B.13
Daniel Snuts
Know what you're doing yet?
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2022
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You wouldn't call Burnscar a pyromaniac. Pyromaniacs are people who like to hang out with fire a lot. They're pals. Burnscar wants to marry fire, settle down in a nice burning house in the countryside and have lots of little burning children. She loves fire so much, she deliberately negated her power-granted fire immunity in order to put decorative burn scars on her own face.
"Give me your hand," Burnscar says.
You hold up both hands, wiggle all eight fingers. "Dominant, or intact?" you ask. You have no illusions about where this is going.
She goes for 'intact'. She makes you hold it out in front of you and puts her own hand beneath it, palm upwards. "Don't flinch," she says. Her eyes glow orange, and flames erupt from her hand to engulf yours.
You grit your teeth, but don't flinch. This test is exactly as subtle and sophisticated as you expected it to be.
If you wanted to burn someone's hand off, you'd use something like a welding torch, something powerful and efficient. Burnscar, of course, loves fire too much for that. This is more like dropping a hot dog into a campfire. It turns black and splits open and juices seep out. The smell of cooked and burnt meat fills the room. The pink interior revealed by the cracks gradually turns into charcoal as well. Bits start to fall off at the ends.
From the way Burnscar stares at it, you're surprised her other hand isn't down her pants already.
Yes, of course it hurts. You thought that went without saying. The pain is indescribable. Unlike the last two tests, you have no powers for this. All you can do is stand there and clench your teeth as your hand slowly - oh so slowly - burns away to nothing.
(this is but a fraction of what you left Alabaster to experience)
---
Your three remaining fingers notwithstanding, it's amazing just how family friendly the modern S9 is. From a power-harvesting perspective, you mean. None of their powers are actually evil, or even unsightly. Well, Crawler is pretty unsightly. But personality aside Jack is just a Blaster, his knife beams no more objectionable than Gallant's concussive emotions. Less objectionable even, since they lack the Master component.
Shatterbird is just the world's strongest Shaker, and Siberian is aBrute Master projection like any other (okay, the nudity might offend some people... but the cannibalism is strictly optional). Even Bonesaw and Mannequin are just bio-tinkers. They could just as easily use their powers for good - and did, in the latter case, for several years. You want it all!
Compare this to some of their former members - like Breed, who conjured anthropophagic insect monsters that laid their eggs in human corpses. Or Psychosoma, who transformed people into monsters under this control. Crimson, who gained Brute powers by drinking people's blood. Gray Boy, whose power was consigning people to eternal torment with no hope of rescue.
It's almost as if you were meant to do this, as if fate guided them to you at this point in time. Provided you with a target so juicy you couldn't possibly pass it up, despite the price. You'd inform fate of how you feel about its machinations, but you're all out of middle fingers.
---
Mannequin makes Burnscar's burn scars look like amateur hour. His great love is life support systems, which he demonstrated by cutting himself into pieces, encasing each piece in its own self-contained tinkertech capsule, and reassembling himself into a gleaming white puppet like something an artist would use to study poses.
He leans into that likeness too, fond of exaggerated gestures performed with inhuman grace and precision - but interspersed with entirely alien movements where this knees gyrate sideways and his hands are reeled out on chains. Occasionally he also separates his torso-sections to flash you with panels of clear glass instead of white ceramic, and the pulsing organs within. Because why just creep people out when you can also gross them out, right?
Frankly, you prefer Burnscar's take on artistic self-mutilation. She was less tryhard about her psychosis.
Mannequin leads you into a large basement. It's lit by a single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and the typical waterlogged debris of the post-Leviathan basement has been swept to the sides, creating an open space some 40 or 50 feet across. In the middle of the room, directly underneath the lightbulb, is a single chair. There's a man cuffed to the chair, with a bag over his head.
This test also appears to be very predictable. Mannequin pirouettes over to the captive and removes the bag with a flourish. You realize you were dead wrong about his predictability.
"Dad!?"
