Pandora (Worm, CYOA)

[Disminded]

AN: It's been a long, long time since I've written anything. My skills are a bit atrophied at the moment. Still, enjoy. Feedback is appreciated.

I was surfing SB, bored out of my mind. I'd read all my stories, caught up on every quest, browsed through the fanfic recs and done all other junk that usually occupied my time. Now I was faced with the choice of retreading old ground or turning off my computer and doing something productive.

Thankfully I was saved from this quandary by a thread that was floating on top of the BROB forum. It was titled simply "Worm – CYOA." It had zero replies, and when I clicked on it, I could see why. The post contained only the words "Worm – CYOA" as a hyperlink. No explanations, no other text. The thread author was someone called "Choice" who had apparently joined that very day.

Eh. Newbie poster plus an outgoing link made me nervous… but hell, I had nothing better to do. I clicked the link and inwardly sighed as my computer screen flashed black.

I had chosen… unwisely.

Before I could work myself into a frothing rage, my computer screen flashed again, and the words "Select Difficulty" appeared on the screen with a small list below. I resisted the urge to hard restart my computer and read through the options.

World Breaker ($100) – You have twelve points to spend, and all your powers start out twice as strong. You have no special ability to avoid trouble but you also have little need to fear it.
Easy ($50) – You have nine points to spend, and danger seems to avoid you unless you go looking for it.
Standard ($25) – You have six points to spend. What danger and conflict you encounter depends on your actions and the whims of chance.
Hard ($10) – You have three points to spend. You will find yourself dragged into major conflicts more often than not. Avoiding this will be hard and require significant effort.
Skitter Mode (Suffering) – You do not have any points to spend and must take complications to gain any. Powers start out half as strong or are limited in some other fashion.

I blinked in disbelief as I looked at the prices next to the options. World Breaker looked fun, but fuck if I'd pay a hundred bucks for it. Or $50 or $25 or $10. The price of Skitter Mode was apparently just suffering, which probably meant a virus of some sort. Still, there was no way I was going to hand out my credit card information. Again, I was tempted to just cut the power, but… curiosity drove me onward.

Resigning myself to reformatting my hard drive at some point, I pressed Skitter Mode. The next screen was a choice between being a self-insert, a reincarnation or an Endbringer. Being an Enbringer was right out. Half the fun of RPGs was interacting with other characters, and being an Endbringer would curtail that heavily. So self-insert or reincarnation? I shrugged and picked reincarnation.

The next screen was complications. I needed to take at least a few due to Skitter Mode, but I didn't know how much everything else cost… Eh. I looked down the list with a frown.

Some of them were just insane. Everything Gets Worse? Fuck no. Canon was bad enough. You Needed Worthy Opponents makes a new Endbringer and gives it its own cycle apart from the other Endbringers devoted to fucking you up. All my nope. The Cycle Begins Anew seemed like something you'd only take if you were an Endbringer who'd paid for World Breaker mode.

Some were more palatable. I considered getting Being Taylor is Suffering, which made me reincarnate as Taylor Hebert after the locker incident. Not the worse choice, but it seemed blah to me. I considered Marked, but I couldn't see a way to pick the organization that was pissed at me. It's one thing to be on E88's shitlist; it's another thing entirely to be on the bad side of the PRT. So I skipped that, and went with the Slaughterhouse is Hiring for four points. At least I knew what I was getting with that, and it sounded like I'd have some time before it happened.

Four points. Would that be enough to do anything interesting? Well, if it wasn't I could always just start over, right?

I clicked the "Next" button at the bottom of the screen.

Powers.

Mother of God. The powers were such utter bullshit, I briefly wished I'd taken "The Cycle Beings Anew" just so I'd have a challenge. Then I reeled back the crazy and reminded myself that the entities were also bullshit, and I'd been dangerously close to thinking the forbidden phrase: "Meh, I can take 'em."

