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Safe For Work Worm Ideas thread
- Thread starter Prince Charon
- Start date
Prince Charon
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Emma and her father are never ambushed by the ABB wannabes that night, due to the wannabes being set up in a different alley, or at a different time. Emma thus doesn't meet Sophia until they're both at Winslow, and she and Taylor are still best friends. They also look, to Sophia, like cheerful, naive idiots, the way she saw Taylor when they met in canon. The thing is, Taylor doesn't have Emma's mysterious and sudden betrayal to confuse her and bring her down, so she actually stands up to Sophia and earns her respect... which Emma doesn't, and Sophia can't handle the fact that Taylor wants to hang out with Emma. Also, Taylor isn't traumatized like Emma was, and calls Sophia out on how bullshit her philosophy is, if Sophia explains it.
The thing is, the rich girl with the lawyer dad is now on the opposite side from Sophia, so she can't get away with as much, even with Winslow still being an incredibly shitty school. This makes her that much more frustrated, meaning she may do something drastic sooner - if she doesn't get arrested by the PRT, first. With no Emma to testify on her behalf, she's like going to be stuck in juvie, unless one of the villains has a use for her (Lung and Kaiser wouldn't help her, Skidmark is incompetent, Faultline would consider her a bad risk, but Coil might do something, and there are less well-known villains in BB, or paying attention to BB).
Let's say that the PRT doesn't catch her early enough, and she does do something trigger-worthy to them (whether Emma triggers or not, Taylor could certainly trigger due to needing to help Emma and being unable to) - probably not The Locker exactly, and not necessarily in school, but something quite nasty (or something that suggests that she'll keep escalating, but for whatever reason they can't prove it's her, leading to a Tinker and/or Thinker powerset). The nearest equivalent to the Locker that she could do to both of them (Other than locking them in two separate lockers, with could require more accomplices) is trapping them both in a dumpster. That could lead to Taylor's canon powerset, but there are other options. What might Sophia do, and what powers might result from it?
The thing is, the rich girl with the lawyer dad is now on the opposite side from Sophia, so she can't get away with as much, even with Winslow still being an incredibly shitty school. This makes her that much more frustrated, meaning she may do something drastic sooner - if she doesn't get arrested by the PRT, first. With no Emma to testify on her behalf, she's like going to be stuck in juvie, unless one of the villains has a use for her (Lung and Kaiser wouldn't help her, Skidmark is incompetent, Faultline would consider her a bad risk, but Coil might do something, and there are less well-known villains in BB, or paying attention to BB).
Let's say that the PRT doesn't catch her early enough, and she does do something trigger-worthy to them (whether Emma triggers or not, Taylor could certainly trigger due to needing to help Emma and being unable to) - probably not The Locker exactly, and not necessarily in school, but something quite nasty (or something that suggests that she'll keep escalating, but for whatever reason they can't prove it's her, leading to a Tinker and/or Thinker powerset). The nearest equivalent to the Locker that she could do to both of them (Other than locking them in two separate lockers, with could require more accomplices) is trapping them both in a dumpster. That could lead to Taylor's canon powerset, but there are other options. What might Sophia do, and what powers might result from it?
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Prince Charon
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After a marathon session of Fate/stay night (all three routes, with inadequate sleep between routes, and too much caffeine and sugar) L33t creates something. A tiny thing, so small that individual molecules are important components. A self-replicating nanorobot. Then he crashes, hard. When he wakes up, he finds that the original nanobot has exploded (a very miniscule explosion, far weaker than a bee's sneeze), but the other nanobots it built have mostly not, nor have the ones they built, nor the ones that group built...
Of course, just self-replication wouldn't be scary enough, especially when they tend to break down (and get cannibalized for parts) eight to twenty-four hours after being made (which is only one of the reasons a grey goo scenario is not an option; another is that while they reproduce fast enough to expand their numbers, the speed necessary to go grey goo is vastly greater than they are capable of). When infecting a living human body (or under special circumstances, other bodies), they build partially-extradimensional structures 'in' the nervous and circulatory systems that act very much like the Nasuverse's magic circuits. There's more to it of course, but if you don't care about that, you could skip down to the dotted line under the TL/DR summary.
How many circuits any one magus has, and the capacity of each circuit, seems to be determined by a number of factors, environmental, biological, and psychological. The main advantage of a large number of circuits over a high capacity-per-circuit is the ability to power more than one magical operation (like a spell, or supplying energy to a Mystic Code or Familiar) at a time - actually casting more than one spell at a time would require quite good multitasking. Either way, the fewer circuits used for an operation, the less power is available for it.
The Virtual Intelligence (in this context, an artificial intelligence that is not truly sapient) of the magic circuits determines the subject's Element(s) and Origin - and in some cases, a Sorcery Trait or Mystic Eyes, or similar - based on existing traits (and if already triggered, based on their powers and shard). For example, if Taylor gains the nanites after she triggers, her Element will probably be something like 'Worm' and her Origin will be 'Administration.' Someone who triggers despite having magic circuits may change Origins, or have dual Origins, and may gain another Element, if the Element they start out with does not fit their powers well enough. For example, if Dinah's magic circuits give her something like Earth or Fire as an Element, and she still triggers with her canon power (which is reasonable, since the sort of stresses likely to produce that power probably wouldn't be reduced by those Elements), she might add Ether or Divination to her existing Element or Elements, and her Origin could change to something like Probability or Prediction.
The magic circuits' VI will also work with the new magus's subconscious mind to develop a system of magecraft compatible with the user's personality, skills & interests, other mundane traits, and their Element(s) and Origin(s) (and Sorcery Trait(s), if any). The new magus can become aware of the system as if they were developing it themselves, though they will gain it much faster than they would without help. However, they can also fail to become consciously aware of their power, especially if they are lacking in intelligence or imagination, or have some personal, cultural, or philosophical reason to reject their powers.
Generally, a new magus becomes consciously aware of their abilities from 'opening' their circuits in a moment of stress, like a much milder trigger event (though it could happen in concert with an actual trigger event). After that point, 'opening' and 'closing' the circuits becomes a reflex.
The construction of Mystic Codes is in this variant closely related to the making of Familiars, to the point that one could say that a Familiar is a type of Mystic Code, or vice versa. The magus's blood, hair, or other bodily material is incorporated into the item in a ritual appropriate to the item's purpose and the magus's magecraft style, which gives the item magic circuits, though circuits that mostly cannot fuel themselves, instead needing external power, usually from a magus (this does not reduce the number of magic circuits the magus has, instead granting lower-quality replicas); this is easier if the material was created by your power (or modified, or otherwise related to it), or significant to your Element or magecraft style. If the item is to be a Familiar, an extra step is required, in the form of a ritual to 'collect the leftover thoughts of the dead' (create a VI based on some person or animal that died not too long ago, using a retrocognition effect to gain the necessary information). Creating a 'spirit' (incorporeal or semi-corporeal projection) as a Familiar is also possible, though this means that the magic circuits are almost fully extradimensional, and the spirit's ability to interact with the physical world will be somewhat limited. It is theoretically possible to 'steal' a parahuman's projection by doing this, but it is unlikely that the projection will cooperate under most circumstances.
It is possible to turn a living creature into a Familiar, skipping the otherwise-necessary step of creating a VI. Such a creature would have magic circuits that recharge on their own, but would still be of lower quality than the master's circuits, and would likely have a narrower Element or set of narrower Elements. Also, doing this is instinctively viewed as rather creepy by the vast majority of magi. The exceptions to this would tend to include capes whose power involves controlling or enhancing a specific type of creature, or those for whom other factors overwhelm any sense of disgust they might have.
Because the magic circuits are partially extradimensional, reverse engineering them would be very difficult, even for Dragon Unchained.
TL/DR: L33t makes a thing. The PRT may want to kill him for this thing, because Nilbog. His shard is excited.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Now, L33t isn't totally suicidal - much to his shard's disappointment, he's pretty cautious - but he can't quite bring himself to just destroy his creation. So, he uses an old teleportation device to send the nanobots to another city, at the teleporter's maximum range. He thinks there's about a 70% chance that the nanobots will be destroyed (in fact, it's closer to '70% of them will be destroyed, most of the rest arrive safely'), and even if they aren't, he's not the one who'll be blamed for it (he hopes), since the PRT should trace the first infection to Chicago (or New York, or London, or whereever, the point is that Patient 0 will not be in Brockton Bay). Let us say that the infection is not discovered early enough to be contained (possibly because the nanobots arrive near an airport), and makes it back to Brockton Bay within a month - which may well be before the government knows about it.
I'm not entirely clear on when this should happen, beyond 'after Uber and L33t have been operating for a while,' and 'before canon start.' See, there's less than three months in canon between Taylor's first outing as a cape, and the end of the Warlord Arc, which is probably too short a time for her to notice she has circuits, develop a form of magecraft, and get good enough at it to be useful, if she's also going out and being an active cape in a story with really tight pacing. If she gains the circuits before or not too long after her trigger, she has time to add it to her preparations (and if it's before she triggers, she might not trigger at all, or might get something different from her shard).
Of course, just self-replication wouldn't be scary enough, especially when they tend to break down (and get cannibalized for parts) eight to twenty-four hours after being made (which is only one of the reasons a grey goo scenario is not an option; another is that while they reproduce fast enough to expand their numbers, the speed necessary to go grey goo is vastly greater than they are capable of). When infecting a living human body (or under special circumstances, other bodies), they build partially-extradimensional structures 'in' the nervous and circulatory systems that act very much like the Nasuverse's magic circuits. There's more to it of course, but if you don't care about that, you could skip down to the dotted line under the TL/DR summary.
How many circuits any one magus has, and the capacity of each circuit, seems to be determined by a number of factors, environmental, biological, and psychological. The main advantage of a large number of circuits over a high capacity-per-circuit is the ability to power more than one magical operation (like a spell, or supplying energy to a Mystic Code or Familiar) at a time - actually casting more than one spell at a time would require quite good multitasking. Either way, the fewer circuits used for an operation, the less power is available for it.
The Virtual Intelligence (in this context, an artificial intelligence that is not truly sapient) of the magic circuits determines the subject's Element(s) and Origin - and in some cases, a Sorcery Trait or Mystic Eyes, or similar - based on existing traits (and if already triggered, based on their powers and shard). For example, if Taylor gains the nanites after she triggers, her Element will probably be something like 'Worm' and her Origin will be 'Administration.' Someone who triggers despite having magic circuits may change Origins, or have dual Origins, and may gain another Element, if the Element they start out with does not fit their powers well enough. For example, if Dinah's magic circuits give her something like Earth or Fire as an Element, and she still triggers with her canon power (which is reasonable, since the sort of stresses likely to produce that power probably wouldn't be reduced by those Elements), she might add Ether or Divination to her existing Element or Elements, and her Origin could change to something like Probability or Prediction.
The magic circuits' VI will also work with the new magus's subconscious mind to develop a system of magecraft compatible with the user's personality, skills & interests, other mundane traits, and their Element(s) and Origin(s) (and Sorcery Trait(s), if any). The new magus can become aware of the system as if they were developing it themselves, though they will gain it much faster than they would without help. However, they can also fail to become consciously aware of their power, especially if they are lacking in intelligence or imagination, or have some personal, cultural, or philosophical reason to reject their powers.
Generally, a new magus becomes consciously aware of their abilities from 'opening' their circuits in a moment of stress, like a much milder trigger event (though it could happen in concert with an actual trigger event). After that point, 'opening' and 'closing' the circuits becomes a reflex.
The construction of Mystic Codes is in this variant closely related to the making of Familiars, to the point that one could say that a Familiar is a type of Mystic Code, or vice versa. The magus's blood, hair, or other bodily material is incorporated into the item in a ritual appropriate to the item's purpose and the magus's magecraft style, which gives the item magic circuits, though circuits that mostly cannot fuel themselves, instead needing external power, usually from a magus (this does not reduce the number of magic circuits the magus has, instead granting lower-quality replicas); this is easier if the material was created by your power (or modified, or otherwise related to it), or significant to your Element or magecraft style. If the item is to be a Familiar, an extra step is required, in the form of a ritual to 'collect the leftover thoughts of the dead' (create a VI based on some person or animal that died not too long ago, using a retrocognition effect to gain the necessary information). Creating a 'spirit' (incorporeal or semi-corporeal projection) as a Familiar is also possible, though this means that the magic circuits are almost fully extradimensional, and the spirit's ability to interact with the physical world will be somewhat limited. It is theoretically possible to 'steal' a parahuman's projection by doing this, but it is unlikely that the projection will cooperate under most circumstances.
It is possible to turn a living creature into a Familiar, skipping the otherwise-necessary step of creating a VI. Such a creature would have magic circuits that recharge on their own, but would still be of lower quality than the master's circuits, and would likely have a narrower Element or set of narrower Elements. Also, doing this is instinctively viewed as rather creepy by the vast majority of magi. The exceptions to this would tend to include capes whose power involves controlling or enhancing a specific type of creature, or those for whom other factors overwhelm any sense of disgust they might have.
Because the magic circuits are partially extradimensional, reverse engineering them would be very difficult, even for Dragon Unchained.
TL/DR: L33t makes a thing. The PRT may want to kill him for this thing, because Nilbog. His shard is excited.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Now, L33t isn't totally suicidal - much to his shard's disappointment, he's pretty cautious - but he can't quite bring himself to just destroy his creation. So, he uses an old teleportation device to send the nanobots to another city, at the teleporter's maximum range. He thinks there's about a 70% chance that the nanobots will be destroyed (in fact, it's closer to '70% of them will be destroyed, most of the rest arrive safely'), and even if they aren't, he's not the one who'll be blamed for it (he hopes), since the PRT should trace the first infection to Chicago (or New York, or London, or whereever, the point is that Patient 0 will not be in Brockton Bay). Let us say that the infection is not discovered early enough to be contained (possibly because the nanobots arrive near an airport), and makes it back to Brockton Bay within a month - which may well be before the government knows about it.
I'm not entirely clear on when this should happen, beyond 'after Uber and L33t have been operating for a while,' and 'before canon start.' See, there's less than three months in canon between Taylor's first outing as a cape, and the end of the Warlord Arc, which is probably too short a time for her to notice she has circuits, develop a form of magecraft, and get good enough at it to be useful, if she's also going out and being an active cape in a story with really tight pacing. If she gains the circuits before or not too long after her trigger, she has time to add it to her preparations (and if it's before she triggers, she might not trigger at all, or might get something different from her shard).
evildice
(emotionally stable clown posse)
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macdjord
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- A health crisis has put Piggot out of commission for a while; she's being treated at an out-of-town hospital on heavy medication and strict bed rest
- Suddenly, an Endbringer attack! The entire ENE Protectorate team - but none of the Wards - is going.