How!? You're Poltergeist, you have no link- no. The answer is only too obvious. Low Key was arrested. The heroes have your blood, it's in a national database now. The S9 have your blood too, smeared all over Siberian's face. Mannequin was able to cut himself into a dozen-odd individually packaged parts without dying, he could sequence your DNA in his sleep.
"Wha? Who're you?" Danny looks to be unharmed, but is understandably displaying the confusion and alarm of a man confronted with a teenage girl he's never seen before claiming to be his daughter.
"It's me, dad. Taylor. I'm just in disguise." You hurriedly unfuck your voice and shift your skin tone back to caucasian. "See, I'm a Changer." You really shouldn't reveal that to anyone, but fuck sandbagging, this is your dad! Besides, Mannequin already knows.
"Taylor? Oh god, you have to get out of here! Run! You-" He swallows the rest of what he was going to say when Mannequin leans down and presses a finger to his lips.
Mannequin then launches himself into a cartwheel back towards you. He comes to a stop kneeling in front of you, one hand held up to offer you a knife on an open palm (procured by some sleight of hand during the cartwheel), the other gesturing grandly towards Danny. Aside from the shocking twist in the middle, it is indeed a very predictable test.
"No," you say. "I refuse."
Mannequin staggers back in feigned shock. Drawing himself up to his full height, he tilts his head to the side and theatrically strokes his chin. Then he leans forward again, once more offering you the knife. This time he's also making little encouraging stabbing motions with his free hand, just to make sure you understand what he's getting at.
"No. I fail this test."
Mannequin lets the knife fall. He wags his finger in front of your face admonishingly. His antics work perfectly - you're so distracted by the finger in your face that you don't have time to react when his other hand sprouts foot-long claws and he drives them straight into your abdomen.
You can faintly hear your father shouting your name in the background, but all you can think of is Shatterbird's words when she described the testing process.
The punishment is always worse.
You curl up around the injury, trapping his hand against your body. Mind-hands spring up, taking hold of his head. For the first time, you crack the sky in anger. But rather than the sky, you aim it straight into the ground. His head shatters like an egg, the sheer force of the impact knocking you over and pushing you back across the floor. Meat and blood splatters across the room, and you feel shards of ceramic digging into your flesh.
Mannequin falls apart, chains extending between his remaining parts to let them move freely, but he doesn't die. Roughly half the pieces deploy various cutting implements and swarm towards you, completely abandoning their pretense of humanoid shape. You fend off most, but accept some minor cuts in order to capture a second piece to smash against the floor.
After losing another part Mannequin abandons his attack and instead tries to skitter away, but you refuse to let go of his hand. Mind-hands lash out again and again. You don't stop just because the hand you're clutching starts wriggling about, retracting its claws and stabbing them back into your stomach over and over again. You don't stop until he goes limp and stops struggling, and you can see pieces of brain among the shards and giblets.
You can hear a voice coming from somewhere far away.
"Taylor, are you alright? Please, you have to get up! You killed him, I can't believe you killed him. We're safe now. Taylor! We have to get out of here!"
"He killed Ylva," you say. Now that you've said it out loud, now that you've admitted it's real, now the tears come.
"Ylva? Who's Ylva?"
"My daughter!" Finally there's silence, letting you cry in peace.
---
The silence is interrupted by a slow clapping.
"Bravo, bravo," Jack Slash says. "A truly brilliant performance." He bows towards the largest concentration of bloody mess on the floor. "Ah, Alan. Once again you beat me at my own game. And since you won't be around for a rematch, I must concede the title."
"He was very naughty," Bonesaw counters. "I was looking forward to having a little sister. I had so many ideas for improving her!"
You climb to your feet and face the newcomers, but don't do or say anything further. You hope they've come to kill you for what you did to Mannequin. You hope that, because if killing the examiner is permitted you could have- you could-
"I suppose it's my turn now," Jack says. He bends down and picks up Mannequin's knife, then lazily tosses it at you. A mind-hand reflexively snatches it out of the air. He nods towards Danny. "You know what to do. Rest assured, this time the penalty for failure will be death."