I gathered my scattered thoughts and studied the powers. The first three were based around the Triumvirate dialed up to eleven. Alexandria made you Superman, Legend gave you all the lasers, and Eidolon gave you any five powers you wanted. The next power set was based around the God Emperor of Mankind. I'd never been all that fond of 40k, so I skipped that one. Kaleidoscope gave you mastery of time, space and dimension. Inspired Inventor made you Tinker Eidolon (which was odd, because Eidolon could probably give you Tinker powers anyway, making the power set superfluous). Psychokinetic and Power Control gave you mastery of all matter and metapower mastery, respectively. Last, but definitely not least, Shaper made biology your bitch.

They were all ridiculously powerful, and at some level, it didn't really matter which one you chose, as any powerset would let you do nearly anything, either directly or obliquely, like manufacturing tinkertech through psychokinesis or with the superior intellect granted by Alexandria, or using inspired inventor to give yourself superpowers.

It didn't take long to narrow my choices down to two: Eidolon and Power control. Eidolon had the advantage of not needing time to build up, giving you 5 9-10 level powers right off the bat. Power control started off more slowly, but could grow to eclipse Eidolon by an order of magnitude. Add to that the ability to give other people powers and it suddenly seemed like a no-brainer.

Sufficiently convinced, I chose power control and – after a moment of hesitation over whether to choose Eidolon as well, before deciding it would simply be wasteful – I clicked "next".

I breezed past companions because I only had two points left and I wasn't going to waste them on henchmen. Perks were more interesting. They cost one point each and were pretty powerful. Given that damn near infinite power was two points, they'd have to be. Shattered Limiter was a no-brainer as it handily cancelled out the half-power penalty from Skitter Mode. The immunity to power drain and increased growth that came along with it were pretty cool as well. Blank was another must have. In a world that contained Jack Slash, Contessa and the Simurgh, protection from Thinkers was a godsend. After that, I had zero points. Invictus and Inspiring were both kinda badass, and I was tempted to go back and take another disadvantage, but… Eh, I didn't care that much. This was a nice distraction, but I needed to get through it and find out how badly my computer was screwed by this little jaunt. I hit "Next."

One last screen flashed: "Choose Incarnation." Beneath there was blank space, so I tried typing: "Emma Barnes, During the ABB attack." I'm normally not one for cross-playing, but it seemed like an interesting divergence point from canon. I remembered reading a fic about it somewhere… Also, I couldn't really remember any good male characters.
Honestly, I'm not sure what I expected to happen. I knew this probably wasn't a videogame, not even an old text-based one. Maybe the start of a PbP? Or just a personality quiz type of thing?

I am, however, quite sure I didn't expect the computer screen to flash a deeper black, like a window to the void opening, and begin expanding. I didn't expect to feel a pull toward that expanding abyss, as if gravity were reorienting itself. I didn't expect to topple downward, into an eternity of stars, falling and falling and falling until I fell away from myself completely…

I didn't expect any of this… and yet…

Click to shrink...

tl;dr: Reincarnation, Skitter Mode, Power Control, Blank, Broken Limiter, The Slaughterhouse Is Recruiting.

Pandora – First Spark 1.1​

"Pick." The voice set me on edge, heavy with the kind of sick satisfaction I associated with serial killers.

I blinked, panic welling up inside me as I took in my surroundings. I was on my back on a dirty alley floor. A teen in black was straddling me, using his weight to pin my legs. I could feel two other people holding my arms down, while a fourth was behind me, his knees on either side of my head, keeping it still. I could hear a car running near-by and the whole scene was lit by its headlights.

"Bitch isn't paying attention," a voice sneered. I turned as best I could to look, still numb with horror and confusion. A girl with heavy eye-shadow crouched down and took a knife from the boy straddling me. She leaned forward, leering, as she moved the knife towards my face. I jerked away and she punched me in the mouth hard enough that I tasted blood. "No flinching, bitch. Now, pick."

