Charm Learning Shard (Worm/Exalted) (COMPLETED)

With a pair of throwaway murderous scrubs bringing the Slaughterhouse back to 8 members, recruitment standards become somewhat more stringent, more elaborately ritualistic - circumstances permitting.

Usually they'd celebrate the beginning of a recruitment drive by culling the excess cape population of the city. But Stafford has exactly three capes, two of which have already been set aside for use as props during the recruitment of the third. So they just round up and murder a bunch of random civilians instead.

(Three is actually a ridiculously high number for such a small town - easily 3 times the capes per capita of Brockton Bay in its prime)

"You're not playing with the other children," Jack observes, sitting down next to you at the edge of killing fields. Now that you're doing proper Slaughterhouse stuff again, your murder-reticence has become more obvious.

"Not much point, is there?" you say with a shrug. A mind-hand shoots out to murder a token innocent. Your conscience is clean, Siberian would have caught him in another second or two. Siberian turns around to glare at you, but on seeing you in conversation with Jack she just huffs and sets off after another victim.

"I notice you're not partaking either," you say. "So I'm guessing you feel the same way."

Jack flicks a knife beam to disembowel a young woman in the same off-handed manner you did. "Perhaps I just enjoy seeing the kids have fun."

"Oh please," you scoff. You gesture at where Shatterbird is experimenting with different ways of flaying people alive. "Just one look at Shatterbird proves that to be a lie. It's painfully obvious what she wants from you, and equally obvious that you're not giving it to her." You turn around to look him in the eyes. "Erectile dysfunction in a man your age usually signifies a fundamental unhappiness with their current lifestyle."

Jack looks absolutely stunned for a moment. Then he throws his head back and laughs. He laughs and laughs, slapping his knee as if you'd just told him the funniest joke in the world. You can't quite keep an answering grin off you lips, the sheer intensity of his mirth contagious despite everything.

Jack wants to leave a legacy that lasts forever.

Still chuckling, he gets up and walks into the killing fields. Victims and murderers both get out of his way as he walks, and he acknowledges the presence of neither. He stops beneath where Shatterbird is hovering and gestures for her to approach. When she does, he gently removes her mask. You see her lips starting to form a question before he grasps her face and pulls her into a kiss.

She goes rigid with shock for a moment, but quickly rallies and enthusiastically kisses him back, the glass of her costume sliding aside to let her rub her body against his. You'd give her a thumbs up, but you're all out of thumbs. Her glass wings bend down to enfold them both, gathering them up and carrying them away.

You allow yourself a small smile. He laughed so hard because his power told him that you goading him towards Shatterbird was part of your plan to kill him. Somehow. How could he not go along with it? So far your ongoing betrayal is providing him with excellent entertainment.

---

You lounge on the couch as the rest of the S9 trickle in, covered in gore.

"Anyone carrying any glass?" you ask. "Electronics? I'd get rid of it if I were you."

"Why?" Bonesaw asks. "Shatterbird already sang."

You gesture at the center of the table, where you've placed a single shard of glass and taped down an upturned wire mesh colander over it. The shard vibrates against the table, occasionally flying this way or that to bounce off the walls of its cage.

"Shatterbird is a bit distracted right now, and not entirely in control of her actions."

As if on cue, a loud feminine moan comes from the other room.

Bonesaw immediately claps her hands over her ears, her cheeks turning pink. "L-lewd!"

"Yes! Yes! Don't stop!" Shatterbird cries out, heedless of who she might be traumatizing.

Bonesaw stomps her foot in anger. "Jack is being a bad daddy!" she declares loudly enough to be heard through the door. "Innocent ears should not have to hear that sort of thing!"

Shatterbird responds with a drawn-out mantra, interspersed with gasps and punctuated by a wordless, ecstatic scream. "أتعهد بصدق وإخلاص أن أكون لك زوجة مطيعة ومخلصة"

You have no idea what that means, but the punctuation is enough to send Bonesaw fleeing back outside, hands still clamped over her ears.