It takes you a moment to process his words. Then the mind-hands lash out once more. Knives appear in Jack's hands, and beams of force cut your mind-hands apart. You reel back in shock, and Jack aims a cut at you. You poof into shadow. The beam of force passes through your shadow form, and it hurts. You lose control of the power, almost losing your footing as you return to solidity ahead of schedule. The damage to your shadow form has translated into a long gash across your chest. You stop the bleeding.
"Interesting," Jack says. You suppose no one was supposed to know Poltergeist can turn into shadow either. But fuck sandbagging, this is your dad.
Jack doesn't immediately attack again, so you take the opportunity to properly assume mantis form before summoning up new mind-hands. They reappear none the worse for wear, and you renew your assault. Now that you're ready for it you can replace them as quickly as they're cut apart. Knife beams and mind-hands dance in the air, colliding and canceling each other out as the two of you strike and parry. Jack is being forced back, but you can't seem to land a hit, and he never stops smiling.
Then he does a strange little hop, and knife beams shoot out from his feet. He has knives hidden in his goddamn shoes? You can't imagine how many people have fallen to that trick. The motion looks nothing like an attack, and the knife beams themselves are invisible. If not for sorcerer's sight, the fight would have been over then and there.
Jack doesn't appear upset at you seeing through and parrying his little sneak attack, though. Instead, his face lights up as if you just gave him a Christmas present. Grinning widely, he resumes his attack - and suddenly you're the one being forced back. He was holding back this whole time, toying with you?
Mantis form isn't helping. Or it's helping, but not enough. Shatterbird tried to simply overwhelm you with a storm of glass, but with Jack every move is unpredictable, every feint and attack performed with cunning intent. It's not that there's too many knife beams to keep track of. He's just better than you.
But, losing is not an option. You meet his next attack with your right arm. Your cauterized stump is cut open, but you stop the bleeding. Meanwhile the mind-hands that would have parried the blow are diverted to pick up shards of ceramic from the floor. You launch yourself towards Jack at the same time as you fire the shards with crack the sky, bracketing him and constraining his movements.
All you need to do is to gently brush against him and you can bad touch him out of existence. But Jack steps aside from your charge, calmly accepting a shard penetrating his ribcage in return. How- combat Thinker, you realize far too late. That's what the odd fluctuations of his power means. That's how he's able to keep up with your mind-hands.
Trying to stop and turn around to face him again is sure to result in disaster, so instead you continue your trajectory, turn into shadow and flow into the debris along the walls.
"That really won't help, you know," Jack says conversationally, turning to look right at you. Your heart sinks. Now that you're looking for it, you can spot the faint pulses of power flashing between him and you. It's not a Lisa-style power, he's not making deductions, he's getting data directly from the opponent somehow. He's maintaining a similar connection with Bonesaw, not that she's bothered to join the fight.
The shadowy tendrils of your body flow through the debris, circling around the room. Jack keeps turning to face you, his power easily keeping track of you. You search for a way out, a vent, a pipe, anything. There is none. A sensation not unlike suffocation grips you. You can't maintain shadow form any longer, and there's no space back here big enough to materialize in. You have to come out, despite Jack knowing exactly where you'll emerge.
With a cry of defiance and despair you flow out and reform, mind-hands striking out one final time.
Jack easily parries them, and cuts your throat.
You stop the bleeding, but that was 50% of your carotid arteries. The fight is over. You fall to one knee, the edges of your vision going dark.
"Fascinating," Jack says. "People usually die when I do that."
"Oh don't kill her yet, mister Jack!" Bonesaw says. "I want to figure which part of her power lets her do that. Changer or Shaker? Or maybe Breaker?"
"Oh, very well. Last chance, miss Poltergeist." He gestures towards where you dropped Mannequin's knife.
"Do it, Taylor!" Danny shouts. "If one of us has to die, let it be me!"
"..." you say. That was meant to be 'no', but your throat isn't working properly.
"Please, Taylor!"
You stretch out a mind-hand and snatch up the fallen knife. You hover it in front of Danny.