I was about to ask what the fuck she was talking about, when she seemed to pause in thought. "No, wait," she said, horrible glee bubbling in her voice. "Eat it, then pick." She shoved something into my mouth, and I gagged as I tasted hair.

And then, past the confusion, past the horror, a candle flame of rage ignited and I suddenly wanted to hurt them, hurt them so badly, so thoroughly that they'd never do this to me again.

And inside me, in the back of my brain, something moved in response to that crystallization of intent. Time seemed to slow like cold syrup and I was suddenly aware of ten sparks dancing in the darkness behind my eyes. I thought of the hair that eye-shadow bitch had shoved into my mouth, and that little candle-flame of rage and hate and I thought of breathing it out, all that rage, all that hate, and blasting these assholes with burned hair and flame and the sparks heard me and understood. Seven danced together, merging into a single brighter star.

And time sped up again and I was staring up at that stupid bitch who was holding a knife to my eyes, and it was the most natural thing in the world, as natural as breathing, to open wide and exhale.

A plume of phosphorescent flame whooshed from my mouth. Eye-shadow barely had time to scream before it took her and she was thrashing on the ground next to me. In the same breath I swept the seething torrent over one-eye. He screamed and rolled away as the flames ate away his face and chest.

The ones on my arms and the one behind me quite sensibly let go of me. It didn't help. I twisted around, supporting myself with my arms. I could see them skittering away from me, their eyes wide with terror. I couldn't find pity in my heart. There was only rage and fear and hate, so I breathed out one more time. The flame swept over the three as they tried to clamber over the dumpster blocking the end of the alley. Two died like their friends, collapsing like puppets to thrash uselessly on the ground. The last had been vaulting over the dumpster when the flames hit him. I saw him drop down into the belly of the dumpster, screaming, and I smiled, part of me gleeful that the trash was dying in the trash.
I turned to look for more. Nothing. The alley was choked with smoke and dying flames, but there were no more gangbangers in sight. I stepped forward, perhaps to track more down – I remembered a white van parked at the other end of the alley – when I stumbled and fell, all the strength going out of my legs at once.

On my knees, amidst the scorched ruin of several human beings, people – teenagers – that I had killed, I felt the flame of my rage sputter and die. I tried to clutch it close, to feel its warmth again, but all I felt was a horrible cold darkness. I hugged myself and slouched, feeling tears burn my eyes and sobs build in my chest.

"Emma." I looked with tear-blurred eyes to see Alan Barnes walking cautiously towards me, his face pale as death and filled with a sick mix of fear and fury and love. Part of me wanted to rush at him and throw myself in his arms like I did when I was little.

Only I didn't, not when I was little, not ever, part of me argued. He wasn't my father. He was just a character from a story. Not even a character I particularly liked. But… I remembered. I remembered him taking care of me when I was sick, sitting with me 'till I fell asleep when I was afraid of the monsters under the bed, sitting with Taylor's Dad talking sports at Thanksgiving, when Taylor's mom was still alive. And I couldn't help but love him, even as part of me screamed he wasn't my father…

He must have seen the conflict on my face. I saw the fury fade from his eyes as he knelt down beside and put his arms around. He talked in that soft, nonsensical way you talked to scared animals and children, telling me it would be alright.

I could almost believe him. Maybe that's why, even though part of me wanted to shove him away, I simply sat there and cried in his arms.

At length, he managed to get me up and back into the car. I barely noticed as he backed carefully out of the alley, the sound of tires crunching on dirty ground audible through the broken window. I spent the trip back in a fugue state, vaguely aware of movement by the passing city lights.

I was dimly aware of the car stopping, of Alan Barnes leaving for minute. Then he was back with another, an older woman Emma's memories identified as her mother, who cajoled me out of the car and into the house, where they set me up on a couch in the den. I lay there, a shuddering lump under a blanket.

I was spent, burned out and tired, as if the flame I'd used had hollowed out a part me as well. My eyes closed and I sank gratefully into sleep to the sounds of my parents talking quietly in the background.