- As they're leaving, Aegis complains about not being allowed to go. In an effort to make him feel better, Armsmaster reminds him that, with all of them gone, he is Acting Head of the Protectorate ENE until their return, and charges him to hold the fort until he returns
- At the Endbringer fight, a recently Triggered Tinker deploys, without authorization, an untested device intended to allow every cape there to fight as one, connected in a single hive-mind. Because she's worried about being influenced through the link, she sets it up to target only Protectorate and registered Heroes. It works - the Endbringer is driven off with relatively few casualties - but the Tinker is one of those casualties, and no one knows how to safely turn it off. The linked Heroes are no help; without the single unifying goal of 'fight the Endbringer' to concentrate on, their hive-mind has dissolved into an incoherent hash of conflicting desires and thoughts. Dragon - who could not be linked in, for obvious reasons - is working as fast as she can to reverse-engineer the tech, but it's going to take time.
- Back in Brockton Bay, Acting Director Renick receives the news with dismay, to put it mildly. He's an able administrator and good second-in-command, but he's not really up to the task of leading the PRT ENE, not in the middle of its biggest crisis in 20 years.
- Renick calls Aegis into his office, and gives him the bad news: the Protectorate capes are all gone indefinitely, while the Villains are already starting to return to the city; they are going to need to keep the peace, and until reinforcements arrive the Wards are the only capes they have to do it with. Aegis looks determined and says that Armsmaster named him Acting Head of the Protectorate ENE until he returned, and if that takes a little longer than expected, so be it - he's not going to fail in this duty. Renick, feeling relieved and a little guilty, decides that if Aegis feels he's ready for the responsibility, then Renick's going to let him - he's got too much on his plate to take over running the Wards directly if there's any other option. (Aegis does not, in fact, feel he's ready for the responsibility. He's putting on a brave face in a time of crisis. But once he realizes that Renick is expecting him to actually act as Head of the Protectorate ENE in every respect, he's certainly not going to let the man down or breath a word of complaint.)
- Renick does, of course, call for reinforcements. But, unlike Piggot, who would have called Chief Director Costa-Brown as soon as she could get 5 minutes on her schedule, Renick files his request using the standard forms. Unfortunately, everybody is filing for reinforcements after this disaster, and the person who processes the request gives it a low priority, because ENE still has 7 capes while some branches are down to, like, 3 - having missed that all of ENE's remaining capes are Wards. Renick brings the issue up in the next director's meeting, mentioning that he's got Wards filling in for his missing Protectorate, but the other directors think nothing of it - they've all got Wards supplementing their heavily reduced Protector forces.
- End result: Aegis is now, de facto and de jure, the leader of the Protectorate ENE, for an indefinite time.
I'm probably being dreadfully unfair to Deputy Director Renick here, but if you want to pull off a Lord of the Flies plot without actually killing off all the adults, you need someone ineffectual enough to let a child get and keep actual power in a crisis.
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I quite like it. Would this be before canon?
Lazurman
That Others May Fap
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That's a Walking Dead cosplay isn't it? That one zombie girl from the first episode?
macdjord
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D'know. I'm not sure where to go with it from here.
Lazurman
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It's an excellent start to a wildly divergent AU, but still, even with bureaucratic hell being a thing here, hard to see any situation where this lasts longer than a month, two at most before a responsible adult in a position of power gets wind of this. Not a lot of time until the adults take over again.
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Didn't realize we were in the SFW thread... All we need is the right timeframe and we could do all kinds of shit. For instance if during the Canberra attack maybe Sophia is too busy to go to school Which helps Taylor recover enough to push back against the Duo. Emma might be the one pointing them but Sophia always struck me as the Lynchpin.
macdjord
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Honestly, I was thinking more on the order of a week or two. Maybe a bit more if things actually go well for them - both because they've proved they can do it, and because Renick would put less pressure for reinforcements.
But they would be the harshest weeks possible, since every Villain in town knows that the Protectorate has been defanged temporarily and tries to take advantage.
Radek
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That sounds really interesting and has room for all sorts of shenanigans. I´d read it.
Prince Charon
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Depending on the timing, and Coil's choices (he doesn't want the other villains to win too big, after all), this could be a good time for the Undersiders to show themselves as the 'good' villains, helping the Wards when they're really needed (which Coil can spin to make the PRT look weak without actually letting villains he doesn't control win much). If it's Canberra, it could lead to Taylor going out in an incomplete costume, and possibly winning Shadow Stalker's approval for her ruthlessness (this and the previous option could be combined, of course).
TheDivineDemon
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Special thanks to Auks, Scriniver, Inkling, and Drvash for helping me work on the notes for this story and special credit to Auks for helping me edit the first chapter.
Immersion
Chapter 1: Prologue
The warehouse district of Brockton Bay was a surprisingly lively place for a city whose shipping had dried up. Though, perhaps, that wasn't so shocking. The old concrete buildings were spacious and though a bit drafty protected many from the elements when they had nowhere else to call home.
it had practically become a small town unto itself. They were a headache that the police couldn't be bothered with unless they got into buildings that businesses were actually using.
But vagrants and the homeless weren't the only residents of the area. No, there were far more fantastical occupants who made their homes away from homes within the forgotten buildings.
Parahumans. Capes. People with near unbelievable powers who operated on either side of the law made their homes bases in the empty walls of the district even as they presented themselves in costumes both awe-inspiring and frightening. Or, in the case of the two parahumans currently running through the back alleys of the district, dressed in the most ridiculous things imaginable.
The taller of the pair wore a gold-tan mask that made his face appear to elongate into a long muzzle with a cartoonish grin and eyes above the nose. Atop his head was a blonde wig was stylized to appear almost like a rabbit's ears. Around his neck, he wore a bright red scarf that rested on top of a purple tank top with a large white O painted at its center.
The other man… the other man was dressed as a giant blue frog. It's too long arms flapped as the man struggled to keep up with his friend, his face sweating as the material turned out to be less breathable than he had hoped.
"Are, are we almost there?" The question struggled to come out, the man's breath catching in his throat as he tried to regain control of his lungs.
"We really need to get you running out more bro." The other teen's voice came out through a broad grin in a cheery baritone, "You've been spending way too much time in the lab."
The frog man, better known to most of Brockton Bay as the villain Leet, gave his friend a half-hearted glare, "It's because I spend so much time in the lab that we got away." He had created a line of sight teleportation device that had helped them escape the back of the transport. Like he had thought it had made for an amazing escape. Unfortunately, it had proven to have a short shelf life.
Like a number of his latest inventions. At least it didn't explode too bad. He could probably salvage some bits of it.
"We still had to run miles man. With Vista on our tails." Uber, his partner, and overall bro, said with an exaggerated shudder. "She's a vicious little thing man, I don't care how the Heroes try to market her."
"Stop being a baby."
"You can't make me!" He proclaimed loudly, getting a laugh out of his friend. "C'mon man, just another block or two before we get home. And my fingers are sore from getting out of those PRT cuffs. Trickier than they look."
Leet groaned but flopped after his friend at an easier pace now that they were all but home free. Home, in this case, being a rundown warehouse that they had renovated with quick made walls and generators. It wasn't much but it had room for his lab and for Uber to practice so it was home.
It also had a decently concealed security system that made sure the homeless couldn't get in and try squatting, again.
"Still, overall I think we had a good show." Uber said, typing in the code to open their 'front door'. "Especially the last bit, that escape was fun. Very GTA."
"Hey! Maybe that can be out next show. It'd be pretty easy to do too. Steal a car, get into a… car… chase…" His voice began to trail off as he took in the sight of his home.
The furniture was flipped, the TV was missing along with all of their game systems, and the most telling thing about the scene were the seven sets of rabbit costumes that laid discarded on the floor. It didn't take long for them to put the clues together but he felt more numb than angry.
Wasn't he supposed to be angry?
"They took the VR system." He heard someone say in a small voice, belatedly recognizing it was his voice. He couldn't wrap his head around the idea of the guys doing this to them. They had done at least half a dozen jobs together, did that not warrant some form of comradery? An honor among thieves? "I was going to see if I could salvage the neural interface from it…"
He didn't know how long he stood there for, frozen and staring at his disturbed property, but it was long enough for Uber to search the rest of the building. "Dave" He called out Leet's real name, enough to snap him out of his stupor, "You should come see this."
Something about the tone of his voice made his legs freeze up and his stomach to drop. He felt as if he were moving through molasses as he finally moved, tracking his friend's voice to the back of their home. What he saw drained what little blood he had left in his face.
The door to his lab was open.
The steel door was still in one piece and the advanced lock was still in place but the wall next to it was ripped apart. Drywall caking the hall, leaving wooden paneling and studs plain to see.
A movie line played in his head, "Secure lock, sturdy lock, completely unbreakable. The walls? Not so much." He couldn't place it and he didn't care to. He all but stumbled forward, dread firmly setting in as he crossed the threshold.
The room was empty, or damn near close. Most of the heavy machinery was still there but it seemed that anything that wasn't bolted down or weighed less than a hundred pounds was gone.
His legs shook and gave out at the sight.
He was ruined.
Dave had an amazing power, one that made him more than what he used to be. It's what made him a part of the elite. He could build anything. If you could dream it he could make it.
Freeze ray? Done. Flight belt? First week easy. Transforming car? Tell him what you wanted it to change into.
But he could only build each of these miracles once. And the closer he came to a previous invention the more likely it was going to fail, explosively. He needed his old machines to work around the limitations of his power. So that he could jerry rig something new from the old.
But if he didn't have the old how could he create something new? If he couldn't create something new then what was he?
A hand landed on his shoulder and didn't bother to look up. The reassuring squeeze did nothing for his spirits. "We'll find it, Davey, we know where most of these guys live. They should have thought of that before stealing from us." There was a menace in his voice that David tried to take comfort in but he couldn't bring himself to.
Especially when he thought of what was taken. "They took the Medigun Eric." He vaguely realized that he was trembling. "How am I supposed to make anything without that? What if something goes wrong?"
"We'll get it back David, we'll get it all back. Don't you worry."
-0-0-0-0-0-
Danny Hebert often found that he was stretching the definition of a dockworker. Dredging up jobs and contracts out of prospective employers for simply being near the oceanfront. Sometimes he half joked that they were a union of security guards and salvagers.
The joke didn't make it any less true or any less difficult.
The Construction Union fought them on a number of jobs and the city was becoming increasingly stingy with their contracts. There was a full grown tree of bitterness in the local government aimed at the Dockworkers Association. Planted, with admitted justness, due to the actions of the rioters in the 90s.
Poor Matt hadn't even been involved with the riots, he had begged for cooler heads to preveil. But no one listened and Matt ended up taking the blame, stepping down as the Association President with the birth of the Boat Graveyard.
City hall's resentment was likely fanned from all of Danny's numerous attempts at revitalization. But, as his late wife often said, he was a pig headed man and wouldn't give up. Not while he still believed that his city could get better, that it could truly live again instead of just going through the motions.
So, despite the likely rejection coming his way he still worked on. Throwing his all behind each project and problem put in front of him. How could he not when it felt like if he stopped that everything would fall apart.
A knock came at his door, dragging him away from the proposed contract with the storage chain taking over some of the beachfront, "Come in." He called, half distractedly with his eyes still skimming the paper and his teeth gnawing at the end of a pen.
Dorothy, the office secretary, was a stout woman with a smiling face that seemed to have never seen a frown. She wore a simple skirt and blouse with a color scheme that could only be called 'bright'. But what really caught his attention about her was the cup of steaming coffee in her hand.
"Door, you're a lifesaver." He praised, setting aside the contract for the first time in nearly an hour to accept the cup.
"Well, someone has to make sure you boy's don't fall asleep at your desk."
"That was one time!"
Her lips took an amused twist, "Oh, really? Then it must have been someone else I saw napping here the other day."
"That was my lunch break and I just pulled an all nighter"
"Then a chewing out would serve you right." She said with hands on her hips, "Leaving your poor daughter home alone like that."
Danny took a long sip of his coffee, not meeting the woman's eyes as she squinted at him. Guilt easily rising once again as she stared down at him and he remembered just how many times he had done just that to his daughter, "Taylor's fourteen, old enough to stay home alone for a night."
Dorothy gave a snort, "If only I could have trusted my boys like that at her age. I don't think I would have come home to a house if I did." Danny gave a small chuckle at that, remembering all the exasperated stories Dorothy had regaled to the office about her boys over the years.
The woman suddenly snapped her fingers, "Ah, before I forget, Jared wanted to know if you had time tomorrow to go over itinerary for the Union meeting."
"Alight, give me a sec," Danny had to brush aside a good tower's worth of paper to find his calendar book, "Alright, according to this I'll be free on the ninth around 2 and Thursday around the same time. Can you see if he's fine with either?" Something about those dates was bugging him. He couldn't place his finger on it but there was something at the back of his skull nagging at him.
"Can I walk all of ten feet? Why yes, yes I can." She gave him a wave he absently returned, studying his calendar book like it was a piece of new age art that Anne used to love and he didn't quite get. He hemmed and hawed over it, trying to puzzle his way through to a discovery.
He hummed at the date for a good minute before flipping the page, thinking that maybe he had forgotten a meeting later in the week. It was until the date of that Friday was staring him in the face did he realize what he had forgotten.
He had somehow lost his balance while sitting completely still, barely keeping himself in his chair and the calendar in his hand. His stomach had dropped as the room spun and a cold sweat threatened to break across his back.
How could he have forgotten about June 11th? How could he forget what was literally the most important day of his life?
How could he have possibly forgotten Taylor's birthday?
Not only the date but he had forgotten to get her anything. No gift, no cake, he didn't even bother asking her if she wanted to have Emma over for a birthday dinner. God, he had never felt so low.
What would Annette say if she saw this?
He stood with that thought, his legs easily carrying him out the door. He had to fix this. It was fixable. There was time to repair his stupidity.
Taylor used to love that sushi place off of the Boardwalk, it was a bit expensive but it would be worth it. And maybe he could call Alan, see if Emma wanted to join them. Then he could finish the day with ice cream at that new place off of Third.