"I love you Taylor," he says. "Please be safe."
Your three fingers manage to squeeze your windpipe shut long enough for you to croak out "I love you, dad" before you plunge the knife into his heart.
You allow yourself to pass out.
===
"Give me your hand," Burnscar says.
You hold up both hands, wiggle all eight fingers. "Dominant, or intact?" you ask. You have no illusions about where this is going.
She goes for 'intact'. She makes you hold it out in front of you and puts her own hand beneath it, palm upwards. "Don't flinch," she says. Her eyes glow orange, and flames erupt from her hand to engulf yours.
You grit your teeth, but don't flinch. This test is exactly as subtle and sophisticated as you expected it to be.
If you wanted to burn someone's hand off, you'd use something like a welding torch, something powerful and efficient. Burnscar, of course, loves fire too much for that. This is more like dropping a hot dog into a campfire. It turns black and splits open and juices seep out. The smell of cooked and burnt meat fills the room. The pink interior revealed by the cracks gradually turns into charcoal as well. Bits start to fall off at the ends.
From the way Burnscar stares at it, you're surprised her other hand isn't down her pants already.
Yes, of course it hurts. You thought that went without saying. The pain is indescribable. Unlike the last two tests, you have no powers for this. All you can do is stand there and clench your teeth as your hand slowly - oh so slowly - burns away to nothing.
(this is but a fraction of what you left Alabaster to experience)
---
Your three remaining fingers notwithstanding, it's amazing just how family friendly the modern S9 is. From a power-harvesting perspective, you mean. None of their powers are actually evil, or even unsightly. Well, Crawler is pretty unsightly. But personality aside Jack is just a Blaster, his knife beams no more objectionable than Gallant's concussive emotions. Less objectionable even, since they lack the Master component.
Shatterbird is just the world's strongest Shaker, and Siberian is a
Compare this to some of their former members - like Breed, who conjured anthropophagic insect monsters that laid their eggs in human corpses. Or Psychosoma, who transformed people into monsters under this control. Crimson, who gained Brute powers by drinking people's blood. Gray Boy, whose power was consigning people to eternal torment with no hope of rescue.
It's almost as if you were meant to do this, as if fate guided them to you at this point in time. Provided you with a target so juicy you couldn't possibly pass it up, despite the price. You'd inform fate of how you feel about its machinations, but you're all out of middle fingers.
---
Mannequin makes Burnscar's burn scars look like amateur hour. His great love is life support systems, which he demonstrated by cutting himself into pieces, encasing each piece in its own self-contained tinkertech capsule, and reassembling himself into a gleaming white puppet like something an artist would use to study poses.
He leans into that likeness too, fond of exaggerated gestures performed with inhuman grace and precision - but interspersed with entirely alien movements where this knees gyrate sideways and his hands are reeled out on chains. Occasionally he also separates his torso-sections to flash you with panels of clear glass instead of white ceramic, and the pulsing organs within. Because why just creep people out when you can also gross them out, right?
Frankly, you prefer Burnscar's take on artistic self-mutilation. She was less tryhard about her psychosis.
Mannequin leads you into a large basement. It's lit by a single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and the typical waterlogged debris of the post-Leviathan basement has been swept to the sides, creating an open space some 40 or 50 feet across. In the middle of the room, directly underneath the lightbulb, is a single chair. There's a man cuffed to the chair, with a bag over his head.
This test also appears to be very predictable. Mannequin pirouettes over to the captive and removes the bag with a flourish. You realize you were dead wrong about his predictability.
"Dad!?"
How!? You're Poltergeist, you have no link- no. The answer is only too obvious. Low Key was arrested. The heroes have your blood, it's in a national database now. The S9 have your blood too, smeared all over Siberian's face. Mannequin was able to cut himself into a dozen-odd individually packaged parts without dying, he could sequence your DNA in his sleep.
"Wha? Who're you?" Danny looks to be unharmed, but is understandably displaying the confusion and alarm of a man confronted with a teenage girl he's never seen before claiming to be his daughter.
