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Here's an idea, that Taylor go to some of the quarantine zones to kidnap the parahumans that are there or go to some of the cities that have fallen under the total control of the villains.

I remember a story where it is mentioned that Las Vegas is full of villains. (although I'm sure there are more cities that aren't mentioned in canon.)
 
She's not going to use it because Snuts has a rule about canon parahumans, but there were no canon characters from Glaistig's cellblock except Bakuda, who had obviously been butterflied away.
Heh, then it could work three ways. The Doylist mechanics limitation, the Watsonian trauma, and an extension of the gag about the guy with truth-telling powers immediately getting whacked when he crossed the thin blue line.

Also, could be foreshadowing that Taylor will Yozi charm herself into something not dissimilar from the Ebon Dragon. so making anything communicate any truth is somehow spiritually inimical to her.
 
Here's an idea, that Taylor go to some of the quarantine zones to kidnap the parahumans that are there or go to some of the cities that have fallen under the total control of the villains.

I remember a story where it is mentioned that Las Vegas is full of villains. (although I'm sure there are more cities that aren't mentioned in canon.)
Bitn already proudly proclaimed to follow kill orders, so they could officially go on tour. (And their members are clearly psychopaths so she wouldn't even have to hide her leftovers, though would be wise to pulp them a wee bit.)
 
quick qn :doesn't adorjan give a charm that allows you to turn bodied into wind and consume them ,would that combo with soul consuming transandance or not ?

I'd allow it.

Well. That was horrifying. Genuinely felt sick to my stomach and almost wanted to cry. I wanted to give Taylor a hug and tell her that she doesn't have to do this.

No, no, you should be happy! You wanted abyssal charms, and look, she has the Dark Messiah capstone and the Hungry Ghost capstone. You even get a cookie for predicting one of those.

That's a very interesting way to word that considering people were asking questions about if Taylor might have a genuine Exaltation or not.

Is it? Taylor has already demonstrated exalted biology - the not-bleeding, the lethal soak, the resistances... why would lifespan somehow be different?

That's honestly a weird choice, I don't understand why you'd do that on a writing level.

Haha, look at this guy thinking I do things on a writing level.

Also, I'm not sure if this was an intentional joke?

Never crossed my mind.

Part of it was presumably to make a specific point about Taylor's moral character.

The relevant part is this:

You don't even particularly want this one. You're doing this to prove to yourself that you can, so that you can do it again in the future.

She doesn't particularly want his power, i.e. she has no plans for using it, i.e. I have no ideas for writing about it. Scene directions were 'Glaistic Uaine gives Taylor someone inconsequential to eat'. Who? I'll make up a funny OC. What charm? Something that doesn't affect the story. If I had needed more plot-relevant OCs to bring things home, I would have declared a bigger number up front.

It's not that Taylor would mind using his power. I've simply told you that she won't be in a situation where it'll matter, just like I've told you that Blasto will not be showing up.
 
She doesn't particularly want his power, i.e. she has no plans for using it, i.e. I have no ideas for writing about it. Scene directions were 'Glaistic Uaine gives Taylor someone inconsequential to eat'. Who? I'll make up a funny OC. What charm? Something that doesn't affect the story. If I had needed more plot-relevant OCs to bring things home, I would have declared a bigger number up front.

It's not that Taylor would mind using his power. I've simply told you that she won't be in a situation where it'll matter, just like I've told you that Blasto will not be showing up.
Blasto not showing up is normal, the world's a big place. Taylor having the ability to rip answers out of peoples skulls and not using it at least once would be surprising.

Is she going to not pay the 'potential' cost to permanently learn the charm? I guess that would make sense if her expectation of it is a cursed always on truth-telling power that would out her a shapeshifting raping torturing murdering cannibal simurgh bomb.
 
K.09
As you emerge from the sands, you glance up. You cannot see the sky. It appears New Dawn has followed your instructions, and constructed a giant tent roof over the Silver Desert, high enough that it does not crumble into sand. Not that any rain ever hits the desert regardless of the mortal weather outside, but you're less sanguine about satellite imagery. Yes, you're wearing a generic face unrelated to any of your known identities, but if certain people (robots) noticed people walking out of the desert every so often they might start looking for patterns.

Speaking of New Dawn, your arrival has not gone unnoticed, and the nearest edge of the desert is quickly filling up with kneeling worshippers.

"Great Esper foretold thy arrival, honored apostle," the guy in front says. "New Dawn is at your service." He also offers you a robe, because you're currently naked. Not much use wearing a false face if your clothes still have 'Baumann Parahuman Containment Center' printed on them, after all.