---

Damsel of Distress is a comedy villain, sort of like Uber and Leet were. And sort of not, because a quick interview reveals that she has the same soul price as Aisha: She wants to be respected and feared. The comedy stems from how earnestly she tries, and how abjectly she fails.

'Haha, the look on her face when she accidentally blew up the loot from her heist!'

'Remember when she started crying halfway through a cape fight and the heroes stopped and bought her a cup of cocoa?'

Hilarious, no? Now imagine what that feels like from inside.

A lot (but far from all) of the blame can be placed on her power. She fires blasts of spatial distortions that... well, that can do anything from lightly muss your hair to turn your skull inside out, completely at random. It doesn't exactly help that she can't aim for shit, or that she tends to suffer from power incontinence whenever she's stressed or excited.

Attached to a slightly less incompetent person, it would make for a terrifyingly unpredictable threat.

"Anyone who's a fan of Damsel of Distress can come with me instead," you announce to the roomful of raw materials Bonesaw has gathered. She appears to be trying to develop her own version of containment foam, and has moved on to the human testing phase. It seems to be containing people quite well, even if she hasn't quite gotten the 'breathable' part down quite yet. Or the 'not flesh-melting' part.

"Who're you?" someone asks.

You shrug. "I'm not Bonesaw."

"I'm a fan!" "I love Damsel of Distress!" "Me too!"

"Your username and password at dodfanclub.com, please," you tell the first person to arrive in front of you.

"Uh..."

"Mine's MisterMysterious!" A young man shouts from behind him. "Capital M's, no spaces! Password is 123465!"

You write that down, but you're going to have to travel to the next town over to find out if he's telling the truth. Shatterbird is hell on internet access. "I'm going to send you back to Bonesaw if you lie," you warn everyone present, "and tell her you've been extra naughty."

---

Damsel's face is streaked with tears, and she's clearly favoring one leg as she walks. But on seeing you she squares her shoulders and grits her teeth, clearly ready to take this recruitment test seriously. It makes her smarter than you, in certain respects.

"This is your fan club," you tell Damsel.

"Do I have to... kill them all?"

"That's up to you. Do you read dodfanclub.com?"

"No. They're..."

"They're a bit mean, aren't they?" you say. Damsel nods.

You gesture towards a kid, about ten years old. Username BigRedPants, page one of your printouts. "'Lololololol,'" you read in a monotone. "'Worst villain evar. My dad could beat her up - no, my little sister could beat her up lol.' Another post: 'I think they don't throw her in jail because they want someone to laugh at.' Another: 'No, I think she's smarter than a goldfish lol. If the goldfish is dead lolololol.'"

Damsel advances on the kid.

"No, please! I was wrong! You're a great villain! You're really scary!"

"You really think so?" Damsel asks, more hopefully than menacingly. The kid nods fervently, and pisses himself for emphasis.

"Are you sorry for what you wrote?"

"Yes! Please don't hurt me!"

"Well if you're really sorry, I shall... spare you?" The statement turns into a question, as she looks at you for confirmation. You shrug in response. Up to her.

She rests a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Yes, I'll-" That's when her power goes off on its own, as it's wont to do, and the kid's head turns inside out with a blorp. There are screams of terror from the audience. Damsel stands there blinking in shock for a few moments, before bending over and throwing up.

You give her a moment to gather herself as her heaving gives way to crying.

"Ready for the next one?" you ask.

To her credit she stands up, wipes at her eyes and snorts to clear her nose. Everyone cringes away against the far wall as she raises a shaking hand. "What did he write?" she asks, pointing at the young man who went by MisterMysterious.

"'I love her, she's so cute. I love her silky hair and that little frown she makes when she's concentrating on something.'"

A small smile creeps onto Damsel's face, and she bashfully looks away. MisterMysterious, meanwhile, is pale and shaking. He remembers writing that post.

"'She ain't got much in the way of tits,'" you quote further, "'but I'd love to shove my dick between those pouty-'"

With a scream of rage, Damsel blorps... the woman standing next to MisterMysterious, because she can't aim for shit. The woman collapses, bleeding and screaming but still alive.

"Aw, you didn't let me finish telling you how much he likes your hair. Did you know that 'hairjobs' were a thing?"