NOTE: Yes, power control is suffering from Skitter Mode here. The number of charges are double what you usually get, as per Shattered Limiter. However, they also buy a lost less. 1 charge gets you a 1 rated power. 2 gets a 2 rated power. 4 gets a 3 rated power. 8 gets a 4 rated power. Etc. Thus a level 3 powers cost 7 (1 + 2 + 4) charges to make. There are a few other limitations as well. Power control is still broken as hell, you can still steal other people's powers, but Skitter Mode has weakened it a bit.

On another note, power control is one of the more complicated powers to right about, because it lets you create powers based on the PRT rating system, which is kinda iffy. Wildbow has an explanation of the rating system in his quest documents, but it pertains mostly to what countermeasures. A level 3 power, for instance, should require a trained PRT team (or similar) to deal with. Most civilians, even well equipped civilians cannot deal with a level 3 power effectively. I use this as a benchmark when I make powers. In the case of Level 3 powers I ask myself whether a reasonable user of these powers win against several civilians with this power. If they can, but can't fight their way though a PRT squadron, then it's a Level 3 power.

I'm rambling. It's late. I'll just leave this here.

 

[Fema]

She is so going to be kicking herself for not taking Invictus. I am really interested in where you go from here, this almost reads like an AU where Emma gets powers, passanger/trauma/foreknowledge assisted personality change, I like it.

 

[Xilph]

Interesting, looks like it could be more interesting than most CYOA stories, possibly would've been more interesting to see one of the less used powers like Alexandria or for you to have spotted why Inventor is useful and taken that. The power/rating discrepancy combined with the right munkinry and combos would still allow you to gain functionally unlimited charges and power in your first day despite the nerf but it's the Worm CYOA so that's fairly expected.

The reincarnation choice is interesting though, hopefully this ends up going somewhere.

 

[Disminded]

Interesting, looks like it could be more interesting than most CYOA stories, possibly would've been more interesting to see one of the less used powers like Alexandria or for you to have spotted why Inventor is useful and taken that.

Click to shrink...

Why is inventor useful? I mean, all of the powers are bullshit powerful, but as far as I know, Inventor just let you give yourself tinker powers. You can make tinker powers with Power Control as well, and you can hand them off to others on top of that so you aren't stuck in a lab somewhere. Just curious, 'cause it seems like a poor man's power control.

It's funny you should mention Alexandria. In an early draft of this story, I took "Being Taylor is Suffering" and eschewed power control completely for Eidolon + Alexandria, which made the SI capable of killing an Endbringer right out of the box. I discarded it because the build up to Power Control seemed more fun.

The power/rating discrepancy combined with the right munkinry and combos would still allow you to gain functionally unlimited charges and power in your first day despite the nerf but it's the Worm CYOA so that's fairly expected.

Click to shrink...

Oh? If there's a way to do that, I haven't figured it out. Which means the SI won't have figured it out either, unless he decides to play with thinker powers.

The reincarnation choice is interesting though, hopefully this ends up going somewhere.

Click to shrink...

Here's hopin'. I won't lie, it's been a long-ass time since I wrote anything substantive. I think the last thing I wrote was The Creature, a Spiderman fic on FF.net. I might just meander the plot into an early grave.

Working on the next part.

 

[Xilph]

Inventor has two advantages over Power Manipulation, the first and minor one is that all specialties perfectly integrate, that's rather nice as integrating specialties is fairly important if you're getting a lot of tinker powers. The second and much more notable one that is also the reason it's second strongest in the long term* is that it has far more strength increase per charge then power manipulation gives, every charge put into a specialty after the first one doubles the power of that specialty, that means that with shattered limited and ten charges a day you can make a specialty about a thousand times more powerful every day. So for example assuming Armsmaster is Tinker 8 (I think that's right) that's two charges spent to get a copy of his tinker power, if you then spend the rest of your charges for that weak on boosting that specialty you would get something that is like his power except about 300 quintillion times stronger, that's why Inventor is better as Power Manipulation seems to be set up so charges give gains roughly equal to each other but Inventor each successive charge is worth twice as much.