You nod, and gesture for him to walk with you as you make your way through the throng. Your awareness sweeps out to cover the entire city - another power of the Butcher, but where she only saw the blood inside people's bodies, you see... everything. In return, it only lets you see into places you personally own - like Brockton Bay.

The irony does not escape you: The moment you decided to stop playing at being royalty, you gained the greatest city lord power in the entire world.

At a glance, nothing appears to be on fire, no capes are present that recognizably shouldn't be... Then again, you can only see the present.

"What crises have occurred in Esper's absence?" you ask your worshipper.

"None, honored apostle."

"None?" you say incredulously. This is Brockton Bay. You were away for almost a month!

"Well, Cryolord came perilously close to the desert once, but we managed to lure him away with food."

Your city-vision hones in on Cryolord for a moment. Still wandering, freezing everything around him as he walks. He's harmless, because in even more defiance of physics than is usual for powers, all living beings frozen by his power thaw out harmlessly after a couple of hours. And, it was discovered, all radioactive matter similarly frozen is transmuted into stable isotopes.

Like many powerful capes he's not quite all there mentally, but after Behemoth's death he decided that the most good he could do in the world would be to wander aimlessly around Brockton Bay with his power on full blast, like a reverse Ash Beast. People generally view him with some mixture of fondness and exasperation, because no one likes radiation, but no one particularly enjoys what having entire neighborhoods randomly frozen does to their schedules either.

You did however give New Dawn instructions to keep him away from the Silver Desert at all costs, because no none wants to find out whether it would view being frozen with fondness or exasperation.

You dismiss the worshipper and start walking across the city. You'll debrief BITN next, because you still can't believe that nothing catastrophic-

A portal appears before you without warning. On the other side, a sterile white room, and a woman in a suit. Mediterranean complexion. Powers. Fedora. You take off flying in the opposite direction before she can even open her mouth.

"Esper-" she begins, before the portal closes and another opens up in the air next to you. "-your services-" another portal, further ahead "-are needed."

Crap. The last portal is just far enough ahead that you have time to slow down and land inside, so you do. It closes behind you.

"Simurgh or Leviathan?" you ask.

"Neither," she says.

Double crap. There never was any reason to think that there were only three Endbringers, was there? No more had shown up for almost a decade... but then they never needed reinforcements before.

"We are still gathering personnel, you have time to change," the woman says. "Door to Esper's costume." A smaller portal opens up, showing the inside of a familiar closet. She politely turns her back to you.

You throw off the robe and reach into the portal, already starting to shift your form into that of Esper. Considering how much she already appears to know about you, you don't know why you bother to dress up. A morale boost for whoever sees you on the field, you guess.

"Are you the one who defeated Lung?" you ask as you step into the leotard. It would be embarrassing if you fled in terror from some other woman in a fedora.

"A strange question for you to be asking, don't you think?"

Ah. That handily answers the question you didn't ask, namely 'Do you know everything about me?' The answer is 'yes'.

"But no," she continues, "it would be more accurate to say that I created Lung, though not on purpose."

Ah, you're talking to Lung's trigger event. Of course he'd want a rematch, now that he has powers. But-

"This does not make you reassess the threat I pose," she notes without turning around. "Smart."

Of course not. Even if she didn't have powers at all, between the portal network and the way her organization is casually taking over the international Endbringer response...

"What's your opinion on Number Man?" you try. "Friend or foe?"

"Oh, Kurt is quite a dear friend." And then she proceeds to once a gain answer the question you didn't ask: "Our organization has, as you would put it, quite the monopoly on world domination plots. The viable ones, at any rate."

You finish pulling on your gloves, and reach into the portal for your baton. "Ready."

Another portal opens, and you both step forth into an auditorium, made up in the same all-white color scheme as the room you just left. Looking around you spot Alexandria, Legend, dozens of capes you don't recognize. The speaker's podium is occupied by a black woman in a lab coat - the only non-parahuman in the room - who nods at you as you appear. "Contessa, Esper," she greets you. "We may now begin."

She addresses the crowd in general. "We have gathered you here to face a new threat to-"

"Who the hell is 'we'?" someone in the crowd shouts. "Who the hell are you?"

"'We' are Cauldron. You may not have heard of us, but for as long as parahumans have existed we have worked in the shadows to ensure the survival of humanity at all costs."

That's not quite how fedora girl - Contessa - introduced their organization. But you suppose that if humanity goes extinct, world domination becomes fairly pointless.

