tonight, but the city will be safer with more gang members off the streets.

Today was Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Name vote is still ongoing!

Should you tell anyone about your powers yet? (Optional, non-urgent, any number of sub-votes allowed. I just want to understand want the thread wants here).
[ ] No, not yet. Surprise is too valuable to give up.
-[ ] What would cause you to want to tell people? (Optional, write-in)
[ ] Yes, you think it would be useful for some people to know:
-[ ] Dad deserves to know the risks you’re taking.
-[ ] Uber and Leet could work with your powers if they knew. Plus, then you could be a proper partner.
-[ ] Kid Win and Vista deserve to know that you actually have powers. Maybe some of the other Wards or the Protectorate too.
-[ ] Someone else? (Write-in)

Next Day’s Day Plan (Two votes, up to two more if you cannibalize morning study or evening patrol):
[j] Go to school
[ ] Study extra for the GED
[ ] Spend time with Uber and Leet
[ ] Get more gear for your power
-[ ] How?
[ ] Meet up with AllSeeingEye
[ ] Other (Write-in)

 

You’ve been living a lie for too long. You’ve got to tell someone about your powers. Someone you can trust. Someone who goes out of their way to keep you safe and happy. No, not Dad, he’d freak out, even though you’ve been wearing heavy power armor when you go out. Daniel and Ted. Uber and Leet. You need them to know that you’ve been using them for their gear. Only a week and you’ve already come to value their friendship so much that you can’t bear the thought of something like this poisoning it. They need to know.

They need to know after you study and have a lunch date. It’ll happen! Just later. You pack some extra clothes in place of a lunch before going to the library. You’ll be needing them today. You shoot a text off to AllSeeingEye as you leave: Lunch today?

Mari’s, it’s on me. Oh hey, she sent a map too! This phone is really neat.

Today you get to start studying something fun! You hope. You mean, you like math, but spending half a week on such basic topics? Hopefully social studies won’t be as bad. Three sessions of civics; one each of US History, economics, and geography; and a final day for an overall review. It’s all interesting stuff, except geography at this level is probably just memorizing places. Which you could probably solve in seconds by scanning a globe and just referring to it as needed. But that’s not for a few days.

As you’d feared, today’s work is at a more basic level than you’re used to, but it’s a new take on the theory of government to you. Put simply, you’d never considered legitimacy as a measure of whether or not something is a government. Prior to Scion’s first appearance, various mafias around the world functioned as a form of unofficial local government, sometimes more powerful than the actual government. If they provide the same services as a government would, and do so via mandatory taxation, are they not a government? Modern gangs, especially parahuman-led ones, do the same thing. What makes the Empire 88 or the Azn Bad Boys not a government in the territory they control? Mostly, it’s a matter of how much competition they have for vital services, how much people acknowledge them as a government, and to what extent they actually provide the services they claim to provide. As police fail to deal with crime in an area, a mafia or gang that can do so gains legitimacy in the eyes of those they protect -- or they can just keep forcing people to buy the ever-valuable service of ‘not being killed’, and be seen as nothing more than what they actually are. (GED status: 8/30 study points!)


Finally, it’s lunchtime! You rush your books to the return cart and dash into the bathroom. There, you change into even baggier than usual clothes, wrap a shirt around your head, and slap a pair of snow goggles over your exposed eyes to hide your identity. And just in case, and because you have a head-to-toe layer covering it, you summon up the Zero Suit under your clothes as an emergency defense layer. Then, it’s off to Mari’s.

Which turns out to be a super-fancy place. If not for the blond-haired girl who flags you down outside the restaurant, you’re certain they wouldn’t have let you in. But money talks, and the maître d is more than willing to ignore the dress code and see you to a booth when AllSeeingEye slips him a Benjamin.

“Hi, I’m Lisa,” She introduces herself properly. “Or AllSeeingEye online, of course.”

“Samus,” You offer. “I don’t have powers or anything, but I also don’t feel super comfortable revealing who I am to a stranger who sought me out, sorry.” She pulls a pad of paper and a mechanical pencil out of her purse and starts writing as you mutter further. “I mean, I’m really excited about having a personal fan and all, I just, you know.”

“Don’t worry about it. I understand trust issues like that. I used to be a supervillain,” she admits, sliding the hotel-sized pad of paper across. I know you have powers, and I need your help to save a kidnapped twelve-year-old. Don’t talk about it, just write as you talk. “Started out with cybercrime against the rich simply to survive. Nothing they’d miss, within the amount the FDIC would cover. Ended up getting caught eventually.”