"Shut up!" Damsel keeps blorping things until MisterMysterious is dead and all the screaming has stopped.

"Please!" Another young man throws himself on his hands and knees in front of her. "Please have mercy!"

Damsel looks at you, and you shuffle your printouts to the proper entry. "Ah yes. He doesn't talk much shit, but his signature is 'PM me for pics of the Western Exchange Wardrobe Malfunction.'"

"I'm sorry! I'll never jerk off to those again! Don't kill me!"

Blorp

"As for her-"

Blorp

"Oh dear. She just wanted to bake you cookies and cuddle you until you joined the heroes."

Blorp blorp blorp blorp

---

Jack gives you a strange look. He knows you're a traitor who doesn't subscribe to the Slaughterhouse 9 ethos. Yet your test for Damsel was exactly the kind of gruesome anti-psychiatry a true believer would come up with. He approves. And he has no idea why you did that.

No wonder he can't figure it out: You had no ulterior motive. You genuinely felt bad for Damsel and wanted to help her. To let her be feared and respected as a true member of the S9, however briefly.

---

Murder Rat is done. You can't teleport. Ergo, you must be able to inflict terrible wounds. But how the hell are you going to test that without either doing something morally indefensible or tipping off the S9 that you're getting new powers?

(You can, in fact, inflict terrible wounds)

You got that power just in time too, because less than 24 hours later you find out that Jack's power doesn't quite have the range and reaction time to warn against threats approaching in supersonic aircraft. And also that he's somehow managed to piss off Dragon to the point that the scary Canadian is conducting military operations on foreign soil. RIP Murder Rat, taking one for the team by teleporting in front of an incoming missile. It was well past her time.

In Jack's defense, as soon as he realizes what's going on his Thinker power lets you pull off 8/9ths of the most bullshit fucking escape ever. RIP Genoscythe, dissolved into nothing by some sort of flesh-eating tinkertech fog (nanomachines?). He died as he lived, committing pointless atrocities.

But the most interesting part of the encounter is the glimpse you catch inside the cockpit of Dragon's aircraft. Too far away to make out faces (masks), but you'd recognize those powers anywhere. This changes everything.

It also puts you on one hell of a timer, even if Jack's being more careful now. Good thing you got a head start on Siberian's power during your initiation.

---

You suppose this is a good news, bad news kind of thing.

Good news, despite knowing the truth about Siberian, despite having to sneak off to covertly peek on Tiger Mom (who, as it turns out, is really a Tiger Dad) to fully understand the power... some part of your brain still thought of her as a Brute. Specifically, the part that (probably) subconsciously shapes the expression of your copied powers.

Because as far as you can tell, instead of a Master power you now have a Brute power even stronger than Lung's. Gazing into your soul and comparing the two, they definitely share a lot of 'target own body' circuitry. And turning into an unstoppable force yourself is obviously a lot better than summoning an unstoppable ally.

Bad news, just like Lung's it refuses to activate on its own. It had better fucking trigger on pact-sealing, once you're in a position to seal pacts without blowing your cover.

Spoiler: Dragon-o-vision

"I found this security footage," Colin says. "It's rather gruesome, but you should see it." He addresses this last statement to Imp.

"'s fine," Imp says. "Already puked my share today." Pierre rubs her shoulders comfortingly. She's by far the most sensitive of her team, but she has been getting better at keeping her food down as we comb through the aftermaths.

There's no sound, but the black-and-white footage shows Poltergeist dancing in front of an audience of crying hostages. Her mind-hands twirl about in hypnotic patterns to accompany her physical movements... and every so often, they reach out to grab a member of the audience and loft them above her head. With the same graceful, sweeping motions they are cut open, showering Poltergeist in their blood.

"Tell me again how she hasn't turned," Colin says.

Imp shakes her head in denial. Then something seems to occur to her. "Wait, go back. No, further back. Not that far. Gah, just give me the remote."

After some scrubbing back and forth, she settles on the frame she wants. She points at the blood spray suspended in the air. "There. That's a letter. She's sending us a message!"

Colin scoffs, but I realize that I recognize the symbol: It was present on Smith's paper strips.