"As for me, you may call me Doctor Mother."

You - barely - manage to keep your face impassive. Okay then. Sure. Nothing wrong with that. If no one else is going to speak up, you too are going to politely pretend not to notice the achievement gap in cape names, and so not piss off the figurehead of the world domination conspiracy.

Your attention is fixed on the video being projected behind her, however. Where the Simurgh brings to mind a twisted angel, the fourth Endbringer is a fat buddha, all in black. A perfectly spherical 'belly', with hips and shoulders almost seeming to be separate pieces. Stubby limbs, adorned with curly claws and spikes trimmed with silver. The face of a demon and the whiskers of a dragon. It floats forward like gravity was a mere suggestion, and three tall, thin cylindrical forcefields circle around it leaving destruction in their wake.

"A fourth Endbringer has appeared - provisionally, we're calling it 'Khonsu.'"

The video (live feed?) shows a flying cape trying to approach, whereupon the forcefields suddenly speed up to catch him. Naught but bones and rags are left in their wake.

"Those are fields of accelerated time," the black woman says. "People caught within them die practically instantly, and buildings crumble at speeds visible to the naked eye. We estimate that the dilation factor is on the order of one year per second."

She fast-forwards the video, showing Eidolon approaching, and attacking with wavy beams of prismatic light. The reds and greens are lost as they travel through the time fields, but yellow-purple beams still bombard the Endbringer. You have no idea what is going on there energy-wise, except Cape Bullshit. It's definitely Cape Bullshit.

The beams cause the superficial wounds typical of Endbringer fights... right up until the monster dismisses its time fields, only to bring them up again covering itself. To outside observers, the wounds regenerate in an instant. Not that all Endbringer injuries aren't mere theater anyway - possibly as a set-up for precisely this moment, and the hit to morale it brings.

"As you all know, Endbringers can fully recover from all injuries in a matter of months," the woman says, blissfully unaware of how much worse than that the situation is. "Or in this case, 0.2 seconds."

Then it vanishes.

"It can also teleport across the entire world, once it accomplishes its objective. So far it has hit Sapporo in Japan, Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan (where this footage was taken), and Puerto San Julian in Argentina." She pauses, then brings one hand to her ear. "We have just received confirmation that its latest target is Khartoum, Sudan."

"Why those places?" someone asks.

"At least it's not Brockton Bay again," someone else says.

"Ahem," Doctor Seriously-You're-Not-Going-To-Call-Her-That says. The view behind her changes to a world map. A yellow line appears, starting in northern Japan, curving down across the pacific to slice the very tip off of South America, then curving up again to neatly bisect Africa and Arabia and going across Asia to rejoin itself in Japan. Then the flat map shifts into a globe, showing that the line does not curve at all, but is in fact a perfect circle.

"So far the targets would all lie on the equator - if Brockton Bay was the North Pole."

Ah. That explains why you did not come back to a crisis: The Endbringers are taunting you.

"We do not believe it will stop until and unless it is beaten," she continues.

"Fuck," someone in the audience says, which opens the floodgates.

"How do we even deal with something like this?"

"Where is Scion?"

"Scion is fast, but he can't teleport."

"Yeah, and he'd get distracted helping people along the way."

"Fuck."

"Esper," the black woman says loudly enough to cut through the hubbub. "If we can prevent it from teleporting, can you strike it down as you did Behemoth?"

Hopeful eyes turn towards you, all expecting the same answer.

"No," you say. There are gasps, and more f-bombs. "In sub-lethal doses, the effects of the Behemoth-Felling Strike fade within a day. All this 'Khonsu' has to do is accelerate itself for a moment between each blow, and it will accomplish nothing at all." You slump as if in defeat. "They deployed a time manipulator specifically to counter me."

You let that that settle in for a moment. Cauldron clearly wanted to let the despair build up a bit before offering hope, so why not bolster their efforts?

"That's why I developed multiple ways to kill an Endbringer," you announce with a defiant toss of your hair. You stand up and look the Doctor straight in the eye. "Prevent it from teleporting, and I will strike it down in a manner entirely unlike how I killed Behemoth."

The room is split between people cheering, and people grumbling at your theatrics.

"You can just develop ways to kill an Endbringer?" the Tinker on your right mutters.

"My sponsors already have developing new flavors of gum covered," you whisper back, playing into Esper's dumb gimmick. "Just keeping up my end of the bargain." By the look on his face, he deeply resents the amused snort you just forced out of him.

"I require some assistance to prepare," you announce more loudly.