You barely manage to keep yourself from overreacting, and it’s an effort of will to write while holding a conversation. “How’d you run into the Merchants, then?” What are you talking about? I’m just an ordinary high-school student. You slide the pad back.

“Ended up joining a… I guess you could call us a gang? More like a bunch of friends who happened to be criminals.” I’m basically psychic. You’re obviously lying. And you’ve been patrolling in Leet’s suit. Neither he nor Uber would do that.

What do you want? You scribble, furious.

“Anyway, that was the Undersiders. Went pretty well for a while. We were the masters of the escape, always pulling off the perfect heists and getting away clean.” Like I said, rescuing a kidnapped girl. Dinah Alcott. Mayor’s niece. Recently-triggered precog, taken by Coil for that.

You slide the pad back without writing anything.

“Then we pissed off a dragon, and you know how that kind of thing goes. Bitch was killed a few days ago, and the survivors split up.” Robbing Lung’s casino was a cover for the kidnapping. We didn’t know. We don’t even know how he pulled it off.

“I thought she was called Hellhound,” you comment.

“That’s what the PRT called her, and they have all the PR. She meant it in the literal meaning of ‘female dog’, not the expletive it’s usually used as. Coil’s a Thinker too, but I don’t yet know how his power works. Seems to get information from nothing. Stay out of his interest until you’re ready to act and you should be safe.

“So the lot of you nearly got shot up at least once by the Merchants?” You ask, still not needing to write back.

“More than a few times,” Tattletale tattles. “The Merchants were scum, and I’m glad they’re gone even apart from the revenge. We’d have done it ourselves had we been prepared to hold territory.” He’s forcing me to work for him, or I’ll be shot by his tinkertech-armed mercenaries. Also recruited The Travelers. Has underground bases, but I don’t know where they are, or how to get in or out.

Food arrives, and you realize a flaw in your cunning disguise. Namely, you can’t expose your mouth without untying your mask. And you definitely don’t trust the psychic supervillain sitting across the table from you.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll leave first so you can eat. I really am a fan of your work, though. It’s too bad you don’t have Leet’s armor anymore. You did more good with it than he ever accomplished with all his other gear combined--Shit!” Tattletale interrupts herself as she drops the well-used pad of paper onto her sauce-covered plate. The page full of information on Coil slides off as she pushes the pad to the side with a fork “I needed those notes, too!” She exclaims, spearing the saucey page and some chicken and eating them both. “Now I’ll have to rewrite everything later. Hold on, I’m going to go throw this in the trash.”

Tattletale gets up, and not long after she returns, a waiter brings her a box for leftovers. “I really do need to run,” She tells you. “But there’s no need for you to rush yourself. Seriously, I’m incredibly thankful for what you did. You went above and beyond the call of duty, especially for being pressed into an Uber and Leet video.” She places seven hundred-dollar-bills on the table, two by the waiter and five by you before heading for the exit, talking quietly to herself some more about Uber and Leet and the call of duty as she leaves.


With the supervillain gone, it doesn’t take you long to loosen your headgear, though you still keep it on. People here know you have something to hide, now, so it’s best to keep as much hidden as you can. Also, you pocket the cash she gave you. There’s no reason not to take the money, you guess. If you decide not to keep the probably-stolen-goods, you can just turn it in later, but cash is basically untraceable. And you thought confessing to Uber and Leet was going to be the toughest thing you did today.

Speaking of which, you text them that you’re coming over after you finish your very long lunch, and also that there’s something you important need to tell them. You won’t let yourself hide from this responsibility.

You arrive, are let in, and take a deep breath before spilling your guts. “I secretly have superpowers and I did from before we met and I don’t want you to just think I’ve been using you because I’m not even though your gear makes me stronger I want to keep being friends because you’re the only friends I have now and please don’t reject me I don’t think I could take it.” You bury your head in your hands.

Uber interrupts your misery first. “We knew.” He tells you.

“You what?” You ask.

“There’s been an unexplained second feed on the suit’s helmetcam the last few nights,” Leet explains. “Interior showed it was you, exterior showed what you were doing. We could probably splice it into an extra video if you want.”

“You don’t mind?” You feel like a broken record.