"It's me, dad. Taylor. I'm just in disguise." You hurriedly unfuck your voice and shift your skin tone back to caucasian. "See, I'm a Changer." You really shouldn't reveal that to anyone, but fuck sandbagging, this is your dad! Besides, Mannequin already knows.
"Taylor? Oh god, you have to get out of here! Run! You-" He swallows the rest of what he was going to say when Mannequin leans down and presses a finger to his lips.
Mannequin then launches himself into a cartwheel back towards you. He comes to a stop kneeling in front of you, one hand held up to offer you a knife on an open palm (procured by some sleight of hand during the cartwheel), the other gesturing grandly towards Danny. Aside from the shocking twist in the middle, it is indeed a very predictable test.
"No," you say. "I refuse."
Mannequin staggers back in feigned shock. Drawing himself up to his full height, he tilts his head to the side and theatrically strokes his chin. Then he leans forward again, once more offering you the knife. This time he's also making little encouraging stabbing motions with his free hand, just to make sure you understand what he's getting at.
"No. I fail this test."
Mannequin lets the knife fall. He wags his finger in front of your face admonishingly. His antics work perfectly - you're so distracted by the finger in your face that you don't have time to react when his other hand sprouts foot-long claws and he drives them straight into your abdomen.
You can faintly hear your father shouting your name in the background, but all you can think of is Shatterbird's words when she described the testing process.
The punishment is always worse.
You curl up around the injury, trapping his hand against your body. Mind-hands spring up, taking hold of his head. For the first time, you crack the sky in anger. But rather than the sky, you aim it straight into the ground. His head shatters like an egg, the sheer force of the impact knocking you over and pushing you back across the floor. Meat and blood splatters across the room, and you feel shards of ceramic digging into your flesh.
Mannequin falls apart, chains extending between his remaining parts to let them move freely, but he doesn't die. Roughly half the pieces deploy various cutting implements and swarm towards you, completely abandoning their pretense of humanoid shape. You fend off most, but accept some minor cuts in order to capture a second piece to smash against the floor.
After losing another part Mannequin abandons his attack and instead tries to skitter away, but you refuse to let go of his hand. Mind-hands lash out again and again. You don't stop just because the hand you're clutching starts wriggling about, retracting its claws and stabbing them back into your stomach over and over again. You don't stop until he goes limp and stops struggling, and you can see pieces of brain among the shards and giblets.
You can hear a voice coming from somewhere far away.
"Taylor, are you alright? Please, you have to get up! You killed him, I can't believe you killed him. We're safe now. Taylor! We have to get out of here!"
"He killed Ylva," you say. Now that you've said it out loud, now that you've admitted it's real, now the tears come.
"Ylva? Who's Ylva?"
"My daughter!" Finally there's silence, letting you cry in peace.
---
The silence is interrupted by a slow clapping.
"Bravo, bravo," Jack Slash says. "A truly brilliant performance." He bows towards the largest concentration of bloody mess on the floor. "Ah, Alan. Once again you beat me at my own game. And since you won't be around for a rematch, I must concede the title."
"He was very naughty," Bonesaw counters. "I was looking forward to having a little sister. I had so many ideas for improving her!"
You climb to your feet and face the newcomers, but don't do or say anything further. You hope they've come to kill you for what you did to Mannequin. You hope that, because if killing the examiner is permitted you could have- you could-
"I suppose it's my turn now," Jack says. He bends down and picks up Mannequin's knife, then lazily tosses it at you. A mind-hand reflexively snatches it out of the air. He nods towards Danny. "You know what to do. Rest assured, this time the penalty for failure will be death."
It takes you a moment to process his words. Then the mind-hands lash out once more. Knives appear in Jack's hands, and beams of force cut your mind-hands apart. You reel back in shock, and Jack aims a cut at you. You poof into shadow. The beam of force passes through your shadow form, and it hurts. You lose control of the power, almost losing your footing as you return to solidity ahead of schedule. The damage to your shadow form has translated into a long gash across your chest. You stop the bleeding.