"Danny? Where you off to?"
"I've got to pick something up Door. I'll be back soon."
That just left a gift.
What should he get? A gift card seemed too impersonal. Was she too old for stuffed animals now? Probably. Clothes? No, he didn't think his daughter was into fashion. Besides, he didn't want a repeat of the training bra incident.
Shaking the memory out of his head Danny decided he would think of something when he got to the mall. That place was basically designed with the idea of last minute gift shopping.
-0-0-0-0-
Taylor let out a scream as soon as she got home, the frustrated sound echoing through the row house's halls. Her dad wasn't home and wouldn't be for another good few hours. Which was just as well. She needed time to decompress, not a barrage of questions.
She slammed her backpack onto the foyer floor and stomped her way to the kitchen. It was all a bit dramatic but she had a long day so she felt justified in her childish behavior. Especially since she was alone and no one could judge her.
As the kettle boiled and she searched the fridge for something to eat, she wondered what the hell could have happened to Emma to make her such a bitch.
Or maybe it was something she did? Something she did wrong? Something that could destroy a lifetime of friendship so thoroughly?
No, she couldn't believe it was that simple. And even if it was there was still no reason for Emma to target her so.
To ruin her textbooks before she turned them in, leaving her with several bills from the school for her dad to pay.
To have kept a piece of her broken flute, a precious memento from her mother that they had defiled earlier that year, to pierce it through several pictures of her her mother. Pictures that had crude and rude things added to them.
How they had gotten that into her locker she did not know. How she kept her temper was another mystery she wasn't sure she could ever solve. Emma just couldn't leave the memory of her mother alone.
Emma had said it was a belated birthday gift, claiming she had all but forgotten it until her dad tried to invite her to Taylor's birthday dinner. She had a good laugh over that, asking if Taylor had any real friends in the world and showed disgust at the very idea of spending time with her former friend.
A part of her wanted to show the "gift" to a teacher. To show physical proof to her claims so that maybe she could get something more then offers of mediation.
But she couldn't bear even the idea of showing those pictures to anyone else. Her teeth clenched just at the thought of them. She couldn't have thrown them out fast enough, keeping only the piece of the flute in hopes to fix what was broken.
The flute still laid in her room, cleaned as best as she could make it but still unplayable. Nothing but a useless piece of wood and metal kept only out of sentimentality.
She tried not to think about it. She tried to focus on the smell of Earl Grey brewing in honeyed water, to think of how relaxing it would be. But in the end her teeth ended up gnashing and another scream worked its way up from her belly as her hand slammed to the counter, tea splashing out of its cup.
She consoled herself with the knowledge that they were in the last week of school and that she would soon have months worth of reprieve. That almost calmed her down.
Still, as she set down a plate of birthday sushi and teas down in the living room, she wished that she had let her temper and fist fly. It would have been worth any punishment to wipe that smug, condescending, look off of Emma's face.
But she rose above the impulse as her mother taught her to. Someone had to honor her mother's teachings and memory, especially if Emma was so insistent on defiling it all.
She was reaching for the remote, hoping to drown out her day with mindless distraction, when something caught her eye. Her birthday present from her dad.
Her only gift that hadn't been a cruel joke.
She wasn't sure if she liked it or not, honestly. She appreciated that her dad had tried but she had never been one for video games. She had always thought that they were a mindless time sink for violent behavior.
But damn if mindless violence didn't sound exactly what she needed.
The game system, a Bridge according to the side of the box, still laid unopened since it's unwrapping and took her a moment to set up. She briefly struggled with the wires but she must have done it right as the screen easily lit up and asked for a disk.
That gave Taylor another pause, after all, she had options. He father said the store clerk recommended them to give Taylor a sample of "different styles of gameplay". Taylor and her dad agreed he probably got swindled but Taylor was now feeling just a bit more grateful for that greedy employee.
The first game she picked up she decided against immediately, basketball really didn't seem like it was going to give her what she was looking for. The opportunity for some cathartic violence.
The same went for the puzzle game with a guy falling through a hole on the cover and what she assumed was a life simulator game.The next two games looked to be more promising. Much more promising.
The first one had a blonde man and a wolf on the cover. The back of the case showed the man swinging the sword at various monsters and the wolf jumping at them. It also looked to have fishing? But the second game won the competition for one very simple reason.
It was rated M for Mature.
She didn't know much about video games but she knew that meant violent. And violent was what she was looking for.
She slid the game in and took her seat, popping in a piece of dynamite roll as she waited for everything to load. The system asked her a few questions for the game, the brightness, the difficulty, the interface. In the end, she just set everything to default and pressed start.
That was when everything went wrong.
A great jolt rushed up from her controller, tingling through her spine and slamming into her brain. She was sure her breath caught in her throat as the sensation began to overwhelm her.
And then she blinked. She blinked and she was no longer in her living room. Instead, she sat in a smoke filled room lined with chairs. An intercom dinged as the room shook periodically and a woman in a blue stewardess uniform walked down the aisle.
Was she on an airplane?
She blinked again and her ears were greeted to the sound of screams. Her lungs strained, her body felt weightless, and her ears rang as she suddenly found herself submerged in frigid water.
Luggage and wreckage sank rapidly around her as she struggled to the surface, every inch of her screaming for air. She broke the surface with what she was sure was the greatest gasp of air she had ever taken in her life, the air tainted by the smell of smoke.
Near everywhere she looked there was fire. Plane wreckage surrounded her and she did not hear a single cry for help.
Was she the only survivor? How did she even get there? Was she in the middle of the ocean?
These questions had to wait for when she wasn't at the risk of drowning or burning alive. So she swam to the only area that wasn't covered in debris and fire, a lighthouse that had remained miraculously untouched.
She called out, asking if anyone was there but she wasn't sure if her voice carried very far with how she was shivering. The door was open though and, hopefully, they wouldn't mind her going in where it wasn't raining and she could get warm.
The first thing she noticed when she entered the lighthouse was the giant statue looking down on her with grim features molded onto its bronze face. Beneath the man's face was a large red banner with golden letters.
'No Gods or Kings, Only Man'
The second thing she noticed was how the door slammed behind in her. She hoped it was just the wind.
She called out again, still shivering and unsure if she was heard. But she must have as a light had flared to life in the back of the building, leading to a staircase and what looked like a fancy elevator.
Were they leading her somewhere because they noticed what had happened? Or did they have other plans? They wouldn't bring her to them just to kill her, right?
Her hand near moved on its own, pulling the lever and jolting the room to life as it began trekking downwards. Outside the elevators window, she could see that she was actually sinking, fish swimming by carefully carved numbers telling her how far down she was going.
An old timey video began playing, taking up the view of the window. A man's voices spoke in smooth and impassioned tones as he decried the government and religion. Shaming them for holding back the artist and industrialist.
Taylor thought he was a bit full of himself but when she saw what he chose she couldn't help but feel awed. A great city, a metropolis, shined bright in neon underneath ocean waves. The elevator, or submarine, or whatever it was, was taking her on a long tour between buildings letting her witness great statues that rivaled the whales that swam between what would have been city lanes and jellyfish that glowed nearly as bright as the neon signs surrounding them.
She could hear other people talking now, on the radio that had apparently been next to her the entire time but she could barely find it in herself to pay attention to their words, too caught up within the great sights before her.
Her ride was pulling into a stop just then, gravitating to a series of rings that led into a building. She found herself excited, wondering just what lay within the wonder before her.
The first thing she saw was a man begging for his life as a woman gutted him alive.
-0-0-0-0-
Danny had gotten home late that night, nearing nine as he walked through the door. Not even a week and he was already breaking his promise to himself to not do that anymore, or at least not as much.
He hoped that Taylor wouldn't mind too much.
But as he walked in he found he didn't have to worry. Taylor seemed to have finally cracked open her gift and was having a grand time with it going by how intently she was looking at the screen.
He winced as the screen was covered in blood as her character seemed to die from what looked like impalement by drill. Maybe that game hadn't been such a great pick, it seemed way too violent. But Taylor didn't seem to mind as her character stepped out of the room it was transported to and came rushing out.
Well, at least she was enjoying it. He was worried that he had made a bad pick, and wasted a decent amount of money on the game system but now he felt better.
He yawned as he went up the stairs, "Try not to stay up too late, honey. You still got school tomorrow." Not that he minded too much, the school year was almost over and it wouldn't kill her to stay up a little past her bedtime.
AN:
I hope you guys enjoyed. And please tell me what you thought of it.
Side note: What sets going to set this story apart is that I have a clear ending for it in mind and it's not the distant Scion fight.
Immersion
Chapter 1: Prologue
The warehouse district of Brockton Bay was a surprisingly lively place for a city whose shipping had dried up. Though, perhaps, that wasn't so shocking. The old concrete buildings were spacious and though a bit drafty protected many from the elements when they had nowhere else to call home.
it had practically become a small town unto itself. They were a headache that the police couldn't be bothered with unless they got into buildings that businesses were actually using.
But vagrants and the homeless weren't the only residents of the area. No, there were far more fantastical occupants who made their homes away from homes within the forgotten buildings.
Parahumans. Capes. People with near unbelievable powers who operated on either side of the law made their homes bases in the empty walls of the district even as they presented themselves in costumes both awe-inspiring and frightening. Or, in the case of the two parahumans currently running through the back alleys of the district, dressed in the most ridiculous things imaginable.
The taller of the pair wore a gold-tan mask that made his face appear to elongate into a long muzzle with a cartoonish grin and eyes above the nose. Atop his head was a blonde wig was stylized to appear almost like a rabbit's ears. Around his neck, he wore a bright red scarf that rested on top of a purple tank top with a large white O painted at its center.
The other man… the other man was dressed as a giant blue frog. It's too long arms flapped as the man struggled to keep up with his friend, his face sweating as the material turned out to be less breathable than he had hoped.
"Are, are we almost there?" The question struggled to come out, the man's breath catching in his throat as he tried to regain control of his lungs.
"We really need to get you running out more bro." The other teen's voice came out through a broad grin in a cheery baritone, "You've been spending way too much time in the lab."
The frog man, better known to most of Brockton Bay as the villain Leet, gave his friend a half-hearted glare, "It's because I spend so much time in the lab that we got away." He had created a line of sight teleportation device that had helped them escape the back of the transport. Like he had thought it had made for an amazing escape. Unfortunately, it had proven to have a short shelf life.
Like a number of his latest inventions. At least it didn't explode too bad. He could probably salvage some bits of it.
"We still had to run miles man. With Vista on our tails." Uber, his partner, and overall bro, said with an exaggerated shudder. "She's a vicious little thing man, I don't care how the Heroes try to market her."
"Stop being a baby."
"You can't make me!" He proclaimed loudly, getting a laugh out of his friend. "C'mon man, just another block or two before we get home. And my fingers are sore from getting out of those PRT cuffs. Trickier than they look."
Leet groaned but flopped after his friend at an easier pace now that they were all but home free. Home, in this case, being a rundown warehouse that they had renovated with quick made walls and generators. It wasn't much but it had room for his lab and for Uber to practice so it was home.
It also had a decently concealed security system that made sure the homeless couldn't get in and try squatting, again.
"Still, overall I think we had a good show." Uber said, typing in the code to open their 'front door'. "Especially the last bit, that escape was fun. Very GTA."
"Hey! Maybe that can be out next show. It'd be pretty easy to do too. Steal a car, get into a… car… chase…" His voice began to trail off as he took in the sight of his home.
The furniture was flipped, the TV was missing along with all of their game systems, and the most telling thing about the scene were the seven sets of rabbit costumes that laid discarded on the floor. It didn't take long for them to put the clues together but he felt more numb than angry.
Wasn't he supposed to be angry?
"They took the VR system." He heard someone say in a small voice, belatedly recognizing it was his voice. He couldn't wrap his head around the idea of the guys doing this to them. They had done at least half a dozen jobs together, did that not warrant some form of comradery? An honor among thieves? "I was going to see if I could salvage the neural interface from it…"
He didn't know how long he stood there for, frozen and staring at his disturbed property, but it was long enough for Uber to search the rest of the building. "Dave" He called out Leet's real name, enough to snap him out of his stupor, "You should come see this."
Something about the tone of his voice made his legs freeze up and his stomach to drop. He felt as if he were moving through molasses as he finally moved, tracking his friend's voice to the back of their home. What he saw drained what little blood he had left in his face.
The door to his lab was open.
The steel door was still in one piece and the advanced lock was still in place but the wall next to it was ripped apart. Drywall caking the hall, leaving wooden paneling and studs plain to see.
A movie line played in his head, "Secure lock, sturdy lock, completely unbreakable. The walls? Not so much." He couldn't place it and he didn't care to. He all but stumbled forward, dread firmly setting in as he crossed the threshold.
The room was empty, or damn near close. Most of the heavy machinery was still there but it seemed that anything that wasn't bolted down or weighed less than a hundred pounds was gone.
His legs shook and gave out at the sight.
He was ruined.
Dave had an amazing power, one that made him more than what he used to be. It's what made him a part of the elite. He could build anything. If you could dream it he could make it.
Freeze ray? Done. Flight belt? First week easy. Transforming car? Tell him what you wanted it to change into.
But he could only build each of these miracles once. And the closer he came to a previous invention the more likely it was going to fail, explosively. He needed his old machines to work around the limitations of his power. So that he could jerry rig something new from the old.
But if he didn't have the old how could he create something new? If he couldn't create something new then what was he?
A hand landed on his shoulder and didn't bother to look up. The reassuring squeeze did nothing for his spirits. "We'll find it, Davey, we know where most of these guys live. They should have thought of that before stealing from us." There was a menace in his voice that David tried to take comfort in but he couldn't bring himself to.
Especially when he thought of what was taken. "They took the Medigun Eric." He vaguely realized that he was trembling. "How am I supposed to make anything without that? What if something goes wrong?"
"We'll get it back David, we'll get it all back. Don't you worry."
-0-0-0-0-0-
Danny Hebert often found that he was stretching the definition of a dockworker. Dredging up jobs and contracts out of prospective employers for simply being near the oceanfront. Sometimes he half joked that they were a union of security guards and salvagers.
The joke didn't make it any less true or any less difficult.
The Construction Union fought them on a number of jobs and the city was becoming increasingly stingy with their contracts. There was a full grown tree of bitterness in the local government aimed at the Dockworkers Association. Planted, with admitted justness, due to the actions of the rioters in the 90s.