“Original’s still here, so we hardly had anything to complain about, and we did basically trick you into the video in the first place.” Ted tells you. “So, what can you do? Duplicate tinkertech?”

“Duplicate anything,” You explain proudly. “More than just that, too. Can you clear some room for sparring?”

As Uber and Leet get to that in long-practiced motions, you pull out your copy of Uber’s Master Sword. “Can you use the original?” You request.

Uber does so, and it quickly becomes apparent why as you mirror his every motion for the duration of a short spar. “Your power lets you duplicate people’s skills?” He guesses.

“Kinda,” you offer, dropping into a chair, exhausted. “When I copy something, I get its entire history. Not just how it was crafted, but also every time it was ever used. And not used, and everything in-between. Things… remember how they were used, basically. And they want to be used like that again. If I used an unused sword, you would have destroyed me. But with the hours of practice you’ve put into this, I can stand up against you.”

“Why’d you really tell us about your powers?” Daniel asks, dropping into a comfy chair opposite you.

“I guess… I wanted to really be your equal. I mean, nothing I said upfront was untrue, even if it is really embarrassing that I don’t really have any other friends anymore. I don’t just want this to be Uber and Leet and some girl who’s barely played any video games but is still helping out to trade views for money. I want this to Uber and Leet and… whoever I am, I don’t know.” You explain more slowly as you catch your breathe. “But I want to be a hero too, and I don’t know if I can do that with the two of you. And if I’m going to be copying your gear, not telling you just seems wrong. I should probably tell everyone else I’ve been copying from too, at least eventually, but they’re not my friends.”

Leet turns to Uber. “Second playlist?”

“Second playlist.” He confirms.

“Second playlist?” You inquire.

“We’re cool with you hero-ing with our stuff. But we want to film it. We’ll stick it on the Uber and Leet and Copy-Girl channel on a different playlist from the main stuff, and you still get a cut of the money.”

“That’s a terrible name,” You tell him.

“Kirby!” Leet corrects. “It’s the perfect choice!”

“We’re not named after characters, though.”

“Emulator?” Leet suggests.

“Do I get to decide at all?”

“Eh, sure,” Uber tells you. He shows you a controller as he turns on Smash Bros. “Copy this and play as whoever. I want to have an actual challenge today.”

Leet sidles over and grabs another controller, and for the first time all day, you finally relax.


You call Dad on your cellphone and tell him you’re having dinner with friends as Uber orders two pizzas on his. You’re a little sad to stop playing as it gets late, but duty calls. If you’re too late to save someone tonight because you were playing video games, you’d never forgive yourself.

“I’m here,” A familiar, expected voice sounds inside your helmet. “I won’t run overwatch for you every night, but I want to make sure you know what you’re doing, at least. Want to fight some Nazis?”

“Okay,” You let Uber know, running helter-skelter as your Speed Booster charges up. “Got something to throw on the map?” You leap into the air, flying towards the Empire’s territory in a sped-up Space Jump.

“Halbeard’s fighting Stormtiger and Cricket,” an icon blinks on your mini-map.

“Halbeard?”

“He has a halberd and a beard. What does he expect to be called?”

You drop out of the sky, surprising everyone on the battlefield as you crash into Cricket at speed. She slams into and through a building as almost all your momentum is transfered into her.

“We really should have thought about how Speed Booster basically turns you into a Kinetic Kill Vehicle before giving you that powerup,” Uber complains. “At least we remembered the sonic boom.”

Armsmaster adjusts easily to your entrance, though he appears uncertain as to whether you’re a friend or foe. You offer him a thumbs-up with your non-cannon hand as you starting shooting ineffectually at the remaining Nazi cape, who avoids your shots when the wind pushes them off-course. Weird, the environment never affected your aim in the games. Unrealistic, or just Leet unable to make the cannon completely faithful? There isn’t even a stun setting in Metroid, so maybe that’s what’s causing the issue. You’re so lost in thought that when he charges at you, hands open as if they were claws, he scores a clean hit. Claws they certainly seem to be, as he manages to drain a good 30 energy from your suit without even physically connecting.

“Ironically, your best bet for taking him is melee,” Uber advises. “You probably shouldn’t pull out any other weapons if you can avoid it. There’s value in keeping your true power secret so you can surprise a stronger enemy in the future.”