The Doctor nods. "Contessa will provide whatever you need."

No sooner has she finished speaking than Contessa is beside you, ushering you into a portal back to the room you got dressed in. Or possibly a completely different room, it's not as if it has any distinguishing features beyond the blank white walls.

"No one from Brockton Bay can join the fight," you tell her.

"Acceptable."

"I also need a cape who doesn't need to eat or drink," you continue. "Preferably with a weak or boring primary power, not a Case 53, signed up for Endbringer fights, English-speaking. In that order."

Contessa nods and portals out. You take the opportunity to shift your form in preparation for what comes next. In less than a minute she's back, along with a lanky man with messy black hair and bags under his eyes. He looks awed but not shocked, so presumably she told him where he was going rather than simply abducting him.

"Esper," he says, inclining his head in greeting. "It's an honor to meet you."

"Yes, yes, no, yes," Contessa says. It takes you a moment to parse that, but you manage.

"You're not signed up for Endbringer fights?" you ask the man.

He looks a bit sheepish as he shakes his head. "I don't- my power, it's not very good. I wouldn't be any help." You just nod in response. Good on him for recognizing that. It puts him ahead of quite a lot of capes you've met in Endbringer fights, brains-wise.

"But if you could give your life to ensure the death of an Endbringer, would you?"

"I, uh- I mean, I'd hope I-" He cuts off his stumbling words, squares his shoulders and raises his chin. "Yes. I would."

"Good," you say, before turning to Contessa. "Kill him."

A shot rings out, deafeningly loud in the enclosed space. You pull down your mask, revealing a mouth full of dragon teeth.

===

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
Jack Slash: Blazing Solar Bolt
Murder Rat: Unstoppable Lunar Wound
Siberian: Void Avatar Prana
Animos: Soul-cleaving Wound
Cuff: Willpower-Enhancing Spirit
Shatterbird: Death of Obsidian Butterflies
Lizardtail: Halting the Scarlet Flow
Butcher: Agony of Unwise Adversity, Watchful Spider Stance, Surprise Anticipation Method, Twisting Spiteful Shaft, Scar-Writ Saga Shield, Loom Stride, Iron Kettle Body, Generalized Ammunition Technique, Terrifying Lust Infliction, Dark Messiah Form, Yeddim's-Back Method, Steadfast Yeddim Meditation, Increasing Strength Exercise, Accuracy Without Distance
Glaistig Uaine: Soul-Consuming Transcendence
Plot-relevant OC #2: Corpse Needs No Food

It's not just that Taylor is protecting her citizens by preventing them from going, she also instinctively understands that her Void Avatar Prana suffers from the Abyssal Compassion Flaw of Invulnerability: It stops working if anyone she gives a shit about is around.
 
Called it with her killing her father earlier and a little further and here we are. This is just a dumpster fire of a completely unredeemable main character but I guess I wanna see how it ends after following it this far. I do not actually like the story anymore.

It's like there was a story at some point, but now its just a gamer fic with a faceless character named Taylor collecting power ups.

——
Actually expecting this to end with her eating/draining the planet and flying in search of more.
 
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Oh my fucking god I thought it was going to just be Transcendent Desert Creature. Fucking Corpse Needs No Food? Really? Guess we're going all in on this new theme. That monkeys paw on the wish for Abyssal charms was worthy of Cecelyne, snuts. Bravo.
 
Taylor: Happily munching away

Random Parahuman No. 473: ... so are we all gonna pretend that she's chewing 'bubblegum' or what?

Alexandria: Unless you can kill an Endbringer, yes.

Random Parahuman No. 473: ... I'm never buying gum ever again.
 
Actually expecting this to end with her eating/draining the planet and flying in search of more.

I've been rooting for that ending for a while.

She has no genuine human connections anymore. She plays pretend with her thralls but they're not really close in a human sense. To use your gamer comparison, all of humanity are NPCs to her.

Eventually Cauldron will give her the flesh garden to eat, after which she'll eat Zion and all of his scattered Shards. Whether she spares humanity or not depends on how convenient it is.

The good news is she still prefers consuming villains and volunteers, so she still has lines to cross.

I fully expect that she will.
 
Taylor has positive intimacies?!?
"Positive" lies in the eye of the beholder. For example: "My minions are MINE!", "Good slaves are good", "I do not hate working with them"

Specifically here: "I always trust (Aishas) notes that suddenly appear in my hand, without any explanation."
This is obviously a very big amount of trust, that Taylor worked very hard to reinforce in the past. It was also rewarded, by the skill and effort her minions put into their service.
 