Poor Matt hadn't even been involved with the riots, he had begged for cooler heads to preveil. But no one listened and Matt ended up taking the blame, stepping down as the Association President with the birth of the Boat Graveyard.
City hall's resentment was likely fanned from all of Danny's numerous attempts at revitalization. But, as his late wife often said, he was a pig headed man and wouldn't give up. Not while he still believed that his city could get better, that it could truly live again instead of just going through the motions.
So, despite the likely rejection coming his way he still worked on. Throwing his all behind each project and problem put in front of him. How could he not when it felt like if he stopped that everything would fall apart.
A knock came at his door, dragging him away from the proposed contract with the storage chain taking over some of the beachfront, "Come in." He called, half distractedly with his eyes still skimming the paper and his teeth gnawing at the end of a pen.
Dorothy, the office secretary, was a stout woman with a smiling face that seemed to have never seen a frown. She wore a simple skirt and blouse with a color scheme that could only be called 'bright'. But what really caught his attention about her was the cup of steaming coffee in her hand.
"Door, you're a lifesaver." He praised, setting aside the contract for the first time in nearly an hour to accept the cup.
"Well, someone has to make sure you boy's don't fall asleep at your desk."
"That was one time!"
Her lips took an amused twist, "Oh, really? Then it must have been someone else I saw napping here the other day."
"That was my lunch break and I just pulled an all nighter"
"Then a chewing out would serve you right." She said with hands on her hips, "Leaving your poor daughter home alone like that."
Danny took a long sip of his coffee, not meeting the woman's eyes as she squinted at him. Guilt easily rising once again as she stared down at him and he remembered just how many times he had done just that to his daughter, "Taylor's fourteen, old enough to stay home alone for a night."
Dorothy gave a snort, "If only I could have trusted my boys like that at her age. I don't think I would have come home to a house if I did." Danny gave a small chuckle at that, remembering all the exasperated stories Dorothy had regaled to the office about her boys over the years.
The woman suddenly snapped her fingers, "Ah, before I forget, Jared wanted to know if you had time tomorrow to go over itinerary for the Union meeting."
"Alight, give me a sec," Danny had to brush aside a good tower's worth of paper to find his calendar book, "Alright, according to this I'll be free on the ninth around 2 and Thursday around the same time. Can you see if he's fine with either?" Something about those dates was bugging him. He couldn't place his finger on it but there was something at the back of his skull nagging at him.
"Can I walk all of ten feet? Why yes, yes I can." She gave him a wave he absently returned, studying his calendar book like it was a piece of new age art that Anne used to love and he didn't quite get. He hemmed and hawed over it, trying to puzzle his way through to a discovery.
He hummed at the date for a good minute before flipping the page, thinking that maybe he had forgotten a meeting later in the week. It was until the date of that Friday was staring him in the face did he realize what he had forgotten.
He had somehow lost his balance while sitting completely still, barely keeping himself in his chair and the calendar in his hand. His stomach had dropped as the room spun and a cold sweat threatened to break across his back.
How could he have forgotten about June 11th? How could he forget what was literally the most important day of his life?
How could he have possibly forgotten Taylor's birthday?
Not only the date but he had forgotten to get her anything. No gift, no cake, he didn't even bother asking her if she wanted to have Emma over for a birthday dinner. God, he had never felt so low.
What would Annette say if she saw this?
He stood with that thought, his legs easily carrying him out the door. He had to fix this. It was fixable. There was time to repair his stupidity.
Taylor used to love that sushi place off of the Boardwalk, it was a bit expensive but it would be worth it. And maybe he could call Alan, see if Emma wanted to join them. Then he could finish the day with ice cream at that new place off of Third.
"Danny? Where you off to?"
"I've got to pick something up Door. I'll be back soon."
That just left a gift.
What should he get? A gift card seemed too impersonal. Was she too old for stuffed animals now? Probably. Clothes? No, he didn't think his daughter was into fashion. Besides, he didn't want a repeat of the training bra incident.
Shaking the memory out of his head Danny decided he would think of something when he got to the mall. That place was basically designed with the idea of last minute gift shopping.
-0-0-0-0-
Taylor let out a scream as soon as she got home, the frustrated sound echoing through the row house's halls. Her dad wasn't home and wouldn't be for another good few hours. Which was just as well. She needed time to decompress, not a barrage of questions.
She slammed her backpack onto the foyer floor and stomped her way to the kitchen. It was all a bit dramatic but she had a long day so she felt justified in her childish behavior. Especially since she was alone and no one could judge her.
As the kettle boiled and she searched the fridge for something to eat, she wondered what the hell could have happened to Emma to make her such a bitch.
Or maybe it was something she did? Something she did wrong? Something that could destroy a lifetime of friendship so thoroughly?
No, she couldn't believe it was that simple. And even if it was there was still no reason for Emma to target her so.
To ruin her textbooks before she turned them in, leaving her with several bills from the school for her dad to pay.
To have kept a piece of her broken flute, a precious memento from her mother that they had defiled earlier that year, to pierce it through several pictures of her her mother. Pictures that had crude and rude things added to them.
How they had gotten that into her locker she did not know. How she kept her temper was another mystery she wasn't sure she could ever solve. Emma just couldn't leave the memory of her mother alone.
Emma had said it was a belated birthday gift, claiming she had all but forgotten it until her dad tried to invite her to Taylor's birthday dinner. She had a good laugh over that, asking if Taylor had any real friends in the world and showed disgust at the very idea of spending time with her former friend.
A part of her wanted to show the "gift" to a teacher. To show physical proof to her claims so that maybe she could get something more then offers of mediation.
But she couldn't bear even the idea of showing those pictures to anyone else. Her teeth clenched just at the thought of them. She couldn't have thrown them out fast enough, keeping only the piece of the flute in hopes to fix what was broken.
The flute still laid in her room, cleaned as best as she could make it but still unplayable. Nothing but a useless piece of wood and metal kept only out of sentimentality.
She tried not to think about it. She tried to focus on the smell of Earl Grey brewing in honeyed water, to think of how relaxing it would be. But in the end her teeth ended up gnashing and another scream worked its way up from her belly as her hand slammed to the counter, tea splashing out of its cup.
She consoled herself with the knowledge that they were in the last week of school and that she would soon have months worth of reprieve. That almost calmed her down.
Still, as she set down a plate of birthday sushi and teas down in the living room, she wished that she had let her temper and fist fly. It would have been worth any punishment to wipe that smug, condescending, look off of Emma's face.
But she rose above the impulse as her mother taught her to. Someone had to honor her mother's teachings and memory, especially if Emma was so insistent on defiling it all.
She was reaching for the remote, hoping to drown out her day with mindless distraction, when something caught her eye. Her birthday present from her dad.
Her only gift that hadn't been a cruel joke.
She wasn't sure if she liked it or not, honestly. She appreciated that her dad had tried but she had never been one for video games. She had always thought that they were a mindless time sink for violent behavior.
But damn if mindless violence didn't sound exactly what she needed.
The game system, a Bridge according to the side of the box, still laid unopened since it's unwrapping and took her a moment to set up. She briefly struggled with the wires but she must have done it right as the screen easily lit up and asked for a disk.
That gave Taylor another pause, after all, she had options. He father said the store clerk recommended them to give Taylor a sample of "different styles of gameplay". Taylor and her dad agreed he probably got swindled but Taylor was now feeling just a bit more grateful for that greedy employee.
The first game she picked up she decided against immediately, basketball really didn't seem like it was going to give her what she was looking for. The opportunity for some cathartic violence.
The same went for the puzzle game with a guy falling through a hole on the cover and what she assumed was a life simulator game.The next two games looked to be more promising. Much more promising.
The first one had a blonde man and a wolf on the cover. The back of the case showed the man swinging the sword at various monsters and the wolf jumping at them. It also looked to have fishing? But the second game won the competition for one very simple reason.
It was rated M for Mature.
She didn't know much about video games but she knew that meant violent. And violent was what she was looking for.
She slid the game in and took her seat, popping in a piece of dynamite roll as she waited for everything to load. The system asked her a few questions for the game, the brightness, the difficulty, the interface. In the end, she just set everything to default and pressed start.
That was when everything went wrong.
A great jolt rushed up from her controller, tingling through her spine and slamming into her brain. She was sure her breath caught in her throat as the sensation began to overwhelm her.
And then she blinked. She blinked and she was no longer in her living room. Instead, she sat in a smoke filled room lined with chairs. An intercom dinged as the room shook periodically and a woman in a blue stewardess uniform walked down the aisle.
Was she on an airplane?
She blinked again and her ears were greeted to the sound of screams. Her lungs strained, her body felt weightless, and her ears rang as she suddenly found herself submerged in frigid water.
Luggage and wreckage sank rapidly around her as she struggled to the surface, every inch of her screaming for air. She broke the surface with what she was sure was the greatest gasp of air she had ever taken in her life, the air tainted by the smell of smoke.
Near everywhere she looked there was fire. Plane wreckage surrounded her and she did not hear a single cry for help.
Was she the only survivor? How did she even get there? Was she in the middle of the ocean?
These questions had to wait for when she wasn't at the risk of drowning or burning alive. So she swam to the only area that wasn't covered in debris and fire, a lighthouse that had remained miraculously untouched.
She called out, asking if anyone was there but she wasn't sure if her voice carried very far with how she was shivering. The door was open though and, hopefully, they wouldn't mind her going in where it wasn't raining and she could get warm.
The first thing she noticed when she entered the lighthouse was the giant statue looking down on her with grim features molded onto its bronze face. Beneath the man's face was a large red banner with golden letters.
'No Gods or Kings, Only Man'
The second thing she noticed was how the door slammed behind in her. She hoped it was just the wind.
She called out again, still shivering and unsure if she was heard. But she must have as a light had flared to life in the back of the building, leading to a staircase and what looked like a fancy elevator.
Were they leading her somewhere because they noticed what had happened? Or did they have other plans? They wouldn't bring her to them just to kill her, right?
Her hand near moved on its own, pulling the lever and jolting the room to life as it began trekking downwards. Outside the elevators window, she could see that she was actually sinking, fish swimming by carefully carved numbers telling her how far down she was going.
An old timey video began playing, taking up the view of the window. A man's voices spoke in smooth and impassioned tones as he decried the government and religion. Shaming them for holding back the artist and industrialist.
Taylor thought he was a bit full of himself but when she saw what he chose she couldn't help but feel awed. A great city, a metropolis, shined bright in neon underneath ocean waves. The elevator, or submarine, or whatever it was, was taking her on a long tour between buildings letting her witness great statues that rivaled the whales that swam between what would have been city lanes and jellyfish that glowed nearly as bright as the neon signs surrounding them.
She could hear other people talking now, on the radio that had apparently been next to her the entire time but she could barely find it in herself to pay attention to their words, too caught up within the great sights before her.
Her ride was pulling into a stop just then, gravitating to a series of rings that led into a building. She found herself excited, wondering just what lay within the wonder before her.
The first thing she saw was a man begging for his life as a woman gutted him alive.
-0-0-0-0-
Danny had gotten home late that night, nearing nine as he walked through the door. Not even a week and he was already breaking his promise to himself to not do that anymore, or at least not as much.
He hoped that Taylor wouldn't mind too much.
But as he walked in he found he didn't have to worry. Taylor seemed to have finally cracked open her gift and was having a grand time with it going by how intently she was looking at the screen.
He winced as the screen was covered in blood as her character seemed to die from what looked like impalement by drill. Maybe that game hadn't been such a great pick, it seemed way too violent. But Taylor didn't seem to mind as her character stepped out of the room it was transported to and came rushing out.
Well, at least she was enjoying it. He was worried that he had made a bad pick, and wasted a decent amount of money on the game system but now he felt better.
He yawned as he went up the stairs, "Try not to stay up too late, honey. You still got school tomorrow." Not that he minded too much, the school year was almost over and it wouldn't kill her to stay up a little past her bedtime.
AN:
I hope you guys enjoyed. And please tell me what you thought of it.
Side note: What sets going to set this story apart is that I have a clear ending for it in mind and it's not the distant Scion fight.
Radek
Promethean
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2017
- Messages
- 405
- Likes received
- 1,822
Could be interesting, but needs more material for proper judgement. Such as who took Tinkertech, how it ended up with the Heberts and what part of it all is going according to plan. And why this plan -if it is a plan and not someone screwing up.
TheDivineDemon
Know what you're doing yet?
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2015
- Messages
- 246
- Likes received
- 2,424
The tunnels were damp and rusted, groaning as the weight of the ocean pressed down upon the city of Rapture. Dim lights lined the halls, flickering intermittently, giving birth to odd, deep, shadows.
Shadows that seemed to move and shift, hiding things deep within them. Things that had once been human, but were now something else. Something less.
Taylor gripped her wrench just a bit tighter, the heavy tool having already saved her life from the crazed denizens of the underwater labyrinth. Atlas, no mister, had called them splicers. That they had once been people before they injected too much of the power granting drug called Adam. Now they had gone mad, twisted in both body and mind.
Taylor took a self-conscious glance towards her left hand where her veins swelled and gave off a steady neon blue glow as tiny bolts of power snapped between her fingertips. She had taken the same drug as they had, multiple times. Was what happened to those deformed people her fate if she kept going on as she had?
But she had to. She had to if she wanted to live through the hellhole that she now found herself in.
She needed power if she wanted to survive the torments that Rapture kept throwing at her. Perhaps escape would be a better term, survival didn't seem to be an issue for her within the city's wall.
Taylor was so caught up in her thoughts, she almost missed the scraping shrieks of hooks against metal. She hurriedly brought her hand up, pointing the lightning covered fingers towards the ceiling even as the deformed man hurtled down.
She screamed, first in fright as her shot went wide and then in pain as the splicer's red hot hooks sunk into her. Her vision blurred a red tint as the hooks found her again and again.
Before she could black out from the pain or die from blood loss, to finally escape the nightmare she lived, the world zoomed by her. The tunnels blurred past her as an unseen force dragged her down the decaying halls she so feared and stuffed her into a tube. Stuffed her into a tube and brought her back from the brink of death.
She couldn't escape the city by dying. It had happened too many times for her to care to count. Her only choice was to keep moving, to keep going, to keep dying.