"What language is that?" I ask. I did send a message asking Myrddin about it, but he never got back to me.

"Language?" Imp says. "It's English, just with different letters. That's an 'S'. Hang on." She steps forward through the video. "That's an I. B. Sib- sibp... sibpr... don't puke, don't puke ...sibproj? 3... 0... 8... B... D... bdlu?"

She stops the video and turns to face the rest of us. "It says 'sibproj three hundred and eight bdlu,'" she announces.

"English," Colin scoffs. "You're making this up."

"If I was making it up, I'd invent something that makes sense!"

"She's not making it up," I say. I recognize every single letter, if not the numbers. With her partial translation, I should be able to finally discover the contents of Smith's... incantation? With such a simple substitution, it takes barely a millisecond for my decryption module to return its result.

Error code 8001: NO MATCH

Oh. Examining the detailed output, it's clear that Smith's message was not in English, or any other known language. But then, neither is 'bdlu'. Do we need to track down Smith to translate the message? He didn't respond when I sent him the report on Smaug's performance in the Leviathan fight, nor has he been answering his phone. His phone that is an integral part of his costume. I'm starting to fear the worst.

"Did Poltergeist know Smith?" I ask.

"In the biblical sense? Probably." Ghost fails to hold back a snort of amusement at Imp's answer. Oh dear. How old is Poltergeist? Will I have to arrest Smith even as I request his help? "She has this golden amulet - no idea what it does, but I'm pretty sure it's Smith's work."

"Do you have any way of contacting Smith?" I ask.

"Nope."

"This is a waste of time," Colin says.

"You shut up!" Imp shouts. "It means something! sibproj... sibproj... Sib... Siberian? Proj... ection? Siberian is a projection!?"

Even as she speaks, my own pattern recognition module throws up a result. "308 BDLU is the license plate of a white panel van registered to Georgios Sopka of Tallahassee, Florida." A swarm of web spiders are sent out, and quickly return with results on that name. "Georgios died in the S9 attack on Tallahassee in 2004. No change in ownership has been registered since then, nor has the vehicle been listed as destroyed. Stand by." Other subroutines start going through years of traffic camera footage from all over the country, looking for a match.

"The Siberian drives around in a child molester van?" Pierre says dryly. "You learn something new every day."

"Traffic cameras put the van near Houston in September 2006, and Phoenix in March 2008," I report. "And Boise in June 2009. Statistical modeling shows 82% probability the van has been shadowing the movements of the S9."

"Hah!" Imp says, pointing a finger at Colin. "Told you she was on our side!"

This is invaluable intel. I send to Colin. Will you finally admit that bringing Bitten along was worth it?

"We just watched her kill 14 people in cold blood," Colin says.

"Yeah, and we barely understood her message!" Imp counters. "If she'd turned evil, she'd have used more letters."

---

It's a typical lazy afternoon in the Slaughterhouse Nine. Jack is napping on the couch. Siberian is giving Bonesaw a piggyback ride, round and round the house on noiseless feet. Burnscar is playing with a lighter, because of course she is.

Shatterbird is reading. Something thick and Russian, though you don't recognize the author. Literature for people who consider Dostoevsky to be for scrubs. You and Damsel are having tea. Your three mind-hands maneuver the teapot and both cups, since neither of you have regular hands up to the task - Bonesaw fixed her power incontinence and aiming issues by turning her fingers into 3-foot long power-guiding antennae/claws.

Skinslip is doing his thing, flaying the original inhabitants of the house alive and attaching sheets of their skin to himself. Now there's a power you have no interest in copying. A more classic example of the Slaughterhouse 9 genre, not just inherently evil but also incredibly gross. It's not even an unbounded growth power like your own or Dauntless's (RIP Dauntless), because the extra skin keeps rotting and constantly needs to be replaced.

Other than him, though, it's a strangely normal/idyllic scene. A side of the S9 most people don't see (because they're all dead). A discerning eye could pick up all kinds of detail not commonly known.

