Charm Learning Shard (Worm/Exalted) (COMPLETED)

Since today's chapter was a bit on the short side, I'll add the bonus content originally posted in the SB thread

===

The trailer opens with an aerial shot of a coastal city. The camera zooms past a futuristic oil rig surrounded by a shimmering forcefield, past the tallest building in the skyline (the logo 'Medhall' can be seen flashing by), before diving down to street level. Night falls, and the glamour gives way to grime, gang members and homeless people. A voiceover plays.

"In the dog-eat-dog world of parahuman crime, empathy is a luxury few can afford."

The camera cuts to a man in a black body stocking decorated with a snake motif. He's seated behind a table, being interviewed by someone offscreen, behind the camera. A single hand can be seen in frame, writing down what he says.

"I view people as tools," the snake man says.

The camera cuts to the same shot, but with a teenaged brunette with glasses being interviewed.

"I view people as tools," the brunette says.

Cut to snake man. "I only care about two things: How to keep them dependent on me, and how to maximize their usefulness."

Cut to brunette. "I only care about power."

Quick cuts of random capeshit CGI. A teenager on a hoverboard. An asian man turning into a dragon. A motorcycle helmet with a skull painted on it emerging from a cloud of darkness. The voiceover continues.

"In the feel-good comedy of the year..."

Cut to snake man. "My favorite person is someone with a simple, easy to grasp handle."

Cut to brunette. "My favorite person is a parahuman who uses their power constantly."

More quick cuts. The teenager is trying to tug his hoverboard free from the jaws of a monster dog. The dragon fights a man in armor, who conjures spears and barriers of metal. The brunette is sitting at a cafe table together with a freckled blonde. The blonde is facepalming. More voiceover.

"Marvel as the two scariest villains in Brockton Bay sociopathically focus their every effort on a single goal..."

Cut to snake man. "In order to maintain her loyalty, I must constantly feed her new powers. In order to maximize her usefulness, I must constantly feed her new powers."

Cut to brunette. "In order to Master him and gain control of his organization, I must fulfill his soul price."

Voiceover: "Making each other maximally happy."

Black screen. White letters slam home one word at a time.

TAYLOR x COIL

===

Bonus comedy content because the obvious candidate for Coil's charm is Avoidance Kata.

Avoidance Kata doesn't let you live in a second timeline. When you invoke it, it teleports you to where you would have been in the other timeline, and Masters everyone at either end into believing you were never there/there all along. But you'll have no idea where you'll end up ahead of time, and will be forced to think quickly and improvise to avoid suspicion.

 

Tales from the Cutting Room Floor

Spoiler: Dream Girl

Cape Name: Dream Girl
Civilian Name: Unknown
Gender: F
Age: Unknown
Alignment: Rogue, Independent
Ratings: Stranger/Trump 5

Dream Girl will randomly appear next other parahumans and follow them around. She shows up dressed in what has been described as "an extremely good cosplay version" of their costume, with her apparent age and hair color (if visible) matching theirs.

She will engage in conversation if addressed, but will evade any questions about herself, her powers or her purpose, and refuses to acknowledge that there is anything strange or even noteworthy about her behavior. PRT psychologists theorize that her trigger event caused a type of dissociative disorder, and that she has internalized the fact that she is parahuman as "I am that particular parahuman", the details changing whenever she encounters another one.

She will accede to simple request such as "could you pass me that item?" or "could you hold this door open?", and she once caught Clockblocker of the Wards unprompted when he was almost knocked off a bridge in an altercation with villain group Merchants (see incident report ENE-18345). She will however ignore any requests to stop following people.

Her helpfulness has made her an accessory to burglary on one occasion when she followed villain Trainwreck around (see incident report ENE-18598), but the Protectorate ENE decided not to bring any charges due to her probable altered mental state.

If attacked, she will either disappear again, or fight back with a version of her target's powers. She will similarly sometimes pursue Movers who try to evade her, and sometimes not. No pattern has been determined for when she decides to use powers and when she simply disappears.

The audience will of course have realized that the deciding factor in whether she disappears or not is whether she's already acquired a power similar enough to that of her target that it can be passed off as their own.

Dream Girl was an early idea of mine, the result of Taylor and Aisha having a competition to see who could receive the highest Stranger rating from the PRT. I had to cut it because it simply wouldn't fit into the timeline. I later changed Shadow Stalker's charm from Dematerialize to Bloodless Murk Evasion, too.

The only scene I had concretely planned was her baiting Velocity into attacking her and completely no-selling him with Mantis Form, which makes you immune to Onslaught penalties - the malus to dodge/block you get from being attacked multiple times in quick succession.

(bonus cookie for telling me what charm Velocity would have given, it's really obvious if you know your flavor text)

My mental notes also read "something something Assault" and "something something Armsmaster".

Spoiler: something something Assault

"I swear there is nothing between us!"

"She's been following you around an awful lot lately."

"I'm not the one who named her Dream Girl! You're the only one for me, puppy."

Spoiler: something something Armsmaster

"Why are you in my lab, Dream Girl?"

"I like it here." Truth

"I don't mind if you follow us around on patrol, but there are classified things I'm working on here."

"That's okay. I won't tell anyone." Truth

"That's not- did you draw a beard on yourself with marker pen?"

"Yes."

---

"How are you here again? I specifically installed anti-Stranger measures."

"You did? Can I see? Oh, ooh, is that a gravity wave detector? How did you make it work at sea?"

"Wait, you can tell-"

"Ooh, and a transverse dimensional shunt? Did Dragon loan you that? Can you really afford the power draw of running that all the time? That's really neat! But you don't have a reverse orgone oscillator?"

"...go on."

---

"You forgot to put my vital signature into the reverse orgone oscillator."

"...yes, I forgot. But since you're here, what do you think about-"

 

Nekomancer was the girl who got canon Taylor's power - but tuned to cats instead of bugs. She dressed as a magical girl, with animatronic tinkertech ear and tail accessories capable of displaying a range of cat emotions. She also carried a wand/baton with a giant cats-eye gem and plastic cat ears on top - not a weapon, just something to gesture with dramatically during her frequent speeches about the power of love and friendship.

By day she worked with animal shelters and did photo ops handing out adorable kittens to cute little kids. By night she patrolled the mean streets of Albuquerque, and whenever she encountered criminals she'd request that they "surrender in the name of the light!"

They almost always did, these days. Nekomancer would say that it's because there's a ray of goodness in even the darkest heart, but mostly it's because everyone who wasn't inclined to surrender had already been buried under several times their body weight in suicidally aggressive feral strays and eaten alive.

She had just as much business being in an Endbringer fight as canon Taylor.

 

Mr Steel Yo Girl had a self-reported Manton limit of 'sevens and above'. It might not have been a lie. There certainly were no sixes in his cyborg harem.

On several occasions he managed to capture and subvert his nemesis Magnet Maggie, but each time she would use her own power to disable her implants at the crucial moment and foil his plans from within.

The villain community commiserated with him over the unfortunate setbacks he suffered, never thinking to ask "why don't you just kill her or tie her up in the basement or something, instead of trying to make her a minion over and over again?"

The hero community commiserated with her over the horrific abuses she suffered, never thinking to ask "why don't you free yourself immediately, instead of sticking around for weeks of passionate rape-by-mind-control?"