Over -
The gardens were surprisingly beautiful, a sharp contrast to the devastation she had found in the rest of the city. They were nearly untouched and even the lights had seemed brighter there than the rest of the city.
And then the laughing started.
A man appeared in a burst of red energy and embers, his fist bright with fire. "Right here asshole!" he yelled as he flung balls of fire at her.
-and over-
As she stepped around the corner a spotlight fell on her and an alarm started to blare. Turret guns and flying security bots came to life with bright red lights as she tried to back away, but it was too late.
Bullets ripped into her before she could run.
-and over-
Two whales danced in an infinite ocean. Jellyfish stars glowed as the whales broke apart and into school upon school of fish, the groups swimming around rising plateaus that seemed uncountable.
One shark among the uncountable thousands upon millions broke from the rest, swimming right towards her.
-and over-
The ground shook as the monster hidden in a diving suit charged. It's whale song of a roar nearly over taking the scream of its drill as it pierced her chest.
"You rescued me Sir Bubbles!" A little girl said with a giggle, hugging onto the monstrosity even as Taylor was dragged away.
-again.
She just wanted it to end. One way or another she wanted it to end. She hurt too much. The phantom pains of her deaths haunting her as she staggered along what was left Rapture's roads, trying to find the ever elusive exit.
She was just so tired.
*Player one unconscious, logging out*
-0-0-0-0-
Taylor woke with a cold sweat and a pounding heart, her frantic eyes searching the room. To her surprise she wasn't standing in a glass tube, instead, she was lying on her family's old sofa with a blanket carefully tucked in around her. The room wasn't lit by neon filtered through murky ocean water but by sunlight spilling in past familiar curtains.
Was she home?
But how? Atlas had said that they were in the middle of the Atlantic! Though maybe in retrospect, she was putting far too much faith in a little voice she had only met over a radio.
Or maybe, her rational mind said as it woke, it was all just a bad dream. A nightmare brought on by a too violent video game and some bad sushi. Her stomach turned as the memories came pouring back in, waking her up completely.
Why was it she could remember bad dreams so clearly but good ones she forgot in seconds?
She tasted bile as a hiccup snuck up out of her throat, but she managed to hold down the rest. Apparently, violent video games were not what she needed.
Taylor let out a groan as she stood, her blanket falling to the hardwood as she rose. She blinked at it, wondering momentarily how the cloth had gotten there and blinked again as she wondered where her glasses had gone.
The image of her father checking on her came easily to her mind. It was a sweet and comforting thought, soothing even. Enough so to calm the last of her nerves back down to manageable levels.
With her glasses recovered from the coffee table, she glared at the TV stand where the console had the gall to look innocent. She would have glared at her plate of sushi too if it were still there but apparently her father had cleaned that up too last night.
She let out a yawn as she moved into the kitchen earning a smile from the man sitting at the table.
Her father was a thin man with thick glasses and a hairline that was losing the war with his forehead, but he was not a meek looking man. For what he lacked in width he made up for in height, towering over near everyone else Taylor had ever met. And when he was angry… he seemed to take up the entire room as he loomed over you.
She had only seen it twice in her life but the image of it had stuck with her.
"Morning sleepy head." He greeted over his newspaper with a pleased smile on his face, "Have fun last night?"
Not really, no. But she didn't say that instead she held a hand over her belly and said, "I think the sushi's gone bad."
Taylor winced as the grin left her father's face as he set down the paper. He reached her in two strides, hesitant hands feeling at her forehead, "You do feel a bit clammy. How's your stomach feeling?"
"Twisty." She told him honestly, causing her father to hum as if he were a doctor trying to make a diagnosis.
"How'd you sleep last night?"
Again she was honest, "Bad. Nightmares…" She hesitated, "I don't think the sushi mixed well with the videogame."
He grimaced and the flash of guilt on his face made Taylor feel a stab of her own, "I thought I saw you tossing last night but I figured it was just the heat… Do you need me to call you out from school?"
Taylor shook her head at that near immediately, barely a thought going into the action. As tempting as that sounded she didn't like the taste of it. It had the bitter tang of giving up, of defeat, something she tasted all too many times the other night. "There's only two days left in the year, I think I can last. If I can't I'll go to the nurse."
He didn't look convinced, but he eventually nodded, obviously none too happy about it. "You will call me if you change your mind. Just leave a message with Dorothy if you need anything, alright?"
Taylor gave a nod.
"Good, now go get ready. I've still got time before work so I'll try to make something to help settle your stomach. Should be done by the time you get done."
Taylor obliged, debating giving him a hug before walking through the living room and up the stairs to get started with her morning routine. The shower's warm water made her feel good, easing muscles she hadn't known were tense and giving order to the mess she called hair. Her locks had not agreed with the sofa's cushions. Though as much good as the water did her it did nothing for the new bags under her eyes.
They made her thin form appear all the more gaunt, even sickly. Her cheek bones now had a sunken appearance and her too wide lips looked all too pale.
She looked like a mess, though she supposed that if anyone asked Emma or her little friends they would say it wasn't much of a change. That was something she wasn't looking forward to later in the day. Still, theoretical opinions aside, that sushi induced nightmare had done a number on her. At least now with her hair combed and her teeth brushed she felt a little more human.
"Taylor!" Her dad called from what sounded like the foot of the stairs, "I've got to head out! Your breakfast is on the table! Call me if you need anything!"
"Ok!" She shouted back as she zipped up her lite hoody, "Have a good day at work!"
"You too!" he said as the door snapped shut with Taylor shaking her head. 'You too'? Like she was going to work too or something.
She was downstairs not three minutes later with a bit more pep in her step as she walked to the kitchen. There was a bowl of porridge and a cup of orange juice at the table, she smiled at that.
Though the breakfast was missing something. Her morning caffeine.
An easy enough fix, just a refill of the tea kettle and a flip of a switch and her water was heating up. It would take a few minutes but she had time, the bus wasn't due to arrive for another twenty something minutes and the stop was not even a five minute walk away. And she needed her daily injection of caffeine.
She sat at the table sighing contently as she settled into her chair. The smell of oatmeal making her feel like she had finally recovered.
Then she made a face when she took the first bite. He had put too much honey in. She hadn't liked it that sweet since she was a kid. Still, it was nice of him, though he seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Trying to be nice. It was a bit weird.
Nice but weird.
She picked up her dad's discarded newspaper, reading it more as a way to distract her from the taste of the too sweet oatmeal than anything else. She'd never been one to really care about the news. Maybe it was because the world was too depressing or, more likely, she had too many of her own problems to pay much attention to what was happening around her.
With another mouthful down and a careful ear out for the kettle, she read the front page news. Max Anders, the guy who owned Medhall the big pharmaceutical company in town, was donating money to the local museum after some Parahuman named Circus robbed them and
Mayor Christner was apparently unveiling a new initiative downtown that would supposedly create new jobs.
She couldn't imagine that last piece of news had pleased her dad any. He was always complaining that City Hall was investing all it's time in the Downtown area while the Docks suffered. She was a bit surprised by how cheerful he had seemed this morning if this was what he had been reading.
More interesting was one of the side articles. Apparently Uber and Leet were responsible for three home break ins where they severely beat two men, with the third having been away from home at the time. The police, according to an inside source, had linked each of the men to Uber and Leet themselves. Former minions who had obviously done something to piss the two villains off.
Honestly, it was hard to remember that those two were actually supervillains, they were just so… lame. They raced around town on go-karts and floated across buildings with balloons wrapped around their waist while the live streamed all their dumb little adventures, and their failures. Their many embarrassing failures.
And then they do stuff like this. Beating up their minions, punching hookers, stomping on turtles, ect. It was like they were bipolar, going from funny to vicious at a rate that gave her whiplash.
She set that thought aside with the paper as the kettle bubbled and whistled. The secret to a good cup of tea was to have the honey at the bottom of the cup and to pour hot water directly over the bag instead of just plopping it in. It led to a richer flavor, or so her mother believed and she wasn't inclined to disagree.
She stirred the cup absently as she sat back down, letting the tea steep and brew in the water. Shouldn't be much longer, which was good considering nothing else interesting seemed to be happening in her not so little town.
She absently took her first sip as she read the funny pages and had her eyes bulged as a strange sensation swept over her. A familiar sensation. It was as if she was filling up a tank she didn't know, didn't want to know, was there.
She had to put down her tea before it sloshed everywhere.
She stared at her trembling fingers, flexing them as horror started to build in her. In the game, in that had given her those horrid nightmares, in Bioshock, there had been a power bar. A limit to how many times she could use injectable super powers. A limit that could be refilled when depleted with a substance called EVE or, which she had much preferred, by drinking some soda or a coffee.
By drinking caffeine.
With a shaky, hopeful, breath she flipped a mental switch that had suddenly made itself known. She let out a choked sob as lightning snapped to life between her fingers and her veins became neon bright. Her whole body felt warm as the power spread over her and sweat started to break out across her back, a sweat not born from the new warmth.
Lifting her other hand, she saw that it was the mirror image of its twin. Veins bulging against skin as the electricity coursed through her and cracked between her hands.
Was she still dreaming? Was it ever a dream?
Had she really gone to Rapture? Had she really died?
Tears started to prick from her eyes.
No, no that couldn't be right. It couldn't have been possible. She couldn't have ended up in the middle of the Atlantic, in the middle of some post-apocalyptic underwater city that should have only existed in a videogame.
How could it have happened? How could it have felt so real?
A thought hit her. A horrible little thought that had her eyes tracking downward, her head slowly turning until they landed onto the newspaper. Her mind replayed the news of the day, remembering the article that had caught her eye. An article about how Uber and Leet, the Videogame themed Villains, had been going around beating up their minions.
Going around beating up minions, one by one, almost as if they were searching for something. Something she probably had.
A game system that granted powers.
She reached out for the paper, wanting to search it for any clues that she was right. As soon as her fingers touched the paper it lite on fire, causing Taylor to squawk and try to slap the flame out. Her efforts just made things worse as her electric fingers started more fires then they stopped, forcing her to dump her cup of tea on the flames to stop it.
She let out a cry at the soaked and charred paper, her hands held high so they didn't set fire to anything else. She just wanted them to go away, she wanted the electricity to stop.
And then it did, like someone had removed a tab from its slot. Her veins dimmed and the lightning sparked away into nothingness.
"Rapture wasn't real," the sigh that came out sounded more like a sob than anything else. Knee wobbling relief mixed with fear sank into her as she fell back into her chair. "It was just a part of a game… a game."
It surprised even her how fast she was up and into living room. When the game system slammed to the floor she briefly worried for the wood but the sight of the undamaged casing infuriated her.
She tossed it, stomped on it, jumped on it.
Not a scratch.
She growled, dragging the system down the basement stairs by its cables taking an almost perverse pleasure as it clacked and thumped against each step. She slammed it to the concrete floor and was frustrated to find that again there was no apparent damage.
She reached for her father's toolbox and grabbed the first handle her fingers came across. She slammed the tool with all her might, hands ringing and bones jarring as she brought her weapon home again and again. But still, there wasn't a mark.
"Why!" Smack, "Why!" Smack, "Why, won't you break!" Each word and swing seemed to add all the more fire to her. Her blows raining down harder with every sound, until she couldn't take it anymore.
On ingrained instincts, she raised her hand. The tab that had disappeared earlier slid into a new slot and lightning lashed out from her fingertips. The smell of burning dust and ozone filled the air raged in Taylor's nose as she took in unsteady breaths, trying to calm down.
She found she couldn't. Not in that cramped dark space. Not with her hand glowing with power. Not with a wrench clenched knuckle white in her fist.
Her breathing just couldn't seem to stay even and her heart raced as her eyes started to notice just how dark it was down there. How the shadows seemed the shift in the light, how they seemed to move. How they could hide something.
She kicked the still intact system out of her way as she ran up the stairs, her hand still glowing and wrench still gripped tight.
Shadows that seemed to move and shift, hiding things deep within them. Things that had once been human, but were now something else. Something less.
Taylor gripped her wrench just a bit tighter, the heavy tool having already saved her life from the crazed denizens of the underwater labyrinth. Atlas, no mister, had called them splicers. That they had once been people before they injected too much of the power granting drug called Adam. Now they had gone mad, twisted in both body and mind.
Taylor took a self-conscious glance towards her left hand where her veins swelled and gave off a steady neon blue glow as tiny bolts of power snapped between her fingertips. She had taken the same drug as they had, multiple times. Was what happened to those deformed people her fate if she kept going on as she had?
But she had to. She had to if she wanted to live through the hellhole that she now found herself in.
She needed power if she wanted to survive the torments that Rapture kept throwing at her. Perhaps escape would be a better term, survival didn't seem to be an issue for her within the city's wall.
Taylor was so caught up in her thoughts, she almost missed the scraping shrieks of hooks against metal. She hurriedly brought her hand up, pointing the lightning covered fingers towards the ceiling even as the deformed man hurtled down.
She screamed, first in fright as her shot went wide and then in pain as the splicer's red hot hooks sunk into her. Her vision blurred a red tint as the hooks found her again and again.
Before she could black out from the pain or die from blood loss, to finally escape the nightmare she lived, the world zoomed by her. The tunnels blurred past her as an unseen force dragged her down the decaying halls she so feared and stuffed her into a tube. Stuffed her into a tube and brought her back from the brink of death.
She couldn't escape the city by dying. It had happened too many times for her to care to count. Her only choice was to keep moving, to keep going, to keep dying.
Over -
The gardens were surprisingly beautiful, a sharp contrast to the devastation she had found in the rest of the city. They were nearly untouched and even the lights had seemed brighter there than the rest of the city.
And then the laughing started.
A man appeared in a burst of red energy and embers, his fist bright with fire. "Right here asshole!" he yelled as he flung balls of fire at her.
-and over-
As she stepped around the corner a spotlight fell on her and an alarm started to blare. Turret guns and flying security bots came to life with bright red lights as she tried to back away, but it was too late.
Bullets ripped into her before she could run.
-and over-
Two whales danced in an infinite ocean. Jellyfish stars glowed as the whales broke apart and into school upon school of fish, the groups swimming around rising plateaus that seemed uncountable.
One shark among the uncountable thousands upon millions broke from the rest, swimming right towards her.
-and over-
The ground shook as the monster hidden in a diving suit charged. It's whale song of a roar nearly over taking the scream of its drill as it pierced her chest.