Take Jack, for example. Not quite as deranged a novelty-seeker as the one he plays on TV, for such a man could not nap so contentedly. The patriarch of your little band, and not just in the leadership sense. A family man living in well-worn grooves, on some level aware that he could just leave it all behind, yet ever choosing not to.

Siberian, the mom to Jack's dad. The most shameless pervert you've ever heard of (not just the exhibitionism, but also her fetish for hunting people down and eating them raw), yet she handles the shards of Bonesaw's cracked innocence with motherly care. And isn't that a chuckle, when you know what's behind the mask?

Burnscar? ...yeah, no. That one, at least, has no more depth than a sheet of paper (the paper is on fire).

Shatterbird genuinely does enjoy her literature, which is not to say that she doesn't enjoy the feelings of smug intellectual superiority it provides just as much. She would be quite wroth if you were to ever bring up the blushing, lovestruck young bride beneath.

Poor Damsel of Distress, so desperately insecure. It's not an inferiority complex if you truly are inferior. She still considers joining the S9 to be the best decision she ever made, and the saddest thing is that she's probably right. Though it's an open question whether she'd have made it if her recruitment had involved more than 0 competitors.

And you. You suppose it says things about you as well, that you fit in so readily despite not being a psychotic murderer yourself.

Then Siberian disappears. Bonesaw falls to the ground, but considering how much cybernetic reinforcement she's packing, it probably hurts the floor more than her. You still rush towards her, a look of concern on your face. The sound of an explosion reaches you before you arrive.

Yep, it's go time. Faultline's amulet materializes around your neck. "Are you all right?" you ask, reaching out a stump to touch her. The instant you make contact, you heal her mind.

She reacts the way any mentally healthy 12-year-old would react to realizing that they were Bonesaw all along: Helpless despair. She curls up in a fetal position, letting out a long hopeless wail as she remembers everything she's done from her new, sane perspective. Everything she enjoyed doing. And like that, the only person with access to your spinal control harness is taken off the playing field.

You throw yourself to the side, barely avoiding the invisible knife edge that gouges the floor where you were crouching. The sleeper has awakened, and he is not amused.

Jack stares at you for a long second, and you calmly meet his gaze. His secret Thinker power and yours jostle against each other, closing off potential futures as they race towards inevitability. He will know everything you're going do before you do it. You will know everything he knows as soon as he learns it.

You can't beat him. You both know that already. But you can survive for quite a while, if you give up all thought of offense. If you form no intention for him to grasp, and merely react to his initiative. You'll lose eventually, that much hasn't changed. But your backup is coming. He doesn't know how much time he has before they arrive, because you don't know either.

He knew this day was coming, of course. He let it happen, because he didn't know what form your betrayal would take, and he is almost as deranged a novelty seeker as he pretends to be. Well, your opening move just took out his two most important pieces. What now, Jack?

He glances around at the lesser members, who are still getting to their feet in varying states of confusion. He knows you did something, another trump card. But he can't tell what, because you genuinely have no expectation of it hurting him, and so it does not affect your potential actions right now. But then why would you do it? What is he missing? Where is the trap?

"Well played," he says. Then he scoops Bonesaw up and jumps out the window. He hits the ground running. You nod to yourself. The prime directive of his Thinker power is to preserve his own life. He's rebuilt the S9 from scratch before, he can do it again.

"Heroes incoming," you shout. "Plan B!" Looking at Shatterbird's face, you can see her heart break in real time. Leaving only Loyalty.

Spoiler: Shatterbird-o-vision, three days ago

"Jack is going to betray us," Poltergeist says.

"He's not," I counter, a flat statement of fact.

"Dragon is hunting us. He knows he can't beat her, so he's going to sacrifice the rest of us to her. Killing us will satisfy her enough to give up the chase. Then he'll lie low for a bit, start over with new people."

I don't even dignify that with a response, and instead try to push past her. She holds out her arm to stop me.

"I have a plan for surviving that," she insists. "I'm doing you a favor, letting you in on it."

"Don't care." Responding to my will, a curtain of glass forms between us and pushes her away.

"Look," she says, sounding exasperated, "let's say the odds are tiny. Minuscule. The vast majority of fire extinguishers never get used, but people keep them around the house anyway. Would it hurt, to have plan for not dying?"