As for how to break the setting with one day of charges I came up with it in the Worm CYOA quest that's just getting started, it exploits the fact that Power Manipulation powers aren't limited by shard power limits and ratings are based off how effective they are. You create one power that allows someone to fall asleep for a chosen amount of time and doesn't need sustenance or physically age or anything until waking, about a max of thinker 1/breaker 1 and that's two of your charges spend with your costs, your second power is the ability to go to a dimensional pocket and back, it's limited in various ways that it's only worth about a mover 2 at most as a PRT guy waiting where you went in will catch you coming out sooner or later. So that's another 3 charges gone. The final and key power is the ability to travel 10 billion years back in time without moving, this is about a mover 1 at most as the system doesn't give zeros and the power is functionally useless. So that's 6 charges spend with your system all for the ability to travel back in time 10 billion years then sleep for 10 billion years, that's good only because of your core power as it means that you now have access to 10 billion years worth of charges and that's basically unlimited power as mentioned. It's a horrible, horrible trick though and any kind of RP or game would have the DM stop it for some reason, requiring the charges to be spent each day can be worked around with a little effort and keeping in the first 10 charges but generally they'd just say no to the time travel exploit.

*: Kaleidoscope is the most powerful long term due to the ability to not be limited by what's possible in Worm and allowing you to learn magic and stuff from other universes, if you rule that power manipulation or tinker could get to other realms of fiction with enough boosting it drops to third though behind them.

 

[Disminded]

Inventor has two advantages over Power Manipulation, the first and minor one is that all specialties perfectly integrate, that's rather nice as integrating specialties is fairly important if you're getting a lot of tinker powers. The second and much more notable one that is also the reason it's second strongest in the long term* is that it has far more strength increase per charge then power manipulation gives, every charge put into a specialty after the first one doubles the power of that specialty, that means that with shattered limited and ten charges a day you can make a specialty about a thousand times more powerful every day. So for example assuming Armsmaster is Tinker 8 (I think that's right) that's two charges spent to get a copy of his tinker power, if you then spend the rest of your charges for that weak on boosting that specialty you would get something that is like his power except about 300 quintillion times stronger, that's why Inventor is better as Power Manipulation seems to be set up so charges give gains roughly equal to each other but Inventor each successive charge is worth twice as much.

As for how to break the setting with one day of charges I came up with it in the Worm CYOA quest that's just getting started, it exploits the fact that Power Manipulation powers aren't limited by shard power limits and ratings are based off how effective they are. You create one power that allows someone to fall asleep for a chosen amount of time and doesn't need sustenance or physically age or anything until waking, about a max of thinker 1/breaker 1 and that's two of your charges spend with your costs, your second power is the ability to go to a dimensional pocket and back, it's limited in various ways that it's only worth about a mover 2 at most as a PRT guy waiting where you went in will catch you coming out sooner or later. So that's another 3 charges gone. The final and key power is the ability to travel 10 billion years back in time without moving, this is about a mover 1 at most as the system doesn't give zeros and the power is functionally useless. So that's 6 charges spend with your system all for the ability to travel back in time 10 billion years then sleep for 10 billion years, that's good only because of your core power as it means that you now have access to 10 billion years worth of charges and that's basically unlimited power as mentioned. It's a horrible, horrible trick though and any kind of RP or game would have the DM stop it for some reason, requiring the charges to be spent each day can be worked around with a little effort and keeping in the first 10 charges but generally they'd just say no to the time travel exploit.

*: Kaleidoscope is the most powerful long term due to the ability to not be limited by what's possible in Worm and allowing you to learn magic and stuff from other universes, if you rule that power manipulation or tinker could get to other realms of fiction with enough boosting it drops to third though behind them.