"You rescued me Sir Bubbles!" A little girl said with a giggle, hugging onto the monstrosity even as Taylor was dragged away.
-again.
She just wanted it to end. One way or another she wanted it to end. She hurt too much. The phantom pains of her deaths haunting her as she staggered along what was left Rapture's roads, trying to find the ever elusive exit.
She was just so tired.
*Player one unconscious, logging out*
-0-0-0-0-
Taylor woke with a cold sweat and a pounding heart, her frantic eyes searching the room. To her surprise she wasn't standing in a glass tube, instead, she was lying on her family's old sofa with a blanket carefully tucked in around her. The room wasn't lit by neon filtered through murky ocean water but by sunlight spilling in past familiar curtains.
Was she home?
But how? Atlas had said that they were in the middle of the Atlantic! Though maybe in retrospect, she was putting far too much faith in a little voice she had only met over a radio.
Or maybe, her rational mind said as it woke, it was all just a bad dream. A nightmare brought on by a too violent video game and some bad sushi. Her stomach turned as the memories came pouring back in, waking her up completely.
Why was it she could remember bad dreams so clearly but good ones she forgot in seconds?
She tasted bile as a hiccup snuck up out of her throat, but she managed to hold down the rest. Apparently, violent video games were not what she needed.
Taylor let out a groan as she stood, her blanket falling to the hardwood as she rose. She blinked at it, wondering momentarily how the cloth had gotten there and blinked again as she wondered where her glasses had gone.
The image of her father checking on her came easily to her mind. It was a sweet and comforting thought, soothing even. Enough so to calm the last of her nerves back down to manageable levels.
With her glasses recovered from the coffee table, she glared at the TV stand where the console had the gall to look innocent. She would have glared at her plate of sushi too if it were still there but apparently her father had cleaned that up too last night.
She let out a yawn as she moved into the kitchen earning a smile from the man sitting at the table.
Her father was a thin man with thick glasses and a hairline that was losing the war with his forehead, but he was not a meek looking man. For what he lacked in width he made up for in height, towering over near everyone else Taylor had ever met. And when he was angry… he seemed to take up the entire room as he loomed over you.
She had only seen it twice in her life but the image of it had stuck with her.
"Morning sleepy head." He greeted over his newspaper with a pleased smile on his face, "Have fun last night?"
Not really, no. But she didn't say that instead she held a hand over her belly and said, "I think the sushi's gone bad."
Taylor winced as the grin left her father's face as he set down the paper. He reached her in two strides, hesitant hands feeling at her forehead, "You do feel a bit clammy. How's your stomach feeling?"
"Twisty." She told him honestly, causing her father to hum as if he were a doctor trying to make a diagnosis.
"How'd you sleep last night?"
Again she was honest, "Bad. Nightmares…" She hesitated, "I don't think the sushi mixed well with the videogame."
He grimaced and the flash of guilt on his face made Taylor feel a stab of her own, "I thought I saw you tossing last night but I figured it was just the heat… Do you need me to call you out from school?"
Taylor shook her head at that near immediately, barely a thought going into the action. As tempting as that sounded she didn't like the taste of it. It had the bitter tang of giving up, of defeat, something she tasted all too many times the other night. "There's only two days left in the year, I think I can last. If I can't I'll go to the nurse."
He didn't look convinced, but he eventually nodded, obviously none too happy about it. "You will call me if you change your mind. Just leave a message with Dorothy if you need anything, alright?"
Taylor gave a nod.
"Good, now go get ready. I've still got time before work so I'll try to make something to help settle your stomach. Should be done by the time you get done."
Taylor obliged, debating giving him a hug before walking through the living room and up the stairs to get started with her morning routine. The shower's warm water made her feel good, easing muscles she hadn't known were tense and giving order to the mess she called hair. Her locks had not agreed with the sofa's cushions. Though as much good as the water did her it did nothing for the new bags under her eyes.
They made her thin form appear all the more gaunt, even sickly. Her cheek bones now had a sunken appearance and her too wide lips looked all too pale.
She looked like a mess, though she supposed that if anyone asked Emma or her little friends they would say it wasn't much of a change. That was something she wasn't looking forward to later in the day. Still, theoretical opinions aside, that sushi induced nightmare had done a number on her. At least now with her hair combed and her teeth brushed she felt a little more human.
"Taylor!" Her dad called from what sounded like the foot of the stairs, "I've got to head out! Your breakfast is on the table! Call me if you need anything!"
"Ok!" She shouted back as she zipped up her lite hoody, "Have a good day at work!"
"You too!" he said as the door snapped shut with Taylor shaking her head. 'You too'? Like she was going to work too or something.
She was downstairs not three minutes later with a bit more pep in her step as she walked to the kitchen. There was a bowl of porridge and a cup of orange juice at the table, she smiled at that.
Though the breakfast was missing something. Her morning caffeine.
An easy enough fix, just a refill of the tea kettle and a flip of a switch and her water was heating up. It would take a few minutes but she had time, the bus wasn't due to arrive for another twenty something minutes and the stop was not even a five minute walk away. And she needed her daily injection of caffeine.
She sat at the table sighing contently as she settled into her chair. The smell of oatmeal making her feel like she had finally recovered.
Then she made a face when she took the first bite. He had put too much honey in. She hadn't liked it that sweet since she was a kid. Still, it was nice of him, though he seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Trying to be nice. It was a bit weird.
Nice but weird.
She picked up her dad's discarded newspaper, reading it more as a way to distract her from the taste of the too sweet oatmeal than anything else. She'd never been one to really care about the news. Maybe it was because the world was too depressing or, more likely, she had too many of her own problems to pay much attention to what was happening around her.
With another mouthful down and a careful ear out for the kettle, she read the front page news. Max Anders, the guy who owned Medhall the big pharmaceutical company in town, was donating money to the local museum after some Parahuman named Circus robbed them and
Mayor Christner was apparently unveiling a new initiative downtown that would supposedly create new jobs.
She couldn't imagine that last piece of news had pleased her dad any. He was always complaining that City Hall was investing all it's time in the Downtown area while the Docks suffered. She was a bit surprised by how cheerful he had seemed this morning if this was what he had been reading.
More interesting was one of the side articles. Apparently Uber and Leet were responsible for three home break ins where they severely beat two men, with the third having been away from home at the time. The police, according to an inside source, had linked each of the men to Uber and Leet themselves. Former minions who had obviously done something to piss the two villains off.
Honestly, it was hard to remember that those two were actually supervillains, they were just so… lame. They raced around town on go-karts and floated across buildings with balloons wrapped around their waist while the live streamed all their dumb little adventures, and their failures. Their many embarrassing failures.
And then they do stuff like this. Beating up their minions, punching hookers, stomping on turtles, ect. It was like they were bipolar, going from funny to vicious at a rate that gave her whiplash.
She set that thought aside with the paper as the kettle bubbled and whistled. The secret to a good cup of tea was to have the honey at the bottom of the cup and to pour hot water directly over the bag instead of just plopping it in. It led to a richer flavor, or so her mother believed and she wasn't inclined to disagree.
She stirred the cup absently as she sat back down, letting the tea steep and brew in the water. Shouldn't be much longer, which was good considering nothing else interesting seemed to be happening in her not so little town.
She absently took her first sip as she read the funny pages and had her eyes bulged as a strange sensation swept over her. A familiar sensation. It was as if she was filling up a tank she didn't know, didn't want to know, was there.
She had to put down her tea before it sloshed everywhere.
She stared at her trembling fingers, flexing them as horror started to build in her. In the game, in that had given her those horrid nightmares, in Bioshock, there had been a power bar. A limit to how many times she could use injectable super powers. A limit that could be refilled when depleted with a substance called EVE or, which she had much preferred, by drinking some soda or a coffee.
By drinking caffeine.
With a shaky, hopeful, breath she flipped a mental switch that had suddenly made itself known. She let out a choked sob as lightning snapped to life between her fingers and her veins became neon bright. Her whole body felt warm as the power spread over her and sweat started to break out across her back, a sweat not born from the new warmth.
Lifting her other hand, she saw that it was the mirror image of its twin. Veins bulging against skin as the electricity coursed through her and cracked between her hands.
Was she still dreaming? Was it ever a dream?
Had she really gone to Rapture? Had she really died?
Tears started to prick from her eyes.
No, no that couldn't be right. It couldn't have been possible. She couldn't have ended up in the middle of the Atlantic, in the middle of some post-apocalyptic underwater city that should have only existed in a videogame.
How could it have happened? How could it have felt so real?
A thought hit her. A horrible little thought that had her eyes tracking downward, her head slowly turning until they landed onto the newspaper. Her mind replayed the news of the day, remembering the article that had caught her eye. An article about how Uber and Leet, the Videogame themed Villains, had been going around beating up their minions.
Going around beating up minions, one by one, almost as if they were searching for something. Something she probably had.
A game system that granted powers.
She reached out for the paper, wanting to search it for any clues that she was right. As soon as her fingers touched the paper it lite on fire, causing Taylor to squawk and try to slap the flame out. Her efforts just made things worse as her electric fingers started more fires then they stopped, forcing her to dump her cup of tea on the flames to stop it.
She let out a cry at the soaked and charred paper, her hands held high so they didn't set fire to anything else. She just wanted them to go away, she wanted the electricity to stop.
And then it did, like someone had removed a tab from its slot. Her veins dimmed and the lightning sparked away into nothingness.
"Rapture wasn't real," the sigh that came out sounded more like a sob than anything else. Knee wobbling relief mixed with fear sank into her as she fell back into her chair. "It was just a part of a game… a game."
It surprised even her how fast she was up and into living room. When the game system slammed to the floor she briefly worried for the wood but the sight of the undamaged casing infuriated her.
She tossed it, stomped on it, jumped on it.
Not a scratch.
She growled, dragging the system down the basement stairs by its cables taking an almost perverse pleasure as it clacked and thumped against each step. She slammed it to the concrete floor and was frustrated to find that again there was no apparent damage.
She reached for her father's toolbox and grabbed the first handle her fingers came across. She slammed the tool with all her might, hands ringing and bones jarring as she brought her weapon home again and again. But still, there wasn't a mark.
"Why!" Smack, "Why!" Smack, "Why, won't you break!" Each word and swing seemed to add all the more fire to her. Her blows raining down harder with every sound, until she couldn't take it anymore.
On ingrained instincts, she raised her hand. The tab that had disappeared earlier slid into a new slot and lightning lashed out from her fingertips. The smell of burning dust and ozone filled the air raged in Taylor's nose as she took in unsteady breaths, trying to calm down.
She found she couldn't. Not in that cramped dark space. Not with her hand glowing with power. Not with a wrench clenched knuckle white in her fist.
Her breathing just couldn't seem to stay even and her heart raced as her eyes started to notice just how dark it was down there. How the shadows seemed the shift in the light, how they seemed to move. How they could hide something.
She kicked the still intact system out of her way as she ran up the stairs, her hand still glowing and wrench still gripped tight.
Prince Charon
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I'm not sure the game system grants powers, rather than simply being a hyperimmersive Tinkertech game system, that made Taylor trigger from the experience of 'being' the main character in a BioShock game.
Prince Charon
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A thought for you: Rachel has a different trigger event, becoming a Tinker whose theme revolves around quadrupedal machines (robots, drones, powersuits, vehicles), possibly with a minor Tinker and/or Thinker ability relating to dogs (if you use the Tinker Methodologies that Wildbow came up with, this would be something like a Hyperspecialist Tinker, Binary Tinker, Limit Tinker, Controller, or if she has something like her canon difficulty dealing with humans, Mad Scientist; Limit Tinker could fit if, for example, she learned that Rollo was killed after the fact, rather than being present when he was about to be). This may mean that she doesn't become a villain, but not necessarily.
Works well with the 'all the Undersiders are Tinkers to some degree' idea that I vaguely think may have been discussed here - or, maybe it was just wandering around my head. (If Tinker Taylor still has QA, I suggest that Controller is an important aspect of her Tinkering. This is also consistent with the months before her canon Trigger, as well as themothsmonths after.)
Works well with the 'all the Undersiders are Tinkers to some degree' idea that I vaguely think may have been discussed here - or, maybe it was just wandering around my head. (If Tinker Taylor still has QA, I suggest that Controller is an important aspect of her Tinkering. This is also consistent with the months before her canon Trigger, as well as the
TheDivineDemon
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So, over the past year, I have discovered and fallen in love with the writings of Brandon Sanderson. A phenomenal writer and a name you should definitely look at when you go to your library or bookstore of choice.
What I loved in particular about him is what he calls the Cosmere which is essentially the shared universe that multiple worlds he created shared. Each story its own planet where select people can hop about once they figure out the trick. These book worlds include: Elantris, Warbreaker, The Mistobrn Trilogy and it's sequels, Whitesand, and The Stormlight Archive along with the collective of short stories called the Arcanum Unbound.
Now there are two things within the Cosmere that made me think of a Worm Crossover, particularly the Stormlight Archive, where Taylor keeps her canon power. But... Spoilers! So read the next bit of exposition for this idea.
And that was an hour out of my life just to write down a stray thought that can be summed up as "Oh, this series has a similar name for the power origin and planet hopping like Worm as well as something cool for Taylor's power to interact with"
Oh well.
Thoughts? Opinions? Suggestion? Butterflies and nails?
Edit:
Some fanart and offical of the varioius types of life on Roshar
What I loved in particular about him is what he calls the Cosmere which is essentially the shared universe that multiple worlds he created shared. Each story its own planet where select people can hop about once they figure out the trick. These book worlds include: Elantris, Warbreaker, The Mistobrn Trilogy and it's sequels, Whitesand, and The Stormlight Archive along with the collective of short stories called the Arcanum Unbound.
Now there are two things within the Cosmere that made me think of a Worm Crossover, particularly the Stormlight Archive, where Taylor keeps her canon power. But... Spoilers! So read the next bit of exposition for this idea.
Okay, I warned you.
More Exposition!
Now a major element of the Cosmere are the Shards, fragments of what is essentially a God each broken off into a specialized bit. Sound familiar? The difference here is that there were only 16 fragments of Adonalsium after it's murder and each Shard I would say could stalemate Scion if not Zion. So my mind though, why not have Both Zion and Eden be one of these Shards?
The Shards in the Cosmere are more... abstract and metaphorical than the clear roles of the Worm Shards with such roles as Honor, Preservation, Devotion, and Odium (Hate). Sanderson semi-confirmed the name/role of a Shard yet to appear, Survival. I'm thinking of having Survival BE both of the Entities of Worm.