"Interesting," Jack says. You suppose no one was supposed to know Poltergeist can turn into shadow either. But fuck sandbagging, this is your dad.
Jack doesn't immediately attack again, so you take the opportunity to properly assume mantis form before summoning up new mind-hands. They reappear none the worse for wear, and you renew your assault. Now that you're ready for it you can replace them as quickly as they're cut apart. Knife beams and mind-hands dance in the air, colliding and canceling each other out as the two of you strike and parry. Jack is being forced back, but you can't seem to land a hit, and he never stops smiling.
Then he does a strange little hop, and knife beams shoot out from his feet. He has knives hidden in his goddamn shoes? You can't imagine how many people have fallen to that trick. The motion looks nothing like an attack, and the knife beams themselves are invisible. If not for sorcerer's sight, the fight would have been over then and there.
Jack doesn't appear upset at you seeing through and parrying his little sneak attack, though. Instead, his face lights up as if you just gave him a Christmas present. Grinning widely, he resumes his attack - and suddenly you're the one being forced back. He was holding back this whole time, toying with you?
Mantis form isn't helping. Or it's helping, but not enough. Shatterbird tried to simply overwhelm you with a storm of glass, but with Jack every move is unpredictable, every feint and attack performed with cunning intent. It's not that there's too many knife beams to keep track of. He's just better than you.
But, losing is not an option. You meet his next attack with your right arm. Your cauterized stump is cut open, but you stop the bleeding. Meanwhile the mind-hands that would have parried the blow are diverted to pick up shards of ceramic from the floor. You launch yourself towards Jack at the same time as you fire the shards with crack the sky, bracketing him and constraining his movements.
All you need to do is to gently brush against him and you can bad touch him out of existence. But Jack steps aside from your charge, calmly accepting a shard penetrating his ribcage in return. How- combat Thinker, you realize far too late. That's what the odd fluctuations of his power means. That's how he's able to keep up with your mind-hands.
Trying to stop and turn around to face him again is sure to result in disaster, so instead you continue your trajectory, turn into shadow and flow into the debris along the walls.
"That really won't help, you know," Jack says conversationally, turning to look right at you. Your heart sinks. Now that you're looking for it, you can spot the faint pulses of power flashing between him and you. It's not a Lisa-style power, he's not making deductions, he's getting data directly from the opponent somehow. He's maintaining a similar connection with Bonesaw, not that she's bothered to join the fight.
The shadowy tendrils of your body flow through the debris, circling around the room. Jack keeps turning to face you, his power easily keeping track of you. You search for a way out, a vent, a pipe, anything. There is none. A sensation not unlike suffocation grips you. You can't maintain shadow form any longer, and there's no space back here big enough to materialize in. You have to come out, despite Jack knowing exactly where you'll emerge.
With a cry of defiance and despair you flow out and reform, mind-hands striking out one final time.
Jack easily parries them, and cuts your throat.
You stop the bleeding, but that was 50% of your carotid arteries. The fight is over. You fall to one knee, the edges of your vision going dark.
"Fascinating," Jack says. "People usually die when I do that."
"Oh don't kill her yet, mister Jack!" Bonesaw says. "I want to figure which part of her power lets her do that. Changer or Shaker? Or maybe Breaker?"
"Oh, very well. Last chance, miss Poltergeist." He gestures towards where you dropped Mannequin's knife.
"Do it, Taylor!" Danny shouts. "If one of us has to die, let it be me!"
"..." you say. That was meant to be 'no', but your throat isn't working properly.
"Please, Taylor!"
You stretch out a mind-hand and snatch up the fallen knife. You hover it in front of Danny.
"I love you Taylor," he says. "Please be safe."
Your three fingers manage to squeeze your windpipe shut long enough for you to croak out "I love you, dad" before you plunge the knife into his heart.
You allow yourself to pass out.
===
Cherie's Law: If your plan goes
1. Join the S9
2. ???
step 3 is never 'profit'.
1. Join the S9
2. ???
step 3 is never 'profit'.