"Fine," I growl. "Tell me your plan B." I know full well it won't be of any use, but if it makes her leave me alone...

Burnscar never figures out what is happening before hundreds of colorful glass shards cut her to ribbons. Bonesaw's armor may protect her vital organs from being perforated, but it doesn't stop all her blood from falling out. And pyrokinetic fire immunity means she's the only person in the room whose wounds she can't cauterize. Meanwhile, two of your mind-hands gouge out Skinslip's eyes even as the third throws a potful of scalding hot tea in Damsel's face. It's over in seconds.

"Now the escaping part," you tell Shatterbird. "Grab my water and meet me in the kitchen."

You scribble a quick note for the heroes, then rush into the kitchen. You ransack the cupboards and fridge for anything edible that will keep a couple of days.

Shatterbird enters, levitating the pallet of dumb overpriced water you stole behind her. You've had her do that before just so you could ride it instead of walking. Another alibi for its true purpose.

"Put that on the table." She does. You pile the food on top. "Now, drop everything. Do not use your power at all."

"Uh..." Shatterbird says, glancing down at herself. Her costume is made entirely of levitated glass, and the only mode of travel she ever uses is flight. She's not even wearing shoes.

"I mean it," you say, and toss her your backpack. "There's clothes inside, you can change later."

The glass crashes to the floor. You rest one stump on her now bare shoulder, the other on the supplies, and activate Labyrinth's power.

---

"You were behind the desert all along?" Shatterbird asks. "Who are you?"

"It's a long story. Luckily, I have five days to tell it." A thought occurs to you. Why rely on one Master power, when you have two? "Would you like some stamina while we walk?"

Spoiler: Dragon-o-vision

I expected a desperate battle. Not an empty house, three corpses, and an invoice.

Yes, an invoice.

Code:

Kill orders executed
 
1x Mannequin (previous delivery) $  8,200,000
1x Burnscar					  $  5,300,000
1x Skinslip					  $	600,000
1x Damsel of Distress			$	250,000
---------------------------------------------
Total							$ 14,350,000
 
Please have payment ready by 07-04-11
 
See you back in the Bay
<3 Poltergeist
 
PS: Don't forget to pay Imp for Hatchet Face.

"Fucking told you," Imp says.

===

Spoiler: Updated status

Charms:
Taylor: All-Encompassing Sorcerer’s Sight, Terrestrial Circle Sorcery
Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price
Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet
Aegis: Ox-Body Technique
Browbeat: Shaping the Ideal Form
Dragon: Implicit Construction Methodology
Kid Win: Industry and Forge Wisdom
Lung: By Rage Recast
Vista: Mind-Hand Manipulation
Cricket: Mantis Form
Faultline: Charm of Lesser Unmaking
Labyrinth: Hell-Walker Technique
Othala: Verdant Emptiness Endowment
Rune: Sometimes Horses Fly Approach
Shadow Stalker: Bloodless Murk Evasion
Miss Militia: Nightmare Fugue Vigilance
Circus: Graceful Crane Stance
Ballistic: Crack the Sky
Crusader: Shell-Cracking Atemi
Purity: Eagle-Wing Style
Flechette: Pattern Spider Touch
Regent: Distracting Finger-Gesture Attack
Bonesaw (sort of): Subcutaneous Armor Plating x3
Jack Slash: Blazing Solar Bolt
Murder Rat: Unstoppable Lunar Wound
Siberian: ???

Spoiler: A/N

"I feel bad about Labyrinth," Taylor's player said. "Are you sure there isn't anything I can do to help her?"

"Fine," the DM relented. "In accord with your subconscious desire, the piece of Cecylene you summoned is a full-fledged Manse, not just a Demesne. It produces a Stone of Comfort, which can temporarily heal mental afflictions. Happy?"

"Thanks, I'mma weaponize that!"

Spoiler: Taylor-o-vision, later

It doesn't fucking trigger on pact-sealing.

Spoiler: Contessa-o-vision, just before the missile hit

"You!"

"I'm afraid your vacation is over, Doctor Manton. Door to Containment Area 5B."