How? Well, spoiler, one of the Shards I mentioned earlier, Odium, is going around trying to kill the other Shards. He's doing this because he wants to be the one and only god of the dwarf galaxy of the Cosmere and absorbing the other Shards power would just pollute who and what he is (Hatred and passion) and he likes who he is. So he shatters these other Shards and leaves them to rot/out of reach for others.
What I'm thinking is that Odium found Survival and partially succeeded in his attempted murder. He split the consciousness of Survival apart but Survival did what Survival does best. Instead of killing the Shards mind and shattering the power into unusability he broke it into two beings with different mindsets. The mindsets of Survival. Fight or Flight. The Warrior and the Thinker.
Both in their own way managed to get away from Odium but neither was working a 100%, not in strength or mentally. Having your brain split in two does that. Flight crash-landed on one world and Fight wandered to another.
This allows for Cauldron to exist as the world hopping organization, just need to have Flight to do something that makes the organization to think they are evil. Or have another Shard do so and the group thinks that all Shards are the same. And considering one Shard, Ruin, wanted to destroy an entire planet because it was in their nature that's not too bad of a mindset to have.
For powers, well, each Shard usually creates their own magic system on the world they occupy. One of the magic systems, based on the Honor Shard, is where a creature of the cognitive realm aka a little spirit based on a concept bonds with a human once they swear some Oaths and another system gives the user its powers after 'snapping' aka surviving a trauma. Considering how canon Worm is a human bonding with an entity Shard after a trauma I was thinking of doing something of a combination. The idea that a magic system derived from the Survival Shard rewards people for surviving a trauma isn't out of the realm of thinking for me.
Maybe a person builds a... Trauma shadow or scar after certain events. Most of the time it heals and fades as the person recovers/deals with it/shrugs it off But for others it festers and builds up. Sometimes from dwelling on it, other times events just continue to pile up. Eventually, this shadow-scar starts to solidify and become a personification. A personification who, if it chooses to, reach out to their human and gives them the power they had built up. (Still working on it). I'm thinking the Taylor's/The QA looks like a mix of her mother, Emma, and insect giving an overall Fairy Queen look.
Anyway, it was Stormlight Archive that made me think of Taylor. Thier entire world (Roshar) outside Humans and a few other animals are arthropods, ranging from the regular bug-sized creatures to animals that could eat an elephant. Thier entire ecosystem is this but most notably is the other intelligent life on the planet, the Parshmen/Parshendi. They're Anothropods too!
I don't think that Taylor could take total control of them, maybe influence them but I can see the Parshmen happily accepting this... kinda. Definitely not the Parshendi. The two groups are basically the same species but their cultures are vastly different. You see, once upon a spoiler, this race was the apocalypse, literally and repeatedly (99 attempts that restarted human civilization to the bronze age each time). They were called Voidbringers, able to metamorph into different forms of power at the instruction of their gods and were bent on human Xenocide. The Parshendi rebelled against their gods, tired of killing and being killed, and purged themselves of their forms of power leaving only their 'Dull" form devoid of their higher thinking. They'd eventually relearn some form on their own terms (Dull, Mating, Nimble, Work, and War).
The Parshmen are what happened to the other Voidbringers who didn't rebel or get killed. They became slaves. That's right, humanity enslaved their apocalypse and for the next 4500 years bred them to astonishing numbers and integrated their service into every facet of human civilization. Totally didn't come to bite them in the ass later. Anyway, these guys are all in "Dull" form and honestly didn't know better as they hadn't seen a form of power in generations.
And then Taylor with her bug control comes around and jimmies things just the right way, similar to their old gods, and gives them back their minds.
From what I'm imagining: arc 1: Taylor gets powers/used to them as I explain/develop the Magic system, Arc 2: Worldhopping (somehow) and Eventual Slave rebellion with Taylor at the head while butting heads with human civilization and the Parshendi (who are not happy about something so similar to their gods showing up). More Conflict in the fact that Odium is on that planet's system and wanted his Voidbringer army back. Arc 3: Return home as well as Cauldron and Survival.
Still working on it.
More Exposition!
Now a major element of the Cosmere are the Shards, fragments of what is essentially a God each broken off into a specialized bit. Sound familiar? The difference here is that there were only 16 fragments of Adonalsium after it's murder and each Shard I would say could stalemate Scion if not Zion. So my mind though, why not have Both Zion and Eden be one of these Shards?
The Shards in the Cosmere are more... abstract and metaphorical than the clear roles of the Worm Shards with such roles as Honor, Preservation, Devotion, and Odium (Hate). Sanderson semi-confirmed the name/role of a Shard yet to appear, Survival. I'm thinking of having Survival BE both of the Entities of Worm.
How? Well, spoiler, one of the Shards I mentioned earlier, Odium, is going around trying to kill the other Shards. He's doing this because he wants to be the one and only god of the dwarf galaxy of the Cosmere and absorbing the other Shards power would just pollute who and what he is (Hatred and passion) and he likes who he is. So he shatters these other Shards and leaves them to rot/out of reach for others.
What I'm thinking is that Odium found Survival and partially succeeded in his attempted murder. He split the consciousness of Survival apart but Survival did what Survival does best. Instead of killing the Shards mind and shattering the power into unusability he broke it into two beings with different mindsets. The mindsets of Survival. Fight or Flight. The Warrior and the Thinker.
Both in their own way managed to get away from Odium but neither was working a 100%, not in strength or mentally. Having your brain split in two does that. Flight crash-landed on one world and Fight wandered to another.
This allows for Cauldron to exist as the world hopping organization, just need to have Flight to do something that makes the organization to think they are evil. Or have another Shard do so and the group thinks that all Shards are the same. And considering one Shard, Ruin, wanted to destroy an entire planet because it was in their nature that's not too bad of a mindset to have.
For powers, well, each Shard usually creates their own magic system on the world they occupy. One of the magic systems, based on the Honor Shard, is where a creature of the cognitive realm aka a little spirit based on a concept bonds with a human once they swear some Oaths and another system gives the user its powers after 'snapping' aka surviving a trauma. Considering how canon Worm is a human bonding with an entity Shard after a trauma I was thinking of doing something of a combination. The idea that a magic system derived from the Survival Shard rewards people for surviving a trauma isn't out of the realm of thinking for me.
Maybe a person builds a... Trauma shadow or scar after certain events. Most of the time it heals and fades as the person recovers/deals with it/shrugs it off But for others it festers and builds up. Sometimes from dwelling on it, other times events just continue to pile up. Eventually, this shadow-scar starts to solidify and become a personification. A personification who, if it chooses to, reach out to their human and gives them the power they had built up. (Still working on it). I'm thinking the Taylor's/The QA looks like a mix of her mother, Emma, and insect giving an overall Fairy Queen look.
Anyway, it was Stormlight Archive that made me think of Taylor. Thier entire world (Roshar) outside Humans and a few other animals are arthropods, ranging from the regular bug-sized creatures to animals that could eat an elephant. Thier entire ecosystem is this but most notably is the other intelligent life on the planet, the Parshmen/Parshendi. They're Anothropods too!
I don't think that Taylor could take total control of them, maybe influence them but I can see the Parshmen happily accepting this... kinda. Definitely not the Parshendi. The two groups are basically the same species but their cultures are vastly different. You see, once upon a spoiler, this race was the apocalypse, literally and repeatedly (99 attempts that restarted human civilization to the bronze age each time). They were called Voidbringers, able to metamorph into different forms of power at the instruction of their gods and were bent on human Xenocide. The Parshendi rebelled against their gods, tired of killing and being killed, and purged themselves of their forms of power leaving only their 'Dull" form devoid of their higher thinking. They'd eventually relearn some form on their own terms (Dull, Mating, Nimble, Work, and War).
The Parshmen are what happened to the other Voidbringers who didn't rebel or get killed. They became slaves. That's right, humanity enslaved their apocalypse and for the next 4500 years bred them to astonishing numbers and integrated their service into every facet of human civilization. Totally didn't come to bite them in the ass later. Anyway, these guys are all in "Dull" form and honestly didn't know better as they hadn't seen a form of power in generations.
And then Taylor with her bug control comes around and jimmies things just the right way, similar to their old gods, and gives them back their minds.
From what I'm imagining: arc 1: Taylor gets powers/used to them as I explain/develop the Magic system, Arc 2: Worldhopping (somehow) and Eventual Slave rebellion with Taylor at the head while butting heads with human civilization and the Parshendi (who are not happy about something so similar to their gods showing up). More Conflict in the fact that Odium is on that planet's system and wanted his Voidbringer army back. Arc 3: Return home as well as Cauldron and Survival.
Still working on it.
Oh well.
Thoughts? Opinions? Suggestion? Butterflies and nails?
Edit:
Some fanart and offical of the varioius types of life on Roshar
Winterborne
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I might end up working on this at some point, but thought I'd provide it here in case anyone else is interested. Also sorry if it's something that's been proposed before.
When Danny and Annette have their arguement about Taylor skipping a grade, this time her dad is convinced. Though her relationship with Emma has been strained by not being in the same classes any more, they still remain fairly close. Having been at Winslow (or even Arcadia) for a year Taylor decides not to go to the nature camp that summary to try and escape, but wants to spend some time with her friend, and try and help out around the house and with Danny's depresison; to show she is growing up.
Then it could go either of 2 ways, as I see it. Taylor could've been with Emma and Alan when the ABB attacks occurs, and it serves as her Trigger and she saves them rather than Shadow Stalker. Or events proceed similarly to canon, but with her BFF closer and more around in the direct aftermath, Emma can get more support and comfort from Taylor in the aftermath, counterbalancing and even fighting off Sophia's influence.
When Danny and Annette have their arguement about Taylor skipping a grade, this time her dad is convinced. Though her relationship with Emma has been strained by not being in the same classes any more, they still remain fairly close. Having been at Winslow (or even Arcadia) for a year Taylor decides not to go to the nature camp that summary to try and escape, but wants to spend some time with her friend, and try and help out around the house and with Danny's depresison; to show she is growing up.
Then it could go either of 2 ways, as I see it. Taylor could've been with Emma and Alan when the ABB attacks occurs, and it serves as her Trigger and she saves them rather than Shadow Stalker. Or events proceed similarly to canon, but with her BFF closer and more around in the direct aftermath, Emma can get more support and comfort from Taylor in the aftermath, counterbalancing and even fighting off Sophia's influence.
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macdjord
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Hell, Sophia wouldn't probably have a chance to have an influence; I can't see Emma going back to the alley the day after if Taylor's in town to comfort her, and if she doesn't then she won't see Sophia at all until the start of school - and, not having proven her 'strength', Sophia is unlikely to be interested in her at that time.
nick012000
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Idea: PMMM/Worm crossover. When Scion arrives on Earth, he notices that he's not the only alien active and granting people powers there in one particular timeline, but the others aren't Entities, so he deploys some shards into that timeline to observe and analyze them for future analysis during the next phase of the Cycle. Kyubey notices the people spontaneously gaining powers for no apparent reason, and using his alien superscience, determines that they're acquiring these powers from some extradimensional source bonded to their brains. Since they've never encountered extradimensional anything before, and since they offer a potential method of escaping entropy (since the Second Law of Thermodynamics only applies in a closed system), they elect to study these new human/alien symbionts, and after a few decades, they've managed to reverse engineer the process, and notice a nearby timeline where there's a significantly larger concentration of them.
So, they arrive on Earth Bet, and discover a teenage girl who's the host to one such alien symbiont that possesses the largest Magical Girl potential they've ever seen, along with a handful of others around her that are also extremely high from the influence they have on her. So, when Leviathan attacks Brockton Bay, and Taylor Hebert is lying with her spine broken, a little white fluffy bunnyfox appears before her. "Quick! Make a wish, so that I can make you into a Magical Girl!"
So she does, and she discovers that her life has gotten even more complicated, since she's apparently now required to fight these "Witches" that followed her benefactor to Earth Bet if she wants to live, and Scion seemed to be paying her an unusual amount of attention after she helped him drive off Leviathan...
It also doesn't seem to help that her school bullies have also been approached by Kyubey and transformed into Magical Girls as well, either.
So, they arrive on Earth Bet, and discover a teenage girl who's the host to one such alien symbiont that possesses the largest Magical Girl potential they've ever seen, along with a handful of others around her that are also extremely high from the influence they have on her. So, when Leviathan attacks Brockton Bay, and Taylor Hebert is lying with her spine broken, a little white fluffy bunnyfox appears before her. "Quick! Make a wish, so that I can make you into a Magical Girl!"
So she does, and she discovers that her life has gotten even more complicated, since she's apparently now required to fight these "Witches" that followed her benefactor to Earth Bet if she wants to live, and Scion seemed to be paying her an unusual amount of attention after she helped him drive off Leviathan...
It also doesn't seem to help that her school bullies have also been approached by Kyubey and transformed into Magical Girls as well, either.
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Prince Charon
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In his revival of an old comic called Stanley and his Monster, Phil Foglio introduced a John Constantine expy named Ambrose Bierce (he'd wanted to use John, or another Constantine-expy named Willoughby Kipling, but had been denied). If you click on the link with Bierce's name in the linked page (the site appears to object to hotlinking), it has a frame with Bierce explaining an organization called the Disreputable Urban Magicians and Sorcerers Union to a guy in a propeller beanie: 'You learn the basics, have a hideous experience in a graveyard, they give you a trenchcoat and steal your razor. Like an assembly line, really.'
This concept gives me some ideas. A few are SIs, but another involves Taylor without an SI: She reads the comic, and later than night, upon having a hideous experience in a graveyard (perhaps she finds out Sophia's identity early, and Sophia tries to kill her by burying her alive with her power), she triggers, and QA uses Taylor's ideas about disreputable urban fantasy characters to inform the power she gains. After using her own blood to draw a hasty magic pentacle and summon an Earth Elemental or minor daemon to dig her out, Taylor decides to go buy a trenchcoat (she's undecided on the mask at first; if her father stays alive, she'll probably use one, but if not, she might not bother), but due to comic-book double standards and the shattered remains of her vanity, does not stop shaving (or waxing, or whatever). She probably doesn't take up smoking, either (she's still Taylor), but might take up drinking, or sacrifice alcohol and tobacco to various spirits and such. She soon gains a reputation as a loony but occasionally useful cape in Brockton Bay (she thinks she's a witch, and I'm thinking the story could leave it vague as to whether she's summoning things, or projecting them, along with whatever other 'magic' she does; if the trigger event isn't shown, QA might or might not even be involved), but often finds herself unable to drink her tea in peace. She might or might not end up getting lots of her friends and acquaintances killed, but I'm leaning towards 'not,' as the primary source for the concept of her powers was Phil Foglio's cute and fun version of Stanley and his Monster, not Hellblazer directly (and also, not Kevin Smith's annoyingly dark take on the Dovers). Also, Taylor doesn't have John's bizarre talent for making friends with people, so she'd run out too fast.