Which leaves you two options on the suit for non-arm-cannon melee. Option one: you punch with your hand-hand, missing wildly as he slides back, leaving him open for option two, which you blatantly copy from your earlier melee session: Grapple Beam to grab him, and then you violently slam him into the ground. Armsmaster takes the opportunity to jab the downed villain with the Halberd’s haft, and Stormtiger promptly stops trying to get up and collapses back onto the ground.

Amsmaster nods companionably to you, confirms Stormtiger is still down, then checks the building for Cricket. While he’s busy, you run off at top speed. You’ve seen how you act in front of your hero, and you do not want to do that in your first costumed meeting. Besides the embarrassment, he also might recognize you. Maybe next time you’ll work up the courage.

The rest of the night goes similarly, though you don’t meet any more capes, as Uber finds targets for you and you alpha strike them and call the police. At his insistence, you call it a night early and head home.

Today was Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Name vote is still ongoing! This’ll probably be the last week it’s open.

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

 

Another weekday, another study session at the library. Yesterday wasn’t too bad, what with the interesting lens you hadn’t considered, and today ends up being the same. The study guide covers United States citizenship and democracy, but it talks about democracy in the historical context of how it arose in contrast to earlier governments. On the surface, that’s reasonably straightforward: ties to the league of the Iroquois and ancient Athenian democracy as reinterpreted through the lens of the Enlightenment, you know the story. That would have been the end of things had you not gotten curious about why the word ‘monarchy’ is so similar to the word ‘democracy’, and from there you ended up spending most of your morning looking up comparative governments both linguistically and in practice online. The lens of legitimacy you discovered yesterday ends up being useful again. It seems that in practice, people are more willing to listen to governments if they can participate in them in some form, even if it’s just by voting for a representative candidate who ultimately loses an election. Most remaining autocracies, like those in Africa run by cape warlords, retain their power despite excluding the populace from contributing in government. And with said populace increasingly developing powers they can use to fight back, the entire continent is increasingly tumultuous. Interestingly, it seems like powers are occurring at a higher rate in Africa, even after adjusting for population, mapping better to crime rate or the rate at which governments are overturned. (GED status: 9/30 study points!)

You barely manage to finish your practice problems before lunchtime, at which point you promptly ditch the library for the fun part of your day. You wolf down a sandwich en route to Uber and Leet’s place. It’s Uber and Leet’s place right now, not Daniel and Ted’s, because you’re going there for power-related purposes. You’re going to start experimenting like you probably should have already.


A groggy, semi-caffeinated Uber lets you in, not that you strictly need to be let in. You could just make a key to let yourself. But that would be rude, and potentially very awkward when they woke up if they didn’t know you were going to be there. Point is, he’s awake, for certain values of awake. You fill him in on what you’re going to do as you close the door behind you.

“So there’s some other things I can do besides make things. I haven’t gotten around to figuring out how they all work yet, so I was gonna mess around with some of that stuff to see what I can do,” You ramble.

“‘Kay,” Uber grunts, motioning you over to the still mostly-cleared zone from yesterday’s spar.

“Oh, and I should warn you. The only other time I ever tried using this, I ended up making a metal knife explode. So you should probably stay back or wear some armor or something.”

He leaves the room, giving you a chance to get started. You pull a knife out of thin air and start messing with it. The first and only time you tried Reinforcement, the knife you used it on started out by getting sharper. That’s an actual, physical change. Which means you might be able to make other changes. You try making the blade longer.

And it works.

You now have a long knife. Well, a knife that’s longer than it used to be. Not really a proper long knife.

So you turn it into one.

And you know what? While you’re at it, this steel is incredibly poor quality. So many impurities. Why not just remove them? You push with your power, and everything but the carbon and iron just melts away. The remaining two elements align themselves into perfectly crystalline carbon steel. Then you remember that rust exists and put the chromium back in, aligning it like the carbon.

You finally snap out of your fugue and take a good look at what you’ve made. Both in material and shape, you’re left with something that barely resembles what you started with: what was a cheap chef’s knife a scant few minutes ago is now a ruggedly-built shortsword, of solidly middle-grade steel.

Then you remember that you have literal Nazis in town, and some kind of event early in Hitler’s reign when he consolidated power called the Night of the Long Knives. You’re not sure exactly what it consisted of, but given that it involved Hitler, it couldn’t have been good. Blushing, you morph the sword into a Napoleonic-era infantry saber.

You have discovered Alteration, the magical art of… altering objects. The bigger the change, both physically and conceptually, the more expensive it is.