I've been rooting for that ending for a while.

She has no genuine human connections anymore. She plays pretend with her thralls but they're not really close in a human sense. To use your gamer comparison, all of humanity are NPCs to her.

Eventually Cauldron will give her the flesh garden to eat, after which she'll eat Zion and all of his scattered Shards. Whether she spares humanity or not depends on how convenient it is.

The good news is she still prefers consuming villains and volunteers, so she still has lines to cross.

I fully expect that she will.


Same here, even from the start she was on pretty shaky ground with the Nazis ironically giving her ties, belonging and a sense of community to her otherwise murderhobo/gamer skill set. Jackslash up ended all that and no one really cares about her, just what she can do for them. Her viewing people as a food/power/biomass resource is just gonna grow ever expansive until she sees the world more useful as just another meal.

——-

Cauldron gonna be like, "okay we won, you can stop now". Taylor will be like "lol, lmao".
 
with the Nazis ironically giving her ties, belonging and a sense of community

Yeah and it's kinda sus tbh

"Oh, look how much worse Taylor is now that she doesn't have Nazis to hang out with. Don't you regret hating Nazis now? Looks like you should have taken the redpill, now Taylor is a cannibal murder hobo."
 
If she needed Corpse Needs no Food, then she also needs Breathless Ghost Emulation?
 
Yeah and it's kinda sus tbh

"Oh, look how much worse Taylor is now that she doesn't have Nazis to hang out with. Don't you regret hating Nazis now? Looks like you should have taken the redpill, now Taylor is a cannibal murder hobo."

Absolutely, yup. Snuts is 100% a Nazi, you're right. Always have been right.

... is that enough validation or are you going to keep bringing it up forever?

I don't know what the new charm does, but it sounds like a nice and wholesome one. Can't wait for Taylor to really turn things around as a hero, like Scion. Maybe less hero and more Scion.
 
Absolutely, yup. Snuts is 100% a Nazi, you're right. Always have been right.

... is that enough validation or are you going to keep bringing it up forever?

I don't know what the new charm does, but it sounds like a nice and wholesome one. Can't wait for Taylor to really turn things around as a hero, like Scion. Maybe less hero and more Scion.

From what i understand, it reduces the penalties from starvation/thirst to the minimum possible each day you activate it. OR, you can take it as a 'taint', which means it becomes permanent but "the Abyssal becomes incapable of eating except when he devours others for Essence." Basically she'd have to do rolls to not vomit what she eats, if i read this correctly.
 
Absolutely, yup. Snuts is 100% a Nazi, you're right. Always have been right.

... is that enough validation or are you going to keep bringing it up forever?
Lol, author kills all the Nazis and effectively punishes Taylor (whether intentionally or not) with tons of horrific shit no one should experience and its still not good enough.
I feel like I should write some real Empire propaganda fic to help them understand the difference. Like a mirror Inheritance, with real challenges, proportional use of force, and moral treatment of captives.

"I also need a cape who doesn't need to eat or drink," you continue. "Preferably with a weak or boring primary power, not a Case 53, signed up for Endbringer fights, English-speaking. In that order."
"Good," you say, before turning to Contessa. "Kill him."

A shot rings out, deafeningly loud in the enclosed space. You pull down your mask, revealing a mouth full of dragon teeth.
Huh. Three birds with one stone: a test of Cauldron's conviction, an enhancement of the Desert escape route, and a hedge against the Khonsu time zones.
 
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Lol, author kills all the Nazis and effectively punishes Taylor (whether intentionally or not) with tons of horrific shit no one should experience and its still not good enough.
Absolutely, yup. Snuts is 100% a Nazi, you're right. Always have been right.

... is that enough validation or are you going to keep bringing it up forever?

Literally in the last chapter she said Jews control the media. I'm not the one that brought it up out of nowhere, the author did!

I don't want to cause an argument, so I'll just say I wish Taylor has literally any friends that weren't slaves
 
Literally in the last chapter she said Jews control the media. I'm not the one that brought it up out of nowhere, the author did!

I don't want to cause an argument, so I'll just say I wish Taylor has literally any friends that weren't slaves
Eh, it doesn't have to be an argument, just diss the characters instead of the author. Writing books with Artemis Entreri as a viewpoint character didn't make R.A. Salvatore an assassin.

I honestly don't know how Taylor would come by friends a this point. Like, maybe if she decided to camp out in one of Khonsu's Hyperbolic Time Chambers for a while, and kept some mortals company while they aged and died, she might connect with one of them?
 

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