Click to shrink...

... Yeah, you're right. Inspired Inventor is pretty bullshit. I didn't realize you could take the humanities as Tinker Categories. Tinker 10 (Psychology) = More than Mind Control.

On your Power Control hack... I'm gonna say "No." Your first power is fine. Your second is... questionable. I'd rate it around Mover 3, just for utility of a perfect dodge to all attacks, but I suppose it depends on what limitations there are. But the power to jump 10 Billion years in the past? That's Mover 12ish. Minimum. It would make it literally impossible for anyone to catch you. Ever. So, not going to work as a Mover 1 power.

 

[Xilph]

While it makes it impossible for anyone to ever catch you as long as you're spending all your time in the past it requires a whole host of abilities to survive for billions of years alone in space without dying or going insane or anything, plus as it doesn't move you you will be in deep space and Earth won't pass your position for 10 billion years or even form for over 5. It's actually got very little use outside of the exploit, as mentioned though with even a halfway intelligent adjudicating force it would get stopped, not quite Pun Pun bad but still an infinite XP button. That's a tangent though so I'll stop with it.

Looking forward to more of the story though, should be interesting to see what you do.

 

[Beyogi]

Well, this is interesting so far. /following

 

[steamrick]

Interesting. I've done a little table of how long it will take to make powers of a certain strength:

In other words, if she lays low until shortly before worm canon, she could have about 3-4 level 10 powers with a supporting cast or level 6-8s. While not as broken as most cyoa fics, that's still S-Class within a year.
Except that this is Skitter mode, so yeah... laying low just isn't gonna work.

My thoughts on the powers I'd go for in this situation (powers I'd want by the time worm canon would kick off):
- Respawn lvl 10 (if lethal damage is taken or total incapacitation occurs, instantly create a new body at a location of your own choosing; can be deliberately triggered)
- Telekinesis lvl 10 (strong enough to rival the Simurgh while she's sandbagging; focussed on power rather than range but can fire off large projectiles at many times the speed of sound)
- Sting lvl 10 (imbue any weapon, item or power with the ability to fuck up anything and everything up to and including Zion)
-> 3069 mote cost... this combination is capable of dealing with any worm canon enemy up to and including the endbringers though not (yet) Zion

- Sanctity lvl 8 (immune to nearly all master and stranger effects; highly resistant to the remainder)
- Teleportation lvl 8 (continental range; needs several jumps to span the earth; can take moderate sized groups along)
- Invulnerability lvl 7 (not on Alexandria's level, but the average cape will never do enough damage to trigger respawn)
- Battle precognition lvl 6 (a few seconds of warning before dangerous things happen)
- Flight lvl 6 (just short of breaking the sound barrier)
-> 736 mote cost - the primary supporting abilities

This would take a total of 450 days to get, assuming no mote wasteage and no other powers created (such as a multitasking power or other thinker powers), so there would be about half a year remaining until the point where Lung goes after the Undersiders in canon.
There's two important powers still missing for the purpose of killing Zion: Something to break through the dimensional barriers and something to destroy his body. Luckily, there's still enough time to create two lvl 11 powers by the earliest time estimate for Zion to rampage.

 

[Larekko12]

Eh. doesn't Shattered limiter nuetralize the skitter mode nerfs?

 

[Xilph]

Eh. doesn't Shattered limiter nuetralize the skitter mode nerfs?

Click to shrink...

It should eventually, remember though it comes with double charges only at the start. Assuming Skitter Mode affects the power of those charges you'd need to wait the several months to a year before the double power effect kicks in which is what would counter the Skitter Mode power nerf. So not initially it won't but in the long run it will.

 

[Larekko12]

Well that fight should make things faster,


as well as power copying from sophia and the wards/protectorate.

 

[Vanargandr]

She's a Fire Breathing Red Head

The next step is obviously becoming a Dragon or a Phoenix (cuz marvel ami rite?)