Using your altered knife as a template, you create a fresh saber, identical to the one you just developed. Uber returns, armored up, to find you staring intently at the two swords.

“Is this like watching paint dry?” He interrupts.

“Um, so.” You try to figure out where to start. “I can mess around with the properties of items. So I made a knife and turned it into one of those swords. And then I copied that sword to make another one. And now I’m seeing which one disappears first.”

“Gear you create disappears?”

“Yeah. Faster for the bigger, more expensive stuff, too.”

“More expensive?” He parrots.

“There’s this… energy,” You struggle to describe Prana. “I spend it to make stuff or change them. Not for analyzing stuff, though. Or if I do, it’s so cheap I’ve never noticed a drain.”

“And bigger, more complex stuff is more expensive?”

“Especially tinkertech,” You confirm.

“Sounds like mana on a wizard,” Uber analogizes.

“Kind of?” You shrug.

“Can you, like, throw fireballs, then?”

You think for a minute. Maybe if you transmuted the air into a pyrophoric substance, you could remotely detonate things. But you operate at touch range, so you’d need to make a long item, with the explosive at the far end. Maybe project some detcord? It’s only through a lucky stroke of (un)common sense that you opt not to make an attempt in the apartment.

“Probably, but I don’t know how through just spending Prana. If I prepped, I could make a bomb on a rope for basically the same effect,” You suggest, proceeding to explain your thought process.

“But you can create something from nothing, at least temporarily, and turn something into something else. So between those, you ought to be able to do basically anything, assuming it isn’t too expensive.”

You nod along. “I guess. But the Prana cost really is an issue.” You continue into a revelation: “My power doesn’t seem to like working with things that aren’t weapons and armor. And it seems to favor edged weaponry more.”

Uber indicates your swords. “Can you make one of those flaming? Not coated in something that will burst into flame, or constantly make flame around. Make it into a flaming sword. Like something from a high fantasy story.”


It takes all the Prana you have left, but you manage to pull it off, somehow. You watch, half-dazed, as Uber picks up the sword and swings it experimentally. Once, twice, and then it’s gone.

He nods in understanding. “Didn’t last long, and you look pretty wiped. I see what you mean.”


You don’t even realize you’d passed out until you wake up again, now on the couch with a pillow under your head.

“Shit, what time is it?” You panic, sending your new phone flying as you try to pick it up.

Uber barely looks as he catches it, gently tossing it back onto your torso. “You were out for two hours.” He pauses the game and moves his chair to face you. Leet grumbles as he follows suit. “Probably best not to do that again.”

“Yeah, I figured,” You gripe. ‘Don’t make yourself pass out in the field’ seems pretty obvious to you.

And then you jolt upright as you remember the next thing you wanted to try today. “I wanted to help with your gear!” You all but shout. “I can physically analyze anything, and I can make anything I can analyze, and I get the memory of use, so I was thinking I could copy Leet’s tools and use it to make more copies of things Leet’s made before.”

“Do you get perfect muscle memory of everything something’s done?” Leet asks, curious.

“More like the kinds of things it’s done?” You questioningly respond. “Maybe some sequences of movements?”

“Like a sword-swing or a wavedash,” Uber concludes. “But it was still based on your sense of timing and your choices, except when you were really getting in the flow.”

“And Tinkering is about more than flow,” Leet grumbles. “There’s the ideas, and the impossibilities, and so much more.”

“Reverse-engineering something to make more of it might be a better starting point,” Uber concludes. “And it’s probably better for you to just rest for today.”

“But I want to patrol later,” You insist, but Uber isn’t hearing any of it.


In the end, your insistence wins out, but only after agreeing to use the original copy of the Power Suit tonight. Which is fine by you, even if it means you’ll need to stop back at Uber and Leet’s place to return it. Except not having Speed Booster for transportation in the middle of the night means you can’t really sneak home from across town, which means you’ll have to call dad and ask for permission for a sleepover. Unsurprisingly, he’s okay with it.

You spend the evening sneaking around the abandoned trainyard with the X-Ray Scope on, but can’t find any clues to where Squealer’s lab is. You don’t even spot any other capes or mundane crime! Really, the whole evening seems to have been a wash. Maybe you’ll have better luck next time. Both for supplies and for copying whatever she has lying around, this seems like a worthwhile endeavor.

Today was Thursday, March 31, 2011

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)

 

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.

 

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)