This concept gives me some ideas. A few are SIs, but another involves Taylor without an SI: She reads the comic, and later than night, upon having a hideous experience in a graveyard (perhaps she finds out Sophia's identity early, and Sophia tries to kill her by burying her alive with her power), she triggers, and QA uses Taylor's ideas about disreputable urban fantasy characters to inform the power she gains. After using her own blood to draw a hasty magic pentacle and summon an Earth Elemental or minor daemon to dig her out, Taylor decides to go buy a trenchcoat (she's undecided on the mask at first; if her father stays alive, she'll probably use one, but if not, she might not bother), but due to comic-book double standards and the shattered remains of her vanity, does not stop shaving (or waxing, or whatever). She probably doesn't take up smoking, either (she's still Taylor), but might take up drinking, or sacrifice alcohol and tobacco to various spirits and such. She soon gains a reputation as a loony but occasionally useful cape in Brockton Bay (she thinks she's a witch, and I'm thinking the story could leave it vague as to whether she's summoning things, or projecting them, along with whatever other 'magic' she does; if the trigger event isn't shown, QA might or might not even be involved), but often finds herself unable to drink her tea in peace. She might or might not end up getting lots of her friends and acquaintances killed, but I'm leaning towards 'not,' as the primary source for the concept of her powers was Phil Foglio's cute and fun version of Stanley and his Monster, not Hellblazer directly (and also, not Kevin Smith's annoyingly dark take on the Dovers). Also, Taylor doesn't have John's bizarre talent for making friends with people, so she'd run out too fast.
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Prince Charon
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Thinking more about this old idea:
This Taylor triggers as a projection-type Master. Specifically, she projects 'spirits' with various powers, in the form of translucent or invisible muppets. The thing is, they act like muppets, so while they're obedient, they are not inclined to kill or seriously injure anyone (trap someone or render them unconscious, sure, but not really hurt them), and they tend to be lacking in intelligence and/or wisdom. A good utility power with excellent combat applications, but perhaps more importantly, getting defeated by muppets is humiliating.
Taylor being Taylor, she's still going to try to go out as a hero, but this power is much more photogenic and relatable (and is effectively non-lethal), while still being heavily munchkinable. She might go out sooner, but then again, might not, as IRC, part of her reason for delaying was not just the costume, but her vanity leading to her needing to get in shape. I'd still prefer to avoid a rehash of the canon Lung fight, partly because while going out at exactly the same time as canon (rather than roughly the same period) would be odd, and partly because it's overdone. For that matter, butterflies from Taylor not collecting all the black widows in town (probably an exaggeration) to make her costume could lead to the Undersiders doing things differently, and thus not pissing off Lung at that time.
So, thoughts?
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Lucky-38
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I wrote the first part of a SFW Worm/MGSV crossover. More to come after this, it's mostly just set-up.
-----
Maelfu Ya Miiba was feared in this area, for good reason. He had single handedly carved a bloody path through many villages in Kenya, using his powers to devastating effect as he staked his claim. Bluish spikes sprouted from every inch of his skin, spending most of the time laying flat as a kind of utterly impervious scale-like armor. When he wanted something dead, the spikes could be fired out like bullets, and regrew in seconds.
Now, 'Thousand Thorns' was enjoying the fruits of his labor. The biggest house in this shithole village that he'd made his home had been converted for his personal use. Money, jewelry, anything valuable that his soldiers could find was in piles around his 'throne', a high-backed wrought iron chair.
Today, he was bored. It had been a week since the last rival band had tried to raid him, and he'd nailed their men to the ground so they would bleed and die in the sun. Now, it had been so long since anyone nearby had tried to fight back, it had Thousand Thorns wondering if it was time to go on the offensive again. Hmph. He'd have his underlings bring him a local girl while he thought about it.
"Joseph! Here!"
A few moments went by, and Thousand Thorns scowled. "Joseph! Enzi! Where the hell are you!?"
There was still nothing, except the continued silence to mock him. Thousand Thorns stood up, striding angrily towards the door and kicking it open, ready to punish his guards for their deafness. Except...they weren't there. Thousand Thorns looked around, suspicions aroused. He always had guards around his house, at least a dozen. None were anywhere to be found. The only thing that *was* there was an overturned cardboard box.
He looked around, sinking into a crouch as he readied himself for battle, and-
The faintest sound of cardboard scraping over dirt was all the warning he had before an iron grip clamped around his neck just under the jaw, lifting him up off the ground entirely before using the momentum to slam him head-first into a very solid wall.
The impact left him too dazed to do much more than mumble as something attached to his back. And then he felt himself rising, faster and faster...
-----
Venom hoisted himself onto his helicopter, the usual motion of stowing his gear and settling into his seat so routine that they were basically automatic. Behind him, there was the sound of boots hitting metal, as Quiet, his unusual companion, made the jump into the ascending aircraft.
As soon as they were both safely aboard, Quiet taking her usual place on the row of seats in front of him, the familiar ring of an incoming call sounded in his earpiece. He tapped it, connecting the call. "Kaz. News for me?"
Kazuhira Miller, his second in command, wasted no time in getting down to business. "The Protectorate bounty contract's been finalized. Instead of just reacting whenever the locals scrape up enough funds to hire us, we can start to take a proactive, wide-scale offensive against the warlords in Africa. If we provide enough evidence on an individual, we can either take them alive to get thrown into their 'Birdcage', or just take them out ourselves. Less pay in it that way, but it might be easier sometimes. Plus, it gives us a chance to headhunt some new recruits."
"Generous of them."
"We're some of the only ones who've had any success in this region. There isn't a single other major player that wants to get involved, and it's made them all look bad. It's a win-win."
Venom reached under his chair for a big canteen of water, the prosthetic fingers of his left hand deftly removing the cap. "And we get legitimacy. Clout. Less chance of being seen as an inconvenience and bombed back into the sea." Gruff remarks made, he drank some water, hydrating himself after the time spent under the baking heat of the Kenyan sun.
"Exactly. This secures our position, Boss. It's been a long two years, but the Diamond Dogs are here to stay, now. I'll see you back at base."
"Roger." As he disconnected the call, Quiet tilted her head towards his canteen, then held out her hand. Her enhanced capabilities were terrifying, but at a similarly terrifying cost. After suffering third-degree burns over her entire body, Quiet's skin had been replaced by a colony of symbiotic organisms that tied themselves into the rest of her system, giving her a variety of incredible abilities. Her scarred lungs were no longer capable of processing oxygen, but the parasites could 'breathe' for her through her skin, as well as allowing her to photosynthesize and soak up water instead of needing to eat. However, she needed much more water than a normal human to feed the parasites, and would rapidly weaken and suffocate if too much of her skin was covered, or if she was deprived of sunlight for too long. Because of this, her outfit covered about as much as a bathing suit, though the R&D staff back at Mother Base were close to finding a workaround.
Worst of all, though, the parasites had stolen her voice. Nobody except the Navajo scientist Code Talker knew exactly how it worked, but if Quiet were to speak English, or too many syllables that occurred in English, the parasites inside of her would begin to devour her body and multiply, becoming contagious. There had already been an extremely close call before the sabotage that had sent them all to this new Earth, and she'd barely survived it then.
Venom handed the canteen over, and Quiet accepted it with silent gratitude. She began to pour the water up one arm, letting a trickle soak in at a time. As she went higher, she let more water pour out, spilling over her shoulder and down her chest, making her pale skin glisten for a moment before it drank in the moisture.
She looked over at her companion to see if he appreciated the show, only to find him engrossed in managing the next stage of Mother Base's expansion through his iDroid. She rolled her eyes and tossed the now-empty canteen back. Venom snatched it out of the air and stowed it without looking away from the holographic display, before glancing up and meeting Quiet's gaze. Neither of them were very expressive, but the ghost of a smile flickered over their faces, before they settled in for the helicopter ride back home.
-----
Maelfu Ya Miiba was feared in this area, for good reason. He had single handedly carved a bloody path through many villages in Kenya, using his powers to devastating effect as he staked his claim. Bluish spikes sprouted from every inch of his skin, spending most of the time laying flat as a kind of utterly impervious scale-like armor. When he wanted something dead, the spikes could be fired out like bullets, and regrew in seconds.
Now, 'Thousand Thorns' was enjoying the fruits of his labor. The biggest house in this shithole village that he'd made his home had been converted for his personal use. Money, jewelry, anything valuable that his soldiers could find was in piles around his 'throne', a high-backed wrought iron chair.
Today, he was bored. It had been a week since the last rival band had tried to raid him, and he'd nailed their men to the ground so they would bleed and die in the sun. Now, it had been so long since anyone nearby had tried to fight back, it had Thousand Thorns wondering if it was time to go on the offensive again. Hmph. He'd have his underlings bring him a local girl while he thought about it.
"Joseph! Here!"
A few moments went by, and Thousand Thorns scowled. "Joseph! Enzi! Where the hell are you!?"
There was still nothing, except the continued silence to mock him. Thousand Thorns stood up, striding angrily towards the door and kicking it open, ready to punish his guards for their deafness. Except...they weren't there. Thousand Thorns looked around, suspicions aroused. He always had guards around his house, at least a dozen. None were anywhere to be found. The only thing that *was* there was an overturned cardboard box.
He looked around, sinking into a crouch as he readied himself for battle, and-
The faintest sound of cardboard scraping over dirt was all the warning he had before an iron grip clamped around his neck just under the jaw, lifting him up off the ground entirely before using the momentum to slam him head-first into a very solid wall.
The impact left him too dazed to do much more than mumble as something attached to his back. And then he felt himself rising, faster and faster...
-----
Venom hoisted himself onto his helicopter, the usual motion of stowing his gear and settling into his seat so routine that they were basically automatic. Behind him, there was the sound of boots hitting metal, as Quiet, his unusual companion, made the jump into the ascending aircraft.
As soon as they were both safely aboard, Quiet taking her usual place on the row of seats in front of him, the familiar ring of an incoming call sounded in his earpiece. He tapped it, connecting the call. "Kaz. News for me?"
Kazuhira Miller, his second in command, wasted no time in getting down to business. "The Protectorate bounty contract's been finalized. Instead of just reacting whenever the locals scrape up enough funds to hire us, we can start to take a proactive, wide-scale offensive against the warlords in Africa. If we provide enough evidence on an individual, we can either take them alive to get thrown into their 'Birdcage', or just take them out ourselves. Less pay in it that way, but it might be easier sometimes. Plus, it gives us a chance to headhunt some new recruits."
"Generous of them."
"We're some of the only ones who've had any success in this region. There isn't a single other major player that wants to get involved, and it's made them all look bad. It's a win-win."
Venom reached under his chair for a big canteen of water, the prosthetic fingers of his left hand deftly removing the cap. "And we get legitimacy. Clout. Less chance of being seen as an inconvenience and bombed back into the sea." Gruff remarks made, he drank some water, hydrating himself after the time spent under the baking heat of the Kenyan sun.
"Exactly. This secures our position, Boss. It's been a long two years, but the Diamond Dogs are here to stay, now. I'll see you back at base."
"Roger." As he disconnected the call, Quiet tilted her head towards his canteen, then held out her hand. Her enhanced capabilities were terrifying, but at a similarly terrifying cost. After suffering third-degree burns over her entire body, Quiet's skin had been replaced by a colony of symbiotic organisms that tied themselves into the rest of her system, giving her a variety of incredible abilities. Her scarred lungs were no longer capable of processing oxygen, but the parasites could 'breathe' for her through her skin, as well as allowing her to photosynthesize and soak up water instead of needing to eat. However, she needed much more water than a normal human to feed the parasites, and would rapidly weaken and suffocate if too much of her skin was covered, or if she was deprived of sunlight for too long. Because of this, her outfit covered about as much as a bathing suit, though the R&D staff back at Mother Base were close to finding a workaround.
Worst of all, though, the parasites had stolen her voice. Nobody except the Navajo scientist Code Talker knew exactly how it worked, but if Quiet were to speak English, or too many syllables that occurred in English, the parasites inside of her would begin to devour her body and multiply, becoming contagious. There had already been an extremely close call before the sabotage that had sent them all to this new Earth, and she'd barely survived it then.
Venom handed the canteen over, and Quiet accepted it with silent gratitude. She began to pour the water up one arm, letting a trickle soak in at a time. As she went higher, she let more water pour out, spilling over her shoulder and down her chest, making her pale skin glisten for a moment before it drank in the moisture.
She looked over at her companion to see if he appreciated the show, only to find him engrossed in managing the next stage of Mother Base's expansion through his iDroid. She rolled her eyes and tossed the now-empty canteen back. Venom snatched it out of the air and stowed it without looking away from the holographic display, before glancing up and meeting Quiet's gaze. Neither of them were very expressive, but the ghost of a smile flickered over their faces, before they settled in for the helicopter ride back home.
aoirann
All of the Kink. None of the guilt.
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2015
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Revolver Ocelot:...Well...Shit. I hope Boss is doing okay without me.
But I want to see Revolver doing his showboating gun tricks in front of Myriddin
Myriddin: Nope. Not a flicker of powers.
PRT Analyst: BULLSHIT! THAT KID IS FLOATING!
*Everyone turns to Psycho Mantis*
Myrridin: Look I'm not saying it's not happening, I'm just saying they're not capes.
Lucky-38
On the house.
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Ocelot's here too. Basically the whole Mother Base cast of MGSV...except maybe minus Liquid.
aoirann
All of the Kink. None of the guilt.
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2015
- Messages
- 3,434
- Likes received
- 43,107
I mean the original Big Boss. Not Venom Snake. He's currently making Outer Heaven.
Lucky-38
On the house.
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2015
- Messages
- 5,772
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- 55,236
Oh, right. Metal Gear names can be confusing.